Aurelian

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Lorgar’s first three steps carried him to his crozius. Numb fingers slapped onto the hammer’s haft and he hauled it back into his grip. He turned in time to catch a face full of sprayed blood and spit, shaken from the daemon’s broken maw. It stung his skin, even as he wiped it away. The rest ate into his armour with hissing, smoking slowness.

  ‘Let this be finished,’ he bared his teeth, unaware how his expression reflected the daemon’s. For a wonder, it replied through its broken jaws and architecture of cracked teeth. Its voice was pulled right down from the thunderheads colliding above.

  ‘All the strength in the flesh. And the bitter caress. And the taste of blood on my tongue.’

  He knew those words. He knew them well.

  Perhaps the beast had intended them as a distraction. Perhaps it was channelling mockery straight from the mouth of a god. Either way, Lorgar met the next attack with a laugh. The bloodthirster’s axe crashed against his swinging maul. One of the weapons shattered with the same ease as the daemon’s teeth. Metal debris burned in the air, flickering with ghost-white fire, before clattering across the sand.

  Lorgar advanced, his maul still raised. ‘You quote my home world’s holy scrolls to me? Is even this moment supposed to be a lesson? Even this?’

  The daemon’s wings snapped out at full reach, darkening all view of the horizon. The display sent the foetid, spicy reek of spoiled meat emanating afresh from its pinions. It wasn’t finished. It wasn’t even close. It needed no axe when it bore such claws. It never needed to walk, when it possessed those wings.

  But it was bleeding now, and Lorgar’s disquiet had long since burned away in the wind. He didn’t fear the thing. Every broken fang heralded triumph, as did every droplet of molten brass blood running from its black gums and each grinding crackle from its shattered knee.

  ‘I will not die here,’ the primarch promised the daemon.

  The bloodthirster’s answer was to roar again. This time, it threw the primarch from his feet, sending him tumbling across the rocky ground. Dull snaps sounded from beneath his armour; jagged spurts of pain pinched inside his chest. Even the fibre-cable cushioning wasn’t enough to prevent broken bones. He crashed to rest against a jutting rock, and in dragging himself back to his feet, he caught sight of Ingethel – its warmish form coiled as it crouched in the sand.

  Cracked ribs stole the strength of his voice, rendering it a wheeze. ‘Help me, you spineless bitch.’

  Ingethel slithered away, chittering with frightened laughter, leaving a thick sidewinder trail in the red dust.

  ‘You die next,’ Lorgar breathed at its retreating back. That, too, was a promise.

  But Ingethel could wait. Thumbing the trigger brought his crozius back to electric life, just in time to fall under the shadow again.

  Sonic booms rent the air with each thrash of the whip. Its lashing impact carved ravines in the sand – canyons Lorgar rolled to avoid, while desperately evading each strike. Each breath brought fresh pain to his broken bones. Each inhalation was strife in the thin atmosphere.

  Another rift in the rocky sand yawned to the side as he weaved away from the touch of the lash. It split the ground with a thunderclap, throwing him off balance again, beyond the means of armour stabilisers to adjust for. The daemon’s immense hand, deprived of its axe, reached to clutch at the prone primarch, and Lorgar reacted purely by instinct. He raised his hand to meet the downward grasp, little caring how his eyes burned and streamed with psychic fire. The great red fist crashed against a psychic barrier, knuckles crackling like loose gravel.

  Lorgar struck. The crozius sang its tempestuous song, thudding against the curled claws and pulverising the black iron bones beneath its flesh. Blood sprayed from the split skin, splashing molten brass across the primarch’s gauntlets and chestplate.

  The whip lashed back, snake-keen and vicious. It spiralled around his arm and crozius, biting with barbs. Lorgar staggered, his armour joints whining at the sudden, harsh movements as the wounded daemon pulled him closer. Its breath hit him in another rancid blast, though the creature didn’t roar. It was done with such displays; as Lorgar leaned back, boots scraping across the sands, he could see the beast’s intentions all too easily. Its jaws were already falling open, offering up broken fangs as a weapon where an axe and whip had failed.

  In the past, he’d imagined his death more often than he cared to admit – wondering if it would come in the distant cold of a deep-void battle, or the burning warmth of a blade to the back.

  Despite their vaunted immortality, despite the invulnerability bred into their bones, a primarch was still a being of flesh and blood. One of Angron’s snorted witticisms came back to him in those moments Lorgar mused over mortality: if something bled, it could be killed.

  Everything bleeds, Lorgar. His brother’s words, cutting right to the quick even years after they were first uttered. Tanks bled fuel and coolant. Aliens bled blood and ooze. Angron had never stood upon a battlefield and failed to apply his own brand of tortured logic to the conflict.

  Lorgar hauled back against the drag, succeeding in doing nothing beyond pulling the coiled lash tighter. The daemon’s clumsy, shattered hand reached for his torso, and the primarch’s kick crunched into its thumb, mangling it further.

  With a roar, it lifted him from the ground. In the time it took to spit a curse, the beast snapped its jaws on his free arm, cracked incisors scraping across the ceramite. Melted brass droplets dripped from the creature’s bleeding gums.

  He was not used to pain – at least not physical agony. The pressure constricting his arm was incomparable to anything else he’d experienced. Ceramite split in metallic rips, threatening the sealed integrity of his armour plating. Something in his elbow clicked, then crunched, then snapped entirely. The fist at the end of his arm fell loose, the fingers relaxing, no longer obeying his mind’s impulses.

  With a fury even his brother Angron would have admired, the primarch wrenched his crozius free with a final scream. The hammer head crashed against the bloodthirster’s temple in a cacophony of breaking bone, shattering its cheek, eye socket, and the hinge of its jaw. The grip relaxed immediately, dropping the primarch to the sand.

  He landed hard, heaping more abuse on his ruined arm, but kept a grip on his power maul. With a roll through the beast’s stampeding hooves, Lorgar struck the creature’s other leg, smacking a blow right against the thing’s kneecap. This time, the crack of splitting bone was enough to cause him to wince even through his own pain.

  The bloodthirster howled as it fell, crippled, to the sand. Worthless legs stretched out behind it. Before the wings could even beat twice, Lorgar vaulted its back, boots clinging tight to the leathery flesh, and pummelled a single strike to its ridged spine. Another tectonic crackle heralded the daemon’s backbone giving way for good. One wing ceased its ignoble flapping, slapping against the sand and twitching with spasms.

  The primarch hammered its club-hands aside as they reached back, deforming the fingers beyond use. Only then did he move around to face it once more, meeting its fevered, bleeding eyes. The blood running from its maw was already cooling in the sand, fusing its jaw to the ground.

  A nasty smile coloured his lips. ‘What did you learn from this?’ he asked the creature.

  It snuffed at him, almost dumbly bestial but for the enraged sentience drowning in its eyes. Even crippled and broken, it sought to drag itself forward, as if the primarch’s very life was some intolerable insult.

  ‘Rage without focus is no weapon at all.’ Lorgar raised his crozius. ‘Take this lesson back to the Blood God.’

  For the second time, his hammer fell, butchering the incarnated essence of a god.

  TEN

  ORACLE

  THIRTEEN SECONDS LATER, Lorgar collapsed alone.

  He didn’t feel the crozius fall from his nerveless fingers. He didn’t feel anything but the breath sawing in and out of his abused body. On instinct, he dragged his broken bones closer, curling upon the sand in f
oetal echo of the time he spent gestating in his genetic life-pod.

  He could taste blood. His own blood. How different it was from the chemical-thick piss running through a Legionary’s veins, or the molten, sick richness of the dead daemon.

  The air is too thin. In his heavy-eyed delirium, his own thoughts came in Ingethel’s voice. And my lungs are pierced by spears of rib.

  For a time he lay there, struggling to stay alive, breathing blood-wet air into weak lungs.

  The daemon died with the same maddening dissolution of so many aetheric insanities in this haunted realm. As for Ingethel, the primarch had no idea. He would check soon. Not yet. Soon. He… he had to…

  ‘No more tests, Anathema’s son,’ said a voice.

  ‘One last test, Anathema’s son,’ said another, similar to the first, but somehow flawed. It was as if a botched cloning had lightly scarred the voice’s timbre.

  The primarch hauled himself over, blinking bloody eyes up at another winged figure. This one was grotesquely avian, with stinking, withered wings and two vulture’s heads. While it would have towered above a mortal man, it was a hunched and decrepit thing by the standards of its daemon kin, closer in size to Ingethel.

  ‘I am the one sent to judge you,’ both heads said at once.

  ‘I am tired of being judged.’ The primarch lay on the sand and laughed, though he couldn’t think what was funny.

  ‘I bring the chance for a final truth,’ said one of the creature’s heads, in a corvidian caw.

  ‘I bring the final lie you will hear,’ its second head croaked, just as sincere as the first. No shade of amusement shone in any of the four pebble-black eyes.

  ‘I am done with this,’ the primarch grunted. Even rising to his feet was a trial. He could feel his bones sliding awkwardly together, jagged pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit cleanly. ‘That,’ he breathed, ‘is most unpleasant.’

  ‘Lorgar,’ said the creature’s right head.

  ‘Aurelian,’ said the left.

  He didn’t answer them. Limping, he moved to retrieve his crozius from the sand. Its active power field had scorched the ground to black glass. When he lifted it, it had never felt so heavy.

  ‘Ingethel,’ Lorgar sighed. ‘I am done with this. I have learned all I need to learn. I am returning to my ship.’

  There was no answer. Ingethel was nowhere to be seen. The bland desertscape offered no hope of determining direction.

  He turned back to the two-headed creature.

  ‘Leave me be, lest I destroy you as I destroyed the Unbound.’

  Both wizened heads bobbed in acknowledgement. ‘If you could banish the Unbound,’ the first said, ‘you could easily banish me, as well.’

  ‘Or perhaps I am more than I appear to be,’ the second hissed. ‘Perhaps you are weaker now and you would fall before my sorcery.’

  Lorgar shook his head, seeking to tame his swimming senses. The air was so painfully thin, it made all thought difficult.

  ‘I bring you a choice, Lorgar,’ both heads spoke at once, sharing the same serious, watery-eyed expression.

  He limped over to his overturned helm, lifting it from the ground and shaking sand from its interior. Both eye lenses were cracked.

  ‘Speak then.’

  The daemon fluttered its wings. Vestigial, skinny things – Lorgar doubted the creature could even fly. Small wonder that it squatted on the sand, leaning upon its bone staff as a crutch.

  ‘I am Kairos,’ both heads said at once. ‘The mortal realm will come to know me by another name. Fateweaver.’

  Lorgar’s desire to show respect for the gods’ agents had faded somewhat in the last hour. The words came through gritted teeth.

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘The future is not entirely unwritten,’ both heads spoke again. Their wrinkled features were strained by effort, as if speaking with unity was a great challenge. ‘Confluences exist as sureties. There will come a time when war breaks out across the Imperium of Man, and you will once again face the brother you despise.’

  Lorgar’s kindly eyes, already weary, now grew cold. ‘I do not despise my br—’

  ‘You cannot lie to me,’ one head said.

  ‘And if you try, I will always see through to the truth,’ said the other.

  The primarch forced himself to nod, before placing his helm back on. It took a moment for the cracked eye lenses to flicker into clarity, but a grainy picture materialised soon enough. Curiously, Lorgar couldn’t see the daemon through his left eye lens, merely the horizon beyond. In his right eye, the creature sat in hunched repose.

  ‘Get on with it,’ he growled this time. Three of his teeth were loose and bleeding.

  ‘It will happen at Calth,’ the right head said.

  ‘Or it will happen, yet not at Calth,’ said the left, though its placid tone wasn’t one of argument.

  Lorgar still tasted blood in the back of his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and he suspected the pain in the bridge of his nose was a mashing break that would need resetting.

  ‘What will happen?’

  ‘You will face Guilliman,’ both heads squawked in eerie unison. ‘And you will slay him.’

  Lorgar hesitated. To consider it, truly, was almost beyond him. Even if there was no way to avert the coming crusade, did it truly have to come to such measures as fratricide?

  His own selfishness was a surprise. With a shake of his head, he considered the other side of the coin. Was fratricide worse than genocide? The loss of life would be immense on both sides of the divided Imperium, among the faithful and the ignorant.

  He had to focus.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I am Kairos, the Oracle of Tzeentch,’ said both heads. ‘I am bound to always speak one truth and one lie.’ The creature rattled its withered wings. Several blue-black feathers, the colour of ugly bruises, drifted from its pinions. ‘But this is a moment of great divinity. A nexus of possibility. A fulcrum. The Great Gods have bound me to speak only the truth, in this moment of moments.

  ‘I am sworn now to stand before the chosen of the pantheon, and offer a choice. Now, and never again, I may speak with one mind. No lies. No words of deceit from one mouth, and words of truth from another. This, now, is too important. The gods are in alignment for the first time in an eternity.’

  ‘And the Unbound?’

  Both heads regarded Lorgar with impassive, unblinking eyes. ‘Kharnath violated the accord. But the Blood God is still bound by it. Still oathed to it. The pantheon of heaven is kin to the primarch pantheon of your species. They wage war amongst themselves, just as you will wage war against your brothers. Existence is strife.’

  ‘To strive,’ the second head added, ‘is to live.’

  The thought chilled Lorgar’s blood. A convocation of warring gods. ‘I understand.’

  ‘No,’ the first head said. ‘You do not.’

  ‘But you will,’ the second nodded, ‘in the decades to come.’

  ‘I bring you a choice,’ added the first head. ‘Face Guilliman and slay him.’

  ‘Or let him live,’ finished the second. ‘And taste the shame of defeat.’

  Lorgar wanted to laugh, but the creeping sense of unease held the mirth back. ‘How is that a choice?’

  ‘Because of Calth,’ both heads replied. One was silently weeping now, the other grinning with beakish malice. Could a bird grin? Somehow, this one did. Lorgar couldn’t help but stare.

  ‘You must choose whether you walk a path of personal glory, or one of divine destiny,’ said the first head.

  The second spoke through its crystalline tears. ‘You must choose whether you will stand among your brothers as an equal, with vengeance as your goal, or work in the name of the gods, tasting shame for a greater victory.’

  ‘I am not a vain man.’ Lorgar felt his broken ribs aching as they slowly re-knitted beneath his armour and flesh. ‘I seek enlightenment for the species, not self-glorification.’

  ‘You will end this w
ar with many scars,’ the first head lowered in bizarre respect.

  ‘Or you will end it dead,’ nodded the second, ‘in one of a thousand ways.’

  ‘Get,’ Lorgar forced the words through a barricade of teeth, ‘to the point, creature.’

  ‘Calth,’ the first head intoned. ‘You will be given one chance – and only one chance – to shed Guilliman’s blood. It is written in the stars, by the hands of the gods. If you face him at Calth, you will slay him.’

  ‘But you will lose the war,’ said the second. ‘You will earn your brothers’ respect and awe. You will savour your vengeance. But your holy war will falter. The Emperor’s defences will be enriched by too many defenders, drawn there by fates that would otherwise have been denied. You may never even reach Terra.’

  Lorgar turned from the daemon, shaking his head in wonder at their offer. Like ruined wings, the remains of his cloak flapped in the breeze.

  ‘Is this prophecy? If I fight Guilliman, I am destined to win, yet I will lose all I sought to achieve?’

  The daemon’s first head hawked and spat bloody saliva in a thick string. As it coughed, the second head spoke. ‘It is prophecy. You will not always be the lost one, Lorgar – the weakest of your brothers. You will find your strength in this faith. You will find fire and passion, and become the soul you were born to be. That is why Guilliman will die at your feet, if you choose to make it so. Fight him at Calth, and you will finish the battle with his blood on your face. You crave that temporal triumph, and it could be yours.’

  The first head twitched with sudden movement, regarding him with its beady bird’s eyes. ‘But the cost is high. To bring about this future, you will be at Calth, instead of standing in the place your species most needs you to be in that ordained hour. If you face your brother Guilliman, and choose human honour over the destiny of your species, you will kill him. Yet in doing so, you will fail in your hopes of setting humanity free from ignorance.’