“I pray to the Goddess that this leads out somewhere safe and not into some other nest.” Sil hauled herself out of the narrow gap, passing into a wider tunnel, just as dark.

Weariness and the constant cutting pain in her shoulder and belly left little room for terror even as the dark filled with the scrapings of claws on stone and the skittering of too many legs. Echoes screamed past them.

“There’s light,” Vergil said. “There.”

“I can’t see it.”

Another step forward. Another intersection of tunnels, three or four branching in unknown directions. Beyond the bend a light beamed in the distance, a faint vein scratching at the black. The sight eased some of the pressure threatening to overwhelm whatever was left of her bravery.

Vergil’s hand found hers and squeezed, much as Tallah did when she was afraid.

“We follow the light?” he asked, voice lowered into a whisper.

“Yes. Let’s. At least we’ll see death coming.”

“That’s cheerful. Should we sing? Maybe draw attention to ourselves?”

“I’m glad you still have the energy for cheek.” She kept her voice just above a whisper. Part terror, part exhaustion. “Be thankful I’m not downright morbid. In the light I’d at least be able to scrape your brains off the walls after the safeguard detonates. I could keep the mess in my pouch to bury later.”

Vergil chuckled. “I’d rather you bury the whole of me. I’d very much rather not end up as spider food.”

“One armed? You’d be too heavy to even budge. A corpse gets infinitely heavier to carry than a living body.”

“Even without my head?”

“Negligible quantity.”

Another chuckle. “Mean.”

“You badmouthed my tonics.”

“They were foul.”

“They were. And unfortunately got us all the way to here.”

Tension bled from her as light approached. It framed Vergil’s silhouette, the smooth walls of the tunnel shining wetly with a thin layer of webbing stretched across. Imagination provided details she would’ve preferred not picturing.

They emerged through a side opening into a spiralling stairwell lit by the familiar crystal lattice. Webs everywhere, of course, but no spiders greeted their emergence. Only the familiar silence of the dead city.

“How are you holding up?” Vergil reached into the hole to help her climb down but she shook free of it.

“Well as I can manage.”

She didn’t quite like the way he stared at her.

“What?”

“You asked me how I wasn’t howling in pain. How aren’t you? I know you’re sewn up, but we’ve ran and crawled. Uh…”

“It wouldn’t be normal to keep going as I am,” she finished what he was struggling to say. “I’m fine. I’m trained for this and it’s not the worst shape I’ve ever been in. More scars for Mertle to…” She clamped up and felt heat rising in her cheeks.

Vergil at least pretended not to have noticed.

She checked her makeshift bandages and found them bloody. Of course her field dressings wouldn’t hold under such duress, but it would all even out if she reached Tallah and the supplies she had in storage. One foot in front of the other. That’s what she needed to focus on. One step. Then the next. And the one after that. Sooner or later, she’d reach a destination, final or otherwise.

The Goddess resolutely refused to answer her prayers. Dead silence. A yawning absence and a growing sense of unease, like an unabated full-body itch. It pulsed through her like a second heartbeat running counter to her own.

Bugger, that couldn’t spell anything good. Some kind of infection maybe?

“Sil?”

“Yes?”

“Are you really alright?”

“Well as I can manage.”

“Please don’t just say that. I don’t know what to do if something happens to you.”

She’d stopped walking and leaned against a particularly cool patch of wall with a sigh of pleasure. A shiver ran through her. And another. She had to grit her teeth against it.

They could head up, find a new vantage-point and orient themselves; or they could keep going down to meet that faint green glow beneath. The decision wouldn’t come easily.

Vergil had been doing quite fine so far. She regarded him more carefully as she tried to make up her mind on where to head next.

Oh, the poor boy. He stood tall and kept watch for something coming out of their crawling hole. But now that she regarded him in the light, she could see he was reaching his own limits. He’d been playing strong but his hand trembled on the hilt of Tallah’s sword and his eyes were wild, pupils drawn into near pinpricks.

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“I’ll let Tummy know how well you’ve handled yourself,” she said carefully. “He’d be proud.”

A pause in his twitching. His back straightened. Head lifted a bit higher. Eyes shone behind the visor of his stupid helmet.

“He would?! You mean that?”

She smiled and she meant it indeed. “Yes, Vergil. You’ve been doing as well as anyone could demand, and more. Come, we’re heading down.”

A strange scent wafted from beneath, like grass just cut, or a forest in mid-Thaw bloom. A garden of some sort? Absurd. She blew her nose on the ruins of her sleeve and sniffed again.

“Do you smell flowers?” Vergil sniffed, blew his nose, and sniffed again.

“I smell something that’s not mould and dust,” Sil replied. It was hard to believe what her nose was telling her.

“It smells like flowers.”

“Can’t be.”

She stumbled, catching herself on the wing of a statue that hung out of a recess. The last pulse hit like a stone to the head, with roughly the same effect. Her knees buckled and a headache exploded in the centre of her forehead. She may have screamed. One moment she was trying not to crumple, the next Vergil shook her gently.

She glared up at him and realised she had fallen to her knees. Nausea hit like a fist when trying to rise. Various bits of her refused cooperation for some reason.

Infection. No, that wasn’t it. She took stock. Slight fever. Pain, yes, but not… not as she’d expect. Centre of her forehead and on her mangled arm, like a particularly sharp scalpel cutting the skin.

Her fingers came away bloody from touching her forehead. Blood flowed down into her eyes and she smudged it off her face.

“I’m sorry. Y-Y-You were falling. I’m sorry. You’re bleeding.” Vergil was having a fit of his own and looked conflicted if to help her rise or set her down entirely. His squeaking threatened a full-blown panic moment and she couldn’t deal with that just now.

“Help me up.” The words hurt in the back of her throat. She’d screamed. It was becoming a habit she didn’t quite enjoy. “Did I hit my head?”

“No. You… you… uh… you screamed and you fell and… you have a cut.”

“I can feel that, thank you. What did I cut myself on?” There was no trail of blood on the wall and no feeling of concussion. The nausea abated but the stinging pain sharpened.

“Nothing.” Vergil looked just as confused as he sounded.

His answer was absurd. “Why am I bleeding then?”

She could stand on her own and Vergil took a few heartbeats before his hands went away. The tunnel spun around her even as she tried to focus on the statue and its beatific face, at once human and not quite so.

Was there something in the air? Couldn’t be. Vergil would’ve been affected too. A trickle of warm blood ran down between her eyes accompanied by a flare of pain.

“Cloth and disinfectant, please.” She prodded whatever it was that she bled from. Like something beaked and angry trying to break out through her skull, the pain insisted and threatened another fainting spell. “Thigh pouch. Other flask. Yes, that.”

Lovely.

“Bugger, that stings.” Vergil did as instructed and pressed the cloth on the cut. She squeezed her eyes shut. At least the sharp smell eased the nausea. The pounding in her skull retreated to the back of her head, like some surly beast waiting for its moment to attack.

Had a spider laid its clutch of eggs inside her head? It very much felt like something impossibly crawling through there, scratching to get out, abuzz in anger.

“Sil, this is a symbol,” Vergil said.

“What is?”

“The cut on your face. It’s three lines. Makes a kind of star.”

“Show me.”

He offered the sword again as a mirror and she had to lean on him lest she’d really faint this time. A cross, cut diagonally, was etched in the dead centre of her forehead.

A sinner’s brand?! Why?

She recognized the mark sure as she would the Mother moon, but could not imagine for the life of her what she’d done to earn it. The beat of her heart threatened to burst out of her chest and bloody snot clogged up her nose as tears welled up in her eyes.

“Please stop doing this. My heart can’t take it,” Vergil complained, trying to sound brave but somehow managing to squeak.

“I’m fine, Vergil.” She wasn’t. “Don’t worry.” He could have no idea how bad this was. “Please check my arm.” She’d faint if she did it herself.

“Which?”

“Bad one.”

A mark on the forehead would be coupled with a punishment. Communication would be achieved in some manner, depending on the gravity of the infraction and the severity of the imposed punishment. That was the School’s law.

She’d irked the Goddess. How?!

Vergil gingerly rolled back her bloody sleeve. “These are words. There’s writing.”

Sil bit her lip, let out a long sigh, and avoided looking down at the punishment she was to endure. How badly had she erred? Why? She’d done nothing but beg for notice since being separated from Tallah. She’d not gone over her allotment. She’d not shown favouritism. Whom to?

She’d denied her fear and upheld what she believed to be moral, faced the monsters in the pit and sought to understand them and offer relief from their suffering. She’d been sincere in that.

Why was she being punished?

As long as one can request our aid, our aid is to be given. We do not discriminate. Aelir or human, bastil, elend, drackir, vanadal, or any other that have yet to reveal themselves. We are meant to be shields. It was the very first lesson and the very first tenant that she’d been taught by the School of Healing, exactly one bell’s strike after receiving her name and her novice’s robe.

Sweat plastered fouled clothes to her back and the cold draft made her shiver as Vergil stung her arm with his cloth. She let out a despairing moan, blinked away heavy tears, and prepared to face whatever new indignity this presented.

“I am coming, daughter. It will hurt. What’s that mean?”

Sil froze, breath catching in her throat. Barely even winced as Vergil pressed the cloth to her cuts again.

“It’s scarring over. Are you healing yourself?”

No. That wasn’t her doing. It took some time for her voice to find its way back into her throat, and even then picking the words was...

Impossible.

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you read that?”

Vergil looked down at her arm, then up at her, confused. “Uh… with my eyes? It’s text. Really clear too.”

“Did your Argia translate?”

It was Vergil’s turn to go quiet as he wiped more blood away. He shouldn’t have been able to understand a sinner’s red mark. Nobody, to her knowledge, could do it aside from another healer. And even a healer couldn’t read it aloud.

“No.” He looked up at her, as much confusion reading in his eyes as she felt. “Sil, this is written in Earth Standard. How?”