'Your work is not yet perfect, Ostian,' said Fulgrim from behind the statue.
Ostian tried to frame a reply when he heard a horrific scraping sound of metal on stone, and the tip of the primarch's alien sword burst through the marble plinth to spear between his shoulder blades.
The glittering grey blade emerged from his chest with a crack of bone. Ostian tried to scream in pain, but his mouth filled with blood as the blade pierced his heart. The primarch's strength drove the blade deeper into the statue, until the gold quillons clanged against the marble and the tip of the sword projected a full foot from Ostian's chest.
Blood flowed from his mouth in thick red runnels of saliva and his eyes dimmed. Ostian's life flowed from his body as though clawed out by some voracious predator.
Ostian looked up with the last of his strength as he dimly perceived Fulgrim standing before him once more.
The primarch looked at him with a mixture of contempt and regret, pointing at the blood-spattered statue he hung from.
'Now it's perfect,' said Fulgrim.
The Gallery of Swords on the Andronius had changed a great deal since Lucius had last walked its length. Where once an avenue of monolithic statues of great heroes had stared down and judged the worth of a warrior as he walked between them, now those same statues had been crudely altered with hammers and chisels to resemble strange, bull-headed monsters with gem studded armour and curling horns of bone. Brightly coloured paints had been daubed over the statues, and the overall effect was like that of some garish carnival parade.
Eidolon marched ahead of him, and Lucius could feel the lord commander's dislike of him as an almost physical resentment. His killing of Chaplain Char-mosian still sat ill with Eidolon, and he had called him a traitor twice over, but that seemed an age ago, when the loyalist fools on Isstvan HI had still resisted the inevitable.
Lucius had given the lord commander the opportunity to win a great victory on a silver platter and, like the fool he was, Eidolon had squandered his chance for glory. When Lucius had slaughtered his warriors, the eastern approaches to the palace were wide open and Eidolon had led the Emperor's Children into the palace to outflank the defenders and roll up their pathetic defiance in a tide of fire and blood. But he had overreached himself and left his forces exposed to a counter-attack. It was an unforgivable oversight, and one that Saul Tarvitz had punished him for, flanking the flankers.
Lucius still smarted at his last confrontation with Tarvitz, remembering the duel they had fought in the ruined dome where he had killed Solomon Demeter. Like Loken before him, Tarvitz had not fought honourably, and Lucius had been lucky to escape with his life.
Still, it didn't matter anymore. After he had rejoined his Legion, the Warmaster's forces had withdrawn from Isstvan III, and commenced an orbital bombardment that had pulverised the surface of the planet until not a single structure remained standing. The Precentor's Palace was a rain of vitrified stone, and the force of the bombardment had levelled even the might of the Sirenhold. Nothing lived on Isstvan III, and Lucius felt a thrill of delicious excitement as he considered the future the fates had opened up to him.
He paused to savour the heights of glory he would rise to, and the new sensations awaiting him as he marched at the side of his primarch once more. The statue before him had once been Lord Commander Teliosa, hero of the Madrivane campaign, and Lucius remembered Tarvitz telling him that he had especially honoured it.
He chuckled as he imagined what Saul Tarvitz would make of the carved horns and exposed breast that had been added to it by enthusiastic, if questionably skilled, sculptors.
'Apothecary Fabius is waiting,' snapped Eidolon from up ahead, his impatience obvious.
Lucius grinned and spun on his heel to join Eidolon at his leisure. 'I know, but he can wait a little longer. I was admiring the changes you've made to the ship.'
Eidolon scowled and said, 'If it were up to me, I'd have left you to die down there.'
'Then I'm grateful it wasn't up to you,' smirked Lucius. 'Still, after your defeat at Saul's hands, I'm surprised you retained your command.'
'Tarvitz…' growled Eidolon. 'A thorn in my side from the day he made captain.'
'Well, he's a thorn no longer, lord commander,' said Lucius, thinking back to his last sight of Isstvan III, the swirling, cloud streaked glow of its atmosphere flickering with the mushroom clouds of high yield atomics and incendiaries.
'You saw him die?' asked Eidolon.
Lucius shook his head. 'No, but I saw what was left of the palace. Nothing could have lived through that. Tarvitz is dead and so are Loken and that smug bastard, Torgaddon.'
Eidolon at least had the good grace to smile at the news of Torgaddon's death and he nodded reluctantly. 'That at least is good news. What of the others? Solomon Demeter, Ancient Rylanor?'
Lucius laughed as he remembered Solomon Demeter's death. 'Demeter is dead, of that I am certain.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Because I killed him,' said Lucius. 'He happened upon me when I was despatching the warriors assigned to defend the eastern ruins of the palace and happily joined in when I shouted to him that I was under attack.'
Eidolon smirked as he understood. 'You mean Demeter killed his own men?'
'Indeed he did,' said Lucius, 'with great gusto.'
Eidolon let out a burst of laughter, and Lucius could feel the lord commander's attitude thaw a fraction at the irony of Solomon Demeter's final moments.
'And Ancient Rylanor?' asked Eidolon, leading him further along the Gallery of Swords to the entrance to the apothecarion.
'I don't know for sure about that,' said Lucius. 'After the bombing, he took himself off into the depths of the Precentor's Palace. I never saw him again.'
'Not like Rylanor to run from a fight,' noted Eidolon, turning a corner and marching down a parchment lined corridor that led to the grand staircase of the ship's central apothecarion.
'No,' agreed Lucius, 'though Tarvitz did say something about him guarding something.'
'Guarding what?'
'He didn't say. Rumour was he'd found some kind of underground hangar, but if that were the case, then why didn't Praal use it to escape when the Legions arrived?'
'True,' agreed Eidolon. 'It is the nature of the coward to flee rather than fight. Well, no matter, whatever Rylanor's purpose, it is irrelevant, for he is buried beneath thousands of tonnes of radioactive slag.'
Lucius nodded and gestured down the stairs. 'Apothecary Fabius… what exactly is he going to do to me?'
'Is that fear I hear in your voice, Lucius?' asked Eidolon.
'No,' said Lucius, 'I just want to know what I am letting myself in for'
'Perfection,' promised Eidolon.
The corridors of the Pride of the Emperor were never quiet now, hastily rigged mesh speakers blaring a constant cacophony of sound from La Venice. After hearing a taster of the Maraviglia's overture, Fulgrim had commanded that his vessels be filled with music, and the weirdly distorted recordings of Bequa Kyn-ska's symphonies echoed along every hallway, day and night.
Serena d'Angelus made her way along the dazzlingly bright corridors of Fulgrim's flagship, lurching from side to side like a drunk, her clothes stained with blood and ordure. The remains of her long hair were greasy, and matted clumps of it had been torn out in her ravings.
With the completion of the paintings of Lucius and Fulgrim, she had found herself without inspiration, as though the fire that had driven her to undreamt of highs and lows had burnt itself out. Days passed without her moving from her studio, and the months since the expedition had arrived in the Isstvan system had passed in a blur of catatonia and horrified introspection.
Dreams and nightmares had played out in her head like badly cut pict-reels, images of horrors and degradation she hadn't known she was capable of visualising, tormenting her with their intensity and hideousness. Scenes of murders, violations, desecrations and things so vile that surely a human being was incapable of indulg
ing in them without losing their sanity, played out before her like some madman's fever dreams laid out for her unwilling scrutiny.
Occasionally she remembered to eat, not recognising the wild, feral woman she saw in the mirror or the scarred flesh that greeted her every morning when she awoke, naked in the ruin of her studio. Over the weeks the suspicion grew in her mind that the repeated visions that plagued her in the night were not simply delusions… They were memories.
She remembered weeping bitter tears as her suspicions were terrifyingly confirmed the day she had opened the stinking barrel in the corner of the studio.
A reek of decomposing human meat and acidic chemicals hit her like a blow, and the lid clattered to the floor as she saw the gooey, partially dissolved remains of at least six corpses. Smashed skulls, sawn bones and a thick soup of liquefying flesh sloshed around the barrel, and Serena vomited uncontrollably for several minutes at the horror of the sight.
She dragged herself away from the barrel and wept piteously as the full abhorrence of what she had done threatened to overwhelm her already fraying sanity.
Her mind had teetered on the brink of madness until a name had surfaced in the miasma of her consciousness, a name that gave her an anchor to cling to: Ostian… Ostian… Ostian…
Like a drowning woman clutching at a branch, she had pulled herself to her feet, cleaned herself up as best she could and stumbled, weeping and bloody, towards Ostian's studio. He had tried to help her and she had rejected him, seeing now the love that had motivated his altruism and cursing herself for not realising it sooner.
Ostian could save her. As she reached the shutter to his studio, she only hoped he had not forsaken her. The shutter was partially open and she slammed her palm against the corrugated metal.
'Ostian!' she cried. 'It's me, Serena… please… let me in!'
Ostian did not reply, and she beat her hands bloody on the shutter, screaming his name and sobbing as she cried and begged for his forgiveness. Still there was no reply, and in desperation she reached down and lifted the shutter.
Serena stumbled into the dimly lit studio, detecting a dreadful, familiar smell even before her exhausted eyes made out the loathsome sight before her.
'Oh, no,' she whispered as she saw the grisly sight of Ostian's body impaled upon a glittering sword blade protruding from a wondrous sculpture of the Emperor.
She dropped to her knees before him and screamed, 'Forgive me! I didn't know what I was doing! Oh, please forgive me, Ostian!'
What remained of Serena's mind finally buckled and collapsed inwards at this latest atrocity. She pushed herself to her feet and placed her hands on Ostian's shoulders.
'You loved me,' she whispered, 'and I never saw it.'
Serena closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Ostian's corpse, feeling the sharp tip of the sword between her breasts.
'But I loved you too,' she said, and pulled herself hard onto the sword blade.
TWENTY-TWO
World of Death
The Trap is Set
Maraviglia
Isstvan V had been, so the exterminated Isstvanian myth-makers believed, a place of exile. Stories told that, in a time consigned to legend, Father Isstvan himself had sung the world into being with music for his Warsingers to hear and interpret. Father Isstvan was, it seemed, a fertile god and had spread his seed far and wide across the stars, nameless mothers bearing him countless children with which he had populated the first ages of the world.
Such allegorical concepts became night and day, the seas and the land, and countless other aspects of the world in which the Isstvanians lived. Within the Sirenhold, great towers and enormous murals had told these legends in great detail: intricate dramas of love, betrayal, death and blood, but these were gone forever, burned and pounded to oblivion by the Warmaster's bombardment.
Such wrath was no stranger to the myths of Isstvan, which told of the children of Father Isstvan who turned from his light and led their hosts against their benevolent sire. A terrible war followed. The Lost Children, as they came to be known, were finally defeated in a great battle and their armies destroyed. Instead of slaying his wayward children, Father Isstvan banished them to Isstvan V, a desolate place of black deserts and ashen wastelands.
Upon this nightmarish place of darkness, the Lost Children were said to brood upon their expulsion from paradise, bitterness twisting their beautiful countenances until no man could look upon them without revulsion. These monstrosities were said to dwell in cyclopean fortresses of black stone where they dreamed of returning to wreak vengeance on their enemies.
Such were the myths of Isstvan as preached by the Warsingers, cautionary tales that warned their people to follow the true path, lest the Lost Children return and finally take their long awaited vengeance.
Whether these myths were allegorical parables or were in fact history was irrelevant, for, in the shape of the Warmaster's Legions, the Lost Children had indeed returned.
The skies of Isstvan V were grey and ashen, dark clouds gathering in rumbling thunderheads to the south of where the first battle for the Imperium would be fought. As places of legend went, it was not particularly impressive, thought fulius Kae-soron. The air tasted of long vanished industry, and the ground underfoot was a dusty black powder, fine and granular like sand, but hard and crunching like glass.
When Julius had first set foot on the black deserts of Isstvan V, a howling wind had been whipping across the black dunes, echoing mournfully through the towers and weathered battlements of an ancient fortress, which stood atop a gently sloping ridge at the northern edge of a vast emptiness. Known as the Urgall Depression, it was the planet's largest desert, a featureless plain of bare rock and scattered scrub that rose gently to low hills upon which was built the fortress. Who had raised it was unknown, though the Mechanicum adepts postulated that it belonged to a civilisation that predated humanity by millions of years.
Its walls were formed of enormous blocks of a hard vitreous stone, each one the size of a Land Raider, and carved with such precision that there was no evidence of any bonding agent between them. Its builders were long dead, but their architectural legacy had endured the passage of aeons, though long stretches of the wall had collapsed over the millions of years. Such ruin rendered it untenable as a fortress, but ideal as a bulwark against which to mount a defence. The wall stretched for nearly twenty kilometres and rose to heights of thirty metres in places, with slopes of gritty sand banked against it and filling the hallways of its mighty, turreted keep.
Fulgrim had set up his command within the remains of the keep and begun the work of ensuring that it would be a bastion worthy of the Warmaster.
Together with Marius, Julius followed the Primarch of the Emperor's Children as he toured the mighty works of fortification being undertaken here. Vast teams of Mechanicum earthmovers were shifting the sand from before the walls of the fortress and using it to form a vast network of earthworks, trenches, bunkers and redoubts that stretched along the ridge before the fortress. Laagers of anti-aircraft batteries were set up in the shadow of the walls, and mighty orbital torpedoes on mobile launch vehicles hid in the warrens of the fortress. If the Emperor's Legions wanted to destroy them, they were going to have to come down to the surface to do so.
The Primarch of the Emperor's Children was arrayed in his plate armour, the gleaming ceramite burnished to a brilliant purple, though Julius's newly enhanced vision detected hundreds of subtle variations of hue within each plate. Legion artificers had added many layers to the armour, its sweeping curves accentuated in new and wondrous ways, the Imperial Eagle removed from his breastplate and replaced with gracefully carved bands of lacquered ceramite.
Silver and gold edged every plate and scenes representing the Legion's new loyalties were carved onto every surface, lending the armour the appearance of something purely ceremonial, though such an impression could not be further from the truth.
'A fine sight is it not, my friends?' asked Fulgrim as he
watched a gigantic bulldozer the size of a Titan lander scooping hundreds of tonnes of sand and rubble into a similarly gigantic hopper.
'Majestic,' said Julius without enthusiasm. 'The Warmaster will be pleased, I'm sure.'
'He will indeed,' replied Fulgrim, oblivious to the irony in his tone.
'Do we know yet when Horus will grace us with his presence?' he asked.
Fulgrim turned, finally hearing Julius's ennui. He smiled, sweeping a hand through his unbound white hair, and Julius felt his spirits aroused by the sight of the beautiful primarch. In deference to the Warmaster, Fulgrim had dispensed with the powder and paints on his face and more resembled his old self, a glorious warrior of utmost perfection.
'The Warmaster will join us soon, Julius,' said Fulgrim, 'and so too will the Legions of the Emperor! I know this work seems tedious to you, but it is necessary if we are to achieve the great victory Horus requires.'
Julius shrugged, his senses crying out for stimulation. 'It is humiliating. The Warmaster could have thought of no greater punishment than denying us a place in the battle for Isstvan III and consigning us to become ditch diggers and grubby labourers on this desolate rock.'
'We all have our part to play,' said Marius, ever the sycophant, but Julius could see that he too did not relish this work and smarted at missing the glory of expunging the imperfect from their Legion. The battles on Isstvan III had been glorious, and Eidolon had sent word of the perfection of the Legion's conduct as well as the fact of Solomon Demeter's death.
Unlike when Lycaon had died fighting the Diasporex, Julius hadn't known what to feel upon hearing of his former battle-brother's end. His senses were heightened to the point that only the most shocking things could evoke more than a glimmer of passing interest. He felt no sadness, only a mild regret that a warrior as fine as Solomon had proved to be imperfect, and thus deserving of his fate.
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