by Rex Jameson
Chapter 6
From One Prison to Another
Lucifer sat on his lumpy bed and watched a Chaos beetle gore its way through the mortar that held the bricks together just behind the zinanbar bars of his cell. He didn’t know why the beetle wasn’t using one of the more convenient holes that he had punched through the walls with his wings during the previous two months. All around him, the smell of excrement and decomposing food wafted in through the porous walls and door. Lucifer didn’t know what was worse: that the smell was always there or that he had gotten used to it.
The captives held here under the Courts of Chaos were relentless in their banter. His chief tormentor was Telal, a thief who his father King Ostat had imprisoned half a million years ago.
“Oh, Great Prince,” Telal yelled down the hallway. “Are you still here with us wretches?”
“Yes,” Lucifer grumbled.
Telal’s delirious chuckling echoed down the hallway. “The Great Commander of the Demon Army is stuck in a dungeon of insects and vermin. Do you still organize the rats into regiments?”
“Why? Are you wanting to sign up?”
“Oh yes, please, Great Commander. I will be the first to volunteer my services. You’ll find that I am so much more skilled than the rest of your vermin followers. Yes, they can gnaw at their bars, and sure, they can defecate in a corner. But can they piss on command, Great Prince?”
Lucifer could hear the faint tinkling of liquid against a wall. He shook his head and sighed before replying. “While any commander worth his salt would gladly enlist the help of a spontaneous pisser, I am especially in need of someone who can choke to death on his own rations. Do you think you could oblige me?”
“Is that how they all died on Earth?”
Lucifer put his head in his hands as he thought of the screams from the second and third waves of demons that burned in Earth’s atmosphere. Those had been the unlucky ones who had already pushed from the ground. They’d pawed helplessly against the air as they were flung into the same invisible substance that burned up the preceding waves.
To hell with this guy.
“Which cell are you in, Telal?” Lucifer asked. “What number is on your door?”
“510,” someone else down the hall said.
Lucifer made some calculations. He knew these dungeons pretty well. 510 put Telal on the opposite side of the hall about twenty cells down. His red wings burst from his back and his tattered shirt as they writhed through the bars. He tested trajectories. Any glancing shots would soften the blows.
After several test runs, he retracted his tendrils and shot them directly at where he believed 510 should be. A couple of his wings clanged off zinanbar two or three cells down, but the others punched through brick wall after stubborn brick wall. Screams came from every direction through the many cracks and holes. He felt soft thuds against his assault and then a scream and a curse from Telal.
Lucifer had been on the mark. He recoiled his wings and sent out assault after assault until he heard no more grunts, moans, or screams from Telal or anyone else.
“He’s out cold,” Batarel said from behind him.
Lucifer stumbled against his soiled bed as he turned around, and his wings retracted into his body. “Is it really you?”
Batarel smiled. “You smell terrible.”
“It’s this place that smells terrible. Remove me from it, and I promise to regain better odors.”
Batarel nodded and walked along the bars, his hands grasping the smooth metal and then passing along to the next.
“I’ve missed you, Uncle,” Lucifer said. “Two months here and not a word from you.”
“The Council wouldn’t let me come any sooner. I’m afraid I’m here on official business.”
“Official business? From the Council?”
“From the Courts,” Batarel said.
Lucifer winced as he realized his uncle hadn’t said anything about his father. This was official business from someone else’s Courts. For months, Lucifer had hoped that his imprisonment was legal wrangling tied to the lottery. He hoped that his father had finally told the people why so many of them had to die.
Lucifer braced himself against the dirty bed. “Out with it.”
“The Courts have passed to another family,” Batarel said. “The Agalal clan will take over the secular rule of Chaos.”
“Agalal? The previous clan?”
“Their patriarch has a lot of influence over the Council.”
Lucifer remembered the blond with the half-smirk. “Eranos? A wizard on the throne? What about the separation?”
“He has convinced the Council that the arrangement is necessary. We’re under magical attack, and Eranos claimed that he could break the barriers between the army and the wizarding core to unify the Council’s efforts against Jehovah.”
“This is your brother he’s overthrowing,” Lucifer said.
“I know.”
“And you know that this coup is only weakening our universe.”
“I’ve argued that, yes. But the people are angry, the Agalal clan are riding the public outrage, and my viewpoint is apparently biased.”
“What is the lottery for, Uncle?”
“No one told you?”
“Unless something has changed, I doubt I am the only one,” Lucifer said. “I ran into a huge crowd when I arrived a couple of months ago. None of them knew what the lottery was for either, and I promised them I would find answers.”
“The lottery was something I requested,” Batarel said. “To save the universe, we needed a large deflector made out of zinanbar. We had to kill a lot of immortals.”
“Why didn’t you tell the population? Our family’s reign depended on that information.”
“The Council decided against it.”
Lucifer muttered angrily and fell backward onto the bed. “Do you always do what you are told?”
“No,” Batarel replied, leaning against the metal posts.
“Well, when was the last time you went against the Council?”
“The Goblin War.”
The Goblin War. There it was again. His whole family avoided the subject like a plague for a million years, and now they couldn’t stop talking about it.
“So, you’ve delivered your message,” Lucifer said. “You’ve done your duty. I guess you’ll be on your way then?”
“That’s not the whole message,” Batarel said. There were tears in his eyes.
Lucifer sat up, steadied himself against the bars opposite his uncle. “Mother and father?”
“Yes,” Batarel replied softly.
“When?”
“Tomorrow at noon.”
Lucifer chewed hard at his hand, but no blood came out. His teeth couldn’t cut through immortal skin.
“You’re to be forced to watch, nephew,” Batarel said.
“Oh, like hell I will!”
“I’ve fought hard to spare you and your brother. Sariel took very little explanation, as he is a part of the Council. You were not so easy. I’ve been fighting for you every day for months.”
Lucifer’s wings broke through his flesh again and weaved around the cell. “And what would they want with me?”
“I am not entirely sure,” Batarel said as he dodged around some of the more excited scarlet tendrils. “Lucifer, we have to survive this coup. Don’t do anything rash.”
Lucifer felt his rage building. “Leave now, Uncle. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll be there with you when it happens, Luke. I promise. I will always be by your side.”
One of Lucifer’s wings tore into the wall behind his uncle, exposing the next cell. “Uncle. Please go. You know how I get ...”
Batarel apparated out of the cell. Lucifer watched him through holes along the hallway. He pounded at the walls around him with his wings as he heard Batarel’s footsteps gallop down the corridor. Pieces of brick scattered against Lucifer’s face as he watched the cloak billow past the last opening.
As Lucifer slumped against the rubble surrounding what was left of his bed and the unyielding zinanbar around his cell, the screams and moans of the demons around him merged with the legion he lost on Earth. He welcomed the coming nightmares almost as much as he embraced the terrible events of the looming day, but he was too tired to fight off the slumber that inexorably came … as his eyelids crept ever closer together …