He moved slowly, carefully, feeling the quivering strain of muscles too long locked. Cramps played along his limbs, all except his augmetic arm which responded sluggishly, its internal processors only now realigning with the impulses from his waking mind. The bionic limb was still the first section of his body to come back into full obedience, despite its halting sphere of motion. He used it, the iron hand gripping at the wall, to haul himself to his feet. Armour joints snarled at even these minor motions.
The pain was waiting for him back in the waking world. It crashed against him now, the same torture that always spiked through his blood like a toxin. He murmured breathless, defiant syllables behind his faceplate, uncaring how the words were vox-growled to the empty chamber.
The dream. Were they destined to be deceived, or destined to be the deceivers? Fate often played them the latter hand. The Exalted had said the words so many times: Betray before you are betrayed.
No matter how he reached for the dream, it dispersed ever further. The pain wasn’t helping. It flooded back as if filling the hole in his memory. On several occasions in the past, the pain had been severe enough to leave him blind for entire nights. This eve was only just shy of the same torture.
He hesitated as he reached for his blade and bolter. They both rested as they should: racked against the wall and bound in place by strong leather straps. This, however, was rare. Talos was many things, but fastidiously tidy was not one of them. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d returned to his room, replaced his weapons in perfect order, and promptly passed out comfortably in isolation. In fact, he couldn’t ever recall it happening before. Not even once.
Someone had been in here. Septimus, perhaps, or his brothers when they’d dragged him from wherever he’d been when he fell prey to the vision.
Still, they’d never concern themselves with something as mundane as restoring his weapons to their racks. Septimus, then. That made sense. Uncommon behaviour, but it made sense. It was even laudable.
Talos pulled his weapons free before fastening them to his armour. The double-barrelled bolter mag-locked to his thigh, and the ornate golden blade sheathed at his back, ready to be drawn over his shoulder.
: come to the bridge
The words peeled across his visor display, spelled out in distinct Nostraman runes, clear white on the background red-tint like any other measure of tactical information or bio-data. He watched the cursor flicker at the end of the final word, blinking almost expectantly.
Quintus, the fifth of his slaves, had been rendered mute through battlefield injury. They’d communicated during the serf’s years of service via hand signs or text uplink from a hand-held auspex to Talos’s armour systems, and usually a fair degree of both at once. Quintus, much like Septimus, was a good enough artificer that a little inconvenience was a small price to pay.
: prophet
: come to the bridge
Quintus, however, had never behaved so informally. He was also decades dead, slain by the Exalted in one of Vandred’s many crazed outbursts.
Talos’s retinal display responded to his desire, opening a vox-channel to First Claw.
‘Brothers.’
They answered, but without anything resembling cohesion. Xarl’s laughter machine-gunned across the vox-waves, followed by the others cursing and screaming oaths in equal measure. He could hear Mercutian’s whisperingly polite swearing coming through clenched teeth, and the throaty chatter of bolters in their fusillade drumbeat.
The channel went dead. He tried several others: the strategium, Deltrian’s Hall of Reflection, Septimus’s armoury, Octavia’s chamber, and even Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eyes. All dead. All silent. The ship thrummed on, evidently active and running at speed.
He perversely relished these first pricklings of unease. It took a great deal to unnerve any of the Eighth Legion, and the ship’s sudden emptiness was a pleasant mystery. He had the amusing feeling of being hunted, and it sent a smile creeping across his pale lips. This must be what his prey felt like, though he’d hardly lose control of his muscles and babble meaningless prayers to false gods the way humans usually did.
: i am waiting
Talos drew his sword and left his chamber.
He was far from shocked to find the bridge abandoned. It was no more than a minute’s travel from his chamber on the deck below, but the Echo of Damnation’s central spinal thoroughfares were similarly empty when he’d passed through them.
The strategium was an expansive oval of gothic architecture, populated by leering gargoyles and sculpted grotesques clinging to the walls and ceiling. Here, a mutilated angel with eyes wrapped by barbed wire roared voicelessly at the central throne; there, a bat-winged daemon spread its pinions across the ceiling above the secondary gunnery platforms. The artistry involved in the Echo’s construction never failed to captivate him – for all the Eighth Legion’s flaws as disciplined warriors, the Night Lords had managed to breed a few scholars and craftsmen with the same skill shown by the artisan-knights of the Emperor’s Children and the Blood Angels. No matter their individual skills in craft, most Eighth Legion vessels were decorated with blasphemous relish, depicting tortured divinities and captive daemons across the architecture.
A central throne rose above all else, its immense bulk aimed at the occulus viewscreen. Above the occulus, a Legionary’s broken skeleton was bound, crucified in place, hanging on chains.
In concentric circles around it were the banks of navigation, gunnery and operation stations. No robed heretic priests muttered their way between control tables. No uniformed crew relayed orders or adjusted settings. No branded servitors hardwired into their restraint thrones chattered and drawled their status reports in machine voices.
This was surely a dream, though it matched no vision he’d ever seen before. No other explanation fit.
‘I am here,’ Talos said aloud.
: you have been dreaming many dreams
: now you are close to waking once more
: sit brother
He didn’t smile. He rarely did, even when amused, though it was most definitely amusing to be told to take a seat in his own command throne. Talos complied, even if only to see what would happen.
: almost close enough to touch
That prickled at the prophet’s skin. He looked up at Ruven’s crucified remains.
: you are not the warrior you should be
: but you and i must speak
: it must be here and it must be now
: there will never be another chance
Talos remained seated, the very picture of stoic patience. He refused to let his anger or doubts rise to the surface. Targeting reticules slid by without gaining a grip on Ruven’s shattered skeleton.
: you made my corpse into the finest decoration
: that is almost amusing
Talos reclined in the throne the way he did on the true bridge.
‘Can even death not render you silent?’
: your own life is measured in months prophet
The skull, suspended on chains, leered with empty eye sockets. ‘Is that so?’ Talos asked it. ‘And how do you come by this precious lore?’
: do you pretend this moment has no significance
: do you believe i cannot hear your heart beating faster
Talos stroked the hilt of the relic blade resting at his side. The restraint needed to resist demanding an explanation brought his headache to a crescendo.
‘Get on with it,’ he said, continuing his facade of bored indulgence. He had to collect his thoughts. At best, this was a trap. At worst, it was sorcery. More than likely, it was both.
That wasn’t good.
: you remember nothing do you
: you have come to seek a pure war
: a noble war
: but you should never have returned to the eastern fringe
: others have been waiting for your return with revenge in their hearts
The prophet remained as he was, still strokin
g the blade’s wingspread hilt. The Eastern Fringe. He couldn’t think of anything that would ever drive him back there.
‘I think you lie, husk.’
: why would i lie
: you run from the eye
: you run from the eldar
: you run from doom at the hands of alien witches
: where better to flee than the other edge of the galaxy
Perhaps there was truth in that, but the prophet felt no urge to confess it. He remained silent.
: how long have you waged this war talos
He shook his head, feeling the sudden need to swallow. ‘A long time. The Heresy was the bloodiest decade. Then, the Raiding Years, when we called Tsagualsa home. Two centuries of bitter glory, before the Imperium came for us.’
: and how long since we left the carrion world
‘For the Imperium?’ He narrowed his eyes at the question. ‘Almost ten thousand ye–’
: no
: how long for the traitor legions
: how long for you talos
He swallowed again, beginning to sense where this was leading. The warp stole all meaning from the material realm, even banishing all pretence of physics and temporal stability. The Great Heresy was days in the past for some of the Traitors within the Eye, and fifty thousand years gone for others. All of them, each and every soul to betray the Emperor in that golden age, could claim a different scale of time for the years since.
‘A century since we left Tsagualsa.’ Less than many, but more than some.
: a century for you
: a century for first claw
: that makes you over three hundred years old prophet
Talos nodded, meeting the skull’s hollow eyes. ‘Close enough.’
: still so young for a traitor
: still naive
: but long enough that you should have learned certain lessons by now
: and yet you have not
The prophet stared up at the wreckage of crucified bone, and the letters superimposed over it. They flickered across his retinal display almost impatiently, as if awaiting an answer.
‘If you find me lacking, revenant, then by all means enlighten me.’
: why are you fighting this war
The prophet snorted. ‘For vengeance.’
: revenge for what
‘To avenge the wrongs done to us.’
: what wrongs do you speak of
The Legionary rose to his feet, feeling the skin crawling at the back of his neck. ‘You know what wrongs. You know why the Eighth Legion fights.’
: the eighth legion doesn’t know why it fights
: you conceive excuses to justify a lifetime of wasted hate
: the legion fights only because it is amusing and pleasurable to dominate weaker souls
‘Unadulterated fantasy.’ Talos laughed, though he’d never felt less like laughing. He considered shooting the chained skeleton down from its ungainly crucifixion, though it was doubtful whether the act of spite would achieve anything. ‘We rebelled because we had to rebel. The Imperium’s pacifism was destined to fail. Order can only be maintained through keeping its souls fearful of retribution. Control, through fear. Peace through fear. We were the weapon mankind needed. We still are.’
: the legion never fought for those ideals
: your delusion was never even popular among our ranks
: but it faded when the truth came
: you cling to your illusions now because hate is all you have left
‘Hate is all I need.’ He drew the bolter now, aiming both barrels up at the corpse’s shattered ribcage. ‘My hatred runs pure. We deserve vengeance against the empire that abandoned us. We were right to punish those worlds for their sins, and threaten others with destruction if they ever broke our laws. Control. Through. Fear. The systems we pacified…’
: the systems we pacified were barely human anymore
: we made the populations into cowering animals dispossessed of free will
: living in terror of breaking the law
: like the weeping herds of humans living in the bowels of our warships now
‘I stand by what I did.’ The prophet was aware of his own maddening stance – he couldn’t aim for much longer without making good on his threat to fire, but nor did he wish to strike in useless anger. ‘I stand by what we all did.’
: many of our brothers never cared for any of those ideals
: that is no secret
: it is why curze destroyed nostramo
: to stem the flow of poison into the eighth legion
: and it was why we were punished by the imperium
‘The lesson of the Legion.’ Talos lowered the weapon. ‘The primarch said those words many times.’
: we became the very thing we warned whole worlds about
: we were the killers and the murderers we told them never to be
: free to slay at will and free from retribution
There was a long pause. Talos felt the ship give a shudder, in sympathy to some external torment.
: the blood ran cold in that age before the galaxy burned
: and it ran in rivers from the veins of the guilty and innocent alike
: because we were strong and they were weak
‘He hated us, I know that for certain. Curze loved us and hated us in equal measure.’ Talos returned to his throne, his voice softened by contemplation. Ideas danced and died behind his black eyes, hidden beneath the monochrome red of his helm’s eye lenses.
Much of it was true, and no mystery to the prophet. Curze had annihilated their home world in a melancholic decree, seeking to end the recruitment of rapists and murderers, but it was far too late by then. Much of the Legion was already given over to the very criminal scum he sought to purge from humanity. This was no secret. No revelation. Merely shameful truth.
But they’d still been right to fight. Pacification through overwhelming force, and ruling forever after by fear. It had worked, for a time. The resulting peace across dozens of systems had been a beautiful thing to behold. A population only dared rise in rebellion when the boot was lifted from their throat. In such cases, it was the fault of the oppressor for showing weakness, not the oppressed for rising up. To resist was human nature. The species couldn’t be hated for it.
‘Our way was not the way of the Imperium,’ Talos quoted the ancient adage, ‘but we were right. If the Legion had stayed pure…’
: but it did not
: the legion was tainted by sin the moment the first nostraman-born warrior swore his oath of service
: and we deserved the hate of our primarch
: for we were not the warriors he wished us to be
Another pause. Another tremor quivered through the ship’s bones.
‘What’s happening?’
: reality is slipping through now
: the echo of damnation arrives at its destination
: but you should never have come back to the eastern fringe
Talos looked up again. The corpse hadn’t moved. ‘You said that before. I still don’t recall ordering such a thing.’
: you ordered it in search of a pure war to elevate the warband
: and seek answers to the doubts that plague you
: by walking upon tsagualsa once more
: nothing I say now is a revelation
: i speak only the same truths you are too proud to speak aloud
: you have been hollow for a long time brother
‘Why am I seeing this?’ He gestured around the chamber, at the body, at himself. ‘What… what is all this? A vision? A dream? A spell? The tricks of my own mind, or something from the outside crawling into my thoughts?’
: all of those and none of them
: perhaps this is merely a manifestation of your doubts and fears
: in the waking world you have been unconscious for fifty-five nights
: you are close to rising
He was on his feet again, as the ship be
gan to shake in prophetic earnest. He heard the hull groaning with the sincerity of a gut-shot soldier. Cracks began to lace their way across the occulus, sprinkling glass to the decking. ‘Fifty-five nights? That cannot be. How did this happen?’
: you know why
: you have always known
: some human children are not meant to carry gene-seed
: it breaks them apart at the genetic level
: some die fast
: some die slow
: but after three centuries of biological flux your genetic incompatibilities are finally catching up to you
‘Lies.’ Talos watched the ship coming apart around him. ‘Lies and madness are all you ever uttered in life, Ruven. The same holds true in death.’
: variel knows the truth
: centuries of injury
: centuries of endurance and pain
: centuries of the visions born of poisonous primarch blood
: your body can take no more punishment
: enjoy what time remains to you brother
: duty awaits in the waking world and you will remember precious little of our talk
: rise talos
: rise and see for yourself
II
AWAKENING
Light, muted and bleached by the red of his visor display, filtered into his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the last thing he expected. His brothers. His crew. The strategium, with its two hundred souls engaged in their duties.
‘I…’ He tried to speak, but his voice was a dehydrated vox-rasp. Talos slumped in his throne, though a chain collar around his throat prevented him from falling too far forward. Voices babbled all around him, along with the growl of armour joints moving closer.
‘I am not in my meditation chamber,’ he said. He’d never woken from a vision anywhere else, let alone to rise and find himself on the warship’s bridge. The prophet was struck by the image of his surroundings, wondering if he’d sat here in his armour the entire time, unconscious and screaming his delusional chants across the vox-network.
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