Bel sucked the dusty air in through the rough cloth of her sleeve as she peered around the dark room. The floating flesh blobs glowed feebly from atop regularly spaced pedestals, casting eerie shadows that danced over long-disused machines and dust-covered worktables. The sight filled Bel with a feeling of foreboding. She shook it off.

  Bel knew that Technis wouldn’t have left anything useful behind. The living lights were interesting, but that was all they were, and she could see that not all of the pedestal’s occupants were still living. Whatever abilities they had that kept the creatures living and functional weren’t immune to the passage of time.

  She stepped into the room, kicking up more dust as she stepped over the remains of the wall. She gauged the room to be a little more than ten strides deep and three or four strides wide, although she had trouble seeing into the distant corners. Empty outlines and dangling metal arms marked the places where equipment had been removed, but Bel saw a few bits of clutter still stubbornly guarding their spots in the abandoned room.

  Next to her, just at the entrance of the room, was a scarred section of wall. Underneath it sat a sad pile of discarded stone limbs, the remains of some statue that had been struck from the wall. Bel bent over and poked through the pile until she located the statue’s head. A familiar face grinned back at her with a sharp-toothed smile. Something about the style looked old, but Bel recognized the face.

  “Mom?” Bel wondered aloud.

  She looked around the space a second time, suddenly more interested in its contents. She had known that Lempo and Technis had once worked together before Technis betrayed the goddess. No had had ever told her any details about his betrayal though, and Bel had wondered if anyone knew the entire story. Although Bel was tasked with wreaking vengeance upon the mortal god, that hadn’t been her original purpose, not if Technis’ betrayal came after her birth. Bel eagerly pushed through the accumulated dust, searching for any clues.

  The first few work tables had nothing more than broken tools, but Bel found her next mystery when she discovered a table littered with tiny, empty boxes. She held one of the finger-length containers up to the light and her eye widened at the intricate filigree that decorated its silvery surface.

  The box was empty though, with no hint as to its intended contents. Bel carefully picked through a pile of the tiny containers, sorting through the entire stack of hundreds until she found just two that were still sealed and unbroken. She hefted them in her hands, but she couldn’t feel any weight to them. She had no way to discover their contents without opening them, but she also had no way of knowing if opening them would ruin whatever was inside.

  Bel grimaced. It wasn’t as though their contents would shift the balance of power in Satrap – or could they? Bel stared at the tiny, ornate boxes and slowly turned them over in her hands.

  She could take them outside and ask everyone else what to do, sure, but what would they know that she didn’t? And what if the contents of the boxes couldn’t be taken out of the room? She couldn’t be sure that these two had actually been left behind by accident, and several of the boxes looked as though something had pushed its way out from within.

  Or maybe she was just making excuses. Bel’s curiosity had certainly grown stronger as she became more independent, and the idea of waiting on someone else’s opinion rankled her. Casting aside her hesitation, Bel carefully set one of the unopened boxes to the side before sliding her sharpened fingernail along the edge of the other one. She peeled the top back and watched with wonder as a ghostly, rainbow light ascended from the opening.

  Her snakes craned forwards to flick their tongues at the apparition while Bel stared with wonder. Then the light spun around and disappeared.

  Bel blinked with surprise. She had been so distracted that she’d forgotten that opening the box had been a limited time opportunity.

  The object inside had been a spirit – she could feel it. But a spirit of what? She didn’t have a clue.

  She pushed down the urge to immediately open the second unbroken box and instead slipped it into a pocket. Bel hoped that something else in the strange room would help identify the mysterious creature.

  She proceeded past several more tables, but found nothing of interest. One of them may have had hides with writing, but they were nothing more than scraps. Bel rushed forward when she saw a large, reflective object at the next table.

  It was egg-shaped, but larger than any Bel had ever seen. Also unlike any natural egg, it was made of metal with a deep green patina. Underneath the verdigris, she saw a familiar set of markings running over the egg. Bel carefully picked it up, grunting at its surprising weight.

  She brought the object closer to a light and spun it. As she did, she became more certain of its identity: a gorgon’s egg, but one made from some copper alloy instead of the usual clay. It was also smaller than the ones that Manipule and Fortuit carried, probably not suitable to hatching multiple young.

  Bel trembled as a sudden realization struck her. She quickly put the egg down as she struggled for breath. An egg only large enough for a single gorgon…

  Could she have grown inside of it?

  Bel gripped the edge of the metal table and stared at the egg, begging it for answers. Her head felt heavy and her knees weak. She had always wanted to know who she was and where she came from. Were the answers hidden somehow, written into the mysterious object in front of her?

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Bel’s knees went out from under her and she sank down into the thick dust at her feet. The world flickered and Bel fought for breath as a bout of dizziness swept over her. When a flickering shadow caught her attention she struggled to turn to the side and was startled to see the broken stone statue skittering over to her on its haphazardly placed stone limbs, like a bizarre spider made up of random human parts.

  “M-mother?” Bel asked.

  “Hello Beloved,” the statue answered back in a dry, scraping voice. Half of its head was smashed, leaving a single eye and half a mouth, but Lempo was unbothered by her form. “You passed out in the dust. I thought it prudent that I check in on you.”

  Bel looked around confused. She was still in the room, wasn’t she?

  She wasn’t. It looked similar, but the walls had receded into the distance, and the lights had been replaced by an impossibly distant, diffuse glow. The clutter had disappeared, save for the egg and a strange, swirling rainbow light.

  Bel stared in surprise as the small spirit reached multiple tiny, silken threads into the air. Then one of the threads twitched, and the spirit was instantly at the other end of it. Bel watched in fascination as it continued with the strange movement, warping from place to place but never straying too far from Bel.

  “It is tethered to you,” Lempo explained. “More specifically, to the anchor that you carry.”

  Bel looked down and saw that one of the spirit’s threads connected to a small item in her pocket – the mysterious box. No matter where the spirit moved, the tether remained.

  “Technis is quite clever,” Lempo said after a few moments. “Although it eventually became clear to me that he lacks originality, repurposing the solutions of others rather than devising his own solutions.”

  Lempo gestured at the box. “That is modelled after an interesting creature that consumes and stores spirits and later uses them to empower its own abilities.”

  “What is this one for?” Bel asked.

  Lempo shook the fingers at the end of one of her broken limbs. “The pantheon objects to me giving out too much free knowledge.”

  The goddess smiled. “And I am sure you will figure it out.”

  Bel opened her mouth to complain, but shook her head instead. She had more important questions.

  Bel gestured to the egg. “Is this where I was born?”

  Lempo crab-walked to the egg and gently caressed it. “This one? No.”

  The goddess’ stony mouth curled with displeasure. “Technis stole your egg away and modified it against my desires. He lacked the patience to wait for you and your sisters to properly mature and attempted to hasten their arrival.”

  If Bel hadn’t already been sitting she would have sunk to the ground.

  “I strongly disapproved,” the goddess added. Bel could feel an edge to the words, and realized that she had never truly seen her mother angry before. Her voice hadn’t changed much, but there was a look in Lempo’s stony gaze that looked to Bel like murder.

  “Sisters?” Bel asked.

  Lempo’s gaze returned. “Yes.”

  The goddess moved her hand from the egg and patted Bel on the head. “A child needs a family, yes? I have heard that said many times and was interested to learn more about it. But Technis cared little for violating our pacts, and he thinks he is beyond the pantheon’s reach if he reaches the Old World.”

  “But why? Why make us? What did he want from you?”

  Lempo smiled. “The answers are all in that room, little one. If you search hard enough.”

  Bel’s snakes curled with frustration. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  The goddess laughed. “I fight with the pantheon every day, but not over things that mortal patience and effort will solve.”

  Lempo laughed as Bel heaved a long sigh. Then the goddess held her limbs wide.

  “Hug,” she demanded.

  Bel rolled her eyes, but as she was surrounded by Lempo’s stony embrace she had to admit that it made her feel better.

  And then she returned to the waking world and found herself hugging the leg of a table.

  “Ugh.”

  Bel pushed herself away from the floor and returned to the egg. She traced some of the designs on its surface, wondering about a sister that she’d never met.

  “I guess this is just another reason to get revenge upon Technis.”

  Bel patted the egg, promising it silently that she would return for it, and then moved on to the rest of the room, eager to discover the answers that Lempo had promised. She passed by several rows of empty tables, only coming to something interesting at the end of the room. There, at a final table that was gouged into the rough rock at the end of the tunnel, sat a ponderous device of twisting metal. Fingers of braided alloys rose from a flat surface, curling inwards on either side like it was cupping around the empty space in its center. At its front was an empty tray, and to the side of it there was a shelf with several stacks of stones that were carefully cut to fit into the tray.

  Bel instantly recognized the device from the diagrams in her books on Technis: it was one of the teleportation devices from the third dynasty. She was drawn to the device and couldn’t help admire the skilled artisans who had produced all of the material before carefully weaving it together into the final design. The finished product was too large to move, which was probably why it had been left behind.

  She realized that it must also have been sitting there since long before Technis created Satrap. The temple above it, and the room itself, were all built around the device.

  She turned and looked at the rows of empty tables.

  Does that mean that everything in here was related to the teleporter?

  Bel remembered how the small, rainbow spirit had jumped from place to place in her vision with Lempo.

  It could be a spirit that teleports, Bel guessed.

  She walked back to the egg.

  “What would a gorgon have to do with a teleporter, though?”

  Bel was pondering the puzzle when the sound of her name snapped her back to the present.

  “In here,” she shouted back.

  “Where?” came the reply.

  Bel recognized the Orseis’ voice, and the few moments later the young cuttle-girl jumped through the hole in the wall. Orseis didn’t pause to inspect the room, instead speaking immediately once she saw Bel.

  “I was trying to explain to the Delvers that I’m fully grown because I’m part cuttlefish, and then I’ll probably be dead in a year or two so I need to find a compatible human quickly and they didn’t take me seriously at all!”

  Orseis stamped her feet as she hustled to Bel’s side, stirring up eye-watering clouds of dust as she went. “But then some of them suggested a few animals with abilities I could use to live longer, so I’m going to go out hunting with them. I would have just gone, but Manipule said that I had to tell you first.”

  Orseis waved her tentacles through the air for emphasis. “So here I am.”

  She smiled broadly and finally looked around the room. “What the hell is all this?”

  Bel grinned and patted the girl on the head, much to her dismay.

  “All this,” Bel said, gesturing around her, “is my origin story. I just have to figure out what it means.”