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vital energy of its procreator filling its body and mind, Rheachan, hound and child, felt as if it could conquer the multiverse. How great and all-knowing the Paterfamilias was! Perhaps if it did well this night, that one would consent to mingle with Rheachan always, so that Rheachan would be as strong and smart as Poxpanus. It sent its desire to the Paterfamilias, along with its hound’s lust for savage killing and devouring of blood… and soul, too. This primordial urge swept through Rheachan and into Poxpanus, and both were one and glad.
    “I have it now,” the daemon crooned mentally to its hound-child. “The life of the sprat, the vibrations of the bitch who was to care for it-so easy to read, to know, to find anywhere now.”
    “No need to think of future hunts. Paterfamilias. I will rend them both for you now.”
    Then the liquid stuff struck Rheachan, and the agony of its burning made Poxpanus writhe in his hidden cell as if the Netherlord himself had been subjected to the assault. In the confusion of the pain, the daemon allowed his hound free rein. The pain drove Rheachan into a murderous frenzy, of course, and the thing forgot all caution in its desire to avenge itself upon the miserable human female who had dared to so harm its corporeal form. Then the cylinder too went home, and the nether-hound and its father were suffused with even greater torment as the blessed silver struck, vaporized, and destroyed the eye of the hound.
    “Revenge!” The mental scream shook Rheachan and infused it with new strength and purpose. So too the assurance that followed: “Slay, feed, and then I will bring you to me, hound-child. Your eye will grow again, your vision be better still, for I will suffuse your being with more of me!”
    It was a fleeting communication, one that scarcely required any consideration. Rheachan reached forth, and the offending female human was no more. There was no reason for feeding, not on such a puny force as that one offered. Neither was the other female worthwhile… at least not immediately. A tiny human cub was there before Rheachan’s remaining eye, and its vitality belied its diminutive size. That one’s blood was ten times more desirable than the others’. The nether-hound reached greedily for the babe.
    “Wait!”
    The mental cry of warning reached the hound-thing too late-or perhaps Rheachan ignored the call. Rage and hunger had driven it beyond thought. This made it quite unaware of other forces that were suddenly impinging upon the space it was in. More than impinging. The forces were indeed in the room almost Instantly. They attacked Rheachan then, and it baffled the hound-thing. All it desired was to devour the infant, and there was something in its way, something that tore at the hound and prevented Rheachan from its evil desire. Then the nether-hound howled and ravened and died.
    The very web that Poxpanus had woven to protect himself prevented the daemon from assisting his offspring. The netherlord could have been with Rheachan in a split-second, using his powers to prevent what occurred, but his own wards prevented that. Only the mental link was possible, and that was now unbreakable as well. When Poxpanus tried to disengage the bond he found that something interfered.
    The umbilical connection between daemon and hound-child was affixed by some outside force that Poxpanus could not fight, locked just as the netherlord was kept tight within a fortress of his own construction. As Rheachan howled and ravened and was destroyed, a similar fate befell the daemon sire of the hound.
    It wasn’t actually death to Poxpanus, of course. The netherlord suffered pain and loss, but at least here, on this plane, it could not be slain. Not so the hound-child. And when Rheachan shed its ichor and died, a portion of Poxpanus, progenitor of the monstrosity, was annihilated. The shock of the loss was traumatic in many ways. The daemon lord tried to see its tormentors through Rheachan’s dying