The Geld by George Mann

Author:George Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

He staggered back wrenching his weapon with both hands so that the blade came up and out slicing through the traitor’s other shoulder. The sheer momentum of the blow caused the traitor to topple forward, the upper half of its body cut free in a jagged V which separated as it fell. Gray dust poured from inside the armor in a torrent and the traitor finally lay still.

FX - DISTANT SCREAM

Qeld twisted and saw another of the 4th Company had fallen. The figure staggered towards the altar, two fist-sized holes in its chest. This was the first of the bodies that examined, dead on the plinth, his arm outstretched as if grasping for the bejeweled eye. Everything was playing out just as it had before, except he, Illith and the other Shadowmasters were here too.

Raven Guard Legionary (in the distance): ‘For Corax!’

The scene was near identical, but earlier there had been no traitors or at least no trace of their remains.

Raven Guard Legionary (in the distance): ‘Victorus Aut Mortis!’

Qeld peered again at the eye. Around him bolter shells were flying, whizzing past his helm, thudding into the wall behind him, but for a moment none of that seemed to matter. The eye was looking into him, calling to him, beckoning him to come closer. He could hear it whispering to him now, its dark imprecations worming their way to his ears, threatening to take root in his mind. He gritted his teeth, raised his bolter and opened fire. Bejeweled eye exploded in hail of shattered gemstones, broken fragments hurtling through the air pinning against his chest plate, as he stormed forward, his bolter chattering, decimating the bizarre beguiling mosaic, tearing chunks out of the stone altar. He stood in a cloud of swirling dust and stone fragments until the base of the altar collapsed and it pitched forward, eroded by the ferocity of the onslaught. Finally, his bolter clicked redundantly in his grip, the magazine empty.

Drawing a ragged breath Qeld looked up to see his three battle brothers staring at him in bewilderment. Mordren was standing over a scattered pile of dust, the tip of his sword trailing upon the ground. Artarix was attempting to load a new magazine into his bolter and Illith was retrieving his combat blade from the dusty ground at his feet. As Qeld looked on, the dust seemed to gather itself before swirling away into nothing, as if carried off by an unnatural wind.

Artarix: ‘Brother?’

Qeld looked down at the bolter in his hands, the devastation before him. For a moment words evaded him.

Qeld: ‘It was the eye asserting the malign influence over us, testing us, reworking time itself to… trap us in whatever diabolical loop our brothers had been caught in for days.’

He looked around to see the remaining two were now dead, sprawled in the positions in which he and the others had first found them. They’d been like that for some time.

Artarix: ‘You mean to say, all of this was a mere illusion? A corruption of the mind?’

Qeld: ‘No, no, those traitors seemed real enough.

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