‘My desire? My desire?’ Talos pounded a fist onto the surface of the war room’s central table, hard enough to spread a cobweb of cracks from where his fist landed. ‘In a vision, I saw a fragment of our home world in the lightless black, and I led us there. Even if you don’t believe that’s an omen, it still brought over a hundred new servitors into the ship’s crew, and a Navigator. My “desire” greatly benefited the Legion, Vandred. And you know it.’
The Exalted drew a breath. As the air was sucked into the commander’s altered throat, it sounded like a banshee’s wail.
‘You will address me with respect, brother.’ The words were meaningless; it was the softness of the warning that made Talos’s blood run cold.
‘I stopped respecting you when you changed into… this.’
‘Standards of decorum must be maintained. We are the VIII Legion. We are not lost to the madness that grips the others who failed alongside us on the surface of Terra.’
There were a hundred answers to that, each more likely to get him killed than the last. With a swallow, Talos finally said simply ‘Yes, sir.’ This was no time to argue. In truth, it never was. Words changed nothing. The corruption within the Exalted ran too deep.
‘Good,’ the creature smiled. ‘Now speak of the other truths you saw. Speak of the things that matter. Tell me of the wars,’ the Exalted finished, ‘and the names of those doomed to die.’
So Talos told him, immersing himself in the flames of those memories once more, and…
…at first, there is nothing. Darkness, blackness. It is almost like home.
The darkness dies in a genesis of fire. White-hot and sun-bright, it sweeps across his senses. He stumbles and falls, kneeling on the red rock of another world. He’s lost his holy weapons… his bolter and blade… When his vision clears, they are not in his hands.
A sudden strength invades his system. His armour’s senses track the waxing and waning of power and life within his body, flooding him with stimulants to keep him in the battle even when his inhuman physiology would require succour. They rush through his blood now, electrifying muscles and deadening nerves.
As they reach his brain, his vision clears. Coincidence or providence, the warrior doesn’t care. Rubble everywhere. And there, shattered and cast aside like a puppet with cut strings, another warrior in the colours of the VIII Legion. Talos moves to him, knowing he must reach the fallen brother before anyone else.
He makes it. Targeting sensors flicker and beep as they lock onto other figures moving through the insane dust-smoke all around, yet he’s the first to reach the broken corpse. But no sword… no bolter…
His targeting crosshairs zero in on the fallen warrior’s blade, outlining it in a threat display reticule and streaming data about the sword’s construction. He blink-clicks the details of metal composites and power capacity away, and grips the blade with both hands. A press of his thumb on the activation rune starts the chainsword roaring.
The others are closing in now. He has to be fast.
The chainblade kisses the dark ceramite armour of the dead Astartes, grinding against the war-plate for several fevered seconds before biting through. Talos carves in a quick sweep, hurling the sword aside once it has performed its function.
One of the others is Uzas. He bounds forward like a beast, ignoring Talos, his hands tearing at the dead warrior’s helm. By the time he has pulled it free, Talos has retreated from the scavenging, carrying the severed forearm he earned. Once the meat is removed from the armoured arm, the gauntlet could be reworked and…
…the Exalted breathed out once more, its laugh-breath exhalation.
‘Who was it?’ he asked. ‘Who will fall, to be plundered in death?’
‘It was… They wore…’
…armour of midnight blue, like everyone in the Legion. But the helm’s faceplate is painted red, a leering scarlet skull. Talos…
‘…didn’t see clearly,’ he said to the Exalted. ‘I think it was Faroven.’
Talos closed his right hand into a fist, listening to the quiet growl of the servos in every knuckle joint. The gauntlet was stiff, and Septimus had said several times it would soon need to be replaced. It was old, that was all. The years had worn it down, and although much of his armour had been replaced over time, his gauntlets were both pieces of his original mark IV war-plate.
It did not trouble him to think of looting his fallen brethren the way it might trouble a mortal to plunder the dead. The Night Lords Legion had lost much since their failure to take the Throne of Terra, and their capacity to forge new Astartes armour was severely limited.
Looting the dead was a forgivable necessity in the endless war.
Talos opened his hand, slowly articulating his fingers. ‘Yes,’ he said as he watched the hand move, thinking of the night to come when this gauntlet would be replaced by another. ‘It was Faroven.’
The Exalted made a sound Talos had heard many times – a grunt of dismissal, callous and curt.
‘When he dies, you are welcome to whatever you take. His demise will be no loss to the Legion. Now continue. An explosion. Rubble and smoke. The plundering of Faroven’s wargear. And then?’
Talos closed his eyes. ‘And then…’
…he sees his sword. There, lying across a spill of rubble, the gleam of the blade already dulled by a thin layer of dust. He scrambles for it, his boots crunching on the gravel underfoot – rock chunks that were the towering wall of a manufactorum until moments ago.
The blade is in his hands, a masterwork of form and function. The hilt and cross-guard is crafted from bronze and polished ivory, forming the outstretched wings of an angel. Between the wings, set into the base of the blade on both sides, rubies the size of a mortal man’s eyes have been cut and shaped into crimson teardrops. The blade itself is forged of adamantite stained gold, with High Gothic runes hand-scribed along the weapon’s length detailing a long and illustrious lineage of fallen foes.
Talos had killed none of them, for this blade was never forged to be his. He grips it now, feeling the reassuring weight of the stolen weapon, as comfortable in his hands at this moment as it was a decade before when he’d taken it from the dying grasp of an Imperial champion.
Aurum. The blade was called Aurum – the power sword of noble Captain Dumah of the Blood Angels. Its kiss was death; like all power weapons, a ravaging energy field tore apart solid matter with every strike. But Aurum was forged when the Imperium was young, when the tech-priests of Mars were as much artisans as keepers of secrets.
Three times, Legion brothers have tried to kill him for this sword. Three times, Talos has slain his kin to defend this prize.
He rises, activating the power cell within the hilt, burning the dust from the golden blade in a hissing rush. Lightning, tight and controlled, dances across the sword’s length, bright enough to hurt his Nostraman eyes.
Talos moves across the rubble. The sounds of battle are returning now. The rubble-dust is clearing. He has to find his bolter before the enemy comes to sweep through the sector they’ve just annihilated with unbelievable firepower.
He… he can’t find it. What is that accursed noise? That thunder? The world is falling apart…
Blood of the Ruinous Ones, where is that weapon…
He…
…staggered under the wave of memory, as real to him in the war room as it was when the vision first struck. The Exalted grunted its displeasure.
‘What is wrong? What happened next?’
‘The sun,’ Talos said. ‘The…
…sun has died.
He raises his head to the sky, all thoughts of seeking his bolter forgotten. A moment before it was high noon, now the sky is dark as dusk. An eclipse. It must be an eclipse.
And it is.
In a way, it is.
Targeting reticules lock on the behemoth that swallowed the sun. Information Talos doesn’t see slides in jerky lines across his retinas, beamed into his eyes from his helmet’s sensor interface.
Alarms chime in time to the warning runes’ flickering, and as he looks up, he recalls why the explosion had levelled this part of the city. He looks up at the explosion’s cause.
Warlord-class. His sensors flicker the words over and over, the alarm chimes becoming screams in his ears, as if he doesn’t know what he is seeing. As if he needs to be warned that it’s death itself. Over forty metres of Mechanicus vengeance has come to destroy them all. It’s taller than any buildings that remain standing.
Its gargantuan weapons pan and aim, tracking the ant-like forms of the Astartes below. Its arms – cannons the length of trains – split the sky with the sound of a thousand gears grinding – just aiming, not even firing yet. Lower, they aim. Lower.
The city shakes again, even before the Titan fires, purely because the iron god is moving. The vox fires into life, voices bellowing in anger as the Imperial war machine strides closer.
‘Heavy weapons!’ he roars into the vox general channel. ‘Land Raiders and Predators, all guns on the Titan!’ He doesn’t even know if there are any of the Legion’s vehicles left in one piece, but if they don’t form a response of some kind, the Titan will end them all.
With the sound of habitation towers falling, the Titan takes another step.
And with the sound of a world dying, it fires again.
Talos…
…opened his eyes, only then realising they’d been closed.
The Exalted had come closer while Talos was in the grip of the vision. ‘Titans are no surprise,’ the creature said. ‘A forge world is the Warmaster’s priority target within the Crythe Cluster.’
Talos shook his head, his lip curling slightly as he made out the edges of the Exalted’s horned visage in the dark.
‘We are going to be slaughtered. We will stand in the path of the Mechanicus’s god-machines, and our eyes will burn in the light of their fire.’
‘And what of the Warmaster’s own forces?’ the Exalted pressed, his eagerness lending an edge of impatience to his burbling tone. Talos was reminded of a deep cauldron brought to the boil.
‘What of them, sir?’
‘My prophet,’ the Exalted drawled, with an unfamiliar hint of kindness. Talos tilted his head to regard his leader, suppressing a growl. The Exalted was trying to mask his irritation, most likely, to keep his pet seer from losing his own temper at the questioning. ‘Talos, my brother, you see so much, yet so little.’
The Exalted smiled – a portrait of too many fangs and acidic drool. Talos glared into his lord’s black eyes, and the twisted face of a man he’d once admired.
‘That is my question,’ the Exalted leered. ‘Where are they? Do you see them? Do you see the Black Legion?’
‘I can’t…
…see them. Anywhere.
Above, the metallic gods make war. Titan against Titan in the ruins of a shattered city. The air is a solid storm of cannonfire bursts and thunderous grinding as war machines loose their wrath upon one another. The Titans have forgotten that battle playing out around their feet now, and the Night Lords – those that remain – regroup in their towering shadows.
Talos reaches his transport, the Land Raider’s sloped, dark hull like a beacon in the maelstrom around. And that’s when he sees Cyrion, still half-buried in rubble, almost a thousand metres away.
It’s not a clean sight, nor an instant identification. The distance is significant, and at first Talos just sees a struggling figure emerging from stone wreckage, the minute movement catching his eye purely by chance.
He blink-clicks the visor’s zoom symbol. A name rune flashes up on his retinal display – Cyrion – as his targeting systems lock onto his brother as an invalid target.
He breaks into a run.
Another target – Uzas, Invalid Target – flashes up in runic code. Uzas reaches Cyrion first, climbing down the rubble behind the staggering, wounded Astartes. Talos runs harder, faster, somehow knowing what’s coming.
Uzas raises his axe and…
‘…and what?’
‘And nothing,’ Talos replied. ‘It’s as I’ve said. The Warmaster will send us against the Titan Legion of Crythe, and we will suffer severe casualties.’
The Exalted let the silence extend for several moments, letting his voiceless displeasure speak for him.
‘Am I dismissed, lord?’ Talos asked.
‘I am far from satisfied with this meagre recollection, my brother.’
Talos’s smile was crooked and genuine. ‘I will endeavour to please my commander next time. As I understand it, prophecy is not an exact science.’
‘Talos,’ the Exalted drawled. ‘You are not as amusing as you think you are.’
‘Cyrion says the same, sir.’
‘You are dismissed. We draw near to Crythe, so make final preparations. Ensure your squad is in midnight clad within the hour. We strike at the Crythe Cluster’s penal world first, then move on to the forge world.’
‘It will be done, sir.’ Talos was already leaving when the Exalted cleared his throat. It sounded like he was gargling something that was still alive.
‘My dear prophet,’ the Exalted grinned. ‘How is the prisoner?’
III
THE WARMASTER CALLS
‘Nostramo has died, and with it, our past.
The Imperium burns, promising a future of ash.
Horus failed, because his plans grew from seeds of corruption – not wisdom.
And we failed because we followed him.
We do not do well when leashed to the wills of others,
And when bound by the words of leaders that do not share our blood.
We must choose our wars with more care in the centuries to come.’
– The war-sage Malcharion
Excerpted from his work, The Tenebrous Path,
Eurydice awoke to a darkness so deep she feared she’d been blinded. She sat up, her shaking hands feeling the relative softness of a cot bed beneath her. The smell around her was a strong mix of copper and machine oil, and the only sound apart from her breathing was a distant but ever-present background hum.
She knew that sound. It was a ship’s drive. Somewhere, on a distant deck, this vessel’s great engines were propelling it through the warp.
The image of a skullish helm leering at her with crimson eyes drifted through her returning memory. The Astartes had taken her.
Talos.
Eurydice moved her hands to her throat, feeling the tenderness there, aching to the touch, hurting to breathe. A moment later, she reached for her forehead. Cold metal met her questing fingers. A small, thin band of iron or steel… fastened to her forehead. It covered her third eye. She felt the tiny rivets where the plate was drilled and fixed to her skull, just the right size to imprison her genetic gift.
There was the sudden clank of a bulkhead door opening, whining open on old hinges. A blade of light, muted and yellow, stabbed into the room. Eurydice drew back from the painful brightness, squinting to make out the source.
A lamp pack. A lamp pack in someone’s hand.
‘Rise and shine,’ the figure said. He entered the room, still nothing more than a silhouette, and seemed to be adjusting the lamp pack in his hands. For a moment, everything went black again.
‘May the Powers take this bastard thing,’ the man grumbled. Eurydice wasn’t sure what to think. She was tempted to fly at him blindly, lashing out to knock him down and flee. She would have, she was sure of it, if her head would just stop spinning. With the return of vision, even for a moment, came the realisation that she was sickly dizzy, right to her stomach. She doubted she could even stand up.
Light was restored when the man switched the lamp pack to a general glare instead of a focused beam. Still very dim, the cone of light projecting from the pack spread across the ceiling and illuminated the cell-like room with a glow almost reminiscent of candlelight.
Her dizziness peaked as her returning vision swam again. Eurydice threw up the remains of her last meal aboard the Maiden of the Star
s. Torc had cooked. Catching her breath, she spoke in ragged gasps.
‘Throne… that tasted bad enough going in.’ The sound of her own voice shocked her. It was as muted and weak as the light from the lamp pack. That Astartes, Talos… he’d half-strangled her. Even the memory made her blood run cold. His eyes, drilling into her own, red and soulless and devoid of humanity.
‘Don’t say that word,’ the man’s voice was soft.
She looked up at him now, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and blinking exertion tears from her eyes. He looked about thirty, thirty-five. Scruffy hair hung in ash-blond locks to his shoulders, and silvery yellow stubble showed he’d not shaved for several days. Even in the darkness, with his pupils enlarged to see in the gloom, she saw his irises were the green of royal jade. He’d be attractive if he wasn’t a kidnapping son of a bitch.
‘What word?’ she asked, touching her sore neck.
‘That word. Do not use Imperial curses or oaths on this ship. It will offend the demigods.’
She didn’t recognise his accent, but it sounded strange. He also pronounced every word carefully, taking care to form his sentences.
‘And why should I care about that?’
She was proud of the defiance she forced into her voice. Don’t let them know you’re scared. Show your teeth, girl.
The man spoke again, his soft voice a contrast to her scathing demands.
‘Because they have little patience at the best of times,’ he said. ‘If you anger them, they will kill you.’
‘My head hurts,’ she said, gripping the edge of her cot. Her throat tensed and saliva thickened on her mouth. Throne, she was going to be sick again.
She was. He stepped back a little, avoiding the ground zero site of her messy purging.
‘My head is on fire,’ she said afterwards, and spat to clear her mouth of the last traces.
‘Yes, from the surgery. My masters did not want you killing me when you awoke.’
Again she felt the metal plating covering her forehead, blinding her third eye. The panic she thought she was hiding so well pushed that worry aside in favour of another. Through the murk of her thoughts, she voiced the first of a thousand questions she desperately needed answered.
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