Auric Gods

Chapter Two The Imperial Palace, Tower of Hegemon, Terra

Few ever ventured this deep. Even amongst the Ten Thousand, those who had done what Syr Cartovandis was about to do could be counted on the fingers of two hands. That would change, of course. Ever since the Rift, everything had changed. The Neverborn had come to Terra. In over ten millennia that had only happened twice. Twice.

It was a staggering statistic. And it had meant those who felt it necessary to do so were taking certain measures in the Tower of Hegemon.

Cartovandis counted himself amongst this number.

Of all the enemies that mankind faced, the daemonic, the Neverborn children of the warp itself, were the vilest. In them mankind saw reflected his own selfish desires, his lusts and mortal weakness. He could no more banish them than excise his own moral turpitude. The battle, then, was an endless one, and Cartovandis had made his peace with that long ago.

So as he stood, head bowed, sentinel blade held in an easy grip, and faced what had been brought to join him in the Oblivion Vault, he felt neither fear nor trepidation, nor even anger. He merely desired to improve.

‘Nullify defences,’ he muttered, and heard the numerous cannons with their thrice-blessed ammunition whirr and power down.

A chuckle echoed from across the darkness.

‘Are we to play now?’ it said, two voices laid one upon the other.

Cartovandis did not acknowledge the figure, though he heard the scrape of its binding chains as it fidgeted in a manner not uncommon for its kind. Much like the cannons, these chains were a precaution. To fight and train against the Neverborn was no small matter. The fact that such creatures were kept on Terra at all spoke to the severity of the Oblivion Vault’s purpose.

We must never be found wanting again.

These had been Cartovandis’ thoughts as he had entered the chamber.

‘Hexagrammic warding… twenty feet,’ he said, and heard the entity in the chamber with him hiss in pain as the sigil rings etched into the floor became active and forced it inwards.

A solitary lumen burned overhead and cast the entity in a pale yellow light.

It had a human form, male, wiry and emaciated. Sores and black lesions marked its greying skin, which was waxy and translucent. A few hairs still clutched at a bony scalp. The eyes had become little more than bloody sockets, the mouth reduced to a few rotten stumps of teeth.

Flesh had such impermanence when invested with the daemonic.

Even twenty feet away, Cartovandis could feel its hunger like a pricking at his bare skin. He wore training armour, a light flak chest-piece with metal greaves on his shins and forearms. No auramite, not here. Not for this.

‘You’re a bold one,’ it said. ‘Have you come to cut me… Thronesworn?’ It spat a rangy gobbet of phlegm as it uttered the final word. ‘Does it thrill you to do it, neutered as I am? Do you like it? Feeling my pain? Does it make you feel strong?’

Cartovandis moved forwards, so fast he appeared at first to be in one place and then another a second later, almost twenty feet away. The sentinel blade lashed out like a tongue of darting silver, flaring bright azure as it struck its target.

The binding chains sloughed loose, clinking loudly as they hit the ground.

Cartovandis slowly backed away, his eyes never leaving the entity, which smiled at him sickle-wide.

‘Oh… Sweet thing… You have unfettered me. I should very much like to taste you now.’

Cartovandis held his sword in front of him at the height of his eyes. The grip, the weight, the thickness of the blade – he knew it as well as he knew his own name. It was a good weapon, a worthy weapon. He wondered if he was still fit to bear it.

‘Let us see,’ he said.

The daemon came for him fast. A second mouth disgorged from the gaping cavity of the first, drooling saliva and ringed with remora teeth. Cartovandis turned on his heel, and the ugly mouth clapped down on air instead of flesh. He swung wide with the turn, the daemon now behind him, and felt the sentinel blade bite. Hot ichor hissed as it splashed the floor of the Oblivion Vault.

Emperor… I am Your blade.

These words were his mantra.

Cartovandis turned to attack but leapt back before a snapping claw could rip off his face.

Without its chains, the daemon could reshape its form at will. It was not supposed to be free of them.

It made a bone spear out of its hand and thrust for Cartovandis’ chest, but the Custodian was faster. He weaved aside, lashing out. The sentinel blade hummed as it cut the air. The arm with the bone spear separated from the daemon’s body, dissolving into foul-smelling smoke as it hit the ground.

Guide my hand, oh Master of Mankind…

A thrust brought Cartovandis in close, rancid innards spilling from the daemon’s sliced torso. It laughed as the sinewy ropes of its intestines coiled around Cartovandis’ sword arm and held it fast.

Bestow unto me Your will and see it enacted…

Undaunted, Cartovandis threw the sentinel blade and caught it in his other hand, hacking down and parting rubbery organs. He sprang aside as flagstones cracked underfoot, the flesh mace the daemon had made of its other hand ­shattering them as it struck.

Forsake me not, oh Emperor…

Turning, Cartovandis had been about to change to his favoured hand when a lashing tentacle took him off his feet. The sentinel blade spun from his grasp and skittered across the floor out of reach.

‘Delicious…’

Remora teeth bared in anticipation, the daemon lunged for Cartovandis.

For I am Your willing servant…

He closed his eyes, his hand finding the long knife secreted behind his back, before the daemon came apart in a flurry of percussive explosions.

As the sentry guns cycled back down, Cartovandis got to his feet and saw Adio waiting for him at the threshold of the chamber. He was in shadow, but visible enough. His green eyes stood out like emeralds. The dark pallor of his skin took on the reflected glow of the lumen, his bald scalp shining like a halo, his features edged in pale light. It only served to enhance his noble visage. A crusader was Adio, like a knight of Terran myth. He had rejoiced when the captain-general had exercised the right of magisterium and sent the Ten Thousand out amongst the stars.

Unlike Cartovandis, Adio was clad in gold auramite battle­plate. His fluted helm was tucked under one arm, the red horsehair plume draped over it. His castellan axe, Puritus, and storm shield, Bulwark, were strapped to his back.

‘You look as if you’ve been on campaign, brother,’ said Cartovandis by way of greeting, and walked right past him through a hexagonal doorway and out of the chamber.

Banks of lumens flared brightly inside the Oblivion Vault, revealing a hexagrammic dome made up of six-sided armourglass facets, like a diamond spanning six hundred and sixty-six feet. In essence, the vault was a glass cage, a warded and psychically impenetrable one. The door shut behind Cartovandis and an alarum sounded, prompting the sentry guns to fold up into niches set into the ceiling. In their place came an array of incinerators, which slowly panned across the entire chamber, cleansing it with blessed promethium.

Ichor burned, all remaining trace of the unclean with it.

‘I have not long returned to the Throneworld,’ Adio replied, turning his back on the firestorm to follow Cartovandis with his eyes. ‘It’s good to see you too, Syr.’

‘Out protecting priests and politicians, eh?’

‘The Aquilan Shield goes where it is directed,’ Adio replied with good humour. ‘But you already knew that.’

Cartovandis grunted in response. He stopped when he reached one of the ablutionals in a separate antechamber appended to the vault but separate from it.

‘Those chains and sentry guns are active for a reason,’ said Adio, a hint of mild accusation in his voice.

‘And they neuter the foe.’

‘You feel the need to test yourself.’

Cartovandis paused.

‘Don’t you?’ he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I did not require or ask for your intervention, Adio,’ he continued, reverently laying down his weapons on the rack provided. He quickly stripped off his armour and other trappings, leaving them for the serf who scurried to attend him, and stepped naked into a metal cubicle. ‘I had the better of it.’

‘Feigning weakness so it lowered its guard. Dangerous.’

‘It’s a dangerous galaxy. Much more so of late.’

A scalding blast of water from a spout above struck Cartovandis across the back of the neck and shoulders, so violent and raucous that he bowed his head.

‘You don’t need to prove anything to me,’ said Adio, once the purification ritual had ended. ‘I apologise if I acted pre-emptively, old friend.’

Cartovandis took a deep breath, inhaling the steam billowing off his body. His skin had reddened. The horrific scar that ran from his left shoulder almost to his groin looked more pronounced.

‘Meroved saved your life that day at the Gate,’ Adio uttered softly. He, like the rest of the Ten Thousand who fought in that battle, still held the horror of it in his eyes.

‘He did,’ Cartovandis replied, turning to the serf and taking a proffered robe, which he pulled over his body. ‘Hykanatoi, Kataphraktoi and Tharanatoi all fighting together. Quite the sight, with Valoris at our head. Do you remember it?’

Adio’s face darkened.

‘Do not ask me that.’

‘How many perished?’

‘Too many.’

‘Half. Almost two thousand of us.’

‘Then it is by the Emperor’s will that you and I lived, and serve still.’

‘Meroved should have let me die.’

‘Perhaps.’

Cartovandis turned to the serf once more. Her head had been shaved, an aquila fashioned into the left temple. She bowed before the Custodian, out of respect and awe.

‘Siris, you need not attend me further today,’ said Cartovandis, not unkindly. ‘You may leave.’

Siris bowed again and scurried quietly away. Cartovandis waited until she was gone.

‘I have not heard His voice since my wounding, Adio.’

‘I know, brother.’

‘It leads me to questions that I am loathe to learn the answers to.’

‘You assume there are answers. If it is His will, you shall hear Him again – but let us speak of this away from this wretched place. I would hear of events in the Palace since I left. In the cerebratory?’

‘I’ll meet you there.’

Cartovandis called out as Adio was leaving.

‘Old friend,’ he said. ‘It is good to see you too.’

Adio nodded, and continued on his way.