A crack of lightning preceded a deafening sheath of thunder that made her teeth vibrate. The cold here had a steel bite to it. In spite of her best efforts not to, Tallah shivered.

“Sit. Still!”

Sil bit off the words and the suturing thread.

Pain flashed white-hot in her already battered side as the healer worked on her, poking and prodding. Normally, Sil would have offered at least something to dull the pain. Not today. Mercifully, Tallah blacked out for a few heartbeats while Sil started working on one of her other cuts. If she had anything left in her stomach, it would’ve probably ended up on the cave’s stone floor.

She probably also deserved the misery.

“Stubborn fool. You and her both. Why did you have to drag her into your mess?”

“She offered,” Tallah wheezed out in a gasp of agony.

Sil tugged on a suturing thread to break it off, mercilessly careless.

“You don’t accept offers like that. Not from them. It was bad enough that Tummy trained the boy. Now this.” Sil’s anger scorched the back of her head. Best not to turn and meet that accusatory glare. “You and I had an understanding. One simple rule.”

Tallah expected some kind of violence to her tender side and braced for it. Instead, Sil draped some fabrics over her head.

“You don’t deserve these, but here. She had them ready for you.”

She pulled down a fresh black coat and an undershirt. Mertle’s handiwork was as clear as Sil’s fury. Gloves and a leather jerkin thudded by her side.

“Get dressed and don’t infuse. Heat’s going to make the pain worse. Vergil’s coming to. I’ll heal your arm later if the accelerant doesn’t take.” Sil’s footsteps moved away before another crack of thunder filled the small alcove with screaming echoes. Only the howl of the mad wind outside drowned them out.

Tallah fingered her side and Sil’s sutures. Her entire chest felt tender and bruised. Her left arm hung painfully in a sling, limp, swollen, and useless. Someone had gotten a knife in her at some point, though for the life of her she couldn’t remember the cut. Not life-threatening had been Sil’s opinion before sewing her up.

She remembered Falor’s hammer like the tolling of a death bell. Her ribs would remember its caress for a long time to come.

Lovely cock-up, ladies, Christina’s voice mewled in her head, as quiet as a rustle of paper. Let’s try and remember what our arrogance buys.

Our arrogance, Christi? I opposed this madness, you might remember. Bianca, but lacking her usual bite. If Tallah knew her at all, she was relieved that Christi was speaking.

An accusation hung in the air. Christina did not voice it, nor did she voice her disappointment for sparing the prince. No amount of justification on Tallah’s side could convince her that the attack was doomed to fail even had she not hesitated.

“Lovely cock-up, yes,” Tallah groaned as she stubbornly inspected her sutures and the beating she’d eaten. Bruised and cracked ribs told a tale she’d not forget soon. Sil withholding her healing draughts for the time being was a way of ensuring just that.

It took a few laboured attempts to get the jerkin on one armed. Tears welled up when she tried to tighten the straps. Ultimately, she asked for Bianca’s help and received it. Wasn’t as snug a fit as her usual carapace, but it’d have to do. The rest of her gear was just as difficult to pull on and she didn’t dare call for Sil’s aid.

The boy had taken a good knocking even with the ghost possessing him. Who that dark-skinned bastard had been she couldn’t fathom. Very likely a Claw, or a Claw’s shadow. Rumi Belli’s? Likely a Rian. Well trained and adept at dealing with people like her. To knock the dwarf on his arse made him dangerous enough to look out for.

She’d need to remember him the next time she clashed with that particular cell. That, or risk another knife in her back. She’d taken a chance but only blind luck had seen her surviving the night.

Sloppy, sloppy work. Good lesson to remember for the future. Falor had definitely remembered his and surrounded himself with competent aides. They were nothing like the lackeys she’d fought on her way out of the vault raid.

“Easy, lad. Don’t move too much. Sip this.”

She ambled over to where Ludwig was trying to get a very confused Vergil to drink out of a flask. The boy’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, his hand groping weakly for something. She toed his helmet forward until his fingers touched it.

That seemed to bring him around.

“Where are we?” he asked as he finally drank.

Sil crouched next to him and brought her sprite about. He shied away from the light. An ugly black bruise marred the side of his jaw and neck, and his nose looked to have been badly broken. He was missing at least a tooth from what Tallah could see.

She let Sil work on him. The healer was, at least, being kinder to him than she had been to her. Kindness on Sil’s part still had thorns around it, so Vergil’s cries echoed over the storm more than a few times.

“Where are we, old man?” she asked Ludwig when he joined her by the cave’s entrance. Ice already rimmed the narrow gap they’d burned to get inside and, by nighttime, it would probably seal completely. Not that there was much light coming through the stormy veil.

“Deep in the Crags. If you know your maps, this would be Marrow’s Gulch.”

How wonderful. We survived the hammer so we could commit suicide. Bianca let out a weary mental sigh. Nobody will ever see our bones at least. Death by stupidity in complete anonymity.

Tallah’s feelings echoed perfectly.

“I can’t imagine how you’ve gotten this far in here. Even the map’s just assumption for the most part.”

“Shards, girl. Shards and months of the Sisters’ ministrations.” He chuckled as Vergil’s pained cry sent echoes dancing around them. “We got as far as we could before we got sick. Buried a shard and then went back and got treated by the Sisters. Repeat until here.”

“Must’ve taken whole seasons.”

“Two full years, actually. Mind you, we did not brave this place in Winter. Can’t imagine it possible at all without the Sisters.”

Determined bastard for sure. She eyed him a bit more carefully, looking for some sign of that dogged determination in his bent and weary form. Before leaving, it seemed he’d had the foresight of stowing a necessities pack in his own rend. The Guard had invaded his home while he was in the middle of preparations.

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“He’ll be fine,” Sil said as she joined them. “Had to pull out a tooth from the inside of his cheek, and straighten his nose before I healed him. Had a stubborn time of it getting his shoulder back into place.” She handed Tallah two glass vials without looking at her. “First the green. Then the draught. You’ve got the Goddess’s own luck to be standing.”

“Can’t say I feel lucky.”

“You’ve got six cracked ribs and your arm’s shattered into three pieces. One more kiss from that hammer and I expect I would’ve had to dig you a grave.”

Tallah uncorked the antidote and swallowed it without further comment. The following healing draught made all of her flare up in agony. It worked quickly at least. Bones knit painfully back together. Whatever was making her wheeze finally shut up. Sutures tightened and the cuts closed up, but she knew it wouldn’t take much to reopen them.

“I drank so much of this green stuff already that I should be immune to anything anyone tries to poison me with.”

“Not how it works.” Sil reached inside her rend and rummaged about. The dark portal fizzed around the edges as she retrieved four more vials from inside. They shone silver in spritelight.

She handed one to each, “These you drink in exactly one swallow. Keep it down whatever you do and you won’t be shitting blood too soon in this place.”

“I’ve heard of these. Blood of the Hearth? Never knew someone to have actually brewed this concoction,” Ludwig said, looking at the vial. It shone in the light like quicksilver. “Did the Sisters really give you sap to make them? Or did you use a substitute?”

“No such thing as a substitute for the sap.” Sil drank her vial, licked her lips and smiled smugly. “And no such thing as the Sisters giving it away.”

Tallah could already see the effects of the staff waning. Sil stooped somewhat and the colour of her hair, under the thick shawl Mertle had gifted her, had begun fading. The smudged edges of old scars showed faintly on her face and neck, discoloured lines getting more pronounced by the moment.

“Amazing.” Ludwig also drank but seemed to have a bit of trouble with the aftertaste.

“Sweet?” Tallah asked. It’s how Sil brewed all her alchemical composites. If they didn’t make your teeth want to be somewhere else, they weren’t quite right by her standards.

“Unique taste, yes,” Ludwig confirmed with a twist of his mouth.

“Keep other comments to yourself. She gets touchy about this stuff.”

Sil shot her a murderous glare. Her eyes were becoming mismatched in colour as the large acid-burn on her face became pronounced. It stretched down her neck and under her clothes.

“You’re lucky I have a full store ready,” the healer warned. “Without this, we’d be dead out here in days. Only have two vials of it left over. Let’s make sure we don’t need to be here long enough to need them.”

“You heard where we are?”

“I have no idea where that is but I doubt it’s a stone throw’s distance from safety. It’s the Crags. Don’t need to know more.”

“You could say that.” Tallah finally drank and nearly brought it back up. “Lovely. As always.”

“Not a word, Your Ladyship. You brought us here and got—” She clamped up, looking angrily at Ludwig. “You kicked the hornet’s nest. We can’t go back yet. So this trip had better be worth the risk.”

She strode away towards where Vergil was trying to get to his feet. Tallah followed, stomach threatening rebellion. For now, she kept her arm resting in the sling.

Tummy had equipped the boy with the axes she had asked him for, and the ghost had done great work with them. Now Vergil was looking at them awkwardly, unsure what to do next.

“Good work in Valen.” She took an axe and showed him how to fasten it to his belt. “Amazing timing.”

Sil sniffed in annoyance. “I ran the soul out of me,” she complained in a huff. “Horvath led us. Don’t ask me how.”

Vergil grimaced as he stretched, looking at the battered state of his helmet. The Rian had caved the face-plate in. Probably would have taken Vergil’s head off if not for it.

“How much did I run? I feel sore all over.”

“I’m amazed you haven’t spat out your lungs. How the ghost tracked whatever this idiot was doing, I haven’t a clue.”

“I remember flashes of lightning. I think he was following those.”

“Where there’s lightning, thunder can’t be far behind,” Tallah intoned one of the oldest maxims about Metal Minds. Another flash of Falor’s eyes on hers got chased away from imagination by Christina’s annoyance. “If he weren’t hopping mad, we could learn some things from the dwarf.”

“I don’t think he’s quite as insane as you think he is,” Vergil said, a sheepish note in his voice. “Don’t ask how I know. Just… gut feeling?”

Filed away for later. Not the time or place to deal with the boy getting attached to his parasite ghost.

“What’s next?” she asked Ludwig, itching to move and put Valen some more strides behind. Too much to think about and kick herself over.

She desperately needed rest, but Sil’s agitation seeped into her own mood. The only way back to Valen would be by shard, and Falor would have the Ascendi under watch with the entire city primed for her return. A single sign of activation so soon after the night’s events, and every soldier, adventurer, and commoner in Valen would be braying for her head.

Nothing for it but to move forward on the old man’s fool quest.

“We are a day’s march away from my ingress point into the underground,” Ludwig said, squatting and pulling out a battered old map. He summoned a sprite of his own and illuminated a mess of scribbles upon the ancient paper.

“Beyond the Gulch, there’s an entrance into a deep fissure. We need to make for that and from there the path’s a straight line to Grefe’s entrance.”

Grefe. The name sparked recognition somewhere in Tallah’s memories. Ancient history. Mythology. Never-been. Faer land and all that.

Little wonder Ludwig had been cagey about his goals. She would have laughed him right out of Valen and off of Vas itself. Now she bit her tongue.

“Grefe? Is that the city you were on about?” Sil asked, looking at his map. “Nasty trip to there,” she mused as she checked his annotations.

Ludwig’s eyes sparked in the sprite light. “Yes, miss Silestra.” A gnarled finger stabbed at the map. “History. Right here. There is nothing like it anywhere on Edana. Nothing as old. Nothing as terrible.”

“Or so you think,” Tallah mused, quietly. Anyplace old enough could be the oldest if there was little surviving proof to say otherwise.

But Grefe was part of faer stories. Even in those, the name was rare, a place of hidden magic, unattainable, unexplored. Unreal. Both she and Christina had enough respect for Ludwig’s work as a scholar not to point this out. Curiosity got the better of them now they understood the lengths to which the man had gone to reach this place. One doesn’t brave the Crags and their poison only on the promises of children’s stories.

Whatever it actually was, that anything had ever lived in the Crags and had grown themselves a civilisation tickled her scholastic fancy.

“Half of these passes will be closed off.” Sil traced a finger across some of the routes on the map. “I’d suggest we wait out the storm, but I doubt it ever quiets down around here. Can you handle the crossing?”

The question was aimed at Tallah, but Ludwig answered instead, “I shall guide us through. Have no worry of that.” Ice could melt in his fervour.

Sil shared a look with Tallah. She shrugged. Your mess, the look said in Sil’s usual resigned way that deferred to her in matters of danger.

“Why does this taste like coolant fluid?” Vergil asked as he handed over his empty vial.

“Why do you know what coolant fluid tastes like?” Sil replied.

“How do you know what coolant fluid is?”

“I don’t. It simply doesn’t sound like something you should have been drinking.”

Vergil stretched and set his helmet atop his head without pulling it down.

“If I understand all of you,” he said with a slight lisp, “we’re in a bad place, we’ll die if we stay too long, and we need to go somewhere worse. Is that about it?”

“Pretty much,” Tallah confirmed.

He stuck his tongue through the gap where his incisor had been. “Cool. Best get on with it?”