Read Diablo III: Morbed for Free Online Page B

Surely they, like him, were seeking an exit.
    Traitor.
    Morbed froze, listening . . .
    Again, the unwelcome, disconnected voice, so like a stranger inside his head, chastising him. Why was his own mind suddenly becoming his enemy?
    Morbed thrust the lantern before him and drove on, coming soon to a doorway and, beyond, another large, open space, a corridor where shadows receded on either hand. He stepped forward, struggling to determine which direction the bats might have fled.
    A sound, soft and unintelligible, drifted from his right. Hoping the noise indicated the colony’s movement, Morbed bent his steps in that direction . . . and soon came to a dark iron gate standing open on rusty hinges, set into a sturdy metal fence anchored to the wall on both sides. A key extended from the gate’s lock, and from it hung a wide ring fixed with several other dangling keys.
    Still grasping his dagger firmly, Morbed held the lantern high, stepped through the gateway, and paused, glancing to the walls on left and right. He beheld horizontal, oblong recesses, one atop the other. Within some lay crumbling wooden coffins; yet more housed only bones.
    The crypts.
    Further, just within the lantern light on either side, Morbed beheld wide pillars spaced evenly apart, set halfway within the walls, and atop them were statues. Each figure was seated with straightened back against the wall, as if sitting on a throne, hands on knees. Many of them bore misshapen features: enlarged brows, distended crowns. The eyes of the statues glittered with white crystals. Beyond the bend lay only darkness.
    Stepping to one side, Morbed leaned forward and scrutinized a nook more closely. There a grim fractured skull surrounded by dozens of bones gazed back at him. Morbed held the lantern near his face and drew closer still. The skull, like the statues, was abnormal—deformed. The eye sockets were set far apart, and there was a great protrusion along the forehead. It sat atop an unusually wide, large mandible.
    â€œWhat news?”
    Morbed nearly jumped clear of his boots. He whipped the dagger up to chest height, confronted by the scowling visage of Clovis. He had doffed his helm and set aside shield and flail.
    Lowering the knife, Morbed replied, “I was . . . separated from the others.”
    Liar! Betrayer!
    A roiling maelstrom of scorn ripped through the mind of the thief. He pressed a palm to his temple, eyes clamped shut.
    â€œAre you ill?” the crusader asked. “What of your face? The blood . . .”
    â€œIt’s nothing.”
    Clovis carried a torch and was now looking down at the spirit wolf that had accompanied him. The animal was silently barking up at the two men. Morbed imagined he could hear the sound as if filtered from a great distance, but he thought it must be his own mind playing more tricks.
    Clovis eyed the animal curiously.
    Morbed realized just what the phantom beast might be trying to warn the crusader of. The thief was overcome with the sudden fear that the animal was naming him betrayer and, further, that Clovis sensed his treachery.
    â€œProbably urging us to depart. Perhaps the others have already left,” Morbed said.
    Clovis absently gestured at their surroundings. “I’ve been occupied here, searching through the remains. I’ve studied every hollow, to no avail.”
    The crusader’s eyes were distant, his features slack. Presently he sighed, his gaze falling to the hand of Morbed bearing the lantern.
    â€œWhy are you shackled?”
    Morbed looked down. Tendrils of dread twisted and burrowed deep within him as he noted the lantern’s manacle, which was closed around his left wrist .
    When? How? He had not even felt it; he had been wholly unaware until just this moment. With renewed dismay, Morbed remembered Jaharra’s assessment, that the lantern was an object of power, that she had detected within it a kind of undercurrent.