Auric Gods

Chapter Twenty-Five City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light

A flare of light, the dull register of energy in a city cast into permanent night, that’s how they found it. Meroved had forced Orn’s hand. In an ocean of darkness, something like the power required by a teleportation event tended to stand out. It only identified a region, but Gedd knew how to pinpoint a location.

‘They use a mark,’ she had explained to Cartovandis as he analysed myriad data-streams. ‘It identifies the boltholes and safe houses the cult have established around the city. That’s how Meroved found them.’

‘Describe it to me…’ said Cartovandis, assimilating all live and archived visual information with a series of ultra-rapid saccades.

‘That’s the devious part,’ said Gedd. ‘The mark is broken up into pieces and inscribed in several places. It can only be discerned at a certain angle and distance, at a point where each of the pieces align and come into focus.’

‘The shape of an eye with the letter “I” inside it,’ said Cartovandis.

‘Er… Yes, that’s it.’

‘I’ve found it.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. Meroved has kept excellent records. The teleportation flare narrowed the search considerably. The rest was simply visual data analysis.’

‘Saint’s piss…’ said Gedd, looking at the pict-feeds herself but seeing a visual blur without meaning. ‘That was easier than I thought it was going to be.’

‘It was incredibly difficult,’ Cartovandis replied, taking up his sheathed sword, which he had removed so he could step into the machine.

‘It took you less than a minute to find it.’

‘I know.’

The old clock tower had collapsed during a hivequake many years ago and never been rebuilt. Since that tragedy, the city had scabbed over it, layer by accreted layer until the clock tower became part of the lowest deeps.

Half of its face, a truly cyclopean structure that must have once inspired awe and reverence in all who saw it, jutted from a stagnant sump, the accumulated run-off from sanitation pipes and industrial chemical drains. Its gold detailing had succumbed to a grubby patina of verdigris, the effigy of the Emperor as a hooded chrono-lord dictating the passage of time similarly degraded. Some of the clock tower’s inner workings lay exposed where the perma-glass or crystal­flex used in its construction had broken like wounds in a body. Great cogs and rusted springs, pulleys and cables extruded viscerally.

The entrance was an old maintenance access hatch, easily large enough to accommodate one of the Revered Fallen, let alone the three Custodians.

Once inside, the true expanse of the clock tower was revealed. Due to destruction, it leaned on a strange angle and this affected the dimensions and orientation within.

Efforts had been made to erect several staging areas, platforms and gantries fashioned from industrial pallets and bulkhead doors. This iron framework rose up into the high ceiling and above the encroaching fluids of the sump.

Cartovandis was first to mount the staging area and looked out across a large chamber lit with a daisy chain of sodium lamps.

At the far end, he saw a flash of light and discerned the metallic churning of the Vexen Cage. For now it was out of direct line of sight, secured in some lower vault or sub-chamber. The main room was dark enough that the armed cultists of the Illuminated hiding in the shadows thought they could not be seen.

‘There are only a few dozen,’ he said as Varogalant and Adio joined him. Ursula Gedd followed after them.

‘Looks have been deceiving before,’ said Cartovandis. ‘Tread carefully.’

‘Stay with me, peacekeeper,’ uttered Adio, swinging up his axe into his grip as he slammed down his shield in a defensive posture.

‘The Emperor protects…’ she murmured in response.

Adio nodded. ‘He does, and through His Aquilan Shields.’

They were about to engage when a scratchy vox sounded over casters rigged up around the room.

‘I knew you would come,’ said Orn. He sounded calm, measured. ‘Nothing could have stopped that. But you are misguided, blind. I would see Him reborn, through the blood of the Sigillite’s heir. Illumination awaits if you would but allow it.’

Cartovandis scowled. ‘Shut him up.’

For a few seconds a trio of bolt casters ripped back the shadows, destroying the vox-rig in a flare of sparks and squawking static.

The cultists came out of hiding, weapons free, and with the knowledge their deaths were inevitable.

They died swiftly in a blur of furious gold and black as Cartovandis and Varogalant cut through the mortals with ease.

‘Another delaying tactic,’ growled the Shadowkeeper, wrenching Vigilance from a dead cultist’s body.

‘It’s his last,’ asserted Cartovandis, the crackling light and the sanity-grinding hum of the Vexen Cage only a short distance away. He looked to Adio. ‘Varo and I can stop Orn.’

Gedd stepped up, realising what the Custodian meant.

‘I am seeing this through to the end,’ she said, though in truth she looked more haggard than ever. Prolonged use of the null-collar had taken a profound toll upon her, but she was determined.

Adio gave a noncommittal look to Cartovandis.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But stay by Adio’s side. He will protect you. I couldn’t save Meroved, and you’re about all that’s left of his legacy, Ursula Gedd.’

She nodded, understanding.

‘Another pit,’ Varogalant remarked as they approached the edge of a deep recess. Sump fluids drooled down the edge, pooling in the corners. It was unlit, but the Cage shone over stark iron walls and a host of figures, men and women both, standing side by side and bound by rune-etched chains.

Orn, the Vexen Cage and the Sigillite’s heir were behind them.

‘Is it just me,’ said Gedd, ‘or is that shitting thing getting louder?’ A trickle of blood seeped from her nose and she wiped it away.

Cartovandis burned the cultist blood from Arcana and leapt into the pit.