Contents

Cover

The Book of Change – Mike Brooks

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

THE BOOK OF CHANGE

by Danie Ware

The incoming message was brief.

Thrown out across the void, soaked in horror, framed by screams. The figures were flickering, hololithic phantoms: Astra Militarum, their combat fatigues and flak armour dirty and stained. They bore rifles, bristling outwards at something that Marissa could not see, but that reflected in their eyes like pure panic.

‘They’re coming,’ they said, static and desperation in every word. ‘They’re com–!’

Barks of orders, the crash of a shattered door. Streaks of las-fire as the enemy burst in upon them. Slashes of claws and steel; red splatters, sudden across the half-light. The full-throated scream of a man in unendurable pain. Cries for mercy–

Then: nothing.

The air fizzed, empty, where the projection had been.

Marissa Khorvayne, her armoured arms folded, her head bared to the steady gleam of the ship’s lumens, nodded once at the message’s end. Turning to the young lieutenant, his uniform in crisp contrast to the bloodstained green and brown of the vanished hololith, she said, ‘And that is all?’

The young man blinked, his own fear tangible.

‘My apologies, inquisitor,’ he said. ‘We have been scanning the vox-channels as per your instruction, but that’s the only solid data we’ve managed to retrieve. The 12th Black Knot Company were stationed upon Kuron VI four Solar months ago, their brief to investigate the ruin. Contact ceased–’

‘I am aware of the mission’s parameters.’ Tall, severe, her face a pale, cold mask, her hair a heavy cascade, she regarded the officer until he flinched, rubbing his hands uneasily as if to wash his foolishness away.

He let out his breath, made an effort to lift his chin. ‘I can play it again, if you–’

‘There is no need,’ she told him, her tone ice. ‘Its content is clear, my suspicions confirmed. We will increase speed.’ The words were not a request.

‘I will inform the captain, ma’am. The Courage of Stadius is at your dis–’

‘Of course it is.’ As an inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus, Marissa had the right to demand any course of action, in His name – to command troops, Naval or otherwise; to take control of a planetary authority, up to and including the rank of governor. She walked around the still-crackling emptiness, studying it as if she could see into its heart, its dreams, its fears.

The horrors it had not revealed.

Ah, the voice in her head said softly, answering her unspoken questions. It was deep and rich, like a plucked string, but less like reassurance than it was the caress of the darkness itself. As you surmised, this is the hand of the Ancient Foe – its touch and taint, soaking and staining. You feel it, I know how acutely. You must carry your light. His light. My light. Burn it into their eyes, child, and sear them from the very world they pollute. Then, your target will be exposed.

The low thrum filled her mind, her soul; she welcomed and embraced it.

Oh yes, she told it in return. I will face them, fearless. I will send them, screaming, back to the very hells from which they came. And I will laugh.

The internal voice was her own, and His blessing. It was guide, mentor, purpose. It had been with her for as long as she could remember, from her earliest days upon Ghorlos, carrying her through the terrors of the Seventh Watch Massacres and into the care of her mentor, Inquisitor Hrake. It had sustained her throughout her training and his death, enabled her to take up his mantle and the torch of the Emperor Himself.

It had also made her pure, strong, untouchable by the Enemy. And this – this! – was exactly the kind of mission for which she had been born, forged, annealed. She was His word, His vengeance. And she would cauterise any trace of Chaos, right back to the planet’s very rock.

And further, if He commanded.

I feel your rage, child, the voice said. My faithful, my daughter, my blood, my blade…

She closed a hand around her rosette, hanging loose on its chain; gripped it until its hard edges scraped against the ceramite of her gauntlets.

The officer was still watching her, poised on his toes like prey, as if he didn’t know whether to flee or to wait for more orders.

‘Captain Curtia understands your need for swiftness,’ he offered. ‘She says it will be less than two Solar days.’

Marissa could feel the great ship around her, its metal and spirit groaning like some vast and semi-slumberous creature, now stirring to creaking wakefulness. Its distant engines thumped and thundered, shaking through the steel of its bones.

‘Good,’ she told the officer. ‘I will retire to my quarters and brief my staff.’ She met his gaze full-on. ‘Do not disturb me, lieutenant.’

The officer paled, but said only, ‘Ma’am.’

Ruin and dust, and now stalked by the Enemy… and the thing I came so far to find…

Marissa leaned forward and clicked off the hololith, let the cloud of static gutter and fade.

They would see the real fears, soon enough.

Planet Kuron VI.

A ruined hive world, orbiting far out from a tiny, blue-white star. Founded and then abandoned during the Forging, its main habitation was a vast and maze-like tangle, ruined upon its surface and descending far below into the planet’s forgotten, granite depths. Once, there had been billions of people here – clerks, administrators, labourers. No one of any consequence, but the tiniest of cogs, driving bigger wheels, and bigger wheels, and ultimately, the bureaucratic engines of the Imperium. Four Solar months before, the 12th Black Knot Company had been despatched from Galeria with reconnaissance orders, to explore and assess.

There was no need to waste a stronger force on a world that offered so little. After all, there were always more cogs.

Marissa however, had a deeper purpose.

In her quarters, she stood at a second hololith, this one of the planet itself, turning silent and serene in the centre of the room. Occasional points of interest flared out from the gently rotating sphere – the governor’s palace, the space ports, the immense warrens of cubicles and dormitories that were the central Administratum complex.

Carefully, she noted each one, indicated that her retinue should do likewise.

They did not argue.

At her shoulder – Sergeant Kezia Gale. Ex-Militarum herself, an older woman who’d once had a reputation for ruthless in-the-field leadership. Later, she’d been one of the few survivors of the horrific tyranid massacre on Telestis; she’d been known to howl in her sleep, haunted by monsters. Under Marissa’s charge, however, she’d transformed her night-time terrors to daytime actions, and now she hunted those monsters with a focus that verged on demented.

At the control panel – Adept Din-14. He was small for a priest of the Mechanicus, his multiple legs bent beneath his scarlet cloak. One dark-skinned hand moved over the panel, deft and assured; the other was already plugged in, its metallic fingers extended. His face, still flesh and eerily beautiful, was bathed in the screen-light, and his lips moved in prayers to the Omnissiah.

These two were familiar, trusted. The others…

Lounging back against the far wall – Syn, a Callidus Temple assassin. The woman was typical of her type, though she lacked the Temple’s more elite hardware. She was slight, wiry, wary, her eyes as hard as the blades she carried. She had botched a job, and been seconded into Marissa’s employ.

And lastly, standing frowning at the planet’s details, the other newcomer – Aris Manistallis Mundas, once an Administratum official himself. He was a pale man, round of belly, bald of pate and already sweating, though the environmentals were set to an ambient temperature. Despite his appearance, however, this mission was his area of knowledge, more so than any of the rest.

The rumour went that he had once read The Litany of the Devouring Hollow – a text of Chaos from the days of the Horus Heresy and soul-taintingly blasphemous, enough to scar and tear one’s thoughts, to leave them wounded and bleeding. How such a thing had come into his possession, Marissa did not know, and had not asked.

She simply needed him, his insight. And, like the assassin, he was expendable.

Glancing at her, Mundas mopped his brow with an already grubby kerchief. ‘I would suggest, ma’am,’ he said, his tone habitually apologetic, ‘that we commence our search at the Administratum complex itself. The background of the message suggests a style-three-zero-seven-six cubicle, used by clerks from levels seven through fifteen–’

‘Agreed.’ The adept’s tone was flat, his brown eyes now closed. ‘Landing pad four-one-eighty, district designation nine point five. Chances of successful progression: ninety-three per cent. It is adequate.’ His perfect lips precisely completing each word, he continued to pray, offering his litanies to the screen, and to the spirit of the great ship.

Mundas nodded, putting the kerchief in a pocket. He was still sweating.

At Marissa’s gesture, the sergeant snapped orders into the vox – timings, weapons, logistics. She had no need for Marissa to describe the details: Gale knew the inquisitor’s operational parameters like the back of her lasrifle.

The assassin still lounged, ice-hard eyes moving from face to face, saying nothing.

Marissa eyed her briefly, but she too understood.

She understands all too well, the voice told her, amused. Her part will come.

In their midst, the ruined planet continued to turn, its noted landmarks lunging from its surface one at a time, as if they clawed outwards for the group’s very souls.

Stone dust, dark and chill and fine.

Marissa had removed her gauntlet and the dust scratched between her fingertips. The opening shuttle-bay doors had driven it hard into the corners, along with a lifetime of other debris – the rusting parts of cogitators, tangles of corroded wires. A single forgotten boot.

Around them, the bay was huge, resonant and hollow, its lumens all but dead. The shuttle’s lights had stretched phantoms from its corners, shadows rising and gibbering as the vehicle had come in to land, and then, as they’d turned off, reaching up to swallow it completely.

Now, the emptiness was all but pitch-dark, echoing to their breaths. The air thronged with suggested terrors, and a rising sense of fear and dread.

There were things here.

Somewhere.

Waiting.

Rising to her feet, the inquisitor brushed the dust from her hands, the gesture decisive.

Let them come. Her challenge was internal, her resolve wrapped like cold and shining wires around the heart of her unshakeable faith. Fear was for the unworthy.

I will slay them all.

We will slay them all, the voice told her, its touch like a caress.

Anticipation surged; she controlled it, pulling her gauntlets back on. Over the vox, she said to Gale, ‘Move out.’

‘Ma’am.’

They deployed in a tight group, the sergeant at their head, the assassin at the rear. The Arvus was locked, its security system active, but Marissa had no fears that it would be touched, or fall victim to sabotage.

No, the things here lurked deeper, away from the sun’s harsh glare.

Her anticipation flared again; her hand tightened on her incinerator.

They moved.

Soon, they had left the shuttle bay behind them. The tunnels and corridors were a sprawl of Imperial numbering, jumbled with complex, bureaucratic minutiae. Marissa was familiar with their progression, however, and she did not need the adept’s precise, numerical mind, nor Gale’s experience, to understand the layers. The upper floors would have larger offices and individual sleeping quarters, home to senior figures who made decisions and carried them forth. The lower you travelled, the smaller everything became.

This was not the level they needed. Following the complex numbering, she located the grav-lift – and found a shaft that plunged downwards into nothingness: a yawning, square chasm, lined with wires, stretching to the planet’s stone guts.

There was no sign that the lift had moved, no sign that the Militarum’s earlier recon had come this way. Yet from the hole there came a breath as foul as every hell, a whisper of laughter, a touch of gibbering madness.

It floated up on a chill wind, a hint of the labyrinth below.

This is the way, Marissa thought, the knowledge settling upon her like a fall of snow.

Beside her, Mundas shuddered. His Militarum combats looked odd on his rotund frame. He mopped his forehead again, twisting his kerchief between pudgy hands.

She shot him a warning look, then said, ‘Din.’

The adept was already at the control panel, his fingers extended to communicate with its sleeping spirit.

A moment later, there came the clunk and rattle of the rising lift.

Careful, the voice told her. It sounded almost amused.

She did not need the warning. Gale gestured, and the group fell back; the sergeant covered the lift with her lasrifle.

The voice in Marissa’s head laughed, soft as good fabric. She wondered what it found humorous.

At the panel, the adept shuddered.

She flicked him a glance, her hand gripping the incinerator. Below them, the lift clunked to a stop. Gale leaned forwards, pointing the weapon down the shaft, snapping a warning over the vox. But Marissa was still looking at Din, watching as his brown eyes rolled back in their sockets, as he began to shake. His jaw spasmed; a bubble of scarlet appeared at the corner of his mouth. A sharp burst of binary cut across the sergeant’s orders – swift, hard, incomprehensible.

Din was twitching, his hand still plugged into the panel.

A second later, the assassin’s soft-soled, grox-leather boot hit the adept’s wrist, jerking it sideways. His fingers sparked, stayed plugged. Syn kicked him again, again, knocking him backwards, sending a spasm of sudden electricity down the shaft.

Din stumbled, his spider-legs folding, his red cloak billowing away to reveal their claw-tips flexing, clicking, as if plagued by some unseen nightmare. But his hand was free, its fingers still extended in some great web-pattern from his augmetic wrist.

Marissa’s internal voice was still chuckling ironically, darkly amused. Touch not the Foe directly, my warrior, it said. It seeks to trap and to trick you, but you must not fall prey to such simple games. You have larger considerations.

‘I will not be thwarted!’ The words were snapped, both aloud and internal. She knelt by the fallen adept, placed her gauntleted hand upon his flexsteel chestplate. The gesture was not compassion; it was both demand and challenge, daring the nightmare to manifest, to come out and face her in person.

I see you! she thought. I see your accursed touch! Will you face me, blessed as I am?

The adept’s eyes snapped open. His mouth extended into a white grin almost wider than his jaw. His teeth were streaked with his own blood and his visage was demented, filled with a crazed elation. He said, his voice a hiss, ‘We see you, inquisitor. You do not yet comprehend. Come to us, find the deeper truth!’

Syn was at her shoulder now, the assassin’s expression cool, questioning. Marissa raised a hand to signal her back. ‘No,’ she said, over their tight-beam link. ‘We need him. If he is still tainted when we leave, then I’ll give him to you.’

Silently, Syn twitched a shoulder and drifted back. Gale shot her a glance from the corner of her eye, but the sergeant was still covering the lift.

A second later, and of its own volition, it started moving once more. Gale stepped back, rifle ready.

Beside Marissa, Din stirred, his hand retracting. Licking his lips with a bitten, bloody tongue, he said, suddenly very human, ‘There’s something down there, inquisitor, something much older. This facility…’ He stopped, swallowed. A second burst of binary came over the vox. ‘It was built on an older site. Something founded before the Great Crusade.’

Carefully, Marissa assimilated this fragment of new knowledge, inspecting it from every angle. Such things were not uncommon – the Great Crusade had founded many Imperial worlds and doctrines upon the remains of older civilisations.

Letting the adept rise back to his multiple feet, she smiled. ‘Do not fear, child, such things cannot touch you while I am here.’

Again, the assassin questioned; again, Marissa gestured her back.

She had no fear of Din’s possessor, and any information it revealed might yet turn out to be useful.

Despite Din’s tremble and the sergeant’s warning, the lift was empty when it arrived.

Bristling with suspicion, the group packed tight within, and it descended with surreal smoothness. It smelled like sweat and fear, like metal and dirt. The adept’s feet were all pulled in under him; his human lips prayed constantly, though whether that was for the spirit of the lift, or for his own soul, Marissa did not know.

The sergeant was tense, disliking the box and its obvious vulnerability, but the inquisitor was not worried. The Enemy was anticipating the game far too keenly to attempt an attack somewhere so obvious.

Another level, another, another. There were no numbered lights to count them down, only the slices of faint illumination that flicked past the dirty glass doors.

Older civilisation or not, Marissa knew what she sought, and she intended to find it…

The librarium.

Another floor flashed past, vanished. The sergeant was sweating now; beside her, Mundas was closed-eyed and praying almost as fervently as the adept. The sharp reek of fear became stronger.

Still Marissa ignored it. Her mind stayed on her mission, on the information that had brought her here. Contacts and hints, questions and interrogations, snippets of forgotten lore. She had chased this target for two Solar years, halfway across the galaxy. The message from the doomed Militarum unit had been the final piece of the puzzle. It had touched her like His grace, like the key in the lock that would open the last door…

Of course there was something older, lurking here. It made absolute sense.

You are close, the voice said. So close, my child. Almost close enough to touch. The book you seek can be yours; it can bring you the strength and insight to take your faith and calling to new heights. You know that its pollution cannot touch you, not while I am with you…

With a jerk, the lift stopped, making the group stumble. For a second, they paused, waiting, breaths held, weapons ready, staring out through the glassaic, now running foggy with the condensation of their presence. The sergeant voiced orders, her tone sharp and soft, but they knew their deployment tactics well. As the doors hissed open, Gale took point, was out and into the corridor, rifle and suit light pointed outward, cutting the darkness into cowering shadows, all coiling and filled with threat.

Yes, the voice told Marissa. Soon…

It was the adept that faltered first.

Claws rattling spider-like, he staggered sideways, his augmetic hand covering his face. As Marissa turned, giving the order to halt, Din was already dragging his web of metallic fingers down over his human flesh, gouging it to long and bloody weals.

Once again, the assassin was at Marissa’s shoulder, utterly silent, her expression intently curious and cold.

‘It’s the angles…’ Din said, his voice flickering between human and metallic. ‘The angles make no sense. They’re wrong. They’re all wrong…’ He was shaking, pointing.

Marissa looked.

Around them, the corridors were endless – junctions and corners and square, steel doors, every one etched with its correct designation. They did not look out of place. Regular lumen-globes, their energy all but spent, were linked with neatly cabled skeins of wires; control screens sat at intervals, waiting for touches that would never come.

Here and there hung servitors’ walkways, rusting but still in place. Beneath them, dust made shadowed heaps, like loitering ghouls.

The adept shuddered, dragged his interface away from his dark, bloodstained skin. ‘The corners.’ He was staring at the lumens, faint as ghosts. ‘They’re wrong. Can you not see? Their perspectives are warped.’ The word was a twist of desperation. ‘That one.’ He pointed his human hand. ‘It bends the wrong way, beyond possibility. It’s twisted. And that one. And that one.’ Another point. ‘Such calculations… cannot be. They’re all wrong. The angles of the corridors cannot exist.’

Marissa and Gale exchanged a brief glance, and Gale twitched one shoulder in a shrug. Whatever it was that Din could see, neither sergeant nor inquisitor could make it out.

They were being teased – and not by the adept.

Mundas mopped his forehead. The assassin still hovered, watching.

‘You will control yourself,’ Marissa said to the adept. ‘Such things are of little consequence, and we will face greater issues than this. We continue.’

In her head, the voice laughed. Ah, the poor child. So addicted to mathematical perfection that he is compelled to madness with such ease. I fear he will not last long.

He will last as long as is necessary, Marissa returned, calmly. I have anticipated his failure and the contingency is already in place.

They had not gone much further, however, before they stopped once more.

This time, Gale was looking around at the doorways, at the pattern in which the corridors were laid out.

‘We’ve turned back on ourselves,’ she said. Confused, she shone her suit light at the nearest steel door, at the numerals etched upon its rusting surface. ‘This is sub-level nine. And that means we should be nearing the control hub…’

‘We’re going round in circles,’ Mundas agreed, his tone bleak. ‘We’ve already been this way.’

Controlling a flash of impatience, Marissa turned to look.

Felt a breath touch her ear, the back of her neck.

What?

In the almost-darkness, something had ghosted past her, something teasing, mocking. The still air stirred with a soft chuckle; a cold chill went down her spine, a touch like the caress of a blade.

Somewhere, something was laughing at them.

Instinctively, the group pulled closer together. The adept was muttering aloud now, bursts of looping, binary prayer. Even the assassin was wary; her attention pointed outwards, her blade glinting in her hand.

Mundas was shuddering, sweat pouring down his bald head. He mopped it constantly, twisting his kerchief in his hands like some sacred talisman. He, too, was muttering, over and over, ‘Be with me, my Emperor. Be with me…’

‘Desist,’ Marissa commanded him, almost irritably. ‘There is no need for fear. These are illusions, games, nothing more. I carry His light and His word, and I say we will not be stopped. Sergeant, you will locate the correct passage and we will continue.’

‘Ma’am.’

They followed the sergeant, onwards through the breath-filled almost-dark.

Soon, they were completely lost.

Despite Marissa’s steel determination, they had passed the same junction three times. Each time, Gale had pointed them down the correct route, and each time the route had changed – doors appeared in different places, walls moved, junctions vanished when they turned around.

The laughter was everywhere now; it seemed to shadow them like some phantom footpad, mocking their efforts as they began to weary.

Din became increasingly distressed. Unable to process the impossibility of the changes, the adept became more and more erratic, sparks flashing across his augmetic arm and hand, their colours echoing in his dark eyes like a data-stream. Once, he stopped by one of the diagnostic panels, seeking solutions, but Marissa commanded him away – if he plugged himself in down here, the results could be devastating.

‘He is not strong,’ the inquisitor told Syn, over the tight-beam. ‘Be aware. Await my order.’

‘Ma’am.’

More worrying, however, was the mania haunting Mundas. His forbidden knowledge – so essential to Marissa’s victory – was fragmenting as his confusion grew. He carried only a laspistol, still undrawn, and he’d wrapped his arms around himself, rocking and muttering, praying incessantly.

This could not be permitted. She needed him. She could not find the librarium without him.

A sharp backhand across his cheek left a weal the exact shape of her gauntlet. He cowered, muttered his apologies.

They kept moving.

Before long, though, even Gale was faltering, her old monsters rising to assail her. Her past was manifest in her present; she flinched at shadows, shone her suit light in every direction at once, looking to find and name her fears. She, too, was starting to mutter, though her tone was swollen with rage. Under her breath, she gave orders to a platoon long lost.

I am surrounded by fools, Marissa thought. Their faith is not enough. They are weak.

But you are strong, the voice told her. Stronger than such childishness. You must go on. The text will be ours!

She did as the voice bid her. She was on the right path, and she had come too far to falter now.

Another corridor, another corner, another doorway…

The same junction, again.

This time, Din collapsed, his multiple legs sagging sideways. Sparks crackled under his cloak.

Marissa regarded him, but he showed no recognition. His eyes were rolled far back, as if he sought answers in his own thoughts; his mouth, still bloody, muttered and frothed.

She contemplated him for a moment, but the conclusion was clear.

‘We continue,’ she said.

Mundas looked at her, his sweating face pale. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Is your hearing deficient?’ It was a snap, cold as the walls themselves. Knotting his kerchief, the administrator did not argue further. They moved on, leaving the fallen adept behind them.

His mutters and clicks followed in their wake, fading into the dark. Sparks lashed after them, as if he wished to call them back.

No one saw Syn drift away from the rest of the group to end his suffering.

Marissa had little patience with failure and, at the end of the day, this outcome had always been inevitable. Few would be strong enough to withstand the presence of the text she sought.

And what was another lost cog, in the name of His glory?

Steps.

They’d found them by accident, almost stumbling over their lip. And now they saw it: a maw of darkness, glistening stone walls that faded to an utter, consuming black. Gale’s suit light shone downwards, and was lost.

An accident? the voice said, rich with amusement. Truly, my child, your faith has led you here.

The air was ice cold; their breaths steamed like their souls were already fleeing.

And they could hear, from somewhere below, that same, easy laughter. It touched their skin like gentle fingers, stirred their hair like a chill breeze from some left-open window.

It plucked at them, mocking, said: Come closer.

The administrator stared fixedly at the stairwell, at the steps slick with old frost. There was nothing else – no rail, no wires, no panels.

No numbers.

This would be the ancient place, the other place.

‘It’s down there.’ Mundas’ kerchief was back, though it was now little more than a rag. ‘I remember. I can feel the words, feel them in my flesh like teeth…’ His shuddering peaked. ‘They call to me. They tell me of another power, another time. They call to me like the greatest hunger I have ever known. They call to me like forbidden places, like books locked shut with the padlocks of millennia. They want… They want me. Want to hold my soul forever. Tear into me, again and again and again and again and again and again…’

‘Of course they do.’ Marissa cut across his muttering, her response bleak and unimpressed. She, too, could feel the yawning pull of the stairwell, as if it led down to some vacuum, some sucking event horizon that she would neither resist nor escape from.

But He was with her.

Always.

You will be enough, the voice said. You destroyed the Cult of Blood on Zain Prime; you brought Exterminatus to the faithless of Lauden; you stood fast against the pollution of the daemon prince Yanya. You are my force and my will, and this cannot gainsay you.

‘Sergeant.’ She snapped the order, but Gale did not move. Like Mundas, she was staring, transfixed, at the hungry darkness below.

‘They’re all in there,’ she said, softly. ‘Can’t you hear them? They come, they come in their thousands. Their tens of thousands, their hundreds of thousands. They click and they seethe and they cannot be stopped. I saw them, I saw my whole platoon… We had no hope. They died, all of them screaming. Dismembered. Pieces, flying pieces. I was helpless. And I watched.’

She was white as ash, her eyes dark with horrors.

Marissa held to her anger. Of all of her followers, she valued the sergeant – needed her – the most. Gale had been the rock against which the inquisitor had set her back.

She would not permit her to falter.

‘He is with you,’ she said, her tone filled with confidence, control. ‘He stands at your back, your shoulder. You do not fear the terrors of the night-time. You will slay them, sergeant, as you slew them once before. In His name.’

At the rear, the assassin still said nothing. Her calm, slightly cynical expression had never wavered, never changed.

Slowly, holding her own belief as if it were a beacon, Marissa started down the steps.

The stone was slippery with ice and age, and the laughter immediately grew louder, swirling around her like a nightmare. It was filled with words, with text that made ribbons and encircled her, that threatened to tie her in knots of temptation and confusion. By the fourth step, the air had become thick and grey; the light had all but gone. By the sixth it had vanished completely – even the square of the tunnel above her had disappeared, like it had never been. The darkness was absolute. It denied faith, denied light; it swaddled her as if in some huge, black cloth. She could see nothing, hear nothing; her vox crackled empty. She had no awareness of the others around or behind her.

Come to us…

There was only the laughter, teasing; only the sensation of vast age, of patience, of mined stone distorted by the pressing weight of millennia, of the things that had hidden within, gibbering and crazed, elated by their own, consuming madness…

Hold fast, the voice said. Do not fear the phantoms of the dark. I am with you.

She held to His strength, to His light and presence, but still, the touches were penetrating that armour, that defiance. They flowed around her like apparitions, finding the cracks, curling in against her skin, shoving her playfully, this way and that. The shape of the stone felt wrong; the confusion of the tunnels above had been nothing, a tease, a reflection. Just an echo of what really lay here…

A labyrinth with no end. An impossible maze, one that she could never leave…

Hold! Amid the taunting, the lifeline that was His voice, the calling from her childhood. It was everything she had ever been, everything she would be and more.

She curled her hands about it as if it were a physical thing, held it aloft.

Slowly, the claws of the laughter drew back and she became aware of the sounds around her. Of boots, of mumbles, of harsh breathing.

The sounds of life.

‘I do not fear you!’ She cried the words aloud, heard them crash back down upon her, as if she had startled the very stone. ‘I am Marissa Khorvayne and I am His word, His hand, His justice! And I will drive you back!’

There: the faintest glimmer of light.

It came from somewhere ahead, a flicker like some lone electro-candle, and it moved, dancing this way and that. It pulled her attention like a clarion call to battle, focused everything she was down to a single, honed-sharp point.

Across the vox, not knowing whether the others could hear her or not, she said, ‘We move. Follow the light.’

The vox-channel hissed at her, filling with voices unknown. They were a choir now, thronging soft with sour disharmony; they grew louder. She had not realised that she had fallen, but now she managed to stand, to force the darkness back.

More noises – the slithering of stone, corridors and junctions that still moved, shifting about her endlessly, as if nothing down here were real or made sense.

She said again, ‘Follow the light.’

A hand grabbed her. She started, reached for her weapon, but it was the square, callused hand of the sergeant. She took Gale’s wrist, pulled her to her feet. A moment later, her suit light blazed in Marissa’s face.

The inquisitor neither blinked nor flinched.

Gale lowered the light, and the inquisitor could hear the relief in the sergeant’s breathing.

‘Just you?’ Marissa said.

Gale’s eyes were wide and wild, but she’d made it, lasrifle still in her hand. Of the assassin or the administrator, there was no sign.

‘Can you see the light?’ Marissa asked.

Gale nodded, the muscles in her jaw jumping. The sergeant’s scalp was stubbled, Marissa noticed. Had she not been clean-shaven when they’d started?

Laughter, again. It was her doubts that were letting it in.

Angry, she threw them aside.

They would do this. That text would be hers.

They went on downwards, and the dancing light led them, as if it were His blessing, come to guide them to the answer.

The light was not His guide.

It was a game; it had all been a game.

Before them emerged an open arch, curved and rank with age, its door fallen and its sides crumbling. Behind it, a chamber that sighed with the dust of millennia.

But that chamber bore shelves – stone shelves, lines and lines and lines of them. They stretched back into an unseen distance.

Laughter, plucking at her like fingers.

So, you have found us, it said. But are you enough? Can you comprehend what you have discovered?

Looking at the endless, parallel lines that stretched into apparent infinity, she did not let its taunt touch her – could not, must not, let it touch her. She lifted her chin.

‘You do not frighten me, horrors of the warp. He is a part of me, a part of my very soul. Who else in the Imperium entire can make such a claim? I am His chosen child, and I am unique in my blessing!’

The laughter curled round her like a caress. Such arrogance! it said. For a moment, it sounded just like the voice in her head, like her very faith and calling were being turned upon her. Your pride is oh so very great, and your fall will be oh so very far…

No! She set herself against it like she’d braced her boots on the stone. I am His chosen! I will not give credence to your blasphemy!

Beside her, Gale was still standing, though the woman’s eyes were filled with phantoms. Marissa nodded at her; she met the inquisitor’s gaze, returned the nod, then focused her attention on the librarium.

‘We seek a text,’ Marissa said. ‘It is called The Book of Change. We will find it, His hand will guide us. And then we will leave this accursed place.’

They stepped forward. And as they entered the chamber, the floor fell away, though their boots did not move. The ceiling spun up and out and was gone; the lines and shelves wavered and shook as if space itself were changing, as if there were nothing solid upon which they could walk.

But Gale still stood firm.

‘We must close our eyes,’ Marissa said. ‘He will reveal to us the true path.’

They did so.

Show me, the inquisitor said to her internal voice. Show me the way!

Walk, it told her, and I will watch where you tread. You are close, so close…

They walked, one boot in front of the other. Another step, another step. Resisting the urge to open her eyes, to witness the distortion that tangled around them, Marissa walked through the centre of the madness, through a folding of time and space and reality that they had no way to encompass or comprehend. The laughter was still there, but there was a voice in it now, deep and strong.

Come, my child, my daughter…

A pure, cold shock:

Which voice was that? Was it within her, or without? What–?

The fear was sudden, sharp. Horrific. It cut an abrupt gash in her self-belief, her armour, and more and more questions flooded through the hole. What was the thing that had called her here? Had they taken five steps? Five hundred? Five thousand? Had they just entered, or had they walked for years?

She did not know. There was stubble on the sergeant’s head. Her voice, her guiding voice – what was it? She–

A hand, grabbing her ankle.

Marissa opened her eyes, looked down.

The librarium was all round them now, its lines twisting onwards to insanity. Books repeated themselves over and over; they floated from one shelf to another, or opened and flicked pages, as if reading themselves. Ladders hung on rails, but they too were warped beyond reason; shadows flicked from shelf to shelf.

And the light, the dancing electro-candle they’d followed, it hung in the air before them now, like laughter, and showing…

In His name!

Marissa stood upon a floating fragment of floor, unconnected to anything around it. And there, curled at her feet, was Mundas’ body, a rictus grin of victory on his round, dead face.

In his hand was a steel casket, rusted to powder; about the casket hung the ancient remains of a chain, a mighty padlock. All were covered with wards, but they were too old to make out, and they distorted as she looked at them, making her face hot and her skull pound…

The symbols of the Enemy.

This – this! – was the thing that she sought, the text she’d come so far to find. This was the thing that had destroyed this world, and that had loosed its monsters upon the searching Militarum. And this was the thing that would grant her the power and insight to carry His name to new heights, to hunt and stay His foes across the galaxy entire…

There was still no sign of the assassin, but that didn’t matter now.

With a voxed warning to the sergeant, Inquisitor Marissa Khorvayne leaned down to take her prize…

But she did not reach it.

Mundas’ attack was savage and swift. His face still pulled in its rictus of death, his body began to shift, swell and change. Great, clawed limbs thrust forth from his flesh, tore out through his fatigues. They anchored themselves in the twisted walls of the librarium, and he rose and spread and scuttled like some vast and sickening spider. The sergeant raised the lasrifle, shot him clean through the skull, but his head was already stretching, changing, his jaws extending, his eyes becoming multiple, popping out of his skin like new growths.

The thing was horrific, but Marissa did not falter – Mundas was dispensable, had always been so. Though her assassin was gone, Marissa would finish this task herself.

Calm, she raised her incinerator, fired a blast. Mundas’ flesh melted, bubbling and smoking; its growths shrivelled and fell free. The creature hissed at her, charred and lowering its head in pain, but it did not stop. Laughter rose from it like the stench of burned flesh.

So pathetic. So tiny. You think you can slay me?

The words echoed round the inside of her skull, their echoes rattling harshly. Her piece of floor was growing smaller, shrinking beneath her feet, but she ignored it – it was only there to make her fear. The sergeant, ashen, was still firing, loosing her internal monsters with a roar of old orders, of rage and defiance. Scarlet streaks struck out from her rifle, searing dark, burned holes through the monster’s flesh.

But from every wound, there came a new limb; for every strike, the thing seemed to grow. It was as big as the width of the shelves, bigger, its bulk swollen and discoloured. It leered down at them, laughing from Mundas’ distorted, human mouth.

‘Join us,’ it said, now aloud. Books fell with the power of its words, tumbling over and over as they vanished into bottomless dark. ‘You will never leave this place. Celebrate its power, its ability to fold reality as it may. You are close to us already, inquisitor, will you not take that final step? Open the book! Open the book, and let us touch you as we have already touched your minion!’

Marissa put one boot firmly on the rusting box, felt the ancient chain clank free as if eager. She could hear it, calling to her, feel its power as if it already coursed through her being…

But she was stronger.

‘He is with me,’ she answered, her voice brittle and fierce.

But His voice had gone, drowned out by the monster’s scorn.

A wisp of fear coiled in her heart. Furious at her own weakness, she pointed her incinerator at the thing’s still-rippling face, shot it again and again. She saw its flesh melt like tallow, its multiple eyes turn white with the scorching blasts of heat.

But in her head – or was it in her ears? – a voice was talking to her, teasing her still. Yes, my child, this is what you wanted, is it not? You walk the wire, inquisitor, teetering between one side and the other, comprehending the Enemy and yet so close to what you defy. Will you not… just…

The weakness in her was crystallising, spreading like ice over her flesh. Doubt grew in her heart. The thing’s mouth moved with the words, but its skin was still melting and the last syllable was a blur – was it ‘read’, ‘bleed’, ‘accede’?

Beside her, the sergeant’s power pack ran down and she slumped, shuddering, her defiance all but spent.

But Gale was not done – not yet. With a final shout, mustered from the depths of her soul, acting as if she could save the platoon she’d lost, she pulled the combat knife from her belt and lunged at the thing’s face.

She did not hit. The blade went through and the thing flickered like the hololith that had brought them here. Gale overbalanced, could not right herself, tripped on the edge of the non-existent floor, and went over.

Falling, and falling, and falling, like the books, spinning downwards into nothingness.

The vox crackled and spat. If she had last words, Marissa did not hear them.

Anger rose in the inquisitor’s heart, melting the ice, sublimating it to a steam of pure fury.

No! I am Marissa Khorvayne! And I am His chosen!

She loosed a third blast with the incinerator, watched as it billowed to a cloud of red-tinged steam. The thing screeched in pain; she heard it moving, its claws scuttling and scraping. Books tumbled in flutters like injured flyers. Then its half-melted face, still with Mundas’ horrific rictus grin, broke free from the smoke and leered down at her.

New eyes had burst forth from its skin. Loose, molten flesh dripped from its chin.

Not here, inquisitor. He cannot touch you here. Only I can touch your thoughts…

My daughter.

‘Blasphemy!’

The word was a howl, fury and denial. She raised the incinerator again, but it slashed a claw at her, taking the weapon from her grasp and spinning it down into infinity.

It laughed, the noise like an invasion. Trust me, it said. Open your mind, your heart.

But Marissa had another weapon. A blessed weapon. A weapon of His grace.

Blade of Blight, Scourge of Scourges.

It was a weapon of toxins, a frothing thing that strained constantly at its bindings, and dripped ichor like blood already drawn. It could slice through steel, but that was not its greatest strength.

No, this blade carried a song of inevitability, of the wisdom of accepting one’s fate. It faced the flux of impossible change with the pure fact of death.

She drew it forth, saw the thing’s limitless eyes, still popping like blisters, all following the movement of the sword.

For just a moment, it paused.

And Marissa, just as Gale had done, drove her blade at the thing’s face.

It scuttled, shielding itself with multiple forelimbs, howling as they were carved clean through. It shifted, its feet catching more books; it lost its hold and almost fell. The blade slashed at it, slashed again. More limbs came to block, to try and shove her back, but Marissa could feel Him now, back with her, back in His glory.

Yes! The voice in her head celebrated with her. You are strong, my daughter! Let the joy of the fight consume you!

And the blade struck.

By the power of the weapon, by His blessing, by the strength of her own belief, it sank into the creature’s face. A ripple of rot broke out across Mundas’ warped, burned visage. A moment later it was everywhere, eating his flesh, his bones, his muscles.

He shrieked, the noise enough to shake the whole librarium, to tumble books from shelves that fell, like the sergeant, forever.

For a second, the beast clung on, Mundas’ face contorting; she raised the blade again…

But it was enough.

The creature, the administrator, the sword, all rotted to nothing and were gone.

Like the hololith, only a static and phantom smoke remained, only a trickle of dust. Marissa stood upon the stone floor of a long room, shelved down either side. At her feet there lay her incinerator, and a crumbling steel box.

And in her head, the voice was clamouring in glory, a wrath of glee, a bell-tone like a cathedral tocsin. It was deafening, yet she knew it was not sounding aloud.

My daughter! it said. Such strength, such fortitude! Truly, you are my chosen, my ultimate weapon. You are enough to carry this text, to use it to slay my foes…

Always, she told it. I stand in your light. I will not fail.

Beside the box, Gale lay dead, her eyes fixed on something Marissa could not see. There was no sign of Mundas.

And the assassin…

Syn lounged, perfectly casual, against the side of the archway, her expression as calmly cynical as ever.

As Marissa raised an eyebrow, she shrugged. ‘There was no reason for me to enter the room, inquisitor. Such was not my brief. And it seems I have no further need to… watch… your retinue.’

Almost in spite of herself, Marissa spared Gale a second glance, felt the splinter in her heart that was the death of the sergeant. Yet she had perished facing the Foe, in combat and honour, and her troubled mind had at last found the peace of the Throne.

Looking back up at Syn, Marissa nodded. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Though,’ and she smiled, ‘I do have to tell you, your mission is not yet quite complete.’

‘Ma’am?’ Syn came upright, her lounging arrogance lost. ‘Is there some other task that you would like me to perform?’

Amused by the faint loss of poise, she said, ‘Of course.’

For the first time since the mission had begun, the assassin looked unsettled.

‘I need someone to carry the book for me,’ the inquisitor said, leaning down to pick up the incinerator. ‘Away from the Enemy and to the safety of the shuttle. And, with my retinue gone, this is the last part of your mission. One might call it a contingency.’ Her smile still in place, the inquisitor twitched her weapon at the rusting box. ‘Pick that up, would you? And if I were you, I wouldn’t make any mistakes. It’s a long walk, and I’d really hate anything to happen to it.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danie Ware is the author of the novellas The Bloodied Rose, Wreck and Ruin and the short story ‘Mercy’, all featuring the Sisters of Battle. She lives in Carshalton, south London, with her son and two cats and has long-held interests in role-playing, re-enactment, vinyl art toys and personal fitness.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: Avenging Son.

‘I was there at the Siege of Terra,’ Vitrian Messinius would say in his later years.

‘I was there…’ he would add to himself, his words never meant for ears but his own. ‘I was there the day the Imperium died.’

But that was yet to come.

‘To the walls! To the walls! The enemy is coming!’ Captain Messinius, as he was then, led his Space Marines across the Penitent’s Square high up on the Lion’s Gate. ‘Another attack! Repel them! Send them back to the warp!’

Thousands of red-skinned monsters born of fear and sin scaled the outer ramparts, fury and murder incarnate. The mortals they faced quailed. It took the heart of a Space Marine to stand against them without fear, and the Angels of Death were in short supply.

‘Another attack, move, move! To the walls!’

They came in the days after the Avenging Son returned, emerging from nothing, eight legions strong, bringing the bulk of their numbers to bear against the chief entrance to the Imperial Palace. A decapitation strike like no other, and it came perilously close to success.

Messinius’ Space Marines ran to the parapet edging the Penitent’s Square. On many worlds, the square would have been a plaza fit to adorn the centre of any great city. Not on Terra. On the immensity of the Lion’s Gate, it was nothing, one of hundreds of similarly huge spaces. The word ‘gate’ did not suit the scale of the cityscape. The Lion’s Gate’s bulk marched up into the sky, step by titanic step, until it rose far higher than the mountains it had supplanted. The gate had been built by the Emperor Himself, they said. Myths detailed the improbable supernatural feats required to raise it. They were lies, all of them, and belittled the true effort needed to build such an edifice. Though the Lion’s Gate was made to His design and by His command, the soaring monument had been constructed by mortals, with mortal hands and mortal tools. Messinius wished that had been remembered. For men to build this was far more impressive than any godly act of creation. If men could remember that, he believed, then perhaps they would remember their own strength.

The uncanny may not have built the gate, but it threatened to bring it down. Messinius looked over the rampart lip, down to the lower levels thousands of feet below and the spread of the Anterior Barbican.

Upon the stepped fortifications of the Lion’s Gate was armour of every colour and the blood of every loyal primarch. Dozens of regiments stood alongside them. Aircraft filled the sky. Guns boomed from every quarter. In the churning redness on the great roads, processional ways so huge they were akin to prairies cast in rockcrete, were flashes of gold where the Emperor’s Custodian Guard battled. The might of the Imperium was gathered there, in the palace where He dwelt.

There seemed moments on that day when it might not be enough.

The outer ramparts were carpeted in red bodies that writhed and heaved, obscuring the great statues adorning the defences and covering over the guns, an invasive cancer consuming reality. The enemy were legion. There were too many foes to defeat by plan and ruse. Only guns, and will, would see the day won, but the defenders were so pitifully few.

Messinius called a wordless halt, clenched fist raised, seeking the best place to deploy his mixed company, veterans all of the Terran Crusade. Gunships and fighters sped overhead, unleashing deadly light and streams of bombs into the packed daemonic masses. There were innumerable cannons crammed onto the gate, and they all fired, rippling the structure with false earthquakes. Soon the many ships and orbital defences of Terra would add their guns, targeting the very world they were meant to guard, but the attack had come so suddenly; as yet they had had no time to react.

The noise was horrendous. Messinius’ audio dampers were at maximum and still the roar of ordnance stung his ears. Those humans that survived today would be rendered deaf. But he would have welcomed more guns, and louder still, for all the defensive fury of the assailed palace could not drown out the hideous noise of the daemons – their sighing hisses, a billion serpents strong, and chittering, screaming wails. It was not only heard but sensed within the soul, the realms of spirit and of matter were so intertwined. Messinius’ being would be forever stained by it.

Tactical information scrolled down his helmplate, near environs only. He had little strategic overview of the situation. The vox-channels were choked with a hellish screaming that made communication impossible. The noosphere was disrupted by etheric backwash spilling from the immaterial rifts the daemons poured through. Messinius was used to operating on his own. Small-scale, surgical actions were the way of the Adeptus Astartes, but in a battle of this scale, a lack of central coordination would lead inevitably to defeat. This was not like the first Siege, where his kind had fought in Legions.

He called up a company-wide vox-cast and spoke to his warriors. They were not his Chapter-kin, but they would listen. The primarch himself had commanded that they do so.

‘Reinforce the mortals,’ he said. ‘Their morale is wavering. Position yourselves every fifty yards. Cover the whole of the south-facing front. Let them see you.’ He directed his warriors by chopping at the air with his left hand. His right, bearing an inactive power fist, hung heavily at his side. ‘Assault Squad Antiocles, back forty yards, single firing line. Prepare to engage enemy breakthroughs only on my mark. Devastators, split to demi-squads and take up high ground, sergeant and sub-squad prime’s discretion as to positioning and target. Remember our objective, heavy infliction of casualties. We kill as many as we can, we retreat, then hold at the Penitent’s Arch until further notice. Command squad, with me.’

Command squad was too grand a title for the mismatched crew Messinius had gathered around himself. His own officers were light years away, if they still lived.

‘Doveskamor, Tidominus,’ he said to the two Aurora Marines with him. ‘Take the left.’

‘Yes, captain,’ they voxed, and jogged away, their green armour glinting orange in the hell-light of the invasion.

The rest of his scratch squad was comprised of a communications specialist from the Death Spectres, an Omega Marine with a penchant for plasma weaponry, and a Raptor holding an ancient standard he’d taken from a dusty display.

‘Why did you take that, Brother Kryvesh?’ Messinius asked, as they moved forward.

‘The palace is full of such relics,’ said the Raptor. ‘It seems only right to put them to use. No one else wanted it.’

Messinius stared at him.

‘What? If the gate falls, we’ll have more to worry about than my minor indiscretion. It’ll be good for morale.’

The squads were splitting to join the standard humans. Such was the noise many of the men on the wall had not noticed their arrival, and a ripple of surprise went along the line as they appeared at their sides. Messinius was glad to see they seemed more firm when they turned their eyes back outwards.

‘Anzigus,’ he said to the Death Spectre. ‘Hold back, facilitate communication within the company. Maximum signal gain. This interference will only get worse. See if you can get us patched in to wider theatre command. I’ll take a hardline if you can find one.’

‘Yes, captain,’ said Anzigus. He bowed a helm that was bulbous with additional equipment. He already had the access flap of the bulky vox-unit on his arm open. He withdrew, the aerials on his power plant extending. He headed towards a systems nexus on the far wall of the plaza, where soaring buttresses pushed back against the immense weight bearing down upon them.

Messinius watched him go. He knew next to nothing about Anzigus. He spoke little, and when he did, his voice was funereal. His Chapter was mysterious, but the same lack of familiarity held true for many of these warriors, thrown together by miraculous events. Over their years lost wandering in the warp, Messinius had come to see some as friends as well as comrades, others he hardly knew, and none he knew so well as his own Chapter brothers. But they would stand together. They were Space Marines. They had fought by the returned primarch’s side, and in that they shared a bond. They would not stint in their duty now.

Messinius chose a spot on the wall, directing his other veterans to left and right. Kryvesh he sent to the mortal officer’s side. He looked down again, out past the enemy and over the outer palace. Spires stretched away in every direction. Smoke rose from all over the landscape. Some of it was new, the work of the daemon horde, but Terra had been burning for weeks. The Astronomican had failed. The galaxy was split in two. Behind them in the sky turned the great palace gyre, its deep eye marking out the throne room of the Emperor Himself.

‘Sir!’ A member of the Palatine Guard shouted over the din. He pointed downwards, to the left. Messinius followed his wavering finger. Three hundred feet below, daemons were climbing. They came upwards in a triangle tipped by a brute with a double rack of horns. It clambered hand over hand, far faster than should be possible, flying upwards, as if it touched the side of the towering gate only as a concession to reality. A Space Marine with claw locks could not have climbed that fast.

‘Soldiers of the Imperium! The enemy is upon us!’

He looked to the mortals. Their faces were blanched with fear. Their weapons shook. Their bravery was commendable nonetheless. Not one of them attempted to run, though a wave of terror preceded the unnatural things clambering up towards them.

‘We shall not turn away from our duty, no matter how fearful the foe, or how dire our fates may be,’ he said. ‘Behind us is the Sanctum of the Emperor Himself. As He has watched over you, now it is your turn to stand in guardianship over Him.’

The creatures were drawing closer. Through a sliding, magnified window on his display, Messinius looked into the yellow and cunning eyes of their leader. A long tongue lolled permanently from the thing’s mouth, licking at the wall, tasting the terror of the beings it protected.

Boltgun actions clicked. His men leaned over the parapet, towering over the mortals as the Lion’s Gate towered over the Ultimate Wall. A wealth of targeting data was exchanged, warrior to warrior, as each chose a unique mark. No bolt would be wasted in the opening fusillade. They could hear the creatures’ individual shrieks and growls, all wordless, but their meaning was clear: blood, blood, blood. Blood and skulls.

Messinius sneered at them. He ignited his power fist with a swift jerk. He always preferred the visceral thrill of manual activation. Motors came to full life. Lightning crackled around it. He aimed downwards with his bolt pistol. A reticule danced over diabolical faces, each a copy of all the others. These things were not real. They were not alive. They were projections of a false god. The Librarian Atramo had named them maladies. A spiritual sickness wearing ersatz flesh.

He reminded himself to be wary. Contempt was as thick as any armour, but these things were deadly, for all their unreality.

He knew. He had fought the Neverborn many times before.

‘While He lives,’ Messinius shouted, boosting his voxmitter gain to maximal, ‘we stand!’

‘For He of Terra!’ the humans shouted, their battle cry loud enough to be heard over the booming of guns.

‘For He of Terra,’ said Messinius. ‘Fire!’ he shouted.

The Space Marines fired first. Boltguns spoke, spitting spikes of rocket flare into the foe. Bolts slammed into daemon bodies, bursting them apart. Black viscera exploded away. Black ichor showered those coming after. The daemons’ false souls screamed back whence they came, though their bones and offal tumbled down like those of any truly living foe.

Las-beams speared next, and the space between the wall top and the scaling party filled with violence. The daemons were unnaturally resilient, protected from death by the energies of the warp, and though many were felled, others weathered the fire, and clambered up still, unharmed and uncaring of their dead. Messinius no longer needed his helm’s magnification to see into the daemon champion’s eyes. It stared at him, its smile a promise of death. The terror that preceded them was replaced by the urge to violence, and that gripped them all, foe and friend. The baseline humans began to lose their discipline. A man turned and shot his comrade, and was shot down in turn. Kryvesh banged the foot of his borrowed banner and called them back into line. Elsewhere, his warriors sang; not their Chapter warsongs, but battle hymns known to all. Wavering human voices joined them. The feelings of violence abated, just enough.

Then the things were over the parapet and on them. Messinius saw Tidominus carried down by a group of daemons, his unit signum replaced by a mortis rune in his helm. The enemy champion was racing at him. Messinius emptied his bolt pistol into its face, blowing half of it away into a fine mist of daemonic ichor. Still it leapt, hurling itself twenty feet over the parapet. Messinius fell back, keeping the creature in sight, targeting skating over his helmplate as the machine-spirit tried to maintain a target lock. Threat indicators trilled, shifting up their priority spectrum.

The daemon held up its enormous gnarled hands. Smoke whirled in the space between, coalescing into a two-handed sword almost as tall as Messinius. By the time its hoofed feet cracked the paving slabs of the square, the creature’s weapon was solid. Vapour streaming from its ruined face, it pointed the broadsword at Messinius and hissed a wordless challenge.

‘Accepted,’ said Messinius, and moved in to attack.

The creature was fast, and punishingly strong. Messinius parried its first strike with an outward push of his palm, fingers spread. Energy crackled. The boom generated by the meeting of human technology and the sorceries of the warp was loud enough to out-compete the guns, but though the impact sent pain lancing up Messinius’ arm, the daemon was not staggered, and pressed in a follow-up attack, swinging the massive sword around its head as if it weighed nothing.

Messinius countered more aggressively this time, punching in to the strike. Another thunderous detonation. Disruption fields shattered matter, but the daemon was not wholly real, and the effect upon it was lesser than it would be upon a natural foe. Nevertheless, this time it was thrown backwards by the blow. Smoke poured from the edge of its blade. It licked black blood from its arm and snarled. Messinius was ready when it leapt: opening his fist, ignoring the sword as it clashed against his pauldron and sheared off a peeling of ceramite, he grabbed the beast about its middle.

The Bloodletters of Khorne were rangy things, all bone and ropey muscle, no space within them for organs. The false god of war had no need for them to eat or breathe, or to give the semblance of being able to do so. They were made only to kill, and to strike fear in the hearts of those they faced. Their waists were solid, and slender, and easily encompassed by Messinius’ power fist. It squirmed in his grip, throwing Messinius’ arm about. Servo motors in his joints locked, supplementary muscle fibres strained, but the White Consul stood firm.

‘Tell your master he is not welcome on Terra,’ he said. His words were calm, a deliberate defiance of the waves of rage pulsing off the daemon.

He closed his hand.

The daemon’s midriff exploded. The top half fell down, still hissing and thrashing. Its sword clanged off the paving and broke into shards, brittle now it was separated from its wielder. They were pieces of the same thing, sword and beast. Apart, the weapon could not survive long.

Messinius cast down the lower portion of the daemon. There were dozens of the things atop the wall, battling with his warriors and the human soldiery. In the second he paused he saw Doveskamor hacked down as he stood over the body of his brother, pieces of armour bouncing across the ground. He saw a group of Palatine Sentinels corner a daemon with their bayonets. He saw a dozen humans cut down by eldritch swords.

Where the humans kept their distance, their ranged weapons took a toll upon the Neverborn. Where the daemons got among them, they triumphed more often than not, even against his Space Marines. Support fire rained down sporadically from above, its usefulness restricted by the difficulty of picking targets from the swirling melee. At the western edge of the line, the heavy weapons were more telling, knocking daemons off the wall before they crested the parapet and preventing them from circling around the back of the Imperial forces. Only his equipment allowed Messinius to see this. Without the helm feeds of his warriors and the limited access he had to the Lion Gate’s auspectoria, he would have been blind, lost in the immediate clash of arms and sprays of blood. He would have remained where he was, fighting. He would not have seen that there were more groups of daemons pouring upwards. He would not have given his order, and then he would have died.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Kevin Chin and Alex Boyd.

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eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

the purchaser of a Black Library e-book product (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase a Black Library e-book (“e-book”). The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media.

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.