The Master of Mankind

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  He loosed his last explosive bolts, sensing the weapon was empty before the warning sigil flashed on his visor. ‘Reload!’ Ra cried as he hurled the weapon back towards the armoury thralls, already drawing his meridian swords in its place. The curved blades ripped through diseased flesh, spilling rotten organs to the misty ground. The swords’ energy fields spat kinetic aggravation at every impact.

  A rune chimed on his retinal display, flickering white. He sheathed the twin sabres in a smooth turn and caught his guardian spear as the ammunition thrall threw it back to him. The moment he had a fist around its haft, he was killing again. This was the way of his kind.

  For Ra, time ceased to exist. There was nothing but the beat of his heart and the lactic burn of his muscles. All he saw were the blades and claws flashing towards his face. The ash of dying, dissipating Neverborn coated his armour.

  ‘Reload!’ Solon called from behind him. Ra heard the snap-crack of Solon’s meridian swords activating, and the rumbled murmur of compliance as the armoury thrall gathered the guardian spear left thrust into the ground.

  Ra parried a cut from a heavy brass blade, returning a blast from his digital lasers that blew the creature’s face out the back of its sloped head. Daemonic slop from the burst skull rained across the Emperor’s back, turning to ash before it touched the monarch’s armour.

  Torrents of chemical fire marked Zhanmadao’s position to Ra’s left. Ra could hear the draconic roar of incendium pikes, burning the still-thrashing creatures that had fallen beneath the blades of the Custodians’ first rank. The Ten Thousand and their golden king were shin-deep in ash, the smoky spectres of daemonic entities flailing as they were swallowed by the Emperor’s fire.

  The daemons that managed to reach the Emperor suffered worst of all. The strongest, most savage of their kind, they swung weapons at a man who was no longer there, cleaving through the golden mist that swirled in His place. With thunder-cracks of psychic force, the golden warlord would appear at the beasts’ backs, His flaming sword already buried in their spines. Fire erupted behind their eyes, boiling and bursting them from within. Their sizzling gore soaked Ra and the Custodians closest to their sire.

  Exaltation quickened Ra’s blood, the cure to the weariness that had slowed him. He was tired beyond belief, yet that had never mattered so little. Each beat of his still-living heart was vengeance, vindication.

  We’re winning. He could feel it in the renewed curses and oaths across the vox as the Ten Thousand advanced. They weren’t just holding their ground. Whatever genius the Emperor had worked in order to stand with them in this final hour had worked. Nothing could stand before them.

  The Emperor turned to Ra, hurling His sword as a spear. It lanced over the Custodian’s shoulder, driving to the hilt in the skull of a creature Ra barely even saw before it was reduced to burning sludge. In a flare of sun-enriched mist, the blade was back in the Emperor’s hand, spinning, falling, killing.

  And still the Emperor advanced. A reptilian canine leapt at him only to rip through the air where he had been standing. It gurgled molten blood as the Emperor’s sword manifested within its throat. The warlord clutched it in place a second longer before ripping it free and moving on.

  Still the enemy came – a tide, a flood. Ra stole glances back to the wraithbone gateway, so incongruous against the Mechanicum’s machinery, watching robed Unifiers passing into the blue mist, escorted by packs of the last surviving Silent Sisters.

  Soon enough only the Ten Thousand remained at their master’s side.

  Be ready, Ra.+

  ‘My liege?’

  The Custodian launched himself over the slumping form of the vulturish creature that had fallen to his final six bolts, hurling his spear back behind the front line and drawing his meridian swords while still in the air. He landed by the Emperor, back to back with his master. Their blades wove a lattice of silver light, eviscerating everything that approached their edged web.

  Be ready.+

  ‘For what, sire?’

  Ra’s retinal display flashed its white sigil. He caught the returned weapon, spinning it with the force and speed of a rotor blade. The tunnel around them cracked and sparked with the strain of overworked generators.

  There, Ra. It draws near.+

  The Emperor moved on, cutting, carving. He led His guardians into the very hordes of a mythological hell, and like the paladins of yore, they followed their king.

  Rare emotion spiced the Emperor’s silent words. +I sense such purity of being. Such pure, unadulterated malice.+

  Ra weaved back from a swinging axe blade, returning a spear thrust that punched through the creature’s scaled throat. He dared a glance left to Diocletian, seeing his kinsman hauling his own spear from the innards of a pot-bellied, horned grotesque, impaling a prize of rotted entrails. Flies droned around the decayed tangle, swarming at the loss of their hive.

  Even immortals could tire. Ra’s breath sawed between his closed teeth. Inside his helmet, sweat drew lines of wet fire down his face. His retinal display kept auto-dimming to compensate for the fire and light bursting into being with each fall of the Emperor’s blade.

  ‘I see only the horde, sire.’ He didn’t like the rapt fascination in his lord’s tone.

  Reveal thyself…+

  The Emperor raised His blade, bringing it down in a crescent of fire. A tide of flame bellowed forth in an incinerating arc, bathing the ranks of the Neverborn before him. Mortis-ash blasted back in the windless air, coating the closest Custodians in the dust of dead daemons.

  A shadow. A shape in the ash.

  A man. Just a man. Long of hair, dark of skin, tribally bearded, wearing jewellery of shaped bone and bearing a spear of knapped flint vine-lashed to fire-hardened wood. A man wearing wounds almost as grievous as those he had inflicted upon so many others. Hundreds of spear slashes and sword cuts marked his flesh. The freshest and bloodiest showed on his chest, the legacy of Jaya’s last blow.

  One man, leading the ranks of howling madness behind him.

  The Echo of the First Murder.+ The Emperor’s words broke into Ra’s skull with crushing gentleness.

  ‘The Anathema,’ was its sick, slick reply.

  Predators always revealed themselves in the seconds before they struck. Wolves howled as they chased; sharks cut the ocean’s surface with their fins as they hunted. Here the ashen silhouette moved through the Neverborn’s ranks, lesser creatures parting before its too-human tread. Whatever the creature’s true form, it wasn’t this muscled Stone Epoch war-chief. It merely aped the form of the first humans.

  For the first, terrifying time, Ra saw doubt flicker within his master’s eyes. The sight flooded him with the unfamiliar taint of dread.

  ‘Sire,’ Ra whispered. ‘We should–’

  But the Emperor was gone. Monarch and daemon ran at one another, sliding in and out of existence, outpacing their lessers on both sides of the battle. And the two entities, one the salvation of a species and the other its damnation, met blade to blade.

  Blood burst into the ashy mist. The Emperor arched, the warlord’s body taut with the utter unfamiliarity of agony. Five talons, each one the length and width of a spear, dripped red as they stood proud of the Emperor’s back.

  Ra had heard tell that every man, woman, and child saw a different face, a different skin tone, a different temperament when they looked upon the Emperor. The Ten Thousand had no experience with such an effect. They considered it doggerel from the strains of unready minds when confronted by a true immortal. To Ra’s eyes, the Emperor was a man like any other. The Custodians saw only their master.

  In that moment, as the claws ran red with his king’s blood, Ra saw what the rest of the species saw. The boy who would be king. An old man, cloaked and hooded, life running from his cracked lips. A knight in his prime, maned with dark hair, crowned with a wreath of laurels. A barbarian warlord, b
arbarous and strong, grinning through teeth turned red with His leaking blood.

  Images. Identities. Men who once were. Men He might once have been. Men who had never drawn breath.

  The Emperor’s boots left the misty ground. He barely even struggled as He was lifted, impaled by the five spearing talons. His sword fell from His gloved hands to disappear in the shrouding fog.

  ‘To the Emperor!’ Ra screamed the order loud enough that his retinal display blurred for a half-second. ‘To the Emperor’s side!’

  He ran, killing faster than he’d ever killed, energised by an adrenal cocktail of loyalty, hatred and the alien touch of something nameless that tasted foul on the tongue.

  Not fear, no, never that. Surely never that.

  I am the End of Empires.

  The thought wasn’t Ra’s own. It belonged to the silhouette in the ashes, the Emperor’s killer, speaking by twisting the thoughts of the humans in its presence. A wrenching violation, with crude, cruel fingers pulling at the insides of Ra’s skull, forcing his thoughts to form the daemon’s words.

  ‘Kill it!’ Ra shouted, half an oath, half an order. The man-shape turned in the settling ash, still holding the Emperor above the ground. The warlord clutched at the impaling arm. His telepathic voice was raw.

  Stay back. All of you. Stay back.+

  I am your death, the creature promised the Emperor.

  Perhaps one day. But not this day.+

  Gold light flared bright enough to blind unshielded eyes. The Emperor manifested at Ra’s side, down on one knee, one hand clutched to his chest, hair hanging down to veil his features. Blood, human blood no matter what the legends said, ran in runnels from the Emperor’s sundered armour.

  Ra.+ The sending was thick with pained defiance. And then, ‘Ra,’ He said aloud, raising His eyes to meet His loyal Custodian’s horrified gaze.

  A blade ran through the Emperor’s body. An ornate sword, as much sorcerous bone as metal, a weapon with writhing, shrieking faces soul-carved upon the steel. The faces shrieked as they drank the Emperor’s divine life. It thrashed as the Emperor clutched it in His hands. It was alive, starving, its form rippling and growing indistinct.

  With a cry the Emperor pulled the weapon free, unsheathing it from His own body. He hurled it from His grip, casting it aside with a surge of armour-boosted strength and devastating telekinetic force.

  Ra blinked once with the impact, feeling it as a thunder-crack against his chest. He swallowed, finding himself unable to breathe. Blood streamed from his mouth, denying the passage of air.

  It was a blade through his body. It was a daemon embracing him. It was a disease in his blood, eating at his bones. It was there and it wasn’t there, everything and nothing.

  The Custodian fell to his knees, hands curling around the impaling blade. The thwarted rage of the daemon sent nerve pain lightning-bolting through his fingers.

  ‘Why?’ Ra asked his king.

  The Emperor stood tall once more, looking down, eyes cold.

  In that moment, Ra knew. The Emperor’s words, spoken what felt like an eternity ago, flashed through his blackening mind, infusing his thoughts with red revelation.

  To illuminate you, the Emperor had said, as they looked upon the wonders and sins of the galaxy’s past. You will fight harder once you understand what you are fighting for.

  And now he knew. Ra Endymion, the one living soul shown the entirety of his master’s dreams and ambitions. An enlightenment not gleaned for the purpose of waging war, but… for this. To know the truth when all others believed in shadows and fragments, and to suffer that truth until it tore him apart.

  Ra rose on shaking limbs, leaning on his spear for support. The sword was gone now. The daemon was within him, caged by his flesh, bound by his agony-drenched will. He felt its tendrils circling his bones, wrenching at them, thrashing in its need to reach the Master of Mankind. The creature tunnelling through his blood would never stop, never die. It couldn’t be destroyed, only imprisoned.

  The Custodian didn’t meet his sire’s eyes. He didn’t demand any explanation or apology. Ra was born to serve, raised to obey and chosen for the greatest illumination preceding the darkest duty. Inside him raged a beast even the Emperor couldn’t kill, the daemon destined to end the empire.

  Every step he took away from the Emperor, separating this daemon from his master, would mean another day that the Imperium stood unbroken.

  The Emperor still bled, still clutched His wounded chest with one gloved hand. Blood flecked His lips. ‘When all that remains is ash and dust,’ He said, strained, ‘be ready.’

  The sword rose, and once more it fell. Fire tidal-waved from its killing edge, immolating all in its path. Clearing the way. The Never­born dragging themselves over the ashen remains of their kindred tasted the same destruction.

  The Emperor spoke to Ra one final time, a single command heard by no other.

  Run.+

  Ra Endymion, Drach’nyen’s golden gaoler, the son of a water-thief, obeyed the last command he would ever be given.

  He ran.

  The Legio Custodes follow the Emperor to battle

  Twenty-Four

  The death of a dream

  Diocletian tore his helm from his head, breathing in the ozone and machine-stink of the Imperial Dungeon. Sweat sheened his face. Blood painted his armour, much of it his own. He was the last one through.

  ‘The tunnels are detonating,’ he declared, breathless. Golden mist still pulled at his armour from the portal behind him. ‘The circuitry is igniting. Whole sections of our tunnels are falling away into the mist. I couldn’t see Ra. He didn’t die, I’m sure of it. I was at his side. I would have seen.’

  He knew he was raving. He didn’t care. He spat to clear his mouth, spattering treacly blood-spit on the floor of the Emperor’s throne room. Beyond the ringing in his ears he was aware of a sound, some kind of mechanical droning, a hum falling slowly through the octaves.

  Diocletian’s spear clattered to the ground, deactivating the second it left the gene-coding of his grip. Blood followed it, running from wounds too deep to swiftly seal. The blood ran down his arm and surfaced through breaks in his auramite, dripping from his curled fingers.

  ‘Seal the gate!’ he ordered, not even knowing if it could be done. ‘They’re still coming. Thousands of them. Seal the gate now, or we lose Terra.’

  They were already trying, he saw. Adepts and engineers clustered around the machines, working the controls of each system. His war-struck thoughts made the connection with the slowing mechanical drone: the chamber’s attendants were deactivating the machinery, but not fast enough.

  A single glance at the coffin-pods in the sockets told him what had happened in his absence, and how the Emperor had been able to come to their aid. The Sisters of Silence had enacted their secretive Unspoken Sanction. They fed the Throne with the lives of a thousand psykers. In every pod he could see a corpse that had thrashed in its death throes, raking uselessly against the transparent panels. All of them were dead. Every one of them. None of them looked to have died swiftly and painlessly.

  Confusion reigned across the vox and among the gathered warriors as to the source of their salvation. Some had seen a dawning star or a sunrise, others had seen the Emperor Himself. Still others claimed to have witnessed a tidal surge of fire.

  Everywhere, men and women were lost and dazed. Baroness Jaya was there on the chamber floor, her helmet in her hands, unblinkingly staring at her reflection in the visor. The Blood Angel, Zephon, was helping carry wounded Sisters from Land’s Raider. The technoarchaeologist himself was kneeling on the ground by his battle tank, rocking back and forth, his trembling hands clutching a necklace of Martian prayer beads, his delicate fingers stroking each bauble of volcanic obsidian in turn.

  ‘My Omnissiah,’ he was chanting softly, eyes unfocused. ‘My God. The Machin
e-God. My Omnissiah.’

  Sagittarus lived, his chassis scored and ruined, the smokestacks on his back belching unhealthily from his overpushed generator. The Dreadnought had his back to the side of Land’s tank, leaking vital fluids from its internal sarcophagus in an oily puddle.

  Sisters and warriors of the Ten Thousand gathered in monumental disorder, all of them looking to the portal’s arch, all of them hearing the slow drone of machinery powering down.

  Diocletian was still demanding answers of the others when Kaeria came to him. ‘Where’s Ra?’ he asked her. ‘Did he make it back? He didn’t fall. I know he didn’t fall.’

  Her eyes tightened with tension.

  ‘He didn’t fall,’ Diocletian repeated. ‘I was right next to him in the battle line. I would have seen it. He’ll be on the wrong side of the gate when it closes.’

  Sister-Commander Krole came to Kaeria’s side, signing briefly for Diocletian’s benefit. He didn’t know her as he knew Kaeria – he couldn’t read her meaning by expression alone. Her signing was blighted by the fact she had lost three fingers from her left hand. Wounds patterned her features while her armour showed the ruination of too many hours in the front lines.

  ‘No,’ said the Custodian. ‘I was at his side, commander. He didn’t die. One moment he was there, the next he was not.’

  Machines were going dark all around them. Great engines of the Emperor’s own vision – centuries in the design and decades in the making – were cycling down, haemorrhaging power. Slowly, slowly, far too slowly.

  Diocletian sought the Emperor Himself, seeing His master ascending the steps to the Golden Throne once more.

  ‘My liege!’

  The Emperor enthroned Himself, His grip loose on the armrests.

  ‘Sire! Seal the gate!’

  The Emperor waited, staring towards the portal. Even from such a distance, Diocletian could see the intensity of that stare. The Emperor fixed his gaze on the gateway, waiting, waiting. Hesitating to do what must be done? Reluctant to abandon His greatest ambition? Or hopeful, yet, that another figure might manifest from the golden fog?