The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,23
a long time ago, that even the Space Marines feared this place. Everything living feared this place. It was said that humanity could not bear to be close to the source of both its creation and destruction, and so we were like moths to the candle here, burning ourselves as we approached the engine of souls.
I saw a cadre of Mechanicus magi processing across a walkway hundred of metres above us, their passage lit by the candle-like flicker of arc-welders. We kept moving, gliding deeper into the underworld.
In time we came to the Astral Gate, marked with the Emperor’s own original thunderbolt sigil over the lintel. The first of the Hataeron Guard were waiting for us there with their guardian spears in hand. The tribune Heracleon stood among them, his helm removed to reveal his severe, blunt face.
‘Tribune,’ I acknowledged.
He looked at me for a long time. ‘Shield-captain,’ he said. ‘Navradaran told you everything?’
‘He said you had been dreaming.’
‘It seemed… the right word to use,’ he said.
I looked beyond him, through the portal and into the heart of the Throne’s inner workings. A long corridor ran onwards, ridged with bands of iron, glinting from tiny lumens implanted in the metal. The floor was lost in an ankle-deep soup of condensation, and slender sparks of static danced across the serrations.
‘I am not the only one,’ Heracleon said. ‘All of us here, little by little, we have begun to see things.’
‘You are honoured.’
‘If they are true visions. But the Throne is not what it was.’
Even as he spoke, I saw a hiss of steam burst from an overhead coolant line, high up in the tangled heights. Immediately a little skull-drone swept up towards it, isolating the leak and hovering below it, dendrites flickering.
‘As you see,’ Heracleon remarked, dryly. ‘Come, this way.’
We passed under the Gate’s arch. The guards remained at the portal, leaving the three of us to make our way further in.
‘I had little idea you were considering me for this, tribune,’ I said.
‘Neither did I. There were other names ahead of yours.’ Heracleon looked over at me. ‘I mean no disrespect. There are many roles to fill on the walls too.’
‘For myself, I did not foresee my fate here. Not yet.’
‘No. But then we live in an age of surprises, do we not?’
At the terminus of the long corridor, we emerged out onto the floor of a colossal hemisphere, filled with glowing power exchangers. The air itself thrummed with electric force, and mighty beams of plasma danced above us, making the reflective metal of the machinery flash vividly.
‘There will be trials,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ Heracleon said. ‘Many of them. But this is the first test.’
From the chamber of light, we crossed over a single-span bridge flung over a cloudy gulf that seemed to go down forever. The noises became heavier and deeper, and I felt the torment of the earth below. It was forever cracking, I knew – prised apart by the forces barely contained within the Martian groundwork of buried iron. On the far side of the chasm soared a wall, entirely man-made, a dizzying patchwork of pipes and riveted panels. Ancient standards hung against the ticking dials and shackled vacuum-pods, most etched with binaric litanies, a few inked with High Gothic purity rotes.
The next portal was guarded by two Contemptor-Galatus Venerated Fallen, both static and silent in the flickering gloom. They didn’t move as we passed them by, their armoured helms gazing in eternal vigil out into the shadows.
There were more gates, more chambers, all passing in stately procession as we wound our way inwards. Some were vast, burning with shackled star-fires and pulsating like hearts; others were frigid, grave-like and lined with crystal fusion vanes. Most were empty of the living. A few held conclaves of red-robed magi poring over open workings while tech-savants whispered sequence-prayers to the Omnissiah, though they paid us no heed.
Eventually we came to the heart of it. Companions were waiting for us, twelve of them. The gold of their auramite was blackened, as if charred by fire. I had heard that proximity to the source did that, turning our pride into ashes. I had always thought the symbolism appropriate.
The door ahead of us was the largest yet, a gothic arch of banded basalt columns. Electricity snapped and fizzed openly through the air now, briefly dazzling in the otherwise near-black interior. Over the Last Door, carved in Archaic Gothic, were the ancient words Conservus, Restituere, Revivicarem.