Several hours later, as she peered through a rune-rimmed window, crouching beside the bodies of two felguards whose own broad-bladed swords still protruded from their chests, Callista's optimism had waned somewhat. She bit impatiently at her lip as she watched the corridor beyond, searching for a new target. Darmog's skittish fidgeting, just visible out of the corner of her right eye, was doing nothing for her nerves.
Callista's plan, which had seemed perfectly straightforward in her head, was proving to be rather more complex in execution. Her problem was twofold: Nerothos' cell was some distance from the edge of the gan'args' passages, and, once she reached it, she needed a way to open it. She had intended to resolve both of these difficulties at once by seizing control of one of the dreadlord's jailers and posing as a prisoner, but, as the two bodies on the floor at her feet testified, she had overlooked a crucial fact. Namely, that the Xorothian high command had not been so stupid as to give all of its underlings knowledge of how to unlock the cells.
She rubbed a little at her temples in a futile bid to alleviate the headache brought on by her enslavement spell. She didn't have much time; patrols in this part of the dungeon were spaced very close together, and soon someone would notice the absence of the two she had killed.
A heavy door slammed, and Callista pressed her face to the transparent stone of the window to catch a glimpse at what had done it. It was not, she noted with mingled satisfaction and dread, another felguard. A massive, black-cuirassed doomguard swaggered down the outer passage, heavy hooves thudding ominously on the jet-dark floor. A thick ring of keys dangled at one of its sides and an enormous glittering-edged falchion hung at the other.
Her eyes narrowed appraisingly as she watched the demon's approach. She had never tried to enslave a doomguard before, wasn't sure she was even capable, though she knew those who had done it. They were stronger than felguards, smarter, and possessed even greater brutality. The thought of trying it now filled her with a queasy sort of fear. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure she had a choice. Once her enemies realized those guards were dead these passages would be choked with demons, and her mission would be hopeless. Besides, the keys at its side made it almost a certainty this doomguard held the knowledge she sought.
She steeled herself to act as the doomguard passed her invisible window and continued on down the corridor. It was almost at the edge of her magical range when she pressed the enchanted prism she held clenched in her fist to the wall and strode through the rippling stone.
Her first feeling, stepping away from the claustrophobic safety of the wall spaces onto the strange black stone of the dungeon proper, was one of startling vulnerability. She wondered if this wasn't exactly the sort of reckless stupidity Tun had warned her about, but stomped on the thought quickly, focusing on the retreating bulk of the doomguard's back.
She took a long deep breath, gathering her magic and hardening her will, before invoking the words of power.
It was like seizing an exploding thorium grenade. A violent surge of power and murderous rage hit her like a physical blow, and she reeled back a step before recovering herself and planting her feet firmly. The doomguard bellowed in fury, whirling around with impressive agility for a creature of its size and drawing its falchion with a metallic clang.
Callista, knowing she was committed now beyond all recall, collected her shaken nerve and spoke forcefully in demonic, drawing power from the Nether to shackle and subdue. She crushed a sudden terrifying image of the demon's blade cleaving through her neck, and renewed her focus on the rushing tide of magic that was rising around her.
The doomguard took one bounding leap towards her and then was brought up short as though a chain around its neck had been yanked, ugly features contorted in an expression of thwarted malice.
Callista uttered the spell's final words, and the flood of enraged hatred that had been battering her will suddenly ebbed to a manageable level. She allowed herself a small sigh of relief, but didn't dare relax her guard for a moment. As thoroughly horrifying as that had been, there was worse to come: she had to let it touch her.
She approached the doomguard cautiously, making sure it was firmly in the grip of her magic before getting too close. It really was a monstrosity of a demon, a breathing mountain of runed armor and knotted muscle. Bracing herself, she instructed it to seize her by the shoulder –
– and found she had overestimated her control.
The doomguard seized her by the shoulder and then through it, its claws ripping into the meat above her collarbone. She cried out and swore in unexpected pain and sent a retaliatory surge of power through the demon's bonds. Its grip loosened to a more tolerable level and she forced it to walk, gritting her teeth against the throb in her shoulder. She directed the doomguard to grab her other arm too, with somewhat more success, so that it shoved her uncomfortably before it as it marched. She kept her head down and her face slack, playing the part of a helpless and terrified prisoner of war. It didn't require as much acting as she would've liked.
Callista hardly noticed the occupants of the cells around them, eyes fixed firmly on the tiled stone before her feet. A felguard passed them in the opposite direction and she stiffened involuntarily, but the demon gave the doomguard a wide berth. She tried not to dwell on how very very close the doomguard's claws lay to her neck. It was trapped firmly in her spell now, but she could feel it seething.
After what felt like far too long, the demon halted and she looked up.
Her eyes met a semi-transparent barrier of fel energy, and behind it, Nerothos. His condition had not at all improved from what Azlia had described, looking as though someone had made a pretty fair attempt at skinning him alive, but he still growled softly at her from the back of the cell as soon as her gaze lit on him. His lip curled, and he skewered first Callista and then her escort, whose claws were still planted solidly on her arm and blood-sodden shoulder, with a contemptuous stare. "Overambitious, warlock?"
Callista raised a brow at this greeting and ordered her unwilling minion to let her go. "Even if I had been, I don't see why you should get to look smug about it."
"The irony has a certain appeal," he sneered, eyes burning brightly in the dark of the cell. "Assuming your offer was sincere." Despite the flippancy of his words, his features, so far as she could read them through the magical barrier, held none of the malicious amusement she would've expected. She surmised that he was not actually pleased that she had been "captured."
She snorted, and took some satisfaction from his low snarl of surprise when the doomguard obediently allowed her to wriggle out of its grip.
"Oh, don't look so shocked," Callista said, quirking her lip just a little, as the doomguard began the complicated process of opening Nerothos' cell. She silently prodded it to move faster, knowing if it broke loose of her control she would be in a very disturbing position, but it didn't seem to have much effect. Apparently Nerothos' jailers had been quite serious about him staying put this time.
"My apologies," Nerothos said sardonically. He laughed quietly at the doomguard's expression of impotent fury, savoring the sight of one of his tormentors caught in the humiliating position of being enslaved by a mortal. Perhaps he hadn't given the warlock enough credit.
"I hope you haven't said anything stupid," Callista said, moving closer to the barrier to get a better look at the dreadlord's injuries, "or freeing you won't do either of us any good."
"That is hardly accurate," Nerothos said. His expression had already settled back into its familiar look of arrogant amusement. "But no. They've learned nothing from me."
"Good," Callista said, looking warily both ways down the passage behind her. Blood was trickling down her sleeve from her wounded shoulder; she wiped it off.
The barrier flickered and faded, and she got her first clear view of Nerothos. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. His entire left side was caked with half-congealed blood, and he was leaning uncomfortably against the back wall of the cell, favoring his right leg. One of his wings dangled at a grotesque angle. If demons bled out or fell prey to infection the way mortals did, he almost certainly would've been dead, but since they did not he merely bared his fangs in displeasure at Callista's inspection.
She supposed she had been staring; there was a strange pattern of runes slashed into the skin of his chest, about where his old scars had been. "Can you – "
Her question was cut off by a thick rope of fel energy that crackled through the air near her face, and she dove instinctively away. "Unholy Nether, demon!"
A bestial roar from behind her indicated that the spell had struck its target, the enslaved doomguard. It drew its falchion to retaliate, the light of Nerothos' spell reflecting off a silvery blade only slightly shorter than Callista herself, but she clamped down hard on the magic that bound it and bade it be still. The doomguard froze, huge face locked in a rictus of murderous hatred, as Nerothos drew its power to mend his own wounds.
"Would you prefer I siphon you, warlock?" Nerothos asked, meeting her annoyed gaze with a toothy smile. The spell-glare that bathed his pale face made this expression even more unnerving than it usually was.
"I don't know, would you prefer I stuff you back in that cell?" Callista retorted, most of her attention focused on keeping her minion from launching on a bloody rampage. With the doomguard at her command, she might even be able to do it.
Nerothos laughed heartily, enjoying the rush of stolen power after the agonies of his confinement. He found her presumption amusing. As if she would dare try. "Even if you possessed the means, mortal, you haven't the will," he said, looking wickedly smug.
Callista just sighed in annoyance, knowing he had her. She'd gone to far too much trouble to just leave him here now, attractive as the idea might become.
The writhing snake of green light that connected the two demons vanished as Nerothos ended the spell with a wave of his claw.
"Feeling better?" Callista asked, only half sarcastically, leaning a hand on the doorway of his cell. He certainly looked better; the crusted blood had been replaced by fresh skin and his wing had snapped back into place. The only injuries that had not healed were the esoteric slashes on his chest.
"Quite," he said, flexing his wings and striding out of the cell to look down at her with malicious satisfaction. "I assume you have a plan."
Callista began to walk rapidly down the passageway, doomguard in tow. She had intended to have already rid herself of the creature, but Nerothos' vampiric spell had had the useful consequence of knocking most of the fight out of it.
"Yes," she said, looking up at Nerothos as he easily kept pace at her side. "Be very far away when – ," she paused as a chorus of enraged shouts rose in the distance, accompanied by the sound of many armored boots on stone, "–that happens," she concluded drily.
She whirled and backtracked a few steps, but was dismayed to hear voices and the clang of drawn weaponry from that direction too.
When she turned around again, Nerothos had vanished. More frustrated than really surprised, she narrowed her eyes and swore venomously.
Tun and Na'rii stared suspiciously as Tazlik attempted to herd them into what was unmistakably a cage.
"But you must!" the mo'arg said, jabbing his steel claw at the cage entrance. It was an elaborate affair, constructed of heavy metal bars and etched with glowing runes. "This isn't some savage backwater; mortals don't traipse around laboratories free." He sounded appalled at the idea.
"Ya said nothin' about this before," Na'rii said, scowling. She prodded the cage door with her toe; it fairly seethed with fel magic. "I don' think so."
Tazlik sniffed haughtily. "I assumed it would be obvious to any creature with logical faculties. Pardon my overestimation."
Tun sighed, shaking his head and eyeing the cage with deep misgiving. "There must be some other way."
Tazlik made a great show of thinking about this. "I suppose I could acquire some shackles," he said, baring his uneven teeth in a grin. "But you cannot get near enough to perform your allotted task without being bound in some way. You would be discovered and we would all be killed at once."
Tun sighed again, in resignation this time. He didn't trust this creature, and he didn't like the look of that cage at all, but they had made a plan and they were committed to it now. If this was what it took to get home…
"We have your word you'll let us out again?" Tun said, crossing his arms and looking up at the much larger demon sternly.
"Of course!" Tazlik said dismissively. "It is as the Lady wills."
Swallowing his apprehension, Tun stepped into the twisted steel cage, trying not to touch anything with a fel rune on it. After a moment Na'rii followed, muttering something in Zandali that could've been either prayer or obscenity.
"Excellent!" Tazlik said, slamming the door shut with a resounding clang. He spoke sharply in demonic, and a team of gan'arg scurried to begin pushing the cage, which had already been set on large iron casters.
Tun looked doubtfully out through the bars at the stone walls rolling past. He hoped wherever Callista was, she was having an better time than they.
"Nerothos!" Callista hissed. The sound of approaching troops was closer now; very soon things would become very ugly. "Nerothos, you filthy coward, I'll help them hunt you down my – mmmphg!"
Her voice was smothered as a large hand clapped over her mouth and an arm locked about her middle, yanking her backwards. Nerothos flickered into view as she was drawn under the auspices of his invisibility spell, her back pressed tightly against his chest. His claws stuck painfully into her neck and side; she squirmed pointedly but to no avail.
"You are fortunate that you've proven yourself so useful," Nerothos said, looking down at her from very close now. He seemed to find her discomfort amusing.
At this point, Callista would have liked to have snapped, "Not as fortunate as you are!" but was prevented by the fact that his hand was still clamped solidly over her mouth. She settled for a baleful narrowing of her eyes.
"Dispose of that creature," he ordered, meaning the doomguard. She could actually feel his breath on her ear, and she twitched away as best as she could in irritation.
Her eyes rolled at the command, but a moment later the doomguard keeled over with its falchion stuck neatly through its own neck. She immediately developed a throbbing headache, and lifted the hand that wasn't pinned down by Nerothos' arm to rub at the bridge of her nose.
Callista dearly wished Nerothos would let go of her face, because by now she had composed a few choice words about this arrangement. That it involved being far closer to the dreadlord than she had ever wanted to be to any demon was something she could accept for the sake of not getting hacked to pieces by a mob of angry felguards, but the way one of his claws was stabbing into the skin exactly above her jugular was as unnecessary as she was convinced it was deliberate. Add to that how tightly he was holding her, the claws digging into her ribs, and the fact that she couldn't say anything scathing about any of it, and Callista was as vexed as she had ever been.
Probably for the best, she realized in some corner of her mind - the indignation distracted her from the fact she ought to be petrified. She decided the tactical choice was clearly to continue being as irritated as possible.
Nerothos laughed maliciously at her. She could feel his voice vibrate against her back, which only annoyed her more. She was starting to seriously consider conjuring some felfire to see if he thought that was funny too, when her increasingly irate thoughts were interrupted by a searing burst of pain.
Nerothos had moved his hand from her ribs to the wound in her shoulder and squeezed down hard. She thought she might have yelped, but any sound she may have made was muffled. She understood why he had done it, of course, (even a felguard would find something suspicious in an empty patch of air suddenly starting to bleed) but the excessive amount of force he had used could only be the result of sheer diabolical malice. Ugh, just like a demon. Even the helpful ones made you miserable.
She fidgeted uncomfortably in his grasp, trying to find a position in which his armored knee wasn't gouging into her leg, but froze when the first detachment of felguards marched into view. Callista counted ten of them, all clad identically in black plate with a faintly glowing sigil on the chest piece. The weapons they carried varied, but all of them were very large and looked wickedly sharp.
The sight of the doomguard's massive corpse occasioned a great deal of shouting and waving about of blades.
"Someone killed the Captain!"
"Aye, with his own sword!"
"Use your eyes, ogre-brain, the Captain killed himself!"
"Why the hell would he do that?"
"Maybe he got sick of listening to your jaw flapping!"
This exchange was terminated by a chorus of jeers and the ring of metal on metal as the offended felguard swung his double-headed axe at the neck of his mocker, only to have the blow deflected by the blade of an enormous broadsword. The impact flung loose a sliver of steel which whistled through the air uncomfortably close to Callista's face. It had almost certainly hit Nerothos, but the dreadlord gave no sign he'd even noticed.
The duel in the center of the corridor quickly expanded into a full-out brawl, felguards being none too particular about who was being sliced up so long as someone was bleeding.
Callista stiffened every time one of the combatants drew too close and wished they would all hurry up and kill each other so she could get away. She knew that Nerothos valued his own hide far too much to betray her here, but there was still a nagging kind of fear associated with trusting her safety to a creature who, under slightly different circumstances, would've tossed her to the felguards just to hear her screams. Not to mention the fact that the dreadlord's skin was unnaturally warm; she could feel prickles of sweat breaking out on her face under the heat of his restraining hand. The only thing her circumstances had to recommend them was that Nerothos' grip had finally caused her injured shoulder to become numb.
One of the felguards managed to bludgeon his way into leadership over the six left standing and began bellowing out orders. "Something's got loose, better kill it quick or it's our necks!"
He began cudgeling his fellows further down the passage, laying about with the flat of his blade at any demon moving too slowly. This announcement was met with a great deal of grumbling and snarling but no outright dissent – the felguards knew the consequences would not be pleasant if their higher-ups learned prisoners had escaped on their watch.
Nerothos' claws bit further into Callista's neck, and she resisted a jolt of alarm followed by a strong urge to elbow him sharply. Mostly because she feared that moving her arm enough to give it a satisfying amount of force would cause her hand to flicker into visibility.
The felguards had gotten most of the way down the passage by now, where they paused to rendezvous with their compatriots, drawn by the sound of combat.
"Something the matter, warlock?" Nerothos murmured sardonically, close to her ear.
If he was still trying to make her uncomfortable, he was wasting his time. Callista had been highly uncomfortable ever since he first grabbed hold of her, and since the sensation had quickly leveled off she'd assumed she'd reached her physiological limit for it.
"Oh, just trying to figure out why you're clawing my neck open by degrees," she hissed, once he'd allowed her to yank his hand away from her mouth. She wondered how well felguards could hear.
"Mortal flesh is so pathetically frail," Nerothos said with vicious amusement, hooking a claw into one of the red dents he'd already made in her neck. "It's no wonder you die in droves."
Callista slapped at his hand and tried to pull away, but his arm across her chest held her fast. There were still felguards at the end of the corridor. "Funny you've had so little luck exterminating us."
"Only because you breed like insects."
"Yes, well, Azeroth is rather boring between your shoddy attempts to kill us all, what else is there to – ow, hey!" Presumably not caring much for her choice of adjective, Nerothos had loosened his grip on her wound just long enough to allow feeling to return and then clamped down on it roughly. This was shortly followed by his other hand clapping back over her mouth, and she was pinned silently against him again until the last felguard disappeared from view.
Nerothos released her, and she sprang away to a decent distance. She eyed him ambivalently for a moment, before supposing that the fact he'd just saved her life made up for the fact he'd done it in a way calculated to be as miserable as possible. She shook her head disgustedly and motioned for the demon to follow, taking off down the black-tiled passage at a near sprint and hopping neatly over the body of a dead felguard. She just hoped Darmog hadn't lost his nerve and bolted off to find some hole to hide in by the time they got back.
Tun laid a hand tentatively on the rune-etched bars of his cage, peering out between them with a mix of fascination and repulsion. Na'rii, at his side, looked about as well, but her expression was one of sullen suspicion.
Their prison had been pushed into the midst of the most well-appointed laboratory Tun had ever seen. He was not as skilled an engineer as many of his race, having devoted himself to the study of the arcane instead, but his fingers still itched to inspect the abundance of mechanical tools strewn about the large room. Or rather, they would've itched, if the implements in question weren't being put to such horrific uses by such a variety of foul-looking demons. The air was thick with the clatter of industrial machinery and the terrified shrieks of other creatures in cages. Tun shuddered despite himself.
Tazlik stood nearby, busying himself with a set of vials and strange liquids on a nearby table. Every now and then he would glance up and give the large stone chamber a surreptitious scan. He was looking, Tun knew, to see if the felguards posted about the room had reacted to whatever diversion Callista and that gan'arg (and Nerothos, he supposed distastefully, if she had really freed him) were meant to be causing. So far, none of the heavily-armored demons had so much as twitched.
Tun sighed and shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach. Nerves, he suspected. He had led a rather quiet life up until Callista's failed summoning had brought them here, and even afterwards most of the danger they had faced had been unexpected and sudden, no time to brood over it before acting. Now he had plenty of time to think and found he didn't like it at all.
Some gan'arg a short distance away were swarming enthusiastically around the disembodied head of a fel reaver, and he focused on that to distract himself. The fel iron grating that composed the thing's "face" had been removed, and green sparks sprayed from the opening as some demon on the inside worked with a welding torch. The entire massive construct had been set on a wheeled pallet to which several large ogres had been harnessed, overseen by a pair of disinterested-looking felguards. A jolt ran through him as he realized one of the ogres looked familiar.
Tun's eyes widened in surprise, and he put a hand on Na'rii's arm to get her attention. Her eyes had been shut (communing with the spirits or some such, Tun had assumed), but she opened them at his touch and looked curiously at him. He jerked his head towards the ogre team.
Recognition, followed by relief, followed by a joyful grin flashed over her face, and she slapped Tun heartily on the back. Kar'thol was alive! A slave to demons, to be sure, but that could be remedied as soon as that Tothrezim creature was dead. The warlock had said he was living, and Na'rii had believed her because she'd had no choice, but she hadn't been really convinced until now.
If Callista only told the truth once in her all scheming life, she was glad it had been on this.
A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! I just wanted to let you know the next chapter may be slow (I'll be on vacation for a bit), but I definitely still intend to finish this. Here's hoping the beach has internet!