by Various
Several sets of human remains, long dead, lay upon the floor; they had clearly been dragged from the burial niches. Some had tumbled face down on the floor, while others were just pushed roughly aside, snapping their bones likes twigs in the process. Those that were still recognisable as bodies were skeletal and ancient, with yellowed, dried-paper skin and clumps of hair clinging to desiccated flesh. They were bedecked in ancient armour that nevertheless bore some similarity to the plate worn by the Legiones Astartes.
There were eight bodies in all, one for each of the arched niches. In their place, eight curved caskets had been placed.
‘Welcome, brothers,’ said a voice in the darkness.
Nine
All resistance in the room was neutralised. The only living enemy remaining was the Contemptor, if you could call it living. Sor Talgron did not. Trapped in darkness, confined in a box. That was no life.
Three of the Cataphractii had been slain before it had fallen. Not even their vaunted armour was protection against its fists.
It was laid low, a battered heap of metal and ceramite, yet still it struggled to fight and kill. One of its arms was gone, and its lower half was malfunctioning. It lay on the ground, struggling to push itself upright. Its chest had been breached, and sickly, foul-smelling fluid was leaking from within.
The surviving Word Bearers circled the downed behemoth, respecting its power even in death. Sor Talgron was holding the dead sergeant’s thunder hammer. Uncoupled from its power source, it did not have the same kick, but it would do the job.
He smashed the hammer into the Contemptor’s oversized red helm. The Dreadnought reached for him, but it was a clumsy attempt and easily avoided – there was no strength left in the beast. Another three strikes knocked the helmet loose, rendering the Dreadnought blind.
‘Take off its arm,’ he ordered.
The two Cataphractii stepped in. One of them pinned the giant’s limb down, testimony to how weak the Contemptor was – minutes earlier, it would have crumpled the Terminator in one fist had he dared come so close.
A chainfist shrieked. Oil spurted and sparks filled the air. Then it was done.
With both arms amputated, and its legs twitching spasmodically, the machine was helpless. It lay on its back, jerking.
‘Kill… me…’ it drawled.
Sor Talgron nodded to the Cataphractii. They wrenched the Dreadnought’s ruptured breastplate apart, widening the breach. Sickly fluid gushed forth.
Within, suspended in a web of cables, tubes and pipes was a wretched, wasted corpse – some XIII Legion hero of ages past. Was this his reward for years of service, Sor Talgron wondered? It was a cruel fate, if so.
It twitched, and a croak escaped its rotten lips. It was piteous. It repulsed him.
The hammer ended its torment. Sor Talgron tossed the weapon away in disgust, and turned towards the sealed door. He was about to order it smashed down, but it opened of its own accord.
A lone Ultramarine walked out to meet them. He was unarmed, and perhaps that was what stayed Sor Talgron’s hand, stopping him from having the fool gunned down immediately.
Like the Dreadnought, the Ultramarine had a red helm, though his was hung at his waist, leaving his head bare. He was looking down, hair hanging over his face.
Sor Talgron felt an uncomfortable buzzing against the inside of his skull. It felt as though something was trying to scratch its way out. He shook his head to rid himself of the sensation.
The Ultramarine looked up.
White flames spilled from his eyes.
Sor Talgron stepped into the dark chamber, noting the sudden drop in air temperature.
‘Enough of the theatrics, Jarulek,’ said Sor Talgron, the grilled vocalizer in his helmet rendering his words into an inhuman, crackling snarl. ‘We do not have much time.’
‘Everything is in readiness,’ said the Dark Apostle, rising from the shadows. He was garbed from head to toe in a heavy, dark robe, his face hidden to the naked eye. Sor Talgron had seen him instantly, his helmet stripping away the shadow of his cowl and the thermal image glowing hot against the stone. But to Volkhar Wreth he must have appeared like a wraith, rising from the dead. The predicant’s eyes were wide.
‘Any problems?’ said Sor Talgron, glancing back the way that they had come. He knelt and picked up a length of chain from the floor.
‘No one’s been down here,’ said Jarulek, pulling back his hood. His head was shaved to the scalp, like an ascetic, and his skin was pulled taut across his skull. His eye sockets were sunken and dark.
‘What is this?’ hissed Wreth. ‘Why do we delay here?’
‘Predicant Volkhar Wreth,’ said Jarulek, bowing his head. ‘It is an honour.’
Wreth nodded vaguely in return. He brushed past the Dark Apostle, picking his way amongst the ancient dead to halt before the nearest casket. Green lights blinked from the panel on its side. He wiped a hand across the curved surface of its lid, brushing aside a coating of frost. On the other side of the crystal, a face was revealed.
‘Life signs?’ said Sor Talgron, wrapping the length of chain around his hand.
‘All strong, captain,’ said Jarulek.
‘You are certain this will work?’
‘It will work.’
‘What is this?’ said Wreth once again. The figure within the casket wore a close-fitting metal cap studded with crystals, diodes and wires. There were markings upon his naked flesh, and Wreth leaned in to see more clearly. His breath misted the air before him. ‘Who are they?’
‘A battery,’ said Jarulek. ‘A very powerful battery.’
‘To power what?’
‘They are psykers taken from the Hollow Mountain,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘All within that hated fastness are those the Imperium deems too uncontrollable, too weak or too old to be of use. They were doomed to die.’
‘For the good of the Imperium,’ said Jarulek, his voice thick with venom.
‘These ones will still die,’ Sor Talgron went on. ‘Only now they will die for a more noble purpose.’
‘They’ve been… mutilated,’ said Wreth, his face close to the casket’s lid. The dormant psyker within had runes and markings cut into his flesh. The wounds were red-rimmed and septic.
‘You wear Colchisian writing, but you’re Terran-born, aren’t you?’ said Jarulek, coming closer.
‘What of it? I have the primarch’s blood in me, as do you,’ Wreth snapped.
‘There are… markedly fewer Terrans within the Legion of late,’ said Sor Talgron. Volkhar Wreth looked at him, his brow furrowed, not understanding what was being said.
‘Tell me, predicant,’ said Jarulek. ‘What would you be willing to give up, if Lorgar himself asked it?’
‘Anything,’ replied Wreth instantly.
‘You would surrender your life?’
‘Of course.’
‘Excellent.’
Predicant Wreth looked around sharply as he heard the murderous intent in Jarulek’s voice, turning his back on Sor Talgron. Before he could react, Sor Talgron looped a length of chain around the predicant’s neck, like a garrotte. He yanked it tight, cutting off his airway and pulling him off-balance. Wreth’s hand went instantly to the choking chain, struggling to breathe. Using his colossal, armour-enhanced strength, Sor Talgron hauled Volkhar Wreth around to face Jarulek.
The Dark Apostle threw off his robe. Beneath it he was unarmoured and stripped to the waist, his tattooed torso exposed. The candlelight rippled across his skin, making the symbols and intricate Colchisian cuneiform emblazoned upon him dance.
‘I too bear the word of our lord upon my flesh,’ he said. ‘The message has changed somewhat in recent times, however.’
He had a knife in his hand, and he stepped in to drive it into the predicant’s body.
‘This is the will of Lorgar,’ he snarled.
Holding onto the chain with both hands, Volkhar Wreth lifted himself and slammed both feet squarely into Jarulek’s chest. The force of the blow knocked Jarulek back, and drove Sor Talgron into one of the stasis-caskets, sliding it half a metre to the side with a screech of metal. The captain’s helmet crunched into the low arch above, and his grip on the chain loosened.
Wreth tore himself free and rose to his feet as Jarulek lunged at him. He grabbed Jarulek’s wrist as the Dark Apostle’s knife flashed in the gloom, guiding it past him and twisting sharply, overextending the joint. With his other hand he grabbed Jarulek’s shoulder and, using his momentum against him, drove the Dark Apostle’s face onto the edge of the stone plinth.
He tore the knife from Jarulek’s hand and spun, coming to face Sor Talgron. The Word Bearers captain was blocking his way out.
‘What in the Emperor’s name is going on?’ he hissed.
‘The Urizen has had a change of heart regarding the Emperor,’ said Jarulek, as he made to rise, blood dripping from his face.
‘This is insane,’ said Wreth. ‘The Seventeenth would never turn.’
‘There were those who were resistant,’ said Sor Talgron.
‘That knife in your hand has spilled plenty of Legion blood,’ added Jarulek.
‘You are the last of your kind, old friend,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘The last Terran-born Word Bearer who has not embraced the new path. The purge is almost complete.’
‘New path?’ said Wreth. ‘What madness is this?’
‘At Monarchia, the Emperor rebuked us for worshipping him as a god,’ said Jarulek. He shrugged. ‘We found new ones. Well, old ones…’
‘You’ve been away from the Legion too long,’ said Sor Talgron.
‘You haven’t got a religious bone in your body, lad,’ spat Wreth. ‘This is not some holy endeavour. You’ve become traitors, nothing more.’
‘No,’ said Jarulek. ‘We’ve become enlightened.’
‘Why did you release me? Why didn’t you just let me rot with the others of the Crusader Host?’
‘You’d only have been executed, in time,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘The truth will out. Always, the truth will out. You think Dorn would let you live once he knew that the Seventeenth had pledged for Horus? This way, you may still serve the Legion. This way, your death has a meaning. A purpose.’
‘What have you become, Sor Talgron?’ said Wreth. ‘You are not the warrior that I knew. He would never have betrayed the Imperium. Never in a thousand years. Something has happened to you, some corruption has eroded your soul.’
‘I am exactly the man that you knew,’ snarled Sor Talgron. ‘The Legion is my life. It has always been so. Would it have been better to have betrayed the Seventeenth? Is that what the man you knew would have done? Would he have betrayed Lord Aurelian?’
‘The one I knew understood the difference between right and wrong.’
‘What’s right and what’s wrong is determined by the victor,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘I am a soldier, just as I always was. I do as I am ordered. Nothing has changed.’
‘Then damn you, and damn the Legion,’ said Volkhar Wreth, stepping towards him, clutching Jarulek’s knife.
‘Kill him!’ Sor Talgron shouted, too late.
The Ultramarine swept his arm in front of him, from left to right, in the manner of one clearing a table in a fit of pique. Every Word Bearer was hurled backwards by a colossal barrage of unseen force.
They were slammed against the far wall, which bent and buckled beneath them. The unseen force did not relent, either. It continued to press upon the Word Bearers, pinning them in place. It was as though the axis of reality in the room had suddenly changed, making the back wall down, and the gravity increased ten-fold.
The Ultramarine had risen off the floor, his feet hovering just above it. His arms were outspread, palms up, and white flames were rising from his hands as well as spilling from his eyes. His teeth were bared in a vicious snarl.
The force pressing upon Sor Talgron made it feel like the weight of a battle tank was on his chest, making breathing difficult. His arms and legs were pinned against the wall, and in spite of all his strength, enhanced by the fibre-bundles and servos of his armour, he could not pull himself free, nor even raise a weapon against his enemy.
Yet, despite the tonnage of force pressing against him, a bark of laughter escaped his lips.
The Ultramarine turned his fiery gaze upon Sor Talgron.
‘You find your end amusing, traitor?’ he said. His voice sounded like a dozen voices blurred together.
‘You are as much a traitor as I,’ said Sor Talgron. ‘You go against the Emperor’s decree.’
‘You have no moral right to condemn me,’ said the Ultramarine, multiple voices overlapping.
Sor Talgron laughed again, with considerable difficulty. ‘I do not need to condemn you. Your actions do that for me.’
‘You speak poison, traitor,’ said the Ultramarine. ‘My infraction is as nothing next to the scale of your treachery.’
‘Such is how all treachery is born – by small degrees,’ said Sor Talgron. He strained to lift his weapon again, but he could not. He might as well try to lift a mountain, so strong was the force ranged against him. ‘But there is no grey area here. There is only obeying, and disobeying. You’ve turned against the word of the Emperor. In his eyes, you are no different from any of us. He ordered the death of one of his own sons for it – why do you think he would forgive you?’
The Ultramarine pressed his arms outwards, as if pushing on a heavy weight. The force holding the Word Bearers intensified. Sor Talgron’s armour groaned. It could not take much more than this.
‘You… are… as… damned… as… us…’ he snarled.
‘Enough,’ yelled the Ultramarine, thrusting a hand towards Sor Talgron, fingers tightening like he was gripping something. Sor Talgron’s throat was constricted suddenly, closing off his windpipe. ‘This world is going to burn, and you and all your traitorous legionaries will burn with it.’
With one hand extended, holding the Word Bearers in place, the damned Librarian drew a plasma pistol. He aimed, taking his time, and fired. There was a searing flash of heat and light, and one of Sor Talgron’s legionaries was slain, cored through his midsection. The air filled with the stink of melting flesh and acrid plasma discharge.
The Word Bearers strained against the psychic pressure pinning them in place, but it was no good. None of them could move.
The Librarian’s pistol was venting super-heated vapour from its power coils. He lowered its barrel at his next target – Sor Talgron. The captain’s face was purple, the invisible grip of iron still clamped around his throat.
Jarulek spoke then. His words made the scratching inside Sor Talgron’s mind intensify sharply, and he might have cried out had he been able to breathe. It felt as though some taloned thing inside his skull was straining desperately to get out. He felt a trickle of blood run from his nose.
The Dark Apostle’s words were guttural and harsh, and not in any way human in origin. They were an aberration, the sounds not ones that any being born of the material realm had any right to utter. It was a calling, a summoning of beings beyond the veil of reality.
And in defiance of all rational logic, that call was answered.
The buzzing in Sor Talgron’s head could have been the sound of a faulty vox picking up nothing but static, or the incessant burr of a million insects. Behind the crackling noise he could hear the chittering of inhuman voices and the cutting cry of newborns. It was an uneasy, disconcerting sound, and it was getting steadily louder.
Every lumen strip in the room exploded, scattering shards of broken glass in all directions. The chittering voices were suddenly in the room with them. The only light was the dull electronic glow of a data-screen coming from the chamber beyond. The electric buzz in the air reached a pain
ful resonance.
With a sound like paper ripping, a pair of shadows detached themselves from the surrounding darkness. They descended upon the Librarian, drifting towards him like moths to a candle, like leeches to blood. Each of the incorporeal shapes manifested a pair of long, spindly arms made of nothing more solid than darkness, the limbs extending from vaguely humanoid, skeletal torsos that tapered into nothingness below the waist.
They grappled with the Ultramarine, clawing his weapon arm with insubstantial talons, and his shot went wild, searing through the metal wall half a metre above Sor Talgron’s head. He felt the pressure against him lessen, and he sucked in a breath, gasping for air. Fighting against the pressing psychic power, he managed to shift his arm fractionally. His fingertips touched the grip of the volkite pistol holstered at his chest.
The shades surrounded the Librarian, coiling around him like serpents. One of them still held his weapon arm, fighting against him, while the other was scrabbling wildly for his throat. The Ultramarine fought them off, struggling to shove them away, but it was like clutching at smoke.
A third spectral shape materialised, emerging from the darkness and rearing up behind him. It grabbed the Ultramarine’s head in its shadow-talons, and the Librarian roared as cold fingers pressed into his mind. The incorporeal being shuddered, dark un-light pulsing along its arms and into its being, and its presence grew more substantial. It was feeding on him, Sor Talgron realised. A mouth split open in its otherwise blank face, revealing rows of tiny, barbed teeth, and it breathed out a cloud of buzzing flies, accompanied by a stench like rotting flesh.
The other two spirits renewed their efforts. It was abundantly clear that the Librarian was about to be overcome.
With a roar, the Librarian threw a hand towards the wreckage of the Contemptor, lying lifeless on the floor. It was lifted into the air, and with a wild motion of the Ultramarine’s arm, it was sent slamming into Jarulek.
The shades began to fade as the Dark Apostle’s voice was silenced. They fought to remain in the material realm, clawing frantically for a foothold in real space, but they were drawn slowly back into shadow. They screamed and writhed, but then they were gone. The Librarian stood alone, breathing hard.