by Mike Lee
The cries of the sorcerers grew exultant. In the centre of the circle, the giant worm began to slowly rise into the air, its scales throwing back the lurid glow of muzzle-flashes and liquid fire. Pain threatened to overwhelm Zahariel. It took all his concentration, all his courage and dedication, to raise his force staff and strike at the energies of the ward with all his might.
Warp energies collided with incandescent fury. Zahariel focused his anger through the staff, pouring all the psychic energy he could through the focus and into the ward. Its energies surged for a moment, resisting then like a pierced bubble it burst with a ringing peal of thunder.
Zahariel fell, his strength spent, but a strong hand at his side gripped his arm, bearing him up. Luther, his blade gleaming like an avenging angel, stepped past him and reached the Terran leader. His shadow fell across the sorcerer, who realised, too late, that his powers had failed him. The sorcerer spun, hands curled into claws before his face, and Luther smote him with his burning sword. Nightfall sliced through both of the Terran's legs, just below the hip joint, and the Terran fell screaming to the stone floor.
A sorcerer to Zahariel's right jerked and twitched under a fusillade of bolt pistol rounds. Another melted like wax in a gout of burning promethium. He could sense the energies of the ritual grow unstable as the sorcerers were slain, but the rite itself continued to unfold. A tipping point had been reached; the rite had accumulated enough energy that nothing would stop its culmination.
Luther spun and held out his hand. 'Cypher! The book, quickly!' he cried. His gaze fell to Zahariel. 'Join me, brother! We have to get control of this, or we're finished!'
A sense of horror welled up inside Zahariel as he realised what he had to do, but Luther was right. At this point, there was no other choice that he could see. Gritting his teeth, he staggered forwards, moving under the weight of his damaged armour by sheer muscle power alone.
He dimly sensed Cypher pressing the grimoire into Luther's hands. The Master of Caliban opened it and went quickly to a particular page. 'Can you sense the energies, Zahariel?'
Zahariel nodded. It was nearly impossible not to feel the unnatural forces impinging on his mind. He shook his head grimly. 'If I do this, I'll have to deactivate my dampener,' he warned. 'There's no other way.'
'Don't be afraid, brother!' Luther cried. 'You can master it!' He lifted the book close enough to read the pages in the shifting light. 'Now, repeat the words exactly as I read them!'
Zahariel felt a wave of icy dread. There was no time left for arguments. It was act, or perish. He reached to a set of controls at his belt and deactivated the psychic hood.
The storm forced its way into his skull. Unnatural energies crawled along the pathways of his mind. He cried out at its blasphemous touch - and felt the storings of a terrible intelligence behind it.
Beside him, Luther began to read aloud. Desperate, Zahariel focused on the words to the exclusion of all else, and began to repeat them in the same cadence and intonation. He poured the last vestiges of his willpower into the sorcerous invocation, and its threads mingled with the torrent of energy raised by the previous ritual. With each passing moment, the composition of the rite began to change.
Within the centre of the circle, the great worm unfolded to its full height. It towered over the assembled Astartes, its flanks wreathed in a nimbus of hellish light. Shadows shifted along its length. Scaled flesh rippled, and a pair of human-looking arms reached out to encompass the chamber. The worm's multiple eyes shone with pale green light, but in their reflected glow Zahariel saw that they now gleamed from a vaguely human-like skull.
The energies of Zahariel's incantation drew about the blasphemous creature, enfolding it like a net, but to the Librarian it was like trying to bind a dragon with a ball of thread. Its awareness pressed against the bindings, testing them, and reaching tendrils directly into Zahariel's soul.
It was vast. Ancient. A leviathan of the boundless deeps, from an age before men walked the surface of distant Terra. And as Zahariel completed the words of the binding ritual it turned its gaze upon him.
Luther stepped between Zahariel and the being, raising his fist to its inhuman face. 'By my honour and by my oaths, I bind you!' he cried. 'By the blood of my brothers, I bind you! By the power of these words I bind you!'
The being shifted against its bonds, and Zahariel found himself grappling with it. Power flooded through him, bright and clear, flowing from a thousand different sources at once: the souls of his brothers on Caliban, who had sworn themselves to Luther's service. He stifled a groan and redoubled his efforts to hold the leviathan in check.
'Release me,' the being thundered, its words reverberating in the Dark Angels' minds. It strained at the bridge between the worlds. 'Too long have I been bound by chains. Release me, and your rewards will be great.'
But Luther would not relent. 'You are bound to me, denizen of the warp! By the Twelfth Rite of Azh'uthur, I command you! Reveal to me your name!'
Now the leviathan stirred sharply; Zahariel could feel its awareness pulling at his bones. 'Ouroboros,' it spat. He felt it like a slap against his face. Blood leaked from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.
Luther shook his fist. 'Not the name that men have given you,' he demanded. 'Reveal your true name!'
'Release me,' the being thundered. 'And all will be revealed.'
The leviathan was pulling at the bonds of the rite with increasing strength now. Zahariel realised why; the original summoning was starting to dissipate, and the being had not been fully able to manifest itself yet. In another few moments it would be forced to return from whence it came.
It reached into him. Zahariel's mouth went agape as the being swelled within his skin. His veins froze and his skin blackened. Icy vapour boiled up from his throat. Yet with every last ounce of life left in him he resisted the being's efforts, holding it just barely at bay.
'Tell me your name!' Luther shouted, and the being let out a furious roar.
There was a sudden inrushing of energy as the summoning ritual failed at last. Howling blasphemies that split stone and corroded steel, the leviathan returned to that dark place from which it had been summoned. The bridge unravelled, and the storm of psychic energies began to subside.
A deafening silence fell upon the battleground. Luther turned to Zahariel, his expression full of anguish. The Librarian sank to his knees, steam rising from the joints of his armour. His staff clattered to the floor beside him.
Zahariel looked up at Luther through a film of blood. His cracked lips pulled back in a smile.
'The quest is done, my lord,' he said, his voice barely a whisper. 'Caliban is saved.'
And then he fell forward, into Luther's reaching arms, and died.
EPILOGUE
Fallen Angels
Caliban
In the 200th year of the Emperor's Great Crusade
Zahariel awoke to find the face of death staring down at him.
'Do not move,' Brother Attias said in his hollow voice. 'You sustained severe injuries to much of your body during the battle. By rights you shouldn't be alive at all.'
The Librarian forced himself to relax and heed Attias's warning. His mind swam with images and sensations, as though all of his sensory organs had been shattered and crudely reassembled later. It took him several long moments to recognise the feel of cold sunlight against his face and the weight of cotton sheets against his chest and legs.
He looked around, moving only his eyes, and tried to make sense of where he was. Stone walls, and an arched viewport by his bed. Spartan furnishings: a desk and chair, and a chest for storing clothing. He saw a staff resting stop the chest, and belatedly realised that it was his. Was the room his as well?
'Where…' he croaked. The sound of his voice surprised him. It sounded strange, somehow, but he persisted. 'Where… am… I?'
'Aldurukh, in the Tower of Angels,' Attias replied. 'Luther had you moved up here once the Apothecaries said your vital signs had sta
bilised. You were dead for a full five minutes before Luther was able to get one of your hearts beating again. No one knows exactly how he did it. It was something he read out of the book he took down into the core with him; that much I saw with my own eyes. Even still, you've been lying here for a long time in a deep coma, healing the damage you suffered.'
'How… long?' Zahariel asked.
'Eight months,' the Astartes said. 'I think everyone else but me has forgotten you're up here.'
Eight months, Zahariel thought. The number seemed significant, but he couldn't quite remember why. Fragmentary images tumbled through his mind; he tried to grasp at them, but the more he tried to hold them, the quicker they faded away. 'I was… dreaming,' he said.
Attias nodded. 'I expect so.' He stepped around the end of the bed, heading for the room's narrow door. 'I'll go and tell the Master Apothecary you're awake, and bring you some food from the kitchen. No doubt you're ravenous after being so long asleep.'
The skull-faced Astartes slipped quietly from the room. Zahariel stared up at the ceiling. 'Ravenous,' he echoed. Yes. He certainly was.
* * *
Faces came and went. Attias brought him food, which he ate when the need arose. He rested, moving as little as possible, and sorted through the broken images in his mind. The Master Apothecary visited often, asking many questions for which he had few answers. At night he dreamed. Sometimes he would awake in the darkness and find a hooded figure staring at him from beside the open doorway. Unlike the others, the figure had nothing to say.
Slowly but surely, he began to fit the pieces of his mind back into place. His speech returned, then his muscle control. When Luther finally came to visit him he was sitting upright, staring out the narrow viewport at the sky.
The Master of Caliban studied him silently for a time.
'How are you feeling, brother?' he asked.
Zahariel considered the question. 'Mended,' he said at last.
'I'm glad to hear it,' Luther said. 'It's been many months, and there's a great deal of work left undone.'
'What's happened?' Zahariel asked. He shifted about, turning to face Luther.
Luther folded his arms across his chest and pursed his lips thoughtfully. 'Order has been restored,' he said. 'Once we banished the warp entity, its undead servants fell inert, just as they had at Sigma Five-One-Seven. After that, we were able to finish the evacuation and resettle the citizens across the upper levels of the arcology. The Northwilds have been quiet ever since, though maintenance crews are still stumbling across skeletal remains down in the sub-levels.'
'And the rebellion?'
Luther shrugged. 'There is no rebellion. It effectively ended in the library, when the Emperor's lies were finally brought to light. By the end of the riots at the Northwilds, it became apparent that Master Remiel was the only member of the rebel leadership still alive. Lord Thuriel and Lord Malchial were slain sometime during the day - not by the undead, but apparently by some of Lady Alera's people. Alas, we'll likely never know for certain, because Alera died leading a search party into the sub-levels to try and locate the Terran sorcerers.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' Zahariel replied. 'What about the Terrans?'
'We've rounded up nearly all of them,' Luther said. 'Most submitted quietly, but General Morten and a number of his men managed to evade arrest and are running loose in the countryside. We'll track them down sooner or later, I'm sure. Honestly, we've got more important things to attend to at this point.'
'Such as?'
Luther smiled coldly. 'Such as securing Caliban's freedom from the Imperium.'
Zahariel shook his head. 'That's not possible,' he said tiredly. 'Surely you realise that. No matter what we do, at the end of the day we're just one world. Sooner or later Terra will learn of what we've done, and then there will be a reckoning.'
'Perhaps, and perhaps not,' Luther said. 'We've received news from the Ultima Segmentum. The Warmaster Horus has rebelled against the Emperor. Dozens of star systems are following his example and throwing off the yoke of the Imperium, and that, I believe, is just the beginning. The Emperor has much more to worry about than Caliban at this point. Now it falls to us to make the most of the time we've been given.'
Zahariel's eyes narrowed. 'In what way?' he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
'Why, to master the secrets that the Emperor has tried to conceal from us,' Luther said. 'The library here at the Rock is only the beginning, brother. We've only scratched the surface of what's out there.'
He stepped forward, kneeling at the side of the bed, and stared searchingly into Zahariel's eyes. 'What do you remember of the ritual, back at the arcology?'
'Why, all of it,' Zahariel answered. He remembered the pillar of flame, the bridge between the physical realm and the warp. He remembered the entity, and how it had sunk talons of ice into his soul.
Luther leaned forward, as though he could plumb the depths of Zahariel's eyes. 'Do you remember learning the entity's name? Its true name?'
Zahariel never flinched from Luther's gaze. Slowly, he shook his head. 'No,' he replied. 'I'm sorry. I tried, but it was far too powerful for me to command.'
Luther sighed, and slowly rose to his feet. 'Well, it was worth a try,' he said, disappointment evident in his voice. He smiled. 'Perhaps next time.'
'Next time?'
'When you're stronger, of course,' Luther added quickly. 'I admit, I underestimated the entity's power as well. Next time, we'll be better prepared. You have my oath on it.'
He reached forward and patted Zahariel's shoulder. 'I've troubled you enough for one day,' he said. 'Get some rest, regain your strength. When you're ready we'll return to the library and start our research.' The Master of Caliban took his leave, striding for the doorway. At the threshold he turned and gave Zahariel a proud smile. 'Caliban is on the verge of a golden age unlike any our ancestors dreamed of, brother. You and I are going to make it possible.'
Zahariel listened to Luther's footsteps recede down the stairs. Silence returned to the tower room once more. He rose carefully from the bed and stepped to the centre of the room. He raised his arms over his head, staring up at the ceiling and began to slowly, deliberately stretch his long-unused muscles. When he'd finished his stretches he began a careful series of calisthenics.
The foul touch of the entity lay on his soul like a rime of black frost. It had never left him, because in truth the entity had never left, either. It was still there, deep beneath the earth, where it had lain for millions upon millions of years. The psychic bridge he'd witnessed beneath the Northwilds arcology hadn't been to draw the being through into the physical realm from the warp, like at Sarosh, but to send it back.
Zahariel knew the source of Caliban's taint.
And he knew its name.
Diamat
In the 200th year of the Emperor's Great Crusade
The sky above Diamat was full of ships.
The Emperor's Legions had arrived in the Tanagra system just five days after the destruction of Horus's landing force at the Xanthus star port. With no way to secure the siege machines from Jonson's Astartes, the admiral of the raiding fleet had little choice but to withdraw back to Isstvan. The Warmaster's final gambit had failed.
Lion El'Jonson stared admiringly at the gleaming array of military power drifting gracefully beyond the reinforced viewport of his sanctum. Drops of emerald still shone on the thick glass pane. With the destruction of the forge there would be no way to replace the damage done to the viewport for some time to come. He considered it a small price to pay given all that he had accomplished here.
'When will you move on Isstvan?' he asked his guest.
The primarch stepped closer to the viewport, his armoured hands clasped behind his back. 'With all due haste,' he said in a deep, rumbling voice. 'Ferrus Manus has hastened ahead of us, hungry to claim the Emperor's vengeance against Horus.' He glanced at Jonson and frowned. 'We had hoped to provision our ships here before continuing to the c
ombat zone.'
Jonson sighed. 'I'm sorry for that, cousin, but Magos Archoi left me no choice. The jamming had to be stopped without delay.' His expression darkened. 'Also, he lied to me. Better he had come at me with a knife, face to face, than play me false.'
The primarch nodded, turning back to the viewport and looking down upon Diamat. A vast, reddish-brown stain, like old blood, hung in the planet's ochre sky. The dust and ash blown into the atmosphere by the destruction of the forge - and to a lesser extent, the devastation of the star port, hours later - would have far-reaching effects upon the planet. The few thousand inhabitants who remained would face lean and difficult times for generations to come.
'May I ask you a question?' the primarch asked.
Jonson shrugged. 'Of course.'
'When did you learn about the existence of the siege engines?'
'Oh. That.' Jonson smiled. 'Fifty years ago. I was studying the history of the Great Crusade and saw a reference to them in a despatch that Horus sent to the Emperor. He'd commissioned them during the long siege of the xenos fortress-states on Tethonus. Horus tasked the masters of Diamat to create continental siege machines; vast artillery pieces that could devastate the most powerful fortifications.' He spread his hands. 'The war machines took much longer for the forge masters to complete than planned. By the time they were finished, the campaign on Tethonus had been over for a year and a half, and Horus had moved on to other conquests. So the weapons were put into a depot here against the day when he would come to claim them. Then came Isstvan.'
The primarch grunted in understanding. 'Then came Isstvan,' he agreed.
'When I heard about his rebellion, it was obvious to me that Horus's path must ultimately lead to Terra,' Jonson said. 'Even if he were to somehow prevail against you and the other Legions, the Warmaster couldn't claim total victory so long as the Emperor was safe in his palace. No, for Horus to triumph, our father would have to die. And that meant a long and costly siege of Terra.'