Tallah

Vergil screamed until his throat went raw. Blood burst in the back of his mouth, choking him into gurgling coughs.

It fucking hurt!

Like nothing he’d ever felt before. One moment he faced the white spider, the next he was on fire, kicking and rolling in the soft turf, pain lancing him from every possible side. No respite. Not a moment’s mercy. Razors across his skin, salt and vinegar in the wounds, bone marrow sucked out through his pores.

Where was his sword? He’d dropped it. Fucking where?! He needed to make the pain stop!

No more air in him to scream. He struggled to breathe and instead inhaled dirt and leaves.

Something swelled in his head. A distant memory hit, of facing the specimen in the vents, of its hooked tail lifting him up. He was still there, hung by the jaw, facing inescapable death.

No air. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move for the pain. His heart threatened to explode though his ribcage.

Then it was gone. It retreated with the same suddenness as it had come, leaving him a trembling mess on the ground, still alive, barely able to draw breath.

He vomited.

Long moments passed before he received the first notification from Argia.

SILESTRA ADANA’s BINDING STUD has activated.

Result: neural excitation of pain centres.

WARNING! Current HBPM reaching dangerous levels. Please consult Medical urgently!

He blinked away the messages and cringed from the glaring light above.

Was the torture over?

Something jolted and shook him. It took some time to realise he was being moved. Dragged. He saw his heels digging a line through the ground as something struggled to move him away. He struggled back, thoughts jellying back into coherence.

Erisa! It must be the girl. One of her spiders was taking him away. What happened to Sil? He dug in his heels and heaved away, dropping to the ground, and rolling awkwardly. Got his knees under him. His sword was gone but he raised his fists, ready to defend himself for all the good that would do.

Against Sil?

The healer heaved with effort, bent at the waist, hands on knees as she gasped for breath.

“Goddess’s blood, Vergil, you’re heavier than you look.” She wheezed. “Did you know that?” His sword laid at her feet.

They were deeper into the forest and the light filtering down was not as bright as he remembered it from… moments ago? He shuddered and looked about, expecting spiders where there were none.

“What happened?” The words cut. His throat felt hoarse, like sandpaper in the back of his mouth rubbing against the soft tissue. “Where’s Erisa?”

Sil’s baffled look had him looking about even wilder. “What? What’s happening?”

“First, calm down. Second, you nearly died. I guess Tallah’s ended up on the far end of the safeguard’s range. I’m so sorry, Vergil.”

“Oh. You weren’t kidding.” He breathed out a sigh of relief and ran a hand across his face. He felt coarse stubble on his cheek. “It hurt just like you said it would. Bloody terrifying. I half-thought you wanted to scare me back in Valen.”

Again, that look of bafflement on Sil’s face. “Are you alright, Vergil? Feeling light-headed? Vision blurry?”

Now that she mentioned it, he took stock. All the stud’s effects were passed. He felt quite well actually, strength returning in waves. For one, he was thirsty. There was the taste of dirt, blood, and bile in the back of his throat, but that was the worst of it.

“No. I’m feeling well. Really well.”

“That’s… peculiar.” She came nearer and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “No fever either. No dilated pupils. I was nearly certain you might’ve popped a blood vessel. Are you certain you’re feeling well?”

He drew back and frowned, a kernel of panic popping at her insistence. “Yes. Why? What should I be feeling?”

“Angry. You should be angry.”

“Oh.” He blinked. “Why?”

“For being put through that. It’s my enchantment that did it.”

“At the moment, I think you scare me far worse than Tallah does. You were right. I’d prefer her fire to your skills.” He smiled and shrugged. “Thing did what you said it would. I’m honestly relieved. I thought you might’ve lied just to scare me.”

He walked over to his sword and picked it up. With Sil more worried about his state than any ambush, he assumed they were safe. “What happened to Erisa? I thought she had us.”

“She did. Then you began screaming and she ran off. I think she worried about the attention you might’ve been inviting.”

“Imagine that. Means there are worse things in here than her.”

“Yes. I wanted to ask her what she wants with me but never got the chance. And seeing her bolt as she did, I figured it would be best for us to do so as well. In the opposite direction.” She ran a hand through her disarrayed hair and tucked errant strands away from her eyes. Her face was pale, lips faded. Sweat and blood soaked the collar of her shirt. “Should’ve stuck closer to the wall, but we can double back I think.”

Vergil had once tracked a particularly ugly critter beneath one of the hydroponic gardens aboard the Gloria Nostra. He had climbed out of the ducts and into the gardens themselves by forcing open an access panel. Sewerage there flooded often by design, and he didn’t want to be caught in a purge.

Normally he wasn’t allowed to breach into any of the life support areas, but he had spent two days tracking the creature, not eating anything but his emergency rations. It had pissed him off to no ends, so he hadn’t paid attention to where he was breaching into. The thing would die, or he’d go mad with frustration and Argia notifications.

The air in the gardens had struck him nearly dumb, fresh, and cool, entirely different from what he breathed normally. It had made him slightly dizzy with the aromas and perfumes of actual plant life. More oxygen than made it into the ship’s normal air mixture.

There was green everywhere, blindingly beautiful compared to the grey metal making up the lower levels. He forgot all about his quary and simply wandered between the shelves and pools of water, taking it all in, mesmerised.

Technicians working the hydroponics found him mere minutes later and had him instantly quarantined and carted out.

He had never forgotten that short time in the ship-borne forest. He had been punished with a month of reduced bunk temperature and rations, but that price was small by comparison to the experience. It was one of the few memories from the Gloria Nostra that he cherished.

All that came flooding back now that he looked about. He’d been in the forests around Valen on his trip out with Sidora and the others, but that had been… different. Here, it smelled nearly as the hydroponic garden did and the air was just as rich and fragrant as he remembered. It was only missing the soft hiss and whirl of automated maintenance systems.

“Which direction?” he asked, turning about. The only guides for their position were the lines his feet had dug through the earth, and he figured they wouldn’t want to head back there. At least, not yet.

“Forward, I guess.” Sil lifted a fern to show even more thickets. “Forward or back, we’re bound to run into some spiders somewhere. Best try and find our way out of here and onto some overlooking balcony somewhere. I still can’t channel.”

“Don’t you two have ways of finding one another? Like this stud?”

He cut a path for them where the plant life grew too thick. Warm sap coated his hands and made his grip on the sword slick and slippery.

“No. Enchantments can work both ways and a skilled artisan can reverse the effect. If I were captured and I wore something like that, it could lead our enemies back to Tallah. It’s why your binding is one-way only. Tallah gets no feedback from you, so she can’t know how far from her you are. It’s still a risk, just not as big of one as you are.”

“Thank you for that.”

“I am reassessing my stance on the stud, and I can bet Tallah is too. Else you’d be shorter a head by now.”

Vergil let out a long sigh. “After we get out of this place, I’d like the two of you to sit down with me and really explain your magic.”

“It’s not magic, Vergil. Magic is for—”

“Channelling. Whatever you call it. I want to know what’s possible and what isn’t if I’m to be useful in any way. I can’t have you both stumbling over me all the time.”

Sil laughed softly and looked terribly weary. Her forehead still bled a trickle down her face, and she pointedly ignored it. She’d needed both arms to carry him and now she cradled the bad one tight against her chest, clearly in more pain with each jolting step.

“You need to be kinder to yourself,” she said without a hint of rancour. “I like that you assume we’re getting out of here in one piece. Your optimism is either pure stupidity, or some strength of character that I ought to study as a curiosity.”

“Ha. Ha. Droll.”

An animal’s sharp bellow sounded from somewhere to the side, muffled by the greenery. It repeated three times, each more distant.

“There are other animals here. That didn’t sound like a spider.” Vergil’s face flushed, realising what he’d said. “Not that these spiders sound like spiders. Do spiders even normally sound like anything here? You understand what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I was wondering what the spiders ate. If there are animals in this forest, one must wonder how far it stretches to accommodate wildlife with enough numbers to survive.”

“I honestly thought they’d be big on mushrooms,” Vergil said. His voice had lowered to a whisper now. His stomach roared.

Sil gave him a disgusted look.

“Of all things, mushrooms? They’re foul. Why would anything eat those? I wouldn’t feed them to swine.”

“They’re good, especially as a sauce.” Hunger pangs reminded him they hadn’t eaten anything since emerging out of the maze. How long had it been since then? “It was a big part of my diet on the Gloria. They would grow in the dark and didn’t need much to thrive. I sometimes found them in the wall panels.” His mouth watered. “And, you know, the master at the Sizzling Boar made this stew with them. It was so good.”

Sil looked like she would prefer eating her boots. “First off, you were probably being fed those because you counted as a bottom feeder. And second, that explains why you would eat even roaches to get away from them.” She screwed shut her eyes and grimaced in disgust.

“You imagined it—”

“Shut up.”

The light changed. What had been near daylight streaming down turned red with a flicker. Above the forest whatever crystals produced the light had shifted to hues of red, with some tremors of blue here and there, a night sky dredged out of some nightmare.

“Bugger.” Sil looked up as well and shielded her eyes against the fresh glare. “And here I thought this place couldn’t get worse.”