by Kenyon, Nate
In spite of himself, Tyrael could not deny the logic. Sanctuary had no divine right to its own survival. It was created as a hiding place for rogue angels and demons, and the birth of the human race had been an accident. The sacrifice of the nephalem Uldyssian had changed his mind so many years ago, had made him see the potential in mankind for selflessness and honor and justice. But what if he had been wrong all along, and their potential for darkness outweighed everything else? What if his mortal dreams of the extinction of Sanctuary had not been nightmares at all but a sign of what must be done for the good of the Heavens? What if that was his calling as Wisdom, a truth he had been avoiding for too long?
Above all else, light must triumph over darkness.
“Join us again, Tyrael,” Balzael said. “It does not have to end this way. We can go together to Sanctuary with the stone. Imperius and the rest of the Council have become impotent over time. This will force them to make a decision. The stone is too dangerous to remain in Sanctuary. I believe the Heavens will choose to destroy the world of men and end the threat—and if they do not, we can. And we must. It is not too late for you to become a guardian of the light.”
“Is that what you call them, guardians? Those things you command?”
“We are the guardians, you fool! And soon enough, once we have the stone, we will reveal ourselves as the true saviors of the High Heavens.”
“And what will you do with the stone?”
“That is our secret,” Balzael said. “But it will be cathartic, I promise you.”
Tyrael looked down. His arms were suddenly free of their chains, and El’druin had appeared in his hand. He looked at Cullen. The man stood silent and still, tears dried on his face, only his eyes still questioning.
The darkness was growing. Tyrael could feel it spreading throughout the Heavens, and soon it would begin to act on Sanctuary, consuming all light. Humankind would eventually fall to that darkness, allowing the corruption to overtake them. They were half-demon, after all.
Chalad’ar had shown him the true path. The chalice called to him, oblivion beckoning . . .
“Where are the others, the Horadrim? They have abandoned you, of course, as their race will. They are only interested in their own survival. Selfishness will lead to greed and finally to bloodlust. It always does.” Balzael gestured toward Cullen. “Cut him down,” he said. “Show us you are committed to serving the light!”
Tyrael shook his head. He felt the emptiness in his own heart. His fingers tightened on the grip of his sword until they ached. Everything he had done, every choice he had made from the moment he shed his wings, had been wrong. Angels and men could never peacefully coexist, and the darkness would never be vanquished fully until drastic measures were taken to ensure victory.
As he raised El’druin, he heard Balzael urging him on, and the whispers of the voice in his head grew louder every moment. He could not think, could not see or feel; the cacophony within his mind reached a fever pitch. His dreams came back to him, dreams of fire and blood, Sanctuary crumbling underneath him, the screams of men, women, and children filling his ears.
Forgive me.
Cullen watched his destiny unfold through the eyes of a dead man.
He had awakened from one nightmare into another. His last memory before losing consciousness had been of Thomas, his friend, reaching out as if begging him for help before the Sicarai’s sword cut him in two. He saw Thomas split open, saw the man’s eyes go wide and then glaze over as the life left him forever.
I could not help him, Cullen thought. He had tried and failed. And now his best friend was dead.
And then a sudden flare of pain and oblivion.
He did not know how long he was unconscious. He saw monsters that must have been from nightmares, grotesque creatures with dozens of hungry, puckered mouths, chained to the walls of some dark place. He saw Tyrael bound before him, blood on his face. He heard voices but could not understand what they were saying.
When he finally regained consciousness, the Sicarai was dragging him to his feet, Cullen’s arms lashed behind him. His head throbbed terribly. He looked around, taking in the huge column of statues rising toward the ceiling, the rows of empty seats facing him. They were in the Ring of Judgment, and Balzael would decide his fate, but what Balzael did not understand was that it didn’t matter. He was already dead; all that was left was the wet work.
He saw Balzael awaken Tyrael with vicious, backhanded slaps. He heard their discussion, but his mind refused to process the words. He watched Tyrael struggle with himself and draw his sword as his bonds fell away.
And then, finally, it hit him: Balzael wanted Tyrael to act as his executioner.
Surely he would not. And yet the archangel was stepping forward, putting his blade against Cullen’s neck. Wait. This could not be; something was wrong; Tyrael would not betray him. And yet the blade, hot on his neck, bit down. He felt blood trickle down his skin. It awakened something in him once again, something he had thought was dead but was only sleeping.
“Wait,” he tried to say out loud, but Tyrael’s eyes had gone blank and dark.
You are still bound, Cullen thought, even though the chains have fallen away.
And then the Heavens exploded around him.
A great blue thunderbolt struck the Sicarai in the back, knocking him to the ground. He howled in surprise and pain, leaping up and turning to the door, where Shanar was throwing more fire and Gynvir charged ahead with her axe. Next to her was Jacob, already running forward, his angelic weapon burning, and behind them came the necromancer.
Chaos descended upon the Courts of Justice.
Cullen’s heart beat faster as he watched Balzael draw his own weapon. He looked back as Tyrael raised El’druin. Cullen tried to move away but could not, and the others were still too far away to stop him as the blade whistled down.
But the sword did not cut his flesh. It sliced through the bonds that held his arms, freeing him. Tyrael removed the gag from his mouth.
The archangel’s eyes were clear. “I am sorry for this,” he said. “I have been a fool.” He charged forward into the fray, leaving Cullen kneeling there, stunned, unsure of what had just happened but shocked to find himself suddenly alive again—and hungry for revenge.
The appearance of the Horadrim had shaken Tyrael free.
He had not expected them to come back for him. He had been clear enough in their training. The mission came first, and removing the stone was paramount. Those left behind would be sacrifices to the cause. It was how they all must act in order to have any chance at success.
And yet they had come back, risking their own lives, risking the mission, in order to try to save their friends.
To save him.
The bonds of Chalad’ar fell away from him all at once. He had been wrong, horribly wrong. He had let the corruption and darkness into his own heart, but what it all meant must wait—now he needed to act, before it was too late.
Incredibly, the Horadrim were holding their own against their opponents. Jacob was circling Balzael, his Hallowed Destroyer blazing with light, Zayl on the other side with his dagger out. But Balzael would not strike and kept his sword between them so they had no opening.
Farther away, Shanar’s staff was glowing with blue fire, and Gynvir was dancing lightly on her feet around the Sicarai, waiting for an opening. The barbarian was fighting as she never had before, infused with a magical energy that gave her strength. Furious, the destroyer could not break through Gynvir’s defenses; somehow she parried his blows with her axe with tremendous explosions of power or avoided them entirely, while Shanar kept hitting him with bolts of energy that knocked him off balance. The two women worked seamlessly together, confusing the Sicarai as he turned from one to the other.
He screamed in anger and pain as Gynvir’s axe slid off his own blade and caught his shoulder. But the destroyer was too strong to be denied for long. Shanar tried to contain him with a burst of energy, but he broke free and lunged at
Gynvir with a move too fast for her to counter. She took his blade across her arm; luckily, she had shifted enough to keep the blow from hitting squarely and doing major damage, but Tyrael could tell it had wounded her. Blood dripped from her fingers as she gripped the handle on her axe and set her feet grimly, parrying the next thrust with her last remaining strength.
Then the Sicarai was upon her. He knocked the axe from her hands. As Gynvir fell backward to the floor, he raised his weapon for the killing blow.
Jacob left the satchel and the soulstone behind and threw himself into the path of the Sicarai’s sword as it descended.
He was close enough for his weapon to deflect it slightly, but the blade sliced deep, spinning him around, where he landed in a heap against the base of the Column of Tears. Blood began to pool beneath him.
With a cry of inhuman fury, Cullen leaped forward, drawing out the nephalem key. Pure energy exploded from him, running up through the key in a white-hot surge of electricity. The destroyer met it with his own blade, and the two clashed with a tremendous explosion, throwing Cullen backward and shattering the Sicarai’s weapon.
The destroyer roared in rage and pain. He strode forward and lifted Cullen by the throat. The Horadrim dangled helplessly, legs kicking, as the Sicarai studied his face, as if wondering how the little man had hurt him.
Distracted, he did not see Jacob pick himself up from the floor. Blood pulsed wetly down Jacob’s chest, and his eyes were unfocused. But he picked up the key where it lay nearby. Energy crackled through his hands and into the key, making the metal glow white-hot.
He moved in front of the Sicarai and plunged it straight through his chest.
The key sliced through the destroyer’s armor. The Sicarai shrieked, the sound echoing through the room, before he staggered backward, dropping Cullen and clutching at the wound that now bled light from his breast, the key still embedded there. He swayed back and forth, and the light coming from him grew in intensity like a tiny sun. Somehow Jacob’s strike had run straight through to his core.
The Sicarai stood for a moment longer, clawing at himself as the wound became larger, light pouring from him as his ethereal form began to fade. The light suddenly burst forth in a hot and bright flare, and the Horadrim turned away quickly, shielding themselves.
Only his armor remained to clatter upon the stone floor.
Jacob withdrew the key from the Sicarai’s breastplate, studying it in wonder, as if unable to believe what he had just done. And then he collapsed, motionless, to the floor.
With a sob of anguish, Gynvir crouched next to Jacob’s prone form, holding his wound with both her hands as if trying to keep the life inside him. Tyrael’s pride in his team was quickly extinguished by the sight of one of their own deeply wounded, surely dying, with nothing any of them could do. He had expected losses, had known they would come, but he could not bear it now, not after what had happened in the gardens.
By all that is holy, you will pay for this.
Tyrael turned back toward Balzael, El’druin glowing with righteous fire, but the Luminarei lieutenant was gone. Balzael might let them escape the Heavens for his own purposes, but he would soon be after them and the stone again. As long as he was still alive, the threat to Sanctuary remained.
Tyrael looked at his team gathered around their fallen comrade. “Get back to the portal,” he said. “I will meet you there, if I can.”
And then he ran out of the Courts of Justice, in the direction in which his nemesis had disappeared.
Chapter Forty
A Sacrifice for a Friend
“Oh, no.” Shanar crouched next to Gynvir over Jacob’s crumpled form. Under her fingers, blood still pumped from the wound. The blade had sliced right through his armor. Shanar looked up at where Zayl stood, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Please help him,” she said. “I saw what you did for Tyrael back in the catacombs. Please!”
Zayl kneeled next to the two women, removing Gynvir’s hands so he could examine the wound. The barbarian stood and turned away with a cry of anguish, looking at the red liquid coating her skin as if unable to acknowledge what had happened, her own blood dripping down her arm to the floor.
Zayl gently separated the cut edges of armor. Blood bubbled up; the blade had nicked Jacob’s heart and sliced deep into the pectoral muscle below his shoulder. A blade like the destroyer’s did a lot of damage to human flesh, and this wound was worse than the one he had healed for Tyrael. There was little hope. He would have to act quickly if he had any chance at all to save Jacob’s life.
But time was running out for them to get back to Sanctuary, and the stone was doing ever-increasing damage to anyone in its vicinity. Any moment now, Luminarei would swarm them.
One chance, perhaps. It was something he had only tried once before, and the necromancer knew that he would have to make a great sacrifice in the attempt.
He removed his materials from his pouch, his fingers trembling slightly as he took Humbart out and put the skull down next to him, then set the candle in place and lit the flame. He had no idea what a healing spell would do here in the Heavens or if it would even work at all.
“Easy, lad,” Humbart muttered. “Remember what it took from you to attach your hand—”
“I am aware of that,” Zayl said quietly. A binding to the darkness that lay between life and death, promises made to things that would be better left to lie still. There were wraiths that had pledged eternal service to the Burning Hells and could be summoned for work such as this, but those who promised to restore some part of the living would, more often than not, end up taking more than their share, their hunger unable to be denied. And he did not believe they could be raised at all in the Heavens.
But one was already here.
Blood continued to well up from the wound. Jacob’s body shuddered. Zayl knew the flesh would not heal unless he reversed the spell of his own making.
“Hurry,” Shanar said. “He’s dying!”
“Use me,” Humbart said. “The spell that keeps me bound to this skull—”
“No,” Zayl said. “I will not sacrifice you for my sins.” He looked at his right hand, hidden under the black padded glove that he had worn for so long it seemed like a part of him. “Keep watch over the satchel,” he said to Gynvir. “You will have to carry it from here. Jacob cannot, and I will be too weak.” Or dead, he thought, but did not say it. He stripped his glove off, hearing the gasps of the two women as they saw the white bone and withered tendon and sinew, the blackened stump where the remains of the hand had fused onto his wrist.
Zayl raised his arm above Jacob’s wound, muttering the binding of blood spell under his breath. He touched his dagger’s tip to Jacob’s flesh. Then Zayl took the blade and inserted it into his forearm just above the blackened skin, yanking downward.
The dagger blazed to life as his own blood spattered Jacob’s chest and shoulder. Zayl gritted his teeth. The pain was all-consuming and immense, a fire raging over his body, but he held strong as he circled his wrist with the razor-sharp blade.
The blood spatter began to reverse. Drips ran back up from Jacob’s wound to the dagger, coating it in crimson. Heat radiated from his bones, flames licking Zayl’s wrist as the hand began to detach from the rest of him, hanging by threads of tendon. The fire singed the stump of his wrist and leaped downward to Jacob’s chest, licking across the open wound as the skeletal hand dropped, bone fingers plucking at the sliced edges, pulling them together.
The necromancer clutched the stump of his arm to his side and slipped his dagger back into its sheath. The pain was so deep and strong he nearly passed out. But he kept his eyes on Jacob’s wound, saw his own hand continue to stitch the flesh together, and for a moment, the flames flickering over it took the shape of a demon with a dragon’s tail and thickly scaled body as they burrowed deep inside.
Zayl’s skeletal hand finally went lifeless and tumbled to the floor next to him, and Jacob’s skin puckered and blackened as the flames consumed it fro
m the inside out. Jacob’s eyes fluttered open, and he gave a guttural groan, reaching up to grab Zayl by the shoulders.
“Hurts . . .” he managed, and coughed. The necromancer held him tightly with his left hand, keeping his right wrist tucked against his body as the last of the flames died out. Then Zayl rolled over onto his back, his chest heaving, trying to find a balance within himself again as the world turned over and faded to a dull, featureless gray.
Jacob felt himself lifted into the air. “He’s not responding,” he heard Gynvir say. With great effort, he opened his eyes in time to see Shanar help Zayl gather the skull and the candle and something else that looked like bones. She got the necromancer to his feet and slipped his left arm around her waist, where he clung tightly, his head slumping toward his chest. It was as if Jacob were looking through a fog that was slowly lifting, and something was sitting on him, an animal that had burrowed inside his skin and was clinging on for the ride.
“There’s no time to revive him,” Shanar was saying. “We’ve got to move!”
They began to run, Shanar half-dragging the necromancer with her, Gynvir running, too, with Jacob slung over her shoulder. Amazingly, there was no pain, even with him being jostled up and down roughly like this; the wound had healed completely, and strength was already coming back to his limbs. He couldn’t remember what had happened. Everything was blank after the destroyer’s blade had gone into his flesh and he had fallen forward, feeling his life draining away.
Now he was alive again. It was some kind of miracle. “Put me down,” he said, but the barbarian either didn’t hear him or refused to respond. They barreled headlong through an archway carved with two gigantic wings, into the Gardens of Hope. “Put me down,” Jacob said again, and this time, Gynvir complied, setting him gently on his feet.
