Direrock was one of the many worlds never meant to be colonised by humanity

Direrock was one of the many worlds never meant to be colonised by humanity. It may put you in mind of the Sol systems Venus. But colder. It was an accident of navigation in ancient times and a triumph of human tenacity. Little was known of the original landing on the planet, any records seldom survive their first fifteen millennia and it had been just over twice that time since the world was unwillingly laid claim to.

Brother Finbold of the Healing Brotherhood was tending to his plants. It was one of his most distinctive activities. He was usually doing one of three things: caring for the aforementioned plants, sleeping or tending to the needy. Land was not at such a premium this far down the central spire of the hive, down in the very bowels of the Underhive and right up against the boundary of the Warrens. Not at a premium but still more expensive than one man should rightfully be able to afford in the quantity that Brother Finbold had procured. The 'land' was not so much land as a man of another, better, world would think of it. Most people in the Imperium would consider it to be floor space.

Finbold hums an old song as he works, carefully selecting leaves and the occasional berry to be harvested. It would be advisable if he had worn gloves more often because now most of the skin on his hands is stained with a green patina now more ingrained than any tattoo. The song that is being hummed is an old soldiers song from the seventh battalion. The idea of such a life would be quite hard to place upon the image of old Brother Finbold with his kindly face, grey hair and eyes as blue as warm ice.

The floor space that contains the plants is more of a spiral ascending twelve floors with branches that protrude out at right angles as a thin corridor is made between two narrow walls to a distant compartment where vegetation that needed a different environment to the sultry atmosphere of the main spiral. The whole edifice may put you in mind of a frayed twine just prior to the point of snapping in basic shape or some strange, strange tree. Old brother Finbold was always careful about how he harvested and pruned the plants. Many of them had a great many toxins and their possession would constitute a breach of law. Which law would be quite tricky thing to decide, being this close to the Warrens.

'Brother Finbold?' Sounds a voice from below the floor brother Finbold is standing upon. 'Brother Finbold?' The voice sounds again this time managing to bring the old monk out of whatever contemplation he was having as his body worked along whatever chores it was instructed to do.

'Yes child?' He both answered and asked.

'The rituals of watering, propagation and re-potting have been completed.' She answered. She was a young woman of seventeen standard years, petite with green eyes, pale skin and raven black hair that was kept in an unruly tangled bun affixed in place by two knitting needles.

'Were they completed with all due care and attention, child?' Asked the old monk with a questioning expression on his face.

'Yes brother Finbold. Please may I be excused?' Asked the young woman.

'Well if your tasks are completed here for the evening then I see no reason why I should have to keep you.'

'Thank you brother Finbold' She said reaching up to give him a hug as a smile spread across her face.

Just as she was about to leave the humid vegetable air of the plant house brother Finbolds voice called after her.

'Who ever this young man is that you are seeing, I would very much like to meet him soon.'

Sharlet didn't dare turn round for fear that he would see her shocked expression. There really were no secrets from old brother Finbold

Desmod the gatekeeper was keeping the gate. It was by way of being his calling in life and the means by which he made his living. He had been stationed to the far down gate on the border of the Spire and the area of the Warrens that was commonly referred to as the Grim Lands. The reason for its name was that the local population was principally that of the Death Cults although they often objected to the label 'cult'. They said it was nothing but Imperialist propaganda designed to oppress and discriminate against a perfectly normal religious sect.

Desmod was ideally suited to a gate that saw so little traffic. It gave him time in which to explore the depths of the human mind and the intricacies of the universe. Currently he was wondering why 'bra' is a singular word whilst 'knickers' was a plural word. Whilst he was methodically plodding along a practically promising line of reasoning a figure in the brown hooded habit of one of the monastic orders rounded the corner and began to walk towards him.

'What's your business traveller?' It was the traditional question asked generation after generation for time beyond mind. He wasn't going to stop now.

'Just visiting some friends. May I proceed?' Answered the monk in a voice bereft of impatience but never the less indicated it had said these words countless times.

'Oh, I do apologise. I didn't recognise it was you brother Finbold with your hood up.'

'That's quite all right. Just asking, you understand, has the heating been cut off again? It seemed almost frosty along the long gallery.'

'Aye, maintenance on the pipes or some such. I have a small heater in my alcove if you wish to warm your hands, brother.' Offered the gatekeeper.

'Would that I had the time. Keep well, Desmod.' Replied the monk strolling through the armoured doorway and across political and legal jurisdictions.

The corridors switched almost instantly from gleaming chrome to hewn rock. The lights became further spaced and the tunnel became home to many shadows and shades. Where there had been the distant hum of the rest of the spire there was just a faint whisper as if even the sound could tell that it was neither invited nor wanted in this place. Eventually brother Finbold found what he had been looking for. Carved into the rock wall was an arrow with directions in a Pre-Imperial script. It was Ayrian. The language brought by the original colonists as their crippled space ship limped to the nearest world to die.

Brother Finbold, for one of the monastic orders that venerated the Emperor Ascendant, got along surprisingly well with the Death Cultists. He generally found that it was easiest to get along with them if you accepted straight from the off that they were perfectly ordinary people who operated on a slightly skewed set of rules. Not so much deviant as differently correct. Normality approached from an alternate starting point.

Brother Finbold trod carefully upon the les refined surface hewn straight from the living rock, one hand brushing against the wall to as a crude guide as the lights were so spaced apart. It was a sigh that he was in another world now. He may have been striding through the same planetary crust but a mere happenchance of geography could never reunite the opposing cultures. The representatives of the Administratum and the Governors household were the government installed by the Imperium and for nearly ten long millennia had ruled the world from the highest spire. But here under the earth in the heart of the world the older order still remained and the King Under The Mountain would never die.

He could hear music and sounds of jubilation coming from up ahead. If he was heading in the right direction he was heading towards the Chapel Of The Deep Well and if those were sounds of celebration then it meant that there was a funeral going on. Rounding a corner he could see light coming from the open mouth of a cave. It was a very inviting sight indeed after the perpetual night of the tunnel.

The party was finely getting going to the point where all but the hopelessly socially maladjusted were getting over the awkwardness of the whole thing. The Religions of Death had in one form or another been around well before the Imperium but there is still something in most human brains that insists it should be mournful when a human surrenders, however happily, to mortality.

Currently it was Fredrick Unthens funeral. He had been born way, way out on the other side of the Warrens. Right out in the unmapped areas. He had joined the guard, killed some orks on a far distant world, spent two weeks taking five years to come home, spent the rest of his life up to about a week ago tending an orchard and raising a family and died aged eighty two. And at the moment was downing his third pint of bitter safe in the knowledge that the hangover would not be his. The necromancer who had installed him in the body was trying, with limited success, to open the childproof lid on a bottle of migraine tablets. It was obvious that it had not been an easy summoning.

The young necromancer nearly jumped out of his skin when a kindly hand was placed on his shoulder. It was quite hard to tell exactly what age the necromancer was. He could be an extremely well preserved forty or an extremely stressed twenty. His hair, light brown, was untameable by even the standards of the fiercest of combs and stood out from his head in a style often referred to as 'mad scientist afro' and his eyes, dark brown, were slightly large and tended to stare at people in a way that made them feel slightly uncomfortable. He had the same amount of body mass as most people except that it was stretched to nearly six foot eight giving him the impression of a slightly mad deckchair in a light grey robe.

'Drink this. You will feel better in a few minutes.' There was the sound of a cork coming out of a bottle and a smell of strong herbs.

The bottle was grasped and a generous swig of it taken. He had no idea what it was but it smelled of herbs and everyone knew herbs were good for you. Besides the worst it could do to him was kill him and that could be quite a relief. It felt like a knife was being slowly pushed into his head above his right eye.

'Thank you brother.'

'How goes the dabbling in foul heathen sorcery that is foolhardy and dangerous?' Asked Finbold with a perfectly straight face.

'So far so good. How goes the sycophantic idealisation of a half dead moron?' Asked the necromancer still not taking his head out of his hands.

'Mister Goobery! I am shocked by you. I was always given to understand the Religio Mortis acknowledged the Emperor as a god.

'Demi-god. Sort of. And divinity does not exclude idiocy.' He lifted his head up. The stuff in the bottle seemed to be working. His head felt completely numb and slightly cold. 'Brother Finbold, whatever you put in this stuff must be magic. After you die you will have to tell someone.'

'Then I shall just have to stay alive out of spite. How is your health?'

'Pretty fair, see.' Said the necromancer lifting up the bottom of his robe to reveal a calf with massive amounts of stitches on either side. 'Its the very devil of temptation trying not to scratch it though.'

'The itching persists?'

'Very much so. Constantly in point of fact.'

'Just one minute.' The monk reached down into his deep, deep pockets and produced a jar with a half faded label on it. 'Spread this on it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.'

The priest of death lifted the jar up to his nose and gave it a sniff and grimaced. 'Smells like the pest killer they use along the electric cables.' Brother Finbold slapped the jar away from his face.

'Don't try and taste it. Not unless you want to find your self on the other end of a summoning. And wash your hands very thoroughly after using it.'

'It says "Doyel & Grimloks Strawberry Preserve" on the label, look you.'

'Jars are expensive so I would be grateful for its return when you've finished with it.'

Next stop was a nice little cave just along the same gallery and off to the left. It had been claimed by the simple but effective measure of sticking a door and wall across it to separate it from the rest of the tunnel. The ventilation had been achieved by welding a pipe to the main ventilation pipe that ran outside the door along the ceiling. Water seeped through the porous rock, percolated from some unknown river and the moisture was collected by means of a polythene sheet, a funnel and a de-humidifier. Electric was stolen from wires that ran along the ventilation tubes. And the occasional trip to the public toilets just further along the cave provided the caves soul inhabitant with all the exercise he could manage.

The owner of the cave was a very, very old man. So old that no one knew how old he was because no one remembered him being young. So old in fact that no even he knew how old he was anymore.

There was a knock on the door that was made up of thin sheets of old food tins stamped flat and stapled together.

'Come on in. The doors...mm...not locked.'

'Good evening mister Hardburn. How are you feeling today?'

'Could be...mm...worse. Thank you for asking brother.' The old man was sitting in an old very large armchair so full of cushions and padding as to be half buried. In front of the chair was a table covered with what looked like maps and drawings of old deeply engraved carvings found on the walls of the caves, remnants of ancient times.

'And your arthritis?' You had to ask with old mister Hardburn. The old man would never complain about anything unless directly asked, a pattern of behaviour surviving from his days in the army. In his mind he was still the soldier he had once been, he just happened to have been a bit under the weather for the last fifty or sixty years.

'Much better after that...mm...stuff you give me. What was it made of?'

'To be perfectly honest; distillates of a plant called Monks Hood.' Answered the monk. 'You did tell young Dwight to wipe his hands after using it, didn't you?' asked the old monk. Dwight was a relative of the old man. A great nephew or some such.

'Aye, I did that. He's a good lad to be helping out...mm...an old fool like myself. When I am gone he can have first pick of my stuff.'

'Don't talk like that. You still have years of life left yet.'

'Kind of you to say that...mm...brother but we both know its not true. I think I may be well past a hundred years old. A five...mm...score year, brother! That's longer than my father and sister lived combined. Far too long some would say, brother.'

'The Emperor has a plan for us all, mister Hardburn. Only He knows when we will join him.' Said the old monk. Then he added with carefully forced joviality 'Besides, you still have your translations to finish. How are they coming along?'

And so the conversation descended into a discussion on the layout of the old tunnels and the mysterious ancestral carvings found throughout.

By the time that brother Finbold had returned to his private jungle, after visiting four more people, it was well into the night shift. It was just at the point where the day shift had gone home but their nocturnal counterparts had not yet become active and so the streets of the spire were for a brief time almost empty.

He was just kicking the door closed behind him when he heard the voice of intrusion and authority both unexpected and familiar.

'Svalbard Finbold, what a life you have made for yourself.' The voice was not an unkind voice anymore than a shard of obsidian is unkind. But like a shard of obsidian it was all edges and hardness. It was a voice from which very little light escaped and could be turned into a cutting edge that would put a more sophisticated steel razor to shame. It was a voice he had helped train in what already seemed another lifetime. 'When you disappeared into the Underhives all those years ago you must have known we would not forget you soon, brother Finbold.'

Turning around the old monk saw his old friend. A man of average height and breath but with a voice that sounded like his lyrix was located somewhere inside his rib cage. He had a face that looked like someone had fashioned it from clay but had got tired about halfway through and his gentle features could almost have been considered kind looking if not for the mismatch eyes that stared back; one ice blue the other slate grey. This indicated that he was from the far northern area of the mid-spire, in the feared Kreldvein Stewardery. A culture of people as proud as archangels and from a race famed for its hetrochromatic eyes and unwavering resolve. Only the faintest touching of frost to his mutton chop sideburns indicated his age that must be early forties.

'It is good to see you again old friend. Would you like some tea? I dare say you have some news? And no doubt there was some other reason to come this far down the spire than to reminisce.' Said the old monk as he made his way over to the kettle.

'Indeed there is I am sorry to say but first I would very much like to hear of the life you have been living Investigator Finbold.'