WYYYYYYYAAAAAAA! VACATION TIME WOOOOHOOOOO!

Ahem! Well, the least I can say is that I am happy this evil semester is finally over. Erh. I finally got around writing again and must have written like 20 pages of different stuff in 2 days. And so, as promised, here is the next chapter of this little story, a little faster than the previous one.

Thank you again for reviewing, and keep it up:)

Chapter 3. Determined

Atsanit returned to Kurast's docks with a sigh of relief. Exhaustion had sunk in her bones for so long that she hardly remembered what starting a day fresh meant. Her arms were heavy and numb from holding her Jared stone and shield in a correct, defensive position all day long, and through a part of the night today. Her head ached from the maintained concentration for hours to regain her mana and cast spells even while she was hit by demons. Her waist and shoulder ached too, occasionally, remembered hits scaring her skin and hurting her flesh. She stumbled as she was stepping outside of the stonegate. Cain was there, and he caught her arm as she stumbled. She straightened herself and thanked him. He identified the spoils of the day, and she went to Ormus for healing and trading. The Skatsimi mage laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, healed her body and her mental energy, and it eased some of the exhaustion from her limbs. She thanked him, told him of her progress of the day, that she had defeated the Council and was now two levels below the surface, in Hatred's prison. He thanked her, and congratulated her for her victory over the corrupted Council. She nodded, then made her way warily towards the little house that had been ranted to her, near Hratli's forge.

She entered it, closed the door behind her and removed her armour. She smelled of blood, sweat and undead. She slid in the bath that a servant girl from the neighbourhood readied for her everyday. The water felt cold, even if it was at the jungle's temperature. But Atsanit was exhausted and half-frozen from using cold spells throughout the day. She scrubbed away the dirt, blood and ashes she had all over her body, then dried herself, as much as it was possible in the jungle's wet air. She slid into a night gown, the only one she had, and collapsed on her bed.

She fell asleep instantly and, when someone knocked on her door two minutes later, it took her a while to wake up.

"Who is it?", she asked.

"It is Hratli. I have brought you dinner."

She was so exhausted she was not really hungry, but she did feel weak after seventeen hours battling demons without a crunch of food.

"Come in, it's not supposed to be locked," she said.

She sat in her bed, rubbing her eyes like a child. Hratli came in, carrying a basket. He set it down on the table, then started to get the goods out of it. There was cheese, a real delicacy these times in Kurast, fresh bred, baked fish with lemon, salted meat from the West, a piece of rabbit, various vegetables and some of the delicious fruits of the jungle. It was now safe to get out of the docks, if you stayed near. Demons appeared to be falling back towards Travincal, no doubt thanks to the exhausted Sorceress in this room.

Hratli looked at Atsanit as she dragged herself out of bed and to the table. Her knees were shaking, he saw, and she seemed to be pulling each feet with colossal effort. He then sat in front of her.

"I also thought I could dare to invite myself to keep you company."

She smiled, then started picking at her food, eating a few crumps of bread, a bit of cheese. Hratli ate his part happily, and after a while the Sorceress seemed to wake, and started eating hungrily.

"Thank you so much, Hratli," she said after she was done cleaning the last crumps of bread. "I would never have had the courage to prepare myself something to eat."

Hratli half-smiled. "It is a much less daring task than forcing your way through hordes of demons."

"Which is a much less daring task than guarding one of the Three for eternity."

Hratli took a second of silence to consider his answer. "No mortal has ever done that," he said at length. "Cain seemed worried by your encounter with Tyrael. He said it made you want to be more than mortal, or be able to do things that no mortal can do."

Then, she made a slow smile. "I know very well what it means to be mortal. I meet demonic or undead enemies on the battlefield everyday. Maybe you have not understood this, but Cain worries that I will give in to the power, that I will succumb to it as the Wanderer has. But I have guidance, I have knowledge. I know what the Soulstone is, and I know what it does to mortals, and I know what is to be done with it. As to my encounter with Tyrael… I doubt anyone can understand what it… brought me."

There was a long pause after that. Hratli finally said: "Will you not explain it to me?"

She shrugged. "It is, obviously, an exercise of humility to face an Archangel. He said he was broken, his energies fading, but he was still a glorious figure of light, with waving threads of light coming from his back, with a glorious, monarchic presence. He seemed, to my eyes, unruffled by his terrible battle against Diablo and Baal. And I was there, my guts spilling out of my body, looking at an Archangel, after crying a while because I was afraid to die."

Hratli's hand twitched. She looked at him, her attention suddenly focusing on his frozen features. "Do not be so afraid, Hratli," she said. "I survived, and I even made some peace with the idea of dying. If it was to be taken away by such a glorious creature, what was to be feared in death? And besides the humility of looking at a superior power, at the very moment I vanquished the most powerful foe I have faced so far, one of the Lesser evils, Duriel, the Lord of Pain – oh, he earned his name – there was… the ideal. The longing for perfection, for a better place, and the Calling. I believe I have known in this instant what a Paladin knows the moment he is called to serve the Light. It might not look so for Cain's worrying eyes, but I do not wish to be more than a mortal. I just wish to achieve my full potential, to serve the Light, and I feel the need to serve… with all I am."

Hratli felt the need to say something, but he was completely silenced by her speech. He had thought her foolish at first to go alone to face the demons. But after a few days, as she was always coming back victorious, but exhausted and battered, he had thought she was maybe a little out of her mind, in a hopeless power quest or on an elaborate death wish. He had come to grudgingly admit the friendliness he felt for her, and that is why he sometimes brought her dinner when she was coming back from her battle very late and tired. Although, he had not expected that speech from her tonight.

"There is more to my meeting with Tyrael that I can explain in words," she added after a while, and this time she was looking far, far into the darkness in the corner of her room, away from Hratli. The sorcerer smith kept silence, and after a while she turned her head back to him, sighing. "Thank you very much for the dinner. But I would rest now, because I have almost reached the bowels of the Temple, and tomorrow I will most likely face the Three assembled. And I would sleep a while and not think of the coming battle for the night."

Hratli stood and, impulsively, blessed her in an ancient kehjistan ritual. It was only three power words, and it was done in two seconds.

"Sleep well, my friend," he said, and he left.

Atsanit looked at him going, and closed the door behind his back. She went back to her bed, and covered her body in the blankets; she felt less cold now that she had eaten, but she still felt the need to cover herself. She laid in her bed for a minute, looking at the ceiling, then she closed her eyes. She did not need any reminder of her encounter with Tyrael. He was already in her thoughts, nearly each minute of her days and nights. She saw him in her dreams, glorious and powerful, his only presence a blessing. She felt comforted in her dreams when he was there, and she was longing for his presence. Always.

ooooo

Of course, she was late again. She had stormed the jungle and Kurast as quickly as it was humanly possible, and she had failed. She found only Mephisto, Baal and Diablo gone away to bring evil to other parts of the world. Mephisto had said, his first challenge as she had come within his sight, that she was too late and that Diablo had already left to gather Hell's armies, to pour upon the mortal realm like a tide of blood and death.

"That is my next destination anyway, after I pluck your Soulstone from your head, Mephisto," she had answered, her voice way too cold and calm for any sane mortal put in his presence.

He had hissed and started to use his spells, most destructive spells, to hit the Sorceress. But she was a fast runner – she surely had magical boots –, and she had the habit of dodging spells. The demon quickly realized that he should be doing the same when he was suddenly hit by a Blizzard.

Both spellcasters, Prime Evil and Sorceress, circled each other, dodging spells as best they could. Her Thunderstorm and Ice shield were things he could not dodge, however, and it was the room utterly filled with Blizzards and her defensive spells that overwhelmed Mephisto in the end. His demonic soul escaped him in a spiral of death spirits, and he fell to the ground.

Atsanit stood over the body, with great difficulty to breathe because of the thunder that had went through her chest a few times. She had learned quite some time ago that health potions only repaired the worst damage; it was no replacement for healing time. But she was allowed none, because now the demon's corpse was changing back to its original form. She knew it was Sankekur, but she knew not the man.

He was gasping his lasts breaths, in a gurgling sound of blood that pitied her. He had fell to his weakness, fell prey to the one beast his duty was to guard. She knelt besides him. She tried to find kind words to give him quickly, and she said, a hand on his cheek:

"You are free from him. He will be destroyed, you can go quietly."

And Sankekur breathed his last breaths, and died, an expression of fear on his face. Atsanit sighed, and covered the body with a cape that one of the Council had worn. She retrieved the Soulstone from the man's body. She took it in her metal-gloved hand, and put it in a bag at the bottom of her pack.

Then she stood, and faced the portal that would take her to Hell. She wondered how she was supposed to go through Hell right now, and without any rest for all the duration of her stay. She drank another potion, letting it the time to kick in and drown most of the pain in her chest because of Mephisto's mastery of lightening. Then she decided she was as ready as she could be, and activated her defensive spells.

And she crossed the threshold.