Auric Gods

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

Gedd had felt horror before, but this was different. Her fear had reached beyond the point of paralysis into a place of desperate survival. So she fought, her golden shadow by her side. The things in the pit came for her, perhaps sensing weakness, perhaps out of malice in that her death would mean another failure for the Custodians. She didn’t care. She only wanted to end them, whatever they were. They wore the flesh of men and women but their forms swiftly changed, bloating and mutating into horrible parodies of humankind with limbs and bodies and mouths distending into savage versions of their former incarnations. They wore scales and hides and arachnid carapaces, or grew tusks and claws and barbs. Each was a weapon of altered flesh and bone, a monster from the deep places.

The Verifier bucked in her grasp, the auto-loader on a continuous cycle and burning ammunition as fast as Gedd was using air with every desperate gasp. It had little effect, except to stun or irritate.

Her protector was consummately more lethal. He weaved and cut with almost balletic grace, his shield miraculously deflecting every blow regardless of whether it was directed at Gedd or himself. She tried not to watch, for it was dizzying and she feared she might collapse from nausea. Effective as he was, the Custodian’s combat prowess was not the greatest boon bestowed upon Gedd. His presence galvanised her. She believed that without it, her mortal mind would have already folded in on itself. Without him, she would have been a quivering and vomit-strewn mess of limbs, food for the unholy creatures trying to kill her.

‘Stay with me!’ she heard her protector say, the strength of his oration such that she had no choice but to obey.

Giddy, her quickening pulse feeling as if it were about to tear right out of her arm, Gedd followed… And then abruptly stopped as she came face-to-face with Xeus.

The Lamplighter regarded her with curious eyes, pitying and condescending at the same time. Gedd staggered, her appreciation of time dwindling away like the sands in an hourglass.

‘Xeus…’ She felt strange, her voice sounding far away even as it resonated inside her skull.

+Shoot him, Gedd…+

‘W-what?’

+Shoot him.+

‘I can’t, I…’

+He can’t protect you.+

She looked to the blurring figure of her protector, so much slower than before. Everything was slower. His dance of blade and shield painted the air in gold. Dark, viscous blood fountained in miniature, slowly exploding blooms.

‘I… He…’

Xeus drew closer, a syncopated movement, jerky like a pict-cast skipping a few frames.

+Shoot him now, and I will do the rest.+

Gedd felt pressure inside her skull. The null-collar burned her neck, but she resisted the urge to take it off.

+You know me, Gedd…+

She saw her arm raising the Verifier, the experience of doing it removed from the actual action itself.

+You trust me, Gedd…+

‘I…’

+Do it…+

‘I…’

+DO IT!+

‘I never liked you, Xeus…’ She shot the thing wearing the body of the Lamplighter in the face. Time resumed its usual pace as the blade of a Custodian’s axe cut off Xeus’ head. ‘But I am sorry that you’re dead.’

Barely a few seconds had lapsed, and as they fought on Gedd thought she caught a fleeting glance from the Custodian. He had a look in his eye, there and gone in a moment. Gedd could have sworn it was approval.

Cartovandis cut one of the daemonspawn across the midriff, spilling its vile innards. As he pressed on, Varogalant came up in his wake and finished it. They fought as two lions, alternating primacy at the vanguard of the fight, one the claws that maimed and disabled, the other teeth that applied the killing blow. One attacked then the other, their fighting styles utterly unalike, but their synchronicity of purpose undeniable.

This martial rhythm brought Cartovandis to the edge of the Vexen Cage, standing on its stepped dais. He felt its power wearing at his armour, scratching at the mental bulwarks that protected his mind. Through the rapidly turning spheres of the Cage, he saw the one referred to as the Sigillite’s heir properly for the first time. He was withered, every tortured revolution of his body bringing him closer to dissolution. His eyes had long been burned from their sockets, blood and ocular fluid plastering his drawn cheeks like wax. Crackling, pearlescent light blazed there instead. It spewed from his mouth too, which was wrenched open, a chasm leading to the deepest pit of the man’s agony.

It reminded Cartovandis of another’s pain. The Lord Malcador’s as he took up the Throne in His stead, a death sentence by any discernible measure. Cartovandis had not seen it, but every Custodian knew of this sacrifice and honoured the man who had given it so selflessly. This was not that. It was an abomination, but the symmetry of it left him disquieted.

And at the heir’s feet sat a partly fleshed ork skull. It retained a leer within its porcine rictus, and its sheer size and apparent age suggested only one possible provenance. It had come from the War of the Beast, when orks had stridden the galaxy as conquerors. Their leaders had been beyond anything the Imperium had known before, literal titans with savage intellect to match their colossal stature. Here, then, was the thing that Meroved had believed was enhancing the Cage’s reach, the tapped psychic power of a greenskin demigod, still potent after nine thousand years. Cartovandis felt the belligerence of its anima.

Orn stood nearby but did not impede him. The missionary was wise enough to know he posed no challenge to a Custodian. He talked instead.

‘It can’t be stopped, Cartovandis…’

Cartovandis’ gaze snapped to Orn, who, though he wore a null-collar of his own, was evidently more gifted than he let on.

‘You’re wrong.’ Cartovandis shot at the Vexen Cage but the rounds ricocheted away harmlessly. He hacked at it with Arcana, but his blow rebounded so ferociously it tore at his shoulder and he took a step back. Behind him, he was aware of Varogalant fending off the daemonhosts.

‘I told you,’ said Orn, his rising confidence seeing him come forwards.

Cartovandis struck again, but did not make a dent. The Cage turned, faster and faster, its victim almost lost in a blur of ancient metal.

Orn smiled, his face cast in the light of the rapidly moving shadows.

‘It is inevitable. It is His will. The Emperor shall rise from stupor and reclaim the galaxy anew. It cannot be undone.’

Cartovandis hefted Arcana again, but the weight of sorrow dragged upon his arm. It was a matter of seconds, a momentary doubt, the physical articulation of his desire to hear the Emperor’s voice again, to know that the Rift had not silenced Him.

Orn stabbed him in the chest, the vibro-knife slipping insidiously through auramite and the armour underneath, into skin and flesh and finally organs. Cartovandis gasped, his pain and disbelief all too apparent.

‘Do not yield to despair…’ whispered Orn, his wet lips pressed to Cartovandis’ ear as the Custodian sank to one knee and the vibro-knife began to move. ‘Your suffering serves–’

Orn stopped to look down at the misericordia protruding through his chest. He peered up, confusion radiating across his face, spitting blood, trying desperately to say something, anything, as Varogalant mounted the steps.

‘Told you…’ he said to Cartovandis, cutting off the priest’s choked words before Orn finally expired.

Wrenching out the vibro-knife with a grimace, Cartovandis staggered to his feet and turned to face the last of the daemonhosts. Adio held them all at bay, allowing his brother to have cast his knife. Gedd stood behind him, alive but almost spent.

‘It is impenetrable,’ Cartovandis said to Varogalant.

‘Nothing remains unbroken forever,’ he replied. He jammed his spear in the second sphere of the Cage, stopping it in a jerk of sparks and disgorged power. Then he seized it and the outermost frame of the Vexen Cage in both hands and started to pull.

Psychic energies rippled outwards like coronal mass ejections, striking Varogalant as he heaved at the relic. His armour and flesh burned, unmade by the arcane science of the Vexen Cage. Every strike lit his skin from the inside, turning it translucent and exposing the structure of his bones within.

He pulled, his face a rictus of agony, and slowly the complex frame of the Cage began to part. A fractious tendril of energy lashed out, impaling his body. Blood painted his armour. He kept pulling. The Cage began to slow.

Cartovandis roared as he leapt for the Cage, Arcana clasped in both hands. His blade struck the metal hard, but the force of the blow returned tenfold and he was thrown, pinwheeling, off the dais.

Gedd saw Cartovandis flying through the air. She had slumped to one knee, struggling to stay upright with the hammer­ing inside her skull. Darkness encroached at the edge of her vision, but she saw the turning Cage and the Custodian being slowly ravaged to death by its foul energies.

She saw the man inside it turning too, his yawning mouth locked in a silent howl of sheer agony. The Cage was hard to look at, but she managed to lift the Verifier and take aim. She felt her fingers tightening over the trigger. She heard the ravening of the monsters behind her and the ferocious defence of the one who had sworn to protect her.

Gedd was just another mortal. She was not fit to fight alongside these auric gods, but Meroved had chosen her for a reason. She had endured terror and seen a glimpse of the galaxy’s true face. Unblinking, her outstretched arm steady, she faced the Cage, and fired.