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Horrors


Our platoon was sent to clear out a mostly-abandoned Ork mining outpost on Corellian IV so we could repurpose it for Imperial use. The first sign that something was wrong was when our first two attempts to make landfall were impeded by our dropships exploding - both times, as soon as they were exactly 22.2 clicks from the outpost. 300 lives lost in the blink of an eye - and not an Ork in sight, let alone an anti-air platform. We tried to get a clearer look at the outpost after that, but all our arrays were bringing back a ton of interference. There appeared to be something - we couldn't tell what - hovering over the outpost. All we knew was that it was big.

We touched down about 30 clicks away and slogged it in on foot. The vets hitched a ride in the tanks - that turned out to be a mistake. We didn't see a soul on our way in, but just before the 22 click mark, all 12 Russes were vaporised. The armour seemed to flake away in an instant, but the interior must have been caught in the inertia. For a flashing moment I saw a look of pure pain on our commander's face, before he got turned inside out. All of us troopers were unharmed.

We crested the last ridge and made visual contact with the outpost - and the thing that had been screwing with our systems and our armour. It must have been 90 feet across, at least. A giant mirror. A diamond - or an octahedron, or a cube, depending what phase of its rotation it was in while you happened to glance at it. The air seemed crystal clear for the last 10 clicks between us, and it was filled with what I can only describe as song. Like a mix between whale sounds and steel chimes. With the sound came a cold touch on your brain - an alien tendril reaching out to your consciousness. More than one of us lost our lunch - or our bowels.

And then the diamond shattered - its bottom half dropping through the air, splitting into a thousand little pieces as they descended. They seemed to fall straight through the corrugated plasteel roofing of the outpost - as if they weren't there at all. But moments later, they had formed a ring around the perimeter. An endless wall of shimmering, iridescent silver.

The singing got louder. More than a few of us split ranks, screaming. We knew it wasn't long now until they were upon us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Furies (now daemonettes, I guess)


They called 'em paper planes, and it made me laugh in the briefing when they told me that and showed me a picture. They looked at me a bit funny then, sorta sad like.

Didn't take long to figure out why they called 'em that. We were on patrol 'round the perimeter when we spotted a pack of 'em - floatin' up, maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty feet in the air. Not movin', just sittin' there - like they were waitin' for somethin'. They can't have been waitin' very long though, 'cause they weren't there a minute ago.

We tightbeamed the boys back at base, let 'em know there were hostiles outside the containment zone, then we stayed and watched 'em for a while. Maybe a minute went past - no movement, no nothin, 'cept for maybe a faint humming sound that might have been comin' from up there, or coulda just been in my head, 'cept for the other guys on patrol heard it too.

Then base got back to us and told us to engage. Course they did - ten patrolmen against a score of spooky alien death kites, what could go wrong.

Well, turns out plenty could go wrong. Seemed as soon as MacBenn even thought about aimin' his lasgun at 'em, they were on the move. And by the Emperor, are they fast. They shot down outta the sky and it was like a watercolour paintin' - just streaks of it fallin' from the clouds - blue, green, silver. They weren't as big as they seemed up in the sky - maybe seven feet long. But every inch of 'em was like a razor. MacBenn was cut into four pieces before he even fell over.

I'm not ashamed to say I legged it outta there. I got no doubt they coulda caught me if they tried, but they seemed to be happy enough to stay and slice the livin' hell outta the other boys. That's why they called 'em paper planes - on account of how they cut you to ribbons.

Really puts things in perspective, it does. Spendin' the rest of my life stuck on this rock minin' promethium for 12 hours straight ain't half as bad as gettin' turned into confetti by those damn silver triangles.

Wish they'd do somethin' about the food, though.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Foot Herald


Now, it's easy fightin' other orks. You find the biggest one, knock 'im on the 'ead, and the rest knows you is da boss now. Same fing with 'umies, only da one with the fanciest hat is usually da boss.

It ain't so easy when yer fightin' shiny 'eadache boxes. One minute yer shootin' at the biggest one yer can see, then next minute 'e's actually the size of a grot's toe and yer shootin' at thin air. Then the next fing yer know it's you what is tiny, and all yer boyz is massive, an' they're about to step on yer 'ead and squish yer to bits. Then yer back to normal size but yer boyz is actually drumsticks and they smell so damn good yer can 'ardly 'member yer 'spose to be fightin'. Then comes the screamin', like they's tryin' to drive an ice pick into yer skull. If yer lucky you'll see some pretty colours before your 'ead swells up an' explodes into squig eggs.

Nah, the best way to fight an 'eadache box is to chuck a stikk bomm at 'em and turn yer green ass round an' find a real fight somewhere else. Coz all yer gettin' from dem is a splittin' 'eadache and a perscription fer crazy pills from the Mad Dok.

An' he delivers those pills straight to yer brain - with his fist.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Disc Herald


Kyne was not the first Inquisitor to investigate the subject, but he knew he would be the last.

Shortly after Kyne had made moonfall, the Overlord of the Syravaul IV lunar communications base had quietly lead him down a guard-lined hallway to the viewing room that housed the daemon’s containment cube and then promptly left him alone.

That was good. Kyne had been thoroughly briefed on Holy Terra and needed no barely coherent blabbering or sycophantic wheeling from a scared public servant.

The viewing room was exactly fifteen feet across, the containment cube exactly nine. Barely three feet separated Kyne, one step inside the doorway, from the nine-inch plasteel walls that housed the daemon. On the ceiling above were the remains of Inquisitor Rachmaroth that the cleaning detail had been unable to remove before Kyne’s arrival.

The Inquisitor took another step forward, a long breath in, and then thumbed the standalone control panel to his left. Immediately the walls transpared, and Kyne saw several things in instant succession. As he watched, each image seemed to linger in his mind for what seemed like minutes; but as each passed into the next he was aware it had come and gone in only a fraction of a second.

He was staring at an enormous quicksilver hexagon. It swirled with colour, as inks float in water; turquoise, mint, magenta. The shape itself seemed to rotate in the opposite direction to the swathes of colour inside it.

Then the shape was gone; replaced by a melon-sized ball of blackness so intense it seemed to seep out into the air around it. It hovered at Kyne’s eye height. Inside it seemed to glitter and blink innumerable pinpricks of light. One second, candles, the next, stars.

The sphere spun around on itself and suddenly it was inside the hexagon that span slowly end over end around it, the iris of an alien eye.

It came to a stop, shapes and colours both, and rested.

Kyne watched it, unmoving, for a time. When it appeared that the daemon would change no further, he opaqued the walls of the cube and then retired.

In his chambers, he wondered. The daemon had not reached out to brush its alien conscious against his own, as he had expected. Inquisitor Rachmaroth’s immediate and ultimate reaction had lead Kyne to believe that making contact would be the daemon’s first move. He felt that today’s display was the creature’s way of sizing him up. Clearly, Kyne was more challenging quarry than Rachmaroth and the planetary consultants that had been here before him.

Here, he caught himself mid-thought – he could not pride himself on the judgment of the spawn of Chaos. How highly the daemon regarded him should be of no consequence to an Inquisitor of Kyne’s status.

He pushed the thought from his mind and walked the perimeter of the base, contemplating the problem.

The next day, Kyne walked in to the viewing room and stared directly into the eye of the Cyclops.

Kyne pulled his high collar up to his mouth and spoke into it slowly.

“Overlord Waldon, has anybody else been in here?”

Crackling came the reply: “No, sir. Not since your last visit, sir.”

Kyne approached the cube and rested a hand on the cold of the transpared plasteel. The daemon was still, but its presence seemed to burn and warp the air around it.

After a time, Kyne thumbed the control and the thing was gone.

That night, he dreamed he was lost in a wine-dark sea. He had sunk below the waves and was trying to claw his way to the surface but had forgotten which way was up. Around him, in the inky darkness, glowed what might have been sea creatures or might have been stars.

After a week of daily visits and no progress, Kyne requested a buggy and drove away from the base. His doubts had been growing. This daemon had given him nothing to work with and yet had eaten away at him. He was Kyne, the problem solver. The Inquisition turned to him with cases too difficult for ordinary men. Many had already failed here. He would not. He could not. And yet he was.

He spent the night in his buggy; running his air supply down to the wire. He alternated between quiet contemplation and frustrated outbursts.

On his return to base, he knew what to expect. He had checked with the Overlord; no one had entered the chamber since he had last been inside, and Kyne himself had opaqued the cube on his way out. Still, he nodded to the last guard, and braced himself for what would come.

Before him loomed the daemon, its silver hexagon taking up an impossible amount of the cube. Its swirling black eye trained directly on Kyne. He felt he would rather take a plasma cannon to the chest than withstand its gaze. He was powerless, he was weak. This daemon was greater. Chaos was greater. What chance did he have, mere human against such a beast?

He began to weep. This was a hopeless task. Why delay the inevitable? Mankind was lost already. Kyne was lost already; no more was he an Inquisitor than was Waldon. The Emperor will wither and Chaos will reign. Therein lies the great mistake of man; to hope. To hope against hope that there is light when there is none.

Kyne had failed. His will was broken, his faith shattered. He was a heretic. He had to get out and get free. Tears rolled down his face and splashed on the lapel of his coat. As he reached out to brush them off, he paused.

Wait, he thought…that was it.

The tears stopped, and laughter poured out of Kyne like smoke from a grenade. He had worked it out.

That was the true evil of the thing. That was the truly glorious, absolute, mind-bendingly wondrous evil of it. Kyne was no a heretic. How could he be? He was an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor - the Emperor’s watchdog against exactly this kind of threat. He was pure – of heart and mind. This thing, this daemon, this mess of shape and colour – had no real power. It could only try to worm its way inside his mind and squeeze it like a lemon; to try to make him believe he was a heretic, and trust that his guilt and conditioning would destroy him.

Had Kyne been a lesser man, one prone to the heretical wanderings of a weak mind and the inevitable tumbling spirals of self-loathing and flagellation that follow, the daemon’s plan might have worked. The prismatic beast had certainly done a number on Kyne’s predecessors.

But he was Kyne, the Fixer. He had built a name and a career out of succeeding where others had failed. And he was sent here to succeed.

He was still laughing as he opaqued the plasteel containment cube and brushed past the startled guards outside. He paused at the top of the stairs to lean on the rail and wipe away a stray tear.

He chuckled softly as he punched the Inquisition Master Override into the ID module of the supreme command centre. Making his way to the control panel, he extended a finger and began to enter the moon base’s self-destruct sequence. As the countdown approached 0, he keyed in the containment cube’s emergency release code.

There, he thought through fits of hysterics, is the ultimate punchline.

And then he thought no more.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Soul Grinder & Nurglings


+++ Canphor System - System-Wide Imperial Acclamation XVI.86641 - Emergency Medical Procedures in the Wake of the Viridescent Slough Epidemic +++

Many members of the general populace in the Canphor system have now heard of the outbreak of Viridescent Slough - also known as orbrot, scarbloom, and greenhex, among others - after the return of the Belber IV probe to the orbital disease control center on Luna Tresellus.

The Officio Medicae have conducted an extensive study on the disease in question and have discerned its exact point of origin, and its method of spreading.

We know how to contain it - though we learned far too slowly - and reducing the spread of the disease will require the thorough circulation of the following information.

1. The symptoms of Viridescent Slough are consistent and noticeable. Within 24 hours of being exposed, the skin of the infected person will begin to blister and display discoloured lesions that form in a repeated, recognisable pattern. Attached is an image of the lesions of a typical victim for ease of identification.

2. All persons suspected to be contaminated must immediately be isolated from the uninfected, and reported to the Officio Medicae immediately.

3. No physical or visual contact - even through glass or plasteel - is to be made with persons suspected to be contaminated at any time.

4. If you believe you may have made contact, physical or visual, with an infected person - you must immediately report yourself to the Officio Medicae as you are at severe risk of infection.

With the help of Imperial citizens and via the ministrations of the Officio Medicae, the spread of Viridescent Slough can be contained to the Canphor System and its victims treated in a timely and efficient manner before being returned to their families and communities.

+++ System-Wide Acclamation Ended +++

+++ Tightbeam Canphor O.M. ODC-LT3 to Terra O.M. BDC-T3 - Viridescent Slough Containment Procedures +++

Please find attached a copy of the system-wide emergency proclamation being presently forwarded through the Canphor system, as well as images of the diseased persons currently in transit to the Officio Medicae offices on Most Holy Terra.

Similar processes are to be followed for the samples being sent to Terra. It is advised that they are not removed from their containers until contact can be safely avoided.

+++ Tightbeam Ended +++

+++ Tightbeam Terra O.M. BDC-TC to Canphor O.M. ODC-LT3 - Re: Viridescent Slough Containment Procedures: HIGH PRIORITY +++

Please find attached a summary of this morning's events and a copy of the system-wide declaration presently being forwarded through the Canphor system.

0601 - O.M. Officer Tako Halifax receives message and images forwarded from ODC LT-3. Information is passed directly to Halifax's superiors and the delivery wing prepared to receive live samples.0817 - Officer Halifax begins to show signs of discolouration at the wrist and neck, despite remaining entirely within sterilised Imperial facilities.0833 - Officer Halifax self-reports to the Infirmary with symptoms typical of Viridescent Slough.0845 - Infirmary is quarantined - Officer Halifax and all staff who treated him are removed for cleansing.

Canphor O.M. ODC-LT3 is required to stop broadcasting images of Viridescent Slough immediately. All members of the medical staff who have treated victims, and all surviving members of the Belber IV probe - even those who made no contact with Specimen 0 - are to immediately report themselves to the office of resident Inquisitor Hyrical Vex.

Further information will be transmitted shortly.

+++ Tightbeam Ended +++

+++ Canphor System - System-Wide Imperial Acclamation XVI.86647 -

The Officio Medicae of Most Holy Terra are ordering a System-Wide Emergency due to the presence of Viridescent Slough within the system.

All citizens of the Canphor system are to remain indoors until otherwise noted as officers of the Officio Medicae carry out planet-wide detoxification processes from the air. This process is deadly to humans, both infected and uninfected. For your protection, it is of paramount importance that you maintain quarantine with the uninfected in a safe, enclosed area.

Another Acclamation will be broadcast when the detoxification process has been successfully completed.

+++ System-Wide Acclamation Ended +++

+++ Tightbeam Terra O.M. BDC-TC to Terra O.O.X. VC-1 - Canphor System Cleanse in Progress +++

Lord Inquisitor,

As per your request the system-wide orbital cleansing of Canphor has begun. Cleansing should be completed within three days.

All images of victims have been destroyed and a list of all persons who had seen them has been forwarded to your office.

The Officio Medicae appreciates your vigilance and assistance in the matter.

The Emperor protects.

+++ Tightbeam Ended +++

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lord of Change


It has no eyes, but it's watching us.

Between the observation camps on ground, the flyers and the orbital surveillance sats, we have visuals on the bastard from nine different angles.

From every single one, we get the same feedback.

At any given moment in time, it occupies those nine different positions simultaneously.

And in each one, you could swear it was looking directly at the lens we were training on it.

That’s good, I guess, because it’s the only way we can contain it.

Less than nine points of visual contact, and it travels between sites.

Not along roads or through the air or anything. One minute, it'd be at Site 4 spinning around like a dreidel. Blink, and the chemical tanks are on fire at Site 3 while at Site 6 our bogie is sitting pretty and putting on a light show for the flyboys.

And containing it's about all we can do, really.

Even with our nine eyes on it, any weapon that gets locked, loaded, warmed up or trained on our bogie gets shrieked to bits. Grunts with flashlights, Russes, Valkyries, laser sats, they all shred the same.

The big =I='s been told. They'll send someone out - 'soon', they say. In the mean time we just sit tight and run our observation routine.

It's getting cold now - not that it was warm before. But we keep on watching.

And that thing - well, it just watches right back.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Burning Chariots


Clavert, who'd grown up on an ag world, saw them as enormous mutie oxen charging around, churning up the snow.

Thule was born on a gas giant and said they could have passed for one of the airships she used to coast in along the trade routes with her family.

Gorman and Gorman came from Aqua Infinitus and swore up and down we were shooting our flashlights at old world sailboats.

I spent my youth dragging ethyl racers in the Old City ruins, and that's what they looked like to me.

Regardless, they hurt. They were blinding fast and burning hot - they could throw out exhaust fumes that'd cook a squad in five seconds flat, but they mostly seemed interested in the tanks.

That was no good for Commander Silva, who lost her Russ and her legs on the first day.

It was no good for us, either. It was our job to look after the artillery - mostly a nice safe job - but what are we supposed to do against enemies like that?

After we'd figured out our small arms were useless and they weren't all that interested in us footsloggers, we spent more time arguing over whether our brains or the bogies were responsible for the different ways we saw them than we did actually trying to stop them from slagging the big guns.

I thought it was obvious they were pulling the strings - they were reaching out and grabbing ideas from our minds, our childhood, and playing them in front of us. Vanderbligh, who was a doctor before getting conscripted, was the only other one on my side though. He said there was no way he could be looking at a giant fire-breathing goldfish taking up the same space as Hilda's flying metronome.

Vanderbligh's parents had run an aquarium back home.

Hilda had been a prodigal pianist as a child.

They knew us, and they were using it against us. Whether it was some kind of sick joke or just how they were - I couldn't bring myself to use the word natural when talking about them - didn't quite matter to me. I never really felt much malice in them. After all, we were still alive.

The others seemed to think it was just their brains making the connection, something like a group hallucination where they all chose their own adventure.

I'm not sure I ever understood their arguments, but then I guess I'd already made up my mind.

General Dore pulled us out on day nine once the last bassie had been burned down to the tracks.

I've been in plenty of fights since then, but none of them have left such a mark. And the worst part is, none of us can go home without thinking about them.

Bastards.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Flamers & Exalted Flamers


Czerno's squad went over the Wall, never came back.

Chee Kam's boys too.

Taggart, Ross and McAllister all went over together with a Valk in tow. No word back, no dog tags or black box recovered.

I've been in the Guard thirteen years, and never have I felt more like meat in the grinder.

We were in the Canphor system, on some frozen moon of a gas giant. Our bogies had taken over the carcass of a processing plant that turned gas cans from the big boy into fuel for starships. They weren't operating it, or even using it for scrap, but the big =I= wanted it back anyway.

We just wanted to know what it was that we were fighting.

Briefing said whatever alien species we were sent there to delete had some inbuilt camo finagling that wouldn't show up on our pictos. They appeared as sort-of empty blurred out spaces on all the images. Like there'd been a sticker there that someone scratched off, leaving a bit of silver gunk behind.

Get out there, Emperor's finest. Climb fifty feet of ice and rust and look for gunk monsters to shoot with your flashlight.

Not exactly inspiring stuff.

The twin suns were bright but about as warm as a cantina microwave burrito. Made sleeping hard and drying your socks harder.

Then, they did come back. Gordon's squad - three of 'em, anyway, and no Gordon.

Boyle's lasgun grip was joined to his hand and he was missing an eye - and half of his face.

Most of Telouse's forehead had melted over his brow.

Jurgen was a mess. Like his skin had been turned inside out.

All of them naked, frostbitten to the knees and not a hair on them.

None of them made it through the night, but word trickled back from the medics about what they'd seen.

The silver scratches we saw on the pictos weren't too far off the mark.

What we missed was that while the planet's surface might have been untouched, the bogies had been busy underneath.

Drills, gone. Storage facilities, hollowed out. A giant cavern, filled with singing stones and crystal snakes - and something else.

Something worse. And something growing.

Those men who didn't make it back? They were made into something else, down underground. Stripped down and used like building blocks.

They're all together now - that's what Gordon's boys kept saying.

They're all together now.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Changeling


He came back again last night.

I don’t know why we called it a he. He had showed up as a woman as often as a man. That was often worse - the women on the station were scary enough as it was. When it played at Inquisitor Farrow, I was even relieved when I found out it had been our little silver friend all along.

That was how we knew – the silver. We had worked out that there was always a palm-sized spot somewhere on the impostor’s new body.

Sometimes it was easy to spot – he’d worn it like a big silver eyepatch when he’d tried on Captain Walrock, and if it was anywhere on the face, neck or hands it was easy enough to uncover the ruse. Beyond that, though, and the mandated Imperial uniforms covered up most any potential giveaways.

When admin announced the discovery to the crew, Calvin made the suggestion that we remove the uniform altogether and go nude. A raised eyebrow from Farrow was enough to shut him up for the rest of the meeting.

Personally, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea.

They’d tried to build a pattern around his appearances. Planetary rotations, lunar cycles, Fibonacci numbers, primes. There were often the beginnings of a semblance of regularity, but it seemed that as soon as we felt like we could predict his next visit he’d throw another spanner in the works and we’d have to start all over again.

There were disagreements about what to do with him when we uncovered him. Admin – Farrow, especially – wanted to keep him around for tests and questioning, or send him to Terra. Some of the crew wanted him dead straight away, even knowing he’d just be back anyway. Some of us thought we should just let him be. Gather his data or play his game or get his jollies off watching or do whatever it is he wanted to do and wait for him to leave on his own accord.

Again, it seemed like we could never make the right decision. He seemed to understand when admin were trying to ship him off-station and would inevitably find a way to elude them. If they took their eyes off him for a moment, he’d disappear – seemingly fading into nonexistence. If they didn’t, he’d get dragged in for interrogations. Sometimes he’d be a closed book, and other times he’d be very honest and open – but his responses always ended up raising more questions than they’d answer. They still had no idea where he came from, where he went when he left us, or what he was even made of. Once they put him on a pod to an Imperial cruiser, but of course it was empty by the time it docked.

He took a lot of killing, too. Joost was coming back from an external exhaust repair when our intruder surprised him in the airlock. He was wearing Stuthard from engineering, and luckily enough had the silver patch right over his nose. Joost had kicked him out into space, cordless and suitless, and rushed back through to the station. He was pretty upset and a few of us who were nearby came out to see what was causing the commotion.

We were treated to a frazzled Joost in foetal, and a frosty Stuthard floating outside, staring at us blankly through the porthole. I thought, at first, he was frozen solid; a silent corpse in the stars, another piece of debris pulled into orbit around our station. But then he moved – propelled himself towards the omniglass panel, placed his hands up against it, and peered in at us, with his neck cocked like a confused puppy.

He stayed outside the station for three days after that; showing up wherever he pleased.

He dodged a point-blank laspistol shot from Calvin in the laboratory that ended up in a hefty bill for replacement chemistry equipment.

When he came back last night, he came to me in my room.

I couldn’t see the silver spot, but I knew it was him.

I knew it was him because he was wearing my form.

He didn’t say anything directly, but I felt calm despite the oddness of the situation. I was finishing up some work at my desk and he approached behind me, looked over my shoulder, and moved some of the displays around. I got the strongest feeling that he was waiting for something, had hoped to find it here, and was disappointed.

He moved slowly away to the porthole – the one in my quarters was rear-facing and held quite a nice view out to the stars, only marred slightly by the dull bulk of the secondary engines.

I was suddenly compelled to follow him, and he stepped slightly to the side to allow us both to look out.

And then I saw it. Out there stark against the black of space stood a myriad of starships – although as soon as I thought it I knew they were not. There were silver arrows pointed straight at the station that could pass for a cruiser or destroyer at a distance; but there were also octahedrons spinning ponderously on unusual axes, cubic chains of various length and indescribable colours, shapes that looked like brush strokes given three dimensional form, and behind them all, looming massive and intimidating despite its plainness, was a sphere so black that at first I didn’t realise it was there. It made itself known through its lack of light, lack of stars, and the way it seemed to bend space at its curve so that the geometric horrors advancing towards our station seemed to do so at great speed for the first few moments after coming into view.

When I finally turned to the changeling, he was looking straight at me, and his eyes were silver.

I closed my own and breathed in, slowly.

I felt his offer, felt his hand reach out and touch my own.

I thought then of the station, mainly of my work here for the last eight years and how sad I would be to see it lost, but also of Calvin and Joost and Farrow. I wondered if he had visited them too and been rejected, or if I had been his first port of call.

I hesitated – just a moment – and then let go. I felt a strange sensation of weightlessness; not like I had jumped, or even moved in space, but like the floor had fallen away below me while I stayed as I was.

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my room – I was no longer on the station.

It seemed to me I was inside the sphere of black beyond black; and looking out I could see a warped distortion of the scene I had just looked out upon from inside the station. I saw everything as though it was through thick dark glass; but here were flashes of silver and colours of all kinds, there were sparks and fireworks and lastly, I thought, after the scene outside had calmed down, the sight and sensation of a sudden lurch backwards.

I floated, then, in a pool of love and colour.

It roiled around me, it lifted me up, it spoke to me in whispers as it gently brushed my consciousness. I felt known; I felt loved, I felt important. I felt a great understanding grow in my heart, of where I was and the part that the silver herald had played.

This new existence was me, now.

It was pure Chaos.

And it was beautiful.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Army


The Canphor system was Lord Inquisitor Squaw’s biggest headache, and had been ever since the first notice of unusual activity in the sector had come across his desk.

When they first arrived, the locals of Canphor II – unwashed feudal tribes, living knee deep in snow and building shrines to their Emperor-proxies out of woolly cammoth bones – called them angels. They descended from the heavens draped in silver and sang harmonies so pure they sent the unclean into fits of apoplexy.

The Goraldan 91st were the closest regiment, having been stationed a few systems away, and were deployed as an immediate precaution. That had proved fruitless – no men returned and an entire armoured company was reduced to unsalvageable scrap.

The Third Company of the Lions Resplendant were called in from the Curac salt moon to deal with the threat but found the planet empty – of not only hostiles but human life also.

Fatline comms were lost on return to their Stormbird and the Lions were never seen or heard from again. Sensitive readings showed an enormous spike in warp activity originating from one of the outer planets in the system.

Navy cruiser Sutrovex was stationed nearby and monitored Canphor IX, sending data back to the sector’s Inquisitorial Command Station regularly.

That had proven to be a costly mistake. The cruiser was soon taken from Imperial control, and then the Command Station itself was host to an incursion of the Canphorite daemons. Though they had beaten back the initial offensive, the Station’s distress beacon had caused further outbreaks at each of the bases that had received the message.

The system was lost, and the loss was spreading faster than the Inquisition could contain it. Squaw sighed, licked his quill, and continued to pore over the records.

There must be something here…


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Keeper of Secrets - Vex, Her Love Egg Unrelenting


In her silence, we heard the screaming of stars.
In her light, we saw our flesh flayed into radiance.

In her motion, halos turned, slicing soul from mortal coil.
In her stillness, we beheld the promise of eternity.

In her silver shell, desire was made divine.
In her pulse, we felt the undoing of reason.

In her gift, we were remade.
In her wound, we found the sweetest ecstasy.

In her worship, we became worthy.
In her love, we found our doom.
And we rejoiced.


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I've seen geometric demon armies before but this is fantastic next-level stuff. Thanks for sharing.