AN : And here comes another chapter. This one is a bit shorter than the few before, because it focuses on the assault on the hive-city of Nalemos, without scenes from other locations like I did in the previous chapter. The time it took me to write it is due to a severe case of the dreaded Writer's Block, which I have fortunately managed to surmount. Of course, after that came the Wifi problems. But I shall endure, and bring you the story of the Foraken Sons no matter what Fate throw in my path ! (Gods that sounded stupid).
On a related note (I am adding this in just before publishing the chapter, taking advantage of a lucky lull in my Internet connection problems), I just finished Adeptus Mechanicus : Tech Priest and Ahriman : Unchanged. I enjoyed both of them, the second better than the first, if only because it wasn't such a blatant product placement for the new Codex of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I swear, they introduce every single new unit in that book. I know it's because that's litteraly the author's job, and Rob Sanders does a great job with the story arc, but still. Unchanged is different, but it also suffers from the same curse that afflicts all stories set in the 41 Millenia : you can't change anything in the setting ! And yet, there is some plot advancement, which I won't spoil, but let's just say that Tzeentch remains a frakking monster. Perhaps the worse of all the Four, and that's saying a lot.
In this chapter, I am experimenting with a new way of narration. Nalemos, one of the two hive-cities still under loyalist control on Parecxis Alpha, has already fallen at the beginning of the chapter : you will experience its fall through a series of flashbacks. Please tell me what you thought of it in your reviews - if you like it, I may use the same technique in the future, since I have worked to integrate the flashbacks to the story proper.
Concerning this chapter's proper contents, as a bit of clarification for readers relatively new to the Warhammer 40000 universe : the Youngest God is one of the titles given to Slaanesh, since he/she/it is only ten thousand years old in the Warhammer 40000 universe (and only a few hundreds at the point in time where this story takes place). Of course, given the timeless nature of the Warp, it is often said that Slaanesh is just as old as the other Gods. But the Chaos Gods are born from mortal emotions, and Slaanesh was created by the Fall of the Eldar Empire, so in my idea of the lore, that means that such claims are just Chaos propaganda, just like those who affirm that the Dark Gods created the universe that you can find in the Black Crusade sourcebooks.
Soon after this chapter is posted online, there will be another chapter added to Warband of the Forsaken Sons. This won't be a 'proper' chapter, but a supplement I have been writing during my period of Writer's Block : a Codex describing the special troops of Chaos, as the final battle for Parecxis draws near. It's already finished by the time I write this, so the delay should be very short - just put it in order and perhaps add a few details or two. After that, I think I will work on the Blood Angels for the Roboutian Heresy, except if an idea for a short story catches my attention. The final part of the Parecxis Campaign will require a lot of preparation on my part, as I intend to make it more tactically-oriented that this story has been so far. I mean, it's the final confrontation between the Sons of Calth and the Forsaken Sons, and there will be a whole bunch of new units introduced. Besides, I kind of have to make at least one proper battle - its called Warhammer, after all.
That's all for now. Enjoy this chapter ! Please review it !
I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Orpheus walked amongst the ruins, listening to the sounds of distant screaming. Here, in the fallen city of Nalemos, the melody of pain never truly ceased. It had kept going on since the beginning of the assault, thirty-three days before. With the decrease of living victims, the screams had started to be mostly echoes of past deeds, forever resonating in the cursed city as hordes of ghosts relived their final moments over and over. But there were still millions of survivors, cowering in fear or running for their lives. With food becoming scarce and countless monsters on the hunt, these pathetic wretches were becoming more desperate by the day, seeking refuge in increasingly dubious locations. None, however, would come here – amidst the rubble of what had once been the headquarters of Nalemos' defenders. The place was the eye of the storm that had engulfed the hive – both its origin point and where its effects were the least pronounced. The pressure on the veil between worlds was strong, but it was kept quiet, as if not even Chaos dared to disturb this hallowed place.
He looked around, not with his eyes but with his sixth sense. His psychic hood was up, but such was the concentration of Warp energy in the hive – and especially there, at ground zero – that he could feel the myriad echoes of emotion that imbibed every piece of rubble. He paid them no heed – he had come here for a very specific reason. After spending several weeks hunting across Nalemos, leading a pack of his brothers into slaughter after slaughter, a whim had taken him : to retrace the events of Nalemos' fall, to see with his own eyes how the mighty hive had fallen. More than that, he wished to test a new trick he had dreamed of last time he had allowed himself to rest – one that had doubtlessly been inspired to him by the Youngest God Himself. His chosen location of sleep had certainly aided : he had laid down amidst the corpses of a hundred civilians, each of whom had spent the last hours of its existence screaming incoherently as Third Legion's torture blades cut their flesh.
It felt like a pilgrimage, and in a way, it was. The city had been consecrated to Slaanesh through pain and fear, and daemons of the Dark Prince walked its streets alongside His mortal servants. Space Marines, cultists, and the resurrected Sha'eilat, all had been unleashed at the Awakened One's command. They had been given only one order : to tear the hive-city apart, feasting on its people and giving a performance that even the Youngest God would approve of. What Orpheus had in mind would be but one more act of desecration of deviant indulgence, but it would add to the strength of the colossal offering to Slaanesh that Nalemos had become.
Orpheus' psychic gaze finally found what it had been looking for. There, sitting on a pile of rubble, was a solitary helmet in the color of the Sons of Calth. It bore the crest of a Captain, and was the only recognizable remain in sight – the rest of those who had died here had been taken away as toys and trophies, or were deeply interred beneath the collapsed masonry. Why this particular relic had been left behind, Orpheus could only speculate – perhaps the killers had recognized the importance of the warrior who had worn it, and sought to leave a memorial of their triumph over him. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a whim. Or perhaps the helm had simply fallen there in the tremors that shook the hive daily as its structure was compromised by the warping touch of the Empyrean. In the end, it mattered little. The relic was bound to the soul of the one who had worn it, now forever burning in the Sea of Souls, at the nonexistent mercy of the Neverborn. It created a link to the echoes of the dead man's last moments. The Sorcerer reached out with his hand, placing his palm atop the helm like a priest blessing a supplicant, and let the memories entrapped within the piece of armor flow into him.
The Captain had died when treachery had dealt a crippling blow to Nalemos' defenders.
Galen stood at the extremity of the table where the hive-city's leaders had gathered. The room, once the domain of the Administratum like the rest of the building, was guarded by several warriors of his 6th Company, and several hundred human soldiers were keeping constant watch over the neighboring streets. This level of security was the bare minimum for such a gathering – for all those present had been target of assassination attempts in the past few weeks.
Military and civilian leaders were all present, all the differences they may have had long put aside by the Warp Storm and the threat of the Forsaken Sons. On the rare occasions when Galen's thoughts turned away from the endless task of protecting Nalemos, the Captain considered how sad it was that it took such circumstances to force the human race to work together toward a common goal.
One month had passed since the loss of Talexorn to the traitors' sorcery. During that period of time, the Sons of Calth had doubled their efforts to root out the heretics still hiding in the territories ostensibly under loyalist control. Squads of Astartes and support platoons of Imperial soldiers were sent to purge hidden cults, while the priests of the Ecclesiarchy endlessly reminded the human population of the insidious threat of Chaos, and of the necessity of praying to the God-Emperor for protection. And during all that time, there had been no sign of the Forsaken Sons moving to attack.
Galen knew that in the capital city, plans to counter-attack and strike back at the traitors were made, examined, and abandoned daily. The Chapter Master and his advisers were as frustrated by the current situation as any warrior under their command, but there was simply no way for them to fight back efficiently. The renegades' leadership was always aboard their ship, and the Sons of Calth lacked any way to attack the Hand of Ruin with any realistic chance of success. Despite the fact that the vessel had far less firepower than most capital ships its size, it still boasted enough weaponry to outgun a small fleet, and would blast any carrier trying to approach it to pieces.
The doors of the meeting room closed, and the Captain turned his thoughts back to the matters at hand. It was becoming increasingly difficult to do so, for he had not slept in weeks, and his catalepsean node could only do so much to keep him awake. Perhaps that was why he did not see the danger until it was too late.
The man who had entered last – an Administratum adept – acted the moment the door closed. He took something from within his robes and threw it on the table. Galen had a fraction of second to see what it was : a sphere of black metal covered in runes shining with fell light, that began whirring the moment it hit the marble table. Then it exploded, projecting a wave of Warp energy that engulfed all those present. Galen's sight went black, and the last thing he heard before succumbing to the darkness was the screams of these men and women with whom he had directed Nalemos' defenses for months, merging with those of otherworldly entities. The last thought that passed through his mind was one with which he was bitterly familiar :
We are betrayed.
Consciousness returned to the Captain. He blinked, but still couldn't see – something was obstruction his helmet's lenses. With hands that were entirely too weak for his liking, he reached for his collar and unlocked the helmet, letting it roll down and allowing himself to look at his surroundings with his own eyes. He appeared to be the only survivor – all others present in the room had been blasted to atoms by the force of the blast. Whether it was his armor that had protected him, or the strength of his mind that had sheltered him from the ravaging touch of the Warp, the Son of Calth did not know. When the Empyrean was concerned, both could be equally significant, or utterly useless, and there was no way of knowing which particular set of rules applied at any given moment.
With a grunt, Galen forced himself to stand, and his senses returned – alongside with a new definition of torment. His whole body burned with pain – not the honest pain of wounds taken in battle, but a more insidious suffering. He could feel every molecule of his flesh rebelling against the unholy powers it was bathed in, resisting the mutagen touch of the Warp. All around him, he could see the evidence of the Empyrean's influence : blood was bubbling from cracks in the walls, bodies were decaying in seconds as soon as his gaze touched them, and the very air was filled with mirages in the shape of claws and fangs.
All of it emanated from the center of the room, where the explosion had occurred. There was a wound in the fabric of space, a rift three meters high in the air. Beyond this gateway, Galen could see nothing – just pure blackness. On the ground before the rift was the remains of the traitor who had activated the fell device. He was dead, but it had not been a clean death : his body was wrecked by deadly mutations, reduced to a mass of bloated, cancerous flesh. The only part of it that was still intact – and which had allowed Galen to recognize the heretic – was his face, its skin stretched out across the flesh in an expression of utter horror.
For a moment, Galen wondered what had led the man to betray his kin for the false promises of Chaos. The device he had used suggested that the Forsaken Sons had contacted him – that this wasn't some random act, inspired by the maddening whispers of the Warp. Had the traitors offered him power ? Wealth ? Or just to spare his life, having already persuaded him that their victory was inevitable ?
In the end, it didn't matter. Galen had long grown used to betrayal. Like all Sons of Calth, he had experienced it firsthand when the Word Bearers had revealed their treachery on his now destroyed homeworld. He would not allow it to damage his resolve. The traitor had met his inevitable fate, and now it fell to Galen to make sure that this one act of treachery didn't …
A movement from the rift interrupted his train of thought. Turning to face it, the Captain saw a humanoid figure emerge from the blackness, walking slowly and calmly as though it hadn't just stepped inside a vision of hell.
Galen had fought the Eldars before, during the Great Crusade. He had traded blows with Craftworld warriors and dueled against the cruel scions of the Dark City. This creature looked similar to them, but he knew with a glance that it was something else altogether. There was a darkness about it, an air of unending hunger that was similar to the sick lusts of the Commoragh-born Eldar, but intensified to the point that it became visible even to those without a psychic sense. It was wearing a suit of what appeared to be leather, but a closest examination revealed that veins coursed across its surface, carrying black vitae. The thing was alive, and worn like a jacket by the fey-like creature. From the back of the corrupt Eldar, two appendages emerged, as if bursting from the shoulder blades of the xenos. They were tentacles, each ending with a fanged maw that snapped at the empty air and dripped drool onto the ground.
Training and conditioning helped Galen ignore the pain of his flesh, and he hurled himself at the alien. Its apparition here and now could not be a coincidence. Somehow, the xenos was related to the traitor who had detonated the Warp-bomb. He had lost his weapons in the explosion, but he didn't need them – Eldar bodies were frail, and this particular one did not look like one of their warriors. He would break its neck with his bare hands if he had to.
Despite his wounds, Galen's enhanced muscles gave him the speed of a human's full sprint as he jumped. With his armor on, his kinetic energy should have splattered the xenos even if he just crashed into it. However, before he could reach his target, the two tentacles lurched in his direction, each of them biting deep into one of his shoulders, before slamming him on the floor with enough strength to send cracks across the permacrete. Sparks ran across the xenos' vestment as it somehow dispersed the kinetic energy of Galen's charge.
Keeping the Captain pinned in place, the creature spoke :
'I am Ezyrithn, Firstborn of the Sha'eilat. You should be honored to be the first of your kind to learn my name. I promise you that many more will in the years to come.'
Galen grunted, and applied all of his strength to pushing away the repugnant tentacles that were locked around his shoulders. But the muscles had been severed by the things' bite, and he couldn't muster the strength to break free, his efforts only causing the teeth to tear at his flesh. The alien saw his efforts, and smiled :
'Do not struggle,' it said with disgusting softness. 'You will only cause yourself more pain. Just … listen to me.'
'You have already failed in your duty, little mon-keigh. The glory of the Sea of Souls is spreading, cloaking this city from mortal sight and reach. It is at our mercy,' the abomination continued, its voice still as soft as a breeze's touch on the skin. 'Every soul within its walls will be sacrificed to She-Who-Thirsts, yours included. You will not be reinforced by your brothers. The children of the Goddess will pick the flesh from this repugnant pit's bones, and every scream will make us stronger.'
Galen ignored the words of the creature, instead focusing his gaze beyond it, to the Chaos Marines that had emerged from the rift behind it. They wore the baroque colors of the cursed Third Legion, though most of them had painted over the emblem of the Emperor's Children on their shoulder pads with black paint and the image of a chained daemonic visage. Each of them wore the mark of their sins on their bodies in an obscene homage to the dark power that owned them. Their armor was twisted, ceramite merging with skin that was covered in piercings crafted from the corpses of past victims. Their weapons looked like demented, oversized instruments linked to cannons, their circuits burning with warp-fire and decorated with fell symbols. The Captain had seen such weapons before, and knew how devastating their sonic blasts could be. These were instruments of ruin, created by the corruption of the Warp as much as by cruel, debased ingenuity. Yet despite the disgust he felt at such a display of ruinous allegiance, Galen expressed his hatred on another thing :
'Xenos,' he whispered at one of them, making the word an accusation. 'Filthy xenos. Is there truly no limit to your corruption, traitors ?'
The Astartes didn't answer, and more xenos emerged from the rift, wearing the same kind of living armor, symbiotically bound to their flesh. Dozens of them passed through, leaving the ruined room quickly, their alien eyes shining with unknowable hungers. Beyond the craft used to create their armors and weapons, there was no unity : some carried blades, others maces, while a few carried no weapon Galen could recognize, and were accompanied by misshapen creatures of forged flesh and twisted bone. To his horror, Galen saw that several of the freakish beings had human faces on their bodies, distended and wrecked by unspeakable torment.
'Corruption ?' said Ezyrithn mockingly, answering the Captain's question in place of those he would have once called brothers. 'Your every word reveals your ignorance. We are not corrupt, Captain.'
The creature said the last word with a sudden change in its tone, all softness gone, revealing the utter contempt it felt for the unfortunate warrior it was keeping immobile.
'We are blessed,' it continued. 'Elevated above the rabble of the trillions of insignificant lifeforms that populate this galaxy. Raised beyond our previous existence by the hand of a divine being in order to do its will … much like you were.'
'We … are nothing alike,' replied Galen, forcing the words now, as he grew weaker. He was bleeding – the fangs in his limbs were generating some kind of poison his Astartes physiology couldn't counter, and his Lamarran cells were failing to close the wounds.
'Are we ? Your kind and mine were once just another few amongst a multitude of unremarkable existences. Then a being of unfathomable power took us from the lives we knew, and reforged us through extreme pain, making us both similar and different to what we once were – and granting us power we couldn't have dreamed of in the process. There is a similarity between us, warrior. The Awakened One saw it. That's one of the reasons he ordered we be brought back from the grave your former Legion consigned us to.'
Galen answer was to spit in the xenos' face, sending acid toward the creature. It dodged it, and the spit fell back on Galen's own power armor, eating into the paint without causing it any real damage. The smile was gone from the creature's face now. Anger and bitterness were flashing across it now – along with a perverse delight it took in dominating Galen. It struck at Galen's throat with its bare hand, the sharpened nails tearing through his bared flesh. With a yanking motion, he tore the Betcher's gland out of the Space Marine's inside, tossing the bloody organ aside.
'I have been restored to this realm of existence by his will and the grace of the Goddess,' it pressed on. It lurched forward on Galen, their faces repugnantly close. 'And this time, no misguided fool is going to kill me. I am going to hunt down and kill as many of your brothers as I can, and I will make sure all of them know who I am before they die.'
The two maws around Galen's shoulders tightened, and with a wrenching sound, his two arms were torn from their sockets, flesh and bone and ceramite alike, and tossed to opposite sides of the Captain's maimed body. Ignoring the pain, Galen tried to rise to headbutt the alien in the face, seeking to at last take this wretched creature with him, but it kept him down with a single palm pressed against his chest, the force of his efforts dissolving uselessly into more sparks of energy.
It took several minutes for the Captain to bleed out from his stumps and the wound at his throat. All that time, he didn't stop trying to rise, nor did Ezyrithn stop pushing him down. He died without uttering a single sound of pain, his eyes staring at the resurrected xenos with unflinching hatred until the light inside of them went out.
The Sorcerer opened his eyes, leaving the memory of the Son of Calth's demise shuddering. To experience death in such a manner was an experience that could very well destroy a lesser being, but for the son of Fulgrim, it was a delight beyond compare – the ultimate transgression, going against the very order of life by knowing death yet remaining alive. His body was responding to what his brain had perceived, flooding his bloodstream with stimulants and forcing his two hearts to beat at the limit of their strength – paradoxically, he felt more alive now than ever before.
He had been part of the construction of the Warp conduit. Its design had been inspired by the artifact that had trapped the essence of the daemonic consciousness of the forge-world, back in the Mulor system. When the traitor had activated it, unknowing of its true nature, it had opened a gateway between the council room and the raging storm overhead, allowing the eldritch energies of the Warp to pour onto the surface. Even now, Nalemos was surrounded by streams of Warp-fire, cutting it off from the rest of the planet, the unholy currents fed by the pain and emotions of those who lived and died inside its confines.
This was beginning to be the standard tactic of the Forsaken Sons, Orpheus mused. One devastating blow to annihilate the enemy's command and throw his forces into disarray, then the packs were unleashed to grind resistance to dust before it could coordinate and re-organize. The very nature of the forces in the warband allowed for little else. Although the Astartes were united under Arken's command, they lacked the discipline and true synchronization of Legion-born brothers. The battle of Meridis had proven that the Forsaken Sons couldn't match the Sons of Calth's tactical acumen. The Awakened One had seen that it was better to rely on specialized agents to deal the initial blow according to a precise plan, and then to simply let the forces under his command do as they pleased.
In the case of Nalemos' assault, this was made all the more important by the fact that the troops dedicated to the hive's conquest were all servants of the Youngest God. Hoping for any coordination between them would have been most foolish. After the city's leadership had been annihilated, Arken hadn't even tried to control those chosen to take part in the assault. He had organized their arrival, tasking the Coven with opening several portals to bring the forces of Slaanesh into the hive. After that, he had allowed them to do as they pleased, sheltered from Imperial ripost by the Warp energies that drowned the city in a sea of twisting nightmares.
Orpheus smiled as he remembered how this method of waging war had also been the one favored by Horus himself, in the days before the Pantheon's endless whispering had driven him to megalomania beyond even that of the Emperor's Children. The battle of Isstvan V had been the greatest example of this tactic, with a singular battle that could very well have won the traitors the war had not so many things gone wrong afterward.
The Sorcerer would never mention this similarity to Arken, of course. The Awakened One's hatred for his failed father was a beacon in the Warp, and Orpheus had almost been forced to avert his gaze when the former Commander of the Sons of Horus had denounced the Primarchs' faults on the desolated world where they had found Serixithar. He may enjoy savoring death by proxy, but he wasn't ready yet to feel it with his own flesh. There was much he intended to do, discover and destroy before that.
And the first of the experiences he had yet to taste waited for him deeper in the hive-city. Before leaving, however, there was one last thing to do. Orpheus reached beyond the veil, seeking the fragment of Galen's soul that remained linked to this place. With a cruel pull of psychic power, he tore the shard of sentience from its repose, and attached it to his own soulfire. To all those gifted with the Art, the ghostly image of the Son of Calth's face was now visible around his shoulders, hovering above him like a crow above carrion. Enough remained of the loyalist Space Marine that he would be able to see all that Orpheus did from now on, but utterly unable to do anything to stop it.
With the shade of Captain Galen bound to him, Orpheus began his descent toward the rest of the city. The hive was filled with the echoes of violent deaths, and he could feel one of these calling to his senses.
He found the next corpse about an hour later, in the shadows of an alley, almost entirely buried beneath a collapsed wall. A single hand emerged from the rubble, stretching toward the blood-soaked skies as its owner tried to dig himself free. Without hesitation, Orpheus climbed the rubble, carefully shifting his weight so as not to bring it down, and seized the outstretched hand inside his own, the tiny hand completely disappearing inside his gauntlet. With the physical contact established, he sent a sliver of his mind toward the corpse, and immersed himself once more into the memories of the dead.
The man had died alone in the dark, when his shattered flesh had finally given up after the torments inflicted upon it by the scions of the Youngest God.
The monsters walked amidst the ruins of the city, and their prey ran from them. All cohesion had been lost with the death of the city's leaders and the darkening of the skies, leaving more than a billion souls lost, at the cruel mercies of the Forsaken Sons. Before, the skies had been filled with the swirling energies of the Warp Storm. It had been dangerous then to even look up, for doing so was to invite madness into one's soul – but at least there had been light, baleful as it may have been. Now there was a cover of black clouds between the hive and the Storm, and while being released from the dark illumination should have been a welcome deliverance, the situation was in fact even worse. The Warp wasn't in the sky – now, it ran through the streets, twisting flesh and metal and stone while the servants of the Emperor ran in the dark, fleeing from those who had once been His Children.
Cal was one of the few survivors of his unit in the PDF. When the attack had begun, he had been sleeping in his barracks, his dreams haunted by images of death and ruin. He had woken up at the bottom of a pile of rubble, with what had felt like the weight of a Titan pressing down on his chest. He had dug himself out over the course of several hours of bloody struggling and swearing, and things had gone downhill from there. From what he had been able to piece together, after the Chaos scum had killed all of Nalemos' leaders, some of them had bombarded the city from the highest spires, unleashing dread weaponry to raze whole districts to the ground. There didn't seem to have been any particular pattern to their targets – Cal suspected that the renegades had struck at random, indulging whatever whim had coursed through their diseased minds at the moment. He was even pretty certain that some of the districts targeted had contained traitor cultists before they had been flattened.
Not that it mattered to the Forsaken Sons. Tens of thousands of Nalemos' own people had been driven insane by the horror unleashed on the city, and joined the invaders' ranks. In their madness, they covered themselves in gaudy, unholy symbols that did little to protect them from the daemons roaming the streets and ran amok in feral mobs, killing all they crossed. As many of Cal's group had died to these poor bastards than to the depredations of the city's true enemies. At least they could fight back against the crazed humans, but when their path crossed that of a bunch of corrupt Space Marines, all they could do was run and hide – like they were doing now.
Cal's heart beat in his ears like a drill sergeant's training drum as he ran. He and the rest of his group had scattered like a flock of birds when the Astartes had found their hiding place. Now, it was each man for himself, until the hunters grew bored and they could regroup. At least one of them wouldn't come back, but such was the price of living another day in this Emperor-forsaken hell of a city. They were prey, their weapons useless against the Chaos Marines' power armor or the daemons' skin. They couldn't leave the city – the Forsaken Sons had complete control of the borders, and even if they had been able to leave, where would they have gone ? The Dark Gods had reached down and claimed Nalemos. When Warp-lightning cast a light on the horizon, it showed only a great wall of blackness and smoke. They were cut off the rest of the world, trapped in this realm of madness with the servants of the Youngest God, mortal or otherwise …
A blast of sonic energy obliterated a pile of rockrete to Cal's left, sending shrapnel all around. He felt several pieces of it hit his flesh, and though his sense of pain was dulled by the adrenalin coursing through his veins, he knew they would leave bad bruises if he lived long enough. He was already bleeding, from wounds taken during this flight and old ones torn open by the effort. In his fear-heightened state of perception, he could feel each drop of the blood leaving his body, and he figured he could sense the thirst of some great and dark beast for it.
He kept running, turning this way and that, hoping against hope that he could shake off his pursuers. The sound of discordant laughter behind him reminded him of just how vain that hope was. Despite their cumbersome weapons, the Forsaken Sons could follow him with ease. Cal knew that this last shot could have easily reached him, and he remembered all too well what such a thing would do to a human body. He had seen several of his friends burst apart that way, their flesh reduced to sludge and splattered several meters away from where they had last stood.
The Noise Marines – Cal remembered that Luc, the old man from the Army, who had fought in the Heresy before, had called them that, before they had gotten him too – were toying with him. They intended to take all the pleasure they could from the hunt before going in for the killing blow.
The pursuit went on for several more minutes. Cal's limbs were burning with lactic acid, but his fear was granting him seemingly infinite reserves of fresh strength. He knew, in some part of his oxygen-deprived mind, that it was an illusion – he was on the verge of collapsing out of sheer exhaustion. His lungs were on fire, and black swathes were obscuring the edge of his vision, making it even harder to navigate the devastated streets. Had anyone else been chasing him, he would have fallen already, accepting whatever fate laid in store for him rather than continue this torture. But these were Chaos Marines, hailing from the ranks of the infamous Third Legion. Even someone like Cal had heard the horror stories about the fallen sons of Fulgrim. Even here, half a Segmentum away from the Throneworld, astropaths and psykers had received visions of the Emperor's Children atrocious deeds on Terra. What Cal had heard of those days – and what he had seen since the hive-city had fallen – was like a white-hot iron brand in his mind, jolting him forward no matter how tired he may be.
Something hit him in the back and threw him to the ground. He fell face first, and felt several teeth and his nose break at the impact. With trembling arms, the terrified soldier crawled forward and used a nearby wall to push himself up. Placing his back to the wall, Cal looked around for the source of the impact, his legs barely able to keep him standing. He found it quickly, and immediately wished he had not.
A figure was crouching before him, taller than he was despite its posture. Cal instantly recognized it as one of the Chaos Marines, but this particular specimen was no foot soldier of the Legions, nor did he carry Warp-spawned sonic weaponry. His power armor was painted in purple, with gold and silver ornamentation and the emblem of the Forsaken Sons on its shoulder. From whatever original design it had followed, it had been reshaped by mundane craft and the energies of the Warp to reflect the true nature of its wearer.
His helm had become a mockery of an avian predator, with an open beak containing several rows of sharpened iron teeth while two eye-lenses of different colors glared down at Cal. The Astartes' legs ended in talons of metal and bone probably useful to perch atop structures but clearly unsuited to walking the relatively flat ground of the street. The crouching position the warrior was thus forced to take allowed Cal to see the jump-pack attached to his back. It was a burly and cumbersome thing, with two engines that looked nothing like the other devices of that kind Cal had seen before. Pulsing flesh and black veins were fused with darkened metal and cables crackling with Warp energy, and he could see purple flames emerging from the engines' bottom. The same unnatural fire told Cal that the strange weapon in the Raptor's hands was a flamer, and the soldier felt an incongruous surge of bleak hope at that realization. Being burned alive would be agonizingly painful, but at least it would be over quick. He closed his eyes when the Forsaken Son aimed the weapon, and waited for the Warp-fire to engulf him.
Heat made the skin of his face hurt and his eyes water, but he didn't die. Surprised, he opened his eyes, and saw that the Raptor had aimed the flamer above Cal and to the wall behind him. With a laugh that sounded like the screams of dying children, the Chaos Marine turned off his weapon, before activating his jump-pack and vanishing from Cal's sight in a blaze of purple fire and foul smoke. Puzzled, Cal looked at where the flamer had hit the wall …
Just in time to see the half-melted metal beams supporting the architecture gave way. The whole wall collapsed on Cal, burying him beneath stone and burning metal. Abject panic seized Cal's heart, and he desperately tried to move, to dig himself out of this grave. He couldn't breath. He could barely move. Several of his bones had broken. He kicked and struggled and screamed, wasting his precious air in mindless terror …
The vision ended, and Orpheus couldn't stop himself from taking a deep breath as his perceptions realigned with the senses of his own body. The sensation of suffocation and crushing death had been enjoyable, but what he had truly savored was the memory of the mortal's fear. As an Astartes, that emotion was unknown to him. He had heard that there were circumstances that would enable even a transhuman warrior such as himself to taste it, but he had never experienced them. He wondered if he would one day. With a purr of his power armor's servos, Orpheus ripped the hand of Cal's corpse off the arm it had been attached to. There was no blood, for the body had long emptied itself of vitae through its many deadly wounds. The Sorcerer planted the gruesome trophy on one of his shoulder pads' spike. The sparks of psychic energy that always coursed on his war-plate reached to the remnant, and Orpheus smiled as the piece of flesh twitched, dead nerves stimulated by the Empyrean's whims.
As he moved toward the next site pulling at his mind, Orpheus mused on the Raptor he had seen in Cal's last vision in his life. He had recognized the warrior. His name was Syphoras, and he had been one of Orpheus' brothers even before the Exodus and Arken's will had made all of them brothers in spirit if not in blood. Like all of the Forsaken Sons, Syphoras had changed much since the beginning of the rebellion. First when the Legion had found illumination and embraced the path of Excess, and then during the Exodus, when the streams of the Warp had molded flesh and soul alike. The two of them had been part of the same company, and had fought together at the gates of the Imperial Palace. While most of the Third Legion had abandonned orders and attacked the human population of the Throneworld, not all sons of Fulgrim had done so. Some had preferred the glory of the greatest battle of the war over the unrestricted carnage. It had been those warriors who had flocked to the Hand of Ruin when Arken had offered his help in leaving Terra.
Orpheus felt no anger toward those of his brethren who had not joined the fight for the Palace, although he knew many warriors from the other Legions did. He understood the motives of his Legion brothers, and did not believe things would have ended differently if the whole might of the Emperor's Children had followed the Warmaster's orders. Many more things than the Third's utter devotion to the Youngest God had stood in the path of Horus' victory. As Arken had pointed out all these months ago, all of the traitor Primarchs had made mistakes during the Heresy.
Still, the Sorcerer was glad to have joined the fight and been picked up by the Sons of Horus' warship when the Siege had ended in shame and failure. As a member of a warband as disparate as the Forsaken Sons, Orpheus could experience things that would have been out of his reach had he followed the rest of his Legion in their flight. The Neverborn spoke to him of what had become of his brothers, of the Legion Wars that raged across the Empire of the Eye. The scale of the battles they described was breathtaking, but Orpheus found wasteful to fight only other enemies of the Imperium. He and the rest of his brothers now scattered across Nalemos, were better off amongst the Forsaken Sons.
This city was the perfect example of why. Arken had delivered it to them on a silver platter, to do with as they wished. And not just the mortal followers of the Prince of Excess were welcome to the feast : daemons had come in great number as well. They had emerged from the shadows of the hive and slaughtered at the side of the Emperor's Children before vanishing back into the aether … most of them, anyway.
He could feel one of them nearby, a potent specimen if his sixth sense was to be believed, but its exact location eluded him. It seemed as if the daemon's presence was diluted, spread across a vast space and not focused inside a moving and hunting incarnation. Although he supposed it didn't really matter, he still had to be careful. Even if the Neverborn and himself were theoretically on the same side, the daemons having been summoned with the help of the Forsaken Sons, he didn't doubt for a second this fact would prevent them from turning against him if the whim took them. Neverborn were creatures of instinct and immediate hunger, not reasoning and anticipation. That was one of the reasons why the Prince of Excess cherished His servants within the Material plane – their conserved intellect enabled them to pursue more varied pleasures that their immortal counterparts, just like their flesh gave them senses to which the Neverborn could never pretend without lurking within the body of a host.
The pulse of soul-fire he had been tracing emanated from a wall that surrounded the location of that consciousness. Figures emerged from the wall, like the sculptures of some demented artists. They were people, reaching out with petrified limbs, their faces frozen in a single moment in time. Orpheus could feel the embers of soul-fire within them, the vestiges of the men and women they had been in life trapped within this daemonic structure for all eternity. Many of them were damaged, but the level of detail on those intact was astonishing. Each and every one of the reaching statues had the same expression of powerless horror … all but one.
A petrified Astartes stood calmly on the wall, petrified like all of the others. He wore a complete suit of armor, and the emblem of the aquila visible on his chestplate revealed that the monochrome sculpture had once been a Son of Calth. The body language of the position he had been fixed into radiated cold calm and self-control, despite the fact that the Space Marine had so obviously died and that his shade was now surrounded by the ghosts of those it had failed to save in life. Unlike all the other silhouettes, the Space Marine's was also armed, his right fist holding a combat knife as it hung slack at his side.
The statue was one of the rare entirely untouched, and Orpheus could guess why. There was a silent dignity to the figure, like a monument to a fallen hero. The Neverborn would hesitate in touching it, in fear that the echo it contained could somehow do they harm, while the mortal scions of Slaanesh were generally wise enough to avoid this region of the city. The Sorcerer was curious to see what manner of death this proud warrior had endured that had yet allowed his ghost to remain so steadfast even in damnation.
The son of Fulgrim placed his palm on the stone chestplate, and was instantly dragged from his body to a place of nightmares and shadows.
The Space Marine had died along the last hope for Nalemos' survival.
They came at him in an endless tide of foetid flesh and diseased minds. A horde of cultists, driven on by the false promises of their dark god, believing that slaying him would grant them the rewards they so craved. He stood alone against them, in the labyrinth that had replaced many of the hive's districts. The touch of the Warp had reshaped what had once been perfectly standardized hab-blocks into a maze of non-euclidean dimensions, trapping thousands of humans within its confines and slowly driving them mad. The Son of Calth suspected that the labyrinth was alive, the entire district being possessed by some malign intelligence of the Warp that delected in the torment it inflicted on those trapped within it.
The warrior had no name. He had once been a respected Sergeant of his Legion, a veteran of a hundred campaigns, beloved by all who fought alongside him for his humor and quick wit. But that had been before Calth. When the skies of that world had been poisoned by the Word Bearers, forcing all combatants to take refuge in the caverns below the surface, the Astartes had been there. He had fought to defend one of the acrologies, housing ten thousand people – farmers and their families – from the horrors unleashed on the world by the traitors. Several years later, when the acrology had been rediscovered by Ultramarines' reclamation teams, he had been the only survivor they had found. Since that day, he had not spoken a single word, taking a vow of silence at the same time he had renounced his former identity – listed in the Legion's archives as one of the tens of thousands of warriors lost during the Calth Engagement.
After the end of the Heresy, when the Codex had been imposed upon all the loyal Legions and new Chapters had been created from their division, he had been chosen by Captain Galen to be part of his company amongst the Sons of Calth. Even among this Chapter of survivors of Ultramar's most grievous loss, the nameless Astartes had been a solitary one. he had kept away from his brothers, fighting alongside them to cleanse the galaxy of Horus rebellion and remaining alone outside of battle. He knew his brothers thought him broken, and he knew they were probably right. What he had seen at Calth had left a wound in his soul which would never heal, but it wouldn't prevent him from doing his duty to the Emperor either. Duty gave his life purpose, and a purpose was all a true warrior needed in his life.
And now, his Captain was dead, his battle-brothers were gone, and the city they were sworn to defend had fallen into enemy hands. The people he was to protect had been driven mad and were trying to kill him and, with no escape from the infernal labyrinth, he had no other choice but to kill them. he was down on his last clip of bolter ammunition, and his chainsword had run out of fuel several days ago. He could still fight, with his combat knife and his bare gauntleted fists if necessary, but he was being worn down. He felt the eyes of the daemon that had created the maze upon him, and could taste the twisted pleasure it took in his situation and its frustration that, despite everything, he had not broken. The latter made him smile beneath his helm. No matter how grim his position may be, there was a chance of victory, however slim that chance and tiny that victory.
And so he kept fighting. Hours passed as he broke bones and tore flesh, memories of charging and retreating blurring together into an endless fight for his life and soul. At some point, his bolter finally clicked dry, and he discarded the weapon in favor of beating his foes to death with his fists. Wounds were accumulating on his body, as did the damage to his power armor. More than any physical injury, though, it was fatigue that was slowly bleeding him of his strength. He had barely a minute of respite between two engagements, as if the labyrinth was guiding its deluded captives toward him – which, on reflexion, it probably was. Space Marines could, thank to their transhuman augmentations, stay awake for weeks on end and remain in fighting condition, but even they had limits, and time held little sense inside the warped confines of this maze.
Already, the Son of Calth could feel that his brain was suffering from the lack of rest. His head hurt like someone was pounding it with a thunder hammer, and he thought he saw glimpses of slithering things at the edge of his vision. And then there were the voices : a choir of meaningless whispers, distant pleas for help and half-heard threats of death and endless suffering, all of which ceased the moment he tried to focus on them. He knew they were naught but the tricks of the Warp trying to creep inside his mind, and he tuned them out with an effort of will, silently reciting the Canticles of Battle to himself. But he was so, so very tired …
The Son of Calth jolted awake as pain like he had never known before reached his exhausted brain from all of his four limbs. Cursing himself mentally at the realization that he had blacked out, he took stock of his surroundings. He had been stripped of his armor, and was surrounded by a veritable ocean of emaciated, feverish madmen pulling at his arms and legs with all the force granted to them by insanity. There were so many of them that he felt his muscles and bones start to tear themselves apart, and no amount of trashing could free him from the press of bodies.
The last Son of Calth in Nalemos died without a sound leaving his lips, his last living thought spent on twisting his own neck with enough strength to shatter a human's back with his reinforced skull.
Being torn apart limb from limb was an entirely novel experience, and Orpheus savored every moment of it through the nameless Space Marine's eyes. So, this was how it had ended – how the last defender of Nalemos had died. After that, all that had remained were stragglers, fighting to survive, not to win. The fact that Orpheus had been unable to learn the name of the Son of Calth frustrated him, for he would have loved to tear his shade from the stone and bind it into servitude like he had Galen's.
This may also explain why the statue had remained untouched : by being nameless, the Astartes' soul was granted a mesure of protection against the denizens of the Warp too weak to track down his path to before the events of Calth. Still, despite his frustration, Orpheus had to admit that there was certain appropriate … drama to the whole situation. The warrior's death was a symbol of his kind's failure to protect this city, his absence of identification making him a perfect representation of his Chapter. Just like his defiance in death represented their ill-judged pride and belief that they could stand against the tides of Chaos.
As he gathered his power to grind the statue to dust, the Sorcerer froze. Something was pulling at his awareness, demanding his attention : the siren call of another step on his pilgrimage, another dead body left to rot with a part in the tale of Nalemos' fall. But it couldn't be so. What more remained for him to see ?
With a halfhearted thought and a push of kinetic energy, Orpheus crushed the stone helm of the statue to dust. He took no pleasure in the desecration, his mind focused on the new spiritual tether he was perceiving. There was something different with this one, but he couldn't identify what. Besides, his goal with these visions was to relive the key moments of Nalemos' fall – after the death of the last Son of Calth within its walls, what could possibly remain of import to see ?
He walked toward the psychic beacon at a brisk pace, his impatience increasing with every step, to the point he considered using his powers to teleport directly to his destination, despite the ludicrous danger of doing so here. He held back from it, doing his best to savour instead the anticipation, relishing in the phantasms his mind conjured about what he would find when he finally reached his goal.
The journey passed in the blink of an eye once he lost himself to his imagination, trusting his augmented reflexes to bring him safely to his goal. A normal human, moving at the same speed and without his full focus on his movements, would have slipped on the unstable piles of rubble and broken his neck a dozen times over, but Orpheus strode on effortlessly. And just like his physiology safeguarded him from mundane risks, the aura of power his soul was projecting in the Aether marked him to the Warp-touched madmen and the Neverborn as a being of power, not to be trifled with.
The Sorcerer emerged from his trance when he felt the proximity of his target, pulling himself from a delicious daydream involving Slaaneshi Secondborn and the tears of maidens. He found himself inside a ruined Manufactorium, filled with destroyed machinery and decaying corpses. There were more than a hundred human bodies here, most of which wore the rags typical of Nalemos' surviving population. But more than a score were dressed in the baroque hues favored by the mortal servants of the Forsaken Sons in they city. A battle had taken place here, but none of the human remnants were the one calling to Orpheus' psyche.
The object of his quest lied on the middle of the battleground, horribly mutilated by blade and bludgeon, to the point it took several seconds for the Sorcerer to recognize it for what it was, using the color of the blood and the texture of the bones as clues.
The corpse was that of Sha'eilat, one of the illuminated Eldar that Orpheus and Jikaerus had managed to return from the dead in an act of supremely delicious transgression of the universe's laws. The former Emperor's Children Legionary was surprised to see that a band of lowly humans had managed to kill one of the resurrected scions of Slaanesh. He knew it was possible for the Sha'eilat to die, of course – the Ultramarines had brought their whole kind to extinction during the Great Crusade, after all. But to see the evidence of it with his own eyes was still surprising, and the spectacle of his work ruined stoke the fire of anger within his guts.
Determined to learn what had happened here, and eager to see the world through the sublime senses of an Eldar, Orpheus placed his palm upon the remains, hoping the connection would be enough. Not enough remained of the xenos for him to locate its skull, and …
The Sha'eilat had died the death that always threatened all those who walked the Dark Paths.
As he stared down into the mass of living beings massed into the slave-pits, Lurackas' smile was as horrifyingly ugly as it was eerie and beautiful. The Sha'eilat's aspect reflected the dual nature of the Goddess that had claimed his soul all these centuries ago. One moment, he and his wonderfully wrought suit of black biological armor appeared to be a sublime statue, the work of some otherworldly gifted artist seeking to give form to the very idea of physical perfection. The next, he was a hideous monster, his evil soul plastered across his elegant features, his inhuman hungers radiating from his every move. He could usually control which face he showed to the rest of the universe, but the wonders he was perceiving were wrecking havoc on his self-control.
This mon-keigh city was drowning in the Sea of Souls, and every deed and thought of the faithful within its walls was pushing it deeper into the realms of the Gods. The laws of physics were already breaking down, and the very fabric of reality could now be shaped by those possessed of a strong enough will. Lurackas himself had little interest in performing such works, but he could appreciate its results. Impossibly huge and thin towers of shining crystal had been raised to contain the laboratories of the Gene-Lords, and great pits had been dug where to store the vast bounty of flesh the city had provided. Millions of slaves had been herded into these holes for the amusement of the children of She-Who-Thirsts and to serve as material for the Gene-Lords. Using the living bodies of these wretches as canvas, the reborn overlords of Parecxis were recreating the legions they had once commanded. Many were improving their old designs with the knowledge they had gained during their time in the Court of Excess. Some were working with their allies, the so-called Fleshmasters. Lurackas doubted that these arrogant mon-keigh had anything to teach to the Gene-Lords, who had spent centuries studying the myriad ways by which the living tissue of slaves may be turned to whatever use their better desired, but the niceties of the alliance had to be maintained. Besides, they had found a way to return the Sha'eilat to life, so perhaps the Astartes weren't as stupid as the rest of their pathetic species.
Although the alliance with the Forsaken Sons had been decreed by the Firstborn himself, whose statute marked him as the favorite of the Goddess, Lurackas couldn't shake off his disgust and contempt for the mon-keigh breed. He still remembered the Parecxis of old, when he had fought in the battles waged between Gene-Lords as a champion of their flesh-forged hosts. Back then, the mon-keigh had been cattle, living only to serve the will of their better. But the galaxy had changed a lot since then, and he would have to do with what he was given. Even if it meant tolerating and cooperating with the Forsaken Sons' most obnoxious servants.
'Are you done watching the spectacle yet ?' came the voice of precisely such an individual, interrupting Lurackas' enjoyment of the misery being inflicted on those in the pit.
'Yes,' he answered in a long-suffering tone, turning away from the unprotected edge of the pit.
The promontory directly oversaw the keeping area, where slaves were lowered on great, overcrowded plate-forms with as little safety as the pit's borders. Several mon-keigh had fallen down while looking at the slaves, the lucky ones dying as they crashed amidst the thousands of those they had betrayed. But Lurackas had a Sha'eilat sense of balance, and he knew he would never fall.
'A new group of survivors has been found,' began the creature which called itself Mikail. 'My scouts tell me that there are almost a hundred of them this time.'
'Then they must be a resourceful group,' noted the Sha'eilat warrior.
Most of the groups of mon-keigh they had hunted in the last weeks numbered no more than a dozen. In the first days of the invasion, they had herded panicked mobs of hundred of thousands, leading them straight into open spaces that collapsed into a pit when the Gene-Lord for whom they were working found that he had enough subjects gathered. But after that, only the craftiest and luckiest had escaped the thousands of Slaaneshi devotees hunting through the ruins.
In a stark lesson on the mon-keigh's nature, these individuals operated in small groups, scavenging what they needed from the ruins. Basic necessities, however, weren't the true reason for the groups' small numbers. Indeed, the attack of the Forsaken Sons had hit the hive like a great disaster, killing millions in the first hour alone as the Warp's touch spread cataclysm and destruction. Far more people had died to the 'natural' effects of the attack than at the hand of the invaders, and despite their number the children of She-Who-Thirsts could scarcely control a tenth of the immense, bloated hive-city. That left plenty of resources laying in the ruins in various states of decay for the survivors to claim. Trust, however, was in shorter supply than food and water. With glorious madness spreading like an infection, the survivors kept to themselves, wary of any other scavengers they may cross on their excursions away from their hideouts. They stayed with their families and closest friends, forming packs of prey easily dispatched or captured by the hunting parties of the Chaos invaders. A group of a hundred survivors was unheard of at this stage of Nalemos' collapse – well, unless you counted the millions massed in the slave-pits and fed chemical-rich liquid and the recycled carcasses of the Gene-Lords' failed experiments.
'Lead on, then,' Lurackas commanded, feigning not to see the flare of fury on Mikail's face at being so addressed. The half-breed's brooding anger at his position beneath the Sha'eilat was sometimes amusing, but it paled now before the prospect of a new hunt.
The two of them walked to where the rest of their hunting party was stationed. About fifty cultists were laying around in the abandoned warehouse, indulging in whatever debauchery had captured their dull and bland imaginations. Lurackas was the only Sha'eilat in this group – the dubious honor of being paired with the mon-keigh cultists' leader falling to him simply because he had been the one to first contact the mortal. The rest of the Sha'eilat who weren't Gene-Lords were similarly dispersed among the other hunting groups, though a lucky few had been accepted by groups of Forsaken Sons, and hunted alongside the transhuman warriors.
At Mikail's command, the cultists began to rise and gathered their equipment. For all that he despised the half-breed, Lurackas had to admire his hold on his wretched little army. They were ready in less than five minutes, and left the relative stability of the Gene-Lords' district for the ruins. On the way, they passed several Forsaken Sons patrolling, keeping a disinterested watch in the unlikely case of an attack.
Once in the wild area, the hunting party began to move carefully, avoiding the hordes of madmen and careful not to give away its presence. Mikail's scouts had not found any sentinel near the survivors' hiding place, which was surprising but not unheard of – several hunting parties had used poorly concealed sentinels as a way to locate fresh prey. But they could still be noticed by wanderers returning to their base after a scavenging trip, and since most of the cultists wore clothing that made Lurackas laugh as much as want to cut their throats, they had to rely on advanced scouts to ensure the way forward was clear.
These scouts were the product of the Fleshmasters' experiments, having endured lesser versions of the chirurgies by which the Astartes of the particular bloodline that had dedicated itself to She-Who-Thirsts. Implanted organs and rewired brains had gifted them with a supernatural sense of hearing that also made them unable to feel anything other than auditive stimulation – a great way to ensure they would wear their camouflage gear and not the ludicrous tunics favoured by the rest of the mon-keigh rabble, Lurackas had to admit. One of them came back to report to Mikail, and the Sha'eilat warrior took a moment to admire the work of the Hall of Aclepios' lords. The mon-keigh – Lurackas was honestly unable to tell its gender – had two holes where its ears should have been, its skull forcefully broken open to allow for the crude bio-mechanical implants that granted it its enhanced perceptions. Stitches from the brutal operation spread all across its hairless head, keeping its skin in place and the dislocated parts of its skull together.
'He wants to talk to you, Lurackas,' called Mikail, and the warrior moved to the scout's side, unceremoniously shoving the cultists' leader away.
The scout remained silent, watching Lurackas with wide eyes. Deciding that terrified respect could wait until after the hunt was over, Lurackas was about to order the mortal to get on with it, when suddenly, something hit him from behind, and he felt a warm sensation inside his armor. He turned to see what had happened, and saw Mikail, holding up a blade that dripped with black blood.
'What do you think you are …'
The next strike took Lurackas in the throat. The blade cut through his armor like it wasn't here, and tore into his flesh. Immediately, blood that should have irrigated his brain began to pour out of his body or down his respiratory system, and the Sha'eilat began to cough weakly as his lungs filled with his own blood. He fell, and immediately the scout caught one of his arms and pressed it down the ground, followed by more cultists, who were laughing maniacally at their manhandling of their former superior.
The pain … was too great. He should be able to endure such a wound, even before his rebirth had granted him some of the regenerative capabilities of the Neverborn. The throat injury, perhaps not, but the wound on his back should have healed by now. He had tested his healing capabilities soon after his resurrection, watching in fascination as the cuts he inflicted to himself vanished in the time it took him to breath. But this one refused to close, and the sense of numbness spread across his body, robbing him even of the pleasure of such an agony.
'See that blade, Lurackas ? I wonder, do you recognize it ? Oh, I forgot, it is difficult to speak when drowning in your own blood.'
Mikail was holding a serrated knife, its metal shining with the reflected light of the burning machines in impossible spirals of illumination. Even with his consciousness slowly fading, Lurackas knew it to be an artifact of power, carrying the touch of the Gods into the Materium since long before Arken had plunged the stars into the Warp. This was the reason his wounds weren't healing. The blessings on that weapon were countering his own. For the first time since his return from the Court of Excess, Sha'eilat knew fear as the realization that he was going to die hit him, and half-forgotten memories of what waited on the other side began to resurface.
'It was so easy to drag you away. Always eager to prove your superiority over us humans, weren't you ? But you are not going to be the star this time. You are going to die here, Lurackas. I am going to cut you apart, and we are going to feast on your corpse. Can you imagine what rewards the Dark Prince will bestow upon us for such an offer ? The blood of one of His own children ! Is there any greater delicacy in this galaxy ?'
The half-breed lowered his face until he was almost kissing Lurackas, and kept speaking, his voice barely more than a whisper :
'And then, after you are dead, we are going to kill all the fools hiding in that Manufactorium, and leave your desecrated remains amidst the carnage. Even if the Forsaken Sons or your kindred find them, they will just think you got killed by "lowly mon-keigh". It would surprise me greatly if they wasted the effort of bringing you back after such an ignominious death.'
The pinned down alien tried to speak, to spit down his defiance and swear that he would return from the grave and inflict upon Mikail and his followers tortures they couldn't imagine – but all that left his lips was a weak gurgle. Darkness closed in around Lurackas as he kept struggling against the mon-keigh pressing his limbs to the ground, his pale blood flowing from his wound like a torrent. Mikail was leering above him, his face torn open by a too-large smile that revealed the additional teeth at the end of his jaw. Ecstasy was written plain on the hybrid's features as he held the knife before Lurackas' eyes, and the last emotion the Sha'eilat felt before slipping away, back into the Goddess' acidic embrace, was rage at seeing such a sacred relic in the hands of such a lowly creature.
Orpheus let go of the Sha'eilat corpse in nothing less than shock. Not shock at the relived sensation of death, but at the simple idea that a mortal – even one elevated like Mikail had been, with the blood of Fulgrim himself flowing, albeit diluted, through his veins – could plot the death of a Sha'eilat and succeed. Part of him screamed to warn Arken, to tell him of this potential threat to their alliance with the reborn illuminated Eldar. If word of that murder reached Ezyrithn the Firstborn … well, all bets were off on how the creature would react. Perhaps he would turn on Arken, or perhaps he would simply plot revenge against Mikail alone. Perhaps he wouldn't even care, and laugh at the folly of his kindred, to be killed in such a manner. Nevertheless, Orpheus had to warn Arken. But he was too busy reveling in this sensation. How long had it been since he had actually been shocked by anything ?
Was it during the Laer campaign ? When he had had his nerves rearranged into new patterns by the Legion's Apothecaries ? When he had learned of the coming rebellion, and of the side the Phoenician had chosen for the Emperor's Children ? When he had fought on the grounds of Isstvan III, murdering those who had once been his brothers because it was his lord's command ? He couldn't remember. All of his memories blurred together in a sea of excesses. But he knew that it had been a very long time since he had last been able to experience shock. The path of the Profligate One required its followers to discard all notions of morality, and embrace the myriad sensations their bodies could grant them. This made genuine shock, the simple surprise of beholding something that wasn't previously part of your conception of the universe, a rare and treasured thing.
To fight against one's fellow servant of the Dark Prince … that was the source of his shock. During the Heresy, he had never fought against another of the Emperor's Children. Duels to the death were hardly uncommon in the Legion, but as a Sorcerer, his path had kept away from such circles. That was why the image of Mikail killing Lurackas had such an impact on him. What would he feel if things went downhill ? If the Sha'eilat and the Forsaken Sons turned on each other in one more glorious battle of the Great Game ?
The Sorcerer laughed, and began the walk back to the Forsaken Sons' camp. This matter required more reflexion. He would think about it while excruciating a few humans, and then make a decision whether or not to warn the Awakened One.