Into the Maelstrom by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-08T15:39:19+00:00

Tenebrae

Mark Brendan

Chinks of reddish-grey glow filtering between eddies in the layer of atmospheric debris announced the break of dawn over Tenebrae’s capital. The city known as Wormwood had stood for the past ninety years of the seven hundredth century of the forty-first millennium. Now Wormwood was dying. The screams of men mingled with the gibbering of daemons and the thunder of weapons. Upset by the warping influence of Chaos gates opening to provide access to creatures who had no rightful place in the material world, the burgeoning clouds over the city periodically rained blood, sometimes toads, upon the death-strewn streets.

The old man strode with rare haste through the vaulted halls of the Adeptus Arbites’ fortress in Wormwood’s war-torn central plaza. Governor Dane Cortez reflected that the pandemonium within the building was almost as distressing as the chaos without. An ageing man, he nevertheless carried his tall, thin frame with authority. His hawk-like features, coupled with the resplendent robes of his office which billowed in his wake, lent him an air of power and mystique. This was but a well-practised front, providing a facade of strength to a man inwardly broken and in turmoil.

All around Cortez, the subjects of his planet, his charges, panicked and fled before the unholy invaders. Even now, within this very building, the Arbites struggled to order the evacuation of civilians to a heavily defended landing pad on the roof of the great edifice. This final chapter in his personal catastrophe was almost too much for Cortez’s ageing heart to bear, but he knew he must appear strong in the face of adversity if there was to be any hope for the survivors.

Striding through the hall of his inauguration, the milling citizens of Tenebrae parted to allow Governor Cortez passage. Amazing, he thought. Even in the hour of my greatest failure, they continue to show me deference.

At his heels, a constant two steps behind, trotted his vulpine advisor, Frane. The snivelling wretch burbled a continuous stream of sycophancy and unctuous nonsense which the Governor had long since learned to politely ignore. As they passed underneath yet another cyclopean archway on their way to the fortified command chamber express elevator, a commotion caught Cortez’s attention in the ornate hallway. A young man had somehow wrestled the bolt pistol from the holster of one of the grim-faced Arbites. Before the security men could stop him, he sprayed his wife and their infant son, cutting them down where they stood, white-faced and terrified. As the lawmen descended on the wretch with their power mauls, he used the space cleared around him to turn the weapon on himself. The man’s chest erupted into a fine red mist as he pumped the deadly explosive bolts into his own torso.

Cortez closed the lift doors on this scene of carnage, and felt his inner spark wither a little more inside him. The ancient elevator shuddered into life and began its rapid ascent.

‘One more heretic bloodline severed. Praise the Emperor,’ Frane remarked in what he obviously considered his most superior fashion.

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