Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

A violet command-glyph streaked away from Sargatanas and dove into Baron Faraii's position, not too far from them, where it was absorbed. Almost immediately Eligor saw the Baron issue the order to advance and he and his troops began to move forward.

Something deep within Eligor made him want Faraii to succeed, to regain his status so that the two of them could go back to their old ways. He sorely missed the endless tales the normally taciturn Baron had unreeled for him in their countless meetings and missed, too, entering the tales into his chronicles.

He watched Faraii's back as he and his bulky troops parted the legions and came within yards of Moloch. As they drew near Eligor even saw the flying rubble of destruction, cast into the air by the Pridzarhim, rebounding off the Baron's armor. Faraii did not duck or flinch as the debris hit him but moved like a figure in a dream, impassive and without hesitation. Despite himself, Eligor could not suppress his feelings of admiration. And then, as Baron Faraii's troops moved out in broad wings around him, with black sword in hand, he turned and faced Sargatanas.

* * * * *

By all that Lucifer stood for, the Prince will not be denied! Faraii has finally awakened!

Adramalik thought. He roared in exultation, a cry picked up by a thousand legionaries around him when they, too, realized how events were unfolding.

He saw Faraii issue a green glyph that only Beelzebub could have created and watched it spread like fire to the troopers, each of whom spun on his heel in turn until a solid wall of them faced back toward the rise upon which Sargatanas and his staff stood.

Moloch, seeing this, redoubled his efforts to push forward. Some moments later, he was swinging his weapons so close to Faraii that he might have reached out a Hook-wielding hand and touched him. The Baron raised his sword-hand and with incredible deftness began to cut his way back toward Sargatanas.

Adramalik saw many things happen at once. A Demon Minor, the Flying Guard Captain Eligor, he thought, shot up into the sky and vanished into the clouds. Lord Valefar began to move hurriedly toward them, parting his legions with a steady stream of glyphs, and then, sprouting four great fanlike wings, took to the air. And an enormous glyph, unlike any Adramalik had ever seen, billowed out from the rise, soaring high over the battlefield and then moving over and behind the legions of Dis to explode into a million fragments that stabbed downward, scratching a curtain of harsh light into the dark sky, somewhere in the vicinity of the abandoned town. But why? Was Sargatanas blocking their way back if they were forced to retreat?

The Chancellor General managed to make his way closer to what he now felt was the center of the battle. In his mind, as well as the enemy's, he was sure, Moloch's fearsome presence was the fulcrum upon which the battle seemed to balance. This moment, this sudden unleashing of all of Sargatanas' troops, could only reveal his desperation; it would not be too long now before the battle was won and the Prince was rid of him. And, Adramalik hoped, the Pridzarhim as well.

Leaping over the piles of shifting rock that had once been legionaries of both sides, Adramalik clambered to within a dozen yards of the ex-god. Here, atop an ash-blown mound of rubble, Adramalik began to work at the attacking legionaries, keeping an eye always on the back of Moloch but meeting easily the ferocity of the legionaries he was felling.

Faraii, too, was busy leading his troopers deep into the heart of the enemy. No common legionary could stand before them, and the Chancellor saw that the Baron was leading them in a direct path toward the enemy field-camp. Ever the artist with a sword, he was creating yet another masterpiece of destruction by his own hand as well as with the chopping ax-hands of his troops.

In the short time that he was in close proximity, Moloch dispatched a full cohort of Bifrons' legion; only its centurion remained, and he was surviving only by his remarkable agility. But his fate was inevitable and the centurion stumbled and was swept up by one of the Hooks. Before he could be shattered, something, Adramalik saw, distracted the ex-god.

A silver-blue sigil heralded the approach of Lord Valefar, and when he stopped a yard above the ground just before Moloch the carnage in the immediate area all but ceased in anticipation of the fight to come. Adramalik hardly recognized the Prime Minister, not just for the many horns, small wings, and embers that had formed a living crown about his head but more for the terrible wrath he saw upon Valefar's face. Resting lightly in the Demon Major's hands was an unusually long sheathed sword.