The shriek of whatever had been birthed from the magma echoed down the gallery for what felt like hours. A low, warbling thing, with undertones of a foundry collapsing onto a mound of dried and bleached bones. If Talia listened intently, she thought she could still hear it bouncing off the walls like the wail of some cursed soul.

The crew had tensed at the sound, clutching at the hilts of weapons and nocking arrows.

But nothing came.

Talia dared to hope that they’d left the infernal creature behind. That whatever being had created it had made a mistake. It wasn’t exactly an unreasonable hope. Torval had been running the drakes ragged, making the most of the straight, unimpeded shot through the cavern—courtesy of Zaric.

Besides. After all the shit the Deep has thrown at us, we’re due for some good luck. We’re within spitting distance now. Just a few more days.

Hope or not, Talia stayed alert, sitting in the corner of wagon seven with her mindsense stretched to its sustainable limits, reminiscent of the weeks she had spent monitoring the caravan’s morale. Only this time, it was enemies she was on the lookout for, not friends.

The delvers had mostly been kept occupied by shiftwork, their nerves drawn taught by the extreme vigilance Darkclaw demanded of them. For whatever good it would do.

If those abominations attack again, a little extra vigilance won’t exactly save us.

Talia thought she’d figured out the battlemaster’s ploy, however. If the crew were consumed by the cycle of sleep, stand watch, eat, sleep, then they were too busy to dwell on the horrors that had taken the lives of four of their number. Too busy to ask questions that no one had the answers to.

The psion shuddered as she remembered the dwarf whose final moments she’d witnessed. The agony of rending, serrated limbs. The churning of metallic teeth through cracked armour and torn, ropy viscera. The—

She took a deep breath, disrupting her cycling, but clearing away the morbid thoughts.

Maybe Darkclaw has a point. Too busy to think might just be the way to go.

Luckily, the perfect distraction presented itself in the form of a wordless moan. Talia opened her eyes right as Mirielle, Lazarus’ youthful dwarven apprentice, jolted from the chair she’d been dozing in.

Talia joined the dwarven lass as she bustled over with a wet cloth and a vial of analgesics, sweeping aside the thin curtains that provided the healers’ patients with a modicum of privacy.

Behind the curtains, a trio of delvers lay convalescing on cots. A human boy who somehow looked younger than Talia did —his torso wrapped in a bloody bandage— a beastkin woman with hints of grey in her fur —both her legs and multiple ribs broken from a bad fall off the roof— and finally, Zaric. The latter writhed in his sheets, covered in sweat and panting heavily in the throes of a fever dream. His dark skin, stretched and swallow, was drawn tight against squirming lines of muscle and bone.

Talia cringed sympathetically at the sight, remembering her own experience with manaburn and the thorny ropes of fire it had ripped across her nerves. Whatever he was going through was probably countless times worse.

“’Elp me ‘old ‘im down would ya, Arcanist?” Mirielle whispered as she stepped purposefully between the cots.

Talia nodded and hurried over to grab the struggling man’s arms, patting him awkwardly and muttering assurances. She’d done it before, in her father’s practice, but it felt…different when it was a friend. In either case, the collared mage stopped struggling, sinking back with another wordless growl.

“Sit ‘im up now, Master Lazarus’ll ‘ave my ‘ead if I waste good pain relief by dribbling it down ‘is chest,” the apprentice chided.

The arcanist did as she was told, propping Zaric up, keeping a wary hand on his biceps in case he started contorting again. He didn’t, cracking his eyes open and swallowing deliriously at the vial Mirielle brought to his lips, before falling limp. Talia took the proffered wet cloth from the apprentice and wiped away the sweat on his brow before laying him back down.

And I thought I had gotten it bad. Though considering what he did… it’ll be a relief if he wakes up at all.

For a moment, the psion considered what she would do if the person who woke wasn’t the same as the one she’d gotten to know and appreciate over the months of travel. If Zaric’s heroic act had been his final one. At least, his final one as himself.

“Shit, shit—”

Mirielle broke off into a string of dwarvish curses that would have had Orvall washing out Talia’s mouth with soap, even as an adult.

“Go ‘n git Master Lazarus, tell ‘im it’s an emergency!” the apprentice yelled.

The human delver—boy—was jerking on his cot, his muscles clenching and spasming erratically while his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. A foamy black froth bubbled up from his lips, and oily black tears ran down his face. The bandage covering his chest, clean only moments ago, was tinged with red, black and the barest hint of silver.

Oh fuck.

Talia rushed to the door, pausing right before the curtain as a bad feeling overcame her. Grinding her teeth and hoping she was wrong, the arcanist stepped back to the apprentice and pulled a plain knife from her belt.

“Just in case,” she said as she handed it to the apprentice healer.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Mirielle stared at her, aghast.

“Ye don’t think…”

Talia glanced down at the piteously moaning boy and prayed once more that the weapon was unnecessary. She just shook her head, gesturing for the healer to take it and headed out, climbing the ladder and jumping across the rapidly moving wagons until she reached wagon two and threw herself inside. The delvers on watch looked over curiously but made no move to stop her.

Lazarus bunked on the only solo bed in the wagon, due to his seniority, or at least she’d thought. Now that there was a medical emergency, she realized that maybe there was more logic to it than she’d first assumed.

Talia tore open the curtain and shook the sleeping—and she realized, very naked—elf awake. He jerked upright, blond hair mussed and eyes wild.

“Huh! Wazzat? Ahem—Talia? What in the wor—” he broke off as he saw her face, “Give me a moment, child.”

With no shame whatsoever, he stood and put on his clothes. Talia turned away more out of a sense of propriety than anything, tapping her foot impatiently. Thoughts about Mirielle being alone with the sick boy ran wild in her head, scenarios flashing through her mind, what ifs and—

“Do not just stand there, arcanist, tell me what has happened!” he snapped.

The psion jolted, pushing away the sense of shame she felt at not having thought of it.

“One of the patients, the young boy, started seizing and frothing at the mouth. He was bleeding tar from his eyes last I saw. Mirielle sent me to get you—”

Lazarus swore.

And kept swearing. And swearing, jumping on one foot as he tugged on his pants.

“Gods damn it, how could I not consider the possibility of contagion? I should have stayed. I knew Mirielle was not equipped to handle it alone. A basic mistake, and one that may cost that boy his—”

Talia shook the elf by the shoulder.

“Lazarus, you were dead on your feet, about to collapse, and like you always tell me, what’s done is done. We don’t have time for this. We need to go.”

The healer bobbed his head silently and swept past her through the door with a growl of frustration, not even bothering to put on his cloak. Talia followed close behind him, her worry building to a fever pitch the closer they got to wagon seven, in the middle of the wagon train.

The pair ripped into the specialist wagon, and Talia’s stomach sank.

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be wrong so badly.

The boy was no longer seizing, though the froth from his mouth dripped greasily to the ground with an eerie familiarity. He was standing as if drunk, swaying and clutching his head in his hands and screeching inhumanly, the sound a cross between a pair of swords meeting and the howl of a musklop with torn vocal cords.

Mirielle stood astride the beastkin woman’s insensate body, her eyes wide and her lips set in a frown, Talia’s knife held out defensively before her in shaking hands.

Talia acted without thinking, whipping out her sword and activating it, feeling the strength that accompanied it and brushing it off. She tuned out the incoherent voice in her head that was screaming that this wasn’t a beast, it was a human fucking being, and slashed at its—his—neck.

Whatever alerted it to the arcanist’s presence—be it the sound of her entrance, or the flick of Mirielle’s eyes, or some otherworldly instinct—saved the corrupted being’s facsimile of life.

But not its arm.

The boy-monster-whatever-it-was twisted bonelessly, somehow managing to duck under the swing. It was only through her own reflexes that Talia managed to harm it at all, shifting her blade downward ever so slightly to slice through its elbow like it was paper.

The limb flopped to the ground, still twitching.

Reaatrchh

The boy mewled, clutching at his stump, which spurted sluggishly, oily black congealing in red blood. He curled over himself protectively glaring at her with a fury that did not belong in still-human eyes, his irises greying and blackening to match the sentiment.

Talia stepped forward, interposing herself between the monstrosity and Lazarus. Something crunched under her boot as she did, and she looked down.

Are those…teeth?

The aberration snarled at her, his mouth opening too wide, tearing his cheeks to strips and revealing a row of jagged silver fangs.

Talia’s bare moments of revulsion were all it took; the boy-abomination leapt at her with eldritch agility.

“Fuck!”

She raised her shield bracer, prayed that it wouldn’t blow up on her, and activated it. It didn’t explode, but there was no time for a sigh of relief. The monster scrabbled at the shield, stopped short, its lone arm tearing at it before finding its edge and reaching behind it to get at her face. Black nails elongated visibly, stretching out from crooked, bony fingers to poke at her eyes.

Talia stabbed through the shield, taking it in the chest and tearing chunks from its ribs. Oily pitch sluiced from its chest cavity to run down its legs, along with fragments of silvery bone. There was no skill to her attack, only frantic, desperate need.

She pushed the monster back, pining it against the wall—all the while avoiding its scrabbling arm—and stabbed through its skull. Again, and again, as its serrated legs skittered against the scale of her greaves. Her mother’s sword punctured it like a hot knife through an egg, spurting black fluid against the walls and all over her shield, along with chunks of brain matter.

When it finally stopped struggling and twitching, Talia staggered back, her breath coming in ragged bursts. She looked at Mirielle.

“Are you alright? Did it get you?” she asked, stepping over toward the shaking girl.

It took her a moment to realize that the healer’s apprentice wasn’t the only one shaking. Her hands quivered and her legs felt weak. Lazarus put a soothing hand on her shoulder, speaking softly.

“Why not let me handle my apprentice, Talia? I need you to call for an officer’s meeting. I’ll need every delver with so much as a scratch to report to me for a checkup,” the elf said, shaking his head, “Until I know how the infection is transmitted, anyone who has taken a wound presents a danger.”

The healer left unsaid that if it spread through skin contact, the entire caravan was fucked, lambasted and buried.

Lazarus glanced at the wall she’d ripped through with her artefact sword.

“If you could tell the triplets that we also have some…repairs to do, that would probably be best.”

Talia nodded hesitantly at his words but didn’t move, her gaze darting from her hands to the cooling corpse in the corner by the door. The elf gave her a little push.

“Off you get then. We can talk about what happened later, but right now, duty comes first. Remember when I told you compartmentalization can be useful? This is one of those moments. Focus, arcanist. Safety first, then recovery. Here, wipe yourself off with this.”

Talia took the offered rag and wiped at her hands shakily, taking a breath to centre herself. Working through the problem rationally, she realized that the boy was almost certainly beyond saving. Nothing she could have done would have returned him to the living, breathing, human being he’d been before.

If anything, her actions had been a mercy.

Logic did nothing to silence the voice in her head.

Murderer murderer murderer murderer

It wasn’t like she hadn’t killed before. If the mage-hunters were to be believed, she’d killed the bleeder goons who’d accosted her so long ago, in that dead-end alley.

But she hadn’t seen it. The memories themselves were muddled and faded. Murky. This? This was visceral. It may have been a monster, but just a few hours ago it had worn a boy’s face. He’d probably had parents, and siblings and—

Enough, Tals. You’re being stupid and you know it. He stopped being a human being as soon as his fucking teeth popped out and were replaced with Ishmael-damned metal fangs.

The arcanist took another shuddering breath and followed Lazarus’ advice, doing what she’d always done. She shoved her turmoil into its own little box, to be unpacked and examined later.

There’s work to do. Feelings can come later.