The Subsector Project

Caomer Subsector – Clydrome Proxima – 898.M41

Content Warning: Blood, Violence, Warp Stuff

  The glamour was gone from her eyes. It had been no more than minutes since Abrea had entered the Vice-Guilder’s observatory, yet she gasped, as if she’d forgotten to inhale for the entire period. She glanced around, confirming her opinion and the Inquisitor’s suspicions at the same time. Like a lens had dropped from her vision, the world had changed.

The sky was all around them. The Warp was all around them. Bannyun was all around them.

What had been velvet moments before was now revealed to be raw, living flesh, slowly pulsing and weeping blood with each throb of the power now emanating from its master. Bannyun himself was a grotesque mockery of the man he’d been a moment before. He was clad in glistening ropes of musculature, and draped in cloaks of flesh. Through rents and blistered holes in his skin dangled organs and blood vessels, open and before the cloying, bright red light which now suffused the space. The man was rooted into the flesh of the floor with throbbing intestinal growths, likewise to the couches and chairs, and massive organelles which had once seemed to be macroscopes. His face was a bare skull, lips and eyelids peeled away, flayed from his musculature and the bone below, a staring mockery of the human form and carved with daubed bloody markings.

Painful runes were everywhere, swirling and demanding the eye, yet repelling and damaging the mind when observed. They were on every surface, carved into the flesh and bone of Bannyun’s overgrown body in grotesque obsequence to the dark gods.

The washerwoman writhed in pain, her head gripped by hands which held her fast to the sucking mouth of the former macroscope, grinding teeth abrading her skull in moments. Her arms flailed wildly at the desk. The stylus, still gripped between her fingers, scrawled onto the skin Bannyun had provided her, carving more runes in the blood which dripped from her blinded eyes. She shuddered and screamed, a high, piercing sound as fanged, gnashing teeth emerged further from the mouth, devoured her nose, her eyes, sucking greedily as her bones cracked and allowed a long tongue to enter her brain case.

Abrea stared in abject horror. Her fellow servants were evidently still enthralled by the glamor which had blinded her, but with no way to escape it.

The other three stared, rapt, at a reality which did not exist. One in which the washerwoman was saying something conventional, drawing stars instead of carving the hideous runic elements which befouled every surface. The woman screamed again, one last exclamation before the barbed demonic tongue slid down her throat, ravaging her vocal cords as her body shuddered and writhed in the seat.

“Who wants to be next?” Bannyun spoke, his voice the same honeyed, gentle invitation that it had been before. Yet his eyes flickered wildly now, not green, but the red and gold of the endless nebulae outside the crystek. It was the view of corruption, of one who has devoted himself to the archenemy, of an impossible hunger of the Warp itself.

The room itself was suffused with the energy of the Immaterium, it veritably screamed from every surface. She wondered how she had ever missed something so evident, so obvious to even the most casual witch.

Somehow, Abrea acted, moving in many directions at once. The Warp was wrenching at the chains of her mind, and she acquiesced to bend it to her will. Like a churning, raging waterfall, the power responded to her beckoning. She unleashed her powers, a flickering tendril of her crystalized, righteous fury blasted away from the flesh which held her fast. Springing up, she slashed at the washerwoman being consumed, neatly bisecting the woman with a flowing blade of emphyric energy. She saw the other three blinking, freed from the constricting flesh and Bannyun’s enthralling voice in an instant by her display of power.

They screamed in unison, now seeing the truth arrayed before them as Abrea had moments before. The tech-adept’s voice was vox-modulated, but it could not conceal his abject terror as a thin tentacle of weeping flesh wrapped around his leg drawing him towards the master of the spire as Bannyun’s head threw back, screeching an inhuman hunting call to the dome above.

+PURGATION. OBSERVATORY. NOW.+ Abrea couldn’t spare more than three words, firing them out into the roiling scar of the Warp, hoping in that moment that Gerion was listening for her call. Their bond had served them well in the past, but the sudden emergence of demonic energies was unique in its scale.

Outside the doors, a growl of rage. The Househead was evidently waiting for such an occurrence. Simultaneously, Bannyun’s skulled head snapped in Abrea’s direction, rotating far past the normal human range of motion. His attention focused, she felt pressure upon her mind, a massive force pushing into her cognition.

In an instant, Abrea felt herself stumble, darkness and blood slowing her muscles despite telling herself to run, a paralyzing stillness was spreading up her body as a mind greater than her own began to encroach. She wanted to scream at herself, but her ears were full of the keening cry of souls already harvested by the abomination. She wanted to sprint towards the doors, Househead be damned.

“The Feast of Crows commences, the harvest has come.” The twisted form of Bannyun lifted one skeletal arm, pointing in her direction, causing fleshy appendages to rise around her. The intention was clear, he sought to bind and pull her down to the razor-sharp mouths opening around her, intent on feasting upon her flesh to complete his vile gift to the dark gods.

Despair, abject and total. She had never felt such a force of nature, a reality-warping entity like the one now intent on consuming her, body and soul. She doubted she could have overcome the demonic entity now inhabiting Bannyun’s body, even with Gerion’s assistance.

A looping coil wrapped around her leg, and she could hear the inane chattering of demonic voices raised in a chorus of demand just beyond the skeins of the material plane. She bashed against the psychic force holding her in place, railing against it within the Warp, never more aware of her own weakness.

This was death, the certainty of it crushing into her mind, the cackling of dark creatures nipping at her heels, eager to rend her soul into pieces for consumption. The rift the Inquisitor had detected was not near Clydrome Proxima, it was here.

Then, a shudder, the crystek of the dome above her shattered into tens of thousands of razor shards, each daggering downward. Their trajectory was self-evidently unnatural, sharply intent on impaling the fleshy form of Bannyun’s torso. The creature shrieked as each thudded home, exclaiming its distress to the skies now open above them.

The nebulae seemed to roil in response to the Warp creature’s distress, and Abrea felt blood leaking from her ears as the force of the psychic scream assaulted her. It was as though the Warp itself had opened up around them. Yet, for an instant, she felt the warpspawn’s grip slacken in its distraction. The thousands of voices stuttered, the hands and appendages grasping at her recoiled. In that moment, a strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, hauling her to her feet, and into a dead sprint away from the impaled foulness.

“Run! That won’t hold him for long!” The thin man’s voice was harsh and raw, his eyes bloodshot with effort. She felt his mind brush against hers, and almost recoiled from his arm. She did not have time to choose her allies. He was another psyker, but who was immaterial while they were both on the edge of being consumed.

The doors before them hissed open once more. The Househead’s bulk was distended, foetid and disgorging foul, caustic slime with each shuddering footstep. With an effluvial sound, she disgorged a spray of the stuff in their direction. In that instant, the creature grinned, utterly unrecognizable but reminiscent of her idea of a welcoming smile from before, save now she was as tall and broad as an Astartes terminator, and twice as angry. The thin man grimaced, the throng of fluid deflecting from his person in a flash of energy, disrupting the assault with a gossamer web of archaotech power and turning his attention to the new demonic threat preventing their retreat.

Abrea jerked right, spinning away from the being that had once been the Househead’s bulk as it darted forwards. The creature swiped at her with razor talons the size of her forearm, howling like one of the creatures of the darkest forests of her homeworld.

The battle was joined. The two psykers dodged and whirled to avoid the Househead’s reach, and the flailing tentacles of the enraged Bannyun-thing which was regaining its focus on their withdrawal. Seconds stretched, each attack avoided merely prolonging the inevitable.

Abrea felt her rising anger once more, the rage at being forced to muzzle herself for so long, at her own inadequacy as an investigator, and now an incandescent seething fury at being challenged in the psychic arts however momentarily. She raised a hand, reaching past the barrier which protected her from the roiling rage of the Immaterium yet again, inviting damnation in the Emperor’s name. A withering burst of voidflame lanced at the repulsive bile-leaking warp beast, catching it low in the chest and throwing it back through the doors. She felt a surge of perverse pleasure at its pain, even as she staggered with the effort, following after it while simultaneously risking a glance behind her long enough to see Bannyun’s torso growing.

The Vice-Guilder was pushing upwards towards the sky, howling with fury as it devoured the remaining indentured with a thousand grasping mouths, tearing them apart in gouts of blood, its body still sparkling with crystek shards. The tech-adept’s scream lingered in the air as his metal components were savaged. The thin man pushed her forward, his face set grimly.

“Move! Anywhere is better than here!” Blood ran from his nose and ears. She could feel the same, and knew the death awaiting her if she did not immediately follow the Househead through the doors.

Abrea sprang, rolling back into the foyer, relieved to find tile rather than velvet (or flesh portraying itself as such). The foul warpspawn was shuffling to its feet.

The former Househead was hunchbacked, clad in shredded robes which barely concealed the holes in her body which dribbled caustic fluid, hissing as it touched the flooring. Her hair was lank and matted, her face decayed and moribund. Yet her eyes were still sharp and malicious as they locked onto Abrea’s own.

“The Master will feast upon your flesh!” It hissed through cut lips and fractured teeth. This seemed to elicit a roar from the beast behind them, shaking the spire from base to top. Abrea did not deign to respond- a true hunter does not waste breath speaking to her prey.

Abrea slashed, but the Househead would not be caught unawares a second time. The creature’s raised hand swallowed the gout of psychic lightning before it had a chance to disintegrate her.

“The feast has come, your souls are forfeit!” The mutated creature shrieked, its voice rising in ecstasy as it darted forward, dribbling unholy acid with every shake of its body.

Abrea instinctively reached for her hip- when warpcraft fails, a mass-reactive bolt usually doesn’t. But servants don’t carry bolt pistols. She cursed, diving to avoid a clawed swipe, and an associated jet of foul, stinking fluid.

The not-Bannyun roared, and she was forced to scrabble forward, avoiding the monstrous tentacles stretching through the double doors.

“Futile, futile! The masters come! The skies shall be rent asunder!” The Househead sounded almost religiously fervent, like a thousand street preachers across the subsector. “These worlds shall be harvested and-!”

A blinding, hissing stream of sunlight snapped into the side of the creature’s head from point-blank range. The image of the thin man was imprinted on Abrea’s corneas as he discharged an ancient inferno pistol directly into its brain. For a moment, she groped blindly, seeking a wall, a column, anything to forgo the sunburst which enveloped her senses. A wave of the scent of burning rolled over her, causing her to retch as the Househead gurgled an end to her statement in vain through boiled vocal cords.

A hand grasped hers as Bannyun roared again, and she was pulled to her feet. The walls and doorway behind them cracking as tentacles pushed against them, the structure of the tower heaving with the strength of the warp beast the Vice-Guilder had become.

“No time to tarry.” The thin man’s voice was soft, almost calm. He pulled her at a dead sprint through the foyer as her vision slowly reasserted itself onto the material plane.

The man pushed her forward, into a servolift that waited for them. Abrea almost laughed- the absurdity of taking the elevator during a demonic incursion striking her as the peak of hilarity. She scrabbled, her eyes weeping as she fumbled with the buttons, finding the correct one, a ping announced her success, and the lift slid smoothly downwards. They were away from the screaming, unholy beast which sought to sup from their veins, at least for a few moments.

“Who are you?” Abrea hissed, rubbing hands to her eyes to allow them to readjust. As she opened them again, she found her vision still murky, but serviceable.
The thin man’s face was blank, studiously so, as if seeking to be forgotten even as she met his dull grey eyes. An act- it had all been an act to disarm those around him. She hadn’t taken him seriously before, thinking him a vain, boring face in a vain, boring crowd; yet now she viewed him with fresh eyes. His hair was dark, his nose crooked, as if it had been broken at least once. He had no visible augmetics, but given his rare, expensive weaponry, she assumed he was at least somewhat modified.

“I am no one, just like you.” His voice was lower than it had been, more frank and matter-of-fact than preening. “You did me a solid back there by breaking the guilder’s spell, and I’ve paid you back by not letting that daemonspawn eat your heart, we’re even.” He held her gaze for a moment, before looking down, searching through his pockets with his unarmed hand.

“Are you an agent of the throne?” Abrea’s voice was guarded, uncertain. She tensed, watching intently for anything, a flicker, a reaction. For an instant, he was silent, but she saw his knuckles tighten, almost imperceptibly around his pistol grip before the mask of placidity descended once again.

“Of course-” Abrea tightened, ready to batter him physically and mentally, the falseness of his words evident to her keenly-attuned hunter’s instincts. He, too, was a servant of the archenemy.

The thin man sighed, leveling the inferno pistol at her to forestall her assault. “I’ve had a rather trying day.” He produced a chronometer from somewhere on his person, bringing it up to his sightline to avoid glancing downwards. “And we are almost out of time, so I will give you a choice: Simply depart, going our separate ways, or I burn you, here and now.”

Abrea bared her teeth at the idea. She was sworn to destroy the foes of the master of mankind, and their momentary alignment did nothing to change that obligation.

“Shoot then, traitor, and be done with it!” She spat, pushing her mind against his suddenly, rushing his defenses. She met a ceramite wall affixed with a steel trap which grasped her tightly. She felt a chill in her fingertips, as if a winter storm had suddenly encroached upon her. Even as it did, the doors opened with a ping, as they arrived at the thirtieth floor.

“No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.” He remained focused on her for a moment before his finger moved microscopically, but the flow of energy was forestalled by a blast of subsonic munitions entering the chamber, flaring his personal shield and ricocheting around the small room. Abrea gasped as she was peppered with shot, several sticking fast in her flesh as Lieutenant Laral advanced upon the thin man standing over her.

The atrium was filled with detritus indicating a commotion. With so many guilders arriving simultaneously, and the psychic discharge from the peak of the tower, Abrea surmised that some had gone insane, and had been reduced to bloodied pulps by the shock batons and riot guns of the household guard. The glassy, blackstone floors were covered in pools of blood, while the vaulted ceiling rang with the shouts of alarm as shots continued to ring out, and merchants cowered away from the center of the room. As she’d hoped, Laral had survived. Upon seeing her seemingly about to be executed by the thin man, the foolish guard had charged to her defense.

“Stay down!” He shouted, in something she assumed he hoped was a dashing and heroic tone, even as he rained shot onto the shielded man (and her unshielded form). She dived to the floor, scrabbling out the doors, and across the slick, slate-black tile as the archenemy’s servant responded.

A superheated blast of air heralded the inferno pistol’s activation, punching through Laral’s chest armor and goring a hole through his organs even as the others who remained of his squad began to respond, rushing towards the thin man as he betrayed his warp-touched status in earnest. Abrea took no pleasure in his death, yet did not mourn him either.

Waves of pressure thudded through the air, sending house guards sprawling, cracking facades and tiles with each flare of energy. The thin man’s face was a rictus of emotion, rage and pain evident on his visage which hadn’t even appeared while he was fighting with the former Househead. Screams and warpfire flickered about him, a raiment of darkness flooding from the servolift’s interior and arraying itself about him.

Abrea scrambled away, rolling herself into a doorway to avoid the meat grinder which now walked amongst the guardians and guilders, sowing fear and death with every footstep. For a moment, she wondered why he hadn’t returned to her, to burn the flesh from her bones as he’d so indicated.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

A rumble, deeper than the sounds of butchery and screams of the dismembered, growled from below. Urgent reports from the base of the spire, sharp cracks as supports at the base of the hive’s superstructure were blown apart. She learned later that the fusion reactor and batteries had been overloaded, along with dozens of meltabombs strategically placed to gut the substructure supporting the vast weight of the Vice-Guilder’s ambitions. Someone, and she had a sneaking suspicion she knew who, had lit a powder keg to send them tumbling to the ground.

Ignoring the large thoroughfare, now occupied by the swirling chaos worshipper and a thousand screaming guilders, Abrea found her feet and ran. Sprinting through the door by which she sheltered, she dashed towards the nearest alternative exit. Even as she did so the walls began to shudder, deep, grinding sounds roiled beneath her feed and floor tiles tilted from true, their supports unsteady.

Now was not the time for circumspection.

Abrea threw herself through a series of increasingly chaotic rooms, throwing a spear-like tunnel of force before her, the physical manifestation of the Immaterium aiding her as she punched through walls and doors with reckless abandon. She ran without fear, but with a dread certainty that death awaited her, both behind her and in any instant of hesitation she might have.

For a moment the flow of energy through her body, the pounding of her heart, reminded her of the hunt. The rolling gait she adopted to manage the sundering of the building around her was indistinguishable from that she used to manage the undergrowth of her home.

She lowered her shoulder as she came to a shutter, shattering it like glass as warpfrost coated her austere garments. She was flagging, but she could finally feel the dim light of dawn approaching from the horizon. The surface streets of the city unfurled before her, but a dark shadow cast upon her back.

The tower of the Vice-Guilder was crumbling towards her. She could practically hear the psychic shriek of the creature occupying the pinnacle as it slammed against an adjacent basilica to the Emperor’s benediction. Imperial citizens gaped as she rushed past them, frozen in fear as vast chunks of the structure sheared off, flattening stalls and groundcars where they stood in the late-night bustle of the streets.

Death raining from above, the final revenge of every heretic. She thought, dodging this way and that, emerging perpendicularly from the shadow of the massive spire, dodging through a manufactory to avoid ceramic tiles the size of a Chimeras punching through rockcrete, flesh, and steel plates around it.

Secondary explosions rocked the hive to its very core, flames flooding sublevels and igniting the very air itself as the disaster unfolded. It felt like the city was shaking itself apart as at least three smaller towers crumbled and subsided to their foundations as well.

The flames of perdition licked against the lip of the chasm where the Vice-Guilder’s household had once stood, the layers of the city exposed to the laughing stars above for the first time in centuries.

Abrea stumbled to a halt, as soon as it was evident that the ground beneath her no longer moved. The moans and screams of the dying colored her perception, their suffering bleeding into the warp even as survivors began to creep out from their homes. Every other hab block had been spared, while some were rent down to their foundations. The light of the rising sun caught vast dust clouds as they began to settle over the hive, a thick, cloying material which stained and befouled all it touched.

A fitting metaphor. Abrea mused, limping from her shelter, towards the pitch-black inquisition shuttle which was just setting down at the edge of the chasm.

She sighed.

She had a long conversation ahead of her.