Fire Warrior (warhammer 40,000)

by Саймон Спуриэр

  It took a breath, ignoring the mundane details of the temple abyss, hardly even glancing at the snarling tau that had released it, and turned to face the pulsing shrine of its master.

  “Oh, great Tzeentch...” it rasped, feeling some transient corner of the warp shifting and sliding in response. It seemed that the monstrous attention of the Lord of Change, mystic gaze wrapping around like tentacles, fell upon Tarkh’ax’s existence and gave it form.

  Blessed be! the daemonlord shrieked, gaseous shapes ossifying around the host-vessel. Blessed be!

  Kais gnashed his teeth like an animal and didn’t care.

  The governor creaked to his feet, oblivious of the chasmic wound in his chest. He stared at his hand for a moment, as if fascinated by the simple physicality of his digits. His face creased into a necrotic smile and he said: “Yes!”

  And then he was gone; lost at the heart of a light-bloom, a malignant supernova that writhed and took form around him. Kais would have staggered back, quailing at the shape that rose up from the blossoming energy, but the instinct to flee was drowned by the rage and fury. Gripped by anger, filled only by an image of the crumpled ethereal and his own wasted efforts, Kais was surging forwards with a bellow before the daemon’s shape had fully resolved.

  It was a cloud, briefly. A thing of tendrils and pseudopodia that shook with internal spasms and dissolved, rarefied features contracting and warping. Severus’s glowing form remained aloft, burning through the translucency of the flexing vision like a luminous heart, bisected by the energy spike at the pit’s centre.

  It was a cloud and a serpent and a devil, all at once. A tree without roots, an ocean of blood, a starfield seen in negative, a prowling t’pel predator, a rotten fruit.

  Endlessly shifting, the riot of shapes and forms still somehow contrived to form a whole, like the teardrop of shadow in an endlessly-flickering flame. It was a wraith, rising up in some ethereal parody of a figure, its robes billowing and snatching in an invisible gale, three times as tall as Kais and striated by pennants and spines and lights. Clad in a writhing ensemble of blue and gold, the daemon-aspect clutched at a staff of pure night and thundered with a bellow that shook the abyss, carrion features splitting along a vulturelike beak. Vast wings of blue and yellow, as insubstantial as paper but beating with the force of a hurricane, encircled the flexing shape and rustled, sparks and smoke coiling from each feathertip.

  Kais didn’t care. He fired and reloaded, shouting and spitting and cursing, and when lightning poured from the staff, a river of sparks and ionised air that clawed at the ground and charred the sludge wet floor glassy and smooth, he dived and rolled without thought, lurching upright in a single movement to fire again. Smoke coiled, ozone wafted across his senses, the daemon loomed over, and he didn’t care.

  “Die!” he howled, all control gone, “Get back! Die!” The words themselves had little significance beyond the need to emote; to roar and bellow his fury at the world. Any target would do, even one as horrific as this.

  He was blind to the reality, uncaring that his shots had no effect, that the daemon merely laughed at his rage, that his fury was inconsequential, a termite’s temper tantrum in the face of an anteater.

  Abruptly the words of the dead admiral, spoken before the man’s transformation mere raik’ors ago, ghosted through Kais’s mind.

  “It draws its strength from the... the Dark Gods...” he’d said, clutching at his face, as if the very knowledge revolted him. “I saw... I saw it. In its prison. Oh God-Emperor, it’s almost free! But it... it needs their strength... It needs their patronage to restore its powers...”

  Kais hadn’t understood and said so, but the man was oblivious, perhaps aware of his impending alteration, and had rushed to complete his cryptic pronouncement.

  “You can’t kill something like that.” he’d hissed, “Not really. Y-you... you can only stunt it... starve it of power before it’s fully formed... take away its sustenance... You have to send it back to where it came from!

  The shrines! It takes its strength from there! Y-you understand? The shrines! Remember!”

  Kais had kept his word: he had remembered. He’d remembered although he hadn’t understood. Only now, his blood screaming for violence and death and destruction, his mind shrouded behind the veil of Mon-t’au imbalance, now he understood.

  Four daemon aspects. Four Dark Gods, bestowing their gifts upon a cherished child. Four shrines.

  Leaping over a vengeful bolt of lightning with a cry, he rolled and dived for the nearest antechamber, where a cord of yellow light hung aloft and snaked between the bellowing Daemonlord and the writhing altar.

  Looking back, he saw that the fluttering monstrosity was tethered somehow, as if unable to stray far beyond the energy-spike at the centre of the pit. Finding its prey beyond its grasp it turned its back on Kais, robes pulsing like half-melted liquid, and faced the next of the shrines. The human body, glowing at the thing’s centre, was speaking and gesticulating grandly. Paying homage, Kais realised, to the next of its evil masters. Inviting more power into itself.

  Kais, thoughts racing, turned the muzzle of his gun upon the altar beside him.

  Across the pit the daemon stiffened as if stung, inexplicable senses clearly aware of this new threat. Robes drifting, shadow-wings flexing it turned its feathered skull, radiating white heat, and hissed in warning.

  The railgun fired with a flare of light and gurgled a smoky column of ozone.

  The altar shuddered, shot ricocheting with an ugly whine and a fountain of sparks, impacting dustily against the shrine wall. Glowing, as if with some arcane shield, the altar’s shimmering defence briefly severed the glowing cord that connected it to the daemonlord.

  The brute seemed to sag minutely, aware that, even temporarily, the power source it suckled upon greedily was gone. Its fury sent serpents of gauss lightning thrashing along the pit walls and inchoate plasma storms raging and battering at the ground around Kais’s feet, blistering his underhooves and gashing at his legs. Tumbling and rolling through the maelstrom, ignoring the burns tattering his flesh, Kais took aim upon the daemonlord with clenched teeth and fired.

  And fired.

  And fired.

  And this time each shot thudded into and through its armour with a brassy clang and a wet slap of parting flesh. Its screams were like music.

  Tarkh’ax, through the haze that passed for its mind, felt the warp construct pulse and crumble. The sustenance it drew from its master, Tzeentch — a comforting flow of warmth and power — stuttered and failed.

  The Lord of Change, ever-watchful gaze staring bale-fully through the warp, turned its cheek dismissively and cast its disciple aside.

  The daemonlord’s fury at the defeat was a white-hot torch. Unable to vent its madness fully, it turned to the next shrine and dipped the host-body’s head in greeting, hands forming complex shapes in the air.

  “Bless me, mighty Slaanesh. Bless me!”

  Kais staggered back from the squealing monstrosity, howling in triumph.

  The fragments of its robes rained like broken glass, dissolving and writhing even as they fell. The flickering images that haloed and oozed throughout the collapsing shape coiled upon themselves and aborted, slurping away into the ether, leaving only the hunched Changer of Ways and, glowing at its translucent centre, the fiery body that had once been Severus.

  The second shrine illuminated with a vile purple glow, snatching out a cord of light to intersect the energy spike. Ethereal shapes began to form around the daemon, smokelike appendages that bent the light and cast a new aspect across the daemon’s horrific form.

  Kais sighed, reloaded the gun wearily and prepared himself for more.

  “La’Kais, come in! Kais? Are you getting this?”

  Silence on the comm.

  “Ui’Gorty’l? Are you still there?”

  “Yes El’Lusha. I’m listening in.”

  “The signal boost isn’t working. Try something else!”

&nbs
p; “Fio’el Boran says he’s running out of ideas, Shas’el. There’s just too much interference.”

  “That’s an excuse, Kor’ui. Tell him I’m not interested. Tell him I want a comm-link. Tell him there’s something going on down there and I want to know what. Results! Now! El’Lusha out.”

  Kais sagged to the ground without a hope, leg finally giving way, and prepared himself for the end.

  The daemonlord’s second aspect had been a dream.

  A thing of musk and stench: writhing barb-tendrils coalesced around its avian features, sensuous tongues and pseudopodia threatening to overwhelm Kais with a heady melange of pleasure and pain. It had groaned and screamed, shivering with whatever agonies and ecstasies it inflicted upon itself. At one point it lashed out with a hook-tipped tentacle, faster than he could hope to react, and dragged him hungrily towards some wet-lipped orifice that yawned open upon its chest. It puckered hungrily, dribbling moisture, and vented a blast of thick haze in his face. The musk coiled through his thoughts and dampened his mind, every movement felt like wading through an ocean of feathers, and he dropped to his knees to laugh insanely as, like some obscene slug, the mouth oozed itself forwards to roll hungrily over him. The daemon’s wings dipped down to encircle him, blotting out the light.

  Kais snarled at his own fallibility, raging inwardly against the cloying effects of the drug. Mercilessly, as if punishing himself, he pushed his fingers deep into the gash on his shoulder; probing and twisting until he was sure he’d pass out, screaming unstoppably, feeling fluid warmth spreading across his arm and chest. Under such an assault the soporific musk fled from his senses like vermin before a cleansing flame, leaving him scrabbling aside and gagging, even as the monstrous sucker mouth squirmed closer.

  After that he’d wasted no time in shooting the purple shrine — his satisfaction at its writhing discomfort no more dulled by the pain than by the intoxicating haze. Thus defenceless and severed from its second patron, the daemon gibbered and slunk away. Kais emptied the last of his grenades into its various mouths and oily orifices, hacking at its fronded tendrils with his knife before they could curl unctuously around his limbs. As it detonated from within it sounded disturbingly as though it was enjoying the experience.

  Kais had begun, in that moment, to entertain the insane idea that he might just prevail.

  He should have known better.

  Turning to face the next shrine, the Changer’s body rippled and altered subtly, inflicting a new aspect upon itself. It became disease personified.

  The writhing shape, avian face sagging with pus and pestilence, slouched forward tentatively. What little skin it had was blotched with mildew and bruise patches, hanging flaccid about its joints with little to prevent it from sliding and creasing with every creaking arthritic movement. Beneath the grisly dermis was a web of wasted muscles and suppurating sores, hernia knots wobbling and bulging fleshily, cascade gaps punched through to rotten bone and cancerous organs. There was no science to its appearance, no sensible arrangement of parts beyond the haemorrhaged disorder they clustered around, slopping jelly-like in pools of bile and pus. Its wings, once vibrant and exotic, now hung tattered and torn, feathers spiralling away with every movement. It keened lowly, like an animal in pain, and reached out its gnarled hands, supporting itself on its staff.

  Kais hadn’t been much concerned by this pitiful thing when it manifested, attached as it was to the green, pestilent shrine chamber by a glittering light stream of flies and filth, but he’d quickly realised his folly. There were things living in the daemon’s body. Tiny balloon-like monstrosities that chattered and giggled, sucking on sores and clawing at the diseased flesh with their miniature limbs. They fixed their beady eyes on Kais and gibbered, rushing forwards in an endless tide of slime and haphazard physiology.

  For every one he exploded with a satisfyingly wet direct hit, another three pushed their way past atrophied organs and emerged from the corpse, in a living carpet of pestilence and horror. Kais limped away from them, clinging to that tiny spark of sense in the sea of rage that told him, despite the desire to launch himself into their fray with a bestial roar, that rushing in to tackle these squealing prey things would be the last mistake he ever made.

  The wound on his leg betrayed him. Infused with infection and filth from his long journey, it cramped and oozed a thick bloody sludge, grinding and opening with a life of its own. Responding to the presence of its lord and deity, the nascent disease in his flesh magnified and rejoiced, sending out its bitter tendrils into the surrounding tissue. To Kais, it felt as though his entire leg was dissolving, sending him clattering to the floor with a groan.

  The Nurgling swarm rushed onwards, grasping out to claim him, hungry to share their plague gifts. Kais felt his blood rebel against him, leaving him shivering, unable to properly hold his gun. He kept firing regardless, holding them off less and less with every raik’an, slumped against the pit-wall.

  And then he was down to his last clip of ammunition.

  And then the daemonlord slouched ponderously towards him, ulcer claws reaching out. And now he was going to die.

  The man, such as he was, pushed at the sphincter door weakly, refusing to allow exhaustion and pain to overcome him.

  The vox was mangled, emitting a constant stream of white noise that he could neither shut off nor encourage to receive other signals. It was beginning to grate on his nerves.

  The door wouldn’t open. Taking a deep breath, ignoring the bloodslick trail he left behind him, he thumbed the activation-rune on his chainsword and treated the membranous portal to an appraising look.

  “Courage and honour...” he muttered, unable even to summon the appropriate gusto for a battlecry.

  It had been a long, long day.

  The first chittering midgets were almost on Kais now, tiny limbs flexing outwards, wide faces breaking in toothy grins. They pounced forwards, sinuous tongues flicking spittle and slime in their wakes, and—

  And gunfire ripped through their ranks in a savage melee of tiny limbs, scabrous flesh and mucal fluids. The hungry chatter of a bolter echoed throughout the chamber.

  “Back!” a voice grunted, thick with anger and pain. “Get back to the warp, Chaos filth! Get back in the name of the Emperor!”

  Ardias ripped through the remains of a sphincter portal with a savage growl and swept the daemon creatures away with a sweep of his chainsword, revelling in the devastation. His armour was chipped and cracking, one arm messily fragmented below the shoulder, and the bronze sealant ring around his neck was shattered in two, components and cables bunched up in disarray. Despite his ragged appearance, Kais had never been so relieved to see another being in his life.

  “I should have known better,” the Space Marine growled, with perhaps the merest hint of a smile, “than to trust something like this to a xeno.” He arched a respectful eyebrow briefly at Kais and returned to pumping bolter shells into the thrashing plague corpse.

  “Better late than never, human,” Kais said, weakly.

  “Ha!”

  Slowly, Kais dragged himself upright, every tor’il a lesson in agony. He was surprised to find his leg still there at all — it felt as though it had bubbled away to liquid filth long ago.

  “The shrine...” he grunted, supporting himself on the wall. “Shoot the shrine!”

  If Ardias doubted the bizarre advice he gave little sign of it, spotting the lurid green antechamber and stomping inside with a scowl. Kais heard the unmistakable rattle of bolter fire from within and, for the third time, the glowing cord of sustaining energy faltered.

  Shakily he raised his gun, gratified by the daemon-lord’s gyrations, and took aim. The railgun’s breathless reports merged bizarrely with the sharp hammering of the Space Marine’s weapon: a chorus of punitive destruction that blasted great slabs of rotten meat from the writhing daemonform and sent lurid streamers of infectious waste cascading through the gloom. Bored out by railgun rounds, the monstrosity detonated along its spine to a se
ries of vengeful bolter shells and lay still, pools of sludge draining from its ragged shanks.

  “For Ultramar!” Ardias cried, clashing his pistol against his chest. Ave Imperator!

  He turned to face Kais, features bisected by a feral grin.

  “You don’t understand...” Kais muttered, suddenly overwhelmed by tiredness and pain. “There’s one m—”

  Red light filled the cavern.

  The fourth aspect lifted up behind Ardias.

  He never knew what hit him.

  Tarkh’ax scrabbled for vengeance. Its formidable manifestation was denied it. Each in turn, its dark gods had turned their unkind faces away, disappointed in its performance.

  Only one remained, now. One last chance at revenge. One last chance to crush the fleshy maggots that had brought it so low.

  “Mighty Khorne!” the daemonlord raged into the warp, sensing the bloodlust rising in its consciousness, feeling the fleshshape coalescing around it. “Deliver me into form!”

  And Khorne delivered.

  And it all came back to Kais.

  (In the mundanity of reality, the Space Marine hit the wall and crumpled to the ground, flicked aside by a nonchalant swipe of one armoured gauntlet.)

  He’d killed so much, this rotaa. He was a broken knife, hewing at flesh and sawing through bones. He’d faced more than any Fire Warrior should face in a lifetime.