“Is the beast dangerous?”

Tallah stretched and grimaced at the way her back popped. If she missed one thing about Iliaya’s staff, it was the flexibility of her own joints.

Age was a terrible thing to experience again.

“Quite so, yes.” Ludwig arranged supplies in his rend. “It devours illum. I saw it drain a pyromancer to a husk and then eat him. Poor Morgyas. I can hear his screams still, echoing here.”

“Poetic. So it’s best to not channel at all. Does it sniff out enchantments?”

“It draws it closer, but not like illum does. If we don’t stop in place, it will not find us easily.”

“Lovely.” She was far from reassured. “Light? Sound?”

“Doesn’t seem to notice either. Certainly not torches.”

Tallah scanned the swirling mist oozing from the passage. She’d seen no other sign of whatever waited beyond the gates, nor felt its terrifying presence, but weariness had already set in from first contact. They were rested, fed, and, once Sil finished rummaging about her rend, they would go forward. Her fingers idly toyed with the mask.

“How long does your concoction last?” she asked the healer as she emerged.

“Until you shit out blood. I haven’t had a chance to field test it.”

“You said you had more?”

“Not enough for everyone. You try and get sap from Aliana next time and let me know how it goes. Like bleeding a stone.”

Lovely indeed.

“Here, hold these.” Sil doled out three vials of a tar-like substance to each of them. “I’m not lugging twelve of these around. Care for your own share.”

“What’s this?” Vergil asked as he set the vials in the loops of his belt.

“What coffee would be if you managed to distil it down to its soul.” Sil reached deep inside her Rend and pulled out five different flasks. “This should be everything I need,” she mused, checking her satchel. “Here, take this into Tallah’s.”

Vergil no longer hesitated before lugging the bags inside the larger rend. For this part of the journey the decision was to travel lighter. They aimed for a three-day march across the maze, and there would be little time to rest. Best to stow excess baggage.

“Grab torches while you’re in there,” Tallah called to Vergil. If she couldn’t blast the guardian, a club on fire would be the next best thing.

“Incredible volume, Tallah,” Ludwig said as he circled the dark portal. “How much do you carry in there?”

“Enough for my needs.”

“My guess is that you are up to about six limiters, Garet variety. Good estimate?”

Sil chuckled. “Waste of money, those. Their formulae were ancient and outclassed when the Empress was still a girl.”

“Still, am I close?” Ludwig accepted a torch and lit it with a small fire bolt.

“Six would be about half of what I need to maintain coherence. I use five of Sil’s.”

Ludwig whistled appreciatively. “Pure silver?”

“She melts those in two days just meditating. I’ve been using electrum for her. Expensive as sin but it does the job.”

Ludwig’s eyes looked ready to blow out of their sockets. “Not many have a claim on such raw power. I am in awe.”

“Blow it out your arse.” Tallah prickled at his fool praise. If she were as powerful as she needed to be, she wouldn’t be using limiters. Falor and Catharina didn’t need any and she’d been taught the painful lesson of the gulf separating them.

She donned the mask and, for the thousandth time, envied the true Egia. Illum raged around them and gently resolved into lines of power rushing through the gateway ahead.

“That’s odd,” she mused.

“What do you see?” Ludwig had asked to try on the mask and she’d refused him. Now he hovered close to her elbow, relentlessly wringing his hands, his gaze swivelling back and forth between her and the way forward.

“The gate was a seal that you broke open,” she said. “Illum flows by and not through it. Something was sealed inside. Maybe the creature.” She splayed her fingers through a stream of power, drew it in, found it bitter, released it. “Maybe something worse. There’s poison in the air.”

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Like water raging around a deadly whirlpool, illum swirled in and out of the gateway. Normally she would see veins of bright blue in the undisturbed flow. Now, furious reds and purples coloured her vision and sparked the first sign of a headache in the space behind her eyes. It was hard to tear her attention away from the chaos.

In the dead centre of the maelstrom there was a sliver of calm, of gentle flow. The blue she normally knew, flowing through like a guiding light in a storm.

“I see the path,” she called to the others. “I need you all to stay close. It’s narrow.”

Passing through the narrow gap gave an odd feeling of walking through veils of gossamer-thin silk, its ghostly touch verging on the edge of physical sensation. It lasted for a brief heartbeat and then they were through.

The sight forward sent a cold shiver down Tallah’s back.

A cavern awaited beyond the entrance tunnel. Ruins snaked through the fine mist, dressed in riot illum colours. She dared a look without the mask. Light from the torches barely illuminated ten paces ahead, swallowed by the roiling, churning cloud-like swathes of mist. Fire sputtered and hissed, shrinking back from the dark.

Another ruined city or some kind of outpost. Like the ash-covered remains outside, this too had been cast down to near nothing, the ground beneath it cracked and shattered, twisted in ways that could not be natural or intended. Pathways wove among the wreckage of time, going up and down, sideways and back into themselves.

Through the Ikosmenia the path was a clear tunnel through the mad haze of power. It swayed and shifted, shrank and enlarged in uneven intervals. Safety fleeted. Like the mist, the flow of illum moved unpredictably and couldn’t be relied on for long.

“Lovely place, old man,” Tallah mocked. “May the wonders on the other side be as impressive as this pit of despair.”

She set the pace at a steady march among the shattered stone walls. They followed a path bordering the bottomless depths where the rock had shattered. Their lifeline swayed on invisible tides.

“Did you learn what happened here?” Sil asked from the back.

“I’m afraid not,” Ludwig said. “Our time was too short to learn much of real value.”

“And yet you brought back plunder.”

Not the best start to the trek. Nearly a bell’s worth later, she had to backtrack as the path she’d followed plunged into the chasm. Soon after, she withdrew them from the lip of another precipice, already atop what had felt like an endless flight of uneven stairs. Her lifeline became a distant guiding light that she sought out rather than followed. Safe passage often seemed chaotic. The best way forward was not the obvious.

“Your sense of direction is as great as ever,” Sil grumbled. She and Tallah had to squeeze by one another in the narrow gap between two ancient walls, now leaned on one another and slowly crumbling to nothing..

“Would you like to lead, Sil?” Tallah shot back in her most honeyed tone. “I’m more than happy to pass you the mask.”

“Sure. Give me. We can take breaks while I puke every few steps.” Her tone dripped honey.

“Then can it. This place is mad enough as it is.”

“Charitable assessment, I’d say.”

“I have had nightmares often of this part of the journey,” Ludwig said. He and Vergil brought up the rear. “We tried mapping the place but the poison moves.”

“I can see that. What I’m surprised is that you’ve not been getting nightmares of your own shadow.” On and on the old man went. Terror this. Horror that. Nightmares and woes. He and the accursed place wore on her patience. She could push him off the path and be done with the bleating at least.

Temper, Tallah, Christina whispered. You’re drawing in power. Release it.

She did so. Hairs pricked on the back of her neck and her gloved hands sweated. Danger hung in the air like the mist, ever-present and oppressive. She didn’t need to invite more of it closer.

It’s stalking us. I can feel it out there, closer with every step.

Tallah ignored this. It wouldn’t do to become paranoid. Creeping across the narrow sliver of stone was effort enough without worrying of the fall or the beast. It took enough focus not to see the wraith that followed on the edge, always wreathed in the underground poison, ever silent.

“It’s so quiet here,” Vergil said. “I can hear my heart in my ears.”

That, at least, was an understatement worthy of a village idiot. The mist sucked in every sound. Even Sil’s terse reply came to her ears as a muffled whisper, and she was barely five steps ahead of the healer. No echo to their steps. No sound of pebbles grinding underfoot. No swish of cloth on cloth or rattle of sword in its scabbard.

Just silence, unbroken. She forced herself to release more of the power she’d been drawing in.

“Hold. Shush.”

Something slithered ahead. She saw it as a mess of illum erupting from the chasm. A massive shape hauled itself from the depths, settling with a tremor on a rock outcropping. Tallah risked a glance from under the mask and saw the impression of a massive head moving side to side, mist clinging to it on the edge of torchlight. What manner of creature it was she couldn’t say. Her gaze slid off it, as if it wasn’t quite there, yet very real at the same time.

It sniffed the air and grumbled, the vibrations of its heavy growl throbbing through the soles of their feet, yet as soundless as the mist itself. It advanced, sniffed, growled, swung the great head around. Confused. Angry?

Hungry.

“What is it doing?” Sil’s voice squeaked behind Tallah. The healer’s hand grasped her own and squeezed.

“Searching.”

Again, the creature growled and turned in place, lumbering back from whence it came, heaving into the dark depths. Its vibrations took a long time to settle.

Tallah saw the poison following him and swallowed the lump in her throat. Fear? Yes, definitely. As she moved forward, it grew into bone-deep terror.

“Why are you stopping?” Sil asked from behind. “We should be getting as far from it as possible.”

Tallah stared into the maelstrom of poisonous power roiling beneath their feet. The impression of a sea at storm came to her. Among the crashing waves of reds and purples, the blue line of safety shimmered and descended.

Uneven steps led down into the leviathan’s domain.

“You can’t be serious.” Sil’s tiny, muffled voice echoed every drop of terror Tallah felt as she took the first step down. “There’s no other way?”

Rhine’s wraith looked up at her from the bottom of the descent, and smiled.