Architect of fate, p.29
Architect of Fate, page 29
Lysander took a few steps forwards and saw Shon’tu. The warsmith had made it to one of the Dreadclaws and was in the process of hauling its jaws shut.
‘See, Lysander!’ yelled Shon’tu. ‘See the herald of your deaths! Every move you made, I had a counter! For every thrust, I had a feint! Our victory was decided before the first shot was fired, Imperial Fist!’
Lysander charged through the smoke. He slammed into the jaw of the Dreadclaw just as it was closing, reducing his view of Shon’tu to a sliver. The warsmith’s face was lit red by the warning lights inside the assault-pod, just a few centimetres from Lysander’s.
‘My brothers on Malodrax were weak,’ said Shon’tu. ‘They were the dregs of our Legion. You think you have stared into the soul of the Iron Warriors. You have no idea.’ Shon’tu smiled as he saw Lysander trying to force the Dreadclaw’s jaws open, and failing.
‘I know what you left behind on Malodrax,’ said Shon’tu, with a smirk on the remains of his half-mechanical face. ‘And I know what you took from there, too. What you still carry. It is what drives you to kill me, Lysander. It will be the death of every battle-brother who ever stands at your side And it will not let you go until you have killed everything you fight for!’
‘I didn’t fight you here to defeat you,’ said Lysander as the jaw ground closed. ‘I fought you here to bring out Velthinar.’
The faintest trace of confusion passed over Shon’tu’s face. Then the Dreadclaw was closed and in a hiss of steam the clamps holding it in place disengaged.
‘Breach!’ yelled Lysander. ‘Back! Fall back and seal us off!’
The Dreadclaw’s thrusters roared and the assault-pod was ripped back out of the star fort’s hull. Air whistled out behind it. Lysander pulled his helmet from the waist of his armour and jammed it over his head as warning runes flickered telling him the air pressure had suddenly dropped to little over nothing.
Smoke swirled out, the air suddenly clear. The area was strewn with the bodies of Iron Warriors, and Lysander’s squad shot down a couple who were still moving even as the air dissipated and silence fell.
‘Missed him,’ voxed Brother-Scholar Demosthor. ‘Damnation and filth.’
Lysander did not answer. He looked back up through the ceiling of the arterial corridor, the view no longer obscured. But he was not looking at the burning mass of Velthinar. He was looking at the storm of purplish lightning that was swelling into real space just behind the daemon, the sign of a spacecraft ripping its way from the warp.
‘Throne of Gold,’ said Sergeant Laocos, standing just behind Lysander and following his gaze. ‘What is that?’
‘A friend,’ replied Lysander.
Velthinar knew that something was wrong. It paused in its path towards the Endeavour of Will and turned to see what was causing the disturbance in the warp behind it.
What it saw was reality splitting and the stuff of the warp pouring through. A billowing tide of sorcery crashed into the vacuum, carrying upon it a vast shape, like a ghost hulk carried on a stormy ocean. Its hull was pitted and scored with the punishment of the warp, and every surface was blistered with pustules and veins. Eyes opened everywhere there was space for them, clustering like buboes, rolling madly and bloodshot. The shape trailed ragged tentacles and arteries that spilled blackish blood into the void.
It was deformed and horrible, all symmetry destroyed, but it still carried enough of its original form to be identified as a star fort, much the same shape and size as the Endeavour of Will. A few tattered banners still hung from it, carrying the colours of the Imperial Fists.
‘I cannot be redeemed,’ bellowed an artificial voice, transmitted through the substance of reality. It was heard by everyone for light years around, but it was directed at the daemon Velthinar. ‘I cannot be saved. I cannot know peace.’
Tentacles burst from beneath the corrupted mass of the star fort, snaking around Velthinar’s primary limbs. Velthinar thrashed, but the star fort was bigger and stronger.
‘But I can have revenge,’ the voice continued.
Velthinar fought. The energy it had siphoned from the star Kholestus raked across the corrupted star fort, blasting off battlements and defence spurs, but it was no good. The grip was tight and not even Velthinar Silverspine could break free.
Velthinar was looking into the million eyes of the Bastion Inviolate.
‘My god will shred your soul!’ spat the daemon.
‘I have no soul,’ came the reply. ‘I was a machine. Now I am a disease. You did this to me.’
‘Serve Him!’ countered Velthinar. ‘Untold power will be yours!’
‘I do not want power,’ said the Bastion Inviolate, ‘save the power to break you upon the anvil of my hate.’
A tentacle wrapped around the head and mouthparts of Velthinar, silencing the daemon for the moment. The eyes of the Bastion Inviolate turned towards the Endeavour of Will, the star fort which had until recently been its brother.
‘Lysander,’ it said.
On the Endeavour of Will, Lysander heard the voice, and he knew that it could hear him too. He had watched the corrupted star fort and the daemon struggling, and it had been clear from the outset that the Bastion Inviolate would win. Velthinar Silverspine had not destroyed it, for a being with the tenacity and willpower of the Bastion Inviolate’s machine-spirit would not simply be wiped out by corruption. It would become something else, something awful, and it would thrive.
‘Your astropath called for me,’ the machine-spirit said. ‘He told I could have revenge on the being that did this to me.’
‘And you have it,’ said Lysander. ‘Now depart. This reality has no place for you now.’
‘I know what I am,’ said the Bastion Inviolate. ‘And I know the oaths that you swear. I am an abomination. Your kind must hunt me down.’
‘And we shall,’ said Lysander. ‘When we meet again, it will be as enemies.’
‘That will not be for a long time.’ The Bastion Inviolate held up the squirming daemon like a hunter displaying the body of a kill. ‘For many thousands of years I feel my enthusiasm shall remain. I am a newcomer to the warp. I have much to learn of what pain a daemon can feel. It will be a long time in the learning.’
‘We will find you,’ said Lysander.
‘And when you do, the sundered corpse of this creature will be impaled upon my battlements, and its flayed skin shall be my standard. Farewell, Captain Lysander of the Imperial Fists. What remains of me with the capacity to honour you will soon be lost to the warp, but for now, it salutes you.’
Lysander could hear Velthinar screaming as the warp tore open again and the Bastion Inviolate sank out of real space. The daemon struggled and thrashed but the star fort held it fast in its hundreds of spiny tentacles. The vacuum boomed shut behind it, and when the afterglow died down, Velthinar Silverspine and the Bastion Inviolate were gone.
The Dancer was a messenger, neutered of its deadliness and malice, a barely perceptible shadow within a shadow. The destruction of its kind had left only this shade, the ghost of a daemon. Only its eyes were obvious, flickering red-black orbs that darted in every direction as if watching for enemies.
Lysander knew it was there before he saw it. It had been nine days since the Ferrous Malice, shorn of the daemon that commanded it, had limped away from the Endeavour of Will with Shon’tu and the surviving Iron Warriors on board, and the star fort was still a wreck. More than half its crew were dead and large areas were ruined, amongst them the shattered expanse of map rooms and tactical libraries that Lysander was searching for dead crew or Iron Warriors.
Lysander froze, hand hovering over the shaft of the Fist of Dorn.
‘I have not come to fight,’ hissed the Dancer.
‘The last time I met your kind, I tore you all to shreds. And the time before that. So for your sake, be speaking the truth.’
The Dancer slithered out of the darkness where it had been lurking, beneath the charred remains of a map table surrounded by scrolls and books. ‘I come to give thanks.’
Lysander spat on the floor. ‘Thanks from the warp are a curse. Begone or I will throw you back to your god in pieces.’
‘But what else can the gods of the warp give to Captain Lysander of the Imperial Fists, when he has given to them a victory their servants could not win? The violation of Ionis’s tomb. The death of Astropath Vaynce. The soul of Techmarine Hestion, upon which we still feast. The loss of a billion minds’ worth of battle-lore. And the pact with the Bastion Inviolate, a pact to which no god could force a spirit such as yours and yet one of which you were the author! How could any servant of the warp win such victories from the Imperial Fists? Shon’tu sought only your deaths. He could never have won such triumph as we gained, but you have given it to us of your own will.’
Lysander hefted the Fist of Dorn and took a stride towards the Dancer. The daemon did not move, holding out its arms as if about to embrace the Imperial Fist.
‘The warp thanks you, Lysander! The greatest champion of the gods could not have done more!’
Lysander swatted the daemon aside with the Fist of Dorn. The hammer’s head tore right through the creature and its shadow dissipated into a thousand wisps that vanished like smoke into the air. There was no impact, no satisfying crunch of bone. The daemon was simply gone, for it had been sketched so lightly on reality its destruction had no meaning.
Lysander stood there for a long time. The words of a daemon would not sway him. They might worm into a lesser man’s head, to discourage and corrupt, but not the mind of an Imperial Fist.
Nothing had changed. If anything, the events aboard the Endeavour of Will had proven to him what he already knew.
Everything could be sacrificed. It took a man of Lysander’s will to know that. Everything was secondary to victory.
Everything.
FATEWEAVER
‘We know no fear. It was cut from our souls at birth. We can feel it only as an absence, as an empty shadow cast by the light of annihilation. In the face of a future of atrocity I stand mute, numb to the only feeling that would make me human. But I remember what fear was: its cold pulse in my veins; its echo in my ears. I remember fear, and remember that I was once human. I look towards what must come to pass and I wish that I could meet it as my ancestors did, with fear. The future deserves that, it deserves fear.’
Epistolary Cyrus Aurelius, unheard confession
I
SUMMONED
The vision unfolded into the present in a cascade of sensations.
The sword is hot in his hand, the fury at its core bright with his rage. He cuts, feeling his armour move with the surge of his muscles. The edge meets deformed flesh, the sword shuddering in his grip as power flows through it. A bloated creature with a face like a flayed skull dissolves into smoke. Threat runes spin across his vision, pulsing red, swarming. A taste like burnt sugar and ruined meat fills his mouth.
He is a figure in blue armour the shade of a clear sky, standing at the centre of a turning circle of countless twisted creatures. They close on him, pacing forwards, claws clicking on the stone floor. He can feel the creatures’ raw power, feel them thirsting for his soul. A death light fills their eyes. He stands alone and knows that he has failed.
A shape with a wide mouth of glittering needle teeth comes at him, its limbs flowing into new shapes as it moves. The storm bolter roars in his fist, muscle fibres swallowing its kick. Detonations turn warp bloated flesh to red pulp. A threat rune blinks out. He turns, finger still squeezing the trigger, watching the ammunition count fall as the weapon trails a line of fire.
I have failed, he thinks, and there will be nothing after this moment.
The gun clatters silent. He raises his sword. A clawed hand bites through a leg joint. He feels the warm fluid pooling inside his armour. He steps forward, ramming the sword into the open mouth of a bird-shaped creature until its blade disappears in flesh. The power flows through him like a storm rush. The half-feathered body explodes in a blaze of light. He realises he is screaming. Lightning gathers around his body in a crackling spiral. The creatures fall back for a brief moment, turning their lidless eyes from the light. He raises the sword. His limbs are shuddering. Inside his helmet he is weeping blood.
They come for him again, a tide of teeth and claws. He is striking, each blow a thunderclap. Many of the creatures fall, their distorted forms sliding back into shadow and smoke. But they are many and he is alone.
This has not come to pass yet, he thinks, this is not happening. I am not dying. This is my fate, what shall be. This is the future, it has not happened yet. But the thought dies.
The creatures around him howl and he feels the psychic crystals haloing his head shatter. He is blind.
The world goes quiet and warm.
I am dying, he thinks, I have failed and there will be nothing left, nothing but ash and hungering darkness.
Something within him dims, fluttering to nothing like a flame fading to cold embers.
He tries to raise his sword.
He is falling…
He was…
… running the ashes of a dead world through his fingers. The vision faded, bleeding away into the grey present. He blinked, pushing away the sensations that remained coiled in his mind like a fever’s touch. He had seen echoes of possible futures before, but this had felt different; stronger, more instant, like a memory of something that had already happened.
‘Epistolary?’ said a voice, its sound flat inside his helmet. Cyrus looked up from the grey dust falling from his armoured fingers.
He flicked his eyes across the green runes at the edge of his sight; the four green cruciform marks of Phobos’s squad winked back at him. He turned to look back at his escort spread behind him in a loose diamond. The white of their armour was bright beneath the shroud grey sky.
Like him they were clad in monstrous Terminator armour. Their genetically enhanced physiques wrapped in layer upon layer of adamantium, their movements augmented by sheathes of fibre bundles that ran through the armour like a second set of muscles. The suits were relics of a lost time, their components replaced and repaired so many times that they were like walking scar tissue. To wear such armour was to feel the past as a cold shroud against one’s skin. Hundreds of his Chapter ancestors had worn Cyrus’s suit before it had passed to him. Most of those ancestors had died wearing it, he recalled.
‘Is everything well, brother?’ said the red-helmed sergeant.
‘Yes, brother. An errant thought, nothing more.’
‘As you say, Epistolary.’ Phobos’s tone was clipped and respectful, but Cyrus could feel the sergeant’s questions unspoken behind the blunt snout of his helm: why had they come down to the surface of this planet?
A flat, grey plain extended away from them, its surface undisturbed by wind, rain or the tread of feet. Runes flowed across Cyrus’s vision, his sensorium searching for movement, heat, life, and finding nothing. Two hundred and thirty million people had died here. He blink-clicked away the questing runes; this world was dead, and it had died at its protector’s hand.
It was called Kataris, an agri-world of processing cities and endless plains of crops, ripening under a bright sun. It had died in less time than it took that sun to circle the sky. Something had drawn the eyes of the daemons to it, and they had come from beyond reality. Millions had died in the first assault. Their deaths had prepared the world for the arrival of more of their kind. More and more had slipped across the shadow divide between reality and the warp. The few, the very few people who had not died then became a defiant clutch of humanity clinging to the planet’s last fortifications. There they had muttered prayers, tears rolling down their ash-dusted cheeks, and waited for the end.
An astropath had sent a desperate call out through the warp. It had called for help, for the protection promised by the priests of the Imperial Creed. ‘The Emperor protects’ had been the last words of the message. And a single word of execution had answered that message: Exterminatus. The death sentence of a world and all who lived on it. Kataris had pleaded for aid and been answered by death falling from the tortured sky. For a moment the wide plains of ruin had been still, the sound of thunder settling with the dust. Then the inferno came, rushing across the world from horizon to horizon, consuming the tainted air in a roar like the war-cries shouted at the end of time.
Cyrus could almost taste the pyre.
‘This was no victory,’ he murmured to himself.
Decades before, Cyrus and his brothers had fought on Kataris against a raiding force of eldar. They had defeated the aliens and broken their hidden witch-gate. It had been a vicious war, but they had won and the world had lived. This time their answer to the dead world’s plea was too late. They had arrived many days after the ships of the Inquisition execution force had departed.
If we had been here, could we have saved this world? The question had no answer, but that did not stop Cyrus asking it to himself. Unlike the rest of his brothers he could feel what had happened here as echoes lingering in the immaterium. He was a psyker, gifted with an ability to channel and manipulate the power of the realm beyond reality. The warp was a nightmare other realm of psychic energy, but the mind of a psyker could tap and shape that energy. To some it was sorcery. To others it was a step in the evolution of humanity. To Cyrus it was a weapon. It was a gift that allowed Cyrus to do things beyond even his brother White Consuls. But the gift also set him apart from the rest of his Chapter; it could not be otherwise. How could it be, when he felt the death of this world resonate over him like dust blowing over bare skin?
