One demon, larger than Pug could have imagined possible, turned and shouted, ‘Hold!’
Hanam screamed, ‘Tugor! I challenge! Meet me and die!’
The other demons fell back. Pug didn’t know if they ignored him because of the challenge, but he rendered himself invisible.
Hanam and Maarg’s captain squared off. Pug saw at once that Hanam had been right, for in a fair fight, Tugor would quickly destroy the lesser demon. But what the captain didn’t understand was that the Loremaster of the Saaur faced him, not another lesser demon, and that being was prepared to die.
Pug hurried to the two rifts and attempted to make some sense of them. The two shambling creatures ignored the demons, working like automatons on the two rifts. When Pug had first encountered these creatures, years before, he had found them nearly mindless servants of an unknown dark power, technicians of magic, clever in their ability to work the solid form of what was an invisible force on Midkemia, but without a strong intellect. They had been servants of others then, and here again they were servants.
Once more Pug confronted the knowledge locked away in his own mind, and he intuited that these creatures were serving whatever the greater power behind this madness might be. He knew that to dwell further on their part in this would be to risk distraction.
He quietly stunned both creatures, letting them fall to the floor.
He quickly studied the rift to the demon realm, and realized it was readily opened at any time. He decided Maarg, their great ruler, was waiting safely in his own realm until his captain opened the rift to Midkemia. Then he could easily cross into the lush, life-filled world without long pause in Shila.
Pug turned to study the other rift with the thought that should Maarg reach Midkemia, he might be in for a rude surprise should Jakan reach the Lifestone.
Screams of pain and rage filled the hall as Tugor fought Hanam. The demon lord was injured, because rather than keep his distance, the smaller demon closed and accepted wounds in exchange for giving them.
Pug tried to ignore the combat, knowing seconds counted. He looked at the Midkemian rift and saw the Shangri were on the verge of punching through whatever barriers had been erected on the other side. His intervention had forestalled that.
Then a chilling presence behind Pug caused him to cease moving. A voice that ground his bones together said, ‘What have we here?’
Pug turned and looked into the face of horror.
A face the size of a dragon’s leered at him through the rift.
For a brief instant Pug was astonished to witness a rift that was as transparent as a window, that looked like a hole in the wall between two worlds, but that fascination lasted less than a second, for it was what confronted him through that transparent rift that demanded his undivided attention.
While the other demons looked muscular and powerful, Maarg looked gross. Jowls hung down from a face eight feet from brow to chin. Fire burned in the pits of its eyes, and evil emanated from it like a visible miasma of black smoke. The creature’s face seemed fashioned from the skins of living beings, which still moved and twitched in agony. A face contorted in torment was stretched across Maarg’s right cheek, mouthing silent screams while a clawed hand moved feebly along his right jawline. Details of the various bodies devoured and incorporated into the Demon King became evident as the creature moved closer to the other side of the rift to inspect Pug.
The figure behind the face was immense. Maarg must have stood thirty-five feet tall when upright. His body was likewise covered with other beings, twitching and undulating in the faint red light of the demon homeworld. Wings to hide the sun spread out behind him, and a long tail with the head of a serpent at the tip writhed behind him, hissing and spitting at Pug from over Maarg’s shoulder.
Pug didn’t hesitate. He knew instantly he was overmatched. He turned, and with all the power he could muster, he blasted open the rift to Midkemia.
‘Tugor!’ came the cry from the other side of the demon rift as the room rang with the explosion of powers Pug unleashed. The rift to Midkemia seemed to contract, then expand, then rush forward with a tremendous ripping sound. Then Pug was staring at Macros and Miranda.
Macros returned from his bath and a meal. ‘That was delightful. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed Sorcerer’s Isle.’
Miranda said, ‘Has it changed much?’
‘A great deal. Pug has it crawling with students, some rather interesting ones, I must say. Gathis is the same as always. It’s as if I had left yesterday.’ Macros sighed. ‘I’m afraid he’s become something of a fixture there. It would be a shame to ask him to leave with all the good work he’s doing for Pug. Why -’
Suddenly he looked wide-eyed and distracted.
‘What?’ asked Miranda.