“You’re missing something,” Karlach said.
“Yeah, well.” Karlach’s engine rumbled louder. “I’m also a tiefling who’s had exactly one real friend in the last ten years, and I’m not letting her go into a fight short-handed. Even if she is stubborn as a rusted bolt.”
“High praise,” Karlach laughed. The sound broke the shadow-cursed air like a bell.
Later, when the others slept, Lae’zel stood watch alone. Her fingers brushed the crimson cord on the hilt. She did not remove it. baldur 39-s gate 3
They had lost the ghaik ’s ship, its twisted metal corridors, its brine-soaked horrors. But they had also lost gear. Lae’zel’s backup longsword had shattered against a hook horror’s carapace two nights ago. Since then, she had fought with only her greatsword—a magnificent, cruel thing—but Karlach noticed the imbalance. The way Lae’zel adjusted her stance for a strike that never came.
She unwrapped the cloth with the same care she’d use to disarm a trap. Inside lay a longsword—not githyanki make, but sturdy. Elturel steel, by the look of the hilt. The blade was nicked but true. And wrapped around the grip, braided through the leather, was a single crimson cord. Karlach’s cord. From the sash she’d worn the day they escaped the nautiloid.
“You are a soldier of Avernus,” Lae’zel said at last. “Not a smith. Not a quartermaster.” “You’re missing something,” Karlach said
The githyanki moved like a blade through the gloom, silent, precise. But Karlach had known her for tendays now. She saw the small things: the way Lae’zel’s gauntleted fingers twitched toward her hip—not for her silver sword, but for the empty place behind it. The place where a second blade should hang.
Karlach sat down across from her, close enough that the heat from her chest made the frost on Lae’zel’s pauldron hiss.
For a long moment, Lae’zel said nothing. Then, almost too quiet: “It is… inefficient. To fight with a single point of failure. A second blade is not sentiment. It is tactics.” Even if she is stubborn as a rusted bolt
The shadow-cursed lands clung to the soles of their boots like the memory of a scream. Even with the Moonlantern’s frail glow, the air felt thick—half rot, half regret. Karlach walked at the rear, her engine a low, warm thrum against the cold. She was watching Lae’zel.
No. Two points of victory.