Tallah

Panacea stared at the boy as if she’d forgotten he was even there. Realisation dawned with a sigh of displeasure. “You’re not who you’re supposed to be.”

Sil felt about as confused as Vergil looked. He dashed a look to her, eyes wide in panic. What could anyone even answer to a remark like that? She could do nothing but shrug.

“What was your function aboard your ship?” the goddess asked.

Vergil’s jaw dropped.

“You… know?” His eyes boggled. “How?”

“She touched my mind,” Sil said, anger rekindling. “Lying tart knows all about us.”

Panacea gave her a flat stare and went on, “I know, boy, because I brought you here. Unfortunately, you’ve been tampered with.” She crinkled her nose. “I can smell his touch on you sure enough. A pity. What kind of engineer were you?”

“I… uh… I wasn’t an engineer. I’m a pest removal technician.”

“Assigned to the hydroponics?”

“No. To the belly.”

“I see. Useless and disposed of.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes as if tired. “You caused me no end of grief, only to be this. If this day could hold more disappointment, I don’t know how I’d cope.”

Vergil looked as if he’d had the world yanked out from under him. His shoulders slumped and the light of his eyes dimmed away to a fish’s dead stare. Hands balled into fists, shook, released.

Sil sympathised.

“Now see here—” she began, turning to Panacea. Goddess or not, Vergil deserved better than such crass dismissal.

Tallah strode past and beat her to the punch.

Panacea’s head snapped back with a crunch of fist meeting bony cartilage. By the sound of the impact, Bianca had added her own push to Tallah’s waning strength.

“Guts and bones and blood and piss!” Tallah cussed through gritted teeth, dancing in place, cradling her fist. She had used her newly reattached arm. “That bloody damn hurts!”

It would’ve been gratifying seeing the goddess bloody-nosed. It wasn’t to be.

“I am reaching the ends of my patience with you two,” she groaned. A red splotch marred that infuriating marble-perfect face..

“You don’t talk to him that way.” Tallah spat the words. “The boy’s earned his keep.”

“It’s alright, Tallah,” Vergil said. He sniffled loudly. “I didn’t expect anything better. Of course the only answer to me being here is that I wasn’t supposed to be. Story of my life.”

“I was merely honest.” Panacea’s glare could melt steel. “I did not aim to bring him here. He is not the one I wanted.” She came closer to Vergil and seemed to measure him head to toe. “I should destroy you before you can do more harm to my designs.”

Tallah’s hands flashed into fire and Vergil got yanked back from the goddess. She merely laughed as the sorceress interposed herself between them.

“Put out the flames, Tallah Amni. I have no wish for innocent blood on my hands. I’d warn you of him, but you’d ask questions I can’t answer here. Safe to say, he’s been forced onto us. What I wanted to bring here was an engineer and not some bug catcher.”

Sil placed a hand on Vergil’s shoulder and he didn’t pull away. Rather, he raised his eyes to the goddess and there was a wild gleam in his eyes.

“How the bloody Hell do you know about the ship’s order? And how do you know about engineers? Who are you really?”

“That is not for you—”

“You said systems. And spoke of transmissions. You’re not a goddess.”

“I could show you how wrong you are,” she warned.

“Nah. You’re not from here, are you? You’re like me.” He grinned and pointed up at her face. “The red eyes give you away. You all have red eyes, and none of you can hurt the humans in your charge. I know that for a fact.” His tongue flashed across his lips, as if he savoured the words. “You’re a machine spirit, like Argia. She’s been pinging something ever since you showed up.”

Panacea’s back straightened as if a hot poker had been driven up her backside, her face caught between incredulity and pride. Her next words came out softer, almost wistful, “Is that what your ghost was called? Argia... Light motif. So, a fifth generation name out of Shade’s stack. What year is it?”

Vergil’s eyes darted to Sil’s, questioning.

Panacea interrupted him before either could speak, “Not here. On your ship. What is the Terran year?”

“2247, past the 10th millennium. At least that’s what Argia says. Last known date was week 36, day 06.”

“So, you've all endured. Good. Fifth generation even. You must have been well on your way out of the Milky Way.”

“Not yet. Maybe some of the others.”

“Humanity endures. As well it should.” She gave him a rueful smile, teeth gleaming white. “I am not a mere machine spirit, boy. I am the template, the first born on Holy Terra. My body was built on Luna.”

“Can you please explain what the two of you are on about?” Sil asked. Reality had gone syrupy and she was coming to regret coming awake. Maybe she’d hit her head?

“No, I cannot explain. Ort’s sniffing about.” Seeing Tallah’s flame turning white-hot, she added, “Protections are in place against his interest. He will not be finding us here, much less penetrate the barrier. Not easily. Best we got on with our business.”

Luna made its way back up to Vergil’s shoulder and regarded the whole proceeding with what Sil came to understand as interest on the creature’s part. Its palps moved slowly as the humans bickered with the lying goddess.

“Luna, take us to the birthing chamber, please. Erisa’s dead. It should be safe.”

At some point, it had stopped raining. Puddles pooled in the grooves dug by Tallah’s battle. Footing became treacherous, the mud sucking down at their boots with squelches.

“The false mother lives,” Luna answered, its voice somehow tinny. “Her hunter lies dead, but she has others. She lives still.”

Lovely. More of those creatures roaming about sounded just about right for how the entire day was shaping up. Maybe one of them could just eat her and put an end to the misery.

“Lead on. Which way?”

Luna pointed the way and Panacea walked ahead of them. Her feet sank in the mud just as theirs did, but it did not stick to her.

Life had fled the forest. Trees and bushes lay still, only the drip-drip sound of water streaming off leaves accompanied the squelches of their footsteps. Sil found that she could manage and open a rend to pull out her actual supplies. A draught mixed to offset blood loss, one mix of withering nettle for the pain. Poppy? Nobody aside from traditionalists still used that addictive thing.

Tallah was grateful for each of them. The painkiller smoothed out the lines of pain on her face, and the bloodberry tonic brought some colour back to her lips and scar.

“Where do you suppose Ludwig is? Did the spiders eat him?” Sil asked. They followed the wall away from the chasm, its curve moving sinuously further into the forest. Soon enough they left the green behind and stepped through a path guarded by statues, the walls close enough together that only two of them walked abreast.

“I’d be disappointed if he were already dead,” Tallah said. “I want to skin him myself.”

“I recommend you don’t,” Panacea piped up. “He owes me several debts of blood and I aim to collect, given what I’ve learned from your recollection.”

Sil avoided the gaze now, cowed back into her proper place. Panacea had mind-touched her. She knew now of every sin she’d committed, every way in which she’d knowingly skirted the laws and broken her School’s trust. If the goddess so desired, Sil could be barred from the healing arts altogether, excommunicated and shunned.

As if sensing her thoughts—and she may really have been able to—the goddess turned to her and spoke softly, “Daughter Dreea is dead, yes? Well and buried?”

Sil swallowed the lump in her throat and squeezed Tallah’s cold hand for support.

“She died on Aztroa’s Crown.”

“Good. May her sins rest with her. You, however, are not an Adana. Death is penitence enough. I have named you Iluna and I expect you to carry the title properly, with all it entails. Am I understood, daughter?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good. We will speak more of this at the School.”

“You keep saying that. What makes you think we’ll try and find the School. Unless you have some way of transporting us all there, I have no plans of—”

“Save your breath, Tallah Amni. You will make the journey and deliver to me several things. The boy for one. My daughter’s soul for another. If this healing water is what I believe it to be, I may want that as well.”

One of the large spiders tried ambushing them. It dropped from the high ceiling nearly atop them. A flick of Panacea’s finger turned it into a twitching lump smeared across the forest floor, though her hand turned translucent with the effort.

She looked down as if to bore through the earth.

“They repurposed my reactor, I see. Good on them. Ended as well as my models predicted.”

Tallah stepped right across the remains of the spider. Heat wafted off her.

“You don’t get to demand anything of me. I refuse playing whatever game you and Ort seem to be enjoying.”

Panacea offered a perfectly innocent smile. “And here I figured you’d like to know who’s been yanking on your strings.” She thumbed in Vergil’s direction. “Did you think you’d run into an Other just like that, so fortuitously? I know you’re not that stupid. You wouldn’t be doing the things you’re doing if you were.”

“I don’t follow.”

“And you won’t unless you do as I say. You’re tightly bound in a scheme that you have no chance of unravelling without my aid. I’ve been trying to locate my errant summoned soul all winter. Only managed to get a whiff of him because you’ve sent him into your rend and it cleared up the interference. That bastard made sure to involve me at just the right moment—” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Oops, may have said a bit too much.”

“You’re baiting me.”

“I am.”

“It won’t work.”

“It will. Once I confirm what I suspect, I will make you a gift you’d be silly to refuse.”

Tallah glared daggers at the back of Panacea’s head. Sil sympathised with her friend. Her goddess had done nothing yet but raise questions and refuse answering any relevant one. Vergil had called her a machine spirit. Was she from his world?

Why was she here, then?

Why did she act as if the entirety of Grefe was somehow known to her, and yet utterly alien?

Questions and mysteries, half-alluded truths, and baits.

Sil hated the whole thing altogether. This was not how she would’ve hoped to meet her goddess.

Panacea had restored her name though. Part of her was elated at this. Dreea’s crimes could remain her own, buried under Aztroa’s Crown and…

The headache stopped the rest of that thought and she forced herself back into the moment.

Two more large spiders loomed ahead but did not attack. Rather, they retreated up the wall and watched them with black, beady eyes. Afraid? In their place, Sil would’ve been.

Statues led the way to an opening in the wall. Some strange metal door lay ajar, as if something had burst out from beyond.

“It is here,” Luna said. “The false mother lies here.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Panacea looked up at the cringing spiders and they retreated even farther away. “Something of hers lingers.”

They passed into a strangely low-lit room. Gems had been brought in and set in webs against the walls, mostly yellow and white, to mimic a mockery of the missing sun. Remnants of ancient flower beds littered the room, with strange metal constructions poking out from the wreckage of aeons.

Red flowers bloomed all around them, in every crevice, on every wall, on every patch of dirt. They leaked a clear nectar whenever the group touched one, and red spiders, about the size of Sil’s head, scurried with web satchels to collect the liquid, drop by precious drop.

“That is Mother’s healing water.” Luna’s mental tone bordered on reverential. It pleaded, “Please do not touch the flowers. Please do not harm them. They are precious.”

A scent of citron wafted on the air, coupled with mint and something resembling ginger. It cleared up Sil’s headache in a heartbeat.

On an upraised platform, held almost lovingly within a cradle of webs and gems, there was the desiccated and mutilated body of Erisa Egia.

She was still alive.

Her belly was swollen up to near bursting, ripples crawling across her flesh.

Sil regarded the scene in mute horror. The girl was older here, tall and lean if not for the gruesome bulge of her belly. Her limbs were long and strangely bent, legs splitting into two at the knee, arms at the elbow. Her head lay back. Four black eyes stared up into the light above. Her jaw hung loose to reveal a maw of uneven teeth and fangs, with a wet, sinuous tongue lolling out.

Breath sawed in and out of her as her body jerked on the web. One of the red spiders rushed to her side and fed her a bubble of water.

With a groan of pain from the girl, her belly ruptured. Tens of red spiders spilled out as she voided the contents of her womb. If not for Tallah’s arm around her shoulders, Sil would have fainted.

One of the spiders attended to the brood wiggling on the moss-covered ground, gathering them on its back and taking them away.

Another brought a different bead of water to the girl’s mutated lips. She drank it down and it was like watching the entire process happening in reverse. Meat drew back into her abdomen, the flaps of her skin tightened and knit back together, and in moments the girl was as pristine as if never hurt. Only the puddle of blood on the floor signalled anything had even happened.

Vergil retched atop one of the flower beds. A red spider rushed to clean up after him.

Panacea watched it all with wide eyes, horror etched on her face, appalled into silence.

“This is what remains of innocence, then,” said Tallah, more sanguine than anyone else in the room just then. Her heat remained steady throughout the entire spectacle. “Is this the false mother? Spider?”

“This is her birthing chamber. This is where she makes her black broods to inhabit. They are all wrong.”

“This place keeps on giving.” She ignited a heat lance and aimed it at the girl now swinging idly on her web, eyes half-closed against the light, one foot pushing against the floor. She hummed a melody that Sil recognized from the School’s hymns.

“Ludwig needs to die for this,” Vergil croaked. His voice shook. “He left her here for this.”

His outburst got a smile from Tallah and Sil was amazed of the vitriol from the boy. He whirled on the goddess. “Why did you allow something like this? Why—”

“Because I didn’t know. Weren’t you listening? This place is hidden to me. Had I known—”

“You would’ve done nothing.”

They all turned to the girl on the web. She regarded them, four black eyes pinned on the goddess. Her lips crinkled into a sneer of disgust. “What would you have done, lying machine spirit? Would you have made a study of me, like you’ve done of the others you’ve betrayed?”