They could see the tower from where they were, standing tall and grotesque and defiant above the blunt utilitarianism of the old Soviet architecture. Strange energies were crackling up and down the length of the tower, as though it were trying to force itself awake.
Harry and Roger looked quickly about them as a horde of demons came running right at them from every direction at once. They’d been alerted by the attack on the New Zealand ghoulville, and they were ready. But here, in this nest, all the drones were freaks and monsters. Whether it was a legacy of the old forbidden sciences practiced in X37 during the Cold War, or strange emanations from what lay sleeping under the permafrost, every drone here was oversized and monstrous. Terribly misshapen, with huge bones and long strings of muscle, stretched faces with slit mouths full of shark teeth, clusters of eyes, and even waving barbed antennae… they might have been human once, but they had left all that behind. The drones surged forward with fangs and claws, and improvised weapons, and Harry and Roger and the Droods went forward to meet them.
Fang and claw were no match for golden armour, and the Droods’ enhanced strength and speed made them a match for any monster. Harry wore the gold and fought alongside his people, striking down his enemies with brutal efficiency. Roger hung back from the main fighting, watching carefully. He was waiting. And when the first drones appeared with glowing swords clutched awkwardly in malformed hands, he was ready for them. He pointed a finger, and they exploded. He looked at them in a certain way, and blood burst from their mouths and eyes and ears. He spoke certain Words, and their rotting flesh melted and ran away down their bodies. Roger Morningstar wore his Infernal aspect openly, and even Harry couldn’t bear to look at him directly anymore.
For all the drones’ overwhelming numbers, without the radioactive swords they were no match for Drood armour and Hell magic. Harry and Roger took the point, and slowly but inexorably they fought their way out of the open square and headed for the tower. Every drone in the nest came running or sliding or hopping through the city streets, pressing together in the narrow intersections to block off the way to the tower, and it didn’t even slow the strike force down. They cut and hacked and hammered their way through the drones, killing everything that wasn’t them.
Harry stayed right at the head of his people, proving himself a magnificent fighter. The golden blades in his hands swept back and forth with supernatural speed, too fast for the unaided human eye to follow. Blood gushed over his gleaming chest and sprayed across his golden face mask, and just ran away, unable to get a grip. Drones attacked him singly and en masse, and never even slowed his advance. He had learned everything the Deathstalker could teach him about fighting with blades, and nothing could stop him now.
Roger strode along beside him, embracing his Infernal aspect, and the drones fell dead just for getting too close to him. Roger looked at last what he really was; a thing from the Pit walking arrogant and unleashed in the world of men, and poisoning it just by his presence. Wherever he looked, bodies exploded or burst into flames. Some he turned inside out and left to lie in the gutters. When he spoke, drones turned on themselves and tore each other apart.
He smiled a devilish smile; home at last.
The Droods forced their way along behind their leaders and killed everything that came within reach. The tower loomed up before them, a door opened at the base, and a whole new army of drones came staggering and lurching out, bearing hundreds of the glowing swords. Roger spoke a single dreadful Word, and they all exploded into flames, bright crimson fires that stank of blood and brimstone, and consumed the drones as fast as they could appear.
Harry put the bomb in place, set the timer for a comfortable margin, and then he and Roger led the way back through the ghoulville to the Merlin Glass. They all trooped through into the War Room, and I shut down the gateway. The bomb went off, X37 was destroyed, and everyone in the room went mad all over again. Harry and Roger hugged each other, Roger’s aspect now safely suppressed again. The Droods armoured down and clapped each other on the shoulder and on the back, and there were even some tears and kisses.
Victory can feel oh so fine. While it lasts.
Mr. Stab and the Sarjeant-at-Arms led their strike force into the Punjab, in India. A narrow fertile valley surrounded by mountains, supporting a small population; a perfect target for the Loathly Ones. The quiet settlement became a ghoulville and no one noticed. It was, after all, the kind of place where one tribe wouldn’t lower themselves to speak to another, and none of them would speak to outsiders because authority was never to be trusted. They might want you to pay taxes.
When the strike force passed through the Merlin Glass, the ghoulville turned out to be a collection of squat stone houses, half overgrown with slowly stirring vegetation, strangely mutated by the town’s other-dimensional energies. There were cracks in the bare stone ground that seemed to fall away forever, and the light was so bright it seemed to wash all the details out of everything.
It was a scene out of some bare, abstract hell, and Mr. Stab seemed quite at home there.
The drones were waiting again, but this time when they came surging forward to attack the invading force, the crowd seemed to split apart at the last moment, broken in two by an immovable object. They surged around this object, and did their best not to touch it, though they fell on the Sarjeant-at-Arms and the other Droods with all their usual ferocity. But they couldn’t touch Mr. Stab. Something about his no-longer-human nature actively appalled them. They couldn’t bear to be close to him.
So he just walked straight forward into the roiling mob and began killing with an elegant grace, using a long, shiny knife that just appeared in his hand out of nowhere. He walked unopposed through the surging drones and did awful, terrible things to them, and they couldn’t even touch him. Mr. Stab smiled slightly, possibly remembering other times…
The Sarjeant-at-Arms moved quickly in behind Mr. Stab, backing him up, and the strike force followed. The Sarjeant had never been one for swords and blades; he preferred to use the aspect granted him by the family to summon weapons into his waiting hands. All he had to do was gesture in a certain way, and a gun would pop into his hand, fully loaded. And the Sarjeant used these guns to shoot down any drone who showed up with a glowing sword, long before they could get close enough to do any damage. When a gun ran out of bullets, he just tossed it aside and summoned another. The rejected gun would disappear in midair, and there was never any shortage of replacements.
Mr. Stab sliced up the drones, and the Sarjeant mowed them down, and the strike force moved inexorably forward, towards the tower on the horizon. They almost made it look easy. Mr. Stab danced through the slaughter, killing with a touch, the Sarjeant emptied gun after gun, and the armoured Droods struck down anything that came within reach. They soon came to the base of the tower, and more drones appeared from within, bearing an assortment of entirely unfamiliar weapons. The Sarjeant-at-Arms took no chances and shot them all down from a distance. The few that couldn’t be stopped by bullets, protected by strange, glowing armours or energy fields, proved no problem for the smiling Mr. Stab.