Chapter Text
She’s never been on this side of things.
She’s Sharran, so she’s accustomed to being an enemy of ‘good’, but the Dark Moon is an organization that operates out of near obscurity. No one is going out of their way to hunt down their members, or seek out their temples. Except, of course, when the late Grand Duke Adrian had led his cohort to their monastery in the Cloud Peaks.
They’d learned from that, however.
Teacher and those who’d served in the Order since that time had rebuilt the Dark Moon under a tighter leash—no more of agents boldly accosting marks in the middle of the street with only the night for obscurity.
In its nascent years, during Father Alorgoth’s time, the recruits of the Dark Moon had been plucked from the disgruntled and discontented acolytes of various other monastic orders—or any cutthroat who showed promise and was willing to be properly obsequious. The bones of that Order still exists today—in the structure and the rigidity—but with many more years to learn from their mistakes.
They won’t be found sitting in their monasteries, awaiting the arrival of some do-gooding party of adventurers. They’d learned to conceal themselves better, operating out of local shrines and temples, often in the guise of traveling ascetics; and for those like Mal, whose purpose was only infiltration, then it was never a good idea to stay long in the same place, lest a keen bystander deduce the connection between some recent local catastrophe and the new faces in town.
Standing around, waiting for the enemy to come to her, is an entirely new experience.
An uncomfortably long experience.
With the Rite half-begun, the spawn locked in the stasis of the transmutative arcana, and only Cazador’s ghasts, werewolves, and bone mage for company, Mal is left to sit in silence and in darkness that offers none of the comforts she’s come to rely upon.
There is no Shar here. And, even if She was, She certainly wouldn’t be making an appearance for Mal.
Not after she’d spat in the faces of the Dark Deity and Teacher, rejecting their offer of two terrible choices in exchange for no choice at all. In exchange for the flimsy hope that this sad*stic vampire lord is willing to destroy her—be it as a spawn or as material components to a ritual. A flimsy hope—because there’s still the very likely possibility that he’ll just hand her back over to Teacher; for the sheer pleasure of doing the exact opposite of what he’d promised.
Cazador is talking. He might be talking about his plans for how to make use of the yet to be acquired power. Mal only manages to remember to glance over at him on occasion, never for too long, so he can be satisfied that he’s being heard.
The only sounds Mal is paying any attention to is the way his voice, and the grunts and low growls of the ghasts and werewolves, extend out into the greater cavern of this man-made chasm—listening for the feedback from echoes or any other noise to tell her more of the space. She’s listening, too, through the dark. Or, at least, as far as the dark here will permit her to extend her awareness into. This is still part of a vampire lord’s lair, after all.
Her gaze follows the walkways that bridge from the ritual platform, out to towers of stone and their projecting balconies to nowhere. Many of these balconies are illuminated by twin braziers, with a single gilded portcullis that leads into dark tunnels and the interior of towers she doesn’t wish to imagine the purpose of. She tries sensing through the dark for any stirring of life, but finds herself thwarted by the countless rodents, winged or otherwise, infesting the dungeon.
Distractedly, she wonders, “It’s been a while. Is the palace the only way to directly access this place?”
A little miffed to be interrupted, he says, “It’ll be the only way he knows. None of them have ever been permitted into my wing of the palace.”
Mal frowns, feeling a flicker of frustration in her chest. Resisting the urge to frown at him, she asks in a different way, “But is it the only way?”
“No.”
Still looking out to the walkways half-concealed by the dark, Mal takes a measured inhale to counter the reflexive impulse to sigh.
Vampires and their damn pride.
Mal brushes a finger along the outer curve of her earring, where she can feel the grooves of the carved runes to awaken the enchantment of the artifice. Choosing her words carefully, so as not to offend, she directs the sending spell to connect with Irfaan’s earring and says, “Brother—there is a secondary entrance.”
She can feel it when the spell connects—the odd vacancy left in her head to create space for the response allowed by the sending.
Always answering with the absolute minimum of words, Irfaan says: “Understood.”
There is no determinable emotion in his voice, only weariness.
Mal tries not to let herself feel the guilt that wants to push from beneath the paper-thin layer of her control—but it’s building in her, filling up that space she normally reserves for the dark; a building pressure beneath the lid she’s trying to keep over her emotions, and it’s more like the building pressure of heat. Like what’s filling her is a sea of flames, not the dark, depthless waters of soothing oblivion. She can feel it push beneath that lid, flames licking up from between the seams, scorching her for brief moments of forced acknowledgement—and so she knows. She knows if she lets herself be touched by any of that guilt, it will be too much. An annihilating pain beyond anything she’s ever had to physically endure.
She’s terrified of it.
Her body is terrified of it.
Her mind is terrified of it.
Mal is terrified. Of all of it.
She has never felt so much. Hadn’t thought it was possible to feel this much.
She feels restless and paralyzed all over again. Feels like the only thing she can do is hold still, staring blankly at the dark, seeing nothing—trying to feel nothing.
It used to be so easy.
It used to be second nature.
Once upon a time, she could imagine herself as the stone cliff against which the waves of uncertainty would break. It had meant silencing her mind, silencing her heart. It had meant looking only ever towards the dark—nurturing apathy against life. Had made her incapable of recognizing the variance and color and life even amongst those sworn to a Goddess of Loss.
She’d perceived only what she’d been taught to perceive. She’d perceived only what she was capable of perceiving.
But this body is different. This mind is different. This heart is different.
Emotions and thoughts and memories may not be anything tangible, but they do still leave their record—on your skin; in your muscles; in your nerves. Conscious memory, after all, cannot account for all the ways you adapt and become changed by experience.
She understands this now.
Teacher had made a mistake. An incomprehensibly mundane mistake. Incomprehensible—because he has always been something so untouchable. Extraordinarily unreachable. A greater power over her life than even Shar.
But the monks of their Order know their bodies too well. And Teacher had trained her too well in pain—had isolated her too thoroughly from the inverse—and even without memories, even without a reason to betray her Order—even if the only reason is a desperate need to be free of this life—a memory modified by only mortal magic cannot bridge the gap between the person she remembers herself to be, and whoever she’d become in the short time among strangers.
Teacher had only taught her to endure the physical.
This … this is too much.
And she hates herself. Because, in making the choice to take her freedom, she is condemning them. Her companions: her fellow monks, the ones she’d barely cared enough to notice, yet never enough to grieve; and the forgotten ones, the ones she’d known for only a fraction of her life, and who’d somehow upturned all of it.
It’s hard enough to make this decision without the memory of what they’d been to her. It’s hard enough to think about the choice she’s robbing them of.
If Astarion and his companions succeed in destroying Cazador, then there’s nothing for her except a cell in a Sharran monastery—to be dragged out for only Nightfalls and Kissmoots. To be bred like her father, so that they might make a better version. A malleable version. A version of her that isn’t so fragile—so easily deformed from the shape they’d tried to compress her into.
If she fails to help Cazador succeed, her only option is ceremorphosis.
But then she really is just a monster.
She used to be good at seeing through obstacles to different solutions. Her role has always been as scout; her specialty in observation.
Everything feels too clouded now. The debilitating threat of guilt and grief and so much else she can’t fully process has made it so she can scarcely look anywhere other than forward on this single path towards self-destruction.
“Stop that.”
Mal blinks, glancing over her shoulder to see Cazador scowling at her.
He’s staring at her hand—glaring at the way she’s twirling her dagger; an idle and restless action she hadn’t been aware she’d been performing.
Mal returns the dagger to her side, crossing her arms and looking back towards the long ascent of stairs up to the dungeons.
“Look at me, girl.”
Mal immediately drops her arms, turning on a heel to do so.
He’s smirking, eyes darting across her face, amused. “Still blubbering like a child, I see.”
Mal frowns, confused.
Warily, she reaches up to touch fingers to her cheeks, disturbed to find them wet again with tears.
Blinking, she looks back at him, saying flatly, “I don’t remember how to make it stop.”
He arches a brow, smirk widening to a smile. “There’s no need to stop on my account.”
Mal still wipes her face with both hands, determined not to let anyone else observe her weakness. It will be alarming to Irfaan and Naila, and she can’t afford them asking questions.
When she lowers her hands, he’s standing directly in front of her, leaning his weight into the scepter as he observes her, head canted.
“Half-drow,” he says musingly, apropos of nothing. “The benefits of a race evolved to the dark, without their sensitivity to sunlight. A shadow sorcerer made to devour the darkness in others; such that you can affect darkness untouched by your goddess, or by her Realm.”
He extends a hand between them, palm up. Mal looks down at it, frowning.
Impatiently, he demands, “Your hand, girl.”
Mal gives him her injured hand—sees her assumption is correct when he twists it, exposing the dark line that drags upwards from the tattoo of a Sharran disk. His thumb pushes into the wound at her palm. With the curiosity of a sad*stic child, he adjusts his grip, digging nails around the wound at her wrist—pushing deeper, harder, until eventually the clotted blood is disturbed enough and the thin line of unhealed flesh pops open. He watches the spidering veins of inky shadow that bloom out from the injury, visible only along her skin.
Realizing what he’s after, Mal tightens her hand into a fist, squeezing it with enough force that she feels the wound in her palm split open anew—but it finally serves to send enough pressure for blood to swell from the injury at her wrist.
“Clever craftmanship, I’ll admit,” Cazador remarks, swiping a thumb across the blood for a taste. “Wasted on zealotry.”
She has to acknowledge—in a matter of hours, Cazador had unraveled more secrets about her and Teacher’s purpose for her by simple observation. It spoke to centuries of research into all things arcana; it spoke to an understanding of the sort of people who would ever even think to do something like this: to mold children into instruments for their own ambition.
… Teacher is such a hypocrite.
With some hesitance, encouraged to speak only by their proximity, she whispers, “… It would be easier to kill me. If you kept me, you’d have to contend with my uncle. With the rest of my Order. I don’t think I’m worth the trouble, my lord.”
He doesn’t look away from his inspection of her wrist—the barely weeping wound; the pulsating pattern of her shadow veins—but a slow smile pulls at the corners of his lips, curling upwards as if in response to his own secret joke.
“Is that a request?” he asks, voice a low, intimate murmur, even as his smile widens to something undeniably malicious.
His eyes dart up to meet hers, holding her gaze.
Mal swallows, uncertain how to proceed—can sense this is a test, but doesn’t know how to answer in a way that won’t provoke him to do the exact opposite, just to be awful.
In a moment, all humor is gone.
He doesn’t tense—doesn’t react at all, except for a quick flick of his eyes past her shoulders—but Mal responds anyway, free hand coming up the instant her ears pick up the whistling sound.
Her hand closes around the shaft of an arrow, just below the broadhead.
Both Mal and Cazador look to the arrowhead, inches from his shoulder—jaggedly carved from green wood, visibly wet, and sticky to the touch.
An arrow of undead slaying.
In a single movement, Mal turns to face the interlopers, snapping the shaft of the arrow as she positions herself to stand directly in front of the vampire lord.
At the foot of the long descent of stairs are four unwelcome faces.
Mal’s heart sinks.
… It’s him.
The fool.
Tossing the pieces of arrow aside, Mal looks past the approaching vampire spawn—to the three women at his back: the traitorous cleric, the Harper, and—just as Naila had mentioned—a gith.
A baffling configuration.
Loudly, and with an accent Mal can now place as Chondathan, the Harper announces, “I hope you don’t mind. We’ve let ourselves in. Not so clever of you, vampire—to leave your secret passages marked so obviously.”
Moving in response to the approaching threat to their master, the werewolves growl, stalking forward to form a line between their two groups. From behind, the rattling shuffle of Cazador’s bone construct approaches.
Chuckling, Cazador steps out from around her, ignoring the Harper altogether. “Is this truly our prodigal son? Crawling back after abandoning your family—not once, but twice. And after I paid you the courtesy of sharing a private moment with sweet Mahlysaaria.”
Hearing her name spoken by Cazador is startling—but she sees it serves his intended purpose by the scowls that settle across the women’s faces.
“Reprehensible,” Cazador’s voice drops to a furious hiss, as if the only people around were himself and the spawn. “You should be begging our forgiveness.”
Mal still can’t bring herself to look at the returned spawn.
It feels like her stomach has been replaced with a void—that untenable pressure of emotion pushing the lid of her decades of practiced apathy.
It doesn’t matter what Cazador is trying to accomplish with his sniping—it’s at least buying her time to prepare herself. Closing her eyes, Mal inhales deeply, drawing her shortswords as she calls for her shadows—grateful now for the strange neutrality of Cazador’s lair. They don’t all come when called, but they’re not prevented from doing so either.
It’s their choice, unblemished by vampires or Goddesses.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, boy?!” Cazador snarls, standing close enough to her that it rings her ears, forcing her out of her concentration.
It’s enough.
There’s enough distance between herself and those unrelenting emotions that she can make herself look.
Something still trembles inside her—an unpleasant quivering of nerves as her gaze finds his, taking in the face and the eyes; the moonlight of his hair; the drow armor, and his single shortsword, which he passes between his hands in a sort of restless gesture. He’s scowling, alternating between looking at her, then at his former master, undiluted anger and hate burning behind the gently glowing ruby of his eyes.
Mal frowns, eyes darting across the expression of anger—the snarl of his lips, the deep furrow of his brows. There’s fury there. There’s hate.
But there had been such a different sort of pain in his anger before. A different kind of sorrow.
This anger …
This is rage.
This is an entirely different kind of rage.
Mal tenses, breath catching in her throat with shock—with realization.
Without thought, she shoves the full weight of her body into the vampire lord, forcing them both backwards—
A second before the roaring of a fireball erupts directly in front of them, swallowing the werewolves whole. The force of the explosion destroys any of the bats that had begun to manifest out of the dark—the heat expanding in waves, scalding any place her skin is exposed.
Cazador is snarling, either at her or the mage who’d interrupted his monologue, “You wretched little—”
Mal snaps, “That’s not him!” and shoves the vampire lord back another step, twisting around to face his enemies, swords now held in a readied position.
The werewolves are not dead, but they are badly burned.
The smoldering carcasses of half a dozen bats litter the ground around the werewolves—who snarl and growl and howl with fury, but do not dare make a move against the intruders without their master’s command.
“Can’t fool you, huh, soldier?”
Where Astarion had stood, the illusion of a disguise self fades—replacing the drow armor with soft leathers, and the shortsword with a battleaxe. The gentle glow of ruby eyes brightens to the infernal glow of the tiefling’s eyes—the one from the Bhaalist lair.
Karlach. Her mind supplies the name, heedless of the instant flare of agony.
Mal’s eyes prickle, but she grits her teeth through the discomfort, hands tightening on her weapons.
“Mal—” the tiefling says, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for complex emotions when her anger for the vampire lord shifts into deep compassion when she looks at Mal, face crumpling with unabashed misery. “I love you. And—” The expression changes again, hardening with resolve. “If you weren’t scrambled eggs right now, you’d agree entirely when I tell you—I’ll kick that tight little ass if you try to stop me crackin’ this bitch in the face.”
Mal says nothing—listens to the ghasts moving to new positions and the shrieks of new bats being called forth from the depths of the vampire’s lair.
Icily, Cazador says, directly behind her, “Kill her. Now—”
Behind the tiefling, the building magic of a radiant spell becomes apparent once the residual Weave evoked by the fireball has faded.
Cazador’s bone mage, alerted now to the danger of their mages, wastes no time shuffling forward with a counterspell the moment the cleric raises her spear, pointing it in their direction—and, because it’s just a construct, and because only Mal seems to be paying any real attention, the construct fails to observe the brief flash of a smirk as the cleric drops the point of the spear, releasing the casting while bringing up her opposite hand with an entirely different spell.
The sacred flame dies halfway through its trajectory to one of the werewolves.
A damn cantrip.
The construct had wasted its counterspell on a damn cantrip.
There’s a different series of eruptions—smaller, just as impactful, and sending a gust of tomb rot to sweep across the platform as the ghasts are scattered by a volley of crackling energy.
Hazarding a look back, Mal sees two more of Astarion’s companions stood on the balcony directly across from Aurelia and the halfling spawn, Yousen. The wizard and the male tiefling—a warlock, if Mal is judging that last spell correctly—with the wizard readying what looks like a complex series of gestures, the warlock doing the same.
There’s the roar of a battle cry—snapping Mal’s attention back to the women in front of her—to the tiefling, charging the werewolves with her battleax, the gith directly beside—and then the Harper, weaving her own magic in what seems to be a summoning—then the cleric, radiant magic gathering again at the tip of her spear.
The bone mage scrambles towards the threat of the highest magics, releasing a counterspell against the warlock first—who’s gathering of Weave has become tinged with the magic of the Hells, empowering what might have been a lesser spell to something that certainly feels of a higher level—
The warlock drops the spell, mimicking the cleric by redirecting the remains of the gathered magic to a cantrip—another volley of eldritch blasts that sizzle into static as they’re interrupted by the bone mage’s counterspell.
It leaves the wizard and cleric free to release their spells—a Guardian of Faith, which bursts into brilliant existence directly where the fireball had been dropped, and a glowing ball of emerald energy that explodes at the feet of the ghasts, showering them in sizzling acid—narrowly missing Aurelia and Yousen.
The bone mage swivels, a chattering of bones against granite as it scrambles to find a position against either the wizard or cleric—but too late to react to either.
Scowling in frustration, Mal snaps at the construct, uncaring of whether it can even understand her, “Stop. They’re baiting you!”
It doesn’t respond to her—doesn’t have a mind to respond to her—is operating entirely by the limitations of its design. Entirely oblivious to the fact that it is what they are targeting—the lone and obvious mage among a cluster of minions whose utility is best served by close combat.
All of this occurs in a matter of seconds, with Mal left rooted in place by the contradictory commands: the geas oath that demands she obey all instruction by the vampire lord, and the awareness that to leave his side feels like exactly the wrong thing to do, exposing him to the threat promised in those infernal eyes.
They are being bombarded.
Overwhelmed.
The balance of numbers meaningless in the face of an organized and calculated attack.
And Mal recognizes these tactics.
They’re Annelore’s tactics.
These are her tactics.
These are Godsdamned tactics stolen straight from the Dark Moon.
Baffled—mind racing now with all the ways this changes things—Mal grunts an emphatic, “… f*ck.”
It is made abundantly clear within moments that Cazador Szarr has never had to actually defend against any real resistance—made indolent by conceit and what is evidently centuries of a vampiric life spent in the performance of civility so as to not attract the attention of monster hunters and mercenaries seeking to collect on the bounty a vampire lord’s head might bring. That same arrogance, coupled with paranoia, had kept him from providing Mal or Irfaan with critical details—putting them immediately at a disadvantage.
His need to exert dominance had kept Mal at his side, rather than searching the walkways and passages of his dungeon to better inform herself about the environment she is meant to be defending from intruders.
Mal has never been in this situation. She has never felt herself crippled so thoroughly by another’s inability to lead.
Irfaan and Naila might be on their way, but Cazador’s creatures and creations had been assessed for their weaknesses: the bone mage forced to expend precious energy for more powerful castings by the spellcaster’s barrage, overwhelming its limited capacity for independent thought; the werewolves kept busied by the brutal strength of the tiefling and gith, whilst left entirely unprotected to the glancing cantrips sent their way, helping the two warriors corral the three shifters into the area kept protected by the Guardian of Faith.
One of the ghasts attempts to leap the distance to the two mages. It’s blasted down into the chasm by the full bombardment of the warlock’s eldritch blasts.
The cleric is still holding the rear, guiding a spiritual weapon to cover the flanks of the tiefling and gith—a swirling flurry of angelic spirits surrounding her, defending her against any of the lair bats that try to disrupt the concentration of her spells. The flitting spirits move like carnivorous fish, descending upon any intruding creature with ferocity, leaving a pile of winged rodents to gather at the cleric’s feet.
But still, no Astarion.
And, the Harper—
A hand curls into her hair, yanking her head back.
“Show yourself, boy! Or watch as I drain your little friend dry!”
There isn’t a response.
It takes a moment for Mal to understand what she’s hearing—what she’s feeling—as her entire body is swallowed by a sound her mind can’t immediately place, but it’s abrupt, and rushing, like the sudden onset of heavy rain. It fills her ears, her bones, her head—reverberating along the stone floor. A crackling hiss that might be familiar, yet still undefinable.
The gith and tiefling react immediately, charging past the werewolves, ignoring their attempts to claw and bite at them as they move through their space. They’re not even defending, they’re just running, the werewolves turning to make chase.
Where the Harper had been working her casting, Mal now has the visibility to see it was indeed a conjuration.
Filling the space between the two obelisks that flank the short steps from the walkway to the ritual platform is a giant lizard—resembling an iguana, though considerably broader, its body nearly twenty feet in length, skin mottled and dull: a deep lizard. One considerably larger than any she’s ever seen in the Underdark.
It doesn’t rush the werewolves—it rushes one of the obelisks instead, climbing up the vertical surface easily by its sticky footpads, then maneuvering itself to face the werewolves directly below.
It opens its powerful jaws, revealing terrible teeth and the coil of a long, probing tongue.
The tongue lashes out.
But Mal’s attention has to shift to the tiefling and gith, who are sprinting towards herself and Cazador—approaching at first side by side, and then moving into a different sort of formation, with the tiefling taking a leading position—
They’re coming in for a double grapple.
Mal throws herself forward, ignoring the fleeting pricks of hair being ripped from her scalp—then dashes towards the charging two, throwing herself feet-first into a slide to intercept the tiefling’s approach.
The tiefling is just as quick to adapt, powerful thighs aiding her as she vaults over Mal without breaking her dash—a feint, Mal realizes too late. The tiefling’s back is arched with the weight of the battleaxe held over her head as she brings it down on Cazador’s position.
Mal extends both hands to catch herself from skidding into the Guardian of Faith’s area, grabbing one of the nearby bat corpses—pinching off a sizzled tuft of fur and huffing, “Noctem.”
Magical darkness unspools in the area around Cazador.
The tiefling is mid-swing, unable to stop the downward momentum of her axe.
The clang of steel meeting stone resonates tellingly.
Scrambling to her feet, Mal ducks past the swinging kick of the gith, darting into the cloud of darkness—and it’s different. It’s different than when she uses ki to guide her magic—different than when she weaves the living energy with her shadows.
The instant she steps into the magical dark summoned by sorcery alone, Mal finds she can see everything with perfect clarity—can see the tiefling’s back, skin licked with flames that become little more than dying sparks, their illumination swallowed greedily by Mal’s darkness.
From elsewhere, the cleric shouts, “Karlach! Behind you!”
The battleaxe swings backwards at her in an arc. With the momentum of her sprint, Mal throws herself into the air, curling her body into a tuck—then twisting over the sweeping axe, landing in a crouch on the tiefling’s nondominant side.
Surging forward from the position, she thrusts her swords straight for the glowing red center of the woman’s chest.
The two blades clang noisily as they crash together when the tiefling brings the heel of her axe to block the attack.
There’s a surprisingly heartfelt chuckle, then the tiefling says, “Playing dirty, huh? Fine. Don’t burn yourself—!”
Mal sees the tiefling drop her left hand from the grip of the axe, reaching for something at her belt.
Flipping the sword in her right hand to a reverse grip, Mal smashes her pommel into the back of the woman’s wrist, with enough force to bruise the posterior nerves of the forearm—causing a bizarre reaction of sparks along the brilliant red of the tiefling’s skin.
Mal can’t linger on this—sees the woman swap her free hand, using the other to reach for the same pouch—and then it’s a confusion of hands punching, smacking, knocking the other away, weapons held but entirely forgotten—until the tiefling releases a growl of frustration, muttering a begrudging, “Sorry, love—” before smashing her skull into Mal’s, stunning her momentarily.
The tiefling plucks a dark metal coin from her pouch, curling a powerful hand around it.
There’s no Weave or swelling of magic to warn Mal.
Heat explodes from the tiefling, who releases a primal roar with renewed vigor.
It’s not a spell. It’s not anything that Mal is familiar with. It’s just her. It’s just Karlach.
Mal has to abandon the dark, stepping out of the cloud to see it bubbling and struggling to stifle the bloom of orange brilliance.
Too hot. These flames are practically Hellsfire.
It doesn’t seem to matter that the woman telegraphs her intent with every move. Charging Mal, axe sweeping and cleaving the space between them, the length of the weapon grants Karlach the range she clearly knows is critical to maintaining the advantage, making it so that Mal never has the opportunity to close in. There’s no dodging—there’s scarcely any viable space to even operate if she wants to stay engaged in melee with the tiefling. Mal can only redirect the weight of each oncoming strike, every trick Mal might have utilized against such an opponent made futile because the tiefling never gives her the space to breathe, longer strides preserving the exact distance Karlach needs to keep Mal pinned and useless.
Even if she wanted to get close, Mal’s not sure she’d survive the proximity of the woman’s blazing skin.
Out of her periphery, Mal catches a glimpse of the gith and Harper driving a relentless series of attacks against the vampire lord—the gith with her flaming two-hander; the Harper with a flurry of her dual blades and the lashing of a grasping vine.
“Don’t get distracted now,” Karlach grunts, bringing Mal’s attention forward in time to block the bruising front kick to her chest.
She’s still sent skidding backwards, heels sliding across smooth granite. Mal digs the points of her blades into the stone to catch herself. She frowns, regarding the tiefling silently.
Karlach smirks, swapping the battleaxe to her left hand—demonstrating she does not, in fact, have a dominant grip—holding the heavy weapon easily off to one side, biceps and shoulders engorged with blood, forearms and hands accented with swollen veins. A barbarian of a woman.
Nodding down to Mal’s shortswords, Karlach says, “Reckon it might be easier without those.”
Mal’s response is to hold up her swords, readying herself.
Karlach snorts. “Fibber.”
Not expecting a response, Mal asks, “Where are you hiding him?”
Karlach rolls her eyes. “We’re not hiding him.”
“Then where is he?”
Karlach grins. “Why? Worried?”
Mal’s lips press to a line, brows knitted in consternation.
She has never had to resort to speaking to an opponent in order to make space for a reorganizing of thoughts, but the piercing efficiency of the group has her at a loss—every tactic and maneuver somehow as transparent as if—
Right.
She winces.
Of course.
She recalls the tiefling girl—Arabella, who’d somehow known all the gestures to communicate fluently with a Dark Moon captain and veteran—and her memory resupplies the baffled shock of being on the receiving end of a Dark Moon strike tactic that had been adapted to serve this diverse group of fighters and mages.
This is her own doing.
Which really only makes it that much more improbable that Shar would ever permit her to be redeemed.
Someone is lying.
Teacher, or Shar.
But it doesn’t matter.
Mal doesn’t care anymore.
Behind Karlach, the deep lizard is gulping the last of the werewolves.
The obelisks near the entry onto the ritual platform obscure her vision of the cleric or anyone else that might be on the walkway, but she sees that the Guardian of Faith has exhausted its store of magic, dispersed.
There is only a single ghast, called to aid Cazador against the gith and Harper, with the bone construct reduced to the ray of frost cantrip to try to tame the deep lizard.
“Aright!” Karlach huffs, charging her. “Gave you a breather—now—”
The axe comes at her in a diagonal slice.
Mal lowers her swords, holding the tiefling’s gaze. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t block.
“f*ck—!”
Admirably quick, Karlach slides her forward hand higher along the haft of the axe, yanking to divert the momentum downward, chipping stone at Mal’s feet.
“Right,” Mal mutters flatly, swapping her hold of her other sword to a reverse grip as well. “I thought so.”
With a lateral slash of her blade—from which Karlach dives back to avoid—Mal summons her veil, using it to call the still lingering cloud of darkness to be tugged between them.
“Oh, you little—!”
Soundlessly, Mal advances on the tiefling, throwing herself into the dark.
She doesn’t think Karlach can see in the magical darkness, but she still parries and blocks and defends like someone accustomed to using every other sense to guide their movements—and for a brief instant, parasite pulsing with a familiar ache, Mal sees herself surrounded by a hoard of devilkin, tiny bodies and wings bumping into her; claws slashing; vicious little teeth attempting to sink into flesh.
Mal doesn’t allow herself to be distracted by the vision, however, the pain insignificant to the agony that comes with just trying to resist the lurking grief daring her for acknowledgment.
As expected, touching Karlach is nearly impossible to do without getting scalded by just the waves of heat rolling off of her.
Mal does it anyway, ignoring the blisters that form along her hands and arms—driving in, relentless and ruthless, swords slashing and stabbing and hacking. Karlach tries to respond—but when Mal doesn’t raise her guard, continues to press only with a direct offensive, the tiefling is forced into a retreat, using the haft and heel of her weapon to deny as many strikes from connecting.
Wounds split open across both their bodies—arms and shoulders and unguarded flanks littered with injuries that are cauterized instantly by the flames licking the entirety of the tiefling’s frame.
Distantly, she is aware of the cleric barking orders—of Cazador snarling insults and the Harper responding with the flippant contempt of a living legend.
“Enough of this!”
Mal’s body moves on instinct, drawing up her blades to deflect the heavy weight of a flaming greatsword as it comes down like a guillotine for her head.
She retreats a step, shoving the blade away from herself as she adjusts her footing and stance to face her new opponent.
Alien face contorted into a snarl, the gith launches her attack on Mal, shouldering Karlach out of the way with an irritated growl.
Mal has less than a second to size up the gith: About two inches taller than her, with a lithe body that carries the weight of her heavy armor with effortless ease. She has long arms—longer than Karlach—because even being nearly a foot shorter than the tiefling, she holds the lengthy two-hander with remarkable grace.
If Karlach is overwhelming strength, this gith is perfect brutality.
She operates with absolute economy of movement, shifting between offensive and guarding positions like something out of a training manual, with such fluid transitioning between actions that, even when Mal can read what the position forecasts of the gith’s intent, she can still only parry and deflect. Every strike of the greatsword against Mal’s shortswords reverberates up her arms and into her shoulders and chest; proof, at least, that she has no intention of permitting Mal to choose anything other than to respond if she doesn’t want her head cleaved cleanly off her shoulders.
Karlach, recognizing the same intensity, releases a startled yelp when Mal’s cross block with her blades isn’t enough to stop the gith’s sword from sinking a half-inch into her trapezius.
“Oi! Lae’zel! Don’t actually kill her—!”
The gith sneers, driving her foot forward into Mal’s gut, sending her stumbling backwards. “If she does not wish to be slain here, then she would do well to defend herself.”
“Right, but—”
Instead of pushing forward with the two-hander, the gith drops the sword—a heavy clang that jolts Mal with alarm, unfamiliar with any tactic that would require someone disarm themselves. The gith steps over the sword, confident that no one but perhaps the tiefling will be capable of retrieving it.
Cracking the knuckles of her fists, the gith smirks—then rushes her.
Mal can’t tell if she’s being mocked.
She tries to use her blades to keep the gith at bay, but the fighter responds with a flurry of blows and sweeping kicks that Mal knows has been taken directly from her. Either by observation, or taught—or both—the gith moves like her body has been forged for the singular purpose of mastering any and every martial art.
And then Karlach joins, weaponless, and Mal can’t be sure if she abandons her swords consciously or not, only that they soon become an impediment—the two women leaving no room for Mal to think, only react.
She can’t tell if she’s sloppy, or they just know her too well, and it’s frustrating, because even when she can read their movements—even when she knows what should follow by observing the positioning of their feet or their torsos—it’s like she’s always too slow.
And they’re being kind. Even the gith. She can tell that their fists and elbows and knees, when they connect, aren’t aiming to do more than perhaps remove her from the field as an opponent—but that only makes her chest strain miserably, throat aching with emotion.
“You disgrace yourself!” Lae’zel snaps, fists pummeling into Mal’s block. “Fight back!”
“I—am—!” Mal grunts, teeth clamping down on the inside of her cheek as a punch breaks through and connects—reopening injuries she’d forgotten about entirely.
Lae’zel snorts derisively—
And then there is a leg sweeping her feet from under her, and Mal is suddenly horizontal—head and back slamming to the floor.
She chokes on the sudden ejection of breath, tasting blood.
Her vision doesn’t immediately return, splotched in motes of black and white, sound dampened around her.
There are hands curling into the fabric at her shoulders, two different sizes, hauling her onto her feet—then a shoulder shoving into her, forcing her to stumble back.
Mal blinks several times, shaking her head.
“Sister—”
Mal stills—stunned by the voice; stunned by the realization that she’d forgotten almost entirely about the person who belongs to that voice.
Looking up, she sees Irfaan and Naila standing in front of her, positioned defensively between herself and the other two women.
Eyes fixed on their opponents, Irfaan says, “Find the spawn. Kill him if you need to. We’re running out of time. He’ll have to make do with a corpse.”
Mal opens her mouth to argue, eyes darting impulsively to the tiefling and gith—sees the flash of horror across the tiefling’s face, whose gaze finds hers, shaking her head with a softly mouthed ‘no’.
Clamping her teeth, silencing her mouth before it can betray her, she bows, murmuring, “Yes, Brother—”
“Mal—no!”
Jaw aching, Mal twists on a heel, retrieving her swords and sparing only a glance to confirm Cazador is still relatively unharmed—if very obviously furious and determined to kill the Harper and the cleric presently attempting to corner him against the edge of the platform.
All the vampire lord’s minions have been felled.
It’s only them now.
Cazador and the Dark Moon.
It had been a passwall spell. Or stone shape. At least two instances of it.
Mal finds the evidence of this almost immediately by just following the walkways around to the underside of the long staircase up to the upper dungeon level. There, she’d found some sort of altar or shrine, with a square opening in the floor filled with soot and ash, and what looked like the charcoaled remains of two goblins. Across, up from a set of stairs riddled in stone and dirt debris, a perfectly rectangular hole had been shaped through the collapsed structure of an archway. It had led through a dark series of chambers, connected by walkways open on either side to a drop at least a few hundred feet into canals flowing with fresh water, rather than sewage.
She’d found the second instance of shaped stone at a locked door, tucked away through a series of passages that looked too ruined and collapsed to serve any purpose other than a place for unfortunate wanderers up from the Underdark to stumble into a pool of caustic brine, or fall prey to whatever other terrible things the vampire lord might think to keep in his horrible lair.
Mal doesn’t linger. Not even long enough to try to identify if the magic sustaining the two passages are by the same caster. She moves on, peering through gilded portcullises or a narrow window—if she can reach a ledge to grant her access—aware the entire time that every second she wastes searching for the spawn is time Irfaan and Naila must spend defending against the mages and fighters that will read every single one of their moves.
It takes at least a few minutes for her body to come down from the rush of adrenaline; to begin to feel the sting of blistered skin and the dozens of nicks and cuts burned shut by the tiefling’s unnatural blaze.
Fatigue is setting in, adding weight to her limbs, slowing her movements.
When she turns onto a new passage—this one far enough removed from the open chamber that only her darkvision permits her to see in shades of gray—she has to catch herself on a wall as her foot stumbles—as if her mind had retracted the command of taking a step, distracted by a deep ache in her side. Glancing down, touching a palm to the area, she doesn’t feel any wetness or indication of something broken—and so it’s just exhaustion. Just motor functions faltering and failing after a day and night spent in a constant state of anxiety.
She’s so tired.
She’s tired down to her soul.
Shutting her eyes, throwing her head back, Mal tries dragging long pulls of stagnant air through her nose—tries to build the strength or energy to continue. She’s aware of it, this time, when the new swell of tears pushes past her lashes, spilling hot tracks down her cheeks that sting as they pass over injuries that might be from the tiefling, or the gith—or Cazador.
Mal’s eyes snap open when she hears the sound of footsteps approaching—slowly, quietly. Just not quiet enough.
“You don’t look so hot, chief.”
The voice is vaguely familiar. And gentle.
Kind.
Her face crumples miserably, eyes squeezing shut against the flood of more tears. She hangs her head, clenching her teeth to stifle what feels like a hiccup—or a sob.
The footsteps stop at a cautious distance.
There’s no other life here. Only shadow. Only stone. It carries the whisper of her words easily. “Please. Just … go.”
A sigh.
“Can’t do that. The Blade of Frontiers doesn’t turn his back to a friend in need.”
A baffled, incredulous breath leaves her—almost a laugh.
Wiping her face, she pushes against the wall to help herself turn to face the man.
In total darkness, the single glowing eye burns like torchlight.
The warlock.
Reeling from the absurdity of this encounter, Mal shakes her head, muttering, “… The Blade of Frontiers. Helping a vampire.”
“Helping a friend to kill a vampire.” She sees him grin, the soft sadness of his gaze doing little to dampen the boyish charm of his expression.
She frowns.
Aiding a spawn in killing his former master, then claiming a ritual that promises to consume thousands of his own kin. It’s not something she would have expected the Blade of Frontiers to endorse.
“Then it’s back to saving the world from the Dead Three’s Chosen and their illithid cult,” the warlock adds conversationally—and Mal has the thought that he might be stalling her, but is too distracted by what he’d said to linger on the concern for long.
Hesitantly, she says, “Orin the Red and … the Archduke. Who … who’s the third?”
“Ketheric Thorm.” He snorts, sounding smug. “Already done and dealt with, chief. We’re that good.”
Clearly.
Mal just stares at him, too exhausted to sustain any expression for long.
His humor fades, brow furrowing again with concern.
Holding up his hands in a placating manner, he asks, “Is it safe to approach?”
Mal huffs another short laugh, shaking her head.
It’s not as if she’s in any state to do anything about it.
… And—it’s not as if he’s a threat.
Reading her silence easily, he closes the distance with measured steps. Her eyes drop to his hand when she sees him reach for something at his belt—but it’s just a potion.
He holds it out to her, smiling tentatively. “Come on. Let’s get these wounds taken care of.”
Mal stares at the bottle, feeling wretched.
It’s all falling apart.
Her only way out—her last resort—and she’s too much of a soft-hearted coward to get on with it.
She doesn’t even need to be here. She can run. Flee into the depths of the Underdark—wait until the parasite takes her. Or maybe wait for the Blade of Frontiers and these heroes to save the day—to stop the illithid threat; to find their cure. She can find some dark corner of the Lower Dark to hide herself in. Somewhere far away from sunlight—as far away from people and Teacher and the Order as she can go.
It would be a life spent on the run. Being hunted.
But if she’s being hunted, she’s not being used to steal shadows from the unwilling.
But …
She’s tired.
And, running …
Running until Teacher tires of hunting her …?
She’s not sure how to force herself forward—to continue—when the obvious and cleanest and simplest answer to her problems is death.
“You kept your secrets,” the warlock says soberly, still holding the potion bottle between them, hand perfectly steady. Mal blinks, feeling more tears spilled by the action. “You didn’t abandon the Order on a whim. You kept your secrets—because that was the only way you knew to protect us. And when it mattered—when it was about protecting Shadowheart—you trusted us enough to tell us the truth. You trusted us enough to tell us everything we’d need to know to protect ourselves. In case you couldn’t be there.”
Mal shuts her eyes, swallowing thickly. She hangs her head, fingers curling into a fist on the wall. She tries to speak—but the muscles of her throat are contracting too powerfully to make space for words.
She doesn’t know what she can say, anyway.
“You said, if they come for you, let them. So—we prepared for it. Gale prepared. Not for Cazador, no—but for the Order. For your uncle. And I don’t know what’s changed,” he says, voice so tender it actually hurts. “But I know you haven’t changed. Even like this—Mal, even like this, you still find ways to do what good you can.”
The stutter of a sob vibrates deep in her chest. She stifles the sound of it. Traitorously, however, she feels her shoulders begin to tremble.
“I understand feeling like you don’t have a choice. I understand feeling like the only option you have is to make deals with devils—or monsters. You want to do good—you want to help—you want to be able to defend as many innocent people as you can—and you feel alone, and overwhelmed—frightened—and you don’t know the right answer—”
Mal feels a warm hand settle atop her head, smoothing down to rest at her nape—then the press of a brow to the crown of her head.
“But it was hard before, too, wasn’t it? The way they trained you—what you had to do to enter the Order—your Own Secret—"
The horrified gasp that tries to escape her only makes room for the broken choking of a sob. The moment the sound leaves her—the moment her weeping becomes something real—Mal feels the last of her strength leave her.
And Wyll is there, closing the last bit of space to let her collapse against him, one arm circling her back.
“It was hard before, and you still did it. You kept going. And whatever’s changed—that’s alright. Because you survived all that when it was just you and your shadows—and now you have us—” He’s holding her—embracing her. Still so careful. Still so gentle. He says, wonderful as always, “If it’s the Dead Three, or their Chosen, or a vampire lord, or an entire Sharran Order—trust me when I say, there’s no evil we cannot vanquish together.”
Mal weeps.
She weeps until her guilt becomes grief.
She weeps until her grief becomes relief.
