Angels of Darkness (Warhammer 40,000) by Gav Thorpe

Author:Gav Thorpe [Thorpe, Gav]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE TALE OF ASTELAN

PART FOUR

Voices called to Astelan from the dark shadows of the cell. He thrashed feverishly within his chains, his once mighty frame now wasted and haggard. Not a scrap of flesh had been left unmarked by the Interrogator-Chaplain’s cruel ministrations.

Astelan’s mind felt as equally ravaged by the psychic intrusions of Samiel. His body battered, his thoughts in tatters, he struggled to maintain a fragile grip on reality.

Unable to move his head very far, his world had constricted to a space only a few metres across. He knew every crack and crevice above him, he could picture them in his head as clearly as a map. He knew there were thirteen blades, three drills, five augurs, eight clamps, nine brands and two barbed hooks on the shelf. He could remember the feel of every one on his flesh, each a little different. Even when Boreas was not there wielding his vicious implements, so confused was Astelan’s mind that sometimes he would wake feeling their savage touch upon him.

With creeping fingers, he had counted the links on his chains hundreds of times to keep his thoughts occupied. Every moment that he did not concentrate on something, the voices returned.

He had long given up his refusal to sleep. It mattered not that he cried out when the nightmares assailed him. Awake, he was barely more lucid, the barriers between what was a dream and what was real had blurred for some time.

All this he knew, from a detached, coherent part of his mind that sometimes fought through to take control. He knew the voices were simply echoes in his head of Boreas’s questioning and the psychic probing of Samiel. He knew that it was merely an illusion of his tortured senses when the shadows grew hands that reached out towards him. But those times were few, and his moments of lucidity were growing rarer and shorter.

Astelan had lost count of the number of visits he’d had from his captors. Perhaps it had been fifty, perhaps five hundred. Sometimes he argued, other times he shut himself away, ignoring the slice of the scalpel in his flesh, the boring of the drill through his bones, the searing of his skin on the tip of a brand. Boreas came and went, Samiel came and went, and there was no pattern that Astelan could fathom. Sometimes he awoke to see Boreas standing there watching him, listening to his nightmare-induced screams. Other times the Chaplain plied him with questions, examining every aspect of his answers, but did not inflict any more pain on him. Sometimes there was only pain and no questions, or the insidious whispering of the psyker inside his head, calling him a liar and an oath-breaker.

As he lay there, tormented and delirious, he dreaded the sound of the large brass key in the lock. And then there were the times when he longed for Boreas to return, when his strained mind could no longer be contained and he had to communicate his raging thoughts.

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