“Once I flick this switch, we’ll be transported to a location that I believe will be near Technis’ Citadel in Central City. You’ll feel a moment of disorientation, but try to get your feet under you quickly. I’m not exactly sure where we’ll end up.”

  No one reacted to her instructions, but Bel wasn’t disappointed. Her expectations were already low. She was just repeating old information anyway, and had already given the same talk five times.

  Bel kept her shoulders up and her back straight as she waited for any last minutes questions or panic. There weren’t any – their questions had long since exhausted her answers. Bel would have preferred that Beth take charge, but her sister had waved off the responsibility. Bel suspected that her sister wanted to focus on her final revenge against Clark and Technis, but Beth had claimed Bel would be a better leader after her experience guiding the gorgons out of the Underworld.

  Bel wasn’t sure how relevant that would be, with only three of the gorgons following her to Technis’ Citadel. The two flying gorgons, Crecerelle and Occulaire, were coming to repay their debt to Lempo. Manipule was coming along as well, but she would just be waiting at the teleporter for their safe return. And if one of them didn’t survive, she would be there to cut them into pieces and throw them into her new egg.

  Bel’s gaze lingered on the metal egg for a few moments before she tore it away and looked over the rest of the crowd. High Priest Warrenier was too frail to come, but she had sent her assistant, Toll, to help. Bel had hoped that he would be a powerful warrior priest, like Ventas, but Toll said that he focused on healing instead. Upon seeing her disappointment he’d told her that staying in the fight was just as important as joining it. The words were the kind of wisdom that she expected from a priest, but Bel would have still preferred a strong fighter.

  Even older than Warrenier, but slightly less frail, were Flann and Jan. The two of them had probably fought in more battles than Bel and Beth combined, but they refused any offers of leadership with vigorous shakes of their tails. Bel felt guilty for dragging the elderly duo into more danger, but she was grateful for their help, even if they wouldn’t lead.

  She was grateful for almost any volunteer, but there was no way that Bel would let Orseis fight. She already planned to ask the young cuttle girl to stay back with Manipule and Toll. She hadn’t told Orseis yet, but she’d learned that surprising the young girl was the best way of avoiding an argument.

  Her remaining followers were a group of ten delvers, dead-eyed and grim-faced. Their families had been murdered by Technis’ army and they were out for revenge. Bel hoped that they would listen to her, at least a little bit, but Beth had looked them up and down and declared that they were only interested in glorious, vengeful deaths.

  The only other people coming with her were Beth and Seth, the scorpion boy. His silent, passive nature made for a strange contrast with Beth, but the two of them somehow managed to get along. Or at least they seemed to, it wasn’t as though Seth expressed many opinions. Bel didn’t think she’d heard a dozen words come from his mouth.

  Although he did get Beth to tell me that my little “reward” from the cat girls is maybe a key.

  Bel was bringing the small pyramid with her, just it case. She had stored it, along with her nice clothes, books, and other precious belongings, in a large wooden box. They were also bringing food and water, just in case they didn’t show up as close to the Citadel as Bel hoped.

  Or on the off-chance that they all happened to survive and were hungry afterwards. Bel had seen stranger things happen.

  Bel was also bringing two short swords, one strapped to her waist and the other on her back. She hoped it would take her twice the usual time to lose them both. Over her armor, Bel also wore a long leather coat that held twenty throwing knives.

  James had told her that she looked like “a real bad ass tactical bitch.” Bel wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t make her feel ready to confront a demigod.

  I don’t think I’ll ever feel ready though, and it looks like everyone is starting to get twitchy.

  Bel raised her hand and waved to James, Daran, and all of the other people who had squeezed into the room to see them off. A cheer went up, and Bel managed a small smile in response.

  “Okay,” Bel declared, “I’m hitting the switch.”

  She hit it quickly, before anything became emotional. After an explosion of color and disorientation, she and her army were standing in a wide, damp cave. The wind shrieked, as though expressing distaste at their sudden arrival, and Bel’s bare feet were wet. She looked around, quickly assessing their surroundings.

  They were in a natural cave, with a tall ceiling and sloping walls, dimly lit by a light from beyond a bend in the tunnel. Bel could just make out the outlines of the other fighters, but even with her abilities she couldn’t make out any fine details.

  The ceiling was crumbling, and large stones littered the once smooth floor. The ceiling also leaked, and half of Bel’s group was scurrying out of calf-high puddles.

  “I scouted ahead,” Beth announced, “and we’re in a cave on the side of a cliff. It’s raining outside, but I think I recognize the place.”

  Bel frowned. She was fairly certain that leaders were supposed to tell other people what to do, not the other way around.

  Beth cleared a spot on the floor with her foot.

  “We’re about halfway between High Temple and Central City.”

  She prodded two large stones into position.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “If everyone remembers our maps, that means that we’re pretty close to Technis’ Citadel.”

  She rolled over another stone to sit in between the first two.

  “The High Road runs from Central City to the High Temple, and passes by the Citadel as it leaves the city behind. The Citadel sits upon the slope that leads to the Temple. If I’ve got our location right, we can go outside and climb the cliff and find ourselves right above it.”

  “Scale the cliff?” asked a skeptical delver. “In the rain?”

  Beth nodded. “Yeah. It’s raining and we’re showing up out of nowhere, so we should take them by surprise, right?”

  “You know rain makes things wet, right?”

  Beth looked at Bel.

  Oh, now I’m the leader? Bel thought petulantly.

  Aloud she said, “Clark likes to spy through his imitation birds, so the wind and rain will limit their usefulness. I’d rather fight the weather than a swarm of flying things made of whatever he’s killed recently.”

  Bel turned to Jan. “Could you make a safe route for us to quickly get to the top?”

  His tail flicked as he examined the cave walls. “I recon I could do that. I can just make an opening from here, if you don’t mind me taking a minute to make a ditch for drainage first. It’ll give us a safe and defensible position, if we need it.”

  Bel nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “I got some rock shaping abilities too,” one of the delvers said. “I’ll help out.” Bel examined the spindly spindly looking man who’s thin build disappeared into the folds of his thick cloak. His bent nose and beady eyes were the opposite of typical imposing delver, but Bel wasn’t going to underestimate someone by their looks.

  “Thanks, uh…”

  “Tim.”

  “Thanks, Tim.”

  She nodded to the man before turning to address the room. “Okay, we’ll leave our stuff here. Toll will remain here as a healer, so try to make it back if you get injured. Manipule will stay here for, uh, gorgon stuff.”

  Bel had decided to skip any kind of explanation of the gorgons’ death rituals, and she certainly wasn’t going to bring it up before the fight. “If one of us gorgons dies, try to bring our corpse back to her.”

  Manipule clutched her egg to her chest and looked at Bel with big, shimmering eyes. “Be careful,” she whispered.

  Bel nodded back. Then she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

  “We’ll need someone to stay behind and help guard this place from any patrols.”

  The delvers immediately objected.

  “I’ll be damned if I’m stayin’ behind!”

  “I’m only here to kill the soldiers that burned my village! I don’t give a damn about gettin’ out again!”

  Bel hummed thoughtfully. “It’ll have to be someone good at hiding so no one can sneak up on them.”

  She glanced at Beth and then turned to Orseis. “Ori, you would be perfect. You’re so good at hiding that no one could surprise you.”

  Orseis’ puffed her chest out at the praise. “I’m the best at hiding!”

  Bel smiled. “Great! So you’ll here and watch Manipule and Priest Toll, and keep an eye on our food supplies.”

  Orseis frowned, only then realizing that she’d been tricked into staying behind – but also distracted by the thought of food.

  “Looks like we’re in luck!”

  Bel turned to see Jan’s head poking down from a hole in the ceiling.

  “We’re not that deep! It’s raging like a spirit outside, though!”

  Bel could see a torrent of water spilling down from Jan’s opening. The flow was so fast and thick that it threatened to overflow a shallow drainage path that Jan and Time had created, and a new pool was rapidly filling the floor, consuming the smaller puddles as it swelled. Bel watched with concern as the water moved towards them, but Tim rushed back from the end of the tunnel, widening a drainage path as he went.

  The delver was scuffing his feet over the rocks, peeling back a layer with every kick of his feet. The rocks stuck to his legs and feet as he moved, and soon his lower half was encased in a rocky shell. It slowed down his movements, but each kick of his enlarged feet freed more rocks from the floor. In just a minute of shuffling, the water was directed out of the cave.

  Jan waved to the delver. “Can you make it a bit deeper? I’m gonna widen this so you big folk can get out.”

  Tim nodded. “Sure thing.”

  Bel looked at all the water flowing in through the hole and sighed. “Everyone get ready to get wet.”

  There were grumbles, but some heavy rain wasn’t going to deter them. A few of the delvers dug into their packs to pull out rain gear. Bel was interested to see Cress and Oculaire rubbing their hands over their feathers. She wanted to ask what they were doing, but Jan’s head popped out of the hole in the ceiling again.

  “I’m gonna make some stairs so it isn’t so hard to get up here.”

  “Great,” Bel said. “I’ll head to the surface first and see if I can sense any traps. Beth…”

  Bel turned around, looking for her sister.

  “Ah, she, um, already slipped past me,” Jan said.

  A few of Bel’s snakes hissed. She wanted to ask why Beth told her to be leader if she wouldn’t listen to anything Bel said, but she couldn’t actually be surprised at Beth’s loner approach to things. At least the rest of the delvers had stuck around.

  Bel’s eyes narrowed as she counted them.

  “Did one of the delvers leave too?”

  Orseis laughed. Bel was tempted to throw something at the girl.

  Jan rubbed his head. “Maybe? They were fast, so I couldn’t really see.”

  Bel snorted. “Fine, whatever. Everyone else just follow me outside and take up a defensive watch until we know where we are.”

  She turned to Manipule and Orseis and nodded before marching up Jan’s rock stairs. The passage was short, and in under twenty steps she was outside getting soaked by the cold rain. Her snakes pressed against her scalp as the cold water soaked into her, but Bel had more important things to worry about.

  Beth and the delver were out there, arguing over which of them should scout ahead. Bel stepped up to them, nodded, and used wind step to leave them a few hundred strides behind her. Her body was carried by the whipping winds over the moss-slicked surface of the cliff. She rematerialized on a large boulder, perched like a predator searching for prey. She frowned when she caught sight of a familiar blue glow.

  Did Technis move his Barrier here? she wondered.

  Eye of the Huntress allowed her to see farther, but not through the obscuring clouds and rain. Bel reached up hand and flipped up her eyepatch, and the world leaped into rainbow-colored clarity. The rain was nothing to her spirit sight, but anything that manipulated essence had tendrils of influence that danced around it. The Barrier was like a fuzzy pane of glass. There were multiple panes though, and they were moving. It wasn’t what she expected to see.

  Bel watched for a few heartbeats, until she figured out what was happening.

  “Okay,” Beth huffed from behind her, “you proved your point.”

  The delver was right behind Beth, breathing heavily after running. He was a short man with dark skin and a short, dense beard that was now thoroughly soaked.

  “Anything interesting?” he wheezed.

  “Yes. I can’t see the building very well, but it’s covered in something like Technis’ Barrier.”

  “Well then we’re right shafted.” The delver turned and spat.

  Bel shook her head. “Not quite. This one is made of multiple pieces that are moving around, but they don’t fully cover all approaches.”

  “Why would Technis do that?” Beth wondered aloud.

  Bel shrugged. “Maybe opening a portal to the Old World takes all his energy and he can’t do that while fully powering the Barrier. That could have been why he took down the one around Satrap in the first place.”

  “We’ll need to find a good place to approach. Can you two do that without getting into a fight?”

  “Hey,” Beth said.

  “Sure,” said the delver.

  “Great,” Bel replied. “I’m going to go back to everyone else and let them know what we’ve seen. We’ll meet back at this rock in ten minutes.”

  Beth looked sick at the thought of taking orders from Bel, but she reluctantly nodded.