Talia was…different.

It hadn’t been especially obvious to start. Small things. Dismissible things.

The way she held herself. Back straight, eyes both focused and far away, instead of slightly hunched, gaze downcast and distracted. She smiled with her teeth now, and when she did, it looked more like she was baring her fangs, than any expression of mirth or joy. When she thought no one was watching, her face slipped into an unnerving, blank apathy.

The softness was gone from her voice entirely now, even when she joked, which had become increasingly rare. Curt, one-word answers, and drawn-out silences characterized her sparse interactions with their fellow delvers. That, or a haughty, bemused drawl. Something that straddled the line of extreme self-assurance and rank arrogance. Or blurred it completely.

It was as if Lord Wyrr himself had descended and wiped away any traces of trauma, doubt, or weakness from her. Leaving behind nothing but the polished steel of a naked edge.

As if the Lord had decreed that her mind would match her jagged-blade appearance.

The prosthesis only completed the image. Sleek, smooth lines of silverite and mithril, plated in matte, black adamite. Devoid of rivets, bolts or pins; Osra’s magic meant the whole thing was one flowing, nearly uninterrupted piece of metal, sheathed in adamite scales. When the concealment function was deactivated—as it currently was—purple luminescence peaked through the ovoid scales and shone through the segmented plating over the elbow joint.

Cannibalizing her armour had given the metal limb the look of a tool of war, belied only by the elegance of the painstakingly articulated hand and fingers. Blackened digits extended to sharp points—the only place where the adamite had been limited to gauntlet-style covering—exposing softly glowing, dense arrays of runescript.

The joints had no pistons or pulleys to action them, fuelled entirely by magic. The only moving parts were a set of almost fully enclosed steel balls trapped in what Talia had called a ‘limited friction field’.

Whatever that means.

Sometimes Osra wondered if her friend realized that her profession was a mystery to everyone but a select few. It seemed to combine engineering, metallurgy, physics, and a host of other disciplines into something unfathomable to the acolyte-turned-mage, not to mention anyone else.

But none will argue that it is her gods-given gift, before the Gift ever was.

Osra leaned against the granite sink basin, letting the coolness of the stone against her gloveless palms settle her still queasy stomach. Let it ground her in the moment. She’d witnessed death before—they all had—with all the gore it entailed, but watching her friend lie expressionless and uncaring as Healer Lazarus removed her arm was a different experience. Unsettling didn’t begin to describe the pit in Osra’s stomach.

Talia had acted like it was routine.

That, more than anything, confirmed to Osra that something had changed.

Just a week ago, she was still a lost, sobbing mess—a wreck.

Inexperienced as Osra was, even she knew that people didn’t just snap out of that. She’d still been caught in a daze when the healer had mentioned psionic self-modification; it was only when she’d been cleaning up her sick and rinsing her mouth that the term had clicked into place.

Talia had altered her psyche. More than just the pain-numbing she’d admitted to. Probably closer to what Osra herself had asked the psion to do, in a moment of weakness.

The realization shook Osra more than she would’ve thought. The mind was not inviolable. If such had been the gods’ intent, psions would not exist. Mage-madness would not exist.

No. It was clear as arcano-sunlight that the gods intended the mind to be yet another proving ground for the Deep-darkened souls of the Under. The scriptures just about said it outright.

‘The proof of virtue is in ideation. Its execution is only secondary.’

Yet, the knowledge that her friend—her only friend—had…altered herself, scared her. Even when it shouldn’t. The gods did not allow their instruments to shatter. Not until the work was done.

For it was clear now that Talia had been chosen for some grander purpose. The arcanist didn’t notice, but the caravan had been pulled inexorably into her orbit. Even in their trauma-induced apathy, the delvers gave her looks. Rumours and murmurs had spread across the haven like a runaway gas eruption. Most with any sense knew that without her, they would likely all have met their makers. Those that didn’t, regarded her with thinly veiled suspicion and near-universal trepidation.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Wherever they fell on that spectrum, they looked at her. To her. Talia didn’t see it—or if she did, she never mentioned it—but she had become the centre of the play.

Like the slow, inevitable consumption of a sinkhole, Talia’s actions and inactions rippled across the expedition like the divine intervention they likely were.

No matter how much Osra dearly wished for the opposite.

I like Talia. The real Talia. I don’t want her to become…whatever she’s becoming. Why, Lord Wyrr? What is your plan?

Osra’s shiver had nothing to do with the coolness of the stone against her skin. Her fingers dug into the uncaring stone, reptilian digits scoring the granite.

Do you have one?

She banished the thought as soon as it intruded upon her mind, muttering a litany of redemption under her breath. Her father would have struck her bloody, had he ever heard the doubtful words uttered aloud.

Clink, clink, clink.

The sound of metal on metal tinkled through the workshop as the arcanist’s new limb moved for the first time. Healer Lazarus was lecturing Talia on post-surgery care, but Osra could tell she was only half paying attention. Individual fingers wiggled and clacked against the adamite palm plate. Then the sound whisked out, as did the glow of runescript, its divine light muffled by the concealment function.

Lord Wyrr, have mercy on my friend, that she might recognize herself when this is over. Give her the strength to achieve the task you have set forth for her, and the fortitude to survive it.

Osra watched the sharp grin spread across Talia’s face as her artificial limb clenched into a fist. With her blood-tinted hair and the battle-artefact grafted to her, she looked like an incarnation of wrath. Or judgment. One of Ishmael’s executioners, sent to their mortal plane to deliver the gods’ justice.

You’re breaking her, Lord. You’ve already broken her. When does it end?

Her god was silent—as he always was. As he always had been

I—

“Feeling better, Osra?” Talia called.

“Give her time, Arcanist. What she witnessed is not easy for everyone to process,” Lazarus chided.

The disapproval in his voice reminded Osra of her mother.

“Er—yes. Fine now. Sorry about your pants,” Osra answered, shaking off the unpleasant memory of the woman who’d birthed her.

She might as well not have spoken.

“I need a sword,” Talia said, dragging over her journal from where it sat open by the healer’s tools. Her prosthesis moved with unnatural alacrity, sketching out the broad outline of a single-edge blade by the time Osra had arrived at the operating table.

“That is not a sword. That is a cleaver,” the elf scoffed.

Talia didn’t even deign to grace the healer with a glance.

“Steel, with a mithril core, dense as you can make it, and a plate of silverite on the flat of the blade, half a centimetre deep. Make it about…ninety centimetres long, with a fifteen-centimetre hilt, short crossguard. Oh, and plate the hilt in silverite as well. Might as well make use of the space there.”

Looking at the sketch, Osra couldn’t help but agree with Lazarus—Talia’s design looked like a cleaver. An elegant cleaver, adorned with the slight curve of a falchion, but a cleaver nonetheless. She made no comment.

I can’t do much, but this, I can do.

“No runework?” Osra asked, already moving to grab the remaining bar stock Talia had pillaged from the caravan’s stores.

The arcanist’s smile was downright feral as she scratched a clean groove into the stone of her operating table with one metal finger.

“No need. I’ll take care of it myself. Just need you to plate on the mithril when I’m done.”

Osra didn’t know whether to be shocked and impressed, or saddened that her friend didn’t need her skills anymore. She settled on neither, murmuring another prayer of protection and doing as asked.

Strength, Lord, grant her strength. That she need suffer no longer.

----------------------------------------

Watching the dozen or so members of the away team walk through the gate was like leaving home for the first time all over again. A tearing sensation in Osra’s chest. Both bittersweet and heart-wrenching.

They’d been delayed by a day as they planned and gathered last-minute supplies—and volunteers, among which the delvemaster herself was counted.

The group was larger than Osra had expected; someone had clearly spent time galvanizing the demoralized delvers, pushing them toward their duty.

Osra only cared insomuch as it granted the team safety in numbers.

Before the gate had been opened, the air had been filled with the low hum of a beastkin spiritsong. How they had managed to compose a hopeful dirge was mystifying, but it was beautiful, Osra had to admit, for all that they blasphemed. Now, the slim procession left in muffled silence—the dull susurrus of metal on padded cloth and leather against leather. None of the gathered spectators spoke, they just watched, battling their own demons, praying for their friends to return home, safe and hale.

Osra had eyes only for Talia.

Even now, her friend drew looks, sheathed as she was in Legion armour, its pauldron making her new arm look like an extension of her. Her monstrous cleaver-falchion-bastard sword hybrid was strapped hilt down on her back in a minimalist scabbard. Seeing her prosthetic wrist twist one-hundred-eighty degrees to grasp the weapon and pull it from its over-engineered casing had sent shivers down Osra’s spine.

Yet, despite Talia’s display of lethal competence, despite all of her preparations—many of which Osra had assisted with—despite the supreme self-assurance she’d displayed, Osra felt only dread as she watched her only friend leave her behind.

And…shame, that she hadn’t pushed harder when the delvemaster had told her to stay.

Strength, Lord. Strength and fortitude.

This time, the prayer was for them both, selfish as it was.

On a whim, Osra plucked her clicker from its pouch, sliding it into her mouth. The three-tone code for ‘unbowed’ wouldn’t reach everybody, but the away team all heard it. Osra froze as Talia’s steel-shrouded eyes met hers through her cowl.

‘Always,’ came the reply.

And then they were gone, and Osra was alone.