Bel was feeling hungry, tired, and slightly desperate. She had gone from having an army of hundred to having a few gorgons, a pair of old semi-humans, and a cuttle-girl who was so young that Bel wondered if it was immoral to bring her along. Her hunger problems would be solved soon, hopefully, by Manipule’s cooking. Bel would have to solve her other problems with her own abilities of persuasion.

  She didn’t think she was doing well so far.

  “So that’s the story,” Bel said as she finished her summary of current events, ending with the humans from the Points leaving. She looked at Rock, the leader of the delvers, wondering what he was thinking.

  He didn’t say anything, so Bel kept rambling. “Head Priestess Warrenier said that she’s too old to travel to Technis’ citadel in Central City, but her assistant is coming with us. She’ll remain here with the scrattes and keep the town safe, so you shouldn’t need to worry about any non-fighters who you leave behind.”

  Bel gestured towards the field of scrattes. Around a quarter of their population had been buried head-first up to their waists. Bel had walked through the muddy ground as their shaman showed off their growth, and Bel had been shocked to see their above-ground limbs darkening and their toes lengthening into branches. Bel wondered if anyone understood their life cycles. Certainly, none of the priests or delvers knew what was happening.

  Rock squinted as he looked at Lempo’s priests. He struggled with the evening sun, uncomfortable with the intense light. Unlike the people from the Points, the delvers were pale from their time underground and unaccustomed to the harsh light of day. He scratched at his chin and looked at Bel.

  “Why do you think Technis is actually in the capital? If you just want to go there and, well, promote your mother, I don’t we’ll be any help with that. You do know that delvers aren’t respected here, right?”

  “Oh, he’s there. I’m sure of it. Why else would all of his people be retreating there?”

  Bel took a deep breath. “Rock, we need your strength. People here in Satrap are weak compared to the gorgons and the warriors of the Golden Plains, but the delvers are strong. You have the numbers to make a difference when we confront Technis, and we don’t have the time to raise a different army.”

  Orseis had verified their strength. She had lost most of her wrestling matches with the delvers, despite having an advantage with her flexible tentacles. Bel hoped that the delvers would put some of that strength to use helping her topple Technis before he activated his portal and left for the Old World.

  Rock rubbed a large scar than ran across his forearm and shook his head. “Why attack Technis? Your goddess-mother has already warned you that once you go to fight him you may not return.”

  Bel’s snakes twitched with irritation, but she managed to keep her expression neutral. “My mother likes to say confusing things. She probably meant that I’ll have to go to the Old World to clean up whatever mess he’s making.”

  That was the explanation that Bel hoped for, at least. She had talked it over with James and that was his hopeful conclusion. In stories from his world it was a common trope for gods to use misleading phrases. Bel hoped that applied to real life.

  Rock frowned. “I want to stay in this world though.”

  Bel sighed. “Then don’t go through his portal after we kill him.”

  When Rock paused to think again Bel couldn’t decide if he was honestly considering aiding her or just considering his next excuse.

  “To be honest,” he began, “my people have already decided that I cannot go, and that most of us have other priorities.”

  Bel’s eyebrows shot up. “Your people decided?”

  He rubbed the back of his head and grinned bashfully. “I’m the strongest, so I’m the leader, but I’m not the smartest. Once we heard that Technis was leaving Satrap and taking his followers with him, my people became afraid for this place.”

  He gestured away from the ocean, towards the continent’s interior. “Many of our families are still in towns across Satrap. We want to find them and make sure they are safe.”

  “But with Technis leaving they will be safe,” Bel said, exasperated.

  “Ah, he’s gotta point there, young ’un,” Flann interrupted. “Whenever the strongest disappears ya find out who’s had it in for each other the whole time. Ya remember how much arguing we did after the Dark Ravager died, yeah? And that was with everyone still worryin’ about our lack of children.”

  Bel threw up her arms. “Technis could come back, you know.”

  She shook her hands angrily, wringing the life out of the air in front of her. “But he’d be back with wagons made of metal! They can launch explosions that would obliterate a town from a thousand strides away! And flying weapons that drop balls of fire! Lots of stuff like that! The Old World’s technology is scary.”

  Rock nodded. “I agree. The cannons here in Baytown had prevented several attacks in the past. And of course I hate Technis.”

  He shrugged helplessly. “But I’m also responsible for my people.”

  “Are you sure that I couldn’t tempt you?” Orseis said. She waggled her hips in what Bel guessed was supposed to be suggestive, but just looked silly on her young body.

  Rock laughed and rubbed her bald head with his massive hand. “You know, my sister’s children must be around your age. I can only hope that they are alive when I go to my old village, and that they are half as entertaining as you.”

  Bel watched as Orseis struggled. She smiled at the sight, but Rock’s words reminded her that everyone else had problems.

  She could understand why the delvers were worried – those who hadn’t been born into the delving life had been sent to the labyrinthos as a punishment, torn away from whatever families they’d had. Rock hadn’t seen his family in years, probably.

  Rock finally let Orseis push his hand away with a mighty heave of her tentacles. He laughed at her pouting face. “Oh, that reminds me!”

  He grinned at Bel. “We do have some people who want to go with you. They’re mostly folks whose entire villages were burned by Technis, so they’ve got nothing left,” he explained.

  “They’re a hard, vicious lot who’ll stop at nothing for revenge. They don’t mind dying or falling into a hole to another world or whatever, just as long as they can hurt Technis.”

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  Oh good, Bel thought. More Beths.

  “How many?” she asked aloud.

  “Around ten.”

  “Are they strong?”

  Rock shrugged. “They didn’t get killed so far, so they’re alright.”

  That’s ten delvers, three semi-humans, four gorgons if I count myself, a priest, and Beth wants to meet me partway.

  Bel couldn’t see how she was supposed to kill Technis with such a pitiful group.

  Cress landed hard a few strides away, kicking up a cloud of grit with a flap of her wings. Oculaire thumped down next to her a moment later.

  “What now?” Bel huffed angrily.

  Cress cringed. “Sorry. There is a group of people approaching where the gate used to be.”

  “I don’t suppose they look like my mom sent them to help?” Bel asked hopefully.

  “They look like brigands to me.”

  Bel sighed. “Brigands,” Bel said to Rock as a one-word explanation.

  He nodded. “Probably because we don’t have a flag up.”

  Jan nodded. “Prolly. Hard to scare people away if you don’t have a flag.”

  Bel rolled her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Absolutely,” Flann interjected. “A good flag’ll ward away trouble like the bright spots on a poisonous snake.”

  Bel shook her head in disbelief. “I’ll go deal with them before they cause trouble. You guys can worry about a flag if you want.”

  She turned and activated her newest ability, wind step. Her body – and her clothes, thankfully – flowed into wind and she raced through the air. Bel had been forced to admit to herself that she wasn’t getting wings any time soon. Learning to fly would take too much time and she couldn’t afford the ability anyway. Instead, she’d comforted herself with one of Dutcha’s abilities that let her take a step as a creature of wind.

  With her current capacity, Bel could only take a single step, but it carried her several thousand strides from the floodplain to the town wall. She landed lightly as her body reformed from thin air, grinning at the sense of freedom and movement. She looked back and saw that the two flying gorgons were racing to catch up.

  Bel turned to survey the threat. “Maybe you shouldn’t have rushed here by yourself, dummy,” she muttered.

  She saw around a hundred of the presumed brigands, with five or six of them riding lizard-pulled chariots and the rest on foot. She had no good way of gauging their strengths, but she didn’t see anything obvious. No huge creatures of magma, no rippling of ground beneath their feet, no one casually carrying a cannon under their arm.

  I can’t tell if I’m feeling arrogant or confident, Bel thought.

  She didn’t see any set uniform across the group, but many of them wore pieces of formal clothing. If she had to guess, she would say that they were a group of deserters who had joined up with a well-funded group of thieves.

  She glanced up as Cress and Oculaire landed beside her.

  “Manipule wishes you luck,” Cress said. “But Orseis is angry that you left her behind.”

  “Whoops,” Bel replied. “I didn’t want these guys getting past the wall, though. We should really repair the gate.”

  She glanced at the gaping hole that Cress had left behind when she’d led the scrattes into Baytown.

  Cress frowned. “I will speak with Rock about setting up a formal guard rotation. Most threats have come from the sea or air, so we have been neglecting this approach.”

  Bel looked up and spotted one of the creepy birds that circled her every hour of the day. They reminded her too much of Clark’s birds for her to completely ignore them, but they were too far away for her to do anything. They were a good reminder that her opponents hadn’t forgotten about her.

  “Do you think Clark could have sent these guys?”

  Her gorgon companions shrugged.

  “We know little of politics here. Why would Technis not send his army?”

  Bel pointed at the brigands. “They guys are obviously expendable. Maybe Clark or Technis want to threaten the town enough that the delvers feel like they have to stay?”

  Bel clicked her tongue. “If the stupid people from the Points hadn’t gotten greedy, we could have sailed straight up the coast with an entire army. Now we’ve got to walk with not even twenty people.”

  Cress hefted her hammer. “But we will have the best twnety people.”

  Oculaire was still struggling with the local language, but she lifted an axe and grunted like a warrior to show her emotional support.

  Bel laughed. “Yeah, we’re the best. Let’s see what these guys want, and if they start something we can show them their mistake.”

  The brigands stopped at a respectable distance while their leader rode his chariot to the base of the wall. Bel guessed that his pointed hat with a large, billowing feather stuck through it was supposed to be a sign of authority, but she thought it looked like his head was being used as a nest. He leaped from the ground to the top of the wall in an almost impressive display of athleticism. Bel thought that it was somewhat diminished by the number of buttons and chains that popped off of his uniform as he landed.

  Completely ignoring the bits of his clothes that were rolling away, the man stood tall and whipped back his crimson half-cape. “Hello, ladies. I must insist that you throw down your weapons and surrender yourselves and your goods to me.”

  He drew a slender rapier from his waist. “Otherwise, we will have to get physical.”

  “He’s got two people sneaking up the wall. I can feel their hearts, but can’t see them. They’re invisible or something,” Bel said in English.

  Cress nodded and translated the words into one of the underworld tongues for Oculaire.

  The man snorted. “What’s wrong? Don’t you speak a decent tongue?”

  He looked her up and down with disdain. “Why are your heads so grotesque? Are you some rogue creations of Technis?”

  “That’s a pretty rough insult,” Bel replied. “Why don’t you leave before we have to kill you and all of your people?”

  The man pointed his weapon at Bel. “Hah! Unlike you squatters, we are a real troop of warriors!”

  “We’re not squatters. We took this town from Technis’ army.”

  “Hah! I doubt that. If you had, then you would be waving your own flag over the garrison.”

  Bel didn’t bother looking at the empty flag pole. “So would you have stayed away if we had a flag?”

  “What?” the man asked.

  “I want to know. For next time.”

  “You’ll have no–”

  Bel pounced. The invisible climbers were halfway up the wall and she was losing patience with the man’s bluster.

  As his sword pierced her body a dozen times, Bel realized that she had slightly underestimated him. Just slightly though. Her liquid body neatly flowed around the thin weapon and she remained unharmed.

  On the other hand, her opponent seemed quite displeased with the liquid shockwave that she sent into his chest. He coughed up blood as he staggered away from her, but, to Bel’s surprise, he stayed on his feet. Bel reset her stance as the man growled and counterattacked.

  He stabbed forward with his rapier again, but this time the blade was coated in a disturbing yellow-green aura. Bel decided to block the attack this time, catching it upon the armor across her forearm. Her metal stopped the blade, but the aura flowed from his sword into her arm. Bel felt a sharp tingle and then her limb went numb.

  His sword sprang to life and the metal whipped around like a snake. The brigand reached out with his free hands to grapple her, and Bel felt him trying to use an ability to take control of her armor.

  Meanwhile, his animated sword took on a life of its own, wrapping around her numbed arm and stabbing at her like a crazed serpent. Bel waved her arm around to shake it off, but when it stabbed at her sole eye she decided that she’d had enough.

  She used her liquid body to squeeze her hand out of his wrist lock, grab his sword, and used destabilize bonds on it. She throw it at the invisible people just as they finished climbing the wall. Bel felt the heartbeats leap to the side, but, while the abrupt movement saved them from her explosive attack, their bodies became visible as they rolled across the floor.

  Bel saw Cress and Oculaire moving in and considered the two stealthy attackers dealt with, leaving her to finish off their leader.

  Bel she channeled some of her anger and frustration into Sparky as she mixed spirits with the magma snake. Her opponent was still attempting to grapple with her as she transformed, but he screamed in pain and released her as her skin grew hot enough to melt stone. He had backed up to the edge of the wall and had nowhere to retreat. She didn’t hesitate to charge.

  He attempted to dodge to the side, but she grabbed his arm to take him with her as she leaped over the edge of the wall. After a few seconds of falling, she landed upon his neck with a satisfying crunch.

  She wondered why she wasn’t hit with a ran of arrows and stones, but when she looked up she saw that some of her enemies had already been turned to stone. Several statues of bowmen now decorated the front of the town with looks of surprise and horror.

  Realizing their situation, a few of the brigands had turned to flee, but plenty still remained to face her wrath. She reared her head back and roared.

  So what if she only had a tiny force to confront Technis? Numbers didn’t mean much when her opponents were so weak!