Part I: It's a Dry Heat
To the Victor Goes the Shaft
The imps that didn't scramble out of the way in time were hurled aside bodily as Karlach crashed through their numbers beneath Avernus's blood red sky. The cambion that had been the target of Karlach's charge raised his shield to counter the swing that would have taken his head off. He tried to push back against Karlach with his shield. In his mind's eye, the cambion was going to knock the tall, red-skinned tiefling off balance with a bash from his shield then follow up by skewering her with his longsword. Expectation was soon trounced by reality as the cambion realized he wasn't even remotely strong enough. It was with a fearsome grin that Karlach roughly shoved the cambion's shield aside before raining a pommel strike on his forehead that staggered him long enough for a second swing to finish what the first had started. The cambion's head rolled gently across the plateau and off the cliff.
Karlach shook her head and let out a chuckle. "Poor fucker."
She turned back toward what had been a large mass of Imps in time to see the dilophosaurus, a large scaled beast that stood shoulders over Karlach's head, deliver a tail swipe that sent four of the little bastards reeling before pouncing toward two of the Imps she had just knocked down. The dilophosaurus clasped a screaming Imp's head with each of her clawed feet and squeezed until their skulls crunched in sprays of blood and brains.
The remaining two imps took flight. Karlach removed a hand axe from her belt and hurled it at the nearest one. The axe hit one of the Imp's wings, not quite cutting it off but doing enough damage to render it useless. The imp careened out of control before smashing face first into a cliff face.
At the same time, the dilophosaurus set off after the last Imp. As the beast ran, black on red scales turned to feathers, the saurian snout turned aquiline and arms turned to wings as dilophosaurus reshaped to golden eagle.
Its ascent aided by Avernus's intense thermals, the eagle rose quickly in the sky over the imp it pursued before diving down on top of it. Three inch-long talons dug deep into the imp's back, drawing copious amounts of blood and shredding the nerves that would otherwise have controlled its wings. The two fliers somersaulted in the air before separating, the eagle flying away gracefully while the imp flailed pointlessly before it crashed to the ground in a heap of broken bones.
The eagle spread her wings, riding the thermals once again for an easy ascent, and started circling overhead.
"Fine," said Karlach, watching the eagle for a moment, "Guess you'll come down once you've taken in the view. Bloody lot that there is to see."
Karlach looked around. The imps that had welcomed her back to Avernus were all dead, as was their cambion handler. With no other enemies in sight, Karlach had a moment to orient herself.
The steaming shitstain that was Avernus hadn't changed a bit since she had last had the displeasure of being here. Blood red skies marked with the occasional fireball streaking high overhead. On the ground: rocky, craggy hills and mountains with rivers of blood flowing between.
Karlach's engine was now humming happily, and at least that made one of them. The infernal engine that had replaced the berserker's stolen heart was a chain binding her to Avernus. On the material plane, the machine had very nearly cremated her alive from the inside out in the moments before she had been convinced to return here, to the first layer of hell. And now, thoroughly saturated in the heat of the hells, the machine was running without complaint. Home.
But as for herself, Karlach watched as trickles of blood from the melee she had just fought streamed downhill to join a coursing river of blood, and knowing that she had only just arrived and was already feeding into the cycle of pointless bloodshed that typified Avernus filled her with a bitter and futile rage.
The eagle landed beside Karlach and the berserker forced herself to unclench her fists, "You shouldn't fly so high, Raphane. Bigger and meaner things than eagles here."
The eagle's form stretched and warped into another tiefling that stood about a head shorter than Karlach herself, unless if one counted her long, spiraling horns. She had red hair, green skin and eyes that shone orange within black. Her forehead soon beaded with sweat. Raphane's tiefling heritage may have provided her some measure of protection from the heat of Avernus but she would still have to acclimate to this unnaturally hot climate.
In this moment, the green tiefling's face was etched with worry. There was a hard edge to Karlach's voice she had never heard directed at herself before. "Of course," she said apologetically, and joined Karlach in looking out across the landscape, "That portal should have taken us to the House of Hope. What do you think went wrong?"
"I think Helsik screwed us," answered Karlach.
"She did seem taken aback that we survived Raphael," said Raphane.
"And is probably none too eager to have anyone learn about her part in his snuffing," added Karlach.
"And this," Raphane waved her hand to indicate all the dead Imps, "what do you think? An ambush?"
Karlach shook her head. She bent down to search the dead cambion for any clues as to whom he had served. Found nothing.
"No. Helsik knows it would take more than imps and a lone cambion to kill us. Probably just a scouting party that happened to see us. We should get moving before they're missed. Did you see any shelter when you were flying around up there? Caves or really sturdy looking buildings? Preferably abandoned." Karlach pointed at a pair of fireballs blazing their path across the sky, "Because if we're stupid enough to camp out in the open, one of those big fuckers will blast us to smoldering nothings in our sleep."
Raphane pointed, "There were what looked like some cave openings in that direction." She looked up at the sky: a blood red pit interrupted by the occasional smoke cloud. "Navigation will be a challenge here without stars or sun to guide."
"We'll have to rely on landmarks," said Karlach, starting off in the direction Raphane had indicated at a deliberate pace. "And even that won't help much. Things move down here. The only good news is that the Bronze Citadel is nowhere in sight. The further we stay away from it, and the front line of the Blood War, the better off we'll be."
"So, how do you think we might make our way to the House of Hope from here?" asked Raphane, looking around for any point of reference that she could recall also seeing from the House. Nothing leapt out to her any more down here than it had from the air.
"We don't," said Karlach. "The House of Hope was Raphael's sanctuary. He would have had it warded, hidden and locked up tight. We're not going to find it, nevermind make it inside, without so much trouble as would bring the whole of Avernus down on our heads."
"So, lunch first," suggested Raphane.
If Karlach was at all amused, she didn't show it.
They walked some distance toward the caves Raphane had seen, and they turned out to be much further away than Raphane had thought they were.
Karlach led the way along rocky ridgelines and through mountain passes under the blood red sky, pointing out various hazards as she did. Spurs of obsidian that could easily rend unprotected flesh. The ever present fireballs that roared across the sky. One of those fireballs landed on the other side of a ridge they were passing, shaking the ground and kicking up flames and debris. Occasionally, they would hear distant clashes of steel, shouts or cries of anguish.
Trickles and rivulets of blood flowing downhill or pooled in craters were common sights, as were bones and skulls, some of them piled or otherwise intentionally arranged, others were just the remnants of the innumerable battles that were fought here.
At one point they found themselves peering over the edge of a cliff, looking down on a column of shabbily dressed prisoners escorted on either side by whip-bearing merregon, who did not hesitate to lash their charges at the merest hint of dawdling.
"I know what you're thinking," Karlach said bitterly as she stared. "But you can't help them."
Raphane just looked at Karlach.
"Believe me. I tried," said the red tiefling, "Paid for it more than once until I finally learned my lesson. This place is horrible. But the ugliest truth is that most of the people stuck here deserve it."
"What if they're like you were?" asked Raphane, "Or Hope?"
Karlach shook her head. "Not these ones. Look at their faces. No fear. No panic. Just shame." Her voice turned colder than Raphane had ever heard it, "They made their choices. If we try to help we'll just end up paying along with them."
After about another hours' walk they passed into a region marked with crevices and caves. They moved slowly here; Karlach was cautious of what might have taken up residence in those caves. They saw more than a few slovenly ooze like fiends before they were seen themselves. Karlach led the way around them, saying that killing them would be far more trouble than it was worth.
They continued until coming upon a charred and smoldering depression. Karlach pointed it out as a crater left behind by a fallen fireball. The blast had exposed multiple cave openings. They scouted the area until Karlach was satisfied it was relatively undisturbed and picked out a cave to take shelter in. The basalt rock cave was about the size of an inn's common room.
"There," said Raphane, as she finished stone shaping what was effectively a door leading out into the crater, complete with handle. "Shouldn't be too conspicuous from the outside either."
Karlach didn't say anything, from where she sat eating some of her remaining rations.
"We'd better make sure though," said Raphane, stepping outside the cave. "Come, close this behind me, please. And. Uhm. Open up when I knock as well. No handle on the outside. Would be a bit of a giveaway," she punctuated the sentence with a laugh that came out sounding far more nervous and awkward than she liked.
"Okay," said Karlach. She set aside her rations for the moment, came over and shut the stone door just as Raphane had asked, a cold blankness to her expression.
The moment the door shut with Karlach on the other side, Raphane was ashamed to let out a sigh of relief. Karlach had been uncharacteristically stern ever since arriving in Avernus, had barely spoken at all except to direct or instruct, almost always with a glare and a harsh edge to her voice. There was conversation that needed to be had, and no point in delaying it any further.
Raphane took a few steps back to examine the door, making sure it was mostly indistinguishable from the rest of the rockface, before stepping forward again and giving the door a few taps with her staff.
The rockface split as Karlach opened the door and moved deeper inside to make room for Raphane, who pushed the stone door shut behind herself. Closed, the stone door shut out all but the faintest trace of Avernus's red light, even to a tiefling's darkness-adjusted eyes, so Raphane cast a light cantrip for illumination.
"We should get some sleep while we can," said Karlach as she set about removing the bedroll from her pack.
Raphane followed Karlach partway before stopping, shifting uncomfortably where she stood. There was nothing for it and no point in delaying it any longer. "You're still angry with me?" she asked, but there was hardly any doubt in her voice.
"You know I am," Karlach answered as she unfurled her bedroll.
Raphane moved to kneel down in front of Karlach. "Talk to me, Karlach. You've never held your tongue before, don't start now. We can't afford to leave things unsaid."
"I'm not holding anything back darling I just," Karlach let out an irritated sigh and looked up from her bedroll to make eye contact with Raphane. "I was ready to go," she said. "I wanted to go. And it would have been on my terms: with the woman I loved at my side having just saved the city I loved. What better ending could I ask for? And you: you would have been safe. I know it would have hurt, darling," her expression softened, but only for a moment, "But you would have gotten over me. You would have moved on and you would have lived."
"Don't talk about yourself like you're replaceable," begged Raphane, orange within black eyes glistening, "No one's ever meant to me what you do."
"But if you had stayed in Faerûn you would have had a chance to find someone else to make a life with. Down here?" Karlach shook her head, "we'll be lucky to last a tenday. There's no future here. I could never get that message through to you. The most I can hope for now is to find a way to get you out of Avernus and catch a quick and easy death myself before something worse can happen to me. It's not just our lives we're risking down here. It's our souls. Every minute that we're here."
The berserker shook her head in frustration, "I can't believe I let you talk me into coming back here and-worse still-bringing you with me! I should have been stronger than that. If I had held on for just a few seconds longer, my troubles would have been over and you would have been getting on with the rest of your life."
Raphane put her hand on Karlach's arm, "Do you remember what you said to me after Nettie gave me that vial of wyvern poison?"
Karlach shook her head, "No. Might as well have been a lifetime ago."
"It wasn't long after we first met. Nettie was the first healer we spoke to, to try and fix our tadpole problem. Instead, she gave me a bottle of poison and and asked me to promise to use it if I felt the symptoms of ceremorphosis coming on," Raphane smiled as she recalled, "You were furious with me when I did, and you said that you didn't plan on dying a single second sooner than you had to. I know that things are bad, and I'm not asking you to forgive me, but we haven't made it to the last second yet."
"We've been hanging in the last second since we stepped through the portal," said Karlach bitterly before she pushed Raphane's hand off her arm, to the green tiefling's shock. "You just can't see it. Or won't. Your pick. It usually is."
"What is that supposed to mean?" asked Raphane, dismayed.
"It means you're fine with everyone picking their own destiny but only so long as they do what you want them to."
Raphane's jaw worked uncertainly as she tried to think what to say, but Karlach didn't wait for her.
"You did it to Shadowheart, you did it to Astarion, you did it to me."
Raphane's mouth dropped open, "You can't possibly be comparing yourself to those two!"
"I can and I am," said Karlach. "It was my choice. Until you made it yours," she laughed bitterly, "And I let you! And what makes it so much worse is that we talked about it." Karlach's voice nearly broke. "We talked about it so many times. You knew how I felt about coming back here. You knew that all I wanted was for you to stay with me while I went. If you couldn't change my mind when I was good and lucid, what made you think you had the right to change it when I was half senseless?" She hung her head in tormented, hopeless, frustration. "Shit!"
"Karlach, as long as you're alive–"
"Stop, Raphane, just stop!" Karlach interrupted, and turned away from Raphane to sit watching the cave's entrance.
There was a long silence before Raphane spoke again. "I suppose you're right," she said in a hushed tone, barely above a whisper. "I trust you with my life. With anyone's life. Just not your own."
"Get some sleep, soldier," snapped Karlach, "And keep your armor on. I'll take first watch."
Raphane stared dumbly for a long moment at Karlach's indifferent back before facing away and putting out her own bedroll.
Karlach's bitter words stormed back and forth in her mind as Raphane laid down her head. She knew well enough that Karlach was angry at her but, more than that, the berserker was terrified. Raphane didn't know what the words were that would allay Karlach's fears but, in this moment, she doubted that even the perfect words would make much difference as long as they were coming from herself. Raphane tried to think of happier times, but utter exhaustion proved to be her greatest ally in finally getting to sleep.