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Daemonology

Chris Wraight

The world was called Terathalion, named for the species of jewel found in its equatorial belt under mountains of copper and iron. Even during the long interstellar silence before the Ipsissimus had made himself known, those swirled green-orange jewels had been mined and cut and polished, adorning the chief treasures of the planet – these were always books.

For Terathalion was a world of words where documents stored in a thousand human tongues were collated, analysed, annotated and catalogued.

A library-world, they had called it later. A place where knowledge coalesced, all under the benign guidance of distant masters on Prospero. For a hundred years after its incorporation into the Imperium, ruby-armoured magisters had been welcome and frequent visitors, prompted by curiosity or sent on assignment by their venerated primarch in search of myriad fragments of learning. Those visits had slowly dried up as the demands of the Great Crusade had drawn more of the XV Legion away from the loose-thrown Prosperine empire until, one day, they had ceased altogether.

During this new isolation, the world’s temporal masters did not worry unduly, nor did they seek especial clarification. The galaxy had been made safe for study, and so Terathalion’s patient work continued unabated. They knew that the Legions would return in time, for it was widely understood that Space Marines left no task unfinished.

In that, the temporal masters were of course entirely correct, except the ships that eventually emerged from the Mandeville point in the Imperial year 007.M31 and spread out through the local system were not the sleek and gloriously decorated system-runners of the XV Legion, but corpse-grey, vast-hulled leviathans.

Moreover, it was no mere squadron that had arrived, but an entire battle group. And as the warships took up position above Terathalion’s risibly meagre orbital defences, even the most trusting of the planet’s overseers felt a sense of unease.

They sent messages to the lead battleship, a colossal Gloriana-class monster with the tactical ident Endurance, but no response was received. Orders were frantically transmitted to the defence grid to mobilise, but by then even that gesture was made far too late.

The placid people of Terathalion had never witnessed the full firepower of a Legion fleet before, and so they could hardly be blamed for not knowing what to expect. They were still looking up into the skies when the bombardment began, turning the skies white as the clouds boiled away. Mass drivers annihilated the outer ring of defences before pinpoint lance strikes destroyed every command-and-control node across the northern hemisphere. A rain of incendiaries ripped through the urban centres, falling for hour upon hour in an unrelenting barrage that left barely one stone standing atop the next. Sheets of promethium flame swept through what little remained, scorching it black.

The books burned. Millennial tomes that had been secured in vacuum chambers were ripped apart as the armourglass casings shattered. Archives became white-hot tunnels, atomising irreplaceable volumes in puffs of burning dust.

When the bombardment finally relented, the few survivors crept slowly from whatever refuges they had been able to find, their ears ringing and their eyes streaming. For a moment it seemed to them like some awful error had been committed, and that the worst was over, and that – satisfied with the apocalyptic destruction they had wrought, for reasons that were still entirely mysterious – the attackers would now move on to their next target.

But then dirty contrails of drop pods split the smoke-barred skies. All across Terathalion’s newly tortured surface, clusters of adamantium teardrops crashed to earth, disgorging squads of pale-grey Space Marines from the impact-rubble. More and more landed, until whole battalions of warriors stalked through the rapidly toxifying atmosphere, their faces hidden behind slope-grilled helms. With horrifying efficiency, they ground their way from one ravaged hab-section to the next.

They asked no questions and made no demands. As aftershock thunderheads boiled across the rubbled cityscapes and heavily acidic rain began to drum from still-hot metal, the survivors of ruined Terathalion were hunted down like vermin.

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