Inspirational Friday - 31/10/2014

[TDF]

“You’re one of us brother,” replied the traitor marine, “Welcome to the Long War.”

I love this line.

[Tenebris]

Private Hikks jumped into the trench, mired as it was with the bodies of the fallen, where he almost drowned in the sludge which filled the fortifications. On his left Sergeant Hakswell cursed the Emperor for the fifth time that day and Commissar Laran twisted his eyes... despite the lack of decorum presented by a fine Cadian like the Sergeant, the curses of the Sergeant were ... appropriate. 

 

The 707th Cadian was fighting hard that day, hard as it has fought for the past two months against the scions of Chaos in Berunna's Well, a mudball of a planet in the Obscurus Sector. The Arrogant Sons called themselves, this degenerates, and arrogant they were, always charging, never backing down, never letting go, rushing across no mans land like the devils themselves were behind them, which probably were...

 

What started as an uprising soon turned to be a full scale rebellion and the Cadians had to land in the shimmering crystal forests of Berunna's Well where only death and mutation awaited them. Initially the imperial forces managed to contain the rebels but once the thrice damned traitor astartes appeared on the battlefield, the war was as good as lost.

 

Lost in his thoughts Private Hikks too late realized that the men around him were screaming, screaming in pain, screaming... because their forms were twisting. Like molten wax the features of the 45th Company were lost in the madness of mutation, eyes were peeling down, the skin was running like water and bones were bones no more...

 

Change, rapid, drastic change overtook the men of the 707th and the Commissars were already at work across the trench line, their bolt pistols silencing the screams of the lumpen sacks of flesh that were once valiant Cadians. Hikks has seen Laroe and Dteva merge into a single being, no longer recognizable as soldiers of the Imperium, Sergeant Hakswell tried to shoot himself rather face this horrible fate but his fingers were no longer fingers, his muscles unable to exert pressure on the trigger of his laspistol...

 

As one the men of the 45th Company ran, leaving their degenerate companions behind, a whole company was lost to the madness of Chaos... but as the laughter echoed across the earthworks... Hikks realized that there was no escape, no escape from the Change...

 

Searing bolts of witchfire screamed overhead and soon the remaining Cadians were engulfed by flames which did not burn, Hikks even felt invigorated by them... but then again the screaming began anew. Now his time has come too, his time to change...

 

He collapsed on the ground, his legs were no longer flesh and bone but pseudopods grew from them, his fingers were now a dozen times dozen more than they should be and his holy body, the pure form of humanity was no more. Suddenly he was able to see with a pair of eyes on his arms, hear with three new ears on his back and taste the rich copper stink of blood with nine new tongues jarring from his mouth filled with needle sharp teeth...

 

Not even the virtuous were spared the touch of Chaos, Commissar Laran was twisting on the ground, his lower parts now a betentacled monstrosity, his arms plucked wings with feathers of sickly purple... truly all were equal in change, it was equal to all men and beasts, no ranks or titles saved from the tender caress of the warp...

 

As one, hundreds of men screamed with a thousand different voices and then... all were laughing... laughing for they recognized brotherhood in the misshapen forms of the mutants coming to embrace them... kinship even... 

 

Is is done? Asked a legionary, observing the madness unfold on ramparts...

 

Not yet... echoed the voice of the sorcerer.... it has only begun... the Changer of Ways will not be denied his merriment...afterall were not you who demanded more slaves for the brig, brother?

[Kierdale]

Something rotten in the hinterlands

 

 

“Why me, sir?” He tried to hide his displeasure at the assignment as best he could.

“Because, scrivener third class Jolen Quidity, I command it,” replied Quidity’s superior, prefect Wutai, turning all three of his glowing green optics to face the rail-thin, slightly stooped Departmento Munitorum scribe. “Because the tithe shortages from these towns must be investigated. Numbers do not add up, and we do not like it when numbers do not add up, do we scrivener third class Jolen Quidity?”

“No, master. We don’t,” Jolen replied, looking down at the cog-tooth patterned hem of the other’s robe.

“And,” Wutai continued, the pistons of his legs and back hissing as he leaned forward at his desk. “It would be unseemly for household troops to investigate why three townships are not sending their youths for enrolment in the militarum. Thus the burden falls to this office.” He tapped a chrome digit on the hardwood desk, the native furniture at odds with the prefect’s bodily enhancements. “And so to you.”

 

A flash of lightning and the thunder which followed soon after -frighteningly soon after- shook Quidity from his reverie and he pulled the hood of his riding cloak further forward. His thighs and back ached. He had accepted that one of the main means of transport upon Kierdale’s shrineworld was by horse, but was far from accustomed to it even six-months into his assignment to the planet. Two centuries ago the warp storms which had cut the system off had ceased and the planet had been welcomed back into the Imperium, though the locals were somewhat reticent to give up their backward ways, despite the best efforts of the Mechanicum. That they were devout members of the Imperial Cult was their saving grace.

Rain fells in sheets and both Quidity and his riding companion were thoroughly soaked. At least, Quidity assumed his companion was in equal discomfort, though while the scrivener (third-class) sat hunched in his saddle, shivering in the storm, the arbite enforcer assigned as his escort rode with his back ramrod straight, bobbing skillfully with the movement of his mount. Rain ran off his leather jumpsuit, armour plates and the leather holster holding his shotgun by his saddle. His face was hidden by his helmet. On reflection Quidity realized that he himself was probably in the most discomfort. Likely the most discomfort for miles around, he thought, straining to see through the rain and darkness.

He looked not only ahead, searching for their destination, but also to the sides. Other Departmento staff had told him of the wild animals that roamed the forests and plains between settlements. Why they could not have requisitioned a flyer, or at least some form of sealed grav-effect, irritated him.

“Are we near the first town yet?” he shouted over to the arbite thought it was lost to a crack of thunder as lightning once more rent the welkin.

“ARE WE-“ Quidity began again and a gust of wind tore his hood from his head, soaking his face and instantly plastering his hair to his scalp and face.

“Throne!” he cursed, pushing his hair away and pulling up his hood successfully on the second try, looking up to find the arbite leaning close.

“Don’t let the locals hear you blaspheme,” his deep voice came out clear though his helmet’s speaker despite the storm. Quidity was about to ask his question again when the arbite extended a hand, pointing ahead.

Quidity strained, not expecting to see anything without the visual enhancements no doubt built into the enforcer’s helmet, but was surprised to make out buildings ahead. Buildings of stone and timber. Timber! He had laughed when he had first seen the local buildings constructed of dead wood upon his arrival six months earlier, but now they brought a weak smile to his face. Shelter!

He spurred his horse onward and it whinnied in protest. The ride would have been long and hard in the best of weather. That the animal should choose such a time, with their destination (the first of three, but he did not wish to think further than those town gates!) in sight, to protest angered him and he dug in his heels.

The next thing he knew he had been pitched into the ditch at the side of the road which, due to the storm, was as a river. Disoriented, he coughed and spluttered, arms waving about to find purchase and finally being hauled out of the slurry by the strong arm of his riding companion.

“Idiot! The beasts are exhausted,” he was admonished as he lay, panting in the middle of the road in puddles of increasing size as the rain continued to hammer down. He then noticed his horse’s cries and looked up to find it had fallen badly after throwing him off. He couldn’t see if it had broken a leg - he could barely see three meters ahead. The arbite was silhouetted by rain pattering off his shoulder and helm - but the beast was surely in extreme pain.

“It’s finished?” he asked and the arbite gave a single nod.

“Can you…can you…,” Quidity motioned to the holster by the enforcer’s saddle only to notice that it was no longer there but was in the arbite’s left hand. Always ready.

“Waste of ammo,” the arbite turned, “Behind me,” and strode back to his own horse, mounting it and turning once more to offer his right hand and pull the soaked scrivener up.

 

The storm had not abated by the time they made it to the township, rain pouring from guttering and gargoyles’ mouths. Some were shaped as ill-wrought Aquila, others human-like faces vomiting forth rain. They rode toward the center of the town, past buildings on both sides. After over a decade of schooling in the notary arts and years of experience as a Departmento Munitorum scrivener, even during such a storm Quidity had a sharp eye, wondered why his superiors even bothered trying to collect a tithe of recruits from such a remote hamlet. Then again, all had to serve in one way or another. His was usually from a desk in a warm, dry office.

 

Though the arbite knocked at a couple of doors as they went (with the ceremite toecap of his boot, being disinclined to dismount into the filth flowing down the sloped road) they received no answer. Quidity would have thought the place abandoned were it not for carts and crates (a few made of plasteel!) here and there, indicating activity in the earlier daylight hours. They pushed on toward the center of the town, expecting to find the burgomaster’s houses or some other such facility.

A couple of times Quidity thought he heard movement in other streets, parallel alleyways, the sloshing of - he presumed - boots through mud, but whenever he turned his head he could make out nothing in the darkness and the driving rain.

After having wandered the streets in vain for half an hour even his enforcer bodyguard was beginning to show signs of discomfort and disgruntlement. It was then that a fork of lightning speared down and struck a spire a couple of streets away, briefly illuminating an Aquila atop that very spire.

The enforcer made the same symbol as a salute over his chest, bowing his head momentarily before urging their mount in that direction.

 

The spire was the uppermost reaches of what appeared to be a temple of the Imperial Cult, though evidently in disrepair. Even from the grounds’ gates they could see holes in the slanted roof and the stained glass windows. The gate was spotted with rust and bound with a chain. Someone had the forethought to seal it up lest children play in the ruins?

The arbite’s boot saw to the chain and they soon found themselves in the shelter of the temple’s narthex. Their boots and the shoes of the horse clattered over dislodged mosaic chips on the floor. Quidity shivered, the air even cooler within than without. Flashes of lightning illuminated streams of rainwater falling down through the broken roof onto the scattered pews within the nave. Those that weren’t soaked were covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. Quidity could not well make out the images in stained glass in the windows. Many were broken, others seemed dirtied.

The arbite looked about, shaking his helmeted head at the disorder and disrepair, thought he soon set to constructing a shelter and fire. Quidity’s own riding cloak and tapestries from the walls (the arbite had muttered prayers of forgiveness as he had taken them down with great care) served as a tent and blankets. Dry pews, the wood surprisingly brittle and rotten - the work of mites, no doubt – became firewood. A few dusty candles gathered and lit for illumination.

The horse was left to wander the narthex, loosely tethered.

Quidity stood in the aisle upon the molding carpet, holding his arms, shivering and looking about. In truth it had been many years since he himself had stood within a house of prayer. It brought back memories of his father that he did not often dwell upon.

“Stay by the fire,” the arbite called out. “Rub your chest and your arms will take care of themselves,” he added as they sat before the fire.

Quidity nodded, did so and opened up a ration bar once he had stopped shivering enough. It was near tasteless, guard-standard issue, but better than nothing. Perhaps his bodyguard could hunt them a rat for breakfast. Rats in such a big old temple were probably rather large, he thought to himself.

“Are you going to…,” he nodded toward the arbite and tapped his own soaked head, indicating the enforcer’s helmet.

“Remove it? Not likely.” The arbite looked about. “I see far better this way.”

Quidity let out a small chuckle.

“I’ve never even seen your face. Not since we set out.”

“Do you need to?”

Quidity, scrivener third class, realized he didn’t.

“Get to sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

Quidity nodded obediently and lay back, pulling a tapestry over himself. This was almost like going camping, he thought. That was one of his happier childhood memories.

The fire crackled and he felt his body warming.

Eventually he did hear the sound of the arbite removing their helmet. Perhaps they had relaxed a little. The arbites were known to be an uptight bunch.

How long was a watch anyway?

Whatever. The locals would have some explaining to do in the morning. Tithes. Decrepit temple. Lack of common hospitality.

The snap of a lighter. The smell of ‘bacco.

He realized he was getting drowsy, and let himself succumb.

 

He shivered as he awoke, squinting in the beam of sunlight which was creeping its way across his face. He was cold, the fire having gone out in the night. He then realized it was morning and he was alone.

Quidity cursed as he stood, the cold having gotten into his bones while he slept.

Where was the arbite? Why hadn’t he kept the fire burning? Why hadn’t he woken Quidity for his watch?

He peaked out the narthex, noting that their remaining horse was also nowhere to be seen, and he could see as far as the gated wall they had entered through. The path from the temple to the gate was a swamp of mud and puddles. The higher patches were drying out in the sun, the earth beginning to crack. No sign of footprints though. The sun was rising overhead, the sky a clear blue. It would turn out a hot day, he thought.

Evidently the arbite had chosen to explore the rest of the temple.

Returning to the nave, the scrivener scooped up his satchel and pulled out a ration bar, chewing on it idly as he wandered up the aisle, stepping over pews, fallen candle-holders and scattered prayer books. He thought twice about calling out inside a temple of the Master of Mankind, even one which appeared abandoned.

The stained glass windows depicted images from the history of Kierdale’s world. It’s original settling by colonial noble houses. The coming of the warp storms and the inter-house feuding in those dark agesThe eclissiarchy’s attempts to keep the peace. The rise of the prophet father Kierdale and his visions of the greenskin menace. The union of houses under the priesthood. The deaths of those who did not swear fealty at the hands of those very aliens. The prophet leading his merry band of warriors-

Quidity swore as he noticed that the window depicted homo sapiens variantus - beastmen - amongst the priest’s `chosen`.

“Depraved bastards are lucky the astartes don’t show up,” he muttered to himself, moving on.

The altar in the chancel at the very end of the temple appeared to have been the site of a fire: the walls scorched, the table itself a blackened skeleton. Broken glass in a rainbow of hues lay like a carpet over all, the huge window above holding only a few jagged shards. Whatever image it had held could only be guessed at.

Off to one side Quidity found a staircase leading downward. The catacombs. Beyond the first few steps (again, wood!) the sunlight failed to penetrate the darkness.

“Illuminate,” he said, at first quietly then a second time louder, but it seems the temple did not even have any automated systems here `behind the scenes`. Returning to the makeshift camp he lit a candle, pocketing the lighter, returned to the staircase and descended.

The staircase wound round, down and down. He held the candle in his right hand and ran his left along the stone pillar at the center of the shaft. It was slick with moisture and after a few steps he stopped, sniffing the residue and pulling a face at the rank odour. Wiping it on his trousers he kept his hand close to the pillar from then onward. Close enough to reach out should he stumble, but refrained from touching it further.

The staircase ended in a chamber, the floor, walls and ceiling all the same blue-tinged grey as the temple itself, though like the walls of the staircase all seemed slick. Groundwater? Runoff from the storm? Likely much had drained down the staircase, he told himself, picking up the rot and dust of the temple. That would account for the smell.

Water dripped from the ceiling somewhere deeper in the chamber. He could hear it.

The candle did not illuminate far and he was forced to squint as he moved into the chamber, stepping between bare catafalques, sparing little time to look at the inscriptions and carvings on them and the walls. Many were broken, their details laying in piles of chips and pieces on the floor. Further into the chamber - he could not see how far it stretched, though the echo of his footsteps suggested quite some size - he found what he at first thought to be bundles of rags laying here and there on the floor. Upon closer inspection he could see that they were clothed bodies. Who would pull the dead from their resting places down here and cast their remains about like seeds at planting?!

He was about to turn back but something stopped him. Something he hadn’t realized he had followed down here. Beneath the smell of rot there was the pungent odour of burnt ‘bacco.

Quidity moved on, almost tripping on one corpse and inadvertently looking it in the face. And it had a face! A face of flesh rather than bone. His gorge rose at the ruin of that face. Whether it had belonged to a man or a woman he could not tell though he spent little time pondering the issue, turning away quickly.

The maggots. Their plump white bodies writhing in those empty sockets.

He swallowed bile once more and pushed on, breathing deeply though his mouth, holding his sleeve over the lower half of his mouth, the candle outstretched in the other.

Jolen Quidity then saw it and his blood ran cold.

His escort. His bodyguard. Prone upon the mildewed flagstones, between empty catafalques. Facing away, deeper into the chamber.

“Officer!” he whispered pitifully. “Arbite!” To no avail.

There was a sound off deeper in the chamber. At first he had thought it just the dripping of water, but the rhythm had changed. Something shifted over stone. A heavy weight.

Lowering the candle and crouching, he approached the arbite.

That sound again. Slithering. Like wet leather.

The warrior’s shotgun was gripped tight in the arbite’s gloved hands. A single expended shell a meter away.

The dripping quickened.

A small gilt Aquila, the chain cut, lay on the ground before the fallen arbite. The scrivener unconsciously picked it up, only then realizing that the darkness of the flagstones underfoot was due to blood.

Something scraped past stone not so far off.

Quidity swallowed the acrid content of his mouth and looked to the enforcer’s head. The helmet had been split open. A blow from above. His stomach expelled its meager contents as he viewed the face within.

Footfalls. Slow and slick, in time with the dripping. Nearer.

He hurriedly tried to wipe the vomit and sputum which hung in cords from his mouth as he looked up, holding the candle this way and that as he looked about, his limbs trembling.

Something, something wet, reflected the faint light of the candle yet he could not tell how far off it was.

With a cry he turned and fled and the pace of his pursuer quickened immediately. Pushing past stone biers he sprinted toward the staircase, plunged into blackness as he either dropped the candle or the flame went out as his arms pumped. He did not know which.

Panicked, he screamed as he ran, terror driving him onward and drowning out the thumping sound of whatever had been feasting upon the dead and others who had strayed down here. Strayed?

He clipped the corner of a catafalque with his left hip, letting out a cry of pain and being spun around. Collapsing to his knees he heard a hiss, growing in volume, in the darkness. Blinking back tears, Quidity dragged himself to his feet and felt his way along the wall as fast as he could, treading upon bones and stone chips, until his feet stumbled upon wood.

The stairs!

Up he fled, his feet hammering the boards, his hands tracing the slick walls and cutting themselves on jagged corners.

He heard boards snapping behind him and fell himself as one gave way beneath him, twisting his ankle.

The hissing, dripping, drew close and he threw himself onwards, screaming all he could.

Out into the chancel, through the trancepts, the nave…

Pews scratched as they were heft aside, crunched as they were trampled underfoot by the thing chasing him.

He could hear it breathing behind him. He felt as if the ground quaked beneath it.

He flew through the nave, the open doors in sight, the light beyond blinding.

His feet slipped on the mosaic chips scattered about and down he went. Scrabbling to his hands and knees he crawled to the door, getting his fingers to it when the strap of his satchel pulled tight.

Kicking, chips flew about but he could not gain purchase. The strap was pulled and he almost lost his grip on the door.

Weeping, was he to be denied his freedom having some this close to escaping?

He heaved himself toward the door, the Aquila he still held digging deep into his palm and with a sudden snap the strap of his satchel gave.

Clambering to unsteady feet he sprinted as best he could out across the drying mud of the temple grounds and into the arms of the townspeople beyond the gate.

 

 

“A wild beast?!” the scrivener stuttered in incredulity at the inn keeper’s explanation. The largest of the peasants, he seemed to be in charge and had ordered the others not to turn their pitchforks upon the dirty, bloody foreigner when he had flown out of the ruins into which he had intruded. They now sat, along with over a dozen other badly dressed and equally badly smelling serfs, in the tavern. Jolen Quidity’s hands still shook, clutching the mug of ale tight. At least that was one luxury: real alcohol had been almost unheard of outside of nobility back in the hives of Stalinvast.

“Aye.”

“A servant of the Emperor has been killed! Why has it not been hunted? Why is your temple in such a state?” he asked, looking from one peasant to the next, his eyes wide.

“Who are you to ask such questions of us?” spat one old crone, her wrinkled visage the only part of her not wrapped in rags that would not have looked amiss on the corpses back in the catacomb. In fact most seemed similarly clad. Protection against the burning sun, he absently thought.

“Jolen Quidity, scrivener third class of the Departmento Munitorum,” he said weakly after a mouthful of ale, half of which ran down his chin. The alcohol stung the cuts of his hands.

The inn keeper cocked his head to one side and folded his brawny, tattooed arms over his barrel chest. The inkwork seemed to consist of circular patterns.

“And what brings you to our little hamlet, scrivener?”

Quidity swallowed more ale, which steadied his nerves and his limbs.

“To enquire as to why this township and more have failed to send the prime of their youth to join the regiments of the Imperial Guard.”

His explanation was met with guffaws and hisses.

“Look around you,” the inn keeper explained, “we are but a small town. The youth, what few there are, are needed here. In the fields.”

Quidity did look at the unwashed mass before him. Faces as brown and as dirty as the clothing they wore. Ugly brutes, no doubt with blood on the suspicious side of thick. But strong of limb, as far as he could guess.

“And why are there so few young here?” Surely you have little other entertainment in the dark hours he did not add.

“Bad harvests.”

“Accidents.”

“Wild animals.”

“The pox.”

Quidity jerked his head round to look at the peasant who spoke this last excuse. The woman must have been in her early twenties. Thick built and with an ugly, wart-strewn face under her stained wimple.

“Pox?” he looked questioningly to the tavern keeper. “Why has the capital not been informed?” He himself would be seeking a chirurgeon for a looking over as soon as he returned to civilization.

“We deal with things our own way here.”

“That is why your temple lies abandoned? The den of a beast left to feed on the corpses of your ancestors?” The ale may have fueled that last comment and it elicited cries of anger from the crowd, which he ignored as he remembered something.

“…and what of the fresher corpses down there?”

It was all the innkeeper could do to hold back the nearest of the crowd.

The bear of a man took a deep breath and nodded to those whose way he barred, before turning back to the small scribe.

“As I said, we do things our way here. That includes dealing with criminals, the sick…and the unwanted.”

The looks of the peons before him left him with no doubt that he belonged to this last category, but he would not be intimidated. He took a deep breath to speak but the other spoke before he could.

“We will provide you with a fresh horse. Our best. You will be on your way to your next stop. You will not tell a word of what you have seen here, and you will make whatever excuses you need. This town has no youths for your regiments.”

He bit back a retort when he heard a blade being drawn from a sheath somewhere in the crowd.

He nodded.

 

The innkeeper held the reins of the horse tightly and the crowd followed as Jolen Quidity was lead through the town toward the gates on the far side.

What would he tell prefect Wutai? He had never told a lie in his entire life.

He looked across the muddy crowd and their mud-splattered buildings, the roads now caked with cracked earth.

Perhaps he could secretly split the town’s quota between the next two on his mission.

As they passed the high wall surrounding the ruined temple he gripped the reins and grimaced as something dug into his hand. Opening it he found the small gilt Aquila there. The gold no longer shined, dulled by his own blood and that of the arbite.

His protector.

Quickly standing in the saddle he vaulted over the wall, crying out at the pain in his ankle and screaming louder as he landed on it in the grounds within. A commotion arose on the other side and he hurried toward the ruined fane, confident that the boors would be too scared to follow him in.

 

 

He shivered once inside the building again, limping badly. A trail of blood led from just outside the temple, through the church and to the staircase down. Had the creature injured itself? He could only hope the bastard had bled out during the day. His and the arbite’s saddlebags had been strewn about by whatever it was that had chased him out, but thankfully he found the arbite’s small medkit and gave himself an injection of a pain-relieving unguent before binding his ankle as best he could with bandages. It still hurt like Throne-knew-what when he stood, but stand he could and thus he staggered up the aisle. All that had once littered and obstructed it had been cast aside or trampled underfoot by something heavy. He could only imagine something of Ogryn proportions.

What was he to do?

What had he been thinking?

He cursed himself and leant on the lectern, idly tracing the circular images someone had carved into it.

Why hadn’t he just stayed on that damned horse and rode out of town. He could have simply told Wutai about the pox and had the place raised by those redemptionist nutcases.

Circular patterns, grouped into threes.

But they’d probably have torched him too. He sat.

Not unlike the innkeeper’s tattoos.

The setting sun shone once again through the broken windows, a pane of red glass causing carmine light to bathe the portal which led down to the catacombs.

Biting back a sob, Quidity hauled himself to his feet once more and hobbled over into the darkness.

 

Carefully and oh so slowly he descended, cursing at each creak and groan of the old wood, a flaming torch of tapestries wrapped around a pew leg in his right hand, the Aquila in his left.

The catacombs were much as he had left them, though there were drag marks leading from the bottom of the staircase and the bloody trail continued. Had someone else strayed into this blasted place? Had the residents of the town cast some other unwanted soul in? Was this how they appeased the beast?

He soon found the arbite’s body once more and, careful not to gaze again upon the enforcer’s face, he mouthed a prayer for his fallen protector’s soul and tried to pry the shotgun from the gloved hands. Rigor mortis had set in and he had to put down the torch to pull at the stiff fingers. The Aquila in his left hand bit into his palm once more but he would not put it down.

Eventually he had had to stamp on the fingers of one hand to get the weapon from the corpse’s grip and he heard a wet growl from deeper within the chamber as he lifted the weapon.

He picked up the torch with his left hand and peered into the darkness. He could barely make out something. A black heap, a dozen meters distant.

A wet sucking sound.

He raised the shotgun, resting the barrel against the top of his left hand and the shaft of the torch, squinting against the flame’s heat and blinking as it robbed him of what night vision he had.

He stepped forward once.

The sound of bones cracking.

Again.

Meat tearing.

He could still do no more than make out a bulk lying on the floor some eight or none meters distant now.

“IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR, DIE!” he cried.

click went the shotgun when he jerked the trigger.

With a thunderous roar the beast advanced, not leaping over the corpse of the horse it had been feasting on but tearing directly through the dead animal. In the light of the torch all was bleached orange and the combination of his panic and the thing’s speed meant his mind only registered fractured images. A hideous conglomeration of limbs, flesh vivid and covered in puckered sores weeping purulence.

He backpedalled, waving the torch wildly before him, blinding himself as much as he kept the abomination at bay.

Faces decorated its hide, each distended in expressions of agony. Eyeballs glazed with cataracts, swollen veins like worms writhing beneath grisly skin.

A limb terminating in several clawed hands swung out, missing him but pulverizing the catafalque it impacted.

Quidity turned and fled.

Pushing past stone biers he sprinted toward the staircase.

Panicked, he screamed as he ran, terror driving him onward and drowning out the thumping sound of the abomination.

He clipped the corner of a catafalque with his left hip, letting out a cry of pain and being spun around. Collapsing to his knees he heard a dozen mouths hiss as one, growing in volume, in the darkness. Blinking back tears, Quidity dragged himself to his feet, treading upon bones and stone chips, searching for the staircase.

There it was, just five meters to his right. But then the beast appeared from the darkness, charging toward him, maws gaping and slathering.

Desperately he threw the torch toward the thing’s faces. Though the torch fell short, it erupted in screams as the Aquila struck its accursed skin and it staggered.

That was it! He could make it to the staircase…

 

His left hand shakily came up to grip the pump of the weapon and he grimaced as he ratcheted a shell into the chamber and raised the weapon once more.

“IN THE NAME OF…”

 

 

The sun was but a sliver of gold on the horizon when Departmento Munitorum scrivener third class Jolen Quidity staggered from the ruined temple, the Aquila once more in one hand, the arbite shotgun in the other.

He looked up to find the peasants of the town gathered in the temple grounds, their robes stripped from them. Scars, mutations, disfigurements and tattoos praising the Lord of Decay proudly showing.

Quidity spat and raised the shotgun, tears in his eyes.

[TDF]

Wow Kierdale, that was epic.

Quidity kinda reminds me of this guy from a BBC comedy/drama The Wrong Mans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crkE7x_HFr0&feature=youtu.be&t=28s

There's a scene where he delivers that line again but much more badassfully and then punches a guy in the face, but I couldn't find it on youtube.