This was turning into a bad rest for Tallah. She groaned as she nearly fell out of bed, head light with the shock of being woken so suddenly.

Has she gone insane? She groaned as she rose from the mires of terrible sleep.

‘She’s having a mild existential epiphany,’ Christina replied. ‘I think it’s adorable.’

Can’t she have it quieter? What’s she doing?

‘Enjoying herself by the looks of things.'

She lit a flame sprite and spun in around her fingers. Vergil was asleep on the top bunk, splayed out in such fashion that one leg hung over the edge. It would take one turn for him to end up on the floor. She tucked his errant limb back in as she moved for the door.

Sil still had a black eye and split lip. What had gotten into that one to get into a cat-fight tumble with that elendine, Tallah would never guess.

Everyone’s losing their bloody minds, she thought as she drew on her battered and abused under armour. The stink of it was a mixture of blood, pus, and too much mud. It still survived in spite of efforts from a hundred monsters trying to carve her heart out. Mertle had really outdone herself. That thought shot a stab of guilt through her chest.

Everyone’s losing their bloody minds. Myself included.

‘Shush the drama, Tallah,’ Christina admonished. ‘You may not have noticed but Anna’s doing the work. Bianca’s overseeing, but seems so far things are going splendidly.’

Well, that, at least, was a blessing.

She closed the door behind herself, stumbled down the stairs, and sat at her stool in the main room. Her head throbbed with the suddenness of waking. Her back and legs ached. She was bruised in places she didn’t need bruising in. With their stock of accelerants nearly depleted and the healers at the ward constantly occupied, she hadn’t gotten around to getting healed.

Anna’s talents, while a welcomed addition, worked in more direct fashion that a healer’s would’ve. A Vitalis’s healing bloody hurt and left her sore for days.

“Yer up early,” Miks said as he wiped down the bar in front of her. Why he did that, she’d never bothered to ask. “Get you something?”

“Anything that’s not beer,” she answered hopefully. Beer was fine and all, but she wasn’t a big fan of it. At times like these, she missed Aliana. Her spirits had fire in them.

The rest of the room was quiet, the adventurers mostly asleep or quietly contemplative. This was the second mood of the tavern’s daily life cycle, the one where those that remained didn’t need to be bothered and didn’t need companionship.

What did they do all bloody day?

“What do they do all day?” she asked the tavern master.

“Mull about, mostly. Drink me out of house and home.” He set a small thimble glass in front of her and poured something out of a bottle he held wrapped in a kitchen rag. “Some do odd jobs here and there. Sewing. Working the smithy. Brewing. The usual. There’s not much work to be done with a siege out there.”

Tallah couldn’t see what the bottle was, but the liquid in the glass… frothed? She studied the oily sheen on top and the bubbles rising to form a thin foam.

“This ain’t some kind of beer, I hope.”

Miks encouraged her to drink it. She did. It went down like a guillotine’s blade into her stomach. She sputtered, coughed, and nearly retched from the kick of it.

“Bone and marrow, what’s this?!” She put a hand to her mouth as she continued coughing the vile thing.

Miks leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “Boiled tzaik. Cooled down and carbonated.”

She’d heard that last word before. They made water like that back in Valen. She’d never tried it as most described it as a kind of beer with no actual taste. Like chewing rocks.

This… was vile. It woke her up, yes, but it wasn’t drinkable. She pushed the glass away.

Miks grinned. “Not a fan, I take it?”

“Not a fan, no.” She emphasized the point by licking the heel of her glove to be rid of the taste.

“Did wake ya.”

That it did. But her stomach would bubble and complain for the rest of the night at least.

“When the other woman that's with me wakes up, tell her and the boy to head down to Liandra’s. They should be able to teach the crone something new.”

“Liandra’s dead,” Miks said. “A bad cough took ’er.”

That gave her pause. ‘Her son?”

“Alive and drunk. Doesn’t tend to the gardens as much as he ought.”

“My friends can straighten him out. Tell them to go there and talk shop. Sil will understand. I don’t need them at the wall tonight.”

She pushed her chair back, rose and headed to the door. The tzaik boiled in her stomach unhappily, reminding her she hadn’t eaten any proper meals in a while.

“Tallah,” Miks called to her back.

When she turned, the big tavern master looked slightly abashed. “Caragill's about. Serves on the western wall. Ye want… I send word?”

A shiver went up her spine at the sound of a name she hadn’t thought of in a long time. A combination of it and the drink made her stomach tighten into a cramping mess. The last thing she needed was more ghosts from her past haunting about.

“No. Don’t have the time for his nonsense,” she answered.

‘You strode away right quick,’ Christina mused. ‘Who’s that? I don’t remember you mentioning the name before.’

“Bugger off.” She immediately regretted the answer as Christina’s curiosity echoed louder.

‘Testy. Now I need to know. Old lover?’

She refused the bait as she attacked the stairs. Instead, she reassessed her current standing.

If Anna could handle the work—and they would know by the end of the night if she could—then Tallah could have access to both Christina and Bianca for the next part of her plans. For all that Anna was capable of, her skills weren’t needed in the next endeavour.

Bianca would have complaints enough for the three of them combined.

‘What are you scheming to draw my attention away?’ Christina asked, playful in her prodding. At least someone was in a bloody good mood for once. ‘Channel with me.’

Tallah obliged the request. And part of her looked forward to doing the same with Anna, now the ghost had shown an interest. She’d need to ask later what had lit the fire under the Vitalis’s arse in such spectacular fashion.

Could this work three ways, I wonder?

It got back a feeling of scholarly inquisitiveness. Christina would consider the prospect.

‘I’ve wanted to try with Bianca, but it doesn’t work if you’re not part of the equation.’ Christina’s power thrummed in Tallah’s veins as if to prove the point. ‘We are, as much as can be, beholden to your strength. Without you, we cannot function as we did in life. The thread is not strong enough to channel through. You are. Every time we do this, you grow stronger.’ Christina sent an image of a grin. ‘It becomes easier to deal with your affliction.’

She hadn’t known that. All she knew of the work was that it involved a trade-off between the ghosts and the traps. Neither Christina nor Bianca wanted to talk much about it. They only did their job. Anna was the first to show elation in pursuing said function.

After the previous night’s exercise in fighting off that monster, Tallah had expected pain. There was some, yes, like a strained muscle. But it was a far cry from what she’d endured after fighting Anna and burning out on casting Disintegration. The endurance race that had been the hunt for Erisa had also depleted her, but not quite as severely. However she thought on things, she was better now. Her capacity was better.

And her control…

For once she didn’t quite feel like a clash with Catharina would be an impossible task. She knew how the empress fought, what power she could bring to bear, how devastating she could be if she took to the field. Together with the Adjunct, she was a force of nature. With Falor, they were a cataclysm that could lay waste to half of the Dominion if they chose.

Tallah had to be stronger than that.

And she was getting there. Day by day, fight by fight, she was growing. And this little trick from Grefe was going to pave her way to new heights.

Christi, why are you needling me?

‘I’m not.’

Your mindscape’s bleeding into mine.

That got the ghost quieted. ‘Are you certain?’

Yes, she was quite certain. She was a vain woman, but she wasn’t as arrogant as her recent thoughts. In her mind, she understood the gulf she had to cross to reach the strength she needed. She was impulsive, not insane. And this fancy, this arrogance, was uncharacteristic of herself.

It was Christina’s way of looking at life.

‘Fancy that. We are indeed bleeding into one another. I don’t see it as an issue.’ Christina offered a mental shrug. ‘We don’t know everything about this method of grafting. It might simply be the end effect of coexistence, for the grafted to be subsumed. I wouldn’t mind it.’

Cycling illum within one another refined it. What they now shared, even on a low-level exercise, was a different kind of strength. When they both dismissed it, and Tallah absorbed the combined illum into her store, its taste was like nothing she’d encountered before.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“We’ve been fools,” she admonished herself. “We’d assumed that because they knew the same basics as us, they had little else to teach.” Apparently, the dwellers of Grefe had reached an understanding of illum that modern scholars couldn’t even dream of. And it required a type of trust that was hard to come by in modern times.

What would Panacea know, given her age? By the guardian’s admission, the so-called goddess was at least five thousands cycles old.

Her thinking time got cut short when she walked headfirst into Vilfor’s back.

‘We need to stop doing this. Someone’s going to stab us in the back some day.’

“Evening, Cinder,” the vanadal said as he turned. He had his chin up and there was a very human-like smile on his face. “Yer up early.”

“Do you ever sleep, Vilfor?”

Did anyone at the Rock? She rubbed at her forehead and stared up at the ant-like frenzy up on the walls. Some men were shouting. Arrows flew.

“We’re under attack?” She made to rush past, but a strong hand on her shoulder stopped her in place.

“Nothing serious so far,” the vanadal said. He began walking up the stairs that led to his map room. “Come. You’re not needed tonight. Only beastmen out there. Ye gave them a proper fright yesterday.”

She had. Killing that many in one strike, and then culling whatever had slithered inside, would have unbalanced the more dangerous creatures hanging back. For now it would be hard for them to muster a proper assault here, if whoever or whatever led them had any sense.

Vilfor opened the door to his office and let her walk in first. Several others were already there, waiting. Her eyes fell to one particular man.

“I believe you know Caragill,” Vilfor rumbled as he walked in. “If ye don’t, he’s our scout master.”

Dark-haired, green-eyed, tall and spindly, Caragill still bore the scars she’d left him with. They had the shape of fingers on his face and neck. For whatever reason she failed to understand—and didn’t want to consider—he’d decided not to have those healed.

He didn’t flinch as their gazes met. She looked away first and felt her heart thunder at the idea.

“Good that you’re all here,” Tallah said without acknowledging her old Claw. “I need to know the status of the Anvil.” She pointed a finger at Vilfor. “I want straight, clear answers. No more of your shite.”

Around the map table there was Caragill setting up some tokens, Dorin and Albert, Kor the healer—he’d aged a century in less than a decade since she’d last seen him—and several others she didn’t know. But she suspected they were the commanders on the other walls. If the attacks had lessened, now they could gather and plan in earnest.

A roar filled the world outside. They all looked up and waited. It came again, more distant. Then it was nothing but an echo.

“Dragon not landing,” voices called outside. “See to the beasts.”

“Seems the lizard doesn’t care to risk dealing with that pest from yesterday,” Vilfor said. “Right, then.”

“The Anvil’s not dead,” Caragill said. His voice rasped unpleasantly. Tallah watched the scars move on his throat as he drew breath. “It’s not taken. There’s fighting in the fields. We managed to get as far as the Bloody Hand. Close enough to get a good assessment.”

“Fighting outside the walls? Or inside?” Vilfor asked.

“On the walls. The daemons don’t pick up their dead. There’s flies enough there to choke the skies. The fighters can’t light the pyres during the day.” He pointed to a token on the map named ‘dragon’. “We were going to push on, but then the dragon came roaring through. Got the siege forces scrambling.”

“That’s decent news then.” The vanadal rubbed his hands together. “We are going to—”

“You aren’t going to do anything except man the walls,” Tallah cut him off. All eyes turned to her. “I’m heading over there.”

“I don’t have a force to give you,” Vilfor said, all levity gone. “And I’m not stupid enough to let you get yourself killed.”

“I don’t need a force,” Tallah said. “And you don’t get to allow me to do anything. You can spit shine my boots if you mean to do anything, but otherwise I go where I please.”

“The Cauldron is seething,” Caragill said. He didn’t look at her. “We don’t see it from here. There are war bands roaming the crater. They are setting up siege equipment.”

That got a roar of commentary around the room. Tallah ignored it. She only looked at Vilfor.

“I don’t care how many there are. I am your best hope of relieving the Anvil.”

“We assume the portal’s in the main crater now,” the scout master went on. “That’s where we’ve seen the most movement. They’re digging down. Probably they’re also digging our way now they’ve got the big critters out.”

“You heard the man,” Vilfor said. “Ye can fly, fine. But there’s plenty beasts out there who can use a bow or sling.”

Tallah felt her blood-red anger rising, her patience fraying. It was easier to work with Sil and Vergil. They barely questioned her. She had too much to explain to argue the point here. “What happened to the tunnels, Vilfor? And enough pussy footing about. I need good intel.”

The vanadal’s shoulders slumped as if she’d struck him in the nether region. He avoided her gaze.

“We got daemons in the tunnels,” he finally confessed. “They dug into the city. We had to fight ’em off when we lost the cadre.”

“Did you seal the tunnels?”

Christina had kept quiet thus far, but now her interest was piqued. ‘There are tunnels to the other side of the Cauldron? I’ve never heard of them.’

Vilfor growled. “Of course I had them sealed. Don’t mock me, Cinder.”

Now things made sense at long last. Vilfor couldn’t coordinate his efforts with the Anvil’s because they’d lost their connecting lifeline.

“All the tunnels?” she prodded.

“All. We got hit from every way imaginable.”

Of course he had. Christina’s mind raced. Tallah could feel the concepts turning over in the ghost’s imagination, arriving at the same suspicion she had.

‘I can’t help but notice this is exactly what one could do if the goal was to weaken the empress,’ Catharina chirped. ‘Destabilise the empire’s most volatile region. Break the seal and allow daemons out into the country proper. Sow chaos. Force the empire to react. Tallah, this could work for our benefit.’

It can’t actually. Think on it some more.

What Christina failed to take into account was that this sort of manoeuvre would put armies between them and Catharina. If the Twins fell entirely, Catharina’s armies would need to march down into the south for a long, drawn out campaign. Catharina and her entourage would need to take to the field of battle, and that would put them anywhere imaginable on the eastern coast of Vas.

Reaching Aztroa would be next to impossible for Tallah without a spearhead of her own.

And, worst of all, if she allowed this debacle to continue she would serve as a pawn to whoever was orchestrating events. That would simply not stand.

A flame sprite ignited on her finger and began orbiting her hand. A second followed. It helped her focus and strive for calm.

“I can fly to the Anvil, yes,” she said, words measured and careful. “And I can fight my way across the sky. Short of that dragon or the white-faced daemon, I trust I can handle anything. I want you to be ready to retake the tunnels once I succeed my mission.”

“Your mission is not to go out there,” Vilfor insisted. “Morale is barely recovering here. If you get yourself killed out in the Cauldron, I may as well count the Rock as dead.”

Voices agreed to this estimation. His men had been quietly watching the discussion unfolding, but now they were siding with him.

This was too much. She leaned over the table, knuckles pressed on the map, and pinned the vanadal with her gaze.

“I am one woman, Vilfor. I broke them yesterday. I will break them tonight. I will break them tomorrow. But I am just one woman.” She called on Bianca’s help and dragged the vanadal towards her until he leaned in above the map. “I. Will. Fall. Unless we decide, here and now, that we will not simply wait to die. Unless we free the Anvil and retake the tunnels, the Rock is lost.” She swept her gaze out from Vilfor—who hadn’t even noticed her grasp on him—across the rest of those gathered.

They were all veterans. Some had fought the daemons since before she took the Cinder moniker. If she were still in the empire’s service, some of them would outrank her in Catharina’s eyes.

But they were all being stupid now.

“Surviving is not enough. I saw the city, Vilfor. I saw your food stock’s low. I saw your men are tired and wounded and struggling. I fought that white-faced monster within the walls. If it turned on you, you’d not survive.” She gestured in the general direction of the wall. “For pity’s sake, it could have blown a hole in the wall anytime it liked. If that doesn’t concern you, I may as well take my people and leap the ravine out of here. Because the Rock is lost, and you’re being too stubborn to see it.”

Silence answered her. She’d taken hope away and hated herself for it, but it had to be done. Simply defending this miserable mountain wouldn’t be enough. It would take a miracle to survive until summer. By the time the relief force would get there, all of them would be hanging off the walls, skinned and rotted.

“I will get to the Anvil. I will help them clear their walls. Then we will coordinate to reestablish a proper status quo. We are done fighting on the enemy’s terms.”

That had been the stick. Now to bring out the carrot. She grinned as she slit open her rent and withdrew the treasure she’d pilfered from Ludwig’s corpse.

Gasps errupted as she revealed the blue burst of light from a shard. “I own a set of these.”

She faced the vanadal’s yellow gaze evenly, but felt Caragill’s eyes crawling over her. She knew the feeling entirely too well. “Once I arrive at the Anvil, we can connect our forces. We can start shattering the bigger threats. If that won’t be good for morale, I don’t know what will.” She squeezed out the light from the shard, encasing it in her fist.

Now the room was aflame in discussions. Catharina had never allowed shards at the Twins for the simple worry they might fall in the daemon’s claws. It was bad enough for the creatures to escape the Cauldron, but for them to have easy access of transporting the worst of their kin across the mountains, that was too much to risk.

But now, here was the solution to their problems. Tallah only needed to cross the battlefield once. If she managed that, a bridge would be established.

“We have reasonable estimations of force deployments,” Caragill said in his low rasp. His voice cut through the noise “If we move quickly enough, the maps will be useful and precise.” He pointed to the table and its arrangements of pieces. “If she crosses from the Rock to eastern gulch, then cuts through the ravine, she might end up on the Silent Hill before many of the beasts catch wind of her.” It wasn’t a straight line at all on the map, but Tallah could see the merit of this approach. “From there, it’s the Woods. If she flies low, she can keep hidden in the canopy almost to the Bloody Hand.”

“What about the dragon?” one of the men asked. “It’s been hunting in that area.”

“The dragon doesn’t range at the Bloody Hand. No corpses there. It could be an issue here.” He pointed on the table to the open area between the fingers of the Bloody Hand and the Anvil’s gate. “Here are the swarms and the mounds of the dead. I don’t know why they’re keeping corpses rotting there, but it’s odd behaviour.”

He cast his eyes over the table and met hers. She hadn’t meant to accept the look, but didn’t back down from it now.

“Nothing a pyromancer’s fire can’t handle, I’m sure,” he said, voice dripping cold venom.

Part of her wanted to reject his entire idea out of hand and propose an alternative route.

Her route would be suicidal. She knew it. Even Christina smelled it on her by the way she coaxed Tallah’s feelings to calm.

‘I am reasonably certain he’s an old lover of yours,’ the ghost teased. ‘Or else you wouldn’t be getting so flustered just about now.’

“It’s a good route,” she heard herself saying without even looking back at the map. “It can be done and it should be done. In tomorrow’s light.”

“There are the traitors out there.” Vilfor went on. Whatever resistance he’d offered to the idea lay shattered now. “I would send archers to weed them out, but I can’t spare the men.”

Tallah cracked her knuckles, making the sprites pop with dull little bangs. “I wouldn’t mind having a chat with my wayward colleagues,” she said, grin feral on her face. She had a whole list of things to test against live targets that she couldn’t do with just her ghosts. An ambush would be just the thing to get her on the right track on some of the more illusive effects she and Christina were developing.

Vilfor raised all his arms and let out a low, long sigh. “I can’t reason with ye, can I?”

“You’ve done an admirable job wasting our time, yes,” she put in, not unkindly. “But I believe this is our best chance to get this invasion under control. Get a squad ready to send out through the collapsed ravine. Mage killers, preferably. Get them some of those adventurers down there to help. They’re about ready to blow anyway.”

Those had been Vergil’s very flustered words. He’s stumbled over himself relaying the idea to her, but she got the gist of it. It was good information, and she’d praised him for it.

There was no little amount of worry on Vilfor’s face as he took in the room and everyone staring. She’d been undermining him throughout the entire conversation. It wasn’t a goal in itself, but it was necessary to bring the big guy out of his shell. He’d been so terrified of failing the post he’d inherited, that he’d turned into a coward.

It was time things changed.

“Albert, go and draft the best you can find among those layabouts. Anyone that’s done real scouting before and can smell an ambush. Don’t believe two words in three from most of ‘em. Check ‘em. I want ‘em ready by this time tomorrow.”

Albert saluted and headed out of the room.

Tallah rubbed her hands and felt her back itch with a particular gaze staring hard at her. She ignored it.

“Right, gentlemen. Let’s plan this out and give our friends out there a real bloody nose. It’s about time we stopped hiding in this piss hole and started fighting back.”