A little history: I love Diablo 2 -- a computer game for those who do not know. It was my life for awhile--too long--and I wrote for a Diablo 2 website for awhile--columns and articles and whatnot. The following short story I wrote for a contest, only to discover, that at the submission page, they refused to accept submissions from Maryland and Connecticut. What the fuck? I remember being very pissed, and I'm still pissed, because I think my story is quite good. After rereading it today, yeah, it's a bit wordy in some parts, and I cut it down a little. I'm a more concise writer now....fourish years of writing and editing will do that. Honing skills and whatnot. There's always so much room to improve.
Anyway, I won't be surprised if no one reads this. There's a lot of proper nouns, and if you aren't familiar with Diablo lore, you'll probably be confused. Thankfully I'm an expert. If I memorized important stuff--like science--as much as I memorized facts about Diablo 2, I'd have probably cured cancer by now...and I'm sadly not exaggerating. Anyway. here it is.
An Angel’s Fall
To fall this far is to lose yourself. Your world, your life, until you become a distorted husk of what you once were. From the High Heavens to the Hellforge amongst the flames of the molten river, to despair itself I have fallen. Spirit and mind infused within a creature that is not me, a terrible presence from deep within the shadows of creation. My name…I am still known as Izual, but the name means nothing. Meaningless. Misplaced. Identity was lost long ago, torn from my very being as I fell to the shadows, as I became a creature far worse than Chaos itself.
--
“The blade cannot be forged.” Tyrael paced across the glistening bridge, its light-fractured shine matching that of the Archangel’s ethereal wings. His gauntleted hand instinctively rested on his sword’s diamond pommel. Too many battles in the past ages, yet this battle could end everything. Likely would. Darkness could grow only so thick before light failed to penetrate. “Shadowfang must not be completed. For now it is merely a blade, a common weapon, but it holds endless potential. You must strike Hellforge. Destroy the blade. Destroy all you find amongst the flames. Do whatever you must to prevent the power from being unleashed.”
Izual bowed his head slightly, his gray hood covering his dark eyes, pale face. “The blade will not see completion,” he said, his voice raspy and worn like the rest of him. “I have battled Chaos before. Darkness is only so thick, never deep enough to deter our light.”
Tyrael nodded despite disagreeing with all he heard. If only life was so easy; if only absolutes truly existed. “You have my deserved trust, Izual. My greatest lieutenant, wielder of Azurewrath. Trust in the runeblade, what is rightfully yours. Gather yourself before you plunge into darkness. The Burning Hells is a sinister expanse, but why am I telling you this? You already know too much of Hell.”
“Only because I must.”
Tyrael laughed bitterly. “We all must. You, me, the council. We know of Hell because it is our greatest enemy, a relentless fiend that refuses to stay in the shadows. We must keep Hell at bay. We must. We become the aggressors. You, my friend, will be the hero you’re destined to be. One of Heaven’s greatest.”
“Hero’s are made by choice,” Izual said, guising the resentment in his voice. “This is duty, not choice. Besides, I wouldn’t be a very good angel if I sat back and watched the Heavens crumble. No, Tyrael. I will do this, but it won’t make me a hero.”
“All eyes see differently. Think what you must so long as you destroy Shadowfang, and if you use caution just once, use it now. Hephasto has lived long in the flames, corrupted by Mephisto himself. Even we do not know the limitations of the Prime Evils. Do not underestimate your enemy. The Overlord is covetous of his forge. Where you find Shadowfang, you will find Hephasto.”
“Corruption has never matched desire or need. Hephasto commands the Burning Hells through vice. His world is distorted, his mind gone. It is his nature to battle, an impulse he cannot ignore. I journey to Hell through desire, a need not only mine, but that of all the Heavens. Need conquers corruption. I conquer corruption.”
Tyrael gripped the bridge’s smooth marble railing until his hands ached. The Crystal Arch was safe for now, the buttressed towers and temples, the bridges piercing through light-filled clouds, pink and blue and pale green, worlds away from harm. For now. For a very limited time if Izual failed. Izual could not fail, not when the Heavens depended on his success.
“Do not forget the past, Izual. All creatures are vulnerable to corruption. Even angels.”
--
I laughed behind Tyrael’s back. I underestimated corruption, believed it could only consume the weak, those who placed their faith outside the light, outside of Heaven. All creatures are vulnerable to corruption? Even angels? I had not believed Tyrael’s truth. I feared Darkness, the creatures of the Burning Hells, Inarius’s tainted metal-smith, but I never questioned my own ability to resist corruption. I had silently endured torture, felt agony to my core. I saw horrors no eyes should see, bloodied my blade a thousand times. Ages of battle, but Darkness is only so dark. A hint of light always shines through.
The Prime Evils are shadows themselves, of the purest black. I could not defy their torture, their pain. I screamed our truths. Screamed my throat raw. For my transgressions I am ever sorry. Ever stricken. The secrets I shared…
--
The heavy bronze door slammed shut behind Izual; he barely heard it. He had stood in this chamber countless times, enough to memorize the wall patterns—finely painted green vines speckled red twisting through sea-blue higher and higher until blending into the frescoed domed ceiling. The billowing clouds looked almost too real, as if he stared into a sunset sky rather than a ceiling tinted orange and yellow, the clouds crests absorbing sun. Even if this sun was not real like that outside the temple, he would miss it.
The sun did not shine in Hell. True light could penetrate the depths, where towering flames and the muted red glow of molten rock provided the only luminance.
Izual’s heavy steps echoed across the marble floor. Peering down, he glanced at himself in the mirror-like reflection, at the strands of light whisking behind him, the dark face hidden within a hood, the pale blue breastplate scuffed and dented.
He would bring light to Hell. Just a fraction for now. But someday, when the council demanded, when the powers of Heaven opened the gates into Darkness, he would stand on the front line to flood Hell with light. So long into the future. First, destroy Shadowfang and return to his post, lieutenant beneath Tyrael. Destroying the cursed blade mattered above all else.
Izual knew he did not possess the powers of an Archangel, but perhaps success here would make the council look away from raw power and consider ability and desire. Ordinary angels did not serve on the council, true, but all things were subject to change when change was needed. Destroying Shadowfang was a test—a test he would not fail. He had defeated more formidable foes than Hephasto and whatever else dwelled in the Burning Hells. He had battled Overlords and limped away with the spoils of victory. He had brought light to where light had never shined. Hephasto was merely a man who had basked within the shadows for too long, a man who had risen through the ranks of Hell.
“Just a man,” Izual murmured to himself.
Like himself at one time, just a man.
Azurewrath lay across the stone dais where he had left it. The others knew enough to not touch his weapon, the legendary blade entrusted to his care. Izual felt the blade’s holy aura before laying a finger on the sapphire hilt ending at a ruby pommel. Wrapping his leather-bound hand around the hilt, he grinned as assurance flooded into him. The blade would not fail. Could not. Had never. Spinning it in hand, he again felt the weapon’s familiar weightlessness, its speed as the crystal blue blade severed the air. The fires of Hell would soon scream at the touch of Azurewrath and the cold energy instilled within it. Nothing had ever stood against the ancient runeblade, as old as time itself. Nothing ever would. “Hephasto will scream loudest of all.”
“Hephasto?”
Izual quickly turned and stared at the temple’s entrance. Light slipped between the slightly ajar doors, the lone beam cascading over the woman Izual could never quite understand. “What brings you here, Laluriel?” He slammed his blade into its scabbard, letting the echo pass through the chamber.
Laluriel stepped forward out of the light, wearing the same blue dress Izual had never seen her without. The delicate fabric sleeked down her lithe frame in rippling waves and spread across the floor like liquid glass. Her bright green eyes peered out from behind strands of black hair, studying him, accusing Izual before he could speak a word. “I saw you from a distance. You come here only to retrieve your sword, and you need your sword only for battle.”
“The Burning Hells,” Izual said, foreseeing Laluriel’s wince. “There’s a metal-smith I must find, a sword I must destroy.”
Laluriel shook her head as she frowned. “Why is it always you? I heard you speak of Hephasto. If he…it is involved, this is matter of great importance. No doubt another errand for Tyrael? Why can’t he solve this problem? Why send you into harm’s way?”
“Tyrael is on the council. He battles the Prime Evils while we battle lesser demons. You know this. Why must you hear it again?”
“Perhaps because you’re continuously cursed with these mindless tasks. You are always chosen, and this is far worse than the others. The Burning Hells sits beside the Chaos Sanctuary. There are far easier ways to kill yourself than traveling through the layers of Hell.”
Thoughts of the Chaos Sanctuary dizzied Izual; they always did, as if one of the Prime Evils slipped into his mind when his thoughts lingered too near to Chaos. “Curse?” He laughed at what could not be farther from the truth. “This is not a curse, but a blessing. None will forget my name when I return with Hephasto’s anvil as my prize.”
“And if you die? What then?”
“I will be of the forgotten, the fallen. But I will not fail. I have traveled the Burning Hells before. I have faced the fell-spawn and demon lords. My sword has tasted their blood.”
“Your sword is drunk on blood.” Laluriel’s smile matched Izual’s glare. He was a fool, believing he could succeed alone against Darkness he chose not to fathom. It was as if he wanted to die. “You jump when Tyrael speaks, and all to gain favor with the Archangels, something you are not nor will ever be. Like all things, from Hell to Heaven, we live in a hierarchy, and you alone will not change that. You are a fine lieutenant, Izual. No one argues that, but you cannot achieve anything greater. The council has forever been and will forever be Archangels.”
“All things change.” Izual listened to his own words fail. Laluriel spoke too many truths—truths he did not want to hear, would not accept. If things did not change on their own, he would bring about that change by himself. Even the High Heavens were not immune to change. The council needed another point of view, the eyes of a battle-angel to help them see straight and just. They were blind without him, unable to see anything past the Prime Evils.
“And all things die, Izual. Remember that. All things die.”
--
Death was beyond me. I, an angel, felt the nearly limitless power flow through me, strengthened by Azurewrath. I did not listen to Laluriel. I could not afford to listen. The haunting echoes called, lured me into the deepest dungeons of Hell. Laluriel did not understand. Tyrael trusted me when he could not trust another. I would not step through the Gates of Heaven only for my own ambitions, but for Heaven itself. For those I left behind.
Perhaps if she knew of Shadowfang and the grim future…perhaps then we would have departed on better terms. Her scowl, I remember her scowl before she turned and shut the door behind her. I never saw her again. I saw none of them again, not as I once saw them, through my own eyes, my own consciousness. I became a being of neither Heaven nor Hell, a spirit forever lost between.
Alone.
If only I had listened. Perhaps I would not be what I am today. I would not roam endlessly while moving nowhere. I would have allies, not enemies to both sides. My once closest friend would not seek to destroy me, proclaiming me a traitor when I could do nothing to hold the secrets within. The torment was too great. I had to escape, and this is how the fates punish me? By making me a shadow! A shadow trapped within a husk that is not mine, an exile of all regions but despair. I would have taken those secrets to the grave, only the Prime Evils would not let me die. I tried.
I tried so hard to die.
--
Most creatures of Hell were intelligent enough to avoid Izual as he treaded across the charred and blackened ground. Life may have once thrived here, but now only desolation remained. Stained bones, shattered pillars and ruins, warped roots protruding out of rock and crumbling at the slightest touch. Hell corrupted everything outside the gate, leaving nothing untouched by the expanding Darkness. Izual did not remember Hell so dark, the horizons ending a rock’s throw away. Strands of light floating behind him provided only a small circumference of visibility. Even the glow of Azurewrath seemed fainter than usual, its aura stifled.
However often he heard the beasts of Hell, he saw nothing other than a fell-spawn skitter before him and vanish into the surrounding darkness. It seemed the beasts had learned to fear angels over the ages, at least angels wielding a sword born from legends. Even so, even when he walked for what felt like hours, Izual did not allow his concentration to wane. A moment of weakness here would bring death. The lowliest fiend could kill you. He had known too many angels to cross through the gate and never return. Nothing was ever found of them. Not a piece of armor, not a strand of light glistening in the shadows. Darkness engulfed. Izual supposed it was better that way. If the Darkness destroyed him, he wanted nothing to be found. Spare them the horror, the grief.
“Such is the fate of the unprepared.”
Izual felt time bend around him as he passed beneath an arched stone gate. He had traveled this deep only once before, to the outskirts of the Burning Hells before turning back in haste, not waiting for the flames to burn hotter. That journey had been his own choice, driven by a desire to scout but forced back to Heaven out of terror from what he had heard travel up the stairwell leading to the Burning Hells. A twisting, turning stairwell of blackened stone that freed heat like nothing Izual had ever felt. Even Azurewrath had felt warm in his hand.
Now standing before that very same passage leading to the final depth of Hell, he hesitated. The heat was already suffocating, the shrill cries piercing his mind. A faint red glow seeped out of the passage and crawled across the ground, as if alive. The glow of flames. Flames forged by Hell itself.
“I am an angel,” he reminded himself, as if that meant something here.
Izual listened to stones crack beneath his feet as he descended the stairs through darkness so thick he thought it would never end. Heat pushed against him from all sides, sliding beneath his armor and into his hood as if trying to bore into him. His movements felt sluggish, slowed by the thickening air, the heat that brought pain to each breath, like swallowing flames. Finally the darkness ended as a wave of scorched air pushed him back against the wall.
A fiery sea endless in three directions. Exploding spheres of molten rock unleashed clumps of liquid fire into the hazy, uneven air. Stone islands traveled in only one direction, spreading out before him and weaving through the hellish sprays. Thunder roared incessantly, sky a seamless orange-red.
Izual could not hear himself think. The ground trembled slightly, strident screams tearing through his mind as he fought to keep the thunder out. Truly the Burning Hells, for flames touched everything. Small fires burnt in the center of stone islands, where fires should not, could not, burn. Charred bones too near to those flames, ruling out what Izual had wished were coincidences. For a moment, a bright and hope-filled moment, he thought that perhaps the Burning Hells were long ago abandoned, that the council was wrong and only fire dwelled here, but visibility extended too far for him to maintain that hope. Across the isles he observed a group of denizens, fell-spawns and a demon lord. Just one, thankfully, but one was often too many for most travelers. Whether their claws or fiery breath killed you first, death was death.
Izual approached cautiously, waiting for the creatures to see him. Tyrael’s warning spoke in the back of his mind. Caution. Recklessness was death. One slip into the molten river. Failing to see a bursting sphere of flames. A trap. Mindless creatures should not set traps, but Izual ruled nothing out here. And demon lords were one of the few creatures of Hell that could think ahead. Plan and brood. Plot. That made them all the more dangerous, far worse than a creature that killed by instincts.
Azurewrath felt cold in his hand. The brittle stones barely sounded beneath his plate boots. The fiends still had not turned. Another step and still they looked away. Crouching, Izual picked up a small black stone and skipped it across the ground, between the many feet of the fell-spawns. The creatures turned instantly, pale flesh hanging off their deformed four limbs as they awkwardly skittered toward him. Saliva drooped off their sharpened chins, their fiery green eyes wide and never blinking, their fangs small blades.
The mammoth demon lord turned momentarily. Muscles bulged from beneath its leathery black skin, curved claws hanging off its hands as large as Izual’s head. Black horns bent outwards of its chiseled face, the horns red-tipped, a deep red like its eyes and forked tongue that snapped out of its mouth as it spoke words Izual did not understand. The fell-spawn charged as the demon lord turned, its long strides carrying it away from Izual and the lesser fiends.
The fell-spawn hissed and thrashed as they died. Azurewrath tore through their odd frames with surprising ease, freeing sprays of sickly green fluid and blue mist from the cold energy within the blade. He dodged their acidic spit, leaping up and stomping down on the creatures’ skulls, listening to their bones shatter. If Hell was to ever be cleansed, it first must be purged of all its evils. Destroying Shadowfang would not be enough even in the near future. First destroy the sword, then seek out and obliterate every fiend along the boiling river.
The demon lord’s odd behavior worried him. Izual had readied himself to slay the demon first while defending against the fell-spawn, but his plan had altered when the greater demon turned and ran. Ran. A demon running. Setting a trap, perhaps. Izual rather battle the creature than anticipate its next move, but it mattered not. The creature would nevertheless die. First, however, he had to find it.
Izual cut his way through handfuls of fell-spawn before the act began to bore him. The creatures died easily. Once or twice he wiped corrosive spit from his armor, but he otherwise remained unscathed. He had expected worse, fiends far more fearsome than the mindless ground dwellers. Legends spoke of fallen knights corrupted by the spirits of Hell, knights who commanded tainted elements and wielded swords crafted from flames.
Legends, of course, were mostly untrue.
The path intersected ahead, straight and right made up of stone that traveled further into the fiery sea, while at the left a high-walled bridge arched above the fire. Pillars of flames impeded Izual’s view of the other side. The heat intensified, the flames taller and wider, seemingly alive as they crackled and hissed like static whispers. Fiery torrents shot out at him, forcing him to sprawl to the ground. Izual stood and brushed himself off as the flames subsided back into their wall.
He felt himself being watched as he crossed the bridge. Turning, he saw only empty stone paths and bubbling fire. No eyes, nothing that could possess eyes. The bridge opened to a peninsula surrounded by fire. Still he felt eyes studying him, the touch of corruption licking against his armor. His grip on Azurewrath tightened as a wall of flames shot up into the orange sky and sped back down into the ground, revealing the eyes that had watched him.
Although he had never seen Hephasto before now, he knew it could be no one other than the smith. A massive anvil rested against the creature’s almost comically large thigh. Ripped canvas pants covered his bottom half, his upper body, a bulk of muscle over muscle over muscle, unclothed and glistening with sweat. Hephasto towered above the five demon lords behind him, each of his arms larger than a small man. Izual managed to look past the enemy, to the Hellforge directly behind them, elevated atop a set of circling stairs. A red longsword lay across the Hellforge. Shadowfang. For now the sword was just another weapon, defenseless against Azurewrath.
“An angel in the Burnings Hell?” Hephasto asked, his voice an avalanche of raucous sound, his bulbous face contorting as he spoke. “Come to visit me? It’s been too long since I’ve crushed bones on my forge.”
With the point of Hephasto’s finger the five demon lords charged. They moved quicker than Izual anticipated, their fibrous wings swelling out behind them as flames spewed from their mouths. Izual dove to the left and somersaulted to his feet. Claws shattered against Azurewrath as another pair scrapped against his breastplate, nearly digging through the tempered steel. Turning and ducking, Izual dodged a long swipe as he raised the sword in an uppercut, tearing a demon lord down the middle. He plunged the blade into another’s chest as he was hit from behind and skidded across the ground. A clawed foot stomped beside his face, crushing a rock to dust. With the flick of his wrist he severed the foot, toppling the demon lord. Rising, Izual swiped another across the face. The remaining demon lord lunged forward, straight onto Azurewrath. Izual twisted the blade and ripped it free. The grounded demon struggled to stand as Izual plunged the blade into its back.
“An angel in the Burning Hells,” Izual said, drawing deep breaths. “You have it correct, Hephasto. But what now? What now that your minions lay at my feet?”
Hephasto leaned back and laughed louder than the thunder. “An ignorant angel. You forget where you are. Hell. The Burning Hells. Our numbers are endless, a legion no angel can stand against. To enter the Burning Hells is to enter death itself.”
Izual shivered. Not because of Hephasto’s words, but the eyes he felt behind him, staring holes through him, countless holes. He turned as the smith roared with laughter. Demon lords and fell-spawn filled bridge and space before it. A few creatures Izual did not recognize joined their ranks, what too closely resembled the fabled fallen Oblivion Knights, their fiery swords and fists made up of the elements. Izual studied the circle of flames. No escape, no gap to allow him passage. The only escape off the peninsula was across the bridge, through a gathering of fiends even an Archangel would not scoff at.
Izual planted his feet and charged. Not at the bridge, his only hope of escape, but at Hephasto and Shadowfang. The Hellforge. The smith stepped back in surprise, only for a moment before his enormous frame lurched forward, raising his anvil to strike. Izual crouched as he sprinted, leaving a trail of black dust in his wake. His dark eyes stared across the blade horizontal before his eyes. Strands of light whipped behind him, his cloak snapping like a flag caught in the wind.
Anvil and sword met as one, sparks exploding in the impact. Hephasto tittered forward as Izual sped behind him, dragging Azurewrath across the stone and bringing it upwards with all his force. Hephasto somehow repelled the blow with the much smaller anvil, yet it knocked him back, down the slight slope. Izual leapt up the stairs to the Hellforge. Corruption surrounded it like an evil aura, wave after wave of iniquitous heat. Shadowfang glistened within the haze. Izual heard Hephasto scream, saw the legion of demons spilling onto the peninsula, felt the ages of vice instilled into the Hellforge, soon to be transferred into Shadowfang. No. It would end today. Now. Shadowfang would be but a faint memory of the past, just as he, Izual, would vanish, become one of the fallen.
His arm arched back, bringing Azurewrath over his head and onto Shadowfang. The blade shattered into millions of infinitesimal red specks, pommel to tip exploding into nothingness. Hellforge rang like an ageless bell from deep within the Chaos Sanctuary. Azurewrath shook violently in the angel’s hands. The deed was done. Shadowfang destroyed. The Heavens could rest for a time, before Darkness’s next plot to unleash Chaos.
The horde was upon Izual before he could react. He fell battling, spinning, killing fiend after fiend but never denting the mass. Screaming.
--
Forever. Torture lasts forever. Not the touch of the Prime Evils…this is far worse, far more lasting, far more internal. To die again was not punishment enough. My spirit was bound to Hell. Me, an angel, a being that did not deserve this fate. I fell through world after world, dungeon after dungeon, to lowest depths of Hell. So deep, so dark, that in the end even Hell could not embrace me as its own.
My weapon is gone, my body no longer of any realm. Only my spirit remains, but even that falters after ages of wandering through despair. There is only this, these thoughts that are mine alone, that may as well not exist. They should have left me in the Abyss where I belong. I am not part of this world. I am part of nothing. They should have left me to roam the blackness, to exist in nothing, with nothing, think nothing.
Instead, I torture myself through thoughts. Is my name still spoken? Remembered, even? Have I destroyed Shadowfang, or did the credit fall onto another? Does Tyrael recall my name? My face? Has Laluriel forgotten her last words to me? My last words to her? If Hephasto still lingers in the Burning Hells, does he remember who destroyed Shadowfang? Or am I just another of the fallen? Am I, Izual, forgotten to all but myself? I so wish I could forget. I wish to vanish, to leave despair.
If the Heavens do still exist, I beg them, please, let me forget. Let me go. Rid me of this punishment.
All beings are subject to corruption. All beings die. Fade. All beings forget and are forgotten.
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