Dark Imperium

by Guy Haley

  The Emperor had allowed them to love Him, and to believe He loved them in return. He had not. His primarchs were weapons, that was all.

  Though His power was immense, perhaps greater than it had been before He ascended, the Emperor’s humanity was all but gone. He could no longer mask His thoughts with a human face. The Emperor’s light was blinding, all encompassing, but finally – finally – Guilliman had seen it as a whole. The being he had thought of as a father could hide nothing from him.

  The Emperor did not love His sons. They were things. Guilliman, all his brothers, were nothing but a means to an end.

  Mathieu smiled. ‘My lord, He is father to us all now. Did your father not speak with you of His divinity when you received your revelation?’

  The primarch’s scowl was calculated to reveal enough of his anger to shut the priest up, and no more. ‘My other militant-apostolics learned very quickly not to ask me what occurred in the throne room when I returned to Terra,’ said Guilliman warningly. ‘Take this as your lesson. Now, enough of this theological debate. It is time to remove some of the enemy’s advantage upon Espandor.’

  Guilliman smoothly drew his father’s sword. Mathieu gasped. He had seen the Sword of the Emperor drawn on several occasions. Every time, he bore witness to a miracle. On leaving the scabbard, the blade burst into flame.

  Guilliman did not begrudge the priest his awe. There was great warpcraft in the weapon. When the blade was removed from the Emperor’s withered knee and presented to Guilliman by the Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, it had somehow fit his primarch’s stature. Guilliman frowned. He tried to remember how tall the Emperor was, but His living image refused to be caught and examined. In some memories, He was as tall as Guilliman; in others, no bigger than a mortal man.

  ‘I can feel His presence!’ said Mathieu. With wide eyes he stared into the flickering shadows made by the fire as if he could see the Emperor looking back at him. ‘He is all around us, right now. I can feel His power!’

  Guilliman looked at the blade’s flickering edge. When he held it, he too felt the Emperor close by. There had been places in the past that retained an echo of the Emperor’s power long after He had visited. This sword had been his father’s own, the blade that had slain Horus and ended the strife of the Heresy, or so all had thought at the time.

  He hefted the weapon thoughtfully. The firelight danced in his eyes. How it burned was a question of the warp, not of science, for all the machine trappings on the blade and in the hilt. His father had been gifted in both, more so than any other man. The sword resisted Guilliman’s attempts to learn its nature, and he would not release it to any other agency for study.

  For these arts, Magnus had been censured. The retaliation for a warning sent in good faith had created another terrible foe. Another miscalculation on his father’s part – only a human could make so many errors.

  He is not a god.

  Counter to that, no man excelled in so much.

  If a man has all the powers of a god, is he not a god? Guilliman asked himself. That is what Mathieu believes. Theoretical, there is the possibility he is correct. I am not immune to mistake.

  He raised the sword aloft. Its warm, yellow firelight beat the shadows back. The scent of incense filtered into the room. The Librarians held up their hands and muttered focusing prayers, the light of their power shining from their eyes and gathering in their hands. The Sisters took a step closer to the clock, suppressing its malevolent power.

  ‘You are not welcome,’ Guilliman said, and he did not know if he was saying it to the stone or to his father’s faint ghost that seemed to haunt the room. ‘Begone to the warp.’

  With those simple words he swung.

  Whatever its nature, the Sword of the Emperor was anathema to Chaos. It split one leg of the clock as easily as if it had been butter. The machine lurched, its ticking falling out of time and its pendulums clashing together. Clockwork ground upon the unholy stone in the centre of the device as it took the weight of the unbalanced mechanism. Sparks sprayed from the rock, but the device did not fall, only pulsed faster and glowed brighter. Guilliman strode to the second of three legs, drew back his weapon and struck again.

  The second leg was cut neatly through. The clock lurched again. All its weight pressed sideways onto the obelisk. It held for a moment, then with the screaming of metal upon stone, the clock collapsed, taking the menhir down with it.

  The great stone cracked, and its light dimmed. The clock groaned as gears clashed. The mechanism locked, and it was still.

  The primarch gestured to the broken device, ‘Remove this,’ he ordered the Sisters of Silence. ‘Make sure all the pieces are gathered.’

  They moved forwards. A fusion lance was brought up, and lascutters, and they began to dismember the remains. Guilliman watched them begin work, then turned his back. Mathieu looked at him in adoration.

  ‘I advise you to leave, militant-apostolic,’ said the primarch. ‘This place is not safe for you. You have been here long enough.’

  Mathieu’s face changed from rapture. He frowned. ‘My lord, I…’ he blinked and pointed.

  ‘Lord Regent!’ gasped Tigurius. ‘Something is coming!’

  Guilliman looked back at the clock in time to see the first Sister die. A stabbing blade shot from the workings she was cutting into, running her through and lifting her three metres into the air on a pillar of brass that moved and coiled organically, reforming itself into something deadly.

  ‘Daemon!’ screamed Maxim.

  A pulse of energy boomed out from the wrecked clock, and a foul wind blew in all directions. The carving of the Emperor on the wall rattled and banged against the vandalised stonework, came loose from its fittings and crashed down to the floor. The Librarians roared with effort, their aegis hoods blazing with psy-amplification.

  ‘We cannot hold it closed – a rift is forming!’ one shouted. He fell back, staggering, whips of psychic feedback cracking out and lashing the cathedral pillars.

  The Custodes bowed into the wind, their boots scraping on the floor as they were forced backwards by the unnatural gale. Guilliman planted the Sword of the Emperor in the ground and knelt behind it. Flames streamed from its edges around him, forming a golden shield.

  A crack of thunder presaged the opening of a tear in realspace, and a heaving, gelatinous presence poured through, splashing into the broken clock. Long streams of it wrapped themselves around the workings, its touch turning them green and dull with decay even as it bound them together, remaking them and pulling them into a tall, detestable shape.

  A black, oily skin formed over the clockwork and broken stone. The daemon rose up, gathering the stuff of the clock and the menhir into itself, and taking on humanoid form. Organs of whirring cogs sank into its chest. Ropey muscle moved under the shining black skin. Where the metal and stone showed in its form, they were corroded: brass and bronze becoming green, fused lumps, and the rock pitting, though it glowed brighter and brighter.

  Forearms grew and grew, the fingers becoming long, backward-facing spikes, like the wings of a bat. A short powerful rear pair of legs burst from the back of the mass. Huge shoulders grew in seconds, unnatural bones cracking as they grew at pace.

  With a lurching flop, the clock-daemon lurched forwards. For a head, it had the eyeless skull of an equid left long in the forest, green and grey, the honeycomb of its dead marrow showing where the outer layer had failed. It walked hunched over on the knuckles of its elongated fingers, though it had no wing membranes to join them. Indeed, it appeared half finished overall. As it moved its oily surface dulled, becoming leathery, rotting skin. A choking miasma of decay filled the cathedral.

  The wind died.

  ‘Back, daemon!’ shouted Guilliman. He raised his sword.

  ‘I am Qaramar of the Lost Second,’ said a rasping, hideous voice that came from nowhere and everywhere. ‘Las
t Watcher of the Last Moment. Fifth in Nurgle’s favour. I cannot be killed. I have seen the end of time. I will be there when the final atomic motion of this hateful realm decays into blessed entropy, and Chaos will be born anew. I am sent here to be your executioner, anathema’s get.’

  ‘It’s a trap!’ yelled Tigurius. He raised his hand, and blazed out a fork of warp lightning.

  ‘Take it down!’ yelled Colquan.

  All at once, the primarch’s party attacked. Bolts hammered into the daemon’s unnatural body. Psychic power washed at it.

  The daemon marched forwards, its spirit still knitting matter into its false body. The temperature plummeted as it sucked the energy from reality around it. Bullets disappeared like pebbles dropping into water, sending out ripples in the air and nothing more. The thing tossed its head. A stinking mane that looked like rags of seaweed flicked out around its bare skull, and the lightning and fire of the Librarians was turned aside, blasting into the cathedral. It stomped forwards, growing larger as it moved. Now its skin was full of holes, and ribs gleamed beneath; a moment later, it was smooth and supple, untouched by time. As it stalked forwards, like a dragon from ancient legend, it aged and died, aged and died, over and over, though its mismatched skull remained the same throughout and the stink remained, whether its state was flush with youth or ripe with rot.

  Qaramar snickered. ‘You cannot harm me. I am the end of time. I am the last moment of decay.’

  It bent its long head low to the ground and drew in a breath that sucked the warriors of the Imperium towards its razor-toothed maw. Then it blew out, so hard they were bowled over, and aegis hoods exploded around the heads of a few of the lesser Librarians. They died, consumed by their own power, their souls burning up as hot white stab-fires blazed from their eye sockets. Mucous blasted from Qaramar’s mouth, a mist filled with gobbets of diseased offal, maggots and all manner of foulness. Where it hit armour, metal rotted, and where it melted its way through to flesh, warriors fell. Where it hit stone, it slid and gathered, taking on the shapes of diseased, pot-bellied mortals. All around the cathedral, plaguebearers rose up, already counting their infernal count before they had fully manifested.

  Qaramar rose onto its muscular hindlimbs, and spread its membraneless wings wide.

  ‘Fear me, for I am the rot-drake, the foul catcher, the master of last moments. I am the death of time!’ it said. ‘And I am mighty.’

  Qaramar attacked.

  The cathedral became a battlefield where men and women struggled to survive. The fog given off by the daemon corroded breathing apparatus, poured down throats and attacked lungs. The enhanced warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and the Adeptus Custodes struggled on, their mighty bodies fighting against the poison, but even their multi-lungs were no guarantee of survival. Several of the Victrix Guard, the cream of Ultramar, fell to Qaramar’s pestilence.

  The Sisters of Silence attacked it, blades swinging. Their soulless auras perturbed the existence of the daemon, but it swatted them back, or snapped them up in its massive horse’s maw, sheering them in two between scissor teeth. The Custodians charged in, swinging their guardian spears, but they were swept aside by a swipe of the creature’s wing-limbs, and one of their mighty company died before Guilliman ordered them to disengage.

  ‘Enough! This beast is beyond you. Fall back, I command you! I will fight it!’ His sword flaring with fire, Guilliman stepped closer. Qaramar swung its heavy head around to face the primarch.

  ‘You will die. Your bodyguard will die. All things die before Qaramar the Last, the Lifeless, the Never-Living!’

  It bounded forwards, the bones of its useless wings clacked against one another. It knocked the Adeptus Custodes aside, crushing one underneath a massive hind claw.

  The power of the enemy was immense. Its very presence scrabbled at Guilliman’s soul, threatening to shred the edges and tear pieces away. It roared out a torrent of filth at the primarch; he raised his sword, and its bile evaporated on the blade’s fires.

  ‘I have slain many like you,’ said Guilliman.

  ‘There are none like me,’ said Qaramar.

  ‘There are none like me either.’

  Qaramar swung its finger bones like swords, slashing down hard at the primarch. Guilliman parried one hand, dodging the other. The Sword of the Emperor blazed white hot as it connected with the daemon’s skin. But though the sword’s touch alone was death to most daemons, it was not enough to harm the Last Watcher. Guilliman was forced back by the dragon-thing’s onslaught. Custodians leapt to his side, their weapons swinging in perfect synchronicity with one another. They cut it many times, but the wounds closed as Qaramar aged and grew young in constant cycle, and the Custodians were always swept away by vicious sweeps of the thing’s wings, leaving Guilliman to battle it alone. As Qaramar fought, the wing fingers trailed shadow that coalesced into ragged skin. A livid growth of flesh crept up from the base of its equid’s skull, cladding it in raw, pulsing muscle.

  ‘With every death, I grow stronger,’ it said. ‘With every soul I grow greater. At the end of time, I hold all the dead in me, and so none are mightier than I.’

  ‘This is not the end of time,’ said Guilliman. And he struck.

  The Sword of the Emperor swung true, flames rushing from its edge like a banner. Qaramar whipped back its materialising wing too slowly. With crackle of power, the sword cleaved off the tip of Qaramar’s littlest elongated finger. Qaramar screeched so loudly part of the cathedral wall tumbled down, crushing Space Marines and daemons alike. The severed digit tip skidded up against a pillar, and boiled away to nothing.

  Beneath his helmet, Guilliman smiled with savage triumph. ‘This is the Sword of the Emperor, the great foe of Chaos. It has laid low thousands of your kind. You shall be but an addition to the tally.’

  Roaring horribly, Qaramar struck down. Guilliman parried one-handed. Though shaken by the impact, he recovered quickly, raising the Hand of Dominion and raking the side of the creature with bolt fire. Rotten skin blew out in showers of gore, and when Qaramar cycled back to his youthful state, the wounds remained.

  ‘Impossible!’ it hissed.

  ‘I am the light of the Imperium. The Imperial Regent. I was made by the Emperor, and He watches over me now. I shall be your downfall, daemon, not you mine.’

  Guilliman swung his sword round overhead, the fires roaring into a perfect circle. He struck again, cutting deep into the forearm of the daemon. Blood and broken clockwork rained down from the injury, and Qaramar roared in anger.

  ‘To the primarch! Let us aid him!’ shouted Colquan, dragging himself off the floor, snatching up his dropped spear and eviscerating a plaguebearer with a point-blank shot from the built-in boltgun.

  ‘I cannot be killed! I am death!’ cried the daemon.

  ‘There are many that claim that name,’ said Guilliman. ‘I have killed them all.’

  Guilliman pressed his attack, battering at the daemon with a series of lightning blows that filled the space around him with sheets of fire. He carved away the tips of three more wing fingers, and when the creature recoiled, he sliced deep into its right shoulder. It screamed loud enough to interrupt the endless counting of the lesser daemons.

  With a bellow almost as terrifying as the daemon’s, Guilliman hit its shoulder again, shearing off the whole of its right wing. The limb thrashed about on the floor as it dissipated back into the warp, and the daemon backed away. It attempted its scream again, but a slam of psychic force from the Space Marine Librarians stole its voice and sent it whimpering backwards.

  ‘I cannot be killed!’ it repeated. ‘I am death!’ Brass gears and diseased organs ran from its rotten innards onto the floor.

  ‘Then begone!’ shouted Tigurius. Together, he and the other psychic Space Marines bent their will, tearing open the rift the daemon had poured itself through. Purplish light spilled across the ruined cathedral. Rotting fac
es gathered there, eager to join their daemonic lord, but the power of the Space Marines held them back, preventing their ingress, and they howled with outrage.

  Qaramar skittered back, lurching towards the rift. Bolt-rounds hammered into its side. Sisters and Custodians ran at it and drove their weapons into its flesh, all while Guilliman struck and struck again. The daemon was forced to defend itself, no longer able to attack, its remaining wing batted aside by the Sword of the Emperor with every swipe.

  Then it stopped, and it laughed.

  ‘You… cannot… kill… me!’ it roared, and it reared up. A pulse of power upended the attacking warriors, sending them clattering down the steps of the altar. Dark light flared around it, and its body knitted its wounds, growing its wing anew. It beat both wings, now whole and webbed with patterned flesh. Gusts of poisonous air wafted back, and the daemon rose up over the battling host. Spitting balls of searing matter, it attacked again.

  ‘Lord Guilliman!’ yelled Maxim. ‘Force it back! Send it into the warp!’

  Guilliman watched Qaramar swoop down the cathedral aisle, its wings almost brushing the sides. Its long head, now raw and bloody, its sockets filled with rolling yellow eyes, snapped at the warriors of mankind. The doors opened, and Tetrarch Felix came in, his Primaris Space Marines battering at the daemon with a torrent of plasma and bolt fire. But the daemon laughed, and dove at them, scattering them and slaying three.

  ‘I will end it,’ said the primarch. He cast about himself. He spied a set of crumbling stairs within the cathedral that ended in a broken gallery. They shook as he ran to the top, stone pattering on the ground. He halted at the edge of the missing floor.

  The daemon folded its wings, spun around and turned, nose over tail. It passed down the aisle again, back towards the site of the broken clock and the primarch.