Soldiers of the imperium, p.87
Soldiers of the Imperium, page 87
Slowly, the psyker reached a thin, pale arm towards Aerand. ‘Fate and destiny are the domain of the heretic and the witch. The only destiny you serve is the one you create, with every word that you speak and every step you take forward. The Emperor would have it no other way.’
Aerand took his grasp and rose to her feet. ‘So we charge in, then?’ she asked. ‘Blind and alone?’
‘No. Not blind,’ Kellipso replied slowly. ‘And certainly not alone.’
In his hand, the spheres began to dance.
The dark air rippled before Aerand as she strode across the alpine plain. Crusted ice over lichen shattered beneath her boots, a strangely muffled sound that seemed to die only yards from its source. Let the psyker downplay his skill if he wished, but to cast a glamour over an entire company of soldiers was no small feat.
As Aerand watched Kellipso walking comfortably, no visible distraction in his step, a sense of awe, and shame, crept over her. Hours ago she had been ready to kill the man – or rather, to try. She had no illusions now that she would have been the one dead in the exchange. Hours ago she had been convinced of his disloyalty, but now she trusted him as fully as any of her own. She had seen the terrible sorrow in his eyes. Seen his utter dismay at the vision that plagued her. And of those gathered here, only he shared her knowledge of what might await them.
Beside her, Corwyn eyed the psyker suspiciously. ‘My head still hurts,’ he murmured, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
Aerand grimaced. To their credit, the sergeant and her lieutenants had kept quiet about the stand-off atop the ridgeline, but it was asking too much for them to trust the psyker too. ‘Corwyn, I’m sorry.’
The sergeant cut her off. ‘Then again, maybe it’s just my bruised ego I’m feeling. I’m sure Vyse has marked his name on a few of her bolts. But don’t worry about us – she won’t use them unless he gives her good reason.
‘Besides’ – a small smile crept across the sergeant’s face as he rubbed at the back of his head gingerly – ‘I doubt she’d have a chance to get the shot off before he dropped her to the ground again.’
Ahead, the temple stood like a hole in the skyline itself, an even blacker patch of darkness in an already empty firmament. As they approached the jagged, rising walls, the back of Aerand’s neck began to burn. She looked over to Kellipso, who nodded gruffly. ‘Cultists on the other side of the wall. Not yet alerted to our presence.’
Aerand stood silent, awaiting his further instructions, but the psyker simply shook his head. ‘I know little of tactics and the leading of soldiers. What you do with that information is up to you. I will be your eyes and your ears, lieutenant, but you must be our will.’
Aerand nodded, stepping onto the sweeping bridge that separated the temple from the valley over a broad, bottomless chasm. She might be ignorant when it came to visions and divination, but she was far from unschooled in the intricacies of war.
‘Vyse, Graves, Kobald, on me. Lord psyker, prepare to drop that glamour.’
The laspistol sang in Aerand’s hands. A jarring rhythm that shook her bones and comforted her all at once. Around her, the temple courtyard blazed with red fire as the volleys of two platoons tore into an unprepared mass of cultists. Aerand had made no offer of surrender. Their enemy had refused that gift long ago.
Already, the dark stone was littered with pale corpses, the tattooed sigils, arcane brands and savage mutilations of Chaotic rites now invisible beneath the sheen of fresh blood. She took no joy in the killing itself, only in the finality of the confrontation after months of fruitless pursuit and flight.
‘Drusus’ countenance!’ Sergeant Corwyn snapped as another mob of cultists rounded a corner to converge on Secundus Company, crudely fashioned clubs and spears mixed in among energy weapons. ‘No wonder all our raids have come up dry for the last season. Every Throne-cursed cultist on the planet has been hiding here.’
Aerand suspected her sergeant was correct, and that did little to shrink the knot in her gut. With Kobald’s Sentinels patrolling outside the walls to prevent any flanking sortie from the enemy, she had less than a hundred troopers inside the temple. One hundred Cadians against how many cultists? One thousand? Ten? Less than ideal, but all things considered, she would take those odds any given day.
As Aerand sprinted from one debris pile to another, Corwyn followed closely in her wake. On her right, Vyse’s heavies laid down beam after beam of searing lascannon fire, pushing along the natural curve of the temple’s battlements, while Graves’ platoon covered their left flank, already embedded in the cover of a crumbled enceinte. If needed, they could hold these positions all night, but her soldiers were here to conquer, not defend.
Behind her, Kellipso strode undeterred through the tumult, the trio of spheres in the psyker’s left hand flickering like shadows. Aerand watched another group of cultists emerge from deep within the temple only to charge straight into the enfilading fire of one of Vyse’s autocannons, as if they had not even noticed the threat. A chill spread up her spine as she wondered what hand the primaris psyker had in the enemy’s foolhardy decision-making.
‘How many?’ she asked, dropping behind a stone pillar. Kellipso remained on his feet, las-bolts soaring past his hooded head.
The psyker shrugged. ‘Does it matter? More than enough.’
‘Very well then, lord psyker. Lead us on.’
Kellipso nodded, then walked towards a low door in the wall ahead. As Aerand passed through behind him, a sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Something in the colour of the stone and the musty, bloodied scent in the air brought her back once again to her vision on the ridge.
She paused for half a breath, turning to face Corwyn behind her. ‘Stay close. Stay ready.’
The sergeant simply nodded.
Two rounds into a woman’s bare chest. Another straight into the face of a young man barely old enough to join a Whiteshield platoon. Aerand buried her disgust and strode past both bodies.
Ahead, Kellipso walked on, unhindered, the psyker barely present behind his own eyes. Thirteen turns, seven staircases, every step carrying them deeper into the mountain itself, that taste of blood and bile rising higher with each step.
Aerand had seen tragedy here, and it haunted her now. Memories that had not yet happened. That might never happen if the psyker lord spoke true. Even still, she could not help but relive them, and they were nearly enough to make her turn back.
In contrast, Kellipso’s curse haunted him still, the ever-pressing madness that afflicted their deranged enemy encroaching against his own mind through theirs. The psyker had turned back to face her only once since they’d entered the temple proper, and she’d nearly toppled beneath the weight of that horror.
Down another corridor, this one unlit. Then two turns in succession to face a final staircase. Aerand knew what waited down below. Had she not seen it in her mind a dozen times already? Chaos. Death. The gathering darkness. Some arcane ritual or twisted cultist contraption. A heretic priestess, or simply masses of more Chaos-maddened fools. Whatever form the evil of this world had taken, this was where it had chosen to make its stand. And this was where her premonition had led her.
Here, the stone on the floor of the corridor had worn smooth with time, and the carved friezes on the walls faded to mere shadows. At the base of the staircase stood a narrow arch, and Aerand shuddered as light flickered up from within.
Blue. The terrible, unforgettable blue of witchfire and madness that haunted her visions. Ahead of her, Kellipso paused. His weathered face flickered strangely in the awful werelight, his eyes failing to reflect its unnatural hue. ‘I believe that we come now to the end, but I cannot say what lies ahead.’
Aerand nodded in reply to his unasked question. She was ready. Her troopers were ready. And Kellipso may not know what awaited them, but she had already lived through the worst possible fate. She turned slowly to face her company.
‘On the corridor, Vyse. Graves, your rifles with me.’ Her lieutenants nodded and peeled off with their platoons.
Aerand swallowed, recalling her vision one last time. The worn, bloodied stone. The empty, dead faces of the friends around her.
‘Corwyn,’ she began.
‘With you, sir. Always.’
Aerand nodded and dived into the terrible blue light.
A large chamber reared before her, older than any she had seen previously on this world. Here, the shadows grew thick and cloying, seeming to defy the cold white beam of her helm lumen.
In the centre of the room stood a ring of stone chairs. Facing each other, two dozen emaciated prisoners were chained to those seats. Thin, rusted cables stretched from the bases of their skulls and passed to a small black pillar in the centre of the ring. And in the air just above that ancient black pillar was the source of the chamber’s terrible light – a small sphere of flickering, abhorrent blue flame.
Beside her, Kellipso halted, stunned.
‘You’ve seen the like of this before,’ Aerand said.
The psyker’s face contorted in pain, truly unnerved for the first time since she had met him. ‘Not with my own eyes, but I know its design well enough. A fate I myself only narrowly escaped.’
‘Unpleasant for them?’ Corwyn asked.
‘Pure torment,’ he replied. With a shudder, the psyker surveyed the contraption. ‘Fortunately for us, however, not fully active yet.’
Aerand walked towards the captive nearest to her. A young woman – about the lieutenant’s age – her body riven with symbols that made Aerand shudder. She turned to face Kellipso, taking in the pained expression on his face.
Slowly, the psyker approached, eyes distant, those spheres motionless in his hands for the first time since she had met him. He reached out towards the cable at the base of the young woman’s skull, but as his hand closed around the crusted, bloodied metal, the chamber around them exploded with sound.
Half a shout escaped the lieutenant as the report of an autogun echoed off cold stone walls, accompanied by a muzzle flash from one of the room’s shadowy alcoves. Slowly, a dark red flower bloomed in the centre of Kellipso’s forehead, and the psyker slumped awkwardly to the ground. As she reached out to catch him, she blinked at the sound of more autogun fire. But when she opened her eyes, the room around her was silent and Kellipso stood unharmed beside the door, only beginning to approach. A sickening wave of nausea rolled over Aerand as the primaris psyker reached out towards the young woman in the chair.
‘No,’ she whispered, snatching Kellipso’s hand. She pulled him to the ground as the crack of an autogun split the room. Beside them, the young woman’s eyes flashed open, and she let out a terrible, piercing wail. As she did so, the chamber erupted with motion.
Aerand’s laspistol kicked as she fired into the shadowy alcove that had produced the shot directed at Kellipso. With a satisfying thud, a lifeless body struck stone, and Corwyn opened fire with his lasgun behind her.
Suddenly, the dozen prisoners around her woke in unison, their cries rising above the las-fire of her troopers, and in the centre of the room, the blue flame surged. From half a dozen hidden entrances cultists streamed, the edges of the chamber descending into bloody melee as Graves’ troopers raised their weapons and joined the fray.
‘Corwyn!’ Aerand shouted above the din. ‘Get Vyse’s heavies in here! I want an autocannon on every one of those doors.’
Aerand rolled over to face Kellipso, but the psyker had already risen to his feet. Slowly, he surveyed the room around him, unfazed by bolts and las-rounds skirting past his face. A terrible anguish was etched into his eyes, and as he looked towards her, the spheres in his hand began to spin.
‘Kellipso!’ she shouted, levelling her laspistol at the nearest doorway. She pulled the trigger on repeat as a group of battle-mad cultists charged through. A trio of troopers fell under the grouped melee. All around her, her soldiers toppled like timber, and the spheres in the psyker’s hands continued to whirl.
Smoke and blood filled the chamber with their gruesome aroma as the las-charred flesh of cultists fell beside the battered, bloody corpses of Cadians. In the centre of the chamber, that blue fire pulsed, its light rising and falling with the screams of the psykers who produced it. As the tempo rose, a sickening fear gripped Aerand.
She had been here before. She had seen how this ended.
Forward she dived, into the melee, her laspistol blazing. A round into the forehead of the cultist before her. Two more into the stomach of the woman behind him. Somewhere, Corwyn had managed to find Vyse’s heavies, and a pair of autocannons roared, but still the cultists rushed in.
In the centre of it all, Kellipso stood unmoving, the spheres in his hand whirling ever faster until they were nothing more than a blur.
‘Kellipso!’ Aerand shouted one final time. She had trusted the psyker. She had trusted herself. And all around her, Secundus Company died.
Raging, she crashed into a wall of cultists, firing las-rounds point-blank into searing flesh. From behind, a crude bone mace struck her head. As her face hit stone, the horrible vision returned, not imagined this time but visible in truth. Blood on the floor of this Throne-cursed chamber, Kellipso standing alone in the centre of the fray.
Aerand raised her arms to shield herself from the inevitable killing blow, but none came, and when she opened her eyes, the room was still.
Hold.+
A single word reverberated through her mind.
Hold.+
Aerand tried to turn her head to face the cultist above her but found that only her eyes would move. With effort, she fought the iron grasp that had suddenly latched on to her mind, and realised she recognised its touch. She threw her mind against it and managed just enough space to turn her head towards the centre of the room.
Hold.+
Aerand watched Kellipso’s lips move in time with the word in her mind. In time with the word in the minds of every person in this temple. All across the ancient, stone-paved chamber, Cadian troopers lay motionless on the floor, thrown to the ground by the weight of the psyker’s command. Above them, an army of Chaos-maddened cultists stood dumbstruck, swinging knives and levelling weapons at enemies no longer within their reach. Slowly, Kellipso’s grey eyes met Aerand’s, blazing, as the spheres in his hand rose into the air. For a moment, their fractal pattern flared with blue fire, then the three spheres unravelled into a cloud of myriad perfect shards. With a flick of the primaris psyker’s wrist, that cloud rushed around the room like a swarm.
Aerand flinched at the sound of bodies dropping. Felt the thud of dead flesh against solid stone. A bloodied thigh bone clattered to the floor beside her, and the weight of a body collapsed across her. Warm blood trickled down from the cultist’s corpse and seeped through her flak armour as she tried to push the man off her chest.
Hold.+
The command echoed through her mind yet again, but with less power this time. At the centre of the room, Kellipso began to fade. All around Aerand, cultists still fell to the psyker, but the pained expression on his face only deepened further as the dead piled up on the temple’s floor. As if fed by their blood, the blue flame in the chamber’s centre blazed brighter, tendrils flickering outward like rays of some terrible, hungry sun.
Hold.+
So little left in that word. So little power the psyker had held back for himself. Guilt and fear gripped Aerand once again. Whatever confidence Jarrah Kellipso exuded, the man had been afraid. Afraid of the vision that Aerand had shown him. And now he sought its reverse. He would empty himself dry to save the soldiers around him, and by doing so he would spell their doom.
Behind Kellipso, that whirling ball of Chaos still spun, swelling suddenly, even as the psyker grew weaker. Too late, Kellipso turned to face it, to see the horrible, ravenous desire in its light. Empty now, laid bare, the psyker stood defenceless, and what a wonderful prize he would be.
With a shout Aerand shoved the corpse from atop her, then leapt unsteadily to her feet. As the terrible fire reached out towards Kellipso, she stumbled past the psyker and then fell to her knees. Scrambling on her hands, she reached out through the shadows, grasping the cable at the base of a prisoner’s skull and ripping it loose in a gout of blood and crusted fluid.
Above her, the flickering werelight reeled, drawing back from Kellipso, who pushed his last energy towards it. ‘The others,’ the psyker muttered, sweat beading across his wax-pale face.
Slowly, Aerand pushed herself onto her feet, bruised muscles and battered bones protesting every movement. Across the room, grey-clad bodies began to rise from the ground as Cadian troopers spotted their commander on her feet. One by one, rusted cables clattered to the floor, and the terrible blue fire began to fade.
The morning sun that streaked through the clouds above appeared bright and scalding beyond all reason.
‘If I never spend another moment beneath ground, I will live and die a happy man.’ Sergeant Corwyn cracked an irreverent smile as he stepped out from beneath the temple’s shadow and into the bright, unforgiving light.
Aerand did her best to smile back at her sergeant. A wave of gratitude washed over her at the expression on his face, so full of life. So distant from the empty, cold one in her vision. Even still, his lively smile could not erase the image of the dead, both real and envisioned, from her mind.
Across the courtyard, Kobald’s scouts piled casualties. Mostly the half-naked, starved forms of their cultist enemies in a large, unceremonious pile to be burned, but enough corpses in grey flak armour to make her stomach churn.
Two score – three? – dead from Secundus Company. Within her first days on the planet she had seen half of her platoon dead. Now, she had lost almost half of the first company given to her.
Behind her, Kellipso walked slowly through the arch. The man was pale, his eyes even darker and more sunken. Despite his lanky stature, he seemed somehow diminished. And yet somehow so much larger within her mind.
