Along the Cantor path

[Pavement Artist]

Hey folks.

 

For those of you familiar with the "Treacheries of the space marines" anthology released last year, you may recall the last BL submission window was to write a story based on the betusked chap on the front cover- an oracles of change terminator called Xaphan the faceless.

 

I made a go of entering and unfortunately, didn't make it any further with them. That being said, when the anthology was released, it seems as though they did away with any story involving him. Though perhaps the person they chose failed to deliver?

 

This is the 1,000 word excerpt i submitted. It's been posted in the thousand sons sub forum but i wanted to post it here to get a greater feedback. Comments and criticism as always are welcome:

 

 

Along the Cantor path” Excerpt

 

They found him amongst the ruins of the basilica. A heretic sprawled amidst the last burning remnants of the planet's cult. He was still amongst the broken spars that clawed at the sky like desperate, grasping fingers. His chest rose and fell convulsively as his massively armoured form twitched and juddered amongst the shattered masonry. The squad halted a short distance away, forming a rough crescent as they peered down into the deeply impacted crater that now encircled the ruins of the church.

They were armoured the same as the fallen warrior, the deep red plate of their tactical dreadnought armour thrumming with barely restrained power. Racks of dark iron spikes were set into the shoulders, upon which sat skewered helms of fallen foes, some human, others far more alien in form.

One of the warriors broke rank, stepping down into the ruins of the basilica, the yellow helmed head of an Imperial Astartes Legionnaire bobbing on his shoulders spikes like a grim pennant. The heavy tread of his boots crunched the vitrified earth underfoot, grinding the heat blasted remnants of the city into a fine powder, as he descended down the slope of the crater.

Kneeling before his fallen brother, he set aside his blade, bringing his hand up to his neck, digging his fingers underneath the collar of his helmet. With a sibilant hiss, the seals disengaged and he pulled the helm free, setting it down on the shattered rockrete beneath him.

Methusulus was his name and to his brothers of the Oracles of Change, he was known as the Huldraflesh by way of respect to his chosen occult discipline. Methusulus was a flesh shaper, the myriad tattoos etched into his pale flesh were made by inks, who’s pigments had been bathed in the wan light of the great ocean.

The patterns on his hairless head, roiled and shifted, constantly in motion as they flowed, liquid like over the contours of his face. His pitch black pupils swept over his fallen brother, his brow creasing as he stretched a hand to touch the warrior's pauldron. His fingers hovered mere inches above the ceramite as he knelt, observing the shuddering form beneath him. After an eternity, he spoke.

 

“Wake, Xaphan” said Methusulus, his voice gentle, in spite of the horrific stature of his form. His alien accent colouring the softly spoken words with a vague sense of menace, the syllables ghosting from his lips like an outrush of air from an opened coffin.

As if the Huldraflesh's words broke some curse, the warrior known as Xaphan, gave out a terrible scream, his body jolting upwards suddenly. Methusulus rose to his feet, the tattoos on his face swirling and roiling over his flesh, tempests of worry sweeping across his furrowed brow, as he took a single step back from his brother.

Xaphan's massive armoured form snapped taut, his back arching upwards as if gripped by some sort of fit or seizure. He let out another pain scream, the metallic roar splitting the still air.

He screamed and carried on screaming until Methusulus could scarce believe that a man should have breath to scream any longer, even one who had achieved apotheosis such as they had. After an age, Xaphan fell silent, his body growing taut with one last spasm of agony, and then, as if he were a marionette who's strings were cut- he fell back to the ground with a crash of shattering rockrete.

Rolling his bulk onto his knees, Xaphan held himself up with shuddering arms- the servos in his armour whining in protest as they struggled to compensate for the failings of his biological self.

His body was racked with explosive convulsions as he began to choke. He dug his fingers into the ground as he spluttered, the gauntleted fingers digging furrows into the stone, before coughing out a gobbet of dark vitae and then slumping forwards, becoming still.

He paused, long ropes of blood and saliva hanging from the grille of his helm, dangling just above the ground before detaching and splashing onto the shattered stone.

With the slow deliberate effort of someone who has not used their muscles in an age, he lifted his hand to the neck seal of his helm, his limbs shaking as his enhanced physiology chased pain killing narcotics around his system. With a hiss of outrushing gas, he pulled the helm free.

He turned his bare face upon his brothers. To their credit, not one of them flinched.

 

Brother Xaphan bore the epithet of The Faceless. Unlike his brethren in the Oracles of Change, the name was not one that he had chosen upon ascendancy into one of the warband's covens, like Methusulus' honoured title.

It was spoken as half an honorary and a mocking insult amongst his brothers. He had been christened upon the world of Marak, a wretched splinter of Imperial industry. His warband had been engaged in a brief raiding action, teleporting in with his Tactical dreadnought armoured brethren to seize supplies from the vast honeycombed network of mine shafts that were laced through the planet's surface.

The planet was without a standing garrison of imperial soldiers and the legions of mine workers were overwhelmed by the swift brutality of the assault.

Of course there had been some resistance. It was an age old truth that man would fight to defend his family and livelihood, even in the face of certain, horrific death. Never mind that they were towering monsters, warriors out of a half hidden nightmare suddenly made into flesh, some chose to fight.

Xaphan had been cleansing one of the deeper shafts when they came upon a pocket of half a dozen workers. They stood breathless and filthy in the gloom, their dead eyes glimmering with a faint spark of defiance.

The guns of his brothers had called out, appallingly loud in the confined space. The workers had simply burst as the bolter shells tore into them, sending up heavy blooms of crimson as they jerked backwards.

One had remained, shaking amongst the shredded remains of his colleagues. His mind quite broken by the atrocities he had witnessed, the miner had let out an inhuman howl of anguish and ran towards the murderers.

Xaphan could picture the moment with crystal clarity, still sensing the barely perceptible weight of his axe as it bit into the worker, the disruption field wreathing it's blade, sliding effortlessly into flesh.

Even as he split in two, the miner had lashed out with his melta torch. A hefty, crude implement. The device was used chiefly in commercial mining operations, particularly in areas where the bedrock was prone to instability. The melta allowed deep insertions to be made in the earth without risking undue vibrational upheaval.

The Mechanicum of man often made use of super scale earth movers upon which were mounted torches the size of hab blocks. The device the man bore was much smaller, though still quite heavily weighted. He could recall the strain in the miner's face as he brought the torch over his head in a wide arc. A barely perceptible heat haze rippled from the mouth of the torch, distorting the air as the bisected worker brought the tool down on Xaphan's face.

 

The pain was phenomenal. Since his apotheosis, he had been told his body had been engineered above the concept of physical hurt, the warband's apothecaries had crafted his form so that it transcended mortal man's. In that brief moment of white hot fire, he recognised the lie behind those words.

He could still remember the sickening sensation of his flesh running molten liquid, feeling it slough off in thick sizzling gobbets as it fell to the cavern floor.

 

The apothecarium had done what they could to salvage his face but in truth the ruin was absolute. Brother Sind had set the skin and preserved as many of the nerve endings as he could, but even so he advised that a bionic reconstruction would be the only viable option.

Xaphan had refused, greatly vexing the brother apothecary who could not coax the reason from his fallen comrade. A crude solution was reached, the ruined skin of his face was augmented with heavy coats of synth-flesh, moulded as best as could be, to suit the contours of his own face.

The effect was grotesque. The torch had robbed all distinguishing features from him and so it seemed as though the organic and synthetic flesh alike was simply stretched taut over a shapeless skull. In places the scar tissue had hardened, becoming Keloidal, giving his flesh a disgusting glossy sheen.

Such was the way with the Oracles, they attributed every facet of their existence to the tides of fate and were constantly searching for the esoteric symbolism in their existence.

It had been young Anwar who had first christened him as The Faceless. Relatively new to the cult, he had seen in his brother's maiming a sort of providence. Their God was one of change- mutability and the devout Anwar felt that their deity's hand had fallen upon Brother Xaphan, And so out of fire and white hot agony, he had been reborn.

 

Xaphan stood on trembling legs as he passed his inky black pupils over his brothers. Blood flowed out of the perverse fold of puckered flesh that served him for a mouth, bubbling up like water from a borehole. He waved a gauntleted hand, waving Methusulus away as he brother made to go and help steady him.

“You have seen along the skeins,” Spoke the Huldraflesh, the warp ink rolling restlessly over his skin. “what of this war Faceless one?”

“Fleshweaver,” spoke Xaphan, forming the word slowly, tasting it, testing the shape of it as it left his mouth. He turned his ruined face towards his brother, his atramentous eyes alighting as if he awoke from a dream.

“I have seen it my brothers. I have seen the way that we shall die.”