by Ben Counter
It was just pain. The wound would heal. He kept going.
The altar was just above him. His leg threatened to buckle under him. His armour flooded his system with painkillers and his footsteps sounded distant. His vision swam as if he were looking up at the mountaintop through a veil of rippling water.
He reached the altar and stumbled against it. His leg could support him no more. Muscle fibres had parted and the lower limb hung useless.
Yathe was standing in front of him, staring at him past the obelisk. She raised her hand but Cyvon fired first. The plasma pistol roared in his hand and the bolt of plasma slammed against her.
A strobe of intense light flared up around Kalypsa Yathe. The hemispherical power field surrounding her held firm. The plasma energy rebounded off her in coruscating fingers of yellow light.
That House Yathe’s heirlooms included a personal power field came as no surprise to Cyvon. In hindsight, he should have expected it.
Yathe rose off the ground. Fingers of blue energy earthed into the rock. She threw off the pilgrim’s ragged cloak and Cyvon saw the technology she had grafted onto her body. Her forearms had the implanted claws he had seen on the Thricefold. A long, elegant scabbard hung from her waist, and Cyvon guessed it was not of human construction.
He had to close in. That was where he was most dangerous, where his strengths were magnified.
Yathe dived at him. In his debilitated state, she was faster. He was barely able to turn aside before her right hand slammed into his shoulder guard and buckled the ceramite. Cyvon felt the bone inside crackling and dislocating. The painkiller haze, and the shock running up and down his nervous system, dampened the pain, but he was aware of the injury all the same. It was a strange, distant feeling to know his body was breaking inside.
His mind split again between sensing what was around him and dissecting it according to his training. One side of him saw Kalypsa Yathe raising her right hand once more as claws slid from her forearm. The other side dispassionately considered the options open to him.
Block, and he might lose his arm. Move, and the claws would still catch him, but he would have less control over where.
Close in, he thought. Always close in.
The claws plunged into his side. The ceramite was torn apart, laying open skin and muscle. Splinters of Cyvon’s fused ribcage were ripped free, exposing the organs normally protected by a Space Marine’s internal breastplate.
So long as he was still alive. Cyvon did not need those parts to fight. He had redundant organs inside him, three lungs and two hearts. If he had blocked and lost the arm, it would have been over.
He swung at Yathe with his free hand, but Yathe drifted backwards out of his arc and avoided the crushing blow. She switched hands, passing the Lyre of Innokens into her right and drawing her sword with her left. A long, glowing blade slid from the scabbard and Cyvon knew instinctively it would go through his armour like it wasn’t there.
Yathe had another weakness: the pride of an aristocrat who believed she was owed everything. Who craved control and authority. Who wanted to be perfect, and raged against everything that said she was not.
The kind of opponent who wanted to end this with a single, neat killing blow.
Cyvon tilted his torso, to present the ruptured side of his breastplate to his opponent. He saw the smile curl the edge of her lips as she drew back the sword.
She lunged, and Cyvon was too late to turn it aside. The blade speared into his chest, through bone and organ, and out through his back, impaling him right through the backpack of his armour.
Kalypsa Yathe had been so intent on despatching her Adeptus Astartes opponent with an educated kill-stroke that she had neglected to defend her flanks.
Cyvon, meanwhile, had two hearts, and only one of them had been run through.
He swung a left hook at Yathe’s side. His fist crunched into her ribs. All her augmentations and alien weaponry could not compete with the raw strength of a Space Marine. She seemed to deflate as she gasped out all the breath in her ruptured lungs.
Cyvon felt the buzzing of the plasma pistol in his other hand. It changed pitch, and he knew it was recharged. He aimed the weapon right at the Voice of All.
‘Prophet by word,’ said Cyvon. ‘Traitor by deed.’
He pulled the trigger, and Kalypsa Yathe’s head and shoulders vanished in a burst of liquid fire.
Sudden, complete silence fell. Even the rumble of battle in the Tomb of Innokens overhead seemed to come from a different world entirely.
Cyvon dropped to one knee and the remains of Kalypsa Yathe slumped onto him. He let them slide off onto the stone, and caught the Lyre of Innokens as it fell from her lifeless hand.
Cyvon began to drag himself down the slope. He heard and felt the energies of the farseer behind him as the xenos descended to claim its prize, not from Kalypsa Yathe, but from the wounded Soul Drinker.
‘Brother!’ came a shout from down the slope. Cyvon saw Inquisitor Stheno crouching by the entrance to the chamber. ‘Bring the Lyre! Quickly, we can leave this place!’
‘This is why you were on Kepris,’ replied Cyvon groggily. ‘To get the Lyre.’
‘Of course!’ spat Stheno, as if no one had ever asked a more stupid question. ‘An artefact like this in an inquisitor’s hands! You have seen what they were willing to do to get it – think what I could do? I could forge a weapon, learn their strategies! Their secrets will be mine!’
Cyvon glanced back up the slope. The farseer was watching, still behind a curtain of protective energy. The Striking Scorpion dropped down and alighted beside the altar. His armour smoked from the plasma burn, but the wound seemed to have had no effect on the aeldari warrior’s poise. The farseer said something in the Aeldari language and the exarch stalked towards Cyvon, chainsword held in both hands.
Cyvon had no chance of survival if the Striking Scorpion tried to take the Lyre from him by force.
The clatter of armoured feet on the floor reached Cyvon’s hearing. His squad was rushing towards the summit with bolters drawn, led by Brother Sasan.
‘Fire!’ yelled Sasan. ‘The flying one!’
Bolter fire shredded the air above Cyvon. Impacts burst against the farseer’s psychic shield, which flickered and flared with the effort of protecting the aeldari. The exarch looked back to its master, torn between butchering Cyvon and protecting the farseer. A burst of bolter fire spattered against the rocks around it and with superhuman grace and speed, the exarch vaulted into cover before any of the shells found their mark.
It was a momentary distraction, and it would not last long.
‘Quickly!’ shouted Stheno.
Cyvon could dive down the slope and be at Stheno’s side in a few seconds.
The farseer drifted into the cover of one of the pillars. Bolter fire chewed through the ancient stone as the survivors of Squad Phraates found their own cover and kept up the fire. The air turned heavy and thrumming as the farseer readied his psychic powers to deal with this new threat. He might heave up the earth as he had outside the tomb, or crush them with whatever power the alien’s witchcraft could muster. In a few seconds, it would all be over.
Cyvon stood proud of cover, tottering on his good leg. He felt the blood oozing from his chest wound, and the stuttering of his wounded heart. ‘This is what you want,’ he said, holding up the Lyre in the farseer’s direction. ‘And you will not stop until you get it.’
Kepris had been torn apart by the aeldari need for the Lyre of Innokens. Whatever world it went to next, in the custody of the Inquisition or not, they would try to find it again. And they would succeed. It might take them a thousand years, but they would find it. The aeldari were patient. They would make war for it. They would manipulate ignorant humans into committing genocide against their own. They would carve a path of blood and broken lives, as long as the Lyre was at the end of it.<
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‘No more of your people will die for this,’ said Cyvon. ‘And no more of mine.’
He swung the Lyre into the air.
‘No!’ yelled Stheno.
Cyvon smashed the Lyre into the rocks. It shattered into a thousand shards of bone. The gemstones burst and released a tremendous crescendo of sound, like a million voices raised in ecstatic song.
The thunder of their music battered against Cyvon, and then was gone.
Cyvon dropped to his knees, crunching the fragments of the broken Lyre. ‘It is over,’ he said. ‘There is nothing on this world for you.’
The Striking Scorpion exarch loomed up from cover with his chainblade whirring, eye-lenses fixed on Cyvon.
The farseer gave a small gesture and muttered a few syllables. The exarch looked back at Cyvon, who could only guess at the expression behind the warrior’s faceplate. Hatred, maybe. Disappointment. Disgust. Then the exarch rose into the air, buoyed up by the farseer’s powers, and both of them drew back towards the hole in the ceiling. Bolter fire followed them, flaring against the psychic shield, but not enough to break through it.
‘They benefit you nothing now,’ continued Cyvon. ‘Let them go. Give them back.’
The farseer and the exarch rose into the grimy darkness, and were gone.
Cyvon fell to the ground and slid a little way down the slope. His strength was gone, and his body shut down to preserve what remained.
Epilogue
Many things happened that were beyond our sight. But should heresy return – when it returned – it would find it had stoked a fire in the souls of Kepris that would burn away its lies.
– Father Balthan Eugenivov, The Keprian Vengeance
The parade was the grandest thing Hollowmount had seen for many generations. The old Great Houses of the city had taken their primacy for granted and had fallen out of the habit of making shows of wealth and power. Now, they took to the streets not just to show they still ruled the city, but to express their devotion to the people who now ruled the planet.
Hundreds of troops from Kepris’ noble houses marched from the gate, where the Soul Drinkers had first breached the city, towards Sacerdotes’ Square. Each column of brightly uniformed troops was led by the aristocrats themselves in the regalia of the Imperium’s military nobility, beneath the banners of their houses.
The parade was led by the new planetary governor of Kepris. Lord Krieghund Jarulek had been appointed from the Administratum as a solid, schola progenium-educated leader who could be relied upon to rebuild the organs of Imperial authority and purge what remained of Yeceqath’s cult. He was accompanied by hundreds of functionaries from the Administratum, Ecclesiarchy clergy and officers of the Adeptus Arbites, who would replace the Imperial officials lost to Yeceqath’s purge.
The bodies had been cleared from the city. Loyalists no longer hung from gibbets and nooses all over Hollowmount. New bodies piled up in the basements of courthouses and Imperial basilicae, or were buried in mass graves outside the city: the bodies of the remaining cult faithful. Their extermination had been Lord Jarulek’s first decree. Most of the cult had already dissolved away with the death of Yeceqath and the defeats at the hands of the Soul Drinkers. It would take a long time for the last vestiges to be rooted out, but it would happen.
‘A return to normal, brother,’ said Sasan. Along with the rest of Squad Phraates, he was forming an honour guard marking the path of the procession. It was Sasan who had dragged Cyvon from the vault beneath the Tomb of Innokens. Minutes later the aeldari had enacted a wholesale withdrawal from Kepris through the webway portals they had used to invade it. The Biel-Tan Swordwind had departed the battle at the Tomb of Innokens, leaving the Soul Drinkers to consolidate their hold on the temple against a counter-attack that never came. No one had seen the farseer since he and his exarch bodyguard had departed the reliquary vault without the Lyre of Innokens.
‘A lot of people died for the cause of normality,’ replied Cyvon. A few yards away from him, the members of House Yathe were processing past. The aristocrats carried themselves admirably, given they had recently been the captives of the aeldari. Their xenos captors had set them free with no explanation, and dumped them out of one of their portals just before the last aeldari left Kepris. They had stumbled through the desert until a band of pilgrim refugees found them and led them to the nearest shrine. The knowledge that Yeceqath had once been among these aristocrats’ number was kept to a very select few among the new Imperial leadership, who knew to watch them closely. House Yathe would toe the Imperial line closer than anyone else on Kepris. ‘Kepris was a normal world,’ continued Cyvon, ‘and heresy bloomed so quickly it had taken over before anyone could respond. I wonder if “normality” is what mankind needs.’
‘Take care, brother,’ said Sasan with a smile. ‘Think too deeply and the Inquisition will haul you away.’
‘Speaking of which…’ Cyvon saw that the parade was ended by representatives of the Keprian military, whose officer corps had been entirely replaced with Imperial Guard veterans from nearby conflicts. Among them, in an officer’s greatcoat, was Inquisitor Stheno. He looked like any other career soldier now. But Cyvon knew he would be at the heart of everything that happened on Kepris.
Stheno turned to the squad of Soul Drinkers lining the road. Sergeant Phraates’ wounds were so severe that no one could say when he would fight again, and it would take the labours of the Chapter’s Apothecaries and significant bionics to get him back to the battlefield. For now, he had been patched up well enough to stand to attention. Cyvon’s leg was braced to allow him to do the same, and alongside him and the sergeant stood Sasan, Manuch and Arasmyn, who had all acquitted themselves admirably in the battle at the Tomb of Innokens. Stheno singled out Cyvon from the squad, and the squad’s vox-net chirped into life. That Stheno had the means to hack into the Soul Drinkers’ communications came as no surprise at all.
‘So the Soul Drinkers have made an enemy of the Inquisition,’ said Stheno. ‘Again.’
‘What are we?’ responded Cyvon. ‘Who were the Soul Drinkers?’
But Stheno marched on, and the parade passed them by.
The citizens of Hollowmount cheered the new rulers of Kepris, just as they had cheered the mass executions Yeceqath had ordered in Sacerdotes’ Square. Part of Cyvon kept watching, scanning the crowd for threats, falling into the patterns sleep-taught into him during his transformation into a Primaris Space Marine.
The other part kept asking.
Who are we?
About the Author
Ben Counter has two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles, he has written The World Engine and Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris as well as a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit that has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.
An extract from ‘Messiah Complex’ by Steve Parker,
from the Warhammer 40,000 anthology The Long Vigil.
Voss grabbed the big mutant by the shoulder and yanked him back hard. He hit the ground with a grunt. Rounds ripped the air where he’d been standing and stitched the walls of the habs across the avenue, biting chunks out of the brick and plaster. On the other side of the street, Striggo of the Carcharadons, black eyes bright with the sudden promise of bloodshed, knocked his bolter’s safety off and glanced over at Voss for a cue to engage.
‘Omni!’ he called out over the noise of the approaching orks.
Voss didn’t answer. He was busy barking at the mutant. ‘Keep your damned head down! You die before you lead us to the target, you get nothing.’
For a moment, the mutant – a large, tattooed thug by the name of Culc
aven – blinked all six of the bug-like eyes that studded his flat, noseless face. He was stunned by the physical power of the Space Marine. He couldn’t remember the last time another person had knocked him over. He had always been proud of his strength, but in that moment he felt as powerless as an infant. Shaking it off, he shoved himself to his feet and scrambled into the cover of the hab wall behind Voss. He was breathing hard. Combat wasn’t new to him, but xenos were. He’d heard tales of orks, told to frighten even mutant children. He’d never imagined they would one day storm his people’s underground home. If Sapho the Witch had told Zenezeca, having seen the invasion in her visions, then Zenezeca – so-called saviour of the people of Jura, the City Under the City – had not deigned to share that foreknowledge.
‘This is just the first of them,’ Voss called over at Striggo. He tugged a grenade from his combat webbing. ‘Outriders.’
Striggo leaned briefly out of cover. Just a split second. The orks answered with a hail of fire that tore into the corner of the wall.
‘I count sixteen,’ he told Voss. Through that ugly, razor-lined mouth of his, with its triangular teeth and ragged, scarred lips, sixteen came out as part word, part hiss. No wonder Ghost had nicknamed him Lips. Not that the Carcharadon seemed to care.
‘They’ll be here in real numbers within minutes,’ said Voss, mostly to himself. To Culcaven, he added, ‘How far to Zenezeca’s compound?’
‘Still have to cross two districts.’
‘How many minutes at a run?’
‘For me? Forty if I go all out.’
Voss cursed. He’d be waist-deep in orks before he got within striking distance of the Mechanicus renegade. And Zenezeca’s forces, the mutant gangs for whom he’d risen to messiah status, wouldn’t just let two Space Marines get close. Intel said they were well armed and capable. The tech-priest had unified the mutant gangs down here and turned them into his personal army.