Diablo III: Storm of Light

by Kenyon, Nate

  He wasn’t sure what happened next. The lights in his head shifted to somewhere beyond him, and when he came fully back to himself, the demon had let him go, and his feet were on the ground.

  He gasped for air, bringing oxygen into his lungs with hot, ragged breaths.

  Bar’aguil had turned with the other members of the Coven to face the figure who had been strapped to the chair. She stood upright, arms free, the remains of her bindings lying in tatters on the floor. Between cupped hands was a brilliant ball of purple flame. But Jacob’s eyes were fixed on the woman’s beautiful face.

  “Shanar?”

  “Duck,” the wizard said. She released the ball of pure arcane energy with a flick of her delicate wrist, sending it spinning toward the nearest cultist. As the energy hit the man in the chest, it exploded into pieces, and Jacob threw himself to the floor, covering his head.

  When he looked up again, ears ringing, there were only two hooded figures left standing with Bar’aguil. The demon snarled in rage, leaping forward with his claws extended as if he meant to rip the wizard’s head from her shoulders with a single massive blow.

  A glowing bubble of light burst forth around Shanar, enveloping the demon and the remaining cultists along with her. Their movements slowed to a crawl while she moved with stunning speed, summoning spikes of crackling energy in her hands and throwing them like glittering purple spears, dancing around the helpless creatures caught in her web.

  And then, only moments after it had begun, it was over.

  The bubble of light faded. The remains of the fat man who had been inhabited by Bar’aguil lay torn nearly in half and bleeding on the floor, dead cultists arranged around him like some kind of macabre display.

  Shanar stood at the center of the carnage, bare shoulders back, beautiful breasts heaving against a leather corset. She had cut her dark hair to shoulder length, but otherwise, she was unchanged from the woman Jacob had lusted after, not a wrinkle or blemish after twenty years.

  Shanar met his gaze with the familiar defiance that had always driven him crazy, in every sense of the word. “Same old story,” she said. “Saving your hide is getting old, Jacob. I waited as long as I could, but a girl gets tired of being tied up after a while.”

  “You could have sped things up a bit,” Jacob said, getting gingerly to his feet and recovering his sword, wiping it clean. He touched the shallow cuts on his neck from Bar’aguil’s claws, looked at his fingers. The bleeding had stopped, but the sting to his pride remained.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” With the barest hint of a smile on her lips, Shanar stepped delicately over the nearest body. “I needed you to come hither, and I had to wait for the demon to reveal himself to be sure it was time to act. Of course, you were supposed to save the damsel in distress and redeem your own sorry skin. Best-laid plans . . .” She extended a hand. “Now, before we’re overwhelmed by nostalgia and drift off, I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Jacob dug in his tunic and produced her father’s medallion, one of the few items of any tangible value that were precious to her. The symbol of the alchemist. Shanar had told him a story once about removing it from around her dead father’s neck before the coffin went into the ground. He had never seen her without it.

  “When I saw this, I was afraid that it meant that you . . .” He let the sentence hang in the air. Even after all these years, he wasn’t good at expressing how he felt about her. It was one of many things that had finally driven them apart.

  “Reports of my death have been seriously exaggerated,” Shanar said. She took the medallion and tucked it away. “I let the demon take it; it served a purpose. I knew I’d survive long enough to get it back. You, however . . .” She studied him, and he thought he sensed some tenderness there, although perhaps he was just imagining it. “You look a bit worn around the edges.”

  “It’s been a long year. What are you doing in this part of town?”

  “Not here,” she said, glancing at the carnage. The runes had begun to fade away, and the darkness was leaching in. She picked up a wizard’s staff that had been placed at the center of the circle, hidden by the runes until now. “Outside.”

  The front room was blacker than the night beyond it. Shanar muttered a few words and raised a ball of blue light on the end of her staff. It lit the darkness, and Jacob followed her as she flung the front door wide, the sudden icy wind whipping through them like a banshee, cutting through his bones, and bringing in the stinging grit from the street.

  “Wait,” he said. “You still haven’t explained what you were doing here.”

  Shanar sighed, as if he were asking a great favor. “Remember when you found that cave with El’druin waiting for you, and I was waiting there, too?”

  He nodded. “You carved my life story on the walls.”

  “I followed the resonance of the Crystal Arch,” she said. “The Heavens led me to you and the sword, and all these years later, they’ve led me here. I’m not sure why, but considering the circumstances, I figured I ought to listen.”

  A familiar charge ran through him. “I . . . I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “That was the plan.” Shanar shivered, hunching her shoulders. “But plans change. Whether we like it or not.” She turned away again, heading out the door.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  “To pick up an old friend,” she said over the wind. “Come on. I’ll explain more on the way, but there’s no time to lose. We leave tonight—”

  He reached out and grabbed her arm. “Hold it, Shanar. Just like that, you come back into my life and expect me to follow you like nothing happened?”

  The wizard shrugged away his hand. “Look, I know we’ve got some unfinished business between us, but you’ve got a choice: keep wallowing in your own self-pity and drink away your sorrows for another fortnight, or come with me for another adventure, just like old times. Who knows? I followed the resonance once, and it led me to El’druin. Maybe the sword’s calling me again, and it wants me to bring you along.”

  With that, she turned once again and disappeared into the night.

  Jacob stood on the threshold, torn. That was a cheap shot, he thought. She knew what the loss of the sword had meant to him, knew how he would feel if she even hinted that he might find it again.

  And yet what did he really have to lose? She was right: he’d been wallowing in self-pity for too long. There was nothing here for him in Caldeum. Seeing her had brought back all the old feelings. He wanted to see her face again.

  And perhaps, just perhaps, El’druin was waiting along with Shanar.

  Jacob pulled his hood up against the stinging wind and went after her.

  Chapter Two

  Tristram, Several Weeks Later

  The monk paused at the top of a rise, motioning to his two companions to hold back. He looked out across a ruined landscape, searching for signs of danger. The small valley was still. Dusk had begun to give way to night, and a half-moon had broken through the clouds enough to outline the stunted, skeletal trees that stretched their bony fingers toward the blackened sky.

  More than enough to expose the ruins of the old cathedral that lay scattered across the next hill.

  The once-proud structure had been devastated by the archangel’s plunge like a fallen star from the Heavens. The gods had shown it to the monk in a vision—a streaking river of light through the sky. The spire and walls mostly remained, but a hole in the ground gaped open like a ragged mouth, exposing the top levels of the secret catacombs that lay far beneath the foundation. Broken arch supports stuck up through the rubble, crumbling piles of wood and stone everywhere. Fire had ravaged some of the interior, but under the faint moonlight, Mikulov could see several rows of wooden pews intact, as if waiting for a congregation to fill them again.

  He had dreamed of all this many times. But to see it in the flesh, to smell the charred remains on the wind and feel the rot at its core, was something else entirely.


  The gods were silent now. He did not blame them for leaving this forsaken place.

  The two men who had traveled with Mikulov waited for his signal that all was clear and then labored to the top of the hill. Their training had kept them in better shape than most, but none could match the legendary physical conditioning of an Ivgorod monk, and the journey from Gea Kul in Kehjistan had been long and exhausting. The heavy satchels slung across their shoulders added to the burden, but neither of them would think of giving them up. They were Horadrim, and the texts they carried were as essential as the blood that ran through their veins.

  Cullen reached the top first and gazed out at the ruins. The short man pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. He had studied Cain’s texts for years and had always wanted to see the Tristram Cathedral, but only one who knew him well would have sensed the excitement that lay beneath his seemingly calm demeanor.

  Thomas slung his pack to the ground and touched Cullen’s arm. The taller man’s eyes sparkled in the twilight.

  “The history that lies here,” he said. “If we were to gain access to the lower levels—”

  “That would be unwise.” Mikulov turned to his companions. “They are unstable. And I have yet to scout the surroundings. Sanctuary may have been purged of the Prime Evil, but lesser demons still wander these lands. We must be very careful.”

  “Then we search for the pyre,” Thomas said. “We must build a shrine, even a humble one, if none stands. He deserves nothing less.”

  Mikulov studied the faces of his friends. Cullen, the scholar, still had the familiar boyish features below a bald crown, but his cheeks had hollowed some during the long, hard journey. Thomas was a foot taller than his companion and much thinner, but his eyes held the confident stare of a warrior. The men had changed much since Mikulov had left them in Gea Kul after the defeat of the Dark One and the fall of the Black Tower. The monk wondered how they viewed him.

  “Stay here,” he said. “The gods are silent. I must find out why.”

  The two Horadrim watched the monk slip away down the hill, darting between the remains of trees and disappearing into the gloom. As always, Cullen thought, he moved like a ghost; even the moon refused to reveal him. Cullen remembered feeling a mixture of unease and awe when he’d first met Mikulov more than ten years ago.

  Those feelings hadn’t changed upon the monk’s return to Gea Kul and the new Horadric temple some months ago. Mikulov had seemed surprised to find a thriving center for scholarly study in Gea Kul, established with a growing group of Horadrim led by Thomas and Cullen. He should not have been; Deckard Cain had become a legend among the group after the fall of the Black Tower, and they had pledged to do what he asked of them when he left. They followed his teachings and writings closely.

  Mikulov had joined with the others studying the ancient texts, but he remained restless. The gods had shown him many things during his travels these past ten years, he had said, but he had yet to learn his true destiny. Then a new vision had come to him one evening as he explored the ruins of the tower where the final battle with the Dark One had been fought, where Mikulov had nearly become one with all things. He had been confronted by a holy stranger shrouded in light, he said, the embodiment of the gods themselves, who told him he must travel to Tristram and seek out the cathedral’s ruins.

  It was not like the gods to appear in such a form, he had said. But he would not speak more on the vision. Whatever he had seen disturbed him enough to keep him silent. But he was determined to seek out the old cathedral, and when he had asked Thomas and Cullen to accompany him—told them that the fate of Sanctuary itself depended on it—they had readily agreed.

  Our friend spent years wandering Sanctuary in search of truth and avoided a good many Ivgorod assassins along the way. He’s earned the benefit of the doubt. If his gods have called him to the cathedral, that’s good enough for me.

  Of course, that wasn’t the only reason they had come.

  “I’d always imagined the cathedral to be . . . larger,” Thomas said. “More impressive.”

  “We’ve spent years studying what happened here. It’s of seminal importance to our entire purpose. And it’s been touched by fire.”

  Thomas stared past the ruins. He was silent for a long moment, his eyes wandering across the scorched hills. Cullen knew what he was searching for. “Deckard lies near the burying ground, where his body was brought to ash in a great pyre of holy smoke and fire,” he said. “The archangel Tyrael himself witnessed it. That’s what was written to us by Leah, before she . . . before her loss, and I have no reason to doubt it.” He slung his satchel to the ground and dug into the bottom for a map, one of the faithful reproductions of Tristram that they had made themselves at the temple. Cullen was in charge of old and new texts, cataloging the Horadrim’s extensive library and overseeing the lettering and binding of copies of those that were threatening to crumble to dust, and this was one of his best.

  He spread the map across a thick root that protruded like a black serpent from the rocky soil, muttering a few words of power under his breath. The markings began to glow softly, revealing crude drawings of the cathedral and its surroundings.

  Crude but carefully marked. This was a copy from an authentic Horadric scroll, and he had updated it himself from more recent information. From this angle, the graveyard would be located beyond the ruins. Cullen tucked it away as the markings faded and peered through the faint moonlight. His heart thudded heavily in his chest. “Perhaps we could take just a short walk—”

  “Don’t move.”

  Cullen felt the edge of a blade against his neck.

  Thomas had half drawn his sword but held it motionless. He was watching someone just behind Cullen’s right shoulder, and his eyes made a single flick down and to Cullen’s left. Cullen knew what he wanted. His assailant was left-handed, and the proper twisting move could free Cullen enough for Thomas to strike.

  But the blade was held tightly against Cullen’s flesh and made such a move extremely dangerous.

  Cullen made a small sound low in his throat, and the man behind him shifted slightly. The blade bit down before the moon brightened the ground for a moment.

  “A necromancer,” Thomas said. He slid the sword slowly back into place and showed his hands. “Release my friend. We’ve no quarrel with you. We’re Horadrim, come from Kehjistan. What business do you have here?”

  The blade remained in place, and Cullen closed his eyes, waiting for the pulse of his own hot blood rolling down his throat. But eventually, the knife withdrew.

  “Beggars and thieves, more likely,” a voice said, different from the first. “I’d sleep with one eye open, ‘twas up to me. ‘Course, I’ve no choice in the matter. I go where you carry me.”

  Cullen turned, expecting to find two men, but he found only one. His assailant was slim and pale as death, black bangs slashed above a bearded, solemn face. He wore a cloak with silver runes stitched along its edge; a black glove was on his right hand, bone dagger clutched in his left. The blade glowed with an eerie blue light. But his strangest features were his eyes, which were a pale gray and luminescent like tiny twin moons.

  This was a man filled with a quiet but dangerous power. His leather boots did not make a sound on the gravel-packed soil.

  Cullen had met one or two necromancers in his time, and their practice of the dark arts always put people on edge. They rarely showed emotion and tended to keep to themselves. But this one was even more unsettling, for reasons that he couldn’t quite understand. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d just had a knife at Cullen’s throat.

  And, of course, there was the matter of the second voice.

  “Your companion,” Cullen said. “Where did he go?”

  The necromancer slid his gloved hand toward a fat pouch on his belt the size of a melon. “There’s no one else.”

  “A fine hello, that is,” the slightly muffled voice said indignantly. “I can’t very well shake their hands myself. As
hamed, are you? I’m like the hunchbacked aunt the family keeps locked in the root cellar so as not to scare the neighbors.”

  “Hush,” the necromancer said. He patted the pouch.

  “I’ve been quiet too long,” the voice continued. “It’s dark in here and none too roomy. Smells like the ass end of a mule, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  The necromancer seemed to hesitate slightly and then unbuckled the pouch to remove a human skull missing its lower jaw. Cullen stumbled backward, and Thomas let out a cry, drawing his sword as if to ward it off.

  Empty eye sockets gleamed white in the moonlight. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the skull said.

  Chapter Three

  The Necromancer

  The two men had identified themselves as Horadrim, and the sign of the order was stitched on their satchels. They certainly appeared to be humble scholars of some kind, based on their simple dress: pale brown robes over gray tunics belted at the waist, sandals on their feet. There had been rumors of a new clan attempting to establish itself somewhere in Kehjistan, and the necromancer had recently seen a good-quality reproduction of a Horadric text in Westmarch that the bookshop proprietor claimed had been shipped from Gea Kul. But the true order had supposedly died out long ago.

  The shorter one had nearly lost his spectacles as he scrambled away from the skull, and he set them back up on his nose with a finger, blinking rapidly. “Who—what—are you?”

  “I had an unfortunate turn of fate while robbing a lost city,” the skull said. “The pleasant fellow here who threatened you at knifepoint—Zayl, his name is—raised my spirit to help guide him to the proper location—”

  “Enough, Humbart,” the necromancer said. He was uneasy in these surroundings, although he would never show it. Tristram was forever bound to the darkness in ways he would rather not confront quite yet. Chaos and ruin live in this place, he thought, and these men are searching for answers, too.