by Darius Hinks
Stay with us,+ he repeated.
Mephiston’s face was rigid with pain and tiny cracks were spreading from his eye sockets, spidering across his sunken cheeks and leaking a strange, ink-like darkness.
We have to be quick, Rhacelus. We must cure this blindness and return to the Blood Oath. I have to find that daemon while I can still think clearly.+
‘What is your current situation?’ Rhacelus asked Llourens.
Llourens was staring at Mephiston, too distracted to reply.
‘Sergeant,’ said Rhacelus.
‘Forgive me, my lord. The current situation? The ancients’ activity on the surface is destabilising the whole mine complex. Routes I’ve travelled safely since childhood are becoming impassable. There are cave-ins almost daily. We’ve made no attempts to drive the xenos out in my lifetime, despite the captain regularly talking of offensives. He’s right about the regeneration points. We have no idea where the ancients are reborn. But if we did attack them I’m sure we could still achieve something. Even if we could just learn something about their plans – find out why they’re here. Anything would be better than this slow, pointless death.’ She gripped her gun. ‘If we can aid you in any way, it would be an honour. Just give us a chance. Don’t judge us by what you see in Captain Elias. Let us prove what we can do.’
Rhacelus nodded but before he could reply, Mephiston spoke up.
‘What is a blisterman? You mentioned them earlier.’
‘The local abhumans, my lord,’ screeched Vidiens, before she could answer. ‘A species of ogryn.’
‘Yes,’ said Llourens as they approached the archway. ‘Gene-bred miners. Before the arrival of the ancients, there was a large population – many millions, scattered across the whole planet, manning each of the bastion mines. Now there are only a few, living beneath the cantons, hiding in some of the oldest pits and tunnels. They were created to endure almost anything, so they survive in even the most irradiated levels – places that we dare not enter. The radiation has done strange things to them though. They are changed. Most of them are half blind, but their other senses are heightened. They move around the mines as easily as we do.’
‘They do not live with the rest of the population?’ asked Rhacelus.
‘No,’ replied Llourens, shocked by the suggestion. ‘They’re an aberration, my lord – more beast than human. Mutants. They were part of the original colonisation of Morsus, and they were trusted servants in those early days, but rad-sickness has changed them beyond all recognition.’ She shrugged. ‘But they keep to themselves and we don’t have the men to hunt them down, so we learned to tolerate them. They have never shown any aggression towards us and I’ve seen evidence that they still battle the ancients in some of the lower levels.’
Something about her words resonated in Mephiston’s mind. He sensed that there was a connection he should be making, but the dead were now a furious storm, spiralling around him and screaming in anguish. It was hard to think of anything but the need to keep moving, so he nodded and waved her on.
Llourens led them all from the hall and they began the descent into the lower levels. The cold started to fade, replaced by a throbbing, ion-charged heat that radiated from beneath their feet. The shadows became longer, intersected by lines of vivid, cool light, shearing up from below.
The Blood Angels scoured the empty tunnels as they passed them, peering down the sights of their guns, but there was no movement and they made good speed. The Sabine Guard were an unsavoury rabble, but Mephiston noticed that they moved through the precarious rubble with surprising ease, vaulting yawning chasms and clambering over collapsed walls.
‘They may have more uses than simply showing us the route,’ said Rhacelus.
Mephiston could barely hear him. His head was being torn apart by a chorus of shrieks and curses. ‘Keep moving,’ he muttered, trying to discern a path amongst the whirling shadows.
After an hour or so, they reached a landslide and the passage ended at a wall of rubble and twisted pipes.
Llourens was still at the head of the Guardsmen and, at the sight of the dead end, she spat a curse and looked back the way they had come. ‘We’ll have to return to the last spur,’ she said, pained.
‘No,’ said the leader of the Space Marines – the one who had introduced himself as Mephiston. He strode past her, gesturing for the one called Rhacelus to follow.
Without a word, the two warriors knelt side by side and closed their eyes, heads bowed, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords.
Llourens looked back at the other Blood Angels for an explanation but they said nothing, watching her in silence from behind their visors.
After a few moments, the ground around the two Space Marines began to bubble and seethe. Steam rolled off their armour in rivulets and their blades, still embedded in the ground, pulsed with inner fire. Heat rushed forwards from where they knelt and washed over the foot of the cave-in.
The wall collapsed with a crash, sending waves of mud and hissing metal down the tunnel to crash against the shins of Llourens and the other soldiers.
Llourens stared in amazement and for a moment she was unable to speak.
‘We’ll reach the groundcars in a few hours, my lord,’ she said, managing to keep her voice level. ‘We keep a few of them in working order for when we need a quick exit.’ She shook her head, recovering her composure enough to smile. ‘I never guessed we’d be using them to head towards the enemy.’
The ancient tracks were rusted and warped, and the groundcars made a tremendous din as they carried Mephiston and the others deeper into the mines. The tunnels echoed with squeals and clangs, making it clear that they would not be able to approach the necrons with any kind of stealth.
‘Looks like we should expect a reception,’ said Rhacelus, raising his voice over the noise. He was standing behind Mephiston in the first car, along with Llourens, Captain Elias and a few of the Guardsmen. Servatus and the other Blood Angels were in the other cars, along with the rest of the Sabine Guard.
Llourens, who was crouching on the floor of the car, looked up at him, excitement still gleaming in her eyes. ‘They don’t fight in any normal way, my lord. We’ve never been able to work out what signals they respond to, but they’re not what you’d expect. This noise will make no difference. If they attack it will be for some perverse reason of their own.’
The lower they went, the brighter it got. The Blood Angels’ genetically enhanced eyes adjusted easily, but Llourens and the other humans were forced to clip thick, black-tinted goggles to their masks. Most of them had painted white rat faces on their masks, and the goggles lent them an even more rodent-like appearance.
The ghosts of Mephiston’s past kept pace, swarming over the cars and swirling through the tunnels. With rat-like soldiers all around him and the tumbling clouds of lost souls, Mephiston felt like he was part of a divine experiment – racing along a predetermined path to some forgone conclusion. He waved for Vidiens to approach and the servitor fluttered towards him, still cradling the large brass plate.
Mephiston took the salver and traced his route, running his finger over prophecies and charts he had spent years engraving into the metal. His search for the daemon had led him through several warzones since leaving Baal. Now, as he traced intersections and mouthed formulae, he saw quite clearly that his route had always been pointing here, to Morsus. The heretic he had been trailing to find the daemon had vanished in this sector. Morsus’ strange power had enveloped everything. An unexpected thought hit him. Is the witch here? Has she led me to the daemon’s lair?
‘Have you ever seen a priest down here?’ he asked, looking up from the salver and turning to Llourens.
‘Priests, my lord? There are some brothers of the Ministorum back at the Kysloth barracks. The Chapel-Master and a few others. They don’t venture out much though. Certainly not this far.’
Mephiston shook his head. ‘No, I mean a monk. Or he would look like a monk until you were close.’
Llourens was on the verge of replying when she was interrupted by the roar of necron weapons, hundreds of feet above on the planet’s surface. Rather than fading, the sound grew in volume, reverberating through the walls of the tunnel.
‘This is how it starts,’ she said, staring up at the rows of rusty, crooked support beams. ‘We should–’
The ceiling collapsed with a scream of ruptured metal. Rubble smashed into the groundcars, kicking them from their tracks and hurling them back down the tunnel. Tracks curled up like flames and rockcrete columns crashed down to meet them, unleashing tonnes of earth.
Mephiston tried to cry out an invocation but soil thundered into his mouth, before crushing him under its incredible weight. He was blind and deaf as the earth filled his eyes and ears. Darkness consumed him, burying him with his dead.
The years rolled away, returning him to the last time he had been crushed beneath rubble. He became Calistarius again – the Blood Angel he had been before the Angel Sanguinius elevated him, freeing him of the great flaw so he could be reborn as Mephiston.
His lungs burned, but a strange euphoria had overtaken him. If he was back on Hades Hive, he would soon see his saviour. He had revisited this moment in his mind countless times, seeking the truth of his rebirth, desperate for confirmation that his saviour had been Sanguinius. Perhaps now, as Morsus crushed him to its burning heart, he would finally see. Who had made him? Who had created the Lord of Death?
Again, Mephiston thought of the locket secreted in his armour. It was significant in a way he could not explain – there was a link to Hades Hive that eluded him.
The thought of the locket enraged the dead even more. They thrashed through the soil, screaming in his face, furious and deranged. Clouded eyes rolled in bloody sockets as the dead latched on to him, clutching with fleshless hands, mouthing voiceless accusations.
Mephiston reached deep into his soul, grasping currents of aetheric power. His throat was full of soil, so he recited the incantation in his mind, coaxing psychic fire from his limbs.
Warp fury ripped from his skin, bleeding out through his armour and driving back the dead. As the ghosts tumbled away from him, so did the ground. The immense weight of the landslide was nothing to the force blasting through Mephiston’s mind. Morsus had robbed him of prophecy and second sight, but he could still reach into the Great Rift, still harness those savage currents. Slowly, surely, he raised his arms, defying physics and moving soil and rock up and away from his body.
He drew a deep, ragged breath and a space opened around him in the darkness.
Rhacelus?+ he thought, driving the name through the earth.
Yes,+ came the reply. +I’m still here.+ Then, after a moment, +We must reach the other cars. Servatus and the others will be trapped.+
Mephiston felt a surge of power as the other Librarian joined minds with him. Togaether, they forced the soil back.
As the ground moved, creating a small cave in the rubble, the car jolted down a few feet before crashing back onto an exposed section of track.
Mephiston sent shards of thought through the walls and cool, unnatural light spilled across the contents of the truck. It was little more than a powered wagon, but the front end was covered in a small roof of corrugated metal. The roof was now bent out of recognition, but it had saved the life of the humans trapped beneath. By the force of their minds alone, the two Librarians made a trembling, dome-shaped cave, holding back the weight of the landslide.
Mephiston and Rhacelus climbed to their feet, dusting down their armour as they approached the front of the car.
Llourens was there, along with a dozen or so other soldiers and their captain, Elias. They were gasping and choking, clawing soil from their mouths and eyes, spitting gravel into their hands as they tried to breathe. One of them was vomiting inside his rubber suit. The hood had ripped and his mask was broken. Radiation burned into his body as he howled and thrashed on the floor of the truck. The other humans backed away, horrified and afraid, as his skin began to bubble and blacken.
Mephiston stepped forwards, drew Vitarus and ended the man’s suffering, whispering an oath as he pulled the sword from the corpse.
There was silence as Llourens and the others stared at their dead comrade. Mephiston looked into the crowd of spirits that were lashing at him, spitting curses as they tried to enter his mind. As he expected, Mephiston saw a new troupe of tormented souls clawing towards him: the man he had just killed, alongside all the soldiers who had died in the landslide. Many of them were still clawing at their mouths, not realising they were dead, thinking they could find a way to draw another breath. As the truth sank in, they fixed their straining eyes on Mephiston and they roared through the spectral crowd, howling and weeping.
‘Brother-Lieutenant Servatus,’ he said, opening the vox-network.
‘Chief Librarian,’ came the reply. Servatus’ voice was muffled and strange. ‘I am with Sergeant Agorix and some of his squad. The others are nearby. We all survived the cave-in.’ Servatus hesitated. ‘The humans are crushed beneath the rubble, Lord Mephiston.’ He paused and Mephiston heard terrified voices, screaming, calling out for help. ‘We can do nothing for them. We are trapped. I cannot move.’ He paused again, allowing more of the panicked screams to ring through the vox. ‘They are suffocating.’
Llourens and the other soldiers looked around in horror at the earth that was hanging over them. The promethium glow flashed on their masks as they turned to Mephiston, waiting for his response.
‘What are your orders, Chief Librarian?’ asked Servatus.
‘We continue,’ said Mephiston, turning back to Llourens. ‘Before the mine collapsed, how far did we still have to go? How far to the Infernum?’
She stared back at him. ‘They’re dying.’ The vox-network was still open and they could all hear the cries for help.
‘They are dead,’ said Mephiston. He looked from Llourens to the spirits only he could see. Sure enough, a host of new accusers was appearing, gripping their throats, still trying to breathe.
He nodded to the wall of the cave, where the tracks disappeared into the rubble. ‘We must not stop. That might have been a deliberate attack. There was a change of air pressure before the blast – did you hear it?’
Rhacelus nodded. ‘Gauss weapons. The xenos have disintegrated the superstructure. It may be just another pointless strike on the surface though.’
‘We cannot wait here to find out,’ said Mephiston.
Captain Elias had been lying on the floor of the car, watching the exchange in stunned silence, but now he rose to his feet and spoke up. He was so drunk he had lost some of his fear of Mephiston. ‘The ancients?’ His words were badly slurred. ‘We need to get back to the barracks!’
Mephiston pressed the hilt of his force sword against the captain’s chest. The metal shimmered with psychic heat and Elias gasped as Mephiston pinned him to the wall.
‘The ancients never fight with any kind of logic,’ said Llourens. ‘They’ve destabilised all the tunnels but the attacks are random. They wouldn’t–’
‘You’re a fool!’ spat Elias. ‘You’ll lead all of us to our deaths.’
Mephiston felt like beheading the drunken wretch, but he hesitated, interested to see how the sergeant would respond. He could see years of pent-up rage about to spill from her lips.
Another teeth-rattling explosion rocked the chamber. Stone and dust hurtled through the air and the car jolted back again, knocking the humans from their feet.
This time, Mephiston was prepared. As the blast hit, he stepped away from Elias and raised a hand, runes flickering into life across the palm of his gauntlet. Rocks halted in the air, just a few feet from his upturned face. Then, with a string of incomprehensible words, he drove the rubble back.
The car was now tilted to one side and the soldiers had fallen into a heap. As the air cleared, they climbed, coughing and spluttering, back to their feet.
‘That one was closer,’ said Rhacelus, holding his force sword aloft and adding his power to Mephiston’s. Runes pulsed into life along the ancient blades and, between them, they carved the chamber back into being.
‘We need to move,’ said Mephiston. ‘I must reach the Infernum before the whole complex caves in.’
‘The Sabine Guard may be dead,’ he added, turning to Rhacelus. ‘But our brothers are not. Dig them out of that hole while I clear a path forwards.’
Rhacelus knelt before the rear wall of the cave, resting his head on the hilt of his sword. He removed a vial of red liquid from his robes and hurled it at the wall. As it flowed, it formed into a glistening mesh of lines and runes. Next, he took a silver-bound book from his belt and read a single word in a long forgotten Baalite tongue. Flames leapt from his sword and ignited the characters he had daubed on the wall. As the words burned, they started to move, blazing brighter as they rotated in a circle. After a few seconds the circle was spinning so fast that it was impossible to read the characters. The air crackled with sparks of aetheric power that flickered across Rhacelus’ robes and sparked in his beard. He intoned a second word and another detonation rocked the chamber. The disc of light rushed away, blazing through the earth and carving a channel into the distance, bathed in the chemical glow of the rocks.
The humans had climbed back to their feet and were staring in mute awe at the hole Rhacelus had carved. Then they turned to look at Mephiston with equally dazed expressions. The vox-network was still open, but the screams of their comrades had ceased.
Mephiston looked at Llourens.
Her lips moved but no words emerged. She coughed and wiped her lips. ‘We’re nearly beneath the main gates. They’re about half a mile above our heads. If we keep on…’ Her words faltered. She nodded at the tunnel Rhacelus had burned. ‘Are you going to…?’
