Daemons Are Forever

All our plans and tactics disappeared, replaced by a brute struggle to survive. The squads were overrun or forced apart, and it was everyone for themselves. Most of the unarmoured Droods were dragged down and slaughtered in the first few minutes, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, by drones who ran uncaring into the face of their weapons. Droods died screaming under flailing fists, hands like claws, and stabbing, clubbing weapons. I could hear them all around me, their human screams mixed in with the inhuman howling of the drones.

And then, impossibly, even the armoured Droods began to fall, as the drones brought strange and u

Mr. Stab appeared out of nowhere and cut that drone’s throat with a long shining scalpel.

I ended up fighting side by side, and then back to back, with Molly Metcalf. Drones came at us from every direction, sometimes with weapons and sometimes without. I fired my Colt Repeater again and again, picking off drone after drone with my gun that never missed and never ran out of bullets, but soon they were too close, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen to get at me. I put the gun away, grew silver spikes on my gleaming fists, and waded into them with all the terrible strength and speed my armour gave me. I struck them down, and they fell broken and bloody before me. I ripped the faces from their heads, smashed their skulls, broke their bones, and stamped them underfoot when they fell. I picked them up and used them as living flails with which to beat the enemy. Blood and gore streamed down my gleaming armour, unable to find a hold. I stamped and spun, striking out with impossible speed. I formed my silver hands into cutting blades and thrust and hacked, butchering everything that came within reach. And still there seemed no end to them.

They beat at me with their hands, and their weapons, and none of them could touch me. But the drones with the terrible weapons were drawing slowly, inexorably, closer.

Molly was hitting them with every offensive magic she knew, chanting and cursing at the top of her voice. Drones were transformed into helpless things, and trampled underfoot. Sometimes their shapes just collapsed, and then ran away like muddy water. She called down lightning bolts from the sky, called up fire from sudden cracks in the hard ground, called storm winds to blow them away. Strange forces crackled on the air before her, incinerating anything that came too close. But her voice was cracking from the strain, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. Magic takes its toll, and even her hoarded energies wouldn’t last long at this rate.

I looked around during a brief lull in the fighting. I could hear Molly coughing and hacking painfully behind me. All my unarmored Droods were down, dead. Slaughtered, for all their fine training. About a dozen armoured Droods were still fighting, striding slowly through the chaos, striking down their enemies. Islands in a sea of death. Janissary Jane had been right all along. I didn’t need warriors. I needed an army.

Mr. Stab strode elegantly through the madness, no blood staining his fine clothes. He cut and slashed with almost inhuman grace and precision, killing everything that came within reach, and none of the drones could touch him. He was protected by forces far worse than theirs. He stalked the battlefield like a harsh Victorian god of war, smiling a terrible, happy smile, completely at home in Hell.

Roger Morningstar fought side by side with an armoured form I could only assume was Harry. Fierce flames burned all around them, consuming every drone they touched. Roger was smiling too. Harry fought well, with short, controlled, brutal movements, striking down the drones with almost clinical precision. Like it was just a job he happened to be extremely good at.

And Janissary Jane cut a bloody path through the roiling crowds with her infamous old sword, unstoppable in her cold and terrible fury. The greatest demon killer who ever lived.

She fought her way over to join Molly and me. I was wringing with sweat inside my armour, exhausted and ru

“It’s the tower!” she shouted over the roar of battle. “Something’s happening! I can feel it! I think the gateway’s opening!”

I clubbed down the nearest drones and turned to look. She was right. I could feel it too. A great light was shining out of the single opening, and more sprang from a hundred openings in the jagged sides of the huge structure. The air distorted and rippled all around it, and it was nothing to do with heat haze. I could sense if not see the gateway opening behind the tower, a great and growing circle, like a black sun…and on the other side of that opening…Something unbearably huge and awful and terribly aware. Pressing inexorably against the weakening barrier that was the only thing keeping it out of our small and terribly vulnerable world. Something so big I couldn’t even grasp the shape or nature of it. Like God walking angry in the world…

Whatever the Loathly Ones had summoned, it was here, waiting for the gateway to fully open, and then it would come through and do horrible, unspeakable things to us. Just because it could.

Something far worse than the Loathly Ones could ever hope to be.

I looked quickly around me. I counted ten armoured Droods still standing. I called to them through the armour.

“Get to the base of the structure! Everyone grab a part of it and bring the bloody thing down!”

I turned to Molly. She was swaying on her feet, blood ru

“We have to get to the base of the structure, quickly! Molly! Can you clear us a path?”

“I’m tired, Eddie. So tired…”

“Can you do it?”

She glared at me. “Yes! Yes, I can do it! I’m Molly Metcalf, dammit. But you’d better be right about this, Eddie…”

She thrust one arm in the direction of the towering structure, and just like that every drone between us and it exploded into bloody gobbets. I made a mental note never to get Molly really mad at me, grabbed her arm, and we ran for the tower down the narrow aisle she’d opened. Aisles had opened up between all the other armoured Droods and the tower, and they were ru

For a long moment nothing happened. The tower was huge, and there were only eleven of us … but we were Droods, and we had the incredible strength of the armour on our side. We ripped the support right out from under the tower, and brought the bloody thing down.