With a burst of multi-coloured flame, the image of Madox was gone.
Cadmus found himself sweating and trembling. His heart raced in his chest, and he felt the blood burn on his cheeks. The ritual had exhausted him physically and emotionally.
'By Luther's blade,' cursed Cadmus. He walked over to the wall in the darkened room and activated the light. Carefully worked lenses shone into the room from sculpted gargoyles and daemons. Everything about the room had been made in secret to allow this summoning circle to work, just as the sorcerer had requested.
Cadmus glared at the quiet summoning circle. 'Don't trifle with me. I'm not one of your blind cultist pawns,' he muttered to the floor, but he knew that he was the only one listening. He would survive, and one day, there would be a reckoning for all of his enemies.
The commander took a moment to regain his composure. It wouldn't do for the men to see his anger, and he couldn't afford to have his thoughts clouded. He checked his uniform for blood and carefully removed a few incriminating droplets. There was no sign of the lieutenant's body or even his blood in the room. The spell had completely consumed the corpse. Cadmus shuddered.
He activated the door, and then cut the lights. He was worried, even though he knew that everything had gone according to his plan. It was all about time and sequence, one event following another. He had set this in motion and he would see it to the end. He had contacted the Thousand Sons, hadn't he? He was the master manipulator, he reminded himself, but try as he might, he could not dispel his doubts.
Cadmus followed the security corridor past the monitor chamber and the hall to the city complex. The plasteel door at this end of the hall was a duplicate of the other. Two of his loyal men saluted as they maintained their posts. The guards were his people, subservient to his every command.
.’Open the door,' he snapped. The guard nearest the control activated it as soon as he dropped the salute. The door slowly slid open and lights activated as Cadmus stepped inside.
The largely empty chamber was nondescript, a storeroom that could easily have been on a thousand planets or even starships throughout the Imperium. The room had one occupant who lay on the ground in the middle of the chamber.
Gabriella lay shackled and bound. She glared up at her captor with hate in her eyes. She looked tired from struggling. It was a pity that she was so dedicated to her house. Despite her lack of classic beauty, Cadmus admired her spirit.
Gabriella had tried in vain to free herself from her bonds, and although she realised that she was probably wasting her strength, she wasn't going to accept any part of this power-hungry officer's plan. 'I felt the presence of Chaos. Tell me, Cadmus, are the dark forces part of your plan as well? Because if they are, you are a bigger fool than I thought.'
Cadmus knelt down over the Navigator and slapped her hard across the face. The small release of anger felt good. 'I promise you, Lady Gabriella, if I die, you'll die as well. Fortunately, I expect that your Space Wolves will show their typical lack of control and spend their energy rending the Dark Angels. While that happens, my men will kill them both. Soon, we will be in a city of the dead, and my allies will put an end to all of this.'
Gabriella smiled; she didn't believe a word of what he said.
On the streets of Lethe, battle raged between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves. Both sides fought fiercely against their fellow Space Marines, while the men of Lethe did their best to defend their ruined city. Two ancient champions of the Chapters met on the cratered streets.
The Dark Angels Dreadnought, Arion the Unchallenged, levelled his twin-linked lascannons at his
Space Wolf counterpart, Gymir the Ice-Fisted. The blasts scored a hit, but the Space Wolf war machine took the shots on his arm instead of the sarcophagus on his chest. The glancing strike set a massive Fen-risian wolf pelt ablaze, but failed to disrupt the mind of the entombed Space Marine housed within the venerable Dreadnought's body. The combatants on both sides paused in awe and reverence at the duel unfolding before their eyes.
The Space Wolf Dreadnought kicked aside the remains of a dead Dark Angel as if it were a child's toy and charged, conjuring images in the minds of soldiers on all sides of a sprinting soldier rather than a lumbering mechanical walker. The Dark Angels Dreadnought met the challenge full on, swinging his power fist. Metal clanged on metal like the sounds of a giant forge.
Lieutenant Markham staggered away from the battling Dreadnoughts. He prayed that with the aid of the Space Wolves, House Belisarius would emerge triumphant. Wolf Guard Mikal had contacted the other Imperial Guard units. Markham had been lucky to encounter the Wolf Guard. Word of Cadmus's treason was spreading, but despite that many men would stay loyal to him and assume the rumours were just a Dark Angels trick. Still, the Space Wolves were coordinating the battle. The Dark Angels had adjusted to the challenge and the battle for Lethe was in full swing.
A Leman Russ tank, reinforced with siege armour, drove down a side street. It paused to fire its massive battle cannon at a target that Markham couldn't see. Although the Leman Russ was the main battle tank of
the Imperial Guard on countless worlds, the planetary defence force kept few of them on Hyades. The vehicle's size made it difficult to manoeuvre in city streets and in the jungle, yet each one of the tanks received more attention from the tech-priests than the Hellhounds or Chimeras. That was because of the pride that House Belisarius took in the vehicle named for the primarch of their allies, the Space Wolves.
Markham could see the ruins of the city's outer defence wall down the main plaza. Bombardment from the assault had turned it into a mountain of rubble. It was badly breached. Dark shapes crawled through the rubble. If they were some of the defence forces, maybe he could rally them. Commander Cadmus had betrayed him, the Wolfblade and House Belisarius. Markham did not give his loyalty lightly, and something churned in his stomach as the impact of the betrayal struck him. He knew that he was still reeling from the near miss of the Earthshaker cannon earlier, but he felt as if the betrayal was what truly kept his head spinning.
Cadmus had made a mistake. Markham was originally from Catachan, a real deathworld, not some planet where the people hid behind walls and feared the mines more than they feared the plants. He'd find a way to survive and do his duty. He knew that he'd gained some respect from Wolf Guard Mikal when he had demanded a weapon so that he could rejoin the fighting. Markham wasn't going to let a few scrapes, bruises or even a concussion slow him down.
He squinted to see more clearly. The dark shapes that he had spotted moved strangely, and he was sure
that there were many more of them than before. Lethe burned from the ongoing war, and with his addled brains, Markham wasn't sure exactly what he was seeing. He wiped his eyes.
The shapes weren't human, they were reptos. Dozens of the creatures were gathering around the breach, all the while the humans on the planet were busy blowing each other to bits. The reptos appeared to be gathering, waiting.
Markham had a vox that he had scavenged from a dead soldier so he could to stay in touch with the Space Wolves. 'Wolf Guard Mikal.’ he voxxed. 'I believe we have a problem. The wall has been breached and the reptos have come to scavenge.'
'Lieutenant, what are reptos?' came the reply. Markham heard storm bolter shots echo through the vox.
'The reptos are native creatures from the jungle surrounding Lethe. They've been attacking the mines and anything outside the walls. They are mammalian reptiles,' responded Markham.
Static answered him. Communications were jammed again.
Markham crouched down behind a bit of rubble and took a better look. The reptos shook and convulsed. He was confused. He'd never seen this behaviour. The creatures then poured into the streets, heading to the bodies of Dark Angels. Strangely, they ignored the bodies of the defence forces.
The creatures fell upon their targets, ripping and tearing. Through extreme effort, they found cracks
and weak spots in the power armour, and ripped into the dead flesh underneath. Markham shook his head. He hated watching the reptos scavenge and devour any humans, even if the Dark Angels had attacked Hyades.
The reptos were tearing large bloody objects free from the Space Marine bodies. Markham wasn't sure what they were collecting. At first, he thought it might be hearts, but the organs were too large. The reptos gathered in clusters, hissing and snapping at the body parts, as if they were celebrating. Then, they retreated.
All of the reptos moved back to form a semi-circle around a single large member of their species. The large one wore different scaled pelts and held a long staff. The sight fascinated and enthralled Markham. He forgot the sounds of battle behind him, completely oblivious to everything but the scene he was witnessing.
The repto with the staff suddenly ignited, bursting into flame. At first, Markham thought that someone, an infiltrating soldier perhaps, had taken a hand flamer to the beast, but the creature didn't burn with the purifying white fire of promethium. Instead, the flame burned with an unearthly rainbow of colours. As the fire consumed the repto, something even more unexpected took place. Markham cleared his eyes. With the haze of battle he wasn't sure at first that what he saw was real.
Tendrils burst from the body of the flaming creature. Then something covered in mouths and eyes floated out of the fire. The creature was bright blue with streaks of red and pink. It floated above the
ground and a nimbus of rainbow fire curled around it. Markham's mind laboured to accept the sight before him. He was a survivor, a man born on a deathworld. He had endured challenges and pain. He had encountered the deadliest predators on planets across the galaxy.
Somehow, he knew that what he saw was not from this galaxy. He felt terror in every fibre of his being.
The reptos gave a shrill greeting sound as one, and handed over their trophies. The abomination took each of them with its tendrils, tenderly grasping them. Then it pulled itself back into the flame and vanished. The reptos spread out, hunting for more trophies, save for one, who picked up the staff from the charred hand of its former owner.
Markham fell on his knees and sobbed a prayer of thanks to the Emperor. The unnameable horror that he had seen was gone. He would not have felt so relieved if he had known that similar scenes were taking place across the city. The harvest had begun.
In the palace complex, Haegr, Torin, Elijah and Nathaniel searched for Cadmus. Ragnar and Jeremiah were searching together elsewhere, and the other Space Marines assumed that they might be negotiating more details of their alliance without the complications of everyone else's thoughts. The four focused on their search, each one hoping that they would discover the commander first. So far, they had found nothing but bodies, and the lasgun wounds on the bodies coupled with still-secure doors indicated that their killers hadn't been other Dark
Angels. The dead men appeared to have been killed by members of the planetary defence force.
Torin looked over at Haegr after sniffing the air. 'So, lad, your nose can tell us everything else. Where is he? I can't find him.'
Haegr shook his head. 'I'm not sure. There are too many scents.'
'Are you really trying to sniff him out?' asked Elijah. The Dark Angel sounded incredulous. 'I thought that was Space Wolf talk for tracking or something.'
"Young one.’ said Nathaniel, 'the Space Wolves are known for their senses.'
'Unfortunately, some of us spend our time trying to track nothing but food.’ said Torin.
What's wrong with that?' questioned Haegr. 'Without my ability to find sustenance, we could die out here if things stay bad. Torin, I think you've gone too long without a good thrashing.'
Haegr had to admit to himself that hearing the banter made him more relaxed. He kept finding scene after scene of death, and he didn't know where Cadmus was. Torin placed his hand on Haegr's shoulder and leaned over to whisper to him in that conspiratorial manner that came so easily to him.