Had he imagined it? Was it the echo of his own footstep? It must have been. There was another sound, like a rushing wind intermingled with snippets, as of voices. It grew louder, closing in on him from all sides. Morbed stooped, bared his teeth, yanked his hood up, and buried his head in his arms.
He underwent a sudden wave of emotion . . . emotion not his own but rather a heated ardor aimed at him, for lack of better understanding. It was as if he could feel what some other being felt toward him. While difficult to identify, it nonetheless twisted his guts and robbed him of his senses. He struggled to put a name to the sensation, and the only word that surfaced in his thoughts was judgment. He rushed toward the glowing passage in an attempt to escape the impassioned onslaught.
Another hallway. The lavender glow now brighter, Morbed recognized the illumination, emanating from where he had replaced the lantern after the battle in the statuary.
There was a sharp hiss in his ear. Morbed snatched his dagger out and recoiled, certain that someone or something was set to assail him, but upon turning, he was greeted only with empty space and the cold stone hall.
Breathing haltingly through his nose, tasting his own blood, he shuffled to the doorway of the lantern room.
There it sat against a wall, chain coiled at its base, and for a moment Morbed was transfixed by its shimmering violet luminescence. It glowed brilliantly, far more lustrous than it had been when carried by the fisherman, and in that glittering light, so warm and pure, Morbed found a kind of solace . . .
But there was no time to tarry, to become lost in its depths as the fisherman had. He must quit the fortress immediately, and the lantern would light his way. He bolted forward, snatched it up, and was off.
* * *
It would not do to simply return to the statuary ledge. Even if Morbed put aside the lantern to avoid the protective wards, the climb down the sheer fortress wall would be too treacherous. Teeth set, dried blood flaking from his skin, Morbed rushed through one stone hall after another, lantern held before him in his left hand, dagger clutched tightly in his right, searching for another exit.
Coward.
Morbed stopped. The thought had flitted through his mind but felt somehow detached, as though not his own. Morbed rarely, if ever, engaged in self-recrimination. There was no value to be had in it, to becoming immobilized in a quagmire of doubt and guilt.
No regrets. What’s done is done. All that’s left is to move on.
And move on he did, although the passageways were all beginning to look the same. Whether he walked or ran, it made little difference; he still had no sense of where he was.
He moved through an arched passage and found himself in a much larger space. The air was heavy and wet and carried a musky, malodorous stench.
He sensed movement above, as though the roof had come alive. Bats, hundreds of them, wriggled and squirmed. Morbed shuffled back and nearly slipped in guano. Then with a screech the vermin dropped and flew, a black, leathery tempest buffeting his upraised arms seemingly from all sides.
When the cloud of vermin had dissipated, Morbed squinted into the darkness beyond the lantern light to his right and left, then followed the direction of the fleeing bat colony. Surely they, like him, were seeking an exit.
Traitor.
Morbed froze, listening . . .
Again, the unwelcome, disconnected voice, so like a stranger inside his head, chastising him. Why was his own mind suddenly becoming his enemy?
Morbed thrust the lantern before him and drove on, coming soon to a doorway and, beyond, another large, open space, a corridor where shadows receded on either hand. He stepped forward, struggling to determine which direction the bats might have fled.
A sound, soft and unintelligible, drifted from his right. Hoping the noise indicated the colony’s movement, Morbed bent his steps in that direction . . . and soon came to a dark iron gate standing open on rusty hinges, set into a sturdy metal fence anchored to the wall on both sides. A key extended from the gate’s lock, and from it hung a wide ring fixed with several other dangling keys.
Still grasping his dagger firmly, Morbed held the lantern high, stepped through the gateway, and paused, glancing to the walls on left and right. He beheld horizontal, oblong recesses, one atop the other. Within some lay crumbling wooden coffins; yet more housed only bones.
The crypts.
Further, just within the lantern light on either side, Morbed beheld wide pillars spaced evenly apart, set halfway within the walls, and atop them were statues. Each figure was seated with straightened back against the wall, as if sitting on a throne, hands on knees. Many of them bore misshapen features: enlarged brows, distended crowns. The eyes of the statues glittered with white crystals. Beyond the bend lay only darkness.
Stepping to one side, Morbed leaned forward and scrutinized a nook more closely. There a grim fractured skull surrounded by dozens of bones gazed back at him. Morbed held the lantern near his face and drew closer still. The skull, like the statues, was abnormal—deformed. The eye sockets were set far apart, and there was a great protrusion along the forehead. It sat atop an unusually wide, large mandible.
“What news?”
Morbed nearly jumped clear of his boots. He whipped the dagger up to chest height, confronted by the scowling visage of Clovis. He had doffed his helm and set aside shield and flail.
Lowering the knife, Morbed replied, “I was . . . separated from the others.”
Liar! Betrayer!
A roiling maelstrom of scorn ripped through the mind of the thief. He pressed a palm to his temple, eyes clamped shut.
“Are you ill?” the crusader asked. “What of your face? The blood . . .”
“It’s nothing.”
Clovis carried a torch and was now looking down at the spirit wolf that had accompanied him. The animal was silently barking up at the two men. Morbed imagined he could hear the sound as if filtered from a great distance, but he thought it must be his own mind playing more tricks.
Clovis eyed the animal curiously.
Morbed realized just what the phantom beast might be trying to warn the crusader of. The thief was overcome with the sudden fear that the animal was naming him betrayer and, further, that Clovis sensed his treachery.
“Probably urging us to depart. Perhaps the others have already left,” Morbed said.
Clovis absently gestured at their surroundings. “I’ve been occupied here, searching through the remains. I’ve studied every hollow, to no avail.”
The crusader’s eyes were distant, his features slack. Presently he sighed, his gaze falling to the hand of Morbed bearing the lantern.
“Why are you shackled?”
Morbed looked down. Tendrils of dread twisted and burrowed deep within him as he noted the lantern’s manacle, which was closed around his left wrist.
When? How? He had not even felt it; he had been wholly unaware until just this moment. With renewed dismay, Morbed remembered Jaharra’s assessment, that the lantern was an object of power, that she had detected within it a kind of undercurrent. Whatever power it held seemed now to be at full capacity.
Morbed ignored Clovis’s question, wanting nothing more than to flee. He turned and quickly passed back through the gate. “I’ll seek out the others and let you know when I—”
Just then the walls and floor trembled insistently. The tendrils inside Morbed constricted. Clovis and the spirit animal stepped up next to the thief.
It’s here.
The spirit animal dropped, belly and chin to the floor, eyes wide and frightened.
The wolf was trying to warn us of—
There followed a bellow, a long cry of primal ferocity, a challenge of predator to prey.
“There it is, then. Hold this!” Clovis handed his torch to Morbed and with long strides hurried deeper into the crypts. An instant later he returned, fully gi
rded for battle. He dropped his two-headed flail, snatched the torch from Morbed, threw it a fair distance in the direction of their only escape, and waited.
A grinding sound grew louder. The passage trembled with footfalls, the tremors increasing in intensity until the hunched, nightmarish form of the demon entered the torchlight, its immense girth rending the surrounding stone.
Clovis swept up his flail, gave voice to a battle cry, and charged, feet pounding the earthen floor.
“Mal’shallorok!” he boomed. The shifting torch flames flared outward and up in a blazing column that illuminated the dank crypts as if they were bathed in scorching sunlight. The creature bellowed in pain and stepped back as the fiery pillar dissipated, leaving only the guttering torch.
The crusader extended his shield before him, and just before colliding with the behemoth, he twisted, swinging the flail in a tight arc, slamming it with titanic force into the chest of the demon, where it landed with the sound of a meteor crashing to the earth.
The nightmare-giant staggered and shouldered into the wall. Dirt and small chunks of rock fell from above.
Join the fight! Help him!
The voice, now identified by Morbed as female, screamed inside his head. It was soon joined by another, this one masculine.
Don’t make the same mistake again!
Morbed backed away, right palm pressed to his temple, visage contorted, eyes set on the unfolding struggle. The spirit wolf circled several paces away, barking soundlessly. Locked in grim purpose, crusader and demon grappled, the sputtering torch beneath them flinging sinister dancing shadows over the cold stone.
Beams of light shone from the folds of the carved dragon head gracing Clovis’s great shield. Rays burst from the dragon’s eyes and open mouth as the holy warrior gained space and jammed the shield into the demon’s knee. The behemoth hunched further. Clovis spun, plunging his momentum into a vicious backswing, flail aimed squarely at his opponent’s face. But the giant was faster than its bulk would attest. It ducked the blow even as the crusader recovered and bashed the colossus in the crown with his shield, then slammed the flail heads into its spiked back.
The nightmare-giant fell to all fours. Clovis raised the flail for what surely must be a killing blow; then the high-pitched scream of the magic-dampening crystals shot through the corridor.
The crusader hesitated. The demon stood until its hunched shoulders once again scraped the ceiling. In a single fluid motion, its left hand swept outward, seized the twin flail chains, and swiped the bludgeon from the crusader’s grasp.
Act now, for Vasily’s sake! a voice shouted inside Morbed as he stepped backward, hood pressed tightly to his ears. He remembered the statues with the crystal eyes. It would be impossible to get to them all in time.
The spirit wolf at Clovis’s feet disappeared in wafting trails of smoke.
Despite the black blood dribbling from small fissures in its chest and back and running freely from its injured knee, the gargantuan demon was undaunted. It twisted, driving all its weight into a downward blow of its battering-ram arm, smashing Clovis’s left leg. There was a loud crunching of metal and a series of sharp snapping sounds. Remarkably, the holy warrior did not cry out.
Morbed retreated further, back through the open gate.
Help him! Help him!
Clovis endeavored to remain upright. Rather than attempting to use the holy man’s flail against him, the demon simply swung its closed hand toward the crusader’s helm. Clovis spun and raised his shield in time to block the blow, but he was still blasted off his feet and into the wall, where he collapsed onto his right side. The sharp whine of the devices grew in pitch.
The creature moved to a position facing the crusader, extinguishing the torch. The only light remaining was the ghostly lavender radiance of Morbed’s lantern. Despite the screeching of the crystals, it was all the thief could do not to pass out from the screaming in his own head as he shut the gate, reached through the bars, removed the key, and retrieved the ring.
Standing before Clovis, the demon closed its mammoth hand over the crusader’s helm and squeezed. Metal crunched as the fist clenched. Clovis’s feet kicked out, shuddered, then stilled.
Without a sound, Morbed withdrew further into the crypts.
* * *
An outcry of rage blasted the thief’s mind. The starburst flare of the lantern threw light onto the walls, pillars, statues, and tombs. Morbed tossed down the key ring as the screaming of the crystals finally died away. He lowered his hood and raced on until movement over one of the pillars caught his eye—a hunched figure adorned in robes, not a statue like the others. With a swift motion, it depressed a jutting stone in the wall. The disc atop the pillar spun, revealing a secret passage. As it rotated, Morbed spied a carving, identical to its fellows, on the other side of the cutout. When the rotation ceased, the figure was gone, replaced by a statue as if the other had never existed.
A rending of iron echoed through the crypts. The gate.
Morbed weighed his options: continue deeper into the crypts or . . .
Using a low tomb as a foothold, Morbed gripped crevices in the stone. He gained purchase with both hands, allowing the lantern to dangle from his wrist as he scaled the wall beside the pillar. The stone shook, nearly dislodging him. With renewed effort he reached the point in the wall that activated the revolving door. Dust fell from above, and with a quick glance over his shoulder, Morbed could see the tiny ember-glow of the demon’s approaching eyes. Grasping the crouched statue, he maneuvered until his weight hung from it; then he pulled himself into a seated position, embracing the carved image. He cast about for the rock, pushed on it, swung the lantern up into his grip, and felt the disc beneath him slowly spin just as the behemoth drew within reach.
* * *
The crawl space barely allowed room for Morbed to scrabble on hands and knees, but the thief was determined to put as much distance between him and the nightmare-thing as possible. He clamped his teeth on the ring atop the lantern’s ventilator. The chain, linked to that same ring and then to his wrist, provided a short leash for his left hand, but once he adjusted his capote to allow freedom for his knees, Morbed made do with quick shuffling motions.
An instant later, there was a shuddering impact that threatened to dislodge the thief’s teeth from his mouth and sparked a sudden terror that the masonry would collapse around him. Morbed knew without seeing that the statue outside the passage was now obliterated.
As he scrambled on, Morbed suffered a sensation similar to the feelings of judgment and reproach, only this was akin to hearing a whispered conversation where one was unable to discern the words being spoken—a conversation taking place inside his head.
Ignore it and focus on getting out of this alive, he told himself.
His efforts were soon rewarded as he came upon a larger, short passage ending at a ladder that disappeared into the heights of a musty shaft. Morbed ascended. His body ached, and the voices still lingered on the fringes of his consciousness, as he pushed on and quickly reached a closed trapdoor.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morbed hauled himself up and into one side of a room choked with clutter. Beyond the small clear space around the door, mounds of equipment—clothing, furniture, artifacts, relics, and bagatelles—were packed floor to ceiling. As he looked closer, Morbed identified what might be a navigable path deeper into the room.
There was no indication of where his unseen observer had fled. The faint conversation in the fringes of his mind continued as he stepped over and onto the many items that still clogged his way, reaching out to the piles on either side of him to maintain balance, wary that at any time, the towering stacks might collapse and bury him. The lantern threw shadows in all directions as he progressed.
Farther on, a gleam caught his eye: the ivory-hued blade of a necromancer’s bone knife, resting on a shelf of debris.
&nbs
p; Seize it! a voice urged from within.
Morbed possessed a blade of his own. Still . . . what harm in having more than one weapon? He snatched the bone dagger in passing, tucking it into his boot before moving on.
After picking his way into the center of the large room, Morbed rounded a heap and beheld a throne of sorts, built of various items: a grinding wheel, a cooking pot, a training dummy, bellows, bits of armor, and other things Morbed could not readily identify. There on the crude seat waited the robed figure, legs apart, his right elbow resting on his right knee, chin planted on the knuckles of a cloth-wrapped hand. He regarded Morbed silently. The lamplight reached just far enough into the hood to reveal what appeared to be a bandaged countenance.
“See you found the lantern,” the figure rasped in a phlegmy baritone, lowering his hand. “Heard legends about it, passed down from the forefathers. They say it feeds on the guilt of those who sin against themselves.” The stranger leaned forward, and his dark eyes, yellow where they should be white, widened. “I’ve never felt the faintest stirring from it. What does that tell you, mm?” Then began a coughing fit, and the man’s body shuddered violently.
With just the slightest movement, Morbed reached for his dagger.
“Don’t—hhough! hhough!—bother. While not the world’s most accomplished sorcerer, I am more than a match for you and your rat-sticker.”
Morbed held fast.
The other man continued. “You are the last of them, mmh? Your friends did not fare so well.”
The impression of judgment flooded through Morbed once again. His features tightened, and he strained to maintain a sense of awareness, a readiness to capitalize on any opportunity to improve his situation. “It seems your pet has slipped its leash,” he replied. “How long until these walls come down around you?”
His tormentor laughed mockingly, a thick chuckle that turned into another coughing fit, after which he spat a great stream of phlegm that did not fully escape his mouth. “Birthed in darkness, bent on destruction . . . it will do as its nature commands. Besides”—he waved his bandaged hand—“it would not be the first time these walls had been razed.”
Diablo III: Morbed Page 4
