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The Karsharat Abomination – George Mann

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Horusian Wars: Resurrection’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Karsharat Abomination

George Mann

The sky was bleeding.

The rent in the atmosphere was a thick, purple scar, an angry ribbon across the heavens, casting everything below in its vague, unreal light. Shadows danced in twisting interplay, describing shifting patterns of movement. Figures seemed to emerge threateningly from behind every broken lintel, every stub of tumbledown wall, before dissipating again within moments, nothing more than an unwelcome trick of the eye.

From the heart of the rent, fat droplets tumbled in a drizzly veil, pattering against Bledheim’s cloak, so that his hood and shoulders had become sodden, cumbersome. The red fluid streaked his upturned cheeks, oily and gritty against his skin. The air was filled with its rich, iron tang. It sloshed around his boots with every ponderous step.

Bledheim turned to regard the others, who were trudging along beside him in the slick loam. ‘Anyone would think we weren’t welcome here,’ he said, wiping more of the foul liquid from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Inquisitor Sabbathiel turned to meet his gaze, her features set in a grim smile. Despite the torrent, she looked resplendent in her white and red armour, although her hair, loose and tumbling across her gorget, was now streaked with the greasy fluid. It ran in rivulets down the front of her chestplate, pooling in the graven Inquisition symbol that adorned her lower torso, turning the ceramite pink. ‘Your insights never cease to astound me, Bledheim,’ she said. Next to Sabbathiel, the woman, Mercy, emitted a wet chuckle, regarding him with a half-cocked eyebrow. He’d never liked her, and the wicked smile on her lips did little to alter his opinion.

Bledheim sighed. While he understood the necessity of their visit to this Emperor-forsaken backwater, he longed for it to be over. He didn’t even know why Sabbathiel had brought him here, to Karsharat. Mercy and Brondel – well, they were muscle, pure and simple – but it wasn’t as if Bledheim could do much to help in a fight. He supposed she might be anticipating the need for interrogation – his own particular speciality – but that wasn’t what she’d said back on the ship. To all intents and purposes, it was a straightforward mission: storm the ruins, kill the heretics and put a stop to whatever abominable weapon they were devising in there. He’d heard the same story a dozen times before; more, maybe. This was what they did – what Sabbathiel did – and yet, somehow, this time it felt different.

He supposed he’d find out soon enough. He should have paid more attention during the briefing.

The ruins here had once been an Ecclesiarchy outpost but, from what he’d been able to ascertain, had been abandoned some time during the last century. He hadn’t managed to establish why, and he didn’t suppose it mattered all that much, except that the moon had been left unguarded, and now something else had moved in. A renegade Martian, was the working hypothesis, one that Metik – who, Bledheim noted, had somehow managed to remain behind on the ship – had been tracking for some time. A renegade with a particular interest in experimentation. A renegade that Sabbathiel had decided she wanted destroyed.

Still, that didn’t explain the constant shower of blood or the rent in the sky, which raised the dismaying prospect that there might be other forces at play here, too. Forces that Bledheim didn’t want to begin to consider.

And they still had to find a way into the ruins.

Bledheim peered into the hazy curtain of rain, cupping his hand around his eyes. Ahead of them, the remains of the citadel were a towering silhouette, jagged and half-collapsed. Why would anyone choose to come to this place? As a base of operations, it lacked subtlety – and a roof – but he supposed it might very well be the last place people would look for a wanted outcast. Unless those people were Metik and Sabbathiel, of course.

He saw a shape emerging from the rain, and slipped his other hand inside his cloak, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol. Then he caught sight of the flickering blue light, drifting lazily over the figure’s head, and he relaxed, coming to a stop to await the arrival of the newcomer.

Moments later, a filthy, mud-encrusted squat emerged from the rainstorm, flanked by a servo-skull that seemed to be guiding his way with its winking diodes.

‘Frecking Krull, but it’s a beautiful day,’ said Brondel, his voice a low, throaty growl. He shook his head, shaking loose a cascade of blood from his matted beard.

‘Brondel,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. ‘You’ve found a way in?’

‘Aye,’ said Brondel. ‘There’s a door on the west side. It looks as if the structure there has been partially rebuilt, although you wouldn’t know it until you’re on top of it. Whatever’s holed up in there isn’t going to look kindly on visitors.’ He spat, and then ground the phlegm into the mud with the heel of his boot.

‘All the more reason to get on with it and crack some skulls,’ said Mercy. She, of all of them, looked truly menacing, her exposed face and arms spattered in blood, towering over the diminutive squat. The whirring instruments in her chest – an artificial set of heart and lungs, installed by Metik some years earlier after he found her wounded in the lower levels of a hive city – seemed to grind and sputter noisily in the damp. She was clutching a lasrifle in both hands, and the immense two-handed power sword that she usually wielded was slung in a harness across her back. Bledheim knew that, no matter what she said, she had deeper motives than simply cracking skulls – she’d never truly forgiven Metik for what he’d done to her, bringing her back from the brink of death by riddling her body with machine parts, and perhaps taking down a rogue Martian with a penchant for experimenting on people might go some way to at least temporarily quelling her need for vengeance.

Sabbathiel glanced up at the servo-skull. ‘Fitch?’

‘There are life signs within the structure, ma’am,’ said the servo-skull, its voice mimicking the speech patterns of its erstwhile owner, but laced with a sluggish, technological burr. Bledheim shuddered.

‘How many?’

The servo-skull hesitated, as if pondering the answer. ‘Difficult to ascertain. No fewer than five, no greater than twelve.’

‘That’s quite a range,’ said Bledheim.

‘The readings are in flux,’ said the servo-skull.

‘You can say that again,’ murmured Brondel.

Sabbathiel swung her force stave up and around, indicating the ruined citadel with its tip. ‘Fan out and approach the building slowly. We’ll converge again by the door. They might be watching us from the ruins, waiting for us to get close.’

Bledheim nodded, and then slipped away into the rain, edging ever on towards the melancholy ruins. At least, he decided, they might finally get out of the bloody rain.

The jagged remnants of a toppled stone balustrade served as a perfect vantage point from which Bledheim could safely observe the goings-on at the door. It was huge, an ornate archway that had once clearly served as an entrance to a courtyard but had now been barricaded by heavy plasteel panelling. Strange mechanical contrivances – segmented tubular structures – had been arranged around the frame, and they glistened in the red rain. For the life of him, Bledheim could not fathom their purpose.

The others were gathered before the opening, the servo-skull – he refused to call it ‘Fitch’, despite its apparent history – buzzing over Sabbathiel’s shoulder like some skittish familiar.

‘Stand aside,’ he heard Sabbathiel say, and watched as the others retreated a few steps to give her room. She stepped forwards, the servos in her massive armour grinding as she transferred her weight to her front foot. The armour had been modelled on the Terminator patterns of the Adeptus Astartes, constructed by artificers on the forge world of Pholon, designed to Sabbathiel’s precise size and specification. In truth, it seemed to Bledheim to utterly dwarf her, entombing her in its cavernous depths, but time and again it had saved her life – and his, if he was honest – and, wearing it, she became even more the fearsome figure she was without it.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Mercy. She’d already raised her lasrifle to her shoulder, sighting along its length in anticipation of what the door might open to reveal.

‘I’m going to knock,’ said Sabbathiel. She lurched forwards, curling her gauntleted hand into a fist as she extended her arm. She struck the door with a thunderous report, the plasteel flexing beneath the force of the blow, dislodging a shower of broken masonry from above. It had, however, refused to give.

Sabbathiel stepped back, regarding the pitted door before her. The sound of the blow was still ringing out into the ruins around them, the lament of a discordant bell.

Bledheim turned to see a crow, lifting away from its perch atop the broken wing of a monumental aquila that was half-buried in the mud close by. The bird circled overhead for a moment, ignoring the thrumming rain, before dipping low and disappearing into the depths of the ruins.

‘They know we’re here,’ said Bledheim, dropping down from his perch. ‘And before you say it,’ he added, turning to Mercy, ‘I don’t mean because we knocked. That crow – it was watching us.’

Brondel spat again, frowning in disgust.

‘We’re going to have to blo–’ Sabbathiel stopped suddenly, her sentence giving way to a grunt of surprise. Bledheim turned, pulling his laspistol from his robes, half expecting to see the door had opened and guards were spilling out. Instead, he was greeted with a view of seven snaking mechadendrites, which had erupted from the frame around the door, writhing and thrashing in Sabbathiel’s direction. Two of the appendages had already snared her right arm and leg and were dragging her closer – despite the bulk of her armour – while the others quested for her exposed head. At least, Bledheim supposed, he now understood what the mechanical structures around the door were for.

He raised his pistol and tried to draw a bead on one of the twisting appendages, but they were moving too quickly, and in the driving rain he risked hitting Sabbathiel in the process. Grunting in frustration, he lowered the weapon.

Nearby, Mercy had come to a similar conclusion. Discarding her lasrifle, she dragged the massive sword from its harness, swinging it up and over her shoulders, and ran headlong into the morass of tentacles, screaming like some maniacal primitive. Three swift chopping motions later, and Sabbathiel was free, sparks spitting in the rain as the remnants of the two appendages continued to writhe and fizz amongst the nest of their strange kin.

Brondel glanced over at Bledheim and shrugged.

‘Stand aside, Mercy,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. She righted herself, paced back from the door and raised her left arm, so that the nose of her wrist-mounted storm bolter was pointed in the direction of the morass of mechanical limbs.

Mercy, who was attempting to wrestle another mechadendrite into submission, gave a short, dutiful nod, and then released the appendage, stepping slowly away. From her sullen expression, Bledheim could see that she was more than a little disappointed.

There was a sudden eruption of noise and light, originating from Sabbathiel’s outstretched arm, and then the door was buckling inwards, as if folding around the detonating shells, trying to contain their destruction. The mass of tentacles exploded, filling the air with glittering shards that twinkled in the rain as they fell, thudding into the wet ground. A stray shard caught Mercy in the upper arm and she winced, but then, as casually as if plucking an errant hair, she spiked her sword in the ground, dug her fingers into the wound and pulled the bloody fragment free. She examined it for a moment, and then tossed it away, lost in the deluge.

Brondel sighed, and then marched in the direction of the open door.

Brondel had been right, for, on the other side of the archway, they found themselves in a poorly lit tunnel, which seemed to have been constructed – somewhat hastily – from a mix of plasteel and broken fragments of the old building. Here, the new sat alongside the old in glaring juxtaposition, the smooth, industrial plating melding unconvincingly with the ornate stonework of ages past. Every few feet, Bledheim could make out fragments of ancient frescoes, faded now from exposure to the elements, but still vibrant and clear. They seemed to be telling the tale of the Wretch of Menarchus – he had long ago studied such tales during a prolonged stay on the island of Relomas – but in truth it was difficult to be sure as so much of the original painting had been lost, and what survived here had been repositioned in haphazard order.

‘Finally, a reprieve from that frecking awful rain,’ said Brondel, his low voice echoing along the otherwise empty tunnel.

Bledheim nodded, throwing back his hood to reveal his bald pate. Bizarrely, the fabric felt light and dry to the touch. Frowning, he glanced down at his hands, to see that all trace of the bloody precipitation had gone. A quick look at the others established that they, too, were now free from any trace of the dreadful fluid.

Sabbathiel had noticed it too. ‘It seems we can no longer be sure of our own senses,’ she said, a note of caution in her voice.

‘The work of the Ruinous Powers?’ ventured Bledheim.

‘Perhaps… or perhaps not.’ Sabbathiel waved them on. Bledheim had the sense that there was more to her response than he could yet understand, but he’d long ago learned when and how to question her, and now was not the time. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘No doubt the guardians of this place are stirring. We will see battle before the day is out. Be vigilant.’

They moved on, deeper into the network of tunnels. For once, Bledheim was glad to have Mercy looming over his shoulder.

Ahead, the tunnel branched out, splitting off in three different directions. Sabbathiel hesitated at the junction, as if deciding which of them to send each way, but then indicated the central tunnel with a wave of her hand.

‘We stay together,’ she said, anticipating their questions. ‘There’s something… unreliable about the atmosphere in this place.’ She didn’t need to add the remainder of the thought – if I send you off, I’ll probably never see you again.

She was right, though – the deeper they’d come, the more Bledheim had sensed a growing sensation somewhere in the back of his skull: something akin to an itch, but far more invasive, persistent. He could feel it there now, as if some terrible, multi-legged creature had somehow wormed its way inside his head and was even now scuttling about, its tiny feet pricking the undulating surface of his brain. He shuddered at the sudden thought, his hand unconsciously rubbing at the back of his neck.

Everything about the place seemed wrong. The tunnels seemed to stretch on interminably, terminating in nothing but further tunnels. They all looked the same, and all were cloaked in some cloying atmosphere, as if the walls were threatening to close in at any moment. He felt trapped, claustrophobic, fearful that he might never see the sky again. He’d only been in here for – what? – a few minutes, but already it felt excruciating, as if he’d been tramping along these passages forever.

He glanced at Brondel, but it was difficult to tell what the squat was thinking. His expression seemed forever fixed as either thunderously perturbed, or gleefully amused. Presently, he looked as gloomy as he ever did, his heavy brow wrinkled in a frown.

Above them, the servo-skull slid quietly through the air, its blue search lamp rebounding off the plasteel walls to generate an eerie, midnight quality to the light.

Bledheim had slid his pistol back inside his robes, and, as he walked, had begun, almost unconsciously, to massage the palm of his right hand. This was the real tool of his trade – the hand with which he encouraged compliance within those he was brought in to question. Each of the fingers had been replaced by thin, mechanical talons that each terminated in a tiny, retractable needle. These needles were fed from small canisters mounted in a brace upon the back of his hand, containing a variety of colourful fluids designed to incite raw emotions in his subjects. One might sedate, while another excited. A third might inspire fear, a fourth uncertainty and anguish. Choosing which of the poisons to administer, in which order and in what quantity, was the colour with which he painted his masterpieces. He always got his charges to talk.

Now, though, something deep within his palm had begun to ache, and the more he rubbed at it, the more insistent it became. Had he done something to it during the journey here? Was it somehow malfunctioning? He shoved it inside his robes and tried to put it out of mind.

Up ahead, the tunnel disgorged into a vast chamber that was flooded with shimmering light. Sabbathiel motioned for them to fan out, their backs to the walls, as they slowly entered the room.

Bledheim saw immediately that this had once been the refectory of an Ecclesiarchy temple – the towering pillars, the stone arches that had once held panels of coloured glass, the vast, vaulted ceiling. As he watched, the ceiling rippled and began to peel back, exposing a bright and glorious vista of the heavens. Bledheim stood, enraptured, as strange and wonderful shapes – geometric constellations that could never exist – tumbled across a golden sky, and beyond that, twinkling in the distance, the stars, shifting and altering their patterns, dancing into new alignments.

He felt the throbbing in his palm intensify, and tore his eyes away from the view, glancing down. His hand had grown rigid, clawlike, and to his horror, he saw that the poisons in the row of chambers had all discharged, flowing not through the needle tips of his fingers, but back into his arm. The veins beneath the skin were black and pulsating, and he could feel the poison coursing through him, a burning fire spreading up his arm and into his shoulder.

Suddenly, the world shifted. He was surrounded by dancing flames that licked hungrily at his boots, at his robes, at his flesh. He looked around, frantic, searching for Brondel, Mercy, Sabbathiel – but he was already too late. There was nothing any of them could do to help him now. They, too, had been consumed by the unnatural conflagration, their eyes melting to blackened pits, skin peeling from hot, white bones.

Was it the poison? Was that what he was seeing?

Bledheim dropped to his knees, screaming. With his left arm, he searched frantically for his knife. He had to remove the hand, the arm. It was the only way he could stop more of the poison flooding his system. But the knife had gone.

He slumped to the ground, feeling the flames lapping at his face. It was too late. Too late…

A slap brought him around, his cheek hot and stinging. He looked up, confused, to see Mercy standing over him, a crooked grin on her lips.

‘Fine time to wake up, interrogator, now that the battle’s over.’

Bledheim groaned, and then, as it all came back to him in a sudden rush – the flames, the poison – he sat up, tearing frantically at his robes to reveal his right hand. The skin there was pink and smooth, the cylinders in the brace still filled with the same colourful fluids he’d filled them with back on the ship.

He looked up at Mercy, incomprehension in his eyes. She laughed again, and strode away, her boot steps echoing in the cavernous space.

‘Bledheim.’

It was Sabbathiel’s voice. He turned to see her standing over the mangled corpse of… something. It looked as if it had once been human, but it had a brace of what appeared to be electrical filaments erupting from its shoulders and was covered in an array of fine cables and wires. Sparks were still discharging from two metal bracelets encircling its wrists. Sabbathiel’s armoured foot was resting on the side of its head. He could see another three or four of the things scattered amongst the dust and detritus that lined the floor. One of them was missing its head.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Fear. It is a weapon.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘On you, it was ably deployed.’

Bledheim nodded. Psychic attack. He understood now, all too well. The blood rain, the claustrophobia, the poison… It had been deployed ably indeed. ‘So, this is the weapon we seek? The one being crafted here by the renegade?’

Sabbathiel gave a curt nod, then turned away. ‘We must all face our fears, in this place, Bledheim. We must all be strong. We are close now. Our enemy seeks to unsettle us. We shall not be so easily dissuaded.’

Bledheim felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Brondel. He was wearing a fresh scar on his left cheek, and his beard was standing proud where he’d evidently been subject to an electrical attack. He clasped Bledheim by the wrist – being careful to select the left one – and hauled the interrogator to his feet.

‘My thanks.’

By way of response, Brondel simply spat on the ground and wiped his mouth on the corner of Bledheim’s robe.

The itching sensation at the back of Bledheim’s skull was a constant distraction, growing in intensity with every step as they hurried towards the heart of the old citadel, but at least now, he mused, he understood what it was. In its way, it was a kind of poison, too, just like those he might administer – an evil thought that had wormed its way into his head and sought to destabilise him, to throw him off, to dissuade him from completing his mission. But, just like a poison, there was an antidote, and Bledheim was adept at those, too.

In his years of training he had been subjected to all manner of mind-altering substances, testing them upon himself to better understand their effects. In doing so, he had discovered ways to throw up barriers, to parcel off small parts of his mind and keep them free from alteration, from outside influence. This, he had never discussed with any other, as he knew that to harbour such abilities might be seen as heretical, but this was not, he knew, a form of witchcraft, but merely a deep understanding of discipline. He had trained himself to step outside of the effects of the poison coursing through his blood, to reserve a tiny fraction of his mind, so that he might remain, to a degree, in control of his own faculties.

Now that he better understood the threat, now that he had experienced the horror of it, he knew better how to shield himself from its effects.

The others, bar Sabbathiel, seemed not to be faring as well. Mercy had grown increasingly agitated during the last few minutes, twitching at every shadow, her hand constantly playing across the hilt of her sword. He knew it wouldn’t take much to make her snap, and in the confined space of the tunnels, she posed a very real and present threat. If she mistook one of their party for an enemy combatant… well, he’d seen what she could do when her ire was up.

Likewise, Brondel had begun muttering to himself. The words themselves were unintelligible – Bledheim half believed them to be spoken in a different language – but he appeared to be growing increasingly angry and resentful, threatening to boil over at any moment.

Only Sabbathiel herself remained impassive, her expression benign. Bledheim wondered what sort of war she might be fighting behind that implacable facade.

She raised her hand to halt their progress. Peering around the bulk of her armour, Bledheim saw that, ahead of them, the tunnel ended in a T-junction. To the left, the passage looked ill-lit and foreboding, draped in a filthy smear of spider’s webs. To the right, the tunnel was punctuated by hovering lume globes, and had clearly seen more recent use.

‘That way,’ said Sabbathiel, indicating they should follow her to the left.

‘But…’ started Bledheim, his stomach turning at the very thought – but he stopped himself short, recognising the truth in Sabbathiel’s earlier words. We must face our fears. Once again, he’d allowed the tendrils of that psychic presence to burrow insidiously into his mind. Fear was their weapon, but it was also their defence. The images in their minds – the sense of foreboding – they were trying to push Sabbathiel and her party along the opposite route.

‘Ready your weapons,’ said Sabbathiel. Her voice seemed to carry along the entire corridor. Then, with a deep breath, she strode forwards into the darkness, allowing the spectral cobwebs to brush over her face.

Bledheim and the others hurried along behind her.

The tunnel emerged into what had once been a dormitory, during the days of the Ecclesiarchy occupation, but had now been refashioned into a makeshift laboratory. Nests of mechanical arms hung from the ceiling, and upright glass chambers lined the walls, many of them occupied by what looked to be human corpses – although Bledheim could see a man trapped in one of them, his face a visage of utter terror, clawing at the door to his chamber so violently that he had broken all of his fingers.

The place was filthy, rank with spilt blood and discarded, rotting tissue. Trays of surgical tools lay upon stained work surfaces, and tiny mechanical spiders scuttled over the walls and ceiling, red diodes winking.

Strapped to a gurney against one wall was a painfully thin, naked man, his skin so pale that Bledheim initially took him for another corpse, until he noticed the ragged shudder of the man’s breathing, the rattle of the mechanised box strapped to his chest, filtering his air. He was bald, his cheeks sallow, his eyes now fitted with lenses and bionics where once the biological organs had sat. He was peering at them, his mouth hanging limp and open, drool pooling on his chest.

Bledheim heard a clicking sound, and looked round to see a tall, ungainly figure emerging from the shadows at the other end of the room, where an open door appeared to lead off into another area of the complex. As the figure shuffled forwards into the light, Bledheim sensed Mercy recoil at the sight of it.

It was huge, a four-legged monstrosity, now more machine than man. Its body was fat and segmented like that of an insect, formed from interlocking plates that clacked and shifted as it moved, rasping and grating like an ancient machine. Four arms projected from its upper torso, and in one of them it carried a staff, which it used to steady itself as it moved. Its head was hidden beneath a ragged cowl, and jutted forwards inquisitively, pipes and tubes erupting from the place where its face should have been. It issued a hideous noise that might have resembled a laugh, if it hadn’t sounded more like the misfiring of broken pistons. A vent opened in the side of its chest, and a gout of tubercular steam hissed out.

Behind it, two shambling metal constructs loomed, as large as Sabbathiel in her armour, with buzzing saw blades as hands, and heads that resembled those of insects more than men.

‘Restak.’ Sabbathiel stepped forwards, swinging her force stave around before her.

‘Inquisitor Sabbathiel,’ replied the renegade. ‘I am honoured.’

‘It is no honour,’ said Sabbathiel. ‘I have merely come to put an end to your little experiments.’ She glanced back at the others, and Mercy and Brondel moved around to flank her. Bledheim slid his pistol from his robes but held back in the mouth of the tunnel. From here, he might be able to pick off a few choice shots.

Restak gestured to the lumbering constructs behind him, and they lurched forwards slavishly, heads swaying, arms raised and buzz saws screaming.

Sabbathiel’s storm bolter barked, and explosive shells thundered into the construct on the right, chewing two great holes into its heavily plated chest. The construct seemed hardly to notice the impact, however, other than to momentarily correct its shambling gait, before continuing its lumbering, deadly approach.

Mercy went wide, swinging her power sword back and forth before her, flexing her shoulders. Brondel seemed to have momentarily disappeared, but Bledheim knew from experience that he was simply seeking a vantage point from which to unleash his own particular brand of devastation.

With a roar, Sabbathiel charged, her footsteps causing the entire room to tremble as she rushed in to close on the construct on the left, her force stave cutting a wide arc, slicing through thick plasteel until it wedged, with a clang, against the construct’s raised arm. She tugged on the shaft but it was stuck fast, and the construct twisted, wrenching it from her grasp.

With a grunt of frustration, Sabbathiel stepped back, raising her arm just in time to block the downward arc of the buzz saw coming for her face. It bit into her vambrace, chewing into the plasteel with a grinding scream. Grimacing, Sabbathiel raised her other arm, jammed the nose of her storm bolter into the construct’s face – or what passed for it – and fired.

The detonation sent Sabbathiel reeling backwards, but the construct had fared worse, its entire head and shoulders caving inwards under the intense force of the blast. It toppled over with a metallic thud, the force stave still wedged in its arm. Sabbathiel, shaking her head as if to clear the ringing, lurched forwards and set to work freeing her stave. She wrenched it loose a moment later.

On the other side of the laboratory, Mercy had locked the other construct into a spiralling dance, weaving circles around it as it tried to get a fix on her with its saw. Her movements were graceful, fluid, punctuated only by the regular downward thrust of her blade, as she cut furrow after furrow into the construct’s armour. It seemed untroubled by the damage, but Bledheim knew what game she was playing – she was keeping it busy.

A moment later, from the shadows behind one of the glass chambers, Brondel bellowed for her to get down. She hit the floor just as a lobbed grenade clanged against the construct’s head, tumbling down into the hole punched in its chest by Sabbathiel’s earlier shot.

The construct glanced down at Mercy, raised its arm as if to strike her, and then exploded, rupturing out in a bloom of heat and light, shattering several glass chambers and causing thick, viscous fluid to gush out across the floor.

Bledheim, however, had been watching Restak at the time, as he clacked slowly over towards the thin man strapped to the gurney by the far wall. As Sabbathiel righted herself, having finally freed her weapon, Restak gripped the man by the shoulder, and he screamed.

The sound was like fire ripping through Bledheim’s mind, like the entire world had suddenly begun to boil. Blinding light flared in his vision. He could feel himself babbling, could feel warm blood trickling from his nose. And yet, there was a part of him that watched all of this with cool impartiality. That knew precisely what was occurring, that understood that his mind could no longer be trusted, and that the man on the gurney was behind everything that was happening to him.

Bledheim blinked, fighting against the wave of terror and pain that threatened to completely engulf him. Mercy was on the ground, writhing in agony, and Brondel had dropped to his knees, banging the heels of his hands against his head.

Only Sabbathiel had managed to stand her ground, and although clearly in abject pain, she was moving towards Restak, her stave raised.

She lurched at Restak, thrusting with her weapon. He tried to scuttle out of the way, but she caught his lower left arm with a glancing blow and it tore free in a shower of oil and wires, clattering to the floor.

Restak, furious, swept forwards, grabbing for Sabbathiel, battering her stave out of the way and pinning both of her arms, raising his staff in readiness to strike.

As Bledheim watched, his own vision foggy with blood and pain, Sabbathiel slumped, staring down in horror at her own body, as if reliving some distant nightmare. She screamed, and the sound of it was enough to stir Bledheim to action.

Restak was distracted. He had to act now.

Gasping for breath, fighting waves of nausea, Bledheim moved. One foot after the other, wobbling, unstable, he lurched across the room towards the man on the gurney. The man was spasming, frothing at the mouth, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, as whatever power was coursing through him ravaged his own body as much as it was ravaging Bledheim’s mind.

From the corner of his eye he saw Restak turn, call out for him to stop, but it was too late – Bledheim’s fingers had found their mark in the psyker’s chest, and the sedatives were discharging from their capsules.

He fell back, dropping to his knees, before sliding fully to the floor, slick with the spilled fluid from the glass chambers. The fire in his head had dulled, petering out, but the pain was still ferocious, his mind reeling. He watched, only half-aware, as Sabbathiel, still caught in the grip of the renegade tech-priest, wrenched herself loose, grasped the monster’s head in both hands, and pulled it free with a disgusting sucking sound.

Restak’s body twitched nervously, its servos whining, before it skittered back into the wall and sunk to the ground, blood oozing from the stump of its neck.

Bledheim blinked, and the lights went out.

‘That’s twice today I’ve had to slap you awake,’ said Mercy, as Bledheim shifted, dragging himself up into a sitting position. ‘I think I might make a habit of it.’

He looked up at her blearily, then sighed.

Sabbathiel was standing nearby, in the process of strapping the psyker’s body to a stretcher.

‘Brondel, you know what to do. I don’t want to leave any of this standing.’

‘Ma’am,’ said Brondel, not even bothering to conceal his gleeful smile.

Bledheim got unsteadily to his feet. ‘We’re taking the body?’ he said, with a nod towards the remains of the psyker. As soon as he’d done it, he wished he hadn’t, as stars bloomed in his vision. He drew a deep breath.

‘Body?’ said Sabbathiel. She looked at him quizzically. Then something seemed to dawn on her. ‘Oh, he’s still alive. Your sedation should last long enough to get him back to the ship.’

‘Alive? I thought we were here to destroy the weapon?’

Sabbathiel offered him a crooked smile. ‘No, Bledheim. We were here to claim it.’ She met his gaze, and then, with a sigh, she turned and walked from the room. ‘Come along, Brondel is anxious to put this place to the torch, and I can’t say I blame him. Bring the weapon, too. You should be able to manage that, shouldn’t you?’

Bledheim watched her go. He felt nauseous. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I should be able to manage that.’

About the Author

George Mann is an author and editor based in the East Midlands. For Black Library, he is best known for his stories featuring the Raven Guard, which include the audio dramas Helion Rain and Labyrinth of Sorrows, the novella The Unkindness of Ravens, plus a number of short stories.

An extract from The Horusian Wars: Resurrection.

The daemon watched the lone warrior through stolen eyes. Walls of rock, smoothed over time by the passage of water, rose from the floor of the cave. Fingers of slime-covered crystal reached down from the roof. Water dripped from their tips, thick and pale with salts. A soft light rose from the pools of liquid caught in the ripple of the cave’s floor. Bones lay in clusters, some dry, some still clad in tatters of skin. The warrior moved through the gloom and past the pools, eyes moving steadily over the darkness beyond his sight. On his shoulder a weapon-machine pivoted and spun without cease. Crimson armour encased his chest, and a tome sat on his back, bound by locked chains. Lightning crawled down the blade in his hands, its flicker marking his hawk-like features with pale light.

The daemon watched as the warrior paused beside a luminous pool. It could see the fire of the human’s mind coiling in the realm beyond his flesh, bright with strength, threaded with the cobweb shadows of secrets. The daemon smiled, and felt its host’s lips pull back from its teeth.

‘You are Covenant,’ it said in the voice of its flesh prison.

The warrior remained still, but the weapon on his shoulder flicked around, barrel and targeting lens sweeping the dark.

‘I am glad you are here, boy,’ it said. ‘We have met before, but you would not remember.’

Covenant shifted the grip on his sword. On his shoulder the gun linked to his mind slowed its scanning, like a dog waiting for scent to come to it on the wind.

‘Of course,’ said the daemon. ‘That is a lie. I am not glad to see you. I have no soul to loathe or love you.’

Covenant took a step forwards, sword rising slightly, head turning to look to his side.

‘I am a creature that exists by theft. Everything we are, we take from you, our shapes from your nightmares, our words from your mouths, our existence from your weakness.’

The daemon paused. Its flesh shuddered in its wrapping of shadows. The fat, skin and sinew of its host would have rotted to nothing decades before, but the daemon’s presence sustained it, just as the flesh and the cold iron hammered into that flesh had held the daemon like a prison.

‘You know this, of course,’ it said. Covenant had stopped again. He was so close that the daemon could feel the life radiating from his soul. ‘You know what I am. You know that I speak to you because it is my nature, my ordained purpose in the courts of what you might call Chaos. You know I speak because I must. You know all this of me. But what do I know of you, boy? What do we know of you?’

Covenant turned slowly, and the daemon moved with him too, sliding into the space behind him. The lightning glow of Covenant’s sword caught a strata of crystal in the walls and sent a fork of reflected fire through the stone.

‘You don’t wish to know, of course.’ The daemon moved forwards, wrapping silence around itself, dragging darkness with it. It reached a hand out towards Covenant’s back. Its fingers lengthened like shadows under a setting sun. ‘But he wished to know.’ The words slid around the chamber, echoing and returning.

‘Wished… wish…’

‘Know… know… know…’

It was so close now. Just a little further, and then it could feed, it could grow strong, it could slip the bonds that held it here in this realm of mud and pity.

‘The one you call Talicto, the one who bound me here – he wished to know all I could tell him and more, and when I could give him no more he still kept me here in case I had lied, in case there was just one secret that I had not told him.’

Its fingers were almost on Covenant’s shoulder now. The man’s gaze was fixed on empty shadows.

‘And, do you know, there was one thing I did not tell him.’ The words were a wet purr as its host’s jaws distended, glass teeth growing beside its tongue as it tasted the air just behind Covenant’s neck. ‘But if you ask, I will tell you.’

Covenant whirled. The sword was a sheet of lightning as it cut through the front of the daemon’s face. It felt its host stagger, black blood pouring from its cleaved skull. The cannon on Covenant’s shoulder fired. Shells ripped into the daemon’s host body. Chunks of bone and rancid meat showered to the ground. Pain – pure, bright pain of a kind that did not exist for mortals – tore into its essence. The daemon had no true eyes. But it did not need eyes to see in the realm of the spirit. The fire of Covenant’s soul blazed as he came forwards. The daemon lashed out, blood and pus scattering from the iron nails in its limbs as its flesh split and grew. Covenant met the blow with his blade, turned it, and hacked down.

The daemon felt the left side of its body drop away, burning to ash as it fell. It staggered, its remaining flesh reshaping. It scuttled across the surface of a pool. Covenant came forwards again, shoulder cannon firing without pause. The daemon twitched aside as the rounds tore shards from the cave walls. It pulled on the tides of power that were its to command, and an arc of black lightning whipped towards Covenant.

The bolt from Covenant’s cannon caught the daemon in the centre of its remaining flesh, and ripped it apart. In the nailed and bound core of its essence, the daemon heard its stolen flesh try to scream.

It was on the floor juddering, trying to form the pulped matter of its host into a shape to fight. The shadow of Covenant fell over it. The fire of his cold rage sent a shiver through the daemon even as reality pulled it apart.

‘By the grace and power of the God-Emperor–’ began Covenant.

‘I will…’ said the daemon, forcing the words into being with the last spite of its existence. ‘I will tell you–’

‘I cast thee into the abyss,’ said Covenant, and the daemon saw the man’s soul blaze as the sword came down.

The sculpting tool scraped a ribbon of red wax from around the eye socket of the death mask. The tool paused, the polished tip poised above a half-formed fold of flesh. The sculpted face was a horror. Quills hung from its bald skull, and weeping sores blistered the sagging flesh beneath a double set of eyes. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear: a crooked grin like an axe wound filled with row upon row of needle teeth. It was vileness and abomination rendered with perfection.

‘Does it match the memory?’ Josef stepped from the dark beyond the circle of light which bathed the workbench. Tools lay on its grey stone top, each one set next to its siblings in neat rows. Dry spatters of wax marked the blades and tips of some of the tools. In the bright light the dried wax looked like congealed blood. A jet of blue flame glowed above a silver burner, shimmering slightly with the vibration of the ship’s engines.

Covenant remained silent for a moment, his gaze steady on the empty holes of the death mask’s eyes.

‘He was a scholar before Talicto gave him to the warp.’ Covenant looked up. ‘He lived his life in the histories of saints and heroes, and thought of nothing else.’

‘What was done to him happened long ago,’ said Josef, stepping closer. ‘Before you even ascended to the rank, before you could have done anything to prevent it.’

‘There is no forgiveness in time. We are responsible. Always.’

Josef raised a bushy eyebrow, and smoothed the fabric of his robe over his gut.

‘Course is set for Ero,’ said Josef. ‘Viola estimates we will be in-system several days before the conclave.’

Covenant gave a single nod, and flicked his eyes to the side of the chamber. A servitor shuffled forwards from a niche in the chamber wall and took the wax face with long brass fingers.

‘Take it to the forge,’ said Covenant. ‘I will follow within the hour. Have the crucibles of silver ready.’

The servitor bowed, gears clicking in oiled melody. Josef waited as the cyborg shuffled away.

‘Do you wish everyone to gather before we make transit?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant. ‘There are plans to discuss.’

Josef turned to leave, then paused for a second, looking up at the walls. Silver faces gazed down at him, their eyes empty holes, their features set as they had been in the last moments of their lives.

‘As you command, my lord,’ said Josef, and left Covenant to the silence.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Volume 4 in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mauro Belfiore.

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