Diablo 3: The Reaper of Souls (25 page)

Valla waited for Josen to continue. When he didn't, she asked, "After what?"

The master hunter's expression was unreadable. "Follow me," he replied.

As they approached the storehouse, the hum rose in volume, a penetrating, vibrant buzz. As the thrumming grew, the fetid stench grew also. The hunter stationed out front swung open the tall doors.

A thick, dark mass, a living cloud of flies, escaped. And though the smell of degenerating flesh was familiar to Valla, the potency of its assault nearly drove her to her knees. She pulled her scarf tight and choked back bile.

Within the barn-sized enclosure, the townspeople were piled in haphazard mounds. Men, women... many of them bloated, their midsections distended. Some of the bodies had ruptured, insides spilling out, maggots working their way over and through the viscera. Fluid seeped from eyes, noses, mouths. Beneath the odor of decomposition was the unmistakable smell of feces. Hundreds of flies swarmed the carnage.

Valla frowned. The wounds, while gruesome, were not those common to a hellspawn attack. These were stabbings, impalements, crushed skulls—not the shredding, dismemberment, and decapitation associated with most demon slayings.

Josen spoke. "Delios was seen one day ago outside of Bramwell. He stormed into a bordello, killed everyone... then disappeared. Last night there was another massacre. Fifteen victims inside an opium den. Killed by crossbow bolt and blade."

Valla's eyes widened in disbelief. Josen answered her unspoken question.

"He fell to the demon's corruption. He's lost to us now. No better than a demon himself."

It was a horrific development, one every demon hunter faced, navigating the threshold between good and evil. All too easy for hunters to lose their ability to control their fear or hatred and cross over to the other side. But this... this was not the work of Delios. This was something different. Valla hid her unease. "Perhaps that is so, but no hunter is responsible for what we see here. No demon, either."

"Agreed."

"Do you think they turned on one another?"

"Possible," Josen answered flatly before departing. Valla scanned the corpse mounds once more, noting something odd: there were no children among them.

Outside, Josen stood at his horse. Valla hurried to him. "I completed my last assignment. What orders now?"

"We continue searching for survivors. Come sunrise I'll ride to Bramwell, and I'll find Delios. Perhaps... it's not too late for him," the master hunter said, but his minor hesitation spoke differently.

Valla squared her shoulders. "I'll go and seek out the demon, then."

"No," Josen shot back. "You're not ready."

Valla stepped closer. "Come again?"

The master hunter turned to her, his tone remaining even. "I said you're not ready. We know very little of what we're dealing with. What its methods are. We believe it's a demon that feeds on terror... but Delios had that information as well, and it wasn't enough to prepare him. A demon such as this..."

Josen's eyes fell slightly. "It will reach into your mind and uncover every fear, every doubt, every regret, no matter how deeply buried. It will pit you against yourself." The master hunter's eyes snapped up, locking on Valla.

"Remember your failure at the ruins."

"That was different. A demon of rage," Valla protested.

"Rage. Hate. Fear. They all feed upon one another. A demon hunter learns how to direct hate. But such a balance is precarious. And when that balance is lost, the cycle begins: Hate begets Destruction. Destruction begets Terror as Terror begets Hate as—"

"I've heard it a thousand times!" Valla blurted.

"Then mark it well. You're still young, and you have much to learn. If I've taught you anything, it's that a demon hunter must always temper hatred with discipline. So calm yourself. The demon is wounded. Inactive for now. I'll send another hunter."

Josen turned to leave, but Valla was not done.

"I'll go after Delios, then."

Josen looked back. "You'll stay and help search for survivors. Delios is mine. Those are my orders." The master hunter then strode away. Calmly. And somehow, that infuriated Valla all the more. She wanted him to yell, to scream, to show some damned hint of emotion.

Not ready? I'm not ready? After all I've been through... "How dare you tell me what I'm not ready for?" Valla whispered.

An instant later she was astride her horse.

Which way? Which way would the demon have gone? Valla glanced at the blood among the debris. There was no trail outside the radius of the castoff. No help there.

To the east sat only mountains. To the west, the Gulf of Westmarch. Far to the south lay New Tristram. But the demon was wounded. Would it take a chance on the longer journey south, or would it travel northeast... where it might find more small farming communities like this one?

More easy prey.

The closest village, Havenwood, was less than a day away.

The choice was made.

Ellis Halstaff was concerned for her daughter's health.

Sahmantha lay still in the downstairs bedroom, a cold, wet cloth draped across her forehead, her breathing shallow.

Sahm had woken up the previous night, screaming. It had taken a fair amount of time to calm the girl down; when Ellis finally did, and asked what was wrong, her daughter replied that "it feels like there's something bad inside my head."

Bellik, Havenwood's healer, had visited earlier in the day. He had provided a tonic that would allow Sahm to rest, and prescribed a cold bath when opportunity allowed.

But Sahm was resting now, and Ellis's little son, Ralyn, would need to be fed, and there was still work to be done before nightfall. It was easier before—in the days when Sahm's father was still present, before he left without a word, without so much as a note, never to return.

Ellis looked down at Sahm now and thought of the girl's most recent birthday, when the precocious seven-year-old had declared brazenly that she would "manage her own affairs, moving forward," and that her daily routine would no longer include chores. She thought of Sahm's laughter, a hearty, unbridled guffaw. She thought of the night less than a week ago when Sahm had told her in the strictest confidence that she had a crush on little Joshua Gray, because his eyes were like a nice dream.

She thought of these things, and she prayed to Akarat that Sahm would get well soon, that she would have many more nice dreams and no longer be terrified by whatever ailment had befallen her.

Valla sat before the campfire, still a few miles outside of Havenwood, staring. She ran her finger absently over a long scar that traveled the line of her jaw.

You're not ready.

A demon hunter must always temper hatred with discipline.

Josen's words still stung. But the more she thought of it, the more she considered that maybe... maybe he wasn't exactly wrong. Her thoughts drifted back to the incident at the ruins...

She and Delios had journeyed deep into the southern Dreadlands, traveling together for several days. Delios was crude and abrasive and set her nerves on edge. Valla preferred to operate alone, but Josen had insisted they work as a pair.

They located the demon's hideaway among the long-forgotten ruins of some unknown civilization. Valla guarded her mind as Josen had taught her. He had warned them both that, with a powerful demon such as this, their battle would be much more than simply physical.

"You are the demon's greatest weapon," he had counseled.

As the two wound their way down wide, monolithic stone slabs, Valla felt her agitation mounting. The base of the stairs opened into a cavernous grotto where hundreds of gargantuan rocky pillars stretched upward, their caps lost in the darkness above. Flaming braziers cast pools of flickering light.

Delios surged ahead. He was reckless. Foolish. Valla's head throbbed. She could feel the demon infiltrating her thoughts. In her mind's eye its presence was black tendrils, probing, coaxing, provoking. Valla dwelled on every irritating habit, every negative quality, Delios possessed. Her agitation soon turned to anger, which turned to rage.

Delios darted ahead again, after she had yelled at him to stop. He spun, favoring her with a wicked smile. She became suddenly certain that he had been corrupted. He had crossed over. Her rage boiled over into a blind fury, and she knew that she would kill him. He was weak, pathetic. Ending his life would be a mercy.

She drove forward. Delios stood there, smiling tauntingly. She sprinted toward him. He ducked behind a pillar. Valla followed...

And he was gone. She felt the demon behind her, a hulking, otherworldly presence. Inside her mind, she could hear an echo of laughter. The demon had manipulated her with the ease of a puppeteer working the strings of a marionette. The Delios she had followed was not real. She had lost, and now she would die.

There was an explosion then, and much of what happened next Valla only remembered in brief flashes: Josen battling the demon. Delios rushing to help. Valla gathering her senses in time to fire several bolts from her crossbow. Josen shouting words of banishment. "I see you, Draxiel, lapdog of Mephisto. In the name of all those who have suffered, I cast you out! Begone and be damned, and may you never return!" Josen fired a bolt; an eye-searing brilliance flared; and the demon was gone.

The ruins had been a test. (Josen was fond of saying that everything was a test, that life was a test.) And Valla had failed. Now... now Delios had failed as well. And it had cost him his soul.

Valla was determined to defeat this demon, but she was also determined not to meet Delios's fate...

He's lost to us now. No better than a demon himself.

The sawyer's daughter suppressed a shudder. There was more than one way to banish a demon, but only one way that Josen had taught her. He had also told her once that "when a demon peers into you, you may peer back. But it is the most dangerous thing a demon hunter can do."

Valla's mistake at the ruins would not be repeated. She had grown too much since then.

The demon hunter retrieved from her pocket an etching of her little sister, Halissa.

"For you," she whispered. And as the flames of the campfire died down, she initiated a series of mental exercises taught to her by Josen.

I'm not going to make it, Ellis Halstaff thought to herself. I've lost too much blood.

Escaping through the front door and sprinting to Havenwood proper were not an option. Not before she reached Ralyn. He was practically helpless, barely a year and a half old. He hadn't even mastered walking yet, much less protecting himself in any way.

At the staircase she pulled with her good hand on the banister, dragging her worthless right leg behind her one step at a time.

As her strength ebbed she thought of Sahm and wondered desperately why her daughter was trying to kill her.

After finishing her work, Ellis had gone in to check on Sahm, to see if perhaps she was ready for a bath. Sahm had smiled, pulled Ellis's best carving knife from beneath the sheets, and stabbed her in the leg, then repeatedly in the torso. Five, six times, maybe more. Ellis had spent precious heartbeats immobilized by the shock of the attack before she had finally run.

Ellis's head felt foggy now. She was halfway up the staircase when she heard the rapid padding of Sahm's bare feet on the floor below.

She turned, and there, at the bottom of the stairs, her beautiful blonde-haired daughter stood, clothed in the lacy pink dress Ellis had saved up to buy her for the harvest festival. The cloth was spattered a dark crimson that glistened in the lamplight. Sahm held the knife in her right hand. Blood coated her arm from the elbow down, dripping from the tip of the blade.