The weight made the sword formidable. There was no doubting its edge, either, but the weight gave its blows a brutal efficiency. Twice already, Crowe had struck a daemon with an overhead slash. Each hit was so powerful, he had cut the daemon in half and chopped a deep gouge into the rippling stone-flesh of the stairs.
Each blow was also another test. Swear fealty to me, the Blade demanded. I am your destiny. You will give in. I will take your soul apart atom by atom until you do. Bow down now at the height of your strength. You will be a burned offering to me. Be that now. When he ignored it, the sword’s curses resumed, and the endless scratching at the stone keep of his soul, the claws looking for the purchase and the crack, the flaw that would break him open.
The Blade found nothing, and time and again he drove it through daemonic bodies. He struck, and he held back the force that begged to be unleashed. He struck, and he prevented himself from using a weapon so powerful it would make short work of any foe, no matter how strong. He struck, and proved himself worthy of his task.
The staircase ended at a landing where every surface was stained glass. Crowe did not know if he marched on wall or ceiling or floor. There was no direction here, only a savage confusion of colours and more staircases. The daemons were gathered in force. Hundreds fell on the Purifiers. Crowe kept the formation in a tight circle. The Purifiers advanced slowly. No battle-brother left the formation, even for a second. They gave the daemons no chance to get between them, no chance to isolate one of the Grey Knights. They moved as an indissoluble unit. Where they marched, they left a scoured wake. The unclean things could not survive contact with them.
‘Where is our ascent?’ Sendrax asked. ‘There is no up or down in this accursed place.’
‘The ascent is towards our foe,’ Crowe answered. He kept moving.
‘You know the way?’
‘I sense it. We are moving towards the denser corruption, brothers.’
‘We are moving in spirals,’ said Drake.
‘Do not trust that perception,’ Crowe told him. He had the same impression, and knew he had to dismiss it. As they cut and burned through the daemons, he felt as if their progress were no more than facing in a different direction in the hall of stained glass. ‘It is Mnay’salath’s desire to have us believe we are turning circles in its dance. It is wrong.’
He knew the perception was wrong because he could see the vortex of the corruption. The warp was in storm inside the palace, but there were still currents. The gravitational pull of the will controlling the palace was unmistakable. And the further down this path he moved, the more ferocious the daemonic resistance became. Lashes and pincers and horns and stingers assaulted the Grey Knights. The songs of desire and musks of sensation wrapped around them. The scents were thick enough to be seen. Their strands clung to the Black Blade as it whistled through the air. The songs were becoming desperate, furious. Gradually, they offered less desire and expressed frustration. The presence that lurked in the palace wanted the sword, but it had not expected the Purifiers to come this far.
The flow of the warp twisted around and around before him, cyclonic, revelatory.
Step by step, kill by kill, disintegrating daemonflesh bubbling in a lake of ichor around their boots. The daemons howling, massing and charging, hurled back again and again. Antwyr stabbing its will against Crowe’s wall, and forced to cut down the foes of the Emperor from within its prison. And in all this, as the maelstrom of abominations grew more intense, the light and flame of purity also grew stronger. The daemons shrieked with pain as they approached Crowe. He felt the light in his chest, and he greeted it with humility and gratitude.
‘Brother…’ Drake said, and trailed off.
Sendrax said, ‘You are the Emperor’s flame!’
Crowe winced at the awe in their voices. He did not see what was happening as his due. It was not his achievement. It was the blessing of the Emperor. He refused all other interpretation. But it was light, it was fire, it was death to the monsters of the warp. He followed the vortex of the warp, and the flame burned more fiercely. The light pointed the way through the smouldering, agonised daemons. Crowe took the path.
Is this destiny?
If it is, earn this too.
They were still in the immense hall of glass. The jagged colours attacked reality. They attacked reason. The red of flesh’s monstrosity, the blue of a soul’s ice, the violet of art’s torture, the green of murder’s grace – they were corruption and malevolence, and they destroyed all sense of space. But Crowe’s light grew brighter, and his fire scarred the colours, and though he had not mounted another flight of stairs, he realised that he and his battle-brothers were climbing. He could not say there was a slope to the floor. Their journey through the space was nothing so simple. And perhaps Drake was right. Perhaps they were moving in spirals. But if so, they were moving inwards, working their way back up towards the origin of the dance. The daemons sang, but Crowe broke their chorus. Mnay’salath had woven the events of Sandava II’s martyrdom into its dark ball, but the Grey Knights had come to bring an end to the cacophony.
Deeper and deeper, through colours and glass and daemon, closer and closer towards the presence at the palace’s heart.
At last, Crowe gazed upwards, and he could see the true shape of the spiral. The terrible windows wound up and up and up, a nightmare given the beauty of form, and Crowe knew they stood in the base of the primary tower.
‘We are here, brothers!’ he shouted, as his bolter shells entered the gaping jaws of a fiend and blew apart the back of its skull. ‘Our foe hides at the summit.’
‘No,’ said the monstrous voice. It resonated against the windows. The colours twisted into mouths and whispered the echo. ‘No, no, no, no.’
‘I have waited long enough for my prize.’
‘Prize, prize, prize, prize.’
‘The sword is mine!’
‘Mine, mine, mine, mine.’
The roaring cry of monstrous desire descended the entire height of the tower, and with it came the dark, angular shape of the great daemon, plunging down for its vengeance and its joy. Mnay’salath landed before the Grey Knights. The mouths of the palace screamed their chorus of pain and ecstasy, and all that was real began to shatter.
In a trance of ecstasy, Vendruhn saw the blood she spilled. She felt the ichor squirm down her face. She felt the heat of the fires. Explosions drew nearer and nearer to her, and they seemed like a promise. They did not mean anything else. Even when the Chimera skewed violently, she did not concern herself with anything beyond the immediate destruction of those foes in the sights of the heavy bolter.
There was a noise at the edge of her hearing, insistent, irritating, demanding attention she would not grant. It scraped and scraped, until at last she recognised it as her name being screamed, and it was Morenz who was screaming. The realisation forced itself upon her at the same moment that Legacy of Glas collided with the wall of a shrine and stopped.
The heavy bolter whirred, empty of ammunition.
Vendruhn blinked, her breath heavy, growling. The shrine was a tall, twisted wave of metal, a shape that was an abstracted scream of geometry. Behind her, the crucifixions bled and suffered. To her left, she saw a trail of burning shells. The armoured column had made it this far in its pointless advance through the city of daemons and sacrifice. The hull of her Chimera was torn open on both flanks. The sounds from the interior were human moans and the crooning pleasure of abominations.
Ahead of her, one of the flaying daemon engines waited. The steeds pawed at the ground. Their tongues flicked in her direction, anticipating the taste of her pain. The daemon on the platform looked down at Vendruhn. It cocked its head. It shivered in the expectation of joy. Its attendants waited for its signal.
A shadow killed the sun. Vendruhn looked up. The Ecclesiarchal Palace towered above her. It took a step. The earth thundered and shook.
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Vendruhn was alone.
She turned around, taking in reality. She looked past the crucifixions, past the flaying engine. Daemons everywhere, as far as she could see, revelling in the fall of Beroea, singing the praise of the masterwork of their ruler.
The thunder came again, another step – the immense three-beat rhythm that had taken Sandava II, and would soon spread far beyond.
Vendruhn saw her futility, her doom, the utter ruin of everything she had devoted her life to. She felt despair, and she felt rage. But those passions were now mere channels. It was through them that she could reach transcendence. They were the road to the palace of excess. No violence would ever be enough to take revenge on the beings that had destroyed her world. Nothing would ever be enough to sate the desire that consumed her.
And that was the only real truth that was left.
She climbed onto the roof of the Chimera. She pulled her plasma pistol from its holster.
The daemons sang in welcome eagerness.
She defied them with a roar, and began the final journey with the pull of the trigger.
The Purifiers attacked Mnay’salath as one. In an unspoken accord, they spread in a semicircle around the Keeper of Secrets. They struck with the weapons of sanctity. Holy fire washed over the daemon, the warp used against the warp, and they ran in with holy Nemesis weapons. The flames burned Mnay’salath, but though it snarled in pain, the jaws of its elongated head were parted in the abhorrent imitation of a smile. The daemon danced backwards on its towering limbs. In two graceful bounds it was out of the immediate reach of the Purifiers. Its four arms made a gesture like an embrace, and its legions rushed in from behind the Grey Knights, grasping and clawing, seeking to bear them down and hold them for the slaughter. Crowe hit back with his left arm, firing a burst from his storm bolter and blasting away the fiends that tried to trample him. Then two daemonettes seized his outstretched arm with their pincers. Three others took his right. They shrieked in pain, burning as they came into contact with him. They held fast and pulled back hard, arresting his movement.
‘Bring me the sword!’ Mnay’salath commanded.
Unleash me, Antwyr urged Crowe. Now is the time. What price your dead faith if Mnay’salath claims me instead?
Drake spun quickly with his storm bolter, spraying the shells wide, forcing the daemons back before they could seize him. He turned the momentum of his spin into a second charge at Mnay’salath. The Keeper of Secrets lunged at him as quickly as it had retreated before. Its clawed hands reached for him. He slashed at them with his sword. The Nemesis blade cut through the bone-white armour of the daemon. Mnay’salath laughed. Its attack had been a feint. The pincer arms, a beat behind the other two, closed around Drake’s arms. The daemon squeezed and yanked. There was a splintering of ceramite and bone. Drake’s sword-arm came away from his body.
Ruluf managed to twist around and turn his incinerator on the infernal legion. He turned his immediate area into a firestorm. He waded into the flames and kept up the stream of promethium, then turned the fire to where Harsath and Carac were struggling against a tangled throng of fiends. The conflagration freed Sendrax and Destrian, and they ran in together. Destrian launched his flame over Sendrax’s shoulder, giving him cover by aiming the burning fuel at Mnay’salath’s face. The daemon dropped Drake.
Crowe hurled himself forwards. He shouted anathema at the daemons that held him. He called upon the might of the Emperor to banish them from the world, even here in the heart of the domain claimed and shaped by the Ruinous Powers. The daemonettes howled. Their pincers disintegrated and he was free.
Sendrax closed with the Keeper of Secrets. He arced his run at the last moment and came in at an angle as the daemon snatched at Destrian. It was another feint. Destrian dodged, but Mnay’salath had already moved away and launched its true attack. Sendrax swung at air. His storm bolter shells found their target. Mnay’salath ignored the damage. It slashed the space before it with its left arm, as though it were wielding a whip, and a whip appeared, a hissing, whickering lash of sorcery. It hit Sendrax full on. It coiled around him, eating through his power armour, striking him with blasts of warp energy, then hurling him fifty feet through the air. The whip recoiled and hit Destrian. The blow pierced his reservoir tank. The incinerator exploded, wrapping him in flame.
One more time the whip curled and struck, catching Ruluf around the gorget. The whip crackled with a last burst of dark power before it vanished. Ruluf stumbled, his aim going wide. Fiends rushed him from the side, knocking him down, and then the wave covered him too.
Crowe charged, and he knew Mnay’salath expected him. He knew the daemon had choreographed this moment, when the Warden of the Blade would be alone in the fight, and rushing towards the Keeper of Secrets with the prize. This was the culmination of the great dance.
Guide my hand, Father of Mankind, Crowe prayed. Grant that I may turn this abomination’s certainty into its weakness.
Mnay’salath whirled to meet him, as Crowe had known. He drew the Blade back, preparing the strike he would not be allowed to land.
Do your worst, and I will overcome it, because I must.
‘You will dance for me,’ the daemon snarled. It spoke a word. The word was formed by all its mouths. Syllables overlapped. It could never be spoken by a single voice. It was a word that had a chord progression. It forged a rhythm. The word reached into Crowe’s being. It grasped hold of his core and shot its tendrils through his limbs and down his spine. For a moment he was paralysed. Then he began to shudder and spasm. His bones jerked against each other. Pain hammered him. The spasms grew worse. His body was trying to tear itself apart.
The daemon hissed its pleasure. It stalked over to him. ‘My prize,’ it said.
Free me! Antwyr cried. Free me now or all is lost!
Crowe focused on his right hand. He accepted the pain of the rest of this body. Let his skull shatter against itself; he would not loosen his grip on the Black Blade. This was his most sacred task. Only death would end it, and he was not dead yet. So his grip must remain closed.
And it did.
Father of Mankind, I will not fail your trust.
Mnay’salath reached for him. Its head leaned in close, its eyes blazing with a mocking yellow fire.
The eyes that still looked out at the world through the mask.
Crowe turned to his psychic fire. The flames that burned the daemons, that turned away the depredations of the warp, were the flames of faith, adamantine in its inflexibility.
I accept my destiny. I accept the pain it brings. But this pain is not destined. It is the work of the wretch who would destroy the path I have been tasked to walk.
Mnay’salath regarded him. It savoured the perfection of the moment it had created, an artist well pleased with its work.
Militant patience.
Your certainty is your weakness.
‘Now give me the sword,’ the daemon gloated.
And Crowe did. His arm obeyed the will of his faith. He drove the point of the sword against the mask.
Relic struck relic.
The Blade was immortal.
The mask shattered.
Mnay’salath screamed. The mouths of the tower screamed. Every daemon in the stained-glass space howled in anguish. The Keeper of Secrets staggered away from Crowe. It clutched its forehead as if it could hold the mask together. It failed. Fragments of the mask fell like ash. Eldritch light pulsed and died, pulsed and died. The shape of the daemon rippled and wavered. Its monstrous dance lost its grip and drained away from Crowe. The tower trembled. The hall rocked like a ship in a storm, and the palace stumbled. Mnay’salath screamed again, the coherence of its power unravelling.
Crowe launched himself at the abomination. He seized a pincer with his left hand and pulled himself up. Level with the daemon’s face, he drove the sword through its hands and into its forehead.
For a moment, Antwyr’s snarls faded in his mind. The sword was his prisoner, but its hate for the daemon that had sought to enslave it was great. The Blade sank deep into the abomination’s skull.
Mnay’salath’s scream cut short. The shrieks of the tower became maddened. The daemon fell to its knees. Crowe dropped to the floor and yanked the sword free. Mnay’salath’s form wavered again, like a distorting reflection. It lost its hold on the materium... and exploded.
The blast of uncontrolled warp energy threw Crowe backwards. The entire palace trembled. Lightning seethed and lashed out against the heights of the tower. The stained glass shattered, raining down in disintegrating shards. The lesser daemons shrieked in echo of Mnay’salath. Enslaved to their master’s song, they had to answer to its final verse, and their chorus was their end. The lightning lanced from daemon to daemon, enveloping them all, tearing them apart. The palace lurched. Perspectives realigned. The materium flooded over the dying monster. The tower’s form held strong for the moment, but beyond it, the impossible halls began to collapse in on each other. Crowe felt the palace lean, and lean some more. The floor tilted.
The palace was the pinnacle of the daemon’s art, surpassing the work of the cathedral. And now the greatest fall began.
The daemons mocked Vendruhn as she ran into their midst. She fired the plasma pistol as quickly as she could pull the trigger. The weapon became hot in her hand. She was past caring about the chance of an explosive overheat. A stinger tale whipped past her face, and she shot the daemon until it was a melting, indistinguishable mass. She did not seek shelter or try to escape. There was nothing for her now except finding the ecstasy of the kill one last time. The leaping, frolicking abominations were a blur that surrounded her with their laughter and their song.
They taunted her. They danced forwards and invited her violence. Some she destroyed. Their wails only added spice to the pleasure of the others. She was their toy. The last mortal in Beroea, a final amusement to be savoured at the moment of victory.
Warden of the Blade Page 24
