Snippet #2388842

An Astartes in war-plate. Colours not seen for almost a millennia. Somewhere deep in his unconscious, a switch was thrown. The smell of incense filled his nostrils, the hum of distant chanting ringing in his ears. Impulses rose unbidden from the darkest corners of his mind.

A room. Black and featureless. Before him sat a hooded figure, robed in red with a golden pendent hanging from his neck. He tried to rise but his hands were bound, shackled to the steel throne.

The figure began to speak, his voice both sibilant and menacing. “The enemy comes in many guises. The heretic. The witch. The alien.”

Layered beneath every word was the chill of psychic energy, etching each word deep into his mind. “We fight the long war. Against foes which mankind has forgotten. Fallen angels, swallowed by the eye.”

The room blurred and twisted. Before him, where the hooded acolyte had once sat stood a file of armoured warriors at attention.

The first was garbed in black as if mourning, his heraldry flickering between a grey wolf and an eye wreathed in yellow fire. “Fallen sons, wolves without a pack.” The voice intoned. The second dripped blood, his armour's every surface covered in crimson. An axe hung loosely in his grip, a severed head grasped in his other hand. “They are rage incarnate.”

The procession continued. Blue and gold, sand trickling from the joints. A mottled green, the figure corpulent with corpse-gas. A screaming figure in purple and gold, eyes alight with atavistic pleasure. A book crushed by an iron-shod boot, a rearing hydra and a winged figure with eyes as black as night.

The chanting increased to a fever-pitch. “Brother has slain brother and the Malleus will have vengeance for what the daemon has corrupted.”

The wolf. The pendent. An alliance woven from corruption. She had damned herself by the simple act of talking to this abomination. The fog cleared, silhouetting the towering figure, the pounding of drums drowning out their replies, lest their foul words corrupt his mind.The voice thundered in his head, its words repeated by his bloodless lips.

“What is your duty? To serve the Emperor's will!”

The pistol cracked in his hand, a high-pitched whine scouring the air between him and the traitor. The fog lifted, the voice yelling at him to run.

Still as naked as the day he was born, Alpha darted off into the depths of the ship.