Zartath hadn’t moved. His breathing was elevated, his plastron heaving up and down with nervous regularity.
“Release him, brother. Right now.” Elysius gestured to the Salamanders around them.
The Black Dragon didn’t relent. Instead, he smiled, showing off the bloodied ranks of his spine-like teeth. “Did you think I survived this place for so long alone?”
The staccato snap of racking weapon slides filled the amphitheatre.
Elysius and the others looked up and saw twenty ragged human warriors emerge from their hiding places amongst the higher echelons. Almost half were armed with automatic weapons, stubbers, shotguns and heavy-bore rifles. Some carried heavy crossbows or bows. One other Astartes, also a Black Dragon, aimed a bolter.
Too many were dead already; Elysius wanted no further blood to mar his hand, especially if it could be avoided.
“I am not alone,” Zartath muttered darkly.
Mag-locking his crozius to his armour, Elysius then removed his battle-helm. It was the first time he had openly showed his face in over a century.
His eyes were penetrating. “You see me now for what I am—an ally. So, tell me Black Dragon, will you slay him and force me to end your life and the lives of your men or will you accept me as your brother?”
Still the bone-blade didn’t move.
Elysius ignored the shocked glances of his kin, offering his hand.
“Decide quickly. Friend or foe?”
II
Fire and Stone
Flight went against a Salamander’s every instincts. Astartes were bred to ignore fear, to compartmentalise it and lock it away.
And they shall know no fear.
It was amongst the oldest edicts, since the time of the Great Crusade, when the Space Marines were young and they could still dream of untainted glory. Salamanders were stoic like no other. They would stand and fight when many had long left the field of battle. No cause was ever lost. No Chapter ever fought as tenaciously. It was Vulkan’s legacy and it had stood for millennia.
As the power-scythe came down between them, splitting the ravaged earth in two, Pyriel and Dak’ir fell back. A torrent of shells from Pyriel’s bolt pistol traced an explosive line that stitched the reaper’s flank. Barely a scratch registered after the fire and smoke had died. A half-aimed shot from Dak’ir’s plasma pistol had similar effect. The reaper was unscathed.
“It’s tougher than Dreadnought armour,” the Lexicanum gasped, snapping off another ineffectual shot. Streams of plasma ran off its granite-grey skin like water on oil. The golem-creature was advancing swiftly, its servos warmed up and impelling it to increase motion.
“Try to hold it off,” Pyriel replied, his pistol’s muzzle flare lighting up his battle-helm. He’d stowed his force staff. He was too exhausted to wield it.
They backed away further as the reaper came on, its power-scythe poised.
With the physical weapons the two Librarians possessed, the reaper was unkillable.
But Dak’ir had something more in his arsenal. It lapped at the mental bulwarks of his mind like a turbulent sea.
Unleash it. Let it all burn…
“I can destroy it.” Dak’ir went to the psychic hood’s dampener. One twist and the power, eager for release, would return.
Pyriel flashed a furious glance at him. “No! You’ll kill us both. Maybe even level the catacombs and the cryptoria beyond.”
“I can vanquish it with a thought, master. Let me save us.” It craved release. The power within him wanted to be let slip.
Feed me with your will.
He was taken back to the subterranean depths of Mount Deathfire where’d fought the giant of onyx. On the precipice’s edges, the lake of fire churning below, the monster had nearly ended his life. He was stronger now. A ripple of power jolted through him like a miniature shock wave, threatening to overload the psychic hood and throw open the mental flood gates.
“Harness it, brother,” Pyriel was imploring. He couldn’t make Dak’ir stop, all he had left was reason. “Don’t become like Nihilan.”
Like ice down his spine, Pyriel’s words chilled him.
Nihilan… The sorcerer had trod a similar path. Pyriel had trained with him. Pyriel had betrayed him. There was no choice.
The universal truth of it resonated in Dak’ir’s mind like a bolter shot and brought with it a startling revelation. The flame within him was a monster, something he couldn’t exert his influence over. It had to be shackled. His hand fell away from the dampener. The reaper was upon them.
Dak’ir flung himself aside, the scythe parting rock where his head had been a moment before. Debris shorn off by the blow cascaded onto his armour. A burst of gunfire from Pyriel dragged the golem-creature’s attention away. The Epistolary was more than a mere Librarian, he was a warrior with warrior instincts and took up a position on the reaper’s blind side.
Despite its size and strength, the golem-creature was still just an automaton, little more than a servitor. Even the psychic impel left behind by Nihilan couldn’t change that. It could be manipulated, goaded like any mindless, unthinking monster. Oil flowed in its veins instead of blood, machine parts not muscles drove it, but it was still just a thing.
Pyriel drew it on, all the while his psychic strength returning.
++We make for the doorway++ he said through the comm-feed.
In the brief respite his master had provided, Dak’ir replaced his battle-helm. ++We are to escape? What about the cryptoria? We must gain access—++
Another line of bolter shells strafed the pseudo-stone hide of the reaper, stalling but not stopping it. Pyriel was already moving again before the last round had detonated.
++Trust me, Dak’ir. Make for the doorway. I will not be far behind you++
Though he didn’t like it, Dak’ir ran for the doorway to the lair. He closed the distance in a few seconds, not even looking back as he burst through a short corridor and into the labour tunnels. The hot glow of the incinerators bathed his armour as he stood upon the bridge. Bent wholly on their work, the army of toiling serfs didn’t even acknowledge his sudden arrival let alone cease what they were doing.
Halfway across the bridge, Dak’ir waited for Pyriel.
Beneath him, a caged sea of fire raged and spat. A sense of realisation awakened within him. Nothing could withstand those flames…
++Master?++ It was taking too long, Pyriel should have appeared by now. Dak’ir was about to go back when the Epistolary rushed from the gloom. His bolt pistol was holstered and he was clutching his force staff when he reached the apprentice.
“Stand firm,” Pyriel told him. His breathing was laboured and there were energy-seared chips in his armour.
“Master…”
Pyriel’s red eyes flashed angrily. “Stand firm,” he repeated in a stern voice.
A second later and the forbidding effigy of the reaper emerged from the darkness, death incarnate.
It had to bend to get through the archway into the labour tunnels, servos protesting in an automated squeal. The reaper was supposed to be confined to its lair; it was not meant for the labour tunnels. Warp-sorcery had corrupted its central programming. The doctrina wafers slotted into its cerebral cortex were just blackened fragments of overridden data impulses. A slave to Nihilan’s psychic command, the reaper stepped out onto the bridge.
It swung its power-scythe, leaving a trail of latent energy humming on the air.
Dak’ir’s body tensed. His instincts screamed to attack or take a tactically superior position. Pyriel refuted both.
“Hold,” he said.
The bridge was narrow, at least for the reaper. Compelled it might be, but it still couldn’t throw its machine-life away recklessly, so advanced with slow purpose.
“Hold,” Pyriel continued, aware of the hypno-conditioned battle responses flooding Dak’ir’s brain—they were flooding his own, too.
A crackle of energy went up the haft of the force staff, a primer for what was to com
e.
The reaper was a few short metres away; the death arc of its scythe even less than that.
“Lexicanum…” Pyriel’s eyes were ablaze with cerulean blue fire.
The psychic echo of his thoughts resonated in Dak’ir’s mind, a command unspoken but understood all the same. He gripped the force staff with his master and channelled the small tributary of his psychic strength into the weapon where Pyriel could mould it.
It was called conclave, when two or more Librarians shared their mind-strength and unleashed it together.
Dak’ir could not control his powers, not at their apex, not yet, but he could siphon a portion of it into the staff for Pyriel to focus and direct.
Within striking distance, the reaper uttered its last.
Death to the Salamanders.
“Death to traitors,” snarled Pyriel, “and all who serve them!” A bolt of fire surged from the end of the staff, slamming into the reaper to send it staggering. There was enough force to push it to the end of the bridge, where it teetered, swinging its scythe in impotent rage.
Rushing forwards, Pyriel fired the last of his bolt pistol’s rounds. “Finish it!”
Following his master’s mark, Dak’ir put a trio of plasma bolts into the reaper’s scorched torso.
Like a slab of mountain surrendering itself to the elements as it collapsed into oblivion, the reaper held on for a moment and then fell. Heavy like a gunship, the golem-creature smashed straight through the cage, killing a swathe of serfs on its way, before crashing into the incinerator. Hot flames lapped around its body, which was suspended for a few seconds on a bubbling lava bed before it finally sank and was gone.
Together, the Librarians watched it die. Klaxons were sounding below. Servitors and maintenance crews emerged from bulkhead-sealed hatches. The incinerator’s work must not be interrupted. The dead would not wait. The corpses were endless and the machine would go on. It was paramount the cage be repaired and the labour-serfs replaced. It took just minutes.
“Another Imperial servant turned to Chaos,” Pyriel muttered. He sounded bitter.
“What did you mean,” asked Dak’ir, “when you said ‘don’t become like Nihilan’?”
Bowing his head, Pyriel sighed. It was like he’d been burdened by a sudden invisible weight.
“It was long ago,” he answered in a quiet voice, “Before Moribar. I was a Lexicanum then with aspirations of becoming a Codicier. Nihilan, too.”
“You were battle-brothers?” Dak’ir tried to keep the disbelief from his voice. He hadn’t known the strength of connection of between his master and his nemesis.
“Yes, but that was before…” Pyriel tailed off, uncomfortable at unearthing the old bones of his life.
“What happened?”
The Epistolary faced his apprentice. The flame glow in his eyes dimmed with regret.
“He fell.”
A memory, dredged from Dak’ir’s mind, came out in his reply.
“We were only supposed to bring them back.”
“What?”
“Back here,” Dak’ir gestured to the fiery chasm below and the hard rock around them, “more than four decades ago, I dreamed of it. Nihilan led a minor rebellion. He and the others weren’t meant to be our enemies. They were wayward sons, polluted by a stronger mind.”
“Ushorak had a gift.” The praise was given through clenched teeth.
“Like the traitorous scions of Lorgar.”
“It wasn’t a rebellion, though,” Pyriel corrected his apprentice. “It was him and one other. They weren’t the Dragon Warriors then. That came much later, though when exactly we do not know. It was a travesty, wrought by Ushorak’s hand—all of it.”
“Some do not want to be brought back, some can’t. An old friend told me that.”
“Who?”
“Fugis. It was one of the last things he said to me before Stratos. Cirrion came soon after that. And the Aura Hieron…”
“We’ve lost much.” Pyriel didn’t need to be psychic to read Dak’ir’s thoughts.
“Fugis isn’t dead, master. Our Apothecary will return from the Burning Walk.”
Pyriel’s tone verged on paternal. “Such hope… I always liked that about you, Dak’ir.”
The image of Fugis’ corpse, putrefying in the ship’s hold in Dak’ir’s vision came back to the Lexicanum unbidden.
“He will return.”
“Alive or dead, lost or returned, it matters not. I won’t stand by and let further destruction be waged upon us.” Pyriel gestured towards the doorway at the end of the bridge. It was cracked, the stone splintered where the reaper had forced itself through. “The way is open. We make for the cryptoria,” he added, trudging back across the causeway. It wasn’t fatigue making him weary—any Astartes could overcome that as easily as they could wield a bolter or chainsword—it was sorrow.
Dak’ir followed him in silence.
If the catacombs of Moribar represented the lowest level of squalor for the dead then here, further below, was the very peak of opulence.
Gilded mausoleums, silver-chased crypts, tombs of cut marble and crystal obelisks lined a concourse of pristine alabaster that ran throughout the entire cryptoria. It was a vast space, the equal of any starship’s footprint, and teemed with the interred dead. Heady incense flooded the air, overwhelming the grave-dust stink and ash-soaked reek of the pauper levels. The entranceway was immense, like the triumphal arch of some great cathedra or palace. Effigies of saints and ecclesiarchs were carved into its columns. Vines of onyx rose, strangle-ivy and helsbane wreathed the arch from base to apex. This great gate was open but shielded by a force-field that sparked and cracked as the minute specks of dust collided with it.
Passing through it required disabling the field long enough to walk the connecting chamber. The reaper was its intended guardian and with it destroyed, getting into the cryptoria was a matter of lowering the shield via a control port. Even still, the hermetically sealed environment beyond the force-field had to be preserved. Before Pyriel and Dak’ir had reached the other side of the conduit, air-scrubbing servo-skulls were sanitising the atmosphere.
Ranks of servitors tended expansive grounds, which were lush with manicured lawns and topiaried flora. A damp patina of vapour swathed the Librarians’ armour. The air was heavy with oxygen and hydrogen to maintain the health of the cryptoria’s gardens.
Pyriel paused on the road, absorbing the view. There were skulls embedded beneath him, their eye sockets glistening with jewels, bleached white and inscribed with litanies for the deceased.
“Hard to believe that Utopia exists amongst all this death.”
A fluttering of censer-bearing cherubim drew his eye up to a false firmament of starry glass. They were internal lume-globes, their polished silver as bright as a solar flare. Through the flocks of cyb-organic creatures above, it bathed the world in microcosm below with a refulgent aura.
Dak’ir was unmoved. All he saw was ash, and the rendering of what the cryptoria could be if the flame inside him was unleashed.
“It’s as grey as the rest of Moribar.”
“Perhaps…” They were walking again, following the concourse.
The air was cold, sanitised. It ghosted through Dak’ir’s mouth-grille.
“I can feel it.”
“The voice?” asked Pyriel.
“Yes, it speaks still. Our enemies came this way.”
“Can you discern the speaker?”
“It’s in thrall, in a limbo between realities. The agony gives it resonance. Up ahead… here.”
A crypt of black obsidian stood out amongst the throng of tombs. It was grand, imposing. Whoever this monument was meant to commemorate had been wealthy. Incredibly so.
“Do you recognise that mark?” Pyriel pointed out a simple icon steam-carved into the glassy rock.
Dak’ir shook his head.
“It is a dynastic sigil, one associated with a house of rogue traders. This one was a technocrat.”
&n
bsp; Crouching down, Dak’ir traced an armoured finger across the sigil. It was the icon of a man, split in two and with his legs and arms splayed in a star shape. One half was flesh, the other metal.
“How can you know, master?”
“Because I’ve seen it before, emblazoned on one of the dynasty’s vessels.”
Dak’ir turned.
“When Nihilan and I were neophytes, we fought a campaign with the Black Dragons,” said Pyriel, by way of explanation. “Ushorak commanded our allies. Captain Kadai led the Fire-born, as he always did.”
Dak’ir stood. “None of this is in the Chapter records.”
Pyriel gave a sniff of amusement. “I daresay Elysius could unearth something. It was buried deep, much of it proscribed except to the higher ranks, and the darkest accounts to the Reclusiam only.”
“Ushorak’s damnation,” Dak’ir guessed.
“The inception of it, yes.”
The Lexicanum regarded the crypt. It was, after all, the reason they had come to the grey world.
“Do you know who is buried here, who Ushorak coerced into serving him?”
Pyriel shook his head. “No. But whatever knowledge is held by them, once in life and now in death, must be terrible indeed for Nihilan to have followed his master’s intended path as far as he has.”
The Epistolary held out his hand, palm flat to the crypt.
“Stay very still,” he warned.
Dak’ir watched and waited.
After a few seconds a dull, red glow suffused Pyriel’s hand. The air grew heavy with heat, the vapour-laden atmosphere boiling off into clouds of steam against it.
The voice came first, no longer just in Dak’ir’s psychic consciousness but aloud for anyone to hear. It was screaming, intermittent and as if from a great distance. The pitch rose and fell as an image, struggling to resolve itself, stretched and yawned.
Slowly, the outline of a figure shimmered into existence. It was a shade of sorts, a warp echo. Dak’ir was reminded of the apparitions they’d fought at Aphium and the Imperial bastion of Mercy Rock. A dark canker had infected that place, filled with disquiet energy that had manifested in the tortured revenants of the dead. The thing before him, twisting in its ethereal agonies, was uncomfortably familiar.
[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Page 22
