Chapter 4
For one final moment, holding each other just so, we rested. Then, a booming rumble, like thunder – closing in, and then arriving before one could realize what was coming. The beat of heavy wings.
Great, black shadows grew on the skies visible in the windows, before they came crashing into the room, dozens and dozens of cambions with their wings and tails whipping, their clawed feet hitting the floors with the deafening sound of marble cracking. Immediately after: the clang of blades meeting, the boom of Wyll’s voice calling upon magic that lit up the room in flashes of green and purple, lightning patterns climbing up the walls around us. Everything: blinding lights and great shapes of darkness crouching and pouncing.
My body, instinctively, went to work, adrenaline rushing through my veins as I swung my sword and hit shuddering steel, thick flesh, cracking bone, directing my gaze into every pair of glowing demon eyes that came at me through the chaos of the battle.
Minutes or hours past, of black blood splattering across the walls, Astarion’s little table long since turned over, playing cards and shattered glass fanned out across the floor. My muscles throbbed and my heart beat with a force I hadn’t felt in what seemed like a lifetime. I heard Lae’zel’s fierce battle cries, saw – again and again – the flash of blood across Astarion’s fangs, blood dripping down his chin, his crimson eyes mad with violence. I saw Karlach break the back of a demon across one of her thick thighs, and at the command of Shadowheart’s soft, ethereal voice – somewhere behind me – specters of light came alive, floating, all around us, the attacking cambions stepping out of their circle hissing, skin sizzling.
We fought on. I tasted iron and was distantly aware of a pain in my right leg, the burn of four deep gashes across my back, and of my muscles – having gone unused for too long – screaming with the effort. But I fought on. It was what I did, and had always done, and only for a single moment did I lose control, only once did the whipping tail of one of our enemies cut through my defense – like a projectile, an impossibly limber and calculating blade – and in that very moment I came close to having my eye snatched out of my skull. And I would have, if it hadn’t been for the beam of fire passing right by my ear, and nearly burning it, before hitting my opponent square in the face and launching them backwards. In one second a cunning, charging demon, in the next a screaming, flailing inferno. Its severed tail fell, blackened, to the floor at my feet.
I turned to see who had been my savior, but her scent had already reached me. I had already recognized her particular brand of magic, her fire that I longed so to have scorch me. And I had heard her voice, as if far away – as if I couldn’t believe it, it was impossible, it was a dream that she had come for me – call out her spell. Her familiar voice, that I longed so to have command me, that I loved.
Mizora’s burning eyes was shooting daggers at me when I turned, her red hair and horns adorned in gold stood like wild fire around her head, the hem of her dress danced around her legs as she charged towards her next enemy. I didn’t call her name, I only shaped it with my lips, still in disbelief. She had come. When she passed me I felt the back of her hand, her smooth skin, grace my knuckles, and she put her face very close to mine to hiss, her breath hot on my lips:
”Have you no sense of self-preservation, brat?” And before she turned away: ”You owe me.”
I might have smiled then, dumb, exhausted. And behind me I heard Wyll call out, his voice distorted with sarcasm:
”Mizora! Does Zariel know you have escaped her penn?”
I looked between them, an immediate knot in my stomach, and they looked at each other but strangely, unnaturally, Mizora only shot Wyll a cool look, and said nothing. No stinging response, no snide remark. She simply turned away, and fought her way into the midst of the battle. And perhaps Wyll realized the same as me, just then, that Zariel didn’t know Mizora was here. That Mizora wasn’t here on behalf of her mistress, not even to protect the asset that was The Blade of Frontiers. She was here on her on volition. For me. I warmed, melting, for a brief moment. Then I cooled again. Forcing myself to harden.
We fought on, together, me and Mizora and Wyll, and all of our friends. And when change – escalation – came, it came with an explosion of heat unlike any other. The temperature rose in a flash and I gasped, breathing like swallowing lava. The smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils, and the air became blurry with the pink mists of evaporated blood.
Mephistopheles appeared in the middle of the room. For a moment the bright yellow light of fire blinded us, and, squinting, I saw him: a black cloak floating behind him, his ram-horned head held high and the great flaming sword at his side making the air around it boil. His face was draped in shadows, and out of the darkness I saw him see me, his black eyes immediately meeting mine.
We attacked as one. Breaking cambion ribs under our feet to get to him, we all attacked Mephistopheles together. And he was ready for us, swinging his sword and calling upon spells with such a thunderous voice that I felt my eardrums tremble to the point of bursting. And each time I ducked under his burning sword I felt its heat travel across my skin, and I caught the smell of zinged hair. Each time it came too close one of my friends, or Mizora, was there to block it, or to counter his spells. Like this, it seemed as if time stopped. Or perhaps it had stopped for Mephistopheles, while it kept moving for us, as we kept getting weaker and weaker, and the cuts and burns kept adding up on our bodies, while he remained unharmed. Untouched.
And our breaths became more and more ragged, my lungs seemingly on fire. There were no spells left. No healing potions or cantrips, no more tricks. And Mephistopheles’ cool face, his icy gaze, still hovered above us, his mouth slack and eyelids soft. Only a small muscle twitched at the side of his nose, with disgust, as he watched us try to fight him. Try as we might.
We fell back. Demons and imps kept coming at us, snarling, hungry, mad, and each time the devil’s flaming sword arched through the air we were forced further back. I heard Lae’zel growl, letting out Githyanki curses. Shadowheart’s trusted shield of apparitions flickered and died, the soft glow of moonlight vanishing from the room, leaving only the red smolder of firelight cast on blood. And the demons moved closer. We retreated, and they came after us.
We reached the throne room, where hellish creatures came pouring like insects around the tall, black throne and down its black marble steps, and always – beyond the demonic screeches and the ever clanging blades – we heard the doomsday bell that was Mephistopheles’ boots upon the floors, coming after us. He appeared at the top of the stairs just as I turned to look back. I thought our eyes met again then, as if he was indeed targeting me, and that small, disdainful smile I saw play at the corner of his mouth, I thought it was for me – because I had been dumb enough to think I could challenge him.
When he spoke every horned head, every pointy ear, turned towards him in fear of his command.
”You. Ungrateful. Savage.”
Familiar words. I had heard Raphael use them before. Echoing his father. And Raphael – did I not feel his presence suddenly? Was the son so much alike the father that I could recognize his smell here? The proximity of his magic, his ambience, his body heat, all of which had had such a hold on me?
The silvery blue light of Cania’s wastelands had fallen into the throne room as the great doors opened. A swirl of snow, a wind like an icy tongue, wrapped itself around me, and I turned once more. In the door, silhouetted against the storm, stood two armored devils. A pair of mighty twins, one of them a step behind the other’s shoulder. Raphael and Haarlep.
Mephistopheles was not looking at me at all, but at his prodigal son, and Raphael met his gaze with such cold, black hatred in his eyes that they looked more alike than ever before.
I was holding my breath. I looked to Astarion, and he looked back, his face a mask of shock, its entire nether half red and wet with blood trickling down his throat and chest. Raphael said nothing. He didn’t even seem aware of our presence. He simply looked ahead, and with a song of steal he drew one of the greatest swords I had ever seen, of twisted metals, like the blades of several swords molted into one and sharpened into what looked like a dragon’s tooth. And like a dragon’s his wings opened up behind him, and he flew past our dumbstruck faces, clove through the demon horde and went to war with the only true opponent he had ever had. For all of his eons.
Time picked up again, on equal terms now it seemed, as Haarlep stepped up between Astarion and I and we soldiered on. The battle was now a storm of fire, thunderous magic and snow blowing in through the doors. And in the midst of it were the devils, at each other’s throats, every clash of their swords an explosion of sparks and a deafening boom.
I didn’t notice when the next change occurred. My vision was blurry with sweat and blood and my ears were ringing. But there was a new shift in power, and by the time I realized it we were well past it, and a new ending to things had become true, fate had twisted: we were winning this fight. And Mephistopheles, the Archduke of Cania, was losing.
I saw him, Mephistopheles, a gash crossing his face and blood dripping from his pointed beard, gore smeared on his curved horns, above us, as he stepped backwards up the steps to his throne. His eyes were black and wild with a fury so great it looked like ecstasy, all dilated pupils. His lips were pulled back from his fangs in a snarl, of disgust or disbelief. And I felt Astarion close, his mind joining mine as images flashed before us both. A plan was forming in both our brains even as we started to execute it, flying up the stairs in a final rush of adrenaline. We reached the throne before Mephistopheles, and he braced for us, but was too late and too unprepared for what was coming.
We reached out for one of his horns each and gripped it with both hands, pulling the devil backwards onto his black marble seat. There was a crack of bone as we forced his neck to bend over the throne’s back, and he growled through gritted teeth, blood spraying into the air. Every muscle in my arms, shoulders, back screamed as the devil buckled and pulled and we held him down, arching him backwards. His long, tar black hair whipped across our faces as he struggled, wings twisting behind his back, but he was already too weak. Too unaccustomed to being at the mercy of others.
Raphael rose above him as he ascended the stairs, towering over his father’s exposed throat. Daggers in his eyes, daggers and flames, dancing furiously. He parted his lips, but he said nothing. His sword hovered at his side, half lifted. But he did nothing. Even as my fingers ached around Mephistopheles’ horn, and my grip started to slip, and Astarion roared with frustration next to me, Raphael did nothing. He simply stared.
Finally I called out to him, wildly, my voice tearing through my burned throat, breaking.
”Raphael!”
For the next brief moment, when Raphael raised his gaze to look at me – defeat in his eyes, dark and trembling like grief – I thought I saw double, in my exhaustion, in my panic. And how familiar it was, to realize that the devil next to Raphael wasn’t Raphael himself, or even a hallucination, but Haarlep. Only the look on their face was unrecognizable. Never in our most depraved moments had I seen such hungry, murderous rage in their eyes. And just as the realization hit, that it was Haarlep that now pushed their model and master aside, one of their hands shot out – a flash of claws, a song through the air as if from so many thin blades – and Astarion and I fell back onto the floor. Between us we held the severed head of Mephistopheles, our fingers still cramping around its twisted horns. But we didn’t look down at it. We were still staring up above us, at Haarlep on the other side of the throne, their fist closed before them around a dripping mess of gore – vocal cords, a ripped out tongue, a broken vertebrae – and they stared back at us.
Haarlep’s face, blank with shock and crossed with a splatter of dripping blood, started to change. It slimmed slightly, the red hue draining from the skin until it shimmered in a light blue. The fire died in their eyes, leaving them black and shiny. Their lips rounded, trembling, the arch of their nose settled, their great horns shrunk and whitened, and a mane of corvid black hair slithered over their shoulder and down their chest. The devil’s wings that had hovered at their back vanished, revealing Raphael behind them, staring in wonder. I could all but hear his voice: Defeat him and all his spells are broken.
Above us, before the throne where Mephistopheles’ headless corpse laid splayed out – spewing blood out of the hole at its neck – stood a young, sweet looking tiefling. And they were so young. They looked so sweet. They lifted their other hand to stare at them both, and a shudder seemed to pass through their body. Some word of confusion, or elation, or horror, started to form at their strange lips but nothing came out. They just gasped and shook, and when their knees buckled beneath them, and they fell, Raphael dropped his sword to catch them in his arms.
The remaining demons scattered, scurrying like rats through the gates and into the storm, bleeding black blood onto the snow. Before distance could swallow them entirely I saw fire catch up with them, cast by vengeful eyes, and with a choir of hellish screeches they combusted, burned into cinders, crumbled and was cast off by the winds. Some lingering flames danced out on the fields, the final traces of Mephistopheles’ court. Karlach kicked the doors shut behind them, and the storm’s howling became distant.
Inside the throne room black and red gore smeared the floors and walls, clawed footprints spreading blood and ashes everywhere. Panting still, her brow glittering with sweat and her silver hair blackened by soot, Shadowheart kept working on healing every scratch and tear in our party, until finally Lae’zel ordered her to rest. To everyone’s surprise – but not without an evil eye shot in the Githyanki’s direction – Shadowheart obeyed.
Once the battle had started to settle down I felt Mizora, immediately, close in on me across the hall. Without looking straight at me, as if our eyes meeting would be some final fatal blow, she reached an arm around me to pull me to her, holding me so tightly that my bruised body ached. For a moment she rested her chin on the top of my head, before letting me go. When she turned away I thought she looked annoyed, and I found myself smiling, exhausted.
My heart was still beating frantically. I realized I couldn’t remember where Astarion and I had dropped Mephistopheles’ head, I couldn’t see it anywhere, neither the rest of his body. Every trace of him, and of this having been his kingdom, had already been eradicated. And his son already sat on his throne.
I climbed the steps again, my sword back in its sheath and Astarion back at my side. He had wiped the blood off his face, but it still clung to the tips of his curls. We stopped a couple of steps down from the horned creatures above us.
Raphael sat leaned back with his wings folded, his large hands curled around the throne’s armrests. Haarlep, in their new – or old – body, stood at his side, and when we approached they had leaned down to let Raphael speak lowly into their pointed ear. Whatever he said put a small, barely noticeable, smile on the young tiefling’s lips.
When Raphael turned to us he rolled his eyes, but smiled broadly. He leaned further back and tilted his head, clicking his claws at one of the armrests.
”For the love of all that’s unholy, what do you want now?” he said, and found something in my face that made his grin even wider. ”And mind you, I am fresh out of favors.”
I scoffed, and, strangely, it felt like a sigh. Relief.
”You didn’t do this as a favor to us”, I said. ”And it is not about what I want. But what you want.”
And as if favor was some magical word that called her to us, or a nickname I had for her, Mizora was behind me in an instant. Raphael only glanced at her, before looking back at me.
”And what would that be?” he asked. Only slightly more tense.
”You’re sitting on it”, I said.
”Presumptuous to think we would let you just take the throne after we did all the dirty work”, said Astarion.
And with a well practiced swirl of her finger, and a small explosion of orange sparks, Mizora conjured up a scroll floating in the air, that promptly rolled itself out.
The arch devil raised an eyebrow. I saw the flame in his eyes dance across the page as he read the Infernal symbols glowing on the parchment. I thought he would laugh out loud, but he only chuckled once, softly, almost tenderly.
It was mostly Mizora’s handiwork, but I wanted to think the knowledge Astarion and I had acquired during our studies in the House of Hope had contributed. It was a contract. The first of –almost – my own design. I almost formed the newly conquered language with my lips while I watched Raphael read it, so that I may spot the very moment he realized what we were asking – no, demanding – of him. Yes, Mephistopheles’ throne was his if he wanted it, but our aid was not free and he no longer had an army to assist him if we were to change our minds. As payment we wanted the Orphic hammer and expected him to help us fight the Netherbrain, solve our tadpole situation and save Baldur’s Gate. No hidden clauses. No loopholes. The scroll rolled itself back up, and landed neatly in the palm of my hand.
I saw Raphael knew he had no other choice but to humor us. He lifted his chin slightly, his lips softening into a smile, and before I could stop myself I said, almost to myself:
”You belong to me now.”
Raphael and I looked at each other for a long moment. His brow creased, as if he searched for something in my eyes, found it, but didn’t understand it. His smile widened. A fang glistened.
”I do so enjoy a plot twist”, he said. Lifting one of his hands and leisurely flicking a claw into the air, he conjured up a black feathered quill. Instantly a thick, red blood drop started to swell at its tip. Raphael caught the quill, and added with a sincerity that made me shiver: ”I underestimated you, Tav. And I am glad I did.”
The blood drop fell from the quill, another one started to form, and I realized Raphael was waiting for me to approach him with the contract. I felt Mizora’s hand hover next to mine, as if she was forcing herself not to take it and keep me back.
”Come now”, Raphael purred. ”Don’t be shy. We are so very close to the end.”
Something squirmed in the pit of my stomach. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Astarion watch me. I turned to him, and he nodded.
I climbed the final steps, feeling Mizora’s and Astarion’s eyes following me, together with the rest of the party’s from the foot of the stairs. Beside the throne stood Haarlep with their slender arms folded, and I found myself unable to look at them. It was too strange. So immensely, I realized, tragic.
Yes, I hesitated – what was I afraid of? That Raphael – however insane and, frankly, stupid it would have been – would attack me? Grab my wrist the moment I reached out the contract and pull me to him, bring his blade to my throat before whisking me away from my friends again? Did I fear that he would kill me, after everything, or make me his again?
I reached the top of the stair and lifted the scroll, having it roll itself out. Raphael didn’t let his gaze drop, but held mine steadily in his. Lovingly, even as he lifted his quill. And signed his name at the bottom of the contract.
The quill vanished, a thin swirl of smoke, and Raphael’s hand dropped. He looked up at me from his throne, an eyebrow raised. It was done. Why did I feel … disappointed?
”Ambition will be the death of you, little mouse”, said the archdevil, sighing softly.
And I let myself breathe again. Something had indeed reached its end. And something new had begun.
”Not with you on my side it won’t”, I said.
Raphael smiled warmly.
”I shall visit your nightmares”, he said.
”And I yours”, said I.
When I turned to Haarlep they were smiling awkwardly, unfamiliar with their lips. But their eyes were sincere. Their eyebrows had a mischievous arch that I recognized.
”Come with us to Faerûn”, I said, and somewhere behind me I heard Astarion’s breath catch.
Haarlep’s eyebrows dropped, but they were still smiling. They shook their head, as if at a child.
”No”, they said. And their voice was their own. I blurted out:
”Leave this place!”
Haarlep scoffed, a sad little laugh, and when I glanced at Raphael I saw he was staring at his own hands, clutching the throne’s armrests.
”I know nothing else”, said Haarlep.
”We will show you. You don’t have to stay.”
”No.” Haarlep turned to look down at Raphael, and Raphael looked back. Strangely compliant. ”But I think I will. For a while.” They smiled at me again, wider this time. Their new face looked completed, suddenly. ”I choose to.”
I said nothing more. I had nothing more to say, to either of them. I turned, and found the entirety of our party looking up at me, eyes bulging with held breaths, apart from Mizora who simply looked annoyed. Her arms were crossed and she was restlessly tapping her foot. It made me smile. I ascended the steps, just as Astarion seemed to make up his mind to climb them again, two steps at a time, without looking at me. I whipped around to see him at the top of the stair, leaned in close to whisper something into Haarlep’s ear. Haarlep smiled even wider, and yes, this was Haarlep. Glamored or not, we had known them. At least a little.
That was it. Astarion was quickly back at my side, without looking back at Raphael, and when we were close again I asked him:
”What did you say?”
And Astarion smirked.
”That’s between me and Haarlep”, he said. ”Or whatever their name is.”
We gathered our party. Everyone was sore but alive, and we were ready to carry on. We had our quest, and a new powerful ally, this had simply been a stop on the way. A weird one. They usually were.
Mizora – not entirely without complaints – helped us open a portal back to The Devil’s Fee, where all this had begun. I thought Helsik might die of excitement when all of us suddenly showed up in a circle of hellish fire.
Astarion and I stepped into the portal side by side. We were finally returning to Faerûn, to never again step foot in Avernus. Or so I thought then, for a moment. Before I looked to Astarion for reassurance, and found him gazing back into the flames, longingly.