Orseis looked around the chamber and sneezed. “So your origin story is really dusty?”

  Bel frowned as Orseis waved a tentacle through the air, stirring up the hanging cloud of dust.

  “Seriously, I’m going to wither up if I stay in here too long.”

  Bel sighed. “Fine, go have fun hunting with the humans. I hope you find some useful abilities. Why don’t you bring Flann or Jan with you though, they must know more about living longer as a semi-human than the people here.”

  “Fine,” Orseis drawled.

  “Oh, hey,” Bel called after her, “can you ask Fortuit to come down here too? I want to ask them about this stuff.”

  Orseis waved a tentacle as she hopped clear of the collapsed wall and exited the room.

  Bel shook her head at the girl’s antics and went back to examining the room’s contents. She spun around and ticked them off on her hand: tiny boxes that stored spirits, an egg to grow a gorgon, and one of the teleporters from the third dynasty. From what she’d read, the teleporters took particular abilities to use, but they didn’t need an any spirits, and they definitely didn’t need any gorgons. She didn’t see any connections between the objects, even though Lempo had assured her that she would find something.

  Bel went back to the teleporter and began sorting through the stones that were stacked next to it. Each one was carved with incredible skill and beauty, and Bel found herself moving them closer to one of the lights so she could examine them more closely. The designs were pretty, but, as far as she could see, they were just designs. They only phrase that came to her mind to describe them was something that James had described with a mixture of befuddlement and derision: abstract art.

  “Bel,” said Manipule in a scandalized voice, “why are you still wearing those rags.”

  “Uh…”

  Bel looked up at Manipule, Fortuit, and Escalope as then walked towards her. Then she looked down at herself and realized that she hadn’t bothered changing her clothes, even after multiple fights.

  Was I wearing these during all of my negotiations too?

  She shook off the thought – she had more important concerns than some human opinions about her fashion sense.

  Bel pointed at the objects in the room. “Look at this stuff. There’s a teleporter from the third dynasty, and my mom told me that I was born from an egg like that one.”

  Fortuit walked over to the metal egg and examined its surface with interest.

  Manipule walked to Bel instead, frowning at the state of her clothing. She glanced at the egg as she passed it. “An egg like that one? What does that mean?”

  Bel gestured at the egg, still sitting lonely on its own table. “My mom meant to make more than one of me, but Technis wanted to rush and somehow things went wrong. I don’t really understand what he did, but he messed me up, and I guess that I was the only one born.”

  Bel was surprised when Manipule wrapped her in a tight hug.

  “It’s fine,” Bel said. She patted Manipule’s arm, waiting for the other gorgon to let her go. Instead, Manipule tightened her grip and whispered quiet comforts into Bel’s ear, which made the taller gorgon squirm with embarrassment.

  Manipule finally allowed Bel to extricate herself so she could wipe at her eyes. Bel wasn’t sure why they were suddenly acting up, but she guessed it was probably from all of the dust.

  As she swiped at her good eye with the sleeve of her ratty cloak, Manipule handed her a clean handkerchief. Bel mumbled thanks before turning away. Her damaged eye was overly sensitive to everything, and she thought that it looked like a mess too, so she preferred to keep it hidden under its scarred lid. She gingerly wiped around the scarring, she spent a moment cursing the nameless servant of the Dark Ravager who had injured her. Then she cursed Nebamon, Rikja, the Dark Ravager, and every other person who had tried given her a scar too.

  Moping done, she turned back and handed the cloth back to Manipule.

  “Thanks,” she muttered.

  She cleared her throat so she could speak with a firmer voice.

  “So Fortuit, what do you think of that egg?”

  Fortuit raised an eyebrow. “What do you want to know? It is an egg, although a small and strange one, but I think it would work for a gorgon.”

  She poked at a few valves along the exterior of the egg, demonstrating some functionality that Bel didn’t understand.

  “Does it tell you anything about my mother’s original plans for me?” Bel asked. “I wasn’t originally made to go after Technis, and Lempo’s original plans have got to clear from whatever is special about that egg.”

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  “Interesting.” Fortuit licked her lips as she inspected the egg, quickly turning it around in her hands. “It is hard to say as I do not recognize the design of it.”

  “It is small. We moved to larger designs many, many generations ago. They are more efficient and larger groups increase chances of survivors.”

  Fortuit poked at a few spots on the exterior and flipped another valve. “The air exchange and nutrient inputs are overcomplicated, but perhaps that is because of the impermeability of the metal shell. Some of the nutrient inputs are strange and make things more tedious than required, I think.”

  She poked at a lever, twiddling it back and forth. “See,” she said, more talking to herself than to Bel, “I cannot understand why–”

  Escalope silently handed her one of the empty cubes from the pile Bel had left behind.

  “Ah,” Fortuit sad. She grabbed the cube with excitement and fit it into the opening. “Perfect. So you flip this lever up, slide it in, and then slide this one down to open it. Ingenious, but too complicated for nutrients.”

  She spun the small cube around in her hand, examining the precise metalwork. “I wonder what these originally held.”

  “Spirits,” Bel answered. She pulled the unopened cube from her pocket. “But would feeding someone a spirit do anything?”

  Fortuit laughed. “Isn’t that a question that you could answer better I could?”

  Bel glanced at her snakes. Flora was just visible out of the corner of her eye, a brilliant white flower on her back still looking bright even in the dim room and Sparky was smoldering with a dim orange glow behind her.

  “I don’t know if…” Bel started, before trailing off.

  She looked at the cube and turned it over in her hands. Then she looked down to the end of the room where the teleporter sat quietly. “Maybe my snakes were supposed to help me use the old teleporters? But I don’t know why Lempo would care about those.”

  Bel gently patted her head snakes. “And I’m not cutting off a snake just to replace it.”

  Manipule gasped. “Yes, don’t do that.”

  Fortuit tilted her head. “You cannot simply add more? Some gorgons are practically buried under their snakes.”

  Bel shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t think so. Dutcha once told me that I could improve myself but cutting things off and replacing them, but she’s a spirit – and also a little crazy – so I don’t think I’ll take her advice.”

  She shuddered as she remembered the shock of losing her original three snakes. “I’m not sure I could stand to lose another part of myself.”

  “What about this?” Manipule asked.

  Bel couldn’t see where she was pointing because her hand was in Bel’s blind spot. As she reared her head back to see, she realized that the blind spot had been Manipule’s target.

  “My eye? I don’t… I mean… Maybe?”

  Bel reached up and ran her hand along the long, thick scar that fell from her forehead to her cheek, cutting straight through her destroyed eye. The thought of sticking something into it was unpleasant, but her need to know her mother’s original intrent was stronger than her aversion. She lifted the small box to her eye.

  Manipule’s snakes danced with alarm. “Bel, you do need to rush!”

  Bel shrugged. “No point in overthinking it.”

  She slipped her fingernail through the edge of the box, peeling it back and pushing it up against her damaged eye as the spirit inside slipped out. Before it could make its escape, she activated her spirit mixing ability and attempted to pull the small spirit into her body.

  When Bel had done the same with her previous spirits there had been some resistance, but this time the sparkling rainbow blob readily melted into her damaged orb as easily as salt dissolved into water. Then her eye began to tingle like a numbed limb finally awakening. The sensation threatened to overwhelm her, so Bel spun around and slammed her palm into a nearby table. The overwhelming sensation caused her to sneeze uncontrollably, and she cursed between the violent explosions.

  “Shit! Damn! Hell!”

  Bel beat the surface of the table with increasing vigor as her eye itched and crawled. Her vision burst into an unfamiliar palette of colors and shapes as arcs and lines jumped from one object to the next. A sea of impossible colors filled the air and bewildering shapes swam through the current. The sensations from her new sight increasingly powerful, making her head swim and her eyes water. Throughout it all, the tingling itch that burned her sinuses never stopped, forcing her into a near constant barrage of sneezing.

  Bel cursed and cursed until she ran out of curses in every language she knew. She squeezed her hands around the table until her fingers ached, desperate for the change to finish. The bizarre sensations didn’t come to a sudden stop, but their growth slowed to a pace where her mind could almost keep pace. As she acclimated to the new sensations, she managed to ignore some of the seizure inducing shifts in color and perspective and began to look at the world around her.

  She found herself staring at an incredible five-pointed star. Colors pulsed through it in a rapid, steady rhythm, and its shape remained solid despite it being surrounded by a shimmering aura. At the tips of its five points it shone with a silver light that she could tell was heavier and more stable than the rest of it. Bel leaned in for a closer look, tensing her hand as she put more weight on it.

  The star shifted. Bel turned her hand over and the star followed suit.

  “Oh, this is weird.”

  “Are you okay now, Bel?”

  Bel looked up to see Manipule’s worried face. Her face now included colored lines, roving points of pulsing light, and regular explosions of dense, shimmering particles.

  “I’m fine,” Bel said, staring at Manipule. “Are you okay? There isn’t something weird going on with your face, right?”

  Bel could still see from her normal eye, even if it was being overwhelmed by her new sight. She picked up a frown through all of the dancing lights, and Bel realized that she was the abnormal one.

  “Sorry, I was just confused. Your face is fine. How does my eye look?”

  Manipule grinned. “It’s glowing! It is very pretty, but a little distracting.”

  “Oh.” Bel reached up and covered the eye with a hand. Disconcertingly, she could still partially see through her own hand.

  “That is better,” Manipule said approvingly, “maybe you could use an eye patch?”

  “Maybe,” Bel replied.

  She looked down at the now empty cube and all of the other cubes left scattered about and realized that they were mostly inert in her new sight. She held a box over her eye and the world calmed down to its previous dullness, with just a hint of colors at its edges.

  Bel breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Okay, let’s make an eye patch out of these.”

  Then she looked around. “Hey, what happened to Fortuit and Escalope? Did something come up?”

  Manipule shook her head. “Escalope said that you looked like you would explode, so she dragged Fortuit and the eggs into the adjacent room.”

  Manipule leaned in closer. “You are not going to explode, right?”

  Bel laughed. “Of course not. That would be silly.”

  Manipule nodded, but Bel could help but think that the question had been serious. Bel looked down at the table she had been using for support and noticed that she had smashed and dented its metal surface during her fit. She rubbed the top of the table and the entire thing creaked on loose, wobbling legs.

  “Just some growing pains,” Bel said.