Lucifer's Lottery

“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 license then, but have you ever wondered when our responsibilities at this ghastly reservation might be at an end?”

Favius shivered. He did not answer.

Buyoux’s voice, now, could barely be heard. “We’d all be mad not to wonder about that, yes? In an eternity where time cannot be calculated? Where day and night do not exist and where the sky is always the same color of ox blood and where the moon never changes phase? Lucifer Almighty.” But then the Grand Sergeant nodded. “No doubt, at least, you’ve heard rumors . . .”

“I’ve heard nothing, Grand Sergeant. I do nothing but stand my post and command my rampart, by your nefarious grace.”

Buyoux paced back and forth, his Dark Ages armor rasping. “Things are going well, I can tell you that, and soon? I’ll be able to tell you exactly why the Unholy Ministry of Engineering ordered the very construction of this Reservoir in the first place . . .”

Favius stood still as one of the Golems, his ears itching to know.

“Soon, just not now.” Buyoux eyed the muscled Conscript. “For the love of every Anti-Pope, I’ve always wondered why they would build this in such a pestilent perimeter of wasteland.”

“The more removed the Reservoir is from the City, the safer it shall stand against infiltrators,” Favius dared speculate.

Again, Buyoux nodded. His keen discolored eyes suddenly went flat. “And safe it had best remain . . . or we’ll all be fed alive into a Pulping Station, of that you can rest assured.”

Why, though? Favius did indeed wonder. Why had they built this strange place?

“And friend Favius, would your heart sing as well were I to tell you that after what must be centuries, we may be privileged enough to leave soon? To return to the Mephistopolis?”

Favius began to shake, his heart racing. But he did not reply.

“I can tell you this. The last of the Emaciation Squads have finished their toil.”

Favius wanted to shout aloud but, of course, could not. Instead, his exuberance seemed to build up from within, threatening to blow him apart.

Next Buyoux pointed over the rampart, to the termination of the great endless Pipeway connected to the Main Sub-Inlet. “And did you know that the Pipeway is now complete?”

“I-I,” Favius stammered, “I did not know, your wretched Grace.”

“Well, it is, and you know what that means . . .”

Favius’s eyes bloomed. “Soon, then, they’ll begin to fill the Reservoir . . .”

“Indeed. With exactly what, I’ve not yet been apprized, but the sooner it is filled, the sooner its actual use will be realized, and, hence?”

“The sooner our duties here will have been discharged.”

“Quite correct. So who says hope does not exist in Hell, hmm?” Buyoux studied Favius in his stance. “I’m feeling charitable today, Favius.” He held up his own pair of Abyss-Glasses. “You’re a loyal servant and inexhaustible soldier; therefore, you deserve a glimpse. Would you like a glimpse?”

Favius could’ve collapsed from the joy of the prospect, but he answered via protocol. “I am unworthy and undeserving, Grand Sergeant. I am but rags in your presence.”

“No, you’re not,” Buyoux’s word came, drained. “We’re all the same, if you want to know the truth.” He gave Favius the Abyss-Glasses. “Go ahead. You have my permission.”

Favius’s large hands trembled when he took the glasses. The model supplied to Grand Sergeants was hundreds of times more powerful than the pair Favius had been requisitioned.

Very slowly, the Conscript turned and raised the Abyss-Glasses to his jaded eyes . . .

The sights took his breath away: the blazing scarlet sky shimmering above the illimitable city. Here was Osiris Heights with its gleaming black monoliths and ceaseless pillars of smoke from the Diviners Stations. Next, the recently rebuilt Bastille of Otherwise Souls, the eternal black prison for Humans damned only for the sin of suicide. Bosch Gardens was a frenzy of giant beaked Demons pitchforking a pitiable Human horde into steaming crevices or feeding the children of Crossbreeds into the mouths of mammoth Gastrodiles. Gremlins prowled through subcorporeal footholds in the coal black clouds, while Gargoyles skulked the ledges and sills of leaning skyscrapers and pointed pinnacles rising to titan heights. Between the drab buildings of the Ghettoblocks stretched cables from which the Damned unwisely hanged themselves, only to learn that the death they longed for would never come, leaving them to hang by their necks, alive, for time immemorial. Gryphons and Wolf-Bats, some the size of airships, glided serenely through the soiled air. Favius zoomed in on a middle school’s playground, where sinister and often- fanged teachers fired young students back and forth on catapults, punishment for earning superior grades. On a foul street corner—the Filth District?—several slug-colored Ushers torqued the arms and legs off a Hybrid man for evidently double-parking his steam-car; and on another corner, a pack of Broodren were raping a half-bred Succubus while simultaneously disemboweling her by a hook shoved down her throat.

“It’s-it’s . . . beautiful,” Favius whispered in awe.

“Yes, it is,” his superior replied in similar awe. “Look to the North Quadrant. There’s something there you’ll find very interesting . . .”

Favius followed the instruction, then paused, locked in a rigor of shock and wonderment.

“It’s the Pol Pot District, and as you can see, fine Conscript, good things are all about.”

Favius could barely maintain his train of thought. There, spiring from the middle of the smoke-hazed District known for beautification via staked heads and “cubing” the Human Damned in massive industrial compactors, was a great statue-like obscenity higher than any building in the vicinity. An enormous, horned thing standing perfectly still.

Parched, Favius uttered, “Antichrist Almighty . . . A Demonculus . . .”

“So it is. The myths are true. While we’ve been guarding this wasted post for centuries, the De Rais Academy has built that. I can scarcely believe they did it. We all thought it was impossible . . .”

“The sorcerial technologies must have multiplied by leaps and bounds,” Favius, in his awe, postulated.

“And why not? It does in the Living World. Stands to reason the same should be true here.” Buyoux’s blemished lips turned to a sharper smile. “Who knows when they’ll be able to bring it to life, but when they do? Our troubles with the Contumacy will be finished in short order.”

“I pray Satan . . .”

The Grand Sergeant pointed down off the rampart. “Now, follow the Pipeway, and maximize your magnification . . .”

Favius did so, training the supernatural binoculars on the massive pipeline sixty-six yards in diameter.

“A hundred miles, a thousand,” Buyoux uttered, “no one really knows. But pay heed. What is your interpretation, Conscript?”

Favius followed the perfectly straight line of the Pipeway from its connection here at the Reservoir all the way across the black, blasted plain of the Great Emptiness Quarter. It took minutes to follow the Pipeway’s complete terminus at the Mephistopolis, and there, where it seemed to officially end, he noticed the features of the Sector District it disappeared into . . .

Gushing smokestacks pumping endless soot into the air, squat buildings stained black from said soot, and the