The cell door opens and from the corner of my eye I see Liana the albino girl in her torn, boxy dress and chains, looking ghostly in the dim light. She puts on a brave face, but the subtleties of her body language betray her apprehension. Mr. Noose Pole leads, slipping the loop over my muzzled head as he enters the room first in a crouch. It's not until the other four sink the clamps onto my limbs that Mr. Noose Pole unlocks my shackles with his key. There is some jostling in the cramped quarters, but overall they work as a team to haul me out as they walk backwards out of the cell. Mr. Noose Pole breaks from the group for a moment to close and lock the cell door behind us.

The noose is frustrating me, because I can't give Liana any words of encouragement or crack any witty jokes.

We march upward toward the torture room, and they've got me lifted up so that my feet are barely contacting the ground, which puts pressure at my neck, and forces me to walk like I'm a puppet manipulated by several sticks. The stone floor is hard and covered with a thin layer of gravel, so I'm reminded of the tap dancer throwing a layer of sand on the stage to give him scratchy-sounding dance steps. The flames on the torches are more in the shape of burning globes than tongues of fire, which is a sign of lower oxygen levels.

I'm trying to figure out why these goons are all shirtless. It's not due to the heat, because the underground mine-slash-dungeon is cooler than the outside air, and if they're going for intimidation, you'd think they'd want to show off some muscles, not look like they've been gorging on carbohydrates, most likely polished rice. When we get to the main dungeon Fatso is working the bellows on an iron basket of glowing coals like an obese accordion player in a Tex-Mex band.

As they jam me into the shallow grotto and fasten the irons on my hands and feet, I'm thinking about what I've been reflecting on during our march here: the wheels of cosmic justice turn slowly, but they do turn. In a random universe, injustices happen, but that's either chance or blind evolution. To paraphrase the bumper sticker, “Feces Occurs.” Whether that “feces” takes the form of an old man robbed and thrown down a mine shaft, a child being raped and murdered, or a pregnant woman having her stomach ripped open by marauding soldiers, it's just atoms randomly butting against each other, and who has grounds to complain?

But in a universe governed by God there is justice—there has to be. Ultimately, God can't abide the murder of an innocent man or the sexual abuse of an albino girl. Wrongs have to be righted, the debt must be paid and the balance restored; it's only a question of when.

I'm praying fiercely, but the muzzle is forcing me to mumble. I'm just asking that I can be the instrument of some small measure of justice today. Whatever torment was dished out to me, I had it coming, but I shudder to think of the cruelty done to innocents in this hell-hole, including one little albino girl.

Suffuse me with Your presence,

Grant me power that I may deliver

the oppressed and free the captives.

Let me serve as a channel of Your energy

so that loss becomes victory

and death is changed to life.

Mr. Noose Pole puts up a dirty, plump hand up to his ear as if he's trying to hear the prayer I'm muttering. “What's that?”

He laughs as he turns to get a branding iron which is resting with the tip down in a basket of smoldering coals. His laugh reveals several blackened teeth, and now that his mouth is open, I can smell them, too. I suppose that's the downside of having a superior sense of smell.

Mr. Noose Pole seizes a branding iron with his chubby hand, and several of the henchmen follow suit. It must be a slow day at Implements of Torture-R-Us, because everybody wants to get in on the action.

They turn and approach, grinning. I reflect that as a planet you're in bad shape when your chief form of entertainment is the torment of a gecko. They haven't noticed it, but my tail has slid up behind me, slipping between the back of my neck and the strap holding my muzzle in place.

Mr. Noose Pole is leering in my face, staring at me with bulging eyes. “How about a little pain, lizard man? I think we're all gonna have a taste of grilled lizard.” He waves the red hot poker under my snout, and I see that he's got the 'B' for “Baal” backwards, like he'd know the difference.

My tail whips off the muzzle and in one continuous motion lashes the torturer standing behind Mr. Noose Pole, slashing right across his face. In the same instant my beak opens and my jaws latch onto the head of Mr. Noose Pole, so that his shaved head is completely engulfed by my mouth. I pick up Mr. Noose Pole and fling his legs and body into the henchmen on my left, causing the animal to brand himself with the hot iron he's brought up in front of his face to threaten me. The brute lets out a muffled scream as the glowing iron slides over his cheek.

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Both of my hands burst into flame, as well as my feet, burning more fiercely than the torches in the sconces, and hotter than the coals in the brazier. Soon the shackles are glowing red. I want to say something clever, but I've clamped my snout over Mr. Noose Pole's head, and I taste an awful combination of sweat and soot. I move to fling Mr. Noose Pole back into his companions, making a preparatory motion to fling him downward before throwing him forward, like shaking out a sheet as you make the bed, but there is an audible snap when his neck breaks. Mr. Noose Pole goes limp in my beak. I drop him to the floor like a bag of onions, where he lies inert, but I see that he is conscious.

The other three henchmen are closing in. They're panicked. These goons are used to tearing apart helpless victims who are powerless to fight back because they're shackled to the stone walls. The henchmen know that they need to get me securely bound, where I can't fight back, so they're rushing toward me in a desperate bid to regain control.

It's hard to focus, because my hands and feet are burning. I haven't been in the flames of purgatory for several days, so I'm a little rusty.

My tail slips out to catch the foot of the nearest approaching goon. Just as he steps, the tip of my tail encircles his lead foot and pulls. He is stepping with that foot, transferring his weight to it, when it is pulled out from under him, as though he's hit an invisible banana peel. His front leg stretches out like a cheerleader doing the splits, only he's not nearly as flexible, and there is a tearing in the muscles at his groin. Mr. Noose Pole can do nothing because he's paralyzed from the neck down, and his fellow henchman falls beside him and screams in his face, sending the spittle flying.

The other three are still charging toward me. With a heave, I yank my manacled hands free from the chains, which have gone as soft as saltwater taffy from the heat. Without a pause my hands continue, slamming into the skull of the closest torturer, clamping onto him just above the ears, and causing him to shriek as his cranium sizzles.

Hauling in with both hands, I ignore his clawing at my fiery hands seizing his head with a vise-like grip and open my snout, sending a spray of acid into his face. He shrieks and claws at my neck. I throw him aside, and he goes blindly sailing into the rock face-first.

My feet are on fire and I kick, tearing a foot free from the heated gooey metal and sending a sizzling iron-bound foot into the crotch of another goon who's drawn back his poker to take a swing at me. At first, all he feels is the impact of an iron-bound foot slamming into his testicles, but that is soon followed by the sensation that he is riding a pony made of molten metal, and his crotch is literally on fire. He collapses to the ground shrieking hideously, which is music to my ears.

One last brute looks about him, and sees the pile of massed sweaty bodies at my feet like we've just finished a punishing hour of exercise on the first day of Fat Camp. He turns to run, but my tongue shoots out and strikes him in the back of the head. I'm hauling him back to me, anchored by the glowing left foot that's still shackled to the wall. He's overweight, so he's hard to haul in, but he spins toward me, and eventually lunges forward just as my foot breaks free from its molten anchor in the rock. He is stumbling forward and has thrown out his hands to catch himself when my glowing foot slams into his face, catching him on the point of his chin. I'm disappointed when he's knocked unconscious, and he drops to the stone floor—I was hoping he'd stay awake to savor a bit of pain.

I extinguish the fire in my feet and walk over to the stand holding the glowing coals, where the heat is intense. Gripping the brazier with my burning hands, I grunt as I heave it upward and haul it over toward the pile of henchmen, some of whom are moaning in pain. My motto is, “You can't get burned if you're already on fire.” I move so that a paralyzed Mr. Noose Pole can see me. His neck is broken, and he can't move or even speak, but he is conscious. I dump the red-hot coals over the henchmen, some of whom shriek, sprinkling the embers like salt.

I know that if I dump the coals over Mr. Noose Pole's body, he won't feel it, so I cover his head with glowing briquettes. He can breathe, but he can't move his lungs enough to speak or to scream.

“That's for Liana,” I say as I let the wrought iron stand drop and clang on the floor. “Get used to it, because today is an easy day, a picnic compared to what's waiting for you.”

I get the keys from the waist of a prone and smoldering Mr. Noose Pole, but find that the heat has warped the locks in my manacles. I try the key in the wrist shackles and the leg irons, but nothing works. I shrug my shoulders—actually, I try to, because it's a human gesture, but as a gecko I don't have shoulders, so I wind up doing some kind of weird convulsion. Looks like I'm going to be stuck in these manacles for some time, but as always, Lord Riyel is teaching me a lesson, giving me a gentle reminder.

I close the dungeon door behind me and lock it. How long have I been a slave to my arrogance, my need to be the Big Man? What would Max think if he saw me as a walking lizard with bulging eyes? I think he'd laugh; I hope he would, especially at the size of my bracelets.

Upon opening the cell door, I see Liana is tense, but then an expression of bewilderment crosses her face. “Where are they?”

“Dead or dying.” I maneuver the key ring to get the right key, which is hard with short thick fingers, and release the shackles from her hands. She isn't as threatening as a colossal gecko, so they didn't shackle her feet. The albino girl rubs her wrist the color of powdered milk and rises to a crouch in the dark cell. I thought that was a movie cliché when the freed captive rubs his wrists, but maybe there's something to it.

“You're not going to unlock your manacles and the leg irons?” She follows right behind me as we exit the cell and move out into the tunnel. We begin the gradual climb across the stone floor to the outside.

“I can't. I had to heat them to break the chains, but it fused the locks.” If I look closely, I can see that the seam joining the two sides of the manacle have been welded shut by the heat.

“What's that mean, 'The taller the crown, the longer the shadow'?” She looks at me with eyes colored in soft pastels of pink and blue.

“As a demon, you want to possess a noble, a princes, the king. Why control a beggar when you can control a king, and the whole kingdom?” I gesture with a stubby hand and figure the manacles may take some getting used to, but I'll just think of them as leg and wrist weights helping me to get into shape. “So I'm headed to the palace.”

“What are you going to do there?” she asks, swiping at a moth flitting around her.

“Kill the king.” My tongue zips out to snag the moth out of the air.