'Son of a diseased dungheap!' Chert bawled as he grabbed the monstrous dumaldun, lifted it over his head, and hurled it into the faces of the next two demoniacal things as they came at him. The corpse sent the pair back and down, but the effort was too much for the barbarian. Head spinning, muscles uncontrolled. Chert toppled backward at the mercy of whatever beast came upon him next.
Gravestone had seen Gord's action, noted the sudden cessation of his evil gateway to Tarterus, and for the tenth time cursed mentally the young champion who opposed him. There was no time for the luxury of a true and proper curse, though. Besides, the priest-wizard thought, the efficacy of such against one so filled with supernatural powers would be questionable at best. What was needed to best the little thief were strong spells and malign forces. Gravestone still had a considerable arsenal of both. Another weapon must be brought into play now, instantly.
'Hellsblades!' the demonurgist shouted triumphantly. That dark calling would not only keep his foe at bay, it would pursue him and at best embroil Gord in combat with the howling, capering dumalduns.
The champion of the Balance heard the exclamation as it sprang from the priest-wizard's lips, saw the red hot metal of the hells-spawned glaives as they came into being and began to twist and spin. Nine long knives, glowing tongues of terrible metal forged on the floor of the furnaces of the hells. They rotated with blades in varying planes so as to describe a moving sphere, a ball of grisly death for any creature caught by them. Nine feet across, nine feet high, nine deep. A devilshine called up to slash and chop a globe of red destruction from razor-edged, searing-hot falchions of diabolic making.
'You grant them to me?' Gord called to the vaunting Gravestone.
'Oh, yes, yes! Dear 'champion,' they are yours — a freely bestowed gift,' the demonurgist called back, wondering why he had spoken so even as he articulated his response. There was a feeling of unease in his heart, but he shrugged it off instantly. He had not erred; he could not.
But he had. Gord knew this the moment he saw the nature of the dweomer Gravestone had brought into being before him. He knew right away what to say and do. 'It is a generous present, and I freely accept!' Gord shouted the response as if responding in a ritual. 'Blackheartseeker and I now take your gift!' With that the young champion thrust forth his dead-black sword, sending its length toward the center, the heart of the Hellsblades' form. The demonurgist had only a heartbeat to wonder what madness had overcome his adversary. He was throwing himself into the centrifuge of his doom, and the blur-quick blades would devour sword and champion alike in the blink of an eye, spewing both out as steely slivers and minced flesh as instantly.
'Die, dirty little…' The shout of final triumph died to a murmuring standstill as the demonurgist saw what happened next. As Gord's sword pierced the sphere, the whirling slowed. Lightless sword touched red-hot glaive, and the hell-forged metal darkened, flowed, and then became a part of the ebon blade. One after another were affected this way, until all nine had melded with the black brand.
Although the horrified gaze of the priest-wizard saw no change in the sword itself, Gravestone understood. 'Aid me, Infestix,' he wailed as Gord brought the dark blade down and a hell-red trail glowed In the air where the long edge passed.
'Demon-hand and devilshine. Gravestone,' Gord called as the demonurgist shrank back. 'Let the greatest filth from Hades' cesspool come bubbling up to heed your bleating and whimpering for help. He'll come too late! My sword needs yet one more component to complete its energy — the heart of the nether-pits' force. You!'
Gravestone turned and ran. The ravening dumalduns would screen him from the terrible blade, from the champion who bore it. Not long, but long enough for him to effect his escape.
Then the demonurgist saw the full effect of the use of the Talisman of Balance. Four of the ape-beasts were tearing at their dead mate where it lay atop the stunned troubador. Two were engaged in a cannibal feast upon the carcass of the dumaldun slain by Chert, as the remaining quartet of the horrible denizens of Tarterus alternately tore into the motionless druid and the felled barbarian, trying to decide which was better feasting. All of them were unaware of what was about to transpire, but Gravestone saw and knew too well.
'No help, no help.' he wailed, clawing desperately in his dark robes for an instrument therein, a thing of power to rescue him.
A shape of pure light, a form of deep blue in which meteors of gold shot and played, stood near the scene. It was the ultimate guardian of the upper spheres, a solar. Gravestone needed but a single glance to know what it was and flee shrieking from it. Gord, however, was uncertain. Despite the rout of his foe and his desire to catch and slay the demonurgist, the young champion felt compelled to observe what the being was doing. Its work was fell indeed.
The glowing form of lapis hue sent forth jagged bolts from its hands. These crackling, ragged-edged arcs did not flash forth, then disappear into nothing but a burning after-image as would lightning. Each played forth with angry snapping to a distance of five paces — just about the height of the solar itself. Then, as if extensions of that bright being's arms, the arcing bands of energy stretched forth, their tips forking pincerlike, and each seized a dumaldun.
The sound of the beasts as they died was a terrible music to Gord's ears. The translucent being from the upper spheres, however, seemed totally unaffected by the hideous yammerings and bellows of the dumalduns as they melted into stinking jelly under the crackling force. Again the pincered bolts reached out, and again another pair of the evil monsters were slowly vaporized into fetid gas and jellylike slag that puddled and bubbled on the floor. These sounds also attracted the notice of the other beasts from the netherspheres.
Leaving their quarreling and feasting, the half-dozen remaining dumalduns sent up ear-splitting howls of anger and hatred as they espied the towering solar. Though small by comparison, the beasts of Tarterus were undaunted. Eight-foot mandrill and nine-foot gibbon snarled and sprang. A monstrous orangutan parody, as wide as its seven-foot height, bounded and gibbered as it charged. The others were no less fearsome in aspect; yet the being from the higher planes stood unperplexed.
Twin rays of molten gold sprang from where the solar's eyes would be, had the tall quasi-god had such. The scintillating beams struck the massive orangutanlike dumaldun, and the beast was transfixed. It took but an instant. The light died, the dumaldun stumbled and crashed down. Where the rays had touched the thing, there was no longer any substance; the orangutan had no chest or heart left. Still the survivors came on. Giant-sized tusks from a demoniac chimpanzee slashed and ripped at the lapis form of the solar. A dumaldun with the long and spindly appendages of a parody spiker monkey used its teeth and venomous claws to inflict its worst upon the being of glowing blue as the monkey-thing perched atop the gigantic head and shoulders of its foe. The five monstrous beasts swarmed upon the solar, and for a split-second Gord couldn't see it or speculate on the damage being done to the godling by the ferocious beasts from the foul sphere of Tarterus.
The solar spoke a bell-loud word, and the spidery dumaldun fell from its place atop the being, its iron bristles aflame, its bodily fluids boiling into steam. It exploded into stinking fragments when it struck the floor of Gravestone's space in no-place. The bolts of energy had vanished, but the solar used its own broad hands to seize another pair of the four remaining dumalduns. Each was held by the scruff of the neck.
The herculean arms came together then, and the beasts were smashed as if they were cymbals. The sound was by no means melodic or even ringing. Instead there was a disgusting thud, a wet squishing accompanied by snapping and breaking sounds and a spray of crimson and gray. Two limp forms flew up and over the massive being's shoulders. They didn't move after bouncing from their impact on the hard flags behind. Darker places of midnight hue showed plainly on the solar's form, mute testimony to the terrible weapons that the dumaldun employed. No mere fang and claw would so wound a being of this sort. The denizens of vile Tarterus used other malign energies as well, to inflict such hurts.
Without regard for such, and with singleness of purpose, the glowing solar drew a silvery rod from where a man's girdle would be. It was small-looking in the beings vast grip, but the instrument was potent nonetheless. Down it came, crystalline light flashed from it as it impacted upon a gibbonlike fiend, and the dumaldun thus struck howled and retreated, with weird, mercurial incandescence lighting its whole form. The sole remaining attacker left off its ferocious assault at that and tried to flee. The right arm of the solar struck again, and the result duplicated his first smiting. Both dumalduns glowed and yowled and capered. This time it was in agony and fear, not as wild lusting for blood and death. Because it was a creature of the higher spheres, the solar dealt quickly with the two. A quick snap of the wrist, a repetition, and the rod took each beast again, giving them a cleaner death than such fiends ever deserved.
Thank you. One of Weal!' Gord spoke out of true gratitude.
'Stay back!' The solar bellowed to the man who had taken a step toward it. 'I read no malice in your heart,
