Decepticon
30-12-2007, 20:51
Hello.
I am looking for two Diablo stories here.
One of them is quite a classic as far as I can remember (I read it several years back, I think). It tells about an Amazon and her quest for revenge against the demons that killed her Rogue friend. I think the Rogue's name was Lienen. It was a very nice story, well written and atmospheric. There was a Paladin as well, his name eludes me. He dies though, and leaves the Amazon woman a note or something, which she only reads in the end. There is also a young sorceress and a barbarian.
The second one is about a Necromancer. I can't remember much about it, other than the main character in the story being an old friend of the Necro. The Necromancer, if I remember, wants to use his powers to revive a loved on (which is what led him down his magical path). Him and the main character fell out or something, and the protagonist goes with a group of warriors to kill him. But they all die, as far as I remember.
I'm sorry for the lack of information on the stories. It was just so long time ago that I read them. I don't visit these forums often - but there are some very good works of fiction here and I have some real favourites.
So if someone knows the stories I am talking about, that would be fantastic. Thanks in advance.
RevenantsKnight
31-12-2007, 08:20
Welcome to the Fan Fiction Forum, Decepticon.
Unfortunately, I am certain that there are no such stories on these forums currently, or in the archives of The Dark Library, the fiction collection once associated with these sites. If these stories were ever in the Diabloii.net universe, they were in the original Dark Library or on the forums prior to the 2003 crash, and I have no knowledge of those eras. Perhaps looking around elsewhere online might prove useful, and Lienen sounds unique enough for a Google search. Best of luck with your search.
Snowglare
02-01-2008, 23:42
Have you tried private messaging?
Anyee's profile (http://forums.diabloii.net/member.php?u=331)
Iampunha's (http://forums.diabloii.net/member.php?u=15807)
Iampunha probably doesn't check the forum anymore, but Anyee's around, and they both have IM.
Snowglare
03-01-2008, 01:03
Sorry! :embarassed: I don't know of anywhere it's still hosted online, but that was one of a select few stories I kept a copy of for my own collection. So here it is:
Hearts, Broken and Still
by the Legendary l33t
Like all great works of fiction, dedicated to a girl not in love with the author.
"Bet you a drink that you're still thinking about her."
"It doesn't count if you check."
My name is Stephen. And that mopey idiot on the stool, one over, is my friend John. The two of us have been here a long time, longer than we care to think about. Even when the war's over, soldiers can still need their armies. Especially if they joined them young, especially if they don't know a life any different. Especially when they joined them to avenge family and town taken away, and not defend something that dared to still grow and be. Nothing to go back to, and with the battle finally and bloodily won, nowhere to go forward to.
The hand over there, knocking back rich caramel shots, there was a sword in it once. One that caught both light and blood on its shimmering edges. In another snapshot of memory, I could see a trembling energy growing in that hand. A black little shadow ball, of pure death-and-stay-dead. When I blink, at the vaguest periphery of vision, I can see all those glimmers. And I remember all the things we had to do to save the world. That's my signal to order a few more.
John and I've been knocking them back for hours, a tradition that's becoming increasingly traditional. We do as we can to treasure and keep these moments, because on the scale we have built for ourselves, these are the best we have known. And if I were a wise and a good man, I would not look forward from here. I would not dare step into tomorrow and the end of all tomorrows. But who says a clairvoyant has to be wise. A clairvoyant is just someone who knows exactly how stupid he'll be until the day he dies.
Happy endings are temporary ones. The princess married the prince and they lived happily ever after, until she died, a lot uglier and wrinkled than she used to be. And the prince hated himself, and their life together, and only existed in the memories of what he had thought it had been. John is young enough and dumb enough to think he's found that princess. And all I know is that whatever happens from this point, gets steadily less pleasant. ********. And a silent toast to John. "May you never find your heart's desire. May you always get by. May you never be so hopeful as to dream, and so bitter as to think. May you never catch a disease so virulent, that whiskey cannot cure it."
"Stephen, I'm getting another round."
"John, you read my mind."
**********
"You've got to see her, Stephen. Prettiest girl, I've ever seen. Short amber hair that curls up at the edges like angel wings, just so. Emerald green eyes. Musical laugh, wonderful smile..."
"Bone white teeth?"
"You're a riot. And I mean that. Check. The truth's right in here, where it's always been."
The banter of mages is a beautiful thing. Talking shop always enters every conversation. The psychic and necromancer jokes help keep us from forgetting who we are. Lest I walk through a crowd and forget to clutch my ears against the yelling. Lest he walk through a graveyard without breaking down into whimpering choke-filled sobs.
"She's too good for you."
"Who have you not said that about?" John's catching on.
"Aye, aye, you're right. You caught me. Drinks on me, then."
************
"She's gone." I knew this talk was coming. Simply from human nature. Not from anything special.
"I'd heard, John. I'm sorry." These aren't the words he needs. But they're the words he wants, and I'm his friend. She'd died in a plague, one of many. Her death was as random as his love had been, a purposeless accident of bodies and pulses. The fever to die, and the fever to rut aren't very different. Not in the fundamentals.
"And tomorrow, tomorrow was the day, I was finally going to say something. Watching her on that bed, knowing that I'd never see her again, I almost had the courage. I almost said goodbye the right way. I almost let her know. Almost. Friggin' almost. Bloody friggin' damnit almost." He sinks his fist into a post, and my distant hands are there to cradle it. It is swathed in the invisible veil of my thoughts, and it will not bleed no matter how badly he wishes it to. It is the only comfort I can give that won't offend him. For now, that's enough.
"Aye." Even without reading minds, I know he doesn't want the truth. Doesn't need a reminder that he's said this every day for a long time, that had the cycle not violently stopped here, it might never have. And I don't tell him to keep playing with death, since he was so damned afraid of living. I don't mention how I thought she was just another crutch to keep the abyss away. That he didn't want true love, but just needed someone as proof to the void that at least one heart beat for him. That he mattered. That his existence wasn't just the temporary ripples of a stone being tossed into a pond. But that the stone was still there, and that the lake bed was different now. That he had been a change, often for good. With her, died his ability to matter. I should have seen that coming. But I always peek into time at the wrong moments, anyway.
************
John's gone the next day. And for a while, I let myself think that he just needs perspective. Just needs space. That he'll actually become better. That he'll come home.
The stories filter back slowly. About a necromancer looking for something beyond animation. Looking to bring the whole mess back, body and soul. Not just bone, not just ashen flesh and dead sullen eyes. But making real life again, bringing something back the way it had left. And my first thought is "You, stupid little bastard." My second is the toast I made.
The man that'd been my friend had become a thing of dark needs. Eating the still beating hearts of shamans in dank jungle temples, holding demonic masses on blood slickened ice. Ice, turned the pink color of spring's first bouquet, lovingly given to a girl. Blood and ice, the color of a rosy cheek or lips, round and full. The caravan traders say there is always rain pouring down around him, sometimes red, sometimes acid green, and more often than that, salty like tears. And the traders always make a point of avoiding the storm.
From far away, in the eyes of a hundred travelers, I watch him disintegrate. Watch as his desires and regrets eat him alive. Watch him do everything wrong, for the sake of a second chance. For the delusion that the next time round, he'd do it right. The things we do for love. Anything for her, again. The devil take the risk.
*******************************************
I track him as best I can, but it gets harder over time. I can only read humans, and he was becoming less and less one. The whiff of his thoughts becomes less a spotlight, and more the faint tang of familiar smoke. Some men are with me, and I don't remember when I met them. They're warriors, and mages, and rangers, or some random shuffling mix thereof. Like the abstract image the mind conjures up when it hears the word "warrior" or "mage" or "ranger." Heroes. Good guys. And I ignore what they could become in five years, when the villains are gone, and all they'll have are glorious yesterdays and the spoils of war to drink away.
The campfire light dances on our faces, throwing up discordant patches of light on this assembled army. They talk amongst themselves, in the camrederie of those who don't know better. I have let these men remain strangers. It is comfortable, because I know where friendships end up now.
We set out by daybreak, for the ruins of something that was a temple to ancient gods, and is perhaps still a temple to something. At point, a grey cloak with a bow races ahead. I have trained myself to only know that little about him. At the back of my neck is the hot ox-like breath of a giant. My hair pricks at the energy of a handful of spells simultaneously being born around me. I know so little about the men I've hired to kill my best friend.
The archer snaps a shot into the entrance, and it perfectly clips off the corner to go ricocheting into the unseen. And I watch the cloak flutter to the ground, now empty. I utter a curse that John taught me when we were both eight, and being a magician seemed something pleasant to look forward to.
The men are too good to panic, and we proceed into the bowels of the dark. With every second of inattention or imperfection, another is gone. He falls on us like a shadow, silent like death often is. One at a time. I watch as hounds of bone bring down a mage who's name might have been Simon. Watch them lap up his blood, and the still smoldering fire in his hand, and the color of his eyes. Sated, they crumble into ashes and blow away.
And I watch as John passes through the ceiling and floor in one perfect motion. An intangible shadow, falling through stone like it wasn't there. Almost too fast for the eye to trace. One of the men falls, a monk from some temple of the far east. A perfect needle thin prick in the center of his forehead. Through his third eye, and into eternity. As if John is saying, "Nirvana will come for you, too, old friend. In unexistence, where all souls meet, I need not be brave to not be alone."
John pulls another one of the mercenaries through a wall, and the pair intangibly pass through. But he leaves the man half materialized, webbed between the walls and inextricably bound there. From our side, we can watch the man scream as John cuts or bites his fingers off one by one. But the huge mercenary in armor isn't screaming for his life, or for mercy. He's screaming, "Hullo, Stephen, it's wonderful to see you again, old chum. How've you been? Would you like a drink? I for one, am famished. Come witchwalk with me. Would you like that? It'll be like old times."
There are only a few of us left, and I'm not sure how deep inside the temple we've managed to go. And in one pirouette, we're all gone. I'm all gone. One crumples in a heap of pure decay, the metal cage around his body rusting and crumpling. Like a spiny mouth of sharp brown teeth, wrapped around a knot of bones. Another, falling to pus. Lumps of ooze and venom, dripping down the insides of his skin. Pooling like raindrops, into little rivulets cascading to the ground. Till it was just translucent skin and oily sick. I don't get to watch the last man's death, because my own has taken me. A wound festering in my belly, and my vision slowly turning to black. Not the kind of eyes closing, or the light fading, but out from the center. A cataract of shadows.
************
John's cupped hand on my back, rouses me. And I awake from a dream that wasn't completely medicinal.
"Take a look at her." The tiny artery in his neck snaps easily, and his head lists slightly and quietly. It looks close enough to sleep for enough of those around, all by itself. The rest see the illusion that I weave on the inside of their eyes.
For a man who knew death so very well, it's kind of strange he believed so strongly and so stupidly in things having a purpose. Worshiper of the great entropy, he still thought things could be shaped, or if too difficult, snapped into place. John stared into the sun so long that it made him blind. Whether one thinks things are too dark, or too bright, they always end up staring into the night eventually. The future is a very bleak place, and I am somewhat glad that John is dead, because it means I will only have to live this life once. It is raining outside, but the rain is sweet.
The Last Melon
04-01-2008, 23:23
Have you tried private messaging?
Anyee's profile (http://forums.diabloii.net/member.php?u=331)
Iampunha's (http://forums.diabloii.net/member.php?u=15807)
Iampunha probably doesn't check the forum anymore, but Anyee's around, and they both have IM.
I'll try that, thanks.
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