Daemon World

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  A hundred daemons of the Blood God poured onto the platform, summoned by the howling of their prince. The first ranks were toppled by Haggin’s bolter fire but there were too many of them. Demetrius watched as half of Haggin’s warband disappeared beneath bronze talons and snapping jaws.

  Ss’ll Sh’Karr bucked like a wild animal and was up on his knees as the Violators began to fall back from the daemons.

  “Kill the prince!” bellowed Demetrius. “Kill it first! Hold! Hold!” But it was to no avail. Individual war-bands were being swept aside by the hundreds of attacking daemons. Ss’ll Sh’Karr brushed off the Violators who still clung to his back—some escaped on the jets of their jump packs, others were cast brokenly to the ground and crushed by Sh’Karr’s massive feet.

  This could not be. Sh’Karr could not live, not when Demetrius had vowed his death to Slaanesh. Daemons leapt at Demetrius but he knocked them aside, battering them with his whips and stuttering assault cannon fire into them. The vox was alive with calls to fall back—Demetrius tried to halt the retreat but those who obeyed his orders were dying as they were surrounded and overwhelmed. Koivas was still alive, his battle-brothers completely cut off in the shadow of Sh’Karr, fending off ranks of daemons.

  Demetrius would have to finish this himself. He was angry beyond belief that he had been robbed of Sh’Karr’s death. His Violators, the greatest warriors on Torvendis, were in disarray. The enemy they had been charged with destroying was still alive, standing over them and bellowing in triumph as more Chaos Marines were snatched between his claws and crushed.

  But Demetrius had vowed to kill Sh’Karr. If he had to do it alone, then so it would be. He threw aside the daemons lunging at him and strode towards the towering daemon prince, daemons’ blood sizzling against his exposed skin. He knocked daemons aside with the barrel of his assault cannon as he ran, clearing a path in front of him with the barbs of his whips.

  The assault cannon chewed through the last daemons that stood between Demetrius and his quarry. He felt the ammunition hoppers were almost empty, and his power plant almost rupturing with the effort. He didn’t care. Even if he had to spend a year inert while the Chapter artificers mended his dreadnought body, it would be more than worth it.

  Sh’Karr saw Demetrius, and lashed down at him. The Violator ducked past the gore-slicked talons and charged into Sh’Karr’s leg, barging him back down onto his knees, as he emptied the assault cannon into the daemon’s torso.

  Demetrius’ whips wrapped themselves around Sh’Karr’s neck and dragged his huge equine skull down, the last few assault cannon shells rattling into the daemon’s face.

  Huge taloned fingers wrapped around Demetrius’ sarcophagus and he was hauled off the ground. Sh’Karr pulled and Demetrius felt a flash of pain as the whips were torn from the arm of the dreadnought body. Sh’Karr reached up with his other hand and tore the assault cannon arm off at the shoulder.

  The world span around Demetrius. The shock of such massive injury sent the overcast sky swirling over his head, the towers of the city dancing. A thousand daemons gibbered up at him, their din mixed with the gunfire from the last resisting Violators. The vox was a wild cacophony of death, and Demetrius realised that he was screaming, too.

  There was one chance. The power plant of his dreadnought body was white-hot with exertion. If he overloaded the plasma conduits he could rupture the casing and disappear in a ball of plasma fire, taking Sh’Karr’s head and upper body with him. He would die, but then he had often contemplated the ultimate sensation of death and that, mingled with Sh’Karr’s demise, would be a greater sensation than could be imagined.

  Demetrius was still thinking this as Sh’Karr ripped free the power plant and hurled it off the platform into the sea of blood below. Then, forcing the side of Demetrius’ sarcophagus further open, he reached in with a claw and hooked out the morsel of living meat.

  Ss’ll Sh’Karr dropped the scrap of wriggling muscle into his maw, and felt it slide, still moving, down his throat. Then he turned to the daemons milling around his feet, and beckoned to them to follow him. They had seen off a troublesome enemy, but there were many more battles here for them to slake their thirst.

  Lady Charybdia looked out across the ruins of the outer walls, trying not to gag on the stench of congealing blood. She had retreated into her private chambers where surely nothing could get to her—but as she watched through the scrying orb that hovered in the centre of her bedchamber she began to wonder if anything in her city was safe anymore. The dim noises of battle penetrated the walls of her keep, drowning out the droning of the souls imprisoned in the stones, echoing the carnage on and around the walls.

  The Violators were holding out as best they could. She had chosen well when she had brought them to her walls, for every one of them was the equal of a hundred of the barbarian animals. But there were far more than a hundred invaders for each Violator Marine, and Demetrius had not yet returned as promised. In fact, Lady Charybdia had not heard back from Commander Demetrius at all. Caduceia and her elite shock companies of legionaries were surrounded and pinned down in the west of the city, trying to stem the flow of invaders still pouring in from the western coast of the blood ocean. Everywhere Lady Charybdia’s forces were cut off, for very few of them were able to use the blood as the invaders were to move from place to place quickly. The city was supposed to be impossible to traverse for an attacking force, but Sh’Karr and his accursed sorcery had completely reversed the situation. Now it was Lady Charybdia’s legions who were trapped, trying to face a foe who could disengage and sail across to the next point of attack.

  And now, that foe had reached the defences of Charybdia Keep itself.

  A tide of men and daemons was crashing against the walls. Towers nearby had been felled to form causeways across which horsemen could gallop and footsoldiers could scramble. The Violators were forming fire teams that faced every point of entry with a wall of bolter fire, but more sections were coming under attack with each passing minute. Explosions tore chunks out of the battlements and men clambered up from boats beached on the growing reef of corpses beneath the wall. Walkways and towers were brought down, forming bridges onto the walls. For every breach swept clear by the Violators, another one opened up and vomited a torrent of enemy warriors onto the walls.

  There was the sound of tramping feet nearby. Lady Charybdia looked away from the gruesome scenes on the walls and strode out to see a troop of legionaries hurrying down the corridor. Their faces were drawn and many bled from their ears and noses—even in its present state the keep, Lady Charybdia realised, radiated experience rather too pure for most mortals to endure without ill effects.

  “Centurion, does the keep hold?” demanded Lady Charybdia.

  The leader of the legionaries stopped and bowed. “They are coming in through the north-west, my lady. They came up the sacrificial causeway. We have sealed the area, but there will be more to follow them.”

  “This is the holiest of ground, centurion. Every enemy foot that steps here is a blasphemy. It will not be permitted.”

  “There are so many of them, my lady. They say the Violators are all but lost.”

  “I am sure they say many things. But if you are still alive, then the enemy has not won yet. Where are you headed?”

  “The waste conduits, my lady. With the causeway blocked, that is where they will attack next. Head-hunters, I saw them. Half-naked, daubed with paint. They must have come from all over the planet…”

  “You will see to it that their journey ends here. The keep will remain inviolate or you will die trying to keep it so. Understood?”

  “Of course, my lady.” The centurion yelled an order and his men followed him down the corridor and down the grand staircase.

  Even the very heart of the keep was disturbed by the cacophony of war. When the enemy was seen off, there would be unending sacrifices to cleanse the city of the presence before Slaanesh received his due of pleasure again.

  There was a su
dden dull crump from beneath Lady Charybdia’s feet, and the rumble of falling rock. Something had exploded and taken a sizeable chunk of the keep down with it.

  Almost immediately there came the dim sound of men’s voices, hundreds of them, raised as they charged into the keep. Somewhere, floors below, the invaders had got in through some subterfuge or stealth. The sounds of steel on steel marked the point where they met her legionaries—but almost as soon as one influx was halted, there was another crash, closer this time, and Lady Charybdia heard more barbarians charging into the keep.

  Lady Charybdia ran back into her chambers, but the warmth and solitude of her haven was fragile compared to the anger of the war outside. She willed the violated floors of the keep to exude their sensations at the level she normally preferred, pure and intense. This was the keep’s last line of defence—the labyrinth of pleasures built into its stones, that allowed her to worship Slaanesh purely, could overwhelm and destroy the minds of lesser men. It was the last chance. She would have to kill the invaders with pleasure.

  The souls would be singing more sweetly and the tapestries shining with impossible beauty, enough to bewitch or destroy any mortal. There were censers that would be burning musk so potent it would utterly paralyse anyone who breathed it and carpets that sent bright stabs of pain through anyone who walked on them. Lady Charybdia felt the heightened, pure pleasures faintly as they echoed up to her chambers—rather more clearly, she heard the screams of barbarian and legionary alike as they died.

  But it would not last forever. As the fabric of the keep was damaged, its power to produce such heady sensations was diminished. The hardier of the attackers might run the gauntlet of pleasure and survive.

  Lady Charybdia glanced one more time into the scrying window. The Violators were now little more than a pocket of blue-armoured figures, surrounded by a baying horde of enemies. There was still no sign of Demetrius or his Thunderhawks, but Demetrius was her last hope. If just one of his flying craft remained, she could call for it to land on the roof of the keep and pluck her to safety.

  With a sudden shock, Lady Charybdia realised that she was genuinely contemplating the possibility that the keep would fall.

  Blood was rushing through the lower levels, and there were barbarian feet trampling the works of art Lady Charybdia had spent a lifetime accumulating. Shaking the horror out of her head, Lady Charybdia ran for the stairway that led to the keep’s upper levels.

  Far, far below, in the channels carved out of the keep’s foundation blocks, all was blood. The tunnels and the chambers were immersed, with the bodies of faithful servants and legionaries floating slowly through the darkness. The drowned corpses of prisoners bobbed in their flooded dungeon cells. Long-forgotten storerooms and oubliettes were saturated, and their contents stained the gore strange colours. Priceless tapestries hung mined. Captured spirits turned angry and violent as they were infused with the Blood God’s rage, destroying themselves in their anger.

  And along one deep corridor, a row of eldar skulls stared blankly.

  Caduceia’s command was all but cut to ribbons. Trapped behind makeshift barricades in a wide crossroads high above the western edge of the city, they had been utterly surrounded as invaders poured up the closest towers. Caduceia had begun this battle with a mobile force of seven thousand veterans. She had barely three thousand left now, hardened fighters who had fought through a dozen campaigns but who were now facing their end at the hands of unwashed hordes of thugs who were not fit to speak the name of Slaanesh.

  The enemy had attacked a dozen times, each time being thrown back with massive losses. But there were so many of them. Caduceia looked through the broken planks of the makeshift barricade, watching enemy warriors scurrying along the balconies of nearby towers and behind the defences that had been erected on the three roads that led from the junction. Sporadic bowfire and volleys of hurled javelins arced into Caduceia’s position, thudding into the barricades and clattering against the stone of the road’s surface, sometimes whistling into the flesh of a legionary with a lucky shot.

  One of her centurions hurried up to her, head bent low in case some sharp-eyed nomad speared him with an arrow. Caduceia recognised him but could not recall his name—he had served the armies of the city for well over a decade, as had Caduceia herself. “There’s movement to the south, below us,” he said. “Some of the men think it’s Charrian’s reinforcements…”

  “There will be no reinforcements,” replied Caduceia shortly, her forked tongue flicking over her lips. “We are all that is left. Our purpose is to hold up as many of these heathens as we can and make sure none of them bleed further into the city. Stop such talk amongst the men, their hope will make them weak.”

  If the centurion objected, he did not say so. With a nod, he headed back towards where his command was manning a south-facing barricade.

  Caduceia had told the truth. A force surrounded and isolated would not be rescued. They were more use as obstacles, and the men who might rescue them were more valuable elsewhere.

  The daemon half of her reminded her that she had been sacrificed to Slaanesh once before, and would be honoured to do it again.

  “Attack from the east!” came a yell from the barricade at the other side of the position, just before a hail of arrows and throwing spears heralded another barbarian assault. Muscle memory kicked in and powered Caduceia across the open ground, ignoring the raining steel as she loped on long, strangely-jointed legs that carried her faster than her legionaries.

  An arrow thudded into her shoulder and a spear cut a long gash down one thigh as she ran. She reached the shelter of the eastern barricades and tore out the arrow—brackish, daemonic blood spurted corrosively before the wound closed itself.

  She pushed in amongst the legionaries and glanced through the planks of the barricades. The enemy were stationed within the bulbous midsection of a tower a short distance down the road—Caduceia could smell them from here, the heat of their breath, the sweat on their skin.

  The clatter of arrows abated. The enemy charged—hundreds of them, a thousand, streaming from the windows and doors of the tower towards her eastern barricade.

  The legionaries were still. None would kill without Caduceia’s word.

  The first of the barbarians were casting spears and throwing axes, which skidded onto the roadway, well short.

  Caduceia withdrew the fingers of her right hand into the fleshy orifice that sprouted from her wrist. White-hot fire flickered inside as her limb shifted into the grotesque biological weapon her invasive daemon had gifted her. Her right hand, a chitinous crab-like claw, snapped impatiently. The daemon wanted blood, but the woman commanded it to wait.

  A hurled javelin thudded into the barricade.

  “Ready!” called Caduceia. Those legionaries with spears to spare drew them back, one hand on their back-up weapons.

  The stench of the barbarians was unbearable. Caduceia knew that only the smell of blood would mask it.

  “Throw!” she ordered, and a wall of spears hurled over the wall like a wave that broke against the charging warriors in a spray of blood. The front rank was broken up just before it hit.

  The enemy was bloodied but they were swarming all over the barricade, many climbing onto its top and stabbing down with swords and axes. Caduceia reached over and fired a blast of superheated plasma down the barricade, the stench of burned meat washing over her as three men disappeared in a crimson cloud of vapourised blood.

  The legionaries were all around her, jabbing with their spears, those with only swords clambering onto the barricade and matching sword-strokes with the attackers. Barbarian corpses were falling on both sides and the clamour was appalling, a terrible song of wounding and death. At the flanks, details of legionaries charged over the barricades, driving a wedge of men into the barbarian line and pitching scores of attackers over the edge of the roadway before falling back behind the barricade.

  Hundreds of attackers were dead already, and scores of legion
aries. How many were there? How many would they have to slay?

  Not enough, said the daemon, and Caduceia let it take her over, claw severing limbs and heads, gun blasting chunks from the seething mass of barbarians. She revelled in the stench of cooked flesh and flowing blood, in the heat of gore against her skin and the pain of a hundred tiny wounds from arrows and lucky sword-blows. A flicker of the daemon’s insanity drove her onward—it was a pure delight in destruction, as if she wanted to tear apart the real world and see only the undiluted Chaos of the warp in its place.

  When the red mist in Caduceia’s mind died down and the daemon retreated from the forefront of her mind, she was standing in the middle of the road with the barricade far behind her, a mound of broken bodies beneath her feet. The last few barbarians were fleeing into the tower, and the enemies in the windows were preparing to launch another volley at the legionary position.

  Caduceia hurried back to the barricades, as something caught her eye.

  It was the keep, far across the city, dimmed by the distance and the palls of smoke billowing from those towers that had been blown up or set ablaze. Blood was fountaining from the windows of the lower levels, and the walls around it were teeming with combatants. The invaders had reached the keep, and Lady Charybdia herself.

  The daemon in her said that it didn’t matter, her fight was here and there were more foes to slay. The woman in her agreed, and she ran back into the barricaded enclosure as the arrows began to fall. There would be many more battles here before night fell and the fate of the city was decided.

  Lady Charybdia saw her city in agony. From the observation dome at the pinnacle of the keep, she could see across to the far borders of her masterpiece. Flames glowed bright on the tops of a hundred towers. Others had been toppled like trees, or were cut off entirely from the rest of the city, their connecting roadways brought down. Seething swarms of barbarians were everywhere, and in the few places that the bright silks of her legionaries were still visible, they were outnumbered ten to one by the enemy.