by Gav Thorpe
They had advanced only a few hundred metres when a stricken shout from Majula had Arjac darting a look up as she raised a hand skywards.
Ribbons of purple streaked the blackness. Their after-image remained like yellow cracks upon a glass dome. The colours shifted, as though a light roved beyond these fissures, its ochre hue falling upon the agitated Stormriders.
The ground throbbed, trembling grit into disturbing organic shapes that melted into one another.
Thunder rumbled. The ground bucked in response. Around Arjac the Space Wolves gripped their totems and talismans, calling on the Allfather. They also muttered skaldwyrdfeyn which they had learnt as children, the old warding words never quite expunged by the efforts of the Wolf Priests.
‘Quit your yowling,’ growled Valgarthr, breaking formation to thrust his axe at his warriors. He lifted the weapon, its blade a sickly yellow in the wyrd-glow. ‘There is nothing beneath this sky that can’t be slain. We are the Allfather’s claws, sons of the Wolf King. Now act like it!’
The tempestuous display continued as they pressed on. The tremors intensified, opening welts in the grey ground. A pale light from within mirrored the cracking of the sky.
Arjac ran a calibration in the sensorium, but the system detected nothing except the earth movements. No life signs, no heat, no air pressure change.
By unspoken agreement the force moved quickly, at a pace with the lumbering run of the Dreadnoughts. Ahead, Njal led the way, his staff tip blazing with golden light – a gleam not dissimilar to the wyrdlit that crept in from the tracery of warp power around them. Nightwing emerged, disappeared into the darkness and appeared moments later, sweeping in and out of sight as the Stormcaller used his psyber-familiar to scout the best route through the widening chasms that split across their path.
Just over half a kilometre from the cavern the otherlight exploded into intense activity, falling in a cascade from the sky and erupting like a raging aurora from below. From the dazzling display swept a cavalcade of daemonic creatures, their wails, shrieks and squawks heard in the mind rather than the ear. Overhead appeared many-armed, squat horrors with mouths lined with needle-teeth, trailed by shoals of barb-finned skysharks whose tails lashed streams of falling sparks. Creatures devoid of human shape leapt and bounded from the fissures with cackling, wild-eyed faces in their torsos, propelled by squid-like undulations and cavorting, acrobatic jumps.
‘Support fire!’ yelled Arjac, determined to regain the initiative against the amassing wyrdkin horde. ‘Counter-charge now!’
He headed directly for a gaping chasm just paces away, trusting that his Wolf Guard and the Dreadnoughts would follow. Shield held before him, he smashed bodily into the first wave of shifting daemons, scattering them like skitlbad pins hit full-on by the tossed stone of a player. Foehammer swept the legs from another three, sending them toppling. He crushed them beneath his boots as he waded to the brim of the precipice.
His sensorium shared the view of the others, his bulky armour set upon the edge bathed in ochre otherlight, his shadow weaving crazily behind him over the scattered remnants of the daemons. He heard the Dreadnoughts closing, their guns hurling lethal rebuke into the fresh surge of daemons pushing up further along the belching fissure.
Against all sense and the advice of his nagging instincts, Arjac looked down.
The abyss seemed bottomless. The walls quickly absorbed into the haze. A sea of formless energy lapped like a coursing river against the sides. It bubbled like hot tar, painting grotesque faces on its surface. Clusters of eyes glared back at him from the immaterial flow.
A fountain of power exploded towards Arjac, forcing him back several steps to avoid being caught in its spray. The discharge towered over Rockfist, more grimacing faces sketched within its coruscation. Falling droplets formed into daemons that set upon the hearthegn with fiery blasts from their fingers, scowling and laughing as they capered around him.
He raised his shield, letting warpfire lap against the power field. A few stray spatters were left burning on his armour. He looked on in amazement as the sparks, each with a tiny fanged face, started to gnaw and scratch at the paint of his battleplate, as though they might burrow into the ceramite.
At Arjac’s side, Berda grunted in pain. Rockfist swung towards his companion and saw that he was almost lost beneath a welter of daemons. Infernal fire seared through Berda’s armour like an Iron Priest’s lascutter, while the Wolf Guard batted away any assailants he could reach. Arjac swept his weapon through the mass of daemons but Berda fell to one knee, his leg armour flowing into a pool around him.
A shadow even bigger than Arjac swathed the daemonpack, moments before Grímr Fellfist waded into view, clawed feet stomping the daemons underfoot, heavy bolters barking death. The Dreadnought’s ruby-gleaming fist snatched up one of the horrors. He squeezed it into a shower of falling sparks, scattering the remnants as though tossing the embers of a fire. Grímr spun at the waist, backhanding another apparition into the chasm from which it had been spawned.
Standing behind the bulk of Grímr, Arjac reviewed the situation. The daemons were all around and falling from above like snarling rain. The guns of the Stormriders met this descending mass with a constant flare, so that Valgarthr and the others stood in the midst of a multicoloured cloud burst. Elsewhere, like he and Grímr, the company was embattled hand-to-hand, hewing and slashing their blades, slamming blazing fists into the steady stream of otherworldly beings sprouting from the crevasses.
The veterans fought hard but many still laboured under wounds of previous battle and fresh injuries. Pledges of valour and cries for vengeance spat across the vox. Arjac snarled as he spied unmoving grey-armoured figures among the press of combat – brothers beyond the care of an apothecary.
He turned his attention back to the gorge at hand. An explosion of power from his hammer greeted the next daemon to jump from the depths.
The din of Bjorn’s assault cannon thundered in Njal’s ears, drowning out the daemons’ screeching and the storm bolter fire. Njal left his pistol in its holster. The blasts of lightning from his staff were a more effective weapon against the apparitions that continued to pour down from the crack across the sky. Unending monstrosities clawed up from the rents that the continuing tremors tore in the ground.
Psychic flare and propellant flash lit the scene, creating a series of staccato tableaux, each image fractionally different from the last. Through Nightwing’s augmented eye he saw a new crevasse open between the Space Wolves and the portal-cave behind them, wyrdglimr streaming from within.
He turned and hurled an excoriating blast of power at the serpent with many heads that eased up from the chasm, turning its ruddy-plumed body to golden ash.
While Njal fought in silence, the vox was alive with Valgarthr’s terse commands and the spat curses of the Stormriders. On occasion, the channel rumbled to a wounded bellow, part anger and part pain. Njal felt a stab of the injury himself each time, sharing the wounds of his brothers. At his side, Majula panted, every breath accompanied by a quiet moan of dread. Yet even in the grip of her fear, she fought hard. The Navigator grimaced with effort as her lethal third gaze fell upon a cluster of daemons gambolling towards the packs from the shadow of a rocky upthrust. Chittering, they split and split again, diminishing under the unblinking stare of the Navigator until they flitted out of existence in a cloud of azure vapour.
A sudden knot of tension dragged at Njal’s thoughts.
+Something else is coming.+
Unoccupied with the physical necessity of action, the sorcerer first sensed that which burned across Njal’s othersense a second later. It was a tide below them, seething through the ground like a swelling pool beneath an icy surface. The Stormcaller could feel the growing presence moving first one way and then another, as if trying to centre upon something. The heat and crackle in the psyker’s veins intensified.
+It is using you as a lode-point!+
‘Speak plainly. What does that mean?’
> +Your powers are giving it a fixed point in reality. A physical node on which to anchor its assembling energy.+
Njal held back his next bolt of lightning, leaving the power to wreath about the tip of his staff. Whatever approached was stronger than anything they had yet encountered. The revelation required all of his psychodoctrination to remain calm.
‘A greater daemon…’ he muttered. The vox caught his words, transmitting them to the rest of the company.
The reaction was immediate and stark. Though the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes were physically inured to panic, the tactical threat posed by Njal’s pronouncement altered their behaviour. They gave ground rather than gained it, drawing back towards each other out of drilled behaviour.
Njal’s gaze flashed back to the portal cave.
+No!+ Izzakar seemed to guess his thoughts, though in this place it was possible he simply heard them. +That portal cannot aid us. We must press on.+
Njal lashed out his staff as a flame-skinned ghoul hurled itself past Valgarthr, its claws of blackness raking at the Librarian’s face. The apparition detonated at the weapon’s touch and far below the incoming greater daemon twitched in response to the release of psychic energy.
‘We go back and find another course,’ Njal said, half turning.
+You will fail!+ Izzakar’s words rang across the psyker’s synapses.
The greater daemon gained speed, or more accurately it accumulated a material incarnation more rapidly. Distance was an illusion of the physical senses, but to Njal it felt like the beast raced ever closer. It would be upon them within minutes.
The choice was stark: press on and risk everything or go back and abandon any hope of reaching Bulveye and his Old Guard.
‘How far?’
+At most, two portals, after this one. No more, I assure you. We are so close!+
A pained roar filled the vox-cast. One of Valgarthr’s Grey Hunters disappeared under a welter of fanged smog, flame burning through the joints of his armour. Njal pushed back against the psychic sympathetic ache that welled up in his flesh. The battle-brothers counter-attacked, slashing with whirring combat attachments and long knives. Beyond them, Bjorn ignored the general withdrawal, thrashing his lightning claw through a horde of daemons, standing firm against the tide of manifestations.
Seeing the other Space Wolves fight on without relent, Njal felt a pang of shame that he had considered retreat. Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished without shedding blood, one’s own as well as the enemy’s.
‘All squads, full assault!’ Njal rasped. ‘Bjorn, form the speartip. Valgarthr, your warriors are the strong haft. Arjac, your pack shall be our shield.’
The Space Wolves responded without hesitation. Valgarthr and his surviving veterans split into two packs, Bjorn between them, the Thrice-Slain and Fellfist like towers anchoring the flanks. Njal motioned for Majula to follow and slipped in close to the pack leader. Arjac’s Wolf Guard faced back towards the cave, firing sporadic bursts as daemons emerged from the ether.
‘Tear a path,’ Valgarthr growled to his packs, his axe signalling the flowing sea of Chaos beasts to the front. ‘Fyrstrom. Drilled fire, five-pace interval, fast advance.’
The Stormriders hefted their bolters and bolt pistols, their weapons falling silent as they awaited the command. Njal lifted free his bolt pistol, willingly subservient to the discipline of the pack. He dropped the psychic shield he had projected, breaking his connection to the warp – the psychic equivalent of running silent. Only the barest glimmer of his wyrdsense remained, but it was enough to tell him that the swelling daemonpower paused, tendrils of awareness probing at the boundaries of reality as it sought its target.
The whine of Dreadnought servos and thud of their tread seemed oddly loud in the brief respite.
‘Fire!’
Spurred to act, Njal pulled the trigger alongside his battle-brothers, two shots, one second apart. The trajectory of the pack’s bolts was almost perfectly synchronised, two fanning lines that erupted against the shifting pink and blue bodies of the oncoming warpspawn. Each found its mark, tearing apart a foe. The Space Wolves broke into a run, keeping pace with each other for five long strides before they halted again.
They fired, two rounds apiece, slashing a path through the enemy. The Dreadnoughts added their firepower, the storm of assault cannon, missile launcher and heavy bolters deepening the wound inflicted. Arjac’s Wolf Guard withdrew at their backs as though drawn into a slipstream, remaining exactly at their allotted position behind the advance. In between the salvoes of Valgarthr’s pack the Terminators’ weapons roared their own defiance.
Five strides, two shots, over and over. Uncaring of the daemons’ numbers, the relentless Stormriders advanced into the heart of the host.
The ferocity of the Space Wolves’ assault, focused by the discipline of their training, took them far, deep into the morass of Chaos energy. The flowing warp power was not able to keep pace with their bolter drill and speedy advance so that the daemonic horde scattered like mist before a polar gale.
Njal called for the company to make haste, and they pressed on at the speed of the Dreadnoughts and Terminators, who had considerable pace once they had picked up momentum.
The landscape was not as featureless as it first appeared. Undulations and crevices marked the wastelands, so that sometimes the Space Wolves’ advance took them into near-lightless gorges or atop the crest of a rising mound. Njal kept his wyrdsense in check, hiding their progress from the stalking presence of the greater daemon. He could feel it still, prowling the warp shadows. It gnawed at his senses, a hunger that could never be sated, a malice that would never be thwarted.
It was not difficult to find the second gate that Izzakar had mentioned. A golden shaft of light rose like a beacon, no more than a couple of miles distant.
‘Onwards,’ Njal told his brothers with grim relief. ‘Soon we shall be with the Old Guard and our mission almost done.’
A thought then occurred to him that caused his smile to falter, though he hid it quickly from his companions. He whispered to Izzakar, beneath even the superhuman hearing of his Stormriders.
‘When we find Bulveye, will we have to fight free again of these circles of madness?’
+If they remain in the heart I will be able to open a pathway directly back to the Pyramid of Photep.+
‘And if they have moved on?’
+We had better hope that they have not.+
Njal sped on with his pack-brothers, feeling more hopeful of success than he had since breaching the Portal Maze.
The closer they came to the next gate the more the Stormcaller felt it throbbing in the depths of his thoughts, resonating in his gut with each pulse of power. What he had taken to be a column of light was in fact countless tiny motes rising up from a circular pool at the centre of a deep caldera. He signalled his warriors to move into the crater, wary of the warp energy that still swirled about the barren landscape ready to manifest again. The sooner they were free of this tainted realm the better for all.
Descending into the circular depression, the Sons of Russ broke their line, spreading out to form a defensive perimeter around the gate-pool. Njal approached closer, Majula at his side, and inspected the light-dappled water. The ripples on its surface were oddly uniform, each tiny wavelet made of a sequence of interlocked runic swirls eddying out of the centre.
Majula lowered to one knee and reached out a hand towards the water.
‘Wait!’ snapped Njal. ‘Do not touch the portal.’
Majula looked up at him with a glare.
‘The pool is harmless. It is just a metaphysical interface. The light is the gate itself, Lord of Runes.’
She plunged her hand into the undulating liquid without waiting for his reply. The golden rune-shapes drifted up the skin of her hand and wrist and then along the sleeve of her robe, losing brightness until they faded into the fabric.
+Now comes the most dangerous stage. The hostile simulacrum is still loit
ering at the boundary edge. When I access the gate, I shall create a flare of power that will draw every gaze far and wide.+
‘You’re talking about the greater daemon, aren’t you? Are you telling me that opening the gate will summon it?’
+The portal smooths away the warp incline. Normally it does so within closely controlled parameters. Here, I cannot vouch for the safe activation. It is possible that opening the disjunction will also form an immaterial breach for the entity to usurp.+
‘What can I do to stop it manifesting?’
+Nothing. I suggest we work swiftly and leave quickly.+
Njal had nothing to add to the discussion and was about to relinquish control to the sorcerer when the retort of a bolt detonation snatched his attention. More of Valgarthr’s Stormriders opened fire against shadowy apparitions at the caldera’s edge. Tentacled and flame-born bodies grew out of the raw ether and launched a fresh assault.
A twitch of recognition thrummed from the roaming entity.
‘Reform on my position!’ Njal called to his warriors. ‘Be ready to enter the portal immediately on my command.’
The Space Wolves drew back amidst intense bolter fire against the returning host of daemon assailants.
‘Quickly now,’ Njal said to Izzakar, letting free the spirit of the Thousand Sons Librarian.
The instant he reached a hand towards the pulsating portal light the roving daemon-presence ceased its directionless wandering and arrowed towards them like a spear cast by one of the dark gods.
Njal wanted to urge on his stowaway but Izzakar had control of his lips. Njal watched in detached suspense while his own fingers splayed and crooked, wove and danced at the end of his arms, as though looking at someone else – which in a sense, he was. The ascending runeshapes in the column of light changed and with them their unearthly reflection in the pool.
For all Izzakar’s supposed precision and art, vibrations shimmered out into the immaterial void. Like a frost shark latching onto the tiniest particles of blood in the water, the greater daemon’s essence sped towards the warp detritus of the Librarian’s ritual.
