Chapter Three
Together, Lorath and Donan formulated a plan, then went to the enclave’s storehouse to obtain the ingredients for a flammable concoction of spirits, oil, and other compounds. They used the blood-drinker cultists’ own ritual hearth to brew their downfall.
When the enemy returned two days later, the Horadrim were ready for them.
Some of the freed settlers inside the walls had even asked to join the fight and were given weapons from the enclave’s armory.
The cultists approached the causeway at dusk, driving a train of bound captives before them using cruel whips.
Donan stood upon the watchtower, in shadow.
Lorath opened the gate, to give the illusion that all was well within the fort and to get the prisoners off the causeway.
The few cultists who preceded their prey through the entrance were quietly slain before they realized their encampment had been taken.
The bound prisoners who followed them marveled at their unexpected saviors, who motioned for their silence as they ushered them inside.
When a young boy passed Lorath, stumbling with delirium from a head wound, he felt his rage stirring again, only this time, it would not be restrained.
The cultists at the rear of the column had already stepped onto the causeway when the last captive reached safe ground.
That was when Donan summoned a ball of violet flame into his hand and hurled it down onto the bridge from above, while Tyrael lit the wood afire from the far shore, having hidden himself in the trees.
The causeway, soaked with the incendiary brew, went up in a rushing blaze.
The enemy screamed as one in shock, terror, and pain as their melting flesh broke their blood magic. Then the Horadrim attacked. Donan fired a crossbow from the tower while Lorath charged through the gate, swinging his polearm in a deadly arc at all who tried to flee the fire.
Some of the desperate cultists leapt from the causeway into the water, where they landed hard in the deep muck and became mired. Many of them sank and drowned. Donan’s crossbow found the others.
Then, as the initial conflagration died down, Lorath attacked, hacking and stabbing any foe within reach of his blade.
Behind him came the armed settlers dealing out their own justice, using spears, swords, and arrows to finish off the cultists struggling in the bone-filled moat, but Lorath paid them little mind.
The beast of his rage had been released from its lair, and he relished the righteous destruction he unleashed on those who would harm and defile the innocent.
He lost himself to the violence, bellowing like the animal he had let himself become, and did not stop his butchery until he met Tyrael near the middle of the causeway.
The man had fought his own way there from the shore, cutting off the cultists who had tried to escape that way, and now he held up his hand.
“Lorath! The battle is won!”
Lorath, chest heaving, covered in blood, let out a final roar before collapsing to one knee, clinging to his polearm. Tyrael laid a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Peace, my friend. Your plan worked. The evil here has been defeated.”
Lorath closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, easing the rage back into the deep cavern near his heart where it dwelt, ever within him, threatening to rampage if he turned it loose or lost control of it.
When he opened his eyes, he found the settlers staring at him warily, whispering and keeping their distance.
Many of them continued to avoid him that evening, when they all stayed together one last night in that place.
Lorath could not blame them, though they had no reason to fear him.
After he had washed the blood from his hair and his armor with water from the spring, he felt more like himself.
As the Horadrim parted ways with the settlers the next morning, the woman Lorath had seen down in the pit approached him, took his hand, and pressed something into his palm.
He looked down at a small wooden talisman the size and shape of a large, thick coin.
It bore symbols he had seen back in her village, set beside an image of a woman’s face carved in relief with some skill.
Vines and leaves surrounded her as if part of her being.
“What is this?” he asked.
“A sign of gratitude,” the woman said. “The spirits of this land thank you. I hope that one day you can find peace within yourself, wherever your journey takes you.”
The gift caught him somewhat off guard, but he managed to thank her for it.
Soon the Horadrim were trudging back out of the Blood Marsh, retracing their path through the twisting waterways.
Lorath clutched the wooden talisman in his hand as they walked, glancing down at it now and then, turning it over in his fingers.
For a short while, the sight of the token provided him with a measure of satisfaction and even a sense of calm, the rage within him appeased.
But that feeling did not last long. It never did, no matter how great their victories, for Lorath knew that elsewhere across Sanctuary, evil went unchecked, and the innocent suffered.
Their imagined cries rang through him, echoes of the suffering he had already witnessed, steadily turning him restless.
Within a few leagues, he had shoved the wooden talisman into a pocket, forgotten, his mind fixed on the battles before them.
He wanted to ask Tyrael where they now traveled, and for what purpose, but still felt a gulf between them after their disagreement.
He waited until Donan had gone ahead a few paces and cleared his throat. “Tyrael, I…What I said to you on the watchtower—”
“You spoke only what you believed to be true,” Tyrael said. “I am grateful that you speak your mind. This hunt has opened my eyes.”
“To what?”
“I know you, Lorath. This will not be the last time you refuse to look away from the suffering of others. It would be unwise for me to expect different from you. And yet, it is also true that Sanctuary needs the Horadrim to defend it against threats, and we must be intentional in the battles we choose to fight. I have therefore come to a decision. To meet the many needs before us, we must increase our number and strengthen our order.”
“How?”
“We will travel to Skovos.”
“Skovos?” Lorath had never been to those southern islands, and no one he knew had sailed there recently.
But he knew that Tyrael had visited Skovos long ago, and he had also sent a group of Horadrim there some years earlier.
They had heard nothing from them since. “You mean to search for the expedition?”
“Their mission was to establish diplomatic relations with the Askari and to reopen the Horadric vault hidden there. We must learn what became of them.”
Lorath inhaled as he straightened his shoulders. “I hear the people of Skovos are not…welcoming to strangers.”
“It is true they are insular and protective of their lands,” Tyrael said.
“But they are also strong, and their seers are gifted with foresight. I sense we have an important purpose there. It is time we discover what happened to our fellow Horadrim and recover the relics and knowledge from our vault.”
Lorath felt some reluctance to leave Westmarch behind, where there remained so much work to be done. Yet he knew the people of other cities suffered just as greatly, and the Horadrim could not be everywhere at once. He decided to trust in Tyrael’s wisdom.
After they had left the swamp behind, they made their way to the Fish Road, a winding path that followed the rugged western coastline of the kingdom, connecting the city of Westmarch to Kingsport in the south.
It was not an easy route. The Fish Road skirted the edges of towering cliffs and traversed tide-racked strands of rocky beaches infested with lampreys and other coastal terrors, but Tyrael believed it would be safer than the inland trackways beset by gangs of thieves.
Difficult or not, Lorath welcomed the briny breezes off the sea after their confinement in the oppressive, fetid air of the marsh.
He preferred the cries of gulls and the chatter of cliff-dwelling gannets to the ceaseless hum of biting insects.
They stopped at the first fishing village they came to, hoping to resupply, but found it deserted.
The gray clapboard cottages stood with their doors and windows open to windblown sand.
Beach grasses had taken root in some of the corners, and the roof of the former inn appeared to have buckled under the force of some recent gale.
A pale crust of salt grew on the buildings closest to the waterline where they faced the spray from crashing waves.
The stalwart dock had somehow withstood the battering, but the broken remains of several fishing boats littered the shoreline around it.
Unlike at the settlement in the Blood Marsh, they found no signs of violence other than the damage caused by the passage of time, which somehow made the coastal village feel more eerie and haunted.
“It’s been abandoned for years,” Donan said.
“Most likely since Malthael’s culling,” said Lorath.
They would likely never know the exact number of casualties across Sanctuary, and many of those who survived the Reaping died in the chaos that followed.
There were times when it seemed to Lorath that only one in ten had survived.
“A small place like this relies on its fishermen for survival. If too many of them were slain…” He shook his head.
“I only hope the survivors found safe harbor elsewhere.”
“A storm approaches.” Tyrael pointed at a bulwark of dark clouds moving in from the sea. “We should stay here for the night.”