It was possible, Nerothos thought, watching Charin's misshapen back retreat into a swarm of mo'arg and their clattering wagonloads of goods, that this little defection had gotten slightly out of hand.
His wings stretched contemplatively as his gaze swept the cavern, cataloguing the supplies and demons on their way to the surface, ensuring that all was as he had ordered. They had managed to amass a sizable force here. Sizable enough, with any luck, to pose as emergency reinforcements to the embattled Legion forces on the Hellfire Peninsula. Far more sizable than he had envisioned, several years ago now, when he had accepted this commission from Lord Banehollow.
A mo'arg approached him purposefully, a thick metal chestplate in one hand and a pair of bracers dangling from the other. It dropped them onto the cluttered surface of a table near Nerothos' side with a series of clangs. "These should do," it said gruffly, fidgeting uncomfortably in its haste to leave.
Nerothos nodded dismissively, and it melted back into the crowd. He hooked a claw into an armhole of the chestpiece, yanking it closer to begin unfastening its various buckles and straps. The silver filigree that detailed the black metal wasn't quite a match for the armor he already wore, but it was adequate for now. He could requisition a new set when he returned to Jaedenar.
And he would have to go all the way to Jaedenar, after this.
The great Legion lords tolerated a certain amount of treachery amongst their underlings (those without the cunning to defend their lives and positions quite clearly didn't deserve to keep them), but what Nerothos had arranged here was beginning to look less like an insignificant squabble over resources and more like a dangerous insurrection. Not his fault, of course – his original plan had been simply to spirit away Charin and a few of his more capable lieutenants, simultaneously gaining vengeance on Lord Hel'nurath for "misplacing" supplies meant for the Shadow Council and doing something to remedy the problem – but Vathregyr's change of heart, followed by Sarlah's opportunistic betrayal, had made this limited sort of operation impossible.
He settled the cold metal of the breastplate against his chest, growling a little as it touched the tender skin where the warlock's solvent had burned him. Such a small wound would normally have healed quickly, but the anti-arcane properties of the substance that had made it were slowing the process. Ignoring the discomfort, he pulled the leather straps tight, fastening the breastplate flush against the back of the cuirass.
This defection, coupled with the destruction that Callista and that gan'arg had wrought to divert Vathregyr's forces, would deal a nettlesome blow to the Xorothian war effort. A blow that Hel'nurath's superiors would not condone. The dreadlord would be quick to punish the sources of the problem, Nerothos chief among them, though Sarlah's fate would likely be no kinder should she fail to stop them here. It was why he was certain the shivarra had no intention of simply letting them leave; it would be suicide for her.
He snapped the bracers into place around his muscled forearms, looking up to monitor the gan'args' progress on his fel cannon emplacement. They had already constructed a tall screen of discarded parts across half the cannon's mouth and several feet to one side. When they were finished, the whole setup would be indistinguishable from a haphazard pile of junk to someone on the ground.
Callista perched on the edge of the machinery the cannon was mounted on, one eye on the activity of the gan'arg to her right and one watching the demons far below. Even from this distance, Nerothos could read the annoyance in her posture. Her eyes were narrowed as she leaned forward over the drop (unwisely, for a creature without wings), and her heel tapped impatiently against the ledge.
Still put out over losing their last argument, he assumed. The warlock was unused to taking orders and it showed, though she was surprisingly efficient once she made up her mind to be. He might have been wary, placing such a recalcitrant creature at the trigger of a powerful weapon with himself in its range, but, in a calculating, qualified sort of way, he trusted her. She needed him and she knew it; had proven it when she'd seared those runes from his chest instead of cutting his throat. A selfish kind of loyalty, perhaps, but Nerothos didn't mind. It was the only kind he understood.
His eyes narrowed in displeasure as a pair of figures at the base of the ledge attracted his attention. The troll woman and the ogre stood directly below the fel cannon, close but ignoring each other, gazes fixed stubbornly to the rush of demons around them.
That would never do. Unless he was much mistaken, Sarlah's troops would have been instructed to seek out and destroy the mortals complicit in her betrayal secondary only to seeking out and capturing him, and the troll and the ogre had positioned themselves directly in the fel cannon's blind spot.
He stalked over to have a word, taking some measure of satisfaction in the subservient way the throng of mo'arg and gan'arg parted around him.
Na'rii's scowl grew a little darker as he neared, eyes darting from him to Kar'thol, who bared his blunt teeth at the dreadlord in warning. Callista's felhunter lay a short distance away, spines flat against its neck but feelers quivering. It raised its head from its horned paws in recognition as Nerothos approached.
He moved closer until Na'rii's hand began to edge toward her weapon and he could feel the alarm crackling off of her. "Move your little feud elsewhere, troll," he ordered, looming over her with a cold smile and spreading his wings slightly for effect.
Na'rii backed up almost imperceptibly, but her expression hardened and her lips drew away a little from her teeth. She hated him, but she was no coward. "Why should we do that, mon?"
Nerothos was silent for a moment, leaning closer until she recoiled. "Because," he purred, relishing the fear wafting from her, "you will either serve my ends, or I'll see what use I can find for your corpses."
Na'rii snarled hatefully, leather armor creaking as she sank into a defensive crouch, but didn't actually lunge.
Kar'thol lumbered closer, disliking the dreadlord more than he was angry at his friend. "Demons not the boss of Kar'thol," he said mutinously.
Nerothos just smiled. "They are today."
"Come on, mon," Na'rii said, spitting him with a hostile gaze. "This spot be gettin' old."
"Na'rii not the boss of Kar'thol either," the ogre muttered, but he plodded after her all the same.
Nerothos' wings settled lazily against his back as he watched them merge into the press of demons and machines. There was one problem resolved, at least.
His fel-colored eyes scanned the cavern. Finding nothing in need of his attention, he sprang into the air with one powerful flap of his wings, vanishing from sight as he did so. The view was much better from above, and he presented a far less obvious target to intruders.
Callista sat on the edge of the steel platform, one leg dangling absently over the side. To her right the gan'arg worked, gluing dented gears and odd bits of fel steel into place with a fast-drying resin that made her nose burn. Behind her sat Tun, resting with his back against the rough-hewn wall, recovering from the exertion of holding the portal open. Ahead of her lay nothing; an empty sea of stale, slightly smoky air.
It was, she thought, looking out over the cavern from her high perch, a really very remarkable view. The seething crowd of demons that had seemed so chaotic from the ground was revealed to be surprisingly organized, a branching river of wagons and carts and flame-hearted fel reavers flowing sluggishly through the far archway and vanishing. Na'rii and Kar'thol were down there somewhere too, though Callista couldn't see them. Nerothos had shooed them away from the wall for some obscure reason of his own and she had lost them in the riot of activity.
She knocked her heel restlessly against the side of the machine, causing a low metallic thud to vibrate through her seat. She knew warlocks who would kill – had killed – for opportunities like this. A firsthand look at the Legion war machine, a working relationship with a demon who was (presumably) of some importance in the Shadow Council. It was a shame that power-mongering was the one dubious activity she'd never had much interest in. She'd fallen into fel magic because she'd been too lazy and self-entitled to master the arcane through the more disciplined path of mages, found she had a knack for it, and as long as she had means enough to knock around Azeroth without getting into any scrapes she couldn't lie or magic her way out of, she was content. All she wanted at the moment was to go home.
"Do you have to sit so near the edge?" Tun asked, scrunching his short nose at her. The bruise below his eye was already turning a vivid shade of purple, and he winced a little at the gesture, immediately regretting it. "It's making me queasy just watching you do that."
Callista snorted, but pulled her leg up from the drop and scooted back obligingly.
Tun looked at her in mild surprise. He'd expected her to gleefully lean out even farther, or something equally contrary, before giving in; she really must've thought he was dead.
He shook his head affectionately. He didn't think Callista was actually half as heartless as she sometimes pretended to be, though he was sure she'd shrivel up with embarrassment if anyone else ever figured it out. A lot of warlocks were that way. It often puzzled Tun that people so generally arrogant chose to emulate their demonic slaves, of all things, and one day he thought it might be interesting to ask why.
"What?" Callista asked, quirking a brow curiously at the way he seemed to be gazing straight through her.
"What in the name of the Light will we tell people about this?" he asked, giving her the first question that came to mind. It wasn't actually what he'd been thinking about, but now that he'd blurted it out he realized that he had no answer for it. They'd been gone for…well, it was hard to tell, since he hadn't seen a sun of any kind since they'd left Azeroth, but it had to be close to a week now. Tun had responsibilities at the Academy to fulfill; lectures to deliver, people who would notice his absence. Even if they believed the truth (which was doubtful enough; theirs was a bizarre story even in a world that seemed to grow more fantastic by the day), it involved enough collaboration with various servants of the Legion that he didn't think he'd want to tell it anyway.
"Lies," Callista answered without skipping a beat, sliding a little closer. "Lots of them. As many as it takes." She was scratched up, singed, and spattered with dried blood (most of it not hers, thankfully), but there was still a teasing glint in her eye.
Tun waved a hand vaguely, brow furrowing in thought. "Yes, but which ones?"
She stared at him for a second, then burst into laughter.
"What?" he asked, smiling a little in response but still puzzled by her reaction. It had been a serious question.
"Sorry," she said, still laughing a little. "It's just that usually you lecture me when I say things like that."
"Yes, well, usually you only say them to make me lecture you. This time you have a point."
"I know. Isn't it awful?" she said cheerfully. She settled back against the wall next to him and stretched out her legs contemplatively. "Just tell them you were waylaid by bandits, that's usually a good one."
Tun made a face, unconvinced. "For a whole week?"
Callista snorted. "Like any of those fluttery old codgers at the Academy would argue with that lump on your face."
Tun prodded absently at the lump in question. It was still painfully tender to the touch. "It's not the old codgers I'm worried about," he muttered without thinking.
He knew he'd made a mistake when he saw the mischief spark in Callista's grey eyes. "Oh no? Then who are you worried about?"
"No one," he said, meaning to be nonchalant but answering far too quickly, eyes flicking away from hers. He winced internally. He'd never been good at deception; his usual philosophy (held with varying degrees of bitterness) was that Callista was practiced enough at it for both of them.
"Liar!" she said gleefully. "Who is she? Gena? Nissa Turngear? That girl – what's her name – you know, the curator's assistant."
"Is this really the time for this?" Tun tried hopelessly, jerking his chin in the direction of the gan'arg, lounging around the fel cannon after finishing their construction.
"Yes," Callista said immediately, crossing her legs beneath her robes and turning her entire body to focus her grin on him more intently. "We're stuck up here and could be dead soon!" (This was delivered far more carelessly than Tun thought such a pronouncement warranted). "You might as well spill."
Tun heaved a sigh, mostly in jest. He could continue to hold out, of course, but he wasn't sure there was any point. He didn't really mind, and besides, assuming they survived this, Callista had an uncanny knack for finding things out. Then, as punishment for not telling her in the first place, she'd make sideways references to them at points calculated to make him choke on his beer or blush to the tops of his ears at the most fiendishly uncomfortable moment. It was almost never worth it. Besides, there was hardly even anything to tell.
"Nissa," he admitted finally. "But it's not even –"
"Really?" Callista interrupted, delighted to have hit on a topic so potentially juicy. "How long has this been going on?"
"There is no this," Tun insisted, shifting a little and feeling himself beginning to redden. "We had one dinner, we haven't even – I don't even know if she – "
"You could try kissing her," Callista advised sagely. "It's generally worked for me."
Tun snorted, not fooled by her superior tone. "Callista, who's the last person you kissed?"
She answered quickly, crossing her arms with an air of smug finality. "Two weeks ago, at the Lion's Pride – "
"Whose name you can remember."
She snapped her mouth shut with a disgruntled expression. "That's cheating."
Tun rolled his eyes.
The black metal of the fel cannon rang softly as a pair of invisible hooves landed on its top. Nerothos' voice sounded disdainfully from the air above it, causing Callista and Tun to jump and the gan'arg who had been lazing about the cannon to scatter. "If you must divert yourselves with this pointless chatter, could you at least choose a less insipid topic?"
Callista climbed to her feet, cocking her head at the patch of air where she thought the demon's face ought to be. She was still too tickled by Tun's revelation to be much bothered by Nerothos' sneering. "If you must skulk around eavesdropping, could you at least do it solely with your ears?"
"If I were you, warlock, I would worry less about ears and more about watching my tongue."
Callista shot him a scornful sideways look, though of course there was nothing to see. She knew it was probably playing right into his black-taloned hands to keep snapping at him, but honestly. He was annoying her (completely intentionally, if past interaction meant anything at all), and, more importantly, she was bored. "You mean you don't like this conversation, either?" she asked, clicking her tongue in feigned dismay. "Careful, demon, we haven't even scratched the surface of insipid discussions." She paused a moment, cocking her head satirically. "You know, my sister just bought some kittens…"
Nerothos clearly didn't care at all for this proposed subject. "A sorry attempt at provocation. If you insist on making an irritation of yourself, at least put some effort into it."
He was baiting her now, but Callista wasn't sure she really cared. "Should I?" she asked, examining the shiny pink scars on her shoulder with faux carelessness. "Let me rephrase, then: how much more Legion property can you destroy before some eredar brands you a traitor?" She smiled arrogantly. "Or have they already?"
Nerothos laughed darkly. "Better." His voice was smooth and sardonic. "For your sake, warlock, hope it's less than stands between here and Draenor. Otherwise you may find yourself in a most untenable position."
"Oh, I doubt it," Callista said. She crossed her arms and leaned against the red stone of the wall with exaggerated smugness. "I'll have plenty of time to sneak away while they're arguing over the best stick to mount your head on."
"Bold words – though tragically divorced from reality." She didn't need to see him to hear his mocking smile. "That is the irreparable failing of your people; too blinded by self-absorbed optimism to see your true place in the pattern."
Tun, who had risen when Callista did, looked back and forth between her and Nerothos with mild misgiving. Initially these vitriolic exchanges had alarmed him, but when the first few had ended without bloodshed he'd concluded that this was simply what they did. Not that he approved. If Callista had any sense she'd leave that creature alone instead of needling him that way. "Whatever happened to Na'rii and Kar'thol?" he interrupted, before Callista (who had taken on a distinctly fiendish expression) could air her views on where, exactly, her people's proper place was in relation to demons. (Probably with their boots planted firmly on their necks, or something equally inflammatory.)
"Gone somewhere to kill each other, probably," Callista said, looking rather disgruntled that she hadn't managed to get the last word in her argument. Giving the patch of air containing Nerothos one last sidelong glance, she wandered over to the edge, blocked off now by a wall of assorted metal junk a little taller than she was, and peered out through a gap at the activity down below. "How much longer will this take?" she asked.
"Some time," Nerothos said, uninformatively. He shifted slightly on his perch, metal sounding quietly beneath his hooves as his wings stirred the musty air against her face and neck.
She stared irritably in the direction of his voice. "More specifically…"
Silence.
"Demon?" she prodded, annoyed at being ignored.
"At your posts, gan'arg!" Nerothos snarled suddenly.
The three cowled demons darted from the corner they'd been skulking in to cluster around the fel cannon, muttering direly. Callista narrowed her eyes, pressing her forehead to the lumpy side of the barricade to look again through the gap. What she saw made her hiss.
The orderly lines of mo'arg and gan'arg had begun to scatter, overturning carts and spilling weapons and spare parts across the floor in their haste to clear the center of the cavern. Callista could hardly blame them; a whirling circle of sickly-bright fel runes swept across the stone, disgorging heavily-armed creatures that she at first took for felguards. Clearly expecting an attack, they separated as soon as they exited the portal, refusing to bunch in a way that would allow them to be dispatched by a single cannon shot.
"Open fire?" one of the gan'arg asked, peering into a collection of runes on the back of the cannon that she took for the gun sight.
"No!" Callista and Nerothos snapped simultaneously. Firing would expose their position; they wouldn't get many shots after that so they had better make them count.
"What's going on?" Tun asked warily, moving to the barrier next to Callista to have a look for himself. "Holy Light," he muttered, eyes riveted to the strange portal.
"Nether," Callista agreed. A sickly taste grew in her mouth as she finally got a good view of one of the demons combing the cavern. They resembled felguards superficially, yes, but on closer inspection that was not what they were. The legs were all wrong, for one thing, and a thickly-muscled tail lashed behind each of the armored warriors. These weren't felguards; these were wrathguards. Eredar. The elite shocktroops of the Burning Legion.
"I thought this cavern was supposed to be warded!" she hissed at Nerothos, very unsettled by this new development. Felguards, even doomguards, were one thing, but even Callista wasn't arrogant enough to think she could tangle with an eredar and live.
"It is warded," Nerothos said. If he was troubled by the wrathguards' appearance, it didn't tell in his voice. "But Sarlah has had decades, if not centuries, to find a counter."
Something else was coming through the portal now. The green glow of the runes intensified, casting a dim second shadow behind every object in the room, and the hot electric reek of power filled the air. Suddenly the circle blazed impossibly bright and then vanished, leaving two figures in its wake. One of them was the graceful six-armed form of Lady Sarlah. The other was much taller and broader, muscular and hoofed, clad only in a kilt of interlocking metal rings and its own dusky-red skin. An eredar sorcerer. Or so she guessed, by the greenish-white shield of power he drew around himself and Sarlah as the portal disappeared.
Callista began to feel sick. "Oh, Nether, we're going to die," she muttered, digging her fingers into one of the hard gears that composed the barrier.
"You very well might," Nerothos said maliciously, less because he believed it was likely and more because he enjoyed the terror boiling off of her.
"Not helping, demon!"
"We must persuade them to drop their shield," he said, only marginally more usefully, in her opinion.
Callista watched as Sarlah and the eredar directed their troops to fan out in a search pattern, mo'arg and gan'arg cringing and cowering in their wake. Surrounded by lesser demons she could intimidate and enslave, she had forgotten, a little, where she was. That this wasn't some particularly unlucky corner of Azeroth or Outland, this was a Legion world. Ruled by creatures older and crueler and more powerful than she could possibly imagine. She was out of her league, and a heavy, fatalistic dread filled her. "Yes, and I'm sure if you go down there and ask very nicely, they'd be more than happy to drop it and stand very still so we can blow their heads off," she said viciously, fear making her even more sarcastic than usual.
"Actually," Nerothos said, a purr of dark amusement in his voice, "I expect that they will."
"What?" she said, irked by his flippant calm.
"Whatever you see, warlock," he said, and she felt the sudden breeze as he spread his wings to leave, "do not fire on me." This last was a low growl.
"What?" she asked again, narrowing her eyes. She didn't know what he was planning, but she didn't like it already. "Demon!" she snapped, but he was already gone. Oh, she really hated that creature sometimes.
"What now?" Tun asked with a resigned kind of hopelessness, squinting in the direction he thought Nerothos had flown with a frown.
"I wish I knew," Callista said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Leaning her forehead back against the cold metal of the barricade, she peered suspiciously down at the activity below and prepared to signal the gunners to shoot.
Nerothos circled the cavern once, taking in the locations of the searching wrathguards and deciding where he ought to land for greatest effect. Mo'arg and gan'arg fled every which way before the advancing warriors, taking cover behind overturned carts and tables where they could and making it difficult to find an empty spot to land. He wanted a place near enough to startle, but not so near that that wretched eredar would sense his presence before he was ready. He settled on a relatively clear patch of stone on the far side of Sarlah and her companion, a position that would force them to turn their backs on the cannon emplacement in order to face him.
Hovering a moment longer, his lip curled with distaste at what he was about to do. It was a hard and fast principle of his never to put himself in harm's way when others were at his disposal, but this time his hand had been forced. He needed to speak to Sarlah, and any of the mortals would simply be slaughtered on sight. Few creatures, however, possessed the means to permanently destroy one of the Nathrezim. Fewer still would dare try, at least not here, on Xoroth, a world governed by one of his brethren. No, Sarlah would try to take him alive. Little comfort that that was should he fail – perhaps she couldn't kill him, but she could certainly make him wish for the peace of death.
Angling his wings, he dropped through the air like a stone, flaring them again a few yards from the floor to land gently. He flickered into visibility just above the ground, calling out in a voice meant to carry above the tumult, "Stay your forces, Lady! I yield."
Disbelieving silence fell immediately upon the cavern, broken only by the loud click of clawed feet on stone as wrathguards ran to surround him, forming a semicircle bristling with weapons.
Nerothos bared his fangs in warning, but they seemed content to level their swords and polearms at him from just out of claw's reach, waiting as Sarlah and the eredar strolled to the semicircle's mouth, still carefully ensconced in their greenish bubble.
"Do you now?" Sarlah asked, beautiful mouth curving in a cool smile. She was clad in a clinging garment of blue silk, ornate silver armbands adorning each of her smooth limbs. A lovely, ruthless creature – he could see why Vathregyr had favored her. Not that that excused his stupidity. "I'm afraid I don't believe you."
Nerothos bowed his head a little before raising it to meet her eyes, drawing attention to his broken horn. "This disruption has gotten dangerously out of hand, my lady. Much of value to the Legion has been lost already, and I fear that if we escalate this conflict the consequences would be dire, the cost greater than even I would dare." He allowed his wings to droop, chastened. "My surrender is sincere. I ask only that you spare me my life, and undo this folly before we both are destroyed for it."
The white fires of Sarlah's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly in thought as Nerothos watched her discreetly. He had told, he thought, a rather convincing lie. Most of it was even true. But Nerothos had wasted a great deal of time and effort on Xoroth, and wouldn't leave it empty-handed if there were any alternative at all.
The eredar at her side gave a cruel rumbling laugh. "A pretty speech, dreadlord, but I still think you are a liar."
Nerothos snarled, causing the wrathguards to start forward menacingly.
Sarlah laid a pair of placating hands on the eredar's arm, tilting her head gracefully. "If you truly are guileless, Nerothos, then tell me this: where are the mortals who serve you?" Her smile gained a diamond-sharp edge. "Vathregyr may have been foolish enough to dismiss such creatures, but you will find that I am not."
She thought she'd posed him a difficult question, but inwardly Nerothos smiled savagely. "Of course, my lady," he said with another subservient dip of his head. "The troll, regrettably, fled before I could dispose of her, but I slew the others myself. The bodies lie outside this chamber, but I could direct you there if you so desire."
"I do," she said coldly, turning to the eredar. "Restrain him, Dathrecarr, and find out if there is any truth to this."
"As you wish, my lady," Dathrecarr said with an unpleasant smile. He barked a command, and one of the wrathguards strode forward to present him with a pair of black iron shackles, glittering with runes. Nerothos could feel the enchantments on them from where he stood, and seethed silently.
He had no choice, however, but to remain obediently still as Dathrecarr seized first one arm and then the other in his huge hands, fastening the cuffs around his wrists. The wards on them were so strong they were almost a physical drain to bear, leeching even at the power that sustained his very form. He bared his fangs a little at the lethargy that suddenly settled on his limbs.
Dathrecarr laughed, thick tail waving lazily, figure distorted slightly through the shield of arcane power he still maintained. "You will have little luck wriggling out of those, dreadlord. Now, where are these theoretical bodies of yours?"
"I assure you," Nerothos purred, "they are quite genuine. I left them near the alchemists' supply on the twenty-first level." His posture remained submissive, but he watched the eredar's reaction with a burning intensity, muscles on a hair trigger. With the gates sealed shut, the only way in or out of this room was through a conjured portal. And Dathrecarr could not maintain both spells at once; he would have to drop the shield in order to penetrate the wards.
"We shall see," Dathrecarr said scornfully. He turned his fel-bright eyes to Sarlah, who nodded coolly in approval.
With a wave of one massive clawed hand, the greenish-white shield dissipated. Dathrecarr shifted immediately into his next spell, voice a bass rumble as he spoke the arcane words, claws tracing sigils in the air.
Nerothos tensed even more, allowing his eyes to flick upwards to the fel cannon emplacement. The warlock had half scaled the barricade to peer over the top and was making an irritating shooing motion at him. He took that to mean the gunners had perfected their trajectory and sank into a crouch, just as he heard one of the wrathguards roar a warning.
He sprang into the air, not quite fast enough as a wrathguard stabbed a pike through the tough membrane of his wing, sending a jagged bolt of pain through him and almost pulling him back to earth. He thrashed against it and the wing tore, agonizingly, and suddenly he was rising, barely avoiding Dathrecarr's grasping claws but climbing slowly due to the shackles and the hole in his wing, far too slowly to escape spell range before Sarlah –
The ground beneath him vanished in a searing flash of green light, and he realized with a sense of malicious satisfaction that Sarlah was no longer among his concerns.
He continued to limp slowly higher, watching the cavern light up with cannon fire as the warlock gave the gan'arg leave to fire at will. There were still plenty of targets left; perhaps a third of the wrathguards had gathered to hem him in, but the rest had survived and were beginning to converge on the fel cannon.
He soared awkwardly over the junk-studded barricade to land on the ledge, made more clumsy than usual by his injured wing and the way his wrists were bound. The gnome skipped indignantly out of his way, while the warlock turned away from the bombardment to face him, vindictive pleasure lingering for a moment on her features.
She looked him over skeptically, careless demeanor returned now that the worst threats had been dealt with. "You know you're bleeding everywhere."
He might almost have mistaken her words for concern, if her tone hadn't been so infuriatingly snide. Nerothos sneered and stretched his torn wing experimentally. It stung, but the blood had already begun to slow, flesh knitting across the wound. "Hardly," he said with infinite disdain. He watched as her eyes travelled to the runed shackles he wore. "I trust you kept that solvent, warlock."
Callista snorted, already rummaging around the inside pockets of her robes. She pulled out the jar of gently-glowing liquid and tilted it to moisten the sponge in the lid. "One day I'm going to stop letting you out, you know."
"Perhaps," Nerothos said, folding his wings arrogantly (albeit a little gingerly). He could've extended his wrists and made it easy for her to treat the runes on his cuffs, but instead he remained still, forcing her to step nearer. He loathed being at her mercy this way and knew she found his closeness unsettling, though, conveniently, never quite enough so to drive her away entirely. "You do seem afflicted by long intervals of reason marred by astounding fits of stupidity."
He expected her to snarl at him, and her lip started to curl to do just that, but at the last moment she cocked her head and quirked the side of her mouth in wry amusement instead. Stripped of all but his mundane senses by the enchantments he bore, he couldn't tell if the change of expression was real or feigned. "You have no idea," she said.
"Debatable," he replied, less viciously than he might otherwise have. Despite her words, she'd moved forward (not without first shooting him an annoyed glance) and braced the hand the jar was held in against one of the warded cuffs, scrubbing at it with the solvent. The runes crackled and dissolved beneath it, leaving nothing behind but pitted black metal.
"What is that?" Tun asked, sparing a glance from the wrathguards (some of whom had reached the base of the machine the cannon was perched on and begun to scale the side) to watch the potion's effects with interest.
"No idea, but it works," Callista said, switching to the other cuff and yanking at it until Nerothos turned his wrist over. He snarled a little at this treatment but she ignored him, dabbing methodically at the runes as they blackened and winked out. "Darmog found it."
Speaking of the gan'arg, she hoped with a vague sort of guilt that he'd made it to the surface already. A flash of green light cast wild shadows across Nerothos' hands and claws as the cannon fired again. The gunners had been shooting steadily with little regard for their brethren on the ground, and had already pockmarked most of the floor with charred craters. Friendly casualties had likely been massive.
Tun peered warily down through a gap in the barricade, recoiling as a wrathguard crouched on one of the enormous pistons that adorned the front of the machine and bared its teeth at him. "Those things know how to climb, Callista. I'm opening a portal."
Callista dissolved the last of the runes with a final splash of solvent and released Nerothos' wrist, capping the jar and pocketing it again. She must've been too slow stepping out of his way, however, because he batted at her with his uninjured wing, causing her to flinch backwards and swat at him. "No arguments from – stop that!."
Room to manipulate it now, Nerothos jammed his claws between a de-enchanted iron cuff and one of his bracers, wrenching it off with a metallic screech before repeating the motion on the other wrist and dropping the pieces disdainfully. "Agreed. We are finished here, gan'arg."
The three gunners jumped at his word. One of them scurried immediately for a coarse woven sack next to the cannon, carefully lifting a belted bundle of dynamite sticks from its folds. He secured the explosives to the cannon with a clear glob of leftover resin and began fiddling with the timer on the side.
Apparently dissatisfied with his work, Nerothos snagged the back of the gan'arg's robe in his claws, jerking the shrieking and squirming creature out of the way to adjust the timer himself.
Callista watched this activity closely as Tun shut his eyes and muttered to himself, magic pulsing around his small figure as he conjured a portal. "How long is that set for?" she asked distrustfully.
Nerothos spread his wings to test them, black blood already scabbed over the wound. "Four seconds," he said with a toothy smile.
Callista's eyes widened, but before she could either panic or curse him roundly two things happened. The first was a bestial roar as a wrathguard vaulted over the top of the barricade, landing heavily and spitting one of the gan'arg on its sword as it did so. The second was Tun's cry of "Go now!" as the air in front of him ripped into the inky black of a portal.
Callista stumbled through, heart in her throat and Tun and the two surviving gan'arg at her heels, as Nerothos, already airborne and safely out of blast range, laughed wickedly.
The portal snapped shut as they spilled out onto the far side of the room and sprinted pell-mell across the debris-strewn floor, dashing through the tall stone archway into the adjoining chamber. Callista looked around wildly, disoriented by the sudden translocation, but slowed a little when she saw no pursuit. Neither, she realized after a moment, eyes narrowing in suspicion, did she see any explosion.
She glanced confusedly at Tun, who simply shrugged at her. She twisted to look up at the barricade just in time to see it blossom into a roaring fireball, concussion rocking the stone beneath her feet and forcing her to steady herself against the side of the archway until the tremor had passed.
Nerothos landed neatly nearby once the ground had stilled and she scowled at him, wavering between relief and profound irritation. "You know, demon, I never thought the Legion drew the most dazzling intellects, but I at least assumed you all could count."
Nerothos strode over to the enormous black iron door whose hinges were bolted into the side of the archway and set his clawed hands against its edge. "The gnome's portal was most tediously slow," he said unrepentantly. "And lies are so much more compelling than explanations."
The door was oiled and well-balanced, and swung closed easily at his touch despite its immensity. A huge bar slid into place as it shut.
Tun gaped at him in angry disbelief. "That wasn't completely stable yet! We could've been torn apart! And for no reason! You…!" he sputtered to an enraged halt.
"You survived," Nerothos said with a callous smile. It was more than they would've done if they'd waited for the gnome to be totally comfortable with his handiwork, and useful servants were in exceedingly short supply at the moment. The spells of mortal mages were so dreadfully over-crafted anyway, unwieldy with safeguards against the corruptive power of raw arcane energies. So much fuss to conjure such a tiny rent in the world.
"Ugh," Tun said, anger and disgust in his expression.
Callista said nothing, losing interest in the topic as most of her hostility faded along with her panic. She turned around curiously, eyes riveted to the hulking dimensional gate that dominated most of the back wall of the chamber. It was dark and inert now, an immense chiseled-obsidian henge framing nothing but the red stone behind it. The gan'arg who operated it had been instructed to close the gate in the event of an attack, and now the floor in front of it was thick with nervous-looking demons and their wagons of supplies, stranded there when it shut.
"Nether," Callista said, cocking her head at the view.
"Follow me, warlock," Nerothos instructed, gan'arg darting out of the way of his hooves as he began moving through the crowd.
Callista made a face. Just because she occasionally cooperated with the demon's orders didn't mean she was about to start tagging along at his heels like some kind of human pet. "Where are Na'rii and that ogre?" she asked, just to be difficult.
Nerothos eyed her over one of his armored shoulders, unimpressed. "I don't care, and neither do you."
"I care a little," Callista argued, mostly out of stubbornness.
Tun, who really did care, craned his neck to try to peer around the masses of gan'arg and mo'arg with little success. He was so short he didn't even reach the waists of the taller demons, and his view was mostly limited to misshapen legs and the dented sides of carts. Na'rii and Kar'thol had to be here. He couldn't imagine either of them lingering in range of any kind of artillery under Callista and Nerothos' command. Not unwisely, he thought with a pang of discomfort, remembering how cavalier the gunners had been about choosing their targets once the initial shot had been fired.
"Aww, the two of you be makin' us feel all fuzzy," Na'rii said, stepping out from behind a large mo'arg with a bundle of metallic tentacles protruding from its elbow. Kar'thol lumbered a few paces behind, the ghost of a sullen expression still lingering on his heavy features.
"You're alive!" Tun said with a delighted laugh, jogging forward a few steps to meet her. She was smudged head to toe with some kind of black grease, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
"Ya, mon," she replied, licking her slim fingers and rubbing futilely at one of the smears. "I been sittin' at the bottom of some cart full of metal bits over there since that demon shooed us."
Callista wrinkled her nose uncertainly, trying to decide if she ought to be pleased or not by the troll's reappearance.
"Satisfied?" Nerothos purred, a mocking gleam in his eyes as he paused to watch her face.
"Oh, shut up," she grumbled. She waffled a moment, listening as Na'rii, at Tun's request, launched into a detailed (and, as far as she was concerned, irrelevant) recap of exactly how she had eluded the wrathguards, before making a face in annoyance and pivoting abruptly. "We were going somewhere?" she asked, raising a brow at Nerothos.
"Yes," he confirmed with a sardonic look, waiting for her to pick her way through the crush of mo'arg and gan'arg to join him.
Tun rolled his eyes and shook his head a little, noting his friend's departure from the corner of his eye. She really must loathe Na'rii, if she preferred the company of the dreadlord. "How in the world did you hide Kar'thol?" he asked, focusing back on the conversation at hand.
The ogre shrugged his huge tattooed arms, looking momentarily put out that he hadn't been asked to answer for himself. "Kar'thol not need hide. Demon lady never see Kar'thol ever. Kar'thol pretend to pull cart, demons ignore."
"You were very lucky," Tun said, remembering with a mental shiver how easily the wrathguards had scaled their ledge and the sadistic delight on the face of the one that had skewered the gan'arg.
Na'rii snorted, craning her neck to make sure that Nerothos, at least, was out of earshot before continuing. "Tell ya the truth, mon, I was more worried about them little fiends and ya friend wit' the cannon. They be terrible shots."
"I don't think they were trying very hard," Tun said, one side of his mouth lifting doubtfully. The hot corrosive smell of fel magic assaulted his nostrils suddenly and he stiffened, whipping his head around to find the source.
A sputtering hiss, a sound like a pan of oil thrown into a fire, seemed to rise from everywhere and nowhere at once, deepening and intensifying into a dull roar that drowned his thoughts and rattled through his bones. He squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears, willing it only to stop until the sound silenced itself with startling sharpness, leaving unnatural quiet in its wake.
Tun opened first one eye and then the other, cautiously uncovering his ears. He found himself staring into the poisonous-green-edged void of an active portal, a perfect rectangle of black shot through with whorls of glowing dust and strange stars. A low thrum of power still teased the edges of his range of hearing, but the sound was no longer unbearable. He knew that this was only a lesser gate, leading to the staging area on Xoroth's surface where Vathregyr's forces gathered, but it was still an impressive sight. "Light," he breathed, as Na'rii muttered something in Zandali.
A ripple of activity ran through the demons gathered in front of the portal as they began to crowd forward, eager to escape the cramped chamber. Tun allowed himself to be swept along, keeping close to Kar'thol's conveniently large bulk to avoid being trampled. Much as he tried to keep an eye on the cursing, shoving press of mo'arg and gan'arg that surrounded him, his gaze was drawn inexorably to the fathomless dark depths of the portal.
Somewhere on the other side lay the way home.