He struggled to speak, blood puddling beneath him. 'I th-thought... I thought I could overcome it... The voices — Emperor preserve me — I... I thought I could resist. I— I was wrong. But sometimes... nn... sometimes I could... could fool them. I made them think you would be a help. I... I recruited you. They wanted me to kill you b-but... But I knew... I knew you'd be the one... to set me free...'
The light went out of his eyes. The Corona fell from his hand and rolled, slick with blood, wobbling as it tumbled, and she lifted it as it passed her, blinking tears from her eyes.
Such a simple thing. Such a little thing.
And then the world went white, and the gallery room pitched like a sinking ship, and the wall beside her was torn away like paper, crumpled in hands of razor steel.
Ice swarmed in through the rent, and with it came a wave of such agony that she screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.
Pain filled the universe. A shrieking like a million banshees drowned her senses, and clouds — worlds — of darkness stormed into the air. The warp lazed into reality like a descending blade, and every light that had ever existed was snuffed, every happiness was shredded, every quiet joy and instant of ecstasy was swallowed up and burned away.
A giant stood at the threshold of the shredded wall. It folded wings of tattered leather, wings that slipped between material and ether as if on fire, venting smoke and ash. It moved on legs of incorporeality, it bled across the spaces of the cavern like an echo of a figure.
It was not real.
It was more than real.
It was Chaos given form.
And through psychic torture that blinded her, through the shrieking of warp-beasts that exploded her ears, through coils of darkness that snared her soul and promised damnation to all who felt their touch, she saw the Night Lord Zso Sahaal stagger from the smoke and frost, arm hanging limp, face bleeding from a dozen cuts, and stare up at the vision of terror incarnate that had defiled reality with its presence.
'It's been a long time, Acerbus,' he growled. 'I barely recognise you.'
Zso Sahaal
He was too late.
He knew it the instant his ancient brother insinuated himself upon the chamber, like an infection taking root. There was no place for focus, here. No hope of reclaiming his master's legacy. No hope of inflicting order and control upon a creature so utterly lost to Chaos.
The daemon prince that had once been Krieg Acerbus paused, shadows shifting despite its stillness, and eyes that had once been human glared down upon Sahaal and narrowed.
'You're smaller than I remember...' it said, amused. Its voice was a thing of mingled screams and the echoes of tortured souls, harmonised and directed. It bypassed sound and arrived fully formed, like a migraine, in the centre of Sahaal's brain.
He fought the urge to vomit. The creature radiated despair as a fire emits heat, and he felt it coil through his senses, churning his confidence to paste, reducing every triumph he had ever enjoyed to failure.
That the creature was Krieg Acerbus was beyond doubt. He was changed almost beyond belief, but still there remained about him some essence of self, some expression of his eyes, perhaps, that betrayed his identity. He had always seemed monstrous to Sahaal: now his outward appearance had merely altered to reflect its inward counterpart.
He had grown massive. Where once there had been armour now there was iron flesh, living warpstuff that writhed and tightened, swarming with wicked runes. He was no longer a thing of corporeality, that much was clear. In every dimension he ghosted and hardened, then faded to smoke, as if uncomfortable with solidity: burning with immaterial energies that flared not with light, but with dark. Smouldering emissions poured from his long limbs like steam from a smithy, tentacles of shadow bulged from his spine, and when he moved, when he unfurled the shadows that crooked upon his shoulders like a vulture's wings, it was as if the existence of light itself was forgotten. It was as if perpetual night had arisen, and morning would never arrive.
At the tips of arms so long they plucked at the floor, claws glittered and spat sparks: forged not from flesh nor metal, but from the raw stuff of darkness itself. They made the air bleed.
'Where,' Sahaal said, pushing down the stifling failure, denying it for a sweet second longer, bolstering himself with foundationless courage, 'is my Legion?'
The beast crooked its pale face, sneered through lip-less jaws, and aimed a smoking talon at the rent in the wall.
Sahaal approached the torn metal like a cripple, limping from more wounds than he could count, wincing at every movement, his dead arm hanging by a nerveless thread at his side.
The skies of Equixus were on fire.
An orbital bombardment had been the first step. Great glittering teardrops of incandescence flared below the clouds, hurtling down at impossible speeds to inflict ruinous tears across the city's surface. Those few defences untouched by the Shadowkin attacks were picked clear one by one, gouged from the surface like tumours, and with each impact shredded metal churned up and out, the hive wobbled as if shaken to its core, and thousands upon thousands died.
The Raptors followed the bombardment, and in the face of their dizzying descents Sahaal's hopes were crushed further. These were not the agile warriors whose kind he had created. These were not the assault squads he had formed and trained an aeon ago, spreading amongst the other Legions as their successes became legend. These were not the Raptors he knew.
They came like daemon vultures, chainswords snarling, pistols flaring in the snow-choked sky. They whooped and cackled and shrieked, and their twisted armour shimmered with unholy light, like an ember's dying glow. Ghastly deathmasks patterned ancient helmets, crooked forwards in beak-like snarls and aquiline grimaces. They flocked above the hive like carrion birds, gathering for a feast, and when they dived together the sky was filled with their ululations and the hissing of whatever unnatural forces buoyed them up. They were a plague, Sahaal thought, and as they vanished one by one inside the wounds of the hive's surface he slipped to his knees, his mind rebelling against what it witnessed.
And then the warriors themselves: a rain of drop pods and assault craft that vomited from the heaving stormclouds, smashing against the city's shell like hammers pounding anvils. In lightning-flash tableaux and the stolen flare of detonating munitions Sahaal could glimpse the ranks of his so-called brothers as they fell upon the crowds within.
Blue and bronze whirlwinds. Without grace or poise. Frenzied. Out of control. Utterly Chaotic.
The Night Lords descended upon Equixus like a bloody rain, and the screams of the population drowned out even the howling of the perpetual ice storm. Oh, my master... What have they done? What have they become?
The failure was a firebrand, slipping into his eyes. It was a tidal wave, the bow-blast of a supernova, rolling and boiling to devour him whole. It settled on his shoulders like the weight of the galaxy itself, and he felt every bone in his body splinter to dust, every blood vessel burst, every atom of every part of him split and die. He was too late.
He wondered if he'd already known, deep within himself. Perhaps he had always known, since awaking in the ruptured belly of the Umbrea Insidior. Too long had passed. Too many centuries had glided by, bereft of his influence and leadership. His master had chosen him as his heir to bring focus to a Legion in peril, to unite a body that threatened to tear itself apart, to offer some measure of temperance against the whispering seductions of power and rage. He had been selected as the Legion's deliverance from corruption, and he had not been present to fulfil his vows.
One hundred centuries — unguided, unprotected — was more than long enough to succumb.
The Daemonlord Acerbus hissed behind him, delighted by the carnage enacted below. Howls rose like smoke: the shrieks of dying men, the moans of tortured women, the tears of youths.
'This is without purpose...' Sahaal whispered, gazing down into the flames. 'Where is the sense in this? Have you no worthier targets than women and children
?'
'Every target is worthy,' the Daemonlord breathed, waves of despair carrying his voice. 'And the purpose...? Little Talonmaster, do you not remember our master's lessons? The purpose is fear. It is always fear.'
Sahaal turned to face the abomination, tears in his eyes, and above him it drew sensuous claws across its incorporeal chest, eyes closed, face upturned, as if savouring a fine scent.
'Do you taste it?' it whispered. 'Do you taste the terror of this world? It is... mm... it is intoxicating.'
Sahaal felt disgust engulf him.
'You dare to lecture me on the Night Haunter's lessons?' he snarled, anger gripping him, breaking through the shame and failure like a hatching beast. 'You dare, when you've fallen so far from his wisdom? Fear is the weapon, fool, not the goal!'
The devil crooned, maw spreading in delight.
'Ah... Righteous little Sahaal. How I have missed you...'
'Look at you! Look at what you've become! You've spat in the face of his legacy. Have you no shame?'
'Our master's legacy lives, little Sahaal.' The beast brandished a fist, clenching claws together. 'Through me, it prospers!'
Sahaal's bolter was in his hand before he had even considered drawing it.
'You are not fit to call yourself a Night Lord,' he said, and squeezed the trigger.
The Mordax Tenebrae spat shells like a hateful dragon. With every blast he saw his master's haunted features, heard his soothing words. With every shell he whispered his master's name.
And then the smoke cleared, and he saw that he'd barely scratched the monster's skin. Through boiling frost clouds and shifting shadows its eyes burned, and before Sahaal had even registered movement its great paw slipped from the smog and swatted him like a fly. His armour cracked. He crossed the room on his back.
'You,' Acerbus said, pouncing across him at a speed inconceivable in a creature so massive, holding him down with invisible cords of warpstuff and poking with child-like interest at the wound on his shoulder, 'should have more respect for your lord.'
His whole body burned. Each vicious slash-stab, each playing prod of the daemon's claws, was a universe of agony compressed upon his brain. Acerbus ate his fear and crooned to himself.
'You'll never be my lord!' Sahaal stormed, reserves of rage spilling through the cracked edges of his soul. 'The Haunter chose me! I was the heir to the Corona Nox!'
'Little Sahaal. Little Sahaal...' the beast shook its head, smoke oozing from burning eyes. 'So foolish... You were never its heir. You were merely its keeper'
'Spare me your lies, scum! Let me up! Fight me!'
'Ha... Have you never considered, little Sahaal, that Konrad Curze intended all of this?'
'How dare you speak his n—'
'He had seen his own death. He had tasted the future. You know that. It plagued him all his life.'
'W... What of it?'
'Do you truly believe, foolish little Sahaal, that he had not foreseen your disappearance? Do you truly believe he did not know you would be lost to this galaxy for ten thousand years? Have you never asked yourself why he would allow such a thing?'
'I... I...'
Lights bulged before his eyes. His world quivered around him.
It couldn't be true. The Haunter had never foreseen it!
Acerbus's voice was a poisoned needle, pumping toxins into his brain. 'Of course he knew,' it hissed. 'He understood his own soul better than anyone. He understood the division in his heart. He understood the choices before him.'
'But he chose me... he chose me!'
'He chose me, Sahaal. He knew that he was two men. One was... just and righteous — ''the daemon spat the words, disgusted'' -whilst the other... mm... the other had felt the kiss of Chaos all its life. One thrived on focus. The other ate fear!'
'And he chose the first, damn you! He spurned Chaos! He chose me!'
'No.' The claws scooped at the flesh of his shoulder, igniting every nerve in his body. The voice was relentless, crumbling every bastion of his resistance. 'He fooled himself. He was divided, but the dark side was strongest. He had foreseen the fate of the Corona, so he bequeathed it to you. He set you to chase after it like some vapid dog, doomed to an era of sleep. He sent you away, so your... ha... your worthy witterings could not obscure his vision. His vision of a Legion that sowed fear in his name. A Legion to eat the terror of the Imperium. He knew you would never accept such a thing. He knew you had to be removed.' The beast leaned down, so close that its fanged maw all but touched Sahaal's cheek. Hot breath washed over him. 'He condemned you to your prison, little Sahaal. He exiled you!
'No! You're lying! If that were true he would have simply killed me!'
'And leave the Corona unguarded? Leave his killer to steal it? Use your sense, Sahaal.'
'But he told me everything! The... the sanctioned genocides! The Emperor's betrayal! The assassin before the Heresy!'
'Lies. The whispers of his Chaotic side, pouring poison in the ear of his virtuous self. Perhaps... hah... perhaps he even believed it himself.'
Sahaal's brain collapsed upon itself. This would not stand. He could not allow himself an instant's doubt. He could not permit the suggestion — the suspicion — that Acerbus spoke the truth. To do otherwise would be to make a lie of everything he had ever believed, and everything he had struggled to achieve.
The Daemonlord was wrong. That was all there was to it.
'You're lying, warpshit!' he snarled, spitting in the creature's face. 'The Corona is mine! He gave it to me!'
'Ah... ah yes, the Corona. I have been without it long enough. I think I should like to have it now.' The creature dug claws further into Sahaal's wound, twisting with a vicious grin. 'Where is it?'
A voice spoke from nearby. 'It's right here, you bastard.'
It was the witch. Little Mita Ashyn, the woman who had set Sahaal free. She stood with blood pouring from her eyes, legs shaking at the tumult of psychic revulsion pouring from the monster, the Corona brandished before her like a halo of darkness. She looked on the verge of insanity and death, and were it not for a single detail, a single redeeming facet, Sahaal might have cursed her for all of eternity, for presenting the prize to the Daemonlord.
In her spare hand she held a melta gun — prised, no doubt, from the dead fingers of a broken servitor.
She smiled.
The melta-stream hit Acerbus full in the chest, and he barrelled away from it as if struck by a rogue meteor. The indistinct tentacles that held Sahaal down whipped away, tangled amongst the devastation of the tumbling beast. It roared so hard that the hive seemed to shake, flexing and mewling at a wound on its front, as if a great scoop had been plucked from its flesh. Raw warpstuff — liquid gore that glimmered and dissolved even as it touched the air — geysered from the crater, becoming smoke and ether before even hitting the ground.
Sahaal was on his feet and sprinting before the beast's collapse was complete. He had no energy to speak of, his mind was a wreckage without hope of salvage, and every truth he had every believed had been stolen from him. In all the world, in all the brutal realities of the galaxy, one thing alone held any meaning.
'The Corona!' he roared, leaping towards the witch. 'Give me the Corona!'
Acerbus was faster.
Like a striking crow, like shadow-wreathed lightning, he was on her, swatting Sahaal aside with a deft flick of his midnight claws and pinioning her to the floor, great tendrils of smoke and shadow tightening around her arms and ankles, wings opening like a canopy of perpetual night. The melta gun crumpled in his grip. She screamed and screamed and never stopped. The Daemonlord leaned close to her face, running a broad tongue across her cheek. 'Mm...' he mewled, intoxicated. 'Her fear is... exquisite...'
Sahaal leapt at his brother with a wordless howl, stabbing out with claws outstretched, hacking through semi-real pseudopods of smoke and dark. The Daemonlord spun to face him, spined shoulders glittering in constellations of darkness, amused at the crippled warrior's truculent attack
.
Claw met claw like the peeling of razor bells, and for long instants the pair slashed and stabbed, parrying blows that would split a man in two. Sahaal found himself dancing between bloody-tipped blurs, leaping above vengeful thrusts and spinning through blows like hail, never more than a moment ahead of his foe's attacks. Acerbus was playing with him. Let him.
Sahaal changed tack with a feral growl. Twisting his body, wincing as wounds reopened and ribs crackled at unpleasant contortions, he slipped away from the savage blades and pounced towards Mita. Blows landed on his back, gashing him open, flooding his senses with fire and fear, but none of it mattered. Only the Corona.
He cut the witch free of the boiling limbs that held her and dragged her to her feet, gore pouring from his wrecked body. Holding her tight against his shoulder with his one useful arm, he staggered with her towards the great rent in the wall and stared out at the shifting tempests of Equixus. Ice bathed him: a frozen baptism to cleanse his tormented mind. Somewhere behind him the Daemonlord realised what was happening, howling at the thought of his prey's escape. Sahaal bunched his legs, final reserves of energy pushing him out into the void.
Let the storm swallow him. Let the ice enfold him.
Let the darkness claim him as its own.
He had the witch. The witch had the Corona. Nothing else mattered.
And then the daemon oozed from the smoke at his back with a roar, fire spouting from hate-filled eyes, and snatched at the witch's arm.
The limb parted from its shoulder with a wrench and a sticky slurp.
The Corona Nox tumbled from slack fingers and spun, tilting and flipping over, catching the firelight of a dying world in a single glorious reflection—
—and then it was gone: tumbling end over end into the smoke and the fire and the ice, dwindling away along the sides of the hive until darkness swallowed it.
The witch screamed, blood pulsing from the open wound. The Daemon Prince Krieg Acerbus roared so loud that the windows of the gallery room burst, like droplets falling from a fountain.
Lord of the Night (warhammer 40,000) Page 33