Atlas Infernal

by Rob Sanders

  As Saint and inquisitor exchanged pleading glances, both engaged in silent longing for an escape that would never come, the pulley chain began to reverse.

  ‘No!’ Czevak roared, writhing feebly on the altar. Above him danced the hands of Xarchos, a pushing motion telekinetically launching Joaqhuine’s thrashing body back toward the oven’s open door.

  ‘Czevak!’ she screeched as the flames re-ignited and the blast wave of heat from the inferno rolled across the pancratitaph chamber. As the Idolatress’s body was swallowed by the blaze and the incinerator door slammed shut under Xarchos’s control, Czevak could hear her screams. The screams of a woman dying, slowly burning alive but pleading for a swift death. A finality that the Thousand Sons would never allow her.

  ‘Release her!’ Czevak howled. ‘Release her! Now!’

  Ahriman stood at the head of the altar, the azure blaze of his face upside down and hovering over Czevak’s own. Grabbing Czevak’s head with his claws, the Chaos sorcerer held it against the stone surface of the plinth with irresistible strength and power.

  ‘What is sacrifice, inquisitor, if you’ve nothing to lose? What is loss without love? A brother’s love? A father’s? An Adeptus Astartes’ love for his Legion? A subject for his Emperor? A man for a woman?’ Ahriman asked. Omnipotent. Everywhere. ‘I beg of you, inquisitor. This is all so unnecessary. Give me the runecodes to the warp gate on Etiamnum III and I can end this pointless suffering.’

  ‘Fiend!’ Czevak roared. ‘You live for suffering.’

  ‘Joaqhuine lives and suffers, inquisitor. Give me the codes,’ the sorcerer whispered, like a prayer inside Czevak’s head.

  The quiet rumble of the Adeptus Astartes’ words passed through the inquisitor, the plinth and the deck and with them came a stabbing psychic shock wave so powerful that the altar cracked beneath. Blood leaked from Czevak’s ears, his nose, and frothed down his cheeks from the corners of his mouth. For the inquisitor, time seemed to slow. Thought was painful. All he could see was the oven door. All he could hear was Joaqhuine screaming beyond. In his shattered mind he saw himself before the incinerator. He reached out and opened it. The blaze beyond hit him like a physical force, igniting his hair, torching his ragged clothes and flaying skin from his ancient flesh. He stumbled through the inferno, his scorch-raw arms groping for Joaqhuine in the fires… and then suddenly it was gone. There were no flames, no Joaqhuine, no incinerator. Only the door, and that was more of an arch. The Segmentia Demi-arch of Bel-Etiamnum. He fell to his knees within the dark aperture of the webway portal. It was open and he had opened it.

  ‘Master?’ Korban Xarchos said. Some time had passed, with inquisitor and sorcerer staring deep into one another’s eyes; the Idolatress’s hollow shrieking all about them. Ahriman turned his head from Czevak’s crestfallen features to face his apprentice.

  ‘I have the runecodes,’ Ahriman said with impassive triumph.

  ‘Then the webway is ours,’ Xarchos said.

  ‘Assume your battle-plate, my apprentice,’ Ahriman said, lifting himself from Czevak’s defeated form and laying the clawed fingertips of a huge hand on Xarchos’ shoulder. ‘Land our troops in preparation for a cross-dimensional assault.’

  ‘The eldar will resist us,’ Xarchos said, his face once again assuming the pallor of the alien farseer.

  ‘The xenos will try…’ Ahriman said. ‘Have Mordant Hex complete the ritual. I will be along shortly with the runecodes.’ Ahriman looked back at the inquisitor on the broken altar. ‘And the location of the Black Library of Chaos.’

  Korban Xarchos exited the chamber calling for his wretched serfs and his armour. Silence descended upon the chamber once again. ‘I’m sorry, inquisitor. I must have it all…’

  Like a swollen channel bursting its banks, Ahzek Ahriman overflowed. Thrusting his palms at the altar, warp streams leapt at Czevak’s limp body and seized it. Czevak’s shoulders lifted from the cold, stone surface. His body flipped and flew through the air, drawn along the warp stream paths, until it arrived in the clutches of the sorcerer. Holding the broken inquisitor by his rags and chest flesh, Ahriman shook him at the crystal ceiling of the pyramid pinnacle. His cerulean face contorted like an angry god – all eyes, teeth and wrath. The psychic blast wave of his sorcerous insistence tore Czevak’s mind apart, smashing through his memories, hopes and fears – stripping back the depths of the inquisitor’s very being. Somewhere inside this maelstrom the Black Library of Chaos hid amongst the damage, falling through the cracks of Czevak’s consciousness, needing to be unknowable. Through the mental desolation the sorcerer had wrought in the inquisitor’s mind, Ahriman stalked its location.

  And then the sorcerer seemed to see it. As his mind walked amongst the inquisitor’s memories, his eyes stared up at the void beyond. The glimmer of stars out of place. Staring up through the crystal pyramid that formed the ceiling of the pancratitaph above, Ahriman recognised the physical falsehood of illusion. It was not the heavens above. The almost imperceptible drift of starlight and the crackle of the dread Eye’s nebulous tendrils convinced the Chaos lord that he was looking at a lie, a technological masquerade far beyond human design. Above the Impossible Fortress was an alien vessel cloaked by some kind of mimic engine. The Thousand Sons battle-barge was being boarded.

  Ahzek Ahriman took a moment to see the future before him but before the demigod had chance, the present was upon him. The sorcerer dropped Czevak’s barely conscious body to the deck by his feet. He called for his armour and weapons but the interlopers were already there.

  Falling into reality nearby, the half-mask Harlequin that Czevak had encountered with Klute in the Kaela Mensha shrine on Darcturus was suddenly among them. Flicking out her riveblades and tubular fist spike like some deadly arachnid, the female poet-warrior ran straight at the sorcerer. At the sight of the Harlequin, Ahriman beamed serenely. No urgency appeared on his cerulean face. A sunken-eyed serf appeared in the archway at the rear of the chamber carrying the sorcerer’s ancient Black Staff. Narrowing his eyes at both Harlequin and serf, Ahriman drew the force weapon to him. Ripped out of the serf’s grip, the long staff span horned-skull headpiece over shaft-spike. The staff flew like a giant arrow towards the sorcerer and up behind the blaze of colour that was the advancing Harlequin. As the shaft-spike surged for her back, the Harlequin leapt, bending and stretching, spinning through the air with her knees to her chest and weapons out like stabilising spindles. The summoned Black Staff passed beneath the vaulting alien and she landed gracefully in its wake before darting after the weapon.

  As the Black Staff reached its master’s hands the Harlequin threw herself at Ahriman, riveblades and fist spike coming at the Thousand Sons sorcerer in a blur. The eldar’s weaponry sparked unnaturally off Ahriman’s Black Staff, the Adeptus Astartes putting the length of the weapon between him and the deadly alien weaponry of his furious attacker. Throughout the desperate battle the sorcerer’s skin blazed sapphire and his face maintained a cold composure. Smashing her in the half mask with the shaft of the Black Staff, Ahriman turned the horned-skull headpiece on the Harlequin, holding it like a form of firearm and blasting force bolts of immaterial energy at her. The Harlequin leapt like a cat, toes and fingertips to the ground as the close-range barrage came at her – but time and again the sorcerer’s doom-laden warp blasts failed to find their target.

  Mouthing a stream of silent incantations and curses, Ahriman lifted the arcane staff and span it about him with martial precision. A cyclone of warp flame erupted from the floor about the fell sorcerer and the prone Czevak, spinning and radiating outwards. As the rainbow wall of moving flame came at the Harlequin like an infernal tsunami she flipped backwards, soles of her boots to palms of her hands, before melting out of existence entirely.

  As she disappeared, the shadows vomited forth the broad carapace and skeletal visage of a Death Jester, whose shrieker cannon began hammering heavy shuriken rounds across the chamber at Ahriman. With a wave of the sorcerer’s hand the first shot be
gan to slow, allowing the second, third and fourth to gain ground on it. As the rounds began to pile up and strike each other in mid-flight they ricocheted off in different directions, fanning out harmlessly around the sorcerer. Ahriman’s honour guard of azure-armoured Rubric Marines began to march to life, their mindless, heavy footsteps falling into synchronicity. Their firepower was similarly disciplined and, while coordinated and lacking in imagination, was brutally accurate. As a hailstorm of inferno bolt-rounds descended upon the Death Jester, the shadows reclaimed him. A moment passed before the bark of the Rubric Marine bolters came to a simultaneous halt.

  The Death Jester rose out of the deck behind the Chaos Marines with a crackle of materialisation. The first of the Rubric Marines to turn found itself facing the muzzle of the shrieker cannon’s length. He was hammered from his feet by a point-blank shrieker round that, although it couldn’t pierce the Space Marine’s power armour, almost knocked the monster back boot over shoulder plate. Before the other Rubric Marines had time to complete their ponderous turns, the Death Jester had elegantly buried the scythe attachment on the end of the cannon barrel into several armoured forms. Even those that did complete their turns had the riveblades and fist spike of the half-mask Harlequin to contend with – the alien athletically dropping into reality behind them. With the murderous arc of the Death Jester’s scythe in front and riveblades and Harlequin’s Kiss caving in helmets and puncturing ceramite chest plates behind, the living suits began to tumble and collapse. With their sealed power armour breached and the Rubric of Ahriman broken, the disembodied spirits of the ancient Adeptus Astartes warriors erupted from their suits in a phantasmal rush of ash, dust and ethereal screams.

  Behind the slaughter, a line of fearful cultist serfs began running across the pancratitaph with individual pieces of their dread master’s ornate power armour: gauntlets, shoulder plates, even his extravagantly horned Crusader-pattern helm. As the archway bulkhead admitted the slaves and closed behind them, the Death Jester turned and fired off round after savage shrieker round at the train of Chaos servants.

  One after another the heavy shurikens found their mark, blasting through the cultists’ bodies and delivering their payload of virulent genetic toxin. Reacting immediately, the organs and tissue of the serfs exploded along the line, showering the pyramidal chamber with a bloody haze and fragments of rapidly expanded flesh. As Ahriman’s armour thunked to the deck, individual pieces bouncing and rolling, the Death Jester and his half-masked companion turned to face the Chaos sorcerer. Ahriman was already in mid-incantation, however. Rubric Marines were getting back to their feet, the rends and punctures in their armour closing and sealing under his control. As the suits repaired themselves, the freed spirits of the Rubric Marines were drawn, screaming, back to their adamantium prisons and re-illuminated the empty helmet eye sockets with brazen, blue light. A fresh blaze of inferno rounds came at the Harlequins and the pair were forced to phase out of reality once more.

  Ahriman stood over the broken body of Czevak like a crafted colossus. The fell sorcerer twirled his Black Staff in his hands defensively, his neck craning around to locate the source of his next threat. As he turned he found himself looking down the twin barrels of the Great Harlequin’s willowy plasma pistols. The eldar had appeared right next to the sorcerer but the shock failed to register on Ahriman’s serene features. He brought up the levelled shaft of the Black Staff, smashing both pistols’ aim at the heavens and the troupe leader back. The gargoyle helmet of the eldar warrior leered at the sorcerer and the extravagant pink plume bounced about wildly as the alien fell backwards into a tumble that became a graceful, gymnastic roll. From his crouch on the deck the Great Harlequin brought the plasma pistols up, the sunfire twinkle in the darkness of their gaping muzzles announcing their intention to fire.

  Clutching his Black Staff the Chaos sorcerer waved a palm at the Great Harlequin. The pistols suddenly exploded, their detonating containment flasks vaporising the surrounding deck in a ball of sun-furious plasma. Despite Ahriman’s efforts, the raw, white heat of the detonation set alight his Coptic robes and melted the cerulean flesh from the tip of his nose and patches across one side of his face. The sorcerer brought his clawed fingers up to the exposed tendons and roasted muscle before tearing the robes from his ancient, muscular frame. As the bubble of plasma and destruction receded, it became obvious that the Great Harlequin had disappeared once again.

  A silence and stillness descended upon the pancratitaph. Czevak bled. Ahriman radiated power through flesh that was at once his body and a conduit to the warp. The Rubric Marines slowed to statuesque dormancy. Then… the fizzle of a phase-field intrusion.

  The Harlequins dropped into reality all about him. The Death Jester’s scythe arced at the sorcerer, riveblades flashed by his face and the thin, razored edge of the Great Harlequin’s power sword almost skewered him through the gut. Allowing the dark forces of the warp to surge through him and the force staff, the sorcerer managed to turn each weapon aside with prognostic speed and surety. Exposing himself to the Harlequin’s death-dealing dance, Ahriman pointed the horned-skull of the Black Staff at the crystal pyramid tip of the chamber ceiling. Blasting a puce beam of warp energy at the crystal directly above him, the sorcerer watched the beam bounce and diverge away into hundreds of weaker beams that were reflected prism-like back down into the chamber.

  There were suddenly Ahrimans everywhere. All bare-chested, cerulean giants, clutching identical Black Staffs, swathed in the thick, illusory haze of the chamber. Rather than wait to be attacked, the Ahrimans launched themselves at the Harlequins, thrusting shaft-spikes, casting warp flame and blasting the alien intruders with doombolts from the eye sockets of their horned headpieces. The Rubric Marines had also had time to react and the lumbering suits began pooling their firepower into one raging storm of inferno bolts flying at the vaulting eldar warriors. The Harlequins danced through the havoc with martial poetry, twirling through the gunfire, flipping between spear thrusts phasing out of the corrupting path of deadly warp streams. In turn their weapons flashed and darted through Ahriman’s phantasmic selves, unsure which sorcerer was the real Ahriman.

  As the battle blazed, Czevak felt his battered body dragged like some wretched spirit through the chaos. His toes skinned the deck as his limp, cadaverous form was telekinetically hauled upright and gently glided towards the shadowy alcove of the closed archway. He drifted into the darkness, away from the crash of bolters and the clash of weapons and floated, held there by an invisible force. Then, out of the shadows, Ahriman emerged, his superhuman bulk towering over the inquisitor and cerulean muscle rippling with the coursing, damned energies of the warp. His plasma-scorched face seemed calm and at peace.

  ‘Come, inquisitor,’ the sorcerer said with a chill conviction. ‘I foresee at my hand a similar surprise for these alien interlopers on the webway.’

  Ahriman jabbed the door stud, prompting the bulkhead to gently rise and reveal a Harlequin Shadowseer. Ahriman saw his sapphire inscrutability reflected back at him in the Harlequin’s mirror mask. The eldar warlock’s eldritch fashions were crafted from pure confusion and his every step quaked with disintegrate reality. The length of the Shadowseer’s leaf-shaped witchblade sang at Ahriman, forcing the Thousand Sons sorcerer back. Ahriman barely got his Black Staff in front of the devastating sword sweeps. Immaterial energies spilled from both weapons as the psykers clashed, forcing Ahriman further back. The archway bulkhead crashed back down at the Shadowseer’s mental insistence and the metal of the Impossible Fortress’s walls melted and dribbled down across the seals, fusing the door shut and trapping the sorcerer in the pancratitaph with his enemies.

  With Ahriman’s power and attention directed very much on his unwelcome visitor, Czevak’s levitating body dropped to the deck. From his perspective on the floor the inquisitor watched witchblade and force staff smash, both physically and immaterially. Where they did, the fabric of reality tore. The disciplined grace and furiosity of the Shadowseer�
��s assault would have carved a bloodthirster of Khorne in two. Ahriman was more than pure wanton destruction, however. The Thousand Sons sorcerer was not only an ancient and devastating warrior, he was one of the most talented psykers in the galaxy. More important than either of these facts was the torrent of unbound ambition surging through the sorcerer’s veins. He was the impossible made incarnate.

  As his retreating heel caught on Czevak’s ragged body, the sorcerer tripped and for a second, Ahzek Ahriman allowed the irresistible potency of the Shadowseer into his mind. The seed of a moment’s doubt blossomed explosively, filling the Adeptus Astartes with unfamiliar fear. Enough to turn the trip into a topple towards the exposed vulnerability of the deck. The Shadowseer strode across Czevak and pressed his advantage, whipping his witchblade around in an apocalyptic arc that came up over the top of the Harlequin’s mirror-mask helmet. On the floor opposite the inquisitor, Ahriman was forced to defend himself, holding the shaft of his Black Staff across him in ready deflection.

  The witchblade never completed its arc, however. From the throng of battle the Great Harlequin sprinted, blazing a trail of chromatic possibility across the chamber. Leaning to the side, the spindly eldar skidded down onto one knee and elbow, the sheen of his coat taking him across the polished surface of the deck and down beside the fallen Czevak. The inquisitor felt the long arms of the Great Harlequin tighten around him and then the indescribable sensation of phase-field relocation flood his broken being. He could still hear the distant ragged screams of Joaqhuine across the chamber and in jarring, dislocated agony tried to reach out for her.

  ‘No!’ the inquisitor cried out in futile defiance. Despite the agony that they had shared in this damned place, he didn’t want to leave her as Ahriman’s plaything for eternity. Instead of cutting through the force staff and its owner with the witchblade, the Shadowseer vanished above Czevak, leaping out of the immediate reality of the chamber. The Death Jester and his female companion melted into thin air as the dance of death the pair had been weaving came to an abrupt, if elegant, end.