Varnae (Chapter 20)
Template:Varnae nav Dear Diary,
Wormwood! I LOVE wormwood, it frees the senses! Green potion had wormwood, must have been. Little green fairies dancing in a line around the rooooom wheee la da-da da-da DA! DA! da-da da-da da! da! la-da da-da da
World clearer now. Someone dropped something heavy on my stomach, a great big heavy hammer. That was rude. Now my stomach hurts nearly as much as my head, which feels as though there's a Flayer living in it. Oh, a note came with it: guess who.
"Now that you're strong enough, try this. It'll be slow, but maybe it can work out anyways. The damage is good, and besides, look: it's got a skull!
The Mule"
After a few hours further recovery, I am able to examine the object: a sledgehammer, such as a mason might use for crushing gravel or pulverizing limestone. The black iron head is shaped like a skull, and a few decorative spikes form a "spine" partway down the shaft. Is this someone's idea of a joke? While many martial implements are, more or less, well-adapted forms of everyday tools (witness the scythe) the requirements for harvesting wheat and slicing demons are entirely different. A battle scythe is lighter than the common farm tool, the weight of its blade balanced by a counterweight on the base of the haft so it is quicker in the hand. Even I, who have devoted so much time to remaining ignorant of warlike things, understand these undeniable facts. Adapting a cumbersome stone-cracking hammer to the quick-as-lightning demands of real combat will require more than a few cosmetic additions.
While examining my newest "gift," who should come visiting but Natalya. That witch wanted me dead, for no better reason than my existence proved an annoyance for her. She's just like mother, she really is. I don't know what I EVER saw in her.
I don't know HOW I could have been so wrong! My precious viper has dispelled all my worries with but a few sweet words. She was not sad to learn of my survival at all, it was just that my daunting presence overawed her into an unaccustomed reticence. "Your power surrounds you like a... like an aura of power!" Perhaps not the most eloquent exposition, but eloquence has a way of abandoning us when we we are most overawed. Even I could not help but be impressed by her sheer honesty, the undeniable, powerful reality of her feelings for me. In the future, I shall have to keep that "aura of power" carefully hidden... she must understand that I am, after all, but a man like any other. Once more into the breach, then, dear friends! Not completely unwilling to abandon Soul Harvest (for the stylishness, if nothing else) I tuck it away and strap the Mule's offering to my back. Devils and angels, that thing is heavy.
Apparently, my indiscriminate consumption of Alkor's medicinals was even less wise than I thought -- my man Khaleel last saw me on my feet some three days ago, and is surprised to see me again at all. This may mean I am, once again, too late to intercept my target. If so, I may soon face The Three united, a prospect which would make Heaven's mightiest quail in fear. Of course, Heaven's mightiest would announce their arrival with blasts of holy fanfare, and ride into open battle on glittering beams of radiance. I am not that stupid.
The marketplace holds no Zakarumites, but their animals have repopulated the ruins. Here is something I had not noticed before: the giant, red-eyed skulls I had thought were randomly placed on these buildings are not sculpted naturally. Judging from the remaining stones, the skulls grew inside the walls and forced their way through the outer casements. Another feature I missed are two sewer entrances. Almost certainly, Kurast's municipal bowels are full of the most disagreeable forms of evil, which I must personally cleanse if there is ever to be regularity in her again. How did I come to embrace this quest, I wonder?
The sewers of Kurast are not as indescribably filthy as they could be, no doubt because they are no longer in active use. Horrors abound, but again nothing is as bad as I first feared. My first encounter was a group of Horadric Mummies, which was a bit of a surprise. How they maintain cohesion in this damp climate is beyond my powers of rationalization. Their leader was enchanted with an aura, which chilled and slowed all of my movements. Experimentally, I used the new hammer on him (or her; difficult to tell now.) The battle was decided with five blows, but I nearly died of boredom. Even without the aura's effects, this crude hammer is too slow to be of use.
These sewers are, in fact, nearly empty. A few Horadric Mummies shamble about here and there; an assortment of bats aimlessly flutter about and die; Tentacle Beasts have made homes for themselves in some of the larger nodes; otherwise, my attention is little diverted and free to wander. Did the Horadrim have a tradition for mummification in Kurast? Surely, I would have heard of it; a sleepy backwater like Lut Gholein could keep such a thing secret, but not the greatest city of the east. Best check the encyclopedia.
Dear old Deckard Cain knows of no mummies in Kurast. The Taan dabbled in mummification long ago, and these may be a remnant of that time -- I might ask Ormus. I think it would be just as profitable to consult the leaves from my morning tea, and say so, which made the old man laugh. "Ormus would like you to think him mad," Cain said. "I am perfectly happy to indulge him," I replied. Personally, I suspect these are creatures Diablo and Baal enslaved in the deserts of Aronach and summoned here for my entertainment, and they are not the only ones. Between the giant spiders, the apes, and the lightning bats, I wonder when I will see my next familiar face. Why, Blood Raven! Is that you? I'd hardly recognized you.
Kurast's sewers are as broad as Lut Gholein's were deep, and there is no sign they were ever anything but sewers. Two more entrances connect the sewers to the upper city -- none go to the lower. Either lower Kurast post-dates the sewer's construction, or the were not worthy of the gifts of sanitation. In one rear corner, a sluice gate leads to a sump, so the sewer might be flushed or drained for maintenance and the like. Flushing the sewer sounds like an excellent plan; the floor will be slippery, but those damned Tentacle Beasts won't be everywhere, getting smart ideas about attacking me.
After a good, long flushing, Khaleel and I go down to see what of value might have washed out. Heavy things, like gold, tend to be caught in sumps, and it is so much easier to check there than to explore every pipe. (Gentle reader, if you wonder how I know so much about sewers, let me just say that at home, this is the stuff of our daily existence.) A jumbled-up lot of monsters are struggling around in the muck down there -- some Tentacles and a few Mummies who weren't dashed to bits by their watery ride -- but nothing I can't take care of. And the treasure! Very few people realize how much wealth is lost every day in a large city simply by being dropped, and how much of that goes into the sewers. Most of my finds are coinage and jewelry, of course, but sheer volume compensates for that. Also in there is a golden strongbox, containing a human heart... well-preserved, slightly damp, flexible to the touch, and unharmable by any power I possess. When I drop it in the sump, it bobs on the surface, repelled by the filth. Nothing even STICKS to it. I'm tempted to leave it down here out of sheer spite.
Never mind the heart; it can sit with its former associates. On to the upper city, where I can loot a better class of corpse. The paladins are here in force, all true zealots eager to die for their cause. When men are willing to die for what they believe, they really ought to put more effort into finding out if what they believe is true. Their priests tell them what they do is right, and that is enough. The upper city's decorative trees have also been rallied to the cause, and more of those infernal vultures flap lazily about. How do my host and his brothers expect to entertain me like this? Unless they provide me with more variety soon, I shall become very cross, and may do one or more of them an injury.
To my delight, one of the houses has a silver mirror which survived the recent upheavals. I am sure Natalya will love it, once it has been polished and otherwise restored. Goodness, I look a fright! Alkor's potions may not help me to live forever, but they can help make me look as though I had.
Two dreadful battles behind me now. The first was a group of walking trees, quicker than average, led by one able to throw curses. I do wish I understood how Hell could work such magic out of a tree. While I knew to retreat, Khaleel unthinkingly let himself be surrounded, and was being pounded into paste before I pulled him out. The second was far, far worse: a group of those damned priests led by one of their cantors, or ministers, or whatever exalted title they give themselves. Perhaps because they find weather more celestial, these priests summon lightning and storms of icy rain, but more importantly they heal each other. The slow death of poison was meaningless to them; despite my misgivings, I had to beat them to death with the sledgehammer. I am growing hourly more annoyed with this instrument.
Two grand temples grace the upper city. Inside the first, one of those fluttery bats has an aura which lowers my magical resistances. Altering probabilities so effortlessly must be marvelous; according to father, Paladins are capable of it, though I have seen no evidence of that. Another temple feature I have just noticed here are the reliefs on the walls. These older expressions of religious fervor were covered over with the scenes of bloody submission I noted previously. They seem more subtle, though the carvings are now so abused it is hard to say what they once depicted. Heaven has always worked more subtlely to extract worship; Hell is content with fear, preferring to use discretion in battle.
Beyond the upper city is a large lake, with a stone causeway leading to a small island. Two more temples are visible on either side of the causeway -- Kurast's water control systems are miraculous indeed, to put underground temples in the middle of a lake! One temple is lair to a vampire, completely immune to Khaleel's icy magic. The sledgehammer takes care of it well enough, I suppose, but it seems so wrong to choose mere practicality over style. Not that I haven't made that choice already, so many times... I hope this is not the last dying gasp of my artistic standards.
According to Deckard Cain, the island in the lake is called Travincal, the religious heart of Kurast, site of the tower where the Horadrim buried Mephisto. The patriarch of the church was possessed by the Lord of Hate (good choice), the High Council of Seven has been twisted into evil mockeries of their former selves, and so on. This much anyone could have guessed; there is more. Cain absolutely insisted I speak to Ormus this time, I couldn't avoid it. Mephisto's power over the local area is focused through a device, unpoetically called a compelling orb. The orb is in Travincal, with the council guarding it. Destroy the orb, and all the little Zakarumites will be free to do as they will for the first time in years.
While I do not anticipate profound changes in their behavior, destroying the orb should put an end to the jungle's growth. If all the Flayers died, I would be in ecstasy. However, the price of failure would be terrible indeed. Should I die on this quest, Ormus has promised to write a poem commemorating my heroism. THAT simply CANNOT be ALLOWED to HAPPEN, UNDER ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. My artistic standards will never be allowed to pass so quietly into that long dark night! Tomorrow, the council will die!