I use it.
My anger gives me focus. It has targets. So much power has flowed into me that I am on the verge of dissolution. I must purge the energy. I create a channel. With the will granted me by rage, I shape the charge as best I can, and then I unleash a force to shatter history.
The explosion is massive. Its light is the deathly white of the statue mixed with the crimson of my hate. It begins as an expanding sphere of the inchoate. With a slipping grip on consciousness, I am able to isolate Albinus, Quirinus and myself from the pure disintegration. The sphere strikes the limits of the vault. With a roar of falling gods, the tower flies apart. Every blade and gun and club that made up its walls is launched on its own trajectory. The spire becomes a swarm of weaponry, raining war upon the land. Our tanks and gunships are sent tumbling end over end, leaves in the wind. Beyond the tower, the destruction takes the shape of my rage. The sphere becomes electric streams, the claws of my talon. They slash across the battlefield, swallowing the berserker Blood Angels and the remaining Sanctified, blasting them apart, reducing their blasphemous existence to smoke. My will is a spear, impaling all that is unclean. It is fire, scourging the land. It is a monster, devouring all of its kin. I experience the destruction of each foe. I revel in it. My thirst can never be slaked, but it laps up the enormous kill. And when the dragon of rage has feasted, it finally dies.
The light fades. The boom echoes off the towers of the city, falling to a distant rumble, and then… silence? No. Nothing so blessed. There is a low, pulsing hum, almost sub-aural. It is so deep, so powerful, that my spine and chest vibrate to its rhythm.
I have fallen a few metres from the dais. I am drained, hollowed out. Oblivion would be welcome, but the hum is insistent. It beats at the frame and at the mind. It will not be ignored. It will not let go. I struggle to my feet. Where the statue stood, there is now a wound in the materium. Darkness still holds sway over Vekaira. The dome of black has not dispersed, and the only illumination is from the fires still licking through the rips in the air. The tear in the real before me is of an even darker black. Its form is irregular and shifting. Tendrils of the warp twist at the edges, serpents the colour of nightmares and madness. Submerged within the hum, but leaking now into my awareness, I can hear an infinite choir of screams and moans. Those are not the cries of the tortured and the murdered. They are the songs of torture and murder themselves. The worst dreams of our species have a life, and they are moving on the other side of that rift.
A howl of rage makes me turn. Albinus is struggling with Quirinus. The Reclusiarch is on the ground. Albinus is behind him, pinning both his arms. Quirinus thrashes. I open my mouth to tell Albinus to release him. There is nothing left for him to defend. He can do no more harm. Then I realise that he is shouting in High Gothic. He is not cursing me, but Horus. The Black Rage is upon him.
Though I protected the two Blood Angels from the worst of the blast, I could not spare them entirely. Their armour looks as if burning claws have raked it. Albinus’s shoulders slump. He is exhausted. I can barely walk, but I join him. I hold Quirinus’s legs, keeping him immobilised while the Sanguinary Priest speaks to him. Albinus calls his name. He entreats Quirinus to remember who he is, when he is, and to come back to his brothers. Albinus recites the Litanies of Sanguinary Intercession, praying for Quirinus’s deliverance from the temporal fugue.
Around us, the remains of Fourth Company gather. It is a diminished force. The losses have been great. No warrior walks unscathed. Drawn to the source of horror, the Blood Angels are confronted by a fallen Reclusiarch, a world still in the grip of Chaos, and the fact of a sacred icon’s destruction. Captain Castigon, his Iron Halo battered, his armour scorched of its glory, kneels beside Albinus and takes over restraining Quirinus’s arms. He meets my eyes briefly. I see exhaustion in his gaze. Worse: I see uncertainty. Though there has been a victory in the destruction of our enemies, he wonders at the cost. He suspects a greater loss. Despair is on the heels of that uncertainty.
Albinus removes Quirinus’s helmet and his own, that his words might reach the afflicted more easily. The intonation and rhythms of his ritual chanting were lost through the distortions of speakers. Still, there is little he can do. Albinus’s spiritual duties concern the Red Thirst. It is the Chaplains who guide their charges through the finality of the Black Rage, and we have no Chaplain. Dantalian, who preached to Fourth Company, died on the Eclipse of Hope. And now we are losing Quirinus. He believed not wisely but too well. The shock of the truth has destroyed him.
Then, his eyes clear. He blinks at Albinus. His raving stops.
‘Have you returned to us, brother?’ the Sanguinary Priest asks. ‘Do you see us?’
Quirinus looks at me. ‘I see you,’ he says. It is an accusation.
‘Have you returned?’ Albinus repeats.
The question is not idle, or rhetorical. It requires an answer. That answer requires the sufferer to be self-aware. Quirinus’s face is contorted with effort. His lips are drawn back in a grimace of strain that could easily turn back into rage. He hangs over a precipice, his grip tenuous. He takes a great, shuddering breath before he speaks.
‘I will not return,’ he says. The words fall upon the company like the peal of the Bell of Lost Souls.
He is not addressing Albinus. He is speaking to me. ‘Why?’ I ask.
‘I will… lose too much.’ His fight is perverse. He is struggling to remain sane long enough to curse that sanity. Another breath. ‘I will not be a monster.’
That is his farewell. With his final rejection of the path I walk, he releases his hold and falls into his personal abyss. His eyes see another time, another threat, and his mind urges him to fight the Battle of Terra. Albinus deploys his narthecium, injecting Quirinus with a massive dose of sedative. We will add another name to the roster of the Death Company.
I stand back as Albinus tends to Quirinus. The Reclusiarch has remained true to the conclusions of his beliefs to the end. He who withstands the Black Rage is without soul. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps I am something worse yet. But which of us stands for the Chapter? Disgusted by his weakness, I turn my back on him.
I face the rift once more. We have allowed ourselves the luxury of a few minutes to deal with the fall of a legend. We have been liberated of our physical foes. But this opening to the warp might yet spell the end of Pallevon, and perhaps of us. I do not know if we can close it. I do not know the nature of the blackness that covers Vekaira, and whether it can be crossed.
I do not know, in this moment of honesty, what I have done.
Castigon stands nearby, eyeing the rift. ‘And so, Chief Librarian?’ he asks. What he means is, You have no answer, do you?
‘The game is not over,’ I mutter.
‘No,’ comes the answer from beyond the rift. ‘Well played, Blood Angel.’
CHAPTER NINE
THE PUPPET MASTER
The speaker is not among us yet, but the words inflict another wound upon the materium. There is a sudden, torrential rain of blood and ash upon the scattered remains of the tower. The voice is resonant with power and millennia upon millennia of violence. It sneers with the special malevolence that comes not from being born to evil, but from choosing that path and rejoicing in the destiny that follows. The voice is as deep and bone-shaking as the hum of the rift, but it thunders, too, like a million drums of war. And it rasps. It is claws scraping the inside of a skull. It is teeth gnawing the bones of hope until they snap. It is the laughter of genocide.
The blood keeps falling from the vault of the black dome. The warp-screams grow louder. The cracks in the air erupt with sudden gouts of flame, and from them comes a new army. These are not soldiers. They are vermin. Their twisted horns sprout from elongated heads. Their legs are backwards-jointed, giving them a mocking, prancing gait. They are the bloodletters of Khorne, and they plagued us aboard the Eclipse of Hope. The sensation of a hellish circle at last being closed is sickening.
The daemons stalk towards th
e exhausted company. We are surrounded. The Blood Angels respond as if fresh to the battle. Defiant, Fourth Company forms a defensive circle. There is no cover. The tower has been reduced to bits no larger than a metre or two. But the wave of daemons will break upon crimson rock.
Castigon joins the circle, exhorting his warriors to a heroic effort. ‘Now comes the true enemy!’ he proclaims, his voice as strong and as eager for battle as when we first stormed the gates of Vekaira. ‘Now, at last, we have the blight of Pallevon in our sights! Sons of Sanguinius, we shall teach the forces of Chaos a lesson in humility this day. They shall learn, to their sorrow, what it means to invoke the wrath of the Blood Angels!’ And the lesson begins. Mass-reactive destruction pours into the ranks of daemons.
I remain outside the circle. I ignore the bloodletters. Whatever danger they represent, they are still a distraction. I confront the rift, waiting for the arrival of the commander of this horde. He speaks again, his voice effortlessly drowning the stutter of guns. ‘Oh, the words, such fine words. Do they give you comfort, you playthings? Do you not tire of mouthing and hearing these tiny posturings?’ The voice is monstrous. It uses sound and words to savage its listeners. I force myself to concentrate past the assault and analyse what I hear. I will do what lies within my power to take the measure of the coming foe. I note the facility with language. There is something, however debased, of the human in the speech patterns. The jagged mosaic of memories impress themselves upon me once more. I have no doubt that they are the memories of this being. This creature, who witnessed the death of the primarch, who is eras older than the Emperor Himself, was once human.
‘Do not answer,’ I vox Castigon. ‘Do not give this abomination that satisfaction.’
‘The satisfaction of what?’ comes the scraping response. There is no urgency to the voice, no acknowledgement of the pitched battle that has erupted at my back. ‘Would you deny me your rage? It is too late for that, Brother Mephiston. Far too late for that.’
The use of my name and the assumption of kinship plunges me back to the caves of Solon V and the lies of M’kar. I bristle, but do not answer.
‘You have denied me nothing,’ the voice continues, with the awful ring of truth. ‘You have given me everything. You have been the tools of my vengeance against your Chapter. You have opened the way to my dominion.’
‘There shall be no more games!’ I shout, and move forward. I will throw myself into the rift if that is what it takes to close the wound. I must, for the appearance of this doorway is the terrible answer to the mystery of the incarnate memory and why we have been lured here. In destroying the statue, I completed my final, assigned steps in the dance. I released the enormous build-up of energy. I tore open the materium.
I unleashed what is coming.
‘No more games,’ I repeat.
‘Agreed,’ says the voice.
I stop moving as I see a shape coalescing in the rift. ‘Let us put an end to games. Let us put an end to everything.’
The arrival of nightmare is sudden. There is the suggestion of a presence. There is a sound of agonised reality breaking. And then the being is among us. He is immense, towering over us all, and I wonder how such a thing could ever have been human.
But then, so was I. Once.
I behold a daemon prince.
Of the man, only cruelty remains. The head is framed by two long, forward-curving horns. The face is reptilian. The eyes are narrow, and from their deep pits of blackness, tiny slits glimmer with terrible knowledge. The maw, which could bite the head off an ork, is filled with needle-thin teeth. The daemon prince strides towards us on legs the size of Space Marines. His claws are gladius-long. His hide and his armour are the red of coagulating blood, and it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. The knee-plating takes the form of a horned, daemonic face. The eyes blink. The jaws of the relief sculptures open and close in hunger and savage amusement. On each of the monster’s pauldrons, a human writhes, surrounded by skulls emerging from a pool of blood. Only the upper half of the tortured soul is visible. At first I think this is because the unfortunate has been torn in two, but then I see the truth is more terrible yet: the body submerges into the unholy plate. The skulls bob and sink. That is blood, that is a deep and noxious pool, and yet it is armour. From the daemon prince’s back, two curved spikes rise, on which are impaled the mummified heads of Adeptus Astartes. Symbols are carved into their foreheads. The monster carries a gun. It looks like a form of bolter.
It is engraved with death’s heads. Its barrel is as thick as my arm.
The earth shakes with the daemon prince’s steps. He pauses a few metres from me. He spreads his arms wide. ‘I am Doombreed, Blood Angels, and you belong to me. Now, kneel, and together we shall feast on the blood of the galaxy.’
Doombreed.
Click. Click. Click.
Logic and machine advancing together, moving toward a picture both coherent and final. Doombreed, leader of several Black Crusades. Five millennia ago, he fell upon the Imperium. He was defeated, and the archives of Space Marine Chapters are filled with records of glorious victories. Ours among them. The histories are also chronicles of unspeakable atrocities, the annihilation of entire planetary systems, and wounds that bleed to this day. I recognise the symbols on the trophy heads of the Space Marines now. They are the liveries of the Warhawks and the Venerators, two Chapters extinguished utterly, lost to the dark dream unleashed by the being that stands before me.
The only answer to Doombreed’s speech is the continued shredding of his minions. How the daemon prince could imagine the Blood Angels would betray the Emperor beggars the mind. The presumption is laughable. Such treason is impossible.
Such conscious treason, I think. I try to suppress the thought, but it is there, nestled amongst my doubts.
Click. Click. Click.
The questions I have about my darkness. The identity of the berserkers. Doombreed cocks his head, the reflecting dark of his eyes trained on me, amused. ‘I thought you were tired of games, Chief Librarian,’ he says. ‘Isn’t it long past time for pretence?’
‘It is,’ I snarl. I walk towards him. ‘It is time for reckoning. I taught your accursed ship to fear me before I destroyed it. I shall teach you to scream.’
‘You disappoint me,’ Doombreed begins. I believe he thought me drained of energy, and perhaps I was, but my will to fight such horrors is unbounded, and the warp bends to my command.
I send a burst of scarlet light into his face. It is hardly more powerful than simple pyrotechnics, but it is dazzling and distracting. He takes one step back, blinking, and I seize the opportunity. I thrust my blade through his armour. Simple metal will not harm this being. I cannot stab him to death. But the power that was absent from the light show is in Vitarus, and I strike him with a fire fit to rip souls in two.
Doombreed’s roar shatters the air. More chunks of the real fall to the ground, releasing greater bursts of warp-flame. The monster bats me away with a fist half my size. The blow would crush a tank, but I anticipated it, and an immaterial shield absorbs the worst of the impact, transforming the force into kinetic energy.
I fly in a high arc, gain control of my flight and land near the top of the bowl. ‘You have been freed only to meet your final end!’ I taunt.
Enraged, Doombreed pursues. He thunders across the amphitheatre, away from the battle between my brothers and the bloodletters. I want his focus on me. Without his help, his army will be annihilated, leaving only him for Fourth Company to fight, should I fall.
But I will not. I freed the monster. I will destroy him.
I cannot say that I have drawn first blood. Doombreed has been striking at us since the Eclipse of Hope. But I have drawn blood, and infuriated my foe. Wrath gives strength, but unthinking wrath births errors. Doombreed charges. He wants me spitted on his horns. Good. My own snarl builds. I owe him a great agony, and he shall be repaid. Anger, directed anger, courses through my blood. Command of the warp flows wi
th it. I gesture, conducting reality. I focus on Doombreed’s path, choose my spot, and strike.
As before, stone is rendered molten by the heat of my rage. The daemon prince plunges his left leg deep into the sudden pit of lava. He stumbles, but does not fall. Instead, he deliberately steps fully into the trap. He stands there, submerged to the knee in boiling rock, and smiles. He scoops up a handful of lava, lets it drip through his fingers. ‘Yes, little brother, yes,’ he says, resuming his most insidious attack. ‘You fight like a true son of Khorne. But you have so much to learn.’ He spreads his arms, palms up, and gestures as if lifting the earth.
The entire upper third of the amphitheatre erupts. I am knocked skyward by a titanic geyser of lava and flame. Boulders are hurled like wheat in a gale. The heat would consume me. I survive in a bubble of force, but the blaze still reaches through that shield and my armour, the pain as piercing as it is enveloping.
The wings of my primarch fly me higher, above the reach of the eruption. At this height, I see a second eruption, this one at the centre of the bowl. The rift is tearing wide, spreading the poison of the warp over an ever-greater area. Reality bends and melts into abstractions of rage. Somehow, the ground on which my brothers are fighting remains stable, but elsewhere rubble howls its anger and fangs sprout from nowhere.
I retreat into the city. I must fight Doombreed on different terms. There is something that feels like inspiration scratching at a door in my mind. I must open it. I seek a moment’s respite at the base of a hab-tower.
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