Xanthippe
Act 1Chapter 1Coming from the west to the Rogue's Pass, the land slopes almost imperceptibly upwards to the base of a range of high mountains. A typical alluvial flood plain, most of Khanduras is well-watered and fertile, the breadbasket of the western world, with many small farming towns along the rivers that wash down from the mountains. The people are simple and good, living and working among gentle rolling hills and lightly wooded dales. This is the last place you'd expect a demonic invasion to begin. The Zann Esu oracles had decreed that the Emergence of the Three Prime Evils was at hand. But you didn't need to be psychic to know that the Rogue's Pass was closed, nothing was going up the mountains, and there were wild and frightening rumors of what was coming down, so it was time to act. Among the Zann Esu, Xanthippe was never the best student. It's hard to be a good student when you're smarter than your teachers, only the little goody-goodies get the praise of the witch mistresses. When the oracles said it was time, she was sent to the Rogue's Pass, probably just to get rid of her. At the entrance to the pass, a rude little fortress had been hastily cadged together from timber and rope; it smelled like cattle and chickens, not blood and guts, so there must be living people there. The camp was full of Rogues, the women archers who had built a fortified monastery across the pass, and made huge amounts of money charging merchants and travelers for the privilege of going through. You don't need to produce a thing to become rich, all you need is position. A well-heeled gentleman greeted Xanthippe, welcoming her to the camp, and was kind enough to explain his position. Demons had taken over the monastery, and corrupted many of the Rogues. The pass and the monastery were full of monsters, and no one could get through, including this fellow's caravan of merchants. Heaven forbid that the wheels of commerce might not be allowed to run smoothly. For the sake of rich people everywhere, this evil must be stopped. The poor people were probably all dead, but they never really matter anyway. Before sallying forth, Xanthippe decided to have a look around camp, and see what paragons of humanity she'd be risking her life to save from the perils of an economically disadvantageous position. There was a tall, strapping redhead in scale armor; she looked pretty full of herself. The High Priestess of the Rogues was weeping beside a small tent. The blondest girl she'd ever seen, with bigger arms than any girl should have, was beating out arrowheads on an anvil. And then there was the caravan's other merchant. Xanthippe recognized him, though she was sure he wouldn't know her. Goody, she thought. This might be fun.
Chapter 2Outside of camp, Xanthippe stalked among the puddles, looking for prey. This had obviously been farmland a short while ago; it was all fenced off from the surrounding woods, and a house was visible in the distance. Any fortified area will need farmland surrounding it, with peasants working hard in the fields to provide the warriors and merchants with the means for their livelihood. The crops had been harvested recently, probably while still unripe, so there was only trampled greenery, a few fruit trees, and a lot of puddles. Stalking the wasteland were some Zombies. Dimwitted things, with the attention span of a gnat. Xanthippe smirked and prepared the fire bolt spell. "Eat fiery death!" she hissed, and a tiny ball of flame shot from her staff, piffling against the nearest Zombie. Its eyes rolled, blinked, and it looked around. The bolt had made little impression; maybe the Zombies were wet from the recent rain. She threw a few more; some missed, some hit, and did just about as much good. They started stumbling towards her, mumbling "brains... brains..." Stupid witches, this spell is useless! Might as well just beat them to death with this useless stick... Now, that was an idea, and it worked much better than any of the stupid tricks the witches tried to teach her. Beating them to death was vulgar, crude, and artless, but the result was three dead zombies and one intact sorceress. And, damn it, it felt good. However, she was going to need something bigger than a sorceress' stick to kill these things; maybe she should check out the farmhouse, there might be a carving knife or a cleaver in there. The house had actual demons in it, the first Xanthippe saw; little red guys, with little swords, and squeaky little voices. They were going through the kitchens when Xanthippe walked in and smacked one over the head. It didn't seem as impressed with her light little staff as the Zombies had been, and slashed her across her exposed stomach! Crap, why did the witch clan decide on a halter top and mini skirt for a uniform? She ran outside; the little guy followed, and got thwacked on the head again. After a brief exchange, the little demon died. The others ran -- but now Xanthippe had a sword. Inside the house, there was a padded coat in the closet, with a sash to tie it closed; much better battle gear than a halter top. With the sword and a pot lid pressed into service as a shield, Xanthippe killed the rest of the demons. *And* she didn't risk setting fire to the house while she was inside it, either. The rest of the farm was less fun, only more Zombies and some Quill Rats. To her surprise, there was a cave in the middle of the field, but then she noticed that the mountains were mostly sedimentary rock. Moisture blowing in from the ocean was stopped by the mountains, so rain would be frequent up here, and could easily wash out a cave in the right kind of rock. Judging from the tracks, there were a lot more monsters in the cave. Going through it, killing right and left, Xanthippe noticed that some of the little squeakers shot fire bolts. Not that it did them any good, but if an enemy wants to do something stupid, Xanthippe was more than willing to let them. There were some huge, hairy things down there too, who took a lot to kill; she needed something bigger than this little sword. As she was beating one last zombie to death, she thought of a design for a new weapon, something that would put some distance between her and a foe, and pack a powerful hit. Simple, elegant, and awesomely powerful. Maybe she could name it, "Xanthippe's Mangler." On her return to town, the Rogues' priestess thanked her for clearing out the cave, and ordered that Xanthippe should have a place to sleep among the Rogue warriors. More importantly, she let Xanthippe study the books she'd managed to carry out of the monastery. There weren't many to choose from, but Xanthippe did learn a few fun facts, including a way to send cold energies swirling in a shield around her body. Not only would it deflect enemy attacks, but rain would freeze before it hit her and she wouldn't get soaked. Then, she went to the blacksmith with her new weapon design after borrowing a pen and paper to draw a picture of it; that muscle girl didn't look too bright. "It's basically a sword, but on a pole, so you have a lever arm. Archimedes was the first to describe the properties of the lever, and a long lever arm provides a mechanical advantage, giving you power with little energy expenditure. Now, the blade will be heavy, so it..." Charsi looked at the drawing. "Oh, a bardiche," and handed Xanthippe exactly what she'd had in mind. "That what you were thinking of?" Caught in mid-sentence, Xanthippe looked over the heavy, sturdy blade, mounted on a long wooden pole, with an iron butt on the foot. "Uh, yes, exactly." "That's great, not many people use those. I always use a hammer when I need to bash heads. It's what I know. But I always keep one or two bardiches in stock, they work pretty well if you're strong enough. Are you ok?" The heavy head of the bardiche had sunk to the ground while Xanthippe tried to hold it. "Oh, I'm just a bit tired. Haven't used some of these muscles for a few years now." "Yeah, I kind of wondered about that," Charsi said with a little frown. "Aren't you a sorceress, though? Shouldn't you be, like, blasting them with fire and stuff?" "It's raining, the fireballs don't work well when it's wet." The bardiche was of superior quality, but it was also very heavy, and all Xanthippe's muscles were very sore. She hadn't considered how much force it would take to get a heavy blade on the end of a long pole moving quickly enough to kill. The Zann Esu mage clan considered mere physical effort beneath them, but damn it, this weapon looked deadly. Slicing them to bits was so much more satisfying; you didn't have to stay calm and focus on a bunch of fancy words, just go in and kill. However, using such a weapon would take a lot of effort; just lifting it was difficult. She stowed the bardiche under the bunk she was using, and fell asleep very, very quickly.
Chapter 3Xanthippe awoke before dawn, as some of the Rogues were leaving for their guard shifts. She might as well get an early start on the day too, and while it was still dark, was making her way across the fields. Well, she did make one stop first. Gheed's cart was shaking from the snoring inside. Loosening the axle stays made it much less noisy. Satisfied that she'd made the camp a happier place for everyone, Xanthippe stepped out onto the fields and made her way to a gap in the fence. One of the Rogues was there, a girl named Flavie, obviously serving as an advance guard. "Morning. Say, why does Kashya have you way out here by yourself, anyway?" "Hello there. I'm here in case anything dangerous comes close to camp." Xanthippe looked a little surprised. "There were demons down there behind you. They were hiding in a cave, down in the middle of that field there." "We know about the cave. Those demons aren't a problem. Andariel keeps all the dangerous ones close to her, in the monastery. Kashya figures they'll come out when she has enough to feel safe without all of them." Now Xanthippe was starting to get angry. "You knew about the cave, and didn't tell me? Some of those bastards in there were dangerous!" "They're not dangerous, just shoot 'em and they die. We didn't tell you anything because you didn't ask for anything." "If the demons weren't dangerous... why didn't you Rogues go in and kill them?" "Akara said you were sent here to save the monastery. Don't know how she knows about you. She said you needed a test, to see if you were brave enough." So, it was all a test, was it? "Listen, I didn't go into that cave because someone sent me, I went in because I wanted to. I didn't even talk to your priestess. Unlike some people here, I am actually doing something about the infernal invasion." Flavie just shrugged. "Whatever. When you arrived, Akara told Kashya not to send any more of us out, that you were here to help us, so I assumed you knew you'd been sent here with a mission." "I'm on a mission, all right," Xanthippe snarled. "And I don't want any interference." In a thoroughly foul mood, Xanthippe stalked out, looking for something to kill. Flavie was right about the monsters beyond being more dangerous, but not all of them were monsters. Some of them were Rogues. Their clothes were ragged, covered with filth, and they looked feverish and sick from exposure. As soon as they saw Xanthippe, they rushed to attack with crude weapons, howling like dogs. How did this happen? Andariel was supposed to have corrupted them, but this was complete degradation, they didn't even act human. Killing them was no pleasure, it was more of an act of pity. The demons were burning the farmhouse here, probably just for the fun of it. But there was good equipment elsewhere; one of the Rogues had managed to keep some armor. Hard leather armor, or cuirbouilli; made by boiling leather in oil, then wax, and laying it over a mold to dry and harden. And because these were Rogues, the breastplate was the proper shape, and not too oversized with enough padding. Off to one side of the plain was a graveyard. As you might expect, the place was full of skeletons and zombies, and the tallest, most evil-looking Rogue of them all -- she even had horns growing out of her head, and her teeth had grown out into points. She was quick, vicious, could shoot fiery arrows, and raise zombies from the graves. Running after her, dodging Zombies every step of the way, Xanthippe wished dearly that she had something bigger than one little sword, it wasn't even that long. After the demon Rogue from beyond hell finally died, Kashya stopped Xanthippe to speak with her. "I can't believe you killed Blood Raven!" "Who's Blood Raven?" "She was raising Zombies in the graveyard, probably an army to attack our camp." "Oh, her. Piece o' cake." "That's surprising, considering you hold your sword like it was a club." "So I have an unorthodox technique. Maybe I'm ahead of the curve." "Maybe you should consider using a club. Buy a mace from Charsi, you can probably handle that." Charsi had some maces. Xanthippe could handle one. She did not buy any. Not even the Vicious mace; she liked the title, but bought a saber. It was of superior quality, with two sockets, she could put a couple of the gems she'd found in them. But while she was walking back to her trunk, a thin, pale man carrying an amazingly full backpack waved her over. "Hi. Who the hell are you?" "And hello to you too, little lady! I'm a mule!" This man was not fuzzy, did not have long ears, nor a peevish disposition. What he did have was a pack full of some of the most amazing-looking *stuff* Xanthippe had ever seen. "Sure you are. Are you selling?" "Heavens no, missy, I'm giving it all away!" I'm just a mule (sing to "I'm just a bill" by Schoolhouse Rock.)
Yes, I'm only a mule, I'll provide you with the right tool. Well, it's a long, long journey From the Rogue camp, you see. I'll sit around here, Collecting no fee! But I know I'll do you good someday... Oh no, I'll never duel, I only eat gruel, I'm a mule!
"No, no! But I carry things around for other people! Great heroes, who find wonderful things that they don't want, but are sure someone else would just love." "And they sell them to you." "Oh, no, sweetness! They give them to me, and I give them away to other deserving folks when the time is right. It's like christmas!"
Yes, I'm only a mule, And I know that you will think me a fool. I keep things that others Find they really can't use. Things so pretty and lovely, They'd make the headline news! In the meantime, my back is killin' me... I'm your magical pool, Generous as a rule, I'm a mule!
"I'd love to! But you're too tiny and weak to use any of this stuff yet! But don't you worry, one day you'll grow up big and strong, and can take some of this heavy load off of me!"
Yes, I'm only a mule, Don't you think this is a big shiny jewel? Take these here runestones, A Tir and an El; Put them in your saber, They will serve you well. That's a runeword! Look it up with Akara. I hope that someday you'll rule, Maybe even be "kewl!" I'm a mule!
The stones fit into the sockets in her saber, and the weapon instantly transformed. Now, the metal gleamed with a high polish, and bluish light seemed to glitter off the scalpel-like edge. It was very pretty... but Xanthippe couldn't wield it. The item's power was too great for her, she wasn't strong enough for it! Grumbling at the stupidity of that mule guy, she went back to Charsi's and bought the vicious mace. And avoided Kashya. Before she went to sleep, she heard two of the Rogues talking about some hard work they'd had to do that day. It seems that when Gheed vaulted his fat rear out of bed, his wagon, obviously overtaxed by the burden of carrying him all these years, slipped off its axles and landed in a mud puddle. Dreadful. But Warriv asked the Rogues to lift the wagon out and fix the axles, which they were nice enough to do, but it was a lot of work for them. That was too bad, maybe something less destructive would have to happen to Gheed.
Chapter 4When she woke up, every muscle in Xanthippe's body was screaming. She'd been up late the previous night, trying to get the swing of her bardiche. The thing was so heavy, her hands would slip off the shaft, and once she almost threw it into Charsi's pit of hot coals. Her hands were blistered, her back and shoulders felt like they'd been in a vise, she just wanted to lie there and ache for the rest of the day, and maybe an extra day for whimpering. Exerting herself far more than anyone should be expected to, she opened her eyes, and saw one of the Rogues standing next to her bunk. "Kashya's assigned me to keep on eye on you. When are we going out?" "Right now." Xanthippe pulled herself out of bed. "You go do your guard stuff or whatever. I'll thank Kashya later." Stretching helped her muscles a bit; at least, it hurt in a different way. Hey, she could touch her toes for the first time in years. Looking back, Xanthippe noticed that Rogue still hanging around. "Is my ass that interesting?" The Rogue blinked, then looked away. "I'm Gaile. I'm supposed to follow you. Kashya thinks you're going to get in trouble." That made Xanthippe laugh. "Of course I'm going to get in trouble. Unless you think killing a demon lord won't be trouble. If Kashya is so concerned, she can get off her ass and help me herself." Leaders who sit back and send underlings to do the dangerous stuff shouldn't be in a position of leadership, in her opinion. And only idiots follow leaders who are afraid to lead. Once they were out in the field, Xanthippe found that Gaile must have been named for the wind blowing through the empty space between her ears. She kept getting in the way of Xanthippe's charges, standing between her and the demons, just interfering with everything. Near an escarpment, a ring of standing stones rose from the damp earth. They radiated magical power, of an unfamiliar kind. At the center of the ring, another group of obnoxious little bastard demons was screaming "Rakanishu!" These guys are so tedious. Kill one, they all run away, kill another, they all run away again, ad infinitum. Gaile shot the purple little bastard, and he started spitting lightning! Xanthippe, who was standing in a puddle at that moment, got the shock of her life. "AHHH! Don't shoot the purple one! Shoot one of the other ones!" "What?" "Don't shoot the purple one!" "But he's the most dangerous one! We've got to concentrate on him," Gaile yelled, and kept shooting. Xanthippe quaffed one potion, then another. Gaile finally switched targets, and they killed off all the bastards except the purple one. He was very tough. Xanthippe would run up to him, hit him once, and run away to drink another potion. Gaile stood there and shot, lightning crackling through the rain. Cursing and hissing to stop shooting, Xanthippe elbowed Gaile in the stomach and, when her mouth opened, poured one of her healing potions down her throat. "Just keep back and keep hitting him!" Gaile said. "No, you've got to keep moving and dodge the lightning bolts!" "They come in too fast!" "Quit standing in the puddle if you're gonna do that!" "There's puddles everywhere! I've almost got him!" Snarling, Xanthippe tried to hop back to little Rakanishu, avoiding the sparkling, wandering bolts, and crush his head, but she just couldn't hit the little bastard hard enough. Pounding and pounding, he kept spitting lightning and Xanthippe didn't even bother to use her shield, just kept grabbing potions off her belt and swallowing. Finally he died, but Gaile died too. Panting, staring at her dead body, Xanthippe wondered if she should even tell Kashya. She might assign another stupid Rogue to follow her around. According to a map Akara had, the mountain pass was beyond the field of standing stones, but there was a short cut. A cave in the escarpment led to a tunnel which surfaced in a wood very close to the monastery. The woods were very dark, and full of demons, including a huge group of hairy brutes around a withered old tree. They hit hard, and nearly killed Xanthippe; she reconsidered telling Kashya about Gaile. Having someone else, at least to take some of the hits, might not be so bad. First, though, there was the tree, which just screamed with magic, and had five strange symbols carved into its bark. Xanthippe copied them down. You never know what might turn out to be useful. The symbols on the tree, as it turned out, represented the stones of the standing circle. The circle was an old transport point, allowing travel to distant locations; a bit like the waypoints, but only along ley lines, and only to one destination. The Rogues had taken over the pass, not only for its economic value, but because it lay at the intersection of two ley lines, one of which also passed over the town of Tristram. That was where Diablo had resurfaced, and Deckard Cain the Elder, last of the Horadrim, lived there too. The Horadrim were legendary among mages, even the Zann Esu respected them. Not that this means much, the Zann Esu didn't always have their priorities straight, but if there was only one left, and he had personal knowledge of Diablo, seeking him out would be a very wise move. But since Diablo had probably roared through Tristram like a bonfire, approaching with caution would also be a very wise move. Time to see about getting another meat shield... another Rogue. "So, Gaile is dead," Kashya sneered. "And you're insisting it isn't your fault." "I don't suppose you thought to tell them about the wonder that is a healing potion? They're so handy when you're standing in a puddle and fighting a lightning beast." "I will allow you to hire one of my Rogues. One of them. And before you do, you are going to listen to me, and listen up good." Now Xanthippe got to sneer. "Oh, please, speak to me, mighty warrioress. Enthrall me with your tales of daring deeds around the campfire." She never saw it coming. The words were barely out of Xanthippe's mouth before she was flat on her back with a broken nose. Kashya stepped over Xanthippe, yanked her up by the hair, knocked her mace away, and spoke, punctuating each word with a hard slap to the face. "You. NEVER. Talk. To. Me. That. Way. NEVER!" Xanthippe kicked at her boots, flailed with her arms, and finally just hid her head behind her shield. That got her a knee right in her unprotected stomach. "Now, come here!" Kashya snarled. "If you take my women out into the field, you are going to learn which end of a sword is up!" Kashya dragged Xanthippe to her tent, still by the hair, and grabbed a sword. "When you hold a sword, you hold it like this!" Shoving the weapon into Xanthippe's hand, Kashya forced her fingers around the hilt and squeezed until she screamed. "The blade's weight falls forward when you swing! You do not chop with it, you slice! Like you're throwing the blade! Got it?" Xanthippe nodded. "Now, the polearm. You do NOT grip it like a staff! It is not a staff, Archimedes! You need leverage! Put your left hand here, above the butt. That's your fulcrum. Your right hand goes here, in the middle of the shaft. That's your impetus, that's where the force comes from! Then you chop. Not slice, chop!" Xanthippe chopped, like it was a big axe. "Good!" Kashya snarled. "I do not want to see you misusing another weapon again. Now go see Akara. And wipe that blood off your face." Akara clucked, and fixed Xanthippe's nose. "You must forgive Kashya, the loss of our monastery and so many of our warriors has been very hard on her." "Hard on her!? They're the ones who are lying around dead all over the place. Kashya just stands around by the fire and sends them out to die..." "Child, you do not understand the life of a warrior. Kashya did attempt an assault on the demon queen, in the catacombs of our monastery, and the meager few you see here are the only ones to survive. She has not sent anyone out to die, except perhaps those who might accompany you, and you must bear some responsibility for them." "Gee, I thought they were supposed to be responsible for me." "And there is the flaw in your thinking. Two warriors together must both bear responsibility for each other. Each works to cover the other's weak points. It is not a solitary way, you must trust completely. No one is simply a 'meat shield' for another." Xanthippe's face was red, and not from bleeding. Akara was a lot like the Zann Esu seers, only worse. The Sightless Eye had irritatingly good vision. Meanwhile, her new Rogue appeared. A nice blonde girl named Debi. "Like, hi! I've seen you around camp, it's so nice to meet you. You seem so, like, exotic, you know what I mean? You're a wizard, and Abhaya says you must be from Lut Gholein 'cause your skin's so dark, and I thought, this is really cool, I've never met anyone from there, I've heard it's really something, like, all mysterious. Do they have harems there?" Xanthippe frowned. "Yes, there are harems there." "Yeah, they must be so nice, all the silks and satin pillows and lounging around all day in a palace, with, like, swimming pools and parrots and cute monkeys to play with..." Debi babbled on while Xanthippe bought her some armor and a bigger bow. Kashya wouldn't hire her out with equipment; that belonged to the order, not the individual members. Can't let the order's property go, even if it might save the world. When they went through the gate to Tristram, Debi finally shut up; the remains of the town were a sobering sight. Cain, though, was still alive, hanging in a cage in the middle of town, being battered and jabbed at like a particularly amusing pinata. He was tougher than he looked, though, and cast a portal spell to ride the ley line back to the Rogue camp as soon as he had room to make the gestures. The rest of Tristram was nothing but fire and corpses, but after killing every monster there, Xanthippe was finally strong enough to use her Steel saber, and her bardiche. She tested the bardiche on a handy demon shaman. It split in half very nicely. She liked it. She liked it a lot.
Chapter 5Another morning, another new world of muscle pain. At least the cuts and burns weren't leaving scars, Akara was good for that. Xanthippe dragged herself out of bed to face a new day running; it would work out old aches, and add some new ones. After several stretches, she mused for a moment, then dropped to the ground for some push-ups. Her arms looked firmer now, there were visible muscles under the skin, though that might just be swelling. But she tried to do 10 push-ups. One of the Rogues, Shika, could do 100, or even 5 with only one hand. Four... five... six... siii... that rounds up to 10. Sit-ups were easier, she could already do 20 of those at a time. Debi was waiting outside. She wasn't one of her "roommates" from this tent. "Hi! What was all that grunting I heard?" "Maybe it was one of the chickens. Ready to go?" "Yep. Did you hear about Gheed?" "What about Gheed?" "Well, last night, at dinner, there was chicken stew, and after everybody ate, he started farting! I mean really, really, farting! You could hear them from Gaile's position! His coat was blasting out behind him and everything!" Xanthippe grinned. "Maybe that's what those noises were." "I swear, it must have been so funny! I think Warriv was wondering about you. This is, like, the third strange thing that's happened to Gheed since you got here." "What was the other one?" "When someone rubbed poison ivy inside his underwear?" Xanthippe silently shook her head. "Who would be cruel enough to do that?" "I dunno. Kashya just said she was glad she didn't wear underwear." Trying not to look disappointed, Xanthippe shrugged. "Well, I wasn't even in camp when those things happened, so Warriv shouldn't worry about me." "Warriv kind of wondered about someone smearing soap inside the bowl Gheed always uses. That's an old trick, he said." "Gee, I didn't know that." As they went through the waypoint, Xanthippe wondered about Kashya. Maybe poison ivy inside those nice, thigh-high boots she wears. Except she'd break my nose again, without any proof I even did it. Maybe I'll do something to her later; Kashya was actually halfway respectable. At least she knew what a fulcrum was. The advice Kashya had so tenderly bestowed upon Xanthippe turned out to be very good. She had held her weapons firmly before, with her fingers perpendicular to the shaft. But with her fingers diagonal to the weapon, her hand and wrist were looser, and she no longer just chopped and hacked. The saber almost seemed to leap in her hand, whipping out and slicing deep into enemies from its own weight; she hardly had to exert with her arm at all, merely guide the edge where she wanted it to go. Of course, the "Steel" saber was a really superior weapon, nicer than anything else available. When she switched to the bardiche, it also gave excellent results, putting her shoulders and back into chopping, and parrying like a staff when she needed it. Now, why didn't more mages use these things? Don't have the muscle for it? Debi kept up a constant stream of chatter through all the killing and death. "So, I was, like, so totally amazed 'cause of all the fireworks, and then it looked like this huge dragon came roaring into the courtyard! It was so cool!" "Uh-huh." Fireworks, a standard visiting wizard tactic for impressing local yokels. "And then it like exploded, and all these pretty paper flowers rained down on everybody! I got one, but it was kind of burned around the edge." Sloppily-made fireworks, too. "What about the mage?" "Oh, he got to eat at the high table, and they gave him his own room for free, and it was all, like, really neat! Did you ever have wizards where you were?" Xanthippe turned and stared at Debi. "Debi... I'm a witch, remember?" "Oh, yeah, they must have come by all the time! Wait, aren't you 'women only'?" "Yes," Xanthippe returned to hacking a goat demon to bits. "Women only. To escape from brutal, patriarchal domination. That way, we get a taste of brutal, matriarchal domination instead." "We're not dominated. Women don't do that." Xanthippe sighed. "Debi... why is your order called the Rogues?" "Oh, 'cause we're rogue women. Everyone started calling the sisterhood Rogues 'cause we don't do what men tell us to." "Exactly, men made society, for the enrichment of men. You, like the Zann Esu, left to make a society of your own in an isolated place. It's called radical separatism." Debi looked a bit confused. Eventually, she nodded. "Uh-huh." "All right. Now, when's the last time you disobeyed an order from Kashya or Akara?" Debi shook her head. "Akara is wiser than anybody. And Kashya always knows what to do. We all trust her." "So, you do what you're told." "Well... why wouldn't we? I mean, Akara is always right. She's the most blessed by the Sightless Eye, she knows better than anyone." Xanthippe nodded triumphantly. "So what you've got here is a society where the head is always right, and never to be questioned." "Um..." "Yet, when you have a traditional society, where the king, or 'father', is always right and never to be questioned, that's wrong and you should rebel? The only difference up here is that it's women who are on top. Does that make your society any better, just by putting different people on top?" In their wanderings through the marsh, they came to a ruined tower, and stopped beside it. Debi actually looked upset. "That is so not right! Akara is blessed by our goddess, that's better than any king!" "Don't get me started on religion. Ever heard of the divine right to rule? Everybody who rules claims they're ordained to rule, they know best, the only thing you should do is obey them. From the head of a family, right up to Akara or any king. Women do it as well as men." "Look, Akara is the wisest, purest, most... wise woman in the world, and Kashya always looks out for us. Women just don't have that, you know, need to dominate." "You've obviously never met the Zann Esu matriarchs. What is this place, anyway?" "Maybe your Zen Esus do, but never say something like that about Akara. It's just not true." Looking at the tower, Debi suddenly went pale. "Oh. This is the Countess' tower." "The Countess? Countess of where?" "No one knows her name anymore. She was a Countess, who came to escape her husband. The Order welcomed her, and she lived here. But girls started disappearing." "Disappearing?" "She was killing virgin girls and bathing in their blood. She'd drink it too. She thought it would keep her young forever." Xanthippe nodded. "Maybe she didn't flee here to escape her husband. No idea about her name or where she was from?" "Her name was stricken away a long time ago." A cellar door was all that was left inside the tower. It smelled pretty bad down there, maybe there were demons lurking in the dark. "And she was executed a long time ago, right?" "Yeah... I think." "I'll bet there are some demons hiding down there. Let's check it out." The first level looked like a wine cellar. Maybe this had been a winery before, there were reddish stains on the floor. There was a hidden door, now broken in, which led to a stairway down. Below were several levels of cellars, all full of bones. Hundreds of skulls were scattered on the floor, stuffed into wall niches, everywhere. The few whole skeletons looked so... tiny. To dig such deep cellars, and fill them all, this Countess must have been killing and killing for years. Didn't the Rogues' all-seeing Sightless Eye see what was happening? Or were the Rogues were so sure a woman could never do this, they never thought to look at one of their own? Maybe they just didn't see it was happening until it was too late. There were demons in the cellars. Goat demons, gory red ones, and many, many ghosts. The fixtures in the cellars were valuable, and there were some excellent weapons and armor. Both Xanthippe and Debi got new helmets out of the tower. At the bottom of the cellars, they found quite a bit more. A long hall, full of ghosts, held a cauldron of boiling hot blood; the smell was horrifying. Coins and valuables were scattered all over the floor; rings, combs, silver buckles, pendants and bracelets. In the back of the cellar, a few women, dressed in ragged servants garb, were huddled by the entrance to a final chamber. They were all very pale and thin, their flesh shrunk to their bones, and fell back into the chamber as Xanthippe advanced. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." Xanthippe was sure something much worse than those women was in there. If the servants were alive, the master must be with them. "No, no," Debi whispered, "she's supposed to be dead." Something laughed, and hissed, low and slow, "Your blood will boil." Maybe the Countess was dead, had been for years, she and her servants with her. Maybe Andariel had found her in there, and gave her a mockery of the life she'd been willing to kill hundreds of times over for. "Debi, she is dead. We've just got to go in there and remind her." Then the servants rushed out silently. They were terribly strong, and screamed in delight at the first sight of blood. A tall, beautiful, almost translucently white woman followed behind, with an... axe? Her voice hardly rose above a murmur. "Hold them... do not spill a drop." Xanthippe hardly knew where she found the strength. She tore away from the servants, dropped her saber, and snatched the bardiche off her back. Screaming the silence away, she charged straight at the Countess, swinging wildly, not even looking where the blows landed. Something crunched-- an axe bounced off her helmet-- all Xanthippe could see was red, but she kept swinging. An arrow whizzed past her ear, hands clawed at her back; Debi must be shooting the Countess, she jumped to the side to give her a clearer shot. There was an explosion of gore. More hands clawed at her; Xanthippe hacked and smashed in their direction, eyes shut tight against the blood. Spinning and whirling, suddenly the bardiche wasn't hitting anything. But there was still screaming... no, that was just her. She stopped and opened her eyes. The Countess was lying on the floor in pieces. She had burst like a bloated tick. The Countess' chamber held what must be her personal treasure; a lot of gold, and several items bearing the crest of a noble family line. Looking at the ornate emblem, Xanthippe knew she would probably have no love for them. But if the Countess was fleeing them, they must have known what she was. Before she returned to camp, she and Debi pried off, chopped off, or obliterated every crest and sign of who the Countess once was. Wiping her name away forever seemed perfectly fitting.
Chapter 6After disposing of the Countess, and her things, Xanthippe found herself quite wealthy. There wasn't much to spend money on in camp, except at Gheed's. Having never officially been near Gheed, this would be an excellent time for her to introduce herself. Having a full money pouch in view would ingratiate her quite nicely, if she remembered Gheed. "Hi there," Xanthippe smiled sweetly. "You stay away from me, you little [I want my mummy]. I don't know what I ever did to you, but I know it's you!" "Have you been having some problems?" "I haven't had a rash like this since that night at The Slippery Fist. Who are you, anyway? I don't remember seeing you before." "What, they don't have girls like me at The Slippery Fist?" "What a man does to entertain himself in a strange town is his own business. I'll thank you to mind yours and stay out of mine!" "I always do! Mind, I mean." She smiled coyly, and bounced a bit. "I've got a little problem." "You're telling me?" But the bounce made Xanthippe's purse jingle loudly. It was practically falling off her belt. "However, I'm always glad to help a young lady in need!" "Well, if you've got something good enough..." "Always the finest! I guarantee it." "Well..." Xanthippe drew in the dirt with her toe. "How's your... equipment?" "Don't even try, little girl. I don't impress easily." "I know. You like the big busty ones who spank you." Oh, what an interesting shade of purplish-red Gheed turned. "Oh, so you're from that line of work." His eyes narrowed. "Yes... one of the girls from the Silver Moon house." "Nope." "The Black Swan Oasis?" "Try again." "You're not old enough for the Areb Shayar; they have more class." "You idiot," Xanthippe laughed. "I'm not old enough for any of them! If you knew anything, you'd know mages have to study for at least 7 years, and 7 years ago, I was 10." Chuckling very unpleasantly, Gheed sneered, "There are harems for that, too." Xanthippe wondered if Gheed really knew of such a place. "Are you trying to make me hate you even more?" "Come now, what's wrong with a diversity of experience? But I didn't think you wanted to discuss matters of the heart... unless you have some need to... ?" That smug smirk still brought out the same homicidal urges... and now, she was big enough to do more than just throw camel dung. But Warriv would intervene, and Xanthippe didn't want to have to kill him too. "Yes. For equipment." Gheed rubbed his hands together. "And you want to see mine?" "You've got a breastplate inside your cart. Mind if I take a look at it?" "I do mind. For you, cash up front." And it was expensive, too. Nice breastplate, and a belt to go with it, but Gheed made her pay through the nose. All right, Xanthippe reflected, I lost that round. But he wouldn't be bothering any of the guilds when he got to Lut Gholein. The poison ivy took care of that. Still, the bastard really knew how to give you a crawly feel in your gut. Freak. Back out in the field, Debi was quiet as they approached the monastery. Not too surprising, except that before this, Debi never seemed to shut up about the monastery. Xanthippe had a good idea of the place's layout through her; an outer gate, courtyard, a cathedral in the middle of the yard, with Andariel in the catacombs. Getting through the courtyard would be a bitch, if there were enough archers in there; they'd be moving targets in a big open area like that. That probably wasn't what was up with Debi, though. "Something on your mind?" Xanthippe asked. "Um..." Debi paused to shoot a Rogue. "I was wondering..." "About what corrupted your sisters?" "No..." "About what we're going to find inside the monastery?" "No..." "About what I do at night when no one's looking?" "You chop wood." "It's good for my shoulders. What are you wondering about?" "Um..." "If you say 'um' one more time, I'm gonna stuff your bow down your throat." "No you won't, I'm stronger than you." "WHAT IS IT, DEBI!?!" "Oh, uh..." "'Uh' isn't any better!" Looking very uncertain, Debi bit her lip. "How do you... know... about Gheed?" Smirking, Xanthippe said, "You're not supposed to listen in on other people." "But he's, like, old and creepy! How do you even know a creepy old guy like him?" Thinking about a good answer to that took Xanthippe will into the monastery's outer yard. "Debi, what do you think a harem is?" "It's, like, a place with... um..." "Silks and satiny pillows, billowy pants and lounging around all day eating grapes?" "Um... that's what's in the pictures." "Fine. A harem is a feature of Lut Gholein. Lut Gholein is in a desert. The land has nothing to live on. There is no way Lut Gholein could be a rich city if it weren't for trade. It is the best trade port on the Twin Seas. But it's no good if the merchants just sell stuff or move it through. The sultan taxes the goods, but if he taxed them enough to get rich, the merchants would go to another city. He needs them to spend money of their own free will. That's what harems are for." "How do harems get merchants to spend money?" "They're seraglios, Debi." "A what?" "Whorehouses." Debi blinked. "Oh." "And Gheed goes to all of them. All. The. Time." "So, that means you..." "No. When the Zann Esu came to get me, I was 7. My mother was in one." "That's terrible!" Debi frowned. "Didn't her mother know, and help her out of there?" "She was the house madam." Debi just stared. "She... they... but that's..." "Yep. Lut Gholein is the jewel of the desert. That's because they take all the pretty girls, dress them up nice, and line the streets with them when the merchant caravans come to town. They 'entertain' them too, and the sultan gets his cut." "That's horrible! That's men using women to make themselves rich!" "You got it. Hit the nail right on the head with that one." "That is everything we Rogues are opposed to! Someone should do something about it!" "No one's going to do anything about it, Debi." "But they're exploiting women!" "Yep. If they didn't, Lut Gholein wouldn't get money out of the merchants. It would be all business, no pleasure, and they've got nothing worth selling. Everyone would be poor, and poverty sucks. That's why my grandmother heads a house and pimps her daughters. Even though I hate the Zann Esu, I'm glad I was born with the gift. Let's kill things." Debi shut up again. The courtyard inside the outer walls was indeed wide open. Peeking through, they could see every Rogue and her long-lost cousin, hiding behind a column or bush, arrows at the ready. Maybe another way in would be better. The main gate barracks were off to one side, through a sheltered walkway they could use for cover. A big fat demon inside the barracks had one of Charsi's tools, a magic smithing hammer; she was happy to have it back. The Rogue's jails were under the barracks, and extended to an inner cloister next to the cathedral. So, they went through the jail. The demons had found the torture equipment, and used it enthusiastically; they hurried through quickly.
Chapter 7The cathedral in the middle of the Rogue monastery was a horrible mess. The demons had really enjoyed themselves in there. The baptismal was full of clotting blood, the pews were all broken, and the frescoes had obscene additions or were just burnt. There was one big threat in the cathedral, a skeleton spewing poison. She'd probably come out of a burst reliquary by the main altar, where churchly folk put the bones of their saints. So much for sainthood. The dead saint actually chased Xanthippe out of the cathedral and back to camp for an antidote, her poison was so strong. On her way back, Xanthippe stopped to ask Cain about saints. He replied, "The Rogue cathedral, from what I am told, holds the relics of many female saints, including St. Dorothea, who some doubt should have been made a saint at all." "What'd she do?" "She ministered a home for the indigent in Westmarch, and earned the love and respect of all who knew her. However, many of the poor souls who took shelter with her became sick and slowly died under her care. Others disappeared, and were never heard from again." That would be odd, Xanthippe thought. "Did she keep rat poison?" "That is lost to the mists of history, I am afraid. Why do you wish to know?" "I'd heard of a woman who slowly poisoned her children, so they were always sick and dying and she'd selflessly take care of them. Everybody thought she was some kind of saint too, until her husband caught her putting the rat poison in their food." Cain thought about that for a while. "I cannot understand why any woman would do such a thing." "So she could look good," Xanthippe shrugged. "The easiest way to look good is quietly do bad, then make sure everybody sees you fixing it." "But one cannot do good, if..." "No, I didn't say 'do good.' I said 'look good.' Easy way to get the praise and admiration." Brows furrowing, Cain sighed. "At times, the duplicity of man can put demons to shame." "She was a woman. Anyway, it would explain why Dorothea is up and spitting poison. None of the other saints are. Might want to de-canonize her after all this is over." With the help of antidote potions, Dorothea was laid to rest, though when she died, her cold heart burst, and nearly killed both Xanthippe and Debi. The catacombs under the cathedral were almost as cold. Bones were everywhere... but lying still. Maybe the life you lead does affect what demons can do with your body, Xanthippe thought. If so, religion would be a good thing, if the religion was on the right path. That was the hard part; religions do not tolerate rational examination of their sacred beliefs. Evil and good are not discrete things, simply labels ascribed by the human mind. Yet, most religions insist that they are actual properties of things, and even claim to be able to 'detect' evil! Perhaps you can detect a demon, but a demon, if viewed simply as an extra-planar creature, does not necessarily have to be "evil." It was a strange train of thought that went through Xanthippe's mind, as they hacked their way down the catacombs. For not-evil extra-planar entities, these demons sure were feisty, but this was an invasion force, and must be opposed like any other. Though the blood bubbling up through the floor was kind of unsettling. At the lowest level of the catacombs, beyond a pool of blood and bodies, was a small temple. Choking green mists filled the air, through which they could faintly see something shaped like a woman, about 12 feet high, with huge spider legs coming out of her back. "Ok, Debi. You say she spits poisonous mists?" "Yeah. That's what killed most of our sisters." "I believe it, I can smell it from here. A shield won't do much good." "Uh-uh. You have to stay away from her." "Or right in her face. With a..." "FEAR ME, MORTAL!" "Aw, shit." Out of the mists charged a Freudian nightmare -- resplendent in her finest jeweled g-string -- nipple chains by Versace -- hair by a 110-volt outlet and a fork. It was just too much to be believed. Xanthippe drew a deep breath... and started laughing right in Andariel's face. "Oh, puh-lease! What is this? Carnival season is over!" "YOU WILL INTERFERE NO LONGER!" "Xanthippe! Duck! Run!" "Aw, c'mon! What's she gonna do? Beat me to death with her boobs?" With a snarl of rage, Andariel strode forward. She was very tall -- Xanthippe was looking her straight in the, uh, g-string -- before she reared back, and slammed down right on top of Xanthippe's head. The double blow was bone-jarring. Well, Xanthippe thought, her helmet crushed down over her eyes, I guess I asked for that. Then came the poison; Andariel opened her mouth far wider than anyone should be able to, and out whooshed a burning, choking, green cloud. Pushing her helmet up, Xanthippe swung her bardiche, chopping into Andariel's alabaster thigh. Debi was choking off behind her somewhere; Xanthippe tossed an antidote potion over her shoulder, and chugged one herself, with a healing chaser. Andariel lashed at Xanthippe with her huge spider's legs, venom now dripping from small arrow wounds. Parrying was futile, that just got Xanthippe knocked all around the room, so she jumped away and stabbed at Andariel's gut. Keeping some distance seemed like a good idea. Then Andariel let out another gout of venom. If I'm going to die down here, Xanthippe thought, at least I'll leave my mark. Stretching up as high as she could reach, she stabbed up into Andariel's cleavage. This sliced her chest nicely, but then Xanthippe snapped the bardiche back through those oh-so vulnerable nipple chains. The stupid things tore right out! The ceiling-shaking bellow alone was worth it. Andariel, now absolutely furious, backhanded Xanthippe into a wall, blasted her with poison again, blasted Debi, and waited, roaring with pain. Time for another antidote potion. No wonder Kashya hadn't been able to take Andariel, the venom clouds she put off were serious business, and covered a huge area. Archers would be almost helpless. Getting up, Xanthippe charged back into the fray, and stabbed into Andariel's gut. The blade bit deep, and she was able to dodge Andariel's return strike and chop into her thigh again. A spray of venomous blood gouted out; must have hit an artery! All she had to do now was keep the bitch running until she bled to death... no that wouldn't work. The wound, she could see, was already starting to close. Another chop from the bardiche severed the nipple chains completely. They fell to the floor, and Xanthippe made sure to stomp on them. Should she go for the g-string? No, that would probably be scary, and wouldn't hurt Andariel much. Instead, she concentrated on her gut, trying to dodge blows and dish out as much punishment as she could. Finally, a burst of fire flashed out of Andariel's bowels, and she fell screaming to the floor, consumed from within in a column of flame. Not a minute too soon. Xanthippe drank her last antidote potion. The temple was finally quiet. Too quiet. Debi was dead, her face green and swollen as she lay in a puddle of blood. Xanthippe had forgotten her in the middle of the fight, and now she was dead. When she returned to town and told everyone Andariel was dead, everyone was overjoyed, except Kashya. "You forgot her." "I was kind of busy down there." Frowning, Kashya looked away. "You defeated Andariel. That's more than I thought you could do. But you do not forget your soldiers." "I... know. I'm sorry." Kashya's eyes snapped back. "What did you just say?" "I said I'm sorry." Kashya stared, until Xanthippe wished she were back fighting Andariel again. "Those are the last words I ever expected to hear coming out of your mouth." "Well, I am sorry! Give me a break!" The corners of Kashya's mouth twitched. Then, someone cleared his throat loudly -- it was Warriv. "If you'll excuse me... my caravan is moving out, and it occurs to me that our young friend here will want to join us. The dark wanderer she is pursuing was last seen headed for Lut Gholein, and that is where I have every intention of going as quickly as possible." "Yes," Kashya said. "Andariel's death will be meaningless if the greater evil is not caught. As for you... if you ever want to return here, you will be welcome. Who knows? You may make something of yourself yet."
Act 2Chapter 8Warriv's caravan stopped inside the western gates of Lut Gholein. The town was full of people, but there were no crowds to greet them, just a single, well-dressed man only slightly older than Xanthippe. Guards were on all the walls, armed and ready for action. While Warriv negotiated their entrance fee, Xanthippe stood on top of a cart to look over the city. The buildings looked the same, maybe a little smaller than she remembered, and a little more run-down. The colorful banners they usually put up for a caravan were absent; so were all the greeters. The central marketplace looked almost deserted, just a few salesmen, and fewer customers. Quite a few people were wandering around, in a directionless way; they looked like they were just passing time. Warriv was having an animated conversation with the young guy, who was probably one of Sultan Fat-ass's officials. Xanthippe wondered what had happened to the old Vizier; not that he'd ever come out to the gate, he'd greet the caravan master on the palace steps. But he always made sure the merchants got a good parade when they came to town. At the head of the caravan, Warriv was motioning to her, so Xanthippe hopped down and went to greet the official. Warriv had probably been telling him about the Rogue's pass, Andariel's corruption of the monastery, and her defeat. If Andariel was delaying pursuit of Diablo, then Diablo had probably already reached here; it would explain the guards, and the lack of celebration. The city was still standing; that was a good sign, at least. "Greetings, honored traveler. I understand that I have you to thank for the caravans coming through the western pass once again." "I guess you do. Has Sultan Faduwas any idea of the source of your demon troubles?" The young man stared stonily at Xanthippe. "My father has been dead for nearly two years. I am Jerhyn, Lord of Lut Gholein, and I bid you welcome on your return. It seems you have not visited my fair port city for some time." Right, Xanthippe thought. "Thank you, my lord, I have not. The city seems less... cheery than last time." "These are not happy times we live in," Jerhyn said. "There is little to bring us joy, save your appearance. One who can vanquish such great evil may bring us hope." Don't think I'm gonna save your city for free, junior. But Xanthippe smiled. "Well, gee, I hope I can help just a little bit. Do you have any idea what you're up against?" "A few weeks ago, a dark wanderer came from the west, and terror followed in his wake. The dead have risen from their tombs, and strange beasts, never before seen in this land, stalk the dunes. I cannot doubt that this is connected with a great evil. If you need help, perhaps you should speak with Drognan, he is very wise and knows many things. Oh, and Atma, our tavern keeper, has something she might ask of you." So Drognan was still around. Xanthippe thought he was even older than Fat-ass, but maybe he kept himself healthier; or, maybe, he really had some of that power he was always bragging about. Either way, she didn't want to talk to him, he was a big pompous jerk. Hey, Meshif was down by the docks. Xanthippe liked Meshif, he'd always been nice to the girls over at her grandmother's. A couple of them wanted to marry him, but he seemed married to his ship. He didn't recognize Xanthippe; she didn't tell him how she knew him. Might embarrass him. Atma's tavern was full. People were at the tables, at the bar, and milling around aimlessly. Everything went silent when Xanthippe walked in; she wondered if her skirts had ridden up or something, before she remembered she slew a greater demon not long ago. Word travels fast around a town, everyone had probably heard by now. Standing a little straighter, Xanthippe stepped up to the bar. "Hello. You're Atma." "I am," the sad woman behind the bar answered. "You are the one who slew Andariel." "Yep," Xanthippe nodded. "Jerhyn said you had a problem." "I do. There is a demon in the sewers below the town, a bloodthirsty creature who kills all it sees. Though confined to the sewers now by Greiz's guards, it used to hunt the city at night for victims. It killed my husband and my son. If you will help me, avenge me... I would be grateful to you." This was not the same Atma Xanthippe remembered; she had been a proud woman once. She and her husband ran the tavern, an "honest business", and looked down on the girls from the guilds. She'd chased Xanthippe out more than once, calling her foul names. Now, she looked broken, and exhausted, as though she wasn't sleeping. Humility suited her well. "Sure," Xanthippe said. "What's another demon? I'll kill a lot more before I'm done." The central marketplace was mostly empty. Some foreign woman Xanthippe didn't recognize had set up a smithy. After Charsi, this woman looked positively willowy. But old Lysander was still in business! Xanthippe could remember running to his shop for a "cure disease" potion, after every time Gheed came to the house. He never judged anyone, just sold it without asking, and gave her some licorice. Lysander was almost deaf now, probably from all those explosions. He'd made one once that made a purple cloud with gold stars and lightning in it. But he was happy to see Xanthippe, and gave her some licorice too. Chewing her licorice, Xanthippe wandered up to the north end of town, where the inn used to be. Outside the inn, two old warriors were chatting about the good old days, robbing and looting, and things involving unwilling women. Judging from the number of parts he was missing, one wouldn't be having any more good days. The other was hiring mercenaries out. Hmm, men for sale. Xanthippe bought one, named Razan, and went down into the sewers. The sewers had always been a good place to hide, or get from one building to another. Now they were full of skeletons, swinging scimitars and firing flaming arrows. The shield was more useful than the bardiche down here, so Razan did most of the killing until they got down to the bottom of the sewers. The monster was there, a huge undead thing stitched together from human and animal parts. Many "servant" skeletons were with him; he was probably an old high official, mummified at great expense to guard his own tomb. The vanity of wealth is incredible. Killing it took a long time, it was very tough, and had poisonous breath. As it died, strange lights shot down from the ceiling; that was odd, maybe Xanthippe should ask Drognan about it. He'd know about the magic used to hold these dead rich guys together. Among his remains was a book of magic; Xanthippe grabbed for it. Razan tried to get her attention, but the book looked old and valuable. Quickly, she began leafing through it; it contained a spell for enchanting a weapon with fire. That would be great, she thought, before she noticed that Razan was wheezing. He died as she was pulling the antidote potion out.
Chapter 9The cleansing of the sewers (so to speak) made everyone in town very happy. Greiz moved his men away from the sewer entrances, and Atma convinced the town's merchants to let the wheels of commerce run a little more smoothly for Xanthippe. And just in time, too; the sewer fiend had a Tir rune. Andarial had an El rune, and Fara (the new blacksmith) had a morning star with two sockets, much heavier than the saber and better suited to crushing undead bones. With all those skeletons, a saber's light blade just wasn't enough. A "Steel" morning star would be great for skeletons and mummies. This was probably her "test" upon coming to a new town, so Xanthippe went to tell Jerhyn she had passed. "Others attempted to rid us of that fiend before this," Jerhyn said. "Often, we found them floating in the bay, with pieces of their bodies missing. Others, we never found at all." "It was stitching together some kind of suit out of pieces of human skin. I don't think all of its parts were original equipment, either." "Drognan tells me that you have not spoken with him. It would be a wise of you to do so. He would know much better than I what to make of this." "It's dead. What else matters?" Jerhyn looked uncomfortable. "It may matter, I fear, for I must ask something of you." Raising an eyebrow, Xanthippe asked, "Ask? Cannot a lord order those in his lands?" This seemed to surprise Jerhyn. "I remember, now, that you were in Lut Gholein when my father was sultan. There are many things about my father which I did not admire, even in my youth, and I have no desire to be like him now. You will not be ordered, or compelled in any way. I can only ask you, beg you if needs be, to help my city." Xanthippe considered this. Seeing this bejeweled young man begging for help from a whore's daughter might be fun. "And... how may I help your city, great lord?" Jerhyn relaxed visibly. "I am sure that the dark wanderer who came here from the west must be... Diablo himself!" What a genius. "And?" "He must have come here to search for his brother's tomb. Ages ago, the Horadric mage Tal Rasha took the essence of the dark lord Baal into himself, to wrestle against for all eternity. If Diablo finds the tomb where both were imprisoned together, he may free his brother, and both great evils will be free to roam the land." That would be very bad. Xanthippe was willing to forgo the pleasure of watching a sultan humiliate himself for more information. "Where are Tal Rasha and Baal entombed?" "There is a set of tombs in a small valley, the Valley of the Magi, with 7 tombs. Six of the tombs are false, filled with traps and deadly magics. But so much time has passed, that no one knows where the valley is any more, or which of the tombs is the true tomb." Diablo would be looking for the tomb too, and had a head start. If she was going to catch him, there was no time to waste. "Thank you, Lord Jerhyn. I will speak with Drognan immediately." Drognan was outside his little shop, watching her approach with a faint smile. "Greetings, young sorceress. I have been expecting you." "Well, hi. Of course you have. Jerhyn dropped enough hints." "You were always a willful child. Even running your grandmother's errands, you could not constrain yourself to the path she gave you. When told to run to the market, you walked there around the houses. If she told you to go straight down the street, you would jump from roof to roof. Oh yes, I recognize you. I am not so old as to begin forgetting." More smugness; Xanthippe gritted her teeth. "Fine. Three cheers for you. What do you know about Tal Rasha?" "The greatest of the Horadrim, Tal Rasha was known for his unmatched --" "The condensed version, please." "Tal Rasha chose to embody Baal, knowing it would mean wrestling against his will for the rest of eternity. Both were buried in a secret chamber, whose location has been hidden from all. When the wanderer came here, he asked after the tomb." "Wouldn't Di... I mean, he know where it was?" "The brothers were separated in the mortal realms, and none could know the fate of the others. The wanderer was lost, which gives me hope that he may be defeated here. There are many tombs scattered across the desert, and if he must search them all, it will buy all of us much-needed time." "One last question: which of the seven tombs is the real one?" "That knowledge was deliberately lost. How it might be found again, I do not know." Smug, and completely useless; that describes mages to a tee. Even that short exchange left Xanthippe boiling mad. How was she going to find this tomb first by random searching? Unlike demon lords, she needed to sleep, and eat. It just wasn't fair! Yeah, like whining about it would do any good. Better get started; another mercenary might be a good investment. She went to see Greiz. "Nice to see you again," Greiz said gruffly. "Didn't see most of the heroes who went after that thing more than once." "Some people say I'm like a bad rash. Just won't go away. I need another man." Greiz smirked. "You've come to the right place. What are you looking for in a man?" "I need staying power, a man who knows how to protect himself and me." Greiz smirked more. Elzix looked over, obviously listening in. "You're sure you wouldn't want one more skilled, or a quick recovery time so he can get back in faster?" "No. If he's behind me, he's gotta be able to go the distance." "Behind you, huh? Most women want the man in front." "So I'm weird. He's gotta go in hard and fast, and follow orders too." Turning away, Greiz surveyed the men he had up on the wall. That's what it looked like from behind, anyway; actually he was biting his knuckle, trying not to laugh. "Hey, Waheed. This young lady here wants to see you." Waheed came down. "Yes, sir. What am I supposed to do?" Greiz gestured to Xanthippe. "This is... uh..." "Xanthippe." "Yeah, Xanthippe. She looks like she swings a mean stick, and needs a man who knows how to handle his. I figure you're the right one for the job." Elzix piped up, "Wasn't there a kid here who got sold to gypsies named Xanthippe?" "I dunno, I don't hang around town any more than I have to," Greiz replied. "Good luck, I think you're gonna need it." He didn't explain which of them needed the luck. Outside of town, the desert was full of demonic vultures, and the little scuttling cliff leapers were attacking people in packs. They never used to do that. Right by the entrance of town was a tomb, where Xanthippe used to play "tomb raiders" with her friends when she was little. She was always the "raider" then, and now, there were some real walking dead in there to raid. The mummies broke easily with her new bashing implement; avoid the corpse gas, and you'd be fine. If only Waheed could remember that; he wasn't the sharpest spear in the armory. Further out in the desert was another tomb, actually a complex of them. The burials went deep into the earth, and the whole place was just lousy with skeletons, mummies, and big greater mummies like the sewer fiend. At the bottom of the tombs was a special chamber, with a Horadric Cube. Oooh, the Zann Esu had a book describing the Horadric Cube, that was a wonderful thing to have. All kinds of transmutations used the cube, the recipes filled whole volumes. Since Cain was a Horadrim mage, maybe he'd know a few useful ones. "You have quite a treasure in that cube." "Yeah, these things are legendary. What recipes do you know?" "All require certain ingredients. For instance, 3 chipped gems and a magical sword will make a new sword, with different enchantments and 3 sockets for your use." "Coolness! Hey, how about potions? Making antidotes in the field would be great." "Three potions of healing, and three potions of mana, will make a potion of rejuvenation." Xanthippe started going through her pack. "That's handy. How about scrolls?" Cain looked startled. "Where... where did you find that scroll?" "Huh? Oh, the sewer fiend had it." "That must have been Radamant, the keeper of scrolls! This is a record from the expedition which captured Baal!" Xanthippe blinked. "That might be something useful?" "Let me translate it... ah! In Tal Rasha's tomb, the innermost chamber is protected by a seal, which can only be opened by using a Horadric staff. To prevent their theft, the staves were all broken into shaft and headpiece, and hidden in the desert." "Okay... so we need to find the valley, the true tomb, and a staff to open the tomb?" "If you intend to find Tal Rasha, yes..." "Sure I do. I have a plan. Don't worry, I won't tell you. But you're going to love it."
Chapter 10The Horadric Cube was an incredibly useful thing. You could make rejuvenation potions, greater rejuves, improve gems, change item enchantments, craft items with specific properties, there were all kinds of recipes. Most needed rare and expensive ingredients, but that's pretty common in alchemy. Some recipes, like the gems and potions, seemed to follow a "law of threes"; three of something made an improved version of the same. Others didn't have much rhyme or reason -- for instance, two packs of arrows would make a set of bolts, or two bolts would make a bunch of arrows. How the cube differentiated one unenchanted pile of sticks and another was unclear. After playing with the cube for a while, Xanthippe ran out of things to transform. Her chest had more room, and she had many valuable gems. One was a big diamond, about the size of her mom's pendant. The pendant was a gift from a customer, maybe Xanthippe's father, and mom was very protective of it. Looking at the sparkling gem, it occurred to Xanthippe that she hadn't gone to visit her family. She wasn't sure if she wanted to. They did sell her to the Zann Esu. The Zann Esu always claimed they don't "buy" their apprentices, but the families are always rewarded. Xanthippe couldn't imagine her grandmother giving up anything without some kind of compensation. For that matter, Xanthippe hadn't seen anyone from the guilds on the streets. The buildings they worked out of didn't smell of perfume, and none of the expected sounds filled the night. She went to look at her grandmother's house, near the palace; it had been divided into a set of apartments not long ago, and families were living there. Where was her mother? Jerhyn was outside his palace; he must know. "Lord Jerhyn, I crave a moment of your time." "You need but ask. Please, how may I help you?" Xanthippe smiled. Lord Fat-ass never said 'please' to anybody. "When I visited here last, there were several harem guilds operating..." "Ah, yes. Another relic of my father's days. I fear the reputation of our city and our people suffered greatly during his reign, and it will be years before we recover our good name." "So... you've banned the guilds?" "No, no." Jerhyn smiled. "My father, though I owe him my life and position, enriched himself by pandering to man's lowest impulses. Gambling houses, hired women, blood sports, all of these things were used to separate the unprincipled from their wealth. I want to change our city, and make Lut Gholein a true jewel of the desert, not a polished paste gem, cheap and showy." "So the harems had to go." "The harems..." Jerhyn thought for a moment. "They presented me with a quandary. I believe our city -- my city -- should have real products to offer the world, not low entertainments. Did you know that, before my father's time, there was a great tradition of craft here? Works in glass, clay, and stone, the best in the world." "No, I didn't know that." "Antiques from that period are treasured in the noble houses of every land. Now, our potters and glass blowers produce nothing but cheap trinkets and souvenirs for visitors. The waters of the bay were once clear and clean. Fish were abundant, but between heavy fishing for the feasts, and the sheer... waste that flowed back, the fish are nearly gone. Weeds and slime choke the waters." That was well before Xanthippe's time. The bay had always been black and smelly, as far as she knew. "So, you want everyone to go into 'honest' business." "I want my city to be something more than a bawdy house, for visitors to let themselves loose in. With time to recover, our bay could produce fish for sale again, in quantities that could be sustained for centuries. I have been encouraging our craftsmen to return to the old ways of making things, and revive our past glory." "What about the harems?" Jerhyn took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. "The harems... no longer have official sanction. Depending on them was degrading for our city, and for the poor girls forced into that way of life by my father's greed. I will not force them from their business, but I will not condone it. They continued to operate, but were no longer allowed to parade their 'wares' in the streets before visitors. They are no longer taxed, so none of their profits flow to me, but I have forced heavy fines on them for any public displays of licentiousness." Xanthippe slowly nodded. "You say, 'continued.' Where are they all now? I don't see any sign of them." "Since the troubles began, I have allowed them to... live inside the palace." "Inside the palace?" Jerhyn looked nervous. "Yes. There are many refugees from the deserts and oases hiding inside our walls now. Some are rough folk, probably bandits. Others are strongly religious, and think the harem girls were the cause for the countryside's corruption. After many unpleasant incidents, the girls begged me for more protection. Scattered throughout the city, my guards could do little, so I offered them shelter within the palace walls." Feeling a bit skeptical, Xanthippe nodded. "That was very generous of you, Lord Jerhyn." "Generosity had only a small part to play. With so many crowding inside the walls, keeping the peace was absolutely necessary, and my guards must concentrate on their real duties. Besides which, much of the palace was empty. Moving the harems inside allowed refugees to stay in their houses, and greatly relieved the crowding." That might actually be true. It sounded plausible. "Well... I suppose that under unusual circumstances, unusual measures must be taken. I hope your city survives, Jerhyn. Now, I'd better go help you with that." Well, at least her mom was probably all right. Jerhyn sure was nervous, though. He must be concerned about the city; if he was nervous about just himself, he'd probably be on Meshif's ship and sailing away. But he'd ordered all ships to remain in the bay, so nothing evil could infect other lands. Jerhyn might be sacrificing himself to try to protect the rest of the world; that would make anyone nervous. Xanthippe should know. When she'd walked back to her chest, she saw something on top of it: a pair of light gauntlets, and a note. "Dear Xanthippe," it read. "Having great time. Wish you were here. XOXOXO The Mule." The gauntlets were magical: 30% cold resistance, and 10% increased attack speed. No one had seen who'd left the gauntlets. Xanthippe read the note again, not sure if she was grateful or insulted. But the gauntlets would come in handy. Back out in the field, Xanthippe and Waheed entered a bug-filled oasis. Clouds of demon mosquitoes, with a collective will of their own, tried to drain her dry. Huge beetles spat lightning when struck. But she kept a close eye on Waheed, feeling more than a little guilty about Razan, and Debi, and Gaile. Now she understood, when Gaile jumped between her and a demon, she was just trying to protect her flank. All the other mercs did the same thing; soldiers are trained to work together and look out for each other. If only he wouldn't keep wandering away from the cliff walls, out in the open. "Hey, Waheed. I want you to do something." "Okay. Like what?" "I want you to stick closer to the cliff, and not get out in the open where you can be surrounded." "Uh... but you're there." "Yeah. I want to keep our backs to it." Waheed stared at her. "Uh..." "That way, monsters can't come up behind us." "What about those vultures?" "Vultures?" Xanthippe looked up. A cloud of vultures was swooping down the cliff. So much for protecting her back. These were a group of champions, very tough and fast. Waheed's spear came in handy, though; she'd bought him one with an Amplify Damage curse on it. With that, they vanquished the vultures, and Waheed returned to his old position, away from the cliff. He still got clouds of mosquitoes around him, but seemed less bothered by them than the vultures. In the middle of the oasis, a round hole, easily large enough to admit a man, descended into the sand. It did not look man-made; the walls looked like sand glued together by a insects. This might be where the giant bugs were coming from, so Xanthippe went down. There were plenty of giant bugs down there, and pieces of dead people, some of them wrapped up in slimy tendrils and writhing with gigantic, growing maggots. They squished them all. Deeper into the maggot lair, swarms of bugs and huge sand maggots were everywhere. The sand maggots had always been a threat, but they were never so numerous or powerful before this. When they ran into one that was demonically enchanted, things became very bad. Its skin was like stone, very tough, and its blood was enchanted with lightning. They could only beat on it for so long before they had to retreat to heal, and it kept regenerating all the damage they could do. Finally, Xanthippe just decided to charge the thing, and bash it into oblivion or die trying. Waheed and she chopped and stabbed, while it spat poison and retreated into the sandy floor to heal. In the end, it died, but Waheed died first; Xanthippe's potion belt was empty. At her request, Greiz brought out another mercenary: Kasim. Determined to keep him alive, Xanthippe raided Fara's smithy and Elzix's back-room pawn shop for anything with lightning resistance or poison resistance. All of her mercenaries had been killed by those, so she obviously needed to guard against them. The rest of the maggot lair went smoothly, down to the deepest part. A huge, bloated, pulsing queen of the maggots was down there, laying adult maggots. As disgusting as the queen was, killing it was fairly easy; it went up in an explosion of poisonous slime. Xanthippe brought antidote potions for both of them, but it was still totally gross. Inside the maggot queen's lair was an old staff, with its headpiece broken off. As she suspected, the staff was a Horadric staff. If she could keep herself, and her mercenary, alive, she might be able to locate the headpiece and reunite them in the Horadric Cube. Diablo had not put in an appearance. Cain said the third of the brothers, Mephisto, was on the other side of the Twin Seas in Kurast, and Diablo would need a ship to reach him. It was safe to assume Diablo was still searching for Baal, but probably not for much longer.
Chapter 11Xanthippe had been sleeping inside one of Warriv's carts, on a bundle of carpets. There was no room at the inn. When she woke up the next morning, there was something else in the cart with her; a big poleaxe, with a note.
Violets are blue. You are malicious, Don't deny that it's true! Since you're having so many problems with your mercenaries, this little number should help you bring out the malice in them! The runes are Ith, El, and Eth; you'll find them in your luggage. Hugs and kisses, The Mule."
Out in the field, the poleaxe proved very effective. One neat trick was to slice across the skins of the better armored opponents, removing the armor. It was especially malicious since demon armor tends to be a part of their bodies. Beyond the oasis, Xanthippe and Kasim moved into a dead city; more like a city of the dead, there were so many zombies wandering around. Shortly after they entered the city, a huge black blot covered the sun, and everything went dark and very cold. Jerhyn was outside his palace. "Lord Jerhyn, what the hell is going on?" "Prophetic words, I fear," Jerhyn said. He looked even more nervous. "My astrologers did not predict this eclipse. We must seek out Drognan's council immediately." Not that. Anything but that. "Surely, you have some idea of the cause of this?" "There is a possibility. Out in the desert, near an abandoned city, is a temple where Claw Vipers worship foul gods. They are black-hearted beasts, enemies of all humanity, and I am sure they would make alliances with demonkind at any opportunity. Unlike natural reptiles, they are fond of cold and darkness, which is why they dwell far under the desert sands, and do not venture out in the heat of daylight." Xanthippe had heard all kinds of stories about Claw Vipers. Most of them were meant to frighten her and keep her inside at night. "Are there any tombs in their temple?" "Long ago, a group of abjurers allied themselves with the Claw Vipers. For some time, my father had an artifact of that era, a suit of armor called 'Skin of the Vipermagi,' before it was stolen. I believe they were entombed there, with their servants." Tal Rasha would not be among them. Not in the Viper temple. But the temple might be useful for something else, after it had been cleared. "Very well, Lord Jerhyn. Maybe the city craftspeople can find a use for snakeskin." The snake temple lay beyond the dead city. Xanthippe could tell it was the right one by the heroically scaled statues of snake-men flanking the entrance. Their beetling brows and exaggerated pectoral development were obviously meant to intimidate; nothing is more pathetic than someone trying to be intimidating. They were greeted by a group of slithery bastards and a couple of greater mummies right inside the entrance. The mummies, with their crowds of servant skeletons, were annoying, but the Claw Vipers were hardly the stuff of nightmares. Deeper in the temple, some cousins of theirs, Salamanders, were much more of a threat. They moved very fast, and seemed to suck heat out of your body with their touch. In the deepest part of the temple, an altar had been built and consecrated with human blood. The people were hanging from the walls, and the chamber was filled with mummies, skeletons, and the leader of the Claw Vipers: Fangskin, a name everyone from the desert knew. He was evil, and tough, and... lightning enchanted. Damn. Xanthippe couldn't bear to say goodbye to Kasim; she just went to kill mummies in another part of the room. Blades swung, lightning sparkled; after 10 minutes of running around and screaming, everything in the chamber was dead but Xanthippe... and Kasim! He'd made it through, only slightly burned. Xanthippe did the happy dance on Fangskin's butchered corpse, singing, "He didn't die! He didn't die! You tried to kill him, but he didn't die! Nyah!" "Uh, are you OK?" Kasim was looking dubiously at her. "Sure! Never better!" *squish, squish!* "Well, there's this hideous altar over here, arrayed with the butchered remains of poor lost innocent souls, and drenched with the blood of the screaming damned. Think we should do something about it." "No problem! Hmm. Low-slung, these snake altars. How do you get rid of altars, anyway?" "The usual approach is to defile them." "What, piss on them or something?" "I guess that'd work, but I'm not bringing my little soldier anywhere near that thing." Xanthippe shook her head exasperatedly. "Do I have to do everything around here?" "Why don't we just kick it around some?" "Even better!" Xanthippe did the happy dance on top of the altar, and disturbed its arrangement of human body parts. That did the trick; the altar cracked in two, and warm sunlight shone through a small window onto the altar's remains. Something metallic glinted in the light; a little amulet, with a snapped-off piece of a staff jutting from a socket. Hmmm... Back in the city, everyone was relieved to see daylight again. Warriv described the people "gathering the wits that had been scattered about like... restrictive undergarments in the darkness." Maybe he was missing the harem guilds. The staff piece she already had fit the piece from the amulet, so she set the cube to "repair" and pushed the button. The cube rejoined the wood, polished the shaft, straightened up the filigree, and reset some missing gemstones; it even made a little "ding" noise when it was done. There, step one of her three-stage unstoppable plan for world domination. Or at least honking off Diablo. "I am impressed. For one of your limited experience, you are rising to the challenge most admirably." It was Drognan, come over from his little shop to bother her. "Hello, master Drognan. My, something very important must be happening for you to abandon your cozy corner of the city, and come alllllll the way over here, to visit little old me." "Vanquishing the Claw Vipers was a necessary step..." "Unless you happen to have another Horadric staff lying around your shop somewhere?" "The powerful staves of the Horadric magi were broken and scattered long ago..." "You must be so disappointed, Droggy-baby. They'd sell for some major bucks." Drognan paused. "No record exists today of the location of the true tomb of Tal Rasha." "Well, you said it, so it must be true! Oh no, I must be wrong, I'm of such limited experience. You'd better go back to reading for a few decades until you find it." "There are records of those bygone days. The great Vizjeri sorcerer Horazon had a hidden sanctuary near here. Horazon was alive when Baal was captured and bound; surely, he would have recorded the location of the tomb in his personal journal." "Which you don't have." "No one can be sure where it lies now." "So, Droggy-poo, instead of looking for one permanently lost thing, I should look for another permanently lost thing that might tell me where the first permanently lost thing is." "I believe that Horazon's journal might be easier to locate. In fact, you should go speak with Lord Jerhyn. He is most anxious to speak with you."
Chapter 12"There are WHAT in the palace?!" Jerhyn stammered, "Please, do not shout!" "You want me to WHAT?! There are DEMONS in the palace!!" Xanthippe wasn't shouting. She was shrieking at the top of her lungs. And she was very good at it. "It all started when a Vizjerei mage came to visit. He asked for a tour of the palace, which I granted. When we came to the old portal in the basement --" "A WHAT in the WHERE!?!" "A sealed portal, in a basement chamber. No one had ever been able to open it, though many tried, for centuries. I had nearly forgotten it was there, and when he asked to examine it alone, I thought nothing of it... it had always been harmless..." A small crowd of frightened-looking people was gathering around the palace steps. Two palace guards tried to keep the crowd away, but you could probably have heard Xanthippe down by the docks. "THERE... IS... A MAGIC PORTAL... IN... THE... PALACE?!?!?" Pale and quivering, Jerhyn tried to shush her. "We did not see the Vizjerei after that, but one night, my guards and I awoke to find hordes of demons rampaging through the palace! They were slaughtering the poor girls from the harems --" When she heard that, Xanthippe went as pale as Jerhyn. "Slaughtering? Harems?" "Yes, the harems, my whole staff, all of my servants, even old Jabeeb, my father's vizier. My brave guardsmen tried to push them back through the portal, and we have been fighting a losing battle ever since. I had to hire Greiz's men to guard the walls and keep the peace!" Xanthippe's voice dropped to a whisper. "Where is my mom?" "I... beg your pardon?" "Where... is... my... mom?! I want to know where my mom is!" Now Jerhyn just looked confused. "I..." "You... YOU... stupid... incompetent... nimrodish... dumb... utter... you... AAAGGGHHH!! Get out of the way!" Xanthippe charged into the palace, with Kasim on her heels. While Xanthippe's mother and grandmother often went to the palace on business, she had never been there. It was a luxurious building, covered with gilt and enamel work, low divans and inviting pillows beckoning from every corner. The upper floor looked exactly like the paintings Debi liked so much, except that they were empty. They checked the rooms; one was being used as the guardsmen's headquarters, but there were no guards, just a few old wanted posters and paperwork. One was strange:
Height: Very tall Weight: Very heavy Eyes: Yes Hair: Brown; ubiquitous Sex: No, what a disgusting thought Distinguishing features: Oh my, yes On charges of: Failure to procure appropriate pet licenses Harboring and transporting fleas Necromancer abuse Conduct unbecoming to a woodland creature Reward! Call LGPD for more information. Keep our city clean.
The palace was a chamber of horrors. Every gilded, painted, silken, satiny, luxurious surface was spattered, splattered, or drenched in gore. Harem girls, household servants, and guards were everywhere, tied to the columns and grillwork, then slowly torn to bits. Hanging plants were smashed on the floor, and bloody heads swung in their places. Everywhere on the floor were lumps and gobbets of flesh, arranged in strange patterns or just thrown around. At every woman's body, Xanthippe stopped to look at the face. Many didn't have faces anymore. Others were so mutilated, you couldn't tell if they were men or women. Of course, the demons who had done this hadn't left. Some were different and frightful; ape-like things that might have come from some jungle, and pin-headed giants swinging the bodies of dead guardsmen as weapons. Others were familiar; skeletons, with bones that looked suspiciously fresh and bloody. Many of the bodies on the floor were partially defleshed, and there was all that shredded meat lying around with no bones... At the lowest level of the cellars, they found the portal. Chopping at it did nothing; it was made of some strange metal and just reeked of enchantment. Staring at it, Xanthippe wondered what was on the other side. Some demonic realm? If that Vizjerei got through, he'd be right at home, damned demon summoners. "Uh... boss? Why were you asking Jerhyn about your mom?" Kasim was staring at her, as she stared at the gate. Xanthippe thought for a while longer. Kasim cleared his throat. "I don't want to pry or anything..." "Then don't," Xanthippe snapped. Kasim looked away, leaned on his poleaxe, and whistled a bit. "Stop whistling, dammit! I'm trying to think!" Rolling his eyes, Kasim mumbled, "If she was in here, she's a grease spot by now..." Her speed surprised her; she punched Kasim right in the nose before he could block it. It didn't knock him down, though it drew blood. "I KNOW THAT!! Do you think I could not know that?! Just SHUT UP AND LET ME THINK!!" Quietly, they both stared at the gate. "All right," Xanthippe finally said. "We have a gate. It will not close from this side. So we go through the gate and close it from the other side. Or we kill every last thing that moves in there. No, we do both. Close the gate, slaughter every living thing, every dead thing, every thing that can't make up its mind. Sound like a simple enough plan?" Kasim nodded, and wiped his nose one last time. "Sure. Real simple." "Then what are we waiting for?" For you, Kasim didn't say. But he led the way through the portal; the bodyguard always goes into danger first, that's his job. On the other side was... hell? Heaven? Neither of them had ever even heard of a place like this. Marble causeways were suspended in empty space, with tiny stars rocketing past, far away in endless night. Bronze braziers held pure elemental fire, never to be extinguished, lighting and warming the emptiness. With a shock, Xanthippe realized that this was a place of awesome power: an actual pocket world, a tiny duplicate of reality itself, separate from the world except at one point, the portal. Making such a place would take legendary knowledge, skill, and more raw power than anyone alive wielded... this could only be Horazon's Arcane Fortress. The causeways made up a maze of paths, designed to confuse the mind. While going through the place, killing everything they met, what little Xanthippe knew of Horazon came back to her. The ancient Vizjerei summoned demons, thinking they could control them and use them without danger. Some rift in the clan ended up as a fight between two factions, one headed by Horazon. Each tried to use their demonic "servants" on the others. The demons did not fight each other; they ignored the binding spells their masters thought were constraining them, and killed most of the clan in one huge blood bath. Horazon went missing, presumed dead, but his body was never found. The remaining Vizjerei turned to elemental magic, and supposedly founded some group of mage-killers to police the mage clans. Horazon's Fortress was easy enough to move in, but it took some concentration to figure out where you were going. Figures a sorcerer would make a fortress like this; no walls, you have to think your way through it. Finally, on the last little platform, they saw Horazon. Or maybe it was that Vizjerei, wearing an antique robe. Either way, he was summoning more demons. And laughing. There was a lot of laughing. Xanthippe charged, slashing her way through a crowd of blood goat demons, and buried her bardiche in his brain. She and Kasim were now the last living things in the Fortress. On the little platform, there was a dusting of very old bones, swept to one side. Someone who had been in here had died long, long ago. Floating above the platform was a journal; Xanthippe started reading at random. "-- others know nothing of the ways of power. My brother Bartuc is such a fool. To imagine that Demons might be befriended, traded with fairly, secrets given and received in exchange, is the height of absurdity. These creatures can only be dominated, their wills crushed and forced to serve their masters." Yech, sorcerous garbage. She skipped on a bit. "-- responsibility only to himself. As demonkind is unfairly maligned by the 'heavenly' hosts, who persuade fools with their talk of 'evil' and 'wrong', so are the true masters of the world misunderstood by those they rule. Is there any fool so foolish as he who believes himself the wisest of all humanity? Those with vision and the will to grasp --" You can always tell a book written by a mage. They use the word "fool" so damn much. She skipped a bit further. "My fortress is complete. Let Bartuc challenge me, if he dares. My slaves are more than his match. I hope he does come, that I may laugh in his face as his pitiful forces are wiped out and his spells fail. I wonder if he even has the wit to thread the maze? Surely not --" Sounds like things were heating up. A few pages ahead, the handwriting got shaky. "My injuries are severe. But I will live. The demons - my slaves - cast aside the chains I bound them with. They had been fooling me, fooling us all, all along. I think Bartuc is dead, I truly regret it. Though I think I was less wrong than he. It does not matter. My servants did not serve me, I served their purposes. Now I know why they did not always respond to my summons, why they did not follow the letter of my instructions. There were no flaws in the spells. It did not always suit their purpose to respond to me. Their purposes... I have no idea what they truly wanted." Xanthippe smiled coldly. Never trust someone who has their own agenda. How long did Horazon live after that? There was about half an inch of pages yet. "My fortress is as perfect and as empty as ever. A grand folly, a fortress built where there is no one to attack it. My final monument, and a fitting one. Perhaps I ought to make journal entries only on my birthday. Nothing happens to write down anymore." Humility suits him well, too. Xanthippe went through the last few pages, looking for a capital H. Here, an entry with 'Horadrim': "The demon battles have continued across the desert. A new order of young battle-mages, the Horadrim, are pursuing one of the great demon lords. I should do something, but I know nothing of real magic. "The demon lord was captured today, and imprisoned in an odd crystal. I have not seen the like; maybe it is something that works. The young fellows did not believe their crystal, which seemed to be damaged, could hold the demon, so one of their number volunteered himself as a repository for both crystal and demon. This seems foolish to me, but perhaps wisdom would seem so. They will entomb the man, Tal Rasha, in an empty tomb in the Canyon of the Magi, then block the entrances to the canyon. That's all right, no one goes out there anyway. "The man was entombed in the empty tomb, the square one. The tomb is buried, the canyon blocked off, all is sealed. That demon couldn't be more secure if you put him in here with me. Heh heh! Must go to Lut Gholein tomorrow for more tea. I'm running out." That was it. Nothing about where the canyon was. Of course not. Why bother to write it down when you know where it is? He could go whenever he wanted. Wait, if he wanted to go someplace, Horazon must have had some kind of gate, some way of getting there easily. No mage worth his wand of fireballs would walk when he didn't have to. And since mages are so fond of their puzzles... there, on the columns! Little buttons, set cunningly into the stone, almost invisible. Shine the light on them right, and you could see silvery writing. The language was archaic (wizards love showing off their mastery of archaic languages) but Xanthippe could make out the world for "canyon", and pressed the appropriate button. A reddish portal appeared, and they took it.
Chapter 13The Canyon of the Magi was a small, steep-walled gorge, blocked with rock falls at both ends. Some Saber Cats and huge Sand Maggots were in there, but they were everywhere. No human tracks led to any of the tombs; unless Diablo flew through in, he hadn't gotten here yet. Which led to the question, which was the right tomb? There were seven tombs around the canyon walls, that was right. Tal Rasha was in "the square one," but all of these tombs had roughly square entrances. Xanthippe and Kasim stumbled around in the dark, looking for some clue, but couldn't find anything. Finally, Xanthippe decided there was no point looking without some daylight. There was a disused waypoint in the middle of the canyon, so they just went home. When they arrived at Lut Gholein, the city was on fire. Did the demons invade while she was in the palace? No, there were no demons, just people, and only a couple of buildings were burning. Jerhyn was directing a bucket brigade from the bay, and Drognan was using frost bolts to put out smaller fires before they spread. Still worried that demons might have tried to invade, or take advantage of some other emergency, Xanthippe went to the gates. They were locked tight, but there were a lot of bodies a short distance outside. If the demons never got in, what caused the fires? She stopped to ask Greiz. "Oh, yeah. There was a bit of a panic when you disappeared into the palace. What were you doing in there so long, anyway?" "It was just overnight," Xanthippe frowned. "What panic? What happened?" Greiz looked at her quizzically. "In the first place, you were gone almost two days. Second, everybody heard you screaming about demons in the palace. When you went in and didn't come out, everyone got scared." Two days? When did... then she remembered Horazon's sanctuary. Time didn't seem to pass in there, she'd lost track of how long it took to get through. "Well, I was OK." Greiz shrugged. "Doesn't matter. When someone screamed 'demons in the palace,' half the city fled. We've been listening to them getting eaten out there ever since." "You mean all the bodies out there... ?" "The demons let them get far enough to be out of arrow shot. Took most of the horses in the city, too. I hate listening to horses scream. Worse noise than people." Xanthippe stared silently at the burning city. Finally, Kasim spoke up. "Boss? I don't know about you, but I feel like we've been up for two days." Slowly, Xanthippe nodded. "Yeah. There's nothing we can do now." Xanthippe went back to Warriv's caravan through the dark alleys behind the palace. If she went by the docks, she'd have to pass the fire brigade, and she did not want to talk to Jerhyn tonight. Not now, not until she'd gotten some sleep. The caravan wagons had all been broken into; a lot of stuff was stolen, and all the horses were gone. Warriv and the other merchants must be gone or at the fire. So, no one would mind if she crawled into Warriv's nice comfy bunk and... It was morning. Warriv was shaking Xanthippe's shoulder. "Here, you shouldn't be in my bed! Someone might get the wrong impression about us." "Oh, sorry," Xanthippe mumbled, and got up. Ouch, her back! She'd fallen asleep in the armor. Bad thing to do. "Is Jerhyn all right?" Warriv smiled. "He's fine, I'm fine. Everything looks much better by the light of day. There are no more demons in the palace, and while I will have some trouble taking my caravan any further, the animals can be replaced." Nodding, Xanthippe unbuckled her splint mail and bent over to touch her toes, putting her palms on the floor. Every muscle in her back screamed. "Where will you get more horses?" Warriv looked away. "Many of the local desert tribes have kept their herds intact through the troubles. While they are not trained to harness, I'm sure we can work something out. But you have a bigger concern than horses, my friend. Greiz says the demons are no longer visible outside the walls; they seem to have left us." That could be very good or very, very bad. "I've got to speak with Jerhyn." "I think you should. He seems to like you. Be sure to take your things with you." "I've got everything here." "What about those things? They certainly aren't mine." Warriv was pointing at a pile of battle gear next to the bunk. There was a huge gothic shield, an armor-plated belt, a ring, several runestones, and a battle crown set with an absolutely gigantic ruby. Inside the crown was a piece of paper with a note: "Darlin, you've done so very well! Last night, you really passed a threshold. I am happy to present you with most all of the things I have for you! The runeword is RalOrtTal, the pledge of the Ancient Ones. Oh, and try to work up a little more muscle, that bardiche you're using just won't cut the mustard much longer. It's hard to find a good voulge or scythe, but where you're going next, they sell poleaxes. Work on it, girl! -- The Mule." Even though part of her brain was urgently insisting she get moving, Xanthippe read the note twice. The presumptuousness of this guy... who the heck does he think he is, giving her wonderful presents without her permission, and wanting nothing in return?! What's his angle, anyway? What in the blinking flaming bejeezus does he want? She went up to the palace, carrying the load of new equipment awkwardly in her arms. Kasim followed behind, wondering why she didn't ask him to help her with it, but glad she hadn't. That stuff looked heavy. Outside the palace, Jerhyn was speaking reassuringly to a small crowd. "All is well! The emanations of evil from the corrupted sanctuary are no more, and the danger is past. I am so sorry I could not tell you, but with the city so crowded, I feared a panic if word got out." "But where did the demons go?" someone asked. "They're not here now, that's all I care about," someone else answered. "I still think we should have been told." "Believe me, this was for the best," Jerhyn said. "Drognan the wizard advised me. In the days of old, during the great Sin War, small demons would stow away with travelers fleeing the advance of evil. Once they were in a new place, the small demons summoned their larger brethren, and the war began anew. You would simply have carried your doom with you to new lands." "But we all could have died here!" someone shouted. Jerhyn saw Xanthippe, but continued to address the crowd. "And if you had gone elsewhere, would you be any less dead there? The whole world is under a new attack, or will be soon. If we do not fight them, they just grow stronger. Running will only help them to spread. For the good of the world, of all people, not just us, the line had to be drawn! My life was as much at risk as yours. The line had to be drawn here!" The crowd didn't have an answer to that. "Now go to your homes," Jerhyn said. "There is still much to be done and little time. I must speak with our champion." Champion? He's got to mean me, Xanthippe thought, but the word felt so strange. "Lord Jerhyn, about the demons outside --" "The demons are no longer outside; during the night, they left the city walls, and I fear for us all." "I also want to say I'm sorry for screaming. I was --" "There is no time! Regrets may come when there is a moment to indulge them, not now." "Does Drognan know anything about the tomb of Tal Rasha?" "Only what he has told you, and me, which is almost nothing. What are these things?" "Uh..." Xanthippe looked down at the bundle she was carrying. "Christmas presents." Picking up the crown, Jerhyn whistled. "You have generous friends." He unbuckled her helm, and ceremoniously placed the crown on her head. "I dub thee champion of Lut Gholein, and charge thee with the conquest of Diablo. Now hurry, time runs short." The crown filled Xanthippe with a surge of life. After setting the runes in the shield, putting on the ring and belt, and rearranging her potions, she and Kasim ran to the waypoint and returned to the Canyon of the Magi. The canyon was empty except for a dead camel. Two sets of human footprints led into one of the tombs... which had square decorations carved on its lintel, where they had been invisible in the dark. One set of prints led out of the tomb, to the canyon wall; whoever made those could climb like a monkey. So, Xanthippe thought, two went in, one came out; which to chase? She led Kasim into the tomb. It was full of the usual complement of evil creatures, which they dispatched with all speed. One monster dropped a legendary ring, the Nagelring. The last chamber held a dais, carved with mystical symbols of protection. A round hole at the apex fit the base of the Horadric staff like a keyhole, and a when she set the staff in its place, a burst of energy shot from the gemstones in its head. One wall of the chamber crumbled, and they went through. "Looking for Baal?" a horrible voice croaked in greeting, and the smell of rot washed over them. A huge maggot, pulpy and white, reared up its front end. It had arms ending in giant axe blades, and a grinning mouth full of blade-like teeth. The stench of it was overwhelming. Lifting itself off the floor on its arms, it catapulted forward on a thick layer of slime and slammed bodily into Xanthippe; she was glad she'd gone in with her new shield up, but was still knocked back into the wall. Kasim sliced across the thing's soft body with his poleaxe, but it didn't seem to care. For several minutes, they chopped and slashed at the thing, keeping close to it so it wouldn't vault into them again. It struck swiftly with its axes, grinning with pleasure. Xanthippe switched to the bardiche, her morning star was of little use; the way to kill this thing seemed to be to chop it so full of holes it would bleed to death. Fortunately, though it could speak, it didn't seem to be very smart. After smashing one of them back into the wall, it would turn to the other instead of pressing its advantage, giving them time to recover. It was a hard fight, but Andariel had given her more trouble. Finally, the thing died in an explosion of slime and maggots. "That was 18 different flavors of disgusting," Kasim opined. "Yeah," Xanthippe agreed, a feeling of doom creeping over her. "Hey, look," said Kasim, pointing at the wall paintings, one of which showed a chained man impaled on a giant red crystal. "They took the time to decorate the place." "If what this thing said is any guide, Baal and Diablo are gone." "Uh... yeah. We'd better at least look around." Damn it. She'd had it all figured out, too. Diablo was looking through all the tombs in the desert. So, all she had to do was take Tal Rasha out of the tomb he was supposed to be in, and put him in a tomb Diablo already checked. The old tomb right outside Lut Gholein's gates would have been perfect; it was so obvious, he'd never look there. The best place to hide a book is in a library. But Diablo found the tomb while she was lying in bed asleep. Deeper in the tomb, great hairy worms were crawling all over the floor. Kasim squished them as he led the way in; Xanthippe just trudged along behind. The tomb had one huge inner chamber, with a pit of molten rock surrounding an island draped with empty chains. Above a bridge over the lava was a strange being. It glowed brightly, yet was eclipsed by its own luminescence. Floating as delicately as the ether, it was encased in heavy golden armor, with a huge sword at its side. Glowing tendrils like wings came from its back, but no bird or beast was ever supported by such things. "Hello," said a voice at once powerful and gentle. If this was a demon, it was the most beautiful demon there ever was, but it didn't attack. Its blade was sheathed. "H-hello," Xanthippe said. "I thank you, mortal, for my freedom. Though I did expect you earlier. Diablo and Baal have fled, I was unable to stop them both." "Who are you?" "I am the Archangel Tyrael, benefactor of the Horadrim of old. In ages past, the Horadrim pursued the Three Prime Evils to the ends of the earth, allowing my hands to remain clean of them. Now that the Horadrim are gone, I felt I must come to earth to do battle with Diablo, and prevent him from freeing his brother. I have failed." Slowly, Xanthippe nodded. "You're an angel." "An Archangel, blessed by the light, benefactor of the Horadrim. You must go, mortal, and continue your pursuit of the Three. I am too weakened by battle to follow." Staring at this... being, Xanthippe smiled slightly. "Keep chasing them." "Yes, mortal. Other duties call to me, I must see to them." "Duties? Oh, yes." Xanthippe grinned. "Heavens, yes. So sorry, great Archangel, to have kept you waiting. Us mortals have to do this thing called SLEEPING!" Tyrael said nothing. "Oh, yes, us poor weak little mortals," Xanthippe continued. "Lest you might dirty your pure, sanctimonious hands with the tiniest speck, I'll be HAPPY to chase every demon lord in Creation to the ends of the earth! Please, oh great Tyrael, tell me how I might serve you better? Do you like me on my back, or on my knees? Either way, I get the shaft, don't I?! Oh, no, precious angel-kins is too weakened by battle after, what, one fight!? Well, what about ME!?! I had to carve my way across this GODFORSAKEN desert, with no help from YOU or ANYONE ELSE to get to this damned tomb!!" Looking very pale, Kasim mumbled, "Uh, I helped a little." "SHUT UP!!" Xanthippe was livid now. "What is up with you angels, anyway!? Sitting up in the heavens, lest the stench of mere mortals offend thy delicate nostrils, telling everybody what's good and what's bad!?! LIKE YOU'D KNOW!! What do you know about ANYTHING?!? You just sit up there, all pure and powerful, with us mortals like some kind of buffer state between you and Hell! Is that it?! This whole SH!TPILE just a layer of insulation between you and Hell?! Or maybe it's the battleground you chose so you wouldn't risk having some icky demon touch his toe to your precious heaven!! EITHER WAY, WE GET SCREWED!!" Kasim was edging away from Xanthippe, hoping to be out of the blast radius. But Tyrael did not even appear ruffled by her shrieking. His expression was impossible to judge, but when he spoke, all that was in his voice was sadness. "To lose your mother at such a young age, you have suffered greatly. She did not abandon you, as you thought when you were a child. She sent you away so that you might have a better life than she had." With a clank, Xanthippe's bardiche dropped from her nerveless hand. Tyrael continued, "Your grandmother wanted you to remain, and carry on your family business. When the Zann Esu came, your mother went against her will, and removed you from your grandmother's power. The gift you carry within you made you more than your mother could ever be, and she knew that it must be allowed to flourish for you to have any chance at happiness." Looking back and forth from Tyrael, impassive and majestic, to Xanthippe, now shivering and crying, Kasim wondered what the hell was going on. "Where is she?" Xanthippe finally whimpered, "Was she ever happy? Can I see her again?" "Those questions, I cannot answer." "Please," Xanthippe started sobbing, "I just want to see my mommy again..." "I cannot help you," Tyrael intoned. "You must put your anger aside. Your world is being invaded, by beings whose goal is your destruction. You are correct, in a way; the mortal realms lie between Heaven and Hell, and Hell's intent is to make the mortal realms a staging point for an assault on Heaven itself. This cannot be allowed, for your sake, and for ours." Wiping her eyes, Xanthippe nodded. "Where are they going?" "To Kurast, where the eldest of the Three awaits them. Here is a gate to Lut Gholein. You must travel across the seas, and pray you are not too far behind." "Can't you just zap me to Kurast?" Tyrael might have laughed. "My strength is at an ebb. The journey will give you time to recover the strength of spirit you will need as well. Go now." Everyone in Lut Gholein was sad, and horrified to learn of Baal's escape. "Do not worry," Jerhyn said. "You have done very well. I speak for all of us when I say we would trust you with our very lives. For the sake of all, you must continue your quest." Lysander was far less poetic about it. "It was never going to be easy. Go, and remember us fondly. You know, you bothered me far less than most." She went off to Meshif's ship with her luggage, Kasim... and a handful of licorice.
Act 3Chapter 14Meshif's ship pulled out of the harbor with a full crew and two passengers. At least, there shouldn't be any more; the crew made several searches of the ship, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Any stowaways couldn't be very powerful, as Xanthippe could sense no magic, so they probably wouldn't be in any danger. Xanthippe stood on the stern of the ship and watched the city grow smaller in the distance. When you travel by magic, there are no long good-byes; you blink and you're there. But traveling by ship, or by caravan, does have advantages. You have time to relax, and reflect. Her mother, her grandmother -- most of her relatives were probably dead. There might be a cousin somewhere in Khanduras. He'd become a priest; the "black sheep" of the family. She wished she could have found her mom's pendant. There might have been something about it to help find her father. How did that angel know about her family? Damn, she really lost it when he pulled that out of nowhere. And he ducked her questions about Heaven and Hell, too. If she ever saw an angel again, Xanthippe resolved to interrogate him calmly, and not let him dodge the issue, no matter what he said. When she came aboard, Meshif had told her, "My cabin is yours." Why was he so confused when she put all her stuff in there? She couldn't walk around the ship in full armor, what if she fell overboard? The Zann Esu taught her how to harness the elements, not how to swim. One day, as she was standing on the ship's stern, watching the waves wash out in the ship's wake, Meshif came to ask her to do something. "Ah," he began, "madam." "I'm not a madam, I'm not even in a house." "No, no... it's not that. It's, ah..." "You need some more wind." "No, we have a good wind, it's not that." "You want your cabin back?" "No... it's the crew." Xanthippe looked back over her shoulder. "Isn't that your department?" "You are..." Meshif scratched his ear, and stared at the water indecisively. "They are, but discipline is becoming a problem." "Do you think they're going to mutiny and turn pirate?" "No... I don't think you realize, when you lean on the railing..." "I get sick when we go through the big waves. I tried not to make a mess." "You'll get your sea legs sometime. But you've been wearing that mini skirt..." Raising an eyebrow, Xanthippe asked, "How does wearing a skirt keep me from getting my 'sea legs'?" "Well, my crew keeps getting... distracted." "By what?" Meshif rolled his eyes. "Nothing. Sorry to have troubled you." That was a strange conversation. But Xanthippe had started to notice something. Some people can't come out and say what they mean; they hem and haw and talk in circles around it, hoping you'll read their minds and figure out what they're babbling about. But if you take all the little hints they try to drop, sometimes you can put them together and figure them out what's up. Hmmm... me in a skirt... leaning over the rail... a distracted crew. A hypothesis formed in Xanthippe's mind. Glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder, she stood up and stretched languorously. Her halter top rode up high; she straightened it delicately, and ran her hands down her sides to smooth her skirt. The whole crew suddenly looked very busy; my, what a burst of energy that brought on. Goodness, the Zann Esu certainly would not approve of this! Of course, the girls in her family tended to be pretty; it made their house a success. According to the Zann Esu, this sort of thing was supposed to make her angry; but somehow, she didn't really mind. Curiosity satisfied, for the moment, Xanthippe walked (well, strutted, maybe, just a tiny bit) to the prow, and watched the waves breaking over the front of the ship. When the ship arrived at Kurast, Meshif couldn't find the docks at first. The land was a giant green wall, nothing but plants, plants everywhere, you couldn't see anything but green right down to the edge of the water. This was not what the great city of Kurast was supposed to look like, so Xanthippe ordered Kasim to suit up. There might be trouble. Finally, after sailing past what might have been several piers completely swathed in vines, there was an opening; a small dock, barely large enough to tie the ship at, with a few people fishing off the end. They called and waved as the ship approached, and ran to bring others. Xanthippe disembarked with Kasim, both armed and ready for anything. The entire welcoming committee consisted of one small man, covered with tiny burn scars. "Greetings," he said. "I am Hratli, smith and enchanter. Weaponry and armor are my specialties, and I am very happy to see two such as you. I don't have many customers, these days." "Hi. What the hell happened here?" "I perceive that you are not a believer in small talk. We shall have big talk, then. The servants of Zakarum are a plague upon the land. The rivers run red with blood, and demons fill our nights and days. A wretched jungle hell has swept over all, and we few survivors huddle on the dockside as our city falls to pieces and is consumed." Xanthippe smirked. "Oh, I don't know, a little spackle, some weed killer, you could get this place fixed up all right. You sure you're a smith? You look kind of puny." Hratli, who was only a bit taller than Xanthippe, smiled thinly. "While it is refreshing to meet someone who has dispensed with any tedious sense of false modesty, I must regret that we can offer you little by way of hospitality. Fish and bananas are our entire diet, and even the water is fouled by a demonic presence." "That's got a ring of truth to it," Kasim noted. "Any idea what's causing all this?" Xanthippe asked "The city was built around a tower, which housed the soulstone used to imprison the eldest of the Three. The demon lord Mephisto has corrupted his keepers, and now leads them as his army. Where once they seemed wise men, there now stand paranoid religious fanatics." "Religion'll do that to you," Xanthippe said. "So, it's the church, huh?" "Where the eldest of the Three is involved, it is doubtful that any church could stand. There are many things the Horadrim of old did that seem to lack common sense." "Tell me about it. Kasim, let's look around town." It wasn't much of a town, just a section of the dockside under a Dome of Protection. Most of it wasn't even solid land, just stilts driven into the river muck to support a few houses and walkways. The few patches of stony land were all made from fill poured into the water. One of these had a big stepped pyramid on it, surmounted by a small temple. Xanthippe was looking up at it when a very tall man approached her. "You now speak... to Ormus!" Xanthippe's eyes narrowed. "No! Really?" "He once was a great mage, was Ormus." "Now he does advertisements for Abs of Steel (TM)." "Now he lives like a rat on a sinking vessel." "Is his vessel sinking? He'll need it safely harbored. He needs to find a good one, though, I see it lists to starboard." "What the hell was that?" Kasim asked. "Old dockside call," Xanthippe laughed. "You have questions for Ormus, he perceives." "Yeah: why does he refer to himself in the third person?" "You have questions for yourself." "Yeah! Why am I standing here listening to this?" "Ormus sees conflict in you, as he does in all would-be heroes." "No, Ormus sees conflict with me, when I kick him upside the head!" "Boss, leave him alone, it's bad luck to beat up people like that." Kasim tugged on her arm. "Aw, c'mon! He's funny!" "And you can't kick him upside the head, he's too damn tall." "Can I slap him around like a red-headed stepchild?" "He doesn't have hair either." If Ormus was discomfited by any of this, he gave no indication. "All will soon become clear." "Not with demons 'fouling' the water supply!" Xanthippe laughed. Finally, Kasim dragged her off. She could have stood there making fun of Ormus all day, he was too damned easy. Of course, the next person they met might have been even easier. "Hello there," Asheara said. "You must be a great adventurer to risk coming here." Staring goggle-eyed at this vision, Xanthippe bit her lip hard. Tiny, muffled giggles escaped the corners of her mouth. Asheara continued, "I'm Asheara, leader of the Iron Wolves." Glancing over, Kasim noticed that Xanthippe was turning dark pink. "Uh... yeah, great adventurers. Can you excuse us a minute?" He dragged her outside. Asheara must have heard the laughter. It lasted nearly a minute. "Dammit, what's gotten into you?" Kasim asked. "You're acting all weird and stuff." "Did you SEE that woman!? Talk about overcompensation! And the snake! Of course she has a pet snake! How damned phallic can you get?! And the 'Iron Wolves'!! Oh, how scary and awesome they must be! Oooh, I'm so intimidated!" "How damned WHAT can you get?" "Never mind. Oh, wow. This town is hilarious. Let's see what else they've got." Looking very uncomfortable, Kasim followed Xanthippe to a small hut. A hunched old man with a bald head and a face like an dyspeptic monkey greeted them with, "Hello, and welcome to Kwikee-mart! Oh, you're new here, aren't you?" "Yep! I'm Xanthippe. You're an alchemist. You sure smell like one." "I sell potions and salves. You may buy some, but don't make a habit of coming here! My studies constantly require my attention." "Do you sell licorice?" Alkor looked at her strangely. "How did you know?" "Alchemical union bylaws, no. 310." "Dammit. I will sell you some if you promise not to tell anyone." "You will give me some, if I promise not to tell anyone." "It is a deal. Now, I can get rid of the filthy stuff. It attracts brats. See? It has attracted one already, and it is not even noon today!" Xanthippe didn't meet anyone else special that day. Some of the townspeople mentioned a woman on the southern docks, armed with strange weapons, but when Xanthippe went to look, there was no such person there.
Chapter 15The jungle outside was frightening; you could stand there and watch it pulling the nearby buildings apart. Very few animals were in the green, just vines, twining roots, and huge leaves that blocked out the sun. The dockside was protected by a power dome built into their pyramid, but the spell was old and no one had upgraded it for centuries. A lot of progress had been made in protection spells since then, but that wouldn't do them any good now. Unless the dome could be strengthened, Xanthippe had a definite time limit for invading the city and killing Mephisto. Outside of town, Xanthippe and Kasim saw a strange man walking into the jungle. Wearing a long, fully concealing robe with a hood pulled over his face, he sure didn't look local. There was only one way to find out, so Xanthippe took matters into her own hands, and drove the butt of her bardiche into the trailing edge of his robe. "Oh, sorry! Was this yours?" The guy kept walking, his feet shuffling in the mud. Whoever he was, he wasn't very bright. "Peekaboo, I see you!" she said, lifting the hood to look underneath at his face. His eyes were yellow, with slit pupils. His skin looked like a mask that was rotting away, with red scales underneath. And there was a glowing red spot *inside* his forehead. The eyes focused on her; they were proud, utterly cold, and completely indifferent. The cloaked thing disappeared in a puff of brimstone; four small, fleshy things appeared and attacked. After they'd killed them, Xanthippe turned to Kasim. "You know, I think that was our boy." "Was he scary beyond all reason?" Kasim asked. "Yep. Think he stowed away with us?" "How else could he have gotten here?" "Good point. Unless he's just zapping around. Wonder why he didn't kill us?" "Maybe he would have if you'd looked under his robe and said, 'I see England, I see France, I see Diablo's underpants.'" "Do demon lords wear underpants? Boxers or briefs?" "I don't think you'd want to get to know a demon lord that well." "True." Xanthippe looked into the jungle. "I wonder where Baal is?" Kasim shrugged. "We'll find out." The jungle had mosquitoes three feet long, walking tree trunks, and tiny little men with teeth half the size of their bodies. They made cute little squeaky noises as you killed them. In a couple of sections, giant spiders had built huge communal webs. There are such things as social spiders; they are very small, and need numbers to prey on the large insects of the jungle. But these spiders were gigantic: even the babies were the size of tarantulas, and the adults could prey on people. Inside the cavernous webs of one group, Xanthippe found a small jade statue of a proud barbarian. Another held a shining chest full of gold and magic, and an odd thing - a small sculpture of a human eye, with a red iris. The statue was part of a set, made locally. Meshif had collected them since he was a boy, and this one happened to be the only one he was missing. After the long delay at Lut Gholein, he was a bit short on cash, so he offered a golden bird statuette in exchange. Just a glance told Xanthippe there was magic inside this bird, and she eagerly traded for it. The eye sculpture was not as easy to figure out. It was hard, like alabaster, but warm and obviously magical. None of the locals could say anything about it, so they went to Cain, their resident antiquities expert. "Ah, this is the Golden Bird of Ku Y'leh! He was a great alchemist long ago; perhaps Alkor will know more of his history. The eye you have there is not a sculpture. That can only be a relic of the Zakarumite saint Khalim." "Aren't saint's relics body parts? This thing is hard as a rock." "Yes, its present incorruptible state is a sign of sainthood." "The saints I've run into have all been bits of bone." "And were very corruptible. So, in all likelihood, sainthood was improperly bestowed. Khalim was a member of the Zakarumite high council, who withstood the corruption of Mephisto after it had claimed all of his fellows. When the other council members killed him, it caused a schism within the church, and a large proportion of the sect fled into the west." "Places like Khanduras?" "Exactly. Khalim's body was all but destroyed by the demonic assault, but according to legend, three pieces of him survived, carrying his vision, knowledge, and soul." Xanthippe looked directly into the eye. The iris contracted slightly, like it was focusing. She dropped it and jumped back. "Ewww!!" Laughing softly, Cain picked it up and looked into it. "Poor Khalim. But this may be for a greater good. The relics of a true saint cannot be anything but a help for us." Xanthippe shivered. "Why does religious stuff always involve dead things?" "Oh, I'm not sure about that," Cain chuckled. "Let me see... the eye would most likely carry Khalim's true vision, able to see corruption through all obscuring veils of deceit. Finding his knowledge and soul would be helpful as well." "Do I have to touch them?" Cain smiled indulgently. "I am sure that will not be necessary." Alkor knew the bird on sight. "Ah, the Golden Bird of Ku Y'leh! Busy yourself elsewhere, while I go to work on the ashes contained within." "Something alchemical?" "No! I will sprinkle them over your precious licorice, stupid girl!" He made no move towards the licorice jar, so he probably wasn't serious. Xanthippe got some treasure identified by Cain. One was a rare poleaxe, about as good as Kasim's "Malice" poleaxe, but without the life-draining problem. She was strong enough to use it now, too. After buying some plate mail from Hratli, she went back to Alkor, who had a potion ready. "Hey," Xanthippe said after drinking it, "that was good! Most potions taste like socks." "Ku Y'leh was the greatest alchemist. His body was so saturated with good chemicals, how could something prepared from his ashes be less than wonderful?" "Those were HIS ashes?" "Indisputably!" Hopefully, Ku Y'leh wouldn't mind his new final resting place, in the swampy muck outside Alkor's door. Dammit, religious nuts were supposed to be the only ones who play around with dead people. In spite of her reaction, she still felt suffused with new life. But she wasn't going to try getting Ku Y'leh back to see if he had any more to offer her. Deeper and deeper Xanthippe and Kasim went into the marshes. Sticking close to the river made travel easier, there was less to trip over. Her new poleaxe was a thing of beauty. Well, maybe not, but it was very helpful for slicing and dicing. After chopping up the immortal remnants of the strongest man in Kurast, now a very strong zombie, Xanthippe found a magic long sword. The enchantment was terrible - +1 to maximum damage - but Cain had mentioned an alchemical recipe that used swords. She had some chipped gems set aside, so she used the cube to transform the sword. As predicted, the long sword came through the transformation with three sockets and a new enchantment, a brutal one. That was good... but Xanthippe felt she could do better, and she had the gems to try again. Bronze sword of quality... sword of the icicle... then, out came a Soldier's Long Sword of Alacrity. That was good enough for her. In the Spider's jungle, she'd found a gem shrine, and made a perfect ruby with it. It was stowed in her luggage now... no, it wasn't there anymore! Instead, there was a runestone and a note: "Oh, what a pretty shiny thing you've made for me! I'll take this as payment for the ruby in your crown, my little princess. Make the next one an emerald or topaz, I don't have many of them. As for your sword, when you make it, here's an Amn rune to keep you healthy. Don't be too upset! You're fiery enough without this. -- The Mule." Eyes narrowing, Xanthippe finally saw what was his little game was. Breaking into luggage, moving things around as he saw fit, giving and taking depending on what HE thought she should have! How DARE he!?! She promised herself that she would find this guy and make him squeal like a pig, no matter how long it took. He had to be around here, he had to have stowed away on the ship SOMEWHERE... but she still couldn't find him. She couldn't even find that great warrior woman who was supposed to be hanging around the southern docks; everyone kept telling Xanthippe she was there, but there was never anyone where they pointed.
Chapter 16Hratli was growing concerned about the dome over the dockside, and wanted an old Skatsimi relic that could supposedly reinforce it. It was a dagger called the Gidbinn. "Why would a dagger help with a Dome of Protection?" "Why would a sword help a sorceress? You ask many meaningless questions." "Hell yeah, I ask questions. I want answers. Good answers. Like, why the hell does everyone say there's some great warrior over there behind me?" Hratli looked over Xanthippe's shoulder. "Perhaps it is an error in their judgment. The Gidbinn is a repository, and contains a great deal of magical energy. Though the enchantment on the dockside is not the best, more power should strengthen it." "Or burn it out completely," Xanthippe snorted. Grumbling and swearing under her breath, Xanthippe trudged back into the jungle. Kasim kept at least 5 yards ahead of her; that way, he didn't have to listen. Slowly, the land rose and became less swampy. There were fewer drowned corpses wandering around, but this didn't improve matters. The number of toothy little pygmies rose. They weren't much trouble, except for their shamans. Xanthippe would have liked to use her poleaxe, but the shamans breathed fire, and her fire resistance was quite poor without her shield. At least it gave her a chance to try her new sword. Xanthippe liked swords better than maces; the beautiful, graceful blades, and the smooth, sharp edges, are so much nicer than all those little spikes. It wasn't long before they found the Gidbinn, with a little band of pygmies who lived next to an old dungeon. The blade was small, bronze, and primitive-looking, but screaming with power. How did this thing get to be a religious artifact and power repository? Then she remembered that religious energy often involves death... small knives would be very useful for collecting it, since they were often used to create it. Oh, well, she thought. Energy is energy. Religions gather their energy very inefficiently, but as long as it's there, it might as well be used. Back on the docks, Ormus took the Gidbinn, and floated it over a little altar next to the pyramid. New power surged over the docks, though few noticed it, and the dome pushed the jungle back with renewed strength. Xanthippe's good deed for the day was done. Ormus gave her a lousy ring he didn't like, and composed a poem for her:
'It's doubtful that she'll come to good!' For she, despite our good advice, Simply isn't very nice.
Not to magic, but combat martial: When she was young, she fell from bed, And landed solid on her head.
Imitates enviable names, Puts use to magic, with calm thought -- But she thinks that is full of rot.
Inseparable are her nose and thumb!"
"Heya, Alkor. It smells like poo gas in here." "Do not bother me, stupid girl. My mind encompasses the universe." "Have you been hitting the sulfur compounds again?" "The world is a speck of dust settled upon my left buttock!" "I didn't need to know that. Looks like you're busy, I'll come back later." Hratli bought the ring. Xanthippe asked him what was up with Alkor. "Alkor lives a life of ceaseless study and endless dissipation." "Kind of contradictory goals," Xanthippe said. "Alkor studies by filling his head full of knowledge, until it can hold no more. He then indulges in all the worst of his own concoctions at once, burning the feverish fires of delirium through his brain. What knowledge survives, he takes to be true, good, and worthy." Xanthippe thought about that. "So, we're all dirt on Alkor's left butt cheek." Hratli impassively replied, "It might explain certain things." Meanwhile, back in the jungle, Xanthippe led Kasim down into the dungeons. They were full of ghosts, probably the remnants of some religious purge. The Rogue dungeons had a lot of ghosts too; maybe ghosts were a manifestation of the mental energy produced by pain and fear. This was also where the pygmies put their dead, and they were all very happy to see Xanthippe. Out of respect for their dead, they had been wired with explosives, set to go off when their bones came apart. The poleaxe helped a lot with them, if you were careful to keep them at range. At the lowest level, one of those evil little Shamans had set up shop. She needed the shield to deal with him. Toasty. The dungeon had a golden treasure chest, just like the spider webs. Several traps protected it, but inside was a lovely suit of plate mail, a few useless things, and a brain. The brain looked like polished rose quartz, with reddish veins. Gingerly scooping it up with an old shield, Xanthippe took the brain back to Cain. "Ah!" Cain picked up the brain, "Khalim's brain still bears the knowledge of Mephisto's weakness!" "How do you know?" "He just told me. Here, hold him and he'll speak with you." "NO THANK YOU! You can tell me, please, I'll trust your judgment!" "There's nothing to worry about. He says you're very brave, and he is glad to have seen you. Soon, you will have his heart." Xanthippe went pale. "Please, can't we just be friends?" "No, no!" Cain laughed. "His heart is entombed beneath the lower city. After Khalim's destruction, the high council of Zakarum could not destroy his remains, so they scattered them. If they were to be reunited, Khalim might be able to destroy Mephisto!" "Hey, great! Anyone who can take on the big guy is cool by me. Why didn't the Zakarumites drop his bits in the ocean or something?" "Khalim explains that he can return to Kurast, but not bring his parts together within the city while Mephisto's spirit is dominant. Nor can he reconstruct his body." Xanthippe frowned. "I thought he said he could destroy Mephisto. What's he going to use, harsh language? I'm not looking for his tongue." Cain held the brain, frowning with concentration. "Mephisto will not allow his body to exist. But there may be another way. While embodied, Khalim had a flail, a special one with three heads. If combined with it, he could make a holy weapon of himself." "Another artifact. This city is just dripping with rare holy artifacts." "This is a holy city, after all. What does it matter? Much good has come from religious faith, despite the darkness we find ourselves in now." Xanthippe looked annoyed. "Religion is an excuse for people who don't want to think. Using your brain, not some saint's, is infinitely better. None of this would be happening if it weren't for religious nuts bringing angels and monsters into our world." The emphatic assurance of Xanthippe's words seemed to trouble Cain. "Yes... I have heard others argue that as well. Perhaps there is something to it, though I suspect the angels and monsters would be in our world regardless. If we can truly say it is our world, and not theirs." Xanthippe shrugged. "They have theirs. This is ours. They should get out and fight their own damn war in their own damn worlds, and leave us out of it." Cain looked at the brain. If Khalim said anything, Cain didn't repeat it. "This is a very old debate, and I do not think it will be answered definitely in my lifetime or yours. But time is growing short. There is still much more that you must do." Xanthippe snorted, had Cain drop Khalim's knowledgeable mind into her luggage, and returned to the jungle. It's typical of old people to change the subject, rather than admit they've lost the debate. Cold logic does that to prideful people. Going further into the jungle, they killed pygmies, more pygmies, and yet more pygmies. They found a swampy pit, which was full of pygmies, treasure, and still yet more pygmies. After a long stretch of jungle with even still yet more pygmies (Damn, they must breed like rats! Which ones were the girls, anyway?) they finally came to the outer walls of the great city of Kurast.
Chapter 17"Yes, that is the entrance to the lower city," Cain said. "Glorious Kurast was built as a series of concentric rings, separated by defensible walls and moats. Connecting the rings are permanent bridges, with towers flanking them where archers may be stationed. At the very heart of Kurast, in the middle of a lake, is the city within the city, Travincal." "Great," Xanthippe nodded. "The towers and walls are there. But I didn't see any archers." "No one here has been near the city for weeks. Even Asheara's Iron Wolves have not been able to penetrate the jungle." "That's not saying anything," Xanthippe snorted. "I didn't see any people in the city either. That might explain it." Cain considered that. "It may be, once they were no longer needed, Mephisto replaced the Zakarumites with more suitable minions." "Maybe. Anyway, Alkor tells me there's a book in the city somewhere I should find. The Black Tome of Lam Esen." "Ah! A book of histories and prophecies, concerned especially with the Three Prime Evils." "Yep. Might have useful information, if it wasn't written by a mage." Cain chuckled. "You are so very hard on those of your own profession." Xanthippe smirked. "Of course. I've met enough of them to know. See you soon." After Xanthippe and Kasim left, and their portal winked out of sight, Cain sat for a moment in thoughtful meditation. Turning to his right, he looked straight at a shadow no one had thought looked out of place, even though it was, and said. "Some would consider it rude, the way you listen in on others' conversations." With a shrug, Natalya let her shadows drop. "Ok, how'd you spot me?" Cain raised an eyebrow. "Do you think I am going to tell you?" "It would be very bad for us, if many others knew how to see through our cloaks." Natalya smiled. "I suppose I could just ask you another way." "With your 'gifts of the mind' and 'psychic attunement'? If your powers were so subtle and refined, I think you would know enough of our girl to trust her, as I do." "This represents a breach in our defenses, you know." Natalya walked over to Cain. "For the good of my order and our mission, I have to know sometime, somehow." Cain smiled. "Subtle threats are pointless when I know as well as you that they cannot be carried out. If you must know, I simply used my brains. I have seen others point you out to my little sorceress, but she does not see you. You are Viz-Jaq'taar, of the order of mage-slayers, and I am well aware that you refine the powers of your minds. Therefore, the only possible conclusion is that you can 'persuade' others that you cannot be seen." "Ah, ha." Natalya nodded. "So you just looked where I was telling you not to look. Logic. Can't call using that a crime. You'd be amazed at how weak wizards are, when it comes to logic." "Magic is mysticism at its core, despite what sorcerers might say. No one really understands how it works, why certain words and movements produce certain results. Logic is simply not a useful tool for the magician. Speaking of weak logic... what do you think of her?" "What's to think? I'm assigned to watch someone else." "Then why were you here listening to us?" "How do you know I was?" Cain folded his arms. "Attempting to maintain plausible deniability, are we? While I have not refined my 'psychic talents', I know when I am being bamboozled!" "All right. Actually, I respect you a lot more than I thought I would. I've been assigned here to keep an eye on Ormus, and kill him if I have to. I believe he's a spy for Mephisto. But when your little princess showed up, I knew she was the greater danger. You should see the emotion crackling off her, she's all raw nerves." "Many her age are. If your order was meant to police the mage clans, I should think there are greater concerns here than a... juvenile delinquent, if I must use such terms." "Her age isn't important. Look at her profile. Cocky and arrogant, assigned to kill Diablo by people she thinks she's better than. She might betray us to the Three out of spite." "I find your case unconvincing," Cain said. "You must also, as you have taken no action as yet. Unless you are the one who wants the Tome of Lam Esen?" Natalya laughed, and leaned back casually on one foot. "I can't fool you, can I? You're right, I bribed Alkor to ask her for the book. There's information in it about the early days of my order, as well as the prophecies. It will be an interesting history lesson... and valuable for the war." The more Natalya seemed to relax, the more troubled Cain seemed. "You know that we are in a long-overdue phase of the Sin War, then." "Isn't it obvious?" "Then it concerns me, that one of your talents is not trying to do something about it. Why is Xanthippe making her way through Kurast, while you sit on the docks and wait?" Natalya stared hard at Cain. "You think I'm a coward." "I merely think it wise to judge others by their actions." Cain's eyes narrowed. "Ormus would like you to think him mad, but I know he is not by his actions. You, however, have given me very little to judge you by." Coldly, Natalya nodded. "Deckard Cain, I am part of an organization, not an individual acting on her own. I know that others of my order are active in this area, and I trust my superiors. There is more going on here than we know. Mephisto's corruption of the city is so complete, it's almost as though he's daring heroes to come and try him. I will not go in against him until I know what he's up to, or it could be a very costly mistake. Costly, as in more than just my own life." "And... ?" "I can't fulfill my primary mission if I go into the jungle. But I can't keep an eye on her if I stay here. So, I sent her after the book. It's quite a treasure. If she comes back with it, I'll know she's reliable. If not, I'll have to leave Ormus alone while I take care of her." Cain must have given an involuntary twinge. Or maybe Natalya just knew. "Don't be afraid for her. I don't just go around killing people. If I did, Ormus would be dead and I'd be off somewhere doing something more important. If I have to kill her, it will be because I have to kill her." "How... professional of you." "It's a job," Natalya shrugged, and walked back to the southern docks. Ormus, though he had been nearby several times, gave no sign of having seen or heard the conversation. Lower Kurast was full of apes, leapers, and despite Xanthippe's suspicions, Zakarumites. Their clothes were ragged, rotting off their bodies in the constant rain, and they had nothing to protect themselves by scythes and axes. Their eyes had a strange, vacant look, like they didn't really know where they were or what they were doing. This went above and beyond the siren call of any religion Xanthippe had ever heard of; it must be some magic, but she couldn't see anything in the air of the city. The bridge deeper into Kurast was undefended. The defense of the city didn't seem to follow any rational pattern. The Zakarumites and the demons weren't organized in any way; they just roamed the city in little patchy groups, and attacked with great zeal, but in a totally disorganized way. There were many dead people in the city, tied to rocks and tortured, or laid out on the ground and disemboweled. Looking at the bodies, Xanthippe could tell that the mindless abuse had continued long after the victims were dead. The bazaars in the second ring of the city had two temples, entrances to the sewers, and the bridge to upper Kurast. Pausing for a moment to weigh her options, Xanthippe asked Kasim, "Which way do you think we should go next?" Wet and miserable in the rain, Kasim pointed to the temples. "They're probably dry." Xanthippe nodded, and started climbing the steps. "Yep, these buildings look real solid. They'll stand and keep water out for a long time. Wish the Zann Esu built like this." "Hey, what do you have against them, anyway?" Once they'd gotten under the roof, and could drip-dry a little, Xanthippe answered, "Just about everything. Like the way they build buildings. Do you know how they build things?" "No." "Of course not. Stupid question. When the Zann Esu went into the jungles, they had to build a place for themselves to live in. You'd think they'd find people who know how to build, right?" "Not if they're supposed to be secret." "Yeah, ok. But they didn't even need to do that. They had books with them, including books on architecture. Do you think they looked up how to build things in those books?" "I think you're gonna say 'no'." "No, they didn't. Men wrote those books, and they didn't want to build the way men do. Men are always building towers. Big, tall towers, and they're incredibly concerned about who has the biggest tower. Get my meaning?" "Uh... no." "It's a phallic symbol. The Zann Esu wanted to make a completely new tradition of female scholarship, female arts, female magic. To do that, they rejected everything male, even if it worked. You know how they built the first buildings?" Kasim looked confused. "I think you already asked me that..." "Oh, yeah, sorry. They all got together, and lifted the rocks with TK." "Huh?" "Telekinesis. You know?" Xanthippe looked at a pebble, and cast a spell. The pebble floated up in the air, and moved where she pointed. "Hey, I've never seen you do that before!" "It's not hard. But you can't lift much weight, even a dagger's too heavy. It took most of the witches to move one rock, but they wanted the buildings to be made using magic, not brute strength. They thought it'd make the clan more magical." "Uh... ok, makes sense." "No it doesn't. It took the whole clan months to build one building. It fell down 5 times while they were building it. They didn't know how thick to make the walls, they didn't think to put in support beams, they never thought of how the weight of the roof would be distributed... they didn't know what they were doing!" "Huh." "And, of course, they can't actually read one of those filthy male architecture books, or their minds might be infected. They had to figure it all out by trial and error -- you know, the 'intuitive' way of doing it. Women's intuition, huh?" "Uh, yeah." Kasim looked a bit uncomfortable. "Anyway, the first building fell down a few months after they finished it. They were making a second one, and trying for a second story. It never did go up." "So... you guys were all out in the jungle without any buildings?" Xanthippe laughed, "No, they figured something out eventually. We apprentices were housed in one of the older buildings -- one of the ones that actually stood up, anyway. The place was drafty as hell, leaked all the time, and the ceiling was only 4 feet high because they didn't want to make the walls thick enough to make it taller. Too much work." "Damn..." "Yeah! Years of trial and error, just to get that. And you know what? The senior witches were proud of it! They were proud of a bunch of ugly, dysfunctional, pile-of-junk buildings just because they'd built them by themselves. They thought it made them superior!" Kasim just nodded. He was beginning to be sorry he'd asked. Xanthippe ranted until they were both dry. All the hot air must have helped. If they were going to go anywhere today, Kasim realized he'd have to get her to shut up. "Uh... one thing I don't get?" Xanthippe stopped in mid-rave. "What's that?" "What's a 'phallic symbol'?" Xanthippe blinked, thought for a minute, then said, "Let's go kill things." "Fine by me." The ruined temple was small, and very crowded with giant spiders, flaming ghouls, and Zakarumite women. The ghouls were nasty, summoning fireballs from the heavens, and Xanthippe still didn't have nearly enough fire resistance without her shield. The Zakarumite women were the worst. Judging from the remains of their clothing, they had been nuns or priestesses of some kind. The juxtaposition of nun's garb, near-nakedness, and bloodthirsty savagery would have brought back nightmares if they'd been raised in the church. On the temple's altar, a black book rested on a puddle of dried blood. There was a lot of treasure in the temple; while Kasim helped ferry it out, Xanthippe took a look at the book. Unfortunately, it was written in Dravidian, a language she was not familiar with. It was the old language of this part of the world, so Alkor probably knew it; she took it straight back to him. Cain was overjoyed to see the book; it must really be something good.
Chapter 18While they were exploring the second temple in the Kurast bazaar, Kasim seemed to be thinking. After a while, he smiled, and said, "Hey, boss? You know what?" After taking a moment to not-very-neatly remove a ghoul's head, Xanthippe answered, "What?" "I think you've been lying." "No, I haven't. Incoming!" They ran away just as a meteor crashed through the ceiling and shattered in a ball of fire. Pity what these ghouls were doing to the city. "What makes you think I've been lying?" "Well, maybe not lying, but making it worse than it is." "Exaggerating." "Yeah. It's like this: you said the Zann Esu wanted to reject everything men knew, right?" "Everything tainted by a biased male perspective, yes." "But you also said they brought a bunch of books with them into the jungle. If they didn't want them, why'd they bring them?" After they'd beaten the last ghoul into a pile of bone splinters, Xanthippe answered, "So they could try to prove them all wrong. Hard to do that if you don't have the original material to dissect and misquote." "Oh." "You know, the Zann Esu philosophy is supposed to be supportive, broad, nonjudgmental, and all-inclusive?" Kasim shook his head, and looked around the next corner. "Well, they are some of the most judgmental, intolerant philosophers ever. Just try contradicting one of them sometime! They all get the old girls' group together and jump all over you! It's completely hypocritical!" "Heads up!" Kasim yelled, and sliced open a giant spider. Chopping up spiders, trying to avoid the webs, Xanthippe continued, "When we apprentices were supposed to look at 'older philosophies', they quoted the men's books at us. The actual books were hidden so our delicate young minds wouldn't be polluted." "Yeah," Kasim grunted as he buried his poleaxe in a spider's bloated abdomen. "So I went and found where they were hiding them. I stole one, hid it, and read the whole thing, not just the parts they wanted me to read." "You read a whole book?" After sticking her poleaxe in the last spider, it expired with a hiss. Xanthippe smiled, and finally nodded to Kasim. "Ayuh. A whole book." "Damn, that must have taken a long time." Turning away so he couldn't see the smirk, Xanthippe nodded. "Oh, yeah. And you know what I read?" "About architecture?" "A lot more than that. I thought, after reading one book, that one dead male had a lot better things to say than all my teachers." "Oh." "The book was about mathematics, and the elements. It was all clear, concise, no babbling about political perspectives, or imposing male and female characters on fire, air, water, and earth. They were just forces, energy, and matter. I even found the sections the witches liked to quote; they'd been taken totally out of context to try to make them look stupid." They left the temple and trudged towards the bridge to upper Kurast; Xanthippe just went on and on. Kasim tried to think of something that might shut her up again. Finally, he remembered. "Didn't you want to go into the sewers to look for something?" "Oh, yeah. That heart thing." The Kurast sewers were huge, as you might expect for such a city. They probably extended for miles underground. Mostly, they were empty, but not completely. Giant tentacled reptiles were living in the sewer nodes, and Mephisto seemed to have imported mummies, both greater and lesser, to fill in the dark places. Pygmy skeletons were everywhere too. On a trip back to town, Xanthippe visited Asheara, which she normally wouldn't do. She couldn't even look at Asheara without giggling. But Hratli didn't sell boots, and Xanthippe needed a new pair; they were one of her few items with fire resistance, and she needed much more than they had. "Hello there," Asheara smirked. "You've been scarce." "Um, hi." Xanthippe tried to look anywhere in the room but at Asheara. "Just want to look over the stuff you've got for sale. Need some boots." Asheara nodded, and stood behind her table of wares. Xanthippe kept her eyes down hard on the table, the corners of her mouth twitching. "Something funny?" Asheara asked. "No, nothing!" Xanthippe snerked. Patiently, Asheara waited, stroking her python and rubbing under its chin. Xanthippe stood looking at the table for a long time... then began to tremble. Asheara bent over to look at her downturned face. Xanthippe's eyes were shut tight, tears trickling down her cheeks, her teeth clamped on her lip. "So laugh already," Asheara whispered in her ear. "BWA HA HA!" Xanthippe face-planted on the table, dropping everything. Her crown fell off, and her poleaxe clattered on the ground. Smiling to herself, Asheara let her blow it off for a while before she spoke. "There, now. Isn't that better?" "Yes... um..." "Now," Asheara handed Xanthippe her crown back, "what is so damned funny?" "YOU!! Look at you! What's with the leather bikini?! And don't you think the snake is just a little too much?! I mean, please!" "It's my look. You have a problem with that?" "Your look. 'Hi, world! Here are my tits!' That's a look?" "And how is the typical sorceress belly-button display an improvement?" Xanthippe frowned. "Look, I don't know what the Zann Esu were thinking when they gave us all those outfits. But I don't wear it into battle!" Asheara nodded, smiling. "That's all right, I don't either. Then again, maybe you shouldn't even try. You really don't have the bustline to pull off a bikini." Xanthippe smiled. "Maybe when I'm as old as you. Or do the potions of manliness help somehow?" "Potions of manliness?" Kasim asked. "Sure." Xanthippe hunched over and did an imitation of Alkor: "Asheara is one of my best customers! She buys a potion of manliness from me every week!" Asheara frowned, and tapped one bare foot. "Do I look 'manly' to either of you clowns?" "It might explain why your voice is so deep," Xanthippe suggested. "Come on. What is this, some pathetic plea for attention?" Asheara snorted. "You're sounding a lot like the rest of the Zann Esu right now." "No I'm not," Xanthippe retorted. "Oh, yes you are." Asheara stood up very straight and huffed, "This blatant appeal to the lower emotions is undermining every effort we have made towards feminine equality!" "Uh... yeah, ok, the Zann Esu sound like that..." "Damn straight. I studied under them for a few years. I will wear what I damn well please. Nobody tells me what to do." Xanthippe still looked unhappy. "Ok, you don't have to do what they tell you. But that still doesn't explain why you're doing that." Asheara laughed, and struck a pose. "Because I look damn good. Why not?" "Well... men don't respect women who dress like that." "Hey, Vanji," Asheara said to her personal guard. "Do you respect me?" Vanji looked up. "Hell yes, I respect you, ma'am." "He's only saying that because you pay his wages," Xanthippe snorted. "No, he's saying that because if he doesn't, I'll kick his ass. Look here, girlie. You've been with the Zann Esu for how long?" "Ten years." Asheara looked surprised. "What, did they steal you out of your cradle or something?" "I don't want to talk about that. What are you getting at, anyway?" Asheara crossed her arms under her admittedly ample bosoms. "You've had no contact with men since you were a little kid. All you know about them is what the Zann Esu told you." Xanthippe thought about the hundreds, maybe thousands of men who'd gone in and out of her grandmother's house. Almost all the talk in the house had centered around men: how to please them, how to flatter their egos, how to get around what they wanted or satisfy their worst impulses. "I think I know something about men." Asheara looked doubtful. "Girl, you don't know anything about men, or what men respect. It's not what you wear. It's not what you say. It's not being able to kick their asses. And it damn well isn't Zann Esu philosophical screeching." "Then what is it, since you are so incredibly experienced with men?" "Damn right I am," Asheara grinned. "What gets respect is this: guts. If you have the balls to tell them off and fight back, they respect that. Don't take anything from anybody, man or woman, and they'll respect you." "Balls?" Eyes narrowed, Asheara said, "It's just an expression." "I hope so... or you've really been hitting the potions of manliness too much." Meanwhile, off to one side, Kasim whispered to Vanji, "So, what's your boss like?" "A bitch. Yours?" "A bitch. Think they're gonna be friends?" "Or hate each others guts. C'mon, she might start walking around in a bikini." "That wouldn't be bad. She'll probably start asking me if the plate mail makes her look fat." "Don't go there, man. Just don't even go there." Xanthippe left Asheara's hut laughing, but Asheara was laughing too. It wasn't until they were back in the sewers that Xanthippe realized she'd forgotten all about looking at boots. Oh, well, it was probably a good idea to wait until after they were out of the sewers to look for new footwear. Navigating the sewers was a challenge in itself, even without the monsters; there were several sections where the walkways had collapsed, or bridges had never been built over the muck. At one point, they ran into a group of greater mummies, led by a glowing purple one. They had a huge retinue of skeletons and lesser mummies, and a pack of exploding pygmy skeletons joined in on the fun. It was next to impossible to hack through the crowd, the lesser undead kept getting raised as soon as they'd been smashed... until Xanthippe remembered she knew how to teleport. Smacking herself in the forehead (good thing she had the battle crown) she grabbed Kasim and zapped over into the greater mummy pack. A few choice slashes and the pack went down, and cleaning up the lesser undead was much easier. Teleporting made life so much easier! Xanthippe would have to remember to teleport more often. Eventually, they found a sewage node with an iron gate on the floor. Next to it was a big wheel, set into the ground. They turned the wheel, and with a rusty groan, the gates swung up, revealing stairs down to a large chamber. Why is this here, Xanthippe wondered? Is it some kind of control room? A hidden treasure room in the sewers? Down below, Xanthippe and Kasim found a small chamber resembling a four-pointed star, with a pool of water in its center. All was quiet. Xanthippe looked at the pool; it was black and still, but bubbles occasionally broke the surface. "Ok... looks like we've got a tentacle beast. You stay here, I'll go around to the right." Kasim nodded, and after Xanthippe moved, stomped on the floor next to the pool. That usually brought them up. Then it happened. A pack of pygmy skeletons, led by an extra-strong one, came out of nowhere behind Xanthippe and attacked. Kasim ran around to engage them; Xanthippe tried to get her shield off her back, but the little bastards weren't giving her a chance. The head of a tentacle beast came up from the pool... then another, and another. All of them decided that Xanthippe was their new special friend, and spit globs of poisonous mucus at her back, knocking her right into the middle of the pygmy skeleton pack. Kasim killed the first pygmy just at that moment.
Purpleberries! Xanthippe wondered what purpleberry tasted like, so she grabbed something purple and drank it. She immediately felt much better! Wow! There was a pygmy skeleton standing on her chest, spinning on its knife like it was trying to drill for oil. That would be bad. She'd never be able to wear a bikini if he kept doing that. Kasim was covered in slime, there were pygmies dancing on his head, but he was screaming at her to get up. Get up? Oh yeah, these things are trying to kill them! Tossing the pygmy skeleton off her chest, Xanthippe got to her feet, nearly slipping in the slime. There was almost no room to maneuver in the tiny chamber, she couldn't get any distance from the skeletons when they blew up. And those damn tentacles kept knocking her where she didn't want to go! After tossing Kasim a purple potion, she skidded over to the pool, and hacked at the nearest tentacle. It submerged, but the others spat her back to the pygmies. *BOOM!* *BOOM!* This was really starting to hurt. Finally, they'd killed two tentacles and all the pygmies but the last, the strongest one. Would it run away and give them time to breathe? No, it wouldn't. It suicidally leapt straight for Kasim, and he skewered it. **BOOM!!!** The blast knocked Xanthippe back into the wall. A momentary hallucination passed through her mind, of someone pressing a button marked 'C' and looking at a life indicator, which read exactly '3'. Kasim killed the last two tentacles while she was prying herself out of the wall. Both of them were badly poisoned; what little life they had left was ebbing fast. Quickly, she made a town portal, and they crawled back to Ormus's feet. "Ormus, first I want to say, I'm very sorry about all the things I said about you." "Ormus cares not for the slings and arrows of outrageous verbiage. What harm can an adjective bring?" "Could someone get this flayer skull out of me?" Kasim whined. Without haste or delay, Ormus healed them both, and flushed the poison from their bodies. "There is no need. It will serve as an extra-rich source of calcium, as well as other essential vitamins and iron." "Just don't incorporate the green gunk into us," Xanthippe snarled. "You don't know where it's been." The chamber under the iron grate must have been a treasure house, though why someone would put it in a sewer was anyone's guess. Sure, very few people would look down there, but you have to go through a sewer to get to the place. There were several chests full of gold and other valuable items, including... Khalim's heart. It looked like it was carved from solid ruby, with a light burning inside. She couldn't bring herself to touch it, even though it looked kind of cool, so Xanthippe scooped it up in an old helmet. It seemed to throb and pulse, but that might be her imagination.
Chapter 19The next morning, Xanthippe yawned, stretched, and listened to the rain outside. Does it every stop raining here? Lut Gholein could use a little of this weather. After the time she'd spent here, she understood why all their stuff was either of incredible quality, or as cheap as possible. With all the rot, things had to be either indestructible, or cost nothing to replace. The roofs, for instance, were heavily lacquered ceramic tile, or thatch. Nothing in between. The desert's heat preserves things; those mummies in the sewers had to be imported. And supposedly, the saber cats of Lut Gholein were from these jungles. The Three were working together over very long distances. Maybe Diablo and Baal hadn't needed to stow away on Meshif's ship. Does Mephisto know what she's doing, where she is? Lying in bed won't do any good, no matter what the enemy is planning. During her morning stretching, Xanthippe was pleased to note she could put her palms on the floor without even straightening her arms. She could bend over backwards until she put her hands on the ground too, and balance like that. One of the girls at her grandmother's could put both legs behind her head; Xanthippe only managed one. Still, not bad. While getting her armor, she noticed it was still green with dried slime; she'd forgotten to have her equipment cleaned and repaired last night. Ew, the padding she wore underneath was getting moldy again. That was the fifth set of padding she'd had to buy; if she didn't replace it regularly, it gave her a rash. On her way to Hratli's, Xanthippe saw someone new. She was very tall and long-legged, with short dark hair, and was dressed all in black. Including, Xanthippe noted, thigh-high, jet-black, patent leather boots. This reminded her of Kashya; high boots over creamy pale thighs, revealed by daringly cut armor, was a popular look for some warrior women. Maybe they favored it for the distraction value, along with the low-cut cuirasses. In her opinion, there were too many arteries and other vulnerable things in the thighs, chest, and neck to even consider it. But, there's no point in holding poor aesthetic judgment against someone new; there will be plenty of things to hold against them after you've met them. "Hi there," Xanthippe smiled. "New in town?" "Hello. I'm Natalya," the woman smiled. "I've been here and there. Guess we've just missed each other. It's been hell out in that jungle." "Yep, it's been hellish." Xanthippe looked down. "Amazing that you can keep such a shine on those boots, with all the mud and blood and fire you have to go through out there. I could never manage it myself." Natalya laughed. "I like keeping up appearances." "Oh, I noticed," Xanthippe quickly interjected. "You look like you've got some armor troubles there." Xanthippe lifted her plate mail to look at. "Yeah, it's probably got a few communicable disease colonies living in it by now." She flicked a stray flayer bone out of one armpit. "Gotta get Hratli to clean it up." "He's very good for that. My order could really use someone of his talents. If he ever wants to leave this hellhole, I'll be happy to offer him a job." "Your order?" Xanthippe delicately inquired. "The Viz-Jaq'taar. We've had to come out of hiding and take a more active role in the world than is our usual policy. All this business, you understand." Oh... kay, Xanthippe thought. That order isn't supposed to really exist, and if they do exist, they're supposed to all be men, since they were founded by the Vizjerei, the male-only mage clan the Zann Esu got (or stole) a lot of their magical knowledge from. "Hmm, interesting. Kill anybody yet today?" "The day's hardly begun." Smiling, Natalya asked, "How are you planning to spend your day?" "Well, there's this demon lord, see. Actually, there's three of them, and they're planning this big reunion party. They were rude enough not to invite me, so I'm going to crash the party and steal the hors d'oeuvre tray. And maybe get drunk and throw up on their dates." Natalya listened with arms folded, and nodded. "Interesting." "A good time shall be had by all. Excuse me, the sun's rising. I want to make good use of daylight." "Understandable. Sure they'll have dates with them?" "Several for each. None of them seem to travel alone, these days. Ta-ta!" Damn, that was creepy. What the hell is an assassin doing here, and not going after Diablo or someone worthy of the attention? Sure, they're supposed to keep mages honest by the threat of silent death, but there are bigger problems right now! "Hratli?" Hratli took the armor and went to work. "I noticed that you have been talking with Natalya." "Yeah. Where the hell did she come from, and what is she doing here?" "That has been a source of speculation since before your arrival." "You mean she was here before me?" "Indeed, it is so. Wild rumors and gossip are all we have to entertain ourselves now, aside from the Flayer races on Saturdays. Two starving Flayers are placed in a pit, and the one which kills and devours the other is the winner." "What do you do with the winner?" "Drown it. I cannot abide cannibalism." At least she's not after me, Xanthippe thought. "What's beyond the Kurast bazaar?" "Beyond the marketplaces are the homes of the wealthy, and the causeway to Travincal." The armor took some work, it had gotten a terrible beating last night. After burning away the poison, and combing out the bones and other big chunks, Hratli gave Xanthippe two new sets of padding. She needed to double up on the padding, or the plate was too loose; Hratli couldn't cinch the metal in tight enough. "The city of Kurast was built to resemble the orb of the sun. The city resembles an onion, particularly by the weeping it brings to those who cut through it." While Hratli polished her gauntlets, hammered the dents out of her crown, and sharpened the edge on her poleaxe, Xanthippe sat down by the warmth of his forge to think. Visiting Hratli was actually pleasant; the forge's heat made this the only really dry place in Kurast. "There is a mage-slayer in Kurast. What does she want?" "It is possible that her presence has something to do with a mage." "Hmm... there's Asheara, they might want to recruit her or something. Alkor? Nah. Ormus is just nuts. How about you?" Hratli smiled thinly. "She has spoken to me about leaving this place, to forge weapons for her order. Her suggestions are reasonable. However, I am not a reasonable man." "I know. Your prices sure aren't. I don't have enough information to figure out what she's here for. Have to listen to the rumor mill some." One of Xanthippe's best sources of unsubstantiated rumor was Alkor. He'd tell her almost anything if it would get rid of her. And while she was there, she could gamble for boots. Asheara was still getting her beauty sleep, but Vanji showed Xanthippe the table of wares; no boots this morning, but maybe later. "Alkor, you lovely person! How are you this bright, sunshiny morning?" "Sleeping!" Alkor screamed. He'd stuffed himself under his mattress, and the place smelled like mulberries. "Hand me my clothing, stupid girl. What business do you wish to harass me about at such an hour?" "Trying to return to the womb, Alkor?" "For planting such an image in my mind, I will request you to drop dead. Last night, while studying so intensely I feared for my thighs, I imagined myself in a huge cave, filled with all the knowledge of the world. As I suspected, well over 99% of it was worthless filth, and it contaminated me with bits of socially acceptable drivel." Turning her back while he combobulated himself, Xanthippe sniffed the air. "Sounds like you had quite a party. Anyone else I know get involved?" "I dearly hope not." "Aw, c'mon. There's a really hot chick in black down on the southern docks." Alkor glared intensely at Xanthippe. "She is not much for reading." "You know her, then?" "Yes, I do. And she has no interest in books!" "She sure doesn't dress like the intellectual type. Not nearly enough tweed. How have you met her, then?" Alkor thought for a bit. "She buys a potion of manliness from me, every week." "That's Asheara." "Then she buys a potion of womanliness from me every week!" "Then how come Asheara still has a bigger bust?" "What sorts of sculptures Asheara keeps, I do not care about. Cease prattling, stupid girl. What do you want?" "Well..." Xanthippe thought for a bit. Alkor is a lousy liar. Doesn't have the social skills for it. But he's not ready to talk yet. Later in the day, after he's gotten into his concoctions, he'll have loosened up enough to be chatty. "Let's gamble." "Certainly! Your money is better in my pocket than yours any morning." The gambling wasn't a total loss this time; Xanthippe walked away with a new set of boots. But she couldn't wear them. They were heavy greaves, rare and with excellent enchantments, including a lot of fire resistance. But Xanthippe wasn't quite strong enough to wear them and still run, and running is even more critical than fire resistance. Why are all the really good warrior things made for huge, muscle-bound brutes? Thinking about it, Xanthippe realized that question answers itself. Damn. She'd have to hang onto the greaves until she'd worked her thigh muscles enough. And have Hratli resize them. There aren't enough socks in the world to make her feet big enough for those things. Back in Kurast, Xanthippe and Kasim crossed the bridge into upper Kurast. Immediately, a blizzard struck, a very intense snowstorm that blinded them with snow and chill, icy winds. Odd weather for this part of the world, but Xanthippe could see that it was magical. A group of robed priests, with a retinue of poleaxe-wielding zealots, was approaching. The zealots fell quickly; maybe if they'd been wearing the heavy armor Paladins are supposed to favor, they'd have given them more trouble. The priests were harder; they kept healing each other, and the chill they summoned up was getting annoying. Taking out the high priest took the wind out of their sails, though. The upper city had temples, with more firewall- and meteor-tossing ghouls. There were also big blue serpent-men, just like the ones from Lut Gholein, only nastier. How were all these creatures getting across the Twin Seas? Surely, not on ships. Maybe, if they were being summoned from Hell, these were snakes she'd killed in Lut Gholein, come back meaner than ever for a rematch. After clearing the city, Xanthippe and Kasim went down the causeway, which also had two temples, and arrived in Travincal. The city within the city was not much of a city anymore. The buildings were neglected, the streets hadn't been cleaned, and the many altars were all gory messes. While walking around the outer causeway, trying to get an idea of the extent of the place, Xanthippe saw a waypoint through cracks in a nearby wall. Grabbing Kasim, she teleported over and took it home. It was getting dark. They would take the city tomorrow.
Chapter 20"Hiya, Alkor." "Hello, stupid girl. You plague my morning once again. Have you more money to give me?" After raiding the licorice jar, Xanthippe said, "I'm off to Travincal. Know anything important about the place?" "No! It is a city of temples and devotionals. Faith and preaching give me hives." "How's the book of Lam Esen?" "Absolutely fascinating! Events are proceeding exactly as Lam Esen foretold." "What did he foretell?" "That we are utterly ruined!" Alkor squealed. "This is news?" Xanthippe went through the jar again. "Does he say anything about me in there?" "There is mention of a small, bratty girl, who goes to hell as her reward." "Good to know I'm going places," Xanthippe mused. "Now, about Natalya..." Alkor looked nervous. "Who is Natalya?" "Alkor, you're a really bad liar. Stop trying. The tall woman in black." "Ah, she is very friendly and kind. She leaves me alone!" "Well, if you didn't make yourself so much fun to torment, I wouldn't be here. Natalya's been here too, I'm guessing." "She did not say anything!" Xanthippe pouted. "Are you sure sure sure?" "Yes yes yes! Now go away!" "She didn't mention Hratli, did she?" "No!" "All right, then... I'll leave you alone." "Good! And do not come back." "Not even to take some licorice off your hands?" "I will run out of patience before I run out of candy for you!" Xanthippe slowly ambled towards the door. "Here I go. Zoom." "Have you not something to kill? You are no better than Hratli. Always messing about with his silly magic weapons. It is not as though he has the stones to use them on anything." "I don't have any either. Guess I'll have to stay here." "No, you will not! You have more stones than anyone but Asheara. Now go away!" Stumbling around the tiny hut, Xanthippe tripped over a stool. "Oh, I've fallen, and I can't get up. I'll have to stay here forever and ever and ever." "You get off of my floor! I do all of my best thinking there." "Hey Alkor, what are all those skulls you have in your roof?" "Stubborn and willful customers! Where are you going? Get away from there!" Xanthippe had rolled along the floor, and was going through the dusty piles of stuff under Alkor's bed. "Hey! A recipe book!" "Those are mine! And you would not understand them. Go away!" "Alkor, why have you dog-eared the page with a love potion on it?" "That was many years ago, stupid girl. And I will not make that potion again for you!" "Can I have a potion of womanliness? Asheara thinks I haven't developed enough." "I fear for the world if anything about you develops any more!" Xanthippe paged through the book. "How about a potion of strength?" "That one makes you smell, and grow hair in peculiar places." Alkor was beginning to turn beet-red. "Now, GO AWAY!" "Oh, all right. Time to go to Travincal, and kill priests and councilmen." Alkor smiled, much relieved. "Kill as many as you can. I have a morbid love of excess." After taking the waypoint back to Travincal, Xanthippe and Kasim teleported to the causeway which surrounded the city. It was probably the safest way to look the city over. Skirting around Travincal, they found many black-clad zealots (would have been rough running into them in the dark) and priests, as well as more ghouls. The causeway wasn't completely safe, there were stairs the zealots could attack up, and weather-summoning spells could still get them. Xanthippe's thunderstorm could get all of them, and it did an impressive amount of damage now; some of the weaker monsters died in one strike. Around the backside of Travincal, they found the black tower. It was very tall indeed; the high council of Zakarum had a very impressive... edifice. The council itself was not to be seen. Why black, Xanthippe wondered? The local stone isn't black. Maybe it had been stained with all the filthy thoughts being thought inside. Actually, circling the city was helpful in more than one way: not only were they relatively safe, their long weapons could strike down the Zakarumites who chased them around the lower levels. Why did those zealots just stand there and be hit, knowing they couldn't reach far enough to strike back? Even religion doesn't make you that stupid, does it? Cain thought that Mephisto might be using a Compelling Orb, an arcane device capable of sapping the will of those bound by vow into an organization. Yet another reason to never take religious vows, Xanthippe thought. Xanthippe led Kasim down among the buildings of Travincal, smashing ghouls and priests; most of the foot soldiers were dead by now, so there was no one to protect the artillery. As they approached the black tower, they got a good look at the council members through the windows. Ew. Ew ew ew. The corrupted Rogues sometimes had horns, or tails, or maybe huge fangs, but this went far beyond that. The councilors were twisted, limping things, grossly deformed in just about every way. Tumors bulging out of skulls, one huge arm and the other withered to a stick, fangs arcing out of the mouth all the way up to the eyes... gah, hadn't their followers noticed? They must be using mind control. As she went by, the council members summoned hydras to harass her. This was not demonic in itself, Hydras are actually fire elementals, but Xanthippe's fire resistance was still awful. Again, she dearly wished she could wear her new greaves... but for now, she'd better switch to the shield and sword. The battle with the council went smoothly. Apparently, what was affecting their bodies also ruined their brains; they came out one at a time and fought in single combat. Leaving a trail of chopped-up bodies and less-than-ideal magic items, Xanthippe and Kasim drew them out of the tower one by one. There were some tentacle beasts in the pools beside the tower; having very special feelings towards tentacles, Xanthippe smashed their heads in. The last council member to die had, among other things, a flail with three gold balls. "Think he was a pawnbroker?" Xanthippe smirked. "Is that the thing you were looking for?" Kasim asked. "Yeah. Not sure I really want it. It's another holy relic." Kasim shrugged. "Doesn't sound so bad." "Maybe. Religious stuff gets so weird." After returning to town, Xanthippe scooped the eye, brain, and heart out of her luggage and set them with the flail. Nothing happened. Wasn't there supposed to be a shaft of light, a heavenly choir singing a single pure note, something? She rapped each relic with the shaft of the flail. Nothing. She rested each ball on one of the relics, then propped each relic up on one ball. Still nothing. Cain suggested putting them all in the Horadric Cube and pressing the button. You'd think making a holy relic wouldn't involve alchemical transformations, but it worked. Each of the balls now looked like a little spiky skull, and the whole thing had a golden glow. Xanthippe picked up the flail. "Ok, what's so great about it?" It's a pleasure to meet you, finally. Kasim and Cain found themselves gazing up at the top of the pyramid, where Xanthippe had leapt with a single bound. "Who said that!?" Xanthippe asked no one in particular. Just me. "Oh God, this is getting so freaky. The flail is talking to me." If you'd been stuffed in a box for this long, you'd appreciate a little conversation too. I can tell you're feeling a little fragile now, so why don't you just calm your nerves and climb down, one step at a time, before we both fall. That might hurt. "You know, if your balls didn't look like skulls, it might be less nervous-making." Xanthippe carefully climbed down, and looked at the flail. "What's up with that, anyway?" I have been dead for some time. What should my balls look like? Xanthippe frowned. "Look buster, I found an eye, a heart, and a brain. Let's leave any other anatomical parts out of this!" Very funny. "Uh, what's going on?" Kasim looked confused. "Here, hold this." Xanthippe passed Kasim the flail. "Whoa!" Kasim's eyes widened, and then he laughed. "Hey, good one, man." "What did he say?" Xanthippe asked. Holding the flail and listening intently, Kasim started grinning. "Oh, man, that's harsh. I thought you were supposed to be a saint!" "Wait, what's he saying?" Now, Kasim was laughing. "Yeah, and she doesn't think they're big enough, either!" Xanthippe snatched the flail back. "What were you saying?" Nothing of importance. That flail was laughing. Xanthippe just knew it. "Do you want me to bash your heads in on a rock? Tell me what you were saying." Part of growing up is getting used to disappointment. "Well, what if I don't WANNA grow up?" You know it is inevitable. A great deal depends on you. Snarling, Xanthippe shrieked, "What if I don't WANT things to depend on me?" You can't always get what you want. But if you try, sometimes, you get what you need. Xanthippe fumed. "Very funny. What I need is to whack Mephisto." That is true, but there is a difficulty. After his brothers entered the durance intended to contain him, Mephisto locked the doors and sealed them all inside. "So the Three are together. But if they're locked in..." They will open a gate to Hell, and bring forth their armies from below. "Crap." A direct conduit to Hell would provoke that out of most people. You need to open the durance to reach them and stop them. "How do you know all this, anyway?" One of my ears is hidden in the council chamber. "Ew." You get used to it after a while. The Black Tower key is sealed inside the Compelling Orb. "How do I get it out?" Xanthippe asked, expecting another long, convoluted quest that would take far too much time to be practical. The Compelling Orb can be destroyed by being struck with a holy artifact. Looking at the flail in her hand, Xanthippe was a bit surprised. "Why didn't you just say so?" Because destroying the Orb will also destroy the artifact. "Oh. I was going to use you to whack Mephisto." You do not need me for that, child. Any weapon will do for Mephisto and his brothers. "But if you're destroyed, won't you... die, or whatever?" And finally be released from this plane? Yes, I would, and for the best possible cause. Khalim seemed remarkably at peace with what Xanthippe needed to do, and Xanthippe didn't see any alternative. He didn't seem like such a bad person, and if release from this plane of existence was agreeable to him, she wouldn't put up an argument. Besides, she wasn't sure she wanted a talking weapon. The Compelling Orb shattered into a million pieces and vanished in puffs of black, greasy smoke. The flail disintegrated in a burst of golden light, and a misty form rose and vanished into the sky. The shattered base of the Compelling Orb held a huge iron key, which Xanthippe used to open the iron trapdoor leading down into the tower basement. Back in town, everyone was overjoyed. The jungle was already dying back, trees were shrinking visibly, even the Flayers they'd captured for the Flayer races looked scared. They were still vicious little bastards, but there was a look of desperation to it now. Natalya was nowhere to be seen, again. Meshif picked Xanthippe up, armor and all, and gave her the biggest hug of her life; he'd taken Kurast's corruption harder than most, but Xanthippe was using those ribs, thank you very much. When she went to visit Alkor, she found him up in the rafters of his little hut. "Alkor, do you think you're a monkey?" "Shhh! I am hiding from the puppy children." "Puppy children?" "Yes, the horrible puppy children. They have big black eyes, little red noses, and white faces like a spooky clown." Xanthippe stared at him. "I'll come back later." Asheara was very pleased. "That was the greatest thing I've ever seen anybody do. I've sent my Wolves away from the docks to wipe out what's left of Zakarum. You sure you don't want a job after all this is over? You could be my lieutenant, just ask." "Nah, I don't like the climate here." Asheara laughed. "If you were behind the lines, you could dress a little cooler..." "Ah..." Xanthippe smirked. "But, Ms. Lightly-Clad, what if I look better than you?" "Not likely. Actually, you're probably right. From what I've seen, you'd make a pretty lousy leader of men." Xanthippe smiled. "I guess I just don't have your big motivating factors." With a gasp, she put a finger to Asheara's chest. "Ooh, is that a chest hair?" "What?" Asheara looked down. Xanthippe flicked her finger up under her nose. "Gotcha!" As Xanthippe giggled, Asheara frowned... and punched Xanthippe into the river. "Ow. Damn, I hate punching out people wearing helmets." Fortunately, the river outside Asheara's door was only two feet deep. Nonetheless, Kasim ran out to check. If all the padding Xanthippe wore got soaked, she'd have a lot of trouble getting up off the river bottom. "She's not coming up!" "Poke around down there with your axe," Asheara said. "No, the other end, the one that's not sharp! Dumbass." "Ah, Asheara..." Vanji asked, "would it not be a good idea to avoid drowning our rescuer?" With a sigh, Asheara came the door and looked down into the water. "She can't die this easily..." "Nope," Xanthippe said, and punched Asheara into the river. Just at that moment, Kasim remembered that she could teleport. Damn, that was handy. Spluttering down in the muddy water, Asheara screamed, "You little bitch! See if I ever offer you a job again!" "Hey, at least I took my gauntlets off!" With a scream, Xanthippe launched herself off the dock and landed on Asheara. They started wrestling in the muck. "Uh oh, catfight," Kasim muttered. "Who's your money on?" Vanji asked. "Mine's still in full armor." "Not much help when you're up to your ass in mud." A crowd began to gather. "Think we should charge people?" "Hey, that'd work. On second thought, they'd both have to be in bikinis." "Yeah." Kasim shook his head. "Plate mail mud wrestling just doesn't cut it." "Hey!" Xanthippe shouted from the water, "this isn't funny!" "Yes it is!" Asheara said, and threw muddy water at Xanthippe's open mouth. "Not fair," Xanthippe spluttered! "I only hit you once!" "When my back was turned!" Asheara jumped Xanthippe, and twisted her arm behind her back. "Now say 'uncle', and I'll let you go." "Aunt!" Twisting further, Asheara grunted, "Say 'uncle'!" "Second cousin, twice removed!" Struggling, Xanthippe finally got her feet braced, and pushed back, lifting Asheara out of the water and throwing her on her backside. Spinning, she got her arm loose and threw muddy water in Asheara's face. "Hey, you're stronger than you look, girly." Asheara grinned, and faked left before punching right. Not so long ago, it would have hit, but Xanthippe had seen that move before. Kashya used it. She dodged the punch, and gave Asheara a black eye in return. "Okay, okay... I give," Asheara was laughing. "Damn, I love a good fight. Clears all the crap out of your head." "Yeah, I guess it does... Ms. Lightly-Clad." Xanthippe started to climb out onto the dock. "That's a lousy insult, you know." Asheara climbed out beside Xanthippe. "Show me one real disadvantage to wearing this. I don't give a damn about societal disapproval or any of that: just one *real* disadvantage." For a few seconds, Xanthippe stared at Asheara, her mouth twisting with suppressed laughter. "Ok. Don't say you didn't ask for it." She grabbed Asheara's top in one hand, her bottoms in the other, and with a mighty heave, tore the sodden leathers loose. Bubbling with laughter, Xanthippe ran down the docks through the crowd, waving the torn bikini like two victory flags. Asheara screamed and quickly jumped back in the water. After a moment's stunned silence, a roar of applause rose from the crowd. Xanthippe turned and bowed deeply to the assemblage. "Thank you, thank you. Ah rally do appreciate it. Rally I do." "Vanji!" Asheara hissed. "Get me something to wear! Now!" With a completely straight face, Vanji went back into Asheara's house. Quickly returning, he bent down on one knee, and solemnly offered Asheara a hat.
Chapter 21After 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.
Act 4Chapter 22A narrow causeway of steps led down from the Pandemonium Fortress to the outer steppes of Hell. There weren't any roaring flames, pitchforks, or parades of the damned. All was quiet, gray, and still; the only sound was the granular soil crunching under their feet. Just outside the gateway at the bottom of the stairs, Xanthippe looked around. A few columns, made of either gray stone or some strange metal, were scattered about, broken chains hanging listlessly from their peaks. Nothing else could be seen. The material composing the columns did not reveal itself to closer examination, either. It rang dully when struck and could not be scratched; the chains seemed to be made of the same stuff. A rough line of the columns extended into the distance; maybe this had once been some large building or covered corridor. Further down the line, Xanthippe could see some people, tied to the columns. They looked as gray as everything else, and their sex and age was uncertain, but maybe she could get something out of them. As Xanthippe and Kasim approached, the people tied to the column's base looked up. They had no hair, and their legs were fused together, but their eyes and ears were grotesquely huge. Xanthippe stopped and stared, horrified. They began a low wailing moan, and the nearest flailed their arms at them both, clutched and clawing with over-lengthened fingers. Soon, all the others on the line rose and took up the call. Some things approached fast, kicking up grit and dust. Their skin was pale and fleshy, but there the resemblance to humanity ended. Shuffling on long, backwards-bent legs, their bodies were taken up almost entirely by a single, huge... opening, and a featureless head crowned the whole grotesquerie. Kasim and Xanthippe ran to attack; a column thing grabbed at her as she went past, tearing her surcoat. One of the shuffling things squeezed itself together, and from its orifice, a fleshy worm shat out into the world. More and more of the worms came; soon, they were surrounded. Taking out the big grotesques, before they could give birth to any more of those things, was the best tactic to take. As Kasim chopped through the little ones, Xanthippe ran around to tackle the big mothers. Her frozen armor shield, quite strong by now, stopped the worms as they leapt onto her; it gave her valuable time to reach their mothers and slice them to bits. The new armor she'd bought held up wonderfully. Once they were all dead, Xanthippe went back to the column things. "Who are you? Can you understand me?" The thing that had grabbed at her was dead; its fellow beings had torn it to shreds. They were now busy tearing each other up, fighting over that tiny bit of green silk, which was already ripped to pieces. After they died, Xanthippe watched as their bodies slowly shriveled and crumbled, like sand pouring out of an hourglass. The ground itself was exactly the same color, the same consistency; she bent down to take a closer look. The loose grit was full of tiny fragments of bone, and broken, human-looking teeth. Looking around, Xanthippe saw other things approaching. There were running leapers, which jumped from pillar to pillar, and huge demons with swords and vast bat wings. The big guys looked exactly like the paintings of balrogs, except that they were much, much worse in life. The battle was long and very bloody; Xanthippe and Kasim were almost constantly on the run, either chasing the bouncing leapers or trying not to get surrounded by the balrogs and grotesques. Huge cracks ran through ground, which they had to avoid, and many more people-things were laying out everywhere for them to trip over. Once all was quiet again, Xanthippe looked at the... dead souls? The gray people scattered on the ground, or tied up to columns. All looked mostly human, but were deformed and mutilated in horrible ways. Some were on the ground, their bodies thrown over a small stash of treasure, often a bit of gold or trinketry. Others were bundled up like firewood, thrown together in huge cages, and set on fire, lighting up the vast emptiness of the steppe. A few pairs were melded together at the lower body, with their arms cut off at the elbow. None had any legs, nor would any of them speak. Most of them could scream, especially the ones in the fires, as they burned down to sandy ash. The cracks in the ground went deep. Looking down, Xanthippe could see buttressing columns and huge chains supporting the deep, deep layers of ash and bone, which went down at least 30 feet and probably much further. "What is all this?" Xanthippe asked no one in particular. "Uh... Hell, I guess?" Kasim answered. "But... but... are these things people? What are they doing here?" Looking around, Kasim shrugged. "Being in Hell?" "But why are they here? What are they doing here?" "Uh... well, those guys are on fire. Those two look like they died doing something obscene." "No! Why are they here at all?" Kasim looked confused. "Uh... punishment for their sins, and stuff?" Xanthippe went silent, staring at the unknowably thick layers under her feet, and at the former human beings slowly joining them. "But WHY? This serves no purpose!" After a moment's pondering, Kasim rubbed his chin. "Punishment... ?" Xanthippe shook her head in irritation. "Look, when you punish someone, you're trying to get them to stop behaving a certain way, right?" "I guess." "Then what's the point of punishing someone for all eternity? After they're dead, they can't change the way they behaved, or atone for their sins, if you believe in that kind of thing. What purpose does it serve to punish someone when you can't change them?" Kasim hated it when Xanthippe got to asking stupid questions like this. It made his head hurt. "Uh... I guess they're not being punished for eternity, then." "No, they're just... crumbling into nothing." "Yep." Xanthippe shook her head. "But why?" With a shrug, Kasim opined, "I dunno. Let's kill things." Xanthippe just stood there, staring around. "Why are we here? There's no point to this." "We're here to get Diablo, right?" "Yeah... Diablo, Baal, all their hoary minions. They're invading the world. Killing and torturing everybody. They want to make the world like this." That sounded plausible to Kasim. "Maybe, yeah. That would be bad." "Very bad." "I'm not gonna burn in a cage for the rest of my life." Xanthippe nodded. "Or whatever. But..." Quickly, Kasim said, "Whatever. Let's kill things." "Yeah. Okay." The steppes were full of more dying souls, and more demons. They killed lots of things. During a return trip to the Pandemonium Fortress, Tyrael told Xanthippe of an angel named Izual, who had betrayed Heaven to the demons, and had been punished by imprisonment within an abyss demon. Xanthippe wondered if angels and demons had bodies of their own, or if they always had to possess something to act in the mortal world. Maybe the dying souls down there were people who didn't have their bodies anymore. No, that couldn't be right; there were too many of them, and there had to have been thousands -- no, millions -- there in the past. There couldn't possibly be that many demons possessing bodies. As she stood there thinking, Xanthippe suddenly realized Tyrael had stopped talking. "Huh?" "I believe he has suffered enough," Tyrael said. "What? You mean... the people out there?" "The mortal souls troubling your mind sank to this depth of themselves, but an angel must not be allowed to suffer so. The torture my lieutenant suffered was beyond the endurance of even the noblest spirit, and further punishment is undeserved." "You say the people out there are being punished?" "Izual is being punished, for betraying the light of Heaven. The mortal souls littering the plains of despair are damned by their own weight of sin. There is nothing you or anyone can do for them." Slowly, Xanthippe let that sink in. "Why are they there? What's happening to them?" "Long ago, the Seven Great Evils came to this place, and made it their own. Seven layers of the Abyss, each ruled by one of them, make up Hell. After their first invasion of the mortal realms, Heaven surrounded Hell with a towering wall. Now that wall is buried under the sinners of your world, those whose weight has not sent them further down." "They just... fell?" "Yes. The human spirit is eternal. But in time, these ones come to a kind of end, as the weight of despair crushes them. Now, they make up a new ring of Hell, out of the exhausted remains of their own souls." "Rings? I thought they were layers." "The two are not incompatible. You will not have to enter the inner seven. Your destination lies in the second, just within the wall. There, you will find the Hellforge, which Izual assaulted so inadvisedly, and the Chaos Sanctuary, Diablo's staging post." Xanthippe counted. "That's nine layers." "The Nine Hells. The second was a moat, built next to the wall. It is now a river of flame." "Sounds wonderful." "Though it is a wonder to behold, caution is advisable. The effluvia of Hell's malice overflows into the river of flame, and millions of mortal souls burn forever in its depths." Abyss demons, rivers of flame... this just gets better and better. Wandering back to the plains of despair, Xanthippe avoided the damned souls as she looked for Izual. Though when she found them, she kicked over the greedy ones who were hiding treasure; no sense wasting it. Kasim seemed to think chopping them to bits was fun. On the plains of despair, they met the first undead beings they'd seen in Hell. So, they weren't all demonic; maybe only the most malicious didn't wind up as legless slugs on the ash-heap. There were great cracks on the plains under their feet; a hellish red glow glared from underneath. Even though she knew she'd be going there eventually, but Xanthippe could not bring herself to look down to what lay below. Alone in a ruined building, Xanthippe and Kasim found a huge demon. Its body was dark blue, vaguely translucent, and covered with huge icy spikes. Deep inside it, a light struggled and quivered like a butterfly in a bottle. This was almost certainly Izual, being punished for breaking under torture that would have broken anyone. Xanthippe wondered if that's the sort of justice Heaven usually doles out. No matter; she said she'd get Izual out, so she and Kasim got to work breaking the ice. The demon, or ice thing, had a very thick skin, and it took a lot of chipping and chopping to finally smash it to bits. The only blessing was that the thing was slow as a glacier; it was easy to avoid its blows. As the demon crumbled to the ground and its body melted away into nothing, the bluish light inside spread its wings, and floated free. "FREE!" a huge voice rang out. "You were sent by Tyrael!" "Yes..." Xanthippe said, not sure what to make of this. Something wasn't right. "What a fool! And what a fool you are for following him!" Something definitely wasn't right. "Izual, I presume." "What a great fool, imagining that I, his superior, would be content to remain his lieutenant!" Ah, so it isn't just megalomaniacal mages who use the word 'fool' so much. Izual continued his ranting: "I shall tell you a secret, mortal... now that it is far too late for you or any other power to stop the plan set in motion ages ago. I am the one who convinced Tyrael to use the soulstones on the Three Prime Evils." Xanthippe nodded, her brain racing. "He wouldn't have thought of it on his own, huh?" "Tyrael is a slow, stupid, half-witted, blind FOOL! Using crystals to trap spirits is an idea completely beyond his comprehension! I knew when I suggested it that his meager intellect could not possibly see the terrible flaw therein!" Judging from his word choices, Xanthippe decided that sucking up to this crazy angel was the best option. That works best for the 'smart and arrogant' types; sometimes, they'll tell you their whole plan, just so you'll be impressed with how smart they are. "But I don't understand! How would trapping the demons work to their advantage?" "Your tiny mind would be blasted into gibbering madness if the full plan were known to you!" As Izual laughed, light pulsed and flickered through his form. "The soulstones can be flawed by the corrupting power of darkness, as all things can be. That is why Hell will be victorious over Heaven in the end! All can be corrupted, and corruption is mastery!" As much as she hated listening to people like this, Xanthippe kept talking. She needed more information. "But that can't be! Tyrael knew the stones were flawed; that's why the demon spirits were imprisoned in mortal bodies!" That provoked such roaring laughter, even Tyrael must have heard it. "IMPRISONED!! You fool, you cannot imagine the purpose of the stones! They were tools to gain great and powerful bodies for my Lords to possess! Full of knowledge, magic, and strength! Inside these powerful shells, The Three are hidden from the power of the Worldstone, and may roam your world at will. You, and all your kind, are doomed!" Izual vanished with that last, oh-so typical threat. Why do all big nasty evil people talk like that, anyway? They all think they're better than everybody else, but they all sound exactly like each other. Tyrael was very surprised to hear about this. At least, Xanthippe got that impression. Hard to see facial expressions amid all those tendrils of light. "If what you say is true, we may have been played for fools all along." "We?" Xanthippe said. "The Horadrim and I, of course. I am sorry, I had no idea Izual's betrayal went so deep; this has affected me." Xanthippe frowned. "The Horadrim and you. Didn't the Horadrim do what you told them?" "Not entirely. But..." The light around Tyrael trembled. "My judgment may have been in error, and led those I felt most responsible for astray." Xanthippe stared at the angel. She wanted to say something. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to do something besides stand there, staring at an angel who was supposed to know better. Finally, she said, "Do you know where Diablo and Baal are?" "That is hidden from me, in the depths of Hell." "How do you know they're in Hell?" For a moment, Tyrael was silent. "I do not know." Suddenly fearful, Xanthippe asked, "When I killed Mephisto, among his remains were three human skulls. Who were they?" Tyrael's light trembled again. "I have no knowledge of this. Mortal, I fear this is a ruse, meant to draw our attention from the Three's true purpose. I must go for a while. My servants should keep the Fortress safe during my absence. Should an assault breach the fortress, please, take Cain and return to Kurast. My servants will find me." With a soft sound and a smell like a freshly-cut apple, Tyrael vanished. Cain, who had heard all this, looked like he was going to faint. Xanthippe said to Kasim, "Well, we're fvcked."
"Kind of figured, when you said we were going to Hell."
"No, we're fvcked in new and totally different ways."
Kasim shrugged. "Want to go home?"
"No. I wanna kill things."
Kasim thought about that for a while. "Sure, why not?"
Chapter 23Moving further into Hell's outermost sphere, Xanthippe and Kasim came to a city in ruins. All the buildings were constructed of the same greyish, metallic stone, which Xanthippe suspected might be made from the souls of the damned. Maybe, with heat and pressure, the gritty remnants of crushed souls might metamorphose, like mud being pressed and baked into a hard shale. Not only would the demons get useful material, it would be a new and different way to inflict agony. From what Tyrael said, even after the people crumble, they're not really destroyed; they might continue to be aware. Being pressed into service as a paving stone could not be pleasant. Not for the first time, Xanthippe wished there was somewhere she could step where she could be sure she wasn't stepping on someone. Looking at the buildings, Xanthippe wondered if any one block represented one soul, or a whole bunch mashed together. The former might condemn them to an eternity of isolation, without eyes or ears or anything but themselves and the void. But if the souls were broken apart and mixed up, each would be fragmented, then forever melded with people they would probably hate. Which would be worse? For all she knew, the demons carefully sifted the remains and put each soul in the fate it would like the least. They do love pain, and might not have much else to pass the time with. But there wasn't much point in worrying about it now; though the city was a wreck, it was not uninhabited. The undead here were mages, and threw intensely hurtful barrages of elemental magic. Bigger, nastier cousins of the Balrogs played forward guard for the mages, and fat, black, tentacled beasts with huge mouths shuffled along beside them. The mages were probably the most dangerous, but the fatboys had a nasty habit of devouring any dead bodies whole, then vomiting them out with great force. Their guts could launch a 300-pound Balrog over 20 yards, something well worth dodging. With missiles screaming through the city from all directions, Xanthippe switched to sword and shield for a while. It was useful for blocking, but the sword was so much slower for killing than the poleaxe, she was actually taking more damage because of her poor offense. After getting her mana shield knocked out several times, she went back to the poleaxe, relying on footwork to herd the monsters around, then take out specific targets. The mages always got first priority; maybe Cain was right, she was cruel to those of her own profession. But they're the ones who merit special attention the most... Mechanically, they cleared the city, killing everything they met. Xanthippe wondered if her mana shield would be more effective if she had more mana. Or maybe, a weapon that stole mana; then her shield might never go down. Have to keep an eye out for one, ideally a halberd. She'd found one, but it was of miserably poor quality. Still, it was much better balanced and more graceful than a poleaxe, which was a clumsy-looking weapon, even with a lot of enchantment. Tyrael still hadn't returned from wherever he'd gone. With the city empty, there was nothing left for them but a narrow staircase, leading down. That hellish red glow shone up from underneath; Xanthippe did not want to go down there. She went back to town again, by a handy waypoint next to the stairs. Did the Horadrim build those things EVERYWHERE? For a minute, Xanthippe wondered if there was a waypoint in Heaven, and if she might be able to go visit her mom up there. She hadn't seen her down here. On second thought, there's probably more to getting into Heaven than a waypoint. "Say," Xanthippe said, "before we go down there..." "Yeah?" Kasim said, almost eagerly. He didn't want to go charging into the fiery abyss either, it seemed. "There's something I should do." Xanthippe bit her lip. "Maybe I'm being stupid, but I think I need to do some atonement." "Atonement?" "Yeah. Don't get all religious on me or anything." Kasim looked askance at her. "Uh... you know, I have noticed we're in Hell, and I don't like it one bit. If we ever get out of here, I'm becoming a priest." Xanthippe laughed mirthlessly. "You found religion, huh? Hey, who wouldn't? Me, I think I need to confess to some sins, seek absolution... clear my slate. Some things I've done, I think I can feel the weight of them." By waypoint, Xanthippe willed them back to the Rogue encampment. After hanging in the scary void for a few seconds, they arrived... at an empty field. No one was there. Oh, they're all in the monastery! She went to the inner cloister, and found what was left of the sisterhood cleaning and fixing the cathedral. Everyone was very happy to see her, which was kind of surprising, considering some of the things she remembered saying to them. Kashya looked impressed. "Hello there. You actually look like a warrior. A warrior princess even; nice crown." Xanthippe smiled. "Yeah... I just wanted to come back, and say I'm sorry about some of the things I said and did. And I'm sorry about Gaile and Debi. I know they were just trying to help me, and I was too stupid to accept it." Shaking her head, Kashya said, "Water under the bridge. They served the sisterhood nobly, and died the way a Rogue should. Any debt you owe to us is smaller by far than the one we owe you. You gave us our monastery back. I couldn't do that myself." Strangely, Xanthippe felt embarrassed. Sure, she'd tried to humble Kashya, but hearing her admit to that was weird, and kind of unpleasant. "I think you could have... but it would have meant the deaths of a lot of sisters. Your order would have died, and it's probably better to survive in exile than to die out. At least you could do the world some good." Kashya blinked, and crossed her arms, staring at Xanthippe. "What the hell's happened to you, anyway? You never used to talk like this." "Hell" was an appropriate word choice, but Xanthippe didn't think it would be a good idea to mention why. "A lot of things... some of which meant more to me than I thought they would. But, they're water under the bridge. I shouldn't stay long. I just wanted to come back and say thank you, I'm sorry, and I hope everything's ok with you." Still staring, Kashya slowly nodded. The other Rogues looked shocked and surprised too. "Sure... we've heard you chased Diablo out of Lut Gholein... killed a couple more Evils... you're the one I was worried about. Guess I shouldn't have?" Now Xanthippe looked surprised. "You were worried about me?" "Hell yes. Always was." "Oh." Xanthippe couldn't think of a thing to say. This also surprised the Rogues. She did stay long enough to say a few goodbyes. Akara, who'd been purifying the altar, smiled sweetly and congratulated her on the progress she had made. Charsi thought her armor was spectacular (which it was) and was dying to meet the smith who'd made it so nice for her. Also, she'd recharged the Horadric Malus, and was ready to craft a rare item with it. All Xanthippe had to do was bring her an unenchanted item, and she'd work the hammer's magic on it. Her next stop was in Lut Gholein. The city had been cleaned up since she saw it last, and the damaged buildings repaired and repainted. Colorful banners flew from the rooftops, but the streets weren't full of beautiful, scantily-clad women. Instead, she could smell smoke and the acrid tang of metal being worked, and the moist earthiness of wet clay. People of all descriptions walked the streets, some beautiful, some less so; they recognized her instantly. Kasim went to meet up with his boss, and hand over a cut of his pay; Xanthippe went to the palace, accompanied by a cheering throng. Jerhyn invited her inside. "It is so good to know you are well. Much has been happening, and word has come to me of your exploits in the east. They say you defeated the greatest of the Prime Evils in combat." "Yeah, I guess I did," Xanthippe said. "I've heard he wasn't the greatest in combat, though; he usually left that to his brothers. What I've come back for is... I want to say I'm sorry." Jerhyn looked shocked. "Whatever for?" "When you were trying to explain about the danger inside this palace... and I stood there screaming about it in the middle of the street? That was incredibly stupid of me; it got a lot of people killed, and might have destroyed the city if the demons had taken advantage." Jerhyn smiled. "That was much more my fault than anyone else's. When those demons began pouring in from the sanctuary... I did not know what to do. This has been the first real trial of my reign, and the course of action I took led to many deaths. Some might accuse you of being impetuous; that is far, far better than standing frozen in fear." "You weren't frozen! I mean, what could you do? You couldn't evacuate the city, you couldn't tell everyone about the danger, I don't think there was anything you could do about it, except what you did." "Your words are kind," Jerhyn shook his head. "And my people have forgiven me. But it is much harder to forgive myself. What good is it to call yourself a leader, when you cannot find a course of action in a crisis? Drognan tells me I will grow more sure with experience, but I wonder if anyone should place their faith in me at all." Xanthippe bit her lip. "Would you believe... I know what you're talking about a little bit? I've made some really bad decisions, and gotten people killed. As hard as it's been, I think I've gotten better. I haven't killed my hired underling for weeks now." "I should have guessed!" Jerhyn laughed. "One such as you must be of noble blood, and accustomed to the burdens of leadership. Here I am, complaining of minor difficulties, when the ones you bear have always been far greater." Xanthippe shook her head. "Lord Jerhyn... I am the daughter of one of this city's most often-used prostitutes. I am about as low-born as anyone can be. The most I have ever commanded is one person; I would never know what to do with an entire city. That must be so damn hard, I can't even imagine it." Jerhyn stared at her, deeply surprised. "Oh. Well... so much for nobility, then. If I may say so, your deeds have been noble and worthy of all praises, and if such greatness comes from Lut Gholein, our city will never fall to darkness." Oh, now she was blushing. Xanthippe looked down. "I don't mean to be rude, but there are more things I need to do." "Of course. Whenever you wish to return to your city, I will be very glad to have you." Xanthippe looked up, and smiled faintly. "To have me?" Jerhyn blinked a moment, then went beet-red! "I mean, to have you in the palace!" Wheresoever my lord commands, Xanthippe thought, but did not say. She couldn't control her smile, though, which spread into a grin. Jerhyn stammered, "To have as a guest!" Nodding, Xanthippe tried to force the smile away, but it just wouldn't go. "Thank you, Lord Jerhyn. I hope I can come to your palace again another time." On her way out of town, Xanthippe collected Kasim... and saw Gheed. He was lying in one of the weed bars, having gotten a huge bowl of the stuff and smoked until all sense had left his body. He was just lying there... it would be so tempting to... no, she shouldn't. She was trying to be good. In Kurast, Xanthippe first stopped to visit Alkor. He greeted her with shock, dismay, and too much melodramatic moaning to be taken seriously. "Oh, it is you, stupid girl! I thought I had died and gone to hell. Are you a demon now, come to torment me?" "Nah, I just wanted to tell you I won't be bothering you any more. And I got you some more licorice, to replace the stuff I took." "No, no more licorice! If I have some, you may return again!" Asheara was packing up stuff in her old dockside house. She was dressed about as sensibly as ever. Helping her was Vanji, looking much better now that he wasn't hanging by his heels over a pit of starving Flayers. She must be moving out, either into Kurast, or to some other part of the world where mercenaries would be in demand.
"Hello, Asheara."
"Well, well. If it isn't our little princess. You never said goodbye after you whacked Mephisto."
Xanthippe nodded. "No... I guess I was kind of avoiding you."
Asheara laughed. "Don't tell me you got scared."
"You think I was more scared of you than Mephisto?" Xanthippe shook her head. "Maybe I was, I knew you'd be mad. That's why I want to apologize."
Asheara slammed a box closed, and stared at Xanthippe. "You want to apologize."
"Yes. I'm sorry I embarrassed you, and insulted you, and gave you that black eye. I was acting like a total b!tch, and I apologize."
The black eye was gone now; maybe Ormus had healed it. But Asheara didn't look ready to be apologized to. "Aw, how sweet. Isn't that nice?" she asked Vanji, who nodded obediently.
Xanthippe took her crown off. "Look, if you want to give me a black eye too, that's ok. Fair is fair."
Asheara frowned. "Put that back on. Listen, you know what you did?"
"I made you a laughingstock in front of everyone in Kurast?"
"Not quite everyone. And you know what?"
Xanthippe weighed her options, and decided playing dumb was the best one. "What?"
Asheara grinned. "It was the funniest thing I've seen in YEARS. Hell yes, I was the victim, but damn, you got me good!"
Xanthippe laughed. "Well... yeah, I guess I did."
"I haven't been had that bad since this bastard named Gheed came through. And you were a hell of a lot funnier about it than him. I gotta admit... I asked for it."
"And got it. But it was still mean."
Asheara clucked. "I'd have been disappointed if it wasn't. If you think you have the guts to take on the jungle, you'd better be mean."
"I guess. Hey, what's that?"
Among the stack of spears and things Asheara had against the wall, Xanthippe spotted a tall, graceful-looking halberd. "That? One of the guys found it in Sankekur's chambers."
It was a beautiful weapon, polished to a bright finish, chased with gold and jewels, and the edge looked absolutely wicked. Xanthippe took it down to look at. The balance was perfect, the weight just right, it was obviously an amazing weapon. "This is beautiful."
With a smile, Asheara picked up a glass globe. "Actually, Hratli made it, and I put the enchantments on."
"What enchantments?" Xanthippe asked.
Asheara squeezed the globe. With a soft pop, it broke and vanished. The halberd vanished too, and so did Xanthippe. But not completely; her empty armor and equipment fell to the floor of Asheara's hut. "Ok, you two, hide that crap before she remembers she can teleport back here."
Out in the middle of town, Kasim heard a girl scream, then a loud splash. Normally, he didn't like taking orders from women who weren't paying for the privilege, but this sounded like a noble and worthy cause. He and Vanji did as they were told.
A few seconds after they'd hidden everything, Xanthippe reappeared. She was buck naked, dripping wet, and trying to cover herself while standing up straight to glare Asheara in the eye. "You... YOU... B!TCH!!"
Asheara chuckled. "Takes one to know one."
"Where is my stuff?"
"What, didn't it appear with you? Oops, I must have gotten the teleport spell wrong."
"That was some VERY EXPENSIVE gear..."
"Don't worry, we'll track it down," Asheara laughed. "Might take a few hours."
Vanji let out a low whistle. A few more men were staring in the door. Xanthippe hissed, "Dammit, Kasim, at least turn your back!"
Kasim leaned on his poleaxe. "Sorry, I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my ear."
"I thought you were going to become a priest!!"
"Not yet, anyway..."
"Then somebody give me something to wear!"
With a completely straight face, Asheara solemnly offered Xanthippe a hat.
Chapter 24All was peaceful when Xanthippe and Kasim returned to the Pandemonium Fortress. At least, no demons had invaded that they could see. Xanthippe did not feel peaceful at all. See if she'd ever apologize to certain people again. And Kasim, the way he'd been looking her over after Asheara's trick. He was quiet now, but every now and then his attention would wander and he'd start grinning; didn't take a genius to figure out what he was thinking of. Since all was well in the fortress, they took the waypoint back to the ruined city, and bravely stepped down the long, narrow stairway into the glowing inferno. Down they went, though thick accumulations of gritty soul ash, and past a polished stone layer many feet thick. If this was the wall Heaven had put around Hell, Xanthippe wondered why it was laid down horizontally. Then she remembered that Tyrael had spoken of Hell's layers as rings. Maybe the layers of Hell manifest as spheres, nested one inside the other, and a wall around them would make a larger sphere. The inner rings must be very small, then. Maybe the evil was highly concentrated down there. Once they'd gotten through the wall, Xanthippe and Kasim saw the River of Flame. It wasn't nearly as frightening as the harsh glow suggested -- Xanthippe was reminded of a huge lava flow. In color, it was full of bright oranges and yellows; had it been molten rock, the heat coming off of it would have parboiled them both, but the temperature was quite tolerable. A few islands of rock were scattered over its surface, and they could see demons crawling and stumbling towards the stairs to greet them. They were more grotesque spawning things, chained giants, and undead mages. Nothing they hadn't met before. They say you can get used to just about anything. During the first few battles, Xanthippe noticed that Kasim was helping her a lot more than he should be. She'd square off with some big brute, the big brute would slam her into next week, but get frozen by her cold aura. Then Kasim would come in and chop the frozen thing to ice cubes while it was helpless, like she couldn't do it herself. Even after she glared at him, he kept doing it, though he had to know he was irritating her. Finally, after clearing out a pack of grotesques, she just couldn't stand it anymore. "Will you stop doing that!?" Kasim looked confused. "Stop doing what?" "I can take some of them on myself, you know!" "Yeah, I know... I'm just getting the ones --" "The frozen ones are not dangerous, the ones that are running around are." Suddenly feeling very tired, Kasim said, "the frozen ones are easier to take out." "Do you think I can't tell that? Do you think I'm stupid? Listen --" Kasim interjected, "Is this about looking at you while you were naked?" "NO! Yes! What the hell do you think you were doing?" Kasim glanced heavenward. "Looking at you while you were naked?" "No! What makes you think you could do that to me?" "Because... you were standing there, completely naked?" Panting, Xanthippe glared hard at him. "First, you say I look fat..." "I didn't say that." "I KNOW what you MEANT!" "Aw, hell!" Kasim shouted, "If I thought you were fat, I wouldn't want to look at you, would I?" Xanthippe opened her mouth... then shut it again. "Ok, point. But you do not just stare at me like that!" Kasim folded his arms. "I thought you said you could laugh at yourself." "That was humiliating! I just stripped Asheara! She took two hours to get my stuff back!" "She did offer you one of her outfits..." Eyes narrowed, Xanthippe hissed, "I'd rather die." "I don't think you're going to die from wearing a leather bikini. She even said you'd look better in it than she thought." "What she said was that the plate mail made me look fat. You told her, didn't you?" "No." "You told her bodyguard, then." "Vanji? Uh... yeah, I guess I did." Xanthippe went quiet, just seething with anger. "All I want... is a little respect. That's all. Just a little bit of respect. No talking about me behind my back, telling me I should be prancing around in a bikini, or getting stripped. Just... respect. Is that so much to ask?" They stood there for a moment, Xanthippe silently boiling over, and Kasim slowly putting together a response. He had found, over the course of his career, that when a woman talks about wanting respect, she's in a really pissy mood, and will try to bite your head off no matter what you say. But you have to say something, or she thinks you don't respect her enough to pay attention to her. The best tactic is to start getting philosophical: talk about something else that has something to do with it, and hope she'll get the connection. "Ok... it's like this." "What?!" Xanthippe snapped. "When I was growing up, in our neighborhood, there were a couple of dogs who lived there. There was a big dog, and a little dog." "Ok. What about them?" "The big dog was a great dog, everybody liked him. He'd let you climb on him, the girls would dress him up in clothes and stuff, he didn't mind. You could tell he was laughing, you know, going along with the joke, right?" "We can argue about how much a dog understands jokes, you know." "Yeah, but anyway, he was a great dog. Everybody respected him, because he could rip your arm off if he wanted, but he didn't have to 'cause everybody respected him. The little dog yapped and yapped all the time, morning 'til night. Everybody hated that damn dog, he wouldn't shut the hell up for anything." Xanthippe nodded. "Go on." Kasim continued. "The little dog was trying to tell everybody he was, like, dangerous and to respect him, but all he did was annoy everybody. We used to drop buckets over him, or tie things to his tail, the little guy totally went ballistic. Never did that to the other dog. You could drop a bucket over his head, he's just shake it off and look at you." "And rip your arm off." "I don't think he ever bit anybody. He didn't get upset over nothin'. The little guy just kept tryin' and tryin', but the more he yapped, the worse it got. Cause everybody hated him, you know? It wasn't respectable, it was annoying." "Yeah, annoying yappy little mutt. What are you telling me all this for?" Kasim looked at Xanthippe for a minute, then sighed. "No reason, I guess." Irritatedly, Xanthippe let the matter drop. There was no point in even trying to talk to Kasim about most things anyway. He just didn't get it, and never would. They continued making their way up the river of flame. Every now and then, a scorched, skeletal form would rise screaming out of the river, then fall back out of sight. Guess there had to be something to remind them they're still in Hell. The stone platforms and narrow bridges eventually led to a large island, with one peninsula off to the left. A waypoint was on the island; Xanthippe activated it, then went left. Amid a crowd of grotesques was a big fat demon who reminded Xanthippe of the demon smith from the Rogue Monastery. He was laboring over a forge, but dropped everything when they came in sight. An aura surrounded him, which suddenly made the heat of the river more palpable; the hammer he was swinging was white-hot, and getting hit by it would probably hurt a lot. Running around him, Xanthippe and Kasim concentrated on killing the Grotesques and their wormy brood before they got out of hand. The armorer was easy to avoid until they could deal with him by himself. Concentrating on hitting hard and fast, they never let him get in a good strike with the hammer, and eventually he went down. Back at the fortress, Tyrael still hadn't returned. According to Cain, that was the Hellforge, which Izual had supposedly assaulted all those centuries ago. Hell's greatest weapons were forged there, amid the raging heat of the river of flame. Xanthippe informed Cain that the river wasn't that warm, but Cain told her the heat was produced by burning souls on the bottom. The roiling vapors of the river tended to keep the energy insulated in the river's channel, except what was routed through the forge. The Hellforge was also the place to smash the corrupted soulstones. "How can you be sure?" Xanthippe asked. "Tyrael has told me this. When the soulstone is smashed, the spirit contained within is released into Hell, and its connecting links to the mortal realms will be no more. The demon lord Mephisto will never be able to enter our world again." "And how does Tyrael know this? Did Izual tell him?" Cain thought about this, beads of sweat forming on his brow. "I do not know. Oh, this is terrible. Without heavenly wisdom, what is there to guide our path?" "Cain..." Xanthippe shook her head. "We're supposed to be standing up on our own two feet anyway. Come on, if we just apply logic, we can figure this out. What do you know about the soulstones?" "Hmmm. I am afraid the Horadrim never knew very much about their exact nature. They were given to us by the archangel Tyrael, for use in imprisoning The Three. Their perfect crystalline structure acted to counter the natural resonance of the spirit contained within, but now that they have been corrupted, I have no idea what properties they possess." Xanthippe got Mephisto's soulstone out of her luggage. The shard pulsed from within with an evil blue light; it reminded her of Izual, but more diseased-looking. "How does the stone get corrupted? Did Mephisto alter the crystal lattice pattern?" Cain just looked at her. "How am I supposed to know? I had no idea this could be done, and now you ask me how it was done? What you say sounds reasonable, but there are many other reasonable explanations. We have no way of knowing. With years of time to study the stones, we might be able to deduce the weakness the demon lord exploited, but we do not have that time!" "Nor will you need it," Tyrael's voice intoned. The angel floated down from above. "The Three's plan is a diabolical one, but the soulstone may be safely destroyed on the Hellforge. After the Three opened the hell gate, each went a separate way. Mephisto remained in Kurast, to guard the gate and forestall your invasion of Hell. Diablo has entered Hell to raise his army, in case Baal should fail on his mission." "What's Baal doing? Where is he?" "Baal remains in the mortal realm. The Lord of Destruction is making for the Barbarian lands at great speed. He has recovered his own soulstone, somehow. For Hell's invasion to be halted, all three brothers must have their soulstones smashed on the Hellforge." "Great," Xanthippe said. "They scattered. I have to chase each one down." "The Lord of Terror is closest at hand, so you should continue your pursuit in Hell until he is vanquished. When this is accomplished, the pursuit of Baal must begin in earnest." "Yeah, right. Get moving, in other words. Are you sure smashing the soulstones is safe?" Tyrael was silent for a moment. "You feel you have cause to doubt me, mortal. You may be correct in doing so. I am sure. The Lord of Hatred's ties to your world will be broken when the soulstone he has bound to himself is destroyed." With grave misgivings, Xanthippe returned to the river of flame and found the armorer's hammer. It had cooled, and she could pick it up without burning herself. Even approaching the Hellforge was difficult; the heat coming off it was intense, scorching and shriveling the flesh. Carefully, she put the soulstone on the huge anvil in the heart of the forge; it glowed with the heat of the screaming souls surrounding it. Lifting the hammer, she brought it down as hard as she could. Thunder and fire shook the forge, and a scream of rage billowed up into the air. Hundreds of skeletal spirits floated away from the shattered chips of crystal; Xanthippe wondered who they were, and where they were going. Among the crystalline shards, she found several gem-quality pieces: a perfect emerald, a flawless emerald, a flawless skull, and a ruby, as well as a Sol rune. In her cube, she was able to make another perfect emerald and a perfect skull. Hopefully, the mule would he happy with those.
Chapter 25Even though she knew time could not be wasted, Xanthippe insisted that she and Kasim get a good night's sleep. Invading Diablo's sanctum was not going to be easy. Despite Tyrael's dire warnings, she wasn't about to go anywhere without plenty of rest, a good breakfast (herbal tea, sausages, and buttered bread, toasted very nicely over one of the fortress's eternal flames) and a thorough check-over for all their equipment. The armor was strong, the weapons all sharpened. Her stock of full rejuvenation potions overflowed her trunk. The waypoint waited. From the waypoint on the river of flame, they advanced slowly, and found... an angel? Hovering over the path was an angel, smaller-looking than Tyrael, and his (her?) armor was silvery instead of golden. The angel's voice sounded male, but Xanthippe wasn't sure how much that mattered. According to him, Diablo was in his Chaos Sanctuary with his greatest generals and officials, in an inner chamber protected by five seals. Each of these infernal officials in turn had an assortment of lesser officers, hangers-on, and other bureaucratic vermin in the Sanctuary itself. Of course, the instant the angel stopped speaking, Xanthippe burst out with questions. Who are you, and what are you doing here? How did Diablo get these generals together so fast? Supposedly, it was a huge rebellion in Hell that exiled The Three to the mortal realms; had these officials been waiting for Diablo's return? The angel did not reply. Xanthippe wanted to whack him with her poleaxe, but Kasim wouldn't let her. Before they reached the Sanctuary, they had to go through a maze of paved paths set in the river. The convoluted twists and turns were frustrating; was this meant to forestall invasion of the Sanctuary? Xanthippe doubted it: angels could just fly in. Even she could teleport. The twists and turns did give the undead mages plenty of opportunity to blast away at them, but the grotesques and spitters had to wait until they approached. As they advanced, the Chaos Sanctuary loomed into view, black and huge, covered with spiky turrets and toothed spires. The front gates were open; in fact, there did not seem to be any gates in the frame. Much of the ceiling and pieces of the walls were gone too. Yet, there was no wreckage or ruin inside; had the missing pieces ever been there? This was the closest thing to an intact building she'd seen in Hell, and the construction seemed confusing and impractical. It almost seemed to have been built to make it easy to enter. The minute Xanthippe and Kasim entered the gate, she felt weak and slow, and her vision dimmed. A crowd of undead knights advanced on them, with an armored skeleton in green and purple behind, making strange gestures. This had to be a spell of some kind... oh, of course, it was necromancy. Primitive magic like necromancy needs those elaborate movements and finger twining to harness and shape the mana. Altering the magical field of the body is not easy, and the effect of inefficient necromantic "curses" is subtle at best. The final result was a general weakness; no actual damage was inflicted. However, it did make that crowd of dead knights more difficult to deal with. Xanthippe called for a retreat, and they decrepitly creaked their way out the Sanctuary door. Standing on either side of the doorway, they smashed an chopped the knights as they came out, killing quickly with little risk. The strange construction of this demon fortress confused Xanthippe even more; it seemed easier to attack the defenders, to get them in a bottleneck, than any sensible architect should allow. After the knights were dead, they went back and charged the necromancer skeleton; it retreated to a group of balrogs, then cursed them again. Several times, they retreated to the gates, killed a horde of demons, then ran in again to try and catch the necromancer. Stupid necromancer. The dead bastard just wouldn't stay still until he found a group of like-minded friends. Together, the group of them started churning out curses and gibbering, flying skulls. It took forever, three more hasty retreats, and two full rejuvenation potions to corner them all and beat them back to death. After clearing the entrance hall, the rest of the Sanctuary was easy. Dealing with the curses was simple; just get away from the necromancer. The fighters will follow you, but the necro won't, so they're easy to separate; after dealing with the fighters, corner the necromancer. Oddly enough, the layout of the Sanctuary resembled the four-pointed star of the Zakarumite church. In the center was a huge pentagram, surrounded by pools of flame and hundreds of burnt human skulls. Obviously, a place of importance. The pentagram's center was a single slab of stone, held down by huge clamps. When Xanthippe stood on it, she could feel some irregular vibration, rising and falling. She took her crown off and lay down with her ear to the stone; it was definitely a voice, but she could not discern the language. That had to be Diablo's inner sanctum. She wasn't going to try entering now, there was still more Sanctuary to clear, but Xanthippe was pleased to see a combat shrine right next to it. Shrines are useful things, even if they involve praying; Xanthippe was sure they had to predate the coming of demons to Hell. At the end of one wing of the Sanctuary, there were two circular disks set in the floor. Their function was unclear, but when Xanthippe tapped the first one, it sank an inch into the floor and glowing glyphs appeared on it. Xanthippe hadn't paid much attention to runes and glyphs when she was studying, and was really starting to regret it. Old-fashioned symbol magic should be unimportant when you could simply harness raw magical power, but knowing them might help her figure out what another spell-caster was up to. Then, that strange angel's words came back to her; five seals held Diablo's sanctuary shut. She hit the second disk, and it did the same thing; two out of five? As the seal lit up, a feeling of disquiet came over Xanthippe; a low, almost subsonic rumbling that had pervaded the Sanctuary rose to a shout, then died away. A sparkling light shot out from the center pentagram, and a group of insectile creatures appeared next to her. These things drain mana with their lightning touch, but Xanthippe made sure both she and Kasim had all the lightning resistance they could get, and she had mana to spare. On the opposite side of the Sanctuary were two more seals, which released an extremely fast balrog and his friends. They were even easier to deal with than the insects. When she went back to the central pentagram, most of the clamps had opened. But the slab still wouldn't budge. The voice underneath was silent. Xanthippe wondered if Diablo had run out of generals yet. There was still one more seal, so Xanthippe ran off and tripped it. She should have known; the Sanctuary had been full of necromancers, mana bugs, and balrogs. At the first set of seals, Diablo sent the lord of the mana bugs to kill her. On the second set, it was the lord of the balrogs. This last one summoned up the lord of the necromancers, who heralded his arrival with a wave of curses and gibbering ghosts. Not wanting to take that much punishment at once, Xanthippe teleported away. These guys proved smarter than their rank-and-file: the whole group stayed in a tight bunch, slinging death magic, no matter how much Xanthippe and Kasim tried to draw individuals away to deal with alone. Eventually, they had to charge right into the middle of them and start swinging. After a healing potion for each of them, one necro finally died; two more healings and a full rejuve got the second. Xanthippe cornered the necromancer lord, while Kasim chopped up the last two. When they were all dead, a burst of heat and flame erupted from the center of the Sanctuary. It must be their boy, and he was mad. Good. Then she remembered; the combat shrine she wanted to hit was on the west side of Diablo's sanctuary, and they were on the east. "Ok, Kasim, we have to get past him." "Just run by him?" "Sure, why not?" Kasim looked doubtful. "Hoped you'd teleport. That's kind of fun." "We're not here to have fun. This is it, the big guy." Kasim nodded. "Ok. Let's do it." Together, they skirted the edge of the central pentagram, and Xanthippe got the shrine. The walls of flame that blasted out of the pentagram hurt Kasim some, so Xanthippe tossed him a potion, before they charged into the flames. There was Diablo, huge and terrible, with a shard of glowing red crystal stuck in his forehead. "Ok, we've got him!" Diablo's laugh shook the Sanctuary. He crouched down, and red and white lightning arced from his fingertips, straight through Kasim. He died almost instantly, sliced in half by the bolt. "MORTAL... WHO IS THIS 'WE'?" Ulp. This called for an immediate change in strategy. Xanthippe hid behind a corner and counted her potions; would she be able to get them fast enough? Diablo came out of his pentagram, all of Hell shaking with his footsteps, and stomped what was left of Kasim's head into jelly. Xanthippe tried to think: should she switch to the shield? She could hide behind it, and the sword had life leeching. And she could hide behind it. Diablo was coming over for her, trampling Kasim's thoughts and memories on the floor; they went up in smoke from the heat. She was still trying to decide what to do when Diablo looked around the corner, his face not a foot from hers and... licked... her... cheek... The teleport spell came to mind instantly; she was on the opposite side of the pentagram in a thought. Diablo didn't seem to care; a wave of his hand, and a wave of fire blasted her off her feet, completely obliterating her mana shield. "TO COME SO FAR, AND FAIL SO MISERABLY. YOU WILL BE A DELIGHT." Xanthippe hid behind another corner, chugging a mana potion and recasting mana shield. She could cast a portal from here, and get back to the fortress... Xanthippe looked out from her hiding place. Slowly, Diablo was coming for her again. When she showed her face, he licked his lips, then shot his lightning right through her. EEEAAHH!! She scampered like a frightened rabbit, the ground shaking under her trembling legs. Dammit, Kasim had always done most of the killing! She hated it, but he did, she was almost just a support unit for her own mercenary... and now he was a splat on the floor! Spinning fire and lightning in waves, Diablo blasted her into corners and off of walls, laughing. "AH... YOU SCREAM WELL, TINY GIRL. I WILL CHERISH YOU LONG AFTER YOUR DEATH." In the back of her mind, a tiny voice told her, he's the Lord of Terror: he's trying to scare you. A much louder voice answered, he's succeeding! She didn't want to die down here, in his hands. There really is life after death, and she did NOT want hers to be in here! Running around the pentagram, keeping the flame pits between herself and Diablo, Xanthippe tried to think. What could she do? A portal! Just get out of here! Xanthippe cast the town portal... and didn't go through. She could see Him out of the corner of her eye, grinning and slowly stomping his way over, in no hurry at all. But the voice in the back of her head was saying, you won't be scared. Little girls are scared, and run away. You never ran away before, and I'll be damned if I let you run now. Bony spines sprang up from the floor, surrounding her portal, but Xanthippe still just stood there. Then Diablo was there beside her. "STOPPED RUNNING? DON'T. IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I COULD REALLY ENJOY MYSELF." She looked up at him. He swatted her, like a cat playing with a helpless mouse. Spinning across the floor, the arrogance of the act suddenly thrust itself into her mind. Yes... an arrogant, conceited, murderous BASTARD who's dragged her halfway across the world and straight into Hell just so he can have a little fun! Springing to her feet, her indignation wiping away all fear, Xanthippe screamed "How DARE you!!!" She charged straight at him, swinging straight for his smug, ugly face. The swing was magnificent. It would have been great if it had actually hit Diablo. But the Lord of Terror was quick enough when he wanted to be, and sliced into her with his lightning again. Chopping almost at random, Xanthippe drew a bit of demonic blood, then paused to take a full rejuve and recast mana shield. A quick mental calculation, comparing her supply of potions to the damage he seemed to be suffering, yielded an unpleasant result: she would run out of rejuves long before he ran out of life. There had to be some way to really hurt him, something that would not depend on her mediocre combat skills... As another stream of lightning arced through her, Xanthippe realized that was the answer. Lightning! Not her Thunderstorm, which was doing a only little bit, but another spell perfect for softening up big targets: Static Field! She cast, zapping Diablo; unlike the swats from her poleaxe, he actually seemed to feel it. As waves of fire poured out of him, she cast again and again and again, watching him slowly burn. And just like that, the tables turned; he started running away from her! "Oh, no you don't, you bastard! Do you think I'm gonna let you get away?" Quaffing potions as she slowly pursued the fleeing demon lord, Xanthippe filled the air with static charges. Sparks poured off of Diablo's claws, but not ones of his own making. Howling with pain and anger, he clawed and smashed at Xanthippe, but her Thunderstorm and the crackle in the air were draining his life energy to a sliver. Finally, he collapsed to the ground, twitching and squealing like a dying pig. Xanthippe raised her poleaxe, and with a single stroke, hacked his head from his body. The corpse burst into flame. A raging red spirit rose from the charring flesh, and was sucked into the soulstone. Then, silence. Xanthippe pulled the stone out of the burning skull. The corrupted shard flickered with an angry red light, full of eons worth of fury... and complete helplessness. The smith's hammer should be next to the Hellforge where she'd left it. This is it, you bastard, she thought. Get ready for oblivion. I got you.
Act 5Chapter 26After smashing Diablo's soulstone, Xanthippe walked to the waypoint. She was sure Cain and the others in the Pandemonium Fortress would want to see her, but she had to do something first. During the fight with Diablo, she'd lost control of a couple of basic bodily functions, and cleaning up was a priority now that her business in Hell was done. Fortunately, there was a river near the Rogue monastery with nobody nearby, and she could make herself presentable. Back in the Chaos Sanctuary, she took stock. There were a few items on Diablo's corpse -- adventuring gear for a warrior, it looked like, but nothing noteworthy. Then, there was Kasim. After the fire waves, lightning blasts, and physical abuse, not much remained of Kasim's body. About the only things she could recognize were his feet. Damn, she was so lucky Diablo didn't just go for the kill. Now what was she going to do? Leaving him here in Hell would be wrong. Maybe it didn't really mean anything... if the eternal soul finds its own level, the fate of the body wouldn't matter. She'd left dead mercenaries here and there, regrettably. But leaving Kasim lying around like so much meat just wasn't right. So Xanthippe returned to the fortress, hauling about 80 pounds of scorched flesh and shredded metal in three separate pieces. If Kasim's relatives asked, she'd say he'd lost a lot of weight. Cain and Tyrael greeted her. "Mortal, you have accomplished the impossible. You have banished two of the Brothers forever to the burning hells. But there is still more to be done." "Yeah, Baal," Xanthippe said. "You said he'd found his soulstone and was invading the Barbarian highlands. Why do the demon lords want the soulstones, anyway?" "The corrupted stones retain their power to hold souls. It may be possible to use them as a source or conduit for magical energy." Cain was scratching his head, and seemed very puzzled by something. "Was there anything unusual about the River of Flame?" "Apart from being a river with flame in it?" Cain looked sidewise at Xanthippe. "I am wondering how your hair came to be wet..." "While determining Baal's whereabouts," Tyrael interrupted, "I returned to Lut Gholein. It seems to me that you ought to have this." A triangular pendant floated from Tyrael's hand to Xanthippe's. The silver gleamed brightly, and the diamond glittered with every shift of the light. It was smaller than she remembered... but it was beautiful. "This was the gift your father gave to your mother, before your birth. He was an itinerant mage named Xanothon, who journeyed to Tristram to battle Diablo, and died there a short while ago." Xanthippe lifted the pendant, staring into it. "He was nobody special, then." Cain nodded sadly. "Did you imagine he might be high-born? Perhaps a prince of the east?" "I would have been disappointed if he was." Running her fingers around the pendant's edges, Xanthippe said, "You shouldn't need big relatives to be somebody. Um... could I ask you something, Tyrael?" "You are worried about finding Baal." "No, I'm worried about Kasim. He's kind of dead. No, he's extremely dead. I was just wondering, what more can I do for him?" "This is unexpected, mortal." Tyrael looked at the lumps of meat Xanthippe had left leaking on the floor of the fortress. "There is little time to locate his family. It is unfortunate that he was cut down while only beginning to approach enlightenment." "Do you mean... he's going to Hell?" "The life he took for himself was hardly exemplary. Though you may have grown fond of him, his path has taken him to his destiny." Blinking, Xanthippe stared at Tyrael. "But..." she said, lips trembling. Then she balled her mother's pendant up in her fist. "NO!" "I am sorry, child," Cain said. "It is a cruel blow, but --" "NO!! I do NOT accept this!" Xanthippe put the pendant on, tucking it under her armor. "This is NOT FAIR, I am NOT going to just accept it! I have left too many dead people behind me, I am not going to leave another one!" "If that is their fate," Tyrael intoned, "who are you to cast judgment?" "I WILL cast judgment, I WILL decide what I want to do!" Xanthippe stormed down the steps that led to Hell's outer steppes. "Never leave a man behind! That's the mercenaries way! He couldn't have sunk too deep! I WILL find him!" Tyrael was waiting at the bottom of the steps. "Have you any idea of Hell's vastness? You could search a hundred years, and not see more than the smallest fraction. You who have condemned Heaven for casting judgment on mortal's lives, know that is it no better for you to do the same yourself." Xanthippe snarled, "Get. Out. Of. My. WAY!" "If Baal is not destroyed, all of your world will suffer his fate, or worse." "He couldn't have gone far. This is so totally not fair! How the hell are we supposed to know what the right thing to do is to satisfy you, anyway? You're not there to tell us, the old books get rewritten, history becomes myth, lies find their way in! WE CAN'T SEE WHAT YOU SEE!! And right when we start to see it, SPLAT! IT'S JUST NOT FAIR!!" "MORTAL." Voice booming, Tyrael's response actually had some emotion in it. He even crossed his arms over his chest. "DO NOT PRESUME TO TAKE THE UNIVERSE TO TASK FOR FAILING TO MEET YOUR STANDARDS OF FAIRNESS." The force of his presence actually forced Xanthippe back; she fell on her butt on the steps. Quickly, the sense of his anger faded, and the blaze of light softened. "A soul may be leaden with the weight of its own corruption; should it fall, how is it the fault of Heaven? When we were with you to guide you, you remained as children. Do not be angry if we no longer hold your hands, it would be far worse if we did. Suffering and death will come to you. There is no avoiding it." Clenching her eyes shut, Xanthippe stood up. Determined not to cry, she said, "He died just when he was starting to get it... whatever 'it' is. He even said he wanted to be a priest. Yeah, ok, we all die. But he never had a chance! It was just ZAP! SPLAT! SQUISH! and that was it. How can you learn anything when the first lesson is fatal? It's just not right..." Then the tears came, trailing down her cheeks while she struggled to hold them back. After a lengthy pause, Tyrael said, "Mortal, return to the fortress. Perhaps, given the nature of your quest, I should take action on your behalf. If Heaven disagrees, then let me be damned. We must continue on our course." With a wave of Tyrael's hand, a golden light sprinkled down like falling leaves over the rear of the fortress. Watching, Xanthippe turned, and slowly walked back. The pieces of Kasim's body were rejoined, and he was whole again. As she approached, a ghostly vapor trailed in over Xanthippe's shoulder. Kasim breathed, and the ghost was drawn in through his nose. Blinking, he slowly sat up, looking stunned. Kasim began to say "Uh... oof!" as Xanthippe dropped to her knees and hugged him tight. "You bastard. Don't ever get killed like that again." "Killed like what again?" "Don't you remember?" "Uh... no. We were going to get Diablo, you hit a shrine, and then..." Nodding, Xanthippe gave Kasim his poleaxe back. "That's all the important stuff. Diablo is smashed; that's two down, one to go. I think we take that gate there." Kasim looked back at the red gate, glowing next to Tyrael. "Sounds good. Man, I'm confused..." "Of course. You've been mostly dead all day. What's through the gate, Tyrael?" "The city of Harrogath, the last bastion of order on Mt. Arreat. This is as close to your true destination as I can reach now. Baal is laying siege to the city, and hopes to crush even that hope." "Fine. That'll be a good base of operations. Mt. Arreat, huh? What's up there?" Tyrael responded, "With luck, you will not need to know." "Yeah, right." Xanthippe smirked, then bounced on the balls of her feet. "Wanna go kick Baal's butt, Kasim?" "Sure..." Kasim staggered towards the gate, and they both went through. As they left, Cain turned to Tyrael, smiling. "Thank you, great Tyrael. Should nothing else come of this, I am grateful that you could make one person happy." "That happiness will be short-lived. The city of Harrogath is in grave danger." "Yes, but I feel sad for her at times. One so young should have a happier and more carefree life. Her worries should be her studies, and perhaps boys... not the fate of the world." "The workings of fate are beyond us all," Tyrael said. "If this fate falls on a child, so be it." Xanthippe and Kasim arrived in the city of Harrogath. Or perhaps the town of Harrogath, it was much smaller than Lut Gholein. In other lands, this would be considered a border fort, not a city. The walls, high and very thick, enclosed a small collection of extremely solid buildings. At first, they couldn't see any people, but then noticed two exceptionally large men sitting against a wall. Both had very pale skin, shaggy black hair, and many tattoos. They were heavily bandaged, but wearing little else, even though it was very, very cold. "Hi there," Xanthippe said. "Who's in charge here?" The two men stared at them in horror. "Och! Outlanders, invading the city!" "How'd yoo get past the walls?" "We were sent," Xanthippe explained. "I need to talk to your... chief, or whatever." One man, looking very indignant, turned to the other. "Talk to the chief? A woman?" "We've no need for a seamstress... or whatever services yoo be selling." "Here now, lad," one said to Kasim, "Why are yoo lettin' yoor wife do all the talkin'? And why are yoo wearin' a dress?" The other shook his head in disbelief. "He's in a dress, she's wearin' the pants." "I suppose he's big enough... almost." "That wee laddie? Have yoo gone blind?" The first one looked again. "Yoo're right! Standing next to her, I thought he was a giant!" The two laughed, big hearty laughs. Xanthippe and Kasim were starting to feel annoyed. Finally, they stopped. "Ah... feels good to laugh." "Not much to laugh at but wee little outlanders." Xanthippe cleared her throat. "Is there anyone FOR REAL up here we can talk to?" They looked at her. "What, yoo haven't run squealing back to yoor mummies yet?" Kasim smirked. "Killed my last mummy a while ago." "Forget these guys," Xanthippe said. "Let's find somebody else." "What are those spatulas they're haulin' about?" "Och, little outlanders carry those to poke demons with, so they don't have ta go near 'em." "They're bundled up tight, aren't they? They must think it's cold!" As Xanthippe and Kasim walked away, one called after them, "What, can't stand a little snow? Gonna have a rough time of it up here!" They didn't have to go far. The building the men were sitting against was some kind of hospital, run by a very old woman, bent with advanced age. As they walked in, the groans of the many wounded turned to laughter. "Aw, look! We've got a cute lil' couple of darkies here." "Och, don't they look fancy? Look at all that armor and them jewels." "Hey, cloth-head! Why are yoo wearin' a nightgown?" "He looks like he should be a wet-nurse." "Yoo all be quiet!" the old woman said. "Don't yoo lot know a Sorceress when yoo see one? She's a great mage, from the look of her, and don't yoo forget it!" Smiling, the old woman hobbled over to them. "Please, don't them worry you. This is a hard land, and makes for hard men with unforgiving natures. Ah, a Sorceress! When I was much younger, I wanted to study with your clan. But my powers never developed beyond the simplest levels, so I stayed here with my people, tending their wounds and illnesses." "That's very good of you," Xanthippe said through gritted teeth. "These pale, sickly men must need your services for every little boo-boo." "Do you make them warm cocoa when they get the sniffles?" Kasim asked. Xanthippe giggled. "With tiny marshmallows." "Yoo're the only tiny one around here!" one man called out, and tried to get up. After a heroic effort, he collapsed back into bed. "Well, maybe yoor husband there is. If yoo ever need yoorself a real man, just about anybody'd be better." "If you can ever get up off your butt," Kasim said. "Just give me a day or so, little man," the Barbarian said. "Just to get back on me feet..." "Yoo shut up, and don't tear yoor stitches, or I'll sew yoo to the bed!" the old woman shook her head, and smiled gently. "I am sorry, my manners escape me. I am Malah. I hope you brought good news with you, for there is very little to share here. The demon lord Baal is laying siege to our city, though you must know that. How you entered our city through the walls of his legions, I cannot imagine." Xanthippe was starting to notice that Malah's accent got stronger when she was yelling at her patients, but disappeared almost entirely when speaking with them. She must have spent time in distant countries at some point in her life. "We've come here from Hell, where we killed Diablo, the Lord of Terror." Ah... the whole room was now gratifyingly silent. Malah shook her head. "I beg yoor pardon, my hearing is not what it was... could yoo repeat that?" "Sure," Xanthippe said. "After we trashed Mephisto, the Lord of Hate, we found a gate to Hell he'd opened. We went down to Hell, found Diablo, and kicked his ass. Now, we're here, to find Baal and make him wish he'd never been born. Or whatever demons do." You could have heard a pin drop. Finally, one wounded man spoke up: "Yoo're lyin'!" Quickly, other declarations of skepticism burst out. "Can't be!" "Don't yoo talk like that!" "Stupid outlanders, thinkin' we'll believe such tales!" "Should cut you for sayin' that!" "SHUT UP, ALL O' YOO!" Malah still had a good set of lungs, that was obvious. "As for yoo two, yoo shouldn't be tellin' stories yoo can't prove are true! But, on the other hand... you have gotten here, somehow. Unless this is some deception, designed to smash our hopes... but the Lord of Destruction has shown no capacity for subtlety thus far." "We want to talk to someone who's in charge." Malah sighed. "I fear that almost all of our elders sacrificed their lives to place a protective dome around Harrogath... all save one. Perhaps you would prefer to speak with Qual-kehk, our senior man-at-arms. You will find him by the gates." In the town's central square, near the only gate, a huge man with white hair, clad head to toe in barbaric finery, was looking over a group of warriors. Outside the gate, Xanthippe and Kasim could hear the clash of steel, snarling demon voices, and the screams of the dying. The number of warriors looked pitifully small. As they approached, the great old warrior looked them over.
"Hmmm... yoo two look like yoo're trying to be warriors. I don't know how yoo got in here, but any extra man in a fight. Why is yoor wife all in armor?"
"You got me all wrong, man." Kasim said. "We're not married."
"Why does everyone think we're married, anyway?" Xanthippe asked.
"Don't ask me, I do NOT know how these people think."
Qual-kehk looked offended. "What, an unmarried woman, traveling by herself!? Without her family to protect her, a woman should never set foot out of her house. Up here, a woman knows her place. And so does a man!"
"I'm not traveling alone, I'm traveling with him."
"And yoor not married to him! What other improper things are yoo outlanders up to?"
Kasim smirked. "I'm only the hired help."
"Yeah," Xanthippe said. "I'm the boss. You talk to me."
None of these explanations seemed to assuage Qual-kehk. If anything, the more he heard, the more offended he was. "And WHAT would YOO want, then?"
So Xanthippe explained, from the killing of Mephisto, to the killing of Diablo. Qual-kehk grunted. "Things have gotten so bad in the southern lands, that their girls go out to fight?"
Xanthippe smiled sweetly. "Yep."
"We are a sturdier people. Our warriors are worth ten of the ones yoo are accustomed to seeing. They must be, for our women could outfight any two of yoo! If the Prime Evils fall so easily in battle, defeating Baal should be a simple matter, once we can reach him."
"Having trouble with that?" Xanthippe was still smiling.
"The hellish troops arrayed against us form a living wall, separating us from their master. Yoo cannot imagine the like; demons that crawl through the earth beneath yoor feet, or the catapults, flesh and steel bound together to hurl death for miles. They've trapped us in our city to starve." Qual-kehk looked up and down Xanthippe's delicate from, and laughed. "For one who can defeat a Prime Evil, breaking the siege should be child's play."
"Sure. What's a few more demons? Let's go, Kasim."
Chapter 27Outside the gates of Harrogath, on the high side of the mountain, the wind blew harsh and cold, chilling Xanthippe to the bone. Her stomach felt sick, even breathing was hard, and the cold air made her teeth ache. As they looked over the frozen plain before them, Kasim cut a wide strip from the hem of his robe, and wrapped it around his mouth and nose; Xanthippe did the same. That helped keep the chill out of their lungs, but they were both still freezing. The padding under their armor had made places like Kurast sweaty nightmares, but simply wasn't enough to deal with this biting cold. Xanthippe cast her preparatory spells, and they set off up the slope. Harrogath had been built at the bottom of a ledge, with a sheer cliff on one side and a vertical drop on the other, so there was only one way for Baal's troops to approach the city. Unfortunately, it meant there was only one way out, and the defenders were facing upslope, making the city very easy to besiege. Maybe the Barbarians thought the demons, when they came, would obligingly charge in willy-nilly so they could be cut down, rather than doing the intelligent thing of cutting the city off and starving them to death. The ground was littered with bodies, some human, others definitely not. The first demon corpse they found was a spiky thing the size of a man, which seemed to be made of earth and rock. Soon they found more, a crowd of four surrounding a lone Barbarian warrior. That wasn't fair at all, no matter what the Barbarian might say, so Xanthippe and Kasim charged in to the rescue. Her thunderstorm bolts attracted their attention; their "spatulas" completed their argument. And what did that Barbarian say? That's right, absolutely nothing; he gave them a peevish look and went looking for more demons. The ingratitude was positively galling. As they worked their way up, they encountered more demons, the spiky earth monsters and hunched-over naked ones swinging heavy falchions. Not that the earth demons weren't naked, but the little guys were, um... noticeably naked. For one mad moment, Xanthippe almost asked Kasim if it was comfortable running around with those swinging in the icy wind, but thought better of it. While they were rescuing another unappreciative Barbarian, a fiery ball came roaring in from the sky, bursting a few feet away. The explosion scattered small, glittering objects on the ground, which exploded when you stepped near them. Soon, they found the source of these missiles: huge, immobile devices, with a single long arm for hurling balls of fiery traps, icy liquid, or poisonous gas. Each had a face, which grimaced in fear at their approach. Catapults were bizarre looking things, but their range was awesome, perfect for dealing death over the walls of a city. If not for the dome of energy Xanthippe could see shimmering beautifully over Harrogath, there wouldn't be a Harrogath anymore. Fortunately, though their range was great, they couldn't hit anything closer than about 20 yards. With one eye on the sky, a single person could easily walk up to the catapult and smash it to bits. The demons fought hard, but the trek upslope was mostly uneventful. There were some fortifications, obviously put in place long ago to protect the city. The catapults were set on high platforms, which the Barbarians might have planned to use as defensible mini-forts. But there were very few Barbarians on the field now, and they all fought alone, surrounded by hordes of demons. Xanthippe remembered a passage she'd read, by a Khanduran general who'd invaded the highlands once. In his opinion, the Barbarians were superior fighters, each one easily better than one of his soldiers. But when placed in a large group, greater numbers seemed to make the Barbarians grow weaker, not stronger. In a way, it was kind of sad, repeatedly coming to their rescue; she'd always heard Barbarians were a proud, powerful people, not people who needed rescuing. If they'd just cooperate with each other, they'd do so much better, but they wouldn't even work with her. At a narrow point on the ledge, Xanthippe and Kasim were going along with three Barbarians behind them. As little as they seemed to care, she'd perversely started collecting them, and in the narrows they all bunched up together. Maybe here they'd have to work together, at least so they wouldn't knock each other off the cliff. Two more Barbarians were up ahead, battling hordes of earth demons; Xanthippe saved one. With their four new chums, she and Kasim found a group of Imps. That was a surprise; Imps are tiny demons who used to come to mages as familiars, in the old days when mages were less leery of demons. Small, bubble-headed humanoids with weak bodies and powerful magical natures, they were not the sort of demon Xanthippe expected to see running loose on Mt. Arreat. Being weak of body, it didn't take much to kill the little bastards, except that they kept teleporting around. Xanthippe had found it so much more convenient when she was the only one who could do that. The Imp's magical attack might have hurt some wussy magician, but the only problem they had was chasing them down. After the trail widened out again, they came to a high platform. A huge crowd of demons surrounded one huge, fat thing, which was waving a whip and squealing orders in a harsh, guttural voice. That had to be Shenk the Overseer. Xanthippe and Kasim set to work thinning the ranks around him. It's always easier to take out the little guys first, so you can concentrate on the big ones without interference. Even her surviving Barbarian buddy seemed to be taking note of their tactics. There were more catapults to the sides, and lots of earth demons and naked slave guys; her thunderstorm bolts were doing a lot of good work on these crowds. While smashing the last catapult, Xanthippe heard a wet sort of explosion behind her. Kasim, who was starting to get bored, had gone up and hacked Shenk to bits while she wasn't looking. "Hey, you shouldn't have done that," Xanthippe said. "He might have been dangerous." "Nah, no problem," Kasim shrugged. "Well... he was so fat, it was hard to reach his vitals." "Yeeeeuch. His skin all fell off." "Yeah, slid right off his bones. He smells even worse now." "That is eighteen different flavors of disgusting. Any good stuff up there?" "Couple of bucklers... a set of padded armor... crap." "Damn." Then they noticed the surviving Barbarian, staring at them as he stood there. His mouth hung open so wide, you could probably have stuffed a Flayer in. "Yoo..." he said, looking from the dead Shenk, to Kasim, to Xanthippe, and back to Shenk again. "What is it?" Xanthippe asked. "Yoo... yoo slew Shenk the Overseer!" "Yeah." Kasim shrugged. "So?" "Diablo was a lot tougher," Xanthippe informed the Barbarian. "Okay, that looks like all the demons. Qual-kehk will be pleased to know his siege has been lifted." This took a few minutes to sink in. While the knowledge penetrated the thick muscles the Barbarian used to insulate his brain from the cold, Xanthippe and Kasim picked through the loot of the battle. Hey, the padded armor was Greyform, a piece out of legend. Not that it was all that wonderful, just an interesting antique. Behind Shenk's platform, they found a large open area, with stairs carved out of the living rock of the mountain, leading up. No more demons were back there, but they did find a crowd of rabbits. Not the long-legged, fast-moving hares of the deserts, these rabbits were small, with compact bodies, relatively small ears, and the thickest, fluffiest pure white coats Xanthippe had ever seen. "Aw... look, Kasim! Look how cute!" Kasim raised an eyebrow, and nodded vaguely. "Uh... yeah, sure." "Oh, they're adorable!" Xanthippe dropped to her knees and tried to catch one. "Look at those huge white paws, and the big brown eyes!" "Uh... yeah, sure." Kasim was starting to feel uncomfortable. Bounding here and there, the bunnies were hard to catch, but Xanthippe kept crawling after them, trying. "They're so fluffy! They look so soft. Hi, little guys! Don't you worry, all those nasty demons are gone far, far away!" Now sure his blood sugar was spiking, Kasim mumbled, "Hey, you're gonna wear out the knees on your armor like that..." "Don't worry, they're steel boots. Oh, look! That one's sitting up to look at me! His nose is wiggling! Oh wow, that's so cute!" The Barbarian, now recovered from his shock, watched Xanthippe crawl around with thinly disguised contempt. "Why did yoo bring a woman into combat, fool? Though yoo be a great warrior, even I know little girls have no business in war!" After a moment's consideration, Kasim decided to be charitable, and not smack this bastard around for calling him a fool. "I didn't bring her into combat. She brought me in. She's the one who killed Diablo." The Barbarians jaw dropped again. "No... yoo've got to be jokin'..." "Sure," Kasim smirked. "She ordered me not to go after Shenk 'cause he might hurt me. Wouldn't have been any danger at all for her." At the moment, Xanthippe was skidding on a patch of ice, her butt in the air, trying to get a bunny to come to her. "Hey, fuzzy-wuzzies! Do you like carrots?" "Yoo've GOT to be jokin'... I don't believe it! Yoo CAN'T be serious!" "I'm serious, man." Kasim shrugged. "Never seen her act like this, though." "Did she take a blow to the head, yoo think?" "Probably not. She acts weird sometimes." There was a convenient waypoint at the top of the steps. Back in Harrogath, Qual-kehk had noticed many more of his warriors coming home from battle this time. Some returned with tales of thunder and lightning rattling the mountain, of fierce, exotic warriors dealing death with graceful sweeps of their huge weapons, and the fiery glow of enchanted steel slicing demon flesh. Barbarians do love to tell epic tales. So, when Xanthippe returned to town, Qual-kehk greeted her very differently than he had on their first meeting. "So, it seems the siege is lifted, and in a very short time. Perhaps I have misjudged yoo." "I guess you did," Xanthippe smiled. It was always a pleasure to watch someone swallowing their pride, and the harder it is to swallow, the better. "Do you have a smith in town? My armor's been scratched." "Yoo'll want to speak with Larzuk, near the south wall. Don't speak too long with him; he's not right in the head. But he's a fine smith." "Not right in the head?" "He gets... strange ideas." The warmth of the smithy was welcome; Xanthippe knew she'd find herself spending a lot of time there. Larzuk was an absolutely huge man, even by the standards of Barbarians. And not just in terms of width, either; he had to be close to seven feet tall! Kasim looked puny next to him. Xanthippe wasn't sure she should even go near him, for fear he'd step on her. If he was... mentally challenged... he might be a real danger. While polishing and repairing their equipment, Larzuk spoke quite amiably with them, and seemed curious about the outside world. He certainly didn't sound mad; perhaps by lacking the typical Barbarian insularity, his fellows thought him mad. Eventually, Xanthippe warmed up to him, and asked him about the demonic invasion.
"Och, it's terrible to see what's been happening," Larzuk said. "We're protected by the shield of the elders, but the danger didn't come from swords. I thought that, soon, I'd have to put down my hammer and take up a sword myself, and abandon our city. Or die trying."
"You let yourselves get boxed in," Xanthippe said. "That's not good."
"I thought of somethin' we might do... ah, but it's foolishness."
"No, what was it?"
"Well..." Larzuk paused to think. "Suppose yoo were to take some of the alchemical powders used to make explosive potions. Instead of dissolving and bottling them, place them in a strong iron tube, so the force of the explosion could be directed."
Xanthippe thought about that. "Yeah... you could aim it. Go on."
"Now, if the tube were to have a great steel ball in it, the explosion would force it out and down the tube with great velocity. I think it would have to be a ball, but maybe a collection of sharp blades or bits of iron would do as well. They might spread out, propelled by the explosion, and injure or kill many foes."
"Huh." Pondering, Xanthippe nodded. "That makes sense."
Larzuk laughed. "Qual-kehk didn't think so. And when yoo give it some thought, it isn't very practical. Where could yoo get so much iron? And forge it strong enough not to burst with the explosion?"
"Well, it wouldn't have to be big... if the powders are powerful enough, you wouldn't need a really big tube to hold them. Maybe one or two guys could carry the thing around."
"Och, to break the siege, yoo'd need to destroy many demons. The thing would need to be big enough to destroy one o' the catapults, or smash through a wall. The demons took over the fortifications we built. We're going to have to smash our own walls to defeat them."
"Hmm... yeah, something that big, made of iron, would be really heavy. It would have to be set on a cart, and hauling it up this mountain would be hard."
With a sigh, Larzuk nodded. "Aye. Qual-kehk was wise enough to see that. I'm no war leader, just a smith. But I do want to help."
"That's a good thing," Xanthippe smiled. "And you know something? I think you have a good idea there. Maybe it's just ahead of its time. With a little work and some experimenting, you might have something."
Larzuk smiled. "Yoo think so?"
"Sure." Xanthippe smiled. "Where would we be, if it weren't for new ideas? Somebody has to think them up. Maybe it won't help in this battle, but there will be other battles."
Thoughtfully, Larzuk nodded. "Before Baal came, men might have hoped there would be no more wars. Now, yoo can only hope this isn't the last one."
Chapter 28With the siege broken, Xanthippe decided to have a look around town. When she and Kasim first arrived, the jeers made her want to leave almost immediately. If the Barbarians had been more numerous and less injured, there would probably have been more than jeering. Not that these great sides of beef seemed like a real threat, not after she'd seen them in action on the battlefield. But her experiences in school had taught her never to take on a group of teasing children alone. Thankfully, now she didn't have to. Doing what they could not, and doing it easily, seemed to have shut them up. Harrogath wasn't any bigger from the inside than the outside; the tour took her exactly 10 minutes. Most of the city was empty, as many of Qual-kehk's warriors had gone out to find food and other supplies; Baal's legions weren't going to leave them alone forever. Strangely, she couldn't find any women besides Malah. Surely, there had to be women in any city, but where were they? Impulsively, she knocked on one door. The door cracked open, a feminine pair of eyes peered out, and the door quickly slammed shut. There was someone in there, but she was afraid; of what? "Hey, the siege is over! You can come out now!" No one responded to Xanthippe's call. That woman couldn't have been afraid of her; she must have been close to a foot taller than she was. All the other houses, up and down the street, had their windows shut and barred. When she was with the Zann Esu, they had spoken of old cultures, where women weren't allowed out of their homes. They were kept inside, barefoot and pregnant, completely dependent on their husbands. Maybe, up here on the mountain, those old cultural ways had persisted. On the other hand, the Zann Esu might have been exaggerating. They've been known to do that. There was one woman standing outside, but when Xanthippe got closer, she realized that she was a he. His long hair (all white) and scrawny build sure made him look like a woman among these hulking brutes. He was hunched over a fire, rubbing his hands against the cold. Maybe he was another foreigner, though Xanthippe doubted it; not only did he look too weak to defend himself, his skin was even paler than most up here. "Hi there. Don't think we've met. I'm Xanthippe." Slowly, the man looked up. He had a needle-thin nose, sunken cheeks, and pale, watery blue eyes. With a sneer, he said, "Well, well. A sorceress, and with a fine large axe, too. The siege has brought a shortage of everything, except fools." Hmm, gratuitous use of the four-letter F-word. No, the other four-letter F-word. That was becoming a warning sign for Xanthippe. "Charmed. The siege has been lifted for now, so I thought I'd have a look around your fine, prosperous city and see what you guys have to offer for the winter tourist." "You needn't have bothered. Lifting the siege will do no good, the demons will simply return again. Qual-kehk is a fool to imagine he can fight Baal. He goes to war against these legions as he would attack men; he has no conception of how his enemy thinks." Again with the F-word. Warning flags were going up all over. While he was right about Qual-kehk, even Xanthippe wasn't tactless enough to call him a fool. "Hey, how many people have real experience with demons?" Suddenly, the man stared sharply at Xanthippe. The intensity of the look was surprising; she took a step back. "What would you know about that?" he snapped. Xanthippe realized she must have hit a nerve. Casually looking towards Harrogath's one gate, she said, "Oh, I'm just the one who broke the siege. Chopped up a lot of demons doing it. Kind of an occupational hazard." "Your philosophy mirrors his, then." The man, who still hadn't introduced himself, smiled. "Tell me this: what good does it do to slay a thing for which death holds no fear? A demon is never truly alive; the loss of its body is a minor inconvenience at best. So few understand how thin the veil between life and death is, and how unimportant it is for the knowledgeable." This was something Xanthippe had long suspected. While demons were devoted to bringing death to others, most didn't seem to care if they died themselves. The more cowardly ones avoided pain, but that was all. But pretending she was awestruck by this creepy guy might get more out of him. "Um... I never thought of that." "Of course not," he sneered. "You must be barely out of your most basic schooling. And never, ever learned about the nature of life and death. No, I am sure your training was all about the basic elements. You have no idea of how they combine in the body, or the spirits which move the elements about at their whim. What good is studying building blocks? The will which moves them is what shapes the world." Xanthippe nodded silently, eyes wide. "But you can destroy the body by taking the elements apart; that does some good." This brought a snickering laugh from the man. "Using energy to destroy a body is a common and simple trick. And useless in the long term. Qual-kehk, the other elders... none of them could see the long term needs of our city." "Hey, you must be Nihlathak!" Xanthippe grinned. "You should be a little freer with your name. Malah told me about you, but I thought you'd be more impressive-looking." "Hmm?" Nihlathak glared at Xanthippe. "What about Malah?" "She told me, Mr. Barbarian Elder, that every other elder in town is dead. They died putting up the dome of protection over the city. And it's a nice one, too. But you survived." Coldly, Nihlathak smiled. He did have kind of an aura to him; he was creepier than Gheed. "I was there when the shield was put up. It was so terrifying when Baal's legions appeared so suddenly, and slew all save myself." Xanthippe nodded. "By what miracle did you survive?" "By my speed of movement," Nihlathak smirked. "Rather than remain to fight a battle that was lost before it began, I fled, and am not ashamed to say so." "How un-barbaric," Xanthippe smirked back. "One last question: where are all the women?" Nihlathak raised an eyebrow. "So good to know my interrogation is at an end. Our wives and daughters are indoors, and will remain there. There are foreigners in the city. It would not do for them to be seen with foreigners walking about." That was peculiar. The Barbarian tribes are supposed to be insular, but locking all the women up was crazy. Why would women be in more danger than men from foreigners? Maybe Malah would have some explanation for it; Xanthippe wasn't about to ask Qual-kehk. She spoke to Malah outside her hospital. "Oh, you should not worry yourself about our women," Malah said. "Your presence has made us all very nervous. Ages ago, when our Gods walked the earth, the greatest king was given the most sacred charge, the protection of Mt. Arreat." "Which king was that?" Xanthippe asked. Malah smiled. "It would not be proper for me to speak his name. Since then, none who are not of our king's blood have ever been allowed to see the sacred mountain. Certainly, none were allowed to enter Harrogath. Your appearance here must mean that the end times are upon us. You see, it is not really you." "The... end times?" "The time of the last battle, when the forces of chaos attack the mountain. This will be our greatest trial, and our people have been preparing for these times for centuries. Perhaps you can understand our apprehension." "Okay, with demons outside, I can understand being a little scared. But why are the women locking themselves in? Especially now?" "Our warriors are trained from childhood for this." Then Malah frowned a bit. "And suggesting that they are afraid will not endear you to my people." Xanthippe guffawed. "Some training. They've been dying like chunky meat snacks out there. Don't you think it might be time for your women to be taking a little more active role in this war?" There was a profound silence. A wounded Barbarian by the door looked quite angry. Malah said, very seriously, "Our ways have not changed since they were handed down to us by the Gods. This is a sacred charge. Change should not be suggested on a whim." "This is not a whim," Xanthippe said. "This is just plain sense. The men here obviously need help, and a lot of it. I mean, I'M doing better than they are. ME." Malah stared hard at Xanthippe, before her eyelids fluttered and she looked down. "We... are a proud people, and it is hard for any of us to request aid. Yoor presence is not appreciated by everyone here, even after breaking the siege." Xanthippe smirked. "Maybe *especially* after breaking the siege. Come on! What's wrong with women helping? Or maybe even more than helping? There's work to do here!" "We are helping, young sorceress!" Malah objected. "As much as we can, in our own ways." "Ok..." Xanthippe shrugged, "what are you all doing?" "I have been giving aid and succor to the wounded. The others are preparing bandages, and helping use our food supplies most efficiently. Also, keeping our supply of firewood." Xanthippe frowned. "They're cooking, and cleaning." "It is the old way," Malah said defiantly. "The men do the men's work, the women do the women's work. Thus is our life maintained, as it has always been." "Well, the old way has led to a mass slaughter," Xanthippe thumped the ground with the butt of her poleaxe. "Maybe the old way isn't such a good way." As they stared at each other, Xanthippe noticed Malah's grip on her cane was so tight, the knuckles had gone white. The gentle old woman's eyes were hard as flint; Xanthippe had obviously managed to deeply offend her. "Yoo should not cast judgment on things yoo do not understand. What would a foreigner know of our ways?" "Look... okay, I'm a foreigner, but I'm just saying what I see with my own eyes..." "Then yoor vision needs an adjustment. If I were 20 years younger, I'd adjust you myself! Get out of my home!" Xanthippe got. Damn, she didn't want to offend Malah. Malah had been so nice to her. But somehow, she had to see that what they were doing was wrong! The whole way this war was being run was wrong, and it came from this society the Barbarians had put together. Larzuk, Qual-kehk, Malah, all of them were part of this ultra-conservative, unchanging culture that just didn't work against the demons. The only one who saw any of that was Nihlathak, and he gave Xanthippe the creeps. And maybe Larzuk. He had some new ideas; obviously, he didn't have muscle between his ears. But he deferred to Qual-kehk. "Ahem," someone said behind Xanthippe. It was Qual-kehk. "Oh, hi there," she said. "The siege has been lifted, and I have sent some of my men down to the lowlands, to trade for things we need," Qual-kehk explained. "Very wise," Xanthippe said. "What do you want to say to me?" Emotionlessly, Qual-kehk said, "Thank yoo." Xanthippe jumped visibly. Blinking, she stammered, "Oh. Uh, ok. I mean, thank you. No, I mean, you're welcome." Faintly, Qual-kehk nodded. "My mind has turned to my men who were captured while trying to break the siege. The survivors who returned spoke of cages, built in our old fortifications, where prisoners are kept before being killed and devoured by the demons." "Prisoners in cages, and cannibalism. Ok." "If yoo could aid us further, freeing my men would be very helpful of yoo." "Uh, sure, no problem." Xanthippe smiled nervously. "I'll see what I can do." Xanthippe and Kasim moved further up the mountain, and found some fortified barriers across the path. The place was lousy with Imps; they were everywhere. Baal must be in dire need if he was pressing these little bastards into service; all they could really do was harass. As they chased the Imps, they found other demons, huge armored ones with little howdas on their backs. The howdas were equipped with mounted flame jet wands, which might have been dangerous for those without good fire resistance. The Barbarian forts, built of wicker and bone, had towers equipped with flame jets too. That was odd, Xanthippe thought the Barbs frowned on magic or complex devices. The demons probably installed the flamers. The fortresses had a some armaments lying around. Xanthippe found a few nice runes, including a Shael and a Dol, which she had not seen before. One Imp had Cathan's Seal, a fairly nice ring, and a naked slave creature had a rare halberd. It was a nice one, too, with extra damage, extra speed, and mana leeching. Her poleaxe did a bit more damage, but she switched to the halberd for its quickness and the leeching. Among the slaves, they found a cage with five Barbarians inside. After a lot of charging around smashing things, Xanthippe chopped down the door. "Follow me if you wish to live." Maybe she shouldn't have said that, but the look on their faces was priceless. In short order, Xanthippe freed two more cages of captives. Qual-kehk felt it was quite an accomplishment, and gave her three runes he hadn't gotten around to using: Ral, Ort, and Tal. These were the same ones she had in her shield, which was almost unused; maybe the Mule would appreciate them. The Shael and Dol had disappeared already. Nihlathak sneered that all she'd really done was bring sheep back to a blind and foolish shepherd. Xanthippe was really starting to dislike him.
Chapter 29Slowly, Xanthippe and Kasim toiled up the steep side of Mount Arreat. Even the relatively flat areas had a strong slope, and they always seemed to be going uphill. The fortifications were 7 or 8 feet higher on the back than the front, which sure helped the demons defending them. Even the Rogue's Pass was never this much of a struggle to move through, and the cold kept getting worse. Back when Xanthippe's stomach had started to bother her, Cain said it was probably altitude sickness, a consequence of exerting yourself too much in thin air. She was starting to believe it. Long fights left her gasping and light-headed, and feeling like she was going to throw up. When they came to what looked like a portal to Hell near the top of a hill, going through was actually a relief. Ah... it was warm down in the depths. The air was thick, too; thick with the stench of sulfur and the screams of the damned. Xanthippe was amazed she'd ever thought Hell might be a nice place, but at least it wasn't freezing cold. This looked like another section of the River of Flame, though there was no Chaos Sanctuary, just more Imps (Xanthippe knew she was going to get really tired of Imps before they'd stopped Baal) and huge, axe-swinging Minotaurs. The fiery paths of stone over the river made a passable maze for the Minotaurs, maybe that's why they were here. Either that, or they didn't like cold any more than she did. After clearing out everything demonic, they found a chest with, among other things, a very fine-quality rare jewel. While walking back to the portal, Xanthippe asked, "Kasim?" "Yeah?" "Can I ask you about something?" Oh no, Kasim thought, that question. She wants to talk. The last time she wanted to "ask about something" was still giving him nightmares. But once a woman has asked, there's no avoiding what's to come. You can distract them, and hope they forget, but they never do for long. The only way is to deal with it and get it over with. Hopefully, his many years of experience with the fairer sex would help negotiate this minefield, to the end this time. "Sure." "Um... you remember that story, about the dogs when you were growing up?" "Yeah." "I'm the little dog, aren't I?' Ok, she'd finally figured it out. That's a good thing. At this point, it is very important not to blurt out "Bravo, genius! Sure took you long enough!" no matter how much she deserves it. It can take a long time for sense to get through into the female brain. You see, a woman's brain is always full of useless crap about clothes, good hygiene, or what every other woman in creation thinks of her. It can take a long time for important stuff to penetrate. So, you have to be really patient, until she gets it, if she ever does. "Eh..." With a shrug, Kasim looked away. "Come on, you can say it. Like the little dog that won't shut her trap, and everyone hates her because she's obnoxious." "You worried about Malah?" "Yeah, I'm worried about Malah! She was so nice to me when I arrived. Now I've completely alienated her, and did it damn quick, too." Kasim shrugged. "She'll get over it." "I don't know. Barbarians supposedly carry grudges." Kasim shrugged. "Maybe if you rescue some more Barbs, she'll be ok with it." "Doesn't change the fact that I can't keep my mouth shut. And these people are sensitive. Damn, they're proud. I never thought Qual-kehk would ever say 'thank you' for anything." "Ok... so, maybe they're not acting, you know, like you think they will." "They're damn strange people." It occurred to Kasim that Xanthippe was probably judging the Barbarians's behavior based on their reputation -- a stereotype. This is a pretty stupid thing to do; not only does it reflect a lack of worldly wisdom, it can really alienate people. But telling a woman she's being stupid is a real problem, especially one who thinks she's smart. With a guy, you can say "Man, you're being stupid," but with a woman, you have to be a lot more gentle, or she'll blow up and think it's your fault she's being stupid. Remember: with a woman, everything is your fault, unless she decides on her own it's hers. "Yeah... I guess maybe they're not acting like everyone says they do." Xanthippe thought about that as they went through the portal, back to Mt. Arreat. "Maybe they're not. I mean, look at them in action. That sure doesn't fit their reputation, they're supposed to be these awesome warriors." As they went through some thickets, a powerful earth demon and several armored maulers attacked them. While chopping them up, Kasim took a few moments to think. He didn't remember dying, or being dead. You'd think that being dead and in Hell would make more of an impression on a guy. But he'd decided that maybe religion, being good, and all that stuff might be a good idea. Being a priest would be good, if he could swing it. He had helped take out the world's biggest church; they probably don't let you become a priest if you do stuff like that. But if he was going to get religious, he'd have to start acting like it. Kasim hadn't been in church since sunday school. The Barbs don't have any religious books up here, so he'd have to go from what he could remember. Never been much of a reader, anyway. All of his faint, dim memories of sunday school were stupid songs, Yasheef waiting outside the building to beat him up and take his lunch money, and some rules. One of the rules was "Love thy neighbor as thyself." There were others, but that one always got the most laughs, so he remembered it. Anyway, you're supposed to love your neighbor, in a not-sex kind of way. If Kasim was ever going to be a priest, he'd have to get people to love their neighbors, and the boss would be a good place to start. The thickets had opened out onto a broad plain, full of naked slave creatures and big fat Overseers. Watching Xanthippe summon lightning and hack through with her halberd, Kasim wondered if he wasn't biting off more than he could chew. Getting her to love anybody would be a tall order. He also wished the church had picked some word other than "love"; it made it sound like he was trying to pimp her or something. Maybe "like" or "get along with" or "don't sleep with the sister of" would have been better. Wonder if the boss has a sister? And if she's any nicer than she is? Maybe he'd shouldn't ask right now. "Hey, boss. Can I ask you something?" Frowning, Xanthippe nodded. "Uh... sure. What is it?" "Do you think you should tell Malah you're sorry, next time we're back in town?" "I remember what happened the last time I tried to apologize to somebody." Rolling his eyes, Kasim said, "She's not going to teleport you out of your clothes." Xanthippe laughed. "Better not, I'd freeze to death." Kasim smiled. "Hey, you made a joke about it." "Yeah, I guess..." Xanthippe laughed. "I guess it was a pretty good joke. But don't you try it." Kasim shook his head. "Nah. You'd get back at me, and it's too damn cold. Anyway... what got Malah so mad at you, anyway?" The conversation paused for a few minutes while they destroyed a fortress line. When they resumed it, Xanthippe said, "I guess I was saying she and the other women here should do more. Stop hiding in the houses, and do something." "Ok. You know why Malah got upset about that?" "I was saying they're lazy, or scared, or whipped, and she got upset." They were entering all-new conversational territory here, so Kasim had to remember to tread lightly. He'd have to get her to question her own judgment, and that's a dangerous thing to do. She'd probably wind up saying it was all his fault. Damn, sticking your neck out like this is hazardous. He'd rather take on those Minotaur guys. But this had to be done, for her good, and maybe for his. If all those guys in Harrogath went after them 'cause Malah hated them, it could get ugly fast. "You know, a while ago, you'd been telling me about your Zen Eesu clan witches." "The Zann Esu. What about 'em?" "You know how you were saying that they went into the jungle to get away from men?" "Yeah. It's called radical separatism." "Yeah, ok. You don't think it's such a good thing?" "In what way?" Xanthippe asked. "Well, they went to get away from men being stupid, and bullies, and that stuff?" "Yeah, and they turned into stupid bullies when they got to be in charge too." Kasim nodded, trying to straighten out his thoughts as he spoke. "Yeah, so... what about all the women who stayed outside, with men?" "Well..." Xanthippe thought. "If they were anything like my grandmother, they could be as greedy and stubborn as the Zann Esu thought men were. What are you saying?" "Hmm..." After thinking for a minute, Kasim said, "I guess what I'm saying is, that maybe Malah isn't, like, completely wrong. You know what I'm saying?" Xanthippe stared at Kasim, eyes narrowing. "Malah said that women have to stay in their place, barefoot in the kitchen, and leave all the real work to men. That is just plain wrong." "That's not what she said." "Not in so many words. It might as well be." This was getting bad. Kasim tried a different tactic. "Maybe their way works. I mean, they've survived on this damn mountain for centuries this way." "This isn't about what works, Kasim," Xanthippe snarled. "This is about what's right. Women should be free to do what they like, and no one should tell them differently." "What about working together?" "What ABOUT working together? Look, you work for me, that doesn't mean you can tell me what to do, dammit!" "Ok, yeah! Here's an example! We're working together, right?" At the moment, they were going through a second tier of forts. "Yeah, and?" "Well, I think you'll agree, I'm better at this than you are." There was a long silence. Finally, Xanthippe snapped, "All right, yeah. But I can do it!" "Right! Now, suppose you were in a, like, really dangerous area, where everybody had to help. Wouldn't it be better if everyone did what they were good at?" "Yeah, but when the danger passes..." "No! The danger never passes!" Kasim kicked over a watch tower, sending a squealing Imp crashing to the frozen ground. "Suppose there's always a danger, and even when there isn't, it's hard to even find enough food for everybody. What then?" "Then, you..." Xanthippe thought about it while smashing a catapult. "You live a marginal life, in a marginal territory, there's no time or resources to waste. You'd have to live very efficiently, and there'd be no time for... for anyone deciding to do what they want to do." "Yeah, that's it! You know what? I think the Zann Esu could only have gotten mad at men if they were from civilization. These women don't have enough time to get mad." After chopping down one last Imp, Xanthippe paused for thought. "Oh, yeah... I think you're right. Kind of incoherent, but right." Kasim smiled, in what he hoped was a wise and worldly way. "What do you think?" "Most everyone from the Zann Esu came from one of the civilized nations." "Yeah?" "Malah said she wanted to... but you know, I'll bet it isn't that her talents didn't develop. I'll bet her family needed her here." "Yeah?" "This is a land with no luxuries. The time to think about revolting against the status quo is a luxury. When life is lived on the margins, you don't have time for that. You need to survive." Continuing on from the ruined forts, they ran into a crowd of champion Overseers. Must have been a conference of Baal's greatest generals. As they fought for their lives, Xanthippe continued. "I'm betting Malah has traveled outside the highlands, but that doesn't mean she'd be impressed by the way 'foreigners' do things. She'd be sure they wouldn't work up here, where life is so hard. And there's a real reluctance to make changes when you're already on the edge; what if the change doesn't work? Children will starve if you're wrong!" "Ok, sounds good," Kasim grunted, as a slave exploded in his face. While burying her halberd in a fanatical Overseer, Xanthippe kept rattling on. "You know, in countries where revolutions take place, it's always the middle class who leads the revolt? The poor form mobs, not revolutions. To want something better, you have to have an idea that there *is* something better!" "Ok, sounds good," Kasim shouted, charging the last Overseer. "These women just don't know there's anything better! But there is!" Triumphantly, she slammed her halberd right through a slave creature. "There is a much better way to live than the way they're living! When I get back to town, I'm going to apologize to Malah for being such a jerk." "Great!" Kasim said, looking around for more things to kill. "And then, I'm going to talk to the women in town. You shouldn't come with me, it's probably you they're afraid of." "Huh?" "Now, setting up a matriarchal government would be stupid. Woman can tyrannize just as much as men. But we do need to change the way things are done around here, and get started on it as soon as possible." Kasim stared at her. "What are you talking about?" "About building a better way!" Xanthippe grinned. "The old way isn't working. But you've shown me where I went wrong, all I was doing was pointing that out. To make real changes, you've got to have a new way, something to replace the old way! And the new way can't be that radical a change from their customary practices, or they'll never accept it. Change will come slowly, but they'll figure it out in time. Now, what can we change? Hmm, I wonder if women have the right to own land? Speaking in the assembly should sound reasonable, especially if most of the men who might object are dead. Maybe it's a little too early for any kind of democratic system..." As she went on, Kasim stared, wondering where he'd gone wrong. He just wanted her to get along with Malah... oh, no. He hung his head in shame and disgrace. No, no. What have I done? What hideous thing have I wrought?
Chapter 30"Malah?" Xanthippe was about 10 feet away from the door of Malah's hospice. Malah, apparently out for a bit of air, did not acknowledge her presence. "I want to apologize for what I said earlier. I was wrong. I didn't understand why you were doing what you were doing." Malah smiled. "Of course, child. Come in, it is cold outside at night. Someone accustomed to warmer climates must be suffering greatly here." After entering, Xanthippe and Kasim sat down on one of the empty bunks. The siege had not yet resumed, so there were fewer casualties lying about. Qual-kehk's warriors were making their way further up the mountain; Xanthippe had seen one or two as she drove upwards. More than likely, Baal would never raise the siege again. Destroying Harrogath was no longer on his list of priorities; he had some greater goal in mind. "Thank you, Malah. Actually, the air is the bad thing. It gets thinner and colder the higher I go." "There is little to be done about that, I am afraid. But you do not seem too inconvenienced by it. It has certainly raised a healthy flush in your cheeks, young girl!" Malah chuckled. Burst capillaries can do that, Xanthippe thought. "I think it was just me, making snap judgments. I've always tried to do everything myself, my own way." Malah nodded. "Your way is certainly unlike most of your kind." "I don't even like to be packed in with 'my kind'. But, as much as I hate to admit it, I need help. No one could do this alone." "And that is why we all must work together, each in their own best role. This is no time for anyone to decide they do not feel like cooperating." Malah was busy over a pot of brewing herbs, the preparatory work for a poultice. "Skills are useless if not given a direction and purpose for the greater good." Kasim cleared his throat. "I'd always heard that Barbarians are supposed to be really into self-reliance and independence, and all that stuff." "Look at your fingers, young man." Kasim did so; they were a bit blue at the tips. "Now, each of those fingers is different from the others. But when all are threatened by some danger, all work together to save themselves. Thus do we come together in time of crisis." Both Kasim and Xanthippe thought that a person's fingers make a poor argument for the nature of independent existence. While Kasim was silent, Xanthippe said, "Well... um, ok. Maybe you will help dispel my ignorance: why are all the Barbarian women hiding indoors?" Sharply, Malah looked at Xanthippe. Then her eyes softened. "Perhaps 'hiding' is not the word to use. It would not be proper for our women to be seen by foreigners, especially a foreign man like your hireling." Xanthippe thought for a minute. "What, you think he'll go for one, or something?" "Foreigners have invaded our lands many times," Malah said. "Always, they try to kidnap Barbarian women. Their beauty must drive them mad." One of the Barbarians, who they all thought was asleep, spoke up. "Och! 'Tis true. The most beautiful flowers of the world, they are! When spring comes, and they dance in the fields and swim naked in the icy brooks, ah, t'would drive any man mad. Those outsiders who catch sight of them must be stricken dumb by the sight! They have only known the puny little sticks of women who scraggle up in foreign lands; who can blame 'em?" Actually, Xanthippe and Kasim had seen Barbarian women here and there; dead ones, at least. Judging from the mortal remains, they were tall, rawboned, heavy-set, sturdy women with unruly tangles of dull black hair. Some had traces of beards and moustaches. They almost certainly looked better when they were alive, but Xanthippe had Kasim's solemn word that she looked way better than any of them. He thought they looked like horses. Since Kasim hadn't dragged her off yet, she was pretty sure she could count on him to keep his urges under control with the Barbarians. "Eh..." the Barbarian glanced at Xanthippe. "Not to mean yoo, o' course." "Thank you." Xanthippe smiled sweetly. "A pity I'm so delicate, suffering away up here. Actually, my feet have been bothering me." "Have you kept your feet wrapped well?" Malah asked. "In those steel boots of yours, frost on the toes might be a danger." Xanthippe and Kasim both checked their feet. In patches, especially on the toes, the flesh had gone pale and rough, and the skin brushed off when rubbed. Malah gave them both foot baths in warm water; their feet tingled and stung as the feeling returned. The Barbarian stared openly at Xanthippe's feet. "Yoo're that color all over?" Xanthippe raised an eyebrow. "I'm not going to show you any of the rest." "But the bottoms o' yoor feet are white!" Xanthippe rolled her eyes. "Yeah. The burning sands of the desert make them that color." The Barbarian nodded sagely. "Yoo'd have thought they'd be burnt even darker!" "Now that the subject of women has come up..." Malah poured more warm water. "There is something I have been hesitant to speak of." Xanthippe wiggled her toes in the warm water, which had herbs in it too. Like bathing her feet in tea. "Is there a problem?" "Before you arrived, Anya, the daughter of our chief elder, disappeared. I'll grant you, many went missing then, or worse, we know what happened to them. But Anya was not someone to be easily taken from this life." "No, she wasn't!" the Barbarian proclaimed. "Och, a thing of beauty she was! And the wise daughter of our wisest elder, too! All men for leagues around vied for her hand." Malah continued. "The night when she was last seen, she was arguing fiercely with Nihlathak. I suspect that he had something to do with it." "Hmmm," said Xanthippe. "She was old enough, not married, and the chief's daughter? Could he have her squirreled away somewhere for a leadership coup?" "Why?" the Barbarian asked. "He's the last remaining elder. What more could he want?" "Nihlathak had a wife," Malah said, "and our people are forbidden to remarry. But I am sure he has done something with her, though I have no idea why he would do so. If I can prevail upon you, I implore you to search for her." Kasim smirked. "So, the chief's beautiful daughter's gone missing, huh?" "Kasim, you've been reading too many dirty novels," Xanthippe chided him. "The chief always has a beautiful, nubile daughter in those things. Anya's probably 8 feet tall with a beard like a rhododendron. And an arm that could choke an ox." "What's wrong with a beard?" the Barbarian snorted. "I like a woman in a beard! Gives me something to hang on to!" Before undertaking a search for one woman among many dead women, Xanthippe decided to talk with Nihlathak. Sure, he was creepy, but if he's being accused of something in a vague sort of way, he should be given a chance to tell his side of the story. Besides, no one else in town had spoken ill of him, at least not to her. Nihlathak was outside his house by the fire, staring up at the mountain. "Hi there. You know, Malah's been saying some not-nice things about you." Nihlathak took a bit of dried meat from above the fire, and slowly shredded it in his teeth. "Malah is an old fool. What has she been saying?" "Well, first, she says you shouldn't eat so much. And, she says you have something to do with some woman named Anya." At the mention of the name, Nihlathak glared hard at Xanthippe. She was expecting it this time, but it was still alarming. "What has she been saying about Anya?" "That she's gone... and you had something to do with it." "Why would I do such a thing?" Nihlathak smiled. "The last time I saw her, she was worried about an uncle and aunt of hers, who live in a hovel on the mountain. With Baal's legions about, she had grown concerned, and felt they needed rescuing. I advised against it; the danger was too great. But... she was a headstrong girl, not one to be ruled by sense." "So she took off, sword in hand, to fight her way in?" "I would imagine so. It would be just like her. But you may rest assured, I have absolutely no knowledge of her current whereabouts, nor have I done a single thing to place her in any sort of danger." Qual-kehk thought Nihlathak was a snake and a rat who'd probably killed all the other elders while they were casting the dome of protection over Harrogath. But he wouldn't act against the last elder of Harrogath without some proof. Xanthippe wondered if any of the outsiders "assaulting" Mt. Arreat had given him such proof. Qual-kehk laughed in her face; the fact that they were there was proof enough of their motives. Even Larzuk was angry about Nihlathak. "I wish I could have built my smoke flyer. Perhaps I might have seen some of what happened, and acted on it." "Smoke flyer?" Xanthippe asked. "Oh, that was just an idea of mine." Larzuk looked embarrassed. "Yoo see there, above my forge, how those banners billow up with the smoke? Watch this." Larzuk reached up, and staked one of the banners over the smoke hole on his forge. The cloth billowed up as the heat rose underneath it. "Yoo see how the cloth catches the smoke, and rises? The first stake I put in tore out, so strong was the upward pull!" "Ok... so what?" "By my reckoning, if the smoke of the fire were caught in 20 sheepskins, it would give enough lift to carry a man aloft. I could float free as a cloud, to spy on Baal's legions, or perhaps drop explosive potions or hot oil. Higher than any arrow could fly, a warrior in such a flying device would usher in a new era of defense!" "Um..." Xanthippe looked dubious. "How would you get smoke in 20 sheepskins, and keep it there? Seems to me it would blow away the minute you got away from the fire." "Perhaps the warrior could carry some fire with him, to provide more smoke." Kasim asked, "Do you think the skins might catch fire?" "Well, that banner hasn't caught fire! Oh, yoo're right. Something like this really couldn't work. 'Tis folly to think on it." "It might work," Xanthippe said, "but using fire is dangerous. Especially around anything flammable. Besides, how much of a fire would you need to make enough smoke to lift you? I mean, you might have to burn down the whole town." Larzuk laughed! "Well, maybe send a woman up, then. Strength would not matter, if you're spying or throwing things down." Xanthippe smiled. "Yeah. That might work. Anyway, I have to go look for Anya." As they went through the waypoint, back to the mountain, Kasim asked, "Do you really want to look for this Anya girl?"
"Sure. If she went out alone, she probably would have been careful. Besides, I don't think she went after her aunt and uncle. Nihlathak's up to something."
"You think so?"
"One thing I've noticed, is that none of these Barbs are good at lying. Nihlathak is the only one who even tries, and he's pretty bad at it. Besides, I want to meet Anya."
"Even if she's 8 feet tall and has a beard?"
"Hey, if I'm going to help these people, it can't be through Malah. She's a sweet old lady, but if things are going to change up here, it will have to be through the young. Women who are still flexible, and can imagine a better way."
"Boss..." Kasim looked worried. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"Of course." Xanthippe grinned. "Having new options is always good."
"No, I mean, what about Baal?"
"Oh, him." Xanthippe shrugged. "We'll get him. But I don't want to just win the war against the demons. Peace will come after, and I want to win that too."
Chapter 31Making their way further up the plateau around Mt. Arreat, Xanthippe and Kasim found more fortresses, more demons, and more bunnies. The bunnies were the worst for Kasim. As soon as she saw then, Xanthippe would coo, hop up and down, and start chasing them, even ignoring the whip lashes of angry Overseers. Of course, when you're sheathed head to toe in enchanted steel, a whip lash can't do much, but occasionally one of the Barbarians saw her like that. It was embarrassing. Kasim had seen her face down Hell's worst minions, scream in an angel's face, mud wrestle Asheara, even take on the Prime Evils. But throw fluffy white bunnies into the mix, and she goes to pieces. The Barbarians who'd made it up this far were few and far between, but their tempers hadn't improved any. They still insisted on charging into battle wearing a kilt and a full helm, even though Larzuk had lots of fine armor for sale. At least they had the kilt; Xanthippe had heard some berzerkers even considered that too much. The look in their eyes was crazy, and they did the stupidest things, but Xanthippe did what she could to keep them alive. Most went for the forts; after clearing one, they'd often stay inside, looking proud of themselves. If they wanted to play "King of the Castle", it would keep them out of trouble, so Xanthippe let them think what they wanted. The only noteworthy incident came when a naked slave, engorged with explosive energy from an Overseer's whip, burst, and a fragment killed one of the bunnies. Xanthippe challenged herself to see how many of his own slaves an Overseer could eat, stuffing them in with the butt of her halberd. The answer was: at least nine, but Kasim begged her to stop at that point so they could continue up the mountain. At the top of the plateau, a cliff blocked further ascent. Light shone out of a small hole in the cliff, and inside was a fire, in a cave with walls of clear ice. Next to the cave was an urn, its base embedded in ice. When Xanthippe opened it, huge spiders crawled out; they creeped around slowly as she squished them. The base of the cliff also supported a small colony of rabbits. Xanthippe just had to chase the bunnies, and with a quick teleport, caught one. The poor thing was terrified, but she held it on her lap and petted it anyway, before letting it go. Then they went into the cave. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of solid ice, but strangely, it felt warmer inside than outside. The flickering fire wasn't hot enough to melt anything, so it must have been very cold indeed. The firelight and the glow of Xanthippe's spells sent light shining and reflecting through the crystalline cave walls. The red if her fire enchantment danced with the blues and greens of the ice, making subtle purples and flashes of orange. It looked like something from a fairy tale, or legends of the heavens. It was almost offensive to see the Minotaurs charging through the place, covered with armor and swinging axes nearly as long as her halberd. The place was too pretty for them. Minotaurs are nasty bastards, fast and absurdly strong, and something new was with them: demonic women. Sharp-featured, long-legged, alabaster-skinned women with colorful bird wings on their shoulders, wearing almost nothing. Shrieking happily, they cast a barrage of spells at Xanthippe and Kasim, before swarming in like crows to a corpse. Xanthippe had to teleport them out of the mess, or the sheer weight of demons might have gotten them. The Minotaurs were as tough as ever, but the winged women were fragile. They raked with their nails and kicked with their spiky boots, but made little impact on their layers of armor and protective magic. As they died, their bodies withered to heaps of dried-out bones, much like the crushed skeletons Xanthippe and Kasim had left behind so many times before. These demons were even less suited to open combat than Imps; their appearance suggested some perverted harem, not the battlefield. Maybe she wasn't as sturdy as some, but Xanthippe wasn't going to be b!tch-slapped to death by some half-naked flying bimbos. "I wonder what all these bimbettes are doing here?" "They sure didn't come dressed for a fight," Kasim opined. "You noticed that, huh? Maybe Baal's putting his personal harem into action." "He must be desperate. Girls shouldn't be in combat." After a second, Kasim noticed that Xanthippe had stopped, and was glaring at him. Aw, man, what did I just say? he thought. "Hey, I didn't mean you. You're ok in a fight." Now Xanthippe looked even more offended. "Only ok?" Wearily, Kasim closed his eyes. "I thought we'd gone over this already." "When did we do that? I don't remember it. All I remember is you making smarmy comments, I ask what you mean, you change the subject." Damn, she's on to me, Kasim thought. "Well.... uh... I was talking about harem girls." "You said, 'girls.' I did not hear the word 'harem' in that sentence." "Sure, I had 'harem' in there somewhere. I'm pretty sure. Maybe I just meant to say it." Xanthippe looked unconvinced. "So: what kind of girls do you think belong in combat?" Kasim thought about that; actually, he was stalling. "I got hired by this assassin once. She was a mean bi -- I mean girl." "Ok, magekillers. Not mages?" "I thought you didn't like being a mage?" "I like being a mage. I don't like mages. They're pretentious, snobbish blowhards who take forever to get to the damned point." "Oh, yeah. And they never admit when they don't know something." "Yeah, that's another thing: never admit you don't know, just keep talking and later pretend you knew the whole time. Oh, and even better, pass the buck to some other mage and try to get them to admit they don't know. Then they can say 'Ooooh! Look at the almighty size of my awesome brain! Wow, I'm so much smarter than you!'" Kasim laughed. "And they say size doesn't matter." Xanthippe snorted, trying to hold in a giggle. "Not for that head, anyway! But a really good one is when... DAMN IT! YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN!" Damn! "Doing what again?" Kasim asked in mock confusion. "Quit changing the subject!" Kasim scratched his head. "Uh... what were we talking about?" Xanthippe opened her mouth... and closed it again. "It was about... assassins? No." "You mean Natalya? She was kind of scary." "No, not about her. Scary women... the flying bimbettes!" "Oh, yeah! You know, that sounds like a name for a weird circus troupe, or a chorus line." "A circus troupe?" Xanthippe pointed at the piles of bones. "Them?" "Sure! Instead of having an act, they'd have... an unnatural act, I guess." Xanthippe thought for a moment. "You know, there's probably a lot of people who'd pay good money to see that." "That's a weird phrase, you know?" Kasim pondered wisely. "If there's good money, what's bad money? I never saw money I didn't like." "Bad money is just not enough money," Xanthippe said. "Doesn't make it bad. I mean, bad cheese isn't not enough cheese." Sighing, Xanthippe closed her eyes. "Damn it. When I remember what I'm mad at you about, you're gonna be in trouble. Don't go running off anywhere." Kasim shook his head. "No way. It's dangerous in here without you." Her eyes snapped open, and Xanthippe smiled a bit. "Don't think you'd survive without me?" "Nuh-uh. Those bull guys are hella cruel." Smugly, Xanthippe nodded. "Ok. I guess that's what I was mad at you about." "Maybe. Your mind is one of the world's great mysteries." Xanthippe grinned. "That's a quote from somebody, isn't it?" Kasim smirked. "My dad used to say that to my mom. Then she'd laugh, and hit him with the rolling pin." "What a charming little domestic scene that must have been. Let's kill things." "No prob." Moving through the ice caves, they found more monsters, including slow-moving demons who seemed to be made of ice. They were too pokey to be a threat in and of themselves, but they breathed chilling blasts of air. If there were Minotaurs in the area with them, they were worse than the bimbettes. There were also more urns in the caves, but when she opened these, demons appeared out of nowhere. The urns must be trapped somehow. One demon dropped a beautiful rare circlet, with wonderful properties... too bad it was ethereal. Deeper in the ice caverns, Xanthippe and Kasim found a river of melt-water. Apparently, the river wasn't maze-like enough to keep the Minotaurs happy, but some big, white, hairy bipeds liked it just fine. The "Yeti" weren't as fast as the Minotaurs, or as well-armed, but they were very sociable and came in large groups. There were plenty of narrow places along the river's edge where they could attack them a few at a time, though. Xanthippe nervously noted that even though the water was icy cold, bubbles streamed up to the surface. Volcanic gas was apparently escaping through the underlying rock, but she couldn't smell what kind of gas it was. Odorless gas, associated with volcanic activity, could mean a build-up of undetectable, deadly gas in a closed space like this cave. At least the Yeti, though in league with the demons, were only animals, and had to breathe too. The air was probably safe where Yeti weren't afraid to walk. After chopping their way through the skull of an especially tough Yeti, they came to an odd tiled platform in the middle of a bubbling lake. A column of ice stood in the center of the platform, and by the light of her enchantments, Xanthippe could see something inside it. It was a person, a young woman, completely encased in the ice. This was very odd. Someone had built the platform, but it looked very old; the surface was dirty and deeply scratched. This frozen woman could have been here for a long time, her body preserved for centuries; Xanthippe had heard of mummies found in ice that were thousands of years old. Wait a minute; did her ice-woman's eyes just open? Xanthippe took a step back and waved to Kasim, but the ice didn't burst asunder, unleashing a prehistoric ice mummy from days of yore. Stepping forward again, Xanthippe rubbed the frost of her breath off the clear block, and saw the woman's eyes were open, and her mouth was moving. Help... me... No, this woman was of much more recent vintage. Xanthippe started chopping at the block to free her, but on the first swing, her halberd froze in the ice. "Argh!" Xanthippe twisted and pulled at her halberd. "Don't do that, you'll break the blade." Kasim looked at it. "That thing's stuck." "Oh, crap. Now what?" "Maybe we can build a fire?" Kasim asked. "From what? Besides, my enchantment had my halberd on fire. This ice is magical." Kasim frowned. "Couldn't you just look and see that?" "I didn't think it would freeze my halberd. Damn, that's strong stuff. Let's ask Cain." Cain didn't know anything about breaking the ice with a young woman; venerable sages sometimes have trouble with that, Xanthippe surmised. But Malah knew something about it; it was a spell known to the elders of Harrogath, which took some time to cast, but could be used on anyone who had previously been rendered helpless. The victim was kept alive, but unable to move or act, perfectly preserved until freed by the caster's whim. Malah was sure the woman was Anya, and that it was imperative to free her. Nihlathak could do it... but since he was undoubtedly the one who put her there, why would he free her? Xanthippe sent Kasim to grab him anyway, while Malah mixed a potion that might thaw the ice. Malah tossed some twigs into a very thick-walled bottle, then some yellowish liquid. "This is similar to normal thawing potions... but I am making much more, and much stronger." Xanthippe nodded. "Smells like white wine. Not vinegar?" "The tincture contains many oils, which act against the grip of water. Some are very rare." "From what I'm smelling, capuscin is the main ingredient." Malah glanced at Xanthippe. "You amaze me. I did not realize you were familiar with alchemy." Xanthippe smirked. "Where I'm from, that's a spice." Malah chuckled, skimming off a green liquid from a simmering pot. "You must be very hot-blooded there. I would scarcely think it, to know you." Kasim came back. "He's not over there. I searched his house and everything." "Crap. Are you sure that potion will work, Malah?" "As sure as I am of anything," Malah smiled. Xanthippe smirked. "These days, that's not reassuring." Malah kept smiling. "Don't say such things, child." She quickly added a dash of red stuff to the bottle, then jammed a stopper in hard. "Here, take it, and free Anya. As our chief Aust's daughter, she is privy to many of the secrets of Mt. Arreat, which otherwise only Nihlathak would know. I cannot imagine why he would do what he has done... but now is not the time to guess at his motives. Anya will tell us." The potion bottle shook with bubbles bursting inside, and stayed hot in her hand all the way back into the ice caves. Looking at the ice block, Xanthippe wondered how she should use the potion; but first, she had to get the stopper out. Malah had jammed the thing in hard. For a decrepit old woman, she had a heck of a grip. After watching her struggle for a bit, Kasim took the potion, and popped the cork out. "Don't start thinking I'm only good for mowing the lawn. Whoa!" A blast of vapor shot out of the bottle, and the liquid boiled over instantly. Kasim dropped it, and Xanthippe screamed, "Get it on the ice! On the ice!" They kicked the bottle towards the block, thankfully splashing most of the liquid on it. At the touch of the boiling oils, the ice flashed up instantly into steam, and the huge block dissolved to nothing. The ice woman was left standing there. She was still blue, and hunched over, but Xanthippe could grab her, and carry her back to Harrogath. It was Anya, suffering from the worst case of frostbite Malah had seen for a long time. The spell was supposed to keep the victim unharmed, but it seems Nihlathak had forgotten that part. Or just didn't bother. "What's going on? Where's Nihlathak? Why'd he do this?" Xanthippe asked.
"Let her recover!" Malah said. "She is barely even conscious. I will do all I can."
Chapter 32After bringing Anya back, Xanthippe returned to the ice caverns. The girl was in no shape to talk to anyone, even if she did know anything important about Mt. Arreat, and there was a demon lord to catch. The caves were ridiculously extensive -- they went on for miles, in every direction. How these caves came to be, Xanthippe had no idea. Most caves occur in areas with limestone, or some other sedimentary rock that can be dissolved by groundwater. Arreat was volcanic. These might be old lava tubes filled with ice, but to have such a huge twisty network of them was strange. Back in town, Xanthippe stopped to talk with Cain. The ice caves were too convoluted; there had to be an easier way up Arreat. Heck, even Larzuk's idea of riding smoke with sheepskins was beginning to sound more practical. Cain reassured her that the caves were the fastest way up the mountain. "While you were making yourself a hero for these people, I have been speaking with them about the mountain, and their lives here. Ah... if there is anything traveling with you has taught me, it is how meager my lifetime of accumulated knowledge is. Sages have debated the true nature of Mt. Arreat for centuries, but I believe I have learned more from idle chat with the Barbarians of this city than --" "Cain, the condensed version, please. How do I get through the caves while I'm still young?" Cain laughed. "Forgive me, I forget myself. The elders of the Barbarian clans ascend to the summit of Mt. Arreat through the caves as part of an ancient ritual. None will say what they find there, but the mountain cannot be ascended by man any other way." Xanthippe nodded. "Which clan was Nihlathak an elder of, anyway?" "The snake clan, I believe. I hope Anya will be receiving visitors soon. As the daughter of the Barbarian's chief, she would be privy to many of Arreat's secrets! At first opportunity, I intend to seek out her council, and try to find answers to some of the questions that have plagued me for decades." Xanthippe frowned. "If the men are the only ones who can be elders, there's no reason her father would tell her anything. She wouldn't need to know." "I understand Aust, the chieftan, was very fond of his daughter, and kept nothing from her. Ah, look! Malah wishes to speak with you." Outside her hospital, Malah was motioning for Xanthippe to come over. Just about every Barbarian in Harrogath had gathered outside the building, including a lot of women willing to be seen out in the open for this. All were in hushed conversations, and went quiet at Xanthippe's approach. Something important must be up; Xanthippe had never heard hushed anything from the Barbs before. As she got to the top of the steps, Malah grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside. "Hey, what's up?" Xanthippe asked. "Come inside. Anya desperately needs to speak with you. She is still in terrible pain, but it is of the greatest urgency." No one was paying attention to him, so Kasim followed. Inside, Anya was waiting. She had been in a bath of herbs and potions, like the ones they'd had, so her skin was red and raw as her injuries healed. But since she wasn't wearing anything but a tattered old blanket, Kasim hardly noticed. Anya was very tall, with a sleek, muscular body and generous curves. Just by breathing, the swell of her bosom nearly pulled the blanket from her shoulder. Long, smoothly muscled legs ended in relatively dainty feet, and her glossy black hair was so dark against her creamy skin, it looked almost blue. "Hi," Xanthippe said. "What's so important?" "Gawahaa..." Kasim said intelligently. "What are yoo doing here?" Malah waved her cane at Kasim. "Yoo get out! It's indecent!" "No, let him stay," Anya said. "Yoo helped to rescue me from Nihlathak's trap?" "Heewa... ahh... yeah?" Xanthippe's eyes narrowed, and she glared hard at Kasim. But Anya gave him a smile that must have melted the heart of many a Barbarian. "Thank yoo. Yoo are very brave, and a hero to my people." Kasim's face was so flushed, he'd gone 5 shades darker. "Erk?" Xanthippe's face was also darkening, but the snarl curling her lips told Malah it was not for the same reason. Anya turned back to Xanthippe. "And courage like yoors is rarer! From what Malah has told me, yoo are amazing, a true inspiration for me and many others." "Yes, Anya!" Malah said. "Young sorceress, I have told Anya of your courage and --" "Why does everyone up here take so long to get to the point?!" Xanthippe shouted. "What was Nihlathak doing with you, and why should I care?" With a slight frown, Anya said, "When my father and the other elders died saving all of our lives, I suspected that Nihlathak was somehow behind their fate. After all, why should he be the only one to survive that dreadful night?" "Because he ran away and abandoned everybody else?" Anya shook her head. "My father would not die so easily. I was able to guess part of what Nihlathak did, and confronted him with my suspicions. But I was not shrewd enough to guess what he would do to me in return, to hide his guilty secret." Glancing at Kasim, Xanthippe saw him bending over to look at Anya's legs. Or something else down low on her body. Accidentally, she dropped her halberd on his head. "Oops! I'm sorry, are you all right?" Caught off guard, but not really hurt, Kasim held his head. "Ow. I'm fine. No problem." "I will take care of him," Malah said, hustling Kasim off to one side. "Please, continue!" "Yes!" Xanthippe smiled. "But pull your blankie up first, sister." "Oh!" Having apparently forgotten her only cover enough to let it slip, Anya took a moment to protect her modesty. Past her, Xanthippe saw Malah forcibly turning Kasim's head away so she could look at him, despite his best efforts. After making herself more presentable, Anya continued. "Nihlathak lured me into the caves, and imprisoned me in that icy tomb. He was laughing, and raving about how he was going to save Harrogath by making a deal with Baal!" Xanthippe bristled. "What deal?" "He intends to give Baal the Relic of the Ancients, our most holy totem!" Anya and Xanthippe stared each other in the face. Finally, Xanthippe asked, "And... ?" "Yoo don't understand! The totem will allow Baal to..." Anya paused, uncertain. "Allow him to what?" "This has never been spoken of to an outsider," Anya said. "The Relic is the heart and soul of our pact with the Ancient Ones. If Baal were to get it, it could be the doom of the world." A religious artifact. ANOTHER religious artifact. Xanthippe wondered if the 'heart and soul' part was literally true. "You're not going to tell me what it does, are you?" Anya looked down. "I hope I will not need to. I would love to strangle the life out of Nihlathak myself... but my imprisonment has left me weak. Yoo must find him before he can give the Relic to Baal. I am sure he is in his temple, on the other side of Mt. Arreat." "That'll take a while. Any idea where Baal is?" "No. But unless he has the Relic, he will never get past the peak." Xanthippe blinked. "Past the peak? How can you go higher than the top of a mountain?" Anya smiled. "Hope that yoo will never need to go there. Now, time is crucial! Nihlathak's temple is far away, but my father taught me the spell to make a portal which goes there. Yoo must hurry." As they left Malah's, a huge hand grabbed Kasim by the front of his robe. Shortly, he found himself slammed against a wall, his feet dangling high off the ground, with a dozen angry Barbarian warriors staring into his face. "What were yoo doin' in there?" "Uh... nothing?" Kasim grinned. "Yoo don't even LOOK at our Anya! She's too good for the likes o' yoo!" "Yeah!" another said. "We heard yoo! Filthy foreigners, after our womenfolk!" "Hey!" Xanthippe said, "Put him down. If anyone's going to chop anything off him, it's me!" Great, Kasim thought. "Uh, guys? Look, I've been around her for weeks. I've pretty much written women off. I'm gonna be a monk when all this is over. There's this little island in the Twin Seas, where the most demonic thing you'll see is a 15-year-old dachshund named Mr. Wigglesworth. I'm gonna go there and take up a new living as a goat." "You are not," Xanthippe said. "Get over here!" After kicking the Barb holding Kasim in the shin, she dragged Kasim off. "Listen you, what the hell do you think you were doing, walking in there like that?" "She said I could stay..." "You shouldn't have stayed ANYWAY! You just stood there, drooling all over yourself..." As Xanthippe's voice receded into the distance, one Barb shook his head, and said. "Aw, the poor bastard. If only I knew." "That's a damn shame," another said. One of the Barbarian women nodded. "I thought she was a great hero. She's horrible to him. Doesn't she know any decent behavior at all?" "She was raised all wrong. And if he tried to correct 'er, she'd kill him." "That's a damn shame," the one Barb repeated, shaking his head. When Anya had dressed, she cast the spell and made a portal, taking them to Nihlathak's temple. The place was typical of Barbarian architecture -- low, solid stone, and sturdy enough to take anything the natural world could dish out. Atypical of Barbarian places were the long-dead bodies littering the courtyard. The Barbarians seem to favor defleshing of their dead, or cremation. The bones are then placed in a burial chest, along with any valuables the deceased had in life. While it seemed highly disrespectful to Xanthippe, it did prevent the bodies of the dead from being raised by wandering demon lords. Of course, anything unusual is a sign of a possible trap. A few seconds after they'd come through the gate, the dead moaned and rose to their feet, shambling to the attack with huge swords raised. More zombies, Xanthippe thought, before one ran at high speed and slammed into her. That was unusual, as it was when the Zombies started talking to each other, in slow and slurred tones. Despite the fact that their brains seemed to still be working, the dead soldiers weren't much more of a threat than regular Zombies. The fire-enchanted one in the temple's entrance was trouble, but when he died, he had something odd, a magical kris. Cain identified it as something called the Jade Tan Do, a legendary dagger prized by Necromancers. "What's a Necro toy doing up here?" "That is a curious thing," Cain agreed. "I would sooner have expected a sword or axe." "Whatever. Move your butt, Kasim." The inside of the temple was worse than the outside. There had been murals on the walls, but they were falling off in pieces. Everywhere, bodies of dead Barbarians were nailed to walls or posts, beaten to a pulp, and stripped of flesh or partially skinned. Dead soldiers and Baal's Minotaurs were everywhere, and a lot of them had things a Necromancer would like -- heads in jars, dried-out skull totems, bone shields, scythes. Piles of human bones and skulls were everywhere. But Xanthippe's mind was not on the temple decorations, or what they might imply. For the whole time they were in the temple, until they reached the lowest level, Xanthippe's mind was on Kasim. He had been a clod before this, many times. But this time, his behavior was simply inexcusable. All the time they explored the temple, she told him so; how she had trusted him to control himself; how he was an embarrassment; how much he had offended their hosts; and especially, how disappointed she was that in all the time he'd known her, he'd never learned how to behave around a woman. As they descended the stairs into the deepest level of the temple, she was still going. "It was deeply offensive to say the least. I hope the rest of your family knows how to behave better than you! I should have left you with the Barbarians. I should have!" "Incoming," Kasim mumbled, not really caring anymore. "You know what they do to people they don't like," Xanthippe said as she chopped a slave to bits with great energy. "You would have deserved it! All that ogling, you were practically drooling on the floor! That is no way to treat a woman, even if she is wiggling her half-naked body in front of you!" "She wasn't," Kasim sullenly noted, crushing a slave's skull. "Hell yes, she was! Oh, I'll just bet she didn't mind having you slink your way in there and stand there staring at her! But that is no damn, sorry excuse!!" "She was nice," Kasim sighed. "Oh, yeah! Really nice! Got every Barb up there wrapped around her little finger, she's so nice, I'll just bet!" Sputtering with anger now, Xanthippe snarled, "Just nice on ice! So nice and icy and spicy and... and... Do you know what you need?" "Sure," Kasim looked for more things to kill. "No you do not! What you need, you need, is a lesson in sensitivity! Yeah, that's it! You need to be more sensitive! If I have to pound it over and over into your thick skull, you are going to be more sensitive, you are --" Something inside Kasim snapped. Should I kill the boss? Just kill her? Smash her yapping mouth right in, once and for all? I've tried to be reasonable. I'll try to ignore her. I'll try really, really hard to... "AAAAAHHH!!" Kasim screamed at the top of his lungs! "I can't take this anymore!" "What?" Xanthippe squeaked, taken aback. Three winged female demons (Cain identified them as Succubi, to no one's surprise) came screeching out of a side hall, no doubt attracted by the sound of a man screaming in soul-wrenching agony. Kasim stood in front of them and said, "Ok, just kill me now! Right now, if you please! Just rip my head right off! I don't care anymore!" The Succubi stopped, staring at him. "Ooh, he's begging for it!" one said. "Make him beg more!" another replied. "That gets me so hot!" "Kasim!" Xanthippe screamed, "Get out of there! Those things are dangerous!" "Not half as bad as you!" Kasim yelled. "Or a quarter, or an eighth, or anything! You are the biggest b!tch to ever come out of Hell! They'll be a walk on the beach after the crap I've had from you!" "What YOU'VE had to put up from ME?! You listen to ME, buster! All the time I've known you, all I've gotten out of you is complaining, and leering, and crude comments, and other stuff I don't even want to think about!" "I have gotten into so much sh!t for you, it's not even funny!" Kasim retorted. "I have been blown up, poisoned, struck by lightning, had my head bashed in, trying to keep you alive! Who took the first shot from Diablo, huh?" "I don't care WHAT happens in combat! I'm not talking about combat! Whenever we went back to town, you stared at Asheara, you stared at Jamella, you were even staring at Fara and she's a fvcking paladin, for crying out loud!" "So I wanna look at nice women! You're talking like we're married or something! And they're all a hell of a lot nicer than you! Even Asheara!" Wide-eyed, Xanthippe drew her breath in with a hiss. "Asheara!?! She... you... How can you even SAY that!?! What, did she sleep with you or something?" Meanwhile, the three Succubi were munching a bowl of low-fat popcorn and drinking some diet Squeezed Souls colas. "This isn't bad, is it?" the blonde asked. "No," the brunette replied. "She's not bad at all, for a mortal. I really should brush up on the mental tortures. Claws and curses only go so far, you know." "Oh, I know!" the redhead giggled. "A shame to see so much raw talent going to waste." "Oh, I definitely agree," the brunette answered. "Such passion. But it's all so intellectual." "Give her time," the redhead smiled sensuously. "She's young yet. She'll figure out the other passions, and then I think we can just... watch out!" "But we're supposed to kill them!" the blonde said. "Do you think we should? I agree with you both, she really should ripen more before she's plucked." The brunette laughed! "I wish we could, girls... but our master would be upset." They all shivered. "Ooh... don't get me all excited like that, you b!tch." The blonde grinned hungrily. "But you're SO much fun when you're excited..." "Later, darling... what do we do with them?" The screaming continued unabated. "Maybe they'll chop each other up." "Or maybe..." The brunette grinned, eyeing Xanthippe. "I have an idea." "What's wrong with a woman being nice?" Kasim asked. "Why can't you be nice to anybody? You're not giving anything up by not being a b!tch for 5 fvcking seconds!" "Oh, so that's it!" Xanthippe shouted. "'Oh, Xanty, why can't you be all nicey-nice and bring me my slippers like a good girl?' Because 'nice' girls get treated like doormats, that's why!" "Bullsh!t! Fara is nice, everybody respects her, a hell of a lot more than they respect you! What'd all your yelling and screeching ever get you, huh?" "That is so... insensitive! Completely insensitive! I wish there were sensitivity courses so I could enroll you in one! And make you attend! This is... so... insitive! Aghh!" Whatever argument Xanthippe was trying to make sputtered to a stop. The redheaded Succubus stepped forward. "May I cut in?" "What do YOU want?" Xanthippe and Kasim yelled together. "Well, excuse me for breaking up this little love-fest!" The Succubus giggled. "I just wanted to give you a few pointers, dear." "What?" Xanthippe boggled. "Oh, yes!" the blonde Succubus jumped up, spilling the popcorn. "Listen to her. This is very important." "You can learn a lot from her," the brunette one smiled. "She's VERY experienced in these matters." "First, don't be angry with him for sleeping with this Asheara person. After all, he's a man! He'll sleep with anything." "I didn't sleep with Asheara," Kasim complained. "Even better!" the redhead smiled over her shoulder at Kasim, bending over to show off her absolutely perfect rear and legs. "You can torment him for something he hasn't even done. That's the best." Her technique is excellent, Kasim thought. Even though he knows what she is, the way she shows off, that tail looks like nothing more than an exotic addition to a very lovely exhibit, not a sign of a diabolical nature. He looked away quickly. "I saw that!" Xanthippe shouted. "Good!" the Succubus smiled. "Want me to show you how?" "No! I was talking to him! Kasim, you do not treat women like objects for you to look at!" "Of course he does!" the blonde said. "That's how you get him!" "Honey, you've got to learn to go with your strengths," the brunette purred. "There's a weakness. Take advantage! Don't reject the temptations of the flesh, they're one of your biggest, most powerful weapons." The redhead tsked. "Girls, we're going about this the wrong way. Conference!" They hustled off to one side for a whispered conversation, interrupted by girlish giggling. Xanthippe and Kasim looked at each other silently. "Don't listen to 'em," Kasim said. "They're after you." "Why would they be after me?" Xanthippe hissed. "A raw recruit?" Kasim smirked. Xanthippe looked disgusted. "I have NOTHING in common with those bimbos!" "Yeah," Kasim said ruefully. "They're probably nicer." "They're DEMONS from HELL!" Kasim nodded. "They're probably nicer." "All right!" The Succubi clapped their hands, had a group hug, and strutted back grinning like sharks. Xanthippe and Kasim kept their weapons ready. "First," the brunette licked her lips, "what did this brute do to get you so upset?" "Why should I tell you?" Xanthippe snarled. "Because we asked nicely!" the blonde pouted. "You don't need to tell us." The brunette looked chasteningly at Kasim. "He's been running around after some local woman, hasn't he?" "Well..." Xanthippe thought for a minute. "She wasn't exactly discouraging him. In fact, she was encouraging him!" "That b!tch." The redhead shook her head sympathetically. "Is she beautiful?" "Oh, yeah. And boy, does she know it. When she invited us in, she was practically naked." "No, she wasn't," Kasim objected. "And she didn't invite us in, I walked in myself." The blonde sneered at Kasim. "That's what she wanted you to think. It's an old trick." "Almost as old as you," the redhead teased. The blonde gasped dramatically! "You hag! You're older than me!" "I prefer to think of it as 'more experienced.'" "Girls!" The brunette glared at her sister demons. "This isn't about you. This is about this pig of a man and his new girlfriend." Kasim squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. He was getting a headache. "She is not my girlfriend. Neither of them are!" The brunette snorted! "Don't try to dodge responsibility." The blonde shook her head. "This is so typical." The redhead whispered to Xanthippe, "He'll probably claim he couldn't help himself. Don't just take our word for it, but believe me, if there's one thing we know, it's men." "I can believe that," Xanthippe said, looking up and down at the outfits the Succubi were almost wearing. "You sure seem to know what they like." "It's not hard to figure out," the brunette said as she adjusted her nipple rings. "Never once did either of them have one thought about your feelings, did they?" "I don't think she cares about anyone's feelings but hers," Xanthippe huffed. "I can't believe you're listening to this," Kasim said. "Maybe I am! Don't worry, I'll kill them in a minute. But there she was, wearing nothing but a towel, cooing and sighing over her 'great hero' and he was falling all over himself!" "Boss, the three of them together couldn't make a washcloth." Xanthippe glared. "And don't think I haven't seen you noticing that!" "Girls," the brunette said, "this man obviously has no self-control. I'll bet that b!tch can play him for any kind of fool she wants." "She must have lots of boyfriends," the blonde suggested. "Oh, yeah!" Xanthippe laughed. "Every stupid muscle-head in Harrogath! They all think she's some kind of gift from the heavens or something." "What a slut," the redhead hissed. "She's probably been with every man in the mountains." "And some of the women!" the blonde chimed in. Xanthippe laughed even more! "Maybe, those Barbs are probably badly inbred by now!" Kasim was looking increasingly nervous. "Can we kill them now?" "Hey, c'mon!" Xanthippe grinned wickedly. "Can't stand to hear anyone say anything bad about your precious Anya?" "Weren't you the one saying 'They're DEMONS from HELL!'?" The redhead shook her head. "Girlfriend, why are you even listening to this jerk?" "I don't know!" Xanthippe laughed. "He should go running back to Anya." The brunette gave Xanthippe a sympathetic hug, and stroked her hair where it came out of her helmet. "Say, how do you do your hair?" "Uh..." Xanthippe blinked. "I wash it?" "That color is natural? You lucky! I love your highlights. Auburn is so passionate!" "Oh, wow," the redhead said, stroking Xanthippe's hair too. "I am SO jealous." It occurred to Xanthippe that she was surrounded by demons, who were touching her rather provocatively. She was kind of proud of her hair, but this was getting a little weird. "Uh... I think I've got a lot more to be jealous about." "Boss..." Kasim said through gritted teeth. "Don't worry, we'll help you!" the brunette laughed. "A boob job, maybe some work on your nose, and you'll look a lot better than any old Anya." This was definitely getting weird. "I..." "I don't know," the blonde said. "The boob job is a definite must, but I think her nose is fine. She'd look a lot better as a blonde. Platinum blonde hair and tawny skin is so in these days." "Don't you think of touching her hair!" The redhead patted Xanthippe's rear. "A little more down here, and a lot more up here. The nose I can take or leave." "But darlings," the blonde said, shaking out her hair in gorgeous golden waves, "Blonde is better!" "Hey!" Xanthippe swatted away three sets of hands. "What are you doing?" They all smiled. "Plotting your revenge, of course," the redhead said. "She'll just DIE of envy when she sees you," the brunette cackled. The weight of the halberd in her hand was very reassuring, all of a sudden. Over to one side, Kasim looked kind of green as he stared at them, weapon ready. Trying to find words, Xanthippe mumbled, "I don't want to make Anya jealous. I just..." They laughed. "Of COURSE you do! You're jealous of her; get back at her!" "I'm not jealous of Anya! You don't know what you're saying!" The brunette quirked an eyebrow at Xanthippe. "Girlfriend, I'm sorry, but it is SO obvious. There's nothing wrong with being jealous. Work with it! That's how you make yourself better than other people." "Jealousy is wonderful when you know how to use it," the blonde smiled. "It's made me what I am today," the redhead licked her lips. Now Xanthippe was very, very afraid. But they were all around her; the redhead was trying to pry her fingers off her halberd. "Get off!" Xanthippe snarled, and punched the redhead right in the nose. "MY FACE!" the redheaded Succubus squealed! "YOU B!TCH, MY FACE!!!" Instantly, fangs grew from cute little pointy teeth, and their nails sharpened into long claws. Kasim charged in and stabbed the brunette in the back. It was a short fight; after it was over, Xanthippe stood panting and staring at the ground, and Kasim stood staring at her. "What the hell were you doing?" he finally asked. "I... don't know... what happened." Xanthippe stuttered. Kasim snorted. "I thought Succubuses were supposed to just seduce men." Xanthippe looked up at Kasim. "I would never... I wasn't gonna... Do you think I could..." "I don't mean like sex," Kasim grumbled. "Now quit being jealous of Anya. She wasn't trying to steal me. Besides, the Barbs would kill me if I tried anything." "I'm not... I..." "Yes, you are. I dunno why. I don't care. Let's kill things." Wordlessly, Xanthippe followed Kasim around the lowest level of the temple. When they found Nihlathak, he was surrounded by slaves and Succubi, laughing that his minions would crush them, he had saved Harrogath, they were helpless before him. As waves of minions advanced, Kasim and Xanthippe fell back, until at Kasim's suggestion, Xanthippe teleported them right next to Nihlathak. It would have been a good plan, if Nihlathak couldn't teleport too. Instead of a running battle, they had a teleporting battle, a genuine wizard's duel ranging over the whole room. That much heavy 'porting was disorienting, but Nihlathak died spectacularly in the end. Twirling in the air, the flesh was stripped from his scrawny bones, and he went straight down into a fiery inferno. Cleaning up the leftover minions was easy, but Xanthippe's mind was elsewhere. And not on Kasim this time.
Chapter 33There were several totem-like things in Nihlathak's temple, but Xanthippe and Kasim couldn't tell which might be the important one, so they gathered them all up and took them back to Harrogath. It was dark, and Anya was sleeping, but Xanthippe didn't feel like talking to anybody anyway. That night, her dreams were strange and disturbing. She usually slept deeply enough not to remember any dreams in the morning, but this night her mind simply couldn't rest. Just before dawn, Anya knocked on her door. Xanthippe was already up -- having gotten no real rest. With increasing worry, Anya went through the totem collection twice. "It isn't here." "It isn't here?" Xanthippe repeated numbly. "It isn't here! The Relic of the Ancients! It's gone!" "Oh." Anya stared at Xanthippe. "Have yoo gone mad? That is our most holy totem!" Xanthippe sighed. "I have a killer headache. I'm sorry. Now please, you haven't told me what's so important about this relic. Why do you want it?" "The Relic is the sign of our pact with the Ancient Ones, our ancestors. They were as gods, far greater than any who live today. When they took on the task of guarding Mt. Arreat, three of their greatest champions were given the gift of immortality, and stand eternally on the peak of the mountain. Any who approach are challenged to combat -- unless they bear the relic. All who bear the relic may pass." Ancestor worship. Ok, but how those primitive beliefs can blend with the religion of light is anyone's guess. Thinking about religion would only make her head hurt more, so Xanthippe just said, "You think they'll just let Baal pass." "Nihlathak must have given the relic to Baal. He will not be challenged. It is imperative to find him and stop him!" Privately, Xanthippe wondered how anyone could let Baal go where he pleased, just because he had some fancy totem. He shouldn't be that hard to recognize for what he is. For all this stuff about the ancestors being greater than anyone living, Anya didn't seem to place much faith in their intelligence. However, voicing doubts about Anya's judgment, or someone she worships, would not be very nice. "Find him and stop him. Right. Guess I'll get to the summit, then. That's where he's going." "I do not know if this will help yoo, but please take it," Anya said, handing Xanthippe a small crystal orb mounted on a wand. "It was among my father's things, and I know magicians use them. Yoo might want something larger, but it is all I have for yoo." The orb wasn't anything special, or even useful, but Xanthippe tucked it into her belt and mumbled something about it being lovely. Before going out, she stopped to talk with Cain. "Can I ask you about something?" "Please, stay a while and listen! While I know time is of the essence, your efforts are best guided by knowledge and --" "Thank you. I was wondering... what can you tell me about Succubi?" Cain looked a bit surprised. "Ah, yes. The Succubi are the handmaidens of Andariel, but often given by her to other demon lords to curry favor. Combat is not their forte, to say the least, but they are zealous in their bloodthirst. Many were found under Tristram, and I had thought they were all but wiped out in the battles there." Xanthippe slowly nodded. "They can't... like... see into your soul, or anything?" Now Cain looked puzzled. "Hmm. All demons study human weaknesses, as their intelligence allows. Even during times of supposed peace, some walk among mortals, creating havoc in subtler ways. The helpers of the Maiden of Anguish are well suited to this task, and I am sure many of them have been deceiving men, in one disguise or another, for centuries. They would be very familiar with the darker sides of human nature. Where is Kasim, by the way?" "I don't think he and I are speaking to each other right now." Xanthippe stared at the ground. "But they can't... just KNOW what's in your heart, by looking at you?" "No more so than any other student of humanity," Cain said, raising an eyebrow. "You know, when I went to see Anya, she asked about you. Your mood confused her, but I assured her that you were merely impatient to be about your business." Her face flushing, Xanthippe nodded. "I'm sorry. I was beyond rude. And I will apologize, but I can't really face her right now. I have to sort out my head. Better go. Thank you." As she walked to the waypoint, Cain frowned deeply, and thought for a while. Deciding that he didn't have enough information, he went upstairs to speak with Malah. "Malah," Cain asked, "may I ask you for a moment of your time?" "Of course, young man." Malah cackled a bit. "You don't often hear that, I think." "Not so often, these days," Cain sat down on a bunk. "Many my age or older were unable to flee the invasion; it is still not clear to me why I was spared. But now, it is the young who worry me. Tell me, what did Xanthippe say, when she met Anya?" "That girl never learned how to behave!" Malah snorted. "When Anya praised her strength, she was met only with harsh words. Her man was ill-behaved, though she did fetch him a goodly clout. She was ill-spoken, curt, and insulting to elder Nihlathak long before his betrayal was known." Cain nodded slowly. "Well... she is under a terrible burden." "There is a child who was not beaten enough," Malah scowled. "Here, children learn to respect their betters." Then she sighed. "But you are right, we must be generous. It is a great burden, which may be what makes her company so difficult to bear." Cain smiled. "Especially for people who must seem strange to her." "What is so strange about us, then?" Malah smiled cannily. "Yoors are the ways that are strange. It is Anya who has call to take offense. When Baal has been defeated, it is my hope that Anya will teach your little tyro a lesson she won't soon forget." Remembering the "mud wrestling" incident, Cain said, "It would not be the first time, or the last, I am sure. Let me warn you, she forgets lessons easily." "We are not in the way of letting children forget their lessons." "As you said," Cain nodded. "That is all I wished to ask about. I hope that all goes well." Xanthippe's safety was never a worry for Cain, no matter how much she offended the Barbarians' ways. As thick-boned as these people were, he was sure her skull was thicker. For herself, Xanthippe was threading the maze of ice caves with Kasim. Despite several attempts on her part, Kasim was not speaking to her. He fought along with her, protected her, and watched her back as she watched his, but he wouldn't acknowledge anything she said -- not even a grunt to show he'd heard her. As they went through one blind alley and looping passage after another, she finally gave up trying to get a response, and just went on talking. She had to get this off her chest. "You're right, I was mean to Anya, the things I said about her were wrong. I was upset. I'm still not sure why. Ok, I am sure, I was jealous. For no good reason at all." Kasim actually favored her with a glare before turning away. "What were you going to say? You can say something, I won't tell." Kasim found a couple of Minotaurs, and they started chopping them up. "I think I started getting mad when Cain said he was going to seek her out for her council. Why all this over her, I was thinking? I don't think she's any older than me, and nobody seeks me out for my council. I know lots of things!" Kasim grunted as he ran a Minotaur through, killing it. Xanthippe continued, "Ok, you're thinking, why would anyone ask a total bitch anything. Doesn't matter what I know, nobody wants to talk to me anyway. But everybody wanted to talk to Anya." As her lightning killed a last earth demon, Xanthippe said, "She gets a ton of respect, she hasn't even done anything, just has well-placed relatives. I'm not getting jealous again, that's just a statement of fact. But you know, I gotta admit, thinking about the things she says, I respect her too. She's smart, a lot smarter than I thought anyone here would be." As they continued, Kasim in the lead (keeping his back to her at all costs) they finally found an opening that led to the surface. "And she is beautiful. Ok, I admit, it should not matter, but it does. Maybe it was just the last nail in the coffin... or maybe I worry about my looks more than I want to think. I mean, I've kept my hair long, and let it hang out of my helmet. That's not a good idea in combat. I thought about cutting it off after what those Succubi said, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Vanity, right? I like my hair." Outside the cave was an icy tundra, covered with snow and slick ice. The wind was thin and bitingly cold. "I know, vanity begets envy, envy begets vanity. That's how Succubi can work on people, right? Even women. And you were right, they were seducing me. It had nothing to do with sex, but it was a seduction nonetheless." The tundra was lousy with Imps and big thunder beasts. Imps are obnoxious little bastards, but Xanthippe's lightning could kill them in one shot now. Kasim still ran from Imp to Imp, with Xanthippe trotting along behind. "They found a weakness, and exploited it. You know the really ironic thing? When I thought men were looking at me, I didn't mind. It didn't upset me, even though it should have. But when you looked at Anya... I completely overreacted." "You went apesh!t," Kasim finally said. She almost jumped, she was so startled. "Yeah! I went apesh!t! I mean, why shouldn't anybody look at anybody they want to, right? It's just looking!" They found another set of Barbarian fortresses; Kasim began smashing towers. "Just looking does not mean a lack of respect! When men were looking at me, I didn't think they thought any less of my strength, or my power, just because they also thought I had a nice rear. And maybe my legs too. Actually, I think my legs have gotten better since I started wearing the heavy armor, they get more of a workout." Kicking down a door, Kasim found a catapult stand with some slaves, who looked surprised to see them both. "My shoulders are broader too, I think, my old top doesn't fit anymore. And... you know, maybe I am developing some more. I'll be 18 in a couple of months. Had to happen sometime, right?" Kasim was kicking down a door, ignoring the blast of flame from an Imp in a tower. Xanthippe ignored them too; they both had so much fire resistance, and it was so cold up there, getting hit with a flame-thrower actually felt kind of nice. "Ok, I'll never be as big as Anya, in any direction, but that's ok! She looks great the way she is. I kind of wish you hadn't let your jaw hit the ground, but I understand why. I really do!" Looking around, Kasim found some more Imps. Xanthippe ran into the crowd with him. "We are all human, and some of us look so good, that other humans go ga-ga over them. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is, so no one should think it's wrong." Silently, Kasim killed Imps, and slaves, and thundering beasts, until Xanthippe screamed, "DAMN IT, ANSWER ME!! Say SOMETHING!! You're the only one I have to talk to! No one else has seen what I've seen! You've got to say SOMETHING to me..." With a sigh, Kasim turned and glared at her. "What?!" "Just... say something." She was almost in tears now. "Sure. How do you keep up all that yapping in this thin air, anyway?" As soon as he said it, Kasim regretted it. She just stood there, quiet, tears freezing on her cheeks. Damn it... he never could take it when a girl cried. "Hey... I didn't mean it." She started sobbing. "Yesh you did... everbody hatesh me..." "Look, not everybody hates you. Some people don't know you well enough." THAT sure helped. Xanthippe started whimpering and crying more than ever. "Hey, Anya doesn't hate you! She's trying to like you!" "Yeah!" Xanthippe sobbed, "sheesh one of tha big dogs!" After thinking about that, Kasim said, "Uh, look: don't call her a big dog to her face, ok? She probably won't get it." Now Kasim didn't know if Xanthippe was crying, laughing, or both. "Come on. Just calm down, relax, you're gonna turn this place around and liberate all the women, and they'll all love you for it. Well, maybe not Malah, she's kind of reactionary. But old women get like that! Look at what you're doing! Everybody thinks you're great!" "I don' think I could liberate anybody," Xanthippe sobbed. "I'm just a..." "Sure you can liberate 'em! It'll be easy, you told me how a million times. You're gonna bring women's rights to the Barbarians, show 'em the error of their ways, all that stuff. It'll be great!" Slowly, Xanthippe stopped crying. "Nobody's gonna listen to me..." "Sure they will. Just say what you got to say. Be the big dog." Sniffling, Xanthippe rubbed her nose on her sleeve. "I don't know how." Kasim sighed. "What does Anya do? She's a big dog, act like her." "She's tall and strong and her dad was a chief." Kasim shrugged. "You're the one who killed Diablo. Think that's chicken feed?" "They don't believe I did that," Xanthippe complained. "I dunno. Ever since we killed Nihlathak, I think some of them are getting convinced." "What about him? He was easy." "Yeah." Kasim grinned. "Tribal elder, the most powerful guy in the city, and he was easy." Xanthippe laughed. "Uh... yeah. That's true. Heh. Never thought about it that way." "Yeah. Now, we gotta get movin'. The summit's a long ways up." Xanthippe looked up, up the mountain, where the peak shone against indigo skies. "Wonder what's up there. Think we're too late?" "We will be if we hang around here." "Right. Let's kill things." The slope of the mountain was steep now, and the icy ground was slippery. More than once, one or both of them slipped and skidded across patches of ice as they chased the monsters. At the top of the tundra slope was another cave, under a thick wall of ice that surrounded the peak. Trying to climb the ice would be pointless, so the cave was the only option. It was full of the usual horrors, including several dead Barbarians. Had they been up here, this high on the mountain? Or were they just dragged up for entertainment, and food? As they got back to town that evening, Qual-kehk greeted Xanthippe. "Yoo have reached the Ancient's Way, which holds the entrance to the summit. Every time I hear from yoo, your deeds have grown more legendary. Yoo are entering into the realm of myths."
"They're caves, like any other. I'm sorry, but I've seen worse."
Qual-kehk stared straight at Xanthippe, shaking his head slightly. "Yoo really did descend into the burning hells, didn't yoo? And battled to the death with Terror and Hate."
Turning away, Kasim smirked a bit. Xanthippe looked down, but nodded. "I wasn't lying. It was what I had to do, and I did it."
"I think I believe yoo now. It makes me wonder if all the training, all the devotion and care I have given to this mountain was for nothing." Qual-kehk cast his eyes down. "A woman, who I scoffed at, succeeds where I can only offer failure."
"You didn't fail... you just didn't know what you were fighting."
"That is a failure, to have forgotten so much, or thought it unimportant. I sent hundreds of men to their deaths. Thousands more died on the slopes while I could not break out of a box of my own making." Qual-kehk looked up at Arreat's summit. "The defense of this place was my life. I have never been to the peak, where yoo are going. It never seemed to me that I was worthy of it. But I may tell yoo what is there."
"The Ancient Ones?"
"Aye, the Ancient Ones. They stand eternally vigilant, cast in unbreakable metal. The gates to the interior of the mountain will not open unless they let yoo pass. Or, if you have the relic that will open the gates without their say."
Xanthippe nodded. "You go into the mountain?"
"Yoo will, I am sure of it. Inside the mountain is the greatest charge a people could have, the key to the safety of everything that is: the Worldstone."
The word meant nothing to Xanthippe. The Barbarians had the task of protecting Mt. Arreat, but no one outside of the highlands knew why. Sages had debated possibilities for ages, but with no knowledge possible, argument was pointless. Declaring that the great secret was a thing called the Worldstone was interesting, but told Xanthippe absolutely nothing. "What is the Worldstone?"
"I do not know," Qual-kehk replied. "Not exactly. It is the soul of the world. If all that is were wrapped up in a single thing, that would be it. The energy it creates keeps Hellspawn from drawing on their full power while in our world. What more it does, I cannot say. But I know this: if Baal corrupts it, as he corrupted the shard of it used for his Soulstone, all is lost. Instead of preventing Hell's power from flowing in the world, it would make it easier, and every demon would become as 100 of what it was. We would be doomed."
Chapter 34Before returning to the Ancient's Way, Xanthippe stopped at Anya's to see if she had any more interesting items. The elders of Harrogath had apparently kept a lot of armor and other equipment hidden in preparation for the end times, and most of them didn't have heirs left who knew where it was. Even Nihlathak had some worthwhile things squirreled away. There was far more available than there were soldiers left to use it. The elders really should have told Qual-kehk about all that stuff before they went out to raise the shield. If there had just been some better communication, Baal might have been stopped back when all this started. The items from ancient days could be awesome, particularly the body armor. It was thick and very heavy, but somehow less restrictive than the plate armor made today. Kasim had a suit of the ancient armor now, and liked it, but as hard as she tried, Xanthippe could barely move in the stuff. Anya felt this was because the men of those legendary times were far greater than those of today, and humankind had degenerated since then. Xanthippe was skeptical; Kasim could wear it fine, and besides, if a girl her size couldn't wear the ancients' heavy armor, that was hardly a sign of humanity's degeneration. Tonight, Anya was not in her house, nor any of the other elder's houses. Looking around, Xanthippe saw a house with several burning lamps shining through the shutters; many female voices came from inside. The door was open a small crack, and when Xanthippe approached, it opened a bit more, and a young girl motioned for her to come in. Suspecting what might be going on, she told Kasim to wait, and went inside alone. The house was packed with women, facing each other from benches in the middle of the room, or standing against the walls. The older ones seemed to have the benches, Xanthippe noted. Seating was probably determined by social position; it often is in tribal societies. Anya was there, standing at the far end of the room, smiling at Xanthippe. Malah was also there, seated at the head of one bench, but she was not smiling. "I am so glad yoo have come," Anya said. "We are discussing the fate of Harrogath." "The fate of Harrogath is not our decision!" Malah insisted. "And it is not something to discuss with outsiders, great and powerful though they be." "It seems to me..." one of the other older women said, "it seems to me that the fate of our people may be decided by us. The council of elders is no more, and the warriors who might replace them have been cut down." "Not all are lost!" Malah said. "The old ways were handed down by the gods, their curse will be upon yoo all if yoo abandon them. Have yoo forgotten the strength of our forefathers?" "The prophecies say that the old ways will fall," Anya said. "They are difficult to interpret, but that point is clear." Another of the older women, a big woman with a handsome mustache, stood and clouted Anya on the side of the head. "Do not speak of the prophecies in front of strangers! Have yoo no shame?!" The blow hardly fazed Anya, though Xanthippe heard it from across the room. "The future will not be like the past! And what harm is there in a foreigner? She may have ideas, knowledge we can use to help ourselves." "Yoo have never been outside of our lands." Malah crossed her arms and started hard at the opposite wall. "Outsiders do not even respect their own ways of doin' things. All are thieves, smooth-talkin' merchants, and lords livin' off others' labor. Honor, plain speaking, finding yoor living on the land yoorself... none of these things have value to the others." Looking up at Xanthippe, Malah snorted. "Beggin' yoor pardon, young miss. I know yoo've done many great things, but I speak the honest truth, and yoo cannot say I speak false." So far, this debate had been very familiar for Xanthippe. She was reminded too much of the Zann Esu. None of the young women, besides Anya, had spoken. She was sure they were "allowed" to speak, but would be shamed and ridiculed for anything they said, unless they parroted one of the older women. And since none of them were speaking, they obviously didn't have anything to say the old women would like to hear. "There are people like that. I don't think I'm a thief, or a lord living off the fat of the land. Maybe I'm a merchant; I bring stuff back and sell it." "No, no!" Malah looked aghast. "I wasn't speaking of you, miss! You've become a great hero, a true inspiration... though perhaps some of the younger women have been too inspired by your example." That was accompanied by a castigating look at Anya. "I don't see why she should be allowed here at all," another older woman said. "We all saw how she treats her man! Ought to be ashamed of herself, but is she? This one must not know shame at all!" "I'd have more sympathy for him if he'd the strength to stand up to her! He's a weaklin'. Who needs a weak man about?" "No, he is not weak," Anya said. "He can wear the ancient's armor, when some of our own menfolk haven't the strength. And she always takes him with her, even when she went to challenge Nihlathak!" "He's tiny! Such a spindly thing, and so dark and ugly." "Well, she's a spindly thing, dark and ugly, and she defeated the Lord of Terror alone!" "Hey!" Xanthippe said. "I happen to believe I'm not ugly." Her own opinions of these women, she kept to herself. They did look like horses; but the men looked like oxen, so that was all right. And maybe standing up to them and speaking her mind would get her some clout. Malah smiled. "I am sure the menfolk in yoor lands think well of yoor beauty. Here, things are different." Mrs. Mustache was glaring hard at Xanthippe. "I still canna believe yoo defeated the Lord of Terror. Yoo say so, and yoo are strong... but I canna see it bein' so." "I believe it is as she says," Anya said, smiling at Xanthippe. "And I believe she will pass the challenge of the Ancient Ones as well." That quieted the room down. Xanthippe had learned a little bit about the Ancient Ones, ancestors the Barbarians worshipped. A challenge from them would probably mean combat, to the death. That's the Barbarian way. Thinking about it, she realized she'd much rather be on the peak, fighting the gods themselves, than standing in this room trying to talk to these women. The old women didn't think she had anything to say, and most of the young ones wouldn't challenge them. So, she took up her halberd and spoke: "It may be that I'm not worthy of speaking to this assemblage. I am a foreigner, and know nothing of your ways. My mind is befouled with strange ideas. And I have been treating my man very badly. However..." Then she frowned. "I am not here to respect you, or abandon my ideas, or apologize for being short, dark, and unblessed with the gifts of testosterone. I am here to kill Baal, before he destroys the Worldstone. Talking with you accomplishes nothing. I am going back to the mountain. I'll see you all after I've killed some gods." The Ancient's Way ran under the icy cap of Mt. Arreat, so steep that steps had been carved into the tunnel floors. All the usual creatures were there, but the fights were getting harder. The air was so dry and thin, both Xanthippe and Kasim were constantly short of breath, and even after a short fight, they had to rest for far too long. Her lungs and sides hurt from all the gasping, and her stomach was constantly queasy. Still, they pushed upwards, climbing at every chance, until they reached one final stair with no more demons, and sunlight shining down from above. The peak of Mount Arreat was a small, flat area, about the size of a large room. Cyclopean cliffs dropped off from every side, huge sheets of glacial ice making a surface ascent all but impossible. Xanthippe and Kasim could look down, over the long spiraling path they'd taken up Arreat's slopes, or up at the cobalt sky, where the air was so thin stars shone near the zenith, even in daylight. On the peak itself were an altar, surrounded by three statues, and a gate, closed and locked. Far inside the gate, Xanthippe saw a barbaric totem. Obviously, the Relic of the Ancients, left where they could see it... but just out of reach. The statues were made of some kind of metal, tarnished with great age and covered with snow and ice. All were of Barbarians, who didn't look much bigger than the living ones. They did have heavy armor on, though, which automatically made them smarter than the Barbs of Harrogath. Runes on the statues' bases may have given their names; for the second time on this quest, Xanthippe regretted neglecting her languages. The altar had some writing, faintly visible through the snow. Xanthippe brushed the snow away; it was probably more runes, but her brain wasn't working well with so little air. As she touched the altar, three deep voices spoke in unison. "WELCOME! WE ARE THE NEPHALEM, THE ANCIENT ONES, GUARDIANS OF THE KEEP OF THE WORLDSTONE. THE DEMON LORD BAAL HAS OPENED THE GATES AND ENTERED, NOT 10 MINUTES BEFORE YOOR ARRIVAL. YOO MUST MOVE QUICKLY TO STOP HIM, BUT WE MAY NOT OPEN THE GATES AT A WHIM. TO ENTER THE KEEP, YOO MUST FIRST DEFEAT US." With a flare of golden light, kind of like the light made when she crafted Khalim's Will, the statues changed into three Barbarians clad in glowing, fiery-red armor. One had a sword and shield, another a huge axe, and the third two handfuls of throwing axes. "Huh?" Xanthippe blinked in confusion. "DEFEND YOORSELF." The swordsman smashed Xanthippe over the head with his blade; it really, really hurt. "WE CANNOT LET UP. YOO MUST BE WORTHY TO ENTER THE PRESENCE OF THE WORLDSTONE TO DEFEAT BAAL!" Shaking her head, Xanthippe swore and parried another blow with her halberd. "Kasim! Get the axe guy." "I'm on it," Kasim said, staggering a bit under a barrage of throwing axes. As he swung for the axe Barb, that same leapt high, high into the air, easily over Kasim's head. Must be the pure mountain air. Then Mr. Axe came down, axe blade first. Looking up, Xanthippe suddenly realized her head would intersect with that axe in very short order, and that would be a bad thing. A quick teleport solved that problem, but then Mr. Sword went through her and Kasim like a rabid wolverine, smashing and slicing left and right with fierce abandon. More throwing axes bit into their armor; Mr. Axe took to the air again; Xanthippe decided a change of tactics was in order. Teleporting to the edge of the cliff, she and Kasim chugged healing potions and conferred. "Who do we concentrate on?" she asked. "The thrower. He's the most annoying." "Gotcha." Teleporting back in, Xanthippe shot off a few quick bursts of Static Field, and she and Kasim began laying into the thrower. The other two came to his aid, but if they kept their feet moving and didn't stay in one place, they could avoid the worst of their attacks. Mr. Axe's move of choice seemed to be that leap; if you see him jump, just move before he lands, and he can't hit. Mr. Sword's rabid wolverine attack was basically a rolling charge, in a straight line; it was harder to dodge, but if they were careful about placement, he couldn't get them both at once again. The thrower ran; a "tactical retreat," not scampering like a bunny, of course. Xanthippe and Kasim concentrated on Mr. Axe, and on a masterful impaling from Xanthippe, his body broke up and he disappeared. A golden statue of him reappeared in his place. The thrower came back and tossed some more axes as Xanthippe and Kasim lay into Mr. Sword. After a couple of full rejuves, he gave up the ghost too. The hardest part about killing the thrower was chasing him down. And they say Barbs don't run from a fight. After they sent the thrower back to his endless vigilance, they spoke again. "YOO STAND BEFORE US, TRULY THE MOST WORTHY OF HEROES! THE GATES ARE OPEN TO YOO NOW, ENTER WITH OUR BLESSING. BAAL MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE HE REACHES THE WORLDSTONE; FEW ARE WORTHY TO..." They probably said more than that, but Xanthippe and Kasim were already running through the open gate into the Worldstone Keep.
Chapter 35The Keep of the Worldstone was a magnificent place. The walls and floors were all huge tiles of stone, masterfully fitted like a giant's jigsaw puzzle. The solidity and grandeur of it suited Barbarians perfectly, though there wasn't much evidence that the living ones knew anything about stonework. Even the buildings of Harrogath looked old. If a lot of their knowledge of craftwork had been lost while they studied the arts of combat, maybe these ancient works had impressed them as the works of giants... or gods. Xanthippe was distrustful of tales of godlike ancestors, or anything people did to justify feeling superior to others. A lot of noble houses in "civilized" lands claimed great heroes or divine beings as ancestors; it was bullsh!t there, and bullsh!t up here. Of course, the keep was full of Baal's creatures: Succubi and Imps, Minotaurs and exploding slaves. Xanthippe and Kasim simply ran past some of them, particularly the Imps, who were too time-consuming to bother chasing. These Succubi had golden skin and rainbow-colored wings, and were actually very pretty if you ignored the talons, teeth, and bloodlust. Maybe Baal had kept his favorite ones closest to himself. While going through a particularly large flock of them, Kasim asked, "Say, what were you doing in that house earlier?" "It was a women's meeting," Xanthippe replied. "Kind of figured," Kasim said, chopping a Succubus in two through the waist. "Wondered when you'd get back to liberating women." Xanthippe laughed. "Not going to happen. It was stupid of me to think I could. You know, meeting these women, I think I understand why the Zann Esu took off into the jungle. They weren't just fleeing men, it was everything. Some of the old stories of those days mentioned women participating in their own subjugation." "How did they figure that?" "They didn't want to change the world. At the meeting, all the older women went on about being improper, shameful, not traditional. Shame is one way a society controls its youth. I'll bet in the old days, when the Zann Esu were all young rebels, the old women told them what they were doing was shameful." Kasim laughed. "That why you never act ashamed?" "A long time ago, I told myself never to be ashamed of anything I do. Once the Zann Esu established themselves, and got old, they started shaming their young recruits into behaving 'properly'. I do not like being manipulated." As the last Succubus died, Xanthippe paused to reflect for a moment. "Maybe I have been too harsh on the Zann Esu. They have done a lot of good, for women, and for me. It was hard to do what they did. I guess they're just rebels who succeeded. Some rebels, when they get to be in charge, make a system that's worse than the one they replaced. But seeing what they might have been rebelling against, I don't think they were that bad." Kasim had moved on ahead, and found a group of Minotaurs, led by a fierce general. "What about the young ones? And how about a little help here?" Xanthippe ran in and fired off a few quick Static Fields from the middle of the Minotaur horde. "They might change... I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm such a good role model for them. Anya sure seemed to admire me, but I don't know if that's a good thing." That surprised Kasim some; the boss had never seemed the kind for self-doubt. "Man, those Succubuses got to you more than I thought." "It's Succubi." She chopped a Minotaur off at the knees. "And, yeah. I don't know what they saw in me, but they saw something. Some vanity, or jealousy, or just being a vindictive little witch." While they laid into the Minotaur general, Xanthippe laughed a bit. "Found out I'm not as strong as I thought I was the hard way." Killing the Minotaur, Kasim nodded. "Could have been worse." "Yeah, I could have gotten the boob job. I wonder if Succubi really can do that?" "Maybe they just make you think you look better." "Illusions, yeah. Disguises. Nothing real. You know, I'll bet the way they look while they're alive isn't real either." Kasim nodded. "Probably not. They sure don't look that good after they're dead." On a return trip to restock in Harrogath, Cain asked Kasim to go to Malah's and buy some antidote potions. Baal's preferred body shape was an enormous spider, and this might mean he had a poisonous attack. When Xanthippe tried to go with him, Cain caught her and quietly asked, "May I ask you something, alone?" "Huh? What?" "This is none of my affair, and I know you have little time, but rumors have been circulating, as they always do. There has been some wondering if you have... feelings for Kasim?" "WHAT? No. That must be about yelling at him over Anya." Cain smiled. "I suspected as much, but wished to hear it from you." Xanthippe looked around. Quite a few people, male and female, were quietly milling around, looking like they weren't listening. "I got mad at Anya, without any good cause, because everyone respected her so much and I didn't know if she deserved it. Kasim admired her too, so I got mad at him. I kind of like Kasim; he's not the sharpest spear on the rack, but he's dumb enough to tell me when I'm full of sh!t, and I think I need that." Raising an eyebrow, Cain said, "Not everyone would choose that in a traveling companion." "Hey, someone's got to. You have no idea how wrong I can be." Cain chuckled, and shook his head. "And the Barbarians accuse outsiders of not speaking plainly." Kasim came back with two potions. "Hey. Think this'll be enough?" "Should be. Even strong poison's not that bad. Gotta run. Bye!" As they jogged back to their portal, Cain went upstairs to speak with Malah. "Hello, Malah." "Hello, young man," Malah chuckled. "Your sorceress is very close to her goal." "Yes, she is. I only wish their battle were taking place outside the keep, not inside. Anya has shown me the prophecies, and according to them, the Worldstone survives. But prophets have been wrong before." At the mention of Anya, Malah stiffened a bit. "Superstitious things, prophecies. Why should you listen to them, my fine fellow?" "Prophets are often correct," Cain said, staring at the floor. "Sometimes, the only difficulty is the interpretation of their words. Anya came to me, because she was not sure how she should read the old predictions, and felt my council might help her. Qual-kehk had refused; it seems he does not think he has the wisdom to judge them." "Qual-kehk has taken all of this so very hard," Malah tsked. "He should not be so angry with himself. The prophecies said our people would be swept away and lost in the great conflict. There was nothing he could do. If you believe prophecies, that is." "Even good prophecies are useless without actions to bring them to pass. Perhaps I should go and see Anya again. She may have some more things for me to examine and identify." As he approached Anya's, Cain heard voices inside. Now, Cain was not the sort to resort to spying, of course. However, in his many years of experience, he had found that some are reluctant to speak their minds if they know anyone but their intended audience is listening. People will say revealing things in confidence, and Cain never betrayed a confidence, even an unacknowledged one. Well... not never, but hardly ever. "... and then she said, her man was not the sharpest spear on the rack, but he will tell her off when she needs it. Now, why would she say that?" The voice sounded like a young woman's. As Cain listened, he recognized Anya's voice. "I do not understand. If she likes him, why does she not go to him? Instead, she insults him. If he has no wit, why does she think he can tell her what is right?" "It is strange," another young female voice said, "but she defeated the Ancients. She must know of what she speaks, but I do not understand." There was a long silence. Cain hurried off a short distance, then approached the house again, coughing a bit to announce his arrival. Two young Barbarian women left by the back, and Anya met him at the door. "Greetings, honored visitor. How may I help yoo?" "Hello, Anya. I have a few moments free, and wondered if you had found anything more of the elder's stores of equipment." "No, I think we have found all there was," Anya smiled. "But do enter, if yoo wish. Perhaps yoo could lend me more help with the prophecies." "I would be delighted." The ancient Barbaric texts were very interesting, though the runic script was difficult to translate into modern terms. The same letter, in a different context, could mean something radically different, and subtleties of meaning were often impossible to extract. While going over the prophecies of Baal, Cain noticed that Anya was fidgeting, twirling her hair around her fingers over and over. "Something seems to be troubling you, young woman." "Och, no!" Anya laughed nervously. "No more than is warranted. The times are troubled." "You are worried about our champion, as I am?" "By the light, no! She defeated the Ancient Ones themselves, and they honored her! We all saw the light around the peak, and heard their voices proclaiming her victory! Baal feared the Ancients, so he holds no fear for her." Cain nodded slowly. "Perhaps you are worried for yourself?" "Yes," Anya said, very simply. "I do not know what the future will bring for my people. The prophecies say we will be lost, swept away. But I do not see how. The siege that would crush us was lifted; no demon comes near us. What could destroy us now?" "Perhaps 'destroy' is not the right word. See here," Cain pointed to a passage. "This word could mean 'swept away', but it could also mean 'passed away'; the old simply dies. Your people live on, but the way they lived is no more." Anya thought, slowly letting that sink in. "But... the only way the old ways could die... would be if we no longer guarded sacred Mt. Arreat." "That might be so, yes..." Anya suddenly smiled. "That could only mean that the Worldstone will be completely safe. The prophesies say nothing of its corruption, so Baal will not reach it. If we no longer must dedicate our lives to its safety, that can only mean it will never be in danger again! The forces of Hell will be permanently banished from our realm!" "Now, not so fast!" Cain smiled. "I would love to believe that too, but these prophecies have been difficult to translate. They have been accurate so far, but only after a certain amount of after-the-fact reinterpretation." "It is all clear to me now." A huge weight seemed to have lifted off Anya's shoulders. "The Worldstone will be safe forever. We do not need to dedicate our lives to it, as our ancestors have done. It is their final, and greatest gift: our freedom." "Your freedom?" Cain asked. The open smile on Anya's face quickly vanished; she looked embarrassed. "Oh. It is nothing. It is just... sometimes, I have wondered, what the rest of the world is like. As the chief's daughter, I've responsibilities, and could never travel out of sight of the mountain. There have been times, when it has seemed a burden to me." Cain smiled indulgently. "I forget how worldly we must seem to you, and how confusing." Anya nodded. "Some of your ways confuse me, a bit." "I remember when dear Xanthippe became so angry with her hireling, for no apparent reason." "Yes! She seemed so angry, but I do not know why." Cain nodded, pondering which version of the truth would be the best one to tell. "She did not understand why you were so well-respected here, when you had not fought demons, or been able to stand up to Nihlathak." "Oh, of course," Anya bowed her head. "He fooled me, as though I were a child. Blundering so, she would think poorly of me. Has she changed her mind, now?" "Oh, yes, in every way. It no longer upsets her if her man thinks well of you. You see... I believe she thinks of Kasim as something like an older brother. Perhaps not very intelligent, but more knowledgeable in the ways of the world, and with a bit more practical sense. She does not want his head to be turned by... well..." "By mere beauty," Anya said. "She is a beauty herself, she would know how easy it can be. As is right, I should have to prove myself first." "Ahem. Yes. Something like that. Now, back to these prophecies..." In the Worldstone Keep, Xanthippe and Kasim had quickly went down three levels. As they got deeper, they actually caught sight of Baal, riding an elaborate palanquin carried by huge Minotaurs. Xanthippe quickly ran in pursuit, but a horde of slaves, charged with explosive energy, gathered and blew themselves up as she approached him. When she'd gotten her bearings again, Baal was gone, and slave meaty bits were all over the place. Just what does Baal do to get such dedication out of his employees? No, that's not right; they're slaves, not employees, and probably don't have a choice. Never mind: next time, teleport. Remember, teleport! It's a very useful spell. At the lowest level, in a central chamber, they finally found Baal waiting for them, surrounded by his sluttiest Succubi and his ugliest Minotaurs. Behind him was a reddish gate. Didn't look like he'd gone in yet, so Xanthippe teleported. Aiming right behind him, determined to block the gate with their own bodies, she and Kasim... reappeared right where they'd been standing. Damn, he was blocking the spell. "Hey, wussy-boy! You any tougher than your brothers? Or are you gonna send your little girls to take me on instead?" Xanthippe shouted. Baal theatrically cocked an eyebrow, listening. "Did I hear a buzzing noise?" "Yes, great lord," a Minotaur answered. "An insignificant insect is disgracing your diabolical presence." "I thought as much. Go and crush it." Shrieking and bellowing, Baal's retinue roared into battle. The slaughter that didn't take nearly as long as you'd think. Soon, all were dead, but this didn't bother Baal at all. The giggling bastard was still blocking teleports, so Xanthippe and Kasim charged him. With an arrogant gesture, Baal cursed them, decrepifying their bodies and wracking them with pain. With the other hand, he summoned more minions, a pack of... oh, the little shaman guys Diablo had sprinkled all over the Rogue pass. Chopping them to bits, Xanthippe couldn't resist a small dig: "Oh, how cute. Can't you do better than that?" Deigning to notice her, Baal laughed even louder. "It is advisable not to break in such a special lady too quickly." With another gesture, a new group of monsters appeared: some Greater Mummies, with a bunch of Burning Dead mages. For these, Xanthippe used Static Field a few times, smashed all the Greaters, and finally all the skellies. Good thing they'd brought antidotes, those guys had serious corpse breath. Then a bunch of Kurast council members appeared, though Xanthippe was sure there weren't any of them left. Oh well, at least Baal wasn't bringing in Flayers. The head councilor was lightning enchanted, but Xanthippe and Kasim both found sweet spots and killed him without taking a bolt. All the while, Baal sat up there, tossing off curses and more minions. Diablo and Mephisto weren't nearly this annoying. Maybe Baal was the "arrogant wimp" brother. Next were Balrogs, as weak as the big guys down in Hell had been. The Minotaurs were more respectable, even though they looked less impressive. "Baal, Baal, Baal," Xanthippe shook her head. "You just don't know how to satisfy your 'special ladies', do you? Is that why you keep so many around? Can you say 'overcompensation'? If this is the best you can do, you must be hung like a field mouse." The annoying laughter stopped. "Ooh, did I touch a sore spot?" Xanthippe asked with a big smile. Baal was still smiling, but it was a cruel sort of smirk; he threw down a new group of minions for them to play with. These were strange, fleshy things with huge teeth and spines out of every part of their bodies. Not sure what they were capable of, Xanthippe teleported herself and Kasim back, and tried to bring just one out to test. They hit harder and faster than anything they'd ever seen before; then the rest rushed in. Taking on the whole pack would be suicide. Xanthippe teleported back a few times, hoping to string them out into manageable groups. It mostly worked; when she finally decided to stand and fight, there were only three of them to deal with. But that included the big one, whose touch drained spiritual power. Kasim nearly died twice, she nearly died three times, and her thunderbolts didn't strike nearly as often as she would have liked. When they got back to Baal's chamber, the demon lord was gone. They ran through the gate. The Worldstone hovered in the air inside a huge cave, with a single causeway extending from a broad ledge up to the stone itself. The thing was huge, glowing with reds and purples, absolutely beautiful; slowly walking down the causeway towards it was Baal. "Ah! Isn't it magnificent! Don't you think so? I can't wait for it to be mine!" "Get him!" Baal was still blocking teleports. As they ran around the ledge, long tentacles burst from the floor under their feet, hauling them into the air. "Oh, dear, my shoe is untied," Baal said, stopping. "But wait: I don't have shoes! Silly me!" He continued his slow amble up to the Worldstone as Xanthippe and Kasim struggled and chopped their way out of the tentacles. Rounding a corner, more tentacles exploded out in front of Xanthippe and Kasim. Baal lowered himself to the ground. "All this traveling is so wearying. I'd better rest a bit." Swearing, hacking through the tentacles, Xanthippe and Kasim reached the causeway. With a gesture, Baal blasted them with a wave of icy cold, knocking them off their feet and back into the far wall. "Ah, that was refreshing! It gets so warm in these caves, I was about to lay down for a nap." He continued his slow approach to the Worldstone. All manner of imprecations boiling out of their mouths, Xanthippe and Kasim split up and ran to the causeway two separate ways. When they reached it, Baal glanced back, and another Baal appeared in front of them. Their weapons bit into him; it wasn't an illusion. But after a few swings, the new Baal vanished, and the old Baal was standing next to the Worldstone. "I am *so* exhausted. How can I ever reach up and claim my prize?" "DON'T YOU FVCKING DARE, YOU SORRY-A$$ BASTARD!!" They sprinted up the causeway and dove into Baal, just as he reached up, and delicately put one finger on the Worldstone. "You lose." As Baal laughed, veins of black shot through the beautiful crystalline purity of the Worldstone, with a sound like ice crunching and shattering filling the chamber. They still killed him. It didn't take nearly as long as Diablo's death, or even Mephisto's. Kasim took one last full rejuve to keep alive, but Baal dropped, puking and laughing out his last breath, strange ghostly souls escaping his mangled carcass. As Xanthippe jumped up and down on his chitonous body, Tyrael floated into the Worldstone chamber. "ABOUT FVUCKING TIME!" Xanthippe snarled, then remembered herself. "I mean, you must have been delayed." The angel graciously ignored Xanthippe's greeting. "The chamber was blocked to me; my own abilities lose much of their strength, so close to the Worldstone." "Huh?" "Ages ago, when we left your world, Heaven placed the Worldstone here to protect you. Its purpose is... was to prevent alien energies for entering this plane. Diabolical, as well as angelic." Xanthippe looked at the tendrils of blackness lancing through the Worldstone's scarlet glow. One theory of teleportation is that it takes a mage out of the universe itself, to return them an instant later in another place. Maybe it wasn't Baal blocking her spell after all. He might actually have been dangerous, further away from the Worldstone. "What about now?" "Now, Baal's touch has corrupted it, just as he and his brothers corrupted the soulstones made in its likeness. Over time, its energies would drain away completely, and it would cease to function as a barrier. It would become a lens, empty, but able to focus outside energies into your world." "To make something like a gate, maybe." "Or more terrible things. Once broken, the Worldstone cannot be repaired; replacing it would be all but impossible." "But Heaven made one, can't they make another?" Tyrael almost seemed sad. "Perhaps. If I am allowed to enter the gates of Heaven again, I shall petition my fellows for another." He touched the Worldstone, at the same spot Baal did. Whiteness sliced into it, filling the empty blackness, but the red energy the stone was filled with before did not return. "This Worldstone cannot be allowed to remain here. Whatever becomes of it would be inimical to your world. It must be destroyed." A sharp crackle erupted from the Worldstone, as the blackness shattered a mote of redness within it. The white chased the black, filling the cavity. "What happens after that?" "That, even I cannot foresee." Tyrael opened up a gate. "Go, mortal. This is not the end of your world. A wall between you and the fiery abyss has been obliterated, but all is not lost. I shall appeal to Heaven to forgive my blindness, and perhaps --" "No," Xanthippe said. "We can stand up to Hell. If Heaven doesn't give us another stone, we'll just have to make do on our own, won't we? It's not like that's a bad thing." "Perhaps. But nothing will be as it was. This gate will take you to Harrogath. Tell the people this: their duty is done, Arreat will no longer remain a sacred place. What will become of your world, none can say." Xanthippe and Kasim took the gate, reappearing in Harrogath. Several Barbarians were there to greet them, but Xanthippe ignored their questions; she was staring up at the peak of Mt. Arreat. The ground trembled, and the town went quiet. After several seconds, in absolute silence, the peak of Mt. Arreat burst open in a flare of light brighter than the sun. The sky went dark, and tremors in the earth knocked everyone from their feet. The earth shook for what seemed like minutes, the thick walls of Harrogath groaning and its buildings losing pieces of stone. When it stopped, and they looked up, Arreat had lost its peak, and a cloud was sliding down the mountain. Bits of rock, drops of water and ice, and reddish shards of crystal began to rain into the streets. Everyone took shelter, and no one spoke until it was all over. As calmly as she could, Xanthippe explained what had happened, and what Tyrael had said. Reactions among the Barbarians were mixed; some wept, and blamed her for all that was lost. Others were more philosophical. Despite all they said, Xanthippe couldn't bring herself to care. She was tired, very tired, and just wanted to go home. Where is home, she wondered? Not here. While she was wondering if Jerhyn would rent out a wing of his palace (she knew she could afford it,) Anya quietly spoke to her. "Are yoo leaving, then?" she asked. "Don't think I can stay," Xanthippe mumbled. "I failed. I should go." "Please, stay as long as yoo like. None could have succeeded. But..." Anya nervously looked down at the floor. "If yoo go, could I come with yoo?" Xanthippe blinked. "Why would you want to leave?" "I know what yoo'll say: I've responsibilities to my people. But I've been thinking. We were was the chiefs of Harrogath, we'd no clan of our own. We kept the clans united to protect sacred Mt. Arreat, and the Worldstone." "And now there's nothing to unite the clans." "I fear not. Our authority was the word of Heaven, and our ancestors. That is gone now." Slowly, Xanthippe nodded. "You don't think your people will need you?" "On the contrary, I think they will. But what can I do to help them now? Things have not gone as I hoped, but I know the old ways will pass away. I need to know a new way if I'm to offer any guidance. I need learning, knowledge, like you have." Xanthippe was surprised by that, and a little alarmed; her faith in her knowledge wasn't what it used to be. "Malah knows a lot, probably a lot more than I do." "I do not want to follow Malah's ways," Anya bowed her head, "as wise as she may be. I heard yoo say once, that yoo were often wrong. It may be wiser to know and say yoo are often wrong, than never to know at all." Feeling a bit stunned, Xanthippe stared at Anya. "Um... I... heh." She started to feel embarrassed again. "Mind you, I'm lousy about admitting when I'm wrong." "Yoo've a temper, I've felt it," Anya smiled. "But then it passes. Like a spark of lightning, it appears, makes a noise, and then is gone. It does not burn for years in yoor heart." Xanthippe nodded. It was a fair description. "What will your people do while you're gone?" "The clans may break apart, there is little to hold them together. Or, they may not; with so many warriors dead, we may band together in the cities for protection." "You have other cities?" "Sescheron, our capital, on the edge of our lands. Outsiders sometimes visit there; it is a grand city, though not so great as Harrogath." Xanthippe almost laughed. To cover the grin, she picked up a bit of shining red crystal from the street, pondering it. "What do you think you'll see, outside?" "Something different from what's here. They may think I'm ignorant and stupid; I'll bring a sword. There may be thieves and liars too, but I must learn to deal with them sometime." Xanthippe laughed. "If you want thieves and liars, there's no better place than Lut Gholein. You can see where I was born. Then, I'll take you over to the Zann Esu. If you can deal with them, you can deal with anybody. You might pick up a good trick or two, too. And if you're going to see the world, you've got to see Kurast. I mean, if you think this is a city, you haven't seen nothin'. It kind of got trashed in the wars, but there's still a lot left. Oh, and the sea! You've never seen the sea, have you? Everyone should sail on the open ocean at least once in their lives. You might want a hat for the sun, I think pale people burn more easily... Hey, Kasim! Quit playing with the Barbs and get over here." A few of the Barb women had been talking with Kasim. They sure had lost a lot of their shyness for him. Maybe they were worried about there not being enough young men left in the highlands. With some reluctance, Kasim broke away. "Yeah, boss?" "Pack up. You're Anya's bodyguard now; don't touch her even if she wants you to. We're going home." "Home? Yeah?" "Yeah." Xanthippe looked around Kasim at the young Barbs. "Want to bring any of your new friends with you?" "Eh... well, they're ok lookin' while they're still young..." "Sure. We can rent a wing of Jerhyn's palace. He's had hordes of young women in there before. If they want to go back, they can just use the waypoint." "Whoa! You think we can live in the palace?" "Kasim, I think I could buy the damn palace and hire Jerhyn as a butler." Kasim frowned. "Then how come I never saw any of that?" "Look at what you're wearing. You could buy a mansion for what that armor cost." "Oh." "Pardon," Anya said, "but you said you came from a desert?" "Yeah," Xanthippe answered. "How can a desert be so rich, that there are palaces there?" Xanthippe smirked. "First, we go there and get settled in. Next comes the 'Economics 101: The Mercantile System' lecture series. You'll probably hate it, but that's what school is for. Pack your bags, grab some weapons, and keep your minds open. Things are going to get really strange. But who knows? Once you get used to it, you might like it."
This has been fun, and Xanthippe is heading off into Nightmare level. I'll put out updates if she comes across anything good, but her story has been told and it's time to move on. Let us leave Xanthippe to whatever strangeness life brings her, and start our quest again with the next character in line, someone of nobler bearing and a lot less swearing: the Paladin.
Epilogue
SourceStony's Grand Tour was originally posted in Diablo: IncGamers (formerly Diabloii.net) Single Player Forum. While almost all original posts are long gone, Vesper, one of our Community Members, contacted him and was given the original documents, and permission to reproduce them at the Amazon Basin. Onderduiker 13:09, 29 August 2012 (PDT) |