by Joe Parrino
‘Good to see you too, Rhasc,’ he said.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked.
‘The same reason as you.’
‘I mean, why now?’
‘I know. We’ve arrived at the rendezvous point. We’re receiving a guest shortly. I thought I’d let you both know. And keep you from killing each other.’ He lit a lho-stick from the end of the old one.
‘You had to do that in person, after all this time?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be best to soften one surprise with a lesser one. I’m sorry, Klara.’
‘That surprise being?’ asked Torq.
‘An unpleasant one for our Callidus friend here, Eversor.’
A chime sounded through the ship. A servitor’s burbling voice drooled acknowledgement that another vessel was inbound.
‘We’d best get it over with then,’ said Torq. The Eversor left the training room, his posture growing increasingly hunched.
II
Achyllus burned in the fires of Severin Drask’s will. The planet would be unwrought, broken, to drag the Long War from its stagnation, to prove to the Old Kinds that strength did not descend from lineage, and that one did not need to have built the Imperium to tear it down.
Severin Drask and his warriors brought destruction and doom to this miserable planet. Great Akkarnol, bearing Drask’s bloody, glittering standard, punched through the struggling Cadian mortals. That they were present at all was an irritant. Why would the Imperium even bother to guard this world?
Achyllus Prime offered nothing of note to the wider Imperium, save the taxes and tithes that collared all within the hypocrite realm of man. Its turquoise skies stretched over shimmering fields of grain and scattered townships. Unbeknownst to all but the very wise, the Temple of Shades waited behind the veil here, crouched in the Sea of Souls for one with the power and the drive to tear it free, to bring it to purpose.
He could hear the Temple now, even as mortals screamed and died around him. It called to him in the fell voices of the daemonkind. Other voices clamoured for his attention too, his renegade brothers from the Crimson Slaughter. They streaked past him in armour of red and bronze. They were the ones who had rejected Kranon and his madness. Bound and sworn to the Changer of the Ways, his warband had refused to follow the rest of his Chapter into the unheeding bloodlust of never-ending war.
Mutagenic fire whipped from Drask’s hands. Cadians died with wet burbles, coughs of aspirated blood and broken spines.
He thrust his staff through the torso of a ranting commissar.
The troopers around the commissar barely had time to feel their morale shatter beneath the warp magic before Drask ended their pathetic lives with a sweeping spray from his storm bolter.
The gloaming turquoise sky exploded into sordid life, full of the crash and burn of detonating system defence ships. Achyllus’s heavens were being slowly turned into hells, mirrors of the dark realm that provided haven to the Imperium’s traitors. Strange witchlights, auroras built of shrieking souls, weaved through the clouds.
The ground itself was a weeping morass of mud and stone, churned by the countless dead of a butchered planetary population. The Crimson Slaughter had arrived swiftly, burning and killing. Their very presence heralded insurrection, wrought by Drask’s manipulation of the warp and the spontaneous eruption of nightmares within the mortals’ ranks. The people of the world had turned upon one another.
All around the sorcerer lord came the screams of the changing and the dying. Pieces of mortal flew, shifting and bubbling as they danced through the night air. Bat-winged globs of flesh wept tears of coal-coloured smoke while spinning spirals of blood and bone crashed into Guardsmen. Driven almost mad by the twisted remnants of their comrades, the Cadians faced a brutal assault and did not weather it. They broke. In ones and twos, faced with the blessings of the Great Changer, their minds burned and they fled.
The stench stained the air. Weak daemon-things, drawn by the slaughter and sworn to the High Maze, flickered through the air on sickening contrails of unlight.
Drask could hear the cries of countless more creatures of the warp demanding he let them run free and wild, fists and claws of raw soulstuff hammering against the veil.
For a moment, the sorcerer lord almost obliged them, but then he held on to his iron will. The voices of the slain that haunted him, all those he had once betrayed, crowed in disappointment. They waited for his failure. They longed to see the one who had broken them brought low. They would wait for all eternity for that to happen.
Drask’s storm bolter chattered, carving through an advancing knot of Imperial Guardsmen.
‘They always said that Cadians died hard,’ Drask said. ‘That they were the only force in the Imperium to rival the Adeptus Astartes in strength.’
‘They must have lied,’ chuckled Akkarnol. ‘They die as other men die.’ Blood streamed from the possessed Space Marine’s maw. Wicked teeth drooled bright, noxious light.
Two Guardsmen sprinted forward, lasguns spitting their weak light.
Akkarnol roared, the entity within him stirring ever more from its slumber. The pair of Guardsmen tumbled through the air and landed with a sickening crack of broken bones and ruptured organs. The corrupted Crimson Slaughter warrior pounced on the bodies and tore into them, desperate to sate the appetite of the daemon bound within his flesh and soul.
Drask could feel the daemon swelling with unholy power, pressing at his brother’s mind with tendrils of shadow and bile. Akkarnol had asked for a solution to keep his own voices at bay, to stifle the haunting cries of murdered victims. The solution was little better.
New voices joined the clamour in Drask’s skull, the echoes of stolid soldiers. The shades of the dead Cadians wailed in terror as he tore through their living comrades.
Two Crimson Slaughter Space Marines, traitors bound and sworn to his warband, died as a lucky pulse of las-fire tore through one of their backpacks. The power reactor within went critical, erupting in a cloud of nuclear fire and unbridled energy.
Drask felt their souls shriek into the empyrean. He paused as a curious sadness washed through him. Those men had been brothers, bred from the same stock as him.
Purple-eyed men and women spat hate and defiance the deeper he ripped through them. Stubber rounds spanked off his armour. Prayers to the False Emperor were thrown at the sorcerer lord.
A priestess of the False Creed strode through their ranks, bellowing a paean to their dead god. Drask could see their morale stiffen, even in the face of all this horror.
He would not allow that to happen. The Cadians must die here. Achyllus would fall and Drask’s star would rise. The Temple of Shades would open.
Drask could unmake the woman with a word, turning her soul to ash and dust. But no, he would make an example of her, draw out the pain and death.
His staff flicked forward, slicing through reality and emerging behind the buzzing blade of the woman’s chainsword. The weapon slipped through her defences and into her flesh. He lifted, swinging the staff up. She tried to stay on the ground. Her prayers grew louder, and she screamed to the Corpse-Emperor.
Her comrades threw themselves at the sorcerer lord, trying to swarm him and bring him down by weight of numbers. Runes of fire dripped from Drask’s mouth and he drew them upon the air in sickly flickerings of green and gold.
Frail arms wrapped around his, trying to pull him down. A man with a corporal’s stripes threw himself at the staff, his flesh melting and burning even as he dragged the heavy gold weapon down.
None could resist the might of Drask’s armoured form. He shoved his staff still further into the warp and impaled the priestess. She screamed then.
Her impending death resonated through the warp rift, down the length of his staff. Drask’s eyes rolled into his skull as he supped on the feeling of it.
Panic ripple
d anew through the Cadian ranks.
Then Drask felt it, the presence of another mind murmuring through the warp. Through the murk of mortal minds and the bright stabs of hate and rage of his fellow Crimson Slaughter, the heavy soul of a psyker called into the aether.
He was attempting a sending. While not an astropath, the witchmind sought to cast what he saw, heard and felt into the void and bring warning to the Imperium. He could not be allowed to succeed.
Achyllus lost,+ the psyker whispered frantically. +Traitors have come.+
Drask belatedly recognised the priestess’s sacrifice for what it was, and his eyes narrowed in displeasure. ‘A feint,’ he murmured.
Here was the discipline of the sons and daughters of Cadia. That such guile had tricked him, that they had kept their purpose hidden at the expense of so many lives, stood testament to the resolve of the Cadian Imperial Guard.
The other mind’s spoor grew louder in the warp, rippling across the battlefield. The Cadians spent their strength to keep the Crimson Slaughter distracted, while their primaris psyker called for aid.
Drask projected his mind outwards, relying on muscle memory and instinct to take care of the human dregs that swarmed him. He passed through the battlefield, leaving behind a ripple of hoarfrost and scorched earth.
Where are you, psyker?+ Drask thundered. His psychic voice startled feasting daemons into sudden flight, squawking like disturbed carrion crows with nearly human voices.
The psyker’s soul flared as he forced more of his message into the aether.
Then Drask snapped back into his body.
A casual gesture flung the Cadians around him aside, killing them before their bodies could hit the ground. A bow wave of thrown and burning mortals drove before the advancing sorcerer.
Half of his mind worked on clearing the path. The other tried to contain the psyker’s message. Acrid sweat broke across Drask’s brow, joining the sulphuric stink that circulated through the recycled atmosphere of his war-plate.
His vision blurred. Fatigue bloomed through his muscles while a headache pounded.
The words boomed in his mind, the psyker’s strident, desperate calls reverberated against his every fibre.
Send relief,+ the voice begged. +Major incursion.+
The words burned along his bones, thundered through his blood. He held them at bay, but barely.
Traitor Space Marines.+
The psyker watched his approach, sagging against his staff of office. But he still did his duty and channelled the warning. His face was haggard, worn and bleached by his sending. A rictus of pain scarred him and coloured his aura in blooms of bruised purple and clotted red.
Help!+
The psyker’s warning slipped from Drask’s mind and his lips formed the words. The message thundered into the aether, disjointed and disconnected.
Achyllus Prime.+
Drask reached the primaris psyker and felt the air coalesce around him as he met the resistance of the man’s guardian shield. +Servants of ruin. Unknown purpose. Achyllus falls.+
The sorcerer lord pressed forwards, stopping at the runes inscribed in the mud.
Rage filled Drask at the humans’ impudence. He roared and called an order into the vox. ‘To me!’ His mind felt wretched, bereft of the warp’s comfortable caress.
Akkarnol howled from across the battlefield. Bolter fire erupted around the psyker, stitching into the mud and bodies. Scraps of flesh and torn uniforms flapped into the air.
The psyker’s barrier deflected the projectiles. Desperation was writ onto his features. His psychic voice grew weaker as he became more engrossed in saving his physical form.
Drask began incantations of his own. He knew his time was short and his skills in the subtler paths of the Art limited. While he was a powerful pyrokine, and had a wide body of knowledge, his talents had always focused on the more martial gifts of his mind. He had to keep the message contained. He had to keep the Imperium ignorant of events on Achyllus until it was too late to effect change.
Akkarnol circled the psyker. The man stood his ground, driven past fear and into the arms of almighty duty. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, some resignation to his own fate. Resolve stiffened his features. Pride then took its place.
Then the psyker pushed. The mortal’s mouth stretched wide, then wider still. Drask could hear his jaw break with brittle cracks as his mind-voice thundered into the warp. Tiny dimples appeared against his forehead, like finger marks pushing in.
His head deformed, squeezed from the sides as thought, ideas and, above all, the warning tore into the aether. The clouds burst above even as the psyker’s brain case shattered. Vile obsidian rain fell, pounding into the battlefield. It streamed from the plates of the Crimson Slaughter, dyeing their armour black in the deluge.
Akkarnol pounced with a roar, clawed arms outstretched and maw opened wide.
Cadians were knocked flat. Reality split. Daemons poured into real space, weak, mewling wretches of the lower choirs. But they were still lethal. Mortals and Crimson Slaughter alike fell to the dripping claws of the neverborn.
The sorcerer lord’s voice rose in pitch, shouting the words of containment, trying to cage the astropathic message. The psyker’s mortis cry proved too strong.
The message, a blend of words, visions, feelings and horror slipped out from the bleeding husk of Achyllus, driven by the last gasp of a dying mind. It was bound, Drask knew, for the listening ears of the Imperium.
III
The Traduceum’s loading bay was a simple thing. There were no crates stacked within, no servitors bustling to prepare for the docking. There was just bare scuffed steel. A blue force field fuzzed at the end, locking the void away.
The three Assassins waited. Weapons were holstered at their hips. Their lethal bodies were tense, but none reacted as yet. Klara Rhasc felt the coiled-spring tension that came before combat. Even Adamta, short and compact, was a thing of hard muscles – weaponised humanity. While the trio lacked the physical uniformity of the Adeptus Astartes, there was something that bound the three together. It was in the way they stood and in the manner in which they carried themselves.
A massive shudder rocked the Traduceum. Metal boomed and wailed. An umbilicus broke through the blue haze. Air and vapour gusted forth, trailing like dense fog into the Traduceum’s landing bay.
Klara’s keen hearing caught the muffled hint of footsteps. The near silent rustle of cloth ghosted through the vapour. She felt the cold grasp of recognition crawl up her spine.
Pain darted up her side, driving into her spine. The old wound in her flank burned with sudden heat. With it came memories.
Klara Rhasc lies on a snow-covered street. Adamta is yelling in her ear through the vox, confused, angry, concerned. All these flavours war in his voice. But Klara can barely hear him, can barely feel anything except the warmth stealing from her body. Centimetres from her outstretched hand lies a fallen knife, poisoned tip melting through the snow. She hears the sound, over and over. A muffled crack of noise, the crunch of bone and the tearing of flesh. She should know the sound, but she cannot think as the warmth leaves her, fleeing her body to lie red against the white. Bright pain and shame; for the first time in her life, she has failed a mission.
Footsteps crunch, light and muffled.
Flakes fall from a sky pregnant with grey clouds.
A masked face looks down, lenses whirring. A black cloak stirs in a gentle breeze. Wisps of smoke curl from a sniper rifle.
She hears another voice, a man’s voice, and she feels nothing but hatred.
‘No,’ she whispered. Rhasc drew a knife from the sheath on her hip. Adamta steadied her with a light touch. She shied away from him, twitching at the foreign feeling.
From out of the umbilicus emerged a masked figure, covered from head to toe in a black bodyglove and swaddled in a dark cl
oak. Slung over one shoulder was a long rifle. She knew the silhouette, had been haunted by it in her dreams. A Vindicare. Adamta had hinted as much, but seeing the other Assassin in the flesh was too much.
The masked figure’s face panned from Assassin to Assassin. The gesture was slow, inexorable and somehow judgemental. His gaze lingered on Klara.
Without even consciously realising it, Rhasc hurled the knife. A flash of silver spun through the air.
Quick as lightning and with a sudden whine, the Vindicare pulled his pistol, pressed the trigger and vaporised the knife in one smooth motion. Then he returned the pistol to its holster. Never once did his masked gaze slip from Klara Rhasc.
Klara became dimly aware of shouting around her. Adamta was yelling for calm, cursing about some improbable aspect of the God-Emperor. Torq was hunched, in the corner, clutching his head. He mouthed nonsense words.
The Vindicare never broke his stare. Instead, he spoke for Klara’s benefit. The words were calm, utterly devoid of emotion.
‘I have always found that restraint is the greatest virtue,’ he said.
He removed his mask, revealing skin the warm colour of honeyed amber and a head utterly bare of hair. A proud noise hooked out from the man’s face while thin lips concealed a mouth that seemed built for smiling. Judging by the frown lines that surrounded it, the gesture never graced his features. His grey eyes were dispassionate and clinical.
Rhasc focused on his features, mnemonics drifting through her mind. She committed it to memory, ready to shape her own features accordingly.
Quick strides, almost silent, brought him to the other three. He held his hand out to Adamta in a perfunctory shake.
‘Viktor Zhau,’ the Vindicare offered. His tone never altered, never shifted. It was so calm it bordered on infuriating.
He repeated the same gesture to the Eversor, repeated his name. Still huddling in the corner, Torq met his gaze, snarled at him and ignored the handshake.