A long, muffled howl rose and fell from deep within the demon-made mountain, the voice of Semjaza the Watcher, Hannibal knew, but it seemed to him more like the Keep's primal utterance of a deeply felt wound. What would befall that never-seen creature of legend, he wondered, if the Prince and his abode were destroyed?
Hannibal returned his attention to the ramp, which had gotten far ahead of him. The demons had been careful not to destroy the wall too close to the ramp's construction site, and now he could see that it would not be long before it reached up to the gate. Looking back down the steep causeway, he could already see the very few remaining Behemoths being brought to the fore. He knew Satanachia would use them to batter down the drawbridge, whether there were curses embedded in them or not; nothing Dis or Hell, for that matter, could offer would keep him from rejoining Sargatanas.
* * * * *
The battle-Passion had finally risen through Eligor's body, inflaming him with the ecstasy of destruction. Oddly, it had not accounted for the quick demise of the Knight-Brigadier Melphagor. That, Eligor had to admit to himself, had been pure luck.
With every demon destroyed, Melphagor had, as was the wont of the Knights during battle, grown a bit larger, and it was this extra height that had sealed his fate. As Eligor had dropped toward Faraii, the giant Knight had turned directly into his outstretched lance. The long point had cleft the demon's exposed head straight down to his neck, cleanly cutting through the shocked expression that froze upon Melphagor's face. The Knight imploded with a flash and Eligor, never even pausing his descent, landed and retrieved the demon's disk. It was the fortune of the battlefield, a chance stroke of such importance that it made Eligor grin even as the fighting raged around him. Melphagor's disk melted onto his breastplate, and he felt a surge of power.
As quick as the absorption of the Knight's powers was, it gave Eligor no time to prepare for his chosen opponent. Weaving agilely between the thrashing combatants with sword outstretched, Faraii advanced upon him, his single eye glittering intensely, flames licking from his breastplate's vents. Prudently, Eligor passed off supervision of the Guard to Metaphrax with a streaking glyph.
From the first moment their weapons clashed, Eligor felt an odd sympathy for Faraii. He had expected to hate the Baron, to simply want him destroyed by either his hand or another's, but his feelings were, at worst, ambivalent. Faraii's destruction was necessary; that much Eligor knew. But looking at the gutted and tattered figure he felt that if there was any part of the old Faraii left within, taking him away from the Fly would almost certainly be a favor.
As Faraii's blade sank a short way into Eligor's thigh, he winced and realized that he was a long way from performing that favor. Flapping quickly upward, he flexed his leg, feeling the pain damped by the Passion; it would blossom after the battle. The wound was deep but not debilitating, a timely reminder that he was facing a great warrior whose skills—perhaps enhanced by the Fly—would have been well beyond his if he had not just absorbed an Order Knight's abilities.
Eligor used his lance with an adroitness that he could never have hoped for before this battle; Melphagor had been quite accomplished because of either his many conquests or his own innate skill. Every perfect thrust of Faraii's was countered by an equally perfect parry. Eligor spun and jabbed, twirled and sliced, with amazing speed and accuracy. He used forms that he had only heard about, techniques that he had known to exist but had never witnessed, and employed them with the inspired creativity of an artisan. He was as exhilarated by his own newfound skills as he was experiencing his former companion's.
Faraii said nothing; the whistling point of his sword spoke for him. Whether he even recognized Eligor the demon could not tell. His sword moves were as precise as always, but underlying them was a distinct and uncharacteristic lack of imagination. Gone was the improvisational bravura that had so infused his very personal style with genius. In its place was a methodical display of brilliant swordsmanship that most who faced him would never have been able to overcome. Time and again Eligor tried to see something of his old friend's personality, but Faraii seemed wholly devoid of spirit, even of awareness. As he fought he stared through his opponent, the eaten-away eye a worm-filled hollow, the green ember that was not his eye an unblinking thing of mad hatred.
The black blade wove in and out of Eligor's guard but never actually found him. The Guard Captain, for his part, maneuvered his opponent so that he could better see his lord high atop the throne. Eligor could hear Beelzebub coming together in a noisy, furious cloud of gyrating flies and blazing sigils and it was all he could do not to stop and watch, but Faraii was persistent, his blade thirsty.
Eligor grasped his lance at its end and, extending it with a fierce snap of his hand to its fullest length, swept it in and under Faraii's arm, slicing a neat crescent from his side. The Baron neither cried out nor flinched, and for a moment Eligor was not actually certain the hollowed figure that kept doggedly advancing upon him had been injured at all. Forced backward, he worked his weapon, as Faraii had once taught him, like the darting tongue of an Abyssal and caught the Baron yet again. This time the wound, which was broad and had penetrated directly into the center of his bone-shod foot, seemed to impede him and his footwork became, Eligor saw, slower and more deliberate.
The fighting demons around them began to close in, and Faraii, never taking his eye from Eligor, reached out with his free hand and grasped the wrist of a hovering Flying Guard lancer. With a twist and a pop that Eligor could just hear over the insistent buzzing, the Baron effortlessly wrenched the wrist and the lance that grew from it free of its owner, easily speared him through the chest, and proceeded to wield it along with his sword. Two green glyphs, potent with magic, appeared and began to snake around the tips of the two weapons.
Eligor's calm, the strange confidence he had been feeling that was so different from his usual Passion, began to fade, receding into a place where he could no longer look.
What skills did Melphagor harbor that can help me with this?
It was an Art Martial, Eligor thought in something close to panic, that must come from the Fly, acquired from some nameless demon who had probably ended up rotting on the very floor upon which they stood. Certainly it was nothing the Baron had ever spoken of or shown Eligor in their time together. In Faraii's hands the two weapons became as one and then split to go their separate ways only to converge again, with lightning speed, at Eligor's throat or chest or wrist. Or conversely, they never met, moving independently in whistling arcs so intricately interwoven that it seemed to him as if they were being directed by two different individuals. Eligor could only dodge and parry and try to get back and away from the two glyph-tipped points without any consideration to landing his own blows. Fatigue was beginning to show in his own moves, to slow him just enough to be a danger, and he realized that he could not sustain this kind of defense for too much longer. His wings, especially, felt leaden.