Gatecrashers
"IDIOT!"
The word was spat venomously from the throne that dominated the flying fortress's octagonal command chamber. Leaning forward atop the throne sat a woman who might have appeared angelic at a glance: white feathered wings, gleaming, silver amor, flawless skin. However, her glowing, red eyes and the Infernal glyphs damascened on her armor in gold hinted at the true nature of Sevra the erinyes. Her tirade continued. "Zariel wants the runaway's head. Only an idiot would assume that she would accept it crushed to a pulp! We should have boarded the house with merregon and barbazu. Flooded it with imps. There were only a handful of mortals inside. Pulverizing it like this was wasteful and stupid."
Opposite the erinyes seated on the throne was the shimmering red image of a bat-winged devil with tall, arching horns, a cornugon. The cornugon was called Bulvyr, and he was both Sevra's contemporary and principal rival for the favor of the ever-capricious Archdevil Zariel. Beyond his projection was a wide viewport taking up much of the three walls opposite the throne, through which the broken remains of the House of Hope could be seen as they descended to the surface of Avernus. The walls of the octagonal room's centerline held the doors leading into the command room, positioned so that the erinyes could sit on her throne and observe both entrances.
"And yet, after I fired, you joined my attack," the projection of Bulvyr the cornugon said, his arms crossed. "Interesting that."
"Once the opening salvo was made there was hardly any point in holding back," Sevra grumbled.
"You make the situation out to be far more dire than it is," returned the cornugon. "Two possibilities exist, either the runaway is alive, and if she is, our scouts will soon find her, or else she is crushed under the rubble, in which case finding her is simply a matter of time."
"You are mistaken to assume time is our ally," said the erinyes, "Our archdevil is known for neither patience nor understanding. We must deliver decisive, tangible results. And soon."
"Nonetheless my approach will prove correct," said the cornugon with confidence, "The attack revealed that the house contained numerous gateways back to the material plane. Had we gone with your plan, the mortals would surely have fled while we were still breaching the house. Now we have their only exit to the material plane surrounded."
"The runaway can't flee," said the erinyes. "The machinery embedded inside her won't work outside Avernus."
"You have so little understanding of mortals," the cornugon chuckled, "When circumstances are desperate enough they will attempt the impossible."
"I have no need to understand mortals. They bend to my will or they break. Either way they are no obstacle."
"Is that so? One of my scouts told me she saw a pair of elementals board your flying fortress. Certainly no one would blame you if you chose to recall a portion of your soldiers from the search to defend your vessel and yourself."
Sevra shot a contemptuous sneer at Bulvyr, "You would like that wouldn't you? And make it so much more likely than you become the one to locate the runaway. Our archdevil is not so generous with her favors that she would even consider promoting us both to pit fiend, even should we proclaim we captured the runaway as the fruits of cooperative effort.
"And yet, if we do not cooperate, the runaway may still slip the noose we have tightened round her neck. She has a history of evading capture. She may yet evade us. Or, worse still, become the prey of our esteemed colleague, once he does us the honor of arriving."
"What a waste his victory would be," Sevra scoffed. "Over six hundred years he has had many opportunities for promotion and refused them all."
"Perhaps he's waiting for his six hundred sixty sixth year?" the cornugon suggested with a slight grin.
Sevra's expression turned suddenly severe, "Enough! My soldiers will find the runaway and I, personally, will claim her mongrel head."
The metal deck plates shuddered beneath Sevra's feet.
"Mmm," the cornugon started in a musing tone, "One of my spotters just witnessed an explosion on the starboard side of your fortress. You are certain you have no need of assistance?"
"How dare you," growled Sevra, "the situation is in hand." She ended the conversation abruptly with a telepathic command before starting a new one. Another red shimmering projection formed in the space in front of her throne, this time of a barbazu who dropped to one knee when he saw that he was addressing his mistress, "Well, is it?" she demanded.
"Is what-" The barbazu never got to finish his question, as he instead promptly keeled over dead when the erinyes sent the telepathic command for her bound servant's heart to stop beating. The next image formed almost immediately: an even more nervous barbazu who dropped down to both knees.
"Well?" inquired the erinyes.
"We are fighting to contain the-" was as far as he got. A flaming scimitar briefly shared the projection with the barbazu, long enough to sever his head from his shoulders.
Sevra growled with irritation as she dismissed the image. She stood up to pace angrily in front of her throne. "Why must I be surrounded by incompetents and meddling dollards at every turn?" she bemoaned her fate.
The erinyes' four merregon bodyguards, the only other occupants of the command room, continued to stand silently. One of them flanked each side of the two entrances, faces hidden behind gold-plated masks. The merregon stood so still they might have been statues. Until, that is, the portside door to the command chamber was bashed open by a blow from a wood woad's clublike branch.
Sevra whirled on the intruder. "Those doors are pull-to-open you oaf!"
Simultaneously, the merregon were springing into action. A bearded great axe splintered the wood woad's oaken shield before the woad responded by raining a blow from its club on the merrgon's head and, while the Infernal soldier was staggered, a dryad slid through the door beside the wood woad, her long shillelaghed branch-staff shimmering with orange energies, and tripped the merregon with a strike aimed at the back of its knee. The woad took the opportunity to continuously clobber the tripped up merregon.
"Enough of this accursed distraction," growled the erinyes. She uncoiled a rope that hung at her her side and, at her word, the rope's end flew toward the wood woad before coiling about it, ensnaring the creature and providing an opportunity for the merregon that had been guarding the other side of the nearby door to land an axe blow that dug deep into the woad's shoulder.
The door at the other end of the command room burst open, and through it flew Raphane's conjured fire myrmidon. It blew past the merregon who had flanked that door, instead moving straight for the center of the room where it severed the erinyes' rope of entanglement with a swing of its fiery scimitar, freeing the trapped wood woad. The two merregon the fire myrmidon had bypassed were closing in on it from behind when the fourth intruder arrived in the command room, Raphane wearing the form of a dilophosaurus. Moving low and fast, she pounced on one of the merregon and tackled it onto the deck before ripping open its back and exposing its spine with a fury of claws. Soon enough, it ceased struggling and just started twitching instead.
The second merregon of the pair swung its axe at Raphane and the blade dug into her side. She disengaged from her target with a hiss, fury and adrenaline propelling the dilophosaurus form through the pain of its injury, she lashed out with a tail swipe at her aggressor. The merregon was barely phased and directed an overhand chop at the dilophosaurus. Raphane sidestepped the attack before spitting corrosive acid at the merregon. The devil blocked the attack with its right hand vambrace, but the acid weakened the armor enough that Raphane's teeth were able to penetrate it and sink into the merregon's forearm in order to rip and tear at the muscles and sinew before the merregon knocked her away with a blow from its left fist.
A flaming scimitar burst through the merregon's chest even as it was readying its axe for another strike, the fire myrmidon making its presence known, but the triumphant moment was short-lived. An ice arrow struck the fire myrmidon, loosed from the bow of the erinyes, who stood near her throne, her mouth twisted in a gloating smile as she watched the fire myrmidon's burning form turn to ice before it was shattered by a decisive blow from the merregon's axe, the wound from the myrmidon's scimitar barely slowing it down.
Raphane had recovered from the blow delivered by the merregon to see her conjured ally destroyed and the erinyes nocking another arrow with herself being the clear target.
The merregon had its back to Raphane and she pressed that advantage, using the claws on her feet to slice open the merregon's calves before biting into its shoulder as she forced the devil to its knees, all the while keeping its bulk between the erinyes and her own not inconsiderable bulk while the devil struggled to free itself.
The erinyes laughed, "Are you trying to take a hostage? Adorable. As if failures have any value."
She loosed the arrow and soundly struck the merregon's throat. A rivulet of blood poured out as Raphane let the merregon collapse. The time it took the erinyes to reach for another arrow was her opportunity to pounce.
Both combatants were fast. But neither was quite fast enough to achieve her goal. Raphane had pounced toward the erinyes before she could nock her next arrow, but not before she could draw it from her quiver. The compromise: the erinyes sidestepped the leaping dilophosaurus and jabbed the arrow into the base of her neck.
Raphane threw her weight into a tail swipe that slammed the erinyes against her throne, and made the Infernal lose her lose her grip on her bow, before taking the opportunity to reach down, seize the arrow that was embedded in her dilophosaurus shape with her teeth, and yank it out. Already, Raphane could feel that she had become slower and weaker. The arrow must have been poisoned.
The ring of steel announced that the erinyes had drawn her sword. The ensuing melee was fast and bloody. Raking strikes from Raphane's claws tore several gashes in the erinyes' armor and skin, while strikes from her tail bruised and battered her. In her dilophosaurus wild shape, Raphane stood several feet taller than Sevra, which helped the nimble erinyes to get inside the druid's guard and deliver multiple decisive slashes. With the last of those strikes, Raphane's wild shape was damaged enough that it lost coherence and instead of battling a larger foe, the erinyes suddenly found herself looming over an exhausted tiefling a good bit shorter than herself.
"So the shape changer is a tiefling, why am I not surprised? It is only natural that a mongrel like you would prefer any form over her own," said Sevra, mouth twisted into a victorious sneer.
Raphane held her staff with both hands as she used it to block an overhand strike from the erinyes' sword. Sevra laughed derisively and pushed back against the druid until her back slammed into the wall. Raphane's eyes flitted to the erinyes' blade. She could see her own reflection in its mirrored polish, inching closer to her neck.
"Can you see your death, mongrel?" asked the erinyes, craning her neck forward. Her face hovered close to Raphane's as she gloated. "Pathetic. Even for your misbegotten kind. A perfect companion for the damaged runaway."
The erinyes suddenly seemed distracted and her gaze focused beyond the tiefling at her mercy. Raphane didn't know that Sevra was receiving a telepathic transmission from her colleague and rival, the commander of the other flying fortress Bulvyr, but she seized the opportunity nonetheless, reaching forward to bite off Sevra's right ear with a swift, sharp-toothed chomp then spit it out in the erinyes' face.
Sevra recoiled away from Raphane, her face contorted in a mixture of disbelief, revulsion and anger. Her eye twitched as she put a hand to where her ear had, until recently, been happily attached.
"CUR!" the erinyes screamed at the druid, and lunged toward her, sword held high, ready to descend in a killing stroke, only to be ensnared in grasping vines by the dryad she had forgotten all about. The vines tightened even more as the erinyes struggled, all while letting loose a litany of curses in Infernal.
"Thank you, Berry," Raphane said to the dryad, the last member of her ad hoc party still standing. The dryad inclined her head and smiled beatifically. Raphane squared her focus on the erinyes.
"Release me at once or kill me, mongrel," Sevra demanded, once she had run out of curses to scream. "But spare me your slack-jawed, dull-eyed gaze."
Raphane wasted neither time, focus nor energy bantering with the erinyes. Instead, the words to a spell were passing her lips, and the erinyes recognized the words well enough that her eyes widened with horror as she struggled against the vines with renewed urgency. "No, no, no! Don't you dare!"
Karlach threw all of her weight into a final push that shifted the broken debris of the collapsed wall that had fallen on top of Ilkin. The pinkish skinned tiefling and cleric gasped with relief now that he could breathe the comparatively fresher air of Avernus. "Thank Lathander it was you who heard me calling," he managed between gasps. "Thought I was done for."
"Just catch your breath up," said Karlach, even as Yssylt and Dammon pitched in to help her clear the rest of the debris off Ilkin. "We'll have all this cleared off you in just a second."
Once the debris was clear, Ilkin tried to stand only to wince in pain at the effort.
"Wait," said Yssylt, the blue-eyed human paladin. "Your leg has taken a beating." She laid her hands on his leg and whispered a healing prayer. A soothing blue light enveloped healer and patient. She didn't exactly look satisfied with her work when she was done. "It's healed to a point," she said. "Keep off it as much as you can," she glanced around. There was enough ceiling left in this room to provide a bit of an overhang. But they could still see the swarms of imps flocking around the broken, descending remnants of the house. "Given everything," she added.
Karlach helped Ilkin back up to his feet. "We'd better get going. I don't know exactly what Raphane's up to but the closer we can get to the gate room without being spotted, the better off we'll be."
"She didn't tell you?" Ilkin asked, surprised.
"There wasn't time. Still isn't. Don't forget this House is coming down, if that feeling in your gut isn't reminder enough."
Karlach was putting Ilkin's arm around her shoulder when Dammon interjected. "You'd better let me help him along. The two of you are the seasoned fighters," he said, addressing Yssylt as well as Karlach, "We'll all be better off if the two of you have your weapon arms free."
"Fair," said Karlach, and Ilkin was subsequently passed over to lean on Dammon's shoulder.
The three tieflings and Yssylt started making their way cautiously through the broken descending remnants of the House, doing their best to get as close as they could to the gate room while still staying out of sight. The House was still disintegrating as it fell, and there were several close calls when someone set their foot down only for the floor to fall out. They learned quickly to spot and avoid weakened sections.
"Do you see that fireball?" asked Karlach at one juncture, pointing to a spot on the horizon. She couldn't guess how far away it was, but it was certainly getting steadily closer.
"Fireballs in the sky aren't exactly unusual down here," commented Ilkin, impatiently.
"But they usually follow parabolic arcs," said Dammon. "This one is coming straight for us."
"All the more reason to be somewhere else," said Ilkin. He got no argument on that point.
The swarms of imps proved to be surprisingly easy to stay hidden from.
"Their commanders have them whipped up into a real frenzy," Karlach commented, " They might be motivated. But they're going so fast they could fly past a hill giant without noticing."
There were also merregon and barbazu searching the House. The merregon's heavy footfalls meant they were heard before they were seen. The same was true of the barbazu due to their tendency to complain and bicker with one another, they were no more happy to be on the slowly crashing House than were Karlach, Dammon or the Hellriders.
It was all going as well as it could. They were passing through a large section of the House that hadn't existed before the blasts delivered by the flying fortresses had rearranged it. Instead, this place was cobbled together from various chunks of the house that had been blown apart but were now recoalesced into a baffling conglomeration of masonry and foundational rock about which swirled myriad disembodied souls.
"There it is," announced Karlach, pointing ahead. Forward across the island of wreckage they now traversed, and just on the other side of a bridge made up of another battered section of the house, was the gate room. She could just see one of the portals through all of the obstructions that tangled the way. A vortex of imps still swarmed over it. "We'll get as close as we can without being spotted."
"Then what?" asked Yssylt.
"Then we wait for Raphane to do her thing," said Karlach confidently.
"How do you even know she's still alive?" asked Ilkin.
"Faith," answered Karlach, then fired a grin at Ilkin and Yssylt. "You holy people ought to know a thing or two about that."
The party was moving across this bizarre landscape when the enemy played his hand.
Infernal portals opened, surrounding the party on all sides. Karlach held her great sword in a high guard as she watched the front, her tail swishing in anticipation of the melee to come and of the opportunity to carve a path forward. Yssylt's sword and shield were at the ready as she watched the left. Dammon had a scimitar of his own make in hand as he watched the right. Ilkin supported himself with a hand on Dammon's shoulder as he watched the rear, a radiant flame in his hand, ready to cast.
The ashibai were the first to appear from the portals, vaguely saurian creatures with wings, claws, and tautly muscled sinewy limbs. They hissed as they surrounded the party. A line of barbazu emerged behind the ashibai, arrows dripping with poison nocked to their short bows.
Then the imps showed up, not emerging from the portals but converging in the sky above in a swirling vortex, ending their search pattern, their quarry found. Their swarm darkened Avernus' blood red sky. One of the two flying fortresses hove into view as well, taking up position on the periphery of this island of the crumbling House.
"Fool," hissed Ilkin, "We weren't escaping at all! They were just giving us enough rope to hang ourselves."
"None of us knew to avoid this. Now prepare yourself. This could get ugly." Yssylt whispered, then added, "Uglier."
The last to emerge before the Infernal portals closed was the ten foot tall cornugon Bulvyr himself. The shadow his massive horned and winged figure cast covered the party.
"Karlach," he began. His tone was conversational, but his deep voice echoed with a low rumbling. "It's been too long."
"You know this devil?" asked Ilkin over his shoulder, not daring to take his eyes off the ashibai in front of himself. Its glowing red eyes were full of barely restrained bloodlust as it fidgeted and jeered at him.
"Hardly matters," said Karlach, "They're all just different shades of the the same shit."
The cornugon took on a bemused smirk. "What a pity. I certainly remember you, Karlach. I was there on the day you slew your first balor and cast his head into the Styx." He laughed. "Your… career… has always managed to intrigue."
Even more devils were arriving: barbazu and merregon who took up position on the periphery of the devils who had shown up with Bulvyr. Then a massive shocktroop devil showed up, nearly as tall as the cornugon but twice as broad across the chest, he carried a greataxe and was as heavily armored as he was muscled.. More imps were swarming in the air as well, separately from the first ones that had arrived. Finally the second flying fortress rose up over the island, hovering perpendicular to the first one.
A good number of Bulvyr's devils turned to watch the newcomers warily. Bulvyr himself kept his gaze on Karlach, making a show of ignoring the newcomers.
Of course, thought Karlach. Two flying fortresses. Two commanders. And the prize will only go to one or the other. Typical. Karlach looked at the flying fortresses. While each had the same basic downpointed hovering blade shape, there were enough differences between the two that she could tell apart the one to which Raphane had flown. There was a hole in the starboard side, as if something had blown out from the inside. Raphane had been busy. She's got something in mind. Something she was sure would clear the way forward. Now come on Karlach, do your part. Just keep this git talking…
Karlach's eyes narrowed. "Now I remember you. Hiding behind your battle line the whole time. Never lifting a finger." She cast her gaze across the ashibai and barbazu that stood between her and Bulvyr. "Looks like you haven't changed a bit."
"A competent commander need never enter the fray himself," said the cornugon smugly.
Lucky guess, thought Karlach. "I'm surprised you left your flying fortress."
"Since we're short on time," said Bulvyr, "I'll come to the point." Damn. "Our Archdevil wants you returned to her, Karlach. Whether you do so whole and alive, or in pieces, is negotiable."
"Not fucking happening. How many times am I going to have to tell pompous pricks like you?"
The smug smile on Bulvyr's face curled a notch more sinister. "And what of the rest of you?" His gaze fixed upon Dammon, Yssylt and Ilkin in turn. "Are you prepared to die for the sake of this selfish runaway? Give Karlach over to me, and you will all go free."
Karlach's eyes shot wide when she felt cold steel pressed at her throat.
"Ilkin!" cried Yssylt. "What are you doing!?"
"One life for three," said Ilkin, his voice quavering as he held the dagger against Karlach's throat. "It's as good a trade as we're going to get."
The sudden turn and the possibility of imminent bloodlust excited the ashibai, who yipped, jeered and jumped about but held back from attacking as if restrained by invisible leashes.
Yssylt risked a look over her shoulder. "You can't trust a devil! Twisting words so that you never know what you're bargaining away until they have it is in their very nature!"
"Of course you can trust me. Lies are for rabble and gutter scum," said Bulvyr, "Turn Karlach over to me, and I will ensure your safe passage back to the material plane. I offer my word as bond," he spread his hands magnanimously.
"That won't go how you think," Karlach warned Ilkin.
"Shut up!" snapped Ilkin. "You might survive a melee but none of the rest of us would. They're only here for you. Take some responsibility!"
For the first time, Karlach found herself missing the tadpole connection she had once shared with her companions, being able to coordinate and strategize silently. She wished she could tell Ilkin to stand down, that there was still a way out. She was trying to think of a way to say that without arousing Bulvyr's suspicions when came the sound of metal stabbing through gambeson and penetrating flesh.
The dagger dropped away from Karlach's throat and she whirled around to face Ilkin. He gurgled once and coughed up blood before collapsing. A wide eyed Dammon was standing over his body, bloody scimitar held in trembling hand. The blacksmith had seen the weakest point in Ilkin's armor and known exactly where to strike.
Bulvyr let out a deep, echoing laugh, and a chorus of noises that might also have been laughter rose from the surrounding ashibai as well. The energetic devils were now positively exuberant. The remaining members of the party spun back from their fallen to point their weapons back at the Infernals that still surrounded them.
"That was an amusing diversion," said Bulvyr, "I sometimes forget how much fun you mortals can be."
Nearly every mortal and devil present suddenly flinched at the thunderous whoosh when a fireball passed overhead then began to circle the island, the same one Karlach had spied afar earlier, and certainly behaving like no fireball Karlach had ever seen.
For the first time, Bulvyr was visibly agitated before he took his eyes off the fireball and squared his gaze against the party once more.
"But we mustn't forget the gravity of our situation, and I do believe the weak link has already been culled from your number." He held his hands out to either side, lightning crackled in one palm while fire simmered in the other. "Time we got on."
Hell broke loose all at once, but not the hell Bulvyr had intended to unleash.
The first blow to land was from a Merregon's halberd, which sliced off the head of a barbazu. But countless spear jabs, axe blows, barbed tentacle strikes and claw slashes were delivered within the same moment as the second set of devils that had arrived fell upon the first in unison.
And only in that first second was it at all possible to tell which devils were on what side, because, by the second second, the fighters had become so enmeshed in the melee that all sense of order was lost. Even the sky rained with the bodies of dead, dying and maimed imps, the melee hardly being contained to the ground.
Bulvyr himself was caught by surprise when the shocktroop devil charged him, trampling over several barbazu in its path. The cornugon attempted to take flight but the shocktroop devil leapt and tackled him midair before they both hit the ground with an impact that sent tremors across the makeshift island.
Even the flying fortresses were joining the fight. Beams of incandescent fire lanced from the second fortress to slice burning arcs across the first one while barrages of rockets blasted it. The first fortress returned fire as it turned its ponderous bulk toward its aggressor but it was clearly already behind in this fight.
Karlach didn't wait to see how any of these contests turned out. "Time to move!" she shouted at Dammon and Yssylt.
The three of them pressed through the melee. Karlach cut down any devils that got in their way but otherwise let the Infernals occupy themselves with each other.
They made it to the edge of the island. Karlach's great sword cut simultaneously through a pair of barbazu who had been too busy with their own fight to notice her. The bridge to the gateway island was just a hop away now.
Karlach turned around to make sure Yssylt and Dammon were behind her. They were indeed, each of them with quite a bit more blood on them than the last time Karlach had seen them. They both seemed uninjured, if out of breath, so the berserker chose to trust for now that most of the blood wasn't their own.
That wasn't the only thing Karlach saw when she turned around. The first flying fortress was already in flames, with numerous blast and burn marks scoring it, but the second flying fortress was bearing down on it anyway and tilted to a forty-five degree angle as it rammed the damaged vessel. The two ships collided in a screeching, ear-splitting crescendo of grinding metal as the second ship cleaved the first one in half. The two halves of the destroyed vessel fell away from sight, not subject to the same forces that were slowing the descent of the House of Hope it seemed, but the flying fortress that had rammed it was continuing in its path. Straight for the island.
"Shit!" yelled Karlach. She grabbed Dammon and tossed the suddenly wide-eyed blacksmitih onto the bridge. Karlach was turning toward Yssylt when the paladin raised a hand. "I've got it," she promised before making the jump herself.
That was when the flying fortress crashed into the island. Karlach stumbled as the ground shook and split beneath her feet. She steadied herself and made the jump before it could fall out from underneath her entirely.
A harrowing, unearthly ringing reverberated throughout the remains of the House of Hope as the crashed flying fortress imploded, infernal metal hull collapsing in on itself while also pulling in large chunks of the island. "Get down!" Karlach told Dammon and Yssylt. The ringing reached a shrill pitch before a thunderous explosion let loose, shards of infernal metal from the hull blasted outward and the island the ship had crashed onto shattered utterly.
Those combatants who had until seconds ago been locked in a melee on that island, and had not already died to the implosion or the subsequent blast, now fell to their deaths, although the handful of fliers who had survived continued their fight.
With so many of the belligerents now dead, a strange quiet fell across the descending remnants of the House.
"We've got a chance, let's not waste it," said Karlach, as she helped Dammon to his feet.
"Raphane did that?'' asked Yssylt as she came to her feet as well. "Turned the devils against each other? How?"
"Don't know," said Karlach, "But I'm looking forward to asking her."
"You really think she survived all that?" asked Yssylt.
"Yep," said Karlach, "Let's move."
There were a few straggler devils on the bridge: an ashibai and a couple barbazu, easily disposed of.
Karlach recognized this place now that she'd had the opportunity to give it a proper look. It had been Raphael's library, the place where he kept the collectibles he liked to show off. Then it had been Raphane's garden. The remaining wall still had the climbing rose trellises built into the recesses that had once been bookshelves. Sections of the floor still housed the planters Raphane had set into them. The grass beds, bushes and trees were already looking dry and brittle, the direct heat of Avernus doing no favors for them.
They had made it perhaps a quarter of the way across the bridge when the fireball made its third appearance, roaring overhead before banking sharply and coming down at the far end of the bridge. But there was no explosion. Black smoke billowed where the fireball had come down and out from it strode a figure in black full plate armor mounted atop a black horse clad in black barding.
"Oh, look," Karlach laughed as she readied her sword in a high guard. "A narzugon and his nightmare. So sweet. Have you got a big bloody speech full of flattery, platitudes and false promises to recite as well?"
When the narzugon spoke, its voice was a low hiss whispering from behind into Karlach's ear.
"No."
Judging from the way Dammon and Yssylt flinched and looked over their shoulders, they likely heard the same thing.
"Oh, stop," said Karlach. "Don't make me like you."
The narzugon held up its lance. Flames spread from the devil's hand to coat the entire length of the weapon. At the same time, the nightmare, the creature the narzugon rode that mimicked the form of a horse, spouted fire from its nostrils before flames ignited along its mane and beneath its hooves as well. The creature stamped those hooves impatiently, leaving scorch marks on the stone, and it neighed to reveal a pair of long, pointed fangs.
"I'll do my damndest to distract it," Karlach told Dammon and Yssylt. "Shouldn't be hard. I'm pretty sure I'm its target. Get past it and to the gates."
Dammon's blue eyes were wide open, "I can't-" he started before Karlach interrupted him.
"Don't argue. I'll fight better and harder if you two are safe. Don't try to be heroes. These narzugon have a weird sense of honor. Act like bystanders and he'll probably ignore you. Attack him and, well. Please just don't."
Karlach cut a smile at Dammon, "And don't worry about me. I'll be right along. I've never had more to live for, more to fight for, more to kill for," She raised her voice as she turned her head back toward the Narzugon, "AND ALL THE FUCKING DEVILS OF AVERNUS WON'T BAR MY WAY!"
She brandished her greatsword and pounded her chest. "SO COME AND GET ME YOU SHINY-ARSED PRICK!"
With a final stamp of its hooves, the nightmare and rider charged. As the narzugon rode, flames and embers scattered in its wake. The crisp plants of Raphane'a garden may well have been kindling, they ignited so readily, leaving a burning path behind the narzugon.
"Come on," said Yssylt, as she grabbed Dammon's arm and pulled him to the side.
A wide grin spread across Karlach's face as she watched the narzugon's advance, she lowered her sword into a trailing guard hanging from her right hip. The narzugon lowered its burning lance as it closed in.
Then flames enveloped Karlach's form as she channeled magic from the Helldusk boots and, in an instant, she was suddenly alongside the narzugon. In the space of the same second, she had begun to rotate her hips and the blade of her greatsword followed the motion, lopping off the nightmare's back legs. With a sound that was somewhere between a whinny and a howl of anguish, the nightmare lost control and toppled hard, landing on its side.
Karlach approached the wounded infernal beast with her sword held high and pointed toward the nightmare. The infernal beast clopped its remaining hooves on the ground as it made an effort to turn toward Karlach. It hissed and snapped its jaws at her before a descending stroke of the berserker's sword separated its head from its neck.
It was nigh silently that the black rider rose up from behind his fallen mount and removed a war hammer from its loop on his belt. He crossed with deliberate steps around the slain beast and toward Karlach. The berserker kept the narzugon fixed in her gaze even as he stared back at her. She spared only a single glimpse beyond the narzugon as he approached, the mountains were rising into view behind him, a gentle reminder that the House was still falling.
Karlach could tell by the set of her opponent's shoulders and his gait that this was no longer sport to the Infernal. Narzugon were bonded to their nightmare mounts and there could be no doubt that the beast's death had truly angered him.
Now that the narzugon was closer, Karlach had a better look at him. His black armor, composed of interlocking plates, covered him head to toe. Spikes rose up from the backplate, each one crowned with a skull. The armor was almost certainly of Infernal make. Even Balduran's sword probably couldn't cut it, but perhaps it could pierce it with enough force.
"You fight without honor," the Narzugon's voice whispered into Karlach's ear once more, even as the Infernal approached her head-on.
"Big words from the posh git who was about to run down a woman on foot from nightmareback," Karlach shot back.
The narzugon's first attack sought to rain a hammerblow on Karlach's head. She parried the attack using a half-sword grip and wrenched the hammer down before stabbing her sword toward the narzugon's armpit, the weakest spot in the armor as far as she could tell, only for it to glance off the armor anyway. At the same time, the narzugon's follow-up hammer blow struck her in the ribs. Karlach clenched her teeth, breastplate and gambeson only softened the blow so much. Her stabbing attack deflected, she used the momentum to slam the pommel of her sword into the narzugon's faceplate. A war of footwork had been going on all the while the two combatants were exchanging blows, and Karlach's pommel strike staggered the narzugon long enough for her to trip the heavily armored warrior and deliver a second pommel strike to his chest that knocked him to the ground.
Karlach stabbed down at her prone opponent, intending to impale him. The downward strike dented the narzugon's armor but failed to penetrate it. The narzugon had never lost his grip on his hammer, and slammed it into Karlach's left knee. She fell with a sharp cry but didn't miss the opportunity to slam that knee down onto the narzugon's right arm, pinning it in place with her weight. Too close for the greatsword to be of use, even half-sworded, Karlach pulled a hand axe from her belt and rained blow after blow on the same spot her great sword had dented earlier, until the narzugon struck her with his mailed left first, knocking her off him.
The berserker seized her greatsword and came to her feet, gritting her teeth against the pain in her knee, and rounded on the narzugon to see him uttering infernal whispers. A roiling black miasma crept outward from the narzugon as he stood. Karlach backed away from that same miasma as it stretched out toward her. Veins of inky darkness raced outward from it, embedded in the stone floor, far faster than the miasma itself was moving, and the ground suddenly felt brittle beneath Karlach's feet, scraps of it coming away with every dragged step of her left foot.
Only then did she notice the green spirits swirling about the bridge, seeming even more agitated than they had been since the House had been rent asunder, a chorus of howls emanating from them.
Every instinct told Karlach that it was time to go. She turned toward the gate room at the end of the bridge. It wasn't there anymore. "Shit!" Had the gate room moved during her melee? Had the bridge moved? She didn't have long to think about it before the ground fell out from beneath her.
Karlach landed with a grunt amidst the rubble. She shook off dust and raised her head to get her bearings. It came as a relief to see that she was in the gate room. Either the gate room had moved beneath the bridge or the bridge had moved over the gate room. Regardless, she was here now. She didn't see Dammon or Yssylt and could only hope they had already made it out. She didn't see Raphane either. That worried her.
Then Karlach heard the heavy footfalls and, when she turned her head, she saw her: the winged, black armored woman with blazing eyes and a halo of fire circling her head. In one hand she held a hammer. The other hand was missing, a spiked flail hanging from its place.
"Zariel," Karlach gasped.
Despite all the battles she had fought, the terrible foes she had vanquished, Karlach still felt a surge of terror at the sight of the archdevil. The urge to flee was overpowering. She jumped to her feet only for infernal chains to spring forth from the stone floor to bind her arms and legs and pull her down to her knees.
"Did you think you could escape?" asked Zariel as she stalked toward Karlach. "Did you think you were your own to steal? Even in death you could not evade my dominion. YOU ARE MINE."
Karlach struggled against the chains and her eyes scanned frantically for anything she could use to defend herself before settling on the narzugon's lance that had fallen nearby.
The chains had just enough slack that Karlach was able to seize the lance. Hellfire engulfed the weapon and her hand as she did. Karlach's engine burned hot to match the heat of the lance even as her terror turned to hatred. Gortash may have been the prick who bartered her away but it was Zariel who had torn out her heart, enslaved her, stolen ten years of her life and set bounty hunters on her when she had finally escaped.
"Zariel," said Karlach through clenched teeth, "Fuck. You."
She hurled the burning lance and the chain binding her arm broke into its constituent links as she did. The weapon struck its target and pierced the breastplate. But it was the narzugon, not Zariel, who sank to his knees, impaled by his own infernal weapon. The lance had struck the center of the narzugon's breastplate, where Karlach's previous blows had dented and weakened the armor enough for the lance to penetrate and inflict a decisive killing blow.
All of the chains that had bound Karlach's arms and legs were suddenly gone, no more real than the visage of the archdevil had been.
"STUPID PRAT!" Karlach yelled at the narzugon as she rose to her feet. "If you wanted to play on my fears, you should have picked one I didn't hate so much."
She crossed a short distance to pick up her greatsword from where it had landed before turning back toward the narzugon.
The narzugon's helmet was gone. Unmasked, his pale visage stared at Karlach from the corner of his eyes. It seemed his eyes were the only thing he could still move, while his head and neck were riveted stiffly in place. The veins in his face glowed red hot, in stark contrast to his pallid grey skin, as the hellfire lance consumed what was left of his soul and burned his body from the inside out. Orange flames erupted from the gaps in the interlocking plates of his armor in fits and starts as he cooked before even the armor began to turn to ash.
Karlach was contemplating whether or not to put a quick end to the narzugon's misery when a rising, deep throated yell filled her ears and echoed off the stone floor. She raised her eyes to see the ten foot tall devil descending. She recognized the cornugon Bulvyr. The once proud devil was now bleeding profusely from numerous gaping wounds and desperately attempting to fend off a giant eagle that was clawing at his chest.
The cornugon's wings were in tatters and barely slowed him down at all as he crashed into the gate room, landing on top of the narzugon, and just a few feet from a wide-eyed Karlach. The large devil continued to slide from the momentum, straight toward one of the gates. Bulvyr's head went through the gate, the one to Waterdeep, Karlach thought, before his shoulders crashed into it and broke the gate's mirrorlike frame, at once severing the portal connection and his head. Meanwhile, the only trace remaining of the narzugon was a black and red streak of ash and blood that trailed the path Bulvyr had taken on his landing.
"Woah-ho!" Karlach called out, "Nice one, babe!"
The giant eagle spread her wings triumphantly before letting out a call that sounded rather more like a seagull that had just stolen a meat pie than a majestic eagle that had just slain a devil.
"Gods," uttered Karlach. "Is that really what they sound like?"
Raphane drew back down to her tiefling form, wavered just a moment as she had to adjust to keep her balance while standing on top of Bulvyr's body. "Oh, I know," she said, "Bit rubbish isn't it?"
The druid was looking a little worse for wear: bruised, split lip, her robes torn in multiple places. There was also a trail of blood from her mouth down her chin, although Karlach had the distinct impression that blood probably wasn't Raphane's, at least not most of it. The druid's shining orange within black eyes, however, were wide and exuberant as she jumped down off the devil's corpse into Karlach's arms before rapid firing questions at the berserker.
"How much of that did you see? What a rush! How about you? What did I miss? Where is everyone? Are they okay?"
"Gods, Raphane, we can't have both of us being that jumped up. Slow down, darling."
"Mmmmmm," Raphane buzzed, "Can't slow. Can't stop. Drank a speed potion. Had to go-" Raphane's eyes suddenly rolled into the back of her head as she passed out in Karlach's arms.
Karlach was smiling down at her sleeping beauty when the floor shook beneath her feet and reminded her of the gravity of the situation. The gates shuddered and rattled. Two of the frames collapsed, their portals going with them. Karlach turned toward the portal to Baldur's Gate and ran straight for it. With every step she could hear the gate room crumbling behind her until she crossed the portal's threshold, leaving behind the hellscape of Avernus for what had better be the last fucking damned time.