Tallah

She was shown the point of the needle. Something that small could somehow occupy her entire world in that moment as the blasted mind-skinner prepared. He showed her each instrument that was to follow, now that they were done with the more mundane preparations.

“Beatings and starvation will only get you so far, you know. Especially for someone with your grip on yourself. It’s best we now start in earnest.”

The bastard liked talking about each of his little tools. She knew them all, except the needle. Now she couldn’t tear her gaze away from it.

They had her strung up tight for the procedure, all risk seemingly accounted for by long, horrible experience. Was this what Rhine had gone through as well? Had she lain on the same rack, feel herself drawn to the breaking point, and then… this?

Had she delivered her sister to this monstrous little man?

Anger lent her embers of strength. Tallah screamed and heaved one more time against her bonds to no effect, the iron shackles cutting painfully into her wrists. It earned her a baton across the stomach and the white-hot pain that followed. She hadn’t anything left in her to bring up but black bile and blood. For a moment the music swelled triumphantly as her grasp on consciousness ebbed.

“This will hurt,” the bastard said. “But the pain will pass before you know it. It’s for the best really. You can let go of your anger now.”

Oh, she bloody well did not want to let go of anything. She wanted the horrid little creature roasted alive from within. She wanted him cursing her name in all tongues of Edana. If she could free herself for but a moment she would tear out his heart with her teeth and cook it in front of his eyes. Her hand flashed into fire for a moment, the last dregs of her illum igniting in the incandescent rage that seethed in her bones. It earned her another beating.

“Stop, you oaf. She’ll pass out. It’s no good if she doesn’t see it happening. I have a schedule to keep to.”

Ice-cold water splashed across her.

Tallah came awake with a jolt of dread, drenched in cold sweat. Her glasses clattered to the floor along with the inkwell and several scroll sheathes. Muscles cramped up and protested as she tried to shake off the nightmare, phantom echoes of pain lancing up through her joints.

Under the mountain. She had been under the blasted mountain again. It rose in her memories, darker and sharper than she knew it to be, to dominate her nights. Screams chased her among the peaks, chased down by the Empress’s headsmen and the great beasts that guarded the passes.

A sharp, needling pain wormed through her left eye as she tried to fully come awake from that place’s grasp.

Was that what had woken her?

She had fallen asleep at her desk, head slumped over her grimoire, quill leaving a dark blotch of ink where she’d poked the paper.

Blast. It was expensive paper too, hard to get outside of Aztroa or Calabran.

Something happened, Christina whispered. Something’s wrong.

“I know,” she replied, voice low, throat scratchy with thirst. No, it wasn’t the nightmare that woke her. She was certain of that at least. The horrors of the mountain rarely pushed her back into reality anymore. Christina and Bianca kept the worst of it at bay when she managed to rest.

At the edges of her consciousness, music hummed distantly. Bianca—it was her turn tonight—shielded her best as she could but it was still slipping by. It hadn’t woken her. Something else did.

Vergil was asleep in the armchair by what remained of the fire, exhausted from the day’s training, folded in on himself on the narrow cushion. His sword lay by the hearth, unsheathed, reflecting ember light. He’d sat down to rest for a moment and had passed out. She’d covered him with a blanket but it had slipped off. The boy tossed and turned regardless of where he slept. She didn’t envy him his dreams.

Windows rattled and a chill came down the chimney over the still smouldering ashes of the fire, ruffling her papers as she tried to clean up the spilt ink. Something rattled ever so slightly over the background noises of the night and the music in her head.

Something is very wrong, Christina said again.

“I know, Christi. I felt it.”

What had she felt?

She looked over the dimly lit room. Her candles had gone out, melted into puddles now cool to the touch. A red twilight of emberlight shifted shadows around as she paced the breadth of the room trying to shake loose the cobwebs in her head.

Something kept rattling and it wasn’t the windows. It came from her heavy chest, the one they kept locked. It got louder when she approached.

A wave of nausea hit her when she lifted the lid. Darkness seethed inside, roiling like stormy waters in the confined space. Her mask poked out from the blackness as if floating on top of whatever was happening in there.

The world snapped into sharp focus when she donned it. A storm churned in the room, curdling illum into mercury-like beads of power only the mask could see. They were being drawn into the chest.

Anna. Something of Anna had avoided capture and the soul trap was unhappy about it. Tallah knew the phenomenon all too well.

“I told you,” a bead of illum whispered as it sped by her into the gaping maw of the waiting gem. “I will have the day.” Another whisper. Tallah spun on her heels but Anna wasn’t there, even as she kept talking in her ear. “Now they know, whore. Your sin is laid bare. They will come for you.”

The beads laughed and mocked her as the silent storm ceased with the suddenness of a snapping rat trap. Like a sigh, the gem drew into itself, sated, contained once more by its box.

Tallah stood by the chest for a long time cursing under her breath, questions crowding for attention in her head.

Who they were was not a mystery to ponder. If the Storm Guard had found the rat cave, they had found Anna’s Sanctum and whatever else was still down there. Anna’s fragment, or echo, or whatever it had been, hadn’t just arrived in Valen of its volition. It would be Summer at least before the soul gem would’ve wound itself into enough of a frenzy to reach out for whatever it had missed.

Did they talk to Anna? Could they?

She looked at the horned helmet, hung on a peg above the fireplace. There were ways to communicate with lingering echoes. There were even ways to trap them. It didn’t matter where Anna had squirrelled away some of her essence, or even how it had gotten loose enough for the trap to sense it.

All that mattered was that something hadn’t gone to plan.

“I should have burned it all,” she said to nobody in particular. Her nails dug into her palms and her skin felt too tight over her bones. She raised a fist to her mouth and bit into a knuckle. “I should have burned it all to ashes and left nothing to be found.”

This is your gambit biting back. Regrets are tardy, my girl. We need to take measures.

Vergil stirred. First he grumbled about stiffness, then came fully awake with a whimper of pain. Empty vials littered the room. He’d drank too many again against her instruction when she wanted to end the earlier training, and was to pay the price in side-effects. A splitting headache would be the least of his worries.

He was the least of her worries.

“Get dressed, Vergil.”

“W-what?” He pressed fists into his eyes as if trying to batter away whatever was trying to claw out of his head. “I am dressed. Aren’t I?”

“Get dressed to go out.”

Vergil groaned and looked around the room with sleep-heavy eyes. He stumbled when trying to get his feet under him and almost landed in the ashes. “It’s the middle of the night. Where are we going?”

She paced, still chewing on her finger.

You are panicking. We need a clear head now. Wake the hen.

“I am not panicking.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Vergil replied, looking even more lost and confused than his usual self. “What’s going on?”

“I wasn’t talking to you. Can you find your way back to Ludwig’s from memory?”

You are panicking, my dear. Christina is correct. We need you to have a clear head before we set upon a course of action.

“I can get there, yeah,” Vergil finally answered after looking bewildered for a minute. “I have a—”

“I don’t care, Vergil,” she cut him off. “Get dressed. Take the sword with. I’ll explain when you’re ready.”

What are you doing? Christina asked after the boy stumbled his way out into his makeshift room.

“Preparing a contingency.”

With the Professor? He will be useless to us if we run afoul of the Storm Guard.

“He’s got a way out of Valen. Passes out to Basra and Garet are closed and it’s suicide to try and get into the Ruffle in this weather. The old git’s got some way out or he wouldn’t have been so insistent for my help.”

She was being ridiculous. She knew that.

But the music in her head had changed its tune. Her companion siren call never really went away, even with the two ghosts shielding her, but now it was downright jubilant, celebratory. Instinct poked her in the small of the back with cold fingers that spelled danger. She remembered it sounded just like this, just before the needle—

“Good morning, Vergil.” Mertle’s voice came from the hallway, entirely too cheerful for the hour. “Good morning, Tallah.” She stuck her head through the opened doorway. “I need to go and fire up the forge. Tummy’s going to have my hide otherwise.” She’d been spending all her evenings with Sil, sneaking in and out at odd hours, always somehow managing to pass under Verti’s gaze unnoticed.

Tallah stopped herself before waving the elendine away. “Can you hurry up our gear? We may need to leave in a hurry.”

Mertle’s expression fell. She looked towards Sil’s room and back at Tallah.

“Why? S-Sil said—”

Tallah rummaged through the chest, moving boxes around. “It doesn’t matter what Sil said. We may be in trouble. If you and Tummy can’t get it done before we leave, just ship everything to Solstice when the passes clear. I’ll get there eventually.” She pulled out the leaden box in which Sil had stowed the gem. It buzzed in her hands.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Mertle’s voice had the slight edge that she rarely used to show her annoyance. A bit of her old self talking over the new. “You’ll owe me big this time.”

“I already owe you big.”

“Bigger. We can deliver two days from now. And you’d better have an explanation ready for me because I had plans and arrangements for Winter. With Sil.” The edge of annoyance bled into cold anger that sent another chill through Tallah’s back.

She just stood in the ember glow and stared at the box in her hands until the outside door slammed. Mertle would get her explanation. It was time for one.

But first she needed to get rid of evidence for all the good that would do her peace of mind.

She couldn’t even be mad at Anna much as she wanted to. Had roles been reversed she would have done anything and everything in her power to get revenge. In many ways, she was doing exactly that.

She reached out a hand and focused her illum. Not much pain anymore, just a slight refusal that she had to force aside. Exercising with Vergil had helped her push through the fugue she had settled into and her strength was returning steadily. Anger still bloomed, at her mistake and her weakness, and she used it stoke the fire inside and infuse herself with its power.

Far from ideal, but better, Christina encouraged her. You are almost completely renewed.

Reality warped around her fingers and—finally!—a proper Rend manifested, not the paltry slits that she had to force open. Pins of light pricked a dark gash in reality and she had her storage bubble back. She thrust the box inside and allowed the Rend to close.

Vergil watched her from the doorway, dressed for a blizzard. Sil was behind him, dressed in a night gown, murder on her face.

“What do you mean we’re leaving?”