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Azarok Sector – Berrenos System
744.M32
War came to Berrenos III once more, even as the embers of its apocalypse smouldered still.
In the wake of the Chaos fleet's defeat, Morkoth withdrew his remaining ships to the planet's orbit, meeting up with the Eidolon of Regret. The Dark Mechanicum forge-barge had been left behind, its value too high to risk in a direct engagement with the foe. Until the last moment, its assembly lines and infernal foundries continued to spit out weapons and ammunition, which were delivered to the Unbound Host's great stronghold on the surface in a steady stream of cargo conveyors.
When Morkoth judged that they could hold their position no longer, the remains of the Unbound fleet broke orbit, seeking refuge in the immense void of the Berrenos system, away from any of its planetoids. Their ships were faster than the bulk of the Imperial armada, and the Unbound fleetmaster was rightfully confident that the Imperial Navy would not attempt to pursue them.
While keeping an eye on Morkoth's force, the Imperial fleet turned its attention on Berrenos III. The planet had been made a desolate wasteland by the Chaos invasion, its once-populous hive-cities turned into ever-burning wrecks. Auspex scans revealed that there were still signs of life within these ruins, but the Inquisitors rejected any proposition to try and rescue these potential survivors.
Berrenos III had been tainted by the forces of Chaos, and its people were considered lost to the Emperor's light. The Inquisitors knew that not all civilians had been turned to the Ruinous Powers : there would be plenty who had somehow managed to survive, hiding from the invaders in terror, prayers to the God-Emperor on their lips. But they also knew, from bitter experience, that some would be, and they would not risk the crusade to save a few thousand souls.
Exterminatus wasn't an option, not with the strength at their disposal and the risk that destroying the planet may damage the Warp routes leading from Berrenos to the rest of Azarok. But Inquisitorial ships parted from the Imperial armada, and rained death upon the husks of hive-cities and settlements until not a single trace of life remained there.
The primary fortress of the Chaos forces was easy to identify. In their hubris, the leaders of the Unbound Host had turned one of Berrenos III's mountains into a vast stronghold, and surrounded it by a circle of lesser forts where hundreds of thousands of heretics awaited the coming of judgement.
After a few testing salvoes, the engine-seers calculated that breaching the void-shields covering the fortress would require focusing the near-totality of the Imperial firepower, leaving them exposed to a strike from the remaining heretical space forces. Landing near the hollowed mountain was also ill-advised, as these would be the most heavily trapped grounds on the planet as well as those within range of the stronghold's anti-air guns.
Other landing zones were found, both close enough to the Chaos fortress and suitable to unload the numerous armies massed in the Imperial transports. Space Marine strike forces were sent first, ready to deal with any ambush waiting, and after them were sent the transports of the Astra Militarum. Millions of Guardsmen were unloaded onto Berrenos III, yet for all their multitude they were but the tip of the spear that would be thrown onto Azarok to liberate the Sector. The hulls of the gargantuan troop carriers were emptied, as the destruction of the Chaos forces on the planet was the main goal of the first Imperial thrust into Azarok, and the strength of the enemy defenses would require all of the strength at the disposal of the Imperial war council.
Both Chapter Masters of the Red Hunters and Purple Stars had come to Azarok, and both sat on this council. Alongside them was Inquisitor Galloreene, representing the Ordos presence in the fleet, Lord General Frederic Elgein, who was in overall command of the Imperial Guard Regiments, and Lady Admiral Rebecca Del Baranthir. These five souls were the masters of the Imperial forces in Berrenos, and with the quiet departure of the Grey Knights, the fate of the system was in their hands alone. Together, they devised the deployment of their forces. There were several approaches to the Chaos fortress, and by separating their troops so that they could follow these different paths to the same objective, the Imperial commanders were hoping to surround the heretics, trapping them in their hollow mountain with nowhere left to run.
With the sound of boots and tank tracks crushing the earth, the armies of the Imperium began to march across Berrenos III's continents. The nearest host was still over eight hundred kilometers from the heretic stronghold, while the furthest was almost an entire continent away, with three thousand kilometers to cross. But those were distances as seen from space – the actual paths to the goal would be much more complicated than mere straight lines. The forces assigned to each landing zone had been chosen for their ability to cross the terrain they would face on their way as much as in combination that would be able to face any opposition.
This turned out to be a sensible precaution, for the first ambush happened less than six hours after the first pair of Departmento Munitorum-approved boots hit the ground. The Unbound Lord had let loose those armies under his command ill-suited for defensive fighting, tasking them with making the Imperials suffer as they advance across Berrenos III.
The Knights of Beribbon, cannibal riders mounted on the mutated beasts of their homeworld, caught the Astarian 149th by surprise when they climbed down several hundred meters of sheer cliff-face. Despite their initial victory, the Knights were soon wiped out, as the 297th Torrian Artillery Regiment unleashed the wrath of its engines upon them during their ritualistic post-victory feast.
The Cerulean Companies were the greatest of their world's mercenary forces, and their banner had flown for hundreds of years when the Unbound Lord had arrived. A coalition of a hundred captains, each commanding a hundred men, women, and things that were not human at all, they had fought for the coin of the Dread Dukes of Jeveloth – until those sorcerous lords had been slaughtered by the Unbound, their palaces cast down and their treasures plundered. Now they fought with all the tricks they had learned during those years, unleashing a nightmare of guerilla warfare upon the Astra Militarum. By the time the last of the ten thousand Cerulean mercenaries had been slain and the contract binding them to Mahlone's will was fulfilled at last, they had cost the Imperium near twenty time that number of Guardsmen, along with a Governor's ransom of armor and materiel.
As the Olinean 732nd Armoured Regiment crossed the misted plains that had once served as a dumping ground for the refineries of a nearby hive, they were beset by feral ghosts. The Sisters of An-Rachlos called forth the spirits their order had bound and used as weapons for generations. The wraiths passed right through the tanks' armor and made sport of the crew inside, until the Regiment's sanctioned psykers located the Sisters through the chemical mist and their commanding officer ordered a blind and overwhelming strike on that position.
East of the Chaos stronghold, in a pass snaking across a chain of mountains, the Count of Herienkoff and his retinue of soul-scarred servants held their ground against the Vostroyan 17th for an entire week, using their surroundings to counter the foe's greater numbers. When the Count was finally slain, his corpse burst apart, revealing a vast insectoid monstrosity that killed dozens of Vostroyan Firstborn before flying off into the mountains, never to be seen again. It took three hours and twenty-seven executions by the Commissars to get the Regiment moving again, so horrifying had been the sight – and even then, the Vostroyans didn't start to relax until the pass was behind them.
The Third Company of the Red Hunters, reunited after the fleet engagement, spent its entire journey harassed by the Congregation of the Brass Hand. The cult had been given free reign into one of the eastern fallen hive-cities, and its magisters had forcibly inducted tens of thousands of Imperial subjects into its ranks. Men, women and children, their right hand severed at the wrist and replaced by cheap brass prosthetics branded with unholy sigils, hurled themselves at the ceramite-clad transhumans, driven to madness by fear and the whispers of their own tainted hands. It was barely enough to slow the Red Hunters, who waded through blood and corpses. But while the Chapter's service to the Inquisition had hardened the minds of all but the youngest Hunters to such sights and deeds, such was not the case for the human armies that followed in their wake, whose soldiers were horrified at the carnage the Emperor's Angels of Death had wrought.
For twelve days, the Assault Marines of the Purple Stars' Second and Fourth Companies hunted the Anointed of Dusk amidst mounds of rusted machinery, ancient ruins that predated the current invasion of Berrenos III by millennia. The running battle between the jetpack-wearing Space Marines and the shrouded mutants only ended when the champion of the Anointed was dragged beneath the antediluvian rubble by things which resembled mecha-dendrites but were something entirely different. Terrified by the techno-horror their battle had awakened, the Anointed of Dusk sought to flee, only to be slaughtered by the rest of the two Companies' warriors, who had been walking around the edges of that dread battlefield. Upon receiving word of what had occurred within, the Chapter Master ordered the region abandoned for now – whatever laid beneath these ruins of the Dark Age of Technology would be a concern for another day.
All the while, Imperial Navy fighters (those not rated for space flight and that had thus been spared from the Unkindness' claws) duelled with the escorts of Dark Mechanicum bombers, keeping the forces on the ground safe. Skies choked with pollution were the theatre of a hundred engagements and more, the aces of the Navis Imperialis matching their skills against the infernal perceptions of Argentian constructs.
One by one, the armies that survived the journey arrived to where the Unbound Host had chosen to make its stand against the wrath of the Imperium it had defied. Trenches were dug and bastions raised all around the Hollow Mountain, while the Imperial armada established a blockade above, cutting off all avenues of escape. And then, finally, weeks after Imperial planetfall, the battle for Berrenos III began in earnest.
Six months later …
Marcus the Riven stood on an observatory carved high up in the flank of the Hollow Mountain (they had heard the name in an intercepted Imperial transmission, and it had spread through the ranks – apparently the Lord Mahlone had found it amusing). From there, he watched the battle unfold on the northern side of the Unbound Host's last fortress on Berrenos III.
An array of auspexes was spread across the observatory, with their crews of hereteks and servitors, scanning the plain below and sending the collated data both to the Hollow Mountain's strategium deep within and to Marcus' own custom, bulky data-pad. There, a machine-spirit that had once been the brain of the conqueror of a world of the Wailing Storm analysed the information and provided a simplified overview to the Riven.
Three months had passed since the last of the outlying bastions had fallen, its defenders retreating across the plains between the Hollow Mountain and the ring of ruined lesser strongholds. Already millions had died in the siege, Imperials and members of the Unbound Host both. Their bodies littered the network of trenches spreading from the Hollow Mountain's artillery range to the bottom of the peak. And yet still more fought. Garbled transmissions from the remaining fleet had told of a steady flow of Imperial reinforcements, all of whom were sent there, to this siege.
Here and there, amidst the blood and mud, demigods clashed. Unbound warriors in black armor fought the Purple Stars and the Red Hunters, while around them mortals died in droves. Astartes on both side of the conflict had been slain by lesser troops since the beginning of the Battle of Berrenos – although Marcus suspected some of the most martially-inclined factions of the Host would disagree with that classification – but in the end, it was better to leave the demigods fight among themselves rather than rely on the hundred-to-one chance that someone would manage to bring them down.
Unfortunately, the Host had precious few demigods left to bring to the field. A great many Unbound had died in the void battle, and few of the survivors had managed to reach the stronghold ahead of the Imperial fleet. Morkoth and the remnants of the Forsaken Sons' fleet hung in the void still, preventing the Imperial armada from bringing to bear the amount of firepower needed to breach the void-shields covering the stronghold. But by the same token, if Morkoth were to bring his Unbound to reinforce the defenders, his ships would be broken by the Corpse-God's slaves.
They still had the edge in sorcery. The Imperials had learned the hard way not to make advances after dusk. There were voices in the trenches at night, lurking in the shadows cast by flickering torches and whispering awful things to soldiers on both sides. The barrier between reality and the Immaterium had been thinned by bloodshed and sorcery, and the Neverborn were pushing, trying to get in. Ancient daemons of plague and terror, born in the long-forgotten conflict that had seen Mankind first learn the horrors of trench warfare, buzzed over the battlefield, plunging into the unprotected corpses of the slain and making puppets of rotten meat with which to walk the broken land.
To the Riven, it felt almost like home.
There were priests in the trenches that bore the sigil of the Inquisition, and Librarians as well as sanctioned psykers attached to the Imperial Guard. They castigated the Neverborn with words of faith and hatred, or burned their incarnate forms with psychic fire and lightning. None of the Imperial Warp-sensitives were ever allowed to walk alone : more than a few had succumbed to daemonic possession, and now they all lived under the threat of a swift execution.
The Host had priests of their own, their eyes opened to the Primordial Truth by the myriad horrors of the Wailing Storm, their faith sharpened by the Dark Apostles of the Forsaken Sons into a blade they wielded at the behest of their transhuman masters. The House of Darkness, the Circle of Hunger and the Path of Unbalance had held dominion over entire nations before the Unbound had found them. They walked in the trenches still, shouting hymns of ruin and glory, bestowing dark miracles upon those willing to pay their terrible price.
In the early days of the siege, there had been many such martyrs, who had blazed bright through the trenches as infernal energies coursed through their flesh. Such daemonhosts had ripped through the lines of Guardsmen, slaughtering dozens before being put down. But by sheer attrition, the flow of those willing to offer up their soul to the Neverborn had all but dried, and now the Ruinous priests had only the occasional zealot willing to burn to help turn around a desperate battle. Then again, all battles were desperate now.
And so they bled, and died, to make the enemy bleed in kind. Marcus wasn't blind. He knew the Host could not hold Berrenos, not for long. Nor had it ever been meant to. The mongrel horde had been thrown in the path of the Imperium's retribution. And like the Shiva's Wrath, whose broken remains now drifted in orbit after the Imperials had pummelled it to scrap, it had not been meant for more than one strike.
They were all going to die here, one defiant last stand against the Imperium's gargantuan war machine, throwing their lives away in the hope of forcing its gears to stall. This did not worry Marcus : the fear of death had been torn from him long before the Unbound Host had found him. He had lived far longer than he had any right to, born as he had been on that island of black, jagged rocks surrounded by a roiling sea haunted by leviathans. But at the same time, he did not think that the Unbound Lord was as content with their inevitable doom as he. Mahlone had to be planning something, and Marcus was curious to find out what it was.
Most of it was madness, but some of it was courage. In Marcus' opinion, the Imperials had made a mistake. They had completely surrounded the Unbound Host, cutting off all possible paths of escape. With nowhere to run, the only thing left to do was to fight and die well, making the foe pay such a price the Gods would take notice. Had he been in command of the Imperial war effort, he would have dedicated enough resources to hold the Unbound Host down and send the rest of his forces to the help of the Azarok Sector. But the pride of the Imperium would not let them continue their liberation campaign until the Forsaken Sons had been purged from this system first.
Marcus' role had once been to keep the numerous mortal factions of the Unbound Host under control, to prevent them from turning against one another and to speak for them at the war councils of the Lord of the Unbound. With the siege underway, that role had more or less ended, and the Riven had instead been assigned to the observatory, to put his mind to work helping anticipate the actions of the Imperial side and direct the reserves to where they were most needed. There was another observatory on the Hollow Mountain's southern side, where the lord Kakios had settled, but the northern front was Marcus' to direct – and direct it he did.
This was his gift, the reason why he had survived longer than any of his people. He could read the currents, see what was about to happen before it did. It had helped him overcome his initial difficulties in understanding other people, and had allowed him to keep a horde of millions of fanatics and madmen from tearing itself apart. But its first purpose had always been to see the threat before it could kill him. He had heard some of the older Astartes say that this was similar to the Lord Mahlone's own brand of genius, though he suspected there were differences lost on the casual observer.
Marcus had watched Mahlone during the conquest of the Wailing Storm. The Chosen of Arken had flashes of inspiration that let him see paths not considered by others, either in single combat or on a strategic level, but it fell to others – usually the lord Ygdal – to make that vision a reality. Marcus' own talent was more mundane, more grounded. He saw threats before they manifested, and he could see how to act to stop them. The artillery of the Hollow Mountain was potent, but the ammunition stores were running low, and every shell had to be carefully spent for maximum effect. With a word, he could command the cannons, unleashing devastation upon any mass of Imperial forces that were detected by the scouts and auspexes.
In the last months, he had seen many things, as the strategists of the Imperial Guard used every trick they could think of to try and breach the gate at the base of the mountain's northern side.
And what he saw right now made no sense. The Imperials were gathering strength, bringing in tens of thousands of fresh Guardsmen up the trenches and at the base of the Hollow Mountain. But as things stood, launching an assault would only see them slaughtered by the Unbound Host's coordinated response – unless …
Driven by some nameless instinct, Marcus looked up, and something like a smile twisted his lips. There, through the pollution and ash-clouds that cut off the peak of the Hollow Mountain, human-sized figures were falling. Drop-troopers, unleashed from low orbit with only the grav-chutes attached to their back to give them any chance of surviving the fall. They were just small enough to be all but impossible for the anti-air defenses of the Hollow Mountain to target them accurately.
Marcus laughed, delighted, and clapped his scarred hands together. One really had to admire such suicidal bravery. Inaccurate or not, the fire of the anti-air batteries was cutting through the drop-troopers, slaughtering dozens of them even as the rest continued their descent.
One of the new troop transports arriving in the system must have brought them, giving the Imperial commanders a new tool in their arsenal. If they could destroy the observatory, they would effectively rip out one of the Unbound Host's eyes, and there was no telling what damage the troopers would do before being caught and killed. There were hundreds of kilometers of tunnels across the Hollow Mountain, and most of its defenders were either dead or holding its gates. A few squads could remain hidden for weeks, launching hit-and-run attacks on important targets and diverting strength from the frontlines in order to keep them secure.
"Prepare yourself, my friends," Marcus called out to the hereteks. "We are about to have company."
Shrieks of corrupt machine-cant filled the air as the hereteks realized their peril. They pulled out of consoles made of meat as much as metal and gathered their minions to their side. None of them were defenceless : the inner politics of the Dark Mechanicum were, Marcus had been told, even more vicious than those of their loyalist counterpart. Whether the precautions that had kept this bunch safe from assassination would hold up to real soldiers was yet to be seen.
Marcus himself carried no weapon. He had never had the need for them.
The first drop-trooper hit the ground, his grav-chute slowing him down at the very last second. To his credit, it only took him a few seconds to get his bearings – but before he could even draw his las-gun, half a dozen hereteks had already opened fire, reducing him to nothing more than a greasy stain on the observatory's stone floor.
The second and third Guardsmen met similar fate, but eventually one of them managed to hit the ground rolling, dodging the hereteks' fire until he reached one of them and stabbed it in the chest with a combat knife. As the hereteks' attention focused on that single soldier, his comrades still in the air triggered their grav-chutes early, and began to rain down las-fire upon the hereteks from above, catching them by surprise. Within moments, the observatory had been cleaned, and nearly forty drop-troopers stood scattered on the platform. None of them, Marcus noted, had missed the observatory or failed to trigger their grave-chute in time.
"Well done," he called out to the drop-troopers in Low Gothic, and his accent sent shivers down their spines even as they turned toward him. "Now let's see if you can kill me, slaves of the Corpse-God."
A half-circle of elite Imperial storm troopers aimed their weapons at Marcus, somehow sensing he was the real threat on the balcony, preparing to fire all at once. The clicking of their vox was the only audible sign that they were communicating with each other beneath their sealed helmets.
The Riven smiled, and the sight of his teeth made them open fire.
Iames of the Unbound saw the universe collapse around him.
It was always different. This time, there was thunder and screams, and the laughter of daemons. It was all he could hear as reality cracked and fell apart. Matter split and time frayed, letting through the things that dwelled in the Empyrean and beyond, abominable shapes that could never be comprehended by those born of the Materium. His own body dissolved as the laws that held it together became obsolete, and he felt something impossibly vast brush against what remained of his essence …
The vision ended, and he was back on the battlefield, standing at the Hollow Mountain's northern gate, with sorcerous fire in his hand and the extremity of his tentacle wrapped around his dagger's handle. Before him, hundreds of Guardsmen were emerging from the trenches, rushing through the no-man's-land separating the trenches from the gate in half-squads, too small and spread out for the heavy artillery to target. Next to him, heavy guns fired into the Imperials, tearing flesh asunder and sending the broken bodies join those already laid down upon the broken earth.
Around him were those who had been chosen to defend the gate. The Monks of the Nameless Day had begun as a sect of the Imperial Creed, whose members lived in seclusion atop snow-covered mountains, separated from the rest of the world and spending their existence meditating on the words of the God-Emperor. But when the Wailing Storm had been unleashed, they had been closest to the skies, and the entire monastery had been warped into something very different by the baleful energies emanating from the sundered heavens.
When the Unbound Host had come to their world, the Monks of the Nameless Day had emerged from the walls of their monastery clad in suits of baroque armor and carrying heavy melee weapons of infernal design, and had knelt before the Unbound without a word. As far as Iames knew, none of them had ever spoken since – nor had any of them taken off their armor, even to eat or drink.
The fifty Monks stood alongside Iames at the gate, defending the weapon emplacements behind them. They were locked in battle with the few Guardsmen who had made it to the foot of the Hollow Mountain, cutting them down with ruthless efficiency, every stroke of their blades a prayer to the Ruinous Powers, that they may bring forth the Day for which they lived.
Iames' hold onto the flow of battle had not been interrupted by his vision of universal oblivion. He knew that the Imperials were pushing again, sending thousands more to assault the gate despite the horrendous casualties they were taking in the process. They were pouring from the trenches, having defeated the infiltrator squads of the Unbound Host scattered across them.
In his chest, Iames' hearts beat. One.
With an effort of will, he intensified the aura of dread that permanently cloaked him like a mantle. One of the reason why the Monks had been assigned to this duty along with him was that they weren't affected by it – a side effect of whatever transformation the Wailing Storm had wrought upon them.
The Guardsmen recoiled with horrified cries, their feeble wills overwhelmed. Some collapsed outright, bloody tears running from their eyes as they convulsed, their brains fried by sheer terror. The few who continued their charge were cut down by the Monks, their feeble weaponry failing to penetrate their thick plated armor. Every cut was aimed according to unholy geometries that had been burned into the minds of the men who had become the Monks, every blow an offering to the Nameless Day they had given themselves unto.
Two.
Iames tasted blood in his own mouth as well. Though Jereb's grand ritual had been thwarted and the psychic power it had accumulated to sunder the Veil been used to cauterize the tear instead, cauterized flesh was still sensible. All across Berrenos III, any use of psychic power resonated with increased strength, sending pain-filled echoes across the Immaterium. Ritualized sorcery was ironically safer, which was why the dark priests could perform their ceremonies without being devoured by the very entities they were calling upon, but drawing directly upon one's unnatural talents now came with an increased cost.
Iames swallowed a mouthful of his own blood, just as a glimpse of red drew his attention back to the trenches.
Three.
There they were – the Space Marines. Without transhuman support, there was no way for mere mortals to take this gate, not as long as Iames and the Monks of the Nameless Day held it. By the color of their warplate, those were Red Hunters – the Purple Stars had been deployed in the southern front, and while the maze of trenches had made sure Iames had fought them, all but two of the nineteen Space Marines he had killed since the beginning of the siege had belonged to that Chapter.
Seven Red Hunters charged, firing their bolters with pin-point accuracy. With a wave of his tentacle, Iames raised a kinetic shield before him and the Monks. The shells slammed into it uselessly, but such a barrier wouldn't hold up to the warriors themselves. Within seconds, the Space Marines clashed with the Monks of the Nameless Day.
Four.
Lightning sparked from Iames' mutated limb, catching two Red Hunters and burning them to ash within their armor. They had marked him as the greatest threat, and two of them parted to keep the Monks at bay while the remaining trio converged on the Sorcerer. There was something in the way they moved that told Iames that this wasn't the first time these warriors faced a wielder of the Warp's powers. All members of the Red Hunters Chapter seemed to possess that kind of experience – not that it had saved them from him.
Five.
He took a step back just in time to avoid a blow that would have severed his head. The air around him darkened as he drew upon the power of the Warp to intensify his dread aspect once more – he didn't expect the Space Marines to panic, but even they reacted to the sudden pressure on their psyche. That brief slip was enough for him to imbue his tentacle with eldritch energy and strike at the helmet of one of the three, the Warp-touched flesh pulping metal, bone and brain.
Six.
His boot slammed on the ground, and spectral hands rose from the blood-soaked earth, clasping at the two Red Hunters and hampering their mobility long enough for him to blast the one to his left with a bolt of psychic energy that tore a smoking hole in his chest.
Seven.
With a might war-cry, the remaining Space Marine descended upon him, his chainsword held in both hands as it plunged toward him. Iames slapped the weapon aside with his tentacle, teeth clenched as the pain of the adamantium teeth biting through the skin and spilling blood registered even through his deadened senses.
Eight.
He raised his left hand, aiming the dagger at the loyalist's gorget …
Nine.
Once again, the cracks in reality began to spread, time slowing to a crawl as everything fell apart around Iames. Light faded as darkness engulfed all things, drowning him in a tide of frozen, endless night. The Sorcerer hardened his mind, and prepared to witness the universe's end once more, while in his mind's eye he considered the battlefield his body still stood on and considered his next move. This, after all, was the nature of those who followed Chaos – how to take advantage of the curses you collected on the Path to Glory.
In the Wailing Storm, the hag had cursed him with her last breath. "You have destroyed my world," she had croaked out amidst the flames that burned down her mansion of rotten wood held together by the skins of her victims, "and so you will watch your world end until the day you die." And in his exhaustion from their duel, he had not felt the power behind those words until they had tightened around his soul and the cycle of hallucinations had begun. Every time, he would get the time it took for his two hearts to beat nine time, before the vision would return. The Fleshmasters had given him drugs he could take outside of battle to slow his cardiac rhythm, but it hadn't been enough. Soon he had spent most of his time in suspended animation, every beat of his hearts separated by entire hours. It had been Mahlone's decision, and one Iames did not fault his commander for : a Sorcerer going insane was a terrifying prospect, especially in a Warp Storm.
When the forces of the Forsaken Sons had gathered once more, Iames had gone to see Asim, the lord of the Coven. The Blood Sorcerer had told him that it was too late to remove the curse : it had become too deeply woven into his soul, to the point that attempting to purge it would cripple him at best, and destroy him at worse. Instead, Asim had taught him ancient methods to focus his mind, to hold onto his power through the shattering of his perception that the curse brought with metronomic regularity. Under the tutelage of the Sorcerer Lord, the Unbound had learned to use the curse to his advantage, ignoring the horrifying feeling of reality collapsing and using the time out of time to sharpen his thoughts and tighten his will.
But there had still been the fear of madness – for what mind could truly bear to see everything goes to ruin, again and again ? And so a bargain had been struck, with Asim as the intermediary. It had not been the first deal Iames had made : during the conquest of the Wailing Storm, cut off from the Coven, he had been forced to learn however he could. But it had been the most significant. In exchange for all the memories of his life before becoming an Unbound, Iames had been granted protection from his vision's horror. He could watch reality break, over and over, and never feel anything more than irritation at his activities in reality being interrupted.
And so, when the vision ended, the darkness parted and he was back on Berrenos III, his stride was unperturbed, and his blow still struck true. The dagger burrowed itself into the throat of the Space Marine, its deceptively frail edge cutting through the power cables and the transhuman flesh with ease. Rich arterial blood spurted, Some of it spilled onto Iames' face, but he did not feel its heat – another of the many prices he had paid for his powers. The Space Marine fell, last of the seven who had made it through the trenches – but these seven weren't the last. Already Iames could see a new figure emerge from the death-infested tunnels, followed by others.
One.
Not a mere battle-brother, this one. He took in the words in High Gothic inscribed upon the scarlet armor, the ornate helmet and the priceless armaments. The warriors who came behind this one wore similar gear, though none as blazing in his sight with glorious history and deeds.
Chapter Master. The Forsaken Sons knew of these, the leaders of the gutted Legions. Each commanding a thousand Space Marines in the name of the False Emperor and the lost Primarchs. Warlords of the weak and mewling Imperium that had risen from the ashes of Horus' rebellion and Guilliman's Breaking. Yet there was no denying that this one would be strong, stronger than any other Astartes had ever fought – yet he had faced worse things, in the Wailing Storm, and emerged triumphant. He would triumph here, too.
Two.
The Chapter Master and his praetorian guard charged the lines of the Monks, holding great shields before them to absorb the gunfire levelled at them. Iamesreached out with his sixth sense and unleashed a stream of Warp-fire upon the Red Hunters, but the symbols layered upon their shields in golden filigram blazed bright, and he felt the threads of sorcerous power slip away from his grasp.
Three.
He raised an eyebrow. This … this was new. He had known the Red Hunters specialized in taking down the targets of the Inquisition, but to think that the Imperium actually had access to such wardings …
"In the name of the Emperor, die, heretic !" roared the Chapter Master. Holding his sword in both hands, he rushed toward Iames. Four.
Faced with an enemy that was both stronger and had a longer range than him, Iames drew deep from the Empyrean's energies, imbuing his transhuman flesh with even greater potency. Dark claws slithered on his skin, and the air above his head blurred to show a screeching, crowned visage, and he felt blood flow from his eyes, nose and mouth. But the sorcerous boost enabled him to block the Chapter Master's two-handed blow with his dagger, the ritual weapon comically small when compared to the energy-wrought power sword. For a breath's length, the two of them struggled against one another.
Five.
With a grunt, Iames lashed out with his tentacle. The mutated limb tore a rent in the outer layers of the Chapter Master's chest-plate, but failed to draw blood. He stepped back, letting one of the Monks charge at the Chapter Master. Six.
The Space Marine did not even slow down. In a single strike, he beheaded the armored Chaos warrior, his sword cutting through the infernal plate covering the Monk's head with ease. Black smoke poured from the headless body's neck as it fell, but the Chapter Master did not wait. He rushed toward Iames, sword at the ready, looking every bit the vengeful angel of death come to deliver the Emperor's judgement upon those who had defiled His kingdom.
Suddenly, with his psychic sight opened wide, Iames caught a glimpse of something impossibly vast and powerful behind the Chapter Master, something which looked upon him and all his work and felt nothing but contempt. Something cloaked in bone dust and corroded gold. It only lasted for a flash, but it was enough, and Iames' focus slipped. His hearts sped up -
Seven-Eight-Nine.
The Chapter Master exploded in a shower of scarlet pieces surrounded by a halo of deadly sunlight. Tendrils of colorless energy reached out for him. Teeth made of the death-cries of worlds closed in on his soul. He shook with the vibration of a distant black hole being born -
- Reality slammed back into focus. Iames stumbled, his balance lost.
Decades of training and experience allowed his foe to seize this minute opening, and the sword of the Chapter Master slipped under Iames' guard and through his chest.
The Sorcerer stood, frozen, as the Space Marine ripped his weapon free in a shower of gore. His hearts … his hearts were no longer beating, because they were gone. He could no longer feel the witch's curse, could no longer hear the coming apocalypse …
"Go to your false gods, heretic scum," spat the Chapter Master, striking again at Iames' immobile form, sending his body crashing onto the ground, blood pooling beneath it. Within moments, as the Monks of the Nameless Day fell one by one to the elite of the Red Hunters, Iames' soul slipped away from the ruination of his flesh and into the roiling Empyrean.
On the other side, every bargain he had ever made waited for him with tooth and claw.
The fortress had been breached, as he had known it eventually would be. Jikaerus pressed runes on his workstation, the tremors of distant explosions already reaching the medical bay dug deep within the Hollow Mountain. The patients laying on the operating tables shuddered as massive amounts of stimms, mixed with more exotic ingredients harvested in the Wailing Storm, were suddenly injected into their bodies. Of the twelve Unbound, only five rose to their feet, the remaining seven briefly convulsing before their hearts burst in their chest.
An acceptable result, thought the Fleshmaster, considering the alternative had been to leave them for the Imperium to find. All of them had had wounds extensive enough that it would have taken days for them to recover naturally – days that they didn't have. And perhaps something could be learned from dissecting those who had perished. The effects of some of the ingredients he had used in his cocktail were still barely understood, after all.
The noise of the door opening interrupted his thoughts. He turned, hand moving to the pistol at his hip – before letting it fall as he recognized the newcomer.
"Ygdal. What are you doing here ?"
"Kakios is dead," replied the Unbound bluntly. "Among others."
… Well, well, well. That certainly was cause for concern. Kakios' death was a grave loss, made more so by the fact he had been the last son of Perturabo among the Unbound Host. The monstrous tank Antipater's Wrath had been destroyed along with all three of Kakios' brother two months into the siege, during a brutal engagement across the plains. The former Iron Warrior had grown even more bitter and sullen after that, driving the forces under his command on the northern front into battle without any pretence of care for their lives beyond the cold arithmetic of war. But brutal as that approach had been, it had worked. Without him …
"Then the northern gate has fallen ?" He asked.
"Yes, along with the one in the south. The Chapter Master of the Red Hunters showed up in person and killed Iames." No mortal could have seen the minute shifts in Mahlone's posture that revealed the slightest hint of grief at the Sorcerer's demise. "On the northern end, the Purple Stars sent three Dreadnought against the Ones Who Walks. They took two of them down, but were wiped out, and the last one punched the gates open with its power claw."
"There is more to it," Jikaerus said."Even if the gates are breached, the Imperials still have to contend with a mountain-sized labyrinth of tunnels, choke points and traps. A strike force breaking through would have almost no hope of reaching anywhere useful."
"There is. How do you think Kakios died in the first place ? The Imperials are raining men on us. They are throwing an entire Regiment of drop-troopers with some kind of gravity-manipulating parachutes down on us, taking out our artillery."
Jikaerus blinked, the nictitatine membrane that had appeared in his eyes as his reptilian mutations continued to develop briefly covering his vertical pupils. Gravitic technology in the hands of mere Guardsmen ? That … they hadn't had anything like that during the Great Crusade, at least not as far as he knew – and as a former Alpha Legionnaire, he had known a lot. It seemed that the Imperium wasn't quite as static as the exiled Space Marines had come to believe, after all.
"Surely they didn't take down all of our guns ? We did have defenses put in place against the possibility of teleportation strikes making it through lapses in the void-shields, or Assault Marines managing to reach them despite our anti-air defenses."
"Of course not," scoffed Ygdal, "but enough of the platforms have fallen silent that the Imperial commanders are sending in their tanks and transports across the trenches. When I left the strategium, they were finishing putting up reinforced plank ways for them to advance on. This was planned, Jikaerus, since weeks ago. Strike at us from above to disrupt our troop deployment, then launch an attack on the gates with their elite forces before rolling in with the armored infantry to pour troops into the breaches until we are all dead."
The Fleshmaster considered Ygdal's words. If the Unbound was right – and Jikaerus had no particular reason to doubt it – then it had been a brilliant plan, if utterly ruthless. The casualty rate during the descent of the drop-troopers must have been horrendous, and even success would have seen them stranded in a fortress full of tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. Whoever had made the decision had probably signed the death warrant of the entire companies, perhaps the entire Regiment. But given the losses the Imperium had already taken besieging the Hollow Mountain, such a price would have been one any strategist worth his rank would have been entirely too willing to make for the chance of breaking the siege and ending the battle of Berrenos once and for all.
There were more immediate issues at hand, however. "Why did you come all the way here ? We are not exactly close to the strategium."
"We are leaving," replied the Unbound bluntly. "Mahlone's orders are that you come with me to the strategium, where we will render-vous with him and the other evacuees before making for the extraction point. Congratulations, you are too valuable a resource to leave behind. The rest of the Fleshmasters are either dead or already in the fleet. Since there is a strong chance of us needing medical attention after we get out of here, I recommended we drag you along with us so you can patch us up if required. And with the enemy already inside the fortress, I thought it better to come get you in person. It's possible the Imperials have breached our communication lines through the fortress, and if they identify you as a person of importance it's unlikely you would make it to the strategium."
Ygdal looked at the other Unbound in the room, still sluggish from their wounds. Some of them were still recovering, while others were putting on their equipment, which Jikaerus had brought to their beds before beginning his last gambit. The younger Astartes' helmet hid his face and his posture revealed nothing, but Jikaerus could guess what was going through the warrior's mind : he was considering whether to take the wounded with them, coldly weighing the pros and the cons. When the next sentence came on a private channel, the Fleshmaster knew what the result would be before Ygdal even spoke :
"We are leaving them behind. With any luck, they will serve as a distraction."
It frustrated the Fleshmaster to abandon his work, especially after he had expended rare resources to restore the Unbound to functionality, but Ygdal was right. Without another word, the two of them left the room, leaving the Unbound to find their own fate in the doomed fortress.
"What of the shield generators ?" asked Jikaerus as they advanced.
"Mahlone has sent the last of the Unbound there with orders to hold until death, along with the gladiators of the Unsevered Chain. They obeyed since that's where the fighting is guaranteed to be fiercest, the gods-cursed lunatics. Kakios designed the entire area to be a death trap : it will cost the Imperials a lot of lives and time before they can shut the generators down."
"But they will, sooner or later."
Ygdal shrugged. "That's why we are getting out of here. At least we can be confident they won't flatten the mountain from orbit the moment the shields come down : there is a Chapter Master inside, and that isn't the kind of 'collateral damage' their commanders will want on their hands."
"They will also want access to whatever records they can find," added Jikaerus. "With the number of Inquisitors involved, they will be hungry for whatever scrap of information they can get their hands on."
They walked at a brisk pace through the labyrinth of corridors. Running wasn't an option : as the siege had ramped up and the population of the Hollow Mountain had decreased, the amount of traps had been increased in proportion, and their helmet displays could only show them how to avoid them so quickly. Jikaerus followed Ygdal – the Unbound was more aware of the latest changes in the strategium's defenses that him.
Eventually, they arrived before a locked reinforced door with a control panel next to it. Ygdal placed his hand on the panel, letting his armor interface with its machine-spirit and gesturing for Jikaerus to go through first when the gate opened with a his – the unique alterations of the Fleshmaster's own suit likely wouldn't play nice with the security. The gate would still open, but now was hardly the time to risk messing with the fortress' defenses, mused Jikaerus -
Something slammed into his back, and he stumbled. There was a moment of surprise, before the tip of a sword burst from his chest and the pain hit him, blossoming inside him like a star going nova. He felt his armor's altered machine-spirit panic, sending a spike of meaningless impulses into his connection sockets as it felt him being wounded.
Ah, he thought, realizing what had happened. That was quite well done.
It was with a cold satisfaction that Ygdal pulled his blade free of the Fleshmaster's back, the weapon running red with the blood of the Legionary's two hearts. The strike had been perfectly angled to cut through both organs in one blow. He had repeated it many times in the training cages, using his authority to order the creation of customized targets based on biometric data he had pulled from the Unbound Host's cogitators. All for that single moment, when a window of opportunity finally opened and he could take his long-delayed vengeance.
Jikaerus wasn't dead yet, though. The Fleshmaster was hard to kill, even more so than a normal Astartes thanks to the mutations that had been bestowed upon him in the Wailing Storm. Ygdal reached down and pulled the Fleshmaster's helmet off before throwing it away – he wanted to see his victim's face before he died.
The Fleshmaster's visage was much as Ygdal remembered it from when he had first seen it, glimpsing it in a rare moment where Jikaerus had removed his helmet. He had been floating within an amniotic tank then, recovering from the latest round of surgeries that would elevate him from child to Astartes. Half-delirious and mad with the images that had flowed through his fevered brain from the genetic memories being implanted into his flesh, he had seen the reptilian, noseless face staring at him from the other side of the glass.
He had felt the same hatred then as he felt now, and it made his revenge all the sweeter.
The dying man coughed, cold blood spilling from between his lips.
"I am impressed," he rasped, staring up at his killer. "After all this time, I had truly forgotten that you despised me. You held your hand long enough to make me lower my guard … well done."
"I have been awaiting this moment for a long time," confessed Ygdal, cold fury and relish mixed in his voice. "Ever since I faced you in the Dark, amidst the ruin you had made of our homeland. Mahlone's hatred flared bright and dimmed soon enough … but I cultivated mine."
"You are a fool if you think … your brother has forgotten. But … you and Mahlone have murdered billions in the last year alone," coughed Jikaerus along with another mouthful of blood. "Compared to such sins, what does what I did on Mulor Secundus even matter ?"
"It matters to me," hissed the Unbound, a rare flare of emotion showing on his face. "All that we have done, all that we have become, finds its roots with you. You made us into monsters, Jikaerus, so it is only fitting that one of the monsters you created be the one to put you down."
"You are … right. I do not … regret this end. But there is … one thing you should know," the Fleshmaster rasped. "Mahlone's bloodline ..."
"I know you made him Ascend using Ultramarines' gene-seed, old man. I learned that long ago, did you forget ?"
"Of course … but he wasn't the only one … on whom I used something special … my son."
With trembling fingers, Jikaerus tapped his throat – where the secondary progenoid developed within the body of an Astartes, eventually harvested to allow the Legion to grow beyond its initial numbers. Ygdal's eyes widened in realization, then his face darkened in disgust.
"I always wanted to see … what you and Mahlone would accomplish together," wheezed the Fleshmaster. "It was … curiosity, you see."
"Another of your damned experiments ?" spat Ygdal.
"… Yes. I wanted to have a glimpse … of what could have been ..." The Fleshmaster took one last, shuddering breath, "if Guilliman and Alpharius had worked together. And you … were … magnificent …"
Jikaerus died with his eyes open, staring lifelessly into the face of the youth he had turned into a Space Marine using his own gene-seed, and who had killed him for the crimes he had committed against his ruined homeworld. For several moments, Ygdal remained standing, staring at the corpse lying before him.
The sound of footsteps interrupted his reverie, and he drew his bolter, only to lower it as he recognized the humans arriving. They wore the uniforms of soldiers from Androkas-Prime, led by that lieutenant Mahlone had pulled from the field after burning that church dedicated to the Avenging Son. What was her name again ?
"Report," he commanded, and the squad stopped dead and saluted. Even with their uniforms covered in grim and blood for the siege, the discipline ingrained over a lifetime spent in the shadow of a megalomaniacal daemonic tyrant still held them in its thrall.
"Lieutenant Lysandre Ariethi, my lord," said the woman. "We are patrolling this sector in search of enemy infiltrators."
Ygdal looked at the ten-odd mortals, noticing the good state and quality of their equipment and the way, even facing him, they were still keeping an eye on their surroundings. The lieutenant didn't appear overly intimidated by his presence either, which was rare among the saner servants of the Unbound Host. Mahlone's instincts had served him well when he had promoted this one.
"Not anymore, lieutenant." He gestured toward the corpse at his feet. "As you can see, enemies have already made it this close to the strategium You will accompany me as we go there and ensure Lord Mahlone is safe."
"As you command, my lord. And what of the Lord Jikaerus ?"
It wasn't as stupid a question as it might sound – the Androkasians would have seen how hard it was to kill a Space Marine first-hand during the siege, and they would know that their transhuman masters could recover from wounds that would have ended a mere mortal instantly.
"He is dead, and his killer has already fled." The blood on Ygdal's power sword had been burned off by the energy field – not that the mortals would have dared say anything otherwise. "We must find Mahlone, now. The enemy is inside the wall, and he will be one of their priority targets."
His brother had made sure of that, fighting on the frontlines during the first weeks of the siege, rallying the other Unbound by slaying every Space Marine that made it to the walls. The Imperials knew Mahlone was in overall command of the Unbound Host, and with his death, the entire Host would collapse in on itself. Only a Chosen of Arken could wield the authority and power needed to unify the bastardized legions of the Lost and the Damned along with the remaining Unbound, be they of the first or second generation.
Of course, with the fall of the Hollow Mountain being now inevitable, the collapse of the Unbound Host wouldn't mean much – but the death of a Chosen would still be a great coup for the Imperials. And if they could capture Mahlone instead …
No. It would not come to that. Ygdal would make sure of it.
They came across a squad of drop-troopers before reaching the strategium, but the Imperial soldiers were already dead, butchered by a mine buried in a wall that they had activated by rushing by it without pressing the appropriate stone next to it first. Lysandre walked through the gory mess without blinking – she had seen much, much worse. She and her squad had been spared from frontline duty by the Lord Mahlone, who had used them as messengers and inner patrols instead, but they were from Androkas-Prime : they had been the first to join the Unbound Host, and had fought in the conquest of the Wailing Storm.
As they approached the strategium, they started to hear the sounds of battle, and quickened their path, the humans struggling to keep up with lord Ygdal. The doors hung open, showing signs of having been breached by heavy explosives. They rushed inside, guns at the ready, lord Ygdal holding his sword and pistol in his hands.
The command center was a corpse-filled wreck, with the bodies of hereteks and servitors strewn all around along with a handful of scarlet-armored Space Marines. And there, pulling his sword from the chest of the last Red Hunter, clad in ornate, blood-splattered armor of black and gold and wearing a horned helmet, was the Unbound Lord himself.
"Ygdal," breathed out Lord Mahlone as he saw them enter. His helm briefly turned toward Lysandre. "Lieutenant Ariethi. It is good to see you. Where is Jikaerus ?"
"He didn't make it," answered Ygdal. Lysandre remained silent. She had her suspicions as to the Fleshmaster's fate, but it wasn't her place to interfere in the affairs of the Forsaken Sons.
"A shame," sighed the Unbound Lord. "Very well, it is time for us to abandon this place. More of these will be along soon. Give me a minute to finish things here."
With a gesture, Lysandre commanded her squad to take defensive positions. Lord Mahlone walked to one of the few consoles that remained intact and started working on it, bringing up a general channel.
"This is Lord Mahlone to all remaining forces of the Unbound Host within the Hollow Mountain. The strategium has been lost. All restrictions on ammunition expenditure are lifted," announced Lord Mahlone, his words carried to the ears of every gun crew that still held their position, every army in the trenches, and every squad in the Hollow Mountain. "By my order as Chosen, all previous restraints placed upon empyric capabilities are removed. Unleash hell, brothers and sisters. Let us make the dogs of the Corpse-Emperor pay for their victory."
With his last speech delivered, Mahlone pressed a few more runes on the console, until a garbled transmission emanated from it, in a language Lysandre didn't recognize but which sent shivers of dread down her spine.
"There," he muttered as he pulled away from the console. "Now, everyone, come with me. We are going to the teleportation chamber. Morkoth just confirmed the Blade of Terror is ready and waiting for us."
"What of the rest of our forces ?"
It was only when all heads turned toward her that Lysandre realized she had been the one to speak. For a moment, she wondered if she was going to die, slain out of hand for daring to question her lord.
"What of them, Lieutenant Ariethi ?" said Mahlone instead, sighing. "They will die fighting, as they were always going to. The teleporter isn't rated for multiple successive transfers, so it's not as if we could take anymore people with us. Now, follow me. We do not have much time."
The teleportation chamber was in an area of the Hollow Mountain even more secure than the strategium, though that was probably due to the fact less people were supposed to access it on a daily basis. They passed through several false walls and secret passages before reaching it – and all the while, the sounds of battle across the Hollow Mountain grew louder.
There were screams, human and inhuman, and the sound of explosives going off. With the last of their restraints removed by Lord Mahlone's last order, the Unbound Host was unleashing the full horror of its might. Lysandre knew that things would be even worse in the trenches, where the dark priests would be making their final offerings to the Dark Gods.
"Here we are," said the Unbound Lord as he entered a twenty-digits code onto a panel hidden behind a wall carving depicting the Throneworld burning within the clawed hand of Horus Lupercal, the First Warmaster of Chaos. How the artwork had ended up here, Lysandre had no idea – the architect of the Hollow Mountain surely hadn't put it there himself.
The chamber was small, mostly occupied by a metallic disc engraved with a complex runic circle and linked to a series of interconnected devices that filled the rest of the room almost to capacity. Androkas-Prime hadn't possessed any teleportation technology, but even so, Lysandre was certain what she saw now had little in common with what the Imperium used to send living beings across the Warp. There were infernal carvings in the sides of the machines, and tubes more akin to fleshy veins carried blood and oil from one part to the next.
Every individual component of the teleporter was connected to a cylindrical box attached to the ceiling directly above the platform. Through the gaps between the pulsating cables and the holes in the cover, Lysandre could see something spinning inside the box. She knew what it was – what it must be, and part of her wanted nothing more than to turn back and run as far away from it as possible, even if it led her directly into the guns of the Imperials.
The dark magi of Argenta Primus were hardly secretive about what powered their machines. In fact, once you got them started you could hardly stop them talking about their homeworld's "great accomplishments". So Lysandre knew that their technology was powered by drawing energy from the Warp itself, somehow filtering the raw madness of the Sea of Souls into something usable. The stuff of souls, made into a power source – it smacked of hubris even to her, who knew very little about technology and even less about theology. This was what the cylinder was : a miniature reactor, a hole in reality kept open by Dark Tech.
"Don't look at it for too long," advised Mahlone. "It will drive you insane, there wasn't enough space to install all the proper shielding. It should be safe to stand next to for a while, but best not to take any chances."
A dry cough drew Lysandre's attention away from the device and back to the door. There stood Marcus the Riven. His crimson robe was covered in blood, and Lysandre doubted any of it was his.
"Marcus," greeted the Lord Mahlone, sounding unconcerned by the Riven's arrival into this most secure and secretive of locations. "I see you made it."
The Riven bowed. "It wasn't easy, lord. I fear the Hollow Mountain will soon be in the hands of the foe."
The Lord of the Unbound waved a hand dismissively. "It was always going to fall. What matters is that we successfully delayed the Imperial retribution into Azarok. If we can escape to bring word of the enemy's strength back to Lord Arken, then we will have done our duty."
"As you say, lord," replied the Riven, bowing once more.
"Get on the platform, all of you," commanded Mahlone, flipping a series of rune-switches that turned up the apparatus, with a sound like a wet, hungry growl.
"Are you sure about this, lord ?" asked Markus, looking at the machine with concern. "This is Argentian technology. While I would never question the quality of our allies' work, their inventions have shown a tendency of … unfortunate side effects."
Mahlone shrugged. "If you have another way off-world, Marcus, I am all ears." When the Riven remained silent, he continued : "Our only choices are to die here fighting, or take the risk of using this device. It has been tested, you know – I am not a fool. It will be unpleasant, but all of us should survive the journey."
Obeying the orders of the Unbound Lord, they stood on the platform while Mahlone finished setting up the device, before joining them. The circle was barely large enough for all of them. Mahlone reached to take hold of a brass lever raised on the platform's edge. The Argentian Warp reactor above their heads accelerated, and the cables spreading from it glowed through their shielding with a light of a color that did not belong to this side of the Veil.
"Gods be with us," said the Unbound Lord, and he pulled the lever.
"You made it," said Morkoth. "I wasn't sure you would."
Mahlone stood on the bridge of the Blade of Terror, gazing at the daemonic display at the center of the room. Berrenos III was growing more and more distant as the daemonship, along with the Eidolon of Regret and the rest of the Unbound Host's decimated fleet retreated toward the Mandeville Point. Imperial cruisers were detaching from the retribution fleet in pursuit, but they wouldn't catch up to them in time.
The engines of the Blade of Terror were roaring, and the displeasure of the daemonship at fleeing was palpable. Mahlone had passed by the remains of a dozen crew members on his way to the bridge from the teleportation chamber, freshly slaughtered in a myriad different ways by the vessel. The infernal sentience hadn't tried anything against him, of course – it knew better. Morkoth may be the vessel's current master, but Mahlone remembered when the display at the center of the bridge had been made of an actual hololith instead of flesh and blood.
"Al-Zarak's teleporter worked in the end," the Unbound Lord answered the fleetmaster. "Is everything alright on the Eidolon ?"
"He's still complaining about the resources they spent on providing the ammunition for the Hollow Mountain, but the ship should follow us when we leave the system. It's not as if they have anywhere else to go."
"There is still the Zethirion system," pointed out Mahlone. "The bulk of the Argentian forces are there – he might want to join up with them instead of following us."
"I don't think he can," said Morkoth. "I think his orders are more … literal than that. He was told to accompany us and provide us with what we needed, and it's what he will do, even if he complains every step of the way."
Mahlone mused on that. It was possible, he guessed. The Dark Mechanicum may claim that it had rejected the chains of its loyalist counterpart, but those who stood at the top were still very much willing to bind those under them into complete obedience by whatever means available. Al-Zarak had been given command of a forge-barge : his masters wouldn't have wanted him to simply run off with it and start building his own empire with the resources and troops within. Warlords had accomplished that with much less.
"The lieutenant and the other survivors have been brought to the Apothecarion," said Ygdal, stepping onto the bridge. "The medicae are confident they will be fine as long as they wake up sane and not screaming or drooling."
"Good." The mortals had been unconscious when they had manifested on the Blade of Terror, with several of them having gone missing during the transition – Mahlone didn't want to imagine their fates. The teleportation had been a … disturbing experience to say the least.
Though the Unbound hadn't suffered the same psychic damage as the Androkasians, their armor had still been damaged during the transit. Ygdal's helmet had been shattered, and the face that was revealed sported scales and vertical irises – nothing too remarkable among the Forsaken Sons, but Mahlone recognized that particular pattern.
"Ygdal. Your face ..."
"It turns out that we both must bear our fathers' sins," joked Ygdal dryly. On his command throne, Morkoth inclined his head, sensing a private joke he wasn't included in. Mahlone's brother wouldn't normally have been so open with his secret – he too must still be shaken from the teleportation.
"We will reach the Mandeville point in another nine hours," announced Morkoth. "Is it time for you to tell us where exactly we will be heading next, Mahlone ?"
"The Graveyard," said the Unbound Lord, referring to the Sub-Sector of Azarok that had been left completely devastated by the War of the Beast. "We will reunite with Lord Arken there, and he will be the one to give us our next target."
"Or … we could just leave," said Morkoth. The other two Unbound turned to face him, and the fleetmaster shrugged. "I am just saying that this is an option we have. There are a dozen paths we could take into Azarok once we leave, and the Black Crusade is scattered across an entire Sector and will face the Imperium's full might now that Berrenos has fallen. We could sneak back into Imperial territory and raid and conquer while all eyes are turned on Azarok."
"You speak treachery," said Mahlone softly.
"You have seen the fleets the Imperium is sending," pointed out Morkoth. "And we all know the extant of the forces that emerged from the Wailing Storm. They are strong – but they are not strong enough. Sooner or later, the Imperium will crush the Black Crusade, just like they crushed the Unbound Host here. And when that happens, we may not escape that time."
"You are wrong," replied Mahlone, and there was something haunted in his voice. "You forget, I am one of Arken's Chosen. I was taken into his confidence. I know his plan for this war … what he hopes to find in the Graveyard. If he succeeds, then it won't matter how many ships, how many armies, how many Chapters the Imperium sends after him … nor where we run to escape his wrath. All who stand in his way shall perish."
"And if he fails ?" asked Morkoth.
"Then we will die at his side, spitting our defiance at the rotting Imperium and spending our lives to hasten its inevitable demise. A better end that what would befall us should we break our oaths to the Awakened One and he succeed all the same."
AN : Hello, everyone ! Here we are, the last part of the Breaking of Berrenos. As you have no doubt noticed, characters are starting to die - first Iames, and then Jikaerus, who had been within that story for years now.
Truth be told, the reptilian Fleshmaster was always going to die at Ygdal's hands. It wasn't a matter of if, but when.
The next chapters are going to be a bit shorter, as we look at the events across the Azarok Sector by following the Tarot cards that were revealed when Janus gazed into the Aether. Then we will go to the cemetary-world of Nerel, where the plot will advance. I am still determined to finish this story this year, which means I am going to have to accelerate.
Fortunately (?) I am also going to be off work and locked at home during the entirety of next week due to the current circumstances, so hopefully I will be able to use writing as an outlet to avoid going stir-crazy.
On that subject : stay safe, everyone. Stay indoor when possible, wash your hands, keep your distances when outside. Let us all give Nurgle the finger together, okay ?
Zahariel out.