Bel put on a smile and shook hands with High Speaker Cove. She kept it up and shook hands with the entire human delegation, holding onto her composure until they finally left. If it had only been herself, Cress, Flann, and Jan in the tent, Bel would have yawned with exhaustion and collapsed right there. The cramped, dusty room was beginning to feel like a prison cell, but Bel couldn’t escape until until their final guest had her say.

  Bel looked at priestess Warrenier, hoping the woman would explain what she wanted. The older woman was content to wait in silence though, and Bel quickly decided to be more direct.

  “Is there something that you want in Baytown?” Bel asked. “We just agreed with the other humans where they could put their things. Do you need space for a temple or something?”

  Warrenier smiled gently. “I was planning to set up a small shrine near the scrattes, outside of the city proper. I’ve never interacted with them before, but if they are Lempo’s children then I must offer them guidance. I have already sent Priest Toll to establish friendly relations with their shaman.”

  Warrenier leaned over the small table to put her hand over Bel’s. “You’re obviously exhausted, and I don’t mean to keep you from your rest, but we should discuss the goddess Lempo’s plans.”

  Bel withered. She wanted rest, but she couldn’t ignore her mother’s plans.

  “If the rest of you want to leave, it’s fine,” Bel said to her friends. “Maybe Orseis is still wrestling that big guy.”

  Cress frowned. “Lempo’s plans are important. She is our goddess now, too.”

  “Reckon we may as well stay,” Flann added. He prodded the golden ear cuff that was an upgraded version of the earring that Bel wore, allowing him to both receive and initiate calls. “Your brother and Beth are gonna want a report, and I’ll get an earful if I skip this part.”

  “And Hanti,” Jan added.

  “Yeah, she’ll want to ask her questions too. They’re probably dyin’ for our report on the assault of Baytown.”

  Bel turned back to the priestess. “So what plans has Lempo given you? I should mention that she makes plenty of plans without me knowing anything about them.”

  Bel waved a hand with frustration, gesturing vaguely outside. “Did you know that she even promised to send Orseis to the Old World?”

  Warrenier made a noise of surprise. “I didn’t know that was possible. No, your mother just asked me to tell you a few things.”

  She pulled a small sheet of paper from inside of her robes and cleared her throat. Bel paled at the sight, but Warrenier laughed.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” the old woman said. “It’s not a huge list, I just didn’t want to forget anything.”

  Warrenier raised her hand, holding up a single finger. “First, she wants you to tell Oculaire that she’s being stupid and she should just do it. Not sure what that means.”

  Bel sighed with frustration. “That’s one of the gorgons. My mother asked me to get them to pray to her, but I guess she can’t easily answer them.”

  Warrenier nodded and smiled. “I can never tell what Lempo will take seriously. Under Lempo’s guidance, I’ve given fashion advice on many occasions – even in the middle of a plague!”

  The old priestess chuckled before looking back to her list.

  “Ah, number two. This is the gorgons’ home now. Leave anyone behind who isn’t needed for the fights ahead.”

  Bel glanced at Cress and the two of them nodded. Warrenier moved on to her third item.

  “Finally, once you confront Technis you won’t return. Set your affairs in order before then.”

  Bel stared at the woman in open-mouthed shock.

  “Whoa there,” Flann protested. “She won’t return? Is her mother sendin’ this young ’un to her death?”

  Warrenier smiled apologetically. “Her words often carry hidden meanings and multiple truths. No one can see the future, not even Lempo. All I can say is that asked me to pass this message along to her beloved daughter.”

  Bel rolled her eye. “Great. Riddles. James would love that. At least she isn’t telling me to hurry up.”

  Bel leaned back in her chair. “Was that it? I want to take Flann’s earring and call my brother now, if there isn’t anything else.”

  Warrenier smiled kindly. “That was it.”

  “Great. Flann, give me the earring. I want to tell him that I’m still alive, and then I’m going to sleep.”

  “It’s not really an earring,” Flann sniffed, feigning offense. “It’s a cuff. I would never poke holes in my ear.”

  “His hearing is already bad enough,” Jan quipped.

  Bel laughed along with them, although her heart wasn’t in it.

  Flann reached up to his ear. “Okay, we’ll have to–”

  His words were interrupted by a loud explosion from outside. The ground shook and dust sifted down from the ceiling of the small room.

  “What now?” Bel screamed with frustration.

  She found herself halfway through the door frame, her snakes writhing with tired fury, but was brought up short by the bulky being blocking her path.

  “Cleisthenes?” she groaned. “What do you want? What was that explosion?”

  The hippo snorted at her. “I want to complete this mission and return to my people. I don’t know what caused that explosion. Maybe the scrattes – they will be the cause of no end of trouble.”

  Bel waved her hand at the annoying man, shooing him to the side. “I’m going to go check it out. Move.”

  Cleisthenes stomped his foot angrily. “You seem to forget that I am in charge of all military aspects of this mission. Just because you disobeyed orders and got lost in the Underworld does not mean that you can ignore the proper chain of command. Now that you are finished playing with the humans I insist that you return to headquarters to report.”

  Bel ignored the man’s ranting and peered around him. Pelagius trailed after the hippo, as usual, but something was off about her. Instead of her usual vacant stare, when the fish woman saw Bel her mouth stretched into a wide, gape-mouthed smile.

  “Uh, Cleisthenes, what’s wrong with–”

  “Don’t you interrupt–”

  Cleisthenes’s head was enveloped by Pelagius’ suddenly tooth maw. Bel watched in stupefied horror as the woman’s long, sinuous neck – which hadn’t been like that a moment prior – retracted, leaving Cleisthenes’ headless body behind. A bulge travelled along Pelagius’ neck as she swallowed.

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  She patted her stomached with a wide, webbed hand. “So much better,” she hissed.

  Bel was yanked backwards by someone, and Cress interposed herself in the fish woman’s path. “She’s got something over her eyes,” Cress warned. “She’s prepared for gorgons.”

  Bel looked over Cress’ shoulder and saw a thick membrane had covered Pelagius’ eyes. The formerly incompetent woman reached into her satchel and pulled out a pair of rods with sharp, twisting tangles of wire at their tips. “Of course I’m prepared. I’ve been waiting for years to carry out my god’s will, hiding in the recesses of this body’s mind.”

  Cress held up her hammer as Pelagius jabbed with one of her rods, but the gorgon hadn’t been the target. The twisting mass of wires easily penetrated the flesh of Cleisthenes’ corpse. The hippo’s lifeless body began to writhe and stir as the wires wriggled under his skin.

  “Not more of these,” Bel groaned. She wanted to shut down whatever abilities Pelagius was using, but that would hurt her allies too. Flann was summoning orbs of fire and Jan was burrowing a second exit out of the building; Bel couldn’t be sure that ending their abilities abruptly would be safe.

  She was also unsure that she would reach Pelagius, and if the now-terrifying fish-woman was outside of Bel’s reach then she would be the only essence-empowered person around.

  Bel decided to go on the offensive and widen the room’s exit instead. She slapped a hand onto the door frame used a quick liquid shockwave to blast it into a cloud of debris.

  Flann made immediate use of the new opening, sending a barrage of small burning orbs at their fishy adversary. Pelagius pulled a wall of water from a nearby sewer, but she was forced back by the ferocity of Flann’s attack.

  Cress advanced, but she didn’t know the threat that Cleisthenes’ corpse posed. Bel pulled the other gorgon back as the hippo’s headless body rose to its feet and swept a massive poleaxe through the air.

  Cress’ snakes rattled in alarm as she deflected the much larger weapon with her war hammer. Bel kept the other gorgon upright as she staggered back from the force of the blow. A wave of water followed a moment later, shoving them all back into the cramped room. Bel pushed her head above water, pulling in a full lungful of air as she struggled against the waist-high water and powerful current.

  “Through here!” Jan shouted.

  Bel looked over to see his hand beckoning from a hole in the wall. She and Cress gladly retreated from the rapidly flooding room. On the other side she saw Warrenier and Flann standing at a safe distance. Flann shook the water from his fur while Jan quickly refilled the hole with his ground manipulation.

  “Should hold ’em for a second,” Jan said. “By the gods, what is happening?”

  Bel examined the area around them, taking in the small courtyard walled in by stone buildings, including the one they had just fled.

  “Pelagius was some kind of spy or puppet,” she growled. “And she just killed Cleisthenes and reanimated his corpse.”

  “You say that like it’s normal,” Jan complained.

  “Around Bel it’s not so strange,” Flann replied. He shot an orb of fire high into the sky. “Would be nice if someone noticed what’s happening here,” he explained.

  “Technis has been known to turn people into his playthings,” Warrenier said, her voice dry and rasping, but not at all worried. “Thanks to that explosion, everyone is likely too distracted to notice your signal. We had best prepare, the creature is clearly targeting us.”

  Bel knelt down and picked up a nice, heavy brick that Jan had dislodged with his work. “I’m ready,” she declared.

  She wondered if the fish woman would come over the building, flowing in on a dramatic wave of water, but she’d forgotten about Cleisthenes. The headless body burst through the back of the build as if it were paper, spraying bricks and debris in every direction.

  Bel wondered how the headless thing would see, but she noticed a few twisting wires poking out of its neck, spinning through the air like an insect’s antenna. She found its silence unnerving as it spun to face them and charged.

  “I got it,” Jan declared. The short meerkat stepped forward and lifted several walls of stone into the charging hippos path.

  Bel doubted that the obstacles would do much, but she was underestimated the experienced warrior. As Cleisthenes’ body turned to shoulder through the first wall, the stones dropped away to ankle height. The faceless creature stumbled through the surprising lack of resistance and tripped over the short wall.

  Jan gestured and the next wall dropped away, revealing a hidden pit. The body fell into it and was quickly buried in stone and dirt.

  Jan clenched his hands like he was holding a heavy weight. “Finish ’im off before he gets out!”

  Bel hopped towards the pit, but hopped away when she saw motion from the corner of her eye. A large icicle pierced the ground in front of her, and Bel hopped away again to get space for a good view of her assailant.

  Pelagius had sneaked to the top of a second building and was launching attacks from its flat roof. It looked to Bel like she had brought a well’s worth of water along with her, hovering over her shoulder in a swirling ball. At a gesture from the fishy woman, a crust of ice formed around the floating orb. She spun her hand and the water began to turn until its surface blurred with speed. The crust fractured and Pelagius released wave after wave of thin ice shards into the small courtyard.

  Cress tried to blast through the attack with an ear-splitting shriek, but that only vaporized a single wave ice. Pelagius whipped her hands through the air and the attack continued, quickly overwhelming Cress’ ability. Jan was forced to abandon his hold on the headless body to erect a stone barrier between Bel’s group and the icy assault.

  Cleisthenes’ corpse crawled to its feet, once again free. Flann immediately hit it with a ball of fire, but the heat didn’t even scorch the hippo’s thick skin. Bel used destabilized bonds to turn her brick into a weapon of destruction and hurled it at the hippo.

  She was pleased with the explosion that filled the courtyard with light and heat, but it barely knocked the corpse off-balance.

  I guess that I don’t know much about his abilities, Bel realized.

  She glanced at Pelagius, who seemed content to keep Jan busy while the corpse struggled towards them. Cress and Flann were stuck behind Jan’s wall, and Bel didn’t think that priestess Warrenier looked like much of a fighter.

  Jan was doing fine against the undead hippo, she though. Let’s try that again.

  “I’ll take care of the fish,” she declared.

  Without waiting for a response, Bel liquified her armor and manipulated it to cover her most important organs before pouncing at Pelagius. The fish-woman’s response was predictable: she blasted Bel full of holes. Bel lost some blood, but her liquid body prevented any real damage to her extremities while her impervious pillar-metal protected her important parts.

  Bel’s fingers twitched, eager to wrap around Pelagius long neck, but before she reached her the vile creature erected a wall of ice to block Bel’s path.

  Bel sank her nails into the ice and obliterated it with a liquid shockwave. She felt resistance from Pelagius’ control of the frigid material, but Bel’s ability was well-suited to dealing with any water-based material. Shards of shattered ice scattered around her as she advanced across the flat roof, but Pelagius didn’t retreat.

  She gestured to her dwindling supply of water and small, silver streaks shot towards Bel. The gorgon hunkered down behind a shield of her metal, but a surprise explosion blew her from her feet. Off-balance, Bel was forced to run around the rooftop, dodging small, exploding fish.

  Where the hell did she get these? Bel wondered.

  After a few seconds of running, Bel’s tired mind realized that she had a better way to combat the threat: she located the fish with track hearts and liberated their essence. She still dodged the next body, but when it splatted limply against the roof Bel turned her gaze back to Pelagius.

  There was a flash of light and a blast of heat behind her, but Bel trusted her allies to deal with the headless Cleisthenes. She charged Pelagius with a snarl and her snakes hissed an angry accompaniment. Her essence was running low, and she was exhausted, but Bel ignored her body’s complaints as she barreled through another pair of hastily erected walls of ice.

  Pelagius struck with her long neck and sharp teeth when Bel was only a few steps away, but Bel lifted her arm and let the woman break her teeth upon her armor. Bel grabbed the woman’s neck and attempted to snap it, but it was too long and sinuous and flexible. Bel batted away Pelagius’ clacking jaws as she formed a small knife from the edge of her armor. With a decisive slash of her razor-sharp blade, Bel bisected the woman’s head.

  She was once again covered in gore, and her purloined clothing was in tatters, but her enemy was defeated. Bel ripped the essence from Pelagius’ body, pleasantly surprised at its quantity. Then she rushed to the edge of the roof to check on her friends.

  She saw a crater five strides wide in the middle of the yard, and the area was filled with bits of burning debris. Bel didn’t see any sign of Cleisthenes and guessed that his body had been at the center of the blast. Flann and Jan were stuck on the side of the crater, sheltering inside of a rocky shield whose exterior look reflective and glassy.

  Cress and Warrenier were standing outside of the crater. Although the other gorgon was holding one her arms like it was injured, the area around them was oddly free of any signs of the blast. Bel inspected the priestess and noticed that the area of undisturbed dirt began at her feet. She wasn’t sure what abilities the priestess had used, but they had been effective.

  Bel dropped down from the rooftop and approached her friends.

  “Is everyone alright?”

  “I think I’ve gone deaf,” Jan shouted.

  “Ya already were,” Flann shouted back.

  Warrenier dusted some ash from her robe. “It seems we’ve poked Technis in a way he didn’t appreciate.”

  The old woman smiled. “This is excellent.”