[Warhammer 40K] - Daemon World

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  The banners—silk and skin, woven hair and hide—would tear constantly, always needing the attention of Yrvo and his acolytes. And it was in this way that Yrvo would do the work of Slaanesh, for every time he crossed the floor of the temple the chains would gift him a thousand tiny cuts, the sweet agony feeding the pleasure-fire within him, the fallen links cutting into the soles of his feet.

  In the centre of the temple was the altar, a metallic depression sunk into the ground in a curious star shape. Only when one looked long enough did it become apparent that it was designed to accommodate a spreadeagled human form. A chamber directly below was full of blades and drills, controlled by a system of levers operated by Yrvo’s acolytes, that would stab or slice up through slots in the metal. The altar was rarely cleaned, for the rust-red stains were a testament to the holy work done there. How many unbelievers had Yrvo anointed with pain? How many had been introduced to the majesty of Slaanesh, manacled there as the words sacred to the Prince of Chaos were spoken?

  “Magister Yrvo!” called one of the acolytes, scurrying into the body of the temple from outside. “The Deacon sees strangers approach!”

  Yrvo peered at the acolyte through the forest of chains—he was one of the young ones, judging by the relative lack of scars on his milky skin. He wore the yellow and white colours of a novice wrapped around his waist, leaving his upper torso bare to show the scars and tattoos of devotion. There were about a hundred and thirty acolytes here, living in the tents and huts clustered around the shelter of the nearby rocks. Yrvo rarely left the temple, and knew few of the acolytes by name.

  “Who? How many?”

  “It is hard to tell. Not many. They are coming quickly, but in hiding.”

  They are always afraid, thought Yrvo. Those who had not had contact with the profane mysteries of Slaanesh were always frightened of what their senses could show them. They had to be brought unwillingly to the fold of the Pleasure God. It was such a shame so many of these did not survive their anointing, but at least their lives were given to pleasure in the end, even if they did not appreciate it.

  “Have the faithful arm themselves,” said Yrvo. “Our guests will be bandits or scavengers. And gather some of the novices to prepare for the anointing, the altar shall see use before sundown.”

  The acolyte bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Praise Slaanesh, magister.”

  “Praise Slaanesh,” said Yrvo.

  Yrvo walked to the threshold of the temple, the skin of his face receiving many exquisitely fine cuts from the dangling chains. He never tired of that tiny, sharp pain when his skin parted, and the smell of the blood that ran down his face.

  Beyond the fluttering banners he could see the ridges of rock that rippled up in the distance, across which the newcomers would be approaching. Acolytes were hurrying this way and that armed with autoguns and laspistols, valuable firearms given to the temple from the armouries of Lady Charybdia’s legions. There were not enough to go round and many acolytes had swords or spiked flails. Yrvo was proud to see that just having such weapons in their hands was too much temptation for many, who drew thin red marks of devotion on their skin with swords and bayonets.

  Yrvo saw the Deacon, who had been a fervent worshipper of Slaanesh for so long he no longer had any skin at all. His wet, red flesh glistened as he racked shells into a shotgun chased with gold and pearls. The Deacon had been at the temple for as long as Yrvo had, which was long indeed. In that time they had seen astounding pleasure-rites, the festivals of flesh that travelled the scattered temples like moving cities of sin, visitations from daemons on unholy nights and visions of new pleasures that lit up the sky. They had fought together often enough, too. The Deacon, as might be expected, felt no pain any more from conventional means, and to him combat was just another arena for experience.

  Yrvo had still to arm himself when the first shots rang out. Not from his acolytes—from the newcomers, still out of sight. It was a ranging shot. The second shot took the head clean off one of the novices, a fountain of blood like a spray of jewels as he fell.

  He saw a group of acolytes gathering beneath the lip of the rocky ridge where the novice had fallen, scattering random return fire. The Deacon was leading some of the tougher acolytes forward to flank the attackers. The attacking fire was suddenly heavier, and the acolytes by the ridge scattered, three or four falling in sprays of blood and rocky shards.

  An acolyte running past thrust an autogun into Yrvo’s hands. Yrvo felt the round slam into the chamber and sprinted towards the ridge. A sudden explosion blossomed, arcing past the ridge and blasting a handful of acolytes apart. Small arms fire chattered overhead, raking through the Deacon’s men, punching raw red holes through torsos and sending limbs spinning from their bodies.

  It was beautiful, thought Yrvo. There was a rare poetry in violence. But it would not do to lose too many followers, so Yrvo called out to the scattered acolytes falling back from the ridge as bright yellow-white lances of fire sheared through the air all around them.

  “With me, sons of Slaanesh!” he yelled, holding his gun high. “For the Lady! For the Prince! Feel the deaths of the enemy as your own!”

  Yrvo ran up the slippery rock, one half of his mind urging him to move quickly and keep his head down, the other willing the bullets to rip through him so he could drown in his own blissful pain.

  He reached the ridge, and saw the enemy for the first time.

  Their attacker must have once worn armour, but the armour and flesh had become one. Skin grew in rags around the massive greaves, slick muscles for hydraulics, spines of bone jutting from rips in the dark scarlet metal. Each arm ended not in a hand but in a club-like slab of muscle covered in orifices from which weaponry jutted—on one arm were three cycling autocannon barrels spitting white tracers of fire, from the other stabbed the snout of a frag missile. The dead-skinned eyes and mouth opened and gun barrels poked out, chattering left and right.

  The figure was three and a half metres tall with armoured shoulders just as broad, its armour plates packed with muscle, its shape shifting as new weapons were extruded from its flesh. Yrvo had seen Space Marines before, distant figures guarding the battlements of Charybdia Keep—but this was something different, ugly and brutal when Lady Charybdia’s Violators were elegant in their strength.

  Yrvo ducked behind the lip of the ridge as the missile streaked towards him, and half-rejoiced as shards of rock were driven deep into the skin of his back as it detonated. He fired back blindly, dazzled by shards and smoke, the kick of the weapon in his hands and the roar of its report flooding his senses alongside the pain.

  The smoke cleared and Yrvo saw the acolytes were dashing up to join him, screaming as they fired wildly, blood fresh on their skins. Their bodies jerked and came apart under the autocannon fire, beautiful patterns of blood and ruptured organs cascading. There was nothing so aesthetically perfect as death—the reduction of living flesh to dead matter combined with the rush of escaping life that created the final, ultimate thrill.

  Yrvo had to tear his eyes away from the spectacle. He had the Pleasure God’s work to do. Another spray of bullets and his autogun’s clip was empty. He took a lasgun from the mangled body of an acolyte that had tumbled beside him and fired blind again over the ridge. The metal was hot in his hands from sustained lasbursts, the thrumm of the power pack and the throb of the blasts spitting from the barrel pulsing through his palms.

  He took his finger off the trigger and darted his head above the ridge.

  The monstrosity was closer now, so close Yrvo could smell the deep, metallic reek of oil and taste the smoke that coughed from its many gun barrels. Its face was nothing more than another gun mount—too late, Yrvo realised it had seen him with eyes that blinked from sockets sunk into its armour.

  The autocannon was levelled directly at his head, unerring as a compass.

  The shells passed right through Yrvo’s upper body. He could feel his organs shredded and his jaw shattering, taste the shrapnel and b
one driven high into his brain. Cold rushed through him as his spine came apart, whiteness bloomed in front of his eyes as they spattered from their sockets. His tongue was in tatters and new tastes of pain and ruin flooded his mind.

  Yrvo, now just a tattered column of torn flesh tottering from his waist, keeled over onto the rock. His last conscious thought was that death was not the cacophony of sensation that had been promised him—it was cold, and empty, and carried with it pain that he had believed he could never feel again.

  Perhaps the revelation would lie in what followed. Yes, that was it. Just a little while longer, and he would feel that ultimate thrill.

  Yrvo turned colder, and then thought nothing more.

  It was, Amakyre thought, dismal sport. Vrox, massive body sprouting a new gun every second, had the defenders penned in below the ridge. They were typical of Slaanesh’s devotees, rushing into gunfire and scattering as they were cut down by Vrox’s explosive shells and frag missiles. The cultists’ eagerness for the sensations of battle warred with their instincts for preservation, and so it was simple for Vrox to keep them pinned back with sustained fire. Brothers Skarlan and Makelo, their boltguns sending controlled bursts spattering over the rock, were sprinting up to support Vrox.

  The Multus Sanguis had landed five kilometres away, nestled on a salt-slicked plain between the mountains and the ocean. It was not safe for the coven to stay with the age-streaked old warship—Lady Charybdia or any one of Torvendis’s peoples might discover the ship through sorcery or divination, and take exception to its presence. The coven needed somewhere else to plan their next move, and the Slaaneshi temple was the closest place where they might snatch a few hours’ respite.

  Amakyre could have joined his warriors assaulting the temple. But he knew how fine a warrior he was. This was the first chance he had to see the coven acting unsupported under live fire, and wanted to observe them.

  Energy blasts impacted around the Chaos Marines. Skarlan ignored them even as they flashed off his power armour, while Makelo ducked to the side and strafed as he moved.

  Far to the side, Feorkan was sniping at a flanking force led by a nightmare of a man whose skin was tied in flowing pennants around his waist. This group was more cohesive, using the broken rock as cover as they advanced to drive back Amakyre’s battle-brothers.

  They could not know they were facing Word Bearers. They would know soon enough. To a lesser man, it would seem tragic, for not one of them would survive. But Amakyre was above such sentiment.

  Two or three of the acolytes fell even as they fired, Feorkan’s heavily customised bolter sending single shells punching through their bodies. Feorkan ducked and rolled as he moved to the side, and Amakyre saw he was trying to herd the skinless man’s mob towards a knot of rocks.

  He guessed Feorkan’s plan before it began. Phaedos leapt from the shelter of the rocks and barrelled into the mob, chainsword throwing out fans of blood as it slashed, plasma pistol discharging a white-hot bloom of liquid fire into the centre of the acolytes. Prakordian was crouched in the rocks, covering the Chaos Marine’s attack, sending bursts of bolter fire into the attackers who tried to surround Phaedos.

  Phaedos duelled with the skinless man, who was quick and determined as only a man with no sense of pain could be. It wasn’t enough just to wound—Phaedos’s blade lanced deep into the raw flesh time and time again, severing nerves and shredding muscle, until the man could fight no more. A second blast of the recharged plasma pistol reduced the nightmare to a melting, burning mess.

  The mob were scrambling over one another to flee. Prakordian sprayed bolter shells into them as Feorkan picked them off one by one, every bolt sending a head snapping back as the life flowed out of their bodies.

  Amakyre strode forwards and the sounds of slaughter cut through the wind, the stuttering roar of Vrox’s autocannon mingling with the gurgling cries of the dying. The ground between the ridge and the temple was strewn with bodies, maybe fifty or sixty, with about twenty stragglers now cowering behind the pillars of the chain-festooned temple. The banners that billowed around them were shredded with charred bullet holes.

  Amakyre despised these wretches. The weakness of character that prevented them from worshipping the full pantheon of Chaos was unforgivable. The Pleasure God was just one facet of the magnificence of the warp—to worship Slaanesh to the exclusion of all others was too feeble-willed even to register as heresy.

  Death was too good for them. And they would get worse than death—to die here in the Maelstrom without having the favour of the Chaotic pantheon was to give your soul up to the warp. The enlightened of the Word Bearers would see the glory of Primarch Lorgar taking his place alongside the gods. These pathetic acolytes would see only madness and oblivion. Gods below, how Amakyre hated them.

  He sprinted towards the temple, lasblasts and shells buzzing around his ears, heaving the heavy-bladed power axe from its holster on his backpack. The power field crackled to life without him having to activate it—after so long the weapon knew when its master was angry, knew when it would be ordered to draw blood.

  The defenders were cowering. The iron of the temple was good cover for a scattered mob, absorbing head-height shots into the forest of dangling chains. Vrox, Skarlan and Makelo were grinding them back with twin autocannon and bolters, but it could take hours to winkle the acolytes out with gunfire alone.

  These vermin dared waste the time of Word Bearers with their survival. In doing so, they impeded the work of true Chaos. This was what Amakyre told himself as he ran across the corpse-strewn rock, but it was drowned out by the hatred.

  The first enemy was right in front of him, finger jammed down on his lasgun trigger. Lasblasts spattered off Amakyre’s breastplate like rain, nicking his bare face, scoring the ancient gold and scarlet. He brought the axe down and it passed straight through the acolyte, so he had to check the swing to avoid burying it in the rock. The cloven body slumped to the ground before the blood had even begun to flow.

  The shadows of the banners rippled over Amakyre as he tore into the body of the temple. He swung the axe in a massive arc, shearing chains and sending melted links spraying in a white-hot hail. He heard screams, and was glad, for every scream was a song sung in praise of his gods.

  They were firing back at him, but he had been shot at and hit a million times. One shot penetrated between his forearm and elbow guards, the flare of pain an insult. Amakyre drew his bolt pistol and blasted at random, firing a salvo at the closest scrabbling shapes, seeing red blooms where he hit and bursts of barbed shrapnel where he missed.

  One or two acolytes fled past him, into the covering fire of Skarlan and Makelo. One took refuge in a human-shaped depression of bloodstained brass that marked the centre of the temple—Amakyre sprinted towards him and swiped off the top of his head.

  Others fled. Others failed. Amakyre hacked down the closest and shot down the rest.

  By the time Amakyre had wiped the blood from the blade of his axe and returned outside, Feorkan, Phaedos and Prakordian had butchered the acolytes who had followed the skinless man. Amakyre walked over to the bloodstained ridge and spotted a corpse with rather more elaborate robes that the rest, its upper body shredded by Vrox’s heavy weapons fire. Amakyre picked up the corpse, which flopped like a dead fish in his gauntlet.

  “This is what happens, brothers, when your eye wanders from the true pantheon of darkness! This is what we will become if men like Karnulon can rebel with impunity.” Amakyre cast the body aside. “Never forget why you fight.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The rolling, grass-speckled foothills rose all around like the swells of a stone ocean. The peaks were pale fangs that jutted in the distance behind the caravan. The way ahead was well-worn by marching feet and rutted with wagon tracks, and wooden frames supported lookout platforms where tall warriors with spears were silhouetted by the orange evening suns. The foothills of the Canis Mountains were every bit as treacherous as the mountains themselves, but it was the t
ribesmen themselves rather than dizzying heights of bitter cold that took men’s lives with such regularity. Grik ruled these parts, and those loyal to him would kill without thought for his favour.

  The trail had become more and more well-defined in the two days’ journey from Arrowhead Peak to the outer foothills. Deep ruts were worn in the path where wagons had rolled this way and alongside the steeper parts were well-worn steps cut into the stone. Small settlements, no more than handfuls of tents, clung to the slopes around the road, and peddlers would sometimes emerge from the huts and hovels to hawk their wares before seeing that the stern-faced men of the caravan would probably make unappreciative customers. There was no need for fences or fortifications to mark out the borders of Grik’s sphere of influence, for the road was one of a very few safe routes towards the current site of his city, and these were well-watched by many eyes loyal to the chieftain.

  Golgoth had taken care to make sure his own warriors did not look suspicious. The fine and exotic weapons they had looted from the cargo were hidden under the hide coverings of the wagons, and the iron tokens that Grik’s men had carried were hung around their necks on thongs of sinew. Kron was seated alongside Golgoth on the rearward wagon, the cowl of his cloak pulled down low over his face. If they were questioned intensely, Kron would take the place of the sorcerer who had guided the caravan to the Snake’s Throat. In a sense this would not be a deception at all, because if Kron wasn’t a sorcerer then no one was.

  Hath, on the lead wagon, jabbed the flanks of the pack-beasts with a pointed staff and drove them forward. The closest sentry clambered down from his post and jogged down to the lead wagon. He was an old and grizzled warrior, who had so many scars on his face that it was hard to discern his features. He was wrapped in furs and had a brand of the quartered circle, the same symbol as appeared on Grik’s tokens, burned into the back of his spear-carrying hand.