Pug and the others were thrown to the ground as a tower of green energy ripped through the air from the pit. The brilliant energy lashed out like angry lightning, sizzling through the air with a hiss loud enough to make Pug’s group want to cover their ears.
‘Gods!’ said Brandos. ‘What was that?’
Pug felt the hair on his arms and neck stand up as an all too familiar and evil power began to coalesce. ‘Oh, gods, indeed,’ said Pug as a deep thrumming sound and a powerful vibration emanated from the ground beneath them and set their teeth on edge. ‘It’s a summoning!’
‘What?’ asked Gulamendis. ‘I have never experienced anything like this.’
Laromendis said, ‘I have never seen its like either.’ The taredhel had found his brother, Amirantha, and Brandos while Pug had encountered Jim. Pug had just finished explaining what he was going to do when the energy erupted.
Pug turned to Brandos and said, ‘Here, take this.’ He handed him a Tsurani orb and said, ‘Push that button and you will find yourself in the keep on Sorcerer’s Isle. A magician named Pascal will be there waiting for you. Tell him to bring everything. He’ll know what to do.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ he said, looking at Amirantha. ‘He’ll get himself killed if I’m not here to watch his back.’
Amirantha took the sphere from Pug and pressed it into Brandos’s hands. ‘I have been staying alive since before you were born, boy.’ If anyone found it strange that the younger looking warlock called the grey-haired fighter ‘boy’, no one felt the need to remark on it. ‘Do as you’re told and then get back here if you can; otherwise wait at the keep with your wife. Understand?’
Looking from face to face, Brandos realized that he was the most expendable person there, so he grabbed the sphere and suddenly he was gone. ‘What now?’ asked Gulamendis.
‘Something beyond our ability to imagine may be coming through that portal soon.’ Pug saw that the guards in the area were hurrying back inside the wall, with looks of panic on their inhuman faces. ‘If you see anything heading for the small building against the far wall, kill it,’ he shouted, taking off at a run.
Amirantha and the two elves didn’t hesitate and were only half a step behind Pug, who sprinted past the wooden barrier and through the empty gate. Several demons of varying size were screaming at one another, looking for anything to vent their rage and terror against. Amirantha shouted, ‘Pug, to your right!’
Both the Warlock and Gulamendis began banishment rituals, but before they could get halfway through, Pug put out his palm and unleashed a withering beam of silver energy that tore the demon closing on him in two. The pieces fell to the ground smoking, and then erupted into flames, while the two demon masters and the conjurer looked on in awe. ‘Remind me never to make him angry,’ said Laromendis.
Gulamendis nodded, then shouted, ‘That got their attention.’
A dozen demons had seen the display and Pug had provided them with a convenient target for their fear and rage. They bellowed and shrieked as they charged him and the others. Pug made a sweeping gesture with his hand and a curtain of flames erupted on the ground in front of the demons. They were engulfed as they screamed and roared in outrage and pain.
Gulamendis came to stand next to the nearly frantic magician. ‘Those are demons. Fire will only annoy them.’
‘It has slowed them down for a couple of minutes,’ said Amirantha.
They reached inside the building and Pug made a quick decision. ‘Amirantha, go down the stairs and find Jim Dasher. Be careful.’ To Laromendis and Gulamendis he said, ‘We have to keep those creatures back.’
The Warlock hurried down the circular stairs while Pug’s right hand shot outward, palm forward, through the door. A rippling in the air, tainted green by the light from the summoning device, showed a wall of force striking a dozen demons and knocking them backwards. Several lay stunned and motionless, but the others seemed only to get madder.
Gulamendis took a talisman from his belt pouch and pointed it at one particularly nasty looking demon, a thing of scales and crocodile teeth, bat wings, and blood red armour. He spoke a quick phrase and suddenly the demon’s yellow eyes blinked as it reached over and ripped out the throat of the demon next to it. Laromendis closed his eyes and muttered, ‘Something big.’ A moment later the ground shook from the enraged bellow of a massive golden dragon as it sprang into being above the thirty or so demons ringing the hut.
Gulamendis said, ‘This will only buy us a few minutes, Pug. The bigger and angrier the illusion, the faster Laro fatigues.’