DIABLO: ARCHFALL


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

"The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats


Dust — I

Deep in the barren wastes and shadowed by a dune rivalling the tallest mortal towers in size, was a crystal. Its facets glimmered as the sun eventually crept forward. Its faces were pristine, its corners unsullied by the ravaging winds that scoured the rest of the desert. Only a bucket-sized fraction of it jutted out from the earth. The rest lay buried underneath a crown of rock and glass, formed when the sand had vaporized upon impact.

Davik ran gloved fingers along its surface, marveling as his reflection shone back from within the opalescence. There was a thinly translucent layer to the crystal that captured his image like a mirror.

"Finally," he breathed, withdrawing a worn pickaxe from his belt. The crystal rang with the smallest tap, its song echoing out over the wastes until it wavered discordantly in the wind. Unsurprisingly, it remained intact. It was the same as the other pieces, then.

To the side, his guardian stood atop a minor dune, the tassels of her head wrap tossing about as the breeze picked up. "Is this it?"

"I'm fairly certain." He dropped to his knees and began to brush away the fresh sand gathering around the crystal's base. A half a foot down, then two, and he saw the formation begin to widen. "It's big. Not like those other ones."

"I worried as much. What in the Hells are you going to do with one this large? Drag it back with a mule cart?"

"The usual." From a pouch on his belt, he withdrew a gem that was suspended between pristine silver clasps and attached to a loop of silver twine. He closed his eyes and dangled it over an open palm, then began to swing it gently. "Find it. Dig it out."

Images blossomed in his mind. Layers upon layers of rock and dust, built from millennia of unrelenting heat and harsh gales. Bones, in places, some ancient. Pebbles. Shattered stones. Glass.

A hollow.

He snatched the scrying gem up and dropped it back in its pouch, then fetched and tossed his pickaxe in the direction he'd sensed. It sailed across the cloudless sky before slamming into the sand. A small crevice formed where it landed, growing as granules began to seep down around the tool into the cavern below.

"Then write it up for the history books," he finished with a wry grin. "How about you?"

"Let's get out of the heat to start. Then we can talk more about your obsession with jumping into dark caves and how much I hate it."