Tallah

The doppelganger mimicked every word Vergil said, and it flailed its arms about in a simulated panic.

“Stop that and calm down. Don’t be a child. We’re not hurting you.” Tianna’s words cracked like a whip.

Sil walked around the cowed, twitching creature, her face twisted into an unpleasant expression. “You have been starved for a long time,” she said and scrunched up her nose. “Hunger is a very powerful transformational state for a person, of any species. While you’ve been in that state, you have been tempted by your captors and have broken under that temptation, in some way I’d rather not know about.”

She waved a hand at the doppel, “This is the transformation your inner self was undergoing when we found you. Had Aliana and her priestesses not cared for you, this is what you would have eventually become. This, or dead.”

“Teach later. Pay attention now,” Tianna intervened. “Come and look at this.”

She pointed at the thing’s chest, above where its heart would be. Under the shiny, oily surface mimicking skin, a deep red cancerous growth pulsed steadily. Sil walked around to it. Red tendrils extended like veins, pulsing in a steady rhythm.

“It looks like an infection,” Sil said. She sketched and wrote in a leather-bound booklet. “Does it feel familiar?”

“I’ve never seen absolutely anything like it. I assume it’s divine by the way it’s built, but I have no idea which one of the maggots could have made it. Seems too subtle to be Ort or Isadora. Definitely not Anatol.”

Tianna prodded the heart—at least, that’s what it looked like to Vergil—with a gloved finger. A spark of electricity danced on her finger as she did.

Vergil screamed and the growth on his copy pulsed in agitation, more tendrils growing out of it and stabbing at its host.

“Hostile little bugger,” the sorceress noted while Vergil’s calmed down, ventilating hard.

“You prodded it.” Sil shrugged. “I’d be hostile too if you electrocuted me.”

“Please don’t do that again. It hurt.” Vergil felt faint. He wasn’t sure he would still be standing if he weren’t quite literally rooted to the spot.

“I don’t have equipment here to excise it without killing him, I think.” The sorceress looked up at Sil, who shook her head. “It’s latched on tight and reacts this hard even on the doppel. I need it separated to study it properly. I could just capture it whole…”

“You can’t kill him. Aside from the fact that it would be daft to do it now, after we dragged him here and paid a small fortune for him, you’d announce yourself to the entire Guard. They’re jittery enough already.” Sil gave her a long look with a raised eyebrow. “Remember the chaos you caused when you took Bianca in Aztroa? With an Egia sniffing about, you could just as well go up to the Lord Commander and kick him in the shin.”

Tianna cursed and walked away.

“Sorry.” Sil shrugged and, with a gesture of her hand, released Vergil from whatever curse was holding him.

The copy shivered in the air as if struck by a heat haze and then puffed into dark smoke. The sorceress cracked open a window.

Vergil collapsed to the floor, the goblet rolling away from him. His teeth chattered. He wasn’t so much cold as intensely terrified of his two saviours, of how casually they had discussed possibly executing him, of the disappointment in the sorceress’ voice and the pain they had so casually inflicted on him. He couldn’t parse which horrified him more.

“I need to have him along until we get back to Solstice.” Tianna poured herself a glass of some yellow liquor from a carafe, looking morose out the window. “I have things in my Sanctum that will help me study it without killing him.”

“I’m not babysitting,” Sil was quick to reply, hanging up and covering her staff. She sat at one of the worktable, lighting a brazier.

“No, we’ll put the helmet back on him and we’ll take turns in keeping the effect going. At least we’ll have a front line like that, if the ghost plays nice.”

Vergil tried to stammer something but neither woman paid him any attention. Whatever they had done to him, he could barely move, feeling his body turned leaden. He couldn’t take his eyes off them though, afraid one of them would hurt him again.

Sil was studying a bi-horned helmet on her desk. It had a penis drawn on it in bright red paint.

“I really wish I hadn’t used such good pigment for this. Now it’ll draw attention,” she mumbled, scratching at the paint. It stubbornly refused to flake off.

“Least of my worries.” Tianna set her empty glass on her table and walked towards the door, stepping over Vergil’s splayed form. “I’ll have a long bath and then we’ll see how we plan our next moves. He’s all yours, healer.”

She talked to herself. Vergil couldn’t catch the words, but she was definitely having a conversation on her way out of the room.

It took some time before Sil remembered he was still there. She scribbled in her notebook and nibbled on the end of her pencil, completely oblivious to him struggling to crawl away.

Where to, exactly? He had no idea. But he’d seen these people before, on the Gloria, in every core crew member that looked at him like he was less than human.

The helmet clattered at his feet, bounced twice, and stopped against his leg.

“The weakness will wear off on its own. Don’t force yourself.” Sil was looking at him from her table, her chin resting in her palm. “Congratulations, Vergil. You now own a cursed artefact. Don’t poke an eye out with it, all right?”

He stared at the ugly thing resting against his trouser leg. It was little more than a grey metal dome with two horns fastened on top of it. A T-shaped visor had been roughly cut in one side of it, just enough for whoever used the helmet to see out of.

Malice radiated off it. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he wanted to pick up the ridiculous thing and settle it on his lap.

“Who are you two?” Terror strangled the words into a squeaking mess. At least he had gathered enough of himself to look up at the healer.

Her lips quirked into a mirthless little smile and he felt like a child ready to wet himself.

“Two very unpleasant and dangerous people. And you are an excessively unlucky one,” she responded candidly.

A pregnant pause stretched out between them. She moved away from the table and he managed to get himself up in a sitting position. Breathing came easier and he was already feeling tingles in his hands and feet, sensation returning slowly and painfully.

To his surprise, Sil came and sat next to him, an arm’s length away. She sighed heavily.

“In the interest of honesty, I need to confess that I have touched your mind, Vergil. You were in no state to consent, so I apologise now for the invasion.” She shrugged, not waiting for an answer from him. “We weren’t intent on saving you. I was dead set against it, actually.” She had no remorse to show over this. Her voice said as much. “What I saw in your head, about the… what was it called? The Gloria? Yes, that. It interested Tallah a great deal. It’s why you’re here now and why we paid for your treatment. This is not a blessing in disguise.”

Vergil didn’t know how to respond to any of this, and it didn’t look as if Sil expected him to have an opinion. She went on.

“I think I have an idea of what you must be thinking now. We frighten you. This is not what you may have hoped for when waking here. You expected adventure. And maybe some glory? Instead, there was blood and death, and you fell into the care of two bastards.”

She sidled closer and inclined her head towards him. She kept her eyes staring forward as she talked, her voice lowered to little more than a whisper.

“I’m impressed you’re taking it as well as you are. Understand, however, that there are no heroes here. There is no righteous cause to follow, no glory to earn, no dragon to slay.” She stopped and thought for a moment, her smile turning just a fraction. “Well, there are dragons. But slaying one is a faer tale at best.”

“What do you want to do with me?” Vergil asked. He darted a look after Tianna, fear of her returning clawing inside him. “Is she going to kill me?”

Sil shook her head. “I doubt it. She likes to talk big but doesn’t kill on whims. You are interesting to us. When that interest runs out we’ll cut you loose if we’re certain you won’t be an issue. Will you be an issue, Vergil?”

Her eyes now bore into his and she smiled so like Sidora that it twisted the words out of him. “No. I swear on my life that I won’t be.”

“You have no idea what you’re saying. It’s adorable. If I were you, I’d weigh my words more before spilling them out.” She shrugged, pushed herself to her feet and offered him a hand. “Stand. You should be able to by now.”

He gingerly took her help and rose to his feet, his other hand holding tight the helmet. The soles of his feet stung as if he stepped on pins, but he stood unassisted and shuffled about.

“Go and eat something. Don’t be shy of it but pace yourself. Sap healed you but it did not nourish you. Eat slowly or you’ll cramp up, and you’re in no fit state for any of my medicine to help.”

As he turned towards the cart of food, she went on, her voice quiet enough that he strained to hear.

“I will remember what you just swore to me. Tallah’s fire is much kinder than what my talents can do. You’ll remember that I hope.”

She dismissed him with a gesture, not expecting an answer from him as she sat at her desk and wrote in a thick, leather-bound book.

He ate as instructed, small nibbles of food such as he’d never tasted before, making a determined effort not to gorge himself. For some reason he had no taste for meat. The smell of it, when he uncovered the pot, made him gag. Instead, he filled a plate with vegetables, cheese, bread and an odd assortment of spreads, and sat in a chair in the common room, creeping about to not disturb the aelir healer.

“You don’t need to carry that around, you know.”

He jumped at the words and chocked. He hadn’t noticed her move from the desk.

Sil offered him a pitcher of water.

“Easy, boy, I don’t bite. Put that down.”

It took him a moment, once he forced down the lump in his throat, to realize that he was holding the horned helmet on his lap. Reluctantly he set it besides his chair.

She held a notebook in one hand and her gnawed-on pencil in the other. “Eat. I’ll ask some questions. Answer as you can.”

“What about?” he asked, cringing back. Their curiosity, he feared, was a mercurial, terrible thing. It had saved his life, true, but who knew how long that goodwill could last.

“Relax. Let’s talk for a bit about that place in your head. The Gloria Nostra, yes? Tell me about that thing thinking for you.”