Petal hurriedly rolled into a kneeling position, and then rose to her feet. Surrounded by fog, she was unable to see anything farther away than she could reach to. She had no idea from where she had come from, glanced forwards to backwards, side to side, until she was satisfied she had no idea which way was back home. She gripped her claw, nervous of her unknown surroundings, and took a deep breath. She had to calm down. After a moment, an idea occurred to her, and she opened her Horadric cube, removing a blue tome. She quickly opened it, and found…

Nothing. Some indecipherable scrawls in the back of the book, covered in a fine layer of dust, taunted her and her inability to return home. Frustrated, she shut it and tossed it back into the warped dimensions of the Cube, and set the cube back at her side. Suddenly, she noticed a steadily growing crescendo of whispers around her. She slowly rose her arms in defense, and yelped as a blade glanced across her shoulder. Luckily, her padded armor had deflected it away from her, and she counterattacked with the flames of her right blade. It was time to battle.

She rapidly followed up with a few slashes at the creature spreading the same emerald-shaded orbs around her in spiral after spiral of fatal poison. However, the enemies kept coming in invisible wave after wave to match the deadly poison. Some avoided the poison entirely, and she slowly ducked and rolled forwards, simply trying to avoid all of her attackers. The scene was blind entropy, with magical winged skeletons biting at her from all sides, and zealous humanoids slashing at her and attacking with magical weaponry. She quickly switched to her other blade, releasing deadly flames in front of her with each swipe, flames speedily eating through the ones who had laughed at the orbs of venom. While this this onslaught of fires quickly annihilated most of the remaining dæmons, Petal herself was running out of stamina, and the constant injuries from the enemies were wearing her down rapidly. A lull followed the waves of flame, and she took advantage of the opportunity to check her injuries. She was coated in minor cuts and bruises, but nothing particularly worried her other than the festering bite covering her shin. She wasn’t going to be running away from anything on that leg until she found some form of healing. The adrenaline began to wane, and she found herself far more tired than she was moments ago.

She was almost ready to collapse when a horrible, distorted cackling rang out around her. The memory of her recent encounter with the apparition faced her in reality, and she gasped loudly as the first wave of magic struck her. Flames, ice, and lightning stormed from all sides in hellish chaos, and her weakened state left her keeping low to the ground, barely able to dodge the assault. She calmly inhaled, held, and then released a breath as magical flame twisted into an ancient symbol around the mage’s pedestal. The flames struck the spirit and returned rapidly, replenishing her life at the cost of his magic. Rejuvenated, she leapt towards the evil sorcerer and slashed with the flames and poison at her control until, finally, nothing remained of him except a cackle which still echoed around her and charred robes.

Petal knew he wasn’t dead, and that he would return and attempt to slay the next unwary wanderer who laid foot on this unholy island. However, it wasn’t her problem. She stole a small bag from his corpse, and glanced at it shortly, before tossing it into the cramped spaces of the Cube. She quickly rose, leaving the pile of ash behind as she strode on to explore this place further, and possibly find a way to return home.

Median XL – Diablo 2 Mods by Brother Laz

It’s a great mod. Far more balanced and fun than classic Diablo II.

Well, I’ve not much more to say.

For you non-Median readers out there, some background — This written from the point of view from an assassin, using the flower skills — These are quick, powerful novas of fire and poison spread through melee combat with the use of claws or glaives (Naginatas.)

The character in this is using claws and said skills. The fiction is far easier to understand should you actually play the mod, but isn’t totally necessary. I realize the writing may seem extremely corny at parts, but writing from the point of view of a hack’n'slash RPG character, it’s difficult to avoid.

Here goes:

Part 1: Into the Rabbit Hole

Petal slowly crept through the icy caverns, her frigid breath condensing onto the heated edge of her blade. Suddenly, a glimmer of light danced in her peripheral vision. Petal’s head quickly snapped to the left, and she smiled. Next to some forgotten adventurer’s charred skeleton lay a runed shield he’d obviously attempted to defend his last moments with. She crept over to investigate it, and laughed with a tinge of schadenfreude as she read the inscription: “Mallo the Invulnerable.” She allowed herself a moment, and then calmly reached towards the shield, slowly. Still sadistically smirking, Petal mused, “His loss is my –”

Unable to finish her sentence, as she grasped the shield she was catapulted into a hellish landscape of flames, screaming and chaos. Otherworldly dæmons laughed sadistically as she fell through the portal headfirst, and image after image of other dimensions soared across her eyes. Worlds full of psionic beings, infested humans, and strangest of all — A world of enormous, evil humans who laughed and smiled as they controlled helpless adventurers like her, leading them to their deaths with the flick of a finger. She snapped her eyes shut, unable to take any more of these visions. Something hard struck her head, and her consciousness fell into black.

The unwary assassin came to seconds later, as her eyes slowly cracked open. She gazed straight up, into the endless sky — “Sky?” she thought, a confused expression passing across her visage. “Wasn’t I in a cave…?” She glanced down, and to the left and right of her patch of ice. Murky, gray waters, as far as her honed eyes could see, surrounded her on all but one side. Here the deadened crystals of ice gathered into a pathway, and she saw the outline of an enormous island, shrouded in sinister, magical fog. She slowly rose to her feet, and glanced skyward, towards the endless gloom reflecting the sunless sea.

Suddenly, something burst from the gloom. A dæmonic bat hovered in front of her, wings flapping slowly. Its fur was a translucent, cloudy yellow, and its eyes were made of the same crystal which composed the ground below her. It gave off a grotesque odor, of an alien nature, one Petal could not determine. The evil creature swooped up, and dove down towards her face, claws and fangs extended. Petal ducked, and swung a single claw upwards, releasing a shower of small glass orbs, each containing a few drops of lethal caustic poison. The gash rippled across the left wing of the bat, and the spheres exploded within it, dooming the creature to a torturous death. It slowly floated to the ground, and gave it’s dying breath into the frozen waste.

The corpse was unfinished, however. Slowly, but surely, it disintegrated into an ebony pile of ashes, unassuming and plain. However, they slowly began to glow with a bluish light, and soon they rose and formed an apparition of what appeared to be a mage’s silhouette. The mage was an ugly thing, wearing a mask over the top half of his visage and  scarred, wrinkled skin on the lower half, pockmarked with various ailments and moles. It cackled maniacally, pointed a crooked finger in her direction, and cried, “Your curiosity will be the death of you!”

Petal swiped at the figure with a single claw, and the ashes flew away into the waters, to be carried away into eternity. Suddenly, what remained of the bat’s broken skeleton burst into wave after wave of powerful force, sending Petal skittering across the ice into the unknown.