by Darius Hinks
‘Gaius!’ snapped Mephiston, raising his sword, but hesitating to strike.
Rhacelus grasped his head in his hands and bent over double. Then he stood upright and looked at them. His scowl was gone, replaced by an amiable grin that had no place on Rhacelus’ face.
Mephiston and Antros watched in horror as he stretched his limbs with feline pleasure and sighed. Rhacelus looked physically unchanged – but they knew they were facing Pieter Zorambus, clad in a suit of Blood Angels power armour.
‘Impressive…’ said Zorambus, lifting Rhacelus’ sword. ‘Antiquated, but impressive.’ He dropped into a relaxed fighting stance and beckoned Mephiston forwards.
‘Astra Angelus!’ gasped Saint Ophiusa, dropping onto the snow with blood pooling around her. ‘He’s tricking you! Ignore him! Remember what you must do. Go now. To the fortress! His fellow sorcerer… She is at the Ædicula Sacrum.’ Her voice became almost incoherent as she fell back, blood filling her mouth. ‘He’s tricking you. Can’t you see?’
Mephiston was not looking at her. Blood rolled across his eyes as he saw what had been done to Rhacelus. The blood poured down his cheeks like tears and the cracks of dark fire simmering across his armour began spitting across the rocks.
Mephiston staggered as Vitarus exploded into flame and a violent tremor rocked the mountainside.
‘My lord!’ cried Antros, as Mephiston strode towards Zorambus, drawing back his flaming sword. ‘The Blade Petrific!’ Remember why we came!’
Mephiston was gone, consumed by the Gift. As he brought his sword down towards Zorambus’ face, the road tore itself up from the ground, wrenched free like iron drawn to a magnet. Vitarus clattered against the sorcerer’s falchion, hauling several tonnes of rockcrete in its wake, burying Zorambus in a cloud of dust and rubble.
‘Gaius!’ roared Mephiston, summoning his wings and launching himself into the air, hovering over the plumes of dust.
Zorambus tumbled back across the mountainside, shocked by the ferocity of Mephiston’s blow.
Mephiston drew Vitarus back again and the ground rose up once more, whirling around the blade like a pennant of rocks.
Zorambus cried out in frustration and summoned gaudy, glittering wings of his own, soaring to safety just before Mephiston slammed another landslide onto him.
Antros looked back at Volgatis. The golems had demolished the walls and were now wading through the streets, trampling down temples and punching through statues. Seraphim whirled around them like carrion crows, but their bolter fire was useless, punching holes through the ancient stone but doing nothing to slow their advance.
There was another tremorous boom as Mephiston and Zorambus clashed blades again.
Antros was hurled back through the dust and landed on the road, towards the fallen gates of the fortress.
‘I will find it!’ he yelled, sprinting towards Volgatis.
The duel taking place behind him was heaving the mountainside back and forth beneath his feet and he staggered as he ran. As he neared the wreckage of the portico, the ground was also shaking under the pounding of the golems’ feet. He vaulted rocks the size of tanks and reached the courtyard. Corpses lay everywhere – Seraphim and Hesbon’s dragoons, sprawled over the shattered ruins. Seraphim and Blood Angels were hunched in the rubble, firing up at the giants looming overhead, as other Sisters looped and dived through the fumes.
Antros clambered over a toppled wall and grabbed one of the Seraphim by the arm, turning her to face him. ‘The Blade Petrific!’ he cried, raising his voice over the cacophony. ‘Where is it?’
Her helmet was gone and she glared at him. ‘What have you done with the saint?’
‘Do not dare,’ roared Antros, overcome by fury, ‘to question the motives of a Blood Angel!’
She gasped and pulled away, clutching at his hands, trying to free herself from his grip. As she struggled, her eyes alighted on the distant statue of the griffon, high up at the rear of the convent.
Antros nodded and loosed his grip.
‘What are you?’ she demanded, staring at him in horror, blood trickling from her eyes.
Antros gave no answer and raced off through the rain of falling debris, leaping through the mayhem and running towards the steps.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Volgatis, Divinus Prime
‘It has to be me!’ howled Livia, terrifying Dharmia with the ferocity in her voice. There was no irony in her tone now, just naked fury.
As the jump pack’s thrusters roared beneath them, Livia drew a strange-looking knife and brandished it at the few daemons that were still circling them. Most of the screaming, shark-like things had been obliterated moments earlier – destroyed by the lines of blood fire hauled from the heavens. The crimson flames had skewered, then imploded the daemons, dragging unexpected cheers from Livia and Dharmia, but the few that remained were still intent on blocking their return to the stone griffon.
Livia whispered a long stream of syllables and it sounded to Dharmia as though she were speaking backwards – the words were a torrent of convoluted gibberish.
The knife flickered in response to the words and Dharmia saw again how misguided she had been about Livia. This was sorcery. There could be no other way to describe it. As Livia continued muttering, the light in the blade grew so fierce that Dharmia had to look away. Then, with a final word, Livia slashed the knife through the air and the light sprayed out in a rippling semicircle towards the daemons.
As it collided with the daemons’ blue, undulating bodies, the light passed through them. The sky was bisected by a scar of blue-and-pink flames, then, when the glare faded away and the sky was seamless once more, the daemons were gone.
‘It has to be me!’ hissed Livia, boosting the jets of the jump pack and throwing them both back towards the steps.
They landed heavily among the bodies of the Seraphim that had been butchered by the daemons. Livia shielded Dharmia from the impact and then gently put her back on the ground, before looking down at the scene below.
They both stared in stunned silence. The walls had been torn down and the towering golems were striding through the destruction they had wrought. It looked to Dharmia as though the old gods of Divinus Prime had risen from their slumber to strike down the works of the God-Emperor. But even the magnificence of the stone giants was overshadowed by what was happening beyond the ruined walls. The whole mountainside was being wrenched back and forth, like a flag rippling in the breeze. Vast shoulders of rock were being hurled around, triggering a thunderous avalanche from the surrounding slopes. Thousands of tonnes of rock crashed down into the valley, adding to the destruction.
The fortress shook in response and Dharmia staggered across the steps as slabs of ossified bone crashed down all around them.
‘The blade!’ cried Livia, hauling her back to her feet and dragging her up the steps. ‘We must save it.’
A figure charged through the whirling banks of dust, making for the top of the steps. He was a giant, clad in blue battleplate, and Dharmia cowered at the sight of him, knowing immediately that it could only be one of the Adeptus Astartes. It was not so much the bulk of the warrior that terrified her; it was the expression on his face. His features were large and perfectly symmetrical, like a character from a heroic painting, and his eyes were locked on the statue of the griffon with such fierce resolve that she could not believe they would dare compete with him. He seemed even more godlike than the golems that were tearing the fortress down.
He paused and glanced at them as he passed. ‘Leave!’ he cried. ‘The fortress is coming down!’
‘Wait!’ cried Livia, outraged. ‘The blade is–’
‘The blade is in danger,’ growled the Space Marine, without giving her a second glance. ‘There is a sorcerer in Volgatis. Leave this place!’
‘Moron,’ whispered Livia as he reached the chasm at the top of the
steps.
The warrior looked across the gap to the casket beneath the griffon. Then he nodded and took a few steps back, preparing to make a running jump.
Livia glanced at Dharmia, the crooked smile back on her face. ‘The galaxy is peopled almost entirely with simpletons.’ She raised her knife. ‘Which makes life so much easier for the rest of us.’
She flicked the blade to one side as though fending off an invisible blow and muttered another spell.
The Space Marine ran and launched himself from the top step, propelled by a flicker of psychic fire.
As his feet left the edge of the steps a wound opened up in the air between him and the dais, mirroring the shape Livia had made with her knife.
Blue-and-pink flames spiralled from the hole, viscous and treacly, spewing out through the air.
The warrior cursed. He summoned white light from his staff and jammed it into the opening, trying to halt himself in mid-air.
The staff caught on the edge of the portal and lodged there, like an anchor, but his momentum was so great that his lower half flipped round and disappeared into the fire, vanishing from view.
Livia laughed at the sight of the Space Marine trapped in mid-air, only his upper half visible. It looked as though he had been sliced in two.
Her amusement was cut short by another deafening explosion in the valley.
Dharmia and Livia flinched and whirled around to see that a great thunderhead had risen up into the sky and was rolling across the ruined fortress. The mountain of dust and fumes hurtled towards them, and Dharmia saw that there were two figures riding the crest of the wave – a pair of battling warriors, wearing the same battleplate as the man Livia had just trapped in the sky. They were hacking at each other furiously with flashing blades, but both had their eyes fixed on the Ædicula Sacrum as they tumbled and rolled through the tumult.
As the front edge of the dust cloud hit, the two warriors crashed into the steps with the force of a comet, scattering corpses and wreckage.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Volgatis, Divinus Prime
Antros looked down from his agonising prison as Mephiston and Rhacelus rolled to a halt and clambered to their feet. Rhacelus’ face was a grotesque hybrid – a mixture of the Librarian’s own stern features and Zorambus’ leering grin.
‘Too slow!’ Zorambus cried through Rhacelus’ mouth, sprinting up the steps towards the woman.
The witch drew back her knife to cleave another hole in reality, but before she could lash out Rhacelus jolted to one side, blasted against the railings that edged the steps.
Mephiston strode after him, his smouldering blade held aloft like a banner and his armour coruscating with warp-flame.
The railings gave way under Rhacelus’ armoured bulk and he had to grasp on to a heat-warped strut to halt himself.
As Mephiston approached his possessed friend, the witch led her female companion up the steps towards the statue.
Antros strained to free himself from the rift that he had been cast into. His legs felt as though they were sunk in boiling tar. He could barely speak he was in so much pain. ‘The blade!’ he gasped, trying to get Mephiston’s attention.
Mephiston looked up at him. Then he turned to the woman as she ignited the jump pack and launched herself across the abyss, clutching her friend to her chest.
The black cracks that had spread over Mephiston’s armour had now splintered across his face. Lines of vivid darkness networked his skin. He looked like a piece of shattered ivory.
Antros looked at Rhacelus and saw that his face was being contorted into a likeness of Zorambus.
Mephiston howled and lifted Vitarus to the skies, summoning wild, fulminous streaks from the clouds. The grin faded from Zorambus’ face as Mephiston plunged the shimmering blade into his chest.
Zorambus stiffened and slumped backwards, almost falling into the chasm below. Mephiston grabbed Zorambus by the arm as silver blood rushed from his chest, reforming into the same silverfish swarm that had invaded Rhacelus’ body a few minutes earlier.
Rhacelus’ body slumped in Mephiston’s grip as the silverfish scurried together and piled on top of each other, forming a glittering, humanoid shape.
Mephiston howled again, shedding more darkness from the cracks in his body. He dragged Vitarus from Rhacelus and thrust it at the silver shape.
Crimson spat from the sword, tearing through the half-formed Zorambus and turning the silverfish into a column of red flame.
A searing scream sliced through the storm as the sorcerer finally died, but the red fire did not halt at the destruction of Zorambus; it powered on across the collapsing rooftops and spires, ripping through the destruction and razing everything in its path, carving a brilliant red channel through the ruins of Volgatis and lancing out into the toppling peaks beyond.
The blast was so fierce that it knocked Mephiston from his feet and sent him crashing back against the steps. He landed heavily, enveloped in his scorched robes, then lay there, raging at the clouds and crying out in a torrent of different languages. He lashed out with his sword, as though surrounded by foes only he could see, and with every blow, waves of flame spilled out across the steps, toppling statues and immolating the surrounding corpses, surrounding Mephiston with a whirlwind of fire and dust.
Antros felt himself being dragged from the world. Clawed, inhuman hands were hauling him down into whatever hellish realm lay beyond the sky. ‘Mephiston!’ he howled.
He strained to look at the shrine behind him and groaned in horror. The witch was hauling a sealed box from the casket beneath the statue. The casket and half the dais were smouldering and glowing where she had blasted them with sorcery. As Antros slipped from reality, she leapt from the dais, the chest under one arm and her friend under the other, grinning victoriously as she dropped into the crevasse, her jump pack blazing.
Something serpentine and muscular lashed itself around Antros’ chest and jolted him violently. His staff began to slip from its perch, ripping through the sky as though it were cloth. ‘Mephiston!’ he cried again.
A figure lurched through the maelstrom and, as it reached Mephiston, Antros saw that it was Rhacelus. His chest armour was drenched in blood and his face was a ghastly white, but he managed to dodge the waves of flame Mephiston was hurling and wrestle the Chief Librarian to the ground.
Mephiston grabbed Rhacelus by the throat.
Rhacelus gasped in agony as the Chief Librarian crushed his neck. Then he grabbed a syringe from Mephiston’s armour and jammed it into his lord’s neck.
The dark lines faded from Mephiston’s armour and he loosed his grip, looking around at the desolation with a dazed expression. Rhacelus collapsed on the steps and Mephiston stood up, reeling like a drunk and looking for something.
‘Mephiston!’ cried Antros, only his hands and head still visible. He could just see the crevasse. ‘She has the blade. The sorcerer. Stop her!’
Mephiston staggered up the steps and looked out at the receding figure. Then he simply nodded and watched her go.
‘Stop her,’ whispered Antros as all his worst doubts returned to haunt him. Mephiston was letting the witch go. She was a Chaos witch and he was letting her take the Blade Petrific. A crushing despair washed over Antros and his strength failed. A forest of unseen limbs enveloped him, wrenching him from the world.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tamarus Mountains, Divinus Prime
Antros lay on the mountainside listening to the universe. The skies overhead were clear, an indigo crescent, edged with wisps of crimson cloud and speckled with the tiny silhouettes of eagles, wheeling lazily on distant thermals. There was no mirror, no serpentine horrors, just reality. But it was the chatter of minds that filled Antros with renewed hope. Mephiston had also brought an end to the silence of the Miracle. With the death of Zorambus, the crushing, psychic void of Divinus Prime had be
en filled with sound. The voices of the Imperium once more echoed around Antros’ skull. He could hear the tortured screams of astropathic choirs and the unknowable whispers of the Navis Nobilite, steering the Imperial Navy back to the world they had thought lost. Divinus Prime was saved – returned to the firm benevolence of the Imperium; so how could Mephiston be anything other than a hero?
Antros groaned as he struggled to lift himself into a sitting position. Mephiston was standing a few feet away near the prone figure of Rhacelus. At first Antros thought Rhacelus might be dead, but then he noticed that the Librarian was twitching and muttering in pain. Rhacelus’ chest was cocooned in some kind of psychic shell – a glimmering web of energy that sparked and danced across his armour. Mephiston was not looking at his old friend. He stood right at the cliff edge, looking out across the peaks of the Tamarus Mountains.
Antros stared at him in confusion. Mephiston had brought a world back within reach of the Emperor’s light. There were millions of pilgrims and priests scattered across Divinus Prime that would now have a chance at salvation. Mephiston had also hauled him back from whatever hellish realm he had fallen into. And yet… Antros pictured again the moment Mephiston had looked at the witch and let her go. There had been no doubt in the Chief Librarian’s eyes. He had nodded quite deliberately before letting her dive to freedom, taking the Blade Petrific with her. What did that mean? How could that be anything other than the action of a traitor?
Mephiston spoke, as though sensing Antros’ thoughts.
‘The fleet will take a few weeks to reach the planet and lift us from Mormotha,’ he said.
Antros frowned. ‘We wait for the fleet? Why not return the way we came?’
Mephiston shook his head and looked down at his still-trembling fist. ‘We will travel behind the safety of a Geller field, as we should have done when I brought us here. I have made enough mistakes.’
