There are two individuals! Faraii and Beelzebub. They are fighting me separately and together.
More and more, as Eligor twisted and jabbed, he began to focus on the unwavering green eye of Beelzebub. It became an irritant, a hated symbol, and finally a yearned-for target.
From somewhere, buried deep within Melphagor's acquired, collected knowledge, came a glyph to give Eligor hope. It was not a difficult casting, but its potency was in its timing. Because it was a glyph-of-transpiercing it had to precede his weapon's tip by the minutest distance to be effective and not be blocked, and as tired as he was growing, Eligor was not at all certain he could perform both the casting of his lance and the glyph at once. He reared back, floating momentarily up and away from the duel to gather himself, and then, with a great rushing of wings, he dove down and threw the glyph and his lance as swiftly and surely as he could. Faraii's weapons came up to meet Eligor, and their glowing tips came so close to his eyes that they momentarily blinded him. He thought his casting was true, but the dazzling green light made any certainty impossible.
When the weapons fell away he saw that the lance had caught Faraii precisely in the eye, jolting his head back and fusing instantly into the bony tissue. The eye split, radiating a shiver of searing energy downward that blew his body apart, its already worm-eaten limbs disintegrating into clotted masses of desiccated flesh and bone. His head, still mostly intact but smoking and cracked from the intense heat, fell heavily atop the breastplate, bounced once, and stuck into the floor by the protruding lance point.
While the battle in the dome continued, the fighting just surrounding Eligor ceased, combatants lowering their weapons as the impact of the moment sank in. Hearing the cheers from his troops above, he alighted, favoring his wounded leg and folding his aching wings. The charred remains of Faraii lay before Eligor, and as he looked down he felt only relief. It was done. As much as Eligor had once admired the demon, the Baron had been too great a threat to his lord; Faraii's destruction was a necessity, as much as or more than the destruction of the Knights, but it was not something in which he would take any pleasure.
He saw no disk—the intense discharge of energy had seemingly precluded that—but he did see the black sword lying amidst the remains and he bent down and picked it up, feeling its lightness and balance. All eyes were trained upon him and he thought to say something, something stirring for his appreciative Guards, but a thunderous roar from the throne brought his and all the other demons' heads around.
Beelzebub had finally materialized.
Chapter Thirty-Three
DIS
The ramp trembled as the two Behemoths, goaded by their mahouts, beat upon the gate with their massive hammers. Any signs of their fatigue vanished as their drivers tapped lightly, suggestively, upon the spikes driven deep within the bases of their skulls. With their heads bowed and their chinbones dug into the ramp, Hannibal saw the raw, physical power of their heavily muscled, sweating bodies, saw how they strained and flexed as they put all of their weight into each blow. The gate was broken in a dozen different places, held together only by the wide bands of metal that spread across them like veins, and while the tendrils of its curse-glyphs wound, briefly, around the giant souls and then spiraled away into the sky, it seemed that it would split apart at any moment.
A siege commander, standing between the Behemoths, guided their strikes, placing target-glyphs upon those sections of the reinforced portal that appeared weakest. Hannibal could see light from within peeking out of the long cracks.
He peered into the relative darkness of the battlefield behind him; since the wall had failed Dis had been plunged back into the unilluminated gloom of Hell. There was no longer any fighting in the front lines; Beelzebub's legions had been either destroyed in combat or crushed in the rain of gargantuan debris that had filled in large sections of the Belt. Even now, far from the ramp, Hannibal felt the dull concussion of giant slabs slamming into the lava as they continued to be chiseled away by the bombardment of glyphs.
And the rain of destruction had not been limited to the wall alone. Glyphs arced high into the air to land amidst the towers and minarets within its confines, jarring some of them loose. These rose, Hannibal saw, into the black sky, turning and cartwheeling slowly, and began to float away from the Keep.
Put Satanachia's sigil appeared at the ramp's base and Hannibal saw that its owner was mounting the incline and heading toward his position, his staff in tow. His presence was welcome; the Soul-General found himself feeling more loyalty to the Demon Major than toward his own kind. The cold glances Hannibal received even from his trusted souls holding Gaha's reins were distancing, something he was not accustomed to as a general. Something in Hell he would have to get used to if he was to maintain his position with his demon lords.
Satanachia stopped before Hannibal and patted away some imaginary ash from his immaculate armor. The splendid multicolored sigils that floated over his breastplate shone upon three new disks, talismans of hard fighting against hard foes. Hannibal wondered how the looming demon could appear so composed and, in contrast to Field Marshal Orus and the rest of his retinue, so clear of ash and blood.
"Well done, Hannibal. We are close now, eh?"
"Close enough for me to smell the rot from inside."
"We will cleanse it with sword and fire; of that you can be sure."
"And then?"
The gate sagged with a terrific groan. More blows revealed more of the dimly lit interior of the vestibule beyond. Weapons could be seen glittering in the hands of barely seen legionaries.
"And then we will take it down ... the whole Keep ... and start anew. It is Sargatanas' wish."
"That will take centuries."
"Time is something, with luck, we will have."
Four simultaneous deafening hammer-blows knocked the immense gate inward and the Behemoths lurched forward and over the twisted hinges, entering the vestibule and grinding the front ranks of enemy legionaries underfoot. A reverberating cheer went up from all who could see the portal's collapse. A rain of attacking glyphs met the Behemoths, stopping them for the moment; they would not be able to go too far into the Keep anyway, Hannibal knew. The corridors leading up to the palace were intentionally cramped for just that purpose.
Satanachia, a pale mountain of fury, leaped past Hannibal and disappeared between the pillarlike legs of the huge souls, followed by Orus and a steady stream of legionaries. Hannibal saw his souls far below being passed by the demon legionaries and saw, too, their indecision. If he was to have sway over them it would come from this moment. He raised his sword.
"Follow me," he shouted hoarsely in the souls' language, "or forever be their slaves!" He turned and sprinted for the entrance.
As he jumped over the wreckage of the hinge he stole a glance backward. Those souls who had been able to hear him—souls who had been earmarked to be converted—were taking up weapons from the long pile and running after him. What real choice did they have? he thought. They could fight and take their chances, either being destroyed or sharing in the victory, or they could resist and suffer the fate of insurrectionists. Or they could run and take their chances with the hungry Abyssals. Hannibal knew which alternative he would choose.