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The door at the low base of Moonrise Towers creaks open with a rusty whine. Hector leans heavily against the doorframe and surveys the dock that lines the tower's east side, and his weary expression brightens as soon as he spots Karlach.
“There you are!” With visible effort, he levers himself upright again and limps slowly down the stairs towards her. “I was looking all over for you.”
“Hey, Soldier.” Karlach shakes herself out of her thoughts and looks up, a smile automatically sliding onto her lips as well. “Come to join the party?”
She's slumped on a battered crate, her back against the precarious stack of barrels behind her. Nearby, four of the young tiefling children -- Ide, Mirkon, and Umi, with Mattis of course leading the pack -- are clambering about on a battered boat tied to the pier. It's not much of a party, especially given she feels like a herd of rothe recently ran her over and took a shit while they were doing it, but it’s certainly more cheerful than the tower's corpse-strewn innards. The shadowy air is cut with the children’s soft laughter; after the bloody events of the day, the sound feels incongruous, dreamlike.
Brave little fuckers, she thinks with quiet admiration. No way they don't know all the terrible shit that went down here tonight. But they're still hanging on.
We're all still hanging on…
“A party, hm?” Hector comes to a halt next to her, resting a hand on her shoulder. His lips twitch with amusement at the sight of her four unexpected charges. “Actually, I was hoping to come collect you so we could go to bed.”
She clicks her tongue playfully, peering up at him with half-lidded eyes. “To bed? Saer Carlisle, are you trying to seduce me?”
“Am I-- oh. Ah, no.” He blushes, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wish. Tragically, I’m being entirely literal; I’m so exhausted I could fall over right here.”
I bet. You look worse than I feel - and no fucking wonder, she thinks ruefully. Nearly fifteen hectic, bloodsoaked hours have elapsed since they left camp, with Hec leading the charge every step of the way. Battle after battle, each tougher than the last, culminating in a final revelatory showdown with Ketheric Thorm that felt like some sort of fucking apocalypse. It’s a wonder any of them can even see straight.
“C’mere, you. Fall over, then,” she says gently, and extends her arms towards him.
With a very dramatic groan and no hesitation whatsoever, he lets himself pitch gratefully into her embrace. “Oof.” She grunts as his weight hits her; shifting her weight on the crates, she settles him into her lap, his head nestled against her shoulder. “There we go.” At once, everything feels just a little warmer, a little less bleak. She can feel him relax too as her arms close around him.
“Ah,” he mumbles, turning his face into her neck. “That's better.”
“I’ve got you.” She rests her cheek against his - very carefully. “Gods, we do look a mess…”
It’s a miracle (mostly attributable to Shadowheart) that all of them made it out of the battle with Myrkul with all their limbs, but plenty of less life-threatening damage lingers untreated. Karlach herself has one shoulder wrapped with a bloody bandage where the god’s avatar slashed her, and Hector's face and arms are mottled with deep, angry bruises. And, worst of all somehow, they’re all still covered in the slimy mucus that lined the pathway down into Moonrise’s godsawful basement.
She makes an experimental attempt to run her fingers through his hair, but only succeeds in making it stick up in stiff, congealed spikes. “There. New style for you,” she says teasingly. Turning her head, she presses a kiss very gently against his jaw where the bruising is darkest, and hears him sigh contentedly.
A burst of giggles sounds at once from further down the dock. The kids have stopped playing and are watching the public display of affection with gleefully disgusted amusement. “Ewwww!” Mattis crows teasingly, hands around his mouth for extra volume.
“Ew yourself, kid,” Karlach returns, sticking her tongue out at him. “One day you’ll grow up and think this sort of thing’s fucking amazing.”
“Nuh-uh.” He rolls his eyes. “Kissing’s gross .”
Hector laughs, a soft snorting sound muffled into her neck. “What’s with the peanut gallery?” he asks.
Karlach shrugs. “The whole crowd came over from Last Light once the fighting stopped,” she explains. Her fingers drift absently over his shoulders and back, lingering carefully on a new scar where his robes are ripped under his shoulderblade. “Way I heard it, Isobel was off like a shot as soon as she heard Aylin was here, and none of the others wanted to hang around there without her. Not that I blame them.”
She glances at the kids. Mattis has already lost interest in heckling her and is now directing the others to dig through some of the crates at the end of the dock, picking out viable snacks from the mostly rotten provisions. “Alfira was trying to keep this bunch in line and looked about run off her feet, so I told her I’d keep an eye on them for a bit.”
“That was kind of you, given that you are also run off your feet,” Hector points out with a slight smile. He lifts his head to nose against her cheek gently.
She shrugs, and her grin fades. “I gotta be honest, Hec. I needed something to keep my mind occupied while you finished hashing shit out with Jaheira,” she says quietly. “If I start thinking too much about everything we saw down below - about Gortash - I’ll turn into a fucking candle out here.”
He frowns, takes her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Come morning,” he says softly, “we'll start making a new plan. We'll get to the city and we'll find him. I prom--”
“Oh, whoa, look at that!”
Hector's earnest reassurance is cut off by an excited cry from Mattis. Karlach looks up, startled, and sees the tiefling kids clustered around a particularly large crate at the end of the dock. As she watches, Mirkon and Umi finish wrestling the lid off, revealing rows and rows of very familiar-looking bottles.
“Oh, shit. Oy - don’t touch those!” She stands up so fast that Hector falls off her lap and onto his rear with a yelp.
Closing the distance with a few rapid strides, she looks down into the crate and quickly confirms what she thought from a distance. It’s an enormous box full of tadpole specimens - at least fifty bottles, all carefully preserved. The whole crate itself seems to wriggle unpleasantly with the movement of all its occupants.
“Holy fuck,” she mumbles.
Mattis peers into the box with great interest. “Cool!” he says brightly, and picks up one of the bottles, tossing it from hand to hand to feel its weight.
“Hey,” Karlach says firmly. “Put that down, yeah? It's dangerous.”
He grins up at her mischievously. “I dunno,” he says. “New trinket for the shop, maybe?”
Karlach groans. “Put it back, kid. Last thing we need is you getting wormed to the Hells and back.”
She reaches out to take the bottle from him, but he laughs and darts back out of reach, lobbing it underhand to Ide, who clutches it obediently to her chest.
“Mattis.” Karlach tries for a more imperious tone this time, folding her arms across her chest to show she means business. “Put it back.”
He picks up another bottle and grins, unintimidated. “Or what?”
“Or I'll dunk you in the fucking river, that's what!” she says, but that only makes him laugh harder.
“Children.” Hector has come up next to her, and his voice is grave - the tone Karlach calls Extra Serious Monk, the one he cultivated for addressing unruly novitiates in the monastery. “Karlach is right - you're playing with something very dangerous.”
Mattis juts his jaw out. “Everyone's always saying stuff is too dangerous for us,” he points out stubbornly. “But we made it this far, didn't we?”
Privately, Karlach has to admit the kid has a point. Everything since Elturel has been a nonstop horror show for the rapidly dwindling group of tieflings, and these children have witnessed it all. They’ve been stripped from their homes, swallowed up by the hells and spat back out again. They’re angry about what happened to Mol, they’re stuck in a land of endless dark, and they’re seeing a war play out on a scale that doesn’t bear thinking about. She can't exactly blame them for feeling reckless and invincible - even more so than the average eight-year-old.
But also - this is a box of fucking tadpoles and they need to stop messing with it.
“Be that as it may,” Hector says placidly, “you're being very irresponsible right now.” She can hear his exhaustion layered through the calm words, an unspoken desperation. Please, no more. Not tonight.
Mattis squints at him and then snickers. “Yeah, well - your hair looks stupid,” he says, which elicits a round of giggles from the other children at this devastating rejoinder.
Hector blinks, then frowns; his patient demeanor is starting to show signs of cracking. “Mattis--” he begins.
“Hey!” Karlach says abruptly, before this gets completely out of hand. “You kids ever see a smokepowder explosion?”
This question is so surprising that everyone (including Hector) stops and blinks at her. “Huh?” Mattis asks.
“Well.” Karlach cocks her head to the side, then grins slowly. “I'll trade you. You put all the worms back, and I'll show you what it looks like to blow that box sky high.”
Mattis considers this negotiated offer with the appropriate gravity of a businessman. Then he nods very seriously and his eyes glint with excitement. “Cool!”
Between them, Hector and Karlach have six smokepowder bombs in their packs. With the kids’ help, they arrange them carefully around the crate and its ugly cargo, spaced at even intervals. Karlach lets Mattis place the final bomb carefully amid the bottles-- and she sees a flash of glass into his pocket as he starts to step back.
“Mattis!”
“Aw.” He pulls a mock-aggrieved face at her, thoroughly unashamed at being caught, and returns the bottle to the pile. “Can’t blame a kid for trying.”
“I really am going to dunk you in the river,” she says.
“Gotta catch me first.” He lounges against one of the dock pillars and smirks. “So how do we light it up?”
Her eyebrows knit together in deep thought for a moment. “Well. Hec has a couple of spells he could use, I suppose - but he's pretty worn out. Besides - much more fun to do it the old-fashioned way.”
The inside of the Tower still stinks terribly of blood and death. Karlach shepherds the kids as rapidly as possible through the main entryway, which is piled high with bodies, and on towards the back stairwell to the upper floors.
Ketheric’s office upstairs is, mercifully, much less gory. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have been touched by the fighting much at all. Still, there’s something oddly unsettling about the place, a feeling that its master is still staring out of the walls at any intruders, even though his body lies dead in the depths below the tower.
Karlach sets the kids to work searching for any useful supplies. Eventually Umi hits on what she's looking for, a long piece of string wrapping a pile of books next to the desk.
She holds it up for the kids’ approval. “What d’you think?”
Mirkon squints curiously. “What’s it for?”
“A fuse!” She ruffles the boy’s hair gently. “Light up one end and it burns all the way down to the other and sets the bomb off. And then that bomb sets off the next bomb, and that sets off the next. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boooooooom…”
“BOOM,” Mirkon finishes with a giggle.
“Did you do this in Avernus?” Ide asks curiously, trotting at Karlach’s side as they start back down the stairs again. “We heard lots of stories about you. Fighting demons ‘n all.”
Karlach rubs her jaw thoughtfully. “I was mostly more up close and personal. But I did make a bomb once. Demon we were chasing had retreated to a cave in the mountains and walled itself in, and we weren’t gonna let that stand. We cobbled together some blasting powder sealed in infernal iron casings and lit that fucker up by redirecting a lava flow across it. Noise about blew my ears out, chunks of rock flying wherever you please; it was a madhouse.”
“Did you kill the demon?” Umi asks, eyes wide.
“Not with the bomb - that was just so I could get at them. But afterwards, yeah.”
“Wow.” The kids look up at her admiringly.
It's strange. Her memories of Avernus are of a horrible wasteland, a prison where she was trapped without hope of escape or redemption. But these kids look up to her with eager eyes and see a hero from an adventure tale, powerful and dramatic. It makes a flicker of warmth go through her that for once has nothing to do with the infernal engine.
“Is all well, Karlach?” Jaheira asks as they re-emerge from the stairwell. “The children are all right?”
“All well, High Harper,” Karlach answers with a grave salute. “We're on a mission at present, top secret, gathering supplies to address a tactical threat on the docks.” She winks at the older woman. Next to her, the kids all nod very seriously, and Umi does his best to mimic Karlach's salute with one small fist pressed to his chest.
“I see.” Jaheira's lips twitch.
“We're going to make a bomb!” Mirkon explains eagerly.
Jaheira raises one eyebrow slowly. “I… see,” she repeats, now eyeing Karlach with considerably more skepticism.
Karlach grins crookedly. “Smokepowder for a crate of worms out there,” she explains. “You telling me, ma'am, that there's not plenty of this place you'd like to see go sky-high?”
“I will not argue with that, but take care that you too do not go sky-high,” Jaheira says dryly. “There is far too much fighting ahead yet. And you are all far too valuable to lose.”
The comment makes Karlach do a double-take in spite of herself. Of course, it’s meant mostly for the kids, but Jaheira is clearly directing it towards Karlach as well, and coming from this woman she so strongly idolizes, it gives her pause. She feels another wave of deep, comforting warmth go through her, driving back some of the weary anger and despair of the last few hours.
That’s something we never got in Avernus. Coming down from a fight and realizing afterwards that it meant something, what you fought for. And that someone cares that you lived to be ready for the next one.
She smiles widely. “You got it, ma'am.”
Hector stands guard next to the crate, staring down at the worms as if ready for them to leap from their bottles and attack. At the sound of Karlach's footsteps, he looks up; a slight, somewhat sad smile touches his lips as he watches her approach.
“Why the long face, Soldier?” she asks.
His eyes flick over her, then to the kids around her, and then he shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says mildly. “Just a mess of thoughts, and too tired to make sense of them. Are we ready for the fireworks?”
“Think so.” She holds up their prize from Ketheric’s office. “Mattis, tie one end of this to one of the charges. Careful now.”
Mattis takes one end of the string and scampers past Hector. “Like this?” His lips are pursed in deep concentration as he ties a deft knot around the center of one of the squat little smokepowder bombs.
“Perfect,” says Hector dryly. “Now put the bottle back.”
Mattis groans dramatically and removes the worm flask from his pocket again, putting it back into the crate. “You're no fun, Hec.”
“So I've often been told.”
Karlach snorts. “Whoever said that clearly hasn't tried to have proper fun with you,” she says teasingly. “All right, everyone far back now. I'm not joking. Don't make me regret this by having to pick up pieces of you.”
For once, none of the kids object; they all back up behind her and Hector at the base of the tower. She leans over and snaps a flare of fire onto her fingertips; it catches easily against the string which begins to burn down rapidly.
“Here we go,” Karlach says with satisfaction, watching the little flicker of fire make its way towards its target. “Get fucked, you little wormy bastards.”
“Yeah!” Umi's voice pipes up behind her. “Get fucked--”
BOOM.
The explosion goes off like a cannon shot. A gout of flame erupts around the crate, shattering it apart in a cascade of wood and glass and slime, and the dock under it cracks in half. At her side, Hector staggers and cries out, grabbing onto her arm to keep from collapsing to his knees, and Karlach feels an unexpected wrenching of pain in her own skull as her tadpole screams in sympathetic agony at the deaths of its fellows.
Good. Scream all you want , she thinks, gripping onto Hector's hand and gritting her teeth through the pain with a sort of vindictive satisfaction. No friends for you, you slimy little son of a bitch. You're alone, and I'm not, and that's why we're going to fucking win.
There's a short silence broken by the sound of fragments of wood splashing into the water around the dock. Then the kids burst into a round of cheering, whoops and hollers that split the dark eternal night around them. Mattis's voice rises above the rest, triumphant as a warrior after battle.
“That was so cool!”