Auric Gods

Chapter Thirteen City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light

There was something wrong about the figure standing twenty feet in front of Meroved. It was a man, that much he had managed to interpret from its shape and build, but his head was bowed and he wore the anonymous overalls of a hive labourer. He had yet to step into the light after the hololith of Ylax Orn had faded, and stood remarkably still. It was almost as if he wasn’t breathing.

‘I am Meroved, once of the Ten Thousand, servant of the Emperor’s Light. Come forward and make yourself known.’

‘I know who you are.’

The voice definitely belonged to the man, but it was inhuman and entirely too deep and too resonant, as if more than one person were speaking at once.

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘No…’ said Meroved, stepping back as he moved into a fighting stance, ‘but I know what you are.’

‘So confident, so sure of yourself… Do you think he was the same? Would you like me to tell you how he died?’

‘Why don’t you shut your mouth and try to kill me instead?’ Meroved holstered the pistol. He wanted to do this hand-to-hand.

‘Oh,’ said the daemonhost, lifting its night-black gaze from the floor and revealing all the horror of its unholy countenance. ‘I would be delighted to.’

Two shiny horns protruded from its forehead, framing a face elongated by the rigours of the warp. Its mouth was a pallid scythe-slit, filled with needle-sharp teeth. Its nose was long and edged like a dagger. Patches of dark discolouration covered its skin like a colonisation of plague.

As it advanced on Meroved, it seemed to stretch. The skin tautened, then ripped, revealing gleaming bone beneath. It teetered on spindly legs. Its overlong arms swept down from its body like an ape’s. The ribcage bulged then broke apart, the jagged edges of bone becoming gnashing teeth and the red place within, a maw. Its neck distended, uncoiling in peristaltic fashion until the now diminutive head wobbled on a grotesque tentacle of flesh.

The clothes it had once worn sloughed away, caught by some unseen fire and turned into burning scraps that fled on a stinking breeze, until it stood naked and foul as the night it was spawned. Spoiled meat and rancid milk tainted the air.

Meroved roared, never taking his eyes off the stalk-like daemon as it bore down on him with unnatural vigour.

He missed the first blow struck at him, his own cut with the vibro-sword glancing off rubberised flesh. Meroved lost his feet, a whipping arm taking his legs and dumping him hard on the ground.

Tasting blood, he realised he had bitten his tongue.

Shoving his body up with a grunt of effort, Meroved hacked at the daemon’s ankle and was rewarded with a discordant shriek of pain.

He smiled grimly. ‘Old weapons… They leave a mark.’

He jerked, a bone spar suddenly jutting from his chest where the daemon had impaled him.

Slow, Meroved. Too slow.

Cutting down with the vibro-blade, he severed the wretched limb and left the end of it sticking in his body like a piece of shrapnel.

Rusty too…

A savage kick sent Meroved sprawling, pain lancing up his back as he struck the wall.

‘I remember this being easier with the gilded arsenal,’ he said through gritted teeth, hauling himself to his feet as the daemon paraded in front of him.

‘We have fought before, you and I,’ it said, and Meroved was all too willing to let it talk. Daemons liked to talk. It was one of the attributes of mankind that they adopted with some relish. To taunt, to beguile, to mock and to promise… These were the daemon’s tools as much as any bony blade or sharpened tooth.

Grimacing, Meroved wrenched out the bone spur sticking in his chest. The end of it was thick with dark blood and he realised it had gone in deep.

‘Possibly… I don’t remember.’ He took a shuddering breath. Any one of the blows he had sustained would have killed a lesser being. ‘My mind isn’t what it used to be. Either that or you’re just not very memorable.’

It smiled, revealing crocodilian teeth.

‘Trying to wound me with words. There’s only one word that can hurt me, and you don’t know what it is.’

Meroved sneered. ‘I don’t need your true name to kill you.’

The daemon struck with viperous quickness, and Meroved cried out as it lacerated his chest and left a ragged gouge in his flesh. He only just clung on to the vial of silver liquid he had taken from a pouch on his belt.

‘As I was saying…’ he rasped, shaking the vial hard before tossing it at the daemon. It hissed as the vial shattered, bathing it in some kind of holy acid that burned at its emaciated flesh and sent it reeling.

‘Sanctus lamenta,’ snarled Meroved, feeling the pain of his injuries. ‘It means “saint’s tears”, you ignorant piece of filth.’

Foul-smelling smoke coiled off the daemon’s body and left it raw and bleeding.

Meroved charged, swinging his sword two-handed. He closed fast before the daemon could recover, stepping between its gangling limbs and hacking up into its groin.

It writhed and staggered with every blow, emitting a porcine squeal from its overlarge mouth. Stabbing down with its arms, it tried to pierce Meroved’s shoulders and back, but he weaved and turned and stayed out of harm’s way. As long as he stayed beneath it, it could not bring its superior reach to bear.

But Meroved was tiring. The wound to his chest had taken more out of him than he had at first realised. Blood flowed freely over his armour, pooling at his feet. He almost slipped in it, and as he hastily regained his footing the daemon arced its neck and spat a fusillade of sharpened teeth, as though it were blowing Meroved a kiss.

He recoiled, but dared not release his hand from his weapon to clutch at the wound to his face. If he dropped his sword, it was over. Blood now streaming down his face as well, Meroved swept out the vibro-blade in a wide arc. He cut through the daemon’s legs at the knee and it collapsed, a spider flailing without its limbs.

Meroved cut a second fusillade of teeth out of the air with the flat of his blade and advanced. With the daemon screaming curses, he severed one arm then the other, and then began hacking at its neck. It took several blows, each one releasing a welter of stinking ichor that gummed up his armour and burned his scalp and exposed skin. Meroved did not relent. The only way to vanquish a daemon was to disassemble it. The screams of its death throes reverberated around the cavern, but Meroved was resolute. Limbs burning, dizzy from the blood loss, his attack became urgent and frenzied. His grief found expression in a final roar of triumph and retribution. When he was done, he sagged and almost fell. He dug the sword into the ground, using it as a crutch.

Nothing remained of the daemonhost but a rancid puddle of bubbling ichor that was evaporating into even fouler smoke. Meroved took care not to breathe it in. He blacked out for a few seconds, dark flashes invading his vision, and realised he was blind in one eye. He reached up with trembling fingers to find the wound and felt a ragged eye socket instead. Spitting a gobbet of blood he found the stimm-injector amongst his trappings and did not stint on the dosage. Bright fire lit up his nerve endings. He knew the effects would be short-lived and that medical attention would be needed, so he used the time he had to raise Zatu on the vox.

The servitor’s response was swift.

‘Have you found the relic, my lord?’

‘No, but I am convinced it’s here, Zatu. I have found something much, much worse.’

‘You sound injured. Should I–’

‘I am and yes, despatch the gun-cutter. Make sure there’s a full medical array. I am sending you my location. The Throne must be made aware, Zatu. A threat is here in Vorganthian. It is real and it is dire beyond imagining. The cult of the Illuminated lives. I must contact the captain-general immediately.’

He gasped for breath, clutching the wound at his side. Then he glanced at the foetid remains of the daemon, almost incorporeal to the point of absolute dissolution.

‘And try to reach Gedd. She has no idea what she’s walking into.’