There you are.
As planned, Galen and Aan had charged into the graveyard with a loud battlecry and had begun to cut down the shambling dead where they stood. The horde swarmed them but they held the line, the barbarian mowing down wave after wave with his huge axe while the paladin's scepter rose and fell like the drumbeat of a war song. They glowed like a beacon with the holy knight's golden aura of might, drawing the undead like moths to a flame.
Hiding out of sight, Dana heard her quarry before she saw her.
- "Look, sisters. Fresh volunteers for our army of the dead".
She instantly recognized Bloodraven with her goat skull mask. She was trying to make her way around her minions to get a clear shot at the two intruders, accompanied by her four remaining lieutenants.
The amazon began stalking them, moving like a shadow among the tombstones until her prey stood still. Bloodraven had found an angle and was aiming her bow at her unwanted guests, shaping her malice into dark curses that stained the arrow tip black, but unbeknownst to her she herself was now a target.
The hunter becomes the hunted the amazon thought to herself as she nocked and drew her own arrow, breathing upon it the secret name of Hefaetrus, the Askari god of fire. More and more of her mana poured into the missile, which began to glow as if with hidden embers. She held her breath in anticipation for the perfect shot, her skin sensing the direction of the wind, her eyes charting the arrow's trajectory.
Just as she recognized the subtle shift in Blooraven's stance that meant she was about to loose, she released her own arrow, which shot forward like a shooting star. The twang of a bowstring that was not her own and the whistle of the projectile as it sped through the air alerted Bloodraven just in time for her to react on pure instinct and shift her body slightly so that the tip embedded itself into her arm instead of her heart.
Dana smiled.
The arrow burst into a fiery conflagration, immolating Bloodraven and her closest lieutenant in the flames of Mount Arnazeus itself. The lieutenant dropped dead instantly, but Bloodraven rolled on the ground to put out the flames, shrieking in pain. Dana cursed. What will it take to kill this abomination?
Already two of the other bodyguards were charging at her, the third fumbling to retrieve her leader's discarded bow. She took the pike-wielding one in the eye with a well-placed shot but the other had a large wooden shield and kept blocking her arrows as she bore down on her. Dana shifted targets and aimed for the charging rogue's exposed shin, but this only slowed down her crazed opponent, and the last lieutenant was now shooting at her.
Rolling away from the missile, the amazon came up just in time to block the axe blow meant for her head with her bow, which almost snapped in two. She abandoned the broken weapon and grabbed a javelin from her thigh-quiver, using her superior agility to dodge away from the frenzied strikes of the pursuing rogue. She danced around the wild swings, making sure to keep the axe-wielder between her and the archer, waiting for a reckless attack that would open the shield enough to allow her to snake in a killing blow.
Suddenly, decaying hands burst out of the ground and seized her legs, immobilizing her. She caught sight of Bloodraven muttering a necromantic incantation, a sneer of pure hatred etched on her now bare face; the left side of her body was almost entirely charred and her left arm hung limply by her side. The shield-bearing lieutenant threw herself at the amazon with wild abandon, jubilant at the idea of finally burying her axe in the intruder's skull.
Galen had been trying to make his way to the amazon with little success; the sounds he heard from the other side of the battlefield were anything but reassuring.
He tried to push through the roiling mass of zombies, but every corpse he felled was eagerly replaced by another with the same unnatural hunger in its eyes, clawing at his defenses to get at the soft flesh beneath. He surged forward with increasing desperation, his shield a battering ram, his scepter a blazing meteor that smashed into foe after foe, but all his momentum was lost when he heard a woman's scream over the cacophony of wretched groans.
It was Dana. He had never heard her scream, not even when he had pulled the arrow from her thigh, but he knew it in his heart.
Everything seemed to slow down around him. The undead were taking advantage of his hesitation to pile up on him, bringing him to his knee, trying to drag him down to the ground with sheer weight. He shut his eyes in frustration and turned his focus within, searching for something pure beyond the despair he felt.
What he found was a surprisingly powerful outpouring of love, for Dana, for his newfound companions, for life itself. It was like a newborn sun within him and he seized it, channeling it into raw life-force that burst forth from him in an aura of pure white light.
The writhing horde that had him pinned down just a moment ago recoiled in terror and pain, their rotting flesh withering as if seared by the sacred flame. They toppled each other in their efforts to get away from the paladin, many falling lifeless as the unholy magics that animated them were burned away by the sanctuary of light that pulsed like a heartbeat around him.
Galen rose to his feet and lifted a palm in the direction of the receding horde, and a wave of the same pure white light shot forth. A look of fierce determination on his face, he sent bolt after bolt of holy energy, clearing a way through the zombies; those that could scrambled out of the way while those that couldn't simply shriveled where they stood.
- "Aan!"
The northman turned to the knight behind him, a flicker of understanding in his gaze, before letting out a mighty shout that sent the swarming cadavers around him reeling, as if for one instant the fear of death had been put back into them. With a great leap he joined his companion and charged past him into the trail the paladin was blazing with blessed fire, each new wave healing his cuts and restoring his strength.
The few zombies that remained in his path quickly fell to the thundering barbarian and he burst out on the other side to find Dana with a corrupted rogue's axe lodged in her shoulder. Said rogue was now hanging limply against a javelin through the throat, the amazon using her corpse as a shield against the last bodyguard's arrows; so many dotted the dead rogue's back that she looked like a quill rat.
Aan rushed to Dana's side and tore her away from the clawing grasp of the undead hands holding her down. Arrows started smashing into his mail but he ignored the pain as he carried the amazon behind cover. He took a moment to assess the severity of her wound before removing the couple of arrows embedded in his side. His armor had stopped them from biting too deep. It was nothing that would slow down a son of Bul-Kathos.
- "How bad is it?" Dana asked.
- "I'm no healer, but I'd advise you not to remove that axe until Galen can take a look at it."
- "You left him to fight the undead alone? How is he faring?"
- "Like a bear among dogs," he grinned. "You stay here, I'll handle Bloodraven and her underling."
- "No! I can still fight. I still have my javelin arm." Despite his earlier warning, the amazon pulled the axe out of her shoulder with a muffled scream. "Bloodraven is mine. You take care of the archer."
Aan looked at her sternly but she held his gaze, pride flaring in her eyes. A small smile peaked at the corner of his lips.
- "Alright, shieldmaiden, have it your way. Give me that".
He snatched the axe from her hand and charged out with a roar. He received an arrow to the chest for his trouble but it barely fazed him as he threw the one-handed axe blade over haft and it struck the lieutenant before she could loose another shot, sending her to the ground.
Bloodraven was already running away as he closed the gap to her last defender and buried his broadaxe in her chest. The rogues' former champion fled with unnatural speed, Dana hot on her heels.
When the amazon finally caught up to her nemesis, she was picking up a spear from the ground with her good hand.
Lydia's spear.
Rage burned anew in Dana's veins and with a snarl of hatred she called upon Zerae, goddess of vengeance and storms, to imbue her javelin with her fury. As if she had snatched a lightning bolt from the heavens themselves, she hurled the charged javelin at Bloodraven and it burned its way into her abdomen.
Again and again the amazon struck, each javelin sending Bloodraven reeling in a shower of sparks, until she had emptied her quiver.
Bloodraven fell to her knees, dropping Lydia's spear. Dana approached her battered foe and picked up the weapon. At her touch, the long, leaf-shaped speartip danced with flame, and with a final shout she drove it into her opponent's chest, searing her from the inside. As one last agonized breath left her, Bloodraven could only whisper one word.
- "Finally".
With that, the fallen rogue collapsed and the dark energies inside her burst out with an inhuman screech. When they faded, it sounded like a sigh.
Dana knelt before the twisted body, staring at the face of a woman that she could have once called "sister". She felt no sense of triumph, no vindictive joy. She just felt hollow. She clutched Lydia's spear tight to her chest.
A moment passed before she felt a hand on her wounded shoulder. It began to heal.
- "Did you put all the walking corpses to rest?" she inquired in a tired voice.
- "Yes, the few that remained simply collapsed on their own."
- "Where's Aan?"
- "I'm here," the barbarian spoke up.
- "Does it still hurt?" Galen asked her.
- "Yes."
- "Your shoulder?"
- "No."
The paladin remained quiet.
- "It should feel good. Why doesn't it feel good? Why do I only feel more grief?"
- "Because this story was a tragedy even before your part in it. You can't blame yourself for how it ended. There was no other way."
- "Now what?" She asked after a brief silence.
- "Now we honor those who fell valiantly in the war against Hell by carrying on the fight," he said, offering his hand.
She took it and he helped her to her feet. Aan approached her and held out a recurve bow.
- "You should have this."
It was Bloodraven's. Despite having been caught in the blast of her immolating arrow, it looked pristine. The amazon knew her way around bows, and this one was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, carved from a composite of rare materials and forge-enchanted.
- "The bow that helped bring down Diablo. It belongs to the rogues," she decided. "Let's head back. I'm sure they could do with some good news right about now."
