A sickle moon, yes, that was black.
Hence the sickish-white smoke rising from the curtilage of untold censers amazed this steadfast servitor of Satan. The churning wisps of contrast broke the endless visual monotony of what he’d been looking at for longer than he could remember.
Bronze-helmed and breast-plated, Favius had long ago earned the rank of Conscript First Class. This rank he’d earned faster than most due to his predilection for logic, efficiency, and unhesitant brutality. In life he’d served the in the Third Augustan Legion, circa AD 200, slaughtering women and children in a village called Anchester during Rome’s occupation of Angle-Land. Now, in death and damnation, he was a loyal member of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. Since time was not measurable in Hell, Favius had no way of calculating how long he’d actually been serving this post, but it had to have been the Living World equivalent to hundreds of years.
The notorious Exalted Security Brigade were sworn on their damned lives to guard by all means necessary the six-billion-gallon facility. Directly under his command were a hundred foot soldiers and countless Golems, all who coalesced to form a living and not-so-living security shield. This far out in the Quarter, infiltration and/or vandalism against the Reservoir was unlikely, but no chances could be taken.
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 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?”