Diablo III: Storm of Light by Nate Kenyon

was seated with the Council, and Leah stood behind him, her face a mask of blood. She screamed as horns sprouted from her forehead. Her flesh crackled and split .
    Imperius’s laughter stayed with him long after he shook himself awake .

    Tyrael sat in Wisdom’s domain as the dream clung to him like a spider’s web. At the Fount of Wisdom in the center of the vast main courtyard, exhaustion and despair had overwhelmed him at long last. Somehow, he had fallen asleep, and after the unsettling vision, he felt like an intruder .
    I must leave this place, he thought. And yet he could not .
    An atrium led to soaring, polished stone halls and a magnificent courtyard open to the sky. But it was all empty and dead and icy-cold, and the endless halls and anterooms had an air of neglect. Everything here was silent, the music that permeated the Heavens conspicuously absent. There was no radiant glow, no golden light; the realm had faded to gray. Even his footsteps made no sound .
    He should have felt at home. Beautiful streams and waterfalls used to fill pools and tumble through rock-strewn paths, but they were dry now, and the majestic Fount was dead and still. When Malthael’s disappearance had gone on longer than any had before, the Council had sent his angels to search for him. A few returned empty-handed, but most simply vanished. No one knew what had happened to the rest, and there were no others to take their place. The angelic forces Tyrael used to command as Justice were being tasked by Imperius to track down rogue packs of demons after the Prime Evil’s fall, and he had yet to recruit his own angels as Wisdom .
    Now, perhaps, he never would. He feared the changes to the realm of Wisdom could not be undone .
    Maybe Imperius was correct after all; maybe he was afraid to embrace his new role within the Council. But Tyrael had come for one thing tonight. The chalice was here, waiting for him. He must consult it to help him truly understand the soulstone’s influence on the Heavens and whether the path he was considering was the right one .
    Tyrael stood, his knees popping, sore from remaining in one position for so long on the hard stone courtyard. Chalad’ar was set into the side of the Fount itself, perfectly fitted into a carved depression like a key into a lock. The chalice had four handles and was adorned with etchings depicting water flowing from one place to the next in a cascading pattern that appeared chaotic at first. But it was not. It was the same with the pools and streams within the realm itself; walking along the paths might lead a visitor to feel lost within a maze, but if everything was viewed from far above, the pattern would become instantly clear. Wisdom was a web connecting all things, a sum total of all experiences and emotions of sentient beings at any moment in time, and the trick was in seeing those connections and drawing conclusions from them, understanding the balance between motion and stillness, light and dark .
    Malthael would refill the chalice at the endless pools and stare into it for years on end, gaining insights into the totality of existence that others, even the other members of the Angiris Council, could not grasp .
    To peer into the chalice would prove that he did not fear it, Tyrael thought, and perhaps it would also offer the answers he so desperately sought .
    He pressed gently against Chalad’ar, his fingers tingling, until it released itself to him. The chalice’s power enveloped him, walked up and down his spine. To control this power would take all the strength he possessed. As he peered into its depths, the idea that he could lose himself forever within the endless, ancient pools made him wonder whether he had made the right choice after all .
    The bottom of the chalice was not empty. A thin film of light moved within it, swirling hypnotically in a rainbow of colors like oil on the surface of a pool .
    At first, it seemed to hold nothing else. But then a charge swept up from