by Nick Kyme
‘Why did you come with us, medicus?’ he asked, answering Issak’s question with one of his own.
‘Because you allowed it.’
Agatone looked up at that.
‘It was more than that,’ he said. ‘And don’t tell me you just wanted out of the hive.’
‘I won’t. I experienced something in the archive, a sense of being there before but not knowing when or how. It led me to a name.’
Agatone raised an eyebrow, questioning, and Issak continued.
‘It was amongst the wreckage in the archive. The uppermost level before we got in the lifter. I don’t know why I was drawn to it, but I was. I think it was what your errant warrior and his companion were looking for.’
‘What name?’
‘Draor.’
CHAPTER FORTY
Heletine, beneath Solist
Angerer awoke to pain and an alarming lack of feeling in most of her body. The lids of her eyes were heavy and difficult to lift, so what she saw when she first tried to open them came in slivers.
A dark chamber, somewhere underground and lit by flaming torches…
The brooding presence of my monstrous captor, hulking and vile as it regards me from the back of the room…
Warriors, clad in armour, the same traitors we met at Solist…
A wretched figure, robes clinging to her body, knelt and praying before me…
She is hunched, shivering, but does not relent in her murmuring benedictions.
Looking up at me, our eyes meet and I recognise the kinship in them.
It is Revina. It is my sister. And she is praying for me.
‘Reunited with your sister,’ uttered the monster, its voice resonant. ‘How long has it been?’
Angerer glanced at it but only glanced. To do anything more would be to invite damnation. She tried to focus on Revina, on her sister. Despite her conditioned revulsion for the witch and the heretic, Angerer had tears in her eyes when she answered.
‘Years…’ she said, her tone low and faint, ‘it has been years since I last saw my sister.’
‘I forgive you,’ said Revina. Her voice had recovered, losing the reedy croak from when she had been staked down in the desert.
Angerer had no words. She warred between familial compassion and what was demanded of her by the sacred creed of the Ecclesiarchy.
Suffer not the witch and the heretic to live.
It was tattooed across the back of Angerer’s partially shaved scalp, just above the nape of her neck, scribed in High Gothic.
‘I forgive you, Maelisia.’
No one had called Angerer that name since before the Adepta Sororitas.
‘And I am so sorry…’ said Revina, bowing her head.
Incredulous for a moment, Angerer found her voice stronger. ‘For what?’
Belatedly, the canoness realised she was pinned. Her limbs, waist and neck were shackled to some kind of wrought iron edifice. It stank of old blood and the foulness of decay, but was impossible for her to see whilst she was bound to it.
Rage supplanted pain as Angerer fell back on her training. All those hours of excoriation and penitence had honed her into something more and at the same time less than human.
‘Release me!’ She snarled at the monster, spitting her zeal from cracked lips.
‘I too have siblings I wish to be reunited with,’ it answered, stepping into the light and letting the lambent glow from the torches wash over it.
It wore a thick sheath of war-plate, but rather than fit perfectly over its body like the armour of a Space Marine should, it was stretched and malformed like wax exposed to heat. Between the glossy black plates, pale ivory trimmed with ocean green peeked through like an aperture into another world. Its face was false, the simulacra of one of the Emperor’s Angels rendered into artistic stillness.
‘Unlike you,’ said the monster, coming in close so Angerer could smell the corpse-stench of its breath and feel her skin prickle at the proximity of its unnatural aura, ‘I won’t cast them out. They are lost. Your sister,’ it gestured to Revina, whom Angerer glanced at, ‘is going to help me find them.’
Its eyes briefly changed from two pure black voluminous orbs to having corneas, retinas and irises. Perhaps it was her pain-fuelled imagination, but Angerer swore there was something vaguely lupine about them.
‘I was formerly a Wolf,’ the monster confessed, tearing open Angerer’s thoughts as easily as it would her flesh. ‘One of Luna…’ it said resignedly, ‘but no more.’
‘Sister,’ Angerer was weeping, her wrath and despair colliding ambivalently, ‘what have you done?’
‘What I had to do,’ Revina replied calmly, though her eyes betrayed the depth of anguish she felt for her sister, ‘what I was born to be. If you didn’t want me to see, you should have taken my sight.’
‘Would that I could, dear sister.’
The monster clamped a meaty gauntlet around Angerer’s chin, forcing back her attention.
‘Strange, isn’t it, that only when we are faced with losing something or someone do we appreciate its true value.’ There was scorn in its voice now, and Angerer suspected some part of it despised her for what she had done to Revina.
‘She has a gift, your sister,’ the monster went on, though it did not loosen its grip which had begun to wear at Angerer’s jawbone. ‘I shall see it used to bring about a reunion between my brothers and I. They are here… somewhere, and blessed Revina and her witch-sight are going to peer beyond the veil for me, so I can know exactly where, so I can determine where in the skein of the flesh-world I need to make my cut.’
Revina was a seer, an augur of sorts. Her latent gift had been discovered in her infancy, manifesting as an uncanny ability to know things before they had happened. The first time had been the death of their mother. A virulent illness had destroyed her from within, eating the poor woman alive whilst her children could only watch. Revina wept. Once on her own, before her mother had passed, and again with her sisters – both for the parent she had lost and the orphan life as part of the Sisterhood they were about to be forced into. She had seen everything.
Though she was only a child, Revina saw the drill abbot arriving at their domicile before he had arrived. Through her sorrow she was afforded a glimpse of him.
Later, when the three sisters had been inducted to the Order of the Ebon Chalice as neophytes, Revina had lost the penitent cup she used for prayer and ablution. Without it she would have been severely beaten and chastised by her superior. Her tears revealed the location of the cup, sparing her the lash but eventually opening her up to more serious censure. It was Angerer who had discovered her ‘taint’, and Angerer who brought her to the attention of the then canoness. Once Angerer had been cleared of any suspicion, her genetics deemed pure, it all but assured her rise to prominence in the order but condemned her sister at the same time. Laevenius rose with her, whilst Revina languished in a cell, her existence known only to a few, a dirty secret the order kept at its heart. It was a circle that shrank to two when the old canoness died and Angerer replaced her.
Decades old, the memories resurfaced like fresh wounds. It might have been the presence of the monstrous warrior or just pent up and repressed emotion. The revulsion, the disgrace of having a mutant for a sister and the purifying vindication she felt when she had exposed her to the order. It was empowering.
‘Witchling!’ Angerer cursed Revina, tears streaming from her eyes now, ‘Laevenius and I should have strangled you as a child.’
But Revina was no longer there. She had been ushered away by the monster’s warriors. Angerer turned to it instead, hawking a gob of phlegm onto its pristine, false face.
‘Abomination!’
‘I wasn’t always,’ said Faustus, and tightened his grip until the Sister’s jaw broke. His name was no longer Heklion Faustus, it was Gralastyx, daemon lord of the Eye.
Lufurion watched the brutalisation of the woman with detached interest. He kept to the shadows, out of Gralastyx�
�s immediate sight and gathered with his trusted warriors, ostensibly strategising. These three had been hard to find. Amongst the Children of Torment and the remnants of his own Incarnadine Host, Lufurion had discovered entire nests of betrayers. But these three he had fought with, bled with, pledged oaths with. It wasn’t brotherhood – he had abandoned that long ago, but it was something close.
‘Reports are coming in,’ uttered Klerik, keeping his voice low, ‘Vorshkar has led the army to victory against the Imperials.’
‘I heard he was injured in the act,’ whispered Juadek.
‘No need to sound so conspiratorial, you idiot,’ snapped Klerik, looking askance at the Black Legion warriors standing to attention around the chamber and waiting on their master.
‘It has been agreed,’ said Lufurion. ‘We deliver the daemon’s kin and he will give us the witch. From there we part ways.’
Preest angled his head up slightly.
‘He knows, Preest,’ Lufurion told the sorcerer.
‘Can we trust him, though?’
‘Of course not,’ Lufurion told him, ‘but his mind is no longer entirely his own. He’s a slave to that thing he has become, but he’s also driven by sentiment and an outdated sense of fraternal honour.’
‘A true son of Cthonia then,’ laughed Juadek.
‘So he claims, yes,’ Lufurion replied.
‘Are we certain we still need the witch?’ asked Klerik. ‘In the wake of Vorshkar’s triumph we could take our ships and be gone.’
Lufurion looked to the sorcerer again. ‘Preest says we do.’
All eyes went to him for an explanation.
‘Our brothers we sent to Sturndrang are all dead.’
Juadek leaned in, a sour look on his face as he regarded the sorcerer.
‘You’re sure?’
Preest gave him a disparaging glance.
‘I spoke unto a servant of the Eye,’ he said, as if it were a rudimentary thing he was describing and not a rite of incredible difficulty and peril.
‘Claimed by the warp then?’ asked Klerik. ‘I had wondered what happened to Ryos and the others.’
Preest shook his head. ‘They arrived, only several years ago.’
‘Temporal displacement,’ said Klerik. ‘The tides really didn’t favour them, did they?’
‘Something else killed them,’ Preest continued. ‘Even now their souls are in torment.’
‘And I have no desire to join them,’ said Lufurion, nodding to Gralastyx as the daemon allowed his prisoner to sag in her chains. She would not die yet – he still had use for her.
The gathering parted swiftly. Preest would be needed to ‘encourage’ the witch’s auguring. His mortal worm would assist, the one that still lived. As the sorcerer was summoned by one of the Black Legion warriors, Klerik hung back to whisper in Lufurion’s ear.
‘We both went on bended knee before the Warmaster. We pledged oaths in front of Devram Korda. If they discover our plan to betray them, the daemon will be the least of our worries.’
Lufurion smiled, the patchwork of his stitched face straining to perform the gesture.
‘We always knew it would come to this. Either Ryos and the others found the archive on the hive world or we secured the witch. Ryos is dead, so that leaves us. I’ve seen her work. She’ll give us what we seek.’
Klerik’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is it real?’
‘Ten thousand years ago, it was.’
‘But can it do what Preest claims?’
Lufurion gave the facial equivalent of a shrug. ‘Something that old, with that kind of provenance… We’ll have to acquire it to find out.’
‘They’ll hunt us. The drakes, what’s left of the Iron Tenth… Abaddon.’
Lufurion smiled thinly. It was a viper’s smile, deadly. ‘You sound scared, Klerik. Have I misplaced my faith in you?’
Klerik didn’t respond to the threat. He knew Lufurion was just testing him.
‘I merely point out the list of our enemies should we pull this off.’
‘If we do, Klerik,’ said Lufurion, ‘with the storm we’ll unleash, none of them will matter anymore. They’ll all be too busy… drowning in their own blood.’
EPILOGUE
A future truth…
Kinebad struck up the lamp’s igniter and a stark light lifted the darkness. Old stone, layered with dust, was revealed. The chamber was based on a hexagonal structure, a vast outer ring that led to increasingly smaller ones.
So far, Kinebad and his companion had passed through five circles. He hoped the sixth was the last.
The lamp hissed and flared, reacting to something in the air, before settling into a pulsing glow that gave off an actinic stench.
‘That thing reeks foul,’ uttered a deep, belligerent voice behind Kinebad.
Kinebad was stooped over, trying to avoid a section where the ceiling had partially caved in. Dust cascaded languidly from the gap with the natural shifting and settling of the stone above. It did not look as if it was going to come crashing down any time soon – in fact, this place barely looked disturbed in years – so Kinebad was content to proceed.
‘It’s phosphor,’ he said.
Kinebad turned the lamp on the speaker to reveal a tall, thick-set warrior clad in loose-fitting carapace. The grey armour was bespoke and had sigils on it scrawled by the wearer in ash. A mesh layer underneath the plates hinted at a muscular frame, far larger than that of an ordinary human man. The hood attached to the mesh was drawn up over his head, but couldn’t conceal his eyes. They were fiery red, burning like hot coals.
‘Sadly, it is also necessary,’ answered Kinebad. ‘Despite my many gifts, I don’t have your enhanced sight or physiology,’ he said, and took the lamp light off his protector.
He didn’t need protection, per se. Kinebad was trained: both armed and unarmed, and in a variety of fighting disciplines. He carried a folded long rifle in a case cinched to his back and a snub-nosed automatic pistol, the Redoubter, in a holster on his left hip. His right thigh was strapped with a mono-molecular kaisen blade. It was a relic, as well as his birthright, from an ancient human dynasty.
Compared to the other warrior’s heavy slugger that he had strapped across his immense back and shoulders, Kinebad’s weapons were practically an arsenal. He had offered to furnish his protector with better materiel but had been refused. Repeatedly.
The light picked out the details of the chamber. It was mainly granite but there was also some ouslite, marble and even obsidian, though the volcanic glass had tarnished over the ages. The air was cold too, and it made the light grainy. The slightly brisk atmosphere was in sharp contrast to the world several hundred metres above them. On the surface of Draor, it was a blisteringly hot night and the sulphur rain was falling in sheets.
Kinebad had searched for this world and then this chamber, or series of chambers, for almost half a decade. Using the power and influence granted him by the rosette he carried beneath his armoured tunic, he had scoured obscure histories, references on forgotten parchments and proscribed knowledge vouchsafed by the Holy Ordos of Terra. A common archeotech could not have come as close as he – likely they would have been silenced for even asking the question. But here he was, on the very threshold of a significant discovery. Shogu master he might be, but it was the beating heart of a scholar and a theologian that fed the blood around Kinebad’s veins and gave him vigour.
‘What is this place, witch?’ asked the warrior, casting about his surroundings as bare stone gave way to lapidary inscription.
Kinebad had moved beyond the sixth ring and was into the seventh. A pair of columns separated it from the rest, between them the only entrance. Faded frescoes had been worked into their smooth stone but the meaning had all but been obliterated by time and entropy.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ Kinebad moved further, slowly casting the lamp around to find his footing. There was much debris on the ground, which made crossing the chamber slightly hazardous.
‘
It’s untrue?’ The warrior sounded nonplussed.
Kinebad turned his gaze on him. A scrutinising lens flicked from under his headgear across his right eye. It gave off a faint whirring sound as the analysing rings calibrated.
‘It’s derogatory.’
‘I didn’t think you had me in your company for my manners.’
‘Your bearing suggested nobility, Scar-borne.’
‘You say that like it isn’t my name.’
‘I know it isn’t. It’s what the overseers called you on Sturndrang, a slave name. Are you a slave?’
‘To you, witch… no.’
Kinebad laughed. ‘You’re fortunate I have need of you.’
The warrior named Scar-borne took a step forward. In the light from Kinebad’s lamp, he seemed to increase in size. And threat. The shadows across one side of his features deepened, his face a cleaner version of the volcanic glass in the chamber.
‘Am I? Am I really, inquisitor?’
There was a brief moment when Kinebad felt the irresistible urge to reach for a weapon. But even with an arsenal as formidable as his, and with all the dynastic training from his shogu instructors, good sense told him this would be a mistake.
Scar-borne was testing his boundaries again. He harboured a deep anger, a sense of injustice and volatility Kinebad had found useful, but occasionally it needed marshalling.
Not rising to the bait, he turned away and went back to his work.
A large circular hall stretched in front of the inquisitor, held up by more columns. And something else…
‘There,’ Kinebad hissed, and gestured to a shaft of light.
An opening high up in the vaulted ceiling fed back to the surface almost three hundred metres above them. Thin veils of sulphur rain were coming in through the gap and hissed against an obelisk as they struck it. The obelisk was marble, three metres high and its six faces each carried an illustrated slab of varicoloured minerals. At the summit there was a statue of a massive warrior, similar in build to Scar-borne, and another, smaller warrior kneeling down in front of the first.