Days passed in a blur.

The call had gone out for the pace to slow from a sprint to a fast clip. Still fast enough to make Talia nervous, but slow enough that she stopped feeling queasy. The order was almost immediately followed by a call for all but the forward scouts to confine themselves to the wagons. It meant that the expedition would be at a severe disadvantage in the case of an attack, but it seemed Torval wanted to avoid future casualties to the spores.

I can’t say I blame him.

Talia’s job had only gotten harder.

In the confined spaces, tensions were running high. The doom of Mishar— the beastkin woman who’d gone mad— had spread amongst the crew like a plague, spreading dread and apprehension.

Mutterings spoke of curses and the end of days. The more dissenting accused the delvemaster of lying about the arcano-sun and the Migration for his own personal greed.

None of them truly meant it. They were just afraid.

And Talia felt it all.

At some point, it had become more than simply monitoring morale, or watching the delvers for mental strain.

She sat cross-legged in her bunk, pushing out thoughts of unity and trust. Of faith in a higher power. Anything to appease the doubt and desperation the expedition was falling prey to.

It felt like a drop of dye mixed with mud. Inconsequential.

But Talia forced herself to believe that it was helping. That she was helping.

The only times she stopped were to sleep and repair the flagging enchantments of the caravan.

When the wagon train was blocked by an overgrowth of ghostcaps that needed to be removed, she would grab her tool belt and run out to do as much damage control as she could.

The air-cleaner arrays that purified the cabins were pushing hard, becoming clogged with mats of budding spores and even partially melting in some cases. The silencing runes on the wagon wheels had been subject to constant abuse that she now finally had the time to fix, or at least patch where she could.

When the blockage was cleared, she would cloister herself back up in her bunk and stretch out her psionic web, projecting confidence that she did not feel.

Glowing pinpricks of bestial minds fluttered above and around the field of fungi, swooping over and past the expedition with leathery wingbeats and the squish of claws into tender fungal flesh.

Talia shuddered, remembering the one time she’d tried to connect with the beasts.

The alienness of the mirage lynxes’ minds paled in comparison to the thoughts of what Darkclaw had called blight devils.

The beasts were part scavenger, part symbiont.

Blight devils preyed on the unfortunate victims of the ghostcaps’ spores, swooping down in a glide to tear at them with the sharp claws on their wingtips and feet, ripping into them with a putrid maw of jagged fangs, before flying off.

Immune to almost any type of poison, the reptilian creatures possessed all the cruelty of a goblin in the body of a scaled bat. According to Darkclaw, they often made their homes in toxic areas of the Under, subsisting off mushrooms and cave moss while waiting for a heartier meal to stumble into their dens.

The Chasm of the Lost was the perfect habitat for them.

Luckily, this particular breed had terrible eyesight, sight being useless for navigating the cloying confines of the spore clouds.

But their hearing was impeccable. In all probability, Mishar’s death had drawn them in. Her shriek a clarion call for the creatures. They swarmed above the caravan, drawn by the occasional sound that escaped the silencing arrays as they degraded, unable to pinpoint them so long as the silencing enchantments held.

Talia’s dreams were filled with echoing screams and leather wingbeats as she fell into the Chasm. The scream followed her into the waking world, like a constant drone in her ears.

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It took a week before she started seeing sparks of purple in the corner of her eyes, the barest glimpse of runes that disappeared as soon as she turned to look at them. Tinny whispers overlaid the deluge of fear from her fellow delvers, packed like lumps of raw ore into wagons not designed to accommodate so many at once.

She spoke with Lazarus and Zaric as often as she could, hanging on to the sapient contact like a lifeline. The former helped her manage the ever-growing weight on her shoulders, going so far as to suggest she cease her psionic bolstering, to preserve her sanity.

The tinny voice in her head seemed to whisper its agreement. Talia ignored them both, remembering Mishar’s scream. The streaks of glowing, spore-infested blood the maddened delver had ripped down her own face in her mania. A clear and stark warning of what happened when Talia wasn’t attentive enough.

While the healer cared for her emotionally, the mage-commandrum kept her grounded. They drank tea and discussed life and magic and nothing of importance. Often, he sat on her bunk while she cycled. His mind-shielding did nothing to mask the worried looks Talia saw him throw at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy. I’m not—

The face she saw in the tiny mirror of the officer’s cabin water closet said otherwise.

Talia’s face was pallid, skin drawn tight across protruding cheekbones. She knew that underneath the illusion of the grey artefact lenses, her eyes would be bloodshot to better complement the dark bags that had accumulated under them.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

She looked sick.

The tinny voice-that-was-not-a-voice in her head agreed.

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It was only when Calisto got involved that Talia realized she had to stop.

One week had turned into two, and the young woman was operating on rote.

Caravan stop, fix runes, go back inside, cycle mana. Soothe, protect, watch. Sleep. Do it again.

Repair the channel with her arcano-torch, inlay silverite, cover with mithril. Re-carve damaged runes. Double-check—

Something shook her shoulder.

Talia whipped around, arcano-torch brandished like a weapon, her other hand gripping her sword hilt.

Calisto took two big steps bag, hands up above her head.

Steel-blue eyes widened behind the glass of the woman’s gas mask. When she saw Talia relax fractionally, the chronicler lowered her hands.

‘Come’ the woman clicked out softly, only to the two of them.

Talia shook her head, turning back to the wagon wheel she was in the middle of repairing.

‘Busy’ she clicked back.

The older woman crouched down next to her. For a moment, Talia thought she might insist. But she said nothing. Instead, she just watched as the arcanist worked, carving out runes with a steady hand, laying out wire and rerouting channels around metal that had been worked too many times.

When Talia finished, Calisto stood with her and pointed to the command wagon. Talia was about to follow when an ear-shattering crack split the air near the front of the wagon train, swiftly followed by a series of screeches from the omnipresent blight devil nests nestled in the Chasm wall above them.

Talia spun up her psionic web, reaching out to where the forward scouts and the trio of engineers—the gnome triplets she had yet to meet— were cutting into the mass of ghostcaps that blocked the caravan’s way.

Their minds stuck out like burning embers in the void of thoughtlessness, sparks of realization and panic seeping from them and into Talia. Above them, dim specks swarmed.

Blight devils. Shit. There’re too many, we won’t make it in time.

Next to her, Calisto let loose a stream of clicker calls that Talia ignored.

A dangerous idea was forming in her head.

If I can influence people’s thoughts…can I also interfere with them?

With nothing to lose, Talia released the senselock on her telepathy and pushed all of her mana into her psionics. She firmed her will and sent questing threads of power towards the rapidly growing group of bat-like abominations.

Talia snapped as many links to the beasts as she could, tuning out the discordant, inhuman sensation of being in multiple alien minds at once.

Then she focused.

The image had to be strong enough to hamper the blight devils’ ability to fly or detect the delvers or something.

Flying. Focus on the wings. Darkclaw said that their bones are brittle. If they fall…

Forcing more mana into her channels, Talia sent out an order for the beasts’ muscles to tense and tighten mid-motion, freezing them in place.

The young woman collapsed to her knees as the mana was ripped from her Core. The world around her swayed precipitously. Manaburn coursed through her veins and channels, rippling across nerves like jagged rock. Purple runes flashed to red in the corners of her vision.

Her mindsense fizzled blurrily, the information it gave her entirely useless.

For a terrible instant, Talia thought it hadn’t worked.

A voiceless moan built in the back of her throat at the thought of another failure.

Then the first blight devil fell.

Triumph and relief filled her as she heard it woosh past with a confused screech. One by one, the beasts fell, most into the Chasm below, but some splattering onto hard stone and shattering every delicate bone in their scaly bodies.

Yesss, fall you bastards. Fall to me.

She could only hope that it had been enough, for she had nothing left to give.

As the rockfall of surprised blight devils continued up ahead, Talia levered herself up and stumbled her way back to wagon two. Each step was agony, manaburn searing itself into flesh and bone. Calisto had run off somewhere—it didn’t matter. Sleep mattered. Rest.

The pain was excruciating.

Her thoughts ran delirious circles around her head as her mindsense sparked tiredly.

Somehow, she managed to make it into wagon two and pull open the curtain before falling over again.

A half-dressed Zaric jumped in surprise.

“Talia?” he yelped.

The young woman's muttered attempt at ‘hello’ was aborted by a combination of the clicker still in her mouth and her gas mask.

The shirtless mage dropped his belt of battle wands to the floor and rushed over to help her up.

Talia flopped onto his shoulder and let herself be listlessly dragged toward her bunk. The collared mage pulled off her gas mask and laid her down on her bed. Talia groaned as a jolt ran through her.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, “Is your mask compromised? Should I go get Lazarus?”

His words confused her for a moment. Then she understood.

Oohhh— he thinks I’m poisoned.

Talia turned over and spat out her clicker onto the sheets.

“Manaburn,” she croaked, “Blight devils about to attack the crew. Stopped them with—”

She reached up to tap at her head with a finger— and immediately regretted it as the light touch reverberated through her brain like a hammer blow.

Realization spread across Zaric’s features.

“Holy gods Talia, you madwoman. How many?” he gaped.

The young woman’s shrug turned into a convulsion.

“Twenty? More? Not sure,” she said.

The mage-commandrum shook his head in amazement.

“You’re crazy. You have a death wish.”

Talia wasn’t sure if she could disagree with him. Thinking back, what she’d just done was monumentally stupid. Not only had she linked herself to over a score of minds, but she’d then directly forced the creatures to go against their own self-interest and drop to their deaths. The whole thing was head, shoulders and fucking heels above anything else she’d ever attempted.

There was a distinct possibility that she’d crippled herself.

I’d do it again though. No doubt about it.

Sleep called to her, and her consciousness began to fade. Zaric’s words fuzzed out before they reached her ears. Eventually, he left, drawing the curtain on her bunk closed.

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Talia’s mindsense came slowly back to life in its most basic form—a simple awareness of the living beings around her— and even that hurt, like a pickaxe to her skull.

Suppressing a groan, Talia stared up at the wood of the bunk above her, feeling both fulfilled and like she was an idiot.

What’s done is done. Chances are I saved lives today, and now I know— wait

Above her, the wood rippled ever so slightly. A small fleck of sentience clung to the bottom of the top bunk.

Talia set aside the pain and squinted.

A flicker. Almost like—

A blink.

The mirage lynx cub stared back at her with beautiful, disembodied, orange eyes that seemed to fade in and out of existence.

Talia tensed.

She was defenceless, even in the face of a tiny kitten, she didn’t think she would be able to put up much of a fight.

Neither moved.

They sat there for a moment, just looking at each other.

Taking a chance, Talia scooted over, slowly reaching for the drawer under her bed.

Pulling it ajar, she fumbled around gently until she landed on the stash of jerky, she kept around in case she got hungry, maintaining eye contact the whole time.

Gods I wish I had my psionics right now.

Just the thought sent a spike of pain through her head.

Still holding eye contact, careful not to move too suddenly, Talia offered the cub a piece of the jerky.

There was a tense moment where she thought the welp might swipe at her finger instead.

With a hard-to-track pounce, the jerky disappeared from Talia’s hand, falling, seemingly of its own volition, onto the bed at her side.

The little furball tucked itself into the corner, chewing the dried meat, appearing and disappearing intermittently as if it hadn’t quite learned to control its camouflage.

The young woman breathed a sigh of relief and let out a slight chuckle.

Here lies Talia Vestal-Angrim, who died to a kitten.

She’d have laughed harder if it didn’t hurt so much.

The issue became moot as unconsciousness finally claimed her once more and whisked her off to a dream of falling blight devils and little balls of fuzz.