Something of Erisa still squirmed in Sil’s guts. She could feel it despite Tallah’s efforts. She’d counted the eggs with her. Nothing could have remained, but—


    She tried not to think on this as heartbeats gelled together into long, long aeons of waiting. Her own heart threatened bursting at the seams whenever she raised her eyes and peered at the fight going on in the darkness. She’d extinguished her sprite and threw out her illum to better hide from Erisa. It wouldn’t be enough. Somehow, it wouldn’t be enough.


    From one foot to the other, always aware of the squirming thing under her skin, too afraid to think on it much, Sil waited for whatever Tallah prepared.


    “Can you stand?” Vergil asked as he shifted Tallah on his shoulder.


    “No.” The sorceress’s honesty shocked Sil back to the now and the danger. “I can barely breathe.”


    “What are you doing?” Sil asked, more to make herself heard above the screaming coming in from above. Mother and Erisa both screamed as they tore at one another.


    She pulled illum back in, preparing for the worst. A final stand. Vergil and Tallah dead. That… stinger cutting into her again. She shuddered.


    “Anna’s making a poison. I need you to deliver it,” Tallah answered. “I’ll…” She gasped for breath and dry-heaved. “Bugger, that’s horrid. Get the axe away from me.”


    It would fall to Sil. It must fall to Sil.


    Erisa’s death should happen by her own hand. It was hard to voice this, no matter how much she knew it to be true.


    Tallah couldn’t kill the girl. It had to be her.


    Or she’d never sleep another night in her life…


    “A poison? I’m to have her drink it? How? Ask her nicely? Offer some tea?” Now that her voice was back she found it harder to stop talking. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?”


    “Vergil. Hit her, please.”


    “Uh… right.”


    The bugger actually did it! He slapped her right across the back of the head, hard enough that she saw stars blooming in the pitch.


    “You little weasel!”


    “Sorry.”


    The ground beneath their feet shook with whatever was happening in the dark. A rain of shards spilled over them, followed by the dry scent of a disturbed ossuary. Screaming echoes cascaded over them, a thousand voices all crying out, ghosts, spiders, and a mutated horror singing in cacophony.


    “We have something a bit more direct in mind,” Tallah said. “Give me a spell.”


    Another part of Mother crashed only a few paces away from them. Sil squeaked and clasped her hands across the sealed wound in her belly. Erisa had won. The thing inside her squirmed in anticipation of this.


    Maybe she imagined it. She prayed she imagined it.


    But she didn’t imagine the shifting steps coming their way, nor the rasping breath and the gurgle of effort.


    “Sister… come… I will spare the others. Leave them here. They may even still find a way out.” The words whispered in her ear, bypassing any sort of logic.


    Tallah pressed something in her hands. It felt like a needle, about the size of her forearm, warm and sticky to the touch. “Try and not prick yourself on this. Stab her with it. I’ll be readying my devourer. Just… keep her attention for a few moment.”


    “You can’t…”


    “I can and will. Do as told, and we may walk out of here.”


    In her state, Tallah wouldn’t be walking anywhere if she fired off her insane final gambit. She had no more limiters left to manage the thing. It would be a miracle if she didn’t end up killing all of them.


    Her hand tightened around the needle. It weighed nothing at all. Tallah’s blood. Life for death. Without waiting for her head’s decision, her feet moved in Erisa’s direction.


    “I’m here, Sil,” Vergil said from her side, concern dripping from every word. “I’m right behind you. Once you stab her, I’ll come and—”


    “You’ll stay put. Sil knows her job. Drag me away so I can focus.”


    Hands trembled violently. Teeth chattered and she couldn’t lock her jaw. She made a sprite instead, unable to face Erisa in the dark. Its light shivered worse than she did and what it showed…


    Erisa bled. She pulsed. Meat sloughed off bones, grew back, turned into something else. Tallah had hurt her enough that the mutation had run rampant. Or maybe it was the soul trap working its way through her, on and on, devouring whatever was left of her sanity.


    “I’m coming,” she heard herself say, voice pitiful. “Just… just don’t hurt the others anymore. I’m here.” She hid the weapon behind her forearm and forced herself to look Erisa in the eye. Some eyes. There were many, all trained on her. Two girls had survived and they watched quietly from their maker’s side, puppets on strings.


    Another step forward. Slipped. Nearly fell. Caught herself.


    A shooting pain cut through her belly as Erisa approached and extended multi-jointed arms to embrace her.


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    “I will not hurt them, sister,” she cooed. “They may leave. You and I will follow.”


    More arms reached for her. Too many fingers on each. Too long. Their touch was cold, slimy and sticky. They touched her and lifted her up. Brought her close to what served as a face for the girl.


    Closer.


    Wide blue eyes stared brimmed with tears of blood stared at her. Sanity had fled them.


    She stared into an abyss that threatened to devour her, and recognized something in there.


    She’d seen eyes like that before. Often. They stared at her from the darkness, whenever she was alone, and whispered terrible things.


    These… these had hope shining through. In spite of everything, Erisa held on to the hope of being again human. It broke Sil’s heart.


    For a heartbeat, as she was brought to the bosom and cradled preciously, the weight of the needle in her hand was that of a millstone. She couldn’t make herself lift it.


    But she did.


    And she plunged it into Erisa’s neck.


    It squirmed like a living thing for a heartbeat, and then melted into the wound.


    Erisa screamed. Her grip tightened. Squeezed hard enough to break bones.


    “Why?!”


    Sil’s eardrums burst in the assault of noise. Pain shot up her legs as Erisa’s grip constricted into a death keening that threatened the world’s destruction.


    “Why, sister? Why?!”


    Anna’s poison worked murderously fast. What it did, Sil could only guess at through the red haze of pain. Flesh dissolved in front of her eyes, faster than the mutation could keep up. Still, whatever physiology Erisa had tried to keep up, out-mutate the poison’s effect.


    “I require…” A mouth formed the words to a prayer of purging.


    Sil pressed her hands to it and gagged the girl, cutting off the words. She ignored the pain of the constricting grip.


    At least she wouldn’t let her suffer.


    “This one requires aid,” she chanted out in a wheeze as Erisa crushed her chest.


    Tallah’s Disintegration would have done the job of finishing the girl. It wouldn’t be painless, but it would be definite.


    But Erisa had to die by her own hand! She wasn’t evil. She didn’t deserve all that they’d visited upon her. Even through the fear and the pain and the horror of this day, Sil couldn’t find it in herself to hate a tortured little girl that had meant well once.


    She couldn’t visit another betrayal on her.


    Panacea’s light bloomed in her veins and the power burned out of her in a torrent as bright as the sun.


    As she dropped from lifeless hands and saw only blotches of multicoloured lights, she hoped that it had been painless. She hit the bones and all air was driven from her. Erisa collapsed moments later. She came apart in a deluge of gore and viscera, sticky and hot, and nearly drowned her beneath its rotting mass.


    Hands pulled her up and dragged her hurriedly away. Someone was speaking. She couldn’t make out words.


    Her sprite had survived the moment and hovered above the scene, casting white, uncaring light upon a sea of dissolving red.


    Something was pushed between her fingers, lifted to her lips. She drank without tasting, the last of the draughts Tallah had held on to. Its citron taste was tinged with blood off her lips. Sounds returned with a buzz. Pain flared. Then faded.


    And she found herself keeling over, hands clutching her belly, crying her eyes out.


    What had she done?!


    She cried for the little girl they’d murdered, and for the monster that wanted to be saved. She cried for herself, for choosing all of it. And she cried for remembering why eyes stared at her from the darkness.


    Dreea had crimes to pay for. Dreea had died, but her victims remembered.


    Sil now fully remembered the victims. And wished she didn’t.


    Tallah stumbled up the bones, alone now. She reached into a mess of organ meat and Sil didn’t need to see what she fished out. The trap had worked. It must’ve.


    “Give it,” she croaked and pushed herself up. Vergil steadied her, his face a grim mask of concern. “Give it to me, Tallah! Give her to me.”


    That was one betrayal too many. She couldn’t let Tallah drag Erisa into her war. She simply couldn’t!


    Her friend’s face, when turned to her, stopped whatever hope she had of preventing this final indignity. It was there and gone in a flash: the hunger. What Erisa had been, Tallah could become. They were both aware of it and words hung in the air, unspoken but true nonetheless.


    “I will use her,” Tallah’s long silence said. “You owe me more than you owe her or yourself. Never forget.”


    It was gone in a heartbeat and Tallah stumbled down to where Vergil had dragged Sil. She pressed the jagged black gem into her hands.


    “Got closure?” she asked, voice exhausted. “Will you be alright?”


    The gem was hot to the touch and buzzed in her numb, cold hands. “I’m fine,” she lied. “It worked.”


    “You almost didn’t survive. Whatever that was, try and not use it again.” Tallah tapped the Ikosmenia. “You were lucky. It would’ve licked back at you had the girl not dropped you. Panacea’s helping hand?”


    “Aye. I don’t know how or why. I just asked for aid.”


    Tallah shrugged, wrapped an arm around Sil’s shoulder, and they hobbled away from the scene of carnage. They sat together heavily among the bones a distance away, the first moment of silence in what felt like a decade’s worth of misadventures. Somewhere, meat and blood bubbled in the throes of final death.


    Vergil fussed around them like some protective hen, his energy seemingly boundless.


    “It’s not fair he’s come out of this the least bloodied,” Sil joked. “Even the spider’s fared better than we did.”


    “It’s more than fair. Get that thing off him,” Tallah answered and showed the final limiter. She’d actually protected it. The silver was barely warped.


    It took very little to disengage the stud on Vergil’s neck. It had been fashioned to be removed only by her hand and she was glad to see it gone as the boy chucked it into the bones.


    “How do we get back up?” he asked.


    “We will help you, saviours,” came a voice just as Tallah drew air to answer.


    They looked up into hundreds of beady, glassy eyes staring down at them from the walls of the ravine.


    “Mother has been born,” Luna chirped from Vergil’s back. “We hear Her. Only Her.”


    The Oldest came into the light, palps raised in a very human-like greeting.


    Sil gave a small wave back to the spiders arrayed on the wall. All of Grefe seemed to have descended. Tallah was already passed out, slumped against her shoulder, asleep.


    The black gem buzzed in her hands and she gripped it tight.


    In the end it had only been pain. And pain passes.