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"Where have you been?" The question was an accusation, the voice a snarling scream.

"Serving you as I then thought best, my king," Vuron said evenly.

Graz'zt, his giant ebony frame tense on his massive chair of state, was obviously not about to accept so reasonable a reply. "There has been a shift of power here! Why didn't you warn me, Vuron?" As he spoke, crackling motes of dark energy came from his body, forming an aura of negativity that sucked in little bolts of electricity from the dim atmosphere of the huge chamber. These crackles played in sudden bursts around the demon king and made his aspect even more terrible.

The tall, straight body of the albino demon lord bent in subjection. "It was the power of Initiator, my king. That force, and the emissions of your own Theorpart too, masked the turn of events."

"Give it to me!" Graz'zt screamed. "You were trusted with the most important assignment, and you failed! Where is Unbinder? I want it now!"

"As you wish, King Graz'zt." The albino held forth both of his long, powerful hands, palms upward. His pink eyes glazed, then burned a ruby hue. The black, conical shape of the third portion of the mighty relic appeared in his pale hands. As if it were upon a cushion, Vuron presented it, dropping down to one knee as he did so. "Your Theorpart, my king," he intoned ceremoniously.

The black demon snatched the dark object from Vuron, the Theorpart becoming nearly invisible as Graz'zt clutched it to his massively muscled chest. Then its strange dweomer came into play. The crackling energies around the demon king were drawn to it and absorbed in a lightless flash that was still somehow perceptible. The effect was instantaneous on Graz'zt. He seemed to grow larger and more awesome. "Get out!" he shouted at Vuron. "I will hold council soon. Be prepared! Your failure will be judged then."

"I hear and stand always ready to serve, my king," the albino said quietly as he bowed his head and withdrew. Graz'zt was paying no attention, clutching Unbinder and drawing in great waves of energy with it. Vuron made no sound as he left the hall. The tall, stick-thin, and leathery-skinned albino stood out among the weird nightmare of demons in the palace, not only because of his alabaster skin but because of the power he held. As steward to Graz'zt, he commanded instant homage from all there save a few princes and one or two demon lords holding high office.

As Master of the Roving Hordes, Vuron was the third most powerful general in his king's growing domain. Only Prince Yeenoghu and Lord Kostchtchie were superior in rank — and that only theoretically, for the albino demon lord controlled fully two-thirds of all the troops inhabiting Greater Mezzafgraduun, the name given to the layers of the Abyss that were under Graz'zt's purview. Vuron flinched inwardly at that thought. He had been in such a position of power. Now... who could say? From the sly glances and covert whisperings he evoked, Vuron knew that word, as usual, was sweeping through the grand palace: "Vuron is in disfavor," went the mutterings. "Beware when you speak to him, or you too might suffer the wrath."

With bearing, gaze, and controlled gesture the near-skeletal albino commanded and got every bit of respect and obedience due him, but not one jot more. None came fawning to ask favors. No groveling and begging supplicants lurked outside his personal suite. Vuron shrugged and ignored that. Excellence and commitment would tell in the end. A pair of hulking skurda guarded the portal. The flat, lifeless eyes of the scorpion-demons seemed to grow even more dead as he passed, but both were otherwise perfect in appearance and demeanor. The albino carefully closed the door to his chambers and locked it fast with a spell. Then, using his secret word of passage. Vuron went into the inner cyst where all of his vital information was kept. He floated above the concave floor in the center of the space, looking down upon a holographic map of the Abyss.

Mezzafgraduun, three hundred thirty-third layer of the Abyssal Plane, glowed with a deep, opaline luster. There were twenty-nine levels above it and thirteen below that had a paler though similar hue. Those were the layers now conquered and made part of the greater kingdom of Graz'zt. The realms of Kostchtchie. Yeenoghu, and the newly joined Baphomet shimmered in tones of color that indicated their past status. In all, six dozen strata of the plane were now bound to Graz'zt — counting only the useful, productive ones. Adding in the various shunned layers and forsaken backwaters, virtually a quarter of the whole plane was under the control of the obsidian king of demons. Little markers and strange, floating sigils showed demon gatherings, hordes, powers, and magics in play. Fully half of all of these indicators were of the silvery black sheen of Graz'zt and his minions.

At a mental command, the sphere of the demoniac realm altered and the whole of the netherworld replaced it. More of the dark opalescence appeared, demonstrating the extent of Graz'zt's power, the sweep of what was in actuality the first demon empire. If each plane of the dark realm was likened to a continent, then Graz'zt had spread his power out to engulf two and was threatening a third, from a base that was but a portion of the demon-land. Masses of red and purple glyphs writhed along a line described by similar markings of glowing black and smoky color, the place where the front of the advancing horde of demons was met by devil legions and daemon divisions. At a thought, Vuron could cause any such marking to expand and reveal details of Its representation, whether it was an auxiliary legion of second-rate dreggals, elite maniples of evil-horned devils, or the battalions of Nerull himself. The demon lord Impassively noted that every advance he had planned seemed stalled, and there were possible reverses taking shape. But that was secondary and must wait until later. He concentrated once again, and the view shifted again, so that the sphere of the Abyss now filled the chamber.

Vuron floated gently through the phantom replications of the demon strata. These layers wavered and changed as the demon lord sought here and there. Nothing! This is not actual," the stick-thin demon said aloud. He closed his red-pink eyes and concentrated. He still maintained a link to the Theorpart. Carefully, so as not to alert Graz'zt, he drew power from the matrix that was Unbinder, letting the great evil force of the artifact flow through him. Its energy filled Vuron, spilled out, and surrounded him with a field of terrible strength.

"Now let us see," the demon lord cried, and Intoning mind-shattering syllables In his sing-song incantation, Vuron knitted, shaped, and focused the power that he had leeched Into a palpable cluster of tentacles. These he sent into the phantom projection, and as they entered the projection they too became ethereal and vanished, small things lost in the greatness. But the force within them dwarfed all else, and suddenly the maplike depiction shimmered, flickered, and changed.

"Now I see you!" It was a cry of triumph, for the seemingly quiet layers that surrounded the domain of Graz'zt became hot with the glow of enemy forces at work. Triumph turned quickly to disbelief, disbelief to agony, as Vuron comprehended the extent of the debacle. Graz'zt's fury had been spewed forth upon the albino because the stratum of the cataboligne demons had been wrested from the king's grasp by an unexpected assault. Vuron was certain that Graz'zt envisioned it as nothing more than a minor revolt in the provinces, so to speak. The albino demon lord now grasped the fullness of the enemies' strength.

Up from the depths swept the forces of the slime-demon queen Zuggtmoy and her cohort Szhublox. With them were the standards of Demogorgon. Var-Az-Hloo, and a score of other demon lords. Even as Vuron's gaze took in the advance, the mass of hostile sigils was brightened. It now gleamed with the glyphs of the hordes of Mandrillagon and Abraxas with their lesser vassals as well. The combined host was awesome in its strength and numbers, and Graz'zt had no intelligence of its approach.