Diablo III: Morbed Read Free Page A

them.”
    Vorik turned. “Crypts.”
    Clovis removed his helm. “I will begin my search there.”
    Jaharra cut in, “We still don’t know what happened here. What if the thing outside these walls returns?”
    â€œThen I will know the glory of righteous battle,” the crusader responded.
    Jaharra stood before the crusader, and although he towered over her, somehow it seemed as though she looked down on him. “I say we find answers before all else.”
    Clovis’s tone was even. “Command as you wish. I am my own master.”
    Aedus sighed. “Though his time with us has been brief, I think we all know that this easterner will do as he pleases.”
    Without saying as much, Morbed agreed. Since their meeting, the holy man had displayed a single-minded determination to find a means of vindicating his religion, a quest the warrior hoped might be realized in discovering the remains of Akarat, upon whose teachings the Zakarum Church was founded. For the crusader, it was more than just a mission to venerate his order’s patron; the Zakarum had long ago fallen to corruption, and Clovis believed that Akarat’s bones held within them an unassailable purity, capable of scouring the historical blight and restoring faith in the order.
    On the rare occasions when Clovis spoke, he said that if he found the bones, the world would see the Zakarum in a different light. Morbed had questioned early on if Clovis’s own faith had truly weathered years of scorn. Indeed, the more time he spent with the crusader, the more Morbed believed that the warrior’s faith was, in fact, unshakable.
    Then, too, there were the late nights during their recent voyage, while the others slept, when Morbed would tread softly to the galley and see Clovis seated alone, head bowed, eyes distant and forlorn over a brim-filled cup of cold tea. He often wondered what transpired in the mind of the holy man during those long, quiet moments.
    Aedus indicated the spirit wolf. “Kasha will go with him and lead him back when necessary.”
    Jaharra responded, her eyes not leaving the holy man, “Very well. We’ve wasted enough time.”
    Clovis and his new pet set out. The wizard drove past the others, and the light moved with her.
    *  *  *
    Jaharra and her companions rounded the bend. Before them stretched another long passage, and at its end were more bodies, a score of them heaped just outside the ruins of two massive iron-banded wooden doors. An open chamber lay beyond.
    In their approach the visitors crunched insects beneath their feet. Here in the depths of the stronghold, the smell of decay and putrefaction had thickened to become nearly overwhelming. Slowly Morbed and the others stepped over the fallen, all of whom, save two, wore the light armor of the harriers. The two defenders lay closest to the chamber entrance.
    The room itself was a grand, towering space. Niches in the walls housed statues of various horned aberrations, situated in a ring and posed as if holding court. Spaced between these, around the periphery, were large arched tunnels with wooden doors set deeper in, flanked by great stone braziers. The floor was starkly etched with a wide circle at the outer perimeter, intersecting lines and loops combining in the center to form an elaborate symbol.
    Higher up and stretched along the wall’s circumference were rusted chains, pinned to the mortar in various places, where skeletal remains hung from timeworn shackles, their bony frames held together by yellowed ligaments and ragged cloth. Jaharra’s light ascended the tower’s height farther, where the macabre display continued upward, circling them, grim skulls leering down in immortal condemnation. At the uppermost reaches of the tower, a rounded parapet jutted out, winged gargoyles looming at each side, mouths set as if in screams.
    Jaharra’s voice sounded strange; although it should have echoed in