by Rob Sanders
The legionnaire could guess who the second figure was. Clad in ash-smeared plate, Lord Occam turned slowly on the star beneath the gaze of dread daemon entities. Ragged cultists chanted. Diabolists went about their rituals. As the strike master’s head lolled around on the creaking wheel, Malik’s body tensed within his armour. Malik had listened to his commander’s fate over the open vox-channel. He had his orders but Lord Occam was before him now. A prisoner, whose flesh was being offered – like Goura Shengk’s – for daemonic possession.
Malik looked around. His cloak – disguised as stapled daemonhide – covered his weaponry. He felt for his long-shot plasma gun, his boltgun, grenades and power blade. He was surrounded by cultists and censer-swinging priests, but they were nothing to a renegade Space Marine. Within moments, the crowd would be a mound of broken bodies. The legionnaire hesitated. Looking through the forest of Chaos stars staked out across the Constellation Fields, Malik could see all manner of daemons – like watchdogs – stalking through contested souls and warping flesh. Grotesque servo-skulls hovered overhead, their pict-feeds no doubt feeding back to the Word Bearers who had ordered such punishments. Beyond them, in the shattered sky above, daemon monstrosities could be seen. Eyes, inhuman in their vigilance and full of predatory intent, were everywhere. They looked down on the Shrine of Iron, ever watchful.
The strike master’s head came back around again. Malik was relieved to see that as yet, Occam had not suffered spiritual invasion and a damning of the flesh. The ash about his eyes and head was dark with moisture. Malik could only imagine the physical exertion of the wheel, the spiritual resistance required by the strike master and the torment suffered on the star, as daemons tried to claim their offered victim. Tears and dirty beads of sweat rolled across Lord Occam’s shaved head to drop to the daemon world earth.
As the strike master’s head lolled back and upside down, Malik saw his eyelids open. At first, the legionnaire thought his master was dead – or worse, that his body had become home to some parasitic daemon entity. Malik didn’t find lifeless eyes or the black doll’s eyes of a possessed warrior; he saw glistening eyes still full of fight and determination. As the wheel turned, Lord Occam shook his head slightly – imperceptible to the diabolists offering his Alpha Legion flesh as a vessel to daemons hungry for the taste of mortality. Malik saw it, and nodded his helm slowly in return. Drawing his cloak about the bulk of his plate, the legionnaire pressed on as a drizzle of crystal slivers began to fall from the sky.
Following directions that Goura Shengk had shared with the strike master on board the Iota-Æternus, Malik made his way through the Constellation Fields, through the ruins of the long-collapsed Church of the Righteous Darkness and broke into the catacomb-archives beneath the Cathedra Nox.
In his disguise, hunched beneath his daemonhide cloak, Malik explored the labyrinthine nightmare of the Word Bearers’ secret repositories. The passageways twisted and turned. Some sections had collapsed under the weight of the fallen structures above and the mighty cathedral on top.
The legionnaire moved down through the infernal tombs and catacombs. Thousands of Word Bearers had been interred there. Warped bones and horned skulls sat in coffins of blasted plate. High-ranking cultists and benighted priests made offerings in sacrificial chambers. The final screams of victims slaughtered on obsidian altars and the laughter of appeased entities rang through the depths.
Malik passed diabolists dragging feral daemonhosts in silver chains. Cultist archivists busied themselves recovering dread texts for their Word Bearers masters and cataloguing dark artefacts. Daemon creatures stalked through the labyrinth on their own foetid business, the unholy glow of their eyes visible in the distant darkness. As a Word Bearers acolyte appeared out of the same impenetrable gloom, marching in the other direction to Malik, the legionnaire kept his head down. Speaking in a strange tongue that the Alpha Legion renegade didn’t understand, the acolyte came to a creaking stop in the faded infernal glory of his ornate plate.
Looking about for skulking daemons and tome-laden archivists, Malik stepped into a catacomb alcove and directed the acolyte to follow with his gauntlet. Even in his daemon world dialect, the legionnaire could tell that the Word Bearer was upset. Stepping after him with rasping remonstrations spilling from his helm grille, the Word Bearer closed with him.
Spinning around, Malik grabbed the traitor about his armoured throat and pushed him back against the crumbling stone of the alcove wall. Pulling his power dagger out from beneath the folds of his cloak, Malik brought the weapon up with force and precision, hammering it into the Word Bearer’s chest. He held him there for a moment like an assassin, intending his foe to die quietly in the corner. As the Word Bearer heaved back with the strength of an altered, Malik began to realise that he had underestimated his enemy. Forcing the Alpha Legionnaire against the opposite wall of the alcove, their armoured boots scuffling in the dust of the catacombs, the acolyte plunged his gauntlet down into his holster to produce an ancient bolt pistol.
Slashing the power blade down like a machete, Malik hacked the pistol and gauntlet off at the wrist. With the weapon on the floor, the legionnaire batted the Word Bearer back. Slamming him into the wall once more, he held him there and stabbed the traitor again and again in the breastplate. With his corrupted hearts ruined and gore cascading down his plate, the acolyte slipped down the wall. Malik held him the precious seconds it took for his rasping breaths to come to a haggard stop. Heaving the armoured corpse into an empty catacomb, Malik kicked at the disintegrating wall to bury the puddle of tell-tale gore in rock dust and rubble, before swiftly moving on.
Crooked corridors led the legionnaire to vast libraries, where the stone shelves crumbled beneath the weight of damned tomes, grimoires and tracts written by corrupted cardinals, Dark Apostles and daemon princes.
As he descended down through the cursed earth of the daemon world, reality began to break down. Up became down, with dislodged stones falling towards the ceiling. Shadow turned to a blinding daemonic light. The twisting corridors became filled with a ghostly fire, through which Malik walked.
Goura Shengk’s directions eventually led the legionnaire through sentient stone gates and a portcullis that rumbled at his approach. In the depths of the catacomb-archives, with the walls, floor and ceiling covered in the scribbled madness of incantations, Malik came to a network of half-collapsed caverns. The air was thick with ancient evil and the very stone of the crumbling structure felt infested with the presence of infernal entities. The floors of the archives were covered in Chaos stars, pentagrams and circles of glowing, unholy runes. They overlapped and intersected like a diagram. In each, Malik saw there were collections of mouldering artefacts. Ancient weaponry possessed by evil spirits. Blasphemous representations, draped with charms and religious icons venerating Dark Gods. Heretical technologies of human and xenos origin that crackled and interacted unnaturally. Cursed objects and containers leaking foul corruption into one another.
As Malik progressed through the caverns, objects moved of their own accord. Artefacts seemed to whisper their depravity to him. Chambers seemed to repeat themselves. Eventually the legionnaire came to a central hub – a cavern whose obsidian pillars held up the strata of crushed ruins and the weight of the Cathedra Nox. The darkness of the obsidian swirled with the strength of horrific entities.
The chamber was busy with cultists. Senior diabolists in robes of black and gold chanted unholy litanies about altars and Dark Mechanicum technologies. Daemon cyborgs in ragged robes, leaking the filth of corruption, worked on ruinous artefacts and entity-infused technologies. Hideous, horned monsters watched their progress while a pair of Dark Apostles in bleeding plate gave instructions in the same Ghalmekian tongue Malik had heard spoken by other Word Bearers.
This wasn’t going to be easy, the legionnaire decided, moving back into the adjoining chamber. Looking about, Malik started pulling melta bombs from beneath his cloak. Priming their timers, the legionnaire crept carefully abou
t the circles of damned artefacts and began setting them up on crumbling pillars and the rusted structural supports about the entrances.
Advancing into the central hub and around the choirs of cultists, Malik marked time by watching the daemon priests of the Dark Mechanicum work on one of their foul instruments. On an altar contained within a framework-globe of interlinked Chaos stars, Malik spotted the piece of ancient xenos technology that the strike master had described to him. It was small enough to be held in a gauntlet. A midnight black polyhedron in slick motion, with sections continually revolving, unlocking and interlocking to form new shapes. With moving edges outlined in an eye-stinging green radiance, the alien object hinted at a strange source of energy within.
This was the Tesseraqt – the object Omizhar Vohk had described to Lord Occam and Lord Occam to the legionnaire. Understanding it to be some kind of containment field generator, Malik tried to get a better look. Goura Shengk’s Word Bearers had stolen the artefact from the Inquisition and returned it to the Shrine of Iron: now Dark Mechanicum priests, diabolists and daemon creatures had taken an interest in the dread item. Bombarding it with curse-fields, rancid augurs and ritual ceremony, the catacomb archivists were intent on finding a way into the piece of alien technology.
With his back to one of the obsidian columns, Malik attached a final melta bomb to the impossible structure. With all eyes on the Tesseraqt he then edged unnoticed towards a chamber exit not rigged to blow. As he did, one of the daemon monsters observing the delicate investigations of the priests momentarily sniffed the air – as though he could smell Malik’s intentions or the stench of unwarped flesh.
The detonations in the first chamber went off, melta bombs vaporising the structural supports. The caverns shook. A thunder rolled through the catacombs, followed by a dust cloud that billowed through the hub. The air thick with the sound of pulverising rock and dust, Malik withdrew further and cycled his optics. Moving between spectra filters that showed the cultists, priests and daemonic entities, the legionnaire’s augmented vision cut through the murk. He watched the gathering back away from the entrance to the collapsing chamber in shock. Even the robed daemons seemed skittish, the malevolence of their brute forms standing no more chance of survival if the Cathedra Nox came crashing down on them than the weakling cultists.
As the rumbling faded and the air thickened, the priests of the Dark Mechanicum began to take stock of the disaster. Malik heard the Dark Apostles on their vox-links, communicating with brothers on the daemonworld surface. While surprised by the event, none of the gathering panicked. The detonation had been lost in the unfolding thunder of the collapse, which Malik supposed was inevitable from time to time. Also, given the volatility of the possessed artefacts and xenos technologies stored in the catacomb-archives, explosive interaction was always a possibility. When the final melta bomb took out part of the obsidian pillar, however, caution prevailed. Cultists fled the chamber. The Word Bearers withdrew, their communications with the surface becoming ever more urgent. Daemonic creatures slunk back into the shadowy murk of other chambers while Dark Mechanicum priests hastily started to prepare the Tesseraqt for transportation.
Malik ventured forth. Having partially collapsed the adjoining chamber by design and leaving all other mighty pillars of the hub intact, the legionnaire was confident in his advance. Striding through escaping cultists, who simply took his armoured outline to be one of their Word Bearers overlords, he moved in on the priests. As their sickly optics blinked incomprehension, Malik put them down one by one. Thudding silenced Stalker rounds from his bolt pistol into the hooded, cranial cogitators of the Dark Mechanicum priests, the legionnaire scooped up the barbed globe of Chaos stars dropped by the senior construct. He smashed it into the ground and the iron cage fell apart. The forces suspending the Tesseraqt within were broken. Picking up the black cube, Malik saw that it continued to transform on the outstretched palm of his gauntlet.
As he stared at the alien object, the Alpha Legionnaire heard the infernal growl of daemons stalking him through the murk. They sniffed at his betrayal with flared nostril-slits and watched him with the burning of their eyes. He secured the Tesseraqt on his belt. Positioning his bolt pistol under one arm, he aimed the weapon through his cloak at their skulking approach. Malik could hear claws scraping on the archive floor and knew he was being rushed. The legionnaire blasted at the monsters, pumping bolt rounds that tore through the material of his cloak. Feeling one fell creature at his back, he spun around and dropped his pistol. He grabbed his plasma gun, turned and blazed a staccato of close-range orbs into the thing until, shrieking and thrashing, the daemon was blasted back.
Bounding over the bodies of its infernal kindred, a red-fleshed fiend barged the suffering creature aside and launched itself at Malik. Moments later, the legionnaire found himself crashing to the floor – the savage daemon tearing into him with snaggle-fanged jaws and claws.
With his plasma gun knocked aside, Malik grabbed the thing by the throat and tried to push it up and away from him. The beast was wild with infernal strength and fury, clawing and snapping at the legionnaire. Patting the rubble-strewn ground nearby with his other gauntlet, Malik found his way to his abandoned pistol. Snatching it up, he thrust the muzzle into the red flesh of the creature’s side and thudded round after round into the daemon’s unnatural flesh. Still, the monster came at him. As the pistol clunked empty, Malik allowed it to fall away. Slipping his power blade from its sheath on his belt, the legionnaire stabbed at the cratered ruin of the beast’s midriff. With ichor streaming down his gauntlet, Malik thrust the weapon deep into the monster, ripping through its innards until finally its savagery subsided and it slouched still on top of him.
Heaving the daemon’s corpse off his torn plate, Malik got back to his feet. Sheathing his blade and recovering his battered plasma gun, the legionnaire recovered both his pistol and the alien Tesseraqt. He aimed the glowing barrel of his weapon through the murk and dust. All about him, the structure creaked and cracked. The stone of columns and ancient walls was being slowly pulverised by the colossal weight of the Cathedra Nox. Confident that the Word Bearers had withdrawn to safety and that no more daemon entities stalked him through the obscurity, Malik left the chamber. His mission complete, the legionnaire scrabbled through the thick dust and rubble, making for the surface.
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Political Animal
Occam became aware of deviant souls gathering out on the Constellation Fields. He had little idea how long he had been turning on the creaking iron wheel. With his armoured wrists and ankles lashed to the Chaos star, the strike master had been offered to the daemon swarm glinting in the shattered skies of Ghalmek. The malevolence of corrupt entities, reflected in the shards of crystallised warp smothering the planet, hungered for Occam’s spirit. They fought for possession of the strike master’s soul as his plate and the revolving star became encrusted with a mixture of ash drifting down from the manufacturing districts and a drizzle of silver slivers.
It hurt to open his eyes. The lids were heavy with a fatigue both physical and spiritual. Under a mask of settled ash, his face ached as the perpetual spiritual agony twisted his expression. About him, Occam saw that priests, warped pilgrims and robed daemons had gathered on the track running alongside to observe his torment. Diabolists chanted and droned, while armoured Word Bearers stood guard nearby.
As time passed the numbers and interest grew. Turning on another star next to him, Occam was aware of Goura Shengk. While the strike master fought off the soul-starved attentions of daemonic entities with every ounce of his being, the Word Bearer had freely offered himself to the corrupting darkness. He groaned continuously, his gasps and cries a haunting catalogue of unimaginable experiences, a simultaneous agony and relief that wracked the Word Bearer’s body. Entities had fought over Shengk’s soul like some kind of prize. Occam had listened as a conquering daemon wormed its way into the Word Bearer’s being. Taking residence in his flesh and becoming possessed of Sheng
k’s soul, the monstrous entity made the Word Bearer its home. Occam heard its voice mixed in with the Dark Apostle’s own – its glee threading through his sufferings. The strike master listened to the horrible rupturing of flesh, the warping of bone and the growth of claw and horn. All the while, Goura Shengk became something else: a thing he had been before Occam had rescued him from the exorcists and interrogators of the Inquisition.
As for Occam himself, he had felt the tug of daemons tearing at his soul. His ears were full of infernal threats and promises, while a living nightmare of daemonic visions played before his eyes. He felt the predatory intentions of entities attempting to corrupt his soul and infest his flesh. All failed.
Occam’s soul was strong. Fortified by his secret faith and with his soul still pledged to the God-Emperor, the Alpha Legion strike commander withstood the temptations of darkness and futures promised to him, and the monstrosity of daemons attempting to force their way into his being with spiritual savagery. Despite the torments of soul and flesh, Occam managed to resist them all. He had taken precautions.
Summoning the High Serpent and the best inkers among the Seventh Sons, Occam had lain naked across the altar within the Chapel of the Immaculate Ascension. With needles stabbing across the surface of his skin, Occam had ordered that the death cultists transcribe onto his flesh the ancient hexagrammic wards, purity seals, extracts from the Lectitio Divinitatus and sigils of banishment that decorated both the altar itself and the recovered flags surrounding the holy object. Like something unnatural in a sea of swarming behemoths, Occam was swallowed and spat out by creature after daemonic creature. His soul burned those entities attempting to smother it with their tentacled embrace, while his flesh was better protected from daemonic possession by the inked wards and sigils than by any plate or field.
