Interruptions
Shimmering blue lights faded from Raphane's eyes as she released the spell and they resolved back to their usual orange within black coloration.
"So," said Karlach, "How fucked are we today?"
Raphane kept her hand touching the black sand. She whispered a cantrip and the grains of sand rearranged themselves into a relief map of the surrounding several miles, a craggy valley replete with ridgelines and trenches with mountains rearing up around its perimeter.
Various lines and squares indicated battlelines, columns and patrols of Infernal and Abyssal forces, most of them heading for direct confrontations with one another. A circle indicated the tieflings' present location.
"Not as fucked as we were yesterday," said Raphane with an uncertain shrug.
"Fantastic! We keep this up, we'll be unfucked in no time!" said Karlach cheerily.
"We have about ten minutes to get clear of here before this patrol's on top of us," said Raphane. "There's a tunnel here. I'm thinking we take it through to these ruins then go along this ridgeline. The ridgeline is craggy enough we'll have some cover from being spotted by air. Should get us out of the valley."
"It's a good plan," chirped Karlach. "We'll just have to hope this is the center of the conflict. If we can get it behind us, we'll have fewer assholes to deal with."
Raphane rested her head on her hand while looking at Karlach with a tired smile, "It's not right, you know."
'We're in hell, darling," said Karlach, "Nothing's right."
"I mean you," said Raphane, "Still being the one keeping me together."
"It's easier for me," said Karlach, "All I need to do is slash and smash. Can do that in my sleep. You're the one doing all this." The berserker waved her hand at the relief map in the sand. "Planning and strategizing and whatnot. You'd better have a bite to eat before we trot off." Karlach removed a fire fungus cap from her pack, tore off a chunk and handed it to Raphane. "We're bound to have some run-ins. You need to keep your strength up."
Raphane accepted the bit of fire fungus hesitantly. "What about you?' she asked.
"Don't worry about me," said Karlach. "I'm good to go for miles."
Raphane fixed Karlach with a measuring stare for a few seconds to be sure the berserker meant what she said. It was clear she did. The tieflings' increasingly desperate circumstances seemed to have awoken a new energy in Karlach that Raphane hadn't seen in her since those last long days in the fight against the Absolute. She was eating less, fighting harder, barely sleeping but somehow invigorated.
Neither of them had been getting enough to eat, the devils and demons they had been fighting and killing had no need to eat, and thus carried no food, and were themselves inedible and therefore couldn't even serve as game. Occasionally they had run-ins with cambions or other half-fiends who did sometimes carry food, which was always a welcome relief from a diet that consisted almost entirely of unappetizing and barely edible fire fungus and, on good days, when Raphane could afford to expend the spellpower, goodberries. As a result, both of the tieflings had lost quite a bit of weight. But while Raphane suspected the weight loss had just made herself look tired and stretched–mercifully, she lacked a mirror and couldn't be sure–for Karlach it had sharpened her features to a predatory keenness that she wore well.
"Sorry I'm slowing you down," said Raphane, before taking a bite of the fire fungus and wincing at the taste, even after months of eating the stuff she still couldn't get used to it. "If it weren't for me you would have been across this valley yesterday."
"None of that talk, now," said Karlach, squatting down behind Raphane and squeezing her shoulders, "You are what keeps me going. Hells, you're the whole reason I'm alive."
"You've forgiven me for that?" asked Raphane hopefully.
"What's to forgive?" said Karlach, before kissing the top of Raphane's head. "Mmm. I miss the long locks," she said, giving Raphane's hair, cut short with a belt knife after the encounter with Florenta, a tousle. "When are you going to grow it back out?"
"I'll think about it if we go another month without a Florenta sighting. Now come on, we need to be moving," said Raphane, "By the way, you're eating something next stop."
"Promise?" teased Karlach.
Raphane rolled her eyes, "Not me. Grow up, you."
"But my boyish charm!" protested Karlach.
"I prefer your feminine wiles," said Raphane with a smirk before she swept a hand across the relief map, scattering the sands and removing any trace it had ever existed.
The tieflings made decent time toward the tunnel Raphane had pointed out, slowed down only by an encounter with a pair of short-lived spinagons and on another occasion when they took cover from a flying fortress that was passing overhead.
While navigating the tunnel, they skirted past no less than twenty lemures, knowing full well that slaying the bloated, blob-like devils wouldn't be worth the effort.
The red sky of Avernus that greeted them amongst the ruins at the tunnel's exit was no comfort.
The ruins themselves consisted of various bits of wall, ceiling and floor that clung stubbornly to thick rock-hewn columns. Large portions of the ground were missing, having collapsed into deep chasms.
"Only half a mile to the ridge from here," said Raphane.
"Better step quick," said Karlach.
The tieflings had only stepped about ten paces from the tunnel when Karlach bumped face first into… nothing.
"Fine," groaned Karlach before she looked back at Raphane. "What magical fuckery are we dealing with this time?"
Raphane poked her staff forward only for it to be deflected to the side as if against a round wall. "It's a first for me," the druid admitted. She continued moving the staff's tip along the curve, this time moving upward. "A spherical barrier?"
"It's a trap though, whatever it is, isn't it?" asked Karlach. She turned on her heel and walked back the way the tieflings had come until running into the invisible wall again. "Yup. Figured that."
"Look at them trying to figure it out. Adorable."
"Helsik?" asked Raphane.
"Woah," added Karlach, turning her head toward the source of the voice before she chuckled. "You look like shit. How much effort did you spend getting up there for your reveal? Overdramatic tit."
Helsik was standing rather dramatically on what was left of a second level balcony, looking down on the trapped tieflings. The dwarven diabolist did indeed look worse for wear. Since the tieflings had last seen her, Helsik had traded her fine robes for hardwearing traveling clothes, and even those looked to have seen better days. Her hair was frayed and frazzled. Her face was tired, worn, darkened with the soot of Avernus and a good bit less healthily plump.
"I might have fared better if you two were ever where you were supposed to be. You were supposed to materialize in the trap appointed for you. Should have taken me all of one afternoon to handle. Instead, you've managed to lead me on quite the merry chase across one of the least fashionable hellscapes," she shook her head disapprovingly at her surroundings, "So drab. So common. So tiresome."
"Awh. Well we're ever so sorry we inconvenienced your black little heart," said Karlach before looking to Raphane, "Isn't it such a shame when bad things happen to shitty people?"
"Why betray us?" asked Raphane. "Especially after all the gold we paid you?"
"Do you have to ask?" asked Karlach, "Fucking devils. Only the idiots who throw in with them by choice are worse."
"I've had to spend all that gold and then some since that time," said Helsik, responding to Raphane's question, "Your little stunt in the House of Hope has caused me no end of troubles."
"Amazing," said Karlach, "It's like she's ignoring me. Hello? Can you hear me? TWAT!"
"Karlach," Raphane said imploringly, wearing her 'please tone it down a notch' expression.
"Sorry, darling," said Karlach, "I guess I'm hungrier than I thought, which makes me irritable," she raised her voice for the next part as she glared back in Helsik's direction, "And degenerate devil fuckers put me on edge as well!"
Helsik's eyes rolled into the back of her head but she kept on: "Raphael was connected. Well-connected. Some of my patron's clients were adversely affected by his demise and one of them had enough influence to make demands and, owing to your lack of discretion, the task of setting things right fell to yours truly."
"So much for your plausible deniability," mocked Karlach.
"If you had enough gold to outprice that client," Helsik continued, "We might have something to talk about. But you don't have a single coin on you, do you? And I do mean gold coins, not those rubbish soul coins. I don't do exchanges. So, boorish though it may be, I am here," she sighed as her gaze settled on Raphane, "for your head."
"Look at that," Karlach said cheerily and slapped Raphane's back, nearly knocking the smaller woman over, "Now both our heads are wanted."
"You know that we killed Raphael," said Raphane, straightening up, "So what makes you think you have a chance against us?"
"Raphael was overconfident," said Helsik and continued talking.
Raphane whispered to Karlach while Helsik was still going, "Do you still have that amulet? The misty step one?"
"I think so," said Karlach quietly, before surreptitiously fishing it out of a belt pouch and handing it to Raphane. "You think it'll get you out of this barrier."
"I'm depending on it," said Raphane. "So should your boots. I'll go left, you go right. We'll catch her in a pincer."
"Love it when you talk tactics, darling," said Karlach in a low, breathy voice.
Raphane let out a giggle despite herself. "On five," she whispered. "One, two."
"And now," Helsik had finally finished her speech, "you die."
A green mist formed around the tieflings' ankles. Black motes rose up from it, rapidly filling the dome-shaped prison in which they were trapped and, for the first time, they could clearly see the bounds of their confinement.
"FIVE!" Raphane shouted, skipping three and four.
White mists shrouded Raphane before she disappeared to reform suddenly beside Helsik. The diabolist spun toward her, surprised. Less than a second later, flames enveloped Karlach's form and dropped her off with an eruption of fire on Helsik's other side. The diabolist yelped as her trouser cuffs were scorched then gasped when Karlach seized and lifted her by her collar and held a blade to her throat.
"Choose your next words very carefully," said Karlach.
Helsik chose her next words carefully indeed: the words to a misty step spell of her own. The diabolist had disappeared in a cloud of mist before Karlach could draw the blade across her throat. She reappeared about thirty feet from the tieflings, as far as the spell could possibly have carried her.
"I thought you might make this difficult," yelled Helsik. Then she whistled.
At the sound, fourteen barbazu, devils with tails and beards of barbed tentacles, their skin colored a motley collection of different hues ranging from orange to purple, resolved into view. Standing in pairs on top of various bits of floor, ceiling or column amidst the ruins, they surrounded the tieflings on all sides.
Most of them wore a mismatched mashup of armors, some bits of chain and plate here and there while about half of them proudly displayed bare chests. Despite how disorganized the barbazu might have looked at a glance, there was a coordination to their armaments. One in each pair carried a crossbow while the other held a polearm. Those polearms sported a cruel assortment of hooks, blades and spikes with no two exactly alike.
A different sort of devil, a hamatula, coalesced into view beside Helsik herself. This one stood about two feet taller even than Karlach and its body was covered head to tail in long spikes. Flames snapped to life in the palms of its clawed hands and it grinned to reveal a maw of sharp teeth.
"I need the green one's head," Helsik told the large devil. "Try to keep it recognizable. May as well take the red one's head too. She's some sort of runaway the local archdevil wants dead and is probably worth something as well."
"More than you can afford!" yelled Karlach, who was sweeping her eyes across the newly arrived mix of devils by which she had found herself surrounded. "Hired help or no."
The hamatula snarled out a command in Infernal and the crossbow-wielding barbazu let fly. Raphane felt a bolt penetrate her calf and collapsed to one knee with a grunt. She kept her shield up and heard several more bolts glance off its adamantine surface.
Karlach risked a look down at Raphane, after having just taken a glancing hit herself from a crossbow bolt on her pauldron. Another bolt was lodged in her breastplate but hadn't penetrated the gambeson underneath.
"Go!" Raphane yelled, "Cut them down! I'll catch up."
Karlach grimaced before charging out of Raphane's eyeline, and the druid heard the berserker's ensuing battlecry and the clash of steel as she leapt across the gulf between the remnant of the balcony and the remnant of a spiral stair ascending a column, on which one pair of the barbazu had taken position.
The crossbowman of the pair, having just reloaded, fired in a panic and his shot missed by a wide margin. The first swing of Karlach's sword was parried by the polearm wielder, the blade caught on one of the weapon's hooks. The crossbowman thought to take advantage and drew a dagger which he then attempted to plunge into Karlach's neck only for the berserker to elbow him in the sternum, with the impact sending him careening off the staircase to fall broken on the ground below. The polearm wielder, still with his weapon and Karlach's locked together, lashed out with his beard of barbed tentacles, making Karlach recoil. She used the momentum to wrench her weapon free and reoriented her grip to hold it half sword before plunging the blade through the barbazu's shoulder down into his chest then retrieved it with a spray of blood from her collapsing victim.
Still on the balcony, Raphane kept her shield up while she examined the bolt in her calf. It hadn't gone all the way through. Removing it would be all the more painful but necessary. Raphane wasn't rested enough to cast her way out of this. She needed to wild shape in order to be of any use to Karlach in this fight and it wouldn't do any good to wild shape with the bolt still inside her. She would have to deal with the wound after the dust settled and, with a hard grimace and a cry that was equal parts pain and anger, Raphane yanked the barbed bolt from her leg and tried not to look too hard at all the flesh that had come out with it.
The crossbow bolts had stopped clinking against Raphane's shield, but she knew it wouldn't take long for them to reload. She had to act now.
The barbazu finished reloading his crossbow and hefted it in time to see the dilophosaurus pouncing toward him. Clawed feet impacted the barbazu's chest, knocking him onto his back.
While the polearm bearing barbazu of the pair was still turning on Raphane, she dragged her clawed foot forward across the barbazu that was underfoot, opening him up while his beard of barbed tentacles jabbed feebly at her foot. The barbazu with the polearm jabbed his weapon forward, piercing Raphane's side but missing anything vital. Irritation and rage spurred on the dilophosaurus, and her jaws snapped shut around the barbazu's neck before slamming his head into the nearby column.
A crossbow bolt penetrated Raphane's shoulder. Her head snapped in the direction of the offending barbazu before she shrieked then spat out a green acidic glob. The crossbowman sank to his knees and did his best to scream as his face melted into his hands.
Karlach cut down the last barbazu between herself and Helsik then settled her gaze on the diabolist and her accompanying hamatula, the tall spike-covered devil.
The berserker was mid-charge when the hamatula conjured a fireball into the palm of his clawed hand and hurled it. The blast didn't hit Karlach directly but it did take out the floor beneath her feet and she landed with a thud and a grunt on the ruins of the floor below along with a shower of stone bricks. The hamatula dropped down after her and reached forward to stomp on her sword before she could take hold of it. Long claws swiped toward Karlach and she rolled to avoid them, freeing a hand axe from her belt as she did so. The hamatula's other hand clawed at Karlach's right arm as she was standing up, managing to carve into unprotected flesh, and, at the same time, it stepped forward and kicked Karlach's sword, from where it lay on the ground, back behind itself.
The hamatula seemed to grow before Karlach, towering over her impossibly. Baleful eyes glared at her hatefully while a maw of razor sharp teeth threatened to swallow her whole. The menacing visage swung a clawed hand toward Karlach and she met it with a decisive blow from her hand axe. The hamatula howled with pain as it reeled from the strike and at the same time the visage it had presented receded back to its former dimensions.
"Trying to fuck with my brain?" Karlach asked with a grin. "Worse than you have tried." She pulled a second axe from her belt for her free hand.
The hamatula grinned its maw of teeth back at Karlach as it raised a hand. Infernal speech spilled from its mouth and resonated through the air and Karlach risked a glance over her shoulder at feeling a disturbance in the air behind herself–just in time to see a second hamatula emerge from an infernal portal with a fury of swinging claws.
Still wearing the dilophosaurus shape, Raphane had just sent the last of the pair of barbazu she had been fighting tumbling off the ruins and down into the chasm below with a swipe of her tail when she saw Karlach's difficulty: one level of the gutted ruins below Raphane with spiked devils closing in on her from ahead and behind.
Raphane was crouched on her haunches, about to spring to Karlach's aid, when long, bony, clawed fingers swung toward her from seemingly nowhere, seizing her with a vice-like grip and pinning her against the wall.
Raphane struggled against the creature's grip even as her gaze followed its arm to see just what she was dealing with now. It was an osyluth. This devil was taller even than the hamatula with which Karlach was engaged, at least two feet taller even than Raphane's dilophosaurus shape. Pallid grey skin stretched taut across sharply protruding bones, lending the devil a skeletal aspect. Its eyes were sunken black pits that stared coldly at Raphane. Only its mouth betrayed any emotion, gaping wide and curled in a semblance of a smile. Raphane attempted in vain to kick out her clawed feet at the devil, but its long arm held her at bay.
Just then the osyluth's tail came into view: long, whiplike and crowned with a massive scorpion's stinger. It hovered menacingly before springing forward to strike. Raphane's dilophosaurus neck proved agile enough to juke the attack, and the osyluth hissed with agitation.
For an instant only, Raphane thought of letting go of the wild shape, thinking that her own natural size would probably be small enough to slip the osyluth's grasp; but then she would have to contend once more with her wounded leg, which would certainly slow her down enough for the osyluth to either catch her again or kill her outright.
In seconds, the dilophosaurus's acid gland would be replenished enough for another spitting attack but, as the osyluth tightened its grip on her and drew back its tail for another attack, Raphane wasn't confident she had those seconds. Not until the crossbow bolt whistled past her to impact the osyluth's right eye socket with a burst of divine light and thunder that shook the air and turned the eye from a black pit to a blazing golden inferno. Raphane could hear shouting from the direction the bolt had come, but not well enough to make out what was being said.
The osyluth's piercing shriek rattled Raphane's eardrums. With one clawed hand it tried futilely to extinguish the scorching divine fire in its eye, but succeeded only in gouging the eye and tearing flesh from its face. Its other hand still held Raphane tightly.
She pointed her snout at the thinnest portion of the distracted osyluth's wrist and spat a corrosive glob of acid onto it. The osyluth's taut flesh, already stretched thin over bone, melted with a rapidity that surprised Raphane. The osyluth let out another shriek and swung its free hand at Raphane while jabbing at her with its scorpion tail. The half blind, disoriented osyluth's attacks were wild and Raphane easily avoided them with a duck and a juke of her head.
Acid by now had melted much of the flesh and muscle from the osyluth's wrist where the corrosive glob had hit, weakening it to the point Raphane was able to seize it between her jaws and twist, snapping off the hand at the wrist.
The clawed hand that held Raphane about the torso still did, with a death tight grip, but the hand no longer being connected to its owner did present opportunities, particularly with her legs being free. The druid surged toward the osyluth and slammed her hip into it. The osyluth responded with a whirling swipe from its remaining arm with enough force to send Raphane hurtling off the edge and across the chasm to slam bodily into a hamatula devil. Both Raphane and the hamatula were sent sprawling by the impact, and by the time Raphane had collected herself enough to look up, she did so to see Karlach delivering repeated hand axe blows to open up the hamatula's skull before it could recollect itself.
"Hello, again, darling," said the blood splattered berserker, stepping toward Raphane as the dilophosaurus wild shaped druid was getting awkwardly back up to her feet.
"Need a hand with that… hand? Hold still." Karlach lined up the axe and delivered a few swift chops to hack off the osyluth's fingers that were still clasped tightly around Raphane's torso. "There, that's better isn't it?" she said when her work was done. That was when she noticed the exchange of crossbow bolts happening on the level of the ruins above them, with the barbazu's black barbed bolts flying in one direction and shimmering golden bolts flying back in response. "What's going on up there?" she asked cautiously.
Raphane's dilophosaurs shape warbled.
"Allies? Down here?" Karlach asked, the disbelief on her face apparent before she moved to retrieve her greatsword.
The dilophosaurus warbled again.
"Shit. You're right. And why not? We scarcely have anything better to do."
The tieflings stuck to the same level of the ruins as they closed in on the location from which the golden crossbow bolts were coming, which seemed to be about the same spot where Helsik had been when they first emerged from the cave.
They found a spiral stair ascending to the next level up, dispatching a couple barbazu on the way, when the now one-handed, one-eyed osyluth with its scarred face descended around the curve of the staircase to bar their path.
Raphane crouched low and hissed while Karlach hurled a throwing axe. The axe stuck into the osyluth's ribcage with a "thunk." The devil seemed to regard the weapon as only a mild nuissance before it plucked it out and contemptuously dropped it on the ground, not taking its remaining eye off the tieflings for a moment as it did so.
Karlach charged. Her battlecry echoed as the osyluth parried her sword with its arm that now ended in a bony stump. The blade dug into the devil's arm, drawing blood, but the osyluth gave no sign that felt any pain.
The osyluth's scorpion tail coiled menacingly as it prepared to strike but, before it could, moving low and fast, Raphane ran up along the large devil's back left side before jumping onto it and digging her claws deep into the osyluth in order to gain purchase as she climbed. The osyluth's tail reoriented before springing forward to attack the dilophosaurus climbing its back. Raphane kept her front claws dug into the osyluth's back and swung her lower body to the osyluth's right side, evading the scorpion tail so that it instead stabbed into the devil's own back,
The devil flailed and let out a piercing shriek that Raphane felt reverberate in her teeth, even as she wasted no time in clawing the rest of the way up the osyluth's back and sinking those same wild shaped teeth into its neck. Her mouth flooded with foul-tasting blood.
This time, Raphane failed to evade the osyluth's scorpion tail. The tip pierced her back and she fought to cling onto the osyluth with her claws as her strength faded. The devil reached back with its remaining hand and siezed Raphane with its long, clawed fingers before throwing her. Already weakened by the osyluth's venom, Raphane's wild shape lost coherence when she hit the ground, losing her grip on her staff as well, and rolled, coming to a stop only when she was perilously close to going over the edge of the ruined floor and down into the chasm below.
Her good leg and one arm hung over the precipice. Raphane dared not shift her weight too much, doing so meant risking a plunge she no longer had the power to wild shape out of. With her left hand she groped for a handhold strong enough to pull herself away from the edge but the stone floor was worn uncooperatively smooth.
She risked turning her head, looking for something she could grab onto, and saw an iron torch mount on the wall opposite her. Summoning her remaining strength, Raphane threw her dangling arm over her side to cast a vine whip that wrapped around the mounting and pulled, then gasped when she unbalanced and her other leg slipped over the edge.
Pure desperation gave Raphane the motivation she needed to cling to the vine and climb it until she could finally lay exhausted on the stone floor. The wound the osyluth's tail had inflicted may have disappeared when the wild shape broke but the devil's venom was still sapping her strength.
"Are you done napping, darling?" asked Karlach.
Raphane looked up. The berserker's face and armor were splattered with the osyluth's black, ichorous blood. The devil itself now lay crumbled against the wall. Since Raphane had last laid eyes on it, the osyluth now lacked one of its legs, the arm that had been whole was now absent from the elbow down and several slashes had exposed its heart, now cleaved in two.
"Shit," said Karlach as she took stock of Raphane's condition. She sank down to a crouch in front of her. "You look pale, darling. Oh, fuck! Your leg! Can you heal it?"
Raphane shook her head wearily and fought to keep her eyes open. "Can't cast anything more than a cantrip in this state. Out of health potions too."
"Damn it, me too," said Karlach. She wrapped a torn cloth around Raphane's wound to staunch the bleeding. "That'll have to do. Come on, let's get you up and pray to any gods still listening that someone up there is on our side."
On Raphane's insistence, the druid used her staff as a crutch, once Karlach had retrieved it for her, and followed the berserker up the spiral stairs to the level above.
Once there, they got their look at the battle that had been going on above them. This floor of the ruins was shaped like an "h," and, on the portion of the floor bridging the two sides, the tieflings could now see a squad of warriors, armored in gleaming mail topped with red surcoats, embattled against multiple barbazu.
"Hellriders!" Karlach exclaimed as she recognized the heraldry and squeezed Raphane's shoulder. "Come on darling, we're close."
Karlach led the charge with Raphane hobbling behind. The first two barbazu the berserker fell upon had been moving to attack the Hellriders and weren't aware of Karlach until her battlecry, concurrent with her own attack, announced their incipient demise.
Raphane assisted Karlach's advance as she was able, using freezing cantrips to chill and numb the barbazu nearest Karlach, making them that much more powerless against the berserker's advance, until the druid heard footsteps approaching from behind. She turned around in time to see the three approaching barbazu and cast a cone of poisonous gas in their direction. The back two fell coughing but the one in front took several more steps before slowing down, getting close enough to take a swing at Raphane with his polearm. One of the complex weapon's many hooks knocked Raphane's staff from her hand and over the edge down toward the chasm below. Without her staff to lean on, Raphane made the reflexive mistake of putting weight on her wounded leg and let out a string of curses before falling down.
The attacking barbazu intended to press his advantage and closed on Raphane, just in time for her to conjure a wind gust that staggered him long enough for Karlach to strike his head from his shoulders.
Karlach helped Raphane back up to her feet and put the druid's arm around her waist as she resumed hurrying toward the paladins.
"Almost there, darling, just a quick three-legged race away," Karlach assured Raphane.
"Oooh, Karlie," Florenta's voice lilted from behind.
Karlach whirled around. Florenta stood there, wings crossed in front of herself, concealing everything below her face. "I brought a gift for you," she said with a grin.
The cambion's wings parted to reveal that she held Helsik by a garrotte around her neck and a heel pressed against her back. The dwarf's hands were manacled with bonds that bore the same spell canceling glyphs as the collar Florenta had used on Raphane earlier. Helsik's eyes were full of terror and her mouth moved in a soundless plea that she couldn't catch enough breath to voice.
"Silly diabolist," Florenta taunted her captive, "What a clumsy interloper. Should have stuck to counting coins." Florenta's blood-red eyes took on a sinister gleam before she released the garrotte and kicked Helsik toward Karlach.
The half-asphyxiated diabolist had a moment of relief as she stumbled forward, and took in a deep breath, before the merciless descent of Karlach's great sword divided her from shoulder to hip. The berserker stared dumbfounded into Helsik's dead eyes, frozen in her final moment of terror.
"Just like old times, Karlie," said Florenta brightly, the corners of her lips curling into that all-too-familiar face splitting grin. "You never really lose it."
Karlach bared her teeth as she glared at Florenta, her gut twisted by how easily the cambion had pulled her strings. She reached for a throwing axe.
"Karlach," said Raphane. She didn't shout, but her voice was firm.
The berserker shook her fury long enough to look down at Raphane where she had fallen on the ground. Only then did Karlach realize she had pushed the druid, with her wounded leg, off from leaning on her shoulder in order to take that two-handed swing at Helsik.
"Go on, Karlie," said Florenta with mock sympathy, "tend to your broken pet. We'll catch up later." The cambion gave Karlach a finger wave before vanishing in a cloud of black mist.
Karlach grit her teeth in Florenta's direction one last time as she vanished and only then noticed the additional infernal gates that were popping up all around the ruins, disgorging red-skinned merregon devils whose halberds were making short work of Helsik's remaining barbazu.
The berserker wasted no more time before throwing Raphane over her shoulder and moving quickly to the spot from where the paladins were firing their crossbow bolts. "I am so sorry, darling," said Karlach as she ran.
"It's okay," said Raphane, her voice quiet and shaky as she jostled about on the running berserker's shoulder.
"Thank the gods! You made it," declared a voice once Karlach had gotten closer. She didn't need to see through the helmet, clearly designed for its wearer's horns, in order to recognize Zevlor.
His Hellriders, six of them, were gathered at the bridge's center. Crossbowmen were taking cover behind other Hellriders who carried tall shields. Between all of them was an orange portal.
"Go through the portal, quickly," said Zevlor, "The rest of us will follow in short order."
Karlach didn't argue, immediately carrying Raphane through the portal, its orange light engulfing herself and Raphane as they entered the threshold.