#haarlep

Haarlep ground their teeth, and strained against the weight pinning them down. Splintered masonry bit into their shoulder where the rubble had shifted again, warm blood seeping through dust. They forced another breath in anyway, dragged it through clenched teeth, and tried - again - to pull themself loose.

Rubble began to move, at last. But so did the marilith. 

Six blades hung loose for a moment, as if she were considering which expression of violence would be most efficient. The cambion - the last one - managed a single broken stagger backwards before she decided, almost lazily, that there was no further need for delay.

The first blade went through him cleanly. The second turned him into something less structurally coherent than he had been a moment ago. By the third, he was no longer standing at all; only falling in pieces that did not agree with each other about the direction of gravity. Haarlep exhaled a short, humourless laugh.

Well, there goes the last of the House’s competent help.

The laugh was a mistake, as it turned out. The eyes of three remaining hezrous and the marilith’s all turned to them. And while the marilith was certainly more pleasant to look at, the smile that opened her face promised a unique kind of unpleasantness.

“Ah,” she muttered, barely glancing to the side where her companion had fallen, body now reduced to black ichor. “It seems those pretty horns are mine to claim.”

For a moment, Haarlep wondered if it would make any difference whatsoever if they told her that the horns were borrowed, actually, and would become far less impressive the instant they were removed from their head. The next moment they came to the conclusion the information would not change her mind about killing them, and therefore they may as well save their breath. So they just gave one last push to the broken slab of marble keeping them pinned down, and tried to run.

They were barely able to take a single step when the marilith reacted, lighting-quick. There was no flourish, no warning beyond the tightening of her posture - six arms rebalancing in a single, coordinated snap of intent. The tail came in low and then up, less like a whip and more like a battering ram. Graceful as mariliths may look, there was nothing graceful in the result: heavy, dense muscle tearing through the air to hit Haarlep mid-motion with bone-shattering force.

And bone did, in fact, shatter. Several bones. At first Haarlep heard it more than they felt it as they were driven hard into what remained of the wall, stone cracking outward in a spidering fracture beneath them, breath ripped out in a sound that didn’t quite manage to become a scream. For a heartbeat they were simply pinned there; then the tail retreated enough for them to fall, caught them before they hit the ground, and the marilith’s spires tightened in a vise-like grip.

Agony came all at once, then. Ribs shattered, blood filled their mouth and chest cavity, something in their back snapped like a twig. Something in the shoulder too, already compromised from the collapse, had given way further; their right arm tingled, but they otherwise barely felt it. 

Other parts of them, however, screamed. The world narrowed to a ringing, white-edged blur. With a hoarse cry, they tried to slip away in the only way they still could - to gain at least a little more time.

Except they could not. For the first time, the Ethereal Plane answered with nothing but static. The sounds of battle throughout the House sounded so very distant, now. And no one was coming.

Raphael…!

“Come now, pretty thing,” the marilith called out, voice almost musical, as she dragged them closer. There was a hand grasping one of their horns, lifting their head and tearing a gargling cry from them; faintly, through the haze, Haarlep could see the gleam of a blade. “I’ll make it quick, if you keep still and--”

She trailed off, suddenly, and Haarlep could sense it too despite the agony.  A change, for lack of a better word, like a correction in reality. A wrongness in the air snapping back into alignment so violently that the remaining glass in the chamber trembled without being touched. The pressure in the room inverting, as though something vast had inhaled. 

The Master of the House was coming. 

The realization filled Haarlep with something they were rather annoyed to identify as relief, and a kind of childish glee they were all too happy to indulge in as they watched the marilith rear back, the hezrous looking around frantically.

“Who--” one of them began, and never got to speak another word before the very center of the room exploded into a white-hot inferno. The hezrous standing closest to it were incinerated on the spot; others staggered back with pained cries. Haarlep felt themself being dropped, fell to the ground, and cried out at the flare of pain. They remained still, unable to move, and had to make a supreme effort of will to lift their head and look.

The marilith had been far enough from the inferno to avoid direct harm, but even so she could comprehend what she was looking at - not simple flames, but all-devouring hellfire. It burned so fiercely one could almost believe Mephistopheles himself had deigned to come visit his least favorite bastard after all. Then said bastard’s voice rang out - laced with boundless contempt, the blackest fury, and just about the level of drama Haarlep had come to expect. 

“HOW DARE YOU LAY HANDS ON WHAT IS MINE?”

Just home, Haarlep thought, and already throwing a tantrum over his toys. Such a maddening brat they had been sent to serve… but beautiful, too. Haarlep never saw any point in denying the obvious fact Raphael was handsome, and he’d never looked as handsome in their eyes as he did now, eyes blazing with fury and hellfire coiling around him instead of dispersing as he lifted a hand.

All the way across the House, the Soul Pillars answered. Twisting green ribbons, all that remained of mortal souls, raced to him across the air through the gaps in the shattered door and half-collapsed entrance. He consumed them with an inhale, and his eyes glowed all the brighter. For the briefest instant, the chamber seemed to breathe in with him… then he smiled at the still stunned marilith, all teeth.

“You poor witless thing.”

Three chains erupted from him, molten lengths of hellfire, each link dripping white-hot flame that hissed through the air with the sound of shrieking souls. They lashed across the chamber with terrifying speed; two struck at the last hezrous standing, and the resulting screams only lasted the instant it took for hellfire to take, incinerating them from within until the only thing left to collapse was ash.

The third struck the marilith, who was knocked back - away from Haarlep - with a scream of pain and outrage in equal measure. She did, however, fare better than the lesser demons who'd accompanied her: she landed in a crouch rather than in a heap, scales already blackening where the fire had kissed them. Hurt, but not dead... and very pissed about the turn the fight was taking, Haarlep could tell. She hissed at Raphael, all six swords raised.

“You are picking a fight you cannot win, halfbreed,” she sneered. “However many tricks you may have, you shall not walk out of here a victor.”

Even half-conscious, Haarlep caught the wrongness in that. They stared at the demon as she coiled up, ready to strike, holding onto her blades. Mariliths, Haarlep knew, were very much the tacticians of demonic hordes; far from witless, whatever Raphael had to say about it, and not known to make threats they could not back up with action.

What is she talking about? He commands hellfire, surely she can tell he is no ordinary half-fiend. He outclasses her in every way, doesn’t he? What makes her so certain he cannot win? What does she know that we do not?

It seemed that Raphael was asking himself none of those questions, arrogant little bastard that he was. Instead, he sneered right back at her. “You may amuse me for slightly more than a heartbeat,” he declared. “That much, I shall conce--”

He was still speaking, the idiot, when the marilith sprang into action and steel became a storm. Mariliths did not rage blindly, nor throw themselves forward with the abandon of lesser demons. Every movement had purpose, every strike another piece in a battle they had already played out in their minds in a matter of moments. 

Six blades came at Raphael within instants, with deadly and practiced precision. Dodging every one of them seemed impossible and, as a matter of fact, it was.

Not that Raphael did not make a valiant effort to. He too moved with purpose, as though every angle and trajectory had already been accounted for in his mind. One blade he simply leaned away from by the smallest possible margin, letting it pass so close it stirred the fabric at his throat; the second he ducked beneath, the arc of steel cutting empty air where his head had been a heartbeat before. The third he stopped, a forearm rising up to meet the marilith’s wrist; Haarlep did not think they imagined the pained hiss she let out at the impact… but it did not stop her attack for even a moment.

The fourth and fifth followed in the same breath, and found flesh. Steel bit deep across his side, slicing through velvet and embroidered silk alike, opening a bright line of blood over his ribs. More steel slashed him across a thigh, and his leg buckled; a moment later the sixth blade sang through the air and bit into Raphael's shoulder before he could fully recover his footing, causing him to let out a pained grunt.

“Raphael--!” Haarlep called out, trying to warn him of what they knew was about to follow, but to no avail; his name turned into an unintelligible gargle through blood - and the only result was to make Raphael turn to them, taking his eyes off his opponent. A mistake, that. 

The tail struck, again, like a siege ram. The impact hurled Raphael bodily through a marble column. Stone exploded around him, the pillar collapsing in a deafening roar as he disappeared beneath dust and shattered masonry. For the first time since his arrival, the Master of the House looked less like an incarnation of infernal wrath and more like something that could, perhaps, be wounded.

The marilith lunged after him without hesitation, six swords already descending toward the cloud of dust. For one impossible heartbeat, Haarlep's certainty that Raphael would emerge from the scuffle a victor faltered... but only for that one moment. The next, Raphael made it plain that he was quite far from defeated.

The rubble burst apart in a geyser of white-hot hellfire, throwing the marilith back with a furious hiss. Raphael stepped forward through it with blood running freely from the gashes in his side, shoulder and thigh. There was another crimson streak tracing his temple where flying stone - or perhaps a blade? - had caught him. His clothes were torn, and heat shimmered around him so violently the air itself warped.

It burst outward from his palms in a blinding wave that swept across the ruined chamber. Marble flowed like wax beneath it. Books, shelves and broken furniture ceased to exist altogether. The marilith crossed four blades before herself to weather the blast, skidding backward through molten stone, smoke pouring from between the scales of her crossed arms.

Raphael did not seem all that concerned about his injuries. Slowly, almost absently, he drew a thumb through the blood soaking his side and looked at the crimson smear. He looked up, something flickering in his eyes.

“...You struck me.” The words were soft. Somehow, that made them infinitely more terrifying. “How extraordinarily unfortunate for you.”

At last, the demon looked… not quite scared - she would only return to the Abyss if killed - but not as certain of victory as she had been before, either. So, of course, she tried to bargain. “You still do not know what you’re trifling with,” she said, hissing out each word, only for Raphael to sneer. 

“But I do. I am dealing with rabble who thought they had the right to defile my House of Hope.”

“Leave now with your life, and--”

Whatever she said next, whatever she offered or threatened, Haarlep did not quite hear. Their every breath was becoming more difficult, and they dropped their head against shattered marble with a sound that could pass as a laugh, blood and all. 

Oh, dear. You ought to leave bargaining to devils. 

There was fire, again, and it flared painfully against their eyes even as their vision darkened. They closed their eyes, trying to even their breathing. They noted that more and more of their body was becoming numb, the pressure in their chest greater. They heard the sounds of blades through the air and more roaring flames, they heard screams, but they did not see what followed nor could they tell how long it took. As their ears buzzed and consciousness began to slip away, their form flickering briefly before resuming Raphael’s likeness out of long-held habit, hours and minutes seemed one and the same. 

If they died there because Raphael simply had to play with his food instead of making a clean kill, they decided as they began to sink into nothingness, they would find a way to haunt his dreams to the end of his days. But surely, he would be done with the marilith any moment now and turn his attention where it belonged - on them. 

He would take them to the restoration pool and heal them, and then proceed to be a pain in the ass in all the wrong ways over saving their life. He’d expect their thanks, wouldn’t he, the insufferable brat. And perhaps they would give thanks, if he asked prettily enough. But first, they would have a nap. A little nap as they waited for the demon problem to be sorted. Just… just a little…

“ENOUGH!”

Raphael’s scream dragged them back to consciousness, quite suddenly and rudely as well. Haarlep groaned and opened their eyes just in time to see Raphael bring down his hands with a snarl, conjuring a downward burst of flames on the screaming marilith.

She never stood a chance. For one impossible instant the demon became nothing but a silhouette suspended inside a pillar of incandescent white. Then even that outline collapsed inward, taking the scream with it… and suddenly, the room was silent again. Well, save for Haarlep’s gargling breaths - and then, Raphael’s steps as he hurried past the pile of ashes that had been his opponent.

Right to them, of course. He always did return to his Haarlep, in the end.

“Ah-- there you are, sweetling,” Haarlep muttered, and managed a grin even as blood poured from the corners of their mouth. They had to be a sight; they felt nothing below their waist, but they were rather sure the constriction had also crushed something that might have been vital when it still worked. There were still sounds of battle from elsewhere in the House, but they sounded so distant now. “Fashionably late. Almost…” blood filled their throat, causing their voice to come out as a gargle. “Almost… missed… the fun.”

Haarlep’s vision had begun to swim as they forced out those last words, but they still could see Raphael’s expression going from fury - the gall on those demons, to invade his House! - to confusion and then something remarkably close to alarm. Ah, yes - surely not something he expected to see, his own face and body broken like that. It was not how he liked to see them… or rather, himself.

Well, no matter. A soak in the restoration pool will do the trick, they thought, and opened their mouth to say as much - only for more blood to pour out down their chin and throat and chest, with no intelligible words to accompany it.

Annoying, that, but it seemed Raphael had gotten the message regardless. Haarlep could barely see now, as though looking through a thin black veil, but they could hear his scoff and his shadow moving closer, crouching by their side. 

“Imbecile,” he muttered, the rage still singing in his veins giving his voice a gravelly quality Haarlep may have rather enjoyed in entirely different circumstances. There was an arm around their shoulders lifting them back to a sitting position and a solid shoulder to rest on as their head lolled to the side. “Your idea of fun is questionable to say the very least.”

Had they been able to talk, Haarlep may have said something remarkably predictable about pots and kettles, and how they would not take that sort of criticism from someone who’d only ever bend over for his own cock with so much more on offer. Instead they only grunted and closed their eyes as Raphael’s hand rested across the side of their head and he muttered something. 

They did not catch the words, but what washed over them next was unmistakably a healing spell. It was no full mend, not even close, but it allowed them to snap back into full awareness - of their surroundings, of the situation, of all the pains and aches that came from a near-death battle. Not that they had done any battling, really, but Raphael did not need to know that. They could feel their legs again, too, and that felt like a fair enough trade-off for some discomfort.

For a moment neither of them moved. Raphael knelt there with blood - his own, mixed in now with whatever had transferred from Haarlep's ruined shoulder - drying on his hands, and Haarlep sat propped against him like a puppet with half its strings cut, breathing in slow, careful pulls that no longer ended in a wet rattle. Small mercies. Still…

“... I wouldn’t say no to another healing spell.”

“I’m half tempted to make you beg for it.”

Haarlep grimaced. “Oh, please. You don’t do things by half when it comes to temptation.”

There was a scoff that was almost a chuckle. “I never do anything by half, as a rule,” Raphael informed them, just as he cast another healing spell. More wounds healed, the last pains dulling into aches. “Although this unfortunate mess has forced me to leave a rather promising lead cold well before the final stanza could play out.”

Haarlep sighed, the relief welcome enough that they decided not to point out that Raphael bailing out before things could reach a satisfying conclusion was, in their experience, a nightly occurrence. When Raphael pulled back and stood - not offering to help them up, the brat - they were able to stand as well. They were rather certain a wing was still dislocated, though, and that would make it impossible to fly until it was sorted.

They could still hear the sounds of battle in the rest of the House, and no doubt Raphael would have more demons to wipe out… but before he did, they intended to make one thing plain. “Just to be clear,” they declared, tilting their head towards the flying fortress still wedged into the wall behind them, “this was not my fault.”

It gained them another scoff. “If I’d had any reason to think it was, I’d have annihilated you with the rest of the rabble,” he muttered, and turned to the door. It was half-collapsed, rubble over it to block the way out, but surely it would not be difficult for Raphael to break through. “Now, remain here while I take care--”

“RAAAAAAAAGH!”

The Nine Hells of Baator, and particularly the eternal battlefield that was Avernus, were not short on unpleasant sounds - from the screams of soldiers and hordes to the shrieking of the damned, through the roar of infernal engines and the clash of endless battles. However, few could compare to the bellowing noise that spilled out of the flying fortress before something tore its side open. 

Stone and warped metal shrieked as something vast tore itself free from within. It had to fold itself nearly double to fit through the gap it made, wings like sheets of oil-black flame dragging furrows through the rubble, and when it straightened to its full height the ceiling - or what was left of it - groaned in protest at the sheer presence of it.

Well, Haarlep thought, this just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?

They had only ever seen balors from afar, well out of their reach - which, in their opinion, was the closest anyone should ever come to the very embodiment of demonic fury. About as dangerous as a pit fiend, much more unpredictable… and now there was one towering over them, at least sixteen feet of muscle and flames, a whip of fire coiled in one massive fist and a greatsword wreathed in crackling lightning in the other.

Honestly, Haarlep did not feel the slightest bit of embarrassment when they immediately stepped behind Raphael. They were a lover, not a fighter, and they knew what battles they could pick. This was not one of them.

Not one I’d advise even Raphael to pick, either. But I suspect our guest is not going to give him a choice in the matter. There is no reasoning with a balor.

However, chaos of battle did not follow immediately. For a moment the balor's eyes did not so much as flicker in their direction. They found the ash where the last marilith had been instead; then they found Raphael, standing in the middle of the room with his clothes torn, blood still wet on his hands. In the end he sneered, a great gash of a mouth full of teeth like broken glass.

“Half a mortal,” it rumbled, and the words themselves seemed to singe the air on the way out. “Playing lord in a house of mortal scraps. How precious.”

Standing well behind Raphael, Haarlep could only begin to guess his expression upon being called such; if his voice was anything to go by, though, the bridge of his nose must be scrunching up something fierce. 

“I am no mortal,” he bit, “and I do not recall extending an invitation to whatever remnants the Blood War has relegated to the bargain counter.”

The balor's laugh shook dust from the rafters. The whip uncoiled with a hiss, trailing sparks along the scorched floor. 

“I would tell you it is not wise to stoke my anger, but it never did need stoking,” he said, his voice the rumble that promised a storm the likes of which even Dis had never seen. “My name is Zhalmoxis, and I am going to grind it all to dust. The incubus. Your house. The soul-well beneath it. And you, halfbreed, last of all, so you may watch everything you built become nothing before I finally let you die.”

For one heartbeat, nobody moved. Then hellfire ignited along both of Raphael's forearms and he turned just enough to glance back at Haarlep. His expression had settled into something they had seen perhaps twice before and liked far less than his usual theatrics: a stillness, cold and absolute, beneath which real fury lived.

It was said that Mephistopheles was like that, too; that one ought to fear him most when he grew cold and quiet, the moment before the Lord of Hellfire tore blazing through the veneer of the Cold Lord. The apple and the tree and all that, though Haarlep suspected neither father nor son would be pleased to hear as much.

They also suspected that look was meant to tell them that was the moment to make themself scarce. As much as they enjoyed pushing against Raphael’s wishes, this was one order they were keen to obey.

“... Well. It does feel like I’m intruding. And I am sure you have everything well in hand, sweetling, so I’ll leave you to it. If you could get that door out of the wa--”

Raphael’s hand closed around their good arm before they could finish, and then - with far less ceremony than Haarlep would have liked - he shoved them, hard, sending them sprawling behind the dubious shelter of a fallen column just as the balor's whip cracked forward like a felled tree. It hit with a crack of thunder, tearing a gouge of molten stone through the space they had occupied a half-second before.

“Rude,” Haarlep managed, from the floor, to no one who was listening. And the ruins of the door and wall still blocked the way out. How very irritating. 

Haarlep sat up with a groan - should have asked for one more healing spell - and peered from behind the broken column. Raphael was already moving towards the balor, and the whip was coming down in another blow.

For once, Haarlep found themself hoping the action would be over sooner rather than later.

***

Dodging the first blow had been relatively easy; the whip's second strike Raphael did not dodge so much as he declined - a twist of will and momentum that put three feet of empty air where his shoulder had been, close enough that he felt the concussive heat of it against his skin and nothing else at all. 

Fire had never been permitted to hurt him; Zhalmoxis seemed to register this a half-second too late, the whip already curling back, something like irritation crossing that bestial face.

“You'll want to try something else,” Raphael informed him, almost pleasant about it, “if fire is the extent of your imagination. You’ll find that I save my best work for things capable of appreciatin--”

"SHUT UP AND FIGHT!"

The next strike came from the sword, crackling white-blue along its edge, enough force behind the blow to shatter baatorian steel. Raphael barely avoided it; it came close enough that the electricity licked scorch marks across his ruined coat regardless.

Distantly, some part of him catalogued the damage already done to this body: the gashes still weeping at his side, his thigh, his shoulder - each protest amplified by the balor's proximity like a wound remembering an old grudge. He filed the complaint away for later. There would be time for indulgence; now there was only the arithmetic of survival, and he had never once in centuries of practice found that arithmetic wanting.

He drove a hand forward in answer, hellfire surging at the balor's chest. Fire could not hurt a balor any more than it could hurt him, but hellfire - oh, that was different indeed. It struck true, searing a black, smoking wound across scaled muscle, and Zhalmoxis roared.

It was not enough to stagger him but Raphael felt the small, vicious satisfaction of it regardless and pressed forward. That was, in hindsight, an error.

The whip caught his forearm; flames were harmless to him, but even still it wrapped tight before he could pull free. A pull, with the balor’s full weight behind it, hauled him forward off his feet - directly into the reach of the blade. He twisted barely enough that the sword opened a gash on his already wounded shoulder rather than on his throat, and he swallowed the sound that tried to follow it.

Electricity did not char him as it would anything mortal but it caused his muscles to seize up, pain racing down his arm. Still, he was able to wrench free and a beat of his wings was just enough to carry him out of reach before the next swing landed. The tingling in his arm was not enough to keep him from lifting it and casting again - three chains of hellfire straight at his opponent’s chest, already blackened by the first hit. 

This time it did not merely wound: it caught, licking hungrily along the blackened gash it had already opened… but Zhalmoxis was not thrown back, and he did not stop. 

One massive arm swept around in a backhand blow that had nothing to do with the sword at all - raw mass and muscle, moving faster than something that size had any right to. Raphael had just enough time to get an arm up. 

It did not help. The impact was powerful enough to shatter stone, and would have killed lesser devils on the spot. Raphael was no lesser devil and still the force of it took him clean off his feet. He was thrown through what remained of a bookshelf, splinters and scorched parchment scattering in his wake, and he came up hard against the far wall with the taste of copper flooding his mouth. 

Something cracked in his chest and pain flared across his back. One of his wings drooped uselessly behind him when he forced himself to move, rolling across the floor and out of the way before the fire-wreathed whip cracked against stone where his head had been. 

“You're slower than the marilith,” Raphael wanted to comment, but blood dribbled rather unceremoniously from his mouth the moment he tried and nothing intelligible came out at all. That part, he decided, he would leave out of his retelling of the battle, once he wrote it. But first, he had to end it.

Raphael used the momentum to come up onto one knee, just in time to see the longsword descending, lightning crawling white along its length. He crossed both forearms above his head and caught it. Steel and crackling electricity bit, racing through muscle and bone in a way that left his arms numb and singing, but he held. 

For a few moments, they were locked in the struggle. Zhalmoxis was not laughing anymore; he was trying to press forward through sheer muscle power, whatever amusement the fight had held for it burned away with the first hellfire wound - replaced by the single-minded, unblinking focus of a creature that had stopped playing. 

He snarled. “I have killed dozens of your kind at war with scarcely one blow,” he ground out, flaming eyes narrowing into slits of pure malevolence. “Yet you persist, and wield hellfire.”

Raphael met his gaze, baring bloodied teeth. Whether he meant to sneer or snarl back, he did not know nor did it matter. “There are no other devils of my kind.”

A scoff. “Whose blood are you to wield all this power, halfbree--”

“MY POWER IS MY OWN!”

It was a rare thing for a balor - a being that was the very incarnation of the hatred and fury of the abyss - to be taken aback by another creature’s rage. Yet, it seemed, that was a day of firsts, because he did look surprised when Raphael came up off the ground in a single motion, pushing back with more force than the balor had clearly braced for. 

Zhalmoxis did not step back, but it made no matter; his feet slid across the floor, and Raphael snarled, forcing a step forward, pushing back. “You dare compare me to the rabble you've killed at war! You dare stand in my House, ask after my blood! I’ll have you scream for this, to be allowed to die and return to the wretched abyss that birthed you!”

I owe him nothing. Not this House. Not my power. Not a single ember of what I have made of myself.

The pain from his wounds, the broken wing, shattered ribs, at least one lung no longer working as it should - all of it seemed distant. Raphael shoved the blade aside hard enough to stagger the demon, and instead of putting some distance between them he held up a hand to cast immediately, fury thudding in his temples and obscuring all thought of tactics. 

And it cost him. Before he could cast, the balor had dropped the flaming whip, closed a hand around his throat, and lifted - a solid wall of muscle seeking to find out how much pressure a cambion's neck could withstand before something gave. 

“Agh--!” The spark between his fingers sputtered, and his hands went to his throat instead. Raphael's vision narrowed to a bright, furious point as his boots left the floor entirely, claws scrabbling uselessly at a wrist thicker than his own thigh, flames guttering weakly as he struggled to focus, to call forth more hellfire. It should have come easy as breathing, but now it did not. Neither could he breathe, and he felt the vertebrae in his neck beginning to give--

“Catch!”

Something heavy that looked suspiciously like the Orphic Hammer entered Raphael’s field vision at high speed, but only for one instant before it connected with the side of the balor’s head with an admittedly satisfying crack. Zhalmoxis roared and staggered, dropping Raphael to the floor. He fell on his knees, coughing, hands reaching up to his throat as he looked around, wide-eyed, trying to make sense of what had just happened. 

Standing several feet away, wearing the Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and little else, Haarlep grinned.

“Do be more careful, sweetling,” they sing-sang, as though they were in the boudoir with no overwhelmingly powerful demon to contend with. “You’re not done disappointing me yet.”

***

Truth be told - not that they ever did plan on telling - Haarlep had not aimed for the balor’s head. They had meant to throw the hammer at Raphael, expecting him to catch it in mid-air and swing at the Whatshisface’s head himself… but their aim had been just a little off. Which was not too bad, really: it was a good hit they could easily pass off as intentional, after all.

The flipside was that while it had caused the demon to drop Raphael, it had also caused him to turn his full attention - and fury - towards them. Haarlep’s words were barely out when Zhalmoxis’ eyes found them, and their smile froze on their lips.

The roar that followed made them very much suspect that even the gauntlets would not carry them very far in a fight. 

“Now let’s not be hasty here, it was barely a friendly bonk--” they blurted, trying to step back, but the admittedly not brilliant argument in their defense fell on deaf ears. The huge mass of the balor moved frighteningly fast, toppling yet another column on the way, crackling sword lifted to come down as he roared again and--

No, wait. Someone else had roared. And Haarlep knew that roar as well as they knew every other part of Raphael, in any form. 

Well, about time he began taking this seriously. 

They looked past the balor even as the blade descended toward their head, and got a glimpse of three bestial skulls fused together, crowned in hellfire, just one moment before Raphael slammed against the balor like a battering ram. 

As much as Raphael’s ascended form towered above an average devil, it was not quite so vast as the mass of muscle and hatred barrelling toward Haarlep - but he was strong, frightfully so, hellfire licking along dark ridges of his body, and it was enough. The impact drove Zhalmoxis back, causing the sword to fall and slide across the floor.

For an instant, the balor did not even seem to notice he had lost his weapon: he only stared, clearly stunned, at the sight of an ascended fiend crowned in hellfire roaring right back at him as though he, too, embodied the primal fury of the Abyss. Flaming eyes met Raphael’s glowing yellow ones - which set, Haarlep was not certain - and then, at last, the demon bared his teeth. 

“Your heads shall make a fine troph--”

Raphael roared again, wordlessly, but Haarlep was rather sure they could guess what that meant - SHUT UP AND FIGHT - before he threw himself at the balor, all claws and teeth and flames.

After that, Haarlep mostly gave up trying to follow the specifics. They were a little busy trying to keep away from blows that would probably pulverize them on the spot if they just so happened to land on them.

And there were many such blows. It was not a fight so much as a collision, over and over - no thought getting in the way either of them fought now, just fury and instinct and the desire to annihilate. Two beasts clashing across what remained of the Archive with no regard whatsoever for the walls, the shelves, centuries of collected knowledge currently being reduced to ash and splinters beneath them. 

A column went down in one direction; half a bookcase in the other, throwing burning parchment into the air like a flock of startled birds. Haarlep threw themself sideways more than once, more from instinct than any real plan, feet skidding on rubble already slick with boiling blood that could have belonged to either combatant at this point.

At one point Zhalmoxis got a fistful of one sloping horn and used it to slam Raphael bodily into the floor hard enough to crack marble in a spiderweb; Raphael retaliated by driving his claws up into the balor’s unprotected stomach, and the answering scream had a wet, ragged edge that hadn't been there before. He tore Raphael off himself - something seemed to fall out of the opening, sliding wetly onto the burning floor - and threw him clean across the chamber… and through what little remained of the door.

The impact tore the frame apart entirely. Stone and splintered wood collapsed outward, and where the door and rubble had been there was now simply a ragged hole into the corridor beyond - smoke-hazed, but clear. A way out.

As Raphael tore himself from it to launch himself at the balor again, blazing and roaring, Haarlep took a step towards it. Several, really.

But then they stopped.

It was stupid to hesitate; they knew as much. They would accomplish nothing - they had no knowledge of how to wield a weapon, no spell worth casting against something that size. Nothing but a pair of gauntlets that allowed them to throw a hammer with few results, and a smart mouth that had gotten them exactly nowhere thus far. 

Every reasonable instinct told them to run, to get clear, to let the two monsters currently demolishing the Archive finish it without a bystander underfoot. Whatever the situation was in the rest of the House of Hope - had their security dispatched the rest of the invaders, or had they been destroyed? - could not possibly be as dire as this. 

Another step. Then they paused, again, and looked back. 

Perhaps, they told themself without much conviction, it would be wise to see which way the clash went before they left. Just to… just so that…

Haarlep tried to think of an excuse, but their mind remained blank and they could only curse under their breath, standing stock still by their only way out and unable to just go. At least it would not be a long wait. It was clear by now - how long had it been? - that the fight could not last much longer… although it was difficult to tell which way it would go, each roar now a sound of pain as much as of fury as the two opponents kept tearing into each other. 

The last exchange, when it came, happened almost too fast for Haarlep to follow.

Zhalmoxis lunged with what looked like everything he had left - some final, desperate surge of brute strength - and Raphael met it head-on rather than dodging, both clawed hands driving forward into the balor's chest in a single, blinding detonation of hellfire that lit the whole ruined chamber white.

The sound of it was enormous - and then, all at once, it wasn't.

Zhalmoxis went down first, one massive knee striking the floor, then the other - smoke pouring from a chest cavity, his enormous head bowing at last. Raphael staggered back a few steps, and he did not so much collapse as unmake himself - the hellfire guttering out along the ridges of his arms, the three-faced horror of his head folding back down into something smaller and intimately familiar.

By the time he hit the ground, he was simply himself again… and gravely, catastrophically wounded. Bone was visible where his collarbone had given way under some blow, a leg stuck out in the wrong direction below the knee, and there was a gash along his stomach deep enough that Haarlep could see more than they would have liked of what lay beneath, blood pooling dark and fast beneath him on the broken marble. 

Raphael coughed - was that a shard of a broken rib sticking out of his side? - and blood dripped from his mouth. He lifted his head, looking around with just one good eye as the other remained swollen shut, and for a moment he seemed lost.

I call it power when I bleed, he’d written in his silly little diary, but he sure as all Baator he did not look powerful now.

“Haarlep…?” he gargled, and the sound snapped Haarlep out of a state that was very much like stupor. They recoiled and next thing they knew they were moving across the ruined room to kneel beside him, hands hovering, uncertain for once in their long existence where it was even safe to touch. 

“I’m here,” they said, “you absolute, catastrophic idiot.” 

Raphael’s gaze found them, and something that was almost a huff left the wreck of him. Even now, he acted indignant. “Your thanks… would not… go amiss.”

“I’ll thank you when you read dispatches from the frontlines before you go chasing your flights of fancy,” Haarlep muttered, but there was little bite in their words. The most urgent thing, they decided, was finding a way to move Raphael to the healing pool in the boudoir without damaging him more. 

Once their little brat was on his way to full healing, then they would tear him a new one. Figuratively. And possibly literally, if the mood struck them and--

“... Heh. Revolting. Half a devil, twice the fool.”

Haarlep turned to see that Zhalmoxis had lifted his head, just enough. Whatever remained of his face still managed something like a grin - cracked, molten, delighted in the particular way of a creature who knows it has one last card to play and intends to enjoy playing it. 

For one blank second, Haarlep genuinely didn't understand. Then the memory surfaced, unhelpfully late, dragged up from some dusty corner of centuries spent half-listening to war stories they'd never expected to need: balors did not simply die. They detonated, spitefully and gloriously, taking whatever stood nearby down with them before reforming somewhere in the Abyss to lick their wounds. 

And just now the flames wreathing Zhalmoxis were crackling more fiercely, burning hotter and brighter and--

Raphael moved, faster than Haarlep could finish the thought. He pushed Haarlep on the floor against the wall, covering them with his body and spreading his wings just one instant before the blast rang out, replacing all the sound in the world. Heat and force in a single indivisible wave, shattering stone and sending fragments hurtling through the air; Haarlep clenched their teeth, and waited for the pain to hit.

It never did. The blast faded at last, leaving behind only silence. 

Haarlep opened eyes they hadn't realized they'd shut, coughing dust, and found themself entirely unhurt. Not so much as a singed hair. Raphael was on them still, one arm braced against the wall. Then his arm fell bonelessly to his side, his head dropped on their shoulder - and for one giddy, adrenaline-drunk moment all Haarlep could think to do was laugh.

Of all times to get on top…!

“Well,” they managed, grinning. “I have to say, this is the most passionate you've ever held me. Who knew all it took was a fight to the death to get you in the mood?”

Their words seemed to echo in the ruined archive, to no response at all. Haarlep blinked. 

“... Raphael?”

No answer, and that was when it suddenly struck Haarlep how still he was, how limp - and not the kind of limpness they had come to expect from him. They could not feel the heat of his breath against their shoulder, or the thumping of that mortal heart in his chest. 

Haarlep reached up to grasp his shoulders intending to push him away and shake him, but they found they couldn’t. As long as he did not move, as long as they did not turn him over and see, there remained some small, foolish sliver of a world in which this was nothing - in which he was simply being dramatic, milking the moment for sympathy he did not need, and would scoff at them the instant they gave him the satisfaction of panicking.

They gave him the satisfaction anyway.

“Raphael.”

Nothing answered them but silence, the widening pool of blood and the sudden, hollow feeling of realizing that for once in his miserable, dramatic, insufferable existence, Raphael had gone silent as a grave.

Raphael and Haarlep arrive in the camp of the adventurers in a quick blaze of flame. Raphael’s anger is manageable, for his goal is just within reach—his real goal, that is. Obtaining the Crown of Karsus to unite and dominate the hells. The mouse has been too distracting, too present in everything lately…

She was never meant to have any lines in this play, was never meant to fuel an archdevil supreme in her own right. Raphael must reconsider this mouse’s role, reduce her to the nameless trinket she was always meant to be. She will be kept safe yet beautifully uncomfortable in the care of Korilla whilst the deal that will fulfill his destiny is finalized. Upon Haarlep and Raphael’s return perhaps he will keep her kept tucked away safe until she can be returned to the surface.

Raphael is not surprised to find the camp empty, but there is a smell… a sense in the air that he was not expecting. Raphael and Haarlep lock eyes at perceiving this at the same time, and Raphael dismisses the silencing magic restricting Haarlep’s silver tongue.

“It is Hope,” Haarlep says, confirming they are sensing the same thing.

“It is, indeed. This… complicates things.” Raphael replies, remembering his vow not to bother Hope without her consent, “I did not expect Hope to seek out the adventurers, not just yet.”

“Ah… so you shall break your vow to my pet and approach Hope?” Haarlep asks tauntingly, “Or perhaps give up your ambition to the crown, lest you disappoint our sweet, little friend?”

“I may not approach them yet, this is true.” Raphael says, considering the situation, “But perhaps you can earn a crumb of redemption…”

“Wearing you again, my love? You do make such a tantalizing uniform,” Haarlep says with their head cocked to the side. All chained up, looking at Raphael with such unearned confidence… Raphael has to keep his focus and not let the incubus distract him, though he can feel the incubus’s charming magic try to reach him. “No. I do not wish to confuse these mortals further.” Raphael considers his options…

“And two of you would surely overwhelm their pretty little beating hearts!” Haarlep flirts in that way that Raphael cannot quite tell if he is being made a joke of or not. Raphael is never quite sure if he enjoys this, but he knows Haarlep is quick to forget their place and is trying to rattle him.

“You will approach them as yourself. You are not technically of the hells; this is within the bounds of the contract. Hope will recognize you, and with your undeniable powers of persuasion, you can convince them to wish to see me.”

“And if they attack? Shall I strike them down, my darling?” Haarlep asks through large, innocent seeming eyes. Raphael huffs a small laugh,

“Only if you think your little Tav would ever conceivably forgive you for that crime.” Raphael says with an eyebrow raised, “You’ve gotten yourself in quite deep trouble with her already, haven’t you? Oh, that look on her face of the betrayal…” Raphael tuts.

“Raphael…” Haarlep says in a tone of warning, all flirtation gone in an instant.

“The tears falling from those lovely, trusting eyes… tears you caused, Haarlep.” Raphael says, eager to gain back the upper hand in their dynamic, “You felt it too, didn’t you? That it was I from whom she wanted comfort and reassurance. Not you. She feared you, looked at you as the monster we both know you truly are…”

“Cease this, Raphael.” Haarlep growls, straining against the bonds.

“You could smell me all over her from the return of our trip to the surface too, couldn’t you? You sensed I had held her, and she had held me. Not out of lust, no, but comfort of all things. She had curled up in my arms as sweet and sleepy as a pup. No sooner than you singlehandedly dismantle the trust you have built, I am there to hold, to reconstruct those very pieces and build my own bridge to her mortal heart. Such a pity for you…”

“I will be redeemed.” Haarlep says through a clenched jaw, “I will not deny that Tav occupies my mind in a way few others have, but she is your weakness as well, Raphael. Best we work in tandem to accomplish what needs to get done, no?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Raphael says, placing a hand casually around Haarlep’s throat, “I am going to free you now, and if you so much as consider fleeing or disobeying me, so help me, I will slaughter every single one of these adventurers and place the blame on you.” Raphael brings Haarlep’s ear to his mouth to whisper, sweet as a lover, “I do not lie often, so when I do, and tell the little mouse it was you who could not contain your jealousy and rampaged in a murderous fit, she will have no reason not to believe me. You would truly be irredeemable then.”

“…Understood.” Haarlep says after a long moment. With a snap of his fingers, Raphael’s binds fall from Haarlep and they stretch their limbs, coming back into their freedom and body, once again theirs.

“I don’t know about you,” Haarlep says, stepping well into Raphael’s personal space and holding his waist, “But this is the most fun I’ve had in a millennium.” Haarlep kisses Raphael on the cheek and steps back.

A small smile flickers across Raphael’s face, indicating the feeling is mutual.

“Come. Let us follow the trail to what leads us next. I believe they are headed towards our dear old friend, Helsik.”

Haarlep and Raphael make their way over to the borders of Helsik’s property. Invisibility is best for now; discretion until it is the exact right moment to be seen.

The trail of the adventurers indicates they’ve broken into the basement of Helsik’s shop filled with the accouterments of home.

“Haarlep, your objective is to obtain Hope’s consent for me to approach. You are to shapeshift only if necessary to prove your identity. Do not tell the adventurers so much as a single detail of your deceptions without me present; for they will be motivated to hear them and therefore motivated to allow me entry should the story be contingent on my presence.”

“Well enough, dear Raphael,” Haarlep says, with a low bow, again in a tone Raphael can not quite discriminate if it be satire or supplication.

As Haarlep approaches the newly unlocked door to the basement, it appears there is already something of a ruckus going on.

“Can you not take ‘no’ for an answer?!” Helsik says through gritted teeth as she is half-way down the stairs, apparently catching Tav’s little friends mid- break in. Haarlep remains in the shadows a moment longer to better observe the group.

Hope looks well-suited to this team, Haarlep thinks. They are an exotic collection of little creatures, each with an odd little story. Perhaps Hope can be something of a replacement for Tav to them.

“We need to get to the House of Hope” says the one with long white hair- Shadowheart. She is very pretty, but Haarlep sees now they got her scar wrong when demonstrating their shape shifting for Tav. A mental note is made.

“Then you better get yourselves a damned shovel and get digging because I’m not helping you!” Retorts Helsik.

“Perhaps we can obtain the necessary items another way?” says the human wizard, “We would be happy to pay a fair price for the Coin of Mammon and—”

“You’re in more debt to me than you know,” Says Helsik, “Now get the fuck out of here, or I’ll get every Steel Watcher here to grind you to dust.”

“Bad luck, mate.” The teifling says with a wide grin, “Those particular scraps of metal are no more than heaps of junk now.” Helsik's eyes widen in surprise and a creeping anxiety.

“Damnable things, not so much as a breath of life in them.” Says a shockingly large elf Haarlep has not yet seen. The tiefling raises her hand, and the elf slaps his palm against it, seemingly in a gesture of camaraderie. Haarlep with have to remember that move—it looks like fun.

It is Hope who senses Haarlep first—perhaps she can sense them or perhaps it is from living lifetime upon lifetime of having to look over her shoulder, but Hope turns quickly, finding Haarlep who was lurking in the shadows as silent as a statue.

“Haarlep.” Hope says—something of an accusation and greeting mixed in her tone. A corner of Haarleps mouth turns up as they step into the light of the room. “The incomparable Hope,” Haarlep responds with a polite bow of their head, “You are looking well. The life of the surface dweller suits you.”

All eyes shoot to Haarlep instantly. Haarlep would be lying to themselves if they tried to admit they didn’t get a little thrill every single time they are the focus of the room. It is a feeling that is not unfamiliar, but delicious all the same, every single time. Haarlep lets the moment settle, and senses the feelings in the air. This quaint little team is scared. Angry. Confused. Sad. Different degrees of each of these feelings permeate the air, creating a very interesting and tense blend that Haarlep has little time to savor as about half of these young adventurers reach for weapons, readying for a fight.

“What are you doing here?” Hope asks, one of the few not reaching for a blade or readying a spell. She seems apprehensive, defensive… but she knows already why Haarlep would be sent here.

Haarlep says nothing but widens their smile sweetly at Hope.

“Where is he?” Hope asks, piecing together the situation quickly. Her mind has either not been as scrambled as it was believed, or her healing is occurring quickly. “Away, for now.” Haarlep responds, winking over Hope’s shoulder at the rest of the friends to their obvious discomfort, “But he would like to see you, Hope. It has become my understanding that there are questions you all may have regarding Raphael’s last visit to this sweet little team that only he shall answer.”

“It was you,” accuses the vampire, Astarion who steps forward. The one that Tav said has similarities to Haarlep and that in another timeline, in another universe, they might like each other, “You were shape-changed to his form, weren’t you?”

Haarlep turns to the beautiful elf, knowing this is whom Tav has had the most yearning. Haarlep can sense this basement is where Astarion and Tav had been intimate before she had returned to the House of Hope on her unsanctioned sojourn that has caused so much trouble. The desk behind the adventurers, specifically, sitting so innocently against the wall. Haarlep looks at it pointedly before returning their gaze to Astarion. There is a brief moment of tension as Astarion’s gaze follows Haarlep’s to the desk and the two lock eyes, a small battle of acknowledgment and possession sparks.

“I am afraid I can not answer any further questions without the presence of my master.” Haarlep says slowly, relishing the attention and curiosity surrounding them, “If sweet Hope would be so gracious as to allow our friend Raphael entry, he would be positively gleeful to explain further.”

Several of the members of the group tense, gripping weapons more tightly, readying for a battle.

“Oh, do put those away. For not only am I hardly dressed for the occasion of battle,” Haarlep says, gesturing to their leathers with a sly smile, “But I do not wish to upset our mutual friend. Darling Tav would be most irritated if any of us were to become wounded at the hands of another.”

Eyes turn to Hope for guidance. Only she is fully aware of who she is dealing with here. A small, tense nod from Hope permits Raphael’s presence and it takes less than a moment for him to appear in a small circle of flame in the direct center.

~~~~ Cania ~~~~

“Where are you?” I demand. Korilla has dragged me deeper into the hells than I ever imagined. My fists are clenched, my head is whipping around to seek out this arch-devil. Korilla fades back into the thick fog that obscures my vision. I reach out to grab her, but she disappears too quickly.

“Show yourself, coward!” I demand to Mephistopheles and Korilla both. A booming laugh circles me, coming from behind no matter how quickly I turn.

“A coward, you say?” comes Mephistopheles’ voice, “I only wished to ease you into this, your new reality, little one. But very well. If you wish to see me…” The fog clears instantly, and there, “…here I am.”

He is larger than I remember, and far more imposing. I am undoubtedly in his domain. He stands at a distance as if daring me to try to run away. Whatever room or chamber this is so dark, it is difficult to discern anything. The floor is as dark as a void, and the dim white flame above me does little to illuminate any furniture, exits, or anything else. It is only Mephistopheles and myself. Korilla, that sneaky bitch, is nowhere to be seen.

“What is this about?” I ask in a voice as strong as I can manage. I stand straight, as tall as I can with my chin held high as if I were the one to have summoned Mephistopheles. I think of how Raphael commanded the offices of Gror in Damara as if they were his and try to summon that energy now.

“What do you think, child?” Mephistopheles says with a cruel smile, “I have made my intentions and desires clear, have I not? I have never been one to play coy…”

Without taking a step, Mephistopheles comes forward with a whoosh so he is standing no more than three meters away from me. He inhales deeply, as if he can smell every thought, every feeling I have ever had. Maybe he can. I refuse to move or step back, though every muscle in my body tenses and it feels like the air has been knocked out of my lungs.

“Bring me back,” I demand.

“In due time, perhaps,” Mephistopheles says, a flash of sharp teeth showing, “and only if you are exceptionally well-behaved. I do not share your Raphael’s passions for negotiating and creating deals, you see. There is only what I want, and your ability to give it to me. I will not pretend you, in particular, are of interest to me, but I will also not pretend that you are anything more than disposable.”

“Then just dispose of me back to the surface. I’m mortal, you’re not; I can go back, live my short little life and be dead of natural causes before you know it!” I say. “Indeed, you will be.” Mephistopheles says, taking another step forward, “But before any of that, I have a need of you. My newest spawn. You will give it to me, or I will take it. It does not matter much to me if your desires match my own.”

Before I can retort or even so much as take an inhale of breath, Mephistopheles is on his knees before me, hands clutching my hips, claws digging into my flesh, leaving me immobile. Attempts to twist or push him away are futile as he inhales deeply by my lower abdomen.

“Your fruit is not yet ready to be ripened,” Mephistopheles says softly and unbothered as I make every attempt to fight him off; pushing him by the horns, trying to kick or knee him away—it makes no difference. “It is of little consequence; I can wait.” The cambion's glowing red eyes reach mine from below as I am trapped very literally in his clutches. “A mere matter of weeks and then our joint venture can begin. A union to destined to bring in a new era of rulers across the hells.”

Mephistopheles places a hand across my belly and a cold magic seeps into my abdomen. I know what he is doing—reversing the magic that keeps me from getting pregnant.