Tallah

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you certain?”

“Quite certain.”

“Ho—”

“Listen, Master Ludwig. I don’t know the whys, hows, whens, what fors, or any variation thereof. I woke in Valen. Almost got myself killed. Tallah saved me. That’s all of it. Really.”

Was that impatience in Vergil’s voice? He quickened his step to move away from Ludwig’s unending questions. Sil sympathised with the old man as she’d been down that road with Vergil and had run against the same wall of obliviousness.

But the boy’s patience frayed so she stepped in before Ludwig could launch into another assault. “Leave him be. We’ve questioned, poked and prodded him for at least half of Winter. All we’ve gotten out of it is Vergil and confusion.”

“Thank you, Sil,” he said. “It’s lovely knowing I’m the dregs you needed to settle for.”

“What’s crawled up your arse?” Tallah asked. She didn’t cuff him over the ears for his tone. “You wanted to stay. I would’ve cut you loose.”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“I expect I will. Out with it.”

Vergil sighed. The strange walkway they crossed shifted as he stopped to gesture at the fast-approaching vista. A dazzling rainbow of colours dressed the edges of Grefe.

“I said I wanted to go with you. Here I am in this place where Argia connected to a beast in a maze, and where I found signs of my own world. It feels like destiny. It feels like I have a destiny to achieve.”

“Go on.”

He gestured impotently at the whole thing and then at himself. “I don’t know the whys, hows, what fors, or any other variation thereof. It’s frustrating.”

“No reason to be a git about it,” Tallah tutted. “Want my sword?”

“… What for?”

“We’re coming up on the end of this blasted shifting walkway. I expect we’ll meet danger, and you don’t know the first thing about using your axes. Or should I get the ghost?”

The sword passed hands in silence. Tallah retrieved a fresh one from her rend.

Sil kept her sprite as the path led through one of the high archways and into a dwelling proper. She’d expected darkness inside but found yet more light. A latticework of crystal crossed the ceiling and walls, shining gently with reflected luminescence. How had they done this? The crystals looked grown into shape, not broken, or sculpted. Even the glassblowers of Drack couldn’t mimic anything so complex.

Debris of habitation littered the home—at least, she assumed it had been a home. Vases filled with the dust of whatever they had once contained. Alien-looking furniture lay under a thin sheath of dust. Everything was left as if the owners had simply up and vanished.

Passing from room to room led them to inner stairs, wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Grefe seemed to stretch onto and into the rock, to depths that Sil feared exploring.

“Is this anything like the Gloria?” Tallah asked. She and her fireflies moved further ahead up the stairs, following the tug of Ludwig’s necklace.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Wonderful answers. Pick one.”

“I was never in the proper habitation block, all right? I lived in the low decks, like a rat beneath the floorboards. I don’t remember anything from before I was transferred to the creche.”

“I see. Pity.”

“Why were they so deep underground?” Sil mused.

From the stairwell into an ornate tunnel, and then back into the strange light of what she had come to think of as outside.

They emerged onto one of the jutting platforms. The still-preserved stalls suggested it was once an open-air market Some of the stalls were on small wheels. The ruins of an old camp were strewn about, satchel bags emptied of contents.

“Figure this was your mess?” Tallah asked as she walked to the edge of the platform to look further out.

“Yes. We made a stand here. It did not end well.” Ludwig picked through the bags, hefting the crumbling remains of a sword. “Everything is dust and rust. They never touched what we left here.”

“Does that bode well to you?” Tallah asked when Sil joined her by the lip of the platform.

“Bugger…”

From here they could make out more of the sprawling city. The size of only what was visible matched and perhaps exceeded Valen. And atop it all lay white sheets, still as granite, turning a ghostly place haunted.

“I’m not an expert on spiders, but that looks like webbing to me.” Tallah stuck a fist in her mouth to muffle a yawn. “And it doesn’t look like any black-monk spider web either.”

They’d run across enough of the black-monk spiders in the caves and ruins littering the span of Vas. Voracious eaters. Large enough to overwhelm a person with sheer bulk. But solitary and generally timid.

Yes, this did not look like anything they’d seen before. Tallah’s fireflies flitted around her in a storm, gathering at a point aimed at somewhere above, then dispersing only to gather again.

“Jittery little creep,” the sorceress said. She rubbed at her eyes under the mask. “Keeps following us, but it moves about so much that we can’t pinpoint it.”

“Same from earlier?”

“No. Smaller. Big as your head, this one. Keeps out of sight. Annoys me to no end.”

“That’s still unreasonably big. Why—”

She stopped and listened. Farther on into Grefe rainbows arched through shafts of light as water spilled into the chasm, falling off jutting aqueducts. It flowed through some of the buildings nearby, the sound bubbling up from time to time. The hiss of the falls carried far, but there was more than that.

Words on the air. Figments of imagination almost, but there all the same. If she strained just a little more, she could make them out.

“Help,” the city whispered. “They left me.”

“Do you hear that?” Sil drew a step back from the edge.

“Unnerving. It’s not just words either. There’s a weave. I’m starting to see it as we go deeper.”

“See what?” Vergil asked.

“Nothing for you to bother over. But I’ll need the dwarf for a time.”

They both went quiet for a few heartbeats. Vergil’s eyes flitted to Sil’s, confused, then back at Tallah.

“A-are you asking permission?”

“Seems polite to. I expect you’ll want to see more of this place if something’s related to your condition.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “If something’s weird, just pull me out and I’ll have a look. Why do you need him? Are we in danger?”

“Quite a bit of it, yes. Don’t know yet what’s coming, but it’s brewing all right. When we’re hit, Sil’s going to send you under. Just be ready for that, yes?”

One of Tallah’s fireflies flew past his head, exploding with a concussive boom somewhere above. She swore under her breath. Vergil barely flinched.

“Nimble bugger. Anyway. Come.”

Going around the edge of the plateau brought them to another cluster of hanging dwellings, and another set of deep stairs. They ascended, lit only by the ever-glowing vein of crystalline light. The whispers grew louder. Sighs. Soft words. A call for aid. Sobbing.

Sil’s legs refused to push through the final steps. She’d tried to ignore the growing terror. Had pushed it down into the pit of her stomach. But this was too bloody much. Silk webs hung across the entrance into the next room, thick as any brocade drapes, and she couldn’t bring herself to come near. The sight repulsed her.

She let out a squeak of terror when Tallah pulled the webs aside and strode beyond, threads of sticky white silk clinging to her clothes. Vergil followed. So did Ludwig. Sil could only stare at the swaying mess, already imagining the touch of it against her skin and… no, no, no. She couldn’t move past it. Sweat stuck the shirt to her back.

Tallah poked her head back through the curtain to glare down at her delay. “Again?”

Sil nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Do you need a hug, or a drink?”

Sil raised two ice-cold, frustratingly shaking fingers. Tallah’s head retreated into the room beyond and Vergil came down a short time later holding a small, black bottle.

“She says you need to drink this. What’s the matter?”

The drink went down like a cascade of molten metal, exploding in the pit of her stomach, the furnace blast of its heady mix sending sparks behind her eyes. For a blessed moment it obliterated the mindless fear. She swayed in place and waved Vergil off when he reached out.

“Don’t touch me,” she warned.

Terror mixed in with Banshee’s Wail generally made her unreasonably angry. At herself. At the world. At Tallah, for knowing her well enough to keep that poison stocked. Vergil didn’t deserve what she’d do if he got any closer just then.

“Go back. I’ll come in a bit.” A hand on the wall steadied her enough that the world could stop bucking under her feet. “Stop gawking and go away.”

“Said to give her a bit of time.” Vergil’s voice explained once he was out of sight.

“That smells like Banshee’s Wail. Liquid courage?” Ludwig’s voice, likely inspecting the bottle. Of course he’d know the stench.

Tallah would keep it on hand from now on. Damn the woman to a thousand unkind fates for dragging them here. Of all possible places on Edana, she’d found one with more of the one blasted creature that turned Sil’s bowels loose.

Right, then. She’d had the Wail enough times to recognise when it was doing the thinking for her. At least the fear had dulled into a surly tremor that she could ignore for a time. The headache to come would be harder to.

“Back with us?” Tallah asked when she joined them.

“Not a word.”

More webs. Underfoot. Overhead. On the walls. Bloody lovely! As if rising from beneath the stinking things, sobbing drifted through the room, louder than it had been just less than a bell before. It sounded like a young girl’s and Sil wasn’t quite certain it wasn’t her doing it as she trudged after the group.

Room after room only thickened the covering of spider shit. It was everywhere. It clung to everything. If she had a torch, she’d set it all alight regardless of the danger. She swore she could see it move at times, like ripples in the fabric, rising and falling.

“Can’t you just burn this?”

To answer, Tallah ripped a whole swath off a wall and ignited it with a spark. It burst into fire and was gone in a heartbeat, burning wilder than anything Sil had ever seen in her life.

Sil nodded once. “Right. Point taken. Carry on.”

Tallah shrugged as she cut a way through, prowling from room to room. Sil wondered if it ever got dark here. It probably did, if the light was brought in from outside. What a wonderfully terrible place this would be come the night. She instinctively made a sprite and a shadow darted beneath the webbing on a wall. Several others followed, skittering into holes unseen.

She shrieked as one raced past her feet, ripped out of the fabric, and leapt at Tallah, eight legs spread as if seeking to embrace the sorceress.

“Please—”

Tallah stopped it midair with a flick of her hand. It squirmed and wriggled all its terrible legs at her, still trying to reach. When Tallah brought her hands together and the spider exploded into a shower of chitin shards and foul ichor, Sil was certain it had pleaded. In human speech.

Or that might just have been her screaming.

Tallah slapped her. The sting shut up her terror with a hiccup, the Wail’s detached anger taking over instead.

“You said there was one.”

“I also warned they were as big as your head. What are you screaming on about?”

“You said there was only one!”

“We thought there was only one. We were wrong.”

Ludwig looked as ashen-faced and sick as Sil felt. He’d seemed wretched ever since entering the dwellings, his comments sparse and subdued, but now his face was a mask of pure agony. Only Vergil was unperturbed, removing his helmet to clean ichor off his face. It glowed faintly greenish on his helmet and skin.

“It…” Ludwig swallowed, looked at the mess left behind on the pristine webs, and ran a hand across his face. “It was trying to speak.”

“Should do so faster next time,” Tallah replied acidly.

An entire swarm of fireflies orbited her head, tracking something Sil couldn’t see through the webs.

“They never spoke. Only… the intelligence did. But not in words!”

Vergil raised a hand and inclined his head questioningly at Tallah. She nodded and he struck the old man. It shut him up for a couple heartbeats. He’d been, like Sil, on the verge of hysteria.

“Thank you. It was… unexpected.”

“And there are more, and very likely much bigger. Let’s keep our heads, shall we? Even Vergil’s showing more sense than the two of you.”

“I do not appreciate how you framed that,” Vergil said. He donned his helmet again and drew Tallah’s thin sword. “But they’re just spiders. Yes, all right, they can leap. But it’s not like they can fly or something.”

Sil’s knees nearly buckled at the thought of a flying spider the size of a horse. She gripped the staff tighter to stop herself from braining Vergil with it.

Instead, she recited the healer’s mantra to draw out some of her errant courage.

I am of the many, and I am of the few. I am light, and I am warmth. I am shield, and I am sword. I stand to brace the other, unbent, unbowed, unbroken…

One of Tallah’s fireflies launched, exploding in a web above. Ichor filtered down in a cascade. The sorceress looked smug.

“Got your scent now, you creepy little shits,” she crooned.

Two more fireflies were let loose and two more cascades of ichor rained down, spreading into diffuse puddles that Sil hurriedly stepped away from. Three more pops got no kills.

“Ran off. Wise of them.”

She turned and strolled away, booted feet sloshing on the wet fabric. Chitin crunched with a near porcelain tinkle.

“That won’t work,” Ludwig said. He shuffled past Sil, trying not to step into the gore.

“Wh-what won’t?” she asked.

Only then did she realise she had her staff raised and pulsing white light.

“You will not be able to make a portal to take you away from here. We’ve tried. It ends messily.” He gestured something that suggested being turned inside-out. “Only way is forward, I’m afraid. I do apologise, miss Silestra.”

Vergil gestured for her to go ahead. “I’ll bring up the rear. I wear the most armour.”

Her cheeks flushed and her hands grew even colder with shame. Vergil, the whelp, was indeed showing more backbone than she could muster. She nodded and paced to Tallah’s back, gingerly stepping over the puddles, her sprite moving close to the walls.

In spite of her bluster, Tallah radiated warmth when Sil caught up, two rooms over. A steady rhythm wafted from the sorceress, a full charge of illum prepared for unleashing. She’d recovered well from her thrashing at Falor’s hands.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tallah said as she stepped out onto another plaza platform, “I’m terrified out of my wits right now.”

“Your sister?”

“Behind every web, always in the corner of my eye. Christi’s trying to get rid of her. The more she tries, the more I see the wraith. I don’t know why or how, or if I’ve crossed some threshold. Bloody terrifying.”

Not that she let anything show. But if Tallah said she was scared, then Sil believed her and worried.

“But you said this place is shielded.”

“It is. I feel no draw. They feel no draw. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Except for seeing your dead sister.”

Tallah let a shuddering sigh slip before drawing herself back up, the men joining them on the platform. Gone were the empty black expanses of the cavern. Now the city was indeed embalmed in silk. The original architecture and spider construct became one glittering mess spreading as far as the eye could see. Light shimmered through in a myriad oil-slick colours, draping long shadows across sagging clusters of ancient dwellings.

It would’ve been breathtaking if Sil didn’t find it trouser-wettingly terrifying.

“What a place,” the sorceress breathed out. She leaned out for a better look.

A sheet of the stuff hung from the platform to the next, immobile as everything else in Grefe. If the ancient masonry gave way, the webs looked thick enough to hold her weight if she fell.

“Please don’t say it as if it’s wonderful.” Sil’s voice squeaked no matter how much she tried to bolster it.

“It’s pretty. Give it that at least.”

“No. I know how they make webs.” She shuddered and tried to find a place that wasn’t covered in smeared excrement. Even Valen, in the full embrace of Winter, hadn’t been as white and pristine as this.

“It’s beautiful,” Vergil chimed in as he approached them. “When do we eat?”

“What is it with you and eating?” Sil rounded on him and nearly poked his eye with the tip of her staff. “Every single time we stop, you must gnaw on something. Just…” Words failed as her own stomach rebelled and let out a growl loud enough that Vergil’s eyebrows shot up.

“Hungry and angry. There should be a word for that,” Tallah mused.

She spread her fireflies and let them flit about the edge of the platform. Across the great covered abyss, the soft, echoing whispers of quiet sobbing rose and fell as if brought across by an unfelt wind, and Sil felt a gentle tug somewhere deep inside her.

Whatever that was, it couldn’t be good.