Tallah

By the eve of a third day of walking, crawling, and slithering through gaps, moods had begun to sour. Tallah felt herself snapping to anger at the slightest provocation, especially as their bursts of progress became shorter and shorter.

“Aren’t we going in circles?” Sil asked, for the hundredth time it seemed. “It feels like we’re going in circles.”

“How would you even tell?” Tallah asked, more tersely than she intended. Everything hurt and her eyes stung with sweat.

Sil didn’t reply. She sullenly drank from the vile tonic and huffed.

They’d been out of the ruins for a day now. What followed had been endless twisting pathways across another bottomless chasm, always descending just enough to make slipping a real danger. Stairways up or down into nothing, dead ends that she needed to backtrack from, losing valuable time. Narrow squeezes ending in blocked passages. More and more reasons to stoke her anger.

And always Rhine. Everywhere she looked, the wraith stared back and grinned.

“Is the fog getting to you?” Tallah asked, trying to hold back the red tide of her own annoyances.

“It’s not even fog, Tallah. Fog has volume. It has class. This is just a piss-thin curtain of vapour. Bloody right it’s getting on my last nerve!”

Under her mask, Tallah raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a good thing the creature guarding this place is deaf. They must have heard you over in Valen just now.”

In spite of Ludwig’s age, it was Sil that was having the hardest time keeping up. The healer had shed some of her layers and wore her under-shirt tied at her waist. The temperature kept dropping and increasing, and she’d taken to complaining incessantly. Granted, it filled the grating silence.

“I think we’re coming up on something.”

“How so?”

Tallah scraped the floor with the heel of her boot. “Mosaic tiles here. I think I saw some parts of walls in the dark. The poison flows around them. And the waves are coming in faster now, like they’re bouncing off something, like at the entrance.”

“How do you figure the old man made it through? With twenty men with him?”

“Slowly.” She ducked a cuff to the back of the head. “I’m serious.”

“And I seriously want to hit you for that one. I’m in no mood.”

Sil’s Terrible and Healthy Tonic, as Vergil had dubbed it, was fast losing its effectiveness. Weariness set bone deep and every step forward took effort of will.

Miserable experience with no end in sight. She could only glance at the blue line lately, always just on a different path than them. It was probably why Sil felt they were going in circles. More a spiral, Tallah realised as she looked to her guiding light, trying to discern it better. If she’d paid more attention to it…

It is a spiral, Christina said. Thought you’d noticed. We’ve been going lower and lower for a full day now. If Bianca weren’t immersed in the work, she could tell you more.

“You know what’s odd?” Vergil asked as he and Ludwig came down the path from a bit further back.

Tallah gave him a flat look, gesturing in an odd arc with the sputtering torch.

“My head thing’s been trying to connect to something since we got in here,” he said, oblivious to the irony. “It keeps pinging something and waiting for replies. I think it’s finally going bad.”

“Join Sil then. She’s going nutty too, the poor biddy.”

Sil belched and showed a rude gesture.

“We should be coming up on the end of this.”

“How do you figure, old man?”

“I remember the fractured path. It should be close to the end.”

“Well, that’s encouraging at least. How’d the girl manage this trip? It couldn’t have been easy on a child.”

Ludwig sputtered, “Oh, she handled it better than any of us. Wonderfully resilient child. She put to shame grown men. Hardened veterans of a dozen war fronts.”

“And one grown healer, I might add.”

Sil refused the bait. Rather, she stared at them, open-mouthed, eyes wide. Stared through them. Tallah looked over her shoulder and met the beast.

How it had snuck so close she could only imagine. But it was there, on the nearest path, close enough it could reach over to them. Great bat-like wings folded around a serpentine body. It propped itselft on two massive, multi-jointed and clawed limbs.

She could see no eyes on it.

It was there and not wholly there. Breathed in the poison and exhaled it twofold.

It stared right at Vergil. And Vergil stupidly stared back at it.

“Connection achieved,” he said, fixed in place like a seamstress’s dummy. “Why?”

A great maw of teeth opened and cadaverous stink filled the air. Spikes bristled and it hunched forward, long tongue lashing about, searching.

Tallah grabbed Sil and Vergil by the arms and hauled them along. Ludwig could follow or be eaten. The creature lunged forward, its massive jaws snapping at the space where the boy had been with a crunch of uneven fangs gnashing together.

“To your senses, you two,” Tallah growled. “No time to go deaf and dumb. Run now. Lose your minds later.”

“That never happened before,” Ludwig squeaked behind her. “It never came for us without provocation.”

“It did now. Shut up. Move.”

Vergil managed on his own, snapped out of his stupor. Sil kept trying to look behind. She needed dragging and shoving before snapping back to a semblance of clarity.

“It’s coming, Tallah. It’s behind us.”

She didn’t look.

“Stop gawking at it. Run. We’ll lose it in the ruins ahead. Vergil, shut that bloody thing off.”

“I can’t. I don’t—it lost connection. Trying again. Shock me. Do something.”

“Just run.”

The path vibrated, rumbled, was still, as if something massive had fallen off it. Or taken to the air. Her imagination provided the sound of leathery wings beating against the vapour-choked air and the world darkening just a little as a shadow passed overhead, cast by light only her imagination provided.

Maybe that wasn’t her imagination.

Rubble and ruin blocked the way forward, a dead end of masonry that spilled into the chasm and rose to unseen heights. She urged them to scrabble over it. No time to go back or around. A near avalanche followed, noise swallowed by the fog.

Tallah reached the top first. Beyond, down the ragged slope, twenty paces away, the fog swirled out like raging through a funnel. The end in sight.

Sil fell. Broken masonry shifted underfoot and she tumbled back with it, too far from either Tallah and Vergil to reach out. With a thud, she landed on empty air.

Damn the woman’s reflexes!

A triumphant roar filled the air and fog swirled above.

“Wake up. I need you.”

Tallah reached inside, found Bianca, yanked her to the surface. She braced for the flood of music but she barely felt it in the panic of the moment.

What do you think you’re doing? Bianca asked irately. What in the bloody throne is that? She added as Tallah’s eyes rested on the surging beast.

“Tell you later. It eats illum.”

She reached out, grabbed Sil and pulled hard. Bianca provided the anchors. The healer flew through the air just as the creature crashed into the ruins. Its jaws crushed rocks as it rose and bellowed. Dust exploded off it in a cloud.

“Run to the exit,” Tallah called to the others. “Don’t stop until you’re out.”

What do we do? Bianca overcame her panic easily and Tallah felt herself grow lighter than air.

The beast came up the slope with thunderous roars of anger, great maw snapping for prey it knew was there. The others slid and tumbled down the other side. Tallah drew in power and launched herself over the creature, and back down the path they’d come from.

Lead it back to the chasm, make it take flight, outmanoeuvre it.

Context please. Bianca wasn’t nearly as spent as Tallah expected her to be. Normally, when only one of the ghosts did the work of both, they would be spent within bells. The store of illum the ghost brought to bear was nearly intact.

“It sees illum. It eats it. I expect I can’t fight it. If we go off the safe passage, we die. Enough?”

Plenty.

It came upon her like a murderous tempest. Fog wreathed it and Tallah got a sense of just how large the creature was. A swipe of its tail would break her in two as easily as she would a twig. Talons as long as her arm swiped after her but Bianca whirled her sideways. She sailed down the shifting passage and the beast charged after her like lightning.

A fireball slid off its bristled hide like water. It only made it roar, a feeling of excited pleasure emanating from it as clear as if it was…human? In the rush of the moment, Tallah could swear it felt something human from it, and yet horribly wrong.

It snapped and clawed for her. She dove and slid under its great bulk. Bianca tried anchoring her to it but the power slid off. She fell through the chasm, dipped feet into the poison, rushed back over in a sailing arc. Drew her sword. Where the weave failed, perhaps steel would help buy her some time?

“The wing.”

No, came Bianca reply as she pulled her away. It’s not really flying. Can’t you see it?

Now she could. The same kind of weave she used, the beast used to keep that great bulk aloft. A moment after realisation hit, the beast opened its mouth and fire belched out. Bianca yanked her sideways and the heat merely blistered rather than consumed. Another furnace blast followed and it was all the ghost could do to keep her ahead.

A glance back. She was no longer ahead. It dove from above. Talons reached out to enclose her. Bianca pulled down with such force it snapped Tallah’s head back. Blood filled her vision as she rode the dive breakneck.

Brace, the ghost commanded. She did, shut her eyes tight. Her flight lurched sideways, avoiding another swipe of the creature. The others should have had enough time to get away. She couldn’t run for much longer. Poison caressed her skin, burning with all the pain the flame breath promised.

Open your eyes. I need to see through the mask.

It followed unbelievably fast.

Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out.

“I won’t.” Tallah gritted her teeth and urged Bianca for more. The beast kept up too easily, unhindered by its tremendous bulk, too intelligent by far now it had the scent. It saw through every move, matched and cut off her options.

She loosed another blast of fire to no result, not even slowing it down.

Panic began to sizzle and bubble. As fast as Bianca could pull her, the creature was simply faster and bloodlust frenzied. It flew straight through walls she needed to avoid, snapping and swiping after her like a storm of knives. One talon grazed her leg, knee to ankle. Pain blossomed red-hot. She parried the claws with her sword. The strength of the swipe sent her sideways, tumbling through the mist, into the poison. Pain sharpened her focus.

A flash of light. One heartbeat away from disaster. She drew sideways and the furnace blast flashed by, so close her skin blistered.

“Pull me back, hard as you can.” Any more of this chase and she’d be trapped by the poison.

They swirled together through the roiling mist, dipping painfully in and out of the thing. It pushed her back inwards, away from safety and the exit, cutting off her retreat.

Bianca set a tether atop a statue jutting out of the mist and swung them around in a wide, accelerating arc.

Don’t panic. Launch at it. Quick direction change sideways. May get close for it to work. Be ready.

No amount of bracing could have prepared her. Bianca didn’t just accelerate. She launched them back like a stone out of a catapult. Her eyeballs pooled in the back of her sockets, vision turned bloody.

It was in front of her, meeting her, jaws open, teeth bared, still coming at incredible speed. She couldn’t and didn’t dare try and blink.

An arm’s reach away from its centre mass. Claws flashed to rip into her.

Bianca’s tether pulled hard sideways and down and she felt her bones ready to rip out through her skin, every joint distended, prepared to snap. Sil’s sutures, barely healed, burst to release a cascade of pain down her side.

Under the claws’ killing sweep. A palm’s width by the creature’s brutish torso. Past its legs. Away through the painful mist.

Blast its bones, it’s fast, Bianca warned and dove her downward in time to avoid a blast of fire.

If she turned her head to look, her neck would’ve snapped.

Too slow. Too clumsy. It was on her, flying in from the side, jaws coming down to snap her in two.

It smashed into something invisible with the force of an earthquake. Tallah heard Sil crying out and, through the red haze of burst capillaries, saw the healer atop the mountain of refuse, leaning heavily on her staff. Tallah’s flight brought her near in a heartbeat.

She caught Sil as she flew by, one arm around her belly. The healer fainted with the sudden motion as Bianca raced them to the exit, head smashing against Tallah’s shoulder.

The creature’s anguished roar of frustration made the whole cavern vibrate. Tallah didn’t care. She flew through the barely opened doorway, Sil in arms, at blinding speed and only slowed far down the following tunnel. She wasn’t quite certain if she’d passed Vergil and Ludwig but was happy to feel solid ground underfoot again. Her leg couldn’t hold her weight and she toppled forward over the healer, gasping for air, feeling sick.

In the rush, she hadn’t had the time or strength to breathe.

“Are you two all right?” Vergil ran in from the back of the tunnel. A crash followed him as the monster smashed into the gateway and bellowed out its anger.

“Alive,” Tallah gasped as she rolled off Sil’s unconscious form. “See to her.”

But Sil was already stirring. She groaned in pain. “I can’t believe that worked. I can’t believe it.”

“Agreed.”

The why and the how of it barely mattered. Nothing else had even slowed the thing. She was thankful they’d both made it out alive.

Vergil brought Sil her satchel as she forced herself into a sitting position to rummage about. She threw Tallah the usual healing draught.

“Well near broke my back when you grabbed me,” she complained as she tried to get up and winced.

“Either that or leave you to get eaten. You’re still walking. You’re fine.”

“How did… how did you do that, Tallah?” Ludwig broke his silence. He stared at her, the first inkling of doubt crossing his face. “How could you do that?”

“Practice, old man. It does wonders. Are we safe out here?”

He remained unconvinced. Sil trudged over and asked to inspect the cut leg. It had healed, yes, but it still hurt like crazy. All of her did, mercilessly.

“Nearly cut the bone in two,” Sil noted. “Drink this too. I think you painted the path red.”

“We’re safe, yes,” Ludwig finally said, weighing every word while he eyed her suspiciously. His gaze swivelled from her to Vergil. “This never happened before. What are you, boy?”

“Lost,” Vergil answered with characteristic honesty. He shrugged. “And very confused.”

“He’s a long story,” Tallah cut in. “Leave him be. I got you past the horrid place. Be happy with that. You’ve only waited a lifetime for the moment.”

“And you’ll all wait a few bells more,” Sil said, definite. “Line up. I want to have a good look at each of you. We rest and sleep or next we’ll be seeing things.”

There’s no music here, Christina whispered in her ear while the men did as ordered. Ludwig had given her one final look and then seemed to reach the right decision and dropped his questions.

There was, Bianca said. But it got quieter as we moved in there. Was waiting to see if it went away completely when you pulled me out.

It has. Not a peep. Not a bit of a draw. Whatever this place is, you’re shielded.

“Well, fancy that,” Tallah said. She looked back up the tunnel at the half-opened doors and thought back to the near-human feeling that had washed off the beast. “Wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”