Chloe's week in the Bowels of Hell, that's what she called the place, was a mixture of scavenging the remains of dead things, running, hiding and avoiding anything that moved.
She quickly realized that she was one of the weakest creatures in this new world of monsters. She needed to get out, but she didn't have the courage to cross the great cavern and return to the waterfall.
“Even if I did manage to reach it,” she muttered. “How am I supposed to climb up?” She shook her head. “No, that won't work. I need to find another exit, if one even exists.”
[Hunger 7%]
Her growling stomach reminded her that she couldn't just hide away. She needed to eat. If she let her hunger get out of hand and she lost control down here, she would be torn apart by the other monsters.
She couldn't die yet. She had a mission. Get stronger. Kick Malice's ass and find her sister, and then return home.
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A week later, while Chloe was looking around the tiny bit of territory she had mapped in her mind, she found a corpse of some sort. She assumed it was a dead demon, since it was mummified and almost completely unrecognizable.
She poked at it with one finger, and it crumbled to dust in her hand. A shiny green gem lay in the center of the ash pile.
She picked it up and pocketed it. She wondered what the gem was for, but her stomach growled again, and she quickly forgot about it. She wiped her hand off on a rock before returning to her search.
She was looking for something weak to kill, if something like that existed. If there was nothing weak, then she needed something stupid enough to fall for a trap.
She’d spent many sleepless nights thinking about how she'd trap something more powerful than her. She'd come up with a few ideas, all stolen from movies.
Her first idea was simple enough. She needed to dig a hole in the floor directly above the lava lake. Then she'd cover it with a thin layer of shale and hope to hell something stood on it and fell into the lava. She’d then sneak down and decapitate the burning beast. She didn't feel positive about that idea, the chances of her falling in the lava were too high.
Her next ideas were standard trap fare. The rolling boulder trap, the spiked pit trap and the last and most desperate trap, hanging upside down with her claws extended and hoping something walked beneath her. She’d then stab it in the head with her claws and hope it died.
None of these plans sounded very appealing, but Chloe was desperate, and sometimes desperate people have no choices left but to do something stupid.
She fled back to her hole when she heard something stomping down the passageway.
Chloe spent the next few hours planning her trap. Her hunger gnawed at her, and in her desperation she even tried to eat the gem she'd found. It was rock hard and tasted like dirt.
She had gathered a small stash of glowing moss which lit up her new home, and in that light she studied the gem. There was a rough spiral shape carved into the center of it.
She played with it throughout that night and finally when she grew bored with the gem she drew out her amulet. As soon as the gem got near to the amulet, the gem began to change shape in her hands.
It twisted and reached up to the amulet like the branches of a tree reaching for the sun. She touched the stone to the amulet, and immediately the symbol of the Talamasca on the amulet opened up, and the stone was absorbed into it.
It happened so quickly that Chloe thought she'd imagined it at first. But when she ran her fingers over the amulet, she found that it was warm.
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It took Chloe two days of constant searching to find another body. This one's head was caved in, and Chloe managed to scrounge up a mouthful of its brains.
It tasted like shit and did nothing for her hunger, but it would work as bait.
She dragged the body under a stone ledge that she had found a few days earlier, and then she climbed up onto the ledge and waited.
Hours passed before something appeared. It looked like a giant snail, about the size of a large dog. Its shell was orange, and it left a trail of fire in its wake.
It was too short for her ‘stab it in the head strategy.’ But she was already in position, and she couldn't back out now. Her stomach wouldn't let her.
The Ember snail, that's what she decided to call it, slithered towards the corpse slowly, and she watched it carefully studying its movements. If the snail could survive in this place, than it had to be dangerous.
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It stopped twenty feet from where she sat, and then its lower jaw dropped open, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. She didn't know snails had teeth. She just hoped it had a brain.
The snail slowly inched nearer until it was close enough to smell the disgusting fleshy aroma of the decaying body.
It started to chew on the cadaver, and Chloe knew that this was going to happen. She could wait no longer. She extended her nails and then activated her new ability for the first time.
[Oath of Pain: Activated]
[Sets you on fire when cast. The oath uses your pain to increase your strength]
Her body burst into flames and her muscles bulged. She expected that part. The part she did not expect was just how incredibly painful it would be.
She fell to her knees and screamed in agony as her skin burnt. She bit her lip, trying to control the pain, but it did nothing to dull it. Even when she was still human, she had never felt pain like that.
"Holy shit!" she screamed, but she couldn't hear her own voice, the roar of the flames were so deafening.
She had not expected such intense, all consuming pain. Her head spun, and she fell from the ledge and landed on her back.
She rolled to her feet and slashed at the Ember Snail's head. Her claws cut through its antennae, and red-hot lava spurted out of the wounds and sizzled on the stony ground.
Chloe dropped to her knees as the pain redoubled. The snail's neck stretched out towards her-its face a wall of jagged teeth.
Hell no, I can't go out like this.
She scrunched up her eyes, and felt the hard ground beneath her feet. She directed her new strength into her legs.
"Die you slimy mother custard son of a biscuit!" she yelled as she thrust herself forward.
Her arms outstretched, claws reflecting the flames. Her razor sharp nails ripped through the snail's mouth and tore through its flesh effortlessly.
The snail let out a pitiful squawking sound as its slimy body deflated and a pool of lava spread around it. Its shell began to expand and glow a menacing red. Chloe jumped over the lava and slashed off the snail's head and dived away just as it exploded.
The explosion threw her across the cavern, and she hit the wall and crumpled to the ground. An intense pain lanced through her head and she saw an image of her standing over the dead body of Hope.
[Ember Snail Killed - Progress Towards Next Evolution: 13%]
She lay motionless for a moment, groaning in agony and trying to process what she had just seen.
"Shit!" she groaned as she realized that she was in control of her own pain.
[Oath of Pain: Deactivated]
The pain faded, and she sat up, still with the snail's floppy head in her arms. She looked at her arms and legs expecting burn marks, but there was nothing, not even faint scorch marks.
It seemed like her fire spell was an illusion - a damned painful one, though.
She sniffed the snail and pulled a face, "Please have a brain."
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Chloe returned to the hole she called home, sweat soaked and covered in slim. She ate the measly snail's brain, then she fed the snail's gem to the amulet, and once again the amulet absorbed it. She wasn't sure what it was doing, but she felt that it was important somehow.
She focused on the amulet, trying to sense a connection with it. After a few attempts, she felt a tingling sensation run down her arm. She looked down to see that the amulet was glowing.
"What are you?" she asked, and an image appeared in her mind of her holding a black sword, standing over a dead crocodile.
"That's me. But how?"
There was no response.
She tried to summon more images, but they never came.
“Wait. You are the weapon,” she said. “Just like Garrick's bird that transformed into a sword.”
She picked at an unhealed wound as she drew on the memories of the past few weeks.
“When Cassadin used you,” she said, speaking to the amulet. “You transformed into an axe. How does it work? How do I summon you?"
An image flashed through her mind. It was her speaking, she couldn't hear the words she said, but she saw her lips moving. She was saying a name.
"What is your name?"
Only silence answered her question.
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Chloe woke up the next day in a bad mood. She was sick of all the mysteries, all the pain and mindless killing.
She just wanted out of this underground prison and to see the light of day. The vision she'd received from the snail's putrid brain showed a series of tunnels that led slowly upwards.
She had also seen something else in that vision. A monster the size of the tunnel itself. The snail knew it as the Behemoth, the Lord of the Catacombs.
Chloe was afraid, and she didn't know where the hell she was, but she knew she couldn't stay there another day.
She was so sick of being afraid. It felt like she was losing her mind. Each day was made up of fear and hunting. She was becoming an animal. A creature of instincts, and her instincts were telling her that she needed to get out before something hungry came looking for her.
Chloe adjusted the amulet around her neck and crawled out of her hole in the wall.
As soon as she emerged from the darkness, she heard the sound of wings flapping. It was a flock of Hellkites. That was her name for the black and red bat-like creatures that owned the air. They were weak alone, but she had seen a flock of them take down a lizard man.
The Hellkites circled and swooped around her, squealing and screeching in protest at her intrusion. She had noticed days earlier that the Hellkites didn't like her scent. It was one of the perks of being undead.
Being a rotting corpse has its benefits.
Chloe waited for them to pass, and once the air was clear she strode determinedly to the end of the tunnel. She reached the edge and looked up at the sheer cliff sides stretching as far as her eye could see.
The top of the catacombs were so high above her that she felt dizzy and her stomach lurched. She turned back and looked down into the dark abyss of the cavern. There was no going back. It was time to leave this place.
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