Chapter 62: Hannibal

It was the name Turk gave his pegasus, a broad winged creature with more guns than a person has teeth. I saw Hannibal ahead of us, along with several others. There were two strong tarrasquin fighters, twins, who rode their pegasi named Sound and Fury, and to my immense surprise, Harbinger had lived after all, having only taken a wound that seemed worse to me when the sparks flew. When they caught sight of us, they banked hard and landed, and we laid out our stratagem.

Turk was glad to see us, and lamented having to pull away. When I told them of my escape and encounter with Patches, Abdiel cracked his knuckles.

"He would not have helped Victor escape if he meant to sell us out," Turk warned. 

I had my say in my heart, seeing Abdiel pry the Traitor from his salmagundi shell and throw him from Pandemonium, where his soft, exposed body splattered on the rocky ground. 

"We need to get someone on board," said the sighing giant, "to free our comrades and let the rest of us in. No longer can we drive the worm from behind. We must drive it from within, and give it as an offering to Regis."

It was agreed on and discussed, and Abdiel told me how his jinn gave him a tally of the surviving pegasi, and that Northwind was among them. Perhaps my elation brought the vision on, or perhaps I was desperate to cling to any hope, even an imagined one. I watched the walls of the tunnel, large enough for a city to grow and sprawl forever, and the pale green shine of our torch pile, home to onyx heroes so tall, jagged and mean, ever dancing and bobbing while our plans were made. We were all giants, and the Devils would do well to fear us.

Harbinger was to be tethered to Hannibal, so Abdiel could carry me to a place where he and I could both enter unseen, and together lead the revolt while those still outside attacked Pandemonium's engines till we .

"What about Warcloud?" I asked. 

Abdiel scoffed. 

I dared to touch him, placing a firm hand on his towering trapezius. "What about Warcloud?"

"Feeding. Sleeping. Egging."

I nodded. "I was inside it. I don't want to find myself in there again."

Abdiel grinned, and I took that for... well, I didn't know what to take it for, so I put on my armor and held my spear, and nearly sprayed giant's broth when I was lifted violently and flung about like a ragdoll. Only for an instant, then the flight was smooth, and he held me with both hands and sent hurricanes to the ground beneath us. The pegasi rapidly overtook us, but we were still moving fast, turning a sharp corner and the dropped downward, and riding ahead of the giants on a strong current that came from the depths. Then we saw the light of the engine, and the pegasi went wild with their payloads, bringing Pandemonium's speed down more than a notch. Abdiel then worked a spell on the wind and we hurdled forward at a frightening speed. I thought my skull would be a splash of red paint on the roving city's hull, but Abiel spread his wings and extended one strong arm to grasp a huge rivet, then swung us onto a thin seem of metal and we clung to the city's side, inching our way to a flange over one of the worm's legs where we entered like a pair of burrowing leeches. 

I chanced a quick look back before returning to that horrible place, and saw the giants all leaping off their mounts and vanishing behind flared strips of hull.

"They're entering the city!" I shouted as Abdiel pulled me in. I was giddy, and whispered to him that they'd found a hole to ingress through where the pegasi had attacked. Abdiel gave me a look that shut me up, and we were walking as fast as we could through a narrow space between the hull's armor plating and interior wall, then through a joint before the city flexed into a turn. I did not know what the giants were planning, but I was childishly eager to see them tear the Devils to pieces. I developed a secret hope for their to be nothing left to offer to Regis when we ascended.

I followed Abdiel, spoiling for a fight, having learned a little of what my spear's jinn needed from me to be effective. Weapons like ours; y spear, Turk's spadone, Abdiel's falcata, Zulu's iklwa, Goth's poleaxe, Qatar's shamshir, they all answered to their master, summoning elemental forces to aid in battle. I was told it had to do with their mark, and mine shifted the folds of space around a singular point, I thing I would eventually do on a scale unheard of since the last days of Neophilus. Only the Cataphracts could properly wield such imbued tools, as they were made for them. But mine answered to me, and I never did coax a straight answer on that count out of Turk.

But who needs answers when you have results? We moved stealthily down a number of long, sparsely lit corridors with high ceilings that arched inward at their peak. Abdiel would suddenly duck and drop, finding some shadow that just barely hid his wide shoulders and glorious wings. Twice I tried to slip between, but both times the Devils traveling that way stopped where I stood and probed with strange devices embedded in their vambraces, so I took to finding my own shadows to hide within. I found that our foes did not have the best peripheral vision, and did not let my anxiety slow our progress. Only once on our way to holding cells did we have to fight, and it was swift. We'd made our way to the car where Abdiel knew high profile detainees to be kept; those wanted for torture or gradual execution, and there was an increased guard at the junction. We had two choices; fight before the junction, or fight after. We chose to fight before.

It was a small male, stocky, but not broad. His armor was brilliant red and his helm, witch seemed to blend into his shoulders and bypass any sort of neck, was painted with a golden phoenix wrapped around the visor. He walked right past us, and I was nearly through the junction, where I planned to dart to the left and behind what looked to be a munitions crate, when the junction door slammed shut in front of me with a hiss and a snap. 

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It was a massive door, and moving at that speed it might have split me in two, possibly ending me beyond what my parasite could repair (unless a second half would have grown from each). Abdiel did not have his arbalest, but he worked well enough with his falcata, slicing through the seams in that Devil's elbows. The Devil whirled to riposte, but his arms were stiff and he could not move them properly. I lurched forward, then back, walled off by a gout of flame that left a scorch mark on my shroud like a blindfold. I ducked, albeit late, and saw Abdiel's wings flapping as he hovered over the Devil, harrying him with his sword. Flame jetted and spouted, but the Devil could not find his mark. I realized though that if he was not dispatched soon, he would, and found my moment when Abdiel cut a line in the Devil's backpack. White fluid sprayed, coating the nearby wall and floor with ice, and the Devil had Abdiel by the ankle with a bone fingered hand. The other arm, which bore the bulbous growth that sprayed his fire, was rising to line up with the tyfloch. I thrust my spear in its orifice and summoned my jinn (just a little), shattering the Devil's left hand.

The beast dropped to one knee and I saw faintly through his visor a pale, pulpy face with fleshless lips curling to scream. Abdiel came down with his full force and dug his blade in where I could not see, being at a disadvantage, and the face turned outward in pain, shaking and spitting and frothing, but no sound escaped. Abdiel gave a me a look and my head darted to either side, as if I were vehemently denying some terrible thought, when in fact I was searching for a breach to make a second attack through. I felt foolish when I found it, and my jinn used a portion of her (she felt like a feminine spirit, of storms and shadows) strength to send a shockwave into the Devil's injured arm. The armor split with a keen, but the Devil's torment was held within his helm by Abdiel's tinkering. We dragged him towards the door, and Abdiel, remembering the city's basic operations from his brief stint as Blitzkrieg's asset, opened it, and we then gave the Devil the end that might have been mine. 

The junction had two doors and a space between that was treacherous and riddled with steaming pipework. We moved fast, though Abdiel limped where the Devil grabbed him, and waited by the window until there was only one Devil present on the other side. I stood on Abdiel's bent back and looked through the thick, dirty glass, being much taller than my comrade, and when the Devil was alone I let my hand waft out of our world and through the door. I then pulled off such a neat trick, amidst the muck that slowed my transference, keeping my forearm adrift while my hand gripped the soft stuff below the Devil's skull. One squeeze, one twist, one dead Devil, one messy gauntlet. I wiped it clean on the emblazoned skirt draped from the Devil's belt as we passed.

To be honest, my hero worship of Abdiel is largely in hindsight. Some of the moments I've recalled instilled fear and distrust at the time, and other moments I've not recorded filled me with outright disgust. But in time I saw the man's worth through his ability, knowing from my own experience that to accomplish truly unbelievable deeds indicates an immaculate drive. And his deeds in Pandemonium that day were unbelievable, to the extent that I doubt anyone will trust this portion of my account, but I'll write them all the same, because he did these things.

I had to sprint to keep pace with him, using his wings to augment his speed as he did. We rounded a corner, leapt onto a walkway some two dozen feet over my head (I transferred), and when he told me to halt he knew exactly how low to duck as three of them passed, so that their eyes did not see us, and something done by his wing prevented their other means of perception from finding us. He found shadows of the exact length, threw small knives from a hidden pouch at gorgons, gave me instructions that gave us the chance to cross long distances at a dead run, and when two Devils came to answer a silent alarm from a one goron missed, he turned, flapped his wings once, and rocketed forward in a spiral that had him behind and between. An apparatus dropped from each of their arms and they tumbled downward before trying to attack him. One had a series of wide vents running the length of his spine that vanished beneath his backpack. I thrust my spear into one those vents and my jinn raged against his spine. He went limp, and together we found small creases in the other's shell until, from a thousand tiny cuts, he filled his armor with pale whispering pleas.

Our presence was known then, and we had only a few minutes to reach our goal. That was when Abdiel really shone. The Devils had many slaves of nearly every kindred, and they sent them after us in waves of two, four, and six. Abdiel moved so that they ran into each other, and like a dervish he cut them, not always in vital places, but so that they grew weary from blood loss and cut ligaments, leaving them weak to my attacks. When he found the lock to the cells our people were kept in had been altered since he turned back his cloak, he knew exactly where I needed to transfer my hand and which cables to cut with my knife. 

Soon the sparse white light of the prison car turned red, and sirens heralded the next wave of guards. He took me by the collar and led me to the door, commanding me not to let anyone pass. Before three foes reached me I was flanked by Tomorrow Gives Hope and Tall Mountains Call. When we were overwhelmed, Qatar and Zulu took our places. Soon we were filing into the hall and the fighting grew intense. The prison car had cramped and narrow halls, making a mass escape difficult, and a few of us conscripts fell. My throat knots, as my adoptive tarrasquin mother was one of them. She charged too hard and while she opened a slave's throat with her claws, a Devil hit her with a hammer as large as a tall man's torso. What was left of her twitched.

I'm sure I felt something; rage perhaps, but it was subdued by our need, and I fought on as if I'd never met her. Her death opened a gap in the hall, and the Devil's hammer was lodged in both the floor and her remains, so I was able to try a new trick that barely worked. My jinn was for the moment spent of mana, so I passed my spear through the ether as I had recently done with my knife, and as I used my knife to sever those ties of power to the locking mechanism, I severed those ties that passed power from the Devil's heart to his brain and lungs. It took an immense amount of concentration, and I nearly lost the tip of my spear, so I refrained from repeating the move for the rest of our flight. 

I was by Qatar, Zulu and Iber, catching glimpses of Abdiel harrying a large Devil from above. Iber, an olive skinned beauty with feline eyes, had taken a pair of maces from a slave and was rapidly pounding down those that filed endlessly towards us. I know not what brand she bore, but each strike came with a blast of ice that sent shards in a conical arc. Each swing felled three opponents at least. Zulu ravaged the enemy as well, and the Devils that were left in the car were hard pressed to survive the onslaught of Abdiel, Mongol, Goth and Greek. Greek was a meek older woman who moved like a serpent. Abdiel made certain the Devils could never keep their attention downward, while Zulu and Goth punished them for looking upward, and Greek delivered the killing blows to each.

I found myself running behind a group of deadly women. Three were Cataphracts; Mongol, Britton and Qatar, and two were lucien conscripts. My male companions were the Cataphract Slav, and Goro, whom I was elated to see.

"How were you spared?" I asked as we ran.

"They wanted them for slaves," answered Britton. She ran with an odd gate that hid her athleticism, a wonder that showed when she fought, and she fought like a nimravus, using her appropriated weaponry to drag her foes down to their end. Slav was not a large man, but he fought savagely, though with a restraint that arrived at the last moment of every attack that created a delayed form of precision, keeping both my admiring eye and his enemies' defenses guessing at his movements. And Mongol! Mongol's corpse belongs in a museum, taxidermied in a case with a floor made of with fallen Devil slaves, and one of them to act as a prop for her to stand on triumphant. 

It's amusing to look back on, though at the time I didn't notice, but we inadvertently split into gendered groups. Us men had a Devil come thundering from behind, and Slav went toe to toe with him at first, while Goro ducked and came up behind the brute, holding one of his arms back with all four of his. I hurled my spear from behind Slav, trusting his reflexes to duck, and it pierced the Devil's visor. My jinn then did a thing I did not anticipate, and I was moved to see she had grown so fond of me as her master as to act for my interests of her own accord. 

When the Devil's decollated husk fell to the side, another came, and this one was Slav's. He'd taken a glowing cestus from a slave, and with it he dodged the larger foe's slower attacks. But the fight was more than he could handle alone, and while Goro mowed down the slaves coming towards us with the blunderbuss he cut from the pruned Devil's lifeless arm, and I poked holes in those who made it passed his salvos, too many came for us to aid Slav, and we had to finish his opponent off after he'd been flung to opposite ends of the hallway.

Meanwhile the girls had dueled with two Devils of their own, and I was about to gloat over us handling the same number with slaves to back them, when I saw how these two were different, in that their shells sprouted steel tentacles that spouted flame. Down Mongol and Slave, we hurried on our way, reuniting at a nexus of three hallways with the rest who had survived. Next was the junction, as Abdiel had told us we needed to gain control of Pandemonium's rear legs, and in a way those in the city's steerage could not counteract. So we fought our way through the gradually thinning defense, until we opened the aft junction and saw a fresh horde who waited in formation.

And then, only a few moments after we'd engaged, expecting most of us to die, the Fates emerged from the machine, bursting through the car behind us. There was Hannibal, Turk in the saddle, framed by the wreckage of the aft car, spewing absolution from red rimmed canons. We dove aside and found cover, holding our hands over the backs of our heads while empty bolt shafts littered the ground.

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