Horrors of the Dancing Gods

At precisely eighteen hundred, about ninety minutes before sunset at that season in that latitude, the figure of a monk appeared among them on the battlement. In spite of bright sunshine, he still looked as if he were in deep shadow.

Mephistopheles looked at Marge, but not as other men had. 'I see that you have made the final transition. More than ever now you must trust your instincts. There will probably be good prey in there for a seductress, but use the power wisely. Iron about fifty millimeters below the heart will kill you as surely as it will kill any other of the facie, and you have no power over women of any type.'

She nodded. 'I'll be careful. That much hasn't changed. How do we get to Mount Doom, though? Shouldn't we have left before now in order to travel? I mean, it's like another thousand miles, isn't it?'

'Almost, but that is using the methods of the world. Come! All together now! Have hold of what you wish to bring with you, for there will be no chance to do this twice!' The Prince of Hell put his arms out straight to either side and faced the south-southwest. 'All face where I face and be prepared. Even now the battle rages, and we shall soon join it. Each of you touch one other close to you, and at least one of you touch my robe. Yes, thank you. Do not fear what you see — it is being done for your own benefit. Be prepared for bizarre and violent sights and sounds and dizzying sensations, but hold fast. You must hit the ground running and be into that wood in the blink of an eye, as soon as you see the opening. Many lives and souls of great bravery and value are being put on the line for you! Do not let them down!' He paused. 'Ready? You see? I am in Hell, and Hell is in all places at once. Therefore, since you are with me, we are already there!'

The entire world, even the entire universe, suddenly vanished.

They approached the dark at the end of the tunnel before they could think any more about it.

And like that they burst through into an insane, chaotic roar of battle on a vast supernatural scale.

All around them, great dark shapes like giants in a twisted shadow play rode even more horrifying steeds that snorted, exuded, and shot fire and brimstone and electrical energies at an equally horrific series of giant apparitions in front of them. The enemy seemed outlined in bright white energy yet was all animal hatred, with slashing fangs and razor-sharp claws not of flesh and blood but of supernatural energy, the true underlying That behind All That.

It was the most awful, terrifying thing any of them had ever seen, made all the more so by their total lack of control over anything, including being able to run or hide or block from their vision the grisly and grotesque war of the evil gods that raged all around them. Instead, they tried to focus forward on a tiny sliver of light, of reality, toward which they slowly moved even as they stood motionless with Mephistopheles.

The pinpoint grew abruptly larger, surrounding and overwhelming them, and they felt the suddenness of wind on their faces and the heat of the early evening and saw a. vast impenetrable-looking forest only a few dozen meters in front of them.

They didn't wait for an invitation; although they were all still stunned and reeling from the incomprehensible violence through which they'd come, they each acted out of an instinct for self-preservation and hit the ground running hard for those trees, not stopping until they were well inside the thick grove and hidden by its shadows.

Irving still wasn't thinking; he flattened himself against a tree, breathing hard, the terror in his face impossible to disguise. He wasn't certain where Larae was, but he thought he could hear her gasping for breath not far from him, while over in another corner came the sound of the oily Thebes whimpering.

Poquah had been in that realm before, although never against that sort of enemy or facing that intensity of sheer hatred. He had felt and been unnerved as they had, but his nearly absolute self-control had not wavered. Only the fact that he was breathing almost as hard as the others showed that there was anything more going on inside his head.

Of them all, Marge felt the least affected, and she wasn't sure why. Certainly she'd never seen anything like that before, but what had been total horror and confusion for the others had been to her like a great thrill ride; she could still feel the sense of exhilaration from all the energy that had washed over and through her. It felt as if she'd just come off the greatest roller coaster in the world, one with, nothing but superhill after superhill. The sense of extreme danger, of the potential for instant death or psychic dismemberment, far from being so terribly frightening, had only increased the thrill. She hadn't had this much fun, felt this great, since… since…

Hell, she'd never felt this great!

She'd been a wimpy Kauri far too long. This was living again!

She could see and sense that her companions did not share her enthusiasm, and it amused her. I'm the only real female in this whole bunch, and I've got all the balls, she thought with some satisfaction.

She walked through the forest, finding each of them in turn and saying in a normal tone not designed to bring unwanted attention but sufficient to be heard by them all, 'Come on, come out! We've got to get moving! The dark's not gonna pose a big problem for me, but it sure will for the rest of you. Let's move in and set up some sort of camp here.'

Slowly, shakily, they all managed to let go, although Thebes let go and followed only when it was suggested that the alternative was that he not come and thus be left there for whoever or whatever came along.

'What — what was that?' Larae managed after a while.

'Just what the demon said it was,' Poquah responded. 'That is total war in the realm of Heaven and Hell and, in this case, a third force as well. Ugly, is it not? Ugly and beautiful at one and the same time.'

'I–I could make sense of little of it,' she admitted.

He nodded. 'None of us could. Our minds aren't capable of processing that sort of information, nor are our brains fast enough and clever enough to interpret what we were seeing. The result was a series of horrific impressions, true, and all of the chaos of battle, but nothing specific. I must admit, though, that it was useful and instructive in judging the enemy here.'

'How so?' Irving asked him. 'All I got was a lot of hatred and animal lust.'

'True. That's what I got, too. The mason this temporary breakthrough worked was that the forces of Hell were employing carefully plotted battle plans. There was intellect, organization, and discipline there, and it was pitted against raw emotional power. No plan, no coordination, no discipline, just all the base passions. The only reason they am formidable is the depth of their power. Intellect can hold against brute force in most cases, but if that is the force level now, imagine what it will be like if these demigods truly come through. I believe that's what Hell fears, what it cannot withstand. If just the followers here can muster this kind of power and wrest and tear even this small spot flout the Prince of Hell himself, then who or what could withstand their masters?'

There was a sudden low, ominous rumbling that seemed to come from all around, and the very earth shook and the trees began to sway this way and that. The earth shifted beneath them, throwing them all briefly to the ground.

It went on for a few seconds but stopped almost as quickly as it had started. There was, however, still the sound of only slightly more distant mumbling and the occasional whiff of sulfur.

They picked themselves up in the deepening gloom of the forest. 'What was that?' Irving asked as they set off, unnerved once again.

'A minor earthquake, I believe,' Poquah told him. 'We are walking into a deep valley cutting right into a gigantic and somewhat active volcano, remember, and these forces all around certainly won't help pacify its normal and natural anger.'

'There is no danger of it erupting onto us, is there?' Larae asked nervously.

'I don't think so,' the Imir replied, 'even though that would be very symmetrical and thus in full accord with the Rules. To do so, though, would mean wiping out this valley and this forest, and I believe that these specific segments, mostly remnants moved here from Earth after the Fall, are pretty well protected. Not, however, from