Tallah

“If this place could be fouler, I’m having a hard time imagining it,” Sil complained as she made her way back to the group. “Squatting over the chasm to pee is an entirely new flavour of terror.”

Tallah ignored her.

The path had been descending for a while now. How deep, she couldn’t say, but it kept on going, sliding ever deeper beneath the surface. The air was grave-stale and smelled faintly of some hidden decay. Mould? A long-dead corpse? Maybe both. A draft caught her attention every so often but even these were rare now, after more than two days of descent.

How deep could it go?

Over it all, she felt awash in a kind of power that seeped into her skin and burrowed through her veins to corrupt her stores of illum. If not for Sil’s concoction she felt certain she’d be violently sick.

Illum flowed strangely. In places she felt it stagnating into pools through which she had to wade. In others, it was a torrent that slammed into her in waves. The Crags lived up to their miserable reputation thus far.

If Sil felt it, she said nothing.

“This can’t be the way into a city,” Vergil said from the back of the column. “It seems absurd, doesn’t it?”

She agreed with the sentiment.

“You’ll see when we reach our destination,” Ludwig assured him. “I believe this was once part of something very different, cast asunder by some manner of catastrophe.”

“I’m honestly curious of where this leads to,” Sil admitted. “If it’s a few rocks arranged in some fashion that merely suggests a settlement, I will punch you, old man. My disappointment would be boundless.”

That last part was sarcasm. Ludwig either didn’t notice it, or ignored it. “I assure you, Miss Silestra, that you will be amazed,” he said. Tallah envied his certainty. “Grefe is a magnificent place. My words would do it no justice. You need to see it with your own eyes to believe me when I say there is no wonder built by man that can match its glory.”

“Fancy words, professor,” Tallah said as she slowed them down for a narrow strip of path. It might have been wider once, judging by the sudden break, but now it was barely a palm’s width and they had to hug the wall to advance. “I’ve always thought you had a knack for waxing poetic. It made your abominable lectures that much harder to stomach.”

Ludwig laughed. “I do remember you saying that at one point. If memory serves well, I believe your exact words were that if you gagged me, excrement would erupt from my ears.”

You did say that, Christina noted. He wasn’t quite so amused back then.

Tallah grinned. “And I remember you petitioning old witch Zakovia to have me, and any who laughed at my observation, lashed for it. Has hindsight let you finally admit I was right?”

“Does lashed mean exactly what it sounds like?” Vergil interrupted.

“Oh yes,” Tallah went on. “Get stripped to the waist, tied to a pole, and whipped with a cat o’ nine tails for as many times as needed to satisfy the ego of whichever imbecile demanded it.”

“Sounds cruel and painful.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Tallah chuckled softly. “When they came for me, we threatened we’d burn the academy to the ground and salt the earth if they so much as lay a finger on any of us.”

“Us?”

“Tallah was part of one of the most powerful cliques that ever formed at Hoarfrost. Cythra led them,” Ludwig provided when she didn’t elaborate. “It was believed amongst us faculty members that they were more than capable of making good on the threat. We chose the wiser course and I dropped my claim for satisfaction.”

In as much as anyone could lead a gaggle of power-lusted sorceresses, Christina did make a good attempt at it. Tallah smiled as the vague flash of arrogance emanating off her back.

A slight tremor on the tips of her fingers. It passed quickly, almost unfelt. And just in time too, as they found the next plateau and walked again in single file. No change in the dark around. No sounds. No echoes of their words.

The world shuddered again and immediately stilled.

“I really don’t like how that felt.” Sil remained close to the wall. If she could grip it in hand, she likely would.

“You get these tremors here,” Ludwig assured them. “It’s nothing to worry about. Distant echoes of the Salmek disaster. Nothing more.”

Salmek’s Illum Hearth had detonated more than five hundred years earlier, effectively ending the aelir assault of Vas by instantly wiping out more than half of their fleet and decimating their foot soldiers. Millions of humans had died then, wiped out in a flash. As violent an event as that had been, Tallah doubted it was to blame for this.

It started as a vibration in her chest. A distant rumble growing to a roar in the span of a heartbeat. Her ears popped.

She meant to call out the quake. Too late. Too slow. Like a great beast trying to shake them off, the shelf under their feet bucked and twisted. She groped for a handhold in the wall but a second shock slammed them and she found herself pitching into the black, the entire world shaking with an ear-splitting groan of cracking stone and shifting walls.

She reached for Bianca but the ghost was buried deep in the work of keeping her soul attached to her mortal coil. A gasp behind her and a thunder crack spoke of the path fracturing and the others falling.

“To me,” Sil called out.

Tallah fell sideways and slammed bodily into something hard that swayed beneath her. Pain screamed in her sutured side. Pure, heady mix of fear and adrenaline got her back up to stand on empty air. Around, Vergil and Ludwig were similarly suspended, slow to find their feet, a sprite hovering just above all three.

“Don’t gawk! I can’t do this for long,” Sil called again, her voice strained with the effort. “All of you to me. Now, or I drop you.”

Tallah took a cautious step on the invisible platform, found that it held, then rushed forward towards Vergil. Where she was sure she’d step into nothing, another platform would take her weight, the one behind crumbling as soon as she was off. She grabbed the boy by the arm and hauled him to his feet, dragging him along. Ludwig joined next to Sil.

Their path was gone, shaken clear off the wall. Sharp pieces of rock remained in places, puncturing the chasm.

“How much longer to the bottom?” Tallah asked Ludwig as she got an arm around Sil’s waist.

“Bells. We’re nearly where we need to be.”

“Sil?”

Sil swayed in place, eyes wild as she looked at the ruins of the path. They could see now the aftershocks hitting, the path rumbling and swaying while they remained safe.

Tallah knew they weren’t simply floating. To hold anything aloft like that, there needed to exist an entire support structure anchored somewhere. It was a gargantuan effort on the healer’s part to keep them from plummeting to their deaths, and steady to not be shaken off by the earthquake.

“I can walk or I can focus. Not both at once,” Sil said, voice shaking. “Thigh pouch. Nettle. Have on hand.”

Tallah extracted the tightly tied bags and pocketed them for later.

“I can carry you,” Vergil said.

“You can’t,” Tallah replied. She grabbed him by one of the helmet’s horns. “But Horvath can. I can’t make a tether like she can, but I can power you by direct contact. I can’t make this any clearer, but you need to keep him restrained. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Tallah. Count on me.”

“I am.”

She moved her grip to his shoulder, focused, and in a heartbeat the mad dwarf was in control. He twitched, made to rip away from her, and suddenly stilled. Only a quiet, droning growl showed that it wasn’t Vergil in charge.

“You know what you need to do?” she asked.

Of course, no reply but he picked Sil up in his arms and waited. For a moment, Tallah half-expected him to throw the healer into the abyss just to spite them all.

Sil raised a hand and pointed towards the wall. They were meters away and swayed in the air. The quake had quieted, its violence lost in the depths of the earth. Some stones fell from somewhere above, missing them by less than ten paces. They’d been lucky.

“Take me closer. Easier that way.”

Vergil took a step forward and Tallah followed, her grip on him white-knuckled. Ludwig held on to her sleeve. His terror, at least, sufficed for them all.

Sil built as they went. Where the shelf was gone, she erected steps that hooked into crevices and held on to the remains of the old path. Slow, blind work. Tallah called out suitable anchor points as Ludwig’s sprites fanned out to light the way. Each step forward, a small victory.

They had been spared the worst of it. Further on, a whole portion of the wall had detached, leaving behind a wound large enough to obstruct the far side. This would be the old man’s last trip to his fabled city, unless he’d somehow master the flight of a manipulator.

Sil’s nose bled after long, sustained effort, and they were gone through more than half of the ink-nettle dust.

The black remained bottomless and hungry.