The singing in his head has almost stopped.
Almost.
He realises it hasn’t; he has simply ceased to listen. Its mellifluous tones, its constant strokes of praise and demands for adoration are part of the background hum of his thoughts, ever present like the armour that encloses him or the twilight of the deep mines of Truan IX.
He keeps the siren lure at bay with his own voice, fixes on every word that he speaks as if it is a cliff edge on which he is hanging. He not only sings the hymnals, he feels them, pulls them in to his soul as a ward against the accusations and mockery of the thing that has destroyed his battle-brothers.
No, it did not destroy his brothers. It made them destroy each other with its fake threats and false promises. Only he has survived. Only he remains to avenge them. Four days have passed since Master Batheus and the others died. Four days since he started his hunt for the creature. Four days alone against the unceasing voice.
The litanies continue even as he roams the lower shafts seeking its lair. Every canticle and verse he can recall becomes his armoury, until the teachings of the Chaplains are exhausted. He then begins the Lessons of the Armorium, and feels a quiver of rage run through the walls as he starts the Rites of Bolter Sanctification.
The las-scorched walls and floor are bare here, the litter of miners’ bodies and those of his battle-brothers far behind. Soon even the touch of the ore-workers disappears, to leave only virgin stone for him to follow.
His continuous muttering moves on to the Seven Chantings of Activation for the engine of a Land Raider. As he recites the Third Chanting – the Release of the Invocating Rune of Gears – he spies a gleam ahead, a shimmer of gold that, when he turns to gaze upon it fully, is more of a darker shadow.
He lost his helm during the fighting against his squad-brothers. Or removed it after, he is no longer sure. Perhaps he took it off to listen to the song all the better, unfiltered by the machinery of his auto-senses.
The soulmusic is so pure, so invigorating, it lifts him...
‘And on the Fourth Chanting thou shalt ignite the Battery Connections with the activation of the Rune of Power. By its inverted red triangular shape shall it be known, located on the thoracic converter panel on the left of the driver’s station,’ he calls out. His voice rises to a bellow, the words almost meaningless, but better than outright defiance of the whispering threats, for he has learnt that to engage, to confront is only an invitation to a wave of paranoia. ‘If the Rune of Power be active already, recourse must be made to rectify the negative flow!’
His pace quickens as he nears the source of the gold-shadow aura – a natural cavern that swiftly expands from a branch of the tunnel to his right.
The cave is not large, no more than thirty metres across, and half that in height. The darkness here is almost total, yet shot through with golden sparks that hover on the edge of vision. His breath comes in chill clouds, though until he entered the cave the temperature had slowly increased with each level descended.
He activates the lamp of his war-plate and reveals a circle of eight pillars that rise from floor to ceiling, veins of crystal through them that reflect the yellow beam.
Within the ring of columns, something stirs.
It is the shadow incarnate, an auric gleam at its heart that briefly shines and then dims again as its bulk moves. It does not turn like a living thing but shifts its presence, coiling about itself until a cluster of amber-gem eyes regard him with their inhuman stare.
The soulsong has become a mewling, pleading entreaty full of sorrow and loneliness.
‘Pathetic,’ he growls as he circles the pillars, his bolter levelled at the creature, his combat knife in the other hand. Spare ammunition and grenades salvaged from the others clank and scrape as he paces. ‘You make yourself pitiable? I am a Space Marine of the Dark Angels. I have no pity.’
The thing lashes out at him, materialising a tentacle of darkness about a golden thread that whips between the columns and strikes him on the shoulder. Its touch passes through his armour, leaving a burning welt inside the flesh and bone, a gnawing pain that is as much psychic as physical.
He staggers backwards, the agony in his hearts as much as his shoulder, as though his body is suffused with the manifested disappointment and hurt of a spurned child. Swallowing hard, he ducks the next lashing blow, but is not swift enough to avoid a third, which coils about his leg for an instant before evaporating, sending the chill of abandonment and scything wasp stings coursing through his mind and body.
A glancing touch from another tendril caresses his throat, robbing him of his voice. He spits and coughs even as anxiety and an overwhelming need for approval swamp his thoughts. He thinks of his superiors, of the Lion and the Emperor, and knows shame at the thought that he will fail them. The pressure is almost too much, the weight of expectation of ten millennia of Dark Angels ranged upon his shoulders. He is unworthy of the title, dishonouring the name of the Chapter.
But it is surrender to the xenos that would be failure – all other fates, even death, are acceptable.
That shame hardens into anger; the warp-induced despair becomes hatred. The creature has been luring him closer, herding him nearer and nearer to the columns with its lashing blows as though steering a yoked beast with flicks of a whip.
He looks around the chamber and sees the pillars pulsing, flaring into life each time a shadowy appendage passes between them. The floor and ceiling are marked with more crystalline shapes, half-seen but faintly gleaming.
‘This is not your lair,’ he snarls through a fresh surge of pain when another questing tendril slides through his gut. ‘It is your prison! Someone brought you here, wanted to use you, and you killed them. You want to be free? Not here, not in my world. You’ll feed on no more of the Emperor’s servants.’
He opens fire and bolts blaze into the shadow-beast. It reels and squirms, throws more flailing tentacles towards him. He meets them with the edge of the knife, slashing through insubstantial limbs.
The voice of Master Batheus roars in his thoughts, commanding him to lay down his weapons. He hesitates for an instant on instinct, a moment in which the creature renews its assault, leaving lacerations across his cheek and temple with another whip-crack blow.
Having emptied his bolter, he thrusts home another magazine. He fires again, knowing that his shots have little effect. He continues to shoot; the act of fighting invigorates him, gives him purpose and muscle-memory focus even as the warp-beast’s lamentations and urgings drag at his thoughts and try to force his surrender.
Rolling beneath a pair of lashing whips of darkness, his attention is again drawn to the pillars. Where his gaze passes close to one of the stone columns it seems he can see the creature more substantially. The stone is imbued with some peculiar quality, an aura that extends a distance from the surface through which he is looking at the creature’s real form.
He rolls again and fires, testing a theory. The bolt passes close to the pillar and disappears. A moment later a surge of anger and pain rolls out from the inner cave, slapping him aside like a fly, his armour cracking and clattering as he slams into the wall. Something in his leg snaps on landing. Even with the support of his armour and the pain-killing elixirs that flood his veins, he can barely stand.
A rapid succession of tentacles explode between the nearest two columns, striking him across the chest and face. It feels as though his hearts are being ripped out, his brain turning to hot embers at their touch.
‘Not enough,’ he says through gritted teeth. He limps through the next attack, thoughts fixed on the apparition within the pillars. ‘Not nearly enough!’
He reaches the closest column and half falls into it. Resting on one shoulder, shuddering as a tendril slides up and down and through the back of his leg, he pulls an explosive charge from his belt and drives it into the stone.
The assault stops.
In the discombobulating silence that follows, he almost forgets himself. So hard has he been concentrating on forcing back the creature’s thoughts, he almost opens himself up, like a pugilist that overextends and becomes unbalanced. Fresh whimpering and pleading course into his mind, seeking some image, some thought to latch onto that will stir his empathy and compassion.
He laughs and staggers to the next pillar with a fresh explosive in hand.
‘Find only my hate!’
Around the circle he continues, alternately assaulted and cajoled and tempted and caressed by the shadow monster. His leg feels shattered in a thousand places, his ribs a solid mass of pain, his hearts thundering lumps of solid stone in his chest.
He thrusts in the final explosive just as a new sensation sweeps into him, of brotherly concern, of a father’s stern admonishment.
The song becomes a bombastic insistence demanding that he stop, cursing his existence. A moment later warnings and worries assail him. The song is one of fraternal bond again, but it is a lament for both of their deaths and he understands what the creature intends. He looks again at the ceiling and sees the cracks in the rock, the whole chamber held up only by the pillars.
He knows then that he has won. He detonates the charges.
The whole world falls. As the rocks tumble, two pillars form an angle as more and more debris crashes down, spilling to either side in drifts of crushing rock. He throws himself between the toppling columns and slides to a halt beneath the furthest as it falls into its neighbour.
Amongst the tempest of tumbling mine workings he hears a drawn out roar of rage and frustration that eventually diminishes into the rumble of falling rocks.
Crouched between the crumbling pillars, he waits for the assault on his senses to end. For several minutes the ground shakes and the tumult continues, to the point that he wonders if it is not perhaps some fresh attack from the creature, that he has failed to despatch it back to the warp.
The space left is barely large enough for him to spread his elbows and he cannot stand. The throb from his leg is insistent. He welcomes it, the clarity of the pain, as he welcomes the silence in his thoughts.
He is alone.
There is no way out and the rest of the force from the Third Company has been killed by the miners or each other. He is the last and will probably die here, unremarked. It does not matter. He has done his duty, and if he is to perish in this lonely sarcophagus he is content with that.
He has no regrets.