by Nick Kyme
My reply was caustic. ‘You are not my brother. Now, shut up!’
Ferrus’s voice grew lower, more sinister, ‘Do you want to know what I realised at the very moment of my death?’
I paused, and cursed myself inwardly for doing it.
‘I bested him, you know. Fulgrim, I mean.’
Now I turned. I couldn’t help it. Deep down, a part of me must have suspected this, otherwise how could this apparition speak to me of it? ‘He was your slayer?’
Ferrus nodded slowly, as a smile crept up over his lips like a spider crawling across a weed.
‘He was.’
‘You hated him, didn’t you? For his betrayal, for the bond of friendship he broke.’
‘We were once very close.’
I felt the weight of the chains anew, their paltry fragments dragging me down like an anchor into the abyssal deep of an ocean. Darkness lingered here in this trench of the mind, all-consuming and endless. I knew that I was succumbing to something – that my will, not my strength, was being tested, and I wondered again at the nature of the darkness in this place that I could not see through it. That I was blind like any mortal man would be.
‘Yes – you are, brother,’ said Ferrus, causing me to start when I realised he had read my thought and turned it to his own ends. ‘Blind, I mean. Blinded to truth, by so-called enlightenment.’ Ferrus’s smile reached his eyes, and it was hideous to behold. All light was drawn to them, devoured by those deadened orbs as a black hole devours a sun. ‘You know of what I speak.’
‘You said you defeated him.’ I felt a weight upon my back, pressing me down to my haunches.
‘I did. I had him at my mercy, but Fulgrim,’ said Ferrus, whilst shaking his head, ‘was not all he appeared to be. You know of what I speak,’ he repeated, and my mind was cast back to when I saw Horus for that second time, when I felt the nature of the power he had cloaked himself with. I could not put a name to it, to this presence, this primordial fear, but knew that Ferrus spoke of the same thing.
He leaned back to expose the neck wound. ‘He cut off my head, slew me in cold blood and left my Legion shattered. You failed me, Vulkan. I needed you at my side, and you failed me. I asked you–’ Ferrus grew angry, ‘–no, I begged you to follow me, to stand by my side!’
I stood, the weight leaving me, the chains losing their power to drag me down into the dirt, into this dark hollow with only an apparition and my eventual madness to keep me company.
‘You lie,’ I told the spectre. ‘Ferrus Manus would not beg. Not even for that.’
I turned back to the wall, took hold as my fingers pressed into the metal, and began to climb.
‘You will fail!’ Ferrus raged below me. ‘You are weak, Vulkan! Weak! You’ll perish in this place and no one will ever know your fate. Unmourned, your statue will be shrouded. Your Legion will diminish and die, lost like the others. Unspoken of, unwanted, a cautionary tale for those that remain behind to spit on your unworthy ashes. Nocturne will burn.’
One hand over the other, I kept on climbing.
‘Shut up, brother.’
Ferrus had never been this talkative before; I wondered why in my subconscious he was now. It was guilt, and the slow erosion of my resolve, that provided his words. They were my words, my fear.
‘I am starting to understand, Curze,’ I muttered, finding all the imperfections in the metal with my fingertips, rising like a feline predator from my prison.
I slipped, fell a half-metre, my knuckles scraping against the wall, but managed to grip where one of the weld points jutted almost imperceptibly in a shallow lip of metal. No one berated me or willed my death. I glanced down.
Ferrus was gone. For now at least.
Making sure of my grip, I set my mind to the task ahead.
Above me, with every painstaking metre I climbed, the oval of light that cast down into my cell widened.
Once I neared the end of the shaft, no more than two metres from the summit, I stopped and waited. Listened.
Two voices, low and grating, emanated from above. The rough tonality came from vox-grilles. Curze had positioned two guards to watch my cell. I briefly wondered if they were amongst the legionaries who had stabbed me so grievously before. I could still feel the presence of the blades as they pierced my body, but it was a phantom pain and no scars marred my skin other than those rendered by the branding iron.
During the Great Crusade, there were few occasions I could remember when the VIII and XVIII Legions had fought together on campaign. Kharaatan was the last time, and that hadn’t ended well for me or Curze. Whatever bonds of loyalty I felt towards him, whatever fraternal love and respect I might have borne for him, ended on Kharaatan. What he did there… What he made me do…
I shuddered, and one of the guards laughed in such a way as to suggest the nature of their discussion: death and torture, and how they had meted it out to those weaker and smaller than them. Murderers, rapists, thieves, the children of Nostramo came from spoiled stock.
I felt my anger boil, but kept my fury in check. This needed to be swift, silent.
From the resonance of their footfalls against the metal floor, I gauged each legionary’s position relative to the opening of the shaft. One was close by – bored, as he shifted around often. The other was farther away, perhaps a few metres between each warrior. Neither of them was watching the opening. I suspected they thought I was dead or dying. Certainly, they had plunged enough steel in me to see it done.
I am a primarch, and we do not die easily… or well, I reminded myself, thinking of poor Ferrus. And for a moment, I felt his presence again below me, but he did not stir or speak.
I eased out of the shaft.
Two guards, midnight-clad in their legionary colours. Night Lords both. One had his back to me. Moving silently I slipped my hand around his gorget, smothering his vox-grille with my palm, and twisted.
The other saw me too late, a little farther down the corridor. He saw my eyes first – he saw them when I chose to open them after I killed his comrade. Two fiery orbs, burning vengefully in the darkness. Shadows were the province of the VIII but they were not the only Legion who could dwell in darkness. Balanced on the edge of the shaft, dropping the body of the first guard to land with a dull metal-hitting-metal thunk, I pounced.
The second guard was raising his bolter. It must have felt like gravity had exerted itself fourfold over his muscles; every movement glacially slow in the face of a primarch’s concerted attack. He aimed for my chest, going for the centre mass as instinct would have urged him to. I carried the guard down as I landed upon him, my fingers clamping around his trigger hand and mashing it into the stock of his bolter so he – and it – would never fire again.
He hit the ground, grunting as my sheer weight and power dented his chest plate and cracked the fused ribcage beneath. I masked his scream with my hand, crushing the vox-grille, breaking teeth. Blood geysered up through his ruined war-helm, splashing hot and wet against my face. I kept squeezing, immune to the guard’s panic.
Then it stopped, and silence followed.
Still straddling the dead guard’s body, I looked up and tried to get my bearings.
A long corridor stretched out in front of me: bare metal, faintly lit, nondescript. I could be anywhere on Isstvan. I remembered little of my abduction from the battlefield. What happened between when Curze appeared and my waking in the cell might never return.
A sense of enclosure as I touched the metal wall on my left made me suspect I was underground. Perhaps Horus had ordered the construction of tunnels beneath the surface. I wondered if there were cells for Corax and Ferrus too. I dismissed the idea almost as soon as it was formed. Horus did not take prisoners of war, it wasn’t in his nature – though I had much cause to question exactly what his nature was over these last few months. This was Curze’s doing.
I knew
then he hadn’t forgiven me for Kharaatan, for what I did to him.
My brother was a petty-minded, shallow creature; this was his way of evening things up between us.
Taking the bodies of the guards, one by one, I threw them down into the pit. I suspected much of this place was deserted – after all, Curze had left me here to die – and no one would hear the crash of their broken bodies when they hit the ground, but a pair of dead Night Lords out in the open would arouse alarm immediately. A few seconds gained might be the difference between my escape and continued incarceration.
With the guards dispatched, I padded gently to the end of the corridor, slowing as I reached the junction and listening intently for sounds of disturbance.
Nothing.
Peering around the corner, I saw another passageway, empty like the one I was just leaving.
The peace didn’t last. After a few minutes, I was halfway down the next corridor when a door slid open along the right-hand side and a legionary stepped out.
Acting with greater alacrity than his dead brothers festering in the pit, he opened up a comm-channel and sounded an alarm.
‘Vulkan lives!’ He sounded afraid, and the irony of that fact gave me a cruel satisfaction as I ran at him. I took a glancing hit from a hurried snap shot, before I smashed the flat of my palm against his chest. It was a heart strike, which, if delivered with enough force, can kill instantly. His primary organ collapsed – so, too, the secondary back-up. The legionary crumpled and I left him for dead, racing into the chamber from where he’d come as the sirens started screaming.
Again, I was confronted with more bare metal. No weapons, no supplies, nothing. It was spartan to the point of being deserted. Except I heard them coming for me above the wailing alarms. Some were shouting in that ugly, guttural language of their home world; others hurried in silence, the drum of their booted feet betraying their urgency and panic.
I crossed the room, rushing through the only other exit, and found another corridor. It was shorter than the previous one but just as barren, yet I had begun to feel a familiarity for this place. Around the next junction I almost charged into a pair of guards who were coming the other way. I killed them both swiftly, lethal damage inflicted in less than the time it took for me to blink. I stole one of their chainblades – it was the only weapon I could take and use effectively – wondering how I would escape, trying to formulate some kind of plan.
I needed to find somewhere to stop and think, adapt to the changing situation.
I went up.
The ceiling duct was tight against my body, and I had to discard the weapon I had only just procured, but by replacing the overhead grate I could temporarily mask my point of egress.
It stank in the vent, of blood, of sweat, and I wondered where exactly it was ferrying air from and to. Crawling on my belly, using my elbows and toes for propulsion, I reached another grate that looked down onto a room below.
Banks of monitors surrounding a much larger screen showing a schematic of the prison marked it as a security station. Unaugmented human serfs were in attendance, speaking into vox-units, desperately trying to find me. No legionaries were visible. They were hunting, attempting to establish a trap.
These men and women were not warriors, but they were allied with my enemies.
If I were to escape, none could live.
Quietly removing the grate, I slid through the opening head first and dropped down amongst them. A woman, her face daubed in Nostraman tattoos, cried out and I backhanded her across the chamber. Going for his sidearm, one of the male operators tried to draw down on me but I was faster. Much faster. I killed him, too. In fewer than three seconds, all six human operators were dead. I made it quick, as painless as I could, but failing to salve my conscience in the process.
The schematic on the screen showed only a portion of the underground complex. Again, I was struck with a sense of familiarity concerning the layout and wondered how massive this prison actually was. The other monitors showed pict-feed images of the search teams, linked up to retinal lenses. Data inloaded from the legionaries’ battle-helms ran across the screens. Heart monitors on every Night Lord thrummed agitatedly below the feed from each helm-corder, graphic equalisers slaved to their voice patterns rose and fell as they breathed and hissed orders.
I ignored the pict-feeds, focusing on the half-map instead and committing it to memory.
Two doors led out of the security chamber. I took the one that, according to the schemata, led to an upper level. I had no idea how far down beneath the Isstvan surface I was, or what would be greeting me when I got there, but there was no other course for me to take.
Another corridor faced me, at the end of which was a cross-junction. Halfway down, I paused and shook my head to clear it.
‘Where am I?’ I breathed, not recognising this junction from the schematic. I had an eidetic memory – this should not have been happening. I considered going back but the risk was too great. By entering the ducts above I had gained only a few seconds against my pursuers. I had to move on. And fast.
Reaching the junction, I paused again. Two more corridors stretched away from me, the destination of each concealed in darkness. A faint breeze, detected by the tiny hairs on my bare skin, flowed from the right. I was about to take that branch when I saw a shadow seemingly emerge out of the darkness.
Gaunt, grinning, I recognised the cadaverous features of my brother.
‘Ferrus…’
Placing a finger mockingly to his lips, he beckoned me to follow him into the shadows.
I knew I could not trust my own mind. By manifesting this apparition, here and in my cell, it had already betrayed me.
Weak, he mouthed as I paused before the threshold to the right-hand branch. So weak.
I took the left branch, trusting my instincts over my mind, and as I turned I saw another figure. Incorporeal, a wraith in form and features, it wore gossamer-thin robes that appeared to float as if they were suspended in water. Its eyes were almond-shaped and the runes crafted about its person were eldritch and alien. The eldar flickered once as if captured on a bad pict-cording and disappeared.
My brother or my enemy; it was not much of a choice. I felt the jaws of the rusty trap closing around me again, their teeth pinching my flesh.
I raced down the left branch, finding its terminus was a bulkhead. It was the first of its kind I had seen since my escape, more robust and inviolable than the doors I had passed through so far. Metres thick, triple bolted, I wasn’t able to just rip it from its hinges.
Pressing my hand against the metal, acutely aware of the shouts of my pursuers getting closer, I felt coldness. Then the light glaring from the bulkhead’s inbuilt access panel went from red to green.
Klaxons sounded as the amber strobes above the door kicked in; I noticed the black-and-yellow chevrons delineating it.
Backing away, too late, far too late, realising now where I was and why this place was so familiar to me, I watched as a jagged crack formed diagonally in the bulkhead and its two halves slid apart to reveal a second emergency door.
The coldness intensified. Tendrils of it touched my skin, freezing me. Knowing it was pointless to run, I waited as the second door split just like the first. Invisible force shields collapsed and I was wrenched up off my feet as the pressure inside the corridor began venting outwards, taking me with it.
I was not on Isstvan. I had never been on Isstvan.
It was a ship, Curze’s ship.
The emergency door opened and I had a few seconds to behold the void of deepspace before I was wrenched out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Blood begets blood
Valdrekk Elias crouched at the bottom of the shaft. Masked by shadows, he surveyed the dig site.
‘What were they looking for?’ asked one of the Word Bearers in the hole with him. His name was Jadrekk, a loyal if unima
ginative warrior. He was pacing the edges of the site, bolter locked across his chest.
‘Whatever it was, they found it,’ Elias replied.
Tools lay strewn about the subterranean chamber, and doused phosphor lamps were still suspended from cables bolted into the cave roof. A cup of recaff sat next to an upturned stool and there were scuff marks in the dust made by the hurried passage of booted feet.
In the middle of the chamber – some kind of reliquary if the presence of bones and skulls was any guide – the flagstones had been upheaved. They were cracked apart, blackened at the edges and not by the action of any digging tool. Through careful excavation, through the use of micro-trenchers and the application of debris-thinners to gently extract extraneous layers of dirt and granite, a crater had been revealed. And in its core, half a metre down, was a void.
Elias leaned in to the hole cut into the crater, exploring the unusual cleft in the rock where the fortune hunters, or whatever they were, had been digging.
‘And it was removed from here,’ he added, standing and dusting off his armour.
Amaresh dipped his horned helmet towards the mess surrounding the crater.
‘I’d say they left in a hurry.’
He knelt down to touch the cup of recaff.
‘And not that long ago, either.’
‘Agreed,’ said Elias, activating the arcane-looking flask attached to his belt.
‘I have their trail,’ Narek reported without having to be asked.
‘How many?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Don’t kill them all, Narek. Not until we know what they took from the catacombs and why.’
‘I can’t swear to that.’
Narek ended the communion, allowing Elias to appreciate the primitive architecture of the room. Though much of it had been destroyed, collapsing in on itself as entropy was exerted upon stone and steel, he could still discern the eight-sided structure, the weave and weft of the arcane in its construction. Primitive, centuries old, he felt the latent power in this temple. It was nothing but a shadow, the artefact that had been taken from the crater having destroyed it and robbed it of its potency long ago.
