Xanthippe (Chapter 21)

Template:Xanthippe nav After the previous night's adventures, Xanthippe wondered if she should try to lock the door of the cabin she was sleeping in. Asheara would be mad, but she seemed like the "revenge is a dish best served cold" type. The door didn't have a lock anyway, and was pretty flimsy; if anyone really wanted in, all they had to do was breathe hard on it. Just in case, Xanthippe propped her poleaxe, armor, and helmet precariously against the door, so they'd fall and make noise if anyone tried to enter. They were undisturbed in the morning, so she got herself together and went back to the Durance of Hate.

On their way over, Xanthippe and Kasim went by the pit where the townspeople store captured pygmies for the Flayer races. Vanji, Asheara's personal guard, was there. He'd been tied hand and foot, stripped to his jockey shorts, and hung head-down over the pit like a pig in the market. The pygmies, which don't take long to start starving, were jumping up and down beneath him, squeaking "Brains! Tasty brains!" in their nasty little scratchy voices. Kasim stopped to speak with Vanji.

"Hey, dude."

"Dude."

"How's it going?"

"Eh..." Vanji looked down (up?) at the jumping Flayers. "Could be better."

"Yeah. Bummer."

"It was worth it, though."

"Coolness. Well, see you around."

"Hope so."

The Durance of Hate was dark, more so than most of the underground areas. The floor was, almost literally, covered with bodies. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead people in every stage of decay, piled up to the ceiling or dumped into huge pits overflowing with gore. The smell was beyond belief. Both Xanthippe and Kasim had to wrap cloth around their mouths and noses not to faint in the stench. Most of them were ordinary townspeople, but there was a Zakarumite here and there.

Diablo and his brothers didn't rush out to greet them at the door. There were two levels full of ghouls, skeleton pygmies, and those fat giants who swing chains and dead bodies. Xanthippe found a few interesting items. On the first level, there was a bone helm with two sockets, and a high-quality bone shield with two sockets. Looking at the helm, Xanthippe wondered who in the world would want such a thing. Made from a demon skull, bone helms are light and very strong, but damn, they are ugly. As a joke, she put it on, and picked up a random thigh bone.

"Hey, Kasim!" she said, waving the thigh bone. "Death to dead things! Rarrg!"

"Um." The skull-helm looked absurd on her head. Even with her armor and padding, the horns were wider than her shoulders. "You ok?"

"Sure. Isn't this thing hideous?"

"Yeah, it is. Why are you wearing it?"

"To show you how hideous it is!"

"Ok... you sure you're all right?"

"Yes. Well, mostly. I guess."

The shield and helm disappeared from her pack, and a note was left in their place:

"Oooh, scary! Halloween has come early. Don't you worry, honey-chile, there's a Necromancer out there who'll just love these! Since you've got no use for them, I'll carry them for him. Oh no, I'm almost full again! Hope you all appreciate this. -- The Mule."

Staring at the note, Xanthippe wondered how the heck the Mule managed that one. He sure wasn't in the Durance with them. There's more to this guy than she'd thought, but what? All right, she did appreciate the crown, and the belt. Without those, she would have been dead back in the sewers when that skeleton pygmy exploded. The gold ring of the leech was nice too. Maybe she wouldn't actually interrogate him when she found him... but she was going to find out, somehow.

After killing a pack of skeleton pygmies, they found a maul. To her surprise, she was strong enough to use it as a weapon. Wow. All this time, she'd never been strong enough for the really big stuff, and now she could go through killing things with a big ol' sledgehammer. On a whim, she put her poleaxe away. The next set of monsters was a pack of ghoul lords, led by a cursed one, with some skeleton pygmies. The hammer did impressive things to them, but she couldn't get the distance she needed from the exploding pygmies, or the speed to beat the fire chuckers down quickly. Back to the axe.

"Hey, Kasim?"

"Yeah?"

"Um... can I ask you something?"

A prickly feeling of fear went down the back of Kasim's neck. Kasim considered himself pretty good with the ladies. Maybe not the best, but good enough to know that when a girl says "can I ask you something?" you're in trouble. It'll be about curtains, or what the neighbors think of this pigsty we're living in, or why don't you wear that nice new robe I bought you for your birthday (because it makes me look faggy, that's why.) She was probably going to ask if the armor made her look fat. He could sense these things.

"Sure, go ahead," he answered, many possible answers swirling through his head, even though none of them had ever done any good.

"Do you think I've been acting weird, or anything?"

That's another good woman question with no good answer. Sometimes guys ask that, but with a guy, you can say, "Yep, you've been acting like a total freak for months," and he won't take it the wrong way. If you say that to a woman, she'll start crying and saying you don't love her and all that crap. Then Kasim thought, hey, wait! I don't love this girl, I don't even like her! I don't have to keep her happy; what's she gonna do, fire me? With new-found courage, Kasim bravely gave his answer.

"Yeah, you have been acting kind of strange."

"I guess. Yeah, I guess so. I've been acting like a total b!tch. Well... maybe not a total b!tch, I mean, Asheara really did ask for it."

When a woman says she's been a b!tch, never agree with her too quickly. You always have to act reluctant to agree. And if you say she hasn't been a b!tch, she'll think you're lying. That's because you are lying -- for a woman to realize she's been b!tchy, she has to have been REALLY b!tchy, so by the time a woman actually thinks she's been b!tchy, she sure as hell has been. Oh, and if a woman says a bad thing about another woman, you've got to agree with everything, no matter what.

"Well... maybe not that bad..."

"No, I've been acting so weird. I read in a book once that when an adolescent is placed under stress, she starts acting more like a kid. When I read it, I thought it was full of sh!t, but I guess maybe I have been acting like kind of a brat."

"That's just what Alkor says."

"No, this makes a lot of sense. After I found out my mother was probably dead, I never really got a chance to be sad, and now in Kurast, things are so bad I haven't had a chance to be sad at all. I mean, look at all these dead people."

Kasim realized he was standing on one. "Uh, yeah." Damn, there was hardly a place to stand where you weren't standing on somebody.

"If I started crying, I don't think I could stop, and I didn't even know any of these people. When you have to swallow that much emotion, it's got to come out, and it'll come out in bizarre ways. I mean, I've been really mean to Alkor and Asheara, and that Natalya woman was totally getting me paranoid. She can't be after me, why would she be? I haven't done anything wrong."

"Nope."

"So... I guess this was all just laughing so I don't cry. The desperate need for anything to distract me from where I am and what I'm doing. Because, what am I doing?"

"What?"

"I am going in against the lords of Hell. But I don't even believe in Hell. I mean, what's the point of having a place to put sinners and torture them for all eternity? Why bother? That's not a rational cosmology, that's a story to scare kids with and get them to behave."

"Uh-huh."

"Ok, there's probably a Hell, but it's just a place where the race we call 'demons' comes from. It might even be a nice place. The natives of Hell are invading here, and we have to protect ourselves from them. That's all."

Blinking, Kasim looked around at all the 'decorative elements' of the Durance. "Um..."

"This is all for intimidation. You know how barbaric tribes display the heads of their enemies around their villages?"

"Um..." Kasim still looked doubtful.

"You're right, it doesn't really matter. What matters is, I have been a b!tch and a brat, and I should be ashamed of myself. Especially for Asheara. I can't believe I stripped her naked in front of everybody like that."

At the mention of Asheara, Kasim became lost in memory, and didn't say anything.

"Ok, maybe she sort of dared me, but I didn't have to do it. Even though she acts all tough and stuff, she's got feelings like anybody else. I wouldn't want that done to me, even if I was acting like I deserved it. You know, the tough act was probably just her way of responding to the stress. Everybody responds differently. You've got to understand, when someone is stressed, they will behave strangely. We've all got to be more understanding."

She paused, so Kasim knew to nod at this point.

"In the end, all we really have is each other, so we've got to be patient with each other, even when we're acting stupid. I wonder if I should apologize? She'd probably hit me. No, she'd want to do worse than hit me. What do you think?"

With a start, Kasim realized she'd asked him a question. Her voice went up at the end, and then there was a pause like she expected him to respond. One of the most important things Kasim knew about women is: never let them know you weren't listening. They go ape-sh!t. Women will babble on and on about the stupidest crap, like babies and shopping and their women friends and stuff. They think you should be interested in it too, and have an opinion on it all. Over the years, Kasim had learned two sentences that answer almost any question a woman asks: 'Baby, you know I love you,' and 'What do you care what she thinks? You know you're better.' The only judgment call is knowing which one to use. Telling Xanthippe he loved her would be very bad. She'd either try to chop his balls off, or start getting all girly and stuff.

"What do you care what she thinks? You know you're better."

"Huh? Well... yeah, I guess, but what about apologizing to her?"

A clue! Kasim ran with it. "What do you have to apologize for?"

"For stripping her naked in front of God and everybody? Don't you remember?"

"Yeah..." Kasim's mind raced like a well-oiled machine. "Thing is... you know... the thing is, will she want you to apologize for that?"

"Oh, I get what you mean." Xanthippe thought about it for a while.

Smiling, Kasim tried his best to look wise and worldly.

"You know, you're right," Xanthippe finally said. "I don't need to apologize to her. She hit me first, and wasn't sorry about it at all. If I could laugh about her hitting me, she can learn to laugh too. Besides, she said she looked too good to wear much."

"Sure, yeah."

"You know something else? It doesn't matter if I look better or worse in a bikini than she does. I don't need to impress people like that. When I want to impress somebody, I can do it my own way."

"Yeah." Kasim felt relieved, like he'd just successfully navigated a minefield.

"And if I want to look good in a bikini... I can do that too."

"Sure! Damn, I was scared you were gonna ask me if the armor made you look fat or something. Which way do we go next?"

Blinking with confusion, Xanthippe stared... then looked down at herself. "Does it?"

"Does what?"

"Does this make me look fat?"

Oh, no. No, no. Cold dread gripped Kasim. Please, dear loving God, help me! Should he fake a heart attack? No, that never works. "Uh..."

"It's because of all this padding, isn't it? I don't look like this without it! I have to wear a lot because this stupid armor is too big. You understand that, don't you?"

Kasim's life was flashing before his eyes. "Uh..."

"You've seen me without armor. Wait, is this some trick to get me undressed or something?"

No, please not that, anything but that! "Uh..."

Xanthippe started fuming. "Just because Asheara runs around half-naked doesn't mean I'm going to. She can do what she wants, that's ok, but don't start thinking that's what women are all about! Are you listening to me? Hey, get back here, I'm talking to you!"

To his immense relief, Kasim found some more giants. For the rest of their trip through the Durance, Kasim kept a good distance ahead. And pretended he couldn't hear her. Though on a trip back to town, Kasim dropped by the Flayer pit to talk with Vanji.

"Hey."

Vanji blinked back into consciousness. "Hey."

"You gotta help me, man. I am the most miserable guy in existence."

"I kinda doubt that," Vanji said, looking at the Flayers.

"You don't understand, man. I went there."

Vanji's eyes widened. "Oh, man. You poor bastard."

"Can you, like, spot me for a day or two?"

"No fvcking way, dude. You're on your own."

"You can't leave me like this, man! Look, I'll pay you."

"Not enough gold in the world." Vanji shook his head. "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not moving."

Dejected, Kasim went back to Xanthippe. She was ignoring him, which suited him fine. One of their finds was interesting. It looked like a short sword, but Cain explained that it was a Gladius, a sword of exceptional quality, and magic to boot. He'd never seen one in Kurast before. Xanthippe kept it; maybe she could get something out of the three chipped-gem recipe and this sword.

Back in the Durance, Xanthippe and Kasim finally got to the basement where the Horadrim had originally imprisoned Mephisto. Now embodied in Sankekur, patriarch of the Zakarum, Mephisto ruled from his prison. A few more council members were down there with him, and a crowd of ghouls, but Mephisto himself was all alone, next to a red portal full of screaming faces. His brothers were gone; probably through the portal. After the trouble Kurast and the Zakarumites had been, Mephisto himself was easy. He hardly even had a chance to say anything.

After smashing Mephisto down, Xanthippe and Kasim found a lot of treasure, and the red portal. While ferrying treasure, a strange, translucent spirit appeared, and took a swing at Xanthippe. It missed, then disappeared, and she couldn't find it again. What was it? There was something else in here... something waiting very impatiently. When Mephisto died, he disappeared in a pile of valuables and pulverized bone fragments, but there was something else there on the ground. Where he'd died were three human skulls. They were white, clean, perfect in every way, unlike the other random bones in the Durance. Whose were they? Were these three connected with The Three in some way? Something about this was very, very wrong... but what was going on?

Cain had no idea what the spirit might be, or whose skulls might be lying on the floor. The portal was the most pressing matter. It must be going to Hell, and the surviving brothers would bring all their legions through it if it was allowed to exist. Usually, the only way to close these portals is from the other side. Xanthippe stood for a while, staring at the portal. The horde of screaming faces in its blackness was... hellish, in the full, religious sense of the word. What if I'm wrong, she thought? What if I'm really marching into the worst nightmare imaginable? What other choices do I have? None. Xanthippe went into Hell.

Concluding thoughts:

1. Act III is fairly easy with a fast character. Those Flayers really favor speed.
2. Maybe I could start a column: "Kasim's Advice to the Lovelorn".
3. Has anyone else noticed those three skulls lying on the ground after you kill Mephisto? I'm betting they're foreshadowing for Diablo III.
4. The Dark Library updated their story index, and it looks like the Mizor stories are not there. I think I will post the rest of part 2 here, and maybe the others as well. This is a good forum, full of worthy people, and I'm glad to be here.