Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Vulkan put a hand on his shoulder, father to son.

  ‘I cannot give you answers, Barek. I don’t have them. Ever since I returned, I have known a single truth. That I must reach Terra. The talisman is aligned to my fate somehow. I forged it for a purpose, one given to me by my father, one which I do not yet understand. I do not believe I could have fashioned the talisman had I not perished and been reborn, had I not been imbued with part of the Emperor’s will bound into that spearhead of stone. But we cannot linger. The fulgurite is gone. It has served its end at last, and given us a moment’s respite. We cannot squander it, my son.’

  Zytos wanted answers. He had never possessed Numeon’s faith, or Abidemi’s spiritual belief, or even Gargo’s blunt acceptance. Vengeance had driven him, not belief. He had many questions.

  In the end, he settled for just one.

  ‘Which way?’

  They left the city, chased by an intangible hunger, the thing that had tasted Vulkan’s immortal soul when they had passed through the warp. They found a passageway and a great stone stair that led deeper, below the city.

  Descending into a series of catacombs, the Drakes discovered ­further evidence of the Mechanicum’s presence in the eldritch tunnels. Strange, dormant machines littered every artery and conduit, their function unclear. The dead lingered here too, more of the Custodes and the Silent Sisterhood, entire cohorts of Mechanicum Thallax, Castellax and skitarii, and even the cold shells of Titans, the sight of their stricken bodies as impressive as it was appalling.

  An urgency burned within Vulkan. It had seen them through the city, and to the labyrinth beneath. It had brought them to the very edge of where one world met another.

  And it was here the Drakes came to a halt. Standing amongst the corpses of the fallen war machines, they saw an army.

  Not of men or machines, but of monsters.

  Of daemons.

  A gateway loomed, far, far ahead like a distant horizon. A door to Terra, to the Palace itself. A sliver of light, just a crack, remained. A passage through the door, but it would not stay open for long.

  A second army arrayed before the gate fell back in full retreat, holding off the horde and dying as they did it.

  Titans and warriors clad in golden plate armour fought ferociously to stem the daemon tide. Great swathes of the dead had been left in their wake, their fallen abandoned in the desire to survive, to fight on. Stragglers feasted on this carrion, small knots of daemons picking at the bones and sucking deep of the soul marrow.

  Further on, in the midst of the battle, a Reaver fell, the great war machine smote to ruin by a winged beast wielding a blood-red axe. A second, smaller engine collapsed to one knee then fell forwards, harried by a swarm of capering, iridescent beasts. A phalanx of Martian automata reacted, their beam weapons emitting a collimated blaze of light and fury, until their bearers were overwhelmed by a flock of shrieking monstrosities and the beam flickered then died. Custodians and their ancient Contemptor brethren fought atop the wrecks of destroyed tanks, trying to hold back the wretched swarms amassing below. Golden jetbikes contested the unnatural skies with winged screamers and daemons riding strange, fleshy discs.

  So distant was the fighting, discerning any further meaning was all but impossible.

  Vulkan’s eyes narrowed as he beheld the battle.

  ‘That door leads to Terra. The Imperial Dungeon is beyond,’ he said. ‘My father awaits. He will hold the way open for us, but we must hurry.’

  Hope was rekindled for a moment as Vulkan made to head off towards the gate and the battle, but then Zytos stepped into his path.

  ‘You cannot mean to wade into that. To reach the gate you would have to pass through it. No man, no god, can withstand that.’

  ‘There are no gods,’ Vulkan warned.

  ‘My lord, they are before us!’

  Vulkan did not argue. His resolve remained unchanged, however.

  ‘Gods or not, that is our path.’

  ‘There has to be another way. Brothers…’ said Zytos.

  ‘It is certain death,’ said Abidemi.

  Even Gargo’s belief faltered. ‘Perhaps there is another path. Earlier, I saw a branching tunnel–’

  ‘Enough!’ said Vulkan, and then more softly. ‘Enough.’

  He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the head of Urdrakule.

  ‘It is our path, but it is death. This cannot be the only way. It cannot end–’

  Vulkan stopped and opened his eyes. Zytos met his gaze.

  ‘I hear it too,’ he said.

  Some of the feasting daemons estranged from the battle had begun to turn. A few lapped at the air with their tongues. They scented prey, but they were still too far away to be a threat.

  The sound was not coming from them.

  A low drone, just at the edge of hearing, filled the air. It gnawed at the senses, an irritant, growing louder and more insistent.

  ‘The mist returns,’ said Abidemi as a yellow fog began to gather. It rose quickly, climbing the tunnel walls, spreading until it shrouded the battle from sight and impeded the way ahead.

  ‘That is no mist,’ said Vulkan, and readied his hammer.

  The droning resolved into the frenzied beating of hundreds of thousands of diaphanous wings, and a swarm of flies materialised around the Drakes, who clamped on their helms.

  The fly cloud swirled, then coiled and uncoiled like the turning of a foetid screw, a noisome murmuration that barred the way back.

  Caught between the yellow miasma ahead and the swarm behind, the Drakes were trapped in a stretch of tunnel barely fifty paces long. Even the walls closed, laden with a spontaneously growing fungus. Filth rapidly encrusted the fallen Titans. The bodies of dead Custodians swelled with sudden putrefaction, their skin undulating with the slow peristalsis of maggots.

  The mist had lost its incorporeality and become a barrier of solid putrescence. Abidemi hacked at it with Draukoros but found it unyielding.

  ‘That stench…’ said Gargo.

  ‘The hunger has found us,’ Vulkan replied, his eyes on the swarm as it began to coalesce.

  Slowly, through the blur of fat insect bodies, flesh began to materialise.

  At first a gnarled finger, the yellow nail chipped and dirty. Then a flabby arm, skin hanging off it in folds like a grubby sail. Another arm followed, as wretched as the first. A torso, a gut, bloated and distended, girded by layers of fat. Pustules and boils protruded under the skin, ripe and fit to burst. Cloven feet, stumpy legs consumed under rolls of flesh. At last, a stubby head, its many chins framing a grinning mouth filled with needle teeth. A single milky eye blinked in childish amusement, the other gummed shut with seeping pus. A long, lascivious tongue slithered loose to lap at sagging, sore-encrusted breasts. A broken horn jutted from its forehead, crowned by a pair of rotten antlers.

  Gargo retched within his helm, a spray of vomit painting the inside of his faceplate.

  ‘Steady, brothers,’ said Zytos, grimacing at the sheer foulness of the thing.

  ‘Blood of Deathfire,’ hissed Abidemi, fending off his own nausea. ‘It is beyond repellent.’

  ‘Father… How do we kill this thing?’ asked Zytos.

  Scowling, Vulkan waited until that moment to put on his helm.

  ‘You cannot help me here. All of you,’ he said, striding towards the beast. ‘Stay back.’

  The yellow fog gathered in Vulkan’s wake. Zytos tried to plough through it, but wisps of decaying matter entangled his legs. So mired, he could not follow. Instead, he had no choice but to retreat. In seconds, the miasma solidified as before and the Drakes found themselves encased in a cage of rot.

  They were not alone for long.

  The maggots had gored their way outside of their host bodies, and began to hatch.

  ‘Gargo,’ said Zytos, held rapt by the rap
id metamorphosis, ‘does that flamer still have fuel?’

  Gargo hefted his spear, levelling the flamer he had attached to the blade at the corpses.

  ‘It does, brother.’

  ‘Then, by Vulkan, let them burn!’

  The beast waddled with disgusting slowness, the last of the flies absorbed into the meat of its body or lazily snatched by its tongue. It chuckled as it regarded Vulkan.

  And then it spoke.

  ‘Take up thy black tongue and preach the words of rot.’

  Its voice gurgled like a festering sinkhole, a bubbling clangour of corruption.

  ‘Behold!’ it said, stretching wide its flabby arms as if to encompass its own majesty. ‘Aghalbor, Bringer of Poxes.’

  ‘I see you, filth,’ snarled Vulkan, and felt his gorge rise. ‘This is Urdrakule, the Burning Hand. I’m going to use it to reach into your foul innards and immolate you.’

  Aghalbor tittered, an utterly incongruous and abhorrent noise from such a beast.

  ‘Let root and bower blight, to feed the plague of fortune.’

  A crust of pestilence crept across Vulkan’s armour, hardening across the joints. He felt it slowing him down, feeding atrophy into his bones, cancers into his muscles. He fell, leaning on the haft of his hammer to stay upright.

  ‘Let bone succumb to canker, and flesh to waste,’ cooed the daemon, chuckling as it reached for a bony hilt sticking out from one of its many folds of greasy flesh.

  ‘Seven times seven times seven, hark now! The tolling bell of the pox, the virulence of life unending, and disease unbound.’

  Urdrakule burst into flame, scouring the filth scabbing Vulkan’s armour, burning it away into flakes of ash. His strength returned, fuelled by an inner fire.

  ‘Are we to fight, daemon, or must I endure more of this vapid poetry?’

  Aghalbor’s face contorted into an approximation of distaste.

  ‘Spawn of the anathema, Aghalbor shall make a sport of it, if thou wish.’ Wrapping chubby fingers around the hilt, the beast drew forth a great cankerous sword from its gut, the edge pitted and gleaming with corruption. ‘Quoth no more,’ it uttered, its humour abruptly evaporated.

  Vulkan barely leapt over the canker sword, the daemon much faster than its bulk would suggest. He swung Urdrakule but it was like hitting solid rock. Even the fire could find no purchase on the daemon’s rubbery hide.

  Aghalbor laughed as tendrils of ropy flesh speared from wounds that had opened in its flesh, coiling around the primarch’s arms, pinning them to his sides. Urdrakule seared his armour and Vulkan had to douse its flame, his fingers scrabbling for the deactivation stud.

  He felt a pull and braced his legs, but the daemon’s strength was prodigious. Slowly, boots scraping against the ground, Vulkan was dragged towards it.

  He gagged, spitting up a clot of black blood, and looked down to see the canker sword impaled in his chest. The daemon’s laughter resounded in his ears as the blade slid free. The flesh tendrils uncoiled, allowing Vulkan to collapse to his knees. He let Urdrakule fall, then sank to all fours, coughing up thick yellow phlegm, a host to a riot of diseases.

  He heard shrieking laughter and realised it came from the fat flies still buzzing around the daemon.

  Vulkan felt his chin rise, lifted by Aghalbor’s rancid tongue. Its breath seared the faceplate of his helm. A crack stitched the left retinal lens, and he wrenched the helm off in order to breathe.

  Glaring at Vulkan through its milky eye, the daemon tutted as if reprimanding a wilful child. It slid the canker sword back into its sheath, the blade accepted greedily by its fatty excess.

  Its tongue lengthened, entwining Vulkan’s limp body. The pri­march barely had strength enough to grab and hold on to his hammer, let alone swing it. Like him, it would soon be devoured by Aghalbor’s widening maw, which slavered in anticipation.

  ‘Such a morsel,’ the daemon burbled, eyelid fluttering, skin trembling as it pushed Vulkan down into its gullet.

  The fly swarm burned.

  In their death throes they tried to bite and sting the Drakes, but legionary war-plate proved proof against them.

  Zytos crushed the last beneath his boot in a spray of rank innards.

  ‘What now?’ asked Gargo, his armour smeared in greenish blood.

  ‘Torch the bodies, brother. Every corpse that could be a host. Leave no scrap of this filth.’

  ‘And what of the primarch?’

  Zytos looked to Abidemi, who had sagged onto his haunches, but for all his relentless efforts the foetid barrier appeared unscathed.

  Abidemi shook his head. ‘It cannot be breached. Not by any means we possess.’

  Zytos stared grimly at the barrier, willing it to reveal what was happening on the other side. Its opacity mocked him. He saw only shadows, suggestions of a struggle.

  ‘Zytos…’

  He turned at the sound of Gargo’s voice and saw him gesture to the other barrier.

  Shadows lurked here too, though much closer. Following the scent of prey, a horde had gathered.

  Vulkan drowned in pestilence. He fought, but the flabby tongue pulled him in further. He tried to gasp a breath but a pudgy hand pushed him down and he swallowed filth. Digestive acids ate at his armour.

  He descended and all sense of reality faded as he sank ever deeper. Foulness without end existed beyond the daemon’s gullet. It was a gateway to another realm, a great and foetid garden into which Vulkan was slowly being consumed.

  Urdrakule had slid from his grasp, but he refused to yield.

  His fingers brushed against the talisman of seven hammers. It felt warm to the touch and for the briefest moment, his mind filled with the vision of endless fire. He blinked and stood before a world aflame, its cities and monuments mere shadows in the flickering haze, before he too burned…

  Except he wasn’t burning, he was drowning. But something remained of the fire. He felt it stir within Urdrakule. The heat of its awakened power reached him through a mire of wretched innards.

  He should be dead, but for his father’s gift. Clawing through the foulness, the rumblings of Aghalbor’s tortured gut thunderous in his ears, Vulkan found the activation stud upon the weapon’s haft and lit the hammer.

  Fire blazed into being, purifying, rampant. Hotter than before. A furnace.

  The daemon recoiled, its throat clenching, corruptive acid rushing upwards. Its stomach lurched. Hefting Urdrakule one-handed, both blind and deaf, Vulkan seized Aghalbor’s tongue with his other hand. It dangled cruelly, a rancid lifeline. Gauntleted fingers dug into rubbery flesh and pulled.

  A panicked choke escaped the daemon’s lips. Its mouth opened as it tried desperately to swallow.

  Vulkan took a breath, and thrust with his hammer. Aghalbor squealed in pain, several needle teeth cracked by the blow. It retched, releasing a flood of corruption and the bedraggled body of a primarch.

  Staggering to his feet, his armour seared but intact, Vulkan yanked on the daemon’s tongue and tore it out.

  Ignoring its gurgled protests, he charged at Aghalbor and fed his fury into Urdrakule.

  Hurt, but not defeated, the daemon unsheathed its canker sword.

  Vulkan shattered it. He smashed in Aghalbor’s milky eye and broke off an antler. The talisman grew warm against his chest, and Vulkan yoked its strength. He struck again, and again. And with every blow that followed, the daemon shrank, wheezing like a slowly deflating bladder until nothing but pieces of decaying flesh remained.

  The flesh began to discorporate, withering against Urdrakule’s cleansing fire, unable to turn back into the swarm.

  Not even ash was left by the end.

  The daemon was dead. Not banished, but annihilated. The talisman had done that, Vulkan was certain. As he had killed it, he beheld the endless flame again but in snatched flashes. Exhausted, its meaning
eluded him for now.

  Vulkan wanted to fall. He badly needed rest. Instead he turned.

  The barrier of putrescence dissolved, the last of Aghalbor’s power turned to mist and then to nothing.

  Vulkan’s sons had their backs to him. They faced a horde of red-skinned daemons, revealed by the second barrier’s collapse. The Drakes were sorely outnumbered.

  Something called to Vulkan, begging to be unleashed.

  He felt the fire. He clutched the talisman.

  Not a compass, never that. Something else. Something my father gave me, something he forged with my hand…

  Vulkan had forged it, but he did not yet know how to wield it, or even if he should wield it. What would he wreak if he did? He had to act. He was weakened. The daemons would slay them.

  A ferocious arc of lightning fell amongst the creatures. It coursed like wildfire, turning the red-skinned daemons into blackened husks. The storm abated and from its wrath stepped a seer.

  ‘Deathfire,’ uttered Vulkan, causing his sons to turn.

  ‘Father, you live!’ said Gargo.

  Vulkan nodded, but looked beyond his sons.

  ‘You have returned,’ he said.

  The Drakes turned back to regard the stranger in their midst, who gave a shallow bow. The old man of the mountain had come amongst them, the truth of his provenance laid bare.

  An eldar, judging by his garb. One Vulkan had met before, judging by his eyes. The seer wore black robes under runic armour. A strange helm masked his features and he clutched an ornate, alien staff that resonated power.

  Behind the seer, the battle raged on. The Emperor’s army had almost retreated in its entirety now but the gap in the door remained.

  ‘You cannot go that way, Lord of Drakes,’ said the seer. ‘I can show you another.’

  Vulkan staggered up to the seer, waving away offers of help from his sons.

  ‘What is your stake in all of this? Why go to such lengths to get me to Terra?’

  The seer canted his head. With the eldar’s face hidden by the elaborate helm, Vulkan could only guess at the creature’s mood.

  ‘I have done much more, I assure you,’ he said. ‘To reach you here at this moment, this crucial skein… I have done terrible things.’