Writober Day 1: From Beneath the Bed
Halloween Art Gauntlet
They stopped following him.
Thevan didn’t lose them. Their howling was still loud and eagerly baying for his blood. But he could sense their frustration and rage at being denied their prey. But beneath it, fueling it, he sensed…fear.
Fear? That didn’t make any sense. He was in the pack’s territory, the seat of their strength where none would dare stand against them. The only possible explanation could be that he had blundered into the domain of someone or something that even the Wulfen couldn’t overcome.
Thevan ducked into a room to catch his breath and regain his bearings. Half of the floor here was missing, allowing him a glimpse into a cavernous chamber roughly carved out from the manufactorium block.
The sight that greeted him gave him pause. Laying supine on the ground many dozens of stories below was the wreckage of an Imperial Knight. Numerous rents and tears in its armor revealed the cause of its demise, though Thevan couldn’t identify what weapons inflicted such damage. More disturbing were glimpses of what looked like dead and rotting flesh within the torn metal, as though he was gazing upon the resting place of a slain, armored giant and not a machine of war.
As Thevan’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that the rubble the Knight lay upon was not stone and metal, but bones and fur pelts. Lots of pelts, all in varying stages of decay. Was this a sacred site for the Wulfen? Or the lair of something that hunted them for their skins?
Either way, Thevan did not want to linger here lest he be encircled by the Wulfen or cornered by whatever dwelled here. He opened his awareness, and the Outcast strained her senses for any psychic signatures within this Emperor-forsaken place.
Just as she suspected, the Wulfen were attempting to lay ambushes at the most likely escape routes, but a faint presence brushed her mind, one that was unmistakable: a shard of the World Spirit. Somewhere, below the crude metal giant, was an anchor of the moon’s soul, and, by extension, those of her kin. How it survived this long, she could only guess, but she could not simply pass it by, not while she had an opportunity to tie it back to the shattered World Spirit’s other fragments.
But despite her conviction, the Outcast couldn’t help but notice that besides the World Spirit anchor and the Wulfen, she could sense nothing else. It’s never this easy, the Lamenter thought grimly.
Thevan carefully and quietly climbed down the ruined floors of the manufactorium, wincing at every tiny bit of debris that fell loose into the chamber, the quiet crumbling clanging loudly to his ears. No other sound or movement could be detected in the chamber, but he refused to hope that he was alone or undetected by whatever lurked within.
Bolt pistol and Eldar chainsword were already in hand the moment his feet touched the floor of the cavern. Up close, the ruined armor of the Knight and its macabre barrow loomed over him, its imposing presence second only to the terrible stench of death and decay. Thevan was nearly overcome by nausea before he summoned the will to filter out the overpowering reek from his senses. He quietly picked his way around the cairn, not certain what he was looking for save that the faint signature of the anchor seemed to lay somewhere within and below the mound.
He soon found his solution, though he found himself loathe to continue. There was a narrow tunnel just barely wide enough for him to walk through without stooping in the side of the pile of bones and flayed skins. Despite the crude, gruesome materials, it seemed to be stable enough for him to safely enter, but it begged the question of who built it. Thevan took some solace in the fact that whatever monstrosity lurked within, it couldn’t be all that much larger than he was. With a whispered prayer to the God-Emperor for guidance and protection, he entered the tunnel.
It was only thanks to his finely-honed sense of direction that he was somehow able to keep his bearings within the labyrinth of bone and molding flesh, though it was sorely tested. With the anchor acting as his only frame of reference, he was forced to press forward blindly, circling around on himself and doubling back multiple times. The time he was spending wasn’t what worried him, for he could operate for weeks without rest if he had to. But the utter silence of the winding ossuary save for the dripping of putrid fluids and the soft crunch of bones beneath his boots disturbed him the most. If there was anything lurking here, it had to know of his presence by now. The thought only made him advance all the more slowly in the near-total darkness, lest he blunder right into an ambush. Every now and then he could have sworn he saw something scuttling just out of sight or heard the shuffling of bones off in the distance, but then it was gone. Thevan hoped that he wasn’t losing his grip on his sanity. He had been trained far too well to be cowed by fear and paranoia now, not after the horrors he had witnessed before.
Wait. The Outcast paused, extending her senses out as far as she could. There. She turned towards a wall, the arrhythmic hum of the anchor radiating faintly from behind it. It was close, so close. Did this tunnel even go towards it? Did she have to backtrack several kilometers just to get to it? Was the anchor just simply buried? She couldn’t stand it, the tension, the uncertainty. Stowing his pistol and sword, Thevan began digging, quietly at first, but then with increasing urgency, no longer caring if anything heard him or not. If any abominations lurked here, let them come! At least he will then finally face his tormentor and put his fears to death.
Thevan ripped out half a skeleton before he was blinded by a bright flash of psychic energy. When his mind finally adjusted to its glare, he nearly cried out in joy. Visible through a gap in the wall of bones was the roughly hewn surface of a menhir, the anchor of the World Spirit. Without another moment of hesitation, he pulled off his glove and placed his bare hand against the cool crystalline surface.
Waves of pain, confusion, and anguish nearly overwhelmed the Outcast, forcing her to summon all of her psychic prowess just to keep her feet. The fragment of the World Spirit within lunged at her, clinging to her for some measure of hope and stability. Her knees gave out, yet she somehow managed to keep her hand against the menhir, unwilling to break contact. Fear not, she told the wounded shard, I shall show you the way. Ignoring the sharp bones poking at her flesh - no, only borrowed, you will do well to remember that - and the foul fluids dripping down around her, the Outcast reached out with her will, dancing around the numerous slavering predators marauding just on the other side of the veil of reality, leaving them no trace of her passage. Finally, she found the other shards of the World Spirit, loosely bound together like children holding together in the dark.
Come, join your kin. She felt energized just by the mental touch of the others, almost too much for her mortal vessel to bear, but she let it suffer only enough to join the lost fragment to the rest, letting her consciousness take the brunt of the overwhelming emotions and power contained within. Though once sundered, let this joining now hold together, if only just enough to finish our great work upon this blighted world.
Thevan regained consciousness in an instant. The nauseating smell of burning flesh was still hot and fresh in his nostrils, the searing pain on his palm intruding upon his awareness. This was good, as it meant he was only unconscious for but a moment. He silently recited a litany of strength, willing the pain to the back of his mind. This anchor is once again joined to the whole, he told himself. Now to get out of this particular piece of hell.
After checking himself and his wargear one last time, he began retracing his steps as best as his memory would allow. He had barely traveled a kilometer before he stopped, straining his senses against the darkness. A scraping of bone, growing practically deafening after the long, maddening silence, coming seemingly from all directions at once. An earthquake?
No, the denizens finally hunger, he grimly realized. Tightening his grip on his weapons, he started running, the time for stealth now long past.
He saw it after he turned a corner into a long straightaway. In the light of his stab-lumen, a Space Wolf in power armor crawled on his belly towards him with unnatural speed. Thevan immediately knew it was no longer among the Emperor’s worthy when he saw the twin chainblades protruding from the helmet’s vox grill and a second pair of armored arms pulling it over the bone-covered floor. Taking aim at the monstrosity, Thevan fired his bolt pistol repeatedly, most of the rounds deflected into the walls, but a lucky shot pierced one of the cracked visor lenses. The side of the helmet blew out in an explosion of gore, but still the abomination kept advancing. It lunged at him with its chainblade mandibles, very nearly succeeding in impaling him as he managed to parry them to the side.
Thevan shoved the muzzle of the bolt pistol into the remaining lens and fired the last couple of rounds into its skull. As it reeled from the exploding bolts, Thevan thrust the quietly-whirring Eldar chainsword right into the bloody mess, twisting it and ripping it free.
His eyes did not leave the now-still body as he reloaded his pistol, waiting for it to show any sign that it still lived. He could now see that it had not just two pairs of arms, but many, with several breastplates of Astartes armor stacked one on top of the other in a gruesome chain all the way down the tunnel. Just how many Space Wolves and Traitorous Astartes comprised this horror, Thevan did not want to even contemplate. After firing a couple more bolt shells into the remnants of its neck for good measure, he ran down the tunnel on the back of the monster.
He did not make it very far when the macabre chain of corpses began to violently shake, nearly throwing him off his feet. He turned and saw the bloody end of the monster rise up, its arms ripping off the first two segments and revealing another chainblade-fanged head. Thevan leveled his pistol again, but the cracking of ceramite and bone filled the tunnel and several arms reached around at sickening angles, grabbing him and holding him fast. He lashed out with his chainsword and pistol, but for each one hacked off or blasted apart, several more were there to take their place.
Thevan chanced a glance up, and the new head of the monster was nearly upon him after crawling along the ceiling of the tunnel. He raised his sword to block the coming lunge, but the arms grappling him threw him off balance. The monster struck, burying its bladed fangs deep into his chest, their serrated edges tearing through bone and organs with ease.
As his body lost sensation and the pain rapidly disappeared into a cold numbness, Thevan’s silent cry of pain settled into an annoyed grimace.
Will this finally be the end at last? the Outcast wondered wryly.
With my luck, doubtful, the Lamenter replied.
