The cellar entrance lay concealed beneath a hidden panel in the floor of the village granary. Duvall lifted the boards, and the stale reek of old grain and damp earth rushed up to meet him.
He cracked a glowstick and tossed it down. Its wan yellow light revealed a flight of stone steps descending into the depths.
"Stroud," Duvall said, turning back. "Take five men and scout ahead. Maintain vox contact. If anything happens, withdraw at once."
The bald officer nodded and selected five veterans. They checked their weapons, set their lasrifles to minimum power to reduce both noise and glare, then slipped soundlessly down the stone steps and into the dark.
Duvall waited roughly three minutes before leading the remaining men after them. Anderson brought up the rear with the heavy logging gun slung across his shoulders, flanked by two soldiers carrying its ammunition belts.
The three grievously wounded men had been bound to improvised stretchers and were borne by their comrades. Evan stayed close at Duvall’s side, while the little girl rode upon the back of a veteran.
The stairway was long, descending some twenty metres before it finally ended. The ground beneath their boots became packed earth, while crude brick walls hemmed them in on either side. Dust lay thick over wall and floor alike. The air was cold enough to flay the lungs, and every breath emerged as white vapour.
Stroud had left markers ahead of them: arrows carved into the corners of the walls with the point of a blade.
Duvall followed the arrows, all the while watching the ground. The dust was thick, yet several trails of footprints were visible within it. They differed in size, plainly left by more than one group.
The farther they advanced, the more the passageways forked. Some side tunnels had been choked shut by collapsed stone, while others reached onward into an even deeper blackness.
Their pace slowed steadily. At times they had to wait for long minutes, but Duvall could still use the map in his hand and Stroud’s reports over the short-range vox to choose their route. The signal was weak and crackled with static, yet remained barely intelligible.
"Chief, there’s a broad passage ahead." Stroud’s voice came in broken bursts. "There are rails... torn up."
Duvall frowned. They hastened forward and, several minutes later, reached the place Stroud had described.
It was a tunnel that had plainly been expanded by human labour, broad enough for two wagons to pass abreast.
Crushed stone covered the floor. Two rusted rails ran down its centre and vanished into the darkness, but they had been brutally pried loose. Sleepers were scattered everywhere, along with bolts and rail spikes half-buried in the dust.
"Civilians did not do this." Duvall crouched and picked up a rail spike. Its broken end had been smashed apart by some heavy implement. "It looks as though they were trying to stop something from passing through here."
Then faint footsteps sounded in the darkness ahead. Stroud and his scouting party emerged from the shadows, and none of them looked well.
"There’s an open area ahead." Stroud kept his voice low, and rare tension threaded through it. "It’s covered in blood. The walls are filled with those damned blasphemous markings."
Duvall’s heart sank. He looked back at his force: thirty-seven men, supplies reduced to a quarter, and three grievously wounded casualties. Reason told him they should find another path.
Then a new notification flashed across his vision.
[Mission: Uncover the Truth]
[Reward: ???]
"Fuck you, you yellow-furred bastard," Duvall cursed silently.
He did not move at once. Instead, he said to Stroud, "Check the other branch. If it is passable, we do not touch this place."
Stroud nodded and led his team back into the darkness. The wait seemed agonisingly long. Underground, silence became something vast and oppressive; all they could hear was the suppressed breathing of the soldiers and the occasional drip of water somewhere far away.
A short while later, Stroud returned and shook his head. "Blocked. The cave-in is three or four metres high. There’s no way we can dig through it."
Damn it. If they wanted to get through, they had no choice but to pass through there.
Duvall drew a deep breath and checked the company’s status. Morale had already fallen to sixty percent under the strain of their relentless march and the wounded they carried. Loyalty, however, remained at ninety percent. They still trusted him...
"Listen carefully, all of you," he said in a low voice. "Stay close and stay quiet. If anything goes wrong, withdraw immediately. Stroud, take your men ahead as sentries, but do not range too far from us."
"Understood."
Duvall activated [The God-Emperor’s Gaze]. In an instant, the darkness within his vision changed. The world around them seemed stained by a viscous scarlet glimmer, throbbing ceaselessly in the black.
"Chief, something’s wrong with my vision. There’s suddenly some kind of... red light?"
"Sir, I can see it too..."
Duvall heard the frightened whispers spreading among the warriors around him. He spoke at once. "Do not be afraid. I have allowed you to see this. It is power granted by the Emperor of Mankind."
Silence descended upon the column. Every man stared in shock at the probationary commissar before them, until Stroud’s voice crackled through the vox. "Chief... are you one of those legendary... Living Saints now?"
"Shut your mouth. Keep moving." Duvall did not deny it for the moment, and they continued onward.
The deeper they went, the brighter the scarlet glow became. A foul odour began to taint the air: the rank stench of blood. More of those blasphemous symbols appeared upon the walls, and merely staring at them for too long made Duvall’s temples throb.
Throne damn it... The unease within him grew heavier by the second. Every soldier in the column maintained the utmost vigilance.
At last, the tunnel came to an end.
The way ahead opened abruptly. The place Stroud had called an open area was in truth an immense subterranean complex: the grain distribution centre on the outskirts of Heras City.
Under the feeble light of the glowsticks, metal support pillars rose like the trunks of colossal trees, holding aloft a black vault so high its ceiling could not be seen. Vast metal storage silos stood in rows along the walls, each capable of holding enormous quantities of grain.
But there was no grain here now.
The glowsticks cast their light over the centre of the chamber. Duvall and every soldier with him stopped dead, a chill born of primal horror filling their eyes.
Heads.
Thousands upon thousands of heads had been piled into conical pyramids, arranged with dreadful order across the open floor. Some had decayed to bare bone. Others remained fresh, their faces frozen in terror or blank bewilderment. The blood had long since dried, crusting black across the concrete.
Duvall’s gaze swept over the nearest pyramid. Then he saw several faces that seemed disturbingly familiar.
At its very summit, one head had been deliberately positioned to face the entrance. It belonged to a middle-aged man, his hair neatly combed and his features stern with authority.
Though death had rendered his skin grey and rotten, Duvall found the man in the memories of the body he had inherited.
The Planetary Governor of Falak IV. Before the supporting Astra Militarum regiments had arrived upon this world, he—and nearly every noble and senior administrator upon the planet—had already vanished amid the rebellion.
So this was where they had gone.
Stroud emerged from the shadows once more, carrying a thick notebook bound in black leather. Dried blood stained its cover, but the gilt crest remained clear: the heraldry of the Planetary Governor’s palace.
"Found it over there." Stroud pointed towards a small table in the darkness behind the pyramid of heads. "It was just sitting on top. Like it was waiting for someone to read it."
Duvall took the notebook and opened it. The handwriting on the first page was neat and clear, evidently penned by a senior official.
"Falak Calendar, 7974. Late autumn. The Administratum tithe fleet shall arrive in thirty standard days. This tithe shall collect all outstanding levies from previous years, totalling..."
He turned the pages swiftly. Account ledgers, grain-yield statistics, climate reports... Then, in the latter half of the notebook, the handwriting became increasingly ragged.
"The prophecy of the cold disaster... Damn it, I truly do not wish to believe those lunatics and their endless ravings, but every sign suggests they were right."
"A once-in-a-century extreme freeze shall sweep across the entire continent and persist for four months. After the tithe is deducted, existing grain reserves can sustain the planet’s population for only half a month... no more... Civilian and garrison rations must be reduced."
"Today, a delegation of young officers from the Third Regiment petitioned for the strategic grain reserves to be opened and for the tithe to be delayed. I refused. The orders of the Administratum stand above all else. Any delay shall be judged rebellion."
"The way they looked at me... I know the seed has been planted. But they do not understand! They do not know how terrible the Imperium’s punishment shall be!"
The following pages had been torn out. Farther on, the script became something else entirely: frantic, violent, gouged into the page with such force it nearly tore the paper apart.
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
"Those maggots above us! They drained us dry, and now they would take our last morsel of food! My parents were beaten to death by tithe officers because they had failed to hand over one sack of grain!"
"We prayed to the Blood God. We offered the skulls of those corrupt officials. The god answered us: power! Power enough to tear down every injustice!"
More pages had been ripped away in a frenzy.
"No one can go back now."
"Why [bloodstain] can’t we stop!!! [scratches where the page had been torn] Kill!!!"
The journal ended there. The final page bore only a great eight-pointed star, and at its centre, a line written in blood.
"The cold disaster is coming. All things shall perish. Better to burn without restraint before destruction claims us."
Duvall closed the notebook and let out a long, weary breath. He understood now.
The rebels had not invaded this world. This world had bred the rebels itself.
Poverty. Oppression. Despair. The Administratum’s merciless tithes and the coming natural disaster. All of it had mixed together and fermented into this rebellion.
And Khorne, the god who thirsted for blood and skulls, had merely set fire to a mountain of dry kindling that had been piling up for years.
Perhaps, in the beginning, they had only wanted to save themselves... But the Dark Gods of Chaos had never been benevolent.
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