Tallah

This would be a lot easier if we simply took to the air again. A bit more care and it wouldn’t end as badly.

Where Bianca got her optimism from, Tallah couldn’t imagine. A bit more care and they wouldn’t have ended up so far beneath the reach of real daylight. A bit more care and they wouldn’t have misplaced two people and nearly choked to death on the ashes of burning spiders.

That last part was mainly Ludwig’s fault, though. She should feed him the ashes and maybe he’d remember his own lectures on the subject.

Avoid using fire whenever your retreat is not assured. You burn just as easily as your foe, his reedy voice echoed from the halls of memory. She banished it back into its box before she decided on doing something unpleasant to its owner.

Tallah had tried getting a bird’s-eye view of the city so she could follow the lifeline connecting her to Sil. And she’d discovered to her amazement and general annoyance that these spiders could stay wonderfully camouflaged by the monochromatic light and jump a staggering distance. Getting hit by two of the things mid-flight was not something she aimed to experience again. If she hadn’t dodged the third things might have gotten really ugly really quick.

Terrible creatures. Adaptable. Aggressive. Uncaring of their own survival. Quite unlike any other spider she’d ever crushed beneath her heel or set ablaze. Black Monks, the largest she’d ever seen prior to coming here, were solitary and easily scared off with a stick on fire if not especially hungry. These ones…

What do they even eat down here? Christina added the question to the growing list of academic curiosities Tallah was not inclined to solve. They must be consuming something. That much mass doesn’t simply appear out of nothing. There’s so many of the bloody things.

“I don’t care.”

“About?”

Ludwig trailed behind her at a distance, labouring to climb what must’ve been the tenth stairway in less than a bell’s time. She had to stop and wait for the codger to catch up and then wait for him to catch his breath. It cost her too much time and there was more than enough reason to leave him behind. It would provide Christina an answer to her feeding question.

“Nothing you’d need to care for,” she spat. “How did you manage the labyrinth but have trouble here?”

“Miss Sil’s Terrible and Healthy Tonic helped,” he huffed. “You have. The endurance. Of a vanadal. Charger. Mercy…”

Maybe if she kicked him back down the stairs—no, that was unkind even to him. Her mood was getting the better of her judgement. Instead, she walked away to explore beyond the next door.

It was all getting rather monotonous by now. Stairway. Room. Webs. Windows. Outside platform. Angels staring down everywhere, like some beatific gargoyles left behind to watch over a dead city.

She paced some distance away from the uncomfortably large openings leading to another platform outside, staying within the long shadows cast by sculpted pillars lit by the shining spire outside. Bridges connected the platform to hanging sections of the city she had no interest in visiting. Ahead, past this room, was a long corridor overlooking the abyss, its open side guarded by pillars and more bloody statues.

What vain people this civilisation must have sired, to fill every nook and cranny with their winged countenance. Or maybe they’d grown into horrid creatures here, like that beast in the labyrinth, and needed reminders of what they’d lost.

Some intrepid beasts had taken to assaulting her when she got too close to any blind edge. Even now she knew there were some right outside the windows, creeping through their great web, staging another ambush. Their cooperation was something to ponder on when she’d have more time for it and less lurking danger.

She loosed two of her fireflies through the curtain and was rewarded by a meaty pop and splash of ichor. A black body thudded outside the window, still twitching its remaining limbs. Another firefly turned it to wet offal. They’d been learning to avoid her strikes. This one had been careless. The other three had fled.

“How do you always know where they are?” Ludwig crept next to her, keeping away from the windows.

“None of your concern.”

“I’m noticing that’s your answer to most questions I ask.”

“Then stop asking.”

She had very little patience left for him. Worse, he’d proven himself useless and couldn’t be trusted for defence if she slowed down and rested. What good was he to her now?

No matter how hard she marched forward, Sil remained too far away and out of reach. The illum lifeline wove in and out of Grefe’s maze-like architecture, sometimes disappearing entirely into the depths of the structures only to reappear some place farther ahead. Blind luck kept her on the scent, and not much else.

What were the spiders running from to take such illusive, absurd routes? Surely, they didn’t fear her.

Maddening. And Ludwig took so long to catch his blasted breath, his wheezing like a saw cutting a stubborn log. The temptation to simply go ahead grew by the moment as the lifeline faded ever more from view.

If you leave him, he will not survive the bell, Christina commented.

So what?

Do not act the child, Tallah. We are not going to abandon him to his fate, much as he might deserve it. We don’t know enough of what transpired here and he is still our best hope of understanding this place.

Yes, dear. It’s becoming very clear that he’s lied to us, Bianca chirped, about as enthused about the place as Christina. I’d like him on hand by the time we unravel whatever mystery is here to be unravelled. You may eat him afterwards.

How lovely. Her consciences were going daffy. But Christina never liked Sil much—

You are tired and that is unfair. I would not condemn the hen to such an end even if she does annoy me in unspeakable ways.

Something flashed on the horizon of her illum sight. Like a flash of thunder, it drowned out any other colours for a moment and then was gone. Her pulse quickened to a panic-fuelled gallop.

It couldn’t have been Falor! There was no way for him to follow from all the way across the empire. And he certainly couldn’t have traversed the maze.

Or… could he? He did have an Egia on retinue.

She chanced a look outside, towards the depths of the city.

Here it was again, clearer now. No, definitely not Falor. He was a storm in the illum flow, a bolt of lightning that she’d never forget, almost pure energy.

This had none of his sharp clarity. It came like a churning cloud of power dragging a net of razors behind it. A spider on a moving web, its illum size mind-boggling.

In some ways, it resembled the imprint of the maze creature. There was something in the way it moved and shifted, as if it weren’t fully there, and yet terribly real. It ate up the distance in heartbeats.

“Get up, old man,” she urged. “We need to move.”

“Where to?” Ludwig pushed himself to his feet, fists knuckling the small of his back, oblivious to the storm about to hit them.

“In. Deep as we can go.”

Too late.

She’d misjudged the distance in the unreliable sight of the Ikosmenia. She grabbed Ludwig’s shirt and yanked him back just as something slashed through the entire structure, stone splitting like butter. A heartbeat later and he’d be in two distinct pieces.

That was a healer’s barrier. Christina sounded awe-struck. It cut through stone?!

She’d think on that later. Illum churned outside, creeping into their hiding spot to drown out all other flows until only the storm remained. It swirled into coherent shapes, an assault about to begin. Something huge landed on the terrace outside with an earth-shaking thud, dressed in jagged power than looked like nothing Tallah had ever seen before.

It moved in jerks and loomed across the exit to drown out the light.

Fresh offal stench wafted off the thing, a mixture of putrefying gore and fresh sores. Its breathing rasped painfully.

It crashed against the pillared entrance, trying to squeeze its bulk inside.

“It can’t be.” Ludwig had trouble keeping on his feet as he gaped. “It can’t.”

Tallah was already moving, running forward through disarrayed rooms, her grip hard on Ludwig’s arm. He stumbled and dragged his feet. It was all she could do to resist hitting him back to his senses.

More of the strange constructs obstructed their path. Barriers that took a moment to materialise—slower than Sil could make them, the detached part of her mind observed—but cut through anything they reached. Solid rock. Pottery. Crystal veins that flickered in chaotic patterns of displaced illum. Whatever the barriers touched slid apart into neat pieces. Mad. It was only the Ikosmenia’s heartbeat of warning that kept them both from vivisection.

She fired on the constructs, heat lances punching through barriers before they could reach full coherence. Ludwig cowered besides her, blind to the encroaching danger, panicked by whatever he saw that she didn’t. With that mixture of bulk, power, and stench, Tallah was certain she wouldn’t want to get a real view.

Rage echoed outside, a half-human cry of fury echoing across the chambers. The storm moved. It raced across the outside walls and stabbed long tendrils of power into her path. Some of them were actual limbs on the creature, punching through the thinnest walls, seeking to skewer them.

Tallah dove under a swipe and dragged Ludwig down with her. He had enough sense to follow her cues. Another swipe of claws the size of a child rendered the wall to rubble and the monster again reached inside.

Barriers bloomed and blocked the passages forward. Not neat sheets of protection like Sil made, but like blown glass absurdly shaped into spiderwebs, every edge a cutting danger. They grew thorns.

It had taken Sil more practice than most healers got in a lifetime to fashion her barriers into crudely shaped constructs. This thing created abstract, coherent patterns on the fly.

“We’re being boxed in.” Tallah’s voice strangled out with the rush of danger. A crashing echo behind them, silence, and then the thud of giant limbs pumping across the wall outside announced the creature following on its own territory.

“I can’t see anything,” Ludwig said as she pulled him back from running face-first into one of the constructs. “That creature. It can’t be. The face!”

She slapped him in earnest. No time for him to panic and spiral out of his senses.

More constructs bloomed around them and sectioned the tunnel. Pieces of it crumbled and fell into the outside abyss as great claws raked them away with ear-splitting roars of crashing stone. The floor shifted underfoot, listing dangerously to the side.

They backed up and pricked their backs on the invisible barrier barring their retreat. Its touch cut through her clothes and under-armour as if they weren’t even there. Skin split and blood flowed down her back, the pain lost in the onrush of battle fervour.

If she retreated, she’s show her back again to the thing. It was climbing inside beyond the barriers, great bulk drawn in to bar the way.

She launched a heat lance at full strength and punched through the line of constructs, setting the webs around them alight. She’d have to manage the heat and the smoke, but at least she gutted the obstacles for a heartbeat. Just enough time to formulate a plan that wouldn’t allow this thing to dictate the pace.

Barriers shatter when you hit them at the right cadence. First tap should consume the outside deflective layer, second should punch straight through the feed-in layer, Christina droned in her head, reciting back her own grimoire notes. Bianca, we need your support.

Ludwig screamed and backed further into the lattice, unmindful of the cuts he accumulated. He’d sever himself to pieces to be away.

The creature roared again, pure triumph in its eerie half-voice. It made Tallah’s teeth vibrate and sweat break out across her back. Sharp pain kept her mind racing.

They couldn’t remain here or move forward. The many side exits could take them either into an inside stairwell, or a blind dead-end where they’d be easy pickings. Who knew how deep those barriers could cut from here?

If they ran into one of the narrower tunnels, it’d be even harder to avoid the killing strikes. Flames licked at her boots as she hesitated and planned, the webs combusting around her in great gusts of smoke and belching flames. It was getting too hot to breathe and, soon, the old man would be just dead weight she’d need to carry.

Black shapes crawled in through the gaps between the pillars, their ambush finally sprung. They threw themselves at her fire, mindless and wild, screaming as her lances and fireflies loosed.

“Give him.” She heard the voice like an echo of many others. “Give him and you may live.”