Tun tested the gleaming edge of a short dagger cautiously against his finger. The weapon had been pressed on him by Callista and Na'rii, along with the leather sheath that now hung on his belt, back in the imp-infested vault. He wasn't sure quite what the two of them expected him to do with it. He'd killed quite a few demons with magic since this adventure started (though he didn't like to think about that) but, in all his life, he'd never cut up anything more threatening than a tough haunch of beef.

Na'rii noticed his mixed expression and dropped gracefully to the ground at his side. She'd pilfered a shield, a great round sheet of spike-studded felsteel, and it clanged against the stone as she carelessly tossed it at her feet. "Go for the eyes," she advised sagely, making a stabbing motion in Tun's general direction.

Tun looked up at her, mildly surprised. "What?" Unless she wanted something, the troll had completely ignored him for the last day and a half, treating him with the same watchful disdain she did Callista and Nerothos.

"The eyes," Na'rii repeated, jabbing two slim fingers at her own yellow ones for emphasis. "Or maybe the back of the knee," she added, after regarding him critically for a moment. "Ya be awfully small."

"Uh…thank you," Tun said, examining the dagger skeptically. "I'll keep that in mind." Long association with Callista had made him less squeamish than he might otherwise have been, but he still had difficulty imagining himself gouging the eyes out of anything, even a demon.

He leaned back against the cool stone of the passage wall and sighed, giving the area around him a cursory glance. The sickly, sputtering light of the wall sconces revealed nothing but the familiar forms of his companions. Callista was curled on her side, face buried in her arms, while Kar'thol lay on his back, belly rising from the floor like a huge overturned cauldron, snoring uproariously. Nerothos stood on the other side of the sleepers with his back to the group. In the skittering dark of the passageway he looked like a creature of nightmare, all wings and claws and horns and an aura of demonic energy that was faintly palpable even from where Tun sat.

He shivered, nose crinkling a little as Callista's felhunter loped restlessly past. Na'rii aimed a halfhearted kick at the creature, causing it to growl deep in its throat.

"If you don't mind my asking, how did you get here?" Tun asked, somewhat suddenly. He was conversational by nature, and, despite some of the more gruesome tales he'd heard about trolls' gastronomical preferences, Na'rii seemed friendly enough. "You, ah, don't seem very fond of demons."

Na'rii chuckled, looking down at him. "Ya got that right, mon, I hate the things." She paused a moment, tilting her head, causing the intricately carved beads amongst her braids to clack together softly. "Me and Kar'thol be mercenaries, though. Don' matter much what I be hatin', so long as we get paid." She grinned a little at that, then sobered.

"So what happened?" Tun pressed, more than vaguely curious.

Na'rii stretched lazily and leaned back against the wall, sliding down until they were at eye level. She really was very pretty, in a savage sort of way.

"We be runnin' low on gold, so we decide to try our luck in the Outlands," she explained. "Us and a couple other goons take a job wit' a Blood Elf fella. He be crazy wit' the magic sickness, ravin' about some gate to unlimited power. He be wantin' an escort out to the Blade's Edge Mountains. Always talkin' about ley lines, though everyone knows there be nothin' out there but demons and rock.

"That's why we think it be easy. We bring him out there, he finds nothin', we come home. But it turns out that elf only be half-crazy, and a warlock too. He opens a portal, and the next thing I know, Kar'thol and me and the others be in a cell. Not the Blood Elf, though. Dunno what happened to him. I hope he be dead, but the spirits tell me he be livin' still." From the murderous expression on her face, Tun gathered that he wouldn't be living for very long should he ever be unfortunate enough to cross Na'rii again.

"What happened to the others?" Tun asked hesitantly.

"Dunno," Na'rii replied, shrugging indifferently. "We be in the cell for days, maybe weeks. One by one the guards drag them out, and none of them ever come back."

"That's horrible," Tun said, though he wasn't really surprised.

"Demons," Na'rii said, as though that explained everything, shooting a withering glare at Nerothos' back. "How come you be in this place?"

Tun sighed, remembering how this disaster had begun. "Callista tried to steal a dreadsteed." It seemed like a very long time ago now, though it couldn't have been more than a week. "The beast's owner was very unimpressed."

Na'rii snorted derisively.

They were silent after that. Hours later, after rousing Kar'thol, Na'rii lay on her back with an arm thrown over her eyes and feigned slumber. She kept her breathing slow and measured as she listened carefully, sword and shield close by her side. The passage was silent as death, save for the occasional grunt from Kar'thol and the click of the felhunter's claws against the stone. Still, she would wait up a bit longer. The lack of sleep would exhaust her on the morrow, but, if the warlock and the demon were playing foul, she would have proof.

Callista yawned and rested her head back against the rough stone of the wall, still in a half doze. She was meant to be on watch, though she hardly saw the point. Jhormug would sense intruders long before she ever would, and her presence was only a distraction to Kar'thol. The ogre's stare was fastened alternately to her and Nerothos in an expression of beady-eyed suspicion. He didn't appear to be very good at splitting his attention; a troupe of pitlords could probably have stomped down the corridor behind him without attracting his notice.

Jhormug gave a low snarl, not quite a warning, and she opened her eyes to see what had prompted it. She found herself gazing directly into Nerothos' black armor-plated knee. His large arms were crossed, and he was looking down at her in a most disconcerting and pointed fashion.

Callista stared up at him mulishly for a moment before surrendering and hauling herself to her feet. Nerothos towered over her quite well enough while she was standing. She didn't need him to look even more menacing than he already was.

"What now?" she asked in mingled exasperation and resignation. Kar'thol was staring as though trying to bore holes in both of them.

"I have business to attend to," he replied in Eredun, eyes glowing like green coals. "You will accompany me."

"How?" Callista asked in the same tongue. For Kar'thol's benefit, she tried to keep her tone conversational. "They already suspect I'm in collusion with you. Try that trick again, and they'll know for certain."

Her suppressed agitation seemed to amuse him. "Perhaps." He uncrossed his arms and inclined his head, broken horn casting weird shadows across Callista's face. "But perhaps not. The gnome has great faith in you…considering." He smiled ironically, light glinting sharply off his fangs. "It hardly matters now, anyway."

It mattered to her. She forced herself to keep a relaxed posture. Let the ogre think they were talking about the weather, or whatever the demonic equivalent might be. "I hope they send you back to the Nether in pieces, you know," she said pleasantly.

Nerothos actually laughed at that, a deep sinister sound. Kar'thol's head swiveled tensely from one of them to the other, trying to decide if they were behaving suspiciously enough yet to wake Na'rii.

"I suspect you would enjoy that far less than you'd imagine, warlock," Nerothos said, smiling wolfishly.

He was standing too close again, but this time Callista held her ground, looking at him as blandly as she could manage. Somehow, she doubted the truth of his statement.

"After all," he continued, running the back of a claw mockingly down her arm, "if I am dead, what will have become of my servant?"

Callista bristled, gritting her teeth together to stop herself from saying anything regrettable. Like an immolation curse.

Nerothos took no notice of her response except to look even more fiendishly amused, switching topics. "Now, grant me the favor of distracting that mindless oaf whilst I deal with his meddlesome companion." He stalked off without bothering to wait for her response.

Callista sighed ill-temperedly and flopped back to the ground, digging a soul shard from one of her pockets. The small jagged crystal lay innocuously in the center of her palm, glowing very slightly with its own inner light.

Nerothos had moved to Kar'thol's other side, making it impossible for him to watch both the demon and the warlock at once. Now he whipped his head back and forth, eyes narrowed, unsure which was the least trustworthy. His mind was made up when the shard in Callista's hand blazed suddenly, bathing her face in amethyst-colored light.

Callista's former mentor, a severe old hag by the name of Lucrinda, had taught her in her first lesson that the results of spellcasting should be spectacular, not the process. A glitzy spell was generally an inefficient one. If old Lucrinda could've seen the Technicolor hash Callista was making of her healthstone transmutation now, she would've boxed her about the ears.

Great loops and whirls of fel energy coursed around Callista's outstretched hand as the purple glow slowly melted to green. Kar'thol stared wide-eyed. He dearly wanted to wake Na'rii, but he wasn't sure one of the crackling ropes of demonfire wouldn't strike him dead if he tried.

The magic dimmed quickly, leaving a small green stone sitting inertly in her hand. "Healthstone?" she said innocently, proffering it to Kar'thol.

Kar'thol's look of suspicion flickered to an almost comical expression of serenity as he passed out under the influence of Nerothos' cursed sleep.

Callista stood, pocketing her stone and watching Nerothos over Kar'thol's collapsed bulk. The wariness in her stare was tempered slightly with curiosity. Despite herself, she was more than a little interested to know what business was so important that a dreadlord would risk his own precious skin lingering in a hostile fortress to see it through.

She had expected to be dragged on another extensive tour of Xoroth's time-eaten warren of passages, so she was surprised when Nerothos halted a short distance from their camp. She laid a hand lightly on the hilt of her long dagger, just in case.

The blade pulsed with fel energy. Tun had looked somewhat askance at her when she'd chosen it above the more mundane (and thus safer) weapons in the pile, but, as she had pointed out, it was a bit late for her to be turning her nose up at demonic magic at this point in her career.

Nerothos was holding something delicately between his finger and thumb. It was a small, roughly hexagonal prism of clear crystal, a tiny constellation of demonic runes rotating slowly within its faceted surface. Callista recognized it as the trinket he'd taken from the dead gan'arg.

Nerothos tapped the prism lightly against the wall of the passage, and she watched with narrowed eyes as the solid red stone began to ripple as though it were a reflection on the surface of a still pool into which a stone had been tossed.

"After you," he said, waving a clawed hand towards the wall in an elegant, if sardonic, gesture.

Callista shot him an irritated glare before stepping forward and jabbing her hand experimentally through the rippling stone. When she found her fingers neither jammed against the wall nor snapped off by some horror waiting on the other side, she strode through.

Blackness, accompanied by a wave of vertigo so strong it was almost nauseating, and she was on the other side. She whipped her head around, disoriented and half expecting an assault of some kind, but the corridor she had emerged into was silent and still. It was similar to the one she had just left, in fact, but in much better repair. The dusky-red stones of the wall and floor were whole and clean, the passage illuminated by bright tongues of flame set in carved niches lined with some reflective metal. It was far narrower, too. Nerothos, who had emerged behind her, could not have spread his wings to their full span without brushing against both walls.

"Where are we?" Callista asked, still gazing curiously at their new surroundings.

"We have entered the mo'arg engineering works, between the walls," Nerothos replied, striding purposefully past her.

Callista jogged a little to catch up, mulling that over with narrowed eyes. This corridor must have been subject to the same quakes which had ruined the outer passages, but there was hardly a fleck of stone out of place. That meant that someone had been mending it, and recently. Which meant that their party had almost certainly been discovered, and yet no horde of felguards had descended to haul their carcasses back to their cells in shreds. Which meant these tunnels were tended by the most colossally stupid demons ever to blunder out of the Nether, or Nerothos had friends in some very interesting places.

As she walked, Callista noted perfectly circular configurations of runes within which the stone of the walls was as transparent as glass, allowing a view of the outer passages. These portholes were evenly spaced and placed at about the height of her elbow, far too low to be useful to a demon of any size, but at a convenient elevation for a gan'arg.

There were no other signs or means of navigation that she could see, but Nerothos seemed to know precisely where he was going, leading her through the maze of intersecting corridors with an experienced air. Gradually, the scenery visible through the portholes changed. The half-destroyed stonework with which she was so familiar disappeared, replaced by gleaming black stone punctuated with the duller ebon shine of prison doors.

She began to see demons, felguards and felhounds, with the occasional doomguard or succubus thrown in the mix. It unnerved her the first few times, but they couldn't see her of course, and when she tried to detect them with her magic she found it impossible, even when she was standing nearly on top of them. The engineering works, it seemed, was an isolated system unto itself.

The sight of a gan'arg, bustling down their corridor in a drab-brown cowled robe, caused her to stiffen. She expected it to flee howling at the sight of them, but Nerothos paid it no mind. The gan'arg ignored them in return, dodging silently around Nerothos on its own obscure mission.

The view through the transparent stone didn't change again for a very long time. There must have been countless thousands of warded cells in this place, probably identical to the one she and Tun had been tossed into at the beginning of this mishap.

"Why so many?" Callista muttered to herself. It was a question that had been tugging at the edge of her mind for a while now. What was the point of keeping so many prisoners? It was a great deal less efficient than, say, wholesale slaughter.

She had not expected an answer, so she was surprised when Nerothos turned his head to look at her. His smile was no less daunting in the brightly-lit passage than it had been in the half dark. "You haven't guessed? There is only one intelligent possibility."

"Oh?" she said, raising a brow. She was not above dropping her usual hostility if she thought the demon might reveal something useful.

"See for yourself." He buffeted her lightly with one of his wings, knocking her in the direction of one of the low windows.

This treatment was irritating, but once Callista leaned to peer through the transparent stone her annoyance was forgotten. She hissed, drawing back from the window before returning her gaze in disgusted fascination. A large cage of twisted and enchanted iron was pushed up against the wall she was standing behind. Within the cage was…something. From its size and general shape she guessed it had once been a dwarf, though it would be over-generous to call it that now. It looked a little like a demon, too, though it was not quite that either. A pair of stubby horns protruded from its forehead, and its black beard was thin and scraggly. Its face was horribly distorted, and it was lying weakly on its back, eyes closed. Callista doubted the creature could have stood if it tried. Its knees faced front, but it had an extra joint just above the ankle, giving its legs a grotesque knobby appearance.

"The Legion has discovered that weapons forged of flesh and blood often serve better than those of steel." Nerothos' voice spoke from above and behind her. It was tinged with cold amusement, though whether at the suffering of the not-dwarf in the cage or Callista's reaction to it was impossible to say.

"Ah, yes, a terrifying champion of the Burning Legion," Callista said, still regarding the trembling creature in the cage. "Recruitment been slipping lately?"

"That pathetic wretch is hardly representative of this endeavor's potential. Felguards serve us rather effectively, wouldn't you concur?"

She found this revelation to be unsurprising. It had long been known among those who cared to study such things that very few races were originally demonic. Nerothos himself belonged to the only one she knew of. She'd never given much thought to how the others had come about, but if she'd ever bothered to try she would probably have pictured something very much like what she was seeing now. A crude process accompanied by as much suffering as was consistent with its victim not escaping into death.

"They win points for sheer brutality, I suppose, but lose them all for gross stupidity." Callista didn't bother turning to look at him, examining the room beyond the cage. It was huge, larger even than the great workshops and laboratories of Ironforge, and cluttered with tables laden with vials, glowing crystals, and implements for which Callista had no name. It was also teeming with demons, mostly gan'arg and their larger, prosthetically-enhanced mo'arg cousins. A pair of dreadlords stood off to one side, watching the proceedings with an air of inexpressible boredom.

"A necessary flaw. It would never do to have slaves with ambition."

Callista straightened and looked at Nerothos over her shoulder. As long as he was feeling talkative, she might as well satisfy her curiosity on other points. "If we were meant to be the Legion's newest source of cannon fodder, what were you doing in that cage?"

Nerothos laughed unpleasantly, and answered a question that was not the one she had asked, but one tangentially related. "Our reasons for visiting this wretched world were less dissimilar than you might expect, warlock."

Callista was skeptical. If the Nathrezim had nothing better to do with their time than perpetrate cross-dimensional horse thievery, or something similarly frivolous, the Legion was in even worse shape than she thought.

Nerothos had begun to walk again, rather briskly, and she had to execute an awkward half jog in order to keep pace. He still hadn't told her what her purpose was meant to be on this little excursion. She considered asking what the hell he thought he was doing, then decided against it. She suspected it would fall into that category of things (grown depressingly large since she first took up demonic magic) that she found out about sooner than she expected and then immediately wished she hadn't.

A/N: Wow, this thing is getting longer than I expected. Next chapter should be up a bit sooner than this one, since I've already got it half written. :-)