ended in glittering blades, or had sharp ridges of bone running down their craniums.
A pair of Rhakaeth’s grotesques guarded the door to the haemonculus’s chambers: his altered
ones, his companions, his twisted cortege; his more successful experiments. These eldar had come
to the haemonculus willingly, desperate to experience new and varied sensations, and they had
begged and backstabbed their way into Rhakaeth’s favour in order to feel the touch of his razors.
One of the grotesques stood taller even than Drazjaer. Hundreds of quill-like spines had been
surgically inserted into his flesh, running down his spine and across the backs of his arms. His
mouth had been cut into a new form, a vertical slash bisecting his horizontal lips, and additional
musculature added so that when it opened, its four corners peeled back independently. The
abomination’s eyes were those of some serpentine, alien species, and a dual pair of eyelids blinked
as the grotesque looked towards the approaching dracon and his incubi. Its quills stood on end and
began to shiver noisily. More spines flicked from within his forearms, and others slid forwards from
the base of its palms.
The second of Rhakaeth’s guards, a female eldar, was completely naked, though her flesh was
covered in small metallic blue scales that shimmered and turned a dusky red as Drazjaer drew near.
Her luscious, ruby lips parted and a forked tongue, pierced in a dozen places with metal studs,
flicked out past sharpened teeth. The fingers of her left hand had been replaced with long knives,
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and parts of her body—and her companion’s—bore scars and fresh wounds that had clearly been the
result of her caresses.
Neither of the altered eldar warriors bore weapons, their enhanced bodies their instruments of
death.
The incubi at Drazjaer’s side levelled their glaives at the pair, and runes flickered with witchlight
upon the blasters built into their sweeping tormentor helms. The potent weapons were neurally
linked to the incubi’s brain waves, and could be fired with a mere thought, leaving the warrior’s
hands free to wield their punisher glaives.
The grotesques hissed at the powerfully armoured incubi, the female creature flexing her fingers,
and her male counterpart turning his upturned hands towards them. Drazjaer had seen that one fight
before. It was capable of firing the spines from its palms, and the merest scratch of one of the quills
would cause a slow and painful death. The haemonculus Rhakaeth had been particularly proud of
that creation.
Drazjaer waved them aside with a languid, dismissive motion, and the pair of grotesques backed
away from the portal, still hissing at the incubi.
“Stay here,” Drazjaer said to his bodyguards, in his soft, dangerous voice. The incubi bowed
their helmeted heads in respect of his wishes and stood to attention, taking up a position opposite the
grotesque bodyguards, the ruby-red crystal lenses, hiding their eyes, glittering menacingly.
Drazjaer strode into Rhakaeth’s chambers, the bladed arcs of the door slicing closed behind him,
and gazed around.
He avoided the haemonculus’s private chambers whenever possible, and it had been some years
since he had last set foot in this part of his ship.
The only light within the room was a dull, pulsing glow that emanated from the floor and
ceiling, throbbing like the beat of Khaine’s heart; Rhakaeth’s eyes were particularly sensitive to
bright lights. The walls of the circular chamber were smooth and the colour of dried blood and
bladed stands atop which was spread a veritable cornucopia of curios and torturous implements
hovered above the floor.
There was no obvious order to the mess of objects strewn across the levitating stands. The
hollowed skulls of eldar, carved with runes, lay alongside blades covered in rust-like flecks of dried
blood, jars filled with blinking organic creatures that squirmed within their confinement, and
decomposing severed limbs and organs left to rot.
Drazjaer moved to one of the hovering stands and lifted up a cube the size of a child’s skull. Its
sides were covered in stretched, flayed eldar skin, and as he held it, faces began to push from within,
straining to escape. They opened their mouths wide in silent cries of torment.
“That was a gift to me from my old master,” said a hollow voice, and Drazjaer turned to see his
haemonculus, Rhakaeth, ghost into the room, his impossibly thin, skeletal frame seeming to glide
across the floor. Blood was splashed across one emaciated cheek, shockingly bright on his
monotone countenance.
The haemonculus folded his wasted arms across his chest, skeletal fingers covered in blood
scratching idly at the emaciated flesh of his upper arms.
“Before you killed him?” asked Drazjaer.
“Indeed. It is a crucible. The soul-spirits of an entire seer-council of our brothers of Ulthwe are
housed within it,” said Rhakaeth.
“It’s very nice,” said Drazjaer, placing the cube back upon the hovering stand.
“But you did not come here to admire my collection,” said the haemonculus, “you came here to
pay witness to my work. Please, my lord, come through.”
Drazjaer followed him through to a side room and gazed upon the two bloodied bodies that were
held aloft by a multi-legged mechanism, their limbs pierced by the blade-arms of the machine.
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The two figures were immense, as tall as eldar, but easily three times the weight, their bodies
bulked out with thick slabs of muscle. Blood was everywhere in the circular room. It had sprayed
across the walls and ceiling, was pooling on the floor, and covered the bodies and the mechanical
arms that pinned them in place.
The dark red armour plates of the mon-keigh were scattered across the floor. Drazjaer moved
one of them with his foot. It was heavy and inflexible, a brutal and crude form of armour for a brutal
and crude race.
Returning his gaze to the two human bodies impaled upon the bladed arms of the mechanical
apparatus that held them, Drazjaer saw that one of them was clearly lifeless, and anger blossomed
within him. What good were they to him if they were dead?
As if feeling his master’s anger bloom, Rhakaeth stepped away from the dracon, putting the
bodies between them. The eyes of the still living human flicked towards the dracon, fires of rage in
his lidless orbs. The man’s flesh had been stripped from his body, and his chest cavity was open to
the air, organs pulsing within.
“My lord dracon—” Rhakaeth began in his deep, hollow voice, but Drazjaer cut him off.
“I told you to keep them alive,” the dracon said, his voice low and deadly.
“This one did not die as a result of my ministrations, my lord dracon,” said Rhakaeth. “The
mandrake, Ja’harael, delivered it half-dead. It was all that I could do to keep it alive for as long as I
did.”
“Ja’harael. It’s all Ja’harael’s fault,” said Drazjaer, sneering. “I’ve heard that before, from the
snivelling sybarite rotting in your cells. I do not wish to hear any of your excuses, haemonculus.”
“Whether you wish to hear me or not, my lord dracon, I speak the truth,” said the haemonculus,
his voice devoid of fear. Indeed, Drazjaer had rarely heard any emotion in his servant’s voice.
“And this one?” asked Drazjaer, leaning over the massive form of the still living human
creature. It pulled at its restraints, massive muscles bulging as it stared at him in hatred. The dracon
was unmoved, and peered with interest inside the figure’s exposed torso.
“Living, and strong, my lord dracon. The potency of its soul-essence is worth a hundred, a
thousand of the lesser mon-keigh breed.”
Drazjaer licked his thin lips. He had already gathered almost ten thousand souls for his lord and
master, the dark lord Asdrubael Vect, but this did not yet meet the extortionate tribute the high lord
of the Black Heart cabal had demanded of his vassal.
When Vect had butchered the cabal leaders of the Bleeding Talons, the Vipers and the Void
Serpents in one dark night, Drazjaer had been cast adrift, vulnerable, now that his lord had been
slaughtered in the murderous plot. He had been forced to kneel before Asdrubael Vect in chains, and
had been asked if he would submit to his rule, if he would join the Black Heart. Only once he had
sworn his warriors to the Black Heart over the soulfires of Gaggamel did Vect lay down his terms.
Drazjaer’s time was running short. The Great Devourer hive fleet would overrun the system
within the day, and his harvest would be over, his tribute not yet fulfilled. There was no running
from Asdrubael Vect. No matter where Drazjaer went, no matter how far from Commoragh he fled,
Vect would find him.
However, if he could gather more of these enhanced mon-keigh, these Space Marines, he mighty
yet gain Vect’s favour. Perhaps the dark lord would even raise him to the exalted status of archon, in
command of an entire slave fleet.
“Their physical makeup is interesting,” the haemonculus was saying, “clearly the result of geneconditioning
and surgical enhancement. It is offensively crude work, with little subtlety or grace, but
I feel that I could harvest their organs to create a superior blend of eldar warrior.”
Drazjaer barely heard the sibilant hiss of Rhakaeth’s voice, lost in his own thoughts of greed and
desire.
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“Do whatever pleases you, Rhakaeth,” he said. “Just see that that one does not die. I believe that
it is time to unleash Atherak and her wych cult upon the Imperial world.”
“The bitch’s arrogance knows no bounds,” said the haemonculus.
“Indeed,” agreed Drazjaer. “Let us see if her boastfulness is founded. Let us see if she can bring
back more than two of these mon-keigh.”
“I will look forward to working upon more of these,” said the Rhakaeth, indicating the pair of
altered humans strung up before him.
“Fine,” said Drazjaer, turning and striding from the haemonculus’s chambers.
Outside, his incubi were still eyeing up the grotesque guards, and a third warrior had joined
them, another of his sybarite captains.
“What is it?” asked Drazjaer.
“My lord dracon,” said the warrior, bowing. “The traitor returns.”
Solon Marcabus knew that the end was near. They were running low on food, down to the last
protein bar, and his strength was fading.
Dios seemed neither to tire nor despair, and he pressed on through the snow with grim
determination while Solon often lagged behind, and it was Dios who rubbed warmth into Solon’s
frostbitten fingers and toes whenever they set up camp.
He was determined to see Dios on a shuttle away from Perdus Skylla, and though he had never
been a pious man, Solon swore that he would devote his life to the Emperor if he only allowed the
boy to survive this nightmare. Dios would have a future somewhere, on some distant planet, far
from the threat of xenos incursions. Solon was fixated on the completion of what had become an
epic pilgrimage towards the Phorcys spaceport, and he would fight to his dying breath to see the boy
safely off-planet.
Dios could have the life that Solon’s son had been denied.
The ice crunched beneath his laboured steps. He could barely feel his arm, and though it was a
relief to be free of the throbbing pain of his wound, he knew that it was a bad sign.
He heard a sound like thunder rolling towards them, over the blinding gale, but he gave it little
thought; just more bad weather heading in their direction he thought grimly. He kept plodding along
through the snow, putting one foot in front of the other.
The sound got louder, and Dios cried out. Solon lifted his head to see the boy gesturing wildly
into the air.
A shuttle roared out of the banks of billowing snow and ice, flying low and fast through the
storm. It was hit with a blast of wind and dropped metres through the air as it was buffeted to the
side, and for a moment Solon thought it was going to crash, but the pilot compensated and the
shuttle righted itself, engines screaming. Solon waved his arms above his head, attempting vainly to
get the attention of the pilot, hoping and praying that the shuttle would stop. It passed low overhead,
blocking out all sounds of the wind, and Solon stared up in awe and amazement as the shuttle
screamed past, making the ground shudder with the power of its engines.
Then the shuttle was past them, its retro-burners blazing with blue flame. Solon whipped his
head around as the shuttle roared over their heads. He could feel the heat from the plasma-core
engines even through his exposure suit, and he relished the almost forgotten sensation. Stabiliser
burners fired on the underside of the shuttle, lifting it over an outcrop of ice.
Dios was standing, staring, his eyes filled with wonder as he watched the shuttle disappear once
more into the concealing storm.
Solon felt a sudden surge of hope. They had come for them! They had come looking for
survivors! He was certain that he had sensed the shuttle slowing down. The pilot must have seen
them!
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“Hurry, Dios!” he shouted, filled with a sudden surge of energy, and he set off in pursuit of the
shuttle, pounding through the snow and ice, his fatigue forgotten. They had come for them! They
must have picked up the blinking distress beacon in Solon’s exposure suit that he had activated as
soon as the raiders, the ones that Dios called the ghosts, had departed.
Dios was falling behind, and Solon paused to wait for the boy to catch up, his heart thumping.
Scooping the boy up in his arms, who whooped in excitement, Solon set off, pounding through the
snow, running madly towards where the shuttle had disappeared.
Reality hit home like a punch in the guts. No one would be coming back. The shuttle was
probably heading to Sholto guild to pick up rich merchants, or other high guilders of influence. No
one would be coming to find an orphan and a lowly crawler mule.
He slowed his pace, feeling suddenly exhausted, and dropped Dios back down to the ground.
The boy looked up at him in confusion. Solon avoided the boy’s eye contact, hanging his head and
putting his hands on his thighs, leaning forward as he strained to catch his breath.
Dios reached out to him, taking hold of his hand and urging him on. Solon angrily shook his
hand free. Again, the boy reached for him, and Solon swatted his hand away.
“It’s over, boy!” he shouted, suddenly enraged. “Don’t you get it? There is no salvation. No one
is coming to help us! We are going to die out here, and no one is going to know. No one is going to
