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Chapter Two Hundred Seventy-Nine: 'The Reckoning at the demonic Pit...'
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Fire and lightning lashed up and around the enormous chamber, casting off sparks that were so numerous and deadly that any normal person would probably have been vaporized on contact. The entire building rumbled more violently with each new geyser of electrified flame.

This level of danger while working was not something he had experienced in quite some time. Even the most intensive bits of creation involving the Roberts had not gotten this bad. Hell, perhaps not since its own creation had he seen such fury from the Clown Pit.

In moments like this, even he was not invulnerable here. The forge had that much power. He had to be in pan-rozum just to handle it, just to keep things under control.

One slip up would spell the end for the poor little Lion and his reaper, who were both currently at the center of the inferno. They were probably screaming in agony, but it was all being drowned out by the Pit.

The Pit itself was a gigantic bowl embedded in the floor, big enough to park ten or more cars. Plenty of space to move about and work, to interact with the inferno, to calm or stoke it at particular points, to tweak the raging ardor that flowed and swirled through each spark and flicker.

Delicate, delicate work. Made even more so by the Pit's rage.

The real magic, though, happened at the very bottom of the bowl: the center, where the subjects were being held fast as much by their harnesses as by the whirlwind of ardor currently encapsulating them. Because beneath them, beneath that whirlwind, was the Eye of the Pit.

The pitch dark hole with no bottom, where all of the ardor in the Pit flowed both from and then back into. It was a rift, of sorts, and that was where the Pit truly lived. Where it felt. Where it learned.

Where it decided whether it would work for or against him during the creative process.

This time, unfortunately, it seemed to have chosen the latter. Not that he was terribly surprised.

It didn't much care for organics. Especially people. It tolerated him, sure, but anyone else? No. It wanted to render them inorganic. It wanted to reduce them to dust.

So Morgunov had a fight on his hands. And not an easy one, to be sure.

But, thankfully, it was one he'd had many times before.