by Ben Counter
The guns on the Thunderhawk opened up and blazed white tracer rounds down at the temple. Daemons scurried there, some of them muscular footsoldiers with blades of black iron, some of them skittering winged things. Some came apart in the hail of fire – some were pierced through then reformed, their unnatural daemon flesh refusing to bow to the rules of physics.
Gorgythion brought them in low. The Gilded Pyre touched down on the uppermost level, just beneath the soaring arches from which hung the huge bronze bells. Lysander jumped down first, followed by Deiphobus.
‘Get the psyker!’ shouted Lysander over the gale and the tolling of the bells, which were swinging back and forth in the wind. ‘Deiphobus, Orfos, on him! Kirav, with me! We press on! We head down!’
The Peril Swift swung in overhead. It was in worse shape than the Gilded Pyre, one of its wings almost sheared off and one landing jet belching smoke. It skidded onto the top of the temple, spraying sparks from its belly. It crunched side-on into a pillar and Squad Ctesiphon were jumping out even before it came to a halt. Emperor’s Champion Ucalegon followed.
‘It’s the Cacophonous Tower,’ said Deiphobus, looking at the hellish architecture around him. ‘It stands in the warp, tolling a song that opens holes in reality. Enough blood, enough souls pledged to the warp, and it can be summoned into the real world. When the bells finish their song, the door will open.’
‘How long?’ said Lysander.
‘Not long.’
‘Then we move. Ctesiphon, clear this floor! There are daemons all around, they must not get behind us! Then follow and back us up!’ He turned to Deiphobus. ‘Emperor’s wings carry you, Librarian.’
‘Dorn’s hand guide you, captain.’
Kirav’s squad, along with Ucalegon, gathered behind Lysander as he ran across the top of the temple towards a yawning archway. Steps led downwards. The howling from below was more than the wind.
Lysander ran down the stone steps. They wound tightly down into the Cacophonous Tower. The layers of stone between him and the top levels did nothing to muffle the sound of the bells and every footstep was met with another peal of clashing notes.
The staircase opened up into a great hall where corpses were hung like sides of meat in an abattoir. They were citizens of Khezal, from every level of its society, their bodies hung from iron hooks. They were alive, and they wept. Their tears formed a waist-high lake into which Lysander ran.
‘Legienstrasse!’ he yelled. ‘Assassin! We have found you! You can run no more! Face me and show me what you truly know of death!’
Through the hanging corpses came a great shape, taller than even Lysander, glowing from within. Lysander recognised the shape of Karnikhal Six-Finger, the World Eater, and around him skulked a host of bloodletter daemons. They were the legionaries of the Blood God, the swords of Khorne.
‘I trusted the flame,’ said Karnikhal, ‘when I should have trusted the blade. I let you burn when I should have stayed to take your head. I will hang your skin as a banner above the throne of Khorne! I will plate your skull in bronze and mount it on my armour, and through its eyes you will watch your galaxy end!’
‘Captain,’ said Ucalegon, laying a hand on Lysander’s shoulder. ‘Go on. Find the Assassin and kill her. You cannot be held up here. Karnikhal must be mine.’
‘The fates led you to him,’ said Lysander. ‘Cut out his heart, my brother.’
‘It has been an honour.’
‘And it shall be again, Ucalegon.’
Ucalegon nodded, hefted the obsidian blade, and ran towards Karnikhal. The daemons leapt towards him like attack dogs loosed from their chains. Karnikhal’s own sword glowed dark red and molten ceramite dripped off him, kicking up a cloud of steam from the lake of tears. The cloud enveloped Ucalegon as he charged and he vanished from sight.
Howls and screams came from the daemons. Lysander could make out the sound of blades through flesh, but had no way of telling whose flesh or whose blade.
Scout Enriaan shot the witch Stahl through the spine. He fell to his knees, then was yanked up off the floor by spectral strings that wrapped around the metal halo implanted in his back. His legs dangled uselessly as he drifted out of Enriaan’s line of sight behind a pillar.
Deiphobus ran through the sheets of rain that lashed down from the storm. Shadowy daemons leapt at him – Squad Ctesiphon shot them down as they charged. One dived down at his face from an archway overhead but Deiphobus raked a volley of shots from his bolter through it and it burst in a shower of black gore.
Stahl was up ahead. His head lolled on his neck as if he were not a man at all but a marionette, controlled by unseen hands. Deiphobus had blasted away much of Stahl’s mind and now there was nothing left but the malevolence that Chaos had poured into him.
Deiphobus let his psychic force swell in him, focused through his mind’s eye and unleashed like a white-hot needle right through Stahl. It was a crude attack, without any of the telepathic finesse he had trained so hard to acquire – it was the power over another’s mind, used to batter and crush.
Stahl was thrown back and slammed into a pillar. The pillar fell, the stone drums scattering across the temple’s roof. Stahl’s response was a bolt of lightning that crashed down from above, stuttering glowing scars into the flagstones as it rippled towards Deiphobus. Deiphobus dived and rolled, and knew then that Stahl had so little mind left that a telepath couldn’t do much more to harm him.
This time Deiphobus came up firing. Stahl put up a hand and glowing runes burst in the air in front of him as a mental shield deflected the bolter shots.
Deiphobus kept running. He drew his combat knife. Another bolt of lightning tore past him but Stahl – or whatever controlled him – was not expecting the Librarian to keep charging at him.
Deiphobus leapt at Stahl and slammed into him, shoulder-first.
Stahl grabbed the backpack of Deiphobus’s armour. With strength born of the warp, he lifted up Deiphobus and threw him aside.
Deiphobus dropped his bolter and his hand closed around the corroded metal ring implanted in Stahl’s back. He held on and Stahl tipped back and sank almost to the floor. Deiphobus planted a foot in the small of the witch’s back, and pulled.
Skin and muscle tore. The halo came away, taking a good chunk of Stahl’s back with it. Stahl flopped to the ground, those strings of light cut.
Deiphobus threw the steel hoop aside. Stahl looked at him with a face suddenly human, and he looked as if he were seeing the Imperial Fists Librarian for the first time.
The witch held up a hand as if begging Deiphobus not to hurt him. But Deiphobus spotted the spark of light in his other hand, as he gathered a shard of lightning there to hurl up at the Librarian.
Deiphobus kicked Stahl aside and stamped down on his spellcasting hand. The bones pulped and Stahl screeched, a very human sound. Deiphobus lifted the witch up by the scruff of his neck.
‘I liked you better,’ said Deiphobus, ‘when you were a puppet.’
Deiphobus wrenched Stahl’s head all the way around. He felt the witch’s neck breaking. Stahl’s body hung lifeless in his hands.
‘The witch is dead,’ voxed Deiphobus. He looked up – the light of the opening gate broke through the dissolving black clouds, and the wind had already dropped from the screaming gale of a few moments ago. ‘The skies are clear, my brothers.’
Gunfire stuttered from across the rooftop, where Squads Ctesiphon and Orfos were fending off the daemons coalescing around them. Deiphobus paused only to throw the body of Stahl off the edge of the temple, and to watch it broken to pieces against the jagged balconies and buttresses it hit on the way down. Then the Librarian ran to join the fight.
The Cacophonous Tower devolved further into madness the lower Lysander descended. Squad Kirav, behind him, struggled to keep pace as they fended off the gangling spider-daemons that lurched at them, and shot down bat-winged creatures that swooped down from the rafters.
The tower was a single great instrument. A spiral st
aircase wound down, surrounded by ranks of pipes, their mouths wrought into grimacing daemons’ heads, through which hot blasts of air howled from the molten levels that glowed far below. Every step Lysander took echoed like an orchestra of drums in the unnatural acoustics.
The lower floors, Lysander could see in the ruddy glow, were flooded with lava oozing up from the torn crust of Opis. Archways and columns sank into the bubbling fire. All the way down the floors were stacked haphazardly on top of each other, some of them seemingly ripped from another building altogether – a chunk of prison block, skeletons mouldering in manacles that hung in every cell. A stage from a theatre, bodies torn and mutilated into a tableau that resembled an orchard of bloody flesh with hearts hanging as its fruit. An operating theatre surrounded by glass jars containing deformed limbs and diseased organs, and things like oversized embryos that were humanoid, but not human. At every turn there was something else, crushed into the dark stones of the Cacophonous Tower as if this structure of the warp had swallowed up other places of madness as it grew.
The tower burrowed at the surface of Lysander’s mind. It felt as if a host of worms were underneath his scalp, inside his skull, chewing at his thoughts. He forced himself to keep his train of thought intact.
Legienstrasse.
He was here to kill Legienstrasse.
The spiral staircase shuddered. Blocks of it fell away, tumbling into the lava below. Squad Kirav scattered and grabbed any useful handhold as the staircase came apart underneath them. Brother Beros lost his footing and sprawled over the edge – Brother Stentor grabbed his arm and dragged him back to safety.
‘My thanks, brother,’ said Beros. ‘This place knows we are here.’
‘Then let us hope it can hear us, too,’ said Stentor. ‘Because we have come to tear out its heart. Let us hope it can feel fear, because we will throw it back to the warp in pieces.’
‘Poetic,’ said Beros. ‘If words were bullets you would have won this war yesterday.’
Lysander reached the next level down. This was a library, floor-to-ceiling bookcases loaded with books bound in gold and held closed with silver clasps. The floor was an exquisite mosaic, depicting a thousand scholars kneeling before a burning sun at the centre of which was a great eye. Chandeliers of blue crystal hung from the ceiling. Stained-glass windows coloured everything a fractured rainbow of colours. Wherever the Cacophonous Tower had found this place, it had been a magnificently wealthy place of learning.
And it was corrupt. The eye was the eye of Horus, symbol of the great betrayer of mankind. The books were held closed to keep whatever evil they held inside them until needed. The windows were swirling galaxies and nebulae, an exaggeration of the night sky that represented the closest a human mind could get to imagining the sight of the warp.
A young blonde woman sat at a lectern in the centre of the room, a huge book laid out in front of her. Pinkish tendrils reached at her from the pages, but she did not look afraid.
‘Legienstrasse!’ said Lysander, walking into the library. He saw now that it was a complete floor wedged in between two strata of the tower, the grey daemon-touched stone breaking through the walls and ceiling like an infection.
Legienstrasse looked up. She wore grey-green Imperial Guard fatigues but even with the loose cut over her slender body, the deformities were clear. Her back was raised up in large blisters that pulsed and squirmed. She stood and closed the book.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You have decided to fight. You agree with the Officio Assassinorum, and the war they started to find me.’
‘The Assassinorum can rot,’ retorted Lysander. ‘I am here because you are an enemy of mankind.’
‘I am a mistake the Assassinorum are using you to erase.’
Lysander took a dangerous few steps towards her. She did not move, even as Lysander drew back the Fist of Dorn and held up his shield.
‘Then again,’ continued Legienstrasse, ‘you are Lysander. You are the man who will do anything for victory. The souls of your brothers. Deals with the warp. Anything to be on the winning side.’
Lysander roared and charged.
Legienstrasse had shed the biomass she had harvested at Khezal. Still, she moved faster than a Space Marine. She snapped out of range, leaping from the lectern and rolling to a halt by one of the great bookcases. Lysander’s hammer shattered the lectern and threw the book to the floor, where it flapped wetly and squealed like a wounded creature.
‘Do not presume to know my mind!’ shouted Lysander. ‘A mere man might give up on Opis and on your death. A Space Marine knows his duty.’
‘Duty above all,’ said Legienstrasse, stalking to the side as she and Lysander circled one another. ‘Duty above honour. Duty above humanity. You would burn the galaxy to win. I seek only survival.’
‘You will not find it here!’
Lysander ran at Legienstrasse again. This time he ducked to one side just as he hit, slamming into the bookcase and wrenching it down over Legienstrasse. The bookcase crashed down on her, tons of books sprawling across the mosaicked floor.
Legienstrasse tore her way out through the back of the bookcase, talons of bloody bone sprouting from her fingers.
Bolter shots thumped into her torso. Brother Mortz of Squad Kirav had reached the library level. Beros was just beside him, lightning claw activated.
Legienstrasse ran right at Beros. She dropped to the floor and skidded underneath the swipe of Beros’s claw, the power field rippling centimetres over her head. Then she jumped to her feet in front of Mortz and punched her claws through his stomach.
Lysander ran after her. Mortz seemed to die in slow motion, every drop of blood arcing lazily through the air as Legienstrasse tore her claws out and took the contents of Mortz’s abdomen with it. She tore the ceramite of his armour as easily as his skin.
Beros aimed a thrust of his claw at the back of Legienstrasse’s head. Legienstrasse drew the biomass out of Mortz so quickly she was able to wrap a great globe of flesh around her fist and slam it into Beros as he ran at her. Beros was thrown against the wall and Legienstrasse turned to face Lysander.
Lysander barrelled into her at full tilt, shield raised in front of him. There was no room for finesse now, not against an enemy like Legienstrasse who was sprouting new weapons with every second.
Spikes slid from her heels and rooted her into the ground. Her new weight of muscle met Lysander’s momentum and held him fast. The two wrestled, each trying to get the other off their feet. Legienstrasse’s fatigues bulged and tore as new muscle wrapped around her arms and upper torso, and Lysander caught a glimpse of the young waiting to hatch from the egg sacs under her skin.
‘Heretic!’ yelled Beros. He ran at Legienstrasse, drawing back his claw to swipe at her.
The claw tore through her. Four deep slashes opened up in Legienstrasse’s swollen torso. But her organs reformed around the wounds, and Beros’s momentum carried him right onto the spike of bone she thrust out of her elbow at him.
Beros was speared through the faceplate. He died just a couple of metres from Lysander, and Lysander could do nothing. If he had moved to save his brother, Legienstrasse would have dragged him down to the ground and probably disembowelled him as she had done Brother Mortz.
Lysander had a thousand oaths he wanted to spit at Legienstrasse in that moment. But there were no words. It was all he could do to match strength with Legienstrasse.
Beros slid to the ground. The bone spike had become a bony syringe that sucked out the blood and flesh from inside Beros’s armour. Lysander felt the weight on him grow as Beros’s biomass was added to Legienstrasse.
He could not hold her. New limbs were splitting off from her legs and lower torso to grab his legs and throw him to the ground. He dropped to one knee and ducked back, letting her surge forwards at him.
He slammed the shield into the side of her head. He brought the Fist of Dorn round to follow up with a blow to her ribcage, but she crashed down on him, smothering and crushing.
He had enough room to roll out from underneath her. Insect-like legs were carrying her now, slashing down at him. He felt shots of pain as they cut through the ceramite of his leg and arm.
‘Every brother I lose,’ gasped Lysander, ‘I will avenge ten times on you!’
‘You wrap your sacrifices in lies of revenge,’ said Legienstrasse. Her face was still human, surrounded by bulging masses of muscle, obscene by its very humanity. ‘So desperate to deny what you are.’
A bladed whip-like limb snaked towards him. Lysander slammed the edge of his shield down onto it and severed it. It whipped uselessly around his feet.
It was a feint. Three more lashed at him and caught him around his hammer-arm and leg. Another caught him around his neck. Legienstrasse fought to reel Lysander in, but Lysander dropped down to a crouch, dug his feet in and would not budge.
Legienstrasse spun and whipped Lysander around, picking him up as she turned. The whip let go and Lysander was hurtling through the air, across the library and through the stained-glass window.
The grey labyrinth of Khezal whirled around him as he fell.
Ucalegon wrenched the blade out of the bloodletter’s back. The daemon’s boiling blood hissed as it seethed out into the salt lake of tears. Above, broken bodies swayed, hacked and torn by the flurry of blades beneath them.
Ucalegon’s twin hearts hammered. His body was being pushed to its limit. The daemons were fast and strong, and they attacked relentlessly, heedless of anything but bloodshed.
The shadow that fell over him was of a Space Marine, like him, but not like him. Its armour was a fused nightmare, bullet and blade marks piled on top of one another until it resembled a mass of metallic scar tissue. It glowed from the inside, and light bled from the cracks around its joints and vents.