Tramping along a deserted stone corridor, staring at Tun's angry and unresponsive back, produced in Callista a disheartening sense of déjà vu. Only this time, instead of a good-natured dwarf and a scheming dreadlord for companions, they had Jhormug (newly recalled from the fallen column he'd been licking his wounds under since the battle), and a pushy troll woman. Callista wasn't sure this constituted an improvement.
Tun stopped walking, wordlessly, and Callista plunged a hand into her pocket to fish out the small crystal prism she had swiped from the mo'args' table.
"Ya sure that thing be workin'?" Na'rii asked, lean face suspicious in the uncertain firelight.
"No," Callista said shortly. The trinket flashed and glittered as she held it up to her face, pulsing slightly with its own light as the tiny runes wheeled within it. It looked identical to the one Nerothos had used, but the first time she'd touched it to a wall, nothing had happened. Either it was defective, or the engineering works didn't run behind every passage on Xoroth. She hoped it was the latter.
Na'rii narrowed her eyes, and drew her lips back to reveal teeth sharper than Callista's own. She was single-mindedly determined to find Kar'thol, and had little patience for delay. She didn't trust that the warlock wasn't stalling intentionally for some nefarious purpose of the dreadlord's or her own.
Callista pressed the prism to the dust-powdered red stone, and was relieved when the familiar ripples spread outward from her hand. She paused before stepping through, turning back over her shoulder. "You know we'll probably be killed."
She had been looking at Tun, but he just stared stonily back at her. It was Na'rii who answered.
"No one's makin' ya come, traitor." Her yellow eyes were hard.
"I know. But someone had to say it," Callista said coldly, before whirling and stepping through the wall, Jhormug at her heels.
In all honesty, she wouldn't be coming if she had any choice at all. Na'rii's plan, which boiled down to "find demons, slice them up 'til one leads to Kar'thol, launch a half-cocked assault on wherever he happens to be," amounted, in Callista's opinion, to suicide. She'd always thought melodramatic heroic gestures to be idiotic, and she was rather irked to have been roped into one now. But the truth was, now that they were no longer under Nerothos' (and thus Vathregyr's) aegis, anything they did amounted to suicide. And, given the choice of dying alone or participating in this scatterbrained venture, well…misery loves company.
"Which way?" Na'rii demanded once she'd stepped through the portal, squinting for a moment in the brighter illumination.
Fel light flecked Callista's pupils as she searched for demons. She didn't find any, but it hardly mattered. Any direction would yield some eventually. "Go right," she said, picking at random.
Na'rii grunted and turned, striding down the corridor in her silent, cat-like way. Callista and Tun followed, not looking at each other except for the occasional disappointed glare from Tun.
He didn't know whether to be furious at Callista or just plain hurt. She had lied to him before, of course, but always out of simple thoughtlessness or a desire for expediency, never out of – Tun paused as he realized he had no idea why Callista had been lying at all. She had explained what she had been doing with That Demon, but not why. He would have assumed Nerothos had threatened her into obedience, but, if she had been that terrified of him, he doubted she would've dared to do so much verbal sniping at him.
He looked up at Callista with a puzzled frown. She was staring at a point a few feet in front of her with a brooding expression, oblivious to his gaze. He could ask her, but he realized with a slightly sick feeling that he wasn't sure he'd believe what she said.
Na'rii stalked down the corridor ahead of him with her brow furrowed in concentration, gaze lancing from side to side down cross passages in search of demons. There were circular rune-rimmed windows set low to the ground on roughly alternating sides of the corridor, but all she could see through them was the bottom of thick metal doors and tumbled piles of stone. She didn't need Callista to tell her what they were doing was probably hopeless. But she had learned a long time ago that opportunities came to those who made them, and, from what the warlock said, they were dead if they stayed where they were anyway. She owed it to Kar'thol to try.
Jhormug growled softly, and Callista sensed his frisson of excitement at a possible meal. "We've found one. Probably a gan'arg," she said, only half-interested. She had thought, for a moment, eavesdropping on Nerothos' talk of assaulting dimensional gates, that there was actually a possibility of escaping this world in one piece. She could accept the fact that that was no longer likely with the fatalism common to warlocks (very few in her profession got to be old, usually due to demon-related mishaps), but she found it difficult to be very excited about rushing headlong to her doom. She just hoped when the inevitable happened she wasn't taken alive and left in that Tazlik creature's clutches. She doubted he'd be above a little petty revenge.
"A ga-what?" Na'rii asked, looking around with even more focused intensity, beaded braids clacking together softly. "Where?!"
"A gan'arg. Left corridor," Callista said, giving Jhormug silent permission to bound ahead. The felhunter leapt forward with a pleased snarl, quickly outpacing the group.
"Hey, mon! That thing better not be eatin' it!" Na'rii cried, lengthening her own strides as she turned into the indicated passage.
"I wouldn't worry," Callista said dryly, not bothering to accelerate past a leisurely jog. "He's been trying to eat you for days."
Na'rii either missed this last remark or chose to ignore it as she broke into a full sprint. Her tall, lanky frame was well-suited to running, and she was in much better physical condition than Callista or Tun. She quickly left them far behind.
They caught up a few minutes later to find Na'rii and Jhormug jointly terrorizing a bewildered-looking gan'arg. The demon was lying on his back in the middle of the corridor with Jhormug's front paws planted solidly on his chest. Evidently he had been carrying a flask or vial or some sort, because shards of glass were everywhere, and the gan'arg himself was covered in a brilliant violet liquid that Jhormug licked from his robes with relish. The gan'arg shrieked in terror, believing, understandably, that he was about to be eaten.
Na'rii chose this moment to draw her curved sword and prod the side of the gan'arg's neck. "Where ya keepin' the prisoners?" she demanded, giving him an extra poke.
The gan'arg babbled incomprehensibly, becoming shriller as Jhormug began lapping at his cowl.
Callista laughed despite herself. "He can't understand you," she pointed out, walking around to where the demon could see her.
"Talk to it then!" Na'rii snarled, remaining crouched threateningly at the gan'arg's side but removing her sword point.
"I am," Callista said, leaning over the pinned gan'arg and pushing Jhormug's blocky head away from his face. Then, in Eredun: "Do you know where we could find an ogre?"
The gan'arg stilled his flailing and eyed her suspiciously, becoming bolder now that the felhunter was pacified and someone was speaking to him in a tongue that wasn't barbaric mortal gibberish. "Maybe," he said evasively. His voice was surprisingly deep and gruff for a creature of his stature. His small round eyes flicked to the purple stain on his robe, and he become agitated again. "Ruined! Weeks of setback! The Lady will – "
"If I were you I'd worry less about the Lady, and more about that troll," Callista said, leaning closer. She continued in a lurid whisper, backing her words with shadow magic to frighten and lend credence. "Failed experiment. Very unstable. They put her back with her cellmate after her last session, one of those six-headed hydras." She paused for effect, eyes wide with sincerity. "Ten minutes later, nothing was left but a flipper."
The gan'arg swallowed visibly and glanced towards Na'rii, who grinned viciously and sighted him down her sword blade.
Callista swallowed a laugh. It was an idiotic story, but the entertaining part about fear magic was it didn't much matter what balderdash you said, so long as you put enough power behind it.
"What kind of ogre you looking for?" the gan'arg asked, suddenly disposed to be helpful.
"The recent kind," Callista said, drawing back to a more comfortable distance and pulling Jhormug with her by tugging on his striped neck spines. "You serve Lord Vathregyr?"
"I suppose," the gan'arg said in a surly tone. With Jhormug off his chest, he sat up and readjusted his drab brown cowl. "When I can't help it."
Callista tilted her head curiously, brushing away a strand of hair that fell into her eyes. "Has he taken any prisoners lately?"
"Few dozen, I'd guess," he said offhandedly. He eyed Na'rii with undisguised fear and scooted a few inches nearer to Callista. The grayish skin of his hands was mottled and discolored; Callista guessed this wasn't the first accident he had had with a beaker of enchanted potion.
"I meant here, on Xoroth," Callista corrected.
"What ya be tellin' that thing?" Na'rii interrupted suspiciously. She was fidgeting restlessly, toying with her sword and staring at Callista with narrowed eyes.
"Not now," Callista said impatiently, waving a hand at her.
The gan'arg hesitated, featureless face difficult to read. "Yeah," he said finally. "Two of 'em. You want that ogre?"
"Where is he?" Callista asked, satisfied to finally be getting somewhere.
"Hauling fel cannons. I can take you there," the gan'arg said, climbing to his feet.
Callista looked at the demon with a raised brow. Her spell must've been more persuasive than she thought. "Good," she said. She turned and relayed this news to Na'rii and Tun.
Tun crossed his purple-and-blue-clad arms, skeptical. "How do you know it's not an ambush?" He peered at the gan'arg with wary interest. It was an odd kind of demon, short enough for him to look in the eye, and it didn't seem very fierce at all.
"We don't," Callista said flatly. The enslavement spell she had used to pry the truth out of Tazlik was good for extracting facts, but next to useless for determining its victim's intentions. It was, at its core, a fairly nasty form of psychological torture (something she justified by telling herself it was nothing compared to what the demon would like to do to her). The gan'arg would swear to the Dark Titan himself that he meant to help them, and mean every word of it, if he thought it would make Callista release him. But what he actually would do once freed was another matter entirely. She could try to keep his mind subverted until he led them to Kar'thol, but even if she succeeded the strain would exhaust her to the point she'd be useless in battle.
"Better than nothin'," Na'rii said philosophically, urging the gan'arg forward with the tip of her blade.
Tun looked doubtful, but fell into step beside her anyway.
Callista yanked Jhormug away from the pool of violet liquid he'd been lapping off the stone, jaws crunching as he contentedly swallowed bits of broken glass along with the potion, and trailed along at the gan'arg's back. There was a strange sort of serenity, she reflected, that came with knowing beyond all doubt that you were about to die horrifically.
"Almost there," the gan'arg, whose name had turned out to be Alchemist Darmog, said gruffly.
"Darmog says we're close," Callista repeated in Common. She had to raise her voice to be heard; the passage was thick with scurrying gan'arg, all chattering in their own tongue. Luckily the three mortals had been totally ignored, beyond an occasional furtive glance. Their presence was unusual, but not threatening, and most Legion demons learned very quickly that the consequences of curiosity were nearly always unpleasant.
Disapproval flitted over Tun's face at her use of the gan'arg's name. He held little prejudice against any mortal race, Alliance or Horde, but he thoroughly disliked all demons on principle. He found it alarming that Callista, who was quite prone enough to dubious behavior on her own, always seemed to be so familiar with the creatures. Especially after that mischief with the dreadlord. "Must you always be on a first-name basis?" Tun muttered irritably.
Callista bristled. "You made me talk to him!" she protested.
"Yes, to get information, not make friends!" Tun said, scowling over his shoulder and almost colliding with a gan'arg rushing the other way.
"I was!" Callista snapped, glaring back. "How in the Nether was I supposed to talk to him without a name?!"
"I don't know, the same way you talk to everything else?!"
"Stuff it, both of ya!" Na'rii broke in, weary of their bickering.
Distracted, none of the three noticed Darmog signal discreetly to a passing gan'arg, which abruptly changed direction and dashed off down an adjoining corridor.
Several minutes later, the argument had broadened in scope and was still escalating.
"I never told you because I knew you'd act like this!" Callista shouted, now rather red-faced.
"Like this? This?! You get mixed up with a dreadlord – a DREADLORD, for Light's sake! – who almost kills us all, and you think THIS is unreasonable?!" Tun was practically bursting with fury, fists clenched. "You're lucky I haven't throttled you!"
Na'rii rolled her eyes in exasperation, having given up quieting the two as a lost cause. Their words echoed loudly in the corridor, which, Na'rii noticed with a mixture of surprise and suspicion, had suddenly been cleared of its hordes of gan'arg. "Hey, mon, where'd they all go?" she said to no one in particular, straining her senses for anything out of the ordinary.
"They've all gone away, because they think you're about to die." It was a cold, feminine voice, speaking lightly-accented Common.
They all whirled on the spot, Callista and Tun silencing themselves mid-yell. Only Darmog looked unsurprised.
"You!" Callista said, as the graceful form of Lady Sarlah emerged from a side passage.
"Don't tell me you know this one, too," Tun muttered, irritated disbelief breaking through his fear.
The Lady was clad in a clinging garment of enchanted blue silk, intricately graven silver bands on each of her six arms, and her smile was beautiful and hard as diamond. "I am not your enemy, mortal."
"I don't think I believe that," Callista said, backing up a step. Jhormug snarled at her side with his spiny hackles raised.
"No, I suppose you wouldn't," Lady Sarlah said, the natural malice of her expression tinged with amusement. "Nerothos was convinced of my treachery. He was right, thought not in the way he expected."
"Who are you and what do you want?" Tun asked, trying to sound more confident than he felt. If he was going to be dragged into another of Callista's spectacular demonic messes, he at least deserved to be informed.
Lady Sarlah looked at him, her gaze flaying his courage like a knife, and it took all his resolve not to shrink under it.
"If you don't know, I see no reason to tell you, mortal," she said coolly. "I have a proposition for you. You will accept it, or you will die."
"What ya proposin'?" Na'rii asked warily, fingers curled tightly about the leather-wrapped hilt of her sword. She sensed with a shaman's instinct that Lady Sarlah was not a creature to trifle with, even less so than Nerothos had been. Demonic power flowed from her, tainting the very air, and the spirits whispered warnings.
"The Tothrezim, Vathregyr. I want him dead," she said, lips twisting hatefully.
Silence greeted this statement, incredulous on Callista's part, and confused on everyone else's.
"You can't be serious," Callista finally said, shaking her head skeptically. "We've as much chance of killing you. How is your proposition more attractive than trying that?"
Tun mentally swore at Callista and twitched his fingers in the first gestures of a spell, expecting the demoness to acknowledge the threat and react accordingly. Why oh why couldn't that thrice-cursed warlock ever show any tact?
Lady Sarlah, however, seemed to have anticipated the question and was not offended. "Simple," she said, smiling icily and gesturing elegantly with two of her hands. "You want to return to your own world, yes? With Vathregyr dead, this becomes possible."
"How?" Tun asked cautiously, not quite daring to hope.
"The High Mekgineer's people still wish to defect, but serve out of terror," she said, eyes bright with an unholy light. "Vathregyr has told no one of the failed rebellion lest he be suspected of treason himself. If Nerothos has not yet revealed his intentions to his captors, and if Vathregyr is destroyed, their defection may yet succeed."
Tun found this more puzzling than clarifying, but Callista's gray eyes were narrowed and he could practically see the thoughts arranging themselves in her head.
"Assuming, of course, we can rely on your discretion," Callista said, having mulled this over and decided it made sense. It was a stupid, desperate plan, but it was fractionally better than the stupid, suicidal plan they currently had.
Lady Sarlah laughed, a frigid, unkind sound. "If Vathregyr's death remains too long secret, then suspicion will fall upon me. I will grant you a few hours, no more."
"Deal," Callista said after a moment's consideration. She had no way of knowing if Lady Sarlah's word was good, but she was also in no position to be choosy.
"What are you doing!" Tun hissed. The details of the conversation had been meaningless to him, and he was in no frame of mind to trust Callista's judgment. She'd just agreed they would assassinate someone he didn't even know!
"Wonderful," Lady Sarlah said, looking cruelly pleased. "Remain here; one of my aides will join you shortly." She turned and left in a swirl of blue silk and sinister magic.
"What have you gotten us into?!" Tun yelled, whirling on Callista as soon as the demoness was out of sight. "What on Azeroth is a Tothrezim and why are we killing one?!"
"A way home, a goblin with wings, and I don't care," Callista said, only half listening. She had dismissed Jhormug back to the Nether, and was tracing the runes in the air that would summon Azlia, her succubus.
Tun did not find these answers at all enlightening, stamping his foot in frustration. "In Common, you idiot warlock!"
"I be killin' no one 'til we find Kar'thol," Na'rii said firmly, staring balefully at Callista.
"Vathregyr has Kar'thol," Callista explained, finishing her last rune with a trail of green sparks.
Na'rii's face split into a wide grin. "Now ya be talkin'."
A pinprick of green light on the floor expanded to a rotating circle of fel runes, Callista's succubus popping into being at the hub. Tun wrinkled his nose at the demoness. She was very pretty, if not quite conventionally beautiful, and, thanks to the magic she wielded, more alluring than any mortal woman could ever hope to be. She was also thoughtless, capricious, and unutterably cruel. Tun liked her even less than the felhunter.
"Ooooh, mistress," Azlia said, flicking her almond-shaped eyes around the corridor and clapping her hands together prettily, "have we joined the Legion?"
"Absolutely not," Callista said, looking disdainful of the idea. "I need you to take a message to the dreadlord Nerothos. Don't be seen, and come straight back."
"A dreadlord?" Azlia said, tilting her head so her dark hair gleamed in the light from the wall sconces. "What are you doing with one of those, mistress? And where is he?" she added as an afterthought.
"Getting out of here, and good question," Callista said, looking thoughtful and tapping her teeth with a fingernail.
"I know where he is," a gruff voice said from behind her in Eredun.
Darmog. She'd forgotten about him in the confusion. He'd slunk off to the side while Lady Sarlah was delivering her ultimatum, watching everything with his round pale eyes.
"Like you knew where the ogre was?" she asked dryly, turning to look down at him.
"Nah, I was lying about that," he said, waving a splotchy hand dismissively. "Now I'm telling the truth."
"Uh-huh," she said, unconvinced. Unfortunately, he was currently her only option. "Azlia, go with him, and if he's lying, kill him." She said this in demonic for Darmog's benefit. He looked unperturbed.
"Oooh, goody!" Azlia said, amber-colored eyes sparkling with malicious delight. "I do hope he's lying. What shall I tell the dreadlord?"
Callista paused for a moment, head cocked. "Tell him if he doesn't say anything stupid, we'll let him out."
"We'll what?!" Tun asked incredulously, whipping his head around to stare.
"Yes, mistress," Azlia said with a wicked smile, hooking her claws into Darmog's shoulder and dragging him along. She giggled when he flinched at her touch. "Come along, gan'arg, or I'll flay you!"
"I'll be havin' nothin' to do with that dreadlord," Na'rii said darkly, crossing her lean blue arms with an air of finality. She'd neither forgotten nor forgiven the soul-warping terror she'd felt under his power.
Callista sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose unhappily. She didn't like arguing Nerothos' case any more than her companions liked hearing her do it, but practical considerations had to come first. "If we don't go get him, he'll tell all of Xoroth what we're up to, and a great big demonic army will crush us like little mortal insects."
"Then we be gettin' crushed," Na'rii said stubbornly, face hard and closed.
"Oh, please," Callista said scornfully.
"I'm not helping you let that fiend out either, Callista," Tun said, standing next to Na'rii and adopting her stance. "It was a mistake the first time, and it's a mistake now."
Callista just stared at them, such willful irrationality completely beyond her comprehension. "Oh, whatever, I'll do it myself," she said under her breath, when they showed no sign of relenting.
She suddenly noticed they were no longer looking at her, but someone or something over her left shoulder.
"Ahem. Hello, mortals," a fussy voice said in perfect Common.
Callista groaned, recognizing it even before she turned to see the speaker. "Unholy Nether, not you again."
Fiendsmith Tazlik peered disdainfully at her through green-tinted goggles. "Hello again, you degenerate human swine. I hope the Tothrezim kills you first."
"I hope a felhound eats your other arm," Callista retorted.
"You know each other too?" Tun asked, putting a hand over his eyes in annoyed disbelief. "What in the name of the Light were you doing with that dreadlord, going to parties?!"
"Worst parties ever," Callista muttered, eyeing Tazlik balefully.
Tazlik smirked.