Tallah

She is not dead, Christina said with more confidence than Tallah could muster. We would be feeling her passing. Be rational.

“If she resisted,” Tallah muttered under her breath. She picked her way through the rubble, mask off for a clearer look. Smoke dispersed in black wisps across the chasm. “You can never be sure with her.”

The spiders hadn’t come back. Likely, they would wait in ambush somewhere deeper in, massed in strength now that they’d tasted her fire. Charred chitin snapped as it cooled to embers in her wake.

Sil’s medicine bag lay discarded, caught haphazard against a jutting piece of masonry, its strap broken. Her friend must’ve been grabbed and dragged away when Ludwig’s smoke went up.

They’d also grabbed Vergil for some reason. He was more skin than meat and she hoped they’d choke on his gangling bones.

She is not dead. Christina was resolute in this. We know both sides of your affliction, Bianca and I, and we both feel nothing. The hen lives. Somewhere.

Little comfort that, what with an entire city to search and the looming threat of nighttime encroaching. She wished she had asked Sil for a feedback loop built into the Vergil safeguard so she could find the bugger, but that would’ve been capable of tracing back to her.

She spat, bile rising in the back of her throat. Rhine regarded her from across the remains of the platform, gaunt-faced and dead-eyed, never seeming to move but still always in her line of sight. The wraith’s glare cut through her guts and encouraged a growing panic. Cold sweat ran down her back as weariness wormed into the void left behind by the passing rush of battle.

Ripped stitches in her side chaffed and throbbed as she cooled down. More little nicks and assorted scrapes begged for attention now, the pain distracting. Mertle had outdone herself in truth. Claws had snagged in trying to dig through her and those ghastly, impossible fangs had barely punctured her armour. They had made an admirable effort of it and, without Vergil fighting on her flank, she wasn’t certain she’d have pulled through quite so unscathed.

She dug through Sil’s satchel until she found the familiar green-hued purger and the amber-coloured healing draught.

“Are you hurt, old man?”

“No. I—” Ludwig swallowed and approached unsteadily, looking abashed and sorrowful. “Listen, Tallah, I’m terribly sorry for what’s happened to Miss Silestra. I-I—”

Tallah drank, wincing at the wave of nausea the purger produced. Yes, there had been something nasty in those bites. She rushed to the edge of the platform and vomited into the abyss, black bile heaving out in waves that weakened her knees and made the wounds unbearable. It took a long time and a long purge before she found the strength to down the second vial.

“That was terrible,” she groaned. Cuts painfully knitted together. Her head swam with exhaustion and worry, not helped in the least by Rhine’s very presence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man. Use your words.”

“Well… Silestra… she’s dead. Nobody survives these creatures once separated. I’m so terribly sorry.”

Tallah pushed herself straight and rolled her shoulders, starting to pull in illum again, straining at the effort. Not great. Not terrible. The power flowed into Grefe jagged and fragmented, like shards of glass with impossible cutting edges. Was what blocked her affliction also blocking illum flow, causing it to stagnate and mutate in here? No. That would be too neat an explanation.

Might be what’s causing your haunting, Christina offered her opinion. I simply cannot get rid of the apparition. I don’t know what she is or where she’s coming through. Might just…

“Be a figment of my imagination,” Tallah completed the thought and waved Ludwig’s questioning gaze away. “Sil’s not dead. We’re going to find her.”

“Tallah, you must understand that she’s passed. It’s always happened like this.”

“Sil’s not dead.” The repetition was for her own sake and conviction.

If Grefe affected the pull of the soul binding and mutated illum in some fundamental way, who was to say that it wouldn’t also change the nebulous rules of the empress’s weave? Until she found two fresh corpses, Sil and Vergil were alive and awaiting rescue.

Despite the power’s odd nature, it replenished her handily. Oh, more than merely replenished. She had to stop drawing or burst with it. How had she not noticed this before?

No matter. Something to think on later, after she got her wayward companions back.

Ludwig looked sheepishly back at the entrance towards the inner city. She ripped open a rend and stashed Sil’s supplies inside, only keeping a spare healing draught and an extra aerum. She’d likely have need of both soon enough.

If the spiders made off with the healer they couldn’t have gotten far. If Sil was conscious, she would call out eventually. Or signal somehow. The only way to be sure was to don the mask and watch for any disturbances.

Which… well, that was peculiar.

Grefe’s flow of illum was chaotic in itself but still predictable. Her own weave lingered, a stormy mess of patterns of fire and force vectors, drifting away on the invisible tides. That’s what she expected, at least.

These weren’t here before, Bianca said. I drew in power after your flight in the maze. It was nothing like this. And we were already inside.

A whole different weave plastered the air and travelled in a ragged line away from their position, cutting through the other currents in a riot of colours and hues that she’d never seen before. This is what she’d pulled in and what had felt so odd. Curious.

It was a path. As clear as anything. It originated in the very spot where Sil had hunkered down with her protective barrier, ran up into the higher levels of the dwellings, and moved further into the city, in and out of the tenements. If a giant spider had been carrying one unconscious healer, their flight might have looked just like that.

“Sil?” It was not an uncommon thing for a weaker-willed channeller to leak illum when under duress, but she’d never heard of a stream so dense and… odd.

“Where? What do you mean?” Ludwig looked to her, confused.

His own aura of power was a subdued trembling in the air, barely worth remarking on, all the signs evident of an unfocused ability. Age and carelessness had left their mark on what she saw in his strength now that she actually paid attention.

“Sil’s left us a trail I believe.” It was already unravelling into ribbons of concentrated power that she didn’t dare pull in again. Her store, Bianca’s and Christina’s already felt full to bursting out her eyes. A phantom sting in one informed that she had popped some blood vessel already. Best not to think about that.

“Are you certain?” Ludwig made no try to hide his disbelief.

“Better than going forward blind.”

Rhine seemed intent on the trail of power, a thin hand cautiously caressing the jagged outline as if daring Tallah to follow. It was the first time the wraith had looked interested in something else aside from Tallah, and she was thankful for the respite from its baleful gaze.

Christi, I need your strength. Are you well enough for a burst? She stepped to the edge of what remained of the terrace and looked to a cluster of dwelling hanging on a stalactite so large and intricately sculpted that it beggared belief.

What do you mean to do?

Reluctant strength flowed into her veins, Christina surrendering control with awkward grace. She still smarted from Falor’s assault and would be a long time in recovering and rebuilding her wards and patterns. The binding on her back tightened painfully.

Tallah only needed to send a message and make it explosively loud and crystal clear.

She pointed three fingers forward and took aimed at the distant cluster shining resplendent in the multicoloured light. A wasteful pity but this transgression needed answering.

“What are you doing?” Ludwig looked from her to the distant fragment of Grefe. “Do you mean to burn them out? All the way out there?”

A Punishment? I see. Christina obliged her silent wish.

A burst of Titan’s Punishment shot from Tallah’s fingers and tore across the divide. Grefe shook with the wound she carved into its distant flesh. The whole structure folded in on itself like a castle of cards, bursting to smoke and dust from within. It shook again, the beautifully sculpted columns reduced to motes, whatever it had contained for millennia riven to ashes. It all slowly, ponderously began to crack across the wound the bolt had inflicted. With a roar, the stalactite detached, crashing into the abyss with groans of anguished rock being reduced to nothing.

Inhuman voices cried out in horror, a sign that something had been alive there.

The old man gaped, his throat working uselessly for a long time before he found his tongue. “Th-Th-This is a priceless city.” He ventilated on the edge of hysteria, voice squeaking. “You mustn’t destroy it. The em-empress… Are you listening?” His mouth clamped shut with an audible click of teeth. Realisation dawned as he stared at her in mute horror.

Internally, Christina sighed and produced a genuine feeling of pleasure that washed over them. Tallah wouldn’t exert her again soon, but they’d confirmed Falor hadn’t maimed them quite as badly as feared.

So I take it we’re done trying to hide what we can really do? We’ve announced our sins to the Professor quite clearly.

Can I say ‘Hi’ now? Bianca snickered in the back of her mind. I’ve a lifetime’s worth of things to correct him on.

They all chuckled stupidly and it did Tallah good to escape her own unease watching that part of the city finish shattering. No point in hiding her sins, not with danger like this stalking them. Ludwig would either fall in line with her, or he could face the black hordes alone. Made little difference. Bigger things to worry over at the moment.

She followed the ethereal path as the rest of the stalactite tumbled into the depths. Its fall shook the floor, rattling ancient masonry and finally collapsing what remained of the platform. She didn’t care. If Sil was conscious, she’d understand and make preparations.

Maybe the trail was something laid out by spiders to lead her into an ambush. Hard to imagine, seeing how they’d need knowledge of the Ikosmenia first and an ability for illum manipulation that she’d never even imagined.

No. It would be too much of an absurd coincidence for the weave to originate with Sil and follow such a particular path for it to be unrelated, and instinct dictated that she was right. Anyway, forward. Her message had been simple and, if Ludwig assumptions of the creatures’ intelligence was anywhere near accurate, it would be understood.

“I will destroy you,” her actions had proclaimed. They’d taken two of hers. She’d burn them to the very last eight-legged freak.