by Ben Counter
Daemons shrieked and were thrown back, their flesh becoming unstable, one daemon flowing into another and dying as their burning blood and organs spilled out onto the bleached stone. The sound was awful, like a million death-rattles at once.
Against the shattered wall of the tomb, destruction all around him and Ghargatuloth towering over him, was Alaric of the Grey Knights. His body was battered and broken, his armour split and torn. But he was alive, and he was conscious. He was shouting out the same words that Inquisitor Ligeia had, over and over again, in the run-up to her execution.
The Inquisition had believed she was speaking in tongues, her mind rained by Ghargatuloth's influence. But Alaric knew how strong her mind was, and he had found it in him to trust her one last time. He had taken the transcripts of her interrogations and memorised the phrase she repeated over and over again.
It was not a stream of meaningless syllables. It was Ligeia's last desperate message to her captors, her last attempt at getting revenge against the Prince of a Thousand Faces.
'Iakthe'landra'klaa...' shouted Alaric, and the flesh of Ghargatuloth was shocked into dullness, flakes of it shearing off and falling like grisly grey snow.
Every daemon was ultimately a servant. Every one had a master, even one as powerful as Ghargatuloth whose master was Tzeentch himself. But for daemons to serve unquestioningly, a master had to have power over them. And so every daemon had a name. Men might know them by any number of names, but only one was the True Name.
Inquisitor Ligeia had known her mind was being invaded by Ghargatuloth. She had known her fall was inevitable, and so she had left herself as open as she possibly could. Her psychic power drew information out of any source, and Ghargatuloth was pure information - she had let him course through her, giving up her sanity and ultimately her life, searching for the knowledge she needed. She had found it, and in her final moments she had stayed just lucid enough to communicate it to her captors.
Of all of them, only Alaric trusted her enough to listen.
Syllable by painful syllable, just as Ligeia had done even in her dying moments, Alaric recounted the True Name of Ghargatuloth.
THE SYLLABLES BURNED Alaric's lips. Had it not been for his faith, he could not have survived saying the True Name at all. It was hundreds of syllables long and Alaric knew that if he made the slightest mistake he would fail, and so he pushed through the pain flowing through him and carried on.
The immense form of Ghargatuloth was flashing black and sickly green, blotches of purplish decay rippling up it. The faces writhed beneath the skin, fighting to get to the core of Ghargatuloth's body and away from the words that were burning their way through the daemon prince's flesh. Skin was flaking off in great slabs now, falling to earth in a terrible hail of dead flesh. Tentacles became dry, grey arches of flesh that cracked and fell to crash against the ground far below.
Alaric forced the last syllable out of himself, a sound he thought he could never make, ripping up through his throat. He thought he would die with the effort -he fell forward and landed face-first in the drift of shattered marble at the base of the ruined wall Unconsciousness pulled at him. Blackness flashed at the edge of his vision. The death cry of Ghargatuloth cut through the pain - it was a low, hideous keening, at once pathetic and full of rage. It was hatred and pain. It was a raging against the agony of death.
Alaric forced his eyes open. Over the shattered shell of the tomb, the column was showering dead flesh and leaning drunkenly. Tight masts of flesh near its base snapped and Ghargatuloth toppled sideways, towards the plains that lay to the east of the processing plant and the line once held by the Sisters of the Bloody Rose. Slowly, appallingly, Ghargatuloth fell with a terrible sound as thousands of tendons snapped in sequence.
Alaric forced himself to his feet. The air was thick with falling scraps of desiccated flesh like black snow. His Nemesis halberd lay nearby. He stumbled over to it and picked it up as he heard the massive crash of Ghargatuloth hitting the ground.
Alaric clambered up the wreckage until he could see out from the remains of the tomb, painkillers flooding through his system but failing to cut off the ache that came from everywhere at once. Ghargatuloth was a huge, dying drift of flesh. Daemons were dissolving back into the ground.
Justicar Genhain stumbled across the wreckage towards Alaric. A couple of other Grey Knights could also be seen - Alaric recognised one of the Terminators and realised it must be Brother Karlin, for Tancred must surely be dead.
There were perhaps ten Grey Knights left - Karlin, a couple of Genhain's men, a couple of Alaric's. Alaric couldn't see any of Squad Santoro - he wasn't even sure how many had made it to the acropolis at all. Lachryma and her Sisters were gone.
Alaric turned back to Ghargatuloth. The True Name had weakened it, for so soon after its birth the shock of having a new, mortal master had made its very fabric unstable. But the Prince of a Thousand Faces wasn't dead yet.
Alaric began to walk towards the fallen daemon prince, followed by the remains of his command. He still had work to do.
IN THE END, it wasn't the Grey Knights who killed Ghargatuloth. It was mostly the Balurian heavy infantry, who marched in a cloud of ash wheeling anti-tank guns to finish the job the Grey Knights had started. None of them knew what had happened or that the Grey Knights were even there - all they knew was that immense destruction had been unleashed on Volcanis Ultor, that many of their regiment were dead, and that the fallen beast was responsible. A couple of Leman Russ tanks were brought up and the few surviving officers began to direct their fire into Ghargatuloth.
Tank shells and heavy weapons fire ripped into the daemon's flesh. Many-coloured blood soaked the earth, turning the ash-choked ground into a foul swamp and running off into Lake Rapax.
The surviving Sisters of the Bloody Rose added their firepower, too, their one remaining Exorcist tank sending rockets streaking into Ghargatuloth. The Methalor 12th Scout Regiment made the long march up from their positions on the south of the line and added what little long-range firepower they had, too, until Ghargatuloth was a pulpy burning mess of oozing flesh.
The Balurians advanced, the Methalorians by their side. Lasgun fire flashed in a crimson storm, turning Ghargatuloth's blood into clouds of foul steam. Both regiments fixed bayonets and, filled with the hatred they had felt when Ghargatuloth first erupted from beneath the ground, set to hacking it to pieces. The Sisters joined in, intoning prayers of righteous wrath as they blasted Ghargatuloth to pulp with their bolter fire and the Sisters Superior laid into it with their chainswords.
Few noticed the Grey Knights. There were few of them, and everything was obscured by clouds of smoke and steam. Alaric and Genhain stood side by side as they hacked with their halberds, grimly and methodically reducing Ghargatuloth's daemonic body into a filthy viscous lake of daemon's blood.
THE SUN OF Volcanis Ultor was setting somewhere behind the ever-present clouds. Alaric could feel Ghargatuloth's life draining away and he stayed on the shore of Lake Rapax, waiting until his psychic core told him the daemon prince was gone.
He had several severe injuries - his storm bolter arm was broken somewhere, his rib-plate was fractured and shards of bone were loose inside his chest cavity. His third lung was the only thing keeping him breathing. Lesser men would have died. But the medicae facilities in Hive Superior could wait - Alaric would not go anywhere until he was sure Ghargatuloth was dead. And the faint throb of willpower was dying out. Alaric didn't have long to wait, leaning on the shaft of his halberd, feeling the night-time cold settle over the plain.
Justicar Genhain was trying to find all the surviving Grey Knights, and locate as many bodies of the fallen brethren as he could. He had found Santoro's body, broken almost beyond recognition by the explosion of the acropolis. He had been only metres away from Alaric - it could so easily have been Alaric who had died. Some of Santoro's Marines had died earlier without Alaric knowing anything about it, killed by Ghagratuloth's cultist
s on the way to the acropolis along with several of Lachryma's Seraphim. Tancred's body could not be found - Alaric knew that it never would be.
The sword of Mandulis had survived, glinting brightly at the bottom of the crater where the processing plant had once been. Genhain held it now, wrapped up so its blade would not reflect the drab destruction around it. It would be Genhain who returned with Durendin to the tomb of Mandulis, to re-inter the weapon beneath Titan. Until then the sword would be kept wrapped, its work now done.
The Sisters of the Bloody Rose were recovering their own dead, and Alaric had watched as they took away the body of their canoness from what remained of the steps up to the tomb. The whole of the processing plant was now just a crater filled with rubble, and it was impossible to see where the normal dimensions of the plant had ended and the abnormality of the tomb had begun. Balurian dead lay everywhere, and a Chimera troop transporter had been commandeered to carry loads of bodies back towards the rear lines.
So many had to die. So many that could not be replaced.
Something stirred in the dark stain of Ghargatuloth's blood. Alaric painfully walked over to it and saw, writhing in the filth, a human body.
Its skin was gone, eaten away as if by acid. It was covered in slime, its lidless eyes rolling madly, its hands wrapped around its entrails to keep them from spilling out.
At first Alaric thought it was a Balurian. But then he recognised the power sword that still hung on a tattered sword belt around the figure's waist, the same sword that Alaric had seen on Valinov as he welcomed Ghargatuloth into real space.
Alaric almost wished Valinov could still speak, so he could hear Valinov's taunts. But it didn't matter. As Alaric had recounted the True Name, Ghargatuloth had rejected his servant. Valinov had devoted his life - more than his life, his soul, his very existence - to Ghargatuloth, and it had been snatched away from him at the very last second. The pain of dying would mean nothing to Valinov, but the agony of failure when he had come so close was a torture of which Ghargatuloth himself would have been proud.
Perhaps it would have been fitting to let Valinov carry on despairing. But the Ordo Hereticus had already executed Valinov once, and Alaric knew they would expect the job to be finished.
'By the authority of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition.' said Alaric, 'and as a brother-captain of the Grey Knights, Chamber Militant of the Ordo Malleus, I enact the judgement of Encaladus and place your soul before the Emperor for judgement.' Alaric bent down and picked up Valinov by the scruff of the neck. Valinov stared wildly at him, shivering, vile slime oozing out of his red wet body.
'But then.' said Alaric, 'you don't have a soul. So this is the end of everything, Gholic Ren-Sar Valinov. This is oblivion.'
Alaric walked slowly away from Ghargatuloth's dissolved corpse, up to the edge of Lake Rapax, which shone a multitude of sickly colours in the faint pale moonlight that filtered through the clouds. He knelt down at the lake's edge and plunged Valinov into the polluted waters.
Valinov struggled weakly. Slowly he stopped kicking. Alaric waited long enough to be sure that Valinov was dead, and then waited some more, alone and silent on the shore of the lake.
DAY WAS BREAKING by the time Justicar Genhain came to find him. Genhain had taken a Chimera from the Methalor regiment and was using it to take the surviving Grey Knights back to Hive Superior, where along with the Sisters they would tend their wounded until transports came to take them to proper apothecarion facilities.
Karlin had survived - he still held his incinerator in spite of the shrapnel wounds that covered him. Justicar Genhain along with Tharn, Ondurin and Salkin (who had lost an arm, sheared clean off). Alaric's Marines Haulvarn, Dvom and Lykkos. Alaric himself. No one from Squad Santoro.
As the Chimera trundled across the battlefield towards Hive Superior, Alaric looked back, once, at the huge dark stain that remained of Ghargatuloth.
It wasn't over, of course. Ghargatuloth couldn't be permanently killed. But the Grey Knights - and Mandulis, and Ligeia - had shown that he could be beaten. And it was the duty of the Ordo Malleus to make sure that he stayed beaten.
The sun broke through the clouds, but it only shone on death and pollution, the piles of wreckage, the heaps of the dead. Slowly, very slowly, the long and gruelling task began of purging Ghargatuloth's influence from the Trail of St Evisser.
ON A RIDGE deep into the plain, the death cultist Xiang watched Ghargatuloth dissolve. Xiang had finally completed the last orders of her mistress Inquisitor Ligeia, and ensured that the daemon prince was brought into real space so that the Grey Knights could have their chance to destroy it.
Xiang was in a situation she had never been before. She had no master. She had once served the sect of the Imperial church that demanded blood sacrifice for the Emperor, and after that had sworn allegiance to Ligeia. Xiang had never been without a master, and it was a strange feeling - her thoughts, her movements, her decisions were her own now. She was not an instrument of another's will. There was only her own will to obey.
Perhaps she would find a new master eventually, and suborn herself to his commands. But perhaps she would explore this feeling more. Volcanis Ultor was as good a place to start as any - bleak wilderness to explore, layers of lawless underhive in which to test her skills, all manner of Imperial citizens to learn from, to observe, perhaps to obey.
She turned away from the dead daemon prince and looked across the plain, towards Hive Verdanus just visible far to the east. Xiang wondered if she would ever find a master like Ligeia again. Then she wondered if she wanted to.
Her taut muscles barely registering the effort, Xiang began the long walk.
* * *
THE AIR WAS cold deep beneath Titan. The psych-warded chamber was small and bleak, lit only by a single guttering candle. The chamber had been excavated only a few days before to serve as a secret, secure repository for information that had to be kept secure -and more importantly, that should never be forgotten. It was hidden in the bowels of Titan's catacombs, guarded by the legions of dead Marines, where only the chaplains of the Grey Knight would know where to find it.
A single large desk dominated the room, and a scribe-servitor sat hunched over a large open book. The book was new, only recently bound, its pages white and blank. The servitor's quill arm hovered over the page.
Chaplain Durendin and Inquisitor Nyxos stood towards the back wall of the room. Durendin had led Nyxos down to this place, because it was on Nyxos's insistence that the chamber had been built. Nyxos was recovering from the injuries he had suffered at Valinov's execution but he still looked weak and drawn, aged even beyond his advanced years, his every movement supplemented by the servos of his exoskeleton.
'You may begin.' said Nyxos, and the scribe-servitor began scratching a title onto the page.
Second Book of the Codicium Aeternum, it began in perfect flowing script. Being a description and naming of Daemons, the Dates and Durations of the Banishments and Details thereof that the Enemy might be known before his Machinations are complete...
Inquisitor Nyxos began to dictate the details of the report Alaric had given in the apothecarion, about Ghargatuloth's elaborate plans to create a fallen saint to act as the centrepiece for the ritual that would revive him, to use the Grey Knights to deliver the weapon that had first banished him, and to suborn unnumbered cultists and demagogues to cover his tracks. Those same cultists were even now being purged from the Trail of St Evisser in an operation commanded by Inquisitor Klaes and Provost Marechal, and it would not be finished for decades, if ever.
He made sure to mention Inquisitor Ligeia, and how Alaric was the only one who trusted her in the end. He mentioned the many, many Imperial citizens that died, and the many that were still to die as Ghargatuloth's influence was scoured from the Trail.
Finally, the scribe-servitor noted down that Ordo Malleus research and readings of the Imperial tarot had suggested the duration of Ghargatuloth's banish
ment. He would be able enter real space again in one thousand years. But this time, the Malleus would not give him the chance to succeed.
'Note this exactly.' dictated Inquisitor Nyxos, 'for every syllable must be pronounced perfectly lest the banishment fail. Know that the True Name of the daemon Ghargatuloth is Tras'kleya'thallgryaa...'
For several minutes Inquisitor Nyxos forced the syllables out of his throat. When it was done, the servitor-scribe was taken away to be destroyed to ensure that hearing the True Name had not implanted some corruption in its biological brain.
Then Inquisitor Nyxos left Titan for Iapetus, to head for the Eye of Terror and continue the Emperor's fight. One chapter of Ghargatuloth's story was done, and by the time the next one began, Nyxos and all those who had fought the Prince would be long gone.
* * *
WHEN IT WAS done, when the bodies recovered had been buried beneath Titan, the reports had been made to the Ordo Malleus and the survivors had been thoroughly purified, Alaric was granted a few days of convalescence to himself while it was decided if he should retain his rank of brother-captain.
He was given permission to make the short journey to Mimas, and there he was guided by the interrogator staff to the place where Inquisitor Ligeia had died.
There was nothing left. The cell had been dismantled - only the clamp remained bored into the rock where the cable had once been fixed to the surface.
Ligeia's body had been cremated and scattered in orbit, to ensure there would be nothing left of her. All Alaric could do was say a prayer for her passing, but it was still more than anyone else had done - Ligeia had died a traitor, so no one had seen to it that her soul was commended to the Emperor's side. It wasn't much, just a few sacred words pitted against the horror of heresy. But it was enough.
