Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 124
Someone had been crying for hours on end, filling the cell with bitter tears. Since there was no light the noise filled his augmetic ears with grating rasps, each hacking sob a blunt saw across his nerves. Severcole Vanderspeak tried to ignore it but as the hours ground on his patience frayed down to a thread, liable to snap. These were his last hours, he did not want to spend them dealing with this annoyance.
"Shut up!" he barked into the pitch dark, "Just shut up!"
Haldrist's voice came back, "Leave him be. We're all feeling the same."
"Bad enough that we die in this fetid gaol, I don't have to listen to this mewling cur."
Haldrist sounded impetrate, "You should be making your peace with the God-Emperor."
"No point to that, he's not listening, he was never listening."
"If you believe that then you are truly lost."
"Maybe I am," Vanderspeak conceded.
They fell silent, trapped in the dark with the hacking sobs. Vanderspeak had nothing to do save sit on his rear and relive the last weeks, or was it months, he had no way to tell. Memory replayed as a reel: he'd been found by victorious Terran Guardsmen, who recognised his rank. Too valuable to be left to die, they'd taken him to an Apothecarion and healed his wounds. There was no mercy in this, he was a General and they'd pumped him for Tellarite secrets, drug-addled sessions with harsh interrogators and Inquisitors, extracting every last morsel of information he owned.
Time became a blur as days bled into each other, endless waiting in the dark punctured by brief interludes of achingly bright light and sharp needles. He'd been moved, several times, then a long voyage in the haunted depths of a void ship. He had a good guess where the ship was headed, given the people he'd been manacled to. Hundreds of Tellarites, industrial-factors, wealthy merchants, priests, propagandists Marshals of the Commissary and strategic planners. All those who could be considered the Leaders of the Rebellion. That the high Plutocrats had been wiped out was irrelevant, the Terrans wanted someone to blame and had rounded up anyone who could fit the descriptions.
In the brief interludes of light when they'd be fed thin gruel Vanderspeak had seen the fear and terror in their eyes, the protestations of innocence and ignorance. It hadn't mattered, all were guilty in the eyes of the Inquisition. In the long stretches of darkness they'd had nothing to do save share their stories, each a self-indulgent justification of why they had done nothing wrong and didn't deserve this fate. Vanderspeak had been stunned when he discovered Haldrist was with them. He'd have thought the Gun-Captain too unimportant to round up, but someone had wanted him.
Vanderspeak shifted his weight, feeling the cold stone, soaking wet with urine. Their latest gaol was on a planet somewhere, even more awful than the ships' hold. Stinking and cold, with no toilet, the prisoners having been left to piss themselves where they were chained. If they weren't moved soon dysentery would sweep through them all. Vanderspeak reckoned that wouldn't be an issue, the end was surely at hand.
Suddenly searing light burst in as the iron door was thrown open and blank-visored guards rushed in. Some prisoners screamed, others begged but it made no difference as short whips were applied to backs, forcing the Tellarites to their feet. Barked voices and insults made them line up, then they were manacled together. Vanderspeak tried to remain silent and dignified, but could not help but cry out when the whips were laid across his back. Fetters about their ankles, wrists and necks forced them to stoop over as the prisoners were led out in single file.
Eyes on the floor, don't look up, don't see, don't care. Vanderspeak bent his will to becoming a stone, but his jaw fell as they were led out of a blank stone corridor into the light of day. Soaring pinnacles arose in all directions, plated in silver and gold. Spires punctured the heavens and each competed with the next for filigree and ostentation. The wind was fierce, lashing across a suspended road wide as ten Baneblades. Glancing over the edge he saw more marble roads stacked below, a stair into lightless darkness, each step packed with teeming supplicants. His augmetic ears picked up distant prayer bells ringing by the thousand, completely disharmonious and out of accord. The air was thick with the exhalations of packed multitudes and stank of industrial smog.
He'd suspected where they were heading since the start, but the reality of it struck him mute. Holy Terra, the birth-rock of humanity, abode of the Emperor and seat of galactic government. The decayed glory of it took the breath away, the sheer scale of its architecture eclipsing any other world in the galaxy. The grandest Hive city was barely a foothill compared to these edifices, the richest Governor would be a beggar on Terra. Everything was bigger here, the buildings, the glory, the power and the corruption. Every face he saw was etched in misery or indifference, marking the divide between those who clung to hope and those who had given up any thought of a better life. Vanderspeak had always thought Terra a soulless machine that ground men down to nothing, now he saw with his own eyes how small his thinking had been.
"God-Emperor," Haldrist breathed at his back.
"He's over there," Vandersepak grunted.
"Where?!"
"Somewhere, anywhere, this is the closest you'll ever get. Enjoy it."
"Silence!" a guard barked as whips drew blood from their backs.
Hours crawled past the prisoners were marched without pause or food. Vanderspeak's bare feet became numb, his legs stiff rods that moved mechanically but he pressed on, there was no other option. The light of day was growing dim when they approached a Cathedral of black, the only building he'd seen not plated in precious metals. Up steep stairs they were driven, stumbling and crying out but goaded on by cruel whips. Eventually they reached a spire top and were herded out, separated, then forced to kneel as their chains were bound to the floor.
Vanderspeak glanced about, the top of the steeple was a flat circle, exposed to the outside but overshadowed by a black iron bell hanging from gothic arches. What a bell it was, the size of a Titan, its clapper alone as massive as a Baneblade. Stained by the patina of ages and carved with runes of fell provenance. Darkness clung to it, beyond the shadows of evening, a miasma of dread and horror. The air that brushed its flanks seemed to shiver in sorrow, as if the wind was weeping merely to touch it. Vanderspeak knew it from legend, the Bell of Lost Souls, which tolled to mourn the passing of heroes. Already warning sirens were ringing far below, sending millions of servants and adepts to cower in sheltered bunkers, wary of what was to come.
A fat prelate in a ridiculous amount of robes waddled up to the prisoners and bellowed, "By the authority of the God-Emperor, vigilant and protective, one majesty everlasting, you have been found guilty of crimes against the One True Imperium. Sedition, rebellion and the fostering of disobedience among His peoples. You have lied to the masses and led them astray from His bountiful providence and turned the common man against His Anointed servants, the High Lords. The war you started claimed the lives of three and a half billion loyal souls! So great is the God-Emperor's sorrow that it is decreed that the Bell of Lost Souls shall chime thrice in lamentation. Yet in His endless mercy He offers you final absolution, if any of you wish to confess your sins and be cleansed before death, speak now and He will forgive you in the afterlife."
Brown robed Confessors stepped into sight, moving along the line of bound prisoners. Some wept as they spoke to the priests, others begged or spat defiance, many protested their innocence, but the priests simply nodded their heads and offered the same platitudes regardless. Vanderspeak kept his chin up when a grizzled face leaned in, framing a face that offered no compassion, only enjoyment of suffering.
"Will you confess?" the priest whispered.
"I have nothing to say to Terrans," Vanderspeak retorted.
"It is the God-Emperor who you speak to."
"He isn't listening, He never was. Terra enjoys no divine favour and neither do I."
"You abandon your God?!"
"He abandoned me, he abandoned the whole galaxy!"
The priest leaned in and whispered so low that no other could hear, "He is not listening, that is true. But there are other gods, mightier gods, who do more than listen. Offer yourself to the Chaos Gods and they will reward you with actual, tangible power in this life. Give your soul to Khorne and he will grant you strength to break these chains, pledge to Tzeentch and he will weave a spell of deception to make all think you are dead. Nurgle will see your rotting flesh bloom into new life or Slaanesh will snatch your soul from the ether so your spirit may dance into eternity."
Vanderspeak should have been shocked to find a devotee of Chaos here on Terra, but he was not. The structure of the Imperium was riddled with corruption, gangrenous right down to the marrow. Everything was rotten, the High Lords, the Space Marines, the Novans, especially Disquisitor Von Tor. Even Vanderspeak could not deny his own fall, he'd willingly embraced the temptations of power, despite his misgivings. Severcole was sick of it all, the galaxy was diseased and he refused to endure this farce a day longer.
Vanderspeak eyed the cultist and answered, "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to die now." The false priest flinched in surprise but then backed off, joining his naive comrades as they shuffled off. Quickly the spire top was evacuated, leaving the prisoners alone. Mighty mechanisms began to grind, pulling back the enormous bell, almost ready to sound. It would take an entire minute to draw back and Vanderspeak prepared his soul for death.
"He loves us," Haldrist wept, face down to the stone, "He loves us."
"Try to die with some dignity man," Vanderspeak muttered.
"The Emperor Protects, the Emperor Protects, the Emperor Protects."
"Not from this he doesn't."
The bell was loosed and began its inexorable slide downwards. Vanderspeak felt the stones rattle as it plunged but that was nothing to the sound of its ringing. Ears could not encompass the scope of the sound, it was instead felt in the crumbling of bone and the shattering of teeth. Vanderspeak felt the shockwave pass through him like the punches of a thousand Space Marines, pummelling every cell of his body. Veins burst from head to toe, his bowels emptied in a rush and his mouth filled with blood and splintered teeth. Pain followed in a red flood, born anew over and over as internal organs were thrown against his ribs, squashed into unnatural shapes.
Vanderspeak doubled over, vomiting blood and enamel. His skin was on fire, his tongue tasted raw iron and his vision was a sheet of red. Yet his augmetic ears still functioned, telling him of disasters unfolding. Distant echoes told of shockwaves rolling over the world, tearing down crumbling statues and ripping free gaudy filigree. Rumbles spoke of collapsing bridges and imploding habs, the ramshackle pilgrim cities in the deepest levels unable to withstand the sheer force of the Bell of Lost Souls.
He blinked blood from his eyes and saw many Tellarites laid out on the stones, unmoving and staring blankly in death. The weakest among them had had their hearts stopped and lungs burst by the sound, they were the lucky ones. Far below hundred more innocents died as the world fell on their heads, crushed by their God's indifference. They wept and they prayed for deliverance but it did not come.
"He's not listening, I was right all along, he doesn't care!" Vanderspeak howled though none could hear. The second chime was worse than the first, a fundamental shifting of the world within and without. This was not noise; this was the universe convulsing and the shrieking of dammed souls in the warp. A billion screaming voices, all crying in distress, pleading and begging for the peace of oblivion. There was nothing beyond the veil of death save the fires of perdition and the hunger of ravening Daemons.
Vanderspeak collapsed, blood gushing from his eye sockets, mixed with optical jelly. Legs were twisted bags of flesh and his arms were powdered bones. His heart was barely beating and his innards felt like mush. He was the last, of that he was certain, his augmetic ears detected no other heartbeats on the spire top. Severcole, last of the Tellarite generals, last of those who dared take a stand against galactic corruption.
Though his mouth felt divorced from his brain and his tongue had burst, his bleeding lips still mouthed, "There is no peace among the stars... only an eternity of carnage and slaughter... and the laughter of thirsting gods..." Then the Bell of Lost Souls sounded a third time and Vanderspeak's life was brought to its end.