by Tyrant » Fri Mar 04, 2011 10:18 am
The Cathedral of the Emperor Incarnate was the largest building that Mikael had seen so far in Valerion. It had four immense spires, one rising from each corner of the building, tapering off to points far above. He imagined that, in the days when Valerion had been just an ordinary city, the spires would have seemed to pierce the very clouds. The building was constructed of great blocks of grey stone. Further up there were balconies, supported by semi-circular pillars that nestled against the sides of the cathedral. Gargoyles leered down from the edges of the balconies, while atop them great statues of the Emperor stood, each angled so that it appeared to be looking out across a different portion of Valerion. The message to the citizens was clear. The Emperor is always watching.
Now those same statues gazed upon a shattered city and, closer to the cathedral, a sea of corpses.
The road that encircled the cathedral was raised a few inches higher than the ground it surrounded; a quirk of geography or urban planning that Mikael was thankful for, since it allowed the six men to stand at the edge of the road and look at the bodies without stepping in the blood. There was so much blood. From where he was, Mikael could see thousands of corpses, disappearing from sight around the side of the cathedral. If it was the same on the other side, then there could be upwards of ten thousand cultists laying here. The smell was nauseating; everyone had clasped their hands over their noses in a vain attempt to prevent the odour from getting in. The air was ripe with the stench of putrescence and decay. Even stronger was the scent of spilled blood; it was so powerful that Mikael could taste an iron tang at the back of his throat.
Each cultist had died in the same way; their throats slashed open and the blood allowed to pour out. They lay in orderly rows; all dressed identically in their grey-black armour with white masks covering their faces. Males and females, young and old; united in death. Many clutched knives in their hands, the blade of each coated in a film of dark red. It didn’t look as if they had killed each other. Instead, it appeared that each cultist had lay down, then cut their own throats open, one by one. The pools of blood from each cultist had met and mingled, so that they were lying in a lake of congealed fluid.
Despite the horror of what he was seeing, Mikael felt that there was almost something peaceful about the scene. These men and women had calmly committed suicide, without any sign that they had been forced into it. Thousands of them. What strength of conviction that must have taken, what dedication to the dark gods they worshipped.
It was almost admirable.
“Witness, men, the fate of those who turn their back on the Emperor!” Krayn declared. “They believed that they could stand against the righteous fury of the Imperial Guard, and they paid the price for their treachery”.
“Begging your pardon, sir”, Frox said, “but the cultists all appear to have killed themselves. Voluntarily. It doesn’t seem like anyone else had a great deal to do with it”.
“That is where you are wrong, guardsman”, the commissar replied, after glaring at Frox for a few seconds. “What happened here is quite obvious. The heretics realised that they would soon be crushed by the might of the Imperium. In their despair, they turned upon each other, then the survivors ended their miserable lives. Exactly the sort of behaviour that I would expect from chaos-worshipping filth”.
The men exchanged sceptical glances, but said nothing further. Mikael was struck by how silent it was when the commissar had finally shut up. There was something missing. He thought for a moment, then it finally came to him. It was too quiet. There were thousands of dead bodies here, the air should have been filled with the buzzing of flies and other insects, come to feed on the decaying flesh. He looked again at the nearest body, and something caught his eye. He crouched down to get a better look.
Black specks were scattered across the cultist’s body. Looking more closely, Mikael realised that they were insects. All dead. It was the same with all the bodies. The insects had come to feed on the flesh of the cultists, and they had all died. Mikael quickly got to his feet, and took a few steps back from the edge of the road, almost colliding with another guardsman.
“I think I see a way to the cathedral”, Krayn said suddenly, pointing to the east. “We need to keep moving, we’ve been standing here too long”. As before, the commissar waited for the five guardsmen to take the lead before he followed.
As they drew closer, Mikael could see what Krayn had been referring to. From the entrance of the cathedral to the edge of the road there was a stretch of ground without bodies lying on it; a path of sorts, over two metres wide. Mikael glanced back in the direction they had approached from. It was hard to tell for sure with so many bodies on the ground, but he thought that he could make out another clear path. It appeared to travel in a straight line from the road to one corner of the cathedral, at a forty-five degree angle to the first. Just as he reached the path leading to the cathedral entrance he noticed a third stretch of clear ground to the east, again at a forty-five degree angle to the first. He wondered if there were more on the other sides of the cathedral. If the pattern persisted then there would be eight in total, spaced evenly around the central building.
Like the petals of a flower, he thought.
When they reached the path the guardsmen raised their weapons. The entrance to the cathedral was fifty metres away; a set of two tall doors, either wood or fashioned to resemble it. One was closed, but the other seemed to be slightly ajar. On either side of the entrance, sandbags were arranged around support weapons; heavy bolters and lascannons. There appeared to be nobody manning the weapons emplacements.
"Go!" At the commissar's order the guardsmen immediately went forward, still with their weapons aimed at the entrance, ready to fire at any sign of movement. As he ran, Mikael heard an unpleasant, rapid squelching sound, and glanced down. The path might have been free of dead cultists, but the blood that had spread from their corpses had covered the open space just as it had the ground beneath the cultist's bodies. He kept running, concentrating on keeping his footing. He had no wish to slip and land in the blood; throne only knew what infections it might carry.
He noticed something else as they approached the entrance. Halfway between the top of the doorway and the roof of the cathedral a large dish was attached to the wall, angled slightly upwards. It looked like a vox transmission dish, which was an odd thing for a cathedral to have.
They moved past the support weapons and pressed themselves up against the closed door, listening intently for any sound that their approach had been noticed. After a few moments Krayn nodded, and the first guardsman slipped through the open door with the butt of his lasrifle pressed into his shoulder, gazing through the sight and ready to fire. Mikael was next through.
It was dark inside the cathedral and Mikael blinked his eyes rapidly to try and make them adjust more quickly, moving to the right and pressing himself against the wall as he did so. He was in a corridor that ran straight ahead for about ten metres, terminating at another set of double doors, both closed. Glow globes hung from the ceiling, but they had been smashed. There were several alcoves at regular intervals on both sides of the corridor; each contained a statue of the Emperor or one of his saints.
The air was.....strange. It was utterly still, and surprisingly warm, given how cool it had been outside. With every breath he took Mikael could smell and taste something unusual; similar to blood but different somehow, drier and more metallic. The skin on the back of his neck tingled slightly.
Once everyone was inside they moved quickly down the corridor. Mikael saw that the images in each alcove had been defaced by the cultists; the statues had been smashed apart and markings daubed on their plinths. They looked like they had been drawn in blood. Whatever the markings were, he began to feel sick if he gazed at them for more than a moment.
Reaching the end of the corridor, the guardsmen crouched down while Frox checked the doors. Mikael tightened his grip on the plasma gun, and made sure his lasrifle was secure on its shoulder strap. The plasma gun took almost a minute to recharge between shots; he would need to be able to swap it with his other weapon quickly to avoid making himself into too much of a target for any cultists inside the cathedral.
Frox gave a quick hand signal, indicating that the doors were unlocked, and clear of any explosive booby-traps. The guardsmen exchanged glances. In that moment something passed between them; the kind of bond experienced by men who know that they might be about to die. Even Krayn was included within it. The commissar drew his chainsword and held his thumb over the activation toggle. He nodded once.
The guardsmen stood up as one. With his free hand Frox turned the handle of one of the doors and pushed it slightly. He stepped to one side and another guardsman moved forward, kicking the door hard and knocking it open wide. He ran straight through, followed by the rest of the men.
The space they entered was immense; Mikael estimated that it was over two thirds the length of the cathedral itself. Round stone pillars were spaced at regular intervals in twin lines that ran the length of the room, supporting the arched roof at least fifty metres above their heads. The unit spread out, Mikael and Frox moving to the right. The sound of their rapid footsteps echoed in the silence. On this side of the room there was row after row of benches for the congregation to sit; each row with enough clear space in front of it for the faithful to be able to kneel and give thanks to the Emperor. The rows stretched away towards the end of the room. Mikael ran forward, scanning constantly for any sign of cultists. He spotted several doors in the right-hand wall, but all seemed to be closed tight.
“By the throne, what is that?”
The disbelieving murmur had come from one of the other guardsmen, and Mikael turned quickly to see what had caught his attention. He saw immediately that there were rows of benches on the left, mirroring those on the right, but halfway down the benches had been removed. In their place sat what looked like a portable field generator. Thick cables ran from the generator to another machine; which he recognised as a vox broadcast transmitter. What was something like that doing here? He looked round, only to realise that the others weren’t paying any attention to the vox transmitter. They were staring at the far end of the room with expressions of bewilderment. Even Krayn seemed taken aback. Mikael turned slowly, and what he saw literally took his breath away.
At the far end of the cathedral was the altar, where the archbishop and his priests would lead the faithful in worship. Behind that, a stained glass window was set into the far wall, bearing an image of the Emperor seated upon the golden throne, a halo of light playing about his head and a noble expression on his face. In normal times it would have been a captivating sight, but now; with the only light entering the cathedral tainted by the madness of the sky; its majesty was somewhat lost.
A man was hanging above the altar.
The figure was suspended high in the air, held in place by thick steel cables that had been wound around his wrists and driven into the walls on each side of him. The cables were taut, so that his arms were held parallel to the floor, at right angles to the rest of his body. His head was bowed, but Mikael could see some kind of mask covering his mouth and chin. Another cable descended from that to the floor, where it snaked across the cathedral to connect with the vox transmitter.
The guardsmen walked slowly closer, stopping when they were only a dozen or so metres from the man. Mikael could now see markings on his naked body; just like those he had seen defacing the statues of the emperor outside. They seemed to have been carved into him with a knife. Directly beneath the hanging figure was a pool of blood mingled with what looked like urine and faeces. The smell rising from it was appalling, but not enough to overcome the dry, metallic scent that seemed to permeate the entire cathedral.
“He’s dead”, Krayn began. “We should…..”
At the sound of the commissar’s voice, the man slowly raised his head. Mikael stepped back, then wondered why he had done so. It was hard to put into words, but something about the man frightened him on a deep, instinctive level.
The man’s face was gaunt and haggard. His cheeks and forehead bore similar markings to those on his torso, the lower portion of his face obscured by the mask Mikael had noticed earlier. His eyes were shut, his head tracking slowly from side to side.
Before anyone could do or say anything, the man started to moan. It began as a low, mewling sound, like that of a hurt animal, then rose in volume, rapidly transforming into an agonised shriek that went on and on without any sign of stopping. Still screaming, the man opened his eyes, and the guardsmen recoiled.
His eyes were missing, and in their place were twin pools of congealed blood that began to seep down his cheeks and splatter on the cathedral floor even as they watched in silent horror. The moan deepened, until it no longer sounded like anything human. All at once the metallic odour in the air intensified and the temperature seemed to soar impossibly quickly. Beads of sweat broke out on Mikael’s face as he staggered backwards, suddenly understanding what was happening, and what the creature before him really was.
A psyker.
With that realisation it was as if a switch had been thrown in Mikael’s head. Suddenly what had happened in Valerion began to make some kind of sense, although he doubted that he would ever understand all of it.
The cultists had been losing the war; everyone on the Imperial side had known it, and doubtless the enemy had too. Realising that they could not hope to win against the army of guardsmen opposing them, the cultists had fallen back to the cathedral. There they had all killed themselves, offering their lives up willingly to the dark powers they worshipped. But their mass suicide wasn’t an admission of defeat, far from it. For them it was a victory. Perhaps they had conducted some foul, blasphemous ritual, sacrificing themselves to open up a gateway to the warp; a conduit that the psyker had manipulated to twist and alter the sky into the monstrosity that it had become. With that power he had used the vox transmitter to spread madness among the Imperial Guard forces; turning them against each other in a nightmare of bloodshed and terror. What better way to honour the dark gods than to create such chaos?
“Kill that abomination!” Krayn yelled, struggling to be heard over the psyker’s screaming.
Mikael was already raising the plasma gun, but had only lifted it halfway when the psyker’s moans ceased, replaced almost instantly by a sound that was terrifyingly familiar. The air was suddenly filled with a roar of white noise, so loud that it seemed to hammer at Mikael’s senses. He fought to hold on to his weapon, but the noise redoubled in intensity and he fell to his knees, screaming in agony and pressing his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to blot it out. He could hear the voices in his head now, much more clearly than when Meeks had played the vox transmissions; before he had began killing. His vision blurred, and everything he could see seemed to flow and run together. He closed his eyes tight and doubled over, struggling desperately to resist, to hold on to who and what he was as the voices continued to scream at him; offering power, wealth, glory, blood, immortality, slaughter, ecstasy; if only he would…..
Silence.
Mikael slowly opened his eyes. His vision was still slightly blurred, but after a few seconds everything snapped back into focus. His hand groped across the floor until he found the plasma gun. Keeping a tight grip on it, Mikael got to his feet. The other four guardsmen were recovering slowly, blood was trickling from one of Frox's ears, but apart from that they seemed fine. As for Krayn.....
The commissar was standing a few metres away from them, his bolt pistol aimed at the psyker. Mikael turned, and saw that a hole the size of both his fists pressed together had appeared in the psyker's chest. Blood and the pulped remains of his vital organs were oozing slowly out and splashing on the cathedral floor. Mikael stared at the commissar, barely able to believe it. The psyker had tried to drive them mad, just like Meeks and however many other men and women in Valerion. Yet despite the agony that he must have been enduring, Krayn had somehow resisted long enough to do what none of the other guardsmen had been able to do. He felt a new sense of respect for the commissar.
A fly buzzed past his left ear, and he flicked at it idly. Before he could speak, the guardsmen heard raised voices, and the sound of doors slamming against the walls. Mikael span round to face the right-hand wall. The doors he had seen before! The cultists had to have been hiding in the rooms beyond. There were shouts from the other side of the cathedral too, then the guardsmen opened fire. Mikael raised the plasma gun and waited. Three cultists appeared from behind the nearest pillar and he fired. Ionised gas streaked forward and tore through each of them, and one after the other they fell. Dropping the plasma gun on the floor while it recharged, Mikael began firing his lasrifle at the oncoming cultists, killing them one by one as they charged towards him, screaming incoherently.
He frowned, starting to feel puzzled even as he kept firing. The cultists didn't seem to have any ranged weaponry at all; they were charging the guardsmen armed with nothing more than knives and clubs, and were being cut down long before they even got close. What was wrong with them? Had the death of the psyker robbed them of what little had remained of their sanity?
Howling furiously, four more cultists ran at him. He switched his lasrifle to full auto and fired a quick burst, dropping three straight away. The fourth kept coming until he put three holes through the cultist's face mask. The man fell without a sound. Mikael began to turn away, then looked back at the corpse for a moment. Something wasn't right. The cultists had literally fallen without making any noise. He hadn't even heard the thump of the body hitting the floor. What.....
A volley of lasblasts sizzled past his face and he threw himself backwards, heart hammering as the realisation of how close he had come to dying struck him. He twisted round and fired in the direction the lasblasts had come from. His shots struck an onrushing cultist in the shoulder, knocking him off balance and on to the ground. Before he could get to his feet to try again, Mikael stepped forward and put two more lasblasts into the cultist's chest.
Running footsteps to his right.
Mikael turned, just in time to see the butt of a lasrifle rushing towards his face. He sidestepped, but not quickly enough. The lasrifle glanced off the side of his head and Mikael staggered, barely able to raise his own weapon in time to block a second strike, then a third. The cultist charged forward into him, both of them toppling to the floor. Mikael went with the fall, rolling so that he ended up on top of the cultist with the lasrifle pinned against the floor. Mikael twisted and tried to bring his lasrifle down on his opponent's head but the cultist bucked and twisted underneath him, knocking him off balance long enough for the man to get an arm free and deliver a stinging left hook to Mikael's cheek.
Mikael rolled off the cultist then forced himself to roll again, coming to a halt just as the cultist was getting to his feet and aiming his lasrifle. Mikael fired first, lasblasts pulverising the cultist's chest and stomach until the weapon's power cell ran dry. Ignoring the pain of his aching face, Mikael slowly got to his feet, fumbling at his belt for another power cell for the lasrifle. Behind him he heard a shrieking, buzzing noise; the sound of the commissar's chainsword. He turned round, taking a step backwards as he did so.
It was that action that saved his life.
The chainsword swept round in a horizontal arc, the buzzing sound it made intensifying to a high-pitched screaming as its teeth tore through Mikael’s flak armour and the tip slashed across his stomach. For a moment Mikael stared at the cultist wielding the chainsword, who returned his gaze impassively from behind his blank white mask. Then the pain hit him. Mikael’s knees buckled and he toppled backwards, the chainsword passing through the air where his throat had been only a second later. The cultist took two steps forward and brought the chainsword down, and again Mikael only just dodged in time. In desperation he kicked out at his opponent’s ankles, screaming in pain as the movement wrenched at his stomach. The cultist dropped to the floor and Mikael threw himself forward, gaze locked on the chainsword. He couldn’t afford to give the cultist the opportunity to attack again.
Mikael landed on top of him, and he heard a gasp as the breath was driven from the cultist’s body. He grabbed hold of the cultist’s arm with both hands even as his opponent tried to bring the chainsword round to strike him. The cultist writhed beneath him, striking Mikael’s side repeatedly with his free hand. Mikael recoiled, each blow jarring the wound in his stomach still further. Not knowing what else to do, he lunged forward and head butted the cultist in the centre of his face mask. Starbursts of pain exploded in his head, but he felt the resistance in the cultist’s weapon arm loosen. In one swift movement he leant back, pulling the cultist’s arm round until the chainsword was between the two of them, its whirring teeth pointing downwards. Then he pushed.
The chainsword screamed, and hot blood sprayed across Mikael’s face and chest. Beneath him, the cultist fell limp, and after a few seconds the chainsword’s teeth stopped rotating. Leaving the weapon embedded in its former owner, Mikael lurched to his feet, but when he tried to straighten up hot pain flared across his midriff. Keeping slightly hunched, he glanced around, looking for a weapon. He spotted the plasma gun lying on the floor a few metres away, and moved slowly over to it, bending down and recovering it with a wince of pain. He checked the weapon’s readout and saw that it had finished recharging.
Mikael turned slowly, looking for the others, but there was no sign of them. The bodies of five cultists lay nearby; more corpses were by the pillars and near each wall. The cathedral was silent again, and as Mikael stepped forwards slowly his footsteps echoed around the vast space. What had happened to the others? Had the cultists taken them somewhere? But why would they take them alive and only try to kill him? It didn’t make any sense.
He heard a faint buzzing again and flicked at his ear. “Blasted insects”, he muttered, then hesitated. He hadn’t seen any living insects so far; only the dead bugs lying on the bodies of the cultists outside the cathedral. The buzzing changed pitch and shifted position, now seeming to come from the other side. He turned, but still couldn’t see any insects. The sound was strange; the longer he focussed on it, the louder it seemed to get. It was almost as if…..
“Guardsman!”
Mikael whirled, biting back a cry of pain as the sharp movement tore at his wound once again. He clamped a hand to his belly, feeling warm liquid seep slowly between his fingers. Ten metres away from him a man stood; a guardsman, with the tabs of a captain on his shoulders.
“Sir! Sorry, captain, I didn’t hear you approaching”.
The captain nodded. “We’ve only just arrived. The rest of my squad is outside, securing the perimeter. To be honest I was surprised to find another guardsman here, we haven’t encountered a single living soul in the past three days”.
Mikael nodded, trying to ignore the faint buzzing that he could still hear. “There were five others with me; four guardsmen and a commissar. I don’t know what’s happened to them”.
“Don’t worry, son, we’ll find them. You need to get outside, we have a medic who can patch you up; that stomach wound doesn’t look too good”.
Mikael slowly lifted his hand away from his torso and looked at it. His fingers and palm were stained dark red.
“I think you’re right, sir”. He moved forward, and as he did so the buzzing in his ears intensified sharply. He stopped and shook his head, but it made no difference. An odd compulsion came over him and he turned to look back at the corpse of the psyker hanging above the altar. For a fraction of a second the body seemed to ripple, as if surrounded by a heat haze of some kind, then it jumped back into focus; still unmoving, with blood dripping slowly from the chest wound that had ended the psyker’s life.
“Hurry up, guardsman”. The captain’s voice had changed now, more impatient, almost urgent. Mikael looked back at him, and flinched.
He could see a white flower.
It protruded from the top of the captain’s flak armour, just below his neck. It was identical to the flowers he had seen before; eight white petals above eight evenly-spaced thin green leaves. He was positive that it hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Where did that come from?” he asked, pointing at the flower.
The captain looked down. “What?”
“The flower, sir”.
“What are you talking about? A flower? There’s nothing there, guardsman. Now come on”. The captain extended his arm. “You have to leave this place. Now”.
Mikael hesitated. How could he not see it? It was right there! Unless…..unless Mikael was the only one who could see it. He had seen the flower before, in his dreams as well as in his waking hours. Each time it had disappeared without a trace. But what did it all mean? The buzzing sound he could hear grew louder, and he suddenly remembered that he had heard the noise before. During the ambush, before he had killed the people he had thought to be cultists; who had turned out to be guardsmen, just like him. When he had been…..seeing things. Things that weren’t there.
He took a step backwards. The captain didn’t move, his arm still outstretched, an almost blank expression on his face. “Come with me, guardsman”, he said again. “You have to leave”.
Was he hallucinating now, like before? No, he thought. He couldn’t be. He had fought hand to hand with the cultists, he had shot throne knew how many as well. But he remembered how strange it was that most of them hadn’t been armed with ranged weaponry, except for a few.
Five bodies. There were five cultists laying on the floor nearby. One of them had wielded a chainsword. Mikael gasped, horror building inside him. Five bodies. Four guardsmen, and one commissar.
“No!” Mikael stumbled back, away from the captain. The guardsman remained unmoving, yet still Mikael could see the white flower, protruding from between the captain’s flak armour and his chest.
“This isn’t real!” Even as he spoke the words, Mikael began to hear them. The voices. They were angry now, furious. The figure of the captain began to ripple, becoming insubstantial. Everything around him started to blur again. He felt his eyes begin to throb and clenched them shut, struggling to blot the voices out. His head began to pound, changing rapidly from a dull ache to sheer agony. It was as if his head was about to explode. Mikael knew he was screaming, but couldn’t hear his cries over the sound of the voices. He somehow knew that this time was different; this time he would die if he didn’t do something.
Mikael turned slowly. His vision was swimming; shifting into focus one moment only to dissolve into a formless blur a moment later. The pounding in his head increased, each throb now coming so rapidly that they ran together in endless, searing pain. His eyes felt like they were on fire, yet despite that he somehow managed to look up.
The psyker seemed to stare back at him, blood still pouring from his ruined eyes. He thrashed back and forth, straining at his bonds as if desperate to break them and hurl himself at the guardsman. The cables wrapped around his wrists were surrounded by a crackling halo of energy, constantly shifting in colour from one moment to the next. It reminded him of the sky. He raised the plasma gun, and the screams of the voices in his head reached fever-pitch. He could feel blood coursing from his ears and nostrils.
Mikael squeezed the trigger.
The ball of ionised gas struck the writhing psyker in the stomach, incinerating the whole of his lower torso and most of his legs instantly in a flare of searing blue energy. The psyker threw back his head and shrieked in agony as blood and scorched fragments of viscera gushed from the tattered remnants of his lower body and splattered across the cathedral floor. The energy wreathing the cables intensified in strength, arcing out to strike the walls and floor. Mikael staggered back, dropping the plasma gun and clutching his head as the voices began to wail in fear and rage. The pressure in the air built rapidly, until he felt as if it would crush him at any moment.
Then something picked him up off the floor and hurled him across the cathedral to slam into the wall. Mikael hit the floor, and blacked out.
----------
When Mikael came to, the hiss and crackle of flames was the first thing he heard. He groaned and opened his eyes. On the other side of the cathedral he could see what was left of the vox transmitter, burning furiously. He guessed it must have exploded, and the blast wave had thrown him into the wall. Perhaps there had been some kind of feedback from the death of the psyker? Mikael didn’t know, nor did he care particularly. It didn’t seem that important.
The psyker, or rather what was left of him, was still suspended above the altar, a charred ruin of black, smoking flesh. He was very definitely dead.
Just like Krayn and the others.
Mikael looked across the floor to where they lay; Krayn still with his own chainsword buried in his flesh. Guilt rose up inside him, adding its nauseating presence to the litany of pain that was announcing itself all across his body. Mikael knew that he had killed two of the guardsmen as well, but not which ones. He didn’t want to know. He hadn’t been in his right mind, none of them had, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Mikael tried to get to his feet, but found that he couldn’t. His body ached all over. When he breathed he could feel several of the ribs on his right side grating against each other. The wound in his stomach throbbed in time with every heartbeat, and he could still feel blood seeping slowly from it. Despite the warmth of the air he was shivering; a very bad sign. He lay where he was, tempted to simply give up, to wait for death to claim him. After all that he had been through, hadn’t he earned a rest? But he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure whether it was a desire to live or simply sheer bloody-mindedness that eventually persuaded him to start moving, dragging himself hand over hand across the cathedral floor towards the entrance.
It was exhausting; he had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath and wait for the aching in his muscles to subside slightly before starting again. Where possible he used his right foot to push himself along; when he tried to do the same with his left, twinges of sheer agony shot up his leg. There was no way he could put any weight on it.
Reaching the corridor, Mikael paused for a while, listening carefully, but he could hear nothing except for the sound of his own ragged breathing. Glancing back, he saw the trail of blood he had left across the cathedral floor. The sight spurred him on, and he began to drag himself forward once again. Maybe he would get lucky, maybe there were other guardsmen on their way to the cathedral even now.
Yeah, and maybe the Emperor is waiting to give you cookies.
With the psyker dead, the metallic tang that had been in the air seemed to have disappeared, and it felt much fresher. More….natural, somehow.
After what seemed like an eternity, Mikael finally made it outside, stopping before he made contact with the lake of cultist blood. For long moments he lay still, struggling to catch his breath and control the shivering that hit him in waves. His whole body was beginning to feel numb and unresponsive, and his vision was slightly darker at the edges. He could hear his heartbeat throbbing in his head, and listened as it gradually slowed. It reminded him of what he had dreamt of for days; the pounding of the heart of Valerion. As his eyes began to close he wondered if he would dream of it again.
He started to hear a faint whining, growing louder with every passing second until it became the roar of thrusters. Just above that he could hear raised voices, although not what they said. Mikael groaned. Not more hallucinations. Couldn’t he just have some peace and quiet? Using what felt like every remaining ounce of strength he possessed, Mikael rolled over and opened his eyes. It took a moment for what he was seeing to sink in, then he slowly smiled.
Valerion’s sky was blue again.
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