by Ben Counter
The space within was large, a maintenance chamВber that had been had been cleared and refitted so as to resemble some underground stone chamber. Twin rows of stone benches faced the far wall, where meaningless symbols and words had been painted. Blank-eyed skulls hung from the ceiling, staring and grinning with bared teeth. They swayed gently as Loken passed them, thin tendrils of smoke rising from their eye sockets.
A low wooden table stood against the far wall. A shallow bowl carved into its surface contained flaky dark detritus that he could smell was dried blood. A thick book lay beside the depression.
Was this a temple? He remembered the bottles and glass flasks that had been scattered around the water fane beneath the Whisperheads.
This place and the fane on Sixty-Three Nineteen looked different, but they felt the same.
He heard a sudden rustle on the air, like whispers in his ear, and he spun around, his knife whipping out in front of him.
He was alone, yet the sense of someone whispering in his ear had been so real that he would have sworn on his life that another person had been standing right beside him. Loken took a breath and did a slow circuit of the room, his knife extended, on the defenВsive in case the mysterious whisperer revealed himself.
Bundles of torn material lay by the benches, and he made his way towards the table – the altar, he realised – upon which lay the book he had noticed earlier.
Its cover was leather, the surface cracked, old and blackened by fire.
Loken bent down to examine the book, flipping open the cover with the tip of his knife. The words written there were composed of an angular script, the letters written vertically on the page.
'Erebus,’ he said as he recognised the script as identical to that tattooed upon the skull of the Word Bearer. Could this be the Book of Lorgar that Kyril Sindermann had been raving about following the fire in the archive chamber? The iterator had claimed that the book had unleashed some horror of the warp and that had been what caused the fire, but Loken saw only words.
How could words be dangerous?
Even as he formed the thought, he blinked, the words blurring on the page in front of him. The symbols twisted from the unknown language of the Word Bearers to the harsh numerical language of Cthonia, before spiralling into the elegant script of Imperial Gothic and a thousand other languages he had never seen before.
He blinked to ward off a sudden, impossible, sense of dizziness.
What are you doing here, Loken?' a familiar voice asked in his ear.
Loken spun to face the voice, but once again he was alone. The temple was empty.
'How dare you break the trust of the Warmaster?' the voice asked, this time with a sense of weight behind it.
And this time he recognised the voice. He turned slowly and saw Torgaddon standing before die altar.
'Down!' yelled Tarvttz as gunfire streaked above him, stitching monochrome explosions along the barren rock of Isstvan Extremis. 'Squad Fulgerion, with me. All squads to position and wait for the go!'
Tarvitz ran, knowing that Sergeant Fulgerion's squad would be on his heels as he made for the cover of the closest crater. A web of criss-crossing tracer fire streaked the air before the monitoring station the Isstvanians had set up on Isstvan Extremis, a tall, organ-like structure of towers, domes and antennae. Anchored on the barren rock surface by massive docking claws, the station was dusted in a powdery residue of ice crystals and parВticulate matter.
The Isstvan system's sun was little more than a cold disc peeking above the horizon, lining everyВthing in a harsh blue light. Automatic gun ports spat fire at the advancing Emperor's Children, more than two hundred Astartes converging in a classic assault pattern to storm the massive blast doors of the station's eastern entrance.
Isstvan Extremis had little atmosphere to speak of and was lethally cold; only the sealed armour of the Space Marines made a ground assault possible.
Tarvitz slid into the crater, turret fire ripping up chunks of grey rock around him. Sergeant FulgeВrion and his warriors, shields held high to shelter
them from the fire, hit the ground to either side of him. Veterans only truly at home in the thick of the hardest fighting, Fulgerion and his squad had fought together for years and Tarvitz knew that he had some of the Legion's best warriors with him.
They were ready for us, then?' asked Fulgerion.
They must have known that we would return to restore compliance,’ said Tarvitz. 'Who knows how long they have been waiting for us to come back,’
Tarvitz glanced over the lip of the crater, spotting purple armoured forms fanning out in front of the gates to take up their allotted positions. That was how the Emperor's Children fought, manoeuvring into position to execute perfectly co-ordinated strikes, squads moving across a battle zone like pieces on a chess board.
'Captain Garro of the Death Guard reports that he is in position,’ said Eidolon's voice over the vox-net. 'Show them what war really is!'
The Death Guard had been assigned the task of taking the western approach to the station, and Tarvitz smiled as he imagined his old friend Garro marching his men grimly towards the guns, winВning through relentless determination rather than any finesse of tactics. Each to their own, he thought as he drew his broadsword.
Such blunt tactics were not the way of the Emperor's Children, for war was not simply about killing, it was art.
Tarvitz and Fulgerion in position,’ he reported. 'All units ready,’
'Execute!' came the order.
'You heard Lord Eidolon,’ he shouted. 'Children of the Emperor!'
The warriors around him cheered as he and Ful-gerion clambered over the crater lip and gunfire streaked overhead from the support squads. A perВfect ballet began with every one of his units acting in complete concert, heavy weapons pounding the enemy guns as assault units moved in to attack and tactical units took up covering positions.
Splintering explosions burst in the sub-zero air, chunks of debris blasted from the surface of the entrance dome as turret guns detonated and threw chains of bursting ammunition into the air.
A missile streaked past Tarvitz and burst against the blast doors, leaving a flaming, blackened crater in the metal. Another missile followed the first, and then another, and the doors crumpled inwards. Tarvitz saw the golden armour of Eidolon flashing in the planet's hard light, the lord commander heftВing a mighty hammer with blue arcs of energy crackling around its head.
The hammer slammed into die remains of the doors, blue-white light bursting like a lightning strike as they vanished in a thunderous explosion. Eidolon charged inside the facility, the honour his by virtue of his noble rank.
Tarvitz followed Eidolon in, ducking through the wrecked blast doors.
Inside, the station was in darkness, lit only by the muzzle flashes of bolter fire and sparking cables
torn from their mountings by the furious combat. Tarvitz's enhanced vision dispelled the darkness, warm air billowing from the station through the ruptured doors and white vapour surged around him as he saw the enemy for the first time.
They wore black armour with bulky power packs and thick cables that attached to heavy rifles. The plates of their armour were traced with silver scrollВwork, perhaps just for decoration, perhaps a pattern of circuitry.
Their faces were hooded, each with a single red lens over one eye. A hundred of them packed the dome, sheltering behind slabs of broken machinery and furniture. The armoured soldiers formed a solid defensive line, and no sooner had Eidolon and the Emperor's Children emerged from the entrance tunnel than they opened fire.
Rapid firing bolts of ruby laser fire spat out from the Isstvanian troops, filling the dome with horiВzontal red rain. Tarvitz took a trio of shots, one to his chest, one to his greaves and another cracking against his helmet, filling his senses with a burst of static.
Fulgerion was ahead of him, wading through the las-fire that battered his shield. Eidolon surged f
orwards in the centre of the line and his hammer bludgeoned Isstvanians to death with each lethal swing. A body flew through the air, its torso a crushed ruin and its limbs shattered by the shock of die hammer's impact. The weight of enemy fire faltered and the Emperor's Children charged
forwards,’overlapping fields of bolter fire shredding the Isstvanians' cover as close combat specialists crashed through the gaps to kill with gory sweeps of chainswords.
Tarvitz's bolt pistol snapped shots at the darting black figures catching one in the throat and spinВning him around. Squad Fulgerion took up position at the remains of the barricade, their bolters filling the dome with covering gunfire for Eidolon and his chosen warriors.
Tarvitz killed the enemy with brutally efficient shots and sweeps of his broadsword, fighting like a warrior of Fulgrim should. His every strike was a faultless killing blow, and his every step was meaВsured and perfect. Gunfire ricocheted from his gilded armour and the light of battle reflected from his helmet as if from a hero of ancient legend.
'We have the entrance dome,' shouted Eidolon as the last of the Isstvanians were efficiently despatched by the Astartes around him. 'Death Guard units report heavy resistance inside. Blow the inner doors and we'll finish this for them.'
Warriors with breaching charges rushed to destroy the inner doors, and even over the flames and shots, Tarvitz could hear muffled explosions from the other side. He lowered his sword and took a moment to survey his surroundings now that there was a lull in the fighting.
A dead body lay at his feet, the plates of the man's black armour ruptured and a ragged tear ripped in the hood covering his face. Frozen blood lay
scattered around him like precious stones and Tarvitz knelt to pull aside the torn cowl.
The man's skin was covered in an elaborate swirling black tattoo, echoing the silver designs on his armour. A frozen eye looked up at him, hollow and darkened, and Tarvitz wondered what manner of being had the power to force this man to renounce his oaths of loyalty to the Imperium.
Tarvitz was spared thinking of an answer by the dull thump of the interior doors blowing open. He put the dead man from his mind and set off after Eidolon as he held his hammer high and charged into the central dome. He ran alongside his fellow warriors, knowing that whatever the Isstvanians could throw at him, he was an Astartes and no weapon they had could match the will of the Emperor's Children.
Tarvitz and his men moved through the dust and smoke of the door's explosion, the autosenses of his armour momentarily useless.
Then they were through and into the heart of the Isstvan Extremis facility.
He pulled up short as he suddenly realised that the intelligence they had been given on this facility was utterly wrong.
This was not a comms station, it was a temple.
Torgaddon's face was ashen and leathery, puckВered and scarred around a burning yellow eye. Sharpened metallic teeth glinted in a lipless mouth and twin gashes were torn in the centre of his face.
A star with eight points was gouged in his temple, mirroring its golden twin etched upon his ornate, black armour.
'No,’ said Loken, backing away from this terrible apparition.
'You have trespassed, Loken,’ hissed Torgaddon. 'You have betrayed,’
A dry, deathly wind carried Torgaddon's words, gusting over him with the smell of burning bodies. As he breathed the noxious wind, a vision of broВken steppes spread out before Loken, expanses of desolation and plains of rusted machinery like skeletons of extinct monsters. A hive city on the disВtant horizon split open like a flower, and from its broken, burning petals rose a mighty tower of brass that punctured the pollution-heavy clouds.
The sky above was burning and the laughter of Dark Gods boomed from the heavens. Loken wanted to scream, this vision of devastation worse than anything he had seen before
This wasn't real. It couldn't be. He did not believe in ghosts and illusions.
The thought gave him strength. He wrenched his mind away from the dying world, and suddenly he was soaring through the galaxy, tumbling between the stars. He saw them destroyed, bleeding glowing plumes of stellar matter into the void. A baleful mass of red stars glowered above him, staring like a great and terrible eye of flame. An endless tide of titanic monsters and vast space fleets vomited from that eye, drowning the universe in a tide of blood.
A sea of burning flames spat and leapt from the blood, consuming all in its path, leaving black, barВren wasteland in its wake.
Was this a vision of some lunatic's hell, a dimension of destruction and chaos where sinners went when they died? Loken forced himself to remember the lurid descriptions from the Chronicles of Ursh, the outВlandish scenes described by inventions of dark faith. No, said the voice of Torgaddon, this is no madВman's delusion. It is the future.
'You're not Torgaddon!' shouted Loken, shaking the whispering voice from his head. You are seeing the galaxy die. Loken saw the Sons of Horus in the tide of fiery madness that poured from the red eye, armoured in black and surrounded by leaping, deformed creatures. Abaddon was there, and Horus himself, an immense obsidian giant who crushed worlds in his gauntlets.
This could not be the future. This was a diseased distorted vision of the future.
A galaxy in which mankind was led by the Emperor could never become such a terrible maelВstrom of chaos and death. You are wrong.
The galaxy in flames receded and Loken scrabbled for some solidity, something to reassure him that this terrifying vision could never come to pass. He was tumbling again, his vision blurring until he opened his eyes and found himself in Archive Chamber Three, a place he had felt safe, surВrounded by books that rendered the universe down
to pure logic and kept the madness locked up in crude pagan epics where it belonged.
But something was wrong, the books were burnВing around him, this purest of knowledge being systematically destroyed to keep the masses ignoВrant of their truths. The shelves held nothing but flames and ash, the heat battering against Loken as he tried to save the dying books. His hands blisВtered and blackened as he fought to save the wisdom of ancient times, the flesh peeling back from his bones.
The music of the spheres. The mechanisms of reality, invisible and all around…
Loken could see it where the flames burned through, the endless churning mass of the warp at the heart of everything and the eyes of dark forces seething with malevolence. Grotesque creatures cavorted obscenely among heaps of corpses, horned heads and braying, goat-like faces twisted by the mindless artifice of the warp. Bloated monsters, their bodies heaving with maggots and filth, devoured dead stars as a brass-clad giant bellowed an endless war cry from its throne of skulls and soulless magiВcians sacrificed billions in a silver city built of lies.
Loken fought to tear his sight from this madness. Remembering the words he had thrown in Horus Aximand's face at the Delphos Gate, he screamed them aloud once more:
'I will not bow to any fane or acknowledge any spirit. I own only the empirical clarity of ImperВial Truth!'
In an instant, the walls of the dark temple slammed back into place around him, the air thick with incense, and he gasped for breath. Loken's heart pumped wildly and his head spun, sick with the effort of casting out what he had seen.
This was not fear. This was anger.
Those who came to this fane were selling out the entire human race to dark forces that lurked unseen in the depths of the warp. Were these the same forces that had infected Xayver Jubal? The same forces that had nearly killed Sindermann in the ship's archive?
Loken felt sick as he realised that everything he knew about the warp was wrong.
He had been told that there were no such things as gods.
He had been told that there was nothing in the warp but insensate, elemental power.
He had been told that the galaxy was too sterile for melodrama.
Everything he had been told was a lie.
Feeding
on the strength his anger gave him, Loken lurched towards the altar and slammed the ancient book closed, snapping the brass hasp over the lock. Even shut, he could feel the terrible purВpose locked within its pages. The idea that a book could have some sort of power would have sounded ludicrous to Loken only a few months ago, but he could not doubt the evidence of his own senses, despite the incredible, terrifying, unimaginable things he had seen and heard. He
gathered up the book and clutching it under one arm, turned and made his way from the fane.
He closed the door and eased past the banner of the Seventh, emerging once more into the secluded darkness of the strategium.
Sindermann had been right. Loken was hearing the music of the spheres, and it was a terrible sound that spoke of corruption, blood and the death of the universe.
Loken knew with utter certainty that it was up to him to silence it.
The interior of the Isstvan Extremis facility was domВinated by a wide, stepped pyramid, its huge stone blocks fashioned from a material that clearly had no place on such a world. Each block came from some other building many of them still bearing architecВtural carvings, sections of friezes, gargoyles or even statues jutting crazily from the structure
Isstvanian soldiers swarmed around the base of the pyramid, fighting in desperate close quarters battle with the steel-armoured figures of the Death Guard. The battle had no shape, the art of war having given way to the grinding brutality of simple killing.
Tarvitz's gaze was drawn from the slaughter to the very top of the pyramid, where a bright light spun and twisted around a half-glimpsed figure surВrounded by keening harmonics.
'Attack!' bellowed Eidolon, charging forwards as the tip of the spear, assault units the killing edges
around him. Tarvitz forgot about the strange figure and followed the lord commander, driving Eidolon forwards by covering him and holding off enemies who tried to surround him.
More Emperor's Children stormed into the dome and the battle at the base of the pyramid. Tarvitz saw Lucius beside Eidolon, the swordsman's blade shining like a harnessed star.
It was typical that Lucius would be at the front, demonstrating that he would rise swiftly through the ranks and take his place alongside Eidolon as the Legion's best. Tarvitz slashed his weapon left and right, needing no skill to kill these foes, simply a strong sword arm and the will to win. He clamВbered onto the first level of the pyramid, fighting his way up its side through rank after rank of black armoured foes.