Tallah paced the room, all but a handful of the tome-carrying spiders dismissed. These followed her around with their loads, an arm’s length away from her, carrying the most galling of tomes.


    Works on Panacea.


    Why have they locked away knowledge of the goddess? It must be intentional.


    Christina answered with a mental shrug. ‘Of the little we know, they and the goddess—’


    “She wasn’t a goddess.” Tallah felt that needed remembering. It helped to compartmentalise Panacea as a separate entity from the wider pantheon. She had some doubts about some of the others, but Ort was definitely not some alien creature, easily understood. She knew this much about that particular maggot.


    Vergil had said machine spirits couldn’t hurt people.


    ‘They and the goddess did not see eye-to-eye is what I’m trying to say.’ Christina’s calm demeanour doused some of Tallah’s frustrations. ‘It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to assume they’d warded against her prying interest.’


    “But why?”


    ‘Well, that’s the bitch of the matter, ain’t it? Why did the long-dead do as they did? Even if we could recall their spirits here, they may have forgotten themselves. You may as well ask the rocks and get as useful an answer.’ Christina forced in a mocking smile, the sight of herself with tea in hand. ‘I know it’s not scholastic fancy that keeps you prying at this.’


    The ghost was right. Tallah’s digging into the machine spirit was driven by the trisected path ahead. Sil had pointed on a map where the School of Healing lay, and it was well and truly out of their way.


    On one hand, they had a soul to implant and tame, and a long way to go to Solstice to do it. Anna’s willing cooperation was a boon Tallah couldn’t dare hope from the maddened girl. It would take at least a season to bring Erisa into the fold fully, and it would be the greatest test her inner cabal had endured thus far.


    On the other hand, Sil was going ragged. Part of Tallah suspected it was for worry over Mertle and the mess they’d left her saddled with. Her friend had grown restless and jumpy, constantly on the edge of some panic she wouldn’t voice. Going to Valen would ensnare Tallah back into the Tianna role, with likely fresh faces for Sil and Vergil, if Mertle hadn’t already managed to send the cover story out of the city.


    Mertle and Tummy were superbly competent so her own worries over their fate were muted. But Sil knew next to nothing about what the two were capable of, and Tallah had been sworn to secrecy. It wasn’t her story to tell, even to Sil.


    So where did this leave the goddess’s invitation?


    A third option that would have them braving some horrifying passes and then some dangerous lands, searching for something that only existed on a map in Sil’s head. Granted, she’d promised the thing her cooperation, but Tallah hadn’t specified a time to do so. Would the answers the goddess had teased weigh more than her plans and friends?


    ‘We simply can’t know what the goddess has in store for us,’ Christina went on, oblivious to Tallah’s inner turmoil. ‘It’s factual that we may not survive a second clash with her if she catches us unaware. As long as the hen is with us, Panacea has an open door to arrive straight into our midst. And out in the open, she may not need as long to instantiate.’


    “I’m not afraid of upsetting her. I want to know if she can be trusted.”


    Christina shrugged.‘I feel trust is a commodity we can ill afford. With the amount of farcical bad luck we’ve endured thus far, we should count ourselves fortunate to have come out of this misadventure as far ahead as we did. We’ve gained not one, but two allies. Willingly antagonising the one that can destroy us with a thought seems foolish, even for us.’


    No mystery where Christina’s interests lay.


    Tallah groaned and stopped her pacing. The spiders nearly piled up against her boots. She made a shooing gesture and the tomes closed reverently, with barely a wisp of dust escaping the ancient pages. The creatures retreated back to the library, spooling up their long lines of web as they went. She followed them out and remained on the balcony of her apartment, overlooking Grefe’s rebirth.


    It would be a jewel of a place if the young matriarch got its vision enacted, with more than half of the place given over to the possibility of different peoples coming in some day. Statues were being carved based on drawings from Tallah’s own books.


    Knowing of the mountain of bones at the bottom of the chasm lessened some of the city’s overall impact.


    She extended an arm and Christina reacted to her request. Lightning coiled around her arm, moving sluggishly from the seal on her back to the tips of her fingers, back towards her heart. She added her own channelling to this and the stream of power turned from bright white to blood red, coiling around her fingers as she slipped into the dual meditation.


    In the end, they’d learned a valuable skill in Grefe and it had taken no small amount of digging through the ancient library.


    This normally required two channellers of similar capacity and with similar affinities. Without somehow finding, murdering, and enmeshing Lucretia within herself, Tallah had to rely on Christina as they shared the closest mindscape. Such a deviously complicated exercise this was. One of them generated the first pulse of power, guided it to the other who received it, amplified it, and guided it back. On and on, in a continuous stream of power that became more and more difficult to control and maintain.


    Christina’s long practice with the Titan’s Punishment made her the lead in this, her illum control far and above greater than Tallah’s. Even if the exercise was new to both of them, the ghost took to it like a duck to water.


    Tallah struggled. Her control slipped and the lightning licked back at her, singing her hair and clothes. A push of will got it back under control, barely contained, her efforts keeping pace with Christina’s patient guidance.


    I wonder—


    ‘Shush!’ the ghost admonished her wandering attention. ‘Focus now. Wonder later.’


    She couldn’t kill Christina, as the tome warned could happen when two channellers did this, but neither of them was keen to learn what would happen with a single body taking the brunt of backlash.


    Voices drew her out of the meditation just as the conjoined power reached a new apex. She nodded, aimed her hand over the black chasm, and unleashed a burst of red lightning that would’ve made a Titan’s Punishment blush in embarrassment. It exploded against the far wall, carving out a trench in the rock.


    “That felt good,” she mused, shaking her numbed hand as red sparks still danced on her skin. The sleeve of her shirt was singed where the lightning had licked at it. There was a long way to go until real improvements would be visible, but this was a promising avenue for improving her strength. Already she could feel fresh channels of power opening within herself.


    She dropped into a chair—fancy that, the spiders had added a cushion to the bare wood frame—and breathed out a sigh of exhaustion just in time for Sil and Vergil to walk in.


    “I believe Mother asked you not to destroy any more of the city,” Sil said. She walked in softly, checking for the normally present tome carriers. “Finally let the critters get some rest?”The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “It’s the wall on the other side. We didn’t hit anything here,” Tallah protested.


    “Still.”


    Vergil wandered in, wearing the ridiculous helmet, and dropped heavily into one of the new chairs. It groaned under his weight. He’d filled up somewhat. Too fast, by Anna’s estimation.


    “I take it you still haven’t found anything about the systems in this city?”


    She got a stare back that said pretty much all he needed to. Vergil sighed, took off his helmet, rested it on his knees, and his forehead on the dome. “I got the computers to turn on. Needed Er—” He lifted his eyes and looked around.


    Tallah dismissed his worry with a wave of her hand. The only spider in the room was on his shoulder.


    “I needed Erisa’s blood,” he said. “I don’t know why, but the system was locked somehow to her genetic stuff. Of course, once it turned on it needed a password. And I don’t have that.” He tapped his forehead against the helmet’s metal. “So I have nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.”


    It broke her heart, she told herself, that she was now about to make his day much worse.


    “Unfortunately for you, bucket-head, we need to head out. Within the day.”


    Sil at least looked relieved.


    Vergil didn’t look up at all. His shoulders slumped even further, so much so that he looked to be melting. “Why? What’s the rush?” he asked, voice tired for once. He’d finally found something to take the wind from his sails.


    ‘Don’t be cruel,’ Christina admonished. ‘You’re no better when you sulk.’


    “For one thing, we’re about to die. Painfully.”


    She let that sink in, but got no reaction from either. Only the spider looked over Vergil’s shoulder, mildly curious at best. Her audience seemed ready to accept their impeding doom with nary a complaint.


    “And second, I aim to check on Mertle.”


    That got Sil’s attention. Vergil melted further.


    “We’re not going to Solstice?” the healer asked, excitement coating every word. “Or to… the goddess?”


    “We’ll eventually head there, yes. But for now, I want to make sure Mertle’s alright.” She ignited a flame sprite—one more little trick gleamed off a tome—and idly played with it across her fingers. “We’ve saddled her with some overbearing worries. I’d rather make sure she’s come through winter unscathed.”


    “And if she’s not?” Vergil asked, without looking at her.


    “I’ll burn Valen to the ground and salt the earth behind me.”


    This cut through his apathy. He chuckled, the sound echoing oddly in the helmet. “That sounds just lovely then. If we don’t die here, we can perish there. Lovely.”


    She felt an overwhelming urge to go to the boy, grab his ear, and shake him. Ended up doing just that, to Vergil’s shock.


    “What’s gotten into you, bucket-head?” she asked when he drew away from her hands, almost hard enough to tear his own ear off. “You asked to stay with us. You want the spider to come with. We agreed. What’s with the bloody sulking?”


    “He’s being a pissant about being denied his answers.” Sil held a hand over her mouth, not quite hiding her mirth. “Found him screaming at one of those crystal squares. Was a sight.”


    “And you didn’t kick his arse up between his ears?”


    “He’ll get over it.”


    “I’m still here, you know,” Vergil said, his tone just a note shy of a whine. “I can hear the two of you.”


    “So act like it,” Tallah snapped at him. “We’re leaving. Make your peace with it.”


    “I am.” He rubbed at his ear, now turned red. “What’s this about us dying?”


    “Anna’s been watching my blood. Yes, it’s creepy. But she says the potion Sil’s fed us isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. Whatever’s on the air, it’s eating us alive. We need to leave.”


    “What’s the ghost saying exactly?” Sil had been reticent about the second dose of the elixir from the get go. “We’ve grown resistant to the effect, right?”


    They’d all started feeling sick early that morning, took the potion, and now Anna was making a fuss about what was happening. Tallah would be fine with her help—probably—but the other two were as good as dead. The Crags’ poison reached even down into Grefe.


    “It’s not as effective as it was originally, no. We’ve developed a sort of immunity to it. She’s estimating a little over three days, Grefe time, for the poison effects to catch up with us. We need to move and we need to do it now.”


    “It won’t be enough to get us to the surface. It’s three days, normal, to cross the labyrinth, and three more to climb up. And that’s without considering how the path’s broken now.”


    “Bianca did the maths and the conversions. We’ve got enough time to get out. Not enough to keep lollygagging in here.” Tallah nudged Bianca and she floated slightly into the air. “I’ll carry us out after the labyrinth. No old man means I can move unimpeded.”


    Vergil still rubbed at his ear when Luna dropped off his shoulder and headed out of the room, right out the window.


    “Where’s your pet off to?” Tallah asked, not following to check. “I didn’t expect it to go say its goodbyes to the rest of the brood.”


    “Please don’t call it a pet. It’s not a pet.” He seemed affronted by the idea. “It said it’s going to bring help for us.”


    Sil already headed out of the room and into her own to pack whatever she’d collected from the city. They’d sealed the water drops inside the bottle with a cap made of wax. Aside from that, she’d been offered some tomes of ancient medicine and seeds for various plants and shrubs from the forest.


    Those would all go into a rend.


    Vergil didn’t head anywhere. Instead, he sat back down, extended his legs, and remained pensive. For a while, Tallah only watched him stare into nowhere.


    “Do you need my reassurance too?” she finally asked, knowing well what ate at him.


    “No.” He shook his head for emphasis, breathed deeply, and let out a long sigh. “There’s stuff you can’t figure out for me.”


    “Like?”


    “None of your business.”


    ‘Cheeky!’


    “Just so you know, Christina’s clapping for you right now. It’s precious.”


    But he had his right to privacy and she wasn’t going to pry. If he wanted to talk, he had a tongue in his head and air in his lungs. If not, she trusted he’d sort himself out in time.


    She launched herself out the window and took one final trip to the library, Bianca carrying her across the chasm to the great stalactite hanging above the forest.


    They were both surprised to find the Oldest with a gaggle of spiderlings readying tomes in a neat little pile covered in a tight netting of webs.


    “Saviour Tallah,” the gnarled creature said, “we have prepared a parting gift. Many parting gifts for you.”


    “Did you cut these out of your mind?” She looked up and, with Christina’s help, reached out to touch the presence inside the great library.


    It answered her in an avalanche of joy and exuberance, a riot of imagined colours that danced in the space behind her eyes. It was jubilant for the contact, but also tinged with a kind of melancholy about the impending parting. Mother hung in a great web high above, grown frightfully large in the short time, communing with the presence. It paid Tallah no attention.


    If Mother or the mind were loath to part with the books, they didn’t show it. Nothing of the avalanche of love Tallah received spoke of any rancour about the loss of precious Knowing.


    “I had come to haggle,” Tallah admitted. “Thank you. Truly.” The spiderlings carried the burden inside her rend and she could feel the space twist and tighten as the books were deposited. Power was woven within those. She’d need to be careful with what else she deposited in there.


    “You have given us freedom. Given us purpose. Given us Mother, true and pure. We cannot repay this kindness enough.” The Oldest did a small dance in place, one she recognised as a sign of obeisance.


    ‘You’re blushing,’ Christina noted. ‘It’s adorable. Where’s the boy to see this?’


    It was a strange feeling, this gratitude she was experiencing. Far as she could recall, she’d never been welcomed anywhere. That spiders of all creatures could feel this way about her… well, what did that say?


    “The one now known to us as Luna has made its request of us. We will oblige. We are prepared.”


    “What request?” she asked, still fighting and failing to keep the heat off her face.


    “We will take you through the Lair of the Old One, of course. You needn’t fear its wrath for we will guide you.”


    “How?”


    “All will be clear. We are grateful. We show you our gratitude. Come. Come and see.”