The slag heap of the creature awakened every nerve in Stroud and he could feel the intense heat of it scalding the outer layer of the protective shield afforded by Esruad.
Stroud began to feel--literally feel--the pain that Kendra was suffering. He felt it in every fiber of his being. The slag heap rose and fell, the swells of its breathing forming an ocean wave of intense, volcanic fire.
"You came a long way to find me," it said, snickering. "What for you is thousands of years ... for me is the time it takes to roast this man thing!"
Wisnewski's body lit in flame and went up like a torch when a fluid, fiery finger from Ubbrroxx touched him. Stroud found his eyes dimming. It was torture to look on the ugliness of the monster, for in its center floated the remains of half-digested human parts. The demon was a shark of the underworld, swallowing its prey near whole, able then to reproduce any form it wished, capable of controlling lesser forms from afar.
"My God, I'm going blind again," Stroud said.
"Don't look on it!" Esruad replied from within.
The demon heard both voices and slowed in its progress toward Kendra.
"Now! Now! As planned!" shouted Esruad.
Stroud raced toward the gelatinous fire before them, watching snakes, huge lizards, spiders and rats raining down on him as he did so, bouncing off him as they hit the shield that was blazing red now from the heat. Stroud's form stopped before the demon, and the shield around him glowed, ablaze with the energy war going on between Esruad and Ubbrroxx, turning to a white-hot glare. Inside, Stroud felt his own flesh burning when the cube protecting him began to spin and spin and spin, so fast now that it resembled an enormous diamond in the darkness, a small crystal closet.
"Swallow me whole, mighty Ubbrroxx! Swallow me up now!" Esruad's voice wafted over the creature.
Now the demon moved toward Stroud, but it was confused at the sight before it. Stroud himself could hardly see through the spinning veil before him when suddenly he felt himself being wrenched apart, turning into two separate, distinct but identical beings. Stroud saw himself separating, dividing like a duplicating cell, and there were two spinning brilliant lights in the darkness, he and Esruad.
Ubbrroxx watched, hesitant, confused.
So far, so good, Stroud thought. "Come for me now!" he shouted.
At the same instant Esruad shouted from his vantage point the same words. Stroud could not believe the mirror image they had become of one another there in the pit of darkness before the fiery demon, still breathing its hot breath against their shields.
Ubbrroxx swung its entire bulk at them, sweeping them down, a pair of broken bowling pins as the shields came crashing down around them. Stroud felt now at his most vulnerable and he tried desperately to do what was required, as Ubbrroxx, taunting now, raised a spurting jet of itself directed at Kendra and set her aflame!
On cue, Stroud screamed and raced madly at Ubbrroxx, cursing it for having burned the screaming woman alive, just as Esruad had promised he would. The other Stroud drew forth an enormous sword, a knight prepared to slay the dragon, but the sword took shape away from Esruad and grew larger and larger, forming an enormous steel mirror, and for the first time ever Ubbrroxx gazed on itself, sending a river of fire at the steel mirror created by the ancient magician.
Stroud saw the river of fire coalesce into a river of light, and it shone back at Ubbrroxx, blinding him, reflecting back a burning light that began eating away at it, parts of its fiery exterior falling away, raining down over Stroud like screaming bombs.
Stroud reached for the crystal skull and held it firmly up to the creature and he felt the jolt of light reflected off the crystal now, and in the struggle the three points of light and energy formed a kind of supernatural transponder network. It was Esruad's plan to reverse the field of energy from which the demon drew its evil magic, to transpose and interchange his own power for the demon's, and to ultimately neutralize it. His calculations and his faith in the triangulation of their three energy fields were an incredible risk, but it was the only risk worth taking anymore. It must work.
Stroud was now completely blind. The light, heat and energy charging down at him from the mountain of fire that was Ubbrroxx, pounding into the crystal skull, by all reckoning ought to have exploded the crystal. Stroud found himself beaten back by the sheer force directed at him as it beamed off the steel mirror to Ubbrroxx's essence and back to him. The energy surge had sent him to his knees, and he was being doubled over, his hands burning as if frozen in ice where he held firm to the skull. The skull turned into the hideous head of an ogre, but he held firm.
He heard no more laughter, no more screams, all the sounds that gave the demon comfort. He heard no more rending of flesh, no more flesh popping with heat, for all the power was now directed as with a laser at and into the eyes of the silvery, crystal skull. It was being drained away and stored like a battery in the skull and Ubbrroxx sensed this and for the first time began a whining, sniveling screechy noise like a keening bird that was going hungry.
Stroud felt now the heat polyps on his own face and hands bubbling, and for the first time he realized how badly he had been charred, but he was relieved to once again be feeling something, anything. For a time he had gone completely numb, blocking out everything, and his sight remained lost. He could only see now through the ethereal "eyes" of Esruad, who had regained the form of a lich once more and had come to Stroud, taking the skull that was burned into his flesh out of his hands and placing it into his own.
"I, too, must go now," said Esruad, holding on to the skull.
Stroud stared through Esruad's eyes at the spongy, moldering residue of mossy material left behind where Ubbrroxx had been. There were no smoldering skeletons hanging from the wall, no sign of Kendra or Wisnewski ever having been here; not so much as a shackle. There was only the wavy, fading apparition of Esruad, the skull he held in his hands and the fire inside the skull--electrical impulses, miniature shooting stars.
"Any further battles with the demon god," said Esruad in a reassuring voice, "will be fought inside the skull."
"Wait!" said the blind Stroud, stumbling toward Esruad but in the wrong direction as Esruad's spirit flew into the skull and the skull fell to the planks of the ship and rolled to Stroud's feet.
Esruad, too, was gone ... possibly forever.
Stroud gathered up the skull which had saved them all--all but Leonard, Wisnewski and dear Kendra, he feared. He had been willing to sacrifice himself for them all, but that apparently was never the demon's wish. Ubbrroxx had wanted them all, and especially Esruad. The demon had wanted to swallow the skull and make its energy source part of its own.
Watch what you wish for, Stroud silently told Ubbrroxx, wherever the damnable bastard now was. "And watch yourself, Esruad..."
Stroud stumbled about trying to find his way, unable to see, as blind now as a man could be, banging against dangerous tiers in his way, belowdecks of a ship sunken beneath earth. He was blind inside a black hull.
Then he remembered the radio. He couched the skull in the crook of one arm and tried to raise James Nathan, and it seemed that all static had been created by the demon. He got directly through to Nathan. An agitated female voice came over before Nathan got to the radio.
"Abe! Abe, you're alive! You're okay!" It was Kendra.
"And you? You're topside?"
"Yes, Wisnewski and I made it back when--"
"I thought you died. In fact I thought I saw you die, both of you. Illusions, deception ... all along."
"Thank God you're okay."
Nathan must have snatched the receiver away, for he was suddenly on. "Stroud, it's like a miracle. Everyone here, the zombies--"