Warhammer - Ultramarines 03 - Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, Graham)

by Graham McNeill

  'You waste your energy, Ultramarine. It is not within your power or destiny to destroy me. Save your strength for the world of iron. You will need it.'

  'Get away from me, you bastard abomination.' shouted Uriel, struggling in his captor's grip, despite the fiery pain from the hook gouging his back.

  'It is pointless to resist.' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'I have travelled the bloodtracks between realities for countless aeons and all things are revealed there. What has been, what is and all the things that might yet be. I have snuffed out lives yet to be born, changed unwritten histories and travelled paths no others may walk. And you think you can defy my will?'

  'The Emperor is with us, yea though we walk in the shadows-' began Pasanius.

  The Omphalos Daemonium smashed a gauntleted hand across Pasanius's chin, swinging him wildly around and drawing a hiss of pain from him as the hook in his back dug deeper into his flesh.

  'Prayers to your corpse of a god mean nothing here. His power has gone out of the world and nothing now remains of him.'

  'You lie.' snapped Uriel. 'The power of the Emperor is eternal.'

  'Eternal?' snarled the Omphalos Daemonium. 'You would do well not to use such words so lightly until you have experienced such a span, trapped and helpless and tormented beyond reason.'

  The yellow eyes of the Omphalos Daemonium burned into Uriel's and he saw the depthless rage and madness within them. Whatever the malign intelligence that lurked within the ancient suit of power armour was, it was clearly insane, the torments it spoke of having driven it into a depthless abyss.

  'What are you?' said Uriel eventually. 'What do you want with us?'

  The Omphalos Daemonium released its grip and turned from him as the Sarcomata began gathering up more body parts and carried them towards the furnace, hurling legs, arms and heads into the flames.

  'That is unimportant for now.' it said, pulling a thick chain that hung beside the firebox and hauling on a rusted lever with a thick, rubberised handle. 'All that matters is that you are here and that, at this time, our journeys follow the same path.'

  Uriel felt the impossible room judder as the lever was drawn back fully, the iron door they had been carried through shutting with a squeal of tortured metal. Pain flared in his back as the hook twisted between his ribs and the massive daemon engine began to move. Cadavers on other hooks swung on their jangling chains and Uriel felt the familiar churning sensation in his belly of a warp translation. Was this infernal engine somehow capable of traversing the currents of the warp? Was that how it had managed to intercept Calth's Pride within the treacherous shoals of the immaterium?

  He knew not to dwell too long on such things. The asking of such dangerous questions led to the path of deviation, the very thing that had seen them condemned to this fate.

  The churning sensation in Uriel's stomach grew and he gritted his teeth against the growing pain. The Omphalos Daemonium turned from its labours and retrieved its billhook as the Sarcomata continued feeding the fires with corpses.

  'Where are you taking us?' hissed Pasanius through gritted teem.

  'Where you need to go.' said the giant. 'I know of your death oath and what has led you here. The Lord of Skulls has more artifice to him than simply the art of death.'

  'You are a daemon!' snarled Uriel. 'You are an abomination and I will see you destroyed.'

  'Your skull will be laid before the throne of the Blood God before that happens, Space Marine. I have already seen the manner of your death: would you know of it?'

  'The words of a daemon are lies!' shouted Pasanius. 'I will believe nothing you say.'

  The Omphalos Daemonium slashed its billhook around, the blade flashing towards Pasanius's neck. Blood welled from a shallow cut across the sergeant's throat.

  'You seek death, Ultramarine, and I would gladly rend and tear your soul. I would rip your flesh screaming from your bones and garland this body with your entrails, but your death is to be far worse than even one such as I could devise. Your skull will be honoured with a place in one of the bone mountains within sight of the Blood God.'

  Another shudder, more intense, passed through the chamber and Uriel felt as though red-hot skewers were being pushed through his skull.

  'You should honour me, for you travel in ways no mortal has dared for aeons.'

  The Omphalos Daemonium raised its arms to the ceiling and laughed.

  'We travel the bloodtracks. The Heart of Blood and the daemonculaba await!'

  And the daemon engine roared into realms beyond existence.

  Uriel screamed.

  Space folded, the currents of the warp vanishing: the arena, the daemon engine, the firebox, Pasanius. All disappeared, ripped away as everything around him turned inside out and became meaningless concepts. He felt himself simultaneously explode into a billion fragments and implode within himself, compressed to a singularity of hollow existence.

  Faces floated before him, though as a dense ball of nothingness and a fragmented soul he knew not how he recognised them. Worlds and people, people and worlds, flashing past in a seamless blur, yet each as clear as though he examined each one in detail. Time slowed, yet rushed, splintering crystals sounding from far off as fractured realities ground and shifted like tectonic plates.

  He saw the daemon engine spiral through the cracks between dimensions, snaking a path that wound through the shifting glass shards of reality, existing outside of everything, travelling in the slivers of null-space between all that was and all that ever could be.

  He saw worlds of choking fumes, people in walking comas shuffling from one banal day to another, grey and dead without even the awareness to scream at the frustration of their pointless lives. Worlds where twisting numbers fell upon mountains of implausibility before running in molten rivers of algorithms to a sea of integers. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by a

  towering world of mountains and seas, white, marble and gold. Flames roared and seethed from every surface as the world burned, its people ashes on the wind, all life extinguished. Uriel, though he could no longer be sure he even knew who that was any more, saw with mounting horror that he knew this world. He saw the Fortress of Hera cast down, her once proud walls splintered and broken, the Temple of Correction no more than a shattered ruin. Daemons made sport in the Shrine of the Primarch, gnawing on his holy bones and defiling his sacred corpse.

  He wept at such vileness, furious at his helplessness and incapable of wreaking his vengeance upon those who had visited such wrath upon Macragge.

  Black, howling things closed on the daemon engine, unseen, slithering guardians of nothingness worming their way through the cracks to close on them.

  The daemon engine had travelled the bloodtracks for millennia and knew that these blind sentinels were no threat to its terrifying power. Such guardian creatures fed on the souls of those unwitting fools who breached this realm by accident: madmen who pored over forgotten lore and forbidden magicks to unlock the gates between dimensions. Mortals who dared to travel to realms not meant for souls were devoured and made into yet more of the dark worms. The bloodtracks carried the daemon engine away from the toothless, questing mouths of the guardian creatures, its evil and power burning those that managed to approach too close.

  Clockwork worlds, worlds taken by evil, worlds of elemental madness, worlds of chaos, worlds of insanity and worlds of arcing lightning. Everything was here. Every action that spawned a new realm of possibility could be found here and Uriel felt the knowledge of such things fill him as he hung from his hook, bleeding and raw.

  The glue that held his fragile mind from sundering into pieces began to come undone, awful knowledge of me insignificance of being and the pointlessness of action tore at his sense of who he was and he desperately fought to hold onto his identity.

  He was Uriel Ventris.

  He was a warrior of the Emperor: sworn to defend His realm for as long as he lived.

  He was a Space Marine.

  His will was stronger, hi
s purpose and determination greater than any other mortal man. He was in the belly of the beast and he would fight its corrupting touch.

  He was... who...? His existence flickered and despite the protection of the daemon engine, he knew the madness that claimed the minds of the ignorant fools who sought such places out was enfolding him. He struggled to hold on as shards of his life began spiralling away from him, each spawning fresh realities within this terrifying multiverse.

  Visions of potential and unwritten pasts floated past Uriel's eyes and he gasped as he saw alternate histories...

  slide past his eyes

  He saw himself as a wrinkled ancient,

  He saw himself as a young man,

  Lying prone on a simple cot bed and

  but one who was no longer a

  surrounded by grieving family members.

  Space Marine. He was a lean,

  Here was his son, dark haired like him,

  muscled farmer, toiling in the

  but taller and with the look of a warrior.

  cavern farms on his homeworld of

  Uriel's heart swelled in pride and regret:

  Calth. His features were soft and

  pride in his son and regret

  tinged with great regret

  that this vision of his life could never be...

  that this vision of his life could never be...

  Both faded from his mind, though he craved to see more of them, to know the consequences of his life having travelled the road not taken. But such was not to be and other visions intruded on his sight.

  Pavonis.

  Black Bone Road.

  Tarsis Ultra.

  Medrengard?

  What were these? Names of places or people? Memories or invention? Had he journeyed to these places? Was he from them? Were they his friends? He could taste the meaning on every jagged syllable, but none made sense, though he knew he should recognise them. Except... except there was one that did not have the subtle flavour of recognition. One that tasted of dark iron, that reeked of ashen pollutants, burning oil and echoed to the hammer of mountainous pile-drivers and pistons of hellish engines.

  This world, that reality, was alien to him. Why now should it then intrude on his fracturing consciousness? It swelled in his perception, growing and filling what remained of his mind before it too vanished and his mind began to collapse inwards.

  Nothing made sense any more: all was... dissolving in tamorass of information. He could no longer hold onto anything coherent, feeling his thoughts blur and soften, running like a hundred tributaries of a thousand rivers that emptied into a sea of oblivion and he welcomed it, knowing it would end this screaming madness in his head. An eternity or an instant -passed though he could not tell which time was now a meaningless concept, bereft of meaning and reference.

  A voice sounded amidst the insanity and what little remained of Uriel Ventris clutchedat it, as a drowning man grasps for a life line.

  'Fear not, Ultramarine.' it said. 'This journey is like all mortal life.'

  The daemon engine roared back into the realm of existence.

  'It ends...'

  Uriel drew breath, his hearts hammering fit to break his chest, his blood thundering around his body and his face streaked with crimson that wept from his eyes and nose. He had bitten his tongue and his mouth was filled with a coppery taste.

  He spat, tasting the reek of fumes and the acrid, iron stench of industry. He lay still for long seconds as he tried to work out where he was. Above him was an unending vista of white, without depth or scale, and he blinked, reaching up to wipe the congealed blood from his face. His hand passed before his face and he was struck by a lurching sense of vertigo. He had a sudden sensation of falling and cried out, scrabbling around him for purchase.

  His hands closed on a fine shale of metallic shavings and his vertigo vanished as he realised he was lying on his back and looking up into the sky - a dead sky, featureless and vacant without so much as a single cloud or speck to blight its horrid emptiness. He ached everywhere, his muscles weary to the point of exhaustion

  and a searing pain in his back from where his flesh had been gouged by the hook. His thoughts tumbled over themselves as he tried to piece together what had just happened.

  He pushed himself upright, seeing Pasanius next to him, retching onto the metallic ground. His friend's face was drawn and hollow, as though the weight of the world had settled upon his shoulders.

  'Get up.' said a grating voice behind him and a flood of memory filled Uriel's skull. Daemon. Daemon engine. He fought to stand, but his flesh was still adjusting to its return to existence and he could only stumble to his knees.

  Before them stood the Omphalos Daemonium, gigantic and monstrous in its blackened and ancient suit of power armour. Behind their captor was a shimmering, impossible rectangle of seething red light, a doorway back to the hellish interior of the daemon engine.

  It carried its billhook and stood ankle deep in the powdery shale of the ground. Their weapons, Uriel's sword and bolter together with Pasanius's pistol and flamer rested against the rocks beside it. White reflections of the dead sky glittered on its shoulder guards and it seemed to Uriel that the grinning, visored skull there burned with even more malice than before.

  'You will need to restore your equilibrium soon, Ultramarines.' said the daemon thing with an echoing chuckle. The delirium spectres will hear the pounding beats of your hearts and such morsels as you shall not go unnoticed for long.'

  'The what?' managed Uriel at last.

  'Monsters.' said the giant.

  'Monsters?' repeated Uriel, gritting his teeth and finally climbing to his feet. Pasanius picked himself up and stood beside him, his face ashen, but angry.

  The skins of murderers stitched across desecrated frames by the Savage Morticians and filled with the mad souls of those who have died by their hands.' explained the Omphalos Daemonium. 'They hunt in these mountains and you will know them by the cries of the damned at your heels.'

  'Where are we?' said Pasanius. 'Where have you brought us?'

  'This is Medrengard, world of bitter iron.' said the Omphalos Daemonium, pointing at something behind the two Space Marines. 'Domain of the daemon primarch, Perturabo. Can you not feel his presence on the air? The malice of a being who once walked with gods and is now cast down to dwell beyond the realm he once bestrode. Look upon this ashen world and despair!'

  Uriel turned to where the Omphalos Daemonium was pointing, the breath catching in his throat as he saw the desolate vista before him.

  They stood on a high, rocky plateau above a sweeping, grey hinterland of utter wretchedness. Far below them on the dismal steppe was a world of death. Uriel had thought the sweltering cavern of the daemon engine had been a vision of hell, but it had been no more than a prelude to this soul-destroying desolation. Vast expanses of industrial heartland sprawled across the surface of the world: steel skeletons of factories, mountains of coal and reddish slag and mighty, belching smoke stacks. Flames burned from blasted refineries, the pounding of mighty hammers and the clangourous screech of iron on stone audible from hundreds of kilometres away.

  Uriel had seen pollution-choked hive worlds, planets teeming with uncounted billions who toiled ceaselessly in filthy, smog and soot-choked death worlds, but they were garden paradises compared to Medrengard.

  He had even set foot on the iron surfaces of Adeptus Mechanicus forge worlds, the hallowed domains of the priests of the Machine God. He had been awed by the scale of their pounding infrastructure, their every surface given over to colossal manufactorum and cathedral forges, but even the mightiest of these worlds was but a village smithy compared to Medrengard.

  Rivers of molten metal snaked like channels of lava and evil clouds of smoke wreathed each tall tower and fanged chimney in a halo of lethal fumes.

  A vast, dark range of mountains towered over it all: blasted black rock where no living thing had ever lived or ever would. The peaks seemed to scrape the sky i
tself: the jagged stumps of the mountains a dozen or more times taller than the highest summit of Macragge. Uriel felt his blood chill as his eyes travelled up the terrifying heights of the enormous crags, seeing vile tendrils of noxious black smoke writhing from behind the mountains and clawing impossibly into the sky.

  Strange turrets reared beyond the peaks and Uriel knew with awful certainly that some nightmare city lay concealed and brooding in the deep, dark valleys of that damnable mountain range. A city where walls and bastions spread across the ground and distant domes fouled the rock like fungi after the rain. It was a hideous, dead-ringed outpost of malice that was rightly abhorred by all living things. Tarnished steeples and stained walls, deathly weed-tangled spires and empty halls were filled with limping and shuffling ghosts in rags who blindly obeyed the loathsome will

  of the city's diabolical master: the daemon primarch Perturabo, lord and master of the Iron Warriors.

  'The hate...' whispered Uriel. 'So much hate and bitterness.'

  'Yes.' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'Imagine all the rank bitterness I smell within you - poisoned and grown strong by millennia of vengeful brooding, and it is still but the merest fraction of how much a living god can hate.'

  Uriel closed his eyes to shut out this nightmare vision, understanding that to take even a single step towards the dreadful city was to die, but its cyclopean immensity was etched forever in his mind such that nothing could ever remove it.

  The futility of existence in the face of this nameless horror was almost too great to bear and he raised his eyes to the dead sky, its soul-destroying emptiness preferable to Perturabo's baleful city. The ghostly black tendrils squirmed through the sky and he saw that they poured towards the solitary thing to stain its emptiness.

  A vast black sun, its surface so dark that its darkness was not simply the absence of colour and light, but such that its fuliginous depths sucked all life and soul from the world.