Debilitating energy was coursing through Marduk’s body from the whip lashed around his neck, but he looked up at Kol Badar with fiery eyes.
“Don’t… let… go,” he hissed.
Kol Badar stared into the First Acolyte’s eyes, his entire body straining to hold the shuttle’s ramp open.
Then the Coryphaus’s talons opened, and Marduk fell to the ground below.
“No!” gasped Sabtec as the ramp slammed closed and the shuttle lifted from the ice. “We must go back!”
“Be silent,” barked Kol Badar. “He’s gone.”
BOOK THREE:
SHE WHO THIRSTS
“And so from decadence, wantonness and depravity a new power was birthed into the darkness. In darkness it resides and in darkness it hungers, now and for all time.”
—Ravings of the Shalleigha, Flagellantaie Diabolicus
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marduk opened his right eye groggily as he regained consciousness. His left daemonic eye was lidless, but he could see nothing with it. Perhaps it had been ripped from his socket while he was unconscious, he thought, before he remembered the needle that had been pushed into the eye. He tried to move his limbs, but they were held fast, and he gritted his sharpened teeth as pain coursed through his body.
With the pain, his memories came flooding back to him. Again, he felt the paralysing length of the whip wrapped around his neck and the jolt as he hit the ice. He felt the Coryphaus’s grip on him slip, and saw again the blue engines of the Idolater as it roared up into the heavens away from him. Rage had blossomed as he had realised that it was not turning back.
He had been bound with manacles that coursed with energy, sending shooting pain through his nervous system, and had endured the humiliation of being bundled from the battlefield, hovering a metre above the ground, held aloft by the vile sorceries of the eldar. He had been raised to the back of one of the eldar skiffs, and he saw that other warrior brothers had been captured. They were prodded and kicked into low cages beneath the deck of the skiff, while the hateful xenos laughed.
Marduk had stared hatefully at the female wych that had disabled him, her long, fiery hair flowing down her back. She sneered at him and slammed the solid cage door closed.
The vehicle had reached incredible speed, and at some point Marduk had felt a subtle change in the air, as if the skiff had been transported somewhere else entirely, and its speed increased tenfold. At some point he had passed out, and he had come to again only when the skiff screamed to a smooth halt. Once again, the air tasted subtly different, more cloying and close.
Marduk and the other captives had been dragged from the hold beneath the deck of the skiffs, and had looked around them angrily. They were inside a cavernous, expansive dome, with bladed ribs arching up above them, and Marduk saw scores of alien skiffs and jetbikes lined up around its sides, hovering at rest above the floor, lined up one above another. Hundreds of eldar soldiers moved through the lair, and Marduk glowered at them hatefully.
A gateway of crackling darkness hung in mid-air in the centre of the dome, enclosed by elegant bladed arches. Even as he watched, Marduk had seen a skiff emerge from the portal, appearing from the wafer-thin, vertical pool of darkness and gliding effortlessly several metres above the ground, the warriors upon its decks leaping to the floor.
Then searing pain exploded through Marduk’s body, his every nerve ending on fire as needles stabbed into his flesh. He resisted it as long as he was able, and a further set of needles stabbed into him. Still, he fought his captors, struggling and roaring his anger. A third set of needles plunged into his neck, and at last he was overcome, and everything had gone black.
Glancing down, Marduk saw that his arms and legs were spread-eagled out to either side. His blessed armour had been stripped from his upper body, and his pallid skin was puckered with tens of thousands of tiny pinpricks of dried blood. His armour had been slowly fusing to his body, and the inside of their plates were covered with thousands of tiny barbs that were growing into his flesh. Removing the armour plating was a painful and oddly distressing procedure, for it was as much a part of him as his limbs, and he had only twice removed his breastplate since the blessed Warmaster had perished.
That was an age ago, a lifetime in the past. Once his armour had been granite grey, as had the armour of all the warriors of the XVII Legion, the colour they had worn since the Legion’s inception, but he had long ago stained it the deep red adopted by all of his brethren at Lorgar’s decree.
Marduk gazed blearily down upon his naked torso for the first time in untold millennia. It looked like the body of a stranger. His pectorals were thick and slablike, and the muscles of his abdomen rippled as he strained against his restraints. Dozens of scars marred his perfect form and blue veins could be seen clearly through his translucent, pale flesh.
Marduk turned his head groggily to the side, looking along the length of his outstretched arms. His powerful limbs had been stripped of his power armour, exposing passages from the Book of Lorgar that ran in spirals of tiny script around his forearms, lust looking upon the tiny, archaic script gave him comfort, even though his eyes still could not focus on the individual words and characters.
Casting his gaze further along his arms, Marduk saw what was constricting his movements. A slender, tapering blade had pierced his wrists, passing through his flesh and between his bones, protruding a metre out the other side.
Marduk pulled against the restraints, trying to slide his limbs off the impaling blades, but jolting pain accompanied his efforts, making his body shudder and contort in agony. He could feel the needles, the long shards of metal that had been inserted between his vertebrae, piercing his central nervous system. They ran from the base of his spine to his skull, a slender needle inserted into every gap between the bones. Marduk ceased his struggles, and the pain instantly receded.
He was suspended, upright and hanging upon the blades piercing his wrists and lower legs. The blades shifted slightly, angling upwards, and Marduk hissed in pain as he slid further back along their lengths, the spikes grinding against bone.
As his vision cleared, Marduk took in the details of the room. It was circular in shape, and the ceiling was low. It was dim, the only light coming from the featureless floor and low roof, fading in and out in rhythmic pulses. There was a single exit from the room, semi-transparent strips of plas-like material blocking his vision of the room beyond.
Marduk registered the presence of another being in the centre of the room. He had thought he was alone, but his vision focused on the back of a tall, unearthly thin individual. Marduk glared at the creature hatefully, remembering its touch.
Its emaciated upper body was garbed in a tight-fitting, glossy black bodysuit, and its legs were concealed beneath an apron of similar material. The figure was leaning over something, a body perhaps, and appeared engrossed in its work. Dozens of blades, hooks and other less easily recognisable implements hung from its waist, and its hairless head was strangely elongated, its skull extending back further than was normal. Dozens of needles and tubes entered the flesh of its skull, flowing backwards like a mockery of hair.
Hovering above the table on which the death-like eldar worked was an immense spider, a dozen slim limbs extending from its body. The long, multi-jointed limbs were akin to the blades that pierced his own body, their surface black and reflective, and he wondered if it was a similar creature that held him. Its legs moved with swift, precise movements, each one easily four metres long and elongated to sharp points. Marduk decided that his first impression had been wrong. This was not a living creature at all. It was a machine.
As the machine spider rotated slightly in the air, its long legs moving rapidly and independent of each other, Marduk saw that his assumption was not quite correct. The thing was alive, or at least part of it was. In the dull light that pulsed from the ceiling and floor, he could see that there was an eldar figure at the heart of the spider-machine, or at least what must have once been o
ne of the decadent xenos beings. Its face was obscured beneath a shiny black, featureless mask, and the spider-like limbs were attached to its torso, protruding from its spine. The eldar’s humanoid upper arms merged into another pair of long spider limbs, though they were shorter than the others and ended in cruel barbs. Where its two legs ought to have been there was instead a bulbous, glossy black abdomen that hung low, bloated and obscene. From the tip of this abdomen, a pair of spinnerets exuded a sticky substance.
As Marduk’s eyes became used to the dim lighting, he saw that the spider-eldar was not hovering at all, but was attached to the ceiling via a series of coiled cables. A black substance moved within those cables in rhythmic spurts, like blood behind pumped through arteries by a beating heart.
The tall, black-clad humanoid, that Marduk took to be a sub-species of the eldar race, was talking to itself in a hissing voice. The First Acolyte could not understand its words, for it spoke in the foul eldar tongue, but he sensed that the creature was pleased. As it moved to the side, he saw what was occupying the creature’s attention. A fellow warrior of the XVII Legion: Sarondel, one of the 13th coterie was pinned down upon a bladed slab, his chest sliced open to expose his internal organs.
Anger roiled up within Marduk to see one of his sacred brothers of the Word so violated. The tall, skeletally thin eldar was removing the warrior’s organs one by one, and placing them in shallow dishes that hovered alongside the slab. The eldar’s long fingers ended in scalpel blades, and he saw a cruel smile on the creature’s face as he got his first look at his captor’s visage.
Its cheeks were hollow and sunken, emphasising its sharp, high cheekbones and thin mouth, and its almond-shaped eyes were black and dead. Its movements were crisp and sure as at sliced through Sarondel’s flesh, and the warrior growled, gritting his teeth against the pain as his blood began to flow anew.
Marduk felt savage pride as the warrior of the 13th coterie spat a wad of blood and phlegm up into the twisted surgeon’s face. The eldar was unconcerned, and wiped its face with the back of one hand.
“The dark gods of Chaos will feast on your soul come the end,” said Marduk. “You are already lost, you just don’t know it yet.”
The eldar straightened, dead eyes fixing on Marduk. It ghosted across the floor to stand before him.
“In the end we are all lost,” it said, lifting a bladed fingertip to Marduk’s cheek.
The First Acolyte did not flinch beneath its touch, though he felt hot blood running down his face. Instead, he grinned, his blazing eyes holding the eldar’s gaze.
“Your time will come sooner than you think,” he said.
“That is your prediction? You are a prophet then, human?”
“I am far beyond humanity. I am Marduk, First Acolyte of the 34th Grand Host of the XVII Legion, the Word Bearers, blessed of Lorgar. I make no predictions, xenos filth. I make you a promise.”
Marduk’s eyes rolled back into his head as he sought to draw the power of the warp into his body, to call the daemons of the immaterium to him and unleash their fury upon this wretch that dared to defile the sacred forms of Lorgar’s angels of the Word… but nothing happened. Silence and emptiness was all that greeted him, vast, cold and empty, and he screamed his fury.
Marduk tried to fly free of his mortal body, to rise above his earthly shell and become as one with the blessed ether, but it felt as if shackles held him locked into his body, imprisoning him within the cage of his flesh.
Had the gods of the ether forsaken him? Had they withdrawn their favour from him? The thought was more terrifying than any pain or horror that this being could ever heap upon him.
The eldar sneered at him, dead eyes watching him with keen interest.
“You can bring none of your taint here, slave,” it said, its voice mocking. “Your gods have turned their backs on you.”
Marduk gritted his teeth and threw himself forward, muscles straining as he sought to rip the eldar limb from limb, but he was jerked backwards. The bladed limbs that impaled him hauled him back, and shooting pain blossomed up his spine.
Marduk thrashed and roared, and fresh blood began to run from his wounds as he fought to tear himself loose. The eldar merely gave a dry, cruel laugh, and turned away from him, and Marduk stared venomously at the retreating figure as it strode from the room, parting the hanging partition with a wave of its hand.
You can bring none of your taint here, slave, his captor had said, and Marduk could well believe the truth in the words. The feeling of isolation was staggering.
Did a null-field containment force keep his link with the warp at bay? Or had the gods truly forsaken him?
He had experienced a similar sensation of being cut off from the powers that be, once before, deep within the xenos pyramid on the Imperial world of Tanakreg, in that hellish otherworld that was not truly part of the material universe, but something else entirely. He had experienced a similar sensation there, and there he had won out, defeating his former master and escaping with his prize.
Escaping? The doubt came unbidden to his mind. Had he truly escaped? Or had he merely been allowed to escape? Surely such a being as powerful as the Undying One would never had allowed him to flee its realm had it not wished it to be so.
“My lord,” said a cracked voice, and Marduk glanced over towards the mutilated figure of Sarondel, stretched backwards upon the surgeon’s slab, his chest ripped open. The monstrous spider creature was still poised over him, and it sprayed a liquid film over the exposed organs from the tip of its vile, bulbous, segmented abdomen.
“The gods… have they deserted us?” breathed Sarondel, echoing Marduk’s thoughts. “I cannot feel their touch.”
“Speak not such heresies,” growled Marduk. “This is a test of our faith. The xenos filth will be punished for what they have done to you, brother. I promise you that.”
Sarondel groaned something indecipherable in response, and Marduk strained again to pull his limbs from the spikes impaling them. His efforts were hopeless. His muscles bulged with all his hyper-enhanced strength, but he was powerless against the slender blades that held his crucified form.
What if the gods had deserted them, thought Marduk with a stab of terror?
Silence such thoughts, Marduk raged. Such doubts are poison. Fortify your soul, he reminded himself, your faith will be rewarded.
Patience, he told himself.
His time would come, and he would be ready.
“You left him behind,” said Burias flatly, his eyes glinting dangerously.
“Am I going to have a problem with you, Burias?” growled Kol Badar.
Burias pursed his lips, not taking his eyes off the Coryphaus. He took a deep breath, repressing his violent urge to leap across the shuttle cabin and tear the older warrior’s head from his shoulders.
He had always fought at Marduk’s side. Even as an acolyte, Burias had recognised that Marduk was destined for great things, and he was honest enough to admit that that he had befriended him in the hope that he would be dragged up the chain of command with him. Burias had never made any secret of this fact, and he had enjoyed the success he had achieved, and the privilege he had gained, as Marduk had risen to First Acolyte. With Jarulek dead and gone, it was surely just a formality before Marduk became a Dark Apostle, and then Burias’s position would become even more influential. He was Marduk’s confidant, his brother, his friend, and he would have had the ear of a Dark Apostle at his disposal.
In one swift, opportunistic move, Kol Badar had eliminated that future, and for that Burias would dearly love to rip his hearts from his chest.
“You think he is dead?” asked Burias in a low voice.
“He’s gone,” said Kol Badar. “The dark eldar took him. There is no coming back.”
Burias scowled, all his years of comradeship with Marduk, wasted. Once again, he let his eyes roll back into his head and the deafening tumult that was the immaterium screamed into him. Drak’shal had a bond with the First Acolyte, stro
nger than any bond between Burias and Marduk, a bond of servitude, a bond of command. It was, after all, Marduk who had first summoned Drak’shal into the icon bearer’s flesh.
Drak’shal reached out at Burias’s urging, searching for Marduk’s soul-fire, for some hint of its existence. The daemon found nothing. Of course, it would take days, weeks even, to properly scour the turbulence of the empyrean, despite the bond the First Acolyte and the daemon shared, but a shadow presence should have been simple to locate. It was as if everything that Marduk was had been snuffed out. Slowly, Burias opened his eyes.
“He is truly gone,” he muttered in disbelief.
“As I said,” said Kol Badar.
This changed everything. If Marduk truly was dead, and what other explanation could there be, then Burias would have to quickly reassess his position. Without the First Acolyte’s backing and favour, his position within the Host was tenuous. Kol Badar, as Coryphaus, was the most powerful individual within the Host, and would, as protocol demanded, take over the leadership role. Burias would be foolish to take that lightly. Without the First Acolyte to shield him, Kol Badar could do with him as his wished with impunity.
“What of the Council?” asked Burias, his mind whirring. “The life of a Coryphaus that has allowed his Dark Apostle to die is a tenuous thing, but a Coryphaus that has allowed his Dark Apostle and First Acolyte to fall? You’ll be made to suffer, and I have no wish to fall with you.”
“Walk with me,” commanded the Coryphaus, releasing the harness clamping him into his seat, and making his way towards the control cabin of the Idolator, fighting the angle of the ship’s assent and the G-forces that pushed against his massive frame. Clearly, Kol Badar wished to continue the discussion out of the earshot of the other warrior brothers of the Host, which made Burias at once both suspicious and intrigued.
[Word Bearers 02] - Dark Disciple Page 27