Lucius: The Faultless Blade

by Ian St. Martin

  At long last, Hakith found what he had been seeking. A true and viable doorway that would grant him passage into the realm between reality and the warp. Countless sacrifices and betrayals, the intolerable sufferance of servitude beneath the most vile warlords of the broken Legions, the deaths of unknowable amounts of sentient life, all had led to this. The accomplishment of his discovery was the achievement of Hakith’s grandest ambition, the sole drive that, in the wake of his Legion’s death, had stood as the purpose of his life.

  It was for such a secret that Hakith would die.

  For all of his power, toned and amplified through the wars that funded his search, Hakith could not see the eyes that watched him. The mind that beheld from afar each degrading, blood-drenched step of his journey, and his progress. And now, his victory.

  Hakith sailed the storms of Eyespace from within the bronze-and-crimson shell of the Elypsis. She was a small and slight frigate, the best he could have hoped to steal during his flight from Sortiarius, but she had served him well. Her guns had sung a ­thousand songs, and her armour had borne the brunt of the cataclysms that shaped themselves every moment in the realm of their damnation. The crew, few enough that there were by this time, were efficient and loyal slaves. He had even allowed a select few to kneel upon the bridge beneath the oculus screen as their master opened the way into the forbidden.

  Cries of alarm vomited from the maws of Prosperine gargoyles spaced around the circumference of the bridge. From the depths of the great clouds of storms that swept across the oculus, a dark sliver resolved. It drew nearer, growing into the graceful, predatory silhouette of the Diadem.

  ‘Come about!’ Hakith shouted to the team of servitors who controlled the navigation of the Elypsis. Its small array of engines flared as it turned. A salvo of macro shells roared from the trio of cannons that studded the frigate’s flank.

  The broadside crashed against the void shields of the Diadem in a riot of colour. The overlapping fields of energy shimmered as they absorbed the impact, dissipating and distributing it across the protective capsule surrounding the ship. She surged forwards undeterred, her own weapons priming.

  The exchange was pitilessly short.

  The Diadem was a bladed city in space, a vessel more than thrice the scale of the Elypsis. The outcome of a warship of her size descending upon a frigate was a foregone conclusion.

  Clarion had expressed her desire to toy with the frigate, to hound it across Eyespace before gutting it. The Composer had denied her request, demurely yet firmly. The sorcerer took no issue, however, as she used the Diadem’s lances to carve their prey apart piece by piece. She savoured its slow destruction until all that remained was a ­crippled, drifting hulk, just intact enough to maintain life support.

  Life needed to be maintained aboard the Elypsis for just a short while longer. Long enough for the Composer to go aboard, and collect the fruits of his careful cultivation.

  Throughout the entirety of his life, Direnc had known but a single constant. Pain. The pain of chains, of the cruelty of masters, of the deprivations endured as one who was enslaved. The pain of violence against his fellow serfs, in the gladiatorial pits and in the darkness of a ship’s corridors. The pain of killing them, of victory, of survival. The pain of knowing that he would continue on, to shoulder more suffering.

  All of this was recorded in scars across his flesh, and etched into the memories of a brutalised mind. All of those moments of blood, toil and despair were lost from his mind. They paled before what afflicted him now.

  Direnc had experienced the radiance of sensation, beyond any he could imagine. After a lifetime in thrall to those who worshipped at the altar of the god of blood and war, a deity who only took in skulls and still-beating hearts, Direnc felt the touch of a divine force of a different nature. An entity that gave wondrous, inconceivable gifts whose only cost was the joy of receiving them.

  He had felt the breath of Slaanesh.

  And then, like seeing the light of stars for a moment between the crushing smog of a factory world, it was taken from him. The pleasure was unimaginable, but its touch was fleeting. Those who now carried Direnc’s chains denied him all but the thinnest gasps of the divine musk fed into his respirator. He sucked it into himself as soon as the perfumed pheromones of its scent caressed him. It was tantalising in its reunion with his starving senses but just as quick to vanish. The absence was dissolving the core of his being, collapsing him from the inside. Even with the rationed joy he was not capable of reaching back to the dismal lows of the existence he had once lived, that of a beaten and miserable wretch in service to the XII Legion, treated as cattle and surrounded by murderers. He needed more.

  Direnc had thought he had tasted true life when he breathed in the mist. What he now felt was worse than death. He was drowning in air without it.

  The chains around Direnc’s throat rattled, constricting even through the dense suit he wore. Insulated as he was, Direnc was near collapse after walking the upper decks of the warship his masters had not bothered to inform him was named the Diadem. The barrage of light and sound was overwhelming, like travelling through the wild current of a sea churned by storms. Only a short journey had left him crippled with nausea and nearly blind.

  Another teasing whisper of the musk kept him upright. He followed the hunched, mutated shape holding his chains and stepped through a narrow, circular hatch in the wall. Direnc was shocked as darkness and silence confronted him. He thought for a moment that his consciousness had finally succumbed, until his collar was removed and the bulky helm was pulled loose from his head with a hiss of air pressure. Amber lumen strips flickered to life over him in a crackle of buzzing energy.

  Direnc stood in the aisle of a cramped, tubular chamber. Flanking him to either side were the silent forms of machine men, locked in restraint thrones. Their bodies were horrific amalgamations of flesh and silver, beyond the clumsy crudeness of combat servitors. These were lithe, contoured creations of smooth, flexible design. The lascarbines, segmented whips and blades that replaced their arms at the elbow appeared as though they had been born to them. Each was different, an individual rendition of the same vision to inseparably meld the organic with the mechanical. Direnc could not see where their bodies of blood and bone ended, and where the machine began.

  ‘Welcome, little one.’ The voice sent Direnc to his knees. He shrank down, pressing himself against the shins of a mechanical simulacrum of a perfect human female, as the heavy tread of ceramite boots passed by him. The soft scrape of fingertips trailed behind the softly clanging footfalls, from the fringes of a cloak fashioned of sensory organs. Noses gathered Direnc’s scent, while bloodshot eyes stared upon him in twitching unison.

  ‘Do you like Olivaw’s pets?’ The Composer motioned to the rows of cyborgs. ‘What the red world would think of his works now that he has embraced the brilliance of flesh.’

  The sorcerer chuckled, a frightful noise from behind his shining mask. He stopped at the end of the tube, sitting in an empty throne and lowering the restraints over himself. The deck beneath Direnc’s palms began to vibrate with a building rumble.

  He was inside a boarding torpedo.

  ‘I am going to gather knowledge of great import, and you are going to be part of it. Feel honoured.’ He motioned to the throne across from him, but Direnc remained rooted to the spot, dazed upon his knees.

  After a stretch of silence, the Composer tilted his head. +You will secure yourself, if you wish to survive our arrival.+

  Direnc cried out from the knifing pressure of the sorcerer’s voice in his head. The Composer inclined his head towards the throne again. Direnc steadied himself, blood pattering to the deck from his nose, and stood. He staggered over to the restraint throne, and locked himself in place.

  Being trapped within the throne, directly across from the staring visage of the Composer, was one of the most terrifying feelings of Direnc’s life.
The echoes of the demigod mage’s mind still rattled against the inner walls of his skull like chips of electric ice. The sorcerer was inside his thoughts, and thus knew the crippling panic afflicting him.

  With a sigh, the Composer produced a vial from a leather pouch on his belt. He opened the vial, emptying a measure of fine, violet-pink powder into his palm.

  Direnc’s body surged against his restraints, not waiting for his mind to process what the sorcerer held.

  ‘For your journey,’ he said, as the powder rose in a swirl above his palm. Were he not enslaved so completely to the poison, Direnc would have seen it for what it was, the strings tied about him to be pulled at the whim of a cruel puppeteer. But such clarity was beyond him now. The pink-purple cloud shivered as the boarding ram prepared to launch, before flowing across to envelop Direnc’s face.

  The slave’s eyes rolled back into his head. Rapture, devastating waves of crashing rapture. Direnc melted into them. The sights and sounds of the world around him withdrew, until there was nothing but him, alone with his bliss.

  At the farthest fringes of his senses, beyond his care, Direnc could just barely hear the sorcerer’s laughter as the torpedo fired.

  ‘Am I not magnanimous?’

  With the warband gone, whisked away and captured by the machinations of Fabius, the Composer had resorted to baser means to storm the Elypsis. A shoal of boarding torpedoes embedded themselves along the superstructure of the crimson frigate, disgorging their cargo into its sparking, flame-ridden innards. Mutants, scoured from the warring clans that populated the Diadem’s lower decks, charged aboard in crude armour of mail and cracked leather, bearing crooked axes and beaten heirloom autoguns in their claws. They brayed and stomped with iron-shod hooves, killing the few souls who sought to oppose them and herding the rest into bondage.

  From the other attack pods came boarding parties of sleek semi-organic automatons, the heretek Olivaw’s fusions of warp-blessed flesh and tainted machinery. They flowed into the veins of the Elypsis like poison. The directives and primal impulses buzzing within them guided them through the ship, leading unerringly to positions that cut off every passage leading to and from the command deck and bridge.

  The Composer emerged from his own torpedo, savouring the sting as the fringes of his cloak were singed by metal decking that had become warped and superheated by their incursion. The Diadem had deployed them with the aim of inserting them close to the bridge, and Clarion had not disappointed. Eidetic recall summoned the frigate’s construction instantaneously in his mind. He had but two decks to walk until he arrived.

  Olivaw’s creations glided around the sorcerer as they attended to their own objectives. None remained behind as his huscarls. Had he felt the need, he would not have left Afilai back within his tower sanctum. The Terminator would have been of negligible utility to him in any case. As it was, Olivaw’s current labours were devoted to the restoration of his war-plate after the thrashing it had received battling that greater daemon. No, the Composer would require no protection here.

  Already, he could feel the collective’s will to resist disintegrating. The Composer walked the corridors he had seen a thousand times from Hakith’s eyes. The frigate was populated by a skeleton crew, and an anaemic one at that. Hakith had lived the existence of a mercenary, and he had utilised similar means to achieve his aims. With the goal of his life’s obsession so close before him, he did not think to retain a cadre of warriors to ensure his passage into the webway. It made the matter of his fate all the simpler to decide. The Composer beckoned for Direnc to follow, and strode into the smoke wreathing the corridor.

  They progressed steadily through two decks abandoned during the fighting before they encountered resistance.

  III.IV

  When the lift’s descent from the floor of the eldar arena came to a halt, over one hundred Commorrite guns were levelled at Lucius’ head. Splinter rifles, disintegrators and thrumming cannons all had the Eternal between their crosshairs. The slender fingers of the gunners hovered just over triggers and firing studs.

  Lucius laughed. The cruel barks of it echoed from the walls of ­sloping alien plasteks. The fear dripped from his captors; he could see it in their eyes. An army of cold murderers, terrified of a single warrior.

  Rightly so.

  ‘Now this,’ said Lucius as his laughter ebbed. ‘This is what I was expecting.’

  Cadarn sank back into his fighting crouch. ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘Finally they bring something worthy of me and you sulk?’

  The renegade Executioner grunted. ‘Not all of us are as gifted as you, Eternal.’

  Lucius made a derisive noise, halfway between a chuckle and a scoff. The last note of it strained into a gurgle. Pressure and vertigo surged up his spine, like jaws of ice and grease swallowing him. The killers screamed louder, louder. Lucius needed something, anything, to focus on, desperate like a man sinking beneath the sea. He turned, locking his eyes upon the eldar hefting the largest weapon.

  ‘You there,’ said Lucius, pointing a clawed fingertip at the xenos. ‘Do you believe you can hit me, before I tear that little toy away and beat you to death with it?’

  The eldar remained silent. Their species lived lives measured in centuries, so Lucius doubted that it did not understand at least the most basic parts of what he had asked it. Even if the barrier of language had robbed the words of their meaning, the challenge was clear in Lucius’ posture, and the savage, smiling glee in his eyes. The Commorrite shifted, tightening its grip upon the cannon it held, its barrel bathed in crackling obsidian fire.

  ‘No?’ Lucius tilted his head, fighting to keep the tension from bursting out from inside his skull. He spread his arms, looking down at his feet. ‘But I am all the way over here.’

  ‘The death of us all,’ Cadarn groaned. Lucius ignored him. He clamped hold of the distraction, his focus drowning in the screams.

  Lucius snapped his fingers, eyes flashing wide. He could mask the strain in his voice if he sneered. ‘I have it. This will be more sporting. Let us wager, then, that as I am killing you, whether or not your bowels will have time to void themselves fully, before I tear that head of yours off?’

  ‘Very good, Lucius,’ a voice echoed from the hall leading from the lift. ‘That will be all.’

  The ring of tense dark eldar split, admitting Fabius Bile. The former Chief Apothecary of the Emperor’s Children arrived trailed by a pair of eldar in suits of elaborate heavy armour. The silent warriors bore long ritual powerblades, carrying them in light, practised grips and staring out from behind bone-white helms crested in curling horns.

  Lucius drank in every detail of the eldar from the moment they entered the room. The polished charcoal armour they wore was bulkier, heavier, every joint and plate crested with enough barbs and blades to make them weapons in their own right. It spoke of strength, more so than the usual eldar carapace, yet without sacrificing much of their favoured speed. Lambent green eyes smouldered behind the silver masks of their tall helms, focusing crystals clicking as they in turn studied him. The blades glittered from obsessive care, easily betraying their owners’ devotion. Lucius’ smile, for a rare moment, became genuine, as he glimpsed what passed amongst the craven aliens for swordfighters.

  ‘Dearest brother.’ Lucius took a step forwards, the eldar gunner forgotten. He bowed theatrically, cuffing away the beginnings of a nosebleed he wished to hide from view. ‘My saviour. You have left me in the care of the most dreadfully dull company.’ He tutted, wagging a claw at Bile as the fleshcrafter approached. ‘Have you come here to apologise?’

  Bile’s withered features remained set. He studied Lucius for a moment of extended silence, before turning with a short wave. ‘Follow me.’

  Cadarn looked to Lucius, who inclined his head in a flourish of mock appreciation. ‘But of course, kindred. Lead on.’

  Lucius and Cadarn passed
the twin eldar swordsmen, who spun smoothly behind them as they followed Fabius out of the chamber. Just before stepping from the lift, Lucius stopped, looking back at the eldar still gripping the energy cannon.

  ‘Worry not, little spindly thing,’ he said. ‘I promise, we will get to our wager soon enough.’ He bit down swiftly with a sharp clack of fangs, forcing himself to laugh as the alien twitched before striding from the room.

  ‘So much has changed,’ mused Fabius as the group entered a darkened hallway. He looked back at Lucius with a scowl. ‘Yet so much remains the same.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Fabius,’ laughed Lucius. ‘If you did not want my company, you should have thought of that before bringing me to this abhorrent travesty these things call home.’ He stared at the eldar on his right. Lucius snapped his face towards the xenos in challenge. The provocation had no effect upon the warrior, who maintained its lockstep with a purr of smooth armour joints.

  They came to a fork in the passage. With a wave of his arm, Fabius signalled one of the eldar to lead Cadarn down the left fork, as the other followed behind the two Emperor’s Children as they entered the right. Lucius saw a moment to exploit an opening, where he could have killed the eldar and either murdered Fabius or escaped. Perhaps both. Yet his curiosity for what the Primogenitor had in store held him back.

  ‘Too much for you together, are we?’ Lucius asked.

  ‘What I have is not for him,’ Bile replied. ‘It is a gift, for you.’

  ‘Ah, have you brought my sword back for me?’

  Lucius watched as Cadarn disappeared into the mists shrouding the opposite tunnel. ‘You would probably prefer my using that, brother, as opposed to me throttling you bare-handed.’

  Bile did not deem Lucius’ baiting to be worth responding to. They continued down the passage. After a time, the walls to either side became panes of dense leaded armourglass. Lucius peered into the murkiness beyond.