Chapter Text
Hot.
That’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s really fucking hot, like the dead center of a campfire or the lit wick of a lamp, heavy and unavoidable as the deepest parts of summer.
The second is that of course it’s hot. She’s in the godsdamned Hells. The humid air is made thicker with the stench of blood, the sound of flames crackle in her ears and distant screams echo off the walls. Everything about the place is wrong. She just can’t remember how she got here.
Something hits her in the back of the head. Hard. Karlach starts to remember.
Enver had asked her to stay for dinner. It’d been a surprise: ever since he’d started sneaking around with his newest associate he’d become more reclusive than normal, barely speaking most days. She thought she had her old boss back.
Now that she’s thinking about it, she’d been the only one to drink the wine. Gortash’s favorite goblet was notably empty. Had he laced it with something?
—No. They’d finished their meal without a hitch. It was after, when Karlach’s belly was full and her head was buzzing with wine that he invited her into his office with the promise of showing off a new invention. She always liked his gadgets, even if they never made much sense to her.
Bastard opened the door for her— uncharacteristically polite — and she walked right in. Stepped directly into the sigil he’d copied onto the floor, and it sent her screaming down into the Hells.
The devil that now drags her along the obsidian floor of gods-know-where had been waiting for her like a dog awaits a meal. The back of her skull still stings from the blow, making her head throb in time with the beat of her heart. She blinks slowly, sizing up the beast. Must be an orthon, if the artistic recreations were anything to go by. It carries her with one massive hand looped around both her wrists, torso lifted slightly while the rest of her is dragged across the ground.
She starts to fight.
It’s a nasty affair. Karlach kicks and screams with all the fervor of an animal realizing it’s been brought to slaughter. She digs her claws into the burning flesh of the orthon’s fist, curses its mother, and tries to bite on anything she can reach. All while her legs kick violently, heels of her boots digging uselessly into the polished obsidian as she alternates between trying to stop herself and squirming away.
The orthon silently endures her struggle until suddenly it raises its arm, lifting her as if she weighed nothing at all. It holds her high off the floor while she continues to kick at empty air, dark eyes glaring into hers. She spits into its ugly face.
“Should break your jaw for that,” it says, voice deeper than any natural thing should be.
“Fuck you!”
In the struggle, Karlach hadn’t paid attention to where they were going. The halls of this place are dim, lit only by flames that seem fearful of piercing too far into the hellish dark. They’re standing at the top of a stone staircase, its steps far more neglected than any else she’d seen so far, and nothing has ever looked more like the entrance to the dungeon before or since. Everything inside of her screams at her to run, that if she lets this thing take her down those darkened steps she’ll never see the top of them again.
The orthon tosses her down the stairs.
Karlach had taken plenty of falls in her day, but none as hard as this one. She curls herself into a ball, arms wrapped protectively around her head, though not before the worst point of impact. The stone stairs dig painfully into her skin as she tumbles, leaving her with small cuts over what will soon be bruises. She falls for what feels like forever, like a second descent into this cursed place, until finally landing hard at the bottom.
She has no time to gather herself. Instead her ears ring with the shrill laughter of a gaggle of imps that lift her to her feet and pull her further in. Lit only by a collection of braziers, she can see a table in the center of the room, blood soaked deep into the stone. It reminds her eerily of an operating table, evokes images of surgery and blades— and she’s being taken right to it.
She puts up a fight. Harder than she’s ever done anything in her life. She’s still tossed onto the altar of torture, given just enough time to sit up.
Karlach smells her before she sees her.
First comes brimstone, then the heat of a fire hotter than any holy light could hope to be. The flames in the braziers seem to grow bolder in her presence, burning taller and hot. With the smell comes dread, a looming sense that soon becomes suffocating.
No depiction could ever do justice to the experience of seeing Zariel in person. The dual flames of her eyes burn into Karlach, the unholy halo over her head the color of dried blood. Great and leathery wings are tucked close to her body, their size implying a great wingspan. They look stronger than any pair on the back of an imp or devil, a mocking imitation of something holier.
There's the sound of metal against metal, of a chain moving, and with it Karlach watches the archdevil unfurl her left arm, a massive flail in its place. It's constructed of an impossibly dark metal, reflecting no light in spite of the flames illuminating the room. Karlach wants to look toward the stairs, to search for a sign of escape, but finds herself unable to tear her gaze away.
“Karlach Cliffgate,” Zariel’s voice is a decibel too loud, too powerful to be mortal. “Why that name?”
Karlach’s mind is assaulted with the memory of her mother tangled in sweat stained sheets, skin slick with it and choking on coughs. She knows, vaguely, from somewhere so far back in her head that it's fuzzy that this is one of Zariel's many games. An infamously cruel power to flood the consciousness of others with tortuous images and memories.
Nonetheless, the memory remains just as painful. She can feel the weight of her mother hanging off of her, clinging to her daughter as desperately as she clung to consciousness. Hears her father begging the healer to treat his wife, the mother of his only child, telling an unfeeling face that they had the coin— more than enough.
Foulbloods, the healer called them, just like the ones before. No amount of coin could convince them to lay a hand on devils tainted by Zariel's blood.
Then, like a strong wind blows the dead leaves off a tree, the memory leaves her.
"After your mother, then?"
Karlach feels her face burn hot with rage. It's Zariel's fault that her mother couldn't be treated, that she worked herself into the grave cleaning up after the very same people that hated the horns on her head. What she doesn't understand is why she's here, why Gortash had banished her to the Hells themselves.
The weight of the betrayal finally settles onto Karlach's shoulders, and she's struck with the abrupt urge to cry.
“I’ll kill him,” she says mostly to herself.
The embers in Zariel's eyes seem to burn brighter. They remind Karlach of the fire that burns in her own irises so much it makes her sick. She makes a move for the exit.
Springing off the table, she plans to duck under the impossible size of Zariel's cursed wings and bound up the steps. It doesn't matter what awaits her outside, if there's even a way out, only that she tries while she still can.
She doesn't get very far. Zariel moves fast, faster than any mortal being could hope to see. She grabs Karlach by the back of the neck with her remaining hand, palm glowing a sickly green with unfamiliar magic.
The dread that the archduchess' presence brought with it paled in comparison to what she delivered unto Karlach. Pure misery seeps into every muscle, down to the bone, quickly turning into agony. Every limb feels as if it were rotting off, decaying at a supernatural speed. Karlach cries out, knees failing beneath her.
"I will not tolerate insolence. You have potential: do not squander it.”
Then, Zariel lets go, and the pain disappears as if it’d never been there at all.
“Why?” Karlach shouts, thinking of more than just the devil in front of her. She recalls the years spent at Enver’s side, protecting him from more than a few political rivals. He’d saved her in his own way, with not just a paycheck but a purpose. She always thought she’d be nothing without him, just another orphaned tiefling on the streets of Baldur’s Gate— but what is she now? A fool doomed to die in the Hells? Another soul sold to a devil?
And more importantly: what did he get in return?
A dozen spectral hands, crimson as fresh blood, emerge from the floor and drag Karlach off her feet. They carry her like a funeral procession back to the metal slab while Zariel follows in lockstep, flames of her eyes dancing. Hands trapping her atop the slab, Karlach squirms uselessly away from Zariel’s singular hand when it reaches toward her.
The palm emits a great, impossible heat that burns away the cotton of her shirt. She melts a perfect circle into the material, exposing the expanse of Karlach’s heaving chest.
The hand hovers still. Karlach feels her skin start to burn, same as the cotton, and screams.
Just as the fire grows too agonizing, on the cusp of becoming so painful it would drive her unconscious, the archduchess’ hand begins to glow with profane magic. The pallid flesh grows translucent, nearly see through before it moves again.
What happens doesn’t make any sort of sense. Not by any standard outside the Hells. Zariel, archduchess of all things blood and demonic and war, reaches into Karlach’s chest. Presses inside, past her ribcage as if it were water. Karlach can feel her grip, flesh cold and dead underneath the heat; no idea that it’s the last time she’ll ever experience cold.
Like a raptor’s talons, Zariel’s fingers close around Karlach’s pounding heart. The organ spasms under the pressure in a way that makes her feel like she’s burning alive from the inside. She watches in rapt horror, expecting to die. Instead, Zariel retracts her wicked hand. In one smooth motion she plucks Karlach’s heart out of her chest like one would a fruit from a free.
Her vision, mercifully, grows dark.