Mizor (Act III)

Template:Mizor nav Glorious Kurast, huh? The dockside only had enough space for one ship, all the rest was overgrown. Mizor normally wouldn't see anything wrong with this, but this growth was not natural. For one thing, the dock obviously wasn't old or abandoned, but had been in use within the year. For another, he could put his paw on the trunk of a tree and feel it growing, its woody fibers twisting like living rope as it sprouted black leaves up to the overcast sky. Lut Gholein was bad, with monstrous beasts plaguing the desert, but this... nature itself seemed to have been taken into league with the demonic invasion. It was unimaginable how such a thing could happen, but here it was.

As Mizor stood staring at the impossible green corruption curling like claws around the docks, a small, thin man greeted him.

Hratli: "Well. As sanity is in such short supply here, I suppose you must be our savior, and the greatest of all men. Welcome to Kurast, traveler. I am Hratli, smith and enchanter."

Paige: "Thanks... say, aren't smiths a little... bigger, usually?"

Hratli: "That would be true, if madness were not the course of our days here. I am, as you see, a pathetic specimen, who appears unsuited to his craft. Our finest healer is tall and powerful, with hands that can crack the strongest betel nuts, while a great warrior, a slender woman, stands on our southern docks and does nothing all day. Nothing is as it should be."

Mizor: (Looking at tree as it grows six inches taller during Hratli's speech.) "Auhh."

Hratli: "Your words are full of wisdom. I could learn much from your sage council. You should let others know of your arrival. They will be overjoyed."

No one on the docks was particularly happy to see them, but no one was ever happy to see Mizor the first time he came to a town. There were quite a few people wandering the docks like lost souls, with nothing to eat but fish and bananas. Besides the healer and the warrior (who certainly didn't look the part), there was a hermit-like alchemist who threw rocks at Mizor until he went away, and a mercenary battle-mage who obviously didn't catch colds easily. Maybe it was her way of dealing with the warm and sticky weather. Deckard Cain had come over with them; didn't he have anything better to do, like go somewhere else? Oh well, at least he was good for figuring out item enchantments.

Moving off the docks onto land, Mizor saw, up ahead, a man stumbling into the jungle. He was completely covered in a rough brown robe and cowl, but the aura of menace he radiated was unmistakable... this had to be the wanderer who was host to Diablo! The Krakatoan Body Slam would have been the move of choice, except that the wanderer vanished as Mizor approached. Drat. But they were catching up with him! Mizor was at least a month behind at Rogue's pass, and a few days behind at Tal Rasha's tomb. Now, he had finally caught up to Diablo, and would surely overtake him before he'd reached Mephisto! Unless something went wrong, but what could possibly happen?

Mizor led his group along a river; it was better than trying to make their way through the jungle. The greenery was growing even faster beyond the dockside, and sometimes, buried in the green, Mizor could see a house or other structure, only recently abandoned. This was not a virgin jungle, but had been the suburbs of the city. Now, it was full of birds with skull faces, gigantic mosquitoes, and psychopathic midgets with blowguns. The midgets were the most annoying, they were horrifically fast. Mizor could run up to one, swing his axe, and it would have run away by the time the blow came down. None of the monsters could really hurt Mizor, though they all tried as hard as they could.

One of the skull birds was carrying around a little jade statue of a barbaric warrior. How, Mizor did not know, but how had that midget been carrying a poleaxe? Cain said that Meshif collected jade, so they took it over to his ship. It turns out that it was the very rare #47 of a 60-statue set put out by Steroid Stud magazine. Meshif was so happy to complete his collection, he gave Mizor a frilly little filigree statuette of a golden bird in exchange. It was all very odd, but it would explain why Meshif was so well-built for a sea captain, if he read muscle magazines. Maybe he'd picked it up in the navy. Alkor the alchemist gave Mizor a potion in exchange for the bird. It was very tasty and good.

Deeper in the jungles, giant spiders had built huge underground nests to incubate their eggs. Cain said the spiders had once been much smaller, and harmless; yet another example of how the corruption of demons could taint even the purity of animals. Mizor went through both of the nests they found, killing huge, venomous spiders and crushing their eggs, when he found something locked in a chest: a human eye, but the iris was red. It felt much tougher than a normal eye had a right to be, too, so Mizor took it back to Cain to ask about.