Altar of Cyrene by Warhammer

Author:Warhammer [Warhammer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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THE TWO MARINES walked in silence, deeper into the heart of Bastillius where buildings lay in piles of burning rubble and the ravens sang serenades to the corpses. Gabriel’s march was silent, his thoughts as dark as the night around him. Isador remained quiet. Gabriel could see he was invigorated after the massacre, a chance to destroy heresy was a powerful affirmation of his own faith in the Emperor. But the librarian was also wise enough not to say anything. This was not a victory for Gabriel. It was his troubled duty, and Isador had known Gabriel long enough to recognise the distinction.

Both men continued their march across the city, with Gabriel determined to reach the St. Bellstus Bunker in New Carnith. Both were caked in the filth of death, their every victim having left something of themselves behind on their armour.

And they walked because Gabriel refused to contact anyone via the vox, he refused to draw any more of his men into his personal quest, or to reveal his position.

Gabriel and Isador stood upon the rise of the hill that was once crowned with monolithic buildings. All that remained were the streets and the flattened terrain. Massive earth movers had shoved the rubble into the crude fortifications that now surrounded the Crucivex Camp at the foot of the hill. Gabriel and Isador stared down, their minds unprepared for what lay below them.

The Crucivex Camp stretched into the darkness for miles. Tens of thousands of Cyrene’s citizens had been crucified on crosses, their lifeless - or near lifeless -bodies dangling from cross bars, their death one of slow suffocation. None could cry out, so the flocks of ravens did it for them. In the chaotic maze of hanging bodies, servo-skulls wove lazy paths, recording everything as a warning to others who would truck with heresy.

Gabriel and Isador said nothing. Their surprise was naught but a brief pause, long enough to register the fact that they’d never witnessed this particular horror. But now they had. Now it was time to go on.

Their path took the duo through the ruins of this place, past breaks in the high walls of rubble, past the bare, impaled feet of the crucified and through the forest of crosses. For the hour they walked, the occasional victim stirred, but most noise came from the buzzing corpse-flies, laying their eggs in the dead, and the ravens who feasted upon this unexpected banquet.

The sound of a lasgun stopped the pair. Gabriel and Isador waited, their breaths held to hear more reports. A moment later, there was another shot, the discharge muted.

They moved toward the sound, careful of their surroundings. A third shot finally brought them within sight on a black-haired Imperial Guardsman. He was young and without the blemish of a scar or cybernetic augment, a neophyte to Cyrene’s defence force and now among the doomed. He looked broken, his clothing ripped and covered in dust, his arm bandaged for some wound that drew flies to it, and a lasgun hanging limply at his side.

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