Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

The cry went up, barely audible over the wind, from one of the six hammer-gangs attempting to breach the Dome, ending Eligor's ineffectual attempts to see the battlefield below Waist-deep in the heavily bleeding hole they had excavated, they were shouting that they were nearly through the dense, howling soul-brick exterior. Eligor flew to them and landed inside the shallow, inclined crater, his excitement mixed with a numbing sense of dread. To enter the Dome was to see Sargatanas' vision through, to either lose him forever or watch him be crushed. Neither prospect appealed to the demon.

He was hovering overhead with his picked assault team when the inevitable hammer-strike bit through the Black Dome's roof. Strong hands held on to the heavy, protesting brick, lifting it out of the way, careful not to let it fall into the vast chamber below. Behind them, a hundred lance points directed at the hole awaited anything that might emerge from within, but only a dismal gloom, barely lighter than the surrounding dome, was visible. Even with the fierce winds he could smell the raw odor of the building's interior, a heavy stink of decay that made him curl his lips.

It seemed that no sooner had he sent his glyph off to alert Sargatanas than the Demon Major appeared in a flurry of sigils, glyphs, and spreading white wings. The intensity in his eyes was unmistakable as he peered into the hole and Eligor saw him reach down and, along with the Flying Guard, begin to pry away the heavy bricks at the rim of the hole. After an hour, the opening was enlarged sufficiently that three demons with wings extended could pass through at once—wide enough that the attack could begin.

Eligor looked away from the hole, and by chance, for an instant, his eyes met Sargatanas'. No words were spoken, but the bond that had existed between them for so long, the tie between teacher and apprentice, the tie between ancient friends, held them. The wind suddenly grew stiffer and there was no chance either could have heard the other, but Eligor saw Sargatanas smile, pull his sword—the sword Valefar had kept for him—from its sheath, and mouth the words, Heaven awaits. He raised his hand, sending a glyph skyward, and, with a deafening flapping of wings Eligor's Flying Guard and Barbatos' Flying Corps assembled three abreast in a long and precise column that stretched far up and away behind Sargatanas. Without another word, the Demon Major plunged headlong into the Black Dome with Eligor just behind.

The moment he passed through the opening and began to drop he, like Sargatanas ahead of him, began to chop away at the myriad obstructing skins that hung from the cavernous dome-ceiling and clearing a vertical path for the flyers behind. The skins twisted and curled, agitated from either fright or the distant awareness of the battle far below, and each time Eligor slashed a rafter away he heard them cry out. They fell by the fluttering dozens, but not as fast as the demons' diving descent, and when Eligor saw Sargatanas break free of the hangings, the blue-flame sword—his old sword—was pointing straight and true at the throne beneath them.

Eligor looked down past his lord's broad wings at the approaching Rotunda's floor and clenched his jaw; the Fly's troops were tearing wide the sphincter-threshold and streaming in from the one main corridor. How could Sargatanas have hoped to breach the dome's ceiling and not alert its occupants? But the Guard's Captain was distressed not only by the number of Keep Janissaries already assembled but also by Adramalik and the scarlet-clad Order Knights who led them. He recognized many of them, had fought against their brethren in the past, knew how dangerous they could be, and wondered, for just a chilling instant, if Sargatanas' assault force would be capable of withstanding the collective fury of their glyph-flamed scimitars.