“Brother demons, this will be a war of remembrance. A war wherein we Fallen try to re-attain the grace that we once shared. Our enemy, content to wallow in the corruption of Hell, is mighty and outnumbers us many to one. But if we fight like the warrior-angels we once were, with that same, almost-forgotten, inner fire of purity, we
With that, Eligor saw his lord’s giant sigil break apart into a thousand glowing comets that darted outward, each alighting above the regimental glyph of a different banner, each transforming into Sargatanas’ iconic battle emblem.
A great cheer rang up and Eligor tingled with the auspiciousness of it all. He knew what this ceremony, this charging of the banners, meant. They were at war.
Amidst the clamor, Sargatanas descended the great flight of stairs followed by Eligor and the others. He would review his new army and make what last-minute suggestions to Faraii and Valefar might be appropriate.
At the base of the stairs stood five of Sargatanas’ most trusted generals. Backs straight, heads held high, they looked upon their lord with a near-religious zeal.
“Generals,” Sargatanas said so that only they could hear. “What I am ordering is nothing short of open rebellion. To free ourselves we will, if need be, storm the gate of Beelzebub’s Keep itself! I tell you now: this rebellion will either break us or free us forever. Either way, we will be done with Hell.
“Through the course of this campaign we will be facing a superior force composed of those Demons Major and Minor who have willingly taken up with Beelzebub. Astaroth—the first—is little more than a puppet; his destruction will be a prelude only. Our legions are the best conjured in Hell, led by the best officers in Hell. They are obedient, disciplined, and, at your hands, brilliantly trained. Use them recklessly and we will be at an end before we start. Use them wisely and we will achieve something unimaginable for all these long eons. This campaign will be your last, the final demonstration of all you have learned. Be bold; be creative; be ruthless upon the field of battle. I, and my Guard, will be with you every step of the way. We will prevail because we share a single vision… the vision of the Light that we once cherished.
The generals knelt as one, and with a vast clattering the entire gathered army followed them to their knees. The generals were smiling and Eligor saw the fervor flooding through them. He watched Sargatanas reach down and clasp each by the arm and as he did they, too, received a small token from his sigil.
The small party moved on past the general staff, on to Faraii’s Shock Troopers, big, brutish, and very heavily armored. Each of their arms ended in a variety of crudely conjured cleaverlike blades, thick enough to easily split a legionary’s torso agape. Their oversized, scarred heads were squat, and their feeding mouths were lined with thick, pointed teeth. When Sargatanas approached them, they turned to Faraii, almost as if looking to him for guidance as to how to behave before their lord. Unseen by all but Eligor, he quickly bowed his head—a signal meant to be imitated—and the troopers followed his cue. It was an odd moment, Eligor thought, odd that they would not immediately have saluted their lord, odd that they would look to the Waste wanderer for guidance. Eligor put it down to their obvious mental deficiencies; they were, after all, dim but effective fighting creatures, not reasoning demons.
Without warning a glyph soared from the arcades overhead. Eligor’s keen eyes spotted the tiny running figure just as it burst from one of the arcades and was hooked by the closely pursuing squad of his Guard that flew above it. At that distance he could not see the web of chains that dragged what appeared to be a soul into the air, but as they approached, he did see the flailing soul tugging futilely at them. Eligor turned to see Sargatanas staring intently at the scene but, with some anxiety, could not imagine what the Demon Major was thinking or what the consequences would be of such a flagrant security breach.
Pain and terror and a sudden sinking feeling of disappointment filled Hani as he felt himself jerked into the air. He was used to pain and almost welcomed it. Its infliction meant, at least, that all of the questions—how his quest would end—were answered. It had been an amazing journey, the journey, as it turned out, toward the end of his conventional existence. For surely his punishment would be unthinkable. But still, he had gotten as far as he had hoped. Farther than he dreamt. Even now, twisting in numbing pain at the end of a dozen hooked chains, he was sure that he saw in the distance his true goal, the large form of Sargatanas as he walked amidst his troops.
Above Hani, the six flying demons were dipping and rising, expertly keeping their chains taut. The barbed hooks were deeply embedded all over his body and he finally gave up struggling. What really was the point? If he fell, it would only be atop a waiting legionary’s halberd.
He saw the ranks of legionaries looking up at him, expressionless; they were weapons to be wielded, mindless and dangerous. He saw them in an agonized blur, each nearly identical to its brother, focusing only upon a face, or a scooped-out cranium, or a thick carapace with its distinctive chest-horns. They were all alike, all cruel and efficient.
They flew on toward the central flat-topped mountain of stone. He saw a great throne atop it. At its foot he saw the nearing dark figure of the Lord of Adamantinarx staring up at him, unmoving, waiting, and fear added itself to the pain that bled through his limp body.
Through tear-veiled eyes he saw the figure grow larger as the flying demons dropped down. He saw the coronal eyes encircled by flame and then, beneath them, the intense, metallic eyes that reached up toward him with a penetrating intensity. A few moments later he was hanging mere feet from Sargatanas, dangled like a lifeless puppet by the hovering demons.
Hani hung there, transfixed by the eight eyes of the demon, convinced, in his delirium of pain, that they were what held him aloft rather than the chains. The gigantic chamber dimmed and swirled and blazed before him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, but each time he opened his eyes the demon’s were always, unblinkingly, upon him. Was it for seconds or minutes? Time, as he perceived it, could only be marked by the uneven rhythm of pain, the artificial night and day of his tenuous awareness.
“Why are you here, larva?” Hani heard, and his eyelids fluttered open.
“I sinned,” he said foggily.
“Why are you
“I had to come,” he said, his voice cinder dry. “I have something… you would value.”
He saw a demon step forward and, because the memory was still so sharp, remembered that he was named Valefar.
“Lord, there is nothing this larva can offer us. Shall I have it dispo—”
“No, Valefar. You do not find it remarkable that this
Hani saw Sargatanas turn back to him.
“What do you want from us… from me?”
And even through his haze of agony Hani realized that this was his opportunity,
“I want only to know who I was. And what I did to get here.”
Sargatanas stared at him, cocking his head slightly to one side. Hani saw the demon close his many eyes, saw the flames about his head gutter, and saw, too, the very slight trembling of one clawed finger.
And then Hani felt it. It began as a sharp, hot breeze upon his mind, strong and persistent, and gathered quickly into a rushing, searing gale that surpassed the hottest winds he could remember, the roaring Tophet blasts from the child-sacrifices in his home city.
He shut his eyes and the memories of his Life began to cascade back into him like the most precious, sweetest wine being poured into an amphora. He knew then that the bits of memory that he had experienced in Hell had been like some barely fragrant residue clinging to the inside of his mind, the stubborn dregs that been left in a vessel when it was emptied.
The fleeting images of a wide, sun-kissed sea had been the Central Sea, the huge wall-encircled city his beloved Qart Hadasht—the New City—and he knew now that the soul-beasts had evoked nothing less than his prized war elephants. Had he not made this fateful journey he could have wrestled with those images’ meaning for all eternity.
Hani opened his eyes, but he was Hani no longer. And he was no longer hanging by the hooks. Instead he
