***
Lucifer slipped the thin chord over his wrist and twirled a stun stick in his hand as he walked beside Sariel down the mountain.
“You apparate through the walls of the maze, and I’ll leap over them with my wings,” Lucifer said.
“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”
“Just don’t get lazy like you sometimes do. Make it random.”
“Right, Mom. I’m on it.”
“This is not that different from teleportation chess; it’s just fifty to one here. We have to play smart.”
“You mean strategy? Can’t I just nuke ’em from orbit already?”
“No,” Lucifer said in exasperation. “Look, how about some motivation? You don’t get stunned, and I’ll pay for a month of Rosaline’s escort service.”
“Forget everything I’ve said about you when you’re not around,” Sariel said. “You’re all right.”
“That’s weird. I dislike you more with every passing minute.”
“Would you hurry up?” Sariel asked before apparating out of sight.
Lucifer pushed his wings through the slots of his suit and launched himself to the base of the mountain. Sariel tapped his foot as Lucifer landed and motioned with his hands toward the opening of the maze.
“Come on, bro! Daddy needs a night with a distributed sex goddess!”
“You do this all the time, and I’m the one that gets left in an impossible situation.”
“You are such a woman! Shut up. I’ve got this.”
“I hate you so damned much. You’re going to get stunned. I freakin’ know it.”
The monitors circled around them, and Lucifer noticed the countdown. Sixty seconds before the match started.
“You get stunned, and you’re paying for Rosaline for both of us.”
The monitors zoomed in on Rosaline’s location in the stands, and she smiled at the attention. Her purple, pink and black globus stood up and danced for the monitors.
“Oh boy … she heard that, didn’t she?” Lucifer asked and watched her red-haired singulus bite her lip and nod in the monitor.
“I guess so,” Sariel said. “Anyway, whatever. You have a deal. If I get stunned, I pay for the finest escort service in the cosmos. If I don’t, you pay. You ready to do this or what?”
The monitor showed twenty seconds.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Lucifer said. “Don’t forget to capture their stun sticks and put them on a hand or wing.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
Lucifer shook his head. Sariel never liked to work as a team. Hopefully, his brother would at least split the globi into two groups for a while. Five seconds until start. Four. Three. Two. One.
“And they’re off!” the announcer yelled over the loud speakers.
Lucifer turned to say something to Sariel, but he was gone. Lucifer lifted himself on top of the two-story hedge and formed a protective series of halos with his wings, like a luminescent ribcage that extended ten feet around him. His strategy was simple. Catch the stun sticks with his wings, and use them against their masters. Improvise, react, and win.
“Did you see that?” the announcer asked the crowd. “Five champions down already! And he’s picking up their stun sticks!”
“Well, at least he’s not filtering out everything I say …” Lucifer muttered.
A stun stick flew by his head, and he grabbed it with a wing while simultaneously throwing his baton at the source of the projectile.
“And Lucifer has his first kill!” the announcer said.
He pulled on the stunner cord to return it to his hand as he ran to a new location on the hedge, but the other chord was stubbornly stuck on the stunned elf’s arm and required some rough pulling before it finally came loose. The downed singulus lay beside a turn in the maze, and Lucifer figured there might be more hiding behind the green wall.
He jumped across the opening and hit a soft spot on the opposite wall, causing him to tumble down the other side. Thankfully, the elves seemed surprised to see him.
The two elves who were turned toward him received the first strikes. Lucifer pulled back on the cords around his wrists while simultaneously picking up another baton from a recently felled singulus, which he used to incapacitate the remainder of the blue-clad team that he could currently see.
“Five more down to the Crown Prince of Chaos! Sellys is merging.”
Lucifer crouched against the wall and alertly peered around the corner while retrieving the new stun sticks. There could be a globus anywhere. He wrapped the securing straps around his wings, formed three halos around him, and punched into the ground. He somersaulted into the air and leapfrogged the hedges, while actively scanning for movement.
He caught a glimpse of golden legs darting through a hedge that he had just flown over. He pushed himself onto the top portion of the wall—careful not to expose himself to the elves on the other side until he was ready to pounce on them. From this position, he could hear their footsteps coming his direction. Rorschaz was just underneath him.
He rolled over the hedge and aimed quickly.
“And the former champion loses three of his own. These demons are the real deal, folks. Your champions are going to need some support. Let’s hear some noise!”
Lucifer could no longer discern any footsteps around him, but this meant his opponents couldn’t either. With his sense of hearing dampened by the emphatic crowd, his other senses became more acute. He wondered how Sariel was doing.
“Our champions are down to eighty members, folks.”
Crap. That meant Sariel was ahead of him. He had only managed eight.
“Quadrant four,” someone nearby shouted.
“Whoa,” the announcer yelled. “Two more down. This time Sariel hit Ganymede!”
“He’s in seven now. Converge on seven!”
Lucifer turned around quickly, but no one was there. They must have been targeting Sariel. He moved toward the direction of the voices.
“Somebody help! He’s in eleven!”
Lucifer launched himself high over the top of the mountain. He needed to see where his brother was. Far below, dozens of elves poured through openings in the maze toward the southeast part of the mountain. And there was his brother … apparating southeast in a predictable pattern.
Lucifer knocked out three of Sariel’s pursuers and then another six multicolored singuli who were pressed against a wall.
“Folks, we are down to fifty. My God, the purple one’s tearing us apart!”
Lucifer crouched against the top of a hedge and tumbled down to pursue a pair of green legs. Ganymede. And that’s when he heard a crash against the brush behind him. He ducked and rolled just in time, and a stun stick sailed past him. He pivoted and fired his own stun stick volley, struck true, and then pressed his back against the wall as he moved closer.
The elf that almost bested Lucifer had fallen from the sky, and judging by the wall he hit, he must have come from the south. Lucifer punched his wings into the earth and rolled over the hedge into the other corridor.
“Quadrant fifteen! Not the appar …” a green-clad elf screamed before receiving a baton to the face.
Ganymede’s singulus had been standing on the hands of two other elves, each of whom appeared to be in mid throw. Ganymede lost the launchers as well, but the pair of legs Lucifer had originally chased into the hedge almost caught him with an airborne stunner. The elf ducked into an adjacent corridor before Lucifer could return fire.
Lucifer climbed the wall and looked around for his brother, but he could see no movement anywhere.
“Sariel, if you can hear me, they’re tossing members over the hedges!”
“And we have our first kill, folks. Ganymede has done it! A prince of Chaos is down. We’re back to a forty to one advantage!”
“Idiot …” Lucifer grumbled.
An elf arced over an adjacent hedge, but he was looking the wrong way. His hands went limp, and he dropped his stun stick as he careene
d over another wall.
“Oooooh, tough break for Sellys. We have our first case of friendly fire. The stunner landed right on another singulus.”
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, Lucifer thought. It was unlikely that Sellys’ singuli were working alone. He followed the path of the fallen elf and dropped from the hedge. Jackpot.
Overhead, a monitor flashed thirty-five remaining champions for the elven side.
“Quadrant six!” someone yelled.
Lucifer launched himself over a wall and just barely avoided a projectile. As he ran through an opening and jumped over another wall, he decided that it was time the gloves came off. No more playing around.
He brushed an elf aside with a wing and hit him with his own baton before picking the man up and using him as a shield. He bypassed a couple of stragglers and let their stun sticks bounce off the involuntary elven helper before stumbling upon a group of seven singuli in transit down a corridor. He threw the stunned elf at them and sent out a volley. The elves were so busy trying to catch the gold-colored man that they didn’t try to dodge the batons.
Two additional singuli fell around the corner, and Lucifer picked them up and maneuvered them around to the weaker areas of his vision. Someone had to cover his back after all.
“Only a quarter of our champions remain!” the announcer yelled. “He’s got shields, boys. You’re going to have to encircle him!”
Lucifer jumped over a bundle of bodies and noticed luminescent purple. He turned and kept the elven shields to his backside as he inspected the heap of immortals and pulsating wings. Sariel lay under a golden and green colored set of elves. At least he had managed to take out a few of his attackers before they barreled down upon him.
He heard three soft thuds behind him and immediately knew what they were. He flipped atop the wall to his right, maintaining the barrier between him and his attackers. On his unprotected side, he saw an inbound missile and ducked under it. He caught two of the elves, but didn’t pursue the others out of fear of another ambush. Instead, he retraced his steps and pushed himself high and fast over Ganymede’s four remaining members.
One of them was lucky enough to escape, but he was visibly shaking. Even without a radix, it appeared that losing nine of ten members was enough to cause a distributed mind to hiccup. Lucifer committed this little tidbit of knowledge to memory.
He let Ganymede’s remaining singulus flee and moved northwest.
“Quadrant nine!”
He changed direction.
“Quadrant six!”
They must have been watching the monitors.
“Damned cheaters,” Lucifer said to the cameras as he dispatched four attackers. At least they were still being aggressive.
“Sellys and his allies are down,” the announcer said. “The Daniel globus is out of commission. Shep is gone. Rorschaz has four, and our champion is left with just one singulus.”
Time to find the golden child. Rorschaz. In Lucifer’s mind, Ganymede deserved to be the last one standing. He had started the singulus tossing which took out Sariel, and the elven prince had also been communicating demon locations, which exposed his own position for the other globi to respond to. Any leader could appreciate that kind of teamwork and sacrifice.
He saw a green foot and let it go. Nothing but gold. He launched himself to the crest of the mound and pounced into the air. He walked with his wings and circled the peak like a satellite. All he needed was a glimpse. Here kitty, kitty.
And there he was. Rorschaz retreated back into the maze, and Lucifer worked his way around his flank. Now was not the time to be overconfident and launch a frontal assault. Lucifer grabbed a stunned elf and pushed him through an opening in the hedge with his wings. He smiled as two stun sticks harmlessly glanced off the man’s face. Quickly and quietly, he mounted the wall and readied two of his wings to catch the other batons.
But it was unnecessary. He caught the two armed elves first, and grinned at the other couple as they frantically pulled their stun sticks back to them. He tapped one on the forehead with a baton and then slapped the other’s stunner to the ground.
“Where do you want it?”
“J-j-just g-g-get it over with,” Rorschaz’s last member said through his convulsions. “Save me some p-p-pain.”
Lucifer rapped the man on the forehead and watched him fall to his buttocks before toppling over into a deep sleep. He lifted the singulus and his three comrades and used them to protect his sides, back, and top as he returned to the peak of the mountain, where Ganymede’s largest singulus was waiting for him.
“We meet again,” Ganymede said.
“Indeed,” Lucifer replied. “I guess it’s time to finish what we started in the state room.”
Lucifer threw Rorschaz’s singuli aside and discarded all but two of his accumulated stunners, which he rotated around his hands. Ganymede set his feet and struck a guard position.
“Thanks for letting me regroup.”
“Anytime. You ready?”
“Let’s do this.”
Lucifer ran at his opponent with wings dragging along the ground behind him. As he engaged, his wings came alive and struck at Ganymede in a multi-pronged attack, like a Chaos striker on a battlefield. Ganymede managed to parry the stun stick and three of the wings, but the others hammered him along the torso. He flew over the peak and into a southern hedge.
“Can’t let a demon get too close,” Lucifer said.
“I can see that.”
Ganymede threw his baton at Lucifer’s head, but it was quickly deflected as Lucifer pushed against the peak and flew toward him. He pressed the edge of the stunner into Ganymede’s chest and let him slump against the hedge.
He couldn’t hear cheering or the announcer, but he could see the crowd’s reaction on the monitors as he backed away from Ganymede’s serene expression. The elves were pouring down the sides of the Coliseum and onto the field.
After the events in Alurabum, he didn’t trust a mob. He summoned his zinanbar blades and retreated until his back touched the stone pillar at the pinnacle of the maze. He raised his blades into a guard position before he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll have to relinquish those if you want to stay in my universe,” Elandril said.
Lucifer watched as the mob approached. They were smiling and laughing, and Rosaline was leading them. Her singuli’s breasts bounced as her many feet bounded across the field and into the maze.
Lucifer smiled, passing the swords to Elandril. “Take care of them.”
Elandril nodded as the blades vanished.
“So, we’re square?” Lucifer asked.
“You and your brother have earned your asylum.”