Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

"The Great Lord Sargatanas bids you and your army greeting. Lord Sargatanas wishes you to assemble just before the Fifth Gate, where he and his staff will meet you. He issues to you this baton as an official symbol of your commission in his Great Army of the Ascension."

The herald proffered a military baton, heavy and sculpted with a horizontal crescent and a disk, symbols of Hannibal's long-past empire. Thin, shivering snakes of lightning played upon its upper surfaces. This was a significant gesture that spoke of acknowledgment and even respect, and it filled Hannibal with emotion.

Taking his cue from the herald, Hannibal signaled to one of the demon cornicens that had been attached to his army, and soon the air for some distance was filled with the hollow braying of war horns.

By the time he made his way to the front ranks of the soul army, the whisper of the rumor of war that had begun upon the arrival of the herald had grown into an excited murmur.

Eagerly the souls took up their arms and quickly formed ranks and files. Hannibal turned to his brother and together they gave the order to march. An hour later the well-ordered formation surged around the last corner of the ten-span-high city walls to the not-too-distant gate where, already emerging, Hannibal saw the demon general staff. He looked at the distant gate and remembered the spikes that adorned it. They call it the Fifth Gate, but we have always called it something very different ... Gate of a Million Hearts. He shook his head with the memory of its hooked decorations and with the irony of it.

Marching in a tight wedge with Sargatanas at its point, the generals were the crest of a black wave of soldiers, fifteen columns of resplendent standard-bearers followed closely by heavily armored legionaries. Above them flew two full squadrons of Eligor's Guard trailing long gonfalons from their lances, each emblazoned with their lord's fiery seal. The splendor of the scene, the sheer visual weight of it, crushed Hannibal, who stood transfixed, trying as best as he could not to show his awe.

He had never been this close to Demons Major in all of their battle panoply and realized, then and there, that he would never get used to the impossible inhumanity of them. As they drew closer, their giant, anthropomorphic forms seemed to create an organic wall that loomed fiery and dark and wreathed in smoke. Fortunately, the debilitating influence of their proximity that he so vividly recalled when he had nearly been converted no longer seemed to influence him; he had concluded that they could exert that effect if they chose. Their thick armor, pitted and hot, was annealed into their bodies, embedded for war and impossible to remove except by uttered invocation or prying blade. Between the plates were areas of umber flesh that writhed and clawed and snapped with innumerable fanged mouths and taloned fingers and bloodshot eyes. No two demons were alike, and yet there were similarities enough to suggest their kinship. No matter the form their casquelike head-armor took, the demons' eyes all shone silver upon black, all with equal intensity, and Hannibal found that looking into those eyes served as a touchstone, a grounding for him to avoid what must be happening upon the surface of their restless bodies.

All of the principal Demons Major and Minor were there at Sargatanas' side: there were Andromalius and Bifrons and Minister Valefar carrying a ten-foot-long sword that Hannibal had never seen the like of, and there was Zoray, his shield emblazoned with the glowing symbol of the Foot Guard, and the gaunt and ferocious Baron Faraii, whose spare manner and differing armor bore the stamp of the Wastes, and a heavily robed demon who could only be Yen Wang strode a pace behind with fireballs circling his head and fabulous glyphs orbiting his body. Other demons, too, followed behind, some of whom Hannibal had not yet met but seemed to him to be of very high stature. Eligor, who Hannibal had heard from rumors was somehow more accessible than the rest, flew overhead at the front of his troops and dropped down to the ground as the demon lord and his retinue drew close.

Hannibal had been warned that his souls, now mobilized as an army, were not to be permitted within the walls of Adamantinarx, and so he dutifully drew them up some distance from the towering gate. There they re-formed into parade squares facing the legions of demons that poured out of the city and the Soul-General had to applaud their discipline for not breaking and running at the sight of it.

Sargatanas stepped up to Hannibal and looked up and down the front ranks of soldiers, nodding approvingly.