From the back of the throne, Havloc spread a large pair of black, leathery wings. The girl spat at the Rancour’s commander and, free of her shackles, came straight at the beast. Havloc relished her mindless fury – her lack of fear and desire to kill. Flapping his wings in front of him, Havloc sent a wall of foetid air at the girl. Running and kicking, the spirited slave was blown from the grille of the pulpit-mezzanine. She tumbled with a half-caught scream before hitting the floor with a sickening crack. The scream came fully-formed this time. The slave was squirming around on the blood-slick floor of the gladiatorial arena below. A shattered tibia had sheared up through her knee.
‘That should slow her down a bit,’ Lord Havloc hissed, emerging from behind his retracting wings. Howls of furious delight rose from the audience as another slave was freed from a holding cage. Snatching a crude flensing blade from a hook on the rusting pit wall, the gore-speckled defending champion swept down on the girl.
The howls and shrieks of the berserkers on the bridge suddenly seemed to combine into one horrific roar. Flames thrashed to greater heights and the corroded metal of the deck began to vibrate, causing fragments of grit and shattered skull to dance, and blood to steam from its agitated surface. Umbragg took to one ceramite knee. The damned all spoke as one.
‘Havloc…’
Even the Chaos lord bowed his head and lowered his wings, as though the voice was everywhere and its owner looking down on him from above.
‘My lord,’ Havloc grizzled, with fear and fire fighting within him. ‘Great Pilgrim, the Right Claw of Khorne, Chosen of the Brazen-Fleshed. What is thy bidding, my merciless master?’
‘I lead,’ the cacophony of spite continued, ‘the Cholercaust follows. To what part of the doomed Imperium does the crimson comet – the physical embodiment of the Blood God’s will – take us next?’
‘Under your ruthless leadership, Great Pilgrim – back to Terra, to the crumbling walls of the corpse-Emperor’s palace and the Eternity Gate. For your murderous amusement, the War-Given-Form has blessed your path with a faith world. A planet of the dead, where the corpse-Emperor’s cultcubines minister to the galaxy’s silent majority.’
‘A planet of the dead, indeed,’ the Pilgrim boomed through the mouths of the mob. ‘Hone your blades, my slaughterkin, for shortly they shall taste priest-flesh…’
I dream.
For the longest time I have lived a nightmare. My eyes have been half open to events unfolding about me while behind them a macabre puppet show has played. To be neither awake nor asleep. A mind-breaking combination of both. It is custom to pinch oneself – to test if one is awake. I need no such test to know I am finally asleep. To know I am in the cradle of the unconscious. The world about me has that punch-drunk quality, the distant resonance of the unreal.
I walk the surface of the cemetery world. The sandy Certusian earth crunches beneath my boots. Through my helmet optics I zoom in on a crenulated horizon. A sea of gravestones and masonry markers extends before me. Above, the ivory sky broils and bubbles in the distance. Then, like an atomic explosion, a mushroom cloud vomits forth from the heavens and billows thunderously for the surface. There is no sound – only doom. The creamy cloud spumes and rages, swirling black, then red and gold as a swirling wall of flame overreaches the blast wave and the inferno hits the ground.
I turn and run. Armoured footfalls pulverise the grit beneath my boots as stride for stride my plated form attempts to outrun the conflagration. As the firewall of destruction billows furiously across the necroscape behind me, I feel my progress slowing. Even in full battle-plate I could make the horizon, but it is not the distance, nor the extra weight of ceramite that impedes me. I hurdle gravestones and will myself on, but as the flames engulf the world behind me, my boots sink deeper and deeper into the grave dirt. The soil has lost its consistency and I have run myself down into a quagmire. The earth – black, sodden and heavy – pulls me down into the ground itself. It oozes up my greaves, splatters plate and swallows cabling. With my legs and arms churning the morass, I see shattered bones, earth-stained skulls and rotten remains in the mire about me. Even a smashed stasis casket surfaces for a moment, like a sinking ship, before disappearing back into the depths.
With every movement my ceramite sinks further, and within moments I am up to my helm in cemetery world dirt. I turn to see the bank of flame – an unstoppable inferno of fire and fury that has scorched the Certusian surface clean – erupting upon my position. The most primal of instincts takes over, and before I know it, I have dived down below the quagmire and into an underworld of darkness, grit and death. My optics turn black. I desist in my armoured struggles and allow the cemetery world to take me down, while above the earth hardens, as the inferno bakes the ground with the heat of its righteous fury.
Kersh opened his eyes. The vague recollection of a dream misted his mind like a taste water wouldn’t wash away. He felt smothered yet calm and took a moment to savour several deep breaths. He allowed his head to roll to one side. A form sat by his bunk crystallised into focus. Bethesda, his personal serf and absterge, was watching him. Her mask of tension broke with relief and she smiled. The curl of her lip was simple and sweet, and Kersh found that he was actually quite glad to see her.
She turned and called ‘lord’ lightly at the dormitory door. It opened slightly and Kersh saw Micah’s face in the crack. His expression became a grin.
‘It’s good to see you, sir. I’ll send for your Apothecary, plate and bondsmen.’
Kersh nodded and went to sit up. The hermitage slab made a harsh bunk, but the Scourge had known worse. He had been stripped of his warrior’s plate and lay in his clean but blood-stained robes, bearing the venerated symbol of the Stigmartyr. As was custom, the cream of the garment was fresh but the spiritual work of ‘the purge’ was forever allowed to stain the material.
Putting the soles of his feet on the cold stone of the hermitage floor, Kersh felt something fall from his chest. On the flags beneath him, the Excoriator found a liquid-crystal wafer. He picked it up. It bore an illustration: a single eye, unflinching, open and glinting with predatory intention. The Space Marine felt some unease looking at the disturbing image. It was as though the card itself was watching him. Below the illustration, inscribed in High Gothic, was the title Magnus Occularis. The Scourge’s brow creased with confusion.
‘Did Melmoch leave this?’ Kersh asked. Bethesda shook her head.
‘Your armour, sir?’ Micah said as Kersh strode past and out into the dark hermitage thoroughfare. The company champion’s thoughts were always centred on his commander’s safety. The dim light of struggling candles illuminated the glower on the Scourge’s face.
‘The plate can wait,’ Kersh murmured, advancing up the cloister past the heavy doors of private dorms and hermitories. The corpus-captain came to a silent halt outside one. The ferruswood door was slightly ajar. Beyond, Kersh and Micah could hear the savage crack of a ‘purge’ at work. Kersh recognised the knotty face of Chief Whip Skase’s lictor. The serf himself was stripped to the waist and his body slick with the effort of mortification. Edging around, Kersh could also see the pool of blood gathering around the purged. Dorn’s Mantle had not been so much donned as spread across the floor. Both Skase’s seneschal and absterge were employed with mops and buckets, attempting to stem the flood. Against the wall stood the chief whip himself, stoic and immovable – like a statue – his mangled back cut to ribbons.