Tallah

“Distinctive taste, miss Silestra.”

“Very different from your usual, Sil.”

“Are you poisoning us? This is disgusting.”

“Bugger you all. Don’t drink it then. See if I care when you stumble off the path in exhaustion.”

Yes, the tonic tasted like fermented elkana milk. Charitably. And it looked like she’d scraped it off the sidewalk beneath some street vendor’s food cart. Again, charitably. She was keenly aware of its shortcomings.

But that’s how the mixture came together. She’d tried to make it more palatable but then it turned into a sort of laxative and that defeated the purpose of something meant to keep you on your feet for a week.

“Sil, my tongue’s gone numb. Is that normal?”

“It’s normal. It’s only bad if you can’t feel when you bite it.”

“Ow.”

A dash of pettiness helped alleviate the gnawing fear that squirmed in her guts. They hadn’t seen the beast again and it’d been near a day since that first time, if Tallah’s time-keeping was to be believed, but she felt the tremors of its presence. Even in the dead silence, she could imagine hearing it dragging its corpus through the ruins, sniffing for their trail.

The tonic gave her restless energy as the others struggled to get it down. Tallah’s guidance brought them to some kind of temple to rest for a time—she assumed a temple for there were statues rising through the mist, depicting some kind of winged beings surrounding a central platform too featureless now to guess at its purpose. Her legs ached but she couldn’t sit. She almost envied how easily Vergil rested on the edge of the chasm, feet swinging idly over the emptiness.

Sil busied herself making a study of the statues and the vague remnants of mosaic paintings on what remained of the walls. Humanoid torsos. Two-armed. No idea on the legs. Winged. Above, the cupola of the building was opened, as if to peer at the sky. It made very little sense.

“Worshipping winged beings underground? What kind of idiocy is this?” She lifted her torch trying to get a better view of the heads of the statues. Most were shattered, smashed clean off by some weapon, ages before. Mist clung to them in ghostly wisps.

“Makes you wonder what’s happened here. Have a look through this,” Tallah said as she joined her and handed over the Ikosmenia.

She could only take a few heartbeats of the maddening swirls before she had to hand back the mask. Already she felt her head swimming.

“How are you not clawing your eyes out,” she asked.

Tallah offered her arm for support until the dizzy spell subsided.

“I’ve never seen illum behaving like this. I could swear it’s bouncing off of something at times. In some places it pools.” Tallah finished the last of her tonic and grimaced. “Same as before? Two per day?”

“One. It’s concentrated. Reason for the taste. Figured it’d be less traumatic to only drink one that’s a bit fouler.”

“Admirable sentiment.” She burped and hiccuped, pressed a fist to her mouth and swallowed. “Not sure about the trauma part. Come on. Path’s starting to shift away from the exit.”

They set back on the tortuous slow trek forward. From the temple out into an open street, among wrecked hovels that hung shattered, stone bones tumbling across chasms. Tallah led them across some of these walls turned bridges, picking their way onward, testing each step.

“If the guardian feels magic,” Vergil said from behind her. “Shouldn’t it feel the mask and follow it right to us?”

“Enchantments are a different form of magic, as you call it, lad,” Ludwig replied. “They hold very little illum. It does leak, but not as strongly as a channeller’s weaving. Some people have spent lifetimes developing ways to scry an assessment of an enchantment by touch. Some bastil Shadow Priests can do it at a glance. But it’s a rare gift even for them.”

“I don’t know what a bastil is. Is that another species?”

“Odd. You should at least know of the seven, lad. Were you taught to read but not this?”

“I’ve grown up in the sticks before coming to Valen.”

Sil grinned at Vergil’s poor lie. Yes, that’s what they’d told him to say if anyone asked about his incongruities. But he and Tallah were of a feather when put on the spot, both too honest for their own good.

“What are the seven?” Vergil went on.

“Human. Aelir. Elend. Vanadal. Bastil. Drackir. Dwarf. Though that last one’s mostly died out unfortunately.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on a bastil, myself,” Sil said. “Aren’t they beastly?”

Ludwig sounded affronted by the very idea of it. “Miss Silestra, that is base human centrism. The bastil are a noble people with a rich culture that have much to teach all of Edana if there weren’t so few of them. Yes, they have fur, but that hardly makes anyone beastly. I’ve visited their homeland. It is a marvel.”

“Watch where you step,” Tallah called back as the path fragmented and loosened underfoot.

They climbed atop the crumbling remains of what Sil assumed to have been some kind of aqueduct. It shifted with each step, every sway sideways sending her heart high in her throat. Fine dust, like ash, covered it, marking the passage of their footfalls.

“Are you sure this is the way?” she asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest. But it’s safe. I think we’re in a kind of illum funnel. If I’m right, there’s a clear flow of power that goes from the entrance to the exit.”

“You can’t know that.”

“No better explanation, at least for now. Best guess as any.”

“I haven’t seen that many kinds of people in Valen,” Vergil said. Sil silently thanked him for the distraction. “I’ve met elends and aelirs, but that’s about it.”

“You forget there’s a dwarf ghost in your helmet,” she provided helpfully.

“He doesn’t say much, now does he? Just screams all the time.”

“Very dwarfish behaviour,” Ludwig remarked.

“Now who’s being human-centric?”

“It is well documented, and commonly known, that dwarfs were a belligerent society that valued strength of arm above most anything else. If they weren’t fighting, they were building, often with the intent of going to war. A quiet dwarf was an abnormality.”

“So is a quiet human,” Tallah said.

“Well, yes, true. But we don’t fight ourselves out of existence.”

“The aelir might have something to say on that subject. And the empress herself.”

That shut him up. Two centuries of near-endless civil war. The aelir’s slaughter of ancient human empires paled in comparison to what the empress had wrought. Only the gods knew what her goals were, but the amount of blood she’d already shed could drown cities.

“You’ve also met a vanadal, Vergil,” Tallah said without looking back. “In the snow storm. The one with the Storm Guard captain.”

“Seemed like an odd fellow.”

“Be happy you’ve met him like that and not in a fight. Barlo’s one of the meanest mage killers in the entire empire. He was trained by the Adjunct’s personal guard, though I know he knocked several of them on their arses.”

“Even odder is that he’s on Vas,” Ludwig mused. “Vanadals don’t often leave Nen. They’re beholden to the aelir.”

“Not the ones from the steppes.”

“Long way from there to here.”

“I’ve met a drackir once,” Sil said to keep herself from imagining more shapes in the listless movement of mist, especially with the road swaying underfoot. “Back when I was still at school. Hard to stomach. Tentacles and all that. Was an alright person though. Liked bees a lot.”

“Never knew them to be the healing sort. Most drackir I’ve served with were keen on disembowelling.”

“Pretty much. They did like the autopsies best.”

Vergil gave a loud belch and immediately clamped a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “The tonic—”

“It’ll do that, don’t worry,” Sil assured him and stifled her own noisome belch. “It’s made to keep you going, not be nice about it.”

“Can’t you work out the taste to be at least gross?” Vergil asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything worse. Tastes like rotten meat smells.”

Sil turned to him and brandished her torch. She gave him a wide grin.

“Would you like me to tell you what I ground up and put in them, bucket-head?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Well, you see, I take the legs off of this blue bellied roach and then grind it down to—”

“I had to deal with a roach infestation once,” Vergil interrupted her. He grinned right back. “I was supposed to burn them out but found that they were really quite tasty. Spent a few days just eating myself into a stupor wherever I found a nest. They’d do this cute squirm whenever you bit into one.” He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. “Finally had to set them alight. I couldn’t eat enough of them, fast enough, to stop their spread. They made this little sad pop when they caught fire and burst.”

Sil turned away and dry heaved over the edge to no success. She had brewed the tonic to be nigh impossible to regurgitate.

“A lot of the things that clogged up the vents were surprisingly edible,” Vergil went on, in a cheerful tone. “I did change colours a couple of times. My stool—”

“I swear I will push you off this ledge,” Sil said without turning back to him, gesturing instead with the flaming end of her torch over the emptiness. “You are the most disgusting creature I’ve ever met.”

“I’m still more palatable than your tonics.” Vergil dodged the flame before it smacked him right in the face.

Tallah gave him a slow, gloved clap, without even turning to look at their little argument.

“How do you discover, by accident mind you, that a roach is tasty? Asking out of academic curiosity, naturally,” Ludwig said, all too pleased to take the blasted boy’s side.

“Yes, Vergil, do tell us. I bet Sil could grind up some of those into an even more disgusting version of this drink.”

If Sil could slap her, she would’ve. The last stretch of the aqueduct lay tumbled, broken to pieces onto which they had to climb. What waited at the bottom was something resembling solid ground again. She offered a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess for this small mercy.

Tallah stopped them. She reached out a hand to the side and withdrew it quickly.

“Path’s getting real narrow ahead.” All levity was gone, swallowed whole by the choking mist.

Sil peered over her shoulder and saw the narrow slit at which the path led. Two dwellings lay crashed against one another, walls forming the narrowest passage since the ice squeeze. Something caressed her cheek, burning her skin like the kiss of acid. She recoiled, swinging her torch around, heart threatening to jump out her throat.

“Don’t move about,” Tallah warned. “It stings even at a touch. I expect it’ll be worse if we breathe it in. Deep breath while we still have air.”

She turned sideways and slid inside the gap, torch held forward. Sil and Ludwig extinguished theirs and followed inside.

“Dark, cramped, and dangerous places; story of my life,” Vergil groaned as he brought up the rear.

It wasn’t a long passage but it squeezed them tight and kept them quiet as they made their way along it. Rough stone scratched at her cheek. Her heart drummed a melody of panic in her ears. Would this even lead somewhere forward? She wanted to ask Ludwig but breathing was enough of an effort.

“Deep breath. Hold until I say so,” Tallah called back, words strained. “It will hurt.”

Sil inhaled and felt the first stinging caress on her face. Like being lashed with fire. She whimpered and froze to the spot. Pain washed across her face, faded, came back again.

Vibrations in the wall. Pressure on it, like something tremendously heavy leaning on the other side. Breath wheezed out between teeth as she felt crushed and dissolved at the same time. Stuck fast, the wave of poison enveloping her in a stinging embrace, the creature on the far side sniffling about. Its heartbeat—it had a heartbeat!—thundered rhythmically against the stone, in and through her.

One heartbeat. Two. Three. Four. She counted and her own sped in a panic. Her chest… her chest burned. Too frozen in fear to draw anything, even if she could. The corrupt touch of the place washed over her, needling a scream in the back of her throat.

Not like this. Vision blurred in tears. She shut her eyes tight against the constricting pain.

It moved away, thump by blessed thump.

Tallah grabbed her hand and yanked her forward, out of the passage’s grip. “Breathe,” she said. She reached inside again to pull Ludwig forward. Then Vergil. “Don’t dawdle. I don’t know how far it’s gone but it’s pulled some of the poison after it.” She was already moving forward, stepping around something only she could see, urging them to follow.

Sil tried to keep up and gasped for breath, still feeling the touch of corruption on her skin, fearing she might inhale whatever it had been. She stumbled. Ludwig helped her to her feet and they kept up with Tallah’s long strides, never looking back.

Torchlight drowned in the mist. Tallah swung it around and raised her mask, massaged her eyes.

“Rest a moment.” She relented. “The worst is yet to come, I think.”

In the unsettling quiet, the beast’s roar came like echoing thunder.