Daemon World

by Ben Counter - (ebook by Undead)

  Amakyre had an all-encompassing hatred of weakness. His own weakness was the worst. It was a blasphemy in itself, to be trapped and powerless, totally at the mercy of his enemy.

  “All those dead…” said Prakordian vaguely, spittle glinting at the corner of his mouth. He reached out a hand to touch the shimmering image of Torvendis above him.

  Amakyre drew his bolt pistol and shot Prakordian between the eyes. Prakordian stumbled and looked at Amakyre, watery blood flowing out of the wound and down his face. “But… it’s wonderful. They’re telling me, the dead. He planned it all so long ago, he used so many of them to make it happen. It never died, they’re saying… it never died, it was there all along, captive, insane…”

  Amakyre wished for once that Space Marines were easier to kill. He emptied his bolt pistol into Prakordian until there was nothing but shattered bone and gristle above the neck. Prakordian’s body swayed slowly, as if it hadn’t realised it was dead. Then it fell and crashed to the floor of the bridge.

  There were no slaves left to clean up the mess. It would have to stay there for the time being. Amakyre looked up at the screen, at the deformed, dying globe of Torvendis, and waited with gritted teeth for the blasphemy to end.

  Quite why he had done it, Veq wasn’t sure. Not leaving the Last alive—there was no choice in that. You couldn’t kill something like the Last. You couldn’t kill a whole planet, not if you wanted to offer it up as a prize to your masters. The question Arguleon Veq often asked himself was why he had left himself some means of waking it up again.

  Perhaps it was the feeling of power it had given him. It would certainly have been just like him. To simply cripple the Last forever would have given him less pleasure than knowing he could release it, and yet choosing not to. That might well have been why he had founded the Emerald Sword tribe to guard the weapon that, if removed from the heart of the Last, would let it awaken again.

  Of course, he had been very careful to guard against anyone accidentally removing the Sword. The tribe had been bound by his sorcery and will to ensure that they would allow only one of their own member into the heart, and that both the guardians and the Sword would destroy anyone whose hate was not as deep as the last’s own rage against Chaos.

  It had taken some effort to find someone whose inherent violence and pride was as strong as Golgoth’s, and then to break down that pride so utterly through destruction and betrayal that there was nothing left in the man’s heart but hate. To tell the truth, while Arguleon Veq had always been able to read the behaviour of Lady Charybdia and Ss’ll Sh’Karr, he didn’t know quite how Golgoth would react to the betrayal of first Grik, then Sh’Karr. It had been enough of a risk to assume he would survive at all—Veq had taught Golgoth a few of his simpler tricks, but it had never been certain that he wouldn’t get himself killed.

  It had all been an immense risk. It could have been just another cycle of war and bloodshed on Torvendis, and Veq could have risked showing his true hand to the gods of the warp without accomplishing anything. But incredibly, it had worked. Though he was immeasurably old and well past his prime. Arguleon Veq still had the power to make legends.

  Veq allowed himself some satisfaction at this thought as he walked back onto the bridge of the Slaughtersong. It was still transparent, affording an awesome view of the torment that racked Torvendis.

  “It has been a long time, my friend,” he said.

  A very long time, replied the ship. I was beginning to think that the probability of your ever returning was negligibly low.

  Veq could understand. It was when he first began to doubt the authority of his Chaos masters that he had left the Slaughtersong in Torvendis’ orbit, and had wandered off across the Maelstrom to look on it with new, doubting eyes. For years beyond number he had watched the carnage and torture and slavery, and had come to the conclusion that he wanted revenge against the powers that had made him a part of it. “I hope you haven’t been lonely,” said Veq.

  I have been able to amuse myself. The planet provides much of interest.

  “Not as much as it will do shortly. Torvendis has been everything a planet could be, except for dead. Are you ready?”

  I have been ready for some time, my lord.

  “Good. Take us to atmospheric depth. I wish to talk with another old friend.”

  Golgoth’s death, when it came, was not as he had imagined it. He had never doubted that he would die in the teeth of some battle, axes and swords in a storm around him, his shield stove in and a thousand wounds on his body. That was how death happened—it was supposed to be the final step on the warrior’s road.

  Instead, it was a pitiful fall into darkness. An earthquake ripped apart the ground beneath him and a crevasse opened up. Kron’s sorcery had made him superhuman, but it couldn’t beat gravity. The ground fell away in chunks beneath his hands and his feet kicked out at nothing. He let go of the Emerald Sword and it tumbled, glittering, into the crevasse to land in the bubbling glowing red lava pulsing below.

  Then there was nothing left to hold onto. Golgoth was falling tumbling towards the terrible heat below.

  What if he had never left the Bladestone settlement? What if he had been content to fight and not to lead? He could have lived. He could have ended his days like a man, not like a pitiful wretch who had died after unwillingly destroying all that he had once dreamed of ruling.

  The searing heat enveloped him, chewing up through his legs and dissolving his bones. What if he had stopped at the foothills and been content to rebuild his tribe? What if he had headed back towards the mountains as soon as Sh’Karr had appeared? Why had he wanted a part in such an insane alliance, man and daemon, when only carnage could be the result?

  Golgoth died in the fires beneath Torvendis, never knowing why he had died, and never guessing that it was the same reason for which he had been born.

  Arguleon Veq looked down on the city directly beneath him as the Last’s maw closed. Towers splintered beneath the crushing teeth. Daemons died as the city fell down, a mighty roar rising up in a cloud of debris. Veq could see Sh’Karr clinging to the top of Charybdia Keep, raging insanely and showering blood, lashing out with steel claws at the fangs that bore down on him. The whole city was gone now, crushed and hidden beneath a canopy of mountainous teeth, with only Sh’Karr visible. His huge body was transfixed by a dozen points that sunk into his flesh and came out the other side, holding him fast. Still he bellowed, brass skull shaking with anger, as the maw sunk into the ground.

  Sh’Karr was still alive, if any daemon could be alive, when the earth closed over him.

  The Slaughtersong hovered low over the surface. The maw resurfaced, teeth now picked clean of daemon’s flesh. The earthquakes and storms paused as the Last recognised the Slaughtersong and the mind of its inhabitant.

  The Last didn’t speak, as such, but it had been given intelligence by the eldar, who at their height had mastered psychic engineering, and it could talk directly with a man’s soul.

  It was in agony. It had been that way since the day Veq had defeated it, a hundred lifetimes ago. It had been violated as the powers of Chaos took the planet as a symbol of their power, infected with its war dead and soaked in corrupted blood. Its stones had been ground up and incorporated into terrible temples and bastions that rang with the screams of the tormented, into the very city it had just reabsorbed into its body. It had been suffering most terribly, and it had been driven insane.

  Torvendis, last of the eldar maiden worlds, wanted revenge just as much as Arguleon Veq. Revenge against Chaos, which was such a vast and all-consuming power that only the grandest of gestures could hurt its gods. Only the loss of a symbol like Torvendis would be enough for them to notice.

  Veq and the Last had fought the most terrible battle of the Maelstrom’s long history, but now, when they had both had so much time to contemplate what had happened, they understood. The Last did not hate Veq, though Veq had imprisoned it and introduced it to this torment. It hated Chaos. Veq
, for his part, knew the last was still a maiden world, imbued by the eldar who had lived there with a consciousness of its own so it could be as beautiful and productive as possible. It still valued beauty and justice, and understood the value of sacrifice in the face of evil. It was mad, but those beliefs had not left it.

  The only way it could hurt Chaos was to be destroyed. Arguleon Veq, a different man from the one who had defeated it, had let it free to accomplish this. For this, at least, it found space in its rage to be grateful.

  It also understood that Arguleon Veq did not expect, or particularly want to survive. So it was with little ceremony that, with a final roar of rage from it very core, Torvendis tore itself apart.

  The viewscreen on the bridge of the shuttle blew out as the continents began to detach themselves. Amakyre just had time to see the seas boiling into a cloud of superheated vapour and the main continent tearing itself from the crust like a scab. He saw plumes of lava ejected into space, he saw ice caps flashing into white towers of steam, he saw impossibly bright slashes of red where the rock of the mantle, suddenly relieved of the pressure of the crust, liquified and exploded outwards.

  The death of the Last sent waves of unleashed anger lashing across the Maelstrom. The shattering of Torvendis was perhaps the single greatest event the ancient warp storm had ever witnessed—the symbol of the power of Chaos, the lynchpin of power, erupted into a boiling sphere of nuclear fire that expanded as the planet’s massive energies were all released at once.

  Long-buried palaces were torn from the ground and hurled out into space. The evaporated oceans carried immense kraken and undersea kingdoms with them as they billowed across the vacuum. Sections of crust thousands of kilometres across and hundreds deep fragmented into seething clouds of superheated dust.

  The howl of the Last rocked the very stars, screeching into every living mind in the Maelstrom so man and daemon alike would know of its death. Even the gods, in those final few moments of destruction, turned to see their prize disappearing in a cloud of roiling flame.

  The Shockwaves slammed into the side of Amakyre’s shuttle, spinning it wildly and throwing Amakyre against the walls and ceiling as the gravity systems cut out. He heard the scream of a dying world.

  Then the storm of shattered rock and unleashed power split the shuttle clean open, and he glimpsed the blinding light of the exploding planet before the massive wave of heat and rage vapourised him.

  Of all the legends of Torvendis, the one that is recounted most throughout the Maelstrom is the best one, the last one. It is the story of how a once-beautiful eldar maiden world was defeated by a Champion of Chaos, who then turned against the dark powers. It tells of how he woke the maiden world’s spirit, now insane, and let it destroy itself so the daemon world would be lost to Chaos forever.

  As is inevitable when tellers of tales gather and try to outdo each other, there are embellishments that go beyond what all the tales agree. Most notably, they question whether Arguleon Veq, the great betrayer of the Maelstrom, is indeed dead. Perhaps, some say, the Last let him live as a final act of vengeance against its imprisonment. Perhaps the gods kept him alive just to torment him with the memories of the atrocities he had committed in their name, as gods are wont to do. Or perhaps Arguleon Veq was simply too powerful a warrior to die like that.

  And perhaps they are right. Arguleon Veq could be wandering the Maelstrom, livid that he was robbed of his death, ever searching for new ways to hurt the pantheon of Chaos and ensure they would regret the day they had corrupted his soul until it was no longer his.

  But that, of course, would be a different story altogether.

  AFTERWORD

  When I came to suggest ideas for my second book, something I didn’t lack was ideas. I wanted a change from the Space Marines of my first novel and I turned to some of the most intriguing corners of the Warhammer 40,000 background to find it. Sisters of Battle! Imperial assassins! Inquisitors! Xenos! And at one point I said, “What about a book set on a daemon world?”

  My favourite aspect of Warhammer 40,000 is the Imperium, so maybe a daemon world was a strange idea for me to have because the Imperium wasn’t the focus of it. In fact, the Imperium is barely mentioned at all in Daemon World—Torvendis is light years away from the nearest Imperial planet. But a close second favourite of mine is Chaos.

  Chaos is a fascinating subject, because it isn’t a bad guy that we can readily understand. It is unknowable, and trying to understand it drives people mad. The simple question of “What is Chaos?” is difficult enough. Chaos is a force that somehow resides in the parallel dimension of the warp, and which finds form in four (or maybe more—a lot more) Dark Gods. It is the substance of daemons, magical creatures who serve these gods and, just as often, serve themselves as predators or meddlers. And it is a sort of corruptive disease, a malady of the soul, that worms its way into innocent or upstanding people and rots their morality away until they are monsters serving the powers of the warp. And all along it has its own symbolism and flavour, its own tricks and traps and personalities, while remaining as constantly mutable as true Chaos must.

  The biggest challenge of writing Daemon World was making it “Chaotic”. I didn’t want that to just mean it included all the bits of Chaos that Warhammer 40,000 enthusiasts would be familiar with—colour-coded daemons, magic spells they knew, even references to obscure bits of background. Those were elements of a tabletop game and while plenty of them still appeared, Daemon World needed to reflect Chaos in a purer form than fans of the game would be used to. Another difference would be the viewpoint. Chaos was mostly experienced in games and previous novels from the perspective of people who fought Chaos, who saw it for the evil it was and tried to stop its plans. I wanted to see what Chaos looked like from the viewpoint of someone who was actually caught up in it all, one of the billions of souls who lived on worlds controlled by Chaos. Such worlds existed in the background already but rarely had they been explored very thoroughly, and since they were all by nature different I could do whatever I wanted with mine.

  Torvendis, then, became the setting, a patchwork of ill-matched landscapes with its own native peoples (for whom Chaos was literally a way of life) and power groups (including a queen who ruled from a massive city of bizarreness and sin). The beginnings of the plot were starting to form, but it needed a villain, a bogeyman to haunt the story and be revealed at the end. To begin with, the Last was just a very powerful daemon, but that didn’t seem that exciting a prospect since the book would be dripping with daemons anyway. Other options were considered (including a C’tan, which were only just being realised in the tabletop game), but eventually someone from the Design Studio mentioned the possibility of an eldar maiden world. This was a planet that was alive, that had its own spirit nurtured by the alien eldar. What if one of these worlds got lost in the warp and was colonised by daemons? What if it went mad?

  The second element was the story’s protagonist. I knew from the start that this protagonist—not really a hero, because I didn’t want some knightly Space Marine or implacable inquisitor coming in from the outside—would be as mysterious as the rest of what was happening on Torvendis. He would be a legend, hinted at throughout the story and only brought to the fore at the end. I called him Arguleon Veq because I liked the way it tripped off the tongue, and he became the puppeteer behind a plot which would only become apparent as it unravelled at the very end.

  Veq was the vessel through which I could illustrate something about Chaos. The first principle of Chaos, to my mind, is that everyone who become involved with it becomes corrupted. Chaos is like spiritual acid that corrodes wherever it comes into contact. No one ever worships Chaos because they want to be corrupted—they do it because Chaos promises power, or mercy, or deliverance, or the granting of the heart’s desire. The corruption starts straight away but only becomes apparent later, and by then it is too late. Chaos, then, if it can be said to be any one thing, is a lie.

  Arguleon Veq knew this. He knew it
because he had been the Chaos champion who had defeated the Last and claimed Torvendis. But he had then come to understand what he had become and decided to have his revenge on Chaos itself. Plenty of heroes in the 41st Millennium go out to fight daemons because they know it is evil. Veq was different. He wanted to fight Chaos because it had turned him from a potential hero into a villain, and he wanted payback for forcing him to become something hateful. Veq’s quest for revenge became the foundation for Daemon World’s plot. The fun bit was working out how it all played out.

  Most of Daemon World isn’t about Veq at all, but about the corrupted inhabitants of Torvendis who are manipulated towards conflict or destruction. They all illustrated some aspect of the corruption Chaos forces on all its followers—the unfocused anger of the barbarian who has known nothing but harshness and cruelty, the infinite arrogance of the Slaaneshi queen, the pathetic servitude of the city’s revellers and the spectacular brutality of Ss’ll Sh’kaar. Some were sympathetic by comparison with one another, but they all still deserved to die. The Word Bearers became involved partly to provide a more solid link to the Warhammer 40,000 background, but also to show that it was Chaos itself and not just Torvendis that corrupted—the Word Bearers, though they lie to themselves that they are in control, are as degenerate a bunch of thralls as the lowest vermin of the city. I also couldn’t turn down the chance to throw some Space Marines into the mix to see what sort of action sequences might come out of it, and the inclusion of an Obliterator let me bring some massive firepower to bear.

  Daemon World let me cut loose with all manner of bizarre, intense action sequences which would only be possible on a world where mundane rules like gravity and logic didn’t count. This is my strongest memory of writing Daemon World—letting the completely insane stuff in my imagination take control and forge some of the strangest scenes I have ever written. A sea battle on an ocean of blood, a titan-sized daemon prince, a city suspended over a pit dedicated to the creation of obscene pleasures. The awakening of Torvendis itself, a planet-wide version of all this madness, was an inevitable conclusion. It’s a good job it was a part of Veq’s plan, otherwise I would have had to find some other excuse to have Torvendis turn cosmic predator at the end. It was a very liberating experience to pencil in sections of the book that I would fill with as much craziness as possible, and to dive into moments of grandeur and horror that wouldn’t fit into most other plotlines.