Aboard The Blackest Vindication

 Aboard The Blackest Vindication

The maze of corridors was nearly pitched black and barely wide enough to stand abreast in. Granite-grey walls stretched into the impenetrable umbra, the same prefabricated blocks comprised the ceiling and floor both. Even behind the overbearing precipice of darkness unnatural etchings could be seen scratched onto the wall as the occult runes and anagogic depictions glowed with a certain unsettling otherness to them.

The air in the foreboding labyrinth was thin and frozen, though despite its harrowingly lonesome aura of solitude, there was the inescapable feeling that one was not alone in this stygian gloom. Far into the rayless depths the eye gleans detail, a figure, tall and gaunt, disappearing into the murk. Later, row upon row of predatory teeth gleam in the impossible distance, and hearts begin to pump. Again the mind perceives movement, slithering and unwholesome, before the black nothingness veils it again milliseconds later. Was there a sound? A distinct echo of footsteps some many miles beyond your vision perhaps, or the baying breath of something unimaginable and unbearable? It is damnably difficult to tell with your ear drums pulsing with your petrified blood.

Veteran Brother-Sergeant Aldwyn stalked these corridors dauntlessly and with intention. He moved sparingly, taking each step with care less calculated and more instinctual. His combi-flamer was levelled square at the yawning nebulous gulf before him. His emerald battle plate reflected the acetylene light given off from the weapon, every trapping of the 1st Company’s regalia glowing like smouldering embers. A Crux Terminatus adorned his right shoulder, marking him as one of the greatest warriors of the Rift Pyres chapter. A blank black banner draped from his other shoulder, a solemn memoriam to his countless murdered brothers. From his backpack a cluster of thick cabling terminated in a floating cranium, the servo-skull packed full of sensory paraphernalia to aid his search in the thick, inky gloom. Despite the ornamentation that singled him out as the pinnacle of a human warrior, the pervasive and aberrant feeling of being alone still struck the veteran.

Even within his helmet he could feel the frosty cold, though his breath burned as hot as coals as it lusted for retribution. He had been separated from his squad for many hours now, their vox silence mandatory so that they do not become bait for whatever harrowing presence that indwelt this retched place. Being apart from his brothers was anathema to him, though it was necessary in order to completely cover the entire complex. However without them for company he was beginning to feel lost. The repetitive walls and endless darkness in both directions made him unsure if he had already covered this area, and given the unfathomable nature of this hades he did not entirely trust his helmet display either. Something in the distance flickered at the edge of his vision, and the sergeant without a thought raised his bolter, ready to fire. No sensors picked up anything, auspex remained silent and his motion trackers were taciturn as well. For minutes he remained motionless as sweat dripped from his brow, intently scanning before him, trying to gauge what, if anything, was there. Finally, he lowered the sights of his firearm. Was it his own conscious playing tricks on him? Were his very eyes deceiving him, or was it some necrotic and damnable mind alien to his own that was behind this? Nevertheless he pushed onwards; a mind left pondering the eldritch was easy prey for whatever bestial intellects that may lie beyond.

Again hours had passed. The passageway was still oppressive, slowly gnawing away at the psyche with its persistence. Aldwyn’s mind, although still fixated on his task at hand, could not help to begin to race at the possibilities of what he may be stalking, or indeed what may be stalking him. Deep in the heart of this space hulk, a carved out rock adrift the black void, lurked something that no mortal mind can imagine, hailing from the blackest pit of unreality. It was in here, and so was he. It was nearing a day since he last saw his squad, and the lonesome journey was beginning to gnaw at him. Had they encountered the beast, tall, gaunt and horrifying? Had they been butchered in the pitch dark by ravenous and heinous creatures? Had they been stolen away by a tenebrous and cryptic consciousness? Taking step after creeping step, the marine immersed himself in wild speculation, not entirely unprovoked by the dark magics haunting the throughways. Whilst he was intuitively conditioned to be constantly calculating possible battle outcomes, this was something different. This was not the imagination breaking its hard and fast boundaries; this was Aldwyn reliving the deaths of hundreds of his brothers, in their place stood his squad in his mind being massacred in the legion of methods employed by the blackest of intellects and most evil of consciousnesses. Bodies rendered into threads and trails of organs, a palette of torture ranging from pink to red to brown as the victim shudders and screams, still alive through arcane methodology despite the most visceral of mutilations.

Suddenly a chittering of chirps and beeps awoke Aldwyn from his death-visions. The vocalisations of the servo-skull was the first sound other than his footsteps and heartbeat he had heard in nearly a full twenty four hours, and it made every muscle in his body at once creep. A dull sensation at the back of his head fed him with information, but there was more to it than the simple influx of data from the servo-skull to his neural implant. Without a single moment’s hesitation he spun round and raised his weapon, switching to the combi-flamer attachment as he turned. He stood aiming down the barrel at a stomach-churning figure, barely visible in the dimness. Gibbets of flesh hung from its long and haggard face, a ribcage writhing with flesh as if it had a mind of its own, and teeth like skeletal fingertips emerged from a maw below eyes that resembled globules of sour milk. All the time it murmured in languages ancient and perverse as its snakelike tongue hung limply from its maw, tasting the air and relishing the scent of mortal flesh, blood and sweat.

Aldwyn stayed the urge to balk at the stench of rot pervading from the abomination before him, instead he mentally relayed the command to his servo-skull to begin transmitting a beacon before taking aim at the daemon. He had tracked the foul and wretched beast and all of its bastard kind across the stars for light-years upon light-years. It and every hell-thing which burned his world out of existence and tormented and agonised his every brother will suffer the self-same fate. Trembling with exultation he squeezed the trigger which released a torrent of burning promethium, engulfing the corridor in the light of cleansing and illuminating it for the first time in countless ages. His helmets optics dimmed to compensate though he still squinted at the brightness of the flame after being in pitched black for so long. Behind the glowing aura of flame he could see the apparition rearing up, its hands snapping into hideous, malformed claws. Aldwyn braced himself as the daemon brought them down; the beast screaming an impossibly loud screech as he prepared himself with the ancient adage and tenet of the Astartes:

+++AND THEY SHALL KNOW NO FEAR+++

