Callista's whole body stiffened as she resisted the urge to bolt, green flame crackling at her fingertips. She tried to fix the dreadlord with a curse but somehow he eluded her magic, slipping away, almost as though…
Oh.
The dreadlord was, in fact, imprisoned. Instead of one of the rune-etched doors, his cell was closed off by an almost transparent magical barrier. It formed a delicate red wavering curtain, pale motes within it slowly drifting from floor to ceiling and back again.
"Greetings, dreadlord," Callista replied cautiously, panic replaced by a feeling of slight idiocy.
Tun looked to be on the verge of fainting, face white beneath his disheveled mop of green hair. "Don't encourage it!" he said in a whispered hiss.
Callista prodded curiously at the barrier with a shadow spell, marveling at the way her magic impacted it and slid away, like water down a windowpane. "He's in a cell, what's the worst that could happen?" she hissed back.
"He gets out of the cell?"
Reasonably sure of safety, Callista moved closer to the barrier to get a better look.
"Careful, lass," Folgrim warned.
Callista merely shook her head, eyeing the dreadlord with new interest. She was no expert on the more subtle intricacies of arcane magic (that was Tun's field), but she suspected such a construct would take an immense amount of power to sustain. "What did you do?" she asked the demon, cocking her head curiously.
The dreadlord's voice was deep and sardonic as he replied, examining the mortals before him with eyes that were the color of felfire, and held about as much compassion. "Release me, and perhaps I will tell you."
"Before you claw out our insides," Tun muttered under his breath.
Callista raised an eyebrow, adopting a skeptical expression. "I think I'd rather not." From her new vantage point she had a much clearer view of the dreadlord. Like all his kind, he was tall and powerfully built, standing several heads taller than Callista, and heavily muscled, large fingers tipped with wickedly curved black claws. Unlike any other dreadlord Callista had ever heard of, he looked rather worse for wear. He was clad in plate armor only from hooves to waist, nasty-looking scars crisscrossing his exposed torso. His leathery reddish-black wings were rent and torn in places, and one of the horns that jutted from his forehead had been broken off jaggedly a few inches from the top.
Further discussion was curbed by something that sounded distressingly like a felhound slamming against the room's double gates. A guttural voice shouted a command in demonic, and the banging redoubled. Folgrim ran to throw his own weight against the doors.
"Run afoul of Lord Hel'nurath, I see." The fel light in the dreadlord's eyes seemed to intensify. "We share a common purpose, mortal. Release me from this prison, and I'll aid you in your flight."
Tun's attention, which had diverted to the commotion at the gate, snapped back immediately. "Callista! So help me, if you let that thing out of that cell I'll—"
"This gate won't hold forever!" Folgrim shouted over the din. Callista's imp was hopping about even more agitatedly than usual, terrified jabbering adding to the noise. "We need a plan!"
Callista glanced at the buckling gates, then back at the dreadlord. "Purely hypothetically, if we were to let you out, how do we know you wouldn't slaughter us all?"
The demon smiled unpleasantly, displaying a set of alarmingly sharp fangs. "You have my word. And the assurance that I would not kill one who proves useful to my ends."
His word, Callista knew, was worth less than nothing. But dreadlords were calculating creatures, and it would not be logical for one to destroy his only allies in a desperate situation.
There was a final deafening bang and the gates flew open, hurling Folgrim across the rune-marked floor. A towering felguard stalked into the room, flanked by four exceptionally large and savage-looking felhounds. The foremost leapt immediately for the imp, who began fleeing around the room, occasionally flinging a fireball at his pursuer. The other three made straight for Callista and Tun.
"The word of command is 'kanthre'nash'," the dreadlord supplied. He flexed his claws, watching Callista's face with a burning intensity.
Callista's eyes flicked nervously from her companions to her enemies to the dreadlord as she worked out a disheartening mathematical exercise. Five demons. Two allies, self included, who could give any decent account of themselves.
Plaguing hells.
"Sold!" Callista declared, pressing a hand to one of the intricate runes that framed the dreadlord's cell. She spoke the demonic command, and the runes flared brightly before extinguishing themselves.
"Callista, you IDIOT!"
"A wise decision, human," the dreadlord said, as the magical barrier flickered and vanished. He snarled savagely at the charging felhounds. "I will honor our accord."
The felhounds were almost upon them now, and Callista flung herself to one side just ahead of the beasts' enormous jaws, casting a curse of agony upon the nearest one as she dodged.
She needn't have bothered.
The dreadlord hardly moved at all. When one of the demons leapt for him he met the lunge halfway with a powerful sweep of his claws, tearing out the felhound's throat and most of its neck in one swipe. The felhound's body fell to the floor a bleeding, writhing mass. On the dreadlord's other side, Tun had conjured a water elemental and was using it to distract the second demon while he battered it with frost magic.
Callista pivoted to face the third demon, fel magic coursing around her hands. She tried to release her spell, but her gestures were slowed by a grinding pain in her injured wrist. The felhound leapt with preternatural speed, knocking her backwards and landing on her chest heavily enough to crush the wind out of her. She could feel the beast's breath on her face as she gasped for air, nose assailed by a sickening mixture of rotten flesh and fel magic. She molded her fingers into her final gesture just as the felhound twisted its head, opening its jaws to finish her.
A phantasmagoric stream of fel energy wound itself around the felhound, squeezing mercilessly. The felhound made a sound halfway between a howl and a whimper as one of its forelegs collapsed with a grisly crunch of bone. There was a sharp snap as Callista's wrist mended itself, and she felt a heavy pressure and then a sudden lightness as the demon sprang from her chest, whining pitifully and fleeing in terror.
In its panic, the felhound bolted straight into the dreadlord's open cell. Callista scrambled ungracefully to her feet, still gulping for air, and sealed the creature in before it could flounder its way out again.
"Callista!" Tun yelled. The warlock whirled to help her friend, but he gestured franticly back towards the gates. His own felhound was incapacitated, cemented to the floor by a chunk of ice encasing its hindquarters. "Not me, help Folgrim!"
Her eyes widened. Folgrim. She had forgotten about the felguard.
She spun around again to see it advancing deliberately on the dwarf, swinging a massive cleaver around as though it weighed less than a throwing axe. Folgrim had risen from where he had been flung by the gates and taken a fighting stance, but there was little he could do against the grinning demon except back slowly towards the wall. The felguard widened its toothy smirk, obviously relishing toying with its helpless target.
"Come on, you bastard," Folgrim said defiantly. "Let's get on with it, then. Swing, you great coward!"
The felguard stumbled a little, grin souring as Tun's magic sheathed its leg in ice, but then it sneered, shattering the trap with a ringing blow from the flat of its axe blade.
"Do something!" Tun said urgently.
Callista eyed the demon critically. Oh, she could do something, alright.
The felguard raised its axe high, bored of playing with the hapless dwarf and ready for a new victim. Suddenly it bellowed in agony, blow going wild as searing flames engulfed its entire body. It forgot all about Folgrim, howling wordlessly and swatting at the fire blazing around its face and neck as it cast about the room for its tormentor.
Spotting Callista, it gave a roar of mingled rage and pain and charged. Holding her breath, she watched as the juggernaut hurtled towards her, oblivious to the barrage of frostbolts Tun was firing at it in a vain attempt to slow its assault. Folgrim let fly a spectacular torrent of foul names and abuse in an effort to regain the felguard's attention, but it was beyond that.
No matter. She knew what she was doing…
Maybe.
Clenching her hands into fists, she extinguished the small flames dancing around her fingertips, ending the spell mid-cast. The excess magic she had accumulated blazed up in a white hot inferno around the demon, cutting off its bellowing abruptly. Callista took a step back as the fiery conflagration that had once been a felguard skidded to a halt and burnt itself out at her feet.
The sharp reek of charred demon flesh filled the air.
"That is disgusting," Tun observed, wrinkling his nose.
"Yet effective," Callista agreed, casting her gaze about the room. The dreadlord had dispatched the felhound that had been chasing her imp, and now her minion was scratching spitefully at the carcass, yanking out handfuls of the large black scales on the thing's head and generally making a hideous mess.
"Tarnik!" she called sharply. The imp looked up shiftily at the sound of his name, and, spotting the disapproving expression on his mistress' face, dashed obediently to her side.
"We mustn't linger." The dreadlord's voice was a low rumble as he stalked over from executing the felhound trapped in Tun's ice. Black demon bile dripped from his dagger-like claws. "The sound of battle and scent of arcane magic will surely draw more foes."
Callista was relieved to see he didn't seem to be immediately bent on killing them, now that their mutual enemies were dead. Tun took several steps back as the dreadlord approached, glancing over at Folgrim for support. The dwarf was glaring at the demon skeptically through narrowed eyes. "Aye, and I don't suppose you'd happen to know the way out of this hellhole, would you, demon?"
The dreadlord's sneer was cold enough to freeze over hellfire. "Actually, dwarf…I would."
"Well, by all means, lead on then!" Folgrim's voice was hardly less frigid, scornful despite the fact that the dreadlord was at least twice his size and orders of magnitude better equipped for a throwdown.
Snarling vilely at the dwarf, the dreadlord whirled and strode off towards the broken doors at a swift pace.
"I hope you know what you're about, lass, letting that devil out," Folgrim said quietly, in a voice that clearly implied he thought she didn't.
Callista muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Me too," before brusquely commanding her imp to follow. She was rapidly discovering that a dreadlord making deals inside of a cage was a separate creature entirely from a dreadlord running around loose, and she did not think she liked the difference.
She followed the dreadlord at a half run, breaking into a sprint as the clamor of pursuit built behind them, the eerie baying of felhounds and raucous shouts of their felguard handlers echoing dauntingly in the stone corridor. She glanced around for her companions just in time to intercept a scowl of purest venom from Tun.
…She bet this kind of thing never happened to paladins.