A/N: First of all, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who's stuck with me thus far and/or offered suggestions or encouragement. It wouldn't be nearly as fun without you guys! Second of all, my claims of this being the last chapter may have been a bit, uh, overambitious. I really will wrap this up one of these days, I swear!:-p

The first thing Callista noticed, stepping out of the portal onto the coarse red sand of Xoroth's surface, was the chill. The air wasn't quite cold but it was bone-dry, and a breeze, strange after so long in the stuffy heat of the underground passages, swept across the rust-colored dunes. It pelted her face with grit and made her shiver.

She moved quickly out of the way as mo'arg and gan'arg began pouring through the portal behind her with their loads of supplies, tramping over sand packed hard and flat by numberless feet and hooves to join their fellows already gathered on the plain.

Nerothos, several yards ahead already, turned his head to give her a pointed look, eyes narrowing to glowing slits against a sudden gust of dirt-flecked air.

She jogged a little to catch up, feet hardly sinking at all into the compacted sand of the path. "Where's the other portal?" she asked suspiciously. Her line of sight was cut in all directions by the long sinuous backs of dunes, but she still should have been able to see a construct as large as a major dimensional gate from some distance away.

There was cruel amusement in the smile with which Nerothos regarded her, though she couldn't see what was funny about her question. "It is there," he said. "The dust obscures the horizon."

She scanned the distance, squinting her eyes against the occasional spray of red sand, and found that he was correct. The tops of the farthest dunes faded into a grayish haze that, in a more hospitable place, she might have taken for mist. Actually, now that she was looking for it, she saw a great deal of grey dust scattered amongst the sand as well, pushed into little pools and ripples by the wind. All of her theories on its origins in this rust-colored desert were unpleasant.

Her musings were interrupted by the sound of someone gruffly clearing his throat. She looked down to see Darmog clutching an armload of what appeared to be heavy iron restraints, a ring of matching keys dangling from one of his discolored fingers. "Found some," he said, shrinking a little as he drew Nerothos' gaze.

"That will do, gan'arg," Nerothos said with a cold smile, picking the ring of keys from Darmog's nerveless hand with the claws of his thumb and forefinger.

Relieved of his keys, Darmog cringed and quickly shuffled several steps away from Nerothos. He glanced uncertainly up at Callista, offering her his armful of shackles.

"Oh no," she said, crossing her arms and looking balefully up at Nerothos. Darmog was carrying four sets of chains, one of them ogre-sized – it didn't take an archmage to figure out where this was heading.

"Oh yes," Nerothos said. In his usual fashion, he'd stepped just far enough inside her personal space to raise the hairs on her arms, and she could hear grains of sand ping softly off the black metal of his breastplate as the wind kicked up again.

"Absolutely not," Callista said, holding one hand up to the side of her face to block the flying grit. "There have to be mortals on Xoroth who aren't slaves."

"Of course there are." He tilted his horned head, gaze raking contemptuously over the dried blood that clung to her face and hair and the sorry state of her robes. "But none as disreputable-looking as you."

Callista made a face. She didn't see where a demon got off calling anyone disreputable-looking, but that was neither here nor there. Annoyingly enough, he had a point; none of them were exactly dressed like favored servants of the Legion, and Tun, Na'rii and Kar'thol didn't even speak Eredun. "Alright," she said, letting a hand fall onto her hip and looking up at him with an adamant lift to her mouth. "But we get the keys."

"Agreed," Nerothos said with a sardonic smile, tossing them to her.

Callista was so startled by his sudden capitulation that she almost dropped them.

Nerothos turned to stalk off through the blowing sand then, presenting her with a view of the long black scab that marred his wing and leaving her with the funny feeling that she'd just been had.

"I don't know why you even try, mortal," Darmog muttered, shifting the load in his arms so the chains clanked together.

"I win sometimes," Callista said, turning to watch the stream of demons exiting the portal for her companions.

Darmog made a skeptical sound, following her gaze with pale eyes. "I bet that's what he wants you to think."

"Oh, shush."

The first thing Tun noticed, swept out of the portal in the midst of a crush of gan'arg, was the immensity of the sky. It was huge and dim (the brighter stars already pierced it, though it seemed to be midday), lit only by a tiny sun that shed tired red light down on parched dunes. All of it seemed even bigger and farther away after so long underground.

The second thing he noticed was Callista, standing out of the way halfway up a sandbank with a gan'arg clutching a load of shackles to his brown-robed chest. She motioned to him and he nodded.

"Na'rii!" he called as he prodded the troll's arm, jerking his head in Callista's direction.

"We be right behind ya, mon," Na'rii said, falling into line with Kar'thol as he began to fight his way through the jostling demons and carts.

Tun ducked out of the procession (managing to gain only one extra bruise from a wagon driven by a harried-looking mo'arg), and slogged his way up the dune to join Callista, sand shifting and sliding beneath his boots.

"Who are those for?" he asked, gaze falling suspiciously onto the restraints carried by Darmog. He thought he could guess, but it never hurt to ask.

"Us," Callista said, holding up a large ring of keys and rolling her eyes resignedly.

Na'rii scaled the sandbank easily behind Tun, her bare two-toed feet finding much better purchase than his boots. "Why?" she asked distrustfully.

Callista picked a pair of shackles off Darmog's pile and handed them to Tun, who turned them over doubtfully in his hands. "There's a checkpoint," she said with a skeptical shrug. She pulled one of the keys off the iron ring and passed it to Tun. "We're all too scruffy to pass as loyalists so we're going as slaves."

"Even you?" Na'rii asked derisively, moving closer to peer down at Darmog's restraints.

The gan'arg shifted uneasily under her scrutiny until she selected two pairs for herself and Kar'thol and stepped back.

"Yes," Callista said with a disdainful look, yanking the key to the remaining cuffs off the ring before tossing it to Na'rii. She took the last pair of shackles from Darmog and inserted the key into first one cuff and then the other, turning it until they fell open.

Tun did the same to the shackles in his own hands before fitting them around his wrists. The black, slightly rusted metal was chill against his skin, but unwarded – even without the key he could probably have escaped from these. It reassured him to know that they really were useless for anything but show.

Kar'thol looked down at his newly chained wrists in mistrust, pulling them apart until the metal screeched in protest and snorting in contempt at the sound. "Demon chains weak."

Darmog, unable to understand his Common but interpreting his tone well enough, looked mildly scornful of this insult to his people's craftsmanship. "They're only meant to hold 'til this all goes to hell," he muttered. "Shouldn't take long."

"What did he say?" Tun asked curiously. He moved forward cautiously, beginning to slide and skitter down the side of the dune to rejoin the caravan of demons.

Callista tested the new weight around her wrists as she skidded down behind him, making the chain jangle. "Oh, he thinks we're going to die," she paraphrased glibly. Darmog's dire croakings didn't worry her overmuch; she'd learned by now that the gan'arg was unflaggingly pessimistic.

Tun looked less sure. He stumbled a little at the bottom of the dune, shackled hands keeping him from throwing his arms out for balance. "Wonderful," he said grimly.

"I wouldn't worry," Callista reassured him, "he's been saying things like that for ages." She reached out one of her iron-cuffed hands and snagged the back of his robes, hoping to stay together as they merged into the pack of demons and carts.

Tun didn't look much soothed by this, merely shaking his head before pushing his way into a group of gan'arg.

Na'rii and Kar'thol followed, sending the little demons scuttling out of the way of the ogre's huge feet and nearly upsetting a cartful of shields.

The caravan of demons, which had seemed so huge in the cavern, looked small and paltry now amid the vast wastes of Xoroth's surface. Thankfully, the crowd had spread out a little upon exiting the portal, making it much less likely to be stepped on by a fel reaver or run down by a carelessly-propelled cannon.

Tun felt Callista release his robes as they shoved out a space for themselves in the center of the caravan, where, hopefully, a quartet of odd-looking mortal slaves would go unnoticed in the general chaos. At least it was easy walking. The red sand was packed level and hard, though every now and then their passing would kick up a cloud of grayish dust that made him cough and sneeze.

"What is that?" he asked, the second or third time this occurred. He'd always thought of deserts as dry, clean places – most dirt was a byproduct of living, and nothing stirred in this desiccated land but demons.

"Dunno, mon," Na'rii said darkly. She raised a slender blue hand, summoning a light breeze to blow it away from their faces. "Around here, I wouldn' be askin'."

"Probably something nasty," Callista agreed. She toyed with the idea of posing the question to Darmog, but wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know herself.

"Where on Outland we goin'?" Na'rii asked after a brief moment of silence, broken only by the crunch of sand and the metallic scraping of cart wheels.

Callista tilted her head, unsure. The troll had actually brought up a good question. There were many demon gates on Draenor, of course, but all the ones she knew of were shut. "Somewhere on the Hellfire Peninsula, I would assume," she said finally. They were meant to be "reinforcing" the forces there, anyway; it seemed the most logical guess.

Na'rii scowled, tusks glinting a soft pink in the dim red Xorothian sunlight. "So somehow we gotta be sneakin' past the demon front of a huge battlefield before we can go home?"

"If we're lucky," Callista said darkly, fanning her hand in front of her face to clear another cloud of dust. The troll's question had raised another rather disturbing point.

"Why ya be sayin' that?" Na'rii asked, yellow eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Because all the dimensional gates on Draenor anyone knows about are closed," Callista said. "Do you really think they'll let us walk off with the location of one of the last ones functioning?"

Na'rii's scowl deepened. "I told ya that – "

"Draenor is a portal world, isn't it?" Tun interrupted, before the two women could start another row.

"Yes." Callista looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you think you could…"

Tun shrugged his brightly-clad shoulders. "I've never been there before. But I could try."

He possessed neither the power nor the skill to open a portal from Xoroth to Azeroth; the distance was too far and the energies needed too great to be controlled. On Draenor, however, the stuff between worlds was worn thin. He had heard you could even see the Nether in the sky. There, he might be able to hold one long enough for them to pass through.

Na'rii, catching on, laughed and pounded him lightly on the shoulder.

Tun just frowned absently. He would do what he could, but portal-making over long distances was a risky business at best. Even more so when complicated by a creature like Nerothos. He had no doubt that the dreadlord would be watching them closely as soon as they passed through that gate, and their plan wasn't exactly subtle. It would take more luck than skill to escape unharmed.

The sand and dust beneath his feet hissed softly and he shivered, only partially from the wind. This whole world was a reminder that few managed to be lucky where the Legion was concerned.

Callista drank thirstily from one of the bottles Tun had conjured, wiping her lips awkwardly with the back of her cuffed hand when she'd finished. The air was so dry it seemed to wick all the moisture from her mouth, and the skin of her face felt rough and tight. She was glad it wasn't hot enough to sweat.

They had been walking for some time now with no change in the landscape that she could see. Sandy red dunes rolled endlessly away from their path, marked only by grey streaks of that strange dust. They had seen nothing living but themselves and the demons they travelled with.

For that, at least, Callista was grateful. She had half expected a pursuit of some kind from Hel'nurath's fortress, but Sarlah must've been discreet. Not that surprising, she supposed. Having most of her forces snatched from under her by Nerothos and a ragged group of mortals was not the sort of thing she would have been eager to publicize. The only alternative to seeming utterly incompetent would have been to admit the truth – that she had been complicit in Vathregyr's defection before their series of betrayals and then had had him killed. Not the sort of thing anyone would want to explain to an angry Legion commander, luckily for Callista and her companions.

"What is that?" Tun asked suddenly, squinting into the distance ahead.

Callista followed his gaze, lifting a hand to block gusts of sand as she tried to pierce the grey haze that veiled the horizon. She couldn't see anything. She was just about to say so, when a gleam of light flashed at her from the midst of the dust before being swallowed up again. "I have no idea," she said. It didn't look like fel magic, but who could tell here.

"Kar'thol not like," the ogre said ominously, lumbering along at Na'rii's side.

"Me neither, mon." Na'rii shielded her eyes with her palm, holding the chain of her shackles out of the way and leaning around the back of a towering fel reaver to see as she stared into the distance.

Callista was just about to summon Darmog from the cluster of gan'arg he'd melded into when Nerothos dropped from the sky several yards ahead, flaring his wings to land softly. "We are nearing the checkpoint," he said, wings folding neatly against his back. His wound was completely healed now, she noticed. Fully armored, his only remarkable feature was the broken horn he still sported.

"And?" she said, trying (halfheartedly and mostly unsuccessfully) to keep a respectable distance as he turned to match her pace. The mo'arg and gan'arg had already cleared warily out of his way, and even Tun and Na'rii dropped back a few steps at his approach.

"And," he said, smiling unpleasantly, "there is every chance we will fail. Which is why you are coming with me." His tone brooked no argument, and he spread a wing behind her to discourage her from falling back as he lengthened his strides.

Callista cursed and trotted awkwardly to keep up, moving through the crowd of demons which parted before him. She glanced back at Tun. He was just visible beneath the leathery edge of Nerothos' wing, matching their pace from several steps back, but he only shrugged in resignation. "What's garrisoned at this checkpoint?" she asked suspiciously, deciding that picking an argument wouldn't be worth the effort. She wasn't necessarily averse to a skirmish, if that's what it took to get out of here, but she was not about to fight some sort of suicidal holding action while Nerothos slipped away without them.

"No more than a company," he assured her. "Two doomguards and a few score felguards at most, divided between two ridges."

"Ridges?" Callista echoed, narrowing her eyes. A few score was a manageable number, considering how many fel reavers and cannons they had at their disposal here, but not if they were all up on some ledge they couldn't reach taking pot shots at her. That was entirely different. "How are we supposed to – "

She cut off suddenly, suspicion forgotten as the haze in the distance finally faded. She wasn't sure what she was looking at, but it was…beautiful.

"Holy Light," she heard Tun breathe behind her.

A giant faceted crystal, miles across and so high she had to crane her head back to see its top, grew from the midst of the Xorothian desert, spires seeming to pierce the dim sky. Its faces were smooth and polished despite the blowing sand, and red sunlight flickered and played off its edges, making it glow and shimmer like a beacon.

"The Legion built that?" Callista asked incredulously, looking to Nerothos.

"No," he said contemptuously. "That is a relic of our feeble predecessors."

Callista didn't think anyone who'd managed to build something that had survived thousands of years of demonic occupation could've been that feeble. "You killed them all, I assume," she said, still marveling at the way light seemed gathered and magnified by the crystal.

"We did." His smile seemed even more malicious in the blood-colored light. "One of the last great battles for this world occurred here, long ago even in my memory. They raised that structure at a convergence of ley lines and herded thousands within its walls, hoping to win some reprieve." He cocked his horned head, regarding the crystal almost contemplatively. "They failed, of course. We incinerated everything within, and the gutted shell of their fortress has hosted our portals for thousands of years."

"Ugh," she heard Tun mutter at her back.

"It was hardly a tragedy," Nerothos said, twisting a little to turn his amused gaze on the gnome. "This world belonged to a race of immortals who had done nothing but create useless baubles for centuries. The ennui must have been terrible." He smiled satirically, clearly enjoying the gnome's horror. "I daresay we would've had their gratitude, if any had survived."

Tun looked even more disgusted.

Callista rolled her eyes, albeit where the dreadlord couldn't see. "Just because your people can't go ten years without setting a city on fire…"

"Whole worlds, generally," Nerothos corrected smugly.

"I beg your pardon."

They had moved almost to the front of the caravan of supplies, and the crystal spires were much closer now. Callista could see that the face of the fortress was not as perfectly unblemished as it had seemed from a distance; a charred black crack sliced through its front and extended towards its core. As she watched, a green flare shot towards the sky from the darkest part of the crevice.

"They are hailing us," Nerothos observed, spreading his wings to leave. He turned slightly to include Tun, Na'rii and Kar'thol in his field of view, eyes narrowed in warning. "You are prisoners now, mortals. Do not speak unless spoken to, and don't fall behind."

"Whatever ya say, mon," Na'rii said snidely.

Callista made a face but didn't actually protest, dropping back to rejoin the others as Nerothos sprang into the air. "Well, this will end well," she remarked, looking up at the burnt maw of the crack in the shimmering crystal.

"I didn' hear anyone speakin' to ya, warlock," Na'rii said wickedly.

Callista's gaze slid scornfully to the troll. "You're taking orders from the demon now? Nice to know you're listening to someone smarter than you, I suppose."

Na'rii grinned, chains clinking together softly as she walked. "Nah, I don' be plannin' to make it a habit. Then what would you do?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe waste less time - "

"Would you both just shut up?!" Tun yelled suddenly, causing both women to stare at him in amazement. "Er, please," he amended, seeing their stunned expressions.

They travelled in silence after that.

Nerothos waited until the caravan had almost reached the crevice before swooping to land on a charred crystalline platform overlooking the entrance. An enormous doomguard stalked forward to greet him as he touched down, his two felguard subordinates flanking a Legion communicator against the far wall.

"What is the meaning of this, dreadlord?" the doomguard demanded in his bass rumble, sneering down his flat nose at Nerothos. "There isn't any shipment due today."

"You are ill-informed," Nerothos said, returning his sneer. "These reinforcements are due on Draenor immediately, lest Hellfire Citadel fall like the rest."

The doomguard bared a mouthful of jagged teeth, thick wings spreading slightly. "I have heard nothing of this. By whose authority!"

"The Tothrezim Lord, Vathregyr's," Nerothos lied. He stood his ground impassively as the larger demon glowered down at him. Obviously not expecting a sincere attack, the doomguard had moved close in an attempt to intimidate – a tactical error. There was no way now the demon could draw the falchion at his side before Nerothos tore out his throat with his claws.

The doomguard growled deeply, making a sharp motion to the felguards behind him. One of them crouched and pressed a rune on the side of the communicator, speaking Vathregyr's name into the device. A wedge of white light shone from the projector, but no one answered, of course, even as the seconds ticked by ominously.

"Vathregyr is a very busy creature," Nerothos purred haughtily. "If you wish to retain this command, I suggest you cease pestering him with this – "

"Lies," the doomguard snarled, hand jerking towards his weapon.

It never got there – Nerothos struck faster, seizing the doomguard's armored wrist with a grip strong enough to deform the metal and slashing at the soft flesh of his throat with his other claw.

Dark blood sprayed from the severed artery, but the doomguard was only dying, not dead. He lashed out with a fist like a block of fel steel, face twisted into a mask of hate.

Nerothos dodged, but too slowly – he took the blow on the shoulder instead of the head, force driving his heavy pauldron into his collarbone and nearly shattering it. This was why he hated physical combat: it was so painfully inefficient. Snarling in outrage, he kicked out with an armored hoof, driving the doomguard backwards to collide with the two felguards rushing to aid their commander. He used the brief respite to gather a spell, scraps of darkness bursting from the air around him to rush forward in a ravenous cloud.

The two felguards bellowed savagely and charged him with axes drawn, heads down as they plunged into the thick of his swarm.

Nerothos curled a lip contemptuously at their stupidity and propelled himself into the air, watching from above with callous scorn as his spell devoured their flesh, flaying skin and muscle until nothing was left but bone. When all three demons had stopped twitching, he landed lightly within the swarm, fluttering bits of shadow returning to heal the (admittedly minor) wounds he had sustained.

The Legion communicator still flickered with white light; he strode forward and crushed it under his hoof.

When he turned again to face the edge of the platform he found the ground below transformed into a scene of carnage. Green streaks of fel cannon fire burst from the ground and defending emplacements on both sides of the canyon as felguards hacked at mo'arg and gan'arg, the smaller demons choking their enemies with deadly alchemical concoctions or instructing massive fel reavers to crush them.

He hoped Charin had managed to destroy the communicator on the platform mirroring this one. Otherwise this was merely a prelude to the horror of the real battle.

On the ground, Callista threw away her shackles just as the first gout of cannon fire seared the sand far too near for comfort. Above and before her loomed the blackened chasm through the crystal citadel; around her swarmed hundreds of howling and shrieking mo'arg and gan'arg, alternately trying to flee the bombardment and ready their own cannons to return fire. A pair of ramps switchbacked down each ridge of the canyon and she could already see felguards charging along them, hacking and slashing at anything in their way.

"We have to get out of here!" she yelled to Tun, stumbling as she was nearly bowled over by a sprinting mo'arg. If there was any sort of organized defense being mounted here, it was incomprehensible to her; she was more afraid of being trampled by her own allies than she was of being incinerated.

Tun narrowly dodged the clanking feet of a fel reaver, knocking clumsily into Na'rii. "Out of here to where?!"

"Told you this would happen," Darmog muttered, ducking behind Callista as another ball of green fire plowed into the nearby sand. The gan'arg had reappeared as if by magic as soon as the first shot had been fired, apparently deciding his best chance of survival was to cower behind those who could actually fight.

"Anywhere, mon!" Na'rii cried. She looked around wildly for a haven in the mass of stampeding demons, and lit on one of the flat crystalline surfaces that towered above their heads. "Up! Port us up!"

Kar'thol bellowed in irritation as an out-of-control cart careened into one of his thick legs. The gan'arg pushing it fled shrieking as the cart toppled over with a clang, spilling a messy pile of enchanted gemstones and smooth green pebbles.

Callista cursed as the stones rolled underfoot, sliding over one another and causing her to lose her footing. She fell flat on her rear, interrupting the summoning she'd been trying to attempt, and she picked up one of the pebbles to hurl at the ground in frustration. She was halfway through the motion when she realized what was in her hand. Throwing back her head, she laughed uproariously, digging her fingers into the spilled stones to grab a double handful.

"Come on, Callista!" Tun yelled impatiently.

She looked up to see him standing before the hovering black gash of a portal, Kar'thol's wide back just blinking through it. Stuffing the pebbles into her pockets she clawed her way to her feet, dashing headlong into it with Darmog in front of her and Tun right behind.

She skidded on the other side, boots finding no purchase on the smooth surface of the crystal, and careened into the side of the fortress with a thud. "Ow," she said lamely, sprawled in a bruised heap on the cold floor. She said it again a second later when Tun, making the same misjudgment she had, slammed into her prone form and landed on her back.

"Sorry," he groaned, crawling off of her and climbing to his feet.

Na'rii, who had had more sense than to sprint full tilt onto a surface obviously slick as glass, snorted.

Callista pulled herself up carefully. The ledge Tun had chosen was wide, but it was a long way to the bottom should she slip. Moving slowly towards the edge, she peered over and found herself staring directly down onto the spiky-helmeted heads of a column of felguards snaking down the ramp. She hissed and backed away quickly, though none of them seemed to be looking up.

"What now?" Tun asked doubtfully, crawling to the drop to glance over before recoiling much as Callista had.

Darmog skulked against the shimmering fortress wall, completely uninterested in looking down after seeing the two mortals' reactions.

Na'rii just laughed, grinning wickedly as she settled down cross-legged on the glassy surface. "Now, mon, it be time to do some killin'."

Callista lifted one side of her mouth skeptically. She wasn't sure how the troll expected to do any "killin'" sitting down that way, but supposed it wasn't really her problem. Sliding carefully back towards the edge, she dug one of the pebbles out of her pocket and squeezed it in her palm. It was unnaturally warm, and she rolled it between her thumb and fingers as she stared out over the cavern, looking for a target.

Nerothos descended upon a cannon emplacement in the wake of a searing wave of felfire, snapping the arm of a surviving felguard before hurling the creature from the ledge. They would win this skirmish – it was inevitable, their forces far outnumbered the defenders and even gan'arg would fight when the only alternative was to be slaughtered – but the battle was progressing much too slowly. If reinforcements from Hel'nurath's fortress arrived before they had fled through to Draenor, they were finished.

Nerothos snarled viciously, summoning a twisting sea of fire that boiled up from the charred crystal beneath the feet of a trio of felguards, leaving only blackened corpses as it ebbed.

He had risked far too much to fail now.

A deafening crack split the sky, and he looked up to see a green streak lancing through the grey air towards the canyon. A flame-engulfed meteor plunged into the back of a group of felguards fighting an organized retreat, incinerating several as it gouged a molten-glass-rimmed crater in the red sand. The rest fell into disarray as the meteor unfolded and rose, stone upon stone, until an enraged infernal exploded from the crater and smashed into the back of the line with single-minded hate. It was quickly hacked down, but the damage was already done. A pair of fel reavers, backed by a small army of demons armed with powerful explosives and canisters of choking poison, slammed into the distracted felguards' front and the retreat became a rout.

Nerothos laughed cruelly. It seemed the warlock had discovered a cache of infernal stones. His own contract with the Tothrezim to summon such creatures had been voided during his first imprisonment; perhaps he would convince her to share. Spreading his wings wide to catch the sandy air, he swooped down towards the ledge the mortals had claimed.

He reached it in a few lazy flaps, alighting between the warlock and the gnomish mage. The battlefront had advanced to just below their position and a hurled spear followed him, ricocheting harmlessly off the side of his breastplate. It skittered across the crystalline floor, coming to rest at the huge flat feet of the ogre, who stooped to retrieve it before flinging it back violently at the felguards below.

The gnome edged cautiously away from him, a blue glow coursing between his hands as he took careful aim at their enemies.

Callista didn't so much as glance his way, fiendish amusement playing across her face as she cocked her head at the destruction her infernals were wreaking. The pebble she held cupped in her palm vanished in a puff of flame as another meteor streaked across the dim sky, plowing into a cannon emplacement on the other side of the canyon and sending the mangled piece of artillery tumbling down to the sand. She released the infernal that rose from the wreckage, allowing it to rampage masterless behind enemy lines as she pulled another stone from her pocket. For all the scorn she'd evinced earlier at his people's appetite for destruction, she was enjoying herself immensely behaving no better. It was, he thought, a typically mortal sort of hypocrisy.

Her next meteor missed, shattering harmlessly against the blackened face of the opposite ridge, and she finally turned her attention to him. Still caught up in the vicious pleasure of her spellwork, she didn't bristle at his stare the way she usually did. "Shouldn't you be killing something?" she asked, needling him mostly out of habit.

"Shouldn't you?" he replied maliciously, turning his head in a pointed gesture to study the smashed fragments of her wayward spell.

Callista snorted scornfully, still half-distracted by the roil of fel magic in the air around her. She knew she'd pay for it later (once the rush of power wore off she'd be exhausted and her head would ache, it always happened when she drew on demonic magic too heavily), but at the moment she found it exhilarating. She inspected the softly-glowing pebbles lying in her hand before flicking her gaze challengingly up to Nerothos. "You could do better?"

"Please," he sneered. He stepped close to take the stones from her outstretched hand but didn't remove his fingers, claws gouging into the skin of her palm. "You mortals never could mimic that spell properly."

The sensation was mildly painful but she didn't draw away out of principle, sensing he was trying to make her flinch. If Nerothos had been human she might've grabbed his wrist and pulled, forcing him closer and yanking him off-balance to gain the psychological advantage, but somehow she doubted that trick would work on the dreadlord. For one thing, he was too large for her to pull anywhere.

Instead she took a deliberate step nearer, putting them almost nose to nose and pressing his claws even harder into her palm. She could feel the pulse of the fel magic he wielded, especially where her fingertips brushed the underside of his wrist just below a jeweled bracer – it ought to have unsettled her, but it didn't. With the fel power of her summoning still coursing through her, it seemed almost familiar, in an odd, distantly troubling way. "No?" she said, showing her teeth in an edged smile. "We never were much interested in mimicking demons."

Nerothos smiled in return, very close now, and Callista was suddenly acutely aware of how every one of his own teeth came to a predatory point. "Neither were the dwellers of this fortress." He tightened his grip on the infernal stones she'd offered him, dragging his claws uncomfortably across her skin. "Perhaps you should reevaluate your interests."

His fist closed against her palm and Callista withdrew her hand from beneath his, leaving him holding the pebbles. She wasn't actually bleeding, though his talons had left several parallel red scratches on her palm. "Maybe later," she said insincerely, sidestepping as another spear clattered onto their ledge and spun in her direction.

"Pity," he said, satire in his felfire-bright eyes. He turned away from her then to study the battle raging below.

Callista watched him for a second longer, flexing her scratched hand, before moving carefully across the smooth surface to stand near Tun. A fel reaver stomped up the ramp on the far side of the cavern, crushing several felguards beneath its drilled hands before being overwhelmed and shoved over the side. Most of the artillery of both forces had already been destroyed; in the narrow confines of the canyon there was room for little strategy but attrition now. Though the felguards held the higher ground, Nerothos' demons were more numerous and backed by fel reavers. Callista braced herself for a long and bloody battle.

Tun craned his neck over the glassy side of their ledge, tiny shards of ice whirling between his raised hands. They dissipated, however, as he pulled his head back with a doubtful look. The felguards had been pushed back away from their position and there was no longer anything to cast at. "Ugh," he said, surveying the carnage with disgust.

"More or less," Callista said, gazing down at the mess of mangled bodies, smashed machines, and hacking and slashing demons that blanketed the sand below. Nerothos' infernals tore through the dust-choked air, adding to the chaos.

She focused on those, curious if there had been any basis to his sneering. After watching three or four hurtle to earth, she concluded, with some irritation but little surprise, that there was. He never missed, for one thing (impressive, since the high, closely-spaced walls of the crystalline canyon allowed for very little error in trajectory) and he seemed able to direct more than one infernal at a time without losing control (Callista could only command one, and even then it was likely to break loose if she held onto it too long). One of the perks of being a several-thousand-year-old demon, she supposed. On the whole, she'd rather be herself.

Darmog bumped suddenly into her legs, causing them both to startle.

He looked up at her with a wary expression until he realized that no repercussions were forthcoming. Then he turned his pale eyes suspiciously back towards Na'rii, who he had been slinking away from. "What in the Nether is she doing?" he asked.

Callista twisted her head back over her shoulder to see. Na'rii sat cross-legged on the glassy floor with her eyes shut, a look of intense concentration on her face. She murmured fast and soft in her own tongue, the behavior that had alarmed Darmog so.

"I don't know. Praying, or something, I should think," Callista said skeptically.

"Oh," Darmog said, relaxing a little and shooting Na'rii a look of disdain. "Mortal jabber," he muttered.

Callista secretly agreed. She had little faith in religion herself; if prayer was worth the breath it took to utter, Prophet Velen and the rest of his unfortunate people would be chasing the Legion across the worlds, instead of the other way around.

She looked back towards the battle, idly fingering the remaining infernal stones in her pocket. She thought about using them, but Nerothos seemed to have that role well in hand. His tactical knowledge was greater than hers (hardly an accomplishment – Callista had sat out the Third War in the safety of Stormwind, and this was the first real engagement she had ever seen), and he sent meteors streaking to ground with devastating effect. She was perfectly content to watch. Battles, she concluded, weren't so bad from a comfortable distance.

An unruly gust of wind pelted her face with sand, causing her to cough and rub at her eyes. "Nether," she swore, as she heard Tun choke as well.

Just as she'd managed to clear her eyes and throat of the first spray, another gale swept up from the bottom of the canyon and made her sputter again. She pulled the collar of her robes up over her mouth and nose as a filter, squinting.

She noticed with a jolt of shock that she could no longer see the bottom of the ledge. The air below churned and boiled with blood-colored sand twisted into a vicious storm, and the screech of the wind around the sharp corners of the crystalline fortress filled her ears. Anything on the ground was likely being flayed alive.

She whirled to look incredulously at Na'rii. The troll had drawn her blade and made shallow slices across the backs of both her forearms, blue blood trickling slowly from her elbows as she raised her hands beseechingly. She swayed slightly as she chanted to herself, seemingly oblivious to the storm.

"What are you doing?" Callista cried, voice muffled by the fabric of her robe.

It was Kar'thol who answered, standing in the cone of still air surrounding the troll with his meaty arms crossed impassively. "Na'rii ask wind spirit for help. Spirit say yes, kill demons."

Callista could barely keep her eyes open anymore in the relentless bombardment of grit. "Is she crazy?! She can't just kill every – "

She broke off coughing, hunching her shoulders against another violent blast.

A cold blue glow lit the air suddenly, sparkling off the flying particles of rock. She turned to see Tun, his eyes closed to narrow slits against the wind and arcane magic gathered about his open hands. Slowly, a solid wall of glittering ice grew before him, three-sided and curved over at the top like a seawall to repel sand. She slid behind it gratefully, rubbing her eyes to clear them of grit.

Darmog already cowered against one of the corners with his head pulled almost entirely into his cowled robe. She supposed they both might have to revise their opinions on the utility of mortal faith after this.

"She has to stop," Tun said grimly. Sand had already begun to drift in little piles inside their windbreak; he pushed it out with his foot only to have it blow right back in. "I'm not sure she's controlling this anymore."

Callista just nodded warily, listening to the screaming of the wind with her back pressed to the comforting bulk of the ice. Nerothos alone remained standing in the full fury of the storm, only the green shine of his eyes visible amid the whipping gusts of sand.

The wind gave a particularly loud screech and she shuddered a little and hunkered down. It was almost as though there were voices in the storm, though of course that was ridiculous. Air couldn't talk.

Na'rii kept her eyes squeezed shut in concentration as the words of the ancient prayer tumbled from her lips and the howl of the wind filled her head. She had never felt the elements like this, not even in the tortured wastes of Draenor. They raged and screamed, and the steadfast power of the earth and the fierce might of the gale roared through her.

Anger.

Grief.

Pain; so much pain.

They spoke to her in voices – she heard them, she never had before, only silent nudges to her thoughts, and it awed and frightened her – voices with the reedy shriek of wind and the sibilant rasp of sand on stone.

"We have heard you, child of a different world."

"The firsst to ssspeak in yearss on yearss..."

Her vision changed then. Instead of the dark behind her eyes she saw coppery sunlight dappled by leaves, flashed from waves, bright on grass and birds and forests and spire-crowned cities, rain-drenched clouds limned in purple, a strange dusky-skinned people, cliffs and plains and marsh, lakes-fish-stone-desert-sky – a whole world in a blink of thought.

"Faded sshadowsss …"

"Only we remember now."

The vision changed again. Burning, everything. Trees into charcoal, fields of smoldering embers, fire from the sky. Monstrous armies of horned and hoofed things whose very blood was corruption swarmed from rune-rimmed gashes in the world, hacking down forests and cities, slaughtering the live things and poisoning the land. The dusky-skinned people fought with magic and clever enchanted machines of crystal, and the spirits aided as they could (a battle; the earth convulsed and split; the invaders fell down, down, into the clean fires, but there were always more, too many more) but it was not enough.

They perished. All of them, everything, perished.

Ash and dust blew across a blasted wasteland, a world become a burnt-out pyre. The wind keened brokenly over all, the only thing left with voice to mourn except demons, who knew neither remorse nor pity.

Then the vision cleared. All she saw was dark again, but the elements were still with her. The terrible bitter loss of guardians who had failed in their charge was with her too, and their fury was hers.

"Murderersss…" the earth rasped.

"Usurpers!" shrieked the wind.

"Killerss of worldsss, sscourge on creation…"

"We will tear them…"

"Sssmother them…"

"You will help us flay them!"

"Help usss…"

So she did.

Power crackled through her blood and bone like white-hot lightning, indistinguishable from grief-maddened rage as the wind and sand rose in wrath at her plea. Blood stained the charred crystal walls of the canyon even darker as the storm tore and bit, shredding muscle and flesh and choking and burying what it couldn't rend. It was a slaughter. Felguards and mo'arg and gan'arg died in droves, regardless of allegiance. She reveled in the massacre, didn't know if the bitter pleasure was hers or the spirits' and didn't care; she was a conduit for vengeance.

"Abominationsss…"

"Slay them all!"

"Na'rii wake up!" Another voice. Not the spirits. Weaker, mortal. Kar'thol?

Something wasn't right.

The thought leapt unbidden into her mind, almost overwhelmed by the fury that consumed her. What was she doing?

"They sslaughtered everything! All musst die!"

No! Her thoughts clawed to assert themselves over the voices. There had been a battle…demons, yes, but some of them were allies…they were trying to get home! Clarity returned in a rush, and Na'rii struggled to control the powers that wracked her. They were killing everything!

"You must help!" the wind wailed.

She felt again the wrenching loss, the agony of a shattered world. They should all die for what they'd done, every last...no! A terrible thing had happened here, but it was long, long ago and she hadn't the power to undo the Legion's poison. Terrible things would happen again, to Kar'thol and to Tun and to herself if she didn't stop this.

"I be sorry," she whispered.

An awful keening sadness, so deep she might drown in it, the grief of a whole blighted world that would never be mended –

She opened her eyes, communion broken, and found she had been sobbing. Sand caked the wet trails on her face. A warm solid weight rested on her shoulder, and she turned her head to see Kar'thol's hand there.

"Na'rii okay?" he asked, large brow lowered in a concerned frown.

"Ya, mon. Gonna be fine," she said with as much conviction as she could manage, patting his hand gratefully with her slender blue one. It was probably true, anyway. She wiped the tears and grit from her face with the back of her wrist, slowly climbing to her feet.

Tun had conjured a barricade of glittering ice, and rust-colored sand had gathered around it in great drifts. He and Callista and the little gan'arg stood cautiously, shaking grit from their robes. Even the warlock looked shell-shocked, but Na'rii was still too stricken herself to feel much satisfaction that she'd finally wiped the arrogant expression from the other woman's face.

Callista brushed herself off dazedly, still not quite sure what had happened. She'd been nearly choked by wind and flying grit, and then it all had just…stopped.

She peered hesitantly over the side of the ledge and saw that reddish sand had piled up nearly halfway to where she stood. The only demons she could see were at the mouth of the canyon – the remainder of their forces that hadn't ventured in before the sandstorm. All of the felguards, it seemed, were dead.

"I thought you said she was praying!" Darmog said. His gruff voice was aggrieved, almost accusatory as he looked up from beating the grit from the cowl of his robe.

"She was," Callista said defensively, plopping down and pulling off one of her boots to let the sand run out.

Darmog narrowed his pale eyes suspiciously at her, half-convinced she was lying. "Never did them any good before," he muttered.

Callista flinched and scrunched up her face as Nerothos flapped his wings sharply, showering her with sand. "Unnecessary, demon!" she said, raising a hand to block the grit pattering down onto her head.

"The least of your concerns," Nerothos replied.

She snapped her head up to look at him. The red sun was low in the sky behind her, making the silver embellishments on his armor shine like wet blood. He stared over her head towards the dust-shrouded horizon with his eyes narrowed in cold calculation.

Callista stood slowly, one hand on the frigid side of Tun's barricade for balance. She turned to gaze in the direction from which they'd come, dread closing iron fingers around her heart.

The far distance was cloaked in gray dust, as it had been ever since they'd set foot in this misbegotten desert, but now there were lights in it. As far as she could see, tiny twinkling flashes like sparks drifting from a fire.

Or like red Xorothian sunlight, glittering from the thousand jagged blades and armored helms of a murderous demonic army.

Every curse she'd ever heard seemed too mild to be appropriate. Instead she simply blinked, fear raising the hairs on the back of her neck and making her palms start to sweat. The moisture burned the scratches on her hand, and she wiped them mechanically on her robes even as she heard Tun's hissed intake of breath behind her.

"It seems," Nerothos said, and even the approaching legions hadn't knocked the sardonic note from his voice, "that someone has finally deigned to expend some effort."