In a few minutes all conversation died away. Each man did his best to relax and conserve energy for the coming confrontation. Soon only the sputtering of the lamp's wick as it burned could be heard; then that was drowned out by the barbarian's rumbling snores. One of the six watched the others through slitted eyes, but not one of the five stirred in unnatural fashion. They were, it seemed, strong in mind and firm in their purpose. That pleased the watcher, for although the principal burden of this mission was squarely on his shoulders, he knew he would need the help of all of them to succeed. Thinking that, Gord turned his head a little so that when the sun came up its rays would strike his face through the slats of the shuttered little window. Then, grasping the hilt of the black sword, he let his thoughts drift, and soon he too was asleep.
Chapter 7
AT FIRST GLANCE IT SEEMED a featureless, endless plane — not that anyone would wish to even glance at it in the first place. Its putrid hue was sufficient to make all but the most hardened guts writhe with nausea, the eyes to water, the mind to seek sanity in delusions so as to escape the thought of such an abomination actually existing.
The rotten dun of the plane was far from featureless. It was shot through with veins of stuff that looked like coagulated blood, and craterlike openings dotted here and there resembled massive, open sores in which pools of pus festered. Other portions of the landscape manifested themselves suddenly. Here a wormy thing suddenly rose up, splattering the noisome stuff of the place in reeking gobbets that splattered and rained down for seconds after its upheaval. Then the maggoty monstrosity was sucked back into the corruption, the putrescence absorbing the foul lumps greedily. There first one and then another strange growths shot up. Soon a forest of the ulcerous things had been extruded, so that their angry red and slowly dripping green stood out in stark contrast to the less colorful but no less disgusting flatness from which these excrescencies had been thrust.
In addition to the assault upon the visual and the olfactory senses, so too the very sounds of this place ravaged the ears. Disgusting slobberings, vile smackings and slurpings, terrible rendings competed with a cacophony of shrieks and teeth-paining screeches, accompanied by litanies of hollow groanings and gibberings along with sounds that could only be the slow splintering of bones.
Was this the floor of the lowest hell? No, not that pleasant a place by any means. This was the three hundred sixty-sixth layer of the Abyss, a place called Ojukalazogadit by those who cared to identify it.
As the expanse pulsed and twitched and parts of it grew or shrank, were silent, or gave out their horrid sounds, it geysered forth streams of thick, steaming liquid at unexpected places and of varying colors of revolting sort and appropriate odor. Parts of it took on lives of their own, dashed madly off as if trying to escape the place on stubby, misshapen appendages, only to be swallowed by some suddenly appearing maw or be caught and torn to stinking gobbets of gore by hands that sprang from nowhere.
A monstrous thing heaved itself up from a suppurating morass, wallowed forth, and began to trample and gore the very stuff it had issued from. The place grew lesser monstrosities, things all head and Jaw tusks, hungry answers to the behemoth. In a protracted pursuit and battle, the lesser things brought the greater to bay and devoured it alive, slowly, starting by eating only those portions that were nonvital so that the monstrosity's great bellows of pain and suffering might go on longer. This was Ojukalazogadit at its most splendid.
As the tusked victors howled over their triumph, a volcano thrust itself up nearby and vomited forth a sticky, acidic fluid that was both burning hot and sentient. The viscous tentacles that were spewed out quickly found and engulfed the now gibbering things that had devoured the behemothian monstrosity alive. The searing heat and burning acid had their own sport with the things, and then the plain was again relatively undisturbed. Vapors rose from the scarred place where the eruption had occurred, but even that was soon awash in a slimy lake of ichorous secretion.
Here was a place for demon wars. No king of the Abyss, no demon prince or great lord of Evil could work his will upon the stuff of Ojukalazogadit. The plane was itself a demon of sorts. It was uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and uncaring. Content in its madness to torment and devour itself, Ojukalazogadit heaved and pulsed, changed and re-formed, and quietly enjoyed its utter madness without caring, without feeling a need for revenge — for how can something avenge what it does to itself?
Either unaware or cunning In its insanity, the plane allowed vast armies to come upon it and do battle. And, of course, those not
of
it who caused it hurt would certainly pay for their deeds. Whether they were still alive or already dead, many of the interlopers would feed Ojukalazogadit before it permitted the survivors — if any — to depart.
This disgusting layer of chaos was also a gateway to many other strata of the abyssal realm. If counting downward made it three hundred sixty-six steps deep, that by no means meant that the law of orderly progression applied to it. Ojukalazogadit touched a dozen other layers firmly and impinged with varying degrees of tenuosity upon as many others. The eleventh and five hundred second were somehow firmly adjacent to it, as were other key strata seemingly above and below the reeking stretch of it. No other plane touched as many others in the whole realm. Thus, no other layer was so important in controlling the Abyss as Ojukalazogadit.
Into its very heart now marched a vast array from the deeper tiers that were the home place of demon-kind: a great mass of awesome proportion and terrible composition. Only demons could abide such a place, and they but for a short time. Nonetheless, march they did toward Ojukalazogadit. They came to conquer — not the place itself, but the other forces that had taken up temporary residence here, as if daring their foes to meet them on this most loathsome and important of battlegrounds.
A sudden cloud loomed on the sickly pale horizon, a blackness smudging the rotten orange atmosphere above. "Zubassu scouts, King Demogorgon!" a six-legged lizard-thing with human arms and a bat's head chittered as it peered into the distance. Obviously the demon didn't suffer poor vision, as its form might suggest. Its huge, dull red eyes evidently were very keen indeed.
"Attack them, fool — quickly!" said the left head of the towering Demogorgon, even as the right one barked orders to a squabbling flock of vulturelike demons that was clustered nearby.
Multiwinged wasp-demons swarmed upward with a hideous buzzing, heading directly for the approaching cloud of enemy zubassu, while the vultures stretched out snaky necks and beat their huge pinions in order to climb high into the dead-orange sky. From all along the front of the marching horde sprang other sorts of flying demons, some with such gross and bloated bodies, tiny wings, or other oddities that it seemed impossible for them to engage in aerial activity of any sort. Yet not only did they fly out and up, but soon the menagerie of monstrosities was battling fiercely with the thousands of four-winged zubassu demons. As bodies plummeted to the foul plain, whether singly or in tangled clusters still clawing and biting, the ground welcomed them. Wormheads formed to swallow the wounded combatants, or funnel-shaped holes suddenly gaped. Taloned, pawlike growths struggled forth to grab and pull down clusters of the fallen. Ojukalazogadit was already feeding well.
Despite the masses of opposing demons who arose to contend with the man-hawk zubassu, the latter were both fierce and more numerous. They flew over the advancing mass of nonflying foes in squadrons. Gouts of flame, jagged lightnings, thunderous explosions, searing streaks of pure energy, and other releases of magical forces made it seem as though a celebratory display of pyrotechnical virtuosity was in progress throughout the rotten, sickly orange sky. Even as scores of the four-winged scouts tumbled down burning, dismembered, half-vaporized, or simply as ashes, these demons repaid the compliment sent upward to greet them with similar, but less powerful, spectacular compliments. It seemed that even a miss was useful, however. To inflict a lightning stroke or gouting flame upon Ojukalazogadit was to ensure the instant demise of any creature near the wound, as mandible or tentacle, huge head or flopping hand suddenly appeared to seize repayment for the injury. The zubassu were soon in total rout, however, and only a tithe of their original multitude flapped over whence they had come.
"We have crushed them!" The boast was from the capering Mandrillagon, a monstrous, blue-faced parody of a mandrill. He was a mighty demon Indeed, with two strata under his heel. It was Mandrillagon's winged monkey-demons who had finished the pursuit of the fleeing zubassu.
"Fodder!" rumbled both of Demogorgon's heads. "Mere dung for spreading! Worse, many escaped. Now Graz'zt and his lickspittles will know our numbers, the composition of our masses," the heads of the massive demon snarled. Even Mandrillagon, blood kin and long ally of Demogorgon, quailed before the fury evident in the demon king's twin voices.
Mandrillagon's livid blue face wrinkled, baring massive fangs of filthy yellow-gray at the rebuke. This was not defiance on Mandrillagon's part, but simply a reflexive gesture. "We have no need to worry, my brother," he assured Demogorgon in a coughing, barking voice. "No enemy can stand before us. Never has such a horde as this been assembled!" That was true, and Demogorgon lashed his forked tail in acknowledgment of the statement.
A vast force of demons rolled across the disgusting plain that was Ojukalazogadit. On the left of the array were the mighty Var-Az-Hloo and Abraxas, each with an army of lesser demons. Demogorgon's headquarters and personal guard of snake-fish, toad-crabs, and lizard-slugs occupied the right flank. The central mass proper was commanded by Mandrillagon. This body of more than a million of all sorts of demons was the largest and certainly the most varied in the whole host that stretched for miles and miles across the flatness. It marched through pus and ordure, scum and bubbling excretions, heedless of all, even losses to predatious portions of the plain itself. Its tread shook even Ojukalazogadit's self as it squawked, screamed, fluttered, wiggled, hopped, and bounded along in a phantasmagorical symphony of hideousness.
Far away to the right rear was a smaller array. The two divisions that composed it were those of Zuggtmoy and her servitors and Szhublox and his lot of toadstool demons, amoeboid monsters, slimes, fungi, smut, rust, more slimes, blight, molds, and still more oozing slimes. Some hooted or puffed or burbled, but most were silent as they slid and lurched across the plain. Ojukalazogadit recoiled from their touch, so terrible were the demons and demonkin making up this force — not even a quarter-million strong, but so fearsome as to be dreaded. It came slowly, so it was effectively echeloned to the rear.
Lesser princes of the Abyss and a multitude of demon lords were scattered throughout the three great battles of the advancing horde. Telepathically and by various other means as well, they assured that the wild disarray of demons would obey orders to the limit of their ability. Of course, that simply meant that the vast hordes would move in the same direction and not tear each other to pieces. Such was the way of demoniacal warfare. With such a force as he had assembled and not marked against the actual person of the hated Graz'zt, Demogorgon was confident of an easy and total victory. Then he would assume the emperorship of the whole of the Abyss and deal with pretenders too. After Graz'zt came Orcus and Zuggtmoy.
They retreat before us, brother," Mandrillagon barked. "They hope to wear us down before having to face your awesome might." The latter was a hasty but needed addition to his first statement. The blue-faced master of demons knew that calling Demogorgon
"brother" too often was not a healthy thing to do, even if it were a fact. Both were sovereigns, blood relatives, and allies. The towering Demogorgon, though, accepted none as equal. Better to fawn now and save vaunting for the time when his own power enabled him to do away with the two-headed freak permanently. "What shall I do, greater one?"
"Order our horde to halt," Demogorgon commanded, fixing Mandrillagon with his twin stares so that even so mighty a lord as the simian demon king twitched uneasily. "Order the reserves, slaves, and foot beasts to hurry up to the advance."
"I don't understand...."
"Of course not," the right head of Demogorgon said with contempt as the left giggled derogatorily and nodded. "I will communicate with Ojukalazogadit, sacrifice to it and feed it. This plane will then hinder the flight of Graz'zt and his little turds. Then I will bring him to battle and crush him and have the throne and the Theorpart both."
There was no darkness on the near-infinite reaches of the stratum, but some time later the dull orange sky was suddenly shot through with sheets of bilious green. Sacrifice to Ojukalazogadit had indeed been made in copious form, and as the monster that was itself a layer of the chaotic netherworld chomped and crunched and surfeited itself on blood and ichor and flesh not of its own creation, it raised up folds and sunk chasms. The surface of Ojukalazogadit rippled. Pulses boomed, and Demogorgon exulted. "The dirty lump styling himself emperor of the Abyss has been halted in his flight! We now march to render Graz'zt and all his curs their death blow!"
To an ear-splitting cacophony of iron horns and vast kettledrums covered with human skin or dragon hide, to the bonging and whanging of gongs and cylindrical bells, to screeching fifes and other instruments of all sorts, while millions of demons raged and roared, the corps and divisions of Demogorgon's horde marched. Soon the stronger began to outpace the weaker as the advance became a race to see who could fall upon the enemy first. Streaming across the vile landscape inexorably, a tidal wave of demonkind rushed upon a huddled array of their fellows not half as numerous.
* * *
They come, my liege."
This was more a confirmation of some long-expected and delayed event finally occurring than anything said in fear or as a warning. The speaker was Eclavdra the High Priestess, known to some as Leda, a dark-elf counselor of standing and power equal to any of the demon lords who swore fealty to Graz'zt, save possibly the alabaster-skinned Vuron. "All is in readiness."