‘I think you’re wrong about that, Caxton,’ said Zouche. ‘This panel hasn’t got a spot of rust or dust on it. I think someone’s used this machine quite recently.’
‘And you would be right,’ said a cracked voice, ancient and thick with age.
Dalia spun to see Rho-mu 31 with his weapon stave aimed at a hooded adept in dark robes emerging from the passageway at the far end of the chamber.
‘Oh yes, you would be right,’ continued the adept. ‘Happy day that you come to me! I had all but given up hope of anyone ever arriving!’
‘Who are you?’ demanded the Protector, igniting the tip of his weapon stave as a hulking servitor emerged from the shadows to stand beside the adept. The servitor was bulky with augmetics, one arm replaced with a hissing, wheezing power claw, the other with an oversized chainblade.
The adept drew back his hood and Dalia gasped as she saw his gaunt features, wild eyes and thin scraps of bone-white hair. His flesh shone with mercurial light, as though glittering fire filled his veins instead of blood, and upon his forehead she saw a shining electoo of a diminishing spiral with a stylised set of wings to either side.
The mark of the Dragon.
‘I know you,’ she said. ‘I dreamed of you.’
‘The hooded man?’ gasped Caxton. ‘He’s real?’
‘Am I real?’ asked the adept. ‘Well, as real as any of you, though what constitutes reality in this polluted cesspool of psi-spoor we call a universe… well, a matter for some debate, yes?’
‘Who are you?’ repeated Rho-mu 31, taking a step towards the man.
‘Who am I? Now there’s a question. One might as well ask how many stars there are in the heavens, though that would have a definite answer. Or would it? Ah, it’s been so long since I have seen them. Are they still there or have the others devoured them?’
‘The stars?’ asked Dalia.
‘Of course the stars,’ snapped the adept. ‘Are they still there?’
‘Yes, they’re still there.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Dalia. ‘Millions, I think.’
‘Millions she says,’ laughed the adept. ‘And not a second after she says she knows not.’
Rho-mu 31 stepped between Dalia and the cackling adept.
‘I won’t ask again,’ said Rho-mu 31. ‘Tell me your name.’
‘My name,’ said the adept, looking confused. ‘Ah, but it’s been so long since I needed one and it gets so hard to remember. I need no name, for my name is insignificant against the vast, echoing emptiness of the darkness, but men once called me Semyon.’
‘And what are you doing here?’ asked Dalia.
‘Here?’ cried Semyon, throwing his arms wide and spinning around like a lunatic. ‘You have such a limited understanding of the material world, girl. Words like here and there have no meaning. The myriad dimensions of this material universe cannot be defined by so limited a thing as human language!’
Semyon stopped with his back to Dalia and looked over his shoulder, his face alight with the fire she had seen in Jonas Milus’ eyes before his body had disintegrated.
‘I am the Guardian of the Dragon!’ said Semyon.
THE SUB-HIVES AND manufacturing regions to the northwest of the Magma City lay in ruins. Kilometre-high hab blocks lay scattered across the burning container port like toppled anthills and smashed war engines burned where they had fallen. Bodies littered the ground and tanks lay on their backs or twisted onto their sides without turrets.
With the destruction of their scouting engines, the Titans of Legio Mortis had pulled back, unwilling to advance through such dense terrain and into the teeth of an unknown number of enemy engines.
Instead, they had settled for an intense bombardment from afar, each engine bracing itself with internal gyros and gravitational stabilisers as they locked out their weapon limbs and began to systematically pound the outer habs and work precincts of Koriel Zeth’s domain, careful not to damage the forge.
That was to be captured intact.
Princeps Cavalerio withdrew his forces within the walls of the Magma City as the punishing fire brought the thunder of the gods to earth. Fire sheeted from the sky like the end of days, and the planet was lost in a mist of dust and fire and smoke as the city in the shadow of the volcano shuddered with the fury of the bombardment.
Within the walls, hundreds of thousands of refugees packed the thoroughfares, boulevards and sinks of the city. With nowhere to run, the servants of Adept Zeth huddled in terrified misery as the deafening roar of explosions and the seismic shocks of detonations shook the city from the peak of the forge to its void-shielded foundations.
The Knights of Taranis broke two more attacks on the gate, each time without loss, but Preceptor Stator’s mount, Fortis Metallum, took a grievous wound to the chest.
Further west, sealed up in his forge between Biblis Patera and Ulysses Patera, Ipluvien Maximal watched as a screaming host, conservatively estimated to be in the region of half a million soldiers, hurled itself at his shielded walls with power mauls and vortex mines.
Servitor-slaved guns sawed through mob after mob of enemy warriors, but such was the force arrayed against them they might as well have ceased firing for all the difference they made.
Ipluvien Maximal greatly feared that the life of his forge could now be measured in hours instead of days.
In the north-eastern reaches of Tharsis, only Mondus Occulum had been spared the ravages of the enemy, though for what purpose, Fabricator Locum Kane could not fathom.
Perhaps Kelbor-Hal thought he might yet lure Kane to his cause, or maybe the Fabricator General did not wish to risk losing the Astartes production facilities for the Warmaster.
Whatever the reason, Kane gave thanks to the Omnissiah as he stood in the howling winds that swirled around the gigantic Tsiolkovsky towers and landing fields of Uranius Patera, watching as squadron after squadron of Imperial Fists Stormbirds descended like a golden flock of avenging angels.
3.03
AFTER HIS DRAMATIC pronouncement, Adept Semyon lowered his arms and moved past Rho-mu 31 to shoo Zouche and Caxton away from the machine. He adjusted the dials and pressed a number of the buttons, though nothing appeared to happen. Looking disappointed, but not entirely surprised, he shrugged.
‘What kind of machine is that?’ asked Zouche. ‘Some kind of conversion beam engine?’
‘Pah, it’s too complex for the likes of you to comprehend,’ snapped Semyon. ‘But, for the record, this is my very own gas discharge machine of the perturbation variety, which creates pulsed electrical field excitations and thus measures electro-photonic glow. What the less sophisticated might call auras.’
‘These images,’ said Dalia. ‘That machine created them?’
‘It did indeed,’ nodded the adept without looking up. ‘It did indeed, though it takes a great deal of effort to convince the subjects of the images to willingly submit to the process.’
‘And why’s that?’ asked Zouche.
Semyon pointed to the imprinted shadow on the upright slab. ‘You see that? That’s all that’s left of someone once the device has been activated.’
‘It kills them?’ asked Dalia, horrified at the number of deaths that must have taken place in this grim laboratory to satisfy Semyon’s research.
‘It does,’ agreed Semyon with a giggle. ‘But such things are sometimes necessary to keep the Dragon quiescent.’
‘You know where the Dragon is?’ demanded Dalia. ‘Can you take us to it?’
Semyon laughed, a high-pitched skirling sound of hysteria. ‘Take you to it? Doesn’t she know it’s all around her, that she walks in the throat of the Dragon even now? Ha!’
‘This fellow’s mad,’ declared Zouche. ‘Too much time alone has broken his brain.’
‘No,’ said Dalia with steely conviction. ‘This isn’t the Dragon. Take us to it. Now!’
Her friends turned at the commanding tone of her voice and even Semyon blinked in su
rprise. His eyes narrowed and he peered more closely at Dalia, as if seeing her for the first time.
Semyon grinned and nodded, pulling the hood of his robes over the wispy strands of his hair. ‘Very well,’ he said, all hint of his former mania vanished. ‘Follow me and I will show you the Dragon.’
Semyon and his threatening-looking servitor led them from the laboratory, through the darkened passageway at the far end of the chamber, and into a winding series of tunnels. The gloom soon gave way to a soft light that once again seemed to come from the walls.
The walls here were also smooth, but instead of having the look of fused glass, these tunnels appeared to be fashioned from purest silver. With purposeful strides, Semyon led them through the twisting labyrinth of the incredible tunnels, apparently taking turns at random, but refusing to answer any questions as to their route.
Zouche jabbed his elbow into Dalia’s side. ‘Wherever this takes us, remember what we talked about on the mag-lev,’ he cautioned.
‘What was that?’ asked Caxton.
‘Nothing,’ said Dalia. ‘Just Zouche being paranoid.’
‘Paranoid am I?’ smiled Zouche. ‘Remind me of that when this Dragon’s devouring you, Dalia. See how paranoid I am then, eh?’
Eventually, Semyon brought them out onto a wide ledge high up in a glittering cavern of blinding silver that put Dalia in mind of the hollow core of the planet, such was its size. It was the largest internal space any of them had ever seen or could imagine, the uttermost reaches soaring above and below them, and the shimmering walls curving out to either side of them like the largest amphitheatre ever conceived.
‘Behold the Dragon!’ cried Semyon, moving to stand before a wooden lectern that was incongruous for its very normality. A thick book with a worn leather binding sat atop the lectern, next to a simple quill and inkwell.
Dalia looked out over the vast expanse of silver that was the interior of the cave, half-expecting to see some winged beast launch itself from its lair.
She glanced over at Caxton and Rho-mu 31, who both shrugged, both equally as puzzled as her. Severine shuffled forward to the edge of the jutting promontory they stood on, her eyes with a glazed, faraway look.
‘Severine, watch out,’ cautioned Zouche, looking over the edge. ‘It’s a long way down.’
‘This place feels… strange,’ said Severine, a tremor of disquiet in her voice. ‘Do any of the rest of you feel that?’
Dalia saw Severine looking in confusion at the distant walls of the gargantuan cavern, blinking rapidly and shaking her head as though trying to dislodge a troublesome thought.
‘If the Dragon is chained somewhere in here, I expect it’s bound to feel a little strange,’ said Dalia. She squinted at the far off walls, though their unbroken, reflective sheen made it hard to focus properly.
‘No,’ insisted Severine, pointing with her good arm at the vast shimmering silver walls and roof. ‘It’s more than that. The angles and the perspective… they’re… all… wrong! Look!’
As though Severine’s words had unlocked some hidden aspect of the cavern, each of them cried out as the sheer impossibility of its geometry, previously concealed from their frail human senses, was suddenly and horrifyingly revealed.
Dalia blinked in confusion as a sudden wave of vertigo seized her, and she grasped Rho-mu 31’s arm to steady herself. Though her eyes told her that the walls of the cavern were impossibly distant, her brain could not mesh what she was seeing and what her mind was processing.
The angles were impossible, the geometry insane. Distance was irrelevant and perspective a lie. Every rule of normality was turned upside down in an instant and the natural order of the universe was overthrown in this new, terrifying vision of distorted reality. The cavern seemed to pulse in every direction at once, compressing and contracting in unfeasible ways, moving as rock was never meant to move.
This was no cavern. Was this entire space, the walls and floor, the air and every molecule within it, part of some vast intelligence, a being or construct of ancient malice and phenomenal, primeval power? Such a thing had no name; for what use would a being that had brought entire civilisations into existence and then snuffed them out on a whim have of a name? It had been abroad in the galaxy for millions of years before humanity had been a breath in the creator’s mouth, had drunk the hearts of stars and been worshipped as a god in a thousand galaxies.
It was everywhere and nowhere at once. All powerful and trapped at the same time.
The monstrous horror of its very existence threatened to shatter the walls of her mind, and in desperation, Dalia looked down at her feet in an attempt to convince herself that the laws of perspective still held true in relation to her own body. Her existence in the face of this infinite impossibility was meaningless, but she recognised that only by small victories might she hold onto her fracturing reason.
‘No,’ she whispered, feeling her grip on the three-dimensionality of her surroundings slipping as the distance to her feet seemed to stretch out into infinity. Her vertigo suddenly swamped her and she dropped to her knees as her vision stretched and swelled, the interior of the cavern suddenly seeming to be as vast as the universe and as compressed as a singularity within the same instant.
She felt the threads of her sanity unravelling in the face of this distorted reality, her brain unable to cope with the sensory overload it was failing to process.
A hand grasped the sleeve of her robe, and she looked into the lined, serious face of Zouche. With a gasping snap, her focus returned, as though the squat machinist was an anchor of solidity in an ocean of madness.
‘Don’t look at it,’ advised Zouche. ‘Keep focused on me!’
Dalia nodded, her senses numbed by the violated angles and utter wrongness of the cavern walls and the thing they cloaked from view. How had she not noticed it before? Had it taken her senses a moment to try to process the sheer impossibility of what she saw?
Even knowing the warped nature of what she was experiencing, she still felt dizzy and disorientated, so she followed Zouche’s advice and kept her attention firmly focused on his loyal face.
She took a series of deep breaths with her eyes shut before pushing herself to her feet and turning to face Adept Semyon, who stood beside the lectern. The dark-robed adept and his towering combat servitor were an unwavering slice of reality amid the chaos of her unmade vision, and the more she concentrated on him, the more her brain forced the anarchy of angles and rogue geometry into a semblance of normality.
She could still sense the roiling power and madness behind the thin veil of reality her mind had imposed, but pushed the thought of it to the very back of her skull.
Caxton lay curled in a foetal ball on the ground, his eyes screwed shut and a thin line of foam dribbling from his mouth. Rho-mu 31 was down on one knee as though in prayer, gripping his weapon stave tightly as he fought down the maddening vision in his head.
Severine stood where Dalia remembered her, staring out over the expanse of the cavern at the furthest extent of the ledge.
‘I understand,’ Dalia told Semyon. ‘The Dragon… I don’t know what it is, but I know where it is.’
‘Do you?’ asked Semyon. ‘Tell me.’
‘This cavern… everything in it. This is it. Or at least a sliver of it.’
Semyon nodded. ‘A tomb and prison all in one.’
‘How?’
Semyon beckoned her over to the lectern and opened the book. ‘Look. Know.’
Dalia took halting steps towards him, feeling the strange sense of inevitability that had gripped her when they had travelled on the mag-lev. She had a sudden sense that she was meant to do this, that she had been heading towards this moment all her life.
She reached the lectern and looked down at the book, its pages filled with the tightly knotted scrawl of a madman with too much to say and too little space to write it. The words made no sense to her, the language archaic, the lettering too small and compressed.
Even as she t
ried to tell Semyon she couldn’t read his words, he reached over the book and took her hands in a grip of iron as its pages turned in a frantic blur of parchment.
‘No… please…’ she begged. ‘I don’t want it!’
‘I said the same thing,’ said Semyon. ‘But he doesn’t care what we want. We have a duty.’
Dalia felt the inhuman fire in Semyon’s blood through the searing heat of his hands. The pain was excruciating, but it was nothing compared to the terror that filled her at the dreadful truths contained in the immortal depths of his eyes.
She tried to look away, but his gaze held her locked tight.
His skin blazed with a pure golden light. ‘Look into my eyes and see the Dragon’s doom!’
And in one awful rushing flood of knowledge, Dalia saw everything.
AS SIGISMUND’S COMPANIES landed at Mondus Occulum, the rest of the Imperial expeditionary force was fighting all across the surface of Mars. After a rapid deployment under fire in the shadow of Pavonis Mons, thirteen companies of the Saturnine Hoplites advanced on the lines of circumvallation surrounding the forge of Ipluvien Maximal.
At first, the soldiers of Saturn made good progress, their heavy armour soaking up the fire from the enemy warriors tasked with manning the rearward-facing defences, but within hours, a host of skitarii surged from the ridged landscape of the Gigas Fossae to flank them.
Hundreds died in every surge and clash of arms, nightmarishly augmented warriors tearing through the ranks of the horrified Imperial soldiers before finally being brought down. Beetle-backed servitors with spiked armour and hissing weapon arms bounded forward, unleashing rippling beams of incandescent light that shrieked like banshees and incinerated men and obliterated armoured vehicles with equal ease.
Bizarre tanks scuttled forward on spider-like legs to clamber over the wrecks of destroyed vehicles and slice through armour and flesh with every sweep of their energy-sheathed pincer arms. Within minutes, the Imperial advance was in danger of becoming a rout until a company of super-heavy tanks rolled through the centre of the Imperial lines to tear through the vile horde of the enemy with their enormous guns.