jagged lightnings, thunderous explosions, searing streaks of pure energy, and other releases of magical forces made it seem as though a celebratory display of pyrotechnical virtuosity was in progress throughout the rotten, sickly orange sky. Even as scores of the four-winged scouts tumbled down burning, dismembered, half-vaporized, or simply as ashes, these demons repaid the compliment sent upward to greet them with similar, but less powerful, spectacular compliments. It seemed that even a miss was useful, however. To inflict a lightning stroke or gouting flame upon Ojukalazogadit was to ensure the instant demise of any creature near the wound, as mandible or tentacle, huge head or flopping hand suddenly appeared to seize repayment for the injury. The zubassu were soon in total rout, however, and only a tithe of their original multitude flapped over whence they had come.
'We have crushed them!' The boast was from the capering Mandrillagon, a monstrous, blue-faced parody of a mandrill. He was a mighty demon Indeed, with two strata under his heel. It was Mandrillagon's winged monkey- demons who had finished the pursuit of the fleeing zubassu.
'Fodder!' rumbled both of Demogorgon's heads. 'Mere dung for spreading! Worse, many escaped. Now Graz'zt and his lickspittles will know our numbers, the composition of our masses,' the heads of the massive demon snarled. Even Mandrillagon, blood kin and long ally of Demogorgon, quailed before the fury evident in the demon king's twin voices.
Mandrillagon's livid blue face wrinkled, baring massive fangs of filthy yellow-gray at the rebuke. This was not defiance on Mandrillagon's part, but simply a reflexive gesture. 'We have no need to worry, my brother,' he assured Demogorgon in a coughing, barking voice. 'No enemy can stand before us. Never has such a horde as this been assembled!' That was true, and Demogorgon lashed his forked tail in acknowledgment of the statement.
A vast force of demons rolled across the disgusting plain that was Ojukalazogadit. On the left of the array were the mighty Var-Az-Hloo and Abraxas, each with an army of lesser demons. Demogorgon's headquarters and personal guard of snake-fish, toad-crabs, and lizard-slugs occupied the right flank. The central mass proper was commanded by Mandrillagon. This body of more than a million of all sorts of demons was the largest and certainly the most varied in the whole host that stretched for miles and miles across the flatness. It marched through pus and ordure, scum and bubbling excretions, heedless of all, even losses to predatious portions of the plain itself. Its tread shook even Ojukalazogadit's self as it squawked, screamed, fluttered, wiggled, hopped, and bounded along in a phantasmagorical symphony of hideousness.
Far away to the right rear was a smaller array. The two divisions that composed it were those of Zuggtmoy and her servitors and Szhublox and his lot of toadstool demons, amoeboid monsters, slimes, fungi, smut, rust, more slimes, blight, molds, and still more oozing slimes. Some hooted or puffed or burbled, but most were silent as they slid and lurched across the plain. Ojukalazogadit recoiled from their touch, so terrible were the demons and demonkin making up this force — not even a quarter-million strong, but so fearsome as to be dreaded. It came slowly, so it was effectively echeloned to the rear.
Lesser princes of the Abyss and a multitude of demon lords were scattered throughout the three great battles of the advancing horde. Telepathically and by various other means as well, they assured that the wild disarray of demons would obey orders to the limit of their ability. Of course, that simply meant that the vast hordes would move in the same direction and not tear each other to pieces. Such was the way of demoniacal warfare. With such a force as he had assembled and not marked against the actual person of the hated Graz'zt, Demogorgon was confident of an easy and total victory. Then he would assume the emperorship of the whole of the Abyss and deal with pretenders too. After Graz'zt came Orcus and Zuggtmoy.
They retreat before us, brother,' Mandrillagon barked. 'They hope to wear us down before having to face your awesome might.' The latter was a hasty but needed addition to his first statement. The blue-faced master of demons knew that calling Demogorgon
'brother' too often was not a healthy thing to do, even if it were a fact. Both were sovereigns, blood relatives, and allies. The towering Demogorgon, though, accepted none as equal. Better to fawn now and save vaunting for the time when his own power enabled him to do away with the two-headed freak permanently. 'What shall I do, greater one?'
'Order our horde to halt,' Demogorgon commanded, fixing Mandrillagon with his twin stares so that even so mighty a lord as the simian demon king twitched uneasily. 'Order the reserves, slaves, and foot beasts to hurry up to the advance.'
'I don't understand….'
'Of course not,' the right head of Demogorgon said with contempt as the left giggled derogatorily and nodded. 'I will communicate with Ojukalazogadit, sacrifice to it and feed it. This plane will then hinder the flight of Graz'zt and his little turds. Then I will bring him to battle and crush him and have the throne and the Theorpart both.'
There was no darkness on the near-infinite reaches of the stratum, but some time later the dull orange sky was suddenly shot through with sheets of bilious green. Sacrifice to Ojukalazogadit had indeed been made in copious form, and as the monster that was itself a layer of the chaotic netherworld chomped and crunched and surfeited itself on blood and ichor and flesh not of its own creation, it raised up folds and sunk chasms. The surface of Ojukalazogadit rippled. Pulses boomed, and Demogorgon exulted. 'The dirty lump styling himself emperor of the Abyss has been halted in his flight! We now march to render Graz'zt and all his curs their death blow!'
To an ear-splitting cacophony of iron horns and vast kettledrums covered with human skin or dragon hide, to the bonging and whanging of gongs and cylindrical bells, to screeching fifes and other instruments of all sorts, while millions of demons raged and roared, the corps and divisions of Demogorgon's horde marched. Soon the stronger began to outpace the weaker as the advance became a race to see who could fall upon the enemy first. Streaming across the vile landscape inexorably, a tidal wave of demonkind rushed upon a huddled array of their fellows not half as numerous.
They come, my liege.'
This was more a confirmation of some long-expected and delayed event finally occurring than anything said in fear or as a warning. The speaker was Eclavdra the High Priestess, known to some as Leda, a dark-elf counselor of standing and power equal to any of the demon lords who swore fealty to Graz'zt, save possibly the alabaster- skinned Vuron. 'All is in readiness.'
'Kostchtchie?' asked Graz'zt, turning to the ugliest and perhaps most ruthless of his lieutenants.
'My horde stands ready!'
'Baphomet?'
To kill!' the bull-headed demon prince bellowed, raising a massive axelike weapon.
'Your demon giants and scum, Kostchtchie, will march very slowly forward. Delay as long as possible the melee with Zuggtmoy's horde. You, dear Baphomet, must fling your ravening demoters and the rest quickly forward so that you strike the enemy on the left under Var-Az-Hloo before the freak and his corps are in range of our own main body. Understood?'
Neither of the great demons understood the strategy involved, but both said they knew exactly what was expected of them. 'Go then, and may you savor the death of each enemy slain!' Graz'zt roared.
Dark and dour Nergal remained standing with Graz'zt, both demons bulking huge beside the small and delicate drow, Leda. 'I will watch the horn-head Baphomet,' she said to Graz'zt softly. 'Even though you promised him ascendancy over Yeenoghu should he triumph this day, I trust not his loyalty to you, liege.' That brought a dry rasp of a chuckle from the stony depths of the demon-man Nergal, who had been through his own quarrels with the ebony Graz'zt before the latter had acquired the Theorpart he now controlled.
'Yes, little one, and think you not that the weird Demogorgon frets not about the blubber-gutted sheep-face with whom he has made common cause? Time enough to even old scores afterward, say I….'
It was a most unexpected combination, that of Orcus and Demogorgon, but as with Yeenoghu and Baphomet, the foes fought for the same side on different fronts. Perhaps it would suffice. Leda understood full well the principle of biding time to wait for revenge or anything else sought for. 'Nevertheless, with your permission, emperor,' she said, 'I will take my station on the right.'
'Take Palvlag and the conflagranti,' Graz'zt assented, pointing toward the half-hundred great demons of flame who were his personal guard. 'For what is coming I have no need for them. Their presence will be sure to soothe any ill will Baphomet harbors.' Again Nergal chuckled. The terrible fire fiends were sufficient to give any, even the greatest of great demons, pause.
Leda made no protest. Turning quickly, with but the slightest of bows, the drow priestess hurried off to
