Mortis et Umbra
Trooper Halvek’s boots scuffed on the rockrete as he followed the squad, lasgun clammy in his grip. The others moved in quietly, each man waiting for the next flicker as though the light itself might betray what lay ahead.
When it came, it revealed a body. Juras. Or what had once been Juras.
The corpse was splayed in the centre of the corridor like a grotesque offering. His ribcage had been cracked apart and pulled wide, ribs splintered into jagged prongs. The organs within had been arranged with sickening deliberation: lungs draped across his shoulders like a shawl, heart resting in cupped hands of bone. The head was gone, wrenched away at the neck in a spray of sinew.
The squad froze. Someone’s breathing grew sharp and fast. The light flickered again, plunging them into blackness, then back. The corpse was still there in its silent display of extreme violence.
Halvek swallowed hard. The copper stench of blood was thick, almost sweet, clinging to the back of his throat. He wanted to speak, to ask what could have done this, but the words refused to materialise. The silence stretched, broken only by the buzz and hum of the failing lumens.
It felt deliberate. Not just a killing. A message.
The corridor trembled with the pulse of dying power. Each flicker of light seemed slower than the last, shadows stretching and folding in on themselves.
The squad edged forward, lasguns raised, boots slipping in the blood smeared across the rockrete. Halvek swallowed the bile creeping up his throat as his gaze slid over Juras’s corpse again.
The light died.
In the suffocating dark, something moved. Heavy. Too heavy. A scrape across the floor, the hiss of breath through a filter. Then a muffled cry, choked into silence before it could rise.
The light snapped back.
Venn was gone. His lasgun lay on the ground where he had stood, still vibrating from the fall.
The darkness came again. This time, Halvek heard the impact, flesh against stone, a sharp crack of bone breaking. A scream burst out, only to be cut short with a tearing crunch.
The light returned in a stutter. A shape dangled at the edge of vision. Venn, half-sprawled against the wall, blood sluicing down the rebar that now pinned him there. His chest had been crushed inward, ribs jutting through his blood soaked uniform. One eye hung loose on its nerve, swinging slightly in the air.
Someone opened fire, the corridor alive with the crack of las-fire scorching the air. Muzzle flashes painted the walls in red bursts, and in those fragments of light, Halvek saw it, a shadow far too large to move so fast, darting low and close to the ground. Each time the lights caught it, it was somewhere else.
Another man screamed. This one didn’t stop right away. His voice pitched higher and higher as the dark swallowed him, then broke into a gurgle. Something wet splattered.
The light returned. Another lasgun lay abandoned on the floor.
Halvek’s knuckles whitened around his own weapon. His mouth was dry knowing something was in here with them. Something impossibly big.
The lights flickered slower now. Each return of brightness felt weaker as though the compound itself was struggling to stay alive.
Halvek’s squad was breaking. Men were backing into corners, turning their guns on every shadow, breath ragged and uneven. Orders were shouted, but each command ended abruptly, cut short by the next scream.
The dark came.
A sound tore through it. The hollow whump of something massive striking meat, followed by a splatter that sprayed wet across the walls. Halvek flinched as droplets struck his cheek.
Light returned.
Drenn was gone from the formation. His boots were still there, neatly upright, blood gushing down from the stumps where his legs had been severed clean above the knee. His body, what remained of it, had been dragged into the dark, leaving a slick smear across the floor.
The squad fired blindly, las shots scorching plasteel walls. Muzzle flashes stuttered the corridor in red bursts.
And then Halvek saw it.
For the briefest instant, caught in the red flare of a las discharge, something loomed above them. Armour dark as the rockrete they stood on, slick with blood. A mask of bone-white, empty-eyed but for the glow of two green embers that burned through the haze of smoke and shadow.
It moved. The light stuttered again and it was already inside their line.
A blade tore up through a man’s jaw, splitting his head in half with a crunching rip. Another was slammed into the wall so hard his chest burst, ribs protruding like snapped spears. Their screams blended into one long shriek before the lights stopped flickering and guttered out again.
When they returned, only three of them remained.
The corridor was a slaughterhouse. Limbs lay scattered, slick trails of intestine curling like eels across the rockrete. Blood ran in sheets, pooling in the gutter like spilled oil.
Halvek’s hands shook around his lasgun. He could taste iron in the air. He knew, with a weight that hollowed his chest, that they weren’t fighting an enemy. They were being hunted.
Halvek ran.
Barely keeping balance, his boots hammered the rockrete, slipping in the blood that slicked the floor. The lights above guttered and stuttered, throwing the corridor into staccato frames of brightness and dark. Each time the light died, his breath seized in his throat, waiting for a strike that didn’t come.
He dared to believe he might have outpaced it.
With each corner turned hope grew. Halvek saw a bulkhead door yawning open ahead. Figures moved beyond it, voices rising in confusion. Another squad. Alive!
“Help! Help me!” His voice cracked as he stumbled toward them, arms outstretched, lasgun dropped and forgotten somewhere in the complex.
The light failed once more as he reached the bulkhead.
No sooner had his face emerged through the doorway something large seized him. A gauntlet shattered through his ribs, dragging him backwards by his spine and off his feet with impossible force. He tried to scream as blood began to fill his airways, legs kicking in the dark, fingernails clawing at anything in reach as he was pulled away from salvation.
The lights flared again just long enough for them to see... The silhouette of something huge in the gloom, hauling Halvek into the black. Sounds of his screaming echoed down the corridor, rising into a wet, choking gargle before it stopped altogether.
When the lights steadied, the only trace left was a wide smear of blood stretching into the shadows.
The men at the bulkhead stood frozen, staring into the silence.
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