Tallah

“Vel, what is the meaning of this?”

It had all happened faster than Anna could perceive, in the narrow space between heartbeats. One moment she’d been reeling in her strength and rebuilding the walls keeping Tallah out of her mind, and the next she was wrestling this… thing.

It had come out of nowhere!

A being of raging fire barrelled into her and cut through every protection she’d set up. Incandescent rage tore through her mindscape and drove her to the ground, punching and clawing at her essence like something straight out of a faer story.

How was this even possible?

“What is this, Vel? Answer me!” The creature rolled and tossed her around the desolate mountain landscape, casting her against sharp-edged rocks and down into gaping gorges.

The space didn’t matter, of course. It was merely fancy, so she felt no pain at this abuse. It was the scenery constantly rushing past that undid her focus.

The creature would devour her if she didn’t fight back. Each fiery touch burned in impossible ways and threatened consumption if left unchecked. She braced for the assault when the creature followed her down a slope of imagined danger, and ended up rolling with it, punching and clawing at each other like base peasants. She would not be treated like some child’s rags doll.

“My apologies,” Vel’s voice said. “You’re fresher than I am at the moment. I led it to you.”

Words failed in conveying exactly how much Anna loathed Vel. If she could set her on fire by spite alone—

“Yes, yes, I am terrible. And all that. See that you don’t get devoured while I sort out this mess. Christina’s not doing well.”

“What mess? What’s happening?” Anna threw the beast off her but it came loping back, a crazed animal trailing a blaze.

“Tallah’s happening. Hang on.”

Bloody easy for the witch to demand. She wasn’t the one grappling tooth and nail with this avatar of pure, undiluted anger. Its heat was a metaphysical manifestation, something burning with such terrible intensity that even in her spirit form she could feel sweat beading on her skin.

Amni had enough rage in her to self-combust. How she functioned while keeping this beast in check was a thing to marvel at. Later. If she survived its assault.

Was this Amni herself? She tried getting a glimpse out at the structure that she thought of as her host’s self, but it had disappeared. Instead, they were now fighting through… a prison? Walls decorated with chains and the well-used apparatus of torture. Empty cells.

She heaved and threw off the fiery abomination, then made off down a random corridor to try and gain some distance and thinking time.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Vel’s voice admonished her from somewhere outside the conjured space.

“Get bent,” Anna spat. “You come and fight it then.”

“Been there. Done just that.”

The fiery beast burst through the walls of the prison and tackled her back to the ground. Flaming fingers grasped fistfuls of hair and slammed her head against the stone floor. Once. Twice. The third time she fought back through the blinding haze of fury, pushing her illum against her assailant to throw it off. It did next to nothing as the fire consumed her strength and was eager for more.

“That won’t work,” Vel said again, her voice on the edge of panic.

Anna was punched in the face as she prepared to answer, felt the ghost sensation of her nose bursting into a smear of blood. Rage climbed into her veins and ate at her core as she felt her control slip.

“Not as good as your boast, are you?”

“Shut up!”

She caught the next blow aimed for her face, heaved, and rolled the elemental under her. It seemed surprised. And it was doubly surprised when Anna headbutted it.

“Good. Keep doing that for a time. We’re getting to the core of the issue.”

“When I’ll get my hands on you, Vel—”

“Even temper, Anna. Or else it feeds on you.”

Her fingers were interlaced with Amni’s rage. The touch burned in searing agony, so hot that she feared she’d burn her hands away to ashes. It took an effort of will to remember this wasn’t a real place and her wounds existed only on a level that she allowed them. If she focused, she could douse the flames.

Except that was easier thought than done. What rage was this? Anna had devoured many channellers and many ash eaters among them. All had their black moods that she excised from what remained of their minds, but none carried fury like this.

No wonder Amni needed her limiters like some training whelp. A spark like this wouldn’t just ignite her channelling, it would make it unreliable and downright explosive. Any channelling born of this would bite back the hand that wove it.

It bit at her fingers and arm, trying to dislodge her. Anna lacked the means of holding on for long, her arms already nearly useless in spite of her understanding. She rammed her forehead against the thing’s again, stunned it for a heartbeat, and let go.

“What do I need to do, Vel?” she asked the air. It was already up on its feet, chasing after her as she ran down the corridors. “How do I stop it?”

“Wish I knew. I need you to restrain it. Or keep it occupied for long enough that we find what memory Tallah dropped into and why she refuses to come out.”

Lovely. Bloody lovely! She’d been defeated and grafted by a neurotic ash eater prone to bouts of burning insanity. Whatever shreds of pride she had salvaged out of the ordeal were already burning away in the heat of Amni’s manifestation.

She skidded to a halt past one of the rooms and ran in, bare feet slapping on cold stone. It had been a moment’s feeling, something different about the room, an edge of reality clinging to it like nothing else in the imagined prison.

A moment later the burning avatar burst behind her and screamed at the sight unfolding.

Here was Rhine Amni, hung on a saltire rack, halfway flayed from neck down to her waist, gagged. Blood pooled on the floor, warm against Anna’s feet, bubbling now with the avatar in the room.

“Ah good, you found it. Hang on.” Vel’s voice seemed to drift away.

Anna was hit from behind as the creature rammed her with titanic force, its anger doubled as it pummelled into her. She twisted out of its grasp, its attack too frenzied to carry any tactic or weight. It burned, but it was desperate now.

The scene played out in agonising slowness. The flaying knife moved with glacial intent to separate skin from muscle. Rhine’s chest heaved in quick succession even in the slowed down moment, the younger Amni very much awake and aware of what was happening.

Anna registered distantly the collection of salves and potions on one rack as she dove under her assailant’s swipe. Adrenaline boosters. Healing salves. Accelerants. Bloodberry extract. All quite useful and some of them she knew from her own experimentation. A well-mixed cocktail of everything on display could, as it was obvious here, keep a victim conscious and aware through the most intensive torture.

If she had a stomach, it would’ve knotted in disgust for this. She’d quite liked the younger Amni sister for that brief time at Hoarfrost. Something like this scene felt obscene.

At the back of the room, beyond the body, there was the healer Amni carted around with her, watching the process with bored interest. Something added up quite wrong. What was this?

Flames licked at her skin, so hot now that they burned her down to conjured bone, the room too small now to properly contain the beast.

Vel had asked her to restrain it. And it definitely hated being in the room, bearing witness. Whatever sick fantasy this was, she could use it.

“Right, then.”

She let go, rolled away and came up in a crouch. Physical altercations weren’t her strongest suit. Amni and Vel had pinned her to the floor plenty of times in their girlhood that she’d made it a mission later in life to absorb as much knowledge about hand-to-hand fighting as she could, if for nothing else but to silence some of the echoes of shame.

A deep breath as the elemental stared at Rhine, glowing white-hot. This was going to hurt. A lot.

Anna launched herself forward before it turned on her, and grappled the thing. It was a painful scuffle as she drove herself against the fire, tripped it up and forced it down to the floor with moves she half-remembered in the intensity of the moment. It was enough.

An effort of will got her holding the creature by the arm pits, her hands gripped behind the impression of a neck. It tried to get her to fall but was distracted. Anna got a good grip and managed to get to her knees, forcing it to watch. It twisted and howled, filled the room with scorching fire, made the whole prison shake with it fury.

She held on through it all, burning illum to keep herself from succumbing to the fire.

Vel appeared by her side and grabbed hold of the burning head.

“We are here, Tallah,” she spoke. “This isn’t real.”

Again, the scene shifted. Walls bled colour as whatever Vel was doing seemed to accomplish something. The blinding intensity of the flames dimmed as the scene shifted and it was now Tallah herself lying on a rack, her entire body black and purple with beatings.

“You survived this. You can survive your anger. You can’t achieve your mission if you can’t control it.”

Anna didn’t dare let go even as the fire slowly died and the shape of the ash eater emerged from the heat. The deafening screams eased off as everything seemed to calm down.

There was someone new in this scene, someone watching from the side as the torturers did their work. Barbaric methods that would achieve, in Anna’s opinion, absolutely nothing. She’d learned this early on in her work when experimenting. Torture so intense gained nothing. It only destroyed… oh.

Mayhaps destruction was a purpose into itself?

The woman by the rack wore the imperial white uniform and had ashen hair cropped short. A part of her face bore a deep scar from temple to chin. She regarded Tallah with glacier-green eyes and an unhappy sneer.

“You promised!” the Tallah on the rack screamed. “You swore to me!” Her voice gurgled blood. Given the extensive damage, Anna had to be impressed that she could articulate words.

“Yes… well, oaths change, Tallah,” the woman said in a tired voice. “This brings me no pleasure. The longer you hold on, the worse it will get. Your sister was as obstinate as you.”

“You swore her safety!”

“Stop resisting and you may join her. A family reunion would do both of your souls good.” Empress Catharina smiled grimly. “I need your strength, now more than ever. Let go and you won’t even remember this in the end. It will help you.” She raised a hand and ignited a blue flame atop her fingers. “Your sister’s fire burns hot. She asks for you. If you stop your resistance, you will join her. All will be well, just as promised.”

“Liar!”

The empress shrugged and moved away from the table. She tapped the healer’s shoulder. “See that you finish with her by the Descent. Time’s short.”

“You swore!” Tallah’s screams followed the empress out of the room.

As the woman passed by, Anna could swear she’d looked straight at them.

By now Tallah had grown inert in her grasp.

“Let go,” she said.

Anna did, shockingly unable to resist the command.

Vel also moved aside as Amni regarded herself on the rack.

“She’s using Rhine to reach me,” the ash eater said, not tearing her eyes away from the scene. “She’s established sympathetic contact. I need you to shut her out.”

“Don’t think it’s possible,” Vel said. “Whatever she’s doing, she’s bypassing every defence we’ve set up. I expect only that goddess thing may have an idea on how to proceed. We didn’t catch what she did to banish your… sister’s wraith.”

“What just happened?” Anna asked, still feeling the aftereffects of fire against her bare skin. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to conjure up some apparel, as Cytra had suggested.

Amni turned to her and terror gripped Anna’s chest. The eyes regarding her made a mockery of whatever strength of will she thought she possessed. Now she understood why Cytra and Vel both had laughed at her extracting that promise.

This was a monster of pure will. That rage smouldered behind Amni’s grey eyes, leashed back into control, twisted to purpose. Revenge, the great motivator indeed. As long as Anna couldn’t match that same strength of purpose, she’d never manage to superimpose herself.

“You did better than either of them managed.” Amni favoured her with an ugly, bitter smile. “Better, but it’s something I’ll probably be prepared for the next time I slip control. Can I rely on you to subdue me again when it happens?”

“Are you giving me a choice in the matter?”

“I am, yes.” She thumbed over her shoulder at the frozen scene behind. “I’m not Catharina. Won’t use her tactics. Not all of them, at least. You were brought into the fold, yes, but I will not use you against your will.”

“I don’t remember such courtesy when you came and slit my throat.”

The witch smiled. “I expected I’d win you over later. In all fairness, you deserved what you got.”

That, at least, was… well, not true, but understandable. Since her death, anger notwithstanding, Anna had found a different perspective on life. Or was this afterlife? Much of her cravings from before were gone, relegated to the idle curiosities they’d once been. Her own work, all-consuming at some point, had begun to dim and rot in the mind’s eyes, shown in its true form now that the fleshy bits were long dead. She remembered the feeling of triumph at the end of a particularly informative vivisection, but found it a hollow thing, more a product of an overactive and overexcited glandular system than anything scholastic.

For the first time in decades, she was thinking clearly. And Amni was right on her assumption. What Cytra had said before still rumbled in her imagination.

“Are you really planning on killing a god?”

“Ort, yes. Anatol and Isadora too, if there’s enough left of me by the time I finish with their master.”

No hesitation at all. Either Amni was delusional in a way that beggared sanity, or she had a plan that wasn’t as half-arsed as all the rest she’d concocted since grafting Anna.

“Best you get out there and deal with the eyesore chasing us. I have no intention of inhabiting another corpse in this pile of bones.”

“Christina’s done enough.” Tallah glowed incandescent again, but this time it was purposeful. “I’ll ask for some strength to win this.”

“See you don’t exhaust yourself,” Vel said. “We can’t pull you out of danger if you’re damaged beyond use.”

Anna found herself back on the slope of the mountain, Vel and Cytra by her side. The black structure loomed over them, bright light shining out of cracks as if an inferno smouldered inside.

“If we survive this madness, I need the two of you to explain to me exactly what’s going on,” she said as she gazed at the overcast sky. Thunder rumbled and lightning arced among the high peaks. The sounds of distant screaming echoed again, but there was an edge of frothing anger to the cries.

She felt she had a decent grasp on what had spurned her old friend to this course of action.

“Are we under the effect of a soul trap?” she asked, a piece of the puzzle still confusing her.

“We are,” Cytra answered and smiled as the world shook. “An unfortunate one too.”

“Shouldn’t I feel something? I remember that monstrosity used in my Sanctum. It wasn’t a subtle thing.”

“Not in this place. Grefe is an anomaly. It’s shielded.”

She gave the two a long stare as the world shook and buckled under their feet. “Your roles aren’t as a resources to be used.” There was, after all, another way of surviving soul magic. Cytra had been quite a busy monster in her own right. “You serve as anchors. She only fought me with one of you assisting. The other was busy. Is that why she needs more of us?”

Two grins met her realisations, and Vel answered. “Dear, you don’t know the half of it. Let’s survive, as it were, and I’ll explain it all over tea.”