Chapter 23

The unwounded woman danced around in front of the spider close enough to be a serious threat but just out of the spider’s reach. While the spider was distracted, the woman with the broken arm came up behind the spider and stabbed her sword to the hilt into the spider’s rear end. Uh-oh, somehow, the sword jammed in place and could not be pulled free. That was a real disaster because the only woman with a usable weapon was facing the spider at its strongest point—its mouth and fangs.

The woman who had the broken arm did not give up, though she was without a weapon. She kept trying to reach the sword’s hilt where it stuck up from the skin of the spider. On several occasions she was able to exert enough force onto the sword’s hilt to cause the blade to shift position inside the spider. I certainly did not know enough about spider anatomy to know if this was really doing some good, but it did cause the spider to scream in pain every time the woman was able to hold onto the sword, even for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, the woman in front of the spider tried to rush in and strike every time her partner managed to grab the hilt of the sword jammed into the spider’s rear end. So far, all she had been able to do was to put some gashes on the spider at places that were not fatal, but they seemed to slow down the spider’s reaction time.

Uh-oh, that was the woman’s last charge. She got into the wrong position and the spider was able to whip around its uninjured front leg and bash it into the woman’s side hard enough to throw her against the arena wall. This happened so quickly that I could not see exactly what happened, but the result was that the woman was lying on the floor of the arena and not moving. That lasted for about 15 seconds before her body vaporized. Now it was a fight between the spider and one badly wounded human female.

That woman ran to pick up the sword that had been used by the now vanquished human so that she was now armed again. It looked to me like the lone woman was only going to be able to delay the inevitable and stay alive only as long as she could keep out of the reach of the spider.

The woman must have realized that same fact, so she decided to do what she could to keep the spider from being the full winner of the battle. She grasped the sword with a grip that made it obvious to me that she had given up on trying to use the sword as a stabbing tool, but to use it as a chopping axe. As fast as she could, she ran at the spider and chopped down on it as if to chop off its head. Considering the current situation, that was the best that she could do.

The spider managed to grab the woman around her waist with its fangs penetrating the skin. That had to hurt like hell, judging from the scream of pain given off by the woman, but that scream was deeply tinged with a bit of a scream of triumph. She had managed to chop down on the spider’s head so that there was a deep penetration of the blade into the spider’s skull.

In effect, the two combatants died together! I say that because both bodies vaporized at so nearly the same time that I could not tell which one went first.

The Devil jumped to His feet and began to applaud and cheer. I was happy for the result right up to the time the Devil nearly killed me by slapping me on the back. Of course, he had not intended to hit me that hard, but I was knocked unconscious by the blow. I came to a few minutes later in bed with Jean and the Devil both looking at me with deep concern. Jean was in tears, and the Devil actually looked both embarrassed and upset. Both of them seemed to be considerably relieved when I opened my eyes and asked for some water.

For the rest of the day, the Devil was at my side, and He was filled with praise at the show that he had seen that day. He gave me full credit for suggesting that battle, and he now must be showing all of the signs of making me his entertainment director. Dammit, this was getting complicated.

“Jim, My friend, you have outdone yourself. I have never been so excited as I was at today’s match. Can you top that? I doubt it, but I can hardly wait to see what you have in mind for the next match.”

“Sir, I am still a bit befuddled by the pat of joy applied to my back this morning. I cannot seem to get my thoughts organized to come up with something quite so thrilling. All I can think of at the moment is for a repeat of the two previous exercises using goat men instead of humans. Let’s try that out to see what will happen. Is that possible?”

“Of course it is. Anything I want in Hell is possible!”

“Okay, in that case, I suggest that one goat man with military experience be pitted against one giant spider so that we can see how well he matches what the human man did. If that turns out to be fun for You to see, I have several more possible matches to propose.”

“Excellent! We will do the single goat man versus the spider tomorrow to see how that works out. Jim, your presence in Hell has proven to be a gift that I shall always cherish! Thank you!”

There was no holding back with Jean in bed that night. She was so turned on by the way that the Devil was treating me that she was almost bursting at the seams.

The next day was the first time that two of the Devil’s minions were scheduled to fight each other, and I had no idea what to expect. The two fights involving humans had been great shows, and the Devil was very enthusiastic about them, but even He did not know how well the show would turn out when no humans were involved. Okay, so we would all learn something from this fight.

No goat man could be found who was really familiar with the use of any sort of polearm. After some hard thought, he decided to use a club fitted with a lightning spell cast upon it. This was something that was going to teach me the details of how a goat man would use a club and how well the lightning electric charge was going to work for him against the spider. Other than that, I was slightly biased toward rooting for the spider, but I really didn’t care how the duel came out.

The spider was not truly sentient the way a human or a goat man was, but it was classed as an excellent fighter and able to learn fast from its opponent’s mistakes. Therefore, the potential outcome of the duel was something of a toss up, and that did serve to heighten the Devil’s interest in the contest.

The only real difference between this fight and that first fight with the human man and the spider was the weapon used by the goat man. He seemed to consider himself and expert with the use of the club, and he thought that the magic lightning spell applied to the club would give him a significant advantage. Since I had considerable experience with using a club, I considered myself a fully competent fighter with the club, and I should be able to see very quickly how well the goat man was going to fare against the spider.

Also, I had no inkling of how well the spider could survive a touch by the lightning bolt released by the spell on the club, but only one or two bolts should answer that question. Frankly, I figured that this would be a short fight with the goat man winning as a result of those lightning bolts. That assumption was based on the kind of results I had routinely gotten in fights in which I had been using my Demon Bane weapon. Of course, there was a metal blade as a major component of that weapon system, and I was sure that was why my Trio had been so successful with the Demon Bane as our main weapon.

The fight opened with the two competitors standing at opposite ends of the oval arena. A bell sounded, and the two fighters moved quickly toward the center of the arena. The goat man opened the festivities by getting a little too close to the spider when he swung his club at the nearest spider leg. The blow connected with the leg, but it was only a glancing blow; I had no idea that a spider could move so quickly to dodge a blow.

However, there was enough contact to trigger an electric bolt from the club to the point on the leg where the club had hit the spider. The spider did make a noise that sounded to me like a groan, and it was a little unsteady on its feet for a few moments after the bolt had landed. However, that passed so quickly that an average spectator might have missed it, but not so the Devil. He cheered at the contact that was made, but it was not what I figured would have qualified as a shout of joy for either side. It may well have been that the Devil was simply cheering the fact that the contest had finally started.

As a kind of reflex reaction to the hit by the club, the spider whipped out its middle leg on that side and made a small cut on the hip of the goat man. Nevertheless, the cut did bleed, so it was an adequate response to the hit made by the goat man. Unfortunately, that was the limit of the action for close to 10 minutes. The opponents danced around each other, but never got close enough together to score a single hit on the opponent.

The Devil was at the end of his patience with these two individuals. Suddenly, He jumped up from his seat and announced in a loud voice, “You are both disgraces to your races. I have had enough of your silliness!” He stared for a moment at each of the two reluctant duelists, and a fire broke out at the feet of each one. Both gave out with screams of intense pain and pleas for the Devil to stop torturing them, but He ignored their cries.

It was as if each of the two was being burned at the stake with no way to escape the flames. It took about half an hour for the two former fighters to be consumed by the flames. They were reduced to little more than ashes when there was a kind of whooshing sound and the signs of the ashes and all other things associated with them vanished. The Devil turned to me and said, “I have never been so bored in my life as by the exhibition put on by those two cowards! Don’t worry, Jim, I don’t blame you for the cowardly behavior shown by those two. It was my fault for not being more careful in the individuals I chose to fight each other.”

Oh, Man, this looked like the opportunity I was looking for to twist the Devil into making a decision to go along with my plan to push him out of the Milky Way. “I agree with you that we just witnessed a ridiculous display of cowardice. Dammit, I could have done better than either one of them with just my usual weapons from Isbardia. I am embarrassed for having suggested the show we just witnessed.”