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The Hunter Between	By : BurneHazard Category: +A through F > Diablo III Views: 6166 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Diablo III (3) and all content therein is the property of Blizzard Entertainment. This story is for entertainment purposes only and I make no money from writing it.

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            The stone was cold against his bare skin. Moisture had made it almost slimy in the places he felt against his body. Whether it was water, sweat, or his own blood had long ceased to be of concern. Pain was all he knew. His head throbbed like a giant heart, hot and without cease. The ache in his arms and shoulders was all but gone despite the fact they still held his dead weight. His throat burned it was so dry and his tongue was a thick weight sticking to the insides of his mouth and teeth.
            Every bone in his body ached. It made his head pound harder until it drove him mad. Everything hurt. Time had ceased to make a difference. All he knew was the pain. If he tried to stand to relieve the strain on his arms, his feet would slip on the blood pooled on the floor beneath him. His blood. Constantly renewed by the open welts covering his back. Somewhere in that loss of time, his stomach had ceased to gnaw at him with hunger and all that was left was the thirst and the pain.
            He had barely any warning before liquid ice splashed over his back. Millions of tiny daggers lanced through open wounds and straight into his body. Lurching in his chains, he gasped for a ragged breath. Some of the cold water spilled over his head and into his mouth, wetting bloody and split lips. The taste was like heaven as it cooled the surface of his swollen and bitten tongue. But it was too little. It made his thirst even stronger, twisting his stomach and up his throat in painful knots.
            A step came from behind and he jerked, trying to open his burning eyes. Water had washed some of the sweat and blood over the lids. Blinking, he struggled to regain his sight as bare feet scrambled over the newly slickened stone floor. Cruel hands grabbed his arms to wrench him back upright. The sudden lack of drag on his arms made him sob with a renewed pain when circulation returned and the limbs throbbed with pain. Somehow, he heard the clunk of the bucket being dropped aside.
            "Do you know why you're here?" a voice thundered in his ears and increased the throbbing in his skull.
            Groaning, he shivered violently. The hands supporting him tightened but did not let him sag again. Another hand grabbed his chin and he felt another splash of water strike his parted lips, washing into his mouth. It was barely enough to moisten parched tissues but his tongue no longer stuck to the roof of his mouth.
            "...here?" he managed to mumble.
            "Yes. Here. Do you know why you're here?"
            All he could do was shake his head slowly.
            "Do you remember where you are?"
            When he did not move again, something struck his back hard enough to bruise exposed muscle. Lurching upright, a howl of agony left him. The hands restrained him, forcing him to thrash in futile effort to combat the agony. He had no concept about escape, only the pain.
            "Do you remember where you are?!"
            Collapsing, gasping for breath as his body again drown in the agony, he managed to shake his head as he stared at the blood-stained stone wall he faced.
            "Who are you?"
            Thinking was not a possibility. He heard the voice, knew the words, understood the question, but could not comprehend it. Another blow.
            "Who are you?!"
            Breaking down, he let his forehead strike the stone as his eyes closed and he just sobbed. He did not know. He could not remember. He could not answer. Another blow from the other side and he howled like a tortured beast again. The hands were suddenly gone and he fell. The chains held fast, jerking his arms up as his body struck the end of the slack and he felt joints pop in elbows and shoulders.
            "He's ready," the voice said behind him.
            Suddenly, ice lanced across his raw back. Lurching in the chains, he could not even voice another outcry as the blade's edge of ice melted into burning fire eating through his flesh into his very bones. It took him several more moments to grasp that the lashing had resumed. But it was only one strike. One. Nothing more. And suddenly he felt something new, something absolutely alien. He felt...like a man. A man with a name. A man with a purpose. And a man who remembered this place and this torment clearly.
            Kormac opened his eyes and rose, pushing himself back to his feet as he remembered who he was, where he was, what was happening. He remembered the source of the voice behind him and twisted to look over a bloody shoulder. The inquisitor stood there flanked by two more. A third was near the door to the cell behind them. But even as he looked, the familiar visages changed, fading into something else. Their ceremonial garb altered itself, melting into something different with completely alien coloring.
            "He's free! Don't let him rearm!"(1)
            Pushing away from the wall, he spun. The chains were gone and he was clothed in torn rags that had been his clothing. Charging forward as holy retribution filled his breast, the templar struck the cultists head-on. Their magic sputtered and was lost as they were knocked back. Even unarmed and outnumbered he could fight them. His fists jolted with pain every time he landed a blow but he ignored it. Light filled his chest and ignited his senses, washing the pain away as he focused on dispatching the vile criminals in his path.
            For every cultist that fell, another seemed to just appear with the pus-yellow garb clashing against dark purple. Refusing to tire, he fought on, striving to reach the armor he could see in the open chest beyond his adversaries. But despite his fervor, regardless of how many steps forward he took, he drew no closer to his goal. They continued to come, ignoring the corpses of their comrades in their haste to attack. And between the numbers, the blows, and the spells, he felt his light fading as his body began to succumb to exhaustion.
            One of them managed a lucky strike across his skull that sent him to the floor. His head and ears rang, bringing that hot throbbing of a headache back. Their hands caught him, hauled him back, restrained him. Dizzy and unable to focus, he knew they drug him along the floor. Blue light was off to one side of him as he struggled against his captors. Vision clearing for a split second, he saw part of the cathedral in ruin as if something had crashed through the ceiling and the floor. Then it was obscured by the forms of his captors.
            When they dropped him, Kormac grunted as the impact struck some cracked bones. It was a brief moment of distraction, but it was all they required. He felt it even as he struggled to his feet. Demonic magic. The curses came from all around him as tendrils of burning shadow tangled about his arms and legs. They snaked around his waist and tangled about his chest and throat. Roaring in pain and rage, he struggled only to hear sudden silence when something filled his throat to render him mute.
            Still, he screamed as the first burning sensations came. It was not just his body but his mind. Spidery claws crawled through his thoughts, raking vicious trails of pain in their wake as they sought memories. He felt that tainted thing bleeding into him and he turned his fight toward it. Light flared in his heart and mind as he pushed the warping disease away from his thoughts. Voices droned in his ears like bees. It was wordless tones rising and falling, dragging at his mind and driving him mad.
            Acid ate away at his body, his mind, his soul. He felt the odorous presence growing. Every moment he remained snared in the magic of the cultists, the power behind it grew. It began to overwhelm him. Refusing to surrender, he continued to fight, body thrashing in the tight bonds and mind raging against the crushing grip of magic beginning to envelop it. The drone began to drive everything but the pain out of his mind. Head thrown back, he screamed again, soundlessly as he strained with everything he had against the bonds and magic.
            "...templar."
            The voice was a faint whisper in his mind--no, his ears. Even as the corruption closed around him, he heard it.
            "Templar. Don't make me ask again."
            It was a new voice. One he knew. One he had heard...so many times. It was as dark as the foul magic devouring him but it was not tainted. This dark was cool and natural, powerful in its simplicity. And then he realized it was a woman's voice.
            "Why are you being punished?"
            Suddenly, he remembered. Flooding back into himself again, Kormac's eyes snapped open as he strained to look toward the source. The woman's name was on the tip of his tongue. And just as he caught a glimpse of a figure standing on the stairs above--the cultist magic was gone. Dropping, he landed on a stone floor that was vastly different than the one he had been on a moment before. The air around him was chokingly hot and poisonous. Coughing as his straining lungs took the first breath, he gagged and choked.
            Then he realized he could not move. Again he was bound, but this time by...spider webs. Forgetting to breathe in that moment, he tensed and stared down at them. Blood splattered the floor beneath him where he rested on his hands and knees. It had spread in unnatural patterns like a crazed artist might make. Curving lines with small spatters trailed away from him as his back burned and throbbed just as it had when he was chained to the wall.
            Drawn by the curious sight, he slowly lifted his head to let his burning eyes follow the trail. That was when a hand caught his head. Cool leather pressed against his jaw and cheek. It guided his head a little to the side to press against cool metal. And he remembered even faster than before. He knew the woman who pressed his cheek to her armored thigh. Just as he recognized the nightmare human-spider maiden sitting so leisurely yards away, fingering the nightmare of her sex-mouth.
            "Templar!"
            Taking a sharp breath, Kormac drew upon the light he felt residing in his heart. Pulling it upward, he released it, pushing its flow along the trail of his own blood toward the nightmare that chilled the sweat on his abused, over-heated body. The light exploded as the maiden screamed, vanishing in blinding illumination. He closed his eyes against the intensity and pressed his face against the armored thigh to help block the sight out.
            Suddenly, it was gone. All of it. He was free. And she was walking away. Panting to catch his breath as holy light filled him, strengthened him to where he could regain control over weak limbs, he slowly sat up. Dizzy and light-headed from blood loss, he did manage to get to his knees, then clumsily to his feet.
            "I am not Maghda."
            He remembered this. Blinking, he swayed before regaining his balance. Taking one step after her, the name returned. Just as he started to reply, he saw her stop and turn around. The cloak had concealed her from his view but in the dark gloom of the pit, the metal nearly glowed. It was white. As white as fresh snow. As white as milk. As pure as angel's wings. Angel wings that rose behind her to spread the ethereal tendrils of light through the darkness.
            No, not just wings. As he watched with eyes widening, the demon hunter tossed the bloody lash aside and let her arms fall to her sides. Another set of arms faded into view as the wings continued to rise. The powerful limbs embraced her from behind with the tenderness of a lover. Kormac watched breathless as a being he had only seen depicted in drawings and murals emerged into his sight. Tyrael--the Archangel of Justice--stood behind the hunter. The angelic being towered over her by several feet, dwarfing her form.
            "But, I am Jondar."
            Confused by the words that came from her cloth-covered lips, the templar stood there and frowned. Tyrael had no such problem. He straightened, easily lifting Shandra from the ground and into his arms as she brought one of her own up to wind about his neck as best as she could with the angel in full armor. The glowing white hood turned so the shadow within could clearly regard her. And before the confused templar, the hunter leaned into the void as if kissing something in the dark visage.
            "My Shandra," the power-filled voice stated.
            The white-blue wings rose and shifted, tendrils merging into a more solid shape as they took on a more familiar avian form. Tyrael's hollow hood turned back toward Kormac to regard him before he leapt upward. In his arms, Shandra curled securely as any maiden in the grip of a knight in shining armor. Bowing her head, she rested it against the angel's chest and closed her eyes. Just as Tyrael became a shaft of brilliant light, the hunter dissolved into an arc of blood twining about the streak of illumination as they ascended from the pits of hell.

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
            Kormac woke with a sharp gasp. One hand immediately went to grip at his chest and the racing beat of his heart. A heart that felt as if it had been pierced. Every beat was a sharp lance of pain that made his entire body throb. Eyes stinging, he blinked rapidly before dashing angrily at them with the back of one hand. Ignoring the tears on the back of his hand, he tried to steady his breathing and remember the dream. Already it was fading but he recalled bits and pieces of it.
            As he caught his breath, he flipped the bedcovers back and sat up to drop his legs over the edge of the bed. Elbows falling to his knees, he let his head drop into his hands as he scrubbed at his face furiously and focused. The dream had been alternating. He remembered his purification and the inquisitors was the first part. The second was...the cathedral and the cultists that had captured him. From there, the crater. And he knew that the hunter had been part of this dream.
            In fact, when he focused on it, that was the clearest part of the entire dream. He found himself glaring at the floor near his feet as he remembered the last moments with crystal clarity. Tyrael. Shandra. Together. And for some reason that hurt. It was why his heart ached this way. But there was one other thing he remembered that he could not place into the rest of the fading blur. Shandra's words. She had mentioned Jondar. Then she had gone to Tyrael's arms. The very thought made pain and dread grip his heart but he could not figure out why!
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The Hunter Between