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Outside the great metallic cities – spell-protected and weatherproof – the climate of Hell was extreme. Surface temperatures rose to 860°F in the carbon dioxide atmosphere, a greenhouse effect so intense that it melted lead. A fifteen-mile layer of sulphuric-acid cloud blanketed the world at a height of thirty miles, casting the surface into perpetual gloom.

Because of the conditions, each member of Beleth’s entourage was forced to take traditional demonic form – squat, immensely strong, with leathery skin and stubby wings – while Beleth himself had shape-shifted into the towering, slab-muscled Prince of Darkness whose horned face was so familiar to black magicians everywhere.

The party sat in the Great Hall of Beleth’s keep, a basalt-built structure that clung to its lonely cliff face like a giant toad. Acid rain lashed the translucent window, driven by a hurricane that seldom ceased. Their faceted, adaptive eyes penetrated the heavily scarred glass and the deepening gloom beyond to give them sight of a gently rolling plain strewn with flat wedges of rock and broken to the east by an active volcano.

‘The special portals…?’ Beleth rumbled.

A smelly demon named Asmodeus said quickly, ‘In place, Master. ’

‘All of them?’

‘Yes, Master. ’

‘Troops?’

‘On standby, Master.

‘Assault spells?’

‘In place, Master. ’

‘Illusions?’

‘In place, Master. ’

‘Blooms?’

‘Matured, Master. ’

The volcano to the east belched black smoke and erupted lava which flowed in a fiery river across the open plain. A small colony of steel-fanged niffs took fright and raced away.

Beleth leaned forward, his eyes dark. ‘The boy?’

‘In pl-’ Asmodeus caught himself in time and changed his response. ‘The boy, Master?’

Normally they would have communicated telepathically, with no chance of misunderstanding. But here, far from the amplifiers of the cities, it was easier to revert to speech.