Ate Without Table
An insistent tap on her shoulder brought Raphane out of her slumber. "Pst. Soldier!" She dimly heard Karlach's equally insistent whisper.
Raphane moaned groggily before she spoke. "Is it my turn for lookout?" she asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Once Raphane's bleary vision had cleared a bit, she saw Karlach sitting next to her, golden eyes wide and earnest.
"What's wrong, Karlach?" asked Raphane, sleep dropping away quickly as she propped herself up off the bedroll with her arms.
"What's wrong? Oh. Just me," Karlach answered with a nervous laugh, "This place. Everything. Remember how just a couple nights ago we were sleeping on silk sheets in the Elfsong tavern?" She laughed. "Then we beat a netherbrain into oblivion. Heroes of the city for about a minute. Yay. Then straight to hell!"
Karlach's face was suddenly crestfallen, her wide eyes glistened. "I was just so tired. I was so ready to be done with everything that it felt like death was going to be a break. No more fucking tadpoles or devils or constantly being cooked alive inside my own body just," she paused uncertainly, "Just whatever happened to come next."
Raphane came up to her knees and pulled Karlach into an embrace. The larger woman let out a sob while Raphane stroked her hair. "Ready to be done with these waterworks too," Karlach said, drying her eyes. "I've got a lot of anger. At this place, Zariel, Gortash. Agh. Still. And you," she squeezed Raphane tightly, "but I don't want to be angry at you."
Karlach lolled her head against Raphane's, "You never lied to me up there about how bad things were and I've tried to be honest with you down here. My engine may be running fine for a change but I'm not alright. Still, I'm going to do my best to inflict my bad moods on the shitheels that deserve it, and that's not you, darling."
"I don't want you to be angry with me either," said Raphane, "But we can't stop talking to each other. I need to know what you're thinking."
"Well you know what I'm thinking," said Karlach, "You always seem to know. Sometimes before I even know myself. The things I said to you last night… I needed to say them but I didn't need to be so cruel and I'm sorry for that. You know I love you, right?"
"I love you too," said Raphane, leaning her head down to give Karlach a lingering kiss. When their lips separated, Raphane saw the telltale blue glow in Karlach's eyes. "Oh, I know what that means," she said with a grin, and caressed a hand across Karlach's cheek then traced the curve of her horn.
"It's not fair," said Karlach, "I have so many tells. Can't keep a thing to myself."
Raphane swung one leg onto the other side of Karlach and gently pushed the larger woman back onto her bedroll to plant a string of kisses down her neck-all the while Karlach's practiced fingers set about undoing the various laces, buckles and straps that held Raphane's leather-reinforced robes together. Raphane spread her hands across Karlach's shoulders as she felt her robes loosen. "Mmm. Didn't Karlach say last night that we should keep our armor on?" she asked, running her fingers through Karlach's black-red hair as it pulsed with waves of blue flame, tickling Raphane's fingers with a cozy warmth.
"That was last night's Karlach," was the answer, even as Raphane's robes were rapidly falling off, "What did she know?"
A steady rainfall showered Karlach and Raphane as they lay next to each other, washing off days of accumulated sweat, grime and other matter that left Raphane thinking the wise thing would have been to do this before making love, had the moment not overtaken them so completely. As things were though, Raphane was content to lay her head on Karlach's breast, listen to the hum of her engine and let the waters cleanse them both.
"I could almost believe I'm back in the real world," said Karlach, staring straight up.
Raphane followed Karlach's gaze. The shower of rain poured down from conjurework clouds and, although the shower was confined to just a couple meters' radius surrounding Karlach and Raphane, the clouds had spread out to cover most of the cave's ceiling.
"I had a dream last night," said Raphane. "About the first night we spent together. Do you remember it?"
"How could I forget," Karlach laughed, "You were so sure I was going to be the one to wake up the rest of the camp."
"Not that night," said Raphane with a shake of her head, "I meant the night I finally told you how I felt about you."
"You mean when Alfira blurted out how you felt about me?" asked Karlach with a smirk.
"Yes, that night," said Raphane, smiling. "There were a lot of things I wanted to say to you that I didn't get around to. More than anything, I wanted to tell you how much you meant to me in those early days. I was terrified of becoming a mind flayer, snatched away from my friends, family and home. Just a small-time adventurer from Beregost hopelessly out of her depth. The only allies I had were either constantly bickering or trying to drain me in my sleep. You were the first person I met in the midst of all that who I could count on. Just being near you reminded me what was so worth fighting for and living for. You were my light. My rock. I had a daft notion that I could be that for you down here."
"That's… really sweet," said Karlach, tracing a finger around the curve of Raphane's ear. "A little naive maybe," she admitted with a kindly laugh, "But still sweet."
"I can't pretend to be happy to be here," Karlach continued, "And I still think it would have been better for both of us if we had never come. But having you here with me has made this moment livable. I mean I never would have guessed that I could feel clean in Avernus of all places. It means a lot."
"Karlach," said Raphane, "I don't believe your story ends here in Avernus, and I mean to see you watch another sunrise."
"Raphane, please stop," said Karlach, a sad desperation in her eyes, "I'm burnt out on hope. You'll only make me cry again. And I'm ready to be done with that for a bit," she squeezed Raphane's hand. "Maybe someday I'll be ready to talk hopes and dreams again. But right now, I just need to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Make it through the day. Does that make any sense?"
Raphane nodded silently.
Karlach hugged Raphane against herself. "Maybe you can carry the hope for both of us for a bit," she said.
"I'll do whatever I can to help," said Raphane.
"But what about you?" asked Karlach. "You've got to have your own hopes and dreams. What about them?"
"I have hopes and dreams," said Raphane. "And you're in all of them. I'm not leaving you alone down here."
Later, Raphane had just put her underwear back on and was reaching for her robes when she unrolled them and let them hang from her hand and noticed just how much light was passing through portions of them.
"Karlach…" she started, "Did you tart up my robes?"
"Such a prude," teased Karlach as she was getting dressed herself. "Nothing wrong with showing a bit of leg. Trust me. You'll thank me later. Avernus is too hot for all that heavy cloth and leather. They needed some airing out."
Raphane smirked, "Fine. But if my cheeks hang out you're fixing it."
"Fair. I'll tuck 'em in if they need it," said Karlach with a snicker, and she gave Raphane a squeeze as she moved past her on the way to the door, prompting a surprised squeak from the smaller tiefling. "I'm stepping out for a look. Catch up when you're done tarting up. Oh, shit."
"What is it?" asked a suddenly alarmed Raphane, who turned her head to see Karlach staring at her sword.
The greatsword's long blade was enlarged toward the tip, not unlike a boarsword, but the similarities to any normal weapon ended there. The greatsword was rife with Illithid corruption: tiny toothlike projections extended from the crossguard while pulsating veins and buboes climbed from the hilt up the blade and along the length of the fuller. It didn't even look sharp, and yet Raphane had seen Karlach use the weapon to great effect. "Yep. It's still gross," the druid commented.
"This is Balduran's sword," said Karlach, looking back at Raphane. "I brought a bloody heirloom of the Gate to the hells. What will Wyll say when he realizes I absconded with this thing?"
"Worry not, Karlach. I have every confidence that you will wield this sword with honor and do our fair city proud," said Raphane, in an impression of Wyll's voice that was bad enough the cringe threatened to break Karlach's face.
"Please, never do that again," the red tiefling begged.
"Well, I don't doubt he's confident you're putting it to good use," said Raphane as she got back to getting dressed. "Besides, since you've held that sword it's killed a devil, a tyrant, a netherbrain and more mind flayers and cultists than I could track. Who's to say what else you'll add to its tally? In a hundred years, maybe they'll call it the Cliffgate Sword."
"Of all the daft ideas," said Karlach with an incredulous chuckle as she left the cave.
Karlach was crouched down in the smoldering crater outside the cave by a cluster of glowing orange mushrooms. "Over here, Raphane!" she called out.
"A little early for mushrooms, isn't it?" asked Raphane. She crouched down next to Karlach and took a bite of her croissant.
"Not that kind of mushroom." Karlach took hold of one of the mushrooms by its stalk and tugged it free of the crater. "Barely even the other kind. But the leftover rations in our packs won't even last to the end of the day and firefungus is the finest dining available here in Avernus."
"Tell me you know there are more than two kinds of mushrooms," said Raphane.
Karlach held the firefungus in front of her face for a long moment, her eye twitching a bit, before taking a bite and grimacing before forcing herself to swallow down the awful thing. "Gods! It's worse than I remember. Tastes like shit. But, if you boil it… then it tastes like boiled shit." She tore off a bit of the mushroom and held it out to Raphane. "Here, try some."
"No thanks," said Raphane, before taking another bite of her croissant.
The red tiefling did a double take on the pastry before grabbing it from Raphane's hand and taking a Karlach-sized bite for herself. "This is fresh," she said and proceeded to waggle the croissant accusingly at Raphane, "Darling, which devil did you make a deal with to get a freshly baked croissant in hell?"
"Calm down, Karlach," said Raphane. "I just got it from that picnic basket." She pointed.
Karlach was soon on the picnic basket, throwing the lid open. "Sausage, omelets, wine, fresh fruit and what even is this?"
"Haggis," said Raphane, helpfully.
"No, I mean where did this come from?"
"Nature's bounty," said Raphane with a sweet smile.
"Nature makes croissants and haggis?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Karlach grabbed one of the omelets and started eating with her bare hands. "Gods that was good," she said, once she had finished inhaling her breakfast. "How long have you been able to conjure food like this? There must be enough in here to feed a dozen people."
"Not long," Raphane admitted, "Never bothered with it before since Gale would always sulk when he didn't get to do the cooking."
"And you watched while I ate that firefungus. Why?"
"I like it when you take charge," said Raphane, "I wasn't about to interrupt."
Karlach laughed, "Sometimes I could swear you're half-imp." She grabbed a sausage from the basket and bit one end off, "You do realize this is literally hell, right? There's not supposed to be three course breakfasts or saunas or tender lovemaking down here." She pointed the sausage accusingly at Raphane. "You're cheating."
Raphane smiled innocently.
By the time Karlach heard the three small objects rolling down the slope of the crater in her and Raphane's direction, it was already too late. She turned her head toward the sound in time to see the all-too-familiar shape of an orthon's bomb before it exploded.
Her last thought before she blacked out was that this was more along the lines of what she had expected.
Once Karlach managed to open her eyes, she could only just tell what was happening through the pounding headache, the blurred vision and the high pitched ringing. She could see Raphane laying on her side, eyes closed and blood dripping from her ear. Dizzily, Karlach managed to clamber up onto one knee and reached back to seize the hilt of her sword. That was when the orthon's massive, meaty fist collided with her chest and knocked her flat on her back.
Karlach only saw a hazy outline of the orthon looming above her before it rolled her over. She tried to fight back as she felt the chains loop round to bind her arms but her body betrayed her.
"Too easy," grumbled a voice directly behind her that Karlach assumed belonged to the orthon, "You really think this is her? She went down to one grenade. Don't seem right."
Another voice, vaguely feminine but with a bass rumbling, chimed in, "She'll have markings on her horns if she's the right one."
Karlach managed to turn her head in time to see another orthon descending the crater's slope before the one behind her hauled her up by the chains binding her arms and spun her round to face himself.
With her vision beginning to clear, Karlach could see that the orthon was more than twice her height and nearly as wide across the shoulders as it was tall. Scraps of metal armor had been bolted onto its leathery red-brown skin. She blinked the last clouds from her eyes before staring back into the orthon's eyes. "You'd better let me the fuck down and forget you ever saw me, shitbreath," she said.
"Talks like her," voiced the feminine sounding orthon, unbothered.
The orthon holding Karlach ignored her threats, held her closer to his face to stare at her horns, "Yeah, that and she's got Zariel markings and all. Demonsbane. Hah! That's a laugh. It's payday alright."
Karlach tensed as she saw the second orthon getting close to Raphane. "What about this one, then? The bounty didn't say nothing 'bout no greenskin tiefling. How's a tiefling get to be green anyhow?"
"Don't matter, do it? If there's no bounty may as well stomp her head in now."
"Don't you fucking dare!" yelled Karlach. She was starting to get proper sensation and strength back in her limbs. She struggled against the chains. Flames rolled off her shoulders as her engine heated up.
"Shut it," said the orthon holding Karlach before dropping his arm. Mercifully, his face fell away from Karlach's view as she dropped down. The orthon still held her by the chains binding her arms, dangling above the ground.
"Hold up," said the orthon hovering over Raphane before she turned around and stepped toward Karlach and the orthon holding her. She took a sniff of Karlach and then a nasty smile spread across her face, "These two's been tangling tails. They've got their stink all o'er each other. Ain't that sweet?"
"Sounds like a sweet bonus," said the other orthon before the two of them shared a laugh.
"I'll get the little one then. Huh."
"What now?"
"This one's got two horns. That one's only got the one."
"Make 'em match then. Hack off her rightside horn. That'd be your left. Her right."
"No, let's make 'em complement. Like they complete each other."
"Ahh. And that's why you're the artist of the operation."
"Ain't it?"
Karlach strained harder against the chains. The second orthon had grabbed Raphane by one of her horns and was dragging her toward a nearby rock.
"Stop squirming," said the orthon holding Karlach, giving her chains a shake.
That was when Karlach felt her hand knock against a coinpurse on her belt: the one she kept the soul coins in. The chains had enough give that she could reach for it. Her fingers were just starting to loosen the purse strings when the whole thing slipped from her belt to fall down to the crater. "Fuck," she growled.
"What's that?" asked the orthon holding her.
"Fuck you, you fucking fucker," Karlach snapped back, "What fucking else?"
"You need to learn more words," said the orthon.
"Fuck off."
A leaden weight of anxiety settled in Karlach's gut as the second orthon positioned Raphane with one of her horns on top of the rock to which she had been dragging her. Karlach poured that rage into fueling her engine, enveloping her body in a fiery haze, but it still wasn't enough to break the chains.
"Hah," the first orthon laughed at her, "Burn as hot as you want, little toaster. Won't change a thing."
The second orthon's foot came down, pulverizing more than half of Raphane's left horn and bringing the green tiefling back to consciousness with a wail of anguish.
"Fuckers!" shouted Karlach bitterly.
"Oi, sleepyhead's a screamer!" called out the second orthon with a laugh, then seized Raphane in a meaty hand as the green tiefling tried to scramble away, wide-eyed and disoriented. "Nice to see you up and about, but it's back to bed with you."
The orthon slammed Raphane down onto the surface of the crater to knock her out again, or rather, she intended to. Before Raphane hit the ground, her body bulged, swelled, and lengthened massively while skin, cloth and leather turned to feathers. The momentum of the orthon's slam was interrupted when she suddenly found her hand not quite holding a fully grown owlbear instead of a petite tiefling woman.
The owlbear rounded on the orthon with a fury. Rearing up on her hind legs, the owlbear was nearly the same height as the devil. Long, sharp claws slashed the bewildered devil's flesh. The orthon tried to draw her weapon but the owlbear had soon bowled her over and held her down in order to use her beak to tear long ribbons of bloody flesh from the orthon's neck.
"Ain't you never seen a shapeshifter before?" the orthon holding Karlach grumbled at his colleague, who was rapidly losing blood and flesh. "Fine, I'll help. But it's coming out of your share!" He dropped Karlach, who landed on the surface of the crater with a grunt, before drawing his sword; the blade was short for a devil of his height, but compensated for its short length with its breadth.
"Raphane, watch your left!" Karlach called out.
"Shove that shite back down your throat or it's you next," said the orthon, sparing a glare back in Karlach's direction.
By the time he turned back in the owlbear's direction, Raphane was already on him. The owlbear shape had moved with agility belying its size, whirling from the orthon it had been savaging in order to perform a flying leap toward the other one, barreling into it just as he was turning to face where he thought she still was. He staggered back but kept his feet and raised his left arm to shield his face from the owlbear's slashing claws before bringing down his sword with the other arm to hack into the owlbear's shoulder, causing her to let out a high-pitched warbling shriek.
"That's it!" yelled the Orthon who was missing patches of her face, neck and torso, as she sat up. "Chop the bitch up! Can't possibly be worth this much trouble."
Karlach's fingers groped the surface of the crater frantically for the soul coin purse. She grinned triumphantly when she found it. The purse strings had already been loosened. It didn't take much to reach inside and clasp her hand around one of the coins.
The owlbear's beak penetrated the forearm of the orthon's sword arm, grabbed hold of a thick vein and tore. A spray of blood let loose when she withdrew her beak, even as the orthon let loose with a string of Infernal curses and epithets before slamming his left fist into the owlbear's face, sending her reeling with a disoriented warble, bladed knuckles ripping away patches of feathers and flesh.
"Get your ass over here and help me, you dozy cow!" the embattled orthon commanded his mate.
He looked into her eyes as she backed away long enough to realize she saw something behind him, but he didn't have long to ponder before a well-honed blade slashed open the backside of one of his shins and then the other. The orthon was already going down when Raphane knocked him onto his back and held down his arms, claws digging in and drawing blood. Karlach didn't give him a second to recover and delivered a series of hacking slashes to his neck, only stopping when the last strips of flesh connecting head and neck had been cut.
This time, Karlach and Raphane both recognized the sounds of the orthon bombs rolling down the slope of the crater in time to react. At least a half dozen lit bomblets were rolling in from the direction of the live Orthon, rolling straight towards the dead one.
Raphane didn't need to be told that the dead orthon was almost certainly carrying bombs of his own, nor did she need to be told that those bombs wouldn't react well to any other nearby combustibles going off. She wasted no time using her beak to snatch up Karlach by the collar of her armor, over her protests, and bounding away.
The first set of bombs did indeed set off secondary explosions, thanks to the bombs on the body of the dead orthon.
The mass of explosions exposed a chasm beneath the crater and fissures rapidly radiated out from the blast, sending rock tumbling downward. Even bounding as far and fast as she could, Raphane's owlbear form couldn't outrun the collapse and fell tumbling down into the chasm as well. As she fell, Raphane curled her owlbear shape protectively around Karlach. The last thing she saw of the surface was the smug face of the female orthon delightedly witnessing her fall.