Chapter 1
Private Parker Duxton was standing in the second row of the rank, marching forward, his regiment one of five that were deployed to Kavalito II to deal with the recent problems reported by the populace. It was only his regiment, which was the 621st Imperial Regiment, and the 620th Imperial Regiment sent to deal with this area. They were nine days into the investigation, and since the second day they were there the field had been flooded with smoke. On the first day the smoke was there, it was light, perhaps a fog. However, as the days passed on, the fog got thicker, until it was a cloying, smothering smoke. It muffled sound so the Regiment had to communicate through vox, and even then, they had heard weird noises on the vox itself. It started as an artifact, a word misheard, but grew into constant static that made communication nearly impossible, and no one knew what was causing these disturbances. Kavalito II is a relatively sparsely vegetated planet, mostly being plains and rocks, so the smoke was very out of place.
Reports were that people would just disappear, and no one saw them again. Nothing, they just vanished. As with protocol, the Imperium sent the standard five regiments to deal with any possible threat of chaos arising in a planet's people. These days chaos was a serious threat to the stability of the Imperium, so no risks were taken.
Being on Kavalito II did not settle their fears of it being chaos-related. They had heard horrible, cacophonous sirens, blaring noise and screams electronic, since they had arrived. They had sent scout teams that couldn't find anything, but the noise persisted, getting louder with every passing day. At night it was louder, and they had heard rustling in the nearby rocks. Parker was horrified, shaking in his boots. He still didn't know which was worse though, his Commissar threatening him with death if he fled, or knowing that if they came up against Traitor Marines their death was assured anyway. During the day the sun was dimmed so much that it could have just as well been a lamp 10 meters in the air, much less a giant red ball of flaming gas millions of kilometers away.
Night was descending on the mostly-lifeless planet, and then something new happened. They saw faintly, through the blinding smoke, shapes flying through the air. The night of the ninth day was upon them, with no relief coming in the phrase, "Tomorrow's a new day." To Parker, tomorrow was more terror and fear brought down upon them. They had no idea what these flying shapes were, and Parker did his best to sleep, despite the rumors spread like candy by his fellow guardsmen. Sleep came in bursts until finally, hours after lights out, he had found fitful sleep. His sleep was invaded by nightmares probably brought on by those damn sirens, and he woke up in a cold sweat.
The day progressed just like the previous nine at first, until he noticed that the sirens were louder. They were all ordered to remain in file, in formation, at all costs. The sirens grew louder, much louder than before, and a new sound was heard, it was the screams of some bird-like creature. Piercing, like nails on a chalkboard. The guardsmen's nerves were nearing the breaking point, some even speaking of defecting, though in hushed whispers.
All throughout the ordeal, the only thing that had kept the guardsmen capable of standing up straight enough to avoid a beating by the Commissar was the comforting sound and rumble of the marauders doing their patrols. Today was only slightly different.
'What's this?' Parker said as he felt something wet splash onto his face. He wiped it off and looked at it, and it was red. He tasted it, and he realized it was blood. He heard some discontented muttering and looked up, and he saw the sky was dotted with dark masses falling toward the ground. At first Parker thought they were bombs, and began a prayer to the Emperor to protect, when he realized they weren't bombs. A length of the mass collided with the ground, bounced, and Parker broke ranks to examine it. He looked at it, and though covered in blood and dirt, he could clearly see that it was intestine, and human at that. Suddenly, he felt a lump hit him in the back, and he realized that it was, in fact, raining human innards. There was nothing the guardsmen could do to shield themselves from the horrid hail.
'Hold fast!' Parker heard his regiment's Commissar shout. Hardly any of the guardsmen responded, most cowering to any cover they could find, fearing the bloody rain. After minutes of his useless ordering, the Commissar finally gave the order to break ranks and shield from the organ-rain, making up an excuse that the organs might be poisoned, but in reality, the Commissar was just as afraid as the guardsmen were, and Parker knew it.
'This is horrifying!' Parker heard a guardsman shout from the rocks nearby, though he had no idea who it was, the smoke was so thick seeing one's own hand in front of you was a difficult task.
Hours passed, and the organ rain was consistent. Not increasing, nor lessening, just constant. Parker had begun to wonder just how many people were killed to supply this grotesque rain. Parker sat blankly, his teeth all but chattering in his skull as he saw the dark shapes fall through the smoke and thud wetly against the ground. The piercing screams of the bird monsters grew more incessant, more terrible, more unnerving as the sun crawled further down the horizon, eventually disappearing as night descended upon them.
At first, it appeared as if the barrage of guts was ceasing, and Parker felt a greedy sliver of relief near his mind, and he gobbled it up hurriedly. The organ-rain had stopped, until, a few minutes, the entire regiment, now consisting of about nine-thousand-two-hundred and fifty guys left, seven-hundred and fifty having fled the ranks, doomed to a life in hiding from the vengeful Commissars, saw something being added to the smoke. It was almost like snow, Parker thought, as he extended his hand and let some gather in it. He pulled it back and looked at it, and a fellow guardsman's eyes widened as he say the powder and exclaimed, 'It's bone dust! They've dropped all the organs so now they're dropping the crushed bone!'
Parker shook violently, images of death and terror clawing at his sanity. He looked ragged as the Commissar ordered the regiment to make camp under the overhang, and Parker saw the Commissar sitting on a rock, rubbing his temples, his face gaunt and destitute.
Parker thought, The Commissar is afraid. The Mouth of the Emperor has given up hope, his ceramite will broken. How can I hope to survive?
Parker didn't sleep that night, and the eleventh day was upon them. Parker's face was catatonic, and the Commissar, who had on the third day shot some guardsmen for 'Suspicion to desert', had his IG pistol holstered, his will so shaken he wouldn't even threaten. He slapped Parker in the face so hard he fell off the rock he was slumped against. As Parker lay on the ground, his senses slowly returning to him, the Commissar kicked him in the stomach, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to damage.
'Wake up damnit! Get up you... you...' The Commissar's voice was quiet, broken, '...'
The guardsmen around the Commissar were shocked, the new behavior entirely foreign to the Commissar. Realizing this, he shouted at the top of his lungs, his will hardened, 'Wake up you fool! Get up before I shoot you! By the Emperor I'll end you!'
Parker began to come to, and as soon as he was conscious the Commissar ceased kicking and ordered the surrounding guardsmen to help him to his feet. He left to the main body of guardsmen, and they were informed that they would march forward today, to meet the enemy head on. Parker did not like this idea, but, as usual, had no choice.
What the regiment had immediately noticed, was that it was silent. Deathly silent. The only sound was one's own breath, along with the shuffling of the nearby men's feet. However, soon added to the unusually quiet overture of sound, was the flapping of once-feathered wings.
The regiment, with a breaking will, formed into shoddy ranks, but the Commissar let it pass. Parker was placed in the middle of the first rank due to the Commissar having to deal with him personally, but to Parker, no rank was secure.
Curiously, the smoke directly above them thinned slightly, allowing for vision in the deafening silence. This vision came at no relief, as a red and black mass dove down at incredible speeds, and they could all hear the brief scream from the guardsman as large kathartes talons clamped down on his shoulders and plucked him out of the center of the formation, his scream quickly muffled by the thick smoke higher-up. The only sound that they heard was his brief scream, lasting less than five seconds, and then his existence was ended.
The regiment quickly looked to each other for help, the fog lending a horror-movie feel as another kathartes swooped down and snatched another guardsman, his inevitable death just as quiet as the first. The collective terror in the regiment increased as as many as five kathartes swooped down at once and snatched men from the crowd. Parker stood, frozen, just as most of his fellow regiments, unable to fire at the kathartes. He was paralyzed with fear, the kathartes thinning their numbers.
Parker, along with most of his comrades, could only stare dumbly at the flying shapes removing their comrades from their ranks, never to be seen again. They were like turkeys in the rain. The ones who had not gone catatonic were still unable to fire, their hands shaking so violently they couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a shotgun.
After at least one hundred people had been abducted, it stopped. The catatonia of the men was suddenly broken, and those paralyzed with fear breathed a temporary breath of relief as the assault subsided. There was no blood left by the kathartes apart from the blood paste that had formed when the bone dust settled on the organs and blood on the ground. It was like the men had never existed. And any of them could be gone in the next second. Even though the kathartes' assault had ended, the menace of the kathartes had not. They circled overhead, low enough to project an ominous dark shadow, but high enough to be impossible to hit. The guardsmen might as well have shot themselves, as the thread of fate was well outside of the range of their own scissors. Whatever force had concocted this living nightmare malevolently held the thread twirled around its fingers, teasing the fibers with its scissors, cutting small parts at a time, teasing the victims with a taste of sweet death from the terror of their lives.
The Commissar ground his teeth violently, his jaw jutting out periodically, deciding on whether or not to march, his eyes tense, but focused on nothing in particular. As if he decided, his eyes lost their glaze and he relaxed his jaw. All he did to signal his decision was draw his Commissar Sword and point in the direction they were marching in before. He knew that had he spoken, his voice would have been so shaky as to weaken the resolve of the Emperor himself. The 621st Imperial Regiment warily marched forward, somewhat reinforced since the end of the assault, but fear still penetrated every fiber of their being, every facet of their soul, and every vestige of their sanity. As they marched forward slowly, they began to see the rough shapes of bodies in the smoke ahead. Average sized, Imperial Guardsman-garbed bodies. The morale of the men began to climb, and then they could perceive another set of shapes, something with a shaft, and a spherical shape on the end. Only when they got closer did the men on the flanks see that there were hundreds of heads impaled on spikes. As they progressed, they had to change formation as this line of impaled heads was so dense, and so sickening they couldn't bear to take them down or walk past them. The heads were oppressive, an impenetrable, disgusting wall three heads thick, and tapering gently to force the guardsmen to tighten their ranks and change formation.
The Commissar had taken up position in front of Parker, to triumphantly lead his men to battle, and to slay whoever played this terror tactics on them. What the Commissar had not anticipated was seeing the skin of the 620th Imperial Regiment's Commissar hanging by two hooks placed through his eye sockets. The Commissar signaled for the 621st to stop, and he moved forward, his stomach trying to rebel and eject its contents just at the sight of the flayed Commissar, garbed fully with hat, sword, IG pistol, and all. Around his deflated neck hung as many dog tags as could be placed there, and hundreds others sat at the hanging Commissar's limp, empty feet. The 621st Commissar reeled in horror, as the men approached from behind, and those in the first row saw the terror as well. The dead Commissar's skin was painted a variety of horrific colors, and inscribed upon his flesh was the number, '620'. The men suddenly became sickeningly aware that the 620th Imperial Regiment, which was supposed to be following them, was now in front of them, and also no longer with them. They could not find the bodies of any 620th members, just the skin, hung up by the hundreds in a field, none of them possessing their heads. Many men vomited as they looked to the sides and recognized faces from the 620th, and they passed through the field of hanging skins at the behest of the Commissar, and passed into an open area, where, shaken and battered, they made camp for the night.
The night passed, deathly silent, and Parker had come to his senses as some point, and managed to actually get restful sleep, his catatonia apparently infusing him with a sense of recklessness, the gore, terror, and fear suddenly mattering little. However, his dreams were still invaded by persistent nightmares, each ominously depicting the events that came to pass that day. His nightmares this night were simply a culmination of the events insomuch as the skin field. The regiment woke up and made formation tacitly, and waited in the once-again thick, smothering smoke for the Commissar's orders. They had no desire to test the Commissar's will and patience, so they gathered without question. There was only one problem: No one had seen the Commissar since lights out the night before.
The guardsmen, with Parker at the front-middle of them, stood in silence for perhaps three hours, the time unimportant to the petrified soldiers. Time was an irrelevant invention of men to the guardsmen, time being only a measurement for the amount of terror they could endure.
After an immeasurable amount of time had passed, large black figures began to form in the fog. They stood well over seven and a half feet tall, and had shoulders at least three times Parker's width. The shapes lined themselves up just at the smoke's edge, just out of visual distinguishing, but close enough to see that they were humanoid. The ranks of guardsmen were mirrored by the giant figures in the smoke, just as wide and infinitely deep. The guardsmen all shook violently in their positions, hearts pounding at two-hundred fifty beats per minute. The air was palpable with tension and fear, the guardsmen incapable of moving, feeling the piercing gaze of the hulking gods before them, their judgment oppressive and terrifying. It was silent. The calm before the storm.
Parker stood at the front of the ranks, the Commissar still missing, the eight-foot shadows still looming, and he somehow felt he was staring past the smoke and into the fiery, hateful eyes that stared him down.
Suddenly Parker heard the violent hum of an engine whir to life as two bright exhaust lights shone level with the waist of the largest, central figure in the line, the one directly across from him. As he heard the engine reach its power-band, the shape moved, and Parker blinked, and when he opened his eyes, this monstrous figure had leapt forward, a cacophonous roar of engines deafening Parker as the titanic Astartes Warrior propelled himself at one-hundred miles an hour toward Parker, and before he could react, the warrior was horizontal to the ground, his head exposed, his features scarred and pale, and this was the last thing Parker saw before a clawed hand forced itself into his chest and the immensely-heavy warrior collided with him, crushing every bone in his body, the clawed hand ripping out his innards, as the light of vitality glinted for the last time in his eyes, as he died.