Lucifer's Lottery

him. It’s just me and the Great Outdoors . . .

When he dared look down, his belly flip-flopped. Six hundred and sixty-six feet was a long way down . . .

It was on the left shoulder of the Demonculus that Krilid now sat, in a convenient little observation cupola.

When he’d slammed Gerold’s raw heart into the monster’s cardiac cavity, the Hell-Flux had audibly groaned down below, and its pallid luminescence had momentarily trebled. Meanwhile, the Anti-Light at the end of the cavity had sparked, signaling that the Animation Spells were properly engaged and conduction had been achieved. All the while, the Electrocity Generators down below kicked up into high rev from an occult detection sensor, to drain off all available Deathforce power . . .

These things meant that everything was working right. All systems go, Krilid had thought, a bit incredulous that nothing yet had gone wrong.

On the field at the Demonculus’s massive feet, throngs of Conscripts rallied, firing up curse-tipped arrows and sulphur guns, but the creature’s sheer size reduced their efforts to futility. Krilid chuckled. Like throwing pebbles . . . But Krilid’s chuckle ground down when he spotted several more Balloon Skiffs beginning to rise from their launch platforms. Not good, the Troll realized. We need to be far away by the time those balloons can reach this altitude. Archlocks and Bio-Wizards would undoubtedly be on the Skiffs, and would try all guises of Hexes and Cabalistic Viruses in hopes of disabling the Demonculus before it became ambulatory.

But . . . when would that be?

“Hey, Gerold!” Krilid yelled up from the cupola’s little side window. He was shouting toward the crude hole where the Demonculus’s ear should be. “Can you hear me yet?”

The giant muck-made head remained motionless.

Krilid began to feel sick.

Why wasn’t it working? He’d done everything as instructed. Had Lucifer’s Sorcerers planted countermeasure devices within the Demonculus? So much for Ezoriel’s fortune tellers, the Troll lamented.

A mile up ahead, an attack formation of Gryphons were beginning to swoop down . . .

Krilid got out of the cupola and ran to the base of the Demonculus’s neck. “Gerold! Come on! Make this thing work!”

No response. The Demonculus didn’t budge, nor could any sign of unlife be detected about the creature’s appalling face.

“Damn it!” Krilid kicked at a muscle strand in the Demonculus’s neck. “The friggin’ thing’s busted!”

Several flaming arrows zinged by. Below, the Balloon Skiffs had ascended several hundred feet already, and the Gryphon formation . . .

More arrows began to sail toward the monster.

Krilid ducked just in time to miss being hit in the head. His guts sunk when he noticed Conscripts riding the first waves of Gryphons, bearing buckets of pitch. The second wave was manned by Flamma-Troopers. These horned, armless Terrademons were Hexegenically bred to vomit fire . . .

The Conscripts will paste the Demonculus with pitch, and then the Flamma-Troopers will set it on fire . . .

Along with me.

Then—

ZZZZZZip!

—another arrow sailed by, this one nicking Krilid’s ear. Off balance he flinched, tried to stabilize his footing, but then tripped on a stray bone jutting up from the dead meat and filth that composed the Demonculus’s shoulder—

Oh my God, I’m gonna—

Krilid fell.

He fell fast. He didn’t scream, and he barely panicked. What he did mostly was frown at his clumsiness as he tumbled head over heels toward the hellish field below.

All that work, all that risk, all that planning . . . all for nothing . . .

Fifty feet. A hundred. He caught glimpses of the Demonculus’s nightmarish body as he continued to fall, picking up speed.

A hundred and fifty feet.

Two hundred.

What a way to go, Krilid thought, spinning.

WHAP!

With an unexpected jolt, Krilid landed in muck. The ground? But, no, he couldn’t have fallen that fast, could he? And if he’d hit the ground and somehow lived, Conscripts and Ushers would be dicing him to pieces. When his dizziness passed, he realized that he felt encased in more of the stinking muck.

Then he felt himself elevating, and whatever steam shovel–like thing it was that encased him . . . opened.

Hot wind blew into his face; Krilid was looking at the scarlet sky.

“Krilid, are you all right?” a voice seemed to crunch and echo at the same time. Not a human voice at all, yet there was something . . . familiar about its pitch.

Krilid realized then that he was standing in the opened palm of the Demonculus’s left hand, a fifty-foot-long hand.

“Gerold!” he shrieked when he got the gist.

The immense hand lifted Krilid until he was face level with the Demonculus.

“Thought I lost you there,” the monster’s voice crumbled out from impossible lips.

“Thanks for catching me,” Krilid said, but then a surge in his heart reminded him that they still weren’t out of the woods. “Gerold, listen, we’re under attack right now—”

“Under attack by who?”

Krilid pointed like a shot. “Those Gryphon formations—”

The corroded, grotesque-beyond-words face seemed to smirk. “I’m real scared, see?” And then like a crane, the abomination’s 200-foot-long arm swept out in an arch and swatted all of the winged things out of the sky. Several of the Flamma-Troopers exploded, which ignited sundry pitch upended from a dozen buckets. Fire rained down on the heavily populated field.

“Great move!” Krilid yelled. He pointed down. “Now step on all those guys down there sticking swords in your feet.”

“Oh—” The Demonculus looked down at the field. “I thought I felt some itching.” And then—

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The entire District shook while Gerold stomped his feet on the droves of demonic soldiers below; in fact, several buildings actually collapsed. Screams rose upward like steam from boiling pots.

“And see those Balloon Skiffs?” Krilid asked. “They’re serious business so do us both a favor and make ’em go away.”

The Demonculus’s chest expanded as it inhaled an inconceivably large breath, then exhaled it downward at storm-force velocity. The Balloon Skiffs twirled end over end in midair, ejected demonic crew members, then slammed into the ground to explode.

“So much for them,” Gerold’s new voice remarked.

“And it couldn’t hurt to step on those Electrocity Generators while you’re at it,” Krilid added. “They’re real expensive and took eons to build. Lucifer’ll dump in his pants if you trashed those things.”

The Demonculus shrugged, and it was more than likely the most massive shrug ever made by anything. Horrendous, tractor-trailer-size feet easily flattened said generators. The presiding explosions threw nuke-style mushroom clouds on either side of the unalive occult creature. The clouds crackled in hues like fresh lava; in only moments, the mushroom clouds had risen thousands of feet.