by Joe Parrino
They pulled fire from the Changer’s realm, the Great Maze of Tzeentch. Formed from shrieking souls and the hopes, dreams and ambitions of sentient beings, the fire tore through the veil and annihilated the remaining guards.
Where they had stood, where their ranks had knelt against the ancient stone of the stairwell, was a bizarre amalgam of flesh, stone and crystal. Arms waved from glass surfaces. Faces spoke from the stone. The Changer had reached through and touched this spot.
Severin Drask brought his temper back under control, reforged his will and dampened his choler. He looked upwards, to the summit of the sanctum.
VI
The Traduceum slunk into the Achyllus System with the grace of an oceanic predator – a knife slipping through the dark. It ran nearly silent. Its engines were designed to flicker with the light of distant stars. Its obsidian hull reflected no light, gave nothing away.
The vessel’s profile was a dagger, sharp and tapered. No guns protruded from its side. No cannons broke the smooth lines of its flank. The vessel was not made for fighting, not made to stand against its foes. Instead, the Traduceum was a conveyor.
Its purpose was stealth; its purpose was death. Like a needle, the vessel was designed to deliver its poison, the Assassins who stalked its dark halls, and then retreat.
It broke the warp far out of the system. Ships stalked the inner planets of Achyllus, blasphemous things in the ruined colours of the darkest traitors. They brayed and announced their victory, postured and bellowed at one another. Minor skirmishes broke out between them. Their discipline was gone, eradicated without a foe to face and an iron will to keep them bound.
This disunity served the Assassins’ purpose.
They assembled aboard the Traduceum’s tiny bridge. Brushed metal walls watched the gathered Assassins as they had generations of their forebears. No ornamentation broke the unremitting monotony of bare steel. All the lines within were clean and sharp, bereft of the gothic ornamentation that encrusted most Imperial architecture. Servitors burbled from stations that, in an ordinary vessel, would be crewed by free humans. Adamta lounged in the command throne, his eyes flickering from instrument to instrument.
A constant stream of course corrections flowed from his mouth.
‘Minor burn, bring us past that vessel,’ he said.
A hooded servitor, mechadendrites extending from its chest cavity, manipulated a number of wheels.
‘Compliance,’ it stated with a voice choked with dust and disuse.
A vessel coated in what looked like fresh gore steamed past them. Ident codes proudly announced the hulk as the Death’s Paradise. Its guns spat out random fury into the void, annihilating chunks of debris and the remnants of the Imperial fleet that had evidently tried to hold this world.
The Traduceum swam beneath the Chaos ship, secure in its stealth.
Rhasc’s breath grew shallow. The Assassins grew silent. Even Torq stopped his laboured breathing as the vast shadow consumed them.
The Traduceum rocked gently, buffeted by the kinetic energy expended by the traitor ship. An alarm burst through the silence, followed by another and another.
‘Collision imminent,’ blurted the lobotomised remains of a tech-plated woman. ‘Collision imminent.’ She began to repeat the words, the pause between losing all meaning.
Achyllus Prime glittered before them, looming larger in the viewscreens with every passing second. Its turquoise skies were bruised and pockmarked by continent-spanning ash storms, a far cry from the bucolic image that had graced the briefing.
Rhasc felt a tightening in her chest. The sour metal taste of adrenal hormones swam through her mouth. Her body was responding to the rising stress levels, mistaking the moment for the kill-urge.
The acrid smell of unleashed chemicals filled the bridge as each of the Assassins’ own systems coped with the stress.
Still the servitor warned of impending calamity. Rhasc could see the Eversor trembling with barely suppressed rage, could hear the sudden blood-fuelled force of air rushing through his clenched teeth. He exploded into motion before any of them could react.
The Eversor punched his naked fist through the servitor’s back and ripped away its spine. Grey flesh tore and iron-rich oil gouted from the wound. He dropped the metal structure, still twitching, to the deck with a clang of finality.
‘Quiet,’ Torq growled. ‘Better.’
Adamta glanced at Rhasc and rolled his eyes.
Silence returned, stirred by the combat chemicals that flooded the room.
Violent shaking rattled through the ship’s bones, the vibrations dancing up through Rhasc’s legs. The broken servitor twitched in its cradle. Withered lips mouthed words that would not emerge from its brutalised form.
More trauma assaulted the Traduceum. A console erupted into sparks. The sudden burst of light brought a strobing, twitching effect to the bridge. Metal creaked and groaned. Something snapped, deep within the ship.
‘Were we hit?’ asked Zhau. No emotion betrayed his words. He spoke with utter calm.
Rhasc read the readout from a nearby screen. ‘Negative,’ she said. ‘But the atmosphere in the lower decks is venting.’
‘It was a near miss. The traitor ship was firing at some scrap that caught the gunners’ eyes. We were likely caught in the blastwave,’ said Adamta.
A new chime blipped into life on the auspex, a newcomer barrelling out of the spinwards reach of a planet.
‘Emperor’s teeth,’ Adamta cursed.
This ship was a true behemoth of the void, a colossal vessel. Pict-thieves on the Traduceum’s hull relayed its image to the watching Assassins. It was a bone-encrusted thing, mounted with horned skulls and pulsing skin. Branded into its flank was a series of runes that whispered of burned books and flowing spinal fluid. Rhasc tore her gaze away from the runes, knowing the false temptation offered by the mad alphabets of the Archenemy.
This new ship bore down on the Death’s Paradise, still stretching above them.
‘That’s on an attack vector,’ Zhau whispered.
An evil smile curled Torq’s battered features. ‘Ramming speed.’
‘What are they playing at?’ asked Adamta.
Torpedoes spewed from the behemoth’s prow, crossing the void at mind-defying speed.
‘Dive!’ Rhasc yelled. ‘Dive now!’
Adamta recognised the danger. The Vanus yelled orders at the servitors, trying to bring the Assassins’ ship out of range of the impending explosion.
Pressure bloomed in the bridge as the ship spun down. Air exploded out from Rhasc’s lungs, while stars danced in her eyes.
Torq lost his footing and went spinning through the air.
Then they suddenly stopped, hanging in the void. They had put thousands of kilometres between themselves and the void execution.
The debris field grew worse the deeper into the system they ventured, remnants of the battle that had once raged here. Achyllus Prime beckoned them onwards. Its skies swirled with storm clouds of every conceivable colour, evidence of the warp corruption that plagued it. A vast structure flickered in high orbit, visible only with their naked eyes. The instruments read nothing there, just empty atmospherics and passing debris. An inverted mountain of stone bled into the void. At its bottom, a wickedly sharp point threatened the planet below.
Crouched atop the mountain’s flat plateau loomed a structure drawn from Rhasc’s nightmares.
Her senses rebelled at the impossibility of what she saw. Something like a temple wrought from nightmare and madness. Despite the vast gulf that separated her from the fane, for no other word truly suited it, she could somehow see disturbing details. Friezes depicted cavorting daemons and war between archaically armoured Space Marines. Towering statues mouthed unknowable promises.
‘What is that?’ she breathed.
‘The Temple of Shades,’ said
Adamta, awe and revulsion warring in his voice.
Torq watched it, unable to tear his gaze away from the structure. ‘That needs killing,’ the Eversor said. Drool slipped from his mouth.
A stream of energy anchored the fane, spearing up from the surface of Achyllus Prime. Flickering with the light of murdered souls and empty colours, it forged a bridge between Achyllus Prime and the Temple of Shades. Waves of force pulsed from the structure, beating in time like some vast monster’s heart.
Ships surrounded the impossible mountain, barely visible against the vast bulk. They encased it in a cordon of steel, a rampart of adamantine fury.
‘We cannot approach that thing from the void,’ Rhasc said. ‘Those ships would detect and destroy us.’
Zhau agreed. ‘This ship would die.’
‘What does the light do?’ Torq asked, shocking them all. He pointed at the light that seemed to connect the fane to the planet.
Rhasc’s mind danced along the possibilities. ‘A bridge perhaps?’
‘That could be our egress point,’ said Zhau. ‘Where is it attaching to on the planet?’
Adamta consulted a data-slate. ‘The storm clouds make it difficult to judge the geo-location, but I think it safe to assume that the light is tethered to the sanctum Astropathicus Achyllus. The last reports from the Cadians indicated that was where the traitors were bound. While the ways of the witch are mostly unknown to me, perhaps the sorcerer required the astropaths to accomplish his aims?’
‘Can you deliver us there, Kurei?’ Rhasc asked.
‘Not directly. The storm patterns around the sanctum are too strong for direct drop pod insertion. There is a break a dozen kilometres away, where the storms appear less fierce.’
Rhasc and Zhau offered their own insight, catching the few things that Adamta did not. While their minds might not have been honed for such information handling in the same way as the Vanus, their intellects were still fierce things.
‘I will deploy and scout first.’
Rhasc made to protest, but Zhau held up a forestalling hand.
‘I will deploy. And I will scout first. This is non-negotiable.’
‘Fine. Mark the targets, find us a way in, but do not engage.’
‘Of course,’ Zhau said.
VII
The chamber was guarded by the final remnant of Achyllus’s protectors. They stared down at the approaching Chaos Space Marines. The moment one of the sorcerer attendants crested the final landing, he was nearly bisected by lasgun fire.
A kineshield shimmered into being before the remainder. Drask shoved it forward. Through its oily shimmer, Drask could see the glory of the circular chamber. At one time, when the sorcerer had bent his knee before the Golden Throne, he would have felt wonder at such a place. The walls were cast in stamped gold, shaped into beatific images of the Emperor’s primarchs. Blind astropaths, heroic in their pose and their duty, marched toward the massive doors that guarded their innermost halls. Cadians and thrall-soldiers of the Astropathicus knelt before those doors.
Drask shoved the kineshield forward. He roared as he charged through the last token resistance of the psykers within and pushed the kineshield into the rank of mortals. They staggered back as solid air punched into them and then pushed them into the great doors.
Arms beat weakly against the shield. The pressure increased. Bones shattered, bodies burst, as the kineshield met the immovable force of the doors. The mortals were reduced to a red paste, flecked with pink and white.
He dropped the shield and the meat paste plopped wetly to the marble floor. Sweat beaded against Drask’s skin, suddenly clammy. Witchlight leaked out from his eyes.
Psychic energy, built up after prolonged use, still boiled beneath his skin. He knew it was glowing, shifting like patterns of fire. Errant embers and sparks shot from his gauntlets.
The sorcerer lord removed his helmet and breathed an exhausted sigh. His transhuman physiognomy could cope with much, but the expenditure of his mental faculties had left his mind drained and weak. When he exhaled, his breaths shivered against the air, twisting like fireflies.
He knew he had much farther to go before this day would be finished. This was merely the next step on the path to his ascension, to the rising of his star.
The psychic energy boiled beneath his skin, eating at his mind, firing his ambitions, his emotions. The weariness in his bones surged, ached and then dissipated. Compensatory mantras and automatic systems within his armour flushed the exhaustion from him.
Hyper-clarity stole over his senses. Falling slabs of pulverised meat and the chittering chants of his attendant sorcerers lanced into his mind. Drask marshalled his strength and pushed against the doors. His psychic might fell upon them like a hammer, like a battering ram, like the adamantine fury of a ship’s prow. His arms rose and then pushed against the air.
The doors did not budge. Recessed wards, cunningly wrought to lie beneath the friezes and murals, blazed into ferocious light. The blowback flung Drask across the room. The sorcerer lord, clad in treasured Tactical Dreadnought armour, left the ground, propelled by his own strength.
He crashed into the statue of an astropath. Stone did not just fracture, it disintegrated, crushing into flinders and dust. The surviving portions fell on him like rain. Shards of rock the size of his fist clattered into his war-plate. Dents appeared, then there was a sharp slicing pain in his upper torso.
Drask saw everything through a haze. His ears rang. His eyes barely functioned. His mind refused cognition. For a moment, he lost his sense of self, of his purpose. He knew only pain.
The sharp snap of broken bone brought Drask back to himself. With a roar of pain and effort, he summoned a small shield. A bubble of protective force surrounded the supine sorcerer lord.
Pushing himself to his feet, Drask nearly stumbled. The stubborn plates of his armour kept him upright. Servos whined then growled as they protested the abuse.
The great golden doors offended his sight. Fading, the wards disappeared once more beneath the facade.
The crowing voices of Crimson Slaughter berserkers sworn to the Blood God, slain by Drask over a disagreement regarding the direction of the Chapter, shouted in his head, ‘Charge the doors! Slay those within! Drink their blood and break their bones! Blood for the Blood…’
His body, battered and bruised, began to move without the input of his recovering mind.
Drask, spurred on by the voices within his head, lowered his horns and charged the doors. Forced into a lumbering run by the cumbersome weight of his Terminator plate, Drask awoke to full consciousness in the moment before impact.
His horns punched into the soft gold, defacing the masterwork artistry that adorned them. Black corruption spiralled out from the impact. His helmet crunched in next. His spine compressed. Metal howled. Pain rippled down his back, through his abused bones, even through the heavy plate and fibre muscles.
The wards failed.
Drask pulled himself free. Golden light trailed from his staff as he gestured his sorcerers forward. They wrenched the doors open with their own psychic might.
Soporific vapour curled from within. Psy-dampeners hummed on the walls, great bulky machines covered in swirling etchings.
Ducking fat cables that hung from the ceiling, Drask entered the room. The feeble, tired minds of the astropaths beat at his own. But they were defeated. Their last gambit had failed.
Pods formed sigils that were supposedly pleasing to the Emperor and the choirs of his servants. Amniotic fluid gurgled within and Drask caught the wretched twitches of emaciated limbs through the dark liquid. Blood pinked the waters. Psychostigmatic wounds peppered the bodies he could see.
Some were dead, already beginning to pickle in their containers. Enough were alive.
Drask pulled a ritual knife from its sheath. Wicked, curved and wrought from some dark, porous meta
l, the knife was crusted with old blood, both human and xenos.
He approached the nearest pod and punched the glass. It shattered beneath the hammer-blow of his fist. Foetid liquid drained out, thick with nutrients and human waste. The body within twitched feebly and held up stick-thin arms to ward off his next blow.
Drask hauled the squirming astropath free and began to cut.
I
In the empty reaches between stars, a shard of blackness detached itself from the greater dark. Long cold systems stirred into life. Machine-spirits emerged from hibernation with the quiet hum of reignition.
Steam and incense drifted through the depths of the Officio Assassinorum vessel. Lights blinked, muted, insistent, glowing in red, blue and green. Obsidian walls formed a coffin, a blank space devoid of comfort.
A form shuddered. Gasps of sudden breaths slipped from between a skull’s rictus mask. Vapour condensed, froze and fell to the deck with a tinkle of ice.
Fluids gurgled down outstretched, flexing tubes. Some glowed a fitful yellow. Others were the sluggish flow of iron-rich blood. Lenses winked into light, green and searching. Fingers stretched and curled, then clenched into hard fists against leather armrests.
Chimes sounded through the vessel. The figure leaned forward, almost drunkenly, unaffected by the cold. Sheets of frost fell from the black sleeves, ice cracking. Breath rasped out from the steel teeth of a skull’s mouth.
The figure tried to stand as vague panic settled in. Disorientation flooded his brain. Then understanding and familiarity took hold. The panic receded, replaced by cold certainty. Knowledge dawned while memories re-emerged from the mind’s own hibernation. None were clear. He had been robbed of the privilege for such experience by the gift that rode his genes.
The darkness around him thrummed. His heart beat a heavy drum, pounding in his ears, irregular at first, then settling into a healthy rhythm.
Long experience brought his arms and hands forwards, setting them to reawaken further dormant systems. The ship shuddered as its engine erupted into quiet life.