Come Endless Darkness

Chapter 7

At first glance it seemed a featureless, endless plane — not that anyone would wish to even glance at it in the first place. Its putrid hue was sufficient to make all but the most hardened guts writhe with nausea, the eyes to water, the mind to seek sanity in delusions so as to escape the thought of such an abomination actually existing.

The rotten dun of the plane was far from featureless. It was shot through with veins of stuff that looked like coagulated blood, and craterlike openings dotted here and there resembled massive, open sores in which pools of pus festered. Other portions of the landscape manifested themselves suddenly. Here a wormy thing suddenly rose up, splattering the noisome stuff of the place in reeking gobbets that splattered and rained down for seconds after its upheaval. Then the maggoty monstrosity was sucked back into the corruption, the putrescence absorbing the foul lumps greedily. There first one and then another strange growths shot up. Soon a forest of the ulcerous things had been extruded, so that their angry red and slowly dripping green stood out in stark contrast to the less colorful but no less disgusting flatness from which these excrescencies had been thrust.

In addition to the assault upon the visual and the olfactory senses, so too the very sounds of this place ravaged the ears. Disgusting slobberings, vile smackings and slurpings, terrible rendings competed with a cacophony of shrieks and teeth-paining screeches, accompanied by litanies of hollow groanings and gibberings along with sounds that could only be the slow splintering of bones.

Was this the floor of the lowest hell? No, not that pleasant a place by any means. This was the three hundred sixty-sixth layer of the Abyss, a place called Ojukalazogadit by those who cared to identify it.

As the expanse pulsed and twitched and parts of it grew or shrank, were silent, or gave out their horrid sounds, it geysered forth streams of thick, steaming liquid at unexpected places and of varying colors of revolting sort and appropriate odor. Parts of it took on lives of their own, dashed madly off as if trying to escape the place on stubby, misshapen appendages, only to be swallowed by some suddenly appearing maw or be caught and torn to stinking gobbets of gore by hands that sprang from nowhere.

A monstrous thing heaved itself up from a suppurating morass, wallowed forth, and began to trample and gore the very stuff it had issued from. The place grew lesser monstrosities, things all head and Jaw tusks, hungry answers to the behemoth. In a protracted pursuit and battle, the lesser things brought the greater to bay and devoured it alive, slowly, starting by eating only those portions that were nonvital so that the monstrosity's great bellows of pain and suffering might go on longer. This was Ojukalazogadit at its most splendid.

As the tusked victors howled over their triumph, a volcano thrust itself up nearby and vomited forth a sticky, acidic fluid that was both burning hot and sentient. The viscous tentacles that were spewed out quickly found and engulfed the now gibbering things that had devoured the behemothian monstrosity alive. The searing heat and burning acid had their own sport with the things, and then the plain was again relatively undisturbed. Vapors rose from the scarred place where the eruption had occurred, but even that was soon awash in a slimy lake of ichorous secretion.

Here was a place for demon wars. No king of the Abyss, no demon prince or great lord of Evil could work his will upon the stuff of Ojukalazogadit. The plane was itself a demon of sorts. It was uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and uncaring. Content in its madness to torment and devour itself, Ojukalazogadit heaved and pulsed, changed and re-formed, and quietly enjoyed its utter madness without caring, without feeling a need for revenge — for how can something avenge what it does to itself?

Either unaware or cunning In its insanity, the plane allowed vast armies to come upon it and do battle. And, of course, those not of it who caused it hurt would certainly pay for their deeds. Whether they were still alive or already dead, many of the interlopers would feed Ojukalazogadit before it permitted the survivors — if any — to depart.

This disgusting layer of chaos was also a gateway to many other strata of the abyssal realm. If counting downward made it three hundred sixty-six steps deep, that by no means meant that the law of orderly progression applied to it. Ojukalazogadit touched a dozen other layers firmly and impinged with varying degrees of tenuosity upon as many others. The eleventh and five hundred second were somehow firmly adjacent to it, as were other key strata seemingly above and below the reeking stretch of it. No other plane touched as many others in the whole realm. Thus, no other layer was so important in controlling the Abyss as Ojukalazogadit.

Into its very heart now marched a vast array from the deeper tiers that were the home place of demon-kind: a great mass of awesome proportion and terrible composition. Only demons could abide such a place, and they but for a short time. Nonetheless, march they did toward Ojukalazogadit. They came to conquer — not the place itself, but the other forces that had taken up temporary residence here, as if daring their foes to meet them on this most loathsome and important of battlegrounds.

A sudden cloud loomed on the sickly pale horizon, a blackness smudging the rotten orange atmosphere above. "Zubassu scouts, King Demogorgon!" a six-legged lizard-thing with human arms and a bat's head chittered as it peered into the distance. Obviously the demon didn't suffer poor vision, as its form might suggest. Its huge, dull red eyes evidently were very keen indeed.

"Attack them, fool — quickly!" said the left head of the towering Demogorgon, even as the right one barked orders to a squabbling flock of vulturelike demons that was clustered nearby.

Multiwinged wasp-demons swarmed upward with a hideous buzzing, heading directly for the approaching cloud of enemy zubassu, while the vultures stretched out snaky necks and beat their huge pinions in order to climb high into the dead-orange sky. From all along the front of the marching horde sprang other sorts of flying demons, some with such gross and bloated bodies, tiny wings, or other oddities that it seemed impossible for them to engage in aerial activity of any sort. Yet not only did they fly out and up, but soon the menagerie of monstrosities was battling fiercely with the thousands of four-winged zubassu demons. As bodies plummeted to the foul plain, whether singly or in tangled clusters still clawing and biting, the ground welcomed them. Wormheads formed to swallow the wounded combatants, or funnel-shaped holes suddenly gaped. Taloned, pawlike growths struggled forth to grab and pull down clusters of the fallen. Ojukalazogadit was already feeding well.

Despite the masses of opposing demons who arose to contend with the man-hawk zubassu, the latter were both fierce and more numerous. They flew over the advancing mass of nonflying foes in squadrons. Gouts of flame, 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 inform Palvlag and gather the force to speed off to where the bull-headed Baphomet's corps was already forming for its advance. "Victory, Emperor Graz'zt!" she cried as she departed.

"There is one whose aura is wrong," Nergal said squarely to the six-fingered demon king. "How is it that you allow such a one to exist?"

"She serves faithfully in all ways and counsels wisely… for a nondemon," Graz'zt said with a little wave that dismissed any further discussion. He would not admit to any that he simply found it expedient to maintain her because that was what Vuron wished, and the albino was his most trusted henchman. Making a face at the unconscious use of a human term, the would-be master of the Abyss said as an afterthought, "Besides, all of my nobles must soon become used to dealing with such as the dark elf. As our realm expands, more and more such servants will be needed."

Nergal nodded but disagreed in his heart. Any territory under his heel would be depopulated quickly, save for those undead and demons whom he placed there. "Most sagacious, majesty. Ann… Shall I now lead forth the main battle to confront the center of the enemy?"

"No, I shall do that myself when the time is ripe. Go and find Ogrijek and have him bring all of his remaining zubassu and voord too — those should total ten thousand or so. They will be assigned the place of honor before us."

"Honor? Before us? I don't under-"

Graz'zt cut the rest off. "What you understand, Prince Nergal, is of no matter to me. Simply fetch them!" As Nergal started to go off, the ebony demon king added. "And, Prince of Unlife, don't forget to have several of your toughest enforcers with you, for it is quite likely that Ogrijek and his lot are in league with our foes!"

Nergal spun and stared, then bared his fanged mouth in a hideous smile. He whistled and clapped. Shadows gathered around and coalesced into massive demons. Soon Nergal and a growing throng of his own were shoving their way toward the place where the lord of zubassu was resting. Ogrijek would not like serving in the forefront, mused Graz'zt… especially when he found that neither he nor any of his kind could take wing any longer.

Not caring now about what was revealed to the enemy by his action. Graz'zt spoke a series of chest jarring words and shot upward. He mushroomed skyward as a pillar of smoke, growing less and less substantial as his height increased. At three hundred feet he was satisfied. Now he could see all that was needed. Ojukalazogadit had obligingly mounded up a ridge beneath Graz'zt, so that now the demon king was able to view the entire front of his force and the wildly surging line of the charging enemy.

Part of what Graz'zt saw was disconcerting to him. Ojukalazogadit was hungry at all times, and Demogorgon's side wasn't the only one being weakened by the gobbling undulations of the plane. But the enemy force was being weakened to a much greater degree than his own by Ojukalazogadit, almost as though the place itself was showing partiality in the struggle. Graz'zt saw that although his array had been sufficient to prevent the enemy from badly overlapping his flanks, the density of the opposing onrushing mass was about five or six times the depth of his own. He had the most powerful warriors in the conflict, by and large. But Demogorgon and his ass-kissing toadies had a great advantage in numbers. Were they two million? Three? No matter. Whatever the count. Graz'zt could see clearly that less than a million were in the horde confronting their howling onslaught.

There were the zubassu and carrion-eating voord, under the command of Ogrijek, thrust into the very first rank of the center. Demogorgon and Mandrillagon themselves would come here, and Graz'zt saw that their center had fully a million in its mass — ten to one against his force! But Graz'zt's minions, led by the forced labor of the zubassu, were stronger and more powerful than the bulk of their opposition. The zubassu were cowardly and traitorous by nature, but Graz'zt had seen to it that they would not have a chance to flee….

A shout rose forth as Ogrijek perceived what was happening just before the charge of the overpowering enemy force struck. He tried to take flight upward, but it was as if he were tethered. His followers then tried to escape likewise with the same result. Then the rush of the enemy was upon them.

When masses of demonkind fight each other, there is little or no use for magical energies. Light and fear, typical demoniacal weapons, have no effect on others of their kind under such circumstances. Most of their other magical powers are likewise of limited effect, short range, or require too much concentration. Simply put, when demons battle other demons, primitive striking weapons, fangs, claws, talons, pincers, mandibles, and the like are the most effective and immediate means of dispensing with foes.

Some aerial combat would have been taking place in this struggle, but Graz'zt had seen to it that the battle would be held down to the surface of the stratum. This he accomplished through the dark energies he had drawn from the Theorpart, and the effect would last long enough for the battle to be fought to its conclusion. His monstrous sword resting atop one mountainous shoulder, the three-hundred-foot-tall demon king watched the horde of attackers impact raggedly upon his own solid lines. The zubassu fought very well once they realized that they had no chance of escape, no opportunity to turn coat.

Parodies of bears and goats, horses and wolves, apes and gorillas and buffaloes, weasels and boars were jumbled with insect, skeletal, amphibian, bat, reptilian, fish, arachnid, bird, and human parts to form the companies and regiments of demons who fought each other. At least that is how it appeared. Toad-man bit pig-owl as the latter used taloned forearms to rend the former's flesh from its slimy back. Elephantine monstrosities trampled chimerical horrors, as little wolverine-faced demons used iron teeth to sever leg tendons and worm-bodied half-camels spewed acidic secretions over all before them. All that happened in mere seconds, and then the initial wave of the attacking horde was broken, reeling back. Graz'zt laughed, and the sound was like that of a volcano clearing its throat prior to eruption.

"Demogorgon! Come forth and face me alone!"

Naturally, the demon king named failed to come forth as demanded. In fact, although Demogorgon and his allied lords and princes heard the challenge clearly enough, they were busy trying to determine what had gone wrong. Ten thousand of their demon troops had fallen in the first rush. They outnumbered the force of Graz'zt heavily. Yet not a hundred of the ebon-hued demon king's soldiers had fallen, the zubassu had not Joined the attackers, and Graz'zt was an enormous figure daring to stand before them all without regard for dweomer or power sent against him. It was true enough that little or no magic played a part in the combat between demon hordes, but their leaders — king, prince, lord, or greatest demon — certainly had recourse to such powers, for they commanded a wide and terrible spectrum of magics and similar energies.

At Demogorgon's enraged command a barrage of lethal bolts, killer forces, and demon-shattering spells were sent to vaporize the insolent figure that rose like a colossus before their burning eyes. The forces struck, visibly and invisibly, and the smoke-black Graz'zt seemed to shake and thin and nearly disappeared under the withering power sent against it. Well it should, for enough force to destroy a small mountain had been expended. "Again!" screeched both of the demon king's baboonlike heads. "Finish him!" Then, suiting words to his own actions, Demogorgon released his most potent and deadly attack, beams of lambent green shooting from the eyes of one head, dull maroon from the orbs of his other. Similar powers discharged from the princes and lords of demonkind there with him, also played upon the foolishly exposed and enlarged form of their hated foe, Graz'zt.

Suddenly the figure shrank abruptly, seeming to collapse upon itself. "Victory, Emperor Demogorgon!" Trobbo-gotath, a greatest demon of earth, rumbled in fawning fashion. "Do I order a new assault to finish them?"

Before Demogorgon could answer, he saw the distant line of the enemy center rolling aside to left and right. Were they about to run? "What…?" said his left head as the right turned to try to peer through the gap.

Then Graz'zt, now but a thirty-foot tall giant, strode into clear view between the parted regiments of his demon horde. In his hand he held a little figure that he tore into two parts even as the demon king watched. The huge ebony arm windmilled. A tiny speck sailed up and out, toward Demogorgon, like a stone shot from a great trebuchet. Lizard-quick, the demon king avoided the missile. Both heads bent to see what had been aimed at him. The thing was Ogrijek's head. "We are undone…." the right head yammered, and the left was too terrified to speak.

Graz'zt was simply walking with impunity toward the horde that had but recently threatened him. With a roar composed of bellows, shouts, squeaks, yammers, and all forms of similar noises, the demon soldiers who served the black one followed with glee. They rushed forth to fall upon a force many times larger than their own. Why not? Before them was Graz'zt, invincible and triumphant! His hands shot forth blasts that blew the opposing horde into nothingness, a hundred at a time. Then the demon king was among the foe, and his massive sword played upon them as a scythe upon a field of ripe grain. Down fell lowly dretch and rutterkin, kerzow and goat-horned clobdroo. Malvachnu demons were as swine in a slaughter, and great lords of ogre size and humanoid form as impotent as lambs before the black blade of Graz'zt.

The left battle seemed unaware of the debacle taking place in the center. Var-Az-Hloo and Abraxas collided with Baphomet's corps and began a terrible melee that slowly ground down the latter force. The bull-headed demon prince and his companies of demonkin were not yielding an inch, only being gradually overcome by the superior numbers of the enemy.

So too on the right. The fungoid and slime contingents of Zuggtmoy and Szhublox were ideally suited to meet the disgusting horde under the even more loathsome Kostchtchie. The foul things commanded by the demon queen and the slime lord felt no revulsion when facing the terrible array of deformed giantlike demons and their ilk. Of course, neither did those minions of the bandy-legged Kostchtchie fear the obscenities that came to do battle with them. Hulking demons spread the plain of Ojukalazogadit with bits and pieces of toadstools and amoeboid monsters while they, in turn, were dissolved, rotted, and made into puddles of putrid ichor by their implacable opponents. It was fortunate for the attackers that there were so many of their own, for a dozen of Zuggtmoy's things, or the smutty warriors of Szhublox, died for every soldier who fell in Kostchtchie's horde. The demon queen hooted and the reserve moved up. The situation was in doubt.

"We must retire, king," Mandrillagon chittered nervously as he hurried up to where Demogorgon had positioned himself. "If we do so immediately, the enemy turds will have to take some time to finish off our cowardly troops, and we can be well away — safe and gathering fresh contingents!"

Demogorgon thought about that with his left brain while the right assessed the field before them. His vaunted mass of demon soldiery scarcely outnumbered the opposition by two to one now, and Graz'zt, accompanied by a half-dozen lords and greatest demons, was beginning to cut a swath through the very middle of the horde to get at him. Then there was a great commotion on his left, and Demogorgon used both heads to see what was happening there. A company of conflagranti, dreaded fire demons, had managed to take Var-Az-Hloo's division in the flank. Trouble there too!

Just as he was about to agree, to slip away with Mandrillagon and leave the others to fend for themselves, Infestix himself appeared to stand beside the demon king. "You! Here?" Demogorgon's heads spoke in chorus.

"You are betrayed by your senses, Demogorgon," the daemon said without bothering with formalities. The offal heap, Graz'zt, has brought the Eye of Deception. With it, and the Theorpart too- "

The Eye of Deception!? He dares-"

"Don't ever interrupt me again!" Infestix hissed, cutting off the so-called imperial demon king. Then, considering the circumstances, the daemon added, "Especially when everything you hope for hangs in the balance so precariously." There was no anger evident in the weird, reptilian eyes of the towering Demogorgon as both of his baboon-heads craned down to listen to Infestix speak on.

"You have come alone," Demogorgon said, unable to keep resignation out of his tone. Then my hordes are defeated!"

"Not so! Not on either count, demon king. I have brought with me Utmodoch and his demodand war-bands in their myriads. Not even Graz'zt can see them, for I have covered their presence with our own Theorpart."

"Where-"

"Marching now to take the inky turdheap from behind. Hold fast here for but another quarter of an hour, and you'll feast on Graz'zt's own flesh to celebrate your triumph."

That was what the two-headed creature desired to hear, to accomplish! "And you will stay? Use Initiator to counter the Eye?"

"Aren't we allies?" the daemon asked. He thought, actually, that lord and vassal were more correct terms, but until the brawling lords of the Abyss were eliminated or subjugated by one master, Infestix had to pretend otherwise. No matter if it was Demogorgon, Orcus, or some other who strove against Graz'zt; whichever of the demons eventually floated to the top, Infestix would himself enthrall. "You will have power to counter what you… your servants… stupidly fed into Graz'zt. Your very attacks were channeled by the relic he is linked to. When I counter that, he will lose that force, return to normal size. Then you yourself can slay him in single combat."

Ignoring that last statement, the dual heads of the demon king began to spit out instructions. Mandrillagon rushed out to bolster the sagging horde, while several demon lords hurried off to stiffen the front. Infestix was very pleased with himself; that Demogorgon could sense, based on that last remark. Infestix knew — as Demogorgon had to reluctantly admit to himself — that despite his terrible powers, poisons, talons, fangs, and the rest, the reptilian demon king had no stomach to confront Graz'zt in single combat — at least not while the black one still wielded his terrible sword.

The daemon was overweening, and Demogorgon would eventually set matters straight. Infestix sought to rule the Abyss, that was clear. Demogorgon knew that the outcome would be quite the reverse: He would rule Hades and the rest of the nether planes too, but only after he possessed the whole of the artifact. Time, only time, was needed. The matters at hand demanded his attention now. In minutes Demogorgon had sent in his last reserve, manlike demons with heads like those of miniature tyrannosaurs. He waded in behind them, going for the monstrous figure that was Graz'zt. Let that one think he would do combat personally. Time too would dispel that idiocy.

Soon enough all occurred just as the daemon had said. The mass of demodands took the enemy by surprise, Graz'zt was shrunk down to normal size, and the tide of battle turned abruptly in favor of the invaders. It was only the lack of cooperation from Ojukalazogadit — or the cooperation of the cursed thing with Graz'zt — that allowed the ebony shitpile to escape, Demogorgon mused as he surveyed the shambles with satisfaction. Even as he watched, Ojukalazogadit began to seriously feed, cleaning up greedily. Good! His troops would not have to view their own dead, which amounted to more than a million. That number was inconsequential; with the millions more available throughout the whole sphere of chaotic evil, Demogorgon would soon be able to field a dozen hordes twice as numerous. The million existences were well spent, a small price to pay for victory. Better still, the puny daemon had hied himself back to his dirty little pit, and Utmodoch and his demodands were left to the demon king's mercy. Those fools would become his shock troops in the next battle… which would come soon, soon.

Despite such thoughts, the facts of the matter prevailed. Graz'zt, worn down to his true proportions by the force of Initiator, fought on with demoniacal fury, hardly surprising but noteworthy because the demon king turned and fought to the rear as it were. Thus he extricated himself and the bulk of his surviving troops. And Ojukalazogadit too assisted the retreat.

Put simply, the strata of the Abyss was, when all was said and done, a loyal if imbecilic subject of the mighty, ebony-hued demon. With its assistance, Graz'zt withdrew all three great divisions of his army and arrived safely on his own plane. In time, the enemy would follow, further depleted by Ojukalazogadit, but not seriously decimated or long delayed. At least Vuron would no longer have to be concerned about a war on multiple fronts. The enemies of his master had managed to consolidate and compress the action to but a single time and place. Unfortunately, that was now, and the battleground the principal place of Graz'zt himself. The time of the final phase of the war was at hand.

The multiverse was strained by this war, but only because of what was occurring with respect to the power involved. Many were the agents of arcane energy and ancient power employed. The Eye of Deception was one of the most puissant, of course. There were a dozen others, graduating down the scale from it. More importantly, there were three far greater. All portions of the tripartite relic were now in play, and about to so exist on a single layer of a single sphere of reality. Well should the whole of existence tremble. All fabric, the very stuff of existence, strained, groaned and shuddered.

Somewhere, a somewhere that was no-where, no-time, no-place, a massive being stirred and strained and sought to awaken. Tharizdun's time was drawing near.