Your cowardice was the cause of your army’s destruction.
Here it comes Abigor thought. A hideous death.
“But I am merciful.” The oily cooing was back in Satan’s voice. “I will give you a chance to redeem yourself.”
“Majesty, I thank you. But there is something we must do first. We must close that portal before it can be used against us.”
“Would that we could.” The words were not spoken but formed in Abigor’s mind. It wasn’t Satan speaking but he didn’t know who it was. “Our mages have been trying with all the energy they can command. It is no use. We cannot close it. It may decay on its own, in time, but we cannot close it. It is as much a fixture now as the very walls of Dis itself.”
“That is not your concern coward.” Satan turned to Memnon. “Tell me your story Herald. Let us hear how you ran from the humans and betrayed our kind.”
Memnon stared at the leering, sneering figure on the throne. Satan had no idea, what hew as hearing simply wasn’t registering. He began to speak, the experiences of the last month pouring from him.
Outside the Portal To Hell, Western Iraq
Running. It was all he could think of doing. Legs pistoning like a great machine his hooves kicked up sand and grit into thick clouds with each giant stride. His breath came hard and fast, foam flecked at the corners of his mouth and his eyes were narrowed into slits as he pushed his body to its limits and beyond in a frightful dash towards home. His mind was racing along with his body. The memories of his recent sojourn here on this dreadful plane burned through his fear and panic.
He had watched his wing mates annihilated by sky chariots. They never stood a chance and all their infernal might was no match for human magic. He did not have time to taste the shame that shot through him. It was not the time or the place to wallow in his misery. He needed to survive. He needed to get home. He needed to repeat the words.
Uriel. Damn the Nameless One. To unleash Uriel on this world in all his awesome wonder and glory was almost too much to bear. After all who was he but a humble servant, a warrior for his Duke. And now to be a messenger, a go between for the angelics made him want to spill his guts into these desert wastes and scream with impotent horror into the night.
But there was no time for that. There was only time to run and not think about the sounds around him, the cracks in the air that indicated some human was pointing his plastic lance and firing bolts of fire nearby, perhaps even at him as he rumbled by like a run away freight train. Were his wings healed he would be flying so hard so fast that the very sinews of his shoulder blades and joints would tear away.
There were the more ominous cracks of artificial thunder as human sky chariots blasted their way overhead. Sometimes it was followed by the deep bass rumble of human fire magic as it burst over a concentration of Never born and spread them over the wastes like fertilizer. He had seen one such strike up close as he ran.
One of the cavalry servitors tending to his dying mount looked up at him as he raced by, several foot soldiers were standing by the noble one waiting instructions. One must submit his will and being to a demon of higher order. It was the way of things. It was the natural order. The cavalry servitor demanded he halt and give a chant of greeting and submission. Memnon had actually considered for the briefest moment to do as he was told. Every fiber of his being seemed to tense as it prepared to submit as was custom and tradition.
The artificial thunder rumbled directly overhead and he remembered the death, the fire bolts, the arrows of doom that could pluck them from the sky as easily as a hawk picked off a field mouse for supper. And he responded in a manner that still haunted him.
“Run you fool!” he spat and his hooves did not falter, did not pause. He simply continued running, hot sweat hissing as it touched whatever it fell upon like an obscene rain. The cavalry servitor was stunned. Eyes bulged and tusks snapped loudly in anger and confusion.
“In the name of Abigor you will submit to me now or--”
Then there was the brief sound like parchment tearing or the clothes of some helpless human wench being rent by lecherous claws and then the cavalry servitor, his mount, and several of the closest foot troops exploded into a thick cloud of blood and bone. They were gone in a moment as if they had never been there. Several of the surviving foot soldiers were crawling away screaming in agony as they left liquefied or shattered limbs behind. He looked up long enough to see a sky chariot with its wings whirling over its head roar past in a low trajectory like a bird of prey surveying the carnage of its passing.
“Or what you fool? Everything has changed. Our world has been torn asunder.” Memnon spat to himself in sheer disgust. He paused only long enough to make sure the chariot did not come around for another attack run but the combination of the billowing clouds swept up by the chariot’s passing and his own panicked running had obscured him from its sight and unlike the other higher flying iron and plastic chariots this one seemed to lack the keen senses of its brethren and that saved the wayward servant of the Morningstar.
His body started to seize up and muscles cramped as he took those moments to slow down. He had pushed himself beyond all endurance and his body was now reacting to his fevered pace. At any moment he would collapse in an exhausted heap and sleep through the hazy pain to awaken refreshed.
However, one glance back at the bloody crater where before several of his kith and kin had stood fired him up and he raised one arm to his mouth and he bit deeply into the bicep. Flesh was rent from his bone and blood gushed into his nostrils. He snorted in pain and pleasure and that small spark of pain he was so keen on inflicting upon the useless wretches of humanity kindled a small surge in power pushed by will and fear and the Never born exploded back into his break neck pace.
And so he ran and ran. He ran past the sight of his grand army shattered into bloody remnants and screaming broken brethren who were begging for release, for a return to the fiery bloody skies of home and cursing humanity in whatever tongue they deemed fit. He ran through a charnel house of guts and sinews, hooves cracked exposed bone and ribs. He ran even as the air burned within his lungs like a furnace. He ran as he heard more thunder claps and whistling booms. He ran until he could run no more and collapsed in heap, blood spewing from his ruined bicep, frothy saliva spilling from his mouth and foam flecking along his heaving flanks.
There was no more left. No more to give and not even enough energy to take.
Memnon was spent to the last dregs of his reserves and he looked up to the sky to scream his defiance and await the human magic that was sure to rend him limb from limb. But then he noticed he was right at the lip of the portal to hell. Could it be? Was it not a failure? Had he pushed himself enough? Before him in a pathetic display a great beast dragged itself towards the yawning doorway home. Both hind legs reduced to splintered messes of dying meat and trailing entrails still it tried to get itself home. A leg from its rider was still firmly in the stirrup the rest of its charge probably scattered along the wastes. Memnon growled and fell upon the beast in a scream of desperation and anger at the predicament he find himself in, reduced to feeding off one of the great beasts to survive. He let his anger and frustration out on the wretched beast as it bleated in its death throes while teeth and claw rent muscle and sinew from bone.
Memnon fed deeply and voraciously as his anger, despair and shame burned in his belly worse than the rancid meat being guzzled in with such relish. He wanted to feed away the pain, the anguish of the defeat, the shame of running from prey, the despair of knowing that their magic had failed so completely and utterly and the gnawing fear that Nameless One was moving behind the scenes, that Uriel would trod this world completely unleashed.
What victory was there in that? It was whispered from the elder days that Uriel’s power was so grand that his death touch obliterated not only human life but also the human soul. His power, one of the greatest of all angels save perhaps for Michael the Great General, was the ultimate weapon because it robbed everyone, including the Nameless of the prize of human essence. When the first born of Khemet were swept aside their souls did not go screaming into Hell or the Etheric Realms. They simply ceased to be. Oblivion.
The very concept chilled the demon to its core. Nothing. Just the great darkness and void. At least in hell these pathetic humans drew solace from the fact that they still existed. Despite the pain and anguish they still mattered. But Uriel robbed everyone of that solace. He was the Nameless Ones’s weapon of last resort. The great scythe that robbed all sides of the prize. Or so it was rumored by those higher than he otherwise why the dread at his coming. Why the reticence of the Nameless to unleash him? His thoughts paused in a moment of revelation.
Standing at the Hellmouth was a Lord. The Duke, Abigor.
In that instant he felt something alien. Something alarming yet exhilarating as he watched his Duke move among the shattered remnants. He was still tall and proud yet there was no longer that cold arrogance to his gait,
