Most of the group was spread across two small alleyways, crouched on the corners, making themselves as small as possible. Hidden though they may have been, old habits died hard. Which, quite frankly, was a good thing. The less they were ‘seen’, the less strain there was on her Core to erase their presence. The boon was cancelled out by the need to extend her shroud across the street, but Talia would take what she could get.
Talia had already been following the lone warrior with her mindsense as it made its way down the street but acknowledged the warning anyway. The split group tensed, a pair on each side bracing themselves, while the rest limbered up weapons.
Scritch-CLACK-scritch-CLACK-scritch—
Silvery rune-rope drew taut right as the towering beast passed by the alleyways, tangling in its overgrown, centipede legs. The slayer stumbled forward and caught itself with scythe-blade limbs, pulling itself forward, only worsening its balance. The rope strained against the sheer weight of the urvai. Mana churned within the simple trinket, burning away at a rate it could not sustain to hold itself together. Thankfully, by the time it ran out, its task was done. The slayer finally collapsed as the rope caught itself within its multitudinous legs.
Delvers spilled from the alleyways, the hulking Bruce leading the way, huge mace held in one hand like it was a deadly paperweight. Talia slipped tendrils into the beast’s mind, shuffling through its functions one by one.
Sight is fine, hearing fine— ah, there’re the motive clusters. Snip.
A comprehensive solution. All movement neutered in one psionic blow. Made much easier by the confusion and general lack of alacrity of the creature’s brain. In one fell swoop, it was paralyzed. One second was all it took, and then Talia was violently ejected from its primitive thoughts as they ceased to exist.
For good measure, Bruce bashed his two-handed mace into the slayer’s crab-like head a few more times. The sounds of cracking carapace and metal on rock turned to the squish of flesh and the splatter of hemolymph.
“Bleurgh—”
Splatter
—sick.
Bile and the half-digested remains of hard rations joined the rapidly expanding pool of bug juices. If anything, Talia thought, it was an improvement. As Grif patted the boy on the back and handed him a waterskin, Calisto moved forward, ordering delvers to grab ropes and sort themselves into teams to flip it over.
Talia nodded absently, pulling out her bestiary from her pack and setting it on the ground.
The way Egrit turned his cowl toward her, and the stirring of his thoughts gave Talia the sense that he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not.
Talia ignored Lored, focusing on her task. The giant two-handed mace tore at her shoulder just holding it. But at least with her prosthesis, she could lift it. A few pointed thoughts rearranged the settings on the runes on her arm, directing as much mana as possible to her strength enchantments. The concealment function failed and runescript flickered to life, casting a brilliant indigo glow from beneath the scales. Delvers stared as Talia planted the mace between the floor and the corpse, hefting the huge weapon as if it weighed nothing.
Positioning herself so most of the strain would be on her mechanical elbow rather than her shoulder, Talia raised her head, meeting the two men’s eyes. Or at least, where she presumed their eyes would be.
Bruce only hummed telepathically. The pair grabbed hold of the edge of the monster’s stony back plate, digging their fingers into whatever grooves they could find.
Talia’s metal arm pumped down like a piston on the haft of the mace. Metal strained against metal. Magic against gravity. And then the latter began to give way.
Despite her precautions, the skin of Talia’s shoulder began to split. Warmth trickled down her half-sleeve, dripping down her metal arm like red rune-rot.
The corpse began to flip over.
Then the ground shook.
Rumble—BOOM!
Fuck!
The group stumbled in unison, caught flatfooted. Talia almost fell to the ground as the mace slipped out of place. Panic spiked across the telepathic link, and Talia realized that Bruce and his fellow were about to be crushed. The human yelped aloud as his leg got caught beneath the rolling corpse.
One of the dwarves launched to his feet to help brace the immense mass, but he only succeeded in trapping himself as well, buying them a few seconds in the process.
For a moment, she considered letting them be crushed. Fewer people meant a smaller group to shroud, which meant less mana expended and a higher chance of survival.
No, consider the sapient element. If they die, the others will creep closer to losing hope.
Talia’s perceptions slowed, and she ran through the options, landing on the only one that made sense. The crystal mind spell made creating the Image a thing of ease. At least compared to before. She could only hope that her practice had paid off. The difference between a push and a lethal blast was hair-thin, especially with her lacking control.
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No time to think, just do.
Whumpf
A band of telekinetic force cushioned around the bracing delver’s midsections, forcefully pushing them out from beneath their burden and onto their backs with a woosh of displaced air. The dead slayer fell to the floor millimetres from Bruce’s boot with a dull, crackling thump.
Talia winced as the mana in her Core fell. They still had time, but they were sitting on a razor’s edge now. Her natural regeneration and cycling were helping, but it was going to be close.
As the delvers sounded off across the link, Calisto rounded on Talia, who realized she’d fallen to the floor. The chronicler offered her a hand, which she took gratefully. Only to immediately regret it as the delvemaster tugged on her prosthetic, pulling her to her feet.
Talia sat on the slayer’s unmoving chest, pulling up the half-sleeve of her armour and tightening the bandage around her stump with a vicious tug. A quick glimpse told her the cloth was soaked through.
The delvemaster was so close Talia could feel her breath. See the slight outline of her nose through the obscuring enchantment on her cowl. Hear the slight whine of her teeth grinding together.
The telepathic shout rattled across the link. Calisto winced, raising her hand to her temple, fear and pain twitching across her mind for a brief moment.
Is the spell failing? No. Irrelevant. If it fails, it fails. Nothing I can do about it now.
For a moment, Talia thought the delvemaster might say something more. Then the icy façade flushed across Calisto’s thoughts and the older woman just jerked a nod.
Talia nodded and watched her stalk away.
Her silverite-tipped claws slid into the slayer’s carapace carefully, the rune glow fading as the concealment enchantment reactivated. It took her all of thirty seconds to carefully peel away the milky rock and reveal the bug’s internal organs. The gland she was looking for was… underwhelming. About the size of two fingers, ugly mottled gray and almost gelatinous in consistency.
That’s the easy part done. Now for the hard part.
Talia wrapped the organ in a rag and went to rejoin her colleagues. Time to cause a distraction.
----------------------------------------
The group clustered in the remains of what might have been a home, or some kind of shop. Only the stone furnishings remained, a few chairs, covered in dust and powdered rot. A set of shelves. What might have been a sitting room or a dining room. Streaks of paint covered one of the walls —a child’s drawing maybe, or a mural whose pigments had long been browned and ruined by time. Even here, Talia had had to score a gash across the capacitor runes of some ancient trap in the doorway, left for whoever next tried to enter the place.
Talia shrugged ambivalently.
The martyr laid a hand on Lored’s shoulder.
The two clansmen leaned in close to each other, pressing foreheads together, conversing silently —though Talia felt nothing through the link. It was a more primal thing. An honour shared, and a weight shouldered. Shared with a look, and a clap on the back.
Talia felt the anger string across the link. The psion almost chuckled as she recalled a time she’d considered Calisto to be as cold-hearted as anyone could be.
Turns out she just hides it better than most.
Talia didn’t blame the delvemaster for her anger. She even understood it, in a detached kind of way. She knew her words had been callous. It didn’t make them any less true. Wasting mana was pointless. So was Calisto’s anger. The dwarf had volunteered. He knew the stakes. He would be remembered, if they survived. He would matter. It was more than many could ask for.
She has a point there. Fine.
An idea sparked in her mind at the thought.
May as well make a show of it.
Morale clearly had an outsized effect on performance, and Talia wasn’t fool enough not to see the benefit of bolstering it with some showmanship.
As the pair of dwarves separated, clasping wrists for the last time, Talia stepped forward.
she said, making sure everyone heard her.
The dwarf gave her a skeptical look, his peridot eyes revealed now that his cowl had been left behind with his gear. Only his weapons would be useful where he was going. The rest would better serve the living.
he said finally.
Talia shook her head.
Lored stepped forward, laying a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder.
Talia shrugged.
The silence drew out well past comfort. Mallard stared at her.
Talia frowned. A shiver went down her spine.
The dwarf grinned.
Orvall always said it’s sapients that lack patience. That the Stone will wait as long as it has to. I guess he was right.
Talia kept that thought to herself, stirring up the Images she wanted. She focused on efficiency first and foremost. The spells should be powerful enough for what was needed.
Playing off the solemnity of the moment, Talia placed her left hand on the man’s forehead.
she continued, numbing the dwarf’s pain receptors,
Emotions swelled through the link. Awe. Gratitude. Sorrow. Respect. Rising up and up like a beacon in the minds of those around her. It gave her the final idea she needed. She could ill afford to give much more, but she could do this last, paltry thing.
Mallard sucked in a breath, pupils dilated. For a moment, Talia worried it was too much. She’d filtered the connection, ensuring only the positives leaked through, but it was possible his mind wasn’t equipped to handle it. Slowly, as to not jar him, Talia let the link slip away, leaving him alone with his thoughts once more.
Shit. Hope I don’t regret this.
Mallard shook his head, tears in his eyes.
Inwardly, Talia let out a sigh of relief. Outwardly, she nodded slightly.
Mallard clapped his fist to his chest in a Legion salute.
Hmm. I didn’t know he was a veteran.
Then he did something no one expected. Pulling a belt knife, the dwarf fingered his russet beard, cutting off one of the many clan braids, beads, tokens and all, and handed it to her. Talia almost refused, but knew she couldn’t.
Damned dwarves and their bloody honour.
Lored stared at her from over his clansman’s shoulder, almost glaring. No, not glaring. Assessing. Waiting to see what she would do. Talia heard her father’s voice in the back of her head, reading from the Book of the Ancestors when she was a girl.
‘A human child ye may be, but yer a dwarf in family and spirit, girl. Ah won’t ‘ave ye shamin’ yerself, not if I have my say,’ he’d grumbled.
Keeping the reluctance off her face, Talia took the braid and the knife. The knife, she nicked her finger with, rubbing the blood across the beads before tying it to a lock of her own hair. Then she took the offered sheath and slid the blade into her belt.
Mallard said nothing, but she could feel the gratitude spill across the link, almost as if he was doing it intentionally. Given what she’d just done, it was entirely possible. The dwarf walked to the exit, turning on a heel. He clapped his fist in a salute again before hefting his axe, standing in the middle of the doorway.
And then he was gone.
Talia cut off his telepathic link the second he was out the door. The mana would be better used for what came next.