Black Legion

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  The prophetess spoke on. I will not relay everything she said; much of it you already know from Imperial annals, and a great deal more holds no relevance all these thousands of years later. To us, it was madness strung together in sentences. To you, it would simply be history.

  Even as I relate the details now, my recitation conveys none of her moments of indecision or the halts within her speech. Moriana has never been a natural speaker. A listener, perhaps – it has been my experience that she hears everything spoken and uses it to her advantage when the time is right. But she lacks a demagogue’s easy charisma or a preacher’s fervent conviction, and yet we all stood rapt as she ministered to us with the unwelcome truth. The imperfections in her delivery that day only added to her sincerity. The hesitations in her cadence as she sought the right words only reinforced the importance of what she had to convey. And so we listened, drawn into the spell she wove.

  One of her most compelling habits was to speak without meeting her listeners’ eyes, her head tilted just so, her gaze unfocused, as though she was used to relying on senses beyond sight.

  ‘I feel your anger,’ Moriana called out to us as she neared the end. Her voice was cracked and dry. ‘I see your broken battleplate and the dried blood of your wounds, and I am here to share a warning beyond the words I have already spoken. I have walked the many webs of fate. The greatest threat to your ascension rises with you now. He hears the same call to unity that you all hear. He follows the same goals, along far different paths. You know him as Thagus Daravek, the Lord of Hosts.’

  It would be an exaggeration to say that every eye turned to me in that moment, but many did. The Ezekarion, privy to Abaddon’s plans, along with their closest warriors – they all glanced towards me. At my side, Lheor gave a dirty, grunting chuckle at the sudden shift in attention, while I heard Telemachon’s mellifluous laughter from across the chamber.

  ‘Thagus Daravek,’ Moriana repeated. ‘In every future where he lives, Ezekyle Abaddon does not. In every future where he unites the Legions, the Vengeful Spirit burns in the void. If he leaves the Eye and steals your fate from you, then your newborn Legion dies.’

  The bridge dissolved into immediate uproar. Moriana raised her hands to bid the crowd be silent, though her efforts were useless. The roars went on, adding to the percussive thunder of weapons beating against armour in militant rhythm.

  I heard and felt no paucity of rage in that bellowing cry. It unnerved me in a way little else could, for it laid bare the arrogance with which we draped ourselves. We had grown so strong, so used to our own victories, that the idea of defeat had become anathema. Perhaps, just perhaps, it also resonated a little too much like fear.

  I looked back to Moriana. Abaddon had descended to her side, and he lifted the Talon high, lightning snapping between its bladed claws, bringing the gathering to a swift silence. He did not need to say a word; the gesture itself was enough.

  Moriana thanked him with a nod. ‘Kill Thagus Daravek,’ she said to him. ‘Kill him and take your place beneath the gaze of the Pantheon. This is your destiny.’

  That word again. How it plagues this tale.

  Destiny, I sent to Amurael in irritated disgust, but Ashur-Kai overheard my psychic derision. He pulsed his disapproval to me from his raised platform above the bridge, where – as the warship’s voidseer – he guided the Vengeful Spirit through the tortured heavens.

  Do not lecture me, I sent back before he could do so. His attempts to convince me of the merits of prophecy had already failed over several centuries, and his reprimand was easy to ignore now. ­Prophecy. Destiny. Fate. Ah, the infinite power of hindsight. Prophets or ­prophetesses may speak whatever they wish, and apply it like a soothing salve over the wounds of any event – once the moment has already passed. Prophecy is unreliable at best and the embarrassing artistry of charlatans at worst.

  Abaddon, silent all this time, finally spoke. He said that which I had hoped to hear, the only words that mattered.

  ‘You speak of the Pantheon’s gaze, but I will never bow to the forces that deceived Horus Lupercal.’

  Moriana looked up at our lord, ferocity in her dark eyes. ‘But Thagus Daravek will. And he will take your place on the paths of fate.’

  I felt like spitting. Surely my brother could not be dragged in by superstition and naked manipulation.

  ‘Ezekyle,’ I said, ‘must we listen to this?’

  Sargon looked aghast at my interruption, as did Ashur-Kai. Both were clinging to Moriana’s every word. Abaddon gestured for me to hold my tongue, though there was no anger there.

  ‘Let her finish, Iskandar. Let’s see where this leads. Thagus Daravek has been a thorn in our side for decades, prophetess, but why do you so fiercely demand his death? What does he intend to do?’

  ‘He intends what you intend, Ezekyle Abaddon. That which calls to you also calls to him, and already he makes ready to claim it before you can. Despite all of your ambitions, you are left with a simple choice – wield the sword that you see in your dreams, or be killed by it.’

  Ezekarion

  I know the cadence of that beating heart. I know the smell of that skin, the tang of those bionics, the scent of those consecrated weapon oils…

  Inquisitor Siroca. We meet again. Welcome, dutiful agent of the Throne. Welcome to my parlour. Please forgive me for not offering you refreshment; the warded chains that steal my sixth sense and bind me to this pillar have savaged my ability to play the kindly host.

  I feel your gaze upon my eyeless face as keenly as these hexa­grammic restraints that sear my flesh. You have come for answers, no doubt, but to which questions?

  No. Say nothing. Let there be no pretence between us. I know where you have been and what brings you back before me now. Your ­scrabbling, delving efforts into your order’s deepest archives have dredged up mention of Moriana, just as I warned you they would.

  You are beginning to believe me, are you not? You are beginning to believe the words of an arch-heretic.

  Moriana is one of those names that slither through the veins of history. Is it the same woman? Can it be true? Can it be that one of the founders of your sacred Inquisition is the very creature that whispered prophetic poison into my brother’s ear? Can it be that the inceptor of your precious ideals chose later in her unnaturally long life to abandon them? Was she a warrior-handmaiden of the Emperor who saw the light, or an archaeoscientific vizier in one of His laboratories who looked too long into the dark? Both? Neither?

  Someone before you has been seeking truth in the shadows. Where did you find this lore, Inquisitor Siroca? In whose archives were these words hidden? Your master’s perhaps. The man or woman that taught you and trained you, the merciless predecessor that fashioned you into the weapon of Imperial law I sense before me now.

  Very well. Keep your silence. I will speak on.

  We made ready for war in the wake of the prophetess’ words. The fleet mustered. We left garrisons at our grandest fortresses and arranged the barest-bones patrols on the edges of our domain, but the heart of our sanctuary nebula played home to almost every able vessel in our armada, from the vastest battleship to the sleekest frigate to the bulkiest troop-conveyor.

  The Ezekarion oversaw this great gathering, while Abaddon – in a move that shocked all of us – sealed himself away in seclusion with Moriana.

  The officers’ perspectives on this were divided. Ashur-Kai was captivated by the new seer, aching to speak with her, his scarlet albino gaze shining with a hunger no different to that of a starving man suddenly presented with a feast. He craved her insight and wanted nothing more than to follow the paths of fate at her side, learning all that she knew, seeing all that she had seen.

  ‘Ezekyle has sealed himself away from his sworn inner circle,’ I argued with Ashur-Kai at one point, as we stood upon the Vengeful Spirit’s bridge atop his navigation platform above the rest of the command de
ck. ‘How does that not trouble you?’

  ‘He has questions,’ my former master replied. ‘She brings answers.’

  ‘He has never exiled himself away from us before.’

  ‘This is beginning to sound like the tantrum of an ignored child,’ Ashur-Kai replied, his tone mild. But I would not be dissuaded by mockery, no matter how gentle or well intentioned.

  ‘Think of his degeneration these last years. Think of the voices in the warp that sing his name, practically praying to him. And now this? Do not mistake my caution for cowardice.’

  He turned his white features to me, and I knew from the starved look in his retinal-red eyes that I was arguing in futility.

  ‘She has brought the answers our lord sought. The only good is knowledge, Sekhandur. The only evil is ignorance.’

  ‘That is a saying uttered by as many fools as visionaries,’ I pointed out, ‘and an attitude that has led to damnation more than once. The last man to speak those words in my presence doomed our Legion.’

  Boy, Tokugra psychically cawed at me from its master’s shoulder. Boy is frightened.

  Hush, crow, lest I feed you to my lynx. Nagual would enjoy that.

  ‘You should not be afraid,’ Ashur-Kai continued as if his familiar had spoken true. ‘See her arrival for what it is – an opportunity like no other.’

  ‘I do not trust her,’ I said, which were words I would say innumerable times across the centuries to come.

  ‘Then don’t trust her,’ Ashur-Kai said as he turned back to the oculus, his long white hair falling to half mask his features. ‘But don’t waste the chance to learn from her.’

  He had every reason to be ill-tempered and distracted given his role in the war to come. He was the armada’s most gifted voidseer, tasked with coordinating and aligning the efforts of every sorcerer in the fleet for the attempt to break out of the Eye’s pull. To even brush against his mind was to feel a dense web of overlapping murmurs that threatened to drag me inside, adding my presence to the processes of what must be calculated and the variables that must be considered. We were asking our voidseers to sail near blind and deaf through a realm where physical law had no grip, and to maintain the fleet’s formation while doing so. In all the years of the Nine Legions’ exile, nothing on this scale had yet been attempted. We were certain to lose several ships, and braced to lose most of them.

  ‘Ezekyle will summon us when he wishes us to attend him,’ Ashur-Kai insisted. He met my eyes with his watery albino gaze. Fascination for all that Moriana represented still burned there, no matter how distracted he was by the coming trial.

  I touched my fingertips to my heart in that old Cthonian gesture that had crept its way through the Legion – the gesture of one speaking the truth. ‘Sometimes I wish I had your faith, master.’ The old ­honorific, just this once. It made him smile before he turned away and resumed his work.

  Among my other contemporaries, between their faith, patience or indifference, none of the Ezekarion shared my preference for caution. Telemachon reacted to Moriana’s favour with Abaddon much as I had suspected he would. His behaviour was nothing but parasitically loyal, to the point that he even stationed several of his Raptors outside Abaddon’s palatial quarters, ostensibly standing guard with Falkus’ Aphotic Blade. It was a gesture rather than a necessity, but – as ever – it was a cunning and valuable one. Moriana took note of it on her emergence, just as she noted those among the Ezekarion that showed less in the way of trust.

  We risked much as the fleet mustered. We lost territory that was left inadequately defended, surrendering it to the other Legions rather than put up doomed resistance. The heartlands of our dominion remained as heavily patrolled as we could ­manage, but we paid in lost worlds at the frontiers. To our rivals and indeed many of our allies, we practically vanished from the Eye, concerned only with amassing our strength in secret.

  Around the Vengeful Spirit, a fleet gathered of such size that even jaded veterans often stopped to stare at the host of warships at anchor in the murky void. Valicar, once guardian of Niobia Halo and now master of the fleet, was in constant contact from aboard his battleship, the Thane. His trust in Abaddon was absolute; he exloaded a stream of updates to the flagship with calculated efficiency, oversaw the muster in Abaddon’s absence and never once demanded to speak with our liege lord.

  We made ready for the war we had wanted to wage for centuries, yet I could not overcome my hesitation over the true reasons we would be fighting it. ‘The sword,’ Moriana had said, with such perfect assurance. ‘You have a choice, Ezekyle Abaddon. Wield the sword that you see in your dreams, or be killed by it.’

  None of us knew, not then, what the sword was. Abaddon had told us nothing before retreating into seclusion, except that we were to make the final preparations to leave the Eye. Moriana’s words were all the more unsettling for the way she knew that which we did not.

  That sword. By the Shifting Many, how much of what we have done has its roots in the wielding of Abaddon’s sword? Oceans of Imperial blood have run beneath that blade’s edge. Rivers of our own have flowed because of it. We fought a crusade to claim it. We have spent an eternity slaughtering those that would take it for themselves.

  In Cthonian, the blade is called Usargh, or ‘Oblivion’. In Nagrakali, the blunt mongrel tongue of Lheor’s former Legion, it is Skaravaur, or ‘Crownrender’. In Tizcan Prosperine, the language of the city of my birth, it is Mal-Atar-Sei, ‘the Shard of Madness’. To Nefertari’s people it is Sorathair, ‘the Thorn in Reality’, a name spoken only as the blackest curse. These are all imperfect translations of the weapon’s true name, for the blade was forged in no mortal realm, nor was it fashioned by mortal hands.

  In the wordless, soul-borne language of the warp’s winds, within the eternal howling of the daemonic choirs, echoes the name Drach’nyen. This is no word as the human mind would understand it, for it is not an utterance but a concept. Within the eternal song of howling, weeping madness is the fate-spun promise of the Emperor’s death, of His Imperium carved clean of ignorance and false faith.

  That chorus, that concept roared into daemonic essence, is Drach’nyen. This is what our languages try and fail to distil into spoken words. Usargh, Skaravaur, Mal-Atar-Sei… They are all aspects of the same thing: Drach’nyen, the End of Empires, a creature with its genesis in the warp-threaded conviction that it exists only to kill humanity’s king.

  That which you call Chaos, or the Ruinous Powers; that which we call the Pantheon – this essence, this energy, does not obey us. It is not an entity unilaterally supporting us, or a reliable weapon that serves our needs. It uses us. It elevates us, for the purposes of its own whims. It is a force of honesty, true, making us wear our sins on our armoured skin, but it is also the essence of absolute deception, shifting and warping whatever it wishes to pursue its own conflicting ends. It is the crashing, clashing energies of every memory, emotion and agony felt by every human since the dawn of time, with the same suffering of countless alien species flavouring the resultant matter.

  It can be used, but only if you are willing to be used in turn. It can be worshipped and begged, but only if you are willing to risk damnation along with ascension. It is a force flowing through the veins of reality, one that chooses us and marks us as its puppets as well as its champions. That cannot be stated enough.

  It is not on our side. Many of us spend our lives fighting it and resisting it far more often than beseeching it.

  Abaddon’s blade is one such aspect. As I hang here, chained and bound in the tender care of your Inquisition, though I crave to be back with my brothers and doing the Warmaster’s work, there is one comfort in my captivity: it is a blessed relief to be this far from Drach’nyen.

  I can still hear it whisper at the edge of my mind even with my powers stripped from me. But I can no longer hear it laughing. No longer does it seep into the core of my being, a distraction and an in
fection, a daemon only content when it is rending reality apart and leaving formless Chaos in its wake.

  It is said that the weapon is only a sword at all because Ezekyle wills it to take that shape. I can tell you this is true. It is not a sword. It is scarcely even a daemon. It is said among the Legions that this was the Gods’ first gift to win Abaddon to their cause. If so, it was by no means their last.

  But I do not believe it was the first. No, that dubious honour belongs to another. Drach’nyen was the second of the Pantheon’s treacherous bribes. I have no doubt that the first was far more insidious, no less bloodthirsty and calls herself Moriana.

  Abaddon maintained his self-exile for weeks, taking counsel alone with his new prophetess. When at last he emerged, he summoned us to Lupercal’s Court. Every one of the Ezekarion answered this call, even Ashur-Kai and Valicar, who were both reluctant to leave their duties in the hands of their lieutenants for any time at all.

  I answered that summons with a sense of purpose I had not felt in some time. Ezekyle had promised me answers upon my return from Maeleum, and one way or another, I would have them. That included enlightenment regarding this sword that Moriana insisted Abaddon was fated to claim. No more whispers of what may or may not be. It was time for answers. I would tolerate no refusal.

  The Ezekarion assembled in Lupercal’s Court. Here, where the failed Warmaster of the Imperium had gathered his lackeys and minions, Abaddon instead gathered his brothers and sisters. We stood beneath banners of Imperial conquest long since rendered meaningless by our betrayals, and in this great chamber where galactic civil war was first planned, we took a quieter counsel amongst the cobwebs. Horus had listened to cheers in here, with half of the Imperium chanting his name. We listened to the squealing of rats and the wet feasting sounds of things that had mutated far from their verminous origins. Whatever they were, they and the rats they had evolved from kept to the shadows.

  Sanguinius was there. Noble Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels Legion, was there in all his glory, and I saw Sargon hesitate upon entering. He considered the primarch’s manifestation an omen, and likely a bad one.