They studied the maps, they studied the drawings Thebes had of a ravenlike bird sculpture that was allegedly what they sought, and they decided on the weight and duration of supplies. The valley was only roughly nine miles long by three wide; they decided that if they couldn't accomplish what they sought in seven days, then it was unlikely they, would be able to do so at all. The shrine of the McGuffin was nestled right into Mount Doom along the valley wall, but it was only about halfway back on the western side of the valley and a bit up the side. This would bring them past whatever was being constructed there but, they hoped, well west of it and clear.
Finally; there was little to do but practice, and wait, and hope that they would be tired enough to fall asleep by dawn.
Marge spent the early morning hours walking the area and flying up to the battlements. She was anxious to get away, to get in there, to get it all over with, if only because she was finding it harder and harder to control her behavior here. There were men all around, awake and asleep, and not just those damned "mechanic” ciphers and imaginary types that kept changing all the time. Real mortal men. She felt a powerful hunger, a craving that two cleanings the night before hadn't even dented.
She had hoped to stave it off with a couple of the Hollywood types, but she couldn't sense that they had any souls; they were as meaningless to her as the "mechanics."
There was no one there, she was all alone, but something seemed to be whispering in her mind, feeding her Marvationlike sensations.
"Too late," it whispered. "Too late. You've already gone over. You are just fighting it. Park your mind and your reservations. Did you not find it possible to be alert in daylight today? Could a Kauri do that? Physically it has already happened. Deep down you already know that. You need only to accept it and let your body do what it must do. Unlike the Kauri, it will give you true power; real strength. Can you stand it, anyway? Can you stand another hour, another day, another week like this? Give in while you can still gain and use that energy . . ."
She felt like crying, but the voice was right; it was like heroin to an addict, blood to a vampire. She could not resist it.
Something inside her just snapped, and she remembered very little of the details of the next few hours, only an eventual sense of enormous strength, of well-being, of being satiated at all levels. She awoke and brought herself to a comfortable sitting position and stretched. She felt different. Not completely; she remembered who she was and particularly what was to happen later today. There was a certain irony in that, she who had been in a force fighting those of Hell more than once was now being protected, guarded, and aided by those very same forces.
It was daylight, in fact at least midday, yet she felt no tiredness, no sense of coma. She walked into the hotel bathroom and stared at the mirror. There was no reflection there, none at all.
She hadn't expected one and wasn't all that upset. In fact, it was impossible to remember just why she had fought this so desperately. It wasn't as if she were going to endanger Irving or even Larae.
She turned away from the blank mirror and went over to the polished black marble tile on the wall. In this she was reflected, although not terribly clearly. It was certainly good enough, though, to show the royal purple tinged with gold, the sculpted and overly large insectlike wings, the incredibly exaggerated female form that made even a Kauri seem plain. Dark lips, too. Huge Bardot-in-spades sexy lips.
She felt better, sexier, more gorgeous than ever before, and she could also feel within her the pulsing of the energy she had from using, perhaps overusing, those attributes.
Poquah wasn't going to like it a bit, but the old prude had expected it, anyway, and if the Kauri leader, whom she now could not even remember clearly, and Ruddygore had not wanted or expected this, then it was their job to have told her how to avoid it.
Not that she wanted to avoid it, not now. Unlike most, she felt no compulsions of obedience to anyone, no servility, nothing. She was totally, absolutely, and one hundred percent a free agent, in total control of herself and what she did, subject only to that one restriction that she found bothered her not a bit.
She was a sexual vampire, and she had total power over men to feed her needs. All the power she needed and not a fear in the world.
Unless the Ancient Ones came through. If the Ancient Ones prevailed, what kind of future would any of them have?
That, too, though, seemed to give her confidence. Those Kauri wimps could barely knock over a leaf, and they had little offense otherwise at all. She, on the other hand, now had some very great power if the opportunity came to, use it. She very much hoped it would.
Chapter 14
Into The
Woods At Mount Doom
Hell may intervene directly in world affairs rather than by surrogate only to preserve the status quo.
—Rules, Vol. XIII, p. 17(a)
Nobody except Marge had slept very well during the morning, but all had adrenaline pumping at a massive rate by the time they assembled that evening at the battlement, including whatever Poquah's race substituted for it. He of course was still the only one who did not seem to feel undue concern.
Irving had decided on a minimalist approach, with the idea of wearing a single loincloth seeming both impractical and silly, not to mention unclean. Instead, he opted for nothing but a belt with a basic leather scabbard that would handle the sword and keep it from cutting his leg off in a fall, a black leather codpiece, and the leather straps to support them. He would also carry a backpack into the valley, but that would be left wherever they made camp. Everyone was to carry his or her own supplies.
Larae opted for almost exactly the same thing, except that she had her sling, stones in a pouch, and dagger on a slightly wider belt and would carry her javelinlike spear. The sight of the codpiece looked silly on that body, but Irving knew it was damnably necessary and not just part of the outfit.
Poquah wore brown and green britches and a more standard sword belt and scabbard affair, but he looked a lot more basic and a lot more sinister, as he had the times the others had seen the usually silent Imir go into battle.
Joel Thebes wore his crumpled and very dirty white suit and black saddle-style tie shoes.
They all gasped when they saw Marge,, and she gave them the sexy smile and a movie star pose. "Really stunning, the new me, huh?'
"Criminal," Poquah sniffed. "I knew this would happen! If you touch either of these two, I'll risk iron myself to finish you!"
She smiled sweetly at him and blew him a mock kiss. "You know you couldn't do it. No man is ever going to be able to do that to me. Don't worry, I'm still on the team and we have the same goals. I'm not about to go after Joe's kid. But if you didn't want this to happen, you shoulda provided some way for it not to happen, or Ruddygore or the Sisterhood or somebody should have, right? It feels so right, so normal, I almost think the reason you all didn't was because I was always supposed to be one of these and everybody but me knew it. Irving, close your mouth, pull in your tongue, think of your almost lady love here, and remember that in an hour or so we're gonna be shot right into a situation that's likely to kill us all in the next couple of days, anyway. Right?"
Even Larae, whose only interest in girls until then had been as rivals or critical examples, felt the attraction Marge now exuded. The difference was, she now felt herself torn between a desire to complete her transformation to male and a wish to become one of those.
At precisely eighteen hundred, about ninety minutes before sunset at that season in that latitude, the figure of a monk appeared among them on the battlement. In spite of bright sunshine, he still looked as if he were in deep shadow.
Mephistopheles looked at Marge, but not as other men had. "I see that you have made the final transition. More than ever now you must trust your instincts. There will probably be good prey in there for a seductress, but use the power wisely. Iron about fifty millimeters below the heart will kill you as surely as it will kill any other of the facie, and you have no p
ower over women of any type."
She nodded. "I'll be careful. That much hasn't changed. How do we get to Mount Doom, though? Shouldn't we have left before now in order to travel? I mean, it's like another thousand miles, isn't it?"
"Almost, but that is using the methods of the world. Come! All together now! Have hold of what you wish to bring with you, for there will be no chance to do this twice!" The Prince of Hell put his arms out straight to either side and faced the south-southwest. "All face where I face and be prepared. Even now the battle rages, and we shall soon join it. Each of you touch one other close to you, and at least one of you touch my robe. Yes, thank you. Do not fear what you see—it is being done for your own benefit. Be prepared for bizarre and violent sights and sounds and dizzying sensations, but hold fast. You must hit the ground running and be into that wood in the blink of an eye, as soon as you see the opening. Many lives and souls of great bravery and value are being put on the line for you! Do not let them down!" He paused. "Ready? You see? I am in Hell, and Hell is in all places at once. Therefore, since you are with me, we are already there!"
The entire world, even the entire universe, suddenly vanished.
Wheeeee●eeeeehW
They approached the dark at the end of the tunnel before they could think any more about it.
And like that they burst through into an insane, chaotic roar of battle on a vast supernatural scale.
All around them, great dark shapes like giants in a twisted shadow play rode even more horrifying steeds that snorted, exuded, and shot fire and brimstone and electrical energies at an equally horrific series of giant apparitions in front of them. The enemy seemed outlined in bright white energy yet was all animal hatred, with slashing fangs and razor-sharp claws not of flesh and blood but of supernatural energy, the true underlying That behind All That.
It was the most awful, terrifying thing any of them had ever seen, made all the more so by their total lack of control over anything, including being able to run or hide or block from their vision the grisly and grotesque war of the evil gods that raged all around them. Instead, they tried to focus forward on a tiny sliver of light, of reality, toward which they slowly moved even as they stood motionless with Mephistopheles.
The pinpoint grew abruptly larger, surrounding and overwhelming them, and they felt the suddenness of wind on their faces and the heat of the early evening and saw a. vast impenetrable-looking forest only a few dozen meters in front of them.
They didn't wait for an invitation; although they were all still stunned and reeling from the incomprehensible violence through which they'd come, they each acted out of an instinct for self-preservation and hit the ground running hard for those trees, not stopping until they were well inside the thick grove and hidden by its shadows.
Irving still wasn't thinking; he flattened himself against a tree, breathing hard, the terror in his face impossible to disguise. He wasn't certain where Larae was, but he thought he could hear her gasping for breath not far from him, while over in another corner came the sound of the oily Thebes whimpering.
Poquah had been in that realm before, although never against that sort of enemy or facing that intensity of sheer hatred. He had felt and been unnerved as they had, but his nearly absolute self-control had not wavered. Only the fact that he was breathing almost as hard as the others showed that there was anything more going on inside his head.
Of them all, Marge felt the least affected, and she wasn't sure why. Certainly she'd never seen anything like that before, but what had been total horror and confusion for the others had been to her like a great thrill ride; she could still feel the sense of exhilaration from all the energy that had washed over and through her. It felt as if she'd just come off the greatest roller coaster in the world, one with, nothing but superhill after superhill. The sense of extreme danger, of the potential for instant death or psychic dismemberment, far from being so terribly frightening, had only increased the thrill. She hadn't had this much fun, felt this great, since ... since ...
Hell, she'd never felt this great!
She'd been a wimpy Kauri far too long. This was living again!
She could see and sense that her companions did not share her enthusiasm, and it amused her. I'm the only real female in this whole bunch, and I've got all the balls, she thought with some satisfaction.
She walked through the forest, finding each of them in turn and saying in a normal tone not designed to bring unwanted attention but sufficient to be heard by them all, "Come on, come out! We've got to get moving! The dark's not gonna pose a big problem for me, but it sure will for the rest of you. Let's move in and set up some sort of camp here."
Slowly, shakily, they all managed to let go, although Thebes let go and followed only when it was suggested that the alternative was that he not come and thus be left there for whoever or whatever came along.
"What—what was that?" Larae managed after a while.
"Just what the demon said it was," Poquah responded. "That is total war in the realm of Heaven and Hell and, in this case, a third force as well. Ugly, is it not? Ugly and beautiful at one and the same time."
"I—I could make sense of little of it," she admitted.
He nodded. "None of us could. Our minds aren't capable of processing that sort of information, nor are our brains fast enough and clever enough to interpret what we were seeing. The result was a series of horrific impressions, true, and all of the chaos of battle, but nothing specific. I must admit, though, that it was useful and instructive in judging the enemy here."
"How so?" Irving asked him. "All I got was a lot of hatred and animal lust."
"True. That's what I got, too. The mason this temporary breakthrough worked was that the forces of Hell were employing carefully plotted battle plans. There was intellect, organization, and discipline there, and it was pitted against raw emotional power. No plan, no coordination, no discipline, just all the base passions. The only reason they am formidable is the depth of their power. Intellect can hold against brute force in most cases, but if that is the force level now, imagine what it will be like if these demigods truly come through. I believe that's what Hell fears, what it cannot withstand. If just the followers here can muster this kind of power and wrest and tear even this small spot flout the Prince of Hell himself, then who or what could withstand their masters?"
There was a sudden low, ominous rumbling that seemed to come from all around, and the very earth shook and the trees began to sway this way and that. The earth shifted beneath them, throwing them all briefly to the ground.
It went on for a few seconds but stopped almost as quickly as it had started. There was, however, still the sound of only slightly more distant mumbling and the occasional whiff of sulfur.
They picked themselves up in the deepening gloom of the forest. "What was that?" Irving asked as they set off, unnerved once again.
"A minor earthquake, I believe," Poquah told him. "We are walking into a deep valley cutting right into a gigantic and somewhat active volcano, remember, and these forces all around certainly won't help pacify its normal and natural anger."
"There is no danger of it erupting onto us, is there?" Larae asked nervously.
"I don't think so," the Imir replied, "even though that would be very symmetrical and thus in full accord with the Rules. To do so, though, would mean wiping out this valley and this forest, and I believe that these specific segments, mostly remnants moved here from Earth after the Fall, are pretty well protected. Not, however, from earthquakes and other similar phenomena."
"You sure you're going in the right direction?" Irving asked him nervously. "It's getting pretty dark."
"I'm an Imir. Being in trouble in my natural forest element would be as unthinkable as it would be for, say, a wood nymph. Ah! See?"
It emerged right out of the ground, surrounded and even overgrown by the trees, but it was a large and very round-looking cave.
"Lava tube," Poquah explained. 'There do appear to have been som
e limited eruptions in here, after all. Perhaps we can use that somehow."
Irving looked at it nervously. "You mean lava comes out of that thing? Forget it! No way I'm goin' in there!"
"It doesn't tend to happen twice. This was formed in the process; it's not a cannon. It appears perfect for us, and convenient. All of us can fit in there, it's not easy to spot, and there aren't a lot of nasty other things living in it."
"I think I'd rather stay outside than be in there," Larae commented, and Irving nodded.
"No telling what is in those trees after dark; you'd have no warning and no chance if something dropped on you," Poquah pointed out. "This might not be as comfortable, but there's rock and dirt all around you. There is no time when you need more protection than now, when we don't know what is here. Later, when we see what we are dealing with, we can adjust."
Marge looked at it. "No way I am crawling in there," she told him, then chuckled. "I don't think you'd want me in such close quarters. Let me see what I can see."
"No! Not yet!" Poquah snapped. "You more than anyone are vulnerable to them, since they are such raw emotion. I cannot afford to have you, engulfed by their power and go over to their side while you know all that we know!"
"You can't afford ...! You can't stop me from doing anything I want to do. None of you can. It's already dark, and you're gonna have to set up by braille as it is, since even faerie sight isn't all that much use in that lava tube. I can see very well. You are all ground huggers. I can fly. You might not approve of my personality change, although I'm getting to like it more and more, but I know which side I'm on. You better watch that iron they're packing when you're all stuffed in there, Poquah. You're in more immediate danger from them than from whatever's out there."
Horrors of the Dancing Gods Page 29