Somewhere, somehow, a pair of heroes whom you would definitely NOT expect to be working together were fighting to preserve their world, Sanctuary.
"By the light of Akarat, I shall be your judge and your jury! " the Crusader shouted whilst bringing down his mighty hammer.
As his hammer made contact with his enemy a bolt of heavenly lightning smote down from the heavens, instantly vaporizing any enemies that dare try to blindside the holy warrior. Raising the hammer to the sky once more, the warrior readied his shield - an enormous towershield. Truly, it was more like a coffin lid then an actual shield, what with it's huge surface and grisly skull decorations. "By the light be damned! Humanity has suffered under your yoke for too long! "
On the other side of the battlefield, a grisly army could be seen tearing their way through demons and angels alike - doing their master's bidding with almost primal brutality. Seemingly neverending tides of undead flooded over the enemies, assimilating the fallen into their ranks. In the midst of all that carnage stood a pale man, chanting to his master Rathma. "This world can not abide you any longer! Dissappear into the soil, fiends! " With a wave of his scythe several corpses violently exploded in the midst of the enemy ranks, sending them into dissarray. "Vile creatures! Prepare to face the consequenses of your transgressions! " Another wave of his scythe followed, this time cutting through an angel - seemingly not noticing neither the angelic nor the infernal enemies sneaking up on him. What the enemies that tried to sneak up on the Necromancer's back did not realize, however, was that he had accounted for that - for at the same time his grim scythe swung, the corpses around him were ripped open and bones were pulled out of them. Watching in shock as their allies were being desecrated in such a manner, they were unable to react in time as the bones all starting flying towards them, impaling them with extreme prejudice.
Needless to say - the end result was not pretty.
"As much as I do not agree with your practices, I cannot argue about their effectiveness. Shall we wrap this up? I'll go have words with the commander if you keep the rest of the enemies out of our little discussion... " The voice belonged to the holy warrior of Akarat - whose hammer had just finished smashing yet another enemy into red paste and was now gazing at the spectacle with a conflicted look. After seeing his fellow warrior nod, the Crusader summoned forth a steed, burning bright with holy flames. "Akarat be praised! Angels, nor demons shall impede the crusade! " The warrior once more hefted the hammer high after mounting the celestial steed and started charging through the enemy ranks like a battering ram, all the while reciting one of the Sacred Laws of Valor. It would seem that Akarat favored this warrior, for his armor started to blaze with holy light as well. As the holy warrior was scouring the battlefield for any who dare still oppose the two, a fiery angel wielding a burning spear and a dark berserker soldier stepped forward. "Nephalem! Your misbegotten kind has tainted creation long enough. We cannot abide this. Prepare to die! " the angel shouted as he brandished his spear. At the same time the demon standing next to him started to grossly mutate - his arm started to become elongated, his head sunk into his chest cavity and his legs were replaced with arachnid razors.
Jumping off his spectral horse and dismissing it, the Crusader raised his shield just in time to block an incoming gout of flame, only narrowly avoiding a direct hit. "Still quite the charming one, aren't you Imperius? Pray tell, what caused you to ally with the demons? Don't tell me you got lonely... I'd imagine even in heaven there are services for that, friend. " "You may jest, nephalem, but the fact of the matter is that those of you who fought and brought down our brother Malthael are too powerful for your own good. Your filthy power must be destroyed, before all creation is doomed! "
Imperius. The Archangel of Valour and leader of the Heavenly host - brash, spiteful and as ferocious and hot-blooded as Diablo himself. Said to be both the greatest commander and strongest warrior to ever have lived. The holy warrior could feel a grin form on his face - he had always wanted to take on Imperius. After all, Imperius was the most vocal out of all the Angels in his hate of humans, even going as far as to call a vote for their extinction.
And thus commenced an epic melee. Spear met shield, all whilst blazing flames burst all around the combatants. Even if any of the other enemies tried to assist their commanders, the flames resulting from the clash rebuked them instantly. Strangely enough, the mutated demon did not make a single move, which picked the Crusader's curiosity. Instead, it appeared to be passively focussing on the Crusader's companion and his army. The scuffle between the Champion Of Akarat and the Archangel of Valour continued on for a while, with both combatants appearing to be evenly matched - another thing that the Crusader found strange. As a nephalem at the peak of his ability he should have been able to end it in a minute... Instead, he found himself being forced into a game of wits and skill - thrust, dodge. Block, dodge, strike. It was a strange sensation for the Crusader, who got used to being able to decimate entire armies of demons with a couple of blows. However, it was not an entirely unwelcome one as he enjoyed a good challenge. Pondering the angel's increased strength and resilience, he raised his shield to block yet another onslaught of fiery blows. Unfortunately, having misgauged the strength of each hit he flinched and was thrown off-balance.
Imperius knocked away his shield and was about to deliver a critical blow when suddenly, the spear stopped mere inches from his throat. Craning his neck to see why Imperius froze, he saw that Imperius' demonic ally appeared to be twitching and emitting - of all things - holy light. Stunned at the appearance of this paradox, the Crusader did not even realize both the angels and the demons alike had hightailed it out of the battlefield. Seeing the demon twitch and convulse had left the warrior in need of a moment to process what exactly was going on - unfortunately, that one moment had been enough for the demon to let out a disturbing cry and jump clear past him. Before the Crusader could react the demon lept once more, straight into the midst of the army of the dead. Corpses were sent flying as the demon used it's appendage to violently tear through the armies conjured by the Necromancer. Worse, it appeared to be capable of strong necromantic magic itself - unusually strong even for a demon - for it assimilated each and everyone of them. The corpses of both friend and foe were consumed, turning the demon into an unstoppable fleshy behemoth. A truly disgusting sight, it looked as if someone had created a sickening hybrid from Azmodan and Belial's remains -twice as lethal as both combined, three times as ferocious. This, of course, was without mentioning the smell... so disgusting it even dwarfed Ghom's putrid scent.
The Necromancer had been viewing the destruction of his army with disgust and slowly started turning towards the Crusader. "Hmph. Looks like this one will be a challenge. Never before have I seen such blatant disruption of the balance of this world... Crusader! Are you still capable of fighting or am I on my own? " the Necromancer spoke, whilst his eyes were starting to glow with an eerie blue light. The Crusader, on his part, righted himself using his hammer and took a look at his equipment. He had sustained wounds and was rather fatigued as he had taken on the brunt of the hybrid army attacking the Stonefort, but otherwise still believed he could muster enough strength to bring this foe down. As he stood up, he shouted towards the Necromancer. "Keep this walking disaster busy! I shall recite the holy laws and invoke the Avatar of Akarat, for I do not think our normal attacks will have a lot of effect on this walking crime against creation! " Having said that, the Crusader planted his hammer onto the ground and genuflected, placing his hands on top of the hilt of the hammer in prayer. "Very well. Do take note that I will not be able to keep this walking desecration busy for long. It only gets stronger from any of my necromantic summons - thus, it will force me to rely on my martial training. " The Necromancer's scowl turned into a grin... It'd been a while since he had the pleasure of taking on a challenge of this scope - it was not since he and a certain Wizard had slain Malthael that he had felt such a rush.
Dodging a swipe from the behemoth's claws he twisted his body into a roll, landing near a pile of ash left over from one of the Crusader's many, many light-infused onslaughts. "Well... at the very least, that abomination cannot use them either... " Summoning a spectral scythe, he assumed a stance that would allow him to react to any and all attacks and waited. As the beast reared back for another strike, the warrior's scythe met the beast's claw in a spectacular clash - allowing the Necromancer to show the beast that while he might not be as powerful as other nephalem were in close combat, he was not to be underestimated. However, the beast proved to be quite resilient - even without an army of corpses to snack on. Every time the Necromancer cut off one of its many appendages, two more grew to replace it, all the while causing the creature to become even more horribly disfigured. "Hurry it up, Crusader! I may not be able to keep it busy for much longer! " the Necromancer shouted, as he summoned forth a wall of fossilized bones to stand between the Crusader and a blast of white flames. Unfortunately, in doing so he failed to pay attention to the appendage that had been creeping up on him and the beast got ahold of him - having free reign to smack him about for a good minute, afore throwing him aside like a ragdoll. The Priest of Rathma ended up impacting a dead tree with his back, which left him completely vulnerable and at the mercy of his opponent. Smashed into a tree and viewing events unfolding through goggles of haziness, a beam of bright light in the corner of his eye and the demon halting his advance on him were the last things he saw before he blacked out due to fatigue and pain.
The demon had halted his advance on the unconscious Necromancer, his attention caught by the light as well. Craning one of it's many heads to see what happened, it appeared to be surprised to see that a flaming juggernaut had taken the place of the Crusader. "By the light be damned. I do not know by what infernal construct you aqcuired your dual nature of holy and shadow, but I shall not allow you to make such a mockery of the holy light of the Zakarum! Face my holy flames, wretched spawn! " And thus the Champion Of Akarat, also known as the Avatar of Wrath charged forward, great maul in hand.
Author's notes
Hey there! Thus ends the first chapter of this Diablo III fanfic you are reading - as well as my first fanfic ever...
If any of you end up wondering how in the heck I thought of this concept, well...
I was playing the Necromancer with a good friend of mine and, as a Crusader main myself, wondered what would happen if the two ever ended up having to fight on the same side. From there on my imagination escalated to an epic story, filled with all the Nephalem ( a.k.a the playable classes, both genders existing as seperate characters ) and engaging in battle against both the forces of light and dark. I have no idea where to go ( alright, I am lying... I do have a general direction / setup in mind ) but judging how the next couple of chapters went ( which will be updated by the time you read this ) I think it'll be interesting to see where improvisation will bring me.
And in case any of you had read the mess this fic was before I updated it - thank you! Out of necessity I was forced to use the mobile app to write these stories, so I was forced to go back and update these chapters ( 1-3 ) to make sure the spelling and formatting were correct once I finally got my mittens on a friggin' pc.
Hope you guys enjoyed, and please leave a review if you'd like - heck, I'd even take suggestions for this fic!
14 sept 2017: Final edit and reupload. Fixed some more errors, flushed out some more details and made the chapter as a whole "flow" a bit better.