“Lexicanum…”
The heat was still growing. Dak’ir slumped to one knee, using Draugen for support. Tongues of flame lashed out from his aura of conflagration. Pyriel reached out to shake him, but recoiled as his fingers were burned even through his gauntlet. He had scarcely brushed the other Librarian’s shoulder guard.
“Dak’ir!” he cried more urgently, stepping back and throwing up a psychic shield. Blackened cracks were already forming in its surface when the Lexicanum met Pyriel’s pained gaze.
“Dak’ir…” he repeated, less forcibly now his strength was fading, and retreated from the terrible fire, “…marshal it.” Pyriel’s mind returned to the burning again, to the moment when his apprentice had almost killed him in an uncontrollable flamestorm. Master Vel’cona had stepped in then and between them they’d averted disaster. Now, Pyriel was alone. He knew he didn’t possess the power to stop the Lexicanum’s tide of fire.
Slowly, Dak’ir’s fiery aura ebbed as he corralled the violent energies that threatened to engulf them both. The heat faded to a flickering haze around his body that eventually dissipated into nothing. Tendrils of smoke exuded from his armour, becoming grey translucent mists carried away on a shallow breeze.
“I… I am…” he stammered, his voice deep and thick with effort, “in control.”
Pyriel’s battle-plate was badly blistered. As he stood up, the ceramite lurched and cracked. “You have nearly destroyed my armour,” he breathed. The words with Vel’cona, spoken years ago when Dak’ir had first lost his grip on the flame during the burning, returned to the Epistolary.
“And if he loses control again?”
“Do what you must… destroy him.”
Except Pyriel didn’t think he could do that. He didn’t know if he was capable. Dak’ir’s psychic potential was simply frightening. It was a weapon. If fettered, a potent and useful one. If left unchecked, one that could bring about a cataclysm.
Much of the battle-helm was scorched from the fire. The lenses were cracked and smeared black with soot, so Pyriel cast it aside. He breathed deeply. Until that point, the air had been stifling.
“Never have I witnessed such power,” he said with something close to awe, but closer to fear.
Dak’ir removed his battle-helm too, and mag-locked it to his belt. The scar Ghor’gan’s melta had left him glared starkly against his onyx-black skin. The flesh was near-white down one side of his face, a product of cellular regression caused by intense radiation of the beam.
“You are more human than any of us,” Pyriel continued, “and yet, at the same time, something else entirely beyond it.”
“It stirred within me, master. It was a pyre-flame and the legacy of Kessarghoth.”
“Your empathy has a psychic application I did not expect.” Pyriel looked around at the crater and the blackened carnage Dak’ir had left in the wake of his power. “You almost killed us both.”
Dak’ir nodded solemnly. “I am not ready. It’s too soon after my training. I—”
“Stop,” Pyriel warned, gesturing to the force sword in the Lexicanum’s hand. Draugen was blazing with the psychic resonance of Dak’ir’s emotions. “Calm your humours, brother, and sheathe the blade now.”
As if scalded by the hilt, Dak’ir returned Draugen to its scabbard.
“Your psychic hood,” Pyriel added, not deigning to step any closer but content to point at the metallic collar that arced around the back of Dak’ir’s neck, “advance it to maximum capacity. Do it immediately.”
Dak’ir obeyed. The psychic hood was, in part, a nullifying device. It aided with the concentration of psychic force, whilst at the same time reducing the risk of its wielder succumbing to the predations of the warp. Here, Pyriel intended for it to staunch the roiling fire within his apprentice from a roar to a whisper. Gauged to maximum, the hood would prevent almost all psychic conductivity and leave Dak’ir effectively nulled.
The Epistolary hoped they had already endured all the snares left by Nihilan. His own strength was sapped and returning slowly; the Lexicanum’s could not be employed beyond seeking the Dragon Warriors’ trail. Anything more was simply too dangerous to even comprehend using. As soon as they were back on Nocturne, Pyriel avowed he would seek Vel’cona’s counsel.
Satisfied he had shackled Dak’ir sufficiently, he turned to regard the statue of the reaper.
“Stand aside,” he ordered.
It was standing atop a granite plinth. Only the lowest of the plinth’s stairs had sustained any lava damage.
None shall pass.
“We are servants of the Imperium. Stand aside.”
Only the dead.
“What’s wrong?” Dak’ir hissed, eyeing the statue warily.
“I don’t know,” Pyriel replied. “It should yield.”
None shall pass, the reaper boomed again, and began to shift. Stone and metal creaking in protest, its massive limbs slowly extended. Its fingers gripped the haft of its power-scythe. Energy being fed down the blade filled the false creases of its robes with shadow. Its cowled face was a featureless, black void.
Only the dead.
It came forwards to descend the first step.
“In the name of Vulkan and the Fire-born of Nocturne, I demand you step aside, automaton!” Pyriel clenched his fist. The reaper was a formidable guardian. Fighting in his condition and with Dak’ir effectively neutered was unthinkable.
The decision was swiftly taken out of the Epistolary’s hands.
Fire-born… uttered the reaper, the timbre of its voice changing, becoming more deep and resonant. Pyriel knew at once the sound was beyond the range of its vocal-enhancers. He started to retreat, only now realising the danger they were in.
“Mercy of Vulkan…”
The reaper dwarfed the two Salamanders, its shadow engulfed them. It raised its power-scythe, sharp enough to cleave ceramite with ease.
Nihilan had left one final surprise for them. Pyriel had just triggered it unwittingly.
As the Librarians backed away from the effigy of death, Pyriel knew there would be no escape.
Death to the Salamanders!
The scythe came down on them in a glittering arc.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
There be Monsters…
“Monsters”. That was how he would describe them. The things pursuing them through the haunted alleyways of the dark city were unlike any hounds Corporal Tonnhauser had ever seen. What was more, they were not entirely in this place. Through snatched glances, he’d seen their forms shimmering, the edges of their obscene musculature blurring. It was as if the hounds were not entirely synchronised with whatever plane of existence the survivors found themselves upon.
“Hurry, human,” snapped one of the giants. His green armour plate was badly battered. A gash along one side was gummed with blood. A thin line of onyx-black skin was revealed beneath an inner mesh.
Tonnhauser was no artificer or enginseer—he knew almost nothing about power armour. It was the aegis of the Space Marines. It was supposed to be almost impregnable. Surrounded by seven of these legendary warriors, ushering him and what remained of his troops through a nightmare of bladed streets and spiked structures, Varhane Tonnhauser should have felt safe. He did not.
Two of the Salamanders ranged ahead, trying to find a route through the alien byways and keep them ahead of the chasing pack. Two more roamed on either flank, the Night Devils between them. Another three served as rearguard behind. Most of Tonnhauser’s men had their heads down, some even ran with their eyes shut, clinging desperately to the belts of their fellow Guardsmen. These men were lost, just like the ones whose screaming had devolved into a piteous mewling. He didn’t blame them.
Tonnhauser’s head hurt from the shrieking of the beasts and the calls of their whelpmasters. The dark eldar were travelling behind the pack on a spiked skiff that hovered above the ground through Emperor-knew-what infernal technologies. His mind was reeling. This place was hell, Tonnhauser decided. It bent realit
y and twisted what he accepted as possible.
As the dark city passed by in a blur, even the sight of its barbed edges making him sicken, Tonnhauser thought of his father. He was back on Stratos and fought as part of the Air Corps. He’d wanted the same for his son, but Varhane had left as part of a planetary tithe of men and materiel to the Imperial Guard. He’d wanted to see the galaxy. If he was to die then he’d do it under a foreign sky and in the Emperor’s name.
Hunted down in the desolated streets of some alien city between realities had not been a part of his glorious vision. He didn’t know what had happened to his father. Varhane hadn’t seen or spoken to the man he knew as Colonel Abel Tonnhauser, or just “The Colonel”, in years, ever since he’d shipped out on the heavy lander. At that moment he hoped he’d see him again.
Tonnhauser slipped, losing his footing on a jagged spur jutting from the ground. It gashed his leg, even though it only struck a glancing blow.
“Be mindful,” said the giant beside him, hauling Tonnhauser along so he didn’t break stride. This one was massive, even bigger than the others. His head was squared like a block of black granite and his eyes were sunken like molten pits of fire. “The way ahead is sharp,” he warned. “Stay with me and watch your footing. We can evade the creatures.”
At the mention of the hounds, Tonnhauser glanced over his shoulder. He wanted to believe the Salamander but their pursuers would not be shaken. Even now, they were gaining. The acid-burned hides of the beasts, shaggy with clumps of blood-flecked hair, came into greater detail as they closed. Their sulphur-yellow eyes glared hungrily. Where the skin was bare, it shimmered like oil on water. It was neither one hue nor another, but an iridescent mélange of many. Faces were trapped behind that flesh, the half-devoured victims of the hounds beckoning others to join them in eternal torment.
It was no fate for a soldier, no fate for any man of flesh and blood.
When Tonnhauser started to hear their plaintive voices he turned away.
“They’re herding us,” said the massive Salamander. One in black, the leader and some kind of preacher, answered.
“We have to keep moving. Be ready.”
Tonnhauser didn’t like the sound of that. A loud cry made him look behind again to see a Salamander hurl a spear into one of the beasts as it pounced.
The barbed tip of the flung missile tore into the hound’s unnatural flesh, spilling ichorous fluid akin to blood. But the beast had momentum and the warrior was borne down under its massive weight. Though impaled, the hound rent his armour plate and flesh. A welter of blood marred the green as another Salamander whacked a flat-bladed sword into the beast’s flank. This one was just a vanguard. More were coming. A third warrior, the last of the rearguard, took the creature’s head with an axe. Together the two uninjured Salamanders dragged the carcass off their fallen brother and hauled the spear-hurler back to his feet. Tonnhauser thought he must be dead. Incredibly, he managed to run.
“Here,” shouted another from up front. He was slighter of frame, though still bulky in his armour. He wore a perpetual snarl from some kind of burn. He beckoned towards a narrow cleft in the razor-edged avenue ahead.
Darkness within. It didn’t look like salvation to Tonnhauser. It looked like a dead end. Perhaps the Salamanders thought that too. Perhaps they’d elected to make a last stand. War could be glorious when you were engineered for it, when you were superhuman. Tonnhauser was just a man, with a man’s desires and dreams. He didn’t want to die here but if that was to be his fate then he’d meet it with the same resolve as the giants around him.
“Give me a weapon,” he said before realising he’d spoken.
They had almost reached the cleft. Just a few more metres…
“Forge the armour strong,” said the other outrider opposite the massive warrior. His voice was grating. The bloody gash in his neck—looked like it was from a garrotte—forced a rasp. “No weak links.”
The big warrior regarded Tonnhauser. “No weak links,” he repeated, and tossed him a dagger that in the human’s hands was more like a sword.
“Once on the other side, form up in a defensive phalanx,” the preacher—Tonnhauser had heard them call him “Chaplain”—was swift to add.
“Make a wedge behind me,” said the big warrior. He too carried a spear. To Tonnhauser it was massive, far too large for a man to wield, yet the giant hefted it like it was nothing. There was something old in his movements, as if he’d learned his war craft somewhere other than the place that had trained his brothers.
Tonnhauser had no more time to think on it. The Night Devils were being ushered through the gap and into the darkness within.
Seconds felt like hours as they waited. The hounds were coming. Their slavering voices presaged doom. Tonnhauser thought they were in some kind of amphitheatre. Rows of broken seats delineated a wide elliptical expanse that was strewn with debris from the upper floor. Several columns, razor-edged and sculpted with obscene and daemonic faces, had collapsed in the centre too.
Dust, disturbed upon their arrival, swelled in fat clouds. Several men coughed. It was like breathing in powdered glass. It stung Tonnhauser’s eyes enough so that when he looked up to the highest echelons and thought he saw a bulky figure flitter into view and out again, he passed it off as vision blur.
“They are coming!” said the big warrior. His spear was levelled and his footing braced. His brothers made an arrow behind him, two at either shoulder, two more at the shoulder of the next. The last two formed a rearguard, ready to step in should any warrior fall. Tonnhauser and the Night Devils were in the middle. The distance to the opening was barely a metre. The fighting wedge filled it. Close quarters and bloody was the how the fight was going to play out.
Tonnhauser gripped the haft of his sword and prayed to the Emperor.
“Show Vulkan your mettle this day, Salamanders!” Elysius was brandishing his crozius, his spitting fervour coming through his borrowed battle-helm in a roar. “Break them on the anvil, Fire-born.”
Ba’ken’s twin hearts were pumping hard. His Brother-Chaplain had stirred his warrior spirit. Three hounds were coming for them. The cleft was narrow, though. Unless they were breached, only one beast could get at the Salamanders at a time. Iagon had chosen well. The other sergeant was on Ba’ken’s right shoulder, wielding a serrated sword. The weapons could have come from any wielder. This hell-place was like a battlefield in parts. Ba’ken shuddered at the thought of the lives taken by it, at the sport made of the captives by its hunter packs. Simple blades and spears, large enough for Astartes to wield, had been easy to procure. They would only do so much. He wished he had his heavy flamer. But as the lead hound closed on Ba’ken, a spear would have to do.
Feels like home, he thought with a sad spike of nostalgia, back in Themis.
The Sanctuary City was another world away; more than just galactic distance separated it from the Salamander. Sentiment had no place in war. The battlefield respected only blood and sweat.
The hound reared up and Ba’ken stabbed it in the chest.
It struggled on the barbed tip of the spear, thrashing, exerting all its strength to free itself. Ba’ken stepped into its killing arc, ducking a swiping claw that would’ve taken his head had it connected. He came close, getting under the beast. The hound’s efforts only impaled it further.
“Shoulder-to-shoulder!” Ba’ken cried, taking a firmer grip on the spear and lunging hard. Iagon and G’heb obeyed, thunking sword and axe blade into the beast’s flank.
It howled—an unnatural and reverberant sound. Ba’ken smiled. It was hurt. He pushed harder and granted when the barbed tip punched through the hound’s back, spraying gore.
He let go of the spear, bracing its haft diagonally against the ground. Muscles straining, Ba’ken seized the stricken beast’s forelegs and heaved. Iagon and G’heb rammed their shoulders in, lending weight.
The beast tipped over, spine cracking as it twisted awkwardly, and the spear was wrenched back through it
s chest.
At last it fell, oozing ichor, and rolled into a ragged heap.
“Wedge forward,” said Ba’ken, taking up his spear again.
Two more were coming. They appeared reluctant.
“They recognise a hunter of the Arridian Plain before them, a man of Themis,” Ba’ken revelled. He brandished his weapon in triumph, eager for another kill. Too late, he realised the beasts were being held back. A skiff hovered into view. A dark beam spat from the cannon on its prow.
It took Ba’ken in the shoulder, shredding the armoured pad and spinning him hard into Iagon. The two sergeants rolled and collapsed. One side of the wedge crumpled. In the same instant, the hounds were let slip. G’heb was still trying to fill the gap, L’sen and Ionnes coming from the rear to support him, when the beast smashed into him. It glowered over the Salamander, who was still flailing for his axe when the hound snapped its jaws and G’heb lost his head.
A fountain of blood spewed up from the dead warrior’s neck cavity, bathing human and Salamander alike. Some of the Night Devils were screaming in terror. Barging into the amphitheatre, the hound made room for its kin.
Elysius met the second beast with Ionnes and L’sen.
The first hound sprang off. A savage blow raked along Iagon’s flank and sent him sprawling off into the darkness. His scavenged sword scraped away along the ground, useless. Ba’ken was still coming to his senses when the loping beast came for him. On his back, he crabbed away and felt for his spear. The hound knew what its prey was attempting and trapped the haft with its paw. Hot saliva that smelled like oil and copper dribbled from its distended mouth. Up close there was something distinctly alien about these monsters. This one was partly scaled, with a long saurian maw. Its eyes were yellow pinpricks, beady and evil.
Ba’ken was about to leave the spear when the hound yelped and released the weapon as it turned about.
The human he’d given the dagger to was standing his ground in front of the beast.
A surge of pride turned to horror in Ba’ken as his saviour was struck a glancing blow by the beam weapon on the skiff. He lost the human from sight, but snatched his spear and got up. Ba’ken drove a heavy blow that skewered the hound from shoulder blade through to the gullet and out the other side. It was a vital wound and lathered the ground in viscous fluids. A death rattle sounded before the beast gave out and slumped dead.
[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Page 20
