The Belemental considered her problems. The remaining delvers were trapped on the lake, the gorgons were dodging a living building, and she was still rushing into the fight with the two semi-humans. She had about ten seconds to figure out a solution before she came to the living lake, and running into it wasn’t an option.

  Flann’s long muzzle leaned over the rocky sled that she held over her head, peering down at her. “Hey Bel, you got a plan?”

  “I’m not really Bel. Call me the Belemental.”

  “This aint the time ta – no, now I’m gettin’ sucked in. Belemental is fine. What’re we gonna do?”

  She thought hard, relying upon all of the natural instincts of a magma spirit.

  “We’ll smash stuff. How about I throw you at–”

  “No!” Flann and Jan shouted together.

  She scrunched her face. Maybe the combination of Bel and Sparky wasn’t the smartest version of her? No, she had to believe in herself.

  “I’ll throw you at a building, and then I’ll fight the water.”

  “No!” the two old men screamed again.

  “Let us deal with the water!” Jan yelled. “I was supposed to make a bridge anyway, remember?”

  “You go help the gorgons,” Flann yelled, pointing with his cane.

  She thought about it for a moment. She hated the water, but it wasn’t really water. Leaving it to the old men would be fine.

  She took two leaping strides and hurled their sled at the place where a barrier trapped the delvers. They screamed with the thrill of battle as they hurtled through the air, and she wind stepped towards one of the carnivorous towers. She wanted to roar out a challenge, but she found that her wind-based body wouldn’t make a sound on its own. Instead, she silently materialized on the face of a tower and used her fist to deliver a powerful molten shockwave between its window-eyes.

  The beast – which, now that she was on top of it, was clearly a long worm with scales that looked like stones – threw back its head and yowled. Pungent gray ichor bled from where she had struck it, so she delivered a second blow. She ripped out more of its brick-like scales and its wound oozed more of the thick, gray blood. The worm roared again and she laughed with triumph. Then the worm dove into the ground, forcing the soil apart with its beak-like face. She found a good grip on the edge of its eye-windows and braced for the impact.

  As a creature of molten rock, she didn’t fear being pulled underground, but as the worm burrowed through the loose soil on the surface and into the harder bedrock below, she realized that her attitude had probably been too much Sparky and not enough Bel. She clung to its side as it crushed her against bedrock. The long worm’s smooth body was perfect for tunneling, unlike her own, and she crashed against every protruding stone like a nut in a grinder. Her horns continually caught on passing rocks, jerking her head in every direction, threatening to rip her body from the creature’s back.

  She squeezed her hands with all of her strength, straining against the constant impacts in a life or death battle of power and will. And then a hard lump of stone slammed into her head. One hand slipped.

  Then she was struck in the should by a passing boulder and her other hand lost its hold. Like a sailor swept out to a turbulent sea, she was crushed and tumbled against the rocks by a force she was helpless to resist.

  She felt pain and disorientation. Then she dropped onto the floor of a tunnel whose ceiling was slowly collapsing on top of her. She couldn’t move – her bones were crushed and her muscles were weak, and she was struggling to breath. But those were pathetic Bel thoughts. She wasn’t just some common gorgon! She was a creature made from the bones of the world!

  What were bones and flesh to a creature who body was rock and magma? She concentrated, increasing her temperature until she become one with her liquid body. Then she manipulated her liquid form back into shape. As her rocky substrate solidified into its proper form, she roared in defiance.

  No stupid castle-mimicking worm was going to eat her!

  She could feel its heartbeat coming back to finish the job, its malevolent heart thrumming with rage as it slowly tunneled in a loop for a second pass at her. She grabbed a loose boulder – a nice, solid chunk of rock that was just about her size – and activated destabilise bonds. Her ability couldn’t take hold of something so large immediately, and she began to worry that the worm would get to her before she was ready.

  She felt, but couldn’t yet see, that the worm had turned about and was travelling back up its freshly bored tunnel. Rocks clattered down from the ceiling at the beast roared, and she protected her snakes and head by holding the not-yet-exploding rock above her. She roared back and her ability engulfed the boulder with unstable energy.

  Her roar turned into a grunt of effort as she held out her weapon and spun in a circle, knocking away the nearby debris with her first swing and building momentum with the subsequent revolutions. The worm pushed closer, until she could feel a thrumming in her feet from its progress, and the boulder grew closer to exploding and she felt another thrumming from her hands. The worm roared with triumph and she hurled the boulder straight into its mouth. It reflexively snapped its maw shut – and then it exploded.

  She could tell what happened next, only that she could see stars in her eyes, her ears were ringing, and she’d been thrust through the loose debris of the tunnel. She couldn’t see anything, squeezed as she was among the rocks, but the only heart she could feel was her own. Her transformation was running out, and she was truly battered, but she had won.

  She struggled, and wriggled, and eventually freed an arm. She thrust it out and cleared the stones around her with another shockwave. With the weight cleared, she spent a few moments enjoying breathing before shoving herself to her feet.

  Her essence was low, and her transformation ended as she stood, with bits of stone and ash flaking from her body. She was left with her usual disorientation and a deep weariness that extending from her snakes to her bones. She had won though: the wan light filtering through the partially blocked, nearly vertical tunnel illuminated the faceless corpse of the tower terror.

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  She got closer and stared at the mess that was once its head. It had organs, but they were all rocks. Bel decided that she didn’t have time to question the strange workings of the unfamiliar creature – there were three more on the surface, and she could spend all the time in the world looking at them later if she survived the day.

  She poked the body with a finger and pulled out its essence, swelling her core past another two thresholds. The influx of energy improved her aches, but just barely. Bel turned at looked at the tough climb ahead. Her body was begging her to stop and rest, but she couldn’t, not while all of her friends and allies were still fighting outside.

  She forced herself at the rocks, scrambling over them and breaking her way through to the surface. Water was flowing in from the rain, washing out the smaller rocks and dirt and making everything more slippery. Bel dug her nails into the rocks and hauled herself out, squeezing through the tight spaces in the recently burrowed tunnel until she finally emerged on the battlefield.

  As her head poked above ground, her ears were immediately assaulted by the noise of battle: Cress’ shrieks, the roaring of the living towers, and the constant staccato of flintlocks firing. Flann and Jan had somehow managed to save the delvers, if they could be considered safe hiding within the hollowed out shell of Tim’s rock ball. Bel was relieved that they had gotten out of the water trap at least, although they were just barely on the shore and pinned in place by two panes of the Citadel’s barrier.

  She couldn’t see which of the delvers had survived, but the one with the whip would occasionally lash out with her weapon to drive back the searching limbs of the water hazard. Flann guarded the other side of their defensive position, blasting flames at the water when it approached. The towers were the more urgent problem, and Bel watched nervously as Cress zipped around them, delivering an occasional shriek or strike with her hammer.

  Bel thought things looked bad for Cress, who was fighting the towers on her own while also dodging the remaining soldiers with flintlocks. There were only two towers remaining, though, so Bel assumed that Cress had found a way to get rid of one of them. She thought through her next moves: hit the soldiers on the tower to remove their constant fire. That would give Cress more breathing room and hopefully free up the delvers and demi-humans to get across the water.

  She took a single step forward and tensed her legs, preparing to pounce. Before she could act, the ground shook and sent her stumbling. The central tower, squatting in the middle of the original four, was rising out of the ground. It spun slowly as it lifted, and its sides heaved like a heavy bellows, which filled Bel with a heavy sense of dread. The top of the tower bent until it faced her, revealing a gaping opening at the top that lead to a gray, fleshy interior. Instead teeth or a tongue or anything normal that Bel had seen in a living thing, a strange, round tube poked out of the tower’s mouth.

  It took her a few heartbeats to realize that it was a giant cannon.

  “I see from the look in your eyes that you realize the error in your approach,” a voice boomed from above.

  Bel tore her gaze away from the cannon and saw that the tower had eyes poking up from the top. It glowered down at her with an expression that was somehow haughty despite its lack of facial features.

  “Clark?” she wondered aloud.

  “Technis has allowed me the great honor of killing you. Don’t worry, I won’t delay.”

  The tower’s orifice had begun to glow as Clark spoke through it. A chill shook Bel’s body when she realized that Clark wasn’t just going to blow her up, he was probably going to blow up all of her friends as well. Maybe he would blow up everyone in Satrap.

  Her mind raced, and she took a tentative step in a direction, but a swarm of blue tiles flew into place around her. She was trapped in a narrow cylinder, and she didn’t have the energy to wind step out.

  If only I had wings! she lamented.

  Bel desperately ran to the side of the trap and slapped the barrier with her open hand. She used unlink barrier to decouple the nearest tile from the rest, and a forceful push with warp barrier curled it to the side. Bel dove through the opening–

  But the other side of the barrier unlinked and wrapped around her, once again trapping her in place.

  She heard someone shouting her name and looked up to see Cress fighting to reach her, but the remaining tower monsters were physically blocking her path. Technis’ soldiers were firing their flintlocks nonstop, pinning the rest of her allies in place.

  Hey, where’s Beth? she suddenly wondered.

  Bel looked around, hoping that her sister would appear to save her, but a sudden thundering from above sent her diving to the ground in helpless surprise.

  She looked up a moment later, wondering why she hadn’t been blasted to dust, and saw a huge ball of fire descending from the heavens.

  “More interference?” Clark boomed from above. “Your mother should know–”

  Whatever he wanted to say, he didn’t get to finish it. The ball of fire grew dramatically larger as it approached, until Bel felt like a mountain was descending upon them. It struck the cliff on the far side of the valley and blew straight through it.

  It seemed to disappear, and the cliff collapsed behind it, but a moment later the ground on the other side of the tower erupted in an angry spray of heat. An enormous upwelling of hot, incandescent rock surged upwards until it was taller than Clark’s tower beasts.

  The living moat writhed with pain and fury, impaled on the solid slab of hot rock. Tendrils rose out of its surface and slapped against the rock, but the rock turned to the moat and spat a stream of lava at it. The moat burst and its innards boiled, and in moments it collapsed like a failed desert.

  Bel stared at the rock, and Sparky strained forward on her scalp. She could feel a sense of awe and respect coming from the little magma snake.

  “That’s Dutcha, Sparky. She’s a bit unpredictable, but I guess she’s pretty powerful.”

  Bel felt relief. From his sputtering voice, Clark was obviously outraged.

  “You foolish spirit! You think I haven’t prepared–”

  Dutcha lifted a rocky arm and silenced him by smashing his tower to the ground. The remaining towers lunged at her, clamping their teeth around her rocky exterior as they attempted to tunnel through her.

  She laughed at their attempts, but more creatures rose out of the empty holes left by the towers: huge flying lizards with multiple sets of wings, giant spiders with more mouths than eyes, and giant people with long, wicked spears. They all charged the spirit, and the sheer weight of their attacks forced her backwards.

  The spirit reared up and opened her mouth wide and breathed out hundreds of spirits of wind and flame. The spirits roared forwards, crashing into Technis’ army.

  “Don’t worry about me, sweety,” she called out as she bathed the area around her in glowing lava, “you go do your stuff.”

  “What is happening, Bel?”

  Bel looked up to see Cress. The other gorgon was dirty and disheveled, but she seemed well. She was still damp from the rain, but the clouds had been dispelled by Dutcha’s forceful arrival, and now the sun and magma were quickly turning things hot and humid.

  Bel reached up and Cress helped pull her to her feet.

  She grinned. “That’s my other mother. She’s a spirit of chaos.”

  Bel watched proudly as Dutcha batted away a battalion of flying lizards.

  Cress grimaced with fear. “Maybe we should go before things get too chaotic? Are we still planning to go into Technis’ lair?”

  Bel furrowed her brows. She really wanted to watch, but Cress was right: stopping Technis was their first priority.

  “Okay, let’s get the others. Is everyone okay?”

  Cress nodded. “I think that Jan and Flann are well, as are a few of the delvers. Oculaire hurt her wing, but Seth helped me get her to cover with the others.”

  Bel frowned. “What about Beth?”

  Cress shrugged.

  “Where the hell is she?”

  Beth slowly peeled herself from the crack in the wall. A few moments ago, an unbelievable horde of monsters had rushed past her.

  If I hadn’t been close enough to a hiding spot, I would have been crushed, she thought.

  Still, I’m lucky that they decided to leave. Sneaking past all of them would have been tough.

  She glanced towards the surface and felt a brief pang of guilt, but she shook it off. Fighting a unascended god just wasn’t something she could do. Either Bel’s mother would help her overcome Technis’ power, or they would all die. That was all there was to it.

  She had long ago come to peace with her eventual fate, but, win or lose, there was one thing that she absolutely had to do: kill Clark.