‘You are mine!’ the beastmaster shouted at the Clawed Fiend. She cracked the whip again, but the creature didn’t flinch. ‘Obey me! Obey!’
Skanis didn’t stay around to watch what followed. He ran for the far end of the menagerie, darting around the beasts until he reached a twisted mass of rusted steel that granted access to the floors above.
He felt the razorwing chick shoot past his ear and grabbed it out of the air as he ran. Behind him, the Clawed Fiend bellowed and the beastmaster’s voice reached him from the tumult. He couldn’t tell if she was still cursing him, or screaming.
It didn’t matter. He would never be down here again.
To the ignorant, it might have seemed beautiful.
This high up, the layer of smoke and cloud was a hazy, translucent layer of grey laid over the city. Commorragh looked like the spiny hide of a flayed beast beneath the fug. The uppermost spires pierced the clouds, each trying to outdo its neighbour. Some were shattered and dark, long abandoned save by the few creatures able to survive at this altitude. Others blazed with light where the archons and nobles tried to banish the desperation of their lives with the pursuit of power or pleasure.
The outside of the spire’s pinnacle was covered in vanes and spikes, the remains of a communications system that had gone dark centuries ago. Skanis clung to one of the vanes against the shriek of the cold wind. His chest burned with each freezing breath but he exulted in the feeling. The lungs Urviel had given him were efficient enough to function up here. Any normal drukhari would have wilted and fallen asleep, never to wake up. Skanis was not normal.
Commorragh was beneath him now. Above him was just the sky, the veined purple of festering meat. Tiny winged specks wheeled in the upper cloud layer, forming loops and spirals as they swarmed. A flock of razorwings out hunting.
Skanis took the razorwing chick from his shoulder. It ruffled its red and steel plumage. He held the chick up into the wind and it spread its wings, and hopped out of his palm.
The tiny razorwing caught an updraught and soared high above the spire pinnacle. Then it looped down again, newly assured in its flight, and arrowed down towards the flock below. Skanis watched it merge with the pattern.
Now, it was his turn.
Skanis gripped the vane with both hands. He felt the flickers of pain down his back and the wrenching in the places where his ribs met his spine. He gasped out loud as, even through the high scream of the wind, he could hear the sound of bone cracking and skin tearing.
Finally, with a wonderful wash of agony, his wings were fully spread.
They were beautiful. Skin – his own and donated from dozens of specimens in Urviel’s lab – was spread across a framework of carved and hollowed bone. Scalloped lengths of flesh formed feather-like trailing edges. Urviel had carefully spliced new veins and arteries into the muscle, and they ran in a pulsing spider’s web across Skanis’ whole wingspan.
Skanis could have hung there forever, letting the knifing wind ignite the pain receptors of his new wings. But he had not come this far just for the sensation. That kind of quest was for the vermin of Commorragh, who destroyed themselves looking for a new experience to cloud over their misery. He opened his eyes, bunched up the grafted muscles in his legs, and launched himself off the spiretop.
The wind caught his wings and he flew straight across the top of the cloud layer. Protective membranes slid across his eyes to protect them from the wind. He hurtled, gathering speed, and angled his wings to soar up in a loop so fast and wide he thought he would breach Commorragh’s atmosphere entirely. But then he reached the apex and dived again, pulled up to skim the smog layer, and left a rippling wake of disturbed smoke as he went.
Another spiretop rushed past beneath him. He glimpsed an eyrie built into its architecture – a nest-like structure where others like him survived far above the darkness of the city. He saw their wings, some feathered and some bat-like, and their masks that resembled narrow raptor beaks. They watched him as he soared overhead, and raised their daggers and swords in salute.
There were more spires too, stretching off further than Skanis’ altered eyes could see. They had their own eyries, their own new angels, whose place was so far above the streets that they lived in another world.
The Scourges were the drukhari who had escaped Commorragh. They roosted in its abandoned spiretops and flew the air currents above the clouds. They were his people now, his species, apart from the rest of this miserable society. Skanis would find them and join them in abandoning the desperate cruelty of the drukhari. He would finally find what he had never had in the kabal – his own kind. He would be new. He would be complete.
The sensations of the flight were so overwhelming he didn’t notice the wound on his forearm opening up again. The slashes in his leg and ribs were pulled apart too, and fresh blood flowed from them, dissipating in droplets into the wind. He left a trail of red as he circled and dived.
The blood fell through the cloud layer and into the swirling flock of razorwings. The creatures caught the scent and formed into a great dark wave of bodies, swelling upwards to hunt down the source.
Skanis did not notice them until the first of them broke his line of sight and soared above him. He banked and flew with his new companion in the sky. Another joined it, then a dozen more, and as one they hurtled down at him head-on.
Where they passed him in mid-air, their knife-sharp feathers sliced deep into his skin. He cried out and tumbled, having to fight to stay aloft. More of the flock darted at him, slashing at him with every pass. His blood showered down and drove their feeding frenzy higher.
Skanis twisted and dropped to get out of the heart of the flock, but the lure of his blood kept them on him as if they were each tied to Skanis’ body by an invisible thread.
One tiny shape detached itself from the swooping mass of razorwings. Its uncertain wings took it on a wide, halting loop until it fell back down towards Skanis, folding its wings back as it gained speed.
Skanis just saw it as it shot towards him. The razorwing chick he had rescued from the gutters outside Kaledari Spire.
The chick arrowed straight into Skanis’ left eye.
Skanis cried out as the razorwing thrashed in his eye socket. He lost control of his flight and he fell, spinning end over end, into the cloud layer. His wings were tatters now. A hundred wounds sprayed blood into a fine red mist around him. The razorwings followed him, slashing and devouring as he fell.
The pet grotesque loped eagerly down the alleyway at the scent of putrefaction. Urviel followed it through the gloom, tossing bones and body parts into the hide bag carried by a second grotesque beside him. Each grotesque had been made of the same scraps he found here in the lowest levels of Commorragh, where the trash of the spires eventually found a way into Urviel’s domain.
It was a good day. Something had happened up on Kaledari Spire and the bodies were still falling. Fresh corpses, still wearing the garb of a great lord’s courtiers, were littering the gutter-levels. Urviel had almost filled the bag with severed limbs and caved-in heads.
‘What have you found?’ the haemonculus hissed as the lead grotesque snuffled and growled at a heap on the ground. Urviel approached to see a pale, thin-limbed shape, broken against the stone where it had landed.
Urviel recognised the tattered wings that still clung to the corpse’s back, and the unnaturally elongated bone structure.
‘Hmm, yes, one of mine,’ said Urviel. Patients and experiments came and went and Urviel no longer recalled names or faces, but he knew the pattern of feathered skin along the edge of the wing. Urviel lifted the draping tatters of membrane for a closer look. ‘Did I know your name?’ He paused. ‘Yes. You thought you would be the one in a thousand who finds the eyries of the Scourges. But now you have come back to me. They always do.’
The grotesque gathered up the shattered body and threw it into the hide bag. U
rviel’s harvest for the day was complete, and it had been good. No matter how many drukhari came to be altered on his slab, no matter what dreams they had of moving beyond Commorragh, they always came back to him in the end. Another would come tomorrow, with the same dream, and the city would drag him back down, too. His flesh would become part of Urviel’s next creation. Commorragh was a living thing. This was its life cycle.
Commorragh would hunger again. And there would always be another to feed it.
FLAYED
Cavan Scott
Alundra was running, feet pounding on the dirt-covered road. She’d run everywhere all her life, always in a hurry. This way and that. Always being told to calm down – to stop and take a breath. She couldn’t stop today. No one could, not if they wanted to live.
She turned a corner, tearing into a paved side alley, the soles of her sandals slipping on the slick flagstones. Something wet. She didn’t look down to see what it was, didn’t want to know.
Seventeen years she’d lived in the township. Her entire life. She knew every corner, recognised every sound: the chirp of the birds, the braying of the grox in the fields to the south, the clamour of market day. Not today. Today there were no birds and no bustle – only screams and explosions and the incessant rattle of shots being fired.
There had been raids before. Of course there had. Perversely, the attacks had become just as much a part of life as the daily grind of washing and cleaning. They had learned how to deal with them, the people of Sandran. At first sight of the invaders, a bell would sound, the streets clearing immediately. The rich would make for their bunkers, the poor to whichever crumbling hab they called home. Raid shutters nailed against windows, families huddling together in the dark, praying that they wouldn’t be found.
Alundra could still remember her first time. A strange brew of absolute terror and the comforting smell of her mother, drawing her in tight and whispering gently in her ear. It will be over soon, my darling, just you see.
So many memories. Cautiously emerging onto the streets when the danger had passed, assessing the damage.
Clearing away the bodies.
So many bodies.
She’d seen her first corpse at the age of six, running into her aunt’s hab after a raid and discovering that one of the monsters had materialised behind the shutters, within the imagined safety of the four walls.
Alundra had lost count of how many raids there had been since then. How many sleepless nights cringing in the darkness, listening to the screams.
But this time was different. This time, everyone was going to die.
There had been no peal, no warning. Just the roar of engines in the sky.
The Flayers were close behind, drawn to bloodshed like dust moths to a flame.
Her grandfather had warned them when she was just a kid. The old man had found Alundra fighting her brother one blazing summer afternoon, the two of them trying to claw each other’s eyes out. There hadn’t been a raid in two years, maybe three. Grandfather’s calloused hands had pulled her from Husim, still kicking and screaming. It wasn’t anything unusual. Husim and Alundra were always scrapping, too similar in temperament. Headstrong. Stubborn.
It had been the first time she’d ever heard Grandfather raise his voice.
‘Don’t you realise what you’re doing? The Flayers can sense violence from two systems away. Do you want to bring them back, risk another raid?’
‘That’s rubbish,’ Husim had sneered, full of childish arrogance. ‘They don’t exist. Galeb says. It’s all lies.’
That night the bell sounded. All four generations of the family next door were slain. Husim and Alundra promised never to fight again.
As if that was ever going to happen.
Where was he? Alundra had already tried two of her brother’s usual hangouts. One had been abandoned; the other had already been raided. She couldn’t identify the remains, but the clothes didn’t look like Husim’s, even under all that gore.
Behind her, Alundra could hear the heavy tramp of booted feet, the all-too-familiar bark of handguns. They were close. Too close. She took a corner fast, belting down the narrow gap between two shops. There was an alley behind the buildings. She could avoid the main roads, make her way to Torin’s place. If he couldn’t come home, Husim would have gone there, probably dragging hapless Galeb with him.
‘Frag, no.’
Alundra skidded to a halt, kicking up a plume of dust. A dead-end; tall redbrick buildings boxing her in. How could she have gone the wrong way? She ran over to the far wall, trying the solitary door’s handle. Locked. Of course it was. There were a couple of windows on the upper levels, but was it worth chancing the old pipes that snaked down to a heap of barrels in the corner? No, she should head back to the main streets, get her bearings. Time was running out.
Alundra spun on her heels and felt the blood freeze in her veins. A ghoul stood in the entrance to the alleyway, swaying back and forth, hungry red eyes fixed on her. It seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move, the noonday sun reflecting off what little of its metal frame was exposed. Its grimacing skull was still visible, as was a blood-smeared chest-plate and long, knife-like fingers. The rest of its body was bound tightly in gory strips of human skin. Some of the bands looked old, like brittle leather baked in the sun, while others looked disturbingly fresh, edges caked in rapidly drying blood.
A Flayer.
Alundra had heard the name during her first raid. Grandfather had gathered her near, gently explaining what they were hiding from.
‘They are daemons, my child, mechanical devils forged from steel and fury. They come to Sandran for one reason and one reason alone – to gorge on any living soul they encounter. They exist only to feed a hunger that can never be sated.’
Even as a child the very idea had seemed illogical.
‘But they are machines, Grandfather,’ Alundra had pointed out. ‘They don’t need to eat, do they?’ The old man had merely shaken his head sadly. He didn’t answer all of her questions that day. She’d asked where they came from, but he said he didn’t know, no one did. She asked what happened to the bodies of their victims. He’d just sent her to help her mother, but not before warning her that they would strike again. The inevitability in his voice was more chilling than the stories of the ghouls themselves.
It was only later she discovered how the Flayers earned their name – how the lifeless raiders wore the skins of their victims on their metal backs, a trophy for every kill. Some went even further, carrying exuviated torsos as grisly standards, testament to their madness.
Perhaps he had been trying to protect what little of her innocence was left. Maybe he had been right to. Three years later she glimpsed a Flayer through a gap in the raid shutters, watching in horror as it shaved the skin from the medicae as easily as someone might peel an apple. From that day on, her nightmares were filled with tarnished skeletons appearing from nowhere. That was the thing that actually scared her the most. Not the butchery itself, but the fact that the Flayers simply shimmered into being. No spaceships descending from on high or smouldering drop pods crashing to earth. These mechanical devils just materialised from thin air, flensing talons scraping together in fevered anticipation.
Just like the abomination standing before her.
The Flayer cocked its head one way and then the other, as if trying to ease out a crick in its neck, the fractured skulls it wore as a belt clattering as it swayed.
Who’s going to make the first move? Alundra asked herself, amazed she was even capable of rational thought in such a situation. Who’s going to run?
Time seemed to slow down, seconds stretching into minutes, hours, before she realised what she was going to do. She had always been fast, but could she outrun a Flayer? Only one way to find out.
Alundra feinted to the left as if she was going to attempt to run past it. The ghoul responded how s
he had hoped, racing forward to intercept, claws outstretched.
The gambit paid off, a move perfected over years of playing ball games with her brother and his friends, having to match their strength with fast feet and cunning. She immediately doubled back, racing for the barrels. She leapt on top of the containers, grabbing for the perilous drainpipe.
Realising its mistake, the Flayer dived towards her, talons closing around Alundra’s ankle. She screamed as the Flayer yanked, the rusty metal of the pipe stripping the skin from her palms as she slipped back down.
Kicking back with her free leg, Alundra somehow managed to find the Flayer’s head, although her thin leather sole was little use against a living metal skull. The raider grabbed at her, one of its claws piercing the back of her calf, not deep, but enough to remind her that this was a battle she could never win.
She would die here, in a litter-strewn alley, a crazed raider carving her up like a cheap grox steak. Worst of all, she would never see her brother again.
The alleyway erupted with the thunder of gunfire. Alundra felt the robot’s claws whip away, looking down to see the Flayer flatten against the wall, shells punching into its body in quick succession. She followed the line of fire to its source, a giant stomping into the alleyway, an excessively large bolter held steady in a gloved hand. Her saviour was clad head-to-toe in heavy monochrome power armour, a winged skull emblazoned across a monumental chest. A similar death’s head was displayed on its bone-white pauldron, this skull painted over a pair of crossed ebony scythes.
The Death Spectres, another name whispered by Grandfather all those years ago: a Chapter of Space Marines dedicated to protecting humanity from the terrors of the Ghoul Stars. No, that wasn’t right. Dedicated to protecting the Imperium. There was a difference.
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