Tallah [Book 3 Complete]

Tallah would've liked a bit more warning before things got well and truly out of hand. Or, rather, any warning at all.

She was expecting the dwarf ghost to make a move of some sort. However much the thing liked the boy, it didn't seem the kind to play nice with others. What she hadn't expected him to do was band together with Christina and Anna for a joint action.

Chaos erupted in the narrow space between heartbeats.

Horvath came out swinging for Ryder's throat. The axe slammed into the side of the god's throat with a sound of metal striking ironwood. It did not part the god's head from his shoulders and, instead, remained embedded bloodlessly in the conceptual flesh, Horvath hanging off it a couple palm widths off the ground.

Ryder was still speaking when Anna rose around them in a tide of pink, skinless flesh. The ghost shed her conceptual mooring, her kneeling shell exploding into streamers of muscle, bone, and sinew. It all coalesced into a gargantuan, flayed copy of Anna, flowing and shifting as her Sanctum once had.

The ghost reached out a still forming hand and grabbed Ryder bodily, lifting him into the air. Horvath let go of his axe and dropped to the ground.

Then Tallah finally saw Vergil. And her heart shuddered.

The boy stared wide-eyed at the scene, arms slack at his sides, weapons barely held in weak grips.

His conceptual self looked as famished as the wretch she'd freed from the cage, his face drawn and gaunt, and his eyes terrified. She hadn't seen that look on him since their first day in Valen, after he'd held the doppelganger goblet.

Vergil stood just beneath the tentacled, squirming mass of oozing darkness, looking lost and afraid and every bit the child he was. For all the courage he showed outward, inside he was still growing into himself, carrying scars Tallah had never considered. This violence against his psyche was not going to achieve anything good.

She'd made a terrible mistake by allowing this experiment!

For all her talk of getting him to stand up for himself against her desires and designs, she'd basically volunteered him for something none of them truly understood. They'd all gambled on unknown risks with improbable rewards.

She should have known better. The realisation, for the first time since she could remember, froze her.

"Ladies, there's really no need for this," Ryder was saying above, voice shaking in pitch as Anna was making a spirited attempt at ripping his head off. "Please stop prodding at me. I can be quite ticklish. Your method of illum injection is excellent, but wasted on me."

Tallah couldn't tear her eyes away from Vergil. She'd seen him afraid. She'd seen him falter and stumble, but never fall.

She'd never seen him like this.

They'd just put him in the same metaphoric room with his torturer and asked him to fight. He didn't have the decades of callouses she'd had when facing Dreea after their escape from Aztroa's Crown. He was just a child caught in a crossfire that should never have involved him, demanded upon by selfish adults.

She spun on Anna and properly took in the scene. "No," Tallah heard herself say. "Stop."

Anna, grown to gigantic size, had Ryder by the arms and held him fast. Horvath had somehow climbed atop Anna's construct, and was now on her wrist trying to work his axe free of Ryder's throat. Through it all, the god was smiling.

Christina's binding flared distantly on Tallah's back and in a flash, the ghost appeared, her body made of jagged light that barely held together. She had drawn in Tallah's illum as well, growing brighter by the moment.

"Need a conduit," Christina said, her voice distorted and odd.

The illum backwash coming from her signalled readiness for their hybrid devourer. She'd constructed wards around the connection, to have formed a shielded link from Tallah's body to this concept space. Christina dumped all this information into Tallah's mind, with the urgent demands to let loose.

Tallah drew in a deep, calming breath. Then she rebuffed her friends.

"Stop," she demanded with the full force of her will propping the command. "All of you, stop."

The room shuddered as her will slammed into both ghosts. Christina haltingly turned to her, white eyes wide, mouth agape. Anna's skinless face stared.

"You can't be serious," both ghosts said in unison. Even the dwarf remained immobile on his perch, staring.

"Let him go," Tallah demanded.

It took several heartbeats for any of them to react. It was Christina that broke the silence, "You're going to ally yourself with him? Has he turned you?"

Tallah shook her head and looked over her shoulders to where Vergil still stood, rooted to the spot. They weren't going to harm Ryder, not here and not like this. She knew it. Christina knew it. What this whole assault meant to achieve was drive off the god, but it would serve nothing in the end.

She'd always gone in head-first, consequences later. Every fibre of her screamed to do the same now, ignite her flames, lash out, blast the pissant to wherever had spawned him.

She drew in another calming breath and distantly felt her real self relaxing. "I'm not allying us with him, but this is foolishness."

She felt Christina's power reaching out, confusion and worry mingled in with the thrill of the fight. Tallah allowed it in and shared her mind just as the ghost had done earlier.

"Ah." The glow died from Christina and the ghost remained as she normally was, the severe headmistress carrying the guilt of five student deaths. She also looked at Vergil.

"Seems I agree with you. Put him down, Anna," Christina finally said.

Tallah studied Ryder's face. His eyebrows had gone up and the smile remained. He shook loose a hand, easily freeing himself from Anna's grasp, and yanked the axe out from his throat. He threw Horvath and the axe across the room as if they were nothing.

There wasn't even a wound left behind.

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Anna did not revert to her original form. Instead, she loomed unhappily, glaring daggers at both Ryder and Tallah.

"After all that effort, you'll not fight?" the Vitalis asked. "We'll show our bellies in surrender?"

Ryder pointed up at Anna above his head. "I'm with her. I honestly wanted to let you ladies hit me with whatever you liked and get it out of your collective system. I'm at a loss for words."

"Would it have done any good?" Tallah asked, moving to interpose herself between Ryder and Vergil, cutting off line of sight.

The god pointed to Christina, "What this one was weaving would have hurt. It wouldn't have been quite a bloody nose, but I would've felt it on Marestra. I was looking forward to it."

If they weren't going to kill him, attacking him was a waste of their strength.

"But bravo," Ryder went on, clapping his hands in genuine good cheer. "I'm almost tempted to yank all of you off this dust ball and drop you in a pocket realm for a few centuries. Given a millennium or two and the four of you could become quite troublesome."

'Why do we not fight?' Anna demanded now that their link was reestablished. "Why are you surrendering us?"

'Because we'd lose,' Christina answered quietly. 'And Vergil would see us lose.'

'Wouldn't be our first! The point was to chase this creature off, not make nice with it. Now you've given him the chance to ask—'

"Be quiet," Tallah growled. "We'll talk later."

Horvath had come to his feet. The ghost was uncharacteristically quiet through the whole thing, seemingly happy to just follow their lead. He shot a quick glance behind them, at Vergil, and something hardened on his face.

His eye then swivelled between her and Ryder, face unreadable. Tallah could almost feel the simmering fury boiling beneath the dwarf's surface. A quiet understanding passed between them.

He'd warned her of not doing more to hurt Vergil. It was time she acted like she deserved the boy's confidence and his loyalty. Getting humiliated here wasn't going to achieve that. For the boy's sake, she'd swallow some bitter pride.

She met the dwarf's eye and a moment passed where no one spoke. Finally, Horvath nodded and sauntered over to stand by her. It was he, Christina, and Tallah herself standing between Vergil and Ryder.

Behind them, the boy let out a loud, rasping breath.

"You were saying?" Tallah asked Ryder. "Before we were interrupted."

The god was busy rearranging his rumpled shirt.

"Ah, you're ready to continue then? All done with the posturing?"

"For now," she said, trying not to grit her teeth in annoyance.

In any other circumstance, in any other place, in any other moment, she would've lit her lances and attacked.

Not here. This was the wrong battlefield and the result would be disastrous. Not for her. Not for her ghosts.

"Good," Ryder said, his satisfied smile somehow growing even more aggravating. "As I was building up to, I will give you until mid-winter to kill empress Catharina. I don't care how you do it, but I need her dead. Poison her coffee for all I care."

"I've missed the moment where I agreed to serve you," Tallah growled, already starting to regret wasting the ambush. "Why would I do this on your timescale?"

"Yes, yes, your defiant streak continues strong." Ryder shrugged. "Were I to tell you what to do, you'd do the very opposite. It's a well-observed pattern."

Christina and Anna looked at one another, then both of them turned to the still frozen form of Vergil. He squirmed under their attention.

"We've spies in our midst," Christina said. "More than we knew of. First the hen and her goddess, now this one. It's a wonder we've no empress thrall ready to report our every move."

"I wouldn't be sure of that," Ryder said, a sly grin on his lips. "Regardless, I aim to help you achieve your goals, Tallah Amni."

He raised a hand and Tallah stiffened. Her hands grew hot before she caught herself.

The thing hanging above them, the dreg, cried out and, with a sound like rending leather, it was ripped away from its spot. A gaping wound remained in the darkness where it had laid, filled with the quick sound of a heartbeat. Horvath grumbled something about having more work to do, but he didn't move from Tallah's side.

"He's hurt the sprig," the dwarf said, voice low and threatening. "I entrusted he t' ye."

"I know," Tallah said as she watched the daemon mass floating above them, squirming and pulsing. "But if we fight now, we'll break him."

"I honestly had a whole speech ready," Ryder said as he gestured through the air. The daemon howled as its shape began compacting. "I was going to let you spend yourselves trying to hurt me, then explain the futility of it all. You've certainly not backed off from any challenge thus far. Onda was convinced you were either fantastically stupid, or suicidal."

Like Panacea had done, Ryder was packing the daemon. It was no longer a blob of dark flesh, but slowly turning into a sphere. Its colour was black, but the surface swirled with faint white symbols. Tallah's eyes slipped off them as she tried to study the language.

"Mercy," the daemon croaked.

Ryder just went on, "For what it's worth, I think you've raised your empress on too high a pedestal and are foolishly chasing to reach that height. Am I wrong?"

"Do you have a point?" Tallah spat, unwilling to fall into whatever this discussion was.

"I believe I do. You're powerful enough to deal with your nemesis. If I were you, I'd be reaching out for revenge with both hands. Or are you afraid of facing your sister's ghost?"

Two hands clamped on Tallah's arms. On the right, Christina. On the left, the dwarf. Neither said a word but their grip was iron-hard. She had taken two steps towards Ryder. There was fire burning in her palms.

"If you won't let us fight him, then you don't get to act stupid either," Christina said. "Don't let him tempt you now. He's just prodding for weakness."

"I'm not," Ryder said, sounding affronted. "I'm being encouraging. And this—" The sphere now hovered above his open palm. It bled from oozing cracks. "This is a goodwill gesture from myself. Use it wisely."

Tallah's teeth creaked as she tried to unclench her jaw. "I don't want—"

The ball blasted up into the air and over their heads. Anna reacted quickest of them all, reaching out to grab it just as it flew towards Vergil. Her fist closed around the projectile in the nick of time, but the thing only blew through her fingers.

Vergil screamed and Tallah was torn between attacking Ryder and running to the boy. Horvath chose more easily. He turned and rushed away.

"What did you do?" she snarled.

Ryder's answer was a shrug. "I have given you a weapon. And I've made sure you'll do what is needed." He raised a finger in warning as she tried shaking off Christina's grip. "Temper, Tallah. You did so well earlier. It would be a shame to squander that perfect moment of self-control."

"What did you do?" she asked again, feeling the chains of her patience slipping.

Christina finally yanked her hand away from her arm as Tallah made herself incandescently hot. The spectre of her anger rose.

"Vergil now has control of my child's strength. It's not much, but it should prove useful. However, if you don't do as demanded by mid-winter…" He mimicked an explosion. "Vergil dies in spectacular fashion and he will take half this continent with him. I trust we're clear. I may not be able to force you into anything you're not willing to do. But I'm certain you're perfectly willing and eager to preserve this particular life." He stuck his hands back in his pockets. "So, I suggest you do what needs doing. You're free to try and circumvent my leash on you, but do you think you have the time for it? Whatever happens, I'll get what I want. The enchantment will disengage on Catharina's death."

He winked and disappeared without another word.

"Tick tock," a last echo of his voice prodded them. It played just slightly out of step with Vergil's heartbeat.