Tallah

Bianca’s tether swung them across to a gallery several levels beneath. They sprawled among the webs with a hard landing, the ghost’s strength barely an ember of its usual.

“She’s coming. I can feel her. We can’t… we can’t run from her.” Sil, in spite of her wound, stumbled to her feet and pressed both hands on the bloody ruins of her belly. “Get them out. Get her out. She is doing things to me. I can feel her.” Blood ran down her legs and Tallah risked a moment’s delay to dig into a rend for a draft.

“She’s confused. We need to run. I’ll deal with whatever’s in you after.” She pressed the draught into Sil’s hands. “Heal yourself.”

Sil pushed it right back, “I can’t. If I heal, she’ll be sealed in me. Take her out!”

“I can carry her,” Vergil said, the only one of them that seemed hale enough to walk and fight unassisted. “I can get her away if you need room to fight.”

“Are you both deaf?” Sil pushed away from them both, still upright somehow. She was yelling. “She’s laid eggs in me. If you kill her, she will still be in me… eating me.”

I can help, a new voice intruded into the storm of Tallah’s thoughts. Anna rose to the front, right among Christina and Bianca’s presences, startling both. I can take out what’s in her. For a price.

You can’t be serious! Christina admonished. Right now? If she dies now, we’re all buggered.

Now is the perfect time, then. Anna was unperturbed and suggested she had enough illum to maybe tip the scale.

Illum thrummed and things moved in the walls even as they tried to make their way deeper. The room had several exits, but she could see wisps of power leading in all direction. Era sent her children to delay them. They erupted from beneath webs. Some came at a loping run towards them. Others stumbled, fell, remained still as Erisa’s influence was drawn out of them.

Forward, there were spiders.

Backward, the pit.

What about at the bottom of the pit?

Ignore me, then, Anna said with detached coolness. You will beg for my aid later.

“I’m not ignoring you. Bigger problems,” Tallah spat. “Bianca, get ready to hold us. Anna, say what you want and be quick about it.”

Without allowing herself another moment’s hesitation, she grabbed Vergil by the tunic and Sil by her arm, and marched them both to the lip of the pit, and over the edge.

Sil screamed.

Vergil whooped as they fell.

Bianca cussed as she rallied her strength to her aid. Are you mad?!

The city crawled with spiders and the webbed castle was a place of power for the girl. Power was woven inside the webs, each single route through the labyrinthine structure trapped and watched. No way up. No way out.

That only left down.

You will promise me control over your body in case you expire or manage to lobotomise yourself. Anna remained calm as she whispered. By the rate you seem to be going, it’s only a matter of time until you do some irredeemable damage to yourself. To Christina’s sniff of annoyance she added, I consider my request quite civil.

In any other moment, Tallah would have spat it right back into Anna’s face and taught the upstart a lesson in the difference of wills. With wind whistling by her ears as they fell and the absolute darkness beneath, whatever strength Anna could bring to bear would be too valuable to pass up.

“Fine. It’s a deal.”

She will try and make it happen, Christina warned. You can’t—

I will do nothing of the sort, Cytra. Do not insult me. Calm yourself and shut up. Vel, reign your power back in and recover. You will be needed later.

Pain exploded across Tallah’s back, flowing out of the soul binding on her shoulder. A feeling as if being cut open and drained dry of blood. Her head swam.

Then she understood the concept as Anna’s mind touched hers and allowed for communion.

Blood erupted from her back and speared in red lines across the empty space they fell through. It formed into a web of power that dug into the walls of the chasm. Some wrapped around Sil and Vergil, and brought them near.

Their fall slowed. Then halted. Finally, it began again, this time in controlled fashion as the living webs attached to her began moving like a spider’s limbs to take them lower. Anna was in absolute control and radiated displeasure at the meagre reserve of blood Tallah held.

You need to eat more red meat, girl. Liver too. Anything. Your physical state is nothing short of a disgrace. Even the healer’s got more blood in her, given that wound and how she’s still yowling.

She hadn’t expected the pit to go as low as it did. After a time there were no more webs to cling to, just smooth walls to which Anna struggled to grip.

“We’re going to go all the way to the bottom?” Vergil asked, brought close enough by the web that he held onto her. Sil was on the other arm, a death grip on Tallah’s shoulder.

“Where else? Did you want to fight that monster up there?”

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of her. If I were her, I’d follow.”

“She’s already coming. I know it.” Sil’s voice was a fading whisper, hoarse and raw after screaming. “She knows where we are. She’s coming.”

“As long as she doesn’t bring her entire army of critters.”

“Luna, what’s down at the bottom?” Vergil asked. Tallah hadn’t even noticed the spider still clinging to his back, its presence a constant surprise to her.

“We do not know. We never came here. It is… it is a bad place.”

“How do you know if you’ve never gone into the chasm?” Tallah felt like snapping at the thing, but the effort Anna was producing kept her head light and spinning.

“Mother saw it. Mother knew the danger and warned away the Kin. We were forbidden from exploring the depths.”

Through the twisted vision of the Ikosmenia, she could just make out what the Mother had seen and understood why it would be considered too dangerous. They were in an illum funnel, she realised, the evil power up in Erisa’s domain flowing upward from the bottom. Directly immersed in it, she sensed the same kind of danger as in the labyrinth. The poison of it was diluted here. It merely prickled the skin.

There was death below, a great pool of it, ancient in its stagnation, stomach-churning in the violence it portrayed.

“Sil, what does Erisa want with you?”

“She’s laid… eggs in me. She… oh, Goddess… she means to be reborn.” Sil’s voice was weakening as she bled and Tallah considered holding her down once at the bottom, and force feeding her a healing draught. “Trying to be human again.”

“Terrifying and utterly wrong. And I’ve just anchored myself to her.”

As if to answer her words, a below of rage echoed down the shaft, an animal sound somewhere in the space between pain and anger. Anna hastened the descent, dropping them in painful, sharp jerks. Wisps of mist appeared the deeper they fell, an uncomfortable reminder of the labyrinth. Was there some other guardian at the bottom, somehow worse than the girl up top?

For all their sake, she held onto hope that she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

“We will hide in the mist.” The plan began taking shape in her mind, aided by Christina and Bianca suggesting new approaches to the inevitable clash. “Illum is thick down here. She won’t be able to pin me down easily.”

“You’ll be just as blind,” Vergil said.

Sil only groaned, half-way to passing out from blood loss, her resilience draining away.

“I have other senses she may lack. I’ll wait in ambush.”

“Just tell me how—”

“You won’t fight, Vergil. Take care of Sil. I am entrusting her defence to you.”

“But—”

“Like all bloody damnation you are!” Sil snapped out of her fugue and gripped Tallah’s lapels. “You aren’t doing bugger all without us.”

“You’re barely conscious. He’s one draught away from accelerant sickness. I can’t use the two of you.”

“Get these things out of me and I aim to make myself very useful. Are you all done passing me around like some sack of flour?”

Vergil shrugged, the motion the only thing to signal it. “I’m not arguing with her. Last time she promised to punch me in the face with my helmet. I think she meant it.”

“I bloody well did. Is that blood witch in there?” Sil’s tone brokered no more argument. She knocked on Tallah’s forehead hard enough that it nearly knocked off the Ikosmenia.

I will drop her if she calls me witch again, Anna grumbled in the back of her mind.

Join the line, Christina added. There was relief in the mental tone.

“She’s compliant, yes,” Tallah said.

Don’t call me that.

“Can she get these things out of me?”

I can. Provided you swear on our bargain, Amni. Make a pact on your honour, whatever that may still be worth.

“Yes, Anna, you will have my corpse. Good luck with dealing with the other two.”

Tart, Bianca snickered. Anna, you’ve done yourself no favour. Tallah’s likely to keep going, dead or alive.

Both ghosts cackled to Anna’s seething displeasure. Tallah pushed them out of mind for now.