The Seventy-Third

My father’s study was always stiflingly hot. The braziers blasted constant heat, keeping some foul mixture always on the boil, and the stench had worked its way into everything—the drapes, the parchment, and my own skin.

Father sat behind his desk, counting metal tokens. “Souls”—the only coin that carried any weight in the Underworld. He kept his head down, ignoring me until the last piece hit the wood.

“The Lord is expanding his baggage train,” he said, sweeping the tokens into a leather pouch. “They’re short on hands. They need boys who can follow basic drills and read an order without stammering.”

“The Legion?” I tried to sound firm.

“The Legion. They’ll either shape you into something useful or turn you into meat. Either way, you’re nothing but a drain on family resources here.” He finally looked up. His eyes were entirely unremarkable, worn down by the dull grind of everyday business. “The supply sergeant arrives at noon. I’m trading you for enough crossbows to secure the perimeter. It’s a solid deal.”

He slid a blank sheet and a quill across the desk.

“Sign the manifest. Name, age, House.”

My stepmother had kept me copying a tedious tract on incubus liver anatomy for hours the day before, and my neck still ached from it. My fingers were stained black. I carefully lined up the first letter, knowing full well that a single drop of ink on the clean parchment would earn me a backhand across the jaw.

The ink was thick and expensive, taking well to the coarse paper.

“Age: eighteen,” I muttered under my breath.

“Add the terms,” my father dictated. “’Transferred to the Eighth Legion’s engineering branch in exchange for three heavy crossbows.’” He pushed the tokens aside, his gaze fixing on my hand. “Make it legible. If the quartermaster can’t read your name, he’ll think I foisted illiterate cattle on him. I don’t care to have my word doubted.”

Every stroke of the pen felt like a final commitment, cutting off any return. “In exchange for.” “Three crossbows.”

“Done.” I laid the quill down. The nib split entirely on the final stroke, leaving a small smudge at the edge.

Father stepped closer, picked up the sheet by the corner, and blew the ink dry. For a second, the room filled with the smell of his breath—bitter herbs and dead magic.

“Pack your things. And don’t forget your mechanics journals. The baggage train has use for men who understand how a wheel turns. They have enough fools who do nothing but howl in terror.”

At the threshold, I paused.

“Father?”

He was already reaching back for his tokens.

“What?”

“Thank you for giving me a chance. For not dumping me in the mines.”

A dry smirk twitched his lips, but he didn’t look up.

“Your value to this House ended the second you failed your initialization. The Legion simply outbid the overseers. Move along.”

The hallway offered some relief from the heat, but the phantom clinking of coins still rang in my ears. I stared at my hands; the deep ink stains looked permanent. The bargain was struck. I was no longer a son, but I had still fared better than most. Overseers in the sulfur pits didn’t live much longer than the slaves they broke.

I went back to my cramped quarters. My own footsteps sounded foreign in the quiet. The small room smelled of dust and sour rags. I dropped onto the filthy straw mattress and lay there for hours, listening to the muffled noise beyond the cloudy bladder-skin window, soaking in the last smells of the house. My mind was blank. Only numbness remained.

The steward knocked on the heavy door.

“Time’s up.”

I got up, stuffed my meager belongings into a sack—a spare tunic, sandals, and a bundle of notes—and walked out to the courtyard gates with heavy steps.

The sun hung as a dull, crimson blur on the horizon, if it even deserved the name, and the light stung my eyes. Dust from hooves and iron wheels already hung thick over the main road.

A massive cart hitched to a pair of heavy, wheezing beasts stood by the gates. My stepmother and a sergeant were waiting beside it. He looked nothing like the groomed, high-tier demons who used to visit my father. This one was different—covered in scars, wearing a leather cuirass slick with soot and grease.

My stepmother threw a bundle at my feet.

“Change out of those rags. The House of Black Flame stays clean, even when discarding trash.”

The sergeant eyed my sack and spat. “So you’re the literate recruit the quartermaster traded his best crossbows for?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he just pointed a finger at the back of the wagon.

“Get in. You’re number seventy-three on the manifest.”

The steward swung the gates shut. The heavy click of the deadbolt sounded behind us, sealing it.

We drove down a rocky trail.

“Listen close, kid,” the sergeant rumbled. “In the Legion, you’re a component. If a component squeaks, it gets greased. If it breaks, it gets thrown away. Got it?”

“Got it. Where do we get the grease?”

The sergeant pulled the reins, stopping the wagon to look back at me.

“You steal it, boy. Or you earn it. Smartasses like you trade it for calculations. Or for silence. The engineering branch isn’t for writing poetry. One mistake in your numbers, and they’ll stuff you into the catapult basket instead of a boulder.”

He roared at his own joke, his breath reeking of garlic so violently it made my eyes water.

I turned back. My father’s estate had already vanished around the bend. Strangely, I felt no resentment. Only cold indifference. A deal is a deal. Father got his three crossbows, and I... I got a fighting chance to live without a slave collar around my neck.

An hour later, we reached the portal grounds—the Legion’s staging area. Recruits just like me wandered aimlessly among the sea of supply wagons and disassembled catapults.

The sergeant led me to a long table where a sullen imp sat checking rosters.

“Seventy-third. To the siege park,” the sergeant barked.

“Show me your hands,” the imp commanded.

I held out my palms. The imp grabbed them, turning them over roughly.

“Quill calluses. Pah. Don’t worry, a month on an onager lever will turn that skin to boot leather. Engineering branch, ballista crew.”

The imp dipped his quill, checked his ledger, and pointed a claw toward a cart loaded with heavy gates and winches.

“Seventy-third, your post is by that wagon. Stand there and keep your head down.”

I leaned against the heavy wheel, trying to melt into the shadows, and glanced around the square. It looked like a giant funnel carved into solid black basalt. Tiered steps descended toward the very center, where the Portal quivered—a vertical rift bleeding a cold, white hum. Thousands of legionnaires in black steel, slaves, and heavy baggage trains were being swallowed by the glowing void. The rhythm of the march—the thunder of thousands of iron-shod boots—merged into a low vibration that rattled my teeth. Directly above my head loomed the steel frame of an onager, looking like a skeletal claw.

“Watch the sky, kid,” a dry voice rasped near me.

A gaunt incubus stepped out from the shadow of the wheel. He looked as though he were molded from the same dust and soot that covered the entire staging ground.

“The Master is coming out. Close your eyes or you’ll go blind. And don’t fall—you’ll snap your spine,” he cackled, mocking me.

Then a shadow fell over the square. The sky turned dense, like cooling iron. The Fallen materialized in mid-air, tearing open space by his mere presence. His armor of hardened oil absorbed the light. Thousands of soldiers smashed their spears against their shields; the explosive blast of sound nearly turned my stomach inside out. The Fallen pointed his greatsword toward the Portal, and the rift’s hum escalated into an unbearable shriek.

In the dark, a low-born demon recruit, crazed with adrenaline, tried to shove me off the platform under the rolling wheels. My hand instinctively found a heavy lead counterweight resting on the frame. With a short, sharp motion, I drove the lead into the creature’s kneecap. The dry crunch of bone was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The demon collapsed backward, and the incubus gave a brief, approving smirk.

“Welcome to the Eighth Legion, Seventy-Third.”

The wagon jolted forward. We were pulled into the white maw of the Portal. A flash of agony hit me—a sensation like my skin being flayed off and put on backward—followed by the sharp taste of copper in my mouth.

A moment later, I was spitting gray dust onto the stones. A crimson sky stretched above us. An ash plain. The rear lands of Lord Gaap’s domain. The place where my life was now worth exactly what was written on the manifest.

The entire side of the wagon was coated in gray frost. Before my eyes, it melted into a slimy residue—the portal’s sludge. I tried to stand, but my fingers were completely numb. I began rubbing them together. The dry friction of skin against skin was the only living sound in the dead silence.

“Seventy-third!” The sergeant kicked me hard in the hip. “Look at the damn wheel.”

I forced my eyes to focus. The hub was intact, but one of the wooden spokes had turned to gray powder. I touched the wood; it crumbled like ash from a dead campfire. The raw magic of the crossing had burned decades of time out of the timber in a single second.

“Don’t just stand there gaping,” he grunted. “Grab a knife and get over to that scrap heap by the barracks wall. Look for oak. If you find something usable, drag it back. If you don’t, you’re sleeping tied to the axle to hold it up.”

I trudged toward the salvage pile. A low-frequency ringing still hammered against my eardrums. I dug through rotting rags and shards of rusted iron until my fingers brushed against something smooth and freezing cold.

It was a bone. Massive, gray with dust. I pulled it out from under a broken axle. As I yanked, something else rolled out behind it—a tiny wooden horse. Crude craftsmanship, with a broken tail. It smelled faintly of dry pine and an old carpenter’s workshop.

I quickly shoved the toy into my tunic, the rough wood scratching the skin of my chest.

“Found one!” I shouted, hoisting the bone.

I began scraping the remnants of dried tendons off the joint with my knife, trying to shape it to fit the hub socket.

The sergeant walked over, snatched the prize from my hands, and weighed it in his palm.

“Marabou femur. Sturdy stuff.”

He tossed me a darkened leather waterskin. It was hot and reeked of rancid fat.

“Here. Boiled hound sinews. While they’re warm, they stretch. Once they cool, they’ll clamp down on that bone so hard you’ll never tear them free.”

I pulled a long, yellowish strand out of the skin. It was slimy and scalded my fingertips.

“Let’s move, Seventy-Third. I hold the rim, you wrap. If the tension is loose, that bone flies out at the first pothole.”

We wrestled with the wheel for two hours. I had to bind the sinews in a tight figure-eight, threading them through the splintered grooves of the hub and wrapping them flush against the bone. My fingers became coated in a sticky, fast-hardening grease. My quill calluses split open, my fresh blood mixing with the yellow lubricant.

“Tighter!” the sergeant growled. “Pull, you worthless dog!”

When the last loop was secured, the sergeant pulled an oak wedge wrapped in lead foil from the wagon—the only protection against portal decay. Smearing it with thick tar, he drove the wedge into the socket with a practiced blow, locking the bone permanently into the wheel.

“Done. Once it cools, it’s solid.”

I sat back on my haunches, wiping my fingers on the straw. The sinews tightened with a faint, taut creak as they dried. The bone sat rock-solid, as if it had always been a part of the machine.

“Wrap a rag around it, don’t get dirt on the sinews,” he barked, completely ignoring the raw, bleeding skin on my palms, before shouting to the rest of the conscripts: “Form up on me!”

He marched off toward the barracks.

He led us into a block where the sharp stench of stale sweat hit my nose.

“This is the main barracks. Recruits take the left wing.”

The hall was split right down the middle. The bunks of the veterans were cluttered with trophies: carpets plundered from human worlds, fur cloaks, and engraved armor. My assignment was in the left wing—bare planks and a fresh straw mattress. Each man received a heavy blanket and a personal footlocker with a thick iron latch.

The sergeant walked down the line, tossing out gear packs.

“Mess kit, spoon, uniform. Standard issue. Lose it, I flay you. Sell it, I kill you. Dismissed.”

I was just starting to unpack my gear when a shadow fell across my bunk. A towering veteran demon with a nasty scar running down his thigh loomed over me.

“Hey, fresh meat,” he growled. “You look soft, pampered. Hand over whatever stash you brought from home. If you want an easy life here, you gotta pay your dues.”

He shoved his shoulder into me roughly and reached out toward my footlocker. From a neighboring bunk, a one-armed veteran watched lazily.

“Drop it, Limp,” the one-armed demon muttered without getting up. “The sergeant will keep us all rotting on the drill square until midnight if there’s any trouble. Leave the kid alone before we all pay for it.”

Limp turned, his face tightening.

“Mind your own business, rat,” he snapped back. “I know what I’m doing. Stay out of my way before I break your face.”

He turned back to me deliberately and slid his fingers right under the heavy iron latch, preparing to yank the lid open.

I knew instantly: if I let this bastard dig his claws into my locker now, I’d be dead before I ever made it back to the portal. This wasn’t something to just let slide.

The exact second Limp threw his weight into lifting it, I slammed my entire body weight down on the opposite end of the latch. The metal piece acted as a perfect, brutal lever. The sharp, clean crunch of shattering finger bones echoed into the farthest corner of the barracks.

Limp let out a howl that made the tin mess bowls rattle. He collapsed to the floor, cradling his mangled hand against his chest.

The heavy doors flew open, and the sergeant stormed into the block.

“What’s all this racket? Goddammit, Limp! What happened?”

Whimpering and clutching his shattered fingers, Limp pointed a hand toward me.

“This little freak... this piece of shit broke my hand!”

The sergeant looked at the massive demon, then turned his gaze to me. His face contorted, and he laughed at the sight.

“You got wrecked by a runt? That’s rich! You’re no warrior, Limp, you’re a pathetic piece of garbage.”

The rest of the barracks immediately joined in, hooting and laughing.

“I know your game, you parasite,” the sergeant said, cutting the laughter dead. “Ten kitchen details. You’ll scrub cauldrons with the slaves. Let this be a warning to the rest of you: if anyone tries to rob the recruits, you’ll go straight to the alchemists for testing. They’re always hurting for live meat. Limp, get your ass to the mages for healing, then report to Sergeant Gys in the kitchens. The rest of you—fall in for mess.”

The dining hall of the siege park was relatively small. Technicians and engineers were valued much higher in the Legion than the simple cannon fodder of the line infantry, so the mess halls here weren’t nearly as cavernous or deafening as those of the vanguard or the blademasters. The air smelled not just of boiling food, but of rosin, sour metal, and smoke.

I received my ration and paused. Sitting in my bowl was a real cut of meat—tough and stringy, but thick with fat—alongside a mountain of steaming porridge. I ate hungrily, burning my tongue, but a strange bitterness welled up inside me. Back at the Black Flame estate, the tables were laden with fine wines and rare delicacies for guests, but as the unprofitable son, I was always left with my stepmother’s scraps or a watery broth you wouldn’t feed to a hound. There, I was a liability. A drain on resources.

Here, inside this brutal, iron belly of a machine, they gave me calories because I was a resource. An instrument meant to function. And that stark realization—that the Legion valued me more than my own blood ever did—hit me harder than any drink.

I lay back down on the straw, pulling the heavy blanket over myself. In the darkness of the barracks, an unfamiliar sense of calm washed over me. I was no longer the unprofitable son. I was a cog in the great war machine of Gaap. Staring up at the dark ceiling, I made a silent vow: I would become the most indispensable part in this entire engine. So that no demon would ever dare try to break me again.