by Darius Hinks
Zorambus was still smiling compassionately and Hesbon was no longer in any pain, but as he tested his bonds, Hesbon felt a rush of fear. He noticed, for the first time, that there was something oddly flat and lifeless about the prince’s eyes, as though they belonged to a different, crueller face than the one they were currently looking out of.
‘My lord,’ he said. ‘My wound. Is it…?’
Zorambus gripped his hand and shook his head. ‘Nothing to worry about, commander. I removed the shells and cleaned it myself.’
The prince smiled again, but now that he had noticed it, Hesbon was fixated on the idea that his lord was wearing someone else’s eyes. Or something else’s eyes. They were dead and inhuman. The idea filled him with a growing sense of terror.
‘Then, am I healed?’ he asked quietly.
Zorambus simply smiled, before wandering over to the table and opening one of the boxes.
‘My lord,’ gasped Hesbon. ‘There was no way we could have reached the gates. There was nothing I could do. The men fought bravely but there was no cover.’ His voice cracked. ‘Where were the reinforcements? What happened to the army from Mormotha?’
Zorambus turned around with his hands clasped together, holding whatever he had taken from the box. His smile faltered at the mention of Mormotha. ‘Dravus failed me.’
Hesbon’s panic grew as Zorambus approached, the smile returning to his face. He strained against the straps again, but they were fastened tight. Suddenly he was sure that the prince meant him harm. He did not want to find out what was in his hands. He drew a breath to scream but, to his horror, he found that his mouth had vanished. His jaw worked furiously but there was no longer an opening. His skin was now stretched seamlessly over the lower half of his face.
Zorambus shook his head like a disapproving parent. ‘No need to trouble yourself, Commander Hesbon. You did everything I needed and more.’ He nodded at the carnage outside. ‘The deaths of your men are exactly what I needed to complete your transformation.’
Hesbon howled behind his healed-up mouth, but the sound was too muffled to carry.
Zorambus reached the bench and peered into the open wound. ‘Remember what I said, Commander Hesbon – if we are to serve the gods, we must think like gods.’ He nodded at the tent door. ‘We have a vast army at our disposal. Your victories ensured that. But, even if you could reach those gates, how long would it take, commander?’ He paused, waiting for a response, then laughed. ‘Sorry, you can’t answer, can you? Well, let me answer for you, my friend – too long. By the time we entered Volgatis, the Blood Angels would have swaggered up here in their pretty suits and found a way to take what is mine.’ The gentle humour of his voice vanished, replaced by a furious snarl. Then he regained his composure. ‘However,’ he said, ‘if we think like gods, we see that there are other kinds of gate than simple stone doors.’ He touched the lines that covered Hesbon’s skin. ‘But even the most powerful practitioner needs help to pierce the walls between what is real and what is unreal. So many deaths, Hesbon!’ The prince’s eyes gleamed. ‘You have given me so many deaths today. All that pain. All those souls crying out together, here, where the Emperor made the boundaries so thin… The deaths of your men have given me just the chance I need, Commander Hesbon.’
He opened his hands and dangled something over Hesbon’s wound. Something that wriggled and writhed in his grip.
Hesbon stared at it in horror, unsure what he was looking at. It was an insect of some kind – a long, serpentine creature, clad in metallic scales. It looked like a silverfish, only several inches long.
‘I may have been a little disingenuous when I said the Emperor blessed you with those wings, General Hesbon,’ said Zorambus, dropping the silverfish into the open wound.
Hesbon strained wildly against his bonds as the cold, eel-like shape burrowed into his guts.
‘They were a divine gift, but the divinity involved is probably not one you’re familiar with.’
Hesbon could no longer feel the silverfish, but he could feel a sickening sensation emanating from the place where it had entered his body: an unpleasant churning, as though his insides had turned to liquid.
‘But what matters is that you have been touched by the Otherworld, my friend. Your soul has been made malleable, receptive to metamorphosis.’
As Hesbon jolted wildly on the bench, attempting to break the straps, Zorambus hurried back over to the table and opened another box. He drew out a quill and a bottle of ink, and returned to his captive. ‘You will be my catalyst, general,’ he said, tracing carefully over the shapes drawn on Hesbon’s skin. ‘Your heroism will accelerate the change that Divinus Prime has been crying out for. Your sacrifice will mean an end to all this stultifying stasis.’
Hesbon moaned in horror as a blue, oily hump forced itself from his stomach.
‘You see,’ said Zorambus, stepping back, ‘I must be the first to reach the Blade Petrific. There is more at stake than you realise.’
The blue shape spiralled and rippled as it rose from Hesbon’s body. The pain seemed oddly remote, but he could see that his torso was breaking apart.
As it rolled and swelled, Hesbon began to make out its shape. It was like an enormous ray fish – flat, boneless, crescent-shaped, six or seven feet wide and studded with yellow eyes. As it slipped from his intestines, it drifted up into the air, as though floating in water, its wings or gills rippling like they were caught in a current. It hovered over Hesbon, turning to stare at him with banks of eyes, studying him with the same inhuman coldness he had seen in Zorambus. Then it opened its wide scar of a mouth, revealing cruel, shark-like teeth, and let out an ear-splitting scream. It sounded like a thousand infants, screeching simultaneously for food.
Behind his sealed mouth, Hesbon began to laugh. The sight of such lunacy slithering from his body, combined with the chorus of screams coming from its mouth, was too much for him. As his sanity deserted him, Hesbon decided that he was an air-fish too, just like the thing billowing above his head. He relaxed back onto the bench, laughing as more daemonic shapes slid from his broken body.
Zorambus sighed with pleasure, his eyes closed and his head thrown back. Then he continued writing studiously on Hesbon’s skin and a whole menagerie of blue-fleshed, monstrous shapes surged and whirled into the room, all screaming as they were born. After a while, there were so many of the daemons rolling and swaying around the tent that it collapsed, spilling the nightmarish things out onto the mountainside.
By the time Hesbon’s mind finally crumbled, he was drifting in an ocean of blue, shimmering flesh, barely aware that Zorambus was laughing ecstatically as he ordered the screaming daemons into battle. Hesbon knew his sanity had finally deserted him because of the man who had appeared behind Zorambus. Despite everything he had witnessed in the last few minutes, he still knew this newcomer could not exist. The man was small and skeletally thin. He was dressed in plain black robes and could have passed for a simple monk were it not for the glimpse of his head, just visible in the deep folds of his pointed hood. It was the long, cruel-looking skull of a raptor, with black, empty eye sockets looking out from each side. It was not the strangeness of the monk’s face that horrified Hesbon, though; it was the oddness of his movements. He approached in a series of dislocated flickers, like a collection of old photographic slides played on a broken projector. He flickered and shuddered towards Zorambus, shedding multiple images as he moved, creating dozens of likenesses, like a double exposure. One of his arms ended in a grasping, bird-like talon, and the other arm was a silver serpent, coiling and hissing as the monk winked in and out of reality.
Hesbon tried again to scream and this time he strained so furiously that his skin began to tear, creating a new mouth.
Zorambus grew pale as he saw the monk and gave him a deep bow. ‘My lord, I hope you are enjoying the performance this time.’
‘The game is over and begun,’
replied the monk. His voice registered in several octaves at once, from a subterranean rumble to a shrill, barely perceptible shriek. ‘The blade is seen, unseen. It is almost in reach.’
Zorambus looked horrified. ‘Livia’s in the fortress?’
‘She has reached the shrine.’
‘No,’ whispered Zorambus, glancing out through the tent doors at the battle outside. ‘No!’ he cried, grasping a clump of his own hair as though he were about to scalp himself. ‘It’s me, my lord. It has to be me. That girl cannot serve you. She is a fool.’
‘A fool that will beat and has beaten you to the prize,’ rumbled and screamed the monk.
‘Never!’ cried Zorambus. He rounded on Hesbon and howled a torrent of incomprehensible words. Hesbon exploded as daemons clawed their way through his flesh, screaming towards the fortress.
Chapter Eighteen
Volgatis, Divinus Prime
Volgatis shuddered, its halls and crypts shaking with the rolling boom of gunfire. Even in its deepest vaults, where only the most senior Sisters were admitted, the walls trembled and groaned, as though cursing the assault. Stones clattered from the ceiling as Saint Ophiusa hurried down a convoluted series of passageways, muttering prayers as her flickering torch lit the way. She nodded curtly at a pair of sentries who were watching over the door to her cell. They stepped aside and admitted her to the chamber, and she slammed the door, bolting it securely from the inside, checking the locks several times before she turned around.
Her cold, joyless cell was almost entirely empty. The damp, stone walls were unadorned and there was hardly any furniture. She made the sign of the aquila across her chest and kneeled before a shrine that dominated the austere room, lighting a small candle on its scarred surface. It was a simple metal table on top of which a crude carving of a man had been placed. The wooden man had wings and a sword. Ophiusa had painted most of the effigy dark red, using her own blood, but the face was a white mask with two bloody thumbprints for eyes.
‘Astra Angelus,’ said the saint, her eyes glinting with tears. ‘You are so close now. After all these years, Mephiston, you heard me. And you came. Through the stars you came.’
She threw back her veil and the candlelight washed over her ruined face as she stared intently at the wooden man, listening for an answer.
As always, it took a few moments, but she was patient and, slowly, the little statue started to move. It clicked and jolted like a mechanical toy, creaking spasmodically into life. It lurched across the surface of the metal table and fixed its bloody eyes on her.
‘Of course I heard, Ophiusa. Prayers charged with such purity could cross a dozen galaxies. I heard every word, as clearly as if you were whispering them in my ear. The God-Emperor Himself assured me you would not fail. And now, your work is almost complete. I will reach you in a few hours and everything we have strived for will be realised. All thanks to your devotion and bravery.’
Tears poured down the raw flesh of Saint Ophiusa’s face. ‘The apostates have not reached anywhere near the gates. Nor will they. We will easily hold them off until you can reach us and claim the blade.’
The wooden man reached out, juddering and trembling as it touched her clasped hands.
‘Your faith must hold a little longer, Ophiusa,’ it said.
‘What do you mean?’ Her breath came in faint gasps. ‘I will do anything. Whatever you need of me, Lord Mephiston. What do you require? Just tell me and it will be done. There is no sacrifice I will not make. I would–’
‘I require nothing that you are not already doing, my child.’ The wooden man waved at the trembling ceiling as it shed more dust into the little room. ‘I just wanted to give you a warning. The battle will not be as brief as you think.’
She frowned. ‘Those Guardsmen are barely worthy of our guns, Astra Angelus. I do not believe even one of my Sisters will fall. We will drive them into the abyss with ease, my lord. Their heresy has robbed them of sense. An army like that could not hope to challenge Volgatis. It is madness. They are dying in their hundreds. That army will not survive the morning.’
‘I would expect no less of the Adepta Sororitas,’ said the wooden man. ‘But I am not talking about those dragoons. It is not the Guardsmen that will test you, but what follows.’
Ophiusa was about to ask a question, but then she shook her head, raising her chin proudly. ‘I fear nothing, Astra Angelus. We will hold these gates until you arrive, whatever the apostates throw at us. When you reach Volgatis, I will be waiting, as I promised.’
‘I know it,’ said the wooden man. ‘As I always did. We dream, dreaming, dreamed.’
Ophiusa frowned. ‘Dream, dreaming, dreamed? What does that mean, my lord? Is it a prayer?’
‘Nothing,’ replied the little doll, shaking its head with a brittle snapping sound, seeming annoyed by its own words.
Ophiusa moved back from the table a little, sensing something unfamiliar in the statue’s voice. A cold shadow passed through her mind, as though she had almost recalled something that she had hidden from herself. The wooden man’s words had planted a worm of fear in her stomach, but she could not give the fear a name.
‘You are afraid?’ asked the doll. ‘It would be understandable. The Emperor and I have asked, and will ask, a lot of you, holding out here as the rest of the planet succumbs to madness. I know and knew that the battle ahead will test you greatly. If you wished or wish it, I could pass this burden on to another.’
Ophiusa stiffened. ‘No!’ she cried, her doubt vanishing. Then she lowered her voice. ‘No, Astra Angelus, I am not afraid. Do not lose your faith in me now – now that we are so close. I will keep calling to you until you have the Blade Petrific in your hands. I will keep calling to you as I have done for all these years.’
The wooden man nodded. ‘Truly, you are and were divine, Ophiusa, as I know and knew. Do you remember the day that we first met?’
Ophiusa smiled. ‘Of course. I thought I was damned. I thought I was tainted by those unnatural wounds. And then you appeared.’ Her voice trembled. ‘And you showed me the way to salvation.’
The wooden man nodded. ‘You burned away your own skin. What greater proof of your purity could the Emperor require? How could there be a taint of corruption in you if you had the bravery to torch the mark of Chaos from your own body?’
‘You saved me,’ she whispered.
‘You saved yourself.’
The walls shook again, more violently than before, and Ophiusa glanced up at the cracking ceiling.
‘It is time,’ said the wooden man. ‘I wish we could talk for longer, but the true test is almost upon you now. Lead your Sisters to glory, my child, and soon we will meet.’
‘Lord Mephiston,’ she whispered, shaking her head in wonder. ‘Soon we will meet.’ She stood, dusted down her armour and nodded. ‘Until then.’
‘Until then,’ replied the wooden man, as Ophiusa rushed from the cell.
The door slammed and the candle flickered, throwing the doll’s shadow across the stone walls. The wooden man was lifeless once more, but its shadow continued moving, even after the flame had settled. It coiled and rolled, then formed into a slender, hooded figure – a monk, with a talon-like beak jutting from his hood. He laughed quietly to himself, his voice a chorus of whispers and growls. ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed,’ he said, struggling to contain his amusement. ‘But infinity comes.’
Chapter Nineteen
Volgatis, Divinus Prime
Dharmia laughed as the guns on the walls launched another volley of las-blasts. She was high on the battlements, watching the Unbegotten Prince’s army disintegrate on the smoke-shrouded road below. The Sisters of the Hallowed Gate had finally achieved what so many others had failed to do: they were showing the apostates that the God-Emperor would not tolerate their backsliding heresy. Dharmia had spent the last year watching powerlessly as Pieter Zorambus and
his lies had destroyed her home and her people. Now the oathbreaker would pay.
‘This is what comes to those who deny the Vow!’ she howled, leaning out over the embrasure. ‘This is the Emperor’s judgement on those who forget their promises!’ As she cried out, tears welled up in her eyes. Since being rescued by Livia, Dharmia had masked her pain and grief behind a nonchalant grin, attempting to match Livia’s carefree cynicism, but now, as she saw her family’s killers receiving their just rewards, emotion boiled out of her. ‘Traitors!’ she screamed, hurling rocks at them as the tears rushed down her cheeks.
Saint Ophiusa was nowhere to be seen, but Sister Superior Melitas was striding up and down the battlements, barking out orders at the Sisters manning the guns. She heard Dharmia over the gunfire and paused to look at her with pride. She nodded and gripped her shoulder. ‘A liar can only hide his true nature for so long. Pieter Zorambus was never more than a thief. I hear his speeches were all very grand, but this is where his deceit ends. The Vow must never be forgotten. The Blade Petrific must never fall into the hands of such men.’
One of the Sisters cried out, further down the wall and Sister Superior Melitas strode off to investigate.
Dharmia backed away from the wall, feeling a rush of shame as she considered why they had come to Volgatis. The Sisters were pummelling the apostates. Perhaps Livia was wrong? Perhaps the blade was safest where it was?
She looked around and saw that Livia was standing just a few feet away, watching her with the same crooked smile she always wore. They had both allowed the Sisters to dress them in new armour and coats, but however smart Livia’s clothes were they could not mask the rakish swagger that had so impressed Dharmia when they first met.
