All my life I had been training for what seemed like this moment. From the first time I made a flower bloom by focusing the right energy on the soil, to coating a blade with fire, my first summoning of a sentient piranha like worm, to running on all fours howling at the moon as I hunted down evil. This confrontation, this showdown with Baal, the Lord of Destruction. My human companion Aliza lay dead, her body unable to withstand the corrupting necrotic energies that Baal started throwing out once I truly injured him. This is despite the armor and weapons that I sacrificed my very blood to imbue with righteous life force being used by her. I prayed to no particular god, more so to having faith in myself to see me through this to the end. For if I fall the world dies. Don’t get me wrong, though the safety of the world will be a great benefit should I prevail, what Baal’s destruction will give me, that I truly desire, is peace. From the beginning from when I was but four years old, to almost twenty-four summers now, my life has been nothing but training, learning, fighting. I have no human family left, Aliza the closest person that I had to a sister, she had been with me almost two years now, from when we first met in the Rogue Encampment. She was a reward foisted upon me for slaying Blood Raven, though she grew on me quickly. Up until a few months ago, I had thought that it would be Diablo himself that I would be staring down for what I hoped would be my final battle. Diablo, while intelligent for a Prime Evil, still fell like many others as my scythe jaggedly cut his head from his draconic shoulders. Mephisto ate a concentrated Armageddon, though jamming as much mana as I did into a spell like that had consequences of its own, namely bedridden for a week to restore the integrity of my mana pathways, with restoration draughts rubbed in every few hours. My Dire Wolf companions, Chaos, Gaia, and Abyss arrayed around me ready to leap forward to continue our fight to save the world. Chaos, the eldest of my three Dire Wolves, stands at just over five feet at the shoulder, her fur a perfect swirl of black and white. Gaia, the middle of her siblings, a few inches smaller than Chaos, solid brown almost black fur, with dark green eyes the only other spot of color. Abyss, the youngest, yet two inches taller than Chaos, everything from her nails to her eyes, a black so deep as if to draw the light in to never be seen again. They began as regular Wolves, but after our bonding, and the trials that we have been on, myself being far and away stronger than when I killed Andariel, their power becoming more than what their regular forms could safely contain, and thus they became creatures of myth, Dire Wolves.
The four of us rush in, my scythe, hungry for more demon blood leading the way, a Hurricane spell waiting upon on my lips to be unleashed at the point of contact. My girls looking to tear into Baal’s flesh with savage fury.
Our fight has still been going on for two hours, but I feel the end is near, especially as his link to the World Stone is almost severed. We have worn him down so much, minor wounds that we inflict now take many seconds to heal compared to instantly at the start of our confrontation, while major wounds such as lost limbs take over a minute for his demonic essence to reattach. As I chug another rejuvenation draught, I see that I have only two more left, when I started with over fifty. My armor and weapons are worn down, Charsi’s enchantments including self-repair worth much more than their weight in gold.
“You will fall like everything else, for this world and all planes connected to it are mine. My Brothers had their tricks, but mine are greater still, especially with the World Stone in my grasp. Behold.” Baal deems it time to talk just before he hits me with a spell that combines hellfire and necrotic energies, but my feet expecting to be touching ground as I am flung back twenty feet are not. Time is slowing down as I realize that I am in a portal tunnel, but not one I am used to. I am used to the blue and purple of Town Portals, not this sick mess of reds, black, and yellows. Baal continues his words. “The study of the World Stone yielded fascinating results. The portal that you are in that I control for instance. It may have taken time and so much energy to manifest, but you will repay that in spades as it renders your very being down to so much energy, which will in turn be fed back to me. Simply put, I win, and you lose.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I didn’t come into this confrontation to lose Baal. I was planning to win, or in this case, draw.” At that moment I did several things that I was told never to do. One was feeding my mana into another’s spell. I was told this as only someone who was much stronger than the caster had the ability to overcome another’s spell and take it for their own. The second, dissolving an enchantment without the proper runes. Even minor enchantments take so much power and time to create because the effect or effects persist until the object is destroyed. Purposely destroying the runes to make room for new, possibly better enchantments, released a lot of energy. Thus, the better the enchantment, the bigger the release of energy. My target, The Horadrim Cube that I found three months before Baal’s tomb in that other plane, more than a year ago. The last thing that I was told never to do was trigger a portal to open inside of another one. For at the very least I would be looking at death, if I was so lucky. This was my great big, last-ditch plan. I could have done it without having to strain my mana more than it already was, but I needed the feedback loop to make sure that the energy from the cube’s destruction would go in only one direction. All of that going smoothly was theory at best, as there was no way for me to test that plan and survive, though having to trigger this plan, I’m not going to be surviving anyway, so might as well go out with a bang big enough to shake the cosmos from the energy being released. I was able to have the cube’s opening facing out of the portal towards Baal, giving me my direction. I didn’t have to say anything more, for Baal’s suddenly scared face was all the proof that I needed as he was blasted to pieces from the channeled explosion.
If I had somehow survived, I would have been hailed as a hero. For what I did also severed the World Stone’s connection to the rest of the planet, unintentionally severing the planes of heaven and hell from ever being able to connect back to the mortal plane.
I thought as my mind faded and my body finished becoming energy that my story was over. I was so glad to be proven wrong as I somehow met another soul.
Compared to me who had lived and fought for twenty some years, thus my soul was big and bright and full of vibrant colors, the soul I found myself facing was barely a wisp of a dull white, and that wisp was flickering as if it couldn’t hold on anymore. I got a glimpse somehow of a just born baby that was failing to take a breath at all. The only sensation that I got was ‘Help’. This child had a tether to whatever world they were in, while I had the will to do what I wanted, while being free of my so called ‘destiny’. I metaphorically took this little soul into my hands and pressed it to my chest. We would be a merger of souls. The child like innocence of my soul, that I was never able to explore from the time the three blue fang-like markings appeared upon my body, was revitalized by the dying wisp of the barely born soul. In this new world I would grow and explore at my own pace. I would still become strong again to ensure that I never had to bend the knee to the will of others, unless it was my choice.