Tallah [Book 3 Complete]

Falor stepped aside and allowed the creatures to pass. The grinners slithered past, silent as shadows, to disappear into the labyrinthine innards of Drak's Perch, scattering like rats. It was an unquestionably unkind thought, but Falor had little care for charity at that moment.

Quistis had taken it upon herself to help these wretches, so he wasn't about to overthrow her decision. The thing that reached the other side of the grates was of far greater and more immediate concern.

What he'd learn of the monstrosities back in their village clash was that they could be killed. Granted, it couldn't be done easily, but he was more than capable of the deed.

But power thrummed in Drak's Perch. He felt it in the background hum of the fortress, in the tremor beneath his feet, in the very taste of the illum flooding the very bedrock on which the fortress sat. He didn't need an Egia to know Yriea was there, her presence as clear to him as the vile stench at the bottom of the shit pit. She was fighting without restraint.

Can't help but wonder what's brought her all the way out here. Last I knew, she's not left the Eastern Tower in five seasons.

Had his mother sent her after him? It was possible, of course. Yriea was one of the few channellers that could bring him to heel if the need demanded it. His mother would have to be very angry with him indeed.

As he could feel the aelir'rei, she would immediately feel him if he took action now. Until he knew the truth of the prison, he didn't want to confront his aunt. It would be almost like facing his mother.

"What the bloody throne is that thing?" Vial choked on the stench, gagging with each word. The aerum serum had run out for all of them.

"Ugly," Quis answered with usual chill. "And an affront. Commander?"

The creature was trying to squeeze itself through the gap they'd cut. A thick tentacle of bleeding flesh had forced itself through, thrashing about on this side of the gap, arms and fingers sprouting at strange angles from the weird stump, hands grasping blindly.

It was coming in, but doing so slowly, its mass too large to fit through at once, but putty enough to squeeze in.

Falor dragged the other two to the far wall. One of the grinners was hesitating by the door, eyes shifting nervously from the pulsing flesh to the darkness beyond, shivering and clanking its teeth. The large one trotted over, grabbed the straggler by the scruff of its neck, and threw it out of the room. It followed after it, hesitating briefly in the doorway with a look back at Quistis. Then it was gone.

"Time we got going too," Falor said as the tentacle kept getting thicker. It oozed beetles.

"Couldn't agree more." Quis held out a hand and closed her fist around the light sprite, turning its light into a beam. "After you, Commander."

They didn't question his decision and he was more thankful for it than he could express. He would do it, later, when all his fears and worries would be laid to rest. When facing his mother, he'd take all fault onto himself.

"Come on."

He led them out into a narrow, dark corridor that stretched in two directions. The right-hand side began climbing almost immediately, stairs heading sharply up into pitch blackness, and he expected that climb would take them towards the main gate, or at least to the defensive tunnels crisscrossing beneath the main courtyard.

The left-hand side would twist around beneath the fortress, a mix of maintenance passages and treacherous pits and traps. At least, that was what he'd seen on the plans.

For now, he chose the stairs and began climbing. The grinners had all dispersed and disappeared to only gods knew where. It wasn't unheard of for deep, dark places to spawn the creatures at some point, so he put them out of mind for now. The fortress had much bigger issues than those particular pests, no matter their numbers, and he very much doubted they show themselves again anytime soon.

Quis followed quietly behind him. He kept a tether attached to her, just a thin tendril of power to know she was well. And she wasn't, not really. She was terrified, her fear almost a palpable presence at his back. Much as he wanted to turn, take her hand, and squeeze it gently, they didn't have the time for niceties then. Quis shivered, but she kept the pace, breathing slightly harder as they ascended.

It would all turn out well once he knew Cinder had lied to him. Once he was free of doubt, he could commit himself fully to the defence of the prison. Between himself and Yriea, Barlo and Vial, and even Tummy, there was no doubt in his mind they could contain this invasion, break its back, then destroy the creature pretending itself a servant of Ort. All he needed to act was proof that once again Cinder had lied.

Below, the creature screamed and filled the narrow stairwell with thundering echoes. It was not having a good time coming through the grate, and Falor was thankful for that. It would probably not follow quickly up the stairs, or head off in the other direction to lose itself in the myriad catacombs.

Their progress was not challenged even upon reaching the top of the stairs to emerge into the underbelly of the fortress, the hidden rooms beneath the courtyard. There were no torches burning, and no lights guided their path aside from Quistis's sprite. She cast its light about in a narrow beam to illuminate rough stone walls and empty corridors.

Dust and cobwebs marked the places they passed, each room looking long-abandoned and derelict. They were surrounded by nothing more than junk and detritus, broken weapons left to rust and rot, broken crates, discarded pieces of armour.

"This don't look like an active fort," Vial aired out the same thoughts crossing Falor's mind. "That, or the commander here got sloppy. We would never have allowed this dereliction at the Rock. Vilfor would've skinned alive those responsible."

Falor grunted his approval. Per the plans for the fortress's defence, these were to be fallback positions and cornering traps for anyone seeking to escape the prison. It was a maze because it had been designed as one, rooms and passages circling in on themselves, passages stopping dead, wall gaps suggesting tantalising possibilities of escape.

But even so, it was supposed to be patrolled and manned. There was no sign of any living thing having stepped through there in seasons.

"Smells like a trap, Commander." Vial's tone was easy-going, but he'd dropped his voice to a whisper. "Something stinks here, and it ain't the privy we climbed out of."

Dust rained down from the low ceiling and the earth shook. Above, the fighting was growing bolder, bigger. A surge in the illum, like the swelling of a tide, then a sudden void. Falor turned, wrapped his arms around Quistis, and dragged her beneath an arch. The world shook with an explosion above. Plaster and stones rained around them. Dust choked the air and echoes bounced through the many rooms.

Vial shook dust off his armour. "Place'll come down around our ears soon."

Quis pulled herself away from Falor's arms and shook dust out of her hair. "The other metal mind in here isn't messing about," she said, pinning her eyes to Falor's. "How do we reach the warden's keep?"

"Unfortunately, I don't know the layout of this as well as I'd like," Falor confessed. "We need to traverse these cellars and cells, and emerge on the far side."

"While there's that horror crawling around beneath us," Quistis grumbled. "Lovely."

Maintaining the general direction was not hard. Low-intensity pulses signalled dead ends and dead falls. Locked doors were easily dismantled with a swing of the hammer. The growing unease was not easily dismayed.

Above, the fighting had not dulled. Yriea must've cast a single devourer up there and was now biding her time. What for, Falor couldn't guess. But illum was being moved about, drawn, transformed, released, then cycled once again. But nothing on the other side of the fight, not even a spark of illum. He hadn't felt anything from the creature below either, and he was certain it was part of the same clutch as the others.

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Vial opened up what was maybe the seventh identical-looking room they passed. As before, nothing but undisturbed dust. The whole place had the feel of a grave long-abandoned and forgotten. All that met their advance was grime and dust and neglect. Soldiers should have been crawling around these rooms, repositioning in order to flank the invaders, rearming or resting.

Where was everyone?

And how come all he heard was the channelling? No men screamed above. No rallying calls. Nothing. They'd seen the dead when they approached… but could the creatures have gotten everyone?! It beggared belief. The Empire did not fall as easily as that, even at an outpost as remote as this. His mother would not have stood for a weak point.

"Commander, with us?" Vial's voice broke through the cluster of thoughts distracting Falor.

"I'm here," he answered, and realised he'd been staring at a locked door, hammer in hand, both Quis and Vial waiting expectantly by his side. "Sorry. Mind's adrift."

"Get it back in here." Quis's tone was firm and veering on the edges of anger. "I keep hearing shuffling feet and moans. I want out of here sooner rather than later."

Vial made a show of listening. Falor turned his head one way, then the other, straining his hearing.

"I can't hear anything," Vial said.

"I know." Quis huffed and hefted her staff. "It's in my head. Can we hurry this along, please?"

A swing of the hammer and another door was reduced to dust. And in the room beyond the corpse of a soldier greeted them. Or what remained of a corpse. Its chest lay open, the cage of his ribs cracked and shattered, a mess or organ meat exposed to the air, cooled to hard jelly. The stench hit them all a heartbeat after.

Vial stepped through the door first, sword in hand, followed by Quis's sprite, now fully released. The room was empty aside from the putrefying corpse. Worse, yet, there were no clear exits out of the room. And the door had been locked.

The flood of white light revealed only bare walls and a bloody slime trail leading to the soldier. Or, rather, away from the corpse, Falor realised.

It slithered on the ground towards a wall, drawing a sinuous line of blood, until it finally disappeared.

But where?

Vial tapped the wall, moving slowly around the area where the trail disappeared.

Falor checked again for life signs, but there were none there. Only faint echoes came down from above, but he'd intentionally kept the outgoing pulse as weak as he could make it.

"Something burst out of him." Quis knelt by the corpse and examined it critically. "Here, from the stomach and sternum. It was big. Ripped right through his ribs."

"Lovely. This is becoming worthy of song," Falor grumbled. "The living dead shuffle above. There's an abomination made of many parts in the sewer. Grinners suddenly form families. And now a burst apart soldier. A minstrel somewhere would be run out of a tavern for this tale."

Quis merely shrugged. "I'm past being surprised and more worried for our companions."

Falor scoffed as he turned slowly in place, kicking up the dust and the stench. "I'm more worried for anything that runs into Barlo now that he's got a couple aelir assassins as his backup." He could feel the trace of a breeze against his skin and stopped. It tickled his ear.

Then it was gone. Then back again.

"Vial, back. Retrace your hand's position."

The solider did. The faint current of air interrupted again.

"There. There's a draft there."

It took what felt like an eternity to find the shifting rock in the wall. Then no time at all to shift the whole wall and reveal some secret passage. A ladder, rusted with age, led the way up.

Falor was the first to climb and the first to discover the charnel house.

"Throne of my mother…"

Twenty corpses, that he could see, laid in the same way as the one below, scattered across the floor of what looked like a proper guard room. Faces stared open-mouthed at the ceiling, grimaces of pain sculpted into wax-like flesh, eyes burst in their sockets.

Every chest was burst open. Ribbons of rotted entrails stretched across the floor. Everywhere stretched dark trails of blood that slithered away from the corpses. The one down in the maze had likely tried to escape there only to find the same death.

"Goddess." Quis covered her mouth as she unmounted the ladder.

Vial's reaction was just a gag for the smell. "Did a Vitalis get loose?" the soldier asked. "This looks like Vitalis work, like that Sanctum we found near Valen."

"Too much coincidence." Falor toed one of the corpses to turn it face-up from its own gore. Not much was left of the face. "Vitalis mages generally use the whole corpse."

"Not if they're insane," Quis said. He had to remind himself that he hadn't seen the Sanctum with his own eyes, so he allowed for the possibility.

"They're all dead a least a tenday now," Quis inspected one more of the unfortunate soldiers. "Same cause of death. Similar damage to all of them."

"This is getting weirder and weirder." Vial tested the handle of the sole door leading out of the guard room. It was locked tight. "Why are those things attacking now if the fortress was already dead?"

"Good question." The door took two strikes to shatter. "But we're finally where we meant to be," Falor said as he peered out into the lit corridor. Light streamed in from windows cut in the wall, showing a clear path forward.

"We're staying the course?" There was just a hint of reproach in Quis's voice. "This feels like it needs our attention more. I think we can conclude something did happen here."

Falor strode forward, ignoring the gore coating his boots. "Whatever happened, it did so within the week." He hesitated for a moment. "Cinder's grievance begins here. I will get to the bottom of that before I decide on anything else."

This was him being unreasonable, he knew. But he owed the crazy pyromancer at least this. For nothing more than because she'd spared his life when she could've simply kill him. He was ready to strike her down, lump in his throat and all, and she'd left him walk away. Whatever his mother could say, that was not the action of a woman gone insane or succumbed to her pyroclastic tendencies.

"Never seen him so driven." Vial's whisper was poorly concealed.

"Neither have I." Quis didn't even attempt.

"And you'll see me far more driven if this proves a fool's errand," he snapped at them both. "Come. We're nearly there."

Still, no fighting barred their way. He could spy the legions of the dead out in the courtyard through murder holes and got his bearing. They had emerged in the outer wall, halfway through the main route. In less than half a bell they should be at the warden's keep that he could spy hanging to the side of the courtyard, a lone building just barely attached to the main keep.

There was no more fighting. While the dead were inside, the gate to the main keep was locked tight, closed to intruders. So, there was someone else in there fighting, and somehow restraining Yriea since she wasn't flinging her lighting out there.

So far, so good. He raised a fist, signalled the others to follow and remain silent, and lead the way, hearts thumping in his ears. Soon, he would have answers and all his doubts would disappear.

Then he could rid himself of any strange affection he might still be harbouring for Cinder, and finally kill her on their next clash. He had the shard from Angledeer's home safely tucked away in his rend. If the old man was still with Cinder, he probably wouldn't have renounced his. Once all this insanity was over, he would use the shard and reach Cinder, wherever she might be. He had a plan for that too.

And here was his destination, finally in view, just down a final flight of stairs. A low pulse revealed nothing. A stronger one still nothing. Once he'd go down the stairs, he'd be face to face with the warden's offices.

Falor licked his cracked lips and began the descent, oblivious to Vial's mutterings or Quis's worried agreement. The heavy door stood in front of him, ornately sculpted, its frame covered with dust and its hinges rusted almost shut.

If he would've reigned himself in, maybe he would've noticed the illum thinning as he approached the room. Or he would've felt the heartbeat inside. Or sensed the danger.

But he didn't and cursed himself for all of it as he smashed open the door.

Yriea waiting in the middle of the room beyond, turning towards him with lightning playing across her arms, an expression of mild shock on her face.

Then recognition.

Then all the fury of a storm at sea.

"There you bloody are, you daft child," the aelir'rei said, voice as cold as the ever storm beyond Aztroa's Crown. "Have you the vaguest idea of what trouble you've caused me?"

Falor would've answered the words. Maybe even Quistis and Vial would've reacted. But they were all staring at the aelir'rei.

Dressed in a flowing robe with edges frilled with singed fur, she was blood spattered and mud caked almost to her hips. But that wasn't the impressive part.

What caught all their attentions and was very hard to ignore, was the swollen belly of the aelir'rei. Aunt Yriea was as pissed as a sodden cat thrown in a bag, and very, very pregnant.

"H-hello, auntie," Falor mumbled, cursing himself for his eagerness. "What… what brings you all the way out here?"

If a storm could have a voice and scream with it, it would not have even competed with the stream of invective that purged out of aunt Yriea. Not even by far.