by Ben Counter
‘…Destroy you,’ the dreadnought replied, the sarcophagus closing up over the blister.
‘Round two,’ Brynngar whispered as Baelanos the dreadnought charged.
MHOTEP CRASHED THROUGH the blast doors of the bridge, and skidded across the floor of an adjoining corridor. Fire wreathed his armour and scorch marks tarnished it from where the daemon had burned him with its breath. The force of the blow was such that Mhotep tried to claw at the corridor walls to slow his passage, but the wood veneer and metal tore away in his grasp, revealing bare wiring and fat cables that spat sparks and flame. The Thousand Son struck a bulkhead at the corridor’s intersection and crumpled to a halt, pain lancing his back and shoulder.
Heat coiled from the edges of Mhotep’s armour. The faceplate of his helmet had taken the worst of the impact and he ripped it away, half-melted, leaving the rest of the headgear intact, together with the psychic hood. Discarding the battle-helm face plate, Mhotep got to his feet. Three claw marks were cut so deep into his cuirass that they bled. The Astartes staggered at first, but drew on his psychic reserves to steel himself. Forcing one foot in front of the other, banishing the pain, he made his way back to the bridge.
Wsoric stepped from the shattered blast doors, metal squealing as the daemon pushed its immense bulk through the ragged hole left by Mhotep. The beast would meet him halfway.
As it got closer, Mhotep saw that the black armour carapace was cracked in places and faintly glowing ichor seeped from minor cuts on its body.
It could be hurt, at least. Mhotep clung to that small sliver of hope as he readied his spear. With a muttered incantation, he sent an arc of crimson lightning towards the daemon. The creature shied away at first, using its muscular forearm to fend off the psychic assault, but the cerulean energy quickly died and Wsoric emerged unscathed.
‘Like an insect,’ said the daemon, its voice accompanied by the slither of muscle and the cracking of bone, ‘you are harder to kill than your feeble frame suggests.’
‘I am Astartes. I am an avenging angel of the Emperor of Mankind,’ Mhotep challenged, using the brief respite to marshal his strength. Though he was weak and in pain, the Thousand Son was careful not to show weakness, not even to contemplate defeat. For if he did, the daemon would seize upon it and all would be lost.
‘I am your doom,’ Wsoric promised and came forward with preternatural speed.
‘As I am yours,’ Mhotep hissed.
Talons like blades scythed the air and Mhotep’s spear spat golden sparks as he used it to parry the blow. He was staggered by the force of it and took an involuntary step back, boots grinding metal. He lunged with his spear, igniting the tip in an aura of crimson fire, and pierced Wsoric’s side. The daemon’s skin felt like iron, and the resonance of the blow rippled down Mhotep’s forearm and into his shoulder. The effect was numbing and he nearly dropped the weapon. Wsoric’s pain bellow was immense, and the Thousand Son winced against its intensity before withdrawing.
With the servos in his armour assisting his muscles, Mhotep leapt backwards, the tattered robes of his armour flapping like a cloak, and landed, spear in hand, before the daemon could retaliate.
‘You have failed here, spirit,’ he said, filling his voice with absolute certainty. ‘Wraith of times past, I name thee. Native thing of the warp, I shall send you back there. However much you hunger, you are known to me and you will not prevail. You will be banished by the light of the Emperor.’
‘You know nothing,’ Wsoric sneered, ‘of what we are.’ The terrible wound in its side was already healing. ‘You are misled and you know not of your fate.’
An image flashed briefly in Mhotep’s mind, of the spires of Prospero burning and the howling of wolves. It was the same vision he’d seen when Wsoric had first tried to subvert him and it came back like a recurring nightmare to haunt him.
Mhotep focused, determined not to give in, and slowly the image faded away like smoke.
‘I am Mhotep, Thousand Son of Magnus the Red. The wisdom of Ahriman flows within me.’ The affirmation steeled him and power coursed through his body. Wsoric’s body, all muscle and blemished skin like the hide of a diseased corpse, shuddered with what the Thousand Son could only think was laughter. The daemon’s bloody lips peeled back from its dog-like skull and its pure black eyes shimmered wetly in sunken sockets of gore. One of Wsoric’s hands turned in on itself with a foul sucking sound, forming a wide orifice, which the monster aimed like a gun. The daemon roared with effort and a bolt of purple fire spat from its hand. Mhotep couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough and the blast caught his pauldron, hitting him hard enough to throw him, spinning, down the corridor. The Thousand Son was on his feet as soon as he landed, feeling the armour down one side char with the heat and the exposed skin of his face blistering.
Wsoric fired again, a heavy chain of caged fire spitting from his hand. The monster was laughing loudly, a horrendous gurgling sound that sprayed blood from its throat. Mhotep rolled around the intersection, tumbling into another corridor as lances of fire tore through the bulkhead.
The stink of burning metal filled his nostrils and wretched heat plagued his skin, but Mhotep was not about to give up. Once the conflagration had died down, he swung back around the intersection. From his outstretched palm, he sent a boiling mass of crimson fire against the daemon, which coursed over its weapon-arm, searing it shut.
‘The Word Bearers will not succeed,’ he said, rushing forward with his spear. ‘The Emperor knows he is betrayed! Lorgar will not escape his justice!’
‘I care nothing for Lorgar’s dogs,’ roared Wsoric. ‘They are beholden to the will of the warp, the ancient ones that dwell in the empyrean. The slave Lorgar is merely a tool in the fashioning of our grand design. Mankind will fall as Old Night returns to the galaxy, shrouding it in a second darkness. You will all be slaves!’
Astartes and daemon clashed. Mhotep ran his spear through Wsoric’s side while the daemon swatted him against the corridor wall with a sweep of its gargantuan claws. Before the Thousand Son could recover, it seized upon his skull and started to squeeze. Mhotep could hear the bone cracking inside his head as dark spots flecked his failing vision.
‘Your Emperor can plot and cower all he likes,’ said Wsoric. ‘What has the warp to fear from him?’ he taunted, exerting more pressure.
‘Knowledge…’ hissed Mhotep through clenched teeth, ‘…is power.’ Twin beams of light seared from his eyes, burning Wsoric’s face and torso. The daemon recoiled, loosing its grip and Mhotep rammed his spear into its neck. Shrieking in pain, Wsoric let him down and the Thousand Son clattered to the floor, the spear still embedded in the daemon’s neck.
With a massive effort, Mhotep got up and threw the daemon off, a mental shield forming in his mind and crystallising in the air before him. Wsoric was angry, its red raw flesh charred and bleeding ichor. The fresh spear wound had not closed.
Wsoric came at the Thousand Son again, tearing through the psychic shield as if it was parchment.
CESTUS FELL FLAT on his face, dry heaving. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He was cold, appallingly cold, as if he was wrapped in ice or exposed to the naked void.
The feeling of his body coming apart was an agonising echo in every bone and tendon. To turn like that from a living, breathing man to a piece of mangled meat, to be trapped in that transition, feeling his spine cracking and his chest splitting, had been as obscene as it was tortuous. He felt violated, as if his flesh didn’t belong to him any more.
Cestus opened his eyes.
He was in the last circle of hell. It was an endless shaft of blackness, reaching up and down for infinity. Hundreds of long, thin blades penetrated the darkened void, hanging down from above and spearing down forever. On these blades were impaled traitors to Macragge. They slid, centimetre by centimetre, down into the black.
Cestus stood on a thin spur of rock reaching from the wall of this circle of hell. He saw the faces of the condemned, locked in eternal screa
ms as the blades bit slowly through them.
‘You have as many circles of sin as hell itself,’ said the taskmaster, standing behind Cestus. The Ultramarine got a good look at him for the first time, as burly as an Astartes, dressed in tarnished steel armour such as that worn by Macragge’s ancient Battle Kings. He wore a leather apron stained with blood and sweat. His face was like a solid slab, features worn down by an eternity serving in hell. The whip in his hand was as cruel and ugly a weapon as Cestus had ever seen. ‘I’m not a traitor,’ said Cestus.
‘Neither are these,’ said the taskmaster, pointing with his whip towards the damned souls sliding their way into eternity. ‘They think they are. Theirs is a sin more of arrogance than treachery. They thought they really had the capacity to betray their fellow man, but in truth they are just petty thieves and killers: unremarkable. To be a true betrayer, you need power to turn against your brother. Very few ever possess it. That the virtue in acquiring that very power should be so tainted by the act of betrayal, that is the truth of the sin. That is what makes it fouler still than anything else.’
Cestus looked down at his body. His armour was gone and he wore the deep blue padded armour of an aspirant of Macragge, with the crest of the Battle Kings on his chest. It was what he had worn when he had first stepped up to the Ultramarines’ chaplain and declared that he believed he was ready to join the sons of Guilliman. It was tattered and torn, stained with the blood of a thousand battles. ‘I am no traitor, imagined or otherwise. I have never turned on my brothers.’
‘As for you, Lysimachus, where do you really belong? You are an Astartes, with all the power and brutality that brings. You’re a murderer, too, given all the people and xenos you have killed, do you truly believe that not one of them could have been undeserving of their fate? Think of all those sins, and that is without the mission you died fighting. You led a whole fleet to its destruction. You allowed your battle-brothers to die in vain. You protected a psyker, knowing full well that he was in breach of the Council of Nikaea: all of this to fight your fellow Astartes. Where, captain, do we start with you?’
Cestus looked down over the edge of the precipice. The true heart of hell was there. Something enormous roiled down, barely visible against the darkness. A vast maw ground traitors between its teeth. Thousands of eyes accused them with every flash of pain.
‘None of this is real,’ said Cestus.
The Ultramarine smiled despite his surroundings as the clarity of understanding washed away all doubt like blue water.
‘I am not dead and this is not hell,’ he affirmed.
‘How can you be sure?’ asked the taskmaster.
‘Because I may be guilty of everything you have said. I have led men to their deaths, and killed and maimed, and turned on fellow Astartes, but I am no traitor.’
Cestus stepped off the ledge, and fell into the last hell.
PAIN, REAL TANGIBLE pain, slammed into Cestus as he hit the ground. He had escaped. Somehow, through resolve and belief in himself, he had shrugged off the psychic glamour, the cage of his own mind, and emerged intact.
The booming of the big guns hammered at him through the floor and recollection returned.
He was on the Furious Abyss. Cynically, he wondered if it might have been more prudent to stay in hell.
Cestus’s body ached and he tested himself for injuries. He was bruised and rattled, but otherwise fine and he still had his armour. Getting to his feet, he saw Excelinor beside him. In his fever dream, he must have dragged his battle-brother along with him, although, the Ultramarine captain had no idea where he actually was.
Cestus felt a pang of grief in his heart. Excelinor was dead. It was possible that under the psychic assault the Astartes’s sus-an membrane had shut his body down into stasis. It hardly mattered; there would be no waking him.
Cestus crouched over his fallen battle-brother and rested his arms across his chest, placing the short-blade in his grasp in a death salute. The Ultramarine captain could do little more. He stood up again and backed up against a wall, ignoring the throbbing in his head. He felt his armour dispensing painkillers into his system and detected his altered physiognomy at work, enabling him to move and fight.
Scanning his surroundings, Cestus gathered that he was no longer outside the ordnance decks. He had no idea how he had got to this place and assumed that he had staggered through the tunnels of the Furious Abyss in a psychic-induced delirium, some innate survival instinct carrying him from immediate danger. It looked like a barracks. He dredged flashes of schematic implanted in his mind by Mhotep. Several dormitories made up the deck and there was a temple at the far end. It was the only exit.
Treading cautiously, assuming that the deck must be largely unoccupied or he would’ve been discovered already, Cestus made for the temple.
The chamber was anathema to everything the Emperor had taught them to believe. It opposed the era of enlightenment that the Great Crusade was meant to usher in for mankind, the banishment of barbarian customs and the value of the empirical over the superstitious. The temple flouted everything the Astartes stood for.
It was a place of worship, but of what craven deities Cestus did not know. An altar sat against one wall and there were pews arranged for prayer. The chamber was dressed with deep scarlet banners with crimson embroidery. The Ultramarine tried to focus on the designs, but found he couldn’t as they appeared to squirm and congeal before his eyes.
Several small bloodstained objects stood on the altar. Cestus realised that they were severed fingers, hundreds of them. An image of the Furious’s crewmen lining up to mutilate themselves in the name of Lorgar filled his mind. Cestus shook it away and forced himself to focus. His mind was still reeling. He had been to hell. The aftertaste of it was in his mouth and his body remembered the feeling of being wrenched apart.
The sound of footsteps snapped his attention to the present. They were approaching fast: voices barked orders and armoured bodies clattered through a doorway nearby.
Though it rankled to hide, Cestus moved swiftly to the far end of the room where he could disappear into a shadowy alcove. It stank of old blood and decaying flesh. For the span of the Furious’s short life, the crew had used it constantly for their devotions. Books were piled up behind the altar nearby, each one with the rune of an eight-pointed star on the cover. Cestus averted his gaze, unwilling to learn of the myriad forms of damnation that awaited him within those pages.
‘There! The blood trail’s in here. Guns up and execute!’ It came from inside the room.
Cestus slid his bolt pistol from his holster and risked a glance around the altar. A squad of five Word Bearers had entered the room and were sweeping every corner with bolters. One wore an open book worked into the breastplate of his armour, words upon it inscribed in gold intaglio. Cestus assumed that he was a Legion veteran given command of the squad.
‘Check the barrack rooms,’ growled the veteran, with a voice like churning gravel. The Word Bearer cradled a low-slung melta-gun, a short-range weapon that burned through armour and flesh like parchment. It was an Astartes killer, the perfect hunting weapon.
The veteran and two others were left in the temple. The squad fanned out at a silent battle-sign from their leader and were working their way through the pews.
Cestus needed to act, while he still maintained the element of surprise. Unclipping a pair of frag grenades from his belt, he thumbed the activation icon on each and rolled them slowly across the ground.
One of the Word Bearers reacted to the sound and swung his bolter around to fire. Frag exploded in his face before he could pull the trigger, ripping off part of his helmet. A secondary detonation erupted beneath the other Astartes, the impact accentuated in the close confines, and took off his leg at the armour joint.
Spits of flame and a storm of splinters still clouding the air, Cestus was up and drilled a shot through the first Word Bearer, exploiting the fact that his head armour was compromised. A puff of red mist came from the back o
f the Word Bearer’s head before he died.
The Ultramarine heard the telltale whine of the melta-gun powering up and threw himself aside as the Word Bearer veteran discharged the deadly weapon. His sight line was cluttered with debris and the shot burned through the still falling, one-legged Word Bearer, who slumped to the ground with a smoking crater through his torso.
Cestus was up in moments, leaping over the pews and pumping rounds from his bolt pistol. The veteran, the last Word Bearer standing in the temple, saw the Ultramarine, but reacted too slowly. Before he could swing his melta-gun around for a second shot, bolt-rounds punched him in the arm and torso. The veteran spun and bucked with the impacts. As Cestus reached him, he had already drawn his power sword and lopped off the falling veteran’s head with a grunt of effort. Ignoring the sanguine gore pouring from the veteran’s neck, Cestus pushed on and regained the corridor outside the temple that led to the barrack rooms. A surprised Word Bearer, alerted by the gunfire, emerged from one of the chambers. Cestus shot him through the lens in his battle-helm and the enemy Astartes crumpled with a muffled cry.
A second Word Bearer sensibly employed more caution, using the extended grip of his bolter so that he could reach around the doorway and blindly strafe the corridor. Cestus hugged the wall as the shots streamed past, muzzle flash blazing. An errant bolt-round struck his pauldron armour, sending a chip spinning into Cestus’s face. He was without his battle-helm and fought the urge to cry out when the shard cut into his flesh and embedded there. Instead, he rolled his body over the wall, descending into a crouching stance and squeezed his bolt pistol trigger in an attempt to force his aggressor back into the chamber.
The weapon clicked in his grasp. It seemed so loud and final, despite the roar of battle filling Cestus’s ears.
The Ultramarine’s mouth formed an oath as the Word Bearer, who must have heard the dry shot, came out from his hiding place, laughing.
Instinctively, Cestus hurled his power sword. The blade spun end over end and thunked hard through the shocked Word Bearer’s gorget, impaling him through the neck. The Astartes staggered, arms splayed at first as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened to him, dark fluid leaking down his breastplate like a flood. Cestus followed the sword’s path at a run, smacking the boltgun out of the stricken traitor’s hand and wrenching the power sword free, taking the Word Bearer’s head with it.
