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.
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