Bodiccea (Chapter 35)

Template:Bodiccea nav The Plains of Despair look just like the Outer Steppes, only with more buildings and a few recognizable landscape features. A few Doom Knights and a pair of Corpulents met them at the gate. As usual, Bodiccea headed straight into the greatest concentration and started Fending them off, while Heather hung back and plinked away. Phoebe stayed back on the stairs, watching. It was a routine fight except for when one of the Corpulents ate a dead knight and spit up on Heather. Bodiccea gave her a potion after it was over.

"Now," Phoebe said with a condescending sneer as Heather drank, "can you guess what you did wrong this time? Go ahead and try."

While trying to scrape the worst of the half-digested knight off of Heather, Bodiccea muttered, "I guess I'm just too stupid, Battle Mistress Phoebe. Heather, promise me you'll try to dodge those in the future, huh? Corpse spitters have easily the most disgusting attack in the whole game before you hit act V."

Heather squeezed a slime-covered vertebra out of the collar of her mail. "I'll try, Miss B."

"BODICCEA! You will listen to me when I am speaking to you!"

"I'm listening, Battle Mistress Phoebe. You're about to tell me how stupid I am, again."

After a short pause, Phoebe continued, in a slightly less strident tone of voice. "You must think I'm here only to make life hard for you. I have come as a handmaiden of Athulua, our Goddess. You do not know it, but I am here to help you. Would I leave a heavenly reward behind and descend into the bowels of Hell just to plague you?"

With no pause, Bodiccea quietly said, "Yes."

"You never understood," Phoebe growled. "None of you did. Before you were born, life was hard, and the trials we suffered forged us anew. Without those trials --"

"No, you don't understand!" Bodiccea snapped. "You died still fighting wars that were over 50 years ago! Nobody's trying to kill each other anymore! Now the fights are in bedrooms and kitchens and temples and business offices, and you don't win them at spear point. They call that 'spousal abuse' and arrest you for it now."

Phoebe snorted. "Those laws should never have been extended to men. If you knew ANYTHING about what they did to us..."

"That was a compromise to end the fighting. You know men: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

"That is a lie stupid women tell themselves," Phoebe snorted. "Women who seek to be the equals of men lack ambition. And little girls who try to distract me with ramblings about men are going to fail. What did you do wrong in this battle?"

Bodiccea sighed. "Not a clue, Battle Mistress Phoebe."

"Which of your foes was the most dangerous? Most capable of inflicting serious injury?"

After a moment's thought, Bodiccea said, "The Corpulents."

Phoebe smiled sarcastically. "Why?"

"The corpse-spitting thing."

"Very perceptive. Are they dangerous in any other way?"

Bodiccea shrugged. "Not really. They've got a melee attack, but it's weak."

"My, what a font of knowledge you are. Now, how did you try to control the battle?"

"By running up to them and attacking."

"Mm-hm. How did your most dangerous foes react to your stratagem?"

Chewing her lip, Bodiccea replied, "They broke away in two different directions. I went to get one, the other came back and got Heather."

"Ah, a potential flaw. And what might have happened if you had used lightning to extend your reach beyond the range of your spear? Or stood your ground over the corpses?"

"Then... Heather's clothes might not be such a stinky mess."

"It's my fault anyway," Heather said. "I should have moved out of the way."

"It is not, Heather. People get hurt in fights. It happens."

"It happened when you did not anticipate your opponent!" Phoebe angrily announced. "In the future, when you meet Corpulents, or any other variety of corpse-spitter, what are you going to do?"

Bodiccea rolled her eyes, and replied, "Kill the Corpulent first?"

"Not always possible."

"Freeze everything first so there aren't any corpses?" Bodiccea smirked.

"Too item dependent. You're not a Sorceress! Next uneducated guess?"

"Buy a Holy Freeze merc so they can't get to the corpses fast enough?"

Phoebe scowled. "Depending on an unreliable hireling? What if he gets himself killed?"

"Ok, taunt the Corpulents into coming close and dying!"

Finally, Phoebe walloped her and bellowed, "CAN YOU BE EDUCATED AT ALL?!?"

"Sure," Bodiccea stood back up again with a calm smile. "I learned something new today: you're a lot easier to piss off now that you're not old." Eyes closed, she folded her hands together before her, her face a mask of Zen-like tranquillity. "Anger is a weapon only for your opponent, grasshopper."

"Oh, no you don't," Phoebe grinned, seething. "I knew all the tricks before you were born, little girl. I'm going to make a halfway-decent fighter out of you if it kills you."

"Yes, Battle Mistress Phoebe," Bodiccea smirked.

"When you face Corpulents," Phoebe shouted, "isolate them! Strike first with lightning, so your other foes will be too busy to surround you. Then, once the Corpulent is dead, Fend off the rest. Since you have neglected to learn Lightning Strike, you will use Jab until such time as you have learned it. Do I make myself clear?!"

"Yep!"

If she noticed the impertinent form of address, Battle Mistress Phoebe gave no sign. "Now find something to demonstrate on! I want to see if anything I said leaked through that thick skull of yours."

Their next encounter was a lone Flesh Spawner. Bodiccea had been hoping she wouldn't see any of those; they're gross, disturbing, and just plain wrong on so many levels. The thing only got a chance to spit out one young before it got Jabbed to death. The running around that always accompanies combat stirred up a nest of Burning Souls; Bodiccea had to run each one down. Once again, Phoebe reminded her of Lightning Strike. Stupid things are immune to lightning in Hell difficulty anyway...

When they found the entrance to the City of the Damned, Bodiccea wanted to go in and find the waypoint, so they could return to the fortress and get some sleep. Phoebe would have none of it.

"Many's the sleepless night we passed back then," she was reminiscing. "Three hours out of every 3 days was enough for us. I remember one time -- where are you going?!"

Bodiccea was ambling down the steps. "I see the waypoint from here. I'll just go get it."

"You will do no such thing! You are not finished here, little girl!"

"But I can see the waypoint from here!" Bodiccea lied. "Besides, didn't you once tell me how important it was to establish beachheads close to enemy territory?"

"That does not involve leaving an assault unfinished! Your main objective is the angel Izual, you are not to deviate from that!"

"But I see the -- EEP!"

Two packs of Abyss Knights came out from behind separate buildings. Before she could blink, Bodiccea was chilled, poisoned, and her health bulb was falling dangerously low. She ran to the nearest knight and hit him with Fend. That helped some... until the Fend bug kicked in. She started whiffing in slow motion as the knights blasted her from a distance. Once again, Heather came to her rescue, killing a knight, then two, then a third, and attracting a lot of fire. Then Bodiccea unchilled, and switched to Jab to get the knights one at a time.

Both Heather and Bodiccea needed healing potions this time. As they came back up the stairs, Phoebe quietly said, "And what about the waypoint?"

Grinning through tightly clenched teeth, Bodiccea said, "Battle Mistress Phoebe, I decided that your assessment of the situation was correct. We really should finish off the Plains of Despair before we head down into the city."

"My, my!" Phoebe acted very surprised. "Why, what's that? It's as though I felt a cool breeze. Goodness gracious, is that snow falling, down here?"

"Ha, ha," Bodiccea grumbled.

Once the sarcasm had dropped to levels compatible with human life, they went to the Plains of Despair. There were enough identify scrolls lying around to keep Cain almost completely idle, and enough town portal scrolls to fill Bodiccea's tome; she sold it and bought another. They found a few curious items, but not much. Mostly, they spent a long time chasing Burning Souls into knots of knights and Flesh Spawners.

Clearing the plains took them all night and long into the next morning; Bodiccea and Heather began to wobble from lack of sleep. Of course, Phoebe felt it was doing them a world of good to drive on, not giving in to physical weakness. She told them so repeatedly; after about the time the sun should have been rising, Bodiccea couldn't think straight enough to answer her. Finally, as they approached the last corner of the map, a strangled voice growled, "Save yourself!" Izual and one Flesh Spawner came out. Bodiccea switched to Jab and went to work. Heather killed the spawner. Phoebe sat the fight out. Again.

It took forever to kill Izual -- it always does. The instant he was dead, he started laughing. "Tyrael wa --"

"Yeah," Bodiccea mumbled, grabbed his drop, and portaled back to the fortress. "Hey, Tyrael."

"Tha --"

"Yay!" Before Phoebe could say a thing, Bodiccea dropped a skill point into Valkyrie, and cast the summoning spell. Phoebe vanished, and someone new appeared. She was tall, maybe taller than Bodiccea herself, with honey-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Bodiccea smiled blearily. "Hi."

"Hello," the new Valkyrie said with an icy smile.

"Are you gonna be my buddy, or do I hafta blow my next skill point?"

"Ahem," Tyrael said.

"Oh, yeah," Bodiccea leaned on her spear, listening to the rest of Tyrael's dialogue.

"Thank you, hero, for putting Izual's tortured spirit to rest. May the Light protect you, and the powers of Heaven shine upon your path. But, if what you tell me is true, then I fear that we have been played for fools all along. Izual helped Diablo and his Brothers trick me into using the Soulstones against them... Now the Stones' powers are corrupted. With the combined powers of the Soulstones under their control, the Prime Evils will be able to turn the mortal world into a permanent outpost of Hell!"

After the last echoes of Tyrael's pronouncement resounded through the Pandemonium Fortress, there was only silence... and snoring. As they watched, Bodiccea silently slumped to the floor. Heather was already down.

"Hmm," Tyrael intoned. "It seems I am not much of a speaker."

Cain sighed. "More so than I. I never get to finish."

The new Valkyrie laughed. "Let them rest. They have suffered. I am eager to tell them how they could have avoided it, but it can wait."