Bel looked around the small stone hallway and gathered her courage. A deep breath brought with it the scent of old stone, a hint of water, and a whiff of unfamiliar alchemy.

  Bel check her group: Manipule, the clingy gorgon, and Orseis, the head-strong many-tentacled semi-human girl, looked fine. Bel touched her chest, where she had embedded her spirit-mother-turned-rock. She glanced at her snakes, who were warily flicking around the edges of her vision, tasting the strange air.

  No sign of Technis. No sign of any people in the dark temple hallway.

  Bel was on her own now, in an unfamiliar world. She had a long list of instructions from her adopted brother James, and some vague instructions from her spirit mother. She also had years of training from her sister and all of the experiences she’d gained on her travels.

  I can do this. I’ll find Technis and put a stop to whatever plans he’s got.

  “Well, we’d best look around,” she said confidently. “It’s possible that Technis already knows we’re here, so we need to move quickly.”

  “Wait!” Orseis cried. She tugged out Bel’s travel box and rummaged around until she pulled out her beloved hat. Bel thought it was an ugly, floppy blob of leather with a wide brim, but the young girl treasured it.

  Orseis pulled it over her head. “Now the humans won’t notice my bald head, just my cute face.”

  Bel shrugged. “Sure.”

  Manipule clicked her tongue. “You are not looking good, Bel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are covered in blood. And where are your clothes?”

  Bel looked down. “I’m not naked,” she said defensively. She gestured at her gleaming armor, made of the same mystical metal from the Pillars that ran through Olympos. It had a skirt of metal strips that nearly reached her knees.

  “And I have my nice clothes in the box. I’ll put them on once we find a river or something to wash in.”

  Manipule looked around. “We are in a building, aren’t we? I am not sure–”

  “Hey guys, there’s water out here!”

  Bel looked at the empty spot where Orseis had been a moment ago. She grabbed her travel box and hurried after the trouble-seeking child.

  “Ori! Don’t run off!”

  Bel inspected the stone walls as she passed through them, wondering if they held some hint about their location. And then she stepped out of the building and into another, newer building.

  “What?” she wondered aloud.

  “There’s no fish in here!” Orseis yelled, distressed.

  Bel walked towards her voice, but spun around as she walked, confused by her surroundings. Her snakes flicked their tongues through the air, suspiciously tasting the strange odors.

  “Is this a cave?” Manipule wondered. “But the floor is too smooth,” she quickly answered herself.

  Bel slid her feet across the polished stone and examined it warily. “Yeah. James said they don’t have abilities here though. I can’t imagine how much work it must be to make such perfect blocks.”

  Orseis was only a twenty steps away, but Bel and Manipule moved warily, struggling to make sense of their surroundings. The portal from Olympos had dropped them in a temple with old, weathered walls, but the temple itself was inside of another, much larger building. Still inside the building, but half surrounding the temple, was a shallow moat with perfectly straight edges. A metal water lizard decorated one end of the moat, but it was otherwise empty.

  Orseis splashed listlessly through the shallow water.

  “I feel weird,” she announced.

  “Like what?” Bel asked. “Did going through the portal do something bad?”

  Orseis rubbed her stomach. “I don’t feel very hungry.”

  Bel rushed to Orseis’ side, splashing through the water to push her hand against the girl’s forehead. “Are you sick? Is it a fever?” she asked frantically.

  She shoved her degrade pathogen ability into Orseis, desperate to eradicate whatever plague was killing her.

  “That’s strange…” Bel mumbled. “My ability feels weak, but I can’t find anything in you to get rid of.”

  Orseis swatted Bel’s hand away. “I don’t feel sick, just weird. It’s like my cores aren’t working properly. My hunger is a good thing you know, it’s where I get my strength.”

  Bel closed her eyes and sent her attention into her own cores. Her unbound core was healthy and vibrant, like a flower blooming in the sun. Her other two cores of Chaos and Upheaval, from her divine parents, were weak and lethargic. They clung to her unbound core for support, almost like they were sick.

  Bel experimentally pushed some essence through a few of her less dangerous abilities and felt a familiar sense of wrongness. “The essence here, it’s slightly wrong.”

  She frowned. “Not wrong enough to stop our abilities from working, but wrong enough to make them weak.”

  Manipule gingerly touched the surface of the water and frost slowly spread at her contact. She nodded. “Yes, weaker but still working.”

  “Hey!” a gruff, unfamiliar voice shouted. “Get outta the pool!”

  Bel looked up and saw two angry men approaching them. They work dark clothing that could have been uniforms, and each of them wielded a tube that projected a beam of light. She wondered if they were weapons, but the light didn’t seem to affect her as they swept the beams over her body.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” the second one asked. “Larping isn’t allowed here, especially after hours.”

  “What?” Bel asked. “Oh, wait, I’ve got instructions for dealing with humans.”

  She turned and reached for her box. It held lots of stuff, including a few scrolls from James.

  “Don’t open the box!” commanded one of the men. “Keep you hands where we can see them, get out of the water, and step away from the box!”

  Bel sighed and turned towards them. “Look, you guys need to calm down.”

  “Miss, if you make one more towards that box I’m going to have to taze you.”

  “Can you do that in water?” the second man whispered.

  The first shrugged, but he kept pointing a small baton at Bel. It looked a bit like a gun, but far too small to take seriously.

  Still, James had warned her plenty of times about the technology of the Old World. She decided to act before they did, looking into their eyes and giving them a tiny dose of her glare.

  The two men collapsed like the dead. She winced as their heads cracked into the stone floor, and then panic swept through her.

  “Oh no! No, no! I just wanted to stun them!”

  “They were being jerks anyway,” Orseis said, dismissing the bodies.

  Manipule shook her head and quickly went to the downed men. “They are just knocked out,” she called out. “You used too much power and they have no protection.”

  “But I didn’t!” Bel objected. “I only used a tiny bit! Maybe the essence here makes our gorgon powers stronger.”

  Manipule closed her eyes for a moment. She shrugged. “Maybe. Why would that be, though?

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  Bel jumped over the water and looked down at the comatose men. “Gorgons were originally from this world, right? Maybe we were stronger here?”

  Manipule smiled at the thought. She patted the large metal egg strapped to her side. “Perhaps here our children will be strong enough that they will fear no one.”

  Bel frowned. “I think there are plenty of dangerous things here.”

  She gestured at the weapons the men carried. “Apparently everyone in this world has a gun. James said that you have to be extra careful of cowboys.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Uh… I forget. I think that they wear large hats.”

  She looked at the hats on the two collapsed men. “Maybe we should stay away from anyone with a hat.”

  Orseis rolled her eyes.

  Bel decided that she couldn’t worry too much about the two humans. They hadn’t been nice anyway.

  “I’m going to rinse off and change into my nice clothes. Maybe the next people we meet will treat us better.”

  Bel chewed on her lip. “I’ve also got to find a phone and call James’ family.”

  “And we should find some food,” Orseis added.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry?” Manipule asked.

  “Just in case.”

  “Look, I’ve answered your questions, can I speak to James’ parents now?”

  “No,” the annoying voice answered.

  Bel growled. “Hey, are you really James’ sister? He never said he had one. I think you’re just fooling around with me.”

  “Then you can hang up.”

  Bel involuntarily clenched her hand and the phone crumbled between her fingers.

  “Ah, crows bite me,” she cursed.

  She shook the bits of phone out of her hand and looked morosely at the ruined device. Wires and shattered bits were hanging out like the intestines of a slain beast.

  “Well, this has been a disaster so far.”

  Bel pushed herself away from the small desk, rolling backwards on the wheeled chair that she had commandeered. She glared at the telephone and leaned back, searching for a moment of calm in the day of swirling chaos.

  The chair flexed suddenly, bending unnaturally under the seat, and in her flailing Bel managed to kick it out from underneath her. She grabbed the desk to stop her fall just as the chair smashed into the wall, puncturing a hole in the clean, white surface. Bel stood up and kicked a small, metal basket to the side of the desk, ripping a huge hole through it and launching it into the air. It smashed into a picture of a smiling family and scattered a wide array of unfamiliar objects across the floor.

  “Dammit! Why is everything here so breakable?”

  “What are you doing?” asked Orseis, poking her head into the small room. “Was the call that bad?”

  Bel waved her hands in the air. “Everything is bad. We killed those humans–”

  “They’re fine,” Manipule interrupted. “I went to check on them, and they’ve already woken up. They ran away though.”

  Bel proceeded without pause.

  “–broke a bunch of glass containers–”

  “It’s not my fault the humans put them everywhere!” Orseis shouted.

  “–smashed three doors, made James’ sister angry, and I didn’t even get to read his letter to his parents. And we have no idea where Technis is hiding or where we are!”

  Orseis fiddled with the tips of her tentacles. “My abilities are all weak here, too. It’s nice not being hungry, but it’s a little scary being so weak.”

  Manipule patted the girl, rubbing her hat-covered head. “But our gorgon abilities are stronger. We will look after you.”

  “The essence here is so thin though,” Bel complained. “I think it would take a day for my core to refill.”

  She closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. Everything was going wrong, and now she found out that James had a real sister. She had hoped that his parents would welcome her, at least a little bit, but they already had a daughter.

  Manipule put her hands on Bel’s temples, spreading some coolness with her icy abilities. “Does that help?” she asked.

  Bel nodded without much enthusiasm. “The Old World sucks,” she complained.

  “We found something to eat,” Orseis proclaimed loudly. She carried a small box in her arms. It had a clear side to it, and Bel could see a variety of small boxes and cylinders shifting around as Orseis tipped the box back and forth. A dark tail waved from the bottom of the box, like it was a bizarre creature excited by some new game.

  “I even figured out how to open it without ripping the entire thing apart. And guess what? Everything inside is cold!”

  Orseis set the box down and stuck her suckers to the clear section. She pulled back and door swung open, dropping a few of the containers on the ground.

  Orseis grinned as she swept them up. “These little boxes have different things in them, depending upon their colors. These ones are sweet!”

  She held up a white carton decorated with a picture of a round fruit with a reddish-yellow color.

  Bel leaped to her feet. “You can’t just eat their food! The people here are already angry at us!”

  Orseis shrugged. “They’re already angry at us, so why not eat their food? Can one of you help me get these metal ones open? I think they’re meant for fingers – my tentacles can’t grip the little handles on top.”

  Bel grumpily crossed her arms, but Manipule took one of the metal tubes from Orseis. She turned it around, inspected all sides before shaking it.

  “I guess it’s filled with some drink. I wonder how they seal them?”

  “Quick,” Orseis urged her, “before those angry guys return.”

  Manipule shrugged and slipped her sharp nails around the edge of the tube, cutting it open. The can hissed, and a dark, brown liquid sprayed out of the cut, like blood from a slashed artery. Manipule reflexively froze the liquid solid before tossing the can away.

  She watched with distaste as the bit of liquid that had gotten on her hands dribbled onto the floor. “What would happen to someone if they drank that? They could explode!”

  Orseis looked sadly at the frozen can.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a drink,” Bel said. “It could be a cleaning liquid, or a poison, or anything else. Everything I’ve heard about this place from James was strange.”

  “The food is interesting, though,” Orseis said.

  “Hello?” a voice called out from the hallway. “Would you ladies like to talk?”

  Bel raised her hands to her head as her snakes writhed in panic. “Everyone act calm,” she hissed to her companions.

  Manipule and Orseis traded glances as Bel took deep, calming breaths. Once her heart was finally under control she reached into her travel box and took out several of James’ scrolls. She unfurled one across a desk and skimmed over its contents.

  “I come in peace,” she read loudly. “I am here chasing a violent fugitive. Please take me to your leaders or local law enforcement. If you don’t speak English, please send for someone who does.”

  “How would they understand that last part?” Orseis asked.

  Bel shrugged. “It’s what James wrote.”

  A human leaned around the door frame and quickly looked around the room. After nothing happened, he stepped fully into view.

  Bel thought that he was wide for a human, with the pale skin of someone who didn’t go outside, although his cheeks were flushed from exertion. He wore an impractical jacket whose dark material bunched around his shoulders when he raised his arms to show off his empty hands, and his blonde hair was cut above his ears. Underneath the jacket he had a white shirt and a dark blue strip of shiny fabric and a slightly bulging belly. It didn’t look like the clothing of a fighter or laborer, so Bel assumed he was a local aristocrat or clerk, although he looked more athletic than the priests from Satrap.

  “Good evening ladies,” he said with a smile. “My name is Charles. Could I ask for your names?”

  Bel looked him up and down and decided that he didn’t look like one of Technis’ minions. Not that she had a good way to tell. Her ability to track hearts was working with a much smaller range than before, but she could feel that he was alone.

  “People call me Bel,” she answered. “And these are Orseis and Manipule,” she continued, pointing to her companions.

  “Any reason you dragged the mini-fridge in here?” he asked Orseis. “You could have just taken the orange juice out.”

  Orseis looked at the carton in her hand and then at the mysterious cooling box. “Oh. I got excited.”

  “Sorry for breaking your things,” Bel said, belatedly realizing their rudeness. “We didn’t mean to end up in your house. I can… well, we can’t pay for anything, but maybe I could trade something?”

  The man looked at her with an expression that Bel most closely associated with strong abdominal pain. “How exactly did you end up here?”

  “We came out of the stone temple that you keep over there.” Bel pointed in the rough direction of the teleporter. He would know what she meant – how many stone temples would a person keep anyway?

  “Okay, can I just check something real quick?” he said.

  Bel nodded. “Sure.”

  He pulled out a small baton that projected a narrow beam of light.

  “Can I shine this on you?”

  Bel shrugged. “I guess. Are you having trouble seeing?”

  He nodded. “Something like that.” He waved the light around Bel’s face, illuminating her eye that wasn’t covered by an eyepatch.

  “Great. Are you on drugs?”

  The question was simple, but Bel struggled for a moment before replying. “No?”

  “You ever heard of electro-stims? You got any insertions or jacks?”

  “What?”

  He held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Three?”

  Bel looked at her companions, but they didn’t know what the man was going on about either. Orseis tore open another container of orange juice and chugged it.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Earth,” Bel replied confidently.

  “Anything more specific?”

  “Maybe Egypt? That’s a country, right?”

  The man chest rose as he took a long, deep breath.

  “Okay, what about Technis?”

  Bel pointed her finger at him.

  “He’s evil! Where is he?”

  The man shrugged. “Nobody knows.”

  “Dammit! I need to find him!”

  The man blinked his eyes strangely, and Bel wondered if he was having a problem. Then he smiled at her and continued with his questions. “And why do you need to find him?”

  “I’ve got to kill him!”

  Realizing that would make her sound violent, Bel hurried to explain. “He’s a bad guy! He kept me in a prison until I was broken out, and he enslaved a country full of people and abducted people from Earth so he could study your technology. Now he’s defied the pantheon and escaped to here from Olympos so he can do something bad.”

  Bel frowned. “Sorry, I don’t actually know what he’s planning to do. It’s evil though.”

  The man nodded. “Right. One more question.”

  The man held up rectangle that was a little more than a hand wide.

  “Tell me if you recognize any of these people.”

  An unfamiliar face appeared on the rectangle.

  “No.”

  He blinked one eye and the picture changed.

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “Yes! That’s James!”

  Bel walked forward and inspected the picture with interest. “He’s older now, though, and he’s got a beard. The beard looks terrible.”

  “Alright,” Charles said, “that’s good enough for me. Anything else, Jaz?”

  Bel looked around, but realized that Charles was using some kind of communication similar to the ear cuff she used to talk to James.

  He looked back at her, and then at her companions, and then at the trashed office. He folded the rectangle into quarters and stored it in one of his jacket pockets.

  “I’m going to have to ask the three of you to come along with me. Will you come willingly?”

  “Is there food?” Orseis asked.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry?” Bel sighed.

  “I could eat.”

  Bel rolled her eyes. “We’ll come along if you give us a pizza.”

  The man quirked an eyebrow. “A pizza?”

  “James says they’re the best food on this planet, and we could really use a guide.”

  “A… guide? Miss, I’m from the FBI.”

  Bel’s brow pinched suddenly. “Wait, no, not just a pizza.”

  “Not just a pizza?” he repeated.

  “Three pizzas,” Bel said triumphantly. “And an iced cream.”

  “Right,” he muttered as he ran his hand through his messy blonde hair. “Sure. I can do that.”

  “Yes,” Bel said. It was her first negotiation with James’ people and she was already coming out ahead. Things were looking up.