The dark was freezing, and shivered with the distant crump of artillery fire. The smell of ferrocrete and damp. The taste of lilac and brass.
Too late, Trog felt the tensile strength of the tripwire snap under his weight. A familiar ‘chk’ of pin leaving primer. Trog sighed and swore softly at the indifferent darkness. Frag, most likely, at this sub-level in the bunker system. Mezoa-pattern by the sounds of it. The common issue frags tend to ‘ping’. Something to do with the safety lever.
He shut his eyes. Trog didn’t always get the chance to shut his eyes. It made no difference to the pain. But somehow it was still better when he could.
He tried not to scream, but the wrenching sensation started under his ribs and drew him down into the earth. Always down. Form and shape washed past him in a scream of colour. Avian claws reached up into his lungs and squeezed. Limbs redundant, Trog opened what passed for his eyes in this liminal place.
And there were his many selves, snared in the threads of his foresight. Burned. Sundered. Crushed. Mauled. Shot. Drowned. Flensed. Exploded. Gassed. Bayoneted. Just once tossed into the turbines of an idling gunship and puréed.
Like picts, at once grainy and vivid. The sensations passed around and through Trog as his tether drew him down and further down.
He felt his own brains run out. The sunburst heat of plasma burns on screaming nerve endings. Ceramite smashing his teeth and jaw.
Trog was dead, again. But his curse recalled him back to himself. Pain. There was always pain. And the taste of lilac and brass.
‘Mm,’ mused Carneus, inspecting Trog’s harnessed form. Delicately, he lifted the slave’s slack chin.
Trog’s psychosomatic wounds formed quickly, a bleeding shard pattern stitched across his head and neck.
Carneus nodded, spoke aloud to his narthecium. ‘Frag grenade. Massive blood loss. Catastrophic head trauma.’ Satisfied, the Apothecary turned to address his warband. ‘Not grievous. He can go again immediately.’
Behind him, Trog awoke from his prophetic stupor and vomited. His bindings kept him upright, but he hung slackly, groaning. At his feet, a puddle lent Trog a hazy reflection of himself.
An abused marionette, painted with ritual scars, owned and animated by renegade Astartes. The Eightfold Path, traitor warband, practised in collecting those mortals touched with the gifts of their ruinous gods.
They stood about him now in this trench, before this bunker system, as they had on hundreds of battlefields before. Protecting an asset, warding a prisoner. Exploiting his curse of foresight.
Trog’s reflection rippled under a boot of burgundy ceramite. Many Trogs raised their heads. His master loomed above him.
‘Come, Trog,’ prompted Carneus, grey eyes shining with purpose. ‘Summon your sight once more. Cast yourself again into the threads.’
Trog blinked. The blood flow from his frag wounds was running over his brow. He swallowed and felt the pain of his latest vision radiate down his side.
‘Lord, please. Respite.’
Carneus’ expression was inscrutable. It was always inscrutable. He may as well have been wearing his helm for all that Trog could read in the transhuman features. It almost looked like affection. Almost. Carneus spoke softly, not unkindly.
‘This bunker, Trog, and then respite. The servants of the Carrion-Emperor are broken, and secret themselves deep within. We must seek them out.’ Carneus reached down and gently cleaned the blood from Trog’s eyes. ‘And forewarned is forearmed.’
Even if just to escape his master’s embrace, Trog filled his lungs and plunged into another possible future.
Freezing dark. Artillery fire shiver. Ferocrete and damp. The taste of lilac and brass.
The bunker system was vast but of standard construction for this sector. The signs of the Imperium’s retreat indicated rapid withdrawal toward the core sectors. Trog, in this next potential self, stepped over the frag-bound trip wire and pressed deeper into the ruddy dark.
Two sub-levels further, and a combat servitor shrieked in binary cant through a cracked faceplate. Half-brained by a clumsy defensive strike from Trog, it snatched at his ankle as he scrabbled to flee. Like a sullen child, the machine-thing hoisted Trog and lashed him down against the floor. Once. Twice. Trog felt his lungs burst with the blunt force of it.
Servitor Battleclade, servo-claws. Sub-Level Gamma, North Sector.
Dark. Shiver. Lilac and brass.
A shell took Trog’s left leg off at the knee. He collapsed, rolled into cover as best he could.
Blood loss haze threatened to drown his thoughts.
Ambush. Enfilading fire. Autocannon emplacement, solid shells. Heavy weapons team, Sub-Sector 4, northern reaches.
Dark. Lilac and brass.
Fall. Sabotaged lifter shaft. Maintenance Sector, Strut 4.
Crushed. Tunnel collapse, deliberate. Tributary Access Tunnel, Armoury.
Immolated. Flamer weapon, Sol-pattern. Militarum tunnel fighters, Hab Sector Main.
Asphyxiated. Gas trap. Ancillary Command Centre, East Wing.
Bisected. ‘Ripper’ weapon. Ogryn. Enraged. Roaming.
Ruptured. Mass-reactive ammunition. Blue ceramite. Data Core.
Lilac and brass.
Carneus inspected the bruise spilling across Trog’s torso. He traced the bursting capillaries to the tips of Trog’s fingers, down and through the groin, across unconscious eyeballs.
Trog urinated into the dirt, and his body gave an involuntary cringe. Nostrils flared. Hairs stood on end.
Carneus read the tarot of Trog’s wounds. Transhuman dread, and a bolter wound. Loyalist Astartes.
Carneus shared the portent with his brother-zealots. The warriors of The Eightfold Path, ancient and monstrous, gathered about Trog to ministrate oaths of gratitude to their gods. They muttered prayers of wonder and shared their envy at the prophetic threads granted to a mortal slave. Forewarned, they gathered their arms and processed into the bunker system to seek their brethren.
Trog awoke, his pain immense. Carneus smiled, perhaps, and reached down to caress his slave’s traumatised flesh.
‘Respite, Trog. Rest now. You are too precious to come to harm.’
