Lucifer's Lottery Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 feelingcharitable 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 soiledair. 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