Lysander led the way. His thunder hammer was a beacon that the other Imperial Fists followed. It rose and fell, leaving mountains of torn bodies and lakes of daemon blood in its wake. The Imperial Fists rampaged over the barricades and stormed through the daemon forges, clambering over the unfinished war engines to batter back the warp spawn that tried to regroup to face them.
The daemons fought with no coordination or intelligence. Many collapsed, flesh discorporating as the warp-magic that sustained them in realspace failed. The Imperial Fists gathered in firing lines to shred their enemies with bolter fire, or launched massed assaults with chainblades and glaives. Siege-Captain Daviks and the surviving Silver Skulls directed the heavy weapons towards the largest daemons, the warp-heralds, before they could organise a resistance.
It was grim, bloody work. There was no joy in this victory. It was a crude and brutal business, wading through the remains of the enemy, as the Imperial Fists passed through the forges and pushed on towards the cargo bays where the heart of the infestation had been planted.
Varnica picked up the semi-conscious Sister Aescarion and carried her clear of the collapsing portal. Abraxes was dead, his physical form split almost in two by the shrinking portal, and his spirit ripped out and thrown back into the cauldron of the warp to be punished. Luko and Graevus knelt by the portal and Varnica followed their gaze as they looked across the cyst to where the first of the Imperial Fists were entering.
Lysander was the first to wade towards the collapsing portal, through the blood which was choked with the bodies of daemons and the strike force’s Imperial Fists. The captain cast an eye over the carnage, over the unnatural warping of the ship around him, at the sorry remains of Apothecary Pallas, Reinez, and the last of Prexus’s squad.
‘Brother Varnica,’ said Lysander. ‘Is it done?’
‘It is done,’ said Varnica. ‘I and this Battle Sister, and these two Soul Drinkers, are the only survivors. But it is done.’
Lysander stepped up onto the ground that broke the blood surface around Abraxes’s throne. The throne of corpses was withering and flaking into dust, as if years of decay were piling on them at once. ‘Captain Luko. And Brother Graevus, if I am not mistaken.’ He held out a hand. ‘There is nothing left for you to fight for. I am sure that many will argue for leniency, but you are still in the custody of the Imperial Fists. Come with me.’
Luko stood up, and hauled Graevus unsteadily onto his feet. Beside him, the portal had shrunk to just over head height, and Abraxes’s body was cut all the way down through his abdomen, leaving the half outside the portal completely severed.
‘Captain Lysander,’ said Luko, ‘there is no place in this galaxy for the Soul Drinkers. Not in the cells of the Phalanx, or in the grip of whatever punishment is decided for us. Not even in freedom. The whole galaxy has been against us for so long that there is nowhere we could go and nothing we could do. So no, we will not hand ourselves over to your custody.’
‘I’m ready,’ said Graevus.
‘As am I, brother,’ said Luko. He looked back towards Lysander, and the other Imperial Fists making their way into the cyst. ‘Wish us luck. You are our brothers, in spite of everything. I have one thing to ask of you. The inquisition tried to delete us from history. Please, make sure that we are not forgotten.’
Luko helped Graevus limp towards the portal. Lysander watched them go, and with a wave of his hand stayed the guns of his Imperial Fists.
Luko and Graevus walked through the portal, into the warp, into whatever waited for them there.
The portal closed completely, cutting off the madness of the warp from realspace, and the cyst fell dark.
It was some time later, as the Imperial Fists and Howling Griffons were killing off the last of the daemons running loose around the cyst, that a blade of black energy sliced through the fleshy growths on the walls. Behind the growth was a doorway from one of the other cargo holds, in the direction of the Phalanx’s bridge. The blade was that of the Soulspear, and it was in the hand of Sarpedon.
The Chapter Master of the Soul Drinkers was near death. Torn stumps of legs dripped ichor. Half his face and one eye were a torn mess, shredded by shrapnel still poking from the pulpy flesh. Open bullet wounds, plugged by congealed blood, were livid against his chest, and one arm hung shattered from a twisted shoulder joint. Sarpedon seemed barely able to walk on the three legs that remained – but the Imperial Fists did not see a defeated man. Wounded, near death, but not defeated.
Sarpedon placed the Soulspear’s haft back in an ammo pouch and picked up a pale, tangled shape at his feet – a body, atrophied with age, which had once been that of a Space Marine.
The Imperial Fists gathered without an order, their bolters levelled at Sarpedon. Chapter Master Vladimir stood to their front, both Fangs of Dorn in hand.
Sarpedon limped to where half of Abraxes’s corpse still lay, his blood drying on the sigils scorched into the floor. They were all that remained of the portal that had opened there. The Imperial Fists saw the wounds on Sarpedon, the torn stumps of severed legs, the twisted shoulder and dented armour. Sarpedon looked like he had gone through enough to kill any other warrior of the Adeptus Astartes twice over.
Sarpedon held up the body in his hand, carrying it by the scruff of the neck. It was alive, and it looked across the assembled Imperial Fists with fear on its face.
‘This is Daenyathos,’ said Sarpedon, ‘This is the man who brought Abraxes forth from the warp. This is the man who manipulated my Chapter and yours, because he believed that mankind had to suffer to make it stronger.’
Imperial Fists took aim along their bolter sights at the mutant.
‘Hold your fire, brothers,’ said Vladimir.
‘But he was wrong.’ Sarpedon dropped his arm and let Daenyathos hang down, dragging along the floor. ‘He thought mankind did not suffer enough. But it suffers too much. Men like Daenyathos, like the powers of the warp themselves, are symptoms of humanity’s misery. But we can put it right.’
‘Just as you did, Sarpedon?’ said Vladimir. ‘You are the only one of your Chapter remaining. Even if your path could redeem the Imperium, how can it be walked when you yourself could not walk it?’
‘Because I was a fool,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘I did not see that Daenyathos was pulling the strings. I walked into the role he had prepared for me, and I almost played it to the end. But you have seen my failings. You know the pitfalls. And when you fail, those who follow you will learn from you, too. And we are the only ones who can begin it. We, the Space Marines, we have the closest thing this Imperium has to freedom.’
Lysander stepped forwards. ‘And what is to say that one of us will take up this torch, Sarpedon?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘If you can ignore your conscience. If you can see the Imperium in the new light the Soul Drinkers have shone on it, and yet still do nothing to stem its suffering, then I suppose there is nothing to say that. If you are content to continue witnessing the death throes of the human race, that is. If you can think your work complete when the Imperium devours itself day by day. If you can do all that, then the light will die out here, with me. But if the conscience of a single battle-brother here, or of any who even hear of us, is inflamed as ours was, then it will burn on.’
‘You have said your piece, Sarpedon, ‘said Vladimir. ‘We must take you back in. Your case will be decided anew. Daenyathos must be punished. Cast down the Soulspear and let Lysander place you back in custody. It’s over, all of it.’
Sarpedon looked down at the sigils branded on the floor around his feet.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that only the blood of Rogal Dorn could open the Eye of Kravamesh. And whatever flows through me, it is not Dorn’s blood. Correct?’
The floor beneath Sarpedon glowed and smouldered. The thrum of caged power reverberated through the cyst.
‘Sarpedon,’ croaked Daenyathos. ‘What are you doing?’
Light gathered and crackled, sending
haphazard shadows across the cyst.
‘Stop!’ shouted Vladimir. ‘We will open fire!’
‘The blood of Dorn,’ shouted Sarpedon over the growing sound, ‘flows through those who fight his fight. When he marched in the Great Crusade, it was to save humanity in unity, not to unite it only to cast it back into the dark. This was the Emperor’s goal. Though His road has not been travelled for ten thousand years, you can put the human race back on it. If you choose to. If you dare.’
Light crackled, flaring across the cyst like a tongue of flame from a star. A crack in reality re-opened, the impossible colours of the warp seething beyond.
‘Sarpedon! Screamed Daenyathos. ‘No! You do not know what lies beyond!’
‘But you do,’ replied Sarpedon. ‘And I see how you fear it. Perhaps I should fear it too. But I can fight it, and you cannot.’
Daenyathos’s last words devolved into a scream as Sarpedon carried him through the portal, dragging the Philosopher-Soldier over the threshold and out of reality.
The portal slammed shut behind them, its fires darkening again, leaving only an echo of its power.
Sister Aescarion blinked in the light, her eyes struggling to kill the glare. She had been asleep for a long time, and her head still pounded.
The last thing she remembered was Abraxes standing over her, his grin turning to a scowl of frustration just as Luko dived into him, ripping out the daemon’s eye. Everything after that had been a blur of noise and fury.
She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed in which she had awoken. She was in the apothecarion of the Phalanx. Dozens of Imperial Fists lay comatose in the beds around her, their armour piled up beside them, lifesign monitors blinking and beeping. A spindly medical servitor trundled between them, reading off vitals and administering doses.
Aescarion was a little unsteady on her feet. She was wearing the shapeless under-robes that Battle Sisters wore when not in armour. Her wargear was piled up beside her bed, and from the scars on her armour and the blade of her power axe she wondered that she could walk now at all.
She wandered through the apothecarion. All was cool and quiet, the wounded tended by servitors or lying in suspended animation induced by their catalepsean nodes. Aescarion felt the cold metal of the deck on her bare feet as she walked out of the apothecarion and into the great lofty passageway, one of many running most of the length of the Phalanx.
Scaffolding stood against the walls, servitors and crew members working at the dark stone that clad the passageway. Statues and inscriptions lined the passage and a great panel of plain stone could be seen between the scaffolds. The servitors and masons were working at one of the lower corners with chisels and granite saws, a drift of stone dust building up at the base of the wall.
Chapter Master Vladimir approached. His armour was clean and repaired, but he still had the minor scars of the recent battles on his face. The crew saluted and bowed their heads as he approached.
‘Sister!’ he said. ‘It is good that you are again among us. Varnica explained to me your actions at the portal.’
‘They are not something I wish to revisit,’ replied Aescarion. ‘I shall meditate on them myself. Such things should be considered in private.’
‘An Imperial Fist would be lauded as a hero,’ said Vladimir.
‘I am not an Imperial Fist. A daughter of the Emperor cannot be prideful.’
‘Perhaps the same can be said of a Space Marine,’ said Vladimir. ‘Though even a Chapter Master must be careful to whom he says it. Our next journey is to the Segmentum Solar, Sister. Lord Inquisitor Kolgo suggested that we take the Phalanx to Saturn, where his colleagues from the Ordo Malleus can assist in cleansing the deamonic stench from this ship. It will take time, and no little negotiation with the daemonhunters, but the Phalanx will fly as holy ground again.’
‘That we stand her now tells me that Abraxes was defeated,’ said Aescarion. ‘But what of our own? How many were lost?’
‘More than half those who fought,’ replied Vladimir. ‘A terrible blow. But we will recover. We have done so before.’
‘And the Soul Drinkers?’
‘None remain,’ said Vladimir.
‘Then it is over.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Vladimir. He turned to continue up the corridor in the direction of the bridge. Aescarion watched him go, not sure what to make of his parting words.
She turned back to the wall, where the masons were starting to work again. She walked between them, running a hand over the surface, the still-rough letters awaiting detailing and polishing.
TYRENDIAN, read the letters that passed under her fingers.
LUKO.
GRAEVUS.
The next column bore the names of Imperial Fists – Sergeant Prexus, who had died in the Panpsychicon, Castellan Leucrontas, all the Imperial Fists who had died. And alongside them, listed as brothers in death, were the Soul Drinkers.
SARPEDON, read the last name to be inscribed.
In a manner of speaking, it was over. The Soul Drinkers were gone. Abraxes was destroyed. But the idea of them remained. Their names were listed among the fallen, and in the Tactica Sigismunda the battle in the cyst would be recreated. Generations to come would live in a galaxy where the idea of the Soul Drinkers existed, an idea that had so nearly died in the execution chambers of the Phalanx and the book furnaces of the Inquisition.
It would live on among the Sisters of Battle, too. It was not Aescarion’s place to judge the right or wrong of what Sarpedon had stood for – but it would not die when she could keep it alive. Even if only as a warning, the cautionary tale of Daenyathos who pulled puppet strings that almost threw the Imperium into a new age of darkness, she would remember.
She turned away from the inscriptions and walked back towards the apothecarion, still unsteady. At Saturn, in the Inquisitorial dockyards of Iapetus, she could try to put her thoughts in order and decide how the story of Soul Drinkers should be passed on so it would remain intact among the currents of the future. But there were wounds that needed to heal first. She would decide that another day.
The masons continued their inscribing as Aescarion walked away, carving the story of the Soul Drinkers into the stone among the lists of the dead.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Cheoljoo Lee
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