Well here we go, one of the first of many chapters that I couldn't wait to write. Once again I made a few changes here and there but I felt the changes were warranted. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, I really tried to make it awesome.
Bones from the risen warriors that the Skeleton King brought back in attempt to kill Deckard Cain still laid scattered over the stone floor. Down the staircase a few meters away from the secret exit that they used to escape the last time Li-Ming was there, a large ornate double door stood in front of her. A royal crest sat in the middle and what looked like either dragons or griffins or maybe even demons stood, carved on either side of the crest, she couldn't tell which they were supposed to be, the carvings were to withered and damaged to tell. A circular indentation that looked to be the same circumference as Leoric's crown sat in the middle of the royal crest. Li-Ming placed the crown inside of it and mechanisms in the door started clicking and turning, the crest turned ninety degrees and the door opened, revealing yet another staircase going even further down in the crypts.
Coming into a large chamber that appeared to be for religious ceremony or rituals, Li-Ming crossed a set of stairs down into the center of the room then up to another flight of stairs leading into a hallway illuminated by blue light coming from the crater. Just how far did this star fall, she looked up and could barely see the night sky through the holes in the several floors of the cathedral that she has already passed through. Walking down the corridor through a lengthy hallway, she past a set of stairs leading upwards where she heard some unsavory noises coming from the top but she didn't stop to investigate.
A door stood open and Li-Ming could make out two statues that stood about maybe eighteen feet high that look liked like holy men, both standing on either side of another door that yet again lead further downward.
"I will not give in! I am a Templar!" A voice grunted as if in pain.
Standing in another chamber, Li-Ming saw a brawly looking man dressed in torn rags on both knees surrounded by people dressed in yellow and black robes reciting some sort of incantation. She saw a red aura surrounding the group and the man in the middle was now on all fours and getting weaker. Li-Ming's eyes widened when she realized what they were doing to him, they were literally draining his life from him.
Drawing her sword, Li-Ming ran to the mans aid and jammed her sword into one of the cultists back, her sword going straight through, killing the cultists easily. "Everyone! Maintain your incantations! The ritual must be completed!" The head cultist ordered before drawing his sword to attack Li-Ming and she decided she was going to play dirty. The cultist swung his sword and missed as Li-Ming bared out of the way and summoned her arcane energy to explode from her body, creating an explosive blast, blowing the cultist to bits.
"You're power is weakening." The tortured man said, referring to the cultists.
Expecting another one to attack Li-Ming took a stance but was surprised when the cultists instead remained focused on their ritual. Were they so devoted to their goal that their lives were forfeit?
"Please, kill them!" The man begged.
Holding her hand up, aiming for the nearest cultist, Li-Ming fired an arcane missile at him, taking his head clean off. The cultists stopped their ritual, their magic was now too weak to continue and they all drew a blade, all aimed to kill Li-Ming. The man they were torturing stood up and shouted. "I am free!" Then instantly ran up behind one of the cultists and twisted his neck, a sick cracking sound followed and the cultists dropped dead.
Only three cultists remained and two of them decided they were going to team up against the unknown man while the other one ran straight for Li-Ming. The cultist swung his sword wildly and Li-Ming dodged and countered with expert timing and precision. He held his sword up about to swing downwards but Li-Ming quickly locked swords with him and kicked him hard in the groin. Dropping his sword, the cultist grabbed his crotch and fell to his knees. Before he had a chance to grab his sword again Li-Ming cut his throat and his robes instantly became stained with his blood.
The unknown man, while unarmed, was holding his own. One of the cultists tried to swing at him but the big man grabbed his wrist and twisted it in an awkward angle causing the cultist to scream in pain. He pulled the cultist into him and threw him against his friend, knocking them both to the ground and Li-Ming electrocuted them with her magic before they got back up.
The warrior spat on their bodies and walked towards Li-Ming. He stood a few inches taller than her, his short, brown greasy, hair clinging to his forehead. "Thank you for your help, stranger."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, thanks to you. Tell me, what's brought you to this infernal place?"
"I have unfinished business with the Skeleton King."
"As do I. Perhaps we may work together because if it is the Skeleton King you seek than you will need to fight your way past Jondar. He is a traitor and must be executed."
"I suppose not. A strong spirit at my side could prove helpful. I am Li-Ming, a wizard previously of the Yshari Sanctum." She finished, holding out her hand.
"And I am Kormac, a warrior of the Templar order." He grabbed her hand and shook it.
"Grab a weapon, we're moving."
Kormac picked up one the dead cultists swords and left with Li-Ming.
Across the chamber they walked up another stairwell that lead them to a corridor where another crater created by the fallen star lit the room with its blue energy. The pull that Li-Ming was feeling from it was getting stronger with every step she took. It was becoming hard to resist to stop moving forward as they got closer to their goal.
"The cultists dragged me past this glowing pit. What do you suppose made it?" Kormac asked.
"That's what I am here to find out."
"I thought you were here to defeat the Skeleton King?"
"He is only a setback. He stands between me and my true goal. So how did you end up in the hands of those cultists?"
"I was sent here by my order to locate and kill Jondar for his treachery against the Templars before I was ambushed. I think it was he who knocked me out while I was fighting off the cultists. I woke up and found all of my weapons and equipment were stripped from me, leaving with me only the torn remains of my cloths."
"When we get out of here, you should follow me back to New Tristram. I know a blacksmith of great skill who may help you."
"That would be much appreciated."
Both of them remained silent for a while as they made their way through the expansive corridors and rooms. Kormac found himself thinking about his new found companion as they moved. She didn't look like much of a threat, but the way she handled a blade and being able to control magic must have made her a force to be reckoned with and he's seen plenty of young people show great promise as warrior. But there was one thing about Li-Ming that he noticed that he hadn't seen in very many people her age, and that was the look in her eyes. It was a look that told him that she had seen more than her fair share of strife.
A wooden door surrounded in black vines blocked their path and Kormac tried to pull it open but it did not budge. "Locked! It seems black magic bars our way." He exclaimed. He rubbed his chin and looked at Li-Ming and then back to the door than back to Li-Ming again and smirked as he got an idea. "Have at it." He said, moving back. Li-Ming stepped forward, cracked her knuckles and conjured a ball of arcane energy into her hand, shooting it at the door, blasting it down.
"Not bad." He complimented.
"I know." She replied.
"That's far enough!" Someone said ahead of them, guarding their path. They looked forward and saw man dressed, head to toe in dark, steel armor; wielding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other.
"Jondar it's over! Your cultists have been slain! Surrender the sacred tomes that you stole now and I'll make sure you'll death with be painless!" Kormac sneered.
"Don't think you can intimidate me with idle threats Kormac! You wouldn't have the gull to lecture if you knew what the order has done!" Jondar brought his arms in and a green aura gathered around him. He shot his arms out and green balls of energy fired off into all directions. Kormac jumped out of the way and Li-Ming conjured a spell called energy armor, forming a sphere around herself, protecting her from the blasts.
Returning with an attack of her own, Li-Ming fired a beam of electricity towards Jondar, his armor making an excellent conductor, making him vulnerable but Jondar raised his shield and blocked Li-Ming's beam. She kept his beam on him while Kormac charged. Green energy circled around Jondar's feet and shot across the ground towards Li-Ming. She stopped firing and jumped out of the way, allowing Jondar to block Kormac's attack with his sword then pushed him back with his shield, knocking Kormac on the ground.
With a little time left still, Jondar swung his sword downward, hoping to hit Kormac but he rolled out of the way and it hit the ground instead. Kormac then struck Jondar against the side of his helmet with his palm, then shoved his foot onto his chest, pushing him off.
Kormac got back on his feet and said, "You were a Templar Jondar! How could you succumb to this…Coven?" A mixture of hurt and anger showing on his face.
"The coven is my brotherhood now!" Jondar replied in hatred. "The powers we serve shall soon rule this world!" He charged at Kormac and he readied himself to defend, but Jondar had forgotten about Li-Ming who, while Jondar was distracted, took the time to charge a large ball of arcane energy and fired it Jondar. The force of the explosion caused by the energy cracked a portion of his armor and shattered it into pieces. Jondar flew and fell on his back. He tried to stand back up but fell back down. He slowly got back to his knees and Li-Ming fired another beam of electricity at him.
He twitched and convulsed wildly as the electricity conducted on his armor, worsening the shocks that coursed threw out his body. Li-Ming stopped her attack and Jondar fell back, unable to attack. Kormac walked up to him and dug into a pouch attacked to Jondar's belt and pulled out an old book. He skimmed through the pages making sure that it was the right book and closed it.
"You brought this on yourself Jondar!" Kormac said.
Jondar coughed and laughed. "You're so blind brother. Hopefully you too will one day see through the lies of the order and when that day comes, I hope you'll look back on this day and see that I was right." He laughed some more and Kormac, in his anger, jammed his sword threw the hole in his armor that Li-Ming made and into his chest. Jondar coughed up blood and heaved for breath, he gripped onto Kormac's sleeve until his grip loosened, his life drifting from his body and his hand fell limp.
"How are you doing?" Li-Ming asked.
"He was my friend, I called him brother, but in the end he was nothing but a traitor."
"What's that?" Li-Ming asked, referring to the book in his hand.
"These are some of the sacred tomes of my order. Can I trust you to hold onto these until we get out of here?"
"I will."
Kormac handed her the book and she placed it into her bag. "Just remember not to forget that you have it. That book is mine."
"I will not forget, although...I wouldn't mind taking a look at them."
"I'm afraid not. Come on, let us continue our hunt for the Skeleton King." The walked through the door that Jondar was guarding and into the depths of the royal crypts.
Expansive cobwebs covered the narrow walls and countless urns filled with the ashes of the dead lined up and piled over each other against the walls. The whole place was filled with a thick atmosphere, she couldn't help but feel the anger and dread that once loomed in this place do to Leoric's madness. She looked over at Kormac and saw that he too must be feeling what she felt.
"Over there I see a door up ahead." Li-Ming said quietly. It looked just like the one that Li-Ming had to unlock with Leoric's crown, it was the same size and had the exact same designs on it, with a large crest in the center. "With any luck we can reach the Skeleton King before he realizes we're here."
Four pillars stood in the middle of the room and Li-Ming could only guess as to what their purpose down here was. Kormac took a step and accidentally knocked one of the urns over, causing it to break. Li-Ming faced him and he had an apologetic look on his face. They were about to continue until a voice that sounded like it was coming from all directions said, "You dare bring the warmth of life onto my tomb!" They looked around but could not find the source of the voice.
"Well it looks like he knows." Kormac said.
Behind them they could hear the four pillars cracking and a blue light began to emanate from them. They drew their blades and blue orbs slithered rapidly from the cracks in the pillars, manifesting themselves into physical entities, forming into skeletons.
Li-Ming and Kormac were quickly outnumbered and each time they struck one the skeletons down, more orbs escaped from the pillars, joining the skeletons. Li-Ming knew what she would have to do, this was just like that jar she came across when she was looking for Leoric's crown. Li-Ming stopped attacking for a moment and concentrated her arcane energy into her body. She focused splitting the energy in two and suddenly she was covered in purple light. Kormac held a hand over his face as he saw Li-Ming's silhouette split into three through the light. As the light dissipated Kormac looked over, he had to rub his eyes because if he wasn't seeing things there were now three Li-Ming's.
"Alright you two help Kormac! I'll go for the pillars." The Li-Ming in the middle said and the other two just nodded. One Li-Ming went in with a disintegration beam while the other fired arcane missiles and Kormac charged in with his sword. Li-Ming fired a ball of arcane energy at the pillars, each one crumpling into dust as the ball exploded. The orbs stopped coming and Kormac and the Li-Ming clones made short work of the remaining skeletons. The Li-Ming clones withered away into streams of energy and went back into Li-Ming.
"That was unbelievable!"Kormac said in astonishment. "What did you do?"
Li-Ming laughed and said, "The spell is called mirror image, basically I can turn my arcane energy into physical copies of myself, very few have ever been able to accomplish it and most of the ones who have were only able to make one copy since that was what their arcane energy was limited to. It takes a lot to make them."
"You must be incredibly powerful if you can make two then!"
"I am." She said with great pride. She was really beginning to like Kormac. No one had ever held her magic with such amazement other than Isendra but she was a lot more subtle about it.
"Then there is no doubt that we can take out the Skeleton King."
"Well what are we waiting for? Let's get moving." Li-Ming grabbed the crown from her bag and did the same thing she did last time. The crest rotated and the door slowly opened, making grinding sounds as the doors slid across the stone floor.
As they crossed through, large torches on top of pillars lit up the room, allowing them to see the body of the Skeleton King, dressed in his armor as nothing but bones, sitting upon a thrown. Three bridges once stood here, the ones on the left and middle having had collapsed a long time ago leaving only the one on the right. After crossing, Li-Ming held onto the crown and walked up the small staircase leading up the Skeleton King. Before she placed the crown on his skull, she looked him over and wondered just hard far had this man fallen into madness, how many people had to suffer his wrath for his own suffering after Diablo's influence finally took over. She turned to face Kormac and he nodded, telling her to do it. Placing the skull on top his head she quickly went down the steps and waited for the King to rise.
Blue energy streamed towards the Skeleton Kings body as his soul returned to him. Joints popped and bones clacked as his hand rose and reached around his large mace. He slowly rose and stood lazily until his soul had fully returned, making a flash of blue light as the King stood tall and ready to fight. He cranked his skull from left to right, making loud cracking sounds as his exposed vertebra popped.
The Skeleton King laughed and said, "Now that I have returned, all who stand against me shall die!" He looked at the two warriors below him and said, "Starting with the two of you." He held his hand up and blue souls whispered forth, manifesting themselves into a squadron of skeletons to aid their king.
"Li-Ming, I'll take out these skeletons. You take out Leoric, deal?"
"Deal?" Li-Ming replied.
Wasting no time, Kormac begun fighting. Li-Ming and the Skeleton King stared each other down before she casted arcane missiles at him with one hand, her other one still holding onto her sword, in case Leoric got to close.
For a large, undead, skeletal shell of the man he once was, Leoric moved like his body was whole as he rolled and jumped to avoid getting hit by Li-Ming's attacks, his armor clanking as he moved. He ran in for the attack swinging his large mace but missed as Li-Ming ducked, He swung again, this time straight down and she rolled out of the way as it collided with stone and cracking it on impact. Li-Ming fired a ball of arcane energy at him, feeling confident it would hit him being that they were so close and he hadn't had time to recover from his last attack, but he vanished, leaving an after image of himself in his wake before disappearing.
"What the…" She said before the Mad King grabbed her by the head and lifted her up, his skeletal hand covering her face. He slammed Li-Ming into the ground, once again cracking the stone with his unbelievable strength. He let her go then swung his mace down as hard as he could, crushing Li-Ming further. A wave of force pushed the skeleton away and he saw a figure covered head to toe in brilliant diamonds stand up.
Standing back up the mad king said, "Why are you not dead? What kind of magic is this?"
"Diamond skin." Li-Ming replied simply, pointing to herself as her spell wore off and revealing that she had taken no damage from his attack. "Protects me from even the most powerful of attacks."
"Be that as it may, your little tricks will not save you from me! I will see you crushed beneath my boot!"
"We'll see about that!" She replied before teleporting herself right in front of Leoric, catching him by surprise. She placed both of her hands on his chest and shot a powerful wave of force into him with both hands, shooting him back against the wall. She then held up her hand and shot a ball of arcane energy at him, the explosion causing rubble to shoot everywhere.
Still fighting the skeletons, Kormac fought the last of them off and Li-Ming walked up to him. "I think that is the last of them." Li-Ming said.
"Yes! I haven't had a fight like this in years! I see you handled yourself quite well."
"Are you surprised?"
"No, I can't say I am." They both started laughing until they heard the Skeleton King grunt as he separated himself from the wall that Li-Ming blasted himself into. He stood and shook his head, looked at them both and clenched his fist.
"You-How dare you, how dare both of you! I will make you suffer before I kill you, DO YOU HEAR ME! I WILL NOT BE UNDONE!" He shouted. Li-Ming and Kormac both took a stance, prepared to fight. The Skeleton King growled, he hoisted his mace over his shoulder and Li-Ming saw the after images as he did, knowing what he was about to do. He charged at great speed towards Kormac but Li-Ming pushed him out of the way and Leoric grabbed Li-Ming by the throat and squeezed.
"What are you going to do now, huh? Plead? Beg? Go on! Let me here you cry for mercy!" Li-Ming opened one eye and smirked at him. She gathered her arcane energy and released it as an explosion, blowing Leoric's hand off. Li-Ming fell and she placed her hand on her throat as she went into a coughing fit. Leoric stepped back and held onto what was left of his hand.
"You-I hate you!" Li-Ming chuckled and pointed behind Leoric telling him to turn around. He turned just in time to see Kormac jump up and swing his sword at his neck. He was unable to believe what happened as his head fell from his shoulders, seeing himself fall onto the ground before everything went dark.
Seeing if Li-Ming was alright, Kormac held his hand out to her and pulled her up. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm fine." She replied in a raspy voice. "Just a bit sore." She said referring to more than just her throat, her shoulder and back were now throbbing from all the fighting. Li-Ming nodded her head at the Skeleton Kings direction and they both saw blue light circling around his body, slowly getting closer. The both turned and covered their eyes as the energy met the body and exploded, destroying what was left of Leoric, leaving only his armor scattered throughout the room.
They both looked at each other then turned to see the thrown where Leoric was sitting when they found him, move back revealing a staircase leading further downward. Li-Ming ran down the stairwell as fast as she could, feeling the energy's pull stronger than she had felt it before, it was within inches of her.
She ran down decayed, stone steps and looked over the railing, seeing the star's end, magical, blue energy's circling her prize. Finally she reached the bottom and she couldn't believe her eyes. She stepped back in confusion and bumped into Kormac.
"What' wrong?" He asked.
"That fallen star, the source of the risen dead, it's a man."
I really had a lot of fun trying to make the fight between Li-Ming and Skeleton King entertaining. I did feel like I was having some problems earlier on though, because I was so excited to write the fight with the Skeleton King that i forgot to think about how I would write the other scenes, so when I got to those I was like, "Oh shit." lol anyway, let me know what you guys thought about this chapter.
I would like to thank Ikilledthepaperclip for reviewing. Your review made me feel really good about this and I am glad that you enjoy it and I will be back with another chapter shortly.