Kostchtchie was deeply frustrated—extremely frustrated—because in less than half an hour, he had run into two pieces of terrible luck.
The first was that the treasure he regarded as his opportunity to rise to power had been taken from him. More precisely, it was about to be taken from him. The insect prince, Obox-Ob, had sent someone to tell him that an alliance was possible, but he had to hand over the pearl in his possession.
Kostchtchie's first reaction upon hearing this was to slaughter everyone around him. He had only obtained the pearl a day ago, yet Obox-Ob already knew about it and had even sent someone to demand it. There was definitely a traitor!
But Kostchtchie immediately dismissed the thought, because he knew it was impossible. What he meant by impossible was not that everyone around him was utterly loyal, but that Obox-Ob would never take Tanar'ri as subordinates.
If Kostchtchie ranked second in his hatred for the Tanar'ri, then first place could only belong to Obox-Ob. This former demon prince, whose chaos surpassed that of nearly every Tanar'ri, could not possibly tolerate any Tanar'ri appearing before him, much less accept one as a subordinate.
Unfortunately, all of Kostchtchie's followers were Tanar'ri. Though Kostchtchie had always hated the Tanar'ri to the bone and had even gone so far as to transform all his followers into frost giants, their essence remained Tanar'ri. Kostchtchie understood that perfectly well.
Obox-Ob's messenger was a creature resembling some kind of crawling insect. It looked like a grotesque patchwork of spiders, centipedes, scorpions, and all manner of venomous bugs. It was the size of an ordinary horse, yet had three different heads, countless compound eyes, and bizarre jointed limbs growing all over its body. It was difficult to determine whether such a thing was