by Rob Sanders
Guiding the lighter down through swarms of spiked transports carrying cultists to dark prayer and mutant labour to their shift in the manufactoria districts, Occam avoided the scaffolding of new daemon-honouring shrines built amongst the horror of older devotional structures. He weaved around high-tension cables stretched between pocket hives and chains supporting Titan God Machines under construction. He dropped down through heavy metal smog banks that were settled above manufactoria complexes and the slum habs that fed them with cultist workers.
Goura Shengk pointed out a landing pad atop a cathedral tower, the crenellations of which were lined with curved metal spikes like fangs. The pad itself was a pentangle lined with ruinous sigils and huge electro-candles. Ragged cultists rushed up from a stone stairwell. They were followed by a squad of hulking, spiked shapes in dirty red plate. Their welcoming party, the strike master assumed.
Occam opened an encrypted vox-channel: ‘Coming in to land.’
‘Standing by,’ Sergeant Hasdrubal returned from the bridge of the Iota-Æternus.
Drifting over the landing pad, Occam allowed the descent to overshoot slightly, scattering the cultists and putting the Word Bearers escort on edge, as he wanted them. Putting the lighter down heavily, off the pentangle’s centre, Occam shut down the craft’s engines and life support.
‘Shall we?’ the Dark Apostle said. Occam said nothing, but led the way through the cargo compartment, hitting the stud for the ramp. Taking his helm off, he mag-locked it to the rear of his belt. As they descended the pair of them found the squad of Word Bearers had fanned out about the craft. They were all armed with boltguns of ancient design. Occam could see that their armour was fused to their warped bodies, gaps in the cracked plate revealing daemon brawn and glowing runes. Among their number was a helmetless acolyte who sported a daemonic half-face, one side belonging to a bald, bronze-skinned Word Bearer and the other an infernal monster of sharpened teeth, warp-glazed eye and single horn. The half-mouth of the daemon seemed perpetually curled in grinning self-satisfaction while the other was downturned and unsmiling.
‘You are Goura Shengk,’ the being rasped, ‘late apostle of the Barbed Oath, Honoured of the Varga Rax, Captain of the Dissolutio Perpetua. Warp-tempered of flesh and host to Morphidax the Primordial.’
‘We are still all those things,’ Shengk told the acolyte. ‘And you are…’
‘Zothrac of the Graven Gate,’ the monster told Shengk. ‘Acolyte to Drach’Var Tal, first of his name, First Apostle of the Daemon Council and right hand to the Abyssal Prince of All-Ghalmek.’
While Occam let the formalities wash over him, it became clear that Shengk and the daemon Word Bearer heralded from different companies or Chapters. There was clearly no brotherly love lost between them.
‘Search them,’ Zothrac said.
Two Word Bearers came forth to check Occam and the Dark Apostle for weaponry. While Shengk still wore his deck robes, Occam wore his legionary plate. He had forgone all weaponry, however. Knowing that he would be searched, Occam had decided not to risk the offence a bolt pistol or secreted close-combat weapon might offer.
Within the ancient plate and helm of the Word Bearer searching him, Occam could hear the ugly breathing of another daemon monstrosity. Like Goura Shengk, it seemed the Word Bearers of Ghalmek favoured their daemon allies with flesh. Their own. They shared their ageing, superhuman frames with beings of the warp, so that such allies might travel with them beyond the safety of the storm.
It did not surprise Occam to be searched, but he was surprised with the equally distrustful treatment of one of their own. As a Dark Apostle, Occam suspected that Goura Shengk outranked every Word Bearer on the landing pad and yet they treated him with the same caution as a member of the Alpha Legion. The Word Bearer searching Occam went so far as to lean in and smell the strike master. Through the helmet’s grille Occam heard a bestial snuffling. Moving across to Goura Shengk, the Chaos Space Marine did the same.
Occam stood there in the sights of the daemon Space Marines as the acolyte and the searchers conversed in a guttural, infernal tongue.
‘You have been purified, brother,’ the acolyte said to Shengk, the disgust clear on both sides of his flesh. ‘Your flesh is without blessing and your soul unfavoured. You are untempered and like this one, you carry the stench of weakness.’
Shengk gave the acolyte a flash of his perfect teeth from behind black, ravaged lips.
‘The Abyssal Prince awaits us,’ Shengk told him. ‘It would be unwise to keep our lord waiting.’
‘Indeed,’ the half-faced acolyte said. ‘I thought the same thing when you failed to return with the Dissolutio Perpetua. You have kept your prince waiting. He is… displeased. I suspect bringing this fork-tongued serpent before him will do little to improve his disposition. The pair of you will not be alone. I have sent for your host captain and honoured First Acolyte – now Dark Apostle of the Barbed Oath in your place. A reward for fulfilling the prophecies of the Daedronicron Malefest and returning Kar’Nash’gahar – Lord of Glorious Slaughter and Slayer of Worlds – to the Shrine of Iron. I am glad to be the one to reunite you.’
‘Does this thing ever break for breath?’ Occam asked. ‘Or is that his talent on the battlefield – talking his enemies to death?’
The acolyte snarled his daemonic displeasure, prompting Word Bearers to lean in with the muzzles of their boltguns.
‘Zothrac is a brother of the Graven Gate,’ Goura Shengk said, ‘and as such hasn’t seen a battlefield for a long time. He hides with his fiends among library stacks and black altars. He is a dark and true servant of Ghalmek, pledging to never leave his daemon world – and certainly not the safety of the storm. He likes the Graven Gate firmly closed, with his host firmly on this side of it.’
‘You will die for that, untempered thing,’ Zothrac spat.
‘Aye, we will,’ Goura Shengk said, ‘but not by your unworthy hand. Now, be a good herald and walk us to our end.’
Out on the landing pad, the strike master noticed that it was raining. Slivers of silvery crystal drizzled from the sky and pitter-pattered against his plate. Occam and the Dark Apostle were escorted down the stairwell and into the main body of the Cathedra Nox. It was a haunted place, filled with gloom and foreboding. Every anteroom and vaulted chamber venerated daemon princes and Dark Gods: colossal statues of honoured entities loomed over them, while sigils of summoning were carved into stone floors stained red with sacrificial blood and black with the infernal fires of manifestation. The stone of the structure was cracking and ancient, held together by warp encrustation and darkness. Occam passed through vast halls constructed from mortar and skulls. He walked through the living light of ghostly entities cast in the colours of stained-glass windows. He heard the screams of the sacrificed as they were burned on great pyres of black bones beneath towering chimneys.
All the while, choirs of lesser daemons filled the chambers with madness, alongside the mournful tolling of cursed bells in the belfries. Cultists in black robes went about their business, chanting, summoning and reading from forbidden tomes. Black priests plotted in benighted crypts. They conducted dark rituals on warped altars. Some fell into mumbling insensibility, standing in their own mess and proceeding to rot in their pulpits. The bloodthirsty whispering of daemons prompted others to make sacrifice of friend and foe with kris blades buried in backs.
Dark cardinals in different transept temples, twisted beyond recognition, gave sermons before colossal barbed stars, in honour of the Dark Gods of Chaos. They favoured ghoulish priests with their wisdom, who in turn would spread the dread word to their damned flocks in the hive chapels and church manufactoria.
In the gloom of the cathedra corners, behind blood-drenched tapestries and in the catacombs below Occam’s feet, the strike master felt daemons stalking his path. Fiends and horrors hungered for him, while the vast building itself seemed alive with infernal sentience. Eyes opened in lecterns. Fanged archways drooled their expectation. The red a
nd black stone of walls creaked and seemed to lean and listen for the strike master’s coming.
While daemons went about their dark business, favouring the shadows, barbican-archways were guarded by cultist soldiers. Some were dressed in blood-stained ceremonial robes. They leaned against serrated halberds, their clawed hands resting on the holsters of baroque autopistols. Those guarding the pulpits and cardinals were caged in clattering plate that sizzled with smouldering runes. They knelt before daemon-possessed great swords and axes used in ritual sacrifice.
The strike master observed with a tactician’s eye the deployment of Word Bearers throughout the structure. Some were warped monstrosities and willing vessels for daemonic entities like Goura Shengk and his Varga Rax. It seemed to be a dark blessing reserved for officers, warlords and favoured units. Most of the Word Bearers on Ghalmek appeared relatively unchanged, their rune-encrusted plate merely smoking with the malevolence of the unholy place and their own black hearts.
As Occam and Goura Shengk were marched up polished obsidian steps and into the cathedra-palace, the strike master was exposed to deviancies of all kinds, committed with solemn reverence in the private chambers of the Grand Apostle. Word Bearers stood guard on vast landings, lit by windows bearing the most blasphemous of stained-glass depictions and twisted daemonic statues of living iron. The Word Bearers sentries were clad in barbed Terminator armour, carrying boltgun-mounted chain-glaives. Their helms were horned and warped about the bestial features of the Word Bearers within.
At the top of the stairs, the strike master and Goura Shengk were walked into a domed throne room with black walls and without windows. An infernal glow was created by runes and damned scripture that burned in the walls. In this gloom, Occam could make out an audience of warped clerics, Dark Mechanicum priests, robed daemon heralds and high-ranking Word Bearers. Dark Apostles, dressed in the dread glory of ornate plate, bore symbols of different unholy Chapters. Heavily armed host captains stood in attendance, while possessed acolytes bled the warp into the chamber from their glowing eyes and mouths.
A pair of misshapen Terminators shuffled their spiked forms and crossed the barbed blades of their glaives before Occam and Goura Shengk. Spindly cardinals sprang forth to offer dark blessings and baptise the new arrivals with daemon ichor flicked from their long fingers. Occam looked down at the filth as it sizzled on his plate. Unholy prayers were offered and chalices brought forth by daemon wretches.
‘Drink of spiritual pollution,’ a horror-faced cardinal encouraged, ‘so that you might be unpurified in the presence of the Abyssal Prince.’
Shengk took the chalice and drank deep the black blood that bubbled within. Taking the jewelled cup tentatively, Occam put it to his lips. His superhuman physiology had been engineered to subsist on virtually anything. The contents of the cup not only raged a physical revulsion down through his body, but they seemed to sear his very soul. Spitting the contents out and dropping the chalice, Occam could hear the infernal mirth of the throne room.
Apostles and armoured acolytes, their features horribly warped by daemon sponsorship, laughed through sharp teeth before standing to one side. A throne of barbed bone and iron was revealed, in which sat a monstrous daemon prince. What little remained of his legionary plate was rune-scored, encrusted and embedded in armoured red flesh. It was all daemon brawn and grotesque sinew. The hulking creature wore a crown of twisted horns and breathed intermittent gouts of fiery steam from a helm grille that still remained part of the daemon prince’s elongated snout.
Zothrac made formal introductions, as he had done on the landing pad. These were translated into a dark daemon tongue by a herald at a twisted lectern, which multi-tasked with its many limbs. As it made its announcements, the creature dipped a quill into the darkness of its single eye and scribbled unfolding events down in a living tome. Occam waited under the burning gaze of the daemon prince as two other Word Bearers were admitted to the chamber. The plate of one had the markings of a host captain, while the second, trailing a cloak of stitched skin and holding a spiked staff of office, carried himself with the confidence of a senior officer. They carried their helmets at their side and Occam saw their ugly faces change as they beheld Goura Shengk. Shengk, for his part, gave them the hostility of his frost-ravaged features. His gaze lingered particularly on the barbed ball that formed the head of the ceremonial crozius his opposite carried.
‘Apostle,’ the host captain said, taking a knee. ‘By the tri-fold blessings of the Dark Gods, you are alive.’
‘I am,’ Goura Shengk said. Occam watched the second Word Bearer. He seemed less pleased to take a knee but finally did so.
‘Apostle,’ he said. ‘You must know that everything was done to secure your freedom.’
‘Everything was,’ Occam interjected, ‘and your master’s freedom was secured.’
The Word Bearers seemed to ignore the strike master, while the daemon prince looked on with displeasure.
‘The mission was a success?’ Shengk asked coldly as they got back to their feet.
‘The prophecies of the Daedronicron Malefest have been realised,’ the Word Bearer told him, ‘and at long last the Slaughterlord returned to Ghalmek.’
‘Where is Kar’Nash’gahar?’ Shengk asked. ‘If I might be so bold.’
‘He has been taken to the catachives,’ the Word Bearer told him, ‘beneath the cathedra, so that the prince’s diabolists and warpsmiths might investigate the xenos technology that is his prison and prepare the rituals for his coming.’
As they talked, Occam noticed Zothrac move through the audience and speak quietly to a number of fell daemons and Word Bearers who bore the same Graven Gate markings as the acolyte. His helm boasted an extravagant plume and the dun glory of his red plate was inlaid with rune-inscribed bone. He too carried a crozius. The weapon boasted a huge head created from the impossibility of interlocking geometric frames, which formed a Chaos star. Its thick iron haft was so heavy that it took all four of the Word Bearer’s four arms to wield it.
‘Enough of this,’ the senior officer rumbled.
‘Silence,’ Zothrac commanded. ‘Drach’Var Tal, First Apostle of All-Ghalmek speaks.’
‘Success,’ the daemon First Apostle said, ‘failure. You are not fit to judge such things. Only the Abyssal Prince can do that. For my part, the brothers of the Barbed Oath have not kept their word – to each other or to the Daemon Council. Goura Shengk, you promised our master Kar’Nash’gahar, the Slayer of Worlds. Instead, you return with slithering vermin of the void. Renegades of half heart, who favour not the Dark Gods with a Legion’s loyalty.’
Goura Shengk lowered his head.
‘As for your host captain and the First Acolyte – now Dark Apostle of the Barbed Oath in your miserable stead,’ Drach’Var Tal said, ‘he indeed succeeded in carrying back your prize and claiming your rewards. He did not return with his master, however. To leave a corpse behind is one thing. To leave man and daemon to the mercy of our sworn enemies is something else entirely. What faith can the Daemon Council have that their own members might be served similarly?’
Once more the Word Bearers were on their knees.
‘My lords…’ the host captain pleaded.
‘I appeal to your infernal wisdom, my Abyssal Prince,’ the newly promoted Dark Apostle said, ‘and the mercy of the Dark Gods.’
‘The Dark Gods know nothing of mercy!’ the daemon prince roared, coming up off his throne and spuming flame.
As the Word Bearers got up and stumbled back, a barbed Terminator stomped forth and rammed the screaming chainblade of his glaive through the Dark Apostle’s body. He trembled on the thrashing blade while daemons vaulted from the audience, pouncing on the host captain and tearing him to pieces.
Occam stood rigid, ready to react should a blade rage at him or an infernal claw reach out for his shoulder. Goura Shengk, meanwhile, kept his head down – accepting his fate and the Daemon Council’s judgement.
As the host captain was torn
to pieces, the Word Bearers Terminator heaved the Dark Apostle away from himself, simultaneously firing his boltgun at his victim, blasting his body against the wall.
Occam took a step back. He didn’t want the hulking palace guards behind him, but if the daemon prince’s court of abominations began leaping at him he wanted to be able to put Goura Shengk between him and any danger.
As the Word Bearers trembled their last on the stone floor, the Abyssal Prince settled back in his throne. Terminators pointed the lengths of their glaives over his shoulders, aiming their boltguns at Occam and Shengk.
‘What to do…’ the daemon prince said, his words burning on their air, ‘…with you?’
The creatures of his infernal court chattered in their dark tongue, contributing their own opinions.
‘Skin the serpent,’ Drach’Var Tal said, ‘and take his ship.’
‘Surely the Dark Apostle must be punished for his failures,’ Zothrac said to his master.
‘Agreed,’ Drach’Var Tal said, turning to the Abyssal Prince. ‘Goura Shengk must be made an example of. We cannot have Bearers of the Word returning to Ghalmek empty-handed.’
‘What say you of this, apostle?’ the daemon prince asked.
‘He contests your judgement, dark lord,’ Occam said.
‘What makes this scaled vermin think he can speak in my presence?’ the Abyssal Prince said, venting flame through his flesh-embedded grille.
A Terminator stepped forth to smash Occam in the midriff with the haft of his glaive, but the strike master kicked it away. Spinning around behind the armoured hulk, Occam used him for cover.
‘He has not returned empty-handed,’ Occam insisted. ‘He offers you one billion innocent souls as recompense for his failure and intelligence of an attack averted on the unholy soil of this very daemonworld.’
The Terminator turned, his chainblade shrieking as it wheeled overhead. At the legionnaire’s revelation, the Abyssal Prince’s claw came up. The chain-glaives at his shoulder rose and the roaring blade gunned by the Terminator looming over Occam chugged and died.