Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [11]
If this project were not very important, Favius knew, my expertise would not be needed here, and nor would the Brigade’s . . .
Sword always in hand, Favius turned and gazed out at the bleak and awesome sight: the Reservoir’s empty pit. He remembered when the Emaciation Squads had first broken ground with mere shovels, digging out and carting away the sinking black sand and corrupt soil. Surely millions of these workers had toiled themselves, literally, to nothingness, and when their labors had reduced them to sunken-faced twigs, they were buried alive beneath the unholy Reservoir’s soil, where they would twitch and mutter and think—forever.
All in the service of their detestable Lord.
I am so honored, the Conscript’s voice creaked through his mind. Only the most loyal, the most trusted, and the most heinous of Lucifer’s soldiers were granted such esteemed duty.
A noxious breeze trailed across the Conscript’s helmed face, and at once he smiled. The breeze carried the rich, organic stench of the Mephistopolis, the place he dreamed of returning to once his duties here were done. He longed to rape, to maim, to slaughter: his natural instincts. And just then he dared to wonder, How much longer?
Such thoughts, he knew, could be deemed treasonous in the event any Archlocks were about—Archlocks, Bio-Wizards, or other servitors skilled in the reading of minds. Favius indulged himself, raising from about his muscled neck the pair of Abyss-Glasses—Hell’s version of binoculars. Instead of lenses, the powerful viewing device was fitted with a pair of eyeballs plucked from the sockets of a Dentata-Vulture, an infernal creature possessed of superlative vision. Favius’s tar black heart fluttered when he scanned the farthest fringe of the Reservoir, admiring the fencelike barrier of Golems forever watching outward for signs of assault or trespass. Within this impenetrable wall of manufactured monsters patrolled Conscripts of Favius’s class who were overseen only by one of sixty-six Grand Sergeants. Favius hoped that one day he might rise to such a hallowed rank . . .
He snapped to attention at the sudden, encroaching sound: footsteps and the clatter of plate-mail. He held his legionnaire sword in the present-arms position. Grand Sergeant Buyoux, he realized.
“Stand at ease, friend Favius,” came his superior’s voice. The Grand Sergeant wore a full smock of plate-mail armor, from knees to the top of his head. Only his poxed face showed through an oval in the hood. He carried a flintlock sulphur pistol, and emblazoned on his chest was the seal of Grand Duke Cyamal—a trine of sixes fashioned via intricately engraved skulls.
“State the status of your post, Conscript.”
“All clear, Grand Sergeant!” Favius barked.
“As always, a good thing.” The corrupt face in the oval smiled thinly. “And now? State the status of your disposition.”
“My heart sings in the unblessed opportunity afforded me, the opportunity to serve our abyssal Lord! I exist, Grand Sergeant, for no other purpose than to be of use to Lucifer!”
“Yes, you do, don’t you?” Buyoux’s voice receded as he looked distractedly back and forth over endless causewalks and the great black gulf of the empty Reservoir. “Loyalty is so rare these days. I heard that a full dozen of the Somosan Guard defected to the Contumacy recently, after destroying several Hell-Flux Generators and Agonicity Stations in the Industrial Zone.”
“Blasphemy, Grand Sergeant!”
“Um-hmm.” Then suddenly the Grand Sergeant seemed to stare off, not into the as-yet-unfilled Reservoir, but more into his own reflections. Favius wished he might read the Grand Sergeant’s mind.
“Have you ever wondered, Conscript?”
“I do not wonder, sir!” Favius snapped. “For to wonder is treason without proper license!”
“Yes, and you may consider this your