Dark Apostle

The joy of killing the man had filled him with warmth. The traitor had turned against the blessed, hated, False Emperor and had deserved death. Taking his life had been a great release and it made him feel strong and rejuvenated.

The enemy had taken him back to the tower, transporting him back to the top, now hundreds and hundreds of metres above the ground. He was to work alone. Perhaps the overseers feared that he would kill again if he was teamed up with another slave, and perhaps he would have.

The tower was above the level of the black pollution hanging over the city, and it swirled beneath him. The mighty winds that were building didn't seem to touch the tower; it was as if he stood in the middle of the eye of one of the dust devils that raced across the plains, spinning the salt up in twisting cones of wind. The noxious fumes whipped around the tower and it looked to him like a great, black, whirlpool that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

He felt strange without the cover of the smog overhead. Now he could see the blaring white sun during the day and the stars by night. And always there was the red giant planet Korsis, drawing ever closer. It was so large that it almost filled the skyline and Varnus could see valleys, craters and channels criss-crossing its surface.

The brightness pained his eyes and the lack of oxygen made them heavy and sore. Twice a day he was held down as red-black, stinging drops were inserted into the centres of his eyeballs. He screamed as the sharp needles pierced the aqueous humour of his orbs and injected the substance that squirmed and burned within him.

Tirelessly he worked, doing the job of two men, but the toil no longer drained him as it once had. Indeed, time seemed to pass quickly and he was barely aware of the fall of darkness as the white sun disappeared over the horizon and rose again as he worked, smearing the blood mortar over the stones.

A Discord seemed to favour him, if such a thing was possible, and it hung at his side for hours on end, pounding his eardrums with its blare. He could hear the voices talking to him, teaching him and bolstering him when he felt weak.

Sometimes he shook his head as if waking from slumber and the horror of his predicament washed over him. He would cry out at such times, longing for the Emperor's soldiers to rescue him and his world. He would kick out at the Discord and it would retreat from him. But these moments passed quickly and Varnus would recover himself and be somewhat confused. He couldn't remember why he had been angry and he set back to work with vigour, the feel of the blood mortar familiar and comforting beneath his hands.

The daemon speaker would hover slowly forward until it floated less than a metre from him once again. Sometimes its usually limp tentacles would reach forwards and touch him on the neck or the back as he worked. He would recoil in shock and the thing would retreat once again. Over time, he came to ignore the touch of the thing and in a way he found it almost comforting. He felt a strange, warm, buzzing sensation at its touch, but it was not unpleasant.

The Discord told him many interesting things: what the other slaves were thinking, that the overseers were afraid of him and that his power was growing. It talked of the early years of an ancient hero who had been turned into an immortal godling and lived on in a great palace far away, and the warriors that he had trained to spread his word. He wondered if it was the Emperor, but his head had begun to hurt when that thought had crossed his mind and he quickly dismissed it.

Yet even as he had come to bear his hellish existence, he prayed for release. Not death, no, he had lived through too much to simply perish. He was filled with a new vitality and fervour that made him determined to cling to life for as long as he was able, to see this through one way or another.

He prayed for deliverance and tears ran down his face as he felt himself becoming lost. Had the Emperor forsaken him? Did His light no longer shine upon Tanakreg? Had he been abandoned to his fate? For the first time since the occupation, Varnus felt true despair pull at him. He prayed vainly to the Emperor, but felt no comfort in his soul. No, he felt nothing but emptiness.

The next moment he had forgotten why he had been crying and wiped away his tears in bafflement. Shrugging, he continued his work. The Gehemehnet needed tending.

The slaughter had been immense and the valley was filled with the dead and dying. A cloying stink rose as the temperature soared, the hot-white sun overhead baking the earth. The wreck of the Titan was like the discarded shell of some giant colossus and scattered debris littered the ravine floor. The battle had been intense. The Word Bearers advanced into the confused Imperial lines after the Imperator's fall, killing thousands of their foes as they tried to realign their battle line and draw support up past the massive frame of the Exemplis.