Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

Looking through the shifting clouds at the gray curve of the dome, Eligor saw the generalized shapes of his dying troops, hammers in hand, begin the mock-assault for the tenth time. They, like Barbatos and his flyers performing the same exercise on the dome's opposite side, would only be ordered to actually strike the building when their tactical maneuverings were satisfactory, an achievement that Eligor guessed would be about a week hence. While the breaching of Sargatanas' dome would only be executed once, for obvious structural reasons, the Guard Captain wanted to feel completely confident that the hundreds of flyers were able to move about comfortably in a high wind on a curved and polished surface. He saw the other flyers trying to hover above where the giant hole would be opened, and even as he watched, chaos erupted as a particularly strong gust buffeted them and sent hundreds of them crashing into one another. And then, to worsen matters, Eligor felt a few drops of blood hit him and soon a steady light rain began to fall, spattering the already treacherously smooth dome, slickening it dangerously. Truly, he thought, this was a good and difficult test. Within moments the rain had streaked the dome shiny and red and, almost mesmerized, he watched myriad thin rivulets winding their way like fast, thick worms downward. He saw how his demons scrabbled and slipped and suddenly one lost his handhold and slid down into another and then another and, before he could warn them, more than twenty of the flyers were tumbling, trying to disentangle from one another and open their wings. But, to his mixed disappointment and anger, they did not succeed and plunged headlong to their destruction upon the cloud-shrouded pavement far below. A good and difficult test indeed, Eligor reflected.

He watched the remainder of the exercise with a decidedly disagreeable attitude. The planning and subsequent training for the assault on the Fly's palace was proving to be about as difficult as Eligor had envisioned; he had known all along that the whims of Hell's weather would play havoc with any aerial assaults. Finally the thousand-odd demons were in their stations, some bearing hammers and focused on breaking through the stone, some ringing about where the hole would be smashed, and the remainder, lances in hand, hovering as best as they could in formation above and awaiting a command to drop through into the palace beneath. A dense cloud passed in front of him and, for a few moments, he could only see the tiny lights of their unit-glyphs through the patchy haze. He held them there for some time; it would be good for them to wait, to lock into their minds their respective roles. Then, satisfied only that they had finally reached the exercise's end, he raised his free hand and issued the command to withdraw and return to their camps. He saw his glyph circle the dome once and vanish and then watched the blood-wet demons break away and drop into the clouds.

Eligor sent a signal to Barbatos at the opposite side of the dome and wondered if his demons had fared any better. He unhooked himself from the dome and spread his wings, descending in a slow, controlled drop through the reddish curtain of clouds. When his feet scraped the flagstones of the plaza it was just in time to see the last of his Flying Guard entering their barracks. And he also saw the crumpled forms of three of his demons lying in twisted piles, their broken wings reaching up like slender fingers. Already he could hear the creaking wheels of an approaching bone-cart sent to remove them.

Sargatanas Descending - (from Barlowe's Inferno - acrylic on ragboard) - Like all Demons Major, Sargatanas is a metamorphic being. Because distances between cities in Hell are considerable - determined for the most part by where the most influential demons Fell - the need to travel quickly between them is rare. Nonetheless, demons like Sargatanas are capable of sprouting great fan-like wings that bear some resemblance to their former seraphic or cherubic wings for just such journeys. Nearly all semblance of anthropomorphism is lost in this demonic form. Here potent glyphs stream away from the wings' trailing edges, glyphs that not only keep the demon aloft but also delineate territories and can carry commands to nearby airborne troops.