by Joe Parrino
More Officio Assassinorum from Black Library
ASSASSINORUM: THE EMPEROR’S JUDGEMENT
A Warhammer 40,000 audio drama
NEMESIS
A Horus Heresy novel
THRONE OF LIES
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IMPERIAL ASSASSINS: THE EBOOK COLLECTION
A collection of short stories by various authors, exclusively available from blacklibrary.com
Tales of the Crimson Slaughter from Black Library
CRIMSON DAWN
A Warhammer 40,000 novella
DARK VENGEANCE
A Warhammer 40,000 novella
THE ASCENSION OF BALTHASAR
A Warhammer 40,000 audio drama
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Prologue
The Changer’s symbol squirmed around the Black Legionnaire’s right eye. Severin Drask, sorcerer lord of the Crimson Slaughter, could not take his eyes from the god’s rune.
From the smile that Beraddon, sorcerer of the Black Legion, brutish and arrogant, offered to Drask, he knew it. Angular runes marred the man’s stone teeth. One eye shone a dirty, muddled brown, while the other was a chunk of marble emblazoned with the Pantheon star.
‘The Warmaster, praise be,’ began Beraddon, ‘will not see you. He will not indulge your request. His time is precious, now more than ever. Your request for assistance and consultation is denied.’
Drask made to protest, even as his hearts sank.
Beraddon’s smile grew wider, feral, hulking, infuriating. ‘I see the disappointment on your face, weakblood. Worry not. The Despoiler, honour to him, will not see you. But I will.’
‘The Temple of Shades must be opened, my lord.’ Gods of the watching warp, to call another lord was galling. ‘We can open a new front in this war. No longer will we be bound to the Eye of Terror. No longer will the glorious hosts of the True Crusaders batter themselves against Cadia’s walls. The Temple of Shades will give me the power to open a new warp rift, one large enough to vomit vast armies into the Imperium’s vulnerable core. This is a chance to end it. This is a chance to end the Long War.’
The pitch, rehearsed and recited so many times, flowed past Drask’s lips, an entreaty, and an exhortation to action. The words were etched on his hearts, beating through his blood. He knew how precious this chance was. He knew the favour he would earn with the Warmaster. His would be the name lifted in unending praise to the watching gods, as the one who had broken the bloody stalemate that had so far prevented the victory of the Long War.
The Black Legionnaire’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know of the Long War? We have been fighting this crusade for countless aeons. Prattle not to me about it. For you, it is short. The conflict you fight in is but a weak hint of the trials we have endured and overcome.’ His lip curled into a smirk, still mocking, but also thoughtful. Daemonic faces swam through the dirty silver of his mutated flesh. ‘How do you know this will work?’
‘I have seen it, lord. Much of the future is known and bestowed upon me through the glorious gifts of the patron we both serve.’
Beraddon paced, stomping through broken bodies. He snorted a laugh.
‘I doubt that,’ he said. ‘How did you come to know of the Temple of Shades?’
‘Certain daemons whispered of it. I followed the traces, the wisps of information across the Eye. In the great libraries of the Ahmen-Ahket, I found further proof. The Temple of Shades exists, I assure you. It exists and it will do all I have said.’
Darkness curled from Drask’s mouth as he spoke, the echoes of the souls he had consumed on his quest for this knowledge. They wailed in time with his words.
Beraddon’s ship, the Seventh Edict, was playing host to this meeting. Drask wished it had been otherwise. He wished to stalk the grand halls of his own ship, the Liar’s Gift, where he could posture and threaten this arrogant son of failed Horus. There Drask would have been surrounded by the reassuring presence of his own warband. Instead, Beraddon had called him here, shortly after Drask had sent his request for an audience with the Warmaster.
The twilight halls of the Seventh Edict glowered down at the pair, pressing in at Drask’s mind.
Here, Drask was forced to curry favour, to scurry beneath the notice of those who believed themselves better. The sneering princes of the Black Legion. He had killed many of them, proved the worth of his sorcery. And yet, Abaddon would not condescend to see him, to listen to his plan. He met with Beraddon, this loathsome creature, in some forgotten court tucked away beneath towering angular glyphs and broken, mummified corpses.
The fire-blackened corpses coruscated with ghostly flames, their bodies shrouded and locked in foetal agony. Beraddon ignored them, but Drask could sense the memories of the fire that burned from his hands, the phantom echoes of dying warriors and the Black Legionnaire’s laughter. The voices of the dead whispered at the edge of Drask’s hearing.
‘Why did you leave your brothers, weakblood?’ Beraddon asked, idly stripping the flesh from a woman’s shrivelled corpse. The Changer’s sigil squirmed along his face again, dancing along the rugged contours of the Black Legionnaire’s features. ‘Kranon has been to the Warmaster’s court. Your Chapter Master,’ he sneered the title, ‘has met with the Despoiler.’
‘Liar,’ whispered a dry voice in Drask’s mind. It was one of the slain who dogged his steps, killed in ages past, whispering secrets. His Chapter’s curse and its first steps on the path to damnation manifested most often when his choler rose. ‘Ignorant worm. Strike him down. I never liked him. He is useless.’
Drask felt his face flush with anger. Flames danced in his vision. The Crimson Slaughter sorcerer lord considered immolating Beraddon. He pictured the Black Legionnaire’s flesh running like molten metal. His hands curled into fists, and tiny daemons, anger bright, skittered over the wrought iron.
‘I have Abaddon’s favour. He will not listen to your plan. He has no time for such things,’ Beraddon continued. The chunk of marble in his left eye socket glowed with flickering witchlight.
Liar, Drask thought. This man was nothing
, merely a veteran of a conflict that no longer held relevance. A son of the things that the Despoiler disavowed, Beraddon could only claim importance due to the quirks of fate. Warriors of Horus’s Legion no longer mattered, not to Abaddon the Despoiler or the empire he was supposedly interested in building.
‘The Warmaster will not see you. He will not grant his assent to this endeavor. But,’ the Black Legionnaire said, ‘do it anyway. Accomplish this thing and I will ensure that the Warmaster is made aware. We will both rise in glory. Forget the Ezekarion and the ruling power structure of the Warmaster’s court. If we do this thing – if we break the deadlock of the Long War – our names will echo through eternity. The gods themselves will grant us unimaginable power. I will ensure that the right ears know of the Temple of Shades and what we did there.’
We, the Black Legionnaire had said. We, as if he would do anything to assist Drask. No, Drask thought. He will merely add his name to the glory I will write upon the stars. We shall see when the balance of power shifts.
‘As you say, my lord,’ Drask acquiesced. The words tasted sour on his tongue; the contempt, the anger, barely held in check.
Beraddon nodded. ‘Good. Succeed or die, weakblood. I look forward to seeing our results.’
The audience ended. Drask left the room, fire sprites dripping from the cracks in his armour, his rage nearly incarnated as weak daemon-things.
The halls of the Seventh Edict were empty, nearly derelict, full of burned corpses.
Shadows pooled as he passed a recessed alcove marked with sharp runes. A horror manifested, armour wrought in bone and darkness. A horned helmet lowered in greeting.
‘Akkarnol,’ Drask said.
‘My lord,’ the shadow acknowledged. When the Crimson Slaughter warrior spoke, it was with a daemon’s whickering snarl. His voice had been warped, along with his body, by their journeys within the Eye. ‘What does the Black Legionnaire have to say?’
‘What they always do. They will watch and claim the glory.’
Akkarnol laughed, the sound deep and rasping.
‘It was ever thus,’ the warrior said. ‘They do not care for the achievements of us “weakbloods” until we accomplish something of note that they can claim for their own aggrandisement. We should just kill him and be done with it.’
‘Your words are wise, brother,’ Drask acknowledged. Where many of his broken Chapter had fallen to the mad blessings of the Blood God, Drask and others like him had sought a different master. Akkarnol’s horns creaked as they twisted into the Changer’s rune.
Their swift strides brought them to the bustling port of the embarkation bay. Servitors trundled past the cowled figures of the Dark Mechanicum. The burned corpses that filled the halls of the Seventh Edict were also present here, lying where they had fallen against the brushed steel.
‘But we need Beraddon’s support, however little he offers. If there is a chance he will bring this to the Warmaster’s attention, we must seize it. I will not return to the Lost Hope. I will not bow to Kranon’s madness again and call it wisdom.’
As they boarded the Thunderhawk Akkarnol asked, ‘What do we do? What are your orders, lord?’
The gunship rumbled around them as they left the Seventh Edict behind. Drask ignored the voices of the slain that whispered in his ears, taunting and threatening him.
‘We open the Temple of Shades. We end the Long War.’
I
Chemical suppressants kept the kill-urge low. So long as the practice cages refilled with training servitors, Torq could actually think and reason.
Swords stabbed towards his body, whirling on four limbs. The servitor’s dull, drooling face stared slackly from behind the cage of steel. The sharp, killing edge of the practice steel caught the dim light of the Traduceum’s lumen globes.
Sylas Torq’s own blade jumped in the spaces between, knocking some blades away, redirecting others. He parried them all, a blur of motion that drove the repetitive thoughts away and calmed the chemical mania that tainted his mind.
A haze covered his vision. Fever shapes and inhuman sounds crawled through the spaces of his mind. Cold and heat prickled along his limbs.
Bright thoughts danced in his head, painful and loud. Musings on the God-Emperor, the barely remembered faces of the dead and the damned, images of skull-masks – all these things and more flashed through his consciousness.
All of it was a discomfort. And a blessed distraction.
But the Eversor Assassin known as Torq would have traded none of it away. While he fought, his thoughts stretched through his mind, a personality unfolding. He relished the identity that had been reclaimed for him by the Vanus and Callidus operatives, stolen back from the dark chemicals that ruled him and his kind.
For now, while they travelled to the rendezvous point, and thence to Achyllus, Torq was, for the first time in a very long time, himself. A self that he had forgotten, a self that had been stolen and shaped into a killing machine. He was, for a short time, a human again rather than a weapon.
It was a glorious thing, to come back to oneself, Torq mused. To actually taste life, to speak and know the words that left his mouth, to frame questions and thoughts and ideas, were precious gifts.
It was nearly enough to fill the broken hole that crouched at the heart of his consciousness.
Even the failsafe that guaranteed his victims never survived was gone. The chemical cocktails that normally swam in his blood and triggered explosively on his death, had been temporarily suppressed by the knowledge and art of the Vanus operative.
Those other two Assassins were still smug, tainted by their training and service to another Temple of the Officio Assassinorum. Torq would never forget that, but he cherished them for the gift they had given him.
So Torq’s mind focused on the combat servitor and ignored the pangs of withdrawal that removed the perfection of his conditioning. His attacks were still brutal, fuelled by training that defined him.
A slice and a stab saw blood and preservative fluid spilling from a servitor’s mottled flesh. The automaton canted in distress, a stream of noise that meant nothing to the Eversor. Blood dribbled from the wound.
A grin flashed across Torq’s scarred features, a mark of satisfaction.
Then cold came, flashing through him, setting his limbs to shivering. The symptoms of withdrawal frustrated Torq. Without the drugs that filled him with fury and stole away the man he was, he felt diminished.
The killing edges of blades lanced for his head and dived for his body. Torq dropped, barely writhing out of the way.
Bright pain stitched across his back as a servitor found its mark.
Torq ground his teeth together and tried to ignore the other presence in the room.
The Callidus watched him, as she always did. Her green eyes judged.
The black reflective walls of the Traduceum, the Officio Assassinorum vessel that had brought them to their target, absorbed the sound of his combat. His blades licked out, their edges dulled for training but made deadly by the force he exerted.
He thundered out with his fist and caught the segmented joint of the upper right blade. Metal crumpled and pain burned across his knuckles as he drove his fist through the joint. The blade spun away and Torq grunted with effort and exhaustion as he broke apart another grey-fleshed machine-man.
‘We’re going to run out of those,’ came the Callidus’s voice. It was cultured in a way that his own voice could never be.
Torq gave her a nod. It was a thing of quiet dignity, a mark of respect and an offer of thanksgiving. Or so he meant it to be. She gave no acknowledgement of his gesture.
‘You keep breaking them. They were meant for all of us to train with.’
Torq grunted by way of response. In his head, a fear took root. Without the violence of the training cages, there would be nothing to keep the rage in check. He’d lose hi
mself once more beneath the broken-glass pain of unfettered anger.
‘Don’t say that,’ he whispered.
‘Why not? It’s the truth. Control yourself, Eversor.’
‘Truth,’ Torq laughed. ‘That’s funny coming from a false face.’
He couldn’t help the insult, couldn’t keep it bottled in. He hadn’t meant to say it, but decades of service to his Temple, and the ingrained contempt for the other Temples who killed in different, lesser, ways, prompted it. He tried to take it back, thought of calling her name and softening the words. But nothing came.
Klara Rhasc shook her head. She flowed down towards the Eversor, crossing the space between them in an eyeblink, and with a predator’s grace. A sword flickered into her hand. Rhasc met Torq’s eyes then glanced pointedly down to the practice blade he carried.
Another voice interrupted, exasperation driving the words.
‘Oh, for the God-Emperor’s sake, this posturing serves no one, least of all the Temples or our mission. You are both Assassins of the Officio. Behave like it or I will thrash you both.’
There was the click of a flint striking and the stench of lho-smoke filled the practice chamber. This, more than the Vanus Assassin’s words, shocked Rhasc.
‘Kurei,’ she said, slowly turning. The Eversor stood behind her, irrelevant now in the face of this surprise.
‘None other,’ answered Kurei Adamta, a lho-stick dangling from his lips. A smile danced in his eyes.
Despite sharing a ship and collaborating on missions, Rhasc had never seen Adamta, an Assassin of the Vanus Temple, in the flesh. He kept his life hidden, shrouded in his own quarters on the ship. She only knew of him from his voice, the low growl of the perpetual lho-addict. Her mind had painted him a thousand times, conjuring hundreds of appearances for the man she had come to call an ally, if never quite a friend.
In the flesh, he turned all her conjectures false. Kurei Adamta proved to be short. His skin was a dark walnut colour, common to worlds where the central system star burned bright. His face was a bulldog’s scrunch, covered in scars.