Lucifer met his team twenty minutes before the first event of the festival, on a stone platform in the middle of the Mythos arena, and he knew two of their names.
The arena had been rebuilt overnight. Twenty raised platforms stood in a wide ring across the floor, each one carrying the bare frame of a fortress: grey walls, an open tower well, a gate, and at the heart of it, sunk into the stone, a relay core the size of a man's head, glowing a dull, sleepy blue. Beyond the ring, under the stands, were six great beast gates, shut.
Above everything hung a board. Twenty fortress names in a circle, each with a long green integrity bar, and under each one, six names drawn by lot that morning.
Under FORTRESS THREE, his own name came first.
"Captain," said the Slatemark girl, as he climbed the steps. She'd said it as a question.
"If nobody minds," Lucifer said.
