The idol of the octopus woman is blind, reminding me of Master Po in Kung Fu, the sightless monk with cataracts, but nevertheless she seems to focus on me with eyes covered in smooth gold. The tentacles forming her arms writhe, while the tentacles extending beneath her skirt whip the floor in all directions surrounding her, lifting her gilt body above the flat stones and slowly propelling her toward me. Like a crowd-surfing fan being carried and moved forward by dozens of hands beneath her, the idol advances with the gentle push of dozens of tentacles. The ram's horns coiling back from the edges of her forehead give her an impression of strength, which contrasts with the sculpted dress, complete with lace at the neckline. Her gold tentacles whip and slice the air as she draws closer, while the king looks on from his perch in the hands of the onyx Molech idol, which gesture downward to the table where children are carved from the bellies of pregnant women.

It seems unreal that I was on another planet, a human with a nice management job about to meet Keisha from human resources. When I reached the intersection at Worthington and Moon Lake, it all abruptly ended, and I found myself roasting like a squirrel caught in a forest fire. Now I'm a gecko in a dungeon filled with unspeakable evil. “Yes, Alec, I'll take Highly Improbable and Ridiculous Outcomes for a thousand, please.”

I spin and drop my head low, sending my tail slicing across the metal face of the closing statue. My tail strikes the image's face with a clank, and fortunately there aren't many nerve endings in my tail. The statue tilts and veers to the side like a drunk reeling out of a bar, but quickly recovers and resumes her upright “stride,” propelled forward by what resembles a nest of vipers spilling from her skirt and slapping the floor beneath her.

I finish the spin and lunge toward the gilded statue come to life. I spring, leading with the spur in my ankle like a fighting cock. The venomous spur catches the idol just under the throat but glances off as I do a 180-degree arc over the statue and land on my hind legs. It's like I'm fighting the queen's champion in armor once again. The idol turns, wheeling around with the frantic movement of her whip-like limbs, which are trembling and thrashing like ribbons in front of a fan in a department store.

The statue's eyes are smooth and featureless, yet somehow they are locked onto me. Like the metal bull I fought in St. Janith, none of the weapons of my formidable body can stop a metal statue.

I want to say “from the corner of my eye,” but that applies to humans, not to geckos. When I was Vic the human, movement from the side was visible in the corner of my eye, because a human's eyes are both in front of the head, facing forward. But now that I'm a gecko, my eyes are on the sides of my head, so I'm not seeing Taur from the corner of my eye, but plainly, in full unrestricted vision. The horned man draws his bat overhead with both hands and hurls it with the motion of a lumberjack throwing an axe, sending it spinning end over end, whirling like the blades on a propeller.

Because the idol is in human form, it detects the projectile from the corner of its unblinking gold eye and turns with its frayed arms spread wide like a scarecrow. The moment she turns full on to see the bat, the end strikes her in the center of her face. The impact knocks her back, so that her metal back clanks against the sacrificial altar. The iron club falls from her face, striking the stone floor once on the handle, then a second time as the heavy end falls. The war club rattles on the floor before it goes silent.

Now that was a highlight reel moment right there. Taur nailed what was an insanely difficult throw, and I'd be in favor of retiring his jersey if he had one.

The golden octopus woman rises from where she lies with her back on the table, snapping upward like a marionette with strings on her chest. Her face is caved in, and I'm thinking it would make a good cereal bowl. The tentacles whip the air at her sides and beneath her as she floats toward me, driven by a multitude of coiling and uncoiling feet. Her face is sunken in, which draws her ram's horns forward, so that instead of spiraling behind her head, they stand out at her sides, like a poorly done fan fiction Princess Leia.

When I open my beak to spray acid in her face, her tentacles shoot out unexpectedly, latching onto my extended head. I reach up with my arms and find for the hundredth time that they're too short, so I can't work myself free of the tentacles. The demon-possessed idol is now drawing me toward her, and drawing herself toward me, with her tentacles wrapped around my head. We are face to face, or snout to sunken face, as though she's attempting a Vulcan mind meld.

Other tentacles encircle my body, and I hear Taur and Liana shouting from the stairway, where a woman groans in pain and the top of a child's head is visible between her thighs. I'm being crushed by a gold octopus woman, whose sunken face is even more disturbing. I manage to clank against her side with one manacled hand, accomplishing nothing, before a tentacle envelops my arm.

It looks like I've got just one option. “Flame on!” At least, that's what I want to say, but my snout has been wired shut by coils of gold tentacles. Is this karma for borrowing the tagline of Johnny “the Human Torch”? Okay, so I didn't borrow the line, I stole it. It's not like anybody can buy comics or watch Marvel movies on this planet, anyway.

Flames engulf my body from snout to tail, causing excruciating pain. The pain of being on fire distracts me from the metal coils that are crushing me, and to further distract myself from the unbearable pain of being deep fried, I decide that I'll just come up with my own tagline to replace “Flame on!” which shouldn't be that hard.

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“Combust!” No.

“Ignite!” Not happening.

“Set myself on fire!” I deserve to get crushed by a demon idol if I can't do any better than that.

“Burn up!” “Burn, baby, burn!” “Crispy time!” “Fan the flames!”

Whoa. The pain spiked on me. You'd think that once you're on fire that you're pretty well maxed out as far as pain goes, like all the pain dials are at ten, but agony has its own Spinal Tap setting of 11, and somehow ramps it up.

I can see my flaming body reflected in the idol's gilt skin, which is now melting like butter, and droplets of liquid gold slide along the sides of her caved-in face. I'm embracing molten metal, which makes the pain unimaginable, but I don't let up until she's glowing like the filament in a light bulb. I'm reminded of the presence of God, being terrifyingly close to an unbearable source of pure destructive light.

I'm wrapped in a death lock with a molten idol who now wants to remove her glowing coils from around me, which have grown buttery from the heat.

“Lord God, help me bear this,” I pray, and in a fraction of a second I remember faith like Jonah, as Liana prophesied.

Jonah was sent on a mission from God to Nineveh, but he decided to duck it, so he took passage on a ship going in the opposite direction. A fierce storm arose, which was so violent that the crew feared that they might die. They reasoned that someone on the ship was cursed by God, and drew lots to discover who was cursed, so that he could be thrown overboard in order to save the ship. At this point Jonah stepped forward to say, “It's me. I'm the one who's cursed. You've got to throw me overboard to save yourselves.”

I stagger backward, but my legs are bound like Houdini's in one of his promotional photos. I lose my footing when I hit a puddle of blood and find we're both toppling over backward when my manacled ankle hits a corpse on the floor. Clean up on aisle 6!

I'm forced to push off with my tail, shoving us up and over the fallen demon worshiper. It's like I've agreed to slow dance with the Goth girl at the prom and she's latched onto me, determined to never let go. Assisted by a stout push of my tail, the two of us in our death embrace pitch over into the well with a splash.

The combination of my fiery body and the molten metal of her body creates a hiss of steam, and a screech as glowing metal is rapidly cooled by the water as it boils off, churning as we sink downwards. I'm creeped out by the thought of Cthulhu or whatever the hell it is that has died and sunk back into the abyss, and I swear if I feel a dead, rubbery tentacle slithering on me I am going to crap myself.

I extinguish my flames, and it feels wonderful to let the cold water sooth my jangling nerve endings. That's the other real drag when it comes to fire: if you're ever on fire, you can't just extinguish the flames and say, “Oh well, thank goodness that's over.” The pain of being burned is always residual, and can't be flipped off like a switch.

The glow of the molten statue has dimmed. The tentacles have stopped writhing, but make a few last feeble efforts. The demon's metal body has cooled from its molten state and is now frozen. We're plunging into an inky well, and even with my enhanced low-light vision there's nothing to see other than a sunken face dotted with beaded gold tears.

With a kick of my foot I separate myself from the gold statue and let it sink into the abyss. I paddle with my arms, which are always too small to be useful, until my reptilian sense takes over and I swim like an alligator, undulating my body from side to side, aided by my tail, rising up toward the faint light above me.

My snout breaks the surface and there's no need to gasp for air like a human might do. My nostrils are already sucking in oxygen, even if the air in this dungeon beneath the temple is humid, stale, and reeks of blood.

I spring up from the lip of the pit of hell, but I'm not dripping water, because my skin is extremely hydrophobic, meaning I repel water. The king watches me emerge from the pool alone, and realizes it's over. Behind me I hear a newborn cry, and it fills me with hope. The fearful king climbs up higher on the Molech idol as I approach.

“The Pintados are swarming the city even now,” I tell him, “and you have no army to defend yourselves. You're outnumbered, and Molech can't save you because you've been killing off warriors for too long. You've destroyed your future, because demons are all about now. The birth of a live child in this hellhole, a child who will not be sacrificed, has broken the curse.””

With a leap I pounce on him, leading with my tongue, which bolts out of my snout and catches his hand holding the flaming dagger. He starts to turn the blade in to cut my tongue, but I have already landed on top of him, and I seize the burning blade with my hand, which is also on fire.

After embracing a statue of molten gold, I'm not so eager to taste the flames again, but it's something that has to be done.

“You can't get burned if you're already on fire,” I growl, and ignite my body once again with a shout of “Fire power!”

The flames that engulf me ignite his voluminous robes, which I swear must have been soaked in kerosene. Unlike the gecko from purgatory, though, he's not used to being on fire, so he wails and thrashes around as the flames enshroud him.

I spin, tearing the flaming dagger from his grasp by working against his thumb. In the same spinning motion I slice the throat of the Molech idol. The burning blade cuts deeply through the stone, causing the horned demon's head to nod downward as if it is sleepy. With a crack, the stone breaks and fractures, sending the ponderous onyx head rolling downward. The stone head strikes the shrieking king, plowing into his burning robe and smashes him into the sacrificial altar before rolling and blocking the pit like a stopper.

I stand atop the headless idol, looking down on the crushed and burned body of the king. “The stones will revolt against their idolatry and their idols will crush them.”

The infant has stopped crying now that it feeds at its mother's breast. Taur is on his feet with a fist raised in triumph. I start to give him the thumbs up when I find myself in a whirlwind.