Yay for the established soon-to-be-existence of Diablo III!

Thanks a lot for those who've added me to their alert lists; though my reviews have hit a record low. Of course, that's not going to stop me from writing, but it's just… nice to know what people think of what I'm doing sometimes. So thanks a lot to Rasbash, BloodHeron and the ever-faithful Emmelyn Cindy Mah, who I owe so much to… just so much.

That bit in the beginning of this chapter about the mind reconstructing and believing in the reconstituted product is called "confabulation", and is an actual phenomenon that I've read about in a science magazine. I just find it fascinating.

And Emmy and I are on a sort of arms race, it seems. She calls it "symbiosis", though.

Disclaimer: I own jack-all when it comes to the actual games. That's why I'm still just a poor student.

Chapter 30

Evanescence of Existence

The day we fought Mephisto was the most surreal day of my life.

It might be because I had hit my head hard enough to get some substantial temporary damage; or it might be the fact that Mephisto just had that hazy, smoky effect on one's memory. I may even be able to say that it was the way everything happened, sluggish but nevertheless seem to take place one over another; it was hard for my brain to follow.

Yet, in this deathly silent of the end, I am recalling the shreds of memory more clearly than ever before; the fragments are coming together, like a broken mirror being repaired piece by piece.

Of course, the image that one can see in such a mirror can never be perfect again – there are cracks and fractures that distort the picture, moving features slightly out of place; but the human mind can compensate for that. The human mind has that ability to reconstruct things, and best of all, it has the ability to believe in the perfectly reconstructed memory, even if it contains elements of make-believe.

So I am going to try my best to remember it all, now, and hope to the gods – if they are listening, if they are there – that what I am recalling is not mere make-believe. The memories may be painful, but what is worse… is the possibility that they will fade away forever, just like the lives of my companions.

People say that one still lives as long as one is remembered, so what happens when those memories die as well? Do they simply cease to be… cease to have been?

I do not want to forget; perhaps that is why I am recalling it now, even though I know of the chances of my sanity breaking down with these haunting thoughts. Even though, deep inside, where emotions are neglected and there is only the truth… I know I cannot preserve them forever.

Such is the evanescence of existence.

It had been almost two weeks since we had cleared out all but the last level of the Durance. It seemed that although none of us had sustained any serious injuries, there was an endless list of reasons to postpone the final battle. Mephisto did not seem to be making a move; we had returned to the second last level a few times to see what we could scavenge – which is yet another made-up reason to delay the final battle – and the chamber, although filled with the repugnant sounds of decomposers at work, was otherwise silent, almost peaceful. Aside from this, Oread always went off to "train", Nyhl to "talk" with whoever sounded like they belong in an appropriate excuse, and Natalya… just was not there most of the time.

Finally, I had to call the shots. It was dinner time, and Natalya was actually present that night. Asheara's band of Iron Wolves made up most of the crowd, as usual.

"Pardon me." I moved my chair back to stand up as I finished my drink. "Excuse me, everyone! I have an announcement to make!" I shouted at the top of my voice, but the crowd's chatter droned out my words.

"What are you doing, Celadon?" Oread asked, hiding her anxiety under a thin layer of innocent ignorance. She knew what was coming, it seemed. All the more reason to get it over with before she could talk me out of it.

Suddenly there was a shrill whistle, and the room fell quiet within seconds. I looked to my left and saw Leaf with her thumb and index finger in her mouth.

"Meshif taught me." She signed.

"Thank you." I smiled, and she beamed back. It was odd that sometimes Leaf seemed like the most reasonable of my companions. I thought she must also be irritated that we have been procrastinating for so long. It might be her demon senses, I was not sure… but she had been more restless for the past fortnight.

"Tomorrow morning," I said as loudly as I could, while making sure that my voice came out clear; my heart was pounding, and I can feel my ears getting hot, "we will attack Mephisto's hideout. Await our good news, citizens of Kurast!"

Everyone cheered; many clinked their glasses together. I barely breathed my sigh of relief when a hand landed on my shoulder roughly and pulled me back down onto my seat.

"Why wasn't I notified of this?" Oread said quietly, but she was furious. Her hand was still on my shoulder, and it was tightening; it started to hurt.

"Oread, no-one was notified." Nyhl's deadpan voice from across the table. Somehow, he was more intimidating than my master now. "It appears that Celadon took matters into her own hands this time 'round."

"I'm outta here." Natalya spat, as her chair scraped the floor loudly. She turned to go, but Leaf hopped off her own chair and took Natalya by the wrist.

"If I hadn't done that, how much longer will you guys put it off for?" I defended.

Oread took her hand off my shoulder, and for a moment she got ready to slap me, I was sure of it; but then she moved her hand and pounded hard on the table instead. Some water splashed out of Leaf's glass. "That was dirty, you wh–" she refrained from naming me with the obscenity at the last moment, but just barely managed. "That was just really dirty, Celadon. I'm your master, you're my mercenary. Do you realise how improper your behaviour was?"

"Regardless of how I'm meant to behave, Master, I have to do what's right, above everything else. If it can get some sense back into you all, then sack me, by all means. It was worth it just for trying."

Oread looked like she was about to refute my point, and after giving me a severe look that a parent would give to a child needing discipline, she sighed. "However rude that was of you, I guess you do have a point." She turned to address the others. "You guys… are you free tomorrow, then?"

Something in the absurdly offhanded way Oread said that actually made Nyhl smile. It was a sad little one, but it was enough to warrant another "for" vote. "Can't be helped." He shrugged.

"Natalya?" I turned to the Assassin. Something about her had gone soft since the day we returned from the Durance two weeks ago. She seemed more… human, somehow. She seemed less cold, and less sarcastic, but she also joked less. Perhaps she senses some impending doom?

"Natalya, you promised." Nyhl said without looking at her. Natalya returned with a glare, but the Necromancer paid no attention to that. That was another thing – Nyhl no longer seems to be scared of Natalya, though he did seem more… weary of her, if that makes any sense. Like an irrational phobia had turned into a rational fear, or something.

I heard voices from my room that night we came back. Natalya was crying, and once I thought I heard Nyhl shouting. I could be wrong. Oread was sound asleep, and I dared not confirm my observations that night with her – for some reason, that did not seem like the sensible thing to do. Oread might be… jealous? That was only my intuition, but better safe than sorry. I probably was not meant to overhear their exchange anyway.

"There's no way out except this, then?" Natalya turned back towards the exit, hiding her face, but her tone was sombre. It made me anxious, and even a little regretful for deciding this on my own. "Right. I'll see you all in the morning."

She gave her wrist a flick and Leaf's hands fell away from her. She walked straight out and closed the door surprisingly softly – I was half-expecting her to slam it.

"Just so you know, Celadon," Nyhl was playing with his empty glass; "if anything happens to any of us tomorrow, it won't be your fault… but you'll feel terrible about it."

"You're a jerk. Stop saying things like that." Oread put her head down onto the table, looking defeated.

"I'm just saying."

"You have absolutely no manners." She grumbled.

Leaf scratched away at a piece of parchment – she always carried some, and a quill and ink, in a little bag. Mephisto is planning to break out once his body is completely recovered.

"How'd you know?" Oread said, in that depressed, pessimistic tone.

I can sense it. Attack while you still have the chance to restrain him.

"There really is no helping it." I shrugged; the gesture felt so casual, almost indecent… actually, it was indecent.

For a long moment, no-one had any valuable remarks worth sharing; finally, Oread provided the table with her conclusion regarding the situation.

"Damn it."

The depressed atmosphere stayed with us in the morning, as we ate breakfast. The lack of a proper conversation made me extremely uneasy.

"Hey everyone," I started, "I'm sor–"

"There's no need to apologise." Nyhl cut in.

"You didn't really do anything wrong. We should really get this over with anyway." Oread added.

That actually made me feel worse, for some reason.

According to the local customs of Kurast, a warrior going off to a major battle always receive blessings from the high priest, who happens to be Ormus in this case; but when I suggested this, the other three's answers were resolute –

"I don't believe in that stuff."

"It's just a placebo."

"Well, it's not like the gods were on our side to begin with."

I wondered if they still hated me for yesterday. Though I would rather have them hate me, than to be hopeless with the actual situation.

As I passed through the Portal leading to the entrance to Mephisto's domain, I wondered if anyone amongst us was going to see the light of day for the last time. We lost Falcon last time; it did seem like the gods did not listen.

I understood then: we lived in a world reigned by the forces of hell. Praying to the gods would do nothing at all.

"You sure you're okay, Celadon?" Oread asked as I swallowed the bottle of red potion.

"As long as we don't run out of potions or places to back off to, I'll be fine." I tossed the empty vial towards the burning, crackling corpse of a Council Member near the wall opposite to where we had now regrouped. There was a sharp ring as the glass bottle exploded.

So this was what Oread and Nyhl encountered back at the Travincal. No wonder they got back in the state they were in.

Still, we have four people now, and surely we have a better chance this time…

It feels like we had been down here for ages, even though we had only cleared out the mere guards of the Lord of Hatred. Mephisto himself was just behind these walls – I could hear him bellowing and wailing for us to come out of hiding and face him.

"Isn't Mephisto not fully-regenerated?" Asked Nyhl, as he flicked the blood off his blade.

"Who knows, he might just be bluffing." Natalya sneered.

It might be that our blood had finally started to boil again after what seemed like forever, because as soon as battle commenced, everyone gradually returned to casual speaking terms again. For us warriors of the Sanctuary, this might be what sustains our spirit.

"With all the yelling and cursing, he's not coming out to us; you're probably right." Oread remarked, as she tried to recover as many arrows as possible from the fallen demons.

"We have to fight him sooner or later." I could not restrain the annoyance from my words; they were procrastinating again.

"When we're all ready." Oread waved me off, her expression betraying a hint of dread.

"We should go." Nyhl sounded uneasy, but at least I knew now that there was another person on my side.

"Any last words?" Natalya chuckled.

"That's way too morbid to warrant a laugh." Said Nyhl, completely devoid of humour.

"You shouldn't talk." Natalya threw him a dirty look, and then charged off.

"Hey!" I shouted after her, and followed along with the other two.

We turned a sharp corner, and Mephisto's chamber opened up before us, but I could not see much of it – the air was thick with his suffocating aura, and the entire place was filled with what felt like dense, white smoke.

Mephisto's hollow voice bellowed something, but it echoed so much that none of it was audible.

Next thing I knew, a stroke of lightning seared through the air, and before I could move, it struck me square in the midsection.

I could smell my clothes burning… then my body was burning. It felt like a few minutes before the fire subsided and I could think again. My muscles were jerking and twitching, beyond my control, and a burning sensation radiated outwards from the middle of my torso. There was no chance that I could aim like this. Better to try and get out of the way and recover as quickly as I could.

The other three were faring better than I was, at least. I could see Mephisto now – naught but an incomplete skeleton, the bones tinted violet and caked with dried blood. The skull was narrow, the jaws were jutted, and long, twisted horns protruded from the top. There was the skeleton for a pair of huge bat-like wings, arms with long fingers completed with claws, a cracked, deformed ribcage and a trailing string of vertebrae, but everything else about his body was immaterial. There were only the bones and the smoke.

I quickly swallowed the contents of another vial, and tried to aim. My hands were shaking less now, and my fingers were getting their feelings back. So I rejoined the battle. I found that I had to keep my mana running at a pretty high rate to keep my body moving – it appeared that while we were physically attacking each other, we were also engaged in a spiritual tug-of-war. Mephisto might have a weak physical body, but his magical strength compensated for it.

He summoned up a number of skulls from nowhere, tinted in the same violet as his own body. The silvery, smoky light poured from the eye sockets, and the skulls exploded into innumerable pieces of shrapnels, flying off in all directions.

Oread, Nyhl and I all managed to avoid the worst of it – Oread with her Slow Missiles, Nyhl with his armour of bones, and I was luckily out of range for most of them. Natalya, however, took quite a number of hits, most of them with her forearms that she had attempted to shield herself with, but a few had pierced or been embedded into her chest and abdomen.

"Hang in there, Natalya!" I shouted, but I thought it better to remain out of range. It was my best chance. I had no defence against such attacks.

Natalya just grunted, uncorked a bottle of antidote with her teeth, drank it, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing a line of red over her lips.

Mephisto screamed something, and sent bolts of chilled mana towards us. I countered by shooting at them with Fire Arrows. Oread was the closest to him, and almost made it in dodging them, but her feet were not quite fast enough, and a bolt caught her in the side of her knee, making her crash to the ground with a yelp.

Mephisto continued his attacks with another volley of bone missiles, this time sending the skulls out intact.

"Oread!" I called out to my master, who seemed somewhat dazed – it might have been the effect of the chill.

The fearful thought of her getting struck was beginning to surface when I saw Nyhl stepped in front of her, and blocked the skull with his sword. The skull blew up unexpectedly then – I could see the surprise in Nyhl's face for a split second – and he tried to put up some sort of defence, holding up his empty left hand and channelling mana into it at an alarming rate.

His power collided with the imbued shards, and while the attack was parried, I did not think that he quite made it in time. He was propelled backwards, bumped into Oread and bowled her over, but as soon as he found his orientations again, he jumped back to his feet and refocused on Mephisto.

Oread looked up, and seemed relatively unscathed, but irritated. She took out three arrows, and with a shout, fired them one after another at astonishing speed. The arrows almost had a life of their own, as they evaded Mephisto's attacks, which might have nullified them, and sought out their target – the centre of Mephisto's ribcage.

With that, the air of the battleground eased a little. Mephisto crumbled to the ground, his smoky mana turning significantly weaker.

"I'll have you share in my torment!" He cried. I could finally make out his words, now that his voice has gone softer.

None of us had the leisure to reply to that, as we persisted with our assaults. He had also given up on using his missile attacks, which meant that I could finally join the battle properly.

Mephisto attacked now with his wings and claws; they whistled through the air. While he had lost a good portion of his magical abilities, the speed of his physical attacks was unexpectedly fast. He got both Oread and Nyhl at the same time, his right hand ripping at Nyhl's leg, and his left at Oread's back. Both of them tried to strike back, but Mephisto had slinked out of their reach to attack Natalya.

The Assassin fared better than any of us did at that point. She was swift, and accustomed to close-quarter combat. She and Mephisto exchanged a few blows, and a smile had just begun to form at her lips when she suddenly stopped, clutched her chest, and coughed.

The blood that streamed from her mouth was black. It was poison. Mephisto's bone missiles had gotten her, and the antidote did not take care of it all.

Mephisto's jaws opened wide as if in laughter, and his skeletal wings flexed.

"Natalya!" My voice coincided with the slashing sounds of the sharp bones piercing Natalya's body. Mephisto had stabbed her with the bones of his wings in six places. Four in the torso.

Natalya's mouth opened a little more, as if to speak, but only a wet gurgling noise came out.

At that moment, I knew that she was beyond help.

Oread's shout echoed, then Nyhl's voice from somewhere. "Leave her, Oread."

I was feeling pretty disorientated. Perhaps Oread did not yet understand Natalya's sealed fate, because she tried to approach her doomed companion nonetheless.

Mephisto ripped his wings out of Natalya with wet, sickening sounds, accompanied by a fine mist-like spray of blood. She dropped straight down to the floor, a puddle of dark blood beneath her spreading quickly, tracing the outlines of the stone slabs that made up the floor. Natalya's head turned towards the rest of us…

… No. She was looking at one of us specifically. Nyhl. Smiling at him.

Oread had staggered to within ten feet of Natalya when Mephisto pounced at his fallen prey – or perhaps he was aiming at Oread, I could not tell for sure – and my body reacted by its own accord. I found the last arrow in my quiver, and shot it into the ground just inches in front of my master's advancing foot.

Oread looked up and our eyes met. Confusion and anger shimmered in hers, but only for a split second, before she looked back towards Natalya. As she did, we both felt it: Natalya died.

Then a thunderous bang, and we were both knocked off our feet as her body exploded. I could feel her blood, mixed with her last surge of mana, warm and slightly searing against the back of my neck, but Mephisto must have bore the brunt of the assault – he bellowed and cursed and his mana ran wild.

Oread shot two of her self-guiding arrows past either sides of my head, and Mephisto's scream came again, this time much closer – I could feel the wind generated by his jerking about on the back of my neck. He was moving faster than ever.

I jerked around and he was right there before my eyes; I could see the fractures in his skull, flecks of it were coming off.

Then that skull connected with my forehead, and I saw nothing for perhaps a good minute. He had head-butted me hard enough to send me arcing backwards though the air, and hit the ground again, the back of my head breaking the fall. I heard a definite crack and thought that I would pass out, but instead I just lost my sense of sight, on top of a lot of pain. I tried to figure out how badly I had hit my head, but all my mind gave me was the image of a cracked egg, with my brain as the exposed yolk. It was almost funny.

I could still hear, though, and I tried to listen through the blur of pain. There was the sound of Oread's spear as it cut through the air, then the crackling of lightning. Mephisto's aura has been reduced to such that was bearable even when I had ceased to supply my own body with mana; that was going well, at least.

I attempted to cast Inner Sight to improve my knowledge of the current battle, but my body refused my mind's request. I tried to turn over; I made it, and something wet and warm ran from the back of my head, down past the top of my right ear, across my right cheek and into my mouth. The blood was thick and salty in my mouth.

My eyes were sore, and I realised that although they were not working, they were still open. I closed them, and tried to refocus on my ears.

There were sounds of blades slashing and stabbing and bones cracking. "Take him down, Oread!" Nyhl huffed, sounding as if he was spent. Mephisto was screeching non-stop now.

"Is Celadon okay?" Oread screamed. I tried to tell her yes, but my voice was caught in my chest. I did not seem to be able to move at all now.

"Just take him down!"

And then there was a continuous string of sounds – exploding, slashing, crackling, breaking, choking, shouting… all superimposed, one on top of many others.

Then it got quieter and quieter. There was a final ring, and short and sharp ting. It did not even resonate… it was silent again. The air was still, and I was being lifted off –

That was when I could not distinguish between my conscious body and unconscious mind. It felt like floating, and warmth, and light… and then it all faded into a storm cloud – the dense and moist grey caressing my soul.

A storm may be imminent, but for now, let me rest in the momentary peace…