A throne atop a central dais dominated the room into which the stairs ended. Human bones, of course, for ambience. Old Vitalis, and full of themselves.


    The room was operation theatre and display case bundled up in one. Most of the horrors to here, aside from the laboratories, had been afterthoughts, a Sanctum overgrown and overfed. In here there was deliberate design for cruelty. Splayed out bodies covered the walls, skin and muscle pulled back to reveal wet, writhing organs. The victims were still alive and in pain.


    Tallah would need to purge the room.


    “I did wonder who had gotten lost in my home,” a sweet, feminine voice said, “scaring my children and trampling my work.”


    Someone sat atop the throne and Tallah couldn’t contain her glee. She grinned ear-to-ear as she gazed upon the mistress, revealed at last. No wonder she hadn’t come up to meet her assault.


    A reunion between old adversaries demanded a proper setup.


    Naked as the day she’d been born, Anna Theala sat among the jutting bones, regarding Tallah with cold, yellow eyes. The fury on her face was poetry.


    Finally!


    She hadn’t allowed herself the hope that this was indeed Anna’s Sanctum, but here her quarry was, as pristine and young as on their graduating day at Hoarfrost.


    “Hello, Anna.” She approached without a care for the chimeras creeping in from other passages. “It’s been too long.”


    Anna looked like she hadn’t aged a day. Tallah lifted her mask a fraction just to get a better look. Yes, it was the same petite woman from the academy, pale as a ghost, drawn-faced, with a nose slightly too sharp to look attractive. Her eyes were different, cat-like, yellow, and wider than they should be.


    The flesh doll occupying the throne was a near-perfect replica of her old clique-mate. Tallah cast a glance around the room.


    “I know that’s not the real you. Theatrics were never your strongest trait, Anna. Come out and greet me properly.”


    She got a sneer in reply and, rising from the floor, two more dolls flanked the first.


    “What have you done to yourself, girl?” one of them asked, smiling as those yellow eyes seemed to measure and weigh her all at once.


    Sil yelped as another doll rose right next to her and circled her, eyes distended in curious pleasure. “Lovely work, yes. But I can see right through it.” She leaned in said in a stage whisper, “I could make you into this, child. Would be no trouble at all. No need to hide under petty glamours.”


    Vergil interposed himself between the doll and Sil and growled in threat. The doll slid out a forked tongue as it joined the others.


    “I’m not here to reminisce with you, Anna,” Tallah said.


    “Such a pity. I couldn’t imagine what other business the whore of the Academy would have with me and mine.”


    Lovely attempt at an old insult. Anna would be close even if she hid. Close enough, at least, that it wouldn’t matter for what happened next.


    Tallah reached into an inner pocket and brought out the real reason she’d done all this, why they’d been searching for so long beneath Valen’s mountains. The black gem buzzed in her hand as she held it between thumb and middle finger, showing it to the doll.


    “I claim you, Anna Theala, born of mother Viostra Theala and father Logovich Eilan,” she whispered to the crystal. It melted away from her hand and puffed to black smoke. “Does that answer your question?”


    Oh yes, it did. The doll was on her feet, shaking with anger.


    “How dare you?! Have you taken leave of your senses?”


    Anger was the first thing the enchantment stoked. If it would have failed to latch onto something, it would’ve just gone inert and reverted to its crystal shape. Anna was indeed close. It didn’t matter that she hid behind her toys. A soul trap, once active, wouldn’t be easily tricked.


    “I’m as clearheaded as I’ve ever been.”


    The challenge was issued. She could see on the doll’s face the first reactions to the trap’s effects. The call of the music rising. The unnerving echoes of things being dug out from the depths of memory. Soon, Anna would start feeling the hooks digging into her essence and yanking out whatever she thought hidden and inviolable.


    She couldn’t help but smile at the reaction. The monster was faced with something more monstrous than she, something that didn’t care for her strength or the protection of her Sanctum.


    “A century since we’ve seen one another, and this is how you greet me… What has the outside world come to?” The doll asked, voice just slightly shaken.


    She’s blustering. Good, Christina commented. For all she sees, she can’t see me. We hold the advantage.


    The doll moved down from the dais with slithering movements, away from Tallah. Anna had never been a thing of beauty and her doll only exaggerated her lack of grace.


    Chimeras gathered around the throne, a wide, agitated circle of gaping maws and misshapen bone weapons.


    She won’t dare unleash on me. Tallah took stock of the surrounding beasts. She knows the old rules.


    Unleash the children to kill her and Anna’d be trapped with that thing in her until it got everything it wanted. If it didn’t, it would drive her insane with its insistence. There was only one way out: fight the one that activated the trap and sacrifice their soul to its thirst. Tallah watched the equation play out on the doll’s face as she regarded her creatures, wondering if their connection to her was strong enough to fool the enchantment.


    It could be. But at the time of activation, the mind was addled and confused. Fear ran high. Given time, Anna would see the loopholes. Tallah wasn’t going to allow her that time.


    “Old witch Zakovia always said that it’s folly to fight another channeller in their Sanctum. I’ve always wanted to try it.” Tallah cast a slow gaze across the room. “Can’t say I’m terribly impressed by what you’ve done here.”


    Was Anna even pursuing anything anymore? Or had she just become another obsessed Vitalis, digging deeper into depravity for depravity’s sake. Ripping her away from the work would be doing her a favour, though she’d likely not see it as such right away.


    The doll smiled and showed rows of perfect needle teeth. “I’m going to rip your heart out and keep it beating forever somewhere in my Sanctum. Maybe where my children piss and shit.”


    Cute. Worthless as a threat, but cute try, Christina chuckled. She’s never been very creative with threats.


    “Let’s get this farce over with.” Anna brandished her wand and invited the start of the duel.


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    Tallah turned slightly and showed off the silver wand clasped to her belt. She didn’t reach for it. Instead, she cracked her knuckles and drew her sword. A calculated insult. She’d thrown down the literal gauntlet and now refused to use her wand for the duel.


    Anna’s face was enraged to the point of poetic.


    She swung the wand and blood erupted from the floor and walls. It surrounded her in a tide, moving unnaturally through the air to form thick red needles. Excellent control, as expected. More monstrous replicas of Anna rose from the surrounding mass. Longer, more feral limbs. Clawed hands. Distended jaws filled with too many needle teeth.


    Sil had already moved back and got barriers up. Vergil was at her side, a growling beast that paced the limits of the invisible wall.


    “Protect Sil,” Tallah ordered. She ignited a fireball and wove two more in waiting.


    She faced a small army leering in the surgical light. Whatever beauty Anna mimicked was gone now as the dolls spread out to advance cautiously. Only the pretend-one remained on the steps of the dais, blood flowing around her like a living thing.


    The first salvo of fireballs blasted two dolls to blood mist. Broken limiters funnelled too much illum into the effect but one couldn’t argue with results.


    They rushed her in pairs. One heartbeat to make her fireflies, another to let loose. Dolls were already on her, claws swiping, fangs bared for her throat.


    Tallah exploded heads and chests, ripped limbs off and turned one construct to a bloody smear of grizzle and hanging chunks of flesh. It was the only one to fall.


    The rest, in tatters but undeterred, ganged up and tore at her. Her sword met claws and the impact lanced pain up to her elbow. Their weight pushed her down to the floor, maws snapping at her arms and shoulders, trying to get to the throat.


    A heat lance ripped one in two and gained her enough room to cut the throat of a second. Enough time to blast them off her with Bianca’s kinetic push. The ghosts cycled inside her.


    Another push, backwards, got her back to her feet. A gesture erected a flame wall two steps away, catching one doll full on in the inferno. Too close to breathe, but it bought her space to think.


    Sil screamed somewhere behind and to the side. No time to worry about her. She’d need to manage with the boy.


    “Only that? You issue a challenge as ill-prepared as this, Tallah?”


    Anna laughed. Blood rushed through the air, the needles only visible in the mask’s sight. She raised fire walls to arrest their advance.


    A heat lance counterattack failed to penetrate the flowing barrier swirling around her opponent. A fireball blasted it open wide enough for a follow-up shot to take the arm holding the wand.


    Another flesh doll rose from the organ mass of the floor and grabbed the thin thing before it even had a chance to clatter to the ground. A swing and needles flew in an arc.


    No time to raise another wall. They hit her as she turned away. Pain flared in a line across her chest, then burned worse than her fire. Tallah choked on blood but swallowed it down rather than spill it.


    Anna could do terrible things with a drop of blood. And in here, a drop anywhere was too many.


    Christina cycled to the fore as Tallah backed away for space. More flesh dolls rose to harry her.


    Careful. She’s close. Won’t hide too far from her wand. She was always overly reliant on her focus. Christina offered her memories of duelling Anna in their younger days.


    Little help now. The more dolls Tallah killed, the more Anna made, each new construct uglier than the last, barely even looking human. She faced a myriad of malicious yellow eyes, keenly aware that she was being pushed back. Soon there would be nowhere to retreat to.


    “Girl, see reason.” Anna’s voice spoke out of too many mouths, like thunder in the cavern. “If I just kill you now, you won’t have to see what I’ll do to your friend. Annoy me further and I may keep your head alive just so you can watch.”


    Bluster. They both knew she couldn’t be allowed to live for Anna to have any chance of besting the soul trap. Good. The curse continued to plan, doing its ugly work.


    Christina provided her strength. A ball of lightning flashed forward from the tips of her fingers to hit the closest doll. Its scream distorted into echoes. Tallah swung her arm around and tracked the next doll. And the next. Lightning arched between the creatures and sent them scattering.


    More screams mixed with the echoes. Sil’s. Vergil’s. The upper half of some shattered creature, trailing tangled entrails, rolled across their arena to trip up a flesh doll.


    Tallah used the momentary distraction, wove a volley of fireballs, and fired them off in quick succession. More blood misted. She aimed always for the source of the weave, chasing the wand’s illum around its trajectory. Each doll that grabbed it allowed her an opening.


    “That does not hurt me, Tallah.”


    She didn’t hear the rest of Anna’s threat but followed up with lances in a wide arc. No more time for subtlety. Claws raked across her back, one creature too close. Its claws snagged in Tallah’s under-armour, the leather carapace holding strong. She pulled away and swung the sword around. It caught the creature clean through the throat, beheading it.


    Softer now. Not as defined. Not as hard to kill.


    Realisation distracted her for a heartbeat too long.


    Something slammed into her, and a long spear of bone thrust through her abdomen to explode out of her back. The pain nearly blinded her. It had erupted straight from the floor, right at her feet, masked by the chaos of illum conflagrations. One sweep of the sword cut off the half-formed arms holding the spear, another cut the shaft so she could stagger away. Anna was speaking but Tallah barely heard anything over the onrush of her own heartbeat threatening to burst out of her chest.


    Her blood ran down her leg and onto the floor. Tongues licked it.


    A barrage of needles caught her attention. She deflected with a wall of flame, moving awkwardly, stumbling over the thing impaling her. Something punched through the wall and straight into her shoulder. Bone. Sharp and barbed. It poked out the other side and staggered her. It pulled her forward, barbs digging into her.


    Too much pain. She screamed in suffering and frustration.


    So bloody powerful! Anna was a beast and, in the centre of her Sanctum, a goddess. Christina swapped with Bianca inside her and she nearly blacked out when Bianca ripped out the spears in a burst of kinesis.


    Follow the wand. I’ve got you. Bianca threaded power through her flesh and pulled the wounds tightly closed. Pain was razor sharp and tasted of iron and bile. Her feet were dead weights attached to the ends of her legs.


    Her eyes darted past the flitting illum of the dolls crowding her. The wand wasn’t with them anymore, its trail a blood-red comet in the noise. She swung in place just in time to meet a doll’s claw swipe. The parry sent fresh agony through her bloodied side, but illum still burned in the furnace of her chest. A lance burst the doll apart.


    And she saw it.


    At the far edge of the room, illum twisted. It revealed the coward as she prepared something complex.


    “There you are,” she screamed in elated triumph even as she could no longer feel most of herself.


    No time to think. No time to look for Sil and make sure she was still alive. No time to make sure her companions were out of the bloody way. All her reserves poured into a single Disintegration blast.


    Darkness lit up with blinding, glorious light.


    The air ignited.


    All of her screamed in protest as she barely contained the devourer and aimed it at the wand’s position. If she missed, they’d all be dead and none of this would’ve mattered.


    Her effort was rewarded by an anguished cry. The Sanctum itself screamed, its many voices turned to echoing, crashing thunder. Earth shook with the impact of the blast.


    And Anna’s dolls were no more.


    Only Anna herself remained, a ruined carcass embedded in a throne of nightmares, revealed at last for a heartbeat before darkness overwhelmed the throne room. She spoke but Tallah couldn’t hear her. Blood sloshed in her ears. The slowing beat of her heart. The ringing of the blast.


    She needed to finish the job before she collapsed.


    Already her vision frayed at the edges and her breathing wheezed in her chest. Every step forward was agony and triumph of will.


    Anna kept speaking. What of… who knew? Who cared? She was only aware of the weight of her sword in her hand and the gaping emptiness in her. All of her illum had gone into the devourer. She was spent and burned out. Nothing but the waning strength of her arm to defend her if attacked now. Maybe not even that.


    She stumbled. Steadied herself on the sword. Pushed forward the final few steps.


    “I’m sorry,” she mumbled the words as she met the burned-out hollows of Anna’s eyes. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” She was. Truly. Not for killing the creature that her old rival had become, but for what came next.


    Her strength failed halfway through cutting Anna’s throat and darkness crushed her.