Tasslehoff had heard rumors about the thing that stood before him, but he had never truly believed them until now. The thing towered over the Magus, three times the height of a man. Two great tentacles dangled from its shoulders in place of normal arms, and two heads maned with black fur rested where one head should be. Scales glittered over its skin, and in the light of the firepots the kender saw its feet were clawed like those of a bird of prey. Slime and oil fell from it, the droplets smoking when they struck the stony floor.

The heads gazed down upon the Magus. Inhuman mouths spoke, their rasping voices out of time with one another by a fraction of a moment.

"Again," the voices said, "you call me from the Abyss to defile my presence with your own. You summon my divine person to fulfill your petty desires, and you tempt my everlasting wrath. Sorely, I wish to have vengeance on this world for giving you birth, you who toy with the Prince of Demons like a slave. I thirst for your soul like a dying man for water."

"I did not summon you to hear your problems," responded the Magus in a cracked, thin voice. "Bound you are to me, bound by the circle. You shall hear me out."

With screams that made Tasslehoff jerk from the bars and cover his ears, the thing's heads shot down at the Magus-and were thrown back by unseen forces that sparked and flashed like lightning. The thing's tentacles writhed and flailed the air like titans' whips.

"Aaahieee!!! Wretch! To speak to me so! Ten thousand times you are cursed should these bonds fade! Ten thousand times will I break you in my coils, until your dark soul rots!" For several minutes the demon roared out its rage. The Magus stood before it, unmoved and silent.

In time the thing ceased to cry out. Its breathing became a slow, ragged thunder.