by Andy Clark
Jennika angled her shield in time to catch another hail of fire from the wounded enemy Knight still standing. The limping engine was no match for her, yet the pilot mindlessly kept firing, kept dragging his steed closer. If this was the madness that had possessed House Chimaeros, thought Jennika in disgust, then it was no wonder they had turned on their allies. Shield raised, the Lady Tan Draconis marched her steed at an angle around her attacker, firing one shell after another into its flickering shield. Her ammo count was low, but she had enough shells remaining for her purpose. Jennika’s first volley battered the traitor steed and slowed its turn. The second collapsed its shield with a flat boom. By the third, she was on its flank, close enough to press her battle cannon’s muzzle to her enemy’s helm even as it tried to turn and face her.
‘Stop. Shooting. Me.’ Jennika punched her gauntlet forward. Two shells blew out the other Knight’s torso in a shower of spinning wreckage. The gatling cannon barrels whined to a stop at last, as the gutted war engine toppled backwards spewing flame and smoke.
Turning her steed away from the mad dog, Jennika strode back to Gerraint’s fallen Knight. She had half expected to see her enemy already squirmed from his carapace hatch and running for his life, but he remained within his fallen Knight.
‘Well fought, Lady Tan Chimaeros,’ said Gerraint, his voice grating through the vox. He sounded pained, and Jennika realised that he must be trapped, most likely injured and pinned in his throne.
‘I don’t want your praise, you murdering traitor,’ she spat, looming over his fallen steed. The Knight sprawled on its side, one shoulder guard crumpled to wreckage, legs tangled. Defeated.
‘I can’t blame you,’ he replied, half coughing, half laughing. ‘How you must hate me. But I had my reasons.’
‘I don’t want your reasons, either,’ Jennika replied, her tone icy. ‘After all you’ve done to my family, to our people, all I want from you is this.’
Bracing its feet, Fire Defiant took aim at the fallen Knight.
The first shot dented Therianthros’ armour. The second tore clean through, detonating its torso and hurling shrapnel against Fire Defiant’s hull. Jennika fired again, and again, the traitor Knight convulsing and coming apart as the Lady Tan Draconis blasted it. With only a few last shells remaining in her weapon’s magazine, she stopped. Jennika breathed out, a long, wavering breath, and turned away from the blazing funeral pyre.
Her comrades were all but victorious. Chimaeros Knights sprawled in wreckage around the plaza, interspersed with a handful of fallen loyalist Knights. Jennika’s first concern was the Porphyrion, but even as she turned towards it there came a bright flash. The Relic Knight was falling, one knee blown out by Lady Suset’s thermal cannon. It fell like a sundered mountain, explosions tearing it apart as it slammed down with catastrophic force.
Elation filled her. Then she saw the ruin of Sire Markos’ Knight, and her heart fell. Honourblaze was a mangled, blackened ruin. The Knight still stood, but it was a wreck. Flame billowed from huge rents in its torso and carapace. Nothing could survive such devastation.
‘Markos,’ she breathed, sorrow welling within her.
Then she saw a small figure drop from the last dismounting rung of the ruined Knight, and stagger drunkenly away from it. Burned, blackened and bleeding, stumbling away from his ruined steed, the herald managed a few more steps, then collapsed in a heap.
‘Markos,’ she said again, voice urgent. ‘High Sacristan Polluxis,’ she voxed. ‘Sire Markos Dar Draconis is dismounted but badly injured in the vicinity of his Knight. I would request that you recover him immediately, and see to his wounds.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ replied Polluxis at once. As she watched the Crawler rumble towards her fallen comrade, Jennika prayed to the Emperor that he would be all right.
Overhead, the pulsing column of daemonic fire thundered into the sky. House Chimaeros and House Wyvorn had been defeated, albeit at a staggering cost, but the Emperor’s work upon this world was not yet done. Battered and savaged, only a handful of loyalist Knights remained standing. They would have no chance in an assault upon the Word Bearers’ position, and Jennika would not get the last of Danial’s loyal followers killed for the sake of reckless heroism. Instead, she ordered the survivors to retreat to the far edge of the plaza and ensure best cover in case the traitors should attack again. The last few Crawlers were tasked with extracting thrones mechanicum from fallen Knights where they could. The last loyal Knights of Adrastapol would wait for their High King to return in victory, or not at all.
‘Danial,’ she said, forming the aquila over her chest with her folded hands. ‘Emperor protect you, brother, it’s up to you now.’
Alicia spat syllables of pure madness, twisting her fingers before her. A Word Bearer grunted in pain as he was lifted off the floor by etheric forces, boltgun dropping from his hands as his limbs splayed out. Alicia flashed him a cold, beautiful smile then clenched her fists. Armour crumpled. Bone snapped. Flesh tore and ancient, tainted organs burst as the Chaos Space Marine was crushed into a bloody mass of meat and metal.
Alicia flicked her wrists and tossed the mangled remains aside, before sweeping up the marble steps to the balcony above. She paused at the top of the steps, extending her senses into the building around her. She could hear the Donatosians bellowing war cries and firing wildly, their courage buoyed by her subtle psychic manipulations. Still, the Word Bearers were immensely powerful warriors. Though the Donatosians outnumbered them, the Traitor Space Marines were tearing them to pieces with contemptuous ease.
None of that mattered to Alicia, for she sought a different sort of victory entirely. Soldiers and guns, territory and losses, such prosaic concerns were beneath one so enlightened as she. The sorceress sensed the warp churning beyond the veil and hungered for that power. In reality, Gerraint’s queen had never shared his belief in a purely military solution to victory upon this world. She knew more of Chaos and its true nature, and of the terrible powers that the gods’ worshippers could wield. Varakh’Lorr was not to be underestimated, and nor were his followers. Yet, blinkered by residual concepts of honour and dutiful conduct, her lover had done just that. Gerraint was the man that he was, whether he walked the Lord of Fate’s path or not.
She was at no such disadvantage. Varakh’Lorr was summoning immense transformative powers, inviting the regard of the gods themselves in an attempt to transcend the mortal plane. He would be vulnerable at his moment of ascension. It was then that she planned to strike, and to claim his gifts for her own. Blessed with the true power of the Lord of Fate, she would become a veritable goddess in her own right. The prophecy she had followed had proven false, or so it seemed, but then she knew from cruel experience that daemons lie. Gods, though, they rewarded those who earned their gifts, and if she could not aid her king’s victory through prophecy and foresight, she would do so with raw power. Perhaps, she would even let him be her consort when all this was done.
A sudden malaise of grief blossomed in her chest, and the strength fled from her limbs. She snatched at the balustrade for support. Alicia threw back her head and screamed as she felt something vital torn from her.
‘Gerraint,’ she gasped, sagging against the railing, tears welling in her eyes. ‘Oh no. Oh my love. No, no, no!’
Alicia wailed in misery and horror as she felt the soul of her brave Knight torn from his body and flung into the warp. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. The man who had rescued her from the death of her House, who had understood and loved her when all others shunned her as a witch, was gone.
Murdered.
Madness broke free in Alicia’s mind, poison seeping from the cracks that spider-webbed her broken heart. For a few bleak seconds, she considered following him, taking her own life so that her soul might plunge after Gerraint’s into the depths of the immaterium. If she had believed for even a moment that she could save her lover in that way, Alicia might even have done it. But he was dead, gone into a realm of eternal torm
ent.
Slowly, Alicia realised that she had collapsed, slumped on the edge of the balcony. A cacophony of ripping and tearing sounded from nearby, as of something massive smashing its way through the building. She could smell the stink of sulphur and brimstone spilling from a looming arch ahead of her. She could feel the salt trickle of her tears tracking through the soot and blood that smeared her face, and the slow, sick thud of her heartbeat. With an effort, Alicia fought down the bile that threatened to surge up her throat. She slowly pulled herself to her feet, and took a deep, shuddering breath as something new swelled within her. Anger. More than that: rage, psychotic fury flowing up from the darkest depths of her soul to eclipse all reason and hope.
They had taken him, the Knights, the Donatosians, the Word Bearers, all of them. They had taken him from her, and they would pay for that not just with their lives, but with their souls. Alicia opened her eyes and blue firelight poured from them. The energies of the warp flowed around her, stirring her black hair and billowing her torn robes. Where she still gripped the balcony’s balustrade, the metal melted and ancient wood roared into bright blue flame.
Three Donatosians burst onto the balcony through a side door, yelling in fear and firing into the darkness behind them. Alicia’s head snapped round and all three men turned to crystal in an instant, tumbling forwards to shatter upon the floor. The sorceress stepped through their remains, jagged shards crunching underfoot. A pair of Word Bearers pushed through the doorway, halting at the sight of her. Both raised their weapons, well enough versed in the ways of the warp to recognise a dangerous psyker when they saw one. Bolters thundered, spitting self-propelled shells. Alicia raised a hand, palm outwards, and the shells detonated against an invisible shield of energy. The detonations grew larger, and larger still, expanding impossibly into a roiling purple firestorm. Jabbing her fingers forward, Alicia sent the flames surging back at the Word Bearers and engulfed them.
Purple fire poured through the eye lenses of their helms as the two warriors convulsed and twitched. Steam rose from their armour as Alicia urged the fires of change into them, and adamantium groaned and creaked as rampant mutation took hold. Seals burst, spilling scaled, purple flesh through the rents. Horns and tusks deformed their helms from within as the traitors melded with their corrupted armour. Tentacles slithered through pulsating skin to flail and slap mindlessly. Bones warped and twisted, ripping their way out to form twisted, osseous limbs. Maws yawned wide in armour and flesh, giving vent to agonised screams.
Twisted and degenerated into monstrous spawn by the sorceress’ magics, the two former Word Bearers writhed and roared. They had become huge, bloated and revolting, things of mauve flesh, rolling eyes and snapping fangs that scuttled on an insane profusion of insectile legs, bone hooves and clawed limbs.
‘Go,’ spat Alicia, and the abominations squirmed away on the hunt for their former brethren. They would wreak terrible carnage before they were slain, no doubt, but Alicia didn’t care. She was wasting time, and the true prize lay beyond the archway. Turning on her heel, Alicia Kar Manticos strode through the arched portal and into an upper gallery of Varakh’Lorr’s inner sanctum.
Lurking for a moment in the fire-lit shadows, the sorceress took in the scene below. The sacrificial pyre blazed, vast and terrible, at the sanctum’s heart. Cultists, slave magi and chained psykers stood in a crowd eight-deep around the blaze, swaying and chanting with their arms raised to the kaleidoscopic fires. Millions of ghosts writhed amidst the flames, revealed to her second sight. Those fires rushed up through the ceiling like a river, and the sorceress tasted the surging power they carried aloft. Here, she thought, was the Dark Apostle’s sacrifice to the gods. But where was the Dark Apostle himself?
She quickly found him, stood in the data-pulpit at the far end of the corrupted shrine. Varakh’Lorr’s arms were raised, his cursed crozius held high as he roared out words in the dark tongue. Shimmering energies played around the Dark Apostle, and his outline seemed to blur where they enveloped him. Alicia could see the potential that lurked within her enemy’s flesh, so close now to breaking forth. Bat-like wings had already spread from the Dark Apostle’s shoulders, and his stature had become far greater than that of his brothers, taller and broader even than the Terminator that she saw sprawled in a slick of blood at the base of the pulpit’s steps.
‘Your last sacrifice,’ she whispered venomously. ‘He that was closest to you, murdered against his will. You and I have that much in common, at least.’
A dozen Word Bearers stood before the pulpit, their backs to their chanting master, weapons at the ready. She saw baroque flame throwers, spike-studded boltguns and larger, heavier weaponry down there. Moreover, she sensed some huge presence lurking close by, something resentful and full of hate, but enslaved to its master by empyric bonds as strong as steel.
None of it gave Alicia pause. The warp energies screaming through the shrine were phenomenal. She felt sure that she could bind them to her will, and use them to utterly destroy all those who had killed Gerraint. They might destroy her in the process, but at that moment the sorceress didn’t care. Revenge was everything.
Raising her arms, Alicia stepped off the gallery. Opening her mind to the tides of the warp, she drank in the power that flowed through the shrine, weaving it into streamers of incandescent energy that held her aloft. Letting her fury take form, the sorceress blazed bright as she drifted through the air towards the Dark Apostle.
Below, Alicia heard the swaying mass of cultists cry out at the sight of her. Their chant disrupted; some scrabbled for their firearms while others wailed. The sorceress swept her merciless gaze across them and dozens fell screaming, the fires of change reknitting their flesh into new and monstrous forms. Others were transmuted, becoming statues of glittering gold or collapsing into swarms of crystal insects.
Some of Varakh’Lorr’s mortal worshippers turned and fled the terrifying apparition above them. Others opened fire, or scrabbled for their own, pitiful psychic energies. Alicia cared little for their efforts, shielding herself with coruscating flames as she swept on.
The Word Bearers, too, opened fire. A storm of bolts, shells and energy blasts engulfed Alicia. The anger that drove her faltered as a lascannon beam hammered her psychic wards hard enough to shatter them. Two bolt shells struck her in the chest, and only with a frantic effort was she able to turn them both to light and air.
‘No,’ she hissed, clawing more power from around her. ‘You can’t stop me. I won’t let you.’
Alicia wove her stolen power into a storm of flaming orbs, hurling them down upon the Word Bearers like an artillery barrage. The blood-stained flagstones were blasted to shrapnel, and her tormentors hurled off their feet.
She saw them stagger upright, leaving only two dead. The rest resumed firing, and Alicia screamed with frustration as she was driven back. Veiled behind fresh shields of sorcerous flame, she stared hatefully at the Dark Apostle. Through his stitched mask of flesh, Varakh’Lorr gazed back at her triumphantly.
His chant was reaching its crescendo. Desperately, the sorceress thrust her mind into the beacon of soul fire, drinking deep of its energies. It was like swallowing molten metal, and she screamed as the raw power flayed her skin and drove blazing needles into her mind. Her body threatened to burst asunder as uncontrolled power raced through it, but Alicia Kar Manticos retained control, and prepared to unleash her spell.
Surrounded by the screaming of daemons, his flesh writhing amidst the furious energies of his ascension, Varakh’Lorr watched through feverish eyes as the floating witch drew power towards herself like a tidal wave. The coherent part of his mind realised that here was the true servant of Chaos in House Chimaeros, just as he had suspected. His mortal self raged at her interruption of this sacred rite, even as the infernal being he was becoming knew only contempt. His rise was ordained. The blood of worlds had been shed to ensure it. He had done everything the gods asked of him and more. Now, at the last moment, this feeble creature s
ought to steal that which was rightfully his?
Varakh’Lorr altered his chant, his fanged maw stretching unnaturally wide as he bound energies of his own to counter those wielded by the witch. The Dark Apostle was no psyker, but the being into which he was transforming could shape the warp as though it were wet clay. A few more syllables, and he would turn her energies against her, send them raging out of control to burn her very soul from existence. So would fall all those who challenged the might of Varakh’Lorr, Daemon Prince of the Dark Gods and master of…
The Dark Apostle’s thought went unfinished as, with a thunderous boom, the far wall of his sanctum exploded inwards. Rubble fell in an avalanche. Metal shrapnel whipped through the shrine, ripping more cultists apart as two Knights emerged through venting steam and crackling energy.
For a few precious seconds, Danial Tan Draconis stared in horror at the charnel chamber. A hiss from his throne spurred him to action.
‘Word Bearers,’ barked Danial, blinking through optic filters as he fought to make sense of the insanity before him.