by Andy Hoare
‘Then why not end your pain yourself?’ said Meleriex.
‘We have no power in this,’ the figure answered. ‘That is how we were created. But you…’
‘We could end your pain?’ said Kholka. ‘Tell us how.’
The figure nodded to Kholka as if in gratitude and understanding. ‘You must burn us, but first, you must know this. A portion of us have been taken, to be imparted into another, over whom Voldorius hopes to gain power.’
‘Who?’ Meleriex pressed.
‘A woman,’ the figure answered. ‘A woman of this world. She is strong, that is why she was chosen. Her strength will keep her alive, yet it shall be turned to the service of Voldorius, of that we are certain.’
‘Where?’ asked Kholka urgently.
‘The fane,’ the figure answered. ‘It is near here.’
‘The cathedral?’ Kholka pressed, a sense of dread descending upon him. The figure nodded.
‘We must stop him,’ Meleriex spat. ‘Whatever he has planned–’
‘First you must grant us oblivion,’ the figure pressed, a note of pleading entering its voices.
Kholka nodded, knowing what must be done. ‘You said by fire may you be slain.’
‘By fire were we forged,’ the figure stated. ‘And by fire shall we be ended.’
The three Raven Guard stood in front of the prisoner. The White Scars had left the chamber, and the prisoner stood in silence, its face serene as if awaiting blessed relief.
‘Now we carry out the Shadow Captain’s orders,’ Meleriex said as his battle-brothers took their places at his side. ‘Rydulon.’
The Raven Guard raised his flamer, and the prisoner lifted its head and spread its arms wide. The pilot light hissed loudly in the preternatural silence, and then Rydulon’s finger closed on the trigger. Searing flame was propelled from the nozzle, filling the chamber with orange brilliance and a sibilant roar. The fire struck the prisoner square in the chest and burning chemicals cascaded around its body, but it was unharmed.
‘Again!’ Meleriex said. ‘We have our orders. Nothing must be left behind.’
Rydulon’s weapon spat a second stream of blazing alchemical fire, and this time he kept the valve open so that a constant torrent of flame ploughed into the target. The prisoner now stood at the heart of a raging inferno, the flames plunging into its chest, yet still its body refused to burn. The temperature in the chamber rose, the Space Marines’ power armour engaging cooling systems that would allow them to survive the furnace-hot environment.
Then, the silver hue of the prisoner’s rippling skin began to change to orange. Flame licked across the prisoner’s body, following the curvature of its shifting muscles. Searing orange stains spread out from the chest until the silver was entirely gone and the figure appeared now to be made of molten magma.
‘Enough!’ Meleriex shouted above the raging inferno.
The prisoner stood as it had before, but now great gobbets of its lava-like flesh came away from its body to fall to the floor, where they began to melt through the iron tread boards. The prisoner raised its hands to shoulder height and its head tracked around the room, though no features at all were visible on its face.
‘You will save her?’
The voice of the prisoner filled the chamber. It no longer sounded like a million voices speaking as one, for all had melted together to form a single, sonorous tone.
‘We may,’ Meleriex replied. ‘We will do what must be done.’
‘You must save her!’ the voice replied, though it sounded somehow distant.
‘We will do what must be done,’ Meleriex repeated. ‘Rydulon, finish this.’
A last burst of flame lanced into the prisoner’s chest and it was consumed in a roaring conflagration. The Raven Guard were beaten back by the impossible heat, even the cooling systems of their armour unable to protect them any longer. Meleriex waved his two battle-brothers out of the chamber, and paused for a moment at the portal.
‘Mission accomplished, Shadow Captain,’ he said into his vox-link, before turning to leave the furnace of the chamber.
‘It’s the khan,’ Khula shouted to Sergeant Kholka as the group ran down the passageway. They sought to put as much distance between the chamber and themselves as possible, and to find the cathedral where Lord Voldorius was engaged in something terrible. ‘He’s launched the assault on the cathedral!’
‘Thank the primarch,’ Kholka growled as he turned a corner and paused while the last of the Scouts caught up. He glanced back along the passageway, and saw at its end a blinding orange light.
Meleriex and his two Raven Guard battle-brothers were still in the chamber, granting the prisoner the end it desired, by fire. The light grew ever brighter, a deep roar growing underfoot as the stones of the tunnel began to vibrate. A low bass note grew in pitch and volume, and soon the air was screaming as with the wailing of the damned. As the roar became deafening, a great wind blew the length of the tunnel, emanating, it seemed to Kholka as he braced himself against the wall, from the chamber.
The three Raven Guard appeared silhouetted against the fiery radiance shining at the far end of the passageway. Brother Meleriex and his brothers pounded along the length of the corridor, the light at their backs growing ever brighter, the roar ever louder and the gale ever stronger.
‘Get clear!’ Meleriex bellowed over the cacophony as he closed on Sergeant Kholka.
The sergeant threw himself around the corner, and a second later the three Raven Guard ducked around it to join him. Before any more could be said, the roar increased by an order of magnitude, the Space Marines covering their ears lest even their genetically enhanced senses be overcome. Kholka gritted his teeth as he was assailed by the sound of a trillion individual screams of burning death, and then all was silent and the wind suddenly died.
‘It is done,’ said Meleriex, nodding towards Brother Rydulon, whose flamer was now all but drained of its volatile promethium fuel. The Raven Guard’s face was gaunt from blood loss and his armour was stained by smoke, yet his eyes glinted with dark zeal. ‘Almost.’
‘The woman,’ nodded Kholka. ‘If what the prisoner said is true, she must die.’
Meleriex nodded darkly, but said nothing in reply.
Chapter 14
Deliverance
Kor’sarro leapt down the last of a thousand steps and found himself in a vaulted antechamber. In front of him was a pair of mighty, corrosion-streaked doors. Descending the spiral staircase in his wake came the greater part of the White Scars 3rd Company, the remainder still battling in the streets of Mankarra far above. Beyond the rusted portal was the subterranean Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.
And Voldorius.
As the chamber filled up with battle-brothers, Kor’sarro turned from the doors to face his warriors. Qan’karro and Xia’ghan stood side by side, and behind them dozens of grim-faced Space Marines. By the steely light glinting in their eyes, every one of them would die to see the hunt for Voldorius concluded.
‘Sons of Chogoris,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘We have come far to stand here now, and many have fallen along the way. Though I could scarcely ask anything more of any one of you, I have but one order more.’
The White Scars listened in silence, hanging on their beloved khan’s every word.
‘I must face Voldorius, though his servants will attempt to bar my way. I ask that every one of you becomes my champion. Be a company of champions. Hold the Alpha Legion at bay, that I might face Voldorius, and strike him down.’
The look in the eyes of every White Scar present told Kor’sarro all he needed to know. They would die for him if he asked them, every one of them.
‘Brother-Sergeant,’ Kor’sarro addressed a nearby squad leader. The Space Marine stepped forwards, and bowed his grizzled, scar-laced head before his khan.
Kor’sarro indicated the tall, iron doors with a sl
ight nod of his head, and the sergeant’s face was split by a fierce grin. ‘It would be an honour, my khan.’
The gathered Space Marines stepped backwards to allow the sergeant room. His power fist crackled with arcs of blue energy and the air around it grew hazy.
The sergeant struck the iron doors a titanic blow. The iron splintered and blew outwards as the gauntlet discharged its potent energies in a single, devastating blast. As the fragments of the iron doors crashed to the stone floor beyond, Kor’sarro drew Moonfang and stepped through the archway into the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.
The portal was at the top of a flight of massive stairs at one end of the kilometre-long nave. The cathedral’s vaulted ceiling was lost to shadow far overhead. At the other end, made pale and indistinct by the haze of incense and candle smoke hanging in the air, stood the towering statue of the Emperor Himself. Even at such a distance, the statue was a vision of glory to stir the heart of even the most grizzled veteran of humanity’s wars. Load-bearing columns rose as tall as battle Titans and distant, black-robed figures looked like a carpet of insects swarming across the stone floor. The insects were the deluded followers of Voldorius, and in amongst them were at least a hundred Alpha Legion.
The followers were arrayed before the statue of the Emperor Triumphant – to what vile end Kor’sarro could not immediately fathom, though he judged they were engaged in some despicable blasphemy. A terrible dirge echoed the length of the nave, and the Master of the Hunt realised that the black-robed followers were chanting the praises of their vile lord, Voldorius.
And then Kor’sarro located the foe he had sought, and come so close to catching, so many times in the last decade. It was Voldorius. Finally, the object of Kor’sarro’s hunt was in his sights.
A long moment of silence stretched out, and then it was broken as the Alpha Legion warriors opened fire from halfway along the nave. As the air was suddenly filled with the sharp crack of boltgun rounds, Kor’sarro began to descend towards the nave.
‘White Scars!’ he bellowed over the roar of boltguns and the sound of rounds exploding from the stonework all around. ‘For the primarch!’
‘Honoured be his name!’ replied the 3rd Company, and the final battle began.
‘It is done,’ Captain Shrike growled as he cut the link on the vox-net. The prisoner was dead, but Meleriex had imparted disturbing news.
Shrike stood at the very brink of a lipless gallery set into the wall of the nave, a hundred metres high, looking down at Voldorius from many metres above the statue of the Emperor Triumphant. He and his Assault squads had split off from the White Scars as they had descended to the subterranean cathedral, seeking to attack the foe from a different angle and to catch him between both forces.
The scene below was obscured by the hazy smoke of a thousand votive candles and by a mist of incense that permeated the very stones. From his vantage point, Shrike watched Voldorius as he stood before the magnificent statue. In front of the daemon prince, Shrike could see some form of altar or table, with a figure laid across it. Though the details were only partially visible, Shrike could see a dozen or so crimson-robed adepts working about the table, tending to banks of machinery strewn all around it. Guessing the adepts must be part of some renegade sect of the followers of the Machine-God turned to the service of Voldorius, he knew he had arrived just in time.
Above the droning chants of the hundreds of black-robed followers arrayed beyond the table, there came a sudden burst of gunfire. Shrike looked down and along the length of the nave, and far below saw the flash of boltgun fire as the Alpha Legion warriors opened fire towards the far end of the nave. He could not see what the renegade Space Marines were firing at, but he knew it could only mean one thing: the White Scars were attacking.
And so too were the Raven Guard.
Turning to his warriors, Captain Shrike said, ‘You all know your objective.’
‘Captain?’ Sergeant Kylanek said. ‘What of you?’
‘I fight alone. Now go.’ With that, Shrike leapt from the gallery, activating the jets of his jump pack as he plummeted through the smoky air.
The crown of the statue of the Emperor Triumphant rushed up to meet him, and then something slammed into him from the side and he was tumbling through the air, his jump pack momentarily uncontrolled.
Shrike looked about for the source of the impact as he fought to regain control. Then it came again, from the opposite direction, and he instinctively grasped onto it even as he spun crazily through the air. The thing in his hands squealed, and suddenly his vision was filled by an impossibly ugly, leering face, dominated by a gaping mouth filled with a thousand razor-sharp teeth.
With a sharp wrenching motion, Shrike tore the hideous head from scrawny shoulders before flinging both parts away in disgust. As he regained control of his jump pack, a dark, screaming cloud of the gargoyle-like, bat-winged creatures were converging upon Shrike and his Assault Marines.
As his feet set down upon the shoulder of the statue, Shrike activated his lightning claws and prepared to face the scores of creatures that were arrowing in towards him. The last thing he saw before they struck was an entire Assault squad being torn asunder by razor-sharp claws.
And then the swarm was upon him. Bracing his armoured feet upon the very shoulder of the mighty statue, he lashed out at the first of the creatures to close on him. Even as he traced an intricate web of death through the air all about him, Shrike was filled with revulsion at the nature of his adversaries. They were akin to the vat-grown cyber-cherubs that populated the Ministorum’s places of worship, but these must have been the result of some unnatural crossbreeding of such constructs with something entirely daemonic. Only the most twisted of minds could have conceived such a thing, he realised, as he caught a glimpse of Voldorius’s crimson-robed, apostate tech-priests far below.
One of the gargoyle-cherubs somehow attached itself to Shrike’s jump pack, and clamped its sinuous arms about his helmet. Impossibly sharp talons raked across his faceplate, causing a series of warning runes to flash across his vision. The armoured visor cracked, causing his vision to go suddenly black.
With a growl, Shrike tore his helmet from his head and cast it away. The lightning claw lashed upwards and back, slicing the vile adversary into several dozen ragged chunks of meat, which scattered to the ground below.
A dozen more of the wailing gargoyle-cherubs were diving towards Shrike, and a moment later he was fighting for his life high atop the statue of the Emperor Triumphant.
A piercing wail from the shadowed vaults high above caused Malya to open her eyes with a start. Something heavy plummeted towards her before striking the flagstones nearby, and a moment later several pieces of foul flesh fell all about, one landing so close that stinking, brackish fluids were spattered across her face.
Voldorius appeared not to have noticed.
The daemon prince’s massive wings curved inwards as Voldorius came to stand before Malya. She struggled and writhed upon the cold steel table, even though she could not break the metal restraints. A word of defiance came to her lips before Voldorius leaned in low over her, filling her vision with his bestial features and her soul with cold dread.
‘It appears that your friends have arrived, Malya L’nor,’ Voldorius growled as the sound of gunfire at the other end of the nave grew louder. ‘How deeply they must care for you, to come at your begging.’
‘They come to kill you, bastard!’ Malya spat, straining at the restraints out of sheer frustration. ‘I don’t want to live,’ her voice grew hoarse as she sobbed, ‘I just want you to die.’
A low, mocking rumble sounded from deep within the daemon prince’s throat. Malya’s grip on her sanity began to weaken as the faith that had allowed her to resist the hellish presence of her erstwhile master was assailed by wave after wave of fell, daemonic power.
‘Oh, you shall die,’ Voldorius growled. ‘One
small part of you at least. But the greater part, that part which shall do my bidding, shall live on.’
A boltgun round whipped through the air scant metres away, a stray shot from the firefight that had erupted at the far end of the nave. Voldorius ignored it, or did not even note its passing, though Malya could not help but flinch and turn her head away.
‘And through you, they shall become living weapons too,’ Voldorius continued, looking towards the Space Marines at the far end of the nave.
‘I won’t let that happen,’ said Malya through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll warn them, whatever you try to do.’
Voldorius raised the clawed hand holding the vial, its contents shining with silvered light. ‘Soon,’ he continued, ‘when the ritual is complete, you shall have no such choice.’ He looked pointedly towards the crimson-robed rogue tech-priest shuffling around the table.
‘Soon, you shall become transcendent. You shall become the angelic hive!’ He extended a claw towards the far end of the nave. ‘And they shall become your servile hosts.’
‘And then, the blood shall rise again, and the galaxy shall drown!’
Scout-Sergeant Kholka heard the distant sound of gunfire from the end of the passageway that opened up into the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom. The end of the passage was only twenty metres away. He hoisted his boltgun and turned to the others of his group.
‘The battle is begun,’ said Kholka. ‘Our captains will be concentrating on killing Voldorius. Our brothers will be hard-pressed engaging the Alpha Legion. It falls to us to deal with the vessel.’
‘Agreed,’ said Brother Meleriex. ‘If she bears but a part of the power of which the prisoner spoke, then she is as much of a threat to the Imperium as an entire tyranid hive fleet. She cannot be allowed to live.’
‘Then we all know what to do,’ Kholka said darkly, looking around at his companions. Meleriex was grim-faced following his close encounter with the prisoner. The feelings of the other two Raven Guard warriors, Sallas and Rydulon, were harder to read, for each wore their full combat helmets. Their body language told Kholka that both were ready and willing to do what must be done.
