Blood, bones, and bile, it bloody hurt to lose an arm!

Tallah would’ve screamed if her focus wasn’t all funnelled into not fainting from the pain. An effort of will banished it… somewhere, and sealed her off from its echoes. Anna’s knowledge guided illum through her veins to staunch the bleeding and ward off shock. Knees trembling and teeth grinding, she swung her eyes to the source of the voice.

It would’ve cut Vergil lengthwise in two if she hadn’t reacted. It had been a tremor in the air, Anna’s instinct and Bianca’s reaction that had saved the boy’s life. Pity about the arm.

Don’t worry about an arm, a whisper slipped past Christina’s hold. You can always make a new one.

Provided she survived what came next.

The Erisa thing slithered down from the trees. If the spider had been frightening, this was so much worse.

“Sister,” it spoke through mouths ill-suited to the task. It slurred and garbled the word. “You ran from me. That wasn’t kind of you.”

It was a spider only in general shape. Its limbs were tangles of human arms. Its claws fingers fused together, bleeding where bones stuck out, sharpened to points. All its eyes were human, all the same, all blue. Human heads crowned its front segment, ghastly in their malignancy.

Beautiful creature, a thought intruded. Such a will to survive and adapt! How does it move? How does it live?

Tallah’s eyes changed and, for a few heartbeats, she saw within the creature. Mutated muscles and organs that should have never fit a spider. Bones propping up what should have been hollow chitin limbs. Brain and nerves. A rib cage protecting an overlarge heart.

If not for the adrenaline surge, she would’ve vomited at the sight.

But the beast could be killed!

She shook her head as the creature heaved itself through the mud, ignoring her. It went for Sil.

“Come, sister. I have need of you,” it droned in a voice too sweet to fit it.

“What for?” Sil stepped out from her hiding place and stood her ground in front of the advance. “What do you need from me? How can I help you?”

It laughed. Or, Tallah assumed the noise to have been a kind of laugh. She forced her remaining hand away from her stump and lit a flame. The bleeding was stemmed.

“No help needed. I have all but achieved my revenge.” It extended human hands from its limbs, wax-white fingers forming atop slender arms that grew out of the spider legs. Long fingers beckoned Sil to approach. “You can make me human again. I have tried to force them into becoming human, but they never will be. No matter how many times I make and unmake them, they will only ever be beasts.”

Right. That was sufficient crazy.

Despite Anna’s new inner voice trying to goad her into watching the whole thing play out, Tallah attacked. Three fireballs fired in quick succession smashed against invisible barriers as she expected they would.

It spun on her, angry eyes pinning her before the earth opened and the rain split. Bianca carried her sideways, away from the blooming barriers.

“Vergil,” Tallah called out. The boy was on his feet and stumbling towards the monster. “Grab Sil and run. I need you both out of my way.”

He turned and obeyed, moving at a quick jog to grab Sil’s arm. Why was she gawking like a stupid hen?

More fireballs smashed against walls.

It hadn’t been a fluke before. It saw her attacks and reacted with lightning-quick reflexes, each vector of attack closed off.

She would be boxed in soon enough. Bianca’s mobility wouldn’t amount to anything the moment the thing realised how easily it could deny her. An Iluna would’ve had her dead to rights from the first volley.

Pain bled through her focus. Her arm demanded attention but she had none to spare.

Or…

She formed a plan through the rush of dodging invisible slashes. She had a heartbeat’s warning before the barrier formed, enough for enhanced eyes to see the vague outline in the rain water and move away. Tallah drew on Anna’s knowledge even as the ghost squirmed inside, curiosity piqued.

Two drops of blood became eyes and she fought the dizzying disorientation of seeing herself from the back of her own head.

She allowed the arm to bleed.

The creature moved like only a fever dream could, a flowing mass of meat and bones. It trampled trees under its great bulk, slithered and crawled on its fat belly, extended its limbs and swiped for her.

Tallah lost more blood with each dodge, leaving it behind into the ground as they circled the clearing of their destruction, the corpse of the hunter spider kept between them.

Whatever she fired, Erisa’s creature saw and countered. From the front, the back and above. Flame lances washed off its hide harmlessly, only managing to turn the rain to thick steam.

Tallah tired and stumbled, head light with blood loss. Pain climbed into dizzying, terrifying levels. She’d been hurt before, but this…

Whatever you mean to do, do it fast. I am nearly spent, Bianca warned. We cannot stay on the backslide like this.

It should be enough.

She hoped it would be enough.

“Why do you intervene, sorceress?” Erisa called out. “I have no business with you. You are not fit for my needs. You could have just gone on your way and not bothered me.”

She had the creature where she needed it, in the dead centre of the trampled clearing.

Time to test.

Tallah reached inside and found Anna’s ghostly form entwined with Christina’s, held tight in spite of its protests. Her conscience touched the other and drew out what she had envisioned.

Bone and blood spikes erupted out of the soil beneath and punched up into Erisa’s abdomen. Some were stopped by barriers.

Most went through.

The girl wailed as Tallah pushed her spears deep within that mutated form, bones growing atop bones and exploding to shards inside to turn organs to tattered pulp. She pushed as much of Anna’s strength as she dared into this attack and followed up with Bianca’s control. She stuck tethers inside the gaps her spears gouged and…

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And she would’ve pulled the girl in two had the forest not exploded with light. To the side, like a sun cresting the horizon, light burst blindingly from the undergrowth.

It distracted her for exactly one heartbeat, and she lost control of the weave.

It was enough. Erisa twisted free of her grasp and slammed a limb the size of a tree trunk against Tallah’s chest. It sent her flying to crash among the trees.

Consciousness dropped away into black night.

Woke to the embrace of the wet earth, landing painfully on her side and digging a trench through the mud.

Something screamed in the forest.

Someone.

Sil!

Bianca righted them before her own addled mind had a chance to figure up from down, left from right.

Left, Bianca urged. Other left. Move. Something’s happening.

“What gave you the idea?” Tallah spat out. She could barely breathe for the pain in her chest, and the blood loss had sapped whatever other strength she relied on. This was too much but she endured, pushed herself forward and forced closed the many bleeding wounds.

She was wasting blood. Disgraceful, Anna’s voice chided.

It took preciously long moments to make her way to the source of the light. It burned with bright white incandescence.

“Tallah!”

Vergil’s voice called to her. Hands seized her shoulders and steadied her. She squinted against the miniature sun writhing on the forest floor and turned her head to look into Vergil’s eyes.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s Sil. We-we-we were running. A-and then—”

Sil’s screamed from the centre of the conflagration, whatever it was. It rose higher and higher in intensity and seemed to rip out of her in sheets of peeling suffering. Tallah shook free of Vergil’s hands and rushed forward, urgency giving her fresh strength.

At least Erisa had been wounded. If the creature attacked now…

Careful. There’s a torrent of that burning illum here. Bianca gasped inside her. Don’t pull in. Don’t even touch it. It’s… I don’t know what it is.

She raised a hand to shield her eyes but it was useless. The light shone so powerfully that it engulfed her. Even with eyes tightly shut, she still found it painful. What new manner of horror was this?

Another cry joined Sil’s screams. Erisa. Somewhere to the side, unseen. If the Egia had a glimpse of this scene, she would be blinded in all ways of seeing. Knowing it hadn’t run off sent Tallah’s heart racing.

“Do you have your sword?” She had to shout for her voice to carry above Sil’s wailing.

Vergil answered from right behind her, “In hand.”

“Be ready. She’s here. I couldn’t kill her.”

Moving closer to the source was like wading through chest-high water, the tide of power unleashed forming a nearly physical barrier. It flowed through her the same as the poison had flowed in the labyrinth, burning against her skin, its touch like acid.

With a snap, the light vanished.

Blobs of colour covered the world when Tallah opened her eyes. She groped blindly forward for heartbeats, panicked. Had something happened to Sil? She couldn’t see clearly.

Anna’s knowledge forced a change in her eyes and the world resolved into black and white shapes. Colours bled back in and she realised she’d been going the wrong way. Her head whipped one way, then the other and finally found Sil’s splayed form.

The healer was collapsed on the forest floor, mouth wide open, eyes rolled up into their sockets, back arched into a near-crescent shape.

A woman loomed over her.

Tallah blinked again, not trusting the sight. A girl?

As white as chalk. Hair cropped short. Naked. Her back turned.

“Sil?” she called out.

Got no answer back but for the woman turning in place and pinning red eyes upon her. Too large for that small face, human and yet not quite. Not at all even.

Tallah lashed out with a heat lance, panic and instinct driving her hand before her head caught up.

It struck the woman straight in the forehead and splintered against her skin, the white-hot beam guttering out with whiplash sharpness. A gesture from the newcomer forced Tallah’s hand up to the ceiling. She couldn’t move it! She could barely breathe, caught in some new weave that held her as surely as if she’d been chained to the walls of Aztroa’s dungeon.

“Where am I?” the woman asked. She looked around, slightly perplexed, a dazed expression flashing across her not-quite human face. The voice was old, much too old for the visage. “Ah. Interesting.”

“What do I do?” Vergil asked from Tallah’s side. “What’s wrong?” He sounded on the edge of hysteria.

Tallah tried to answer him but all of her was locked in place. She couldn’t even draw breath. She cycled through options. Her furnace still burned, illum coursing through her veins, but no amount of straining could force away the holding weave.

The girl strode forward from Sil. Tallah’s head was wrenched forward, her gaze lowered to meet the girl’s red eyes. Their intensity burned.

“Ah. There are… four in here? Interesting.” The girl smiled, pressing two cold fingers to Tallah’s forehead. “I apologise for this, but I require information.”

Vergil sprang forward, sword moving for the girl. He froze in place, still and silent as a statue.

“You’re here too. Good. Patience a moment. I will get to you.”

Tallah felt something reaching inside her to grab hold of her mind and squeeze. Bianca and Christina squeezed right back and the ghostly touch was flung off. The girl pulled her hand away as if stung.

I don’t know what you are, but you will not touch this mind, Christina spat as if the girl could hear her.

“Lovely defence. Good job,” the girl answered, massaging one hand with the other. A flicker of amusement played across her face. “Beautiful work. I must say I am impressed. You will need to show me how you did this.” She paused and regarded Tallah as if expecting an answer. “Ah, you can’t breathe.”

Tallah dropped to her knees, released suddenly. Every muscle in her screamed in protest.

“Where am I, sorceress?”

She raised her head and couldn’t disobey the voice. “Grefe,” she answered and wished she could bite out her traitorous tongue. Her anger boomed in her chest. She’d been restrained! She needed to answer the humiliation.

Rhine hovered behind the figure, looking confused.

The girl turned to it, raised an eyebrow, and banished the figment with a gesture of her fingers. The weight of a boulder lifted off Tallah’s heart, one she hadn’t even noticed was there, beneath the terror of seeing her dead sister.

“What dirty tricks some would use. Shameful. It will be back, but for now I don’t need it observing.”

“Who are you?” Tallah asked. She tried to rise but all of her was jelly. “What have you done to Sil?”

“Who?”

The girl’s eyes moved between her and Sil’s splayed form, and she shrugged. “Daughter Dreea has been my conduit to here. She will be fine, if she’s who you’re referring to. The transmission has been difficult and I believe it’s caused her some discomfort. She has merely passed out. Some smelling salts will bring her right around.”

Dreea? She knew Sil’s original name.

Daughter?

Realisation hit with the force of a hammer. “You’re Panacea.”

She was in the presence of the Goddess of Healing. Tallah couldn’t settle between abject fear and fury.

Erisa beat her to the first strike. Wounded and bleeding from what Tallah had inflicted, the creature rushed in from the forest as if spurred to action by the pronouncement of the name. Blood and puss oozed from wounds but did nothing to slow it down.

“You lied!” it bellowed and the ground split apart with wild barriers. Bianca dragged Tallah away from the churning discharge of power.

Panacea raised a hand. The monster was ripped to pieces.

Tallah’s jaw dropped in astonishment. All of Erisa’s barriers had been turned right around. What remained couldn’t even be considered a corpse. The creature dissolved into an amorphous mass of minced bone, muscle and sinew, dying without even a whimper.

“That is not how I intended that ability be used,” the girl tutted. “Shameful.” She turned that ruby-clear gaze back on Tallah, utterly unimpressed. “I need explanations, sorceress. Where, exactly, is this Grefe place?”