Kingsblade

by Andy Clark

  The towering Knight strode into the plaza, and Varakh’Lorr walked to meet it. He was snarling, the Red Veil contorted into a mask of hate. The acid-green war engine shook the ground as it advanced, every footfall landing with enough force to crush a battle tank like a ration tin. The Knight’s immensity blocked out the clouds as it loomed over him, cannon swivelling in his direction. It was an engine built to slaughter armies, from whose shields the Word Bearers’ fire splashed like rain.

  ‘I have faced far worse than you,’ said Varakh’Lorr.

  He was thirty yards from the Knight’s feet when it fired. Two swift concussions, the scream of shells cleaving the air, then the all-consuming roar as they detonated. A mortal warrior would have been slain instantly, but Varakh’Lorr was no longer truly mortal. The force of the explosions buffeted him, but the energies of the warp shielded him from harm. Ghastly daemonic faces shrieked at him from the churning void behind reality, then Varakh’Lorr burst from the billowing edge of the fireball and charged the Knight with a roar.

  The Dark Apostle could see the soul of the Knight’s pilot, burning like a candle flame amidst the metal immensity of his steed. Sparks of panic flew around that flame as the Knight attempted to redress its aim, but Varakh’Lorr was running too fast, and far too close.

  Warp-bulked muscles bunched in the Dark Apostle’s legs and back. He sprang in a superhuman leap and swung his cursed crozius. The heavy mace slammed into the Knight’s knee with unstoppable force. Plasteel and adamantium sundered. Cables tore and gyros shattered into spinning shrapnel. The Knight’s knee was torn away entirely, its wreckage spinning and clattering around Varakh’Lorr as he landed.

  Turning, the Dark Apostle watched the huge war machine sway, then tip. Servo-motors screamed as the Knight toppled sideways, accompanied in Varakh’Lorr’s empyric senses by daemonic howls of glee. The machine crashed down with horrific force, before exploding like a macro-cannon shell. For a second time in as many minutes, the fires of obliteration washed over Varakh’Lorr and for a second time he scorned them.

  As the smoke cleared, the rush of pleasure from killing the Knight drained away, replaced once more by sour fury as Varakh’Lorr beheld the folly that surrounded him.

  Battle raged in the plaza before generatorum block two, backlit by the towering column of warp fire that surged from the building’s heart. A lance of House Wyvorn Knights had attacked the Word Bearers’ defences. Three of the machines had fallen already, either by Varakh’Lorr’s hand or felled by the fire of the Predator battle tanks drawn up before the generatorum steps. Another Knight was listing badly, smoke pouring from a blasted hip joint as it limped away. The last two fought on, launching a volley of missiles that turned one of his Predators into a fireball and flipped another savagely onto its turret.

  ‘May all of the Dark Gods rain their curses down upon these idiots for all eternity,’ growled Varakh’Lorr. ‘Gothro’Gol, why are those Knights still standing?’

  ‘Apologies, master,’ voxed his bodyguard. ‘One moment.’

  Varakh’Lorr’s scowl eased as he heard a familiar engine scream. A trio of crimson-hulled Storm Eagles swept low over the Knights, guns blazing. One of the aircraft was clipped by chattering Icarus fire, smoke spewing from its wing as it wallowed out of formation. In return, one Knight shook and shuddered as multiple laser blasts burned through it from behind and burst from its chest plates. Secondary explosions rippled through the Knight and it slumped to a halt, dead and dark with flames crackling from its innards. The second fared little better, melta fire burning through its carapace armour and reducing one arm joint to slag. As its gatling cannon fell away, the wounded Knight swivelled its ion shield as the Storm Eagles banked sharply around for another pass.

  ‘Kill it,’ came Gothro’Gol’s voice across the vox. Heavy weapons fire pierced the Knight from every side. The last Predator transfixed the machine with lascannon blasts. Missiles whipped in from the buildings to either side, and Gothro’Gol himself stitched autocannon fire into the war engine from his position atop the generatorum steps. Even from several hundred yards away, Varakh’Lorr felt the pilot’s singular moment of terror and agony. Then the luckless noble’s body expired, and his soul was dragged away to join the towering Beacon of Sacrifice that roared upwards from the Chaos sanctum.

  It would take many more souls than that to fuel Varakh’Lorr’s ascension. This was the culmination of an ancient ritual that stretched across space and time. It was the final, mass sacrifice that would draw the eye of the Dark Gods to all that Varakh’Lorr had achieved in their name, and at last win him his immortal rewards. Many thousands had been taken already, and more were needed to fuel the beacon. The most loyal of Varakh’Lorr’s mortal cultists were performing the harvest, overseen by the handful of traitor legionaries that could be spared. Bands of cultists were sweeping the valle electrum block by block, herding those who came willingly and bludgeoning those who resisted. A gratifying number of the fools cowering in the ruins still believed the Word Bearers to be their saviours, and flocked at the chance of being chosen as worthy. Willing or not, the civilian cattle were being herded through the war-torn city streets, or driven along sewer-tunnels where gunfire could not reach them. Their destination was the Dark Apostle’s inner sanctum, and by the time they realised that they were to be nothing more than sacrificial meat upon his altar, it was too late.

  ‘Not as weak as I thought, I’ll give them that,’ Varakh’Lorr muttered. He had been planning to betray the Knights the moment he seized his mantle of ultimate power. He supposed he couldn’t blame them for being wise enough to attempt a pre-emptive strike. But he could hate and butcher them for it.

  The Knights of House Chimaeros and House Wyvorn had turned suddenly upon the Dark Apostle’s forces thirteen hours earlier, clearly obeying a pre-arranged signal. They had slaughtered many of his traitor legionaries and stolen command of great masses of cultists in the more remote warzones across the continent. The bulk of their strength had been committed to a sudden attack against the valle electrum, but here they faced stiff resistance. Not as stiff as Varakh’Lorr would have liked, since their machine priest had sabotaged the gun fortress atop Ironpeak. Still, the Knights had become bogged down in street-to-street fighting against cult armour and the Word Bearers’ remaining daemon engines, leaving the Dark Apostle with a chance to turn the tide.

  He crossed the plaza, skirting fallen metal giants and the heaped corpses of gun-slaughtered cultists. Gothro’Gol paced down the steps to meet him.

  ‘We act now,’ said Varakh’Lorr to his bodyguard.

  ‘The soulgather is incomplete, master,’ rumbled Gothro’Gol. ‘The beacon is unstable.’

  ‘Let me worry about that,’ replied the Dark Apostle. He paused as a banshee wail washed through the veil of reality to assault his senses. Gothro’Gol waited, hulking and silent as his master struggled with the manifestations tormenting him. It was as if an electrical storm raged within him, and Varakh’Lorr felt organs squirm and flesh twist as his body adjusted itself for the impending change.

  ‘It comes now,’ said Gothro’Gol.

  ‘Soon, yes,’ gasped Varakh’Lorr, a furnace glow cast across Gothro’Gol’s armour from the Dark Apostle’s eyes. ‘The situation is imperfect, despite all our… hngh… efforts. But I must proceed, or face the consequences.’ For a split second, a cavalcade of fleshy horrors and hungry, gnashing maws bombarded his mind’s eye. The Dark Apostle stumbled, bracing himself against Gothro’Gol to stop from falling. As he pulled his hand back, Varakh’Lorr saw that he had left a mark scorched into the crimson metal, directly over his bodyguard’s primary heart.

  ‘I shall withdraw to the sanctum now, faithful protector,’ he gasped. ‘Reinforcements are on their way, yes?’

  Gothro’Gol nodded. ‘The Knights slew Kuvaris’ warband in the exceptum fissional. We lost contact with Jothol’Kar over the trans-mechanoria. All other warbands have returned, or soon shall.’

  ‘The Knights no doubt thin
k they have won meaningful victories,’ sneered Varakh’Lorr. ‘They’ve won nothing. The only fight that matters is here, and soon it will be beyond them.’

  Gothro’Gol said nothing. He merely stood and awaited orders.

  ‘Pull all remaining brothers back into the generatorum blocks and have them dig in,’ said Varakh’Lorr, wrestling for a moment of clarity. ‘The Knights will break through the cultist lines again soon enough, and in greater force I don’t doubt. But they can’t risk damaging these generatorums, not if they want to claim the Adamant Citadels for themselves. They know they can’t win this war without them, not against us and the Imperials. We’ll make our stand here. See to it that the enemy does not break through before my ascension is complete.’

  ‘It shall be thus,’ rumbled his bodyguard, beginning to turn away.

  ‘Gothro’Gol,’ began the Dark Apostle, and his bodyguard paused. ‘See to the defences, then attend me in my sanctum. I would have you at my side when I ascend.’

  The huge Word Bearer stood statue-still for a moment, then gave a single vox-pip of acknowledgement and strode away. Varakh’Lorr watched him go, seeing Gothro’Gol’s rotted soul laid bare like the innards of some flayed thing. For all his sparse words and ineffable, faceless menace, Varakh’Lorr saw the conflicted storm of ambition, caution, jealousy and devotion that raged within his bodyguard’s heart. They were all the qualities that had made Gothro’Gol useful over the centuries, and they would make him so once again today.

  Ritual had transformed the sanctum into a luridly lit abattoir, and Varakh’Lorr stumbled in the doorway as a wave of empyric power washed over him. Where once the sacrificial font had filled the centre of the floor, there now burned a vast bonfire of varicoloured flame. Here was the Beacon of Ascendancy, conduit of the ninth feast. The ethereal fires roared upwards, through the eight-pointed star that hung above them, and on through the sanctum’s ceiling to soar into the sky. They caused no damage to the building itself, for these were fires of the soul, not of crude corporeal heat. Yet they lit the sanctum with a searing radiance that shifted and danced like a madman’s nightmares. Around the beacon were crowds of weeping, terrified sacrifices. The populace of the valle electrum were being herded in through the sanctum’s processional archways, their hands tied crudely with looted electrical wiring and their compliance assured by the menacing gun muzzles of the cultists escorting them. Begging and pleading, they were driven into ragged masses, then shoved headlong into the fires. Some tried to fight, but were bludgeoned with gun butts and thrown in all the same. A surprising number went willingly, their faces lit with the rapture of false hope. They all burned, their flesh reduced to ash in a heartbeat and their souls whisked upward to join the sacrificial energies of the beacon.

  Varakh’Lorr could feel the eyes of the gods being drawn towards his offering. It was inevitable now. The Red Veil trammelled the countless souls of those worlds he had already slain, and now with this last offering Varakh’Lorr’s vast galactic ritual would be complete. If he was not prepared, the fleeting moment of the Octed’s regard would destroy him utterly. But he would be ready; he would greet his eternal masters with the proper sacrifice, with his mortal vessel anointed and prepared, and he would finally earn their greatest blessing.

  Ignoring the trails of phantasmal blood seeping from the walls, and the flickering things that jerked and danced in his peripheral vision, the Dark Apostle forced himself upright with an effort of will and strode determinedly across the sanctum. The sacrificial victims wailed louder at the sight of him, some cowering in fear while others – the truly deluded – cried out for salvation.

  Varakh’Lorr forged on, making for the data-pulpit at the end of the sanctum. Power surged and flared through the chamber. His skin was on fire, and his senses reeled as if he stood on the swaying deck of a starship in low gravity.

  As he neared the pulpit there came a low, wet roar, as of many inhuman voices crying out at once. The sound was mingled with a screaming binharic surge of raw scrapcode. Flowing up from the choristry pit came a vast, fleshy abomination. Yards and yards of bulging flab and stapled, metal-chorded muscle flexed and strained. Spindly, claw-footed legs scrabbled in slime-slick profusion. Cable-tentacles and braided human arms lashed and clawed at the air as arcs of lightning leapt between the engine-spines driven into the thing’s back. A golden cherub mask stared at Varakh’Lorr with idiot tranquillity, while below it a ragged, fleshy maw split open to scream.

  Cultists and sacrifices alike wailed in terror at the sight of the Mournful Angel. The handful of cultists nearest to the choristry pit turned to run, only to be crushed into bloody paste by the monster’s mass, or snatched up in its foul tentacles and snapped like twigs. The Dark Apostle turned, swaying but fearless before the creature as it pooled its revolting body and loomed over him like a fleshy cliff. He raised the Octed rune that hung upon a chain around his neck, as though warding the abomination away.

  ‘Do not threaten me,’ he said. ‘I am your master, and you will obey.’

  The monstrous thing roared, human screams and binharic howls melding into a chorus like a thousand damned souls. It clawed and lashed, but did not attack. Varakh’Lorr could see the tortured animus of Donatos’ astropathic choir still writhing within the monster they had been fused to create. They hated him, but they feared him also, and the runes that the warp smiths had hammered into their mutated flesh bound them to Varakh’Lorr’s service.

  In theory.

  ‘You are my servant, my Mournful Angel,’ cried the Dark Apostle. ‘Blessed with the power of the dark aria. But it is a purpose that I gave you, and what I give, I can take away!’

  The creature pawed the air, screaming so loudly that even the warded systems of Varakh’Lorr’s armour sparked with cut-outs and power surges.

  ‘Y’gleh K’gekh Il d’gyanha!’ roared the Dark Apostle in the words of the Dark Tongue. ‘Ir’klah! D’kaghaka kha’uun!’

  The Mournful Angel writhed, recoiling from the cruel incantation. Wisps of steam rose from its bloated body.

  Varakh’Lorr took a step forward, then another, spitting blood-flecked words of power. His eight-pointed amulet glowed with a hellish light as he incanted, and the monstrous scrapcode beast was driven back. With a final bellow of binharic rage it turned in a great heaving of flesh and scrabbling of limbs, and crashed down into its pit.

  Varakh’Lorr lowered the amulet and staggered, almost dropping to one knee. Twisted images stabbed like splinters into his mind. The sensation of blistering heat and bone-cracking cold flashed through his limbs, causing him to grit his sharp teeth in pain. He let out a snarl as he felt even those grind together in strange new shapes, as though they were becoming too large and serrated for his jaw. With an effort, the Dark Apostle dragged himself upright, shrugging off the ethereal energies trying to claw through his flesh. He could not surrender now, or all would be lost and he would become something lower and more hideous than even his angel.

  Varakh’Lorr turned his burning gaze upon his flock.

  ‘Do not cease!’ he cried, and heard his own voice twining with a deeper, more monstrous growl. They flinched in fear, scrambling to comply. Screams and wailing rose afresh as the terrible slaughter gathered pace.

  Gothro’Gol’s spike-armoured immensity parted the masses like the prow of a ship as he strode up to Varakh’Lorr and slammed one fist against his chest in the old Legion salute.

  ‘All is ready, master.’

  ‘Good,’ rasped the Dark Apostle. ‘Attend me.’

  He returned to the pulpit, every step like climbing some jagged, impossible mountain. Its peak was close, burning with power, but the drop at his back was terrible indeed.

  Gothro’Gol kept pace beside the Dark Apostle. ‘You must endure, master.’

  ‘I must,’ said Varakh’Lorr, ‘and I shall.’

  He gained the first of the twelve marble steps that led up to the pulpit. His shuddering hand found its railing and Varakh’Lorr ascended, Gothro’Gol beh
ind him, ever watchful.

  ‘You have always been faithful, Gothro’Gol,’ gasped the Dark Apostle. ‘You are a capable leader and a devoted servant of the Octed. Yet you seem always content to stand in my shadow. Why?’

  ‘Master?’ rumbled the bodyguard.

  ‘Why do you serve, Gothro’Gol?’ asked Varakh’Lorr, reaching the uppermost step and half-falling into the pulpit. He felt as though every atom of his body was trying to pull away from the rest, aching to reshape itself into something new, and he barely held himself together. ‘Have you never desired to be the master, not the slave?’

  ‘I am no slave,’ replied the hulking Word Bearer. ‘I am oathed to you. So it has been for centuries. I keep my oath.’

  ‘Hah, loyalty from a traitor, is that it?’ laughed Varakh’Lorr painfully as his bones flexed with an audible crackle. ‘Selfless and devoted for all this time?’

  Gothro’Gol said nothing. He merely loomed still and silent. Within his bodyguard’s soul, though, the Dark Apostle could see anger and ambition surge to the fore.

  ‘There’s more than that, isn’t there?’ he asked, already knowing the answer. ‘You haven’t followed in my wake all these years out of duty alone. The great Gothro’Gol, destroyer of Valghoria, butcher of the Hundred Cities, champion of Chaos. You have walked this bloody path with me in the hopes of reward, have you not?’

  Again, Gothro’Gol remained silent, but Varakh’Lorr saw the truth of it. He grunted and nodded in acknowledgement, as though the Terminator had spoken aloud.

  ‘And why not,’ said the Dark Apostle. ‘Master of the warband, after my ascension. Already anointed in the blood of countless thousands. Already far along the bloody path yourself. Slave no longer, you would be Lord Gothro’Gol when I am risen, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, hydraulics whining in his monstrous armour as he took a step closer. Varakh’Lorr smiled knowingly up at the armoured giant, and his stolen visage smiled with him.