Manflayer - Josh Reynolds

by Warhammer 40K

  The throne room sat at the end of a long corridor, which was mostly open to the elements. Ahead of him, two hairy beastkin forced the doors open, admitting him. As he passed beneath the archway, Arrian found himself wondering whose skulls were hanging from its peak. That they were legionaries’ skulls was obvious, given the service studs, contact nodes and general size. But they showed little sign of mutation or degradation, implying that they did not belong to warriors of the 12th. It was the sort of thing that would bother him for days, if he let it.

  A skull is a skull is a skull, dog-brother, Briaeus growled. The rest of his dead brothers murmured in agreement. What matter the dead?

  ‘Do you include yourself in that statement?’ Arrian murmured.

  Of course not, Briaeus snorted. While you live, we live.

  ‘When did you decide that?’ Arrian asked, somewhat nonplussed.

  When you did, Briaeus said.

  Arrian fell silent.

  Briaeus had been talking more of late. So had the others. Once, they’d barely spoken to him at all.

  Maybe we’ve forgiven you, Briaeus murmured.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Arrian said. He could feel the eyes of the Gland-hounds on him, and knew they had been eavesdropping. They probably thought him mad. Which he was. He was not a fool. He understood that his mind was a minefield of traumas at best. Between the Nails in his skull, the Chief Apothecary’s surgeries and his own self-medication regimen, he was half-in, half-out of the world at the best of times. Still, one had to be a little mad, to survive in a place such as this.

  The throne room was crowded. Word had obviously spread, and every pack-leader and mutant chieftain was in attendance. Torches stinking of shrieker dung burned in the corners, and mutant shamans swung braziers filled with some form of primitive incense as they blessed the path before him.

  He could feel the tension on the air. He could smell it in their sweat and musk. For so many of the Gland-hounds, the Benefactor was little more than a story told by their parents. They had never seen him, or heard his words. For the mutants it was different. Faith was bred into them. As he approached the throne, many fell to their knees, calling out the name of their god.

  Pater Mutatis.

  Pater Mutatis.

  Pater Mutatis.

  Arrian wondered what Saqqara would have made of it. He found himself obscurely pleased that the Word Bearer was not with him. He brushed the thought aside as he reached the throne.

  ‘Hail, cousin,’ he said, genuflecting slightly. It never hurt to show a bit of respect. Especially in situations such as this.

  Igori sat atop her throne, an ancient barbarian queen whom even death could not conquer. Her hair had grown out since he’d last seen her, and now fell about her shoulders like a spill of ice. Her bare flesh was marked by pale scars and faded tattoos, and the battle-gear she wore was battered, but clean. An aeldari shuriken pistol hung in its holster from the top of her throne, within easy reach.

  At her feet crouched a trio of bestial mutants, obedience collars around their necks. They brayed in agitation as Arrian approached the throne. They rose, weapons in hand, and bared their fangs in warning. Igori twitched a hand, and the creatures sank back to their haunches.

  ‘Hello, cousin,’ she said.

  ‘Igori.’ Arrian made a show of looking around. ‘Have I come at an inopportune time?’

  ‘That depends entirely on why you’ve come.’ Igori leaned back in her throne. ‘Did he send you?’

  Arrian paused. The question was deceptively simple. ‘Yes.’

  Igori sighed and closed her eyes. Arrian felt the others stir, and heard a murmur run through their ranks.

  ‘What does he want?’ she asked.

  ‘The Omega Protocol has been enacted.’

  The murmur was louder this time. Harsh and savage, like the growling of angry hounds.

  Igori sat up. ‘Why?’

  ‘Things are… not going well at the moment,’ Arrian said, trying to keep his own misgivings out of his voice. ‘Quite badly, in fact.’

  Defeatist, Briaeus murmured.

  Arrian tapped his skull, silencing him. He met Igori’s gaze. ‘The xenos – the drukhari – come to make war on the Chief Apothecary and all of his creations. They have already killed many of your kind. They will kill more yet, unless you are removed from danger. The Chief Apothecary wishes you to be safe.’

  ‘What if we do not wish to be safe?’ Igori lifted her chin. ‘We are not slave-meat, but warriors born. What if we wish to stay? To defend this place from those who would defile it?’

  Arrian looked around. ‘That is your prerogative. He will not force you to go. I will not force you to go. But the protocols have been enacted and your brothers and sisters are arriving even now through the webway. Omega Redoubt awaits.’

  ‘Will you be there?’

  ‘No.’ Arrian smiled. ‘It is not for us to see the promised land.’

  ‘You intend to stay,’ she said. She pushed herself to her feet. ‘No. No, that is not right. We serve him. We are his warriors – his blade. Why does he cast us aside?’

  ‘You would have to ask him, cousin,’ Arrian said. ‘But I will say this… Better to hide and thrive than to die for pride.’ He looked around. ‘Go, cousin. Run and live. As he asked you to do. Let the monsters devour themselves.’

  He smiled again, more warmly this time.

  ‘Let us burn, unburdened by your screams.’ He bowed low. ‘I have delivered the message. I will go and allow you to think on it.’ He turned to go.

  ‘I would have died for him,’ Igori said softly.

  Arrian paused. ‘He does not want you to die for him, cousin. He wants you to live. Whatever happens, whatever the ending of his story – he wants you to live.’

  He looked around, at the sea of sharp faces – human, but oh so much more.

  ‘Remember that.’

  The world had no name. It was one of the many crone worlds that littered the Eye. The detritus of a forgotten empire. The Consortium had claimed a number of them – insofar as they could be claimed – as supply caches and experimental facilities.

  But this one was neither. Fabius had chosen it especially for its rela­tive isolation. Even during the aeldari empire’s height, he suspected that it had been considered a backwater. He had only discovered it by accident, during his explorations of the webway. It was a world of bones and ruins, empty even of anything that might attract the basest of scavengers. Perfect for his purposes, in other words.

  Butcher-Bird circled the landing zone – a cratered structure, reinforced and patrolled by combat-servitors of Fabius’ own design. Through the hull-sensors, he watched as they scuttled into view – arachnid automatons, their fleshy clone faces hidden within armoured hoods. Their twin-linked heavy stubbers cycled back and forth, tracking the vessel as it touched down. Fabius sent a mental pulse to the servitors as his armour automatically synched with their cogitator systems. The automatons lowered their weapons and retreated back into the ruins and out of sight.

  Another warning light flashed in the compartment as the hatch opened. Fabius cut the sensor-feed and stood. Dust scraped across the visor of his helmet as he strode down Butcher-Bird’s boarding ramp.

  ‘I do not like this place,’ Saqqara muttered, as he and Savona followed.

  ‘You say that every time,’ Savona said.

  ‘That makes it no less true.’

  ‘Quiet, please,’ Fabius said. ‘I have enough on my mind without having to mediate your squabbling.’ His armour’s modified sensor-net unfolded as he walked. It stretched to encompass his surroundings, painting a three-dimensional schematic of the city across his helmet display. He compared it to previous scans, noting the changes with interest. ‘Savona – what do you notice?’

  ‘The stability of the surrounding structures has been bad
ly compromised since our last visit,’ Savona said, after a moment. ‘And my armour’s auto-senses are having trouble determining the extent of the damage.’

  ‘That is because it is not damage. It is growth. New growth. Wild and strange.’

  Fabius struck a crumbling wall with Torment. The ancient stone disintegrated, revealing an opalescent surface beneath. Wraithbone. The entire ruin was permeated with it, thanks to him.

  ‘Imagine what it will look like in a century.’

  ‘I’d rather not. It’s going to hollow out this husk of a world and turn it into something else,’ she said. ‘Reminds me a bit of Solemnace.’ She peered at Fabius. ‘Are you making your own planet, then?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That would take millennia. And require more attention than I am prepared to give it. No, I have other plans for this place.’

  ‘And those are?’

  ‘Best kept to myself for the moment, I think. Come. This way.’ His armour detected the sub-sonic pulse of the garden’s caretakers, hard at work. Their efforts on his behalf were one of the reasons he allowed them to stay. He suspected that the garden would not have flourished as it had in their absence.

  The wraithbone took the form of something very much like twisted mangrove forest, rising from a communal root-bed. Tangles of pearly white substance carpeted the ground and stretched upwards, sparsely at first but more thickly the farther into the ruins they pressed. At twenty metres from the landing zone, it had become so tangled that they were forced to move single file along the narrow paths that had once been wide thoroughfares.

  The wraithbone sheathed every structure and crept in thick, glistening strands between them. There were shapes within it, half-formed faces or semi-visible figures. Fabius was uncertain as to whether these were natural undulations or the work of the caretakers. The shapes seemed to move as he drew close, twisting away or lunging forward. A trick of the light, perhaps, or something else.

  Small forms darted through the branches above them. They were pallid, simian creatures – the void-adapted descendants of slaves taken during the Legion Wars. Singularly resistant to the audial miasma given off by their masters, their numbers had swelled with the garden, from a few hundred to untold thousands. Tribes of them now dwelled in the high canopies, and their shrill calls echoed down like rain. They shaped the pliable psychoplastics of the garden, encouraging the wraithbone to grow and spread. They subsisted on it as well, these days, though he wasn’t entirely certain how that could be possible, given that wraithbone was in essence solidified warp energy. Raw entropy given substance.

  At first, he’d thought to use it as the aeldari did – simply to ease the mental transference process between cloned bodies. But over time he’d discovered other uses. So he had let it grow wild, first aboard his ship, the Vesalius, then later, here. As a result, it had become something greater than he could have imagined.

  Fabius paused as his armour’s sensors registered a sudden audial spike. The air began to thrash like a maddened beast as wave after wave of feedback washed forward and broke over them, growing louder with every passing moment. The sonic bafflers built into his helm mitigated the worst of the noise, and he was thankful he’d had the foresight to keep it on.

  ‘I hate this part,’ Savona growled. She clutched at her head. ‘Like nails in my skull.’ She grimaced. ‘I wonder if this is how Arrian feels.’

  ‘It would explain his personality,’ Saqqara muttered through gritted teeth. His flasks rattled against his armour, and he clutched at them protectively. ‘Must they do this every time?’ he said, glaring at Fabius. ‘Can you not command them to stop?’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ Fabius asked, boosting the volume of his reply in order to compensate for the growing noise. ‘They are doing even as I intended. Now be silent.’

  The wraithbone ahead of them began to bulge and run like melted wax. The trees seemed to lean away from the disturbance. The wraithbone split apart, forming an archway. From beneath it, several of the garden’s caretakers stepped to meet them.

  The Kakophoni were things of grotesque beauty. Their battleplate had warped itself into a madman’s ideal, more resembling the carapace of an insect than functional armour. Spiky extrusions lined the garishly hued facets, twitching against the air. Their armour seemed to move separately from its wearers, flexing and creaking in ways it was not meant to. The sound of it was almost painful.

  Strange carvings decorated their shoulder-plates and chest-pieces, and unnatural growths spilled out from cracks and gaps in the armour, growing over the ceramite in fleshy folds. Tangles of power cables and stimm-pumps hung like barbaric tabards, and vox-relays sputtered and sparked from atop helms or within hollows secreted between the plates. There was no uniformity to them – each was a monstrosity unto himself.

  ‘Welcome, lieutenant commander,’ one of them rasped hoarsely. ‘It has been too long since last you visited the garden.’

  Fabius looked around. ‘It seems no worse for my absence. All thanks to you, Ramos.’

  Ramos was larger than his fellows. Sonic emitters studded his crudely reinforced armour, and a glistening, cancerous growth spilled across his chest and limbs, pulsing in time to the slightest sound. Broadcast amplifiers encircled the top of his helm like a humming crown, and the grille resembled the jaws of a wild beast. His visor had shattered long ago, exposing dark, bloodshot eyes. Eyes now fixed on Fabius.

  ‘What we have done, we have done out of gratitude,’ he said. ‘When we served the Radiant, our choir fed on its own feedback. With you, we have learned new songs, new melodies. We have learned new pleasures. For that, you have our loyalty.’

  ‘And I am honoured by it,’ Fabius said. He bowed slightly. ‘I have come to see Key.’

  ‘It knows. It asked that we escort you.’

  Fabius paused. ‘It spoke?’

  ‘After a fashion.’ Ramos and the other Noise Marines turned. ‘Come. Stay close. Straying from the path is dangerous, especially this close to the inner groves.’

  Fabius didn’t argue. A strange ecosystem had begun to coalesce within the garden. Warp predators and other etheric beasts prowled the depths. He did not know where they’d first emerged from, but they were here now and there seemed to be more of them every century. Occasionally, Ramos and the other Kakophoni would hunt the creatures, despatching as many as they could in an orgy of bloodshed lasting several cycles. But they never managed to fully cleanse the infestation. It was possible that was intentional. He had never asked.

  Savona leaned towards him. ‘One day they’re going to lead us down the wrong path and we’re never going to come out,’ she muttered.

  Saqqara laughed bitterly. ‘We won’t. He will. One way or another.’

  ‘Calm yourselves,’ Fabius said. ‘Are you children, to be frightened of the wild wood? Or are you legionaries?’ He glanced at Saqqara. ‘What do your pets whisper to you?’

  Saqqara tapped one of the flasks. ‘This place is noisy to them. Full of spirits, not all of which are friendly. You should allow me to let them loose – they could do with a hunt.’

  ‘No. This place is home to enough monsters without adding those ravenous little falsehoods to the mix. Keep them contained.’

  Fabius’ armour chimed, and he cast his sensor-net wide. Sub-sonic white spots and clumps of distortion danced across his cartographic display, marking the position of other Noise Marines. Once, there had only been twenty or so of them. Now, it seemed there were at least four times that many, scattered throughout the ever-expanding garden.

  He caught Ramos’ attention. ‘There are more of you here than there were last time.’

  Ramos made a contented sound. ‘Our song calls to those of the first choir. They come to listen, at first, and then to join. We welcome them.’ He glanced at Fabius. ‘The garden welcomes them.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

 
Ramos shrugged. ‘A hundred, maybe more.’

  Saqqara grunted. ‘That’s a veritable army in its own right.’

  ‘Not an army,’ Ramos said, sounding insulted. ‘A choir.’ He slowed and pointed. ‘We have arrived. See – it waits for us. As I said.’

  Fabius looked up.

  The creature known as Key perched in the branches above. When Fabius stepped forward, it leapt down gracefully to meet him.

  Key had been an aeldari, once. A Corsair of the Sunblitz Brotherhood. Now it was something else. Though it still resembled the being it had once been, wraithbone permeated its slim form, encouraged by Fabius’ ministrations over the years. Pale thorns studded its bare limbs, and a single rough antler curled from the side of its skull and curved back over its head. Thick barnacles of wraithbone occupied its eye sockets, and spread thin filaments through the flesh of its cheeks and across the bridge of its nose. Beneath the loose robes it wore, ­psychoplastic cilia twitched.

  As it moved towards him, the wraithbone around it responded in kind – swelling or diminishing seemingly at random. Its features were slack, without expression or personality. It had no mind as such, for its cerebrum had been infested with wraithbone. It was now little more than a living psychic resonator. A tool of flesh, devised to open and close the webway portcullises under his control.

  ‘Hello, Key.’ Fabius took the aeldari’s hands in his own. ‘You look well.’

  He did not expect an answer. It never did. Still, he spoke to it. It was an old, accepted wisdom that things grew better when one spoke to them. Key stroked his face, and opened its mouth in a parody of speech. Then it looked past him, towards Saqqara. Its expression became animated as it swayed towards the Word Bearer.

  Fabius watched in bemusement as Saqqara stoically endured the creature’s fluttering caresses. For reasons that escaped him, Key was fascinated by the diabolist. Saqqara, for his part, seemed only mildly disgusted. It was progress, of sorts.

  ‘It seems healthy,’ Fabius said.

  Ramos grunted. ‘It does not eat, it does not sleep. It is a vessel for terrible things.’ He shrugged. ‘It is healthy enough.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘Do you require its services? It has been agitated of late. That usually means you’re planning to use it.’