Heresy-Era Death Guard story

[GooseDaMoose]

Hey all, this is meant for the Tale of Twenty Writers project, but I thought I'd put it up on a seperate thread to get some feedback. Comments and criticism very welcome! ^_^

 

 

 

 

Finneac Morrhun shuddered in his trance. He was sitting on the floor of his chambers, with his legs crossed, and his arms twitching and tracing echoing movements through the air. Around him drifted ghostly whisps of a pale haze, flowing from censers placed around his room, thick as a fog near the floor, where it rolled around his legs. Even by enhanced Astartes standards he was large, but deathly pale, and with dark rings around his eyes. He looked gaunt, despite his genehanced musculature, especially in his trance as he sat bent over and moved his arms awkwardly, acting out phantom movements of ages past.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

It smells like home.

 

I’m standing on an embankment overlooking a vast wetland; an unending bog stretching well into the distance, with the occasional dike or bank of saturated moss and a sickly tree twisting upwards, as scum and rotting matter float still as corpses in the mud-stained waters. Down the embankment behind me, growing in the drained polder of an ancient swampland stands the only forest of any size left on Flyme, like a mourning procession, leaves drooping and the branches spreading and snaking like parasites around a leg. This close to the bog’s edge only a vanguard of trees dare creep, the strongest and most resilient of the twisting species of gangly trees that populate the marsh planet.

 

Building anything on the rotting surface of this world would have taken monumental and stubborn effort and dedication in the early days of the human colonization of Flyme, characteristics I can respect and even admire amongst the lowliest of the human race.

 

I would, had they shown any of these qualities, but society here was built on more rotten foundations than even these stinking wetlands.

 

Above me in the starry dusking skies hang massive, looming shapes, tear-shaped and suspended in mid-air. The Sky-Cities of Flyme. Clumped together like a flock of desperate children in the dark night, the huge floating swathes of earth and peat are held together by some invisible force and hanging, trailing dead plant material and huge roots as if reaching down, seeking to return to the earth beneath them from which they have been so unnaturally wrenched. I spit, the ground hissing at its corrosive touch, and stare at the hanging fortress north of me, the biggest in view. Even at this distance I can see the amber flicker of fires in the capital city and hear low, percussive booms, like a rolling thunder, reaching me seconds after the explosions flare up on the faraway muck citadel.

 

“Brother,” a voice crackles over the vox. I recognize it and replace my helmet, blink-clicking the affirmation rune, “the siege goes well,” it continues, “Lord Typhon has reached the inner courtyards of the citadel. Whatever sorcery is keeping these piles of mud floating is doing little to stop our advance.”

 

I grunt, a non-committal reply, knowing that the owner of the voice will ignore its dismissing tone.

 

“Brother, our victory is secured, do you find no joy in that?”

 

“Everything tastes bitter in this air, Moirae.”

 

The voice crackles again, coloured with impatience now, “ever the melancholist, Finn. Do you find no comfort in your revenge against that sorcerer?”

 

That word again, sorcerer, spoken with such scorn. As always, shame blossoms briefly, but, as always, I ignore it and swallow, and answer, “no.”

 

“He died honourably, brother, and his murderer died by your hands,” Moirae says, speaking softer now, “you’ve done him justice.” I don’t answer.

 

He sighs, “Graul was my friend too, Finneac, but such is our duty. Death is always near, but with us it lingers closer than with most; we are the weapons of the Emperor, and bring humanity’s illumination, but the brighter the light, the deeper the shadows, and Death shadows us like wraith-hounds.”

 

I snort, “ever the philosopher, Moirae,” and close the vox.

 

It is over. The muck citadel is in flames on the horizon and landing craft are taking off to return to orbit. As I watch, a final explosion rocks the sky-city and its hovering, unnatural foundations and it quavers, shuddering in the deepening dusk, silhouetted against the horizon as the sound wave hits me. My helmet’s aural dampeners immediately react to the overwhelming noise as the massive displacement of air ripples the water-logged land. By the time it reaches the wetlands below my embankment it has died down to gentle sloshing, upsetting and stirring the dead plants and rotting materials for the first time in years.

 

The sky is falling.

 

With the death of the world’s capital city, the spell which had suspended the sky-cities is broken, and the massive earth structures begin to fall, impossibly slow, back to the cold, wet embrace of their old homes. I watch as the world around me falls apart and dies an apocalyptic and shuddering death.

 

I close my eyes, and sigh.

 

The vox rune on my helm display blinks, “Lord Typhon.”

 

“Apothecary Morrhun,” the voice speaks, gruff and drawling, like a rake dragged across gravel, “Chief-Apothecary Horphon is dead. You are hereby promoted and transferred to the Terminus Est. Eth grahul nurg-ya.”

 

“I summon thee.”

 

I turn from the colossal jets of rotting water and biological matter raining filth and muck on a drowning world and walk towards my Stormraven.