Tallah

It wasn’t a pleasant thing to watch, what Sil did to Tallah. He knew it was necessary in some way, though he couldn’t understand why. Their explanations remained cryptic, bordering on absurd.

Vergil left them alone after the first minutes, wandering away into the library, guided by Luna on where he could step and where he could go. There were stairs that went up high into the rafters and he ascended only to be away from Tallah’s muffled screams. Something in him strained at hearing that and it… it wasn’t right.

And it wasn’t right that some part of him took pleasure in it, a vile feeling of serves you right that he agreed with and hated himself for. Best to be out of sight until it was done.

Tallah would be alright. She would be! The biggest part of him latched onto this certainty and held on tight even as her screams echoed. For the time being it looked as if every spider in the library was down there, watching events.

Except for Luna.

“You can go and watch too, if you want,” he said.

A nook, three levels up, was free of any silk so he set his sword down and himself next to it. A statue stood vigil besides him, hands outstretched in the now familiar pose of begging for an unreachable sky. He drew his knees up to his chest and forced himself to meditate as Tummy had taught him.

Luna ignored his suggestion, “We see you are… unwell? We… help? Friend?”

“I’m alright,” he lied.

It hopped off his shoulder to stand before him, looking up into his eyes and seeming terribly confused. “Friend of friend in pain. You… accept?”

No, he didn’t. Easier to pretend he did. But no… Tallah wasn’t supposed to be in pain. Or to cry out. Or… be anything but stalwart.

Seeing her in that whimpering state took away the rock he’d come to rely on. In the forest, it was the certainty that the sorceress couldn’t be far that had driven him forward. He’d gone into the dark beneath the earth and into the poisonous maze because she’d been ahead, leading the way.

Now she was in pain. Somehow that felt deeply wrong.

“It hurts me,” he admitted.

This seemed to relax Luna for some reason. If the spiders communicated telepathically, could they lie to one another? What a concept. A species with no way of hiding their feelings. Not something to envy, I think.

“Luna, why isn’t your false mother coming here?”

“Because Mother is here. Mother hides from her.”

“I don’t understand. Didn’t she eat your mother? Or did I misunderstand?”

Luna drummed its front feet on the floor, stopped itself, and looked up. If a spider could look as if searching for words, it would’ve been exactly that look.

“Mother is not one. Mother is many and is one. Mother is reborn when too old to fulfil duty. Last Mother is here, kept safe by Oldest. Mother cannot be reborn. Mother cannot be allowed to be reborn.”

“Why?”

“Because the false mother is still here. Because then the false mother would be in here and all would be lost.”

They held onto their own small kind of hope. He knew enough of spiders—well, of bugs really—to know that they laid eggs to reproduce. And these ones had saved one and kept it hidden from whatever was happening out there. Now it made more sense to him. If they could oust Erisa, then they could have their mother back to rebuild.

Was that even possible?

He sighed and pressed his forehead to his knees. One more thing he’d be useless to help with, now that Tallah had taken away his strength. What did she expect him to do? Swing his sword and get disembowelled by one of those black beasts?

“Are you in there?” he whispered. “In my head?”

“We are not in you. We are We. We communicate,” Luna answered crisply.

Vergil only chuckled. They were wrong, Sil and Tallah. The dwarf wasn’t in him. He couldn’t be. Without the helmet he was only Vergil, and all he’d amount to was another victim of Grefe.

“Argia, run diagnostic of internal memory. Tell me if something’s wrong.”

Diagnostic routine unavailable. Please consult Maintenance at the earliest convenience.

Haw! Ye’d wish.

Contagion detected! Attempt to quarantine.

Quarantine status: Failed.

Won’t work, dry shite. Ye cannae oust me!

Vergil’s head shot up as messages crowded his vision. Argia tried again for the quarantine and began running increasingly obscure routines for it. Pain flared up in the side of his head, as if something tried poking its way out. His heartbeat accelerated.

Tell it t’ stop. Or I kick down walls.What?

“I don’t understand,” he spoke aloud.

Luna moved closer, confused. He waved it off.

There be walls in yer head, ya milksop. I sees what’s behind. Ye dinnae wanna me t’ kick’em down.

A flash of smoke and fire. Two people—he knew them!—punching one another until their faces resembled ground up meat. Hissing and cheering surrounding the scene as they climbed back to their feet to the lashes of crops and whips, only to attack one another again in blind, mad fury.

Acid climbed up Vergil’s throat and scorched the backs of his teeth as he held himself from vomiting.

Tell it t’ stop or I do more than shift the curtain. Now!

Vergil did and the memory disappeared like a bad dream. Tallah had been right! He was contaminated. And the ghost spoke to him.

The ghost was coherent!?

How?

“What do you want?”

T’ fight. T’ kill. T’ be free. Fer ye t’ keep yer gob shut!

I’ll make ye strong, trinket or no. Ye shut up and listen t’ ol’ Hammerhead.

Clear?

Tallah would deal with him, Vergil was sure of that. He didn’t know what the ghost had shown him, but he knew for certain he didn’t want to see it again. Never again.

“Vergil, where are you?”

Sil’s voice echoed up from below and he rushed to his feet, anxious to be away from there as if the ghost were waiting in the shadows of his nook. Its messages lingered in Argia’s log, quickly disappearing under a deluge of notifications announcing containment failure.

“Up here,” he called over the railing.

Spiders were moving back out into the web.

“Get down. I need your help.”

He ran. Had something happened?

The first thing he saw when rushing back out into the corridor was Tallah’s bare bloodied back. Sil was tying off the last piece of string, her needle twisting around into a fine knot. The sorceress was shaking as if in a fit.

“Cloth of disinfectant. Cold water. Be ready to hold her. In that order.” Sil may as well have been taking stock of inventory for the coolness in her voice.

“On it.”

Together they disinfected the ugly thing on Tallah’s back, a complex weaving that looked like several geometric shapes contained within a circle of needlework.

It looked like a dream-catcher. He’d seen one in an Experience once. For… nightmares?

Sil washed her bloody hands and then proceeded to inspect her work, using the tip of the needle to adjust some minute details while Vergil held Tallah’s shoulders to still her shaking. She was cold to the touch and much bonier than when she’d been Tianna.

“Right. Fingers open,” Sil commanded.

Tallah obeyed, her knotted fingers coming loose from the back of her head. Her fingernails had drawn blood where they’d dug into the flesh. The hands barely moved aside and shook violently.

“Help her,” Sil commanded.

He did. As gently as he could, he moved Tallah’s hands aside from her neck and Sil got to work at disinfecting and washing the wounds.

The sword’s sheath that Tallah had used for a gag clattered to the floor. He could clearly see that she’d almost bitten through the ebony. Her hands gripped his and squeezed so hard that he feared she’d break his fingers.

“Tallah, it hurts.”

“She’s out. Bear with it,” Sil said. The look in her eyes was sympathetic. “You’re a big boy. You can take it. She broke seven of my fingers the first time we did this.” And her eyes clearly added a better you than me.

“What happens now?” he groaned.

“Now we wait and see which of their heads’ thicker.”

Sil held a scalpel in hand and hovered it above the woven pattern on Tallah’s back. The intent to stab couldn’t be clearer.

He cringed as the sorceress squeezed tighter on his hands, her entire body convulsing. Her head shot up, veins bulging across her temples and face, things writhing beneath the skin. Two indentations stretched around her throat, like hands squeezing there.

She pulled on him, as if trying to move her hands into position to defend herself.

“Don’t let her,” Sil warned. “She mustn’t react physically to the altercation. It will give the ghost more coherence and confuse her own soul. Keep her still.”

“Do the two of you—” Vergil yanked back on Tallah’s hands as they tried to pull him down. “Do you ever hear yourselves?” He gritted his teeth and looked up into Sil’s eyes as Tallah’s were still screwed shut.

At least Sil had the grace to look apologetic. “It is what it is, bucket-head. You’re doing great so far.”

Tallah wasn’t quite as strong now as she’d been back in Valen. She wasn’t infused. Without her power, she was just human… just like him. Vergil held on tight and awaited for whatever was happening to resolve itself.

Moments passed into minutes and then into the better part of a bell before the grip on his hands slackened. Tallah opened her eyes a fraction and her lips creased up into a smile.

Vergil could see a cracked tooth in that smile.

“I have her,” she said, grinning madly. “She’s subdued. Christi’s keeping her occupied.”

Sil’s knife hovered closer to the threads. “Your name,” she asked.

“Tallah Amni.”

“Full name.”

“Tallah Amni, born of mother Crelli Amni and father Andro of Sentry’s Holding.”

The knife hovered away slightly.

“Your mission?”

“Death to Catharina. Revenge for my sister. Destruction of the god Ort.”

“Let go, Vergil. It’s her.”

Destruction of a… of a god? It was Vergil’s turn to gape at the healer, as if he hadn’t quite heard what he’d heard. That… that was the goal?

“Let go, boy. I don’t fancy you quite that much to hold your hand,” Tallah said and pulled her fingers out of his balled up fists. “Good grip there. Any broken fingers?”

He shook his head as his hands opened. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Good. Help me up.”

Sil handed her a healing draught and Tallah downed it. It didn’t stop the bleeding on her back, but closed the neck wounds and sealed the tooth.

Tallah raised a hand, still naked. Vergil turned to avoid the sight, but his attention was captured by… blood moving up the arm to pool into her palm. It rose into a spike that hovered just above her fingers.

“So, Christina’s managing?” Sil asked.

“Near thing. Needed a bit of help, but her will is stronger in the end. She and Anna had always butted heads, so I guess she knew what she was getting into.”

A smug grin flashed across her face and melted away like never there.

“How’s this going to help us?”

“I can see what she knows. For now, this early in the bind, she can’t protect herself from my control.” She tightened her fist and the blood spike became a constellation of smaller ones hovering around her fingers. They spread out in a widening sphere. “Wish I could show you what kind of control she can muster, Sil. It’s incredible. Maddening.”

The needles reformed into spheres and then into small, floating eyeballs. Tallah staggered and the blood splashed on the floor.

“Bugger me, that’s not going to work,” she groaned. “How did she do this?”

“So, not full control.” Sil’s tone remained neutral, unimpressed.

“No. Some of the things she knows are intrinsically tied to a physical form I can’t possess. Won’t be able to replicate those. Turns out she had several brains only for controlling all the eyes we’ve seen in the sanctum. Fancy that.” She lifted the blood up again and formed into two larger eyeballs and floated them closer to her. “Disorientating,” she groaned again as she brought them close.

“Can you get dressed, please?” Vergil pleaded.

When ye bedding the tall, lanky one? Haw!

He’d ignored the more lurid messages from the dwarf, but now it was getting unbearable.

“Am I bothering you, boy?” Tallah asked. She smirked but drew on her armour just the same, floating eyes turned back to blood and then absorbed into her back wound.

“It’s uncomfortable.”

“Excuse me, then.”

“You weren’t so concerned in Valen with Tianna,” Sil needled him. She grinned evilly.

“Tianna was closer to my age. Tallah’s old.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment and not shove a blood needle up your nostrils.” Tallah squirmed as she drew on her coat, flinching when she tightened the clasps. “This smarts like you can’t imagine. And it’s Anna doing it. She could deaden the pain, but guards the information. Petty revenge and all that.”

“You’d do worse if you could and you know it.” Sil stifled a yawn. “You’ve done pettier things for less reason.”

“Guilty. Nonetheless, she’s putting up the strangest kind of resistance I’ve ever seen. Pettiness is just the tip.”

“Are we going to save the girl now?” Vergil asked. He shuffled from foot to foot, trying to ignore the increasingly lurid messages he was seeing. Horvath was suggesting where to stab the sorceress to kill her before she could react. Four ways of doing it.

“That depends,” Tallah answered. She turned to the Oldest, who was the only spider left near them. The rest had returned to their work, curiosity sated. “Creature, let’s discuss my terms.”