Fantasy Diablo: Voyage of the Duskshroud Coven

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

The air within Marrowhold’s inner sanctum hung thick with the cloying stench of crushed juniper and the metallic tang of alchemical reagents. Esi Abara’s fingers moved with practiced precision, grinding the last of the duskshroud petals into a fine, iridescent powder. The mortar beneath her hands was ancient, its stone worn smooth by generations of coven alchemists who had come before her. The poultice simmered in its brass cauldron, its surface swirling with unnatural hues—deep violets that pulsed like a dying star, sickly greens that whispered of decay, and flecks of gold that shimmered like trapped sunlight. Mother Dagmara’s visions had grown fragmented, her prophecies slipping through her grasp like water through a sieve. This brew would sharpen her sight, pierce the veils of fate, and lay bare the vendetta that slithered toward them from the abyss.

Esi’s jaw tightened as she stirred, the wooden spoon scraping against the cauldron’s edge. The memories clung to her like shadows—Lady Bachleda’s dungeons, the bite of manacles, the cruel laughter as another poison coursed through her veins. Hassan had pulled her from that hell, given her a blade, a bow, and a purpose. But trust was a brittle thing, easily shattered. Even now, as she worked, she wondered if the true threat lay not in Dagmara’s visions, but within the coven itself. The poultice bubbled violently, as if sensing her doubt.

The temple shuddered. Glass vials rattled on their shelves, and the cauldron tipped dangerously, its contents sloshing like a living thing straining to escape. Esi lunged to steady it, her scimitar already half-drawn before she realized the motion. The Leviathan’s roar tore through the sanctum, a sound like the ocean itself screaming in agony. There was no time. She snatched a clay flask from the shelf, its surface etched with warding runes, and poured the poultice in with a hurried, sloshing motion. The liquid inside seethed, reacting to the demon’s presence, its colors darkening to an ominous bruise-purple.

The deck was chaos incarnate when she emerged. Moonlight carved jagged silhouettes from the panicked acolytes, their shouts drowned beneath the Leviathan’s monstrous wail. Varek’s swarm of wasps clouded the air, their venom eating into the beast’s flesh, but the creature was far from slain. Its tentacles, slick with brine and ichor, coiled around the Duskwood tree like serpents suffocating their prey. The demon’s voice—a tri-toned abomination of Mephisto’s tongue—clawed at her mind, each syllable a needle of ice. Esi bared her teeth. She had endured worse than this.

Her bow was in her hands before she could think, an arrow already nocked and dripping with blight. The magic surged through her, a corrosive tide that blackened the shaft with venom. She loosed it into the tentacle’s pulsing underside. The effect was immediate—flesh bubbled, split, and sloughed away in putrid ropes. But the beast was vast, its hatred deeper than the ocean. Another limb erupted from the waves, this one studded with hooked barbs that gleamed like rusted blades.

Then came Hassan. The Archmagus stood like a monolith against the storm, his staff alight with crimson sigils. His voice boomed across the deck, a counter-chant that struck the demon’s invocations like a hammer upon anvil. The Leviathan’s voice faltered, muffled as if plunged into the depths. Yet the battle was far from won. The creature thrashed, its wounds weeping black ichor, its rage undimmed. Esi nocked another arrow, her fingers steady. Let the beast come. She would carve her vengeance into its hide, one poisoned bolt at a time.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

Pain lanced through Esi’s shoulder like a brand of white-hot iron, the Leviathan’s barb still embedded deep in her flesh. Blood seeped down her arm, staining her black robes darker still, the metallic tang thick in her nostrils. Around her, the temple deck was a slaughterhouse—Ana’s lifeless body pinned like a grotesque offering to the Duskwood, Rayan’s headless corpse slumped near the shattered remains of the escape tunnels. The air reeked of salt, ichor, and death.

She gritted her teeth, forcing her trembling fingers to reach for the vials at her belt. Three glass phials of Tears of the Duskwood, their contents swirling with a faint emerald luminescence. The tonics were precious, their ingredients harvested under the dying light of the Blood Moon, but there was no time for hesitation. With a sharp motion, she hurled them to the deck, the glass shattering against the waterlogged wood. A thick, verdant mist erupted from the broken vials, coiling around the wounded like a living thing.

The effect was immediate, though agonizing. The vapor seared into Esi’s wound, flesh knitting together in jagged, uneven patches as the regenerative magic fought against the Leviathan’s lingering corruption. It was not a clean healing—her shoulder still burned, the muscle beneath tender and weak—but she could move again. Nearby, Hassan gasped as the mist closed the gaping hole in his side, the glyphs across his chest dimming slightly as his body siphoned the healing energies. Varek, too, staggered upright, the barb in his leg dissolving into blackened sludge as the tonic purged the demonic taint.

But the Leviathan was not finished.

The whirlpool at the temple’s base churned faster, the waters frothing with unnatural fury. The remaining tentacles thrashed, their barbed lengths coiling like serpents preparing to strike. Esi could feel the demon’s malice in the air, a suffocating pressure that made her teeth ache. It was learning. Adapting. Their attacks had wounded it, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

She turned to Hassan, her voice raw. "We need to strike its core. The thing’s not just lashing out—it’s thinking."

The Archmagus’ face was ashen, but his eyes burned with grim resolve. He raised his staff, the glyphs across his chest flaring once more. "Then we give it something to think about."

Esi nocked another arrow, the blight already writhing along its shaft. Varek’s swarm buzzed at his back, a living storm of venom and rage. The Leviathan roared, and the final battle began.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

The world had become a nightmare of fire and blood. The Duskwood burned like a pyre, its ancient branches collapsing in showers of embers. The Leviathan’s barbs still rained down, each impact shaking the crumbling temple to its foundations. Esi’s leg screamed in protest as she forced herself to stand, her fingers slick with her own blood as she gripped her bow. The blight still answered her call, but her strength was fading.

Then Hassan moved.

She saw the Soul Barb in his hand, the way his glyphs flared crimson like a death knell. She knew, in that instant, what he meant to do. Her throat tightened, but before she could cry out, the blade was already buried in his chest. The air itself seemed to shudder as his lifeblood ignited into a swirling vortex—a portal of searing scarlet light.

No.

The word was a silent scream in her mind. Hassan—the man who had pulled her from the filth of Kyovashad’s slave pits, who had taught her the ways of the coven—was gone. Reduced to ashes in the span of a breath. Grief threatened to swallow her whole, but the Leviathan’s next act tore her back to the present.

The demon’s voice rose in a guttural incantation, its remaining tentacles slamming into the deck with enough force to split the stone. The portal warped. The image of Lut Gholein’s sun-baked spires twisted, distorted—then shattered like glass. In its place loomed something impossible: a colossal sphere of burnished metal, floating in an endless void. Runes of a forgotten language pulsed across its surface, their meaning just beyond comprehension.

Esi’s breath caught. What in the name of the Light—?

The portal’s pull became irresistible. The very air screamed as it was sucked into the anomaly, dragging debris, seawater, and living flesh alike into its maw. Varek was already stumbling toward it, his face pale with exhaustion and pain. Esi reached for him, her fingers brushing his sleeve—

—and then the world ripped apart.

The last thing she saw was the Leviathan’s maw opening in what might have been triumph before the void swallowed them whole.

Darkness followed.

Consciousness fled.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

cxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

Esi's fingers dug into the soft moss beneath her as consciousness returned in jagged fragments. The scent of crushed herbs and something faintly metallic filled her nose. Her shoulder ached where the Leviathan's barb had pierced her, but the wound was now bound with strips of clean linen, the flesh beneath tender but whole. The ghostly teal glow of the pool beside her cast shifting patterns across the obsidian walls, lending the chamber an otherworldly air.

Her gaze snapped to the unfamiliar woman standing over Varek—pale-skinned, bald, with a serpentine mark winding across her scalp like a brand. Instinct screamed at Esi to reach for her bow, but her weapons were gone, stripped from her along with her outer robes. She forced herself to exhale, to still the frantic rhythm of her heart. This woman—Sidra—had tended their wounds. That didn’t make her an ally.

Varek spoke, his voice steady despite the exhaustion lining his face. He explained where they were, or at least what little he knew. A sphere. A pocket dimension. The work of a dead sorcerer. Esi’s jaw tightened. None of it made sense. None of it mattered. Not when Hassan—

Her throat closed.

She could still see the Soul Barb plunging into his chest, the way his body had crumbled to ash. The memory was a fresh wound, raw and bleeding. He had been harsh, yes. Demanding. But he had also been the one who found her half-dead in the gutters of Kyovashad, who had looked at a broken slave and seen something worth saving. And now he was gone.

Esi swallowed the grief before it could choke her. Later. She would mourn later.

She turned her attention to Sidra, studying the woman with a hunter’s scrutiny. The Vizjaqtaar were no friends of the Duskshroud, not truly. They tolerated the coven only so long as its members stayed pure, and Esi had learned long ago that "tolerance" was a flimsy shield.

"Thank you," she said at last, the words stiff but genuine. "For the healing. For the shelter." Her fingers flexed against the moss. "But you didn’t pull us from the void out of kindness. You said we could help you. How?"

Her gaze flicked to Varek, then back to Sidra. The assassin’s face was unreadable, her posture relaxed but poised—like a blade resting in its sheath. Esi knew that stillness. It was the calm before the strike.

"And more importantly," she continued, voice low, "what do we get in return?"

The Ghost Spring’s light pulsed faintly, as if in answer.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

Esi studied Sidra’s face, searching for any flicker of deception in the assassin’s dark eyes. The woman’s words were smooth, her offer tempting—but Esi had learned long ago that gifts often came with hidden barbs. Still, what choice did they have? Stranded in this alien sphere, with no clear path back to Kehjistan, they were at the mercy of forces far beyond their understanding.

She exhaled sharply through her nose.

"Fine," Esi said at last, her voice edged with reluctance. "But I’ll need time. My wounds aren’t fully healed, and I won’t face some abomination without proper preparation."

Sidra nodded, her expression unreadable. "Take what you need. The sphere’s lower vaults hold reagents that may aid you."

Esi didn’t thank her. Instead, she turned away, her mind already racing through the steps of her craft. She moved to the adjacent chamber Sidra had mentioned—what must have once been Marduk’s laboratory. The air here was thick with the scent of dried herbs and something sharper, like ozone. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with jars of preserved organs, vials of iridescent liquids, and bundles of strange, twisted roots.

Her fingers moved with practiced precision as she gathered what she needed. Moonpetal for mending. Blackroot for pain. A flask of distilled Ghost Spring water, still faintly luminescent. She worked in silence, grinding, boiling, distilling, until the air was thick with the acrid-sweet tang of her craft. Three vials of Duskbloom Salve—potent enough to knit flesh in moments—took shape first, their contents shimmering like liquid silver.

Then came the dangerous one.

Witch-fire was not a thing to be trifled with. It was a living flame, one that recognized friend from foe, healing allies even as it seared their enemies to the bone. Few alchemists dared brew it; fewer still survived the process. Esi’s hands did not shake as she measured out the powdered heartstone, the crushed embers of a fallen star. She whispered the incantations under her breath, the words bitter on her tongue. The mixture in the crucible bubbled violently before settling into a deep, bloody crimson. She poured it carefully into a reinforced flask, sealing it with a stopper carved with warding runes.

There. One misstep, and the entire chamber could have been reduced to cinders. But it was done.

Next, she turned to her weapons. Sidra’s Umbaru oils gleamed like liquid shadow in the dim light. Esi unsheathed her dagger and scimitar, running the slick substance along each blade with slow, deliberate strokes. The metal drank it in, the edges taking on a faint, eerie sheen. Lighter. Sharper. Hungrier.

By the time she returned to the main chamber, exhaustion weighed heavy on her limbs. She sank onto the moss beside the Ghost Spring, chewing mechanically on the last of the salted pork Sidra had given her. The food was rich, savory, but it tasted like ash in her mouth.

Varek was already asleep nearby, his breathing slow and steady. Sidra sat cross-legged by the pool, her eyes closed in meditation. Esi watched her for a long moment, suspicion coiling in her gut.

But deeper than the suspicion was the numbness.

Hassan was dead.

The thought should have shattered her. Instead, it sat like a stone in her chest, heavy and dull. She had mourned before—for her stolen childhood, for the family she’d never known—but this grief was different. It wasn’t a wound. It was an absence.

She lay back, staring at the obsidian ceiling. Somewhere beyond this sphere, the Leviathan still prowled the depths. Somewhere, the Duskshroud coven fought on without them.

And somewhere, Sidra’s son waited.

Esi closed her eyes. Tomorrow, they would face the obelisk. Tomorrow, they would fight.

But tonight, she let the numbness swallow her whole.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ACT III


ESI​

Esi’s sleep was a descent into remembered torment. The nightmare seized her with claws of iron, dragging her back to the reeking belly of the White Sepulcher. The stench of witchbane clogged her throat, its bitter tang sapping the strength from her limbs. Around her, the groans of the chained rose and fell like a tide of suffering, their voices blending with the ship’s ceaseless creaking. The air was thick with sweat and despair, the darkness broken only by slivers of cruel daylight that stabbed through the cracks in the deck above.

A whip cracked.

Pain lanced across her back, fresh and searing. She bit down on a scream, tasting blood where her teeth had split her lip. Above her loomed Lady Maria Bachleda, her maroon silks untouched by the filth of the hold, her face alight with vicious amusement. The noblewoman’s smile was a knife’s edge, her eyes gleaming with the pleasure of a predator toying with its prey.

"Still alive, little witch?" Maria purred, trailing the whip’s bloodied tip along Esi’s cheek. "Good. I’d hate for you to miss what comes next."

The restraints bit into Esi’s wrists, the manacles rusted tight. She thrashed, but the witchbane turned her muscles to lead. Around her, the other captives wept, their voices a chorus of broken things. Somewhere, a child wailed—a sound that would haunt Esi long after the nightmare ended.

She woke with a gasp, her body drenched in cold sweat.

Sidra’s voice cut through the remnants of the dream. "We must move. The Ghost Spring weakens by the hour. Linger, and this plane will unravel around us."

Esi forced herself upright, her hands trembling. The nightmare clung to her like a second skin, its echoes still ringing in her ears. She glanced at Varek, already stirring, his face drawn with exhaustion. Wordlessly, they followed Sidra toward the bridge.

The structure stretched into the abyss, a slender thread of stone suspended over nothingness. Flickering motes of light danced along its edges, their glow feeble against the consuming dark. As they crossed, Esi’s pulse quickened. The bridge defied reason—its length impossible, its existence a blasphemy against nature. The sphere’s power was beyond mortal comprehension.

And then, the obelisk.

It rose before them like a shard of frozen lightning, its crystalline surface alive with writhing sigils. The air around it hummed with malice, thick with the weight of stolen souls. At its base, a stone bowl waited, its rim carved with depictions of bleeding hands. A barbed needle glistened at its center, dark with old blood.

Sidra halted, her face ashen. "These were Marduk’s acolytes," she murmured, gesturing to the figures trapped within the crystal. "Their suffering fuels the shade that guards this place. I can go no farther."

Esi stepped forward, her fingers curling into fists. The obelisk’s presence pressed against her skin, a physical weight. She met Varek’s gaze, then reached for the needle.

The prick of its point was sharp, deliberate. Her blood welled, dripping into the bowl.

The obelisk screamed.

Its hues twisted, bleeding into crimson, its light flaring like a dying sun. From its depths emerged Shaitan—a towering specter of bone and shadow, its wings vast and tattered, its maw dripping ichor. Yellow eyes burned into her soul.

"The evil contained herein shall not be set free," it intoned, its voice the grind of tombstones. "This ruse ends now."

Fire erupted.

A cyclone of flame roared outward, searing flesh and stone alike. Esi acted on instinct, smashing the witch-fire poultice to the ground. The alchemical flames erupted in a serpentine spiral, twisting into the form of a blazing viper. It struck, fangs of white fire sinking into the shade’s essence.

The inferno was a living thing—devouring the abyssal flames, healing Esi’s burns even as it scoured Shaitan’s flesh. The shade howled, its form writhing in the conflagration.

The battle had begun.

​

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

The shadow hound erupted from the abyss like a nightmare given form, its twin heads writhing on sinuous necks, scales glistening with an unnatural sheen. The air around it twisted, recoiling from its presence as though the very fabric of reality could not bear its existence. Esi’s fingers tightened around her bow, the Umbaru oils thrumming through the weapon, making it feather-light in her grasp. The blight coiled along the arrow’s shaft, a living venom eager to feast.

"Hold on, Varek," she hissed, the words barely more than a breath.

She loosed the shot.

The arrow struck true, burying itself in the beast’s flank. The blight erupted in a burst of corrosive green, eating through shadow-flesh like acid through parchment. The hound screamed, a sound that was less noise and more a vibration in the bones, a tremor in the soul. Its heads whipped toward her, eyes burning with a hatred older than Sanctuary itself.

Then it lunged—not for her, but for Varek.

Esi’s heart lurched.

"NO!"

The hound’s jaws closed around Varek’s shoulder, teeth sinking deep. Blood sprayed, dark and vivid against the obelisk’s eerie glow. Varek’s cry of pain cut through the chaos, sharp as a blade. Esi didn’t think—she moved. Her bow clattered to the ground as she drew her scimitar, the oiled edge humming with lethal promise.

She struck like a viper.

The first slash carved through the hound’s neck, black ichor gushing like a ruptured vein. The beast reeled, its remaining head thrashing wildly. Esi didn’t give it a chance to recover. A second strike, brutal and precise, severed the other head from its body. The hound collapsed, its form dissolving into a seething pool of shadow that hissed and bubbled as if alive.

But death did not claim it.

Tendrils of living darkness lashed from the corpse, razor-edged and venomous. They sliced into Esi’s arms, her face, the wounds burning as though doused in hellfire. Her vision swam, the world tilting violently. Bile rose in her throat, and she retched, her body convulsing as the toxin spread like wildfire through her veins. Blood dripped from her lips, her wounds, pooling beneath her trembling form.

Yet Varek still chanted.

His voice was a lifeline in the storm, steady and unbroken. She clung to it, forcing herself upright through sheer will. Her fingers, slick with blood, found the hilt of her scimitar once more.

"Varek… now!" she rasped.

The shaitan loomed before them, its form flickering like a dying ember, yet its malice undimmed. Its yellow eyes locked onto hers, filled with a hatred that transcended mortal comprehension.

Esi met its gaze without flinching.

She would not fall. Not here. Not while Varek still fought.

For Hassan.

For vengeance.

For the life she had clawed back from the abyss.

The battle was not over.

And neither was she.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Emeraldweaver]

ESI​

The shaitan's corpse lay still at last, its shadowy form dissipating like smoke in the wind. Esi's chest heaved, her muscles trembling with exhaustion, her wounds pulsing in time with her ragged breaths. They had won—but the victory turned to ashes in her mouth as laughter, cold and mocking, slithered through the air.

"Foolish witches..."

The voice was Sidra's—yet not.

A crackling vortex of energy erupted before the obelisk, and from its depths stepped the assassin—only her form shimmered, warped, then sloughed away like a serpent's shed skin. In her place stood an old man, his pallid flesh the color of tarnished silver, his lips curled in a grin that promised suffering. The real Sidra collapsed to the ground, her lifeless eyes staring blankly at nothing.

Esi's blood turned to ice.

"Marduk," she spat, the name like poison on her tongue.

The sorcerer inclined his head, his golden eyes glinting with amusement. "Congratulations, witch. You've figured me out."

Her fingers tightened around her scimitar, the blade humming with barely restrained power. Betrayal burned in her chest, sharp and bitter. She should have known. She had known—somewhere, deep down, her instincts had screamed that something was wrong.

"Why?" she demanded, her voice raw. "What was this all for?"

Marduk's smile widened, his voice taking on a singsong cadence as he recited:

"Marrowhold fell beneath Leviathan’s breath,
A hymn to the quiet orchestration of death.
Hassan’s folly, a thread in my snare,
His arts lit the path to your final despair."​

Esi's stomach twisted.

"Through the assassin’s mask, I bade you to sever,
The warden’s seal, undone forever.
Duskshroud twists in my shadowed command,
The stars now bow to the will of my hand."​

"The warden?" Esi whispered, dread coiling in her gut.

"Yes," Marduk purred. "The creature you so valiantly slaughtered was no demon, but an angel of the High Heavens—bound here by Sidra's vengeance, disguised by my magic."

Esi turned, her gaze falling upon the slain figure. The illusion melted away, revealing the truth beneath—a celestial being, its wings broken, its luminous blood pooling upon the stone. Horror clawed at her throat.

"Sidra sought to trap me here for eternity," Marduk continued, stepping toward the obelisk. "A bold move, I admit. But futile. Her son is dead, and now, thanks to you, so is Soliel, Warden of the Silver Spire." His laughter was a blade to her ribs. "The Angiris Council will not take kindly to this transgression. The Duskshroud has made a powerful enemy this day."

With a flick of his wrist, Marduk manipulated the obelisk's glyphs, summoning a portal. Beyond it, a throne room stretched into shadow, its occupants robed in crimson.

"I thank you for my freedom, witches," he said, stepping through. "Give my regards to the abyss."

The portal snapped shut.

The sphere shuddered.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the platform, the air itself vibrating with unstable energy. Esi whirled toward Varek, her voice urgent.

"We need a portal—now!"

She rushed to the obelisk, her fingers tracing the arcane inscriptions in desperation. The symbols writhed beneath her touch, their meaning just beyond her grasp. Time was slipping through their fingers.

And the abyss waited, hungry.

 

[Obsidianserpent]

xxxxxxxxxxxx