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Cauda Draconis - Darius Hinks

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Blackstone Fortress: Ascension’

A Black Library Publication

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Cauda Draconis

Darius Hinks

'The holy for the holy,' muttered Draik, lost in thought, gazing across the ballroom of the Imeneo Palace.

'What?' His attache, Isola, was standing at his side.

Draik shook his head and took another drag on his Iho-stick, before waving vaguely at the crowded, grandiose scene below. He was standing at the entrance to the hall, at the top of an absurdly vast double staircase, waiting to be introduced. Draik gestured at the fluted columns and barrel-vaulted ceilings. The palace was a forest of marble, teeming with saints and martyrs.

'They built this monstrosity for a cardinal. Can you believe the irony of it? It was a tribute to the piety of his poor, starving congregation and it looks like a damned cake.'

He studied the dancers twirling past below, gliding through perfumed smoke, powdered wigs teetering on their heads and faces bright with skin whitener.

'And now it is a pleasure palace. A playground for solipsistic inebriates. These people could not understand piety if the Emperor descended from the piasterwork and explained it with a flaming sword.'

Isola studied him, her expression neutral. 'I am very lucky, Captain Draik, to have you as my moral compass. Because these "inebriates" look identical to the people you usually refer to as "the last gasp of a civilised culture" and "scions of a nobler age".'

Draik gave her what he hoped was a withering stare but she held his gaze with no sign of withering.

'Noble birth does not guarantee noble character, Isola.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'The house of Metastasio is a disgrace.' Draik glanced around to ensure the servants were not near enough to overhear. 'No reputable financier will be associated with the Comitissa. She goes too far. She has turned patronage of the arts into something unseemly. Her schemes are floundering. The great houses of Terra have severed ties with her.'

'Including House Draik,' said Isola.

'Including House Draik.' Draik took another drag on his Iho-stick. 'My father was one of the first to distance his business dealings from hers.'

'And yet, here you are, heir to your father's trading estates, attending one of her balls.' Isola smoothed down her immaculate House Draik uniform. 'Might that not seem odd? Your father snubs her, then allows his only son to call on her.'

Draik shook his head. 'The Comitissa will not be surprised to see me tread a different path to my father.'

'Ah, yes. The fabled Draik charm. I'm sure the Comitissa is infatuated with you.'

There were times when Draik almost forgot that Isola had been imposed on him by his father. This was not one of those times.

'I did not use the word "infatuated". The Comitissa and I are acquainted. Before she distanced herself from respectable society, my father was her fencing tutor, among other things.' The words 'among other things' caught in his throat, but he refused to elaborate further.

Draik nodded at the grand clock that loomed over the far end of the ballroom. 'We do not have long. The security detail will depart for the landing platform at ten, local time, so you need to be in place by then.'

'And I give them ten minutes?'

He nodded. 'Ten minutes should do it. Even if the Comitissa orders them back, which I doubt she will, would still have time to act while you are distracting the small group of guards still at the palace.'

Isola took a small chronograph from her uniform, triggered a timer and then placed it back in her pocket. 'The fountain?'

Draik nodded. 'It is near enough that she can rush out to investigate and I hear she cares greatly for it.' He glanced out though the glass doors that looked out onto the moonlit lawns. 'Besides which, the thing is a monstrosity. You will be striking a blow for good taste.'

Rain was lashing against the windows, glimmering like gemstones in the candlelight.

'And the rain won't be a problem?' he asked.

She shook her head. 'The device is watertight.'

A servant approached through the crowds, making for Draik, and Isola headed for the doors, giving Draik a brisk salute before heading out into the rain.

'Captain Janus Draik, of House Draik,' announced the servant, escorting Draik to the top of the steps.

A few guests nodded at Draik as he descended the steps, but he did not recognise anyone in the ballroom. The Comitissa had always immersed herself in the more freethinking elements of society, patronising a dissolute scrum of artists, philosophers and frauds she referred to as the Spectacularists. As a Terran noble, she had walked a dangerous line between artistic expression and unseemly decadence; out here in the westernmost arm of the galaxy, she seemed to have forgotten that there was a line.

Figures loomed up from the perfumed smoke like apparitions, clad in costumes so outlandish that Draik felt like he was descending into a menagerie. Most of the guests wore animal masks; some were trailing great, feathered plumes while others had been mechanically augmented, sporting the kind of insect-like appendages that usually adorned Mechanicus adepts. The surgical enhancements had not been for any useful purpose, however, as they would be on a tech-priest; they were flights of fancy, confections of metal and rubber that orbited the wearers, turning them into walking orreries or giving them fluttering clockwork wings.

As Draik reached the bottom step he found himself engulfed in rolling banks of smoke. It was heady with the smell of spices and he guessed, by the oddly buoyant sensation it gave him, that it was laced with more than just perfume. He tried to march forward with his usual decisive step, but he had the worrying feeling that he was starting to flounce, like the giggling wraiths who were waltzing past him.

One of the dancers tried to take his hand but he demurred with a bow and skirted the dance floor, making for the groups of figures gathered in alcoves around the edges of the ballroom. The alcoves were thirty or forty feet tall, and at their apexes there were blank-eyed cherubs with mechanical wings, dressed in long, golden robes that billowed as they cradled metal braziers, spilling light down onto the figures below.

Draik's head was spinning as he reached the alcove. The smoke was muddying his thoughts and he had to lean on a column to steady himself.

'Quite a party,' said a man dressed as a meteor shower, wide-eyed and beaming as he offered Draik a glass of wine.

Draik stared at him with such ferocity that the man apologised and backed away. Then Draik lit his Iho-stick and began to smoke, hoping to drown one intoxicant with another. As the dancers whirled past he tried to locate the Comitissa. He had no desire to speak to the woman, but he was keen to ensure that she was present. When Isola made her move, it was important that the Comitissa be near enough to see it. He could see no sign of her, but everyone was dressed so exotically he could easily have missed her. Besides, it was twelve years since he last saw her, and that was on the far side of the Imperium, so he might not even recognise her without a mask.

As he watched the dancers, he found himself marvelling at the abundance of different sizes and physiques. The fusion of augmetics and costume made it hard to know what was real. Many of the guests had wings and glittering manes, but there were also some with tall, backward-jointed legs that raised them over the crowd., like wading birds picking through low tide. Some dancers had even employed anti-grav technology to glide and pirouette above their partners, trailing ribbons as they slipped through the smoke.

'Draik,' said Isola, speaking through the vox-bead in Draik's ear. 'I'm in position.'

'Already?' he whispered. 'Good.'

'Already? What do you mean? We only have a few more minutes.'

Draik frowned and took out his antique timepiece. It was fixed to his belt by a slender chain that glittered as he flipped the case open. 'Damn,' he muttered, shocked to see that it was almost time to begin.

'What?' demanded Isola. 'Is there a problem?'

'No.' Draik shook his head, put the chronograph away and took another drag from his Iho-stick. 'Everything is fine. I merely lost track of time.'

'Lost track of time?' Isola sounded incredulous.

Draik could not hide his irritation. 'I walked down the steps and crossed the dance floor and somehow fifteen minutes have passed.'

There was a loud ripple of laughter. For a confusing moment, Draik thought it was Isola; then he realised one of the masked dancers was watching him with interest from a few feet away. The dancer was dressed in black monastic robes that had been embroidered with such delicate thread that the cloth shimmered as it moved, as though draped in gossamer. The mask beneath the hood was a featureless mirror and, as the dancer approached, Draik saw his own, imperious features reflected in the metal.

'Janus Draik,' said the Comitissa, removing her mask.

She had grown younger and more beautiful since Draik last saw her. Her skin was now flawless and her lips were fuller. Draik realised that he would have recognised her, though, however many rejuve procedures she had endured. There was an unmistakable gleam in her eyes - a rapacious hunger that he had never seen in anyone else.

He gave her a stiff bow. 'Comitissa Metastasio.'

She laughed again and grabbed his arm, lolling against him like a lover. 'Comitissa!' she cried, mimicking his deep voice. 'Its Marianna, Draik. Marianna. I was like a second mother to you when you were a child. And now we meet again, after all these years, on the far side of the galaxy, and you cannot even use my name.'

Draik had forgotten how childish she was. She whirled around him, as though examining a piece of furniture, shaking her hear stroking his uniform.

'But you haven't changed,' she whispered urgently, leaning close to him, her eyes straining wide, just an inch from his.

The heady spices that filled the air were even more concentrated in her breath and he held his as she leant against him.

'I heard that you might come,' she continued, keeping here voice to a whisper and her lips near his. 'But I did not believe it. Janus Draik. What can have brought you so far away from Terra?'

Draik gently pushed her away and shook his head. He was not about to explain the family feud that had seen him banished to this dreadful corner of the galaxy.

'I am inspecting my father's estates,' he lied. 'Ensuring that his best interests are looked out for.'

She waved a finger at him. 'You are teasing me, Janus. Your father has no estates this far from civilisation. He would not demean himself. We both know that. The old man can't have changed that much.'

Draik was about to argue when she grabbed his arm and began leading him towards a pair of tall, glass doors that led out into the gardens.

'You can tell me everything out here, Janus,' she said, as servants rushed to open the doors. 'We have so much to discuss.'

Draik felt a rush of alarm as he realised they were about to head out into the area of garden where Isola was setting up her device at the fountain.

'Wait,' he said, bringing the Comitissa to a halt and turning her round to face him. 'It is raining out there. Besides, this is a ball. Will you not dance with me?'

She tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look. 'Now I know you're teasing me. Janus Draik, scared of the rain and asking me to dance. What has the galaxy come to?'

As they headed out onto the dance floor she called out to people, waving flamboyantly at Draik and announcing his presence to anyone close enough to hear. Draik dared not take out his chronograph, so he snatched a glance at the clock overhead. Only two minutes until Isola could start. Only two minutes to keep the Comitissa occupied. Surely he could endure her company for that long.

Draik had not danced for years, but as they turned around each other he felt the steps coming back. He led Comitissa with confidence through a storm of smoke and taffeta.

'Did you bring them all with you?' he asked, nodding at the carnivalesque crowd. 'Are these the same adoring followers you indulged on Terra?'

She pouted. 'Really, Janus, did you really come all this way just to mock me?' She shrugged. 'Some are my travelling companions, some are friends I made along the way. To be honest, I don't care where people come from, it is where they're going that interests me. What they want.'

Janus glanced at the clock. Just one more minute to go. 'And what do they want, Comitissa?'

She stroked the mass of old scars that covered his face. 'They want beauty, Janus.' She took the lead, laughing as she twirled him around. 'And experience!'

Draik realised his mistake. The look in her eyes had changed. Where before there had been hunger, there was now a strange kind of mania. She had pursued her interests to a dangerous place. She was staring intently at him and Draik began to wonder if she might have become more than simply misguided. He had written off the House of Metastasio as a social failure, but was there something worse happening here? The more he looked into her eyes, the more concerning he found it.

They danced faster and Draik began to have the unnerving sensation that they had escaped gravity. He seemed to levitate above the Comitissa, looking down into her eager stare. Then he saw that his boots were still gliding across the polished floorboards and realised it was just the smoke, confusing him. He was losing his grip on reality.

'What have you piped into this place?' he asked, trying to take shallow breaths.

She raised an eyebrow and smiled, but before she could reply, an explosion lit up the gardens. The bang was loud enough to drown out the musicians in the ballroom. Some of the dancers were too inebriated to stop, but most stumbled to a halt and cried out in excitement. 'Fireworks!' wailed, laughing and rushing to the doors.

The Comitissa shook her head, dazed, the gleam gone from her eyes. 'There are no fireworks.' She loosed Draik's hand and rushed towards the doors.

'Comitissa,' said Draik. 'I will check the palace.'

She gave him a vague wave but was clearly not listening, dashing out into the rain with the crowds of laughing guests.

'Are you moving?' said Isola over the vox.

'I am,' replied Draik as he ran in the opposite direction to the other guests, heading for the doors that led deeper into the house. 'Have you called the lander?'

'I have. It has already left. It will be at the rendezvous in a few minutes.'

Draik rushed through a series of antechambers and passageways relieved to escape the cloying smoke of the ballroom. He reached the bottom of another sweeping double staircase, just as a group of security guards appeared at the top and charged down towards him, autopistols raised.

He stood erect, letting the candlelight flash across his uniform as he employed his most sonorous tones. 'There has been an attack. In the gardens.'

Draik had been obeyed his whole life and he found it easy to sway men such as these. They saluted and stood to attention as they reached him.

'Make sure the Comitissa is safe!' he snapped. 'Be quick about it!' They saluted and scrambled off towards the ballroom. Draik watched them go then, after a moment, he spoke into the vox-bead.

'There were five of them. Is that all?'

'No. Ten left on the shuttle. That leaves ten more at the house. The other five must have waited upstairs.'

Draik massaged his jaw, annoyed that things had not gone entirely to plan. 'Could you trigger a second explosion?'

'Not without killing people, no. Everyone has come out here to look, as we planned.'

Draik rushed up the broad, carpeted stairs. 'I will think of something.'

At the top of the stairs he reached a long gallery lined with family portraits. He had memorised the architectural drawings Isola provided and knew that he was not far from the room he needed. The Comitissa housed most of her art collections in this wing of the house. He could reach the room in a few minutes.

He ran down a long gallery, crossed some smaller chambers and then reached the corridor he wanted. There was a guard waiting at the far end, just a few feet from the door.

'What are you doing up here?' cried Draik, filling his voice with fury. 'The Comitissa is being attacked, man. Get to the garden. Now!'

Guard hesitated, then crossed the door towards him, looking pained.

'My orders are to guard the collections, sir. I am not to leave my post.' The man's voice betrayed his lack of certainty and Draik knew it would only take another push to convince him.

'Your orders,' he barked, 'are to protect the Comitissa!'

The man's eyes widened and he saluted, before heading off down the hallway.

'I will find the others and send them after you,' called Draik, pretending he was going to walk on towards the far end of the corridor.

Once the man was out of sight, Draik turned on his heel and returned to the door halfway down the hallway. He took a device from a pocket in his breeches and pressed it over the lock. There was a small thud and a cloud of dust, then the door swung inwards.

'I'm in,' said Draik.

'The lander is here. Make your way to the rear entrance. The Comitissa is still weeping near the fountain but the other guests are not keen on this rain. I think they'll head back in soon. Then you'll have guards to contend with.'

Draik nodded, triggering a lumen on his augmetic eyepiece as he entered the room. The light splashed over a seemingly random jumble of artworks: ivory statuettes, silverware and metal busts. The walls were covered with hundreds of waxed maps and navigational charts and, to Draik's dismay, there were several piles of paintings, covering most of the room.

'There are so many,' he said, walking over to the piles.

'So many what?'

'Paintings. There must be dozens of them.'

There was a pause at the other end of the vox, then: 'You have a few minutes before those guards come looking for you. Sort through them until you find it. It can't take that long.'

Draik did not need to be told. He was already moving the paintings aside as quickly as he could, but there was no sign of the one he had come looking for. Anger lent him speed. Now that he had spoken to the Comitissa he was all the more adamant that his family heirloom would not remain in her possession. The look he had seen in her eyes was more than foolish hedonism. She was involved in something vile. Something beyond the infantile behaviour she had displayed on Terra.

The Comitissa had never publicly acknowledged knowing the painting's whereabouts but Draik had been reliably informed that she had it. She had bought it from one of her free-spirited friends, who had acquired it from the criminal who stole it from Draik's father. She had been overheard, in private, boasting that she was a more worthy keeper than the painting's original owners.

As he moved the large, gilded frames around, something caught Draik's eye. At the rear of the room, beneath the wall of maps, there was a plain metal chest. It was unadorned, apart from a symbol engraved into the lid. There was something vaguely familiar about the symbol and, as Draik studied it, he was filled with a strange sense that the symbol was a warning. Or even a threat. It was a circle, surrounded by a half-moon crescent and linked by a line to another, smaller crescent. The more Draik looked at the symbol, the more disturbing he found it. He could not explain why, but he was filled with an overwhelming urge to know what was in the chest.

'They are heading back in. Do you have it?'

Draik did not answer, gripped by an odd fervour. He went back to the door, grabbed the handheld explosive and placed it on the chest.

It detonated with the same dull thud as before and the chest lid rattled slightly.

'Draik? Talk to me. What is happening in there? We have to go.'

Draik's hand moved towards the lid, then hesitated, hovering over the metal. He was both repulsed and intrigued. He had a peculiar certainty that if he opened the chest, his life would be sent in a new direction. He had no idea where the thought had come from but it seemed oddly potent.

A door slammed somewhere back down the corridor, jolting him out of his reverie. He backed away from the chest, as though waking from a trance, then turned back to the paintings. There was no time to look. He simply cast them across the floor in a heap, scattering landscapes and portraits in every direction. And then, after just a few seconds, there it was: those distinctive, magisterial Draik features scowling up at him from the jumble of frames. The jewel of his family's collection, the Cauda Draconis.

Footsteps were approaching fast and the frame was almost five foot square. There was no way he could simply carry it out. As his fingers drummed against the scabbard at his belt an idea occurred to him. He turned the picture over and used his rapier to remove the back of the frame. Then he cut the painting out, rolled it into a tight tube and slid it into the scabbard. Then, remembering the rain outside, he took the painting back out, wrapped it in one of the oilskin maps from the wall and shoved it back in the scabbard.

Then he backed out into the hall, sword in hand, staring in horror at the pile of paintings and shaking his head. 'Ransacked,' he muttered, before looking up in mock surprise at the guard who was rushing towards him.

'What happened?' cried the man, whipping out his pistol as he rushed towards Draik.

'Someone is breaking into the rooms.' Draik made himself sound outraged. 'I think that explosion was a decoy.'

The guard reached the door and stared in dismay at the wrecked room. He looked at Draik in confusion. 'But you told me the Comitissa was under attack.'

Confusion quickly turned to suspicion and the man reached for a comms device at his belt.

Draik sighed and planted a kick in the guard's stomach, doubling him over. As the man staggered back against the wall, Draik knocked his pistol away and took the comms device, throwing it to the floor and grinding it under his heel.

'This could have gone better,' he muttered, drawing back his sword to club the man unconscious.

'Hold it there!' cried a voice from back down the corridor.

Without looking, Draik took a smoke grenade from his belt and hurled it at the voice. Auto-rounds screamed down the hallway, but Draik had already ducked back into the map room. Once smoke was thick enough, he adjusted the controls of his optical augmetic and marched back out of the room, using the eyepiece to pierce the fug he had created.

The guard near the door was still winded and unable to rise, so Draik strode past him, making for the man who had fired. The guard was leaning against the wall, struggling to breathe. His pistol pointed roughly in Draik's direction but the man was clearly unable to see.

Draik's eyepiece left him with no such problems, utilising a series of spectrum enhancers to see through the fumes. He flicked a coin at one of the walls and stepped in the opposite direction. As the guard fired wildly at the coin, Draik raced forwards and hammered his sword hilt into his stomach.

The man gasped, dropped his gun and fell. Draik kicked him over, snatched his comms unit and hurled it down the steps. The guard tried to rise, so Draik kicked him again before bolting down the stairs.

By the time Draik returned to the ballroom, the commotion was over. The guests had come back in from the rain and were milling around the hall, looking noticeably less ecstatic than when Draik last saw them. He brushed his hair back into place, straightened his uniform and marched out into the crowd, making for the exit.

'Did you hear?' cried the Comitissa, rushing to his side through a tide of sodden costumes. 'My beautiful fountain.'

Draik clicked his heels, took her hand and kissed it. 'I swear to you, Marianna, the culprit will not elude me.'

Colour flooded her cheeks and her eyes shone triumphantly. She bowed to him. 'You do your father proud, Janus. You are so like him.'

There were so many ways Draik would have liked to answer this pronouncement, but he limited himself to a 'thank you' and strode from the ballroom, tapping the scabbard at his leg as he climbed the steps and left the palace.

Rain whipped into his face as he headed down the steps and out into the gardens. He knew that the guards would already be scrambling down towards the ballroom with his name on their lips, but he maintained a casual pace until he was beyond reach of the light splashing from the windows. Then he bolted, sprinting across sodden lawns towards the back of the house.

The shuttle was exactly where Isola had promised it would be and the landing ramp was already down. Draik ran across a final stretch of lawn, up the ramp and dropped heavily into a seat.

'Go!' he snapped, nodding at the pilot and fastening his safety harness.

Isola closed the hatch and jumped into her seat. Then the shuttle lurched up from the lawns and banked away across the treetops, rain crashing against the viewport.

'What happened?' Isola shook her head in disbelief. 'Everything went to plan. Why have you not got the painting?' She looked uncharacteristically angry. 'I'm not in the habit of destroying antiques for no reason.'

Draik held up his hands. 'The plan worked, Isola. It worked. There was a brief delay when I...' He lost his thread as he remembered the symbol on the chest. There was something about that design that made his stomach turn, even now that he was miles away from it. And it was the same feeling he felt when he looked into the Comitissa's eyes. He shook his head. 'There is something odd happening in that palace.'

'What do you mean 'the plan worked'?' said Isola. 'Where is the painting?'

Draik signalled for the pilot to level off and, once the cabin was steady, he pulled the oilskin map from his scabbard, carefully unrolled it and revealed the portrait.

Isola's eyes widened as Draik handed it to her. 'It is beautiful,' she muttered.

'Of course. There has never been a finer portrait artist than Catali. And this is his masterpiece.'

Isola nodded but as she studied the painting, faint frown lines creased her brow.

Draik stiffened in his seat. 'Is it damaged?' He tapped the map. 'I thought the oilskin would protect it.' He was appalled by the idea that he might have ruined an invaluable part of his family history.

Isola shook her head and handed it back to him, still frowning. 'Do you see the cracks in the canvas?'

The lens in Draik's eyepiece whirred as it zoomed and refocused. The painting's details filled Draik's vision, and he saw every line and brushstroke. The surface of the painting was crossed by tiny, horizontal cracks.

'Have I done this?' he gasped.

'No. The cracks will have been there for hundreds of years, but…' She paused and shook her head.

'But what?' demanded Draik.

'Canvases from that era do not crack in this way. The cracks spread out in a web pattern.'

Draik shook his head, still missing her point.

'It's a fake.' Isola sat back with a resigned air. 'Very old. And very good. But a fake. It is not a Catali. That is not the real Cauda Draconis.'

Draik did not even bother to challenge her. She was the brightest and most comprehensively trained of all House Draik's servants. And she was careful never to make claims unless she was sure of them. He knew she would be right.

For all her grand claims of patronage, the Comitissa had been fooled by an expensive fraud.

Draik let the painting tumble to the cabin floor and looked out through the viewport at the storm. The lights of Aiglun Starport were already glittering into view where the Vanguard would be waiting to rush them back to the Draikstar. He had wasted all this time and energy on a fool's errand. Another wasted attempt to show his family his worth. And he had been so sure this time. Something in his soul had cried out that here, at the edge of the Imperium, he would prove himself.

Isola stayed quiet, knowing him too well to attempt platitudes.

The map was still on Draik's lap and he glared at it, as though the thing were the source of his pain. It was a star chart of the Segmentum Pacificus, describing in detail the wretched backwaters that Draik now found himself in. It was unusually detailed, in fact. Few Imperial maps showed this kind of clarity. Now that he looked at it properly, he realised that it seemed more like a holy relic than something produced by the Department Cartographica.

He traced his fingers over the names: Hydraphur, Verghast, Sabatine, Urdesh. Then his gaze came to rest on something odd at the far edge of the sector, in a remote region called the Western Reaches. There was a simple, black triangle that looked to have been added to the map by hand, and there was a line of binharic symbols beneath it.

'Isola,' he said, handing her the map. 'What do you make of that?'

She looked up in surprise, took the map and tapped at a small cogitator while she studied it. She shook her head, frowning. 'Hard to say. It's a peculiar translation. Not a dialect I've seen before.' She squinted at her viewscreen. 'Weapon of Vaul, perhaps? Sword of Vaul?'

'Talisman of Vaul?' said Draik, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.

She glanced at him, noticing his tone. 'Talisman of Vaul? Yes, perhaps. It could be.' Then her eyes widened as she recognised the name. 'No,' she whispered, looking again, shaking her head. 'It can't be.'

Everything Draik had felt since coming to the Segmentum Pacificus suddenly made sense. A powerful sense of destiny rushed through him as he considered the odds of him picking this particular map from all the others he could have taken. A map that would meant nothing to anyone else.

He looked out into the rain, smiling at the blackness.

'Holy for the holy,' he whispered.

About the Author

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blackstone Fortress, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension and three novels in the Mephiston series, Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light. He also wrote the audio drama The Beast Inside and the novella Sanctus. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novel Ghoulslayer. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas.

An extract from Blackstone Fortress: Ascension.

Vorne had not come this far to be intimidated by screams. She had heard worse.

‘Do not be afraid,’ she said, her voice chiming through her faceplate. ‘I have come here to save you.’ She peered into the darkness, listening for movement. ‘I understand your fear. And your anger. Your talismans were fakes. Your spells are powerless. Your utopia was a lie. But the Emperor is real. He will scour your sin. He will bring you truth.’

There was no answer but, after a brief pause, Vorne heard a shuffling sound from the lower steps.

She pulled the flamer’s trigger. The promethium tanks were empty but the weapon had other ways to elevate the faithless. Sparks billowed as the underslung chainsword rattled into life. She glimpsed mutated flesh, a face of lipless mouths, then the teeth bit home, glittering the darkness with blood. The heretic tried to aim a stubber but she wrenched the chainsword free, severed his arm and kicked him down the steps. She followed and lunged again, hacking twice, finishing the baptism with a whispered prayer.

A metallic chorus swelled around her, filling the shadows. The voice of the Blackstone. Near the Crucible it was hungry and eager. This was the very heart of the fortress. Tinny shrieks and whistles assailed Vorne from every direction. It was like a mockery of birdsong, trills and warbles woven into a scream. It rose to a crescendo, gripping her shaven scalp, resonating in her skull. Vorne sneered, amused that the Blackstone thought she could be so easily cowed.

‘Vorne?’ called Taddeus.

‘I’m fine, eminence,’ she replied, staring down the blackness. ‘It’s nothing. Your false gods have deceived you,’ she said, addressing the shadows again. ‘They do not care if you live or die, because they are illusions, conjured madness. By turning your back on the God-Emperor, you have ensured that your souls will–’

There was another rustle of combat fatigues and she lunged, triggering the chainsword.

The teeth screamed, rattling uselessly against colourless rock, scattering sparks. A piece of the Blackstone had risen from the floor and formed itself into a mockery of the divine human form. Vorne cursed as her weapon kicked and bucked, sending painful tremors through her arms. She backed away and, before the sparks died, the column tumbled back down into steps, folding into faceted blackness.

This was new. She had seen the fortress assume many shapes and forms, but nothing that looked like a man. The Blackstone Fortress was becoming progressively less stable, and on this latest expedition it was so erratic that it had been almost impossible to traverse. Taddeus had warned her that this would be the case. The Chaos cults had triggered something momentous with their blood rites. The fortress was preparing to ascend. Soon it would begin the next stage of its development.

Soon it would be reborn.

There was more noise and she triggered the chainsword again. Another step had risen up and become a rotating column, almost human in shape. This time, she managed to hold her blade back and avoid blunting its teeth. She caught her reflection in the column’s shifting surface. She was pleased by the savagery of her appearance. The lower half of her face had been burned away on the day she met Taddeus and he had grafted an iron mask over the scars. She looked as merciless as she felt.

The column of polygons fell away as she stepped closer, crashing down the steps like spilled coins. She followed them, using the last shreds of light to reach the passageway at the bottom of the steps. She was effectively blind, but she could feel shapes moving all around her, forming and reforming.

‘What is this?’ she muttered, edging through the blackness, slowly feeling her way with her iron-soled boots. Light glimmered up ahead, revealing shapes all around her, human-sized, but more like architecture than people – chiselled columns, bent and crooked, built of black geometric blocks. The sounds of the fortress grew louder, and Vorne had the strange sensation that she was passing through stone boughs. There was no sign of movement, and she was thinking again of turning back when a voice rang out over the whistling noise.

‘Vorne.’

‘Raus?’ she replied, guessing it was one of the abhuman runts who had led them to the Crucible. She had seen them fall down a shaft, but perhaps they had survived. ‘Rein? Is that you?’

‘Here,’ said the voice.

Vorne hesitated. The voice was familiar, but it was not one of the ratlings. She glanced back in the direction of Taddeus and, for reasons she could not explain, her hands began to shake, her gauntlets knocking against the flamer.

A column moved towards her, coalescing as it approached. The light flared brighter, and Vorne saw a face.

‘Mother?’

How could it be? But it was. It was her. She looked unchanged, and as she loomed out of the darkness she reached out towards Vorne. Vorne lowered her flamer, shaking her head, and reached out to take her hand.

‘Traitor,’ said Vorne’s mother, striking her hard across the face.

Vorne stumbled back and tripped over the bottom step, landing painfully. Her mother walked after her and booted the side of her skull, snapping Vorne’s head back so hard it slammed against the steps. She tried to rise, blood filling her mouth, but her mother kicked her again, harder, in the guts.

Vorne curled into a ball, winded, unable to stand.

‘You betrayed us.’ Her mother’s voice was cold with hate. ‘To an off-worlder.’

Blood filled Vorne’s eyes as a metal-capped boot cracked her cheek, splitting the skin and sending her tumbling down the steps. Shock had slowed her reactions, but Vorne had stopped taking beatings from her mother when she was nine years old. And she was not about to turn back the clock.

As her mother rushed at her again, drawing back her fist, Vorne rolled clear, letting the woman’s knuckles crack against the steps. Her mother cursed and reeled away, clutching her bloody fist, then fell back into the dark, headless and trailing blood. As the decapitated body hit the ground Vorne stood over it, her chainsword spraying gore. Then she released the trigger and silenced the weapon. She staggered back onto the steps. Her legs buckled, and she sat heavily on the cold floor.

The corpse juddered.

Vorne lurched to her feet, but then her mother vanished, leaving a mound of black polygons.

Had she ever been there? Vorne laughed at the absurdity of the question. Of course not. Her mother had died years ago, burned by Taddeus with all the other wretched sinners from her clan. How could she be here, now, looking just as she did when Vorne was a teenager? How could she be on the Blackstone? The fortress was trying to confuse her. Or the heretics had employed their dark arts against her. Something had reached into her mind and plucked out her greatest fear.

She climbed stiffly to her feet, her head still light on her shoulders and her legs trembling. Her greatest fear? Is that what her mother was?

She looked at the black shape. The light was fading again. This happened a lot in the Blackstone. Lights came and went without logic. As darkness swallowed her, Vorne thought about her mother. A driven woman, dragged into idolatry believing it would be a way out of Gethsemane Hive. Cruel and relentless. So driven she had almost dragged Vorne into damnation. But not worthy of fear. Certainly not now, so many years after her death. Since Vorne had pledged her allegiance to Taddeus, she had seen true horrors. And that had been before Taddeus brought her to the Blackstone Fortress.

She looked around, using the last few shreds of light to study the shapes at the foot of the stairs. There was no more movement. The Blackstone had played its trick and then fallen back into its fathomless slumber. She wanted to sneer but she could not. Her mother’s thin, resolute face filled her thoughts. The fortress had guessed correctly that it would shake her resolve, but why? Why did she care?

She tried to hurry back up the steps but then she had a thought so dreadful, so painful, that she thought she might vomit. What if she had been wrong about her mother’s guilt? She had not handed her mother to Taddeus, but she had known that her evidence would lead the priest to her mother’s door. What if her thinking had been clouded by hate? All those years of cruelty and beatings might have confused her. Vorne was not worried that she had wronged her mother; she was worried that she had wronged the Emperor.

‘No,’ she hissed, heading back to the steps. She knew what this was. She had strayed too far from Taddeus. Without his fierce soul to ward her, her mind often played tricks on itself, roaming avenues best left unexplored. One word from him would set her straight.

‘Your eminence?’ she called.

There was no reply.

Her head pounded where she had fallen and she had to wipe more blood from her eyes. Pain lanced through her broken cheekbone, but the break was not serious. Her mask had taken the brunt of the kick.

She climbed awkwardly back up the steps, keeping the flamer raised as she followed the trail of charred heretics she had left behind. Using the bodies as a guide, she eventually saw a pool of light and the hunched shape of Taddeus, still poring over the Liber Eudoxus. Even a glimpse of him was enough to banish her doubts. The Blackstone had distorted her memories, that was all. Taddeus believed in her. Which meant the Emperor believed in her.

Taddeus did not look up as she approached. He had removed the tall mitre he usually wore. Vorne had never seen her master without his elaborate headgear. Taddeus wore his holy vestments at all times, even into battle. There was something shocking about seeing his gleaming, tonsured head. He was pawing furiously at his scalp as he stared at the Liber Eudoxus, the holy text that had led him across half the galaxy to the Western Reaches and the Blackstone Fortress. He was looking at the same page he always looked at. It showed a simple picture of a square on a faded pattern of triangles.

‘It’s not me,’ he said. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet. Taddeus was usually a booming, confident man, perpetually mid-sermon.

Vorne hurried to his side, wiping blood from her face so as not to trouble Taddeus with her fall. ‘Your eminence?’

One of Taddeus’ servo-skulls was drifting above his head, shining a lumen on his pate and on the pages of his book. The picture of the square was heavily annotated, surrounded by Taddeus’ florid script. He jabbed his finger at the drawing then hurled the book at the wall.

‘Eminence!’ Vorne was unable to disguise her shock. ‘It is holy!’

‘It’s a lie!’ He hauled his massive bulk upright and slammed his mace into the cover. The servo-skull had to bank away to avoid being smashed, and light flashed drunkenly around Taddeus as he pummelled the ancient book.

Vorne rushed to Taddeus and tried to stop him, but he hurled her back towards the steps with such violence that she barely stopped herself from falling. Taddeus raised his mace, glaring at her, then paused, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, lowering the mace and helping her back to her feet.

‘No need,’ she said, but she was shaking. ‘What happened?’ she asked, glancing at the ruined book. Its cover had torn and the spine was broken, spilling pages across the floor.

Taddeus stared at her. ‘I am not the Anointed.’

‘Of course you are. The abhumans have led us to the Crucible. Just as you prophesied.’ She waved her flamer at a light in the distance, glinting and flashing. ‘We have come through the Aberration. You found the entrance, exactly as you said you would.’

Taddeus shook his head and headed over to the tattered remnants of the book, glaring at it. ‘But I could not get in, Vorne. It would not admit me. None of the prayers worked. I am not the one.’

‘Your eminence, you must be. It is what you’ve always known. How could you have managed to come this far if you were not the Emperor’s chosen? No one else has made it through the Blackstone’s storms.’

He glanced around, still gripping his mace tightly. For a moment, she thought he might attack the walls, but he looked at the distant light instead.

‘I tried to get in, Vorne, while you were purging the unclean. I tried and I was denied. It would not admit me.’ He drew the shape of a square in the air. ‘All these years, I thought my mission was clear – to reach the Crucible and claim it in the Emperor’s name, but I’m wrong. I could not enter. I am not the one.’

‘Then this is just not the right time,’ said Vorne. ‘This is not the moment. We can return to Precipice and pray for more guidance. The Emperor will speak to you, as He always has done.’

Taddeus waved his mace at the shadows. ‘Not the moment, Vorne? This is the only moment. The fortress is changing. Being reborn. This is the ascension that was foretold by Saint Corval, by the Idumaen Prophecy, by the Scrolls of Varros, by every sacred text we have studied. The Blackstone is about to become unstoppable. And the Anointed must enter its heart! Cleanse its darkness with fire! Steel its soul against Chaos!’

His face turned purple with fervour and his eyes flashed. Then he halted and shook his head. ‘But it is not me. I reached the Crucible and I could not enter.’ His voice was desolate. ‘I was blessed with a message from the Emperor Himself, and in my hubris I misunderstood it. I did not listen hard enough.’ His head was trembling. ‘I am worse than heretical. Trusted with a great duty and too blinded by pride to perform it.’

A clamour was rising in Vorne’s head – not the din of the Blackstone, but the voices of her own victims. Hundreds of them, burned on the orders of the man who was now saying he had made a mistake.

‘You are not wrong.’ She dropped to her knees and started collecting the pages of the book. ‘Read it again.’

She was about to rise when the floor shifted beneath them and the symphony of shrieks swelled in volume. Taddeus thudded against the wall, while Vorne stayed on her knees until the tremor passed.

‘More light!’ cried Vorne and the servo-skull obeyed, revealing the broad, octagonal chamber at the stop of the steps.

They had learned to use lumens sparingly. Bright light sometimes triggered the Blackstone’s defence mechanisms. But here there was no option and, as the light reached the far side of the room, Vorne saw that the walls were crumbling, collapsing as quickly as Taddeus, who was now babbling to himself. The sheer black surfaces had fragmented like shattered crystal, and the pieces were flooding across the floor. As they landed they clumped together like metal filings drawn to a magnet, creating dark, blocky mounds that quivered as they rose.

‘Time to leave,’ she muttered.

But the steps had gone. The slope was still there, but the steps had become a torrent of glinting shards. Taddeus was still staring at the light and he did not seem to hear.

‘Your eminence!’ she snapped, grabbing his arm. ‘We have to go.’

He turned to her with flat, lifeless eyes. Vorne was almost as shocked as she had been on seeing her mother. She had never seen Taddeus like this. The zeal was gone. The fire was out. He looked like a normal man.

‘I am not the one,’ he said, oblivious to the flakes of black ore whirling around them.

‘You are everything,’ said Vorne, gripping his arm tighter. ‘Do not…’ She lowered her voice, trying to stem the rage burning through her throat. ‘Do not fail me.’

He grabbed his mitre from the shifting floor, placing it back above his jowly face.

There was a noise like a landslide and the walls folded away from them, revealing the endless dark beyond. Even at full brightness the servo-skull’s lumen could not penetrate more than a dozen feet in any direction. With the walls gone it looked like Vorne and Taddeus were standing on the peak of an undersea mountain, surrounded by ink-dark leagues. Colossal shapes churned in the depths, impossible to make out, and a brittle breeze whipped into the two priests.

The mounds created by the toppled walls were growing and reforming. Some were as tall as Vorne, and they were taking on the same shape as the structures Vorne had seen earlier – tall, columnar crystals that glinted as they turned and grew. Some of them were gripping blades of black ore, and blocks that were forming into guns. Some of the slabs were falling away and sliding down the churning slopes like abandoned sledges, rattling into the darkness.

There was a grinding roar as something swelled up from beneath the shifting slopes. It looked like an anvil carved from bone and it was the size of a tank. It was armoured like a tank, too, with rows of gun muzzles at its sides. It climbed from the tumult on three spindly, arachnid legs and towered over the landslide. A drone, like others they had fought earlier, but built on an even larger scale. The darkness shook as it pounded up the slope towards them, turning its T-shaped head to take aim.

Vorne pointed her flamer, then cursed as she remembered she was out of fuel.

‘This is a punishment,’ said Taddeus, staring at the mountainous automaton.

‘No!’ cried Vorne, looking around the summit they were now standing on. ‘This is the Blackstone.’ She knew she had no chance of escaping alive while Taddeus was so dazed. And without him, she would be…

The thought was too dreadful to pursue. She had to rouse him.

‘Your eminence,’ she said. ‘Think about what we have seen. The fortress is overrun with Chaos cultists. Despite everything we have done to drive them out. They are everywhere. If the Blackstone is becoming a weapon, it must be our weapon.’

Taddeus nodded. ‘Yes. You are right. Of course you are right. We have to make sure they are not the ones who claim it. We have to seize control, just as it was written. But I am not the Anointed.’ Taddeus was clearly still dazed by this revelation. ‘It is not me.’

‘Then what do we do?’ demanded Vorne as the drone thudded up the slope towards them. ‘The Emperor must have a plan.’

Taddeus stared at her. ‘But what is it?’ He snatched the torn pages of the book from her hand, peering at his notes.

‘If we die here, we have no chance of finding the answer,’ she said. ‘We have to make it back to the lander and return to Precipice. The rest of the crew will be waiting. If we find a–’

‘Wait!’ He snapped his fingers eagerly, looking closer at the picture of the square.

Vorne whispered a prayer of relief. The holy rage was back in his eyes.

He smiled grimly. ‘I see what happened. I have been so focused on driving Chaos from the Blackstone that I turned a blind eye to the heresy in our own ranks. The heresy on Precipice. That is why my visions have been clouded. I need to turn the Emperor’s vengeance on them.’

Behind her mask, Vorne’s ruined mouth spread into a grin. This was the Taddeus she had sworn to serve. This was the fiery prophet who would lead her to deliverance.

‘Then you are the Anointed?’

‘Perhaps.’ He gripped her shoulder so tight her armour creaked in his grip. ‘Or perhaps not. It matters not. I see my mistake now. I was sent here to cleanse Precipice as much as the Blackstone.’ He looked around at the looming shadows. ‘I was beguiled. I lost my way. I must purify Precipice. And then, as the ashes fill the air, the Emperor will show me my path. Perhaps it is to come back here or perhaps it will be to send another, but,’ he raised his mace into the air, shaking with passion, ‘either way, I will fulfil the mission I was born to–’

The ground exploded beneath Vorne’s feet and she fell onto the seething rubble. She rolled clear and staggered back to her feet in time to see the drone’s guns flashing. She crouched and wrapped her arms around her head as the ground detonated again. More slabs of wall collapsed and hurtled down the slopes, leaving no trace of cover.

Taddeus lurched to his feet, mace held aloft, and howled prayers at the drone. The machine was only a few dozen feet away now and it was turning its triangular head in his direction, aiming guns at his billowing robes. Vorne sprinted across the heaving ground and barrelled into him, sending them both flying through the air onto one of the pieces of toppled wall.

The ground where Taddeus had been standing exploded, hurling shards in every direction, but the two priests were already gone. Their weight had dislodged the slab of wall and sent it sliding down the steep slope.

The drone swivelled its head, still firing, slashing the air with blue-white energy, but the wall hurtled clear and Taddeus and Vorne plunged into the abyss.

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First published in Blackstone Fortress: Ascension in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Rachel Williams & Christian Byrne.

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