Other replies came in the form of howls and cheers. A Legion lost to the Nails. A Legion sprinting gleefully into a hundred ambushes. You couldn’t collar the Eaters of Worlds.
The only voices that made sense in the aural melee all demanded to know the same thing.
‘The primarch,’ they called, over and over. ‘Is it true? Is Angron dead?’
The entity called itself the Communion.
It rose above the Valika Junction, into the smoky sky. Nineteen threads pulled at it – nineteen bonds preventing it from soaring too high. The Communion turned in the air, staring down at the city beneath, where buildings toppled and men screamed in a world of dust and dreadful physicality.
Drawn by curiosity, the Communion drifted lower, watching the lives of the tiny creatures ending in minute flickers of sparking souls. Each death sent a sliver of mist rising from the broken shells of meat and iron. A warrior would fall, and the soul-flare would rise, hazy and indistinct. Each one shrieked, though some laughed between their screams.
The Communion drifted even lower, close to the ground now, running its clawed hand through the misty soul rising from the twitching corpse of a warrior in white. The soul parted, the way mist was broken by the breeze. The Communion laughed, delighted by such fragility.
The nineteen bindings pulled at it, shackling it tighter. An image formed in its consciousness – the image of a graven, bleeding god, lost in the dark.
Yes. The purpose. No time for these little games.
The Communion turned its focus onto the destroyed earth, and sank into the rubble.
Angron, it called. Angron, hear me.
He laughed in the blackness, the kind of laughter that spoke more of madness than mirth. He laughed as he dragged himself across the jagged rock, splitting his skin, unsure which way was up and which way was down. Blood beat behind his eyes, but that that could be from his wounds as much as from gravity. His laughter was little more than snarled wheezing. He’d struggled to draw breath in this airless dark for minutes, or hours, or days. He didn’t know which. All was the same.
Trapped.
No. No, not that word. Even the thought of it set his hands shaking hard enough to almost lose the grip on his axes, and he needed them to dig. Not trapped, no. Not helpless. He wasn’t trapped here in the dark, the epitome of dark, so thick and true he could taste it on his tongue. It seeped into his eyes when they were open – were they open? How could he tell? – and filled his mouth when he laughed.
The dark pressed against him, hungry and hot. Alive. That was the truth. It was alive. It lived, and wrapped him the way a burial shroud wrapped…
Angron, said a new voice.
He wasn’t Angron. He was merely He: a creature of trembling hands, eyes that stung from grit, and laughter that had long-since died, replaced by a stammered wheeze that wasn’t – wasn’t – fear. He feared nothing. Not death, not the dark, not helplessness.
Angron, hear me.
He could feel his hands flayed raw, his fingers now sticks of wet meat fused to the handles of his axes by the glue of his own blood. Dragging himself through the rock was killing him, inch by inch, moment by moment. He was skinning himself alive. He didn’t need to see to know that. The dark couldn’t hide every truth.
The axes were dead, both of them. He knew that, too. Their toothless blades still broke rock, but they’d surely suffered past any ruination that could be repaired.
Angron.
But he wasn’t Angron. He was…
…trapped.
Trapped in the Dark.
The shaking started, harder, heavier. He slavered with it, crawling faster, the stones carving into his muscles as he dragged himself over them, under them, through them.
Angron, you’re crawling downwards, deeper into the earth.
No. That wasn’t true.
He started screaming, venting his precious breath into the place between panic and rage. Blood sheeted from his mouth and nose. The pain engine in his skull tick-tocked into overdrive, knifing its needles deeper into the meat of his mind. He had to kill. He had to kill. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t helpless.
‘Kill,’ he choked the words out, gagging on a mouthful of rock. ‘Kill. Maim. Burn.’
Angron. Hear me. I am the Communion.
The anger – it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t panic – drowned in the wake of their words. He stopped shaking, stopped dragging himself through the rock.
‘Who are you?’
The last nineteen still alive. I am the Communion. The only one who can reach you.
He tried to wipe his eyes clean of the clinging blood. It did little but smear it across his face.
‘Who am I?’
You are Angron, Lord of the Twelfth Legion.
The calm suffused him now, easing his aching bones. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was artificial. The voices were doing something to him, to drown the anger-that-wasn’t-fear.
I am counteracting the machine in your skull, by altering the chemicals flowing through your brain. I cannot maintain it for long, not with only nineteen of us left. Your mind is too different from baseline humanity. It resists any interference.
He tried to shake his head to clear it, but the crunching pressure of the rock all around denied him even that.
No. Lies. Lies, all of it.
‘Who are you?’ he spat this time.
I am the Communion.
Which meant nothing at all. ‘If you have power to reach me, then free me.’
I cannot. I do not exist on this plane of being. I am the gestalt of nineteen psychic minds, nothing more. Nineteen minds separated by hundreds of kilometres, as the Legion marches to war across this world.
‘Free me!’ he said again.
You have to free yourself. You’re digging downwards. The enemy mined the roads and collapsed the towers upon the vanguard of our army. You were over thirty metres beneath the ground when you woke. You’re now closer to two hundred.
And bleeding. And weakening. And your axes are broken. Even your kind aren’t immortal, sire.
He didn’t believe a word of it. He didn’t want to believe it. All the same, he relaxed his grip on the axes. He told himself it was to bide his time, rather than any relief from the agony in his head.
The thing called him ‘sire’. That was interesting.
I am the meeting of minds, born of the last among your sons who still speak without speaking. I am the strength of the last nineteen that still live. I’ve silenced the Nails. You are yourself, for a few rare moments.
Try to remember all that came before. You are Angron, Lord of the Twelfth Legion, a son of the Emperor of Mankind. This is Ultrama–
No. Enough of the voice’s whisperings.
He remembered standing in the dark.
He remembered standing in the dark, while his brothers and sisters died.
He remembered standing in the dark, while his brothers and sisters died, because he wasn’t there to fight with th–
No. Not that, sire.
He remembered being blinded by his father’s light. He remembered refusing to abandon his brothers and sisters, beneath a blue sky at high-sun, far from the city of Desh’ea. He remembered the mechanical thunder of absolute betrayal, when he was stolen from the death he’d so richly earned.
He remembered the cold moment of truth as he stood in the dark, his hurting eyes healing, that every day he breathed was an unwanted gift. He was walking another man’s destiny now. His destiny was to be with the men and women who needed him, who called for him, who followed him into the mountains and died without him. A destiny denied.
He was Angron of Desh’ea. After that, nothing mattered. He’d listened to the others that begged him, that needed it all to matter. He’d played their games, living out another man’s life. He’d
led his fleets, he’d embraced his sons, he’d told himself that blood was thicker than water, and the Eaters of Worlds were the army he wanted and the horde he deserved. He’d sustained himself on lies, letting none see how he starved.
And he served in his cold-hearted father’s empire, enduring the silent sneers of brothers he despised.
Yes, Angron. Angron the Conqueror. The Butcher. The Red Angel. All the things they’d made him into, after stealing his destiny as…
As what, sire?
He recoiled from the voice. It wasn’t for them to know.
‘Vorias.’ He growled the name of his Legion’s Lectio Primus.
Vorias is within me, sire. I am the Communion.
Angron wanted to spit. Filthy psykers. His Legion would be cleaner when the last of them finally died. Their whispers set the Nails ringing inside his skull like nothing else could. Already, he could feel blood sheeting from his nose.
‘You’ve done what you wished to do. You reached me, now tell me which way to dig, and get out of my head.’
They did. They obeyed both demands. Angron spent several gruelling, bleeding minutes twisting beneath the earth, before resuming his aching crawl. This time, bound for freedom and the light above. More importantly, bound for revenge.
Esca collapsed backwards, his armour thudding against the Rhino’s hull. He slid to the ground in a slow hunch, ending the fall in an ungainly slump. Blood ran from his ears, his nose, his eyes, and none of this was anything new. It still hurt, it hurt every time, but even pain became mundane when it was a constant companion.
He could feel the Communion dying in the distance. The gestalt being they’d shaped with the union of their powers was crying out as it diminished, pained by the simple oblivion of each psyker withdrawing his mind and returning to individuality. Strange and unfortunate for the short-lived intelligence, but nothing else would have pierced the murk of Angron’s broken psyche. The primarch’s proto-Nails girded his mind from intrusion. No one knew why, or how, or if it was even intentional.
Esca crouched there, breathing through bloody teeth, too weak to even swallow. To force one’s way into a primarch’s mind was to swim blind through rockcrete. And the Nails… the Nails made torture into a nightmare. Angron’s Nails were almost septic in their simplicity, clouding the warlord’s brain from outside influence, turning his thoughts into untraceable, uncatchable ghosts. To even speak with him, mind to mind, took an event like the Communion, and an event like the Communion left the remaining World Eaters Librarians sickened and weak in the aftermath. Whatever went into the construction of Angron’s cranial implants defied simple reverse engineering.
He finally managed to look up, at where his own brothers were judiciously ignoring him across the wrecked plaza. Esca stared into the dust, watching the white-clad sons of Angron duelling amongst the rubble, crashing blades against the silhouettes of Ultramarines who refused to give ground. Smaller shadows, the human soldiers of the Armaturan Wardens, fought in ever-retreating ranks, forming pockets of resistance with their quick-flashing lasrifles. Even through the dust-mist and the chemical stinks of burnt metal and tank engines, he could smell the fear-sweat decorating the humans’ bodies.
A shadow blocked out the weak sun. A small shadow. He raised his head again, unaware he’d come close to passing out.
The stink of human skin hit him first. And then, the smell of blood. Thin mortal blood, unlaced by stimulants and unfiltered by enhanced organs. He couldn’t make out the face or the features of the man’s armour, but he didn’t need to. It wasn’t a legionary. The human wasn’t on his side.
He lifted a hand. To kill the man? To ward off the coming execution? It didn’t matter. Esca’s hand shook in the air before him, the gravest and clearest confession of weakness. Betrayed by his own body.
Vorias,+ he sent in silence, though that was worthless. Vorias was half a city away. +Khârn,+ he tried. +Kargos.+ They were both nearer. He couldn’t see Khârn fighting in the chaos of the Valika Junction, but he could hear him shouting over the vox, demanding to abort a teleport lock.
Predictably, neither answered. They probably couldn’t even hear him.
The human silhouette levelled a rifle, aiming at his head. Esca laughed, but it left his throat as a wet, wheezing chuckle – a man choking on his own bile.
‘Why?’ the man asked. ‘Why did you betray us all?’
Esca’s vision was swimming as he tried to focus his thoughts. He laughed again, just as weak. His hand was still trembling.
‘Answer me!’ the soldier cried. He pushed the rifle’s muzzle against Esca’s cheek.
The World Eater tried to answer, and instead vomited dark blood down the front of his armour.
A growl. A whine. Something flashing in the sun.
Blood, hot and too-human, painted Esca’s face. The shadow fell, and another replaced it. This one came with the purring thrum of active armour.
‘Esca,’ said the new shadow. It carried a chainaxe, and its helm was crested. It smelled of war and hate and fire.
‘Captain,’ the Codicier replied in a raw whisper. ‘My thanks.’ He held out his shaking hand, needing to be helped up.
The other World Eater stepped back, as if threatened. Ah. Yes. Esca lowered his hand again.
‘Forgive me, Khârn,’ he managed to say.
‘It’s fine.’ The warrior turned away. ‘Now get up and finish this fight.’
Esca watched his captain moving back over the rubble. The Codicier stood almost a minute later, looking around for the weapons he’d dropped when he’d saved his primarch’s life.
The Armaturan wore the dirty blue dress tunic of an Academy Guard officer, replete with gold ropes and silver frogging.
‘Fff… for t-the Emp-peror.’ The dying man stuttered the words from a ruined mouth. Blood streamed from his gums where his teeth had been until Khârn backhanded them down his throat only seconds before. Distracted, the World Eater dragged the struggling mortal into a headbutt, crashing his snarling faceplate into the man’s forehead. Whatever bone remained whole after that blow, it wasn’t enough to keep him alive. The Armaturan officer slumped to the ground, as dead as the city he’d failed to protect.
Khârn breathed in, inhaling the bloodstink painted across his faceplate. The Nails gave a pleased, warm pulse in response.
He looked skywards as the teleport locus fixed at last, ripping a conduit through the warp with a bang that blew out what few windows remained whole in a radius of several streets. The displaced air pressure was like a sonic boom of its own, blasting thirty metres above the battlefield. Khârn looked up when the airwave hit, feeling pebbles and grit clattering against his armour. Those closest to the airburst were thrown from their feet – World Eater, human and Ultramarine alike. He was far enough away that it did little beyond scramble his retinal display for a few seconds.
A demigod in red and gold fell from the golden wound in the world’s sky. A magnificent warrior-priest armoured in sacred crimson, each armour plate inscribed with runic mandalas and prayers written in Colchisian cuneiform. The oaths and scrolls bound to the dark ceramite caught the wind like wings of parchment, spreading as he fell. Khârn felt it then; he felt the instinctive sigh of submission, that skin-itching awe in the first moments that one stood in a primarch’s presence.
Lorgar’s ridged boots crunched down on the rubble, grinding the rocks to pebbles and dust. Sniper fire lanced the air at once, flaring with frustrated light as it impacted against the psychokinetic shield shimmering around the primarch’s armour. Khârn shouted a warning, but Lorgar paid as much attention to the centurion’s cry as he did to the incoming storm of fire that supposedly threatened his life. His attention was elsewhere, focused on the cursed earth lining the fallen avenue.
An Ultramarines gunship rattled overhead, rows of heavy bolters chattering and flashing in the dust-brought darkness. That got
the primarch’s attention. Lorgar turned in a measured, fluid arc, dragging Illuminarum’s brutal maul-head across the ground before roaring as he hurled it skywards. The crozius spun in an energised blur, crashing into the cockpit’s reinforced windshield with a shatter loud enough to be audible over the gunship’s protesting jump jets. As the Thunderhawk banked away, Lorgar raised his hands towards it, fingers curling into claws. He gripped it, holding it in the air.
And he pulled.
The gunship’s engines coughed black filth and shuddered in the sky. Lorgar pulled again, a prophet clawing wisdom from the heavens. The gunship fell, smashing into the broken avenue with an ear-aching crash of tormented metal, engines aflame, hull mangled.
The primarch ignored his lost crozius for the moment, and looked back at the rubble lining the wide avenue.
He said one word. Somehow, Khârn heard it distinctly, above everything else, though it was no more than a whisper.
‘Brother.’
The Lord of the Word Bearers started hauling the rocks free and casting them away from the buried, collapsed road, with the same untouching ease as he’d pulled a gunship from the sky.
Skane came down, jump pack engines giving an ululating whine as he skidded to a halt next to Khârn. His black armour was painted white with the dust of the dying city.
‘You’re going to love this,’ he said to his captain.
Khârn was unable to look away from Lorgar. ‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ he asked Skane.
‘This is even better, captain.’ The Destroyer shook his head. ‘Do you feel that?’
Once he paid heed, he couldn’t help but feel it. The ground quivered, just faintly, but as regularly as a racing heart. The city shook not from its death, but from the footsteps of giants.
‘Titan-tread,’ said Khârn.
‘I saw several coming through the dust,’ Skane admitted. ‘And none of them are on our side.’
FIVE
The Ember Queen
His Imperial Wisdom
They Cheer, My Princeps
Betrayer Page 7