Hi everyone, I'm back! I thank again all the reviewers (this story is rather the only one of mine that is getting any reviews right now, so to hear from you really warms my heart). Your comments are a great motivation, and I thank you for those.

And so, here is the next step of Atsanit's adventure: she faces Diablo, Lord of Terror.

Chapter 6. Anxious

Tyrael snapped from his angry calculations at ways to go around Heavens' rules of intervention back to reality.

"The first seal has been broken," he announced, his voice carrying all throughout the fortress. "She faces Lord de Seis, first horsemen of Apocalypse."

Halbu fell to his knees, and started praying. Jamella and Cain prayed too, although more discreetly. Everyone knew a battle such as this one could go on for minutes, and everyone waited anxiously as time spread. Then, after ten minutes had passed, doubt started to creep into their minds.

Fifteen minutes later, Cain sat in a corner of the fortress, and took his head in his hands. Tyrael himself seemed suddenly less sure. His wings stopped their angry snapping, and resumed their waving on each side of him.

Then, Tyrael exhaled suddenly. "The second seal is broken." Diablo's lackey guarding this one was much less powerful, and Tyrael could not make out his name; it was a poison lord, although his particular pedigree was impossible to discern across those distances, even to an Archangel's innervision.

Again, time spread as every soul in Pandemonium fortress held their breath, waiting for Tyrael's voice to announce what was happening. Tyrael tried to convince himself that Atsanit was just resting, simply resting, between breaking seals, and that this was what was taking her so long.

"The last seal has been broken," Tyrael said at last, his voice a whisper now. Halbu was still praying, on his knees, in front of the hearth. Jamella started pacing around, and Cain stayed in his corner, holding his head. Tyrael strained his innervision to catch glimpses of what was happening, but he could not.

The last event, twenty minutes later, needed no announcement on Tyrael's part. The world shivered to its very core, it seemed, as Diablo was freed in this plane by the death of his last minion.

"She now faces Diablo, Lord of Terror, King of Hells," Tyrael said, slowly.

ooooo

Atsanit gulped a rejuvenation potion as the last undead spectre fell to the ground in a heap of bones. She had made it run around in circles for a while, slowing it with Icebolts, the time for her to breathe a little and regain her life and mana. She quickly scanned her spells as the Chaos Sanctuary was shaken, and she heard the groan of Diablo.

She saw the Lord of Terror drag himself up from inside the gigantic pentagram imprinted into the ground of the Chaos Sanctuary. Terror seized her, but she prayed to the Light, and it gave her enough courage to master her spells. Once the battle started, she would not think to be afraid any more.

She stood her ground as Diablo turned to her.

"You shall die here, petty mortal," he said, his voice a tremendous thunder that drummed through her chest.

"I stand before you, Diablo," she said. Then, in a flash of remembrance and defiance, she shot: "I am Atsanit, and I will free the Wanderer!"

Diablo uncovered his demonic teeth and shot forward a bolt of red magic, which Atsanit could not identify. She did not try and simply dodged, feeling the powerful disturbance of the air around it as it breezed by her.

She proceeded to fill the place with Blizzards as she ran in circles around the pentagram, Diablo running after her grunting, occasionally shooting at her a bolt of red magic or a wall of moving fire. She resisted the fire, and dodged as best she could the bolts of red magic. She sometimes teleported across the pentagram to drink a potion, and he sometimes hit the ground with both feet to make it tremble, so that she tripped and fell, and he could catch up with her and plant his claws through her.

She was very tough for a spellcaster, Diablo found, because not many would have had the force to teleport as claws were tearing them apart. She managed it twice, teleporting away and downing potions at an alarming rate. Her Mana shield must have helped. Diablo did not care. She would run out of potions eventually, at the rate she was drinking them, and he could survive her spells. For the time being.

Atsanit was running breathlessly around Diablo, desperately trying to keep clear his spells and claws, but she was battling one of the Prime Evils, and it was no easy fight. Her mind was full of battle strategies and incantations as she cast endless Blizzards and Icespikes at the demon, in-between her Thunderstorm and Teleports.

Kick yourself, girl, he can't be worse than Duriel!

ooooo

Everyone back at Pandemonium's fortress was taut as a bowstring. Everyone listened to the silence of Tyrael. Jamella had stopped pacing, too tensed to, and Halbu was now silent, his hands clenched over his sword's hilt. Cain had not moved. He was thinking of how he had been when the hero that became the Wanderer had battled Diablo. He was a lot more confident, and he remembered in a heap that it was precisely the Wanderer that Atsanit was fighting right now. He grimaced, and waited in silence, the endless spiral of his thoughts repeating itself, of what should have been and what could be.

Long minutes stringed by. Everyone waited in anguish. After a while, the air around Tyrael started to hum, as he strained his innervision harder, but the Chaos sanctuary was still beyond his reach.

And then, the whole Realm encompassing Hell and Heaven shook; it did not only shiver as it had earlier at Diablo's return. It shook violently, and Jamella fell to her knees. Tyrael's innervision suddenly jumped over the distances, hauled forward across the now-missing Darkness of Diablo, King of Hell, and he saw the demon die.

ooooo

The great horned demon clenched his claws over his chest, and fell forwards. Atsanit was in front of him, one knee on the ground, coughing blood, heavily leaning on her shield. Then she got to her feet, made a slow, swaying step forward, and pulled the Soulstone out of Diablo's forehead with her iron-gloved hand.

The body of the agonizing demon suddenly shapeshifted into a human, the Wanderer. Atsanit knelt besides him. She observed him an instant; he was a young man, around thirty years-old, with distinguished traits and short, brown hair. His face was scarred with previous battles, and his eyes spoke of depths of pain.

"You are free, Hero. He is defeated, and you are free."

The Wanderer tried to speak once, and his voice was lost in a gurgle of blood. Then he tried again. "Stone…" He interrupted himself.

"I will destroy it. Be at peace, Hero," Atsanit said. And he closed his eyes, and he stopped breathing.

She started to cough blood again. When the worst of it was over, she noted that there were no more potions in her belt. She had drunken them all. She put the Soulstone in a small leather bag, and pushed it down in her pack.

Then Tyrael's attention was suddenly pulled back to Pandemonium. He felt Michael's intervention, warning that his attempt to witness what was happening was not going unnoticed, and that the mortal would come back soon enough, there was no need for him to waste his innervision.

ooooo

Everyone was waiting anxiously for her return, she saw. Jamella ran to her and healed her before she was even completely out of the portal, dragging her last feet through in a colossal effort. Then Halbu offered his congratulations and Cain hugged her, saying he was happy she was still alive.

"Cain, he is… your Hero… he is… free," she said. Her first words.

"Then it is… as well as it can be," Cain answered, with great sadness.

Then she turned to Tyrael. "The Soulstone must be destroyed. Shall I be allowed to use the Hammer again, my lord?"

"Not now, Hero," Tyrael answered. "The Hellforge is yet guarded, and you must rest. But destroying the Soulstone is your duty, and you must obey it."

She nodded. Then she excused herself weakly, and escaped to her room. She slid out of her armour, very tired, and washed in her private thermal chamber. She had been more tired in previous days, but she still enjoyed deeply the refreshing effect of the bath, and did not feel the courage to face the others right now. She reflected for a time how close she had been to end up just like the Wanderer, except she would have incarnated Mephisto instead of Diablo, and would surely have boosted the demon's magic with her own mastery of Ice. She got out of her bath, dried herself, then knelt and prayed for the Wanderer's soul. She asked the Heavens to show mercy on his soul. He had defeated one of the Three in a one-on-one combat, and he had lost a fight he could not win against Diablo's essence. She prayed that he should be forgiven his mortality, the fact that it was not possible for him to resist the Soulstone. Then, she crawled between her sheets, and fell asleep in a soft bed, in Heaven's fortress of Pandemonium.