Rauth raised his knife and began circling right. ‘Weaker the mantis who talks too much,’ he told the daemon.
Blood of Armageddon, by Sonolocus. Karras would know the quote. If he still existed in that hijacked body of his, maybe he heard it.
Fight, Scholar, thought Rauth. Fight your way back up.
He tightened his grip on the tiny relic in his left hand and felt the weight of all his hopes resting on it.
If you can regain control for just an instant, all may not be lost.
Thirty-eight
The beast was fast. It had all the speed of a Space Marine’s body plus its own raw, reckless power fused together in one.
Rauth found himself on the defensive from the start.
The beast opened by leaping at him, faking with a low swipe of the left hand, those claws so long and black, then slashing diagonally down with the right.
Rauth’s reflexes were all that saved him, his subconscious programming moving much faster than conscious thought could manage.
He slid the downward blow aside by inches and slashed out in a backhand strike with his knife. But he had to be careful. He had to make the beast believe he meant business, but he also had to give Karras a chance to regain control. He couldn’t afford to carve up the Death Spectre if he was to have any hope of saving him.
And Darrion Rauth wanted to save him.
Since they had met, he had known he would have to kill Karras one day. Sigma’s coven had seen it. The psyker’s greatest asset was also his greatest weakness, and one day, they said, it would overwhelm him. Rauth was charged with watching him, waiting for that day, duty bound to step in and end the threat, destroying the very Space Marine who would be leading him.
Fate was cruel.
Rauth had tried not to like Karras. It was usually easy for him to remain cold and closed off to others, but their back and forth in quotes, their mutual love of written works – some extremely rare – had forged in Rauth’s mind an unspoken bond. He respected Karras. The Librarian committed everything, all he was, all he had, to every desperate fight he entered. Such a shame he had been born with the psyker gene. Things would have been much easier for him otherwise.
As Rauth and Hepaxammon circled each other, the Exorcist’s mind raced for a way to reach the soul trapped inside. If Scholar was still down there, a prisoner in his own hijacked mind, there was a chance, albeit small, that he could be drawn back up.
If he couldn’t, Rauth would have to slay him, and Hepaxammon would retreat from the physical realm, but it would drag Karras’ immortal soul with it to be tortured in the depths of the warp for all eternity.
It’s a fight for Karras’ soul, and I cannot afford to lose.
An idea occurred to him – a ridiculous long shot, but better than nothing at all.
‘Unending is the vigilance of the Adeptus Astartes.’ He said it loud and clear as he circled right, keeping a careful eye for sign of the beast’s next lunge.
Karras was powerless to answer, but he saw Rauth speak it, heard the words in his ears. He would have answered, too, but that his voice was no longer his own.
His inner voice, however, remained to him. He finished the quote.
And boundless is their honour, their sacrifice, their service.
Adelus Gayan’s Ode to Strength. Thirty-third millennium.
Hepaxammon heard his thoughts and laughed. To Rauth, it said, ‘Words will avail you nothing, deal-breaker. You cannot save yourself or the Death Spectre. And his pathetic Chapter had such high hopes for him. Such a pity!’
It laughed, jaws wide, then suddenly lunged, grasping for Rauth’s wrists and twisting its head sideways to bite at his neck.
Again, Rauth was just fast enough. He slipped his head to the side of the jaws, then smashed it into the daemon’s brow, opening a cut that bled into Karras’ right eye, blinding it.
Struck so, the daemon loosened its grip. Rauth immediately twisted his knife arm away and brought the butt of the blade hammering into the side of Karras’ head.
The daemon staggered, roaring in pain, lifting its clawed hands to its skull.
Looking at its terrible, twisted form – a mockery of Space Marine glory – it was hard to think of this thing as Karras now. Rauth had to remind himself that it was still the body of his battle-brother. That all wasn’t lost quite yet.
‘Honour is the only currency they seek,’ he boomed.
Again, Karras’ imprisoned soul heard. Again, he recognised the quote and finished it.
Honour is the price of their service. By that service is our doom held at bay.
The Shadow of the Shepherd, by Annaria Ixia. Thirty-eighth millennium.
The daemon faked at Rauth again, feigning a lateral right slash before spinning with its left talons extended in a wide backhand sweep.
Knife-like claws raked Rauth’s breastplate, sending out a shower of short-lived orange sparks and leaving deep gouges in the ceramite. Rauth was almost knocked from his feet, such was the power of the blow. Any closer and his chest would have been cored like an apple.
He steadied himself and dropped into a lower crouch. His grip tightened on his knife and on the little relic in his left hand. So far, he could see no sign that he was any closer to being able to use it. The daemon’s grip on Karras’ body was too tight. The Death Spectre’s soul was too well bound.
Do something, Karras. Find a way to push through. Anything. You only have to surface for an instant, and I will be on him. If you cannot do it soon, I may have no choice.
Rauth knew he was physically outmatched. The daemon’s raw, inhuman power married to Karras’ superhuman strength and speed, not to mention the addition of power armour now twisted to serve daemonic needs, was an overwhelming combination.
The Exorcist could hold the beast off, but not for long. The daemon would never tire. And it didn’t need to hold back as he did.
One more time, Karras. One more time. But you have to try. I don’t care what it takes, but you have to do something.
Karras raged helplessly as the beast in control of his body slashed deep into Rauth’s breastplate. He saw Rauth stagger backwards and knew that this was a fight the Exorcist was not winning. Why had he abandoned his bolter? Why had he not taken the kill-shot when he’d had the chance?
You know why. He’s intent on saving you. And if he keeps it up, he’s going to get himself killed.
Hopeless anger blazed inside him. He was desperate to undo this, to wrestle control back from Hepaxammon before he had to watch his own distorted hands deal the killing blow.
Again Karras thought of Cordatus. Was there truly no chance that the Chief Librarian had foreseen this and set up some kind of pre-emptive defence along the timeline? Or had Karras’ prime futures become too complicated, too clouded for there to be any hope of salvation?
He cursed.
I cannot always expect him to appear and rescue me, damn it. If those days are over, so be it. If I am worthy of the Chapter’s expectations…
He thought of the day Cordatus had plucked him from the air over the chasm. He thought of his people under attack by red giants, of the burning forest, of…
Aranye. The eldar witch.
She had warned him of horrors ahead. It was she who had first spoken the name Tychonis to him.
She was powerful, and she claimed some interest in his fate.
But she was xenos! She could no more be trusted than the daemon!
Even as he thought this, he knew it wasn’t true. Aranye had clearly indicated that the denizens of the warp and those in service to them were common enemies.
She had some stake in Karras’ fate, and she had his psychic signature. Much as he hated the fact, his time in the eldar healing machine on Damaroth had marked him, made him easy for her to find.
And if he was so easy to find…
It was worth a shot. There was no other.
With the daemon possessing him, the flow of the warp was both strong and close – more than ever before. Its strange currents boiled and churned all around him, feeding the beast its strength, allowing it to exist in the realm of matter, to keep its hold on him.
Maybe that strength could be its undoing, just as it had been his.
Karras turned all his focus inwards, concentrating hard on tapping into the ethereal tide. He cast himself into it completely, felt himself get swallowed up in it. His mind surged with a fresh sense of power and presence.
Hepaxammon did not sense this, occupied utterly with tormenting the Exorcist, but Karras knew that might change at any moment. He would get only one chance at this.
He felt the current rise to a momentary peak and called out with all his strength.
A single word.
Aranye.
The thought rippled powerfully through the warp.
Hepaxammon felt it. Responding at once, the daemon snatched Karras’ consciousness from the flow of power and bound it tighter, cutting off his senses again, casting him back down into inner darkness. Karras plummeted deeper and deeper, descending so far that surely it would be impossible to ever climb back out.
At least he had tried. It had been a desperate move with almost no chance of success. Cordatus couldn’t help him. Rauth couldn’t help him.
What chance did he have with a xenos witch who couldn’t be trusted in the first place? The eldar served only the eldar.
But as his mind continued to descend further and further from physical reality, he heard it – a familiar voice, feminine and musical, yet somehow still repellant, for though it spoke to him in High Gothic, it was no less alien.
‘I told you I would be watching,’ said Aranye. She sounded impossibly close. ‘And I warned you that the path would be narrow.’
Karras felt his essence grasped by a vastly more powerful force. Where Hepaxammon exuded a churning, filth-filled darkness and the stink of rot, Aranye’s essence was almost blindingly bright.
Bright, but not warm. It was harsh and cold and alien.
She halted his descent, enveloped him and surged powerfully up towards physical reality.
‘Do not speak,’ she said. ‘The daemon is attuned to you. It will hear you. It has not yet detected me.’
Further and further they rose. Karras could feel his awareness getting closer to the physical realm.
‘I will hold him,’ Aranye continued. ‘I cannot maintain it for long, for I am some distance away, but it may be long enough. When I do, you must take immediate control of your body and signal to the other who hopes to save you – the one with the displaced soul, he who caused this trouble in the first place.’
There was no chance to ask what Aranye meant by that.
‘Before I do this, mon-keigh, you will swear an oath to me. You will put yourself in my debt.’
Karras could not question her on this, since to answer aloud would alert the daemon, but he radiated uncertainty and distrust.
Aranye noted it. ‘There will come a time soon,’ she said, ‘in which your mistaken notions of duty will call for you to obstruct me, perhaps even to kill me. I will have your silent oath now that you will remember your debt to me and stand aside when the time comes, that you will raise no hand against me nor my retinue. Swear it now or lose your soul and the soul of the other!’
The last thing Karras wanted was to put himself in debt to a damned xenos, but her words were true. He had no other options.
She sensed his resentful acceptance of the bargain. ‘On your life and the honour of your Chapter, then, I accept your solemn oath.’
They had risen close to the edge of physical reality now, ready to push through from mind alone into mind and matter, from the well of the inner self to the conscious world of the senses.
It was time to make the only move available.
‘Now!’ cried the eldar witch.
She cast Karras’ consciousness forward, then threw her full power against the mind of the daemon, smashing her will against it, staggering it, wrenching its control of the body away as it reeled under the psychic impact.
As if from a hammer blow, Karras was struck with immense physical pain. He was back in his body, fully restored to his senses, and the agony of its corruption was almost too much to bear. He dropped to the ground.
Through misshapen jaws, he barely managed to form a single word. ‘Watcher!’
He raised his bleeding head and locked eyes with the Exorcist.
And Rauth saw that those eyes were red again, not black. It was the sign he had been waiting for.
Dropping his knife, Rauth rushed forward, grabbed the back of Karras’ head with his right hand, as tight as a vice, and pressed the relic in his left hand to the Death Spectre’s forehead.
Immediately, he began chanting in an ancient language most thought lost in Terra’s ancient past, a sacred tongue of great power if spoken by those trained in its use. Only two Chapters existed in all the Imperium who knew that tongue and what it could do.
The Exorcists were one of them.
In his head, Karras could hear Hepaxammon giving vent to his rage. A hundred foul voices roared in denial as he wrestled with the burning presence of the eldar Farseer.
‘I can hold the daemon no longer, Space Marine!’ said Aranye, her voice strained with the effort.
Her grasp on Hepaxammon’s essence broke, and the daemon threw her off, surging forward to reclaim control of Karras.
But Rauth was already deep into the ancient rites.
The relic pulsed with purifying power against Karras’ forehead.
As Hepaxammon pushed forward, scrambling for dominion over Karras’ body, the holy power of the relic lanced into him like a spear of light.
The daemon screamed.
Rauth continued his litany, voice rising, his chanting more and more intense. Moment by moment, Karras could sense the daemon’s presence withering and his own getting stronger and stronger.
When he felt himself restored, he turned his mind fully against the daemon and joined his own litanies of protection and banishment to Rauth’s.
There was a psychic firestorm raging inside him now, all its power turned against the insidious entity. Holy light was tearing the daemon to pieces, burning it to cinders and blasting those cinders back into the warp.
As the final fragments of Hepaxammon’s presence were burned away, it railed at Rauth and Karras one last time. ‘This is not the end. Jormungandr, Death Spectre. Mark me well and know that you have condemned your brothers.’
The voice sounded as if from a great distance now. ‘Jormungandr,’ it said again. ‘And I will have my due. I will collect. The Exorcist will not evade me forever.’
Then it was gone.
Rauth’s litany came to its end. Breathing heavily, he removed the relic, kissed it reverently and returned it to its pouch. Karras, barely able to focus on anything but the agony wracking his every nerve, never saw what it was.
Rauth stepped over to where his bolter lay on the tunnel floor, picked it up and returned to Karras. He pressed the muzzle against the Death Spectre’s still-misshapen head and waited.
Karras was on his knees, roaring in pain through gritted teeth. With the daemon gone, his body was restoring itself, but the pain caused by flesh and bone returning to their natural form was excruciating.
Shakily, he held up a hand for Rauth to wait.
On that hand, the talons were retreating, melting back into their original form – human fingers encased in ceramite armour. Spines and barbs receded. Twisted faces melted back into symbols of the Chapter and the Watch.
Before the Exorcist’s eyes, the true form of Karras was restored. In a matter of moments, one would have found it hard to believe it had ever looked any different.
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‘Prove to me now that I should not kill you,’ said Rauth. He had faith in the rites he had performed, but there was still a risk that this was a trick of the beast. He had to know. ‘Prove to me that the daemon is gone.’
Pain subsiding, Karras struggled to his feet and said, ‘How do I prove it, brother? You saved my soul, and perhaps your own, but I have no more proof for you than my word and the form in which I stand before you.’
Rauth eyed him up and down with open suspicion. He wanted to believe. His gut told him no foul presence remained. He felt deep down that the exorcism had been a success, that he would have known this for a trick if such it were.
At last, he lowered his bolter. ‘It will have to do for now.’
They looked at each other, silence stretching out between them. There was so much to say. Rauth had saved Karras, but Rauth was also the reason the daemon had come.
‘It claims a right to your soul,’ said Karras. ‘Why?’
Rauth held his gaze a moment, then turned and started walking up the tunnel in the only direction available to them.
Over his shoulder, he said, ‘I cannot answer that for you, brother. I am sworn to silence. I am sorry you became embroiled in this, but what’s done is done. I cannot untangle you from it now.’
Karras scowled and shook his head, but he started walking. Behind them lay the ruins of the Tower. Ahead, cutting north-east, the tunnel extended into darkness. He caught up with Rauth and they walked together in silence a while.
‘We need to find a way out,’ said Karras after a few minutes. ‘We have to get word to the Stormravens. They may still be within range.’
‘Archangel and the others will think us dead. They may be dead.’
‘Why didn’t you shoot?’ asked Karras. ‘You’ve been watching for it since the day we met. I wager it was the reason Sigma assigned you to Talon Squad in the first place. And yet, you yourself seem to be the reason–’
‘I took a dangerous gamble. I will not do that again.’
Karras let that hang between them a moment, then replied, ‘Let us hope there is never again a need. But this Hepaxammon is tenacious. It is not finished with us.’
Shadowbreaker - Steve Parker Page 30