by Jelboy » Fri Mar 25, 2011 12:36 pm
Emperor slit my throat, but I find formatting awkward on here. Please forgive slight formatting problems.
Word count 1124
The Flask
Brucke fought to match pace with the Collector as they passed from the bustle of the concourse to the under-city, where the roofed alleys swallowed their shadows.
“Can’t be trusting a sod down ‘ere you can’t,” he said, looking left, looking right, as they passed beneath a keystone shaped in the fashion of a claw. He wrapped a handkerchief around his head to ward off the bloated smells and he cursed the flickering gas lights that leant a strobe look to the pale faces in the gloom. “These ‘ere lost every annual fight they ever fought, and should know their place, but,” he paused, letting the faint echo of his voice die, “they keeps like rats in a pack. Are you armed?”
“Do we go left or right,” said the Collector, as the alley split, ignoring Brucke’s question. Again, that voice, it missed the ears and slid direct into the mind like a burglar of the night, all the more surprising considering he towered over Brucke. One would expect a baritone that shook the air.
Brucke glanced at the hard angles pushing through the man's cloak, listened to the quiet whine of servos and felt the thud made by each footfall. All in all, intimidating. He guessed a marine or storm-trooper strode beside him, and the cloak disguised none of this. And he wondered to himself why the elite soldiers of Chaos would need to cover their exact identity here. Unless of course…
He held that thought, hawked and spat at the cobbled stones and decided that ignorance might be a life
saver later. “We turn into this tunnel, where the shadows and the stench deepens.”
Ghosts crystallised upon approach into pale Scrimshaw-Urchins who glared at Brucke and the Collector with moon-eyes flickering with reflected torch light. Something heavy rumbled high above, presumably on a road, and brick dust glided down, and the children ducked, whisking their whittled bones away. Brucke pulled his gaze from them and ignored too their master, the stained-apron pie seller, who stood there bloated, fat pie balanced on palm, right in his path.
A healthy face sat on a squat neck below neat trimmed hair, but the Pieman's eyes held tortures. Brucke knocked the man aside as he strode by, and the pie fell to the cobbles with a ripe splat . The pie seller shouted: fetid expletives, dire warnings, and curses, and Brucke just laughed aloud, leading the Collector onwards to where steam hissed from the rusting vents of underground furnaces.
They passed a ‘lady’ who lounged against the soot covered brick, her finery limp and gaze bled of life, the scales on her arm a unique marketing point. Burke winked, she scowled and he chuckled. He was ugly, he knew that. A misshapen nose plastered on a nondescript face, atop a body suited to this City of Fights: all muscle and bone. 'Burke the Ogryn' they'd taunted in his youth.
He wondered in the quiet of parts of the night to the truth of this. How long ago might an Ogryn have come to this world, by dint of accident or cult affiliation, and forced his ways on a human woman? How had that one act changed the fate of that woman’s descendants, and how many descendants had there been? Either way, it had been a good deed that, done so long ago, for it gave him an unusual strength that served him well in a world where the warp swirled in the air like leaves on a breeze.
His thoughts returned to the present and this oppressive under-city and he felt contempt for the people here and their surroundings. Contempt for the lamps fuelled by human fat whose glow lit the grasping faces of the pie sellers. For the scriveners in their cages huddled over their hoards of bones. He felt contempt for the rope-makers with their baskets of matted scalps, and for the denture crafters with their tubs of teeth. What a degenerate and soulless bunch crept around down here; craven slaves and their masters, scum bettered by their fear into accepting this dismal life rather than progressing in the annual fight games to something better.
The alley widened, as from a throat to a stomach, to become a bustling square and from here he could see the sky. He craned his head back and took a deep breath of the air, once again clean and cool. He stared up at the towering hab-blocks that soared like dark Chaos gods to the clouds. Then his gaze rested on the worn cobbles at his feet and it occurred to him that this was the oldest part of the city. When the Imperial heretics spread out across this world so long ago and hacked hovels from the rock, perhaps they first struck their pickaxes where he stood now.
“We’ve arrived?” asked the Collector, in his non-voice.
Brucke nodded as he stared into the square and the hell within it. Bodies lay entangled in mounds, guts and intestines slithered into vats, and blood, blood was all.
“Yes, the business of death begins here.”
The silver of butcher’s knives flashed throughout: rhythmic drums of chop chop, sharp blades hacking cadavers on stone plinths. Blood swirling, gurgling down drains; flesh, bone and sinew stacked in oozing piles for transportation to clients.
“You wanted busy sewers,” said Brucke, forcing back vomit. “They be here. Or at least, 20 spans beneath our feet.”
“Ironically fitting,” said the Collector and from the shrouds of his cloak a blue gauntleted hand appeared, holding a flask. Plates of armour covered each finger segment of the gauntlet reinforcing Brucke’s suspicions he accompanied a space marine. Blue armour? He had heard of orders of marine that donned blue, and the thought of guiding any loyalist marine raised the hairs on his neck. Only temporarily though, business was business. And there were other blues too.
The Collector unscrewed the cap of the flask and poured a green powder down a nearby drain.
Brucke watched suspiciously. “What is that?”
“Ork spore,” came the non-voice. “Spreading now throughout the sewers. How does that make you feel, Brucke? That your home city will soon be infested?”
Brucke blinked at the news, before coughing phlegm and spitting to the cobbles. “The world is Mlaxos, stranger, and about us is the Maelstrom. War, treachery and death rule here. Your deed shatters no dreams with I, nor brings anger or sorrow as the coin you paid is a daemon's ransom. I could tell on 'ee, but methinks the profit of that would be my death. No, its time to take an holiday away from 'ere, for a while. Fare thee well.
Last edited by
Jelboy on Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
