by Ben Counter
‘Throne of Gold,’ said Sergeant Laocos, standing just behind Lysander and following his gaze. ‘What is that?’
‘A friend,’ replied Lysander.
Velthinar knew that something was wrong. It paused in its path towards the Endeavour of Will and turned to see what was causing the disturbance in the warp behind it.
What it saw was reality splitting and the stuff of the warp pouring through. A billowing tide of sorcery crashed into the vacuum, carrying upon it a vast shape, like a ghost hulk carried on a stormy ocean. Its hull was pitted and scored with the punishment of the warp, and every surface was blistered with pustules and veins. Eyes opened everywhere there was space for them, clustering like buboes, rolling madly and bloodshot. The shape trailed ragged tentacles and arteries that spilled blackish blood into the void.
It was deformed and horrible, all symmetry destroyed, but it still carried enough of its original form to be identified as a star fort, much the same shape and size as the Endeavour of Will. A few tattered banners still hung from it, carrying the colours of the Imperial Fists.
‘I cannot be redeemed,’ bellowed an artificial voice, transmitted through the substance of reality. It was heard by everyone for light years around, but it was directed at the daemon Velthinar. ‘I cannot be saved. I cannot know peace.’
Tentacles burst from beneath the corrupted mass of the star fort, snaking around Velthinar’s primary limbs. Velthinar thrashed, but the star fort was bigger and stronger.
‘But I can have revenge,’ the voice continued.
Velthinar fought. The energy it had siphoned from the star Kholestus raked across the corrupted star fort, blasting off battlements and defence spurs, but it was no good. The grip was tight and not even Velthinar Silverspine could break free.
Velthinar was looking into the million eyes of the Bastion Inviolate.
‘My god will shred your soul!’ spat the daemon.
‘I have no soul,’ came the reply. ‘I was a machine. Now I am a disease. You did this to me.’
‘Serve Him!’ countered Velthinar. ‘Untold power will be yours!’
‘I do not want power,’ said the Bastion Inviolate, ‘save the power to break you upon the anvil of my hate.’
A tentacle wrapped around the head and mouthparts of Velthinar, silencing the daemon for the moment. The eyes of the Bastion Inviolate turned towards the Endeavour of Will, the star fort which had until recently been its brother.
‘Lysander,’ it said.
On the Endeavour of Will, Lysander heard the voice, and he knew that it could hear him too. He had watched the corrupted star fort and the daemon struggling, and it had been clear from the outset that the Bastion Inviolate would win. Velthinar Silverspine had not destroyed it, for a being with the tenacity and willpower of the Bastion Inviolate’s machine-spirit would not simply be wiped out by corruption. It would become something else, something awful, and it would thrive.
‘Your astropath called for me,’ the machine-spirit said. ‘He told I could have revenge on the being that did this to me.’
‘And you have it,’ said Lysander. ‘Now depart. This reality has no place for you now.’
‘I know what I am,’ said the Bastion Inviolate. ‘And I know the oaths that you swear. I am an abomination. Your kind must hunt me down.’
‘And we shall,’ said Lysander. ‘When we meet again, it will be as enemies.’
‘That will not be for a long time.’ The Bastion Inviolate held up the squirming daemon like a hunter displaying the body of a kill. ‘For many thousands of years I feel my enthusiasm shall remain. I am a newcomer to the warp. I have much to learn of what pain a daemon can feel. It will be a long time in the learning.’
‘We will find you,’ said Lysander.
‘And when you do, the sundered corpse of this creature will be impaled upon my battlements, and its flayed skin shall be my standard. Farewell, Captain Lysander of the Imperial Fists. What remains of me with the capacity to honour you will soon be lost to the warp, but for now, it salutes you.’
Lysander could hear Velthinar screaming as the warp tore open again and the Bastion Inviolate sank out of real space. The daemon struggled and thrashed but the star fort held it fast in its hundreds of spiny tentacles. The vacuum boomed shut behind it, and when the afterglow died down, Velthinar Silverspine and the Bastion Inviolate were gone.
The Dancer was a messenger, neutered of its deadliness and malice, a barely perceptible shadow within a shadow. The destruction of its kind had left only this shade, the ghost of a daemon. Only its eyes were obvious, flickering red-black orbs that darted in every direction as if watching for enemies.
Lysander knew it was there before he saw it. It had been nine days since the Ferrous Malice, shorn of the daemon that commanded it, had limped away from the Endeavour of Will with Shon’tu and the surviving Iron Warriors on board, and the star fort was still a wreck. More than half its crew were dead and large areas were ruined, amongst them the shattered expanse of map rooms and tactical libraries that Lysander was searching for dead crew or Iron Warriors.
Lysander froze, hand hovering over the shaft of the Fist of Dorn.
‘I have not come to fight,’ hissed the Dancer.
‘The last time I met your kind, I tore you all to shreds. And the time before that. So for your sake, be speaking the truth.’
The Dancer slithered out of the darkness where it had been lurking, beneath the charred remains of a map table surrounded by scrolls and books. ‘I come to give thanks.’
Lysander spat on the floor. ‘Thanks from the warp are a curse. Begone or I will throw you back to your god in pieces.’
‘But what else can the gods of the warp give to Captain Lysander of the Imperial Fists, when he has given to them a victory their servants could not win? The violation of Ionis’s tomb. The death of Astropath Vaynce. The soul of Techmarine Hestion, upon which we still feast. The loss of a billion minds’ worth of battle-lore. And the pact with the Bastion Inviolate, a pact to which no god could force a spirit such as yours and yet one of which you were the author! How could any servant of the warp win such victories from the Imperial Fists? Shon’tu sought only your deaths. He could never have won such triumph as we gained, but you have given it to us of your own will.’
Lysander hefted the Fist of Dorn and took a stride towards the Dancer. The daemon did not move, holding out its arms as if about to embrace the Imperial Fist.
‘The warp thanks you, Lysander! The greatest champion of the gods could not have done more!’
Lysander swatted the daemon aside with the Fist of Dorn. The hammer’s head tore right through the creature and its shadow dissipated into a thousand wisps that vanished like smoke into the air. There was no impact, no satisfying crunch of bone. The daemon was simply gone, for it had been sketched so lightly on reality its destruction had no meaning.
Lysander stood there for a long time. The words of a daemon would not sway him. They might worm into a lesser man’s head, to discourage and corrupt, but not the mind of an Imperial Fist.
Nothing had changed. If anything, the events aboard the Endeavour of Will had proven to him what he already knew.
Everything could be sacrificed. It took a man of Lysander’s will to know that. Everything was secondary to victory.
Everything.
About The Author
Author of the Souldrinkers and Grey Knights series, freelance writer Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular SF authors, and has written RPG supplements and comics books as well as novels. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England, where he can sometimes be seen indulging his enthusiasm for amateur dramatics on the local stage.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan
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