Christina dumped a dizzying load of situation awareness into her mind as they swapped control of her own body. The ghost was happy to let go.

Tallah fumed.

For losing control. For being blindsided. Again. For being in this place, distracted from her mission, fighting a thing she shouldn’t have needed to. What business had she intervening in Erisa’s fate?

Revenge was honest motivation for anything. In the girl’s place, she would’ve been much more terrible, much more vile.

But now the path to her work was blocked by this creature and it didn’t seem like she had any intention of letting go if asked nicely.

“I’m here,” Tallah said. Vergil turned to her as they stopped on the shifting road of bones. “I’m fighting.”

“Bloody nice of you to take a break right now. Need me to fix you a cup of coffee or something, my Lady?” Sil asked in her most mocking tone as Vergil set her down.

“Droll.”

Something stung her face and they all reeled from the invisible touch. They’d wandered down the incline deep enough that they reached the black illum at its bottom. Dense enough to be nearly palpable in the air. It stung. Not as terrible as the labyrinth, but enough that it would kill them if they lingered.

Or worse.

She took a heartbeat to pull in power. It came to serve, almost gleeful at the prospect of violence but shaping it hurt. Her black mood matched its terrible history. Here, there were ghosts roaming the chasm. If they wandered far enough and stayed in the miasma of death, she was certain she’d see real manifestations of the architects and their final moments.

“Is she wounded?” she asked, more to Christina than the others.

“She’s pissed. You did something to her with the soul trap,” Sil answered as she dug in her rend and pulled out an aerum vial. “This is your last. I have exactly two more accelerants in here. Best we save them up.”

“I have one left in my rend.” She downed the aerum and pulled in more power.

Her girls aren’t ranging far from the main body. Casting the trap may have disrupted her unique relation to the surrogate bodies.

That made sense. The trap was active at all times. Without willing shields like Christina and Bianca, whatever way in which a soul expanded would be drawn inward rather than allowed to move out. Anna’s trick with her flesh doll had only managed to save a fragment of herself because it happened in the moment of expiration, when the trap’s draw was focused on the core.

Her knees trembled and there was a twinge of exhaustion in her eye. Every breath hurt in her chest, both from the corrupted illum and what were, definitely, at least three cracked ribs. Without her infusion, she’d be down on the ground, squirming in agony. Bianca wove power around her, like an invisible suit of armour, lending her strength. Uncomfortable, painful, perfect. Like a torture device she could wear to battle.

That’s just unkind, the ghost whispered. I could let you crawl.

No time to set up a proper strategy. The deeper they went into the gorge, the more dangerous she expected their stay to be. Above, the girl searched. Bones crunched underneath her great bulk, clattered, groaned. She could just make out the horrid thing on the edge of spritelight. It was only the thickness of illum that kept them hidden from Erisa, but that couldn’t last. She’d either stumble onto them, or their hiding place would kill them.

“Why’s the dwarf so quiet?” she asked, expecting Horvath chomping at the bit to get into the fight.

“It’s me,” Vergil said in his usual sheepish tone.

Tallah’s eyes snapped to Sil but the healer waved away her concern, “It’s his head thing. Blocked the dwarf. We’re making do with one Vergil.”

At least the boy didn’t seem much worse for her absence. A bit scuffed and bloodied, but otherwise looking hale and straight-backed.

“Lovely. Got fight in you?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Y-yes.”

“Good. We’re about to make a stand.”

He handed the mask back. “More use to you than me, now. Plan’s gone up in smoke.”

It was impossible not to see the walls forming around the edges. Barriers built higher than she expected Bianca to carry them, boxing them in, closing off the way out. A clatter of bones announced Erisa coming down from up high. Her outline in the illum did not match what she’d expected from what Christina had shown.

The girl had halved herself. She walked on disjointed limbs, holding upright by force of will alone. Nothing of that form suggested any reliable physicality, but she couldn’t doubt the girl was lethal.

This… this was precisely why soul magic had been banned. Meld two souls together and they’d each impose their morphological traits. It would never end well.

Erisa was the end result of falling off the razor’s edge Tallah and Catharina walked. There could scarcely be a worse fate.

“I am tired of chasing you, sister,” it said as it cautiously approached. A throat probably formed the words, but they arrived as a sort of mental assault, similar to the spiders, laden with growling distortion. “Why do you deny me? Why won’t you help me?” Shadows in the illum showed her daughters walking besides her, silent as ghosts.

Each word was accompanied by a flurry of barriers closing the perimeter. They cracked bones and raised a cloud of choking dust. Erisa was a storm of illum, incoherent now in her brutality. Wisps of silver jetted out of her, like steam, only to be drawn back in.

“What did you do to me, sorceress? Why? Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“You can’t undo what’s been done, girl,” Tallah answered. Her heart raced as she drew in more power. The girl would see it now, know she prepared to fight. “I am trying to help you.”

“You’re lying. I need only my sister. I need to be human. Not this. Not a monster.”

Her speech garbled, more and more of it turning to animal noise. Mutation continued even as they regarded one another across the expanse of bones, Sil’s sprite the only light. Erisa shied away for its touch, hid herself in the dark as if… no, that was an uncharitable thought. The girl had every right to her shame. Tallah couldn’t begrudge her that.

“You will be at peace if you let me help you,” she said. “You don’t need to suffer anymore.”

“Liar!”

A barrier cut the air. Then more, almost random in their vectors of attack.

“Liar! The goddess came to help, and she stole from me. The spiders came to help, and they destroyed me. I am tired of being helped. I am tired of being in pain. I am tired of being this!”

Tallah hopped back, drew Vergil after her as Erisa attacked. The girl didn’t move a muscle, but she didn’t need to. Every moment was another razor barrier.

I don’t believe she has the stores of illum to keep this going, Christina whispered.

What does it matter if she does? Those barriers need a fraction of our own costs, Anna put in. Both ghosts talked with a calm that kept Tallah balanced against her own frustration.

Rhine floated among the barriers, stepping between the edges to leer at her. Her form shivered as if seen through a heat haze. Someone else hid behind the wraith’s presence.

Focus, Bianca admonished.

She tried to. But seeing Catharina puppeteering her sister’s form ignited the fury she’d barely kept contained. It came and went in flashes, but there was no doubt.

Here was the bloody empress, torturing her with the visage of the sister she’d led to a horrifying end.

The first heat lance she fired burned the sleeve of her coat and blistered the skin beneath. It punched through the arrayed barriers but missed the girl, Tallah’s aimed drawn to the wraith.

Focus! Bianca insisted and forced her hand up at the right target.

Tallah loosed again and this time Erisa had to move out of the way. From a distance it was unlikely she’d allow herself be hit. Her girls streamed away, running silently, claws bared.

One reached the boy’s range and was cut down. Three more mobbed him, pushed him down, swiped and cut with glistening claws. Before she could trust herself to help, Sil intervened. She clobbered one of the waifs with a length of bone, shattering its skull.

The boy threw off the other two and stomped on the nearest. Blood spurted in the air.

“Vergil,” she growled, barely remembering the boy’s name through the haze of anger. “I want to—”

“Throw me!” the boy called to her, a manic grin in his voice as his axe’s smile chased away the third girl. Blood ran down his face from a bevy of scratches. “Try and not burn me. I’m flammable.”

His good cheer in the face of death cut through her distraction. She laughed as she lifted him with Bianca’s strength, and threw him bodily at Erisa’s shape. Little bastard had grown a spine of wrought iron.

Three lances fired in quick succession punched through Erisa’s defensive walls as Tallah danced on the edges of the girl’s razors. Vergil landed in the bones, rolled to his feet, and exploded up at their foe, aided by Tallah’s own fire pinning the girl.

At a distance, a battle between two channellers that could see the weave… it would be attrition. Having a fighter in the mix could tip that balance.

I am ready, Christina informed her. Do not waste this. I can’t handle another. Tallah’s back tightened in a familiar grip as the ghost arrayed her power.