he was fighting. Only when he saw Faraii in the center of a maelstrom of lances did he grow concerned. The Baron was more than capable of changing the balance of a melee, and Eligor slowly moved toward him, sucked in by the vortex of destruction that the former Waste-wanderer was creating.
From the dark, newly exposed recesses of the dome a buzzing began, low but loud enough to be heard and felt over the clamor of battle. It was insistent, and something in its vibrating tone shook Eligor.
He saw what he thought was the briefest pause in the fighting, as if all of the combatants in the giant Rotunda felt the tremor of pure rage.
A sudden flash caused him to look past the throne and he realized, to his profound dismay, that Barbatos had fallen. A cluster of moving Order sigils hung over the spot. Apparently Adramalik and five of his Knights, bolstered by the imminent arrival of their Prince, had surrounded the Demon Minor and felled him. Eligor knew they would focus upon him next. He soared upward followed by a hundred of his best flyers, vowing to do what he could to even the loss. A bold stroke was called for, and seeking one sigil out of the many, he focused upon the dark form of Faraii.
* * * * *
When the ramp had reached halfway across Lucifer's Belt, the wall's defenses came alive again with a sound like the sharp snapping of a giant's back. Hannibal looked up from the edge of the ramp. Beneath him the lava flowed and swirled, and its heat reached up and threatened to choke him. Though he stood much closer to the wall, Hannibal had not reacted as had many of the souls around him, flinching or calling out, frightened by its sudden reactivation. Through narrowed eyes he watched the carnage begin anew as the wall's incandescent bolts leaped forth and decimated souls and demons alike.
Another layer of souls was laid down and Hannibal moved forward a few yards with the Conjurors and Satanachia's Overseers. Progress was steady and Hannibal estimated that if they did not suffer a direct hit, it would take only a few hours before the project was completed. He saw that the next file of souls was moving quickly into place, pushed and prodded savagely by their former demon allies.
Another few layers of souls were laid down, and if anything, the wall's defenses increased. The many bolts grew in frequency and in strength and Hannibal was reluctant to look back toward the blasted landscape where so many were perishing. He marveled at the puzzling fact that not a single bolt had been directed at the ramp but felt that it was just a matter of time.
Hannibal looked closely at the wall and, in particular, the countless orbs that were embedded in its surface, each one protruding from the crushed body of a soul. They seemed to somehow collect and focus the energies the architect Mulciber was using as a weapon. When Hannibal had possessed an orb himself he would never have guessed they could have been used in such a way. He nodded in silent approval of the Architect General's genius.
Hannibal saw yet another massive bolt forming, a coalescing of bright motes that would, in seconds, discharge outward in a mighty clap of thunder. He braced himself for the sound, but without warning the entire wall suddenly went dark. And then, after a long silence in which he was sure the bolts would resume, he heard a distant roar of elation start from somewhere behind his lines, a cheer that was taken up all around. Something had happened to shut down the wall.
He saw the Conjurors redouble their efforts, fearful, he guessed, that the lull might end, the wall might reactivate itself, and their opportunity to finish the ramp unhindered and gain the gate would suddenly pass. But the wall remained inactive, its only illumination from the Belt beneath, its only sound that of the howling wind that clawed at its rounded sides.
A command-glyph rose from Azazel at Satanachia's position, racing away too fast for Hannibal to read. Moments later a relatively small, bright glyph darted out from Sargatanas' army heading straight for the wall. It impacted toward the top of the battlements and the Soul-General saw a burst of soul-bricks explode away and drop the vast distance down to splash into the lava below. It was just a test, just the beginning. Destructive glyphs, greater in size and numbers, were soon speeding toward the now-vulnerable wall, pocking its sides in showers of exploding debris. Experts in the art of demolition, the demons pounded at the wall in patterns designed to shear off the largest sections with the least effort. Frequent bursts of spurting fluids cascaded down from some ruptured artery or conduit from the archiorganic buildings behind. Enormous flat chunks came free and tumbled slowly from the wall, peeled away as if by equally enormous fingers, and landed in prodigious fountains of lava that threatened to immolate the demons on the far bank. Eventually, Hannibal saw that the debris was actually creating bridges of rubble across the Belt to the wall's foot. Once the destruction was halted he knew these unexpected causeways would be exploited.
A long, muffled howl rose and fell from deep within the demon-made mountain, the voice of Semjaza the Watcher, Hannibal knew, but it seemed to him more like the Keep's primal utterance of a deeply felt wound. What would befall that never-seen creature of legend, he wondered, if the Prince and his abode were destroyed?
Hannibal returned his attention to the ramp, which had gotten far ahead of him. The demons had been careful not to destroy the wall too close to the ramp's construction site, and now he could see that it would not be long before it reached up to the gate. Looking back down the steep causeway, he could already see the very few remaining Behemoths being brought to the fore. He knew Satanachia would use them to batter down the drawbridge, whether there were curses embedded in them or not; nothing Dis or Hell, for that matter, could offer would keep him from rejoining Sargatanas.
* * * * *
The battle-Passion had finally risen through Eligor's body, inflaming him with the ecstasy of destruction. Oddly, it had not accounted for the quick demise of the Knight-Brigadier Melphagor. That, Eligor had to admit to himself, had been pure luck.
With every demon destroyed, Melphagor had, as was the wont of the Knights during battle, grown a bit larger, and it was this extra height that had sealed his fate. As Eligor had dropped toward Faraii, the giant Knight had turned directly into his outstretched lance. The long point had cleft the demon's exposed head straight down to his neck, cleanly cutting through the shocked expression that froze upon Melphagor's face. The Knight imploded with a flash and Eligor, never even pausing his descent, landed and retrieved the demon's disk. It was the fortune of the
