“You’ve all said that you wanted to travel to the Old World,” Bel said with a smile, “so this shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Her audience looked at the teleportation machine. Tails drooped. Snakes hissed. Tentacles wavered.

  “Oh, c’mon. The guy who built this ascended. He knew what he was doing.”

  Flann’s ears twitched. “I don’t mean ta sound like a grumpy ol’ man, but that thing is older than me and this ol’ meerkat put together.”

  He prodded Jan with his cane for emphasis. “How do ya know that ol’ pile of junk is still workin’?”

  Bel glanced at the impressive device, silently apologizing for Flann’s disrespect.

  “It’s got all sorts of rainbow lines coming out of it. They look healthy.”

  Jan leaned over to Orseis. “Is that nonsense coming from her weird eyeball?”

  Orseis nodded with vigor. “Yup, she can see all kinds of weird stuff! She can even see a line connecting me to my spear, even if I try using my new concealment ability.”

  Manipule cleared her throat. “If we are truly planning to go to the Old World with Bel–”

  “With me,” Orseis insisted. “I’m the only one Lempo promised to send. You can all come as guests, if I’m feeling charitable.”

  Manipule patted the short girl on the head. “Yes, Orseis brings us along, then we should attempt a shorter, and safer, journey with this device before attempting to cross between worlds.”

  “Is it really safer though?” Flann asked.

  Bel sighed. “It’s completely safe, I think. I read all about these teleporters in the books on Technis.”

  Bel lifted the relevant volume, turning it so that the golden threads on the cover caught the light. She flashed the gorgeous cover at her audience a few times.

  “If it’s so safe, why did everyone else evacuate the room?”

  Flann waved his cane through the empty space behind them to emphasize his point.

  Bel glowered at the exit on the far side of the room.

  “They’re just paranoid about the egg that’s about to hatch. They made Manipule give it up and switch to the metal one early because of it.”

  Manipule had reluctantly given back the egg to Fortuit, who was now staying in a refurbished house that would become a home for the newly born gorgons once they hatched. Bel would probably miss the event since she would be off fighting Technis, which made her oddly sad. They came from the blood of the gorgons who had died on their journey from the underworld, so Bel felt a sense of responsibility and attachment for them that she didn’t feel for random children.

  She looked at Orseis and reconsidered that thought.

  I guess that I feel attached to Ori too, even though she’s a pain.

  Meanwhile, her four travelling companions stared at the machine.

  “Oh, you are still here!”

  Crecerelle strode into the room, tucking an errant snake back behind her ears. “I wanted to wish you luck before you left.”

  Bel grinned. “You already did. And we’re just going to be gone for a quick trip. These devices were built to gather energy over time.”

  She patted a the large essence battery on the side of the teleporter.

  “The energy comes from the destination, not the source, and this one is full. If the outgoing trip works the return should as well.”

  She shrugged. “Even if that’s not right, I’m pretty sure that the tablet I picked for the test goes somewhere in the Golden Plains, so we aren’t going so far away that we could get lost.”

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  Cress looked at the machine with interest. “I wish that I could come with you,” she said, “but the other gorgons do not want to be left alone with the humans and scrattes.”

  Bel laughed. “Yeah, that’s what you get for being leader. This is what you wanted though, right?”

  Cress nodded with a big grin on her face. “Yes. We are at the top of the food chain around here – or at least we will be once Technis is gone.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bel assured her, “we’ll take care of him soon.”

  Cress tapped her hammer. “I look forward to it.”

  “I’m looking forward to dinner,” Orseis grumbled. “Maybe we should eat before we go?”

  Bel sighed. “Okay, everyone who can get over their fear of ancient technology come stand around me.”

  Bel laughed at the nervous looks as her four companions gathered around her. The machine stood ready, a destination selected by the tablet that she’d placed into one of its many slots. Through her strange new eye, Bel could see a set of grasping lines, eager for her to make a final connection and trigger the device.

  “Should we hold on ta some–”

  Bel interrupted Flann by flicking a switch.

  The world lurched. Bel felt her stomach turn. Then she stumbled as her feet sank into a layer of coarse sand.

  “See,” she groaned, “the Golden Plains, just like I promised.”

  Voices responded, but they were far too high-pitched and nasal to be from one of her friends.

  “Ugh.”

  “Who are these?”

  “It’s those snakes again.”

  “Gross!”

  Bel got her stomach under control and looked up to see a group of deadly cat girls quickly encircling them. Orseis turned white with terror and squeezed against the wall. Her skin rapidly changed color and texture as she tried to disappear.

  Flann stepped in front of Jan as the meerkat tried to discreetly drill a hole in the floor in an attempt to make a new escape route. The stone beneath the sand looked hard, and Bel thought that his progress would be too slow to save them.

  And Manipule didn’t know anything about the cat girls, so she took a step closer to Bel and examined them with wary curiosity.

  Bel panicked. Yes, she had taken her friends somewhere in the Golden Plains, but they were in a large cavern rather than out in the open, cornered by the dangerous, laser shooting cat girls, with nowhere to run. The local teleportation device behind her was their only hope of escape.

  Bel turned to examine it, wondering if she could quickly trigger the trip back, but she realized that something was missing.

  “Where are all the destination tablets?” she wondered aloud.

  “They’re like, pretty nifty,” one of the cat girls drawled.

  “Yeah, we use them on the walls,” said another.

  Bel ground her teeth.

  I hate these people.

  “Can we do riddles now?”

  A chorus of agreements resounded through the room.

  “How about we just leave?” Bel said.

  “Boring!”

  “Lame!”

  “Gross!”

  “I just wanted to test that these thing was still working,” Bel explained. “I don’t actually want to pass through your territory.”

  “Working? Of course it’s working!”

  Bel looked up to see the cat girl with the tiara gliding towards them. She landed at the front of her pack, and the rest of the cat girls looked away in deference.

  The cat girl held up a paw and pointed it at the machine. “We’ve taken excellent care of this thing! We will punish anyone who says otherwise!”

  Bel glanced at the device. “But they’re self-maintaining, aren’t they? You just have to avoid damaging it.”

  The cat girl nodded. “Yes. We have taken great care to avoid destroying it.”

  She held her head up proudly.

  “Uh, then you’ve done a great job,” Bel said. “It worked great.”

  The cat girl nodded. “Thank you.”

  She glanced at Bel’s group. “However, I must inform you that none of you are worthy of King Narisgood’s treasure.”

  “Yeah,” another one chimed in. “You’re, like, too lame to be his successor.”

  The leader nodded. “You may turn around and leave.”

  The cat girl flicked her paw at Bel.

  “King Narisgood? From the third dynasty?”

  Bel opened her mouth to ask more questions, but then she realized that quizzing the cat girls wouldn’t be a good idea. “Nevermind. Just tell me where you’ve hidden the destination tablets and we’ll be on our way.”

  “They’re over there somewhere.”

  Bel looked in the direction where the leader flicked her tail, but only saw a rocky cavern wall. Its surface was smooth, like it had been melted by intense heat.

  “Oh, we totally collapsed that tunnel.”

  “Yeah, I saw, like, a bug or something.”

  “Gross!”

  The cat girls who had just spoken were abruptly propelled into a nearby wall. Bel hadn’t seen their leader move, but she saw the annoyed cat girl flicking fur from one of her paws.

  “Fine, they can just dig the tablets out,” she said.

  “Are you sure they’re in that hall?” drawled another cat girl. “I thought they were over there.” She help up a paw and pointed in a different direction.

  “No way, we had them in the room with the light, right?” another cat girl said.

  “Which room with the light?”

  “Maybe we should just blast ’em and pretend they were never here?” said a cat girl with a malicious gleam in her eyes.

  The leader stared at Bel, and Bel stared back.

  “So, you were supposed to watch over this machine?” Bel asked.

  The tiara-wearing cat girl flicked her tail. “Yeah. I’m gonna be honest, we were chosen more for our immortality than our skills as caretakers.”

  “I can see that.”

  The cat girl’s eyes narrowed. “Hey.”

  Bel shrugged. If the cat girls decided to blast her, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Their attack had too much range and speed for her to do much about it.

  The cat girl’s tail swished with agitation. “Okay, how about this. You losers complete a task for us, and we’ll find the tablet to send you back where you came from.”

  “Isn’t that us just doing you a task for free? The tablet was supposed to be here.”

  “Fine. We’ll give you a reward too. It’ll be shiny. Ooo, shiny. Yay.”

  Bel rolled her eyes.

  “It’s that or we play riddles until someone finds the tablet.”

  “What’s the task?” Bel and Flann and Jan asked in unison.

  “Great.” The cat girl spun around and sauntered away. “Follow me.”