The Chaos beast’s head sagged from its body with a wet rasp. The thing rustled as it died.
As if responding to some invisible signal, the circular doorway opened slowly, sphincter-muscles relaxing obscenely.
Kais stared out at the very base of the Temple abyss.
Ardias sunk his chainsword into the Traitor Marine’s guts with something like relish. In all the galaxy, of all the myriad enemies that clustered around the frail light of humanity, nothing was as satisfying to purge, he thought, as a traitor.
The thing gurgled a blasphemous oath, shuddered as its guts flopped out of its armour shell, and lay still. Ardias stooped to catch his breath and took a look around the chamber.
Just another crypt, one among dozens, lined with moistness and filth, vague suggestions of organic forms jutting from its walls and slurping doorways pulsing every few moments. If he came out of this alive, by the grace of the Primarch, he’d take great pleasure in overseeing an orbital bombardment of this place.
His descent was taking far too long. Perhaps he’d taken a wrong turn, or lost his bearings amongst the snaking corridors and stairways that he’d travelled, unable to tell which would wend its way back towards the shaft of the abyss, and which coiled endlessly away into the rock and soil of the earth. It was true that his sensors and compass readings were scrambled and confused by whatever foul energies riddled the pit, but he’d served the Emperor’s glory long enough to learn to rely upon his own senses just as much as those of his battle armour. Being lost meant someone was messing with his mind.
“T’au,” he voxed, uncomfortable at the thought. “T’au — are you there?”
“Ardias?” came the stammered reply, thick with interference. “Is that you?”
“Of course it is. Where are you? Are you near the bottom?”
The alien sounded changed, somehow; laughing grimly before answering. “Not near it, human. At it.”
Ardias blinked, surprised yet again by the tau’s resourcefulness. Delpheus’s dying prediction, it would seem, had been correct.
He was just wondering what orders to give the xenogen when the dead Chaos Marine decided it wasn’t dead at all and rose up with a roar.
Ardias, as if from a distance, heard shots, the tinny impart of bolter shells against his armour, the final abortive crackle of the vox-line being severed—
And a sharp pain exploded in his mind.
Everything went black.
Although every conceptual philosophy he had absorbed as a youth told him to scorn such fanciful observations, Shas’el T’au Lusha stood at the edge of the pit and recognised evil. Stretching in a wide bowl, nestled like some unhealed wound in the crux of three flint-covered foothills, the sweeping camber of its lip gave way to an uneven shaft some fifty tor’leks across. A curtain of black fumes and unnatural stinks rose from the abyss like the emissions of a pestilent volcano, detectable even within the confines of the battlesuit. A network of walkways, gouged roughly from the walls of the shaft, turned inwards like mutant ganglia to penetrate the rock itself and vanish into the gloom: bore holes that glowed with green and blue light.
Lusha found himself reciting litanies and sio’t meditations without even thinking. Lessons to bring serenity to his mind, lessons to restore him to equilibrium, lessons to stave off the horror of excess and selfishness, lessons to reaffirm the superiority of the tau’va.
“By the path...” he mumbled, astonished at the vastness of the desolation.
Chittering daemon things, like carrion crows, were gathering in a black pall above the abyss, orbiting the flexing blue-white pillar of energy that rose up from deep underground. Its lightning-bolt gesticulations punctured the very clouds and became fluted and spoutlike, segueing into the sky and sucking at the eye somehow, slurping everything into it little by little.
Lusha wondered vaguely where it led.
His team cast long shadows across the lip of the abyss, the sinking sun painting the sky a piebald red. Like splattered blood.
“El’Lusha...” Vre’Tong’ata commed. “I’ve found something.”
The shas’vre’s suit drifted forwards, mandible fingers extended and holding something small. “It was lying on the floor,” he explained.
El’Lusha mentally commanded his own digits to unfold from their protective sheaths and watched with interest as Tong’ata tipped two fragments of display wafer into his grip.
Placed side by side, it was just possible to make out the cracked message.
“Oh,” he whispered, beginning to understand. “Oh, Kais...”
“What is it, Shas’el?”
He looked back round at the pit, swollen darkness gathering around it like anti-light. “It is a reason, Shas’vre.”
A long range comm warning chimed peacefully, interrupting his thoughts.
“Shas’el? This is the Or’es Tash’var.”
“Ui’Gorty’l?”
“Yes. Shas’el, something’s happened. Whatever was blocking Kais’s signal has vanished. We think it was a gue’la communicator, holding open a channel with the shas’la.”
“And now it’s gone? Can you raise him?”
“Not yet, Shas’el. There’s a lot of interference.”
Lusha took a breath, fighting the adrenaline. “Kor’ui,” he said, keeping his tones measured and calm. “Listen very carefully. Find Fio’el Boran. Tell him to boost the signal. Tell him I need to be able to speak to Shas’la Kais.”
VIII
19.12 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)
And Meyloch Severus, Governor-Regent of Dolumar IV, overseer of Colony 4356/E, ranking adept of the Administratum and appointed forgemaster of Mechanicus Industrium Dol.322, was pushed unceremoniously into a tiny corner of his own brain.
Perhaps, as the daemon consciousness that had hissed and murmured to him for twenty-one years finally grew bored of whispers and snatched up his body like a puppetmaster, Severus realised all too late that he’d been betrayed.
Powers untold. Riches without number. Eternal life. Daemonhood. All these things and more he’d been promised. Instead he was brushed aside and used.
Tarkh’ax’s freedom was not yet complete, but, growing impatient, the daemonlord chose to conduct the last moments of the ritual that would release him himself, rather than whispering unsubtle instructions into some foppish idiot’s subconscious. He’d grown strong enough, now, to control his disciple’s body — even from within the vestiges of his warp cage.
It was but the tiniest glimmer of the power he’d wield when the walls came crashing down and he imposed himself into the physicality of a host body.
A strong host body.
He glared through Severus’s eyes at the tau ethereal and dismissed the grey figure as a possibility. The host would need to be corruptible. Tainted.
Attempting to infiltrate Ko’vash’s mind had been like waves breaking against a cliff. It would take centuries to wear him down. Ironic, then, that it would take just moments to wipe him away utterly. He raised the knife for a killing blow.
Severus had captured the admiral and ethereal with good intentions, Tarkh’ax supposed. Two high-ranking officials, corrupted and returned to their people, would be a valuable resource indeed. But the admiral had broken like dry wood and the ethereal was a steel fortress. Two extremes. Both useless.
The knife caught the light hungrily.
A doorway opened behind him with a wet gurgle. He grinned.
“Ahh...” he groaned happily. “Cometh the man.”
He turned in his place, uncomfortable with the ungainly movements of the governor’s body, opting instead to levitate, eyes glowing.
It wasn’t who he expected.
* * *
Kais stepped into the vast chamber and choked. He felt like thick cords were wrapping around his chest and mind — constricting his breath and torturing his thoughts. His impressions of the pit floor came at him in a jumble, twisted by chaotic influence. He felt himself stagger.
/> Sludge.
Sunlight, weak and dying, filtering down from above.
Blood.
Walls of damp obsidian, spine-encrusted and laced with runes and sigils that flexed and coiled with a life of their own.
Shadows.
Four sub-chambers, carved gargoyle gods glaring from stonehewn walls above writhing altars.
Smoke.
The pillar of light; an energyspike that rippled up from a star at the base of the pit into the dizzying vortex heights above.
Evil.
And the gue’la governor. Walking on the air, eyes and mouth and ears burning with living fire, staring down at him with a twisted leer. The Mont’au devil overcame Kais utterly and said: We’re home.
“It’s you...” the human hissed, its voice a medley of screams and echoes and cobwebs, nonetheless contriving to sound annoyed. “I was expecting the Space Marine... You were always my... contingency plan...”
Kais levelled his gun, not listening. He gritted his teeth and dragged his hand onto the trigger, curled his finger around the familiar shape and—
And froze.
“You can’t, little tau,” the thing said, its laugh a dry rasp. “You’ve been prepared.”
“What?”
“You think that little whisper in your head is yourself? Your... mm... what did you call it? Your Mont’au. Your rage. Heh heh heh...”
“What do y... I don’t...”
“You’ve strayed away from your path, little tau. And I’ve led you.”
Kais sank to his knees, bile rising in his belly. It was too much.
“I sensed you this morning, when you set down on this world. I’ve had millennia to prepare, little tau. Millennia of oozing myself into the minds of mortals. I’ve whispered and hissed into more brains than I can remember, through the years. I tasted your species this morning, like a fine wine, and found it wanting...”
“Nnn...”
“So disappointing, I thought. An incorruptible race. No psychic powers. No dark desires or secret horrors... Hmm... On that count, at least, I was wrong. You merely keep them well hidden...
But you... alone among thousands. I could taste you! Such bitterness! Such shame!
You’re strong, there’s no doubt about it. You’re skilled at your craft. You cut a bloody swathe to me like a knife through the warp, but not because you could...
Because I made you want to...
And now you seriously think you can cast off my gift and kill me? Little tau, you have a lot to learn.”
Kais retched on air, feeling his muscles going limp. “G-get... Get out of my head...”
“You and the Space Marine. My two choices. I called you to my side and you came, like faithful cubs. I’ve played you like puppets, little tau. And now I’m out of time, and the Space Marine is late, and you will have to do.
“You wouldn’t begrudge me a little blood before you die, would you? I must drink of the host — a corrupted host — before assuming its flesh. That’s how it works, little thing. It would be such a pity to damage you any more than necessary...”
The body drifted forwards, coruscating energies ebbing from its wide eyes and leering mouth, a blaze of skin and fire. In its hand the dagger was a slash of light. Kais couldn’t even breath, frozen solid by the very fury and rage that had sustained him. Betrayed by his own blood. Deceived by his own mind.
“Kais,” a voice said. “Kais, look up.”
He obeyed and there, hanging suspended far above him in the air, spread-eagled and glowing with purity and peace, radiant and glorious and unified and balanced and perfect, was Aun’el T’au Ko’vash.
“Kais,” he called out, voice full of exhaustion and effort. “Even when broken, a sword may still cut.”
The Aun closed his eyes and serenity enveloped Kais like a warm cloud, filling his mind with peace and purity and the glowing features of the ethereal. Was there a taste, he wondered? A faint scent taste that rushed through his body like warm j’hal nectar, cleansing and purifying.
The ethereal smiled from on high and Kais was free. Invisible bonds fell away, the Mont’au shrivelled and died. He could move again. He could raise his gun again.
“For the Greater Good,” he said, and shot the thing that had once been Severus in its heart.
For a second, but little more, Severus was free.
The daemon fled from his mind with a shriek, clearing his senses and opening his eyes fully for the first time in twenty-one years.
He was bleeding. He was bleeding and he’d—
Oh, by the throne, he’d...
“What have I done?” he gurgled, memories lancing through his mind, panic gripping his soul in the icy cold certainty that it was far, far too late for absolution.
As the colour went out of his vision and his ears roared with the sound of his own blood, he glanced once at the face of the timepiece on his wrist.
“Emperor have mercy...” he said, and died.
IX
19.19
The sun set.
Kor’vesa 66.G#77 (Orbsat Surveillance), had it possessed the ability to emote, might have remarked upon the particularly fine display of colour painting the planetary ionosphere blood-red.
It might have been intrigued or perplexed by the momentary burst of blue-white light that dappled its sensors over a particular point of land several kilometres east of the war torn capital city.
It might, conceivably, have given a damn. Instead it drifted by, blanketed by the thick silence of voidspace, recording and analysing; unable to judge.
The governor coughed and went still.
Kais watched smoke ebb from the gun barrel for long moments, wondering what would come next. The supposition that there were more trials to face was instinctive; for him to believe otherwise was ludicrous.
Silence spread through the cavern: an emptiness that felt like it could go on forever. Like a veil drawing across the world, the last spectral traces of sunlight died from above, leaving only the unnatural malefic glow of the walls themselves.
Kais closed his eyes and allowed himself, tentatively, to wonder whether it could really be finished. Done with. Over.
He heard: Drip.
A droplet at a time, parting from Severus’s corpse with slow gravity, thin strands of blood ran together in a long rivulet that curled and twisted in its course towards the depression at the pit’s centre.
Kais watched it with morbid fascination, frowning as the blood touched the base of the energy spike, pooling softly and dragging reflected light across its meniscus. It crackled, a silverfire glow racing back along the bloodstream to consume the corpse, stretching out tentacles of light into the floor and walls, snapping and hissing and spitting sparks.
And then the storm hit.
The ground shook. The room flashed white and red and green; Kais tumbled and fell onto his hands and knees with a strangled cry and Ko’vash, high above, lips moving soundlessly in some impervious litany of calm, was released from whatever sorcery held him in place.
Kais watched his fall almost all the way. There was a crack of bone at the end, and perhaps the merest hint of a cry.
And suddenly everything — everything he’d achieved this rotaa, everything he’d faced and overcome, every horror he’d defeated, every fear he’d banished, every flaw he’d accepted — was worthless. The ethereal was dead.
And this time the rage couldn’t be restrained. This time the cloak of serenity was cast off with a scream, the false mask of unity and equilibrium shattered on his face and his blood seemed to boil behind his eyes.
The madness came down, his muscles bunched like cords of fio’tak and in his memories he slaughtered every friend, butchered every ally and exploded his father’s glaring eyes into a billion damp fragments.
The Daemonlord Tarkh’ax shrugged off the hated warp prison like some awful infant clawing its way, snarling and spitting, from the womb.
The sun had set. The rituals were completed.
A blood
sacrifice had been offered, dragging his essence thirstily into the shell of an empty host vessel.
The walls came crumbling down.
Eldar dreamweaves coiled away into dry nothingness, webway intricacies collapsing upon themselves in whirligig storms of empyrean haze. Tarkh’ax oozed into reality with a shriek and a ghostly halo of warplight, flexing its ethereal extremities in triumph. The daemonlord focused upon the hollow tube of light and fire that stretched between dimensions and surged into the physical realm.
It had been too long. Oh, powers-in-the-warp, too long!
The host body was hardly perfect, of course. The tattered morsel that had once been Governor Severus was far from ideal but...
Yes... Yes, it was adequate. Needs must, in such circumstances.
The malefic consciousness had waited three thousand years to taste physicality again: manifesting into substandard flesh was, it supposed, better than nothing. It would not take long to secure a superior vessel.
Draining the last of its ectopic being into the meat host, Tarkh’ax opened its eyes — its real eyes — for the first time in three millennia.
Tarkh’ax Faalk’raztiil Koorlagh Thrasz, Changer of Ways, disciple of Tzeentch, agent of transience and modification, hissed its pleasure to the world. It rejoiced. It gloried. It exulted in the carnage that would follow.
It would butcher humanity and slaughter tau-kind; it would rampage across the void dragging behind it a veil of shadows; it would burn the galaxy to a cinder in the name of the Changer of Ways and eventually, with none to stop its ascension-It would murder reality itself.
A maelstrom of light and heat danced across its human body, returning its thoughts to the present. It turned its attention to offering obeisance to the dark pantheon that would sustain it, knowing that all its power was derived from their arcane gifts and favours. Tzeentch was a doting patron, filling Tarkh’ax with strength and vitality, but only by pleasing each of the Lord of Change’s brother-gods could it hope to regain the full strength it had enjoyed before its imprisonment. It had been an avatar of Chaos Undivided in that black time; lofty heights of malignancy and power that it would re-ascend!
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