by Kenyon, Nate
Tyrael returned El’druin to its place at his side. Jacob took a step toward the back door and stopped.
“You never asked whether we would accept this mission,” he said. “Some of us are going to die. Maybe the whole group. Do you really think it’s worth the risk?”
It was the same question Tyrael had been asking himself lately. If the stone is really capable of bringing down the Heavens, are a few lives in exchange for many a good trade? Many centuries earlier, during the Hunt for the Three, he had believed that all life was sacred, and it was not up to him to make such a choice. But if true victory against the darkness could be achieved, would that justify the attempt?
Those who lost their lives might not think so.
Jacob nodded, as if he had received an answer. “If I learned anything tonight, it’s that I’m no longer suited for such a thing,” he said.
And then he turned and left the room, leaving Tyrael to sit alone, the echo of his words still hanging in the air.
Tyrael sat at the table in the Slaughtered Calf for some time. The barmaid came at one point and took Jacob’s mug away, asking him whether he’d like something to eat or drink; Tyrael declined. Another mortal weakness. He had taken little of the mutton and bread upstairs, and although his stomach growled and churned within him, he would not give in to it now.
He was not used to questioning himself, but the mistakes he had made would not be denied. Finally, he brought them into the light and examined them, one by one. He thought of Imperius and his thundering rage at what he viewed as his brother’s betrayal, his insistence on the destruction of Sanctuary as the only path. Had Tyrael done the right thing, leaving the Heavens and forsaking his seat on the Angiris Council? Had he chosen well in bringing this group together? If they could not find a way to work as one, they were all doomed before the quest even began. They would be slaughtered like pigs by the Luminarei.
He needed wise advice.
Use the chalice.
As Wisdom, he should rely on it for insight. Malthael had done so frequently and brought what he gleaned to the Council during matters of utmost importance and debate. But Malthael was long gone. Tyrael touched the object hidden in his robes, felt its weight, the tingle on his fingers. The chalice called to him, and he both wanted it and feared what it might reveal. He had peered into its depths once before, and what it had shown him was exhilarating and terrifying. It had also shown him other things—things that he would have preferred never to see.
The chill of death crept over him once again. Before he had become mortal, he possessed a rare ability to remain impartial, calm under pressure, weighing odds and acting on his sense of justice. Now his emotions overwhelmed him—fear and desire, rage and sorrow and hopelessness. He was weakened by them, no matter how hard he tried to resist.
Was it a sign of his own limitations that he desperately wanted to consult the chalice in order to understand which path to take?
What that meant for his mission and for the future of Sanctuary and the Heavens, he could not know.
Chapter Eight
The Chalice, Weeks Earlier
The sound of his brother’s laughter brought him out of his dream.
Tyrael had been standing on a slab of bare rock thrust high above land. All around him was a flat ocean of white mist, an emptiness that would never end. He was without his weapon, unable to gather enough strength to form a fist. He was nothing but a vague outline of energy that struggled to maintain its shape, like a shadow on the ground. Dimly, he knew this was a memory of his reconstitution after the Worldstone’s destruction had torn his essence apart, and yet the dream was different from what he remembered, for in this instance, he was not alone.
Above him, he could see the members of the Angiris Council on their thrones. They sat impassively in judgment of him as he worked furiously to re-form himself, but he could not seem to become whole again. Auriel’s aura pulsed softly, as if in shame; he began to notice streaks of gray leaking through her normally warm, soothing glow. Itherael was motionless, pity over Tyrael’s fate seeming to emanate from him.
“He is mortal now,” one of them said. “He cannot return. He is bound by the blood.”
Imperius pointed with the Spear of Valor, and a bright, searing band of light pinned Tyrael in place. Suddenly, he was no longer a loose whirlwind of energy; he was made of flesh and bone. “You have forsaken us,” Imperius said. “You are nothing but a trained animal, and you will be treated as such.”
“Let us show him his sins,” Auriel said. Her voice was tinged with sadness and regret.
A brilliant flash turned everything white. When Tyrael’s sight returned, Deckard Cain was seated with the Council, and Leah stood behind him, her face a mask of blood. She screamed as horns sprouted from her forehead. Her flesh crackled and split.
Imperius’s laughter stayed with him long after he shook himself awake.
Tyrael sat in Wisdom’s domain as the dream clung to him like a spider’s web. At the Fount of Wisdom in the center of the vast main courtyard, exhaustion and despair had overwhelmed him at long last. Somehow, he had fallen asleep, and after the unsettling vision, he felt like an intruder.
I must leave this place, he thought. And yet he could not.
An atrium led to soaring, polished stone halls and a magnificent courtyard open to the sky. But it was all empty and dead and icy-cold, and the endless halls and anterooms had an air of neglect. Everything here was silent, the music that permeated the Heavens conspicuously absent. There was no radiant glow, no golden light; the realm had faded to gray. Even his footsteps made no sound.
He should have felt at home. Beautiful streams and waterfalls used to fill pools and tumble through rock-strewn paths, but they were dry now, and the majestic Fount was dead and still. When Malthael’s disappearance had gone on longer than any had before, the Council had sent his angels to search for him. A few returned empty-handed, but most simply vanished. No one knew what had happened to the rest, and there were no others to take their place. The angelic forces Tyrael used to command as Justice were being tasked by Imperius to track down rogue packs of demons after the Prime Evil’s fall, and he had yet to recruit his own angels as Wisdom.
Now, perhaps, he never would. He feared the changes to the realm of Wisdom could not be undone.
Maybe Imperius was correct after all; maybe he was afraid to embrace his new role within the Council. But Tyrael had come for one thing tonight. The chalice was here, waiting for him. He must consult it to help him truly understand the soulstone’s influence on the Heavens and whether the path he was considering was the right one.
Tyrael stood, his knees popping, sore from remaining in one position for so long on the hard stone courtyard. Chalad’ar was set into the side of the Fount itself, perfectly fitted into a carved depression like a key into a lock. The chalice had four handles and was adorned with etchings depicting water flowing from one place to the next in a cascading pattern that appeared chaotic at first. But it was not. It was the same with the pools and streams within the realm itself; walking along the paths might lead a visitor to feel lost within a maze, but if everything was viewed from far above, the pattern would become instantly clear. Wisdom was a web connecting all things, a sum total of all experiences and emotions of sentient beings at any moment in time, and the trick was in seeing those connections and drawing conclusions from them, understanding the balance between motion and stillness, light and dark.
Malthael would refill the chalice at the endless pools and stare into it for years on end, gaining insights into the totality of existence that others, even the other members of the Angiris Council, could not grasp.
To peer into the chalice would prove that he did not fear it, Tyrael thought, and perhaps it would also offer the answers he so desperately sought.
He pressed gently against Chalad’ar, his fingers tingling, until it released itself to him. The chalice’s power enveloped him, walked up and down his spine. To control this power would t
ake all the strength he possessed. As he peered into its depths, the idea that he could lose himself forever within the endless, ancient pools made him wonder whether he had made the right choice after all.
The bottom of the chalice was not empty. A thin film of light moved within it, swirling hypnotically in a rainbow of colors like oil on the surface of a pool.
At first, it seemed to hold nothing else. But then a charge swept up from the depths beneath Tyrael’s feet. He heard a gurgle and bubble of liquid, as if a long-dead spring had come to life. His entire body turned to ice as the world around him grew black and Wisdom’s domain disappeared; he was aware of a void that he peered into like a world beyond the stars, where the blackness was deeper than the darkest night.
Within the darkness, he saw sparks dance like fireflies, shooting across the liquid surface as it expanded rapidly, growing larger and larger. The rim of the chalice receded and then disappeared into the distance, and Tyrael fell into the depths, tumbling through this world into another, toward oblivion.
As he neared the surface, he realized that it was an intricate web created from endless strands of light, all of them rippling as pulses ran back and forth along their lengths, moving from one to the other at incredible speed. Dimly, some part of him realized that his physical body was still standing motionless somewhere far above him and that his consciousness had broken free. But he could not stop his descent, and as he struck the first strands, he instinctively threw his arms up as if to ward them off, bracing for impact.
It never came.
When Tyrael regained his senses, he had come to a halt within the web itself. He was seeing without eyes, sensing what now enveloped him with sizzling energy. Strands of bright light ran everywhere, passing through him in a way that made him shiver; the strands were not warm, as sunlight would be, but bitter cold.
A strange feeling fell over him, a sense of endless euphoria mixed with dread. In a flash, everything became clear; all the threads that had appeared to lead nowhere had been brought together as one. The light was woven in a brilliant pattern that he could suddenly grasp with little effort, and he could see the connections of all angels and demons within it.
The other archangels were assembling against him even now.
He saw their fear. His decision to become mortal overwhelmed them. It was a choice they could not understand, and they sought to banish it from their minds. Just as he had feared, the Black Soulstone had begun to corrupt the light that sustained them, twisting it into something dark and distorted. Valor was evolving into wrath, and Tyrael knew that eventually, it would move toward hatred and mass murder. Imperius would be driven to rule with an iron fist and was bound to destroy Sanctuary in the process. Fate was slowly becoming lost within the endless scrolls in the library, unable to see any possible orderly outcome. Itherael would become helpless or, worse, begin to make decisions that would doom them all. And Auriel, who had recently been a prisoner of Despair, had already begun to lose sight of any hope in what would come and would rule out of fear, rather than from a sense of the goodness in all things.
The Heavens would soon be lost. The stone’s corruption must be stopped. It would bleed the light from them all, sucking away what was good and holy and replacing it with darkness, violence, and death.
Tyrael’s chill deepened, settling into his bones. Something changed; he sensed another strand of light that was powerful and ran deep, but unlike the others, this one’s identity was strangely hidden to him. He tried to turn to seek it out, but it was elusive; it seemed to sense his own presence and move away, almost as if it were watching him.
Suddenly, that no longer mattered. The emotions he had formerly held in check began to overflow, and the strange light strand was lost. Chalad’ar was acting on him in ways he could not fully grasp, but his thoughts started to change as he saw where all these strands would lead. Death was the inevitable result of everything—the slow crumbling, the decay that must come. The end of all things. He understood the connections between all creatures, the threads that joined everything together. With this knowledge, what did life mean? Why value any single life in the pursuit of peace and balance, when death would come to all?
The people of Sanctuary were screaming.
Tyrael came to his senses covered in sweat. He found he had not moved from his position before the Fount, and he was clutching Chalad’ar in both hands as if it had fused to his flesh, his fingers turning white with strain.
His head pounded, the ache reaching through his neck and shoulders and down his spine. A dizzying wave crashed over him as the feelings he had experienced hit him again and again. His mortal flesh had never felt like such a prison, such a burden to overcome.
He had sensed things at the end, terrible things. He had sensed the coming deaths of countless souls, all of them burning in agony. He had sensed the darkness rising up among them, extinguishing all light. But that darkness had not come from the Hells.
As in his dreams, it had come from the angels.
Tyrael tucked the chalice into his robes. A feeling of utter hopelessness descended upon him as he turned his back on the Fount and walked the path out of Wisdom’s realm. Using the chalice had bled energy from him to such an extent that he felt like a hollow shell; mortals were never meant to experience such a thing, and the effects of its use could not be predicted, he knew. Tyrael could become lost, floating forever in the void between this world and the next, unable to find his way back through the strands as his physical form wasted away. The prospect of his own death cast a pall over everything, and he was strangely drawn to it in a way he could not quite understand. There was peace in endless sleep, an acceptance in giving up and letting go.
The thought was hypnotic.
You must not listen.
The archangel of Wisdom made his way back to more familiar surroundings, feeling lost and alone.
As he went, he did not notice the figure slipping from the shadows to follow him.
Chapter Nine
Discovery
As the others gathered in their rooms at the Slaughtered Calf, the necromancer slipped quietly into the night through the back entrance to survey their surroundings. Zayl was not a social person—he preferred the company of the dead, if he were to be honest—and he knew that there was plenty of distrust of him among the group. It was easier to be alone.
But that wasn’t the only reason for his vigilance. He remained unsettled after the appearance of the demons at the graveyard.
Zayl did not rattle easily, but he had continued to feel a disruption in the Balance. It was not Tyrael’s presence that was causing it; something else was at work.
A very dangerous force was behind the recent attack; he was sure of it. And it reminded him of something he would rather forget.
“If you mean to loiter out in the cold, you could have at least wrapped me in a blanket,” Humbart said. He sat in the palm of Zayl’s left hand, his empty sockets staring out into the darkness. They had found a quiet space between the inn and the neighboring building where they would not be disturbed. Zayl crouched in the dust, his back to the wall.
“You’re far beyond feeling a chill,” Zayl said. He flexed his gloved right hand, feeling the bones move beneath the leather. It ached in cold like this, with the flesh long gone. The glove was padded to conceal the fact that the hand was nothing but skeletal remains connected by a few strands of mummified sinew. There was an unfortunate incident with a group of damned souls at the lost city of Ureh several years before, but he had managed to reattach what was left using a particularly powerful spell. It would never be the same, but it was functional, and that was enough.
“Be on guard, Humbart,” Zayl said quietly. “Bring me back if anything should go wrong.”
“Aye,” Humbart said. “Just be quick about it. You know how it gives me the shakes, watching you do this. It’s dangerous. There was the time in Salene’s quarters when you lost control of your limbs to that damned black-hearted necromancer and nearly
stabbed yourself with your own blade . . .”
Humbart went on, but the necromancer was no longer listening. Zayl closed his eyes, and the side of the building he faced receded, a gray mist descending over him. Once they had been schooled in the dark arts, the priests of Rathma needed to put up protective walls around their psyches or risk being constantly distracted by the spirits of the dead.
Carefully, Zayl began to unravel those layers of protection, opening himself up to the world beyond.
Almost immediately, he sensed the souls of the departed that lingered in New Tristram, victims of violence who could not let go of the past; for many of them, death had come so suddenly they did not know they were dead. Others had unfinished business and were calling out for loved ones, pleading helplessly to be heard.
Still, the number of souls here was dwarfed by others he sensed nearby. Tristram was the site of unspeakable violence and death, and the taint of Diablo’s corruption, King Leoric’s possession, and the betrayal of Archbishop Lazarus remained. Many had died there. He had felt them in the graveyard earlier, but in this meditative state, he sensed their presence more strongly, their voices far more insistent.
Zayl probed deeper still, drifting higher above his physical body, leaving Humbart and the dark alley behind. New Tristram played out below him as he soared above the thatched roofs and people slumbering in their beds. Beyond the hills, he sensed the pack of hellions that had come upon them earlier, heading away from Tristram, their numbers depleted. Their energy was foul, to be sure, and he was glad to see that they had not followed the group to the inn.
But the hellions were not the source of the disruption in the Balance, either.
Zayl was uncertain which direction to turn. A chill worked its way through him. Something was nearby, but its exact location remained hidden to him. He felt certain this presence was aware of him, and it was not friendly.