Diablo III: Morbed by Micky Neilson;

Author:Micky Neilson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER FIVE

Morbed hauled himself up and into one side of a room choked with clutter. Beyond the small clear space around the door, mounds of equipment—clothing, furniture, artifacts, relics, and bagatelles—were packed floor to ceiling. As he looked closer, Morbed identified what might be a navigable path deeper into the room.

There was no indication of where his unseen observer had fled. The faint conversation in the fringes of his mind continued as he stepped over and onto the many items that still clogged his way, reaching out to the piles on either side of him to maintain balance, wary that at any time, the towering stacks might collapse and bury him. The lantern threw shadows in all directions as he progressed.

Farther on, a gleam caught his eye: the ivory-hued blade of a necromancer’s bone knife, resting on a shelf of debris.

Seize it! a voice urged from within.

Morbed possessed a blade of his own. Still . . . what harm in having more than one weapon? He snatched the bone dagger in passing, tucking it into his boot before moving on.

After picking his way into the center of the large room, Morbed rounded a heap and beheld a throne of sorts, built of various items: a grinding wheel, a cooking pot, a training dummy, bellows, bits of armor, and other things Morbed could not readily identify. There on the crude seat waited the robed figure, legs apart, his right elbow resting on his right knee, chin planted on the knuckles of a cloth-wrapped hand. He regarded Morbed silently. The lamplight reached just far enough into the hood to reveal what appeared to be a bandaged countenance.

“See you found the lantern,” the figure rasped in a phlegmy baritone, lowering his hand. “Heard legends about it, passed down from the forefathers. They say it feeds on the guilt of those who sin against themselves.” The stranger leaned forward, and his dark eyes, yellow where they should be white, widened. “I’ve never felt the faintest stirring from it. What does that tell you, mm?” Then began a coughing fit, and the man’s body shuddered violently.

With just the slightest movement, Morbed reached for his dagger.

“Don’t—hhough! hhough!—bother. While not the world’s most accomplished sorcerer, I am more than a match for you and your rat-sticker.”

Morbed held fast.

The other man continued. “You are the last of them, mmh? Your friends did not fare so well.”

The impression of judgment flooded through Morbed once again. His features tightened, and he strained to maintain a sense of awareness, a readiness to capitalize on any opportunity to improve his situation. “It seems your pet has slipped its leash,” he replied. “How long until these walls come down around you?”

His tormentor laughed mockingly, a thick chuckle that turned into another coughing fit, after which he spat a great stream of phlegm that did not fully escape his mouth. “Birthed in darkness, bent on destruction . . . it will do as its nature commands. Besides”—he waved his bandaged hand—“it would not be the first time these walls had been razed.

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