The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (91 page)

Sekhmekt turned to stare at the wall over a large mantled fireplace and shook her head sadly. “Unfortunately, Knights of Chaos vanish like demons after you slay them, albeit a bit more violently. I’d love to mount one of their heads above the fireplace!”

~

“I will zoom in a bit,” Horken said, adjusting some dials on his terminal as they peered at the computer screen showing the radar images of the advancing army. “This mass here is what we believe to be the demon army from Doom’s Redoubt, plus their reinforcements.”

Tom nodded at Horken’s explanation.

Vargg Agnoth spoke up. “They have not had over one or two thousand demons there for several centuries. It appears that she sent in about the same number of demons as reinforcements.”

“Is there any way to determine how strong they are?” Tom asked.

Arg-nargoloth, standing beside him, said, “Not until they are on the DoomNet. At that point, the main table”—he gestured to the 3D mapping table in the other room—“should be able to gauge them.”

“How long did you say that was?” Tom asked. He had been told before, but the klaxon had been so loud that he’d had trouble hearing it. Once they had been sure all the commanders were awake, they had turned off the klaxons and let the commanders take care of rousting any still-glarghvost-passed-out D’Orcs.

“About half a period. Once on the DoomNet, they have about another half period until they reach an entrance,” Vargg said. Tom quickly calculated that to be about two hours for each leg.

“From past experience, they will probably try for multiple entrances. We are sending reinforcements to the most likely entrances first,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“The knights?” Tom asked.

“Let me pan over here,” Horken said, spinning a trackball in front of him.

“See that dead zone?” asked Zog Darthelm, the commander in charge of the TCC, pointing to an unlit region that Horken had moved over. “We know from deep space experience that this sort of blackness typically indicates a Chaos Maelstrom. The maelstrom has very distinctive effect on most all tech scanning systems.”

“You’ve encountered Knights of Chaos in space?” Tom asked.

“Not me, personally, but there have been many reports from starship shamans describing this effect. It’s been well documented. Naturally, these were the shamans’ last reports; so follow-up was always difficult.”

“And we are sure it’s not a glitch with the radar system? We just brought it up the other day,” Tom asked.

“Glitches don’t usually move,” Horken observed.

“And the movement is tracking with the demon horde,” Zog Darthelm added.

“Same speed?” Tom asked.

“Roughly,” Horken said.

“Hello!” Phaestus called to them from the command center.

Tom looked towards the smith and was surprised to see a very large anthrolioness in very ornate plate armor standing behind him. Tom nodded to the others in the TCC as he moved to join Phaestus in the other room.

“Hello?” Tom asked, looking at the lioness, who was his own height and size.

“Tommus, this is my wife Sekhmekt!” Phaestus said.

Tom shook his head slightly in surprise. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized you were married.”

“Seems to surprise a lot of people,” Phaestus said as Sekhmekt stuck out a hand for Tom to shake.

“Glad to meet you, Sekhmekt!” Tom said, shaking her hand.

The lioness’s expression was hard to read, but she seemed quite happy. “Honor to be here. My husband tells me you have a Chaos Maelstrom heading your way?”

“We do. I take it you are familiar with them?” Tom asked.

The lioness nodded. “Indeed, they are worthy opponents in battle. Not very nice opponents, but worthy. I do not get that many opportunities to battle them. At least not in the last hundred thousand years.”

Tom nodded, trying to keep a neutral expression at the idea that this woman was at least a hundred thousand years old. “Well, we would really appreciate your help,” he told her.

“I only regret the short notice; I was only able to summon half a dozen of my most experienced warriors,” Sekhmekt said.

“They are waiting in the dining hall at the moment,” Phaestus said. “They are still adjusting their barding; we really scrambled.”

“Barding?” Tom asked, puzzled.

Sekhmekt grinned, or so Tom thought. “They are sphinxes.”

“Wow, I’ve never met a sphinx before,” Tom said.

“They are truly the best guards in the multiverse,” Sekhmekt said. “Nothing gets past them.”

“And to be clear, they won’t be asking any riddles today,” Phaestus said. “They’ll just be killing knights, and any of Lilith’s demons that get in the way.” He chuckled.

“Excuse me!” Talarius shouted from the doorway to the main corridor. He had needed to shout over all the various discussions going on in the command center, which was rather packed.

“Yes, Talarius?” Tom asked.

“Has anyone seen Völund?” The knight gestured behind him to the weird metal being that had dived into Tom’s portal from Astlan. Tom shook his head. He had completely forgotten about that invader. “We are having difficulty getting Ruiden to shift back to his regular form,” Talarius said.

Tom closed his eyes in a slow blink and looked back at the knight, trying to understand what the man was saying and why now, in the middle of preparing for battle. “I am not following you. Who is this Ruiden? I believe he threatened me earlier?”

“He’s my sword; you remember, the one I chopped you to bits with? He turned himself into a golem to search for me; and now he has found me. So we are trying to get him back into sword form so we can go battle Knights of Chaos,” Talarius said matter-of-factly.

“What is a knight of Tiernon doing here?” Sekhmekt demanded after turning around and seeing the knight. She made a motion to grasp the sword on her back.

Phaestus reached out and grabbed her sword arm. “Relax, he’s Lord Tommus’s hostage and is bound by the Oaths of Hostage.”

“Hostage?” The lioness turned to look at Tom curiously. “Are you the demon that stole mana from Tiernon?”

Tom inhaled. “Yes, that would be me.”

“Hah!” Sekhmekt clapped him on the shoulder. “Well met indeed! Bess has been quite preoccupied by you lately. She will be glad to know you are the Master of Mount Doom!” She shook her head. “So much makes sense now.”

“Well… great!” Tom really had no idea what to say; he turned his attention back to Talarius.

“So why do you need Völund?” Tom asked wearily.

“As I said—to help get Ruiden back into sword form!” Talarius said, sounding exasperated.

“How can he help?” Tom asked patiently.

“He’s my father!” the sword said from behind Talarius.

Tom restrained himself from shaking his head in surprise; he would end up getting dizzy if he kept doing that. “Your father?”

“Völund forged Ruiden,” Phaestus explained.

“Seriously?” Tom looked to Phaestus.

“Yep, apparently to help vent his anger at Orcus’s death.” Phaestus shrugged. “Which is why Ruiden likes to slay demons so much.”

“That makes sense,” Sekhmekt nodded thoughtfully. “Vengeance is usually the best way to get a good forging. I mean, it’s no real substitute for a good, final forge quenching in the blood of newborns, but it’s a good third or fourth.”

Phaestus sighed, shaking his head, looking up at his wife. “How many times have I told you those are just old wives’ tales! There is no basis for quenching a blade in newborn blood. Seriously, the metal doesn’t care if the blood is from a newborn or an old man.”

“Are you calling me an old wife?” Sekhmekt stared down at her husband.

“You know that joke is getting old.” Phaestus stared back at her, undeterred.

“Okay.” Tom looked at Talarius. “Zog Darthelm in the TCC will know where Völund is. He’s working on bringing up some heavy artillery.”

Phaestus gestured to Talarius and Ruiden. “Come with me, I need to find him to determine if we are going to get the high-tech stuff ready in time.” The smith headed towards the TCC.

Sekhmekt nodded to the mapping table. “Great table! Let’s talk strategy and tactics! War is something of a specialty of mine.”

~

Tom’s body sat on his throne in the center of the volcano, his right arm gripping the Rod of Tommus in its throne holder. His mind, however, was running through the Doomplex and the DoomNet. Lilith’s forces would be shortly crossing the border to the land connected to the DoomNet.

The D’Orcs were quickly armoring and organizing into their ranks and companies. At first the D’Orcs had grumbled, annoyed to be awoken from their glarghvost-induced slumber, but when they’d learned of the size of the demon army and the fact that a Chaos Maelstrom was on its way, they’d perked up with excitement. Arg-nargoloth had told Tom that for D’Orcs, the best cure for glarghvost was blood. Mayhem, the act of hacking an opponent limb from limb, was the perfect activity to clear away the cobwebs of the mind.

Fer-Rog and Rupert were complete sleepyheads this morning; Zelda had sent them along with Reggie to bard the D’Wargs. It would be a new experience for them, but a great learning exercise. Antefalken had returned with him, having borrowed Damien’s scrying ball to record the battle. There was no way the bard was going to miss out on such an epic battle.

Tom wished he felt as confident as Antefalken did. Actually, Antefalken had not been so enthusiastic at first, but after meeting Sekhmekt, he had really perked up. Clearly, the bard was aware of Sekhmekt’s prowess in battle; he presumed she must be famous or something. She was impressive, Tom had to admit, as were her sphinxes.

She had brought six very large sphinxes with her. The sphinxes were more than proportional to Sekhmekt and himself and were all of the winged variety. With their golden plate and great helms, they were a truly magnificent presence.

All of his commanders were preparing, distributing the battle plans they had devised over the map table. While they did this, it was Tom’s task to prepare the battlefield. After coordinating with Völund, Phaestus had returned and given him some instructions on optimizing the battlefield.

According to Phaestus, since they had begun building the fortress over fifty thousand years ago, the volcano had never actually had a full Plinian eruption from the main cone, where his throne was. This was principally because that would be a rather destructive event for the fortress. Thus, to contain excess heat buildup, there were multiple smaller vents along the sides of the volcano and across the DoomNet. These consisted of both smaller parasitic cones and fumaroles. The goal for right now would be to bring the volcano up to full power and begin filling the channels to these vents.

In particular, they needed to channel the volcanic pressure to the vents on the side of the mountain near the invaders and release pyroclastic flows. These flows, Phaestus explained, were fluidized mixtures of solid and semi-solid fragments of rock, along with extremely hot expanding gases that would flow down the flanks of the volcano. They would move very much like a snow avalanche down the mountain, but at hurricane-force speed. According to Phaestus, the heated gases and fluidized earth would move at speeds of thirty leagues per hour or more, burying everything in their path.

Tom figured this should slow the invaders down; at least, once they were far enough in that they couldn’t quickly retreat off the DoomNet. Once the elemental forces were channeled onto the plane and through the volcano, they became a force of nature and would not stop at the border of the DoomNet, but he did not want to leave anything to chance.

In order to accomplish this, he needed to open up the portals to Earth, Air and Fire located in the volcano’s magma chamber, located beyond their current level. The magma chamber below him right now was essentially a giant, elemental soup pot where he needed to boil these three elements and let them overflow the sides of the mountain and down onto the invaders.

As he delved into the magma chambers with his mind, it rapidly became clear that this would be a tricky exercise that would require a fair amount of skill on his part. He really did not want this mess coming up and flooding his new house. So it was worth taking the time to get it right.

In the meantime, since he was opening the Fire and Air portals, he split their output and channeled them up the main cone and into the Water and Air portals above Doom, which he was also cranking open. The pyroclastic flows might move like a hurricane, but he wanted to dump a traditional hurricane on the invaders as well. Given that the DoomNet contained an electrical network, if he could manage to lower the electric potential on the ground, he should be able to pull storm lightning to the ground. They would not be directed attacks, but they would be disheartening and annoying.

If Lilith wanted to attack him with no actual provocation with the terror of a Chaos Maelstrom, then he would unleash the full power of Doom upon her forces. In some ways, it was a bit odd that someone as old and as experienced as Lilith would be foolish enough to attack a volcano.

~

“I don’t know how Bess and her people stand this place,” Sekhmekt complained to her husband as he worked underneath a large cannon in one of the machine shops. She was stretching and doing yoga to be ready for battle.