Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 240
"This should be the place," Athra stated.
"A forest canopy at midnight allows no star to steer by," Vitcos refuted.
"I'm telling you this is the place," Athra insisted, "Or it should be."
"His tongue may speak truth, guarded well is the conflux," Sechura observed.
"A false hide?" Ilquitio pondered.
"However they've disguised it, it's certainly effective," Athra admitted.
The Smoke Jaguars were standing in sight of a crossroads, just another junction in the weaving routes through the city. It was indistinguishable from a thousand others, save that a small flight of stairs ran up to a blank wall and there ended. Dozens of ghosts milled about, seemingly idle and ignoring the call to action from afar. Guards perhaps, set to watch this portal, only there was no portal to be seen. To find it they would have to plunge deeper.
"Hold my back lest you stray," Vitcos commanded. Athra grimaced as he placed a thin hand on the First's belt, ready to follow, and Tachna held firm to Ilquitio. Vitcos put the alien from his mind and gave his full attention to what had to be done. He sank into his Shadow-path, reaching for that mysterious place within. All in the Chapter possessed some measure of the skill, but few could claim to truly master it. Vitcos drew now on what talent he owned, sinking deeper than ever before. The living world faded and the realm of the dead became more vibrant, the ghost's pallor and hues more insistent in his sight. Still it was not enough, and he groaned as he summoned all his reserves, pushing far beyond what he had believed possible. The sky became mist, the towers suggestions of needles and the Automatons disappeared entirely. Then he saw it.
From nowhere a brilliant circle appeared, encompassing the short steps entirely. It shimmered in golden hues, light beyond spilling out of the aperture. The ghosts were illuminated by it and all became tinged with a golden aura. Vitcos was amazed, how had he not seen this, it was clear as day to his eye. Whatever arcane cantrips had shifted the portal into the realm of the dead made it invisible to the mortal eye, but the Shadow-path placed him outside the perceptions of the living and he could see it plain.
Vitcos stepped forward and the assembled ghosts reacted, bringing rifles to bear. "Halt," Vitcos commanded and they froze at his command. Why or how were beyond his knowing but he accepted the reality as he stepped again. "Part," he ordered and the dead made way for them to pass. Silent faces, each stilled into a confused expression but unable to break his decree. Vitcos moved swiftly through the crowd, till he reached the steps and then mounted them. At the top he paused and hesitantly reached out. His finger brushed the portal's surface, but found no purchase. Gritting his teeth he summoned all his talent. The slightest sense of pressure, as if sinking into fathomless waters, increasing till it became unbearable. His bones creaked and his eardrums stabbed painfully. His sinuses burned and his hearts ached with effort as he reached out and tried again. This time there was the slightest resistance, like breaking the tension on still water, then his arm sank into the golden light.
"There it is!" Athra cried.
"You can see?" Vitcos asked.
"Keep disrupting it till we're all through!"
"Make haste Kinsmen!" Vitcos called.
"The scales fall from our eyes," Ilquitio replied.
Hastily the Smoke Jaguars hurried up the steps, sinking one by one through the portal and disappearing into the wan light. Sechura, Ilquitio, Tachna and the rest. Vitcos held the door open till they were all through, then stepped into the labyrinthine dimension. He did not see Athra casually drop a small crystal-transmitter over the threshold, a marker to draw others to the portal, even if they could not see it.
Vitcos was blinded for a moment as he reorientated himself. Calan Gaeav was no more, instead he beheld the impossible. A tunnel thrice the height of a Space Marine, made of gold, disappearing into the distance further than the eye could see. There was not a straight line anywhere, the contours swelled and ebbed like coral growths. The air was cool on his face and hints of whispers tickled his ear, beyond knowing but with the impression his regret would be eternal if he understood. He let go his Shadow-path and breathed the air, stale but not with the scent of dust, rather like an airlock unopened for millennia, exposed for the first time.
"Behold the wonder of a greater race!" Athra crowed.
"A Mole-Serpent's tunnel, burrowed deep," Vitcos hissed in wariness.
"Do not sully this perfection with your coarse metaphors, the Webway is the highest achievement of beings beyond your understanding!"
"Understand the way to our prey do you?" Tachna growled, his eyes narrow.
"Not yet..."
"Then walk in front and eye not the avenues of escape, lest you hold you can outrun a hail of bolt rounds."
Athra glared at the Headsman but stepped forward heading down the tunnel's length. Vitcos stepped after and nearly stumbled. His foot hit a slight incline in the wall but instead of slipping to the floor it stuck fast. His ankle twinged as his centre of gravity shifted, making him upright despite the slope. Another step and another and he realised there was no up nor down to this place, wherever he put his feet was the ground, the sense of up was merely the centre of the tunnel. How strange, but he would not let that stop him.
"How did Damiel, First of Censors, stumble upon this place?" Sechura asked.
"A question without answer," Sechura muttered, "Yet his vox-signal grows stronger."
Vitcos frowned, "Could we walk to the edges of the galaxy searching?"
"Possibly," Athra shrugged, "But I doubt they got very far, Hythraal said he could not escape Calan Gaeav's pull."
"Have we yet passed beyond the orbits of that world?"
"That's the wrong kind of question."
"Then how far does each step take us?"
"Again, the wrong kind of question."
Vitcos shut up as something different appeared. Laying in the middle, if middle could be termed here, was a pile of smashed parts. An Automaton of Calan Gaeav, broken into tiny pieces. He'd seen such before but this was unique. The damaged sections had a melted quality to them, the blows that had shattered it of prodigious strength. It hadn't just been broken, it had been demolished, reduced to splinters and dust. No mere Space Marine had potency of that magnitude.
"Damiel wrought not this devastation," Vitcos remarked.
"His prey?" Ilquitio asked as he drew his Daga blades.
"Few others have I seen with such power."
Sechura eyed the wreckage, "How are we to best such a beast?"
"With tenacity and guile," Tachna insisted.
They left the wreck behind, but it was not the last they would find. Ahead lay a confluence of tunnels, multiple routes coming together as would the knot at the heart of a spider's web. The conjoining formed a broad sphere in the netherspace of the Webway, a cavern large enough for an Imperial Guard armoured column to pass through without trouble. As with all things in this realm it was organic in shape, ethereal in nature and inexplicable to human reason. It was also a graveyard.
Broken constructs lay everywhere, smashed into bits. Shattered arms and heads lay strewn randomly about, shattered torsos and dropped rifles left where they fell. Automatons had been blown apart, their innards scattered far and wide, their forms so thoroughly obliterated it was impossible to tell where one stopped and another started. The ground crunched underfoot as the Smoke Jaguars stepped on the shattered remnants of an epic battle, the number of slain beyond counting.
Vitcos drew his Chakrams as he growled, "The gravemarker of Damiel is this, on this very spot he expired."
"An army it took to slay him," Sechura noted.
"And yet he called aloud his mission was done," Ilquitio added.
"Where then lies his prey?"
Athra pointed some way distant, "I'm guessing that would be what you're looking for."
A blue speck interrupted the haze of gold and Vitcos frowned as he saw a shape encased in a shimmering field. A stasis-trap, as Hythraal had recounted, but what had Damiel snared before he died? The Smoke Jaguars inched nearer, the wall shifting underfoot as they did so to become ground. Vitcos half-expected the figure to break free at any second and come at them, but nothing happened. Silence reigned as they neared and details became clear. Vitcos would not have been surprised to find a Warlord of Chaos entombed here, a Daemon Prince of the Ruinous Powers even, but this figure was not any of that, and yet he was their equal.
Imprisoned in stasis was a giant man, clad in black plate that resembled the earliest marks of Power Armour as had Astartes of the Dawning, but there the resemblance ended. His arms were bared and wrapped in silver chains that hung loose. Skeletal emblems were emblazoned on shin and breastplate, and the Pauldrons were overhung by shoulder-mounted weapons, a flamer and a plasma gun by shape. In his bare hands was held a warhammer long as a Space Marine is tall, and with a head heavy enough to break a Banebalde. A giant indeed, in form and stature, the greatest Astartes who ever lived, but his cranium was a deathly skull, without skin, eyeball, lip or ear. Yet none of that compared to the fact he was aflame, blazing whisps emerging from every join in the plate, crowning his scalp and bursting from the pores of his bare arms. He wasn't on fire, he was fire incarnate, wrought into the shape of a Space Marine. Retribution manifested; the hatred of an entire species embodied.
"At last the riddles are unwound and the mysteries stripped bare," Vitcos breathed in awe.
"My eye sees but my heart quails," Ilquitio gulped.
"Behold the prey of Damiel, the foe he chased to this world of ghosts."
"No Eldar ghost is this," Sechura hissed.
"No, a far more dangerous breed of foe drew the First of Censors. This is the prey Lazar sought, the power he craves to hold in his hands. Vendrick's lies are exposed, his covetous soul can no longer be hid behind a facade of duty. I understand now the Censors are but feeble graspings at majesty, mere essays in the craft. This is what Lazar seeks, this is what he always intended the Censors to become. An army of such beings, to confront Chaos with equal strength."
"But of what nature is it?!" Ilquitio demanded.
"The truth is as obvious as it is bitter," Tachna uttered.
Vitcos nodded, "Lazar seeks that which is forbidden to all. He seeks to bind to his will the Legion of the Damned!"