by Various
Unconscious and drifting, Ica knew he’d never see Kultoom again. Never net slippery lacefish from his father’s dirigible, never glide in frantic circles above the tribe’s submerged chamack-patch, watching for theft-raids from neighbouring tribes.
There was no Kultoom to go back to. The dirigible had been pulped and hurled away into the shrieking skies. The other tribes had come and, unchallenged, plundered his ancestors’ Chamack nurseries.
Someone slapped him, hard, and he vomited.
Next to him, Dalus said ‘aack’ and dribbled blood. To each side of Ica unconscious youths were dragged awake with punches and kicks, courtesy of those same black-cloaked figures from before. The one looming over him grunted, satisfied with Ica’s alertness, and stepped clear. The twins traded uncertain looks.
They knelt in a line of some thirty youths – those dragged from the building in the skyport, Ica supposed – on a rocky plateau. All around them towered the colossal crags of the Razorpeak Mountains, casting their ugly shadows far across the churning seas below.
Somewhere down there, Ica thought, is Table City, where thousands of bewildered youths are climbing back aboard gliders for the journey home, thanking the Emperor and wondering what had happened to those few who had been taken…
Ica tried to remember how he’d arrived at this dizzying place, but his memory faltered. There had been pain, briefly, then the vaguest sensation of machinery and engines – yes, he recognised the sound from the skyport – rising in volume.
To himself, he said, It doesn’t matter how you got here. Nobody cares.
‘Chapter serfs,’ said a voice, thick with authority, ‘that will be all.’
The black-robed men bowed mechanically, quickly descending a stairway hewn into the mountainside. Otherwise, the outcrop was empty, dwarfed by its parent mountain, with only a small cave in the vertical cliff-face nearby that could have concealed a person. Ica fixed his eyes on the rocky maw and tried to focus.
Something moved inside.
Something that twisted the light like mercury.
Something huge that somehow shifted with fluid grace.
Something that hulked forwards, polished facets decorated by ivory whorls, smouldering with reflected light. Panelled mirror-gauntlets curled around a blood-red staff and somewhere in the centre of the whole impossible being a pair of melancholy eyes stared out with incalculable wisdom and sadness. A metallic hood, pressed down over the sallow face, seemed to crackle with barely restrained energy.
‘I am Thryn,’ the behemoth said, mournful voice shivering along Ica’s spine, ‘Librarian Secundus of the Adeptus Astartes.’
The words meant nothing. Faces twisted by misery and fear, the youths stared as the Librarian took another step, mirror-armour shattering the light. Shoulder guards flexed, and Ica glimpsed again the mournful skull with its stretched wings, engraved upon the metal. The man’s pale face drilled its hard gaze into each boy in turn.
‘You have been chosen,’ the voice said, ‘alone among thousands. Chosen not for your strength or your courage, not for your souls or your bodies. You’ve been chosen because you, each in their way, already understand an immutable truth.
‘You understand that you are already dead.’
Somewhere to Ica’s left, a boy sobbed quietly.
‘Disaster, loss, injury… a lifetime of exclusion and isolation – these are the memories you share. You must understand that whatever you feel, however great your grief, it is a mere nothing: an invisible fraction of the despair shared throughout our Imperium.’
Again something scuttled into Ica’s brain, twitching its way through his memories. And when next the Librarian spoke, the voice seemed to enter Ica’s very mind. ‘You’ve been brought here to die. You must understand. Cherish your mortality. Cling to it. Today each of you will perish with such certainty that you are, in a sense, already dead – just marking time until the end.
‘Behold the despair.’
And the ethereal fingers in Ica’s skull sunk deeper and twisted, bringing forth...
...screaming voices, and his mother’s fingernails broke, one after another, until her grip was wrenched clear and she diminished into the maelstrom, screaming his name for help...
...and howling creatures with scarlet eyes and green skin like rotten leather clashed their tusks as women screamed and babies cried and cities burnt...
...and his father’s workshop disintegrated, vindictive lightning obliterating the chaff as it circulated up into the banshee skies...
...and multitudes were slaughtered, and monstrosities stalked through bloody streets, chitin clacking, and not one horrified scream was louder than any other, and to every sufferer the world is ended, their life destroyed, and it was happening a million times over...
...and Ica screamed and Dalus screamed, although neither was heard, and outside the chapel detonated in a whirligig storm of masonry, and somewhere amongst the debris the old priest thrashed his limbs as the candles he’d so recently lit impaled him before racing away on the wind...
...and the ghostly vessel swept past in a multicoloured broadside, unleashing colossal energies in an actinic torpedo volley that punched gaping mouths into the blast shields, and a hundred thousand human ants wordlessly shrieked the last of their oxygen into the void...
...and they didn’t see their father die, but they heard his voice as the gather-hall sealant crumbled like dry leaves and haemorrhaged into the hurricane, and his howl of terror seemed to go on for ever and ever and ever and...
...and the lightning claws, writhing with evil, moved faster than the eye could follow, flaring against His force sword’s rune patterned blade, and when finally the ivory power armour splintered and the Warmaster’s talons reached inside, on a million worlds a trillion humans sank to their knees, and nothing would ever be the same again...
...and the despair never ended.
Ica opened his eyes and prayed for death. All that he was would be nothing. The suffering of the universe eclipsed his own utterly. Nothing mattered.
‘You will enter the cave,’ the Librarian ordered, words alive with psychic energy, impossible to disobey. ‘You’ll enter the cave and inside you will die. You will rise through caverns of fear and violence, and with every footstep you draw closer to oblivion.’
The grave voice halted, and Ica tried to stand, turning to see his brother already rising up.
As usual.
Always first.
Others followed, desperate to obey the Librarian’s command despite their aching minds. Thryn’s silver gauntlet lifted, unfolded a single digit, and silently directed the youths into the cave.
One boy, further along the line, didn’t stand. His eyes stared blankly, wide and lifeless. Ica understood. The weight of sadness had been too much to bear.
Ica pinwheeled higher, stretchwings fully extended. Every arm movement tilted him fractionally, sending him soaring above and across Kultoom Island.
‘Good, Ica! Good!’ his father shouted up, cupped hands framing his proud face. ‘Don’t overbalance – that’s it! Perfect!’
Above Ica, Dalus glided in a series of long, lazy spirals. ‘How’s this, father?’ he called, voice almost lost in the chasm of air.
The twins’ father glanced away from Ica momentarily, nodding. ‘Good.’
Ica peered up at his brother to exchange a smile in celebration of their first flight. But Dalus was frowning, and when he noticed Ica staring, his smile was too brief and too forced, before he manoeuvred his glider away.
Torches flickered in brackets, flames guttering with each movement of the air. Finally all the youths were inside, silent and cowed by the psychic trauma.
Inside Ica’s head, a voice said: All dead, dead, dead, dead, dead…
Then the door closed.
One moment the daylight streamed in through the cave entrance, framing the wide figure of the Librarian against the rain-streaked outcrop beyond. The next; iron blast doors slipped from grooves with a thunder
clap clang and sealed the youths inside.
The youths exchanged uncertain glances. One boy, voice barely more than a whisper, said ‘W-what’s happening…?’ Nobody replied.
Something hissed, and Ica turned to find water bubbling from a crack in the floor, veils of steam rising from the rapidly enlarging puddle. Nearby, Dalus sniffed at the air. ‘Stinks of sulphur…’
Again the voice invaded Ica’s brain, the measured tones of Librarian Thryn filling his mind with its patient, mournful inflection. All the youths tilted their heads as if listening intently, and Ica knew that they too heard Thryn’s words.
‘Millennia ago, an object fell from the sky among the Razorpeak Mountains. Its impact shattered apart the crust of this planet, destabilising it forever.
‘It – like us – dies one second at a time. One day its core will solidify, its oceans will freeze and its people will starve. Until then it whiles away its mortality with fiery temper tantrums and indignant earthquakes.
‘You are standing at the centre of this world’s deepest despair.’
Ica returned his gaze to the growing puddle at his feet, now rising in a small hump of boiling fluid. He could feel its heat, even standing back. Across the floor of the chamber another fissure began to weep.
‘Once every year,’ the voice droned, ‘lava flows beneath the Razorpeaks vent into the tunnels beneath your feet, filling them with scalding water.
‘Within an hour this cavern, and all those above it, will be submerged. You will breathe boiling fluid. You will gag silently as the air is burnt from your lungs. This chamber has a single exit. Take it, don’t take it. Either way, you have minutes to live.’
The psychic contact ended, leaving Ica dizzy and nauseous.
An orifice in the rock nearby gurgled, hissed, then roared in incandescent fury. Water exploded forth, a mallet striking at the rockface and shattering into a million shards of liquid and steam.
A boy screamed, vapour rising from his blistering face like a shroud.
And Ica thought: So, this is it. Better to die now. Welcome it. Cherish it.
Except…
Except there’s nothing left to lose, and dying in the next chamber is as good as dying here…
Frowning, not understanding why, Ica drove himself onwards, stepping towards the tunnel leading up and away. As quick as a wraith, Dalus streaked past him, rushing to be the first through. And behind them came the others, eyes dead, driven on only by the realisation that it made no difference.
The boy who clutched at his face, shrieking unintelligibly in pain, was left behind, cries becoming fainter and fainter, finally falling silent with a single water-choked sob.
On the day it happened, the twins had sneaked into the gather-hall through the broken synthiplex panel at its rear.
Outside it was raining, and the droplets hammered on the building’s corrugated roof like a harvest of gallberries, all falling at once. Outside the people of Kultoom tribe, as normal, laboured away their small, blind little lives.
Ica and Dalus were mighty kings, contesting the hand of a fair princess.
They were hero and villain, struggling for dominance.
They were Emperor and Horus (although neither knew which was which).
They were alien and human, or heretic and redeemer, or mutant and puritan.
Throughout the deserted hallway their wooden Jenrak-staves clacked together, whistling in broad sweeps and jabbing viciously. Giggling uncontrollably, feinting and lunging, Ica and Dalus were warriors.
And then their father heard their voices and crawled inside, demanding to know why they’d left their chores. Dalus had said they’d wanted to practise so they could defend the Chamack from neighbour tribes, but their father had seen it was a lie. He grinned slyly, and said, ‘Fine. So, fight.’
So, beneath his stern gaze they’d fought. But the fun was gone, and every lunge that found its mark was rewarded with a curt ‘Good’, and every clumsy back step elicited a burning silence from the gallery where their father stood, shaking his head or muttering.
And it wasn’t a game any more, so Ica drove his stave deep into Dalus’s stomach.
‘A good hit,’ their father said.
And it wasn’t fun any more, so Dalus battered aside Ica’s defence and smashed his brother across the cheek. Ica dropped to the floor, blood ebbing from his nose.
And their father rushed to Ica, checking for broken bones. And he looked up at Dalus, standing over him in a confusion of shame and triumph, and said:
‘Stupid boy. Always going too far!’
And outside the thunder rumbled, and Kultoom waited for death.
Bones clattered on the floor with every footfall. Steam churned behind the youths like the breath of a daemon, hot in pursuit of its prey. They drew closer together, staring into the face of razor-sided agony.
The cavern was bisected by a living cobweb of mossy lichen, clinging to strand upon strand of fibrous stalks and coiling roots. Another tunnel, again leading upwards, yawned on the other side of the mossy partition. But the web, glowing with bacterial luminescence, bore thorns. As long as Ica’s finger, they sprouted like butcher-hook talons, curved like scimitars and equally as sharp. Tiny spines beneath the hood of every blade waited to barb any hapless victim, lacerating flesh and splitting sinews. The forest of daggers, five deep, reached from cavern wall to cavern wall, from stalactite-strewn ceiling to uneven floor.
Somewhere, deeply enmeshed, hung a skeleton – its empty eyes watching Ica, saying, you’re like me. You’re all like me. All dead.
The tunnel from the previous chamber was already submerged, scampering air bubbles cratering the swiftly rising surface. Clouds of steam, reeking of sulphur, coiled insidiously amongst the boys.
Ica pushed himself forwards. Once the impetus to move on had taken root, once the inertia – urging him to give up – had been overcome, driving forwards was not so hard. He turned and, yes, there was Dalus, already approaching the dagger-thorns.
What difference does it make? Ica pondered. Might as well.
The first thorn ripped apart his thin jerkin and prised open his skin, a frosty fire that blossomed warmly.
The next hooked into his shoulder, scraping the dark places inside against bone and nerves. He groaned in pain and gritted his teeth.
Keep going.
The next thorn turned his thigh into a ploughfield of flesh-ribbons.
Something hit his cheek and he glanced around, where a small youth sprayed arterial redness from a gaping wound in his neck. The boy’s eyes rolled upwards with something like relief.
Behind Ica, others were pushing through, moaning with each new open wound. To the rear somebody screamed as the boiling water trickled over the lip of the previous tunnel and scorched an unshielded foot.
Ahead, Dalus pushed further into the tangle, incisions covering his arms and legs. He gripped at a branch, hauling himself forwards – only stopping to inspect his lacerated palms. He glanced briefly at Ica, as if checking his brother was still there, still watching, then frowned and barged his way forwards.
A thorn dragged itself along Ica’s brow, and he blinked against the red wetness oozing into his eye. He moved forwards, sliced and diced, not caring; feeling the pain with abstract distance – registering its presence but not its effect. An arm broke free, a chequerboard of cuts marking its surface.
A growl of triumph ahead broadcast Dalus’s release. Dalus stopped and turned, panting and bleeding, as slowly his brother wrestled free. Something splintered, a mossy crack of parting twigs, and Ica stepped clear.
He turned to look back at the others, some almost liberated, others hopelessly enmeshed, watching with eyes already rheumy and lifeless in death.
Some youths hadn’t even tried to get through. They stood or sat on the other side, impassively waiting for their doom as the water bubbled ever higher. Ica nodded, understanding how they felt, and turned away.
Dalus was already climbing towards the next tunnel. Ica blin
ked bloody tears from his eyes and followed.
The sky quaked, electric ribbons chasing across the horizon. Wind plucked at what few trees grew on Kultoom Island, eliciting a creaking and groaning that vocalised the tribe’s anxiety.
Tribesmen looked to the churning clouds and spat, cursing the dismal weather. The priest, dribbling in his zealousness, shouted a prayer to the Emperor, vying with the thunder to be heard. His oratory finished, he entered the chapel and sealed the door.
Windkites were hastily rescued from mid-air gyrations; chamack harvesters were moored securely, and everywhere was the sound of slamming shutters and doors.
The sky went black.
In their hut, Ica and Dalus, footfalls heavy with sulky indignation, descended into the damp darkness of the cellar. Their mother’s voice followed after.
‘…and stay down there ’til you learn obedience! If you can’t be trusted to finish your chores, seems to me you can’t be trusted to use a wing-glider either!’
At this the twins both gagged in alarm, turning to the cross-armed silhouette at the top of the stairs with a cry, ‘But–!’
‘But nothing, night take you! No gliding for a month! And now your father’s out in the rain, fixing up that Emperor-damned panel , and who knows where he’ll find cover if the storm hits and how we’ll survive if he’s hurt and why can’t you be obedient like Father Lemuel says and…’ The whinnying voice faded away as the door slammed and their mother stalked off to bolt the shutters.
In the darkness, Ica sniffed back the blood in his nose. He could feel Dalus glaring across the room.
Through chambers and caverns, they ran. Scalding water churned from every crevice, dousing the flickering torches one-by-one.
In one chamber the floor was a gravelpit of smouldering embers, heated by fire-red magma that cooled, sludgelike, in scattered puddles. The youths – those who dared – scampered across in a flurry of yelps and explosions of sparks. Some fell with a howl into the curdling lava, clawing at the air and shrieking until their skin charred and their lungs filled with fire.
