Blackstone Fortress: The Omnibus by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-07T09:24:11+00:00

26

The deeper he looked, the more he saw. Draik could hear the others gasping for breath as they scrambled down collapsing slopes, cursing and hissing as they bashed their shins and rolled over unexpected drops, but he ran as easily as if he were on a freshly surfaced transitway. The fortress’ impenetrable darkness was gone. Rather than colourless walls and brutal angles he saw numbers. His expanding consciousness had absorbed every detail of its structure and seen logic where it had previously seen only madness. He saw the cracks before they opened at his feet and he saw for miles in every direction, discerning routes and hazards that should have been hidden.

The rest of the group quickly recognised his ability to find the easiest route and began stumbling in his wake, trying to match his steps as darkness whirled around them.

He paused and looked back the way they had come. The slopes had folded away into a forest of pyramids and towers. As the servo-skulls whirred overhead, they illuminated a landscape that looked like a city in miniature, with hundreds of slopes and blocks trailing away into the distance. Draik turned his attention to his companions. The group was thinning out fast. Just five priests now, including Taddeus and Vorne, along with Audus, Quintus, Grekh and himself.

‘Are we safe to continue without our guides?’ Taddeus looked at Draik with an odd mixture of emotions. He seemed furious and awed at the same time. ‘How will we follow the route?’

Draik nodded. ‘I can see everything.’ He gestured away from the jumbled remains of the plateau. ‘I can see a maglev chamber, not more than half a mile from here. And what’s more, I can see where it will take us.’

Taddeus stared at him and recited a line from his holy text. ‘And he shall see the face of his god.’ He shook his head. ‘You are everything that was promised. But it is in the Crucible that you will become one with the Blackstone. It is there that you will steal it from the clutches of the Great Enemy and secure it in the name of the Holy Synod. So why are you heading away from it on this foolish errand? Those scoundrels in Precipice are not worth risking anything for. Can’t you see? Half of them are criminals and the rest came here to escape their duties as Imperial citizens. They have sealed their own fate.’

‘I will not stay down here, knowing I could save them,’ replied Draik. ‘If the Imperium’s ruling classes do not stand watch over the lower orders, we become no better than the xenos or the heretic. Whatever their backgrounds, those people came to the Western Reaches to do the Emperor’s work.’

Audus raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? All of them?’

Draik waved at the surrounding darkness. ‘The Senatorum Imperialis laid claim to this site and offered legitimate salvage contracts for anyone who managed to reach Precipice. Those people are here under the aegis of the Lord High Admiral and the Fabricator General.

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