The thing leered from beyond the flickering edge of sprite light.


    She ignored it. Acknowledging it would only allow more of the music to seep in, and it was stronger now that it had lodged another hook in her soul.


    We need Anna, Christina said in a distant, barely-there whisper of a thought. I may not be of much use for a time.


    Tallah nodded, not really listening to Ludwig’s long-winded explanation of how he’d come to discover such an out-of-the-way route to an ancient wonder. Bastil priests featured in there, somewhere, but she hadn’t been listening since before he opened his mouth.


    She should have been on her way to Solstice. Her tools were there, all the apparatus she needed to spin the soul thread to bind Anna’s polluted spirit. And then would come the long healing process, the battle of wills, the negotiation and the bargains.


    The prospect of it all made her teeth itch.


    Christina had been a willing sacrifice and, even so, it had been an unconscious contest for control between them. Bianca hadn’t consented—hard to do when being beaten to death with a ledger—and it took months before she listened to the plan and her interest was piqued.


    Anna… Anna was monstrous in all possible ways. To bind her to the cause, to get her to accept the bargain, what would Tallah need to promise? She dreaded even imagining it.


    Her power would gain us years.


    Christina was right, but what would the cost be? What could Tallah promise to get that vengeful monster’s support?


    There was no way to reach Solstice, not from the Crags. Even in fair weather, even with her disguise, it would take at least until Summer to travel the span of Vas.


    Marestra. Drack. Valen. Bastra.


    Solstice.


    Each a challenge. All under Aztroa Magnor’s watchful eye, all of them now aware that she lived and practised the highest heresy.


    Someone hit her in the shoulder.


    “What?” she asked, more to show she was present.


    “Next time I aim for the sutures.” Sil waved a piece of dried meat in her face. “Eat a bite. Drink some water. We need to make for a wider shelf before we get some sleep.”


    She snatched the piece of meat and bit into it hard enough that her teeth hurt.


    “I heard. I was listening.”


    “No, you weren’t. You were sulking over how the prince beat you like the drum of Aztroa’s Court. Again.”


    She felt her cheeks flush and opened her mouth to protest. The look in Sil’s eyes made her choke instead.


    She’s giving you space to sulk. A momentary wave of warmth emanated from Christina. Once in forever, the hen can be shockingly accommodating to your moods.


    Sil was on her feet and giving her a calculated look of frustrated impatience. Vergil and Ludwig were already a few steps further down the path, waiting, the sprite bobbing in the air above them.


    Oh. She’d been out in her head for a while. She ate as she walked, not really tasting the salted meat. The shelf twisted and turned as the cavern wall did, narrowed and widened unexpectedly in places, went up and then dipped sharply. She held up a fireball to allow herself more light as the sprites kept disappearing beyond twists in the path, in and out of crevices that led nowhere.


    What a miserable expedition this must’ve been once upon a time. She knew there was a destination to reach, but what would those accompanying the professor have known? Just miserably marching into the unknown on the heels of a zealous madman. Oddly, she gained a measure of respect for Ludwig for the temerity of braving that impenetrable dark and leading people down a path that could see them dead at the merest hint of a quake, on a quest to find a place that had likely never existed.


    Maybe this will be worth our trouble, Christina whispered. Maybe they did know something we don’t now. This at least has the feel of heading somewhere hidden.


    Hopeful thinking. Tallah had gone chasing that particular squirrel before. It was how they’d ended up with the cursed helmet. To accept again the hope of a different way than the one they followed was folly, and she refused its temptation.


    And the wraith followed on dead-silent feet outside the lick of her fireball’s light. It made the back of her neck itch.


    She’s not there.


    She knew that. On every conscious level, she knew that. Thinking too much about it would see her walk straight off the edge so, instead, she moved closer to Sil.


    “I’ll take watch when we rest,” she said.


    “No,” the healer replied curtly. “You’re not taking any watches until I say so. What’s there to watch for?”


    “Vergil twitching himself off the path?”


    It was meant as a joke but Sil remained grim-faced.


    “I’m going to give you burn-leaf and you will take it without comment. I’m exhausted and I haven’t done half of the things you did. Haven’t been half as stupid either.”


    Sil’s glamour had all faded away now. Tallah was by her scarred side and a side-glance from her discoloured eye was enough to silence any protest. Even if she now towered over the healer in height, Sil’s presence more than made up the difference. It was probably wisest not to tempt her temper just then.


    “How long until your secret city, old man?” she called to Ludwig as they slowed for a particularly narrow shelf.


    “Days. Three, if we make good time. Four or five if we tarry.” He seemed to be enjoying himself.


    “We rest and sleep on the first wider portion,” Sil ordered. “I’ll have no discussion on that.”


    They did. And Sil did exactly as promised, having Tallah drink the tea she’d grown accustomed to in Valen. Even as she drank the foul thing, she saw lidless eyes in the dark and the impression of an outstretched hand.


    It called her beyond the path’s edge.


    It’s not real, Christina reassured her as she felt her heart quicken. I am trying to banish the figment. Bear with it a while more.


    Christina would rebuild her strength in time, but until then her promises carried little weight. Bianca had gone quiet, doing the work of two in staunching the bleeding wound left behind by Christina’s humbling.


    Tallah forced her eyes to Ludwig and Vergil as they sat one next to the other, leaned against the wall, quietly chatting while Sil fussed over them all.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    “Don’t look down into the abyss, boy,” the old man was saying. “It will call to you and it might be hard to resist taking the fatal step.”


    “I’m fine,” Vergil said. He grinned. “I’m more accustomed to this than you’d believe.”


    Deep lines of exhaustion showed on his face and Tallah was reminded that he’d not slept, nor even rested since before heading into the blizzard in Valen. Through it all, he’d not complained once, nor lagged behind. He’d pushed himself harder than she had any right to demand of him. Whatever she thought she knew of the boy needed revising.


    When up in the gibbet, he’d raised his hand to ward her away. She remembered the moment with frightening clarity. Desiccated, starved and more than half-mad, he had tried to warn her of danger. And she had nearly ended him.


    Who dragged you into my path? Why?


    Sleep overtook her before she twisted herself into a ball of anxious, guilty suspicion. Chance was a dangerous thing to trust, especially given who its patron deity was.


    Burn-leaf took out the dreams from her sleep. But she’d had it too often, for too long, and now black peaks rose in dream as she slipped beneath consciousness and Christina’s waning protection.


    High storms above. The lash of freezing rain. Wind moaning through crevices and the dray on their heels howling their echoing cries.


    The mountain rose around her, its jagged cliffs murderous in the split-moment flashes of lightning. She was bleeding. Stumbling nearly blind down a break-neck path. Death stalked their footsteps, its hand outstretched in every chasm and out of every shadow.


    She fell, the pain too much to endure. Music thrummed inside her chest, writhed and squirmed through the deepest recesses of her head, and sunk deep, barbed hooks into her soul.


    And it yanked so hard she couldn’t breathe for the pain.


    Freezing hands dragged her up and she leaned into the other, stumbling barefoot down the treacherous incline. Oblivion claimed her. She woke to hands on her. Pressure on her wounds. Sheltered? A cave. Echoing boom of thunder filling the world as she pitched forward. Desperately tried to get up.


    “Sit. Down. Let me work.”


    She stared up into wild ice-blue eyes staring down at her, pools of light in the darkness.


    “Press here. Don’t pass out.”


    Again she tried to rise and was pushed back. Her hands guided to the wound and the compress, made to apply pain to staunch the flow.


    “I can’t heal you. I’ve tried. I can’t. I’m dressing your wounds best I can.”


    What was her name? She couldn’t remember it. Her torturer…


    Not the moment to think on that. She needed this one, at least until safety. A jolt of agony dulling into pressure on her leg as the healer tied her makeshift tourniquet. She was cutting her shirt to make bandages.


    “Don’t pass out. I can’t carry you on my own.”


    Tallah slipped away and was jolted awake when dragged up to her feet. The cave swam before her eyes. She took a step forward and the pain lanced anew through her.


    She nearly stumbled over a corpse but the healer held her.


    “They’re close. We can’t wait more,” the woman said by her side. “I got the drop on this one. Broke my knife in his collar bone. I don’t know if others heard him die.”


    And they were out in the freezing rain, the wet cold another shock to her senses. Blood-red eyes waited for them in the early dawn light, surrounding the cave’s mouth. Dark animal shapes crowded their path. Silver fangs reflected the sprites of handlers further back. Whistles echoed.


    “No…”


    The closest dray leapt—


    Tallah woke with a jolt and a hand covering her mouth to drown her cry. She nearly fired off a flame lance before seeing the eyes staring down at her.


    Sil had a finger to her lips, shushing her, unperturbed by the heat hovering near her chest. One blue eye, one grey and scarred. Their gazes remained locked until her breathing eased and her heart calmed.


    “Just a nightmare. You’re safe,” Sil whispered as she took her hand away and inspected where Tallah had bitten her. “Any harder and you’d have taken a finger.”


    “Sorry.”


    “It’s fine.”


    She shook her head to clear the clinging cobwebs of memory and gratefully accepted a canteen of water. In the black underground night, her traitorous imagination filled the silence with distant, howling echoes.


    “How long?” she asked.


    “Not long enough. You’ve barely been out a bell.”


    Vergil and Ludwig were each huddled against the wall, turned away from Sil’s sprite, fast asleep.


    Tallah lowered her voice. “Rest. I’ll watch.”


    “No.”


    “I’m fine.”


    “No.”


    May be for the best. Away from the light, the wraith lingered, and she couldn’t trust herself not to confront it if left to her own devices.


    Sil noticed easily where her gaze went. A sharp, frightfully well-aimed kick to the shin snapped Tallah’s attention right back to the healer.


    “Sil!” she hissed.


    “Eyes on me, ash eater.” Flat tone. Flat, unimpressed stare. Calculated insult.


    “Are you trying to annoy me?”


    “Is it working?”


    She’d have, I believe, quite enough time to figure that out if we push her off, came Christina’s muttered annoyance. Tallah hardly resisted a smile.


    “I heard you, ghost,” Sil lied.


    And tension eased out of Tallah. The familiar felt good. If she allowed Christina to voice off her grievances with Sil, they’d peck one another to bloody tatters. She took another swig of water, rinsed her mouth, and spat over the edge.


    They sat together some paces away from the men, feet dipped into the chasm. A soft scrape announced Sil putting up a barrier.


    “Vergil,” she explained. “Even exhausted, he tosses. I kicked him back in place twice so far. Was going to kick him in the head next but you started making noise.”


    “You were nicer as a blonde,” Tallah commented and ducked a cuff to the ear. It was her turn to be an annoying twat.


    “Shush. I’m all sunshine and bloody rainbows.”


    It was the scar, Tallah surmised. It twisted Sil’s face into a perpetual, dead-eyed glare that no sort of smile could make look serene. Both of them were scarred and both refused to be healed by Aliana. A good pair in a tight spot.


    “Do we go all the way?” Sil blew out her cheeks and rubbed her fists in her eyes. “We should be dealing with your condition if your ghosts can’t handle it. That monstrosity from storage would help, I think.”


    “Christina was suggesting the same thing. Can’t say I look forward to having her in my head.”


    “I agree fully. Who’d want Christina in their head? Even she didn’t want herself.”


    Push her off. Do this for me and you will never hear another peep from me.


    “I heard her. I love her too.”


    Tallah stuffed a fist in her mouth and yawned. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. “We go all the way with the old man. What other choice is there?”


    “Portal out? Make for Solstice?”


    “We’d either end up in Marestra, or right in Aztroa from here. Hardly good places to visit in our current condition.”


    The rest didn’t need mentioning. Without their disguises, they’d travel by back roads or straight through open country. In Winter it was as good as suicide.


    “Besides,” Tallah went on, “we might find something that could help in the old man’s faer city.” She managed to keep a straight face through it.


    Sil looked back to where Vergil clutched his helmet. She snorted.


    “I’m not touching anything we find.” Some levity crept into her voice. “Learned my lesson.”


    “Your artistic contribution to it hasn’t washed off. I’ve seen him try to clean it.”


    “We could call him unicorn-boy. Seems fitting.”


    It felt good to laugh, even muffled to not wake the others. It purged away some of the doubt festering in Tallah’s gut. Christina propped her spirits up with her own feelings of wounded pride. It lead to a heady mix of despairing energy that needed a focus.


    “What’s the most important step?” she asked with a smile. It had been one of their main topics of conversation for many years back when their plans were still in their infancy.


    “The next,” Sil answered by rote. “Always the next. Felling better?”


    “Wretched. But self-pity won’t get us where we need to be. May as well be civil with myself.”


    Sil scooted closer and rested her head on Tallah’s shoulder. “Good. Because if I go much longer without sleep, I will start biting. I will take fingers.”


    Tallah wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her closer, and they sat in silence for a while longer.