As soon as he saw the man limping into the
light of the glowing fungus upon the tunnel wall, the boy hid all his weapons
but the knife in a narrow ravine. Then he stepped slowly towards the newcomer.
And a newcomer he certainly was — still walking upright, still squinting to
see, not using his sense of smell at all. Laughable.The moment the man noticed him, the boy
threw himself onto his knees and began begging for mercy, sobbing in his most
desperate voice. The man stopped, relaxed his clenched fists, and stared at the
pitiable creature on the plascrete floor. Then he bent down, his voice rough
but not without mercy: “Get up, lad. I can’t give you nothing, ‘cause
I have none.”
Cautiously, the boy rose again, still
hiding his armoured-glass blade tucked into the old bandage tied around his
waist:
"Plzzz… syre… plizzz, dunot kill me!”
The man let out a hard but hopeless laugh. “I
won’t, little one. I won’t,” he said, stretching out his hand in greeting. Of course, the boy did not take it. Shaking
hands was a long-forgotten custom down here — and for good reason.
“What ’r u?” the boy asked.
“I’m Exertus, lad. A soldier in the armies
of the Man in Gold.” He pointed to his chest, where the boy saw a strange bat
tattooed there. “See? The Aquila of the Emperor. I was one of the good ones.
Once.” He slowly reached out for the boy again. "You can trust me, lad. Really!” he whispered, forcing a wry smile.
The boy took a step back, feigning shyness
and fearfulness while using the movement to grasp his blade.
“Oh,” he hushed, “Den take me wiv you,
mazzter… yeah?”
His eyes seemed to close, though he watched
through his lashes. The man took a final step closer, his hand closing firmly
around the boy’s bony shoulder. “Well, well—”
The boy moved with lightning speed, driving
the knife upward into the man’s lower jaw. It did not require much force; the
glass shard was sharp — terribly sharp. Bone cracked. The blade pierced upward
into the brainstem. The boy’s victim fell to his knees,
shocked, staring into nothingness yet still breathing… as he heard the
whispered words:
“Welcome t’ the Underdark, zzoldier.”, the boy smiled, “Alwayz wondered wot a ‘good one’ fetch
down ‘ere?”
-
Deep beneath the scorched crust of a war-torn
Terra, forever unseen by those who do their utmost to forget them and never
destined to walk beneath the pale light of the Sun, live those who still pay
for their ancestors’ crimes — the forgotten sons and daughters of darkness, the
heirs of despair and nightmare, the Children of Eternal Night.
As long as mankind has walked the Earth,
there has been law — from the unspoken codes of the earliest societies to the
complex scientific statutes of a forgotten Age of Technology. And as long as
mankind has walked the Earth, there have been those who broke them. And they
had to be punished.
For countless generations, outcasts,
lawbreakers, dissidents, and criminals of a broken age were banished to caverns
and dungeons far below the surface — places so dark, so vile, and so hopeless
that a death sentence would sound merciful compared to the fate of these
prisoners. Those poor souls are forever barred from natural light and fresh
air, fed on leftovers or corpse-starch rations at best — and on subterranean
vermin and one another at worst — and ever vigilant against the dangers of the
hostile environment in which they are forced to survive. But there is no life in prison, just existence.
But if one thing is true of mankind, it is
that it is hard to kill, surviving like cockroaches even under the direst
circumstances. And so those prisoners endured, clinging to life until their
last breath was taken, forging a brutal and merciless society of their own. And
they continued to exist. And to procreate. Spreading like a virus, lifeless but
most dangerous. Contained only by the cage doors, the concrete the walls and the automatic gun turrets.
Violence is the bloody coinage of these
societies, with sexual favours, bonded labour, and sometimes even their own
flesh and blood serving as small change in their cruel economy. Love and mercy are
weaknesses that have to be forgotten, suppressed beneath an ugly shell of anger
and instinct for survival. And so those poor souls, born of violence or coerced
lust, never have a chance to understand what being human truly means.
Most infants die regardless — often
together with their mothers — during childbirth. Those are the fortunate ones,
for they never have to witness abominable men burrowing their filed teeth into
the flesh of the newborn and sucking the sweet marrow from their bones.
Those unfortunate enough to survive for
weeks or months endure the humidity and stale warmth of long-forgotten tunnels,
where their mothers hide them from human hunting packs. Others suffere the
misfortune of being sold to the Raiser clans and are raised by wet-nurse slaves
in an environment filled with the constant crying of the hungry and unfed, and
the stench of hundreds of children left to soil themselves.
Growing older is no easy achievement
either, for in times of famine and want even the most underfed children were
highly prized commodities. Yet in every litter there were some stronger than
the others, more resistant to pain, infection, and malnourishment than their
brothers and sisters. These were destined to endure, learning to see in the
near-utter darkness and to move in absolute silence.
They are tought the cruel, mutilated tongue
of the Underdark, hissing and whispering to one another, and they later memorise
the strange signs painted upon the walls — runes so ancient and unholy that
almost perfect eyes alone were not enough to perceive them, but rather a
hardened soul and a twisted mind.
And so the years pass for those born into
such misery, raised in confinement though never convicted of any crime. In time
they gather together, forming packs, or flocks, or murders, or — in imitation
of true society— gangs and syndicates. And what they had once lacked in sin and
criminal guilt, they soon accumulate in abundance.
Those desperate few who reach their teenage
years are soon fully confronted with the harshness of their surrounding society
— its cruel politics, its lust and desire, and its corruption. They are
required to rise continually in power, brutality, and cunning in order to
survive and see another day.
But some of them — some of them are lost.
Never to be seen again by their peers, and never spoken of thereafter. Those are
the truly fortunate ones: the ones chosen by the most cruel, most despicable,
and often most effective fighting force the Imperium has to offer — the Cursed
Ones, the Children of the Night… the VIIIth Legio Astartes.
