Tallah [Book 3 Complete]

Tallah knew something had gone wrong.

Christina's panicked warning was a single psychic scream. It came less than a heartbeat before the Ikosmenia flashed red-hot in the grass between herself and Vergil. The mask turned blinding-bright for an instant, then shattered. Its enchantment screamed out of the debris as it unravelled and disintegrated.

The Ikosmenia's death was less impressive than the sudden inescapable pressure that warped Anna's blood bridge. Something seeped through the blood and welded Tallah and Vergil together, the skin of their palms sizzling before merging painfully together. Pain lanced up her arm as Vergil tried to pry his hand away from hers.

She grabbed his wrist with her free hand and held on, shaking her head as she bit her lip. It bloody hurt! Like skin and meat melting off bone, it was as if they were being bonded together.

It all lasted less than a heartbeat, but the effect shocked her into mute incomprehension. Mute, at least until Vergil shook again, still struggling against her grip.

"Stop pulling," she demanded through gritted teeth. "Anna'll clear this up later."

"What happened?" Vergil asked, his fingers intertwined with hers, their grip painful. He was squeezing her hand like a drowning man clutching to a rock. "It hurts."

Tallah didn't answer. She dove inside her mindscape, desperately hoping to find Christina there. Dead silence met her instead. Oh, her storm still roiled above, and the ground shook with the violence of her panic, but the ghosts weren't there.

What they'd done was send the conscious parts of Christina and Anna over to Vergil. They were both still on Tallah's back, but in a state akin to deep meditation. It had been a risk she and Christina had debated internally and for which they considered the reward worth the trouble.

Neither of them had envisioned the prospect of actually being visited by something powerful enough to shatter the Ikosmenia by its presence alone. Christina's panic was enough to confirm that the intruder was more powerful than they were prepared to handle. A daemon like that white-faced dreg was terrifying, but manageable now that they knew how to hit it hard enough to hurt.

Whatever had intruded was beyond such creatures. To her mounting horror, what this felt like eclipsed even Panacea as a potential threat.

"Tallah?"

She jumped back into the real with Vergil's hand on her shoulder. She was burning up, drawing power inside in a tide, ready for a fight she couldn't see.

Vergil was bleeding from a deep gash on his face, likely caused by a piece of shrapnel thrown out by the Ikosmenia. Several bits were lodged in her own chest, the pain a too-distant thing to register.

The only pain that registered was the sting of fused skin and flesh. Vergil's terrified heartbeat raged against her own, blood dripping from between their hands.

"I'm here," she said. "I don't know what's happening. Sil?"

She looked around and found the healer looking ashen-faced. Her white shirt that had survived the battle and the routing of the Rock was now stained red from where she'd also been struck by debris.

"Call your goddess," Tallah demanded.

Sil shook her head mutely and raised her right palm. Words were cut into the skin.

"Deny him," Sil said. "That's all. She sent this just before your mask exploded."

"Coward," Tallah spat and returned her attention to the boy. Whatever was happening, it was going down inside him.

"What are you feeling, Vergil?" she asked, fighting to keep control over her own voice.

"Scared." His face had turned parchment-white and his pupils were drawn into pinpricks of black on grey. "Horvath's not answering. Argia just says that she's gone into a reboot." He pressed his free hand to his chest. "I feel like something's got a hold of me and is squeezing on my heart. Like, if I move, it'll rip it out of me."

"Can you talk to it? Can you hear Christina and Anna?"

His pulse was that of a hunted rabbit, accelerating just as his breathing was. It wasn't often that Vergil really panicked, not since Grefe, but right then she saw him for the child he was, fighting tooth and nail for control over himself.

Sil sat next to them, her own wounds ignored, and she placed a hand on the back of Vergil's neck, fingers squeezing.

"Breathe with me," she said, voice kept soft. "Try and match my breaths, all right?"

His eyes dashed from Tallah to Sil, back again, but he nodded. Tallah forced her own heartbeat to slow as they guided Vergil back down from the precipice of panic. Whatever this was, it would do them no good to try and fight it in a panic.

They all breathed together. In. Held. Out. Held. Again.

There were a few soldiers gathered around, but the crowd was held back by Liosse and Vilfor. The two commanders had each taken a side of the hill and were sending the curious away with calming words. Tallah quietly thanked the two. Now was not the right time for that sort of chaos.

"What's going on?" Vergil asked, voice barely steady. He was breathing together with Sil, visibly shaking as he tried not to outpace the healer. "You're bleeding," he said.

"We're fine," Sil countered. "Focus on your breathing. Nice and slow. Tallah's going to figure out what's happening."

Tallah wanted to shout in frustration. She prodded Christina's mark on her back and got nothing back, not even a pulse of power. Anna was equally quiet.

Bianca stirred from the work and pulsed out her curiosity. She hadn't been disturbed by events. For now, Tallah pulsed back a feeling of calm and reassurance. It wouldn't do for that one to panic too.

Fact: we've angered something by what we did.

She thought back on what Christina had been feeding her prior to the disaster. They had found the thing attached to Vergil, and Anna was busy dismantling its defences in the wake of the dwarf's deeds.

So the assault wasn't coming from Vergil. It was external. Something had reacted to its minion being threatened in some way. Which meant, they'd happened upon a weakness, thought she had no idea how to exploit it yet.

Fact: it doesn't want to kill us.

Else something that powerful would've done exactly that without the need for theatrics. It had overwhelmed the Ikosmenia to the point of breaking it, which was not out of the realm of the possible. Part of Tallah had always been a little surprised that the mask had survived its encounter with Panacea.

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Supposition: it can't attack us directly.

Else it would've, of course. It hadn't needed to ambush them or even pass through the camp to reach her. The power had descended onto them, which meant it was capable enough to do whatever it pleased. If its goals had been annihilation, this display proved it could achieve that.

She thought back to Panacea's words.

"If Ryder had the balls for something like that, it wouldn't have used you." Or something to that effect. Was this Ryder? Lack of information was the greatest enemy on the battlefield, and now she'd just been blinded.

Christina's binding tightened on Tallah's back, and so did Anna's, both ghosts straining under some great load. She recognized the signs of channelling, but not exactly what they were trying to achieve.

"It hurts," Vergil croaked as he leaned forward. He pulled his hand to his chest, fingers scraping against his breastplate. "It hurts bad."

Sil's eyes found Tallah's.

"Do I heal him?" she asked. "I'm not sure Panacea's going to answer."

"No. It's something else." She instinctively reached for the mask. The pain of its bits embedded into her chest reminded that she couldn't rely on the thing any longer.

"Tallah, it hurts bad," Vergil wheezed out, fingers now scratching desperately his armour as if trying to get it off.

Sil unfastened the clasps of his breastplate and, together, they peeled it off him. He pawed at the spider-silk until it ripped off.

Something was being written in the flesh of his chest, similar to how Sil was receiving her warning from Panacea. Blood oozed out of the fresh wounds, coagulating almost immediately to form thick crusts.

'Tallah,' Christina's voice shook her out of the fascination. 'I need guidance. He's here. Ryder--I can't… I don't know how to deal with this.'

Cold dread, part her own, part Christina's, sent Tallah shivering.

"That's not my language," Sil said, oblivious to the sudden ghost intrusion. "I don't recognise the words, but it looks like somewhat like rune crafting. I've never seen formulae like these."

Vergil groaned in pain, his fingers crushing Tallah's. She felt her bones and joints creaking, the boy grown strong enough that he could cripple her hand. The irony wasn't lost on her that, not that long ago, their roles had been reversed.

His face twisted in agony and tears streamed down his cheeks. They were all powerless to stop whatever this was.

"Call your—" Tallah began, but was immediately interrupted.

'Ah, there we go,' a new voice cut in via Christina's link. It was male, and sounded delighted. 'What a wonderful little arrangement you ladies have going on! If you were a little stronger, I wouldn't have dared this intrusion. Now, kindly join us.'

And Tallah found herself yanked out of the real and plunged back into her mindscape.

No. Not hers. She was dimly aware of her body slumping forward, unlike any of the times where she'd voluntarily been drawn in. Part of her wanted to reach out, grab hold of something, and fight to stay awake.

Her fall was going to cause a panic. First, hers. Then the camp's. This would all undermine their fragile moment of victory.

It was probably not the moment to worry about that. The man she found herself face to face with was infinitely more interesting.

She popped into existence between the kneeling shapes of Christina and Anna, faced with a stranger and a misshapen figured pinned to a dark wall.

The figure, in abstract, looked a little like Vergil's doppel.

The man was new.

"I hope you will forgive this excess." His voice was velvet, thickly accented, speaking with a lilt she'd never heard before. His smile revealed two long fangs beneath his upper lip. "I would've left my message with your colleagues here, but I wanted to make absolutely sure it wouldn't be mishandled. After all, it would be such a shame to waste young Vergil's life on a misunderstanding. Don't you agree?"

That stopped Tallah mid-weave. She was about to unleash her Disintegration, damn the consequences. That earned a sardonic smile from the stranger.

"I wouldn't bother trying to attack me. Not in here. Your effect, I'm afraid, would only discharge into Vergil. Let's try and be civil for a minute, shall we?"

She took him in through the sudden haze of fury, at once wanting to make demands of him, and weary of just how powerful a creature he might be.

Ryder, if that was his name, was a full head taller than Vergil, with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair. Beneath two white eyebrows shone some of the most crystal-clear ice-blue eyes she'd ever seen.

His face had something regal about it, something in the set of his jaw or the curve of his elegant nose.

Then there were the clothes.

She'd never seen a cut like what he wore. The fashion was alien and ill-suited for anything but an Aztroan high-class lords' club.

He wore dark-blue pants that did not appear to be linen or leather, but rather some softer fabric. A vest of the same colour covered a button-up shirt that looked thin and soft even from afar.

His sleeves were rolled up to reveal well-muscled arms. A strange device was wrapped around his left wrist, looking like one of the Enginarium's trinkets.

All in all, the effect was striking and she found herself drawn to him as if to spite her better judgement. As if feeling her attention on him, he spread his arms and showed his palms.

"I am unarmed, though that counts for little in this conceptual space," he said, voice carrying a hint of mirth. "Peace, Tallah Amni. I've come to parlay. Had I waited, your world would've been ashes before you knew it happening. I stopped that. You're welcome."

Tallah bristled at that, taking note of Anna and Christina. Both ghosts looked to be frozen in place, like statues, though she could sense nothing binding them. Mental prods were answered only by silence.

"What have you done to them?" she asked, fighting to keep her tone neutral and not let the fear show in her words. "Let them go."

"I had to quiet them a bit so I could draw you in. As you might have guessed, I am Ryder." He took a small bow. "Your cohorts were just about to do something unspeakably stupid to my creature, and I couldn't simply stand by and watch. It's for the best that I've stopped that foolishness, and also given us an excuse to talk."

Questions swirled through her head. First and foremost was, "What do you bloody want?"

"Ah, I do love a straightforward question. I like that about you, Tallah Amni. A pity about the circumstance of our meeting." He took two steps towards her, still smiling that predatory smile, and extended his hand. "I'm a big admirer of your work."

Tallah did not take his hand in hers. She only glared at it until Ryder smoothly pulled it back.

"I'm in no mood for pleasantries," she said. "Cut to the quick. What do you want?"

Ryder chuckled, the sound low and ominous. He stuck his hands in his pockets and had to lean slightly forward for their eyes to be on the same level. "Kill a god for me, is what I'd like to demand. But I'm certain you may ally with the creature just to deny me. After all, I did watch you spit in that little ghost's eye yesterday."

He'd been watching her exchange with Panacea. Through Panacea's little protective bubble. That was something to remember.

He began pacing, walking around the two still figures. "I was going to try and bargain, but you lot don't like that," he went on. "And if I were to threaten you, you'd move mountains and stars to strike back at me. Am I wrong in anything so far?"

Tallah didn't answer. Instead, she quested out with her power, trying to prod at the ghosts. Touching Christina offered back the barest hint of life, but only just. Anna was completely mute.

"Don't bother with that one," Ryder said. "I tried to show her something and she completely locked herself off from me." He came closer and pressed a hand to Anna's head.

Tallah took a step towards him, hands balled into fists, unsure of what exactly she was going to do.

"Don't touch her," she growled.

"I'm not hurting her," Ryder went on, unperturbed and unimpressed by her bluster. "I intended to give her what she wants but she chose to hiss at me and hide. I didn't really expect to turn any of them easily, but that amount of spiteful resistance is just uncanny."

"Let them go," Tallah demanded again, still struggling to find something to follow the threat with.

Ryder cupped the back of Anna's head and smiled, fully revealing his twin fangs. "In due time. For now, let me make my terms clear to you."

"Get buggered," Tallah answered before she could swallow her fury.

"Not an option, I'm afraid. Come now, peace. You will find my demands are quite reasonable and they will align with your own goals admirably. I'm a far more generous man than the little ghost that's been pestering you. What's the worst that could happen if you just listen?"