Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [58]
Up the dark decks, through the nets of strange colours, Elric went, his milk white hair flowing in contrast to the moody darkness around him. As he came to the last deck but one, he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder and, looking in that direction, saw with heart-lurching horror that one of Pyaray's blood-red tentacles had found him. He stumbled back, putting up his shield.
The tentacle tip touched the shield and rebounded, suddenly, the entire tentacle shrivelling. From above, where the Chaos Lord's main bulk was, there came a terrible screaming and roaring.
"What's this? What's this? What's this?"
Elric shouted in impudent triumph at seeing his shield work with such effect: " 'Tis Elric of Melniboné, great lord. Come to destroy you!"
Another tentacle dropped towards him, seeking to curl around the shield and seize him. Then another followed it and another. Elric hacked at one, severed its sensitive tip, saw another touch the shield, recoil and shrivel and then avoided the third in order to run round the deck and ascend, as swiftly as he could, the ladder leading to the deck above. Here he saw Jagreen Lern, his eyes wide. The Theocrat was clad in his familiar scarlet armour. On his arm was his buckler and in the same hand an axe, while his right hand held a broadsword. He glanced down at these weapons, obviously aware of their inadequacy against Elric's.
"You later, Theocrat," Elric promised.
"You're a fool, Elric! You're doomed now, whatever you do!"
It was probably true, but he did not care. "Aside, upstart," he said as, shield up, he moved warily towards the many-tentacled Lord of Chaos.
"You are the killer of cousins of mine, Elric," the creature said in a low, whispering voice. "And you've banished several Dukes of Chaos to their own domain so that they cannot reach earth again. For that you must pay. I at least do not underestimate you, as, in likelihood, they did." A tentacle reared above him and tried to come down from over the shield's rim and seize his throat. He stepped backwards and blocked the attempt with the shield.
Then a whole web of tentacles began to come from all sides, each one curling around the shield, knowing its touch to be death. He skipped aside, avoiding them with difficulty, slicing about him with Stormbringer. As he fought, he remembered Sepiriz's words: Strike for the crystal a-top his head. There is his life and his soul. Elric saw the blue, radiating crystal which he had originally taken to be one of Lord Pyaray's several eyes. He moved in towards the roots of the tentacles, leaving his back poorly protected, but there was nothing else for it. As he did so, a huge maw gaped in the thing's head and tentacles began to draw him towards it. He extended his shield towards the maw until it touched the lips. Yellow, jelly-like stuff spurted from the mouth as the Lord of Chaos screamed in pain. He got his foot on one tentacle stump and clambered up the slippery hide of the Chaos Lord, shuddering beneath his feet. Every time his shield touched Pyaray, it created some sort of wound so that the Chaos Lord begun to thresh about dreadfully. Then he stood unsteadily over the glowing soul-crystal. For an instant he paused, then plunged Stormbringer point-first into the crystal!
There came a mighty throbbing from the heart of the entity's body. It gave vent to a monstrous shriek and then Elric yelled as Stormbringer took the soul of a Lord of Hell and channelled this surging vitality through to him. It was too much. He was hurled backwards. He lost his footing on the slippery back, stumbled off the deck itself and fell to another, nearly a hundred feet below. He landed with bone-cracking force, but, thanks to the stolen vitality, was completely unhurt. He got up, ready to clamber again towards Jagreen Lern. The Theocrat's anxious face peered down at him and he yelled: "You'll find a present for you in yonder cabin, Elric!"
Torn between pursuing the Theocrat, secretly aware that the time for his vengeance had not yet come, and investigating the cabin, Elric turned and opened the