Visions of potential and unwritten pasts floated past Uriel's eyes and he gasped as he saw alternate histories…
slide past his eyes
He saw himself as a wrinkled ancient,
He saw himself as a young man,
Lying prone on a simple cot bed and
but one who was no longer a
surrounded by grieving family members.
Space Marine. He was a lean,
Here was his son, dark haired like him,
muscled farmer, toiling in the
but taller and with the look of a warrior.
cavern farms on his homeworld of
Uriel's heart swelled in pride and regret:
Calth. His features were soft and
pride in his son and regret
tinged with great regret
that this vision of his life could never be…
that this vision of his life could never be…
Both faded from his mind, though he craved to see more of them, to know the consequences of his life having travelled the road not taken. But such was not to be and other visions intruded on his sight.
Pavonis.
Black Bone Road.
Tarsis Ultra.
Medrengard?
What were these? Names of places or people? Memories or invention? Had he journeyed to these places? Was he from them? Were they his friends? He could taste the meaning on every jagged syllable, but none made sense, though he knew he should recognise them. Except… except there was one that did not have the subtle flavour of recognition. One that tasted of dark iron, that reeked of ashen pollutants, burning oil and echoed to the hammer of mountainous pile-drivers and pistons of hellish engines.
This world, that reality, was alien to him. Why now should it then intrude on his fracturing consciousness? It swelled in his perception, growing and filling what remained of his mind before it too vanished and his mind began to collapse inwards.
Nothing made sense any more: all was… dissolving in tamorass of information. He could no longer hold onto anything coherent, feeling his thoughts blur and soften, running like a hundred tributaries of a thousand rivers that emptied into a sea of oblivion and he welcomed it, knowing it would end this screaming madness in his head. An eternity or an instant –passed though he could not tell which time was now a meaningless concept, bereft of meaning and reference.
A voice sounded amidst the insanity and what little remained of Uriel Ventris clutchedat it, as a drowning man grasps for a life line.
'Fear not, Ultramarine,' it said. 'This journey is like all mortal life.'
The daemon engine roared back into the realm of existence.
'It ends…'
Uriel drew breath, his hearts hammering fit to break his chest, his blood thundering around his body and his face streaked with crimson that wept from his eyes and nose. He had bitten his tongue and his mouth was filled with a coppery taste.
He spat, tasting the reek of fumes and the acrid, iron stench of industry. He lay still for long seconds as he tried to work out where he was. Above him was an unending vista of white, without depth or scale, and he blinked, reaching up to wipe the congealed blood from his face. His hand passed before his face and he was struck by a lurching sense of vertigo. He had a sudden sensation of falling and cried out, scrabbling around him for purchase.
His hands closed on a fine shale of metallic shavings and his vertigo vanished as he realised he was lying on his back and looking up into the sky - a dead sky, featureless and vacant without so much as a single cloud or speck to blight its horrid emptiness. He ached everywhere, his muscles weary to the point of exhaustion and a searing pain in his back from where his flesh had been gouged by the hook. His thoughts tumbled over themselves as he tried to piece together what had just happened.
He pushed himself upright, seeing Pasanius next to him, retching onto the metallic ground. His friend's face was drawn and hollow, as though the weight of the world had settled upon his shoulders.
'Get up,' said a grating voice behind him and a flood of memory filled Uriel's skull. Daemon. Daemon engine. He fought to stand, but his flesh was still adjusting to its return to existence and he could only stumble to his knees.
Before them stood the Omphalos Daemonium, gigantic and monstrous in its blackened and ancient suit of power armour. Behind their captor was a shimmering, impossible rectangle of seething red light, a doorway back to the hellish interior of the daemon engine.
It carried its billhook and stood ankle deep in the powdery shale of the ground. Their weapons, Uriel's sword and bolter together with Pasanius's pistol and flamer rested against the rocks beside it. White reflections of the dead sky glittered on its shoulder guards and it seemed to Uriel that the grinning, visored skull there burned with even more malice than before.
'You will need to restore your equilibrium soon, Ultramarines,' said the daemon thing with an echoing chuckle. 'The delirium spectres will hear the pounding beats of your hearts and such morsels as you shall not go unnoticed for long.'
'The what?' managed Uriel at last.
'Monsters,' said the giant.
'Monsters?' repeated Uriel, gritting his teeth and finally climbing to his feet. Pasanius picked himself up and stood beside him, his face ashen, but angry.
'The skins of murderers stitched across desecrated frames by the Savage Morticians and filled with the mad souls of those who have died by their hands,' explained the Omphalos Daemonium. 'They hunt in these mountains and you will know them by the cries of the damned at your heels.'
'Where are we?' said Pasanius. 'Where have you brought us?'
'This is Medrengard, world of bitter iron,' said the Omphalos Daemonium, pointing at something behind the two Space Marines. 'Domain of the daemon primarch, Perturabo. Can you not feel his presence on the air? The malice of a being who once walked with gods and is now cast down to dwell beyond the realm he once bestrode. Look upon this ashen world and despair!'
Uriel turned to where the Omphalos Daemonium was pointing, the breath catching in his throat as he saw the desolate vista before him.
They stood on a high, rocky plateau above a sweeping, grey hinterland of utter wretchedness. Far below them on the dismal steppe was a world of death. Uriel had thought the sweltering cavern of the daemon engine had been a vision of hell, but it had been no more than a prelude to this soul-destroying desolation. Vast expanses of industrial heartland sprawled across the surface of the world: steel skeletons of factories, mountains of coal and reddish slag and mighty, belching smoke stacks. Flames burned from blasted refineries, the pounding of mighty hammers and the clangourous screech of iron on stone audible from hundreds of kilometres away.
Uriel had seen pollution-choked hive worlds, planets teeming with uncounted billions who toiled ceaselessly in filthy, smog and soot-choked death worlds, but they were garden paradises compared to Medrengard.
He had even set foot on the iron surfaces of Adeptus Mechanicus forge worlds, the hallowed domains of the priests of the Machine God. He had been awed by the scale of their pounding infrastructure, their every surface given over to colossal manufactorum and cathedral forges, but even the mightiest of these worlds was but a village smithy compared to Medrengard.
Rivers of molten metal snaked like channels of lava and evil clouds of smoke wreathed each tall tower and fanged chimney in a halo of lethal fumes.