Auric Gods

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

Gedd bent double, her hands on her knees as she tried to breathe. She barely felt the cold. The image of the butchered priest returned when she closed her eyes, so she stared into the distance and tried not to let the darkness in. She had felt something inside the warehouse, a presence both simultaneously there and not there. It lingered, like smoke on cloth after a fire or the taste of spoiled meat. It had seen her.

Gedd wanted to scream, to tear at her eyes as if it might rid her of the memory. She half imagined that terrible effigy lurching into motion, tearing free of its crucifixion and taking flight on its tattered, flesh wings, a hellish shriek resounding as she–

Gedd bit her lip and the pain brought her back.

She saw a figure moving unsteadily through the snow, which seemed only to have worsened since she had been inside the warehouse. Gedd drew the Verifier. Her aim ­wobbled but she managed to hold it firmly enough to draw a bead on the figure’s chest.

‘Halt,’ she said, trying to put some confidence back into her voice. ‘Peacekeeper. I am armed. Come no closer.’

The figure kept coming, swaying drunkenly and mumbling. Something wasn’t right about its uneven gait, and a long uninterrupted strand of drool hung from the figure’s mouth.

‘I am warning you.’

It looked like one of the dregs she had seen skulking in a doorway earlier.

It kept coming as if it hadn’t heard her. She fired once into the ground, hoping the shot would snap the figure out of its strange torpor but it didn’t even react. Gedd reckoned it was about twenty feet away, the snow plastered to its face and clothes. An odd ache began to build at the back of Gedd’s teeth. She winced. Then it got worse. It seemed to coincide with the proximity of the figure. Her vision began to blur. The figure started to moan and then scream, throwing its head back to clutch at its skull, tiny lightning arcs cascading from its mouth and eyes. Gedd fired, and grimaced as her head felt like it was cracking apart. The bullet tore open the figure’s shoulder, releasing a puff of blood and a ragged bloom of cloth. It staggered but didn’t stop. The lightning arcs grew worse. She felt their heat. Her own pain intensified. Is this what happened to the poor bastard her and Klein had found just off the down-trans?

‘I said… stop!’ she yelled, and fired three times.

Gedd could scarcely see, but she knew at least one of her bullets had found its mark when the figure slumped and fell. Dark red spilled across the snow.

‘I’m sorry…’ she whispered, breathless and afraid, driven to her knees. The pounding in her head became a roar of nerve-shredding tinnitus, failing to abate even though the figure she had thought was causing it was dead. She dropped the gun to press at her ears, her mouth wide in a wordless scream for help. Her entire world was pulsing, and it hurt just to open her eyes. From her knees she slumped onto her back, willing the throbbing agony to stop but knowing she was powerless against it. She curled into a foetal ball. Her teeth clenched and her fists tightened as she was wracked by spasms.

I’m going to die here, she thought, alone, in the snow, next to some bloody cultist’s den.

Something warm touched her neck. She heard a faint click and then the whirr of mechanical activation. The pain lessened almost instantly. It diminished so much that Gedd could open her eyes. She could function. She saw Meroved crouching beside her, a gun-cutter in the distance, sat up on its landing stanchions at the edge of the asphalt with engines humming.

‘Gedd…’ he was saying. His voice sounded muffled at first, as though they were conversing under water.

She nodded to show that she was rational.

‘What happened? Everything sounds muted.’

‘It’s the dampener,’ he told her, and she felt the collar he had placed around her neck. ‘You’ll adjust.’

Her eyes widened when she at last managed to focus.

‘Saint’s piss, what happened to you?’ She reached up to touch his ragged eye socket, but Meroved leaned back and Gedd withdrew her hand.

‘The fraying at the edges… It has begun.’

‘What the hell does that mean, Meroved?’ She winced as a fresh spike of pain hit her. ‘What’s happening?’

‘The veil is thinning. We have to leave here now.’

‘Not until I get answers. I felt something in the warehouse… A presence. Is this the thinning veil? Is that what we’re fighting?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I saw something too…’

‘Four crosses.’

‘You knew?’

‘I guessed. You’re not the only one who had an encounter. Each sacrifice is devoted to one of the cardinal aspects of Ruin. The effigies represent the four temptations, the four great sins. There is the changed and the agonised, and the bloated and the flayed,’ said Meroved. ‘These are old names, but there are many others. Each is a benediction to a presence beyond the veil.’

‘Again with the veil. Throne… What I felt, what did it–’

Meroved took a small, stoppered bottle from a wooden casket hooked to his belt.

‘Drink this,’ he said. ‘You will feel better.’

Gedd took the bottle and pulled out its stopper. She sniffed at the contents.

‘It stinks… What is this?’

‘Potent. It will help. You’re not the first in my employ to have had this reaction.’

‘How am I faring?’

‘Better than most.’

Gedd swigged it in one. It went down hard and lit up her nerve endings like wildfire. Her senses heightened briefly, painfully, but it was warming, like the sudden relief of a balm applied to an enflamed tooth. ‘Saint’s piss! It burns! Do you drink this?’

‘My constitution has a greater tolerance for alcohol.’

‘Are you sure it’s not fuel for that gun-cutter?’

Meroved did not answer. He merely watched.

Gedd nodded. ‘That does help. Thank you.’ She glanced at the warehouse. It loomed with an animus she hadn’t felt before, but her terror of it had lessened since taking Meroved’s draught.

‘What’s happening, Meroved? Why are you unaffected by whatever this is?’

‘I am not like you.’

‘That is something of an understatement.’

‘We have to leave.’

He got to his feet and made for the idling gun-cutter. Through the drifts, Gedd saw a servitor at the pilot’s controls.

Meroved kept walking. Gedd noticed a limp.

‘You’re really hurt.’

‘Yes.’

‘Saint’s piss… You can be hurt.’

‘Yes.’

Gedd saw more figures emerging, staggering into the storm. She gestured.

‘Ignore them,’ said Meroved. ‘They won’t reach us.’

Meroved had made it to the ramp and waited there for Gedd to catch up.

‘Shouldn’t we try to help them?’ she asked, calling after him.

He stared back at her, impassive.

‘They are beyond that now. Get aboard. This is just the beginning.’

Gedd took the ramp, which slowly closed behind her. The gun-cutter rose on its wing turbines, its thrusters building to a scream before levelling off again as it soared away, leaving the Hoard behind.

Gedd sat down, strapped in and hung her head by her knees.

‘What was that out there? It felt like my skull was about to split open.’

‘That would be accurate,’ Meroved replied. He had also taken a seat and was starting to shed his cloak and armour.

Gedd gave him a scathing look to suggest she did not appreciate his candour.

‘What causes it? Is it a weapon of some kind? How does it work?’

‘Those you know as wyrds are more severely affected. Their connection to the warp and their powers are greatly amplified. Too much and–’

‘Violent cranial explosion death, like my fake suicide on the down-trans.’

‘Precisely.’

‘But I’m not a wyrd… Am I?’

‘No, you’d be dead if you were.’

‘I’d be dead if I were still out there too.’

‘Possibly.’

Gedd tapped the null-collar. ‘So I assume I shouldn’t take this off any time soon.’

‘That would be a very bad idea.’

‘You still haven’t told me what it is. I assume this is the other business you referred to earlier?’

‘You are very astute.’

‘I agree, but that’s not an answer.’

‘A relic, something very old, something mankind should not meddle with, was stolen. It has since reappeared here in Vorganthian. It’s an amplifier of sorts, a piece of arcana from a dark time in mankind’s past. Whatever is fuelling it must be potent.’

‘I don’t feel any better or wiser for knowing any of that.’

Meroved shrugged. He had stripped off his torso layer to reveal an ugly gash across his chest and even uglier goring in his flesh.

Gedd swore under her breath.

‘That wound… You should be dead. What happened to you?’

‘One of my brothers was murdered. The same thing that killed him tried to kill me. I survived.’

Gedd’s eyes narrowed. ‘When you say “brother” you mean brotherhood, don’t you, as in a fellow warrior?’

‘His name was Kazamende. He was regarded as a protector amongst my former order, one sent to watch over someone of importance.’

‘A duty he failed if he’s dead?’

Meroved nodded. ‘Yes, one he failed.’

‘And this person of importance… Where are they right now?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Could they still be alive?’

‘It’s possible.’

A brief silence fell as the events of the last few hours began to sink in. Gedd found the engine noise soothing and realised how close to exhaustion she was. If not for Meroved’s fortifying tonic, she would probably have collapsed by now. Instead, she watched in silence as he first washed then dressed his wound. It looked savage, like the kind of damage that never really heals.

After fifteen minutes of silence, Gedd decided she had to know.

‘Who are you, Meroved, or should I ask, who were you?’

‘I am my Emperor’s loyal servant, even in exile,’ he replied.

‘A Space Marine?’

‘No…’ said Meroved at length, looping the bindings tightly and methodically around his chest. ‘I am no wolf. I was a lion once.’

‘I don’t know what any of that means.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Gedd.’

‘Call me Sula.’

Meroved smiled, despite the obvious pain he was in.

‘Sula,’ he repeated.

‘It’s short for Ursula.’

He laughed. ‘I know.’

‘So, what do we do now?’

‘We wait. Word has been sent. Terra has heeded us. They are coming.’

Gedd frowned. ‘Who is coming?’

‘My former brothers in arms, the Adeptus Custodes.’

‘Former? But that would mean…’

Meroved nodded. ‘Now you have your answer.’

Gedd leaned back in her seat.

‘Saint’s piss…’