The Unburdened

by David Annandale

  Aethon was not dead. When that task was complete, he hoped the clarity would return. But to complete the task, he needed first to tear the veil.

  It was so easy to tear. Tortured by the Octed, the veil was so thin, it took the slightest tug of his will to create a rift in the real. He widened it, opening the way. The cavern rang with the cry of a wind from the other side. The sound was hollow, rusted, pained by blades and teeth. It was a storm made of nightmares.

  Now the real test of Kurtha Sedd’s skill began. The doubts surged. He defied them. He spoke new words, ones that would do more than tear at the real. They were words of summoning.

  The darkness responded first. It rose as before, a spread of grasping tendrils racing through the cavern, over floor and walls and ceiling. The tendrils thickened as they pulled the greater mass of the dark behind them. The clutching hand became a tide, and the tide became a flood. The night of madness filled the cavern. It gibbered and wailed. Its voices were much louder than before. Stronger. They were hungry. They were eager to take possession of the world.

  They were not enough. In his mind’s eye, Kurtha Sedd stood before the rift. There were things on the other side. He could see them moving with slow, constrictor rhythms and electrical jerks. He could not make out the shapes. They seemed to flow and shift just beyond the limits of his vision. He bade them come. He pulled the rift even wider.

  ‘Enter,’ he said. ‘Enter and feast.’

  Something reached across the barrier. It began to take shape.

  Kurtha Sedd’s perspective shifted. He was looking through his physical eyes again. He stared down from the edge of the floor. The dark beneath him twisted, forming whorls and knots of tension. It rippled and bulged. The bulges tore open. Things emerged from the bubbles of the night’s flesh. They began to crawl up the cliff.

  The cries, the whispers and the laughter grew more intense. The voices circled him, then chased the others of their kind around the cavern. They celebrated. They threatened.

  Things climbed. Kurtha Sedd saw the walls of the gorge in every detail. The higher the beings climbed, the more clearly he could see them. Yet their features refused to define themselves. Their shapes remained fluid. They were masses of shifting flesh. Colours pulsed, mixed, changed. Flesh was the pink of exposed muscle, then the blue of decay, the green of disease, the red of wrath. Scales became hair, hair became claws, claws became eyes. Jagged limbs punched into stone and hauled bodies higher, only to merge with the greater mass as tentacles sprouted with a viscous sound to corrode the rock and grip again. Things reached for each other and merged into a larger horror. Kurtha Sedd saw a monster form. For several seconds, there was the outline of a great mass. The horns on its head were as big as a man. Its jaws widened, revealing teeth curving and twisting in all directions. In the throat, an eye with twin white pupils stared unblinkingly at Kurtha Sedd.

  The jaw opened wider and wider. The angle passed one hundred and eighty degrees. The head tore. The rip extended down the throat, through the chest. The creature split in half. Its mass dissolved into a tangle of fleshy strands of night. Then it was gone.

  Kurtha Sedd growled in frustration. The pattern repeated again and again. Things climbed, merged, grew, disintegrated. The dark of the gorge boiled with incomplete creation. Bubbles of potential expanded and burst. Flesh and smoke and magma, the squalling, struggling mass rose higher and higher, but it also slowed. The surface of the daemonic ocean was still many metres from the top of the rift. Nothing coherent formed.

  Hundreds of limbs reached up to Kurtha Sedd, pleading. Maws gaped. They cried his name for they had none of their own. They were unable to be.

  Kurtha Sedd shouted the prayers. He called on the gods. ‘Urizen!’ he howled. ‘Guide my efforts!’ It was not enough to open the way. The things that crossed over needed to feed on the materium. They needed to mould reality into its antithesis. The Chaplain was the conduit. Through his sorcery, the coming-to-being would be complete. It depended on his strength and skill.

  He was failing.

  The multitude he had summoned could not retain its hold on the materium. It scrabbled up the cliff of existence only to fall away.

  ‘Rise!’ Kurtha Sedd commanded. ‘Rise! Take the world as your prey!’

  Monstrosity heaved upwards and dropped back.

  He was not strong enough.

  ‘Annunake!’ Kurtha Sedd called. ‘You are needed!’

  Sor Gharax lurched towards the edge of the cliff. The Bull was mad, but the Bull was wise. He had been living the endless death of the flesh for decade after decade. His insanity was the acute stab of the truth of things. Now, graced by blood and runes, he was destruction made manifest, and he was an altar that walked. A warrior priest immured in his temple. Kurtha Sedd gazed upon the reified prayers that dripped and squirmed across the ceramite. He raised his arms in praise. He focused on the concrete incarnation of Chaos at war. The being of Sor Gharax was indestructible. Kurtha Sedd used it to channel his strength. He took the monstrous image of the Dreadnought. He fixed it as a model and called upon the potential below to take shape.

  Claws and horns and serpentine twists boiled upwards. Bodies defined themselves. They remained stable. They laughed. They climbed.

  And then they fell back again to dissolve into the frothing dark.

  Not enough. Not enough. His voice was hoarse with his chants. The words of truth cut his throat and cut the real. The wounds on his skull bled freely. Inside his helm there was nothing but the smell and taste of blood. Vitae rained from nowhere onto the shifting horror. Lips metres wide formed to drink it. A skein of rippling muscle the width and breadth of the gorge climbed until Kurtha Sedd could touch it. All he had to do was kneel and reach out. He did. His fingers brushed the flesh. He felt foetid warmth and liquid through his gauntlet. Muscle went from taut to deliquescent and clung to his hand.

  The flesh shall be fused with the warp.

  The mass trembled. It coalesced into hundreds of thrashing, struggling bodies. They were distinct. They were real. And then they dissolved again. The dark howled in frustration, cracking the ceiling with its rage. Stalactites fell into the gorge. The warp mass swallowed them.

  The flesh shall be fused with the warp.

  The refrain of truth beat through his mind. The vital sliver of the vision that still remained to him was the key to the full manifestation of the servants of the gods. To summon was a beginning. Fruition would come through fusion.

  But he did not know how.

  Frustration and despair pressed down on his shoulders with the weight of the rock above. He could not stop. Through will and faith alone he would complete his task. He would bring forth the army that would devastate the loyalists.

  But the old burdens were still there, sapping his strength, eroding certainty.

  Kurtha Sedd roared, and the maws of the half-formed and the half-real roared back. He called to them, and they called to him, and his chains held him back.

  The rattling thunder of bolter fire broke through his concentration.

  No, he thought. Not now. Not yet.

  The test had come. And he was not ready.

  FOURTEEN

  Unworthy

  The last charge

  Unburdened

  I am not worthy.

  The truth was a blow as lethal as an athame. It was the truth long suspected, long evaded, now hitting home.

  Kurtha Sedd turned around. Though he chanted, though he called to the gods of Chaos, his prayers lost the force of his concentration. He saw fate come for him, and with it the terrible suspicion that he had been wrong. Though Kurtha Sedd could not see him, he knew his nemesis was here.

  Aethon was here. So Kurtha Sedd had declared. His new surge of doubt was over the outcome of the encounter.

  The two rings of Word Bearers protecting his position opened fire on the advancing phalanxes of Ult
ramarines. The loyalists came in two large formations from both entrances. They turned on the ambush lines to the left and right and overwhelmed them with a barrage of shells and flamers. Midway between one entrance and the defensive position, a portion of their crude outer barricade collapsed. There was another passageway on the other side. Aethon burst from it, leading another squad.

  The loyalists took damage from the ambush. Some of them fell, but their two phalanxes prevented enfilading fire. They outnumbered the ambushers and finished them off. The Word Bearers struck from the shelter of the pillars, but there weren’t enough to hold the advance back. The Ultramarines were closing in three formations on the principal position around Kurtha Sedd. They raked the cavern ahead of them with a hail of shells. They would not be stopped.

  Isn’t this what you wanted? Kurtha Sedd thought. Isn’t this what is destined?

  It was. But the sight of Aethon was a goad to the doubts. Kurtha Sedd had not seen him since Monarchia, not knowingly at least. In a moment, he was overwhelmed by all the anger and grief of betrayal. The wars fought in a common cause. The life he had saved was one he must now take, and he did not know if he could. If one of his own brothers disobeyed him, Kurtha Sedd would kill that Word Bearer without regret or hesitation. He had spared Vor Raennag only in the service of a final warning. But Aethon was the embodiment of all the burdens of his past. Everything Kurtha Sedd had once believed, everything he had once conquered worlds for, had not slipped from him without trace after Monarchia. The lingering expectation of judgement was their symptom.

  I am not worthy, he thought again.

  Behind him, the immanent flesh sighed and fell away, leaving only the darkness of the void.

  In the centre of the cavern, Sor Gharax bellowed his challenge to the Ultramarines.

  The liars come to their execution at his hands.

  Charging forwards, the ground shaking beneath his tread.

  Cultists on both sides, worshipful vermin racing with him, their hymns resonating through his sarcophagus.

  Hammering the enemy phalanxes with the cannon, then pounding into the formation. His power fist slamming left and right, crunching the enemy to blood.

  A blaze of light and heat from three Ultramarines with rocket launchers. Massive impact on the right of his front armour, stopping him cold.

  Turning in wrath, annihilation blazing from his cannon arm. The first of his attackers exploding as a dozen shells hit him in the space of seconds.

  Terminators. Swing, punch. Blood crackling on his iron fist.

  One more Terminator. A captain.

  His cannon arm is knocked wide. Staggering. Stumbling.

  The enemy are all around him now.

  Two clunks on his flanks, reaching through the haze of anger. Mag-locks to the sarcophagus.

  Melta bombs.

  Swinging his fist to the right, breaking an Ultramarine, but too late, too late.

  Detonation. The heat of suns turning his armour to liquid. Sensors wailing, then dying. A new pain hitting the ruin of his body, scraping his senses to blinding white. Overload of information, cascading systems failure, the sarcophagus breaking down. Two bodies dying at once.

  Encroaching dark.

  Move. Hurt them. Take them into the black. Take them into the truth.

  Lurching around, left leg much slower than the right, arms flailing, power fist opening and closing in spasms. The assault cannon firing wide and wild. Pain in his heart, like a fistful of razorblades.

  Moving towards the abyss. Enveloped in smoke and flame.

  The Bull at bay, a meteor of blood.

  Unstoppable.

  Thunder of footsteps and cannon fire, the crunch and cry of trampled enemies and brothers and mortals. Blasting and burning a swath of absolute death.

  Left leg locking. Falling forwards. The dark within reach.

  Impact. Still moving. The vague perception of bodies beneath him.

  Then weightless.

  A fall.

  And even then, a new pain.

  Sor Gharax smashed through the Ultramarines surrounding him. His final stagger scraped the battlefield as if he were the siege shield of a Vindicator. Ultramarines, Word Bearers and cultists were swept up in the charge. He demolished the lines of attackers and defenders. He crashed through a column, bringing down rolling monoliths of stone. He was a monster of tortured metal. It was a dark wonder that he managed to walk at all. Kurtha Sedd saw the will of the gods in the Bull’s terrible charge.

  His fall to the ground shook the cavern. The grind of his forward slide over stone was a sepulchral shriek. Then the Dreadnought went over the edge, carrying struggling legionaries before him.

  In the wake of the Bull’s plunge, the battle organisation broke down. Ultramarines and Word Bearers formations were shattered. Traces of strategy worked their way through to Kurtha Sedd’s awareness. His brothers were attempting to maintain a cordon around his position. The Ultramarines were trying to salvage the three prongs of their attack. But the centre of the cavern was now a cauldron. Bodies in blue and crimson armour were spread across the floor, some burned, some shot, some crushed beyond recognition. Combatants shot at point-blank range. Melee weapons clashed. Cover was a shifting illusion. Word Bearers fired from behind one pillar at a group of Ultramarines. The loyalists of another formation outflanked them and took the position. Word Bearers coming up from behind them doused the area in flame and krak grenades. A sudden flare of blue heralded the teleport translation of battle-fresh Ultramarines Terminators in lumbering Cataphractii plate.

  The vox was a storm. Shouts of command, grunts of pain, and bursts of static from communications cut off by violence filled Kurtha Sedd’s hearing. His attention was split. He saw the full picture of the struggle, yet it registered in fragments. He did not govern it. Vor Raennag and Toc Derenoth were making the battlefield decisions. He still chanted, trying desperately to recapture his grip on the immaterium. The tide was running against the Word Bearers. The forces of Chaos were receding further and further from existence. And Aethon was there, working his way forwards.

  Fate was closing in. The judgements of gods both false and real were upon him.

  An Ultramarines fusillade punched through the cordon. The impact of the shells knocked two brothers back. They plunged into the abyss. Up and down the edge of the cliff, Word Bearers and Ultramarines came to grips. Giants of ceramite collided. They ripped into each other with hate’s savagery. The darkness resounded with the explosions of combat and the snarls of beings once men, now colossal embodiments of war. Chaos surrounded Kurtha Sedd, but he could not harness it.

  He stopped chanting.

  Aethon smashed Kaeloq aside with a blow from his chainfist. The Word Bearer fell to his hands and knees, his helm shattered. Aethon closed with Kurtha Sedd. The captain’s face was distorted with hate. Kurtha Sedd barely recognised him. The rage was all-consuming, and Kurtha Sedd felt a perverse surge of hope. If Aethon could disappear so completely into wrath, was he really that far from the truth? Could the power of the empyrean, this close, shake the Ultramarine from his father’s dogmatic mindset?

  ‘Steloc, the truth of Chaos is all around us,’ Kurtha Sedd shouted. ‘Surrender to it!’

  Aethon continued forwards. The Chaplain flexed his shoulders and took a step back.

  ‘The Octed is strong here. The flames of darkness shall consume you all.’

  The Ultramarine’s hatred boiled over. ‘Shut up, traitor!’ he bellowed, hurling himself forwards.

  The hope was born of Kurtha Sedd’s past. It was a burden, though he had realised it too late. It slowed his reflexes down – hope, regret, and doubt pulling on his arm. He raised his plasma pistol in his left hand and fired. Aethon had all the time he needed to duck to the Chaplain’s right, and the shot went wide.

  ‘There will be no surrender for either of us,’ the Ultrama
rine growled. ‘You had your chance for an honourable death.’ His chainfist exploded through the pillar. Dust and stone fragments billowed into Kurtha Sedd’s face, blinding him. He rocked back, avoiding a blow he could not see. He swung the crozius to his left. The impact shuddered up his arm as he smashed his opponent’s combi-weapon to pieces.

  He had the captain on the back foot and pressed the advantage, firing another shot at close range. The rock crumbled beneath Aethon’s boots as he evaded it, renewing his own assault. The abyss reached for them both.

  The teeth of Aethon’s chainfist snagged Kurtha Sedd’s plasma pistol before he could fire it again, yanking the weapon from his grip. For a moment, the two warriors grappled back and forth on the edge of the precipice. All Kurtha Sedd had to do was lean forwards, and they would both go over. Oblivion tempted him with an end to all burdens...

  No. Not this way.

  He grounded himself and drew the crozius back, steadying his hand for the blow. Aethon struck first, slamming the chainfist against Kurtha Sedd’s outstretched arm with enough force to jar loose his grip on the crozius’s haft, then hitting him again in the chest. The blade cut through the Chaplain’s armour. Ceramite splinters flew, then blood. He felt the adamantium teeth sink into his carapace. Aethon held his left arm up and out, denying him leverage. The crozius dangled in his gauntlet.

  Kurtha Sedd’s death was a perfect certainty. He was almost calm in his despair. He had failed in his duty, and was unworthy of the destiny.

  In desperation, he pulled away and struck at Aethon’s pauldron as hard as he could.

  The power of the blow caused the Ultramarine to stagger, the rock crumbling beneath his feet and tumbling down into the darkness.

  Kurtha Sedd did not wait for his foe to recover. His right hand reached to his belt. The movement was quick, smooth, unthought. It was as free as the pistol shot had been sluggish. He grasped his ritual dagger. He brought the point up beneath Aethon’s arm as the great warrior turned, pulling him close.