This, came the voice, is the cry of the gods we have both been waiting for.
Argel Tal had no hope of replying. The pain knifing through every cell in his body was enough that he sought to slay himself, clawing at his helm and throat, feeling his fingers burning with his own blood as he ripped hunks armour from his flesh, and fistfuls of flesh from his bones.
Do not fight the communion.
Again, he ignored the voice. He wasn’t dying, no matter how he tried. A hooked claw tore the skin from his throat, and with it, half of his collarbone. He inflicted similar injuries upon himself with each second, but he wasn’t dying. He scrabbled at the armour and bone shielding his two hearts, feverish in his need to wrench both of them from his chest.
Communion... Ascension...
The winged shadow vanished from Argel Tal’s vision, and above him the sky was brightened by the last rays of the setting sun.
I am alive, he thought, even as he tore himself apart, even as he ripped a handful of steaming organ meat from his shattered ribcage and burst his first heart in his hand. I did not die beneath the shadow, and I cannot destroy myself now.
This pain will bleed you of sanity. Let me ascend!
Despite agony no living being had ever survived, there was still a moment of fierce resistance in the war behind Argel Tal’s eyes. He wanted to die, to taste nothingness, not to endure further corruption. The sentience that was Raum found itself shackled deeper within by a soul ruthlessly unwilling to surrender.
I will save us, not harm us. RELEASE ME.
The Word Bearer’s concentration went slack, not because he believed the daemon’s words, but from reaching the absolute end of his strength.
Argel Tal closed his eyes.
Raum opened them.
A cloven hoof of bleached bone, wreathed in ceramite that seemed moulded to fit, crushed a gasping Raven Guard warrior into the mud. Great claws with too many joints, resembling the lashing branches of winter trees, closed and opened, closed and opened, while each of its long fingers ended in black talons. Most of the crimson armour was bulked up and layered by dense bone ridges and knuckly spines. It stood taller than even an Astartes – though not equal to the primarchs battling a short distance away.
Its helm was crowned in pagan majesty with great horns of ivory, and silhouetted against the bright cannon fire it seemed to resemble the Taur of Minos from pre-Imperial Terran mythology. Its legs were jointed backwards and brutally muscled beneath the armour, with powerful black hooves leaving burning imprints in the soil. Its Astartes helm was split along the cheeks and mouth grille to reveal a shark’s maw with rows of bladed teeth, glinting with clear acidic saliva.
The daemon drew in a great breath and roared it back out into the retreating ranks of the Raven Guard. That terrible wall of sound hit the Astartes as if an earthquake was laughing at them. Dozens fell to their hands and knees.
Around the warped helm’s left eye lens, the golden sun was all that marked the creature as the man it had been.
TWENTY-SEVEN
An Image to Make his Name
Sacrifice
The Burden of Truth
Ishaq made a jump for it, and rolled under the bulkhead before it slammed down. It was less daring than it sounded as the security doors were taking their sweet time to close, but with the sirens wailing and the emergency lighting darkening everything to deep red, he was hardly thinking clearly. He didn’t want to get sucked out of a void breach, but nor did he want to be caught up here when the battle was over. He needed to go, go, go.
Checking his picter was still in one piece, he broke into another sprint, desperate to get the hell off this deck. The labyrinthine corridors defied this, hindering him further by the fact most of the wall markings were in Colchisian rather than Imperial Gothic.
Have I been here before? One corridor was much the same as another. In the distance, he could hear bulkheads sealing shut and corridors collapsing as the ship sustained more damage. He’d already made it through several thoroughfares where the walls were reduced to wreckage scattered all over the floor in a twisted mess of grey steel and black iron.
He started running again. Four dead men waited around the next corner – four Euchar soldiers, half-crushed by an exploded, fallen wall.
No. Three dead. ‘Help me,’ said the fourth.
Ishaq froze while the ship shook around him. If this soldier survived and identified him later, he was a dead man for being on the monastic deck.
‘Please,’ the trembling man begged.
Ishaq knelt by the soldier and heaved some of the wreckage off his legs. The Euchar screamed, and the imagist squinted through the emergency darkness to see why. Some of the detritus had pierced the soldier’s legs and belly, pinning him to the floor. There’d be no helping him, after all. Pulling this out was the work of a skilled surgeon, and even then, it likely wouldn’t be enough to save the poor wretch.
‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I can’t do anything.’
‘Shoot me, you stupid bast–’
‘I don’t have a–’ He saw the soldier’s rifle half-buried in the junk, and hauled it free. As he tried to take aim, the shuddering ship almost sent him sprawling.
Click, went the trigger. Click, click, click.
‘Safety,’ the soldier groaned. Blood was pooling beneath him. ‘The... switch.’
Ishaq flicked the switch along the gun’s side, and pulled the trigger. He’d never fired a lasweapon before. The crack-flash left dancing lights before his eyes, and he struggled at first to see the soldier. The man was dead now, his head emptied against the wall behind him. The corridor itself was blocked by debris, and Ishaq dropped the rifle with a clatter, turning to head back the way he’d come.
The bulkhead at the end of the concourse thunked shut with a finality Ishaq almost swore was smug, trapping him in a corridor with four dead bodies and a lot of wreckage. One door led out of here, marked by what looked like Colchisian verse on the damaged walls either side.
He pounded his fists against it, getting no answer. The door was warm, charged somehow, as if the room on the other side were a living thing. Ishaq hammered meaningless numbers into the keypad, receiving the same amount of success.
At last, he took up the lasrifle again, closed his eyes, and shot the security panel. The keypad shorted out, flickering with small flames, and the door at the heart of the monastic deck opened with a sweltering whisper of released air. The sigh of pressure was obscene in its biological origins, stinking of unwashed flesh and the faecal reek of prolonged deprivation. Voices drifted out from the room as if carried on the air. They mumbled and muttered, and made no sense.
Ishaq stood, staring inside, unable to form words at what he was seeing.
His picter flashed. This, at last, was the image to make his name.
His brother was a warrior, a warlord, and from the very first moment their weapons met, Corax was fighting to kill, while Lorgar fought to stay alive. The battle moved too fast for mortal eyes to perceive, with both primarchs pushing themselves beyond anything else they’d endured.
Corax evaded the crozius without even once parrying. He weaved aside, threw himself out of reach, or fired his flight pack with enough force to boost him up and over Lorgar’s heavy swings. By contrast, sweat stung Lorgar’s eyes as he desperately blocked each of his brother’s attacks. Illuminarum’s great hammerhead rang like a church bell as it battered aside the Raven Lord’s claws.
‘What are you doing?’ Corax cried into his brother’s face as their weapons locked. ‘What madness has taken you all?’
Lorgar disengaged, hurling Corax backward with enough strength to leave his brother unbalanced. The Raven Lord compensated instantly, his flight pack breathing fire and propelling him back at his brother. Bladed wings flashed out to the side, but Lorgar was ready for them. He ignored their scraping, cutting wounds as they knifed through his armour, and focused on hammering Corax’s claws aside. In the seconds�
�� safety he bought for himself, Lorgar at last landed a true blow. Corax was sent sprawling again as the crozius pounded into his breastplate. The power field around the maul’s head struck with enough force to send a shockwave blasting out from the warring brothers, throwing all nearby Astartes to the ground.
In less time than it took to breathe in, Corax was back on his feet, thrusters firing, spearing at Lorgar once more.
‘Answer me, traitor,’ the Raven Lord grunted. His dark eyes were narrowed at the sickening light that haloed Lorgar. ‘You... are a poor reflection of our father... with that psychic gold.’
Lorgar felt himself slipping back in the mud, his boots grinding across the earth as his brother’s strength leaned heavier against him. He couldn’t break the weapon lock this time. Both Corax’s claws clutched at Illuminarum’s haft, burning the handle and the Word Bearer’s hands.
‘I am bringing the truth to humanity,’ Lorgar breathed.
‘You are destroying the Imperium! You are betraying your own blood!’ The wildness in the Raven Lord’s black eyes was something Lorgar had never even imagined before. Corax had always seemed so taciturn, so devoid of passion. That this warrior lay beneath the albino facade was a horrendous revelation.
The claw tips, spitting with crackling power fields, were a finger’s length from Lorgar’s face now. ‘I will kill you, Lorgar.’
‘I know.’ He spoke through gritted teeth, feeling strength bleed from his bones. ‘But I have seen what will be. Our father, a bloodless corpse enthroned upon gold, and screaming into the void forever.’
‘Lies.’ The black eyes narrowed, and the Raven Lord’s pale muscles bunched, locking harder. ‘You are reducing a kingdom to chaos. Overthrowing the perfect order.’
Lorgar’s grey eyes danced with light despite the strain on his body. ‘The opposite of chaos is not order, brother. It is stasis. Lifeless, unchanging... stasis.’
With a last grunt, Lorgar’s strength gave. Quivering hands could no longer keep his brother’s weapons back.
‘Here it is,’ Corax promised in a hiss, his saliva flecking Lorgar’s eyes and cheeks. ‘Here is the death you so richly deserve.’
The claws reached his brother’s face. Slowly, the metal burning-hot, they sliced over Lorgar’s golden skin. Inch by inch, blackening the golden flesh, cutting into the meat of his cheeks. Even should he escape, he would bear these scars until the day he died. He knew this, and did not care.
The psychic fire wreathing them both flared in response to Lorgar’s pain. Corax closed his eyes to spare his sight, and instinct cost him his quick victory. Lorgar threw the Raven Lord back again. Illuminarum rose, ready to strike, before a burst of smoky fire launched the Raven Lord up from the soil to come down on Lorgar from above. The Word Bearer smashed the first claw aside, striking the fist with enough force to shatter the gauntlet completely, but even as scythe-long claw blades span off into the surrounding melee, the second claw struck home.
Metre-long talons sank through Lorgar’s stomach, the tips glinting to the side of his spine as they thrust from his back. Such a blow meant little to a primarch – only when Corax heaved upwards did Lorgar stagger. The claws bit and cut, sawing through the Word Bearer’s body.
Illuminarum slipped from the impaled primarch’s fists. Those same hands wrapped around Corax’s throat even as the Raven Lord was carving his brother in half.
‘For the Emperor,’ Corax breathed, untroubled by his weaker brother’s grip. Lorgar crashed his forehead against Corax’s face, shattering his brother’s nose, but still he couldn’t free himself. The Raven Lord gave no ground, even as a second, third and fourth head butt decimated his delicate features.
‘But he lied to us,’ Lorgar spoke through lips that produced more blood than language. ‘Father lied.’
The claws jerked, snagged against Lorgar’s enhanced bones. Corax tore them free, inflicting more damage than the first impaling had done. Blood hissed and popped as it evaporated on the force-fielded blades.
‘Father lied,’ Lorgar said again. He was on his knees, hands clutched over the ruination of his stomach.
Corax’s black eyes gave nothing away. He stepped closer, his one functioning claw raised to execute his brother.
‘Do it,’ Lorgar snarled. The psychic wind, the misty fire – all were gone now. He was as he’d always been: Lorgar, the Seventeenth Son, the image of his father, the one soul in twenty who’d never wished to be a soldier. And here he would die, at the heart of a battlefield.
The foul irony of the moment settled on his shoulders, feeling grotesquely apt. He couldn’t move his legs. His body was a temple to nothing but pain. He could barely even see his executioner, for his psychic efforts had left him quivering with both weakness and a vision-blurring ache in his mind. A faint outline met his gaze, the blurred image of scythe-blades raised high.
‘Do it!’ Lorgar screamed at his brother.
The claw fell, and struck opposing metal.
Corax looked to meet eyes as black as his, in a face as pale as his own. His claw strained against a mirroring weapon, both sets of blades scraping as they ground against each other. One claw seeking to fall and kill, the other unyielding in its rising defence.
Where the Raven Guard primarch’s features were fierce with effort, the other face wore a grin. It was a smile both taut and mirthless – a dead man’s smile, once his lips surrendered to rigor mortis.
‘Corax,’ said the other primarch.
‘Curze,’ Corax said the name as the curse it was.
‘Look into my eyes,’ said the progenitor of the Night Lords Legion, ‘and see your death.’
Corax sought to wrench his claw free, but Curze’s second gauntlet closed on his brother’s wrist. ‘No,’ Curze’s laughter as was joyless as his smile. ‘Do not fly away, little raven. Stay. We are not finished, you and I.’
‘Konrad,’ Corax tried. ‘Why have you done this?’
Curze ignored the plea. He turned his void-like eyes on the prone Lorgar, with disgust written plain across his carcass face. ‘Rise from your knees, you accursed coward.’
Lorgar sought to do just that, using his brother’s midnight-blue armour as a crutch to haul himself to his feet. Curze bared his sharpened teeth. ‘You are the foulest weakling I have ever seen, Lorgar.’
Corax was not idle as this exchange took place. He fired his flight pack, burning his fuel reserves to escape Curze’s grip. The Raven Lord’s claw ripped free, and Corax soared skyward, carried on jet thrust away from Curze’s rising laughter.
On the ground, Curze shook himself free of Lorgar. ‘Sevatar,’ he spoke into the vox. ‘The Raven comes to you, to free his men.’
Battle sounds. Bolter fire. The roar of tank engines. ‘We will deal with him, lord.’
‘See that you do.’ Curze shoved Lorgar back towards his Word Bearers. Around them both, the grey Legion warred with the warriors in black. ‘I am done with you, golden one. Go back to killing Astartes with your pretty hammer.’
Lorgar’s preternatural biology was regenerating his damaged tissue with alacrity, but the primarch was shivery and weak as he reached for the fallen crozius.
‘Thank you, Konrad.’
Curze spat at Lorgar’s feet. ‘I will let you die next time. And if you...’
The Night Lord trailed off, his black eyes narrowing as he watched the figures appearing at Lorgar’s side. Their armour was crimson ceramite and ridged bone. Great claws, both metallic weapons and fleshy, jointed talons, extended from bestial arms. Every helm was horned. Every faceplate was split by a daemon’s skullish leer.
‘You are so much more than merely foul,’ Curze turned his back. ‘You are rancid in your corruption.’
Lorgar watched his brother stalking back through the ranks of Night Lords and Word Bearers, wading through them to reach the Raven Guard once more. Soon enough, the silver claws began to rise and fall as they always had, shearing through the armoured bodies of Curze’s enemies.
Lorgar tur
ned to the Gal Vorbak. ‘Argel Tal,’ he smiled at one of them, knowing him instantly.
The creature grunted, twitchy with the need to shed blood. ‘It is I, sire.’
‘The warriors I would need,’ Lorgar murmured the old words with awe tainting his breath. ‘Truly, you are blessed by the gods. Go. Hunt. Kill.’
The Gal Vorbak withdrew from their lord, launching themselves back into the battle with leaps and snarls. Argel Tal lingered. A claw of ceramite and bone closed on Lorgar’s arm.
‘Father. I could not reach you in time.’
‘It does not matter. I live still. Hunt well, my son.’
The daemon nodded and obeyed.
Thunderhawk gunships in the colours of the Raven Guard and the Salamanders exploded at the launch site as the Iron Warriors turned their weapons from the slaughter and targeted the loyalists’ only avenues of escape.
Despite the grind of battle, dozens of the landing craft managed to make it back into the air. Most of these were soon sent spiralling back down to earth, streaming black smoke from lascannon wounds in propulsion systems. The Iron Warriors fired with impunity, caring nothing that many of the downed gunships fell groundward into the battle still being waged. The burning hulls of destroyed Astartes craft rained onto the killing fields, pulverising Word Bearers and Night Lords more often than they crashed into the few remaining pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders survivors.
When contacted by Legion commanders protesting the careless destruction, the Iron Warriors captains replied with laughter that bordered on betrayal.
‘We are all bleeding today,’ an Iron Warriors captain voxed back to Kor Phaeron. ‘Have faith, Word Bearer.’ The link went dead to the sound of chuckling.
Time ceased to have any meaning for Argel Tal. When he was not killing, he was moving, hunting, seeking something else to kill. His claws savaged any Raven Guard warrior that came within his grip. Corax had thinned the ranks of the Gal Vorbak before Lorgar’s intercession, but enough of the chosen sons remained to form a feral pack that led their Legion, cutting into the diminishing foe.
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