servitors was departing. That ghastly daemon, one of the Diseased Ones, bowed low and firmly closed the ancient door behind itself.
Infestix was now alone in the chamber, a minor audience room he favored because its location allowed him to access so many places easily. The master of the netherplanes sprawled back on the wide chair. His form shifted to that of Nerull, the skeletal god of death, and in his hands appeared the terrible scythe wielded by that deity. Then the terrible figure bounded up from the seat as quickly and nimbly as it he were a young man full of vigor and life rather than a bony monster eons old and laden with plagues. Infestix laughed a booming, iron throated laugh, as in his Nerull avatar he swung the scythe in great arcs around the chamber, the rusted, blood-stained blade singing a death song that was most pleasant to the being as he danced thus and laughed in pleasure.
'The planets come slowly into alignment, and all signs and portents are favorable,' Nerull caroled loudly. There were none to hear, of course. He shared the news with nobody, for none save he would soon ascend to be the Chosen of Tharizdun. No master of devils, no chief of any other power in the whole of the netherworlds had come close to accomplishing all that Infestix-Nerull had managed.
Now the culmination of all he had worked for and labored to produce was at hand. With an abrupt cessation of motion. Nerull stopped his cavorting. The terrible being swished his long-edged instrument through the air. There, where it had passed. Oerth and the Flanaess appeared at his feet.
'Let me see the struggle.' he ordered. From east to west tiny lines of figures sprang up, fighting and killing in a replay of events of the last few weeks. The soldiery of the Great Kingdom fought on all fronts, slaying and being slain by the knights and footmen of Nyrond, Almor, and the League of the Iron Knot. The forces of Iuz and his allies hammered south, east, west and in turn were hit and driven. Scarlet Brotherhood legions marched, battled, and bled. Baklunish hosts fought nomads and wild kinsmen, as dwarves and elves defended valiantly against the unending hordes of humanolds swarming out from the Pomarj. Everywhere there was destruction, hunger, suffering. Nerull laughed the rust-throated laugh of death again, and as he passed his scythe over the little depiction, all save the dead vanished. Those. In their thousands, arose and marched in ordered formation at their master's will. In fact, many of those dead would come to Hades and those other netherspheres serving Infestix and become new soldiers still fighting for the dark cause of Tharizdun.
'It is perfect,' the daemon hissed as he allowed the phantom figures to vanish. 'Neither law nor chaos attains ascendancy now. What war ever brought weal?' he added with a sardonic chuckle. 'I am readying all for you, Great Master of Evil,' Nerull shouted, and a faint pulsing in the dim atmosphere seemed to indicate that the bound lord of all darkness heard and strained to come forth again.
'See, Lord Tharizdun!' the nether-king shouted as he again cut a path through the thick air of the chamber with his scythe. There appeared scenes of the war being fought in the netherspheres. Demons great and small fought with their own ilk and against the minions of the Nine Hells and Hades, too. Three amethyst lights, tiny and bright as stars, showed where the Theorparts were, each a key, a third of the relic that would free Tharizdun.
Infestix-Nerull noted absently the smaller, black gleam where the Eye of Deception gathered chaotic power for its demoniacal wielder, and even smaller motes of rubine hue, orange fire, deep jet. Those were merely indications of the many great weapons being used, artifacts of evil force employed by the warring factions. Together, perhaps, the rest would surpass the power of the Eye wielded by Graz'zt, and it, with the other weapons of the Abyss, might just surpass a single Theorpart.
'My Lord of All Evil,' Infestix-Nerull said more softly, 'see how the three parts draw ever closer to each other? Soon, soon!' But there was no further indication that a channel remained to that no-space where the dreaded Tharizdun was imprisoned, so the daemon dissolved the scene with another swish of the groaning blade.
Thinking carefully to himself, Nerull pondered the situation. The keys were so close, yet they remained disjoined, separate, and contentious. 'The one-who-stands-between still lives!' The words were loud, iron-toned, rust-dead damnations echoing in the fetid atmosphere as the sound rebounded from the walls of livid purple, skipped off the polished porphyry floor, beat against the dull plum-tinged dome that capped the place as the lid of a sarcophagus. 'Where?' Infestix-Nerull demanded, giving the great scythe a twitch that sent it slashing with the sound of a thousand death moans.
There appeared before him his own scrying room. The Diseased Ones were not there, of course. All of them were guarding the door to the chamber he was in. In the vast basin was the situation envisioned as a chess game. The daemon concentrated on the vision of a vision, and the squares ran, shifted, changed. From a vast survey of planar scope it contracted, shifting to a different scale. Yet the field was still multiplaned. Transparent level upon ghostly level it formed. First came the golden brown and pale tan of the material world. Its hue and conformation showed it to be Oerth. There the board shed a fading emerald light, and the violet garments that covered the array of slain pawns and minor pieces there told a tale that brought fury to the daemon's visage. Ghastly lilac light shot from the hollows where violet specks writhed like worms. The beams swept the phantom field, and the depiction of the chess board sank, so that Nerull's gaze was now fixed on a weird and distorted field. 'Better,' he hissed in his metallic voice. 'Much better, little human.'
The twisted, distorted helix that was depicted as the playing field of the game was the work of Gravestone. The convoluted layers writhed out and back, and each stratum was filled with the stuff of Nerull — death! For a brief span the daemon lord watched the tableau. The clear emerald of the sole champion, the resister of Evil's coming domination, was pulsing, moving, but struggling from one tier to the next.
'A fly in the webbed tunnel,' Infestix-Nerull said gleefully, the sound of his mirth like rusted metal scraping on rough slate. A force of the green-hued pieces moved on the strangely colored spaces of the extradimensional board built by the priest-wizard who so faithfully served the cause, but the way grew ever more perilous, each move more fell; and upward, ever upward, the serpentine helix writhed. Those four men were gone from the main field and entrapped in a mazed board that would isolate them for… how long?
Too long!' The daemon's gaze slid upward to where the misshapen squares terminated in an infundibular form. There another pair of the green pieces stood. 'What is this?' Nerull was surprised; concern tinged the iron of his voice as he muttered the exclamation aloud in the empty chamber.
The conformation depicting the enemy men relayed what force they had. Minor pieces, but strong ones. Perhaps one could be likened to the promoted bishoplike piece, a mixture of the conventional moves of bishop and king. The other showed power of a shorter range but good strength in the area immediately around it; a great mage and a high priest.
Infestix-Nerull saw his own chief piece on the field of the material plane. Gravestone. He was larger, stronger, than the two attackers who had attained the funnel's disclike rim. In fact, there in his own place, the nowhere he had constructed as fortress and refuge, power base and armory, Gravestone was nearly godlike in strength. 'But why?' Again the words sprang unbidden from the lipless mouth of the daemon. 'Are those black wings? Shadows? Or something else…?'
He was pondering that, and also thinking how fortunate for his lieutenant that the little force of green antagonists had been split into two parts, when the images of the many-layered board wavered and began to fade. 'No!' Infestix-Nerull boomed the command, and as he so shouted he bent his entire will upon the vision, demanding it to solidify, become sharper, grow. Pale fog of pea green color was obscuring the scene. The phantasmal vapors shot upward from the ground that was Oerth and rose through the unnaturally formed planes above.
'Slow, too slow,' the daemon-master said with hard satisfaction. 'I will see more before you manage to cloud the scrying, Basiliv!' The smoke roiled and darkened. The intensity of its hue tried to shoot upward, but the convoluted parody of creation disallowed such speed. Laughing foully, knowing that his hated antagonist would hear, the daemon again stared upward to the place where Gravestone was about to combat the two minions of the Balance.
The vivid vert of the mage and priest were barely discernible through a growing gloom. 'Black? Black?! What demon scum dares to interfere with Me?' Infestix-Nerull bellowed so loudly as to make the whole room shudder and shake. Nothing was heard outside, of course, but the very stuff of the bronze-bound planks closing off the chamber danced from the force of the daemon's wild outcry, and the Diseased Ones beyond huddled within themselves in fear.
No answer was forthcoming, however, and try as he might Nerull was quite unable to discover some intruding mental force indicating the interference of Orcus, Graz'zt, or any other of the mightiest of demonkind. 'Plagues smite you!' he thundered, and scythed the old-blood blur of metal through the vision. Black smoke and verdant fog alike vanished. Filled with rage, the ruler of the netherworld stalked out of his chamber, scattering the lesser
