Shadowbreaker

by Warhammer 40K

  This was a place that shunned light, where the Chapter’s greatest and most noble came to make a long, slow, fatal act of self-sacrifice. It was a sacrifice made mostly in the dark. Those whose gifts allowed them to be in far-off places and see far-off things needed no light. Powerful psykers often went physically blind over time, their optic nerves no longer necessary given the greater potency of their witchsight.

  The Shariax itself gave off a ghostly bluish glow that pulsed like a heartbeat. Very faint, but illumination enough that Karras’ enhanced eyes allowed him to see his surroundings by it.

  He moved towards the throne apprehensively and noted the large figure seated there. The silhouette was unmistakable. There, the curve of each broad pauldron. There, the sculpted helm, decorated with honours in the form of laurels crafted from silver and gold and inlaid with precious gems.

  He knew the helm. It belonged to his khadit, his mentor.

  So here, in Aranye’s version of Logopol, Athio Cordatus was Chapter Master.

  But this is no future that will come to ever pass, thought Karras, if she thinks Logopol will ever stand abandoned.

  There was another thing she had got wrong – none who took the throne did so in armour and helm. On ascending to the position of First Spectre, the new Chapter Master presented his armour and weapons to the one who would follow his sacrifice next, and that was always the Chief Librarian. So why was this figure before Karras dressed in full Adeptus Astartes plate? It made no sense.

  If she pulled all this from my mind, she knew this already, and her choices are deliberate. What does she mean by this?

  Yet another inconsistency came to him now, for though the throne was clearly occupied, the one atop it radiated no psychic presence. His soul should have been so bright, so potent, that it could be felt from orbit. But even so close to the locus of that power, there was nothing. Not even a trace of an immortal soul.

  Karras girded himself and strode forward determinedly. He flexed his will, causing faint wisps of psychic light to coruscate around him. The added illumination showed him the seated figure in much greater detail.

  The armour was indeed that of the Chief Librarian, but it looked ancient, caked in dust. There was nothing of Cordatus’ life force and spirit in that chamber.

  As Karras came to a stop at the bottom of the dais, the figure moved. It lowered its head to look at him. Dust fell from the helm. Its visor lenses flared red. They locked themselves to Karras’ eyes.

  Wordlessly, the armoured figure shifted again, tossing something heavy.

  Karras caught it.

  When he looked down at the object in his hands, what he saw made him cry out in denial. He dropped it and staggered back a step.

  The severed head of his mentor hit the floor and rolled.

  When Karras found his voice, it was not to the seated figure on the Shariax that he roared. It was to the air around him, to all of this, to the one who had created it and placed him here.

  ‘Eldar witch!’ he raged. ‘Blood-cursed xenos! Show yourself so I can cut you down!’

  The figure on the Shariax laughed at him, a harsh sound that boomed and rasped from the helm’s vocaliser grilles. With gauntleted hands, the figure reached up and undid the seals below the jawline of the helm. Then, slowly, deliberately, it raised the helm from its head.

  Karras glared at it, and the white balefire of his psychic power flared. But what he saw made him reel backwards once again.

  There upon the Shariax, grinning down at him, he saw himself.

  The features were precise, down to each individual scar, and yet it was Karras as he had never been, his mouth twisted with malign glee, a bloodthirsty madness in his eyes.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Karras demanded, rage rushing back over him to replace shock. ‘Answer me, damn you!’

  The false Karras laughed again and rose to full height. Karras dropped into a combat stance on reflex. He felt his power responding to the threat, welling up within him as it always did when he was threatened. He began to coalesce that ethereal strength inside him. He would obliterate this thing, this insult. He would rip this whole damned nightmare apart.

  Even as he thought this, the false Karras flexed its armour-plated muscles… and stretched all four of its arms.

  Karras hadn’t seen the extra appendages until they unfolded – long, bony, covered in glistening chitin, and ending in three blade-like talons.

  He had seen such arms before. All too many of them, and all too close.

  Genestealer!

  Behind the monstrosity that dared to wear his face, he saw the pulsing of the Shariax quicken. It began to glow brighter, as if sensing the surge of violence that was about to erupt. Karras felt the light from it burning his soul, scorching him. He kept his range, stepping back as the four-armed abomination began to descend the steps of the dais towards him.

  At the bottom, it stopped, its shoulders squared, all four arms splayed wide for slashing attacks. Karras saw now that it was taller than he. Its skin had a waxy quality and, as it grinned again, he could see that the teeth were pointed and sharp like tiny white daggers.

  When it spoke, its voice had become that of the eldar witch, incongruously musical and feminine.

  ‘You think I toy with you, Death Spectre? I would waste neither the time nor the power. I do this out of need. The paths before you are many. To your kin, you are the Cadash. Or let us say that you may be. They place too much hope in you, and it may undo them. Others still have seen flashes of you in futures they are working to create. They will use you to bring about their ambitions.’

  The false Karras, the tainted Karras, gestured down at its own body, then turned its gaze pointedly to the left and right at those terrible outstretched arms.

  ‘To yet others, you represent the gravest of threats, the undoing of all they have achieved. You can scarcely imagine. Time and Fate boil and churn around you. It is a maelstrom of possibility. Unreadable. So many paths branch off into horror and suffering. So few lead to the light. Will you be a saviour? A destroyer? Or something greater or worse than either?’

  Karras felt sick with revulsion. Words! Just words!

  He did not believe any of this.

  Damn her arrogance. I’ll have her life!

  ‘I am a soldier,’ he snarled. ‘No more, no less. My fate is to fight and die.’

  The abomination laughed, not with Aranye’s voice, but with one low and bestial. It gestured with all four arms to Karras’ right and left. He sensed movement all around him. Armoured feet sounded on stone. He turned, right hand raised and ready, condensed psychic fire flaring from a ball of power that was growing in his palm. He would burn all around him to ashes.

  Before he could launch it, however, the sight of those that surrounded him froze both his hearts.

  In their hundreds, on every side, were his brother Death Spectres. They crowded around him, hissing like beasts from beneath cracked and rusted battle-helms.

  Each bore the same terrible twin pairs of limbs as the false Karras, mark of the tyranid geneseed.

  Karras heard Aranye’s voice again, though it issued from the air this time and not from the abomination’s mouth.

  ‘Be wise in your choices, Lyandro Karras. Look beneath the surface. The chain of events has already begun. Tychonis will decide much.’

  As the last of those words echoed in the domed ceiling, the twisted false Death Spectres began pressing in towards him, reaching out with their lethal claws.

  Karras gritted his teeth and opened his inner gates to more of the power he commanded.

  ‘Xenos tricks and lies,’ he growled. Then, much louder, ‘I deny you!’

  Empyrean power reached a crescendo, coursing through him, barely restrainable now. He readied himself to unleash it with a battle roar. Just before he loosed it, he felt cold hands press firmly against each si
de of his head, and with that touch, all his power left him, bled away in an instant.

  All went dark. All went silent.

  No dome. No Shariax. No unholy abominations.

  For several seconds, he was just that mote of awareness again – a soul lost in a formless void. Then light and sound exploded all around him. Gravity yanked on him. He staggered, steadied himself, opened his eyes and saw muddy ground. Blood-red clouds tumbled through a purple sky.

  Rockets and artillery shells screamed overhead.

  So close.

  So low.

  Deafening.

  He saw the fighter jets and Marauder bombers of the Imperial Navy tearing through the air. All around him, the ground was carpeted deep with the dead. Men, women, children – all torn to pieces, their blood turning the earth into a crimson mire.

  To his right, he heard the sharp report of gunfire followed by desperate cries. He saw figures clash in great tides, shining chitin striking polished armour plate.

  Lasbeams scored lines across his vision. Metres away, an artillery shell bit into the ground and exploded, throwing him from his feet straight onto his back. Dirt geysered up into the air and rained down on him, drumming on his armour like hailstones. He looked up at the clouds and saw something vast and dark breaking through them.

  At first he took it for a ship, long and sleek of prow. But as more of the object eased itself from the cloud cover, he saw that it was organic, a creature almost city-sized, with great tendrils stretching from its vast torso. There were apertures all along its body. From these, swarms of flying monstrosities emerged. They turned their heads towards the conflict on the ground and dived.

  Karras rolled and pushed himself up.

  ‘None of this is real!’ he bellowed at the sky. ‘Do you hear me, eldar? None of this is real. It means nothing!’

  There was no answer.

  Karras roared in frustration. He looked down at his hands, at his legs. Full battleplate, with all the weight and reassuring power it conferred. It felt real. He heard the blood rushing in his ears, felt his primary heart beating. Runes projected on his retinas by his helmet systems told him his heartbeat was elevated. Adrenaline, too. He flexed his fists.

  What was happening to him? What was this?

  Had he been broken on Chiaro after all? Was he now trapped in his own insane mind?

  Or was this some trick of the daemon? Did the eldar witch exist at all?

  He could smell the stink of blood and burning bodies. He could feel the wind through his armour’s advanced sense-feeds, the pressure of the air, the tug of the gore-sodden ground on his boots.

  What if this is real? he asked himself. What if I suffered some kind of psychic seizure or collapse? What if I’m really here?

  He could be sure of nothing. No, not quite nothing. He was certain his recall of that day in the burning forest was just a memory. He was sure the trek through abandoned Logopol and the twisted horrors in the chamber were false.

  Those things did not happen. They did not!

  But this?

  He looked again at his armoured fists – one silver, one black.

  I am Deathwatch.

  Battle raged around him. Another shell landed close, shaking the ground, throwing up gouts of fire and great clods of earth.

  He felt so present, so grounded.

  He checked his mag-locks and webbing for weapons.

  None. No bolter, no pistol, no grenades, nothing.

  He slid one hand back to see if his knife was sheathed at his lower back where he usually wore it. It was not. Arquemann, too, was gone. The precious force sword his mentor had entrusted to him should have been slung between his shoulder and his armour’s power pack. It was not.

  He was unarmed in the middle of a warzone, alone in a muddy clearing among rocks and bodies and shell-blasted trees, mayhem and death on all sides, great tyranid organisms breaching the skies, Imperial forces fighting desperately to push them back.

  He searched for a landmark, for something that would tell him where he was, anything at all that might give him an idea. His search was cut short. Figures loomed up out of the mire, surrounding him, hissing and chittering, their eyes hard and cold like black stones.

  He’d faced such things, seen good brothers die, swarmed by them and hacked apart.

  They advanced on him as one, long, scythe-like talons raised for a lethal downward stroke.

  Termagants!

  He longed for Arquemann. Four tyranid warrior forms were more than a match for most Space Marines at close quarters, but with force sword in hand, his eldritch power coursing through it, the odds would have been altered dramatically.

  As they closed, the beasts breathed loudly. Drool dripped from their razor-lined jaws. Here was prey!

  But if the creatures thought Karras unarmed in the absence of any visible means of defence, they were very much mistaken.

  Real or not, Karras wasn’t about to take any chances. He brought forth his power, joining it to his violent intent. He spread his arms, hands open, and dropped into a combat stance. Flickering arcs of blue-white power writhed up and down his vambraces like electrical serpents. He felt the pressure building in his mind, a great welling of force. He wrestled it under control, shaped it to suit his needs. In his mind’s eye, he marked his targets, marked the path he wanted the deadly energy to take.

  The termagants closed on him. They tensed their haunches, ready to leap, ready to carve him apart. The moment they sprang, Karras unleashed blinding spears of psychic lightning upon them.

  There was a great cracking sound, like the splintering of bones.

  His vision went black. He felt himself falling forward, his skin suddenly wet and icy cold.

  He struck solid ground, knees and forehead smacking hard on smooth marble. He pushed himself up on his palms just in time to vomit. Thick mouthfuls of a strange, sweet-smelling gel gushed out. He tried to open his eyes, but they were gummed shut.

  His body hurt. It ached all over. He felt pathetically weak.

  He convulsed again, bringing up more of the strange, sticky substance. There was a bitterness to it, despite the sweet smell. Not something he recognised.

  Raising his right hand from the floor, he wiped forcefully at his eyes. A rough voice sounded from a few metres in front of him.

  ‘No, brother. Step back. Let him gather himself. Give him time. But keep your guard up.’

  He knew that voice. Only Space Marines spoke Gothic so low it shook the air like that.

  Marnus Lochaine.

  It was the voice of the Storm Warden, the First Librarian of the Watch at Damaroth.

  Karras forced his eyelids open at last. He found himself looking at a floor of black marble flagstones coated in thick, transparent slime. His vision was flawless, as sharp as it had ever been.

  I know I lost an eye killing the broodlord. How is it I can see perfectly?

  He looked down at his hands braced on the black marble. He saw his fingers splayed there.

  Something else is wrong, he thought. Something is different.

  He brought his right forearm in front of his face and turned it this way and that.

  A chill ran down his spine.

  Where was the scar he had earned on Calvariash? Where were the burn marks that had dappled his flesh, the acid burns he had suffered at the Siege of New Golodin? And where were his wards, the pentagrammic and hexagrammic tattoos he had worn since his acceptance as a full battle-brother? Where were his protections? What had happened to him?

  Confusion etched itself in deep lines on his face. He pushed himself from the floor and shakily stood up…

  … to find himself facing five Space Marines in full armour, three of which were pointing bolters straight at him. A fourth was pointing the nozzle of a flamer in his direction too.

  The last fig
ure, and the only one without a visible weapon, was Lochaine.

  Karras met the Storm Warden’s gaze and was surprised to find the eyes so cold and hard, devoid of the rapport the two had built up during Karras’ time in Deathwatch training. No smile of greeting graced those stern, craggy features.

  ‘Is this real, Lochaine?’ Karras croaked. His voice was rough. Speaking hurt his throat. ‘Throne and Terra,’ he rasped, ‘tell me this is real!’

  Lochaine stared at him a moment, then spoke. The words stunned Karras, chilling him to the bone.

  ‘Who are you?’ the Storm Warden demanded. ‘Who are you, and whom do you serve? Speak now or die!’

  Ten

  ‘Throne and Terra!’ exclaimed Rava.

  There was no mistaking the figures in the pict – figures of legend, icons of Imperial Glory.

  They were the will of the God-Emperor made flesh.

  For a moment, the men gathered in the basement sat in mutual silence, stunned, unable to process the implications of what they were seeing.

  Urqis spoke first. ‘I do not understand this, cousins. These resh’vah… they walk with the pogyos. They are armed, yet they do not kill. In all the tales–’

  Gunjir cut in. ‘Tales are tales. We cannot know what this means until we know more about the woman. She is clearly a person of power and influence. Why she is here, it is far too early to say. The Space Marines appear to be bodyguards. See how they flank her?’

  ‘A prominent Rogue Trader?’ offered Diunar. ‘Matriarch of a Noble House? A political envoy from the Imperium itself, perhaps. No visible bondage. The fire caste troopers beside her – are they there to protect her or to contain her?’

  ‘Would that we knew,’ replied Arnaz.

  ‘How came you by these?’ asked Sadiv.

  Arnaz met his gaze. ‘I have a contact.’

  ‘It is enough that you brought them to us,’ said Gunjir. ‘No more need be said of how. For security’s sake. Many brave haddayin risk more than we rightly ask every single day of their lives just to keep us informed. Some things need not be shared. Protect your source, Arnaz.’