Synopsis "The Great Deceiver (in English)"
As surely as men wage war against each other, supernatural deities also fight for human souls in the afterlife. Earth is the staging ground. If the Devil wanted a protégé, who would he seek to help him win an eternal struggle? Those who've tried to conquer the world have always failed. Being ruthless or power-hungry won't be enough in the war for souls. A true leader would need the right blend of cunning, ambition, and charisma. How can a person whom people would lovingly follow be twisted into someone they would blindly die for? What events would shape his life? What would bring about his rise to power? How would he reshape the world? And, most importantly, when he rises to power, how can he be stopped? Excerpt: The body of each Overlord was bloated and engorged, like someone whose kidneys had shut down. They had two, stubby, t-rex-like arms which extended out of what would have been pecks if they had any muscles under those layers of fat. Each arm had three, blood-stained talons instead of fingers. Although those arms were puny, and the claws looked worse than any imaginable case of carpal tunnel syndrome, I had no doubt that each talon was razor sharp. Instead of a belly-button, the Overlords had what appeared to be a tiny, toothless mouth that opened and closed at random. A thin layer of what I hoped was saliva coated around the lips of it. The belly-mouth would have reminded me of a vagina except for the snake-like, forked tongue that darted in and out. It reminded me of the little, mini-mouth from the aliens in the movie with the same name. I saw no visible sex-organs as part of the Overlords, but that didn't mean much; any organs could easily have been covered up by the gross fat that hung down in front. They definitely had what I would describe as front-asses. This made it impossible to tell their gender. I watched as the Overlords looked us over like a pack of hungry wolves. Their eyes were yellow and jaundiced. There was something feral about them. Each pair of eyes was sunk deep into a swollen, hairless head that was much too large for the greasy, deformed body it rested on. Every Overlord had a bulbous, twisted nose that reminded me of Monroe after I'd smashed him. The few teeth within each monster's snarling mouth were chipped, pointed, and twisted. No amount of dental work would fix them. Their heads reminded me of mushy jack-o-lanterns that had been left on someone's front step a month after Halloween. Many people walked over to a specific Overlord. They looked as if they knew where they were supposed to go. I had no idea what to do and remained in place near the troughs, frozen with terror and amazement. Several other people did likewise; maybe they new too. Moments later, one of the gargantuan beasts lurched my way. A long, flickering tongue darted out of its mouth as it stared at me. My knees started to shake. The Overlord then spoke slowly, as with great difficulty. Its tone was guttural and barely tangible, "slave," it croaked, "you belong to me now. You will work. You will call me master when you address me." BOOK QUOTES: "Nothing would please me more than to cleanse the world for you" "I have turned into a living symbol of the darkness the can reside in the human heart" "My name is one best whispered in terror in a dark corner"
