This incarnation was nothing like those fanciful images. Mephistopheles looked like a human with flesh of polished obsidian. He gleamed in the Hellfire lights, completely naked, although devoid of human genitalia. The demon had no hair, but he also had no horns, wings, tails, or any other fantastic inhuman extremities.
“This is just one of Mephistopheles’s manifestations,” Birch said in a low voice of forced calm to Danner. “The King of Hell can look like almost anything he wishes.”
Hovering almost unnoticed beside the overwhelming presence of the King of Hell was a cloud of demonic smoke Birch recognized as Daella. She was the second-most-powerful of all demons, with the possible exception of Kaelus, who was now seemingly helpless before them all. The black smoke coalesced occasionally into a human-like form that was basically feminine in appearance, but she rarely assumed a shape that was truly corporeal, and trying to describe her mercurial semblance was an exercise in futility. Birch had seen her preferred warrior-like body on many occasions, since she typically utilized it when tempting or torturing her victims, but every time she assumed a physical shape it seemed there was some difference from her previous incarnations, as though she sought to endlessly refine her appearance in search of some elusive ideal, or perhaps she just couldn’t make up her mind what to look like. The only constant seemed to be a pair of emerald eyes that gleamed with an unholy light from amidst the cloud or from whatever corporeal body she assumed.
“Welcome back, O Holy Warrior of God,” Mephistopheles said in the immortal language, and the air itself rippled with the power and malice contained in his voice. Danner shrank back in spite of himself, then straightened when he noticed Birch hadn’t flinched. He also noticed, however, that Birch was looking slightly away from Mephistopheles, as though refusing to meet his eyes. It was a subtle thing, but Danner had been around his uncle and his cursed eyes long enough to notice it. The demon king’s own attention was so focused on Birch, it didn’t even seem like he was aware of Danner at all.
“Truly, you must be strong of will and faith to come back here of all places,” the obsidian demon said, gesturing to his throne room. He smiled possessively at Birch, and Danner did see that the demon’s gleaming white teeth were needle-sharp. “I am pleased you returned. We had unfinished business, and I plan to make good my promise to break you, mortal. With strength such as yours, I anticipate decades of pleasure – at least until you die, then you’ll be mine for eternity. Perhaps I’ll even convert the Hall of the Throne to a new, personal torture chamber just for you,” Mephistopheles mused. “Once I sit on both the thrones of Heaven and Hell, there will be nothing to stop me from ruling all of Creation until the end of time.”
Birch shivered as the immortal’s words conjured images of such startling vividness, the Gray paladin was almost surprised his flesh was not already on fire. He crushed the images and the memories they evoked and started forward, his steps resolute as he approached the shackled demon in the center of the room. Mephistopheles didn’t yet know Birch’s power, and if he underestimated Birch, he might be able to free Kaelus; the powerful demon could aid them in overthrowing the demon king.
“You are the only thing standing in the way of our victory,” Birch said grimly to Mephistopheles, automatically replying in the demon’s own immortal language. He deliberately did not even look in Kaelus’s direction, nor towards Daella. “Once I destroy you…”
“Halt,” Mephistopheles commanded and languidly raised a gleaming, black hand. The force of his command rippled across the room, and Birch’s gray cloak whipped to the side as though caught in a momentary gale.
Birch heard a grunt of strain behind him and knew Danner had been immobilized. He stared at Mephistopheles’s ebony hand in concentration, unwilling to meet the demon king’s eyes.
“Years of resistance, an inexplicable escape, and now this noble attempt to free the traitor Kaelus,” Mephistopheles laughed – a hideous rasping sound, “and in an instant it is all over.”
Birch felt his own body stiffen, but he forced his legs to keep moving as he fought the demon king’s power. He took a step, then another.
How did Trames make it work standing before Maya? Birch wondered desperately. He was free from her power from the outset. Somehow he’d expected this confrontation to be less one-sided, that God would grant him the power to resist and overcome the demon king. Was he truly so weak? So helpless before his enemy? Did he dare reveal his new demonic heritage to challenge Mephistopheles? He wondered if the demon had even realized Birch was conversing with him in the immortal tongue.
Birch took another step.
The smoky shape beside Mephistopheles hissed in alarm.
“Master,” Daella warned unnecessarily. Her emerald eyes gleamed and shifted nervously between Birch and Danner. Her gaze paused on the Blue paladin and focused intently, as though trying to see through his skin.
“You resist?” the demon king said with evident surprise. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You’re stronger than I thought, mortal, stronger than you were before. I shall enjoy forcing you to tell me how. If the explanation is amusing enough, it might even distract me from the pleasure of searing and consuming your flesh,” he said, and hatred washed over Birch in accompaniment to the demon’s words. “It is one among many things I wish to hear your screams tell me. I would know how you escaped and how it was Kaelus came to be with you. I would also have you tell me the name of the traitor whose power I felt outside, and how it is I briefly felt an angelic presence outside my own palace. How you disappeared from the demons I set hunting you, and how you came to arrive here unscathed.
“Oh, mortal, so many, many things I will enjoy hearing as I taste your fear-soaked flesh, and you will ever regret thinking your pitiful faith could be pitted against the King of Hell.”
Mephistopheles’s voice seethed, and the pools of Hellfire throughout the throne room flared in response to his barely concealed wrath. If there was one thing the demon king truly despised, it was the thought of another’s strength contesting or thwarting his will. Birch and Kaelus were the only beings – mortal or immortal – to ever escape his clutches. One had been recaptured, but Birch had returned of his own volition, not bound and helpless, and Mephistopheles hated the Gray paladin with unmatched passion because of it.
The King of Hell clenched his fist, and now Birch found he could not move at all. He was frozen between one step and the next, his feet spread but balanced on the floor. The Gray paladin glared at the ground, gritted his teeth, and nearly burst something in his head as he forced his leg to move an inch.
Has the time come? he wondered. Do I reveal it now?
A familiar voice sounded in his mind, telling him to wait. He couldn’t place the source, and the familiarity eluded him. He knew that voice from somewhere in his past, and until that instant he swore he could have put a name to it.
“And now, mortal,” Mephistopheles said in rich, powerful tones that throbbed with malice, “to begin your torture, you will kneel before me.”
“Never,” Birch ground out between his clenched jaws.
The demon king only laughed.
“You will kneel before me and call me master, a betrayal of everything you have ever been and of the stubborn strength you once showed,” Mephistopheles taunted him. “I did not dominate or force you before, because I thought I might have use for you. Now, on the brink of victory, it pleases me to break that last spine of resistance you held out against me.
“And believe me, mortal,” the ebony demon hissed, “this moment is all the sweeter because of your former resistance and escape. You will be mine, like that fool who calls himself my general is now mine, and you will come to curse yourself and your God.”
Mephistopheles made a beckoning motion, and to Birch’s horror he felt his body respond. Now he fought with every ounce of his will not to move his legs, but the demon king’s will was clamped around his body in a web of power, forcing him into motion.
Unable to stop hims
elf, Birch took a step forward.
- 4 -
Flasch grunted as he dropped to the ground, flattening himself as a foot-wide sword blade whooshed by overhead. He rolled forward and launched himself between the daemelan’s legs, barely avoiding the gigantic, pounding hooves as he appeared on the other side of the demon. He spun and hamstrung the daemelan with his sword, barely pausing as he raced away. The daemelan collapsed with a satisfactory scream of agony and rolled on one side, unable to regain its footing.
The Violet paladin shifted his path to avoid an oncoming demon, then scowled when he saw a group of denarae being forced into a cluster by a pair of daemelans.
“Break up!” he thought as loudly as he could at them. “Scatter, now!”
As one of the demons rushed forward, the denarae ducked out of the way and ran in every direction, confusing the lumbering demons.
They’re fast and powerful, but they’re stupid, Flasch thought to himself. Multiple targets tended to confuse the daemelans, which preferred their victims to be clustered in a group so they could be pulverized en masse. Flasch gave orders for denarae to group no larger than pairs and to keep on the move to avoid the demons.
“We’ve got to hold out until the others can come and get us,” he told his platoon, doing his best to exude confidence in his mental voice. Privately he muttered, “Come on, guys, come and get us. We’re not going to last long like this.”
He murmured a quick – but fervent – prayer to God for deliverance, then ducked between the legs of an oncoming daemelan and split open the demon’s underbelly with his sword. The daemelans were powerful enough that even the denarae weapons, which had been blessed and etched with the holy symbol, were only able to inflict minimal wounds against the four-footed demons. Only Flasch’s blade proved truly effective, but there was only one of him and at least twenty daemelans. The other thirty or so were still busy assaulting the palace gates, trying to force their way in to attack the denarae and paladins trapped within.
Imps and gremlins circled above, watching the battle ensuing below. They stayed well clear of the rampaging daemelans and waited patiently for their chance to pick through the remains once their larger cousins were through with the mortals. Flasch didn’t relish the thought of being carrion for the demons circling overhead any more than he liked the idea of being crushed to a pulp or split in half by the daemelans.
A loud commotion at the gate drew his attention, and he saw a large force of paladins throw back the daemelans long enough to create a corridor for others to get through. Marc and Guilian led their platoons and two platoons of paladins out into the open, and they immediately came to reinforce Flasch.
“Pass the word, Guilian,” Flasch thought to the denarae platoon leader, “split up and keep moving around these hellions. It confuses them. Use the denarae to distract them, but it takes a paladin to put them down.”
“Acknowledged.”
Flasch glanced around and passed orders, guiding the movements of his platoon even as he ducked and wove his way through a mass of daemelans. He saw one of the four-footed monsters crush a Blue paladin who got too close, then the demon turned on an Orange whose back was turned as he faced another demon. Flasch raced forward, cut the demon’s hind legs out from under it, then leapt onto its back and decapitated it.
A daemelan rushed up next to him and tried to skewer him on a black lance, but Flasch dodged the slow attack and leapt from the fallen daemelan’s shoulders onto the other’s back. He paused for only a second – long enough to spin and stab the demon through the throat – then he launched himself off the daemelan’s back in the same motion with which he’d mounted it.
He tried to twist to keep his feet underneath him, but Flasch struck the ground and felt the air leave his lungs with a painful rush. He struggled to his feet and prayed fervently that there weren’t any demons nearby.
Several yards away, Trebor watched in amazement as the acrobatic Violet paladin decapitated the first daemelan, then neatly killed the other with split-second reactions. As Flasch struck the ground, Trebor kythed to him, “Are you insanely stupid, or are you really that good?” he teased.
Brican broke in. “He’s got to be that good, Trebor, or else he’s just damn lucky. People are rarely stupid on purpose.”
“Except maybe Flasch,” Trebor amended with a mental chuckle.
“Laugh when we’re done,” Flasch said with uncharacteristic gravity. Trebor could feel the pain in his friend’s mental voice. He lost Flasch for a moment in the swirl of battle, then briefly caught sight of him again moving to engage an unsuspecting daemelan. A squad of denarae crossed between them then, blocking Trebor’s view of his friend again.
“I’ll take the insane charge, but kindly leave out stupid,” Flasch thought to them. Finally he was visible again, and at the same instant Trebor saw Flasch’s violet cloak, he saw a daemelan reared back and already swinging a massive sword at him. Trebor tried to warn his friend, but he’d seen him too late and the demon was too fast.
“There are some things…”
“Flasch…!”
“…even I won’t d…”
Flasch’s mental voice cut off as the demon’s sword caught him on his right hip and sent him flying through the air. Agony carried through Trebor’s mental link with the Violet paladin, but it wasn’t until the sensation of pain abruptly vanished from his mind that Trebor cried out in despair.
- 5 -
Victory was close – within sight! – and yet still too far away for Molekh’s liking. The Hall of the Throne was just visible at the edge of his vision, but between the demon lord and his target stood the combined might of the Heavenly Hosts, a small army of paladins, and a lake of holy water teeming with dead souls.
Too many of Molekh’s forces had been lost for him to attempt an all-out charge on their goal, but he knew it would only be a matter of time before Mephistopheles contacted him and ordered a status update. He hadn’t heard from the demon king since before the battle had started the previous day, and there had been no word at all since Malith’s sudden departure. Molekh might have been concerned, but he knew all too well the power Mephistopheles had at his command, to say nothing of the strength of the daemelans that protected him.
Whatever had prompted him to recall Malith, the bull-demon was unconcerned and even grateful for the chance at glory. Molekh was, indeed, the last demon lord or prince present on the battlefield – Lotan and Nekushtan had abandoned the army, just like the traitor Azazel had said. Molekh had turned over the demon prince’s words to him, but had been unable to decipher what Azazel had been after. Their rightful master? A power greater than Mephistopheles’s? Impossible that they would not know of its existence.
No, Molekh was convinced he’d made the right decision. He bowed to no one, least of all some phantom power of Azazel’s.
A balrog drifted to the ground and knelt before Molekh.
“Great lord, all units are in position for the assault,” the balrog reported, his horned head bowed low. “They await only your order before attacking.”
“Pour the Hellfire,” Molekh ordered. “Advance on my word only.”
The balrog sped off to pass the message.
Large vats of Hellfire had been brought forward, and now drolkuls used their superior strength to tip the black-steel containers and spill out their infernal contents. Demons were ready with long, metal chutes to channel the burning liquid, which they guided and poured into the lake of holy water.
The meeting of the two liquids created a vicious hissing sound and produced a thick wall of billowing black steam, which effectively hid Molekh’s army from sight. Imps and gremlins stationed themselves behind the resulting cloud and beat their wings to push the hazy black steam forward. It only took a little bit of Hellfire to create a pillar of ebony steam, so he cautioned the pouring teams to ration their supplies. They only had so much Hellfire on-hand to use.
When he judged the smokescreen was thick enough, Molekh passed the order t
o advance. Demons moved forward cautiously, while the Hellfire teams slowly kept pace and poured more of their precious cargo into the lake. The black cloud moved with them, hampering the pinpoint accuracy of the angels as arrows began to sail into Molekh’s army. Instead of every arrow striking a critical spot, now many only managed to nick a demon’s shoulder or leg, and several even missed entirely.
With one advantage nullified, Molekh signaled for crews of demons to topple more buildings to give the army more room to maneuver. Under the cover of black clouds, flocks of imps and gremlins surged forward and literally tore several buildings to pieces. When an army of blessed souls rushed forward to attack Molekh’s advance platoons, more imps flew in and poured small buckets of Hellfire down on the mortals below, causing havoc in their ranks as they turned into screaming pillars of flame. The blazing mortals hurried into the holy waters, which only served to create more black steam to help Molekh’s army.
A flight of paladins on dakkans swept down from the clouds and decimated one of Molekh’s aerial companies, but he shrugged off the losses. Most of those killed were damned souls anyway. He detailed another company wielding cursed crossbows to cut them out of the sky, and the imps gleefully shot friend and foe alike as they rained death on the paladins.
The Beast moved ponderously closer and snatched up several paladins who weren’t quick enough to evade the grasping tentacles. Showers of blood fell on the demons below as the Beast squeezed each mortal into a shapeless pulp.
On the ground, Molekh gave the order for a platoon of childris to advance. The insectoid demons were a strong asset on the ground, one which he had largely saved for just this moment. When Heaven’s defenders would be at their weakest and most tired, the childris would charge into their ranks with lightning speed and cut them to shreds. Molekh almost wished he could be there firsthand to witness the carnage they would create.
He bellowed in laughter and saw tiny tongues of flame leap from his bovine lips. Molekh would be standing in the Hall within hours, and Heaven would fall at last.
Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Page 60
