Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

As there was no art to an avalanche, there was no art to Moloch's unceasing destruction. And wherever he created an opening Adramalik and the legionaries would rush in, exploiting the opportunity. In a last-ditch effort to hold the line, Adramalik saw that the phalangites had been ordered to snap their pikes and use the new shorter weapons' rough, pointed ends as close-righting spears. But it was to no avail; the gap was too large and their cohesion was diminishing by the moment. Clouds of dust rose where the phalangites were being broken.

The phalangite commander Aetar Set, whom Adramalik found easily by his Demon Minor's sigil, strode forward, impressive with his glyph-lit antlers, a long fire-tipped lance in hand. He raised it in preparation for the combat with the approaching ex-god, but as its white-hot head leveled with Moloch's chest the grapplelike Hooks came up in a blurred, prismatic flash of diamond that was so fast Adramalik's jaw opened. Aetar Set dropped the broken lance, a look of shock upon his face. And then his body, ripping apart in six diagonal sections, imploded.

The Chancellor General saw Moloch laugh, snatch up the demon's disk without breaking stride, and move past the reeling enemy, springing over steaming mounds of their still-crumbling rubble, and on into the body of Sargatanas' army. While Moloch's hands moved with a fluid rhythm of their own, wielding the Hooks with an almost casual savagery, it was clear that his focus never strayed from the Seal of Sargatanas that hung some hundreds of yards ahead.

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Eligor watched with some uncertainty the advance of the legions of Dis and. in particular, the steady, relentless approach of the Pridzarhim

champion amidst the fray. He had recognized the personal sigil from afar and knew its significance. And he watched Aetar Set's sigil go out abruptly. In single combat Eligor knew of few, if any, under the station of Demon Major who could match Moloch, and even those of high rank would be challenged. Eligor looked down toward the Baron and his hulking Shock Troopers, as yet untested in this battle, and wondered how they might fare. Perhaps collectively they would stop Moloch. But if not, would it only be his lord or Valefar who could finish Moloch, and at what cost? The Guards' Captain looked up into the clouds toward where he knew his troops to be but saw nothing.

Turning around, he saw his lord standing motionless, observing the battle without any sign of emotion. Even the layered plates of his face, usually so expressive, were hard and unreadable. Perhaps it made sense, given the ebb and flow of battle.

Beside him, Valefar stood fingering the hilt of the huge sword that rested lightly upon his shoulder. He saw Eligor looking at him and nodded, as if to reassure him, but Valefar's concern was clear.

Eligor heard a raucous outcry and spun around in time to see the flood of enemy troops surging behind the phalangites, cutting them down at their unprotected flanks. The wound Moloch had ripped into Sargatanas' phalangite legions was quickly hemorrhaging. Clouds of steam and dust were rising thickly from the battlefield, but Eligor could still see the unmistakable sigils of the legion commanders winking out as they were destroyed.

"My lord, my Guard ..."

"Would be shredded, Eligor," Sargatanas said evenly. "This is not a fight for them to take up. Better that they stay out of sight and deal with any scouts Moloch may send up."

Eligor's disappointment was profound, but he could not responsibly disagree with his lord's appraisal; this was not a battle where precision would prevail.

Moloch and his broad wedge of soldiers were chewing into Sargatanas' secondary line of legions, a force that combined the new allies and legions from Adamantinarx and was comprised primarily of thousands of sword-wielders and hatchet-armed demons. These were slowing the enemies' advance, blunting the sharp edge of their attack, but Eligor saw that, no matter how the legions of Dis fared, Moloch and those Knights and standard-bearers around him never slowed their approach. So much latent energy was being released from the furious fighting that short tendrils of lightning played along the grinding edge where the two armies noisily clashed.

Sargatanas dared a complicated command-glyph that Eligor noted was created for Tribune Karcefuge and his Spirits. Whisking through the air, the glyph set the cavalry into motion, splitting their battalions so as to enter the gap between the decimated front line and the rear from both sides, converging upon the enemy in the middle. By now, other breaches in the phalangite line were beginning to appear, and the Spirits might have to deal with them before engaging the main force, but the hope, Eligor surmised, was that Moloch's forces, so intent upon the destruction ahead, would become aware of Karcefuge's arrival only too late.

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