Mephiston: City of Light by Darius Hinks

Author:Darius Hinks
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2019-10-17T08:32:48+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

The Talon, Abissama Delta, Sabassus

The Illumined Host stumbled on, eyes full of hope as they peered into the darkness. Gourin smiled proudly back at them as they waded through banks of dust and climbed over rocks. ‘I promised you,’ she said, as the daemon led them down the tunnel, deeper into the mountain, followed by clanking rows of Space Marines. ‘I told you he would come.’

She spoke quietly but she felt like howling it in triumph. All those decades of pain and sacrifice. All the friends she had lost. All the oaths she had sworn. Everything she had done to reach this point. It had all been worth it. Zadkiel had come. She had called and he had come, just as the auguries had predicted. Her home might be on the far side of the galaxy, her scarred body was a record of her trials, but she had made it.

Gourin and the other mortals followed Zadkiel at a respectful distance, but they all peered through the gloom, trying to catch sight of his slight frame. Stablights slashed the darkness but the Adeptus Astartes’ armour blocked most of them, revealing only fleeting glimpses of the hooded figure at their head.

Gourin gave up trying to see Zadkiel and looked back at her followers. It was an equally pleasing sight. Months of devotion had already left their mark. A few of them were relatively unchanged; they had ripped the regimental badges from their flak jackets but otherwise they might still have passed for loyal Guardsmen of the Hellbound. But others had begun evolving. Gourin studied them with pride.

Aspis had developed a metallic sheen to her skin. Her face glinted like steel. She flashed like a fish in sunlit water, her eyes flawless, ovoid mirrors. She looked like a piece of living jewellery. She was beautiful and strange and exactly the kind of treasure Colonel Fedorak would like to grind into the dirt.

Zoster the Tank was sparking as he stomped, like a badly earthed circuit. Energy branched across his flak armour and spilled down the barrel of his lascarbine, but he showed no sign of pain, his face rigid with ecstasy as the power danced over him.

Syphus was developing an entirely new anatomy. His shoulders had broadened and his head was unnaturally low, sinking towards his chest and swelling into a new shape. His arms had grown so long that he occasionally dropped his knuckles to the floor and ambled like an ape. It was only a matter of time before he fully embraced whatever new form the Changer of Ways had planned for him.

Gourin had promised them a chance to escape their miserable fate, a chance to change and grow, but she had not expected the change to be so fast and so glorious. She was getting old now. Her joints ached constantly and she was slower than she used to be. Yet even her brief conversation with Zadkiel had been enough to make her feel like a giddy teenager. What would

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