Thanks to the reviewers again!
This is posted early because of Emmelyn's awesomeness. In exchange, you should go and have a look at her 'fic. And review! Review mine too! Do check out my DeviantArt account… I've got some stuff up there that may be of interest.
Firstly, a few definitions:
Tiden – "time" in Swedish.
Kaira – from "kairos", "time" in Greek
Nyhl – a play-around on the word "nihil". Pronounced like "Nile".
Arawn – Lord of the underworld, called Annwn, in Welsh mythology.
And the disclaimer:
I don't own Diablo. Some characters are mine and forever will be.
Onwards!
Chapter 24.5
Crossing Paths
Black. Even, timeless, senseless black that I'm grateful for; I savour it, knowing that it won't last.
Sure enough; the colours come, dancing in the black haze. I remember – Tiden and Kaira fought and fell… the amount of blood, body heat draining away… and… oh gods, the poison. Not the sick, numbing, magically-conjured poisons… organic poison – alternating streams of burns and chills rip through the totally-aware body, forcing it to succumb to its throttling.
Pain shoots through, like a thousand stabs all at once. My right side feels like it's being repeatedly stretched and crushed. I scream out – I think… voices and sounds of running –
"Hold him still!"
"Can't you drug him?"
"There're enough chemicals in him already; more could kill him…"
I clench my jaws as blood stream from inside me. The blood chokes me, and as I cough my right side feel like it's… erupting. The pain gets worse… then back to the blessed unconsciousness.
The other senses kick back in. The light hurts even closed eyes. An incredibly bitter taste sticks in the back of my parched throat – mixture of bile and something sticky and thick. Gods, my right arm… it's on fire; stomach a twisted knot of sick acid burns; right side of the chest threatens to burst into flame with every breath. My lower back and abdomen burn evenly, incessantly, that the exact location of the injury can't be pinpointed.
Are these the fires of Hell? That'd be right, for my incompetence, my weakness… for watching my comrades die. There's a dull twinge in the left side of my jaw… petty compared to the rest of the signals my body's sending to my brain, but it's so damn annoying…
That's right, that woman who came up to me, and caught me in the hinge of the jaw. That's it… I went down, there was another kick in the stomach for good measure, and… I can't remember anything then.
So I'm not dead; where am I then? Still the humid stench of decaying leaves, but a hint of saltiness, too. I'm lying… above soft layers of smooth fabric, under a thin blanket.
Something shifts; I can feel it in my back – through whatever I'm lying on – and the air. My eyes open, and took their time to focus; a roof made out of wood and large, dried brown leaves. This is a hut of some sort; the walls, floor and pillars are all wooden.
"About time." A voice to the right; a woman, surely, with a dark huskiness in her voice that's hardly noticeable beneath the biting sharpness of a low overtone.
I try to form words, but my voice box is too slack. What came out was a half-moan, half-grunt.
"This is the city of Kurast." So I'm here. This isn't the way I planned to arrive, but regardless… "It's been over two days since we hauled your bloody ass back here."
I try to think of something to say, but only manage to form two words: "Thank you." It's no more than a dull croak.
"Hmph." She utters that exclamation with an unusually deep nasal resonance, as if it was a word worthy of emphasis. "Asheara and Ormus are the ones who took all those bits of missiles out, realigned your bones, closed up the holes in your body and stitched you back together." Oh yes, on top of those large ones that stabbed me a few times, there were those darn midget monsters, fast with their poisonous blowguns... and were there arrows at some point? "I only enjoyed the view from the side. Damn gross, though, especially when they shoved your bones back into your arm and chest; of course, you'd decided to regain a bit of consciousness then, too. Bastard."
So that's why it hurt like that before, and hurts like this now. I didn't see it myself when I was hit; it was too dark, and I'm glad for that now. I try to shift a little, towards the voice.
The pain isn't as bad as I'd braced myself for. Across to the wall and there she is, the young woman who brought me down after I got pass all those monsters, sitting under a window in a nonchalant, rather unladylike posture. She's unarmoured, wearing a short, sleeveless plain grey dress that looked ripped at the hems, black tights and leather boots that she'd unlaced at the top. I squint as I try to make out her facial features, but her face was a little too far away.
I do recognise the long, silvery-champagne hair, though. "You were the one who gave me those potions?"
"Darn straight. I didn't give you those so you can stay alive and whine. Get better soon so I can kick your ass." She speaks the words lightly, but her tone gets deeper; I can actually feel the threat in her words.
"May I ask… what do you have against me?"
She gets up and walks to my side, her solid steps echoing through the wooden floorboards. Keeping her legs straight, she placed her hands on her hips and bent over me. Our faces are about two feet apart, and my eyes focus on her face – chin-length bangs frame her hard facial features: large but rather angular eyes, deep-green at the top and gradually progresses to dull-gold, and then dark-brown at the bottom. A straight-bridged nose and full, pale lips. Her tanned skin looks to originally be a light olive not unlike my own.
That face looks down onto me, superior and dead-serious. "I believe you used the body of my former comrade." Her voice is cold; the words roll along like icy waves. "That's rather disrespectful, isn't it, jerk?"
Oh, that. I'm not much of a summoner, but when one's running on empty and comes across a ripped-up body on the riverbed… So that was what the beating was for. "I was desperate; I'm sorry."
She shifts her shoulders back a little and a long, loosely-braided plait falls over her right shoulder. The end of her plait is only about three inches from my throat; perhaps it's because my head's still groggy, but it's almost like she was holding me at knife-point. "That's all right; I still owe you a beating."
I consider explaining to her what happened, but that's for another day – when she's calmed down a bit and I'm less lethargic. Meanwhile, my brain recovers a bit, and I find myself wondering about her eyes. Two-toned eyes, one colour at the top and another at the bottom are a unique, but not very distinct trait of my people. Mine are bright-blue at the top and soft-grey at the bottom, though I rarely ever see such contrasting colours like green and brown. That's apart from the one I'm sent after; now he has eyes like that–
Wait, who is this girl? This is crazy of me… she can't be related to him. His children were killed years ago, during the war. No living relatives, either.
Anyway… "May I ask for the name of the one who saved my ass, then? I'm Nyhl."
"I didn't save you; a girl named 'Celadon' did. I'm Oread, of the Amazonian tribe." Shit. Amazons… those women who were involved with the war that the rest of the Sanctuary knows not much about.
Paladins of the Zakarum hate us – everyone knows that; but we loathe the Amazons and the Amazons abhor us. That's a secret preserved only in the last generation, my parents'. From the fact that the rest of the Sanctuary seem to be ignorant of the war, the Amazons have kept it a war of a single generation, too. There were no stories to be told to the children about this. It was a shameful, disgraceful battle for both peoples.
I only know about it because I was born two years after the war began, and it ended by the time I was six. I wonder if this woman's old enough to have experienced even a little bit of it.
Still, suspicions aside, her eyes are exceptional; and her physique is a little lighter-built, her skin of a cooler colour, and her hair duller than the typical Amazon. "You don't look like an Amazon."
"Well, you don't look like a Necromancer, either." Straightaway, she retorts.
"Then how did you know I'm a Necromancer?"
"Uh, you feel like one?" She says it really curtly but… what does she mean? She can feel my Necromancer blood? "Besides, there is that tiny detail of the summoned skeleton–"
"Does the name 'Arawn' mean anything to you?" Can't hurt to ask, however stupid it sounds. Her eyes look so much like his.
She straightens up a bit, and cocks her head – which is rather… cute – before frowning and narrowing her eyes, obscuring the dark-brown sections. "No. What the heck?"
"Don't worry. My mistake." Damn… spit-fire aggressive. I try to sit up and the pain explodes. Nausea washes over me and I fall back, trying my best to bite back the groan; it comes out as a dull grunt.
"Don't try anything funny. I don't want to hear your whinging." Oread sits down on the floor cross-legged. "Asheara and Ormus said you should stay still for a couple of days at least. They shoved all these antidote and potions down your throat, but there's still a bit of poisons left in you. You'll just have to wait it out." She leans forward, her eyes locked onto my face, as if she's trying to read every tiny expression. "So, what business do you have here?"
"I came with my teacher and step-sister; both perished in battle." It seems so unreal that it's the truth; maybe that's why I'm so calm about it… it'll bite back soon, though, once I've recovered enough to think about all this clearly, perhaps. "We're after one named 'Arawn'. He was a gifted Necromancer who betrayed his people and was to be killed, but he escaped. We've heard rumours that he's travelling, going around and learning the arts of others, but this is the first time in sixteen years that we've got some solid clue – he's far up north somewhere." My bruised jaw's aching from speech, but Oread's eyes are so fierce, I don't dare stop. "Guess we got off on the wrong shore. Outnumbered, ill-prepared… You can guess the rest."
Oread contemplates, and opens her mouth to speak; but before anything comes out, there's a small knock. Standing at the door is a girl who looks to be in her late teens. Her amber eyes were large and gentle; dark-reddish-brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail and bangs neatly swept to either side of her head. She has on a simple but elegant dark-brown shirt trimmed with golden tread, matching brown pants, and neatly-laced boots.
"Umm…" Her hand plays with something dangling off the front of her choker around her neck. She looks at Oread, seeking approval to speak on, then smiles sweetly at me. "You're awake. Do you feel well?"
"I'm all right." I force a grin, despite my body scolding me for lying.
"This is Celadon, a Rogue who claims to be my mercenary and the one who stopped me from killing you." Oread nods at her as the younger girl sit beside her master. "Celadon, this is Nyhl, a Necromancer."
"Nice to meet you properly, sir." The young Rogue greets politely. One of the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye was one of the three who slain Diablo years ago, and as a fellow Rogue, this one lacks the cockiness of her fellow sisters that I've met or heard about before. Her smile fades. "I must say, I didn't appreciate you using Falcon's body like that, but you must have been in a tight situation." Her eyes got sadder; this girl feels like a really genuine person.
"I apologise for the disrespect." I finally manage to get up on one elbow; my right arm's bandaged and splinted to the point that it won't budge. "So, Falcon… a former comrade."
"She was a Druidess who loved life." Celadon's expression is bittersweet. "She died at sea while we were on the way here for the cure to her grievous injuries… in turn she saved the rest of us." Her eyes shift and look into mine; I notice the sheen of tears. "I've collected her bones and we're cremating them soon… anyway. I wouldn't have guessed that you're a Necromancer, sir."
"Just call me Nyhl." This girl's very pleasant, but she needs to loosen up a little. "I'm sure it's my hair that made you think otherwise?" My hair's raven-black, unlike the "full-blooded" Necromancers' white, silver or pale-blonde. There's apparently some in-breeding business concerning that trait; then some of my great-grandparents' generation started marrying people not of our clan… Long story short, I'm only five-eighths "full-blooded".
"Yeah, and I thought you're quite young for someone who's into the business of death." The girl smiles amiably again. "How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Twenty-two."
"Wow!" Celadon exclaims, her eyes widening.
"I'm only an apprentice–" I pause as I realise that I no longer have a teacher.
"I though Necromancers were all… you know, old." The girl chuckles good-naturedly.
"Oh, but there are a lot of young and handsome ones out there, too." Said a smooth, velvety, almost dreamy voice.
This voice belongs to a slim but muscular woman; her skin pale, her features sharp and defined. She strolls over, scanty black outfit displaying her feminine curves. She flicks her short chestnut hair as she stops beside Celadon, and stays standing.
"Assassin." Under my breath. Amazons may be fearsome, Paladins may be difficult, but Assassins of the Vizjerei are just… ugh, annoying. I've narrowly gotten away from one before, and heard many stories about them from my friends. It seems like they just… strangely, identify with us or something. Not many would trust a member of the Vizjerei, but perhaps it's the whole "mysteriousness and dark" stereotype… of all people, they seem to like latching onto Necromancers.
Oread's eyebrows twitch, and I can sense her annoyance, too. "Nyhl, this is Natalya."
"Natalya, I'm sorry, but I may not quite fulfil your criteria."
"Oh, you do well enough." She laughs, rather shrilly.
I'm being surrounded by three women… Celadon is uptight but seems nice enough, Oread is… hopefully tolerable; but Natalya… this kind of women's like sickly-sweet potions that sticks in your throat and leaves a horrid aftertaste. Like Kaira's grandmother. Ugh!
"Your laughter is painful to the ear, Natalya." Oread almost grunts this through gritted teeth. "Please; he only just woke up from being shredded by monsters. I'm sure he can do without your shrieking."
"I see… so my presence in this hut has turned the 'company' into a 'crowd'… All right, Oread. Here's the mutual respect we agreed on." Natalya spins around on the heel of her boot of black, skin-tight leather, grinning somewhat satisfactorily to herself. "I'll be off to see Asheara or someone… hope to see you out and about soon, Nyhl." She goes off.
"Thanks." I sigh in relief.
"I just don't want you to have a mental breakdown and kill yourself. I can't stand her attitude. I don't suppose you'd do any better in your condition." Oread's smiling; whether from relief or triumph, I'm not sure.
"Should you really talk to her like that…?" Asks Celadon, looking worried.
"She doesn't mind; besides, it's good for her." Oread gets to her feet. "We should go, Celadon. We'll bring you something to eat and tell Ormus and Asheara so they can come and check on you, Necromancer."
"… Thanks."
"We should bring Leaf over as well. What do you think, Celadon?"
"I think Nyhl needs his rest." Celadon replies, catching up with her master.
"You might be able to figure the girl out a bit more, or something." Oread turns back to me. "She's apparently half-Zann Esu… y'know, Sorceress."
"What's the other half?"
"Demon." Oread and Celadon exit the room.
And I'm left here to think about this situation I'm in, the people I'm with…
This is going to be one hell of a company.
