Before Obmi could utilize his demon-bestowed strength to fully counter the leverage, Gord brought the long blade of his sword in a sweeping blow that struck low. Its half-circle of travel before impact lent it terrible force, and the edge bit through flesh and bone despite the metal and leather that protected it. Obmi managed, somehow, to shove Gord away, for his power was that of a giant despite his small stature. But as Gord tumbled and sprawled backward from the desperate shove, so too fell the dwarf. His left leg had been severed just below the knee.
Tit for tat, rat! Will your magic grow that back?" Gord mocked. Even as he spoke, though, the young thief saw that the stump stopped bleeding almost instantly, and by the time Gord had regained his feet the pain-wracked visage of the dwarf had begun to clear. The young thief stared in amazement as Obmi scrambled back to a standing position, using his hammer to help his still-intact leg support his body – while the leg that Gord had severed seemed to grow longer by the minute.
Gord was not afraid, but quite confused. Was this Obmi some sort of troll? What if the severed leg grew into a second dwarf to fight with him? While he involuntarily considered these questions for a second or two, Gord failed to follow up on his advantage. As he hesitated, Obmi tore an ebon crystal from around his neck and hurled it at Gord. Instinctively, the young man sought to deflect the missile with his sword. The black object struck the blade and shattered, and Gord was engulfed in night.
Gord lunged and struck then at the place where his foe had been but a moment before. It was too late, of course. In the cloaking darkness, Obmi had moved elsewhere. Gord's blade stabbed grass and soil, not flesh. He could hear no sound from the dwarf, but this was not because the blackness surrounding them cloaked noise; there were noises aplenty in the air as men fought and yelled and died nearby. Unfortunately, those sounds masked any noise that the desperate dwarf might make while doing whatever he was doing. Not wishing to be taken by some other trick of Obmi's, Gord stepped backward as rapidly as he dared, feeling the ground as he did so to avoid a misstep. After ten such moves the blackness thinned, and another crabwise step carried him into sunlight.
Paying no heed to the melee around him, Gord began to circle the blot that covered the dwarf. The darkness lay on the land in a hemisphere at least thirty feet across and half as high. As he proceeded to search the perimeter, looking for Obmi if he attempted to escape, Gord's eye happened to fall upon his sword blade. The length of its metal no longer gleamed. The whole was deepest black, and the inky stain was even now spreading downward over the guard and onto the grip toward his hand. With an oath, Gord hurled the weapon from him, fearful that the sooty hue would somehow harm him. As he watched the blackness creep over his weapon, an idea came to him – a way that he could pursue and find Obmi even within the lightless dome he had conjured up…
The odor was strong. Dwarf, dwarven blood, dwarven sweat, dwarven breath too. The huge black leopard waited not an instant to attack. Little motes of light were dancing within the ebony of the blot now, but whether the darkness was somehow evaporating or some other dweomer was transforming it, only one matter was important: Obmi must be slain. The dwarf was taken completely by surprise when Gord-panther pounced upon him from the side. Somehow the broad-shouldered demi-human managed to bring his martel to bear, and the weapon inflicted a few wounds upon the sleek, black-furred cat's body. But the panther's long fangs sank deep, and its claws tore and raked the dwarf.
Then, after absorbing a particularly vicious blow, Gord-panther managed to seize Obmi's shoulder with his teeth, hold the dwarfs torso fast in his forepaws, and draw the unnatural demi-human into an inescapable embrace – an embrace of death. The rear legs of his leopard body drew up and kicked downward once, twice, thrice as the foreclaws dug deep and Gord-panther's jaws closed tighter and tighter. Obmi screamed in agony and attempted to use his magical strength to dislodge the feline attacker. The dwarf had his arms free, so he seized the great cat by its throat and tried to throttle it. Gord held his teeth fast upon Obmi's shoulder, hardened his muscular cat's throat, and continued to rake with his hind legs. Flesh tore to ribbons. The thick little fingers, fingers that had felt like steel bars sinking into his windpipe and jugular, suddenly went limp. Gord-panther relaxed the grip he had held with forepaws and jaws, but the raking of his rear claws continued on instinct. Obmi's throat rattled, and then his gutted body flew a few feet through the air, propelled by the cat's still-kicking back legs.
In a bound, Gord was atop the seemingly lifeless body. It was a limp thing, a collection of bloody rags and a mutilated, eviscerated shambles of what had been a mighty champion of Evil. That made no difference to Gord, for even in his feline killing fury one thing remained clear in his mind – the dead dwarf had two legs.
Gord-panther picked up the corpse in his jaws and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat. He used claws too, tearing and rending the lifeless body until it was no longer an integral unit but lay in several pieces. Only then did Gord allow his panther self to cease its furious assault and slink a short distance away. The darkness was nearly gone now, nothing more than a haze of black motes that were slowly dissolving. As the last of the motes vanished and the sun again shed its light upon the torn circle where Obmi had fought his last fight, Gord stood again as a man.
"Gord! I thought I saw a great black panther in that- By the Great Horn Spoon!" Barrel's ugly face, marred still further by a long cut across his cheek, lost its grin as he spoke. The burly man's eyes were riveted on the shambles before him.
Following Barrel's gaze, Gord too muttered a shocked oath. The torn bits of the dwarf were pulsing, moving, creeping toward each other. That vile bastard still lives!" Gord shouted. The cry brought Delver and Shade on the run. It was the dwarf who spoke first.
That one is like a troll, Gord. Keep those hunks o' flesh apart from one another, and I'll build a fire quickly. Then when it's going, we toss in all the pieces. Burning is the only way to finish such a thing as that." Delver set about his task while the other three kept busy at the strange and grisly business of prodding and pushing the pieces so that they could not come together.
The other three are in bad shape, cap'n," Barrel said to Gord as they worked. "We've got 'em restin' on the other side of that little hillock."
"We'll tend to them soon," said Gord sincerely, "but much as I hate to say it, what we're doing right now is more important than all three of their lives – or ours either, for that matter."
"Aye, cap'n," said Barrel, who did not really need to be impressed with the seriousness of the situation as he contended with the scuttling bits of flesh and bone.
Minutes later the fire was ready, and they all took up pieces one by one and threw them in the flames. Dark, pungent smoke plumed skyward, and it was over. Obmi the dwarf, servant of EMI, champion of demons, was no more. Gord imagined he heard a wailing, the nearly inaudible sound of an evil life force lamenting as it went off to its end in the lowest of the lower planes.
Barrel had gone back to check on their three injured comrades while Gord witnessed the dwarfs final undoing. The burly seaman trudged back up to his captain with tears glistening in his eyes. "Doho-jar an' Smoker seem like they'll be okay…" he said, putting his hand upon the young thief s shoulder, "but poor Post is a goner."
"When does this end?" Gord said to himself more than anyone else. Then shaking his head to clear away the depression, it occurred to him that the battleground was more empty than it should have been. "Where are the others?" he asked. "What's happened to the white demon? Leda? Eclavdra?"