Holy crud, I last updated in MARCH? Darn it's been too long. I've been preoccupied with my thesis, training, church duties, and recently, being a demonstrator for starry-eyed, idealistic first-years. That's about it, and it's enough. In fact, I was meant to have spent the day writing my thesis… except a CERTAIN reviewer reviewed, then reread and re-reviewed. It was the last reader-love that broke the writer's block. Thanks, Razbash! Thanks also to all the reviewers who've either kept up with or picked up reading my 'fic (in no particular order): CecilRedwing, SeltzerBaby, Wingcommander Whitewolf, KitsuneNoYomeiri, InnerFire, Fayth85, Luna Atra, and SoulCry, as well as all those who've added me to their alerts.

Special thanks always to Emmelyn Cindy Mah; for all the ups and downs we've had, you're still the same great friend and great spazz-mate.

Now if only I could write with this sort of efficiency for my thesis, eh.

Disclaimer: I don't own Blizzard, I don't own Diablo, I don't own jack except my sadistic muse. Yes the skills may not work exactly as canon dictates, but I only tweak them to my liking to offer something more interesting. Peace out.


Chapter 36

Even In Death


This was it. The Chaos Sanctuary, a corrupted cruciform ruin that still bore an eerie resemblance to a grand cathedral. We stood beneath its great arch of an entrance that supported an inexistent roof, facing the translucent barricade that Tyrael had hurriedly constructed. I could see the shapes of Hellions within the pulsating barrier of light, their forms – protruding skeletons, overgrown muscles, spiked leathery wings, insectile limbs – becoming clearer by the second as the glow of the barricade faltered.

"We're not charging into that, are we?" Oread inquired, her brows furrowed in obvious anxiety. I must have had a similar expression on my own face, because really… to charge into this battle, when all the five seals that held Diablo and his troops had been broken, was nothing more than instant suicide.

Halbu shook his head. Thankfully. "Not unless you want to die in a million pieces." He narrowed his eyes; this was a face of the Paladin that I had never seen before. I had known the family man, the gentle father, the dutiful blacksmith... this was another side of Halbu. His face was stern, his jaws were set, and his eyes were resolute.

"This barricade's not unlike one you'd construct out of wood and iron." He said, his gaze shifting along with the pulsing translucence of the spherical barrier. "The offensive energy is directed inwards, and there are gaps from which you can attack the other side." His lips thinned. "However, like a physical barricade, it will also eventually succumb to assaults."

"So..." Nyhl stared through the barricade, his eyes fixed upon the violence within. "We attack through the openings for as long as the barricade holds." He turned his gaze onto the Paladin then; his pale eyes were filled with cold anticipation. "And when it fails we just slaughter our way through the horde?"

Halbu raised a brow quizzically. "Do you want to get yourself killed? No, we're going to work something out before that happens."

"Making sure." Nyhl shrugged. Somehow, though, I did not think he had said that completely in sarcasm. Somehow I could see him doing just that.

Apparently Oread thought something similar. "We don't want anyone dead any time too soon, remember?" She reminded her husband curtly. "We've had enough of that for a while." She scoffed as she turned away. Nyhl smiled a little at that.

"Where's Diablo?" I asked, trying to peer through the barricade with my eyes, both my physical ones and that of my mind. The latter saw a condensed mass of energy in the centre of the hemispherical barricade, an envelope of searing white barely containing the abyssal black within, the light fading little by little as the darkness seeped through, like gore beneath a fragile layer of skin. "Is that him in the middle?"

Halbu frowned deeply as he considered. "Tyrael's bought us some time so we can take out at least some of the lackeys before we'll have to take on the Lord of Terror himself. He did say he managed to stun him."

"Let's not waste any time, then." I drew an arrow from my quiver and fixed the end onto my bowstring. "It's running out fast as it is."

The string was released, the arrow glided through an almost-transparent patch in the barricade and struck a heavily-armoured, skeletal humanoid in the throat, and the battle was on.


One day ago, I did not know that Halbu was a capable combatant. One hour ago, I did not know that he was a tactician.

The barricade had dissipated, but as Oread and I took down the remaining minions as quickly as we could, Diablo, having recovered from his stupor by now, remained trapped within a smoky haze – a cloud of toxic fumes, brewed from the very bodies of his fallen, festering minions.

"It's common knowledge that us Paladins of the Light are rather disapproving of the Necromantic arts that manipulate the dead and the darkness of the mind." Halbu had said, rather matter-of-factly. "Because of that, we've had to learn about your race, and since I've a fair idea of what you can do," he nodded at Nyhl, "we can buy more time with that."

Here was a Paladin who preferred for things to be practical than to be moral, and a Necromancer who followed his race's laws by the book, regardless of any of his own rational objections. I wondered if our company could ever have someone normal.

Halbu had the four of us enclosed in his aura; as he prayed for divine protection, my magical threshold strengthened. It was also because of this aura that Nyhl had managed to create, at a substantial distance, a ring of bloody explosions around Diablo, and then made the corpses fester with poison, trapping the demon lord in his place.

Of course, Diablo was not one to stand for this. From his temporary prison he still commanded the hell fires to rain down upon us. While I was busy enough trying to prevent myself from being scorched, Oread was the only one actively offensive, as she released her self-guided arrows whenever she could. Some of those were intercepted by the fire, but some did reach their target.

Our plan was to hold out this formation for as long as we can manage, depleting Diablo's energy as much as possible. His lack of ability to deal direct damage to our party obviously frustrated him; I felt the flow of his energy change dramatically in an instant – he directed his strength inwards, ceasing the fiery assaults.

I am not sure if my master saw what was coming, or is she was just oblivious; either way she took the chance. She turned to Nyhl, and the couple exchanged a knowing look. The Necromancer held out a hand; the ashes in the air, mixed with the white dust of old bones, were manipulated by his magic. Within seconds they took the form of an elongated missile – a throwing spear. He and Oread locked eyes for one more instant, and at the moment Nyhl launched his spear off towards Diablo, Oread closed her eyes and focused her mind, imbuing the missile with the self-navigating magic of her arrows. The spear pierced Diablo, exited his body, and changed course to pierce him again and again, repeatedly peppering the demon lord.

"Not even death can save you from me!" Diablo's voice erupted, making the very air tremble. The spear splintered; Halbu's aura faded, and now we were the ones caught off-guard, as the demon lord sent a bolt of lightning ripping through the ground. Nyhl and Oread managed to get out of its way, but I was struck by a chunk of the stone tiles that the bolt unearthed. Halbu, however, who was still somewhat dazed by his aura being forcefully halted, copped a hit squarely on the chest.

I cried out to him, and was relieved to see that he had gotten onto his knees without too much trouble. Diablo appeared to have targeted the Paladin as his first victim, and I tried to fend him off with my arrows as he drew closer. My heart rose higher into my throat as I took in the demon lord's form – his scarlet, tough hide drawn tautly over his enlarged, fibrous muscles; each of his vertebrae was spiked and stuck out from his back, all the way down to the tip of his reptilian tail. His face – one glance at it made me taste bile at the back of my tongue – was a gnarled, nightmarish mask, his eyes gleaming like fresh blood upon a fine steel blade.

As I was taken by fear for an instant, Diablo swipe at me with his claws. Reflexively, I tried to parry the attack with the only thing in my hand – my bow. The wood shattered, and I was thrown off. I fell, my stomach feeling wet and the icy chill radiating throughout my body, from my torso to the extremities of my limbs.

While I stared into the fathomless red sky above, paralysed, my mind's eye showed me the ongoing battle. Halbu's being flashed white, and something of the same brightness descended from the sky to land right on top of Diablo, stopping the monster's advance on my prone form. Nyhl's energy, a deep blue, began to swirl; one moment later, Oread's own spiritual energy behaved in exactly the same way, the two colours – blue and indigo, moved in unison.

Then they both glinted. The Necromancer's became a deeper blue, my master's, though… it was crimson.

The chill subsided enough for me to feel the searing sting in my stomach. I pushed myself to sit up, and my hand felt the pool of blood on the ground. Not daring to look down at my injury, I uncorked a vial of potion and swallowed the contents as I tried to catch on with whatever was happening.

Halbu's bolts seemed to rain from the heavens. They smote Diablo directly, but I did not see what was keeping the demon lord still until I looked more carefully.

There was an envelope of dark smoke around Diablo, dense and hazy. The monster roared and grunted, but his cries were muffled. His claws twitched. He turned his head around wildly, trying desperately to seek out his targets, but he appeared to be oblivious to our positions.

Nyhl and Oread held hands, their free palms outstretched towards the demon lord. Their eyes were shadowed.

Something flashed in my mind, as though I had seen this before, somewhere, somehow.

Pushing the thought away for later consideration, I forced myself to my feet. Oread perked up, and, releasing her husband's hand, she ran over to me.

"You're okay?" She asked hastily, her eyes still somewhat darker and the gleam in them more sinister than usual. I nodded, and she handed me her bow and quiver. I blinked at her questioningly, but she simply shook her head and took the spear from the sling across her back. "Stay off and back us up. Don't come too close if you can avoid it." She ordered, and ran back off towards Diablo, jagged streaks of lightning radiating off the tip of her spear.

Meanwhile, as she came over to check on me, Halbu and Nyhl had continued their barrage of assaults, both from above with Halbu's rain of missiles, and from the sides with Nyhl's… ghostly skull summons. The spirits opened their jaws in a snake-like manner, their teeth tearing at the demon lord, misting up the air with vile blood. Yet, the monster did not fall. He was nowhere near falling. In retaliation to the assaults, he sent novas of fire propagating at an immense speed throughout the ruined cathedral of a battlefield, searing the Paladin and the Necromancer and throwing off the incessant attacks.

Oread rushed in, her footing sure and agile, undeterred by the fire. Diablo sent a lightning strike towards her, but she leapt up and evaded it, cut the demon lord deeply in one foot and sliced off one of his toes. Diablo cursed at her in his demonic tongue, smacked her in the side with his tail and sent her tumbling off. He then planted his claws upon the ground, as large arched columns of ivory burst from the stone tiles, encaging Oread, who seemed dazed by the hit.

Diablo raised his arms, lightning crackling between his claws; yet instead of executing his target, he halted, shocked by the scene before his eyes – his bone cage had crumbled away. Furious, the demon lord grunted and turned to the Necromancer, who he knew to have nullified his magic; bone magic was, after all, the Necromantic race's expertise.

The demon lord tried to strike the Necromancer with his claws. Nyhl sidestepped, barely out of reach of the freezing hit; at the same time he drew his dagger and hacked at Diablo's wrist. The tough flesh opened up, and started to fester and blacken straightaway. Nyhl hit him again, this time with his long sword, cutting into the tendons of the same arm. Diablo fell back half a step, and Nyhl straightened up, closed his eyes momentarily. In my mind's eye, his energy reached out to the monster, and a malevolent link was forcefully established.

Halbu ran to my side just as Oread regained her senses to stand. He seemed about to say something to me, but then he took a look at the Necromancer, snarled, and readied his sword wordlessly.

My master joined her husband, and couple unleashed a barrage of assaults on the demon lord. Oread would take the offence with her spear, and Nyhl would be on the defence to parry the blows as best possible. Diablo roared, knocked Oread's spear from her hand, and clawed at her again with his good arm.

Oread wrinkled her nose, seeming to brace herself to receive the blow; instead, Nyhl stepped up and took it, two of Diablo's claws piercing his right shoulder. Halbu ran up then, and hacked off the fingers that were caught. I felt for the last arrow in the quiver, took a good aim and shot Diablo in one eye. Oread picked up her spear, and, with a great shout, slashed the monster across the chest, the lightning-charged weapon leaving the flesh burnt and smoking.

As the demon lord cried out, we fell back and finally regrouped, knowing that the battle was not yet over. Both Halbu and Oread were battered and burnt, the gash in my stomach was throbbing fiercely, and Nyhl still had Diablo's appendages stuck in his shoulder, but he grinned as he sheathed his dagger and took a grip around one of the claws.

"Look at him," He nodded at Diablo; I had just noticed that the monster, also, was bleeding from two puncture wounds in his shoulder. "Watch this." The Necromancer muttered, a smirk upon his lips.

"No, y—" Halbu began, but Nyhl, with sickening resolve, ripped the claw from his shoulder.

Diablo roared as blood sprayed from his shoulder. Nyhl snickered, then proceeded to tear out the other claw. The demon lord stumbled, his blood gushing freely.

"I thought you didn't like to curse." Oread accused her husband as he dropped the claw and quickly drained a vial of potion, which was less than sufficient; his arm was limp and he had dropped his long sword when Diablo stabbed him. He simply ignored his wife's accusation.

"You're a vile man, even for your race." Halbu began, his brows furrowed, his eyes averted from the Necromancer. "But you sure get things done."

"They're not done yet." Nyhl picked up the severed fingers as we scattered, avoiding another bolt of lightning that exploded from the ground. I unsheathed my short sword, and as we charged, Nyhl threw the appendages towards Diablo. They exploded in midair, and the demon lord was rained upon by his own blood.

The explosions were somehow encouraging; we were all drained, but the battle was almost over. Diablo's movements were sluggish; he had minimal uses of his arms, and his fire and lightning magics were far less powerful now. Our four blades cut into him; he tried to reach out with one arm, then the other, and growled in pain each time as he let them fall again. Frustrated, he whipped around quickly, the spikes on his back, tail, and his remaining claws slashing at us with his momentum.

He stopped, and set his remaining eye on the person who happened to be standing before him – me.

He swung his limp arm down at me, despite the blade that I had held out. I turned the sword to block, but the strength with which he had swung the arm – probably with sacrificing it in mind – took me by surprise. I felt my shoulder being wrenched from its socket, and fell onto my back. Halbu stabbed hard at Diablo, burying his blade up to the hilt into his side, ignoring the dangerous spikes from the monster's back cutting into his arms; but the demon lord's hand, still driven by raw momentum, crashed into my stomach. It burned sharply as the wound was torn open again.

"Almost there!" Oread cried desperately. "Just die!" Her spear flashed, and she hacked directly at Diablo's head. She missed, taking off one of his horns along with a large piece of scalp.

"Foul-blooded wench!" Diablo turned to her, his eye wild. He kicked her off – his leg was about the only limb still functioning, now – and focused his last store of mana. But as lightning crackled between the claws of his foot, Nyhl ran up between his wife and the demon lord, and at the moment the foot landed and the lightning burst forth, Nyhl conjured a wall of bone and absorbed the attack.

Diablo, in a state of delirium-driven mania, screamed in fury, and slammed his body directly into the bone wall in one last desperate attempt to kill. I caught a sort of bewildered shock in Nyhl's eyes, before the wall shattered under the force, but instead of a cry of triumph, there was a howl of pain and anguish from the demon lord.

Countless gashes had opened up in the monster's body. Blood was flowing, spurting, pooling on the ground. Within seconds he collapsed, bleeding out, the smell of his blood thick and revolting. A bluish-white, glowing form drifted from his body, and quickly extinguished.

My mind's eye saw that only now, the cursed connection between the monster and the Necromancer was broken.

Diablo died, essentially, at his own hands.

There was a lighter, clearer smell of blood. I felt my stomach, noting how wet and slick my armour was. The thick metallic scent was too strong; I turned my head aside, threw up, and fainted.


I regained consciousness but a moment later, snapped awake by a surge of energy that was induced by panic – my companions…

I tried to sit up; lacking the strength, I rolled onto my front. The motion pulled at my stomach wound terribly, and I cried out.

Then I realised I was not the only one disturbing the deathly silence. There was Oread's voice, too, broken and quavering.

I dragged myself over to the pile of bones, where Oread knelt, blood dripping from her head and her mouth. She was pushing the splintered bones off of her husband, cutting her hands on the sharp pieces. Uneven footsteps resounded; Halbu limped past me, and dropped to the ground opposite Oread.

I braced myself and crawled closer, taking in the form of the fallen Necromancer. No… he was not dead, I could hear his ragged breathing as he gasped for air.

Nyhl lay motionless; his left arm was a nothing more than a mangled mass of meat. The rest of his body was stabbed and impaled by countless pieces of shrapnel; a piece of bone was jammed into the side of his neck, and blood was gushing from a number of large wounds in his torso and legs. His left eye was pinned shut by a piece of glass through his eyelid – most likely from his own spectacles – but his right saw me, and it locked onto me for a moment as though assessing me. He was conscious, perhaps even lucid. Oh, gods...

Halbu removed the leather sash that held the potions from his waist, handing the only remaining vial to Oread. She took it with shaking hands, and poured the potion little by little into Nyhl's mouth, urging under her breath for him to swallow. Halbu slipped the sash around the remaining stump that was Nyhl's left arm, and strapped the tourniquet tight around the mutilated limb. Nyhl cried out weakly, choking on the last of the potion.

"Open a portal. We're getting him back to Jamella." The Paladin bent over and, despite straining the wounds on his own arms, lifted the broken Necromancer off the floor. Several pieces of bone fell off him then, clattering to the ground and marking it with droplets of thick blood. Nyhl uttered a faint groan, but did not move otherwise. "Oread, follow me. Celadon…" He nodded at me apologetically. "I'll drop him off and come back for you in a moment."

I felt awful in so many ways then. Halbu returned after what seemed like a long time – though it could have well been only a minute – and brought me through the portal.

Everyone was assembled just before the portal, where Nyhl has been laid down. The Paladin set me onto the floor, and with his help I sat up beside my master, who was kneeling next to the Necromancer. Jamella was on his other side, looking him over, her fingers hovering quickly over the wounds as she inspected each of them.

She exhaled heavily, and then lifted her eyes. "Halbu, get me my pack."

Halbu nodded and limped off. Jamella laid her hand upon Nyhl's forehead as she spoke softly, "I'm sorry about what I have to do, but we haven't got time."

Oread sniffled. I jerked towards Jamella, but my voice was caught as the movement pulled at my stomach again. I doubled over, wincing, but Jamella seemed to have understood what I wanted to say, anyway.

"If we put him out now," she turned to me, looking me in the eyes; her expression was anxious, yet firm. "We mightn't be able to get him back again."

I fell silent. Halbu returned with a small pack; Jamella withdrew a small vial of colourless potion and poured the contents over her hands. Bitter bile rose into my mouth as I watched the healer reach her fingers into the deepest gashes to plug the wounds, before digging the jagged pieces of shrapnel out with a slender blade. She tied off the blood vessels quickly, punching the broad stitches into place, leaving the wounds largely open – her priority was to slow the bleeding first, before staunching it completely. Her movements were crude, but swift and efficient… and that made it that much harder to stomach.

Nyhl hissed and moaned, but did not budge too much – it was probably causing him more pain to move than it was to lie still and undergo the impromptu surgery. His right hand twitched, and Oread grabbed it with both her hands, heedless of the sharp pieces in his hand cutting into her own flesh. "Nyhl... Necromancer, you just hang tight, okay?" She grunted to her husband, the fear and despair in her voice painfully clear.

Nyhl relaxed a little at that. His functioning eye seemed absorbed by his wife's face as he gazed at her; his expression was one of absolute longing, and absolute regret. Oread bent over him, her forehead upon his, her pale hair falling over his face, soaking up his blood. Jamella worked fast, but not fast enough.

Tears welled up in my own eyes as the realisation I had been trying to deny came to me anyway. I crouched down, putting my functioning arm around Oread's shoulders.

Nyhl gagged weakly, blood bubbling in his throat, and I am unsure whether I had actually heard it, or if my mind's eye showed me how he felt at the time; but it was clear to me, what he said to his wife.

"Sorry."

When Jamella was still trying to cut a piece of shrapnel out of his lung, the Necromancer passed away.