Diablo III: Morbed (6 page)

Morbed felt that he could argue no longer. He desired now more than anything a way to silence the voices. “And so? What would be my fate? To cast myself from a battlement as the old man would have done?”

“The sailor was, in a very misguided way, seeking to restore balance,” Vorik answered. “I believe this may be achieved through other means. Through acts of selflessness, perhaps you might purge yourself of regret, and also atone.”

“Is that what you believe?” Morbed replied. “That the only way to be rid of you and still draw breath is to . . . aid others out of kindness?” The thief shook his head. “And no doubt risk my own life in the process.”

“Not kindness,” Vorik corrected. “Selflessness.”

The lantern hung in Morbed's limp hand. “Yes, of course. It's worth a try,” he lied. “Just as soon as we return to Westmarch, I'll begin a search for endangered orphans or tormented widows. But first, I—we—must quit this cursed bastion.”

“In seeking to deceive us, you deceive only yourself,” Aedus said. “You can no more hide your intentions from us than you could hide your nose from your face.”

Morbed released a long sigh. “What do you ask of me?”

“Your pursuit of salvation could begin with the extermination of our slayer,” Jaharra suggested. “Others are sure to come to this island and would no doubt face destruction. With our aid, you might defeat this demon.”

Morbed laughed hollowly. “Or I might, more likely, get myself killed. And what of your precious spirits then? What if I fail?”

“You would not fail,” Aedus said. “We can join our abilities and exert them through you. Without the master of the house and his magic-suppressing traps, and with the demon wounded, I'm confident we would emerge victorious.”

Morbed's tired eyes drifted over the mirror images. “And this would rid me of you?”

The necromancer was first to answer. “This alone? I would say . . . most likely not.”

“But it would be a first step on the path to redemption,” Aedus was quick to add.

“A demonstration of faith,” Clovis offered.

Morbed stood quiet and still, considering.

“Or you could just do as you've always done . . .” Jaharra taunted. “And run.”

CHAPTER SIX

Morbed raced through the darkened woods as fast as his feet would carry him.

There had been no further deliberation. Instinct took command. Discovering a route that led from the room and out beyond the castle walls had required effort, but self-preservation lent vigor to Morbed's exertions. In time he uncovered an iron-strapped door opening into a dark, musty corridor, then to a cramped drainage pipe, and with Jaharra's assistance in defeating the bastion's outer wards, the thief was suddenly free of the redoubt without crossing the demon's path. In that much, at least, fortune was on his side.

Now it remained for fortune to smile on him just a bit longer, to lay clear his path to the longboat, to the fisherman's hulk, and on to the Great Ocean.

Despite this enterprise, the voices of his companions had stubbornly refused to remain silent. Even as they lent aid, such as in the case of the wizard's assistance in overcoming the wards, they derided and chastised him for choosing once again to flee.

It eased Morbed's anxiety somewhat to know just who and what the voices were, although a lingering doubt still dwelled in the back of his thoughts, maintaining that the thief had, in fact, gone insane, that the disembodied talk and visions were tokens of a fractured mind. If so, how long until his sanity shattered irreparably? As with all hesitations, second guesses, and reservations, Morbed pushed these nagging notions away.

There was, after all, one scrap of cold comfort to be had in the thief's predicament: despite their protestations, the spirits apparently had no direct control over Morbed's actions. So far as he could tell, they could effect change only with his consent.

Once to safety, Morbed would pick the lock on the manacle and toss the lamp overboard!

You're carrying an ensorcelled lamp that magically shackled itself to your wrist
, the wizard's voice interjected wryly.
And you really think that will work?

He would find out, one way or another. There was always the possibility of hiring a blacksmith to solve the problem.

Ha!

Failing that, there existed the potential of seeking out a master mage and employing said magic user to extricate him from—

The thief stumbled over an encumbrance and pitched headlong into the loam. Cursing, he rolled over, sat up, and raised the lantern.

In its violet aura he spied a corpse, broken and twisted, its limbs contorted at impossible angles. Around it lay dislodged branches, as if the body had plummeted through the trees. Morbed held the lantern away, directed his gaze skyward, and noted the stumps of sheared tree limbs against the starless night. Returning his attention to the dead man, he beheld a white beard and weathered, sunburned skin.

Morbed leaned farther forward, holding the light close. He reached out and lifted the dead man's hand, turning it over. There, across the palm, he saw scars upon scars, marks of lines and ropes abrading the skin throughout years of toil and hardship, of harvesting the bounty of the sea.

The true fisherman
, Jaharra's voice spoke.

“Yes, the fisherman. So he's not . . . in there with you? His spirit?”

No.
Vorik this time.

Jaharra rejoined,
The impostor saved my life. He restored balance, and now the spirit of the fisherman is free. It is as Vorik said: acts of selflessness are the only way to even the scales.

You should bury him
, Aedus offered.

“You're a bunch of damned fools! There's no time.”

It is the right thing to do
, Clovis added.

Morbed turned to his side, gained his knees, and was soon back on his feet. “Bury this corpse, and I may as well bury myself with him,” he said as he lit out once more toward the coast.

*  *  *

By the time a heavily winded Morbed neared the edge of the forest fronting the coast, the sky had begun to lighten. With a final surge of energy, the thief broke through the tree line.

Yet where he should have seen the masts of the fishing hulk and the great bulk of the vessel itself, he beheld only ocean and lapping waves carrying debris onto the shore, where planks, spars, shredded sails, chains, wood, and various other evidence of wreckage lay strewn up and down the coast.

The lantern hung in his hand as Morbed stumbled forward. He ambled out among the debris, where he spotted a shattered wooden spine—the keel of his party's longboat. It lay inland, and Morbed realized with sickening dread that the tide had gone out, allowing the demon a less obstructed path to the fishing hulk.

Not long after discovering the fisherman's corpse in the forest, Morbed had heard a thunderous crashing sound, but in the thick wood, it had been impossible to determine its origin. The thief had imagined his pursuer to be raging through the forest, shearing trees to kindling, and he ran all the harder. Now he realized that the echoing clamor had been that of the fishing vessel's destruction.

Morbed dropped to a sitting position near the ship's anchor, its yard-length of chain trailing out like the tail of a slumbering serpent. Twisted bits of iron lay about where the links were snapped at the end.

Staring out along the coast, Morbed spied the massive, gleaming white whale bones he had noted upon his arrival. Grimly he wondered if his own skeleton would soon accompany them in their lonely vigil. Overhead, a bank of clouds unfurled in rippling waves, tinted red by the rising sun, a crimson ocean tide.

Morbed had not been sitting for long when the noises came to him. He heard them faintly at first: great rending sounds deep within the timber. Over the next breathless moments, they grew louder. Nearer. Morbed's stomach turned into a nest of snakes. His blood ran cold.

You must face it
, came the voice of Aedus.
Let us help you.

As he did in any life-threatening situation, Morbed weighed his options. He could just run. Run and keep running until some kind of rescue arrived . . .

How far do you think you'
d get
, Jaharra asked,
before you tire and can run no more?
The demon is an engine of destruction. It will not pause. It will not grow weary.

Morbed scanned the watery horizon for any signs of a vessel. None. No rescue there.

The crash of timber was louder now.

His thoughts took a much darker turn. He withdrew his small blade and rotated it over and over in his hand as he considered what the demon could do to him. How effortlessly it could rip him apart, treat him as little more than a plaything, a mouse seeking desperately to evade the cat's claws.

Don't you dare give up
, Jaharra all but shouted inside his head
. Ending your own life would be the ultimate act of cowardice.

Morbed was silent for a long moment. “I thought you could so easily read my intentions,” he spoke aloud. “How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not a coward . . .”

Slowly, he gained his feet.

“I'm a survivor.”

Nearer the forest edge, trees smashed to the ground, shivering the leafy canopy.

“You said you could help me . . . I need to know that what you say is true—that your claims are not just the ramblings of my own deteriorating mind. Show me. Before I do this, I have to know.”

There was an immediate twisting inside his stomach, nauseated disorientation, followed by a change in his surroundings. In an instant, he had moved from where he was and was now looking from the opposite direction at the discarded anchor and shattered longboat. The action was accompanied by a low boom that scattered sand at his feet and echoed out over the ocean.

Morbed raised his arms to steady himself. He forced bile back down his throat and turned his head. The bleached whale bones loomed behind him.

At the forest's edge, a massive tree crashed down onto the rocky sand.

“If you can do this,” he said, “you could use your power to move me farther away, maybe even to the other side of the island. Then I might—”

I could
, Jaharra answered.
But I won't. You don't seem to
understand, boy.
Her voice had suddenly turned colder than it had ever been.
We're dead because of
you
. We no longer draw breath because you ran away. You've spent your entire life running, and people have died because of it. So you don't get to run anymore. You can either
stand and face this or die. There is nothing else.

The monstrosity emerged, parting the trees at the forest's edge and lumbering out onto the shore. Black, dried blood coated its left leg. It moved sluggishly yet with dread, elemental purpose. The creature turned. Faced with its fierce enormity in the predawn light, the thief felt like little more than a helpless bug, small and weak and wholly insignificant. He tried to swallow but found he had no saliva. His heart raced. Blood drained from his limbs.

Do not waver
,
the voice of Clovis encouraged.
You must believe.

It is up to you now
to restore balance
, Vorik added.

Remember, you are not alone
, Aedus counseled.
You'll feel compelled to act as we exert our will. Bend to each perceived purpose, and we will guide you. But remember also that we cannot do this without you.

And at the last, Jaharra exclaimed,
Fight! Claw! Outmaneuver fate and spit in the face of death!

Morbed advanced two steps. Blade held in one shaking fist, lantern grasped by the ring in the other, he stood, feet firmly planted, terrified yet resolute beneath the killing skies.

Shifting its weight, the behemoth hunched, rose, sent its bludgeon-arm smashing into the sand, then charged.

At once Morbed felt a presence other than his own, an
otherness
working to compel his actions. He detected in some instinctive fashion that it was Jaharra seeking to come forward, and he allowed it. Instantly his hands were raised as he struck a stance, muscles tensing, a string of foreign incantations pouring from his lips.

A breath later, time stalled. The demon's onrush slowed; it moved as if fording water. Morbed sensed the enactment of a temporal spell, a bending of time around him. He felt compelled to let fly the dagger, knowing somehow that its own speed would be unaffected. His wrist flicked out, and the blade drove itself into the demon's left eye.

The churning in Morbed's stomach returned. He briefly lost all sense of time and place as he was physically removed . . .

. . . and transported several paces behind the creature, appearing with a crack like that of a small cannon. He swayed and fell backward as the demon regained its former speed, stumbled, halted. Its horrific bellow shook the sand beneath Morbed as it turned and fixed its remaining eye on the thief.

There was an instant of confusion as two inhabitants of Morbed's mind tried to exert control simultaneously. A tempest raged briefly inside his head. When he looked up, the armored giant was almost on top of him.

Morbed scuttled away, fumbling with his hand and reaching the cold solidity of the anchor. Clovis came forward then. A radiant, resplendent warmth pervaded Morbed's core, washed out over his limbs, and infused the anchor with a magnificent holy light. At once he felt indomitable, armored in righteousness.

The demon closed. Morbed gained his feet, twisted, and swung the Light-imbued anchor up into the heathen's right flank. Brought up short, the monstrosity cried out in primal fury, rendering Morbed temporarily deaf. It yanked the anchor from its side, cast it to the sand, seized the thief's right shoulder and arm, and flung him in a high arc.

Morbed somersaulted through the air and plunged into the forest canopy. He collided with several branches, felt ribs break, and slammed into the unforgiving ground, where he lay gasping. Blood flowed where the manacle had cut into his wrist. The lantern sat unbroken in the loam.

With mighty strides the hulking demon swept aside timber in a mad rush to overcome its prey, even as healing powers within Morbed fought to mend the damage to his broken body. He had seemed so invincible, but although he had felt as the crusader felt, his physical constitution was not that of the holy warrior.

Movement above shook Morbed to his senses. The demon had struck a thick, burled cypress, and the barrel-like column of its trunk was crashing down, a heartbeat away from crushing the thief. The presence of the crusader was gone and replaced instantly by the rugged steadfastness of Aedus.

A collection of esoteric entreaties rolled over Morbed's tongue. All of a sudden, he felt a oneness with each individual species of tree, grass, fern, and shrub on the island. He was aware of every nearby insect, and for the briefest instant he believed he could hear worms burrowing in the earth beneath him.

Incredibly, a long branch jutting from the falling cypress lashed out, striking the ground inches from Morbed's face, intending not to smite him but to arrest its own descent. The trunk twisted, and two more branches on the opposing side groped and snared the raging demon about its torso. Nearby, a rangy pine leaned in and snagged the creature's right arm. The demon strained against its arboreal bonds, reared, then raised a massive leg to stomp the prostrate thief.