Dark Apostle

'Good,' said the tall man, turning and walking around his desk before sinking into his leather chair.

'You are dismissed, officers of the 72nd. Not you, acting colonel.'

His face burning, Laron stood motionless as the other men filed out of the room.

'Now,' said the brigadier-general, 'we need to establish how to get a victory after your devastatingly average attack against the highlands.'

They had awoken him and the other surviving members of his worker team from their allocated two-hour rest break by throwing a bucket of warm water over them. Or, at least Varnus had thought it was water at first, until he tasted it on his tongue: it was blood, fresh and human. The overseers coughed vilely, what passed for laughter amongst them, and jerked at slaves' neck chains to get them to their feet.

The dreams were getting worse. The blaring of the Discord never ceased, and he heard it as he slept, the hideous sound seeping into his brain like a vile parasite, twisting and corrupting within him. It was no release from torment when he closed his eyes and fell into fitful sleep. No, if anything, his dreams were worse than his waking life. He saw a world utterly consumed by Chaos, its sky a roiling miasma of fire and lava. The land was not truly rock or soil, but a pile of skinless, moaning bodies that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. For all he knew, the planet was made entirely from these mewling, bloody wretches. Every one of them had a metal star of Chaos bolted to its forehead, the same mark that he also bore. Endless, monotonous chanting filled his head, intoning words of worship and praise. He saw this place every time he closed his eyes, not just when he slept, but every time he even blinked his eyes against the sulphurous, polluted air.

Praise ye the glory of Chaos screamed the Discord in his mind, blurred with hateful screams, words and bellows. Kill him! they said. Traitor!

Varnus stumbled along with the other slaves. He looked around in confusion as they turned off the well-worn path leading towards the tower that rose nearly a hundred metres into the air and headed off in a different direction. He saw his confusion mirrored in Pierlo's wild eyes, his only true companion here in this living hell.

Someone is here already, he said to himself. He could feel it in the air. Liberation was at hand. He prayed to the Emperor, curse his name, that his hated captors would soon be blasted from the face of the planet by the force of the Imperium.

He grinned stupidly at the thought.

Dully, he came to his senses to find that the line of slaves had stopped.

'On your knees, dogs,' said an overseer in his grating voice, the translator box over its mouth vibrating.

Without thought, he dropped to his knees. The overseers produced long, rusted metal spikes, and walked behind the line of slaves. They pulled the chains backwards violently, dropping the slaves onto their backs. Standing on the chains to either side of each slave, they hammered the heavy chains to the ground with the thick spikes.

Within moments, Varnus heard screaming from other slaves, but from his position he could not see what was happening. All he could see were the slaves directly to either side of him. On one side, a man cried, his eyes tightly closed as he mouthed the silent words of a prayer. The star upon his forehead was clearly visible, and steam seemed to rise from the skin around it, forming blisters. The stink of burning flesh reached Varnus's nostrils. Needle-tipped fingers plunged into the man's neck abruptly and he convulsed frantically, his prayer forgotten. His head stopped steaming and Varnus realised that it must have been the prayer that had caused the reaction.

Turning to the other side, he saw Pierlo looking at him closely with his crazed eyes.

'What now?' hissed the man. He didn't seem overly distressed to Varnus, but perhaps that was his way of dealing with this horror. He envied the man, briefly. Kill him, came the voice within the blare of the Discord.

'What new torture is this?'

The dark figures of chirurgeons loomed over Varnus. They were loathsome creatures, their hunched forms covered in shiny, black material. There was an unholy stink about them that made him gag, and their arms ended in arrays of needles, clamps and syringes.

Something was writhing in the hands of the hateful surgeons and he felt sickness pull within his gut at the sight of the vile, wriggling thing. It was a small, mechanical, flat box that looked somewhat like the translator machines that the overseers spoke through. However, the thin sides of the box were coated in a smooth, black-oily skin that pulsed with movement from within. Four short, stubby tentacles waved from the corners of the box, fighting at the chirurgeon's grasp. His gaze was forcefully removed from the vile blend of mechanics and daemon spawn as a further pair of black-clad chirurgeons pulled his head around.