Celestine - Andy Clark Read online

  ‘People,’ said Duty, sounding equally aghast.

  ‘There must be thousands of them,’ said Faith dully, head lolling as she stared through the lank hair of her fringe.

  Human shapes carpeted the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, apparently stuck fast in layers of thickened slime. Looking at those closest to her, Celestine saw that they all exhibited signs of decay and disease. Flesh crawled with fat buboes and dripping lesions. Parasites swarmed through lank hair that came away in clumps. Eyes stared blindly, yellowed with cataracts, while mouths full of rotted teeth and blackened gums opened to emit piteous moans of despair.

  ‘What new horror is this?’ asked Celestine. Duty only shook her head, while Faith gave a low moan alarmingly close to the sounds coming from the damned souls trapped in the tunnel.

  ‘Is that something moving down there?’ asked Duty, pointing with one of her brands. As she did, Celestine noted its fire was guttering, but her attention was caught by the suggestion of something stirring at the corridor’s far end.

  Something truly immense.

  ‘Whatever hewed this tunnel and created this hellish place draws near,’ Celestine said. ‘Here, then, is our test.’

  ‘Do you still feel the Emperor’s light, Saint?’ asked Duty, stifling a cough. Celestine glanced at her and saw that her sister was beginning to flag, much like Faith before her.

  ‘I do,’ she said. The sensation of candle-warmth still caressed her skin, feeling as though it shone down upon her brow like the fleeting warmth of a winter’s sun.

  ‘That is… that is good,’ said Duty, before her knees gave way and she pitched forwards. Celestine cursed as Duty slumped on hands and knees into the diseased sludge of the tunnel floor, carrying Faith down with her.

  Sheathing her blade, trying to ignore the huge form surging gradually closer along the tunnel, Celestine grabbed both of her sisters by their robes and dragged them to where the floor curved up into the nearest wall.

  Damned figures turned their blight-raddled faces towards her and gave pleading moans. Several raised shaking hands to grasp at her. Others waved rotted stumps in desperation. Celestine ignored them, though it pained her to do so. She had no desire to lean her sisters up against the slime-slick wall, but it was that or let them slip into the sludge and drown. She propped Faith and Duty beside one another, making sure they still had a grip upon their brands. They looked at her gratefully, doing what little they could to help.

  ‘Saint…’ tried Duty. ‘I… sorry…’

  ‘Hush, just do not let yourselves become like them,’ said Celestine. ‘I need you, both of you, if any of us is ever to escape this nether-hell alive. For now, I will stand in your defence.’

  So saying, Celestine took several paces back into the slime, looking for more level ground. She braced her feet and brandished her blade, trying to penetrate the murk to make out precisely what was flowing down the tunnel to meet her.

  It didn’t take long to resolve, and when it did, Celestine wished the creature had stayed hidden. What approached was an immense maggot, its pallid flesh bulging taut and undulating. Thousands of chitinous legs jutted from its mass and dragged it along the tunnel, sending bow waves of filth rolling before it and heedlessly crushing those damned souls unlucky enough to be ground over by its immense bulk. Cyst-like openings squirted sprays of slime with every motion, coating the walls and drizzling down to the floor below. A wave of indescribable stench flowed before the creature, so utterly foul that it made Celestine light-headed.

  Worst, though, was the thing’s face. At its front, the vast daemon maggot tapered, segments of chitinous armour gathering in overlapping waves around an immense maw. Several circular rows of fangs the size of battle tanks gnashed at her as the maggot got closer. Within, protruding from amidst a mass of pulsating red flesh like some obscene tongue, was a distinctly humanoid head the size of a boulder.

  Three eyes stared at her, bulging black orbs ringed red and dripping tears of pus. Cracked and rotted antlers protruded above them, while below was a leering mouth several feet wide, lined with razor fangs and set amidst quivering white jowls and chins.

  With a sound like a thousand sacks of offal being shaken together, the daemon maggot drew to a halt, looming over Celestine. She held her blade high, and it glinted in the half-light. Flies and stinking gases billowed around her, and the monster’s smile widened. Though it could have crushed her in an instant, Celestine was surprised as the maggot showed no signs of attacking.

  ‘Whatever you are, creature, you stand between me and the Emperor’s light,’ said Celestine.

  ‘Oh, little Saint,’ rumbled the maggot, bilious slime drizzling from its mouth as it spoke. ‘I am far too swollen to stand at all. Do you not clearly see my munificent magnificence?’

  ‘I see an abomination,’ said Celestine. ‘I see a foul daemon of the Chaos Gods, that I shall smite down with the Emperor’s wrath.’

  Even as she said it, Celestine knew how ridiculous a threat it was. The creature was several hundred feet in height and she had no way of telling how far back its revolting body stretched. Miles did not seem an unreasonable guess.

  ‘And how would you do that?’ asked the daemon in an affable tone, as though discussing an amusing hypothetical with a fractious child. ‘I mean you no disrespect, morsel, but you are so very tiny and, well…’ The maggot shook its huge body, causing the entire tunnel to shudder in sympathy. The groans of the damned grew to terrified wails. ‘I will devour you in a single bite,’ the monster roared, before breaking into a booming salvo of laughter that caused Celestine to stagger.

  ‘The Emperor will guide my blade,’ she said, desperately seeking any place that she could strike at this monster. Its face seemed an obvious target, yet even that was more than a hundred feet above her, beyond rings of cracked fangs and dripping, acidic slime.

  ‘If you only had your wings, eh, morsel?’ said the daemon as though reading her thoughts. It pouted its lips in a revolting moue of mock sadness. ‘But you don’t. Your sickly little sister cut them off, didn’t she? Oh the irony!’

  As the echoes of the daemon’s cheerful bellow rolled away, Celestine stared up at it. Perhaps if she could goad it closer…

  ‘If you are so powerful and I so weak, why do you hesitate?’ she asked. ‘Come and devour me, if I am but a morsel to you.’

  The daemon laughed again, sending ripples rolling down its slime-slick body.

  ‘I do not need to devour such a fragment as you. I wish only to enjoy discourse. You are going nowhere, little Saint.’

  Celestine stared defiantly up at the daemon. She stole a glance at her sisters and saw to her horror that blotches and rashes were creeping over their skin as the slime of the tunnel walls slowly sealed itself around their forms. Duty stirred weakly. Faith just lay, catatonic, as the slime lay claim upon her. Celestine looked back at the daemon, despising its knowing, somehow sympathetic smile.

  ‘Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it quickly,’ chuckled the daemon. ‘Yet what is there to do, little morsel? You cannot go back. Your Emperor expects you to go only forwards, always forwards. Yet here I am, the immovable obstacle that puts the lie to your irresistible force. You cannot help them. You can only watch them sicken into damnation. Entropy is a beautiful gift.’

  ‘I do not accept that,’ snarled Celestine. She took three running steps and launched herself at the daemon. She leapt high and brought her blade down in a whistling arc, slashing easily through pale maggot-flesh. She was immediately driven back as rancid fat and slime jetted out from the wound and splattered her from head to toe.

  She staggered, retching and spitting, coated in stinking filth. As she ground the slime from her eyes she heard the daemon laughing and saw the wound she had inflicted sucking slowly shut.

  ‘I felt not a thing, little morsel,’ mused the daemon. ‘But by all means keep hacking away. T
hat is, if you don’t mind drowning yourself. Grandfather Nurgle has been most generous to me. I am full to the brim with his magnanimity.’

  Celestine spat, a small part of her mind screaming in horror as she felt things wriggling through the slime that had coated her.

  ‘What do you want?’ she shouted, frustrated and furious.

  ‘I just wish for you to realise how damnably powerless you are,’ said the daemon, and to her horror Celestine was sure this time that it sounded truly sympathetic. ‘You follow your Emperor’s light, and a little faith, a little duty, these things are supposed to be enough to propel you along the path? The obstacles He expects you to overcome. The horrors you must face, the hardships you must endure, and for what?’

  Again, the image of the girl’s face flashed into Celestine’s mind, but as she looked up at the immovable cliff of diseased flesh looming over her she felt despair threaten.

  ‘Oh, I know, how can you ever reach her with me in the way?’ asked the maggot. ‘Poor little child, lost and alone in the realm of the gods, and you powerless to help her. I don’t suppose she’ll last long, if she’s even made it this far.’ The daemon shook its head sorrowfully.

  Celestine’s mind raced, but she could not see any way out.

  ‘Your sisters sicken. There are minutes, at most, until they are beyond your aid,’ said the daemon. ‘You are thinking that you could perhaps flee, drag them with you and find another route. But you know that wouldn’t work. You are tired, Celestine. Even your despotic Emperor knows you’ll never make it.’

  Celestine felt the truth of the daemon’s words as every ache and pain that she had shut away surged back to the surface. Her knees wobbled for a moment. Her grip almost faltered upon her blade.

  ‘I do not wish to eat you, little morsel, but…’ The daemon seemed to consider for a moment. ‘Perhaps it would be kindest? You have failed them, after all.’ In that moment Celestine knew that the daemon meant not only her sisters, not only the mysterious girl to whom she felt such a strange, wordless bond. Not even the Emperor. She stared along the corridor at the countless human souls, trapped in despair. Had they all died because of her?

  ‘If only you had ended the war as you said you would,’ sighed the daemon. ‘But I understand. You are one woman and it is such a vast galaxy. You have more chance of heaving my bulk aside single-handed than you have of extinguishing the fires of war that swallow the stars.’

  Celestine felt doubt gnawing its way into her heart. Mucal filth had all but claimed her sisters now; they had begun to resemble the other damned souls trapped in this terrible place. What could one person do against such overwhelming horror, she thought. Her faith in the Emperor had brought no aid that she could see. Her duty was clear to her, but it was too big for her alone, surely.

  ‘I cannot…’ she whispered as a moment of weakness shook her and her exhaustion returned a thousandfold. ‘I just… cannot…’

  Then she looked up into the daemon’s eyes and saw the hunger there, the avaricious leer of a miser about to gather up another armload of coin. She thought about the girl, lost and alone in a land of monsters such as these. She felt a moment’s self-loathing at her own weakness but saw that in turn for the trap it was. No, she didn’t hate herself for all of this. She hated the daemons that tormented her, and her sisters, and all the other humans that they treated as little more than playthings, soul-currency to be gathered up as a dragon hoards gold.

  ‘You desire me to surrender. To relent,’ spat Celestine, standing straighter. ‘You want me to give up because you know that the only way you will ever stop me fighting is if I lay down my blade of my own volition,’ she said, raising her sword before her again. She felt righteous anger well within her, white hot fury that this revolting mound of offal had so nearly manipulated her into giving in.

  ‘What is there to fight for?’ asked the daemon, its tone mocking. ‘An Emperor that doesn’t care about you? A species of pitiful, selfish beings who know little of your sacrifices for them and care even less? They have all given up already, Celestine, and that makes them wiser than you!’

  Revolting spittle sprayed Celestine as the daemon bellowed, and its rotten stench redoubled in foulness. She ignored both.

  ‘And whose word do I have for that, daemon?’ spat Celestine, standing firm against its ground-quaking bellow. ‘Ever since I awoke in this place, filth like you have been trying to convince me that my task is thankless, endless, doomed. But that begs the question, why would the daemons of this realm keep trying to convince me of such a thing, unless it were a lie designed to rob my strength and steal my will? Unless, in fact, I stand tall in the love and light of the Emperor, a blade in the hand of the entire human race?’

  Celestine’s voice rose to a shout, and as it did a golden halo leapt into being at her brow. She felt a magnificent unfurling between her shoulders as golden wings grew once more from her shoulder blades and stretched out behind her.

  ‘You are nothing!’ roared the daemon, all hint of its former, solicitous tone drowned in a tide of anger and contempt. ‘Who are you to stand against the storm of the primordial annihilator?’

  ‘I am Saint Celestine of Terra, you sack of rancid filth, and until my last breath I will defy you and the vermin-gods you serve!’

  Celestine leapt, her wings beating powerfully and carrying her towards the daemon maggot’s head. At the same time, golden radiance surged from her like a newborn star, flooding the tunnel and causing the daemon to recoil with a roar of pain.

  ‘I name you the Worm of Doubt,’ cried Celestine, weaving around the thing’s huge fangs and lashing out with her blade. ‘And I strike you down for all of humanity!’

  Her blade bit home, lopping the daemon’s head from its fleshy neck in a single, clean cut. The head splashed into the slime, still bellowing in fury, and the monster’s body surged forwards, attempting to crush or devour Celestine. Yet where her radiance shone along the passageway the worm’s thousands of victims were stirring and gasping, their ailments sloughing away and their strength returning. Thousands of faces twisted in sudden anger as they realised that the worm had fed upon their despair and trapped them within its foul larder. Thousands of hands reached out to snatch at the daemon’s rancid flanks, to punch and tear. Warriors drew blades no longer crumbling to rust. Soldiers swung firearms to bear that until moments earlier had been nothing but ancient junk.

  The Worm of Doubt writhed as its viscous hide was punctured from thousands of points at once. Celestine felt the blazing heat of flames at her back as Faith and Duty soared up to join her and pour their fire into the ragged stump of the daemon’s neck.

  ‘My thanks, Saint,’ said Duty.

  ‘I am sorry that we failed you,’ said Faith.

  ‘You have never failed me,’ replied Celestine. ‘Let us finish this together.’

  With that, they lunged at the daemon as its victims tore at it from every side. Half drowned in its own filth, the worm’s head continued to rant and rave, but its howls became piteous wails of agony as more and more of its fleshy body was torn and blasted. The immense maggot writhed, its limbs lashing out to tear its victims apart by the dozen. It crushed more into paste against the tunnel walls, and snapped at Celestine, Faith and Duty with its huge maw.

  They wove easily aside from its clumsy attacks, three angels striking again and again with fire and blade. The light of the Emperor shone from them all, with the radiance of a furious star that burned deep into the daemon’s flesh and reduced swathes of its flesh to cracked black ash.

  Wailing in agony, the daemon jack-knifed its huge body. Its immense forequarters slammed against the tunnel roof once, twice, thrice. On the fourth impact the crystal cracked and shattered. By the sixth, jagged cracks raced along the tunnel and shards of crystal rained down to puncture the vast, revolting maggot. At the eighth thunderous blow, the tunnel’s ceiling sundered altogether, and the entire spa
ce caved in with a shattering roar like a billion mirrors breaking.

  Daylight showed through the shattered mass.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Faith as crystal shards rained around them. ‘Before we are crushed!’

  ‘What of the daemon’s victims?’ cried Duty.

  ‘They have already earned their freedom from this damnation,’ said Celestine with warm certainty. ‘They are victims of despair no longer, and in death their souls will fly free to join with the Emperor’s light. We must follow them.’

  Her sisters needed no further urging. The three angels beat their wings and surged upwards through the jagged rain of crystal shards, leaving the Worm of Doubt to be crushed by the devastation of its own death throes.

  Above, golden light blossomed, and warmth bathed Celestine’s face.

  ‘The light of the Emperor!’ she cried, and drove upwards through the last of the crystal rain into the golden skies beyond.

  415TH DAY OF THE WAR – 1840 HOURS

  IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN

  TWO MILES FROM THE WALLS OF SHAMBACH – LO:801-1/LA:631-3

  Blaskaine woke to the sway of the Taurox crossing rough ground. The familiar smell of unwashed bodies in a close metal box invaded his nostrils. The sounds of the engine rumbling and his command staff talking into vox headsets reached his ears. It was comforting, somehow.

  ‘Wa–’ Blaskaine croaked, before a coughing fit seized him and doubled him over. At least, it tried to, but he found his movements restricted. He opened his eyes to see Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt and a regimental medicae leaning over him, looking both pleased and concerned.

  ‘Thank the Emperor!’ said Kasyrgeldt, hastening to undo the straps that Blaskaine realised were binding him to one of the Taurox’s bench seats.

  ‘Careful when you sit up, major,’ said the gruff medicae. ‘You’re still on the mend. Sir.’