by Darius Hinks
As Draik stared into the darkness, the shape vanished. He frowned, wondering if it was just a trick of the light. ‘Keep your weapons ready,’ he said as they advanced.
They reached a crossroads and Draik halted, looking left and right, no idea which path to take. As the group gathered around him, Grekh jabbed his knife at the left-hand turn.
‘Why?’ asked Draik. ‘What do you know that you’re not telling us?’
He saw, again, a hint of emotion in the creature’s eyes, before it vanished and Grekh’s expression was blank once more. Draik shook his head, exasperated. He stepped into the left-hand passageway and took a few steps down it, trying to discern any sign of a landmark.
Most of the group stayed in the main passageway, looking doubtful, but Emissary Corval followed Draik and, when they were out of earshot of the others, he leant close, lowering his voice to a whisper.
‘Do not trust the kroot. It is not what it claims, captain. I’m not a true telepath, but I can catch glimpses. Whatever it might claim, that creature is not here through any sense of duty. It’s keeping something from you. It came here for its own ends.’
Draik looked back at Grekh. The creature had wiped an oily, sweat-like substance from his pitted skin and was daubing it on the polished walls. ‘I sense it too,’ agreed Draik. ‘He’s planning something.’
‘We’re a long way from Terra,’ said Corval. ‘We need to look out for each other.’
Draik nodded, looking over at the disparate group he had assembled. ‘You must think me a fool, emissary. I was in such a rush to get here, I didn’t take time to consider the reliability of these people. Religious zealots, xenos beasts, smirking deserters – not the kind of associates I would usually choose.’
Corval held up a hand. ‘Normal rules do not apply out here, captain. I would have done exactly the same. There’s no logic to this place. Prophecies and visions are as good a guide as anything else. I’m sure we can find a place that triggers Taddeus’ memories again. But the alien is a different matter.’ A note of distaste entered Corval’s voice. ‘He watches you constantly. Have you noticed? I don’t know what his intentions are, but I’m sure they’re not wholesome.’
Grekh was still smearing the tacky substance across the walls, scribbling what looked like runes or territorial markings.
‘I swore an oath,’ said Draik. ‘I told him he could serve me if he got me to the Dragon’s Teeth. I will not go back on my word, however vexing it might be.’
‘Of course not. Nor would I expect you to. If we can’t behave with dignity, then who will? It’s a gentleman’s duty to show the low-born how to behave.’ He laughed. ‘Whether they heed the lesson or not. Of course you must honour your oath. I’m simply telling you that this creature cannot be trusted. And I intend to watch it closely.’
Draik nodded in thanks, then headed back into the main corridor.
‘We carry on,’ he said, waving for the others to follow.
Grekh looked up, confused, finally paying attention as they marched away from him. He hurried after them, clicking his beak and looking down the barrel of his rifle at the shadows up ahead.
A few minutes later, Draik halted.
‘Wait!’ he whispered, holding up a warning hand. Then he edged forwards, drawing his rapier and flicking the activation rune, scattering blue light from the blade. At first, he thought there was a bundle of rags strewn across the corridor but, as he edged closer, he saw the gruesome truth. Some of the mess was torn cloth, but more of it was ripped flesh – skin and organs, shredded in a kill frenzy and hurled in every direction. The floor and walls were glistening with blood and there were gleaming fragments of bone jutting from the carnage, splintered and cracked, crushed by powerful teeth.
As he reached the remains, Draik prodded them with the tip of his sword, flipping back a hood to reveal a ghastly, bloodless face with delicate, elongated features and wide, almond-shaped eyes.
‘Xenos,’ he muttered.
The others gathered round, grimacing and whispering prayers.
‘Another one,’ said Isola, pointing her lumen down the corridor. The light could still only reach a few feet, but it revealed a pile of body parts.
They took a few steps towards the next body when Corval halted and muttered in disgust: ‘You wretched creature.’
Draik looked back to see that Grekh was hunched over the first corpse, his beak slick with gore as he chomped through the alien’s organs, snorting as he wolfed it down.
Draik marched back towards him, repulsed by the sight of Grekh gulping down a freshly slain body. ‘Show some dignity.’ He tried to wave Grekh away from his glistening feast. ‘For Throne’s sake. We’re not savages.’
Grekh looked up warily, but continued wolfing down the meat.
‘Get back,’ said Corval, drawing a laspistol and pointing it at the kroot. ‘Captain Draik gave you an order.’
The creature backed away, reluctantly, into the shadows, swallowing a final morsel and wiping the back of his claw across his beak. Draik stared at the kroot in disgust, wishing, not for the first time, that he was more sparing with his oaths.
‘This one’s alive,’ called Isola from further down the corridor. She was almost hidden in the darkness, no more than a vague silhouette thrown by the lumen on her gun.
Draik rushed towards her with as much speed as the dense air would allow.
It was another alien, an aeldari, with the same sharp, high-boned features as the first. Isola was on her knees, holding the alien’s head off the ground. He was a horrible grey colour and there was blood bubbling from his nostrils. Large pieces of his chest and throat had been torn away, and Draik wondered how he was still managing to breathe. He was clearly moments from death.
Draik had spent a lifetime in the company of alien envoys and ambassadors. Unlike most of his race, he had even formed friendships with beings like the one dying in Isola’s arms. He prayed that this survivor had not seen Grekh’s grotesque behaviour.
‘Can you speak?’ he asked, trying the phrase in several aeldari dialects before the alien looked up at him in shock.
‘My heart,’ replied the alien, reaching for his chest. Unlike the other xenos, this one wore an ornate suit of armour. Aeldari armour was unlike anything manufactured by humans. Draik had seen it deflect all sorts of blows, but it moulded to the aliens’ slender bodies like leather – a tight-fitting bodyglove. This one was torn in several places but the alien sighed with relief when his hand closed over a gemstone in the suit’s chest-plate.
‘Who did this to you?’ asked Draik.
The alien tried to speak, then grimaced, arching his back in pain, clamping his eyes shut.
When he recovered, he locked his feverish eyes on Isola. ‘Take me with you,’ he said, still gripping the stone on his chest. ‘Get me out of this place.’
‘Can you walk?’ asked Isola, trying to lift him.
The alien gasped and slumped in her grip. Fresh blood rushed from his mouth but he was still trying to speak. ‘The Talisman of Vaul,’ he muttered. ‘The promise of a god.’ His words became a stream of gibberish.
Isola gave Draik a sideways glance and shook her head.
Draik was about to ask another question when they all heard a sound. It was clear this time, the snorting and sniffing of hounds on a scent. Draik stood, trying to pierce the darkness with the lumen on his pistol, but only revealing more body parts, flung carelessly across the floor.
‘We need to go back,’ muttered the alien, lying weakly in Isola’s grip.
‘Not possible,’ said Draik, not really speaking to the alien, still staring through the darkness. A few moments later, the alien coughed and slumped in Isola’s arms. She held him for a little longer, then shook her head and laid him on the floor.
Draik stared at the corpses. He had seen deaths before on the Blackstone but nothing quite this sava
ge. He marched on, his pistol still pointed before him. ‘Keep moving. We have to find another transportation chamber.’
As they headed further down the corridor, the sounds of panting and sniffing grew clearer. They reached another skewed, diamond-shaped aperture and passed through into a large room. The temperature dropped dramatically as they crossed the boundary and Draik almost fell as he rushed forwards, suddenly propelled by a lack of resistance. The atmosphere had returned to normal.
The floor was divided into wide, step-like terraces that led down into the darkness. Draik waved for the others to follow and hurried on. The descent seemed bottomless and the temperature sank even lower, causing Draik’s clothes to stiffen with frost. Just when he was wondering if they should turn back and find the route Grekh had suggested, he reached an open space. The others had just gathered around him when a shadow broke free from the rest of the gloom, rushing towards him at incredible speed.
Without thinking, Draik raised his splinter pistol and fired.
The muzzle flash revealed a grey-skinned horror, humanoid and hunched, with long, ape-like arms that were stretched out towards Draik. It carried no weapons, but its body was a rippling mass of muscle. It had a flat, eyeless face, built around a gaping, incisor-crammed mouth and dozens of snorting air holes. The creature staggered as Draik’s splinters thudded home, punching into the featureless upper half of its head. By the time it reached him, its momentum had gone. It crumpled to the floor a few feet away, grasping feebly at the splinters embedded in its face.
‘Ur-ghuls,’ Draik muttered. He had faced these creatures before, many years earlier, while escaping from a xenos torture cruiser. They were determined hunters. Reared to track and kill. If he hadn’t managed to steal the splinter pistol he still carried to this day, he never would have discovered how to kill the creatures.
‘They’re blind!’ he cried. ‘They hunt by smell. Fire into their faces!’
‘More!’ cried Grekh, stepping to Draik’s side, firing his rifle one-handed from the hip and grabbing a grenade with his other claw.
Dozens of shadowy figures raced towards them, a few falling back as Grekh fired into them.
The kroot’s grenade exploded, hurling ur-ghuls through the air and revealing the scale of the attack. There were hordes of the eyeless creatures approaching from every direction, stooped low and bolting towards them on all fours, growling and snorting. Draik fired furiously and drew his rapier. Isola and the others gathered around him, adding more shots to the fray as a drumming din filled the air – the sound of clawed feet pounding across the chamber.
Flames ripped through the darkness as Vorne fired into the slavering creatures. Several fell back, engulfed in flames, thrashing silently as they tumbled away. None of them screamed. It was like watching pict footage with the sound muted. Vorne’s flames lit up the stairs they had just descended and Draik saw that they were swarming with xenos – far more than they could battle through. There was no way back.
‘Keep going!’ he cried, waving the others on and running deeper into the chamber.
Ur-ghuls rushed towards him. He downed one with a barrage of headshots, then stopped another in the same way, but a third leapt at him, hissing and grasping.
Draik sidestepped and plunged his rapier into its chest.
The creature’s hide was thick and unyielding. He drove the blade home but, as the ur-ghul fell, it took Draik with it, his sword trapped in its chest. The thing thrashed beneath him and locked iron-hard hands around his throat, pulling his face towards its gaping mouth.
Then it stiffened as he fired, repeatedly, up through its jaw, shearing the front of its head away. The strength went from its grip and he freed himself, wrenching his blade out as another creature hurtled through the shadows. Draik caught it on the tip of his sword, triggering a burst of power as the rapier punched into the alien’s face, spilling sapphire beams from the wound. He pulled the sword free, stepped back and fired into the ur-ghul’s mouth, jolting its head back and knocking it from its feet.
There was a flash of light at his side and another ur-ghul flew away from him as Grekh approached, his rifle still smoking.
Draik snatched a moment to look around.
Everyone was firing in different directions, their faces plucked from the dark by muzzle flashes.
‘Go!’ he cried. ‘We need to get out of the open!’
He ran further into the chamber, battling the sense that he might fall into an abyss at any moment. The others rushed after him, but it was ridiculous to run blind. He increased the power supply to his optic implant, driving it towards burnout. Even with the power amplified, it only revealed a vague glimpse of what lay ahead, but that was enough.
‘A ramp!’ he cried. ‘On the opposite side. It’s clear.’
He sprinted across the chamber and rushed up the slope. Halfway up he turned to look back.
The rest of the group were still firing and the darkness around them was seething with ur-ghuls, their eyeless faces lit up by the blasts as they scampered and bounded towards their prey. Draik fired back the way he had come, taking down another two, then he grimaced as one of his guards was dragged from sight, vanishing beneath a wave of thrashing limbs.
Grekh paused, examining the fallen guard, or taking something from him, Draik couldn’t be sure which, then he ran on.
Isola pounded up the ramp to his side, gasping as she fired back down into the fray.
Emissary Corval loomed out of the darkness, practically sauntering up the ramp, firing his pistol with calm disinterest. Then came the two priests. Taddeus’ power mace was dripping with alien blood and his eyes were wide with religious zeal. Pious Vorne walked backwards up the steps, still spewing a torrent of sputtering flames into the stampede below. Then came Audus and the remainder of Draik’s guards.
When he was sure they had everyone, Draik waved them on and they ran up the ramp, firing back over their shoulders as the ur-ghuls scrambled after them. The ur-ghuls clawed frantically over each other, hissing and gasping, but the ramp was too narrow. Draik and the others fired into the bottleneck crush, killing dozens of the frenzied creatures.
Draik was the first to reach the top of the ramp and see what lay beyond.
He staggered to a halt and muttered a curse, his pistol hanging limply in his grip. The next chamber was lit. It was as cavernous as the preceding ones, and the ceiling was a crystal spire, open to the heavens. Starlight flooded down through the panes, illuminating the expanse below – a circular hall, with openings scattered around the circumference. One of the doorways was a maglev chamber. Draik spotted it instantly. It matched the design of others he had seen, with a hexagonal door. He should have been pleased, but it was the other doorways that had caused him to curse. Ur-ghuls were pouring from them in their hundreds. The maglev was on the opposite side of the hall and the ur-ghuls would swamp them before they could get even halfway there.
He looked back to see if there was any chance they could return the way they had come. His guards and the rest of the party were all shooting down the ramp, but the ur-ghuls were gradually making their way up, tumbling from the darkness with frenzied hunger.
Isola looked up at him as she fired. At the sight of his expression, her face darkened. ‘More of them?’
He nodded.
The others backed up the slope towards him and saw the starlit chamber and the ur-ghuls rushing into it.
‘There’s a transportation chamber on the far side,’ he said, nodding to the one door not spewing monsters.
As Taddeus reached the top of the ramp his eyes flashed with excitement. ‘I have seen that chamber. We’re back on the right route.’
‘But we’ll never reach it,’ said Isola, shaking her head as she watched the ur-ghuls flooding the hall.
‘We will,’ said Draik, his face rigid with determination. ‘If we go now. We could still break through.’
Draik could feel his chance slipping away and his pulse hammered in his temples. He pictured his father’s face as it was the last time they spoke, cold and distant. ‘I will reach the vault,’ he whispered, speaking to someone who would never hear him. He started walking down the ramp into the hall, checking his pistol as he went.
‘Wait!’ cried Vorne. ‘His Eminence is the slowest of the group,’ she said, wiping frost from her eyelashes as she strode towards Draik. Behind her, the others were still firing into the ur-ghuls from the previous chamber and she had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘He’s the Emperor’s chosen. You can’t leave him to die.’
‘If the Emperor chose him, He’ll get him to the other side,’ snapped Audus, loosing off more shots.
When Vorne received no reply from Draik, she turned back to Taddeus.
‘The time has come,’ she said. ‘I always said I would pay you back for saving my soul.’ She tapped the fuel canisters strapped to her back. ‘There’s enough here to take them all down, or at least kill most and drive away the rest.’
Draik paused and looked back at her. ‘But how would you get the tanks in the middle of them without…’ His words tailed off as he saw her expression. She was consumed by faith – her eyes were filled with a mixture of determination and passion. He had seen this so many times before in the faces of Ecclesiarchy zealots and it always appalled him. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘No martyrs.’
Vorne hesitated, glancing at Taddeus. Taddeus said nothing. He just gripped his rosarius and whispered a prayer.
Draik’s anger grew. The ur-ghuls were rushing towards the centre of the hall. His chance would soon be gone. But Vorne was now under his aegis. Self-immolation was not how a Draik operated. He thought again of the gruesome scenes carved into the walls of Taddeus’ barge. ‘What kind of Emperor do you worship?’ he muttered, glaring at Taddeus.