Much thanks and appreciation to the reviewers, and an extra great welcome to Emmelyn Cindy Mah, taimench and mickrulz! To taimench: it's always good to have a perspective where the canon law holds a little higher than it usually is in my head. To Emmy, I hope you'll get past my cruddier chapters soon; it's something I'm almost ashamed to look back at…
I've had a lot of time to think, but not about this 'fic; seems like every time I try to think a little harder about it my brain rejects the idea and tells me to save it for something more important (like physics – the discipline furthest from the Diablo realm). Not to mention this seems to have become a runaway-'fic with increasing angst, and writing angst is such a drain on my (limited) supply of brain juice. Murex protests, of course. So here it is.
Disclaimer: I don't own Diablo or the uncanny disappearance of Natalya, and I barely own Murex anymore, if I had ever owned him in the first place.
Chapter 23:
Whispering Memories
I was sick for two weeks; half the time was spent in delirium, the other half in something worse.
The last seconds of Falcon's life haunted my dreams and waking moments. I could not believe it – we failed. We came so close to Kurast, so close to saving her, and she died.
I questioned the child about watching Falcon while I was out to face the Tentacle Beast. She was calm about it as she explained to me – using a mixture of symbols, writing and sign language – that Falcon wanted it to be so; that it was useless as well as cruel to stop her. She justified that Falcon's wish was not to be saved and live on as a crippled being whose body would no longer function as that of a warrior.
Pride, honour, dignity. Are they really what this is all about?
Jerhyn's family ring on my finger… I recalled the times that he had asked me to live, asked me not to throw my life away.
I love him for that.
But maybe it was not what a warrior was to believe in.
"Are you afraid of death, Falcon?"
"You never really die, you know… You remain in parts of the earth; parts of you live on throughout thousands of lives… My being here on earth as who I am now is only a free trip… Let whatever owns me take me in the end; as long as I am where I ought to be, all is well."
But it felt like she just… disappeared. Ceased to exist – drifted away silently, quickly, eternally. An evanescent whisper that faded away without a trace.
"Memories of one who passed away live on in the minds of those who are alive" might be what Falcon was getting at. So what happens when those others die as well?
Lives are so disposable in this world. I questioned my own significance in this greater scheme of things.
As insignificant Falcon's life was to the gods, however, to me she was exceptional. She was a friend, an ally, a companion. She was the first person whose death I bore such an active and undeniable witness to. She might live in the past, in my memories, but dwelling in them did not help; it only made me understand – better and better as the days went by – that she would never be here again.
I decided to get up and walk about for a bit – being alone and unoccupied makes the mental overpower the physical, it seemed.
Kurast was not much of a city; all I knew it as was an array of elevated wooden huts, sturdier stone-paved areas with stalls, imitating bazaars – only they were much too small, and… those darn boardwalks. I slipped several times on them, for they were forever soaked with rainwater; and as much as the townspeople try to maintain them, moss grew between the planks of wood, and sometimes overgrew them.
That was the other thing – the place was always wet. And humid. And so very very hot. It drizzled constantly, and about twice a day, it pours. Further inland the dense forests might make the rain more bearable, but here, close to the main river that led out to sea, the "growth" of the "city" meant that trees were removed, and the rain pelted mercilessly down upon the humans who tried to outwit, counteract and overpower Mother Nature.
I wondered what Falcon would have to say about this.
After asking around for a bit – which took quite long, as I navigated through the maze-like arrangement of the city, in an attempt to speak to the few people I knew, all situated quite some distance apart from each other – and getting lost a few times, I found Oread near the inner border of the town, where the vegetation outdid the artificial structures. Her bow was lying on the ground beside her, and she was soaked – her hair, her skin, and the plain grey dress that she had cut up to be short and sleeveless. She was standing upright and practicing some strictly magical skills, though I could not tell which one it was without my Inner Sight.
"Oread," I called softly. She turned to me, flicking wet hair from her face. "Have you been here since dawn?" We had the last storm then.
"Yeah." She sighed her reply and her posture slumped. "How are you feeling?" She sat down on the ground and leaned back, shifting half her weight onto her arms.
"Give me maybe two more days, I think."
"No, you need more than that. You need to get back in good condition if we're doing any fighting. I'm not just talking about the physical bit, either."
She had looked away from me; silence ensued as her words hanged in the air. "It'll probably do me some good to get back in action." I controlled my voice, pushing aside my sentiments for the time being. "Will you train with me, Oread?"
"Well, we're not doing much at the moment; Cain hasn't got any errands for us, nothing's threatening this place desperately –"
"Then why are you keeping this up?" I cut her off. It was a question that was constantly on my mind every time we battled, and here was the perfect opportunity to bring it up. "What's your goal? Now that we've lost the purpose for coming to Kurast, what's the point of this?"
She was still looking away from me, but had stopped the casual fidgeting of her toes.
"Oread?" I pressed on after a few seconds without a reply.
"Where I'm heading is the Pandemonium Fortress." She responded almost straightaway this time. "I have no idea how to get there, but I thought maybe I'd just go along and piece things together on the way. Where there are demons, there are clues as to Diablo's whereabouts."
"The Lord of Terror himself?" I asked, in a shriller voice than I had wanted. "Are you suicidal?!"
"No, I want to kill Diablo."
"Same difference!" I was shocked, and showing this candidly by now. "Pardon my rudeness, Master, but you're not the best warrior and you like to do things solo, which doesn't help much."
"That's the same with Naiad."
She said it so cavalierly, that I was about to rant on before I bit back the words. "Who?"
"Putting it simply, I'm picking up the pieces. Whose pieces, I'm not sure anymore." She tilted her head right back, and looked at me upside-down. Her emotions were again masked by her solid facial features – especially those unreal eyes. A small bug of annoyance buzzed inside me. "You're wearing your hair back."
"Oh, that." I ran my hand down my small ponytail, from the back of my head to about the middle of my neck. I remembered it was maybe down to my chin when I left Westmarch. By now it had grown past my shoulders. I could tolerate the dry scorching heat of Lut Gholein, but the humidity of Kurast just made it unbearable. "It's getting long and I don't like it when wet hair sticks to my neck."
"You look older this way." She jumped to her feet and swivelled around to face me. "Speaking of which, aren't your bangs covering your eyes?"
"No." At the reminder, I brushed my bangs to either side of my head from the parting on the left side.
"You better make sure they're not." Oread remarked, grimacing a little. "Where d'you get that hair tie from?"
"It was Falcon's spare one. I found it in her belongings." I realised the disrespect as I spoke the words, and guilt gnawed at my guts. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind."
"Even if she did, she can't do much about it now."
As good-natured as she tried to make it sound, it was such a dark, sinister thing to say. The gloom washed over me, and Oread immediately noticed.
"… I'm sure she wouldn't mind that, either."
Just like that, she killed off the previous topic of her true intentions for this journey, and brought the conversation so far away from it, that going back to it would not only be incongruous, but also unforgivably absurd. Though it was not as if she had brought the conversation anywhere better, anyway.
Just for a moment – okay, a while – I hated her for everything.
Maybe it was to make up for what she said; Oread trained with me diligently over the next few days as my body remember the skills that it knew. She also taught me a few others, like Ice Arrow – a deadlier, more aggressive version of my Cold Arrow – and the spectacular Exploding Arrow. She tried to teach me the skill she called "Slow Missiles" again; and again, I just could not understand it. She was disappointed, but implied that she might try again another time. She herself did not use it much anymore, but she seemed convinced that I, being less agile than she was, would find it useful.
This time, we had decided to call it a day as the sun descends beyond the horizon. Storm clouds gathered, looming over us; their dark opacity promising the threat of thunders.
As we entered the hut where the three of us – Oread, me and the girl she had… affectionately dubbed "Leaf" – slept, we expected to see it empty. Instead, a young woman stood at one window, leaning onto the frame, and inspecting something that she held in her hands.
I looked closer, and realised what it was. By then Oread had stormed up to the woman, snatched the short sword off her, and gave her a shove aside for good measure.
"Don't touch that!" She warned. Her voice was soft but ominous – like the thunderous clouds overhead.
"Sheesh," the woman exclaimed in feigned exasperation. "Nice greeting." She looked not much older that Oread, but was perhaps a little shorter, and with quite a narrower built; though her body was beautifully toned – muscular enough to announce her identity as a warrior, but curvy enough to retain her femininity. She seemed to be proud of that fact, with her tight black tube top, short skirt with disturbingly high slits at the sides, and knee-high boots perfectly contoured to her body, moulded closely over her pearly, pale skin. Her chestnut hair was very short and wavy; a stark contrast to her sharp, refined features: narrow light-olive eyes, narrow nose, thin lips, and long, thin eyebrows, all set perfectly on a heart-shaped face.
"It's extremely improper to touch the possessions of people you're not acquainted with." Oread retorted, the darkness in her voice unrelinquished. "Who are you?"
"My name's Natalya." The woman answered, and smirked in such a way that her lips thinned further.
"You're of the Vizjerei?" So Oread had picked this up just from her appearance.
"Formerly." She blinked irritatingly slowly. "All right, so we started on the wrong foot. That was rude of me to handle your sword. I apologise."
Maybe because I had been with Oread for a while, I immediately sensed that she changed the topic very deliberately; she had something to hide about her history with the Vizjerei, whatever it was. In any case, that was a question for another time.
"Apologise to her." Oread nodded in my direction. "It's hers."
Oread had shifted the attention onto me, and the tension eased. "It's all right!" I hurriedly assured, and added a smile to complement my words. "I'm Celadon, a Rogue mercenary from the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye, in Westmarch."
I looked at my master, who seemed not to have realised that she had not yet introduced herself. "Oh," she faced Natalya, "Oread, Amazon."
"So you're the Amazon and her mercenary that Cain and Ormus were talking about." Ormus was an elder of some local ancient order who was obliged in guarding the city; he was stranger than Cain, and always uttered his words in such a way that made my head spin. "And all this time I was looking out for a platinum-blonde." Natalya continued. "You don't look very Amazonian. Anyway; care to join me in a stroll through these infested forests?"
"Unless I'm grossly mistaken, an Assassin such as yourself believes in working alone." Oread's voice was neutral – the kind that I did not like because it was too calm. "I think you'll understand if I tell you that I'm suspicious about your motives."
Natalya seemed not the least stunned or startled by this comment; she even managed a chuckle. "Very well." She replied good-naturedly. "We'll have to work on our own, then. Though I suppose if anyone sends us on an errand, we can still collaborate, right?"
"Whatever. We may not even stay here for long."
"Still." Natalya swatted off the comment with a few casual flicks of the hand. "I just thought Amazons like to work in groups. Is this mercenary your only companion, then?"
"We lost a few a while back." Oread said this without any emotion in her voice; as if she was talking about something inanimate.
Natalya was silent for maybe two or three seconds. "That's the way it works, huh?" She said; her smile was undiminished, but her eyes seemed to have softened, and darkened a bit, perhaps.
It was easy to identify the type of battling environment Kurast was, even just after a few hours of being initiated with the dense rainforest.
Firstly, it was a battle ground that had no boundaries; only rivers cut off the routes of those in battle.
Secondly, as large as the place was, it was cramped. The forest reigned and went feral beyond the makeshift wooden fences and gates of the city. Visibility was horrible.
Thirdly, there were a lot of monsters.
The forest immediately adjacent the city was locally known as "Spider Forest", and rightfully so, too; though we saw no gigantic spiders reminiscent of those that once infested the Rogue Monastery, there were webs all over the forest floor, between the layers of leaf litter. I am no arachnophobe, but moving through the place was disgusting.
When we finally met up with some huge monsters that look like giant animated trees, both Oread and I had our patience worn thin by the hard trekking. We took them down mercilessly as they came to greet us, the intruders. Sure these animated trees were monsters, but this was their home and we were disrespectfully slashing through it. I really wondered what Falcon would do in this situation.
In any case, we disregarded their spirit and felled them like trees – excuse the lame pun – as we went deeper into the forest to investigate the place. They moved slowly, and the two of us, being ranged fighters, had no problem in killing them with a few ordinary arrows. Once Oread even fired an Immolation Arrow – a brilliant new skill of hers that caused the victim to burn furiously for a good few seconds – just for the spectacle of the monster going up in flames.
When we noticed a particularly strong aura emitting from a certain hulk, we were glad.
"You ready for this one, Celadon?"
"If I kill this one, can we call it a day?"
"If you deliver the killing blow, yes." Oread smirked as she let loose an Exploding Arrow. The monster roared and charged at us, a little more quickly.
I followed up the attacks with a few Ice Arrows, slowing it in its path. Beside me, Oread brought down two weaker monsters next to it.
I seemed to have really pissed the tree monster off, for it recovered from the chill and took a few huge strides towards me. I tried to back away, but the huge buttress roots of the trees meant that I could not retreat quickly without tripping over.
The monster swung a gigantic log of an arm down at me. I quickly parried the attack with my short sword. The impact knocked me backwards; I dropped my sword and landed onto the forest floor.
The monster moved closer – I could see the huge gashes and cleanly-sliced stumps of its limbs, clearly old wounds from previous battles with human invaders. Some of these stumps were healed over, leaving an ugly scar that looked like an infected, popped blister.
From a slit in its wooden face marred with twisted scars and ugly blemishes, it bellowed the sharp sound of grinding wood and hot air rushing. It brought down its other arm, and I got ready to sustain another blow, one that would probably be strong enough to knock me out, perhaps for good.
Then Oread's silvery-champagne hair flashed before me, and the blow landed onto my master's head. The skull was cracked, and blood ran freely. As I looked in horror, she remained standing with her back to me. The monster hit her again, and once more. She went down… her dark blood staining the brown layer of dead leaves beneath her mangled body.
I screamed, but not before the hulking mass of the foe crashed onto the ground, the loud rumble drowning out my voice. Hot steam hissed from the large corpse, and within two seconds it all stopped. The corpse was now no more than a burnt chunk of charcoal no more than a few feet in measurements. I looked about the ground, but my master's body was nowhere to be seen.
For a moment, I thought my brain was going to shut itself down from thinking at all. I was that confused. Oread was standing before me, unscathed save for a few bruises and scratches, her bow still held up from recent firing.
I gawked at her; my mouth failed to speak, but my eyes demanded an explanation.
"Ahh…" Oread grinned and smoothed her hair back with a hand. "I should've told you beforehand… that's something I've started to learn, but I can't keep it up for long."
I had no idea what just happened, and I did not want to try to understand it. Instead, I turned to examining the remains.
"You lost the bet, Celadon," Oread was saying, "but I guess that would be it for today; now that I've tried out that trick I really need to practice it a bit more… what's that?"
"Some kind of… jade sculpture?" I picked up the dense, strangely-shaped pale green stone. "I can't tell, it's kinda damaged."
"Anyway, take whatever that thing dropped and let's head back." She opened a Portal. She had been a lot more generous with Portals these days; I was not sure when she changed from her stingier ways, but it had been a huge improvement.
We brought the jade block to Cain, who, for once, had no idea what an object's history was. We were on the way back to our hut, arguing over whether we should just sell it to one of the merchants or auction it off between a few, when the young girl from the Harems walked up to us and stared at the disfigured figurine.
"Uhh, what do you think of this, Leaf?" Oread asked, after the girl stared silently, unmoving, for a few seconds.
The girl smiled brightly and took Oread's hand in her own, and led us away from the hut. With her back to me, I asked Oread where she was taking us. Oread replied with a shrug. Seriously, this girl might have lived a disturbing life, but even when I tried to sympathise, I still found her quite uncomfortably peculiar.
Take her transparent, colourless aura that I could barely make out, for example. And her eyes just scared me – they looked almost blood-red in the sunlight.
We ended up at the Kurast docks; Leaf pointed at Meshif's ship and tugged Oread's hand. "You want me to show Meshif this?" Oread asked. The girl beamed and nodded once energetically.
"Oh yes, I've got a collection of these!" Meshif exclaimed as he examined the figurine. "But one like this I've never seen before! The colour of the jade sure is exotic; and the design! See all the details here?" He pointed at a dirty spot, and in the dim twilight, I squinted to try and see what Meshif was going on about. I failed.
"Anyway, how much do we get for it?" Asked Oread. We had also talked about how we would blow the money if we sold it.
"I haven't got enough gold for this priceless piece." Meshif's eyes were still gleaming with excitement. "But I'll trade you! I've got here…" He went beneath the deck of his boat, rummaged around a bit, and returned with a golden figurine, this one nicely restored, and clearly in the shape of a small bird. "This is the Golden Bird of Ku Y'leh. It's said that once it was a symbol of life for some ancient tribe… I dunno. Gold figurines are not my expertise." He shoved the figurine into my hands. "Here, nice doing business with you."
"What do we do with this?" Oread called after him, but Meshif had swiftly disappeared back inside his boat, no doubt to admire the new addition to his jade collection.
"Great. We got rid of one, but we're stuck with another one." Oread crossed her arms in irritation, glaring towards the direction where Meshif's giddy whistling originated.
"At least this one seems prettier." I said, and realised how stupid I sounded after it came out of my mouth.
As tiresome as it was, we tried to ask Cain again. This time he had some clues. "Oh, I don't know much about ornamental items, but it would be an object of such interest to Alkor."
"Who?" I asked.
"Alkor, the alchemist to the north side of town. Haven't you been acquainted with him yet? You'd need him for your potions supplies. He's a scholar in ancient ornamental charms –"
"All right, thanks for the tip." Oread ran off before Cain could ramble on. Leaf immediately responded as well, grabbing my wrist and running after my master. It seemed that even Leaf, who could not hear, found Cain's incessant speeches droning.
"This is extraordinary indeed!" Alkor was equally excited by the golden figurine as Meshif was the jade figurine, though he did manage to compose himself much more quickly. "I'll have to do some reseach to fully understand the full significance of this piece of art, but this is so well-preserved, I can already get some ideas. Would you like to come by later, perhaps, so that I can tell you about this?"
"Um, no thanks." Oread quickly declined, perhaps a little too nervously, too; for Alkor seemed to have sensed her disinterest, and his smile faded a little. "You can have it if you want; Cain said you'd like it. If you do, we're willing to trade."
"Oh sure! This is an exquisite piece, after all. It's a shame that you don't have the interest in it." He summoned his smile again, even if it was just for the sake of being polite. Not like Oread cared, anyway.
"Soooo..." Oread cleared her throat. "What about what we get?"
"Oh! Why yes, of course..." Alkor went back into his hut, muttering something under his breath.
Oread looked at me, her puzzled expression strangely childish. This time, it was my turn to shrug. It seemed that the people at Kurast were even more eccentric than those in Lut Gholein. Quite a few people already felt strangely Lysander-esque to me.
"Master Alkor?" I raised my voice and called for him after a minute or so without his reappearance.
"Here I am," he popped out from behind a nearby shelf, and made me jump about a foot into the air. Oread stared at me, an amused smile tugging at her lips; Alkor, however, did not seem to have noticed. "Now, I think this payment should be worthy enough. This is the Elixir of Life, brewed from the ancient recipe. It's a local secret, you know."
At the mention of the name of the multi-coloured, crystal-clear potion, the question rose in my throat; but by the time I had pulled my eyes from the potion and back to where Alkor stood, he was gone.
"What on earth –?"
"Don't worry about it, Celadon. You've had enough confusion for a day." Oread said, not at all reassuringly.
I turned back to her; she was holding the large flask of potion lower, so that Leaf could have a look at it. "So, this is what we'd originally sought after." The potion looked... enchanted, all right; from the bottom to the top was a spectrum of colours, from red to yellow to blue-green. When Oread swirled it a little, it looked like it had the consistency of water, but totally settled down within a second or so, with the colours still perfectly differentiated. "I hadn't thought that the process of getting it would be so... anticlimactic."
"Well, that's the way it goes." Oread took out a large bottle of blue mana potion, uncorked it and drained it. "You try so hard to get something, and when you finally get there, it doesn't seem so cool anymore." She poured half of the Elixir of Life into the empty glass bottle, and handed the remainder to me.
"No," I could not forget my position. I had, just a short while ago, but still... "you're my master, Oread. You should have it; or at least more of it."
"Well then," she rolled her eyes, "as your master, I order you to drink this."
That I could not argue with. I took the flask; even when the potion was separated into two parts, each part still preserved the beautiful rainbow of colour. I held the flask between my hands, and warmth seeped from the potion.
"Now this," Oread lifted her bottle of potion, "is to Falcon."
That struck me. I had not expected this from Oread. I managed to keep my hands steady, but my voice quivered. "To Falcon."
As I felt the warmth of life seep through my insides, down to the tips of my fingers, through every vein, the tears welled up. By the time I tipped the flask for the last drops, the tears had broken down the barricade of my eyelids. But these were different to the tears from before - they did not hurt so much, did not feel icy upon my skin.
I missed you, Falcon, I still do; but you would not want to hold anyone back, in life or death. That was what I finally understood then.
