Aurelian

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Nephew,’ Lorgar kept his voice soft, ‘what has happened to you? How many of my brother’s sons are as changed as you are?’

  Hazjihn didn’t look back. This place, this world, it has altered so many of us. The Powers bless us, my lord.

  Blessed. So the daemon Ingethel had spoken the truth: physical considerations faded when one embraced union with the gods. With psychic mastery and the ascension of consciousness to immortal levels, evidently the struggles of the flesh were increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps it made a sick kind of sense: when one was omnipotent, functions of the flesh hardly mattered. Power to such a degree overshadowed lesser concerns.

  Yet even for one who prided himself on his enlightened perspective, it was a bitter pill for Lorgar to swallow. The truth may be divine, but that hardly rendered it any more appealing to the human race. Some truths were too ugly to be easily embraced.

  A rancid, unwanted smile claimed his mouth for a moment. It would be a crusade, then. Another crusade to bring the truth to the masses at the point of a sword.

  Humanity would never, could never, be relied upon to reach its own enlightenment. He found it the sorriest, saddest aspect to the species.

  ‘How long have you been here, Hazjihn?’

  Some of us insist it has been months. Others claim mere days have passed. We cannot record the time accurately, for it flows in all directions. Chronometers dance to tunes of their own devising. The warrior made a strangled gargle, approaching a laugh. However, the primarch tells us mere days have passed in the material realm.

  Lorgar. Ingethel’s voice, not Hazjihn’s. Turn back. This future is not yours to see.

  The primarch held his tongue as they walked into Tizca, the City of Light.

  AS HE LOOKED upon Magnus, Lorgar reconciled logic with emotion, forging both into understanding. This was not the Magnus he knew – this was Magnus five decades older.

  In fifty years, he had aged a hundred. The Crimson King had abandoned the pretension of armour, clad now in nothing more than divine light that left aching after-images in the minds of all who looked upon him. Yet beneath the psychic grandeur, a broken brother stared at Lorgar’s arrival. His remaining eye showed little of its former pearlescent gleam and his features, never those of a handsome man, were now cracked by time’s lines and the ravines of tortured thought.

  ‘Lorgar,’ the figure of Magnus said, breaking the library’s stillness and silence. The witchlight roiling from him in waves illuminated the scrolls and books lining the walls.

  The Word Bearer entered slowly, his purring armour joints adding to the breach of silence. Standing too near Magnus bred a painful tingling behind the eyes, as if white noise had evolved into a physical sensation. Lorgar turned his gentle gaze aside, taking in his brother’s collection of writings. Immediately, his glance fell upon one of his own books – An Epilogue to Torment – written the very same year he had won the crusade against the Covenant’s old ways on Colchis.

  Lorgar traced a gloved fingertip down the book’s leather spine. ‘You do not seem surprised to see me, brother.’

  ‘I am not.’ Magnus allowed himself a smile. It only deepened the lines marring his face. ‘This world holds endless surprises. What game is this, I wonder? What incarnated hallucination am I addressing this time? You are a poor simulacrum of Lorgar, spirit. Your eyes do not burn with the fire of a faith only he and his sons understand. Nor do you bear the same scars.’

  Magnus remained standing by his writing desk, but made no move to go back to his reading. Lorgar turned to him, narrowing his eyes at the glare.

  ‘I am no apparition, Magnus. I am Lorgar, your brother, in the final nights of my Pilgrimage. Time, as you see, is mutable, here.’ He hesitated. ‘The years have not been kind to you.’

  The other primarch laughed, though the sound held no humour. ‘Recent years have been kind to no one. Begone, creature, and leave me to my calculations.’

  ‘Brother. It is me.’

  Magnus narrowed his remaining eye. ‘I grow weary of this. How did you ascend my tower?’

  ‘I walked, in the company of your warriors. Magnus, I—’

  ‘Enough! Leave me to my calculations.’

  Lorgar stepped forward, hands raised in brotherly conciliation. ‘Magnus…’

  + Enough. +

  The explosion of whiteness stole all sense, save for the feeling of falling.

  PART FOUR

  CHOSEN OF THE PANTHEON

  EIGHT

  QUESTIONS

  HE OPENED HIS eyes to see a familiar horizon, boiling in rebellion against the laws of nature. Dusk claimed this world, which was surely Shanriatha. Yet he could breathe now. And the temperature, while cold, was far from lethal.

  Slowly, Lorgar picked himself up from the sand. The parchment scrolls were gone from his armour, burned away in the face of Magnus’s sorcerous dismissal. A tightness in his lungs didn’t bode well. He felt the muscles in his throat and chest clenching in uncertain spasm.

  Not enough oxygen in the air. That was all. He reached for the helm mag-locked to his belt, and resealed his armour. The first breath of his internal air supply was surprisingly soothing. He breathed in the incense of his armour’s sacred oils.

  Only then did he see Ingethel. The daemon lay curled upon itself on the ground, a foetal nightmare slick with the slime of gestation. Red sand clotted its moist skin.

  He kicked it gently, with the edge of his boot. Ingethel rolled, baring its bestial features to the evening sky. Neither of its eyes could close, but both had made the attempt. They snicked open, and its jaw cracked as it heaved itself from the sand. The moment the daemon righted itself, blood gouted from its maw in a hissing flood. Things writhed in the pool of stinking liquid, squirming into the sand as soon as they came into contact with the air. Lorgar had no desire to examine them any closer.

  ‘Daemon,’ he said.

  Not long now. Soon. This flesh will rot away. I will need to incarnate again. Its bones clicked and cracked as it rose to its slouched height. It cost me much, to pull you from Magnus’s tower.

  ‘My brother would not speak with me.’

  Your brother is a tool of the Changer of the Ways. Are you still so blind, Lorgar? Magnus is a creature unaware of his own ignorance. He is manipulated at every turn, yet believes himself the manipulator. The gods work in many ways. Some of humanity’s leaders must be lured by offers of ambition and dominance, while others must be manipulated until they are ready to witness the truth.

  The primarch spoke through clenched teeth. ‘And I?’

  You are the chosen of the pantheon. You alone come to Chaos from idealism, for the betterment of the species. In this, as in all things, you are selfless.

  Lorgar turned and began walking. The direction was irrelevant, for the desert was a featureless sprawl as far as the eye could see.

  Selfless. Magnus had once accused him of the same thing, making it sound more like a critical flaw. Now the daemon used it with a honeyed tongue, as his greatest virtue.

  It didn’t matter. Immune to vanity, he would not be lured by silken words. The truth was enough, despite the horror of it all.

  ‘Do I survive this crusade?’ he asked aloud.

  Ingethel dragged itself alongside his bootprints, slower now, its breath sawing in and out of heaving lungs.

  The Imperial Great Crusade is already over for you. All that remains is to play the role fate offers.

  ‘No. Not my father’s crusade. The true crusade, yet to come.’

  Ah. You fear for your life, if you turn against the Terran Emperor?

  Lorgar kept walking, a relentless trudge over the sand dunes. ‘The vision of Magnus said I had suffered in his era. At some point in the coming five decades, I must struggle to survive. It stands to reason that I may die. If you have stared down the paths of possible futures, you must know what is likely to occur.’

  Once the betrayal breaks across the galaxy, there are countless moments in which you may meet your end. Som
e likelier than others.

  Lorgar crested another dune, pausing to stare down at yet more endless desert. ‘Tell me how I die.’ He looked at the daemon, fixing it with his gentle glare. ‘You know. I hear it in your voice. So tell me.’

  No being may know its future written out before it, in absolute terms. Some decisions will see you almost certainly dead. On a world named Shrike, if you interfere in an argument between Magnus the Red and the brother you name Russ, there is a concordance of possibility that you will be slain in their duel.

  ‘And?’

  If you ever draw a weapon against your brother Corax, in a battle you can never win, you are almost certain to die.

  Lorgar laughed at the maddening unlikelihood of it all. ‘You cannot offer me choices I will not have to make for many years.’

  The daemon sprayed spit as it growled. Then do not ask questions of the future, fool.

  Lorgar had no answer to that, though he found the daemon’s tone amusing. ‘Where are we?’ he said at length. ‘Shanriatha again?’

  Yes. Shanriatha. The past or the present, perhaps a possible future. I cannot say.

  ‘But the air isn’t as cold as the void, here.’

  The warp changes all things, in time. Ingethel paused, seeming to sag. Lorgar. You must be aware of the task ahead of you. I cannot remain incarnate for much longer, so hear my words now. In the course of the Emperor’s Great Crusade, you will come to many worlds. Those populated by alien breeds are useless to you. For the next few decades, let your brother primarchs purge those. You have a more solemn duty.

  Find the worlds rich in human life. Find those with harvestable populations for your armies, with as little deviation from purestrain humanity as possible. Your Legion is one hundred thousand strong now. Over the next five decades, you must add a thousand warriors each year. For every Legionary to fall, you will replenish your Word Bearers with two more.

  He shook his head, still staring out at the sea of dunes. ‘Why have you brought me back here? What lesson is there in this?’

  None. I dragged you from Magnus’s chamber with crude force, not guile. It was not my intention to show you this world again. Something else pulled you here. Something very strong.

  Lorgar felt his skin crawl at the creature’s tone. ‘Explain yourself.’

  Even with its bloody, inhuman face, Ingethel’s worthless eyes were wide in something not far from fear.

  You did not believe even the chosen of the pantheon will be allowed to leave the realm of the gods without first passing their tests, did you? It was chosen that the gods would elect one vizier to send, to stand judgement upon you.

  The primarch drew his crozius with slow, careful intent. ‘If this is all proceeding as planned, why then do you tremble in fear?’

  Because gods are fickle beings, Lorgar, and this was not the plan at all. One of the gods has overstepped the boundary, and violated the accord. It must wish to test you itself.

  He swallowed. ‘I do not understand. Which god?’

  He heard no answer. Ingethel’s psychic shriek went through him like a blade. For the first time since the maiden on Cadia had become his daemonic guide, he heard the girl within the creature.

  She was screaming with it.

  NINE

  THE UNBOUND

  THE SOUND BEGAN as the promise of thunder. Lorgar raised his head just as the tortured sky went black.

  A gargoyle shape cast darkness across the clouded heavens, blasting wind downward from its beating wings. He saw it descending in a graceless spiral but, despite his eye lenses tinting to reduce the greasy glare of warp space, he could make out little detail in the figure’s form.

  It struck the ground a hundred metres distant, sending up a vast spray of powdery sand. The ground shuddered beneath Lorgar’s feet; stabilisers in his armour’s knee joints clicked and thrummed harder to compensate for the quake.

  Its wings rose first – huge, bestial black wings, the membranes between the muscles and bones as tough as old leather, cobwebbed by thick, pulsing veins. Scarred fur coated much of its body, while the rest of its bunched musculature was encased in great brass armour plating. Its horned head defied easy description – to Lorgar it resembled nothing but the malicious features of Old Terran’s greatest devil-spirit, the Seytan, as seen in some of the oldest scrolls. It did more than tower over any mortal man – it stood above them as a colossus. Its fists, each the size of a Legionary, gripped two weapons: the first, a lashing whip that thrashed of its own accord, sidewinding across the sands; and the second, an immense axe of beaten brass, its surfaces encrusted with dense metal runic scripture.

  It stalked from the crater it had made, each fall of its armoured hooves sending tremors through the world’s surface.

  The targeting reticules and streams of biological data across Lorgar’s retinal displays offered no insight at all. One moment they listed details in a runic language the primarch had never learned. The next they told him nothing was there.

  When he spoke, his voice was a breathless exhalation, crackling through the lowest frequency of his helm’s vox-grille.

  ‘What, in my father’s name, is that…’

  Ingethel had slithered away while Lorgar stood rapt, yet it still heard his voice. Hunched upon itself, doubled over and leaking fluids from every orifice on its head, the daemon’s psychic sending was a weak stroke.

  The Guardian of the Throne of Skulls. The Deathbringer. Lord of Bloodthirsters. First of Kharnath’s Children. The Avatar of War Given Form. In the mortal realm, it will come to be known as An’ggrath the Unbound.

  It is the revered champion of the Blood God, Lorgar. And it has come to kill you.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but all sound was stolen in a tempest of breath as the creature roared. The scream was loud enough to disrupt the electronics in the primarch’s helm, causing his aural intakes and retinal displays to crackle with static. Lorgar tore the helmet free, choosing to breathe the thin air over fighting deaf and blind.

  His lungs reacted immediately, clenching like twin cores within his chest. The granite-grey helm fell to the sand by his boots. Fear didn’t clutch at him, the way it would a mortal. He feared nothing but failure. Defiant irritation set his skin crawling, that the deities would test him this way. After all he had endured. After being the one soul to seek the truth.

  Now this.

  Lorgar raised his maul, activating the generator in the haft. A rippling energy field bloomed around the weapon’s spiked orb head, hissing and spitting in the wind. Sparks streamed away from its spines, like halogen rain.

  The daemon thundered closer, step by step.

  This was never part of the Great Plan. You are not a duellist to match the Lion. You are not a brawler to match Russ, nor a fighter to match Angron, nor a warrior to equal the Khan. You are not a soldier like Dorn, nor a killer like Curze.

  ‘Be silent, Ingethel.’

  Kharnath has violated the accord. Kharnath has violated the accord. Kharnath has v—

  ‘I said to be silent, creature.’

  The winged daemon roared again, its fanged maw wide, and the veins in its taut throat as thick as a man’s thigh. Even braced against the gale, Lorgar was forced back several metres in a skidding slide over the gravel. The primarch breathed a stream of Colchisian invective and, as the stinking wind died down, he replied with a shouted challenge of his own.

  Before sanity could wrest control of his limbs, he was charging, boots pounding onto the red sand, his crozius raised in both hands.

  THE FIRST BLOW struck with the force of a gunship falling from the sky, and with an impact at the same volume. The cleaving blade crashed against the golden maul, both weapons banging together and locking fast. Sparks sprayed from the elbow joints of Lorgar’s armour as the muscle-mimicking servos overloaded and shorted out. But he did it. He blocked the first bow. In spiteful retaliation for the beast’s presence, his crozius kissed the axe’s edge with leaping bolts of electrical force. With a cry that wo
uldn’t have shamed a feral world carnosaur, the primarch hurled the bloodthirster’s axe backward in a heaving shove, and brought his warhammer to fall on a downstroke, smashing into the creature’s knee.

  At the moment of connection, faster than mortal reactions could process, the weapon’s power field protested at the kinetic treatment and burst outward in a blast of force. Something in the daemon’s leg cracked with the wet rip of a tree trunk falling.

  First blood. Lorgar was already scrambling back, stumbling over the quaking sand, when the lash found his throat. The spiked coils bit as they wrapped tight, turning the trial of breathing into an absolute impossibility.

  In the panicked rush of distorted senses, he saw the creature driven to one knee, its back-jointed bull-legs bent in submission. The primarch’s first blow had near crippled it. Had he been able to take in any air, he’d have roared in exaltation. Instead, he crashed to his knees, clawing at the serpentine weapon encircling his shoulders and throat. One arm was pinned to his body by the lash’s wrapping caress. The other clutched and pulled, dragging the whip off in a mess of snarling armour joints. For a flickering, red-stained moment, he remembered a painting in his father’s palace: a restored oil work of an oceanic sailor – in the era when Terra had possessed such large bodies of water – entangled by a krahkan sea monster.

  Lorgar heard the bloodthirster’s wings rattling, felt the force of more wind as they beat again. Another acidic spurt of panic knifed through his thoughts: the daemon sought to take off, and drag him into the sky with it.

  He rolled into the whip, trapping himself further, for the chance to tear his crozius from the fist wedged against his body. The lash around his throat squeezed in leathery embrace, freed of all resistance now. As he was dragged across the sand towards the daemon, Lorgar hurled his maul one-handed, with a strangled cry and the last of his strength.

  It struck the bloodthirster’s face with the juicy crack of shattering bone, silencing the victory roar that had been brewing in the beast’s lungs. Fangs clattered down onto the primarch’s armour in a discoloured enamel hail. One sliced his cheek open with the daggerish fall of a stalactite. Had he been able to breathe, he’d have laughed, but pulling himself free of the slackened whip was enough.