Warhammer - Ultramarines 03 - Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, Graham)

by Graham McNeill

  Uriel looked up, coughing stringy, vomit-flecked spittle and said, 'Thank you, my friend.'

  Pasanius nodded and said, 'There. The entrance to the gymnasia should be through that cloister!'

  'Aye, it should be.' agreed Uriel pushing himself weakly to his feet. 'Let's just hope it is still there.'

  Uriel stumbled through the cloister and turned towards the entrance to the gymnasia.

  'Oh no...' he whispered as he saw what lay before him.

  Where he had expected to find the carven marble archway of the gymnasia, there was now a gargantuan gateway of brazen metal: bronze and laced with razorwire that led into a rectangular, earthen arena which was fully a kilomette wide and twice that in length. More incredible still, there was no roof to this arena, simply a lacerated crimson sky, flecked with cancerous, melanoma clouds. What new madness was this?

  Screaming, mad and insane like the wails of the damned in torment, echoed from within and pierced Uriel's skull with lancing, glass shards of pain.

  His stomach knotted in horrified disgust as the overpowering reek of fresh blood filled his senses.

  The soldiers of the 808th Macragge they had come to find were still here, but where there had once been a proud regiment of men and women ready to fight for the glory of the Emperor, there was now nothing more than the screaming, bloody shreds of those yet to die.

  Hundreds of soldiers writhed on the ground, splashing great gouts of blood around them as though fighting some subterranean attacker. Fleshless, bony hands reached up through the dark earth, clawing and grasping at their bodies and dragging them below the surface. Uriel ran through the gate, sword in hand, and felt his boots sink into the soft and loamy ground, crimson liquid oozing from the waterlogged earth.

  Bones and grinning skulls gleamed whitely through the red earth and Uriel saw that the ground was not waterlogged at all, but flooded with fresh-spilled blood.

  His mind reeled at the prospect. How many must have been drained of their life's blood to irrigate such a vast space so thoroughly? How many arteries had been emptied to slake the vile thirst of this dark, dark earth?

  Uriel was shaken from his disgust by the nearby screams of a man half submerged in the earth and weeping tears of agony.

  'Help me! For the love of the Emperor help me!' he shrieked.

  Uriel sheathed his sword and ran over to help the man, who reached up with pleading arms. The man's gore-slick hands slid from his gauntlets, but Uriel gripped his tunic and hauled him clear of the ground, staggering back in horror as he saw that the man had been stripped of flesh below the waist, his entire lower body flensed of muscle, meat and blood. Even as he watched, the hungry earth swallowed what remained of the dying man, unwilling to be cheated of its fleshy morsel.

  A sense of utter helplessness filled Uriel as he watched men and women devoured by the bloody ground, the monstrous sound of marrow being suckled from the bone echoing from the monolithic sides of this gory arena.

  'Blessed Emperor, no!' wailed Pasanius, fighting to save a howling woman from a similar fate. Laughing shadows ran like black mercury along the walls of the arena, a capering dance of souls that flared into the blood-red sky as the slaughter of thousands concluded.

  A sudden silence descended upon the arena as the last of the bloody ground's helpless victims were dragged beneath its thirsting depths. No sooner had the last body vanished from sight, when a throaty gurgling erupted from the centre of the arena and Uriel saw a long strip of rockcrete slowly rise from the soaking ground. Dull, bloody rail tracks arose with it, running across the middle of the arena and ending at opposite walls.

  The hateful silence was broken by a sibilant moaning, as of a thousand voices trapped in a nightmare they know they will never wake from.

  'Holy Emperor, protect us from evil, grant us the strength of spirit and body to fight your enemies and smite them with your blessing.' prayed Pasanius.

  'Too late.' whispered Uriel, drawing his sword and standing ready to fight whatever new monstrosity the warp might unleash. 'We failed.'

  No... you have not yet begun...

  Both Uriel and Pasanius spun, searching for the source of the voice.

  'Did you hear that?' said Uriel.

  'Aye.' nodded Pasanius, 'I think so, but it felt... felt as though it was inside my head. Something terrible is coming, Uriel.'

  'I know. But whatever comes, we will fight it with courage and honour.'

  'Courage and honour.' agreed Pasanius, firing the igniters on the nozzle of his flamer.

  'Let's go.' said Uriel grimly, nodding towards the dripping platform in the centre of the arena. 'Whatever is coming, we'll meet it head on!'

  Pasanius followed his former captain as they made their way across the hideously squelching ground towards the platform.

  As they mounted its steps, the source of the sibilant moaning was finally revealed.

  Each sleeper laid between the rail tracks was a jigsaw of bodies and limbs, writhing in agony and knotted together by some dark sorcery. They screamed in lunatic delirium, their voices piteous and heartbreaking. Though he knew none of the faces, the cast of their features told Uriel that they were of the stock of Ultramar and that the souls of those consumed by this abominable place were suffering still.

  Eyes and mouths churning in the fluid matter of each sleeper gave anguished voice to their suffering

  before being forced from form to formlessness that another soul might vent its endless purgatory.

  Uriel's hatred swelled within him at such horror and he closed his eyes...

  Splintering crystals of alternate existences clash and jangle, detaching from the walls of one plane and shifting their position to resonate at a different frequency. Echoes in time allow the planes to shift and change: altering the angles of reality to allow the dimensions to unlock, dancing in a ballet of all possibilities.

  .. .then opened them as he felt a sickening vibration deep in his bones and a restlessness ripple through the air. The jagged stumps of bone jutting through the ground retreated into its sanguineous depths and the moaning sleepers wept with renewed anguish.

  Where the rail tracks vanished into the walls of this vast courtyard, streamers of multi-coloured matter were oozing from the stonework.

  Rippling spirals of reflective light coiled from the mortar, twisting the image behind like a warped lens. The walls seemed to stretch, as though being sucked into an unseen vortex behind, until there was nothing left but a rippling veil of impenetrable darkness, a tunnel into madness ringed with screaming skulls sent out to die.

  Warped realms, a universe and lifetimes distant, flow together, joining all points in time on the bronze blood-tracks. On a journey that leads everywhere and begins nowhere, the Omphalos Daemonium pushes itself from nothingness to form. Snaking from its daemonic womb and leaving nothing but barren rape and death in its wake.

  And the Omphalos Daemonium came.

  Though the cenobite had raved of the might and power of the Omphalos Daemonium's evil, they had been but the merest hints of the thing's diabolical majesty. Roaring from the newly formed tunnel mouth like a brazen juggernaut of the end times, the Omphalos Daemonium shrieked along the bloodtracks towards the horrified Space Marines.

  Vast bone-pistons drove it forward, iron and steel flanks heaving with immaterial energies. Bloody steam leaked from every demented, skull-faced rivet as wheels of tortured souls ground the tracks beneath it to feast on the oozing blood of the dead earth.

  Deep within its insane structure, it might have once resembled an ancient steam-driven locomotive, but unknown forces and warped energies had transformed it into something else entirely. The thunder of its arrival could be felt by senses beyond the pitiful five known to humankind, echoing through the planes that existed and intersected beyond the veil of reality.

  Behind it came a tender of dark iron and a juddering procession of boxcars, their timbers stained with aeons of blood and ordure. Uriel knew without knowing that millions had been ca
rried to their deaths in these hellish containers, carried to whatever loathsome destination this horrifying machine desired before finally being exterminated. The vast daemon engine slowed, the sleepers driven beyond sound in their torment as the towering machine halted at the edge of the platform.

  Uriel thought he heard booming laughter and the grinding squeal of warped timber doors sliding open on runners rusted with gore.

  Gusts of blood-laced steam hissed from the armoured hide of the Omphalos Daemonium and malevolent laughter rippled through them as they writhed on evil business of their own. Each tendril thickened and became more solid as they wormed

  towards the Space Marines and Uriel said, 'Stand ready.'

  The tendrils of smoke vanished without warning and in their place stood eight figures, each wearing a featureless grey boiler-suit and knee-high boots with rusted buckles along the shins. Each carried a fearsome array of knives, hooks and saws on their leather belts.

  Their faces were human in proportion only, flensed of the disguise of skin and glistening with revealed musculature. Crude stitches crisscrossed their skulls, and when they turned their heads as though hunting by scent, Uriel saw they were utterly featureless save for distended and fanged mouths. They had no eyes, nose or ears, only discoloured swellings that bulged and rippled beneath their fleshless skulls.

  'Daemons!' shouted Uriel. 'Foul abominations! Come forth and die on my blade.'

  A daemon's patchwork face swung towards him, tumourous tissue in its neck bulging with horrid appetite. None of the foul creatures moved, content merely to watch the two Space Marines as a billowing cloud of steam vented from the side of the vast daemon engine. With a clang of locks disengaging, a thick iron door squealed open and a gigantic figure stepped onto the platform.

  Standing head and shoulders above them, the giant wore a clanking, mechanical suit of riveted iron plates and thick sheets of melted, vulcanised rubber. Over its rusted armour it wore a charred apron, and a crown of blackened horns sprouted from a conical helmet with a raised visor. For all its crude fabrication and disrepair, Uriel recognised the armour as impossibly ancient power armour, such as had been worn by warriors of legend many thousands of years ago. The stench of scorched meat enfolded it, together with a crackling sensation of depraved evil and unquenchable rage.

  One shoulder guard was studded with star-shaped rivets, the other emblazoned with a symbol of ancient malice that both Ultramarines recalled from the depths of righteous anger instilled in them by Chaplain Clausel's daily Litanies of Hate. A grinning, iron-visored skull that once was the heraldry of a Legion that had fought for the Emperor in hallowed antiquity, but was now a symbol of unending bitterness and hatred. It was a symbol that now belonged to the most lethal foes of the Imperium: warriors of unutterable evil and malice - the Chaos Space Marines.

  'Iron Warriors...' hissed Uriel.

  'The Betrayers of Istvaan.' growled Pasanius.

  The figure carried a long, iron-hafted billhook, the broad, curved blade rusted and pitted with reddish brown stains. A pair of burning yellow eyes, like sickly, dying suns, shone from beneath the helmet as the figure took a heavy step towards them, the skinless daemons moving to stand behind it.

  'Deadmorsels feed the new fire, blood is supped by the faceless Sarcomata, and flesh of man will come with me.' said the figure, its voice like rusted metal on their skulls.

  It gripped its enormous billhook in one blackened, burned hand and beckoned them impatiently towards the hissing daemon engine with the other.

  'Come!' boomed the giant. 'I have purpose for you. Obey me or the Slaughterman turn you into dead-morsels! I am the Omphalos Daemonium and my will drives this suit of flesh, and it will turn you into dead-morsels! Now come!'

  Uriel felt sickened even being near this thing of Chaos. Could it really believe that they would willingly have truck with such evil? The featureless daemons, which Uriel guessed were the Sarcomata the Omphalos Daemonium spoke of, spread out on the platform, unhooking long, serrated knives from their belts.

  'Courage and honour!' yelled Uriel, leaping towards the nearest of the Sarcomata and stabbing for its belly. His sword passed straight through the creature, its form transforming into a cackling pillar of red steam. He pulled up in surprise, grunting in pain as the beast's form coalesced beside him and its blade slashed across his cheek. Another darted in, its rusty blade stabbing into his neck. He twisted free of the weapon before it could penetrate more than a centimetre and swung at his new attacker. Once again, his assailant flashed to steam before his blow could land and Uriel found himself off balance as another knife blade laid his cheek open to the bone.

  'Burn, Chaos filth!' roared Pasanius and sprayed a blazing gout of promethium at the giant Iron Warrior. The volatile chemical flames licked hungrily at the giant, but no sooner had the fire taken than it guttered and died.

  The creature's booming laughter echoed from the sides of the arena. 'I have been a prisoner in flames for aeons and liveflesh thinks it can burn me!'

  Pasanius slung his flamer and reached for his pistol, but, with a speed that belied its ungainly form, the Chaos creature stepped forward, wrapping its blackened fingers around Pasanius's throat and hauling him from his feet.

  Uriel slashed at the Sarcomata as they surrounded him, each thrust and sweep of his sword hitting nothing but chuckling tendrils of steam that vanished only to reappear elsewhere to cut him. Clotted blood caked his face and he knew that he could not fight such foes for much longer.

  He saw the giant in the rusted armour lift Pasanius from his feet and hurl him through the iron door the Omphalos Daemonium had first stepped from, and surged towards the Chaos creature. He could not fight foes that could disappear at will, but he swore that this traitor from the elder days would die by his hand. He swung his sword towards the Iron Warrior, the blade wreathed in pellucid flames able to cut through armour and flesh with equal ease.

  The sword struck his enemy full square on the chest, but the blade simply clanged from the heavy iron plates of his armour. Uriel was. amazed, but drew his arm back to attack again. Before he could strike, the Iron Warrior's fist slammed into his face, sending him sprawling across the platform.

  He fought to regain his senses, but the Sarcomata surrounded him, their blackened fingers reaching hungrily for him. Their touch felt like rotted meat, wriggling with the suggestion of maggots and freshly hatched larvae. Their dead skin masks were centimetres from his face, their breath like a furnace of cadavers. They moved their undulating faces around his, as though tasting his scent, their fearsome strength pinning him to the ground.

  'The Sarcomata favour you. Ultramarine...' laughed the giant, striding across the platform towards him. 'They are corruption of spirit given form and purpose. Perhaps they sense a certain kinship?'

  Uriel waited for death as one of the Sarcomata lowered its mouth to his bared neck, but the Omphalos Daemonium had greater purpose for him than mere murder, and roared in impatience.

  The skinless daemons hissed in submission, hauling Uriel from the platform and carrying him towards the iron door of the massive daemon engine.

  Burning air and the stench of cooked meat gusted from within, and as he was carried inside, Uriel knew that they were truly damned.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Blood. The stench of it filled his nostrils, overpowering and sickening, the bitter, metallic taste catching in the back of his throat. His neuroglottis sifted hundreds of different blood-scents and the searing tang of burning flesh made his eyes water before his occulobe compensated and secreted a protective membrane across the surface of his eye.

  He blinked away the moisture, twisting in the grip of the Sarcomata and trying to get a bearing on his surroundings. Despite what his eyes told him, he knew he must be seeing things, for the interior of the daemon engine confounded his senses and flouted any notion of reality. It defied geometry, impossibly arching beyond the limits of vision to either side: a sweltering, red-lit hell cavern. A wide-doored f
irebox roared and seethed at one end of the chamber and long lines of dangling chains and pulleys, each with a limbless human torso skewered on a rusted hook, hung from the darkened, dripping roof.

  He and Pasanius were dragged past scattered mounds of human limbs, each piled higher than a battle tank, the flesh rotten and stinking. Two of the Sarcomata slithered away from Uriel to lift a headless torso and thrust it into the firebox.

  They stoked the daemon engine with flesh and blood, its belching stacks spewing ashen bodies into the air. The giant in the armour of the Iron Warriors dragged Pasanius behind it, the mighty sergeant helpless against such power.

  'No!' shouted Uriel as the Omphalos Daemonium dropped its billhook and easily lifted Pasanius with one hand while reaching for an empty hook with the other. The iron giant took no notice of him and rammed the rusted hook into the backplate of Pasanius's armour, drawing a grunt of pain from him.

  Uriel struggled all the harder as he saw an empty hook hanging beside Pasanius, but the Sarcomata held him firm and he could not break their hold. Fleshy, wriggling hands lifted him high and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from crying out as he too was spitted on a hook, the barbed point went through his armour and pierced his back. The Sarcomata hissed and drew back, the lumpen growths beneath their exposed flesh rippling in monstrous hunger.

  The clang of mighty pistons echoed through the impossible structure, hissing spigots belching stinking clouds of oil-streaked steam and iron-grilled furnaces flaring with blue and green flames. Moans and the creaking of molten metal mingled with the chittering glee of the Sarcomata, and Uriel could imagine no more complete a vision of hell.

  The Omphalos Daemonium watched their futile struggles and stepped forward, gripping Uriel's jaw in one blackened gauntlet. Uriel could taste the ash on its fingers and smell the cooked meat beneath. The creature. .. was it an Iron Warrior or some daemonic entity within the flesh of one? Uriel could not tell, and as it leaned close, its breath like the air from an exhumed grave, he kicked out, his boot ringing harmlessly from its ancient breastplate.