by Rob Sanders
Finally, in the doom-laden shadow of the citadel, the wagon came to a stop. The long-snout skinner climbed down and proceeded to open the cage under the infernal gaze of three daemonettes that had moved in on the wagon. Razored wire spiralled through the abundance of their dread flesh while drool continually dribbled from mouths filled with needle-teeth, working its way down their voluptuousness like a river finding the path of least resistance. One of the daemonettes held several hounds on a spiked chain. The creatures had tapering muzzles like the beastfiends in Agrammon’s dark service and snuffled the ground about Archaon’s feet as he was led down from the wagon.
A second daemonette used the crescent claw at the end of her sickle-spear to motion the Chaos warrior on. She looked on him through the slits of her executioner’s hood with a predatory fascination, pushing him towards a cage opening with the curved blade of the sickle headpiece. Archaon took a moment to hold his ground. He wanted to be sure that he hadn’t indeed become one of Jharkill’s slave specimens and a permanent exhibit in Lord Agrammon’s menagerie. Whether it was because the shamanistic tokens about his neck had been intended for another captive or because the damned wards that weaved their way through his pallid flesh like a network of veins countered such primitive charms and enchantments, Archaon didn’t care. All he needed to know was that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his days voluntarily stinking out a cage at the bottom of the world.
Archaon’s reluctance only angered his infernal keepers. A third daemonette slashed at the gravel with a barbed whip, while her rank compatriot pushed Archaon harshly towards the cage with her sickle-spear. Nodding and raising a gauntlet, the Chaos warrior approached his twisted coop. Two long-snouts were carrying the rotting half-eaten remains of a beastfiend with two bovine heads and interlocking horns, an aberration that must have taken Lord Agrammon’s fancy. Climbing up the thick bars of the enclosure below, Archaon hauled himself up through the opening of his own cage – the cage that the corruption-dribbling corpse of the half-breed had just vacated. The daemonette slapped the bars with a claw and said something suggestive and unintelligible before bolting the cage closed.
As the daemonettes, the long-snouts and the wagons moved on, Archaon took in the degradation of his surroundings. The twisted metal of his cage made up the walls, floor and ceiling of several others, for the enclosure itself was enclosed with but one set of bars facing the thoroughfare for observation. All manner of monstrosity and warp-sculpted deformity was present. Above Archaon the cage housed some kind of huge carrion bird – a thing rotten and spoiled in itself but impossibly alive. It pecked at the bars and itself with its great bone-crushing beak and let loose an almost constant stream of milky excrement through the bars into Archaon’s enclosure. The Chaos warrior moved about the mess in the limited space he had, allowing the stinking ooze to splatter a nest of blind wyrms in the cage below. The obscene creatures didn’t seem to mind at all, their bulbous heads only emerging from the rippling sheath of their squirming bodies to snap at the cage roof and Archaon’s boots with their hook-toothed maws.
Casting his gaze through the forest of black bars, Archaon saw a pair of hairless giant rats, conjoined at the tail: one twin feeding on the flesh of the other. A feral spawn jabbered and threw itself mindlessly at its cage door, while stabbing at itself with great bone scythes that might once have been wings. An almost constant stream of mind-splitting screams emanated from a thing nearby that hung from the ceiling bars of its cage by a monstrous tail, while its pectoral wings dangled about it like the fins of some shark of the sky or ocean depths. Below it a daemon beast, some great steed or juggernaut, slowly rusted in a pool of its own ichor, groaning and moaning like a guttering forge. On the other side of his cage Archaon could see that one huge creature had given up entirely. Either out of monstrous habit or spite it had blighted its enclosure with a haze of silk, forming a web in which a pulsing cocoon still gave the impression of horrid life.
Of the things that had a face, from his cage Archaon could only see two. The first inhabited the darkness of a cage across the thoroughfare. It claw-stomped up and down the enclosure, rearing its emaciated body up on its hind legs. Even at skin and bone it was twice the size of Archaon and its flesh was red raw with sores and infection. Patches of worn fur swarmed with fat mites feeding off the creature and driving it to distraction. An infested mane hung about the creature’s monstrous, fang-filled jaws and ran down its back between the shredded leathery stumps of two mite-eaten wings and down the length of a tail that was shot through with thagomizer spikes. The creature stopped, seeming to know that it was being watched, before grabbing the bars with its fore-claws and bringing its daemonic face forward with glowering malice. Like the rest of its body the flesh of its face was a mesh of scratches and dappled irritation, but within it and above the fixed snarl of its leonine muzzle, its eyes betrayed a feral sadness. A knowing. A suffering that betrayed an almost human intelligence.
The creature stared at Archaon and Archaon stared back. The Chaos warrior could feel the monster’s hate across the open space. The druchii of the north called such beasts manticores: monsters crafted of the Wastes, of unrivalled ferocity and spite. They were also treated with reverence and respect, since they were among the most cunning of Ruinous predators. Archaon had heard that rudimentary speech had even been witnessed in some creatures, if only to scorn the attempts of druchii hunters to capture them. Jharkill had bagged his prize, however, enslaving the scabby beast with his shamanic charms and caging it for his master’s pleasure.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ a voice came through the bars in dark tongue. Looking around Archaon saw a legless horror hanging from the ceiling bars of the cage next to his own. The thing had gangly, long arms, black skin and appeared to be nothing more than a truncated torso and a squashed head. ‘He just wants to be free, see?’ The half-daemon gibbered to Archaon and itself. ‘Thoughts. Thoughts,’ the creature said, slapping its narrow skull with a ghoulishly long palm as it dangled from the bars on the other. ‘Thoughts like that will kill you faster than the food around here. Hope. A dangerous thing is hope. It is Lord Agrammon’s weapon of choice. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He’ll get you hoping all right. Craving the impossible. Giving you an appetite for a freedom that just can’t be had. No, no, no, no, no. It’s the only thing to give you an appetite in this food-forsaken place.’
Archaon said nothing, allowing the creature’s sanity to unravel before him. The rising volume of the half-daemon’s voice and the creature’s captive excitability was drawing daemonette keepers towards them. That, Archaon did not need. Not if he were to effect a quiet escape from his confinement. The legless creature hung by one willowy arm. He jabbed a long finger at the manticore opposite. ‘He knows,’ the thing jabbered on to itself. ‘He knows.’ Then to a passing daemonette with three snuffling hounds on a spiked chain: ‘She knows.’ He blew the horror a kiss, producing from her both a seductive snarl and a stream of abuse, in an infernal language that Archaon did not understand. Hanging there the creature bowed his head and lowered his eyes, mumbling a theatrical apology. Archaon watched the daemonette pass. Even when out of sight he could hear the rhythmic echo of her spear rattling along the bars – waking and provoking.
Archaon turned. The daemonette’s spear had disturbed the thing in the cocoon. The sickening sound of swarming emanated from the pulsing hub of the silken haze. Whatever monstrous creature lay within was long dead, Archaon realised. Its body had been eaten from the inside out by thousands of warped spiderlings: translucent creatures the size of a hand that scuttled on stabbing talons. Their mouths were framed with fat fangs and within their abdomens squirmed a single eyeball that stared about their new surroundings. Archaon watched as, drawn by some kind of collective vision, the creatures descended on threads and crawled towards unfortunates in the other cages.
Turning back towards the hanging torso swinging before him on its arms, Archaon found the thing was licking its li
ps as it watched the spiders biting and swarming their thrashing victims.
‘We feast tonight!’ it gibbered before swinging back and forth across its cage. Archaon casually brushed a baby arachnid off his pauldron that had silently drifted down from the cage above. He squelched the miniature monster under his boot. The half-daemon was back before the bars, spilling over with madness. ‘Stay or leave. Leave or stay,’ the thing repeated before jabbing a finger at the sky. ‘There’s nothing out there for us. Death. Destruction. A becoming of that which we are not. Do I stay because of this?’ It rattled the string of shamanistic charms about its slender neck. ‘No. I stay for the safety of a cage. I stay for the food. I have a purpose here. I exist to bring pleasure to others – if not myself. Hope for nothing more than a wretched captivity and you cannot be disappointed. Oh no. That’s what our infested friend over there doesn’t seem to understand,’ the half-daemon said, swinging about its cage, bar to bar, with its long arms and spindly fingers. ‘Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Over there with only his fleas for company. He paces. Paces. Paces. I fall asleep, he’s pacing. I wake, he’s pacing. I rant, I rave, I kill the thing in the next cage, he’s pacing. Do you know what they call him? The diseased one over there?’
Archaon shook his head slowly.
‘Mange,’ the half-daemon chuckled darkly, ‘for it is not just the creature on show in the cage but also the wonderful collection of mites that feed on his monstrous flesh. Where do you think you’re going monster?’ the half-daemon called across. ‘Perhaps he’s dreaming. Dreaming of somewhere high. Somewhere desolate and lonely, where the prey is fleet and the company wanting. Somewhere a monstrosity can… just… be.’
Archaon looked over at the manticore in its miserable state, standing on its hind legs, clutching the bars with trembling claws and glaring with silent malice and suffering. The menagerie was crowded with mindless monsters, warplings, slaves to the darkness and the low creatures of the world. While they all suffered as part of Lord Agrammon’s legendary collection, it was the prisoners of the mind and not just the body that suffered the most. Savage creatures and abominations simply endured. Some no differently in their cages than anywhere else. Those that thought. Those that felt. Those that hoped. They were doubly doomed. The half-daemon babbled insanely but it was right about that. Beyond the ravages of imprisonment and starvation suffered by the caged captives, hope broke the spirit. It had broken the half-daemon, who – for all Archaon knew – might have been an exhibit in the menagerie for as long as it had existed.
‘It’s never going to happen,’ the half-daemon jeered across the thoroughfare. Again, Archaon became concerned over the noise and the attention it might garner. ‘Accept it, beast. You’ve soared over your last mountain. You’ve slain your last piece of prey. You’ll never be alone again. You hear? You hear?’ the mad thing called. ‘Not so long as I’m here, creature of horizons lost.’
Archaon looked from the glowering manticore back to the half-daemon. The Chaos warrior had heard enough. Had waited long enough. Based upon the time it had taken to work its way around the concentric curve of the outer thoroughfare, Archaon estimated the wagon train would be closing once more on the inner thoroughfare. Several times he thought he had heard the movement of the cavalcade, the roar of beasts and the opening of cages, but with the babbling half-daemon pouring madness in his ears it was difficult to tell. Beyond the growing infestation of spiderlings, the half-daemon was dangling one grasping arm through the bars of Archaon’s cage. Despite the disarming distraction of the daemon’s blatant insanity, Archaon knew that it meant him harm and had probably been responsible for the death of the cage’s previous occupant.
‘Want to hear a secret?’ the half-daemon whispered harshly. He motioned with a single long finger, his willowy arm extended all the way through Archaon’s bars. The Chaos warrior approached.
‘Want to be one?’ Archaon put to the murderous half-daemon. He grabbed the monster’s hideous hand in his gauntlets and heaved. The creature’s head smashed into the twisted metal. It gibbered and screeched its surprise. Archaon hauled on the sinewy daemonflesh again, yanking the thing’s head and wretched torso into the bars – again and again. The thing had no doubt meant to do the same to Archaon and feed on his carcass – the fate suffered by the previous occupant. Archaon heaved mercilessly, allowing the creature to pull itself back before the Chaos warrior hauled it once more into the bludgeoning metal. Something suddenly went crack and the creature’s hold on the ceiling bars went slack. As the half-daemon became a broken mound on the cage floor, bloody and still, Archaon dropped its arm and walked to the door of his cage. He found the manticore staring intensely at him, the beast’s eyes glistening with bestial satisfaction.
‘I fear your view is much improved, monster,’ Archaon said. The creature blinked the baleful yellow of its eyes at him. Looking up and down the thoroughfare that curved between the lines of cages, Archaon lifted his boot and stamped down on the cage door. The simple lock shattered – for it was not metal and mechanism that kept the creatures of Lord Agrammon’s menagerie captive. As Archaon walked across the deserted gravel, the manticore leant out. A stringy drool began to cascade from the monster’s maw. It tasted something. Archaon hoped that it was freedom rather than the prospect of fresh flesh. ‘Or perhaps, creature of darkness, you would prefer a view clear of cage bars altogether.’ Before the door of the manticore’s barbed enclosure, Archaon slipped the sinew string of Jharkill’s charms and effigies from over his head and dropped it on the ground. He stamped down on the cursed thing, crushing the tokens of glyph-scored bone and stone into the gravel. ‘Before I give you back the skies, great beast,’ Archaon told him. ‘Might I trouble you for a diversion? A settling of scores perhaps with your jailers or simply an opportunity to sate your all-consuming hunger. You look like you could use a meal.’
The manticore hissed through its sabre teeth. The stench upon which the words wafted almost made the Chaos warrior gag. Archaon could feel the harm the monster meant him through the bars. The Chaos warrior realised that he could be the meal the manticore needed.
He shook his head.
‘You don’t look that stupid, beast,’ Archaon said. ‘The last hundred things that tried to eat me are dead. Besides,’ the Chaos warrior told it, recalling his battle with the Yien-Ya-Long. ‘I cause horrible indigestion.’
Archaon reached through the bars of the manticore’s cage. The monster growled as the Chaos warrior’s gauntlets felt through its infested mane. Slipping Jharkill’s bridle of charms from the manticore’s head, he let it fall to the cage floor by the creature’s clawed feet. The manticore looked down at the thing of dark enchantments and then up at Archaon. The Chaos warrior watched the beast stamp down on the charms and crush them into the floor. Grabbing the bars, Archaon heaved at the cage door and tore it open.
‘Beast,’ the Chaos warrior said, ‘you are free. Unleash yourself on those who would see you back behind these bars.’
As Archaon stepped aside, the manticore fell down onto four feet. The creature was disgustingly lithe – all claw, slavering jaw and ribcage with a spiked tail flowing after it. Launching from the cage – its new-found freedom firing wasted limbs and appetite – the manticore tore up the gravel thoroughfare and bounded off the barbed bars of the opposite cages. Watching the monster surge away, Archaon turned and climbed up the cageside.
The creatures within screeched and spat at the Chaos warrior as he hauled himself up the twisted bars. Atop the row of cages, with monstrosities roaring their displeasure below, Archaon could see the citadel in all of its serrated glory. The crescent crowning the tower pointed its talon-tips towards the broiling sky. Archaon could hear the shrieking trumpet calls of beastfiends and long-snouted hounds. Daemonettes were hiss-squealing. The manticore had bolted up the walkway and ripped through the first of Lord Agrammon’s infernal servants it found.
Keeping hims
elf chest-down on the cagetop, Archaon saw bloody bits of hound and beastfiend flying through the air. Suddenly Archaon heard the sound of claws on bars. Something was climbing up towards him. Moments later the horned head of a daemonette rose above the cage. The creature’s wire-threaded face betrayed an infernal dread. Disgust flooded the Chaos warrior and he bent his armoured knee to kick the creature off. Then the daemonette’s horrid face changed. From below, Archaon heard the roar of the monster Mange. The daemonette’s pincers scraped across the bars as she was torn back down the cages and into the savagery below. With an echoing screech, the jailer was torn apart.
The wretched call of horns rose from the spiral-thoroughfare, drawing daemonettes and hounds down on the escaped monster. Archaon nodded his appreciation. Getting to his feet, the Chaos warrior padded across the top of the cages, perching on the edge and looking down into the next concentric thoroughfare. The train of caged wagons was there, where Archaon’s ear had put it. Horrid beastfiends with tapering snouts and serpentine tongues were moving monstrosities, daemonkind and warped beasts from their bone cages to their twisted enclosures. The miserable creatures wanted nothing more than to visit their wrath on Lord Agrammon’s keepers, like Mange was doing on the thoroughfare beyond, but Jharkill’s primitive charms kept their monstrous natures in check. All they knew was suffering, despair and the need to obey. Archaon watched the cavalcade trundle along through the gravel under the watchful eyes of daemonettes, standing with their sickle-spears while snapping their arm-pincers at the beastfiends to move the caravan on.