Tall shadows danced on the walls, capering along the sides of the black brick buildings, as though racing them through the interior of the fortress. The darkness pressed in around them, and Uriel found himself absurdly grateful for fleeting snatches of the white sky above them. He could feel the power of the black sun above him, but kept his eyes averted for fear of the madness it promised in its fuliginous depths.
Tinny laughter, like a child's, seeped from the walls and shadows and Uriel could see the Space Marines were greatly unsettled by such a plaintive sound. He was reminded of the joyous cries the delirium spectres emitted on their death and wondered if there were similar creatures lurking somewhere nearby.
It seemed that for hours they wandered, lost and misdirected by the insanities of the daemon city. Uriel could find no landmarks upon which to base his choice of direction, the iron tower obscured by the looming sides of the windowless forges and the impenetrable shadows cast by the black sun.
Eventually, he called a halt to their march and ran a hand across his sweat-streaked scalp. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout of the fortress, if even such a thing truly existed. Travelling down the same street was no guarantee of arriving at the same place and doubling back did not return them to whence they had begun.
Impossible physics misdirected them at every turn and Uriel was at a loss as to how to proceed. He squatted on his haunches and placed his gun across his thighs, resting his head against the crumbling brickwork of the building behind him.
He could feel the pounding of heavy industry through the building's fabric, but of all the weirdly angled structures they had passed, they had seen neither window nor entrance to them, simply smoking chimneys and steaming vents.
'What now?' asked Vaanes. 'We're lost aren't we?'
Uriel nodded, too weary and soul sick to even reply.
Vaanes, slung his bolter across his shoulder, as though he had expected no other answer. He looked towards either end of the narrow, enclosing street, its surface black and oily, with the rainbow sheen of spilt promethium to it.
'Is it just me or is it getting darker here?' he asked.
'How can it be getting darker, Vaanes?' snapped Uriel. 'That damned black sun never sets, never even so much as moves in the sky. So I ask you, how can it be getting darker?'
'I don't know,' hissed Vaanes. 'But it is. Look!'
Uriel rolled his head around and saw that Vaanes was right. Creeping liquid shadows were slithering up the walls, swallowing the light and obscuring the surfaces of the buildings they climbed. Inky black, the shadows rippled from the walls, spreading like slicks across the ground and rearing up at the ends of the cobbled street to enclose them.
'What the hell is going on?' gasped Uriel as the sinister, impossible shadows began to coalesce before them, nightmare pools of foetid black iridescence that crept across the walls and street towards them from both front and back.
They drove stinking clouds of vapours straight from the abyss itself before them, vile toxic fumes and indescribable pollutants. Shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles erupted across their amorphous forms, and Uriel now saw the source of the pallid, emerald glow that suffused the city as myriad temporary eyes formed and unformed in the hideous depths, glowing with their own luminescence.
'What are they?' he cried as the slithering mass of filthy, stinking creatures - or creature - oozed forwards.
'What does it matter?' shouted Vaanes. 'Kill them!'
Bolters fired explosive bolts into the heaving mass of corruption, exploding within the jelly-like mass of the things' bodies and the overpowering stench of chemical and biological pollutants gusted from the wounds.
Uriel caught a breath of the fumes and immediately dropped to his knees and vomited copiously across the ground. Even the formidable biological enhancements of a Space Marine were unable to overcome the sickening, horrific stench their bolters had unleashed.
More and more Space Marines dropped to the ground, retching and convulsing at the foulness of the creatures.
'Pasanius!' gasped Uriel. 'Use your flamer!'
He could not tell whether his battle-brother had heard his exclamation, but seconds later Pasanius bathed the advancing beasts in sheets of flame from his hissing weapon. The fires engulfed the beasts, leaping high and burning with terrifying force, as though they contained every flammable substance known to man.
Crackling ooze burned with a white flame and Pasanius switched his aim to the approaching shadow creatures behind them. More liquid flame sprayed and the deafening cries of the burning creatures reached new heights as they burned. Insensate eyes immolated and new ones formed in the fluid flesh of the beasts as the flames burned them. Eye-watering fumes were released from the conflagration, but even though it seemed the beasts were in pain, they did not retreat, holding them trapped within the narrow street.
The heat was intense, but protected by power armour, the Space Marines were immune to the lethal temperatures. The Space Marines sheltered the two Guardsmen as best they could from the killing heat, but Uriel could see that both Leonid and Ellard were on the verge of collapse. The fires killed the worst of the stench and Uriel pulled himself to his feet using the wall.
'Why don't they die?' cursed Vaanes. He held his bolter at the ready and Uriel could see he desperately wanted to fire, but kept his finger clear of the trigger guard, having seen how little effect their initial volley had had. Space Marines picked themselves up, forming a defensive cordon between the walls of flame at either end of the street.
'And why aren't they attacking?' wondered Pasanius. 'Until they went up in flames, it looked like they were ready to overrun us.'
'I'm not sure,' answered Uriel, as an unsettling suspicion began to settle in his gut. 'I think that maybe they never intended to kill us, that maybe they intended something else.'
'What?' asked Vaanes.
'Maybe they just intended to trap us here,' said Uriel, watching as a warrior in glossy black power armour and glowing silver traceries for veins marched through the leaping flames, the oozing matter of the beasts parting before him.
Bronze claws unsheathed from both his grey-fleshed hands and his eyes burned with a soulless silver light.
'Found you,' said the warrior.
CHAPTER TWELVE
'You survived the bedlam portals,' said the warrior, sounding faintly impressed as he walked towards the Space Marines. His armour was utterly black, not even the bright flames reflecting on its mirror-smooth surfaces. Uriel saw that the warrior did not carry a gun, but that did not put him any more at ease. After all, how supremely confident must a warrior be to come before more than two-dozen Space Marines unarmed?
Though to call this warrior unarmed was a misnomer, thought Uriel, seeing his long, glittering bronze claws.
'Who are you?' called Uriel.
The warrior smiled, dull silver light spilling from his mouth as he spoke. 'You have not the aural or vocal configurations to hear or speak my name, so you will know me as Onyx.'
The Space Marines turned their guns on Onyx, the crackling flames beginning to die as more ripples of shadow slithered into the street and quenched them in darkness.
'Are these your creatures?' asked Uriel, raising his own weapon.
'The Exuviae? No, they are nothing more than the polluted filth of Khalan-Ghol, waste matter shed by its industry that mutated to idiot life. They infest this place, but they have their uses.'