by Nick Kyme
Edging down the centre, obscured by shattered columns and the debris from Aura Hieron’s collapsed roof, was Kadai and the rest of his retinue. They kept low and quiet, despite their power armour, and closed swiftly on their target.
Ahead of them cultists thronged in hundreds, respirators fixed over their sewn mouths, prostrate before their vile hierophant. The Speaker was perched on a marble dais and clad in dirty blue robes like his congregation of the depraved. Unlike the wire-mouthed acolytes abasing themselves before him, the Speaker was not mute. Far from it. A writhing purple tongue extruded from his distended maw, the teeth within just blackened nubs. The wretched appendage twisted and lashed as if sentient. Inscrutable dogma spewed from the Speaker’s mouth, its form and language inflected by the daemonic tongue. Even the sound of his words gnawed at Dak’ir’s senses and he shut them out, recognising the mutation for what it was – Chaos taint. It explained at once how this disaffected Stratosan native, who, up until a few months ago, had been little more than a petty firebrand, had managed to cajole such unswerving loyalty, and in such masses.
Surrounding the hierophant was the elite of those fanatical troops, a ring of eight eviscerator priests, kneeling with their chainblades laid out in front of them in ceremony.
IT LEFT A bitter tang in Tsu’gan’s mouth to witness such corruption. Whatever foul rite these degenerate scum were planning, the Salamanders would end with flame and blade. He felt the zeal burn in his breast, and wished dearly that he was with his captain advancing down the very throat of the enemy and not here guarding shadows.
Let the Ignean skulk at the periphery, he thought. I am destined for more glorious deeds.
A garbled cry arrested Tsu’gan’s arrogant brooding. Spewing an unintelligible diatribe, the Speaker gestured frantically towards Kadai and the other two Salamanders emerging from their cover to destroy him. His craven followers reacted with eerie synchronicity to their master’s warning, and surged towards the trio of interlopers murderously.
Shen’kar opened up his flamer and burned down a swathe of maddened cultists with a war cry on his lips. Vek’shen charged into the wake of the blaze, the conflagration having barely ebbed, fire-glaive swinging. The master-crafted blade reaped a terrible harvest of sheared limbs and heads, spurts of incendiary immolating bodies with every flame-wreathed strike.
Kadai was like a relentless storm, and Tsu’gan’s warrior heart sang to witness such prowess and fury. Channelling his fiery rage, the captain tore a ragged hole through one of the eviscerator priests with his inferno pistol, before crushing the skull of another with his thunder hammer.
As the wretched deacon went down, his head pulped, Kadai gave the signal and enfilading bolter fire barked from the alcoves as Tsu’gan and Dak’ir let rip.
As cultists fell, shot apart by his furious salvos, Tsu’gan could contain his battle lust no longer. He would not be left here like some sentry. He wanted to be at his captain’s side, and look into his enemy’s eyes as he slew them. Dak’ir could hold the perimeter well enough without his aid. In any case, the enemy was here amassed for slaughter.
Roaring an oath to Vulkan, Tsu’gan left his post and waded into the battle proper.
DAK’IR CAUGHT SIGHT of Tsu’gan’s muzzle flare and cursed loudly when he realised he had abandoned his orders and left the wall deserted. Debating whether to press the attack himself, his attention was arrested when he noticed Kadai, having bludgeoned his way through the mob, standing scant feet from the Speaker and levelling his inferno pistol.
‘In the name of Vulkan!’ he bellowed, about to end the threat of the Cult of Truth forever, when a single shot thundered above the carnage and the Speaker fell, his head half-destroyed by an explosive round.
KADAI FELT THE meat and blood of the executed Speaker spatter his armour, and started to lower his pistol out of shock. A strange lull fell over the fighting, enemies poised in mid-attack, that didn’t feel entirely natural as the Salamander captain traced the source of the shot.
Above him there was a parapet overlooking the temple’s nave. Kadai’s gaze was fixed upon it as a figure in blood-red power armour emerged from the gathered shadows, a smoking bolt pistol in his grasp.
Scales bedecked this warrior’s battle-plate, like those of some primordial lizard from an archaic age. His gauntlets were fashioned like claws, with long vermillion talons, and eldritch lightning rippled across them in crackling ruby arcs. In one he clutched a staff, a roaring dragon’s head at its tip rendered in silver; in the other his bolt pistol, which he returned to its holster. Broad pauldrons sat like hardened scale shells on the warrior’s shoulders, a horn curving from each. He wore no battle-helm, and bore horrific facial scars openly. Fire had blighted this warrior’s once noble countenance, twisting it, devouring it and remaking his visage into one of puckered tissue, angry wheals and exposed bone. It was the face of death, hideous and accusing.
A chill entered Kadai’s spine as if he was suddenly drowning in ice. The spectre before him was a ghost, an apparition that died long ago in terrible agony. Yet, here it was in flesh and blood, called back from the grave like some vengeful revenant. ‘Nihilan…’
‘Captain,’ the apparition replied, his voice cracked like dry earth baked beneath a remorseless sun, burning red eyes aglow. Kadai’s posture stiffened as the shock quickly passed, subjugated by righteous anger. ‘Renegade,’ he snarled.
WRACKING PAIN GRIPPED Dak’ir’s chest as he beheld the warrior and was wrenched back into the otherworld of his dream…
The temple faded as the grey sky of Moribar engulfed all. Bone-monoliths surged into that endless steel firmament, ossuary paths stretched into endless tracts of cemeteries, mausoleum fields and sepulchral vales. Through legions of tombs, across phalanxes of crypts, along battalions of reliquaries sunk in earthen catacombs, Dak’ir followed the grave-road until he reached its terminus. And there beneath the cold damp earth, boiling, burning, its lambent glow neither warm nor inviting, was the vast churning furnace of the crematoria.
Pain lanced Dak’ir’s body as the vision changed. He gripped his chest, but no longer felt his black carapace. He was a scout once more, observing from the edge of the crematoria, the massive pit of fire large enough to swallow a Titan, burning, ever burning, down into the molten heart of Moribar.
Dak’ir saw two Astartes clambering at the edge of that portal to fiery death. Nihilan clung desperately to Captain Ushorak, his black power armour pitted and cracked with the intense heat emanating from below.
The terrible conflagration was in turmoil. It bubbled explosively, plumes of lava spearing the air in fiery cascades, when a huge pillar of flame tore from the crematoria. Dak’ir shielded his eyes as a massive fire wall obliterated the warriors from view. Strong hands grasped Dak’ir’s shoulder and wrenched him away from the blaze as the renegades they had come to bring to justice, not to kill, were immolated. Barely visible through the solid curtain of flame, Nihilan was screaming as his face burned… Dak’ir lurched back to the present, a sickening vertigo threatening to overwhelm him, and he reached out to steady himself. He tasted blood in his mouth and black spots marred his vision. Tearing off his battle-helm, he struggled to breathe.
Somewhere in the temple, someone was speaking…
‘YOU DIED,’ KADAI accused, looking up at the warrior on the parapet. He fought the invisible pressure stopping him from striking the renegade down, but his arms were leaden.
‘I survived,’ returned Nihilan, the effort to maintain the psychic dampening that held the battle in stasis against the Salamander’s will creasing his scarred face.
‘You should have faced justice, not death,’ Kadai told him, then smiled vindictively. ‘Overloading the crematoria, stirring up the volatile core of Moribar, you provoked it in order to escape and kill me and my brothers into the bargain. Ushorak’s destruction was your doing, yours and his.’
‘Don’t you speak of him!’ cried Nihilan, red lightning coursing through his eyes and clenched fist
s, writhing around his force staff and spitting off in jagged arcs. Exhaling fury, the Dragon Warrior recovered his composure. ‘You are the murderer here, Kadai – a petty marshal who’d do anything to catch his quarry. But perhaps you’re right… I did die, and was reborn.’
Kadai raised his inferno pistol a fraction. Nihilan’s grip was loosening. He was readying for it to slip completely, and slay the traitor where he stood, when the Speaker’s body started to convulse.
‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ the Dragon Warrior added, stepping back into the shadows of the parapet. ‘Not for you…’
Kadai fired off his inferno pistol, melting away a chunk of parapet as Nihilan released his psychic hold. The Salamander was about to chase after him when a terrible aura enveloped the Speaker, lifting his prone corpse inexplicably so that it dangled just above the ground like meat on an invisible hook.
Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he raised his chin to reveal a ruined face destroyed by the bolt pistol’s explosive round. Slick red flesh, wrapped partially around a bloody skull, shimmered in the ambient light. What remained of the Speaker’s cranium was split open like an egg. Luminous cobalt skin was revealed beneath. Cracking bone gave way to a leering visage called forth from a dark unreality as something… unnatural… pulled itself forth into the material plane.
A lidless eye of fulgent black glared with otherworldly malevolence. The eight-pointed star, once burned into the Speaker’s forehead, was now glowing upon this new horror. It was raw and vital, pulsing like a wretched heart as the warp-thing grew hideously. Bulbous protrusions tore from mortal flesh, spilling out with thickets of spines. Fingers splayed as if pulled taut by unseen threads, talons rupturing from them, long, sharp and black. The thing’s distended maw, in mimicry of the Speaker’s original mutation, stretched further and wider until it was a terrible lipless chasm, the lashing tongue within three-pronged and spiked with bloodied bone.
Cultists shrieked in fear and adoration as the Speaker’s corpse was possessed. Eviscerator priests pledged their mute allegiance, turning their chainblades towards the Salamanders once again.
The creature was primal, wrenched from ethereal slumber and only partially sentient, a deep soul-hunger driving it. Roaring in fury and anguish, it surged forwards devouring a pair of eviscerator priests closing on Kadai. Like some terrible basilisk, it consumed them whole, bones crunching audibly as it dragged the prey down its bulging gullet.
‘Abomination…’ Kadai breathed, gripping the haft of his thunder hammer as he prepared to smite the daemon. Nihilan had given his soul over to the dark powers now, and this was but a taste of his malfeasance.
‘Die, hell-beast!’ cried Vek’shen, stepping between his captain and the unbound daemon. Whirling his fire-glaive in a blazing arc, the Company Champion crafted an overhand blow that would’ve felled an ork warlord. The daemon met it with its talons and the glaive was held fast. Its tongue slid like lightning from its abyssal mouth, oozing swiftly around Vek’shen’s power-armoured form. The Salamander gaped in a silent scream, breath pressed violently from his body, as he was crushed to death.
Kadai roared, launching himself at the beast, even as his battle-brother’s flaccid corpse, dented where the daemon’s tongue had clutched him, crashed to the ground.
DAK’IR WAS RECOVERING his senses. Though he hadn’t seen how, the Speaker was dead, shot in the back of the head, his body lying at Kadai’s feet. It wasn’t all that he’d missed while he was under the influence of his memory-dream. In the time it had taken for his Astartes constitution and training to override the lingering nausea the remembrance had caused, Nihilan was already retreating into the shadows. Leaving his flank position, Dak’ir ran towards the nave determined to pursue, when a swathe of cultists impeded him.
‘Tsu’gan!’ he cried, gutting an insurgent with his chainsword and firing his bolter one-handed to explode the face of another, ‘Stop the renegade!’
The other Salamander nodded in a rare moment of empathy and sped off after Nihilan.
Dak’ir was battling through the frenzied mob when he saw the Speaker’s corpse rising and felt the touch of the warp prickle his skin…
TSU’GAN BOLTED ACROSS the nave, pummelling cultists with his fists, chewing up packed groups with explosive bursts of fire. Shen’kar was just visible in his peripheral vision, immolating swathes of the heretical vermin with bright streaks of flame. Smashing through a wooden door at the back of the temple, Tsu’gan found a flight of stone steps leading up to the parapet. He took them three at a time with servo-assisted bounds of his power-armoured legs, until he emerged into a darkened anteroom. Something was happening below. He heard Vek’shen bellow a call to arms and then nothing, as if all sound had fled in a sudden vacuum.
Burning red eyes regarded him coldly in the blackness.
‘Tsu’gan…’ said Nihilan, emerging from the dark.
‘Traitorous scum!’ the Salamander raged.
But Tsu’gan didn’t raise his bolter to fire, didn’t vanquish the renegade where he stood. He merely remained transfixed, muscles clenched as if held fast in amber.
‘Wha—’ he began, but found his tongue was leaden too.
‘Sorcery,’ Nihilan told him, the surface of his force staff alive with incandescent energy. It threw ephemeral flashes of light into the gloom, illuminating the sorcerer’s dread visage as he closed on the stricken Astartes.
‘I could kill you right now,’ he said levelly. ‘Snuff out the light in your eyes, and kill you, just like Kadai killed Ushorak.’
‘You were offered redemption.’ Tsu’gan struggled to fashion the retort, forcing his tongue into compliance through sheer willpower.
The sinister cast to Nihilan’s face bled away and was replaced by indignation.
‘Redemption was it? Spiritual castigation at the hands of Elysius, a few hours with his chirurgeon-interrogators, is that what was offered?’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That sadistic bastard would only have passed a guilty judgement.’
Stepping closer, Nihilan took on a sincere tone.
‘Ushorak offered life. Power,’ he breathed. ‘Freedom from the shackles forcing us to serve the cattle of men, when we should be ruling them.’
The Dragon Warrior clenched his fist as he said it, so close now that Tsu’gan could smell his copper breath.
‘You see, brother. We are not so dissimilar.’
‘We are nothing alike, traitor,’ snapped the Salamander, grimacing with the simple effort of speaking.
Nihilan stepped back, spreading his arms plaintively.
‘A bolter shot to the head to end my heresy then?’ His upturned lip showed his displeasure. ‘Or stripped of rank, a penitent brand in place of my service studs?’
He shook his head.
‘No… I think not. Perhaps I will brand you, though, brother.’ Nihilan showed the Salamander his palm and spread his fingers wide. ‘Would your resistance to corruption be stauncher than the human puppet, I wonder?’
Tsu’gan flinched before Nihilan’s approach, expecting at any moment for all the turpitude of Chaos to spew forth from his hand. ‘Cull your fear,’ Nihilan rasped, making a fist as he sneered.
‘I fear nothing,’ barked Tsu’gan.
Nihilan sniffed contemptuously. ‘You fear everything, Salamander.’
Tsu’gan felt his boots scraping against the floor as he was psychically impelled towards the edge of the parapet against his will. ‘Enough talk,’ he spat. ‘Cast me down. Break my body, if you must. The Chapter will hunt you, renegade, and there will be no chance of redemption for you this time.’
Nihilan regarded him as an adult would a simple child.
‘You still don’t understand, do you?’
Slowly, Tsu’gan’s body rotated so that he could see out onto the battle below.
Cultists fell in their droves, burned down by Shen’kar’s flamer, or eviscerated by Dak’ir’s chainsword. His brothers fought tooth and nail, fending off the horde whilst his beloved captain fought fo
r his life.
Kadai’s artificer armour was rent in over a dozen places, a daemon-thing that wore the flesh of the Speaker assailing him. Talons like long slashes of night came down in a rain of blows against the Salamander captain’s defence, but he weathered it all, carving great arcs in riposte with his thunder hammer. Vulkan’s name was on his lips as the lightning cracked from the head of his master-forged weapon, searing the daemon’s borrowed flesh.
‘I was devoted to Ushorak, just as you are to your captain…’ Nihilan uttered in Tsu’gan’s ear as he watched the battle with the hell-spawn unfold.
Kadai smashed the daemon’s shoulder, shattering bone, and its arm fell limp.
‘…Kadai killed him,’ Nihilan continued. ‘He forced us to seek solace in the Eye. There we fled and there we stayed for decades…’ Ichor hissed from the tears in the daemon’s earthly form, its hold on reality slipping as Kadai punished it relentlessly with fist and hammer.
‘…Time moves differently in that realm. For us it felt like centuries had passed before we found a way out.’
A chorus of screams ripped from the distended throat of the daemon-thing, as Kadai crushed its skull finally and banished it back into the warp, the souls it had consumed begging for succour.
‘…It changed me. Opened my eyes. I see much now. A great destiny awaits you, Tsu’gan, but another overshadows it.’ Nihilan gave the faintest inclination of his head towards Dak’ir.
The Ignean was fighting valiantly, cutting down the last of the cultists and heading for Kadai.
‘Even now he rushes to your captain’s side…’ Nihilan said, insidiously, ‘Hoping to gain his favour.’
Tsu’gan knew he could not trust the foul tongue of a traitor, but the words spoken echoed his own long-held suspicions.
And so, unbeknownst to the Salamander, Nihilan did plant a seed. Not one born of daemonic essence. No, this came about through petty jealousy and ambition, through the very thing Tsu’gan had no aegis against himself.
