Demons and others of the lower realms shouted and snarled, screamed and howled as they struck and were struck killed and were slain in a terrible melee that soon stretched for miles across the featureless plain on this unnamed tier of the Abyssal microcosm. The two lines swayed back and forth, clotted, thinned, bulged one way or the other. Windrows of dead marked the changing positions. Fluid ran — bloodlike stuff, pale ichor, glowing phlogiston. Weapons glittered with those substances, the ground underfoot became a mire from the liquid. The attackers were decimating their foes, but in turn the forces under Demogorgon's command were being doubly killed. To the right and the left there was a bloody standoff. In the middle portion of the field, the mass of dusins and the other soldiers of the nether planes was being slowly compacted. The two arms were circling, mandibles closing. It was becoming more and more difficult to move within the cauldron there. Then reinforcements pressed in from behind, and the press was too great to manage.
Now the troops that had so proudly marched under the black and green flags began to die in waves of a hundred at a time, and so tightly packed were they that no return blow could be struck Demogorgon had no choice. He turned the force of his Theorpart outward, so that the battalions to either hand could force the jaws back gain fighting room. With his second brain, the great lord of demons sent forth energy to counter the Eye of Deception too, for that instrument was making it impossible for his lieutenants to find and counter the nobles of the enemy, and in the resulting confusion Vuron's powerful ones were slaying the lesser demons, dreggals, and cacodaemons by companies.
The shift he accomplished was so sudden and unexpected that Vuron was caught unawares. By the time the pale demon lord was able to switch the energies of his own artifact to attack Demogorgon personalty, it was too late. The trap had been forced open, and the attackers were able to gain room to defend themselves again. The battle resumed its former character, one of slow and terrible attrition. Vuron's army had inflicted appalling losses upon its foes. Demogorgon's horde now numbered no more than twice the smaller force, and many of his leaders and champions were dead. In the process, Vuron had used the Theorpart he wielded to deal great punishment to his two-headed antagonist.
"You will pay," Demogorgon snarled telepathically as he dampened the albino's attack with the power of his own relic.
"Will I?" Vuron shot back across the wild battleground. "We shall see, little monkey-heads. Soon now there will be none of your soldiers between us, and then I will come for you with my raloogs."
"Shoat! That would be like you. Too weak and sniveling to face me alone!"
"You fled from King Graz'zt, as I recall," Vuron jibed mentally.
"Eat honey!" Demogorgon spat, then returned his attention to matters at hand. He wouldn't be duped easily again by the albino. Even that brief exchange had been too dear. The Eye was working again, and the losses inflicted by it and the enemy troops had reduced his superiority by more than a trifle. At the rate the battle was going, when the enemy army was cut to half its original number, there would be scarcely more troops left in his own force.
If only the dogs like Var-Az-Hloo and Bulumuz hadn't gone over to Orcus! The big-gutted one and Iuz together. ... It was Demogorgon's alliance with Infestix that had brought that pairing about. Even demons have loyalty of a sort, and Demogorgon had made common cause with Infestix's force, the hated foes of demonkind, in order to gain parity with Graz'zt. Iuz, Orcus, and the others accused him of selling out the Abyss for the Theorpart. Well, let them! With the one he held, he would gain the second portion, and the two would bring him the last third. Then would Graz'zt be expunged, Orcus annihilated, and Infestix and all the daemons and devils too laid low. Tharizdun arise? Never! He, Demogorgon, would emerge as triumphant lord of darkness — a darkness that would cloak all. "Infestix!" he shouted telepathically.
"The moment is at hand!"
* * *
Something was certainly at hand. Leda sensed it. "We have beaten them, I think," she ventured to the nearby albino.
"No. Not quite. Demogorgon is sly and quick, I'll give him that. He managed to slip open the trap, so now the struggle will be long and very costly. We have better fighters, yet his horde is still more numerous. He is attempting something more," Vuron added, "but I can't pierce his screening energies. I can't tell what ploy he works on."
"Our left and right both stand firm. I use the force of the Eye there," Leda informed the albino, "so that the enemy wastes strength against phantoms while our own kill them in droves. We cannot lose now!"
"Can't? The Eye is worth a division, two perhaps. Yet I think you may be right in your assessment. Something impends. Let us trust it is the victory you speak of." He turned a corner of his mind to the others who commanded. "Palvlag. have you any reserve to spare?" The response was negative. The ancient protodemon had every demon committed to the fight on the left. The same reply came from Nergel, who was pressing ahead, grinding down the foe, but had no reserves. "Ah, if our liege only had a little more strength to spare us," Vuron sighed to himself. With a single fresh division he could have shattered Demogorgon's center. But it was not to be. There was a single company in reserve, rutterkin at that.
"Eclavdra," he sent, using the dark elven priestess's known name. "Cease work on the wings. Summon a raloog — any of the flaming ones will do. It will command the company of its fellows there when they follow me as I confront the two-headed one."
Leda looked to where Vuron had indicated. She saw the sneer-visaged rutterkin trying to conceal their fear with blustering and poses of bravery. She almost questioned the albino then, nearly asked if he was mistaken or perhaps losing his mind under the pressure of the dweomers sent by the enemy. Then she understood, for Vuron had preceded his statement by ordering her to stop spending force on the flanks. That meant she was to use the Eye of Deception elsewhere.
"I hear and obey. General," she sent. Then she located a towering raloog, ordered it close, and set her mind on the rutterkin. "Yes, commander?" the sooty demon growled a moment later. Leda nodded toward her right. The raloog saw a force of fifty of its kind standing there, glowering toward the battle. "Take them into the fight," she told the monster. "Stay with Lord General Vuron no matter what, or you shall feel the terror of Graz'zt's displeasure." The raloog nodded, then struck its head in salute. A few moments later Vuron strode forward. His soldiers forced an opening in the enemy front, made an aisle, and the albino strode into the carnage.
Mandrillagon saw him first and sent a warning toward Demogorgon. It was sufficient to cause the great demon prince to quail. Vuron had told him before that he would come with his personal troop of raloogs to fight when the battle was nearly finished. The implication was evident. In fact, Demogorgon's demons and the other troops from the netherspheres shrank back at the sight of the alabaster-fleshed demon lord leading a half-hundred flame-demons forth to fight. Was the contest decided in favor of Graz'zt's dogs, then? If so, Demogorgon would not stay to die with the useless dunghills who had failed him! But no, the time to retire and re-form a new horde was not quite at hand. There was still an interval, still hope.
"Attack them!" the twin-headed demon king ordered, speaking to the demon who commanded the companies of dusins that formed a square around their master. The demon looked pale but did as ordered. As the square, heavy dusins fought the dusky, flame-limned raloogs, Demogorgon shouted loudly, "Come on, Vuron the Lily! Here I am awaiting you personally!"
"I accept!" The reply came clearly and from nearby. Vuron, clad in his silvered battle armor and bearing a long, crystalline spear, was suddenly almost face to face with his challenger. It was daring, for Demogorgon was almost twice as tall and easily four times more massive than the albino. It was the lance that Vuron carried that made him confident that he wasn't merely throwing away his life in accepting single combat with the demon king.