Diablo 3: The Reaper of Souls

by Vandoren, Elias

  Ellis looked down at Sahm now and thought of the girl's most recent birthday, when the precocious seven-year-old had declared brazenly that she would "manage her own affairs, moving forward," and that her daily routine would no longer include chores. She thought of Sahm's laughter, a hearty, unbridled guffaw. She thought of the night less than a week ago when Sahm had told her in the strictest confidence that she had a crush on little Joshua Gray, because his eyes were like a nice dream.

  She thought of these things, and she prayed to Akarat that Sahm would get well soon, that she would have many more nice dreams and no longer be terrified by whatever ailment had befallen her.

  Valla sat before the campfire, still a few miles outside of Havenwood, staring. She ran her finger absently over a long scar that traveled the line of her jaw.

  You're not ready.

  A demon hunter must always temper hatred with discipline.

  Josen's words still stung. But the more she thought of it, the more she considered that maybe... maybe he wasn't exactly wrong. Her thoughts drifted back to the incident at the ruins...

  She and Delios had journeyed deep into the southern Dreadlands, traveling together for several days. Delios was crude and abrasive and set her nerves on edge. Valla preferred to operate alone, but Josen had insisted they work as a pair.

  They located the demon's hideaway among the long-forgotten ruins of some unknown civilization. Valla guarded her mind as Josen had taught her. He had warned them both that, with a powerful demon such as this, their battle would be much more than simply physical.

  "You are the demon's greatest weapon," he had counseled.

  As the two wound their way down wide, monolithic stone slabs, Valla felt her agitation mounting. The base of the stairs opened into a cavernous grotto where hundreds of gargantuan rocky pillars stretched upward, their caps lost in the darkness above. Flaming braziers cast pools of flickering light.

  Delios surged ahead. He was reckless. Foolish. Valla's head throbbed. She could feel the demon infiltrating her thoughts. In her mind's eye its presence was black tendrils, probing, coaxing, provoking. Valla dwelled on every irritating habit, every negative quality, Delios possessed. Her agitation soon turned to anger, which turned to rage.

  Delios darted ahead again, after she had yelled at him to stop. He spun, favoring her with a wicked smile. She became suddenly certain that he had been corrupted. He had crossed over. Her rage boiled over into a blind fury, and she knew that she would kill him. He was weak, pathetic. Ending his life would be a mercy.

  She drove forward. Delios stood there, smiling tauntingly. She sprinted toward him. He ducked behind a pillar. Valla followed...

  And he was gone. She felt the demon behind her, a hulking, otherworldly presence. Inside her mind, she could hear an echo of laughter. The demon had manipulated her with the ease of a puppeteer working the strings of a marionette. The Delios she had followed was not real. She had lost, and now she would die.

  There was an explosion then, and much of what happened next Valla only remembered in brief flashes: Josen battling the demon. Delios rushing to help. Valla gathering her senses in time to fire several bolts from her crossbow. Josen shouting words of banishment. "I see you, Draxiel, lapdog of Mephisto. In the name of all those who have suffered, I cast you out! Begone and be damned, and may you never return!" Josen fired a bolt; an eye-searing brilliance flared; and the demon was gone.

  The ruins had been a test. (Josen was fond of saying that everything was a test, that life was a test.) And Valla had failed. Now... now Delios had failed as well. And it had cost him his soul.

  Valla was determined to defeat this demon, but she was also determined not to meet Delios's fate...

  He's lost to us now. No better than a demon himself.

  The sawyer's daughter suppressed a shudder. There was more than one way to banish a demon, but only one way that Josen had taught her. He had also told her once that "when a demon peers into you, you may peer back. But it is the most dangerous thing a demon hunter can do."

  Valla's mistake at the ruins would not be repeated. She had grown too much since then.

  The demon hunter retrieved from her pocket an etching of her little sister, Halissa.

  "For you," she whispered. And as the flames of the campfire died down, she initiated a series of mental exercises taught to her by Josen.

  I'm not going to make it, Ellis Halstaff thought to herself. I've lost too much blood.

  Escaping through the front door and sprinting to Havenwood proper were not an option. Not before she reached Ralyn. He was practically helpless, barely a year and a half old. He hadn't even mastered walking yet, much less protecting himself in any way.

  At the staircase she pulled with her good hand on the banister, dragging her worthless right leg behind her one step at a time.

  As her strength ebbed she thought of Sahm and wondered desperately why her daughter was trying to kill her.

  After finishing her work, Ellis had gone in to check on Sahm, to see if perhaps she was ready for a bath. Sahm had smiled, pulled Ellis's best carving knife from beneath the sheets, and stabbed her in the leg, then repeatedly in the torso. Five, six times, maybe more. Ellis had spent precious heartbeats immobilized by the shock of the attack before she had finally run.

  Ellis's head felt foggy now. She was halfway up the staircase when she heard the rapid padding of Sahm's bare feet on the floor below.

  She turned, and there, at the bottom of the stairs, her beautiful blonde-haired daughter stood, clothed in the lacy pink dress Ellis had saved up to buy her for the harvest festival. The cloth was spattered a dark crimson that glistened in the lamplight. Sahm held the knife in her right hand. Blood coated her arm from the elbow down, dripping from the tip of the blade.

  "Wait, Mama, I still need to get you!"

  She thinks it's a game; how can she think it's a game?

  Ellis hauled herself backward up one more step.

  Sahm bounded over two of the stairs in one leap. "I said WAIT!" She slipped in the trail of blood on the step, pitching forward, her right arm arcing overhead, burying the blade in the stair Ellis had just cleared.

  The sound of her own screams drowned out all other noise as Ellis whipped around and hopped up the last two steps to the second floor. She closed the distance to Ralyn's room in desperate lurches, her useless right leg dragging behind.

  Once inside, I can bar the door, then maybe—

  Ellis hit the doorway and froze. Ralyn was not in his crib. What was more, the wooden railing had been broken, pieces of it scattered on the floor.

  The lightheadedness was more persistent now as Ellis reached out to the broken railing for support. Her limbs felt cold, responding slowly to what her mind willed them to do.

  "There you are!"

  Ellis spun to see Sahm in the doorway, a huge grin on her face, the kind she got when she would play roughhouse with Papa in the days before he left.

  The world teetered. Ellis took a step back. She grasped a splintered piece of railing, long and deathly sharp at one end. She pulled it free and thrust it in front of herself with a shaky hand.

  "What did you do, Sahm? What did you do to your brother?"

  Sahm lowered her knife. Her puffy lips turned down at the corners, eyebrows knitted, her eyes wide and moist. It was the look she got when she did something she wasn't supposed to and was trying to escape punishment.

  "Are you going to hurt me, Mama?"

  The floor swayed like the deck of a ship on a restless sea. Ellis was vaguely aware that her hand and the stake were drifting lazily.

  "I just want to know why..." Ellis sobbed, her voice sounding detached. "Is it because you're sick? We can get you help; we can go to Bellik and—"

  She felt a sharp pain on the back of her good ankle then, a piercing clamp that shot an agonizing jolt through her entire body as she cried out.

  Ellis looked down to see Ralyn where he had crawled out from under the crib. He gazed up at her warmly a
nd offered a wide grin, his tiny teeth covered in a layer of bright red.

  The world swam away as darkness closed in. Ellis's arm dropped; her head lolled back; and mercifully, she did not feel the long blade as Sahm plunged it through her chest.

  Valla reached the outskirts of Havenwood shortly before midnight. The time of her arrival was not of her choosing, but it suited her nonetheless.

  She would not be welcome in the town. Her kind never was; demon hunters were seen as dark omens, harbingers of death, even on the best of days.

  The air was still warm as she passed moonlit fields thronged with barren cornstalks, and wide patches of land where rows of gathered wheat bushels stood like obedient soldiers. Harvest was under way.

  Valla's ears were soon greeted with the sound of rushing water.

  A river.

  The sawyer's daughter felt a hollow tug in the pit of her stomach as she rode on.

  The innkeeper turned pale at the sight of her, even though she had removed her hood and lowered her scarf to put him more at ease. He responded to her queries in minimal sentences. There had been no signs of trouble, nothing outside of the ordinary. No cause for concern. She gave him a note to pass on to the town healer come first light: Any trouble, send for me.

  Upon entering her lodging, Valla went through her routine checklist, noting several details: a sturdy sideboard suitable for use as a barricade, if necessary. No connecting door to the adjoining room. A bed positioned against the far wall, with a clear view of the entry. A single desk and chair, and one window with a ten cubit drop to the ground outside.

  Valla then removed her plate armor and numerous weapons. She placed the twin crossbows, daggers, darts, bolas, and quiver of bolts—taking special care with one bolt, crimson with runes adorning the shaft—within easy reach on the bed. She began to unpack. Throughout, the sawyer's daughter could not escape the nagging sensation that had vexed her on her ride in—that she was forgetting something. Something important. Something vital. It was as if there were a void in her mind, an emptiness where some essential knowledge had once been stored.

  She finished her unpacking, then sat on the floor and closed her eyes, quieting her mind. She focused on the rhythm of her pulse.

  Whatever it was that she had forgotten was not coming to her. Other thoughts then intruded as well.

  What if she was wrong about all of this? What if she had disobeyed Josen for nothing?

  Worrying about that now would do her no good, she decided. And the errant memory would return to her in time.

  Valla moved to the desk and wrote a short letter to her beloved sister, Halissa. She recounted details of her journey, told her that all was well, told her that she loved her and that she would come visit her soon.

  And she hoped that was true. Maybe after this demon was dispatched... maybe she could take some time away.

  She folded the letter, placed it in an envelope, then deposited the envelope in her travel bag.

  Valla snuffed the candle and lay on her side, facing the door, her mind working to retrieve what she felt was lost.

  She sighed heavily and wished desperately, as she did every night, for a sleep without nightmares of the attack on her village. She wished, as she did every night, that just once she could dream of something good.

  She had forgotten what it was like to dream of anything but slaughter.

  Keghan Gray stumbled through the doorway of his farmhouse, having relieved himself in the flower garden outside moments earlier. Seretta would not be pleased if she found out, but she would also keep silent on the matter if she knew what was good for her. She hadn't known such things when they were first married, but over the years she had learned. Sometimes the lessons were hard but necessary.

  The lamp beside the door was unlit... a matter Keghan would take up with Seretta come sunrise. A man could break his damn leg walking into a dark house. After three tries, Keghan succeeded in lighting the wick.

  Keghan absently wondered where Rexx was as he headed for the scullery. On the nights when Keghan would come home late from the tavern, Rexx would normally greet him at the door, tongue lolling, tail wagging excitedly. Of course, Rexx preferred to sleep in Joshua's room... He was most likely there now, curled up at the foot of the bed.

  The scullery table was bare. Keghan felt the aggravation well up inside, causing his hands to reflexively curl into fists as his jaw clenched. Seretta had been told to have a helping of supper waiting for him. She couldn't be that foolish. Keghan considered that perhaps Joshua had eaten his portion. If so, the boy would have to be punished. Punished sternly, as was warranted in such matters.

  For now, though, it looked as if Keghan would be forced to cut his own meat. The ride from town had stoked quite a hunger, after all. Snatching a knife from the table, Keghan thrust the lamp before him as he stalked toward the larder.

  He barged into the long, pitch-black room, lamplight revealing a few sizeable chunks of butchered pig hanging on hooks lining the wall to his right. He stood at a thick hog leg and smiled.

  Keghan bent over to set down the lamp so he could cut off a slice, and as he did so, he noticed a puddle of something dark like wine on the floor. He held the lamp closer.

  Blood.

  The sight sobered him slightly... There shouldn't be blood on the floor. The hogs were gutted and cleaned outside.

  It was pooled between his legs, emanating from somewhere behind him. Rising and turning, Keghan lifted the lamp, then nearly dropped it as he stepped back.

  Rexx was dangling from a hook on the opposite wall, hung by the soft flesh under the jaw. Blood matted his fur and was still dripping from his tail. Most of his insides had been scooped out and were piled in the corner.

  A warm breeze rolled in as the door at the end of the larder was opened from outside. The lamplight could not illuminate far enough for Keghan to see. He held the lamp down and away to let his eyes adjust. A voice drifted to him.

  "Father?"

  "Joshua! Get in here, boy; what are you doing outside?"

  Keghan still could not make out much more than a dark blur beyond the light.

  "I said get in here! Someone's killed the dog. Do as I say, boy: move!"

  His eyes adjusted enough to see his son's silhouette then, standing motionless in the doorway, a long-handled scythe held in both hands, its curved blade etched in sharp relief against the moon and clouds.

  "But there's still reaping to do, Father."

  Keghan's mouth hung open as he stumbled forward.

  "What did you say, boy? Have you gone soft in the head...?"

  A few steps more, and the lamp cast light on Joshua. His work clothes were stained... the same wine color that covered the floor.

  "Did you do this? Did you kill the dog, you sick little—"

  Without a word, Joshua stepped forward and swung. Keghan raised his left arm to block, but at the last second the boy brought the scythe down and across, between Keghan's ribs, ripping through his guts, the blade penetrating deep enough to leave the gore-soaked tip exposed on the other side.

  A gurgling sound worked its way up Keghan's throat, escaping as a rattle from his open mouth. The boy had stuck him! Stuck him like a damned pig. He would answer for that. Come what may, the boy would be punished. Harshly.

  Joshua pulled the blade free, a mistake that Keghan took full advantage of. Advancing quickly, he buried the kitchen knife to the hilt in Joshua's throat.

  His son fell back like a stone. Despite the scythe blade's absence, a searing pain scorched Keghan's belly. He coughed up and spewed a massive spout of blood... and then he ran. He had killed his son! Now all he could think to do was get away, run as far and as fast as he possibly could. He headed straight into the cornfields, heedless of the stalks he crushed or drove aside, stumbling, spitting blood, dizziness threatening to topple him at any instant.

  He ran as fast as his feet would allow, until the pain in his stomach at last forced him to his knees. He had ended at the base of the field'
s scarecrow. He needed to get away. If only he could regain his feet. If he could reach town, if he could get to Bellik the healer...

  Keghan clenched the pants of the scarecrow, pulling himself up, a long stream of mucus and blood dangling from his chin. The material beneath his closed fist, however, did not feel like straw.

  And there was blood soaking the cloth. Was it his blood?

  Consciousness was slipping. Keghan hacked violently, pulled himself up the rest of the way, and raised his head to see the face of the scarecrow...

  And saw instead the slackened, horror-stricken visage of his dead wife.

  Just before dawn the following morning, Valla stood beside a sheet-covered corpse in Bellik's study. The blood spreading out from the head had already begun to dry on the cloth.