by Various
And as ever, Angron has changed, but so too have his sons.
The circling spectators are noisy. They bray like animals. They hunger for the sight of blood. The Butcher’s Nails demand it of us all.
They press into the soft flesh of my mind, grinding and wrenching at my pain receptors. They are getting worse. Even at their most dormant they make themselves known, corkscrewing into my brain. The screws turn and the nails hammer.
The camaraderie of my fellow World Eaters cannot raise a smile from me. Food tastes like ashes. There is no joy to be had but that found in killing. Opening arteries, cleaving flesh, taking skulls – this is what the Nails want from me.
I have shunned my brothers these last weeks. Dark thoughts haunt me. I have taken to walking the decks of the Conqueror alone; stalking her corridors compulsively, as though the mere act of walking kilometres upon kilometres will give me some sudden insight. Some direction. Some… hope?
I had not intended to come here tonight. Perhaps the Nails brought me to the pits, but once I heard the sirens’ call of clashing blades and weapons hacking into flesh, I was unable to turn away. The promise of even a moment’s relief from the incessant grind on my cortex was an offer that was, tonight, irresistible.
The Nails want me to fight again. I have not been here since I humbled Erebus. The wretch’s cowardice denied me the kill, and the Nails punished me for it.
But I am here now, and already the pressure has eased.
Borok takes his place opposite me in the circle. He will fight with his usual armament – a pair of long, curved blades.
Swords against axe. Such a fight never lasts long.
I attack. It is the only way I know. My speed takes him by surprise, almost ending the fight in the first breath. He recovers well, though. We are both dancing to the tune of the Nails, and it is an ugly turn. Few within the Legion fight with grace anymore.
I block a blade that flashes for my throat, forcing me to sway aside from its twin coming in low for a disembowelling strike. I kick Borok away, slamming my foot squarely into his solar plexus. He staggers back. I wait for him, rolling my wrist, spinning the duelling axe as I adjust my grip.
He snarls as he throws himself at me. I meet him head-on.
Borok is one of the Devourers, one of Angron’s ‘bodyguards’. The primarch never needed a bodyguard, of course – not before. And now? Chained and bound below deck, the notion that he needs protecting is laughable. The Devourers are little more than his gaolers. An ignoble task for what should have been the Legion’s elite.
Block. Sweep. Side-step, strike.
This is not real. These fights are nothing but distractions to ease the pain until the real battle is joined once again, and then the Legion can be unleashed.
The thought of releasing Angron from his prison is not a comforting one.
And what of us, his sons – are we doomed to a similar fate? Will the last of our humanity be bled out as well, leaving us as nothing more than chained lunatics?
The Nails punish me as they feel my aggression falter. They stab into my brain, blinding me with a white burst of agony. Borok almost takes me then. In my distraction, I only avoid his slashing blades by a hair’s breadth.
I can see the frustration in him. He wanted to test himself against the warrior that had bested the Dark Apostle, but that was different. That was true. This is merely a charade.
One of his blades scrapes along the haft of my axe, almost grazing my knuckles – that would have been first blood, though a result like that would have made Argel Tal laugh.
Perhaps it is the memory of my old friend that adds some fuel to what comes next.
A backhand blow sends me stumbling to the deck. Something drips onto the back of my hand.
Blood. Did he graze me, without me feeling it? No.
We both glance up, the fight forgotten.
The ceiling is bleeding.
Another drop hits me, then another. It is trickling down the walls.
Then I hear Angron’s roar.
He has been raging for weeks, but this is different. It silences the crowd.
The sound wells up through the grilled deck, vibrating through the steel. It makes the walls shudder and groan. It crackles out through the unpowered vox-horns. It is enough to warp reality itself.
My heart begins to thunder in time with the pounding in my head. It blurs with Angron’s din, rising in intensity, a building crescendo. My fingers tighten around the haft of my axe. A growl escapes my lips. The pounding obliterates everything.
I know what is coming but I am powerless to prevent it. It comes on faster than it ever has before. I barely have time to take a breath.
It hits me like a tidal wave, and in an instant I’m drowning. Taking the axe in both hands, I surge to my feet. Everything goes red.
The stink of blood and raw flesh is the first thing I notice. The second is the roar.
Not Angron. The daemon-primarch has fallen silent, but the roar of the crowd is just as deafening.
My vision returns slowly, the red haze lifting to reveal the aftermath of butchery. Blood coats my hands and arms to the elbow. It drips off my axe. There’s blood in my mouth, too, caking my lips and chin. It is not my own.
I look at the carnage I have wrought. Borok is no more. What is left is a ruin – the work of a psychopath. The crowd roars its approval. It is sickening.
I want to be away from here, away from the screams and the charnel stink.
A figure steps forward. My eyes are unfocused, yet the urge to bury my axe in his blurry face makes my fingers twitch.
‘Borok was of the Devourers, Khârn,’ he says. ‘By rights, his place is now yours.’
That actually makes me laugh. It comes out as a bloody cough, spraying spittle and gobbets of congealed gore.
I drop my axe, and it falls with a dull clang. I wipe my hands down my arms. Blood sloughs away, dripping from my fingertips.
I look around like a dreamer waking from a deep slumber. The fury of the crowd, their anger and bloodlust, batters against me. These are my sworn battle-brothers. This is my Legion.
We will no longer walk the Crimson Path. I see that clearly now. We are walking another path entirely – a road far more damning.
I had thought it superstitious nonsense, nothing more than the religious ranting of the XVII Legion. It is not. Sadly, it is not.
We are walking the Eightfold Path, and there can be no turning back.
Taking a deep breath to ease the tension that tightened his chest, Zahariel peered down into the opening. He pushed back memories of the last time he had been here, beneath the Northwilds Arcology, and of the terrible things that he had witnessed. He was not sure if it was the emptiness of this primitive new settlement, or some reflection from a deeper, less physical sense that caused him to baulk at the threshold.
He turned to his companion and gestured towards the rock surrounding them, carved by drill and laser pick.
‘Someone dug this recently.’
Like Zahariel, the other Space Marine was unarmoured, dressed instead in the heavy robes of the Order. He bore no symbols of rank or title: he was an enigma, the Lord Cypher, and guardian of their secretive traditions. He glanced around and shrugged. ‘Scavengers?’
‘After so many years? Why would they run from us? Flight suggests guilt.’
Cypher turned back. It was not the first reluctance that he had shown since Zahariel had joined him.
‘The Order razed this place,’ he said. ‘It is natural that the inhabitants might think they are breaking our laws simply by returning. There is nothing of importance here.’
Zahariel disagreed. ‘I think it bears further investigation. It was you, after all, who wanted to come to the Northwilds. I am only here as… an “interested party”.’
It was Luther that had ordered Zahariel to accompany Lord Cypher in his many secretive comings and goings of late, though Cypher himself had been hesitant to oblige. This was merely the first chance th
at had presented itself for them to travel together.
‘I do not wish to return to the Grand Master without a full report,’ Zahariel added.
‘What is there to report?’ asked Cypher, waving an arm to encompass the deserted settlement behind them. ‘Some vagrants have raised their slum here. That is all.’
‘We have only seen the surface. We should look a little deeper, if only to assure ourselves that there is not another rebellion growing in these decayed tunnels.’
Lord Cypher looked uncomfortable. ‘Did Master Luther share the circumstance that prompted his sudden interest in this region?’
Zahariel did not have to lie. ‘Briefly. The number of recruits raised has almost outstripped the facilities at Aldurukh. He is thinking of raising a new fortress here.’
‘An odd choice, considering its history.’
‘I disagree. It is the most obvious choice – a sign that the Order has returned to mark the lands with its presence.’
They passed down tunnels that had once been gleaming metal, now marked by stains and corrosion. The air turned acrid, tainted by some unidentified source.
Zahariel paused for a moment, one hand to the side of his head. He felt something stirring beneath them. Something that he had not felt for a long time, but familiar all the same…
After a few seconds he plunged into the darkness once more, the lamps of his explorator harness springing into life.
They followed the tunnel for some distance, encountering more signs of recent excavation and construction where toppled walls had been dug away and bulkheads erected to improve the structure. As they descended, the air grew hotter, becoming almost stifling. The stench grew with it, though there seemed no cause for the reek; the passageways and chambers that they passed were free of filth and spoil. Lord Cypher made no remark on this fact, though he continually glanced back at Zahariel.
With the heat and stench also came an oppressive sensation. Zahariel could not shake the feeling that each step was taking him closer to a ghastly fate indeed. The feeling grew the further they delved, though Cypher seemed unaffected.
Or perhaps, a suspicious part of Zahariel realised, forewarned.
‘Wait!’
Zahariel’s warning caused the Lord Cypher to stop in his tracks, hand moving to the bolt pistol at his belt. A moment later a long, low breath resonated up the tunnel, issuing from a distance, the rank air stirring with hot breeze every few seconds.
‘Do you feel it?’ Cypher whispered.
An unnatural dread began to seep through Zahariel’s body, a chill spreading up his spine. Zahariel extended his will, motes of psychic energy dancing in the pupils of his eyes, and he reached out a hand, fingers splayed, as though probing an invisible wall. Cypher drew his weapon.
It was better not to speak of what had happened before, so the Librarian lied.
‘An after-echo. Nothing more. You look… uncomfortable. What is wrong?’
Lord Cypher shook uncontrollably, eyes darting to the left and right, seeking the doom that was coming for him. ‘I… I cannot go… I must…’
He started to retreat up the corridor.
‘We have to go back. This was a mistake.’
Zahariel took a deep breath. ‘Ghosts of the past…’
The words were as much for his own benefit as his companion’s. He had never seen another legionary act in such a manner, but then Cypher had not faced the terrible thing in the depths of the Northwilds in the same way that Zahariel had.
The Librarian filled his voice with false confidence. ‘There is nothing here to be afraid of. Just memories.’
Shuddering, Cypher staggered away. Zahariel did not go after him, the dull thud of his boots fading back up the tunnel.
Zahariel had grave misgivings, his memories crowded with visions of voracious worms and something terrible and unnatural, but he pushed on. Luther had sent him here, and the Lord Cypher had been drawn back to this place too. Zahariel did not need his psychic sense to feel the waves of strangeness emanating from the passages ahead.
There was familiarity here: a voice, a presence to which Zahariel was no stranger. The foulness around him did not feel like a warning – though Lord Cypher had taken it as such – but more like a welcome.
But why now? Had the settlers unearthed something that had been missed by the purge? It seemed unlikely that they would have remained, had that horrific, pervading aura been noticed when they chose this place.
Was it really the two Space Marines that had caused them to depart their homes with such haste? Why had Lord Cypher come here…?
Too many questions without answers.
Cypher. He had to have known what was happening here. Perhaps he had been warned that Zahariel was watching him, and lured the Librarian to this place.
Zahariel’s superhuman hearing picked up the sharp echo of their shuttlecraft’s engines firing. He broke into a run, heading back towards the surface.
Something was coming. He could feel it now, like foetid breath on the back of his neck. The others had to be told. He had to raise the alarm.
The Ouroboros was returning.
The Emperor chose her.
In the wake of that choice, honour and pride, those most insubstantial of currencies, were lavished upon her bloodline. Many of her cousins – hundreds of them, in a tangled cobweb of legitimacy and bastardry – offered their best wishes, brought warnings, or simply seethed in jealous silence.
Others were more overt in their reactions. She received a small fortune in gifts, bribes and favours, read through almost one hundred formal petitions for her hand in marriage, and survived three assassination attempts.
None of it mattered. The Emperor chose her.
He hadn’t come in person, of course. His decision came in the form of a scroll sealed with Malcador’s Sigil. The Imperium’s Seneschal had recorded the Emperor’s mandate in writing, despatching it with patient haste to the territories of House Andrasta. She didn’t need to read the scroll to know the Emperor’s choice. Nothing else would bring a full phalanx of golden custodians to the spire-palaces of the Navigator Quarter.
Before her father had time to open the scroll before his gathered courtiers, word had spread like wildfire throughout the city’s spires. He spoke two words to the Captain-General of the Legio Custodes. The only two words expected of him; the most important two words he’d ever spoken in all the many long decades of his life.
‘She accepts.’
A Gloriana-class battleship, one of only twenty ever constructed. She accepted because there was no possibility or precedent for refusal. This was what she was born and bred to do.
A whirlwind of preparation gripped the following days, passing by in a blur of other people’s effort. Less than a week later, pampered and harassed by a small army of slaves and retainers, she set sail for Mars. Waiting in the skies of the Red Planet was a ship eclipsing all others nearby, casting its shadow across them all as it endured the final days of void-dock.
She sensed its impatience even before setting foot on its hangar deck. Its noble hunger was obvious in every metre of dark, fortified iron.
‘The Adamant Resolve,’ she said aloud. Flagship of the War Hounds. Her first ship, and her new home.
That had been an eternity ago. Now they were the World Eaters, and her ship was the Conqueror.
The rebellion confused her. She was a sailor, not a soldier. Her gaze rested elsewhere, above and beyond mortal concerns of war and territory. A war fought in the Emperor’s name was no different from a war fought for the Warmaster.
Her thralls and feeders began bringing word from the Conqueror’s crew, telling conflicting takes of loyalty and treachery. Some said that Horus’s ambition had driven them to declare war on Terra itself. Others brought word of the Emperor’s tragic death, praising Horus for fighting his way through the crumbling Imperium, back to the Throneworld where he would end the civil war and rule in his father’s place.
She didn’t know who to believe. N
ot at first. Over the weeks and months, rumours became reports and reports became facts. She was still unsure of how to act, or if action was required at all.
Yet she came back to one resonant truth, again and again and again. The Emperor had chosen her.
Not the Warmaster. Not Lord Angron. Not Lord Aurelian, with whom they sailed now. They used her and respected her when they acknowledged her at all, but they hadn’t chosen her. They had rebelled against He who had forged the Imperium. They had declared war against He who had elevated her kind into lives of splendour, and allowed the Navis clan-families to sail the black gulf between the stars.
Now they sailed to Terra to kill Him – He who had chosen her.
The immaterium was an ocean of scalding, shrieking light. Faces boiled up out of the migraine madness, faces from her past that wept and laughed and raged and screamed as they melted away. Looking through the hull revealed the shadow of the Trisagion sailing nearby, hulking and grey and swollen with life, rocking and crashing through the unquiet tides. Waves of aether broke against Lorgar’s colossal battleship, setting it groaning and rolling as surely as the Conqueror groaned and rolled. Like any ship caught in a storm, the surest way to survive was to sail through the rising waves, fighting them with hope, skill and trust in sanctified iron. Yet the Conqueror laboured where the Trisagion did not. The former wallowed and took tidal blows to its belly, while the latter cut the aetheric ocean like a great, defiant blade.
Blackness pressed at her from outside the ship – a blackness that no eyes could pierce – not just the absence of light but the death of it. A Navigator intuitively knew what no other human could experience: the deepest tides of the warp ate light. This was where illumination came to die.
Her beacon was the Emperor’s light. Dimmer now, dulled as if by pain, but still the only light by which to sail. She bathed in it, just as she always had. She followed the Astronomican as it lit the darkest edges of the unreality behind reality.
Captain Sarrin had come to her chambers not long ago, to speak of the warp’s roughening tides. She liked Captain Sarrin, who called her ‘My Navigator’ as was proper, not ‘Mistress Nisha Andrasta’ like her fawning thralls.