‘Why?’ Styer asked. Whatever Ravel had hoped to achieve, he had been deceived. He was dying, but Ravel’s motivation was important. Had he believed himself to be loyal, or was he greedy for power? The reason for his fall could bear the trace of the real threat, and knowledge was a crucial weapon against the Ruinous Powers.
Ravel brought his gaze down to Styer. ‘It was my destiny,’ he said. Clear fluid leaked from the corners of his mouth. His teeth were black with ash and his smile was a savage beatitude.
His face stilled with death.
His corpse erupted with black flame. The blast knocked Styer back, and he stumbled again as a massive convulsion shook the earth. The ground heaved up and down, once, as if a ripple passed through the archives and was channelled into the Mourning Tower. The runes blazed with the light of grief, searing the night with red and death-white. The bell tolled again, and the peal was immense. Reality itself vibrated. The black flames entwined themselves with those that jetted still from the entrance. The two fires merged, twisted, grew. Their roar became a scream and laughter. They raced up the path of the spiral staircase. In seconds they enveloped the Tower, changing it into a cyclopean torch. The runes of memory shone through the obsidian and crimson of the fire, their light a movement now – a shriek and a howl to the nightmares beneath the real.
Gared cried out. Styer felt the psychic wound too. Vital seals were rent asunder. The veil was shredded, and the warp forced its way onto Sitheros.
The rift opened to Styer’s right, in the north, beyond the Mourning Tower’s wall. It was close to the surface, invisible from this perspective except as a sick, pulsing glow in the night. It was the colour of grief, the shade of vengeance and veined with fate. Something bellowed with rage. The voice soared over the spires of Sitheros, accompanied by the clanking and hissing of machinery. Then came the sounds of impacts, explosions and the collapse of masonry. Human voices screamed, while inhuman ones babbled and snarled.
‘Brother Warheit,’ Styer voxed.
‘At your service, justicar.’ The engines of the Harrower howled, the gunship ready to leap to the skies. Tygern was closest to the hull and he pulled the side door back. The Grey Knights and Furia raced aboard, and Warheit took off for the north. Styer and Gared moved forward from the troop compartment to the cockpit. They stared through the armourglass at the enemy that had come to Sitheros.
From this height, the daemons seemed numerous as insects. A carpet of abominations spread out from a ragged tear in reality. They rampaged through the streets, falling on the panicking mortals. From the barracks near the wall, platoons of acolytes and Astra Militarum headed down to meet the threat.
‘They haven’t a chance,’ Warheit said.
‘They are the honourable doomed,’ Styer agreed.
The mortals were marching towards a cornucopia of monstrous change. The colours of madness and evil swarmed up towards the wall, flesh in shades of pink and blue, a spreading contusion on the streets. The horrors and flamers of Tzeentch lurched and whirled into the humans.
Leading the army was a monster as large as the chapels it destroyed. Its six legs were mechanical leviathans, big as a cathedral’s flying buttresses. Its torso was a monstrous knotting of muscle. One arm was a fusion of flesh-covered pincer and cannon. The other was an iron claw that could crush a tank in two. Its elongated skull was parted in a perpetual bellow of rage. Its fangs were long and numerous, and some appeared to be growing through its lips.
The Soul Grinder advanced through the houses of worship. It smashed every wall in its path to powder. Holy sanctuaries millennia-old fell to ruin in its passage. It batted the obstacles aside as it closed in on the peak, where the Mourning Tower waited.
Styer frowned. There was something about the daemon that struck a familiar chord. Something in the architecture of its machinic limbs.
‘What are your thoughts, justicar?’ Warheit asked.
Styer shook his head, dismissing his speculation.
‘Only of what we must do,’ he said. ‘Drop us at the wall, then thin the ranks.’
Warheit banked the Stormraven and flew back to the Mourning Tower’s wall. He vectored the thrust of the gunship’s engines downward and slowed to a near hover over the ramparts. The rear hatch lowered. The squad dropped to the parapet, and the Harrower descended the slope again. It lit up the darkness with the holy fire of its twin-linked assault cannons and heavy bolters. Styer listened to the beat of explosions and waited for the Soul Grinder to appear.
Gared said, ‘And did we bring this about too?’
‘No,’ Vohnum snapped. He had rejected every facet of Styer’s contention. ‘The heretic inquisitor was here before us. We did not know he was at Korzun, and we were too late to stop him here. This incursion would have happened without our presence.’
‘Would it?’ Furia asked.
Vohnum snorted. ‘Of course. The question is ridiculous.’
‘But why this manifestation?’ Styer asked.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, brother,’ Styer told him. ‘It matters a great deal.’
The facade of the crematorium before them exploded outwards. The Soul Grinder shouldered its way out between support columns, which fell away and the roof of the building plunged to the ground behind the daemon. Its limbs propelled it forward with a scuttling movement that pounded the earth like an artillery barrage. Its head and shoulders were taller than the wall. Looking down at the Grey Knights, its bellow dropped to a bone-shaking growl. And then it spoke, its voice a cyclone of flies. ‘Korzun was mine,’ it cried. ‘Sadon fell. He cannot have that victory. Korzun is mine! Its death is mine!’
It lunged forward and brought its claw down on the wall. The squad parted to the left and right, evading the blow. The wall disintegrated. It was no more a barrier than the air itself. The Soul Grinder advanced over the Plain of Anger. As each limb came down, it shattered stones to dust, erasing memories forever. Behind it the daemonic forces boiled through the gap, drenched in the blood of the mortals they had butchered. They capered and celebrated behind their giant leader, then shrieked as the Harrower returned for another pass. Its shells chewed up the daemonic flesh, leaving behind shapeless, evaporating puddles.
‘Korzun’s death…’ Gared voxed to Styer.
‘I know,’ Styer answered. He knew why he felt as if he had seen the daemon before. Its metal limbs bore the ruins of statuary, and though it had been twisted into a blasphemy by the unholy forges of the immaterium, the iconography was recognizable. Styer had seen it adorning the hull of the Blade of Purity.
This is what we are meant to believe, he thought. Sadon’s victory in death turned against us. The bones of a vessel of the Grey Knights transformed into an abomination. Corrupted.
A vision designed to plant the seeds of doubt.
‘The daemon lies within its very being!’ Styer called to the squad. ‘Destroy it with truth!’
Stormstrike missiles flashed from their pods and exploded against the Soul Grinder’s shoulders. The daemon shrugged off the blast and stretched out its right arm. The cannon fired a volley of shells at the gunship. Shaped warpstuff struck the starboard wing. Eldritch light swallowed Aegis armour plating. The daemonic wrestled with the sacred, and the Soul Grinder attacked again, vomiting a cloud of energy on the same wound as Warheit passed overhead. The wing sheared off, the edges turning fluid as their material reality dissolved. The Stormraven went into a spin, coming down at an angle and ploughing a furrow through the cobblestones before coming to rest midway between the ruined wall and the Mourning Tower.
Styer led the squad at a run parallel with the Soul Grinder. A pink horror caught up with him. Eldritch bolts streamed from its talons. Their blows pulled at Styer’s identity. They sought to make him other, to push him into the abyss of change. His strength, his will and his faith rejected the curse. He brought his daemon hammer down with rage
, and with righteousness. He smashed all the way through the abomination, shattering its body utterly. The holy energy of the Nemesis weapon destroyed the daemon’s own essence, blasting it apart with such power that it disintegrated. Styer turned from the dissipating warp glow with contempt and smashed aside another horror. He struck with furious vengeance, disposing of enemies unworthy of his attention, and committing all his focus to bringing down the Soul Grinder and erasing its blasphemous existence. So did his brothers. They blasted the flesh of the daemon with their storm bolters. Their fire converged on its abdomen. Gouts of the monster’s material essence flew into the air. The damage did nothing.
Gared hurled a wave of psychic fire at the foe. The blast was white-hot, purging, the force of sanctity made tangible, the immaterium’s power turned back on itself. The wave sideswiped a leaping flamer daemon. With a shriek, it vanished into ash. Gared’s fire swept up the flank and skull of the Soul Grinder. The daemon roared and smashed at Gared with its claw. He hurled himself back, escaping the direct blow, but the glancing concussion was enough to knock him to the ground.
Styer saw the epistolary fall. If the Soul Grinder had given Gared another moment of attention, it could have destroyed him. But it stormed on, tearing over the ground to the Mourning Tower.
The Tower was the daemon’s goal. Therefore the Tower was the key.
The lesser daemons flocked around Gared. Furia was at his side, lashing at the abominations with her neural whip. The weapon could hold them at bay long enough for the rest of the squad to move into a protective formation around him. Sanctified bolter shells and Nemesis blades cut the daemons apart. Styer helped Gared to his feet.
‘Brother,’ Styer said, ‘why the Tower?’
Gared staggered forward, his eyes on the monument. The red and black flames still surrounded it, and the runes of commemoration still shone through the conflagration. The Soul Grinder covered the remaining distance in a few massive steps. It turned its wrath against the stones. With claws and cannon and exhalations of pure immaterium, it attacked the face of the Tower. The first of the runes vanished. The final memory of an entire world was destroyed.
Styer’s soul recoiled at the desecration.
Gared said, ‘Pride. Memory is not just of loss, but of pride.’ He straightened and walked more easily. As he spoke, his voice grew distant, as if his awareness were already fusing with the Mourning Tower. ‘In whatever fell ritual he performed in the archives, Inquisitor Ravel used the Tower’s memory as a reservoir of loss. But those names are also our goad, brother justicar. They remind us to fight. The Tower summons and repels the Ruinous Powers.’
‘Then we must reclaim memories,’ Styer said.
Gared turned his face away from the Tower with a visible effort and looked at Styer with driven intensity. ‘You must be our hammer, brother justicar.’
Already Styer felt a familiar presence taking shape in his consciousness. It multiplied and it unified. Gared was linking the spirits of the entire squad and channelling the collective psychic force through Styer.
He knew what he must do. As his brothers scythed a path for him through the lesser daemons with storm bolter and Nemesis blade, Styer pounded towards the spiral staircase. He was aware of himself as individual and collective at once. His mind sang with silver force. He was surrounded by holy purpose. The daemon hammer shone with ferocious light.
Styer reached the base of the stairs, a quarter of the tower’s circumference away from the Soul Grinder, and climbed the steps two at a time. It sought to burn him as he ran through the warp flame, the heat worming its way through his armour. He felt as if he was catching fire from the inside out, and perhaps he was. He kept running. As he passed the names of the worlds, the silver power grew. The hammer shone ever more brightly. As the corrupted Ravel had somehow drawn on the grief embodied by the Tower, Gared now drew on the memories. The traces of world upon world once faithful to the God-Emperor came together. Ghosts sought redemption at the last. Remembrance became crusade. Styer could barely see for the light he carried.
The light through which no doubt could pass.
He rounded the Tower at the height of the Soul Grinder’s head. It saw him and slammed its claw into the staircase, destroying an entire span, and turned its maw towards Styer. He leapt into the void, towards the daemon, his hammer high. He seemed to fly on the wings of vindication, a thousand billion souls raged through him as he directed their blow.
He struck the Soul Grinder, and all he knew was consumed by the supernova of the wrathful past.
The darkness of unaltered night returned. Styer rose to his feet. The explosion had thrown him hundreds of metres from the Tower.
From where the Mourning Tower had been, he now saw. Instead of the soaring spire, there was a smoking, guttering depression half a kilometre wide. The memories had annihilated themselves along with the Soul Grinder. The other daemons too, had been purged from Sitheros.
Furia stood beside the pit. Styer joined her. The rest of the squad was a few steps behind.
‘This is for the best,’ she said. ‘There was too much knowledge contained here. Too much reckless exploration.’
‘Too many uncontrolled memories,’ Gared added.
Styer turned from the crater and looked towards the burning shrines of Sitheros. ‘The function of this world is dangerous. It cannot continue. Sitheros must become a memory too, one limited to our order.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Furia asked.
‘The dissolution of all shrines. Deportation and mind-wiping of the population. Containment. Whatever must be done.’ He stopped short of Exterminatus.
‘What about him?’ Vohnum pointed.
Styer blinked. Aldhelm still lived. The relic keeper was on his knees not far from the fallen Stormraven. He had his hands over his face.
‘Mind-wipe him too,’ Styer said. Consigning Aldhelm’s memories to oblivion would be an act of mercy. He had already lost his life’s purpose with the destruction of the Tower.
Styer looked towards the crater once more.
‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘we have been tested by more than war.’
‘Tested by what?’ Vohnum asked.
‘By doubt. It is how the Ruinous Powers have been attacking us. They cannot corrupt us, so they would have made us doubt ourselves instead. And they have failed.
‘They have failed.’
He repeated the words, turning them into a refrain. There would be further tests, and the daemonic powers would fail again.
Of this, he had no doubts.
About the Author
David Annandale is the author of The Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. He also writes the Yarrick series, consisting of the novella Chains of Golgotha and the novels Imperial Creed and The Pyres of Armageddon. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction, including the novella Mephiston: Lord of Death and numerous short stories set in The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universes. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.
An extract from The Emperor’s Gift.
I
They say Fenris breeds cold souls.
I wasn’t certain how much of the sentiment was poetic license, but the frozen world definitely left something cold in the blood of its sons and daughters. For better or worse, we are all the children of our home worlds.
Annika wielded her authority with curious ease. I was never a wordsmith to match my brothers, so I found her presence difficult to describe. Galeo would say it best: that she commanded authority with an economy of effort, as if she expected her merest words to be obeyed at all times.
The night we set foot on Cheth I heard him thinking it again, even as I watched Annika work. Galeo read my mind, a passive perception, gently leeching my senses for res
idual information on what I was witnessing. It left him close enough for me to feel his own surface thoughts in return.
Galeo, of all my brothers, was always the least intrusive. I let him remain in my mind to see what I saw.
Annika was tall, but not unusually so. Her world bred its children tall and strong, and she was no exception. The dark flow of her mane was rare for a Fenrisian: long hair, the sable of clean black silk, was braided into obedience, streaming down one shoulder. Her skin was a healthy pale, the white of winter cliffs rather than the pallid bleach of a consumptive.
The blue of her eyes was rich enough to make others uncomfortable. I had only seen that shade matched by one sight before, in the storm seasons of my own home world. The cryovolcanoes of Titan breathe liquid ammonia and nitrogen into the sky, and in the low gravity, their exhalations freeze into crystals that hang high in the air. Those that do not rain back down to the rocks will drift into the atmosphere and beyond. The irises of her eyes could have been cut from those crystals – they were the same clear glass turned cerulean blue by the night sky.
They were artificial, of course. Despite the exquisite craftsmanship to shape them in absolute mimicry of human eyes, I could hear the softest clicks when she would use her bio-optics to take a pict. I often wondered if she had chosen the colour for its inhuman hue.
We did not talk often, so the chance to ask had never arisen.
She no longer dressed as a warrior-maiden of her birth world, preferring to go clad in the bodysuits and jackets worn by so many ranking Imperial agents. Still, some trace of her origins remained: at her hip was a throwing axe of white wood and poor-quality bronze, its blade drenched in green patina stains. I sensed a theatrical edge in why she bore the antiquated weapon, but she claimed she’d used it the line of duty several times before. I’d never tried to read beyond her words to seek the truth.
On her back was a bolter, and this gave me pause each time I saw it. She carried no scaled-down weapon to fit well with human hands. Hers was a mass-calibre Adeptus Astartes boltgun, Mk Vb Godwyn pattern, hefted like a cannon when she held it in her gloved hands. Evidence of its craftsmanship was in every contour along the weapon’s body: an artisan of rare skill had wrought the black iron alloy with jagged Cretacian runes of dirty gold.
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