The Unforgiven

by Gav Thorpe

  Azrael remained calm, refusing to strike out in panic lest his blade hit Ezekiel. The flies were settling on him, their weight ponderous, his armour creaking under the pressure, but he held firm, enduring the deafening noise and the sickening feeling of being swallowed alive.

  True to his belief, a few seconds passed and a chink appeared in the mass crawling over him, scourged by golden fire. More auric flames licked across the plate of Azrael, incinerating the flies with their touch.

  Typhus continued to laugh even as his flies burned in their thousands, the wisps of smoke from their ashy remains drifting lazily back towards the funnels and orifices of the Chaos lord’s armour.

  ‘Finish him,’ snarled Ezekiel, swiping the last of the flies away with a sheet of fire from Traitor’s Bane.

  Azrael wasted no time and leapt up the last few steps, swinging the Sword of Secrets at the head of the bloated Terminator. The haft of Typhus’s scythe – Manreaper – met the Heavenfall blade, turning aside the ancient weapon with a sickening thud like a hammer on bone. Azrael struck again, cutting low, then high, each attack met with haft or blade of the daemon-infused scythe.

  ‘I will not allow you to bring forth the evil of our past,’ Azrael spat as he stepped back, seeking a fresh approach. He lanced his sword point-first at Typhus’s gut but was again denied by the slashing blade of his foe. ‘There is no place for it here.’

  Typhus counter-attacked, smashing the butt of Manreaper into Azrael’s chest. The blow took him by surprise, knocking him back several steps, almost pushing him from the dais.

  ‘I do not care for your past evils,’ Typhus replied, his humour gone. ‘It is you that must be stopped. The Plagueheart will be freed.’

  Azrael did not understand, and threw up the Sword of Secrets as the scythe blade cut towards his throat, deflecting the blow over his head. He riposted, lunging hard, but the edge of his blade simply glanced from the thick plate of Typhus’s left pauldron.

  ‘You deny your plotting with the accursed renegades of our Legion?’ Azrael crashed the Sword of Secrets against Typhus’s armour, ichor spraying from the wound it opened up.

  ‘You bear the key to the Plagueheart’s prison, so I allowed them to bring you to me.’ Azrael leapt aside as Manreaper swung down, its blade carving a furrow through the stone where he had been stood an instant before. ‘I will take that which was promised to me so long ago.’

  Azrael turned aside his foe’s next swipe and smashed his shoulder into Typhus’s midriff, creating enough separation to cut the Sword of Secrets across the Chaos lord’s chest. Armour split like stretched skin, spilling dark, thick fluid.

  ‘Your lies are for nothing. When I slay you, the breach will close and the dead of the past will remain buried. I will not let you bring them back.’

  ‘The breach is of your making, carved by the abomination you have held secret these many centuries. Do not think that you can save your primarch at the expense of the Plagueheart.’

  Azrael stepped back several paces, confused by Typhus’s accusation.

  ‘You opened the rift with your sorcery,’ he replied. ‘You seek to bring forth Luther and his traitors to wage a fresh war in the forty-first millennium.’

  Typhus’s unexpected laugh stayed Azrael’s next attack.

  ‘My bargain with Luther died with him,’ said the Host of the Destroyer Hive. ‘Simply give me the key and you can leave him to rot again for all that the Lord of Nothing cares.’

  Azrael circled, buying time to think. Typhus bided his time also. He turned with Azrael to keep Manreaper between him and the Lord of the Rock, but made no effort to close the distance.

  ‘What do you know of the key?’ Azrael demanded, assuming that the Chaos lord was familiar with Tuchulcha. ‘How do you know of it?’

  ‘How do you know of the Plagueheart?’ countered Typhus.

  ‘We saw it, at Ulthor, corrupted to the core. Why have you brought it here?’

  ‘I did not.’ Typhus sounded uncertain, his guard lowered for a fraction of a second, but Azrael did not exploit the momentary weakness.

  ‘You and it are children of the same evil,’ said the Lord of the Rock. ‘Allies in your scheme to bring forth the corrupted warriors of Caliban.’

  ‘Caliban will die again,’ said Typhus. ‘That cannot change. But the key will free the Plagueheart at the moment of destruction.’

  ‘My lord!’ Ezekiel’s call broke through from outside Azrael’s thoughts. ‘The breach has almost reached the Rock. Kill him!’

  ‘No!’ Typhus howled the word, staggering as if struck. Azrael took two steps but the Chaos lord straightened, the blade of Manreaper held before him. ‘No, it cannot be! We have all been tricked!’

  ‘What trick? By whom?’ Azrael knew Ezekiel was right. He had to strike down Typhus now that he had the chance, not just for his Chapter but for the future safety of the Imperium. But if he did, there would be no answers, only eternal questions. A little time could be spared. ‘Speak plainly, foul one.’

  ‘We have been lured here, three parts to make the whole,’ the corrupted Terminator answered. ‘The bridge, the key and the Plagueheart, all in this place at the same time. Not to release the Plagueheart, not to bring back your traitorous kin, nor to save your souls. Something greater awakens, dormant for aeons, awaiting the time when it could be brought back. No! Grandfather, I failed you again! The bridge opens again, denying me.’

  Azrael felt a moment of connection from Ezekiel, as the Librarian opened his mind to the Lord of the Rock. For an instant Azrael saw what Ezekiel could see, felt what he could feel.

  Above the breach, the warp bucked, once, as though it turned inside out. There was no tear, no ripping of realities, simply a smooth exchange of energies. Where before there had been empty void, there were now dozens of starships.

  Warships. They blared their identifiers as alarms sounded across their decks and thousands of minds were seized by a sudden surprise.

  The Successors of the Dark Angels that had been approaching Caliban. A fleet of the Unforgiven.

  The only explanation was that Tuchulcha had brought them into the star system in the same way it had the Rock and the Knights of the Crimson Order. Azrael had no idea why, nor did Ezekiel. Whatever the motive, it seemed that Typhus had sensed the same.

  ‘I will not be denied again!’ he raged. Typhus lumbered into a run, barrelling towards Azrael. The Supreme Grand Master raised his sword to receive the charge. Teeth gritted, his eyes on the gleaming tip of Manreaper, he watched the scythe blade descend.

  The world disappeared.

  In the blink of an eye, Azrael knew that he was elsewhere.

  The gloom of a deep cavern, a swirling of red marble and gold. The unsettling presence of Tuchulcha.

  He was back on the Rock. Ezekiel was there also.

  ‘It is done,’ croaked the warp device’s servitor. ‘The plague-lord will no longer interfere. We will be remade.’

  The Beginning And The End

  It seemed to Annael that the ouroboros’s body had acted like a tether, somehow containing the power of the warp rift opening across the Caliban System. As the huge daemonspawn unfurled its body, the breach widened too, splitting the sky around the Black Knights. Looking up, all Annael could see was the shadow of the ouroboros. Looking down he saw a grey and green world, the sky filled with scatters of cloud. The flash of atmospheric entries and the blaze of defence lasers lit the crescent of night-time slowly encroaching beneath him.

  He looked for his companions and saw that Sabrael was hurtling towards the nightmarish apparition, the Sword of Corswain glinting in the starlight. Cypher was retreating, moving away from the beast despite his assurances moments ago that the ouroboros had to be destroyed. Tybalain drifted not far away, as limp as a discarded doll though Annael could not see why. Calatus was a few hundred metres away, tossed out into the void by the mo
nster’s obscene eruption.

  Annael took all of this in at a glance. Cypher was heading towards the Thunderhawk, but whether to attack or to escape he could not say. He had only a couple of seconds to decide whether to go after the renegade or to aid Sabrael in destroying the daemonspawn.

  After the events in Streisgant – the confusion of Sabrael’s disappearance, the escape of Astelan and the capture of Cypher – there was no hesitation. The Hunt was more than a duty, more than a burden. It was a distraction. Annael had been crushed by his failure before the Chapter and the primarch, and he would not fail now.

  The greater enemy was the ouroboros, and it had to be defeated.

  The Black Knight powered after his battle-brother, using the main exhaust vents of his backpack like a thruster, pistol in one hand, corvus hammer in the other. A look at Tybalain as Annael passed confirmed that the Huntmaster was dead – his chest plastron was cracked open from sternum to abdomen, the wound filled with frozen blood, crystallized droplets floating around him.

  The raw edge of the warp breach was bleeding towards the ouroboros, as though reality itself was being torn to tatters. Annael glimpsed immense space docks and orbital stations, the first spewing flight after flight of sword-like attack craft while the second unleashed torrents of plasma and missiles at half-seen starships not quite in view yet.

  Against this backdrop he saw the Thunderhawk that had brought the others to the asteroid lighting its engines. Leaving azure plasma trails, it accelerated away, answering the question of what Cypher intended.

  The vox blared in Annael’s ear, receiving a sudden transmission that was garbled and panicked. He heard voices shouting, but could make nothing of what was said save for the occasional archaic curse word or ancient oath. Twisting in his flight, he looked back to see that the Rock was breaking away from the enemy flagship, which was turning away from the fortress-monastery.

  Annael followed its movement, drawing his eye to a new sight.

  Dozens of battle-barges, strike cruisers and escorts were arrayed across the heavens behind the Chaos fleet. Where they had come from, Annael had no idea. Magnifying his auto-senses, he could make out markings – sigils from the Angels of Absolution, the Repentant Brotherhood, the Angels of Redemption and the Angels of Vengeance.

  ‘Lion’s blood,’ he swore. ‘The Successors are here!’

  The newly arrived fleet was wasting no time bending its course towards the Chaos vessels in an attempt to trap them between the Rock and their angle of attack.

  A little further on, the second part of the Chaos fleet, which had assaulted the Tower of Angels, was breaking apart. The monstrous comet at its heart was glowing with power, enmeshed in a shimmering iridescent aura that Annael knew was connected to the ouro­boros’s emergence.

  His eyes snapped back to the Rock. Beyond the ruddy glow of the Gorgon’s Aegis, the fortress-monastery was shrouded in a similar veil of light. What it meant, Annael dared not guess. He focused his attention on the ouroboros, just a hundred metres away now, so vast it had become the sky. The light from the emerging planet behind Annael shone from thousands of freshly grown scales, each bigger than a Space Marine. Against this impossibly huge bulk, Sabrael looked like a gnat attacking a Thunderhawk, his shining blade a solitary star in the inky blackness.

  The creature itself seemed indifferent to the Space Marines. Fully extended, its body hundreds of metres long, the ouroboros started to move, its neck-gills fluttering like fish fins in water. It was descending, moving down towards the rift beneath Annael’s feet.

  ‘All Dark Talon flights, all Chapters, this is a priority recall.’ Lord Azrael’s voice sounded impossibly mundane in the circumstances, wrenching Annael from his awed contemplation of the ouroboros. He could scarcely believe that anyone was issuing orders at all. ‘All Dark Talons, I have a priority mission. Target rift cannons at dimensional instability centred on the Caliban nominal point. All Dark Talons that are able, you must target the opening breach. We must overload the tear before it engulfs us all.’

  Annael caught up with Sabrael, who was gripping the end of an immense scale in one hand, trying to force the Blade of Corswain into the supernatural flesh beneath with the other. One might just as well try to slay a dragon with a pin, Annael thought.

  He acted with more optimism than he had in his thoughts. Boosting himself forward with another exhaust burst, Annael swung his hammer into the pulsing flesh exposed by Sabrael’s sawing. The power weapon slammed into immortal matter, the force of its blast parting pseudo-sinews. The scale tore free in Sabrael’s grip and the Space Marine looked up in surprise.

  ‘Annael? Did you not hear the Supreme Grand Master’s order?’

  ‘A poor joke, even by your standards, brother,’ said Annael, hooking a boot into the flesh of the ouroboros to prepare for another swing.

  ‘I am serious!’ Sabrael jabbed his blade back towards the warp rift. ‘This is a fool’s errand, but if you can seal that rift, perhaps I won’t have to hack my way into this thing’s heart!’

  Looking back, Annael saw that several Dark Talons were already speeding towards the rift. As he watched, he saw the telltale rainbow glimmer of rift cannons firing. Looking at the wavering gash in reality, and the beleaguered world beyond, he saw no substantial effect.

  ‘They need every cannon they can muster,’ Sabrael insisted. Annael could see nothing of his brother’s face, but knew that he had never been so serious in his long years.

  ‘What about you?’ Annael asked. ‘I won’t abandon you again.’

  ‘Abandon me?’ Sabrael did not understand. ‘What?’

  ‘On Tharsis, I left you for dead. Not this time.’

  ‘I am an idiot,’ Sabrael said, with perhaps more conviction than he intended. ‘I do idiotic things. If you think that staying here with me is the best course of action, you are an even bigger idiot! By the Emperor, brother, get back to your Dark Talon.’

  Sabrael kicked out, pushing Annael away, turning him head over heels. Dumbfounded, Annael had no choice but to adjust his trajectory and head back towards the aircraft that was still clinging to the craggy promontory on which he had left it.

  Venting all of the remaining exhaust gases from his suit, he covered the distance in less than a minute, before realising that he had nothing left to stall his inertia. Annael slammed into the side of the Dark Talon, breaking ablative ceramite plates on both his armour and the aircraft, the two of them careering through the remains of the asteroid in a rapid spin.

  Annael hauled himself up to the cockpit release handle and pulled it hard. Anchoring bolts detonated, the canopy dropping away as Space Marine and craft continued to spin. It made no difference, his armour was just as secure against the hard vacuum as the seal of the cockpit.

  Clambering over the lip of the cockpit, Annael ejected his armour’s backpack. Warning systems screamed into life as his war-plate snapped into reserve power mode and backup environmental mechanisms took over from the air and fluid recycling structures now turning away lazily through space.

  Even with his auto-senses operational, the spinning view was very disorientating as he lowered himself into the seat and secured his spinal aperture on the interface projection. Every few seconds he saw the warp breach sliding past, itself an impossible overlay of stars and world, dotted with the kaleidoscopic anti-explosions of rift cannon shots. There were half a dozen of the aircraft now, but it seemed the chasm between the realities was wider than ever, almost half of Annael’s vision swept up by the impossible view of a dead planet being birthed into his reality.

  The Dark Talon sprang into life as it connected with his nervous system, drawing on his bioprocesses to complete its activation circuits. A touch on the throttle brought the engines into full life, attitude thrusters burning to halt the erratic flat spin that had cast Annael and his craft dozens of kilometres away from the ouroboros.

  Taking contro
l, Annael looped the Dark Talon around on the spot, steering for the warp breach. It filled his view while the scanners wailed and bleated in protest at the spectrum of unfeasible signals being returned by their sensors. The display screen was awash with a white blur that seemed to funnel down into itself, reminding him of the ouroboros clinging to its own tail.

  Powering towards the rift felt like he was going to slam into the atmosphere of the materialising world. Annael had to override his instincts as much as he did the Dark Talon’s collision detection systems. He could not help but grit his teeth as he sped towards that amorphous boundary point.

  He hit the counter-thrusters and opened fire the second the rift cannon was in range, though the horizontal distance to the breach was a wavering measurement, growing closer all the time.

  Nothing particular happened. The detonation was inside the warp break, and showed in his auto-senses as a brief swirl of prismatic energy before disappearing. He waited for the cannon to recharge and fired again. His second shot seemed no more significant.

  ‘Sabrael,’ he called over the vox.

  It took a tortuous second for the signal to reach his battle-brother and the reply to return.

  ‘Still alive,’ came the answer.

  ‘It has been at least five minutes, have you not yet killed the beast?’ Annael fired the rift cannon again while he waited for his friend’s response.

  ‘Not as such. Can’t say that I’ve seen its heart. Maybe it forgot to bring it. Calatus is helping.’

  Annael’s laugh died before reaching his lips as something occurred to him. He had assumed Cypher was fleeing, but he quickly reviewed the Dark Talon’s passive scan record on a sub-screen. The log showed the Thunderhawk disappearing at the edge of the warp chasm.

  ‘The heart’s not here,’ he said to himself. He hit the transmit button. ‘The heart’s not here!’

  ‘What? Where in all that is unholy does it keep it?’