VIII.
Jacqueline had said that fighting Baal was not going to be easy. She was right. Many times over.
Even with his minions all put to the sword, the Lord of Destruction still had many tricks up his metaphorical sleeves. The three female warriors were faced with a nigh impossible task of both being cautious and pressing the assault lest they were worn down by the attacks of the sickly tentacles their adversary was liberally throwing at them. They could not harm very much, but they sapped strength and attention from the assailants, leaving them vulnerable to Baal's own mystical – and physical – attacks. Only their supreme training and concentration – and probably also the highest quality enchanted armor they were wearing – saved them from the brunt of the demon master's sorcerous offense. More than anything, Jacqueline was wary of miscalculating the fiend's intentions, leaving herself – and, more importantly, those she was responsible for – vulnerable to some kind of insidious trick. What the Amazon glimpsed from looking into the malevolent yellow eyes of the Prime Evil – and what she had known about his habits from the tomes of wisdom or her studies with Cain and other wise men – practically screamed at her of this inevitability.
Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened.
They had just dealt with one of Baal's mirror images – an infinitely irritating ploy, meant to confuse and grind down the heroes – when the demon lord simply vanished into thin air. By then, their adversary was, despite all his magic power and undeniable combat prowess, rather worn out by the attacks dished out by the three women, since even his arcane barriers could not fully protect him from either the magic arrows the Amazon and the Rogue were peppering him with, or the Valkyrie's celestial spear. However, his disappearance caught the war party by surprise, as the battlemaidens started looking around frantically, waiting for the enemy to re-emerge. As it turned out, Jacqueline was separated from her sisters in arms by a stretch of a bottomless pit surrounding the Worldstone, while Fiona and the Valkyrie remained on the main part of the chamber, still spinning around to spot anything that might have hinted at Baal's return.
The Askari only just thought that she should better be joining her comrades in defense to form a back-to-back circle and avoid being ambushed when the insidious demon struck again. He appeared right behind Fiona, and struck with his clawed arms, aiming for the kill.
Even the supremely agile and aware Sister scarcely had the time to feel the motion of displaced air and only turned her head slightly towards the source of the attack, for beating a Prime Evil's supernatural power was beyond the capability of a human... but not beyond that of a celestial warrior, as the Valkyrie was seeing it unfold as though time had slowed for her. Unlike a regular human being, she had the capability to keep up with the racing avalanche of moments instead of just watching, but even that fleeting moment was cleaved in two by a bright blade of lethally sinister choice. One scale held her possible recollection and redemption, the other...
Images swirled before her mental sight, a hundred different expressions on Fiona's sweet freckled face, from unrestrained laughter to a momentary sad frown, from bliss after having just been thoroughly pleased by her beloved to a ferocious battle grin. Then, the heavenly emissary saw things she knew she could not have witnessed in her time with the two maidens: the Rogue dressed in a simple white nuptial gown, a wreath of ingenuous field flowers in her hair, her ecstatically happy face raised to the heavens; the outlines of her sisters in arms against the setting sun as they were kissing in the sea surf at dusk; the two stately matrons at the head of a family amid a lavish feast... That had to be their future which was, at the moment, far from assured; infinitely less than that, actually, but she held it all within her hands.
In an instant, the choice that, deep down, was no choice at all was made as the Valkyrie not so much moved to intercept the inexorably descending arm of the demon king but willed herself to intersperse in its path, shoving Fiona away in the process. Seconds slowed down to a freeze as the monstrous limb descended onto the spirit warrior, carried by mighty inertia and unstoppable – even if Baal had suddenly decided to pull it away. The question of why would he ever do such a thing was, of course, entirely irrelevant...
... When the blow connected, she knew with terrible finality that she was done for. Instead of the deathly dread that a mortal would have felt in her place, she sensed the rapidly accelerating – noticeably to her even within the confines of that split second – exodus of her spiritual energy. As the heavenly radiance was quickly and inexorably blotting out her vision, erasing both the Worldstone Chamber and the three of its remaining inhabitants – both the demon lord and the two girls that had touched the deepest strings of her soul, even helping her pierce the veil of afterlife – she felt just two emotions. One was the contentment at having saved Fiona and giving her companions a fighting chance – even if she would never know how they fared from there, or indeed whether they really survived at all. The other...
"Randgrid!.. Randgrid... I shall remember-"
... Jacqueline gasped in terminal horror that grasped and paralyzed her entire being. She beheld it all play out as though time had slowed for her as well – except that she was not able to act as the Valkyrie had, only to see and think. In the first instants, a thousand thoughts zoomed past inside her brain, just like what her spirit protector imagined. But in the Amazon's case the chief among those was the dreadful feeling of having failed to protect Fiona, despite having promised to defend her beloved – with all of the Amazon's life, if need be. Unbeknownst to her, her fear-stricken brain worked very similar to the consciousness of the celestial maiden, as images of Fiona flashed before her mental sight – from the archer girl laughing happily as the Askari was holding her in her trademark embrace on a bear hide, the Sister's hair made even redder by the firelight, to the scout's pallid face after the near demise during the battle against Nihlathak. And the imagined vignettes of their future together – imagined still vaguely, but invariably filled with joy and happiness – that were now crumbling like drawings on a paper thrown into a bonfire. Her entire world was blackened before her...
... but as the flow of time returned to its normal speed, the Askari saw the picture entirely different from what she had half witnessed, half built in her terror-stricken brain. It felt like a ladle full of icy water was splashed in her face, instantly washing away the sticky clutches ensnaring her mind and stifling the shriek of grief and horror that was being born in her throat. Before her sight, Fiona rolled improbably away across the floor of the Worldstone's chamber, and a blinding white flash heralding the exodus of the discorporated spirit soldier bloomed in the place where she had just stood.
Jacqueline understood in an instant that their Valkyrie had just sacrificed herself so that Fiona might live.
Even Baal was seemingly taken aback for a split second, more so since he had already taken a beating and was not all that powerful anymore, so he froze for a moment, apparently unable to comprehend that which had just transpired. And the Amazon used this moment to the fullest, knowing that they still lost the Valkyrie and therefore had to press the attack – in spite of all the odds – to stand a chance of surviving, let alone winning.
It was not a conscious, articulate prayer to the Goddess but a flash of wordless yearning, involuntary even – that still appeared to the Amazon to have been met with a benevolent response. It was not the summons for a new spiritual protector – that was not even on Jacqueline's mind, but should a hypothetical observer have suggested it, she would have probably dismissed it angrily as a sacrilege, since the Valkyrie that had become so dear to her in her own way had only just been vanquished while doing her best to save them. Instead, the Askari warrior wished for nothing more than a second of true aim to be bestowed upon her...
... and she would be sure until the very end of her days that in this instant, Athulua had granted her desire. The ice-enchanted bolt loosed by Jacqueline's crossbow hit Baal in the neck below the jawline, penetrating both what arcane defenses the Lord of Destruction still had about him and the physical skin, and exploding in a volley of frozen substance. The demon master let loose a muffled roar that cut off into a gurgling cry, and toppled over. In its death throes his hideous quadrupedal body crushed the stone parapet and fell into the unfathomable depth of the abyss surrounding the Worldstone. Seconds later, the explosion born below threw both the Amazon and her companion, who had just barely gotten up, off their feet and slammed them into the walls, only their enchanted armor preventing them from being badly injured by this calamity alone...
... The earth's bowels were shaking more uncontrollably by the minute. Dimly, through the veil of happy tears, Jacqueline perceived the shining form of Archangel Tyrael who was standing towards the side of her line of sight, gesticulating frantically. The islander knew that he was talking, too, but she was not hearing any of his words clearly, as she was wholly concentrated on clutching Fiona for dear life despite the scout's weak protests, caressing the Rogue's hair and showering her face with kisses, all the while laving her with the salty water running uncontrollably from her eyes. She understood that she was not supposed to cry, as that was the preserve of the weak – and the weak cannot be called Amazons – but she did not particularly care, because the only thing that mattered was the fact that the Sister was alive, and apparently even no worse for the wear. They had won, and they owed their lives – the ones they were now free to live – to the Valkyrie who had given it all to save them.
But they would never know just how much she had actually sacrificed – the spirit soldier took that knowledge with her to heaven.