YAY ARCANE SANCTUARY:D Best place in all of the Diablo II Universe!

People seem to like the Falcon PoV… much gratitude goes to all my reviewers! Especially to InnerFire's surprise review, Phreno's crazily long and hysterical review, and Elise's sadistic review… O.O

I've thought up the beginning of this chapter for a while now; and in case you get confused, it's kind of at a point in the future where someone (yes, someone; I made sure that from the language it can be perceived as any of the three so-far-introduced main characters speaking) has a kind of reflection… just a bit of foreshadowing, that's all.

And sorry for the long period of being on hiatus; there were just too many quizzes and assignments and exams on at around the same time. I'm hoping to get this Act done in another maybe two chapters. There might be major changes to the landscapes… don't mind me.

Disclaimer: If I owned Blizzard or Diablo, I wouldn't be doing this for free…

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Chapter 19: Beyond the Façade of Bravura

"Hang in there! You're gonna make it…"

What a joke.

It was never meant to be like this. Never expected to turn out this way… So much death, blood, carnage, malice, horror, chaos, and most of all, loss…

Oh… who am I kidding? This shattered world is a battlefield, after all.

On the battlefield, there is nothing expected, and nothing unexpected.

For a warrior, in the end, whilst standing amongst the silence of the deceased, there is nothing gained, and nothing left to be lost.

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My goodness, how much had Jerhyn's young eyes seen from this place?

We were one level down from the glorious exterior of the Palace, and already the stench of corruption was prominent, seeming to seeping through the very cracks in the walls. This must be the Harem – cushions and sheets were carelessly strewn about the place. We were here, in this very place that marked the fall of the hierarchy of Lut Gholein, the fall of the morals of humanity.

I could only reminisce so much because of the strange safety around me - the small, open level was empty and devoid of monsters. We proceeded down one level down, and the danger – and excitement – began there.

Pools of blood greeted my eyes – fresh blood. The bright crimson and the pure smell of metal identified the blood as that of humans'. It both relieved and terrified me, to think that there were still living people down here.

"So the blood that stains the river is not only from the Sewers." Falcon stated from beside me. She had a serious look upon her face – one that promised tension and anticipated horror ahead.

Just then, there was a piercing scream that rang through the air, followed by beastly grunts expressing… pleasure? A few more moans, and there were sounds of ripping and snapping. The gods only knew what happened, but our imagination had effectively made their own connections. Both Oread and Falcon's energy flared, and we all broke out into a run towards the direction of the scream.

We ran straight into a crowd of monsters – four-armed swordsmen, huge humanoid hulks, as well as other foreign monsters; and missile-wielding skeletons. I hate those.

Oread's energy shimmered, and she dodged the incoming missiles while returning a few shots of her own. She was annoyed, I realised – there was really no need to be wasting Exploding Arrows on skeletons, but she did, anyway.

While Oread took care of the ranged monsters, I was focusing on the less agile, but more power-packed hulks. They took quite a few arrows, but once I began to use some elemental attacks, they went down more easily. I stole a look to Falcon, and what I saw really impressed me.

She was wielding the Staff very proficiently – she did not simply bring it down upon her opponents' skulls; she used it to vault herself off the ground to avoid attacks, and she swung it around her with one hand sometimes. I was amazed at the speed at which she could twirl the Staff, as well as the power that she channelled through it. Her range was great, and with her allies, she seemed the most comfortable one of the three of us to fight in such a cramped and dark space.

In the meanwhile, Oread had dropped back beside me. I looked up, and took down one last monster, right between the eyes. The arrow was still aflame when it exited through the back of the beast, and splattered the wall with blood and brains as it was lodged into the wall behind it.

That was when we realised how quickly we had advanced through and cleared this level. Blood ran from the brains nailed to the wall by the arrow, and down the wall, running around a pair of bloody iron cuffs nailed to the wall, and our eyes moved with the trails of blood to what was lying on the floor –

The light from the burning arrow illuminated the scene of horror: where the walls met the floor laid a dismembered body. From the relatively small extent at which the innards were strewn, one could tell that it was probably the body of a young woman.

I looked around me; bodies were littered everywhere, but there were bloody cuffs at irregular intervals, and beneath all of them were similarly-sized bodies, all were mutilated beyond human appearance.

Even the Rogue Monastery was nothing compared to this. There was so much blood, so much violence written in the very air of this now-silence room.

"Let's go and stop this from happening again." Oread sounded really annoyed now.

Suddenly we heard clanging noises. Oread whipped around, violent sparks dancing on the tip of her arrow.

It was the most charged-up Exploding Arrow I had seen from her; it illuminated the dark corner. Oread's temper might have blinded her, but thank goodness that… before I saw it with my eyes, my mind already knew what it was.

"Oread, don't!" I leapt forward and shoved Oread's left arm as she let go, and the arrow flew off-course, and landed into the floor. There, sitting right next to the quickly-disintegrating arrow, was a young girl. Her body was naked, thin from starvation, bloody and bruised from torture. Her hands were in the metal cuffs above her small body, and as she raised her eyes to us, the look was so sunken and hollow, that for a moment I thought she must have been an undead.

"You're all right…" I ran over to her, and hugged her close – I had not freed her from her bondage, but I had to do something to cover her up.

Falcon walked over and bent down, as a ruffle of black feathers landed upon her shoulder. Nimbus brought his head lower, and a set of keys was between his beaks. Falcon quickly unlocked the cuffs, and the girl threw her arms around me, sobbing into my chest.

"Shh… You're safe now. It's all right." I said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible.

There was a magical hum behind me, which I recognised as the sound of a Town Portal opening. "Falcon, Celadon, you two take her back." Oread's tone was dark and deep, bordering on murderous.

"What about you, Oread?" Falcon responded quickly. "Don't tell me you're going to – "

"I'm going to give those murderers a taste of their own medicine." Oread's tone told me that she was barely holding herself together. "No-one trashes a girl like this."

I have knowledge of the structure of her tribe – the Amazons belong to a matriarchal society, where women were no less than men. I understood her fury, but I was not ready to let her do whatever her impulse drove her to do.

"If you don't want to waste time, I'll stay here with you. Falcon can take her back." I suggested, and threw Oread a stern glance, to boot. "I'm staying with you." I reinforced, as Falcon freed me from the girl's gripping fingers and held her close to herself.

"Let's head off, then." Somewhat surprisingly, Oread accepted without protest. "Falcon, make sure she's okay before you come after us, all right?"

"Of course." Falcon smiled, despite of the situation; probably glad to hear the tone of deep concern in Oread's voice. Without another word (though she did take a split second to marvel at the Portal before she stepped through), she and the girl returned to Lut Gholein.

Oread and I proceeded onto our quest to cleanse the Palace – with more blood, ironically. There were levels of cellars beneath the Harem, and I was once again reminded of the Rogue Monastery. We "cleansed" that place with blood too, did we not?

We encountered many foes, and along the way, we slaughtered them all. I once again found that bloodlust welling up within me, and I was afraid, so I held back. Oread was driven by anger now, and I had the responsibility, as a mercenary, to watch her back and stop her from doing anything suicidal. I could not stop her from doing so if I, myself, was overpowered by my own desires.

We survived the first two levels of the cellars, but at the end of the second level we were worn out. Oread received a bone arrow through her side, and after she let loose her own arrow, killing her attacker, she collapsed. Luckily by then there was only one monster left, and, fighting to stay on my feet, I brandished my sword and hacked until the hulk lost his footing and fell, then I slashed through his throat, and stabbed through his heart for good measure. That done, I collapsed as well.

I had hoped that I would pass out, so that the pain could be delayed; no luck. "Celadon?"

"I'm here." I replied. Oread's voice was pained. "Are you okay?"

"That was what I was about to ask you. I gave you that large bottle of pink potion for a reason; drink it."

"But you said that was saved for – "

"Drink it. I have more." Oread cut me off, and I had no option but to obey.

The potion did not take long to work – soon my wounds stopped bleeding and the pain lessened. There was a warm sensation as tissues tried their best to pull themselves back together, and to be honest, our bodies could allow us to keep going.

But a warrior needs more than a recovered body to fight. As the two of us sat beside one another, facing the pile of bodies that we had accumulated on the ground, our minds fought hard to recover from the recent trauma.

"Damn… Falcon's taking her time." Oread grunted.

"I hope the girl's all right." I said.

"Yeah."

Silence.

"You've learnt to swordfight very well, Celadon; despite your moves being highly unorthodox, they seem to be rather effective."

"Thank you."

"And you've managed to keep yourself sane over the battle."

"Same goes for you." The words went out before my head could stop my mouth. I covered my mouth my hands, belatedly. "I'm sorry… that was terribly improper of me."

"No, no… you're right. I was a bit too impulsive back there."

Silence again. I tried to find something to say, but failed; so I took out my sword and began to wipe the blood off of it, and I found it.

"This sword is special, isn't it?"

"Huhn?"

I smiled at her rather weird exclamation. "I mean, it's a precious weapon; you didn't just randomly find it, surely… even Charsi had complimented it, and she's seen a lot of weapons before."

"It came from my homeland." Oread's eyes moved to the ceiling.

"So you were trained as a swordswoman, as well? I didn't know that you possessed such skill."

"No…" Oread's voice drifted off into a soft, slightly-quivering tone. "It was my sister's."

"Your – "

"Are you ready to go now?" Oread got to her feet, and offered me a hand. I took it, and she practically yanked me to my feet, all the while looking towards the entrance to the staircase leading to the level below. "Let's get this over and done with as quickly as possible."

She walked ahead of me, and I wondered what her face looked like then. If only I could read her better… but then, nobody seemed to be able to read her very well.

The last cellar level was a lot smaller than what I had imagined; the narrow corridors around the central room were very narrow, but empty. Even though Oread and I had anticipated a lot of monsters, we did not expect this many, and all of them were hulks.

"Celadon, get back!" Oread shouted as the monsters swamped out from the narrow doorway to the central chamber. Even though they were in single-file and there were no missiles flying this time, there were many of them – and they were tough.

The bow was inadequate for battle in such narrow places, so Oread whipped out her spear again. She could impale the monsters all right, but her movements and speed were restrained by the narrow surroundings. I helped quite a bit with my more manoeuvrable short sword, but we were losing ground quickly.

"If we back off all the way around the chamber, we'd be caught in the middle." I speculated as I hacked with the sword, bringing down another huge beast with Oread as we both aimed for the throat. "I think they're coming from the other side, too."

"It can't be helped now." Oread grunted as she shoved her spear through the body of the near-identical hulk behind the one that had just fallen. The monster howled and took a swing at Oread's face; she must have had her spear caught when it pierced through, barely dodged it, and the fist landed on her right shoulder.

There was a sickening crack; Oread cried and fell sideways into the wall beside her. Her hand did not let go, however, and it yanked the bloody spear out of the abdomen of the opponent as she did so. She dropped the spear as her arm went limp. Oread uttered a groan and panted as she fought back the scream welling up into her throat – I could see the tension from her heaving chest.

"Oread, I'll take the front from now on." I went and planted myself before her. "You try and recuperate while I hold them off a bit."

"There's not enough time." Oread gasped as she picked up her spear with her left hand. "I can hear them behind me. One of them – the one leading from the other side – is a strong one. Its energy is fierce."

She came back up beside me, and with her left arm, thrust the spear through my current foe's right eye. "Damn it all to hell." She cursed.

Suddenly there was a huge quake from the ground, and a deep rumble. Both of us were knocked off our feet, and Oread must have fallen on her injured shoulder, for there were a few soft cracking noises, and she screamed.

I took the monster's temporarily stunned state to my advantage and stabbed it in the lower torso several times. Blood dripped from its mouth, and it fell. I looked behind me, and the path behind us, on the other side of the entrance, the ground was split through the middle. Immediately in front of the stairwell entrance, especially, there was a huge hole in the ground, and steam spilt from it.

Several hulky monsters had fallen into the crevasse, and one of the survivors – the one with glowing blood-red eyes – glared angrily, as the eyes brightened.

There was a light-grey-and-brown blur; it came from the stairwell entrance, bounced off the opposite wall and landed beside Oread.

"Sorry I took so long." Falcon grinned as she leapt off Dawn; Soleil must be too big for this place.

"Nice timing, in any case." Oread replied as the two sibling-wolves began their carnage.

"My Fissure actually worked this time." Falcon was evidently very pleased with herself. "Allow me to take care of fiery-eyes here, yeah?"

Turning around to face the strong leader of the hulks, she raised the Horadric Staff; the runes glowed pure white.

"Let's see how my new elemental summoning works in here." Falcon said slowly, her voice somewhat solemn. "Let's test out my Twister."

She gripped the Staff with both hands, and the very air of the chamber… ripped.