Ruinstorm

by David Annandale

  ‘The choice remains,’ said Madail. At last there was pain in the monster’s voice. There was the first hint of desperation. ‘Fall and rise, or stand and fall. To fall is written. Fall to power. Fall to glory.’ Its staff flared again. The blackness rushed closer. The dark thing was not just part of him, it was linked to his choice to stand against Madail.

  Cracks appeared in the armour of his purpose.

  Madail laughed. It reached out with its free hand. Its huge talons seized Sanguinius’ skull. ‘See and know!’ the daemon bellowed. ‘See and choose!’

  The blackness took him. His rage transformed. His consciousness split. He disappeared into the dark, and he remained detached from it, a sliver of his identity preserved in the suspension of choice. He split into madness and agony, because now he saw the true nature of the darkness.

  ‘This is the consequence,’ said Madail. ‘Wrath of the future. Flaw of origins. Doom of sons.’

  The fate Sanguinius had declared he would accept unfolded again. Horus killed him again. This time, he looked on at his death from a remove. Even so, he felt the fatal blow. As he saw himself die, he witnessed the birth of the darkness. It was a howl of rage, summoned by betrayal, forged from that which was broken in his blood. It was a rage of terminal darkness, and its shriek of birth sounded down the long millennia, to be heard by all his sons, until the final Blood Angel should fall. The moment of his death froze. It became eternal. It could never be expunged. It was the final expression of his soul. It was his scream, his anger, his fury at betrayal, and it would live in the blood of his Legion forever. His lost time on the Red Tear returned to him.

  He remembered.

  He remembered holding Mkani Kano, and not seeing the Librarian. He had seen Horus. He had not seen the bridge of the Red Tear. He had seen the Vengeful Spirit. From the abyssal depths of fury, he had sought vengeance for his death by changing time. He had been about to kill Kano, hallucinating him as the author of a crime yet to come.

  That was his legacy for his sons. The Black Rage would come for them and tear reality from their grasp. Roaring hate, they would slip to the moment in their past that marked the beginning of their long fall. They would seek vengeance upon Horus, and see him in whoever stood before them. Their fury against evil would turn them into mad butchers.

  ‘This is the choice!’ Madail boomed. ‘This is the choice!’

  Sanguinius had thought his sacrifice was his alone. He had stood at the precipice of despair at the thought his death would have no meaning. But it would. It would have dreadful meaning. He did not know if through his death Horus would be stopped. He did not know if this choice meant the fall of the Imperium. He did know that the sacrifice would be that of his entire Legion. If he accepted his fate, the blood of his sons and of those they would kill would be on his hands.

  The Angel screamed in agony, and the daemon grasped its prize.

  And suddenly there was thunder.

  Eighteen

  The Choice

  The thunder destroyed the real and the immaterial. It blasted through the vortex. It hurled the daemon and the Angel apart. They plummeted to the deck. The enginarium twisted and flowed. The huge dome began to spiral. Skulls and metal and stone blurred with one another. The thunder shattered all thought, all consciousness, all struggle. The Veritas Ferrum shuddered. Its existence trembled on the edge of dissolution. The colossal engine casings split, peeling back like flesh. Blood and ichor flooded the deck. The galleries collapsed. Daemons fell and thrashed. Their jaws gaped with screams that could not be heard. There was only the thunder.

  Sanguinius landed at the edge of the portal. It was unstable, and howling energy slashed from its maw, jagged strikes rupturing the bodies of daemons with uncontrolled change.

  Sanguinius pushed himself up. Madail’s staff had fallen from his chest, and blood pumped from the wound. He cried out again from the greater injury to his soul, shaking with horror before the new curse that would fall on his sons because of him. Even to breathe felt like a condemnation, but he saw his foe fallen before him, and he found the strength to fight on. Madail thrashed, the Blade Encarmine and the Spear of Telesto embedded in its torso.

  The thunder was passing, rolling away in rumbles like the fall of mountains. The walls of the Veritas Ferrum began to stabilise. The ship had been hurt, but it was not dead. A growl began to build in the wake of the thunder. It came from a vast distance forwards, vibrating down the length of the ship. It was the snarl of a vengeful beast, about to strike back.

  The fading of the thunder was the measure of the moment Sanguinius had before him. He lunged at Madail and grabbed the hilts of his weapons. He sank them deeper into the daemon, then pulled the impaled daemon towards him. He could feel the portal at his back. The material and empyrean warred with each other. The ocean stormed, waiting to swallow him one more time. Madail reared up. Sanguinius held tight to the weapons. His anger was desperate now. The storm of his destruction threatened to overturn his reason. Despair pushed his wrath to the edge of the blackness. Grief swamped him. His choice was nothing more than a choice of dooms. He would doom his sons and perhaps the Imperium if he accepted his fate, or he would be the doom of the Imperium if he surrendered to Madail. Hope had fled. He forced himself to think no further than the next second, the next gesture. He followed the path of blind duty, though it seemed even that might abandon him too. And so he dragged the weapons towards him, and his wretched fury was still enough that the Spear of Telesto burned the daemon again.

  Held, half-prone, Madail lunged, its staff abandoned. Its giant claws grabbed the Angel by his wings. ‘YOU WILL SERVE!’ Madail bellowed, and the air shattered like glass. The daemon’s grip was iron on Sanguinius’ wings. It was still moving forwards. Sanguinius threw himself backwards. Madail, in mid-lunge, went with him.

  They fell into the portal.

  There was the jolt of a huge disjunction, of two realities forced together, yet separated by the blade of the empyrean. Sanguinius plunged through the violence of the portal. He landed, and his torso was on the floor of the Delphos. His legs were still on the skulls of the Veritas Ferrum’s deck. The daemon held his wings, and he held his weapons. They were caught between the realities, and the warp ran through the centre of their beings. They thrashed. The tip of the Spear of Telesto, embedded in the daemon’s chest, was inside the portal. There it held Madail, transfixing the abomination.

  Sanguinius was held too, by more than the daemon’s grip. He was suspended in grief, trapped by fate. He saw his brothers approach over quaking rubble. Azkaellon and the Sanguinary Guard were right behind them. They cut down the daemons that remained between them and the portal, and then they were with him.

  They seemed so far away.

  Guilliman crushed Madail’s wrist with the Hand of Dominion. The daemon’s claws splayed in pain. The monster struggled, unable to pull free from the Avenging Son’s strength. The Lion brought the Wolf Blade down on the daemon’s pinned arm, grinding through the armour plating of its hide. Guilliman slammed the Hand down again, and the daemon’s hand went limp. Flames licked up and down the wounded limb. The daemon released Sanguinius’ wings and slashed at the primarchs. Its claws cut deep gouges into their armour, but they would not be stopped. The Lion’s sword chewed into the daemon’s flesh. The monster screamed. With a sickening wet crack of gristle, the Lion severed the arm. A deluge of ichor spilled into the temple.

  Madail screamed, and the eyes of its skull bathed the temple hall with fire. The walls wavered, shifting back and forth between stone and flesh. They burned and bled, and the broken dome slumped lower. The blast threw the Sanguinary Guard back and swept over the Dark Angels and Ultramarines. The great daemon’s power was overwhelming. Its flames coursed over and through the legionaries’ armour, burning bodies and souls. Azkaellon cried out in pain and determination. Leaning forwards as if against a hurricane, he staggered back through the fire towar
ds his primarch, fighting for every step.

  Unbowed in the heart of the furnace Guilliman and the Lion redoubled their blows against Madail. Sanguinius could barely see them. The foul brilliance of the fire turned them into silhouettes. Madail slowed them, but could not stop them. They were jagged shapes, indomitable in their attacks, striking through a firestorm with immense blows to smash open the daemon’s body. They were titans of war, and with their features hidden, they were myths, embodiments of strength and courage raining down judgement on the terrible priest.

  Yet Madail moved. Its skull eyes still spewing fire in an unending torrent, it heaved itself up. Sanguinius jammed his spear and sword deeper into its chest, holding the daemon down. Tremors ran through its body, growing stronger. It was drawing the energy of the warp into it. It would rise again. It was imprisoned for the moment, caught between two points in the materium. It must not free itself. It must not cross to one point or the other. As long as the portal was open, the daemon was a threat.

  On the threshold of the portal and the temple, Sanguinius saw what he must do. Here time changed. Here the Warmaster fell. Here the Angel was tempted. Here the galaxy pivoted.

  Azkaellon reached the threshold. He hunched against the blasts, wracked by pain but no less determined than Guilliman and the Lion.

  ‘Free your primarch!’ Guilliman shouted.

  Azkaellon reached forwards in the vortex of warp and materium. Layers of his armour peeled away in the storm. ‘My lord,’ he cried to Sanguinius, ‘give me your hand!’

  ‘No,’ said Sanguinius. ‘I must stay here.’

  Azkaellon froze, rigid with horror.

  ‘Roboute,’ Sanguinius rasped. Speaking was difficult. Battered by the instability of the portal, he was weakening. He clutched the seconds as they went by, holding them with the slender, silver thread of hope that was all that remained to him. ‘Leave me. Leave Davin now. I will hold the daemon as long as I can.’ He looked at the Lion. ‘Now is the time. Destroy this world.’ The portal linked Davin and the Veritas Ferrum. The planet had been dead, but now it was convulsing with power.

  Sanguinius writhed in pain. He dared not wonder if he could last until the evacuations were complete. He could not think of the hours. Only of the seconds. One by one by one. He would hold for this one. Then he would fight to hold for the next.

  Madail strained futilely against the Spear of Telesto. ‘This is not your fate!’ it raged. ‘Fall or rule! You do not fall here!’

  Sanguinius ignored the daemon. He had to. The hope for a meaningful death was too precious. ‘Go,’ he pleaded with Guilliman. He turned his eyes to Azkaellon. With my last breaths, I will spare my sons, he thought. ‘Go!’ he roared.

  Azkaellon took a step away. His face was a mirror of Sanguinius’ agony. He could not disobey his primarch, but the order was condemning him to the unthinkable.

  The Black Rage crawled into the back of Sanguinius’ skull, coiling, ready to spread its cancer through the millennia. He was sparing his Legion nothing. His death would still be the trauma that would bestow his legacy of madness. Whether his sons relived his death at the hands of Horus or on Davin, the result would be the same. The doom was in his blood.

  Curze was right. His fate and that of the Blood Angels could not be altered.

  Perhaps Curze was wrong, too. If Sanguinius could not save his sons, he might still preserve the Imperium. His death could have meaning. The sacrifice of his Legion could have meaning. Here and now, in this act, there was meaning.

  There was also no choice. Curze was right there, too, if not for the reason he thought. Madail and Davin must be destroyed. There was no other action open to Sanguinius. There was the duty of the second, and he held fast.

  The thoughts flashed through Sanguinius’ mind in the time it took for Azkaellon to retreat a single step.

  The rest of the Sanguinary Guard, and beyond them Ultramarines and Dark Angels, had formed a wall, blocking access to the portal. No more daemons were coming through it. Instead, those still in the hall had turned back, trying to reach their fallen priest. The tremors continued to shake the temple. Two storms battered the hall. The portal raged at the edge of extinction. The struggle beyond created a curtain of sorcerous fire, exploding shells and ignited promethium. Legionaries and daemons destroyed each other.

  ‘Go,’ Sanguinius pleaded.

  A new armoured figure knelt before him. It was his herald. He had not seen the legionary approach. Had he marched with the Sanguinary Guard into the Delphos? Sanguinius couldn’t remember. He was there now, as he had come to the Angel on the Red Tear. As, indeed, he had answered the first need on Macragge. His power sword upraised, he held his hand out to the Angel. He said nothing. His gesture was eloquent.

  I will take your place. Let this burden be mine.

  Sanguinius looked up into the helmet of his unknown son. His path became clear. His duty could not end here. He could not protect his sons from their doom. His duty would be to fight until the appointed end came for him. Theirs would be to fight on, and bear the dual burden of Thirst and Rage until salvation or oblivion would come for them.

  He did not hesitate. He had no doubts now. This too, was fate. In the depths of his pain, he experienced a bleak hope, and a bitter joy. He had always been meant to stand at the juncture of timelines, and though there was flux, though there was possibility, he had always been meant, too, to reach this point, and to receive this offer from the one Blood Angel who could make it. There were too many symmetries, too many echoes, for the meaning of this moment to be otherwise.

  Once before, on Signus Prime, a son had taken the place of the father. Meros had sacrificed himself. He had become the Red Angel. He had embodied the Thirst, becoming the worst of the Blood Angels’ nature.

  On the Red Tear, the herald had banished Sanguinius’ madness. He had confronted the primarch with the best of what he was.

  The best was there now. He would suffer for the Angel. He was the perfect offering to the fates.

  ‘No choice,’ Sanguinius gasped. The pain of the truth was as great as the physical agony that wrenched him across the portal.

  Sanguinius turned his back on ruin. He nodded. The herald raised his sword, both hands wrapped around the hilt, the blade pointing downwards. He stepped forwards.

  ‘Save your servant,’ Madail cried, ‘who trusts in you, oh Four!’ It snatched at the herald. As its great claws came together, the air burned around their contours. It tore the fabric of the materium in the frenzy of its effort. With the power that had shattered worlds, that had enveloped a system with a boneyard, it hurled itself against the gates of destiny.

  And found them closed.

  It seized the herald, but the herald was already leaning forwards, plunging the sword into the portal. Madail’s grasp moved the Blood Angel into the position determined by fate, and the blade struck the daemon at the point where it was bisected by the portal, into the wound struck by the Spear of Telesto. The herald stabbed the sword down to the hilt, holding the daemon.

  Madail screamed with a voice of a thousand agonies. The shriek clawed down the vault. Rubble by the tonne collapsed into the centre of the hall, crushing the daemonic horde even as the abominations recoiled from the scream, moaning their despair. The roof of the temple was suddenly open to the air. The daemon’s torso reared up. Its eyes were wide and staring, and they were as blank as the orbs in its skull.

  Madail was blind.

  The daemon screamed again and again.

  When Madail arched its back in pain, Sanguinius rose. He yanked the Blade Encarmine from the daemon’s shoulder. He pulled the Spear of Telesto from the monstrous body. The weapon burned in his grip, and the spearhead glowed white. He staggered back from the portal. The herald stood in the midst of the portal, neither in the temple nor in the Veritas Ferrum. Bestriding realities, enveloped by the storm of the warp, he should not have been vis
ible any longer. He should have vanished the moment he entered the portal.

  His silhouette was visible, bent over of the body of the daemon, his sword transfixing the Undivided. The edges of his outline trembled, as if the immaterium sought to eat away at his being. His stance over the writhing daemon was strong. He was motionless, already a symbol more than a warrior of flesh and bone. He would stand until his work was done.

  ‘We have little time,’ Sanguinius said to his brothers. ‘We must act while my son holds fate at this crossroads. We must honour his sacrifice.’ It felt like a crime, like a new form of treachery, to turn his eyes from the herald and the miracle of that silhouette in the portal. At the last moment, he witnessed the greater miracle. He saw the outline of wings spring from the herald’s shoulder.

  A new angel was coming into being.

  ‘Son of my blood!’ Sanguinius cried. ‘Son of my hope!’ And the angel blazed with gold.

  Sanguinius forced himself to turn and face the hall. The battle was over. The bodies of Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Dark Angels lay in the near approach to the portal, some mutilated obscenely by daemonic claws and sorcery, others crushed beneath the fallen stone. Despite the losses, the formations were intact. The wall of ceramite stood around the primarchs. The daemons here were finished. Their burned, shattered remains covered the visible portions of the floor. Smoke rose from liquefying masses. Screaming shapes half formed in the smoke, vanishing as it spread wider in the air.

  The hall was a mass of rubble. The walls were buckling. Pillars had fallen, and the ones still standing were cracked, stone dust falling from the crevasses. There were ways through the wreckage, though. Where doorways were blocked by collapses, new breaches in the walls opened other passages. The tremors went on and on. The Delphos was shaking itself apart. It had failed in its last task, and the failure was destroying it.