AN : And, here it is. I don't have much time right now, as I am finishing this chapter just before leaving my house for a week, so I will be quick:
This chapter is the first of four parts, called the Seeds of Ruin. Each part will be dedicated to one of the Dark Gods and tell the story of a Parecxisian citizen as he falls to the sirens of Chaos. This one is for Slaanesh, the next one will be for Nurgle, and will come out in two weeks.
Thank you all for your reviews, my apologies for the long delay, hope you will give me your advice on this one too.
By the way, the first chapter of the Roboutian Heresy is out. Check it out !
I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe or any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
+Three hours before the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta+
Killing his commanding officer had been easier than he had thought it would be.
Strangely, that was the only thing Alburt could think of as he watched the body of the colonel fall to the ground, dead before his face touched the floor. The excitation that had filled him in anticipation of the kill was gone, the adrenalin vanishing from his veins, replaced by a sudden fatigue. The serrated blade in the trooper's hand was covered with the blood of the man he had just killed – a man that had commanded every aspect of Alburt's existence since he had been pressed into service of the Army three years ago. It seemed to him that the old man should have died harder, that he should have struggled, perhaps even fought back. Instead, the xenos weapon had passed between his ribs and pierced his heart – a clean, precise kill the like of which Alburt had done dozens of times back in the slums of Parecxis. It wasn't special. He had expected more, but it was just like every other man he had killed. There had been no thrill to the murder, no reward from his patron for an action he hadn't undertaken before. The only difference had been the preparations that one death had required, and though he had savored the experience of plotting his superior's murder, this was still a disappointing ending.
The room was spacious – enough to make Alburt rage at the memory of how he and the rest of the troopers were packed like cattle in their dorms. In one side was the camp bed on which the colonel had slept. The former occupant of the room had once sat at his desk to work on the never-ending mass of paperwork the gestion of a regiment created. All here was standardized, just like the entire garrison of Parecxis Beta. The world-fortress had been built by the Ultramarines' engineers, and the servants of the Thirteenth Legion were nothing if not traditionnalist. The only exception was the picture hanged on one of the wall : a photography of the liberation of the system's celebration, taken many years ago when the last of the xenos on the three planets had fallen.
Commiting the murder had been almost too easy. It had taken time, but no real challenge had been presented. A key to the building stolen while its owner slept after laying with one of the cult's most talented women, a password reconstitued from having seen someone type it hundred of times from behind by using the perfect memory Slaanesh had given one of their adepts, and a knife found in the sands of this lost world then bathed in the blood of six human sacrifices to ensure the favor of the Profligate One was all it had required.
That was disappointing, but also relieving. After all, this had been the first time he had killed with the intention of committing treachery. The magnitude of that crime had been hammered into him by the discipline officers and the newly formed Confessors, who professed the Emperor's divinity and the heresy of all who opposed His divine rule. And yet, killing the old man hadn't been any different from killing another ganger for a scrap of bread or a pile of credits. Treachery wasn't making his soul burn with shame and remorse, nor was he consumed by the hellish flames of the Warp instantly. While that would have been a novel experience, no doubt about it, Alburt was quite glad to still be alive.
So the Confessors had lied about that, too. Alburt had know that what they told all the soldiers each morning, when they were gathered for inspection in the court of the garisson, was filled with lies and falsehoods, but he had still not been certain that they were wrong until that moment.
Now at last, with definite proof that the Imperium was lying, he could be sure that the decision he had made was the right one. Alburt quickly looked through the dead man's desk, and took the thing he had come to steal : the access codes to the void-shield's generator. Now, it was time to return to where Syrina and the others waited for him. As Alburt started to turn from his victim's corpse, however, a flash of inspiration struck him, and he began to carve at the skin of the dead man's forehead, painting the emblem of the Dark Prince in the colonel's blood. While he enjoyed the way the blade cut the fragile, wrinkled skin, each incision sending a new jolt of pleasure through his body as the blessings of the Dark Prince rewarded him for it, his mind went back to that day when he had made the first step on the path upon which he was now irremediably engaged …
+Sixty-six days before the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta+
The dream was unlike any other he had ever had before, and he had had strange dreams. He had dreamed when hungry enough that his stomach felt like it was trying to consume itself, dreamed while the latest cocktail of drugs created by the underhive's gangs ran through his veins, and dreamed while his body was struggling to heal the damage the combat drugs of the Imperial Army were causing to his organism. He was used to the nightmarish visions that narcotics caused to the human mind, and he had even dreamt under the stirring skies of a planet trapped within a Warp Storm.
But this dream was different, and no matter how many times he saw it he could never grow used of it. It was ecstasy and agony in equal mesures, and the things he saw were pure madness. Vast plains of thorn stalked by beings of perfect beauty, great crystalline palaces filled with the promise of pleasure beyond his comprehension, and fields of flowers whose aromas could kill a man or send him to paradise at a moment's whim. He saw before him a wonderful domain inhabited by creatures of nightmare, and his mind reeled at some of the sights that were offered to him – a sign that this was no ordinary dream, for what mortal mind could possibly conceive visions it couldn't bear ? There was a paradox here, and in his fugue state he spent an untold amount of time pondering it before something happened in the dreamscape that claimed his attention.
One of the creatures was approaching him. The form of the being was different in each occurrence of the dream, each of its incarnations being as beautiful as it was repellent, yet he knew somehow that it was the same being that adressed him each night. This time, it was a towering being with smooth pink skin and ragged spikes emerging from its bones. It had too many limbs and watched him with four eyes that looked like they belonged on some giant flea. It smelled like death and flowers, and when it spoke to him, its voice sent shivers through his dream body that made him want to moan and puke at the same time.
'Alburt. Little one. You have been chosen. The Dark Prince watches you.'
The beast lowered one of its limbs. It was a tentacle that ended in a claw the form of a scythe. Unable to move, captivated by the daemon's beauty, Alburt watched at the blade slowly touched his chest. An image appeared then in Alburt's mind, and for a few seconds he saw it just as he saw the beast before him : a giant in black and golden armor, with a horned head circled by chains painted on his chest, wielding death and destruction. Then, without warning, the beast's claw pierced his skin, twisted between his ribs and reached toward his heart …
He woke up suddenly, cowered in cold sweat. His heart was beating fast, and hormones flowed in his veins that the human body shouldn't have been able to produce. He laid still for a moment, savoring the sensation that was left to him after each of his dreamy meetings with the entity. All around him, he could hear the sound of a hundred more souls sleeping more or less peacefully – the members of the Army with whom he shared the rest-block. One hundred soldiers, one of the ten gathered from the remnants of the regiments on post in the Parecxis system when the Warp Storm had arrived and put together as a new regiment. Alburt's former regiment had been wiped out by the warp-borns – the daemons, as most of the troopers had come to call them – but he had survived, alongside with the colonel and a few others. Alburt and the rest of the soldiers had been integrated to one of the newly formed regiments, while the old man reassumed his position as their unflinching, merciless bastard of an overlord.
This was the sixth time Alburt had dreamed of the plain of pleasure and sufferring. Since the Warp Storm had engulfed the system, he and many others had had horrible dreams of being consumed by the creatures of the Empyrean, but as far as he knew only he had that particular one.
The image he saw when it killed him – always in a new, inventive way – was always the same. He had recognised it for what it was the first time : a warrior of the Legiones Astartes, though the color of his armor and the emblem upon it didn't belong to any of the Legions he knew of. Still, there was little doubt that the warrior was one of those who had turned against the Emperor when Warmaster Horus had called for rebellion.
Horus was dead, but those who had followed him weren't. The preachers had said that those of the Astartes who had joined the Warmaster were now exiled into some hellish realm, banished from the galaxy forever by the Emperor's might. More prosaically, the officers had interpreted what little had filtered down the great chain of communication of the Imperium and came to the conclusion that the Traitor Legions had mostly found refuge into the Warp Storm known as the Eye of Terror, in the galactic north.
The keyword was mostly. There were still entire fleets of the fallen Warmaster out there, and the Imperium had been slowly purging them when the Warp Storm had engulfed the Parecxis system – and, according to rumors whose denial by the officers had been so intense it gave them credit, the entire Trebedius Sector.
The officers talked about this in private, but word always found its way to the troopers. The soldiers whispered about it when they were out of their commisars' ears, fearing that the Warp Storm that had so suddenly darkened the Warp could have been caused by such a fleet.
It made sense tactically, to isolate an entire sector from the rest of the Imperium and make Warp-travel impossible within it. If the traitors were able to journey through the storm, and word from the ships in the system which had faced them said they could, then they would be able to target each system at will. Of course, just how the traitors could cause a Warp Storm to manifest, no one knew.
But Alburt thought he knew, now. The Warmaster had found a way to communicate with the creatures of the Warp, the kin of the one which each night summoned Alburt's … spirit ? mind ? soul ? He wasn't really sure. Either that, or the warp-born had found a way to communicate with the Horus. Alburt was certain that the daemons had the ability to create a Warp Storm, though he suspected there were conditions that had to be fulfilled for it to be possible – else the galaxy would long have merged with the Warp.
And now, they had started to communicate with Alburt. That was the first time the creature had spoken before killing him, though, and despite the rare chance of experiencing his own death several times that the dreams had brought, Alburt hoped that the message's delivery meant that they were over. His dreams before that had never been peaceful, as he had a tendency to go to sleep with things in his bloodstream that were forbidden by regulations, but even he was starting to feel the effects of sleep deprivation after waking up in sweat, in the middle of his sleep shift, so many times in a row.
He stood up from his bed, wavering on his feet like a drunk. Lowering himself on his knees, he took the bottle of distilled alcohol he had traded from some of the company's engineers, who had access to the machines that could produce the near-undrinkable but potent liquor.
Alburt sat back on his bed, and took a sip of the bottle. The moment the first swallow fell down his throat, he felt something he had never felt before outside of his nightly visits to the warp-born.
He had drunk the liquor before – often enough, in fact, for the commissars to start suspecting him of being intoxicated while reporting on duty. As artisanal alcohols went, it was cheap and reeked of oil and the other substances the machines that produced it needed to perform their initial function. But this was nothing he had ever drunk before.
Raw heat coursed through his veins as his stomach bursted with fire. Every nerve of his body simultaneously sent message of pain and pleasure. For a moment, he forgot where he was and what he was doing, and lost himself into the sensation.
Then the moment passed, and he was back to normal, with the familiar taste of the drink in his mouth. Except that the taste was now a lot fainter than it had been previously. In fact, everything he felt was dimmer, as if, in contrast to the peak of sensations he had just experienced, the rest of the universe was now lacking in color and intensity.
Without thinking, Alburt took another sip of the bottle, eager to experiment that sensation again. But this time, the only thing he felt was the burning of the alcohol down his throat, and the feeling of drunkness starting to take hold of his body. Yet even these sensations were pale, shadows of what he had felt when he had drunk for the first time since he had woken up from the strange dream.
Frustrated, Alburt hammered his fist on the border of his bed, his hand meeting the metal bordures of his couch. Pain spread across his knuckles, and then vanished, replaced by yet another burst of pleasure and pain that faded again, quicker than the one the drink had caused.
As he looked down at his bruised hand, Alburt suddenly understood : if he wanted to feel that rush again, he would have to try something new. Each stimulation only caused one burst of sensation before its novelty faded away forever. How he knew this, he couldn't tell, but he didn't really care. In a life where he could die at any moment for a variety of reasons – executed by a commissar, killed in his sleep by another soldier, torn apart from within by the Warp, shot by mistake during the training drills – any distraction to his bleak existence was welcome.
He would have to find new ways to stimulate his senses, though, but that didn't worry him. Even on a garrison world, there were still plenty of opportunities. One just had to know where to look, and Alburt knew the hidden side of the disciplined planet better than most. He would start contacting the right people at the morning gathering, in a few hours. In the meantime, he thought while leaning back on his bed, he would better try to catch a little more sleep.
He didn't dream this time.
+Thirty-two days before the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta++
The gathering was taking place outside of the garrison. Parecxis Beta was a world-fortress, but not even the Ultramarines had the means of converting a whole planet into a single, titanic castle. There were ways to do such a thing, but the Astartes had seen no need to call upon the Mechanicum's most ruthlessly efficient devices to shape the continents of the world. In fact, Alburt suspected, the lords of the Imperium had decided to make Parecxis Beta a garrison world only because it would have been a waste to let the few still standing fortresses built by the former xenos overlords of the system unoccupied.
To Alburt's knowledge, six such constructions remained on the surface of the barren world. Before the coming of the Imperium, the planet had been used by the xenos as something of a giant arena. The nobles of that debased race, whose name had been lost in the annals of Imperial propaganda, had raised armies of genetically altered monstrosities within the depths of their private castles, before unleashing them against each other. It had been a contest of sort, to see which one of the aliens was the most gifted, and the results had apparently hold great importance in the politics of the system's rulers.
The fortresses that hadn't been razed by orbital bombardments had been stripped bare of the mysterious devices they contained by the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the vast, empty fields of the planet had been covered in an intricate network of bases each capable of hosting a thousand men in arms. There were roads across the wilderness leading from one base to another and to the gargantuan keeps of the xenos, now headquarters of the system's military.
Thirty-four days had passed since the last dream of the warp-born and the appearance of his new condition. So far, he had managed to keep what was obviously a warp-induced mutation from the officers of his regiment. He didn't know for certain what the consequences would be if he was discovered, but he firmly believed they would involve a bolt in the head and a nameless grave. Trapped as they were in a Warp Storm, the commanders weren't about to take any chances.
While looking for more ways to feel the unforgettable sensation that each new experience brought him, Alburt had been approached by a member of the gathering and invited to take part in the next one. The man wasn't unknown to him : he was another of those who had been press-ganged into service when the troops in the system had started to rebuild their strength, at the end of the Heresy. Alburt hadn't met him before they had been put together in one of the overcrowded transports, but as far as knew, the man wasn't part of any gang with which he had had conflict across the years. He had accepted. Sneaking out of the garrison wasn't easy, and he wouldn't have been able to do it on his own, but the man had had a tunnel ready that led outside. A remnant of the xenos, he had said, and Alburt believed him – the carvings on the walls obviously weren't the work of human hands.
The gathering was taking place in a crater left by the bombardments in one of the many wars that had raged across this world. It wasn't very deep, but enough so that no one on foot could see what was happening within. Watchers were spread out, ready to give warning if someone who didn't intend to join the revelerie approached – although what good that would do, Alburt couldn't begin to guess.
He descended into the crater, looking around. There were a hundred people or so from the garrison here, drinking, smoking and indulging into whatever acts of debauchery their minds could conceive .He recognised some of them from his time as a ganger on Parecxis Alpha. Most were rank-and-file soldiers, troopers who, like him, had been forced into service. But a few were officers : three sergeants, and a captain. Most surprising of all, there even was a commissar. Reiner Stein, one of the thoughest sons of whore in the regiment, was down there, his hat put away, drinking from a bottle filled with fifty-degrees alcohol.
There was a great fire at the crater's center, made of barils of promethium that had been stolen from the garrison. Pieces of meat – the local lifeforms, considered unfit for consumtion because of the narcotic properties of their flesh – were being roasted over the flames. The smell made Alburt salivate in anticipation. It had been too long since he had had a true, real meal.
'Well,' said Alburt to his guide, a smirk on his lips, 'I think I am going to set in there just fine.'
+Three days before the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta++
The knife was beautiful. In the hands of the leader of the gathering, its serrated blade caught the light of the stars and shone like a little sun, a shifting radiance that was purple then blue, then black. Its pommel was a perfectly spherical black stone engraved with purple gems that formed a symbol that burned the eyes of those who looked upon it for a time, before their vision adjusted and they saw the beauty of it. The first time Alburt had seen it, it had taken three minutes before he had been able to speak again, such had been the sensation it had caused him.
They had found the knife in the desert. Ten days before, the Warp Storm above their heads had struck a portion of the land that had been unexplored since the conquest of the planet, and the ruins of something that could only be a temple had been exposed. The commanders had declared the ruins a moral threat and forbidden all units to go anywhere in a radius of fifty kilometers from it – not that it had posed any problem, since the ruin was literraly in the middle of nowhere.
Alburt and several others had had visions of the ruins in their dreams. They had seen that within it lurked a great power, the promise of things they couldn't imagine. So they had gone out in the dark, and went to find what it was that called to them.
They had seen things that looked like they belonged to the dreams Alburt had had before he had changed. In these dephts, they had discovered what it was that had stirred them from their lethargic lives and driven them to search for more. They had found scriptures centuries old, depicting the divinity that the xenos who had once ruled this world had worshipped, and the dark beings that served it. Alburt and the others had recognised the creatures : those were the same they had seen in their dreams, in the plain of pleasure and pain. They had discovered the tenets of the old faith, and found that it was the same they had unknowingly begun to follow since they had started to gather in the crater, against the regulations. They had slept into the ruins, and dreamt.
They had seen the truth of the galaxy : the lies of the Emperor, who had claimed there were no gods in the universe, had been exposed. They had seen the powers at work behind the fabric of reality, the Dark Gods who demanded worship and offered power and blessings in return. They knew now of the Dark Prince, the Profligate One, to whom this world had belonged since long before the False Emperor – the epithet seemed perfectly appropriate now – had set out to conquer the stars. They saw how Horus Lupercal had been illuminated to the Primordial Truth, and how he had led half his brothers and their Legions against his father, who had chosen to deprieve Mankind of its rightful place as the supreme species so that He may continue His tyrannic rule forever.
But Alburt and the others knew the truth, now. They knew that the Warp Storm was a sign of the gods, an opportunity offered to prove their value, to embrace the true path of Mankind by dedicating themselves to the powers of Chaos. Not all were able to bear these revelations : of the eleven that had entered the ruins, only six emerged, carrying with them the blade they had found at the core of the temple. They had brought it with them to the gatherings, and spread the word of the Dark Prince amongst those who attended. The teachings of the Profligate One had spread like wild fire, and the captain had arranged to cover their absence from their posts. The visions had spread, too, and now, it was time to act. They could all feel it : something was coming. It pulsed at the back of their minds, like the waves caused by a mighty ship's journey. The chosen of the Dark Gods were coming, and they would have to prove themselves worthy.
Five of the cultists – for that was what they were now, with the purging of the last ones who had been too afraid to walk the Path of the Primordial Truth – were kneeling before the priestess, naked above the waist. They were willingly offering their throats, ready to be killed so that the alien blade could be reawakened from its long sleep. The leader of the ceremony was one of the women who had come with Alburt to the temple, wearing a long dress of patchwork tissue whose colors would have made a human who hadn't been illuminated nauseous.
One by one, she used the blade to cut the throats of the sacrifice. Every time, as their lifeblood flowed on the soil, the victims died with a satisfied smile on their face, and the blade shone a little brighter. With each ritual murder, Alburt, who stood near the priestess, could feel the Warp's hunger growing, its desire to tear the limits of reality and invade the Materium only increasing as it was fed the lives of those who had dedicated themselves to its glory.
The five sacrifices died, yet Alburt felt that the ceremony wasn't complete. He could see that the priestess felt it too. Then, suddenly, she lurched at him, blade held high, intending to kill him to complete the ritual. With a snarl, he caught her arm as the dagger was halfway to his chest, and forcibly took the blade away from her.
His heart beat with adrenalin, his mind reeled under the pulse of the Empyrean, and he knew what he had to do. With one smooth motion, he pierced the woman's chest, and stabbed directly at her heart. They stayed fixed for a moment, looking like two lovers embracing each other, then she fell and died, the same smile on her lips as the other sacrifices. A wave of pleasure spread through Alburt's body at the sight of his victim, and he knew that the Profligate One was pleased with him.
The rest of the gathering roared their approval at his murder. Looking at them, Alburt raised high the xenos blade, basking in the crowd's adoration. The time had come, and they were ready. The blood of the unworthy would be the baptism of their new faith, and he had just the perfect target in mind.
+Two hour and forty-two minutes before the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta+
As Alburt marched to join up with his allies, his work on the colonel's corpse complete, alarms began to ring across the garrison. These weren't about the colonel's death : Alburt recognised the pattern as the one used to warn that a battle was ongoing in space, and that they had to prepare themselves for orbital bombardment and ground assault if the fleet failed to defeat or repel the enemy.
The rebel quickened his pace, eyes locked in front of him as if he was rushing to his post. He passed next several soldiers, who were looking panicked and rushing toward their post. After a few tense moments, wondering if he was about to be shot at each step, Alburt opened the door of the storage room where he and his complices had planned to meet.
Alburt closed the door behind him and looked at the rest of the group. There were several dozens of them. They were still wearing their Army uniforms, but if any commissar had seen them, they would have been put to jail at least.
The insigna of the Army had been ripped off all uniforms, as had been any marking of rank. The authority they may have been granted by mortal instances was meaningless in the eyes of the Dark Prince, and so they had to start as equals, even though that wasn't actually the case. Sleeves had been cut, revealing skin that was often covered in tattoos or self-inflicted scars. Piercings were spread all over their bodies, with no regard given to the possibilities of infection – a very real threat on a world like Parecxis Beta, where many commodities of life had been lost after the Warp Storm had played havoc with the machine-spirits of the bases' installations.
But the most visible mark was the fevered, impatient, hungry look in the eyes of those gathered here. These were men and women who had seen beyond the pale trappings of matter that fools called reality and looked into the wonders hidden past the limits of their senses. They had embraced the teachings of the Profligate One, and they had been rewarded with such sensations that many had lost their minds or their lives, their mortal forms unable to bear the beauty of the Empyrean. Even those who had survived and retained enough of themselves as to be able to return to the bases had been changed, warped by what they had experienced. They were the chosen of the Dark Prince, and they knew it and reveled in that knowledge.
They, too, knew what the alarms meant. It meant that Alburt's visions had come true, that the demigods that served the Dark Pantheon had arrived. Soon, the ships of the fleet would be lost, and the attackers would move on to assault the system's planets.
All across the planet, troopers were running to battle stations, while the giant cannons that were able to strike even spaceships were being crewed. The orbital platform would also begin to prepare. The well-oiled machine of war was moving to accomplish its purpose : repelling and crushing the enemies of the Emperor.
Unfortunately for the false god's tyrannic Imperium, a few cogs had decided otherwise. Alburt and the men and women he was facing weren't the only cell on the planet. They didn't coordinate in any fashion but they had communicated in the past, meeting in the plains and trading what meager ressources they could scavenge from the Imperial war machine. Alburt didn't know how many of them existed, but he knew that all of them would have started to take action as soon as the alarms had reached them.
'It is time,' he said to the others. 'The Great Ones have arrived, as it was promised to us. Now, we no longer need to hide. We no longer have to restrain ourselves. My brethren, it is time to prove our devotion to the Dark Prince.'
His voice started to pitch up, and his breathing quickened as the cultists started to whisper between them. He could feel the exaltation that filled them, the savage anticipation. It filled him too, and as he kept speaking to them, he felt the familiar rush of pain and pleasure build up within him, ready to be released when his speech was over.
'The servants of the False Emperor shall fall by our blades, their lives an offerring to the Profligate One ! We shall revel in their death and pitiful struggles against the inevitable ! Let the screams of the weak and bland be the proof of our devotion ! Let our own death be a passage to His realm, where endless felicity awaits those who are faithful !'
'In the name of Slaanesh, let nothing stand in our way !'
The name bursted from his lips, seemingly conjured from the depths of his very soul. He had never heard it before, in dream or awake, but is seemed right, somehow. He knew that this was the name of his master, the Dark God of Pleasure and Pain that had sent His minion to Alburt to show the man the way to true freedom and joy.
The moment he spoke, the feeling that had built up within him reached its peak, and as the rest of the coven began to howl and sing their praises to the Dark Prince, the beatific sensation spread once more through Alburt's body and soul, stronger than it had ever been. A torrent of images flashed in his mind : he saw entire worlds inhabited by billions be reduced to graveyards of bone and dust to sate the thirst of a newborn god, heard the screams of despair and terror of an entire race as their excesses gave life to their own damnation, and felt the very fabric of reality tear apart forever under the pressure of Slaanesh's birth. For the briefest moment, Alburt knew how it felt to be a god …
Then the moment was gone, and he felt more empty than ever. But he knew how to feel alive again. The xenos blade in his hand, he ran out of the room, followed by the other cultists, eager to slaughter his way across the base. His uniform was still clean, unmarked : that had to change.
+Ten minutes after the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta+
The skies were aflame with war. The batteries that hadn't been deactivated and whose crew was still alive and loyal were shooting all they had to the invading transports. Sometimes they would get a lucky hit and send one of the slowest and most clumsy crafts crashing to the ground, but most of the time, they missed. The defences of the fortress depended too much upon the mass firing it could deploy at its full capacity in order to make sure to hit, and without it, the heavy guns were simply too slow. Add to that the sudden loss of contact with the orbital platforms, and Parecxis Beta was almost entirely defenceless against the Astartes' assault.
Alburt and the rest of the coven could hear the desperate reports from all over the planet. The forces that had remained loyal to the False Emperor were still fighting, a desperate struggle that was doomed to end in their death. Alburt did not pity them. They could have done what he had, and sided with the Great Ones, yet they had foolishly chosen to keep clinging to that false faith the priests had spread amongst them like poison. They deserved whatever fate awaited them.
One of the crafts started to move toward their position. It was one of the Thunderhawks, the transports of the Astartes. While some of the crafts that hovered in the skies were civilian transports adapted for their new purpose as troops carriers, the Space Marines only traveled on Thunderhawks, or their rarer, older counterpart, the Stormbirds.
The movements of the craft were fluid and precise, and when Alburt saw that it was piloted by a mortal, a spike of jealousy rose in his heart. To command such an engine of war and destruction, to soar the skies as a predator delivering the Angels of Death upon the battlefield … It must be magnificent. One day, he swore, he would feel that sensation too.
The bay door of the Thunderhawk opened, and several giants emerged from its depths. They moved slowly but with purpose, each of them taking position to cover the one they were sworn to protect. Once all of the bodyguards had taken position, the Astartes Alburt had seen in his dreams walked out of the craft and stopped before the cultists.
Alburt kneeled before the towering giant. The demigod was clad in what he knew to be a Terminator Armor, his head without helmet yet protected from the shots that still fled around them. Even here, the battle wasn't over yet. Still, with more and more crafts delivering their lethal payloads upon the field, it wouldn't be long before the loyal soldiers were wiped out.
But he was different. He had made his choice and helped the inevitable victory of the Great Ones, and he had been rewarded for it. Now, as the being in his dreams had promised, he would be granted the ultimate reward.
'Lord Arken,' he whispered. 'Awakened One. Lord of the Forsaken Sons. You honor us all by gracing us with your presence on this worthless world.' The shiver he felt at daring to speak in the presence of the demigod was delightful.
The giant reached with his clawed hand, and placed a deactivated talon under Alburt's chin, forcing him to raise his head. Alburt's gaze was drawn to the Astartes' eyes, as cold as the void and as unforgiving as the fires of a sun. He felt as if the giant could see through his flesh and into his very soul.
It was a new experience, and as such he had to savor it. Still, when it ended, he couldn't deny that he was glad it was over. Then Lord Arken spoke, his voice sounding like the very promise of damnation itself :
'What is your name, mortal ?'
'I … I am Alburt, Great One.'
Arken shook his head, slowly.
'That was your name, before you embraced the teachings of the Profligate One. But the Dark Prince is not one who would accept the man you once were in His service. You require a new name, if Slaanesh is to keep favoring you.'
'A … new name, Great One ?' asked Alburt, his voice hesitating at the unexpected order.
'Yes,' answered Arken. 'You bear His mark, after all. I can feel it. It permeates this whole planet, the echoes of a dead race carrying His whispers to all who would hear them. There are few who can receive His blessing and live for long, even amongst the Legions, but perhaps you will be able to avoid that fate. Think about it, and choose a new name quickly. Alburt is dead, and those who are nameless do not endure for long under the gaze of the Gods.'
The man who was no longer Alburt bowed his head even further in sign of his acceptance of the giant's command. Arken gestured toward the Thunderhawk behind him. The pilot took off, no doubt returning to orbit, where he would wait for his master to call him again. Then the Astartes commander looked at the cultists behind their nameless leader, and a twisted smile formed on his lips.
'Come, then, chosen of the Dark Gods. Let us finish the purge of this miserable fortress.'
And so the Awakened One led his bodyguards and the mortal traitors whose actions had doomed the base to battle against the forces that still hold their positions, knowing full well that they were doomed yet determined to stand until the end.
+Thirty-two hours after the Forsaken Sons' planetfall on Parecxis Beta+
Several ships were orbiting around Parecxis Beta : those that had been captured during the initial engagement with the system's fleet, and the one that had brought the Space Marines. It was in the latter than the man that had once been called Alburt had been brought when the transport had finally arrived to pick him and the dozen survivors of his group up.
The battle that had followed the arrival of the Awakened One on the base had been, despite the absolute absence of doubt concerning the outcome, costly. While the Terminators had been protected against the weapons gathered by the remaining loyalists, that hadn't been the case for the cultists, and the nameless man had lost most of his group to their las-guns before the last of them had been finally killed. Of course, almost all of these deaths could have been avoided if the rebels had worked with anything resembling their former discipline, but then what would have been the point of rebelling at all ? Battle was but another opportunity to experience new sensations, and if one was to meet death while communing with the Dark Prince, well, it was a worthy death.
But he hadn't been worried about that happening to him. The Awakened One had confirmed the words of the daemon : he was marked by the Profligate One, the Prince of Excess, the lord and master of the wonderful plains of Agony and Ecstasy he had seen in his dreams. He wouldn't die yet, and if he had his way, he would never die. He knew that was possible, that eternal life was a very real, if minute possibility. If he could impress his worth enough on his dark patron, then the reward would be an eternity of sensations, of enjoying all the pleasures there was to find in the galaxy – some of them he couldn't even begin to imagine for now, but which would be revealed to him as he progressed upon the path of Excess.
And now, he was about to take the next step on that glorious path. He stood naked before an open and empty sarcophagus, in what his new masters had called the Hall of Asclepios – a realm of horrors and wonders such as he had never dreamt existed in this bleak reality.
The sarcophagus was taunting the nameless man, a gateway to realms of sensations and emotions yet unknown. He didn't know what exactly the Fleshmasters would do to him – there were too many different things strapped on the tables or incubating within glass tanks filled with liquid for him to divine which of them had gone through the same process he was about to, or even if any had. The demigods who reigned in this madhouse were clearly pursuing a hundred projects at once, with failure and success not really mattering to them as long as they gained more forbidden knowledge from each of them. The only thing certain was that he would experiment many things he never had before it was over, and he almost couldn't held his impatience at the thought of how many times he would taste ecstasy before emerging again. Truly, his gift from the Dark Prince was a blessing beyond compare.
One of the lords of the Hall was attending to the machine, imputing the last data he had obtained from studying the man who had been chosen for the transformation the device could perform. The Fleshmaster was called Melakor, and had once been an Apothecary of the Emperor's Children. The nameless man could feel the touch of the Dark Prince on him, and it was stronger and purer than the one he had been granted himself. A pang of jealousy spread through him, causing yet another rush of pleasure that faded all too quickly. Envy of the Astartes was an all too common thing, and the new reason for that jealousy wasn't enough to truly stimulate him.
His work on the machine over, the Space Marine turned toward the mortal. His armor was covered in scraps of parchment covered in notes about things the nameless man didn't know and sigils that he understood all too well. There wasn't a single spot of his armor's ceramite that could be seen beneath the cover.
Melakor's face was a sight that would have reduced most mortal to a gibbering mess, and three of the nameless man's group had died of fright upon seeing him for the first time, their amplified sensations and emotions finally killing them by stopping their heart in one final impulse of pain and pleasure. It was, by any definition of the word, flayed, the muscles and nerves exposed. This would have been disturbing on its own, but the skin that had been removed was kept a few centimeters away from the flesh by wires that were either biological or technological in nature – the nameless man couldn't tell. The wires were drilling into the bone of the Astartes's skull, and one could see the small blood vessels within the skin. They were still active, keeping the flayed face 'alive', though whatever was flowing through them was too black to be blood.
As Melakor looked down upon him, the man caught a glimpse of a portion of the giant's face where skin was beginning to form again, the prodigious regenerative ability of his metabolism healing the damage he had done to himself. With a shiver, the nameless man realised that the Fleshmaster probably had to flay himself anew every few days to maintain his horrible but glorious appearance.
'It is ready, mortal. Before you go in, though, I need to know your name.'
'What do you care, Great One ?'
'Nothing. Perhaps you will live. Perhaps you will die. It is of no concern to me, for both outcomes will yield much data for the rest of us. But it is standard procedure that each of the subjects be named, so that we know which experiment we are talking about. You aren't one of the prisonners or one of those who have entirely lost their mind to the Warp – or at least you don't seem to be – so you must have a name. Give it to me.'
The nameless man paused for a second. He had thought of a name, of course – he had thought of it during all the boring, tedious, interminable ten minutes it had taken the transport craft to get them aboard the ship. He had long decided what would be the name under which his true legend would begin. It was the name of a once famous drug lord of the underworld of Parecxis Alpha, who had commanded dozens of smaller gangs for almost a century before he had finally died in an assassination that – to the surprise of all involved – none of his many enemies had claimed, not even the Adeptus Arbites. It had a long history but no remaining family, and was suitably intimidating. Besides, taking the name of the man he had killed himself after having been wronged in one of the many drug deals he had been part of would probably bring him the favor of the Dark Prince. Even back then, before he had received the gift of Slaanesh, he had enjoyed that hunt like nothing else in his life, reveling in the careful planning and infiltration that had allowed him to access the drug lord's inner quarters.
But it seemed to him that such a thing – the naming of future champion of the Prince of Excess – should have suitable drama to it. He should announce his name after emerging from the sarcophagus, reborn in a new, superior form, ready to strike down his enemies and claim ever more glory for the Profligate One.
Perhaps, though, this would be just as appropriate ? He was about to enter the sarcophagus. A new being would emerge from it. He didn't know the details of what it would do to him, but he knew it would make him stronger. It had a chance of killing him horribly, but what was life without risk ? He stood at the treshold of death and rebirth, and a new name would only reinforce the importance of that rebirth. Yes, this was a moment of great importance to his future legend.
'Your name, mortal.'
The traitor soldier looked at the agent of the Dark Prince that stood in front of him, and for the briefest of moments he thought he could see the endless possibilities that the being would open for him, if he was strong enough to endure whatever horrors the Fleshmaster and his colleagues were going to do to his body while he laid in the sarcophagus. It was glorious and magnificent, and it would be his, no matter how much he had to suffer for it. Then the moment passed, and he answered, his voice devoid of any doubt :
'My name is Mikail, Great One. Mikail Korzhanenko .'