Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [21]
The thief's mouth went dry and his heart hammered. He had to flee, had to get past the demon-
Demoriel bore Gage down to the hard floor. It began to tear at his flesh. The crossbowmen paused, their eyes wide with horror. One said, "What if it finishes eating before its summons lapses?"
Sathra's men turned tail.
The demon tore a chunk from his shoulder. He yowled in surprised pain. This was how he would end? Eaten by a damned demon?
Join with me, and this demon shall fall.
Gage struggled even as his skin ripped and peeled away. Fighting the blade hadn't helped him; it had left him vul-nerable. And in anothet few moments, he would be dead anyway…
He surrendered himself to Angul's will.
A blue haze fell across his eyes. Through the filter of Angul's perceptions, everything was suddenly, gloriously, perfect.
Someone was screaming, but the noise was distant, unimportant, not significant to the task at hand-even though the screamer turned out to be himself. He coughed blood, but the many weaknesses of flesh were no longer his concern. Something far stronger girded his frame and held him steady.
Angul's flame flashed and new vigor flooded his limbs. Flayed skin sloughed, unsullied flesh burgeoned and sleeted across his gaping wounds. Gage stood, heaving the demon up, too. Overbalanced, man, sword, and fiend crashed into heaped tteasures.
Demoriel's grasp slackened and Gage pulled away, slashing with Angul, knocking the demon backward. It rolled, sinuously as a snake might, onto two cloven feet. It screamed again in its unholy tongue, You anger me. More than your soul is forfeit-have you parents? A wife? A suckling child you spawned? I will find them, and they-
The Blade Cerulean seared the demon's sharklike skin, textuted its flesh with vicious swipes, broke its teeth on the hard side of its invulnerable iron. Yet Demoriel withstood this punishment as if it enjoyed the pain. It never ceased its obscene banter, but screamed louder, abyssal curses that smote stone and liquefied metal. A portion of the ceiling collapsed and the demon grappled Gage once more.
But this time, it was a clinch of desperation-Angul's punishments had weakened it. Demoriel attempted to encompass Angul and Gage in a great hug, trapping the blade against its body and thus preventing Gage from swinging the enchanted sword. Gage danced away, ending the demon's best chance to turn the battle's tide. Demoriel's wounds burned with fire, its eyes glazed with pain, and its mouth dripped, a bloody mass of shattered fangs. Yet it fought on. A bound thing, it was compelled to struggle until it triumphed or failed, or until the words that yanked it forth from outside the world lost their force…
Angul staked the demon to the floor. The blade pulsed with purifying fire. Of Demoriel, only ash remained. The demon's time in the world had proven brief.
Gage released his grip. Strength rushed from him like water emptying from a holed aquifer.
His remaining glove whimpered a childlike gurgle of loss and misery.
CHAPTER SIX
City of Laothkund, The Gutter
G'way," mumbled Kiril. Daylight pried at her eyelids. Worse, something small and four-footed pattered around on her back. What the Hells?
Where in Mystra's starry hair was… the smell of garbage and bile brought with it her memory. She lay in an alley alcove.
A fuzzy image of her defeating a sweaty dwarf in an arm wrestling contest took shape in her mind's eye. Had she quit the Smokehouse Inn after that? Maybe. If not then, then later. Somehow, lost in a whisky haze, she'd found her way to the alcove. Her muddy, sodden clothes hinted she'd been there a while. The greasy yellow clay on her shoes, legs, and arms matched the hue of the muck between the cobbles. That must have been earlier, when it was still warm enough for mud. The winter night, now giving way to day, had stolen