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"Bh'Tostl," Stran said to the portly bartender. "Bh'Tostl the Deceiver."

The barkeep was no longer human. Skin that rolled and curled like hot flames stood exposed, as did two great spiraling black horns from a bovine-shaped head. Yellow eyes glared at Stran in fiery anger. Those evil eyes narrowed and the red beast asked in a deep booming voice, "You can see my true form?"

"I was cursed with drunkness when I arrived. Now I am sober and see things as the souls you poison with your foul brew cannot." Stran snapped back his weapons arm. "It is time to retrieve what I came here for."

Clawgibber snapped out, its barbed length reaching for the big demon on the opposite side of the bar. The barmaids, their true demonic forms apparent in Stran's eyesight, leapt to intercept the black coil in the finger-twitch instant it took to reach Bh'Tostl. Two succubi latched their gnarled claw-tipped hands about the cord stopping it an eyelash distance from Bh'Tostl's throat. Stran yanked back on Clawgibber in an attempt to strip the cord away from demon barmaid's foul hands. The snarling fiends, gripping Clawgibber tight, rolled toward Stran, awful maws snapping and acidic drool flying from their full black lips.

"Here, my stout little friend, put that warhammer to use," Stran said as the screeching succubi sailed by and he deposited them in a heap before the dwarf. 

He hauled back on Clawgibber with all his might, tearing the barbed coil from their raw hands. Their blood splattered about Berik's thick hands and he yelped in pain as the black ichor sizzled like water droplets upon a searing pan. Berik, gripping the warhammer in his right hand and wiping his blood-dappled left on his pants, eyed the two females before him, and then shot a glance at Stran.

"These are two soft barmaids. Though they may be good at brawling, they aren't no demonkin."

The boiling blood of the wounded demons enlightened Stran. He realized that without Berik's help he couldn't best Bh'Tostl—who thrashed in rage behind the bar but did not leave it—due to the infringing companions the big demon kept. He also knew Berik would not lay a smiting blow on anyone. The dwarf would be of no aid if he continued to be blind to the true forms of the demons.

Knowing what the fiery blood would do, Stran lashed out with Clawgibber, sending the sharp-toothed coils about the throat of one of the succubi. The whip whirled about the awful demon's neck and even in the moment the weapon slowed, Clawgibber, like a snake coiling about its prey, wrapped another strand about the terrible crimson demonflesh. With muscles bulging, Stran tugged back on Clawgibber. The entangled fiend emitted one ear-piercing scream then its awful head tore from its shoulders, the neck stump spraying a geyser of scorching blood everywhere. Berik, standing almost directly in front of the decapitated demon, howled in pain as he took a full bath of the demon blood in the face, dowsing his eyes with hot gore-rain.

"Ye have blinded me!" The dwarf threw his forearm across his face.

His warhammer drooped. He dropped his arm and blinked the blood from his eyes. The heavy weapon sprang to life, swinging up and out. "By Klmaru, the Devourer of Innocence, there are demons about."

Stran turned his attention to the enormous demon behind the bar. The brute had grown larger in size and its black horns scraped the ceiling.

"You have disrupted my business and livelihood. I will tear your heart from your chest and devour it before your dying eyes, mortal fool!" Bh'Tostl bellowed reaching towards Stran with hands as big as bar chairs.

Clawgibber swept out and away and, with its pointy tip like an arrow, dove into the giant demon's bulging belly. A horrible sucking sound came from the beast's gut. Stran grit his teeth and choked back a scream of pain as an awful sensation washed through him. The hand and arm gripping the ensorcelled whip tensed as if taking a shock of lightning. With sluggish movement, legs like heavy rock, Stran planted his feet and pulled on Clawgibber. Bh'Tostl howled in pain—a sound that shook the entire building—and set about digging the barbed line from his red-black belly.

Berik drew up beside Stran, looking down the length of the whip to where it ended driven into the huge demon's stomach. The black coil seemed to shiver and shrivel though it maintained its tautness.

Stran turned his head slowly and looked at the dwarf, fighting neck muscles that did not want to respond, and willed his mouth to open and his voice to speak. "The creature is too…strong. I feel it draining my life force…right through my…weapon."

Stran continued to pull at Clawgibber and the whip pulled at where it was attached beneath the bulging skin of Bh'Tostl's paunch. Just then the wooden planks beneath the feet of Stran and Berik began to buckle and splinter. An eerie glow shone up through the floorboards; crimson light radiated like glowing embers from some great underground firepit. Thick black stems the size of giant tree roots seethed and throbbed and buckled from beneath the flooring.