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You meet Lorath in Ked Bardu with a carrier pigeon’s thin message clenched in your hand beneath a glaring sun. You’d like to say you’re glad to see him, but you can see the shadows under his eyes and the tightness in his shoulders and know at once there’s only ill news.
“Where is she?”
“She’s…” A sigh. “This way.”
You’ve never been one for long goodbyes. You learned very quickly to make them fast if you wished to have them at all.
“We missed you in Nahantu,” you say, days later, watching the crowds on the docks with a wary eye. Lorath almost flinches, but you didn’t mean it so harshly. “I don’t know if it would have changed things, but it would have been good to see you.” Maybe Neyrelle would have said otherwise, as she had on the outskirts of Kurast, but maybe, by now, she wouldn’t. You’ll not know, now.
“Right,” he says. He moves on, pushing his way through the pilgrims shouting Akarat’s name.
“How’ve you been with all this,” he asks on the overcrowded ship, nodding towards the preacher calling himself a Hand of Akarat. “With Akarat and all. Your order is Zakarum, isn’t it?”
You stare at him with some surprise. “I know who it is in his body,” you say. Your voice carries much farther than his, lowered so you can only just hear it over the wind. “The last true piece of Akarat was destroyed; this is only spite.”
“I know that,” he says placatingly. “It’s still a lot to reckon with, even if you aren’t much for faith.”
An eerie cry comes to you on the breeze. Far above, Tenna’s ghostly wings are barely more than a cloud against the southern sky. You hold out a hand pooled with just a bit of light and she descends, pecking at it as if it were seed. Your first act with the Light, years and years ago now, in a world already halfway dying. It’s still funny to think you and Lorath may have met then, if only briefly.
“I know what I believe,” you say. “And I know how to tell that from what anyone preaches. You needn’t worry for my faith.”
“No, I suppose not,” Lorath says, watching the bird you once tried to save return to the boundless sky.
“You there,” one of the dockside preachers calls from the upper deck, staring down at you and Lorath as if he knows something. Lorath heaves a weary sigh and calls back.
You glare down at the stage where Akarat’s corpse stands with the Amazon queen, hardly seeing Lorath’s shadow until he interrupts. Akarat’s head turns towards him and something stirs, some heat you thought well banished from your blood- something you’ve not felt since Nahantu or, more strongly, since Hell.
You can feel some veiling thing cast over Lorath, even from here.
You run, but by the time you make it to the street level the people of Temis are already screaming and the surging crowd drags at you, but you force your way forward by muscle alone. Queenslayer. Murderer. Oh, Light damn it all, what’s happening?
You break into the open just in time to see someone wearing the cloth of Inarius’s cathedral beneath their travel-stained cloak raise some stinking ball to hurl at Lorath, and you stop their wrist with reflexes meant for war. Just as quickly, you have an Amazon’s spear at your throat.
“Release him,” the spearwoman commands sternly.
“Hmph.” You let the man go and he staggers back as if you struck him. You roll your eyes- but you catch another glimpse of Lorath under the guard of a dozen Amazon soldiers, head bowed and sleeves stained dark. You stride forward, ignoring the one in front of you and the harsh orders of the ones around Lorath.
“Lorath.”
He doesn’t answer you.
You shoulder your way in anyway, glad your armor was repaired in time for this journey. the Amazons aren’t pleased, but the only thing you raise is your shield, letting it catch the worst of the rotten fruit as you let yourself be sent from Temis with your friend.
Lorath’s grip is tight on your arm. Cyra descends into the caverns to make ready, but you linger before the statue of an ancient Oracle and ponder the thing stirring in your blood.
“Look, I’ve been there,” he says, speaking lowly and quickly. “Weighing my life against the faintest hope, for all the good it did- Donan and Neyrelle- I can’t- Sanctuary can’t afford to lose you, too. Are you sure about this?”
“We may not have a choice,” you say, covering his hand with yours. Between you, you’ve managed to wash off most of the blood. “I’ll hear her out, at least.”
Lorath subsides unhappily. He’s no happier by the time you reach the Oracle’s sanctum, peppering Cyra with questions that she answers as serenely as one could hope for, but in the end the need for a weapon wins out and he arms you as best he can with what knowledge he has of the Isles and of her.
“Hold your ground,” he says, “and please… come back, after.”
You were taught often by your order that you should only swear oaths you mean with all conviction to keep.
“I will.”
Deep in your mind the air is cold, cold like the peaks where you nearly died, where your part in this drama first began. You strain against the gale and drive deeper and deeper into yourself until at last you find her.
Lilith.
“Come to kill what remains of me?” she demands icily, though fury like a living thing heats the air around her.
“I'm here to talk.”
And in between derision and I warned you and her wrath, you find whatever part of her is still willing to fight. Is it the part that never forgot that Sanctuary was hers or the part that only wants to break her father? Does it matter, if it will let you fight Mephisto? This is the thing Neyrelle died to uncover; you have no other play.
Before you can decide which you think the truth, your inner world shudders. You think you hear your name as if called down a long, echoing tunnel.
You return to yourself with visitation interrupted, jolting awake in the shallow pools to the reek of blood and brimstone and Lorath standing over you, the long blade of his spear dark with demon’s ichor.
“You back?” he demands.
“And still yourself,” Cyra observes, offering you a thin hand up.
“There’s more of them coming,” Lorath snaps, still the warrior and not the sage, and for a brief time all you know is the fight.
Inside, your blood begins to burn.
The first time it happens, you've just claimed the first piece of Lilith’s bone-wrought blade, trawling through Rathma's maze and cutting down another of the blood-born monsters of Mephisto's Hands. You sent Lorath and Tharra ahead- you are alone as your blood burns, twisting like a living creature all its own inside you, fighting for escape out through your very skin. It seems an age until it subsides, leaving you ashen and trembling on the forest floor.
Slowly, you pick yourself up.
It comes again when you return to them, Mephisto's voice rattling your skull until even Lorath's voice disappears and his hand on your arm vanishes.
“We're running out of time,” you tell him when you can breathe again, short so you don't have to explain to Tharra, or explain that you don't know what's happening- or, maybe, that you suspect. You can't withstand the Lord of Hatred forever, no more than Neyrelle could, and besides that it feels like your insides are melting. If one doesn't take you the other will.
You’re still ashen when you tell Lorath to go, that you'll deal with it, and reluctantly, he goes, because he puts the Horadrim's duty first. Always. He still wants you to promise you'll be okay, or at least careful. You can't give that, but you can at least not tell him outright that you plan to run straight back to Lilith.
You risk much, peering into the Eye alone in the wilderness where Mephisto's demons have been ambushing you. Time doesn't pass the same within, but you'd still feel better with Lorath to watch your back as he did in the Seers’ sanctum and in the last ruin. You sent him away, though, onwards with the first piece to continue the mission.
Mephisto speaks to you as you push deeper. He says he wants to talk, that he enjoys your game, that Lilith's making it too easy... that your guesses are right, that you are dying. Turn away, trust her not- no.
You know you must pursue this. Why else would he try so hard to turn you aside?
Lilith tries to send you away, too, to keep her business her own. To not have to justify herself to a mortal who resents her. At least Elias chose her; you are not bound save by unhappy chance and you... you need answers, you need to know. If you're dying, so be it- you risk it every time you go to battle. You need to know why, and how long, and what else will come with it, that you might prepare.
Lilith gives you a second look when you snap back at her, insisting it's your life and your body being risked in this- you will know what she knows. For now, she permits it.
She's using your shared body-and-soul as a battleground. It's novel, at least, this thing of windows and souls and memory.
“He was just a man, Lilith,” you say to her, when she spits ungrateful and child like curses at the memory of her son. “Only human... just like the rest of us.”
“My son was not only anything.”
“What will you do if you find them both dead?” Lilith asks as you cross the sodden battlefield of Athalua. Lorath and Tharra are still nowhere to be seen.
You wonder if you should say aloud she ought rather to worry what you'll do if you don't find them at all. She scoffs in disgust as the thought crosses your mind.
The ring of livid bruising around Lorath’s neck is stark against his pale skin. Tharra’s grim account of the meeting with Adreona curdles in the back of your mind.
“Lorath!”
He doesn’t answer you.
He's hurt otherwise, too, practically daring the Drowned to kill him before you crash in in a burst of light, death-fey and despairing, and he won't hear a word you say.
Above, crows close in like they can smell oncoming death. Lorath hardly acknowledges them, even as you shoo them away, Tenna swooping in to startle them with ghostly caws.
He takes the Horadrim charm from his cloak and tries to throw it aside, but you grab his arm before he can, his fist closed tight around it within yours.
“Don't you dare,” you say lowly. “Don't abandon me now, Lorath. I need you.” But he doesn't heed that any more than the rest, brushing past you to return to the burning camp. “Lorath!”
And then... and then something appears like an angel, in light truer than that you and your order wield- like you saw only from Inarius. It speaks, and Lorath strikes at it, and you charge to strike, too, but then- but then Lorath is embracing it like an old friend, and you hear the name Tyrael and oh. Oh.
You believe it's an angel at least- it can't be otherwise. You know better than to trust just because it's an angel.
He only holds Lorath, though, and that's more than you or he have ever given, not like this, and Light help you at least someone can get through to Lorath right now.
You're still slow to back down. You're fairly sure Tyrael notices. If you were greatly daring, you might say he approves.
Lorath is hurt again- or maybe only worsens the wounds he already took- as the Drowned close in. He blinks at Tyrael in a daze well past when the spots from the silver sunburst have faded from your eyes. Perhaps he still thinks it a trick, no matter what he says while Tyrael tries to tend his injuries. Lorath tries to brush it off- embarrassed, almost, either at his carelessness or his despair, but Tyrael will have none of it.
You talk a little while you patch Lorath up enough to move, and then talk a little more. You should get Lorath to proper rest and healing, but you all know you won't be able to talk like this in the Amazon camp.
You find an angel who is also so very human. You've never been more certain you were looking at old, old friends, either. Even with Donan Lorath wasn't like this- but they had far more bitter blood between them. Some of the knot that coiled itself in your chest as you crossed Athalua comes just a bit undone.
You mean to tell Tyrael about Lilith before it comes out in a less pleasant manner. He asks, in a roundabout way, about Lorath instead, watching the circling crows. He may not know the whole story, but you can see him putting too much together to not have a guess.
You don't mention Lilith. You worry about Lorath. You kill Drowned.
You’re halfway to the sunken caverns in Tharra’s company by the time you realize you didn't tell Lorath anything about what happened when you looked into the Sightless Eye before you came to Athalua.
It comes again before Mephisto in the guise of Akarat and does so at his bidding, clawing at you before the crowd no matter how you tried to keep to the rear, to draw no eyes- he knew you were there at once. There was no hiding.
It tries to burn you for little but show, here, and it might manage it in truth but for Lilith, though it costs you and her the revelation before the horde and you stalk unsteady from the sermon and wonder how long you have before word spreads.
You try to tell Tharra in the Observatory before it's too late, but you should have done this days ago and now you'll have it out for all to see. You can't read Cyra's expression beneath her golden mask, but her shoulders are low.
You make a show of disarming yourself before you approach Adreona. Maybe it will convince someone you mean her no harm... even if you think about the bruises on Lorath's neck and think you might not mind working some of it out in a friendly spar with the Amazon queen. You sigh through your nose, and try to convey apology to Tharra, and step forward.
“Is it true?” Adreona demands. “Do you carry the Daughter of Hatred within you?” For just a moment, you consider turning and running then and there. Maybe you could prove Lilith wrong in this- it need not end in blood if you are gone.
“It’s true.”
It's only by the Oracle’s grace you aren't slain or chained outright, but there's a heaviness in her voice when she says, “To tell her was to seal her fate... always.” You don't know if she means telling Adreona about Lilith or about her own involvement.
“Will she come after you? Of course. You are the greatest threat to Akarat- and now she knows it.” Cyra shakes her head, casting gold reflections across the pale stone. The evening sun illuminates the floor-tile mosaic of Lilith in brilliant red. Part way around the arc of the room, Inarius is cast in shadow. “Go. Find your friends. They will need you. And…” You pause, but she doesn't finish.
You probably don't want her to. You go.
At least Tyrael already knows. He says he knew from your first meeting, though you rather expect Lorath has said something, too, by now. You wonder if he admitted this with more or less teeth-pulling than his bargain with the Tree- if he’s yet admitted that at all.
You find a small party hunting Lorath- perhaps Tyrael, too, from the sound of the journal- and you set it aside to chase Lorath because he's gone off alone again and you are beginning to hate this habit of his. He's fine, this time, but his knee still nearly gives out when he turns too quickly to face the basilisk. He insists it won’t really matter if you don't find the blade.
You suggest he ride the basilisk. The look he gives you is withering... but it brings a wry smile to your face.
At least the need to watch for ambush saves you from much talk, from explaining how badly it went at the Observatory. There's no reason to keep it secret, save perhaps embarrassment, and in fact quite a few reasons to share, but you say little. He notices, of course, because for all his own preoccupation he's no idiot- and you've seen much together by now.
“I spoke with Adreona,” you say when he presses. His gaze sharpens. The bruises have faded some, though they almost look worse all yellow and blotchy. It looks like he's already been hung. “She knows about Lilith.”
“Damn,” he mutters. “We won't have much time, then.”
“You are running out already,” Lilith says in your mind. “Hurry. Never mind the Amazon... at least for now.” Lorath’s gaze is sharp on you.
Your heart beats in your ears as you step into the heart of the withered island. Lilith shudders. At least this is familiar, guarding Lorath's back as he picks with magic at the barring seals. You can do this.
Lilith tells the story of this place slowly. With each step, your heart pounds.
It's fear, you realize, as you walk a path a part of you that is and isn’t yours remembers. It isn't yours, but it is, because you and she are bound ever tighter now, so entwined you don't know if you'll ever be untangled.
“By my mother's name…” Lorath mutters, and you snort, because… really? He only shrugs a little and moves on.
Yes, he's right about what this place is and Lilith shivers in your veins to recall it. Tenna’s song echoes mournfully in the ancient catacombs.
“That's damned unsettling, you know,” Lorath says conversationally. “That foggy look you get when she talks to you.”
“She remembers this place,” you say. “Better than she wants to.” She hisses in your mind at that. “She says the broken blade would always leave a scar.” Turning within, you think: “Even repaired... will the full blade do anything like this?” She's silent a moment too long.
“No. The properly remade blade will be far more precise.” You wonder if the answer is really yes, or if she doesn't know. You suppose it won't change things; you can't let Mephisto walk free.
Your heart still pounds when you embrace Lorath, holding the last piece, thinking about Neyrelle. You doubt he can feel it through your armor. It’s finally caught up to him, he says. You can't say much of this has done the same for you, not since the drowning caverns at least.
You let your forehead rest against his and exhale. “Let's get back to camp.”
Lorath and Tyrael have decades of being Horadrim behind them. Neyrelle might have known the names they throw around, but you don't. They don't have time to explain it all to you, either, but you needn’t know all of it to follow them to their first vault, to wherever this cube of theirs waits. You will set out in the morning, before dawn and, you hope, before Adreona's scouts find you, but tonight you drink together around the fire.
You don't know where Lorath found port. You've never cared for it, but it tastes like a home you haven't seen since the reapers came, years and years ago. Tenna perches on your shoulder, singing the same song she sang in the grave-chill streets of Westmarch when you thought you knew enough to save her.
Even Lilith joins in tonight, adding her biting commentary for your ears alone. She sputters in thought the first time you repeat it- some comment on Tyrael's softness in her eyes, but the old angel only laughs and raises his cup to the air beside you.
“You've seen more of me than anyone else,” she says to you as you lay down to rest, Tharra standing sentry in the shadows. “You killed me, once. Would you do it again?” And perhaps it's the heady wine that bids you answer- and will bid you a grand headache come dawn- or that bids you give it real thought.
“If I must,” you say, “but I think I will not wish to.”
“Hm.”
You almost die a dozen times climbing Hefaetrus, to stone-creatures and crumbling basalt and the furious mountain, to the choking fumes and the sheer heat of it. You don't know how much of his strength Tyrael spends each time he raises the gleaming shield with his blazing sword, but he gets you to the old vault.
Lilith hasn’t spoken to you all day.
At least this time the hot pulse comes from outside, the wards of the old Horadrim lashing out at you and your blood. It hurts, but less than that which comes from within.
After the seventh or eighth time Kulle’s old automatons try to electrocute you, you refuse to touch anything else in the vault.
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Lorath admits.
You dig through the wings of Horadrim centuries past and oh, something's off with Tyrael, and something's off with you, and you find you're worrying less about whatever's been off with Lorath because you don't have time for any of it.
Your unstill blood strikes again, sending you to your knees in Tal Rasha's corroded wing... and Lorath knows something's wrong, even though you haven't had the chance to tell him, but you don't have time, still, and Lilith can't or won't speak to you, and this is the worst possible place to stop, so you stagger to your feet and raise your shield.
“We keep going.”
Lorath isn't pleased. Even with Tyrael returned to him, he does want so very much for you to be okay. He keeps going, though.
It is, truly, a sight, watching the Horadrim wake the cube and use its magic to remake bone. You thought Lilith might take an interest in this, at least, but no, she's still silent. You try to look inward as best you can without the Eye, but there's nothing at all until-
You thought the volcano was all beyond the vault but now the heat's inside you, scorching your chest and your stomach and your screaming throat. The blade's remade but you see it fall to the arcane worktable because Lorath and Tyrael are reaching for you.
And you fall.
You land in a storm of light like you would call forth in battle, and it drives back strange creatures sewn together from every beast you've ever seen from where Lilith hovers, feet dragging and dress bloody. This should be all in your mind, but it feels entirely too real.
You are dying. You knew this, but it's more immediate now than you would wish.
You have the blade- you have done that much at least, and it is remade, but the battle was always meant for you, not Lorath. He is a good warrior, even injured, and canny as the thieves of Backwater, but he doesn't breathe the fight the way you do. Maybe Tyrael could finish it, if he had to, but still…
“Run,” Lilith commands, and you run and oh, her father is stronger than either of you were counting on, here sunk root and claw into you where he's been growing as Lilith's strength has, and you think of the walking brambles in the Temple of Life, where the bodies of man and beast grew seeds of Hate until it split them open.
You fight it. Lilith does, too, claw and wing and furious hellfire, and it's for more than just survival. You can feel her emotions nearly as your own like this.
You never thought to call her mother, but this world is hers and humanity is hers and as much as she has ever wanted to defeat her father she wants you to endure. Perhaps it's a final proof of some sort, that she can make something, that she can be other than what she was made, that she can escape the cage of divine aspect that even Rathma was so sure bound her.
You fight, and then you fall- into a memory, perhaps, pulled from her eon in the Void.
You fall.
Mephisto has done great damage to you already- you could feel it two weeks ago on the ship, though you didn't know it for what it was. You could feel it a week ago when Lilith woke.
You fall.
There is an escape, perhaps- one Lilith offers you herself, though it cost her all that remains of herself.
You fall.
She demands you live.
You fall.
You have a duty yet to do.
You fall.
A hand catches yours.
“Do it.” You take the blade she offers you and cut.
And you fall.
You wake gasping, gagging on terrible pain from what Mephisto’s already done and from the sudden unbonding of your blood and Lilith's, shaking as if the earth quakes you, too.
“You're al- awake.”
Lorath’s voice above you. His hand sits heavily on your chest, whatever magic he worked slow to fade, withdrawing even slower from your heart. Overhead, a gold and purple dome retracts as the mountain quiets.
“Lorath,” you croak. You try to raise yourself, but there’s no strength in your arms and they give out at once and you are back where you started, head and shoulders in Lorath’s lap as he hovers in both body and magic.
“Easy, easy…” You notice the strain in his voice now- and perhaps Lorath’s not the most gentle man but he is careful, asking what happened and helping you upright. “You scared m... us there. I was about to go track down the Oracle.”
“Wh...?” You notice only then the Sightless Eye lying beside you- and with it half your armor. You wonder how bad you seemed in this world while you were within… or how near you truly came to death. Tyrael stands a short way away, the room littered with shards of broken stone and cooling puddles of the magma-like blood that spills from the stone creatures of the mountain.
“Well I wasn't going to just leave you in there, was I?” But you thought... maybe. The blade is reforged. They had what they needed here. If you hadn’t returned, what choice would they have?
You’re still shaky when you leave the vault, but you can't delay any longer. Lorath takes the lead and Tyrael the rear, and all the while the mountain tries to tear itself apart. Lorath makes another leap across a stream of molten stone, and his bad knee buckles as the ground crumbles beneath his feet. He pulls himself to more solid stone, spitting curses and smoking, but it leaves too wide a gap for you and Tyrael to easily follow.
“We’ll find a way around,” Tyrael calls. “Wait for us.”
By the time you make it to a nearer ledge, the crows are circling. Tenna swoops among them, one ghost-pale songbird among their shadows. Your heart, still stuttering, sinks.
“Lorath!”
He doesn't answer you.
And oh, of course it's her, come in person to find you. It isn't even to avenge her own death, not really.
But you see Lorath, then, and you find it suddenly matters not at all to you why she has come, only that she has. It doesn't matter that Lorath called her friend or that Tharra nearly revered her. You find the rush of battle does much to give you strength even as your heart protests.
You charge Queen Adreona, heedless of the fire of the mountain or Tyrael's protection, calling down a whirling storm of light that also drives back the circling shadows of dark feathers that draw near the spreading pool of blood. They can't have him. Not yet. Not ever, if you have your way, but you know there are things in this world that are not within your power.
It doesn't mean you won't try.
It's done, but oh, you still have a duty. The dead must wait while the living are yet imperiled. He knows that better than any of you.
Knew.
You think of the Tree.
Knows.
You gave yourself to a holy oath when you were very young, and you've not forsworn that duty even with demonblood in you. Light help you, you won't begin now.
A shadow falls over Skovos
You and Tyrael cut your way towards Mephisto, but your blood still burns with a pain that won't subside and his strength for things like the great barrier are not endless. Under better circumstances, you might enjoy fighting beside him, but you've run all the way here from Hefaetrus and you're both bleeding by the time you reach the solid wall of putrid growth cast over the entrance to the Pools to slow you.
“Ah,” Tyrael sighs, and unsteadily raises his blazing sword.
“Tyrael…” But you can't tell him to stop, not even if it means his life, not now, not after all you've given to get here. If this may deliver you to the Pools, blade in hand...
“I'm sorry, my friend,” he says. “I see only one way through.” And he burns it away, and you slip through the gap, and all you can leave behind is a hand on his shoulder to say you hope to see him again.
You race towards a fight that may very well mean your death, too.
A pale blade pierces the Lord of Hatred and he falls screaming into the abyss.
You barely drag yourself from the sinking temple. You find Tyrael, slowly making his way deeper in search of you, and leaning on each other you stagger back to shore. Tharra embraces you when she sees you, laughing high and wild with battle and just as bloodsoaked as you.
“Mephisto's servants remain to be reckoned with,” Tyrael points out wearily. The Amazons cheer anyway.
“You have our answer,” Tharra says. “What is yours?”
“Gladly,” you say. “But... there is something I must do first.” It won't feel over until you see this done.
“They said someone would come for him,” Taissa says in the swamp, ghost-fires lighting her way. Tenna chirps to her in greeting.
“Will you stop us?” you ask. Your injuries have healed, for the most part. Your blood still burns, though you’ve not heard Lilith’s voice again. The Tree will still burn.
“I will not.”
You blink many times before it settles. You will not have to fight over this. You wonder where the other witches are; the Tree can't have called her alone.
“Thank you.”
The heads that dangle from the gnarled branches snarl at you, and there's Elias, too, spitting he is ours like it will stop you.
It's true at least that the Tree is not deceitful; those in its service know how steep its prices are. Lorath knew it, too. He was always like you in this: he gave his life to something greater- and well before he gave it to the Tree.
Maybe, just once, you may break such bond. It's certain it will pain you less than the last tie you cut.
There. There hangs Lorath, well within reach and close to the trunk. Almost as if waiting... or as bait.
“Lorath?” The stump of his neck is still sticky with blood. His eyes don't find you when you cradle his face, nor Tyrael over your shoulder.
“Can't... ours…” His voice echoes the other heads' cries, but wherever he is, he must still wander the tangled paths of the Tree’s branching roots. You sigh.
“Set the fire.”
Damp wood crackles as Horadric fire traces the grooves of ancient bark, and you think as it grows of all you destroy with this, all the knowledge and all the memory and all the power of Hawezar. It smells like burning rot and flesh.
You burn, too, the one place you knew of that held the knowledge of how to call something back from the Void.
“Redeem-” Lorath’s head mutters. It blinks. “I- Rhode? Tyrael?” Oh.
“Lorath!” Tyrael presses close despite the fire. “Fear not, friend. You will have peace soon.”
“Is it... did you finish it?”
“Yes,” you say very softly. “Yes, Mephisto is gone. It is done.”
“Ahh,” his head sighs. The flames begin to lick at the rope that holds it up, at his hair, at the blood. You can just see the edge of the bruises. “Good. Glad you're both... here…”
And you might stay nearer, too, but even the burning you've begun to think will never leave doesn't save you from the magefire, and you and Tyrael say a swift farewell and step back as the fire grows and grows and grows, the swamp echoing with the screams of a thousand bound souls set loose.