‘Peace,’ said Goedendag Morningstar. ‘We have the advantage.’
The woman’s eyes widened.
‘No! There are only seven of you. You have no advantage. They make ambushes, deadfalls.’
‘Yes,’ said Goedendag. ‘But they must fight us one floor at a time.’
The other women now had their mouths cut free. Goedendag was impressed to see how they held themselves. Frightened, hurt, it was true, but they had not broken down. He remembered Kelra, the Imperial Guardswoman, and he realised that they bred them tough on Minea.
Franosch stepped forward.
‘There is a warp portal near the top floor,’ he said. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘No,’ said the women in unison, but one of them stepped forward. She was rubbing white ichor from her body as she did so, exposing the dark skin underneath.
‘I have not seen the warp portal, but I have heard from one who has. One who fled down the stairs while the lift shafts filled with fire. He told me there is a daemon up there, a greater daemon.’
‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Franosch.
‘Yet why does it not attack?’ said Ortrud. ‘Why does its horde remain at the top of the tower?’
‘They’re waiting for something. It’s part of the deal.’
‘What deal?’
‘Gutor Invareln,’ said the woman. ‘There was phosgene leak, his body was badly scarred. He was a bitter enough man before his injuries, afterwards he blamed the world for his troubles. He turned upon all his fellow humans; he claimed he was a latent psyker and that he would have his revenge on us all.’
‘Surely this would have brought the inquisition down upon him,’ called Franosch. ‘Most latents try to avoid their attention.’
‘None of us thought anything of his words. Gutor had always sought any attention to make himself seem more important. To him, even the inquisition would have been welcome.’
‘You believe that Gutor made a deal with a daemon?’ said Goedendag.
‘Yes. He wanted to live to see the destruction of all those who lived around him. Only after that would he surrender to death and allow the portal to fully open! And after that…’
‘After the portal is fully open there will be daemons enough for all of Minea,’ said Franosch.
‘Then we must hurry to make the greater daemon’s acquaintance,’ said Goedendag.
‘Meltaguns?’ said Fastlinger.
‘What about the humans?’ said Ortrud.
‘Use them,’ said one of the women. ‘Better a quick death than what they plan.’
‘Chainswords,’ said Goedendag. ‘Telramund. Less than one hundred floors to go. Move out!’
They splashed up the stairs of the tower. Globs of blood gathered in clumps on their boot spikes. They had to pause to shake them free.
The corridors they passed through were empty; they looked into empty rooms where humans had once lived and saw signs of fighting – overturned chairs, broken tables, even food scattered across the pooled blood on the floor – but of bodies, living or dead, there was no sign.
‘Carried away,’ said Franosch, ‘sport for now or later.’
They passed floor nine hundred and ten, then nine hundred and twenty.
‘What’s that?’ asked Ortrud. The noise came again, a shrieking sound as of many voices crying in agony.
‘It’s coming from the elevator shaft,’ said Goedendag.
The black metal wall of the elevator shafts wa their only constant as they climbed, that and the never ending flow of blood. Each set of doors had buckled and melted shut. Once more, the metal of the shafts seemed to hum with an unearthly music.
‘Like a trumpet call, blown from the warp,’ said Ortrud, darkly.
‘The bodies of those who fled,’ said Franosch. ‘Trapped, still living, in the shafts. Boiled in blood and feasted on by snake-fiends.’
On they climbed. On the nine hundred and twenty-seventh floor, the rooms were filled with human feet. On floor nine hundred and twenty-nine, glistening hearts lay in pools, still beating. They pumped blood from pool to pool, from room to room.
‘This is sick even by Slaaneshi standards,’ said Fastlinger. Goedendag said nothing.
Still they climbed.
Franosch concentrated.
‘Next floor,’ he said. ‘Daemonettes. Hundreds of them. The humans lie beyond them. And then…’
He paused, pushing his meagre psychic ability to its limit.
‘…and then nothing again. Nothing until the top of the building, and whatever awaits us there.’
‘It’s an invitation,’ said Goedendag, calmly. ‘Whatever is at the top is waiting for us. Waiting for me.’
The Space Marines looked at each other. Each felt the guilt of their chapter, each felt the determination to atone for the sins of their fellow Iron Knights.
‘Tell us what to do, Goedendag.’
Goedendag looked at his chainsword. His lyman’s ear was attuned to the noises from above now, the pitiful cries of the tortured.
‘We’ve climbed nine hundred and forty floors in search of a fight,’ said Goedendag. ‘Now we’ll have one. I have a plan.’ He smiled slowly. ‘And Fastlinger, it’s time for you to sheathe your chainsword for a while…’
They fixed melta bombs to the ceiling, retreated to the floor below and waited for the explosion.
Ortrud was an expert at demolition. The bombs broke the ceiling and nothing more. Or rather, he broke more than the ceiling, for the ceiling was a floor as well, and as the ground beneath their birdlike feet gave way, the daemonettes of Slaanesh found themselves falling, falling down in a rain of blood, of thrashing limbs, of dust and screams and noise, falling towards floor nine hundred and forty, falling in a tangled mass. And erupting from the centre of this confusion came Goedendag and his Iron Knights.
Chainswords buzzed as they chopped at limbs and clove heads in two.
The daemonettes recovered quickly, righting themselves and lunging towards the Space Marines, slashing their crab-like claws and kicking with clawed feet. The Iron Knights formed a circle; seven chainswords thrust, cut and parried with elegant precision. More daemonettes dropped down from the floors above and Goedendag withdrew to the centre of the circle, the better to take on this new attack. One daemonette dropped headfirst towards him, one clawed arm stretched out, pointing at his face. He sidestepped, took her arm and rammed the claw straight down into the floor, piercing the metal there. He pushed her forward, breaking her arm, but at that moment a second daemonette fell on his back and he felt the eldritch power of her claw pierce the shell of his armour, the shrieking pain transmitted to his body through his black carapace. He reached for one of the two morning stars strapped to his back and pulled it free, the spiked head of the ball scraping across the face of the daemonette. Now he swung the ball around, as if to hit his own back. He heard the sickening crunch as her body was crushed between the ball of the morning star and the ceramite of his suit.
Still more daemonettes dropped into the room. The space was filled with white flesh, the slash of clawsand the buzz and shriek of chainswords. Above him, Goedendag saw a space leading to the nine hundred and forty-second floor, two floors up.
‘Telramund, you’re in charge,’ he called. Summoning all of his enhanced strength, he leapt upwards, catching hold of the bottom-most step.
A claw slashed down and he caught it, pulling the daemonette down to join her sisters below. Quickly, he scrambled up to the next floor.
Daemonettes crowded towards him. Goedendag took a last look at his fellows fighting below, and then he raised his chainsword and charged forward, cutting his way through to the stairs.
He fought his way upwards against the tide of daemonettes, against the tide of blood. All the while, he had the impression that they were playing with him, that they were allowing him to pass, allowing him to climb higher. The waves of daemonettes diminished, though one or two of them still launched themselves at his chainsword.
Now he pa
ssed through the floors where the humans lay prisoner. Some were bound, some crawled on their knees, lacking feet, some lay half eviscerated, their shouts of pain weak in their throats, their tormentors called away to fight the Iron Knights.
The humans called out to him for succour. Goedendag ignored them. He could better aid them by confronting whatever lay at the top of this tower.
He pounded on up the flights of stairs, his anger acting as a buffer, pushing away all those that came before him. Now the daemonettes hung back as he passed; now they stood and watched as he climbed, or they turned and headed downwards to the fray with the remaining Iron Knights.
Now he was certain something was waiting for him at the top of the tower. As he climbed higher, a feeling of anxiety prickled at his heels, and he began to understand the nature of what lay ahead.
The sound of fighting faded to leave an eerie emptiness, a weariness that weighed down on his very soul.
He reached the nine hundred and ninetieth floor, and glimpsed an open space above him.
On floor nine hundred and ninety-two, he stepped out into a vast cavern. The last eight floors had been removed to leave a huge space at the very top of the hive tower. A nascent warp portal hung in the middle of the space, silver and black roiling in a halo on the boundary between this reality and the dreadful void of the otherworld. Blood flowed through the warp portal in a thin stream, splashing onto the mound of dead bodies below that lay folded up to look like pebbles. A mound of pink and brown and yellow pebbles, bound in red cord. And there, standing at the summit, surrounded by the dark halo of the nascent warp, bathed in the blood that ran from it, a shape within a shape.
Goedendag climbed the pile of the dead, and finally he came face to face with Gutor Invareln, latent psyker, the cause of all the chaos.
Around the human, Goedendag could see the outline of the creature that had possessed him. Huge and powerful, with a bovine face, one female breast and four arms. Two of them ended in human-like hands, two of them in crab-like claws.
A greater daemon of Slaanesh. A Keeper of Secrets.
The daemon had not achieved full corporeality; it seemed to be still existing in some halfway state as it entered this universe. The psyker was completely possessed, looking out from the translucent form of the demon that surrounded him, eyes vacant, an idiot grin on his face.
The daemon giggled at the sight of Goedendag.
‘How appropriate,’ said the daemon. ‘For the Iron Knights have their secrets, do they not?’
‘And you are a Keeper of Secrets,’ replied Goedendag.
‘What is your name?’
‘Goedendag Morningstar.’
There was silence, broken only by the ever present dripping of blood.
‘Don’t you wish to know my name?’ asked the daemon.
‘No.’
A look of petulance crossed the daemon’s face, like that of a small child denied a toy. It quickly passed.
‘And yet I believe I do hold a secret you wish to know. Do you wish to know the location of your brethren?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The daemon laughed.
‘I know that you are lying. Everyone knows of the penitence of the Iron Knights. Few outside the order know the reason. I am one of them. I am a Keeper of Secrets, and I know the location of your traitor brethren. It lies beyond the portal, Goedendag Morningstar, but I think you know that already. Why else would you have come here?’
‘To kill you, of course.’
The daemon looked beyond Goedendag’s shoulder. Goedendag did not turn. He could hear the skittering, giggling sound made by the Daemonettes who filed into the room behind him.
‘My daughters are here. It would appear the comrades you left behind on the floor below have fallen, Goedendag Morningstar.’
‘It is no disgrace to die in battle.’
‘The traitors you seek thought otherwise, Goedendag Morningstar. They chose Chaos, Goedendag Morningstar. And you nearly chose the same!’
Goedendag said nothing, for to speak with a daemon was to be drawn into an argument with a daemon.
‘I will take your silence as agreement.’ The half seen features of the daemon looked down. Within its form, the psyker beamed with happy idiocy. ‘There is no need for you to lie, Goedendag Morningstar. I can sense the shame within you. It is the only thing that you have that outshines the temptation you feel, for you are full of lust for the pleasures of life. The pleasures denied to a Space Marine.’
Still Goedendag was silent.
‘And I should know. Isn’t that what I am about? The Keeper of Secrets? What secrets could be greater than those we do not want to know about ourselves?’
‘What secrets, indeed?’ said Goedendag tightly.
‘See? You speak! You should not be ashamed, Goedendag Morningstar. Your behaviour does not surprise me. Who is more zealous in following a path than one who has almost fallen from it? A man who was never tempted would not have half your ferocity. Look, it brought you to the top of this tower!’
‘I came to destroy you.’
‘So you say. Come, Goedendag Morningstar. Soon the portal will open fully. Why not pass beyond it? Join your dark brethren. Join the Iron Knights that you call traitors.’
‘Enough talk, Daemon. It is time to fight.’
The daemon laughed.
‘Fight? It is all that you can do to stand, Goedendag Morningstar. Look at you. My very presence induces anguish and ecstasy within you.’
Goedendag looked down at the floor, focussed on the corporeal feet of the psyker that stood within the outline of the daemon, and he tried to concentrate on the reality of the situation. In truth, he felt a savage joy within him that he usually knew best from battle, but this time it was mixed with something more innocent, something that rang with the purity of childhood, but a tainted purity, something polluted by blood and perverted in daemonic fashion. He felt the excitement that he had known when, as an Aspirant, he had first begun the transition to Space Marine, when the gene-seed had been implanted and he had begun the long process of modification. Except now he felt something that he hadn’t known at the time. A deep anguish, a total certainty that the procedure would fail, that his body would reject the process and he would be branded a failure, that he would let down those who had come to depend upon him.
‘You’re strong, daemon’ admitted Goedendag. ‘You are affecting even me.’
‘This human is strong,’ said the daemon, indicating the psyker within himself. ‘Strong enough to offer himself in sacrifice in order to open the portal.’
‘He was a weak man!’ shouted Goedendag.
‘He was a bitter man. Bitter that his powers were overlooked by the Imperium.’
‘He should have been executed as a danger to all.’ Goedendag felt his willpower draining away.
‘Lucky for us that he was not. You know what price he asked in order to sacrifice himself to the portal? Only that he lived long enough to see us succeed. That was one bargain that we were happy to keep.’
Goedendag felt the chainsword getting heavier in his hands.
‘You’re getting weaker,’ said the daemon, as the chainsword slipped though Goedendag’s fingers and clattered to the floor.
‘I can still fight.’
‘I don’t think so. And so, Goedendag, before you die, I have one final question to ask you. Goedendag means Morningstar, does it not?’
‘It does. This is the last question you wish to ask me?’
‘No, you interrupt me. Your name, therefore, is Morningstar Morningstar. Why is that?’
‘Because of this,’ said Goedendag. And he crossed his hands over his chest and, gripping the two morning star handles that were fastened on his back, he swung them up and around, through the translucent outline of the daemon and brought them together, crushing the psyker’s head. There was a crunch of bone, grey matter exploding in a disk between the spikes of the two balls.
The daemon shrie
ked, and immediately Goedendag felt the sense of anguish and ecstasy decrease.
‘The portal is closing,’ said the daemon. ‘But I will make my mark in this world first!’
Goedendag stooped and scooped the chainsword from the floor. The daemon saw what he was doing and laughed.
‘That will not harm me in this form!’
‘I am not aiming for you,’ replied Goedendag coolly as he triggered the chainsword and used it to cut through the dead psyker’s neck. ‘Removing the head will speed the closing of the rift.’ He straightened up and moved around so that his back was to the shrinking portal.
‘And now,’ he said. ‘What will your daemonettes do? Will they attempt to pass me as they flee for the closing warp?’
The daemon laughed.
‘One man against the force of the daemonettes? I only wish I could sustain corporeality enough to watch you die under their onslaught! As it is, I will take comfort in the fact the location of your Iron Brethren will remain my secret!’
‘Daemon, when I have disposed of your daughters, I will come looking for you. You have my word on that.’
The daemon laughed louder.
‘You say that when you fight only with a chainsword? And listen! My sisters approach now!’
It was true. Goedendag heard the skittering of claws on blood and iron.
‘Only a chainsword, you say,’ said Goedendag, smiling grimly. ‘You forget my morning stars.’
‘And will that be enough?’ laughed the daemon.
‘Let us see,’ said Goedendag, and he triggered the chainsword. The angry buzzing was an invitation to the approaching daemons. He stepped forward and raised his sword.
Simultaneously, eight white-bodied daemons leapt at him, screaming in unison. They raised their crab-like claws and plunged towards Goedendag, teeth bared. Eight more leapt up behind them.
‘Goodbye,’ said the daemon, and Goedendag stepped forward to meet the lithe attackers. The first lunged forward with one snapping claw. Goedendag swung his chainsword in a tight circle that sliced through the claw and into the side of the daemonette that followed. A clawed foot lashed out and took hold of his armoured boot. Goedendag ignored it and slashed at another attacker.
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