As Eligor soared upward, he tried to picture the chaos of the battlefield far beneath them, wondering about the fortunes, good or bad, of Satanachia, of Yen Wang, and of that resourceful soul Hannibal. For all Eligor or any of the other demons flying with him knew, the battle had turned one way or the other and glorious victory or utter defeat was already written upon the rubble-strewn fields of Dis.
On he flew with a diminishing sense of time and distance. The cloud-bank was an enervating environment, its passing billows slow and hypnotic. The sere wind-current they had sailed upon had left him and the flyers more than enough strength for this final dash to the dome. Over the sound of his own now-moistened wings, he could hear the cloud-muffled flapping of the nearest demons below him, their breaths coming in short but unstrained huffs that matched their wing beats. Above, Sargatanas flew silently, and Eligor could only imagine what must be going through his lord’s mind. Not only did the Demon Major have the innumerable concerns of the battlefield to address but also the fraught possibilities stemming from his army’s success or failure. Eligor found himself actually grateful that his only concerns were his duties as the commander of many hundreds of demons.
Closer to the Black Dome the flights began to encounter luckless patrols of demons patrolling the night sky. These were easily overwhelmed, their ash dissipating on the wind, erasing any trace of their presence and any evidence of their demise.
The huge formation leveled off at an altitude high enough to allow Sargatanas to issue command-glyphs without fear of being detected. This, Eligor knew, was essential to the final approach to the dome. Many of his lord’s spies had been destroyed ascertaining even the smallest structural weaknesses in the Black Dome. It would remain to be seen whether they had been sacrificed for naught.
The Library no longer had the familiar, comforting smell of dust and ancient volumes. Too many holes had been opened in the palace, allowing the winds from outside to purge it of its characteristic musty scent. Lilith watched the corner of the page she was holding quiver in the steady current of air that made its way to where she sat from a demolished corridor wall to her side.
Since her arrival in Adamantinarx, Lilith had found herself drawn toward the Library and its hitherto unimaginable wealth of learning, striving to come back every day for, at least, a short time. In Dis she had been so cloistered that her only source of learning was from demons she had met at court and on those rare occasions when they had been accessible they had never been terribly forthcoming. She had lived in a world of enforced ignorance.
She looked over at Librarian Eintsaras as he transcribed yet another of the Library’s volumes. This was the one place where Sargatanas had realized freeing the souls would be a detriment to the demons. To lose the Library was to lose the collected knowledge of eons. Because each book was fashioned around soul-vellum, they had to be transcribed to Abyssal-skin pages before they could be converted. Giving Eintsaras the glyph-of-transmutation, Sargatanas had known just how long it would take to change over the Library. The small army of librarians had barely made a dent.
Even as she watched, Eintsaras finished another page and, with the suddenly conjured glyph, set its narrator free. The soul, a female, looked around in utter confusion, holding herself up by the solid table in front of her. One of the librarians rose from his seat and escorted her away. Her life in Hell was her own again.
Lilith touched the tiny glyph on the page that initiated the narration. She had chosen a major work on the Wastes, a book that Eligor had heard and recommended, which detailed the findings of the most far traveled of the ancient mapping expeditions. The party had included many souls and the pages had been fashioned from them, lending the book a firsthand immediacy. But, as fascinating as it was, she found herself distracted. Zoray had promised to meet her in the Library to discuss her future in the city and just what her role might be, and she had been giving that question considerable thought since Sargatanas had departed. She knew she was going to disappoint him.
The newly appointed governor of Sargatanas’ wards arrived alone. To Lilith’s eyes, though he was now a Demon Major with all of the newly acquired physical attributes that went with his Elevation, he looked fatigued, and it was little wonder. Since Sargatanas had begun to free the souls this was a new world, and with its beginning came new challenges. Working out just how the wards would function in their present condition was taxing, involving the creation of new economies and new ways of meeting challenges without the enforced use of souls. She could only imagine, with a bit of wryness, Zoray’s boredom as he listened to Sargatanas’ army of advisors.
Lilith touched the glyph again and the page’s ancient soul went silent.
Zoray moved around the table and stood, peering over her shoulder at the open book.
“Should I read anything into your choice of books, Lilith?”
“Perhaps. I have always wanted to see more of this world of ours. There are many mysteries out there, Zoray. Things I would like to see.”
“Really? Well, perhaps you might start with the surrounding wards. And the mystery of how we will get them to run smoothly.”
Lilith smiled, but then a look of bewilderment suddenly crossed her face. Looking past Zoray, she saw the dark figure of a soldier approaching, apparently having entered the Library from the wall that had been broken open. As he came closer she saw that the right side of the demon’s torso was missing, giving the appearance of having been cleft away in battle. This was not unusual in itself, but something about the way the demon moved was not right.
And then Lilith heard the buzzing and knew.
With deliberate and quick steps it walked up the main aisle, and as it passed each working librarian something that Lilith could not see from her distance cleanly sliced their heads from their shoulders, causing their lifeless bodies to gout blood and collapse in upon themselves. Its appearance was so sudden that there was no time for the librarians to react, and in only brief moments the floor was littered with their disks.
Zoray spun around, pulling his sword from its sheath, and Lilith heard him quietly invoke a protective glyph. Not expecting combat, he had no armor upon him, and summoning it up would take too long.
The Hand of Beelzebub paused. Lilith knew that virtually every part of it could see, and yet, unnervingly, its gaze seemed fixed upon her. For a heart-pounding instant, as she was paralyzed and staring into its expressionless face, the world of the Fly spread darkly through her mind, filling her with dread and revulsion.
She cried out when a thin tendril of flies whipped forth, beheading Eintsaras where he had risen.
With sword extended, Zoray moved forward and said “Leave, my lady!
But Lilith knew that it was futile. With the palace opened up like a worm-bored body there was no place to which she could flee that would keep this monstrosity from her now that she had been uncovered. Even so, she found herself moving backward, toward the doors.
Zoray did not wait for the Hand to strike out at him. Closing swiftly with the dark figure, he lashed out at its head, its chest, its arm, but watched, with widening eyes, as the flies parted and his sword passed ineffectually through. Lilith heard the whipping wind of his sword-work as swing after swing met with only air. He turned his blade flat-on but succeeded in only batting the flies away in larger groups. She saw the Demon Major’s mounting frustration boil over as he upended a heavy table and shoved it, scraping noisily, across the floor at his opponent. The Hand simply dissipated into a shapeless cloud and then, just as quickly, resolved into its original form.
Like a demonic whirlwind, Zoray swept chairs and tables aside, treading upon the fallen books and circling around in an effort to draw the Hand away from her. But as he tore through the room, the desperation clear upon his face, the reality of the moment washed through her and suddenly she felt an overwhelming pity for him. As powerful as he had become, he was going to be destroyed protecting her, and there was nothing she could do to save him.
With a roar of frustration, Zoray dropped his useless sword and grasped a flaming wrought-iron brazier that momentarily caused the dark figure to billow and pull back. Lilith heard the buzzing crescendo, the flies’ anger clear to her ears, as the demon fanned its outrage with the guttering fire. Without warning, the Hand leaped forward, parting around the extended brazier and colliding with Zoray. The brazier clanged to the stone floor as the demon suddenly froze in place, his entire front blackened with noisy, writhing flies. And then, to Lilith’s horror, they disappeared into Zoray, boring their way through bone and then flesh and then bone again until she saw them emerge in blotchy patches from the back of his head and torso. When the flies left his perforated body it fell lightly to the Library floor, barely making a sound. She hardly noticed as Zoray drew inward, becoming a glowing disk. Rising up from the destroyed demon, the Hand of Beelzebub turned and regarded her with its thousand eyes.
