by Ben Counter
by her pain. Rend her into a thousand pieces, each one imprisoned in
some maze of torment. Send her shrieking through the immaterium, a
formless ghost driven mad by the warp’s malice. Turn her into one of
them. Use her as their slave and visit a million indignities upon her.
The tiny sliver of Aescarion that remained scrabbled at the walls of
her skull, trying to find some purchase to keep herself from falling into
nothingness. Then, she found it.
A golden figure, his armour burning with the fire of faith, in his hand a
blade that was justice. He was crowned with dominion over Mankind.
The Emperor, the protector of the human race. Though Aescarion
might have nothing left save that which was in Abraxes’s hand, she
still had her faith. That was something the daemon prince could never
have. That was what she had taunted him with – that core of her, the
armoured and inviolate place that all the powers of the warp could
never hope to breach.
Abraxes roared. He wanted it. He wanted to shatter that faith. But
he could not. She denied him, and in his rage he forgot everything else
unfolding around him.
Luko scrambled up the pinnacle on which Daenyathos had stood to
watch the opening of the portal. The spire of corroded metal still stood
proud of the gore, its pitted surface affording enough hand and
footholds for Luko to reach the top. From here he could see the whole
cyst, and the sheer futility his strike force faced.
Three Imperial Fists remained. Graevus fought off the daemons
trying to rush Sister Aescarion. Aescarion was on her knees,
screaming, linked to Abraxes by a torrent of black flame pouring from
the daemon prince’s hand. Varnica was wrestling at the threshold of
the warp portal with Reinez, the Crimson Fist kneeling on Varnica’s
chest and pounding down at the Librarian with gauntleted fists.
Each Space Marine was an island in a sea of daemons. More of the
things were emerging from the gore with every moment, and it would
take seconds for them to overwhelm the warriors.
One part of Luko told him that they had done well to get this far, that
to die facing Abraxes toe-to-toe was as good a death as any of them
could have hoped to drag back from fate.
But the rest of him, the greater part, was driven only by rage. The
Soul Drinkers had destroyed Abraxes once already, and lost many of
their battle-brothers in doing so. Now he had returned as if he had a
right to walk in the same universe as the Soul Drinkers, as if the lives
lost to banish him had meant nothing.
Sarpedon had impaled Abraxes on the Soulspear, an image still
burned into Luko’s mind. It had been the moment that the warriors of
the Chapter realised what they must truly be – slave to neither the
Imperium nor the warp. Abraxes’s return had undone that moment.
That he had dared, that he had sought to make the Soul Drinkers very
existence meaningless, sent anger pouring through Luko that he
couldn’t have stemmed if he had wanted to.
And he didn’t want to. It felt good. This was what warriors spoke of
when they talked of the glory, the rush, of battle. This was what Luko
had never truly felt; now it was impossible to resist.
He crouched and drew back both claws, an animal ready to pounce.
Abraxes’s attention was focused on Sister Aescarion and the daemon
prince had no idea Luko was even there.
It would be a difficult leap. There was nothing easy about what he
would have to do if he made the jump. But the anger in him swallowed
up those useless facts and bade him dive from the pinnacle towards
the twisted grin on Abraxes’s face.
Aescarion saw through her haze of pain as Luko dived towards
Abraxes. The Soul Drinker thrust his twin lightning claws into the
daemon’s face.
The claws punched through Abraxes’s skin around his left eye,
sinking up to the knuckle. Luko braced his feet against the daemon’s
upper chest and yelled as he pulled, muscles of his neck standing out
as sharp cords as he put all his considerable strength into it.
Abraxes had not seen it coming. He had been savouring peeling
apart Aescarion’s mind, and the shock of Luko’s assault stunned him
for a moment. That was all the time Luko need to wrench Abraxes’s
eye out of its socket, a flourish of his claws throwing the orb down to
the bloody shore like a comet with a tail of ragged flesh.
Abraxes screamed. Wrapped up in his howl was a strangely human
sound, a note of pain and shock. It was the first sign of weakness
Abraxes had shown, an echo of some frailty that a human could
recognise. He took a step backwards, scattering bodies from the foot
of his throne as he stumbled towards the portal.
Luko hit the ground hard beside Aescarion. She still knelt, one hand
on the floor, hair clinging to the sweat on her face. She was pale and
blood ran from her nose and ears.
Luko looked away from her. The momentum he had bought would
not last for long. Aescarion would have to fend for herself.
Luko ran forwards, rolled past Abraxes’s cloven foot and slashed at
the back of his ankle. His claws bit through daemonic flesh and
severed tendons whipped from the gash. Abraxes fell back another
half-pace, his screams turning to anger.
Graevus leapt from the gore to join Luko. His axe hacked down into
Abraxes’s knee and the leg buckled, Abraxes putting a hand down to
steady himself.
Abraxes, falling back, had passed halfway through the warp portal
behind him. His hand pushed down against a silvery island of power
that gathered in the warp, the dark intelligences of the immaterium
buoying him up. They would force him forwards again, expel him from
the haven of the warp to finish the job of killing the Space Marine
standing between the dark gods and an eternity of slaughter.
Graevus leapt up onto Abraxes’s chest.
‘We killed you once,’ he snarled, swinging his axe up high. ‘And this
time, we’ve had practice.’
Graevus drove the axe down into the daemon prince’s chest. The
blade carved down through muscle and bone. From the cavernous
wound burst a fountain of light, raw power unleashed like blood from an
artery. It caught Graevus square in the chest and threw the Soul
Drinker to the ground, armour smoking.
Abraxes got onto one knee and held his sword up, point first.
Glowing blood poured from his ruined eye as he measured the blow
and stabbed the sword down into Graevus’s right hip, impaling the
Space Marine through the meat of his leg and pinning him to the
ground.
‘Killed me?’ hissed the daemon prince. ‘Soul Drinker, you did
nothing that day but bring your own death a moment closer!’ Abraxes
twisted the blade and Graevus’s leg came apart, a welter of blood
mixing with the gore spattered across the metallic ground in front of
the portal. Graevus screamed and his axe fell from his mutant hand.
Luko charged at Abraxes, knocking the blade aside with a swipe of
both claws. Abraxes’s re
maining eye narrowed as it focused on Luko.
Reinez kneed Varnica in the midriff hard enough to dent his armour.
The Librarian fell to the ground and Reinez straddled his chest,
bringing his hammer over Varnica’s skull head-down, ready to piston it
into the Doom Eagle’s face.
Reinez’s gaze fell on the lump of seething putrescence that a few
moments a go had been Abraxes’s eye. It lay in a whiteish mass,
dissolving its way through the cargo bay floor, its pupil breaking up in
its corrupt substance.
Beyond the eye, Luko was battling the daemon prince, fending off a
swipe of the daemon’s claws with his own gauntlets.
‘We’re trying to kill it,’ said Varnica, following Reinez’s gaze. ‘It’s the
only real enemy here. No matter what you think of us, Reinez, killing
Abraxes goes beyond it.’
Reinez said nothing. Varnica rolled out from under him, struggling to
one knee. He was battered and broken, bones fractured all over his
body, bruised organs bleeding inside. Reinez was a better warrior than
Varnica. If he made the decision, the Crimson Fist would kill him.
Varnica saw, as Reinez did, that Abraxes was halfway through the
portal, straddling the gap between reality and the warp.
‘We have to close it,’ said Varnica. He pointed to the sigils on the
floor beneath the feet of the two warriors. ‘The blood of Dorn opened it.
The same blood will close it.’
‘You spoke against them,’ said Reinez, breath heavy. ‘You… you
wanted them dead.’
‘No one is leaving this place alive, Reinez,’ said Varnica. ‘The Soul
Drinkers will die. You have your wish. Now kill this blasphemy.
Guilliman’s blood runs in my veins, and Throne only knows what runs
in the Soul Drinkers. Only Dorn’s blood will seal the gate. Only yours.’
Varnica couldn’t be sure if Reinez understood. He certainly couldn’t
be certain that the Crimson Fist, as he stepped back and dropped his
guard, was inviting him to strike. Perhaps Reinez left himself
undefended as he absorbed the realisation that Abraxes was the true
force for destruction, that the Soul Drinkers, the Phalanx, the carnage
around him were all parts of what the Daenyathos and the daemon
prince had orchestrated. Or perhaps he really did understand that his
blood alone would seal the gate, just like N’Kalo’s had opened it.
Varnica did not wait for clarification.
He forced every drop of pain in him into the pit of his mind, and
channelled it, ice-cold, into the psychic circuits built into his force
claw. He lunged and punched the claw into Reinez’s chest.
The Crimson Fist’s mouth opened and a breath escaped him, the
shock to his body too much for him to form words.
Varnica yelled and the psychic power discharged like a massive
electrical surge through the claw, the Hammerhand snapping the
blades open and tearing Reinez’s chest almost in two. Organs glinted
for a moment in red light bathing the cyst.
Reinez fell back and the wellspring of blood inside him burst up
through his ruined chest. The blood of a Crimson Fist, spiced with the
gene-seed taken from the genetic print of Rogal Dorn, washed over the
glowing symbols on the floor.
Varnica placed a palm on the floor, Reinez’s blood lapping around it.
He had unleashed a great deal of his psychic reserves in killing Reinez
– Reinez, as hard to kill as he was, had needed a massive burst of
psychic power to ensure his death. Varnica would have to use
everything he had left, drain himself past the limit of safety – and
sanity.
Varnica wrapped his mind around the unreality of the portal above
him, drawing on the power that surged through the sigils on the floor,
and began to crush the warp portal closed with the force of his will.
Luko leapt over the stricken Graevus and slammed into Abraxes. He
speared both claws into the sides of the daemon’s jaw and headbutted
Abraxes in the nose. Gristle split and blood sprayed. Abraxes shook
his head and threw Luko off.
Luko skidded along the blood-slick ground. Graevus was trying to
get to his feet nearby, one leg buckling under him, his thigh a bloody
ruin of pulpy flesh and shattered bone.
‘What matters this effort?’ said Abraxes. ‘Why must you fill what
remains of your lives with such toil?’
‘Think on what remains of your life, daemon,’ spat Luko. ‘My toil will
go on. Yours ends here.’
‘Pitiful,’ sneered Abraxes. ‘Which one of you can face me that will
not pay for it with his life? What mere man stands my equal, to fence
words with me?’
‘I seem to remember,’ said Luko, ‘that it was a mere man who
speared you through the chest and threw you back to the warp to
begin with. It was men who brought you back. You should be kneeling
to us.’
Abraxes bellowed in rage. He snatched up his fallen blade and
charged. Luko met the charge with his own, shoulder down, sprinting
at the daemon prince. Luko dropped to the ground and rolled, just as
Abraxes’s sword sliced towards him at chest height. The blade passed
over him and Luko sprang up, driving both claws through Abraxes’s
foot.
Abraxes bellowed and wrenched his foot off the ground, Luko’s
claws sliding from the flesh. The daemon prince took another step
back, and blinded for the moment by his anger, he did not see that
once more his back foot passed beyond the boundary of the warp
gate.
The circumference of the gate shrunk. Varnica was closing it, metre
by metre. Luko ran forwards and speared down through Abraxes’s
other foot, pinning it to the ground. The power field discharged in a
staccato of noise and light, energy arcing to the floor.
The warp gate’s uppermost edge closed down on Abraxes, like a
slow-motion guillotine. Abraxes saw, perhaps a second or two too late,
what Luko was trying to do.
A single Space Marine could not kill Abraxes. Sarpedon had
managed it, but he was a mutant beyond a human’s strength and
managed it, but he was a mutant beyond a human’s strength and
speed, and he had wielded the Soulspear. Luko couldn’t do it on his
own. But he didn’t have to.
The edge of the shrinking gate bit down into Abraxes’s shoulder. It
sliced through tendons and bone, and daemonic blood dribbled glowing
from the wound. Abraxes’s face creased in agony and shock.
He tried to force himself out from the gate, but Luko kept him pinned
in place. The gate bit down further into Abraxes’s upper chest, and
blood sprayed now from sundered arteries.
From beyond the portal, from the endless masses of hatred that
boiled there, a terrible wave of scorn burst out. The warp’s evils saw
their servant trapped and dying, and saw all that he had promised
withering away. The strands of fate he had woven, which would take
him across the galaxy disgorging the warp’s malice in the form of
torrents of daemons, were snapping. The future galaxy where the
Phalanx travelled the stars bringing ch
aos everywhere it went, that
dark tapestry Abraxes had concocted with the human Daenyathos,
was unravelling.
They were disappointed. Whatever they truly were, whatever passed
for emotions in their godlike souls, the powers of the warp were most
disappointed in Abraxes’s failure.
The daemon screamed, but the sound did not last long. His lungs
and windpipe were severed. His body reformed around the damage,
echoing the mutability of the horrors he commanded, but it was not
enough. Tentacles slithered from his wounds and bony growths burst
in every direction, but the force was too great.
Luko pulled his claws out and stumbled backwards. The portal was
closing, and it was cutting the daemon prince in two. Abraxes was
wedged in, the sides of the portal slicing into him – he didn’t need
Luko keeping him in place now.
Luko knelt beside Graevus. ‘Come, brother,’ he said.
‘Where?’ said Graevus, watching the portal slicing down through
Abraxes’s sternum into his abdomen. ‘There is nowhere left for us.’
‘There is one place,’ said Luko. ‘Let’s go.’
Captain Borganor’s Howling Griffons smashed into the daemonic host,
joining the Imperial Fists in the wild melee seething around the
daemon engines.
But the daemons were legion. Tens of thousands had gathered, and
every one now dived into the slaughter. The scorpion-like daemon
engine rumbled and raised its segmented body up on eight armoured
legs, the tail coiling over its back.
On columns of fire, the Angels Sanguine leapt through the air onto
the daemon engine. The engine shuddered and its tail swept them off
its back. Commander Gethsemar was thrown to the ground and the
engine’s insectoid head loomed over him, bronze mandibles dribbling
liquid metal.
‘Not yet, brother!’ shouted a voice, and Siege-Captain Daviks
plunged out of the daemon throng to grab the Angel Sanguine by the
gorget. He dragged Gethsemar out of the way of the engine, even as it
vomited molten metal from its fanged mouth.
A hundred similar stories were playing out amid the butchery. Men
were dying for their brothers, or killing all around them in revenge for
seeing their friends fall. But there would be no one to remember them.
The daemonic army was too big. The war engines were being
completed even as daemon blood swamped the deck, ankle-deep. The
