They camped on the edge of one platform, keeping watches through the night as they tried to sleep. But in the warm jungle night, the mosquitoes were out in hordes vaster than any demons. Tossing and turning, waking to slap at the biting bugs, they greeted the morning sun tired and haggard.
Rupert gnawed on a piece of cold sausage. "So, where is the temple and the Council members? Don't we have to get something from them?" As everyone gathered around in a circle, he broke off a piece to offer Jelani for breakfast.
The mage muttered a thanks as he chewed. "The temple is almost a straight line from the causeway. But we have to go through most of the city to get there. Bad tactics." With a greasy finger, he drew a square on the stones. "The bridge ends here, and the temple is back here. We should go around the edge of the city," and he traced the border of the square again, "first, so the madmen can't flank us. Then go at the temple."
Rupert furrowed his brow. "A frontal assault? Isn't that usually a bad idea?"
Jelani snorted again. "No choice. Only entrance to the temple is a little door in the front. Normally, ceremonies were held in the open square in front of it. No one went into the temple except the priests and the Council." He rose, wiping greasy fingers on his tunic. The others followed his lead, marching up the bridge towards Travincal.
As they reached the edge of the city, a group of men, armed with irregular weapons, charged down the bridge at them. With great reluctance, they were all killed, but the heroes continued anyway. They traveled the edge of the city, fighting on the raised walkways that defined the edge of the island. In a surprisingly short time, they were back at the bridge.
Straight through the city they went, to stand in front of the temple. On the steps and the balconies were the members of the council, their bodies twisted by Mephisto into a mockery of the human form. One of them raised a hand, magically covered in ice, and shouted in a demonic language.
The monsters swarmed down the steps, only to meet withering magical attacks. Inferno traps crisscrossed the path to the heroes, while lightning bolts and arrows came burrowing in, striking numerous enemies at once. Those fortunate enough to survive that were then met with vicious claws and deadly axe.
But at the end, three Council members stood there on the steps, looking at the heroes and their dead brethren. Another one, with red-tinged hands, made a magical gesture. Out of the ground rose three fiery heads, and began spitting firebolts at the heroes. As they scattered, the leaders of the Council came down to meet them in battle.
Ron Bars and Erris were faced off against the one with the frost-covered hand. He attacked Erris first, and though she tried to dodge, his hand clipped her ponytail. Instantly it froze, the ice covering half her body as she tried to move away. His next attack knocked her to the ground, and he prepared to finish her off.
But as he raised his hand, Ron Bars threw an axe, almost taking his arm clean off. The demon roared in pain, leaping over the fallen amazon, but Ron Bars swung the other axe with both hands, cleaving him easily in half. The body exploded in a flurry of magical snow and ice, and the barbarian fought quickly to clear his eyes.
Tharos, Oksana, and Jelani were cornered by the third Council member, this one with a hand curled up, withered and diseased. As the demon pressed forward, Tharos animated a skeleton. "Stay away from his hand, I think it's cursed!" Jelani muttered something darkly, throwing an icebolt over Oksana's head. But it missed, shattering harmlessly against the side of the temple.
The assassin dodged the demon's attacks, striking out with her cestus whenever he presented her an opening. Before long, his arms were covered in wicked slashes. But the three heroes had been backed into a corner, and the skeleton was trading shots with the hydra.
Tharos and Jelani both readied spells at the same moment. "Duck!" they cried, and Oksana dropped to the stone, the withered hand narrowly missing her. But the ice bolt hit the demon in the face, and the bone spear impaled him, driving the council member backward as his intestines spilled out.
Garou, Rupert, and Jezebel had been cornered by the Council member with the red hands. With a screech of rage, he threw himself forward upon them. He effortlessly blocked Garou's attack, punching back and driving the druid to his knees. Rupert attacked from the other side, but after two solid hits, the demon dealt a backhand that tossed Rupert backwards like a fallen leaf.
He closed on Jezebel, and as he started to swing at her, she brought her staff up crushingly between his legs. The demon shrieked in pain, doubling over, and Garou lurched forward, biting down hard on his knee. Dogmeat yelped, harrying him from the other side.
As the demon stumbled backwards, he shrieked again and clutched Garou's bite. The flesh began to turn green and poisonous, and Rupert struck him again from behind. They all watched as the council member writhed in agony from the poison, until Dogmeat lunged forward and ripped out his throat. Somewhat nervously, Jezebel patted his head. "Good dog," she said, and he barked happily.
They gathered in front of the temple, and walked up the steps. Inside, Munin perched on a glowing, red orb in one corner of the temple. It positively radiated malice and hatred, and they quickly turned away from it.
Rupert noticed the flail hung on the wall first. He carefully picked it up from the hooks, and nodded. "I think this is the weapon we need." With a last nervous glance at the orb, Jezebel cast a portal, and they returned to town.
Cain quickly took the flail and the tongue, combining them in the box. After a moment of fiddling with it, he drew out the new weapon. Each ball of the flail had become one of the organs they had retrieved, and it seemed to move on its own. Looking slightly disgusted, Rupert took the flail. "I hope this thing doesn't start humping my leg," he muttered.
Inside Alkor's shop, the apothecary seemed ready to burst his skin with happiness. "The tome! I am impressed at you foreign heroes. You have done the impossible!" Flipping open the book, he made them wait while he mixed up another slurpee for the group, passing around the bright green liquid.
After downing their rewards, the heroes left his shack with friendly waves, and gathered in front of the portal again. Ormus approached, moving with his slow, deliberate approach. "You are on your way to destroy the compelling orb, correct?" he asked, and they nodded. "It will take some time to restore the people to normal. But given a few days, the jungle will have started to recede again, and the citizens will again have their sanity. Good luck to you."
They stepped back into the temple, and Rupert walked over to the Compelling Orb. The flail started to writhe in his hand, and he brought it up against the orb. The liver started to swing through the air, cleansing it and removing the aura of hatred that permeated the temple. The other two parts started banging and scouring away at the orb, until it shattered apart, falling into a pile of glassy dust on the floor of the temple.
With the orb destroyed, the flail fell still, and after a moment, fell apart as well. The magically preserved flesh rotted away almost instantly, and the flail dissolved into rust and splinters of wood. After a moment, a rumble came from the back of the temple, and the stone sunk down, forming a stairwell into darkness.
Tharos stood at the top, looking down with his skeletons. "I'm pretty sure this is the way to Mephisto's lair." The others nodded, and with skeletons leading the way, they traveled down into the Durance of Hate.
The air down there was stale, and stank of sulfurous fumes. Voices echoed through the halls, and Erris muttered something about being locked in an asylum. Darkness practically ate away at the borders of their torchlight.
Bodies lay piled around, or slumped up against walls. Many of them had been gutted, sacrifice victims tossed aside carelessly. And the halls were layered with monsters, many of them fire-throwing Ghoul Lords and exploding Fetish skeletons. They wandered the first level, fighting almost blindly through the darkness. Finally, they found another set of stairs leading down.
The room at the bottom of the stairs was empty, but for more corpses. As they started through the room, Jezebel suddenly whimpered and backed away. Everyone came to a halt, looking around, weapons at the ready. "What's wrong?" Garou asked, sniffing the air with his heightened lycanthrope senses.
Wordlessly, she pointed her staff at one of the piles of bodies. These ones had had their throats slit, skins left pale from the absence of blood. Garou slowly moved closer to the pile, and after a moment, he suddenly backed away as well. Tharos peered at the bodies in horror. "I didn't know that could be done," he whispered, holding a hand to his mouth as though sick.
"What is it?" Rupert asked, backing away from the bodies as well.
"Do you hear the voices?" Tharos replied, waving his wand vaguely into the air. When Rupert nodded, he pointed it at the bodies. "Mephisto bound their souls into their bodies. It's their voices we're hearing. They've been slowly going mad, trapped inside their slowly rotting corpses." He gulped down nausea. "It's a form of necromancy I didn't think was possible."
As though listening, the voices in the room intensified, some of them practically shouting in their thin, whispery tones. So distracted by the voices, they almost didn't notice the swarm of Fetish skeletons come swarming into the room. And as they began to fight, from another doorway came ogres, large clubs held ready.
In the front of the group, Jelani was firing ice bolts at the skeletons, and did not notice the ogres' entrance. One of them hefted a club, knocking the mage across the room. Jelani screamed as he flew through the air, landing onto a Fetish skeleton. The undead exploded, ripping his body to pieces.
In shock, the heroes were almost killed that moment. Only a frantic shot from Erris halted the lead ogre, and they were forced to retreat back to the stairs. After a long fight was the room finally clear, and they slowly gathered around Jelani's corpse. Rupert quietly said a prayer for his soul, and silently the heroes continued their search for Mephisto.
They stormed through the maze of rooms and corridors, smashing apart any monster foolish enough to get in their way. Their faces were set in grimaces of hatred and rage, and everyone was happy to charge into battle, to try and vent their anger against Mephisto's minions.
Diablo leaned back from the large bowl where the divination spell was in effect. "You do not disappoint me, brother," he rumbled. "You have managed to exert your power over even Tyrael's chosen warriors."
Mephisto laughed, a harsh grating noise. "Truly these silly fools are nothing for me to worry about. It is surprising they were able to overcome Andarial and Duriel, but they have not faced a true Prime Evil in full command of his powers!" He raised a clawed hand, and throughout his chamber, monsters howled.
Baal nodded, tossing the blood-filled bowl aside. "We have much work to do before we can rid this world of these pesky humans. Diablo and I are on our way to Hell. Please make sure every one of these six heroes is dealt with properly, hmm?"
Mephisto smiled, serrated teeth glinting in the red, smoky light. "Have no worries, my brother. It shall be done."
Baal and Diablo hefted their demonic bulk from the stone floor, and moved forward across the bridge of bones to the portal. Baal cast a last look back at his brother, before vanishing into Hell.
One floor above, as the others continued their hate-filled rampage, Oksana drew her cloak of shadows even closer around her. The mental training of the assassins was allowing her to avoid Mephisto's corrupting spells, but only barely. She halted again, to focus her thoughts, and when she looked up, all of her companions had vanished.
Oksana muttered a silent prayer, and continued wandering the floor, looking for the way to Mephisto.
The heroes had slowly separated completely, and Erris was the first to find the stairway down. She fairly flew down the stairs, jumping the last few to land at the bottom. A hail of arrows flew away, striking down the last of the Council members. As she strode forward into Mephisto's main lair, the demon grabbed her from above.
Though she struggled, Erris could not break the demon's powerful grip. Contemptuously, he snapped her bow in half, and hurled her across the room. With a sickening thud, she hit the wall, falling to the ground unconscious.
Moving silently across the ceiling like a spider, Mephisto picked her up again, and locked her into a set of manacles on the wall. Grinning with victory, he turned back towards the stairs to await the next warrior.
Oksana finally found Tharos and the stairs at the same time. Silently she followed the necromancer and his skeletons down into the heart of Mephisto's lair. She watched helplessly as Mephisto battered the skeletons apart, and threw Tharos into a pillar. As the demon picked him up, she crept silently to the edge of the main room.
She could see her friends chained there to the opposite wall. Chewing her lip in anticipation, she started around the side of the room. Slowly she crept up on another leader of the Council, this one with a missing hand, and slit his throat, lowering the body to the ground. Oksana gathered the shadows closer around herself, and continued.
There on the bridge of bones, Mephisto talked quietly with Griswold. Keeping an eye on them, the assassin scaled the wall, picking her way up to the ceiling, and then across the rough stone. When she hung there above Mephisto, she thought another prayer, and dropped from the ceiling.
She landed heavily on the demon's back, and both he and Griswold roared in anger. Without hesitating, she grabbed Mephisto's forehead with one hand, and yanked the edge of her cestus across his neck. Her anger was so great that it nearly decapitated the Prime Evil, and he fell heavily to the ground.
Griswold lurched forward, raising his hammer in the air. Peering about in the dark and the gloom, he moaned in apprehension. Suddenly, Oksana cast aside her cloak of shadows, raising her bloody cestus in her hand as she pointed to the portal behind Griswold. "Run," she said, and the blacksmith did not argue.
Oksana watched him slowly back away into the portal to Hell, not moving until he had vanished. Running to her companions, she swiftly picked the locks on their manacles, and forced a healing potion down each of their throats. She kept a watch as they recovered from their wounds and the magical hatred.
Garou looked at the corpse of Mephisto, the demonic form slowly melting back into the body of the Zakarum priest. "You did that?" he asked quietly, pointing at the almost decapitated head.
Oksana shrugged. "Yeah. I managed to avoid his hatred up until about the time I landed on his back." Garou shook his head, amazed, and then stared at the flame-colored portal. "I think that leads into Hell. Diablo and Baal were already gone, but Griswold went back into the portal when I killed Mephisto."
Rupert stepped over to the body, and carefully pried loose the Soulstone that held the essence of the demon. Looking at the bright blue stone, he chuckled. "I suppose we should ask Cain what to do with this before we go jumping into Hell."
Carefully, they retrieved their equipment, much of it broken, and stepped through a town portal. Rupert cast one last look at the dead body, and shivered. "He almost looks like me," he muttered.
Stepping onto the docks, everyone around them slowed at the serious faces they wore. Cain walked up slowly, peering at them in turn. "What's wrong? What happened?"
Holding up the Soulstone, Rupert tried to explain. "Jelani died in Mephisto's lair, and all of us fell under his influence. We were so consumed with hatred that we stopped thinking about what we were doing, and just rampaged around killing demons." Hanging his head in shame, Rupert walked off onto the docks.
Cain looked at the others. "How did you manage to defeat Mephisto, then?" He stared at the Soulstone for a moment, almost hypnotized, before shivering and putting it into a pocket. "And what about Diablo and Baal?"
Tharos put an arm around Oksana. "She used her assassin training to avoid the spell. Mephisto captured the rest of us, but she snuck up on the demon and cut his head off. Then chased Griswold through the portal and back to Hell."
His eyebrows shot up alarmingly. "Hell? There's a portal to Hell down there? Take me to it right away!"
Erris chuckled. "I'm sure there's a better way to get to Hell if you're in a hurry."
"You stupid girl!" he shouted, whirling on her. "If Diablo and Baal have reached Hell, it means they're planning to pour all of the hordes of Hell into the mortal world. We have to get there and stop them!"
Garou patted Dogmeat on the head. "Fetch, Dogmeat!" With a bark, he ran off down the docks. Somewhere near Hratli's forge, they heard a cry of surprise, and soon Dogmeat came running back up, chasing Rupert. "Into the portal, we're bound for Hell!"
Ron Bars picked him up by the back of the shirt, stopping the druid's charge. "Ron Bars need axe," he boomed, almost sounded offended, as he held up the broken axe handle. Everyone hurried across the docks to Hratli's forge, and fumed impatiently as he repaired their weapons and armor. Then back to the portal, Dogmeat leading the way and barking happily.
