Daemonculaba

At first, the light of the twin suns was obscured.

A gigantic, twisted shadow, as if cast directly from a nightmare, slowly spread across the most fertile plains of Gracia's main continent.

It was not one of the square, boxy Imperium transport ships people occasionally saw.

The warship's silhouette was savage, its hull streaked with rust-like corrosion that seemed almost alive.

Countless spikes, bone ornaments, and indescribable protrusions ruined any shape that might have conformed to aerodynamics.

More soul-chilling still were the blasphemous symbols that flickered unsteadily and gave off foul light.

A mere glance at them was enough to make people dizzy and nauseous.

It did not stop in synchronous orbit. Like a hunting vulture, it plunged straight through the atmosphere and hovered low above the highlands where the governor's mansion stood.

The roar of its engines was not mechanical vibration, but a wave of sound mixed with countless agonized screams and blasphemous whispers, battering every ear and nerve.

Landing pods, more like gigantic rusted fangs, thrust out from the ship's belly and smashed into the earth, throwing up tidal waves of dirt mixed with shattered stone and crops.

What emerged from them were giants, but certainly not the heroes of myth who protected humanity.

They averaged over two meters tall and wore deep-black power armor covered in filth, bloodstains, and grotesquely proliferating flesh.

Their helmet lenses glowed with savage red light, while their breathing grilles vented thick fumes stinking of sulfur and rotting meat.

Their weapons were enormous and vicious:

The barrels of their boltguns twisted like intestinal limbs, while scraps resembling internal organs clung to the teeth of their chainswords, whose buzzing sounded like demons grinding their teeth.

Most terrifying of all was the sheer "presence" they radiated.

An oppressive aura combining extreme violence, pure malice, and utter inhumanity.

It was as if the air decayed and the light dimmed wherever they walked.

They were a slave-raiding force of the Black Legion.

They came from the Eye of Terror, serving Abaddon the Warmaster's "Eternal Crusade."

Their purpose was simple and direct: to plunder "resources."

In the eyes of these Chaos Space Marines, there were only two kinds of "resources": useful supplies—usually rare metals or alien-made items that interested them—and the "raw materials" used to make them.

That was to say, humans.

In the forty-first millennium, Honsou, Warsmith of the Iron Warriors, invented the Daemonculaba.

Its actual construction and maintenance were handled by the Savage Morticians, a Dark Mechanicum faction loyal to him.

The core purpose of this blasphemous device was to mass-produce recruits for the Chaos Space Marines.

Honsou and the others transformed captured human women into living incubators.

They pumped them full of nutrient fluid mixed with Astartes gene-seed—or genetic material recovered from the shattered remains of dead Chaos Space Marines—and Warp energy.

Then they forcibly implanted human adolescents into their mutated bodies, using Warp power and genetic matter to accelerate the adolescents' mutation.

This turned them into Chaos Space Marines, rapidly expanding the Legion's strength and making up for the Black Legion's manpower losses during its long wars.

This technique was extraordinarily cruel and utterly unethical. Most recruits it produced were born without skin.

Those who passed were grafted with the flayed skin of living human males. The failed "skinless" were discarded, though some survivors became malformed predators within the fortress.

Thus, to these blasphemous believers, men, women, and children alike were all immensely useful resources.

The Warmaster of Chaos was about to begin another crusade. They needed to expand their forces!

The false Emperor's rule would eventually fall, and Chaos's corruption would shroud the material universe!

Hell crashed down upon Gracia's peaceful fields without warning.

Planetary Governor Aulus Greifman's residence was a magnificent building of white stone, one he had taken great pride in.

Yet before the Chaos Space Marines, his pride was no more than a child's toy piled from sand.

The decorative outer walls shattered beneath a volley of bolter fire, while the heavy bronze-inlaid gates were smashed into warped sheets of metal by a single blow from a power fist.

The governor's guards were soldiers in ornate uniforms carrying antiquated lasguns, and their courage meant nothing before true supernatural horror.

Some had their heads casually gripped and crushed with a wet pop, like grapes.

Others were lightly swept by chainswords and split with unnatural smoothness down the middle or at the waist, their organs spilling across the ground.

Still others were trampled beneath armored feet and ground into the earth along with their armor, becoming indistinct heaps of flesh and metal.

Governor Aulus himself sat collapsed upon his throne in his nightclothes, his crotch soaked through as he babbled incoherently and tried to beg for mercy in the few phrases of formal Gothic he had learned.

It was as if the four Chaos Gods had answered the curses cast by the planet's people in the dead of night.

The response was a point-blank plasma gun shot.

The searing blue-white plasma bolt vaporized him instantly, leaving only a blackened human-shaped outline on the throne and trails of molten gemstones running down its surface.

The slave raid was efficient and cold-blooded.

Strong farmers, blacksmiths, and even youths who merely looked broad-boned were dragged from their hiding places.

Resistance?

One blow from a gunstock could cave in even the strongest farmer's skull.

Crying and screaming?

That would only earn an impatient kick, or a throat crushed outright.

They were brutally shackled in crude metal restraints and driven like livestock into cage wagons reeking of blood and excrement, then hoisted back to the mothership by small transport craft.

Throughout the entire process, the Chaos warriors spoke little.

Only the beast-like breathing that came through their helmet speakers, along with the occasional short, blasphemous snicker directed at the fragile "cargo," could be heard.

Once the governor's mansion had been stripped bare, the raiders turned their gaze toward the countless villages scattered across the vast plains.

There were more "raw materials" there, as well as ordinary slaves to serve as laborers.

Kai was ten years old.

An hour ago, his world had still been simple: helping his father repair the drive shaft of the harvester, drying rice with his mother in the evening breeze.

He dreamed that one day he might board one of those enormous starships and see whether the stars truly were as numerous as his teacher claimed.

Then the sky went dark. A tremendous crash rang out, and black smoke rose from the direction of the governor's mansion beyond the horizon.

His father went pale and said, "Stay inside."

Then he grabbed the closest thing their home had to a weapon—a heavy wrench used to repair farm tools—and rushed outside.

His mother held Kai tightly and hid with him in the storage room at the very back of their rammed-earth house.