Adventure Time!

  A team of adventurers set out for the dark dungeons of an ancient hive. A female warrior with emotional issues. In her sword lies power capable of destroying this world.

  A shadow dancer with a difficult character, but for a Drukhari... Do I even know any other Drukhari?

  A wizard with...

  "A sick imagination?"

  Who believes in his only goddess...

  "And she has to listen to his thoughts."

  I sighed at the complaints in my head and examined the entrance to the hive. Imoen and I were wearing Kabalite armor; I had spent a long time checking all equipment elements for needles and hooks. I carefully tried to find the Dark Eldar's perverted devices for inflicting pain, but these were just ordinary sets of armor.

  Of course, the armor was adjusted to human proportions. A sword hung on my belt, a psychoplastic dagger on my thigh, and a shuriken catapult on a single-point strap. A fusion pistol was attached to my leg—we were heading to ruins, after all. I was certain we would need to destroy some barricades.

  Imoen was equally well-armed; besides the sword on her belt, she held a fusion rifle in her hands. What other weapons had she taken? About three dozen grenades. I'm sure the Void found the explosion of grenades amusing!

  Mandrake surprised me the most. This was the first time I'd seen her in full Succubus equipment. Two power sabers made of shining steel absorbed her green flame. She'd even put on a helmet! The nudist had been walking around with bare breasts all this time; this was a first.

  This is a very bad sign! If a Drukhari covers her chest, expect trouble.

  The journey itself wasn't too long.

  A few hours of travel along well-trodden paths to the ruined space, through hills and mountains, sufficient to leave the enormous ridges of fallen hives at a convenient distance from the small village.

  Truth be told, the paths in the hills more closely resembled roads by any fair medieval definition. Trampled by the feet of hundreds of knights traveling to the ruins over centuries.

  Except we weren't walking. Rizalia handled the teleportation. Her ability is pure cheating! According to her, teleportation within a planet doesn't drain much energy.

  Of course, it helped that most of our group didn't have to worry about carrying supplies. Have you tried Drukhari food tablets? Keeps you full for a whole day and weighs just a few grams.

  I didn't mind carrying some of our supplies; my recently modified body was well-suited for empty backpacks and two spatial rings!

  Spatial rings! Rizalia speaks of the technological implementation of this trinket. How? Why? This is clearly impossible. In such moments, even the joke about stupid mon-keigh no longer seems like a joke.

  Each dimensional ring could hold a hundred square meters! Great goddess, how many times have the Drukhari already mocked logistics?

  What was inside the rings? Soul traps...

  I didn't even bother asking how it works; my current knowledge isn't sufficient to even think about such technologies. Why are we carrying five dozen such artifacts with us? Safari...

  Rizalia came to prepare provisions and collect props for our further training. The more demons we catch, the happier she'll be.

  When the sun shone high above us, we headed to a clearing near the ruins. Apparently, this was a common resting place for knights—too many traces of human presence.

  We made another shadow jump, and the long-awaited ruins appeared before us.

  Seeing it with fresh eyes, the city was actually beautiful, in a grim sense.

  The Kingdom of Shadows, as humans called it.

  It was impossible to argue—this was a true kingdom! It didn't match the enormous size of the mountains and hills. Huge! Beyond imagination, with no possibility of seeing the top, only the intact side towers.

  How high did it rise? I pondered, straining my eyes far beyond human capabilities, only to discover that I couldn't find the highest points.

  I idly wondered if the ancient city had reached orbital heights? I looked at the enormous structures, not understanding how the hell a spaceship was visible in the structure!

  The vessel had plunged into the city, slightly deforming the construction. A ship kilometers long, or rather what remained of it, had become part of the gigantic city.

  Matching its size were enormous residential segments and incredible tube-like bridges connecting various sections of the city. Not to mention the lower row of broken domes and protruding smaller structures extending beyond the horizon?

  It was difficult to dispute the name. This wasn't a city but a true kingdom of shadows.

  Rizalia didn't notice my brief pause while I examined the structure; only Imoen cast a light curious glance at me before moving on without comment.

  We followed the path into the breach, then entered the tunnels, while Imoen raised her rifle, I took the catapult off safety.

  "Helmets with integrated night vision are simply wonderful," I awkwardly commented on not having to worry about the darkness.

  Mandrake moved slightly ahead.

  "Don't get distracted, I sense the unborn."

  "That means we'll get home faster," remarked Imoen with a note of hunger in her muffled voice.

  We walked through rooms and halls with slow and steady steps, so many of the halls seemed to stretch eternally, with echoes of mechanisms, rust, and abandoned objects. The style of the rooms resembled science fiction; I didn't see cogitators and panels with vacuum tube logic familiar to the Imperium.

  The parasites in the form of small animals were disturbing as they affected our instincts. I think knights would find such a place even more frightening.

  We moved forward, then stopped at a fork. A plaque engraved in High Gothic showed evacuation routes for critical situations. Rizalia examined the map for about a minute, then we turned left. We passed by destroyed living quarters, workshops, eateries, and huge market spaces. Only the words in High Gothic hinted at the purpose of the rooms; everything that could rot had rotted.

  We were at a sealed door with a plaque reading "archive." It was impossible to open it, so Rizalia ordered me to fire the fusion pistol.

  The first shot melted half the door. Liquid metal flowed across the floor and began seeping into cracks. After moving away from the red puddle, I fired another shot; this time the sealed door was destroyed.

  Once the metal cooled, we went inside. This was supposed to be a large area at some point. The room, about a hundred meters high, was illuminated by sunlight; the floors were strewn with truly enormous shards of glass from the broken dome that once crowned this space. I appreciated both the light and the flow of fresh air entering the room.

  There was one small nuance. The room was filled with bones. Countless piles of ancient bones; the creaking and crunching under our feet showed how fragile they were. I tried to examine the floor covering but saw only human bones. The layer of bones was thickest near the sealed door.

  I couldn't sense their remains or even echoes of souls. The most frightening thing was a small detail...

  All the skulls were missing.

  "Of course," commented Rizalia, tapping on the wall, "We're being welcomed by guests."

  The sharpness in her voice was softened by calmness; not much needed to be said. These were definitely demons.

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  "How far?" I cautiously asked.

  "Warp energy," added Imoen, "Less than four hundred meters. They seem to be moving toward us."

  Rizalia quietly nodded in approval; we aimed our weapons at the only corridor and waited.

  I couldn't sense the demons. I'll need to learn useful magic for this.

  The creatures made themselves known; the air dropped several degrees. Space itself was distorted by the Warp.

  "It seems we've found our prey," commented Rizalia, as shadows gathered around her. The hole in the ceiling was filled with viscous shadow threads, leaving no possibility for light rays to enter.

  I heard the frantic and now, probably, excessive humming of my automatic observation devices; the visor in my helmet was literally overflowing with signals about visual confirmation of the enemy.

  "In line, traps," said Rizalia, frowning, "No further than arm's length. We're outnumbered. Grenades, corridor, upward vector."

  I touched the ring, and all our soul traps materialized around us.

  Imoen and I threw fusion grenades into the corridor. The grenades were set before throwing to release the reaction at a right angle upward.

  I turned on the thermal overlay of the helmet; red spots were visible on the ceiling of the darkening corridor ahead of us. Given the broken dome, their plan to attack us from above was clear.

  Unfortunately for the demons.

  EXPLOSION

  A crimson beam of plasma cut through the ceiling and brought down the remains of the attackers into the corridor.

  Imoen aimed her weapon at the ceiling debris and fired. The crimson beam melted bodies, metal, and glass. The molten mass poured into the corridor, burning everything in its path. Meanwhile, I emptied the fifth magazine of shuriken weapons. A stream of fragments filled the space; any attempts by creatures to escape from under the debris led to death.

  After emptying the last magazine, I allowed my power to fill the psychoplastics. Imoen fired again and now waited for the fusion rifle to cool down.

  Our respite gave the dust and smoke a chance to dissipate. Hundreds of corpses, some splashing in molten metal. Others were cut into hundreds of pieces, but we still faced a crowd of enormous size, hundreds of muscular bodies throwing aside the corpses of their comrades and running at us.

  Splayed claws, hooves, long, flat skulls, long horns, claws, and paws clutching axes.

  Dozens of the most insignificant servants of Khorne moved toward us. The Bloodletters were armed with swords and axes.

  There was one oddity, however.

  The speed of the demons—I would call it a quiet stroll.

  "Don't shoot, these are mine."

  Rizalia stepped forward and disappeared. She appeared behind a demon, then behind another. Wherever she appeared, heads flew. A circle formed around us, which the demons were unable to cross.

  The Drukhari, using teleportation and speed, created a slaughterhouse, but why were the demons moving so slowly?!

  Following my intuition, I turned off the night vision, then uttered an Eldar spell to enhance sight. Something in this area was interfering, but I managed to overcome the resistance.

  I was met with an anomalous color of monsters; instead of blood-red skin, black horns, or even the faint red color of blood...

  The monsters were colorless. Devoid of colors, they moved as if time flowed differently for us and for them. Each demon tried to react to the Mandrake's swings, but their movement speed did not match their desires.

  Not even ten minutes had passed, and all our soul traps were filled. Rizalia lowered her swords, inserted them into their sheaths, then looked at me.

  "Ask the goddess what that was?"

  Around us rose a whirlwind of green flame; the bodies of demons shriveled and turned into mummies.

  "They have a normal level of life force; they're not wounded. I never thought I'd see such weak unborn."

  "Tell her there's a strange field in the ruins. I know not its capabilities or functions."

  The flame disappeared, and the broken dome once again illuminated the room.

  "There's a field around us that interferes with demons."

  Mandrake nodded and began collecting soul traps into her ring.

  "I know, but why does it only affect demons?"

  I shrugged, then began rummaging through the bones. Fabric or plastic had long since turned to dust, but in places, I found armor, strange devices, or pistols resembling blasters.

  "Imoen, help collect trophies."

  The girl nodded, but when I saw her go to a demon corpse, chills ran down my spine.

  "No, we don't need that sword," raising the remains of a microchip, I pointed to the skeletons, "Let's dig through corpses, but not demonic ones."

  Imoen nodded, kicked the sword further down the corridor out of boredom, then helped me sort through all that remained of the pile of corpses.

  When I had completely filled the first ring, I came across the body of someone who resembled a security officer. His armor was mangled, his weapon broken.

  I removed the helmet, as it was completely intact. The paint hadn't survived, and the composites it was made of resembled plastic. I examined the inside of the helmet; there were remnants of electronics, and I also noticed a neat engraving on the inner part of the dome. The letters weren't like Gothic; it was Latin script, but the words corresponded to High Gothic.

  "The United Earth Federacy Blue-21, sol-class deep space fleet engagement vessel, Taskforce-17, 992.M23 TF, DNX-02507."

  One could guess the meaning of the engraving, but I was interested in something else. Blue-21, Imoen said that the kingdom was ruled by Blue Twenty-One... The ship that had rammed the hive city from outside, the local myths, the engraving on the helmet...

  My psyker intuition suggested problems.

  I stopped looking for trophies, and my face betrayed my nervousness.

  "Tired of digging through garbage?"

  Rizalia was filling another demonic weapon with green flame. She had already absorbed the power of three dozen, so she wasn't in a hurry to rush the mon-keigh. If they wanted to dig through junk, why should she stop them?

  "I think we need to leave urgently."

  The Drukhari examined the room and raised an eyebrow.

  "Why? I don't want to leave all this life..."

  A bright blue light appeared around us. Just a moment later, we were in a completely different room. There was no light, but the space was very different from what we had seen before.

  "Energy..."

  The axe in the mandrake's hands crumbled.

  The panels on the walls weren't covered in dust. The floor wasn't cluttered with the decay of rotted items. The non-working lumen hadn't fallen out of its slots. Most importantly, what I saw was...

  An inscription on the wall: U.E.F.

  All this could have been ignored, but there were touch panels on the walls, the kind from science fiction. The design of the room was completely different, unlike the rooms we had visited. The interior decoration consisted purely of metal gratings with false panels. Behind them were visible thick clusters of cables.

  "If I'm not mistaken."

  I point to one of the cameras in the room. The style had changed; the device didn't resemble the cameras I was familiar with, but it was hard to mistake its purpose.

  "The ship that crashed into these ruins is still functioning."

  Mandrake raised her hand; she wanted to create shadows for teleportation. The shadows appeared, but their color was unnaturally gray.

  "We have problems..."

  The device resembling a camera jerked slightly, turning toward us.