He walked forwards, heading up the bony steps towards the Infernal Throne. Could he reclaim it and regain dominion over Hell? The notion of being tethered to this vile realm once more drove him to despair, but with the throne came great power. Power to control the damned. If he took the mantle of Infernus once more, he could close the gates and prevent any more evil spreading to the Earth. It would be a mighty blow to the Red Lord’s plans. Now that Lucas knew who his enemy truly was, he could try to find a way to end him. The throne would help him to do that.
There was no choice but to do it. Lucas would have to become Lucifer. He just hoped he could resist the darkness that came along with the name.
Lucas traversed the final steps to his destiny and felt the pull of power. His soul trembled.
His entire being grew hot.
Something was wrong. The throne belonged to him, forged of his own will. Yet what he was experiencing was something hostile and foreboding.
Pain jolted his mind, and he felt himself being pulled apart, his very atoms splitting. What was happening?What had ahold of him?
“No. No!” He reached for the throne, needing to take it and its power. Once sitting in it, nothing would remove him from this place. He would hold dominion over all.
He reached out a hand, but before he could touch the throne, his flesh disintegrated to burnt ash. The more he moved, the more of him that vanished. Agony consumed Lucas, but he couldn’t summon a scream. A searing heat exploded inside him and he ceased to exist.
Hell’s throne room lay empty.
2
CALIGULA
Blood salted the general’s tongue. Once, in his explorative youth, he’d indulged in the greasy flesh of a giraffe bull, but it paled compared to human flesh.
“Imperator,” one of his minions trilled. A lowly slave by the name of Rux; the creature cowered, ready to deliver a message.
“What is it, slave? Speak now or lose your tongue.”
Rux flinched, trembling as he gave his reply. “T-The human army has scattered, Imperator. Our troops folded their right flank and rolled them inwards just as you commanded. Y-You desired I alert you at battle’s end, so you may—”
“Silence! Do not deign to speak of my desires.”
“Yes, Imperator!”
“If that is all you wish to say, then begone, slave.” The general waved a massive hand to dismiss the Gaul, and he couldn’t fight the cruel grin spreading across his skeletal face. It had been unnecessary to lead the assault—his handpicked Germanic Guard were more than capable—but he savoured that moment when an enemy’s morale shattered. That rolling wave of despair spreading across an army was ambrosia. A delicious cascade of terror.
The general exited his tent and set eyes upon the battlefield. The human army had entrenched itself at a car supermarket, a place—his scouts informed him—where humans had once purchased their motorised litters. Elegant, in some undefinable way, the steel boxes now littered the green and grey landscape as relics of a forgotten kingdom. He saw not their utility. What use had they been to the humans when war had visited them?
The humans had positioned several of those cars end-to-end, forming a steel palisade behind which to cower. It served them well for a time. Battle had raged for several days and nights now, with the humans firing their tiny cannons almost endlessly at the beginning—unleashing metal wasps that flew so fast you didn’t see them until they were buried in your flesh. The general had to admire the musicality of the slaughter the humans directed at his own troops. Even he had been stung several times, but his army took the brunt, falling by their hundreds in the first hours. But eventually, the human cannons fired less and less, and whatever ammunition they consumed ran out.
The humans postponed their fate a while longer after that by employing yet another impressive weapon, this time an innocuously dull metal pipe pointed towards the sky. It summoned fire from the heavens and reduced the general’s forces to cinders. It nearly turned the tide in the human’s favour, but the general had instilled too much fear in his troops for them to flee. Never would his troops dare rout. Before two hours passed, the heavens ceased their fiery fury, and the human resistance died out. As with the barbarians in Germany, the general had outlasted them.
At his order, a legion of troops clambered over the human’s car-wall and set about them with excitement, tearing open throats and gouging eyeballs. Some humans tried using their empty cannons as batons, but their impudence was swiftly punished. They fell in their hundreds.
A rapturous orgy of death.
A glorious day. May Jupiter himself give gratitude.
As he walked amongst his adoring legions, it reminded him of his triumphal march along the floating bridge between Baiae and Puteoli, basking in the adulation of the baying masses. That his glorious mother empire was now a thousand years dead tore at his soul terribly, but a new empire rose in its place. Humanity would tremble before its Red Lord and his loyal generals. Like the Red Lord, Caligula too was divine—a living god.
I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a god.
Let them hate me so that they may fear me.
Caligula’s elite Germanic Guard lined up before him as he crossed the road towards the human fortifications. They were the finest assemblage of battle-hardened warriors—picked only to serve at his side. Their humanity had shorn away long ago, replaced by an oily darkness, yet their loyalty to Caligula was absolute. In life, they had slaughtered the treacherous senate to avenge his assassination. In
