Once again it was Kashya who awakened us, but this time with only rough shakes of the shoulder-there was no kicking involved. That was a meager blessing, as the sun hadn't even crept over the edge of the world when we were forced from our sweet, sad dreams of the only home we had ever known.
The Rouges Kashya was offering to us were lined up like chess figures directly parallel to our sleeping places. Daquir and Amith stumbled over from their corner, looking just as disgruntled as we did, if not more annoyed. "Take your pick." Her voice was grating, a scream in my sleep-muffled ears, and her amber eyes flashed with aggravation.
So we tried to wake ourselves up, and we looked over the women who oh-so willingly offered their services. We ended up wanting Aliza, a tall, steely-eyed warrior with more years of experience under her belt than all of ours' combined and then tripled. There was, however, a catch. Kashya hadn't told us that we were expected to pay for the services of her women; we just assumed we were getting them for free-but that wasn't the case. Aliza was one of the most expensive mercenaries, and we simply didn't have the money.
You should have seen Ivalis and Raverto-they would have ripped Kashya to shreds if she hadn't been so utterly important to the camp's survival .
"That was not in our agreement!"
"-never said a single thing about payments and-"
Their faces bulged with purple rage, and Kashya's condescending smirk only sent them into greater whirlwinds of harpy shrieks and hatred.
Eventually we grew to accept that fact that there was nothing we could do to alter the fine print on our unfair contract. After pooling our resources and emptying our purses, we could just barely afford Breeya, a small wisp of a girl who couldn't be more than 14. To add to our already large company a paid warrior who had less experience than we did was a slightly crushing fact, but we held onto her earnest protest that she could learn, she really could.
"So what are we going to do today?" She was so delicate looking-it was as if I hit her, she would break. Those pale, baby blue eyes reminded me of Marysael, except hers held only warmth and eager anticipation.
"I can answer that for you." Unbeknownst to us, Akara had wandered over to the outskirts of our confrontation, waiting patiently to approach. Her face was fully shielded by the encompassing folds of her purple robe, and I could only barely make out her features. "It is eminent to me that this Evil we are facing is difficult for all of us to understand. There is currently only one Horadrim Sage, schooled in arcane history, who could help us….but he is in Tristram."
Every single one of us stopped any movement, help our breaths, waited for her to say she was kidding. But Akara did not kid, and we all knew deep in our hearts what she meant for us to do.
We had to travel to Tristram.
Even though we had grown up in Marysael's mysterious palace, we knew of the tragedy that had befallen that poor, desolate town. It was the place where Diablo had originally settled, where he had first started his reign of bloody terror in our world. It was also the place where the unknown warrior had defeated him for the first time, ridding our world of him for a short period, but the warrior wasn't able to completely wipe his presence from the area. Putrid beats still wandered the burning pile of rubble it had become, crawling over the shared grave of Hell's most demonic leader and the valiant warrior who sacrificed him or herself for the greatest cause our land had ever known.
We still have no one to credit with the original defeat of Diablo; we still don't even know the gender of his killer, a fact that only seems to add to the allure, the mystery.
"You're asking us…to go to Tristram?" The tales of its current desolation were wide spread, and probably blown out of proportion, but we still had a deep seated fear of the place. Nine pairs of wide eyes focused on Akara, who only looked back at us with the solemn regard of the doomed.
"Eventually, yes. But first, you must find the Tree of Inifuss. Breeya knows where it is-all the Rogues are given a quick tour through the areas we fight in-so I had to wait for you to get one of the Rogues to show you. Now that you are properly equipped, I am comfortable enough in asking this task of you."
Grabbing Amith's wrist in a silent death grip, I swallowed my fear and nodded at Akara.
"Oh, good! My first day on the job and I get to help you make a raid on Tristram!" Breeya giggled and started to prance out of the camp. Hurrying behind her, everyone except Amith and I went after her retreating form, as I still held her wrist.
"His name is Deckard Cain. If he is still alive, he will be instrumental in defeating Diablo. Please try to bring him to us."
Nodding sagely, we couldn't help but snicker at her pensiveness for just a moment as we walked away, jogging to catch up with everyone else.
Once we reached them, we noticed that Breeya was chattering wildly, obviously nervous-excited about this first task of hers.
"-is definitely going to be the hardest to defeat out of all the creatures. He's like, huge and he's got tons of little minion Gargantuans to help him. You guys are just so brave coming out here, risking your lives-especially with that horrible death knoll at the end of the Prophecy. I mean, I wouldn't be out here if I had that hanging over my-"
"Wait, what do you mean, the death knoll at the end of the Prophecy? You mean Diablo's death?" Natairi, always the one in the details, picked up on that slight error in her speech.
But instead of her expected bubbly response, Breeya came to a complete standstill, her voice soft and sorrowful. "What are you talking about? Don't you know?"
"Know what?" Now all of us were concerned, shuffling around her slight form in a mass of leather and steel.
She looked back at us with concern in her vapid eyes, and opened her mouth as if to bestow upon us a curse that would last a lifetime.
"Look," Fed up with the whole premise of this, I decided to speak up. "This is what we know as the Prophecy about us. A flapping white wing; A swishing black tail. Herald the beginning; Of an uncontained gale. Small little children; Just barely turned four. Blood painted on hands; As done so before. Destinies holding; Our world's only hope. Destruction awaits; Unless they can cope. Eyes like old lightening; Come much too far. Three Evils to slay; Nights black as tar. Under the earth; In Hell the Three thrive. Once done the devils; Should not be alive."
"There's no mention of any deaths beside Diablo, Mephisto and Baal's in there. So what are you talking about?"
Breeya's face took on an almost grey shade, and even her eyes seemed to lose their color. "Oh, but you forgot the last two lines."
"There are no other lines. Marysael only taught us those." Pav, ever the trusting, idiotic one, would surely stand by Marysael until the day she died-or until he died for her.
Breeya murmured something under her breath.
"What? Speak up, girl!" I could tell Raverto was longing to hit her-it was in his Barbarian nature-but he was thankfully controlling himself.
"Eight will begin: only four shall survive."
We stood in silence.
"Those are the last two lines."
Her voice was softer than the breeze we were standing in, but we heard her loud and clear.
We had been raised on that Prophecy, raised on the belief that we would prosper, that we would all survive through the trials of our lifetime, and that all of us would we able to live our own lives after we defeated Diablo and his brethren. Now that dream, that one precious, fragile hope we had to hold on to was shattered. Even though Breeya was young and effortlessly naïve, we couldn't help but believe her when she said that four of us were going to die by the end of our journey.
"Ohmygod…We're gonna die. We're gonna die!" Amith clutched desperately at Daquir's shoulder, falling back into his open embrace with the swoon of a falling star.
"We're not discussing this now. We're just not. We have a job to do-let's go do it. Once we've rescued Deckard Cain from Tristram, then we can cry and scream and freak out. Everyone get up, and move. Right Now."
Raverto had woken up the leader of our group today, and he filled the slot with his epic size and booming, relentless voice. We followed his commands, pulling ourselves together with the frays of self-security we still held in our hearts.
Sucking in a deep breath, I turned to Breeya, who was still huddling away from us in scared wonder of our reactions, and gave her an encouraging smile that I hoped didn't look too much like a grimace of pain. She flashed me a tentative smile back, and I realized that I had given her some hope in this ever-changing, bloody world, a single shred of hope that even though we were faced with the possibility of death, we would pull through.
Smiles were passed around, laughter shoved down throats, and we feigned perfect happiness for the sake of the young girl we had just almost permanently added to our band of warriors. We wiped off our tears, picked up our weapons, dusted off our shoulders of each other's imprints and carried on our ways. We traversed the bloody plains of the carnage we left behind in our previous ventures, and encountered very few other monsters on our way to the underground tunnels Breeya led us to.
The opening in the mountain wall wept with blood, and it smelt even worse than the Den of Evil had. Only now we allowed ourselves to grimace, and even then it was in a comic, joking sort of way. Standing at the entrance to this surefire hellhole, I waited back while the others went in. I wondered what awaited us inside its hallowed halls-and I couldn't help but wonder if today was the day one of us would die.
But still we stumbled on towards Tristram.
