The revealed energies above were no better. There was the unmistakable rune of the cambion Iuz and beside it that of the witch Iggwilv. Both were incandescent with the power of the Initiator. "They cluster like dung beetles around a massive pile of turds!" Vuron grated aloud as he saw the sigils of the demon princes and lords that hovered nearby. Orcus to the right, Azazel and Bulumuz there too. Eblis was to the left, with Lugush and Marduk. Close by was Socoth-benoth, positioned as if to prop up the cambion. Behind all of them trailed a cluster of lords and greater demonlings, their trains, and their demon soldiers.

Between these two jaws lay the newly won kingdom of his lord Graz'zt. The bands and hordes guarding its frontiers were few, scattered, weak. The advancing adversaries would crack them like a nut in a vise. Vuron shouted an awful word of power. The scene vanished, and the whole secret chamber shook as it was drained by the magical utterance. The albino cared not. The place had served its purpose.

Vuron strode into the antechamber of Graz'zt's own suite in the royal wing of the sprawling palace. The massive guristhoi who served as the dark demon king's bodyguards tried to prevent the albino demon lord from entering. Steel-hard scales, colossal muscles, and fearsome attack powers were of no avail, of course. The tall, thin demon lord brushed the sentinels aside with a small gesture. His personal efficacy would have been sufficient alone, and Vuron still bore the massive infusion of the black force from the Theorpart as well. The guristhoi were frozen immobile instantly. The huge valves of hematite swung open at his approach, and the albino strode into the sanctum sanctorum of Graz'zt without heralding of other sort.

The six-fingered demon king sprang up from his couch. He had evidently been deep in discussion with certain of his advisors. The dark elf Eclavdra, his great high priestess, was there, as were Ogrijek, lord of the winged zubassu; the flame-demon Palvlag; and Nergal, the Justicier. Maps and papers littered the table around which their seats were clustered. "How dare you?" Graz'zt boomed. "This time, pale dog, you have gone too far!"

Vuron prostrated his thin body full length upon the mirror-polished jet slabs of the chamber floor, but almost as he so supplicated himself the albino was on his feet again. Unnaturally long arms waving, Vuron plunged ahead with what he had to do. Graz'zt actually turned pale at this, his ebon color fading to a dark ashen hue, for he saw what could only be the passes needed to summon power and use it. Vuron is here, thought Graz'zt, to assassinate me!

Graz'zt took a step back, and his hand grasped the icy metal of Unbinder desperately. "No, my liege!" Vuron shouted. "Look!"

The strange movements Vuron had completed caused a high-pitched twanging to fill the room, and at the same moment three-dimensional images appeared on either hand. "Behold the faces of your enemies, King Graz'zt!"

"Are you mad? Play you the gnomish buffoon, Vuron?!" Graz'zt barely glanced at the shadowy figures that moved and seemed to pantomime speech. The great demon had the Theorpart firmly in hand now and drew himself up to his full height, looming over even the tall albino.

"Send him to nothingness, great king!" The voice that urged Graz'zt to use the power of the evil artifact was that of Ogrijek.

"Please withhold your ire, my lord Graz'zt." came Eclavdra's clear voice sweetly. "Isn't that Iuz there, with Orcus?"

Lowering the conical device slowly, Graz'zt turned his gaze from the pink eyes of his albino warlord and steward to look where the dark-elf priestess was pointing. Sure enough, there was the cambion in his demoniacal form speaking with grand gestures to none other than the ram-headed king of vampires and their ilk. "What's this?" the demon king roared, again assailing Vuron with words. "You affront me with such scum in my own inner chambers?"

The nerve-jangling whine accompanying the ghostly images suddenly ceased and was replaced by a voice: "... to fall upon my gross and stupid sire and utterly crush him and all his vomit-sucking little—"

The bland face of the corpulent Orcus split, the woolly muzzle showing teeth appropriate to a shark's maw rather than that of so innocuous a creature as a sheep. "Silence!" the great demon bleated. There — see there! Phantom forms in the mist." Iuz's skin tone deepened from its light red to a fuchsia color, but nevertheless the cambion kept quiet and gazed in the direction Orcus indicated. Both appeared to be staring straight into Graz'zt's own eyes.

"An omen, and a potent one," hissed Iggwilv as she too stared. That the vapors rising from the Cyanic Fens should take the form of 'dear' Graz'zt even as we march for his stronghold is a great portent. We shall thus immerse him in such stuff when he falls into our hands!"

As this occurred, Vuron made further passes, and the perspective suddenly altered to one that was above the figures. This Graz'zt noted, even as his main attention stayed upon the trio. "Omen? My scepter tells me it was something more dire than a foretelling, witch," the gross Orcus said in his blaring baah. "Yet there is no sense of it now, and the apparition too has vanished...."

"Attend me, King of Unlife," Iuz said in his demanding tone. "I wield the uncheckable might of Initiator. With it, I... we all... will overthrow the usurper. If the Font of Witchdom says it is a portent, then so it is!"

Orcus made some sort of reply, but his voice died away as Graz'zt turned away from that tableau in order to observe the other phantasms elsewhere. His eyes fixed on Zuggtmoy in her repulsive fungoid form, with the equally disgusting slime lord Szhublox, chimerical Demogorgon, and the other vile demons who attended them. "We will divide all of the Abyss between us," Demogorgon's rasping hiss said clearly throughout the chamber, "and all who do not fight with us now will be subjected to final termination upon our victory!"

"Just so, Abyssal Prince," Zuggtmoy's booming, rotten voice sounded in agreement. "All that was the claim of Graz'zt, and the fiefs of his curs too, will be ours to divide."

"What of the high priestess Eclavdra?" Var-Az-Hloo asked. "I have heard of the drow's beauty and skills...."

"I think that none will say thee nay should you choose to claim her as booty, handsome one," the fungoid demon queen fairly chortled, "if she somehow survives the coming devastation of her lord and master's false kingdom!"

"Enough!" Graz'zt was a lightless blur, his form barely recognizable. Great energies were being drawn to him, and the effect was startling even to Vuron, who had done a similar feat not so long ago. "I see now that I was in error, my steward. When did you discover this?"

"But a short time ago, my king. I came without regard to protocol or heed for my own well-being."

Graz'zt snarled, but the ferocity was directed at the images of the demon enemies. "They make alliance against me because of Iggwilv's urging and the Theorpart's power. If the witch and her sprat had brought Initiator's might to me, the whole of the Abyss united could not oppose my will. They conjoin from fear and greed. Yet they are allied...."

"Dogs who snap and snarl at each other, mighty king," said Ogrijek, lord of the zubassu-demons, in his most ingratiating tone. "They will devour each other, great Graz'zt, if you will but assign me more hordes to oppose them. My winged killers alone are not enough!"

Palvlag, not to be outdone, urged that he and his flame-demons be assigned to a major position immediately so as to smash the coming attack, even as the Justicier, Nergal, being the most powerful of the trio, demanded that he be awarded command of both of them and their followers. The three-way debate was stopped short by Graz'zt.

"You three will all have important commands... under me! Get ready, for I go to crush Demogorgon and his pack of scum myself. Now get out! Be ready whenever I call. You, high priestess, stay here with Vuron. I will assign you duties now." Not daring to complain, let alone offer protest, the three demon lords skulked out, casting sidelong glares at Vuron and the drow Eclavdra.