***CHAPTER 2***
The devourer shall come to eternal light. The devourer shall be devoured.
- Excerpt from 'The Dreamer Awakes'
The thunderhawk ramp wound slowly open, and the scent of the asteroid hissed inside, wrapping itself around Gunnlaug and stirring the furs he wore over his armour. The Rune Priest closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He could smell the age of the Inquisitorial fortress-asteroid; thousands of years of emotions and events hanging in the air like moisture. Thousands of years of faces and names, forgotten but for the lingering taste they left behind them, discernable only to those few with the gifts to sense it.
He opened his eyes at the click of the ramp touching the rock of the hangar floor, and strode forward into the immense space beyond. A single figure stood waiting for him, clad and helmed in black ceramite and holding a power glaive in his left fist. He stepped forward and offered his free hand to Gunnlaug; vambrace to vambrace, the warrior's grip. He smelled hard, of ceramite and control.
'Brother-Librarian. I am Keeper Ariccus. You made good time.' His voice was gravelly and slow, the voice of one unused to speaking regularly.
Gunnlaug nodded. It still sounded strange to hear himself referred to as 'Brother-Librarian' rather than 'Rune Priest'. 'Of course, Brother-Keeper. The Inquisitor's message was urgent.'
'Yes.' Gunnlaug smelled anger as the Keeper turned and gestured for him to walk alongside. Anger, and just a hint of shame. Almost as an afterthought, Ariccus indicated the rock cavern around them with his glaive. 'Welcome to the Vaults of Vantus.'
Fortress Vantus, hidden in an icy nebula in the Sable Reach, lay on the far north east rim of the galaxy. It was one of the loneliest and most secret places in the Ultima Segmentum. Once it had served as both a Deathwatch fortress and the centre of Ordos Xenos power in the subsector. Now it mouldered, guarding old secrets. As Gunnlaug was led through immense halls and down winding staircases, through huge vaulted doors and past faded paintings, he saw nothing alive in the inches of dust. Only the whine of his and Ariccus' armour generators, and the heavy thud of their boots disturbed the long-silent corridors.
It had not been so, once. Once the fortress had rung to the sounds of hosts; long-forgotten armies dead in long-forgotten wars. Gunnlaug could hear them and smell them, on the very edge of his senses; the ghosts of soldiers sent to die in ancient crusades. In a way, he pitied them. Not for their sacrifices; to die for the Imperium in the furnaces of war was as much as any man could hope for. He pitied them that they had been forgotten; that their memories had lain, like the dust, for centuries; until one such as he walked through them.
Soon they began to descend deeper into Vantus, leaving the armies of the past behind. Now Gunnlaug could hear the screams of past prisoners, and feel the pain of tortured heretics seeping from the walls. Here and there in the memories of the fortress were bright figures; steeped in purpose and faith. Inquisitors and battle-brothers, defenders of the Imperium in both the shadow and the light. They at least would be remembered.
They halted before an immense silver door, embossed with statues of angels and the Inquisitorial I. Two more Keepers stood guard, features invisible behind their helms, weapons drawn and ready. By their shoulder pads, one was an Ultramarine, the other a Crimson Fist. Neither would likely see their home chapters again; the calling of a Deathwatch Keeper demanded a heavy price.
They acknowledged Ariccus and Gunnlaug briefly, before returning their featureless gazes to the empty corridor. Ariccus motioned for Gunnlaug to stand back, and gestured with his Clavis towards the door. It rose into the rock above them with barely a whisper, and the two space marines stepped through into the darkness beyond.
'These are the vaults proper'. Ariccus seemed to feel the need to break the silence. Around them, old lights flickered to life, illuminating in orange an unadorned tunnel curving down and away from them. 'They are ranked by depth; those closest to the asteroid core hold the most valuable relics.' Again, his scent was laced with the warm redness of shame and anger. 'We should proceed quickly; we still have quite a distance to cover.'
'Of course,' Gunnlaug glanced behind him as the door slowly lowered, cutting them off from the lit corridors of Vantus proper. Down here, the smells were almost gone; it was as if the place had no history. Only the constant passage of the Keepers and the occasional Inquisitor had disturbed the years. Strangely, there was little dust.
'How long have you guarded these corridors, Brother Ariccus?' He could smell the answer on him; centuries. He wondered how old the face under the helm would look.
'As long as I have been needed.' Pride, purpose, and then, again, that betraying fury. Gunnlaug could see the other marine tense slightly, could sense his indignation at some unspoken defilement. He didn't his psykic gifts to guess.
'What was taken, brother?'
Barros paced in frustration. Sine was still unconcious on the floor, being fussed over ineffectually by one of his aides. Barros' script-servitor, tasked with recording his every glorious word and deed, was attempting to follow him along his pacing line. After turning and nearly walking into it for the second time, he finally lost his temper.
'Feth off! You stupid thing!' the servitor dutifully scratched the words onto the parchment supported before it. 'Oh, go and sit over by the wall, damn you.' It waited until it had recorded the order before obeying. Barros sometimes suspected it did it on purpose to annoy him.
'And where's that doddering old fool? The Deathwatch docked an hour ago.' Barros was acutely aware that, Inquisitor or no, he'd never have the guts to call Ariccus a fool to the Keeper's face. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and calmed himself. Anger would get him nowhere. 'Script-servitor, delete my last.' He didn't think Ariccus was in any way to blame for the mess; it was simply that he was currently the only target available. Particularly since Barros' Interrogator had, after one of the most ineffectual pieces of scrying she'd performed to date, muttered 'the dreamer awakes' and collapsed to the floor. She hadn't moved in the last hour or so.
Inquisitor Maxim Barros, of the Most Holy Ordos Xenos, was stumped, frankly. Three weeks ago he had recieved an astropathic message of the highest priority. Its contents had prompted him to order his ship, the Holy Vengeance, into the warp whilst sending out several messages of his own. Something had been taken from the omega-level security vaults in Fortress Vantos, and he had requested the assistance of the Deathwatch in tracking it down. Having arrived a few hours before the promised kill-team, he had headed into the depths of the asteroid to examine the vault and question the Keepers.
It had irked him no end to discover the Keepers had no idea what had been taken. They guarded the vaults for the Ordos; what was interred within was no concern of theirs. This was a reasonable precaution given some of the relics stored there could shake the faith of even the strongest men, but it was no help to Barros now. A cursory glance through the vault's data-storage had shown that that too had been wiped clean, and after his seer, Interrogator Sine, had collapsed, he found he had nothing to do but wait for the Deathwatch to arrive.
Waiting irritated Barros. He started to pace the floor again, avoiding, with each circuit, the empty pedestal in the centre of the room.
Eventually, the sounds of heavy footfalls outside roused him from his annoyed reverie. The first looming shape to cross the threshold was Keeper Ariccus, unreadable as ever behind his helm. Barros had found him positively monosyllabic during his questioning; secretly he hoped the Keeper was as pissed off about the whole thing as he was. Ariccus stepped to the side and gestured formally to the shape behind him.
'My Lord Inquisitor Barros, may I present Deathwatch Codicier Gunnlaug, of the Space Wolves.'
The Space Wolf's eyes were the first thing Barros noticed. Grey, they pierced from beneath a shaggy mane of dark hair, streaked with white. His armour, like Arricus', was the black of the Deathwatch; one shoulder pad the silver skull of the Inquisition, the other the grey-blue of the Wolves. Over it he wore the furs of some huge nameless beast; no doubt killed in battle long ago. Various honour scrolls fluttered from his armour, and one gauntlet rested lightly on the hilt of a blade strapped to his hip. His gaze swept the room, and Barros had the strangest impression he was sniffing them all. When he opened his mouth to speak, Barros glimpsed the enlarged canines common to his geneseed.
'Inquisitor.' His voice was surprisingly mellow.
'Codicier. Where is the rest of your kill-team?' Barros couldn't see any other space marines in the corridor beyond, and seven foot tall superhumans, he reflected, were quite hard to miss.
The grey eyes regarded him silently, for a moment. He thought he caught a glimpse of amusement in them, and had the sinking feeling he tended to get when faced with an individual who might be able to read his thoughts.
'My kill-team, Inquisitor?'
'Yes, your damned kill-team. The kill-team I specifically requested to clear up this mess.' He waved his arm around the room. 'I don't even know what was taken! The files were wiped.' He could feel the annoyance mounting. 'I requested the Deathwatch because whoever did this had clearance. As much clearance as I have. Which means they were Inquisition. With hopefully a very good explanation or, Throne forbid, heretic. Either way, I need the incorruptible.'
Gunnlaug nodded slowly. 'You requested assistance tracking something stolen. The Deathwatch of the Sable Reach are stretched thin, and Watch Captain Lanoit thought I would be best suited to help you.' He turned his eyes to the empty pedestal and breathed in, deeply. As he did so, Barros felt the air in the room cool slightly and a shiver he had been trained to recognise ran across his skin; the shiver that denoted a psyker.
'Strange.' The Librarian was frowning slightly. 'I can sense where something should have been, but not where it is.' His frown deepened. 'Or even what it is, come to that.'
'Is that unusual?' Barros felt his calm returning, now that something was actually happening. There was something implacable about the Space Wolf; the Inquisitor's anger had run off him like rain from a mountain.
'Very.' The Librarian's eyes moved to the still figure of Barros' interrogator. He breathed in, and again the chill swept through the room. 'Your interrogator, for example. Aia Sine. Born on Chulan, in the Ferris Sub-sector. Thirty-eight. Psyker, mid range delta-level. Her happiest moment was when she felt the presence of the divine, in a lonely chapel outside Thuggon, on leave from the front lines. Her darkest was when she lost her closest friend aboard the Black Ship she was tested upon. Her first word,' a smile crept into those grey eyes, 'was 'wolf'. A variant of the species inhabits the forests where she grew up.'
'You can see all that?' Barros was impressed. Sine had only ever been able to give him vague impressions; useful, but difficult to pin down.
'And more.' Gunnlaug returned his attention to the empty pedestal. 'Or rather, I can smell it. People, places, items. The scent of each becomes filled with the emotions and feelings they have experienced; love, hate, pain. Death is very strong; the stink of a great battlefield can last for hundreds of millenia.' Gunnlaug smiled, displaying his fangs. 'The stronger the emotion, the stronger the scent. That is my gift. It is why Watch Captain Lanoit assigned me this task.'
'Very well.' Barros gestured towards the pedestal. 'Can you get a better read on that, then? Interrogator Sine tried, and passed out after muttering something about a sleeper.'
Gunnlaug sniffed the air. '"The dreamer awakes"?'
Barros nodded. 'Something like that. You can smell it?'
'Yes.' The marine was looking curious. 'There was a great deal of emotion attached.' He knelt down in front of the pedestal and cupped his gauntlets around it. 'I shall try to discover where she found those words. Have patience, this may take time.'
Barros sighed. 'Oh, don't mind me.'
The sarcasm was lost on the Space Wolf. His eyes were closed, and his head back. He began to breathe in, deeply, constantly. The temperature of the room began to fall. Barros' breath was suddenly visible in front of him, and a movement of his hand dislodged thousands of tiny ice crystals forming on the sleeve of his coat. The Librarian was still breathing in the air of the room, and with it, the warmth. He couldn't possibly have that much lung capacity, Barros decided. This was something unnatural. The Inquisitor began to shiver violently, and quickly gestured for the aides tending Interrogator Sine to carry her from the room. The script-servitor, he decided, as he followed them out, could damn well stay and record.
He could smell, if he concentrated, the whole history of the vault. A group of men, haggard and tired looking, clustered around the pedestal talking animatedly. He tried to see over their shoulders, to see what they were discussing, but in the way of dreams and visions he found every step he took towards them brought him no closer.
He exerted his will, and forced himself forward. He slid towards the group and seemed to bounce off an invisible wall. He was floating, peering over them to the pedestal beyond. Wherever he moved, one would move to block him; a shoulder, a head, an arm; something would obsure his vision at the last moment. He scrabbled against them, trying to find chinks, or cracks, to lever apart.
Finally he found a crack. Latching on, he levered it with all his strength. There was resistance, a bulge of pressure against him, and for a moment he thought he'd lost it completely. Then, suddenly, he felt it crumble. The figures of the past became only two dimensional, and flaked away like ash from a fire. He was left gazing at what was on the pedestal, at a small golden cylinder, inscribed along its length with runes he did not recognise.
The relic whipped away from him, through time, and he gave chase, his claws scratching against the featureless floor. Images of other golden objects flickered around him; another smaller cylinder it should contain, and a larger, that contained them both. He saw glimpses of strange beings, of dying worlds, of a planet eternally lit. He saw another Inquisitor, recent, tall, shaven-headed, with silver augmentation on his skull. Someone somewhere was laughing, madly. It could have been him.
Suddenly the glint of gold vanished, sucked into an unclean darkness that grew larger and larger as he approached. The other cylinders were swept elsewhere, but he found himself following the first. He attempted to slow, but found he could not. All the images faded, and he was alone on a plain with the darkness, which pulled him inexorably towards it. He could feel his willpower fading, his strength deserting him. He howled desperately against the pull, and scrabbled upon the floor. He knew, instincively, that there could be no return from the blackness.
And then a hand was holding him, and the darkness grew no closer. Images of a fleet of starships, and a gate in space, and a madness swept upon him, and he found he was looking into thousands of chanting, frantic faces. They crowded towards him, laughing, crying, screaming; 'The dreamer awakes. The devourer devoured. The dreamer awakes. The devourer devoured.' He turned away from them, ran from them, and the hand was there with him, guiding him, holding him. He felt his mind beginning to break, and with a supreme effort of will, he forced himself away from the vision.
Darkness descended, but now it was clean, and welcoming. He allowed it to sweep him away, and saw and smelt no more.
Gunnlaug could hear someone calling him. He tried to respond, but his eyes would not open. He struggled for a moment, and then forced his ice-encrusted lids slowly apart. Inquisitor Barros was staring at him, a slight irritation suffusing his scent. He mouthed along to silence for a moment more, and then Gunnlaug's hearing snapped back.
'.. to try and wake you. ' Barros was wearing a furlined greatcoat and gloves. The air, Gunnlaug realised, was very cold.
'The dreamer awakes.' He didn't know why he'd said that. It was the first thing which presented itself.
Barros pulled back slightly and raised an eyebrow. 'Yes, that's what she said.' He jerked his head and Gunnlaug realised Interrogator Sine was standing behind the Inquisitor, wrapped up similarly against the cold. She was looking very pale. 'She didn't know why, however. I'm hoping you can shed more light on the subject.'
Gunnlaug slowly stood up, furs crackling as they shifted in the cold. He ached all over, his enhanced metabolism struggling to cope with the aftermath of the trance. He stretched, wolfishly, and felt the satisfaction of joints and muscles clicking into place. It felt as though he had been under for quite some time. Long enough for the entire room to be coated in a layer of psy-ice.
'Yes, Inquisitor. I can shed some light. Perhaps if we discuss it somewhere warmer?'
'Of course.' Barros swept from the room, closely followed by Sine. As Gunnlaug moved to follow them, Ariccus, who judging by the ice on his armour had not left his post by the the door, forestalled him with a raised gauntlet.
'Are you all right, brother?' The concern in his voice was genuine; Gunnlaug could smell it on him. 'You were gone for over a day.'
'That long?' That explained the aches, at least. 'I shall be fine, brother-keeper. Thank you for your concern.'
The Keeper nodded, and followed Gunnlaug from the room.
She was scared of him, he could smell it. He was surprised none of the other passengers could, it was so strong. Gunnlaug and Interrogator Sine were sitting side by side in the launch bays of the Running Man, an Inquisitorial courier ship, waiting to be shown to their quarters by a youthful midshipman who was very slowly working through the various groups of military and Inquisitorial personnel around them. Sine was yet to speak to him.
Inquisitor Barros had been abrupt. Upon hearing that there were other pieces of the stolen cylinder, and that the Librarian could track them, but not the original (after watching it lost within the darkness which had almost consumed him, Gunnlaug had been unable to sense it any further), he had asked Gunnlaug to attempt to find those pieces whilst he investigated the several Inquisitors who had visited Fortress Vantos in the last few months. His theory was that one of them would stumble across something that would lead them to the thief.
He had insisted that Gunnlaug go fully undercover, which had been reasonable. His stated reasoning, however; 'I don't want a massive Space Marine scaring all my answers away', had demanded no small restraint on the part of the Space Wolf.
Gunnlaug was therefore out of armour, and feeling like a newly shaven wolf cub, unused to the cold touch of air on his skin. He was currently wearing just a shirt, baggy combat trousers, boots (he had been impressed that Fortress Vantos' quartermaster had found a pair that would fit), and a snub-nosed bolt pistol strapped to his thigh. His armour and rune sword, blessed and cleaned, had been stored aboard Barros' ship, the Holy Vengeance.
It had been the final demand of the Inquisitor which had annoyed him the most, however. The one which had given him his travelling companion. 'She's more human than you are, frankly. She'll be a help. And she could do with the experience.' Barros' tone had brooked no argument.
Watch Captain Lanoit's orders had been clear: assist the Inquisitor. Gunnlaug, despite his better judgement, and his preference to work alone, had aquiesed.
'Thoughts?' He tried to keep his voice as gentle as possible. Sine flinched visibly as he turned towards her. 'Interrogator, I'm not going to hurt you.'
She gulped and nodded. He could smell her fighting to get her fear under control. 'I.. I.. yes, Lord. I apologise.' An inquisitorial stormtrooper near them looked at Gunnlaug curiously. He stared back until the trooper lowered his eyes and moved to a respectful distance.
Gunnlaug raised his right hand towards Sine. To him, shorn of its usual ceramite, it looked small and weak. To her, it was still easily capable of crushing her skull, he realised, and quickly withdrew it. To give Sine her due, the Interrogator had not flinched that time.
'Perhaps that's something we should address.' He sensed his voice was calming her a little, and kept going. 'We're soon to be undercover. I'll call you Sine, you call me Gunnlaug. Can you manage that, Sine?'
'Yes, Lor.. Gunnlaug.' She took a deep breath. 'Forgive me, I find it difficult around..'
'Space Marines?' She shook her head abruptly.
'Then what?' She was still refusing to look at him. He breathed in deeply, and understanding dawned. 'Ah. Powerful psykers.' She nodded.
'I've always been sensitive to others like me. The more powerful they are, the more difficult I find proximity. I was lucky that my Lord Barros is not a psyker.' She steeled herself visibly, and turned to Gunnlaug. Her eyes were brown, but sharply intelligent, 'It will become easier in time. Our mission will be unaffected.'
Gunnlaug nodded, and watched a loading servitor struggle across the shuttle bay deck in front of them. Most human psykers had a whole plethora of issues. Few were allowed off the leash at all. Sine wouldn't have reached the rank of Interrogator if she wasn't one of the more stable ones. He would have to deal with the runes he was cast.
'Gunnlaug?' Sine seemed to have gained her confidence after their initial exchange. 'Why this ship? Where are we going?'
He gestured towards his belt. A pouch on it contained twelve knucklebones, carefully carved with Old Fenrisian runes. Sine had already seen him throw them on the floor and mull over them once.
'I cast the runes and follow my nose.' Gunnlaug settled his massive frame more comfortably. He had a feeling the midshipman, currently trying to calm an angry Inquistorial aide, was going to be a while. 'The rest I leave in the hands of Russ.'
