Tallah

There were still so many of the blighters left even with Luna’s insistence that there should be many more. Tallah forced herself to push onward against the tide.

She burned through the forces arrayed against them and crippled as many as she could. With a determined barrage from herself and Ludwig, she even managed to cut through the monster guarding the entrance. Something was definitely odd there. The creature fought sluggishly, nearly absently, and made no attempt to use the same kind of tactics as its twin in the forest.

It rushed them mindlessly and been burned to cinders while Vergil occupied its sweeping legs.

Now they were inside the nest, harried from the back by the dregs that remained, tripped up from the front by spiders coming out of the walls themselves. Each advancing step meant another dead creature turned into a burning effigy. Steam blinded their advance.

“Where are we going?” Vergil asked. He hacked the legs off one of the half-spiders, killing it with a blow of the axe to its misshapen head. “Sil could be anywhere in here.”

“Forward. For now, we move forward.”

Illum flowed through the structure in a march. In places it shone pitch-black with accumulated death and violence. An ugly thing, but one that moved. Something, somewhere, was happening and took a great deal of power.

“Right,” Vergil said, shaking his axe clean of gore. “Lead the way. I’ll have the back.”

She pushed Ludwig ahead, unwilling to offer her back to the old man. If anything, if he turned on her then…

Hard to say if we can take him on in our state, Christina said. It was an uncomfortable truth, made all the more unpleasant by Bianca’s assistance.

Tallah could barely walk.

She could barely stay upright. It hadn’t been an exaggeration to Vergil earlier. Whatever strength she relied on was borrowed from the ghosts and their illum stores, but she had reached the limits of endurance.

Everything ached, from the crown of her head—the earlier crack still bothered her—to the small of her back, to her thighs and calves. Bianca’s abilities provided invisible crutches she found herself relying on more and more.

“Don’t stray, Professor.” She grabbed his coat and sent him down a right-hand corridor where he’d meant to take the left. “I’d hate losing sight of you again.”

Ludwig said nothing, only spared a disgusted glance her way. Yes, this was expected. The old man hated her with a passion now. Or maybe he’d hated her since the very beginning. Who could say?

Old fool, she thought.

Christina answered with a mental shrug. Pay him no mind, but keep him close. I sense we’ve not seen the last of his treachery.

Of course they hadn’t. The bastard would bolt with the first chance offered. He was where he meant to be, though not in the position he would’ve preferred.

“What are you going to do with the girl?” The question surprised her as it broke the susurrant silence. Water flowed from somewhere and their steps splashed and squelched.

“Feed you to her,” she answered far more honestly than meaning to. “Grab Sil and run. That’s about the extent of my plan.”

“You don’t mean to kill her and—”

She understood the meaning even as he hesitated on the words.

“And what, Professor?”

“You know full well, heathen. I expect you mean to do something wholly heretical or else you wouldn’t have bothered making it this far.”

“If I were you,” Vergil said carefully, “I’d maybe object to the part about being fed to Erisa. I saw what she can do.”

Tallah let out a soft laugh. “He doesn’t care if he lives or dies. He only cares to see the girl dead before he expires.” And it would be such a kick to his obsession if she were to preserve the girl’s soul, and witness for herself his ancient failure. She was almost tempted to keep him alive

“That’s bloody insane.” Vergil echoed her thoughts on the matter perfectly.

Ludwig whirled on him, pointing with his torch. “Don’t speak of insanity, lad.” He swung the burning stick in Tallah’s direction. “You walk besides madness and you barely know it. The only real monster here is this harlot.”

Tallah stuck a firefly up one if his hairy nostrils. It stopped the rant dead.

“I said this is a bad time to get on my good side, Professor. Turn around. Walk. I expect more spiders ahead.”

There were indeed more spiders ahead. None attacked. Among the wet webs, the creatures all looked to be in some kind of trance, oddly immobile. Heads lulled with empty stares. They walked among an odd assortment of life-like statues, each moving slightly but never coming alive to challenge their progress.

“What are they doing?” Vergil whispered his question.

What to even answer? They were all staring in the same direction, where the illum flowed.

She forced herself to focus on the mission, on finding Sil and saving up whatever strength she could for escape, and ignore everything irrelevant. But—

A scream tore through the air and sent shivers up her back.

“Sil!”

Illum raged by her, a clear sign something, somewhere had changed. Her gaze swung around as she tried to pinpoint the direction of the weave.

“Get back here!”

It happened in her moment of distraction. Ludwig threw his torch at her and bolted into the room beyond, too spry for his age.

She ducked, stumbled and fell, and meant to bring her fireflies to bear. Vergil ran past at a dead sprint to disappear into the dark. A splash echoed beyond. A scuffle. A flash of illum igniting. An explosion followed.

Silence.

By the time she regained her feet with Bianca’s support, Vergil marched back to her among the still mutants. He pushed Ludwig by the back of his collar, as one would a petulant child. Tallah raised her mask and whistled in appreciation at the state of the old man.

“Thought I told you to kill him cleanly next time,” she said to the cringing prisoner.

“We need him. We don’t need him pretty.”

“Fair.”

What a state to be in where even Ludwig could get a drop on her and slip her grasp. Absurd. She made a mental note to treat Vergil in some way if they survived this place. He’d earned a keep and then some.

Sweet meats maybe? She cursed herself for letting her mind wander.

The illum trail led them up several flights of stairs covered in webs, where water poured downstream constantly. It brought with it a stench of death and decay that was hard to ignore. More screams followed, turning into wailing punctured by gasps of silence.

She knew torture when she heard it. She knew that particular kind of scream, of someone brought to the edge of their endurance, where no kind of gag was enough to contain the pain and there was never enough air in your lungs. She would have rushed ahead, past the professor, to find Sil and save her from whatever was happening. But a moment of carelessness got them in this mess and Christina had been right in berating her. She’d gambled too often and with stakes too high. Rushing into a waiting trap was not going to do them any favours.

“She’s torturing Sil,” Vergil said, voice an odd mixture of fear and anger. “We gotta find her.”

“We will. And we’ll get her away, don’t worry.”

“Erisa said she needs Sil. What for? To torture?”

“No idea. Would rather not learn.”

Even in the muffled space, where the webs drank in the sound, the screams became louder as they advanced. The lack of following echoes made the noise all the more unnerving.

At the end of the corridor they emerged into a room much larger than any before, the ruin of several brought together where walls had been knocked down. Illum swirled around a creature off to the side, dressing it in riots of colours.

And beneath that was Sil, strapped to a table, screaming and thrashing.

Even in the illum sight, she could make out the thing stabbing down into Sil’s abdomen. It extracted a stinger the size of Tallah’s forearm from the healer’s belly as they entered. A thick string of blood arched between its tip and the gaping wound it had left behind.

Sil screamed in agony even as some… girls held her down and tried to gag her.

“Sister, it is only pain.” Tallah had come to recognise Erisa’s ill-fitting voice. It crooned over her friend. “It will pass. Shush now, it will pass.”

To attack? To wait? To throw Ludwig at the creature, grab Sil and run?

Time slowed as she considered her options, struck by the sight. None were good. Spiders became animated as Erisa ponderously turned to regard them, all the other creatures turning along with their maker.

Sil breathed on the edge of passing out, her chest rising and falling like a rabbit’s after the chase. Blood oozed down the table. One of the white spiders approached as Erisa stepped away from the table.

“You brought him right to me. My prayers are answered all on this day,” Erisa gurgled as she turned dozen eyes on Ludwig..

The white spider rose on its hind legs and meant to feed something to the healer. Tallah fired on it before whatever it was could happen, instinct guiding her as she didn’t care for whatever Erisa had to say.

A barrier interrupted the lance, but did not stop it. It punched through and incinerated the creeper.

“Get away from her,” Tallah said, voice gone cold, her anger fanned into a roaring flame in her chest. It burned away exhaustion and opened her up dangerously to the poisoned illum in the air. It stung as she drew it in, but she didn’t care. “Step away. Now.”

Without thinking, she reached into a rend and drew out one of her spare gems.

Would it work? Given the girl’s dispersal among the spiders and her children, would the trap function? But here the main body was, likely rearranged into a shape that couldn’t resemble whatever the girl had been before. The rest, those spread across Grefe, were echoes of this soul, fragments that she rode on.

Ludwig by her side tried to speak but Bianca clamped his mouth shut.

I do not wish to hear anything the Professor has to say, the ghost excused herself. I see what he’s wrought here.

“I need my sister,” Erisa said. She moved across the room on impossibly thin legs, trailing obscene flaps of skin and flesh, her face a twisted mockery of humanity. “Pray wait and we will all leave here together. It will not be long for me to be reborn.”

Vergil crept along the edge of the room as Erisa focused on the old man, closing in on Sil. Some of the girl-things barred his way, forming a chain of bodies around the table to keep him away.

Erisa approached, multi-jointed arms raised in welcoming. Illum trailed after her, a grand gown to hide the monstrous body beneath.

“I will be human again. I will leave. We will all go away from this place and seal it once again.” The smile on her face was grotesque in its serenity. “And next we’ll make Panacea pay for her lies. Her crimes demand justice.”

What do we do, Tallah? Christina cut through her horrified fascination. The hen doesn’t look well.

“What have you done?” she asked to stall for time. “Whatever’s been done to you, you cannot undo it. Not…” She gestured to Sil. “Not like that.”

Ludwig made a muffled sound and took the decision away from her with a trio of fireballs aimed for squarely for Erisa’s head. They detonated harmlessly against barriers.

A complicated expression crossed what Tallah assumed to be the girl’s face. Somewhere between a feral grin and a warm smile, she went on in a gurgle of pleasure, “Commander, it’s good I see you here. I was afraid I might need to chase you down.” She turned her attention fully to him.

It might have been her imagination, but Tallah was certain Ludwig wet himself as the girl lumbered to loom over him. In the abattoir stench of the place, it was hard to tell.

She reacted in time with Erisa when Ludwig attacked again. The girl exploded into violence, and Tallah exploded the closest creature barring Vergil’s way.

The boy took his cue and lashed out with the axe. He nearly beheaded one of the abominations, and hacked the legs off a second before Erisa’s daughters came alive with screams of pain and fury. Tallah was nearly certain they weren’t aimed at Vergil.

Ludwig tried to scurry away from the room only to smash face first into a barrier. It took the girl no effort at all to close the meagre distance and seize the old man into her embrace.

She lifted Ludwig into the air as if he weighed nothing, and cooed over him. Her throat made small noises of pleasure as she regarded him struggling in vain.

“Get Sil,” Tallah ordered as Vergil cleaved another head from its misshapen shoulders.

The girls weren’t paying attention to him, all of them infinitely more fascinated by what Erisa was doing. So was Tallah. Illum converged on the girl, wisps of silver in the torrent.

Erisa remained human in a terrible way. Tallah had suspected it before and knew it for certain now. With Ludwig in hand, the girl would enjoy her revenge. She would savour it after such time spent here. The spiders weren’t safe… they were simply kept on the edge, to be taken at exactly the right moment for the blow to be devastating. Same as she hadn’t been safe with them, when her saviours had turned into her gaolers.

Silver illum drew into her. She would be whole for this, the urge for total satisfaction impossible to resist.

Erisa drew herself into a single body just so she could enjoy what came next.

The old man struggled, kicked his feet and flailed his arms. He unleashed lances and fireballs, but they all washed over the girl as if of no concern.

“Please,” he cried out. “Please, Erisa. I mean to help.”

“They ate me, Commander,” she said sweetly. “They buried their eggs in my womb and their children ate me from within.” Four arms now held the professor, one white hand gripping each limb. Erisa twisted and Ludwig screamed as she broke an arm and a leg. Bone crunched beneath skin as she kept twisting. “They made me drink healing water and they rejoiced that I survived. Then they did it all again.”

Her grin turned feral.

A black spider dropped from the dark above and walked across Ludwig. It cut and ripped his clothes off him, leaving him naked to the girl’s attention. Chattering mouths opened across that gargantuan body, all filled with needle teeth.

A torrent of silver streaked through the air, a soul that came to pool in the monster. Tallah’s heart beat in her throat as she hunted the perfect moment.

Another spider arrived, bidden by some silent call, to scale Ludwig’s struggling body. It bit into his neck and the old man went rigid, the quick rise and fall of his chest the only sign of life left.

“Again, and again, and again, Commander. I did my duty to my School. I did as I was taught to do, for you and those men that did not deserve salvation. My reward was pain. Only pain.” A finger idly slit Ludwig from chest to groin, and two hands opened him up like an overripe fruit, hot entrails spilling out to drape across the creature. “It was only pain. Pain passes. Fury does not.”

Tallah’s horrified fascination kept her watching as Erisa bit into Ludwig. He was infused, still conscious, judging by the growing expression of horror etched onto his face. It was only pain, and there would be a lot of it as the girl ripped into him.

You’ll not get a better moment, Christina warned. She is ripe for the taking.

Tallah held out the gem and spoke the activation phrase, “I claim you, Era Saral, born of mother Callimna Saral and father Revall of Low House Chron.” The gem melted to smoke in her hands and her breath hitched. Would it work?

Erisa turned slowly towards her, the half-body of Ludwig held loosely in her many arms. Wide eyes regarded Tallah as if she were the alien in the room.

The girl had been too eager, hungry and desperate for revenge against he who’d doomed her to this life. She’d drawn herself in from all across Grefe to fully enjoy the moment. The gem had activated and the spell would now play havoc. Tallah had not anticipated this, hadn’t dared hope that she could harvest a soul of this potential. Now, faced with the beast lumbering to turn to her, fear gripped the back of her neck.

I hope you’ve planned at least a few heartbeats ahead, Bianca said, a hint of excitement in her voice. We’ve reached this far. What next?

“Sorceress, what did you do?” Erisa asked as her many eyes scanned the room, watching the same storm of illum the Ikosmenia showed. “You cannot take me. Not now. I will be human!”

“Tallah!”

She spared Vergil a glance as Erisa lurched forward, slowly rising on her hind legs to tower above them all. He had Sil draped over his shoulder. The healer held a hand tight across the wound in her gut as they stumbled back towards her.

“There is nothing left of me to break, sorceress. What did you do?” Illum thrummed in the air and rushed into the girl, filling the air with fragments of shattered weave that coalesced into the familiar geometric shapes of cutting barriers.

Tallah fired her lance at full strength forward and cut through the first two layers of barriers to stop on the third. Keen edges filled the air and sliced the room to ribbons, mulching both Ludwig’s corpse and those girls that had still been lolling about brainlessly. Bianca pulled her out of danger with a burst of kinesis.

Every muscle screamed in agony to spite her infusion. She stumbled after the flight, dove to the side, barely avoided another slice in the air.

“Stop it, sorceress,” the girl cried out, spinning in place in confusion. “Call it off. I will be human. We will all leave together.”

The soul trap had activated to full power. It would only keep the girl distracted for so long. Tallah ran to Vergil’s side, knocking over still standing half-corpses littering the way. She took Sil’s other arm over her shoulder and fired a lance through the nearest wall.

“Tallah, they’re in me,” Sil groaned, pale-faced and bloodied. Tallah and Vergil dragged her into a loping run through the burning hole in the wall.

“Tallah, get them out! Get them out of me!” Sil’s voice rose to the edge of hysteria as the healer seemed to ignore all pain.

“I will. Soon as we’re clear.” She fired another lance and broke another wall barring their way. They ran through and fell, the floor disappearing underfoot.