Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

To Eligor, at that moment, it seemed a perfect standoff. Neither opponent had seemed capable of destroying the other, but Eligor feared that that balance might have changed, that without the many demons' sigils that had so helped his lord get to this point, Sargatanas could be vulnerable, even to a very much weaker Beelzebub.

With a gesture that Eligor thought at first was more petulant than effective, the Fly threw a glyph down to the floor that suddenly swept the demons directly around Sargatanas up, tossing them forcefully at the Demon Major. Destroying them with his dashing sword and deflecting them with his free hand, Sargatanas was engulfed in an ashy tornado of crumbling, shouting bodies, his brilliant white form nearly obscured by the sheer mass of them. Eligor saw his troops, legionaries of Dis, and Order Knights alike, indiscriminately uplifted into the air and catapulted toward Sargatanas until the floor hundreds of feet around him was empty. And as he smashed his way clear, Beelzebub cast down seven archaic red glyphs that touched the floor and disappeared, melting into the rubble and blood and flesh and leaving behind pillars of smoke.

Sargatanas freed himself from the diminishing storm of demons and saw the glyphs' trajectory and swiftly rose up well above the throne. Somehow he had read the glyphs and knew what was coming.

* * * * *

No one, Adramalik mused, could help but marvel at the ferocious beauty of his Prince's foe, nor could they help but admire the demon's bravery. Adramalik looked from side to side and saw that his remaining Knights, flaming scimitars flashing, were engaged in furious combat with the Demon Minor Metaphrax and his flying lancers.

Adramalik looked from that fight to the glowing disks of his Knights unfortunate enough to have been caught up in Beelzebub's petulant rage. Sargatanas' convictions had made him truly transcendent among demons.

Adramalik remembered his many punishments over the millennia and the pain of each and, setting his jaw, turned away from the Prince. Beelzebub does not deserve my loyalty, he thought with disgust, and in that moment, the path he had always wanted to travel upon opened for him. He raised his hand and shot a command-glyph out to his Knights to sheathe their weapons and form up around him. He would withdraw and leave the Prince and Dis itself, taking his Order with him. Wounded and distracted, Beelzebub would not be able to stop them.

* * * * *

Hannibal felt the sound in his bones before he heard it. Beneath his feet he felt the floor of the Keep vibrate, felt it yield slightly as if it were shifting. At the present, they were climbing steadily upward and Satanachia informed him that they were roughly halfway to the Rotunda. At first he thought the dull sound was diminishing, but suddenly it gathered into a deep rushing sound and then the floor beneath his feet cracked. Braziers tumbled to the ground, spreading pools of flame.

Satanachia turned and looked at him with knit brows, listening.

"What is it?" Hannibal asked.

But realization suddenly cleared Satanachia's face and, wide-eyed, he shouted "Back, back the way we came!"

As one, the vanguard turned, and the command went back down the unending stairs. The hundreds of confused troops squeezed into the narrow passage tried to maintain some form of order, but were too slow to respond. The rushing sound from below became the din of crashing bone-supports and bricks, and the Keep shuddered like a wounded animal. The floor heaved and buckled and Hannibal saw the long, dim staircase ahead thrown upward, completely broken apart by some titanic force.

As he fell, through the dust and broken bricks and tiles that flew toward him, he had a brief impression of something enormous, something vaguely human in form, rising irresistibly up through the ruptured floor on powerful wings. And as it passed, it gave voice, a deafening cry of release, pained and hoarse but also unmistakably triumphant. Hannibal recognized it as the voice of Semjaza.

* * * * *

The Rotunda floor buckled from the lack of support beneath it and formed a fractured and deepening bowl into which slid hundreds of Beelzebub's legionaries. The ugly mass of flesh that was the Fly's throne sank into a soup of ashy blood, rubble, and flailing demons and then suddenly erupted as the entire floor split open.

Eligor's mouth opened in silent shock.

For eons, the few scattered Watchers, buried and nearly forgotten, had been thought of almost as forces of Infernal nature. They had been in Hell before the demons arrived and, it was speculated, would be there after time ended. No demon had ever dreamt of actually seeing one.

Once Semjaza the Watcher had been beautiful, but that was very long ago. Incarcerated, it had grown immense and mad feeding upon the blackness that lay beneath all of Hell. A rank odor of age and decay filled Eligor's nostrils.