The Hunter.
Qeteb fled through the Maze. The millions of demented creatures that had once throbbed and pulsed and muttered as one, now fled before him, desperately seeking escape themselves.
Beyond the walls of the Maze the trees stepped forward, and buried roots and branch tips into the tiny cracks of the Maze's walls.
Ur, standing slightly back, screeched with laughter.
Cracks spread screaming, and masonry fell. Within heartbeats of the trees' attack the walls of the Maze had been broached in a hundred places.
Creatures poured through, intent on escaping the Hunter. They were all devoured by the trees.
Qeteb knew nothing of the destruction being wreaked on the outer skin of the Maze. He fled as Caelum had once fled in nightmares, through infinitely barren corridors and passageways, all ending in such hopelessness that they forced the Demons and his companions to turn back and desperately seek another way before the Hunter found them.
Behind them rose a clamour of such frightfulness that their hearts quailed, and sometimes the hot breath of the hounds grew so close it scorched their skin.
From some unknown where, a bell tolled.
Qeteb ran, and his remaining three Demons raced desperately to keep up with him, their outstretched hands clutching at the protuberances of his armour, their voices screeching at him to not leave them behind ... don't leave them behind, think of everything they had done for him, remember how loyal they had been, the sacrifices they had made for him, the adoration they had given, so don't leave them behind, please, please, don't leave them behind ...
Qeteb left them behind.
Mot, Barzula and Sheol cried out, lost. Where had Qeteb gone? One instant he had been but a pace in front of them, now he was nowhere to be seen or sensed.
Instead they were faced only with the twisting, blank walls of the Maze, its stone floor slowly rising through twist after twist and bend after bend.
Slowly rising?
The Demons slackened their pace, terror being replaced by puzzlement and anger. The walls of the Maze were altering, the narrowness of the passage which trapped them abating, the entire face of the Maze changing.
"What is happening?" Sheol hissed, clutching at Barzula.
"We are being toyed with!" said Mot, pressing as close as he could to the other two.
The Maze had funnelled them into the twisting, narrow streets of a grey and dead city. Ash drifted down from the broken skyline of the city's tenement buildings: some of their walls rose burned and blackened into the sky, while others lay in tumbled, pathetic heaps of masonry.
Shattered window glass crunched under the Demons' feet.
This was the ruins of a city twisted and murdered within the flames of a massive conflagration.
"Carlon!" whispered a shadowy voice.
The Demons hissed, and turned to stare down a gloomy alleyway.
A small red-headed boy walked forth, one bloody hand clutched over the ruins of his belly.
A small male two-legs.
Tears ran down his face. "This was Carlon," he said. "This was my home."
Sheol growled, and made to snatch at the boy.
No, said a voice in her mind — in all of the Demons' minds — you may not touch this boy. You may only move forward.
The sound of a horse's hooves rattled on the cobblestones behind them.
Sheol whipped about her head.
DragonStar!
Move forwards.
And so they moved forwards, with unwillingness. But they had no choice, for Sheol and her two companions found their feet controlled by another, and their traitor feet moved them further into the city, and deeper into its mangled ruins.
As the Demons passed, gibbering and cursing, grey and saddened people stepped from every doorway, and from every side street and alley. All were disfigured in some manner or the other.
They were the hopeless hundreds of thousands who had either died amid the chaos of the Demons' physical attacks on Tencendor, or who'd had their minds snatched by the Demons and who had died at their own hands, or at the hands, teeth and claws of their demented companions of the wasteland.
As the Demons passed, the dead stared silently, tears trickling down their faces. Sometimes they turned away, unable to look.
The Demons snarled, defiant yet terrified, determined to somehow escape, yet unable to turn their feet from the road which twisted before them. Their forms blurred and changed, trying different guises and frames to see if they could fly out as a gryphon, or muscle their way out as an ox, or wriggle their way out as a worm of the earth.
Nothing worked, and the Hunter's magic drew them inexorably on, further and deeper into the ruined city.
Fifteen paces behind them the Star Stallion pranced, keeping pace with the Demons. He held his head high, snorting his indignation that he was not allowed to run to the clamour of the Hunt. Behind him stalked the Alaunt, their limbs stiff with impatience.
"Soon," whispered DragonStar, a calming hand on the stallion's neck, his voice also reaching and embracing his hounds. "Soon."
"And us?" cried the people as DragonStar passed by them. "And us?"
