#although for less pleasant reasons than hector did :P

[blackjackkent]

In the end it's not hard to spot the devil Wyll is chasing. She kind of stands out.

The woman is crouched in a ball of flame covering her from head to foot. A deep, brutal moan of agony is audible where Rakha stands almost twenty feet away - just as clear as the heat radiating off her.

The flames aren't magic - not in the sense that Rakha has come to know the term thus far. They're coming from within the woman's body, and though they seem to be causing no small amount of pain, her flesh shows no sign of burn or blood.

Must be devil magic, then. Wyll said she was of Avernus...

Wyll is already moving, closing the distance between himself and the crouching woman, one hand going to the rapier on his back. "One horn," he snarls. It's very unlike his usual pleasant, slightly wry tone; Rakha is struck abruptly with the thought that this is what she must look like when the beast takes over. "The stink of Avernus. Advocatus diaboli."

The woman's head lifts with a sharp jerk. Rakha braces herself for battle, remembering the image in Wyll's head of Karlach covered in blood, a greataxe in one hand - but nothing happens. Instead, the woman just straightens, staggers back a step, and an incongruous expression of exhaustion and grief takes hold of her features.

"Well, I'll be godsdamned," she mutters ruefully. "The Blade of Frontiers. Thought I'd shaken you for good. That'll teach me to underestimate you."

In truth, Rakha had sort of been looking forward to this - a death that needed to happen even by Wyll's reckoning, and thus one into which she could metaphorically (or perhaps literally) sink her teeth into. Something that might sate the blood-hunger in her head longer than usual. Attack with purpose, and savor your kills, as Lae'zel advised.

But the devil is not striking first, or even seeming to want to fight back. Irritation spikes through Rakha's skull. Do not deny me this now.

"Tell me, monster," she growls coldly. "What's it like to know you're about to die?" On some level it is a taunt to rouse the moment to violence. On another, it is a serious question to feed the hunger in her mind.

The woman's head snaps back and her lips curl in a tight, harsh smile. "Touch me," she says, equally cold, "and you'll regret it."

And there it is, the pristine glorious edge of violence--

WHAM.

The impact of the tadpole connection is rougher than usual this time, and it sears and burns like a hot coal against her temple. She cries out, staggers back a step.

Narrator: A great heat roars through you - her heat, fiery as the hells. Then you're lost in visions of demonic armies as you tear through a landscape of fire and blood. The Blood War. You saw it from above as the nautiloid passed through Avernus. This woman was on the front line.

Rakha's heart is racing, her breath coming in quick sharp staggers. The imagery Wyll showed her was powerful enough, but this-- this was a sea of gore, an ocean of death. She barely has enough wherewithal to acknowledge the implications here, that Karlach has a tadpole, that she is another of those seeking the same answers as Rakha. The beast in her head roars eagerly, ravenous, demanding more, demanding to gorge itself on the vision.

"What was that?" she hears Karlach shout, fearful.

And Wyll, cold, implacable: "Evidence. Proof that you're a devil, a gladiator in the archdevil Zariel's army."

"I can explain!" Karlach protests frantically as Wyll's blade draws towards her throat. "But it's a whole situation. If you'd just hear me out--"

WHAM.

The impact this time is strong enough to knock all of them to their knees. Rakha hears a sharp githyanki curse from Lae'zel, and Wyll, next to her, begins to shake his head as if staving off some inner attack.

Narrator: Another vision. Karlach's blade raised, slicing through devils - Zariel's servants - as her eyes dart around, seeking escape. Her rage and desperation seep into you. She is a victim of the Blood War, not an agent of it.

Rakha shudders as the images continue to pour through her; it overwhelms the need for blood in her mind as killing this single soul never could. The beast feeds, and feeds, and feeds... and slowly quiets, settling into a sated calm, rumbling with satisfaction.

Her mind clears, her eyes open. She looks up to see Wyll looking baffled, lost... and utterly terrified.

"She's trying to trick us," he rasps out. "Don't believe her lies."

Karlach looks equally shaken; her hands are up in a defensive posture but she looks more ready to flee than fight. "You saw the truth," she says unsteadily. "I never wanted to serve Zariel. I was enlisted in her army against my will. Forced to fight." Her shoulders hunch slightly, as if with shame. "And fight I did," she admits. A slight pause. "When I saw an opportunity to get away, I took it. I'm finally home-- or near it, anyway."

There's a strange touch of joy under the fear there, just for a moment.

Rakha struggles for breath, for clarity. Wyll was wrong, that much is certain. This is no destructive mastermind; she's not sure it's even a devil. She's never met a devil, so she can't be positive, but the woman seems more like the tieflings of the grove, except for the strange flame curling around her and the pulsing light within her chest.

And she was on the nautiloid. She has a tadpole.

It has been enough to keep Rakha from killing Shadowheart, Gale, Wyll himself. Everyone else is fair game enough, should they stand in her way, but it is few enough who seem to have had the same experience that she did, of being marked for death within that terrible ship. Better to keep this woman alive, to use her in their search for answers.

Wyll, it seems, is not quite thinking along the same lines - or is desperately trying not to. "You served her," he snarls. "That's enough to damn you."

Rakha grunts, knocks her fist against Wyll's sword hand irritably. "Be practical," she mutters. "She's infected. Same as us. And powerful, too. We can use her as an ally."

Narrator: [PERCEPTION] Wyll catches his breath and his lips straighten. Sheer dread twists his face.

"You don't know what you're saying," he says, and there's a strange desperation in his words. "You're asking me to trust a devil."

Her irritation sparks again, though it catches less momentum with the beast currently so sated. "Gods, you're stubborn," she snaps. "Karlach's not a devil." She peers at him. There's that same evasion in his eyes, the hint of misdirection. "And you know it," she adds coldly. What aren't you telling me?

Karlach has been watching this argument unfold in silence, the defensive tension slowly sagging out of her shoulders. She doesn't look angry at being threatened; she just looks sad, and perhaps more for Wyll than for herself, for reasons Rakha can't quite parse.

"Listen to sense now," the tiefling finally puts in, surprisingly quietly. "I don't want this to end badly for either of us." She angles herself a little closer to Wyll. "You know monsters, right? Better than anyone. Look into my eyes. Can't you see I'm not what you think?"

It's such a frank, open entreaty that all of them are struck to silence for a moment. Rakha finds herself eyeing the woman with a new curiosity, and not just because of the mountain of other images of death that probably lurk uncovered in her head.

But she's even more curious about what's going through Wyll's mind. The man looks as if he's been sucker-punched in the gut.

"Shit," he mutters. "You really are no devil, are you? I've... I've been deceived..." Both the anger and sardonic good nature are gone from his tone. There is only a cold flatness. Despair.

Did he want so badly to kill this woman, just as Rakha did? Does he feel the same call for blood? No. It's something different, something deeper that Rakha doesn't understand.

Karlach slumps with visible relief, and she grins crookedly. "Thank the gods," she says, in a somewhat more jocular tone. "Thought I was going to have to take your head."

Astonishingly, in spite of that flat despair, Wyll still smiles in return. "You would've died in the attempt," he says, deliberately mild. "But there have been enough threats today."

"Truce then, hey?" Karlach says cautiously.

"Aye," Wyll agrees. "Truce."

Which, Rakha reflects, leaves pretty much every single thing about this whole situation completely unanswered. But the woman will be a new ally. There's something in that. Her head is clear enough, for now, to see the value in it.

The tiefling turns to look at Rakha and grins widely; with the immediate threat gone, her energy rises immediately. "I'm Karlach," she says. She sticks out a hand towards Rakha's midsection the same way Gale did. "But you already knew that. And you are...?"

Rakha gives her a mildly puzzled look, ignores the hand, but answers curtly, "I'm Rakha."

"Well met, soldier!" she says cheerfully, letting her hand fall back to her side when Rakha doesn't take it. "Nice to meet a friendly around here. It's been tough going so far. I may not be a devil, but I can put the Blade's reputation to work. How would you feel about helping me kill some evil bastards?"

The beast stirs sleepily. Rakha's eyebrows lift and her pupils dilate slightly.

Karlach is still talking, evidently not recognizing that she's already said the key word. "A little background, if your moral compass needs something to point at-- you already know I fought in the Blood War. I was good. *Really* good. Turns out I've got a knack for killing demons. That made me a valuable asset. Zariel, the archdevil herself, made me as her personal attack dog. I played along until I could get the fuck out of there, but devils don't like to lose their assets. Zariel liked it so little, she sent a bunch of goons, so-called 'Paladins of Tyr', to take me back. Problem is, I'm not going."

Rakha stopped listening about two sentences in and has merely been waiting to get a word in edgewise; the woman talks nearly as much as Gale. She does not care about this Zariel, or Karlach's history; none of it seems much likely to be relevant to her own problems.

But Karlach wants someone dead. And dead she can do.

"So you want me to kill the people hunting you?" she asks matter-of-factly.

If Karlach is surprised by the alacrity of her response, she doesn't show it, just grins. "Don't worry. I'll lead the charge," she says casually. "But I could use your help. There's a lot of them and only one of me. After that, we can team up. Take Faerun by the short hairs. Sound good?"

Rakha blinks vaguely at the unfamiliar idiom, but she can get the gist. She helps Karlach kill, and in return, Karlach helps them find the answers Rakha needs. She sees no downside.

"Let's do it," she agrees.