193.948.M30 – Eremus Gate
The return voyage to Eremus Gate was a quiet one.
The colony on Eremus II endures, though the men there still call the place cursed. It is not cursed — merely young. Every world the Imperium tames bleeds before it heals. But they are alive, and that is enough.
219.948.M30 – Krynaros
The journey to Krynaros was quick, the warp placid. When we translated, the augurs were overwhelmed by light and ruin.
Two neutron stars, locked in their fatal embrace, circle one another like serpents fighting over the same heart. Their energies scour the void, dragging every wayward particle into their orbit — a grave ring of wreckage and stone. Ships, asteroids, ice, the bones of a thousand dead machines. And within that maelstrom hung the prize we sought: a space hulk.
Ten kilometers from the surface to the center. Layers upon layers of derelict vessels, half-fused, half-melted, bound together by gravity and the dutrius of space. Beneath the tangle of hulls and rock lay something older — a core of metal and stone, perhaps an asteroid, perhaps a seed of something worse.
There are no planets here, only the twin stars and a distant yellow sun, as if the system itself were watching the duel of its dying brothers. The Magos warned that the neutron stars would merge and give birth to a black hole in a million years. I told him we would be long gone by then.
We approached under silent running, but stealth is a meaningless concept in a place that screams with radiation. The hulk’s defenses woke as we closed — sporadic bursts of gunfire, ancient weapons coughing at our hulls. Ork attack craft swarmed from hollow bays, a green tide given wings.
The Ashen Daughter held her course, shields flaring, and answered with disciplined fury. The orks were many but disorganized, their attacks scattered. Even the wounded Ashen Promise, stripped of the Black Comet’s support, could have managed it.
The orks aboard the hulk were worse still — thousands of them, but feral. A population left too long without war, gnawing on the bones of their own empire. They fought with crude firearms and spiked clubs, howling through corridors filled with fungus and the stink of centuries. They died as easily as they lived.
We took the outer levels within a day. The Magos found little of worth — no functioning reactors, no archeotech, no logic engines that still sang. Only a few relics of unknown make, and the ever-present trace of corruption.
Then came the discovery at the hulk’s core.
At first, the Magos thought it an ork rok, but that illusion died the moment we breached its outer skin. There were no straight lines, no rivets, no signs of construction by hand or claw. The corridors were triangular, ribbed like the inside of some colossal creature. The walls pulsed faintly when touched, as if the walls remembered how to live.
I felt unease settle over the company. Something in those walls whispered to us.
I ordered the main force to hold at the perimeter. I would not risk them in the dark. Instead, I took my own squad — Daecrus of my own Legion, Erastes of the Emperor’s Children, Oskyr of the Wolves, and Karyth of the Alpha Legion. Warden Anaïs came with us. “For protection against maleficarum,” I said, though the word itself felt foolish on my tongue.
Superstition has no place in this age. But sometimes, reason has no purchase.
We descended.
The deeper we went, the more the corridors seemed to fold upon themselves. Every junction was a triad — three ways forward, never two. Our auto-senses failed to map the geometry. Anaïs murmured that the walls were “forgetting where they belonged.” I forbade her from speaking further.
After what felt like hours, we entered a vast chamber. Dozens of tunnels opened into it, each one identical to the one we had come from. And in the mouth of every tunnel, we saw ourselves — six figures, mirrored and repeating, stretching into infinity.
For a heartbeat, I could not tell which was us.
Daecrus began to convulse, clawing at his helm. Anaïs cried out a word that made my ears ring, and the illusion shattered. Whether by her power or by my own denial, I cannot say. The reflections were gone.
But the darkness that replaced them was worse.
It came from the center of the chamber, rising out of a pool of shadow that seemed to drink the light of our lamps.
A figure — no, a shape. Vaguely human, monstrously wrong. A skeletal giant, all sinew and claws, its neck a serpent’s coil ending in a mouth of knives. Its flesh rippled like oil over water.
I ordered Oskyr and Karyth to form a shield around the Warden. Daecrus was raving, lost to fear or madness. That left only Erastes and myself to face the thing.
Bolter fire did nothing. Erastes’ blades struck true but met no resistance — the creature’s flesh absorbed every blow like smoke. Its claws raked against our armor, not cutting, but draining. Each strike stole something from us — warmth, strength, life.
Anaïs invoked the Emperor’s name and unleashed her power. The air froze, the warp screamed, but the beast did not falter.
It was then, desperate and fading, that I drew the chainsword given to me by Captain Arend Kairon of the Glory of Kallas. Its teeth roared like a storm. I struck — once, twice, again and again — each blow an act of faith in a universe that allows none.
The creature howled without sound. It dissolved, its darkness peeling away like ink in sunlight. When it was gone, the air was cold and still, and I fell to my knees.
I remember little of the retreat. Erastes dragged me out, or so he says. Daecrus had to be sedated; his mind shattered. Anaïs was pale and silent. None of us spoke.
When we reached the surface, I sealed the tunnels. The Magos protested — of course, he did — but I overruled him. No one enters that place again without my explicit order.
The Warden believes the creature was drawn to the warp bleed between the twin stars, a manifestation of some ancient corruption. The Chaplain calls it a “daemon, an ancient xenos monstrosity from beyond the stars.”
I prefer the term anomaly.
There are no demons, no gods, no maleficarum.
There are only things we do not yet understand.
228.948.M30 – Aboard the Ashen Daughter
Erastes and I recovered quickly enough. Warmth returned to our bodies, our strength returned. Yet I cannot forget how the thing in the chamber reached out and took a part of me to keep forever and ever. But we denied it and cast it back into the abyss.
Daecrus remains in stasis, his mind gone to pieces. Anaïs stands silent vigil.
The Magos wants to continue excavations. I denied him. The hulk is quarantined. Its secrets can rot in the dark.
Some doors are meant to stay closed.
Draco Vult.
No comments:
Post a Comment