As usual, first thing is for me to declare love to all my reviewers. Love you all!
Speaking of reviews… I am quite startled as well as impressed to find that FF dot Net has incorporated the use of formal language, as well as formal-sounding MECHANISMS! Why did it "profanity filter" my reviews::Frantically hurries to disable profanity filter:: Actually, I'm expecting flames a few chapters on…
As you may notice I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to physics. I seem to be a little obsessed with entrails on walls lately… Some changes applied to the Arcane Sanctuary, pardon me; it's either as plot device or the result of my shortage in the memory department. And pardon the random humour… X-) The Arcane Sanctuary rocks like an artwork by M. C. Escher.
And I know I sound idiotic, but I've finally figured out how to use rulers on FF dot Net.
Disclaimer: I do not own Blizzard or Diablo. I can dream, though.
Chapter 20: Twisted Enigma
When I opened my eyes again, the chamber was a mess – flesh and blood and bone fragments were dripping down the walls, and the walls themselves were coming apart, as bits of stone continuously flaked off. Soon there was a rumble, and this time, it came from above.
"Falcon, I'm impressed, but I think you went a little overboard with that." Oread stated calmly as she got to her feet. "Let's head inside here, and see if there're anymore stairs, before this thing collapses and crush us to bits."
Even as she said that, a large piece of stone came loose from above. I uttered a yelp, and Falcon and I leapt to either side of it as it crashed into the floor between us. We got to the inner chamber, and one last beast dived at us. Oread readied her spear, then jabbed it clean through its head.
The hulk fell as I eyed Oread, my mouth fallen open involuntarily. "Wasn't your shoulder broken?"
"I had one of those huge pink potions. They've fixed it up all right." As if proving her point, Oread rotated her shoulder. The joints popped and cracked as she tested the newly-healed tendons and cartilages.
"But… weren't you out? I mean… why didn't you drink them before?"
"If you hadn't realised, while Falcon bought us time, I had a chance to go through the fallen." Oread brought the spear down at an arc, and the blood on the blade streaked the opposite wall with a dull splat. "Now, I don't see any stairs."
"Open a portal, then!" I had no idea how the other two could stay calm; Falcon had recalled her beasts and worked up her Cyclone Armour to deflect some of the fragments, but Oread was as defenceless as I was.
I decided that my master was still suicidal and could not care less; that was all there was.
"There's something here," Oread got to the centre of the small room – there was a small pedestal, and upon it was an obsidian tablet. We ran up to it, and Oread traced her fingers over the etching, muttering the incantations written upon it as she went.
"How can you read that?" Falcon asked as she peered over Oread's shoulder; another fragment came down from the ceiling and it was ripped apart by her cyclonic shield. "It's not even in –"
"It's an older language, one belonging to the ancient Sorcerers, whose descendents now reside in the cold south." Oread paused in the incantations and explained, quickly and monotonously, then continued. I did not think she realised it, but for a few moments as she recited, her aura shimmered with faint, icy-blue sparks.
Once the incantations were complete, the etchings on the tablet glowed a brilliant violet, and then both the tablet and pedestal… sublimated. A portal took their place, its oval ring of a circumference coloured by the same bright violet glow, fiery tendrils fading into white reached outwards; but the centre was pitch darkness – not the swirling silver-grey like the blue Town Portals, but an even, unfathomable black.
"Wow." Falcon, who had always found some kind of obsessive fascination in portals, was downright flabbergasted by this one.
Meanwhile, there was huge boom, and then came continuous individual rumbles that quickly grew more frequent, turning into a single, loud, persistent noise. "We've not got much time! Get in!"
"Ooh, the monster dropped a ruby –"
"GET IN!" Panic took full control; I grabbed Falcon from beside me by the back of her collar, and my shoulder rammed hard into my master's back, knocking her breath out as her exclamation at the gem was cut off.
Rather than first shoving Oread in then pulling Falcon in with me as I had planned, Oread was lighter than I had expected, and Falcon was heavier. Falcon crashed into me as my momentum bowled Oread over.
The three of us literally tumbled through the portal.
The momentum kept us rolling on, crashing into some legs as we went.
When we finally stopped, I was aching all over, and by the curses and complaints that the other two uttered, so were they.
"Oww, my butt hurts like crazy." Falcon moaned as she sat up, then her eyes widened as she brought up a hand. A magical hum, and soon there were sounds of yelps and ripping and tearing and… "baa"?
"This is the Arcane Sanctuary, it seems." Oread groaned as she got to her feet and readied her bow to help out the two sibling wolves, which were battling a group of scythe-wielding goat-like humanoid. I had seen something similar somewhere before… was that back at Westmarch? The memory seemed so distant and blurry.
I took a quick look around me, and my breath was taken away by the sight of the realm that I found myself in – I was standing on a smooth slab of greyish, marble-like stone without any joints or faults. My eyes followed the length of the five-feet-wide slab, and I realised that this array was suspended in space – all around me was an even darkness, illuminated unevenly by what could be distant stars and constellations.
The Arcane Sanctuary itself was lighted, seemingly by an unknown source. Everything was just illuminated very evenly, and as I looked down and about the floor, no shadows were cast. However, as perfect as the lighting was, everything beyond a radius around us – one of about fifty feet – faded into the darkness of the enveloping space. I cast Inner Sight to try and get a better view; the vision radius grew by perhaps another ten feet, but that was all.
This place is mysterious. Twisted. Dangerous.
The last sound of battle – in this space it projected well, but did not echo – ceased from behind me, just as more enemies came into view before my eyes. Oread and Falcon's wild allies joined the battle on this side, as Falcon watched on, standing beside me, quickly looking around her, taking in as much as possible and making her pigtails flick around wildly.
"This place is incredible!" … Well, at least she was pleased with the situation. "My tribe back home would never believe this."
"Well, what do we do now?" I asked after Oread shot down one last foe, and the air grew silent again. "Where do we go?"
"I guess the only possible direction is forward." She replied. "It's not like we know what to do in here, or how we can fix things up in here; we'll just have to investigate this whole space, or as much of it as we can."
"What do you think will happen if we stepped off the edge?" Asked Falcon, perched on her hands and knees at end of the slab we were on, and curiously peering into the nothingness. As a reply to Falcon's queries, Oread wedged her foot underneath a fallen foe – a thin, zombie-like summoner – and with a kick sent it propelling off the edge of the slab. The corpse flew off into space, and within ten feet off the edge, had faded into the even darkness, the new source of black seeping between the white glows of the dusted stars.
Falcon gawked at the point where the corpse vanished, and I saw her swallow as Oread added casually, "I think that means we're not supposed to find out."
"But… isn't it limitless space out there?" Falcon blurted out, very quickly, and rather loudly. "What… so this is an illusion or something? We're actually tightly closed in by some twisted, elastic fabric of space?"
"Just stop thinking about it, Falcon. It'll make you senile."
We followed the long slab, fighting down some foes on the way. The monsters were mostly goat humanoids, and with all of us being able to attack from a distance, the thin slabs really worked to our advantage. We found some stairs which were really just thin horizontal slabs, and large breaks in our paths mitigated by small teleporting portals.
Things were going a lot better than we had expected, until we came across a particularly wide platform. Nothing the small holes upon the perfect surface, I identified traps.
We were just debating over whether to creep around them (from me), rip them all out somehow (from Falcon, my emphasis on the "somehow") or bolt through them (from Oread… as expected) when I noticed a shimmer out of the corner of my eye. Inner Sight did not illuminate anything, but I could see them with my naked eye –
A skeleton… well, half of a skeleton, with its horned skull, thin arms stretching to elongated fingers, and a ribcage that tapered down the long spine, the ancient bones were an uncanny bleached-white. The teeth were pointed and the jaws were set in an eternal grimace. Surrounding the half-skeleton was a smoky, bright blue aura. Unlike the many undead enemies that we have felled before, its eye sockets were hollow; there were no points were life force particularly accumulated.
From behind me, Falcon collapsed to her knees with a moan. Her two ravens dissipated and the loose energy seeped back into their host.
"What's the matter, Falcon?" I asked as Oread shot an arrow through the monster. It crumbled into dust and the remaining still-glowing energy spun off into the infinity overhead.
"I'm all right." Falcon replied, tremblingly getting to her feet.
"No, we're not." Oread replied, nocking another two arrows. I looked up and saw perhaps about ten of those ghost-like beings surrounding us.
Then there were scenes – visions, flashing in my head. The Rogue Monastery aflame… my mother shoving me into the chest of Kashya… we took off, leaving my mother and my oldest sister… what was her name? I could not remember…
Blood and smoke. Smells that burnt this memory deep within my mind.
These things were toying with my memories?
"Celadon, snap out of it!" Oread's strong hand shook me, and I regained my focus for a moment, long enough to fire at the ghost-demon, now glowing with a jade-green aura… was that my mana?
"Falcon, get up!" Oread commanded; Falcon retrieved her allies and fought, tearing through another demon close to her as she twirled the Horadric Staff double-handed. "These things… they reawaken memories to steal your mana while you're mentally weakened." Oread explained. "You'll just have to…" She tightened her brows and shot a flaming arrow through one. "… Get yourself together and kill them before they sap you of all your energy."
"Easy for you to say." Falcon pouted her childish pout, as she summoned Dawn and Dusk, who tore through the ghostly foe close to her.
"Aren't they attacking you, too?" I asked Oread, in a breathier voice than what I would have liked, after I succeeded in fighting back my memory and killed another one.
"Nothing that I haven't seen in my head hundreds of times already." She replied coolly. "And we've hit a dead-end."
"Oh, brilliant!" Falcon moaned as I, with the help of Inner Sight, managed to creep around the traps and opened the chest on the other side of the platform. "Well, at least we've found something…" She trailed off as she ran across the platform, narrowly missing a few of the spikes shooting up from the holes in the floor, and began to explore the chest.
"Your mood fluctuation is extreme." Oread commented with a sigh, remaining where she was. "It's gone up a few notches in a matter of seconds."
"Well, we've got a good load of loot here!" Falcon grinned cheerily as she held up a few imperfect stones. Oread sighed. My mind, however, was still troubled by the mental attacks that we had sustained. Some way to take down an enemy…
And Oread always seemed so troubled, so how come she could fight it back so well? I've heard that the Amazons practice skills where they communicate with the divine, but that was nothing of that realm; that was something that came from evil, from Hell. From the underworld. The fact that she could dismiss it the way she had, so easily, really surprised me.
We backtracked. We found the portal again; it was at a crossroad, and while deciding which way to go, we were again thrown into a three-way quarrel – it had been a very long day for all of us, but we had plenty of supplies, and we reached the consensus that we were not to return here again, so we did not return to town. The resulting impatience, irritability and instigative behaviour, however, meant that we would return to Lut Gholein as soon as… whatever needed to be sorted out here in the Arcane Sanctuary is sorted out.
"We should turn left, so that we can just keep turning left if we backtrack, and we won't get lost." Such was my argument.
"But isn't left bad luck? Why don't we go right instead?" Falcon's temper was getting shorter…
… And so was mine. "I was just giving an example!"
"Then why don't you want to take the route on the right?" Falcon's spiritual energy must have fluctuated as her voice was raised, for Dusk whined and backed off a little, and Dawn's hair stood on its ends.
"Why don't we just go straight?" Oread was getting annoyed with us. In retrospect I realised that it was extremely childish, but I was fired up then.
"Because!" Falcon and I both shouted.
Oread cocked an eyebrow at us. "Who knows how long you two will argue for… at this rate all the monsters here will probably detect us and come kill us, and you two won't even know what's happened." She fished a gold coin out of her pocket. "Okay, heads or tails?"
"Heads!" The two of us shouted. We jerked our heads towards one another, our eyes met, and held.
"Heads for left, tails for right." Oread sighed again, and tossed the coin. I stuck my tongue out at Falcon – another childish behaviour that I blamed on my condition.
"Oh, it's gone." Oread commented in complete casualness. The coin had been taken up by the twisted special dimension, and disappeared mid-flight. Falcon and I broke into a rant so quick and high-pitched that it was inaudible. "I'll spin one, okay?"
She took out another coin, knelt onto the floor and spun it. It continued to spin for a few seconds, and then stopped dead, standing on its edge. The heads side faced the left route, the tails faced the right.
Both Falcon and I stared wide-eyed and wide-mouthed. Even Oread frowned and pulled one side of her lip back. "There must be some strange, funny forces in here or something. That'd almost never happen in real life. Almost." She got to her feet quickly, and still the coin did not budge. "I guess it's straight ahead, then."
So the dispute was settled – barely. Falcon and I still exchanged infuriated glances at one another on the way, as we fought down pretty much the same monsters as before. Except this way had a few extended levels, supported by pillars and arches, as well as a good amount of those mind-boggling teleportation portals. Whether it was me seeing things or just the way this place worked I did not know for sure, but I could have sworn that the top of the arches started from behind me, yet they ended up on our lower level in front, and all this while I was able to shoot up and ahead at the foes overhead, while the arrows seem to go backwards.
I was getting extremely confused and my head started aching. After some time I stopped trying to think about it, and just concentrated on firing my arrows.
This side of the Sanctuary took a lot longer to explore, and the structures are a lot more complicated. We did not have too much trouble, though, as the walls and ceilings seemed to be permeable. When we came across more of the ghost-beings, though, we had real trouble.
There was a whole group of blue ones; perhaps it was because of my tender age and lack of experience relative to the other two, I took down most of them with Oread, while Falcon was struggling. She actually uttered a sob as she collapsed onto her knees, all her allies dissipating and absorbed by three enemies as her golden-orange energy.
"Falcon! Come on!" I got close to her and screamed into her ear. Her eyes snapped open, tears pooling at her lower eyelids. She let out a loud cry and brought the Horadric Staff across horizontally, which I barely evaded as the metallic feature at the end ripped across the armour over my stomach, scratching and denting the thin plate.
I was about to go and comfort her as I sensed something behind me; I spun around, barely skimming past a flaming ball of energy and buried a few arrows through two corpse-like fire-wielding summoners. As the figures fell, the sight of Oread facing a skeleton-ghost was before me. Behind me, by the sound of it, Falcon hacked through another ghost, and soon joined me by my side, her ravens and Soleil recalled.
The being that Oread was facing has a reddish-violet aura, and its bones were golden in colour. As if in slow-motion, I saw Oread nock an arrow, then her hands fell as the bowstring was half-strung. The arrow flew through the hollow ribcage of the ghost, and clattered into the floor.
The aura of the demon flared, and Oread screamed. She pressed on her head with her hands, and fell to her knees.
"Oread!" I started running, before I was struck by a fireball. I shot a Cold Arrow through another summoner-corpse; then, ignoring the searing burn on my leg, I kept running. My mind's eye showed me that Oread's deep-indigo energy was being drained, but as the indigo grew dimmer, an icy-blue light pulsed, deep within the core of her body.
She screamed again, her voice ripping through the very space we were in. Even her blue energy began to flow from her. Oread stayed on the floor as the tendons in her arms, neck and forehead began to stand out.
Falcon and I were both trying to get to her now, but at that instant our visible radius increased, and the space opened up –
Two symmetrical set of stairs from either side of us led to a small, high platform, surrounded by tall arches, as if supported an invisible roof. Upon it was an altar, and a dark-skinned man dressed in robes of gold and royal-blue, almost-human except for the dark taste that his very presence left in the air.
"A summoner?" I asked, my eyes locked onto the man. "Is it Horazon?"
"I don't know about that, but he should be the Summoner." Falcon replied. "All the fire-wielders came from the directions of the stairs."
"Master Oread!" I called and spun on my heel, unsheathing my sword and used the force of the movement to slash through another fiery foe that was creeping up to me. By now, the aura of the ghost haunting my master had turned into a shade of deep bluish-violet.
Suddenly, right before I reached her, Oread's energy flashed red – no, crimson. Such was the colour that perfectly described the smell, the feeling, the taste of what I had sensed from her before. It momentarily blinded me, and when I regained my vision, I caught a glimpse of a fang-shaped projectile, this time gleaming bright crimson, being absorbed and disappearing into the enclosing special fabric. The ghost crumbled and the energy whirled off.
The sound was accompanied by another noise of whirlwind. Falcon must have summoned the North Winds again, the same skill that she had used in the Sewers. There was a large whooping sound as forces clashed, and I caught the flickering remnants of a wall of fire before they died away.
Someone came up beside me; I turned to see my master, on her feet, her head dipped into the palm of her left hand. The tension in her face was gone, but her eyes were closed, and I thought I saw a purple bruise in the centre of her forehead.
She still smelled like crimson. Her energy, her aura, was still crimson, but specks of blue were sparking, and the specks faded into the crimson and made smudges of indigo. However, the crimson dominated her being and overpowered the other two colours.
"Oread, Falcon and I should hold this one off… you've been drained." My voice was on the verge of quivering. This air of hers did not do me very well... I was anxious, and perhaps scared of her.
"Oren."
"What?" Her voice sounded so calm, so smooth… that I was not sure if I had really heard it or simply imagined it.
She had not recovered her bow, I realised.
Faster than I had imagined to be possible, she reached for the spear across her back, pulled it out, and charged ahead. Falcon was preoccupied as she dodged fireballs and cracked the skulls and spines of the lesser summoners with the Horadric Staff, and as Oread whipped past her, Falcon blinked hard and fast a few times, her face looked as if she thought she was seeing things.
"What got into her?" She asked as I ran up to her.
"No idea, but I don't like it." I replied, helping Falcon kill her last foe, and the both of us charged up the left flight of stairs. Oread was bolting up the one on the right.
The Summoner set up walls of fire in Oread's wake, but she ran through them casually, taking the large steps two at a time, the wind against her speed putting out the small flames over her body.
The Summoner hurled himself at her, and she blocked him with her hands – no, there was something between the two. A shield made of… bones?
Using the resistance of whatever material the shield was composed of, the Summoner launched himself off Oread and turned his eyes towards us – light yellow eyes, an acidic shade rather different to the warm amber of my own orbs.
A wall of fire erupted on the step above the one we were standing on, and Falcon and I stumbled backwards. I almost lost my footing and Falcon grabbed my hand. Single-handedly, she conjured up the winds again, and after negating the wall of fire with her chilling blast of wind, she signalled for her wolves to charge.
The wolves pounced repeatedly at the Summoner, but he was agile, and floated here and there as the wolves pursued him. I regained my balance, and was about to keep going as a wall of fire blocked our path, this time on the last step before reaching the small platform.
Falcon fumbled for a mana potion as I watched what was happening – at his speed, we could never harm the Summoner from a distance.
Another wall of fire burst under our feet. Falcon dropped her potion; it fell between the gaps in the steps and into the dark unknown, and Falcon fell back, bringing me along with her as we went tumbled – again – down the flight of stairs.
As I hit the floor a final time, Falcon was under me and cushioned my landing, knocking herself out cold. Instantly her wolves disappeared. Fighting back the pain, I got up and ran up the flight of stairs again, seeing that the walls of fire had died down significantly.
I unsheathed my sword at I climbed the last five steps. As I lifted my head, I was greeted by a rather… familiar sight.
The dark enveloping mass of hazy, shadowy energy that had once trapped Andariel's senses now trapped those of the Summoner.
Trying to seize this turn of the tables, I ran up to deliver the finishing blow; but I stopped myself as blood began to seep out of the Summoner's left eye. A split second later, the pointed tip of a spear came out of his eye, and as the spear was forced further on, the eyeball ripped from its socket, skewered by the tip of the blade.
I managed to fully stop myself just as the spear stopped, and the Summoner's detached yellow eye was staring into my own right eye; I could see my amber eye and the dark red of my lashes in the pierced, split-halves of the pupil.
The spear was pulled back, and the Summoner fell. His eye rolled off the edge of the platform and plummeted into the infinite nothingness. Oread was standing behind the Summoner's body, and yanked the last length of her spear out through the back of his head, with a great stream of blood spurting from the hole in the Summoner's skull.
The bruise was still on her forehead, but it had significantly faded; or maybe it was only because her face was covered by dark blood, cuts and burns.
She looked into my eyes, through my eyes. I looked back, and there was only one emotion in those eyes of hers that I could distinct – misery.
Then the crimson faded away, and she fell on top of the body of her recently-felled foe.
Oren: "Impure", from Swedish.
