Silver Skulls: Portents

by S P Cawkwell

  Karteitja watched in unvoiced pleasure as the biomechanical cables and daemon-flesh bound to the antennae of his device began to thrash violently, soaking up an entire planet’s worth of hate, pain, grief and horror. The blood-soaked heart of the thrall throbbed with the surge of power that came from such emotions; emotions that the sorcerer lord revelled in and which would ultimately fuel the change that would soon wrack the planet. This world would belong to the Oracles of Change and their warp-spawned masters.

  ‘It is time to give Valoria a taste of what is to come,’ he said, running a hand across the slick surface of the device. It was straining now, imbued with so much energy that it could barely contain the forces that raged within it. Once the chosen heart of the anointed was installed, it would be far worse. This was simply the beginning, nothing more. He would turn Valoria inside out, drag it into the tides of the warp, and it would become home to beings far greater than the insects that crawled its surface now.

  Karteitja knelt before the antenna and lowered his head, murmuring words in an ancient language that countless thousands had once spoken but was now known to but a few. The lenses of his helm began to glow softly in the same pulsing rhythm as the disembodied heart and a ripple of arcane power coruscated across the surface of his armour. He felt the always-welcome thrill of his own might and raised his head to the skies. The gathering clouds were black-edged and bloated as though they brought a deluge with them. But this storm would unleash something far more than torrential rain.

  ‘This world will be ours,’ he said in his deep, monstrous growl. ‘Let us take it.’

  With those words, Karteitja channelled the restrained power in the psychic conduits and it burst upwards to the clouds in a single column of pulsating green-blue light. It pierced the roiling clouds and rent a mighty tear through the thin fabric of space and time that separated this world from the realms of Chaos. The sky boiled, the cloud churning into a froth of colour-bruised foam that spread like ripples in a pond from epicentres around the globe.

  There was an earth-shattering sonic boom, like a thunderclap, and Karteitja gasped at the sudden pain that seared through him. But he was a creature of Chaos now. He was used to the agony that always came with the onset of a warp storm.

  But there were others on the world who were less prepared.

  The Silver Skulls had all but made it back to the palace when the clap of psychic thunder rumbled around the city, shivering the souls of all within its walls and crumbled structures. The ground shook; a tremor that Gileas at first mistook for a seismic shock. Bhehan stumbled suddenly and fell against Djul. The Terminator turned to pass a comment, but stopped immediately.

  ‘Brothers!’ Bhehan and Nicodemus were convulsing violently, the echoes of the sudden blast of tainted power affecting them even down here. Bhehan gripped onto Djul as though he were a drowning man clinging to his last hope of rescue.

  ‘So much… power,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Someone is… vile sorcery… ah!’ He broke off and released Djul’s arm, clutching at his helm. He made a move as though he would tear it off, but the zealous Terminator pushed him hard up against the wall.

  ‘Whatever this evil is that threatens your sanity, Prognosticator, you must fight it. You are better than this. Do not disappoint me. Look to your faith. Trust in your own strength and power.’

  Kerelan had joined them while Gileas grappled with the fallen Nicodemus. The first captain noted the sudden play of lights on the Prognosticator’s crystalline psychic hood. ‘What is he talking about?’

  Bhehan was stuttering, struggling to force back the power that threatened to boil his brain and shatter his soul. When he was finally able to speak, his words were slurred as though he were drugged. He gripped onto Kerelan’s forearm and spoke slowly and desperately.

  ‘The warp is bleeding out onto this planet,’ he said with obvious difficulty. ‘I can feel the evil within it clawing, tearing… pushing through. They will be here soon, if they are not here already.’

  Kerelan looked around at the gathered Silver Skulls. There was still no evidence that the Oracles of Change would return and events were starting to spiral out of control.

  ‘Stand firm, brothers,’ he said. ‘I understand that you are in pain, but you are sons of Varsavia both by birth and by birthright. Brother Djul is right. You are stronger than this.’ The words were spoken in a hard tone, but they were not without compassion. ‘Guard your soul and control your mind. We must regroup with the Ninth and begin an immediate sweep of the palace. The outer city is in ruins, the seat of the governor is the only place left they could be hiding. We will find them. And we will exterminate them. Brothers, make all haste. Gileas… carry Nicodemus if you must. We run.’

  The effects of boring a hole through reality were profound, but they were slow to spread. Karteitja, however, was eternally patient. He had been granted millennia to develop the art and he excelled at it. True Chaos, in its raw form, was not a tool that could be easily bent to the will of the one who used it.

  He suffered the effects of the initial tear in reality as much as any other psyker on the planet. Even his own warriors were forced to their knees at the sheer tidal surge of the empyrean. But unlike the Imperial forces, the Oracles of Change welcomed such pain with howls of adulation. They did not fight it, they embraced it. It was that acceptance which had given them so much power over the stuff of creation.

  The clouds above the war-torn planet had distorted completely now, tinged with purple and blue, and the sky beneath was turning a virulent shade of yellow. It seemed as though the heavens themselves had been wounded.

  The rain began to pour, spattering on the armour of the Oracles in a sticky mess of scarlet. No longer the dirty water of Valoria, this was a rain of blood that had started to fall. Vile as it was, the storm of gore was nothing compared to the streaks of pink and cerulean fire that soon replaced it. What remained of the buildings below were slow to catch aflame, but gradually, the world would burn.

  Karteitja began to laugh. It was a deep and guttural sound that carried no humour. Flinging out his arms he raised his helmed and visored face to the skies, welcoming the maelstrom.

  Far below him, the Imperial Guardsmen who had been mustering their forces in readiness for redeployment found themselves caught in a sudden deluge. When the realisation came that they were being soaked in blood, uproar broke out. When the blood became incendiary, things got worse. Where the unnatural fires touched flesh, it bubbled and contorted into obscene new shapes. Men dissolved into thrashing tangles of eyes, limbs and flailing pseudopods.

  There was no escaping the insidious touch of the warp’s terrible power. Those who stared up into the clouds saw daemonic faces etched there; faces that stretched into grotesque, alien shapes and whispered words of damnation to any who were weak enough to listen. Many of the younger and less experienced amongst the soldiers fell prey swiftly to such suggestions and even those who had rallied before in the face of corruption found themselves struggling not to succumb to the power.

  Weapons were drawn as comrades turned on one another in their madness. Shots rang out and blades were thrust into flesh, and above it all rang the stentorian voices of the commissars as they vainly attempted to bring order to the chaos. The crack of execution shots joined the growing din of battle as the regiment slowly but surely turned upon itself.

  The rain sizzled down, igniting drums and fuel tanks with violent explosions that rocked the streets and threw broken men and women in all directions. And the chaos and horror unfurling across the city fed the power upon which the Oracles of Change drew. Violence begat violence and terror begat terror until the entire area around the Governor’s Palace had dissolved into complete and glorious madness.

  The Talriktug were just about in sight of the Celebrant’s Square when three Oracles of Change stepped from their hiding places. A tide of madness was rising across Valoria and the surviving
population was drowning in it, choking the rubble-strewn alleys with crazed rebels and hapless survivors. The all-pervading chaos blunted the Oracles’ surprise attack, as not only did Bhehan detect the peculiar shift in the aether even over the growing storm, but the emerging warriors had to smash aside howling madmen to reach their foes.

  ‘Attack,’ Bhehan bellowed out across the squad vox and lowered his force axe before him. The word had barely left his lips before the first flash of deep red armour had emerged from nowhere. Then another… then another.

  The bolt pistols of every Assault Marine fired simultaneously, the shells cracking against the archaic armour of these most hated of enemies.

  Bhehan could feel the traitor warriors gathering their will, drawing power from the burning air around them, and prepared to deploy a psychic shield of his own. He was sick and weakened by the effects of the backlash that had torn at his consciousness, but he was tenacious.

  The Terminators reacted less expediently than Gileas and his squad, their massive bulk slowing them considerably. Kerelan’s sword was already drawn and he held it before him. Many an enemy had died on the point of that blade and he was more than willing to increase that body count on this battlefield today. His cloak fluttered behind him, whipped into a frenzy by the furious winds, and he held his position rigidly. He was the very image of the stubbornness the Silver Skulls were renowned for.

  The Oracle of Change closest to the Talriktug thrust a hand out in front of him and a rippling ball of energy slammed into Asterios’s chestplate. The Terminator staggered and would have fallen had Djul not been standing directly behind him. The zealot pushed his battle-brother back to his feet with a sputtered oath. There was the crackle of cooling metal as the armour did its job of protecting the man within its shell. But Asterios’s armour was damaged. Djul moved as rapidly as his restrictive plate allowed in such a small place to shift positions with his battle-brother.

  Levelling his own storm bolter before the Oracle could unleash another attack, Djul fired. As the weapon stuttered out its reply to the enemy, ceramite shards of the traitor’s armour flew. At this range, the weapon did enough damage to tear one of the red-clad warrior’s arms from his body. The limb clattered away and a spray of hot Adeptus Astartes blood gushed from the stump. The Oracle let out a scream of fury and pain, stepping backwards.

  But he did not vanish. He said something in some old, forgotten language that grated on the senses and which was quite obviously a curse of some kind. The two warriors with him replied in kind and then they were both gone.

  ‘Do your worst, Silver Skulls,’ the Oracle said in his rasping voice.

  Behind Djul, Bhehan was on his knees, his voice coming in a strangled gasp of effort and energy. ‘I can hold only one tear for so long, brother. Now is your chance.’

  Djul did not hesitate. He stepped to one side, allowing Vrakos to stand beside him. Both storm bolters fired simultaneously and the Oracle of Change was gradually pressed back under the fusillade before finally a well-placed shot chewed through his damaged helm. His skull evaporated in a spray of fine red mist and grey matter.

  Bhehan collapsed in a state of complete exhaustion and was dragged up to his feet by Vrakos.

  ‘Fight now,’ said the near-silent battle-brother in his customary serious tone. ‘Fight now and you can rest all you want when we are back on Varsarvian soil, Brother-Prognosticator.’ He paused for moment, then nodded. It was a curious gesture of camaraderie from the deeply introverted man.

  Amidst the fire and flames of the horror that had become Valoria, they moved off once again towards the Celebrant’s Square.

  Sixteen

  Madness

  Bhehan had regained his composure swiftly following the psychic shockwave, but Gileas was concerned for Nicodemus. The young psyker lacked the experience of the Prognosticator and was clearly suffering under the onslaught. As the squads retreated towards the palace, Nicodemus groaned and several sparks coughed from his protective hood. He was able to mumble a few words of thanks before slipping back into delirium once again. Bhehan, still pale from shock, nodded in approval of the warrior’s fortitude. ‘He will owe you a debt of honour should he survive this ordeal,’ he observed to Gileas.

  ‘It is my duty, brother. You are both too valuable. If it should come to it, I would carry you both to the palace across my back.’

  ‘What are you going to do about the inquisitor, Gileas?’ The question was not entirely unexpected and Gileas did not look at the Prognosticator. ‘You know that I must consult the runes when we get back before a decision can be made.’

  ‘If your runes are not burned away,’ retorted Gileas, then his tone softened slightly. ‘I will wait and see,’ the sergeant said eventually in a neutral but verging on dangerous tone that Bhehan knew well. ‘What else can I do, after all?’

  They finally reached the edge of the Celebrant’s Square and were greeted by a horrific sight: the charnel house that had ensued in their absence. The rain of fire seemed to have abated, but the damage had been done. The madness and mutation that had spread throughout the human ranks was doing more damage in a single blow than months of warfare had accomplished. The streets were choked with soldiers shooting, biting and clawing at each other, their twisted minds and bodies driving them into an orgy of slaughter. A few islands of sanity remained amidst the chaos, drawn up around a handful of officers or the instantly recognisable commissars. Blood ran freely, mingling with the rainwater on the blasted ground. It congealed and created a vile, stinking miasma that seemed to twitch and gurgle with a life of its own.

  They barely had to fight their way through the melee. Nobody even seemed to notice the Space Marines as they passed through the riots. As they made their way through the cordon of vehicles, one Guardsman, engaged in a brawl with one of his fellows, collided with Gileas and rebounded from the Assault Marine without even seeming to notice the transgression. Djul crushed the offender beneath his chainfist in contempt.

  ‘You will forgive me for voicing this opinion, I am sure, but the regiment is in need of discipline,’ commented Vrakos in his usual deadpan manner. His lenses were fixed on the battle with obvious interest. The others swung their heads towards him and he shrugged easily. ‘Merely an observation.’

  ‘With the Oracles of Change behind this unnatural affliction, we should expect the worst from all encounters,’ said Kerelan from behind gritted teeth. ‘Vrakos, Varlen – go and offer whatever assistance you can to the survivors. Take two of Gileas’s squad…’ The first captain tailed off and shot a glance at the sergeant, a cue for him to delegate.

  ‘Reuben, Tikaye – you’re with me.’ Gileas’s squad took their positions without comment; those who remained with him and those who went with the Terminators.

  The rest of them made their way towards the broken entrance to the palace. The buttresses and spires of the building still remained largely untouched by the fighting, but the shower of gore had given the north face of the palace a macabre aspect. Blood streamed in rivulets down its pillars and columns and poured from the shattered doorway that hung open like some kind of obscene maw. Standing before the grisly tableau, Daviks waited for them, his Devastators flanking him and their weapons covering the chaos of the square. The siege captain had removed his helm and his dark face was one of sombre self-control lined with lingering pain from his wounds.

  ‘As you no doubt saw, things have gone from bad to worse,’ he said without any preamble. ‘The majority of the siege company managed to fall back into the palace grounds when the storm struck and I have contact with units around the city who have likewise entrenched themselves. I have twenty per cent loss of armoured support due to catastrophic failure and Thunderhawk Sigil went down beyond the city limits. We have had no further contact. The inquisitor was abducted by Sinnaria Gryce, and you saw what has happened to the regiment.’ Daviks ran a hand over his scalp. ‘The inquisitor’s psyker was injur
ed too – and he and our own psychic brothers suffered some kind of attack that affected them gravely.’

  ‘We noticed that,’ responded Kerelan, shooting a glance at Bhehan and the groggy, but recovering Nicodemus.

  ‘The Oracles have remained curiously absent. I do not have any idea what their strategy might be beyond the obvious carnage.’

  ‘Corruption,’ boomed Djul. ‘Heresy. How bad is the human psyker? How close to failure is he?’

  ‘He isn’t some sort of machine, you know.’ The voice was Harild de Corso’s, his perfectly polished veneer decidedly cracked. He stood several feet away, a supporting arm around the frail psyker who was leaning heavily on the only friend he had left. ‘Nathaniel is disoriented and confused, but otherwise well.’

  ‘If he is a danger to himself and more importantly to others…’ Djul persisted with his train of thought, not wanting it to be derailed. Gileas could not help but get the impression that the Terminator was out for blood.

  ‘He is remarkably resilient,’ interjected Daviks. ‘I have already addressed the matter with de Corso here. I agree that he does not present a danger. Not at this time. He is merely agitated. He does not possess the same potency of psychic defence as do our own men.’ Daviks indicated Nicodemus, who was finally managing to regain his feet unsupported. The young warrior’s psychic hood was occasionally spiking with energy as he struggled to contain the forces flowing through him. It was more active than the psychic hood on Bhehan’s armour but such was the price of youth and inexperience.

  ‘What of the inquisitor?’ Kerelan took command of the situation before Djul and Daviks could descend into some sort of theological discussion on the state of the party’s psykers. ‘Do we have any idea where she has been taken?’