Nate Kenyon - The Order

They had been traveling for days and had left their mules at the last town to continue the final part of their journey on foot. Mules would be of little use on this shifting sand base. The location Cain and his companion sought was remote. He had no doubt that these ruins would have remained well hidden for many years more if this young warrior had not brought him the obscure Zakarum texts now safely nestled in his rucksack. The Ancient Repositories of the Vizjerei in Caldeum were far larger and better known among mages, but this one, if it did indeed exist, could be even more important.

It had been a very long journey. After the narrow defeat of Baal at Mount Arreat and the destruction of the Worldstone, Deckard Cain had been unable to convince his traveling party that the immediate danger to Sanctuary was not over. Far from it, in fact, if everything he had read and understood in the Horadric scrolls was true. The archangel Tyrael himself had warned him of it, before he had been lost. Cain sensed a subtle change in the world that mirrored the prophecies, a disruption in the delicate balance between the High Heavens and Burning Hells that had existed for centuries. The loss of the Worldstone was devastating, and left Sanctuary open and vulnerable.

To make matters worse, Cain had begun dreaming again about his childhood and his mother’s stories, waking in a cold sweat nearly every night. He fought against endless armies of darkness with nothing to protect him, or sat hunched and broken in a cage hung from a pole while monstrous creatures taunted him. And he relived things even worse than that: ghosts from his past that he had thought were buried forever.

He hadn’t dreamed like this since the fall of Tristram. His own guilt over those events consumed him; he had been too late to stop the demonic invasion of his own home, as self-absorbed as he had been back then, and he had been too late to change what had happened on Mount Arreat.

Cain’s companions remained insistent on celebrating their victory, returning to loved ones and picking up the pieces of their shattered lives, and he could hardly blame them. He, however, had nobody waiting for him, and with Tristram destroyed he had nowhere to go, so he set off looking for the pieces that would fit together to reveal the pattern underneath. If the invasion was truly coming, he would need help: the Horadrim had been formed to battle evil but had since faded away into history. His mother’s voice echoed back to him from years before: Jered is your blood, and you—you are the last of a proud line of heroes.

Akarat started down the slope of sand toward the columns, but Cain held his arm. The paladin was trembling, full of the energy and recklessness of his age, which masked his more delicate senses that might have otherwise given him pause now. But Cain felt it, like a faint sour smell on the wind.

The scent of danger.

Akarat unsheathed his sword in his eagerness to charge down upon whatever was waiting for them. “We’re exposed here,” he said. “It’s better to move quickly. I’ll protect you from threshers or sand wasps. Besides, we might find nothing at all.”

“We should watch a moment longer,” Cain said. “The texts warned of a spell that shields the repository from sight. By all rights, these columns should not be visible to us. Something has weakened it.”

He did not say more about what he was thinking: If there are such valuable artifacts hidden here, there may well be other powerful forces guarding their secrets. He knelt in the hot sand and removed his rucksack, searching inside for a particular object. This young man reminded him of another he had known years before, an old friend who had descended into hellish catacombs in an attempt to save Tristram. That hero had paid dearly for his overconfidence, as had all of Sanctuary, and Cain had been unable to save him.

If I’m right, it’s you who will need protection, he thought.

He removed the object, something like a looking glass with an amber lens, and held it to the light. The sun was falling to the horizon, giving the air a more deeply yellow tinge. They had no more than an hour before darkness fell, and the best thing to do would be to set up camp now and explore the ruins in the morning. But Akarat had spoken the truth; they were exposed here, and neither one of them wanted to face what might come out of the sands as the shadows deepened.

He stood up, trying to ignore the bite of pain in his back and the throbbing ache in his knees, a constant reminder of his age. How had this happened? It seemed only moments ago he was a boy playing fetch back in the fields, watching out for cow patties in the long grass or stealing eggs from Grosgrove’s henhouse. Ah, how fickle life was, drifting through your fingers like this forsaken sand, gone before you could catch it . . .

Cain’s own self-doubt crept back in. Most of his life had been spent in selfishness and denial, living among his books and ignoring his own past. He had waited fifty years to embrace his destiny, and in the process had helped destroy everything he had held dear. Could he even consider himself Horadrim at all?

He was no hero, despite what his mother had always told him. The thought of everything resting on his frail old shoulders was terrifying. Something terrible was coming, something that would make the previous attacks seem like child’s play. Nobody he had spoken to about the demon invasion believed him, except for Akarat; they all thought he was a doddering old fool at best, and dangerous at worst. The people of Sanctuary went about their daily lives and rarely sensed the intrusion of angels and demons into their world. Life was hard, but it was mundane.

They hadn’t seen what he had, hadn’t dreamed his dreams, or they might have felt differently.

The paladin grunted. He had sheathed his sword again but was shifting from foot to foot. When they’d been in Westmarch, he had been eager to hear Cain’s stories, insisting they stay up long past when old men should have been in bed; but now, out here and close to battle, he wanted action. The young paladin was named after the founder of the Church of Zakarum himself, and it seemed to be a fitting name for him. Although young and headstrong, he was both a true believer and a zealot.

Cain muttered several words under his breath, a brief incantation to activate the power inside the artifact, and handed it over. “Look through the lens at the ruins,” he said. “Quickly now, before it fades.”

The young paladin raised the glass to his eye, and his sudden intake of breath was enough for Cain to know the artifact was working. “By the Light . . .” he said softly. He lowered the glass, staring down at the ruins, then raised it again. “Incredible.” He handed it back to Cain, his eyes wide with wonder.

The old man peered through the glass. The lens coloring gave the entire scene a tinge of orange, like a fire burned just out of sight. The remains of a massive structure and its surrounding grounds spread out below them, just beyond where the two columns marked the entrance. More columns in various stages of decay marched in twin lines to what had been the front doors of a temple. Broken walls rose to where they had been torn away by some great explosion many years ago. Huge stone blocks, chipped and worn from the drifting sands, lay half buried where they had fallen.

Cain scanned the scene carefully and lowered the glass. Once again, all that was visible to the naked eye were the two columns. The spell that had protected these ruins was powerful enough to last centuries, but it was weakening now. The real question was why.

There was no stopping Akarat, however. He was already twenty feet down the slope, moving as quickly as his armor allowed. He glanced back at Cain, the excitement on his face touched by the warm glow of the sun before he descended into shadow.