Garin looked down to see Nilsa, her lips trembling, her eyes squeezed shut, muttering something he could not hear.
That's it, he thought. You can do it. Torm will bless you if you only let him in.
Nilsa gasped, and Garin could almost see a new radiance burst around her. Her features smoothed, and the anguish and fear faded, leaving her body. Her mouth widened in a contented smile. She opened her eyes, and they glowed with newfound reverence.
'He told me that he was proud of me,' she said. 'He told me to be his example.' She climbed to her feet. 'I'm sorry. I'm ready now.'
Relieved, Garin pointed to the reserve forces of archons that had remained back. 'Take your command,' he said. 'Do not advance until I give you the signal.'
Nilsa nodded, still smiling. 'As we agreed,' she said.
Garin turned and left her there. He pushed himself into the air and sped toward the mad clash ahead. Already, he could see countless bodies, more demons than archons, scattered across the field. The celestials fought with precision, using one another for protection, as they had been trained.
The demons swarmed in a mad, chaotic mess.
They dropped by the dozen, sliced and stabbed by the archons.
For every fiend slain, ten scampered out of the rift in the ground.
Blessed Torm, Garin prayed as he rushed toward a weak point in the archons' line. Give me the strength to withstand this.
He reached the gap and slammed his mace through the skull of a slavering demon. Without waiting to watch it fall, he shouted a holy word of power at the mass of demons behind it. The divine energy of the bellow pummeled the fiends like a shock wave, bowling them over four ranks deep. Archons advanced into the midst of them and attacked, slaying demons as rapidly as they could swing their weapons.
Garin turned and uttered the powerful holy word again, blasting another dozen demons backward. Archons surged into the hole and made short work of their downed foes.
Good, Garin thought, growing more confident. Quick and efficient. We must conserve our-
A shadow engulfed Garin, and he looked up just in time to be struck by the taloned feet of a demon. The blow caught him on the shoulder. It tore through his tunic and sliced into his flesh as it sent him flailing backward onto the torn, blood-soaked ground.
Garin scrambled to rise again. He took a better look at the stout creature and faltered. It had the pincers and markings of a glabrezu demon, but it was no ordinary member of its species. Larger and more powerfully built than any glabrezu Garin had ever seen, it sprouted broad wings that fanned out to either side of its back.
By the Maimed One, he thought out of habit, they're breeding them to fly. Ty-Torm save us all.
The demon rose to its full height and bellowed out a rumbling word in Abyssal that made Garin cringe and cover his ears. Archons for five paces on a side stumbled and faltered at the sound. They seemed to lose their way, their concentration, unable to resist as the lesser demons leaped upon them and rent them with their claws and weapons.
The winged glabrezu whipped one of its huge pincered limbs out and snagged a stunned archon in its grasp. The hound warrior struggled for a moment, pulling futilely at the razor-sharp claw encircling its neck. Then the powerful appendage flexed, and the archon's head separated from its body in a single snip. The hound warrior collapsed and the glabrezu smiled at Garin. It brought the pincer up and ran its long, forked tongue along the blood, savoring it.
'Let us dance, angel,' the beast said, advancing with its claws extended toward him.
Garin adjusted the grip on his mace and motioned for the demon to come closer. 'I have just the music for it.'
Vhok levitated above his troops, glaring toward the front of the column. The scorching, acrid wind buffeted him as he hovered, and the impatient shouts and growls rising from the morass of demons grated on his ears. He could see a great archway ahead in the distance, a monolithic stone structure rising from the broken plain. Fiery red lightning spider-webbed across the surface of the stone, but in the center, where the foremost demon troops passed through it, he could see a writhing darkness that flickered with pulsing blue light.
The arch stood as one among many, a cluster of half a dozen portals arranged in a circle. Demons surrounded the clump of arcane doorways, a sea of bodies stretching all across the desiccated, gravel-strewn plain of Lord Axithar's domain.
The hordes of the balor's army marched toward the arches in fat, disorderly columns that wound through the islands of jagged stone and thorny brambles. Lord Axithar's hulking black keep loomed in the distance, and Vhok could feel the balor's eyes on the proceedings.
And this army is just one of many, Vhok mused with a grin. Mighty Orcus commands great power. The angels will fall this day.
The cambion began counting the number of legions ahead of his, but each time he started, he lost track of where one ended and another began, as the demons could not stay in coherent groups. Already, dretches in his own unit pushed and shoved one another, chafing at being forced to wait their turn.
We'll never get there! Vhok fumed. I will lose control of them if this goes on much longer.
But the line crawled relentlessly forward, and Vhok passed the time cowing his charges with threats of painful, languishing deaths if they did not behave.
When they were second in line to pass through, he began to hear a strange whistling emanating from the arch, and he got a better look as the demons stepped into it. The darkness sucked them in, yanking them forward off their feet the moment a part of their bodies grazed against its surface.
Vhok felt a momentary worry. I hope they go where Lord Axithar says they do, he thought. If not… well then, too late for us.
He was just about to return to his own troops when an imp arrived with a message. 'Vhissilka would speak with you,' it said in a whiny voice, then it tittered as it raced away to continue its business.
What does she want now? Vhok wondered, disgusted.
The cambion unfurled his magical cloak and surged upward. He circled around and followed the column of troops back until he spotted the marilith's vanguard and angled toward it. The snake demon towered over the rest of her forces.
The cambion settled to the ground next to Vhissilka. 'You summoned me?' he asked, trying to keep his tone deferential.
'Remember,' the marilith said, 'you have my right flank. Do not allow your troops to advance too far ahead. I do not want to pass through the gate to find myself surrounded by angry angels. Only when I give the signal may you commence with your charge.'
'Of course,' Vhok said. It's only the fifth time you've told me, you bitch.
'You have the item?' she asked.
Vhok suppressed a sigh and pulled a glass rod from within a pocket in his tunic. The tube, sealed at both ends, was not much longer than his index finger, and slightly fatter than his thumb. Like the arch, the inside of the rod swirled with a darkness shot through with blue flecks of light. He held the thing up for Vhissilka to see clearly, then returned it to the safety of his tunic.
'Very good,' the marilith said. 'Be ready. Watch for my signal.'
'Of course.'
'Go,' Vhissilka said. 'Return to your place. Rain death upon the enemy!'
Vhok gave her a casual salute and took to the air again, returning to his own unit. They were almost to the arch. The last ranks of the legion ahead of them were passing through the portal, drawn into the swirling black mists. He settled to the ground beside a lieutenant, a ram-headed demon corralling dretches with his polearm. The cambion was fairly certain it was the same one he had been crossing paths with lately.
'We will crush them,' the demon said. 'They are weak, puny things that love impotent gods.'
Vhok snorted. 'Do not underestimate them, fool,' he said. 'We fight on their lands today. They draw on powerful magic there, and if we are not careful, they will scatter us to the winds.'
