In Death Duty Serves
The fur-clothed Orks threw the screaming civilians high atop the brewing fire, the pile of corpses fuelling the raging inferno that the vile aliens stood around, warming their thick hands and roasting some kind of butchered meat in the roaring flames.
They burned crisply across the perpetual night sky, the vast fields of snow reflecting the smouldering embers like hewn encrusted diamonds and twinkling like a thousand coins in the warm glowing report of the bonfire. On the Imperial outpost that was the desolate ice wastes of Ersk, a polar sea of white blankets and shifting, glimmering glaciers, the Orks had struck hard.
Through the Eyes of a Traitor
Damascus, veteran sergeant of the 1st Company. Ultramarine. Four hundred and sixty eight years old. Four and a half centuries of loyal service and constant warfare. Now naked. Arms and legs stretched to their limits, locked in chains with adamantium and arcane powers. Putrid worms slowly slid across the flooring, leaving trails of slime in their wake. Hooded and hunched figures moved in the shadows, just beyond the powerful and bright white cone of light aimed down at Damascus from directly above. The hooded figures reminded the Marine of Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, reminded him of a warped and twisted mockery of their ancient and holy technologies. The hunched and robed figures mutated and deformed, mocking the sacred bionics of Mars with blasphemous genetic deviations.
Another Country
It was probably the single most reckless and dangerous action in the history of man.
On the thirteenth of August 1812, in the port of Boston, Massachusetts, Theo Finlayson shot and killed his great-great-great-grandfather in the presence of multiple witnesses, and then, stepping back to allow his colleagues’ cameras to record the man’s dying moments, waited to see if the universe would end.
The Crownless King
Sunset stains the village red, mingling with the shadows and blurring the harsh outlines of the foothills, wrapping them in shadow, hiding them.
Gradually the light fades, the gloom spreading in great slow tides, consuming building after building, swallowing the lonely streets yard-by-yard, boiling from the dark beneath the world.
It comes to reclaim the little township it had torn from the arms of life and light seven hundred years before. It had suckled the village, nurtured it, filled the streets with a darkness so inimical to life that not a single living thing could bear it. It had made the village its child, and every night as the light fled it crept out and made certain its beloved still lived there.
It will defend this empty, broken place forever. The village belongs to the darkness. It has become the darkness.
The Scharfenburg Pigeon Massacre
Drugor surveyed his minions mustering before the palisade wall of Scharfenburg. The Blood God would be pleased this day. His Chosen Warriors would smash the wooden fortress to firewood and rampage through the pathetic little border fort. He could already feel the blood frenzy rising in his soul. Many skulls would be laid at the feet of Khorne this day.
Cugel’s Calling
(A Very Unauthorised Sequel to Jack Vance’s Cugel’s Saga)
Cugel wandered the rooms of Pergolo, one time manse of the now despatched Iucounu the Laughing Magician.[*]
A certain lassitude hindered Cugel’s perambulations. The goals of his life had been attained: wealth and power. He was waited upon by sylphs both exotic and peculiarly plain, learned and innocent. He ate mushrooms from Old Earth’s deepest bowels; confections so subtle they might be flavoured air. Petals from flowers blooming once in a thousand-year lifetime scented his sauces. He drank wines so ancient their grapes had been trodden beneath an almost yellow sun, and teas brewed from leaves harvested beyond space’s fuliginous gulfs. His erotic art collection was unparalleled. Orchestras of awesome ability were his to summon or dismiss at whim. Through mediums of Iucounu’s he did not fully understand, he conducted brief conversations with intellects he could never understand. A thousand other pastimes and delights yet awaited his sampling. Life was easy; but, in spite of all he possessed, it was not rich. Boredom was the inevitable consequence. What, then, else?
The Reaper’s Toll
Sector: Varseeni
System: Anturii
Vessel ID: Annihilator, Gothic Class
Task Force: Delta-921
For the glory and future of the Imperium of Man
There before him was the beauty of the universe. A veil of dust and planetary debris spread across the heavens, pinpricked with the glowing light of the stars within it. An entire rainbow of colours lay before his gaze and for a moment he was lost in it. All of this wonder had been the reason he had joined the Imperial naval academy - to explore the glories of a universe beyond his cold and frigid homeworld.
Ravendark’s Quest
This is the second story in the Ravendark Saga - click here for the first one.
Even after my return from madness to what passes for reality, I still feel my journey across the Wastes was the worst part. Alone, wounded, not entirely sane, I was taken from my followers – assuming that any of them but Nethrak were my followers – and carried deep into the Realm of Chaos itself.
On angel’s wings, through the endless tormented storm of Chaos, with the panoramic polar Realm spread out below me. The night becomes a blur of speed, wings beating about me, and I feel my eyes shut with exhaustion and pain. For the first time in what feels like days, I sleep.
And when I do, the nightmare returns.
I am Astartes
0345 Awakening
The lights stir my slumber and as I slowly come to, the loud-vox spreads the first commands of the day, as spoken by the Nightwatchman on duty.
“Lie not idle and dream of battle, when thou canst rise and seek out thy foe. The day begins my brethren; another day nearer the battle, so wake up Astartes and look brave, because every day nearer the battle, is another day nearer the grave.”
Know No Fear
These small moments of peace, so brittle, so tender.
Surely something so fragile should be sheltered, protected, treasured.
Still, it is not my place to question the nature of the universe, the nature of my existence in it.
I continue running.
The breath rasps in and out of my lungs easily as I lope, shadowed figures at my side. We are not pushing, merely moving faster than would normally be the case in such circumstances.
Steadily, eating ground with each stride, we run. Through the darkness and the gloom, powered armour whispering its message of devotion and protection, past buildings whole and shattered, like the wind we move.