Tallah

Time crawled by in the prison. One day. One season. Eternity.

Anna’s patience suffered it all while her mind sizzled. Her anger would not lessen with the mere passage of time, no matter how stretched and distorted she was forced to perceive it.

Did the ash eating witch understand that the prison was an imperfect seal?

Did she care?

Anna, against her will and with no choice on the matter, had been watching and listening. Her eternities unravelled into moments by the comings and goings of the two oafs serving the Amni wretch. The first thing she’d do, once free, the very first thing, would be to strangle them with one another’s entrails.

For sport.

Tallah Amni had not stolen a mere lifetime’s work from her. The boor could never imagine or understand what she’d destroyed. How could she? The mission and its pursuit needed centuries before even someone of Anna’s intellect could glimpse the edges of what she was to achieve.

How could a peasant like Amni appreciate how far Anna had gone in the pursuits of biological completion, or the depths of depravity she’d plunged for forbidden knowledge?

Preposterous! If she had blood, it would all be boiling to vapour every heartbeat…

If she had a heartbeat, it would have at least distracted her from the ruins of her ambition.

Her Sanctum’s life was… had been measured in millennia. She’d lured there and consumed nearly all of her order’s sisters and brothers, set them up as her proxies, bound them into her and made use of their formidable intellects. Her death was a sentence upon them all, a waste of their unique talents and piss in a fount of knowledge nobody save she could even begin to comprehend.

She would have cracked the code to life!

It was there, in her grasp, mere seasons away. She would have walked in light brighter than even the gods could dare. They merely served the natural order. Anna would have overwritten it in her own image, finally transcend the limitations of flesh and illum, and…

And now she rotted inside this pitch-black prison within Amni’s disordered rend, observing the improper passage of time. Was that a design flaw of the enchantment? Or a conscious effect built in to wear her down?

Eventually she’d learn which. For the time being, she knew one thing: it was only the prison that kept her soul from unravelling into illum. What her captor hoped to achieve by containing her, she couldn’t begin to understand.

The fantasy of picking the information from the witch’s still hot brain, cell by cell, sustained her own sanity through another millennia of waiting.

With a lurch, the world turned on its head and time came to an end.

“Is she resolving?”

“She is.”

“Odd shape to present.”

“I honestly expected something far more hideous. Have you seen the state of her Sanctum?”

“Only in flashes. Got the impression of fleshy bits.”

She knew these voices. Not who they belonged to, but the sound of them. Memories tied her to them, but the meaning eluded the conscience that called itself Anna.

It knew many things. None of them connected to one another. All of them piled together, understanding utterly slipping her—

Her?

Who was she? It? They?

Anna!

Who was Anna?

“Oh dear. She is quite unstable.”

“Expected. Give her time. The bonding is still on its first pattern. They aren’t rejecting one another yet. You were little better.”

“I can’t rightly remember, if I’m honest.”

“Lucky you. I remember the entire thing. It was chaos. Sometimes I wonder how Tallah and I managed to survive.”

Memories jumbled together. Knowledge poured in. The shape of a heart in hand, the way muscles contracted to push out blood, the smell and the smoothness of a perfect organ. How to cut it out and study its function. Observe. Take note. Commit to bone, then to memory. Repeat with next subject until baseline could be established. Commit to memory store. Continue.

She was Anna. Born to the name Theala, heiress to mother Viostra and father Logovich, two names she’d long scoured from active memory. Now they came back to torment her.

More memories rushed in, bits and pieces arranging into position with the cadence of a sewing needle, moments of a long life fitting neatly together as if filling out a tapestry.

“There we go. That’s looking good. Hen’s gotten better at this.”

That voice. Whose…

“Christina Cytra?”

Her own voice was an alien thing produced by no voice box. She thought the words and here they were, coming from her as if projected straight out of her chest. Though she had no chest…

“I, yes,” the voice answered back. “Don’t panic. You are nearly through the grafting process.”

“I can’t see. What have you done to me?”

“It will pass.” A different, bemused voice.

“Bianca Vel,” she recognized it easily. A painful memory arose, of being picked up bodily by invisible tethers, and then slammed three times down against a heavy oaken table. She could not recall whatever had sparked their row. After the first crash she’d passed out, woke in time to fully feel the second, and screamed in bloody froth agony on the third.

“Ah, you still remember that little spat,” the voice of Bianca Vel said. “I don’t think I’ve ever apologised properly for that. Your critique of my grimoire was really not worth that sort of excess.”

Oh, Anna remembered. She remembered a great many indignities she’d suffered in those formative years of Hoarfrost. And she remembered so many other things, all converging upon a terrifying moment.

“Tallah Amni!”

The memory of fire came white-hot. Her death had been agonising, drawn-out, cruel. She had thought herself sealed away from the physical sensations of her bodies, but the memory lingered in this new alien form she was forced to inhabit. Every raw nerve, every dead daughter, every scorching lance and cut of the sword. Now she knew them all intimately.

Sight hit her moments later. One heartbeat—it wasn’t her heartbeat she was hearing, but a far distant rumble—she was in darkness, and the next she saw.

Two women loomed over her. One tall, straight-backed and square-shouldered, regarding her with deep-set black eyes. Dark hair fell down her shoulders, unkempt, half-curled. A mocking smile played across her lips and there were the lines of old laughter scoring her face. Christina Cytra. Older than Anna remembered her, by maybe half-a-century if not more. She wore the richly adorned robe of a Hoarfrost headmistress.

And the other could be none but Bianca Vel. She looked just as Anna’s memory of her: short, rake-thin, with hair impeccably tied up into a severe bun. Her green eyes seemed unnaturally beady without her spectacles, but the lips wore the same cruel mockery that she’d always shown her peers at Hoarfrost. What was different were the clothes. Some Aztroan fashion by the looks of things, aping the empress’s.

Droll.

“Whatever that form is, please get it under control,” Christina Cytra said. She scrunched up her nose at Anna. “We may not have innards anymore, but the sight of you makes me sick. I was never one for exposed viscera.”

What?

Anna’s gaze couldn’t find herself. What was the witch on about?

Instead, she searched outward. Where was this place? Tall peaks resolved in her sight beyond the two crowding her. A mountain she didn’t recognise, a storm crowning it with boiling clouds and unnatural flashes of lightning. Thunder rumbled and echoed among the gorges. Sometimes it screamed.

They were at the base of some structure punching through the high mists and roiling clouds, a block of obsidian time-worn and weather-beaten. It was almost as alien to the scenery as the two women were.

The oppressive chant of the place seeped beneath her skin—

What skin?

Again, she looked at herself and found nothing but discombobulation.

“If you focus, you can alter your shape into any you so prefer. It’s one of the advantages of our condition,” Cytra suggested with no hint of mockery. Even her tone of voice was older, resembling that of one that spoke to a class of hopefuls.

Zakovia came to mind and Anna groaned.

“Just so you know, we can see what you imagine. You will learn to keep it contained, but for now we can see every thought crossing your mind.” Cytra sniffed in annoyance. “I am nothing like Zakovia. She ranked as a hedge witch at best. Sacking her was one of my greatest pleasures upon taking control of Hoarfrost. Do not insult me.”

Even the way she complained…

“Where am I?” It began raining. It did not touch her. Somehow, she should’ve felt cold but didn’t.

“Well, you’re inside your new host’s mindscape, dear. Welcome inside Tallah’s head. It’s generally much gloomier in here.” Vel smiled tight-lipped. “We’ve been looking forward to reuniting.”

“I haven’t.”

The ash eater’s head… naturally, this would be an abstractization of the whore’s actual mindscape. A mountain crowned in storms? What significance did it carry?

“I can’t see myself. Why?”

“We can see you, and it’s gruesome,” Cytra said. “Whatever shape you imagine for yourself to see, you will. Otherwise, your soul will maintain morphological memory and present as you knew yourself best.” She covered her mouth with a sleeve and narrowed her eyes in disgust. “What we see is a pulpy mass of writhing organs. You were always overly fond of dissections.”

“Vivisections, actually. Much more interesting. More to learn from a live subject.”

Regardless, she focused. Pale white hands materialised in front of her, well known and unblemished. Then the rest of her, the ascendant shape she had birthed decades past once she’d excised the cancers from within. In some strange way, she felt human again.

It had been a long time since she’d been merely human. She wasn’t certain she’d missed it.

“You are not limited to just your body.” Cytra’s dress flashed and azure blue replaced the rich ruby red. “Feel free to dress as you may.”

“I’m fine as is.”

“Exhibitionist? Never figured you for one.”

“Why am I here, Cytra?” Anna’s patience frayed and the flood of fury she’d cultivated rose to the fore of her thoughts, barely still under control. “Why were we attacked? And how do I wring Amni’s neck?”

A storm cloud roiled above and thunder shook the vales of the mountain, screaming with an all-too-human voice. A world-shaking crack followed, then more screams; the sound of joints popping out of socket, ligaments snapping, and muscles tearing. More followed. Anna spun in place but there were not other people on the mountain, none that she could see.

“I volunteered for this,” Cytra replied. Her tone was sanguine, if she couldn’t hear the screams on the wind. “You were attacked because you were selected for great work. It took a lot of effort to even find you.”

There was more to them than this. More to Cytra and to Vel. Anna could feel it.

Oddly enough, there was more to Anna as well, parts of her that were distant and hidden, but close at hand when she brought her attention to bear. If she allowed her mind to expand, she would be whole again. Parts of her… were fighting. Who? Or what?

A feeling suggested she might be swallowed and lost in this other depth that was kept from her. The more strength she regained here, in the simulacrum of a bad memory, the deeper her own roots dug in search for the long dead meat.

Beneath this illusion of reality, however, a leviathan swam.

Something tugged at Anna’s conscience. Cold seeped beneath her skin, though if she understood correctly… that was impossible. An alien mind touched hers, fingers caressing the pools of knowledge still sorting themselves out.

Without meaning to, she pushed back. Pain flared in her chest as the presence responded in kind. Ravenous. Aggressive. There was conscious will behind the assault and it would not be denied. For a flash, she couldn’t understand how this other could ever be denied anything.

Her sight lurched and she was strapped to a table. Screams ripped out of her. The joints breaking were hers as the rack’s handle turned, click by click. Ice-cold water splashed across her chest and froze the breath in her chest. Another twist of the rack, another click, another joint shattered. Muscles ripped in her shoulders, their snaps sickening even to her ears. She could draw no air. Could not scream. But she could hate with a depth that no sane thought could plunge.

In a flash, she was back with Cytra, gasping for breath, fallen to her knees. The women sat on rocks and regarded her as she lay sprawled on the ground.

“That is going to happen quite a bit until we balance out.” Cytra did not help her rise. Anna did not wish her to. “You are going to experience some unpleasantness. Tallah tends to remember vividly. She forces herself to re-experience every detail of those days.”

“What balance?” Blood coated the back of her throat. No, that wasn’t right. Intruding memories confused her own and forced their way in.

She pushed back and tried to flee the attention.

Cytra slapped her. She hadn’t moved but… How? The pain on her cheek stung very much like the real thing.

“It’s natural to want to resist,” Cytra said, “but I’d much rather you didn’t. We’re in a deep enough mess without you adding to it. If at all possible, try and cooperate with what you’re experiencing. We don’t have the time we need to make this gentle.”

The world shifted beneath her feet and Anna found herself sitting in an uncomfortable chair in an office she remembered well. Hoarfrost. The headmaster’s office. Or, as she understood things, Cytra’s office. Bianca Vel hadn’t come with, though her presence felt close-by.

She’d been sat in exactly this chair too many times to count, always to be lectured by Zakovia for her academic pursuits.

New volumes lined the walls of the narrow room. Without even looking, she knew they’d be grouped together based on which of the disciplines they spoke of, obsessively catalogued and sorted.

“I am becoming tired of this, Cytra. Speak plainly.” What galled was how out-of-control everything was, and it seemed designed to keep her disoriented. Her power flowed back, illum converging in the hollow of her chest same as it always did. Soon she’d be infused enough to show her old friend just how wide the gulf had grown between the girl she’d been in school, and the woman she’d become.

Cytra merely sighed and ran a hand through her hair, an old, familiar gesture of when she had much to say and couldn’t figure where to start.

“You’re dead, Anna.”

She offered a flat stare. “Are you mental, woman? Of course I’m dead. I remember my own killing.”

“And you’ve been grafted onto Tallah’s body. Same as myself and Bianca.”

“What I haven’t figured is why.”

“The motives are rather complex, but the gist remains as I said before. You were selected. Same as Bianca was. We are preparing great work and need great power to achieve it.”

She scoffed. “Great work, Cytra?! I was doing great work! What Amni tore me from was—” Why even bother explaining it to the oaf? It was lost, all of it. Given the time since she’d been abducted, her Sanctum had either died or turned feral. Any regret would be wasted on something lost forever.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth, striking for calm. “As I recall, soul grafting doesn’t quite work in this way,” she said instead, gesturing at their accommodations. “You cannot graft unwilling souls. It always ends in uncontrollable mutation.”

“As far as our teachers understood this field, yes. But they understood very little.”

They smirked at one another. That, at least, was true. What Anna had been taught by her mentors had been less than a drop in the well of what her knowledge later became. A waste of good years listening to old fools.

“I take it Amni doesn’t aim to consume me, then? If you and Vel are both grafted as well, it means she’s found a way to avoid the mutation?” She narrowed her eyes. “Or is this you, Amni, playing some fool’s trick?”

Cytra’s smile had no humour in it. “I’ve found the way, actually. She’s implementing the results of my research. Tallah had a need, and I had a way.”

Anna’s eyebrows shot up. “Yours? My, Cytra, what depravity have you succumbed to that you’d willingly have dealt in this?” From Amni she would have expected this flavour of madness. The woman had been unhinged even as a girl, in obsessed pursuit of power regardless of costs.

But Cytra had been made of sterner, more reasonable stuff.

“Thank you for the kind thought, but I had my reasons to break from convention. I wasn’t keen on the end I was headed for.” She shrugged and tugged a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “We do plenty of unsavoury things to stave off the inevitable. You’d know. We’ve seen your work.”

Cytra held her. This was all a construct, Anna realised as she quested out with tendrils of power. It existed only around the witch, and was barely anything more than a shell with no substance. She’d undo the sham by picking up any book from the shelves.

Or, maybe not. Knowing Cytra, she’d have had all of those memorised and reproduced here. Had she really read all of Krona’s treatises?

“Tallah is on a mission. Her immediate goal is to kill Empress Catharina. Revenge, you know, the great motivator.”

Anna tilted her head, “Well that is positively boring. You destroyed my work for something as pedestrian as regicide? I’d flog you if I knew how.” Her power slammed against Cytra’s hold. Found herself rebuffed. Just barely. A bit more and she’d break out. Steadily, her strength increased.

Her captor did not flinch. “That is the short-term goal, yes. Long-term… how would you feel about killing a god?”

Oh? Her breath hitched as she regarded her old friend. Cytra offered a polite smirk.

Oh! Yes, that would be something interesting indeed. Maybe almost worth dying for.

“How? …why are you smiling like that?” The way Cytra positively beamed at her was terrifying to behold.

“I’m impressed. More than, even. Bianca was a calamity when we took her. It took us a near season to get her under control. Did not expect you’d be so much more reasonable on first contact.”

“You know nothing about me, Cytra. You knew nothing back when we were girls, you know even less now.” The nerve of being compared to that trollop.

There were gaps in the construct, enough for her to seep through. She found her new condition allowed for a great deal of illum control that had been beyond her means before, always limited by the quality of the flesh that filtered it. The more she tested herself, reaching for scattered shards of herself, the more unshackled she felt.

Like blood seeping into a crack in the stone, a shard of herself slipped between the edges of Cytra’s pretend-room and pushed. It shattered the entire illusion with barely an effort.

A flash of Cytra still sitting at the base of that gargantuan, strange building on the mountain. Anna shot past her. If she understood anything, then the most alien thing in the landscape would be Amni herself, the structure a protected centre through which she could gain purchase into her enemy.

Mutation was one risk of soul magic.

The next was consumption. The strong would supersede the weak. Anna had no doubt she was more than a match for—

And they were back in the office.

Anna slammed back in her seat and nearly toppled over with it. Cytra tucked a hair behind he ear and smiled sweetly, lines of laughter etching on her face. There was tea in cups between them, steam curling above the faintly-pink liquid.

“Still easily baited, I see. Tea?”