Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

The Keep heaved beneath his feet and he broke into a trot. Best to be free of the place, whatever was coming. Free of its miserable confines and, best of all, free of the Prince.

ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON

Lilith opened her eyes in Heaven.

The sky above danced with fiery colors, pure and beautiful, before her heavy-lidded, unfocused eyes just as she had always imagined it. Turning her head, she saw fabulously attired hosts of Seraphim standing under golden and crimson trees and peering from lofting bridges into the sparkling azure streams below. Many were staring at her.

She felt a coating fading away from her skin, a layer of small objects that pattered on the surface she was lying upon. Without moving, she looked for Sargatanas to ask him how he could have brought her with him, but her vision was too blurred to distinguish the features of the unmoving Seraphim.

She raised herself up on one elbow and felt light-headed, nauseated. Looking down slowly, she saw her skin mottled bluish-gray, its texture puckered and dry. She closed her eyes and tried to remember but was rewarded only with still air and silence.

Where is the perfumed breeze? she wondered. Where are the musical calls of the chalkadri? And where, where is Sargatanas?

She felt the smooth, hard stone beneath her and then something else. Her shaky hands met with hundreds of tiny, brittle objects that crushed easily beneath her fingertips. When she opened her eyes again she knew.

Lilith felt as if she could not breathe; her lungs seemed congested and heavy. She dropped one clawed foot to the cold floor, then the other, and stood for a moment in the hope that being upright would clear her head. More of the tiny objects cascaded to the floor.

The Library ... poor Zoray ... the Fly's emissary!

She remembered and then stiffened suddenly, her nausea sharpened, and she heaved. A terrible stream of black, dead flies came up and corrupted the floor. She did not stop gagging for minutes; the thought of those unclean flies deep within her so repelled her that she welcomed the retching. When she was finally finished, the stained floor was like a sacrilege to her and she wiped her trembling mouth, feeling ashamed.

But who had brought her here? Who could have known about the Shrine? And she realized that of all the demons left in Adamantinarx only Andromalius knew of its existence. He had, undoubtedly, thought it to be the safest place in the city. It was a sad choice.

She turned and looked at the bier, covered in the small bodies of the flies that had nearly taken her life. She regarded them, studying their contorted, differing faces, a cold rage flaring to life deep within her. She reached out with clawed hands and scooped up two handfuls of the dead creatures, clenching them between her fingers until a dusting of their shells lay before her. From somewhere she heard herself screaming and saw herself grabbing handful after handful, crushing and pounding the brittle flies until not a single one was left intact. Those in her puddled vomit she flattened into black slime beneath her feet, sliding and slipping after each one, her screams of vengeance echoing throughout the Shrine.

When she had finally exhausted herself, panting and still trembling, she made her way from the center of the Shrine through its vestibule and out into the corridor beyond. Tears of gratitude streamed down her cheeks, for she knew that, somehow, Sargatanas had prevailed and the Prince was no more.

DIS

It was a dying. Not the sudden, implosive destruction that was the all-too-common termination of life in Hell, but then again, Eligor thought, his had not been commonplace mortal wounds. Sargatanas was passing and there was nothing he or any demon could do to prevent it.

The Guard had landed, gathering at a respectful distance, while he and Metaphrax Argastos tried to make the stricken demon as comfortable as they could.

Eligor wished that Satanachia could have been there. He felt there was little comfort in the presence of Demons Minor to a fallen seraph. Eligor regretted not knowing whether Satanachia had even survived the Battle of the Keep, let alone where he was. And, he wondered, what has befallen Hannibal and his souls?

Eligor looked down at Sargatanas, whose bony lids were fluttering open. It was so difficult to see him as Beelzebub had left him. His entire body and head looked as if it had been drilled through in a thousand places and the once-resplendent white plates of his armor showed tiny cracks throughout. When he moved, Eligor could hear the faintest of crackling sounds as bits flaked off.