An Amazon of Limited Means

ACT IV

Day 21

Kitsilan looked around her. "'The Crossroads of Heaven and Hell'? Wonder if Tyrael mans the toll booth," she muttered, staring through the archway onto the desolate and blasted land below. She'd met Jamella and Halbu, who'd insisted on treating her with a deference completely foreign to Kitsilan, and heard about Izual from Tyrael, taken another two seconds to explore the Pandemonium Fortress in its entirety, and now stood at the top of the stairs.

"Well, not like I have anything better to do…" she thought, and entered the Outer Steppes. A Doom Caster floated toward her, and fried on the tips of her Magic Arrows. At the foot of the stairs, three Venom Lords trotted up, mincing along on tiny hooves like goat clan. Their foul inferno breath singed Kitsilan's cheeks, but she took them down at point-blank range, levelling to 27 as she did so. They hadn't dropped anything useful, but a level's a level and she took the stairs back to the Fortress.

She pulled her notebook out of her stash and paged through it. Akara's writing was as incomprehensible as ever, and she had begun to suspect that Ormus had been winging it. A page in back was folded over and she opened it, one word standing out clear. "Decoy? Sounds useful."

Kits dashed across the hall to where Jamella was scrawling blue shapes in the air. "Yo, Jamella—you know anything about this Decoy skill?"

"Hail to thee, Champion! Of course. Is this your wish?"

"Um, yeah, I guess so. I can't make out what Akara said to do anyway."

"Done!"

On Kits' next foray into the Outer Steppes, she was delighted at Decoy's effectiveness. Doom Casters pelted it with mana-burn balls, Venom Lords railed and stamped their feet at it and Flesh Spawners belched out their young in its direction. Meanwhile, Kits stood back and shot them all down. The only down side was that they all dropped War Axes.

Festooned with War Axes and the occasional ring, Kitsilan made several trips back and forth as she cleared her way around the Outer Steppes. She found the entrance to the Plains of Despair along the southwest edge and filed it away for future reference. Meanwhile, the Venom Lords and Flesh Spawners and Doom Casters had her attention, and the War Axes kept falling.

A boss pack of some horrid little leaping doggies darted out around her, the boss being cold enchanted, but Kits didn't catch its name as she was busy shooting Doom Casters. It dropped a fancy pair of greaves, just to break the War Axe monopoly.

Continuing counter-clockwise around the Steppes, she finally came round to a place she'd already mapped. A last Flesh Spawner, and she was alone. She walked back to the Fortress and sold her last bundle of War Axes. Time for a nap.

Refreshed and ready to have at it again, Kitsilan wandered back out into the respawned Outer Steppes. This time, she faced Doom Casters, Doom Knights and Corpulents. The drill went pretty much as it had earlier—if there was a crowd, cast Decoy and fall back. Otherwise, shoot anything that moved till it stopped moving. The drops were slightly more varied; Arcanna's Sign being the only thing she considered keeping. She found the demon doggie boss pack pretty much where they'd been before, led by Chaos Cloud the Grim (cold enchanted), and kept it in her sights even when its leaps took it offscreen, where it perished and wasted its death nova on empty air.

Having cleared the Steppes a second time, Kits headed for the Plains of Despair. As she set foot on the stairway, Izual spoke from somewhere below her. "Well, that's fast service," Kitsilan thought, backing up a step and shooting down the Burning Souls that appeared and disappeared around her. A little backing and forthing on the stairs lured Izual up and into the Steppes behind her, where she cast Decoy to distract him and shot him from outside his frozen nova range. A good thing, as he spammed it every other second.

She went through approximately five Decoys before Izual finally collapsed, and shook her head over his paltry drop: a fancy war hammer. Izual insisted on making a speech before he floated away, mostly boasts and threats to which Kitsilan paid no heed. Looking around, Kits saw that she had led him almost to the stairway to the Pandemonium Fortress, which she thought very good planning on her part.

Tyrael was happy enough over Izual's demise to offer her two full skill points, which she finally decided to expend on Magic Arrow and CS. Cain wanted her to run off and shatter Mephisto's Soulstone on the Hellforge, which Kitsilan thought was a bit abrupt, but that was just Cain's way and she was used to it by now.

Back in the Plains, Kits worked her way around the north and west sections, smarting in the lightning bolts cast by the Burning Souls and dodging Doom Knights. The Doom Casters were a mere irritation by comparison. She kicked over a Trapped Soul and found Iratha's Coil, whose attributes (+30% to fire and lightning resistance) were enough to convince her to swap with Tarnhelm. Her lightning resistance topped out and immediately the threat of the Burning Souls lessened considerably. Continuing around the outer sections, she found a pair of pricey War Staves and the entrance to the City of the Damned. Much though she wanted to peek in and have a try at the waypoint, though, she was just too tired. She finished clearing the Plains and portalled back to the Fortress. "It's a shame," she told Halbu as he straightened a bent piece of her mail, "but I'll just have to go through Izual again tomorrow."

"Hail to you, Champion!" he replied, handing her the bill for the repairs.

"Yeah, well, glad we could have this little chat," she muttered.

Kits found a corner where the stonework wasn't quite as hard as everywhere else and laid out her bedroll. No cocoa, no one to talk to but Tyrael, Cain and a pair of zombies. "Talented zombies," she told her pillow, "good with a Malus or a quick healing spell, but they're not really what I'd call company."

She lay there trying to go to sleep, but eventually gave up. No one ever turns off the lights in the Fortress. Back through her still-standing portal, and into the City of the Damned. Kitsilan figured on finding the waypoint and hoped the exercise would tire her enough to relax.

Trouble just inside the entry: a Strangler boss pack supported by Damned and Stygian Dogs. The minions were easy enough to separate and shoot down, but Ash Eater (cold enchanted) was harder to distract and Kits finally had to shoot it at close range and absorb the death nova.

She continued carefully along the south and east, on the lookout for crowds. Damned were easy to spot, as they announced their presence in advance with lightning balls. They tended to approach from several directions, which was not so easy. Kitsilan got pretty good at dodging around them and forcing them to line up the way she likes.

Stygian spawners rose to the top of her unfavourite monster list, at least until Kits found Abyss Knights at the far end of the City. Before then, though, she ran across a large walled structure paralleling her path whose door(s) were out of her sight. Damned, Stygians, Knights and even a stray Strangler minion bounced and jigged on the other side of the wall. Kitsilan looked around, but couldn't find a break that would let her shoot them without showing them the way out, and right now she was on a mission—find the waypoint, no distractions, no getting killed through inattention. So she moved away from there and cast around on the north side.

She stayed on top of the numbers of monsters that came her way, just barely in some cases. On a trip back to the Fortress, she complained bitterly to Halbu about her overall defense rating and resistance levels. His response was to offer her a Glimmering Field Plate.

Jamella's stores were no better, and Kitsilan returned to the City with a socketed Long War Bow she'd stuffed with a flawed sapphire, flawed amethyst and flawed skull. (They were all she had. Not only can she not get her resistances above a bare stay-alive minimum, but she hasn't yet found more than a very few gems.) She thought it might be an improvement over the gemmed long Battle Bow she'd used in Kurast. Anything to slow down the spawning Stygians. She also tried a Vicious Long War Bow of Fire, but it didn't seem to produce any fire, and not even as much damage as Rune Thirst, though this may have only been in seeming.

At least her lighting resistance was maxxed.

The further Kits walked into the City, the more Abyss Knights she found. Considering the damage they could do, they were quite fragile. If only there weren't so many of them! Kitsilan finally found the waypoint in the south corner, but it was some time before she could even step on it to activate it. Monster pack after monster pack descended upon her, thankfully not all at once, but she slew Damned by the dozens and Abyss Knights and Stygian spawners were close runners-up. When the umpteenth pack appeared, she finally shrugged and waved bye-bye—another day would be soon enough to sort out how to manage a waypoint as thoroughly trapped as this one appeared to be. She twinkled back to the Fortress and straight to bed.