by Darius Hinks
Taddeus’ enraptured grin became a snarl. ‘I will see the truth,’ he said, sneering at her. ‘And I will see every soul that harbours deceit. Every soul that contains beliefs outside the Imperial Creed. I will see the impure, the damned, the faithless, the disloyal.’ His full, crimson lips trembled, glistening with spit. ‘I will see who should be saved…’ He leant close to Audus. ‘And who should burn.’
She rolled her eyes.
He nodded slowly, stepping closer, trying to cow her with his bulk. ‘Even a devout soul such as mine can be tricked. But not Hermius. His vision was clear. Once I see what he saw, I can strike with impunity.’ He was breathing quickly, warming to his theme. ‘I will complete the work he began all those centuries ago. I will begin a new crusade and–’
‘Your excellency,’ said Vorne, placing a hand on his arm. ‘They won’t understand.’
Taddeus gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘They must, if they are to endure what lies ahead.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Draik, ‘but not now. Lead us to the maglev. Once we’re on our way to the Ascuris Vault you can tell us more.’
He gave Audus a warning glance and she looked away, still smirking.
Draik was about to wave the group on when he remembered Corval. He thought for a moment that the Navigator might have remained on board the Vanguard, but then he noticed him a few feet behind the others – a pillar of darkness, motionless, barely visible.
‘Emissary Corval,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to begin?’
Corval took a moment to reply, watching the group in silence, then he nodded.
Draik nodded back and strode off in the direction Taddeus had indicated. ‘It won’t be long before the Blackstone welcomes us back.’ His breath trailed behind him as he went, a silver plume, spiralling in the gun lights. ‘Keep your weapons ready.’
Most of the group followed him in a loose V formation, but Grekh loped off to his left, hunched over his rifle, his rangy frame pacing in and out of view.
‘Stay close,’ he said, but Grekh gave no sign he’d heard, staring into the void along the barrel of his rifle.
As they hurried across the vast space the feeling of being watched grew stronger and the noises grew louder. Some sounded like huge pipes rattling against metal, others like mournful choirs, alien and incoherent, rising to a crescendo. Draik heard, quite clearly, the unmistakable sound of a lasgun firing repeated, desperate bursts before being suddenly silenced. Then he heard screams – human, perhaps, but too distorted by distance for him to be sure.
They had only crossed half the distance when the strangeness of the Blackstone started to assert itself.
At first, Draik thought he had merely slipped. He was striding ahead of the group, scouring the shadows for signs of movement, when his feet suddenly slid from beneath him. He landed, painfully, on his side, hitting the cold, unforgiving floor. He tried to rise, but started sliding to the left, drawn by an invisible force.
‘Gravity shift,’ he cried out. ‘Grips.’
Anyone who had travelled through the Blackstone knew the mercurial nature of its physics. Nothing was fixed. Nothing was permanent. Nothing could be trusted.
As Draik slid across the floor with increasing speed, he felt no panic. He had been through this several times. He holstered his pistol and calmly unclasped grappling hooks from his belt, swinging them into the grooves that crossed the floor. The hooks sank into the gaps with a loud clang. For a moment he dangled there, hanging from the hooks as his mind adjusted to the new physics. The floor was now a wall and the new floor was somewhere far beneath him, perhaps miles below.
The others had all come prepared. Most carried hooks of their own and, at Draik’s warning, they jammed them into the wall to avoid plummeting down the sheer drop. Corval had something more refined, a pair of maglocks in the palms of his gauntlets, and he moved with spider-like ease across the rock face.
‘Keep going?’ asked Draik, looking back for Taddeus. With his pistol holstered he was now in almost complete darkness, but the rosarius beneath Taddeus’ chin radiated pale light, and the priest’s jocund features bobbed towards him out of the blackness, like a severed head.
Taddeus grunted and puffed as he hauled his bulk across the wall, but he nodded. ‘The gravity shifts again when we reach the antechamber. If everything is as it was last time.’
‘Unlikely,’ muttered Audus, earning herself a glare from the priest.
The going became painfully slow as they clambered across the side of the crevasse, lunging and swinging their hooks into the narrow channels.
At one point, Isola cursed and scrambled furiously as one of her hooks plunged into the void. Draik was about to head back and help when one of the guards reached out and handed her another. Even in the faint light of Taddeus’ rosarius, Draik could see her annoyance at being the only one who had struggled. He stayed silent and carried on climbing. By this point his shoulders were burning with the pain of holding himself aloft.
‘Almost there,’ said Taddeus, as though sensing his pain. ‘A few more minutes and you’ll see the entrance.’
Draik nodded and continued swinging across the polished stone, his knuckles skinned from bashing across the wall. A few minutes later, he saw a pale ghost up ahead – a horizontal strip of grey that spurred out from the wall – an area of lighter dark. He realised it was a doorway, just seen side-on due to his current angle.
As he neared the aperture, he began to discern shapes in the chamber beyond – angles and inclines, similar to those he’d seen on the surface, and built on an equally daunting scale. He was about to ask Taddeus if this looked like the right place, when pain knifed through one of his hands.
He looked up and saw that he had sliced one of his grappling hooks through the side of his gauntlet, cutting away some skin. He could feel blood trickling down his wrist and into his sleeve. He cursed his clumsiness. Blood-slick hands would not be able to grip as well as he needed. He wiped the side of his hand on the wall, trying to stem the flow. As he passed his hand over the surface, some of the blood sank into one of the narrow channels that criss-crossed the wall.
As his blood disappeared into the groove, it caused a reaction. What he had taken to be rock blistered into dozens of little black plates, like flakes of iron ore. However many times Draik came to the Blackstone, it always showed him something new. He watched, fascinated, as the flakes shifted and clicked, locking together in a neat, tessellating pattern. The pattern took on three dimensions, becoming pyramidal, like a geometric puzzle carried on dozens of glinting, chitinous legs. It moved with mechanical stiffness, like a clockwork automaton, and there was something almost comedic about how it skittered across the smooth black wall.
Then it fastened itself to the back of his gauntlet and began feeding. Draik gasped in surprise as fresh pain knifed through his hand. He could not see any face or mouth, but blood and shreds of leather began rushing from his hand.
He loosed his grip from the wall and slammed the thing, backhanded, against the rock. Rather than falling or fleeing, it locked its legs even more tightly around his gauntlet and started vibrating, like a motor, scattering more blood into the air.
‘Damn you,’ he muttered, gripping the wall again.
As the pain grew, he realised the thing was about to cut through his tendons. He could never hold his weight one-handed. He looked down to see if there was a ledge but it was like trying to see through oil. He tried to wedge his feet into some of the channels in the wall, but it was useless; the grips of his boots were far too thick to find purchase. This absurd little device might stop him before he even reached the maglev chamber.
He looked back to the others, but they were too far away to help.
Keeping his damaged hand on the wall, he grabbed his pistol with his other hand and fired into the pyramid’s shell. It shattered like glass, filling the air with coal-like shards that flipped away
, tinkling down into the abyss.
Draik muttered a curse as he saw the mess it had made of his hand. There were dozens of tears through his gauntlet and broken skin beneath, glistening and bloody. The tendons were intact, though, and his hand still worked. He was about to continue on his way, when he noticed that the wall beneath him was rippling, apparently affected by the blood he had spilled, moving like fallen leaves caught in the breeze – flaking and rising, becoming a shifting mass. As he scrambled further across the wall, he saw that the shards were forming into pyramids, hundreds of them, identical to the one that had just shredded his hand.
‘Move!’ he yelled. Most of the group were still several minutes from the portal.
Draik reached the opening and stepped inside, finding to his relief that gravity had returned to its original direction and he could stand.
He looked back in time to see a blinding explosion of light.
Heat ripped through the frigid air. He staggered back, shielding his face, engulfed by the stink of burning promethium.
When the glare faded, he was faced with the surreal sight of the others clambering across the same surface he was standing on, hauling themselves furiously towards him, their legs dangling uselessly a few inches in the air. The wall was alight with dozens of fires. Vorne dragged herself towards Draik gripping her flamer one-handed, its muzzle still glowing and dripping fuel. Her mouth was a determined snarl, and as she climbed through the doorway she spat prayers at the burning shapes behind.
The others quickly followed, turning to look back at the inferno she had created. The blaze was fierce. Bright enough to finally shed some light across the chamber they had just crossed. Every inch of wall and floor was in motion, clicking, tumbling and forming a sea of black pyramids – thousands of them, some as small as the one that had attacked Draik but others as big as canids. The larger ones were as featureless as the smaller ones – just black pyramids carried on a jumble of multi-jointed legs. They were all moving towards the doorway, a flood of angles and thrashing limbs. As Draik bound his injured hand the walls began rising and reforming, shedding tides of pyramids as they took on a new shape.
‘Can we close this?’ he asked, looking up at the portal they had just clambered through. It was rhombus-shaped – a skewed diamond, over a hundred feet tall. Draik could see no markings anywhere around its frame, nor any sign of a door.
The ocean of geometric shapes was clattering and rolling towards them with increasing speed, gaining momentum, like a wave rushing towards a beach. The distant, half-heard chorus was climbing ever higher, more like screams than music, merging with the metallic, echoing booms.
Vorne lifted her flamer and targeted the approaching wave, but she looked absurd – it was like pointing a gun at an avalanche.
Draik looked at Taddeus. ‘Does it close?’
Taddeus shook his head, flicking through the pages of his book. ‘This isn’t right. This didn’t happen last time we came.’
Audus laughed. ‘You’re looking it up in a book? This is the Blackstone. Nothing happens like last time.’
Vorne glared at her, keeping her burner pointed at the approaching storm. ‘Address His Excellency with respect.’
Audus scowled, but before she could reply, Draik nodded to the darkness that lay in the opposite direction. ‘Then we keep moving,’ he said. ‘How far to the maglev chamber?’
‘This antechamber is smaller than the room we just passed through,’ said Taddeus. He was sweating despite the cold, and he dabbed his eyes with his sleeve. ‘If gravity remains stable, and we run, five minutes or so.’
Isola had drawn her pistol and was pointing it at the carpet of scuttling pyramids. ‘We could never stop them all.’
Draik nodded. ‘Then we run.’ He looked at Taddeus. ‘Which way?’
The priest was momentarily hypnotised by the sight of the previous chamber collapsing and rushing towards them, then he nodded and raced off into the darkness. ‘Follow!’ he bellowed. ‘The God-Emperor is with us!’
They ran, keeping close to Taddeus, using the lumens on their scopes but only managing to reveal glimpses of what lay ahead. The chamber seemed almost identical to the last – sheer, black rock lined with a tracery of geometric designs – but the floor sloped away to the left, meaning they had to run at an awkward angle. There was no sign of the triangular machines, but Draik guessed it was only a matter of time.
Finally, for the first time since they arrived, Draik saw a light source. Taddeus became a rippling silhouette, his robes fluttering against a rising, pale glow. It was like a dawn – cold and grey-blue, creeping over the horizon ahead of them. It revealed a flat, featureless plain. Taddeus was making for something – some landmark Draik had yet to spot.
They all ducked as a deafening smash rang out. It came from behind them – the sound of a thousand plates crashing on rock. Draik kept running but looked back over his shoulder to see the pyramids flooding through the portal – a tumbling, glinting landslide of angular shapes. They spilled onto the floor of the antechamber and sped after them, their spindly legs clinking across the stone like a hailstorm.
Some of the group paused, looking back, horrified.
‘Keep going!’ cried Draik. ‘There are none up ahead.’
As he looked back at Taddeus, he saw the point the priest was racing towards. It was like a facet of enormous crystal – a hexagon of light that deepened the darkness around it. Taddeus was entirely silhouetted now, but Draik could tell he had stopped.
‘This is it!’ cried the priest.
Draik raced to his side.
‘Why have you stopped?’ he demanded, trying to haul the priest forwards.
The machines were thundering towards them, gaining speed, only minutes away.
‘Wait!’ muttered Taddeus, rifling through the pages of the book.
A few of the guards arrived but Draik waved them on towards the light source.
The rest of the group caught up, and gathered round Draik and Taddeus.
‘Excellency,’ gasped Pious Vorne. ‘This is it!’ She waved at the light ahead. ‘I remember it clearly.’
The guards were still racing towards the shape, but the rest of the group hesitated, seeing the doubt in the priest’s face.
‘They’re almost on us,’ said Corval, his metallic voice echoing oddly through the gloom.
‘Yes!’ cried the priest, running his finger over some text.
‘We have to move!’ snapped Draik.
‘The shadows,’ whispered Taddeus, looking up from his journal and watching the silhouetted guards as they raced into the light. They were trailing long shadows as they sprinted but their shadows also reached out before them, as though there were a light behind them too – several lights, in fact, because the shadows ahead of them had fragmented, spreading fingers of darkness across the floor.
‘They need to…’ Taddeus hesitated.
‘What?’ demanded Draik as the tide of pyramids roared towards them.
‘Damn!’ gasped Audus as one of the guards’ shadows rose from the ground and enveloped him.
‘What is that?’ cried Draik, gripping his pistol.
The guard staggered and lurched as the darkness wrapped around him, a black, serpentine coil, lashing around his nose and mouth until he fell to the floor, moaning and punching at the shape, unable to breathe. Another guard fell in the same way, attacked by his shadow. It spread itself across his face and his muffled cries rang out as he struggled to breathe. He tried to rise, but more of the shadows reared up, twisting around his arms and legs, dragging him down. There was an audible crack as his back snapped.
‘Halt!’ cried Draik to the rest of his guards.
Heat and light exploded behind them as Pious Vorne fired her burner into the pyramid drones. The front wave was just seconds away, and the ground was trembling under their weight. Vorne heaved her bur
ner from side to side, drenching them in flames.
‘What do we do?’ demanded Draik, grabbing Taddeus by his robes.
‘The light is a lie,’ whispered the priest, lurching forwards and starting to run in a new direction. ‘Close your eyes! The light is a lie! Run to the warmth!’
It sounded like the words of a madman, but there was no time left to do anything else.
‘You heard him!’ cried Draik, ignoring Isola’s incredulous expression.
Draik closed his eye and deactivated the ocular implant that filled his other socket. At first he felt nothing, distracted by the deafening roar of the pyramids behind him. But then, after a few seconds, he felt a warm current on the air. It was nothing like the fierce heat of Vorne’s flamer – more like the sticky, humid heat of Precipice. Blind and deafened, he started to run towards it, following the trail of warmth, using it like a beacon. He could still hear the muffled cries of his guard as the shadows crushed the life from him.
Finally, he stumbled to a halt as his legs sank into a thick, viscous substance, knee-high and the temperature of blood.
‘You’re in,’ said Taddeus, grabbing his arm and pulling him deeper into the pool. ‘Look.’
Draik opened his eye and saw that he was inside a black prism. It was like being inside a piece of faceted, hollowed-out onyx. The chamber was much smaller than the previous ones – thirty feet wide and filled with rippling, oil-black liquid. It was a maglev chamber. Draik had seen many others in this exact same shape, but none of them had been filled with liquid. The others crashed into the pool, causing a sluggish wave, but no splashes.
‘What is this?’ muttered Audus, grimacing at the odd way the liquid clung to her flight suit.
‘Taddeus!’ snapped Draik, looking around for a control panel. ‘The controls?’
The priest nodded and looked at Vorne. ‘Hold them off.’
As she spewed another gout of flame into the darkness, Draik’s guards began firing too, blasting furiously into the heaving mass of black pyramids. Taddeus waded to the back of the chamber, and the others added their shots to the furious barrage – Draik, Isola, Corval and Audus with their pistols and Grekh with his rickety rifle perched on one shoulder, kicking deafening rounds into the wall of burning drones.