‘Blood,’ he said. ‘Lots of it.’
The Dark Angels advanced more cautiously, their bolters held at the ready, fingers on triggers. Soon Zahariel could smell what his primarch had sensed earlier, and he gagged on the powerful scent of old, rotten blood. A dim glow built from ahead, and the passageway widened until it opened into a great archway that led into a cavern thick with a miasma of fine smoke.
Only as Zahariel approached did he realise that the smoke was in fact etheric energies, visible only to Israfael and himself. The rest of the Dark Angels appeared oblivious to the drifting clouds of smoke, the twists and curls of it imbued with agonised suffering and fear. Perhaps the Lion could see it too, for his gaze seemed to follow the drifting trails of pain and anguish traced in the smoke.
The Dark Angels entered the cavern, and the mystery of what had become of Sarosh’s missing population was a mystery no more.
The enormous space vanished into the distance left and right, illuminated by glaring strip lights hanging from the cavern’s roof. Steel walkways crossed an immense chasm that was filled almost to the brim with dead bodies, millions of dead bodies.
It was impossible to say how many, for the depth of the chasm was beyond sight, but Zahariel remembered Kurgis of the White Scars talking of a figure in the region of seventy million missing people. Could this be the remains of so many?
It seemed inconceivable that so many dead could have been secreted here, but the evidence was right before them.
‘Throne alive!’ swore the Lion. ‘How—’
‘The missing people,’ said Nemiel. ‘Zahariel, so many…’
Zahariel felt his emotions rushing to the surface and quelled them savagely. An Astartes was trained to control his emotions in a combat situation, but the sheer volume and density of the fear emanating from the endless chasm of the dead was overpowering.
‘Steady, Zahariel,’ said Israfael, appearing at his side. ‘Remember your training. These emotions are not yours, so shut them out.’
Zahariel nodded and forced himself to concentrate, whispering the mantras he had been taught by Israfael over the years of his transformation into an Astartes. Gradually, the feeling subsided, only to be replaced with a towering sense of furious righteousness.
‘We move out,’ said the Lion, heading for the nearest of the gantries crossing the chasm. His footfalls on the metal echoed loudly in the cavern, and the Dark Angels followed their primarch further into the depths.
Zahariel kept his gazed averted from the ocean of corpses, though he could not completely shut out the anguished echoes of their deaths. Whatever came next, whatever death and destruction the Angels of Death visited upon the heads of the Saroshi, it would not be nearly enough.
RHIANNA’S SCREAMS CAME from the heart of her being, for the sight above her was so hideous, so unnatural that it defied any understanding. The entire roof of the cavern was covered with what appeared to be a creature of translucent mucus, its surface gelatinous and festooned with a million unblinking eyes.
It occupied the roof of the chamber like some enormous parasite, hundreds of metres in diameter, and it seemed to shift and ooze so that its boundaries were fluid. Dripping tendrils like writhing tentacles hung down from the body of the vast, amorphous… thing that filled the air with nonsensical hissing, hooting and buzzing sounds.
Stars glistened within its body, distant lights of long dead galaxies swirling in its depths, like morsels devoured in ages past and not yet digested. Her breath came in short, painful gasps as she fought to hold onto her sanity in the face of something so utterly wrong, something that plainly should not be.
‘What… what…?’ she gasped, unable to force her mind to think of the right words.
‘That is the Melachim…’ breathed Dusan, his voice full of reverence and love. ‘It is the angel from beyond that will defile your flesh and wear it as a cloak to walk amongst us.’
Rhianna wept, and as the trails reached her lips, she knew that she wept blood.
‘No, please… don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t.’
Dusan nodded. ‘Your vocabulary is incomplete. We can. We will.’
‘Please stop,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
The Saroshi cocked his head to one side, as though digesting her words and trying to find the meaning.
‘Ah,’ he said, pointing to the masked figures that surrounded her. ‘You have misunderstood. It has already begun.’
ONCE ACROSS THE gantries that spanned the chasm of bodies and into the narrow tunnels that plunged into the deep, Zahariel felt the echoes of the dead begin to fade. They were still there, pressing at the walls of his skull, but he could feel them recede. At first, he was grateful for this, but then he realised that they were simply being drowned out by something stronger and more insistent.
It felt as though a hammer had been taken to his head.
Zahariel dropped to one knee, a blinding spike of pain shooting through his head as if someone had jammed a hot skewer into his ear.
Brother Israfael staggered under the psychic assault, but remained on his feet, the psy-damping mechanism wired into his helmet protecting him from the worst of the pain.
‘My lord!’ gasped the Librarian. ‘It has begun… the xeno creature from the warp. It is attempting to pass fully into our world.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked the Lion.
‘I’m sure,’ affirmed Israfael. ‘Right, Zahariel?’
‘It’s definitely coming,’ said Zahariel through gritted teeth.
‘Then we have no time to waste,’ said the Lion, turning and picking up the pace.
Zahariel used the cavern walls to pull himself upright, his mental wards no use against the force of the power filling the air around him.
Nemiel reached out to him and said, ‘Here, brother, take my hand.’
Zahariel gratefully accepted his cousin’s hand. ‘Just like old times, eh?’
Nemiel grinned, but Zahariel could sense the awkwardness behind the gesture. He hauled himself to his feet and tried to shake off the dread feeling building in the pit of his stomach.
The Lion was already some distance ahead and Zahariel had to jog as fast as he was able to catch up. Every step was painful, his wounds and burns from the embarkation deck not yet healed, despite his speeding metabolism. Worse than this was the psychic pain that seeped into his very pores, against which his armour offered no protection.
The deeper the Dark Angels ventured into the depths, the more insistent the sound became, and Zahariel hoped that Brother Israfael’s device could defeat it. He spared a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the hover gurney and its servitors were keeping pace with the Astartes.
The lobotomised servitors appeared not to feel the soul-deep anguish of this place, and Zahariel envied them. The electro-psychic pulse weapon gleamed in the half-light, and he shivered at the fearsome potential he could feel in the warhead.
From ahead, Zahariel could hear the sounds of voices and a throbbing noise that reverberated through every sense and even those beyond human understanding.
A sickly light, unhealthy and life-draining, filled the chamber ahead, spilling into the tunnel that the Dark Angels descended like a slick. The Lion was first into the cavern, with Nemiel a close second.
Brother Israfael followed the primarch, and the remainder of the Dark Angels swiftly joined their battle-brothers.
A wave of revulsion flowed through Zahariel as he emerged into the cavern, though he was not the source of that emotion. It washed from the robed figures that surrounded an upright slab of dark, veined stone as they chanted and sang a hideous chorus around a screaming woman bound to the slab.
Zahariel followed the howling gaze of the Saroshi’s prisoner and felt a crawling, sick horror as he saw the source of the monstrous evil that dwelled in this forgotten, red-lit cavern beneath the world.
Its jelly-like body was like that of some deep ocean trench-dweller, shimmering, apparently fragile, and lit f
rom within by bursts of coloured, electric light. A million eyes stared out from its hideous form, and he could feel its raw hunger as a gnawing ache in his chest. Even as he watched, the outline of the creature was fading, but instead of a sense of triumph, Zahariel knew that it was close to achieving its goal of translation.
Where others, including Zahariel, remained paralysed by the horrific sight of the creature above, the Lion was already in motion. His pistol shot down two of the robed and masked figures as they chanted, and his sword flashed into his hand as he charged.
Seeing their primarch in action spurred the Dark Angels to follow, and with a fearsome war cry they leapt to the attack.
Pistols blazed and swords glittered in the dead light of the monster above, but as each of the masked chanters died, Zahariel sensed a dreadful amusement course through the air.
The masked figures made no attempt at defence, and Zahariel was seized with a sudden conviction as to why, as he looked into the agonised eyes of the woman bound to the upright slab.
Her face was stretched in a soundless scream, her eyes empty and glassy, as though filled with black ink. Dark power floated in her eyes, and as Zahariel looked into her, something inhuman looked back.
Zahariel raised his pistol, but even as the monstrous essence of the creature on the roof of the cave began to pour into its host, something of the woman surfaced for the briefest second, and a moment of connection passed between them, more profound than Zahariel had ever experienced before, or ever would again.
She simply said… Yes.
Zahariel nodded and pressed down the trigger.
A TRIO OF bolts erupted from Zahariel’s pistol and crossed the space between him and the woman in a heartbeat. They penetrated her skin and muscle, and went on to punch through her ribcage with equal ease.
As the mass-reactive warheads within the shells detected an increase in the local mass, the explosive charges inside detonated.
Zahariel watched as the three shells blasted the woman apart, her ribcage blown out, and her stomach opening like the bloom of a red rose. Her skull ceased to exist, expanding in a confetti of blood and brain fragments.
A terrible, ageless scream of frustration filled the chamber, echoing throughout all the realms of existence simultaneously as a creature older than time was thwarted in its ambitions.
But such a creature was not to be denied its spite.
As the spinning chunks of the woman’s flesh flew through the air, a grotesque crackling sound ripped through the chamber and each piece froze, in defiance of gravity and every natural law of man.
The creature on the cave roof had faded to almost nothing, its slithering viscosity a distant memory, and the masked figures were slain to a man, but the hunks of blasted flesh still hung in the air.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded the Lion. ‘What did you do, Zahariel?’
‘What needed to be done,’ he replied, the pain in his body and the ache of sorrow in his heart making him insubordinate.
‘Now what?’ said Nemiel, staring in revulsion at the floating chunks of raw meat.
‘The creature is not yet defeated,’ cried Israfael, running towards the modified cyclonic warhead. ‘Stand ready to fight, Dark Angels.’
‘That thing had better work, Librarian,’ warned the Lion.
‘It will,’ promised Israfael. ‘Just give me time!’
No sooner had the Librarian spoken than the woman’s flesh hissed and vanished, leaving brightly glowing holes in the air. Horrid light seeped from the holes, multi-coloured and unclean, and Zahariel knew that what lurked on the other side was pure and undiluted evil.
Without warning, a host of tentacles emerged from the light, writhing like striking snakes towards the Dark Angels.
A trio of whipping appendages speared straight for Zahariel.
He slashed at them with his sword, severing them all in one smooth movement. With his other hand, he fired his bolt pistol and sent a salvo of rounds towards the empty space from which the tentacles had appeared.
He heard a shriek, the noise deep and inhuman, like the sound of one of the beasts of Caliban. The familiarity was terrifying.
The battle was hardly a few seconds old and already the enemy was right on top of them. As the Dark Angels moved to form a circle with their primarch, the number of attacking tentacles multiplied with extraordinary rapidity.
Each was two or three times the thickness of a human arm, several metres long, and strong enough to crush the ceramite outer plates of Mark IV Astartes power armour. Some were tipped with talons of bone and curved like the blade of a scythe, while others seemed made for gripping and constricting prey, or were lined with retractable claws.
The tentacles did not appear to be attached to anything, but simply floated in the air, the broad end of each tentacle disappearing into bright nothingness as though they belonged to some manner of disembodied, invisible creature that only needed to show itself in parts.
‘It’s like fighting ghosts!’ shouted Zahariel.
‘Aye,’ replied Nemiel, slashing his blade through another tentacle. ‘But these ghosts can kill!’
As if to prove the point, one of their number was jerked from his feet and dragged through the glowing rent from which the tentacles emerged. A battle-brother nearby reached out to save his comrade and was in turn eviscerated by a taloned claw.
The worst of it was the one-sided nature of the battle. An enemy fully capable of killing them attacked, yet it was difficult for them to respond in kind. Zahariel cut at the tentacles while aiming his bolt pistol at the point where they emerged from the air.
How successful such tactics were, however, he did not know. Did severing a tentacle inflict a mortal wound on the creature it belonged to, or were the tentacles as disposable as human hair?
Eliath’s heavy bolter barked a staccato rhythm that punctuated the screaming noise of battle with a booming counterpoint. Where his shells struck, wet liquid, possibly blood, splashed, but no matter how badly the tentacles were mutilated, more always appeared.
Sometimes, Zahariel heard screams from beyond the glowing tears in the air, but it was impossible to know whether they were of pain or some manner of triumphant hunting cry.
Fighting them, Zahariel was reminded of the tales of his childhood, of fairy tale monsters like daemons and devils.
He was fighting invisible monsters. It was not hard to think of these creatures as something beyond the ken of human understanding, creatures from the primordial depths returned to punish man for his hubris.
‘Israfael!’ bellowed the Lion. ‘Whatever you are doing, you had better do it faster!’
‘Just a moment longer!’ cried the Librarian.
‘A moment may be all we have!’
‘We will hold the line,’ shouted Nemiel, ‘until the Great Crusade is ended!’
There was bravado in Nemiel’s tone, but Zahariel knew that the Lion was right, they had moments at best. Another two warriors were down and the brutal arithmetic of combat meant that the rest of them would soon follow.
The tentacles were relentless, pressing the Dark Angels with no time to rest or think.
Zahariel saw a tentacle suddenly fly to attack Brother Israfael. He responded with a fast cut from his sword, slicing through the tip of the tentacle and forcing its invisible owner to swiftly withdraw it.
As quickly as one disappeared, however, more tentacles took its place.
Zahariel recalled something he had read about one of the ancient myths of Terra, about a creature called the Hydra, which was capable of growing two new heads to replace each one that was severed.
In the legend, the hero of the story had defeated the monster by applying fire to the cut end of each of its necks to cauterise them before the heads could grow again. Zahariel could only wish that something as commonplace as fire could defeat this dread foe.
‘Zahariel!’ called Brother Israfael. ‘Now!’
He turned at the sound of his name, watching as Brother Is
rafael mashed the activation stud on the warhead’s firing mechanism.
A colossal bass note erupted from the device and a titanic wave of psychic force erupted from the warhead in an ever-expanding halo. The Dark Angels were swatted from their feet by the blast and Zahariel felt the force coalesce in his mind alongside the iron will of Brother Israfael.
Knowing what he had to do, Zahariel focused every ounce of his psyche and took hold of the electro-psychic force, turning it to his own ends, wielding the power as a technician wields a plasma cutter.
He felt the force within him grow and take flight, and he relished the fearful potential that flowed through his veins. Fierce fires blazed in his eyes, and as he stared at the tentacles emerging from the streaks of light in the air, they snapped shut.
More screeches filled the chamber, but Zahariel and Israfael blazed with pure white light, the power of a million suns flowing through them, shaped by their will. As though they were fire-fighters in a hangar blaze, they washed their borrowed power around their comrades, destroying the waving tentacles and sealing shut the tears in reality from which they had emerged.
Within moments, though it felt like an age, the chamber was silent once more, the battle was over, and the angel of the Saroshi had vanished.
Zahariel cried out as the power of the electro-psychic blast faded, and he collapsed as the fuel of his body was spent. He lay still, letting his breathing return to normal after the fury of battle and the exhilarating, yet exhausting, channelling of so much power.
He looked over to Brother Israfael and smiled wearily. ‘Is it over?’ asked the Lion. Brother Israfael nodded. ‘It’s over, my lord.’
THE DARK ANGELS gathered up their dead and made their way back to the surface of Sarosh, winding their way back through the cramped tunnels, over the chasm of the dead and up through the galleries of the mineshaft.
Afternoon had given way to night and the air was cool. The freshness felt good on their bare skin, as helmets were removed, and great draughts of fresh air were sucked down into heaving lungs.
The Stormbirds returned to pick up their charges, and Army units were summoned to secure the tunnels beneath the Mining Station One Zeta Five, though no one expected them to find anything hostile now that the angel of Sarosh was no more.
Descent of Angels Page 33
