Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  ‘An unnecessary announcement,’ Zytos replied, exchanging an irritated glance with Abidemi, who had begun attaching his scabbarded sword to his weapons belt.

  The ramp lowered a few seconds later, and the dark lingered beyond it.

  The Salamanders had donned war-helms, even Vulkan, but despite the retinal enhancement of their armour, the black remained impenetrable.

  ‘On my lead, my sons,’ said Vulkan, his voice barely rising above a whisper. ‘Stay close, stay quiet.’

  They exited the ship, using the runic designators on their helm displays to maintain proximity.

  Sound was aberrant here. No echo came from their armoured footfalls against the ramp. To Zytos, even his breath rang flat and hollow inside his helm. But having left the confines of the ship and gazed out upon the hinterlands of this strange, unnerving place, he discerned… shapes.

  ‘I see…’

  ‘This is their land, Barek. The outskirts of a city. Aelindrach.’

  Zytos turned sharply to his father. ‘You know it by name?’

  ‘I…’ Vulkan began, looking down as if clutching for a memory, ‘I do.’ The talisman, the one with seven hammers upon its face, was in the primarch’s hand.

  Zytos had not paid much attention to the talisman at first, deeming it just another part of the primarch’s armour, but now he did, his eye was drawn to it. Its form was as absorbing as the dark.

  ‘It will find a path,’ said Vulkan, as if he knew what Zytos was looking at, without having seen him do it.

  He raised his eyes and the talisman, the hammers… turned.

  ‘A compass then?’ asked Zytos, wondering at the artefact’s purpose.

  ‘One that can navigate this eldritch night,’ said Abidemi, drawing his sword with a flat scrape of monomolecular steel.

  Vulkan regarded the talisman of seven hammers. ‘Igen,’ he said through his vox, ‘follow us. Stay close.’

  As Vulkan led on, Zytos and Abidemi in his wake, the gunship rose up on seemingly muted engines. Air blew out from its whirling turbofans, but it was cold and frost soon crusted the armour of the three in front.

  ‘Pay it no heed,’ Vulkan told them.

  Zytos shook his arms to shatter the worst of the ice, and heard mocking laughter as it came apart. He stopped to look around, finding only darkness and the suggestion of statues or towers that might have been kilometres away or only a few metres. Distance had become hard to gauge.

  Even their armour appeared bleached of vigour, vivid greens and vibrant reds becoming pale and insipid.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Vulkan told him. ‘Do not slow down for anything. We are being watched.’

  Zytos unslung his bolter. It had a dragon-mouth at the end of the barrel and finely wrought gilt chasing around the grip. He nodded to Abidemi to do the same, and the two warriors began searching the shadows for threats.

  None came.

  The darkness began to abate and in its place arose a noisome marshland of talon-like reeds and shallow, brackish pools. Towards the black horizon, Zytos thought he made out a long row of signs, their posts driven deep into the dark loamy soil underfoot. It was only as he narrowed his eyes that he realised the signs were crucifixions, their victims still hanging in place.

  He felt a hand upon his shoulder, but heard Abidemi’s steady breathing.

  ‘Nothing but pain out there, brother.’

  Zytos nodded, his gaze lingering for a moment before he turned away.

  The marsh appeared endless, with little to distinguish it. Hillocks arose in places, surrounded by cold, still water as black and thick as oil. Hunched figures crowded on some, lurkers that had the appearance of men, only rangy and emaciated, their skin grey and gelid-looking. Without eyes, they sniffed ceaselessly, scent pits flaring at the collision of strange odours presented by the Drakes.

  One arched back its head to let out an inhuman howl that spoke of thwarted hunger. Then, as a pack, they scurried agilely away.

  ‘Do not concern yourself with them,’ said Vulkan. ‘They are bone-pickers, carrion-eaters – too craven and not nearly starved enough to bother us.’

  Zytos loosened his grip on the bolter, but only marginally.

  A little way ahead, the marshland grew firmer underfoot and the tangled bough of a tree emerged out of the shadows. It loomed even above the primarch. Pale and thorny vines choked the scaly bark of its wizened trunk. A tarry sap dripped from where the tree’s flesh had split, pooling at roots that drank the filth eagerly, as though they were the mouths of suckling babes.

  ‘Is it a sign of some kind?’ ventured Abidemi, taking care to give the tree a wide berth.

  ‘We called it the “wounded tree”,’ said Vulkan. ‘It was to be our marker, so we would not get lost. It has grown since I last saw it.’ He looked closer. ‘Still here… I don’t believe it.’ Old sigils had been carved into the trunk. Vulkan traced each one with his outstretched finger, close enough to the tree that the edges of his boots touched the tarry sap and he stood entirely in the shadow of its wretched bough. ‘Tribal symbols,’ he whispered, ‘of the warriors who followed me here.’

  Zytos turned his head, angling his neck up and inhaling loudly through his helm’s rebreather.

  ‘Do you smell that?’ he asked, scowling.

  A stagnant odour had suddenly drifted across the grey wilderness. It reeked of decay, of old and dead places. Fog came with it, creeping low and steady across the ground. It spread eagerly across a rugged hinterland of bleak, undulating hills patched with long, dark grass and the rough, spiny gorse that had supplanted the foetid marsh. Ice freckled the grass, shattering like glass underfoot.

  The hunched and sightless lurkers returned, but kept their distance. As Zytos watched, he realised they were fleeing from the fog.

  His eye was drawn to a glittering tract of water, an oily lagoon he had not noticed before. Mist bled off its surface like fever sweat, congealing into the bland, colourless fog that had terrified the lurkers. It reached across a range of low hills, climbing rather than pooling in the shallow valleys, its edge a tendril-lined fringe that took on the appearance of fingers, grasping, hungry…

  The lurkers had scattered, lost to burrows and hollows.

  At the edge of the lagoon – or was it at its heart, standing upon the water? – an entirely different figure could be seen. Its precise appearance was difficult to discern. It shimmered as if both solid and incorporeal at the same time. Tall, dishevelled, with ragged white hair hanging down across its face, it pointed a large, curved blade at the interlopers. Then it was gone. Not fled, just vanished like a shadow in the sudden absence of light.

  Zytos looked again to the fog.

  New shadows coalesced in that bleached miasma, humanoid, armed with hooks and blades, the twin of the figure on the water.

  Zytos let out a warning shout, but when he blinked the shadows had gone.

  By the time Abidemi reached him, Zytos was already lowering his bolter.

  ‘Nothing…’ he hissed, scouring the fog. He suddenly wished he had Gargo’s auspex, but that was with their pilot in the gunship’s cockpit. In the few seconds that had passed, the strange fog had crept closer.

  ‘Something is moving in it,’ said Abidemi, taking aim.

  Zytos saw it too, a figure crawling on hand and foot, slithering upon its belly, a blade shimmering between clenched teeth. Its eyes flashed once, as green as dirty jade, before it disappeared.

  The fog crept closer still.

  ‘There!’ shouted Abidemi, rushing to the left as he took a kneeling stance and sighted down his weapon.

  Another ophidian figure skittered just below the mist, its face obscured by long, lank hair.

  ‘I have it,’ declared Abidemi triumphantly, but the figure vanished and another appeared in its stead, only closer.

  Zytos had this one in his crosshairs
, having taken up position on Abidemi’s unguarded flank. Together, they formed a drake-scaled island about to be surrounded by a vaporous sea.

  A muffled shot rang out as Zytos discharged his weapon. He waited for the killing detonation of his bolter shell, but instead he heard and saw nothing.

  ‘Not possible,’ he murmured. ‘It was in my sights.’

  ‘Another!’ said Abidemi, and unleashed a burst. Again, the expected impacts never came, somehow absorbed by the fog. He stood, so did Zytos, as a host of the strange figures appeared at once. The fog had begun to foul the Salamanders’ auto-senses, and accurate targeting became almost impossible. Inaccurate would have to serve instead.

  Muzzle flare erupted from their bolters, briefly adding light to the dark, but the weapons’ once thunderous reports were swallowed almost entirely. Sustained salvoes scythed into the fog, kicking up earth and sending watery plumes skywards.

  Zytos held out a hand gesturing for them to cease. He read the data-screed across his retinal lens in disbelief.

  ‘No casualties…’

  ‘Impossible,’ hissed Abidemi, replacing a spent clip with swift and practised ease. He resumed firing. So did Zytos.

  The fog had all but reached them, its fingers stretching impossibly, the tips lengthening and tapering to fine points like blades…

  A resounding hammer blow struck the earth, staggering the Drakes, and the fog recoiled. It retreated back into the shadows, taking the grim creatures with it.

  Vulkan stood in the legionaries’ midst, the pommel of his hammer­ stamped hard into ground cracked by brutal impact.

  ‘Come, my sons,’ he said, his hard eyes burning, regarding the shrinking fog. ‘They won’t be gone long.’

  A short time later, the Drakes passed into a benighted grove whose trees defined a wandering path, their branches reaching above, their roots tangling below.

  Mist lingered here too, but it was thinner than that which had formed across the water. It lurked around the yawning boles of trees or gathered where black and spiny leaves grew thickly. But it did not intrude.

  ‘They are the denizens you fought, aren’t they?’ said Zytos, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. ‘The ones who killed your kin.’

  Vulkan nodded.

  The three stayed close to each other, but Gargo in the gunship had to fly above the grove or risk becoming ensnared in the eager, grasping limbs of its trees. He had seen and heard nothing during the incident with the fog, claiming to have only witnessed the ­others standing by the wounded tree and no more than that. Vulkan had chosen not to refute what Gargo believed, rebuffing his concerns with a father’s reassurance and seniority.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Abidemi.

  ‘Shadows, of a kind,’ uttered Vulkan, but did not elaborate. He held on to his hammer with two hands and kept the haft close to his chest.

  Both Zytos and Abidemi had unsheathed hand-to-hand weapons too, deeming bolters too unreliable in this night realm.

  ‘Like none I have ever seen,’ breathed Abidemi, keenly watching the darkness, Draukoros held out in front of him like a flaming torch.

  ‘We didn’t see them, brother,’ said Zytos, thunder hammer grasped high up the haft. ‘Can they be killed?’

  ‘I’m not sure if they are entirely alive,’ admitted Vulkan. ‘But yes, they can be vanquished.’ He said it with the authority of one with first-hand experience.

  ‘How, if our bolters are so ineffective?’

  ‘We have to wait,’ answered the primarch.

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘For them to get close.’

  ‘As strategy goes…’ Zytos began.

  ‘It is a hazardous one,’ Vulkan agreed.

  As they passed through the grove, Abidemi reached out but stopped short of touching the spiny leaves. They looked like knives, only black and perversely veined. Something squirmed in the tree trunks, writhing, in pain.

  ‘I do not know what I expected of this place, but it was not this. Nature itself has been subverted, corrupted. And I suspect these are not even trees.’

  Vulkan’s silence spoke for him.

  After a few moments, Zytos wanted answers.

  ‘This shadowed path… What is it, father?’

  ‘You are standing on it.’

  ‘No, what is it? I looked back, through the grove, down the path and I saw nothing of whence we came. It wasn’t shadow, or fog. It had gone. And I believe if I tried to return to it, to retrace my steps, I would emerge somewhere else entirely.’

  Vulkan stopped, letting the talisman of seven hammers gently fall against his breastplate.

  ‘It is a realm between realms, a place known to few mortals. I took us through the gate beneath Deathfire because I knew it would bring us here to Aelindrach. We roam its edges, its untamed wilder­ness. To descend into it proper would be unwise, even for me. But the city, it knows…’ Vulkan gestured to a ragged, avian creature perched on a high branch. Its slick feathers shimmered with a wet sheen that reminded Zytos of blood. The creature gave off a caw of displeasure that sounded very much like a female voice, before taking flight on emaciated wings.

  ‘It sees us,’ Vulkan continued, ‘and is trying to ensnare us even now. The darkness, the fog, this grove of wretched trees that are not trees – Aelindrach is moving against us.’

  ‘Its denizens?’ asked Abidemi, still watching the wretched bird depart.

  ‘Yes, but also the city itself. Its borders are shifting, folding, like a slow-waking predator that realises prey has stumbled into its lair.’

  As Zytos looked into the darkness and the silhouettes of the trees, he realised they were moving, subtly like shadows stretched against the light, ever reaching.

  ‘We must not linger,’ said Vulkan.

  They moved on, travelling in wary silence until the grove thinned and yielded to dark moorland studded with black menhirs. A light shone here but not from any sun. A great orb loomed above, appearing only half-real, somehow both present and absent at the same time.

  Its bleak light fell on a scorched black knoll, out of which sprouted a tower.

  Beyond the tower lurked the distant lights of a city, creeping closer.

  ‘This is the threshold,’ said Vulkan, first eyeing the tower and then glancing up to the gunship. ‘Igen,’ he said across the vox, ‘bring the ship in low. Keep the engines quiet.’ He looked back to the winding city in the far but narrowing distance. Every blink seemed to bring it closer. ‘Eyes lurk everywhere.’

  ‘I see no birds, no fog…’ said Zytos.

  Vulkan met his gaze. ‘They follow us, Barek. They have followed us ever since we passed beyond the wounded tree. And the closer we get and the longer we stay here, the more they will see.’ He gestured towards the tower. ‘Our path lies within. Its denizens are waiting. They have let us come this far, but now they will have to act.’

  ‘Let us, father?’ Zytos asked, incredulous.

  Vulkan dismissed his doubt with a glance. ‘Earlier was just gauging our strength. Rest assured, they will come, to try to keep us from the tower.’

  ‘What awaits in there, father?’ asked Abidemi.

  ‘A gate, Atok. One we must breach.’

  ‘Well guarded, I assume,’ said Zytos, hefting his hammer.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ said Vulkan, and he led them on.

  The menhirs sunk into the earth sang as Vulkan forged a certain path through the dark moor, warning his sons not to touch the stones or approach too closely. Depending on the angle they were viewed from, the stones appeared to shimmer, translucent, iridescent. At other times they disappeared entirely only to then manifest within touching distance. Faces became apparent, lurking within their apparently fathomless depths. And then they weren’t singing any more, but screaming. The keening wail of these damned souls grew deafening until at last the Drakes had pas
sed through and silence and sanity returned.

  The tower loomed then, large and imposing before them, a spear of dark crystal driven deep into the earth. It jutted upwards, a spiked crown around its neck, just beneath its bladed tip. No obvious way in presented itself. Zytos walked the tower’s entire circumference but found no door or window, no cleft or archway of any kind. Abidemi too found no path inwards. Nor did Vulkan, who had returned to scrutinising his talisman again.

  Zytos briefly glanced at the sky, and then the grim moorland, but detected no threat. Gargo roamed the air, staying close. Vulkan had forbidden him from unleashing the gunship’s weapons on the tower, deeming it pointless and only likely to attract further unwanted attention. Now he was here, at the end of the shadowed road, Zytos had become aware of the slow awakening the primarch­ had mentioned. Something slumbered in this ancient hollow. It grew cognisant of their presence. Zytos did not fear it. He feared nothing and would fight to the death by his resurrected father’s side, but reckless courage would not see them through the shadowed road. Caution would.

  ‘Abidemi,’ he voxed, hoping two pairs of eyes would be better than one as he returned to the tower. What he saw in the dark glass made him stop short.

  A doppelganger regarded him, unnoticed by Zytos before. It mimicked him at first, but as he looked closer he realised its movements were slightly out of synch, until at last it did not move at all but merely stared.

  ‘What is this?’ he whispered, and the doppelganger whispered back.

  What is this?

  Rime began to creep across the glass.

  Zytos raised his thunder hammer, sending a whip crack of power across its head.

  ‘Don’t mock me, shade. Show yourself!’

  The doppelganger gave a short, gracious bow and then… changed.

  I will show you. I will show you everything.

  It stretched, its proportions grotesque and somehow altered, so it was Zytos and yet not. Gnarled horns burrowed through its battered helm, flaking away like spent skin. Its eyes burned with a greasy hellfire that caked the edges of his retinal lenses with grimy soot. Its mantle, no longer made of drakescale, glistened like fever-drenched flesh. A horrifying simulacrum stood before him in the glass, framed by the creeping cancer of the frost.