Crecerelle shrugged at Bel’s question. Worry wormed into Bel’s gut and she tried to remember if she had seen her sister during the fight. She had assumed that her sister could take care of herself – when had that ever been false? – but what if Beth had gotten overconfident? What if she’d been eaten by the lake? Or hit by a wild shot from the walls?

  Bel glanced over the battlefield, but it was chaos. Dutcha’s spirits battled Technis’ creations over every bit of land and sky between the spirit and the citadel, and finding a person within the chaos would be impossible.

  I’ll just have to hope that she’s alright, Bel thought numbly.

  “Bel? What is the plan now that…”

  Cress gestured helplessly at the giant mountain. Dutcha laughed with the deep rumbling of a ground quake as she unleashed a rock slide that buried several hundred raging giants. The stressed gorgon’s snakes were rattling quietly, clearly on edge with the out of control battlefield.

  Bel patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll go inside the Citadel,” Bel said firmly. “And let Dutcha handle things out here. Let’s get everyone else first.”

  Cress looked relieved at Bel’s confidence, and Bel was pleased with her acting. In reality, her head could have been stuffed with bees with all the random worries buzzing through it. She ran her hand through her snakes and pushed her worries down before dashing to the temporary shelter, pouncing to the far side of the desiccating moat as Cress glided across. She was relieved to find her friends safe, although Bel was still missing.

  “What on Olympos is goin’ on,” Flann complained. His tail was twitching with agitation and his ears were back against his head as he looked at Bel accusingly.

  “It’s just Dutcha, my other mother,” Bel explained. “It’s a good thing. She’s occupying everything up here, so can go into the citadel and catch Technis before he activates his portal and escapes to the Old World.”

  The fox – and everyone else – stared at Bel with wide eyes.

  “Seth,” she said, turning to the scorpion boy, “where’s Beth?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it. He waved his claws silently, but said nothing. He was so obviously tongue-tied that Bel groaned in pain.

  “Just point.”

  He pointed at the crumbling walls of the citadel.

  “Is she inside?”

  He shrugged.

  Bel shook her head and resisted the urge to shake words out of the taciturn scorpion man. One problem at a time.

  “We’ve got injured?” she asked pointlessly. She could see that Oculaire was in rough shape, with blood staining one of her wings. Tim was physically fine, despite being stranded on the living water, but he appeared comatose. Bel guessed that he had overused his abilities.

  The tall delver with the weird water ability was missing a leg, but it had been cauterized and he looked pale but stable. The man who had played wheelbarrow with him looked fine.

  “What abilities do you have?” she asked him bluntly.

  “I can hit things really hard,” he responded.

  “Greawt,” she replied.

  That left Bel an army of six: Cress, Seth, Flann, Jan, the whip woman, and a delver who hit things hard. Seven if she counted herself.

  She looked at Oculaire and the mucous man, both of who were still conscious despite their injuries. “Do you think you two can get Tim back to the priest?”

  Oculaire nodded, and the delver grinned and opened his mouth. “I’ve got this ability that let’s me shape my blood–”

  “Fantastic,” she said, quickly cutting him off. “Are the rest of you ready to go?”

  They didn’t look ready to her. They looked bedraggled at best. Flann’s soaked fur made him look particularly pathetic. The six of them stepped forward though, hardened warriors still willing to continue the fight.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  “Okay,” Bel said with a nod, “take a moment to check your stuff and then let’s get going. You don’t want to find out you’re missing something when you need it most.”

  “Wow,” she said. She hadn’t trusted the Citadel’s weird, organic doors, so she’d gotten Jan to burrow a hole into the basement directly from the surface. When she dropped down, she found herself on a spiraling ramp, similar to the one she’d taken from the giants’ hunting town down to the underworld.

  “Wow bad, or wow good?” Jan called down.

  Bel looked around, but didn’t see much. Her snakes sniffed the air furtively, but they didn’t hiss. “Looks safe,” she called back up.

  As the rest of her group dropped themselves through the hole, Bel looked around for any trace of her sister. Unfortunately, the horde of monsters had left so many footprints that it would be impossible to find a lonely pair of human tracks. It was like that needle in a hay pile that her brother liked to go on about.

  Bel was about to tell Cress to go down the hole and search, but she realized that sending the gorgon off alone would be stupid. She sighed.

  “Okay, I hope everyone likes running. Cress, try to stay above us and an eye on where we’re going. Someone else keep an eye behind us too.”

  “I could just make another sled,” Jan offered.

  “How’s your essence?”

  The meerkat shrugged. “I’m almost out, but if it gets us where we’re going faster, then isn’t it worth it? Dunno what I’m s’posed to do against a god anyway.”

  Bel nodded. “Okay. Do it.”

  “Hey,” the whip-wielding delver called out. “I think I see some explosions down there.”

  Bel ran to the edge in time to catch some fading movement from a few turns below her position.

  “Catch up to me,” she called over her shoulder, and pounced.

  The fall was long enough for her to regret her rash decision, and to realize that her leaving everyone behind wasn’t so different from what Beth had done. She wouldn’t regret it if she could save Beth from her own recklessness, but she was going to be angry about it.

  Bel slammed into the ground with enough force to send jolts of pain through her legs, despite her abilities. She rolled along the ground and slammed into the wall, letting out an undignified grunt as the air was knocked from her body. A shower of petals drifted over her face as Flora hissed with indignation. The rest of Bel’s snakes joined the chorus of complaints, and Bel was forced to wave them away from her face as she stood.

  She peeked into the open door – which was made out of flesh rather than a more practical material – and saw a mess of equipment and overturned tables. She smelled blood though, so she hurried inside. Bel reached for her weapons…

  Oh, dammit, I lost everything again!

  She picked up an arm-length of pipe from a pile of rubbish and stalked into the room. It didn’t take her long to find Beth, her face and leg covered in blood.

  “What the hell, Beth!”

  Beth turned and smiled.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Bel,” she said, as if Bel was the one doing something reckless. Bel sagged with relief, but as her worry cleared it only made room for her rage.

  Bel tossed her pipe and pounced over a bizarre chair and the freaky meat-sausages hanging over it. Seeing her sister grinning so nonchalantly after disappearing and doing stuff on her own made her mood worsen. Bel glanced to the side and saw the Clark’s corpse.

  Bel wanted to say something, but when she saw the self-satisfied smirk on Beth’s face she couldn’t help but slug her.

  She pulled her punch at the last moment, but it still knocked Beth to the floor, and Bel was instantly terrified that she’d hurt her sister. Beth was supposed to dodge everything – Bel hadn’t even used her glare or anything!

  She knelt over Beth and fretted over what to do.

  “Ow,” Beth groaned. “But that didn’t hurt as much as I expected. Were you holding back?”

  Bel waved her hands helplessly. “I’m so sorry! I was just so angry that you disappeared!” She leaned down to check her sister’s wounds. “Are you okay?”

  Beth waved her off. “Yeah. I got what I wanted.” She rubbed her jaw. “Guess I got what I deserved for running off, too.”

  Bel took deep, calming breaths while her snakes hissed their annoyance. She waited to speak until she had her mood back under control.

  “When you disappeared I thought you were trampled or eaten or something. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told Seth to tell you that I was going after Clark.”

  “They guy who can barely speak? You gave him a message?”

  “Hm.” Beth played with the loose end of one of her braids. “I guess I didn’t think about that. You know, he talks to me just fine.”

  Bel grabbed her sister by the shoulders and growled with frustration. Then she pulled her into a hug. “I’m glad you didn’t run into Technis. Why couldn’t you wait?”

  Beth glanced at Clark’s corpse and Bel shook her head. “You couldn’t wait a few more minutes for revenge? It’s been years.”

  Beth shrugged out of Bel’s embrace. “Well, I didn’t know if we were all going to die out there, so I thought I would at least get my satisfaction.”

  Bel stared.

  “Whoah, hey,” Beth said, holding up a hand in surrender, “things were looking bad, okay? You know, with all the cannons and the way the towers and lake were alive. What happened anyway?”

  “Dutcha showed up.”

  Beth nodded. “Ah. Figures. Your moms always seem to save the day.”

  Bel started to object, but a loud bang interrupted her.

  She looked into the hallway and saw Jan’s rocky sled grinding to a halt. The delvers literally spilled out of it as it bumped to a stop, but Jan and Flann seemed used to it.

  “Hey Beth,” Flann called out cheerfully. “Cress says we’re most of the way down. Anything we should know before we get there?”

  Beth sheathed one of her knives and patted herself to make sure she wasn’t missing any. “Yeah,” she answered, “everybody’s gone already. We may be too late.”

  “Why didn’t you say that first!” Bel screamed.