In ages past he would have been called a battle-king, one of those ancient Bronze Epoch monarchs that fought in the front lines and inspired his men in the chaos of the shield wall, rather than a ruler directing a war from afar, or only fighting in tediously honourable single combat.
Outside of battle’s heat, no matter how he trains, he lacks the depths of brutality and viciousness that make him so formidable in true war. He is perfectly capable of duelling with a sword in training bouts, but it has never been his gift. Any one of the Ezekarion could, at their best, match him blade on blade. Telemachon and Vortigern could defeat him with relative ease.
We fought alone, our armour illuminated in the flicker-flashes of aggravated power fields. The banners above us flashed as if in a lightning storm, the breaths of displaced air from our colliding blades setting them gently waving in the false breeze.
It is strange to think back to how he was then, before the Pantheon showered him with blessing after blessing. When he was just Ezekyle, my brother and my sworn lord, not Warmaster Abaddon, Chosen of the Gods. In time, I would scarcely be able to stand near him, forever bathed as he was in a rippling, replenishing saturation of soul-matter, with the warp itself forming a choir heralding his every move. He could not growl without even his closest warriors edging away, nor nod without thousands of daemons shrieking in acclamation.
But not yet. I could see the silhouettes of unborn daemons seeking birth through his aura, feeding on his hatreds, and I could see the way the warp focused upon him as though he were a nexus, but such things happen to many souls of significance inside the Eye. I did not know then that I was witnessing a mere fraction of his future majesty.
As we duelled, two other presences joined us. The first was Nefertari, whom I sensed watching us from where she sat among the arching rafters. She should not have been here, but beyond a curl of Abaddon’s lip as he too sensed the alien, he gave no further reaction. The second was Nagual, who melted out of the shadows and watched the fight with burning white eyes.
Master, he greeted me. I could do little more than pulse back brief acknowledgement. Sweat rimed my face. My vision danced with smears of afterlight, blurring with the lightning cracks of the two meeting blades.
‘Nagual,’ Abaddon greeted my lynx, his breathing ragged with the effort of our battle. The lynx yawned in answer.
You should not be here, Nagual, I sent.
The Cold Huntress is here.
Abaddon sensed my distraction and thrust low; I barely weaved aside, hammering the flat of my blade against his, deflecting it at the last moment.
She is, I admitted. But Nefertari at least has the presence of mind to stay out of sight.
Abaddon fought with the Talon held back and low the whole time, knowing it had no place in a spar, knowing also that coming too close to the weapon savaged my psychic sense with its bloodied resonance. As much as I had adapted to weather the pressure of its closeness over the years, if I narrowed my eyes I could still see the mist of death-echoes that surrounded its curving claws. That haze of psychic potency attracted countless unformed daemon-things; these too I could see if I focused. They prayed to the weapon. They whispered lovingly to it, an inhuman murmur of praise for all that it was capable of doing in changing the paths of the future. They sang their shrieking, howling songs in gratitude for all that it had done in writing the pathways of the past. In so many ways, as fascinating and disgusting as it was, the Talon was a taste of what would come when Abaddon claimed Drach’nyen.
Despite my distractions, I was winning. Having to keep the Talon back and low affected his balance, even though his Terminator war-plate enhanced his physicality far beyond mine. I had to hold Sacramentum in two hands, for it was the only way to meet the heavy blows powered by his bulky armour.
‘Moriana,’ he said, when our blades rasped apart, both swords raining sparks across the deck. ‘You don’t trust her.’
‘I do not trust any seer,’ I pointed out.
‘No?’ He backed away, his blade rising en garde. ‘You trust Ashur-Kai.’
That was debatable. I certainly had no faith in his prophecies, for I had no faith in any prophecy, but I refused to be drawn into that discussion. I knew why he had detained me here, and it had nothing to do with Moriana.
‘You should have killed Daravek,’ he said in the face of my silence.
Ah, yes. Here it was. Punishment at last.
I had never deluded myself into hoping that the trivial task of journeying to Maeleum to examine telemetry fluctuation might serve as my only chastisement. Returning with evidence of the Black Templars’ existence, and even bringing Moriana into our coven, was never going to earn forgiveness for my other failures.
I wondered, very briefly, if he was going to kill me. For a couple of heartbeats, when our blades whined and crashed, it seemed plausible. Would he do it, if Moriana had told him it was necessary to secure her nebulous future? I did not know.
And did I lean a little more strength into my blows when he reminded me that Daravek still lived? Perhaps. Perhaps I did. I said nothing, though. There was nothing to say. I would not deny my failure, nor make excuses for it.
‘A target you cannot kill, Khayon.’ He was defending with more ragged deflections, unable to match my speed. ‘Is this fated to become a frequent occurrence? Do I need a new assassin? Should I send one of the others when next I need someone slain? Telemachon?’
My jaw ached with my clenched teeth. From far above I heard Nefertari’s soft laugh. The next three blows that rained against Abaddon’s blade sprayed flare sparks into both of our faces. Still I said nothing.
‘You heard how Moriana speaks of Daravek,’ Abaddon continued, grunting the words now, his own temper rising in mirror of mine. ‘Whispers of destined threat and obstacles of fate.’
‘Her words are meaningless.’ I lashed back with an overhead cut, two-handed and descending. He took it flush on the blade; I heard the servos in his shoulder and elbow snarl at the pressure of holding me back.
Abaddon laughed as I disengaged, though he blocked the following blows as well, hurling me back each time with a toothy smile.
‘I have wanted Daravek dead for decades, Iskandar. Yet still he lives. I have set my precious weapon against his throat five times, and yet still he draws breath.’
I am not without pride. No warrior is. I could accept my failure and bear the shame, but his mockery boiled my blood. I met the anger in his eyes with my own. Our blows were beginning to feel less like the strikes of a spar. They swung harder; they landed heavier. The Talon flashed at Abaddon’s side, twitching. His voice was rising.
‘Daravek unites dozens of warbands against us,’ Abaddon pressed. ‘He deadlocks our fleets. He laughs at us, pissing on what we’re trying to build. And still he lives. Why is that?’
He was giving up ground, backing away slowly, parrying and deflecting without fighting back. I had him now. I could read the hesitancies in his movements that spoke of an inability to keep pace. Yet he laughed all the while, an angry and baiting laugh, meeting my eyes to share his bleak amusement at my failure. He was sincere. That was what ground my teeth together and stole the words from my tongue. This was no jest, no mockery for the sake of spite. He was sincere. Laughing at me, yet furious. Moriana’s promises of Daravek’s ascension had added graver consequences to my inability to carry out Abaddon’s orders.
The Talon crashed Sacramentum aside and Abaddon dropped his blade in the same smooth motion, pounding his free hand against my throat, wrapping around and lifting me with hydraulic growls of Terminator joints. My boots left the deck. I could not draw breath, and though a legionary can survive many minutes without oxygen, as I looked into Abaddon’s wrath-rich eyes, I doubted it would be asphyxiation that killed me.
‘Is it you that is broken?’ The words were a beast’s rumbling growl. Saliva bow-stringed between his teeth.
Stay back.
But master…
Stay back, Nagual.
A breath of wind and a silken purr of alien technology heralded Nefertari’s descent. Abaddon spoke to the shadows, though his eyes never left mine.
‘Alien. Beast. If either of you take a single step closer, this turns from punishment to execution.’
The ceramite of his gauntlet closed tighter around my throat. My spine clicked and crackled. My jawbone pulsed with pain in time to my twin hearts.
‘You are broken, Khayon.’
Abaddon dropped me. My boots thudded to the deck. ‘Broken,’ he continued, ‘but not irrevocably.’
I drew a slow breath through my constricted throat, watching him closely. My voice would not come. Broken? I asked, mind to mind.
‘You no longer hate, Khayon. You have come to accept this exile inside the Eye. You no longer seethe with the need to revenge yourself on the Imperium for the wrongs done to us. You say you no longer dream of Wolves, and you shine with pride over it, as though it were a failing at last overcome.’
Abaddon shook his head, his golden eyes glittering with unspoken insights. ‘Hate is valuable. It made you a killer. Hatred sustains us. Hatred is all we have. Vindicta, my brother. Vengeance. Our fuel. Our sustenance. Where is your passion to prosecute this war? Where is your need to see the Wolves of Fenris bleed for what they’ve done to you? For the life they stole from you? Where is your rage at the Emperor for censuring your Legion and forbidding the very gifts that set the Thousand Sons apart?’
I knew rage at Horus Lupercal, for deceiving the Wolves into destroying my home world. Rage at the Wolves themselves for their frothing, idiotic zeal and their ignorant beliefs. Rage at Magnus the Red, for offering us up on the altar of his martyrdom and failing to defend Tizca at our side.
But anger at the Emperor? One may as well hate the sun or the laws of physics. I said this to Abaddon, who shocked me by laughing.
‘Look at the mastery you and your sorcerous brethren hold over the warp now. You are no longer Librarians questing blindly in the dark. You face the dangers, meeting them with open eyes. You are aware of the predators that swim in this infinite murk. Was the Emperor right to order you to remain ignorant?’
I could not answer that last question. In my hypocritical heart, I feared to give a response. The more I learned of the warp, the more the Emperor’s mandate made sense. I could not pass the opportunity for power now, not when those around me showed no such restraint, but I could see why the Emperor had commanded us to do so.
The more familiar I became with the realm behind the veil, the more I mourned that the Thousand Sons, in our blind arrogance, had believed we knew everything worth knowing. We had stared at the sky and believed we knew everything of the stars. We had looked at the ocean’s calm surface and believed there was nothing deeper beneath.
Abaddon saw my hesitation. He smiled without surprise.
‘Do you see?’ he asked me. ‘Do you see what you’ve become? Moriana brings word of a weapon we might use, and rather than peer into the warp for ways to master it, you doubt that it can be wielded at all. Rather than devote yourself to slaughtering the one foe you failed to kill, you slink around the flagship – accusing, hesitating, holding back.’
He slammed a palm down on my shoulder, a brotherly grip, his golden eyes boring into mine. ‘Rediscover your hate, Khayon. It began to fade when you hunted Daravek that first time, and it has depleted in increments ever since. I need you. My brother. My blade. Reforge yourself, for if we accept the Eye as our domain, we have already lost. It makes us nothing but broken weapons. This is a prison and a lair to lick our wounds. Not our home. Not our fate.’
I nodded, for agreement was the only reaction I could offer. I have torn souls open before, reading mind and memory, peeling back the layers of personality and flaying a man’s essence to rifle through the heart of his being. Such torment left the victims of my interrogations nothing more than fractured husks. Abaddon’s words had threatened to unmake me in the same way, so precise were his insights.
‘It will be as you say, brother,’ I said.
Abaddon lifted his hand from my armour. ‘We stand on the edge of returning to the Imperium we built with our own sweat and sacrifice. Thagus Daravek will come for us before the end. I need him dead, Iskandar. No more excuses. I need him dead.’
I knew he asked the impossible of me, and may I be damned for lying to my brother, but I nodded my avowal. I agreed to do something I was sure I could not.
He turned and left me there, in that museum of futile wars. And with Moriana’s destiny-soaked venom turned to honey in Abaddon’s ears, we sailed for the edge of the Great Eye.
‘…the ferrymen demanded we pay the price of freedom we paid as everyone must pay in coin of flesh of soul of blood of life we paid we gambled our future but it must be this way sacrifices must matter don’t you see a sacrifice is only true if it drains the giver and nourishes the taker so we gave and the ferrymen took and we were lessened and they were enriched…’
– from ‘The Infinity Canticle’, sequestered by the holy order of His Imperial Majesty’s Inquisition as an Ultima-grade moral threat. Purported to be the unedited, raving confession of Sargon Eregesh, Lord-Prelate of the Black Legion.
Outrunning the Storm
The first ship to die was the Inviolate. It was a Terran-born destroyer, one of the oldest vessels in our fleet, and one of the most reliable. It had sailed the skies in the very earliest years of the Great Crusade, and though it was originally sworn to the VII Legion, the Sons of Horus had wrested it from its Imperial Fists masters during the Siege of Terra. Its current captain, the former Sons of Horus Reaver Chieftain Xerekan Kovis, was a calm and calculating officer with a gift for void battle. The Inviolate itself was a beautiful vessel, a spear-point cutter of a warship, swift and lethal.
It exploded after eleven minutes and nine seconds of redlining instruments and warning klaxons, the stress upon its hull too much to bear. I watched it happen. I listened to the final calls of its command crew, laced with interference across the fleet-wide vox. The Inviolate buckled off course, falling out of alignment with the fleet, tumbling into the seething tides of fiery warp energy that thrashed and boiled around our armada. I saw it enveloped in those dissolving waves, its shields bursting as it plunged into them. I saw the ship’s hull first crumple, crushed by the grip of impossible pressures, then come apart, pulled open as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy.
I felt the Inviolate’s sorcerer-pilot’s final thoughts: the split-second desperation of Wait… Wait!… that he unintentionally breathed into the burning night. I felt no fear from him; perhaps he believed he could still maintain control in that flash-fire second before he was bathed in the cascading energies of unreality. Whatever the truth, the mundanity of the sentiment was a breed of madness in its own right – the refusal of consciousness to realise its end has come. Rarely do we sound so human, but death, perhaps, is the great equaliser.
‘The Inviolate has fallen,’ Ultio called out across the bridge. Her voice betrayed her distraction as she faced forwards, floating in her immense life-support tank. Her crown of cognitive interface tendrils swayed in the fluid between the young woman and the hive of gestalt-brain engines fixed to the chamber’s ceiling above her.
Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her teeth clenched, her outreaching hands curled into claws of effort. She wore an expression she had never worn in life, a rictus of such inhuman ferocity that it momentarily drew my eyes away from the oculus. Blood was beginning to stain the fluid close to her body, curling into the aqua-vitriolo in misty, sanguine threads from cuts appearing across her flesh. Around her, around all o
f us, the bridge was a red-stained place of fear-scent and thunder.
Abaddon clutched the handrail at the edge of his raised dais, his golden gaze locked to the storm kaleidoscoping outside the ship. The Vengeful Spirit juddered in its entirety; we heard its central spinal stanchions growl, then whine, in the storm’s grip. At the bridge’s heart, the Anamnesis cried out in sympathetic pain.
The din of the vox rivalled the tempest tearing us apart. The voices of every captain in the fleet cried out in disordered unity, reporting their progress and roaring of stress fractures, of failing shields, of shipboard fires and uncountable deaths. I could hear space around us, the void itself, shrieking with the outpouring of souls dragged from dying bodies. Our fleet was populating the warp with the spirits of our slain.
We led the way. The Vengeful Spirit took the brunt of the tempest’s tide, a wavebreaker vanguard that ploughed through the roughest thrashings of energy, shattering them to carve a route through for the smaller ships. New trails of blood inked the amniotic fluid from a fresh latticework of wounds across Ultio’s body. She suffered as the ship suffered.
The Promise of Absolution was a jagged silhouette off our port bow, another of the forward battleships spearing ahead to take the worst of the boiling tides. One moment it was there, shaking and streaming fire from its battlemented hull; the next it was a lacerated hulk, killed too swiftly to even detonate. Torn-apart sections of the ship tumbled away into the warp’s devouring essence. It was as if the entire ship had crumbled as part of an avalanche. We did not even hear any change in their final communications: one moment the captain was there, the next his voice was no longer present in the vox-web.
Delvarus was next to me, his boots magnetically locked to the deck, his gauntleted hands holding to the same crew rail as mine. He was Secondborn – the melange of daemonic entity and human soul – and as ever in his presence I felt the war taking place inside him, the eternal shifting turmoil between possessor and possessed. His eyes were blackened orbs in his dark flesh, curdled over with etheric cataracts, and though the warp had rendered him blind it had suffused his other senses with sensitivity beyond measure.
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