Callista hovered a palm over the great metal hinges of the guardroom door, calling forth a tongue of flame to melt and soften them. The black metal glowed red and then incandescent white, until Tun, standing a few steps away, could feel the heat of it on his face.
He watched Callista work with a heavy heart. He had not known Folgrim for very long, but the dwarf had been kind. He deserved better than this, an unmarked tomb on a cursed and dying world. Tun wished he had been awake for Folgrim's passing. He hadn't realized his health would deteriorate so quickly.
"It's done," Callista said finally, drawing her hand back from the fused hinges. Her face was flushed from the heat of the metal and there was an expression in her eyes Tun couldn't quite read.
"Thank you," he said sincerely. He meant it. When That Demon, as the gnome had taken to calling Nerothos in his head, had insisted they move on without hesitation, Callista had taken Tun's side with unexpected vehemence. To seal the guardroom had been her idea. It was a far from fitting monument, but at least it would discourage whatever twisted creatures dwelt in this ruin from disturbing Folgrim's resting place.
Callista nodded her head in acknowledgement, but averted her eyes from his face.
Nerothos watched this exchange with superior disinterest from his position a few steps away. He uncrossed his arms to indicate with one clawed hand their direction of travel. "If this mortal foolishness has concluded…"
Callista looked at the dreadlord with heated dislike. "After you," she said, mirroring his gesture with a sarcastic flourish.
Tun winced, waiting for That Demon's usual menacing response to such treatment. He was surprised when the dreadlord merely smirked at Callista. "Careful, warlock."
Callista narrowed her eyes, but bit her tongue. Nerothos held her gaze for a moment longer before turning and striding down the passageway. For lack of better options, the two mortals followed in his wake.
A briefly flaring column of green flame heralded the arrival of the warlock's imp. He trotted along at Callista's side in uncharacteristic silence, sensing his mistress' poor humor. His fel-green eyes darted around furtively, and Tun wrinkled his nose at the demon in distaste. He had no especial love for any of Callista's minions, but the imp was the worst. He had always suspected the hideous little beast held a special malice for him in particular.
Noticing his stare, the imp made a rude gesture and bared his needle-like fangs at Tun in a diabolical grin. Tun glared back at the hairy little monster as scornfully as he knew how, causing the imp to cackle quietly. Callista patted the demon absently between his horns.
She had summoned the creature less out of need, and more out of desire for an ally whose presence caused neither guilt nor disgust. And Tarnik was not bad company once he quit nattering on in that obscure demonic dialect.
Nerothos halted suddenly, letting out a low growl.
"What's wrong?" Tun asked.
"I suggest you brace yourselves," the dreadlord said uninformatively, securing his large form between the corridor wall and a conveniently placed supporting arch.
Callista stared at him icily even as she wedged herself into a corner. "What on Azeroth are you—"
She snapped her mouth shut as the floor began to tremble and shudder violently. Hell's teeth, not this again. The vibrations traveled up her body and chattered her teeth together unpleasantly. She flinched as chips of stone and mortar knocked loose by the tremors pattered down onto her head and shoulders, and was vaguely aware of Tarnik clinging to her leg and shrieking in terror.
Even the imp was better off than Tun. Unable to find a corner small enough to brace himself against, he fell to the ground and curled up with his hands locked over his head. The stone floor of the passageway began to ripple and heave like a rough sea, and the poor gnome fought the urge to vomit. He'd always hated sailing.
Suddenly the earth stilled. Callista clung to the wall for a moment longer, the roar of the cataclysm still in her ears. Finally she dared to let go and open her eyes. Tarnik had released his panicked hold on her leg and was patting himself down vigorously, a cloud of red rock dust flying from his coat. She tried to take a step towards Tun, who was sitting woozily on the broken and upended stones of the corridor floor, but her legs buckled and she collapsed awkwardly to the ground.
"Nether take this world and everything in it," she muttered balefully.
"All in good time, warlock." Nerothos seemed totally unfazed by the quake, looking down at Callista and Tun with his usual arrogance. He'd caught most of the rain of debris on the back of his upraised wings rather than his head, and now he shook them clean easily, keeping himself relatively free of dust. Callista found his luck in this to be irritating.
She wiped the worst of the dirt from her eyes with the inside of her sleeve, ignoring Nerothos' comment in favor of a second, rather more successful attempt at standing unassisted. Tun clambered to his feet as well, looking down at his filthy robes with distaste.
"M-m-mistress!" Tarnik called suddenly, stuttering in his characteristic attempt to say everything at once.
Callista looked down at her minion, mildly surprised he'd deigned to speak Common.
"Th-they've found us! Felhounds!" He began to chatter rapidly in his own tongue, high-pitched voice tight with fear.
Nerothos growled and tilted his great horned head, listening. Tun knit his brows together in concern.
"Where?" Callista demanded, narrowing her eyes.
"Th-that way! That way!" Tarnik switched suddenly to Eredun, hopping about in agitation.
"The imp is correct," Nerothos said sharply. "Come quickly!"
He lead them swiftly down a cross passage. Callista couldn't hear any enemies, but the demons' senses were better than hers. She focused her magic as she ran, trying to seek out their pursuers.
There! At the very edge of her spell's range. Far away yet, but still entirely too close.
She gritted her teeth as she felt a stitch form in her side, glancing down at Tun panting beside her. The gnome was having even more trouble than she keeping up with the dreadlord's long strides. Unfortunately, asking him to slow down would be impractical.
"What are we going to do?" Tun gasped. Their footsteps echoed alarmingly in the stone corridor.
"We are going to flee, and hope we have remained unnoticed," Nerothos replied calmly. "If we must fight, leave none alive."
Tun's frown deepened. "Run away until hopelessly cornered" didn't sound like much of a plan to him. He suddenly missed Folgrim. The dwarf had had a solidly reassuring presence, and been an unflinchingly brave warrior. Unlike That Demon, who Tun expected to abandon him and Callista as cover for his own escape at the earliest convenient opportunity.
The light around them was growing steadily brighter, and the air was growing hot. Most of the heaviest shadows were gone, and now Tun could make out every detail of the bones and half-effaced glyphs mixed in with the rubble strewn about the passage. It wasn't a comforting sight, but he allowed himself a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the new light meant they were nearing the way out?
They rounded a corner, and the light blazed up with startling brilliance, chasing back the last of the darkness and causing Tun to squint.
"Plaguing hells!" Callista cursed over Nerothos' snarl of displeasure. The imp shrieked in frustration.
When Tun's vision adjusted he saw why. They stood on the edge of a great chasm, towering sheets of flame leaping from its depths to impossible heights. It sliced across several corridors, and the part of the dungeon across the canyon was visible in cross section through gaps in the fire. Even had they all possessed wings, they couldn't have crossed without a thorough roasting.
"We must retrace our steps," Nerothos said, in a voice that brooked no argument.
"No," Callista said unexpectedly. Fel magic flecked her pupils with green fire, almost lost in the hot glow of the chasm.
Nerothos growled, looming menacingly over the warlock. The shadow he cast on her was long and very dark, a jagged contrast with the almost painful brightness of the firelight. "I have neither time nor patience for your insolence, mortal. Do as I say."
Callista's attention was split between the dreadlord and their pursuers. Oddly enough, she found Nerothos less intimidating now than before he had gained such a hold on her. That he had taken the trouble meant he needed her for something. He probably wouldn't kill her for a matter as trivial as impertinence, his theatrics aside. Which was fortunate, because she didn't feel much like being civil.
She sneered up at him. "We can't go back. They've missed our trail, already passed this corridor, but if we backtrack we'll come too close. They'll pick us up again."
Nerothos leaned close to Callista's face, matching her scornful expression. "Impossible. Xorothian hounds never lose a quarry once scented. Don't be a fool!"
"It isn't impossible. And if you insist on turning around, I'm not the fool."
Nerothos smiled dangerously, displaying a large number of very sharp teeth. "You tread a very thin line, warlock." Suddenly his hand shot forward, digging the tips of his claws almost delicately into the side of her neck. She instinctively tried to jump away, but he seized her upper arm tightly in his other hand, holding her trapped as Tun cried out in alarm. Tarnik chattered angrily, but would never dare to aid her.
Callista forced down a wave of panic and tried to look unconcerned. She could tell by the look of malicious amusement on Nerothos' face that she was failing spectacularly. Alright, so perhaps she had misjudged her situation a tad.
"Tell me," he said in an almost pleasant tone, pressing his claws slightly harder into her neck, "how large is the pursuit?"
Callista made a futile attempt to twist away from his hand, pondering the odds of a gout of flame leaping from that pit and incinerating the demon where he stood. Not nearly high enough for a universe with any justice in it, she decided.
Nerothos had frightened her into losing her focus, and it took her a moment to regain it. "Four," she said finally. She was puzzled by that, and it showed on her face.
Nerothos narrowed his eyes, but his reaction escaped Callista's notice, which was now totally absorbed in her spell. He nicked her skin deliberately with a sharp claw when she failed to elaborate.
Callista yelped and glared hatefully at him, biting back a string of very interesting curses. "There were five before," she spat.
"Most interesting," Nerothos said, digging his claws thoughtfully into her neck and squeezing her arm painfully. Callista resisted the urge to squirm.
"Perhaps you are right after all," he continued, smiling sardonically at her. "How fortunate for you." He released her suddenly, and she retreated to a safe distance, wiping a trickle of blood from her neck. She didn't think she'd ever loathed any creature more than she loathed Nerothos at this moment.
"Are you insane?!" Tun hissed, yanking sharply at the sleeve of her robes to pull her down to his eye level. "I thought he was going to flay you alive!"
"I didn't," Callista said, grinning with far more confidence than she'd actually felt.
"Liar," Tun muttered. "You're mad." It was the only possible explanation. Callista was not naturally belligerent, but she had seemed to be deliberately needling the dreadlord. Utterly bizarre, considering she seemed to have gotten on well enough with him before. He supposed the demon must have said something not to her liking, and he wondered what on Azeroth it could've been. Callista was not an easy woman to offend.
"What do you think killed that fifth demon?" Tun asked, switching topics. Callista's weird behavior was just one more mystery to add to his growing list of questions about this whole misadventure.
Callista straightened up and rubbed at a bead of sweat on her cheek. It was entirely too hot this close to the fire. "No idea. Let's not find out."
"Whatever happened to 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?" Tun gazed out over the broad gulf of flame. He wondered irrelevantly if the canyon cut straight down into the core of Xoroth itself. It would be a stunning scientific find, if this were a civilized place, and not a damned hole full of monstrous demons.
Nerothos laughed darkly. "Nothing on this world is your friend, gnome."
Including you. "We escaped. Maybe someone else did too."
Nerothos smiled, fangs tinged a rather unsettling red by the fire glare. "There are enough creatures imprisoned in this fortress to fill cities, but few of them are as…accommodating as I."
Callista was only half following the conversation, most of her attention bound up in tracking their pursuit, but she sniffed at that. Her eyes glittered uncannily in the shifting light. "Better hope you're wrong, dreadlord. They're coming this way."
Tun no longer needed Callista's magic to pinpoint their enemies. He could actually hear them now, the felhounds' baying echoing hollowly off the stone walls. There was a great deal of yelling, too, though Tun couldn't tell if the voices were speaking demonic or something more promising.
"Away from the ledge!" Nerothos ordered.
This time Callista didn't argue. If they had to fight, best not to do it trapped against a fiery abyss.
They sprinted back down the corridor, the sounds of battle ahead growing more distinct. Now there was a loud, repeated clanging mixed in with the howls and roars. So, it seemed their fellow quarry was still alive after all. Callista's mouth twisted into a feral grin. She was tired of running, and now she could only sense three demons. This might be fun.
They skidded around one last corner, and crashed head on into utter chaos. Callista dove blindly behind a pile of broken stone, eyes not accustomed to the relative darkness of the intermittent wall sconces after the blaze of the chasm. All she could see was a shifting mass of dark, threatening shapes. Tun half stumbled after her, knocking into her arm and causing her to jump.
"Can you see anything?" he hissed. She could barely hear him over the din. It sounded like someone was hammering on an enormous anvil.
"Nope," she said cheerfully. Well, that was easily fixed, at least. She poked her head up over the top of the debris pile, preparing a fire spell. Before she could cast it, the corridor was suddenly illuminated in a flash of cold white light. A jagged, many-pronged lightning bolt arced from the outstretched hands of a troll woman into three snarling felhounds. Callista's jaw dropped, and the light went out.
"What did you see?" Tun demanded.
"Well, there are three felhounds, a troll shaman, and an enormous ogre whacking at everything with part of a door bigger than you are." She hadn't seen Nerothos, however, and she wondered where he had gone. Useless demon.
"We should help them," Tun said firmly. He wasn't terribly fond of trolls and ogres, but under the circumstances he was thrilled to have found anything else without horns and hooves.
"Probably. Let's go." Callista traced an intricate pattern into the air, forming a glowing rune suspended before her face. It flared and vanished, and a great sheet of flame sprang up with a roar from the opposite side of the corridor. Now she could see.
Callista and Tun leaped from the shelter of the stone pile, flinging shadow and frost spells at any felhound conveniently near.
The felhounds spun around in confusion to meet this new threat, and the troll's mouth gaped before splitting into a huge grin. The ogre took no notice, deeply absorbed in beating a felhound's head into pulp with a jagged chunk of black metal with warding sigils still blazing on it.
"We're friends!" Tun yelled, waving his arms wildly. They might not speak Common, but it was worth a try.
Tiny ice crystals swarmed around his hands as he succeeded in freezing one of the felhounds to the floor. Callista's imp cackled in glee and leapt upon the demon's back, shooting fireballs point-blank into its head. He dodged away just in time to avoid a shattering blow from the ogre's makeshift club. The felhound collapsed, skull thoroughly squashed.
"Kar'thol like tiny gnome thing," the ogre declared in broken Common. "Make demons smash easy."
"Uh, thank you," Tun said. He supposed that was as good an endorsement as he could've hoped for.
The final felhound went down quickly, struck by a combination of Callista's shadow magic and the troll's lightning. The warlock's spell ended as a soul shard dropped into her palm, and the two pairs of combatants stared at each other cautiously over the felhound's corpse. The troll said something to the ogre in Orcish. Her voice had a musical, lilting quality that Tun found pleasant.
"Truce?" he offered hopefully.
The troll smiled. She would've been quite attractive, if not for the tusks. "Ya, mon. You be knowin' the way outta this pit?"
"We're not sure," Tun said, shrugging helplessly. "I'm Tun, by the way, and this is Callista."
Callista nodded her head and waved slightly. She had figured out where Nerothos had gone. The demon had pulled an interesting trick.
The troll grinned impishly in return. "Ya fight well…for sissy Alliance. I be Na'rii, and the big fella be Kar'thol."
Callista mirrored her grin. "You speak good Common, for Horde savages. By the way, don't mind the dreadlord."
Na'rii's expression wavered between bemused and alarmed. "What? Yaaah!"
Kar'thol roared in surprise and raised his club as Nerothos materialized behind Callista and Tun. Tun jumped, startled, and whirled around. Nothing that large and menacing should be allowed to move so stealthily.
"Peace, troll," Nerothos said, curling his lip in amusement at the panic he'd caused.
"Ya be friends with that thing?!" Na'rii demanded. Sparks crackled at her fingertips, and she looked torn between fleeing and testing the dreadlord's properties as a lightning rod.
"I wouldn't go that far," Callista said dryly.
"He's an ally," Tun said, holding up his hands placatingly. "He knows the way home."
"If I intended you harm, you would already be dead," Nerothos said, smiling in a way that was somewhat less than reassuring.
Kar'thol looked confused, staring alternately at Na'rii and the dreadlord and brandishing his chunk of metal threateningly.
Na'rii's gaze was skeptical. "I dunno, mon. You be keepin' strange company."
"Better than wandering aimlessly until we're hunted down and killed like dogs," Tun countered. His expression was earnest. "We'll have a better chance of escaping together." And the more allies they had that weren't That Demon, the happier Tun would be.
Na'rii looked thoughtful. "Maybe ya got a point." She idly fingered a bracelet of bear claws hanging from her left wrist. The gnome seemed sincere enough, and the human warlock didn't seem overtly hostile either. The dreadlord was, of course, an abomination. The spirits howled at his very presence, but it was true he hadn't tried to harm them. And she and Kar'thol were lost. More lost than they had ever been in years of wandering. They didn't understand the fel magics that had brought them to this place, and indeed had very little idea where this place was at all. If the demon really knew the way out…
"Alright. We'll come wit' ya." Na'rii's gaze grew hard as she stared directly at Nerothos. "But I'm warnin' ya, we won't hesitate to defend ourselves if you be playin' us for fools."
"Noted," Nerothos sneered, voice dripping with contempt.
Kar'thol lowered his chunk of door to the floor with a thud. "Kar'thol crush more weak demons now?" he asked hopefully.
Callista chuckled. "Maybe later." Say what you like about ogres, she could appreciate this one's priorities.
Her sheet of fire was still burning, and she extinguished it with a wave of her hand, plunging them back into the dungeon's usual half light. The troll and the ogre had the demeanor of experienced fighters. Perhaps things were starting to look up.
Nice long chapter because I'm trying desperately to avoid finals, haha. Hope you enjoyed!:-)