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They decide that having fake paladins of Tyr hunting Karlach is not acceptable in the short or long term and plan to murder them preemptively.
Karlach is the one who proposes it of course, but it’s Astarion and Wyll’s vote together that cinches the decision to prioritize it. Astarion placates Lae’zel with the notion that it’s in the same general direction as the creche and there’s supposed to be an inn further up in the hills where they can get information on the area.
“But first,” he says brightly, “just a spot of murder.”
Which is optimistic of him considering the very first thing he said to Karlach was, “Um, weren’t these paladins hired to hunt you at your full, un-tadpoled, and extremely powerful best? Don’t get me wrong, you’re very strong now but front-liner of Archdevil Zariel, War Dog Of The Fallen Angel Herself, Scourge of Avernus is, I think, a mite different than where we are now.”
“Gnoll Killing Makes A Girl Winded, you mean?” said Karlach, unconcerned.
“Yes precisely.”
“You make a fine point,” Wyll had conceded, frowning and wincing only a little when his newly sharp fangs hit his tongue a little funny. “But, Karlach, didn’t you fight and escape them on your own before?”
“Yeah, but I fought ‘em off the first time because I still had some, uh, one-time-use tricks up my sleeve.” She shrugged her impressive shoulders. “But I burned that all up and I haven’t got anything left in the tank there. So if we need a little extra fire-power it’s not from me.”
Gale, who just likes making plans, said, “Well, we don’t have to just run in there. They were hiding out at the old toll house on the Risen Road, yes? Surely we could surveil and then form a plan of attack?”
Astarion, surprised, commented slowly, “Well then… this might actually be a job for burglar.”
That was two days ago.
That conversation is why he’s on the porch of the toll house in the middle of the night fiddling with the front door. Why he does not hear the three paladin’s approaching is because it’s delicate work to set a simple lock up in such a way to make it jam shut on its next use and his focus is wholly upon it. He operates on the assumption that gods damned Gale will message him if anyone is coming back.
What Astarion hears instead is a voice saying: “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Shit.
Astarion tries to run, but their wizard hits him with a casting and the familiar, terrifying, full-body lock of the Hold Person spell snaps its jaws around his muscles, so he freezes halfway through coming up from his kneeling position. He’s left with one hand against the door he’d been fidgeting with, half spun in the simultaneous motion of turning in surprise and trying to make a break sideways off the deck for the road.
And then he’s helpless.
Just like that.
The three ‘paladins’ of Tyr look down at him with curious and annoyed expressions.
The leader, Anders, is a pale blonde, broad-nosed human with a massive longsword strapped to his spine. The dwarf ranger, Tyrnn he heard her called, steps forward at just above his eye-height and bends slightly to study his face. The eyes can still move while under a Hold Person, tiny micro-expressions and muscle movements. Complete lock is the providence of truly meticulous casters and Cyrel, the irritated wood-elf wizard, isn’t bothering.
“Someone sent a little burglar to listen in,” says the dwarf, plucking the lockpick kit from Astarion's frozen grip. She inspects it, tosses it, and draws a hunting knife. “Kill him? Or…?”
“I told you I felt someone watching us last night,” snaps Cyrel looking around the dark hill of the toll house with annoyance. “There’s no way he’s alone. Tyrnn, slit his throat and we should—”
“No, Cyrel,” Anders says, like a person who is regularly stopping his twitchy wizard from butchering people. “We need to ask the little spy who sent him and why. If he’s Karlach’s, that’s uncharacteristically sneaky of her.”
The paladin steps forward, bending down to study Astarion. Vapor-blue eyes drop to Astarion’s mouth then go back up in a way that sets every nerve alight with anticipation of agony. Anders – the worst one, as Karlach had called him – lifts a hand to drag cross Astarion’s forehead, pushing his hair of his eyes as if to get a better look at him, but Astarion feels his fingers settle and curl into his hair, testing grip lightly.
“Who the fuck did she hire?” He laughs. “What is this?”
Astarion is disarmed and Anders makes a big show of pulling his great sword before he brings it down across Astarion’s temple. Once. Twice. Enough that he’s bleeding and half stunned. Then Anders grabs Astarion's arm and has Cyrel release the spell so they can drag him into the toll house and lock the door behind them. (Unaware that, in doing so, they’ve jammed the entry shut entirely.)
“Wait, wait, I give up!” Astarion cries, the towering fighter hauling him around by the arm and slinging him hard against the nearest wall. “I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“I know you will,” Anders says. “Are you with Karlach?”
“Yes,” he says tensely. “Don’t hurt me. I’m not even a fighter. I—”
Anders goes for the bait and grabs Astarion by the jaw, slamming his head back against the wall, then leaning down into his face, close enough that his breath ghosts warm against Astarion’s lips in a way that only people who’ve done it before with intention generally do. Astarion tries to shrink back against the wood panels behind him, breath hitching in his throat as the bigger man tightens his grip.
“Alright,” the man says gently. “Calm down. Speak slowly. Tell us everything and we won’t hurt you.”
“Professional courtesy,” says Tyrnn. “Not worth dying for.”
Cyrel just inspects her nails, but while a bit of blue lightning crackles between her fingers.
“Right,” Astarion whispers.
Oh, they are absolutely going to kill him when he’s done talking. And worse, if the way Anders is… yes, he’s slipped his knee between Astarion’s legs and as he talks that’s knee is going to slide further between his thighs as threat. He flinches, lets his eyes dart down to where Anders is touching him, then back up into the paladin’s calm and merciless stare.
“She just… she told me to listen. Tell her when you changed watch, try to get an idea where you’d be. F-for an ambush. I’m sorry.”
“That’s alright,” Anders says gently. “What else? Where is she?”
He tightens his grip, his hand large enough it almost encircles Astarion’s throat entirely, his fingers fastening snug almost at the base of his skull behind his ears. Astarion’s hands jump instinctively toward the man’s wrist but stop, trying make a show of being too afraid to fight even while his captor fits him for a choking.
“She’s… I can show you?”
“No,” says Anders, shaking his head. “Where is she?”
“Please.” He lets a bit of crack get into his voice. “I swear, I was just telling her—
Anders slams his head against the wall.
“The cliffs!” He audibly fights to breathe. “She’s at the cliffs, near where that crash happened. Everyone cleared out so she went there. There’s a camp. Two others, uh, uh, cleric and a ranger-type. Please, they just hired me. It was just money. I’ll do whatever you say—"
Anders steps in closer, pressing his thigh up into Astarion’s groin, leaning his hip into his stomach and it’s not hard to press back into the wall and cringe with revulsion. Let dread crawl along every line of his body until Anders leans into his ear and murmurs, “You’re gonna lead us there and I want you to understand, if you do anything to fight, run, disobey, or trick us I’m really, really going to hurt you. You understand me?”
He nods.
“Good.” Anders leans back a little, looking down at him, face near enough it’s absolutely a threat in every way. Then his free hand not at Astarion’s throat moves up and touches his face with back of his fingers, brushing his thumb along the corner of Astarion's mouth until he finches. Anders huffs, saying, “You’re really not cut out for this kind of work. Are you, pretty thing?”
Astarion doesn’t move. Doesn’t fight.
He just stands still, as Anders idly turns his head this way, then the other before he leans in to press his nose into Astarion’s hair. He inhales, taking his time. To the credit of the wizard, she looks away uncomfortably when Astarion’s gaze flickers desperately to her in a silent plea. The ranger just meets his gaze levelly, unmoved, indifferent.
So none of them see it when Astarion lifts the dagger from Anders’ thigh.
They notice when Astarion whips the blade home in the man’s throat, then rips it out at such a brutal angle blood sprays in a curtain across the wall. The other two react, but Astarion is faster. He knees the big bastard in the groin (since he was kind enough to spread his legs), trips, and shoves him into the wizard.
Cyrel screams, grabbing her choking teammate who is very heavy and lands on her.
Even bleeding from the throat, Anders is growling and gurgling in rage.
Astarion doesn’t wait.
Astarion sprints to the corner of the room, to the ladder leading up to the second story, launches himself at the wall beside it, kicks off, and grabs the edge of the second story banister, hoisting himself up just as the ranger lets off an arrow. It grazes his thigh as he rolls flat on his back, out of sight on the floor. There’s yelling. Then a crash as Tyrrn tries to climb the ladder and it immediately falls off the wall because Astarion removed the pins that hold it in place about ten minutes before.
He low-dashes for the roof-access door.
Through the tadpole connection he ‘yells’ in so much as there is telepathic volume: NOW, NOW, NOW!
Then a lot of things happen at once.
The roof-access door bursts open and Wyll throws a silence spell down in the middle of the room from the second story walkway. Disabling the wizard below. Then the front window explodes as Karlach throws an entire smokepowder barrel through the pane glass. Astarion darts past Gale who does what wizards do very best in the world and he throws a fucking fireball down on all three of the mercenary bastards and the bomb now beside them.
The toll house foyer detonates.
Gale, Wyll, and Astarion all go down as the blast knocks them to the floor of the stone-work part of the roof. Wyll immediately mage-hands the door shut and there’s a flash as Gale seal it with an arcane lock. There’s a pause. Then, on the other side of the door, Cyrel (alive somehow) starts screaming, hammering, and clawing at the door.
“Guess she didn’t prepare a ‘Knock’ spell today,” chortles Gale while someone burns alive.
“What part of 'keep watch' did you not understand?!” Astarion snarls. “They could have killed me!”
“They were ten minutes early!” Gale protests. “And they came around the other way. Clearly, something you did during surveillance yesterday alerted them to—"
“Get off of the roof!” Wyll snarls. “The building is literally burning!”
They all scramble for the ladder on the opposite side of the building from the now burning wooden section of the structure. The place is going up like kindling of course, particularly since Wyll and Astarion spent the better part of five minutes filling the desk drawers with oil flasks. Astarion is down the ladder first, sliding down the rails to the ground floor and sprinting around the front of the building where Karlach is waiting, sword in hand.
“Those fuckers are not coming out,” she crows in delight. “The door trick completely worked. Great job, Astarion! I thought we were cooked when they grabbed you. Are you alright, mate?”
“Did they leave my weapons on the porch?” Astarion asks, exasperated.
“Shit. No. Sorry. I think they took them inside.”
“Gods dammit.”
“They hurt you?” Karlach peers worriedly at him, hand moving toward his bloody temple before remembering she’s literally on fire and stopping. “I mean, you tadpoled that all was well or whatever, but you’re bleedin’, mate. Did Anders—?”
“I am a professional,” Astarion sneers. “I talked my way out of worse.” A pause. “I also stabbed Anders in the throat and kicked him in the balls, so know that he looked extremely stupid and was in pain before Gale set him on fire.” Astarion waves. “And then he exploded.”
“Fuck yes!” Karlach growls with genuine, seething glee. “I love your style, fancy boy.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Wyll and Gale join them to watch the building burn and none of the three fake paladins do, indeed, make it out alive. They scour the tollhouse remains after the heat has burned down some and find access to an armory and storeroom beneath the building. Astarion spends the better part of an hour disarming about two dozen various traps so they can raid the place.
“This seems your speed,” Wyll says, handing him a dagger that shines with the too-clean gleam of a striking rune. The warlock goes back to rifling through a weapons chest, frowning at the contents. “Most of the rest is too heavy I think.”
Astarion spins the dagger in the palm of his hand, flips it, catches it.
“That’ll do,” he agrees.
“Careful, Astarion,” Gale says, looking up from the potions he’s pocketing from a cabinet nearby. “You’re seeming very ‘professional adventurer’ lately. If you’re not careful, you’ll never go back to—” he stops, remembering a lot of new information all at once. “Actually,” he says, pausing in his looting. “Were you actually a magistrate at some point or…?”
“Yes,” Astarion says flatly, crouching to fiddle with a locked equipment chest.
“Ah. Okay. Just checking.”
“I think my certifications are a nearly two centuries out of date, darling, so consider this a career change.” There’s a click as he gets the chest open and flips the lid. “Not gold, but it’ll do,” he declares, pleased, and starts to rifle through what appears to be a cache of enchanted items. “Gale, any notion what sort of magic is hiding in these?”
Gale’s dark, focused gaze flashes with light, his fingers moving briefly through identification magic. “Hmm, most of this is basic anti-aging charms against wear and tear, but about five of these look properly useful. Karlach, could you—?”
The big tiefling woman saunters over and up-ends the whole chest into her pack. It’s not quite a bag of holding, but an off brand of minor pocket dimension, so good enough for their purposes.
“Swish,” she says, then waves a clawed hand. “Hey, Astarion, can I get you over here for a minute?”
He stands up, dusting his palms off as he trails after her.
She takes him entirely to another corner of the basement, which is puzzling until she turns around and has a very serious little expression – a strange mixture of worry and business that he has no idea how to read. She slings the bag to the ground and glances surreptitiously toward Wyll and Gale. Is… is she trying to have a secret conversation with him? What is happening?
“Hey, mate, I saw some of what happened. You and Anders?”
Oh.
Astarion pauses, uncertain what kind of reaction is most appropriate and then, feeling far too tired to manage anyone else’s emotions in this moment, just says, “Yes? And?”
“You alright?”
“Why wouldn’t I be alright?”
Karlach is undeterred. “Because Anders laid hands on you, mate. Not just the fighting sort. I repeat, you alright?”
“I stabbed him in the throat and then he was lit on fire, Karlach.” Astarion smiles at her, arms folded, looking her over as though she were a cute but puzzling thing he’s found. “I don’t know what further vindication I could possibly ask for. That’s exactly the kind of result I hope for when wretches lay hands on me. Thank you for that, by the way.”
Karlach grins, jackal-mean and says, “Team effort. Look, glad you’re good, but even if we merked the fucker, I wanted to check. Killing people isn’t enough sometimes, you know?”
Astarion blinks. “Honestly, no. I don’t.”
“Oh.” She looks a bit awkward. “Well… I’ve killed… most everyone who ever laid hands on me that I didn’t like and sometimes you still feel like shit afterward, you know? So, if you’re not good or whatever, just let me know and, I dunno, we can talk about it. Or find something else to kill about it. Okay, fangs?”
Astarion stares at her for a beat.
“Al… right,” he manages, genuinely stymied. “Did that happen to you a lot while you were conscripted? Devils in Avernus trying to—?”
“It was the hells, mate.” She says it dryly, but without offense. “People try everything down there and not everyone was an ally of Zariel who knew better than to try me.” She shrugs. “In hell, the way you deal with anyone disrespecting you is being a bigger fucking cunt right back, so exactly my forte.”
A flicker in her lovely face, a crack in her casual demeanor.
“Anyway, just making sure you’re okay.”
Astarion debates quickly with himself about whether he can duck her if she swings on him, then asks, “Am I to understand you had to be a bit of a monster to keep the devils at bay?”
She looks away.
“I mean… yeah?” She looks sideways back at Astarion for his reaction, her cat-gold eyes pale through the fringe of her hair, as though afraid to see his expression head-on. “Like, it was mostly for show but… yeah. I wasn’t a good person in Avernus, ya know?”
Astarion, tense now, says, “Are you saying you… occasionally took from others what they tried to take from you?”
She blinks. “What do you me—? Oh!” Horror then, genuine panic. “No, no, no! Never that, gods, no, fangs. I just mean I killed and dismembered a lot of motherfuckers in really gross ways to make a point, ya know? That’s all.” A pause. “Oh, wow, that doesn’t sound better when I say it out loud. Holy shit. Um…”
She looks so utterly mortified, Astarion bursts into laughter.
“Okay, well, glad that’s hilarious to you,” Karlach says, trying to be terse but mostly sounding relieved. Then when Astarion keeps on laughing at her for longer than strictly appropriate, starting to double over with mirth, she deadpans, “Mate, be less tickled about all the hyper-violence I was doing for the sake of not dying. C’mon.”
Astarion calms down enough to grin at her.
“Sorry, darling. I just… do not care. You were in the hells. I didn’t assume you were hugging puppies down there.” He glances over his shoulder to make sure Wyll and Gale are minding their business before adding, “We already discussed that I wasn’t… particularly nice under Cazador’s hand. At least anyone you mauled in Avernus probably deserved it and, honestly, even if they didn’t, I cannot overstate how much I do not care.”
She nods, but there’s a nervousness to her now.
“Right, but I didn’t do that kind of stuff. Okay? I’m serious. It was just the… you know, the regular violence.”
Astarion is a little uncomfortable to realize that he’s struck some kind of nerve; which is not something he ever wants to do by accident. Especially with big, dangerous, former line-breakers for a literal arch devils. Karlach looks down at him with an anxious expectation he’s not prepared for. Not that he knows her well, but fear makes her a stranger to him. As though his opinion makes much difference when it’s largely Wyll and Lae’zel arm-wrestling over which direction to take things day in and day out.
“I wouldn’t dream of telling Wyll,” he says experimentally. “If you want it to be just between us?”
“Huh? No, solider, you believe me that I didn’t do that stuff right?” Her tone only ratchets up with new anxious momentum. “I really didn’t. I… Look.” She steps toward him. “I could show you if you wanted?”
Astarion feels a clumsy telepathic frisson, like a tone being played inside his skull as the illithid binary between them harmonizes Karlach’s mind to his and she opens her entire consciousness to him. She’s awkward with it compared to the others in the group with the tadpole communication, reckless with herself. It’s such a strong connection it bowls him. Too deep. Too fast. Like an over-eager lover takes a hand and guides it straight to aching skin.
He twitches on reflex, snapping his end of the bond shut to keep his thoughts, memories, and feelings walled within himself. A door shut against the wave that breaks against his mind and—
A wash of ripping, screaming, dying devils. Red and bone-splintered violence splatters Astarion’s recall like someone throwing paint into his face, over and over and over until his operational memory is striped in the sensory collage of Karlach’s ‘acceptable’ atrocities. Her enemies eviscerated, staked out as warning to others. Death by inches just to make a point. Enemies left functional enough to be alive long after she walked away.
But more profoundly than that, Astarion experiences the transitive joy and fury of being so fucking powerful that most anything you want dead will be so and yet helpless to break away. For a beautiful, terrible, whiskey-sweet moment, Astarion knows the height of Karlach’s engine-fueled power in the hells… and how far she has fallen to be among their rabble.
He can feel the guttering smolder of her heart for the failing mechanism that it is.
He can feel that she does not miss it… but he thinks, probably, she should.
Astarion says, “Just the regular sort of gore, Karlach. I get it.”
The rip current of her mind goes out like a tide.
“I’d never do that kind of thing,” she repeats once their thoughts are their own again. She’s looking at him with such focus her eyes seem to flicker in her skull. “I swear. That’s not me.”
“I believe you,” he enunciates, gratified that Karlach’s expression goes slack with relief because that was clearly what she needed to hear. “Honestly, you’re so worried about it but I don’t care. If it makes you happy, I shant go on thinking more poorly of you than you actually warrant. Cross my heart and hope to… whatever.”
Karlach laughs a little and he grins.
“Thanks, fangs. Wouldn’t want you inaccurately rating my bastard levels.” She kicks his boot lightly, almost shyly. She’s so enormous that doing anything shyly looks absurd on her but she says, “Seriously. You’re good?”
“Ugh. Yes.” Astarion waves a hand as he turns away. "Unlike you, killing those who wrong me is absolutely enough for me.” He pauses before leaving their little corner, aware again of where Wyll and Gale are riffling through cabinets together and sniffing various bottles to identify their contents. “You… won’t mention Anders to the others?” Astarion keeps a casual tone he does not feel. “Right?”
Karlach clicks her tongue. “Course not, mate. That’s between us.”
Astarion throws her a side-long look, the kind that confidantes trade around.
“See. We get on like a house on fire.”
She grins. “And we set houses on fire pretty well too.”
They finish looting the building and head back to camp. Karlach swings around his tent later in the evening to trade a few stories about devil-killing for sips of whiskey by his tent, laughing, tail lashing like an engaged cat at play until she dozes off in the middle of a story he embellishes for her about a very insufferable party (a normal party, not one of the gut-clenching, horror-shows) he attended at the behest of his master.
Then he lies there, contemplating the stars and the warmth of Karlach’s body like a personal campfire beside him. She’s so warm he will absolutely not do the gentlemanly thing and wake her up to banish her to her own bedroll. He lies there instead, letting her memories roll in his mind – like a coin flipped thoughtfully over fingers in a sleight of hand, tasting of copper.
He imagines Anders’ face blistering, bursting, then blackening to a charred and chattering skull.
He imagines dozens upon dozens of leering, vicious faces, hands all erupting into flame until they’re a crowd of writhing, shrieking, mannequins composed of flame and fats to burn. And it’s on that lovely, self-soothing bit of fantasy that Astarion finds himself slipping into a comfortable trance, meditating warmly on the hum of Karlach’s engine and the glow of burning bodies staked out beneath red skies as a warning to anyone that would think about touching him.