Honō no kokyū - Ichi no kata: Shiranui🔥

“Did you think I would not see? Did you think I would not know what you were trying to do?”

The voice came from around him, within him, everywhere, the rumbling of a volcano and the howling of the icy winds of Cania. Dangling helplessly from the archdevil’s grip, blood blinding him and choking him and dripping from more wounds to count, Raphael had a distinct feeling he wouldn't recover from that slip up. But he could yet try, he had to: this was not supposed to be his final act. So he coughed up the blood clogging his throat, and tried to speak. His voice came out hoarser than he’d have liked, but it would have to do. 

“My liege Lor--”

The grip around his leg tightened, and words turned into a wordless scream as broken shards of bone shrieked against one another. Raphael convulsed, choking and screaming, wings beating uselessly - or trying to, with one wing barely hanging onto his body through scraps of muscle. Then Mephistopheles reached up, and tore it off entirely himself. Steaming blood rushed forth, and Raphael screamed again. 

“My Lord--” he managed, but more steaming blood was filling his mouth, and he could only cough, shattered ribs turning his coughs into a symphony of pain. 

“Your liege lord, yes. Yet you’d try to take the Crown for yourself, and use it against me.”

“I would have-- gifted it to you--”

A roar, and Raphael knew the lie had been a mistake.

“You think you can lie to me? To the father of lies?”

The grip around his mangled leg was gone and he fell, down toward Mephistopheles' maw, towards teeth as long as his arm and made to crush, to annihilate. He tried to slow his fall, to teleport somewhere else - anywhere else - but his powers eluded him, and the only thing to stop his fall was Mephistopheles himself. With a laugh, he caught him with a hand around the waist mere inches from his teeth. He clenched his fist, snapping his spine and crushing something that may have been vital, once, when it was working. Raphael could barely let out a strangled noise.

“I will devour you, and you deserve nothing less. But I will not make it this quick, for your treachery and for the shame you brought to my court. My blood, bested by mortals!”

Raphael instinctively grasped the hand clenched around him; his claws wouldn't even break his sire’s skin. He still tried to pry that grip open, blinking blood away to meet the rubies of malice that were Mephistopheles’ eyes.

“Father,” he choked out. “Please.”

A laugh, low and rumbling. “How he begs, the halfbreed. Sweeter words than any of the tripe you ever uttered. Let me hear more,” he said, and tore off the other wing.

***

“You know, love, just once I’d like to see you not stopping to read every single book we find in every single crate abandoned in the middle of the woods. Or… to open every single crate we find abandoned in caves in the middle of the woods, come to think of it. All these crates have no business being in caves in the middle of the woods. That’s how a mimic is going to get you someday.”

Astarion’s long-suffering sigh made Durge - a silly placeholder name Gale had come up with in jest at the campfire a while ago, yet it had grown on them - smile faintly, but they did not look up from the book. It looked old, pretty close to crumbling to dust, but they could tell the cover had been quite elaborate once. Squinting in the light of the torch, they could barely make out the worn-out title. 

Mother of Flames, it read. Interesting. Something about dragonborns, perhaps?

“It’s a good thing, then,” they muttered, opening the book, “that my immortal lover is here to protect me from mimics with his amazing perception.”

“Mph. Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“... Since when?”

“Well, fine, it is absolutely working. Don’t get too smug about it.”

“When do I ever,” Durge replied, smugly. Considering that they had defeated a Netherbrain only a few short months earlier, they felt they had gained themself the right to be smug. 

“You’re worse than Gale, both with books and the absolutely unwarranted smugness. See if I let you in my bedroll today,” Astarion muttered, but it was an empty threat and they both knew it. Even when absolutely nothing beyond mutual holding happened, Astarion had grown to enjoy the almost feverish warmth of the dragonborn’s skin against his. “Anyway, this place is as damp as it gets. If we’re to camp here for the day, I’ll get a fire started.”

Outside the cave, dawn was breaking. As they could only travel at night, Durge often took advantage of it to stand a little in the sun before retreating back to camp with Astarion, but this time they were too taken by the book - which was not at all about dragonborns after all. It was rather short, chronicling the life of a minor human lord in the last days of the Calimshan empire. But the man’s name had been lost to history - and soon enough, the focus shifted on his wife.

… As the collapsing empire was torn in city states following the Year of Clutching Dusk, the Tethyrian clan went to war to claim its independence, and the lord lent his sword. Alone in their small fort, his wife was tormented by visions of her husband’s violent demise in war, one dream of blood after the other. Driven half-mad with terror, desperate to avert this fate, she turned to occult means and soon enough, she summoned not just any devil, but an archdevil.

Durge lifted a scaly eyebrow, and turned a yellowed page as delicately as they could manage. They could already tell this tale was going to be a sorry one; nothing good ever came from dealing with devils, after all - with archdevils least of all. 

They were not wrong. 

The archdevil promised the woman he’d ensure her husband would survive the war and return home unscathed - ‘But,’ he told her, ‘your firstborn child will be mine.’

The desperation of faithful love, the human folly of believing you can outwit a devil! The unfortunate woman signed the deal believing it would be null and void; for her husband was past his prime, and believed to be barren, as both his doomed first marriage and their own union had been childless.

She signed her name, lost to the ages, thinking there would never be any firstborn to give, and she was lost. For what the archdevil’s careful wording hid was the true nature of his demand: that he beget his spawn on her. Bound by contract, fearful for her husband’s life, she could not avert that fate.

Ah, of course. Very archdevil, that. The distinct feeling that the story would end in tragedy was now a certainty: no human woman ever survived the birth of a cambion… and this tale was no exception.

On the very same day the lord returned unscathed from war, the devilish spawn came forth into our world in blood and flames. The unfortunate man returned to a dying wife and a horned monstrosity shrieking on the charred, bloody mattress. He drew his blade to kill it, but his wife stayed his hand with the last of her strength. Whether it was for fear of what may become of him should he harm the child of an archdevil, or out of misplaced affection for her ill-begotten offspring, no one knows. All that is known is that she died shortly thereafter, leaving a broken body in the arms of a broken man.

Both their names have been forgotten, but she would be remembered for a time in Tethyr as the Mother of Flames. As for the devil’s spawn, what became of it is also lost to time. Some said it was killed, or locked away in a dungeon, or sent someplace far away; others yet believe his most unholy father came to claim it when it came of age, and took it to the Hells with him. Perhaps only the archdevil who sired the creature knows whether any of these claims are true, or if the entire sorry tale is nothing but legend, seeping into ancient Tethyrian history.

“... There was a depressing ending, right? You get that look when it’s a depressing ending.”

Durge looked up to see the camp was pretty much ready, the fire crackling and food out, along with a bottle of blood for Astarion. Only one bedroll out, incidentally. They nodded, putting the book away. “Quite. Thank you for setting camp - I’ll dismantle it come evening.”

A grin. “Oh, I hope you’ll do a lot more than dismantle the camp,” Astarion said, all smoothness and charm, the bottle of blood already in hand; Durge mentally estimated that the odds of Astarion actually falling asleep on them the second they were in the bedroll were in the vicinity of eight out of ten. 

Of course, they were correct.

Once they were settled, Astarion asleep against their chest, Durge spent some time looking into the fire. Perhaps the book had affected more than they thought, because soon enough they were thinking back of their brief visit to Avernus, in the House of Hope… and about Raphael. 

He was a devil who played games with mortal souls, so it wasn’t like Durge was particularly pained by the way things had turned out. On the other hand, he had dealt with them as fairly as a devil could be expected to, and they did steal from his home. It could not be helped - only a fool would have let him have the Crown for himself - but it was not something Durge had enjoyed, either. That Raphael would not appreciate being double-crossed was a given. It just had to be done.

They’d thought they had killed him then, in the House of Hope. Later, when they’d seen him in the Orb of Infernal Envisioning - broken and bloody, dangling above the maw of Mephistopheles - they’d assumed the archdevil would finish him any moment, and averted their gaze. 

Except that when they returned a week later, to buy supplies before they set off with Astarion for what he’d dubbed with some pomp their ‘quest for daylight’, they had looked again... and they had seen the same thing. Raphael, reduced to a broken and bloody mess, dangling above Mephistopheles’ maw like not a moment had passed. They’d asked Helsik whether the orb showed current events, the past, or the future; she had looked back and shrugged.

“The Orb shows you what is fitting for you to see,” she had said, and that was that. 

And that, Love, was that. 

The rhyme Raphael had been so fond of surfaced from the back of Durge’s mind just as they were about to fall asleep. But they were tired, Astarion’s body against them a pleasant weight, and sleep claimed them before they could spare the devil another thought.

They used to be scared of falling asleep, but not anymore. With the Urge gone, their dreams were no longer of blood and guts and screams. Nothing more than the occasional nightmare, either way, and no nightmare would come that night. When they fell asleep now, they did not dream of blood. 

But they did dream of fire.

***

Raphael did not know how long he’d been there. 

Time in Cania flew at Mephistopheles’ pleasure, and his pleasure was a fickle thing. It could have been days, or months, or years since he’d awakened in his father’s grip. He did not know. All he knew was that sooner or later, the game would end and so would he. At this point, many would think it a mercy.

After tearing off his wings, he’d snapped his horns like twigs between thumb and forefinger. Something else had been torn from him, something intangible and yet fundamental, leaving behind only his weakened human form. A form that was now in only scraps of clothing and kneeling in a cell, shackled to the ceiling, a scold's bridle strapped to his head holding a spike through his tongue. His last weapon, made silent.

The wardens outside his cell were, however, far from silent. 

“Lord Mephistopheles is going to devour him at last, I hear.”

“Tonight?”

“-- at the feast, as an example--”

“-- can’t wait--”

“-- cambion like us, but he thought he was all that--”

Down came the claw, Raphael enough, and he could have laughed if not for the pain any movement brought him. He dropped his head instead, listening to the fading voice of wardens and the clinking of his own chains. It spoke volumes of how powerless he was now, that no magic was required to keep him shackled: only old, rusted chains. One last insult before the grand finale, and not the kind of finale he’d envisioned.

Here in Mephistar, he was the mouse who’d thought he could outfox the cat.

When the door of his cell opened, he didn’t look up at first. He only closed his eyes and wondered if he’d be able to hold it together when the moment came - if he could at least go to his destruction with some remnants of dignity intact. It took him a few moments to realize something was not quite right, that the steps did not sound like those of a warden. They were too light, too careful, too secretive. He blinked his eyes open when someone grasped his chin and tilted his face up. 

It was indeed not a warden. Before him was a human woman with dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and a nose that had clearly been broken and healed badly. Either someone was playing an odd trick on him, or this was one of his lord father’s Eternal Debtors. 

“I need you to listen. There isn’t much time,” the woman said, paying no mind to his obvious confusion. “Are you listening? Do you understand me?”

Too taken aback to protest at being spoken to in such a way by anyone’s Eternal Debtor - and held back from doing so by the inconvenient spike through his tongue either way - Raphael found himself nodding. The woman let go of his chin, and quickly put something at one of his fingers. Raphael turned to see a small unassuming ring shimmer for a moment around his finger before becoming invisible - but it was still there. He could still feel the cool metal band even though his hands had gone mostly numb, the cuffs biting deep into his wrists. 

“There is some power in this ring. Not much, but just enough. When you use it, it will allow you to switch places with somebody who’s wearing the matching one. Don’t use it now. Listen to me,” the Eternal Debtor added, and crouched in front of him. Dark brown eyes found his own, and held. “Mephistopheles cannot know you escaped until you’re well away from Mephistar. He and his entire court must think he devoured you, so you need to use this ring at the right moment, as you fall into his maw. He will devour someone all right, and will think it’s you. It’s the only way out of here. Am I clear?”

Raphael had no idea what in the nine Hells was going on, and he was too savvy not to guess that if someone was truly looking to save him, there would be a debt for him to repay afterwards. Nobody - not in Cania, not in Avernus, not in any of the Hells - would simply help someone without gaining something else in exchange. Who would want him alive, and out of there? What had they promised this Eternal Debtor, and what would they expect of him?

Vexing questions, but as had been the case with the many mortals who had taken his deals, the prospect of salvation was too enticing to pause too long and consider other consequences. He really did not like that reversal of roles, but he found the prospect of being devoured by Mephistopheles even less alluring. If he survived it, he could find a way to make things work out in his favor. If he was devoured… well, his story would end there with a less than impressive final act. 

The freedom of choosing the only option left. 

He used that line often. Ironic. He’d never hated irony more.

Unable to voice any of his thoughts, Raphael looked back at the human and nodded. She stared back at him in silence for a few moments, almost as if looking for something on his face , but it didn’t last long. She finally pulled back, and stood. 

“Use it too soon, and they’ll notice the trick. Wait too long, and you’re as good as dead. No pressure, but you absolutely must get the timing right.”

Raphael glared, hoping to convey his thoughts - tell me something I don’t know - through his eyes alone, but she was already turning to the door of the cell. She checked to ensure the route was clear, looked back at him one last time and then she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her. She left him with far more questions than answers, and the first sliver of hope he’d had since he’d been taken down in his own house.

***

“Hope you don’t mind traveling at night too much, Halsin.”

“Oh, not at all. Nature shows a particular side of its beauty at night. Softer, more--”

“Gods, is there a way to shut you up about nature for five minutes?”

“There is indeed a way to shut me up about anything for more than five minutes, Astarion. You know it very well. Made use of it, even.”

“I’d threaten to do it again, if I didn’t know you’d love it.”

“How could I not? Nature made your body into a masterpiece.”

“... You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

As much as Durge had missed traveling with all their companions - what a surprise it had been, getting to see all of them again the previous night! - they found they’d particularly missed Halsin’s company. Accepting his invitation to accompany him back at the Last Light Inn, to see the cursed lands healed, had taken no thought at all. When those two were not bickering, and when all three of them were not making extensive use of their bedrolls, they talked about their other companions and how well they were doing for themselves. 

Durge had little doubt that Gale would do well once the orb was out of his chest, or that Shadowheart would be perfectly capable of looking after herself as she began her journey to learn, once again, who she was meant to be. They were not surprised, either, to know Lae’zel was leading the githyanki to battle against the lich queen as fiercely as ever. 

But Wyll and Karlach… they were a surprise, and the most pleasant one they could imagine. Durge had hoped they would do all right together, even in Avernus, but not knowing it for sure ate at them sometimes. Seeing them whole and well, and even hopeful they could find a way to fix Karlach’s heart to the point she could leave Avernus again - and permanently - had relieved them beyond words.

If there was indeed a way for that heart to be fixed, they were certain they’d find it, as they were certain that whatever devil Mizora wanted Wyll to kill wouldn’t be a challenge. And if it was… well, Durge would be more than happy to lend a hand.

They had killed a devil once before already, anyway.

***

When wardens took Raphael to his father’s grand hall that evening, they didn’t bother to keep him in chains. He was weak, stuck in his human form, and powerless; his legs and spine were broken, as were several of his ribs, and he suspected at least one lung had been punctured.

The chains would give at least the semblance of a devil who could yet put up a fight, be any sort of threat, and his esteemed father clearly saw fit not to give him even that. Let him be dragged, broken and helpless, the rags still clinging to his frame doing nothing to hide his wounds. The only thing they left on was the scold’s bridle, the spike through his tongue. At least his words, Raphael told himself with something close enough to real conviction, were something Mephistopheles feared enough to keep at bay.

The hall was crowded, celebrations loud as always, but the crowd fell silent the instant Raphael was pushed onto the floor, before the pit where his father stood, ever looming and shrouded in flames. Rumbling laughter, and the massive hand was around him again, holding, squeezing, turning his ribs into shards of agony as it lifted him up in the air. An example for all to see. 

“Behold,” archdevil Mephistopheles announced to gales of laughter, “Raphael, the cambion who thought he’d rule the Hells.”

Unable to breathe, knowing full well that he may break if he allowed himself to look down at the jeering faces or at his own father’s eyes, Raphael closed his eyes against the pain and waited. He focused, he had to focus. Not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late. It was his only chance to survive, given that the ring did what it was supposed to.

It may as well have been a jab at his expenses, a worthless trinket to make him think he could save himself after all, get his hopes up for nothing. It was something he may appreciate, and quite a lot, when not done at his expenses.

“All you ever had I gave you, ungrateful wretch, and yet you wanted what is mine,” Mephistopheles thundered. Like wanting more was not at the core of every devil, like hungering for anything beyond their reach was not in their very nature, including his own. Like he, in his place, would not have done the same, coveted the same things. “A waste of my seed if there ever was one. I shall waste no more words on you. Let everyone see what becomes of those who set their sights too high.”

Raphael was lifted up in the air, and he finally opened his eyes. Beneath him, his father’s maw opened up like an abyss, all jagged teeth and churning flame. His hand opened, and Raphael fell. Through the sheer terror of it all, he forced his mind to keep working.

Wait. Wait. Wait. 

He almost waited too long, and landed on Mephistopheles’ tongue with a groan, every broken bone in his body crying out in protest. Still, he forced himself to move; a mere instant before the teeth snapped shut above him, he lifted up his hand. The ring shimmered and that, Love, was that. 

***

“Ah, here you are, my little brat. I’m almost happy to see you. Your unfortunate replacement was getting so very tedious, I couldn’t have kept entertaining him for much longer. He was getting really stupid ideas about the ring I gave him.”

Raphael was almost adorable, really, looking up at them with wide eyes from the middle of Haarlep’s bed. A very large bed, which had seen plenty of use since their return to Cania following Raphael’s downfall. Very often while Haarlep wore Raphael’s likeness, as they were doing right now. Come to think of it, he’d probably felt that, in whatever dungeon he’d been in. 

Ah well. At least it must have been a pleasant distraction from… everything else, really. 

“Not that I wouldn’t love to indulge you, but we have little time as is,” Haarlep spoke again, and reached to undo the straps of the scold’s bridle around Raphael’s head. They pulled it away as gently as they could manage, but removing a spike from one’s tongue had to be rather painful, going by the groan that left Raphael. 

And by the mouthful of blood he promptly spat on Haarleps nice sheets. Pretty rude, that, but nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up once they got Raphael out of there. Sooner rather than later.

“Haarlep,” Raphael rasped. It was likely the first thing he was able to say in months, and Haarlep couldn’t say they weren’t flattered. Or maybe he’d just said ‘help’. Hard to tell, with a hole in his tongue and all the blood in his mouth. “What-- where--?”

“Still in Mephistar, but not for long. Be a darling and sleep, why don’t you? You’ll make everything soooo much easier,” Haarlep replied, and pressed a hand over Raphael’s eyes. He tensed, but only for a moment: it took that short a time to make him fall into a slumber. He didn’t look peaceful in it, not the way he would after sharing a bed with them in less pressing circumstances, but it would have to do.

“Did it work? Is he here?”

Ah, that voice. Haarlep turned, and nodded at the human - an Eternal Debtor, one of the many - standing in the doorway. “It went without a single hitch, I’d say. Don’t you want to come in and say goodbye? After all, it’s been a while since you last--”

“I was in this to spite Mephistopheles, not out of any concern for him,” she cut him off. “Just get him out of the Hells and leave him someplace he may find a healer. I have done enough.”

“Fine, fine. If he wakes, should I tell him--”

“No. Not one word,” she snapped, and was gone before Haarlep could say anything. Ah, those bursts of temper. Highly unusual from an Eternal Debtor, yet so annoyingly familiar.

The incubus shrugged, and looked down at Raphael. The tatters that had once been his clothes would do nothing to protect him from the biting cold outside Mephistopheles’ palace, so they resorted to taking the sheets from their bed and wrapping them around him. Once satisfied his former master wouldn’t be turned into an icicle the moment they were outside, Haarlep picked him up - a hiss of pain, but he did not awaken - before walking to the window. 

Across the windswept courtyard, there was a window that should have been left unlatched specifically for them. It led, Haarlep knew, to the room holding Mephistopheles’ outer portals. From there, they just had to pick one to get Raphael in the material plane. From that moment on his survival would be up to him, and to whatever mortals he encountered. 

It wasn’t much, but it gave him better odds than going down the gullet of an archdevil at least.

Haarlep opened the window, adjusted their grip on Raphael’s body, and took flight.

***