The Dark City (Vaults of Terra: Warhammer 40,000 #3)

by Chris Wraight

He felt the pressure on his own sanity now, enormous, infinite. He heard the screaming even before his mind’s eye spun through the first true gate, the chorus of endless anguish that rang like cathedral bells from every blood-steeped rooftop. The entire place vibrated with it, resonated with an endless repeat-loop of frenzied but unrequited pleading. No other sound made any impression – it was the air those things breathed, the gravity they walked in. It surged up from the torture-pits in the deepest depths, thrummed through the depraved fleshworks and oubliettes, shimmered over the gladiatorial circuses and rancid pleasure-domes – screaming, screaming, on and on, never ceasing, millions of voices never still, merged into an orgy of psychic terror that seemed to form its own physical structures, its own rivals to the pitiless towers that jutted up against the starless darkness in criss-crossed webs of pitch-black despair.