“Pulled it out of a drider’s hoard while you were busy decapitating said drider.” Karlach shrugged, but her tail curled with embarrassment. “Fixed the edge. Re-wrapped the grip. The cord is just—well. I figured if you’re going to be killing mind flayers beside me, you might as well have something that doesn’t look like it was fished out of a latrine.”
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.
“You are a soldier of Avernus,” Lae’zel said at last. “Not a smith. Not a quartermaster.”
“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.” baldur 39-s gate 3
Later, when the others slept, Lae’zel stood watch alone. Her fingers brushed the crimson cord on the hilt. She did not remove it.
“Uh-huh.” Karlach grinned, and her canines caught the firelight. “And that’s why you keep reaching for a sword that isn’t there.”
“You… scavenged this,” Lae’zel said slowly. “Pulled it out of a drider’s hoard while
In the dark, something with too many legs skittered close. Lae’zel drew both blades—the greatsword and the gift—and for the first time since the nautiloid, she felt whole.
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.
Lae’zel lifted the blade. Turned it. The fire traced the cord’s red line like a pulse. The cord is just—well
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.”
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.
“Tch. You fight like a ghustil ’s apprentice, Karlach. But you give gifts like a kith’rak .” She resettled her greatsword across her back. “When we reach the creche, I will tell the inquisitor that you are… acceptable.”
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.