by Stuart Slade
Another projectile slammed into the base of her tail, shattering a vertebra and sending pain shooting up her spine like a white hot poker. Megaaeraholrakni screamed and flailed wildly in the air, an act that granted her a brief respite as the next few shots went high. The portal crackled dangerously below her and she threw her wings out again, desperately trying to glide clear. It was at this moment that the hail of machine gun rounds began to arrive. The heavy rounds ripped through her torso, spraying yellow blood into the air as the gorgon began to fall out of the sky, trailing limp wings behind her. Megaaeraholrakni had a final few seconds to reflect on her folly before she plummeted through the phantom portal mouth. The massive electrostatic charge building there found a convenient discharge path through her body, and the gorgon finally died in a white hot flash of lightning, her charred and broken body tumbling down onto the interchange below.
Okthuura Yal-Gjaknaath, Tartaruan Range, borderlands of Hell
Baroness Yulupki’s eyes were closed, her coils writhing with pain as she tried to force the chorus back into harmony. The ritual had started to go wrong as soon as the portal begun to form. Instead of a single unified psychic push, there was discord. The closest human sensation was ‘tone’ and ‘timbre’; the ritual needed pure chords, but some of the naga were holding the wrong notes. The situation had rapidly deteriorated as each naga tried to stay in ‘tune’ with her neighbors, magnifying the initial dissenting voices into a psychic cacophony.
“All of you, follow me!” Yulupki screamed, over the wails of her subordinates and the hissing of the lava. It was hard to know if the naga on the other platforms heard her, but telepathy was out of the question in this din. The effort had dried out the tips of her tentacles and the energy began to arc back to the surrounding flesh, charring the scales. To the naga it seemed that her body was on fire and her brain was being squeezed in a vice, but gathering strength she didn’t know she had, she made a final push to stabilize the portal. She was somewhat surprised to find it actually working. Her strong, clear stream of psychic energy stood out clearly in the haze and the other naga rallied around it.
“That’s it, hold it, a little longer!” Why hadn’t that damned gorgon opened the portal yet? She couldn’t keep this up, if the signal didn’t come in another minute they’d just have to…
The wash of feedback hit Yulupki like a brick wall. She collapsed onto her pallet, barely hanging on to consciousness. The raging psychic turmoil had been replaced by a numb calm. ‘No, that can’t be, oh no…’ Her pitiful cry rang with the anguish of a human whose eyes had just been torn out.
From her vantage point on the crater rim Euryale had been watching the ritual with mounting concern. She was not yet a participant, but she could sense the unbalanced forces and the resulting instability in the half-formed portal. At the same time, she could sense Megaaeraholrakni’s progress over the human city through the mental link with her handmaiden. That link had just dissolved into echoes of pain, confusion and panic before disappearing entirely. Mere seconds later, what could only be described as a psychic shockwave had rushed out from the centre of the crater. The gorgon could barely make out the great snakelike forms through the dense smoke and heat shimmer, but she could tell that nearly half the naga were down and the rest were thrashing and wailing. Behind them the shrines were breaking out in glowing red patches, as local hotspots began to melt the metal.
Euryale launched herself from the rocks, determined to save the ritual. She pushed questions of what had gone wrong and who would pay out of her mind. That could come later. Her wings billowed taut as they caught the strong thermal and she soared over the bubbling lava. The thick smoke stung the gorgons eye’s; she couldn’t see clearly, but the series of bright flashes and a tortured groan probably signaled the collapse of one of the shrines. She was right over the portal now and she could feel it swelling and ascending, pushed out of the volcano’s throat like a cork in a barrel.
It was the moment for Euryale’s own supreme effort. She put everything she had into a single release aimed directly down, hoping to slam the portal down into the lava in the same act as pushing it over the threshold for opening. For a split second the smoke seemed transparent, as the entire crater was lit up by a storm of dancing lightning. Then noise and motion returned and Euryale was falling, the air whistling through great burning rips in her wings. The lava below convulsed, dropping and splashing and throwing out great chunks of magma. Desperately she tried to ride the thermals clear of the maelstrom before she was swatted from the sky or consumed by the fire.
Chapter Fifty Eight
Heavengate, Hell
The stones upon which Shakoolapicanthus walked were smoothed from the guards' tread over dozens of millennia. He could almost see his reflection in them, he thought, as he continued pacing along the top of the defensive wall.
The wall – it was massive, the work of millennia. It had been built, at first, of mounded earth, but the earthworks had long been replaced with huge blocks of granite. Fifty times the height of the tallest Dukes, the huge loop towered above the surrounding foothills. A human looking down on it from the air would have thought it looked nothing more than a giant tire sticking out of the ground. The outer face sloped gently down toward the plain, crisscrossed with trenches and ringed with smaller fortifications, parallel to the main wall. The inner face sloped sharply down toward the large inner ring. It was faced with granite, polished by the sweat and blood of thousands of lesser demons and enslaved humans to gleam in the dull, striated light.
Faced entirely with polished granite, that is, save for a small staircase almost too narrow for the scrawniest demons to walk down. That staircase was joined to the ramparts at the top of the wall by a small, nondescript crenelation, which Shakoolapicanthus found himself approaching for the twentieth time since his shift had begun. This was the final circuit, and he was ready to be done with his portion of the guard duties. There was just one task that remained.
He passed the standing guard, taken from Satan’s personal legions. They stood fifty feet apart all around the wall for the duration of their shifts, staring impassively down at the large building in center of the wall's inner ring – and stepped backwards down onto the staircase, as though he were climbing a ladder. The steps were also smoothed by continual travel, but far rougher than the smooth stone to either side. For a moment, he contemplated what a rush up that wall would be like, then shuddered at the thought of even trying, let alone in the face of tridents raining down magic on the attackers. This was a unique fortress, designed to keep attackers in, not out.
At the bottom of the wall, he straightened and turned around. The building was before him, towering over him even as it was dwarfed by the ringing wall; a giant demon-made mountain of stone, is what it was. A ring of demons stood guard about it, and twenty were orderly clustered about the only entrance, staring at it as though it were a poisonous snake about to bite them. Shakoolapicanthus stopped before them and said, “I am entering the Gateway.”
The demon in charge of the guard challenged him in the ritual. “Who are you to enter the Gateway?”
“I am Shakoolapicanthus, a captain of the Guard. I see that all is well within.”
“Shakoolapicanthus, a captain of the Guard, I will permit you to enter the Gateway. Bring word of the inner guard.”
Shakoolapicanthus nodded, the demons before him parted, and he stooped as the guard raised the iron portcullis. As he passed beneath it, he shivered; the feel of iron nearby always made his back crawl. It was the only place in all of Hell where iron had a use; it was rumored that the gate's construction had cost the lives of fifty demons, and that a thousand naga had enchanted it with the strongest spells imaginable.
The iron behind him, he made his way forward through the low, twisting passageway on his hands and knees. It was uncomfortable, and certainly made walking impossible for even the lowliest demons or angels. The stone around him seemed to weigh down on him, to close in on him.
N
ever too soon, the inner sanctum approached and the passage widened. The first thing that tipped him off was the stench of blood. He rolled his eyes – Again. The two sides sometimes made points by bursting into the realm of the other and slaughtering the guards before dropping back to the relative safety of their own homes. Once, the raiding parties had encountered each other; it had taken two centuries to alleviate the tensions from the resulting bloodbath. Another consequence of the raiding was that only the lowliest, unluckiest demons were chosen to be the inner sanctum guards; Shakoolapicanthus speculated that the same was true of the other side.
The passage opened out into the inner sanctum, a rectangular room as small as possible. Dominating the chamber, seeming too large for the room in which it was contained, was the jet-black portal: the last one open between Heaven and Hell. Creation of portals between the realms had been forbidden at the end of the Great Celestial War, and only one had been kept open to permit contact and the occasional diplomatic delegation between Satan and Yahweh. A delegation had come through recently, Shakoolapicanthus reminded himself; according to rumor, human magery had destroyed it in the Pit. The higher-ups vehemently denied the rumors, of course, but that made him all the more certain that something had happened. Certainly, strange things were happening in Hell, human armies were fighting in the Infernal Region itself and all the barrack room rumors were of the humans in the pit rising against their tormenters. It was even whispered, there was now an area in the pit where no demon dared go, where if one tried, the penalty was a horrible death by human magery.
The two guards were lying contorted on the ground, charred in places and dismembered in others. Blood was spattered all throughout the chamber. But something was different; standing in front of the portal was a towering white figure. It was staring at him with its pale, white eyes, and Shakoolapicanthus felt himself shudder far more than he had passing under the iron portcullis. This was no mere angel; this was a high-ranking one, one who could probably crush him as easily as it had these two unfortunates.
Slowly, like a cornered Beast, Shakoolapicanthus started to back away toward the tunnel. The angel did nothing for a moment, then flared its wings – they stretched nearly across the chamber – and said, “Stop.” Shakoolapicanthus stopped. He was shivering uncontrollably.
Slowly, the angel raised his sword. It glimmered in the torchlight, bronze lined with pale gold. The angel was gathering fearsome magic; it was already making Shakoolapicanthus' hair stand on end. Then it spoke. “Do you know who I am, fallen scum?”
“N-n-n-no, sir. I do not.”
“I am Michael-lan, commander of the forces of the Most High One. I have a message for the Fallen One from my master. You will bear it to him. Tell him that these words have come from the Throne of the Nameless One. ‘Satan Mekatrig, despite previous warnings you have failed to oppress and dominate the humans. They have forced their way into your realm and still you cannot defeat them. Your failures in this matter have ensured that the humans are developing into a threat to the chorus. The gates of Heaven may be closed to any who may wish to enter but our hosts may leave to engage our enemies at our pleasure. As a last warning to the humans we have gathered Uriel and the Bowls of Wrath. Your failures are causing us to intervene against our wishes but the chorus must not cease. On your head lies what may result.’ Tell him that, and only that.”
The archangel stepped forward, over the twisted bodies, and touched Shakoolapicanthus on the forehead. As he did, he released a surge of magic; the demon howled in pain and surprise as the archangel seared a mark onto his face. Then, without a backward glance, the archangel disappeared back into the portal.
Shakoolapicanthus emerged from the gateway so disturbed he didn't even notice when he bumped his head on the iron portcullis. He said nothing to the guards, but ran as fast as he could to the stairs, and took them up as fast as he could. Five minutes after a brief meeting with his garrison commander, he was on the back of a surging Beast, heading from the Heavengate into the Elysian Fields, toward the city of Dis.
Camp Hell-Alpha, Hellmouth, Martial Field of Dysprosium, North of the Phlegethon, Hell
Abigor's room was pretty spartan, but someone had apparently taken the notion that he might like some plants for decoration. Ordinarily, he'd be offended at the notion that he enjoyed decorations – everyone knew that he used wealth only as a display of status and not because he was soft and decadent – but these plants were green, and had flowers on the end, rarities in Hell. They let off a sickly sweet smell, which Abigor actually liked.
He sniffed them once more, and then sat back, taking a few minutes to try to digest everything he'd learned since his surrender. On his left was a towering pile of DVDs and books on the history of human militaries. It was rich and fascinating, full of change – nothing like the static, unchanging nature of the civilized warfare he was used to in Hell.
For centuries – he was becoming used to the human way of telling time – for centuries, humans had fought in mostly the same way. Infantry would line up and charge each other – sometimes with spears, sometimes with swords. Auxiliaries would harass the enemy lines with projectiles; arrows, stones. Cavalry would protect the flanks, swoop in and charge the enemies. There were similarities to what Abigor knew, of course; infantry and auxiliaries would be combined in Hell, since all infantry could fire projectiles. Cavalry were more important; in Hell, they made or broke battles. And in Hell, flies were an integral part of the battlefield; perhaps they were analogous to auxiliaries? Something to ponder. Humans had not taken to the air before a hundred years ago. The short human timescale still surprised Abigor; a century ago was yesterday.
But with the humans, the themes of infantry-auxiliary-cavalry interplay were repeated in so many variations. In some parts of their world, huge hordes of men armed with sticks and swords had swarmed each other; in others, disciplined infantry formed the core of armies; while in others, men had shot their arrows from horseback. One book claimed that an army was made up of horsemen who could hit a teacup a hundred yards away from a galloping horse. Abigor hadn't heard of any demon who could match that feat from a galloping Beast.
And then, three centuries ago, the human inquisitiveness, curiosity – the human tendency to treat the world as a problem to be solved, rather than a place to live, their almost desperate need to know why – had apparently begun to reward humans. Three centuries ago seemed like last week, when humans were nothing but cattle, to be tortured for benefit and eaten as delicacies. Yet it seemed that no matter what question they asked, the answers that they found were immediately turned into weapons of destruction.
Abigor considered the benefits they had reaped. The ability to throw projectiles further, faster, more frequently, and more accurately seemed to be the chief benefit; it had reshaped the battlefield. Humans could now throw projectiles over the horizon, on long arching curves that impacted precisely where the humans wanted them. It seemed that their entire ground combat doctrine, Abigor now saw, was shaped around using these 'guns' – what he had called fire-spears – as effectively as possible. The accuracy with which humans could throw projectiles explained why they fought like cowards. Their goal was to win the battles; so instead of presenting themselves entirely and honorably, they presented as small a target as possible while still permitting themselves to throw back.
And then there was the question of flying chariots, which were known to humans as 'aircraft'. They flew higher and faster than flies and their firepower was far beyond the flies. The same magic – Abigor caught himself; there was no magic here. There were only skills he did not understand. The same ability that let humans throw projectiles such long distances and with such accuracy also permitted them to create 'bombs', which could be dropped with great accuracy. The seeker lances – 'missiles' humans called them though why was an odd thing that Abigor had yet to fathom out since they never missed – were another manifestation of the same abilities: projectiles that flew like aircraft and sought out their target.
Before the destruction of his Army, he had seen how the human aircraft had decimated his flies and he had thought that was the end of it. Now, he knew differently, human aircraft could do many things, they could wipe out flies with contemptuous ease but they could also raid death and destruction on the ground forces. He had seen a little of that but only a thin shadow of what human aircraft could do when unleashed to use their full power. He had seen how the humans themselves had been forced to invest huge sums in the development of anti-aircraft weapons to defend themselves against aircraft. That was something Satan didn’t have to worry about deploying, there wasn’t an anti-aircraft gun in all of Hell.
And then there were the human boats. They were larger than any boat he'd ever seen; anywhere you needed to go in Hell, there were roads, or Belial's wyverns if the place was inaccessible. The human boats had guns on them, and could also throw missiles. Some even had aircraft on them, and some could actually swim under the water to throw missiles or hunt other boats. Abigor thought of the seas that surrounded Hell’s one great continent and imagined the human boats loose in them. All of Hell would be at their mercy with only Dagon’s few legions of Kraken to defend it.
So much to absorb. Abigor shook his head. Most bombs, missiles, and artillery shells exploded like injured flies, while other projectiles were solid iron. Some were thrown from guns, and others were dropped or thrown from aircraft. These new things were all so confusing in the details, but in general he was starting to absorb the picture of how humans did things. They fought to win – that much he'd already seen. But they didn't fight to win by outmaneuvering… Abigor stopped himself, that wasn’t true, human armies could maneuver in ways a demonic army couldn’t even dream of. To humans though, maneuver was a way to bring overwhelming firepower to bear on their enemy with the aim of annihilating either his desire or his ability to fight – or, in some cases, both.
