Summer of Reading 2015: The Full Collection (Warhammer Fantasy) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2015-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Necessary Evil

Rob Sanders

The wraithgate sat in damnation’s darkness, lit only by the dread twilight of the Eye. Dusted in brimstone, its curves and arches cut a skeletal silhouette into the puce yonder. Here, among the perversity of a daemon world – where reality was twisted and the impossible ruled – the portal waited in the gloom. It waited for a visitor: one with reason to leave the interdimensional labyrinth of the webway beyond and step through a gateway to hell. Not many would accept such an invitation, but in a place where time had little meaning, the xenos artefact did not have long to wait.

From the archway’s agitated nothingness proceeded the sizzle of warp static. Immaterial energies arced between the slants and barbs of the wraithgate’s alien architecture, shattering the space between. Drawing on unimaginable power, the portal scorched a hole through the fabric of time and space. Piece by piece, the reality beyond was assembled like the fragments of a stained glass window.

Bronislaw Czevak stepped forth from this new reality and out onto the surface of the daemon world. His eyes were unmistakably ancient, yet his features were those of a much younger man. His coat was an abomination of eldritch design and alien fabric: ankle-length, incorporating a nauseating clash of colour with the insanity of interlocking patterns. As its harlequin tails flapped in the light breeze, the fabric’s surface rippled with a form of alien field technology that played with the eye. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak of the Emperor’s holy Inquisition, interdimensional refugee. Hunted by the Ruinous Powers for what he could do; by the Imperium for what he had done; by the alien eldar for what he might do. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak – known himself to hunt, on occasion.

Taking in his surroundings, Czevak raised one furrowed brow. His shoulders sagged at the indication of a destination reached, before snapping the gilded covers of the Atlas Infernal shut and burying the antique tome in the depths of his alien coat. Still bathed in the protective purity of the book’s power and with the webway portal dying to inactivity behind him, the inquisitor jumped down from the gate and strode out across the hellish surface of an accursed world.

Nereus had once been covered with fertile oceans and even now no sand or soil graced its surface, just rust and sulphur-dust. Stamping, the inquisitor found that beneath the powder was solid metal. Wrinkling his nose at the rotten stench, he climbed an escarpment of reinforced scrap and corroded plating, reaching the irregularity of an apex ridge. From this vantage point, the inquisitor took in the daemonscape. The rusted archipelago extended for some distance and height, reminding Czevak of a volcanic island reaching out of the waters. The blood-red of a brimstone ocean boiled beyond, the sulphurous surf lapping up against the metal shore, encrusting the coast with yellow crystals. The waters thrashed with larval daemons, swarming and snapping like carnivorous fish in an evaporating pool. In the thin skies above, flocks of furies soared on the hunt for soul-prey.

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