Outside Influences

Bel yelped in fear as she dove onto the rocky cave floor. She skinned her elbows, and her knee somehow found the sharpest rock in the mountain, but those were preferable to meeting with the rapidly spinning drill arm that passed above her. She squeezed her eyes shut as the limb of braided metal shrieked through the air. A spray of sharp debris erupted as the drill tip bit into the rock wall, spraying rock shards that etched shallow cuts across her forearms as she desperately shielded her eyes and face.

Her toughened integument ability made her skin tougher than normal, but the spraying rock and creature of living metal were too much for her to handle. Nebamon had stressed that he didn’t care about her physical condition, but with the way he was forcing their group through the dangerous mountain it seemed that he didn’t care for the safety of anyone.

Too bad I can’t just leave, she groused as she rolled to the side. She breathed a sigh of relief as she passed out from under the destructive device above her and crawled rapidly away from the fight. Maybe she could find a nice, small crevice to squeeze into. Maybe, if she was really lucky, the tunnel would cave in and bury both the metal creatures and Nebamon’s men in one magnificent moment.

Once the towering construct realized that it had missed its target, the cluster of cylindrical eye stalks on top of its body rotated around in a furious search for more prey. Bel’s snakes hissed, but luckily for her, the constructs of metal and flesh didn’t seem to have any hearing.

One of Nebamon’s fighter’s stepped over her and slammed a heavy axe into the momentarily bewildered construct, sending it staggering. In other circumstances she would have been fascinated by the group of semi-humans who had met up with them at the tunnel mouth, but now she passed this one by without a second look. She kept crawling as the fighter grunted with satisfaction and stepped forward to deliver an overhead chop to the unnatural construct.

She desperately wanted to run, but her situation was hopeless. Even if she could get away from Nebamon, Rikja, and the reinforcements he’d picked up at the entrance to the tunnel, there was no way that she could safely make her way out of the twisting passages. The tunnels that descended into the Spine Mountains were dark, winding, and infested with deadly constructs that swarmed the place like ants. Bel squeezed her bleeding arm, speeding the coagulation of her small cuts as she wished for the latest attack to end.

Bel took advantage of her momentary safety to examine the rest of the fight.

Rikja’s magic illuminated the cave system as she formed an orb of incandescent plasma in her hands. Rather than throwing it, the fire mage increased its intensity until Bel couldn’t stand to look at it. She crawled in the opposite direction; previous experience taught her that she didn’t want to be anywhere around the impact point of Rikja’s overcharged abilities.

Bel idly wondered how many strokes of Rikja’s core were devoted to protecting herself from her own flames. The long-snouted woman yelled out a warning in her own language, prompting her allies to scatter away from a hulking four-armed tool-armed monstrosity that blocked their way forward. Bel reflexively covered her head and face and her snakes slithered for safety on the far side of her head. Light stabbed at her eyes through the gaps in her fingers and the heat of a roaring fire baked her skin. Bel held her breath, waiting for the heat and bad air to dissipate before she brought new air into her lungs.

After she judged it was safe, Bel opened her eyes to see that the multi-limbed metal monstrosity had been set alight. It was apparently unperturbed by its smoldering exterior, and continued forward with its pick axe and whirling drill arms held high. The flesh of the human head mounted in the center of the construct may have turned more pink, but it was surrounded by a glass bubble that made it difficult to attack, at least with Rikja’s flames. The best solution Bel had seen was Nebamon’s approach, where he cut and ripped out the eyestalks and accessed the head through the holes left behind.

The whole experience was a feast for Bel’s nightmares. The situation was made all the worse because she had no idea what was happening. The constructs were clearly Technis’ work, but why were they in the mountains? Were they mining something? Guarding something? If they were always here, then why hadn’t the delvers noticed them?

And who in all the hells were Nebamon and his people? If there was a group capable of standing up to Technis’ priests and his twisted technological servants, then why hadn’t Bel already heard about them? Bel grit her teeth with frustration – if she was going to be kidnapped by these people, she at least wanted to know why.

Rickja went from throwing flames to cursing the creature in her strange tongue. Nebamon was more useful: he leaped in front of the construct and neatly pierced his sword through one of the automaton’s shoulder joints. The drill arm went limp at its side while the swordsman leaned back to avoid a swing from its pickaxe.

The swordsman’s mustache quivered in anger as he shouted something to Rikja.

She responded with something that sounded sarcastic to Bel before tossing out a smaller burning orb, aimed at the eye stalks this time.

Bel’s attention was pulled to the other side of the cave where it sounded as if the walls were being torn down.

Bel saw that her first impression wasn’t far from the truth – Crystal had finally unleashed a wand that she had spent the last minute charging. The rocky cave walls were writhing like dancers at her command, tossing person-sized boulders around like skipping stones. The scaled woman gestured and the walls of the passage shuddered, twisted, and abruptly came together to smash several of the automata with a deafening impact.

Bel squeezed her hands over her ears in an attempt to shut out the sound. The moment she removed them she heard a voice.

“Get on your feet, girl.”

Bel stared up at Nebamon’s face, eerily illuminated by the light on his helmet.

“Maybe we had better turn back,” she suggested. She coughed as she inhaled some metallic dust that had been kicked up from the fight. “This way doesn’t seem very safe after all, does it?”

Nebamon snorted loudly. “I think not. These are more nuisance than danger, at least to us, and we are nearly there. We shall press onwards.” He gestured towards her and Rikja roughly pulled the gorgon to her feet.

She hadn’t really expected that to work, but it wasn’t like she had many other options other than wasting their time. She remained alert though, hoping for something – maybe a tiny hole that she could squirm through, perhaps an underground river to dive into – anything at all that would give her the slightest chance of slipping away.

Her snakes flicked their tongues in the air, expressing her irritation to the world. Bel sneezed, clearing out some of the dust from her sinuses. She fell into a caughing fit, but Rikja showed no consideration. She was pushed forward, stumbling down the tunnel until she could master her breathing again.

When Bel could finally take a breath of the stale cavern air, she froze at a familiar scent, one she only remembered from the dungeon in the High Temple. Bel’s feet ground to a halt. She didn’t want to get any closer to whatever shared the tunnel with them. Nebamon’s could yell and hit her all that he wanted, but she knew that there were more terrifying things in the world than him and his delusions of grandeur.

Her feet scuffed on the rocky floor of the cave as Rikja pushed her forward. Bel braced her feet against the ground and got a quick punch in the gut for her trouble.

One of the nameless guards grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her forward. Bel was surprised to see more details in the darkness around her feet, and she looked up to see the distinctive blue glow of Technis’ Barrier reflecting from the walls of the cave. Her captors seemed pleased, but Bel was filled with a feeling of dread. If Technis’ enforcers were going to show up, the moment would be now.

Nebamon gestured to Crystal and barked out a command before turning to her with a wide grin.

Eat shit, she thought. She almost said it out loud too, but she wanted to be conscious for whatever happened next.

“Well, little spirit, this is our destination. I suppose halfway point is more accurate, but things will be much less troublesome once we cross over.”

He gestured and one of the guards put their hand to Bel’s back, shoving her forward. Bel saw Crystal messing with some device, a large engraved metal or ceramic plate that she was rolling down the tunnel towards the Barrier. Another man with a tail like Nebamon’s followed along with a tripod.

Nebamon was no longer looking at her, but that didn’t stop him from gloating.

“Yes, we’ll show you how we’re getting through,” he explained, as if that had been her first concern.

Well, I do want to get through. Just not with you.

“Technis may have delayed us with his abominations, but, in the end, he is just a pale imitation of the glory of our ascending god, the Dark Ravager.”

“What a fool,” a hissing voice mocked. The entire group tensed, and Bel was rudely dropped as the man dragging her reached for his weapon.

“The Dark Ravager is a bug that Technis could squash underfoot. How dare you enter our holy land and attempt to take what is ours.”

The voice had a dry, rasping quality with angry, snappy consonants – like someone had written curses onto hundreds of sheets of parchment before flinging them into the air to flutter madly to the ground. The voice filled the tunnel with its echoes, but the speaker remained hidden.

The lead guards kept their eyes forward as they stepped back and drew their weapons. Nebamon spun around, trying to locate the speaker.

A body spun like a pinwheel as it was tossed from the darkness. Bel realized that it was Crystal, rolled into a protective ball again. She hit the ground with a large thud and continued spinning straight into the wall. A moment later the guard with the tripod also came flying past – but just the upper half of him.

“We thank you for this device, dog,” the quiet voice mocked. “I shall see to it that this weakness is patched.”

Nebamon gestured to Rikja and the fire mage flung a burning orb into the darkness.

The orb flew through the air, its orange glow overpowering the dim blue of the Barrier as it passed through the tunnel. No more than thirty strides from them it was caught in someone’s hand. The glowing orb revealed a large figure, easily a stride taller than any natural human that Bel had ever seen, and a stride and a half taller than her. The giant clenched the fiery orb in a gauntleted hand and squeezed. The orb and its light disappeared with nothing more than a brief sizzle and a pop of light.

Bel took a step back only for someone to shove her forward again. “No runnin’ kid,” her guard hissed.

Bel cringed as the noise called attention to her.

“Ahhhh,” a second voice called out, this one as deep and foreboding as a pit. “I recognize you.” The giant moved through the darkness, the ground shaking with its steps. It stopped just out of reach of Nebamon’s two forward guards and leaned forward eagerly. “You’re the one we’re looking for.”

Bel fought to keep her heart from leaping out of her throat. The giant had come close enough that she could see its outline, backlit from the blue glow of the barrier behind it.

The former human was wrapped in a loose cloak that barely concealed a body with bulging muscles; muscles that were placed in all the wrong spots, like a drunken artist’s rendition of a champion wrestler.

The creature’s biceps were too close to the shoulder and a second bulge of muscle dominated its forearms where no joint should have existed. Its hands, clad in large, spiked gauntlets, bent at an odd angle from its wrists. Bel’s heart sank as she looked at it. She recognized one of what James had named patchwork people. They were a kind of almost-human produced in the bowels of Technis’ temple. Their bodies were all slightly different, but each one shared the same simpleminded devotion to Technis and an utter lack of remorse.

She’d hoped that, even if everything had gone to shit, she would have at least gotten to see the other side of the Barrier. Now it looked like she wouldn’t even get that much.

“You ungrateful wretch,” the patchwork person hissed. “You belong in the Temple! Technis will make your mother regret the day she shaped you from clay!”

Bel wasn’t sure about the truth of the clay bit, but she certainly wasn’t going to stand around and argue with the monstrosity. She turned to run, but one of the guards grabbed yet again, this time around the waist. Her snakes bit at his face and he tossed her to the ground where he held her in place with a knee to her back.

“Technis will get nothing,” Nebamon sneered. “Are you another broken thing, stitched together with foolishness and misplaced faith?” He brandished his sword. “Come, we will send you to hell where you belong!”

The giant bellowed with laughter.

Bel was so distracted by fear and anger that she missed the more reasonably-sized person standing next to patchwork person until the second figure spoke. The papery voice sounded almost soothing after the giant’s rumbling speech. “The Dark Ravager’s followers were foolish to trespass on this side of the Barrier. You are rats stealing scraps from their betters. Perhaps we will leave one of you alive to carry back a message… or perhaps not.”

The light bent strangely around the second man. Even when Bel looked at him directly she had trouble seeing anything more than a vague outline, the effect reminiscent of trying to read with a splitting migraine. She was confident that she saw robes and a staff, so she guessed that he was one of Technis’ inquisitors. A feeling of death seemed to ooze from his pores, making him even more intimidating than the semi-human giant, despite him standing a full stride shorter.

Nebamon glanced at the gorgon and huffed. He responded to the inquisitor in an offended voice, “The Dark Ravager is no thief. As one truly worthy of godhood anything inside of his reach belongs to him. If you have complaints then take them to your absent god.”

The inquisitor laughed. “The Dark Ravager persists because he is simply too far beneath Technis’ notice. You have our attention now though. Now that you are wasting our time, we have come exterminate you and your nest in Satrap. Klang and its siblings are always eager for battle, and Grand Inquisitor Clark has tired of these distractions.”

The giant slammed its fists into its chest, making a hollow, thumping sound as it hooted in agreement, its capacity for speech and thought apparently not enough to prevent it from acting like an animal.

Bel’s heart thumped as she pictured a war band of the manufactured things spilling out of the forest and into wherever James had been taken.

The mysterious man gestured and Bel heard the scuffing of movement coming from behind her. Shit, we’re surrounded, aren’t we? Why is everything a trap?

Sure enough, the blue glow of the Barrier and the flickering glow of their headlamps revealed a host of unsteady things wandering out of the darkness. They looked like the downy spine-backed lizards common in northern Satrap, but with additional clawed limbs haphazardly attached to their backsides. Bel recognized the scraps of different failed experiments hastily slapped together to form the nonsensical body plans. She’d seen similar messes from the practice animals of the less experienced acolytes in Technis’ temple. Amongst the horde there were a few more lithe examples of a master’s work standing upright on their enhanced hind legs. She guessed that this had been a rush job – at least Technis wasn’t ten steps ahead of her, just one or two.

The forest of grasping claws closed off their only path of retreat. They would have to fight the giant and the priest, the horde, or both.

Well, Nebamon’s group would have to do that. Even though she was currently pinned to the floor, Bel was still hoping that the two sides would distract one another and give her the chance to make a run for it.