Daemon World

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  Its noseless face was dominated by eyes three times the size of a human’s, pupilless and tinted red, with dreadlocks of flesh instead of hair. Its skin was a pale blue-grey, rows of hermaphrodite breasts ran down the front of its torso, and its feet were like bird’s claws rendered in lizard skin. It had no hands, and in their place were long claws of ridged carapace.

  They called it a daemonette—mistakenly, Golgoth knew, because the name made them sound like a diminutive version of something deadlier when they were in fact some of the most savage creatures that Torvendis had ever seen. They killed with corruption and lust like men killed with blades. They said daemonettes were the instruments of the Pleasure God, the same decadent force that Lady Charybdia’s hordes worshipped. Which rather begged the question—what was it doing here?

  “We found it in Grik’s harem,” said Tarn, who had brought this unusual prisoner before the Emerald Sword’s new chieftain. “His other wives tried to protect it. Mykkros lost an eye.”

  Golgoth knew from the blood crusted under his fingernails that Tarn had made sure none of the women would threaten Golgoth’s men again. “Did they say what its purpose was? Besides the obvious.”

  Tarn shrugged. “They said it was Grik’s favourite. He kept it behind his throne in these chains. Like a pet.”

  “What kind of man keeps a daemon for a pet?”

  “Perhaps there was a daemon in him. Perhaps it controlled him.”

  Golgoth thought. It instinctively occurred to him to ask Kron—but the sorcerer had not been seen since before the fight with Grik, and Golgoth would have to learn to live without his counsel.

  Then it hit him. The daemon was not a master, or even a pet. What if it was a gift? Could it be the symbol of some pact between Grik and the lust-god, or even Lady Charybdia herself?

  Golgoth ran from the tent followed by Tarn, ordering a trio of warriors to butcher the daemon if it so much as uttered a sound. He headed for the wooden lodge at the edge of the tented city, which was rebuilt at the end of every migration to house Grik’s cabal of sorcerers. Those sorcerers had been rounded up and were now held, minus their tongues and hands, in cages ringed with guards, but the paraphernalia of their black magic would still be at the lodge. It was commonly believed that grave things would befall whoever entered a sorcerer’s home, so it was a good hiding place.

  The people of the city stopped their business to catch a glimpse of their new chief. Already most of the warriors had pledged their swords and their lives to Golgoth, and Tarn had organised a highly efficient fate for those who had not. Grik had lasted longer than most and for the majority of the population, Golgoth was the only other leader they had lived under. There was fear in the city as well as hope. That was how it should be, thought Golgoth as he passed through the crowded alleys between the communal warriors’ tents heading towards the low log-built lodge.

  The place stank. It was not just unpleasant, but a warning, for anyone who had been on a battlefield recognised death when its stench rolled over them. The sparse grasses of the foothills were blackened and dead for fifty paces around the place. No birds sang here. Death bled out, seeping from the corruption the sorcerers had wrought.

  Golgoth stepped across the blackened, spongy ground and pulled aside the hide covering that hung over the door. It was not hide, he realised with distaste, but skin, human skin. And inside, it was worse.

  The walls were covered with skins and chunks of meat: arms and thighs hung by hooks from the ceiling. Rows of heads lined the floor, marking out the rolls of shorn hair on which Grik’s sorcerers had slept. Idols of nailed bones stood in mockeries of the victims used to construct them, and cast strange shadows across the gore-coated walls and ceiling in the light of candles that still guttered in eye sockets.

  Pits of ash were sunk into the floor, where the sorcerers had divined the future from the flames. On the hanging skins diagrams were scrawled in languages never spoken, describing complex spells. This was the place where the sorcerer Golgoth had killed, along with all the others Grik had used for counsel, had lived and concocted their magic. They had written down their secrets here.

  Golgoth entered the room, willing himself not to vomit at the stench of blood and rot. At the far end of the room was a pile of debris, sheaves of parchment and loops of dried entrails and other detritus he did not want to identify. He scraped through it with his hands until he felt something solid, and pulled it out. It was a casket, wooden and bound with iron. It was locked—Golgoth slammed it against the floor and, when it would not open, hacked the lid off with his axe.

  Inside lay the corpse of a bird, a dry skeleton with multicoloured feathers like jewels. Golgoth took the thing out and looked at it with curiosity, peering into the empty sockets of its skull. Its bones were starting to crumble at his touch.

  There was a band around its withered leg gold studded with jade. Golgoth picked at it and a long strip of parchment that had been wound inside the band fell out. There was writing on the strip, in a thin, spidery hand. It appeared to be written in blood.

  Golgoth looked towards Tarn, who stood in the doorway.

  “Read this to me,” he said, handing the dead bird and the message to the warrior. Golgoth had never had any need of reading or writing, but Tarn counted such things amongst his other, more manly skills. It had doubtless made him more useful to Grik, when he had served the chieftain many moons ago, and in any case no one had dared mock him for it in a long rime.

  Tarn began to read, and Golgoth listened. When he was finished, Golgoth thought for a moment.

  “Gather the sorcerers and tribal elders,” he said coldly, “and that she-daemon, too. Shut them in here, make sure nothing can escape. Post a guard of twenty men you can trust around the place. Then gather wood from the people’s hearths, pile it around, and set fire to the place. Stand the guard until everything and everyone is burned.”

  Amakyre never slept. Space Marines rarely did, for a sleeping man was vulnerable. Space Marines had a complex set of organs implanted during their selection and training, one of which allowed them to shut down one half of the brain at a time, entering a half-trance where the mind was rested but the senses remained alert. The world around sped up but the slightest sensation of threat or change in environment would send the Space Marine’s mind snapping to full attention at the speed of thought.

  It was while in such a half-trance that Captain Amakyre of the Word Bearers first heard the call of Ss’ll Sh’Karr.

  So hideous and guttural was the daemon’s cry that it cut through the purple scents and rainbow screams of the spirits kept chained to the walls of the bedchamber in the heart of Charybdia Keep. Their lullaby was shattered and Lady Charybdia was racked with the atonal tremors of the sound, dragging her senses down from their rarefied heights to keep her from being blinded and deafened.

  The violet drapery of her chambers swam back into view. Even the faces that writhed in the walls showed more than their customary terror—the daemon’s waking scream was something more than just a sound, it was something that echoed in the soul.

  Lady Charybdia slid her elegantly elongated body from under the covers and threw her silks around her. She would have to consult her sages about this latest invasion of her sensory worship—she was angered at its incivility, and perhaps a little afraid. There had been grave omens lately, starting with the elimination of one of her temples and the curious motions of the Slaughtersong in the heavens, up to importune mutations and purposeless riots in her city. Torvendis knew that something grave was soon to occur, and Lady Charybdia knew she had to understand it if she was to continue in the Pleasure-God’s service.

  The scream had stunk of the Blood God. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that Ss’ll Sh’Karr had returned—but Sh’Karr was dead, she had his skull nailed up as one of her exhibits, she knew it had to be something else.

  In the city, orgies and complex blood-ceremonies paused as the scream washed over them. Far below, in the mines, final t
endons of sanity snapped and for a while there was pandemonium as the slaves fought each other at the rock face, trying to anoint themselves with one another’s blood to appease a waking god. The legionaries laid into them with nerve whips and painglaives until they had been battered back into obedience.

  On the battlements surrounding Charybdia Keep, the Space Marines of the Violators Chapter made new patterns in their devotion-scars, to signify that a new enemy had arisen.

  The call echoed around the Canis Mountains and barren rocky plains to the north. Flocks of carrion-things took flight all across the foetid swamps. Phaedos, Skarlan and Vrox were making their way back through the mountains when they were shocked into stillness by a cry that bypassed their auto-senses and rifled right into their souls.

  At the bottom of the ocean, flat-bodied scavengers flopped blindly in fear. In the skies, hollow-boned sky-whales circled, blind with shock. Even the stones and the trees and the rivers of Torvendis shuddered—because they had been there when first a similar cry, but one of triumph, had been heard on the planet. They had been soaked with blood in the mad reign of the daemon prince Ss’ll Sh’Karr—one of many, but one of the worst.

  “Blood!” came the call. “Blood for the Blood God!”

  Captain Amakyre snapped out of his trance and saw his bolter was already in his hand, readied in a reflex action. He glanced around the temple, chains swaying with the shock. The portable holomat still stood unfolded on the floor, where a few hours ago it had transmitted the image, sent by Phaedos, of Karnulon’s bloodstained armour. Bodies of novices and initiates were still scattered around the temple, body parts dangling from the chains, blood spattered across the charred banners.

  Amakyre switched on the vox. “Word Bearers, report!”

  “Standing ready, sir,” came Makelo’s voice.

  “Ready,” said Feorkan. “Nothing on the auspex. What was that?”

  “It was a sign,” replied Amakyre. “Prakordian?”

  The sorcerer didn’t answer. Amakyre peered with enhanced senses around the temple and saw Prakordian stumbling, catching at an iron pillar to keep himself from falling. His nose and ears were bleeding. Prakordian was more sensitive than most to voices not spoken by mortals, and the cry of a powerful waking daemon had taken its toll.

  Amakyre hurried up to Prakordian. “Who was it?” he asked. “Karnulon?”

  “Ss’ll Sh’Karr,” gasped Prakordian, gagging on blood from his bitten tongue. “They said he was dead…”

  “You can’t kill something like that,” said Amakyre impatiently. When it had become clear Karnulon was heading for Torvendis, Amakyre had made sure he read up on the historical files the Multus Sanguis carried. Torvendis had too long and complex a history to ever be written down in full, but there had been mention of Ss’ll Sh’Karr, daemon prince of the Blood God who had ruled Torvendis for a number of centuries and who had very nearly killed every living thing on the planet before he was destroyed by the desperate survivors. There were untold numbers of prophecies that told of Ss’ll Sh’Karr’s return, and it stood to reason that one of them might be true.

  “Can you tell where it came from?” asked Amakyre.

  Prakordian nodded, blood scattering from his nose. “South. Three weeks’ walk for a man, five days for us.”

  “Good. Phaedos and the rest can catch up with us when they can.” Amakyre opened up the vox. “Word Bearers! If Karnulon has woken this daemon as an ally, we will never have a better chance to hunt him down. Say your prayers and prepare to move out. All praises.”

  “All praises,” came the replies.

  Amakyre’s mission was to find out what Karnulon’s plans were, stop them, and kill him. Because of the presence of the deadspeaker Prakordian, these objectives could be accomplished in any order. If the coven had to deal with Ss’ll Sh’Karr before they could get to Karnulon, then so be it. Only one of them had to survive to challenge Karnulon—and Amakyre had fought a ten thousand year war against anyone who angered his Legion. No matter what happened, Karnulon would die, because Amakyre had decided it would be so and he was a man who refused to suffer failure.

  The wrenching, metallic screaming was the temple-gaol of Ss’ll Sh’Karr falling apart. The place had been built as a prison and now, as if it knew its prisoner had escaped and its purpose was gone, it was self-destructing.

  Sheets of metal and enormous cogs were falling like guillotine blades. The mystical words inscribed on the shattered buildings had broken loose and flailed, chains of glowing syllables flickering white-hot with anger that their enchantments had been broken. The vast spherical abscess beneath the ground was imploding even as Kron watched, plumes of strange-coloured fire lashing from the black metal walls.

  A massive girder plunged through the suspended city-sized platform and Kron felt the ground tilting beneath his feet. The whole platform, already gouged by the eruption of Sh’Karr’s escape, was fractured, the two halves tilted violently, threatening to pitch the buildings into the darkness. The gulf beneath him yawned blackly, and in spite of the pain that was washing over him, he forced his tongue to pronounce a few more magical words.

  Kron began to float as showers of sparks spat from the metal, like rains of razors against his skin. He saw the painful bright glow of Ss’ll Sh’Karr’s molten prison, and saw the huge winged form of the daemon itself, whose laughter echoed even above the screams of the collapsing palace. Slabs of metal broke as they crashed against Sh’Karr’s titanic form. Fire rippled across the daemon’s muscles and dripped from his twisted mandibles.

  The platform finally gave way and tilted wildly, plummeting from beneath Sh’Karr’s feet—but Sh’Karr stayed in mid-air, wings spread, the machinery hammering into his flesh pistoning and sending gouts of steam spurting from the valves and pumps working wildly.

  Kron willed himself upwards, rising on a billowing cushion of superheated air. The lower half of the sphere was filling with liquid fire, as the falling metal was melted by the energies unleashed by Sh’Karr’s release. Symbols flashed in the air around Kron, the last echo of the spells that had cost so much to cast and taken one man to break.

  Kron flew higher, trying to put as much distance between himself and the growing inferno as possible. The machinery that worked the entrance to the sphere was falling like steel rain and whole vast sheets of curved metal were peeling off the inside of the cavity. Finally Kron spotted the entrance shaft, a pinpoint of light far above him, obscured by chunks of broken machinery and growing ever smaller.

  Sh’Karr was laughing, insane with the novelty of release. Shards of falling metal were spearing into his skin and melting flowing into the machinery, forming new clockwork organs to stud his flesh. The great wings were flapping and he was heading upwards, too.

  Kron soared up the shaft, dodging falling machinery and sheets of torn metal. The mouth of the shaft was closing and Kron reached up to grab the edge, the metal hot against his hands. With a last mighty effort, he hauled himself up into the open air. Above him, the skies of Torvendis were agitated—stars were flitting across the sky, banks of cloud were billowing and boiling away, and twin suns were circling one another like wary predators.

  Kron’s last sight, before he had escaped, had been of Ss’ll Sh’Karr waist-deep in molten metal, wings beating as he flew upwards to keep himself above the surface of the fire. The sphere was filling with fire as the whole temple complex liquefied in the heat. But it would take far more than mere fire, Kron knew, to hurt the daemon prince who had once wallowed in a literal ocean of blood and had whole armies break against him like a wave.

  Kron knew he was no longer strong enough to face something like Sh’Karr. He had made great sacrifices to bring himself to Torvendis, and it was in many ways a miracle that he had made it this far. He was under no illusions that now, when he was nearing the end of his journey, was no time to get himself killed. Banishing the pain from his limbs, Kron ran.

  The sky flashed bright and dark. The very atmosphere of Torvendis
was reacting with confusion and anger—everything that could feel anything on the planet would be aware that something terrible had been released, such was the resonance that great terror, anger or suffering had in the very fabric of Torvendis. Kron could feel it, thick in the air around him—the fear of those who had managed to imprison Sh’Karr, and the fear of a planet which had endured the daemon prince’s rule once before.

  But for Kron, it was just one step of the plan. In many ways, it was the first—everything that had gone before was just preparation. If he had laid his plans with enough accuracy, Sh’Karr’s release would be the first in a cycle of events that would end in victory.

  There were so many variables, so much unseen. The balance was so delicate, and it would take great fortune, diligence and courage for it to unfold as Kron had planned. The result would either be triumph or death—but in many ways Kron didn’t mind which it was. Either would be a release, but that didn’t mean Kron couldn’t give himself the finest send-off.

  Kron hauled himself over the rocks that marked the boundary of the surface temple and ran as fast as he could across the parched ground. The earth shook violently beneath his feet and suddenly lurched, pitching Kron unto his face.

  A fountain of molten metal gouted from the ground, dissolving the ruins of the temple and casting a sea of fire across the sands. Clouds of black smoke bloomed as the fire condensed into a gnarled hail of glowing metal. Chunks of superheated steel fell like daggers and Kron rolled away from a chunk of smouldering rock that thudded to the ground just a few metres away from him. He risked a look back and saw that in the heart of the fire was Ss’ll Sh’Karr, soaring on his bat-like wings and trailing fire like a falling meteor.