A Change of Tactics

“Hypocrites, all of you! All willfully ignorant, denying the true nature of the cosmos!”

The screaming came from a man bound and forced to his knees, the fresh wounds of battle still red on his body. His captors stood nearby, their weapons ready and dripping with gore.

“Chaos is illusory, a veil that disguises the natural order that underlies all things! In your ignorance you fail to pierce it, you believe the disorder on the surface runs all the way to the core!”

His inhuman enemies barked and hissed in their strange language, so brutal and discordant that it couldn’t possibly convey any meaning. One approached him, a silver blade drawn.

“You call yourselves chaotic, yet even you are beholden to order! You have hierarchies, mores and norms! Though you clothe yourself in discord, the fabric of law-”

There was a wet, unpleasant noise, punctuated by the sound of cracking bone. A lanky, almost skeletal githyanki sheathed his dripping blade, and the now headless prisoner fell to one side.

“I figured you’d heard enough of that.” Said Samak, crossing his wiry arms. The gith was still tired and worn from a day of battle, his mind exhausted from mental expenditure and his bony body equally ragged. It didn’t help that he was far from his home plane, the timeless void of the Astral. Instead, the Blood War had brought him to the ferrous, cloudy plane of Acheron. The sound of battle could always be heard in the distance, reverberating off the colossal, continent-sized iron cubes that made up the plane.

He always felt odd when away from his home; on other planes his body aged, tired, and he was vulnerable to hunger and sickness. In the Astral, he was preserved in constant unchanging stasis, like an alchemist’s specimen floating in formaldehyde. The shock of leaving his home always got to him, the sudden weight of decades beating him over the head while hunger and thirst socked him in the gut. True, he ate and drank while in the Astral plane, but it was something he needed to remind himself to do, not a constant necessity. He might go for months without a bite to eat, might stay awake for years on end without realizing it. And while he trained and exercised constantly, there was no escaping that the weightless void required him to move with his mind, not his body. Generations of physical atrophy had afflicted the githyanki with their skeletal, sinewy forms, both from poor diet and worse exercise as their minds became stronger and stronger to better inhabit their astral home. It took several days for him to acclimate to a new plane, his psychic abilities and the sheer stubborn tenacity his race was known for the only things keeping him from falling apart.

“A poor choice of last words,” hissed the demon that sat coiled, watching the execution. “Never adapting, never diverging from established ideas, even in the face of death. How very lawful of him.” Lesser demons within earshot cackled in response, fearing what their dread master might do to them should they not. Of course, they feared what she would do to them should they try and appease her too, that was the way the greater and true tanar’ri held sway over their underlings. A constant threat of violence, an ever-present, choking uncertainty that kept them guessing with every action, trying to avoid their superior’s wraths yet test them for weakness.

The demonic general grinned, her attractive, tan visage contorting into a malicious smirk. “I had already gleaned all he knew from his mind while he spoke, but of course you knew this before you slew our last prisoner, didn’t you Samak?”

The stoic gish wiped his magical weapon on his loincloth, leveling an intimidating glare at a group of dretch that approached too close to him.

“No Tezrian, no I didn’t,” he responded truthfully, a concept all but alien to the deceitful tanar’ri. “But your troops do not have your self control,” he said as one of the dretch waddled towards him, fangs and claws bared. “I feared that his words would incite them to violence. And once he was dead, they would turn on each other. And you wouldn’t want a riot on your hands, would you?”

“Even when you’re killing you have to ruin the fun of battle,” sighed the marilith, folding her half-dozen arms over her chest. She frowned, and looked through the array of weapons she wore sheathed around her hips like a martial skirt. Though the gith was right, she still relished the idea of fighting her chaotic comrades, getting to murder those who she led. She licked her lips when she imagined her loyal flight of vrocks turning on her in a bloody rage, their beaks and talons dripping with the ichor of their allies. She would pluck the feathers from every one of their wings, then use the adamantine handaxe she carried by her side to split the avian fiends in two.

But, she had to begrudgingly admit, that would spell ruin for her army. They were short on troops as it were, the lawful plane of Acheron weakening what tanar’ri could manifest on the cubes and preventing many from being summoned. And numbers were the demons greatest strength. This place of conflict, this realm of lockstep conformity and regimental uniformity, it was a plane made for armies, and for battle. It was a place where armies of the blood war frequently clashed, the forces of law backing the Baatezu holding the upper hand over the hordes of chaotic tanar’ri due to the plane’s alignment. A tactician at heart, Tezrian had sought to address this weakness with a bolstering force of mercenary yugoloths, but the traitorous fiends had vanished on the eve of battle.

The tanar’ri host had been forced to make a fighting retreat from the regimented, efficient Baatezu army, taking shelter beneath the carcasses of titanic war machines and in thickets of rusted spears. Tezrian would not allow her army to return to the Abyss, not as defeated, humiliated cowards. That admission of weakness would mark her for death, show her rivals and enemies that she was not as strong as she claimed. They were already attempting to wound her through Samak.

It was easy for the canny fiends to see how she favored the githyanki; never disciplining him for affronts that would have a molydeus flogged, granting what was ostensibly a mercenary access to her command tent, even defending him on the field of combat when she could have easily stabbed him in the back. But, credit to his own skill with arms and the arcane, he had repulsed the would be assassins with the same efficiency with which he dispatched spined devils.

The loathsome dretch reached for Samak, it’s warty green hand terminating in hooked claws. A swift knee to it’s twisted face sent the lesser demon sprawling, and Samak threw an even more threatening glare at it’s peers. Tezrian chuckled and rolled her eyes, waving goodbye to Samak with two hands as she slithered away. He pursed his nearly nonexistent lips as she left, held captivated by the sight of her backside; powerful shoulder muscles supporting her array of arms, her tan skin bare save for what bits of jewelry dangled over her. The demon must have picked up his rapt fascination with her telepathy, for she slowed her retreat, gently rocking her hips from side to side as she crawled away. Her two lower arms reached under her skirt of weapons and ran over her scaly rear, fingers laden with rings and baubles gently squeezing her reptilian posterior. The gith remained transfixed even as he heard the marilith’s mocking telepathic laughter in his mind, up until she disappeared behind a rusted wheel the size of a building. There were duties around the camp that called to her, things she needed to address both as a commander and as a tanar’ri. Though he would see her again shortly, he longed for that moment’s arrival, for the comfort of the demon’s perverse companionship.

Time was a confusing, relative concept in the planes, but one could still feel it passing. The rusty clouds of Acheron swirled over the machine graveyard where the demons hid, the anarchic fiends unusually placid. Their lust for cruelty and violence was tempered by their recent defeat; while they all felt the desire for vengeance, many willing to throw their lives away for it, they were canny enough to know when their deaths would be pointless. Better to lie and wait and let their hatred fester and curdle, so when the chance to inflict pain arose, the satisfaction would be so much sweeter.

Samak, however, found comfort in his post-battle rituals. His armor was polished, his silver sword cleaned and sharpened, his mind refreshed with a quick nap. As a precaution, he cast a spell to secure his shelter, in case one of the fiends tried to harm him while he slept. Sure enough, the spell had been discharged in his slumber, and a paralyzed rutterkin stood with his spear prodding the side of the tent, sepia-colored energy holding him fast.

He was not surprised, but a bit disappointed. Sleep was something he only did away from home, it was something special and exotic, and he didn’t want to constantly fear a knife in the back while he rested. Tezrian would call it a weakness, a sign of his dependence on his home plane. Her companionship was the reason he traveled with this band of traitorous malicious outsiders, that and his own desire to become stronger.

He moved towards the camp mess, the alien sensation of hunger compelling him forward. The demons favored raw meat, but he was sure he’d be able to find something to sate his appetite.

Then the screaming began. Howls and garbled tongues were common in the fiendish army, but this was the screaming of the hurt and dying. Samak immediately drew his weapon and adopted a defensive stance, turning towards the sound. It took his eyes a moment to pick out what was happening, to pierce the gloomy corroding clouds of Acheron, but then he saw them. Perched upon the ruined gears of some ancient siege engine were dozens of fiends. They were clearly not tanar’ri, they formed orderly lines, worked with clockwork precision, a regimented, cold lethality to their every motion. Baatezu.

How they had found the tanar’ri camp so quickly was a mystery, but Samak curled his fingers and recited the guttural words for a shield spell, then a charm of haste, then finally a blessing of strength. The Baatezu had high ground, and rained cold-iron arrows and spells down at the demons, precise volleys decimating mobs of dretch and turning vrocks into pincushions.

Samak was about to make his way towards them when a series of great explosions rocked the camp, rusty dust being flung into the air as low metallic ringing echoed from the blast. A terrible horned devil, its hands crackling with magic, flew overhead, peppering the tanar’ri with its spells.

More and more Baatezu were converging from every side; grim ranks of bearded devils forming the vanguard while skeletal bone devils harried the surprised demons before they could mount a defense. Samak was in no small part impressed, the devils were efficient, but rarely this so. Samak bit his lip and slipped back into his tent, peeking an eye out of the flap and focusing his psionic senses, readying himself for when the devils were close.

The sounds of conflict outside became louder and grislier, the clash of arms and the screams of the fallen coming closer and closer. Samak had no fear of death, it was another thing his life in the Astral plane had robbed him of. Ageless, never growing ill, his sense of mortality was warped and twisted. Perhaps that helped his relationship with the murderous mariltih, ignoring his own safety, never worrying about if he’d be alive tomorrow.

He was startled as a wounded chasme stumbled into the tent, the fly-like demon’s wings scorched and a handful of arrows sticking out of it’s side. The demon didn’t seem to notice Samak, and it hacked up bile and collapsed at Samak’s feet. The gish exhaled, rolling his shoulders. He could hear footprints against the cold steel ground, the sound of taloned feet marching through the ruined engines of war. His body moving faster than his mind, Samak sliced through the edge of the tent, leaping out headfirst into the oncoming devils. A phalanx of cruel bearded devils, Baatezu shock troops, met him on the other side, their cruel faces all identical to the smallest detail. If they were surprised by the gith’s entrance they did not show it, instead turning their serrated glaives his way and hissing.

With his enhanced speed, the gith stepped into the devil’s guard, inside the reach of their polearms. As one their beady yellow eyes followed him, the closest barbazu bearing his fangs at the lanky green warrior. The gish swung his sword upwards, striking the fiend in the inner left thigh. While most weapons would be turned away by the demon’s otherworldly hides, they were vulnerable to silver, and there were no silver weapons deadlier than a githyanki’s. They were created to hunt the aberrant, mind-devouring horrors that all gith called enemy, terrors from out of time as deadly as any devil. The blade cut true, severing the devil’s leg and cutting up through his side, black blood splattering the nearest devil in symmetrical patterns.

But Samak’s slash had left him exposed, and the light, shoddy armor his people favored left his vitals open to retaliation. Perhaps it was another result of his unaging, warped mortality; he thought himself undying, and neglected to protect himself fro mharm. While never thinking of the possibility of his own death, trusting his skill and his mind to protect him, his kind eschewed practical armor, wearing scraps of metal and strips of leather and little else.

Though the devils could not bring their long glaives to bear, the two flanking Samak thrust their faces at him, thick scraggily beards writhing like nests of snakes. The hairs reached out at his exposed skin, scratching and raking him like a hundred iron wires. Fortunately his shielding spell was still in effect, and the beards hurt only as much as scratches from fingernails. The one to his right opened it’s mouth wide, and snapped at his upraised arm.

Samak reacted, shoving the fuller of his sword into the fiend’s mouth. The silver burned the devil, steam rising from the gaps between its fangs and his eyes rolling back in his head. With a mighty push, Samak shoved the blade through the back of the barbazu’s mouth, separating the top of his head from his body. But again, his disregard for danger, his willingness to risk his own safety exposed him, and he had shown his back to the other bearded devil. A horizontal slash from the jagged glaive cut into his upper back, the serrated weapon opening a painful cut that wept blood profusely.

Samak screamed and cursed, and the other devils took advantage of his weakness. He was surrounded, and though he tried to block and parry their strikes, blows from their polearms penetrated his guard, opening awful cuts in his arm and shoulders.

“I suggest you stop,” said a falsetto voice in fluent Draconic. Its tone was calm and even, but it carried subtle tones of malice and evil. The barbazu looked at each other and, after a moment, parted and allowed a lanky, jackal-headed figure to enter the circle. It wore long purple robes, decorated with arcane runes, and carried its arms folded behind its back.

It was a Arcanaloth, one of the enigmatic rulers of the Yugoloth race.

“I want to pick his brain,” jeered the canine fiend, “see what he knows about tanar’ri command.”

Samak tried to focus his will, to block the Arcanaloth’s probing influence, but the numerous wounds that the devils had inflicted overwhelmed his mind with searing pain. He was rapidly losing blood, his vision already blurring, his extremities growing cold and numb.

“Oh you’ll like this,” sneered the Yugoloth, grinning and casting his gaze from barbazu to barbazu. “This blood’s a tanar’ri lover!”

The barbed devils looked between themselves and shrugged their shoulders, one of their number saying something in sibilant Infernal.

“Your kind take things too literal,” scoffed the Arcanaloth, “I mean he sleeps with one. Lays with it. Breeds. Has intercourse in a consensual manner for pleasure.”

That got a reaction out of the devils, curling their upper lips and snarling at the partially conscious githyanki. One of them fell to the infamous frenzies that so frequently overwhelmed their kind, and had to be restrained by his comrades as he bellowed in bestial anger at Samak, his beard writhing like a nest of vipers and his claws reaching for the gith’s neck.

“You betrayed us. You led them to us.” Samak coughed up blood as he spoke, the oblivion that was foreign to him winning the battle for his consciousness.

“You’d think an anarchic bunch of rabble like yourselves would expect that. It’s just business, I assure you. The Dark Eight offered my warband twice the number of souls that nearsighted marilith could, nothing personal of course.”

The Arcanaloth looked at the raging Barbazu, his fury spreading to his cohorts as they lost control and licked their lips in Samak’s direction. The canine Yugoloth sighed and shook his head.

“Would you believe it, for all their talk of Law they cave in to their base desires when it suits them.” He rolled his eyes at Samak conspiratorially, shaking his head and stroking his fur. “Only so much it can do for them. They’ll turn to True Evil someday, don’t you worry, we just need to show them how.”

Samak tried to mutter a response, but the darkness claimed him before he could utter a word.
Tezrian was ecstatic. She didn’t care if her side won or lost, whether the bodies she cleaved were demon or devil. Her weapons sliced into another-she was half sure that one was a barbed devil-an arc of gore splattering on her chest. The demoness licked her lips and whipped her long black tail out to catch a fiend behind her. It screamed in broken Abyssal, begging her to let it go, telling Tezrian it was one of hers, a tanar’ri. With a grin, she crushed the pleading demon beneath her coils, bright ichor leaking from the gaps between her reptilian lengths. With a gleeful scream, she flung herself at a group of Abishai, driving one of her swords into the gargoyle-like devils and hacking at one’s leg with her axe.

It was over too quickly for her tasts, her six deadly weapons a whirlwind of steel and gore that destroyed everything nearby, be it friend or foe. Sadly, the high of slaughter vanished as soon as it had come, leaving her coiled in a pile of bodies and blood that reached up to her midriff. It was hard to suppress her immediate desires, to leap back into the fray and pursue the wonderful feeling that causing harm gave her. But she was a commander, a tactician, and she had to think on a battlefield scale.

Her army was losing.

While the demons fought as a mass of individuals, the devils fought as one, unified force. The chaotic fiends greatest advantages were unpredictability, variety and sheer innumerable numbers, where the devils’ was their unity, their efficiency, the impossible precision they applied to every action. And now, that precision and cold, mechanical cruelty was overwhelming even the fiercest tanar’ri.

A four-armed, beetle like fiend carrying a pair of heavy battleaxes led a mob of Lemures forward. The gelatinous fiends, the lowest of the Baatezu hierarchy, crawled forwards towards Tezrian, pushed on by the chitinous outsider to their rear. It took the marilith only a fraction of a second to identify the four-armed taskmaster; a Mezzoloth. The ground troops of the Yugoloth race.

Traitors! The thought of being double crossed inflamed the demon, curling her upper lip and tying her reptilian half in knots. Treason and backstabbing were second nature to the tanar’ri, but that fiends as lowly as the Yugoloths would think to betray her? That they would insult her strength and foresight by turning stag on Tezrian the Liar?

She was about to charge the mob of slimy devils when she sensed another fiend appear behind her. Drawing four jagged swords, she rounded on the newcomer, ready to eviscerate whoever it was.

“Rough turn of events, don’t you think?” It chuckled, shaking it’s canine head. The Arcanaloth stepped from the green vapors its teleportation had created, dragging something behind him.

“Must be awful for you, your tactical genius foiled by events beyond your control. Believe me, you have my sympathies, I know how hard it can be to fail in what you thought you were a master.”

“You’ve failed to convince me not to decapitate you!” She shrieked, springing towards the sly fiend. Her swords spun imperceptibly fast, each aimed at the Arcanaloth’s vitals. Her attack would have struck true, would have shredded it’s body and made mincemeat of it’s flesh, but the fiend raised his paw, a dull purple wave emanating from his hand and striking Tezrian’s weapons. The spell removed the magical enchantments from the marilith’s blades, making them into nothing more than mundane metals, which bounced harmlessly off of her foe.

“Ah that tanar’ri impulsiveness, a weakness of your chaotic nature. Its that impulsiveness that’s costing you victory today you know. If you weren’t so disorganized, individualistic and selfish maybe you and your lackeys could stand a chance.”

Tossing the useless weapons aside, Tezrian struck with her tail, catching the Arcanaloth unprepared and hitting him in the side of the snout. The blow knocked him off his feet and sent him sprawling on the hard iron surface of the cube, forcing him to relinquish what he held in his off hand.

“How’s that for impulsive you worm?” Tezrian hissed and drew a new set of weapons; an adamantine handaxe, a magical great sword charmed with unerring accuracy, two maces with flaming head, both facsimiles of dread Orcus’ and a punch dagger whose blade dripped acid. Leaning over the prone Yugoloth, she was about to finish him off when another figure caught her eye.

There was Samak, lying on the steel ground, his helmet missing and his body torn from numerous wounds. His left eye was swollen and blackened and he had lost a few teeth, and, most worrying of all, his silver sword was gone. Githyanki would sooner die than let their enchanted blades leave their possession, each one a personal gift from their god-queen.

“I knew that would work. For all your race’s talk of incomprehensible madness, you wear your hearts on your sleeves.”

He stood up and dusted himself off, drawing a slender black wand and weaving protective charms around his body. Tezrian discerned spells of shielding, flight, elemental resistance and speed, more than enough to make the Yugoloth a match even for her.

“For example, I can tell that you’re deathly afraid that your defeat today will spell death once you return to the Abyss, or worse, another fiend using your weakness to control you, to make your will submit to his.”

“Did you come here just to mock me? Because I’ve heard worse from a Rutterkin.”

“No, I’ve come to offer you a way out. With my minions bolstering their numbers, the Baatezu force outnumbers and outmatches yours, Tezrian. You will not win here, no matter what your stubbornness tells you. But I, and my forces, are more than willing to turn stag on the Baatezu, for a price of course.”

“And what is your price?”

“A few yet unnamed services for me and my superiors sometime in the future, that’s all. Nothing a demon of your skill and strength wouldn’t be able to handle, just some odd jobs and such.”

The Arcanaloth walked back over to the unconscious Samak, gently caressing the green humanoid’s scarred chin. The fiend cackled and mumbled something in it’s profane language, curling his upper lip and showing off his canine teeth as he did so. A storm of incredulous anger overtook Tezrian, a feeling like molten iron flowing from her core to her extremities and causing her face to redden in hatred. How dare that double-crossing worm touch him! The gith was hers and hers alone, hers to touch and to toy with, not his! It was only the quick calculation that told her she wasn’t quick enough to reach him and slit his throat before he hurt Samak that stayed her hand, and even then her half dozen arms twitched with the barely restrained instinct to kill.

“Of course should you refuse, I could just kill this berk. Im sure his screams would be a pleasant divergence from my normal entertainment.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed, rolling her back muscles and gritting her teeth, looking for an opportunity, a single moment where she could strike the other fiend. She wanted to hobble his knees and cut off his arms, leave him a motionless torso for her to torture, sweet revenge for his crime of daring to harm her lover.

“My kin do not dare, we do. Oh! There’s a thought! I could turn him over to the Baatezu, let them have their way with him. I’m sure they’d be fascinated by all the details-carnal and otherwise-he knows about you and your army, your tactics, your motivations. You know how they are, don’t you? They wont kill him, no, far too much paperwork for that. They’ll keep him alive, pick over every detail, record every scream and shudder of his in triplicate.”

Tezrian groaned in disgust, clashing her swords together in frustration.

“They’re not all about violence and bloodshed you know, no, they’re in for punishment. The Baatezu love to punish, discipline and reeducate those that break their innumerable codes. Maybe they’ll make an obedient, lawful drone out of your toy after a century or two.”

The marilith shut her eyes in rage, two hands dropping their weapons and tearing at her hair as her imagination went wild.

There was a surprised gasp and a thump. Tezrian’s eyes shot open, and the Arcanaloth was sprawled on the metal ground, the canine fiend screaming in it’s native tongue as it kicked at Samak. The gish had awoken, and seized the surprised Yugoloth’s ankle in one hand while the other blasted it’s crotch with a battery of magic missiles. This was the chance Tezrian needed, and she sprung forwards, closing the distance in moments. Her two free hands grabbed the Arcanaloth’s hands, preventing him from casting spells while her blades went to work.

The monster’s skin was tough and resilient, her enchanted weapons needing several strikes before they broke his skin. Howling in pain, the fiend tried to summon his own magics, but a silencing spell from Samak muted his canine chants. As the blades cut deeper, centimeter by centimeter slicing away, Tezrian smiled. Here was a prize she could return to the Abyss with. Something that would justify the loss of so many of her underlings and so much effort.

With a final gory slice the Arcanaloth’s head came free, the light in his eyes fading as bright red blood leaked from his neck-stump. Smiling in victory she held the dripping trophy over her chest, letting the gore splatter her breasts and jewelry, reveling in her triumph over the traitor.

“Couldn’t have done it without you lover,” she laughed, casting her bright eyes down at the panting Samak. “How do you feel?”

“Best sleep I’ve ever had,” he wheezed, before collapsing again.

The gish dreamed of great steel swords dueling in the void, sparks the size of moons flying from each clash. A slender silver blade danced between them, avoiding each goliath stab and titanic swing. The narrow argent weapon parried and dodged as the other weapons inflated, growing cruder and larger, losing their military shapes and becoming nothing more than massive iron cubes. They ground the silver sword with their bulk, dulling its edge and crushing it between their sides. The blade was little more than silver dust when everything vanished.

Samak blinked his eyes, his temples throbbing and his stomach turning in knots. It felt like he had downed an entire keg of demonic ale, his body wishing it could cease functioning just to end the discomfort.

“Good morning lover,” hissed a sibilant female voice. Through his blurred vision Samak could only see hazy colored shapes, but he could recognize the fiendish tones anywhere. “You’ve been in the realm of dreams for quite a while now, its good to have you back in my clutches.”

Samak blinked frantically, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes as the throbbing in his head continued.

“How long?” Gasped the gish, the image of his demonic lover taking shape. He was laying in a long, lumpy bed, his body covered in musky furs of many planar creatures. The air was musty, and smelled of old wood and humidity. Tezrian’s black-and-red tail was wrapped around the lower half, her bulk resting on his legs and keeping him immobile, not that he would have wanted to move anyways. Gone was the regular skirt of blades and weapons, gone was her gaudy jewelry. Samak thanked Vlaakith that the first thing he saw upon his return to the living was the comely demoness in all her glory, muscular torso and large, firm breasts so close, the heat from her mammalian half emanating through her colder lower body and into his.

“You rely too much on the Astral,” continued the demon, ignoring his question. “It has made you weak. Complacent. You idle in stasis, away from conflict and strife, from the torment of existence and think that makes you strong.”

“How long was I out Tezrian? And where are we? What happened on the cubes?”

“Maybe if you’d spent that time with me, spent it growing stronger those Baatezu wouldn’t have made a fool of you. Were I any other demon I’d have crushed your spine and tortured you for a year for showing such weakness to me.”

Samak relented, biting his tongue. As reluctant as he was to admit it, she was right. Sequestered away in his home, he could age, eat, drink and sleep at his leisure. Never did he have to worry about the basic needs that made a mortal mortal. Pain, hunger and thirst were alien to him, and his sense of morality had twisted as a result. He had no fear of death because his mind never thought for his own safety, so used to the luxuries of the Astral it was. His bravery was not out of being able to conquer his hardships and overcome his weaknesses, but out of sheer ignorance of them.

“So I’d say you owe me, Samak. You owe me your life.”

“What if I disagree?”

Tezrian’s tail tightened around Samak’s legs, making his already aching bones scream in agony as the serpentine length constricted them.

“Do not mistake me for some fawning damsel. Empathy is something my kin did away with eons ago, and if I want to kill you, to hurt you, to make you scream in agony, longing for the days when you stayed on my good side, believe me lover, I will do that.”

The demon relinquished him, her snarl immediately changing to a placid grin, and she lowered her beautiful upper body on top of Samak’s, her many arms finding places to rest or hold him. Her upper limbs folded under her chin, her breasts pressing against his abdomen as she did so. Her middle set ran over his lanky, bony body, feeling where his bruises and cuts were and idly picking at scabs. Her lower arms folded behind her back, curtly resting just above the strange transitive area where snake met woman.

“But fortunately for you, I shan’t feel that desire,” she purred, gazing up into the githyanki’s tired eyes.

“Tezrian, im sorry, but you’ve got way ahead of me. Where in the Lich Queen’s name are we? What happened on Acheron? How long was I unconscious?”

The marilith pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, the movement of her diaphragm above Samak’s groin making him shiver.

“My horde fell, cut down to the last dretch. You are my last minion, Samak, the only one I have left.”

His eyes widened at that revelation, his heartbeat increasing when he realized the significance of her words. Somehow, this heartless, bloodthirsty monster cared about him enough, valued something in him so much, that she was willing to toss away innumerable tanar’ri to keep him by her side. He didn’t know if he should be flattered or afraid, but the fact that he still drew breath meant he was beyond grateful. It was telling that this was more kindness than half the githyanki race would show him.

“But I found a prize enough to make it worthwhile. A Greater Yugoloth’s head, and all the magical artifacts the traitor carried with him. His magics will be mine, and I will be stronger than ever! I’m already planning on how to use this to my advantage; without the duties of general holding me back there’s a whole realm of opportunities. Perhaps my sister Alamanda could be taken down a peg, I could teach her some respect. Or maybe the Glabrezu of Abysm that insulted me those centuries ago could get his comeuppance! Oh, so many vengeances to take, so little time!”

The marilith took another deep breath and regained her composure. She smiled and gently licked Samak’s belly button with her forked tongue, sending shivers up his body.

“And I couldn’t have done it without you, lover. I’ve taken us to a safe place, back in Sigil, where we can plan our next move while you-and I-lick your wounds. You‘ve been unconscious for maybe two weeks, not that long in the grand scheme of things.”

Samak was stunned, his mouth moving wordlessly while he struggled to process everything. Eventually, he found the words to respond.

“I canno’t thank you enough Tezrian. I owe you my life and my sword. What would you have me do with them?”

Tezrian cupped his face and pulled him half-upright, forcing him to look into her snakelike eyes.

“Stop wasting them! Work to be stronger, not to avoid hardship! Stay by my side and face the cruelty and strife of the planes, grow in power as I do! As a demon would! Toss aside the crutch of the Astral, and live damn you!”

Samak swallowed. The Astral was his home. He was raised there, had spent centuries among the hollow corpses of dead gods, drifted through the infinitesimal void between colored pools, tested his blade against the silver cords of consciousness that crisscrossed the transitive plane. But, as he reflected, his life had become a struggle to avoid it. He found no companionship in his githyanki kin, and lived in constant fear that Vlaakith, the Lich Queen, would see him as a threat and order his execution.

“Whatever you say Tezrian. As long as I can remain with you. Now, where is my sword?”

Tezrian stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and avoided Samak’s gaze for a moment.

“It seems we’ll have to find it.”