[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  And in a sense, they were.

  Ten thousand years before, Talos had watched his world burn, shatter, and crumble. He’d watched Nostramo die. It was sacrifice. It was vindication. It was, he told himself, justice.

  Ten thousand years. To Talos, his life measured from battle to battle, crusade to crusade, it had been no more than a handful of decades since his home world burned. Time was enslaved to unnatural laws in the regions of hell-space where the Traitor Legions hid from Imperial retribution. It was maddening, sometimes, to keep track. Most of his brethren no longer tried.

  Talos’ boots thudded on the ramp as he boarded the gunship. Once inside the hangar, he cast a single glance at the herd of lobotomised servitors standing impassive in the deployment bay, and thumped his fist against the door lock pressure pad. The ramp withdrew and the blast doors slammed shut in a grinding chorus of hydraulics.

  “Do you think we’ll ever see another shard that size?” Cyrion asked as the Thunderhawk shuddered into the air. “That must have been at least half a continent, all the way down to the outer core.”

  Talos said nothing, lost for a moment in the memory of raging fire flickering through breaks in dense cloud cover, before an entire world came to pieces before his eyes.

  “Back to the Covenant,” he finally said. “And then to Crythe.”

  II

  VISION

  “Surprise is an insubstantial blade, a sword worthless in war.

  It breaks when troops rally. It snaps when commanders hold the line. But fear never fades. Fear is a blade that sharpens with use. So let the enemy know we come. Let their fears defeat them as everything falls dark. As the world’s sun sets… As the city is wreathed in its final night… Let ten thousand howls promise ten thousand claws. The Night Lords are coming. And no soul that stands against us shall see another dawn.”

  —The war-sage Malcharion

  Excerpted from his work, The Tenebrous Path

  Talos walked the corridors of the Covenant, wearing his battle armour without the confining presence of his helm. While he lacked the vision-enhancing modes the helmet’s sensors offered, there was a comforting clarity in piercing the ship’s darkness with his natural sight.

  The mortal crew struggled to see in the blackness, their eyes too weak to perceive the trace illumination emitted by the ship’s powered-down lighting. They were permitted lamp packs, allowing them to see in the dark when they must move from one part of the ship to another. To the Nostramo-born Astartes, the gloom simply didn’t exist. Talos moved through the wide passageways, nearing the war room, which had long since become the meditation chambers of the Exalted. A natural attuning, coupled with the genetic manipulations performed on his brain during his ascension into the ranks of the VIII Legion, meant he saw the Covenant’s interior as clearly as dawn on a far brighter world.

  Cyrion, clad in his own war-plate, drew alongside. Talos glanced at his brother, noting the creases of strain around Cyrion’s black eyes. It was strange to see one of his fellow Legionnaires show signs of age, but Talos was under no delusions. Cyrion was struggling under the pressure of his own curse—one that weighed upon his brother far more heavily than Talos’ own visions wracked him.

  “You’re not coming in with me,” Talos said, “so why are you following?”

  “I might come in,” Cyrion replied. Both of them knew how unlikely that was. Cyrion avoided the Exalted at all costs.

  “Even if you wanted to, the Atramentar will bar your way.” They walked through the labyrinthine halls of the great ship, accustomed to the silence that framed their presence.

  “They might,” conceded Cyrion. “They might not.”

  “I’ll let you keep that mistaken belief for another few minutes, Cy. Don’t ever say I am not a generous soul.” Talos scratched the back of his shaven head as he spoke. One of his implant ports, a socket of chrome in his spine just above his shoulder blades, had started aching these past few days. It was an irritating, dull pulse at the edge of his attention, and he felt the vibrating hum of the symbiotic coupling there that merged him to his armour. The machine-spirit of his war-plate must be appeased soon, and Septimus would need to be set to work preparing the unguents and oils that Talos used to tend to his inflamed junction sockets. The invasive neural connections from his armour into his body were growing aggravated from the amount of time he spent in battle. Even his inhuman healing and physical regeneration could only cope with so much.

  In better days, several Legion serfs and tech-adepts would have tended to his bionic augmentations and monitored his gene-enhancements between battles. Now he was reduced to a single slave, and as talented as Septimus was as an artificer, Talos trusted no one to come near his unarmoured form—not even his own vassal, and especially not his brothers.

  “Xarl is looking for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Uzas, as well. They want to know what you saw while afflicted.”

  “I told them. I told you all. I saw Nostramo, a shard of our home world, spinning in the void. I saw the female Navigator. I saw the vessel we destroyed.”

  “And yet the Exalted summons you now.” Cyrion shook his head. “We are not fools, brother. Well… most of us are not. I make no claims for Uzas’ state of mind. But we know you are going to meet the Exalted, and we can guess why.”

  Talos cast him a sidelong glance. “If you are planning to spy, you know you are doomed to failure. They won’t let you in.”

  “Then I will wait for you outside,” Cyrion conceded. “The Atramentar are always such wonderful conversationalists.”

  “He wouldn’t be distracted. This summons is about your vision.”

  “We’re right, aren’t we?”

  “It’s always about them,” Talos said simply. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

  The war room was at the heart of the ship—a vast circular chamber with four towering sets of doors leading in from the cardinal directions. The Astartes approached the southern door, taking note of the two immense figures flanking the sealed portal.

  Two of the Atramentar, chosen warriors of the Exalted, stood in wordless vigil. Each of the elite Astartes wore one of the Legion’s precious remaining suits of Terminator armour, their hulking shoulder guards formed of polished silver and black iron forged into the snarling skulls of sabre-toothed Nostraman lions. Talos recognised the two warriors by their armour’s insignia, and nodded as he approached.

  One of the Terminators, his war-plate etched with screeds of tiny golden Nostraman runes detailing his many victories, growled down at Talos and Cyrion.

  “Brothers,” he said, the words a slow intonation.

  “Champion Malek.” Talos nodded up at the warrior. He was head and shoulders above most mortal men himself, well over two metres tall. Malek, in the suit of ancient Terminator plate, was closer to three.

  “Prophet,” the voice drawled deep and mechanical from the tusked helm. “The Exalted summoned you.” He punctuated his words with the crackling threat of his gauntlet’s claws wreathing themselves in coruscating energy.

  “You,” the Atramentar repeated, “and you alone.”

  Cyrion leaned against the wall, magnanimously gesturing for his brother to go ahead without him. His theatrical bow brought a smile to Talos’ pale features.

  “Enter, prophet,” said the other Atramentar warrior. Talos knew the figure from the heavy bronze hammer it carried over its shoulder. Its Terminator helm, instead of sporting the half-metre tusks Malek favoured, was marred by a vicious bone horn spiking from its forehead.

  “My thanks, Brother Garadon.” Talos had long since given up demanding that others stop referring to him as a prophet. Once the Atramentar had followed the Exalted’s tendency to use the term, it had spread across the Covenant and stuck fast.

  With a last look back at Cyrion, he entered the war room. The doors closed behind him, sealing with a click and a hiss.

  “So,” Cyrion said to the silent, towering Terminators. “How are yo
u?”

  Only two souls were present in the room: Talos and the Exalted. Two souls facing each other across an oval table that had once seated two hundred warriors. Around the edges of the room, banks of cogitators and vox-stations sat idle and silent. Centuries before, they had been manned by live crew: Legion serfs and a small army of servitors. Now the Covenant’s remaining crew strength was focused on the bridge and the other vital sections of the ship.

  “Talos,” came the draconic growl from the other side of the table. The darkness was ultimate: so deep it took Talos’ vision several moments to tune through the blackness and make out the other figure in the chamber. “My prophet,” the Exalted continued. Its voice was as low as the purr of the warp engines. “My eyes into the unseen.”

  Talos regarded the vaguely humanoid shape as his sight resolved into an approximation of clarity. The Exalted wore the same relic armour so revered by the Atramentar, but… changed.

  Warped. Literally. Occasional flickers of warp lighting rippled across the surface of the armour. The witchlight gave off no illumination of its own.

  “Captain Vandred,” Talos said. “I have come as ordered.”

  The Exalted breathed out, long and soft, the amused exhalation ghosting through the air like a distant wind. It was the closest the creature could come to laughing.

  “My prophet. When will you cease this use of my ancient name? It is no longer entertaining. No longer quaint. Our forgotten titles mean nothing. You know this as well as I.”

  “I find meaning in them.” Talos watched as the Exalted dragged itself closer to the table. A mild tremor shook through the chamber as the creature took a single step.

  “Share your gift with me, Talos. Not your misguided reprimand. I control this. I am no pawn of the Ruinous Ones, no avatar of their purpose.”

  The chamber shuddered again as the Exalted took another step. “I. Control. This.”

  Talos felt his eyes narrowing at the old refrain. “As you say, brother-captain.” His words caused another breathy exhalation, at once as gentle and threatening as a blade stroked across bared flesh.

  “Speak, Talos. Before I lose what little patience remains to me. I indulged your desire to seek a rock in the void. I allowed you to once again walk the surface of our broken home world.”

  “My desire? My desire?” Talos pounded a fist onto the surface of the war room’s central table, hard enough to spread a cobweb of cracks from where his fist landed. “In a vision, I saw a fragment of our home world in the lightless black, and I led us there. Even if you don’t believe that’s an omen, it still brought over a hundred new servitors into the ship’s crew, and a Navigator. My ‘desire’ greatly benefited the Legion, Vandred. And you know it.”

  The Exalted drew a breath. As the air was sucked into the commander’s altered throat, it sounded like a banshee’s wail.

  “You will address me with respect, brother.” The words were meaningless; it was the softness of the warning that made Talos’ blood ran cold.

  “I stopped respecting you when you changed into… this.”

  “Standards of decorum must be maintained. We are the VIII Legion. We are not lost to the madness that grips the others who failed alongside us on the surface of Terra.”

  There were a hundred answers to that, each more likely to get him killed than the last. With a swallow, Talos finally said simply “Yes, sir.” This was no time to argue. In truth, it never was. Words changed nothing. The corruption within the Exalted ran too deep.

  “Good,” the creature smiled. “Now speak of the other truths you saw. Speak of the things that matter. Tell me of the wars,” the Exalted finished, “and the names of those doomed to die.”

  So Talos told him, immersing himself in the flames of those memories once more, and…

  …at first, there is nothing. Darkness, blackness. It is almost like home.

  The darkness dies in a genesis of fire. White-hot and sun-bright, it sweeps across his senses. He stumbles and falls, kneeling on the red rock of another world. He’s lost his holy weapons… his bolter and blade… When his vision clears, they are not in his hands.

  A sudden strength invades his system. His armour’s senses track the waxing and waning of power and life within his body, flooding him with stimulants to keep him in the battle even when his inhuman physiology would require succour. They rush through his blood now, electrifying muscles and deadening nerves.

  As they reach his brain, his vision clears. Coincidence or providence, the warrior doesn’t care. Rubble everywhere. And there, shattered and cast aside like a puppet with cut strings, another warrior in the colours of the VIII Legion. Talos moves to him, knowing he must reach the fallen brother before anyone else.

  He makes it. Targeting sensors flicker and beep as they lock onto other figures moving through the insane dust-smoke all around, yet he’s the first to reach the broken corpse. But no sword… no bolter…

  His targeting crosshairs zero in on the fallen warrior’s blade, outlining it in a threat display reticule and streaming data about the sword’s construction. He blink-clicks the details of metal composites and power capacity away, and grips the blade with both hands. A press of his thumb on the activation rune starts the chainsword roaring.

  The others are closing in now. He has to be fast.

  The chainblade kisses the dark ceramite armour of the dead Astartes, grinding against the war-plate for several fevered seconds before biting through. Talos carves in a quick sweep, hurling the sword aside once it has performed its function.

  One of the others is Uzas. He bounds forward like a beast, ignoring Talos, his hands tearing at the dead warrior’s helm. By the time he has pulled it free, Talos has retreated from the scavenging, carrying the severed forearm he earned. Once the meat is removed from the armoured arm, the gauntlet could be reworked and…

  …the Exalted breathed out once more, its laugh-breath exhalation.

  “Who was it?” he asked. “Who will fall, to be plundered in death?”

  “It was… They wore…”

  …armour of midnight blue, like everyone in the Legion. But the helm’s faceplate is painted red, a leering scarlet skull. Talos…

  “…didn’t see clearly,” he said to the Exalted. “I think it was Faroven.”

  Talos closed his right hand into a fist, listening to the quiet growl of the servos in every knuckle joint. The gauntlet was stiff, and Septimus had said several times it would soon need to be replaced. It was old, that was all. The years had worn it down, and although much of his armour had been replaced over time, his gauntlets were both pieces of his original mark IV war-plate.

  It did not trouble him to think of looting his fallen brethren the way it might trouble a mortal to plunder the dead. The Night Lords Legion had lost much since their failure to take the Throne of Terra, and their capacity to forge new Astartes armour was severely limited.

  Looting the dead was a forgivable necessity in the endless war.

  Talos opened his hand, slowly articulating his fingers. “Yes,” he said as he watched the hand move, thinking of the night to come when this gauntlet would be replaced by another. “It was Faroven.”

  The Exalted made a sound Talos had heard many times—a grunt of dismissal, callous and curt.

  “When he dies, you are welcome to whatever you take. His demise will be no loss to the Legion. Now continue. An explosion. Rubble and smoke. The plundering of Faroven’s wargear. And then?” Talos closed his eyes. “And then…”

  …he sees his sword. There, lying across a spill of rubble, the gleam of the blade already dulled by a thin layer of dust. He scrambles for it, his boots crunching on the gravel underfoot—rock chunks that were the towering wall of a manufactorum until moments ago.

  The blade is in his hands, a masterwork of form and function. The hilt and cross-guard is crafted from bronze and polished ivory, forming the outstretched wings of an angel. Between the wings, set into the base of the blade on both sides, rubies the size of a morta
l man’s eyes have been cut and shaped into crimson teardrops. The blade itself is forged of adamantite stained gold, with High Gothic runes hand-scribed along the weapon’s length detailing a long and illustrious lineage of fallen foes.

  Talos had killed none of them, for this blade was never forged to be his. He grips it now, feeling the reassuring weight of the stolen weapon, as comfortable in his hands at this moment as it was a decade before when he’d taken it from the dying grasp of an Imperial champion.

  Aurum. The blade was called Aurum—the power sword of noble Captain Dumah of the Blood Angels. Its kiss was death; like all power weapons, a ravaging energy field tore apart solid matter with every strike. But Aurum was forged when the Imperium was young, when the tech-priests of Mars were as much artisans as keepers of secrets.

  Three times, Legion brothers have tried to kill him for this sword. Three times, Talos has slain his kin to defend this prize.

  He rises, activating the power cell within the hilt, burning the dust from the golden blade in a hissing rush.

  Lightning, tight and controlled, dances across the sword’s length, bright enough to hurt his Nostraman eyes.

  Talos moves across the rubble. The sounds of battle are returning now. The rubble-dust is clearing. He has to find his bolter before the enemy comes to sweep through the sector they’ve just annihilated with unbelievable firepower.

  He… he can’t find it. What is that accursed noise? That thunder? The world is falling apart…

  Blood of the Ruinous Ones, where is that weapon…

  He…

  …staggered under the wave of memory, as real to him in the war room as it was when the vision first struck. The Exalted grunted its displeasure.