Jaedenar itself was less a traditional settlement than an abscess in the diseased forest. What passed for a main street was little more than a muddy scab worn clear of undergrowth, wandering from the gaping cavern mouth that was the formal entrance of the Shadow Hold, through the center of a slightly denser cluster of ramshackle huts, before petering out at the edge of an emerald-tinted creek. Repurposed night-elven ruins butted up against piecemeal new construction in styles cribbed from all corners of Azeroth. The town had no defined borders; it might appear to sink into the forest in one direction, only for a clutch of rickety shacks to appear behind the next rise like woody toadstools.
Callista led her companions through the gap between a ring of hide tents and the burned husk of an Ancient of War, following her vague memories of the single time she'd visited Jaedenar towards the human quarter. As she'd predicted, the felguards stationed around the outpost paid them no mind. With the paladins armed with the shortswords and secondhand armor their captors had provided, they were indistinguishable from any other bedraggled group skulking out of Felwood.
"If those fiends damage my hammer, I'll mash their heads into pudding and serve it up in consecrated bowls," Wynda grumbled. She examined their surroundings with disdain, fingering the tattered hilt of her replacement sword.
Azlia giggled. "You could try, mortal."
"Ew," Ander said approvingly, winking at the succubus.
Aren, supporting Ander as he limped on his wounded leg, remained broodingly silent. Callista could feel his eyes boring into her, but she found his anger less unsettling than Ander's forced cheerfulness. Now that they were on the move, he seemed determined to pretend his earlier outburst hadn't happened, flirting outrageously with Azlia and grinning with almost manic intensity. His exaggerated attempts to impersonate himself made her nervous. Exhausted and on-edge, she only wanted to find a place to hole up before they drew unwanted notice.
She side-stepped to avoid a pack of imps as they scampered past, chattering raucously in low demonic.
"If the Sentinels only knew," Wynda groused. She looked as though she were considering aiming a good kick at the hindmost one.
It made a rude gesture at her before skittering off with simian agility.
"Oh, they know," Callista said. "But we're far from the nearest settlement, and Jaedenar's not foolish enough to provoke a full assault."
"More's the pity."
Away from the cavern at the outpost's heart, the leaf-littered paths they trod were mostly empty. An occasional robed figure watched them from a doorway or furtively avoided eye contact as it sidled past. Callista adjusted the hood of her own cloak, purely out of habit; no chance of remaining anonymous here this time.
The decaying trees clustered densely enough to strangle the late-morning sun before opening suddenly into a white stone courtyard. Browning weeds drooped between cracked cobbles, a tangled profusion of thorns bristling from the bowl of a dry fountain.
"This is it." Callista said. "The Shattered Moon."
"Blasted heathens," Wynda muttered, eyeing the building's front with distaste.
The inn inhabited the shell of what had once been a Kaldorei temple, before someone had, as best as Callista could guess from the scorch marks and the grown-over crater that caused its entire facade to list to the right, dropped an infernal onto it. Broad stairs spilled from its greening worked-copper doors, open now to catch the morning commerce. An elegant colonnade curved from the temple's left side, but new construction had been grafted onto the blasted shell of its right, rough timber covering the damage like ugly scar tissue.
"At least they'll speak Common inside," Callista said.
At this hour of the morning the tavern area was mostly empty, save for a pair of Forsaken hunched over a table in the back corner and the bartender, a whip-muscled orc women whose head was shaved around her black ponytail.
"Two rooms, please," Callista said, approaching the bar.
The orc appraised the five of them with a jaded air. "How are you plannin' to pay?"
"Bill my account with the Sweetwater. Here." She tore a slip of paper from the stack sitting on the bar and seared an identifying rune onto it. She would definitely be presenting the Argent Dawn with the bill when this was all over. Due to the contamination of the surrounding land, most of the food in Jaedenar needed to be brought in by cart or by portal, and prices were exorbitant as a result.
The orc grunted in acknowledgment, expression softening only slightly now that she was assured of an open line of credit. She pried a pair of keys from a bristling ring and slapped them onto the bar. "Room numbers are on the keys. Outside to the right."
The orc's directions led them back beneath the colonnade, where the line of doors that had once belonged to minor priestesses' quarters had been numbered and fitted with cheap locks.
"What do you think fel magic does to bedbugs," Ander wondered, eyeing the temple's moss-stained stone.
"Can I stay, mistress? Pleeeaaase," Azlia begged.
Callista considered her, the succubus's large almond eyes widening in silent appeal. Normally, letting her minion run loose wouldn't be worth the mischief, but she had broader concerns at hand. "Yes, actually," she said. "Go find your sisters. I want to know who's in Jaedenar right now."
Azlia licked her lip. "And what should I say when they ask what you're doing here?"
Callista shrugged, keenly aware how many ears might be listening behind the porous wood of the other doors. "Tell them the truth," she said. "My reputation caught up with me in Stormwind, and as a result I'll be staying in Felwood for a while."
"Uh-huh," Azlia said, brushing her gaze over the paladins with a smirk. She turned to go, glancing back over a delicate shoulder with a little moue - "Try not to have too much fun without me."
Callista drew up one corner of her mouth speculatively. "Bring any felguards back here, and I'll banish you both to whatever part of the Nether spawns twelve eyed void terrors."
After so long in monstrous surroundings - the twisted forest of Felwood, the catacombs below the Hold - the dingy rented room seemed almost unreal. Cheap stage dressing for what Callista was sure would be an unpleasant performance. If there had ever been glass in the narrow window, it had shattered in the assault that broke the temple. Instead, light filtered through roughly- hewn shutters, striping the bare flagstoned floor and the smudged plaster of the walls. Callista perched on the edge of the lumpy mattress, studying what looked like an old felfire burn near the ceiling.
For all she remembered, she might have stayed in this very room during her last visit. Jaedenar had seemed more exciting, then. A bastion of forbidden power, rather than what she had quickly learned it to be: last precarious foothold of a failed invasion; lodestone to the desperate, the ambitious, and the vultures who preyed on both.
She dragged herself over to the basin resting on the little nightstand near the headboard, dipping a coarse cloth into the water and scrubbing the worst of the grime from her face. At some point she'd have to arrange a proper bath, but this would do for now.
Across from her, Wynda performed a similar ritual, unwrapping the filthy bandages that sheathed her wrist and eyeing the contents of her own pewter bowl doubtfully. "I trust this water won't make us sprout horns."
"It's pure," Callista assured her. "The river's a cesspool, but most of the wells draw from a cleansed aquifer beneath the caverns."
Wynda frowned. She looked briefly like she might ask the obvious question - how could there be clean water under the heart of this corruption? - but in the end she seemed to think better of it. She plunged her injured hand into the bowl, grimacing at the cold.
Callista exhaled silently into her washcloth, relieved. She happened to know the answer to the paladin's unspoken question, and it was unpleasant. As most things in Jaedenar tended to be. She'd delivered enough bad news lately.
The reprieve was short-lived, however, as Wynda spoke again, quietly so as not to be heard through the wall. "Give it to me straight, lass. What are the odds we find Vorthaal and Nathanial alive?"
She finished toweling her face, taking extra care with the cloth to delay answering, then dropped it into her lap. "Bad," she said, too exhausted to soften the blow.
Wynda appeared to have expected that answer. "How bad?"
"Very bad. No one seems to have any idea what happened to them, and unusual fates here typically aren't pleasant. If you want to know what I think…" She trailed off, not even sure she wanted to think too hard about what she thought. Callista had a good imagination and more experience than most with the Burning Legion; the two together yielded nothing palatable.
Wynda watched her impassively, waiting for her to continue.
Callista grimaced. "Some kind of soul engine would be my guess, if I really had to have one."
She nodded thoughtfully. "You think the demon means to use them in some spell? Aye, that makes a nasty kind of sense."
"I don't know what else he could be doing. None of us are valuable on our own, and demons don't typically have much use for slaves." She cocked her head. "Actually, there is a slave market in Jaedenar, but if this other dreadlord were only trying to turn a quick coin, I doubt Nerothos would be so agitated."
"Right. So what did that fiend have to say about it?"
Callista laughed humorlessly. "Very little. As you might expect. If Vorthaal and Nathanial are meant as fodder for some spell, they're very likely already dead. And if they're dead, he loses his leash."
Wynda set her good elbow on her knee, resting her freckled chin against her knuckles to better eye her. "Doesn't seem like much of one anyway, given your...lack of conviction."
She shook her head. "It isn't, for me. But you're honorable paladins, who would never abandon your own while there's hope. And I may be a faithless Legion collaborator, but I'm also an Argent conscript, and if I ever want to set foot in Stormwind again, I need you to return with a glowing report of my good behavior. Or at least to return not dead."
Wynda gave a dry chuckle. "So that's the line you went with, aye? Aren must have loved that."
"Oh, I'm sure it didn't help."
Wynda sighed. "You know you've made this harder on yourself than it needed to be."
Yes. She could have turned around at Auberdine. "I've only done what I had to."
"Aye. And you were damned tight-lipped and imperious about it, too."
Callista narrowed her eyes, but Wynda continued before she could interject. "I don't think anyone takes issue with what you've actually done, lass. Not even Aren, once he gets a moment to breath and screw his head on straight. But the instant things got hairy, you cut us loose as fast as you could work the knife. Maybe you feel like we don't trust you, and aye, there's some truth to that. But it's not because of your history. It's because you've made it clear you don't trust us one whit."
Wynda wasn't wrong. Echoes of another conversation, worlds away - I know, I know. You're always sorry - rang unbidden in her ears. Old patterns. Perhaps she wasn't so different from the last version of herself who'd perched on the edge of one of these beds. It had always been her instinct, when things went careening sideways, to assume she was the most competent creature in the room and start excising complications immediately. It made her a good survivor and a bad friend.
She sighed. "What would you have had me do instead?"
"Just give us a chance, lass. You're so sure we'll choose poorly. So you take matters into your own hands, which makes us furious, which makes you think you were right all along."
"I tried telling you the truth. It didn't seem to help much."
"Aye, you told us some things. You explained why the dreadlord might know your name, and why we shouldn't ready the hanging rope for it. But not what to expect, or why we should trust his word now, or even what your own intentions are. We've had to take a lot on faith, without being offered much in return."
Callista breathed out, not quite another sigh, and studied her hands where they lay against the damp cloth in her lap. Dried blood remained trapped beneath her nails, despite the scrubbing. "I'm sorry it turned out this way."
It was not really an apology. There was sympathy beneath the incisiveness in Wynda's gaze anyway. "Sleep on it." She paused. "I'd pray for you, but I'm afraid the words would bounce like rain on a hot greased skillet."
Callista tossed the washcloth onto the nightstand and made a face. "Very funny," she said.
"Oooooh, you're in trouble now, mistress."
She woke some time later to Azlia's warm breath on her ear. She flinched away and shoved at the sayaad's thigh, but she proved impossible to dislodge from the bed. Despite her slight stature, Azlia was damnably strong. "What," Callista muttered into her pillow. Nestled in her snug cocoon of blankets, the fear and confusion of the past few weeks seemed pleasantly fuzzy. She had no desire to wake and sharpen them again.
"I said, 'you're in trouble'," Azlia practically sang.
The naked delight in her voice penetrated Callista's drowsy fog more successfully than her actual words. Azlia loved delivering bad news. Callista rolled over and peered crankily at her, hauling her thoughts up from a deep well of sleep. "Of course I'm in trouble. Look at where we are."
Azlia smiled slyly. "In bed?"
"Try again."
Azlia leaned over her, pushing a hand against the mattress on either side of her shoulders with a sinuous motion. Silky strands of her hair cascaded down to tickle Callista's neck as she licked her lips, savoring the taste of her own speech. "There was a scene yesterday. In the Shadow Hold."
"And?" Callista said, the last traces of her lethargy dissolving into mild exasperation. Trying to have a conversation this way was pointless. Looking at Azlia only provided an unobstructed and obviously carefully engineered view down her bustier.
She pressed a finger into the succubus' breastbone, pushing her away until she could sit up without planting her face in her chest.
Azlia submitted docilely, a wicked smile still playing about her lips. "Beltherac's deathknight returned one of Nerothos' spies yesterday. Without his tongue. Or his eyes. Or a few other pieces."
"So what?" Callista said, rubbing a knuckle into her eye. In truth, the phrase 'Beltherac's deathknight' gave her stomach an unpleasant turn, but she wouldn't give Azlia the satisfaction of seeing it. "Someone's always getting his tongue cut out in this miserable hole."
"I know. Isn't it exciting? The next one might be yours."
Her gaze tightened sourly. "I don't suppose you've ever run into Beltherac before."
Azlia sniffed, tail switching against the rumpled sheets. "Of course not. I don't socialize with nathrezim. All they care about is their silly little plots, and they never want to do anything fun. That's why I keep telling you not to get involved with them, not that you ever listen to my advice."
Callista rolled her eyes. Azlia patently hated Nerothos, though she suspected the reason was nothing so sound as that one. As a rule, Azlia only really enjoyed the company of creatures that would stare at her breasts long enough for her to try to hamstring them, and she doubted there were many dreadlords particularly susceptible to that trick.
"What else did you find? Anyone we might know skulking around?"
"Your little friend Laszlo's here representing the Sweetwater Cartel. And I met a sayaad who said her master came from Stormwind - Daeron something-or-other."
"Ha. I knew it!" Callista said.
Across the room, Wynda, roused by their voices, disentangled herself from the blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Despite having just woken, she looked sharp and alert. "Who let that fiend in?"
Azlia poured herself off Callista's bed to settle against the nightstand, dragging a finger idly along the neckline of her bustier. "It was a flimsy lock. Good thing mistress likes you, paladin."
Wynda looked suitably mistrustful at the idea of Azlia slinking around while she slept.
Callista shook her head, unperturbed by the ease with which she'd trespassed. Much as the succubus pretended to be purely decorative, she did have a handful of useful talents, mostly involving being places she shouldn't. "What time is it?" she asked, squinting at the light filtering through the shutters.
"Morning again, mistress," Azlia replied. "You slept forever. I was starting to get bored."
"Then go have the kitchens start making some breakfast." She looked at Wynda. "Think the others are up yet?"
Aren wasn't sure what to make of Jaedenar.
He'd left Ander snoring in their shared room, quietly performing his morning ablutions in the pre-dawn dimness before wandering out into the common area. He'd taken a seat at a table nestled between one of the fluted columns that marched down both sides of the rectangular room and the wall, keeping him out of sight but granting a good view of the door and the long bar that connected the columns across the way.
He had to admit that The Shattered Moon was a striking establishment, even if the desecration of the holy place repelled him. Decorative gaps in the high ceiling opened to the sky, providing natural light for what had once been elegant garden beds set into the tiles but were now swaths of packed earth and straw. At one end of the hall, the ornate double doors had been propped open, watched by a bored felguard leaning against one of the jambs. A large statue of Elune gazed down at him from the other end. Surprisingly, she remained mostly intact, though someone had fastened crude horns to her forehead and scrawled runes across her naked torso, making her resemble a female satyr with an oddly beneficent expression.
Aside from the statue, the felguard bouncer, and the occasional imp or succubus who passed through the doors, this might've been a strangely-proportioned inn near the mage quarter of any neutral city.
A man in wrinkled grey robes sat at one of the round tables near the bar, chewing on dried fruit and reading an outdated copy of the Gadgetzan Gazette. A blood elf woman and what appeared to be two orc bodyguards sat near the statue, the woman scribbling furiously on a sheet of parchment while the guards shared a pot of coffee. Two Forsaken - possibly the same pair from yesterday - conferred over a large tome in one of the corners.
Aren surreptitiously studied his fellow patrons, looking for some sign of unusual wickedness. Though he was sure there were very few good reasons for ending up in this room, the faces around him were decidedly average.
Familiar voices caught his ear as new customers entered the tavern.
Wynda strode through the wide copper doors with the air of a warden entering a particularly noisome prison yard. Clean bandages wrapped her wrist, the healing bruises on her face almost invisible from where he sat. Ander had acquired a stout stick to use as a cane, and he limped along on her heels with more enthusiasm than grace, gaze searching the room with avid interest bordering on delight. Behind them trailed Callista, watching her companions reactions with clear amusement. She'd pulled her hair up into the artfully artless knot he remembered from his first sight of her on the docks in Stormwind, rune-marked robes hanging open over her tunic in the fashion of Stormwind mages.
Aren had been about to hail them, but the sight of her so tied his tongue that he ducked back behind his pillar instead, silently cursing his cowardice. What possessed him? He wasn't the one who'd done anything wrong. Even so, the way they'd left it between them filled him with a formless guilt.
Fortunately, the orcish proprietor motioned Callista over to the bar, momentarily sparing him the awkwardness of facing her.
He leaned out and waved to Wynda and Ander, gesturing them to his table.
Ander plunked down into the chair on his left and dropped his stick with a clatter. "I'm starving! What do demons eat for breakfast?"
"Nothing, I'd wager," Wynda said, taking the seat on Ander's other side. "You're eating bread and summer sausage."
Despite their injuries, they both looked healthier than he'd seen them since their capture. The worrisome pallor had left Ander's face, strain no longer pinching Wynda's forehead into premature creases.
"How did you sleep?" Aren asked.
"Like a babe, until I woke up to Callista's half-dressed thrall leering over my pillow."
"Lucky," Ander said dreamily.
Wynda shot him a stern look. "I trust you haven't forgotten that creature is a demon."
"How could I? What with the wings, and those adorable horns...I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" he said, holding up his hands to fend off Wynda's scandalized glare. "I can't help having eyes! Besides, Callista's got a handle on her. I'm sure she's harmless."
"I think even she would deny that, lad," Wynda said.
"Deny what?"
Callista edged around the side of the column, avoiding Aren's gaze in a way that might have been accidental as she pulled out the chair next to Wynda. She dropped a folded letter onto the table in front of her as she sat.
"Succubus," Wynda said succinctly.
"Oh." She assessed Ander's expression - still moon-eyed. Leaning across the table, she waggled a hand past his face until he focused on her scowl. "Succubi are demons," she said in the same patient tone she might have used to explain whiskey is wet. "Do...not...sleep with demons."
Ander grinned, undismayed. "Is that theoretical advice, or have you ever - "
"What did the bartender want?" Wynda asked, pointedly cutting off what was sure to be an unproductive line of inquiry.
Callista scrunched her features at Ander in a caricature of disgust before prodding the letter gingerly with a fingernail. "She gave me this. Our instructions, I presume."
A circle of purple wax fastened the page, strangely smooth and unmarked where a seal would normally have been imprinted.
"Addressed to you?" Wynda asked, eyeing the innocent-looking missive with distrust.
"So I've been told," Callista said. She pulled a small pearl-inlaid switchblade from her pocket. Rather than using it to open the letter, she pricked her thumb and pressed a drop of blood into the wax.
It dissolved with an angry hiss as the letter unfolded in front of her.
"Why is everything gross blood magic with you people?" Ander asked, pulling a face.
Callista made an absent motion with the switchblade. "Something something, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like you should stick a knife in it," she said, smoothing the parchment out on the table with her other hand.
Aren craned his neck, trying to read the contents, but the characters were unfamiliar. Demon-speech, he supposed, since Callista appeared to be having no trouble.
"Well, lass?" Wynda prompted.
"Directions to a meeting place," she said. "I'll have to go alone."
"Why?" Aren asked. It was the first word he'd said to her in almost a day.
She glanced at him neutrally. If his suspicion annoyed her, she hid it well. "There are portal coordinates inscribed into the parchment. Passage for one only. It'll have to be me, unless you want to walk back from wherever it puts you."
"I don't like the feel of this," he said.
"And you think I do?"
It was tempting to suggest she ignore the letter's instructions - as much because he was tired of all their knowledge being filtered through the warlock's opaque agenda as because he feared for her safety - but he knew that would not be practical. They needed something to go on if they were to ever rescue Nathanial and Vorthaal. And if they planned to stay out of Jaedenar's cells themselves, immediate disobedience was not the way to do it.
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I suppose we have no choice," he said. "While you're doing that, the rest of us can explore the outpost. Get our bearings."
He was mildly surprised when Callista nodded. "That's a good idea. You should take Azlia with you. She's been here before."
Aren grimaced. He didn't relish the idea of spending more time in the succubus' company, but he did see how she could be useful. Among other things, she'd provide a veneer of legitimacy; despite the complete disinterest the occupants of Jaedenar had treated him with so far, he couldn't shake the feeling that at any moment someone would point a finger and shriek "paladin!", incinerating him on the spot.
"Don't worry, mortal," a velvety voice cooed close to his ear.
Aren jerked, alarmed to find the succubus almost leaning against his shoulder. He was certain he hadn't seen her approach.
The side of her breast brushed his arm as she slid him a coy glance, reaching over to place a platter of bread and sausage into the center of the table.
He shuddered at the touch.
"I know all the best places."
They hadn't lingered over breakfast. Seated around a table for the first time since Auberdine, the absence of their companions was as noticeable as a missing limb. Ander, sensing the strain, had teased and joked with uncommon ebullience, but there was something lost behind his eyes. Callista barely spoke at all, eating her bread and sausage with mechanical preoccupation while somehow managing never to look Aren's way. Only Wynda had seemed her usual steadfast self. Aren had been grateful when the last crumbs had been cleared and he could return to his room to prepare for their foray into Jaedenar.
Footsteps halted behind him as he struggled to fit the poorly-milled key into the lock.
"Can we talk?"
He glanced over his shoulder.
Callista stood in one of the bars of light that slanted into the colonnade. The sun burnished her hair to gold, but its brightness also obscured her expression, making it hard for Aren to know which woman he was dealing with: the charming, if arrogant, arcanist he'd traveled here with, or the calculating nightmare he'd discovered since they'd arrived.
She stepped forward into the shade of one of the columns, and the uncomfortable expression he found on her face reassured him. Slightly.
"About what?" he asked stiffly, finally fumbling the key into the lock. He pulled the door open and entered, leaving it ajar so she could follow if she chose.
She did, nudging it shut behind her. Gone was the icy poise he'd found so disconcerting during their meeting with the demon. Instead, she looked as though she'd closed the door as much to keep herself from backing out of it again as for privacy.
"I wanted to apologize," she said.
Aren couldn't decide if he was surprised. At or words or her attitude. And wasn't that the heart of the problem, even more than anything she'd truly done? His sense of her was so fragmented that he could no longer begin to guess what might be in her nature, for good or for ill.
"For what?" he asked flatly. He rummaged through the pile of gear he'd left on the floor, identifying his boiled leather breastplate and pauldrons and laying them on the bed.
There was a silence of several heartbeats - he imagined she was looking at him disbelievingly.
"For treating you like this was your fault. For not explaining myself." She paused again, but he didn't turn to look at her, continuing to sort his armor onto the bed. It wasn't a bad set, all things considered. Lighter than the solid plate he preferred, but a decent fit and well-made. He thought a brief word of prayer for the previous owner, hoping his fate hadn't been too cruel.
"For committing you to a path you had no choice in. For letting you be blind-sided." Her words fell like stones into the sun-warmed air between them. "Have I missed anything?" There was a faint thread of impatience in her tone, but mostly she just sounded tired.
He relented, turning. "What about Nerothos?"
Aren suspected that she was actually trying to be sincere, but, even so, she couldn't quite seem to help herself. She lifted a brow. "Apologize for him in a broad, existential sense? Or…"
It was all still too close for Aren to find it funny. "You know what I mean."
Her expression sobered repentantly. "Yes, I do." She sighed and crossed her arms. Even her eyes as she watched him seemed more yielding, no trace of the iron they'd so often held lately. "You want to understand what happened in that audience? Then consider this. Nerothos never had any intention of bargaining with you. He'd already made his ultimatum, and I accepted it simply by not spinning on my heel and leaving the Hold the moment he released me. Everything else was a mixture of farce and due diligence."
Aren nodded curtly. Most of that, he'd already guessed, though he didn't mind the confirmation. "Due diligence?"
She shrugged. "You're paladins. Enemies of the Shadow Council. Letting you loose in Jaedenar is a risk. I suspect he wanted to take your measure, make sure you weren't too dangerous to free, even nominally in his service."
He laughed, more humorlessly than he'd planned. "Good thing I didn't cut a very majestic figure."
She had grace enough to wince guiltily. "Believe me, you didn't want to."
"Is that why you turned on me?"
To his relief, she didn't try to deny it. Instead she wrinkled her nose sheepishly. "Partly," she admitted. "Partly because I'd already explained to him that I didn't join your cause voluntarily. Partly because I knew he'd feel better about letting us go together if we didn't seem too chummy."
Aren digested that. It did explain her sudden shift in demeanor. He almost told her she could have warned him, but he realized immediately that it wasn't true. He would have had to feign his reactions, and even in front of a much less perceptive audience than a dreadlord he was a poor dissembler. That still didn't mean he liked being used. "Don't do it again."
So subtly he would have missed it if he hadn't been searching her face, that chill composure settled over her again. "The demon got what he wanted. I don't think I'll have to."
That wasn't what he'd asked of her. It maddened him, how easily she slipped into that other self. No matter how vulnerable she looked, there was a part of him now that was ever vigilant, waiting for that collected mask to frost over her features and prove how little she really trusted him. He'd mostly come to terms with everything else - her dishonesty, her strange alliances - but that continued to cut.
He buried his anger until it smoldered out. Now was not the time to broach that topic - if there ever would be a time. Better to take advantage of her uncharacteristically forthcoming mood (and Light help him, he hated his own cynicism, but how else could he act when he needed someone he could not believe?). "When he pulled you aside in the hallway. What did he say to you?"
She shrugged. "He wanted to know what I was doing here. I told the truth, more or less. We argued. I lost. Obviously."
Obviously. "Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?"
She seemed to consider that for a moment. "Yes," she said. She approached him, finally, and for an uncertain moment he thought she might touch him, unsure what he'd do if she did. But rather than reaching out, she only sat on the bed next to his scattered armor. Her glance grazed his cheek before sliding sideways to meet his own. "I thought I could shield you from some of what I knew would happen here." The corner of her mouth twisted wryly. "But as Wynda told me in no uncertain terms yesterday, I made a terrible mess of it. It would still be much easier for you - and, if I'm being totally honest, me - if you'd let me handle the Shadow Council on my own, but I understand why you feel you can't."
Somehow, it had never occurred to him that she might have been trying to protect him. He flinched inwardly at some of the things he'd said. "Callista -"
She breathed a short laugh. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. Even if I succeeded, I know you wouldn't thank me for it later."
"No," he said quietly. "I wouldn't." Before his reason could catch up with the reflex he reached for her, brushing her arm with the back of his hand.
She looked startled, but didn't push him away. After a moment she closed her fingers gently around his.
"If you really want to be party to this," she said, looking up at him with a skewed smile, "at least let me give you some advice. Something I was told once."
In truth, he wasn't sure he wanted to be party to whatever she meant by 'this' - any of it. But willful ignorance would be no excuse if they met with tragedy here. Not to his superiors in Stormwind, if by some miracle he made it back to them, and even less so to his own already burdened conscience.
He nodded to show he was listening.
She held up two fingers of her free hand in what he was sure was affectionate mockery of some old teacher. "Second rule of summoning. When dealing with demons, the conversation is never really about whatever the conversation's about. It is always, always about power."
He rolled that over in his mind. "Meaning…"
"Meaning the truth is a sideshow, if it bothers to turn up at all. Pretense matters. Presence matters. Where you stand, how you carry yourself, who you support, matters at least as much as the substance of what you say."
Aren grimaced. His exact least favorite set of circumstances. No wonder he'd made such an ass of himself with the dreadlord. "You said that's the second rule. What's the first one?"
She grinned wolfishly. "'Never call up that which you can't put down.'"
The letter had said to meet at mid-day.
Callista latched the shutters of her rented room to keep out prying eyes, moving the basin from the nightstand to the floor to lay the parchment in its place. Digging a hand into the inner pocket of her robe produced the switchblade again. She flicked it open, nicking the pad of her thumb with its point and drawing a bead of blood that she smeared against the parchment.
The paper swallowed it hungrily. Runes bloomed beneath its surface, their venomous glow blotting out the ink.
She snatched up the letter and pocketed it with the knife, backing away from the nightstand as the sigils whirled into the air and resolved into an elliptical portal large enough for her to walk through.
As a rule, jumping into portals with dubious endpoints was not a good idea. But as this whole enterprise had been a horrible idea to begin with, she supposed it was only fitting.
Swallowing her caution, she stepped through anyway.
The sudden relocation wrenched her stomach as she emerged somewhere altogether different.
Forest again. She'd arrived at the edge of a ruined moonwell. Pale lichen scabbed the boulders at its rim, and whatever blessing the waters had once held had long failed, given over to green algae and evil-looking frogspawn. The crosspiece of a toppled henge protruded from the middle of the pool like an accusing finger. No birds sang from the limp branches overhead, but the shrill complaint of some wicked cousin to the cricket pierced the quiet. Reep reep. Reep reep. Reep reep.
It was the only sound above the whisper of leaves. She'd beaten her contact here, whoever he was.
Callista sat down on a stone at the edge of the moonwell to wait. Her eye landed on a spiny orange slug larger than her palm as it oozed its way around the rim of the pool. Disgusting. The lands around Jaedenar were tainted as any but the most blasted of Legion worlds. That the outpost existed at all was a testament to the efficiency of goblin supply lines and the resilience of mortal love for enclaves beyond the reach of law. Not that that meant chaos reigned - on the contrary, the brutal order imposed by Jaedenar's masters supported a thriving black market.
She amused herself for a while by composing a mental list of what she should stock up on, so long as she found herself here, but nothing happened for long enough that she began to be annoyed. The slug had almost reached the far side of the moonwell, the shadow of the fallen henge lengthening across the water's muddy surface, by the time a flurry of runes spun to life in the air of the clearing.
She stood, crossing her arms and arranging her face coolly. Long as she'd been waiting, she'd had plenty of time to revise what would have been a neutral greeting into something blistering. The portal stretched and flattened to a uniform fiery green as she watched, ready to pounce the moment her contact stepped onto the leaves.
Rather than a foot, a heavy black hoof emerged.
Her cultivated expression of hostility flickered.
The rest of Nerothos followed in short order, wings clipped tight to fit through the portal's wavering boundary.
Not what she'd expected.
She dropped her arms to her sides again as she re-evaluated. "You're late," she said, tempering her speech.
The demon scanned the clearing with cursory interest, the green glow of his eyes washed pale by the dappled sun. "I was unavoidably detained," he said.
Callista's mouth twitched skeptically, but she knew better than to expect an apology for wasting her time. Most of her ire had cooled anyway, replaced by suspicion. A leather folio dangled from one of his clawed hands. Why come here himself, she wondered. He was ruining her attempts to convince herself this didn't represent as much danger as she feared. Though she'd been optimistic at first - Nerothos could not have planned for their arrival, so it was likely this task he'd set for them was only a target of opportunity - Azlia's talk of spies with their tongues missing had rattled that theory. And that Nerothos had met her here in person upended it further. It was increasingly possible that the opposite were true - perhaps this was important, but his past efforts had proven...insufficient. Now there was an alarming thought. And not unprecedented, given their history.
"More of your spies wander back without their heads?" she hazarded.
He spread his wings lazily before replying, no doubt enjoying the open air after the cramped passages of the Shadow Hold. She wondered if ducking to avoid clipping his horns on every doorway in Jaedenar ever got old. "A poor start at persuading me not to add yours to the considerable pile."
There was no heat behind his words, and so she didn't tighten her posture as he prowled towards her across the moldering leaves. "And here I'd thought we'd settled all that," she said.
He stopped within arms' reach - for him, anyway - not quite close enough to be truly threatening, but enough to be an encroachment. The daylight faded the shine of his eyes, but it also whitened the pallor of his skin, revealing fine dark veins in an effect just inhuman enough to give her pause. She hadn't forgotten the strength coiled in his arm when she'd pried at it back in the corridor. This close, the faint miasma of power that rose from him drew a metallic prickle from the back of her throat. Too familiar to be discomfiting on its own - but every now and then some hitch in the cadence of their interactions drew her up short, reminded her that he was not just an acquaintance who temporarily had her at a disadvantage, but a nathrezim, and even ten thousand years wouldn't be enough to make her trust his intent.
His lip drew into the barest hint of a sneer. "Only if you believe me the same caliber of fool as your tamed paladin. Your uninspired posturing may have brought him to heel, but I'm hardly convinced of your good faith."
She flicked him a sardonic look from beneath her brows, managing despite how far up she had to glance to do it. As well he shouldn't believe in her sincerity, since he'd done so little to earn it. Her deception hadn't been directed at him anyway. "I haven't scampered off into the bushes yet, have I? Besides, let's not pretend you were after nuanced persuasion in there. Or do paladins usually find your tales of Lordaeron endearing? Maybe next time you can list off all the corpses you raised, compare mutual acquaintances."
He flexed the leathery arcs of his wings to their full span again, then folded them, smugly contemplative. "Your companion's wretchedness amused me. If that's the breed of creature that survived our reign, my brethren had more trouble in their campaign than I thought."
"They did lose," she pointed out. She'd have liked to defend Aren, but a bruised sense of loyalty was better than giving Nerothos the idea she cared about the paladin beyond her eventual ticket home. The last thing the demon needed was more leverage. Besides, there were certain things she really wasn't interested in learning his opinion on.
"Your human kingdom lost," he said, with as much relish as if he'd leveled the capital himself. The humid air stirred as he leaned towards her, curling his wings forward in that way he had when he felt he'd made an unassailable point. "Our forces simply dispersed."
She supposed he had her there. Callista shook her head, inspecting the strangely delicate edge of one wing as she considered nudging it out of her space - much the way she did to Azlia - if it moved any closer. She didn't particularly want to argue the details of recent history with him, not least because only one of them had actually been present. How had they even gotten on this stupid tangent? She remembered Azlia's snide remarks and disgustedly rejected them. This was hardly a social call. "My human kingdom is fine, though it could stand to revisit certain policies." She motioned a pair of fingers at the documents he carried. "Is that why you summoned me here?"
As ever, he accepted the swing in topic as gracefully as if he'd initiated it himself. "In part," he said. He turned the scuffed leather folio flat between them, offering it to her.
She made to take it, but he didn't release his grip, claws dimpling the cover. "If you are discovered," he said, "don't imagine you'll receive any more urgent intervention than the last fool."
Her eyes narrowed as she pulled lightly against his hold, purely to signal she didn't find the contact-by-proxy intimidating. It was rather like tugging on a wall. At what point, she mused, had he started to take her for an idiot. "Why would I ever expect protection from you?"
He smiled cruelly, matching her gaze just long enough for her to wonder if she really needed to elaborate, before unhooking his claws from the leather. "You should not find it difficult to make contact with the cult. They are ever seeking to expand their flock."
She shot him an irritated look. At least the riffle of activity associated with opening the folio and browsing its contents gave her the pretext to back up half a step. The first few pages seemed to be religious missives, followed by a collection of biographies. "How many followers are there?"
"Around three dozen, all told. Most are the same mortal flotsam that prostrate themselves to any religious cause: feckless pawns bowing to the first strong hand that reaches out to them. They are not relevant."
She skimmed the list of names, eyes slipping over a series of life histories that would have been too tedious to commit to paper in other circumstances. Average-sounding people from mundane places, victims not of demons or war, but the same squalid misfortunes that troubled half of Stormwind. Fires and failed crops, dead spouses and squandered inheritances. How had these poor fools ended up in Felwood, of all places? "And the others?"
"Seekers after power, who know not what they serve."
She assumed he meant Beltherac. She traced a finger down the page, searching without much expectation for a familiar name. "Then why not tell them. Even the blindest zealot would have trouble explaining away a dreadlord pulling his strings."
"Not this time." She could tell from the crackle of snapped twigs that he'd removed the small distance she'd put between them. "Beltherac does not manipulate from the shadows. He acts openly as a hierophant."
That was surprising enough to draw her gaze from the papers, face contorting scornfully. "Twisting Nether. What kind of witless hayseed joins a sect with a demon as high priest?" She considered for a moment, dragging her glance dryly up the dreadlord's broad chest. "No offense," she said.
Nerothos laughed. The sunlight drained from the air as he did. Color leached from the woods until the world turned black as charcoal around her, the sour tang of fel magic burning her tongue.
She drew reflexively on her own spells, but there was no attack to answer. No blaze of fire, no sourceless agony...instead, suggestion stroked the edges of her thoughts, every breath she took heavy with promise. Offers of nameless things. Desires, spoken and unspoken, eyeblink glimpses of fantasies all the more lustrous for the way they flitted past before they could be pinned and unraveled.
"You have devoted the whole of your brief life to the study of power." His eyes seared holes in the void that filled her vision, giving lie to the compelling velvet of his voice. "You lack reference to understand how persuasive my people can be to the frail and purposeless."
And he'd mocked her for posturing. Half-formed promises crumbled like husks at her direct attention, tugged with the deceptive strength of an undertow when viewed sidelong. How easy for a desperate mind to fill those flickering shells with all manner of things. No need for Nerothos to expend effort on deception; he could simply coax his victims into providing their own bait for the traps he set for them.
Callista felt the hammering of her own heart in the blackness. Even aware of its source, the dark kaleidoscope of the spell was mesmerizing. Measuring her words wasn't as easy as it should have been around the eager dryness in her throat. "A perspective I could do without, I think." The skeins of magic that held the illusion in place hung tangled and gauzy as cobwebs, almost as easily broken - she sheared through them with a twist of thought. Her vision returned as suddenly as though someone had unshaded a lamp.
She blinked in the flood of brightness. Golden afternoon sun and ancient dying trees, the oily shine of the mud around the polluted moonwell. Nerothos remained still as a flesh-and-blood gargoyle, features carved into an inscrutable expression.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Anything else you'd like to add?"
If the way she'd unworked his cantrip rankled, he didn't show it. On the contrary, he looked satisfied with the exchange. "Admittedly, that caste of spell has never been my particular domain."
If he'd been anything but what he was, she might have been tempted to grab him by the collar and shake.
She twitched her shoulders in the ghost of a shrug instead. This conversation had clearly taken a hard turn past usefulness. Maybe next time, she would send Aren in her stead, and serve them both right. "If I manage to find something, how do I contact you?"
He gestured towards the folder in her hand. "There is a blank page among those documents, linked to another in my possession. Words written on one will inscribe themselves on the other."
"I'm familiar with the enchantment," she said. There had been a time when she'd used a similar spell frequently, in fact - as a child, passing notes in class at the Academy. Despite her lingering acrimony, she tamped down amusement at the image of the demon trying to fold himself into a student desk in Magister Farnham's third-form arcane theory class.
"Good." The air behind him shattered into a prismatic swirl as he renewed the portal that had carried him here. "If you can manage without suspicion, you might also seek answers among the satyr clans. The local sects bear no true allegiance to the Council, or to me. They are easily lured by...inimical powers."
Callista wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. Despite how plentiful the demons were on Azeroth, up until now she had very deliberately avoided dealing with them. Satyrs had fallen far from the arcane mastery of their Highborne roots. But unlike sayaad or even imps, they remained too parochial to have any useful knowledge of the Legion. What's more, they had all the personal charm of a monstrously arrogant night elf wrapped in a mangy fur carpet. She wasn't surprised to hear that their ties to the Legion were tenuous. Her understanding was that the average satyr clan was only a few rungs above the average furbolg tribe on the ladder of Kalimdor civilization - though what they lacked in finesse they made up for in savagery.
"Remind me again why Jaedenar tolerates those flea-bitten relics?"
Nerothos was a winged silhouette against the green blaze of the portal, but she didn't need to see his edged smile to hear it in his voice. "The same reason it tolerates you, of course." He stepped back into the portal, which glowed intensely for a moment before winking out.
"That, I sincerely doubt," Callista said, addressing the empty space where he'd been. She tapped the folio thoughtfully against her thigh, then pulled the parchment from her pocket, activating her own exit back to the inn.
A/N: Yep, I am still alive! xD And still determined to finish this eventually, no matter how many self-imposed deadlines go whooshing by...