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More Blood Angels from Black Library

• MEPHISTON •
by Darius Hinks

Book 1: BLOOD OF SANGUINIUS

Book 2: REVENANT CRUSADE

THE DEVASTATION OF BAAL
A novel by Guy Haley

DANTE
A novel by Guy Haley

SHIELD OF BAAL
A Space Marine Battles novel by Josh Reynolds,
Joe Parrino and Braden Campbell

MEPHISTON: LORD OF DEATH
A novella by David Annandale

SIN OF DAMNATION
A novella by Gav Thorpe

LEMARTES: GUARDIAN OF THE LOST
A novel by David Annandale

THE BLOOD ANGELS OMNIBUS
An omnibus by James Swallow

HEART OF RAGE
An audio drama by James Swallow

VIRTUES OF THE SONS / SINS OF THE FATHER
A Horus Heresy audio drama by Andy Smillie

More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

The Beast Arises

1: I AM SLAUGHTER

2: PREDATOR, PREY

3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

4: THE LAST WALL

5: THRONEWORLD

6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

12: THE BEHEADING

Space Marine Battles

WAR OF THE FANG

THE WORLD ENGINE

DAMNOS

DAMOCLES

OVERFIEND

ARMAGEDDON

Legends of the Dark Millennium

ASTRA MILITARUM

ULTRAMARINES

FARSIGHT

SONS OF CORAX

SPACE WOLVES

Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘The Devastation of Baal’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

PROLOGUE

The Bactrus Wastes, three miles south of Hades Hive, Armageddon Secundus.

Many years earlier.

The angel rose from a wellspring of flame, sloughing off the past and shedding ash from his wings. Dead and reborn, ancient and new, he burned through the veils of reality with his father at his side and the universe in his hand. Even now, hours from birth, his consciousness was exploding and expanding, soaring into new shapes. The curse of his old life was gone, leaving nothing but primordial power. Fire bloomed in his footsteps. Clouds boiled in his wake. Calistarius had fallen. Mephiston had risen.

A grunting, sweating mob blundered into his dream, staining the purity of the moment. He raised his hand and a sword appeared, torn from his gauntlet in a sheath of flame. Vitarus.

The shadows broke through the blaze. Greenskins. Snarling and drooling as they barrelled towards him, chainswords rattling.

Vitarus cut them down like saplings. Mephiston fought with blissful dispassion. No rage. No confusion. The bloodlust remained but it was simply fuel for his blows, just another weapon to wield.

Ork blood filled the air, quickening the angel’s transformation, igniting his soul like a revelation.

The old part of his mind told him to return, reach the Imperial lines, rejoin his old life. But the new part revelled in the moment, carving mounds of broken limbs, scattering heaps of splintered armour.

When the killing was done the angel moved on. Briefly, he forgot himself and walked. Then he breathed wings from his spine and soared, gliding high above the desolation, banking through the smouldering echoes of war.

He came to a ruined city and saw more prey picking through a rubble-strewn square. He plummeted, slicing through the dust clouds and crashing into them, tearing the orks apart with ember-shrouded blows.

He became mired in a mob of brutish, crookbacked monsters, crushed beneath a bellowing horde that mistook him for easy prey.

Eager to test his new form, Mephiston let the warp pour through him, unleashing every trace of power he could summon with no thought for his soul. He was free. Why contain such fury?

Light burned through asphyxiating fumes, incinerating and eviscerating, filling the square with charred flesh. Columns of empyric lightning smashed into the flagstones. The earth split. Walls toppled. Watchtowers burned.

As the fighting grew more frenzied, Mephiston’s mind began to slip. Every thunderstrike and sword lunge fed his power rather than drained it. He was incandescent, his thoughts too bright to grasp, too strange to follow. His hearts pounded as he plumbed the depths of the warp. In his old life he had painted his armour black as a mark of his curse, but now the paint blistered away, revealing a glorious, bloody crimson.

Walls detonated and Mephiston levitated through the maelstrom, arms outstretched, a divine conductor orchestrating the apocalypse. Greenskins tumbled away, charred and broken as the warp reached into reality and ripped them apart. Power flooded every cell of Mephiston’s body, consuming him, transforming him, making him one with the immaterium.

+No.+

The voice rang out in Mephiston’s mind, shattering his equilibrium. Who dared challenge him? He who had mastered the curse. He who had mastered death. Who dared enter the mind of an angel?

Mephiston called down the warp storm with even more violence, splitting the sky with curses and enveloping the city in madness. The flames grew wild and strange, sprouting humanoid shapes that reached through the inferno, grasping with spindly, disjointed limbs.

+Stop,+ said the voice, still audible over the fury of Mephiston’s thoughts.

Rage, long forgotten, boiled up through Mephiston’s chest. He dived through the flames, seeking the fool who dared to address him.

Up ahead, rising from the shattered buildings, was a shrine. It was the same as countless shrines on countless worlds: a winged skull, crowned with a halo of spikes. Mephiston barely registered it. But standing before the shrine, silhouetted by the flames, was a robed figure. Despite the destruction Mephiston had unleashed, the man was standing firmly on the rubble, leaning into the tempest, unbowed by the storm.

Mephiston drew back Vitarus and hurled warp fire at him.

The figure raised a sword and parried the blast. He staggered under the impact, head bowed, but managed to stay on his feet. Ghost-runes billowed around him, whirling like fireflies as he wrenched his sword aside and sent Mephiston’s fire into a temple, shattering walls and adding more flames to the ash clouds.

Mephiston dived again, bringing Vitarus round for another strike.

The blades clashed with a boom of colliding warp fields.

The sorcerer fell, knocked from his feet by the force of Mephiston’s blow. He crashed against the shrine and his sword flew from his grip.

Mephiston strode forwards, raising Vitarus for the killing blow.

The ash clouds banked away and he saw, not a Chaos sorcerer, but a brother of his own Librarius. A Blood Angel, clad in blue war-plate. He removed his helmet to reveal a familiar face with dark, weathered skin and a short white beard.

‘Rhacelus?’ said Mephiston.

‘Calistarius,’ said the Blood Angel, shaking his head and holding up his hand to ward off the next blow.

Mephiston lowered Vitarus and looked around at the burning city, emerging from his fever dream with a jolt. He could barely remember how he had come to be there. ‘Calistarius is dead,’ he said, sure of that much.

Rhacelus climbed to his feet, staring at Mephiston, taking in his warp-mangled armour and the grim pallor of his face. He grabbed his sword from the rocks. ‘Then what are you?’

The name was burned across his soul. It had nourished and sustained him beneath the ruins of Hades Hive. It was his path from the darkness. The ember that lit the fire. ‘I am Mephiston.’

‘And does Mephiston murder his friends?’

Anger flared in Mephiston, then quickly faded. He shook his head and lowered his sword.

As Rhacelus stared at him, Mephiston imagined what he must be thinking. His armour was smouldering and blood-drenched and he had just destroyed dozens of buildings without considering who might be cowering in the ruins. When they last met, he had been lost in the madness of the Black Rage. And now he was apparently sane. Cured by a miracle he could not explain. Rhacelus would be trying to decide if his battle-brother had fallen to the Ruinous Powers. Exactly as Mephiston would have done were their places reversed.

Warp fury drained from Mephiston’s limbs, replaced by doubt. Had he simply replaced one curse with another? ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not kill my friends. I am…’ His words trailed off. He did not know what he was.

Rhacelus gripped his sword, still watching him closely.

Mephiston expected denunciation or attack, but Rhacelus sheathed the sword and shook his head.

‘Calistarius is not dead,’ he said. ‘I see him. He’s still in you, even if you do not realise it. Whatever you are now, you carry an echo of the man you were.’ He stepped closer and looked Mephiston directly in the eye. ‘And so you must. I do not understand what this change means. I do not know what has happened to you. And I sense that you are just as confused. But you have to remember what you were, Calistarius.’ He looked at the wasteland that surrounded them. ‘You have gone beyond the Librarius. I can see that. You are something new.’ He frowned. ‘Something liminal. I see your soul and at the same time I don’t.’ He waved at the path Mephiston had carved through the city. ‘Whatever this power is, it must be taethered, tied to something human. You must remember yourself.’

Mephiston saw the cold, sobering truth of his friend’s words. ‘I will remember,’ he said.

The doubt remained on Rhacelus’ face.

Mephiston gripped his arm. ‘I swear.’

Rhacelus stared at Mephiston for a long time, peering deep into his soul. Eventually, the doubt faded from his eyes, replaced with a glimmer of something else: hope.

He gripped Mephiston’s arm.

‘I believe you.’

CHAPTER ONE

Frost crawled into the bunker, silvering the heads piled at its centre, clamping their jaws into obstinate silence. Most of them were beyond saving, their fat, black tongues hanging from death-grey lips, smoke drifting from their ragged eye sockets. It was a pitiful scene. Some were still twitching, brutally galvanised by banks of sparking transformers, but none of them were speaking anymore. The heads had become totems, carefully labelled symbols of the curse that had befallen Hydrus Ulterior – contorted, mindless and finally mute.

‘Groti-grosi, zero-one,’ said Magos Calx through a hood full of vox-pipes. ‘Hair, teeth, nails. Nails, teeth, hair. Sifter-zero. Sifter-one.’ With each clipped word he stabbed a syringe into one of the heads, trying to coax out a reply. ‘Putrescible matter. Non-copper. No adulterations. Gliacine-zero. Gliacine-one. Blood-spitting, then silence.’

There was frustration in his voice as he glanced at a shrine in the corner of the bunker. It was rattling furiously in its alcove, spooling reels of data scrolls, as though remonstrating him. ‘Munificent lord,’ said Calx. ‘I will not be defeated by this. Whatever they have become, they will give me answers. The vescend-vibum will yield.’ He forced the needle deeper. ‘Flesh always yields.’

The bunker shuddered in response to distant artillery, coating Calx’s crimson robes with a fresh layer of dust. He cursed and brushed it away, revealing gold needlework running down his floor-length robes – a spiral of cogs and circuitry that proclaimed long decades of study. His legs scuttled beneath him, a claw-fist of mechadendrite talons, clattering on the stone floor as he approached another head.

‘Spool-speak-one,’ he hissed, bending his already hunched frame over the head. The slab of flesh twitched in response and Calx nodded, pleased. The head had been transformed by madness, more beast now than man, blood-splattered and leering. Calx activated the transformers attached to its skull. Light flickered beneath the skin and the smell of ozone and cooking meat filled the bunker. ‘S33331 ineffectual,’ said Calx, attaching cables to bloody sockets. ‘IOH zero coagulated. Neuman acid no longer servative. Bio repeat. Others are inferior and subzanted. Glaciahne or Giacialine. S33336 ineffectual.’

He opened a leather-bound hymnal and recited a litany of invigoration, droning the questions and answers until the head started to respond, rocking and snorting in time to his words, jolting so hard that black clots fell from its nose. Calx took a heavy, brass chronometer from his robes and flipped it open, peering at the spinning mechanism and comparing the measurements to lines he had drawn on the head. ‘S33332 efficacious,’ he said.

He looked closer at his chronometer, then snapped it shut, placing it beneath his robes and peering at the rotting face. ‘Talk to me.’ He adjusted the transformers so that the head shook even more violently. ‘Who stole your mind?’

Calx could hear the mortar rounds hitting with increasing force outside, getting ever closer. His time was almost up. He had to find the answer. How had such a primitive foe breached their thrice-blessed logic engines? How had they entered their minds?

The head rocked back on its stand and spat, showering the tech-priest with red saliva.

Calx gripped the head and forced another syringe home, placing the needle carefully between intersections he had inked on its neck. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘what am I not seeing? How were you corrupted? What is absit-absens from your head? How was it possible? Daemonolegisari? You were stearated, anointed, antitropic, metal-bodied. You were everything the Omnissiah desires. There was no trace of delirium in you. None. Steel-bound, god-bound, oil-chained in-ab-eterno. What could find purchase in your soul? I examined your hair, your teeth, your nails.’

As though sensing Calx’s frustration, the severed head started to laugh, snorting like a drunk.

The mass of oily cables that passed for Calx’s face recoiled, rolling like a nest of rubber snakes, their mechanical lenses blinking and refocusing. ‘Do you think you can deceive me? I will reorder your consciousness. You will tell me exactly what–’

The head’s expression changed. The transformation was so sudden and peculiar that Calx paused in surprise. He took out the chronometer again and adjusted the settings, winding the mechanism several times and tapping the brass case. Then he looked back at the head.

It was physically unchanged but the mania was gone. It looked around the bunker with cool disdain, then fixed its stare on the tech-priest, studying the chronometer and the symbols stitched into Calx’s robes.

‘So much learning,’ said the head quietly. ‘So little thinking.’

Calx backed away. ‘What? What did you say?’ He glanced at one of the humming devices sunk into its cranium. ‘Which focimeter is that? These are not your words. Who is that? There must be no interruptions. Is this the extant sphygmograph or the piomancies of the twelfth nine? Did I confuse the screed?’ He approached one of the machines and tapped furiously at a flickering gauge. ‘Are you a pollutant? Is there a pollutant in the ore?’

‘The Emperor has need of you, magos,’ said the head, speaking in ornate, archaic Gothic. ‘Meet me on the crest of the dam.’

Calx froze. Then he looked around the bunker, half expecting to see a newcomer in the room. His machines flickered impassively, showing no signs of anyone hiding. A mixture of fear and excitement gripped him. The Emperor? Could this be it? Had help finally come? Had they finally been heard?

‘Who are–?’ he started to say.

‘The crest. Now.’ The head spoke with such force that it rocked on its stand, spilling sparks across the workbench.

One by one, all the heads started to rattle on their bases, snorting and belching. Crimson tears poured down their cheeks. ‘What is here?’ they whispered in unison. ‘What is here?’

Calx raised his power axe. The weapon was taller than him and clad in a bewildering array of esoteric devices, but it did nothing to calm his nerves.

‘I have no time,’ said the heads. ‘The crest. Now.’

Calx backed away, then jumped as someone began pounding on the door.

The heads became rigid and lifeless once more, so Calx turned to the door and wrenched it open, his power axe still raised.

‘Magos,’ said the pale, blood-splattered soldier outside. ‘It’s over. We are defeated.’

Magos Calx clattered out into blinding, bitter cold, followed by a phalanx of helmeted skitarii: vanguard troops, their low-slung radium carbines crackling as they lined up in perfect lockstep behind him. The clamour of battle crashed into them – thudding, hammer blows of artillery and the peevish cackle of arc rifles. Even up here, above the dam, Calx could see how dire the situation had become. Broken phosphor weapons and diagnostic equipment lay discarded around the bunker and mindless skitarii were sprawled everywhere, pleading to the cogs on their armour and gnawing at their bloody fists. Medicae-servitors whirred past – winged drones laden with needles and hacksaws, pallid, slack-jawed faces embedded in their iron thoraxes. They picked at the dying with blank-eyed disinterest, examining some, killing others. All of the soldiers were lacerated and bleeding, but Calx knew the wounds were not caused by the enemy. The men had not been mauled by xenos horrors, but by themselves. Steam filled the brittle air, drifting from their glistening, exposed innards and bloodstained mouths.

The magos paused as he left the bunker, horrified by the cannibalism that had consumed his garrison. To devour their own bodies, to eat the flesh that had been so lovingly improved by their lord, it was tragic in ways he could barely fathom. It was the most obscene form of defeat he could conceive of and it had occurred under his command. He had no doubt what was responsible. Corruption was the constant enemy. The Ruinous Powers. Daemonkind. The creatures of the warp. They had arrived on Hydrus Ulterior and entered the souls of his men. Then he remembered the voice that had spoken to him in the bunker. Even now there was hope.

He leant back as far as his iron-wrought torso would allow, until he looked like an armour-plated beetle, trapped in the sunlight, trying to right itself. Four of his servo-arms sprouted from his rusty carapace up into the air, as he opened his mind to every datascreed he could locate. Binharic code echoed round his head, a barrage of vox chatter from every corner of the valley – trajectories, munitions details, rates of attrition, all listed in exhaustive detail, despite the hopeless situation they described. Calx sifted through the statistics, trying to find an explanation for what had just happened to the heads.

‘Indente-dante, three-six-nine,’ he said, tapping the tubes that snaked through his skull. ‘Affixing one, affixing two.’ More reports hit him, jolting his body like a current. Then, finally, he found it.

He lowered his arms and stood upright, gripping his power axe with trembling fingers, excitement distorting his words. ‘Adeptus Astartes? The Adeptus Astartes are here? And none of you thought to alert me?’

‘Magos,’ replied one of the skitarii. ‘Your work with the heads… You ordered us not to disturb you until exactly–’

The magos pointed his power axe at the trooper. The weapon’s head was a stylised cog, each tooth sharpened to a keen edge. Calx tapped the humming blade on the trooper’s chest, scattering sparks across his grimy armour.

‘Who is it? What have they said?’

‘Magos,’ said the trooper, ‘the gunship only appeared on our auspexes thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds ago. I did not think it right to disrupt your timings until we identified it. A single gunship is approaching the dam, that is all, and it has not yet reached the valley. They have yet to clear the foothills. We have received no communiques. I disturbed you for another reason. The outer defences are…’ His words faltered. ‘We need to know your orders, magos. Things have become much worse.’

Magos Calx was about to reply when another volley hit, closer this time, causing the tech-priest and his guards to steady themselves as the ground shuddered and the air filled with dust.

When the air had cleared, Calx gripped the soldier’s arm. ‘A-contrario,’ he whispered urgently. ‘We have been saved. This is it. Justitia. Now those apes will learn what happens when they defile an Imperial facility. Actiones-secundafidei. This is it!’

He turned away, scuttling towards the steps that led out onto the crest of the dam. It was a grand structure – a powerful sweep of rockcrete, half a mile tall and a mile in length, supported by a majestic fan of buttresses. It barred the valley like a divine fist.

The dam was made even more spectacular by the skeins of electromagnetic power dancing across its crest. Calx muttered to himself as he clattered through the rubble, his head swimming with the scale of his ward. ‘Steel-bound, god-bound, oil-chained in-ab-eterno. I will never lose you to the sweating hands of these groti-grosi beasts.’

As he stepped out onto the crest of the dam, Calx paused, his excitement fading. When he had entered the bunker, the battle had been desperate; now it was a rout. There was an avalanche of scrap metal smashing through his garrison. His once perfect lines of skitarii had collapsed, thrown into disarray by the delirium that had washed through their ranks. The earthworks were overrun, the cog-shaped fan of trenches awash with xenos beasts. His Ironstriders were being torn down like trees, their mechanical legs thrashing uselessly as ork walkers ripped into them. Most of the Astra Militarum Guardsmen were dead. The final bank of trenches was still manned by his red-robed skitarii troops, but even their orderly lines had been torn open, madness throwing them into a shameful jumble of crossfires and foundering scrums. The greenskins had almost taken the whole valley with their lumbering war machines – ugly, iron buckets, propelled by steam-piston legs and laden with guns. This was the result of damnation. It was the only explanation. As his men battled for their sanity and sanctity, the xenos animals had seized their chance to attack. ‘No,’ said Calx, shaking his mane of cables. ‘This must not be. I will not allow it.’

‘We were betrayed,’ said the soldier, waving his gun at the weapons batteries that punctuated the bunkers. They were all in ruins, their walls scattered across the rocks in smouldering heaps.

Calx hissed as he saw that they had been detonated from within.

‘It was Lexmechanic Balkh,’ replied the soldier. ‘This is why I interrupted you, magos. He took every one of our security protocols to the enemy.’

‘Balkh?’ Calx slumped as though he had been deflated. He remembered the face of his old friend. There were few he would have trusted with such information. ‘How could he do that to me?’

The soldier shook his head. ‘His mind was gone, magos, just like all the others. The Dark Powers consumed him. He did not realise what he was doing. We…’ he hesitated. ‘We stopped him, but it was too late. We found his cognition prints in all the systems. He wanted the dam to fall.’ The soldier looked out across the sea of brutal war machines below. ‘He wanted those monsters to tear it down. He wanted–’

Calx held up a hand to silence the man. ‘No, he did not. Absolvo injuria. His mind was gone, as you say. He was no longer Balkh. We must honour the memory of the man he was, not dwell on what became of him. We are all victims of this curse.’

He was about to say more when a new sound cut through the din – a promethium roar of reversing thrusters. Calx looked away from the battle and out across the top of the dam. A gunship ripped through the brittle mountain air, shimmering in its own heat haze as it swooped down towards the rockcrete landing pad, kicking up dust from the ancient stone and scattering troops. Calx scuttled off in the direction of the landing ship, waving for his men to follow.

Calx’s crimson robes flashed blue as he passed beneath the dam’s final line of defence. All along the mile-long lip of the dam, blue-skinned priests had been welded to metal gantries, their limbs shattered and melted into sixty-foot-tall struts. These dangling, iron-fused heroes were the corpuscarii, the electro-priests, their scarred flesh shimmering with a constant lightning pulse. Their eyes had been burned away long ago, melted by the incredible power jolting through their bodies, but the whole dam was alive with their faith. Their canticles roared out over the boom of the landing gunship, each proud word bolstering the edifice beneath them.

Magos Calx whispered a prayer of thanks to the corpuscarii as he rushed past them, humbled by their sacrifice, but his mask of cracked lenses remained locked on the gunship. It had settled onto the dam and its engines died away as the boarding ramp rattled down. Calx waved a silent order at his men and they fanned out behind him, readying their guns.

As Calx neared the ship, the dust rolled away and a robed colossus strode towards him, silhouetted by the dying sun.

‘Where is it?’ demanded the newcomer as he emerged from the glare and towered over Calx. It was the same voice Calx had heard coming through the severed head.

A Blood Angel, thought Calx as he studied the giant. The Space Marine was clad in a suit of ancient, magnificent war-plate – beautiful sculpted ceramite, filigreed with such intricacy that he could only be a great general or captain. The armour was of an odd design: the surface had been worked to resemble raw, peeled meat, and the plates had been lacquered and polished a dark, glossy red. And that was not the only oddity. Calx had never seen a Blood Angel this close before but the warrior’s face was not at all what he had expected. The Blood Angel’s pale features were gaunt, tormented even. And his eyes were as lifeless as those Calx had just left in the bunker.

Calx’s brain whirred and clicked, skimming quickly through the organisational structures of the Adeptus Astartes. The Blood Angel wore a long, ceremonial cloak and an ornate sword at his hip, but it was the death-white pallor of his face that dragged a hiss of recognition from Calx’s mouth. He had seen this living death mask in countless pict feeds and military texts.

‘Chief Librarian,’ said Calx, performing a disjointed, marionette-like bow. Rumour and myth tumbled through his mind. ‘Mephiston-excelsus. Dominus-a-mortis. It is– it is an honour,’ he managed to say.

Mephiston looked past him to the network of bunkers, Administratum buildings and research stations that sprawled out behind the dam. Then he said something.

Calx shook his head. Mephiston had spoken quietly, using a jumble of dialects so antiquated that Calx could not discern the meaning.

Mephiston stared at Calx and the magos realised his mistake. The Blood Angel’s eyes were locked rather than dead. The eyes of an insomniac – staring, unblinking, remote, as though he were watching something no one else could see. The effect was chilling. Calx began counting the striations in Mephiston’s irises, comforting himself with the emollient rhythm of the numbers. Then he began to multiply the numbers, drowning his fear in arithmetic.

‘What is it?’ said Mephiston, speaking more clearly.

‘What is what, Chief Librarian?’

Something rippled across the Blood Angel’s face – a flicker of barely suppressed violence.

‘What happened to the traitor?’ said Mephiston, speaking even more quietly.

‘Traitor?’

Crimson light blossomed in Mephiston’s eyes, a thousand tiny haemorrhages. Calx considered his next answer with care. ‘Balkh?’ he said finally. ‘The lexmechanic?’

Mephiston looked at him in silence.

‘Yes, yes, of course, Balkh.’ Calx tapped the handle of his power axe on the ground in relief. ‘One of my most trusted lexmechanics. He was corrupted somehow. Fallax-maledictione-three-three-twelve. The Ruinous Powers. Damnatio.’ Calx glanced around, sensing that even now, daemons could be waiting to poison his mind. ‘Balkh’s soul was damned and he betrayed us, allowing these xenos thugs to breach our lines.’ He looked past the straining wall of corpuscarii and out at the carnage-filled valley below. ‘This is all his doing. He is… He was…’ Calx found it hard to say the words. ‘His mind was ruined by the Great Enemy. Chaos-taint is everywhere.’ He picked at his robes, as though removing insects. As though he could preserve his soul through cleanliness.

‘This is not the work of the Ruinous Powers,’ said Mephiston, surveying the battle.

Calx had to stifle an incredulous laugh. ‘Not the work of Chaos, my lord? Our minds are being warped and perverted. Even our most iron-bound logic has been debased. I would never have let those xenos creatures near this blessed dam, but Chaos disarmed our souls. It is amongst us. It is common sense, my lord. If you just look at my men, you–’

‘Common sense?’ Mephiston focused on Calx for a moment. There was a quiet fury in his voice. ‘Common sense is a collective unwillingness to think.’

Calx faltered, unsure what that meant, unsure how to reply.

‘Take me to their general,’ said Mephiston. ‘I need to learn the real cause of your defeat.’

‘Take you to him?’ Calx was still looking at the ranks of dying skitarii falling back beneath the onslaught of the orks. ‘Impossible. He’s hidden. In the heart of their army. In the belly of the beast.’

Hurt filled Calx’s voice as he waved his power axe towards the greenskins. ‘Chaos wiped the logic from my men’s minds. It turned them into animals. And now Balkh has given those xenos dogs every protocol and deployment code he could take. I tried everything I could to identify the cause of the corruption, but it’s useless. If I could rip out the root I would. If I could simply lay my hands on the xenos general of course I would cut him down. But we would have to defeat the entire horde to reach him.’

Mephiston looked through the lines of electricity that were shielding them from the orks. ‘Then defeat them.’

Calx laughed. ‘Chief Librarian, I would die before letting xenos claim this dam, but look.’ He waved again at the carnage. The valley was crowded with deranged, dying soldiers. With their weapon silos disabled, and their minds consumed by madness, the skitarii were being butchered. Columns of fire spat up from frozen trenches, spewing broken war machines, showering the landscape with ember and flame.

Mephiston looked through Calx. ‘Sometimes it is easier to die than adapt.’

Calx shook his head. ‘I have followed every protocol.’

Mephiston looked out through the flames again. ‘The greenskin general is in the rearguard?’

‘I suppose so, yes. That’s what my reports say. They took the secondary comms tower, up on Naxilus Ridge. It’s a small galvanic pulsometer. We only ever kept a small force there.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought an attack would come there. It seems an odd place to strike. But now it’s their base of operations.’

‘And you know the way to this pulsometer?’

‘Of course.’

Mephiston looked from the orks to the tormented priests powering the dam. They were shivering as they channelled their life force through its twisted pylons.

Calx sensed that the Blood Angel disapproved of him. ‘I have given everything to stop them,’ he said.

Mephiston raised an eyebrow. ‘Everything?’ He strode across the dam, drawing a combat knife from his belt as he neared the pylons. He vaulted easily up onto a gantry, his robes snapping in the electric charge. Lightning pulsed through his bones, lighting up his skull, but he showed no sign of pain as he approached one of the priests. Rather, he seemed to grow in stature.

The priest’s song faltered as Mephiston climbed towards him through the inferno.

Calx rushed across the dam, shielding his face as he neared the blazing wall of energy. ‘Wait,’ he cried through the din. ‘Chief Librarian! Do not disrupt the hymn.’

Mephiston gave no sign he had heard, hauling himself up onto another gantry. Without a word, he ripped one of the priest’s arms free from the iron mesh, shedding sparks and blood.

The priest’s song became a howl as Mephiston gripped the broken limb in one hand. Then, with electricity still rattling through his armour, Mephiston jammed his combat knife through the back of his own hand, pinning himself to the priest.

The wall of blue turned crimson, drenching the dam in charnel light. Along the top of the dam every one of the corpuscarii arched in pain, scarlet lancing from their stitched eye sockets.

Calx reeled away from the explosion that had consumed the pylons. ‘No!’ he cried, as the ironworks began to groan and shudder.

Mephiston was barely visible within the wall of red fire, but Calx could just about see him gripping the priest’s hand – he was at the heart of the inferno: a single, stark point of darkness. It looked to Calx as though the Blood Angel had latched his mouth on to the priest’s wrist, but Calx knew he must be mistaken. Why would a noble hero of the Imperium do something so savage?

‘Magos!’ cried one of the skitarii troopers.

Calx whirled around. The soldier was pointing at a network of cracks jerking across the top of the dam. The vibrations were not just coming from the lightning – the whole dam was shaking and shifting.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Calx, trying and failing to break through the inferno.

Even over the electromagnetic howl he could hear Mephiston chanting – indecipherable rhymes tumbled from his lips, forming a red aether that spiralled around his mouth. Blood lashed Mephiston to the priest, whose blue skin blazed with power as he howled in pain.

The dam juddered, filling the valley with a low, mournful groan.

Arcs of electricity fused togaether, forming a single bridge of light across the top of the dam. Then Mephiston dropped back down from the light and walked towards Calx, trailing smoke and sparks. As he walked, strands of electricity tore away from the pylons and attached themselves briefly to Mephiston’s back, flickering there for a moment, like wings.

The dam shuddered again and Calx’s legs had to dance furiously beneath him to stop him falling.

Mephiston muttered into a vox-bead at his collar and Calx heard a crackled response.

‘Chief Librarian,’ gasped Calx. ‘What have you done?’

His words were drowned out by a sound like falling mountains. The dam shifted again and the corpuscarii slumped lifelessly in their iron cages.

The wall of light vanished. A column of water blasted out from the centre of the dam, slamming into the ranks of battling warriors. It was hundreds of feet wide and laden with tonnes of masonry. It smashed through skitarii and ork alike, tearing armour and flesh, thundering through the trenches and shattering the gun emplacements.

Calx reeled in shock as the water carved through the valley, filling the air with blood and dust. He looked at Mephiston in horror. The Space Marine had ruptured the dam. He could not quite grasp the idea. It was so absurd that his mind could not latch on to it.

Mephiston did not even look at what he had done. His gaze fixed on the hulking aircraft that had brought him to the dam, now lifting up from the landing pad with a deafening thruster blast. Mephiston waved vaguely at the distant end of the valley, then, as the gunship banked off through the dust clouds, he strode towards the edge of the dam, dragging Calx with him.

The electro-priests hung lifelessly from their cages, their wall of energy gone. There was nothing to spare Calx from the dizzying truth. The jet of water was growing bigger and more furious. The battle had been transformed. Hundreds of corpses rushed out across the valley as it filled with water, and the front lines of both armies collapsed into a chaotic slurry. Thousands of greenskins were still trying to charge towards the dam, but they were either slipping in the gore or crushed by the blast. The scale of the destruction was staggering.

‘What are you?’ whispered Calx, his face just inches from Mephiston’s.

‘Death,’ replied Mephiston calmly. Then, still holding Calx, he leapt from the dam.

They fell dozens of feet before Mephiston summoned broad, flickering shadow wings and wrenched them into a rolling loop. They soared out over the battle as vapour trails tore past them. A storm of crimson-clad killers was falling from the sky. As the gunship boomed overhead it spewed a lethal rain: Blood Angels, borne by the howling jet turbines on their backs. There were other ships, barely visible overhead, and tiny figures were plunging from those too, guns already blazing as they ripped down through the clouds.

Calx’s heart pounded behind his metal ribcage. Even fear and grief could not suppress his awe. The Emperor’s death angels, come to wreak bloody vengeance. ‘Omnissiah preserve us,’ he whispered.

Mephiston turned his loop into a dive and Calx lost all sense of direction. They hurtled through spume and blood towards the heaving mass of warriors below.

He howled as the ground rushed towards him, but seconds before they hit, Mephiston righted himself and landed with such ease that Calx barely felt the impact. He staggered nonetheless, disorientated from the flight, scrambling like a spider.

Mephiston kept Calx upright as he turned to face the orks. The xenos howled as they pounded towards them. They were grotesque, like oversized apes, so top heavy with scarred muscle that they should barely have been able to walk, but still they thundered across the rocks with incredible speed. Their heads were hung low between absurdly broad shoulders and their faces mostly hidden behind crudely hammered iron – all he could see was their massive, tusk-filled jaws and burning, ember-like eyes.

One of Calx’s limbs was an ancient thermal weapon – a volkite blaster so heavy that it required three of his other arms to lift it. He hefted the antique gun and trained it on the approaching orks.

Before Calx could fire, Mephiston strode towards the orks, blocking his shot. The Blood Angel drew his sword and levelled it at the greenskins, raising his other hand to the sky in a grasping gesture.

The orks shook and staggered, gripped by palsy. Mephiston wrenched back his hand and blood erupted from their mouths. Their bodies jolted and innards burst from their skin. They toppled in a heap.

A bucket-shaped war machine roared into view, bristling with bastardised firearms. Mephiston raised his hand again but, before he could strike, Calx loosed off a shot. The war machine became a wall of flame, taking down a row of orks as it detonated.

Mephiston spoke into his vox and waved his sword at the Blood Angels screaming overhead. Everywhere Calx looked they were slamming down onto the churned earth, unleashing a fierce barrage of bolter fire, toppling wave after wave of the green-skinned monsters.

Calx fired again and raced through the chaos, dodging shots and flames as he scrabbled across the trenches.

Mephiston was just ahead of him and as the Blood Angel advanced through the battle, Calx’s awe grew. The Chief Librarian had not even drawn his pistol. Each time a group of orks lumbered through the fumes, Mephiston simply grasped at the air and ripped blood from their bodies, before striding over their broken husks.

Everywhere Calx looked he saw islands of floating corpses – Guardsmen, skitarii and xenos, pulverised by the force of the water. The dam was crashing forwards, engulfed in flames.

He had the courage to do what I could not, thought Calx. Beyond the valley, the continent was littered with Mechanicus research stations, all under attack. The greenskins would have destroyed them all, but now Mephiston would halt the enemy advance. Calx had been facing a slow, ignominious defeat, but Mephiston had found a route to victory.

Calx painted the air with his volkite blaster, igniting more greenskins as he scrambled on through the carnage. The orks fell back before him, and Calx cried out a staccato stream of binharic, cursing the xenos in the name of the Machine-God.

The battle fumes banked away to reveal a ruined gun emplacement up ahead. Mephiston had climbed up onto the trashed rockcrete to survey the hell he had created.

Calx hurried towards him, wracking his brain for everything he knew about the Blood Angels Chief Librarian. Somewhere in his meticulously organised cerebral cortex, Calx found an image that matched the scene up ahead – his enhanced brain retrieved a centuries-old pict feed. It showed Mephiston, surrounded by slaughter on an unimaginable scale, in a world rent by war and psychic flames. ‘Armageddon,’ breathed Calx, pausing to incinerate another greenskin, staggering under the force of the blast as he immolated the snarling monster. ‘He was born there.’

Calx reached the pile of rubble and clambered up towards Mephiston. As he crested the broken wall and saw the corpse-crowded valley spread out before him, he realised that Mephiston had recreated the place of his birth – Hydrus Ulterior now looked as horrific as Armageddon.

‘You came to save us,’ whispered Calx, glancing at Mephiston with a mixture of dread and astonishment.

Mephiston ignored him, scouring the bloodbath. Blood Angels were slicing through the drowning armies, trailing promethium fumes as their jump packs hurled them forwards. Orks and vehicles disintegrated before their white-hot barrage of bolter fire. Anything not flattened by Mephiston’s destruction of the dam was now being torn down by his assault squads.

‘When did it begin?’ Mephiston spoke softly, despite the din of the battle.

‘My lord?’

‘The poison in the minds of your men – when did it begin? When did they start to unravel?’

Calx was relieved to understand. ‘Twelve days, three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. The first reported case was a datasmith. I heard about–’

Calx faltered as a shadow dropped through the clouds and hurtled towards them. It was one of the crudely built ork vehicles – a single jet turbine with crooked wings and a ridiculous mass of guns welded to its fuselage.

The aircraft dived straight for them, spewing oil, armour plates and fumes. The pilot had turned a crash into an attack, singling Mephiston out as a final target. Calx’s enhanced optics zoomed in on the ork at the controls. His brutish features were locked in a manic leer as he wrestled with his juddering vehicle.

There was no time to shoot and Calx muttered a prayer.

Seconds from impact, the aircraft froze. The pilot’s grin became a rigid, blood-spattered mask.

The entire battle halted. Blood Angels hung in the air, bolter rounds hovering inches from the muzzles of their weapons. Skitarii troops reached in motionless agony towards the rocket-slashed skies. Even the torrent from the broken dam had paused, a silvery mountain of liquid, thousands of tonnes of water, just hanging there.

Mephiston stood calmly before this strange tableau. He had taken a crystal vial from his robes and poured a single drop of crimson liquid. The droplet remained suspended before his face, shimmering like a ruby.

‘You must be wrong,’ he said, his voice ringing out through the strange silence.

‘Wrong, my lord?’

‘The mind-sickness must have started before then.’ There was a quiet urgency to Mephiston’s words. ‘Think again.’

‘My lord, my cerebral circuits were hand-woven on Mars, in rituals prescribed by the Fabricator General himself. My powers of recall were blessed and re-blessed in the Temple of All-Knowledge until–’

Mephiston loomed over him. ‘The blindness began over a year ago. I had barely left the Ameritus Sector when I felt it.’

‘Blindness? We have not been blinded, my lord. The corruption is spiritual, not physical. De spiritualibus-daemonium…’ His ocular implants coiled back into his hood and he waved at the corpses of his men. ‘It’s more disgusting than blindness. It is a degradation. They turned us into beasts.’

Mephiston shook his head. ‘This has to be the place. This has to be the cause of my blindness. Every one of my auguries pointed here.’ He was no longer looking at Calx, but at the comms tower that barred the entrance to the valley. ‘Even a mind forged on Mars can be mistaken.’

Calx was outraged. ‘My lord, there is no one more devoted–’

‘Ignorance is the mother of devotion.’ Mephiston fixed Calx with a cold stare. Then he turned away, drew a knife from within his robes and inscribed a shape into the ruined wall of the bunker. He flicked the blade with a casual, seemingly thoughtless gesture, but when he stepped back Calx saw that the design he had worked into the stone was intricately wrought. It was a fragment of a celestial map. Mephiston placed a drop of blood onto the design and the delicate spheres and arcs began turning, gliding across the crumbling rockcrete. Even in such a strange form, Calx could recognise the continental shapes of the largest planet.

‘Hydrus Ulterior,’ he muttered.

Mephiston stared at the image, peering intently at each annotated line. ‘Everything points to here.’

He waved the image away and turned back to the droplet he had left hanging in the air. He touched it with his fingertip, breaking the stasis. It splashed down onto the rubble.

Hell enveloped them. Sound, movement and violence crashed through the valley and time lurched forwards.

Calx flinched as the ork jet screamed towards them, but Mephiston dismissed it with a casual wave of his hand. The aircraft crashed down a hundred feet away and the resultant fireball bathed the ruins in light, adding another column of fire to the chaos.

Mephiston hauled Calx on through a shattered archway, striding down a trench that led to the end of the valley.

An ork rose from the filth, lunging at Calx with a guttural roar. It barrelled forwards, clutching a massive chainaxe. The weapon’s teeth whirred and rattled as the ork brought it down at Calx’s face.

Mephiston strode on, not noticing the attack, but Calx managed to raise one of his heavily plated servo-arms in time to take the impact. The ork leant its full weight against him, the chainaxe ripping through Calx’s arm, spitting brass and phenolic cabling.

The ork’s face was just inches from Calx’s. The monster’s foetid breath washed over him as its enormous jaws widened in a teeth-filled roar.

Calx reached to his belt and turned a dial. A blinding charge rushed through his servo-arm and the ork stiffened, its roar turning into a gargle. The chainaxe jammed and the ork’s eyes rolled beneath its heavy brow.

Calx shoved his sparking limb harder against the spasming monster, surrounding them both in smoke and spitting fat. Then, with another click of the dial, he allowed the dead ork to fall away, dropping it back into the water with an explosion of steam.

Mephiston was now a distant figure, but Calx was determined to catch up. The greenskins were about to receive the Emperor’s judgement and he wanted to be on hand to see them pay for what they had done. With the water rising above his thighs, Calx wrenched open a hatch in his neck and shoved a cartridge into a socket beneath his jugular.

There was a whine of servos as the program took effect. The forest of legs beneath Calx jerked and clicked into motion, unfolding a new set of struts that jolted Calx several feet higher into the air. As he continued down the trench, Calx looked even more like an arachnid, swaying on his umbrella of spindly limbs.

Raised above the water, Calx was able to pick up speed and race after Mephiston, rejoining him at the end of the trench where the Blood Angel had climbed up onto a landing platform – a circular disc of rockcrete carried on the shoulders of a crumbling, stone lion. Mephiston was in the process of driving back two ork dreadnoughts, slicing through their can-shaped armatures with a flurry of sword strikes. It was a one-sided fight and the xenos were lying in a heap of smouldering engine parts by the time Calx reached the Chief Librarian.

Mephiston was about to speak when more Blood Angels slammed down onto the platform, sending tremors through the stone lion as it took the weight of their power armour.

Most of the Blood Angels took up defensive positions around the platform, training bolters on the surrounding massacre, but the senior officer strode up to Mephiston. He removed his helmet and pounded his chest armour in salute. His appearance was more how Calx had imagined Blood Angels: shoulder-length, flaxen hair framing refined, imperious features. He looked like one of the exalted saints that crowned the frescoes of Hydrus Ulterior’s cathedrals. However, when he reached them and saw the blood oozing from Calx’s wounds, the Blood Angel’s expression changed. His nostrils flared and the muscles along his jaw tightened, as though Calx had angered him. Almost immediately, the ancient warrior regained his look of cool disdain, but Calx took a few steps back. The Adeptus Astartes were a stranger breed than he had expected.

‘The valley is clear, Chief Librarian,’ said the Blood Angel, casually announcing a victory that had eluded Calx for weeks. ‘Lieutenant Servatus has led his Hellblaster squads around to the east, checking the perimeter. They are encountering only minimal resistance. You have…’ The Blood Angel hesitated, glancing back at the dam. ‘You left us little in the way of opposition, my lord.’

Mephiston nodded vaguely and then gestured towards a slender shape at the far end of the valley. ‘How many at the comms tower?’

‘Something is confusing our auspex, lord, but Servatus estimates only two hundred at most. They are heavily armed and Servatus saw a dozen war machines but…’ He shrugged. ‘A hundred or so greenskins against twenty of us. It will be a quick fight.’

Mephiston nodded. ‘They have a weapon of some kind – the cause of this mind-sickness. They’re using the comms tower to amplify it. Leave that to me.’

The Blood Angel nodded, then filled the air with heat and noise as his jump pack hurled him back into the sky.

Calx expected Mephiston to race after his men, but he remained where he was, watching from the landing pad as the squads of Blood Angels screamed past, spewing bolter fire as they reached the tower at the end of the valley.

Greenskins boiled up from the surrounding trenches.

‘That’s more than a hundred,’ said Calx, as the valley shook with the sound of xenos war cries.

Mephiston was not watching the battle. His head was tilted back and a red film had clouded his eyes. They looked like fresh wounds, gouged into his bone-white face.

‘Chief Librarian,’ crackled the vox in Mephiston’s gorget. ‘You should see this. I think we have found the weapon you mentioned.’

Mephiston’s eyes cleared. ‘Hold your positions,’ he replied. ‘You know the layout of the comms tower,’ he said, turning to Calx.

Calx nodded. ‘It’s a galvanic pulsometer. One of the earliest–’

Mephiston grabbed him by the shoulder and whispered a string of words into his face. The chill deepened. There was something sepulchral about the language but Calx’s pulse raced in response, as though the Chief Librarian had triggered an injection of combat stimms.

As they raced on towards the tower, Calx’s limbs trilled with energy and he found he could run at an incredible pace. In a matter of minutes they had reached the trenches surrounding the tower.

Half of the Blood Angels were still outside the pulsometer, stalled by scrums of muscle-bound orks pouring across the trenches. The Blood Angels fought with a savagery surpassing even the brutality of the xenos, hacking at the orks with chainswords and combat knives in a frenzy of bloodlust. The orks were revelling in the ferocity of the fight, chanting a savage mantra, bellowing and snorting in unison. Their cries were so loud they matched the fury of the gunfire.

Mephiston hacked through the chanting orks, charging for a shattered entrance at the base of the tower with Calx rushing after him, still firing. The doors were clinging weakly to their hinges and Mephiston smashed straight through, shielding Calx from the impact as they landed on the other side, scattering masonry into a vaulted antechamber.

Blood Angels had entered through another doorway and there was a brutal firefight taking place. The scorched remains of Adeptus Mechanicus robots were piled across the passageway. They were kastelans, venerable, armour-plated automata that would have towered over even the Space Marines if they had still been standing, but now they were just a makeshift barricade – hulking, blasted shells, piled with the corpses of skitarii troops.

There was a whole squad of Blood Angels trapped on the near side of the barricade, pinned down beside the chipped remains of the robots. Calx scrambled for cover, diving behind the pedestal of a toppled pillar. Bolter rounds hit all around him, filling the air with dust and spinning shards of stone. The proportions of these Space Marines were even more impressive than the Blood Angels outside.

‘Tacticus armour,’ breathed Calx, awed to be witnessing the creation of his great tutor, Archmagos Cawl. The Blood Angels had painted their battleplate red and adorned it with all the fetishes and battle trophies of their ancient brotherhood, but there was no disguising the work of his masters on Mars. These were Primaris Space Marines, the pinnacle of Adeptus Astartes power. They were goliaths, and their weapons were lethal works of art.

Only a few of the Blood Angels were returning fire. The grand narthex beyond the barricade swarmed with orks, all howling and firing their crudely made weapons, but the Blood Angels struggled to shoot back. Those that were firing were shooting wildly, blasting chunks from the ribbed stone overhead or ripping up the flagstones beneath their boots. Some of the Blood Angels staggered as they fired and others clutched their helmets. The chanting of the orks was deafening. The din was so great that the building seemed to judder in time with their cries.

The orks were changing reality with their chant. The architecture pulsed in time to their war song, becoming a great, slavering maw.

Mephiston stood calmly at the heart of the crossfire, surveying his reeling men with cool detachment. He summoned the magos to his side with a wave of his hand.

Calx did not move. The air was full of bolter rounds and incendiary blasts, but it was not the battle that gave him pause. Each time he moved, the orks’ chant threatened to overwhelm his senses.

Mephiston waved again and Calx’s legs clicked into involuntary motion, scuttling over the toppled pillar towards the Chief Librarian.

Calx clutched his head. This was the thing he had been dreading for so long – the soul-sickness that had taken his men. The pulsometer was the source of the corruption. The cool, ordered reason of Calx’s brain sank beneath a hail of brutal visions. They were all just hunks of torn meat, he realised, tumbling inside a pair of enormous jaws. Their flesh was worthless, a pointless encumbrance; he may as well burn everything down in a blaze of violence.

He laughed as reckless, destructive urges gripped him. The sanctity of this place seemed suddenly absurd. The galaxy was burning, so why not fan the flames?

Mephiston strode through gunfire and staggering Blood Angels, immune to the violence. Not a single shot landed on or even near him. But this only added to Calx’s hysteria. He raised his pistol and aimed at a column supporting the central arch of the narthex. The chanting of the orks swelled in his mind and everything became liquid and distorted, spiralling around the fighting.

The air shimmered with radiation as Calx’s shot tore through the middle of the column, adding more dust and debris to the mayhem. Calx laughed as the explosion threw the whole scene into a whirl of colours and shapes. He was destroying reality itself. All around him, he saw the Blood Angels joining in, tearing at the building in a glorious, riotous frenzy.

The column slumped backwards, tearing the vaulted ceiling, revealing the frigid skies beyond.

The orks chanted louder, raising their weapons in triumph, swarming over the corpses, thundering towards Mephiston.

Mephiston mouthed an invocation and reached up into the air, his fingers splayed. The column froze mid-fall, hanging over them at a peculiar, drunken angle. With his other hand Mephiston trained his pistol on the orks and fired, his hand kicking back with each blast as orks flew from the barricade, their armour torn open by the super-heated plasma.

Calx’s laughter died on his lips as a fierce, cold determination flooded his mind.

‘Mephiston,’ he gasped, as the Librarian’s sentience enveloped his own.

As the Chief Librarian took hold of him, Calx saw that the building was not warping and flowing, but simply crumbling under the weight of gunfire. Neither were the Blood Angels tearing it down – they were actually tearing at their own armour, clawing at their gloriously engraved battleplate. Several had fallen to the floor, twitching and thrashing in the rubble, just as he had seen so many of his own men do. The madness plaguing Hydrus Ulterior even had mastery over the Emperor’s finest. The Adeptus Astartes were not immune.

The wall of fallen robots detonated, hurling orks and machine parts across the antechamber. Even Mephiston was kicked backwards by the blast and Calx cried out as they both tumbled over the rubble towards the doors.

When the dust cleared Calx laughed drunkenly. A towering figure emerged through the banking clouds – a rusting, bipedal goliath, bolted togaether from crudely hammered plates of armour. Welded into its centre was a crippled ork. Spider legs of warp fire splayed out from its malformed head, kicking and lashing, juddering over the corpses and rubble. It carried a copper staff daubed with colourful paint and it was draped in skulls and animal hides.

The creature was in paroxysms, drooling and thrashing as warp flame poured through its limbs. Its spine twisted and arched in pain, but its jaws were open in a leering howl. Its febrile body hung from a lopsided, oversized head and its wiry arms were covered with a gaudy collection of fetishes. It looked like a performer in a deranged carnival, summoning madness from the air for the amusement of its audience.

The machine booted its way through the barricade and even the orks scattered, their war cries faltering as they leapt clear. They stared at the twitching figure trapped in its chest, and for the first time Calx saw fear in their tiny, bestial eyes.

The war machine was nearly thirty feet tall and as it stooped over Mephiston it threw him into shadow. The ork shaman jolted forwards in its cage, and with a rattling belch it vomited a column of writhing green light at Mephiston.

Mephiston staggered backwards, lowering his hand and losing his psychic hold on the ruptured column. It crashed down, ripping the ceiling away as it went.

Masonry rained down around Calx. He jammed another cartridge into his jaw and, as the blocks slammed down, a sphere of dented plates clicked into place, cocooning him in plasteel. The landslide ceased and Calx emerged from his shell, drawing his gun and scouring the carnage.

Mephiston was on one knee at the centre of the antechamber, reading from a small, leather-bound book. None of the debris had landed near him. His incantation had left him in an odd, bowl-shaped depression at the heart of the wreckage. He held the book with one hand and with the other he pointed his sword at the strange shape hunched before him. The iron giant was on its knees, like an enormous, chastised hound. It juddered with the effort of trying to stand and the harder it tried to rise, the more violent its tremors became, shedding rivets and sparks as Mephiston’s words droned out through the chamber.

The ork shaman in the machine pointed its copper staff at Mephiston and clutched its misshapen skull with its other hand. Its head flashed with blinding, green light and the ork howled, wrenching green fire from the heads of nearby xenos.

As the psychic flames engulfed the shaman’s head, the other orks became even more alarmed. Their war cries turned to panicked howls and they tried to climb back over the rubble, clutching their own heads as they reeled from the fight.

The Blood Angels gunned their jump packs into life, screaming across the fume-filled chamber and unleashing a deafening salvo at the routed orks. It was brutal. As they ripped through the orks, chainswords growling, some of the Blood Angels fought with hands and teeth, discarding weapons as they savaged their prey. The comms tower collapsed around them, slamming enormous pieces of architecture down into the fray.

There was now a tornado of warp fire around the ork shaman’s staff, wrenching the walls apart and forming a column of whirling, aetheric fury. The ork shrugged off Mephiston’s psychic commands and stood, laughing through its pain. Emerald light knifed from its jaws as it raised a fist to summon more energy. It jabbed its copper staff at Mephiston and hurled a dazzling blast.

Calx flinched but Mephiston remained kneeling with his head bowed, as though in prayer, as he caught the torrent on his force sword. The ork howled louder and the column of warp fire grew in fury, forming a blinding sphere as it collided with Mephiston’s sword. The glare was so bright that Calx could see nothing but the rippling silhouette of Mephiston as he rose to his feet, dropped his book and grabbed his force sword in both hands, hammering the blade into the ground.

The light vanished and an ominous quiet washed through the building.

Mephiston dashed across the rubble, leapt high into the air and jammed his sword through the shaman’s mouth. The sword released the charge it had harnessed and the ork’s head imploded with a muffled crump. A dazzling fan of beams smashed through the heads of the nearby orks, creating a drum roll of explosions. Skull after skull spattered brains across the walls and floor.

The war machine toppled backwards with Mephiston still attached, fumes trailing from the shaman’s corpse. It crashed on to its back and the rest of the Blood Angels powered forwards, ploughing into the remaining orks with a flurry of chainsword strikes. Those orks that still had heads were dazed, scrambling for cover, and the Blood Angels slaughtered them with ease. The fight was over in a few minutes.

Calx stood up, stunned. Most of the comms tower had collapsed, leaving a ring of broken rockcrete heaped with xenos dead. A shaft of light broke through the gloom and flashed in his optics, blinding him for a moment.

‘Saved,’ he whispered, allowing the winter sun to fill his thoughts. The Omnissiah had answered. The Machine-God had brought these death angels to Hydrus Ulterior and cleansed it of filth.

The sound of fighting rang out again and Calx whirled around, raising his pistol. He was sunblind for a second, but when his vision cleared he saw that the noise had not come from an enemy, or at least none that he could understand. It came from some of the Space Marines who were wrestling with one of their own battle-brothers. He thought for a moment they were attacking him, but then he saw the truth. The Blood Angel was unable to rid himself of battle frenzy. The orks were all dead, but he was howling and clawing at their corpses, raging as he hacked and bit into their scorched remains. It was shameful. Unbecoming of an Imperial warrior. Calx looked away.

The gap in the clouds closed and, plunged back into gloom, Calx’s euphoria began to fade. There was something hideous about the sound of the Blood Angel barking and snarling. He could hear anger and shame in the voices of the other Space Marines as they tried to wrestle him away from the cadavers.

Calx’s discomfort only grew as his gaze fell on Mephiston. The Chief Librarian was silent but he had grasped the burnt corpse of the ork shaman and he trembled with anger, crushing the skull between his hands.

Calx was unsure how to act. Between Mephiston’s quiet fury and the ranting of the deranged Blood Angel, he felt he was intruding on some private moment. He backed away to the edge of the ruins and turned to look out across the fast-growing lake.

Through the battle fumes he could make out the rest of the xenos army gathering on the horizon. The dam was only one of their targets. As his optics whirred and clicked, Calx saw titanic war machines stomping over distant outposts. It did not matter. The Blood Angels had achieved this first victory with incredible speed. He mouthed another prayer to the Omnissiah. The Machine-God maintained balance and order in all things.

Mephiston still crouched over his kill, but Calx summoned the courage to interrupt him.

‘Chief Librarian,’ he said, ‘I have troops in reserve, beyond the dam.’ He climbed over the corpses, back to Mephiston. ‘If you give me time, I can rally them. It would be an honour to join you when you make your next attack.’

Calx backed away as Mephiston turned to face him. His porcelain skin had shattered. It was crisscrossed by hundreds of hairline cracks and each one leaked dark fire. Mephiston was bathed in a dark nimbus – a swirling, fume-like halo that boiled across his armour. There was terrible violence burning in the Chief Librarian’s eyes.

‘I am still blind,’ said Mephiston, his calm tones in sharp contrast to the anger contorting his face. He was not looking at Calx, but at one of the other Space Marines. It was another Librarian, dressed in the blue of that discipline, and he was the first Space Marine Calx had ever seen to look old. His skin had the smooth, hardened texture of polished bark and the silver bristles of his beard were like short iron blades.

The Librarian had been helping subdue the ranting Blood Angel, but at Mephiston’s words he loosed his grip and came to study the fallen war machine. ‘But the madness. It came from here. I felt you end it.’

Mephiston stared up at the leaden sky and whispered a venomous curse.

The ground shuddered beneath him. There was a loud cracking sound as the flagstones began to tear. Calx stumbled as the ground opened up next to him.

‘My lord!’ cried the veteran Librarian, grabbing Mephiston’s arm. ‘Do not do this. Not here. Do not let the others see. There is still time. We will study the auguries again.’

To Calx’s relief, Mephiston seemed to hear his battle-brother. He gripped him by the shoulder and nodded, closing his eyes. ‘The rift, Rhacelus. We have so little time.’

‘We can be gone within the hour. The Blood Oath is still at low anchor. Antros is waiting.’

Despite his fear, Calx found himself speaking up. ‘Gone?’

The two Blood Angels turned to face him and he felt insect-like beneath their gaze. They looked as though they could barely conceive of so lowly a being.

Calx waved at the distant armies on the horizon. ‘I would not presume to…’ His voice faltered as they continued glaring down at him. He tried to quash the dreadful realisation forming in his mind. ‘I mean… Would it not be better to continue your offensive immediately? The other greenskins will soon learn what happened here.’

Mephiston shook his head. His appearance was now as it had been when Calx first saw him. The strange, ebon fire had gone, but there was still a terrible intensity to his stare.

‘There is no offensive.’ Mephiston looked out across the lake of corpses he had created. Burning oil had turned the valley into a funeral pyre. Blackened husks floated through the inferno and the smoke played games with distance and size, making it hard to distinguish ruined vehicles from scorched cadavers. Along with the orks, Mephiston had killed countless hundreds of humans.

As he surveyed the destruction he had wrought, Calx saw a new emotion cross Mephiston’s face – confusion, perhaps, or maybe recognition, Calx could not tell. It vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by an expressionless mask. ‘This is not my fight,’ said Mephiston. ‘My duties require me to be elsewhere.’

Cold horror settled over Calx. ‘Elsewhere? Then why did you come here?’

‘I thought this world was the source of my blindness.’ He muttered something Calx could not quite hear.

‘Blindness?’ Calx tried to stand. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Of course not,’ said Mephiston. Then he noticed something on one of the dead Guardsmen and stooped to examine the corpse.

The other Librarian approached and helped Calx to his feet. His expression was just as imperious as Mephiston’s but when he spoke there was, if not sympathy, at least a hint that he understood Calx’s desperation.

‘We have other matters to pursue, magos. The Great Rift grows wider by the day. The final battle is upon us. Lord Mephiston has a great task ahead of him. But we will alert the rest of the fleet to your situation. There may be others in the sector who can aid you.’

Calx stared at the ruined dam. ‘Why did you do this, if not to save us?’

‘Save you?’ Mephiston stood and looked at Calx. He was holding something he had snapped from the Guardsman’s neck – a small, oval locket. It glinted in the dull light as he secreted it in his robes. ‘That is exactly what I intend to do, Magos Calx.’

Mephiston nodded at the other Librarian. ‘Summon the ships. There is nothing more for us here.’

Calx fell back against the ruined walls and stared into the distance. Even from here, he could see the orks massing, preparing to attack in force.

He started to pray.

CHAPTER TWO

As always, it was the curse that called him home. Hunger pulsed through his veins, reminding him that he had veins, and his hearts lurched, reminding him to move. The bloodline, bane and blessing, hauled him back to life.

He rose from the abyss, a broken shadow trailing shards of memory. He saw Dante, lord, general, Chapter Master – pure and noble as his Sanguinius mask, unbowed despite everything he had faced. He saw home: blessed, indomitable Baal, burned and defiled by xenos too strange to comprehend their own barbarism. Above it all, he saw the face of the Great Enemy, coursing through the stars, an untrammelled fire, devouring, brazen, emboldened – revelling in the wound it had burned through the galaxy.

Faces and memories spiralled around him, illuminating and bewildering. The history of the universe became a moment trapped in his mind and he saw everything.

Everything, that is, but his own name.

Again, he caught the scent of blood. His pulse leapt in response and his jaws ached with the need to clamp and tear. The ancient hunger. So ugly and debased. It was bestial and shameful but it drew him back to a fixed moment of temporality.

Sorcery folded itself into physics and the materium welcomed him back.

As time and space fell back into step, he realised how close he had come to losing himself. His omniscience had become a kind of dazzling blindness. Without focus, everything had become nothing. No knowledge. No truth. Not even lies. Just a void. Old Night had divested him of flesh. It had turned him into a ghost and thrown his path into shadow. He had to locate the present and bind himself back into the materium. He tried again to recall his name but it slipped on ahead somewhere, always just out of reach.

The ghost saw a familiar shape marching through the whirl of thoughts. It looked like another warp shadow, another echo of the empyrean, but he sensed it was more than that.

He focused harder, honing in. It was a Blood Angel, clad in the blue of the Librarius, his skin leathery and taut, marking him out as antique, even amongst the Adeptus Astartes. The face triggered more faces – a whole slew of noble warriors. The lone Space Marine became a window onto a legion of similar heroes, like a grand parade gathering before a shattered mirror.

The actual threatened to slip into abstraction again. The ghost stared harder with his mind’s eye, determined to anchor himself in fact. He had to find the root of his rootlessness – the cause of his blindness. He forced the kaleidoscope of heroes to coalesce back into a single Blood Angel.

‘Rhacelus,’ he whispered, pleased to recall the warrior’s name. It was his equerry, the Epistolary, Gaius Rhacelus. At the sight of his brother Librarian, a fierce urgency gripped him.

The ghost clawed slowly back towards the truth. The glamours of the warp released their hold and he began to make out details around Rhacelus. The Librarian was onboard a ship and the ship was under attack. The ghost grasped at these hard, objective truths like a drowning man clawing at the air.

Rhacelus stumbled against an oil-slick bulkhead, thrown by a violent tremor. His battleplate clanged against the pipes and sparks scattered through the gloom. Hooded blood thralls tumbled around him, thudding hard against the floor, muttering oaths as oil splashed across their crimson robes.

Rhacelus righted himself and strode on with the blood thralls scrambling after him. They looked like children beside his armoured, transhuman bulk.

The ghost tried to call out to Rhacelus, but no sound emerged, only colours and light.

‘My lord,’ said one of the blood thralls to Rhacelus, wheezing as he struggled to breathe the fume-laden air. The man looked dazed. Blood thralls were made of sterner stuff than most humans, but these men were as broken as the ship. ‘Shall we…’ The thrall glanced warily at the smoke-filled shadows. ‘Should we return to the Strategium?’

Rhacelus did not break his stride, his ceramite boots hammering out a tattoo as he walked. Servitors rattled clear as he strode by, narrowly avoiding destruction, watching blank-eyed from the shadows.

More tremors hit, each more violent than the last, toppling the blood thralls and scattering debris. Even Rhacelus dropped briefly to one knee, before grabbing a girder and hauling himself up again.

Rhacelus paused to wipe oil from his armour, then marched on. One of the blood thralls hurried after him, tapping furiously at a blinking auspex. ‘That last one came from below. In the hold. Inside the ship.’

Rhacelus halted and looked around, revealing his face more clearly. Flickering suspensor lumens dragged the Librarian in and out of the darkness. He was brutally magnificent. His oversized features were angular and chiselled, as though sculpted by a deranged visionary. His eyes burned deep, otherworldly blue as he took the auspex from the blood thrall and examined its columns of shimmering glyphs.

The serf hesitated beneath the glare of the veteran Blood Angel. ‘My lord, there’s something beneath the starboard cargo bays.’

The ghost could taste panic in the man’s mind. He latched on to it, seizing another anchor in reality.

‘Maybe it’s not just the xenos,’ said the blood thrall. ‘Could something have followed us from the empyrean? Warp creatures? Perhaps that’s why the void shields are failing?’

Rhacelus handed the device back and gripped his sword. The ghost recognised it instantly. Lucensis. An immensely beautiful weapon. Few beyond the Chapter could understand the potency of such elegance and symmetry. Beauty is no indulgence, thought the ghost, beginning to recall his philosophy. Beauty shows us how to live. How to be balanced and strong. How to be true.

As the ghost studied the deadly relic, he recalled the divine armouries of the Arx Angelicum, and then the rest of the fortress monastery on Baal. A torrent of graceful, powerfully wrought designs flooded his mind. It was so beguiling he almost lost himself again so he stared back at Lucensis. Rubies were pulsing along the rune-inscribed pommel, ignited by something. He saw blood dripping from the Librarian’s palm – a self-inflicted wound. The scent of the blood rushed through his thoughts, reigniting the vile hunger, giving him another foothold in reality.

The blood thrall took a few steps backwards, eyeing Rhacelus’ antique weapon.

‘Find First Officer Castulo,’ said Rhacelus. ‘Tell him I will join him on the command bridge shortly. He must hold this course. The master of armament must do what he can to keep the Blood Oath intact. I will resolve the problem beneath the cargo bays.’

The blood thrall attempted to nod his head and shake it at the same time. He glanced anxiously at the other thralls and then back at the Space Marine. ‘Hold this course, my lord?’ He looked at the oil-spewing pipes and the smoke rolling down the passageway. ‘Towards the xenos? But the ship is coming apart. And there is no sign of the rest of the fleet. My lord, we are only a single frigate. I–’

Rhacelus raised an eyebrow.

The serf paled and performed a low bow. ‘My lord.’ He waved at his equally confused-looking subordinates. ‘The bridge.’

Rhacelus held up a warning hand, his eyebrow still raised in disapproval. He looked down at the man’s robes. They were crumpled and dirty from where he had fallen. The blood thrall blushed with shame and furiously dusted himself down. Then, after bowing a second time, he led his men away.

Rhacelus waited until they were out of sight, then turned and peered back down the passageway.

‘Are you there?’ Rhacelus whispered, staring into the gloom.

Nameless as he was, the ghost knew Rhacelus was talking to him. He cried out, trying to wrench himself from the shadows, trying to reply, but it was impossible. He was mute. Lost in the darkness.

Another tremor rocked the vaulted ceiling, hurling ribs of ancient ferrocrete across the deck. Rhacelus shook his head, then marched off in a new direction. He reached a hatch, wrenched it open and plunged deeper, clattering down a series of narrow companionways, heading for the lowest bilge levels of the ship.

The ghost followed, coiled in Rhacelus’ shadow, still trying to recall his own name.

As they descended, one physical, one incorporeal, the barking of the klaxons was drowned out by a louder noise – the deep, womb-like pulse of plasma engines, throbbing rhythmically through the ancient bulkheads. It was an oddly bestial sound but, beyond it, the ghost heard something even stranger – voices, wailing and howling.

The voices ignited a forgotten pain in the ghost. His instinct was to recoil, but the pain was so familiar, so real, that he latched on to it instead, grasping another handhold in the now.

Rhacelus paused, glancing around at the shadows, as though he had heard the sounds too, but then he advanced with the same, carefully measured pace as before, striding through a bewildering network of passageways, following some unseen beacon.

At the end of a passageway Rhacelus reached a gilded door with an intricately engraved surface but no handle. The screams grew louder. The maddening scent of blood grew stronger.

Rhacelus had a small, crystal flask mag-locked to his munitions belt. He took it out, unscrewed the lid and allowed a single drop of dark liquid to fall onto his fingertip, then he dragged his finger against the rusty metal, drawing an I and an X.

The door rattled aside but Rhacelus paused at the threshold, peering through the shifting darkness. Something was moving up ahead.

The ghost slipped past him but even with half its soul still in the warp, it could not fix the shapes into anything recognisable – they were shadows thrown by shadows, darkness bleeding darkness.

Rhacelus raised his power sword, recited an incantation and spilled silver light across the floor. The shapes billowed and rolled away from him, as though he had disturbed a nest of insects.

As the ghost rushed past he heard the voices more clearly. It was a chorus of screams, muffled and distant, like the victims of a catastrophe heard on the breeze from afar. Carefully, he reached out with his mind but could find no trace of daemons. This was reality. Whoever these voices belonged to, they had not followed him from the warp.

Rhacelus approached another door and a figure stepped forwards to greet him. It was another colossus in power armour and this one was even taller and broader than Rhacelus, looming over the massive Librarian by a full head. It was a Primaris Marine, clad in hulking Mk X Tacticus armour painted in the crimson of the Blood Angels Third Company.

‘Brother-Lieutenant Servatus,’ said Rhacelus, banging his fist against his chest armour.

‘Epistolary Rhacelus,’ replied the Blood Angel, mirroring the salute.

‘Has the Chief Librarian emerged since I last came?’

‘No, my lord.’ Servatus was on the verge of saying more, but he stopped himself and continued staring into the middle distance.

‘Speak up, brother-lieutenant.’

‘I heard sounds, my lord. Howls. As though the Chief Librarian were in pain.’

‘The galaxy is torn, lieutenant. And so is he.’

Servatus nodded.

‘Is the servitor in there?’

‘The Oraculist? Yes, my lord. At least I presume so. I saw it enter when we first emerged from warp space and I have not seen it leave.’

Rhacelus nodded, then waved at the door.

Servatus turned and tapped at a rune slate. Symbols flickered briefly across the door’s burnished metal, then vanished as dozens of bolts slid back. Servatus pushed the door open and Rhacelus moved to step past him.

Rhacelus paused. ‘The hull has been breached in several places. Rejoin your squad, brother-lieutenant. Make for the bridge and find First Officer Castulo. You must hold the bridge. I will join you there.’

Servatus saluted and hurried away, slamming a clip into his bolt pistol and donning his helmet as he ran.

Rhacelus entered the chamber and closed the door firmly behind him.

‘Mephiston?’ he said. ‘Are you…?’

The ghost did not hear the rest of the question. At the mention of his name, the galaxy collapsed. Deaths too numerous to count filled his eyes. Unimaginable violence ripped through his brain. The screams rose in volume, desperate and deafening, like a physical assault – claws, raking the inside of his skull. Above it all, though, a great hunger gripped him, even greater than a thirst for blood. He knew, once more, who he was. He knew what he had been born for.

His hearts pounded harder as he rushed on.

He was Mephiston.

He had the answer.

He was the answer.

Rhacelus pushed more light through his sword and revealed a confusing sight – an intricate network of strands draped across the whole room. As Mephiston reeled under the weight of his identity, Rhacelus reached forwards, brushing the tips of his gauntlet across the web. It fell back, tumbling from his touch, forming a corridor in front of him.

Rhacelus stepped into the darkness and the strands dropped down behind him, barring his exit. The air was heavy with warm mist and the iron-stink of blood. Rhacelus’ lip curled into a hungry snarl. He staggered, battling to control himself.

‘Mephiston?’ cried Rhacelus, looking around, straining to be heard over the screams. ‘Are you in here?’

He reached a shape hanging in the knots – a corpse, draped in red robes. It was a Mechanicus adept, swinging a few feet above the ground. There were glistening tubes trailing from his shattered head, linking his augmented flesh to the strange gossamer that filled the chamber.

Again, Mephiston tried to call out to Rhacelus. Again, Rhacelus did not hear the call, but he did hear the chorus of screams that swelled in response. There was such malevolence in the sound, such fury, that Rhacelus raised his sword.

‘My lord,’ he said. ‘We’re under attack. Xenos. Necron cruisers. The Blood Oath is damaged. There are countless boarding actions. My lord, I must know what you intend to do. Whatever you are…’ He looked around, his powerful voice faltering as he studied the bloody mesh. ‘Whatever you are doing.’

Mephiston could not answer, so Rhacelus hurried on through the crimson threads, past other corpses trapped in the mesh, all hanging at different heights and pierced by the cords that filled the chamber.

Mephiston followed. He could not make out many details in the gloom but he recognised the bodies – traitors and heretics all, pieces of the trail that was leading him to their master. He glimpsed baroque, curse-warped armour and sharp, Chaos-tainted augmetics, all woven into the design. Some of the hanging figures were moving. It was a macabre puppet show, enacting a performance that Mephiston recognised with satisfaction, recalling the meticulous work that had led him so close to the truth. There was beauty here too, even if it was of a different kind. Each pained gesture and twisted thread reminded him of an invaluable truth. He could see intricate pictures in the gore – glimpses of the future, echoes of the past.

Rhacelus reached out and grabbed one of the crimson threads. He growled in surprise and Mephiston knew why.

It was skin.

The whole web was woven from shreds of warm skin.

At the same moment they both saw the architect of this grotesque display.

Rhacelus staggered to a halt, staring. Sitting on a brass command chair at the top of a stone dais was a naked figure. His massive frame was bent forwards and he was writing slowly on a large brass salver, held before him by a wasted, winged servitor wearing a white mask. The figure’s face was thrown into shadow but Mephiston could easily recognise himself. His excitement faded as he saw what his journeys in the immaterium had wrought on his flesh.

He saw the same shock on Rhacelus’ face.

Mephiston had been flayed.

The quivering mass of skin that filled his chamber had been torn from his own body. His organs and muscles were exposed. He looked like a dark jewel, glistening in the light of Rhacelus’ sword. His skin was draped up from his shoulders, forming a pair of colossal, trembling wings that enveloped the entire chamber in a bloody embrace. It was horrific and divine. Even through his revulsion Mephiston saw the artistry of it – the intricate work of art he had woven with his own flesh.

Rhacelus faltered, staggering back down the steps of the dais, but Mephiston had already overcome his shock and plunged gratefully back into his body.

Immediately, he was under attack. Incoherent howls scrabbled against his soul, accusing and denouncing. He saw the shadows clearly for the first time through his powerful, warp-fuelled eyes. A tide of mutilated flesh crawled over the dais towards him, spectral, insubstantial bodies, all of them shockingly brutalised. He saw soldiers of every kind – Guardsmen, Blood Angels, skitarii – all screaming at his skinless body. Baying for his blood, as though they could possibly understand its worth.

At the foot of the dais, Rhacelus barked a curse and waved his sword, scattering spirits. They whirled and snarled, like wolves driven from the kill. Rhacelus lunged at them, but Mephiston knew they could not be so easily banished. However valiant Rhacelus might be, this fight was not his.

Mephiston gave in to bloodlust, letting hot fury envelop him. There was no risk. The Blood Angels’ curse had no power over him anymore. He could harness it without fear. It exploded through his muscles, filling him with dizzying power and, after so long silent, he finally cried out. He let out such a deafening howl that his soul sang with the fury of it. Crimson light shot across the web he had constructed from his own skin.

With another roar, hundreds of the shadows rushed forwards, swarming across the dais and tumbling over Mephiston in a flurry of limbs. As the spirits crossed the dais he stood to meet them. He had been nailed to the brass chair with long, ornamental knives and, as he stood, the few remaining shreds of his skin tore away.

He reached up into the storm of phantasms, still howling as he grasped a shadow by its throat. The spirit became flesh. Ephemeral darkness fell away to reveal a bloody, broken Guardsman. The man’s vengeful cry faltered and his anger was replaced by shock. He looked down at his reanimated body, dangling from Mephiston’s grip, and groaned in horror. His chest had been torn off by shrapnel and the left side of his torso was absent. There was no way he could be alive and he knew it, but still he struggled, gurgling and choking.

‘My lord!’ cried Rhacelus, but Mephiston’s attention was fixed on the Guardsman.

The chorus of howls faltered and the shadows fell back.

‘I confess,’ said Mephiston, his voice a furious whisper as he looked the corpse in the eye, ‘to nothing.’

He lifted the undead Guardsman higher and hurled him into the air. As the soldier left Mephiston’s grip, he returned to shadow, enveloped by the other ghosts. Mephiston watched him tumble away, defiant and shaking with bloodlust. Then he dropped into his chair and looked at the brass salver the servitor was holding before him. The emaciated, semi-human creature was borne on mechanical wings – crude, metal likenesses of the mighty blood pinions that arched up from Mephiston’s back – and its white mask was a beautiful, porcelain copy of Mephiston’s sharp, hawk-like features.

The servitor fluttered before him, holding the metal plate closer, and he recalled its name: Vidiens, the Oraculist. As the servitor shifted the plate slightly, Mephiston studied what he had been engraving on the polished metal – an incredibly complex astrological chart. While his mind had been tumbling through the warp, lost and blind to its own nature, his fingers had continued this crucial work. Finalising the details of his masterpiece. He had been inscribing the metal with a stylus, and the shapes mirrored the blood web that filled the chamber. Mephiston peered closer at the details, awed by the fineness of his creation. The design was intricate in a way that would confound even the greatest Mechanicus adept, but he could discern every elegant subtlety. It was a map of time and souls, a chart of ideas that had yet to form. He had illustrated a galaxy hidden from everyone but him – the galaxy of prophecy and life-force. His blood hunger went forgotten as he sank back into the work.

He saw the decades he had spent charting a path across the stars, recording everything, halting for nothing, baulking at nothing, moving ever closer to his glittering prize. The prize that was clearly worked into the brass. He stared at it in wonder. He had rendered nothing short of hope. He had drawn the glory of the Chapter, assured forever, by a victory that was almost in his grasp.

At the centre of the design there was a stylised winged angel beheading a writhing serpent with his sword, as a host of other angels raised their weapons in tribute, bathed in the light of an imperious, beneficent Sanguinius. The serpent crossed the whole map, dividing it in two and spawning hundreds more snakes from its belly.

The howling wretches that haunted Mephiston gathered over his shoulders, staring at shapes they could not hope to understand. He pitied them, of course, but their deaths were a footnote, a distraction – and there could be no more distractions. The Imperium had come too close to defeat. Humanity was on the brink of extinction. The galaxy was torn. The final bell was about to toll. But he had found the answer. And now he would realise his vision before the map on the salver became nothing but serpents.

‘Wait! Vidiens. What have you done?’ he asked, noticing something terrible. He looked up at the Oraculist, his eyes darkening. He touched a flaw at the heart of the diagram: a jarring, ugly mass of lines that confused the whole design. Even as he glared at the servitor’s expressionless mask, seeing the panic in its eyes, he realised that the fault was not with Vidiens. The final piece of understanding fell into place. This was the result of the dreadful blindness that had overcome him. The scrawled lines showed the failure of sight that had driven him further than ever before into the abyss.

He stared at his dripping, skinless hands and realised how close he had come to losing himself. But what had brought him back? Rhacelus. Of course. He recalled the blood he had seen on Rhacelus’ hands. Mephiston had been called back by the same friend who had saved him so many times before.

At the thought of that old, noble soul, he looked up from the salver.

Rhacelus was still trying to fight through the tumult, but the ghosts had become an impassable barrier, hacking and thrashing against him, filling the air with accusations, driving him back.

Mephiston raised a finger and the spirits scattered, creating a path for Rhacelus. His equerry raced to the top of the dais and grabbed his arm, the fingers of his gauntlet sinking into the exposed muscle.

‘My lord,’ cried Rhacelus. ‘You must cease this…’ He looked at the howling faces. ‘You’re tearing the ship apart.’

Mephiston was still warp-drunk. Impossible places were drifting through his mind. He could not think how to reply to such an absurd demand. Stop? Stop seeking the answer he had pursued for decades at the expense of everything else? He turned to the Oraculist as though Vidiens could answer for Rhacelus’ madness. The servitor’s pale human eyes were just visible through the sockets of its mask. It answered in a shrill staccato.

‘Lord Rhacelus,’ it said. ‘The Chief Librarian, Emperor be blessed, is close to success. We have reached the Great Rift at the beginning of the twelfth dawn. Of the sanguine son. The Angel of Baal has spoken thrice. And thrice he has been silent. The Angel has spoken to us. This is not the time to lose faith. Emperor ever be praised. It is a time to pray. Pray and be enlightened. The path to bloody redemption is revealed. But it is not always the–’

‘Lord Mephiston,’ Rhacelus growled, not even looking at the rambling servitor. He gripped Mephiston’s skinless arm so tight that blood oozed over his fingers. ‘Can you hear me?’

Anger swelled up through Mephiston’s chest and bled out into reality – the warp, always straining to escape his flesh, sliced through the joins in his bones and ligaments. The deck shook violently as his rage rocked the ship. A deep, grinding moan echoed through the bulkheads.

Rhacelus drew back his hand and looked around in confusion. ‘My lord…’ he whispered, but he seemed unsure how to continue.

‘The path to bloody redemption is revealed,’ whined the servitor. ‘Pray and be enlightened.’

The servitor’s hectoring tone gave Rhacelus focus. His expression changed to an irritated snarl and he reached past the Oraculist, moving with inhuman speed, writing on the salver before the servitor could stop him. He traced a single word with the blood that was still flowing from his hand. A name. Mephiston’s blood rage was about to boil over into violence when he saw what Rhacelus had written: Calistarius.

The fire in his soul guttered and dimmed. He slumped back, staring at Rhacelus.

‘Calistarius,’ said Rhacelus, invoking the power of the Chief Librarian’s former name. ‘You are destroying this ship.’ He looked up at the vast wings Mephiston had ripped from his back, and the agonised shadows whirling through them. ‘And you are destroying yourself. Whatever this is, you must stop it.’

The old name was a code – a reminder of their shared past, of a trust that would not be forgotten. With a great effort, Mephiston crushed his anger and lifted his hand away from the salver.

When he finally spoke, his voice was thick and slow, as though he had just awoken from a deep sleep. ‘Stop, Rhacelus?’

‘My lord, the ship.’ There was no judgement in Rhacelus’ eyes, only relief that he had been recognised.

Mephiston stared at Rhacelus, then nodded at the corpses hanging from the web. ‘We are almost there.’ His words came quicker. ‘Everything stems from the daemon. I see that now. When we reach the daemon, I can heal the Great Rift, Rhacelus, do you understand? I can heal it. The daemon I seek is the lynchpin of everything.’

Mephiston shook his head as he looked back at the scribbled mess at the heart of the salver. ‘After all these years of hunting, my prey was within reach, but the final approach has been obscured. Something has blinded me. I do not understand how.’ He raised a hand and the corpses juddered in response, a troupe of crooked dancers, wrenching their skeins of flesh into new shapes. ‘But there is always a rite that works. There is always a word that unlocks the truth. And I am so close now, Rhacelus. I will regain my sight. I will complete this chart.’

‘But…’ Rhacelus looked at Mephiston’s butchered flesh and shook his head. ‘One daemon, Mephiston, in a galaxy overrun with daemons – is it worth all this? What of Baal? Are we right to keep tracking this one daemon when so much has been lost?’

Mephiston was surprised by his equerry’s doubt. ‘Do you think me vainglorious? Do you think I’m trophy hunting?’

‘No, my lord. Of course not.’ Rhacelus waved at the strangeness of the web. ‘But you are collapsing.’

‘Everything is collapsing, Rhacelus. You saw what we faced on Baal. You saw what we fought at Dante’s side. And you have seen the horrors of the Great Rift. Our time is almost up.’

Mephiston tapped the design on the salver – pointing at the serpent that divided the galaxy. ‘I see more than rifts and storms. I see the cause. The daemon I seek is one of the architects of the Great Rift and I am linked to him. I see it constantly now, Rhacelus, in my dreams.’ Mephiston stared at the salver as though it were the daemon. ‘An old monk, frail and hunched, its face hidden in its hood. And when the hood shifts there is no head, Rhacelus, just a bird-skull – long and bleached, like a claw. And it recites a mantra. We dream, dreaming, dreamed. Over and over again. The mantra refers to the Great Rift, I am sure.’

Mephiston’s blood rushed as he considered how close he was to his prey. ‘Its sorcery underpins the Cicatrix Maledictum, I know it.’ He waved at the salver. ‘All my designs lead to its door. The daemon’s deceits have helped turn the whole war against us. And now it is within my reach. We cannot simply return to Baal – we must press on, press on, Rhacelus. This is my great purpose. This is my duty. This is the Angel’s wish.’

‘Calistarius,’ said Rhacelus. ‘I believe you. I have always believed you. But, my lord, think. Your vision has been obscured. We cannot just plough blindly on. Your power is too great now to simply–’

‘My power?’ Mephiston stood and reached into the shadows, grabbing another ghost, forming darkness into flesh. ‘This power? Look at what I have wrought. Death, Rhacelus, so much death. Do not talk to me of waiting.’

He shook the reanimated corpse at Rhacelus, splashing his armour with blood. It was a young Guardsman, as mutilated and distressed as the previous one. The undead wretch stared at Rhacelus through strained, blue-white eyes.

‘I must be destined to save us, Rhacelus,’ said Mephiston. ‘Because if I am not…’ He stared at the corpse in his hand. ‘What am I destined for?’

‘Your power is the light of Sanguinius,’ said Rhacelus. ‘I have never doubted it.’

Mephiston was still looking at the pitiful ghosts. ‘This cannot be for nothing.’

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘Do your auguries tell you nothing?’

Mephiston barged through the spirits and reached out into the bloody web, spilling light from his fingers, illuminating the threads.

‘They tell me everything.’

He waved his hand and created another surge of spasmodic movements. ‘Simultaneously.’ As the corpses moved they threw shadows, and each shadow revealed a scene. The more they moved, the more scenes they described, each one superimposed over another. It was bewildering – cities and star systems, murders and births, battles and rites, each contradicting the other.

‘Rhacelus,’ said Mephiston, ‘since we tracked its followers from Divinus Prime, all those years ago, I have never lost sight of the daemon. Until now. Through all these decades, Rhacelus, I have been sure of my purpose. Even now, blind as I am, I know we are close. When we left Hydrus Ulterior I caught a glimpse of the daemon’s tracks and we can’t be far away now.’

Rhacelus frowned as he studied the bloody ruin Mephiston had made of himself. ‘But you can’t carry on like this.’ He waved at the crowds of howling spirits. ‘You are haunted.’

Mephiston gave a bleak laugh. ‘Only by myself.’ He waved a hand and the roar was silenced.

Rhacelus looked around in confusion. The spirits had vanished.

‘There are no ghosts.’ Mephiston tapped his naked skull. ‘Apart from the ones we carry in here.’

‘If only all our foes could be so easily dismissed,’ said Rhacelus. ‘While you were away trying to regain your warp sight the Blood Oath has been attacked. The void shields are failing. We translated back into real space two weeks ago, off course, deep in the Revenant Stars and dangerously close to the Great Rift. Necrons attacked almost immediately and without shields we will soon be–’

‘The Revenant Stars.’ Mephiston frowned, silencing Rhacelus with a raised finger. ‘Near the Great Rift.’ He barely registered the Librarian’s concerns about necrons. The name of the star system was familiar to him. He waved the Oraculist over to the bookshelves that lined the walls.

The servitor fluttered through the shadows as Mephiston called out the titles of books, then, after a few moments, it flew back to him, using the salver to carry a pile of leather-bound volumes.

The books were ancient and incredibly valuable, and Mephiston had no intention of staining the pages with his skinless fingers. He whispered a few coaxing words and the books drifted before him, fluttering their pages until they settled on the passages he sought. Rhacelus and the servitor watched in respectful silence as Mephiston peered at each of the pages in turn.

After a few minutes of intense concentration, Mephiston nodded at the servitor and it returned the books to the shelves.

Mephiston motioned for Rhacelus to approach. ‘We are not too far off the daemon’s trail. I have seen its face in the warp and studied its routes through the immaterium. There is a great storm surge coming to the Great Rift, Rhacelus, in this sector and at this time. An aspect of the daemon will appear here, in real space, within my reach.

‘I lost myself for a while,’ he continued, ‘but now we will remove this delay and continue.’ He tapped one of the solar systems engraved into the metal salver. It was on the edge of the twisted serpent that signified the Cicatrix Maledictum and it was framed by a narrow, angular skull design. ‘Something in this system is the source of my recent blindness and the edge of the Great Rift is exactly where we need to be.’

Mephiston reached out towards the skin web that surrounded them, fanning his crimson fingers until the shadow scenes reflowed, drawing new pictures from the darkness. The silhouettes of metal automata marched into view – rigid, robotic figures, moving with inhuman precision.

Mephiston’s expression was blank. ‘Necrons. The flotsam the war has left behind. They have no hope against the horrors about to pour from this stretch of the Great Rift. I doubt they are even aware of the doom that comes for them. But they have found something powerful out here. It has stifled my second sight in a way I have not experienced before. It feels more like a mechanical block than a spiritual failing. It is unlike anything…’ His words trailed off and he shook his head, unsure how to describe what he was feeling.

The servitor fluttered back over to them and looked at the planets Mephiston had pointed out on the salver. ‘The Revenant Stars were lost to the thrice-damned necrons centuries ago. It was once a great source of promethium. Before the arrival of the xenos, we colonised some of the worlds and built glorious, fortified pits, called bastion mines. But with the arrival of the Great Rift, the system was abandoned. Left to rot. Emperor preserve its memory.’

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘We relinquished a whole sector to the necrons?’

Mephiston nodded. ‘On the order of Guilliman himself. All local Astra Militarum regiments were redeployed to join his Indomitus Crusade. This sector was deemed beyond saving. The lord commander would not spare a soul then and neither would he now. As you and I fought with Lord Commander Dante to preserve Baal, the necrons were given dominion over this damned place.’

He traced his finger over the sigils on the plate, animating the bodies strung from his wings. The corpses twitched and jerked, dragging the threads into a new collection of shapes. Behind the ranks of gleaming automata, a planet whirled into view.

‘Morsus,’ said Mephiston, stepping closer and staring at the spinning globe. ‘This is the exact source of my blindness.’ He reached out to grasp the ghost planet, letting his fingers fall through it. ‘The shadow comes from this world, Rhacelus. Throne knows what it is, but these necrons have blocked my path with something. And while I am blind, the Great Rift grows, unabated.’ He recalled some of the strangest scenes he had witnessed in the warp. ‘And those that have been trapped in its shadow, lost to the light of the Emperor, are in terrible danger.’

As he passed his hand through the image, Mephiston felt the weight of his vast wings, trembling above him, scattering blood rain across the floor. The bulkheads groaned again and more alarms barked into life. Rhacelus staggered back towards the edge of the dais as the ship juddered with renewed violence.

‘Calistarius!’ warned Rhacelus.

Mephiston paused, then lowered his hand and the planet faded from view. He turned to the servitor hovering in the air beside him. ‘Help me dress.’

The servitor took a hymnal from its robes. Then it launched into a droning prayer, warbling the words in a piercing falsetto. As the servitor sang, Mephiston mouthed silent responses. It was an incantation he had never recited before but the words formed all too easily in his mind. Rather than searching for the right syllables, as he did when taking his flesh apart, he now had to make a concerted effort to stop them becoming a torrent. Ever since the Great Rift had torn the galaxy in two, power came almost too easily to his fingertips.

As the words echoed around his head, bolstered by the shrill harmonies of the servitor, the vast web of skin began to lash itself back onto his exposed muscles, hitting the raw meat with a series of audible slaps.

In a few seconds the crimson mesh had vanished from the chamber. Light flooded back into the room as the lumens drifting overhead were revealed and the thick, abattoir stench faded, replaced by the normal ship smells of incense, scented oil and engines.

Rhacelus looked around the chamber and frowned. ‘The bodies…?’

Mephiston listened for a moment to the voices clamouring at the back of his mind. ‘Still here, Rhacelus.’

He looked down at his chest. His skin was a network of hairline scars. At first glance, he looked like a collection of cadavers crudely sewn togaether, but even here his artistry was at work. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the scars were formed in elaborate designs, mirroring the charts on the brass salver.

‘My true armour,’ he said, noticing the recognition in Rhacelus’ eyes.

‘The world behind the world,’ said Rhacelus, recalling the Librarius tracts they had studied togaether as acolytes, centuries ago. He was quoting directly from the Scrolls of Sanguinius. ‘Power beyond sinew.’

Mephiston nodded, pleased that his old friend understood. Where others would have seen ugliness and heresy, Rhacelus saw divinity.

Rhacelus stepped back as the winged servitor dressed Mephiston’s scarred body in plates of power armour, looping and diving in a series of graceful, carefully choreographed moves, still singing as it fastened the greaves and pauldrons into place.

Mephiston’s crimson battleplate was sculpted to resemble a skinned corpse, so by the time the servitor had finished, Mephiston looked almost as fearsome as he had when Rhacelus first entered the chamber.

Finally, the servitor swooped down from the shadows carrying another physical incarnation of Mephiston’s thought: his ancient force sword, Vitarus. Mephiston gripped it firmly, testing its weight and balance, delighting in the company of an old friend. He recited a litany, a prayer for the machine-spirit that fed the blade’s ancient circuitry. His pulse raced in answer to the weapon’s vitality, hearing its wordless voice, feeling the powerful, unbroken bond between warrior and sword, each feeding and amplifying the power of the other.

Rhacelus knelt before him, humbled.

Mephiston nodded, waving for him to rise. Then he frowned, sensing movement at the far side of the chamber. Vidiens was still beside the throne, cradling the salver, and there were no other servitors present.

Mephiston raised Vitarus and moved down the steps of the dais into the middle of the room, striding quickly past the gloomy alcoves that housed his books. The movement was coming from just inside the door. A puddle of fresh blood had appeared a few feet from the wall and it was spreading and flickering, reflecting a light that did not exist.

Mephiston circled in one direction while Rhacelus raised his sword and circled in the other.

The two Librarians were still a few feet away when the red pool exploded upwards, forming a column of whirling crimson that showered them both in blood. Mephiston shielded his eyes until the spray grew less ferocious, falling away to reveal a liquid, rippling likeness of a Space Marine.

‘Antros,’ said Mephiston, remembering that Rhacelus was not the only member of his Librarius travelling on the Blood Oath. Lucius Antros was his most trusted codicier and a Librarian of prodigious talent. As this gory, translucent simulacrum rolled wave-like towards him, Mephiston tried to recall their last meeting and found his memory still clouded.

Rhacelus stepped forwards, glowering at the blood effigy.

‘Where in the name of the Throne have you been?’ His eyes flashed blue with anger. ‘We are under attack. Why have you not reported to me since we translated to real space?’

Antros’ face formed and reformed as he tried to reply and all that emerged was a series of wet gurgles. He was clutching a staff, trying to perform an incantation, but each time he raised it, it collapsed into a torrent of blood. The effort of reaching them was clearly causing him great pain and he grimaced and jerked as he tried to speak.

‘I ordered him off the vessel,’ said Mephiston, his memory finally clearing.

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘When, my lord?’

‘Hard to say. I have been traversing several streams at once. My relationship with time has become complicated.’

‘It was when we first reached the Revenant Stars,’ said Antros, finally managing to form recognisable words. He washed across the floor towards Rhacelus, spilling blood as he reached out. ‘Forgive me, Lord Rhacelus.’ His voice had the distant, muffled quality of someone speaking underwater. ‘I have travelled to the edge of the rift. I have been trying for weeks to contact you but the storms are so fierce, until now all my signals have gone awry. I felt the presence of the Chief Librarian as he re-entered the materium and decided to make another attempt.’

‘The Great Rift?’ Rhacelus glanced at Mephiston. ‘My lord, was that really your order? To send him to the jaws of Chaos?’

Mephiston nodded vaguely, only half following the conversation. He was scouring his memory for anything he knew of necron technology that might be used to blind psychic powers. He waved Vidiens over and grabbed the salver, studying his design again, trying to ignore his battle-brothers’ conversation.

‘Return to the Blood Oath,’ said Rhacelus, staring into Antros’ blood mask. ‘What would possess you to venture out there alone? You are at great risk.’

‘I am about to return,’ said Antros, looking pained. ‘I swear to you, my lord. And I apologise again for failing to reach you. I have almost completed the mission I discussed with the Chief Librarian. I will return to the Blood Oath within days.’

‘Mission? What mission is worth your soul?’ demanded Rhacelus.

Even as a blood mirage, the passion in Antros’ eyes was unmistakable. He pointed his shimmering staff at Mephiston. ‘Lord Rhacelus, we cannot let the Chief Librarian continue like this. You know we can’t. Since the opening of the Great Rift his power is consuming him faster than ever.’

‘You will not help Mephiston by gifting your soul to daemons. Get back here before–’

‘My lord,’ interrupted Antros. ‘I may have found a way to harness Mephiston’s power. I spent the last weeks fighting alongside battle-brothers of the Sons of Helios Chapter. They have survived in the shadow of the rift all this time because they can inure themselves to the warp currents.’

‘Then they may be heretics, codicier. Have you considered that?’

‘Of course I have, but I do not believe they are. They are not even psykers, my lord. That is exactly why they are so fascinating. They follow a rigid, martial discipline that I have never seen before. I read of it when we were still on Baal but I had to see it for myself.’

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘This sounds worse the more you tell me about it.’

‘My lord, I understand your concern, but they are not what you think. These are warriors, not witches or mystics. They have simply honed their martial regimen until their minds are able to ignore the warp. I believe they tread a new path between the material and the immaterial worlds.’

‘That sounds exactly like mysticism to me.’

‘Far from it, my lord. They have lost their home world, their fortress-monastery and most of their battle-brothers, but not one of them shows any sign of losing their powers of logic or wavering in their devotion to the Emperor.’

Rhacelus began pacing, shaking his head. ‘This is exactly how you sounded when you dragged us to see that magos on Edessa, what was his name?’

‘Ferenc, the monogeneticist.’ Antros’ words became harder to understand as he grew more frustrated. ‘Those relics he showed us could have helped Lord Mephiston. They were able to separate one manifestation of the psyche from another. Mephiston could have used it to partition his mind and harness his power. You agreed with me at the time.’

‘Until I saw what became of his test subjects. You were suggesting we risk the Chief Librarian’s sanity on the word of a magos who had no grasp on sanity himself. The man was dangerous.’ Rhacelus jabbed his sword at Antros’ likeness. ‘As were the heretics you brought on to the Blood Oath, with their suggestions that we begin sacrificing our own serfs. What pompous name did they give themselves?’

‘The Ordo Oraculi. They were not heretics, my lord. Their practices were unusual but their creed has been sanctioned by the Ecclesiarch himself.’ Antros shrugged, splattering more blood across the floor. ‘As it turned out, their predictions were useless. I agree with you that they were charlatans. I still do not fully understand how they knew the things they knew, but they were not–’

‘But you had to get them off the Blood Oath before the Chief Librarian incinerated them. That is what I recall.’

‘This is not the same.’ Antros raised his voice. ‘The Sons of Helios are utterly devout. They carry themselves with a–’

‘Rhacelus,’ said Mephiston, losing his thread and looking up from the salver. ‘I gave the codicier permission to pursue his theory. I have heard the same tales as Lucius Antros and I wish to know more. Do not waste your time trying to countermand my orders.’ He looked at Antros. ‘How long?’

‘A few more days at most, Chief Librarian. They suggested I escort them on one last mission. Their Chapter Master, Lord Dragomir, believes it will be a perfect chance for me to observe how they survive in close proximity to the Cicatrix Maledictum. I will record everything and then return to the Blood Oath to share what I have learned.’

Mephiston shook his head. ‘We will not be on the Blood Oath, Antros. Look for us at the heart of the necron forces.’ He traced his finger over the angular skull engraved on the salver. ‘Look for us on Morsus.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘On my command,’ said Lieutenant Servatus, his voice booming through his helmet’s vox-grille. He trained his bolt pistol on a pair of blast shutters thirty feet down the corridor. The doors were warped and buckled, as though a massive weight had slammed repeatedly against them.

Servatus glanced back over his shoulder, checking to see if his men were all keeping pace. He had found them shortly after leaving Lord Rhacelus. The remnants of Agorix Squad approached, filling the corridor with their hulking, Tacticus armour – Primaris Blood Angels in full battleplate, their plasma incinerators primed and raised, waiting for the order to fire.

‘Take them down,’ he said to the nearest of them, Sergeant Agorix.

Agorix saluted and nodded to his men.

‘On my command,’ said Servatus, raising a hand. Behind him, plasma weapons hummed and rattled into readiness, filling the passageway with blue light.

Before Servatus could give the order, the doors exploded towards him, filling the air with shattered plasteel. Debris bounced off his armour and the corridor filled with fumes. His retinal display erupted with scrolling glyphs and targeting data, revealing what had happened. The doors had simply disintegrated.

A block of rigid, identical figures clattered towards him across the deck plating. Necron warriors, moving in perfect lockstep, trailing a mantle of pale smoke. They advanced with jolting precision, spilling hellish green light from their iron skulls.

Servatus sliced his hand down and Agorix Squad fired, unleashing a deafening volley of shots. Superheated plasma smashed into the necrons, tearing through their lines and filling the air with rent metal. Limbs, heads and chest-plates jangled across the deck plating.

‘Cover,’ snapped Servatus, unclipping a grenade and hurling it into the inferno.

White heat rocked him back on his heels, eliciting a chorus of integrity warnings from the cogitator in his armour. Then, as the reverberations faded, there was a brief silence.

Behind Servatus, Sergeant Agorix and his men held their positions.

With a hideous screeching sound, the shattered necrons began dragging themselves back togaether, clicking and snapping their mangled limbs into shape and rising unsteadily to their feet. Behind them, rows of pale lights jerked into view – lifeless eyes, staring blankly at the Blood Angels as they raised their weapons and advanced, lurching forwards like clockwork automata.

‘Break them apart!’ roared Servatus, striding into the fumes. ‘Leave nothing intact!’

The passageway exploded with light and noise as the Blood Angels fired again. Plasma ripped through the serried ranks of necrons, but the lifeless warriors hurled back salvoes of their own, shimmering green gauss beams that sizzled from their rifles, slapping against the Blood Angels battleplate.

One of the blasts thudded against Servatus’ shoulder, rocking him back on his heels. To his fury, he felt the pauldron disintegrating. Corpse light washed over the intricately worked armour and some of the ceramite crumbled, like sand snatched by the tide.

He dropped into a roll and came back up onto his feet, face to face with the necron that had shot him. The xenos was almost as tall as Servatus and its face was a pitted, lifeless mask of corroded metal. This close, he could see a spark of grim sentience in its eyes – a pale, guttering memory of life that had echoed down the centuries.

Servatus had only a second to notice these facts before he sheared the necron warrior’s head from its shoulders, swinging his power sword cleanly through its metal neck.

He was prepared for what would happen next. As the headless necron toppled away from him, Servatus strode forwards, raising his bolt pistol and firing repeatedly into the xenos’ shuddering form. Lumps of warped metal whined through the air, clanging off the bulkheads, but Servatus kept firing until his clip was empty. Finally the necron was still, its body so completely obliterated it could not reassemble. The wreckage pulsed with jade fire and began to vanish from sight.

Sergeant Agorix appeared at his side, swinging his power sword, slicing through the necrons in a blinding flurry of thrusts and slashes. The two officers were haloed by the wall of plasma fire coming from the rest of the squad – cerulean lances, filling the air with more shards of broken metal. It was glorious, for a moment, just to feel his body and armour working as they had been designed to. Every sinew, synapse and servo joined into a seamless weapon. He revelled in the nobility of the fight. In his ears, the Blood Angels’ gunfire thundered like the drums of a great symphony. The lines of necrons fell back, toppled by the ferocity of a Blood Angels close-quarters attack.

Servatus pressed his advantage and led the Blood Angels on into the next chamber. They sliced and blasted the necrons with superhuman speed. Every necron that fell tried to reassemble itself, but the undead mechanoids moved painfully slowly compared to the spring-heeled Blood Angels. Every necron that tried to crawl back togaether was met with a second barrage of plasma, then a third and a fourth, until their metal forms were mangled beyond recognition.

Servatus nodded with satisfaction as he saw that many of the necrons, rather than trying to rise again, were now blinking out of existence, leaving nothing more than scorched silhouettes on the deck.

He bounded up a set of sweeping steps onto a broad clerestory that reached out over the chamber. He leant out from the balcony and began hurling grenades over the clanking ranks below. Sergeant Agorix and the other three Space Marines were still fighting through the doorway into the chamber, so Servatus unleashed hell on the far side of the room.

The world turned white as his grenades detonated. There was a wrenching, grinding sound as even the bulkheads strained under the impact. When the glare faded, Servatus saw that he had torn a great hole in the enemy force.

The other Blood Angels charged forwards, hurling their own grenades and creating more deafening blasts. The necrons fell back, dazed and mangled, their body parts sparking. Servatus reloaded and sprayed bolter fire at their heads, pulverising the reeling figures.

Beneath the clerestory, Blood Angels smashed through into the smouldering gap left by the grenades. They formed a circle, dropped to one knee and fired plasma in every direction, taking down the necrons that were staggering backwards all around them.

Servatus drew his power sword and leapt back down into the battle.

He landed blade first. The humming power sword sliced straight through a necron’s chest and his momentum sent them both tumbling through the crowd. The necron locked its dead fingers around Servatus’ neck brace, but he drew his sword free with a scream of protesting metal and sliced the necron in two. As it crashed backwards onto the floor, juddering and whining, Servatus rained sword strikes on it, shearing off chunks of metal alloy and iron cabling until the body parts were still.

The Blood Angels had now carved a large space in the centre of the chamber. Broken androids lay everywhere, flickering and twitching, melted into the deck plating and warped into tormented shapes. Those that were still standing had been thrown from their regimented ranks into a confused scrum. The mindless necrons were struggling to cope with the disarray and their shots were now wild and inaccurate, disintegrating the chamber’s pillars and cornices rather than hitting Blood Angels.

Something big lumbered into the chamber from behind the necron vanguard, a towering, spider-like war machine, pounding through the smoke towards Servatus. The lumen strips overhead were mostly shattered, but a few were still flickering fitfully and they revealed glimpses of a robotic behemoth. Its bulky, armour-plated abdomen was carried on six enormous metal legs and, as they hammered down into the deck, the chamber shuddered, dropping broken masonry onto the heat-warped metal.

The war machine trampled carelessly through the burnished ranks, unconcerned as it crushed its own troops to reach the Blood Angels lieutenant. As it passed beneath the lumens, Servatus saw that where its head should be there was a metal carriage, containing a proud-looking necron lord. The lord stared haughtily at him from across the battle, his posture revealing an intense focus that the other necrons lacked. It steered its metal arachnid towards him, filling the chamber with resounding clangs as the machine’s talon-legs punched through the deck.

Despite its callous disregard for their safety, the presence of the war machine had a galvanising effect on the rest of the necrons. They silenced their guns and formed back into orderly ranks, backing away from the Blood Angels that were crouched at the centre of the room.

In a few seconds, the Blood Angels were surrounded by a bristling circle of guns, trained on them with cool dispassion. As the chaos receded and the smoke cleared, dozens more necrons pushed into the chamber. The Blood Angels were now facing a sea of expressionless death masks.

Sergeant Agorix helped one of the other Blood Angels back to his feet and the squad looked around warily. They were completely surrounded. With solemn gravity, they straightened their backs and raised their plasma incinerators. ‘For Sanguinius,’ said Sergeant Agorix. ‘For Sanguinius,’ replied his men, with no trace of fear.

Servatus rushed to join them, but the towering war machine blocked his way.

The necron lord raised a weapon resembling a long-handled scythe and spoke. Its voice was like a drill grinding into metal, but it spoke in a disjointed approximation of Gothic. Servatus found it obscene to hear his own language issuing from the mouth of an ancient, mechanised corpse.

‘Interlopers. Despite repeated warnings, you have trespassed on the sovereign and most holy sanctuary of the victorious dynast, He Who is Bidden to Rule, phaeron of the Royal House of Khenisi, his victorious majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal.’

There was a moment of quiet as the necron paused for the Blood Angels to consider the magnificence of its words. The only sound was the humming of servos in the warriors’ armour and the groaning of the sagging floor. Servatus glanced at the heat-warped deck plates. The fighting had been so fierce that several of the support struts had disintegrated. Whole sections of the deck looked like they might collapse before the pompous necron had even finished its proclamation.

‘Your vessel is on a collision course with our inviolable crown world,’ continued the necron. It steered its robotic steed forwards, the tree-broad legs slamming down near Servatus. ‘You leave us no option,’ it said, gazing magisterially across the room. ‘You fought with a degree of honour, but–’

The necron paused as Servatus dashed to the centre of the room. Guns swivelled on the war machine, targeting Servatus as he fixed a grenade to the deck and sprinted back towards the steps, giving Sergeant Agorix a silent hand gesture as he ran.

The war machine fired just as the grenade detonated, ripping the damaged strut away and tearing a hole through the deck. It teetered, legs thrashing, then fell back into the hole with a scream of grinding gears.

There was a series of smashing sounds as it crashed through the levels below.

Every necron in the chamber stumbled and lowered its weapon, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Then, a fraction of a second later they recovered, raising their guns and bracing themselves for more fighting.

The Blood Angels had followed Servatus’ command and leapt up onto the clerestory, hauling themselves up struts and onto the balcony. Once they were clear, they turned and hurled a plasma storm at the androids.

With their lord gone, the necrons’ shots were wild and untargeted. They staggered under the Blood Angels’ gunfire as more of the floor collapsed, sending ranks of warriors tumbling from view.

‘For Sanguinius!’ cried Servatus as they ripped the necrons into a junkyard of steel limbs and thrashing cables.

Within a few more minutes it was over. The Blood Angels lowered their guns and surveyed the carnage. The necrons’ living alloy was now indistinguishable from the heat-warped deck. Some of their skull-like faces were still recognisable, but as the smoke cleared, the necrons’ eyes grew dark and the fragments began to dematerialise.

Servatus reloaded his gun and nodded at Sergeant Agorix. Agorix saluted, and they stepped through the western door and on into the room beyond. There were no necrons there, only fragments of those that had been torn apart by their grenades.

As Servatus picked his way carefully through the steel bodies, two lights blinked into life – eye sockets in one of the metal skulls. At the same moment, a dismembered torso began hauling itself towards the head, dragging its scorched chest with one twisted arm.

Servatus curled his lip in distaste. The thing was not alive in any real sense. It had no creed or faith – it was just programmed to kill.

He blasted the skull into molten ore, then strode on.

The next few chambers were empty, apart from the surreal sight of a neatly decapitated corpse left in the wake of the necron advance. The third chamber had collapsed, but there was a slender gantry left hanging out over the gap. The Blood Angels pounded across without pausing, their servo-reactive armour plates hissing as they rushed through the half-light, their plasma weapons trained on the rolling darkness as columns of smoke drifted up from the lower levels.

Lieutenant Servatus raced on through a vast, abandoned chapel, pausing only to whisper a prayer to a statue of the Angel Sanguinius, then, as he reached the narrow, spear-tip archway on the far side, he stopped, holding up a warning hand to Sergeant Agorix.

The sounds of battle reverberated down the next passageway. He heard the savage bark of bolter fire and the whining howl of xenos weaponry. Lights flashed through the darkness – crimson, green, then white, flickering across the murals on the walls.

Servatus waved for Agorix to follow, then advanced slowly, unholstering his pistol and holding it before him as he marched on.

The passageway ended in a long, rectangular atrium, with a ceiling too high to discern. Spaced along the sides of the atrium were nine grand archways. Eight were dark and silent; the ninth was a gate to hell. It was piled with severed body parts and lit up by a blaze of gunfire.

Just inside the doorway, another squad of Blood Angels were barricaded behind fallen statuary. There were five of them, holding back dozens of necrons. Waves of the dead-faced automata were toppling back into the gloom, their metal limbs glinting in the light of bolter fire as the Blood Angels gunned them down.

Servatus and Agorix hurried down the vast, empty chamber, heading for the fighting. ‘Lupum Squad,’ muttered Servatus, noting the markings on the Blood Angels’ beautifully worked Mk X battleplate.

‘Sergeant Lupum,’ he said, opening the vox-network.

One of the Blood Angels glanced back, still firing into the oncoming ranks. He waved to another archway, further on down the atrium.

His voice crackled over the vox, strained but clear. ‘Brother-Lieutenant Servatus, head for the bridge. We have orders from Lord Rhacelus to keep this route clear, but everyone else is to assemble on the bridge.’ He paused as the necrons focused their fire on him, gauss beams slicing through the fallen statue and forcing him to duck as stonework disintegrated all around him.

After a moment, he stood again and calmly continued returning fire. ‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius,’ he said, without looking back.

There was another barrage of gauss fire and the Blood Angels vanished from view, enveloped in a column of dust and smoke.

‘For the Emperor and Sanguinius,’ replied Servatus, waving his men on.

By the time they reached the bridge, it was already a battleground. They entered just above the command dais and saw that it was heaped with the corpses of blood thralls and adepts. Most of the hard-wired servitors were slumped in their stone cradles, trailing blood and smoke from fatal wounds. Only a few were still hunched over their viewscreens, working furiously at the runeboards, the light of the display glyphs flashing over their beautiful, gilded masks. There was no sign of Mephiston or Rhacelus.

There were Blood Angels lying crumpled on the steps. Their crimson armour was barely visible through the smoke, but they were clearly dead. Large sections of their torsos were absent, leaving their innards to slide from the neatly sliced power armour. Servatus winced at the sight of his fallen battle-brothers. The Chapter could ill afford such losses. He knew them all by name: Mercato, Acutus, Castor, Marchia. Heroes all. They had survived centuries of war to die here, on the bridge of their own ship.

The command bridge of the Blood Oath was a domed hall dissected by two suspended walkways that fanned out, wing-like, from a central blood-drop-shaped command dais. One side of the dome was draped in enormous ceremonial banners, celebrating each of the Blood Oath’s many engagements, but the other was a crystal oculus, a vast, curved window on to the stars. There was so much gunfire and flames beneath it that the oculus was mainly reflecting the battle for the bridge but, through the fumes, Servatus caught glimpses of the scene outside – dozens of necron ships, gathered around the Blood Oath like carrion over a wounded beast, firing a dazzling barrage of laser blasts into the badly listing vessel.

Inside the bridge, the scene was just as grim. Large sections of the two walkways had been sheared away, sent smashing through the levels below, and the parts that remained were crowded with ranks of necron warriors. A single Blood Angels squad held each of the two walkways, firing a sustained barrage of bolter rounds into the calmly advancing xenos, taking advantage of the bottleneck crush and sending the vanguard necrons spinning into the cavernous space below.

Many of the Blood Angels on the walkways had been wounded and some were stumbling backwards over corpses as they fired, surrounded by the heaped remains of blood thralls who had tried to aid them.

‘Agorix,’ barked Servatus over the vox, nodding to the walkways.

The sergeant saluted and sprinted across the command dais. He headed towards one walkway with two of his squad and waved the rest of them towards the other. As they ran, Agorix Squad were already firing gouts of plasma into the necrons.

The Blood Angels holding the walkways glanced back, nodding in recognition as their battle-brothers caused the necron lines to falter.

Servatus raced across the command dais as a wall of gauss fire hummed past, just above his head, disintegrating banks of machinery and religious paraphernalia. Cables and ornamental shields clattered down around him as he ran through the flames, heading for a group of blood thralls on the far side of the dais.

He vaulted a broken control module and landed with a clang on the deck plating, causing the blood thralls on the other side to whirl around, brandishing laspistols and sabres. Most of them were stood next to those servitors that were still intact, but there was a group crowded round First Officer Castulo, struggling to keep him upright. They saluted and lowered their weapons as they recognised Servatus.

Castulo’s robes were stained a darker red by a wound in his stomach. His face was ivory with pain and his tonsured head beaded with sweat as he struggled to stay upright. But he managed to lock his feverish eyes on Servatus.

‘My lord,’ he gasped, shrugging off his helpers and attempting a bow. ‘The master of armament is dead. So is the master of auspex. The void shields are about to collapse.’

More emerald beams slashed across the walls, detonating screens and cutting through plasteel. The blood thralls crouched and shielded their faces, but Servatus ignored the wreckage bouncing off his armour and stepped closer.

‘Maintain your current course,’ he said.

Castulo wiped the blood from his face and managed to stand upright, giving him a stiff salute. ‘I have, my lord. As ordered. The current course takes us into the heart of the enemy fleet, though.’ He waved at the vast oculus that made up one side of the command bridge. ‘In fact, we’re heading towards the planet they appeared from.’

Servatus was about to ask another question when he saw something approaching through the smoke on the far side of the command dais. For a moment, he could not make out the shape. Then he realised it was a pair of vast, tenebrous wings, rearing up through smoke, as though a great eagle were landing in the darkness. A cold disquiet tightened in Servatus’ stomach. He was Adeptus Astartes. He knew no fear. And yet, as the shadow moved closer, he took a few steps backwards, his hearts racing. The darkness around the wings was alive with other shapes. The gloom formed into coiled, faceless beings, boiling and turning with the smoke, weightless and incorporeal as they tumbled towards him. A vast tower of shadow was about to emerge onto the deck.

The blood thralls backed away from their controls, their faces white.

The wings and shadows vanished as Mephiston emerged from the smoke, sword in hand and chin raised. Lord Rhacelus followed close behind and the blood thralls prostrated themselves on the deck as the two mighty heroes approached.

Mephiston walked past Servatus and First Officer Castulo and loomed over one of the hooded servitors in the control alcoves. He studied the viewscreen, muttered a few words and passed his hand over the runeboard. Columns of data scrolled down the screen, millions of runic characters, moving too fast for mortal eyes to register, but Mephiston was reading all of them. He punched some runes and the screen cleared, then it projected a hololith of a planet in front of Mephiston’s face. He studied it, nodded, and turned to Rhacelus.

The fighting on the walkways had grown even more furious and Mephiston had to raise his voice to be heard.

‘The Glutted Scythe,’ he said, referring to an ancient manual of the Librarius, ‘pages twelve hundred to twelve hundred and fifty. Are you able to complete the fourth and fifth rituals?’

‘Of course, Chief Librarian,’ said Rhacelus. ‘My second sight grows as dim as yours, but I feel the warp currents as keenly as ever.’

Mephiston nodded and Rhacelus strode from the dais, his robes trailing through the fumes as he made for the battle below.

When Rhacelus had reached the lower levels of the bridge he marched out into the centre of the walkway and dropped to one knee, scratching something into the deck plating, whispering furiously. Veins of pale fire rippled across the walkway, passing beneath the feet of the embattled Blood Angels and shimmering across the walls of the bridge.

Up on the command dais, Mephiston was performing the same rite, linking his power to Rhacelus’. The light washed across walkways and spiralled around columns, until the whole chamber was lined with a tracery of psychic force. The air shimmered like a heat haze, and the blood thralls winced as aetheric currents jangled through their minds.

Across the bridge, display screens began flashing warnings and bleating alarms.

Mephiston nodded in satisfaction and then rose to his feet and looked through the unshielded oculus at the planet hoving into view. ‘Contact the enemy flagship,’ he said. ‘I wish to speak with their commander.’

The first officer saluted and staggered over to one of the navigational cradles, commanding a servitor to hail the enemy fleet.

‘My lord,’ said Castulo after a few seconds, shaking his head. ‘No answer. Perhaps if we–’

The noise of the battle suddenly ceased.

The necrons on the walkways had simply stopped moving, becoming motionless statues, their weapons still trained on the Blood Angels. Beyond the oculus the stars glittered back into view as the broadsides ceased.

A voice crackled through angel-winged vox-speakers in the alcoves overhead. It was a metallic scrape of grinding vowels, as cold and inhuman as the void. ‘Enemies of the regent,’ it said. ‘I am Lord Suphys, first herald of his majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal. Your time is short. You are permitted to beg the phaeron for forgiveness before we exterminate you.’

Mephiston paced back and forth across the command dais, lost in thought, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his force sword.

‘I am Lord Mephiston,’ he replied eventually, ‘Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels and servant of the immortal Emperor of Mankind.’

There was no reply. Empty static hummed through the vox-speakers.

Mephiston stared through the oculus, as though he could see the crew of the distant cruisers. ‘Are you aware of the military treatise known as the Zanakh Tablets?’

There were a few more seconds of wordless static, then the voice came through again.

‘I am aware of Zanakh.’

Mephiston stepped closer to the oculus.

‘In accordance with Zanakh’s fifth rule of engagement, as a high-ranking emissary of an Emperor, I am formally petitioning you for an audience with Menkhaz the Unmortal, your phaeron and regent.’

There was an unmistakable note of confusion in the next reply.

‘His victorious majesty will only acquaint you with the same facts, Blood Angel. You have trespassed. These are royal territories. You must die.’

‘You presume to answer for your phaeron?’ Mephiston started to pace again. ‘You presume to know his will?’

More silence. Longer this time. When the voice returned, it was as flat and mechanical as the first time it spoke.

‘I will formally petition his majesty the phaeron on your behalf, Blood Angel. I cannot say how soon you will receive a response. There are many matters of court to attend to before I will be able to raise this request.’

Mephiston was about to reply when the static cut off.

He looked up at the domed oculus. ‘How soon can we establish geostationary orbit with Morsus?’

The first officer shook his head. ‘Morsus, my lord?’

Mephiston waved at the planet that was quickly filling the oculus.

Castulo was grey with pain and there was blood pooling beneath his robes, but he leant over a display and tapped some runes.

‘Another hour, Chief Librarian, at least. Some of our primary engines have been damaged and we have limited ability to control our approach trajectory, but I think we can place the Blood Oath at high anchor. The gunnery decks have been blown apart though. We have no weapons batteries and no lance turrets. The void shields are failing. It will be like target practice for them.’

Mephiston nodded at the lights shimmering across the bridge. ‘There is more than one way to protect a ship, First Officer Castulo. The field Rhacelus and I have created will not hold forever, but I have also hobbled the xenos with their own bureaucracy.’ Mephiston strode away from the command dais. ‘I will return before they can think about firing on you again.’

Mephiston waved for the other Blood Angels to follow him. ‘To the embarkation deck. I need a closer look at Morsus.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Burning, broken and black, Morsus rolled into view. As the gunship dropped through the stratosphere, infernal light poured through its oculus, washing over Mephiston’s armour as he studied the lifeless world below. Seated beside the Chief Librarian were Epistolary Rhacelus and Brother-Lieutenant Servatus. In the rear of the gunship were the Primaris Marines of Sergeant Agorix’s Hellblaster squad. They were all watching the strange landscape passing beneath them. Forests of sapphire flame rippled across coal-dark plains, pooling in pitch valleys and washing up against tormented peaks. To most, it would have seemed an unwelcoming naetherworld, but to Mephiston it felt like home.

The ever-present dead drifted past him, quiet for a moment, flowing against the oculus like mist. Their storm of hate became a gentle squall, eddying around Mephiston as he looked out through the armoured glass. Sometimes he forgot that only he could see them. The tragic progeny of his wars were so clear to him, it was sometimes hard to accept that they were not real. This legion of hook-backed cadavers was as much a part of him now as his own scarred flesh. Something about Morsus had dulled their rage and their howls fell away as they studied the inferno below. Death-mask snarls grew calm and hate dimmed in eyeless pits.

‘There was an Imperial presence here,’ he said. Even amongst all this ugliness he could see the divine hand of the Emperor. As they dropped from orbit, he saw a lone tower, slicing up through the promethium clouds – an elegant spur of rockcrete, still clad in bits of Imperial statuary. The broken statues reminded him of the trinkets worn by his ghosts – those sad remnants of the things they loved in life.

He turned from the oculus to the spirits. Some clutched valuable jewellery or fine robes, but most carried mementos too obscure to mean anything to anyone else: a child’s toy or a fragment of clothing. It is odd what anchors us to the materium, he thought, clutching the locket he had taken from the dead Guardsman on Hydrus Ulterior. It was a simple oval, engraved with a lion’s head. The cover had been torn away to reveal a faded pict capture. He had seen countless such objects on the corpses he left behind, but for some inexplicable reason this one troubled him. He tucked it back beneath his robes.

‘Bastion mines,’ whined Vidiens, its thin, grating voice filled with awe. ‘Emperor be praised. Yes. Then this must be one of the worlds that we colonised before the arrival of the necrons.’

‘Mines.’ Mephiston studied the landscape unfurling below. The slender tower was almost as beautiful as the spires of his Librarium on Baal, wreathed in vast crumbling eagle wings and venerable, hooded statues. ‘The name does not do them justice.’

‘True, my lord,’ replied Vidiens. ‘Their beauty reflects their importance. The Revenant Stars were once a jewel in the Emperor’s throne. Whole planets veined with holy promethium.’ Vidiens adjusted the oculus and schematics rolled across the screen, dividing the landscape into a grid of vertical shafts and horizontal galleries. ‘Morsus is uninhabitable now, of course. Toxic. Barren. Infested with xenos. But still a treasure trove. A honeycomb of tunnels and pits. The planet is run through with promethium-bearing lodes. And they are unusually plentiful. The seams are hundreds of feet wide. Some extend for many miles.’

‘If the mines were so valuable,’ said Servatus, ‘why did we abandon them?’

There was a rattle of spinning cogs as Vidiens’ mechanical wings carried it closer. The wizened little servitor was cradling the brass salver under one arm, but it unfolded another of its multi-jointed limbs and pointed at the tower. ‘The divine territories of Morsus were victims of the Great Rift, Lord Rhacelus. Before the galaxy was split by the Cicatrix Maledictum, the bastion mines of Morsus were considered a site of utmost religious and strategic importance. There was an Imperial decree. The High Lords of Terra had no intention of abandoning such a prize. There was a glorious crusade to drive the xenos from their tombs. The local garrisons were bolstered by Astra Militarum regiments. Half of the sector’s troop reserves were deployed to recapture these mines.’ Vidiens raised the brass plate. ‘As the Chief Librarian recorded in his great scheme.’

Mephiston traced a finger over pictures near the edge of the salver – rows of corpses, tiny, stylised men, wrapped in winding sheets, coins over their eyes. They were all contained within a vile, xenos glyph. It was the ankh of the necrons – the symbol of their long-dead king.

‘The Revenant Crusade,’ said Mephiston. ‘It was abandoned and the garrison was massacred.’

‘A needless catastrophe,’ said Rhacelus. ‘If they had called on Commander Dante for our aid, the world could have been saved. The necrons were unsure of themselves when they first emerged. We could have easily dealt with them.’

The gunship jolted, hard, rocked by turbulence, and Mephiston’s ghosts recalled their purpose, clawing at his armour. Pained, furious faces spiralled around him, spitting curses.

‘Make for the tower,’ he said, ignoring the howling dead. He knew the pilot would not hear the screams that filled his mind, so he resisted the urge to shout over them, keeping his voice low. ‘Let us see what the xenos have done to this world.’

‘My lord,’ called the pilot, sounding surprised. ‘There’s something down there – an Imperial signal. The encryption protocols are ancient but they’re not xenos.’

Morsus was lashed by storms that would have burned the skin from a mortal man. Even encased in battleplate, the Blood Angels had to lean forward into the scalding tempest, struggling to stay upright as they clambered over blackened rocks. They followed the remains of an old transitway, a ghostly reminder of the long-gone civilisation that had once covered the planet, but its surface was buckled and uneven – reclaimed by the planet’s death throes. The burned-out skeletons of groundcars and ore-haulers jutted up from the dust, like the fossils of long-dead beasts.

Agorix Squad had spread out to form a semicircle on the orders of Lieutenant Servatus, surveying the scorched landscape through the viewfinders of their plasma incinerators, checking for signs of movement.

Mephiston, Epistolary Rhacelus and Lieutenant Servatus gathered behind the rest of the Blood Angels, surveying the horizon from up on a fist-shaped lump of irradiated rock. Mephiston dropped to one knee, brushing some ash from the ground. There were no blood thralls to accompany them – they could not have endured the fierce atmosphere – but the winged shape of Vidiens was just visible as it struggled to stay aloft in the whirling, ionised fumes.

As Mephiston scratched at the ground, a cold light splayed up between his armour-clad fingers. Under its blackened crust, the ground was pulsing with a phosphorescent blue glow. The other two Blood Angels stepped closer to watch as Mephiston used his combat knife to chip away the surface of more rocks. All of them had the same burning, blue-white core.

‘Nothing could live here, my lord,’ said Lieutenant Servatus. ‘The pilot must have been wrong. The ground is completely irradiated.’

Mephiston tried to reach out with his thoughts but the numbness he felt on the Blood Oath had become even more pronounced since they made planetfall. It was as though someone had encased his mind in lead. He wanted to claw at his skull and let the light back in. He could not even see into the thoughts of the lieutenant standing right beside him.

‘Can you see anything, Rhacelus?’ he asked, looking up into the storm.

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘This place is a pit. I see nothing.’

As Mephiston climbed to his feet, one of the battle-brothers of the Hellblaster squad hurried back to Lieutenant Servatus. He held up an auspex, the emerald display flickering through the miasma. ‘Sir. More of the strange signals. A few miles north from here. They still do not look to be xenos in origin.’

Lieutenant Servatus took the device. He peered at the runes. ‘Beneath the ground,’ he said, turning to face Mephiston and Rhacelus.

Mephiston tried again to reach out with his mind, but the blindness refused to give.

‘Could Imperial citizens have survived from the days of the Revenant Crusade?’ asked Servatus.

‘It is irrelevant,’ said Mephiston. ‘I am here to find the device that dimmed my vision. I will disable it and we will leave. We have not come here to exhume the dead.’

Servatus nodded, humbled. ‘My lord. Of course.’

Rhacelus took the auspex and peered at the screen. He tapped it a few times and then handed it to Vidiens, who was still fluttering overhead. ‘What do you make of these vertical structures?’

‘Mine shafts. And the horizontal lines are the galleries that spur off them. It’s the remains of a bastion mine. A big one too, by the looks of it. All of the planet’s manufactorums and hab-districts were divided into administrative regions called cantons. This looks to be the capital of the twelfth canton.’ It paused to wipe dust from the screen. ‘Some of the fiercest fighting happened here. It looks like this was the mine that held out longest against the necrons. There are records of distress calls as recent as two centuries ago. It was the last place to fall silent.’

‘I do not care about mines,’ said Mephiston. ‘Locate the centre of the xenos activity.’

Vidiens shook its head, scrolling through the lines of glowing runes. ‘Impossible to be sure, my lord. There are at least three hundred and fifty major centres of xenos activity on Morsus. I could not say which is the heart of their operations.’

‘Chief Librarian,’ said Lieutenant Servatus. ‘If there are survivors just a few miles from here, they might be able to explain the disposition of the necron troops.’

Mephiston said nothing but Rhacelus nodded. ‘If anyone is alive down there, they might still be sane enough to know the history of the war.’

There was a crackle of vox chatter in Servatus’ helmet. ‘Chief Librarian,’ he said, gripping the handle of his power sword. ‘Hostiles. Approaching from the east in large numbers.’

Everyone looked at Mephiston.

‘Do we fight them here, Chief Librarian?’ asked Rhacelus.

Mephiston shook his head. ‘If we stop to battle every enemy detachment this will take weeks. How far to the bastion mine, Vidiens?’

‘We could be there in twelve hours’ march, barring any delays.’

Mephiston looked at Servatus. ‘Make it six.’

The lieutenant nodded. ‘Squad, advance!’ he barked, sprinting down the slope towards his men.

They tore through the fumes, racing down the charred transitway and pounding up the ragged slopes. After a while, they entered a valley where the black crust of the ground had broken away in slabs, allowing columns of cold, subterranean light to slice upwards, flashing across the underside of the clouds. It looked like they were running through a forest of cerulean spires. They were dwarfed by the light show – tiny silhouettes weaving between vast, radiant columns.

The Blood Angels kept up a furious pace for several hours, but Mephiston began to wonder if it would be fast enough. The atmosphere was even more toxic than he had first imagined. His battleplate’s cogitator was droning a constant series of warnings and statistics as the suit struggled to cope with the fierce radiation. He glanced down and noticed that the blood-red paint on his armour was bubbling and peeling away from the sculpted plates. The Adeptus Astartes were bred for such hostile environments. They could survive almost any atmosphere for a while. But Mephiston had never seen a world so fierce that its atmosphere alone could warp his power armour. He and Rhacelus had many ways to protect themselves, but he did not wish to find out what would happen to Servatus and his Hellblaster squad if their armour gave way.

They crossed the valley and pounded up the far slope, leaving the forest of light behind as they entered an area of broad, charred flatlands.

‘Necrons again,’ snapped one of Servatus’ men. ‘And they’re close. Approaching fast, from the south.’

A mountainous thunderhead rolled across the ground towards them, more shadow than cloud and moving against the wind. An undulating whine came from the same direction, keening and mournful, like the howling of wolves.

‘Wait,’ continued the battle-brother. ‘They are not actually heading for us. It looks like they will pass by. I’m not sure they are even aware of us. I think–’

The shadow suddenly accelerated, rushing across the plateau at unnatural speed. What had seemed to be several minutes away was now going to envelop them in seconds.

‘Battle formation,’ snapped Lieutenant Servatus, dropping to one knee and drawing his pistol.

There was a roar of igniting plasma cells as the Blood Angels braced themselves and clicked their guns into life.

Mephiston strode out ahead of the squad and drew his force sword. Vitarus shimmered with arcane energy as Mephiston levelled the blade at the approaching void. Psychic flame blossomed around him and he became a point of light, dwarfed by a mountain of darkness.

‘Let me see them, Vitarus,’ he said, addressing the sword in respectful tones.

Blood-light radiated from the blade, threading the gloom with crimson and revealing dozens of small one-man vehicles, screaming through the air towards them. This was the source of the howling noise. Each aircraft was built around a slender, scythe-shaped frame, a hook of corroded metal cradling a single rigid figure. Necron warriors – gleaming metal puppets with ghost light trapped in their skulls.

None of the aircraft were actually flying towards the Blood Angels. They were speeding for a rocky outcrop on the horizon, looping and spiralling in a bewildering display of aerial acrobatics.

‘Fire!’ cried Lieutenant Servatus and the air crackled with arcs of plasma. Several shots hit home, tearing necron craft into lumps of molten slag and kicking them back into the other flyers.

Some of the aircraft looped round and returned fire, spitting lances of gauss energy at the Blood Angels, but most continued as though nothing had happened, rushing on towards the distant outcrop.

Mephiston reached through the walls of reality, allowing himself a taste of the warp. His vision was dimmed but his power was not. The necrons were bloodless lumps of metal, long dead by any normal definition, so many of his incantations were useless. He would need other, less subtle means of harnessing the immaterium. As reality peeled away, Mephiston honed in on a single fragment of the immaterium and locked it into Vitarus.

Mephiston slammed the door on his madness and sliced Vitarus down with a word of release. Warp fire ripped through the gloaming.

The necron vanguard detonated in a spray of molten metal. Mephiston staggered backwards, almost thrown from his feet by the ferocity of the blast.

The necrons continued hurtling past, but they now had a scrapyard of exploding aircraft hanging in front of them. They seemed unable to adjust their unfathomable trajectories and there was a scream of tearing metal as aircraft smashed into aircraft, filling the sky with more flaming metal.

The Blood Angels fired again. They had grown used to the strange motion of their targets and every shot was true, turning more necrons into smoking shrapnel.

Mephiston lowered Vitarus, confused. Most of the necrons were still hurtling past, ignoring them completely.

Agorix Squad fired again, knocking more of the craft from the sky, but after a few more seconds the necrons were gone, spiralling off into the darkness.

‘More, to the west,’ said Lieutenant Servatus and the Blood Angels dropped into battle crouches, raising their guns.

There was another shadow, just a few miles west of them, speckled with points of silver – more of the necron craft, weaving and rolling in drunken spirals.

Mephiston held up a restraining hand as the xenos ships rushed on their way, headed for an empty patch of ground at the edge of a crevasse.

‘They have another target in mind,’ he said.

The clouds flashed emerald as the necrons launched a blistering barrage at the ground, kicking up smoke and dust as their guns disintegrated rocks and the fossilised remains of trees.

‘A training exercise?’ asked Servatus.

Rhacelus shook his head. ‘Necrons do not train, they program. And they must have seen us. What are they doing?’

‘Wait,’ ordered Mephiston. With a word of summoning, he formed wings from the shadows and rose up into the air, staring through the haze at the strange behaviour of the necrons. Their manoeuvres were complex but not random. They were deploying deliberate, careful tactics as they fired at nothing.

He dropped lightly back to the ground and his wings vanished. ‘Their behaviour is odd, but I have read accounts of similar instances. Necrons spend thousands of years mouldering in their crypts before being reanimated. Their technology is advanced enough to preserve their metal shells, but preserving minds is another matter. Their bodies do not rot, but their sanity often does.’

Rhacelus shook his head in disbelief. ‘So they’ve won the war for a planet and lost the battle for their minds.’

‘Perhaps,’ replied Mephiston, watching the distant gunfire. ‘But if the necrons are sane, the Blood Oath may be in danger. The ceasefire I brokered will not hold if my presence is reported to their phaeron. And the shield you and I summoned will not hold forever. We must move fast.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘For the glory of the twelfth,’ said Sergeant Llourens, triggering the blast shutter and stepping out from the mine. Furious, searing wind sliced into her and she staggered, almost falling back through the doorway. Her wiry frame was encased in a filthy, charred rad-suit and her face was hidden behind a rebreather, but she knew she had only seconds to perform her mission. If she was too slow, Morsus would eat into her bones and she would die, painfully, before the day was over.

She clambered out into the acrid air. The stink of burning polymers hit her, even through the rebreather, and she almost gagged, but she knew that the others would be watching, so she climbed calmly up onto the ruins of an old transitway bridge and stood up, in full view of the enemy.

Half a mile away a shoal of glimmering, silver shapes whirled through the clouds – a squadron of enemy aircraft. The fighters made a tremulous moaning sound as wind sliced through their hook-shaped fuselages. It sounded like the sky was weeping.

The ancients were engaged in a furious attack, lashing the barren ground with luminous arcs of gauss fire. The bruise-dark clouds flashed green, lit up by the weapons storm. There was nothing to attack, of course. There never was. The ancients had spent days attacking an empty crevasse, hurling furious volleys at an unconcerned wall of rock.

Llourens did not pause to consider the lunacy of the scene. She could already feel the Morsusian air eating through her rubber suit. She turned her back on the ancients, briefly showed her rear to them, then dived back through the blast shutters.

Eskol slammed the doors and fell back across the floor of the mine, laughing hysterically. Ghadd managed to stay upright by leaning against one of the iron roof supports, but his laughter was just as uncontrollable. Both the troopers lowered their lasrifles as they rocked back and forth, howling with mirth.

‘Rattus rattus!’ cried Eskol. He was a brute, over six feet tall and built like an armoured groundcar, but, for a moment, Llourens was reminded of the boy she grew up with.

‘Rattus rattus!’ howled Ghadd. He was the opposite of Eskol – almost as slight as Llourens and not much taller. With a hunched back and spindly frame, he was the living embodiment of their regimental nickname, the Grave Rats.

‘For the twelfth,’ he said, drawing a flask and handing it to Llourens.

She removed her mask to take a swig and heat blossomed in her chest. Not the lethal heat of radioactive clouds, but the good, invigorating heat of brandy. ‘Rattus rattus,’ she muttered, grinning at the inanity of what she had just done. To be so ridiculous, even for a moment, was a kind of escape.

‘Did they see you?’ asked Eskol, his voice still shaking.

‘The ancients?’ Her heart was racing and she could not entirely hide the tremor in her voice, but she tried to sound dismissive. ‘What does it matter? They were ignoring us centuries ago, when we were actually worth fighting. They’re certainly not interested in me.’

Eskol gave a groan of mock concern and threw one of his arms over her shoulder. ‘I’m interested.’

She punched him, hard, in the stomach and he fell away, bellowing with a mixture of laughter and pain. His lasrifle clattered across the shattered floor and Ghadd had to leap forwards to stop it falling through an opening. The loss of a weapon was a capital offence. None of them liked the idea of facing a commissar when they returned to the Kysloth barracks.

‘Let’s get moving,’ Llourens said, checking that her suit was properly fastened. ‘I need to talk to Captain Elias about this. If they keep attacking that ridge, there will be even more cave-ins. The ancients might not care about us, but they’re doing a good job of making these tunnels unusable.’

They all became more sober as they considered what they had seen over the last few days.

‘Three cave-ins in as many miles,’ said Ghadd, shaking his head. ‘If things carry on like this, the barracks will end up cut off from the rest of the mines.’

They fell quiet for a moment, all trace of humour gone. All of them knew what that would mean for the garrison. If they could no longer reach the promethium deposits, they would no longer be able to fuel their generators. Without generators, they would die.

‘Let’s get back to Kysloth,’ said Llourens. ‘Perhaps I can make Captain Elias listen this time.’

They climbed easily down into a lower tunnel, slipping through rents in the old mine shafts and sliding down the rusted remains of ventilation pipes. A series of crooked galleries and burned-out mines unfolded before them. To an off-worlder it would have seemed an impassable maze, but this was the only world they had ever known and they traversed it easily and quickly.

As they descended, the tunnels became lighter rather than darker. Veins of promethium ore leaked cool, blue light up through the vertical shafts. It glinted in the lenses of their rebreather hoods, lighting up the faces painted on their masks – stylised, white rats.

The heat grew more fierce as they descended, too, but they kept up their pace and soon returned to their prize. No one ever ventured out this far east from Kysloth, but Llourens felt a glimmer of guilt as she saw the unattended ore-hauler. It was only a small mine trolley, but it was laden with promethium barrels. She should not have left such a treasure unguarded, but Eskol knew she could not resist a challenge. They had been listening to the moronic manoeuvres of the ancients for days, unable to sleep because of the endless pounding of their guns. Llourens was tormented by the fact that the ancients were killing them without even realising, so she had jumped at the chance to show her disapproval, even in such an absurd way.

They checked the fastenings were all intact and then carefully placed their shoulders against the back of the wagon.

‘Careful over this next gallery,’ rumbled Eskol. ‘It’s not stable since that last cave-in. See how it slopes to the side now? It could give way at any time.’

The journey had been tortuous. Once-familiar stretches of mine had been altered and weakened by the tremors caused by the ancients’ manoeuvres on the surface. They had to tread with far more caution than usual, unsure which floors would hold and which would not. A mistake would be fatal. One sudden jolt would be enough to ignite the whole load and there was enough unrefined promethium in the barrels to rip a hundred-yard hole in the mine.

They trudged on, steering the trolley around holes in the floor and back onto its tracks.

‘I know you think I’m too good for you,’ muttered Eskol as he took the whole weight for a moment, straining as he lifted the cart over a shattered beam. ‘But I would be prepared to lower my standards.’

He glanced sideways at her as he lowered the cart. ‘You’re not entirely ugly.’

Usually, Llourens would have replied with a barbed comment, but the humour was strained and she could think of nothing funny to say.

‘For Throne’s sake,’ said Ghadd. His face was just inches from Llourens’ and she could see his scowl of concentration through the lenses of his goggles. ‘Leave it. If she tries to hit you, we’ll all end up as meat paste.’

The final approach to the Kysloth barracks was the most dangerous. They wheeled the trolley into the next chamber and reached the remains of a narrow chute. The lift cages had collapsed centuries ago, but the engineers of the Sabine 12th were an ingenious lot and they had rigged up a system of pulleys and gurneys. Iron cables hung down into the brightness, fastened securely to a jerry-rigged headframe – a pyramid of metal struts, twenty feet tall and welded into place at the top of the shaft.

‘Is it still sound?’ asked Ghadd.

‘It will have to be,’ replied Llourens.

The three troopers hardly dared breathe as they fixed the cables to the sides of the trolley, locked the pulley and gently pushed it out over the void.

The cables held and Llourens grinned. She looked at Eskol and Ghadd and saw from their eyes that they were smiling too.

‘Who gets to ride?’ asked Eskol. One of them would need to descend on the trolley so it could be unfastened when it reached the next tunnel.

‘You’re too fat,’ said Ghadd. ‘Think how much blubber you’d generate if it went off.’ He stepped towards the gently swinging trolley. ‘Besides, I have a feeling–’

The mine shook, as though it were laughing along with them. They all froze as another grinding tremor echoed through the tunnels, scattering chunks of plascrete across the floor and agitating the dust into a series of little tornados.

For a moment, none of them spoke, staring in silence at the promethium tanks, waiting to see if they would explode.

The tremor died away and the tanks remained intact.

Ghadd backed slowly away from the trolley. ‘That one sounded different,’ he whispered, as though even a raised voice could be enough to kill them.

Llourens looked up the shaft into the rolling shadows. ‘Something landing on the surface, maybe?’

‘Ancients?’ asked Eskol. His tone of voice made it clear that he did not think so.

‘What else could it be?’ asked Ghadd, looking at Llourens.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘It must be the ancients.’

The other two stared at her, then looked up into the darkness.

‘You’re crazy,’ she muttered, but she was just as intrigued as they were.

There was another moment of expectant silence, then she shook her head and sighed, looking up the shaft. ‘Let’s take a quick look from one of the upper galleries. We’ll have to be quick though. We’ve spent too long in the upper tunnels already. I don’t want to end up pushing two glowing corpses back on this thing.’ She nodded at the trolley. ‘We’ll need to get this back on the tracks. We can’t leave it swinging about like that.’

There was another low rumble, gentler than the first but enough to make them back away until it ceased.

‘Definitely on the surface,’ said Ghadd, his eyes gleaming behind his mask. ‘The first sounded like something landing and the second sounded like it lifted off again.’

‘The ancients don’t go about on the surface,’ said Eskol.

He was right. Apart from their deranged aerial bombardments, the ancients only ever emerged from the very lowest levels of the mines. They rose like the revenants they were, from some subterranean pit even deeper than the deepest mine shafts.

‘Quickly then,’ said Llourens, feeling a strange pulse of excitement.

They hauled the trolley gently back onto its mangled tracks and Ghadd used a few of the cables to fasten it in place for extra stability. Then they grabbed the cables and climbed silently up into the blackness.

The Sabine 12th had no need for maps or schematics. They knew every cut and pump station, every mangled cage for miles around the Kysloth barracks. They vaulted confidently up through the pipes and pulleys, clambering over charred rock and rusted chains as they raced for the upper levels.

Llourens waved for silence as they entered a factorum near the top of the mine complex. They were still a few dozen feet below the surface, but close enough for their rad-suits to bark warnings.

‘We must be quick,’ she muttered, more to herself than the others. What am I doing? she wondered, tasting that familiar burned plastic smell of the Morsusian air. It was risky in the extreme to come so near the surface a second time. One strong gust of ionised air could rip through their suits. If an ash storm kicked up, they would be dead in seconds.

She unclipped her magnoculars from her belt and hurried through an old warehouse. There were remnants of crates and workbenches scattered across the floor and everything was draped in a pale robe of ash.

Eskol and Ghadd unslung their lasrifles from their backs and kept them trained on the large double doors at the far end of the warehouse.

Something moved in the shadows and the Grave Rats whirled around, levelling their guns at the source of the sound.

A grotesque shape lumbered into view. It was roughly humanoid, but freakishly misproportioned – a giant, over seven feet tall, so powerfully built that it made even Eskol look slight. Its shoulders were unnaturally broad and its arms were like a pair of thick, iron cables. The creature was naked but for a loincloth and its flesh was a purple mass of scar tissue. Every inch of its skin was rippled, a glossy record of horrific burns. Despite its charred skin, the creature stood proudly, exuding a fierce vitality. Its face was dominated by the strangeness of its eyes. They were disproportionately large and completely colourless – two white orbs, rolling in a nest of angry, ruddy scars.

Llourens and the other two laughed with relief and lowered their guns.

‘What’s an ogryn doing up here?’ said Ghadd, looking around for more abhumans.

Eskol grimaced and gently steered Ghadd away from the creature as it sniffed the air and stepped a little closer to them.

‘Maybe it heard the same thing we did?’ he suggested.

The creature followed and the three troopers backed away.

‘Don’t let it touch you,’ growled Eskol, gripping his lasrifle.

‘Just keep moving,’ said Llourens, placing her hand on his gun and lowering it again. ‘It has no business with us.’

‘Who knows what their business is?’ muttered Eskol, but he did as ordered and continued on towards the doors, throwing the abhuman a warning glance as he left.

Llourens led them into the cellars of a long, narrow chamber. It was a changing house, one of the buildings where the ogryns used to don their mining gear. The cellar walls had caved in long ago and they were able to cross its entire length by clambering over the downed walls.

‘It’s following us,’ said Eskol, waving back the way they had come.

Llourens looked back and saw the ogryn stepping slowly through the ruins, stooping to fit its massive frame through the same gaps they had climbed through. It was still sniffing the air, tilting its head from side to side as it walked, like a dog hearing the call of its master.

‘It can’t do you any harm,’ she snapped, irritated by how nervous Eskol always got around abhumans.

‘Unless it touches me,’ he muttered.

‘Relax,’ said Ghadd. ‘I met a woman in Kysloth who–’

Eskol raised an eyebrow.

‘Not that woman. I spoke to a woman who once spent two months working right next to an ogryn. She never came down with any kind of rad-sickness.’

‘Rubbish,’ replied Eskol as they reached the end of the room and stopped. ‘When did you ever speak to a woman?’

Llourens gave a despairing sigh then nodded to the hatch overhead. ‘I’ve been out there once today. I’m damned if I’m going up again.’ She held out her magnoculars.

Eskol and Ghadd stared at each other in silence. Then Eskol grabbed the magnoculars and hauled himself up the rungs of the iron ladder that led to the hatch overhead. He paused on the top rung and adjusted the fittings of his suit and hood, then waved the other two back. As he looked down, he caught sight of the giant abhuman. It had crossed the chamber and was looking up at him.

‘Don’t let that near me,’ he growled. Then he turned back to the hatch, shoved it open a fraction and looked out through the magnoculars.

‘Ash clouds,’ he muttered.

‘Get down!’ snapped Llourens and Ghadd simultaneously.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mean a storm. It’s… Something has kicked up the ash. Something has–’

‘Throne of Terra,’ he said, his voice oddly tight.

‘What do you see?’ asked Ghadd.

‘Too long!’ cried Llourens, unnerved by the fear in Eskol’s voice. She hauled him down, leapt up the ladder and closed the hatch.

When she dropped down, Eskol was sitting on a pile of sacks, looking dazed.

‘What did you see?’ asked Ghadd, all trace of humour gone from his voice.

Eskol shook his head.

‘Hey!’ snapped Ghadd. ‘You saw something out there. What was it?’

Llourens remained quiet. She could see the fear in Eskol’s eyes and her curiosity suddenly vanished. She didn’t want to know what he had seen on the surface.

‘Star Warriors,’ said a voice. It was a low, guttural growl, as though a large animal were attempting to use words.

Llourens turned to the ogryn in surprise. ‘Star Warriors?’ Llourens did not understand the words, but the reverence in the ogryn’s voice intrigued her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Sergeant!’ hissed Ghadd, shaking his head.

Llourens blushed behind her mask and nodded, backing away from the creature. Discourse with an ogryn was strictly forbidden, and for good reason. Ignoring the risks of rad-sickness, the ogryns’ mutations were a barely tolerated deviation. In previous generations there had been pogroms and purges. There were too few humans left alive now for such luxuries, but she was committing an act of heresy by addressing the creature.

‘Let’s go,’ she muttered, shocked by her own behaviour. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ she added, looking back at Ghadd.

He shrugged and gave her an awkward smile, but they both knew she had crossed a line.

‘What did you see?’ she asked Eskol again.

Eskol shook his head. ‘Giants.’ He nodded at the ogryn. ‘As big as that thing but dressed in suits of armour.’ He looked up at Llourens, his eyes strained. ‘I’ve never seen anything like them.’

‘Star Warriors,’ growled the ogryn, turning to leave. ‘Sons of gods.’

‘You left it behind?’ Captain Elias leant back in his chair, looking at Llourens with an expression of baffled amusement. ‘An entire trolley of fuel tanks?’

She nodded, sensing Eskol and Ghadd shuffling awkwardly either side of her.

Captain Elias whistled. ‘Impressive,’ he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You have excelled yourself, sergeant.’

The captain’s chamber resembled the back office of an abandoned museum. The walls were hung with what looked like an entire armoury. Ceremonial sabres, arranged in fans, sat next to obsolete lasrifles and medals in display cabinets. It must have once been an impressive collection but now, like everything else on Morsus, it was draped in ash and dust. The captain’s uniform was as faded and stained as the rugs that hid his splintered floorboards. There was a window directly behind his desk, housed in an elaborate golden frame, cast in the shape of heraldic beasts and snapping banners, but the gilt had peeled away and everything was tinted with the harsh, phosphorescent glow of promethium ore.

‘Sir, we had to return as fast as possible,’ she said.

Captain Elias raised an eyebrow. ‘You had to return as fast as possible, without the thing you were sent to find.’

She struggled to hide her frustration. ‘Tunnels are collapsing right across the mine, sir. If we don’t do anything soon, there will be no safe route to the promethium stores. We’ll be trapped in here.’

Captain Elias leant back in his chair and waved his hand vaguely at the square outside his window. Lines of troops were marching back and forth in a desultory, sloppy mockery of a parade. ‘We must not rush things, sergeant. The regiment has not been on the offensive in any of our lifetimes. I’m waiting to discuss tactics with the general when he returns to Kysloth.’

Llourens had heard this answer several times over the last month and she felt like slamming her fists on the desk. She bit back an angry reply, and kept her voice calm as she continued.

‘There was something else, sir. We saw something out there.’ She hesitated. ‘Have you ever heard anyone speak of Star Warriors?’

The captain shook his head and laughed in disbelief. ‘What? What did you say?’

‘Star Warriors,’ she said.

‘We saw a–’ began Eskol.

‘Did I ask you to speak, trooper?’ barked the captain, then he broke into a series of violent, rasping coughs. When the coughing ceased, he dabbed at his mouth with a handkerchief and Llourens saw spots of crimson. As he took a moment to catch his breath, Llourens noticed how painfully thin the captain was. She tried to imagine him as he must be beneath his thick, starched uniform. Little more than a skeleton, she guessed.

Once his breathing was under control, the captain gave Eskol a warning glance and then addressed Llourens again. ‘Tell me what you saw, sergeant,’ he said.

‘Sir, we were half a mile from the gatehouse near the twenty-eighth incline, near the shaft station – the one with the working gurneys.’

The captain grimaced, spat something into his handkerchief, then nodded for her to continue.

‘There was another tremor and this one didn’t sound like the ancients. They’re still bombing the south ridge, but this was something different. We approached the surface and I allowed Trooper Eskol to take a brief look outside.’

The captain shook his head at this but said nothing.

‘Eskol saw warriors, sir, walking on the surface.’

‘Ancients, you mean?’

‘No, sir, humans. Or at least…’ She glanced at Eskol and then back at the captain. ‘They were like humans, but big, as big as ogryns.’

‘They were ogryns then? Those vermin survive everywhere.’

‘No. Not blistermen. They wore decorative suits of armour and carried guns.’ She spoke quickly. ‘And I believe they’ve only just landed on Morsus. I think that was the cause of the strange tremor.’

The captain gave a weary shake of his head. Then another violent coughing fit rocked his frail body. Still coughing, he lifted a chipped enamel cup from his desk and sipped, filling the room with the smell of strong spirits. Once he was able to speak again he said, ‘Sergeant Llourens, if you’re foolish enough to approach the surface, and inhale Emperor-knows-what, you can expect to see all sorts of wonderful things.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Shortly before your mind runs from your ears.’

He was about to wave them away, when something made him pause.

‘What made you refer to them as Star Warriors? Where did you hear that name?’

Llourens hesitated, then spoke quietly. ‘From an ogryn, sir.’

‘You’ve been talking to blistermen?’ The captain’s voice took on a more serious tone.

‘It spoke to us, sir,’ said Ghadd. ‘Eskol was telling us what he’d seen and the ogryn interrupted – talking about gods and servants. Sergeant Llourens didn’t talk back to it.’

Llourens was about to speak up, unhappy that Ghadd was covering for her, when the captain leant across his desk.

‘What did they look like, these Star Warriors?’ He pushed a dataslate and stylus towards Eskol.

Eskol hesitated and looked at Llourens.

‘Draw them, man!’ roared the captain, his voice surprisingly powerful for such a wasted ruin. He began coughing into his handkerchief again, but waved for Eskol to proceed.

Eskol grabbed the stylus and sketched out a few figures – hulking, heavily armoured soldiers, wearing backpacks and carrying large, two-handed guns. He paused to look at his sketch, then tapped his head, grinning as he remembered another detail. ‘They were all marked with an icon. A regimental badge. Wings,’ he muttered as he drew the symbol, ‘around a blood drop.’

The captain ceased his coughing and stared at Eskol’s drawing. The sneer faded from his face. ‘By the Throne,’ he mumbled, picking up the slate and shaking his head.

He switched on the vox-unit on his desk. ‘Get me Colonel Sartor,’ he said. ‘We might have a situation.’

‘Colonel Sartor was last seen inspecting the western barricades, Captain Elias,’ came the garbled reply, half drowned out by bursts of white noise and popping sounds. ‘He won’t return for at least a week.’

‘The western…?’ The captain looked pained and rapped his knuckles against his head. ‘What does he think we can defend the western barricades with? There are no men left. Never mind. I’ll deal with this myself. When he returns, tell him I’ve headed out to inspect the eastern perimeter with Sergeant Llourens.’ He glanced at her. ‘I need to know if she’s a heretic, a prophet or just an idiot.’

‘Captain?’ crackled the voice on the vox-unit.

‘Never mind,’ said the captain. ‘Idiot is the most likely answer.’ He took his rad-suit and rebreather mask down from a shelf and nodded at Eskol and Ghadd to fasten it for him. ‘Just tell the colonel this – Llourens thinks we have guests from off-world. Adeptus Astartes guests at that.’

The captain commandeered whoever he could find skulking around the barracks. He had been gathering troops for months from the outlying garrisons, claiming he was planning an offensive. Llourens wished she could believe him but she knew it was a lie. He was mustering troops because he was afraid, and growing more afraid with every day that passed. Colonel Sartor was even worse, hiding from his own troops in case they demanded action.

As Captain Elias led them all back into the mine’s eastern shaft, Llourens considered what a pitiful sight they would make if they did have to welcome warriors from another world. The ash storms had grown far worse over the last few years. The number of deaths from rad-poisoning had soared and those who hadn’t died were in a pitiful state.

And yet, despite all of this, Llourens still cradled a tiny ember of hope – not of victory, perhaps, but that she might one day find some kind of purpose, some way to make a difference. Something about the ogryn’s awed voice had breathed life into that ember. What kind of warrior could walk on the surface of Morsus? And, if they could do that, what else might they be capable of?

Captain Elias stumbled as he led them into the mine, squinting into the blue-white glare, and behind him came a hundred or so equally stooped, ill-looking wretches. The banner of the Sabine 12th fluttered weakly over their heads as they trudged after the captain, looking as though they could barely carry the weight of their lasrifles.

The captain paused to speak to a vox-officer, then they left the barracks and headed back down the tracks into the mine.

He glanced at Llourens, sneering. ‘It will be hilarious if you’re right, and it really is the Adeptus Astartes.’ He laughed. ‘Only three centuries too late.’

CHAPTER SIX

As they approached its gates, Mephiston saw just how magnificent the bastion mine must once have been. Whatever prosaic industry lay beneath, above the ground it was an angel-shrouded monolith – a glorious tribute to the artistry of the Imperium. Even now, shattered and halved in height, it looked more like the spur of a mountain than a man-made building. Harsh, Morsusian winds had eroded the fortress’ pediments and parapets, lashing them with toxic blasts, rounding the edges to a smooth, indistinct mass of crumbling rock, but that only seemed to lend it more grandeur.

Mephiston led the Blood Angels through the remains of a triumphal arch and on into a broad, square parade ground, bordered by distant terraces and rows of dark windows that had long ago lost their glass, causing them to resemble a forest of sightless eyes staring at the Space Marines. The parade ground was littered with crumbling tank skeletons and the remains of other armoured vehicles, and at its centre was a pedestal of a long-gone statue. Only a pair of colossal, crumbling feet remained of whichever saint had once stood there.

Lieutenant Servatus ordered his men to fan out through the rubble and search for enemies, but the ruins seemed utterly lifeless – the only noise came from the wind, moaning through the broken masonry.

Mephiston climbed stairs that must once have led to a doorway, but were now just a broken limb of stone leading to nothing. He peered at the statue’s feet then nodded and pointed. ‘Between the toes of the statue,’ he said quietly into the vox.

Rhacelus hurried up the steps and stood beside Mephiston, staring through the junkyard of broken machines.

‘Wait,’ said Mephiston, his voice humming over the vox-network. The light was flashing in a deliberate pattern.

‘That’s an Imperial signal,’ said Rhacelus, turning to Servatus and waving for the other Blood Angels to approach.

The two Librarians left the shattered staircase, climbed up onto the pedestal and approached the statue’s feet, with Servatus and the others following behind.

At the base of the statue was the broken remains of a doorway – a broad arch that must once have housed a pair of tall, heavy doors. The doors were long gone, the doorway just a gaping mouth leading to a wall of shadows. The light came from within.

Mephiston held up a hand, signalling for the others to wait as he stepped closer, sword raised, and approached the source of the light. Through the doorway he saw, jutting from the exposed, iron supports overhead, the remains of a mirror – a single piece of broken glass, lodged in a joist. It blinked at him as he approached, reflecting a light that he now saw came up from the lower levels, from an empty lift shaft.

He tried to send his thoughts down the shaft, to reach out with his mind, but it was no use.

He turned to Servatus, who nodded and took the auspex from one of his men. He studied it, the light of the screen flashing across his helmet, columns of glyphs flickering over the polished ceramite.

‘Life forms,’ said Servatus, ‘a few hundred feet below us, in a large chamber. Humans.’

‘Armed?’ asked Rhacelus.

‘Lasweapons.’

Mephiston nodded, then jumped into the lift shaft, drifting weightlessly down into the darkness, surrounded by a faint nimbus of aetheric light. Rhacelus followed in the same way, gliding ghost-like into the shadows, and the other Blood Angels climbed down, hanging from broken cables and girders.

As they moved, the darkness started to lift, replaced by a cool radiance that pulsed up from beneath their boots. It grew hotter as they climbed, adding to a sense that they were descending into an inferno of blue fire.

They passed several yawning, empty galleries and then stepped out onto a balcony overlooking a large assembly hall. The floor was broken in many places and the frigid light knifed up through the broad, domed chamber, creating columns of glittering dust motes. It gave the chamber a grand, cathedral-like quality, despite its pitiful, ruined state.

A block of soldiers was waiting on the far side of the hall, crowded before the entrance to a tunnel. They carried regimental banners laden with Imperial heraldry, but the cloth was threadbare and filthy. Their uniforms were torn and they had the grubby, dishevelled appearance of beggars or itinerants. Their lasweapons looked like they had not been cleaned for years and many of the troopers were wearing shapeless, rubber work suits.

At the head of the soldiers was something resembling a captain. Rather than setting a good example, he was even more unkempt than the slovenly rabble he commanded. He was unshaven and his hair hung down to his shoulders in thin, greasy strands. His right leg had been replaced by bionics and its workings left to rust and corrode, so that it screeched as he hobbled towards them. He staggered as he walked but that was not due to his artificial leg. There was a bottle jutting from the deep pocket of his trenchcoat. The captain was drunk.

As he neared the Blood Angels, the captain made a belated effort to smarten himself – fastening his coat and patting down his errant hair. His face was contorted by a mixture of fear and resentment.

‘My lords,’ he said, his voice a husky croak. He cleared his throat, stood a little more erect and saluted. ‘My lords, welcome to the bastion mines. I’m Captain Elias of the Sabine Twelfth.’

He paused, squinting up at the Blood Angels, struggling to discern their faces in the shifting light.

Mephiston said nothing, waiting for the captain to continue.

‘My lord,’ said Elias, ‘Morsus is in xenos hands.’ He shuffled across the hall, still peering up at the Blood Angels. ‘Have you come to save us?’

Mephiston glanced at the bottle in Elias’ coat. ‘From what?’

Elias’ face flushed with colour.

Mephiston led the Blood Angels down from the balcony and they gathered before Elias and his scared-looking men.

‘I need to find the lord of this xenos army,’ said Mephiston. ‘Where is their base of operations?’

Elias looked confused. ‘You want to go to their fortress?’

Mephiston stared at him.

Elias wiped his lips with a trembling hand. ‘They have thousands of soldiers. There’s no way you could get close. There’s no way in.’

‘There is a way,’ said the sergeant at his side, her face flushed with emotion. Mephiston looked her way. She was as bedraggled and gaunt as all the other soldiers, but there was a steel in her eyes that the captain lacked. She was trembling, not with drunkenness, but with excitement.

Captain Elias seemed furious at the interruption, but before he could speak Mephiston signalled for the sergeant to approach.

She glanced apologetically at Captain Elias as she passed him, then bowed to Mephiston.

‘My lords,’ she said. ‘I am Sergeant Llourens. The ancients’ fortress is in the eastern district of the first canton, deep underground, beneath the largest bastion mine – the one we call the Infernum.’

As the Blood Angels turned their menacing, visored helmets towards her, Sergeant Llourens grew more passionate, rather than more afraid. ‘The ancients are insane, my lords. I and my men have tried striking back at them but they don’t even register us. They spend their time attacking empty strips of land and dropping bombs on the clouds. I bet you could breach the upper levels of the Infernum and descend into their underground complex before they even noticed what you were doing.’

Rhacelus removed his helmet and locked his shimmering, sapphire gaze on Llourens. She was clearly unnerved by his inhuman glare, but she held her place.

‘This Infernum,’ said Rhacelus. ‘How is it defended?’

‘By legions of undead machines,’ said Captain Elias, scowling at Llourens. ‘Metal revenants that will dissolve your flesh.’ He stepped closer to Mephiston. ‘There is no way to fight your way in. They regenerate. Every time you think you’ve killed one it is born again at one of their regeneration points.’ His voice was hoarse with passion. ‘We tried for years to find those regeneration points but it’s impossible. There’s no way to get close enough to locate them. If you try to attack them you’ll be facing an enemy that can be endlessly reborn in whatever numbers they need.’

Llourens nodded. ‘It’s true. We’ve never found those regeneration points. They’re hidden somewhere far beneath the Infernum. But the ancients are fools. They defend perimeters that don’t exist and spend the rest of their time ambushing rocks.’ She waved at two other Guardsmen. ‘We got closer than anyone else in the regiment and I’ve seen blistermen living within just a few miles of the Infernum. There’s no way blistermen could survive out there if the ancients were actually patrolling their borders.’ Her words became a torrent as she voiced ideas long held back. ‘The heart of the Infernum is probably half empty. Whoever rules the ancients sends his armies out across all of Morsus, attacking nothing. If you got past those first few upper levels it would likely be easy to reach the lord himself.’

She paused, staring eagerly at Mephiston.

Mephiston watched her for a moment, impressed. Then he noticed that the shadows beyond the Guardsmen were starting to shift and roll, forming into familiar shapes.

The dead had left him alone as they crossed the planet’s surface, but here, in the dark, they returned in force, screaming through the oblivious Guardsmen and surprising Mephiston with the ferocity of their attack. They had not been this angry since he left the Blood Oath.

He resisted the urge to fight back as they crashed into him, but there was such a torrent of agonised souls that he could not help taking a step back and raising his hand slightly in a defensive gesture.

Llourens and the other Guardsmen flinched, thinking Mephiston was about to attack them. Rhacelus placed a hand on Mephiston’s arm and spoke into his mind.

+Stay with us. We need you here.+

Mephiston nodded and shrugged Rhacelus off, trying to see through the storm of dead soldiers to the real ones standing before him.

‘Do you know the way to the Infernum?’ he asked, managing to focus on Llourens’ face, despite the tornado of spirits that spiralled around him.

She nodded, determination in her eyes. ‘I’ve been within half a mile of the western gate,’ she said. ‘And I know every tunnel in this complex. I can show you the way. I could get you there in two days if we used the old groundcars.’

Captain Elias stared at her, incredulous. ‘She’s more insane than the xenos. You’ll all be dead before you get anywhere near that.’

Mephiston ignored the captain and continued staring at Llourens.

‘Consider yourself relieved of your command, Captain Elias,’ said Mephiston, without looking at him. Then he waved for Llourens to lead the way. ‘Show me what you know, sergeant.’

She looked from Mephiston to Elias. His face was white with rage, but he did not dare reply to Mephiston.

Llourens saluted, looking dazed, as the Guardsmen turned to face her. Not one of them questioned Mephiston’s order. She turned on her heel and headed back across the hall.

‘This way,’ she muttered.

After a few confused seconds, the other Guardsmen followed her, with Elias and his aides marching rigidly at the rear, glaring at her back.

Mephiston and Rhacelus walked beside Llourens as they crossed the hall, making for a distant archway. Rhacelus was watching Mephiston with a troubled expression, seeing how distant he was becoming, twitching and glaring at things only he could see.

+Stay with us,+ he repeated.

Mephiston’s face was rigid with pain and tiny cracks were spreading from his eye sockets, spidering across his sunken cheeks and leaking a strange, ink-like darkness.

+We have to be quick, Rhacelus. We must cure this blindness and return to the Blood Oath. I have to find that daemon while I can still think clearly.+

‘What is your current situation?’ Rhacelus asked Llourens.

Llourens was staring at Mephiston, too distracted to reply.

‘Sergeant,’ said Rhacelus.

‘Forgive me, my lord. The current situation? The ancients’ activity on the surface is destabilising the whole mine complex. Routes I’ve travelled safely since childhood are becoming impassable. There are cave-ins almost daily. We’ve made no attempts to drive the xenos out in my lifetime, despite the captain regularly talking of offensives. He’s right about the regeneration points. We have no idea where the ancients are reborn. But if we did attack them I’m sure we could still achieve something. Even if we could just learn something about their plans – find out why they’re here. Anything would be better than this slow, pointless death.’ She gripped her gun. ‘If we can aid you in any way, it would be an honour. Just give us a chance. Don’t judge us by what you see in Captain Elias. Let us prove what we can do.’

Rhacelus nodded but before he could reply, Mephiston spoke up.

‘What is a blisterman? You mentioned them earlier.’

‘The local abhumans, my lord,’ screeched Vidiens, before she could answer. ‘A species of ogryn.’

‘Yes,’ said Llourens as they approached the archway. ‘Gene-bred miners. Before the arrival of the ancients, there was a large population – many millions, scattered across the whole planet, manning each of the bastion mines. Now there are only a few, living beneath the cantons, hiding in some of the oldest pits and tunnels. They were created to endure almost anything, so they survive in even the most irradiated levels – places that we dare not enter. The radiation has done strange things to them though. They are changed. Most of them are half blind, but their other senses are heightened. They move around the mines as easily as we do.’

‘They do not live with the rest of the population?’ asked Rhacelus.

‘No,’ replied Llourens, shocked by the suggestion. ‘They’re an aberration, my lord – more beast than human. Mutants. They were part of the original colonisation of Morsus, and they were trusted servants in those early days, but rad-sickness has changed them beyond all recognition.’ She shrugged. ‘But they keep to themselves and we don’t have the men to hunt them down, so we learned to tolerate them. They have never shown any aggression towards us and I’ve seen evidence that they still battle the ancients in some of the lower levels.’

Something about her words resonated in Mephiston’s mind. He sensed that there was a connection he should be making, but the dead were now a furious storm, spiralling around him and screaming in anguish. It was hard to think of anything but the need to keep moving, so he nodded and waved her on.

Llourens led them all from the hall and they began the descent into the lower levels. The cold started to fade, replaced by a throbbing, ion-charged heat that radiated from beneath their feet. The shadows became longer, intersected by lines of vivid, cool light, shearing up from below.

The Blood Angels scoured the empty tunnels as they passed them, peering down the sights of their guns, but there was no movement and they made good speed. The Sabine Guard were an unsavoury rabble, but Mephiston noticed that they moved through the precarious rubble with surprising ease, vaulting yawning chasms and clambering over collapsed walls.

‘They may have more uses than simply showing us the route,’ said Rhacelus.

Mephiston could barely hear him. His head was being torn apart by a chorus of shrieks and curses. ‘Keep moving,’ he muttered, trying to discern a path amongst the whirling shadows.

After an hour or so, they reached a landslide and the passage ended at a wall of rubble and twisted pipes.

Llourens was still at the head of the Guardsmen and, at the sight of the dead end, she spat a curse and looked back the way they had come. ‘We’ll have to return to the last spur,’ she said, pained.

‘No,’ said the leader of the Space Marines – the one who had introduced himself as Mephiston. He strode past her, gesturing for the one called Rhacelus to follow.

Without a word, the two warriors knelt side by side and closed their eyes, heads bowed, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords.

Llourens looked back at the other Blood Angels for an explanation but they said nothing, watching her in silence from behind their visors.

After a few moments, the ground around the two Space Marines began to bubble and seethe. Steam rolled off their armour in rivulets and their blades, still embedded in the ground, pulsed with inner fire. Heat rushed forwards from where they knelt and washed over the foot of the cave-in.

The wall collapsed with a crash, sending waves of mud and hissing metal down the tunnel to crash against the shins of Llourens and the other soldiers.

Llourens stared in amazement and for a moment she was unable to speak.

‘We’ll reach the groundcars in a few hours, my lord,’ she said, managing to keep her voice level. ‘We keep a few of them in working order for when we need a quick exit.’ She shook her head, recovering her composure enough to smile. ‘I never guessed we’d be using them to head towards the enemy.’

The ancient tracks were rusted and warped, and the groundcars made a tremendous din as they carried Mephiston and the others deeper into the mines. The tunnels echoed with squeals and clangs, making it clear that they would not be able to approach the necrons with any kind of stealth.

‘Looks like we should expect a reception,’ said Rhacelus, raising his voice over the noise. He was standing behind Mephiston in the first car, along with Llourens, Captain Elias and a few of the Guardsmen. Servatus and the other Blood Angels were in the other cars, along with the rest of the Sabine Guard.

Llourens, who was crouching on the floor of the car, looked up at him, excitement still gleaming in her eyes. ‘They don’t fight in any normal way, my lord. We’ve never been able to work out what signals they respond to, but they’re not what you’d expect. This noise will make no difference. If they attack it will be for some perverse reason of their own.’

The lower they went, the brighter it got. The Blood Angels’ genetically enhanced eyes adjusted easily, but Llourens and the other humans were forced to clip thick, black-tinted goggles to their masks. Most of them had painted white rat faces on their masks, and the goggles lent them an even more rodent-like appearance.

The ghosts of Mephiston’s past kept pace, swarming over the cars and swirling through the tunnels. With rat-like soldiers all around him and the tumbling clouds of lost souls, Mephiston felt like he was part of a divine experiment – racing along a predetermined path to some forgone conclusion. He waved for Vidiens to approach and the servitor fluttered towards him, still cradling the large brass plate.

Mephiston took the salver and traced his route, running his finger over prophecies and charts he had spent years engraving into the metal. His search for the daemon had led him through several warzones since leaving Baal. Now, as he traced intersections and mouthed formulae, he saw quite clearly that his route had always been pointing here, to Morsus. The heretic he had been trailing to find the daemon had vanished in this sector. Morsus’ strange power had enveloped everything. An unexpected thought hit him. Is the witch here? Has she led me to the daemon’s lair?

‘Have you ever seen a priest down here?’ he asked, looking up from the salver and turning to Llourens.

‘Priests, my lord? There are some brothers of the Ministorum back at the Kysloth barracks. The Chapel-Master and a few others. They don’t venture out much though. Certainly not this far.’

Mephiston shook his head. ‘No, I mean a monk. Or he would look like a monk until you were close.’

Llourens was on the verge of replying when she was interrupted by the roar of necron weapons, hundreds of feet above on the planet’s surface. Rather than fading, the sound grew in volume, reverberating through the walls of the tunnel.

‘This is how it starts,’ she said, staring up at the rows of rusty, crooked support beams. ‘We should–’

The ceiling collapsed with a scream of ruptured metal. Rubble smashed into the groundcars, kicking them from their tracks and hurling them back down the tunnel. Tracks curled up like flames and rockcrete columns crashed down to meet them, unleashing tonnes of earth.

Mephiston tried to cry out an invocation but soil thundered into his mouth, before crushing him under its incredible weight. He was blind and deaf as the earth filled his eyes and ears. Darkness consumed him, burying him with his dead.

The years rolled away, returning him to the last time he had been crushed beneath rubble. He became Calistarius again – the Blood Angel he had been before the Angel Sanguinius elevated him, freeing him of the great flaw so he could be reborn as Mephiston.

His lungs burned, but a strange euphoria had overtaken him. If he was back on Hades Hive, he would soon see his saviour. He had revisited this moment in his mind countless times, seeking the truth of his rebirth, desperate for confirmation that his saviour had been Sanguinius. Perhaps now, as Morsus crushed him to its burning heart, he would finally see. Who had made him? Who had created the Lord of Death?

Again, Mephiston thought of the locket secreted in his armour. It was significant in a way he could not explain – there was a link to Hades Hive that eluded him.

The thought of the locket enraged the dead even more. They thrashed through the soil, screaming in his face, furious and deranged. Clouded eyes rolled in bloody sockets as the dead latched on to him, clutching with fleshless hands, mouthing voiceless accusations.

Mephiston reached deep into his soul, grasping currents of aetheric power. His throat was full of soil, so he recited the incantation in his mind, coaxing psychic fire from his limbs.

Warp fury ripped from his skin, bleeding out through his armour and driving back the dead. As the ghosts tumbled away from him, so did the ground. The immense weight of the landslide was nothing to the force blasting through Mephiston’s mind. Morsus had robbed him of prophecy and second sight, but he could still reach into the Great Rift, still harness those savage currents. Slowly, surely, he raised his arms, defying physics and moving soil and rock up and away from his body.

He drew a deep, ragged breath and a space opened around him in the darkness.

+Rhacelus?+ he thought, driving the name through the earth.

+Yes,+ came the reply. +I’m still here.+ Then, after a moment, +We must reach the other cars. Servatus and the others will be trapped.+

Mephiston felt a surge of power as the other Librarian joined minds with him. Togaether, they forced the soil back.

As the ground moved, creating a small cave in the rubble, the car jolted down a few feet before crashing back onto an exposed section of track.

Mephiston sent shards of thought through the walls and cool, unnatural light spilled across the contents of the truck. It was little more than a powered wagon, but the front end was covered in a small roof of corrugated metal. The roof was now bent out of recognition, but it had saved the life of the humans trapped beneath. By the force of their minds alone, the two Librarians made a trembling, dome-shaped cave, holding back the weight of the landslide.

Mephiston and Rhacelus climbed to their feet, dusting down their armour as they approached the front of the car.

Llourens was there, along with a dozen or so other soldiers and their captain, Elias. They were gasping and choking, clawing soil from their mouths and eyes, spitting gravel into their hands as they tried to breathe. One of them was vomiting inside his rubber suit. The hood had ripped and his mask was broken. Radiation burned into his body as he howled and thrashed on the floor of the truck. The other humans backed away, horrified and afraid, as his skin began to bubble and blacken.

Mephiston stepped forwards, drew Vitarus and ended the man’s suffering, whispering an oath as he pulled the sword from the corpse.

There was silence as Llourens and the others stared at their dead comrade. Mephiston looked into the crowd of spirits that were lashing at him, spitting curses as they tried to enter his mind. As he expected, Mephiston saw a new troupe of tormented souls clawing towards him: the man he had just killed, alongside all the soldiers who had died in the landslide. Many of them were still clawing at their mouths, not realising they were dead, thinking they could find a way to draw another breath. As the truth sank in, they fixed their straining eyes on Mephiston and they roared through the spectral crowd, howling and weeping.

‘Brother-Lieutenant Servatus,’ he said, opening the vox-network.

‘Chief Librarian,’ came the reply. Servatus’ voice was muffled and strange. ‘I am with Sergeant Agorix and some of his squad. The others are nearby. We all survived the cave-in.’ Servatus hesitated. ‘The humans are crushed beneath the rubble, Lord Mephiston.’ He paused and Mephiston heard terrified voices, screaming, calling out for help. ‘We can do nothing for them. We are trapped. I cannot move.’ He paused again, allowing more of the panicked screams to ring through the vox. ‘They are suffocating.’

Llourens and the other soldiers looked around in horror at the earth that was hanging over them. The promethium glow flashed on their masks as they turned to Mephiston, waiting for his response.

‘What are your orders, Chief Librarian?’ asked Servatus.

‘We continue,’ said Mephiston, turning back to Llourens. ‘Before the mine collapsed, how far did we still have to go? How far to the Infernum?’

She stared back at him. ‘They’re dying.’ The vox-network was still open and they could all hear the cries for help.

‘They are dead,’ said Mephiston. He looked from Llourens to the spirits only he could see. Sure enough, a host of new accusers was appearing, gripping their throats, still trying to breathe.

He nodded to the wall of the cave, where the tracks disappeared into the rubble. ‘We must not stop. That might have been a deliberate attack. There was a change of air pressure before the blast – did you hear it?’

Rhacelus nodded. ‘Gauss weapons. The xenos have disintegrated the superstructure. It may be just another pointless strike on the surface though.’

‘We cannot wait here to find out,’ said Mephiston.

Captain Elias had been lying on the floor of the car, watching the exchange in stunned silence, but now he rose to his feet and spoke up. He was so drunk he had lost some of his fear of Mephiston. ‘The ancients?’ His words were badly slurred. ‘We need to get back to the barracks!’

Mephiston pressed the hilt of his force sword against the captain’s chest. The metal shimmered with psychic heat and Elias gasped as Mephiston pinned him to the wall.

‘The ancients never fight with any kind of logic,’ said Llourens. ‘They’ve destabilised all the tunnels but the attacks are random. They wouldn’t–’

‘You’re a fool!’ spat Elias. ‘You’ll lead all of us to our deaths.’

Mephiston felt like beheading the drunken wretch, but he hesitated, interested to see how the sergeant would respond. He could see years of pent-up rage about to spill from her lips.

Another teeth-rattling explosion rocked the chamber. Stone and dust hurtled through the air and the car jolted back again, knocking the humans from their feet.

This time, Mephiston was prepared. As the blast hit, he stepped away from Elias and raised a hand, runes flickering into life across the palm of his gauntlet. Rocks halted in the air, just a few feet from his upturned face. Then, with a string of incomprehensible words, he drove the rubble back.

The car was now tilted to one side and the soldiers had fallen into a heap. As the air cleared, they climbed, coughing and spluttering, back to their feet.

‘That one was closer,’ said Rhacelus, holding his force sword aloft and adding his power to Mephiston’s. Runes pulsed into life along the ancient blades and, between them, they carved the chamber back into being.

‘We need to move,’ said Mephiston. ‘I must reach the Infernum before the whole complex caves in.’

‘The Sabine Guard may be dead,’ he added, turning to Rhacelus. ‘But our brothers are not. Dig them out of that hole while I clear a path forwards.’

Rhacelus knelt before the rear wall of the cave, resting his head on the hilt of his sword. He removed a vial of red liquid from his robes and hurled it at the wall. As it flowed, it formed into a glistening mesh of lines and runes. Next, he took a silver-bound book from his belt and read a single word in a long forgotten Baalite tongue. Flames leapt from his sword and ignited the characters he had daubed on the wall. As the words burned, they started to move, blazing brighter as they rotated in a circle. After a few seconds the circle was spinning so fast that it was impossible to read the characters. The air crackled with sparks of aetheric power that flickered across Rhacelus’ robes and sparked in his beard. He intoned a second word and another detonation rocked the chamber. The disc of light rushed away, blazing through the earth and carving a channel into the distance, bathed in the chemical glow of the rocks.

The humans had climbed back to their feet and were staring in mute awe at the hole Rhacelus had carved. Then they turned to look at Mephiston with equally dazed expressions. The vox-network was still open, but the screams of their comrades had ceased.

Mephiston looked at Llourens.

Her lips moved but no words emerged. She coughed and wiped her lips. ‘We’re nearly beneath the main gates. They’re about half a mile above our heads. If we keep on…’ Her words faltered. She nodded at the tunnel Rhacelus had burned. ‘Are you going to…?’

He nodded.

‘If we carry on as we were,’ she continued, ‘we will reach the service tunnels in the east side of the Infernum. The ancients’ fortress is beneath the lower levels, but they guard the upper tunnels too. I don’t know how far we can travel without–’

Another tremor rocked the chamber. This one was so violent that Llourens and the other soldiers were hurled across the car and even Mephiston staggered as he held his hand aloft, driving back the impact with his mind, head bowed as psychic flames rippled across his power armour.

He removed his helmet and knelt beside the soldier he had killed. The corpse was surrounded by a dark pool of blood and as the soldiers watched in horror and confusion, Mephiston dragged his finger through the gore and pressed warm blood to his lips, closing his eyes as life-force rushed through his body.

The curse howled in his soul, a beast straining at a leash. Rage shivered through his limbs, but Mephiston had no difficulty in harnessing the ancient blood-fever. His curse was of another nature. Power raced through his veins and shimmering words appeared in the air before him. He had no need to read from a book. Every word of the Glutted Scythe was emblazoned across his mind. He plucked the syllables with ease, casting them into being with subtle twists of his sword. Then he used Vitarus’ tip to draw a circle in the air and the symbols blazed brighter, starting to rotate. He whispered an archaic Baalite word and the disc of light blasted into the wall, showering the car with rocks.

Frigid light enveloped Mephiston as he left the car and strode into the freshly hewn tunnel. Behind him, the Sabine troopers stumbled and staggered after him, leaning on each other for support and thumping their guns, trying to rid them of grit. Vidiens fluttered at Mephiston’s side, whispering prayers and clutching the brass salver to its scrawny chest.

After a few minutes, the disc of light blasted through into another undergroundcarriageway and then vanished. Mephiston jumped down onto the tracks to look around. He had joined the route at a crossroads and the three other tunnels had all been damaged by the tremor. The left-hand route had completely collapsed and the other two looked close to doing the same. There was a steady shower of soil and stones dropping onto the tracks.

Llourens rushed to his side.

‘My lord,’ she said, her voice muffled by her rebreather. ‘We’re even nearer to the Infernum than I realised. The ancients sometimes patrol this way.’ Then she grimaced as she saw the state of the tunnels. ‘We’ll have to try something else.’ She waved at a pair of thick, rusting blast doors in the opposite wall. ‘I think those ventilation shafts would rejoin the tunnel at a later point. We could crawl along those until we reach a stable section of tunnel. If we just–’

‘Crawl?’ Vidiens stared at Llourens through its porcelain mask. ‘This is the Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels. He is Lord Commander Dante’s Consul Aetheric and he is the Master of the Quorum Empyrric. He does not crawl. You should consider yourself lucky he has not–’

Mephiston silenced the servitor with a glance. Then he turned back to Llourens.

‘What about these routes?’ He nodded to the two tunnels that were mostly intact.

Llourens shook her head. She gestured to the tunnel on their right. ‘That one will just loop round and take us back to Kysloth. And the other route is too dangerous. We should avoid it.’

‘Xenos?’

‘Blistermen. That’s one of the most irradiated regions of the mine, but the ogryns manage to survive in there.’ She made the sign of the aquila. ‘We stay clear.’

‘Ogryns survive this close to the enemy?’

‘The miners were bred to survive almost anything. The rest of us–’

Mephiston held up a hand to silence her.

Since he had entered this new tunnel, the crowds of dead souls had begun to fragment. Most were still lashed around him, howling and clawing at his face, but a few were drifting away down the tunnel Llourens seemed so eager to avoid.

‘Can you lead me to the necron fortress if we head that way?’ he asked. ‘Do you know those tunnels?’

Llourens paled. ‘Yes, my lord, I know all the tunnels. But the radiation down there is bad. We couldn’t survive it for very long, even in these suits. And it leads right through the heart of the blistermen zones.’

Mephiston wondered if she was as strong-willed as he had thought. The dozen or so other Guardsmen had emerged from the tunnel and were watching the exchange closely to see how their new leader would respond. None of them showed her spark of determination. Captain Elias was still with them, but he was clearly useless. After watching them move through the tunnels, Mephiston was starting to see a way the remnants of the Sabine Guard might be of use to him, but only if someone was able to lead them. ‘Can you lead me to the fortress?’ he repeated, looking back at Llourens.

She stared down the tunnel, looking pained. ‘We must avoid the blistermen, my lord. They’re mutants. They’ve been tainted by all their years down in these mines. But yes, yes of course I will show you the way.’

Some of the troopers looked doubtful, but most stood a little taller, pride glinting in their eyes as they gathered around Llourens.

‘She’s a heretic,’ slurred Captain Elias, from the back of the group.

Llourens grew pale with rage and, for a moment, she seemed to forget about Mephiston. She squared up to the captain and jabbed her finger into his chest. ‘You have no right to speak of heresy,’ she said, punctuating each word with another finger jab. ‘We should have been here decades ago, when we still had a garrison to fight with. We could have made a difference. But you let us rot down there in Kysloth, getting weaker and weaker until there was no chance to do anything.’

Mephiston stepped back to watch. Now he would see what Llourens was really made of. Now he would see if there was a spark of life left on Morsus or whaether he should leave these walking corpses in their graves.

Captain Elias looked around the circle of Guardsmen, staring at them in outrage. ‘How dare you stand there and let this heretic speak to me like that?’ Drool flew from his thin, cracked lips as he staggered towards them. ‘Seize her!’ he cried. ‘Take her back to the barracks and find the commissar! I order you to see her executed.’

The Guardsmen said nothing, shame and anger writ across their gaunt faces.

Elias shook his head in disbelief.

‘She is in league with the xenos,’ he said. ‘She must be. Why else would she bring us out here?’ Again, there was no reply and Elias started to look hesitant. Doubt clouded his eyes as he sensed he was alone.

‘I’ve spent my whole life listening to your pathetic excuses,’ muttered Llourens, her words dripping with disdain. ‘I have prayed every day of my miserable life that the Emperor might show me a way to be worth something – a way to deserve this uniform.’ She glanced at Mephiston. ‘But now I see the truth. The Emperor was always there. He never gave up on us. You did.’

The Guardsmen nodded and gripped their guns, stepping towards Elias, their faces grim.

Elias shook his head. ‘You would not dare harm me. I am your commanding officer. I will see you shot if you do not seize this woman.’

They said nothing.

‘Go,’ said Llourens. ‘Crawl back to your office and hide under your desk like you have done for the last thirty years. The rest of us have work to do.’

Elias howled and drew his laspistol, pointing it at Llourens’ head. He was trembling with rage and barely sober enough to stand.

Llourens glared at him down the barrel of the gun, her face defiant. Elias howled again as he pulled the trigger.

Dust and noise filled the air and, when it cleared, Llourens was still standing, staring at Elias. He was so drunk he had managed to miss her head from a few inches away, slicing a fist-sized chunk of rock from the wall.

Llourens took the gun from his trembling hand. Then she pistol-whipped him to the floor. He toppled like a broken doll and lay in the dust, babbling and cursing as she stepped over him, pointing the pistol at his head.

At that moment, Rhacelus emerged from the tunnel, leading the rest of the Blood Angels and the few Guardsmen who had survived the cave-in. He saw Llourens pointing the pistol at Elias and glanced at Mephiston.

Mephiston held up a warning hand.

Llourens did not even notice the others arrive. She was still staring at Elias. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ she muttered. ‘I won’t waste a shot on you. Get up. Get out of here.’

The captain climbed clumsily to his feet to face a circle of cold, scornful faces. His shoulders dropped. He looked defeated. He was about to speak when Llourens clubbed him to the ground again.

Elias muttered curses into the bloody earth, then stood and staggered off down the tunnel that led back to the barracks. He paused once to glare back at them, then he ran on.

Llourens watched him go, weaving and lurching off through the promethium glow. She looked around at the rest of the troopers to see how they would react.

‘Captain,’ said one, saluting.

As one, the others all saluted too.

‘The fortress,’ said Mephiston.

‘Let’s go,’ she snapped, waving for the others to follow as she raced down the tunnel.

The light grew even brighter in the lower tunnels and Mephiston wondered what kind of creature the blistermen were to survive in such a place.

Llourens led them through a bewildering maze of tunnels and galleries and on several occasions they had to clamber down broken lift shafts and vast, vaulted air vents. Centuries of cave-ins had created an unmappable warren of ruined tracks and shafts that would have left Mephiston utterly lost if not for Llourens’ guidance.

After a while they began to hear sounds. At first Mephiston thought it was another aftershock, but as he ran further he realised they were explosions.

A few minutes later, he and Llourens turned a corner and both slid to a halt, looking down over a sheer drop. The track ended suddenly before a vast chasm. One of the mine shafts had been ripped open by an explosion or landslide, a recent one by the looks of it. It had torn through several levels and exposed a sump pit, hundreds of feet below.

‘Stay back,’ ordered Mephiston as he saw the source of the noise he had heard earlier. The bottom of the pit was as wide as a parade ground and crowded with lines of marching necrons. They were surging through silvery, under-lit dust clouds, dozens of them, firing in well-drilled salvoes at a group on the far side of the pit.

Mephiston peered through the shimmering clouds, trying to make out who the necrons were firing at. Gathered beneath a burned-out blockhouse were a dozen or so purple-skinned giants.

‘Blistermen?’ asked Rhacelus.

Llourens nodded.

They were similar to ogryns Mephiston had seen on other worlds, but with a few distinct differences – their blank, oversized eyes were especially odd. They were naked apart from loincloths and their hulking, muscle-lashed bodies were covered in scar tissue. They looked like walking meat but they carried themselves with a dignity that belied the ugliness of their flesh. As the necrons advanced towards them, the abhumans stood proud and unafraid, despite the corpses that surrounded them. They raised their chins and threw back their shoulders as they faced the silent ranks of robots, lifting their guns and preparing to return fire.

‘What are those guns?’ asked Rhacelus. ‘Shotguns?’

‘No,’ said Llourens. ‘They don’t have guns as such. It’s their old mining equipment. They were designed to break through rock faces.’

Mephiston nodded. His mind was a repository of knowledge, from the mythical to the mundane. ‘Ablation drills,’ he said, as the ogryns aimed the devices at the necrons. He felt a flicker of amusement. ‘Clever.’

The ablation drills fired with a sound like dozens of dogs barking. The air shimmered and the necron vanguard staggered backwards, their outer shells vaporised, exposing the circuitry beneath.

‘The ogryns are playing the necrons at their own game,’ said Mephiston. ‘They’re using their mining equipment to flay their enemy’s cells.’

There was another chorus of barks as the drills fired again, vaporising even more of the necrons’ workings.

The necron front rank collapsed, their disassembled parts sparking and hissing as they sank into the filth, their cells continuing to disintegrate as the metal disappeared from view.

Mephiston summoned wings from the fumes and dropped into the pit. As he fell, he drew his pistol and fired into the necron ranks, shearing heads and chests with vivid blasts of plasma.

The necrons whirled around and targeted him, but Mephiston had already intoned another exhortation and, as he fell, ionised fumes gathered around him, creating a rippling, sparking shield that absorbed every salvo that lanced towards him.

With the necrons focused on Mephiston, the abhumans surged forwards, still firing their repurposed drills. The necrons fell back, torn down by the blasts. As the ogryns got close, their drills became even more lethal – shredding the necrons with a single shot.

When Mephiston reached the necrons he spread his wings wider, turning them into a vast roof of pitch that engulfed the entire pit. The darkness became tangible as it enveloped the necron warriors in a blanket of thick, weltering blood. They staggered and reeled, firing wildly as they tried to free themselves from the viscous pool. The more the necrons struggled, the tighter the red tar latched on to them, clogging their joints and pouring through the eye sockets of their metal skulls. The blistermen fired with even more ferocity, ripping layer after layer from the trapped, thrashing bodies.

From above, the Guardsmen began firing their lasrifles into the fray, felling more of the necrons with carefully placed shots as Rhacelus glided down through the gloom, drawing his force sword as he rushed towards the battle.

The necrons toppled back as Mephiston crashed into their midst, shrugging off his shadow wings and wading through the throng. He fired his plasma pistol a few more times, then drew Vitarus and leapt forwards, hacking a path towards the abhumans.

He met them in the middle of the battlefield. Several more had died as they fought to meet him, but the rest showed no sign of fear. When their drills overheated they simply stomped on through the necrons, pummelling them into the slurry until others could fire at them.

Upon reaching Mephiston, the abhumans paused, staring at him with their half-blind eyes as though he was some kind of vision. Then they turned to face the enemy, fighting back to back with the Blood Angel, firing their drills as Mephiston lunged and parried, dismembering the robots with dazzling speed. After the pitiful state of the Guardsmen, Mephiston was pleased to find more worthy allies. The abhumans fought with a cool poise that reminded him of his own battle-brothers.

Rhacelus appeared at his side, slicing and lunging with his force sword, and behind him the other Blood Angels gunned the scattered necrons down with a wall of plasma fire. The coils of Mephiston’s pistol had cooled and he finished off the final necrons with a few well-placed head shots. The abhumans waded into the junkyard of broken limbs, smashing any that moved against the rough-hewn floor of the pit until they ceased twitching.

As the last few necrons blinked out of existence, the ogryns turned to face Mephiston.

Mephiston sheathed his blade and studied them properly for the first time. They were as tall as he was and much broader: beasts of burden who had taken up arms. Their charred bodies flickered with pulses of cool light – the same phosphorescent glow that bled up through the shattered rocks. Their skin was thick, like the leathery hide of a large animal. Their eyes were huge, dominating the rest of their brutally chiselled faces, but blank – nothing more than watery, colourless orbs.

One of them reached out towards Mephiston and touched his face, running its blocky fingers over Mephiston’s hollow cheeks. Rhacelus gripped the handle of his sword, outraged, but Mephiston held up a hand, allowing the ogryn to touch him.

‘Star Warrior,’ said the abhuman, his voice low and resonant.

‘Blood Angel,’ said Mephiston, tapping the winged blood drop on his belt.

The ogryn pounded its chest. ‘Varus.’

‘I need to reach the regions that surround the necron fortress. I have a guide who can lead me from there, but the routes have caved in and we cannot get close. Can you lead me, Varus?’

The ogryn sniffed the air and frowned, making his bizarre-looking face even more grotesque. Then he turned to the other blistermen, as though seeking confirmation. They nodded.

‘There is a way,’ said Varus, grimacing as he spoke, as though it pained him to speak the words. He nodded across the pit to a row of doorways. ‘Our way. We can show–’

‘Mephiston,’ interrupted Rhacelus. ‘We know nothing of these creatures.’ He eyed the ogryns warily. ‘Why should we blindly follow them?’

‘I am not entirely blind,’ said Mephiston. He waved his servitor over. The wasted little wretch fluttered across the pit and handed the brass salver to Mephiston.

Mephiston tapped the plate, indicating the sigils he had scored around the Revenant Stars. ‘I made these marks before my warp sight failed. Much of our route is hidden from me, but as soon as I heard the locals talking of these “blistermen” it triggered a memory.’

Rhacelus stared at the engravings but shook his head. ‘I have never seen marks like these. It matches no language I have seen.’

Mephiston was reminded, not for the first time, of how far he had travelled from the rest of the Librarius. It had not even occurred to him that Rhacelus would be unable to decipher his work. ‘There is no time to explain,’ he said. ‘This clearly shows a link – a bond between these simple creatures and me. They mean me no harm, I know it.’

Rhacelus’ frown remained, but he nodded.

‘Lead us,’ said Mephiston, turning back to the ogryns.

The ogryns moved fast, despite their monstrous size, striding down tunnels and shafts with an easy, loping step. It was a simple matter for the Blood Angels to keep pace but the Guardsmen kept their distance, staying at the rear of the Blood Angels, clearly unhappy about travelling with the abhumans. The ogryns had a strange method of finding their way – trailing their fingers over the walls and sniffing constantly. At first, Mephiston wondered if they had developed some kind of dangerous, unsanctioned psychic ability, then he realised they used their ablation drills as more than just weapons. They pointed them forwards as they ran, and the devices pinged constantly at different frequencies, working as some kind of sonar.

The man-made tunnels and galleries were soon replaced by something stranger. Rather than angular channels, crammed with rusting gurneys and burned-out blockhouses, the tunnels took on a more natural formation – jagged and weaving, and becoming narrower with every step.

As they scrambled down scree-covered escarpments, the rocks burned brighter, until it seemed as though they were tunnelling through the heart of a blue star. The heat was rising and, as he climbed down a particularly steep rock face, the cogitator in Mephiston’s suit began bleating warnings at him.

They reached the bottom of the chasm and stepped onto a shifting mass of blazing rock and raw, liquid promethium, bubbling and spitting, lava-like, as it flowed through ragged channels.

Varus had paused to wait for them, halfway across the gulley. He was holding his drill over his head and it was making a brittle ticking sound. ‘Tread carefully,’ he said.

The Blood Angels stepped easily across the blazing rivulets, ignoring the promethium ore that spat and churned beneath them, but the Guardsmen found it harder going, sweating and muttering as they hurried across.

On the far side of the gulley there was another rock face, rising up into darkness. The ogryns were waiting before a pair of sturdy, heavily bolted blast doors.

Varus held up a warning hand.

‘This is a holy place,’ he said. ‘Our home.’

Llourens hurried to Mephiston’s side, looking up at him with a pained expression. ‘My lord, the blistermen are as strange as the ancients. We don’t know what they do in these caves. Are you sure this is safe?’

‘Safe?’ Mephiston raised an eyebrow.

Llourens grimaced at the stupidity of her question. ‘I just wondered if we should find another route.’

‘You told me this was the only way to get near the fortress.’

‘Yes, but…’ Llourens glanced back at her men. They were all watching to see how she acted. ‘I understand,’ she said, giving Mephiston a brisk salute and rejoining the rest of the Sabine Guard.

Varus waited for a moment to see if the debate had finished. Mephiston gave him a nod and the ogryn turned and tapped at a rune pad. The bolts clattered back and the doors rushed open with a hum of hydraulics, revealing a dark interior.

Varus and the other ogryns made the sign of the aquila, then entered the passageway. Mephiston followed, waving for the Blood Angels and Guardsmen to follow.

‘Did you notice?’ asked Mephiston, glancing at Rhacelus.

‘That they made the sign of the aquila? Yes, but I will reserve my judgement until we learn more about what they’ve done down here all these years.’

He was about to say more, but as they stepped out of the entrance tunnel Rhacelus paused and shook his head in surprise. ‘A cathedrum?’

They were standing in a vast cave, as big as the great halls of the Arx Angelicum on Baal, but it was not simply a rough-hewn grotto. The rock had been chiselled and polished into an enormous, vaulted dome, complete with soaring stone ribs and intricately worked bosses, all carved in the likeness of Imperial saints. Enormous fluted columns stretched up out of sight, lining a nave large enough to house an Imperial frigate. The nave led to a distant altar, and above the altar was a winged colossus – a saint, carved from rock and suspended by a clever feat of engineering, so that he appeared to be hovering, eternally, over the altar, his sword plunged into a writhing, eight-headed serpent.

Mephiston did not spare the architecture so much as a glance, striding purposefully down the nave after the ogryns. Hundreds more of the abhumans were dotted around the vast space and at the sight of the Blood Angels they rushed across the flagstones, anxious expressions on their faces.

As a crowd formed around him, Mephiston was forced to a standstill. The ogryns paid no attention to the other Blood Angels or the Guardsmen hesitating by the entrance, but they were fascinated by Mephiston.

More of them emerged from a porch in the south aisle, led by an ancient-looking ogryn. His skin was even more scorched than the others and in some places it had fallen away to reveal large sections of glowing, raw muscle. His face showed more intelligence than the other ogryns and he was carrying a mechanised, iron axe, gripping it proudly as if it were a holy sceptre. The other ogryns bowed before him.

‘Idolatry,’ grumbled Rhacelus. ‘Treating a gene-bred slave like an Ecclesiarchy prelate.’

Mephiston held up a warning hand. ‘They maintained their faith in the Emperor, even when we abandoned them to this pit. It looks like they have held true to the ideals of the Imperium, which is more than can be said for their masters. Besides, all we need is safe passage to the Infernum. Sergeant Llourens will take us the rest of the way.’

The old ogryn spoke with Varus, then addressed Mephiston.

‘Star Warrior,’ he said, speaking more clearly than the others had done. ‘I am Argolis. We have waited lifetimes for you to come. And we kept our oaths. We have never forsaken the Emperor. We prepared for your coming.’

‘You do not know me. I am Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels Adeptus Astartes Chapter.’

Argolis smiled and waved at the vast statue hanging over the far end of the nave. ‘We know you, Star Warrior.’

Mephiston looked again at the statue. It was typical of its kind – an armoured saint clutching a flaming sword, but as he studied the other details, he began to understand the ogryns’ mistake. The saint wore a high, ornate collar, similar in shape to his psychic hood and it had long, flowing hair, similar to his own. Unlike the rest of the cathedral, the statue had been carved from red stone, as crimson as his battleplate.

‘They think it’s you,’ said Rhacelus. ‘They think you are their prophet.’

‘We unearthed it in the early days of the war,’ said the old ogryn, speaking in hushed tones. ‘We knew, even then, that you would come.’ He waved at the cathedral. ‘We built all of this to preserve and honour your likeness.’

‘I am not…’ began Mephiston, before realising he did not have time to argue. ‘I need to reach the Infernum. Quickly.’

Argolis looked surprised by Mephiston’s harsh tone, but he nodded and walked towards a lectern at the centre of the altar. The Blood Angels gathered around it, with crowds of ogryn watching over them.

Fixed to the top of the lectern was a piece of ancient mining equipment – a battered cogitator, placed in the heart of their cathedrum like a holy relic. Argolis waved to one of the other abhumans and the creature activated the device.

Argolis sang the opening bars of a hymn as the air exploded into movement. The device was a hololith and as it rattled into life, it filled the air with a whirling mass of grids and measurements.

Vidiens fluttered into the centre of the lights, so that the lines and intersections washed over its white, porcelain mask. ‘These are the bastion mines,’ it whined, his shrill voice echoing through the arches and colonnades. ‘We already have this information, Chief Librarian. There is nothing here we have not seen. I do not understand–’

‘Wait,’ interrupted Mephiston, pointing at the largest column. ‘Is that the Infernum?’

Argolis nodded.

Mephiston frowned. ‘What are these?’ The shimmering green lines of the hololith showed a web of tunnels beneath the Infernum, disconnected from the rest of the mine. Each one ended in a rectangular box, nestling in the chambers beneath the Infernum.

‘Promethium charges,’ said Argolis. ‘The ancients are fighting an enemy that died long ago. They never noticed the real enemy at their gates.’

Mephiston held out his hand and allowed the lights to play over his gauntlet. ‘You planted charges to bring the Infernum down? Why? Even if the blast crushed them, they would just return to kill you. The Sabine Guard told me the necrons have dozens of regeneration chambers.’

Argolis’ face twisted into a disturbing grimace that was intended to be a smile. ‘We can go where no one else goes.’ He touched the rectangular shapes in the hololith. ‘These are their regeneration chambers. We discovered them a long time ago. Every one of the ancients relies on those points. When the charges blow, we will destroy the ancients, but we will also destroy their way back.’

Llourens had left the other Guardsmen and was standing a few feet away. She stared at Argolis in amazement. ‘We could rid Morsus of the xenos. We could give it back to the Emperor and–’

Argolis interrupted. ‘We could return to the work we were born for.’ He touched the shimmering lines of the hololith, tracing the route of the shafts and tunnels. ‘We could rebuild the mines. We could bring fire from the earth once more, and send it to the stars, fuelling the Emperor’s sons with our toil and faith.’

‘But you are waiting for something,’ said Mephiston. ‘Your charges are in place and every day that passes sees more deaths. Why have you not completed your work? What are you waiting for?’

‘You,’ said Argolis. He pointed at a small chamber, beneath the base of the tower, in the centre of the necron crypts. ‘The heart of their regeneration network is here. To reach it we would have to breach the outer defences. We tried, but it is too heavily guarded. We could destroy the other chambers, but many of the ancients would remain and they could still regenerate using this central chamber. All our work would be wasted.’ He waved at Rhacelus and the other Blood Angels gathered behind Mephiston. ‘But we had faith that one day you would come. You could get through those gates. You could place the final charge. It would blow the central chambers and trigger all of the other charges at the same time.’

Mephiston glanced at the distant statue, wondering if the Emperor had played some part in this meeting. Then he shook his head. ‘No. I did not come here looking to reignite the Revenant Crusade. I am not here to liberate Morsus. I must–’

Before Mephiston could finish, his spectral entourage swarmed around him, pouring across the flagstones and washing up the steps of the altar. They slammed into Mephiston with such force that he staggered back from the hololith. The dead were all being drawn to a specific place on his armour – the locket he had taken from the corpse on Hydrus Ulterior.

Vidiens said something to him but Mephiston could not hear the servitor over the howls of the dead. He grabbed the locket to hide it under his robes, but skeletal fingers meshed with his own, trying to seize it from him. He felt the spirits as a physical force, pulling his own fingers back and grasping at the locket.

Mephiston cursed. The dead were only in his mind. How could they clutch and pull at him like this?

The cathedrum slipped out of focus, replaced by an agonising, mind-cramping dream. Scenes from Mephiston’s long life washed over reality. The dead were dragging him from the temporal world, hauling his spirit down, beneath the tides of the warp. Dust clouds enveloped him as he staggered through the ruins of Hades Hive, his face covered in welts and bruises, his mind blazing with nascent power. He broke through the fumes and plunged through the clouds, dropping towards a great ocean of xenos horrors – the nightmarish swarms of Hive Fleet Leviathan, devouring everything before them, laying waste to the ancient glory of Baal. He howled, consumed with primeval fury as he crashed into a clattering flood of mandibles and maws. Light consumed him, burning away the vision to reveal the troubled faces of Rhacelus and the others, back in the cathedrum.

‘My oath,’ he muttered, without knowing what he was talking about. What oath? Countless promises and letters of fealty spiralled round his head. He had sworn many things to many men, all in service to the Emperor. Which oath did he mean?

The cathedrum started to fade again, torn apart by the corpses in his head. As the walls fell he saw, not the rock beyond, but the Great Rift, opening its maw to devour him. He was losing himself, as he had done on the Blood Oath.

‘No!’ he whispered, hurling his thoughts towards a point of light in the maelstrom, summoning reason from the madness.

Mephiston sat back in his chair, looking up at a white, domed ceiling, framed with dozens of gilded struts and buttresses. Finally, he knew peace. In this simple chamber the dead could not reach him. Finally, he could think. He was back in the Chemic Spheres of his Librarium, back in the Arx Angelicum, back on Baal. He was not truly home, of course, but his mind, for a moment at least, had found a refuge by recalling this innermost sanctum. The ivory dome was traced with a spiderweb of dripping blood, and as Mephiston let his head fall back against the seat, the blood pattered gently across his bone-white features.

‘We need you,’ said a voice.

Rhacelus had materialised in a chair opposite Mephiston’s. He looked around at the blazing, spherical chamber. ‘You must come back to us, Mephiston. Even here, you are not safe. Your power is still tearing you apart on Morsus, you are just averting your gaze. The only hope is to keep going. To reach the daemon.’

‘What do they want of me? With every day that passes, the dead scream louder in my face.’ Mephiston gripped the locket as he spoke. ‘How can I find the daemon while my mind is crowded with wretches?’

‘What is that?’ asked Rhacelus.

Mephiston shook his head. ‘Just a locket. I took it from one of the corpses on Hydrus Ulterior. All these damned souls that hound me seem drawn to it. It enrages them.’

‘Then throw it away. Perhaps the ghosts would give you some peace then?’

Mephiston shook his head. ‘The ghosts aren’t real, Rhacelus. This isn’t some kind of visitation. They are just the shadows in my mind. They can’t be drawn to anything. And the locket seems significant. I don’t know why. It reminds me of something in my past.’

Rhacelus took the locket and looked at the blurry pict, badly reproduced and roughly fixed into the locket. The dead soldier who owned it had layered tape over the image in an attempt to preserve it from the mud and smoke of the trenches, but the figures were still almost faded from recognition because he had run his fingers over their faces so many times. It was a woman and two young children, smiling awkwardly – the Guardsman’s family, seeing him off to war.

‘Do you know who they are?’ asked Mephiston. ‘After all the death I have left in my wake, why should this one image make me pause? Why these people? Perhaps they resemble my own family? I do not even recall what they looked like. Do you? Do these people remind you of anyone?’

Rhacelus shook his head and a faint smile played around his lips. ‘It’s not the people.’ He held it up. ‘It’s the background. Do you see? Behind them.’

Behind the family, there was a small shrine.

Mephiston’s pulse raced. He had been so obsessed with trying to recognise the people he had never noticed the shrine in the background, even though he had studied the locket countless times. He did recognise it. His subconscious had noticed something that his conscious mind had missed. It was a simple affair – just a winged skull, crowned with a halo of spikes, but it triggered a powerful sensation in him. Hope.

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why does it look so familiar? Why does it mean so much? Where is this?’

‘Who knows? I doubt we have ever visited the place. It’s the design you recognise. It is just like the shrine where I first saw you. As you are now, I mean. When you first told me your name was Mephiston. Surely you remember? The shrine in the Bactrus Wastes where we swore our oath.’

‘Oath?’

Rhacelus’ face remained impassive, but he could not hide the pain in his eyes. ‘Think. Cast your mind back. After you died and were reborn at Hades Hive. When you became the Lord of Death you swore never to forget yourself. You swore that, whatever happened, whatever power you gained, part of you would always remain Calistarius. And I swore to remind you when your memory failed.’

Mephiston’s thoughts traced back over all the wars he had prosecuted in pursuit of the daemon, the terrible sacrifices he had demanded, the countless deaths he had caused. It had seemed as though nothing else mattered. But now, in the calm of the Chemic Spheres, he realised his destiny was more complicated than that. What use killing monsters if he became one himself? He had forgotten his oath. Rhacelus knew him better than he knew himself.

Mephiston held up his hands before his face. The red ceramite glittered in the shifting light and it looked as though his hands were wet with blood. He slumped back against the chair, shaking his head. ‘My memory has failed,’ he muttered. ‘I cannot be the man I was. He has gone. Swallowed by the warp. Help me, Rhacelus. Be my memory. What would Calistarius have done if he were here now?’

Rhacelus smiled. ‘Much as you are doing. He would be utterly focused on his goal, unwavering in his pursuit of his foe. But he would at least give these people a chance to hope. Reach their bomb, Calistarius. Trigger it. Why not? It will give us the chance we need to reach the necron lord and let you find out how he has blocked your vision. But it will also give the people of Morsus a chance to show the necrons they have a real enemy on this planet. There’s no future for these people, but you could at least give them a chance to achieve something before they die. Hunt your daemon without pause, yes, but inspire hope too, rather than despair.’ He handed the locket back. ‘After all, who better to finish the Revenant Crusade than a revenant?’

Mephiston nodded. As he allowed the memory of the Chemic Spheres to fall away, he stared at the picture in the locket, determined to remember the man he once was. Determined to breathe life into his corpse.

‘Do not leave me, Rhacelus,’ he whispered, as Morsus swam back into view.

Mephiston gripped the hilt of Vitarus, staring into the depths of his mind. For the first time in his life, he looked his accusers in the eyes. The shadows that haunted him looked back in silence, the rage fading from their eyes. He was back on Morsus, standing before the cogitator in the heart of the ogryns’ cathedrum. Rhacelus was at his side and all the living souls in the nave were watching him. His tremors had vanished and he could stand upright once more.

Mephiston nodded, understanding the question in the ghosts’ eyes and making them a silent promise. One by one, they nodded back, before slowly dissipating, snatched away by a breeze that sprang up from nowhere.

For the first time in centuries, Mephiston’s mind was silent. Thanks to the loyalty of Rhacelus, he would keep his oath. Calm washed over him. He saw what he must do.

He looked from face to face. It was a disparate bunch – the charred, monstrous ogryn, the survivors of the Sabine Guard, so skeletal they were swamped by their greatcoats, and his own battle-brothers, standing proudly at his side, looking back at him from behind the tinted visors of their helmets.

‘If the Emperor demands a crusade,’ Mephiston said quietly, ‘he shall have one.’ He looked from Llourens to Argolis. ‘No more retreats. We will burn these mines clean.’

Llourens paled as she registered Mephiston’s words and passion flashed in her eyes.

‘For the Emperor,’ said Rhacelus, gripping his force sword and clanging the hilt against his chest armour.

There was a moment of shocked silence, then a chorus of voices, human and abhuman. ‘For the Emperor!’ they cried, raising their weapons above their heads. ‘For the Emperor!’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘The Horns of the Abyss,’ said Codicier Lucius Antros, looking out from the Dawnstrike’s observation deck. He was surrounded by movement and noise as the Gladius-class frigate edged into position, but his gaze was fixed on the scene outside. His training had revealed many extraordinary and disturbing sights to him over the decades, but this was beyond anything he had yet experienced.

The golden-armoured Space Marine at his side nodded, taciturn as ever.

They stood before what looked like the paint palette of a lunatic. Every conceivable colour, and some inconceivable ones too, had been splashed across the stars. The dazzling hues formed a rippling sea, a sea that was exploding, endlessly – erupting and collapsing, thrashing and recoiling. From a distance, it could have been mistaken for a natural phenomenon – a nebulous, geomagnetic storm that had boiled out of control, magnetic fields colliding and detonating – but this close, only a few hundred miles away, there could be no mistaking the truth: this bizarre manifestation was the death throes of reality. Planet-sized limbs of matter grappled and lashed, creating fleeting, recognisable shapes: tormented, bestial faces, blossoming bundles of viscera, the spires of great palaces, the irises of lidless eyes.

For a moment, Antros was lost in the madness of it, his mind reeling before the cataclysmic conclusion of time and space. The Great Rift was physics in reverse – the ordered universe breaking down into the raw stuff of Chaos.

He looked back at the reason Dragomir had brought him up here: the Horns of the Abyss. The orbital facility that no longer had anything to orbit. Once, it had rested gently in the gravitational pull of Dragomir’s home world, Tocharion, but Tocharion was gone, devoured by the rift, along with the fortress-monastery that Dragomir had once called home. The Sons of Helios were now a refugee Chapter, rootless and homeless.

The Horns of the Abyss was a recent name, of course. Before the arrival of the Great Rift the facility had been called Saarik Station, but as it slipped slowly towards destruction, it had taken on a more sinister persona. The facility consisted of two orbiting spheres, linked by a cage of gantries and struts. Each of the spheres was several miles in diameter, peppered with anchorage points and weapons batteries, but the close proximity of the Great Rift had warped and mangled them, giving the station the appearance of a leering, horned skull. It hung over the madness of the Cicatrix Maledictum like a man clinging to a cliff edge. Even now, purposeful, chromatic tendrils surrounded it, preparing to drag it down into the hellish blaze.

The Chapter Master was bathed in warp light. His burnished, master-crafted armour reflected the madness of the storm, blazing crimson and sapphire, making it hard to see him clearly. He had removed his helmet and Antros was once again taken by the strangeness of his tattoos. Every Sons of Helios battle-brother wore a tribal-looking design on his face, but the Chapter Master’s was by far the most elaborate – every inch of his skin was inked with intricate, menacing black lines, like scrimshaw, depicting the trembling rays of a burning sun. Like many others in the Chapter, Dragomir had a long, carefully plaited beard. When he removed his helmet, the Chapter Master pulled his beard from his armour and allowed it to tumble across his chest in a way that, to Antros, seemed barbaric.

The Sons of Helios were far from barbaric, however. It had taken several furious battles to reach this point and Antros had been constantly impressed by their calm, unshakable dignity. There was something humbling in their determination. The more he watched them resist the madness of the Great Rift, the more he felt sure they held the key to Mephiston’s dilemma. If he could understand their strange relationship with the warp, he could share that skill with the Chief Librarian.

‘This is our last piece of home,’ said Dragomir. ‘It will be the first time we have stepped onboard since the fall of Tocharion. But I am sure our brothers are still down there.’

He waved for the serfs and menials to leave the observation deck. Once the huddle of cowled figures had left, he turned to Antros, studying the blue, rune-inscribed war-plate that marked him out as a scholar of the Librarius. ‘The Sons of Helios have never stared into the abyss, Lucius Antros. We have never seen the places you and your kind have seen.’ He raised his chin, his expression a mixture of doubt and pride. ‘For all these centuries we have kept our gaze averted. But now the abyss stares into us. If my brothers are still alive down there, I must know what has become of them.’ He stepped closer to the armoured glass. ‘I have taught you as much as I can about how we think and fight, but if you really want to know how we survive the Cicatrix Maledictum, you will need to see us pushed to the limit, at the very gates of the abyss. Nothing I’ve shown you so far can match the challenge we face down there. We are here to fight for our souls, codicier, and the soul of our Chapter.’

Antros heard carefully masked pain in the Chapter Master’s voice as he continued.

‘We built our entire creed around avoiding the psychic arts.’ He gripped the hilt of his sword. ‘Purity of mind, strength of arms, those are our weapons, Brother Antros, rather than the esoteric and the obscure.’ He shook his head and looked out at the ruined station and the madness beyond. ‘But look where it has led us.’

‘Warp sight rarely gives clear answers,’ said Antros. ‘If the Librarius could see all ends, there would be no Great Rift. Visions and prophecies only ever show half of the truth. And even that can be misunderstood. But why go back down there, Lord Dragomir? You still have four squads on this ship. Chapters have been rebuilt from less.’

Dragomir nodded, but Antros could sense he was holding something back. Antros could easily have pushed his way into the Chapter Master’s thoughts and found out what, but such an intrusion would be a breach of protocol at the very least. Mephiston had spent a great amount of time teaching Antros how to use his gifts, but he had also spent time teaching him when not to use them.

‘I will do whatever is needed to reach my men,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘The distress signals we received were truncated and unclear. And now we hear nothing at all. If my men live, I need to know if they are still mine, or…’ He hesitated, glancing at the galactic wound thrashing outside the oculus. ‘Or if they have become something else. We will be sorely pressed, codicier. The discipline that you have asked so many questions about is our only hope. If you truly wish to understand it, this is your chance.’ He gave Antros a sideways glance. ‘Why are you really here? Your Librarius training must be rigorous. Yet you have gone to great lengths searching for a new way to shield your mind from the warp. You told me you have searched out other Chapters who think as we do. What has driven you to ask these questions, Brother Antros? What puzzle are you trying to solve?’

Antros had the unnerving sense that Dragomir was using the very tools he claimed to have abjured – that he was peering into his mind somehow. His quest stemmed from a shameful secret – the absurd, dreadful doubts he harboured about his own Chief Librarian. He was desperate to find a cure for Mephiston so he could disprove his own suspicions, but he would never share such troubling concerns with anyone, least of all a stranger.

He replied too quickly, his tone flippant, his explanation obviously untrue. ‘A Librarian is like a beacon in the warp – attracting every kind of horror. We must always search for better ways to safeguard our souls.’

Dragomir frowned, clearly sensing the lie.

‘Is your Chief Librarian travelling with you?’

‘He is. I left Mephiston on the far side of the sector and will return to him directly after leaving you.’

‘I fought with him at the Siege of Pactolus. He wields great power.’

‘You spoke with him?’

‘No, we were the relief force. I merely observed him from afar. He was impressive.’ Dragomir hesitated. ‘There were many who spoke of him though, in the aftermath. You must know that there are some who question the source of his power.’ Dragomir spoke, as always, with surprising directness.

Antros’ reply was brittle. ‘Do you question the source of his power?’

‘Of course not.’ Dragomir sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Forgive me. I have offended you.’

Antros changed the subject, nodding at the station. ‘We will have to work fast.’ The station was listing badly and edging towards the rift.

‘There is time. Our cogitators predict that we have nearly seven hours. After that, the station will break down and become part of the storm but until then we have a chance.’

‘You mean to board a vessel only seven hours away from sinking into the warp?’

‘I will only take one squad. If we fail to return, the Chapter still has a chance to survive.’ Dragomir glanced at the winged blood drop on Antros’ armour. ‘If it were Baal that had been lost, and the sons of the Angel who had been wiped out, what would you do? Would you leave even one of your brothers alone down there?’

Antros was about to argue further – to point out that anyone on the space station was liable to be either dead or corrupted – but he checked himself. Dragomir was right. If it were Blood Angels on that orbital facility, and they were the last of their kind, he would have to know what had become of them. And there was another reason he did not argue with Dragomir. Such a hazardous venture, so close to the warp, should finally help him answer the question he had spent the last few weeks considering: did the Sons of Helios carry a unique gift, or were they simply heretics?

He clanged his fist against his chest armour and bowed his head.

When they stepped into the darkness of the station, there were only seven of them: Antros, Dragomir and a single squad of his proud, gold-armoured sons.

Dragomir led the way, tracking the distress signal on an auspex, and Antros walked behind him, his staff held out, washing cool blue light over the tormented ruins. The bulkheads were so mangled and tortured they resembled a wreck dredged from the ocean, or the innards of a diseased monster. Antros felt as though he were marching down the throat of a leviathan. Tumour-like growths had burst through the walls – pale humps of fungus. Antros paused to examine one, pressing the end of his staff against its surface until it tore like wet paper, spilling an avalanche of ink-black spores down its smooth white skin.

‘What is that?’ asked Dragomir, looking back.

Antros shook his head as the spores floated away, tumbling up into the darkness. He followed them with the light of his staff as they drifted higher, alighting on the gantries overhead. The struts were hooked and barbed, like an impenetrable mass of thorns, and at the touch of the spores they twisted further, grinding and screeching as though in pain.

‘If your brothers are still alive,’ Antros asked, ‘how long do you think they have been trapped here?’

Dragomir watched the buckled shapes dancing in Antros’ light. ‘Three years.’

Antros halted. ‘Three years?’

‘It makes no difference. I must know what became of them. If they have turned, their existence is an abomination. If one of my sons has fallen, I will bring him the Emperor’s mercy.’

Antros studied Dragomir and his brothers, impressed again by their calm dignity. Then he nodded and continued along the walkway, keeping clear of the pale, ghost-like shapes that surrounded them. He had the worrying impression the fungus was reacting to his presence – swelling and shifting as he passed.

After an hour or so, they ascended from the lower levels into dormitories and drill halls. They looked into one of the larger cells but saw no sign of life. Religious texts lay discarded on the floor next to piles of robes and abandoned scraps of armour. Dragomir’s battle-brothers would not willingly have left their quarters in such a disgraceful state, thought Antros, rolling a dented chalice beneath his boot.

‘They left in a hurry,’ he said.

Dragomir nodded and gestured towards a weapons rack on the wall. There were empty spaces where the bolters and chainswords should have been hanging. ‘But not unarmed.’

Antros was about to move on when he noticed something glinting on one of the bunks. He bent to pick it up and saw that it was a small mirror, cast to resemble a stylised sun, the Chapter badge of the Sons of Helios. There was an inscription scored into the back, a simple design of four intersecting triangles. He looked closer and realised that the triangles were staring eyes. The simple, geometric symbol seemed out of place amongst the elaborate solar imagery displayed on most of the Chapter’s insignia.

‘This symbol,’ he said, holding the mirror up to Dragomir. ‘What is it? Some kind of personal heraldry?’

Dragomir took the mirror and peered at the tiny engraving. His face was hidden behind the polished faceplate of his helmet, but Antros could hear the pride in his voice.

‘It is an agora. A sacred mirror. The icon on its back is the symbol of the Sleepless Mile.’ Dragomir held out his arm and Antros saw the same symbol – four staring eyes – engraved into Dragomir’s golden vambrace. Behind Dragomir, the other Sons of Helios brothers bowed their heads, as though in prayer.

‘The Sleepless Mile,’ muttered Antros, looking more closely at the mirror, fascinated. The Sleepless Mile was the mental discipline Antros was so keen to learn more of. It was a form of meditation, but the Chapter Master had been frustratingly vague each time he asked for more details.

‘The mirror is a doorway, leading us to purity and strength,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘Once an acolyte ascends to full brotherhood I entrust him with an agora so that he may begin to walk the Sleepless Mile. It is a difficult, inward journey. These are not the psychic arts that you might employ. We do not project our souls through sorcery. We simply find the centre of our being so our subconscious can reveal hidden truths. It takes determination, but over time it will ensure the strength of our minds, and their purity, so we can be inured to the predations of the Ruinous Powers.’

These last words were intoned with the singsong formality of cant and Antros guessed that Dragomir was quoting from one of the Chapter’s sacred texts.

Antros had studied countless initiation rites and training rituals in his quest to help Mephiston, but this one seemed unique. He felt that, finally, he might have found the answer. ‘But what is the Sleepless Mile? Was it a place on Tocharion?’

Dragomir tapped the flaming sun emblazoned across his chest armour. ‘It is a place in our minds, Lucius Antros. It is hard to explain to a stranger. It is a journey within, a path to revelation. A way to create the perfect warrior. A way to free oneself of useless passions. With no Librarius to guide us, we gird our consciousness in other ways. We are each on a pilgrimage into the darkness, to see if we are strong enough for a lifetime of duty. Each day we turn our mind inwards and strive to travel further down the Sleepless Mile. A true warrior must be master of his thoughts, as well as his body.’ Dragomir was warming to his subject, but then he shook his head. ‘There is no time for this now. We must move.’

Antros was fascinated and keen to ask more, but the chronometer in his peripheral vision was flickering away, a constant reminder of how little time they had.

Dragomir handed the mirror back to him. ‘Keep it. I will try to explain better when we have more time.’

He looked at the auspex and led them on into the next chamber. It was a training hall. Battle servitors lay discarded in broken heaps, their blades and drills buckled. Looming over everything were the same pale, ghostly spore sacks they had seen when they first docked. In this chamber, tumours had burst through the ceiling too, hanging down like stalactites, some of them quivering with internal movement. Their white skin was thinner than the one Antros had touched earlier and it was possible to make out the black spores teeming inside.

Antros paused, illuminating the pallid mounds with his staff, struggling to find a route through them.

‘This way,’ said Dragomir, finding a narrow path between two of the larger spore sacks.

They moved carefully through the training room, along a series of narrow corridors and then out into a vast hangar bay, crowded with the silent, looming shadows of abandoned gunships and shuttles. They stood on an observation balcony, looking down over the hangar below. Dragomir stared intently at the auspex as it bleeped and burbled, relaying the static-slashed distress signal.

Then he held up a warning hand, gesturing to the shadows beneath one of the gunships.

‘Down there,’ he said, keeping his voice low.

+I see nothing,+ replied Antros, projecting his reply telepathically into the Chapter Master’s mind.

Dragomir stepped backwards, as though he had been shoved, staring at Antros in surprise.

+Forgive me,+ said Antros. +I did not wish to speak aloud.+

Dragomir continued staring at him for a moment, clearly disturbed by the idea of a voice appearing in his mind, but then he nodded and signalled to his men. ‘The distress signal is coming from those shadows. Approach with care.’

The Sons of Helios split up, heading towards the deck, racing easily down stairways and ladders with their bolters ready. They rushed towards the gunship from different directions.

Antros and Dragomir were the first to reach the shadows beneath the wings. The pale, flickering glow of the emergency lights barely pierced the darkness, but it was enough for their powerful, Adeptus Astartes eyes.

There was a vox-unit on the floor, chattering to itself, repeating the same disjointed signal Dragomir had been tracking.

‘It’s a trick,’ said Antros.

A piece of machinery had been wedged against the vox-unit, keeping the channel open and forcing it to broadcast the same, looping message.

Something moved in the shadows.

Antros raised his staff and poured light into the darkness, revealing a large spore sack. It must have fallen from the ceiling at some point and spewed its contents across the deck. There was a great, teeming mass of spores tumbling from its pallid flesh, some spilling across the floor and others drifting up into the pulsing light.

Dragomir stepped back, but Antros gripped his arm, nodding at the cascading spores.

As the spores rose they formed a dark, whirling tunnel, a miniature tornado of glinting shells rising quickly from the ground.

Dragomir waved to his men. ‘Do not let those things on your armour.’

The Sons of Helios edged back, their guns still raised, but Antros was too intrigued to move. The spores reminded him of something. As he watched, the cloud grew denser and darker, rearing up from the deck and taking on a definite shape: the hulking, powerful silhouette of a Space Marine.

The shape spoke. Its voice was a wet, bubbling belch, full of joy. ‘We had almost given up hope, Lord Dragomir.’

It was a hideous mockery of a Space Marine. It wore a suit of rotten, rusting power armour that bore Sons of Helios Chapter markings. Antros could see the remnants of their flaming sun device on its chest-plate and shoulder pad but the armour was now as warped and buckled as the rest of the station. The ceramite had changed from gold to a garish, toxic yellow and it was covered in broken sores. One of the suit’s arms had mutated into a jagged, bloated claw like the limb of a crustacean, and where the helmet should be there was a lump of puckered flesh – rolls of white blubber heaped around a ridged, foot-long tusk curving up from its forehead. The face had no mouth that Antros could discern, but it had eyes – three tiny studs of jet, just below the tusk, glinting merrily.

‘You’re just in time,’ said the mutant, the words slopping from some hidden orifice.

‘Brother-Sergeant Koloch?’ said Dragomir.

‘My lord,’ said the monstrous figure and its pale head split in half, revealing a mouth so wide that it hinged its entire head. The gaping maw was crowded with spine-like teeth and a lolling, rotten tongue. There was genuine delight in its voice. And there was something almost canine about the way it lurched towards the Chapter Master. ‘I thought we would have to leave without you. I thought you would never come.’

Before the grotesque creature could get any closer, the Sons of Helios opened fire. Bolt-rounds ripped through its half-formed shape, shattering the rusted armour and tearing the blubbery flesh.

The monster slammed back against the gunship’s landing gear and disintegrated as the shots kept thudding into it. Before its face was obliterated, Antros saw shock and hurt in its eyes.

There was more movement behind them and Antros stepped back from the ship, his gaze sweeping the hangar. All around them, the spore sacks were bursting open and spilling their contents. Some of the spore clouds formed frail, withered humans, but others birthed figures like Sergeant Koloch: hulking, Chaos-warped Space Marines, their armour transformed by crustacean-like growths.

Antros waved his staff and the shambling figures erupted in cerulean fire. The Sons of Helios formed a defensive circle around Dragomir, firing in every direction, kicking the mutant horrors off their feet and scattering the spore clouds.

As more shadows stomped towards them, a deafening roar filled the hangar and the ground juddered with the tremor of vast engines. Warning klaxons began barking and all around the deck strip-lumens blazed, revealing the Chaos Space Marines in horrible clarity. The station was coming back to life.

‘It’s a trap,’ growled Antros.

Dragomir stopped firing for a moment and stared at him.

‘The facility is operational,’ said Antros, drawing his pistol and downing a four-armed horror climbing from the balcony. ‘These things wanted you to come back.’

As the Sons of Helios tore down the approaching figures, the engine noise grew in volume, competing with the furious baying of the alarms.

‘They are not firing,’ said Antros, lowering his pistol and surveying the battle.

The shambling mutants were reaching out towards Dragomir, even as the bolter rounds slammed into their contorted armour, but none of them were firing back. There was a mixture of hurt and pleading in their distorted eyes, but no anger.

‘Leave none alive,’ said Dragomir quietly over the vox. ‘These things are no longer our brothers.’

The Sons of Helios fired even more furiously, sending volley after volley into the lumbering ranks. They began to move towards the Chaos Space Marines, advancing in orderly, disciplined lines.

Antros backed up the steps of the gunship, still firing his pistol, and saw that the mutants were absorbing the shots with no sign of pain or hesitation. Every time a blast sliced through their corroded armour, they simply climbed back to their feet and continued pressing closer.

There was a noise behind him on the steps and Antros whirled around, staff raised.

One of the abominations had emerged from the ship and was leering down at him from the hatch. It gripped a rusted chainsword in its armoured paw and levelled it at Antros.

‘The Blood Angel!’ it roared, spewing toxic sludge from a mandible-like mouth. ‘He has tricked Lord Dragomir! He does not belong here.’ His face twisted into a furious snarl, making his deformed features even more disturbing. ‘Kill the witch!’

Antros whispered a word of channelling and opened his mind to the warp, allowing it to flood down his staff. He gasped in shock. This close to the Great Rift, it was like trying to hold back the tide. He shook violently as warp flame lashed from the staff, eviscerating the mutant but also tearing open the gunship’s hull and hurling Antros back from the steps.

All across the hangar, mutants fired at Antros, but their shots punched uselessly into the gunship as Antros lay sprawled and dazed on the deck, enveloped in pulsing light.

Dragomir rushed through the dazzling nimbus and hauled Antros to his feet. Antros was rigid with exertion, straining to keep a leash on the warp flame.

Dragomir continued firing his pistol as he strode back through the wall of energy and rejoined the battle. Upon reaching the first of the mutants, he drew his power sword and began coolly slicing through them, fighting with smooth, even strokes as he scattered ink-black gore from their armour.

None of the Chaos Space Marines fired at Dragomir, even as he hacked them apart; they were all focused on Antros, howling and spitting as they tried to reach him.

Antros raised his staff, more carefully this time, and teased a little warp flame back into it, painting a glimmering shield across the air. The runes along the staff burned white hot and visions clawed at Antros’ mind. The colours boiling outside the station poured through the punctured hull and into his brain, filling his thoughts with malformed spirits. He staggered, battling to hold them back. Channelling the warp through his staff became impossible. His mind burned with the effort of containing such a powerful psychic tide.

With an agonising force of will he stemmed the blast, but the effort was so great he lost hold of his staff. It clattered to the floor, cold and inert.

Antros reeled across the deck as another spray of bolter rounds whined past him.

+I cannot help you,+ he said, placing the words directly into Dragomir’s mind. +The rift is too close.+

Dragomir was still fighting, but he replied calmly over the vox. ‘I have found my missing brothers. I know what to do.’

Shots kicked into the hull behind Antros and he rolled clear as shrapnel exploded all around him. He grabbed his staff and fastened it to his back, then raised his pistol, firing super-heated gouts of plasma as he marched back into the fray.

The station’s engines were screaming furiously, shattering the statues that supported the balcony, scattering broken wings across the deck plating.

Antros fired again, then sprinted to a circular oculus behind the gunship. The stars had vanished. Everything had been consumed by madness.

‘They’re taking us in,’ he muttered.

+Chapter Master,+ he thought, reaching back into Dragomir’s mind. +This is a trap. We have to leave now. They are flying the ship into the warp.+

‘This station cannot fly,’ replied Dragomir, but as he looked towards the oculus his sword blows faltered.

A Plague Marine barrelled past the Chapter Master, making for Antros and raising a spitting chainaxe. Dragomir lashed out with his power sword but the Plague Marine had already passed him, propelled by a savage fury.

Another battle-brother whirled around, loosing off a barrage of shots. The rounds thudded into the Plague Marine’s rusted battleplate, kicking him off course. He staggered and weaved, then launched himself at Antros.

The full weight of the mutant smashed into Antros and they fell backwards, clattering across the deck, kicking up sparks as they rolled towards the oculus. The Plague Marine locked a rotten claw around Antros’ throat, crushing his intricately inscribed armour. Then it rammed the chainaxe into Antros’ faceplate.

There was a blinding flash and a series of muffled thuds as Antros fired his pistol into the mutant’s sagging gut. Pus, blood and spine erupted from the mutant’s back.

The chainaxe tore into Antros’ faceplate with a scream of tearing metal. Pain exploded in his face and rage flooded through him. He reached into the immaterium, howling. Warp fire burned through his veins as he rose to his feet and hurled the Plague Marine across the hangar.

Antros stormed across the deck, arcs of blazing light flashing across his power armour. Still howling, he grabbed his warp-blasted foe, ripped into the rusty armour with his fingers and smashed his staff into the mutant’s misshapen head, pounding it into a bloody pulp. As he savaged the mutant, Antros’ rage grew. Blood was pouring down his face. This filthy, wretched traitor had turned a beautiful likeness of Sanguinius into a mess of torn flesh.

Blood rushed into his mouth and long-suppressed hunger rose from his gut. Bloodlust mingled with warp fire, driving him into a kill-frenzy. He sank his teeth into the mutant’s face. Bitter ichor filled his mouth. A small part of Antros’ mind cried out in warning, but the voice was washed away by a wrathful tide.

Antros ripped the mutant to pieces, hacking and tearing until there was nothing but shreds of gore. Then he staggered backwards, lightning arcing from his eyes and a distorted howl booming from his lungs.

He held his staff aloft and caught strands of psychic energy, channelling them through the rune-warded metal and hurling bolt after bolt into the mutants. Every blast ripped the Plague Marines apart, but the energy was too wild to stop there. The bolts tore through the detonating mutants, then punctured the walls of the chamber, bursting the plasteel like seared flesh. The hangar billowed and folded. Reality gave way. From both inside and outside, the station was consumed by the warp.

Antros closed his eyes, lost to the bloodlust, his mind a conduit for wild, unearthly power. He did not see the Sons of Helios attempting to run towards him, battered by the whirlwind that had enveloped him.

He did not see the jaws of the Great Rift open around the Horns of the Abyss and drag it from the material world.

For a long time, Antros knew nothing but rage. It consumed him to the point at which he could not recall its cause. All he knew was the animal need to roar and thrash, punching his way through the intangible shapes that seethed around him. There was only blood, shadows and hate. Shrieking wraiths clamoured around him, pawing at his mind, babbling curses, drowning his soul. He could feel all trace of sanity slipping away from him and he recalled how Rhacelus had warned him to stay away from the Great Rift.

Antros’ rage grew as he realised what a terrible mistake he had made. The mutants had driven him into the arms of the damned. If he did not halt this plunge into madness, he would become a plaything of the Ruinous Powers.

He howled as he fell but there was nothing he could do. The rage had taken him. He had succumbed to the age-old madness of his Chapter. He gasped in disgust and agony as his mind slid inexorably into the abyss.

Then, with his last trace of consciousness, Antros saw a light. No, several lights, he realised, glimmering in the pitch-black – cool, unruffled flames, quite different from the maelstrom that was consuming him.

He stared harder at the lights, throwing his mind towards them, seeing something wonderful in their implacable dignity. As the lights filled his thoughts, they took shape, becoming a row of kneeling, praying Space Marines, their heads bowed against their weapons, mirrors clutched in their hands, dangling silver chains. It was Dragomir and the Sons of Helios, motionless on the deck of the hangar as a tsunami of colour whirled around them. They had centred themselves, becoming one with the eye of the storm – unbreakable and inviolable, even as the galaxy collapsed around them. They whispered a faint mantra as they prayed. ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed.’

There was something troubling about the mantra that made Antros pause, but as soon as he removed his gaze from the kneeling figures, damnation rushed at him once more, filling his mind with bloodlust and madness. The Sons of Helios were his only chance.

Antros climbed unsteadily to his feet, mantled in psychic fire, shrugging off scorched flesh and broken armour. He staggered towards the Space Marines, reached for the fire in their chests, and said, ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed.’

Calm clarity flooded his mind. The Sleepless Mile. He finally understood. The path to enlightenment. He watched the Sons of Helios in wonder. Even now, they were immune.

Antros’ breathing became calm. The fire in his veins cooled. He gripped the mirror dangling from his armour and mimicked the solemnity of the Sons of Helios, becoming master of his thoughts as their light burned through him. Finally, impossibly, he shrugged off the savagery of the curse. He unfastened his staff and held it aloft, testing its weight, trusting it once more. The ancient staff was unchanged but Antros could feel that he had been altered. Even without being summoned, the warp was pulsing through his arteries, as much a part of him as his own blood. Incredible power was just a thought away. He felt as though he could breathe an apocalypse.

Antros trod carefully as he moved towards the Sons of Helios, as though he carried an explosive charge. Unimaginable force pulsed through his fingers as he reached out and rested a hand on Dragomir’s shoulder.

The Chapter Master looked up and, through his visor, Antros saw the warrior’s expression change from wariness to hope.

The warp storm was still raging through the hangar, so Dragomir had to speak to Antros over the vox-network.

‘You understand,’ he said.

Antros nodded, proud to have joined them, but ashamed that the Chapter Master had witnessed his barbarism.

He looked around and saw that the hangar was now just an echo of reality. There was a vague outline of walkways and alcoves, but they were rippling and fading, like a painting consumed by fire.

‘Reality is still at hand,’ said Dragomir. ‘You could bring it back.’

Antros hesitated, considering the havoc he had just unleashed.

‘You have joined us on the path, brother,’ said Dragomir. ‘It will lead you. It will lead us all home.’

He shook his head, feeling he was on the edge of a great precipice from which there would be no return.

‘If you do not try, we are all lost,’ said Dragomir. There was no accusation in his voice, just quietly stated fact. His tone reminded Antros of his master, Lord Mephiston – or at least it reminded him of the cool, noble side of Mephiston, the side that was such an inspiration to the Chapter.

‘If I try and fail, many more will be lost,’ replied Antros.

‘Then do not fail.’

Antros nodded and closed his eyes, reaching into Dragomir’s mind and stepping onto the Sleepless Mile.

The Horns of the Abyss rose from the Great Rift like a wreck dredged from the ocean. Eddies of warp fire glimmered across its hull as it shouldered its way back into reality. Light and thought churned around its blackened frame, fusing into bestial faces before falling back into shadow.

Antros knelt beside Chapter Master Dragomir as real space settled around them. He opened his eyes and saw that the hangar had regained its solidity. Contorted corpses lay slumped across the deck, but they were all Plague Marines – none of the Sons of Helios had fallen. Dragomir and the others still had their heads bowed as they trod the path Antros had just left.

His thoughts raced. He had shared in the glory of their discipline and restraint. He had seen the light on the horizon of their thoughts – the lodestar that kept them sane, even though the galaxy was not. They had shown him the route to self-mastery and, at the same time, his flesh still simmered with the fury of the warp; he had become the perfectly tempered weapon he always wished to be. He had harnessed the curse.

I must find Mephiston, he thought, his pulse hammering. This is what he has been seeking. If he allies his great gift to these precepts he can unleash it without fear. The Sleepless Mile is exactly what he needs. He will become everything the Angel Sanguinius intended.

Antros climbed to his feet, then had to steady himself with his staff. His muscles throbbed with warp energy. His time in the warp had steeped him in incredible power. It simmered through his veins, ready to spill forth.

He extended his fingers and a blizzard of runes enveloped his hand. Blazing, ember-like calligraphy circled his fingers, describing formulas and incantations he had never seen before. There was no need for invocations – power simply tumbled out of him, part of his very essence. The warp was him and he was the warp.

‘I must find Mephiston,’ whispered Antros, awed by his newfound power and desperate to explain it to his lord.

As soon as Antros spoke, Dragomir and the other Sons of Helios opened their eyes. Dragomir glanced at the carnage in the hangar, then fixed his cool gaze on Antros.

‘You saved us.’

Antros held out a hand, extinguishing the glowing runes with a thought and gripping the mirror Dragomir had given him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You saved me.’

Chapter Master Dragomir strode through the naves and walkways of the Dawnstrike, trailing a wake of bowing Chapter serfs. Everyone on board had heard how close he had come to death. The serfs whispered prayers as he passed, praising him for his bravery and determination, but Dragomir waved them aside, in no mood for their adoration. Whatever he had said to Lucius Antros, he had been sure he would find his brothers alive on the orbital station. He had spent countless hours meditating over their fate and the Sleepless Mile had been clear: they were alive and untainted by Chaos. How could he have misunderstood?

He stormed through the hallways and entered his private chambers, closing the door behind him. It was a surprisingly simple cell for the lord of an army. Candles nested in alcoves along one of the rough-hewn walls, and the warm light flickered over his few possessions. There was a shrine to the Emperor in one corner and a weapons rack in the other. There was a small case of military texts next to his bunk and a rolled up prayer mat. On the opposite wall there was a small table, laden with charts and lists of troop dispositions.

Cowled retainers appeared through an archway and fussed around him, carefully removing his ancient battleplate and taking it away to be oiled and anointed. Dragomir stood in silence, head bowed, as they dressed him in sackcloth robes and whispered prayers, drawing invisible shapes in the air as they bustled around him, dwarfed by his massive frame.

When they had finished, Dragomir waved them away and sat heavily on the bunk, expelling a long, shuddering breath. He muttered a prayer and then leant back against the cool rock wall, his eyes closed. ‘How was I so wrong?’ he muttered.

For several minutes he sat there, motionless, relaxing each muscle in his body, one by one. At first he found it hard to empty his mind. He pictured Lucius Antros as he boarded his gunship and headed off to search for his lord, Mephiston. The battle on the Horns of the Abyss had altered the Librarian. Dragomir was no psyker but he had no need of arcane arts to notice the change. When Antros bade them farewell, silhouetted by the landing lights of his gunship, Dragomir saw a new fire in his eyes – the same fire Dragomir had spent his own life pursuing. Somehow, as they fell through the warp, Antros had achieved the enlightenment that waited at the end of the Sleepless Mile. But how? He had barely even begun to explain the process by which one reached the Sleepless Mile. It should have taken years for Antros to achieve enough self-mastery to see his own thoughts so clearly.

Dragomir shook his head, trying again to understand how he could have misread the signals. The Sleepless Mile must have predicted this, but he had failed to understand. He thought back over months of meditation, but all he could see was the ecstatic gleam in Antros’ eyes as he headed off to find his fellow Blood Angels.

Dragomir was due on the bridge in half an hour. The officers would all be waiting for him. But he could not wait. He had to walk the mile. He had to know what he had missed.

He rose to his feet, took his agora from his armour and placed it on the shrine. Then he unrolled his prayer mat and knelt before the little mirror, closing his eyes.

He whispered the old, familiar mantra. ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed.’ Then his breathing grew shallow as he stepped into the recesses of his mind.

The visions came quicker than he had ever known. In just a few short minutes, his mind ascended from its physical manifestation, leaving behind the concerns of flesh and rising to the inner path. His cell vanished and ahead of him sprawled a vast road. Dragomir felt a rush of excitement. This vision was new. He had opened a part of his mind he had never reached before. He was seeing Holy Terra. His subconscious was showing him the grand, ceremonial route to the Emperor’s vast throne room. Legions of emaciated, hooded pilgrims stretched in every direction, singing hymns and shuffling on bloody, shoeless feet. Miles away, hazed by banks of incense-laden censer fumes, loomed the mountain-high facade of the Eternity Gate – an impossibly huge structure, adorned with so many murals and statues that one could study it for a lifetime without ever perceiving the full glory of its design. Most of the pilgrims would die, exhausted, long before they reached the shadow of those Titan-guarded doors, but they all knew it was a miracle to have even reached this point. Most pilgrims fell long before setting eyes on the Eternity Gate. These blessed wanderers would die in sight of the doors that led to the Emperor Himself.

Dragomir’s mind slipped through the shuffling throng, catching glimpses of their gaunt, rapturous faces.

He felt the same elation they did. This was the furthest point he had ever reached on the Sleepless Mile. He had never travelled so deep into his consciousness. He knew he was really still kneeling in his cell, on the Dawnstrike, but he had learned to trust these waking visions. It was not warp sight or prophecy – it was his mind revealing secrets he had hidden from himself. He moved, ghost-like, through the dream crowds and then, with a thrill of recognition, he saw the same lodestar that always led him through the darkness.

At first he thought the light had manifested in its usual form – a glimmering beacon, leading him ever onwards to revelation, but as he got closer, Dragomir saw something incredible: the light was shining through the hood of one of the pilgrims. His guide had taken human form.

The crowds ebbed and flowed, waving their banners and clanging their cymbals and the light vanished from sight.

Dragomir hurried through his trance-dream, tumbling through the shadowy fumes until he saw the pale gleam again. Now he was sure – the light bled through the filthy, ragged cloth of a pilgrim’s hood. The pilgrim was as stooped and emaciated as all the others and he had his back to Dragomir, but there was no mistaking it: he was the source of the light Dragomir had spent his life following.

There was no way of knowing if this vision symbolised the past or the future, or if Dragomir’s guide was, at this very moment, approaching the gates to the Emperor’s throne room.

Again, Dragomir lost sight of the pilgrim, but then he saw why – the hooded figure was moving faster than the rest of the procession, pressing on towards the distant gates and speeding past the arches and porticoes that lined the avenue.

Dragomir rushed on, his mind crowded with questions. What did this mean? Had he reached the end of the Sleepless Mile? Perhaps his brief sojourn in the warp with the Librarian had been the final step to enlightenment? Whatever the reason, he was filled with a growing sense of portent. This vision was far more profound and vivid than any he had experienced before. Perhaps his fall into the warp had unlocked a part of his mind that had previously been kept from him?

As he neared the pilgrim, the lights along the processional road grew brighter, flashing in his eyes and confusing his sight. Towering statues of mythological beasts lined the walkway, and as the light burned brighter, the griffins and angels seemed to rear over him, reaching out in silent adoration.

Finally, Dragomir reached the pilgrim and placed a hand on his shoulder. The pilgrim turned around and the lights blazed brighter.

For a second Dragomir was too dazzled to see the face he had spent his whole life seeking. Then the pilgrim stepped closer and fear flooded Dragomir’s veins.

There was no face inside the pilgrim’s hood, only the long, bleached beak of a bird skull. It looked blindly at him, but it was not just the absence of a face that caused Dragomir to recoil – the hooded figure moved in a horribly unnatural way, flickering and jerking like a badly edited piece of pict footage.

As the daemon’s voice entered Dragomir’s mind, utter despair crushed him. He knew, from the first syllable, that his mistake was far more profound than he had suspected. His entire life had been a lie. The path he had led his Chapter down ended not with the Emperor, but with damnation.

‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed,’ said the daemon, its voice a chorus of whispers and screams.

Its robes billowed as serpents spilled from beneath the cloth. A forest of black-eyed snakes seethed out and enveloped Dragomir, their dislocated jaws gaping revoltingly wide. As the snakes devoured him, Dragomir saw through the glare with horrible clarity. Finally he had the revelation he had sought for so long.

All of the pilgrims had turned to face him. They were standing in silence, thousands of them, their hoods thrown back. None of them were human. They were a menagerie of animal parts and drifting limbs. Their banners were not Imperial relics, but the vile, decadent symbols of Chaos.

Beyond them, the great gates had opened, revealing the throne. There was a god there, to be sure, but not the god Dragomir had sought.

Dragomir’s soul screamed as serpents consumed his mind.

But infinity comes, said the daemon, laughing softly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Antros hauled himself from the wreckage of the lander and rolled clear as flames took hold. He had crossed the system in days, as he had promised Rhacelus he would, only to end his journey in a fireball. The lander had crashed into a talon of rock, a spur that soared up from one of the Morsusian mountains, and his roll quickly became a headlong tumble, bouncing him over jagged rock and creating a small avalanche as his power armour smashed through the blackened stone.

He fell for nearly a minute, then managed to jam his staff into a crag and jolt himself to a halt. Pain suppressors flooded his body but the glyphs scrolling across his optical display reported that he had sustained several injuries in the crash. The worst of them was a fracture in his leg. His power armour was still intact but the bone beneath had twisted several degrees from its normal position. He could feel splinters jutting through his skin.

The pilot remained slumped in his seat as flames rose around the lander, so Antros limped back up the slope in an attempt to reach him. Electricity shimmered across his battleplate as he leant forwards, forcing his way through the ion-charged clouds.

He was still twenty feet from the lander when it detonated, kicking him back through the air. He crashed down the slope for a second time and when he came to a halt the lander was a furnace.

He hobbled down the incline, limping over boulders and scree until he reached the bottom of the slope and paused to look around. Morsus was as irradiated and unwelcoming as any world he had set foot on.

He cast his thoughts through the gloom, trying to reach out with his mind, but he saw nothing. Ever since breaking orbit he had felt a strange numbness in his second sight – a troubling blind spot that he could not shake. Now that he was on the ground, it was almost impenetrable, like a shroud.

He held out his staff and whispered an incantation. The filigreed metal blazed into life, shimmering with psychic power. In fact, it burned with far more violence than Antros intended. It rattled in his grip until he could barely hold it. Whatever was dimming his second sight had done nothing to dull his other powers. Since his time in the Great Rift, he could barely contain the warp fire in his soul. It was exhilarating and daunting at the same time. With one potent phrase he could tear a hole through the temporal world.

He carefully pressed the staff against his leg, muttering a few words of biomancy as the metal touched his battleplate. Heat pulsed through the ceramite, searing wounds and knitting bone.

He unclipped an auspex from his belt and it flickered into life. He scrolled through data feeds and mine schematics until he found what he was looking for. The same life signs he had identified from high anchor. The storm had not thrown him too far off track. He was only a mile or so from his intended landing point. He glanced back at the burning lander, then sprinted off into the whirling dust.

The auspex led him down through the foothills into a broad, desolate basin of charred earth. Morsus was shrouded in thunderheads that admitted no light from its distant sun, but the dark was pierced by lights from another source. In some places the ground had split to release a cool, lambent glow. Shards of light knifed up into the air, pale blue spotlights splashing across the belly of the clouds.

Antros picked up his pace. Implants in his chest had flooded his body with synthetic cells, healing the rest of his wounds with blood clots and scar tissue. Only the arcane arts of a Sanguinary Priest would be able to repair all the damage, but he could run with as much speed as usual.

The dust storms roared into him, clogging his mouth grille and clouding his visor, but he pounded across the rocks and soon found the remnants of a transitway. The surface was pitted and torn but more even than the rocks to either side. Within the hour, he reached the location he had spotted on his auspex. At the end of the transitway, the track led up to a pair of doors. They were almost as big as the mountain slope Antros had just fallen down, and they were badly corroded – two huge slabs of rusted metal, wrought in the shape of an enormous shield, with the faint outline of an eagle just visible, spreading its wings from hinge to hinge.

Rusted, burned-out vehicles were scattered at the foot of the doors; there was no sign anyone had used the entrance for many years. A great drift of dust and rocks was heaped against the doors – hundreds of tonnes of debris that had sealed them tightly closed centuries ago.

Antros strode towards them, his mind aflame with the knowledge he had brought to Mephiston. The light of the Sleepless Mile would protect the Chief Librarian from his madness. For years, Antros had harboured doubts about Mephiston. He had seen him make decisions so perverse that they seemed almost heretical, but still Antros’ doubts were a torment to him. Either he was right and the Librarius was led by a lunatic, possibly even a heretic, or he was wrong, which begged questions about his own purity.

He held his staff up into the storm and cried out a command. The cables in his psychic hood burned cobalt and hummed with power, jolting warp fire through the staff and hurling it at the doors.

The entire, rusted edifice lit up with the force of Antros’ mind. A psychic tracery fanned across the doors, meeting in the centre and arcing out into the night.

A low, seismic rumble juddered through the valley as the doors shifted, hauled by the tiny figure at their feet. Metal screamed and howled as the doors forced back a mountain of rubble, scattering trucks and bursting pipes with a horrendous din. One by one, the corroded hinges popped from their brackets, firing through the air like artillery as the doors teetered and fell.

Antros was too far away to be in danger, but he still took a few involuntary steps backwards as the doors crashed onto the transitway, landing with a boom and throwing up a wall of debris.

When the dust settled, Antros climbed up onto the fallen doors and pounded across the pitted metal, heading into the mine.

He expected darkness, but found light. The same blue glare that speared from the ground outside pulsed in the gallery beyond the doors. He passed ruined hab blocks and warehouses, all coated in a thick layer of ash and warped by the intense heat of the Morsusian rock. He followed the signal he was tracking on his auspex and reached the entrance to a mine shaft at the eastern side of the gallery. The lift was long gone, a few cables still dangling into the incandescent shaft. He clasped his staff to his armour’s generator and stepped out into the air, gliding slowly down into light.

Antros drifted into the inferno for nearly an hour, passing more galleries and rust-sealed doors, before the auspex whined an alert. He hovered for a moment and studied the device. To his surprise, he saw signs of life just a hundred feet from where he was currently hanging. The original signal came from much lower in the mine; this was a second source of heat. Someone must have separated from the main group. Perhaps Mephiston had left the rest of his strike force behind and struck out on his own?

Antros landed on the tunnel floor. It was a narrow passage lined with corrugated plates – some kind of ventilation shaft. It was so narrow that Antros had to stoop to squeeze his power-armoured bulk through the junctions and intersections.

He was about to give up and head back the way he had come when he turned a corner and saw a man, crumpled on the floor of the tunnel, just a few feet away. He looked to be dead, but the auspex said otherwise. He was dressed in the uniform of an Astra Militarum officer so Antros hurried to his side and turned him over.

The man was horribly thin, weighing no more than a child, and his eyes were sunk deep in bruise-dark sockets. He reeked of alcohol.

He recoiled at the sight of Antros. ‘In the name of the Emperor,’ he hissed, his words slurred. ‘Keep your hands off me, you…’ His words trailed away and he frowned suspiciously at Antros.

‘You aren’t him,’ he said, looking warily past Antros to see if anyone else was in the shaft.

‘Who?’

‘The daemon,’ slurred the man. ‘The vampire with wings.’

Antros shook his head.

‘Mephiston!’ snapped the man, his face contorted by hatred. ‘Are you his servant?’

Antros was about to say yes, but the soldier’s demeanour made him pause. ‘What do you know of Mephiston?’ he asked. ‘What have you seen?’

The man’s face flushed with colour and he tried to cry out, but a violent coughing fit rocked his body. He coughed with such force that blood spattered across the walls of the shaft, bright and vivid on the rusted plates. He tried repeatedly to speak, but each time he began the coughing grew worse, until his face had turned a purplish blue. He curled into a foetal position, breathing in short, shallow gasps.

After a few minutes, the man’s breathing returned to something approaching normal, but he was obviously close to death. His eyes were yellow and bloodshot and they were rolling frantically in their sockets, unable to focus.

When he spoke again, he seemed to have forgotten that Antros was there. ‘Daemon!’ he wheezed. ‘Murderer! You knew the xenos would be waiting. You took us to them. You are in league with the ancients. Vampire! Killer! Traitor!’ he groaned, writhing and twisting across the floor.

Then, as though waking from a dream, he sat upright and stared at Antros, his eyes clear. ‘Stop him,’ he said, his body shaking. ‘He’s a traitor. You have to stop him.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He’s in league with the xenos. He’s working with them.’

The man’s eyes started to roll again and his words descended into gibberish. He babbled incoherently for another ten minutes, then he could do nothing but cough and gasp. His breaths grew weaker and weaker and finally stopped. Antros whispered a prayer, commending the man’s soul to the Emperor as his last breath whistled through his blackened teeth.

He stared at the corpse for a moment, troubled by the man’s choice of words. Then, as he turned to leave, he noticed something strange on the man’s neck. He was covered in scars, old and new, but there was a burn at the base of his neck that seemed familiar.

Antros pulled down the collar of the man’s coat and undid the shirt beneath. As he drew back the material, uncovering the man’s emaciated chest, he saw that the burn was in the shape of a sword hilt, and he recognised the design – it was the handle of Mephiston’s force sword, Vitarus.

He backed away, shaking his head. That means nothing, he thought. The man may have been a traitor. The old, vile doubt came back to haunt Antros and Dragomir’s words echoed round his head. ‘There are some who question the source of his power.’

As Antros’ mind whirled, he realised the walls of the shaft were starting to buckle and pop, twisting and breaking in response to his anguish. He tried to suppress the emotion but it was no use. The more he wrestled with his doubts, the more violently the metal shaft warped. The sound of shearing metal rang out as some of the supports gave way. Soil drummed down on his power armour.

If he did not control his mind quickly, the whole tunnel would cave in. He had not come all this way to die alone, killed by soil and rocks.

The Sleepless Mile, he thought, recalling the great news he was bringing to his lord. He closed his eyes and whispered the mantra Dragomir had taught him, casting his mind away from Morsus, centring himself on the path.

His mind was alive with aetheric currents but he managed to calm his thoughts and reach the centre of his consciousness. The Sleepless Mile was unlike any discipline he had attempted before. He was not projecting his thoughts through the galaxy or scrying in other men’s minds – he was seeking wisdom in the hidden corners of his own psyche.

He sank deeper into his trance and his mind showed him a crowd of pilgrims, jostling and stumbling their way across a statue-lined bridge. Antros felt a rush of excitement. He knew these were only pictures in his mind, but they were wonderfully vivid. There was no sunlight, but the statues clutched enormous beacons, blazing with bright, holy fire. The flames flickered and danced in a stiff breeze, making it hard to see the pilgrims with any clarity. The shifting shadows made it seem as though their robes were stretching and shuddering – like reflections in a disturbed pool.

Beneath the bridge sprawled the lights of a vast, Imperial city. Tiny landers and hulking void ships drifted lazily over the spires of a thousand glittering palaces and cathedrals.

‘Terra?’ breathed Antros, wondering why his mind would show him such a thing.

He fought his way across the bridge and on the far side he entered the colonnaded walkways of a formal garden. Mingled in with the pilgrims were gold-armoured giants – the Emperor’s personal honour guard, the Adeptus Custodes, watching as impassively as the statues as the hooded pilgrims shuffled past them, making for a grand, eagle-winged portico at the far end of the walkways. Antros knew this was not reality, but it was so clear that he found himself carried along with the charade, accepting the vision as fact.

He paused as he saw a familiar light, shimmering in the shadows at the edge of the garden. It was the same pale fire he had seen burning in Dragomir’s mind – the source of his equilibrium and power. He left the main flow of pilgrims and hurried towards the light. As he approached, it faded, but in its place Antros saw something equally familiar. It was another power-armoured colossus, but this one wore lacquered, crimson plate that gleamed like blood and his hair trailed behind him like a pale, ragged pennant.

‘Chief Librarian?’ called Antros, but no voice emerged and he remembered that this was only a waking dream.

Mephiston was quickly vanishing into the night, so Antros hurried on, eager to see what else his mind had to show him.

He had almost caught up with Mephiston when the Chief Librarian stepped off the path into a small, pagoda-like chapel and approached a pilgrim waiting inside.

Antros paused a few feet away, feeling a vague sense of dread.

As Mephiston drew closer to the pilgrim, the light of the distant braziers failed to reach beneath its hood, but the pilgrim gave off a psychic aura so grotesque that Antros recoiled. The thing was a daemon. Antros felt it like a kick to his stomach. Everything about it was malign and unholy. Mephiston was conversing with a creature of the warp.

As Antros watched in horror, Mephiston leant close to the hideous thing, whispering urgently into its deep hood and laughing.

Antros could not recall ever seeing Mephiston laugh before. It was a surreal, incongruous sight – almost as disturbing as the presence of the daemon.

The hooded creature nodded its head in reply, then reached out to hand Mephiston something. Antros’ disgust grew as he saw that, rather than a hand, the daemon’s limb ended in a nest of serpents that coiled and tumbled over the ribs of Mephiston’s battleplate in a grotesquely sensual caress. It placed a small object in Mephiston’s hand and, as the Chief Librarian held it up to examine it more closely, Antros saw that it was a simple pewter locket.

Antros was so appalled that he forgot this was all in his mind. He gripped his staff and began mouthing an incantation. He could not understand what Mephiston was doing but he could not permit the warp thing to spend another minute defiling such a holy place.

Before Antros could complete his incantation, Mephiston nodded to the daemon. Incredibly, he seemed to be bowing. Then the Chief Librarian hurried from the chapel and sprinted off through the gardens, making for the distant gates of the Emperor’s Palace.

Antros let out a mute howl and charged at the daemon, but when he entered the circular chapel it was empty. He cried out again, but this time his voice did carry. The nearest of the gold-armoured sentries turned in his direction and lifted his spear – a power weapon that crackled with cool blue current as the Custodian rushed towards him.

Antros backed away from the approaching guard, shaking his head, then stepped from the Sleepless Mile, whispering the mantra and wrenching his soul back to reality, back to the mines of Morsus.

The ventilation shaft had almost completely caved in. The dead Guardsman had vanished from sight, buried beneath flickering rocks and shards of the corrugated ceiling.

The weight of the cave-in had forced Antros into a lying position, but he managed to twist around and look back the way he had come. The tunnel was bent and narrow but there was still a thin space left for him to crawl through. He hauled himself that way, so shocked by what he had just seen that he forgot he had more strengths at his disposal than mere muscle. After a few seconds of fruitless clawing, his mind cleared and he opened his thoughts to the aetheric currents coursing through his flesh.

The ground buckled and heaved in response, tearing itself back into the semblance of a tunnel. Then the whole mass gave way, crashing down onto him with a resonant boom.

Antros had a choice: be crushed to death, or unleash the power he had taken from the Great Rift.

Warp fire ripped from his mind, spilling through his flesh and out of his eyes. He blasted tonnes of soil and rock, burning a new tunnel through the ground. It was dizzyingly easy. He became a storm, raging through the stone, tearing through granite and mud. He forgot who or where he was, revelling in the heady thrill of destruction. He was a raw, sublime force, with no ties of conscience or morals – just the need to survive.

Finally, with a howl of pleasure, he toppled back out of the shaft and flew over the blazing drop, still sparking with psychic energy. For a moment he drifted there, thinking about what he had just done, still feeling the aftershocks of the warp blast humming through his veins. His armour was damaged in several places and he had been wounded, but Antros found that he could not bring himself to care. What did wounds matter now that he could tap into such incredible power? With a few whispered words he bathed himself in a dazzling halo. It rippled over his battleplate, sealing the cracked ceramite and healing his wounds until he looked as resplendent as if he had just left Baal.

The disturbing vision flashed through his head again, confounding and confusing, but he drove it away, refusing to give it credence.

He grabbed the auspex. It was battered but still working and he saw that the life signs were still there, moving quickly away from him. They were heading towards the largest of the bastion mines and going deeper, beneath even the lowest galleries and sumps into an area unmarked on his schematics. Several members of the group were clearly Adeptus Astartes – he could see their twin heartbeats flickering on the grid – and the most powerful signal could only be the Chief Librarian.

‘I must speak to him,’ whispered Antros, trying to quell the energy still jangling through his bones – trying to recall his original purpose. ‘I must tell him of the Sleepless Mile.’

A terrible thought occurred to him. What if the Sleepless Mile led Mephiston to the creature in the chapel? What if he was about to send Mephiston down the path to ruin? He had only grasped the basics of the discipline before he rushed away from the Dawnstrike.

Perhaps he needed to return and learn more before he spoke to Mephiston?

No. He had come this far. He had to speak to the Chief Librarian now. He had seen enough to know that the Sleepless Mile was the answer. Mephiston could summon Dragomir at a later date if needed. Antros plunged down the shaft, more eager than ever to find Mephiston.

CHAPTER NINE

‘Heliomancer Xhartekh,’ droned a distant voice, ‘high priest of the Still-heart Conclave and scion of the Luminous Prince, do you prostrate yourself before our mighty lord, his majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal?’

Xhartekh had been kneeling for three days, in the same spot, with the same ceremonial blade tapping infuriatingly on his left shoulder. Ping. Ping. Ping. By the time these words finally came he was ready to kill. He was not, thankfully, one of those deluded fools who imagined his body was still flesh and bone. He knew his knees did not really ache, or seize up. And he knew the blade was not really drilling through his flesh. No, the only genuine pain he felt was to his pride.

He looked up, allowing himself a brief glimpse of the mortuary temple. Like the rest of the complex, the central chamber of the necropolis was strangely unmarked by time. It was a wonderful glimpse into the past. The air was heavy with incense and smoke from the braziers that lined the walkway, creating a shifting, dreamlike scene. Xhartekh could almost imagine he was back in the glorious heyday of his people, when they still walked the stars as creatures of living flesh, ruling the galaxy with unbowed legions, their dynasties still untainted by the madness of the Great Sleep. Even through the smoke he could see the beauty of the walls – delicate, dawn-blue calligraphy traced across the polished ebon stone, intricate veins of lapis lazuli that shimmered in the firelight, so that the walls resembled the surface of a moonlit lake. The central walkway was colonnaded but he could see no top to the vast columns – they soared out of sight, disappearing into a ceiling of perfumed smoke, hundreds of feet above. The city of Nekheb-Sur was a stirring reminder of what his race had lost, and it was better preserved than any necrontyr tomb Xhartekh had ever seen. He was slowly growing to hate it.

‘Thy power, I have recalled,’ he recited, the words embedded in his memory after so many repetitions. ‘Thou hast my sword and my loyalty. I say this to thee, thine majesty, I will reach into the heart of thine enemies and tear out their lies. I will reach into mine own heart and bring forth the truth. Thou bringest the ardent law. Manifold are my prayers to thee. Countless are mine oaths. I devote myself to thy word and I prostrate myself to thy will.’

As usual, there was no reply. The words echoed around the grand chamber, swallowed by the dancing shadows. Xhartekh could not even see any of the courtiers or bureaucrats that had crowded the previous chamber. They were alone with the statuary. Like all of the preceding audience chambers, the walls were punctuated with leaf-shaped alcoves, each more than fifty foot tall and framing a glowering statue of their host, the phaeron. After seeing Menkhaz’s face, rendered in diorite, from so many different angles, Xhartekh thought he probably could have sculpted it himself.

‘How many more?’ he hissed.

Vargard Hattusil, his bodyguard, was kneeling behind him, leaning against his glaive.

‘This is the fifth sepulchre, my lord.’

‘Only the fifth? Still? Two years to get here from Nekhsoss and then another year waiting for an audience. Overlord Osokhor will be furious at sparing me for so long. I have studied glaciers that display a greater sense of urgency. This phaeron requested my presence, Hattusil. I am not some adoring petitioner, come to beg for aid. He needs my help.’ Xhartekh’s voice was as cold and metallic as the rest of him, but there was an edge of wounded pride – an echo of the mortal he had once been. ‘How can they move at such a leisurely pace when their crown world is on the brink of the abyss? The trans-dimensional rift could consume them. Have they no concept of how much danger they are in?’

A statue at the far end of the colonnade had started walking towards them. As the light of the braziers washed over it, Xhartekh realised his mistake. Rather than a statue, it was a great lord. He was impressively built, seven or eight feet tall and trailing a flurry of ceremonial robes. His hulking body was painted the same iridescent blue as the courtiers Xhartekh had met in all the previous sepulchres, but it was far more intricately worked, engraved with the same fine calligraphy that covered the walls. His skull was a peculiar design – the metal shell was crowned by a tall, razor-edged mohawk that glinted in the firelight, clearly a badge of high office, but also a dangerous weapon.

Like everything else Xhartekh had seen since his arrival, the noble was oddly perfect – there was no trace of corrosion anywhere on his armour and he moved with a fierce vigour. There was something odd happening in the necropolis that intrigued Xhartekh. The lords of Nekheb-Sur had reversed the flow of time, freeing their constructs from age and decay. He had visited countless tomb worlds but never seen anything like it. Xhartekh realised there may be more than one cause for wonder on Morsus.

The gleaming lord was followed by a train of equally immaculate servants and towering lychguard. This was clearly a noble of some significance. Energy hummed through Xhartekh’s capacitors and diodes, flickering at his joints as he realised that, after a year of waiting, he would finally speak to someone with authority.

When the lord spoke, Xhartekh knew this was the voice that had addressed him from the shadows as he progressed so slowly through the necropolis.

‘Thou art welcomed by the lords of the Royal House of Khenisi,’ said the noble. ‘I am Suphys, mouth of the phaeron, first herald of his majesty, Menkhaz the Unmortal.’

Activation runes flickered into life at the back of the hall and the braziers flashed brighter. As the flames rose, Xhartekh saw the source of the thick smoke. The fuel for the fires was human flesh. There were broken, blackened remains piled in the wide copper bowls.

‘The fifth sepulchre is named the World Soul,’ said Suphys. ‘It is here that we burn animals in a daily tribute to his majesty.’ He beckoned Xhartekh closer. ‘You may rise, supplicant.’

Xhartekh bit back his annoyance at being called a supplicant. He would not risk being sent back to the first sepulchre due to a breach of protocol. He stood and walked down the colonnade. His iron feet clanged against the ancient stone floor, echoing around the vast chamber like a ceremonial bell.

Hattusil followed at a respectful distance, head bowed.

‘It is gracious of you to grant me an audience so soon,’ said Xhartekh with a low bow, unable to resist the thinly veiled sarcasm. ‘I am Lord Xhartekh, high priest of the Still-heart Conclave and heliomancer of the seventh rank. My regent, Overlord Osokhor, sends you his greetings. The lords of Nekhsoss are honoured to assist his majesty the phaeron in this matter.’

Suphys returned the bow. ‘There is no need to thank me, Lord Xhartekh. It is true that not many access the heart of Nekheb-Sur so quickly, but you were personally summoned by his majesty. The phaeron requested you by name and spoke highly of your lineage and your order. His majesty believes that only a cryptek of the Still-heart Conclave can unleash the power of the orchestrion.’

Power flooded through Xhartekh’s circuitry at the mention of the relic. He stepped closer to the herald, forgetting protocol in his excitement. ‘The orchestrion? Is that the war engine I am here to repair? I had my suspicions but I hardly dared to hope. It is a miracle that you have uncovered such an ancient relic. We thought it was destroyed during the War in Heaven. Such a device could transform the fortunes of your dynasty.’

The herald nodded. ‘His majesty has lost faith in his own crypteks. They have been promising him success for decades, ever since we emerged from the Great Sleep in fact, but they have proved unequal to the task.’ Suphys shook his head. ‘His majesty even gave them specific instructions and guidance, explaining how they should awaken the blade, but they lacked the wit to complete this simple task. Most of them have had to be executed for their treason and incompetence.’

Xhartekh pitied the local crypteks. He could well imagine the misguided, distracting instructions their regent would have given them. It was rarely possible to complete one’s work with the ‘assistance’ of unschooled helpers.

‘I and my conclave have researched similar devices, Lord Suphys. I am confident that I can assist in the activation of the orchestrion and help House Khenisi regain its rightful place in the galaxy. If we can utilise the device to its full capabilities, you may well be able to halt the trans-dimensional rift before it reaches you.’

Lord Suphys paused. ‘Rift? I do not think you…’ He cut his words short and shook his head. ‘No matter. All will be explained soon.’ He lowered his voice to a grinding hum, the vowels edged with a faint crackle of distortion. ‘His majesty has deigned to address you personally, Lord Xhartekh.’ The fire in his eye sockets flashed brighter. ‘You are to be admitted to the sixth sepulchre and granted access to the Hall of the Throne.’

Xhartekh bowed again, but after a few seconds of silence he realised something more effusive was expected of him. ‘An unimaginable honour,’ he replied, prostrating himself to the nearest of the scowling statues.

Suphys nodded, then waved for Xhartekh to follow him as he headed back down the smoky colonnade.

At the far end of the chamber they reached a grand portico, built to resemble the angled, elongated design of a necron head. As they approached it, activation runes flashed along the walkway and the skull’s lower jaw slid down through a hole in the floor, creating an opening that flooded the chamber with dazzling light.

Struggling to believe it was finally happening, Xhartekh entered the phaeron’s throne room.

This was the first part of the underground complex to be brightly lit. As Xhartekh strode into the pool of radiance, it took his optic lenses a moment to adjust. When his vision cleared, he saw a vast assemblage gathered to greet him, an entire legion of lychguard standing in motionless ranks, their heads bowed. They might have been statues if not for the electricity crackling around their warscythes. The lines of lychguard were formed into ceremonial blocks, as though on a parade ground, but Xhartekh had no doubt they were ready to cut him down if he did anything to threaten their lord.

The royal tomb was even grander than the rest of the necropolis. There were more statues of the phaeron, but these were too vast for Xhartekh to see beyond their bent knees. He got the impression that, somewhere far above in the perfumed smoke, they were heroically shouldering the weight of a distant ceiling.

The colonnaded walkway continued through the centre of this chamber, bisecting the gleaming ranks of lychguard, its polished black surface flickering with the emerald light of their gauss weapons. At the edge of this central route were lines of musicians: drummers, pounding out a slow, arterial thud.

Most of the walls were too far away for Xhartekh to see, but on the nearest was a mechanical replica of the phaeron’s empire as it must have been before the Great Sleep – an animated frieze rolled slowly across the stone, clusters of jewels and lines of quicksilver set in vast expanses of polished turquoise and diorite, designed to resemble the countless star systems once ruled by the Khenisi Dynasty.

At the far end of the walkway was another piece of statuary, a pitted, copper scarab, hundreds of feet wide. Broad steps led up between its antennae to a circular depression in its thorax, surrounding a dais and the phaeron’s throne.

The phaeron leant forwards on his throne, examining something on a small table. He was surrounded by courtiers and scribes and flanked by two other thrones. Sitting on his left was a ferocious-looking noble whose metal body was painted an incongruous red. Xhartekh presumed she must be the phaeron’s concubine. Unlike the slumped phaeron, she was sitting bolt upright and looked to be rigid with fury, glaring across the heads of the lychguard, directly at Xhartekh. The throne to the right of the phaeron contained an even more unusual sight: half a corpse, propped up by struts, so that it gave the impression of sitting upright even though its body was missing from the waist down. Xhartekh stared, trying to make out the details of this bizarre cadaver. It was partly clad in living, necron metal, but its head and half of its chest were mummified flesh – the rotten corpse of one of their necrontyr forbears, preserved and presented as a living monarch.

Lord Suphys knelt and indicated that Xhartekh and Hattusil should do the same, but after just a few minutes, one of the heralds on the dais called out.

‘His majesty wishes to speak with the cryptek.’

Xhartekh was halfway towards the throne before Lord Suphys had even climbed to his feet. He reached the huge scarab and paused at the bottom of the steps, bowing again.

‘Majesty, I bring you tribute from the lords of the Still-heart Conclave and from my regent, Overlord Osokhor. It is an unimaginable honour to receive a summons from so powerful and wise a monarch. We were delighted to learn that Menkhaz the Unmortal and House Khenisi have survived the Great Sleep and returned to take their rightful place in the galaxy.’

The phaeron continued to stare at the small table in front of him and did not reply. Xhartekh hesitated and glanced back at Hattusil, unsure how to proceed.

‘Approach,’ growled the noble to the left of the king, her tone as furious as her posture.

Xhartekh swept up the steps and knelt before the throne. ‘Majesties, let me introduce myself.’ He waved at the prisms and lenses hung beneath his robes. ‘I am a prismatist of the seventh rank. Amongst all the lords of the Still-heart Conclave, I alone have fully mastered the secrets of phase shifting, anticrepuscular rays, atmospheric refraction, Zemlya effects, tropospheric optics, the true inversion of solar radiation, electroluminescence, sub-parhelic circle theory–’

‘Do you play?’ asked the phaeron.

Xhartekh faltered, thrown by this unexpected greeting. ‘Play, your majesty?’

The phaeron finally looked up from the table. His metal body was clad in the same pristine armour as his lychguard. Every inch of him was inscribed with calligraphy and runes, and like everything else Xhartekh had seen, the phaeron’s metal shell did not carry even the slightest patina of corrosion. Like his necropolis, the phaeron was strangely well preserved, as though his flesh had been forged that very morning. Beneath the armour plates there was perfectly intact circuitry, pulsing with life, unmarred by the ages.

‘Crowns,’ explained the phaeron. His voice, too, was unlike that of any necron Xhartekh had ever met – rather than a thin, distorted scrape, the phaeron’s voice was strong and resonant.

‘Crowns, your majesty?’ Xhartekh had planned this moment for years, but the strangeness of the phaeron had thrown his thoughts into disarray.

The phaeron waved at the table. There was a small, silver cage on it, and each of the cage’s bars carried rows of emerald spheres, around the size of a knuckle. Each of the gems was engraved with a different hieroglyph. ‘Such games might be too juvenile for an intellect such as yours, but they help me think.’

Xhartekh looked at the other nobles gathered around the throne, wondering if this was a joke, but they were all staring into the middle distance. Only the phaeron’s concubine looked his way, and she seemed more inclined to behead him than advise him. She was clutching an ornate sword and straining forwards in her throne, trembling slightly, as though an invisible harness was the only thing preventing her from slaughtering everyone present.

The phaeron waved a hand and some of the courtiers rushed to respond, dragging a chair from the shadows, placing it next to the table and gesturing for Xhartekh to sit.

‘Simple to learn, but hard to master,’ said the phaeron, looking at the pieces.

Xhartekh surveyed the ornate little cage. It was thousands of years since he had played the game, any game for that matter, and it took him a moment to recall the rules.

The phaeron moved a piece and the frame jerked into life, clicking and snapping into a new shape. It had moved from cube to sphere, and several of the emeralds rolled into new positions on the playing area.

Xhartekh stared at the game for a moment, unable to believe he had been through so much, and waited so long, only to play a child’s game. He clicked one of the gems along a few notches and the cage juddered into a new shape, scattering the pieces into a new configuration.

‘Your majesty,’ said Xhartekh. ‘I believe you require my aid in activating one of your war engines. The orchestrion is an incredible find. It would be an honour to assist you in such–’

The phaeron turned to face the rotten corpse propped in the throne next to his. ‘Clever. See how he attempts to distract me as he makes his move.’

The phaeron spoke to the corpse with such conviction that Xhartekh half expected it to respond. It remained motionless though, a dusty mound of ash and dirt in humanoid form, slumped awkwardly in its throne. The phaeron nodded, as though the corpse had answered him.

‘I believe we have the measure of you, cryptek,’ he said.

Xhartekh’s confusion was quickly turning to anger. ‘Your majesty. Your crown world is dangerously close to the trans-dimensional rift. The orchestrion will be of great use but time is pressing. If you could show me to the device, I can–’

‘Lord Xhartekh,’ said Suphys. ‘Do not look directly on his majesty’s face. It is forbidden.’

Xhartekh looked back at the game. He recalled the rules and saw in an instant how he could complete the puzzle the phaeron had arranged. It would be easy to defeat him.

‘Forgive me, your majesty,’ he said, and moved one of the pieces. It looked as though he could win the game in four moves. Perhaps the phaeron would discuss the orchestrion once the game was over.

The phaeron glanced back at the broken remains in the other throne, then leant over the silver cage, muttering something too low to hear. After a few seconds he moved a gem, clicking it across the metal frame.

This was followed by a quick flurry of moves and, as he had predicted, Xhartekh quickly defeated the phaeron. As he moved the last counter into place, the cage formed the shape of a crown, with all the emeralds on Xhartekh’s side of the frame. He nodded his head in a small bow and said, ‘Your majesty.’

The phaeron stood up slowly. The metal links of his robes clinked against the table as he leant over it, staring at the cage. Then he dropped back into his throne and fell silent.

Xhartekh wondered if he had made a mistake. In his eagerness to finish the game, he had not considered the consequences of beating a phaeron. Menkhaz had probably never been allowed to lose before. He did not look at the phaeron’s face, but he could sense that he was staring at him.

For a few minutes, no one spoke. The only sound was the hum of transformers that came from the various nobles gathered around the thrones, and the slow, constant thud of the drummers that lined the colonnade.

‘Your wisdom grows brighter with every new age,’ said the phaeron. At first Xhartekh thought he was being praised, then he realised Menkhaz was speaking to the corpse. ‘Nobody has ever defeated me at crowns. Clearly, this cryptek has the kind of mind we need.’

‘Yes, your majesty,’ said Xhartekh, even though he was not being addressed directly. ‘I can help. My knowledge of anticrepuscular rays will enable me to discern aspects of the machine your crypteks would be blind to. I studied similar engines in the collections of Trazyn the Infinite. I believe I could activate your weapon.’ He clanged his metal fist against his hollow breastplate, jangling the prisms that covered his chest. ‘With my help you can wage war on the galaxy. House Khenisi will escape the rift and regain its empire.’

‘Wage war on the galaxy? We need to achieve our victory here, on Morsus.’

Menkhaz waved a hand at the silver crown and a courtier strode forwards. The mindless drone recorded the final position of the gaming pieces, then turned on its heel and clanked away. It passed the information to a senior ranking lychguard, who nodded and left the chamber.

Menkhaz walked slowly to the edge of the dais and looked out across the throne room. More courtiers marched from the shadows, carrying the phaeron’s weapons and symbols of office.

Xhartekh was unsure what was expected of him, but the phaeron waved for him to follow, so he hurried to the edge of the dais and stood a few feet behind him.

Menkhaz nodded to one of his servants, who clicked a series of activation runes in the walls of the scarab. There was a hum of electro-magnetics and the friezes on the walls pulsed into a new shape. The galaxy map rolled away and the image focused on a single sphere. Xhartekh recognised the mining towers that covered the surface of Morsus. A green ankh pulsed into life near the planet’s south pole.

‘Nekheb-Sur,’ said the phaeron, his powerful voice ringing out across the throne room.

A collection of alien runes flickered into life, covering almost every other part of the globe. Xhartekh could not read the symbols, but he could recognise the language.

‘Aeldari?’ He had made several studies of Morsus before beginning his journey. There were no such aliens on the crown world. Aeldari had not stepped foot on Morsus for millennia – not since the War in Heaven.

‘Witches are not worthy of so grand an appellation,’ said the phaeron. ‘Call them liars. Call them tricksters.’ The phaeron turned to look at Xhartekh. ‘But rid me of them, cryptek. Ignite the orchestrion and fulfil my destiny. The perfidious ones think they have taken Morsus. They have surrounded the capital and consider themselves victorious. They have no idea they are caught, flies in honey, moments from defeat.’

‘I do not understand, your majesty,’ replied Xhartekh. ‘You mean to turn the orchestrion on the… on the perfidious ones?’

Lord Suphys, standing on the other side of the phaeron, spoke up. ‘May I explain, your majesty?’

The phaeron was staring at the glittering map of Morsus, but he nodded in reply.

‘We mean to use the weapon against the planet itself, Lord Xhartekh,’ explained Suphys. He nodded to one of the servants, who clicked more activation runes.

A red circle pulsed into life on the map, hovering over the ankh that denoted Nekheb-Sur. It looked like a wounded eye. The servant’s hands danced across the map’s controls and the red eye grew, radiating circles of light across the whole map.

‘Detonating the orchestrion here, at the intersection of two fault lines, will disrupt several seismic zones. Our crypteks have predicted that the force of the blast will trigger a global chain of earthquakes and other disasters. And that will only be the beginning. The impact will be magnified a hundredfold by the extradimensional nature of the orchestrion. We believe it will destroy the entire system.’

Calculations whirled through Xhartekh’s mind as he tried to grasp the insanity of the plan. He did not need to imagine the death of Morsus though – it was being illustrated quite clearly on the walls of the chamber.

‘Destroy the system? Is your fleet…?’ He looked at the hundreds of necrons that were gathered in just this single chamber of the necropolis. ‘How will you evacuate an entire crown world?’

‘Evacuate?’ The phaeron turned to face Xhartekh. ‘Why would we leave, cryptek, at the moment of victory, and miss what we worked so hard to bring about?’ He nodded to the pile of rotten meat in the throne beside him. ‘My brother has prophesied this event since before the Great Sleep.’

The phaeron looked up through the clouds of perfumed smoke, gazing on an imagined paradise. ‘Morsus will die, the perfidious ones will die, and we shall be reborn for a second time. We shall ascend, cryptek.’ He tapped his metal chest. ‘Once you have overridden the orchestrion’s security protocols and we have defeated our ancient foe, we will shrug off these crude, temporary bodies and become beings of superlunary power. Our deaths will be a doorway. By defeating those duplicitous aliens I will earn a place beside the Silent King. With him, I and my brother,’ he glanced at the motionless corpse, ‘will form a new Triarch. At the side of the Silent King we will reunite all of the necrontyr into a single, unstoppable force, as it has been foretold.’

A crushing sense of despair pressed down on Xhartekh as he realised how insane the phaeron was. Menkhaz had turned his entire dynasty into a suicide cult. He looked across the royal dais and saw that none of the nobles or courtiers were troubled by their phaeron’s words. They were watching the image on the wall – perhaps the more sentient among them were even picturing the glorious apotheosis they had been promised. They were going to use the most subtle war engine that had ever been designed as a simple bomb. All to kill a foe that did not exist.

‘Can you do this, cryptek?’ asked the phaeron.

Xhartekh was about to beg the phaeron to see sense, to explain the true, warp-nulling might of the orchestrion, when he realised that all eyes had turned to him. The royal court was waiting to see how he would respond. The words ‘executed for their treason’ rolled through his thoughts. He glanced at Hattusil, who was still kneeling at the foot of the steps, and his vargard shook his head in a barely perceptible warning. Rather than doing as he would like, and decrying the phaeron as a lunatic, Xhartekh nodded and looked back at the image of the exploding planet.

‘Of course, your majesty,’ he said. He was already calculating how quickly he could leave. He was not going to burn with the rest of them. He carried a phase-shifting crystal that could transport him to the next safe system at the flick of a rune, but he could not bear to leave without at least seeing the orchestrion. Perhaps, once it was activated, the phaeron would see sense. ‘It would be an honour,’ he replied.

‘Finally,’ said the phaeron. ‘A cryptek who understands me.’ He turned Xhartek back towards the throne-shaped cage. ‘Now, before you begin your work, we must play one more game.’

‘Majesty,’ said one of the nobles, stepping from the shadows. ‘If it pleases you, I would speak with the cryptek first. It is a matter of security. I must be sure of his intentions.’

The noble was powerfully built and heavily armed, and his skull was topped with a golden, transverse crest that marked him out as a great general.

Menkhaz nodded. ‘Very well, Nemesor Tekheron. But be brief. The sooner he can begin, the better.’ The phaeron returned to his throne and leant towards the corpse, continuing a whispered conversation.

‘Cryptek,’ said the nemesor, gesturing back down the steps.

Xhartekh descended from the dais and as Hattusil fell into step with him, they glanced at each other. The nemesor’s voice had contained none of the welcome of the phaeron’s – it was hard and full of distrust.

Xhartekh wondered how well he had hidden his disappointment at the phaeron’s lunacy. If the phaeron’s general realised what Xhartekh was thinking, he might need to leave sooner than he had planned. He grew even more anxious when he saw the glaring, red-armoured noble rise from her throne. She moved like a hunter, stalking rather than following, sword drawn, ready to strike.

‘You too, Alakhra?’ said the phaeron, breaking off his conversation with the corpse.

She paused, turning with slow, feline grace. ‘Yes, your majesty. If it pleases you. I will assist the nemesor as he interviews the cryptek.’

The phaeron stared at her. ‘Do not damage him. The good cryptek has crossed half the galaxy to be here. He has work to do.’

The concubine performed a low, elegant bow, flourishing her sword, then descended the steps.

The nemesor marched quickly back down the colonnade, with Xhartekh and Hattusil hurrying after and Alakhra following close behind. As they neared one of the exits a detachment of lychguard broke ranks to escort them, but the nemesor waved them back with a curt growl.

Neither Nemesor Tekheron nor the phaeron’s concubine spoke again for several minutes. The nemesor clanked on through several smaller antechambers, past dozens more courtiers and nobles, then led them across a narrow walkway into darker, less grand parts of the necropolis. The chambers here were smaller and the darkness was punctuated by only the occasional warning glyph, flickering in the centres of doors and at the entrances to recesses. All of the doors were watched over by motionless lychguard who saluted in silence as the nemesor passed.

Finally, the nemesor stopped before a large set of double doors and waited as the guards unlocked it. Then he led the way inside.

It was a training room. Weapons adorned the walls and the floor was marked with geometric shapes. As a renowned cryptek, Xhartekh had visited many tomb worlds and he recognised the designs from the countless parade grounds he had visited.

Once Xhartekh, Hattusil and Alakhra were inside, the nemesor waved for the guards to leave and locked the door. Then he turned to speak.

Before the words had left his mouth, Alakhra lunged forwards and smashed the hilt of her sword into Xhartekh’s face, knocking him onto his back and sending him sliding across the floor in a shower of green sparks.

Hattusil raised his glaive and rushed forwards, but Nemesor Tekheron struck with surprising speed, smashing Hattusil to the floor.

Furious, Xhartekh reached for one of the prisms attached to his robes, searching for a light source to harness. Alakhra leapt across the chamber and kicked the prism from his grip, sending it clattering into the shadows.

‘That is priceless!’ cried Xhartekh.

‘You are a liar,’ she said, her voice a cold drone. She crushed her foot down on Xhartekh’s throat and placed the tip of her sword against one of his eyes. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Are you working for Lord Szokar?’ demanded the nemesor, pinning Hattusil to the ground with his sparking glaive.

‘Szokar?’ Xhartekh had never heard the name. ‘I have no idea who Szokar is.’

‘Liar,’ said Alakhra, pressing the tip of her blade into Xhartekh’s eye socket and stepping on the metal cables at his throat.

‘Your majesty,’ said the nemesor. ‘The phaeron will expect to see them soon.’ He looked at her sword, grinding across Xhartekh’s face. ‘And he will expect to see their robes and weapons intact. If we are going to dress our own cryptek in his lenses and equipment, it must not be broken – or his majesty may see through the ruse. We must kill them cleanly.’

Alakhra shook her head. ‘The phaeron would not notice if we replaced them with a chair.’

As he lay, trapped beneath the concubine’s boot, Xhartekh sensed an opportunity. If they intended to deceive the phaeron, perhaps they had not succumbed to his madness.

‘Do you realise what a powerful weapon you are in possession of?’ His vocal cords were being crushed and the words emerged as a thin, feedback-drenched screech. ‘The orchestrion is not just a bomb.’

‘What do you know of the orchestrion?’ asked Alakhra, taking a little weight off his throat.

‘It sounds to me that you already know more than your regent,’ he replied. ‘It can do more than the phaeron intends.’

‘It is just a relic,’ she replied. ‘A trinket from the War in Heaven.’

‘It is the last of its kind,’ said Xhartekh. ‘I have heard rumours of such things, but never encountered a working example. The Silent King discovered the orchestrion in the final days of the war. He planned to use it against the aeldari witches. I do not know the exact nature of the machine – it predates even our ancestors, but I know it creates a psychic void. It disrupts the aetheric energy sorcerers use for their witch-sight. It clouds their minds and leaves them blind. It is…’ Xhartekh paused, noticing that the two Khenisi nobles were listening intently to his every word. ‘What do you intend to do with me?’

Alakhra shook her head. ‘Lord Szokar must have told you its history.’ She pushed her blade back against his eye. ‘So that you could more easily detonate it.’

‘Wait,’ said the nemesor, still holding Hattusil on the floor. ‘Szokar believes every word the phaeron says. Why would he tell this cryptek that the orchestrion can do more than the phaeron wishes?’

Alakhra made a strange humming, growling sound, then stepped back. ‘Rise,’ she said, waving her sword at Xhartekh.

Xhartekh stood, stepping a little closer to his discarded prism as he did so.

‘In the throne room, you swore to help his majesty trigger the war machine,’ said Alakhra. ‘You mean to help him destroy the crown world.’

‘But you would wish for something other than that?’ Xhartekh hoped he was right.

Alakhra looked at the nemesor.

The nemesor shrugged. ‘We are going to kill him anyway. There is no harm in talking first.’

Alakhra watched Xhartekh for a moment longer, then said, ‘Yes, I wish for more than that, cryptek. I mean to rebuild House Khenisi. I mean to use the orchestrion for a greater purpose.’ She waved him over to a display screen and tapped at the glyphs, summoning a star map into existence. Stars and nebulae drifted between her face and Xhartekh’s. A ragged wound stretched from one end of the galaxy to the other. She traced one of her fingers across the ugly scar.

‘The aether storm has driven everything from this region.’

‘The Cicatrix Maledictum,’ nodded Xhartekh.

‘What?’

‘A name given to the trans-dimensional tear by the lesser races.’

‘The aeldari?’

‘The Imperium of Man, your majesty.’

She shook her head.

‘Forgive me,’ he replied, stepping closer to his prism. It was now just a few feet away and he could see it was already primed – the activation rune must have been depressed when it landed. ‘It is not important. I was speaking of humans.’

Nemesor Tekheron allowed Hattusil to rise and came towards them, keeping his weapon pointed at Xhartekh’s bodyguard. ‘He means the mortal species, your majesty,’ he said. ‘The simian animals that inhabited these systems before the arrival of the aether storm.’

‘Ah,’ she nodded, looking back to Xhartekh. ‘Exactly.’ She waved her hand through the chart, describing the shape of the rift. ‘Vermin that have risen in our footprints. We have encountered them even here, on Morsus. Animals that have mastered the use of crude weapons. We use their meat to fuel our ceremonial fires.’ She laughed. It was a cold, mirthless sound. ‘My beloved thinks some of the animals on Morsus are aeldari – the same witches we fought during the War in Heaven. He has us launch pointless attacks, imagining he is striking at them. Our tactics are dictated by his games of crowns. I would grieve at the waste of resources, but it at least enables us to practice battle manoeuvres and refine our tactics.’

Alakhra placed a hand on Xhartekh’s arm, halting him just as he was about to stoop and grab the lens. ‘If we use the orchestrion on the aether storm we could end it. Or at least create a path through it. And then, with Morsus secure, we could step forth and reclaim what is ours.’ She clicked another rune and dozens of symbols pulsed into life on the map, right through the path of the Great Rift. Every one of them was the cartouche of House Khenisi. ‘The aether storm has cleared a path for us. With the storm gone, we could return to our tomb worlds and unleash the full glory of House Khenisi.’ She leant back, gripping her sword in both hands and staring into the middle distance, picturing the future. ‘With a mighty queen in place of a lunatic.’

The lens was now within Xhartekh’s reach, but he paused. ‘Your majesty,’ he said, shaking his robes, causing his devices to jingle and glitter like jewels. ‘The rift is a vast anomaly that none of us fully understand. I am not sure that the orchestrion could be used that way, but I certainly have no desire to trigger a suicide bomb. The Still-heart Conclave wishes only to recover and repair. I was not sent here to help you all die.’

‘Do you think you could adapt the orchestrion to disrupt the aether storm in the way we described?’ asked the nemesor.

‘It is impossible to say without seeing it,’ said Xhartekh. ‘It is an unimaginably powerful device. Nothing of its like has been created since. And I am particularly adept at this kind of work. But I would need to see the machine before I can determine its capabilities.’

‘Can we trust him?’ demanded Alakhra.

‘Your majesty,’ replied the nemesor, ‘our own crypteks can barely understand the device. And even if they could understand it, they will never question the will of the phaeron. If they managed to power the engine, they would use it as a bomb, as he desires. If there is even a small chance this outsider could harness its true power then we have no choice but to trust him.’

Alakhra raised her sword slightly, as though considering attacking the nemesor. ‘Do not presume to order me.’

‘Your majesty, you misunderstand me. I did not mean to order you – only that we have no–’

‘Wait,’ said Xhartekh. As the Khenisi nobles were talking, he had picked up his prism and adjusted the casing, angling it towards the nearest torch. The lens caught the light and refracted it. The glass blazed with a rainbow of colours, spilling them out across the chamber, turning the room into a slowly twisting kaleidoscope. As the colours washed over the faces of the four necrons, Xhartekh tapped a switch on its hexagonal casing. ‘I acquired this during the Sostran wars. The beam splitter produces a time dilation effect. If I trigger the prism, these beams will become more than just pretty lights.’

Alakhra stepped into a battle-crouch, her sword raised, but the nemesor placed a warning hand on her shoulder.

‘If I wish it,’ continued Xhartekh, ‘these lights could throw us all far into the future. By the time your sword fell, your majesty, Morsus and its sun would be long gone. You would find yourself drifting through the stars alone, if stars still existed.’

Alakhra stayed frozen in her battle pose, ready to cut him down.

‘Very well,’ said Xhartekh. ‘Let me illustrate.’ He adjusted the prism’s casing and the beams formed a single ray of white light that fell on the nemesor’s face. Immediately, his metal shell began to shimmer and fade where the light touched it.

Tekheron backed away, raising his weapon.

‘What do you want, cryptek?’ demanded Alakhra.

‘I want what you want,’ he replied. ‘Look.’ He shook the prism, splitting its lights again. The nemesor’s shell became solid once more. ‘I could remove you from history, or hurl you far into the future – anything I desire, but I have not. That’s not why I came here. I began planning this decades before I left the conclave for Morsus. I and the rest of the conclave set wheels in motion as soon as we received your messages.’ He clicked a switch on the prism and the light vanished. ‘You can trust me.’

After a few moments’ hesitation, Alakhra lowered her sword and nodded at the nemesor.

‘There is another matter,’ said Nemesor Tekheron. He adjusted the star chart to show a fleet of necron cruisers at high anchor above Morsus. ‘Another reason to work fast.’

Xhartekh stepped closer and saw an alien glyph – a winged blood drop – shimmering at the centre of the fleet.

‘The galaxy has remembered us,’ said Tekheron.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Xhartekh. The alien symbol was familiar, and not like the aeldari runes he had seen earlier. ‘That looks human.’

The nemesor nodded. ‘But this is not just a simple animal, like the creatures on Morsus. There is a sorcerer on that vessel. He has studied our methods of war and he wields the power used by the perfidious ones during the War in Heaven. He wields only a faint shadow of aeldari sorcery, but he is a shaman or religious lord of some kind. Whoever he is, he has placed a web of psychic energy around his ship that is so dazzling it stands out even amongst all the disruption of the aether storm.’

‘But the lower races are no threat to House Khenisi,’ said Xhartekh. ‘Even if he is a sorcerer. You have whole legions at your command. What harm could one simian do?’

The nemesor shook his head. ‘None. Of course. I am not concerned about this shaman. Or the feeble shell he has woven around his ship. They would be dead already if they had not stalled for time, asking for an audience with the phaeron. But that sorcerer’s presence will act as a beacon to the primitive races. For a long time we have been left in peace, while the primitive races tried to cope with the arrival of the aether storm. They have no reliable, scientific method of space travel, as I’m sure you know. They rely on prayers and luck to cross the dimensions. But where one group lands, others always follow. When they came to Morsus in the past, they called it a crusade and mired us in an interminable war. They do not fight with any nobility, cryptek, they simply swamp their foes with armies as big as nations. They are a most undignified enemy. If we do not activate the orchestrion soon, we will be trapped in an ugly war while the aether storm continues to grow. And our tactics will be decided by the phaeron’s games of crowns. We could even lose. I will be unable to marshal our forces with reason. The phaeron is a lunatic. We have to act before more of these humans arrive.’

Xhartekh was relieved to finally hear sense. ‘We share the same ambition, my lords. If you can get me to the orchestrion, I will try to bring its systems back into working order. It can, and should, be far more than a bomb. It can be the foundation of your new empire.’

Alakhra and the nemesor stared at each other.

‘It must be done,’ said Alakhra.

‘There is still the matter of his majesty the phaeron,’ said Xhartekh.

Alakhra tapped her blade with a clang. ‘I will deal with that when the time comes.’ She waved Hattusil over. ‘Just one thing,’ she said.

There was a blur of crimson metal as she drew her blade and attacked. Xhartekh recoiled, raising his arm to defend himself, but no blow landed on him. Hattusil crashed to the floor in a shower of electricity, still twitching as his skull clanged away into the shadows. He tried to rise, but before he could move, Alakhra rained dozens of sword strikes on him, tearing his body into a mound of sparking junk.

Xhartekh reached for one of his lenses but Alakhra whirled from Hattusil’s remains and pressed her blade against his throat.

‘Think of betraying me,’ she said, her voice a flat drone, ‘and your end will not be as peaceful as your servant’s.’

Xhartekh stared at his dismembered bodyguard. They had travelled togaether for centuries. Outrage stalled in his mouth as he saw the power rattling through Alakhra’s limbs.

He nodded mutely and allowed the nemesor to lead him from the chamber.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Get down those steps,’ hissed Llourens, as Eskol looked back at her. He was crouching at the foot of a stairwell, clutching his lasrifle and staring up into the endless glare of the mine. Behind Llourens were the rest of the Sabine Guard. They were less than a hundred men, but this was everything that remained of the garrison. Not one of them had challenged her right to command; not one had refused to muster. To a man, the Grave Rats were ready to fight. All they had needed was a leader. She was determined not to fail them.

‘Lord Mephiston’s orders were simple,’ she said, waving her gun at the stairs. ‘We get to the gates of Infernum Primary, make a commotion, then leave with as much noise as possible.’

Eskol nodded, but made no sign of moving.

‘I told you I’d be happy to go first,’ she said, grabbing him by the arm.

Eskol looked back down the tunnel and winked at Ghadd.

‘I just thought you might want to hold me one last time,’ he said.

Llourens let go of him with a curse.

Eskol saluted with a grin and climbed slowly down the first rungs of the stairwell, his gun raised. He disappeared from view but a few seconds later he gave a low whistle to signal the all clear.

Llourens followed with Ghadd and the rest of the Guardsmen. They were accompanied by Varus and two other ogryns, all cradling their massive drill guns. The abhumans kept to the rear of the group, conscious of the Guardsmen’s wary glances as they squeezed their bulky frames down the stairs.

‘They make my skin crawl,’ said Ghadd, noticing that Llourens was watching the ogryns. ‘I wish we could have done this alone.’

Llourens shook her head. ‘You know why Mephiston sent them. Only the blistermen understand those mining charges.’

Ghadd grimaced. ‘They aren’t human.’

Llourens shrugged. ‘Elias is human. I’m starting to think the word is overrated. Elias would never have taken us into that cathedrum but the Blood Angels did. And are they human? I’m not sure. And if they had never arrived and spoken to the blistermen, we would know nothing of these bombs. We would be back at the barracks, snivelling into a bottle like Elias, waiting to die.’

Ghadd said nothing, but the look of distaste remained on his face as the ogryns followed them into the next chamber.

There was no sign of life so they continued, climbing down through dozens of levels in the same way, checking each gallery for signs of recent movement and then moving on.

The next chamber was centred around a mineshaft. It was little more than a tail of broken chains, hanging down through a bottomless hole.

‘I didn’t think any shafts came down this far,’ said Ghadd as they all gathered round the hole.

There was a vague rattling sound echoing through the shadows.

‘Is that a lift?’ asked Eskol, peering up into the lights glimmering further up the shaft.

Llourens shook her head. ‘The lifts stopped working centuries ago.’

‘Something is coming,’ said Ghadd, unslinging his lasrifle.

Varus and the other ogryns strode through the room, causing a chorus of muttered oaths as they shoved the Guardsmen back the way they had come. Some of the Guardsmen drew weapons and started yelling.

‘What the hell are they doing?’ cried Ghadd, turning his gun on the ogryns.

‘Gas,’ said Varus, barging his way towards Llourens.

‘Gas?’ Llourens shook her head. Then she held up a warning hand and glared at her men. ‘Lower those guns, damn you. There are explosives in here.’

Two of the ogryns continued shoving the soldiers back towards the door, and more of the Guardsmen drew guns, filling the room with a roar of curses and threats.

Varus barged his way to Llourens. ‘Gas from the surface,’ he growled.

Llourens paled as she finally understood.

‘Back!’ she cried. ‘It’s a dust storm! Coming down the shaft!’

The Guardsmen swarmed towards the exit, just as the noise became a deafening howl. Light and sound ripped down the shaft, filling the chamber with an explosion of irradiated rubble.

Llourens was nearest to the lift shaft and the blast hurled her from her feet, sending her rolling across the floor. Heat enveloped her as shockwaves rocked through the room. The glare became unbearable, knifing through the lenses of her mask and searing into her brain. Then a shadow fell over her and the heat faded. The noise was still there, but the pain was more bearable. A stench of burning meat filled the air.

After a few seconds, the light and noise ceased and Llourens wiped the dust from her goggles.

Varus was hunched over her. He had formed himself into a living shield to protect her from the blast. The smell of charred flesh was coming from his broad, smouldering back; he trembled and muttered as embers drifted up from his skin.

As the din faded, the other Guardsmen walked back towards her, staring in shock at the ogryn.

She crawled out from beneath his massive frame and gasped. His back had been destroyed, scorched away, leaving his spine clearly visible, a gleaming white line running through a mass of burned skin and blackened, exposed muscles. The other two ogryns rushed forwards but stopped a few feet away, hesitating to touch Varus, their faces twisted in grief.

Varus lowered himself slowly onto the floor, blood rushing quickly from his ruined back. He managed to turn his head on one side and look up at Llourens. His face was beaded with sweat and there was blood flowing from his mouth.

‘Kill them,’ he said, his voice little more than a choking sound. Then he closed his eyes and lay still. After a few seconds his breathing ceased.

Llourens and the other Guardsmen stared at the corpse in shock.

‘He saved you,’ muttered Ghadd.

The humans in the chamber all lowered their guns as they turned to look at the two remaining ogryns.

Llourens felt a rush of shame as she considered everything she had believed about the blistermen. The shame vanished as quickly as it came, replaced with a fierce determination.

She knelt next to the corpse and placed her hand on the charred, mutant skin. ‘We will not let you down,’ she whispered.

As they reached the levels beneath the mines, the Morsusian heat faded, replaced with a damp, bone-gnawing chill that formed frost on the burned skin of the abhumans. The phosphorescence that illuminated the rest of the mine started to fade, replaced by an impenetrable, green-tinged pall.

Soon, Llourens and the Guardsmen were forced to trigger lumens on their gun barrels, filling the night-black stairwell with thin shafts of light, picking out their way through the broken steps and rusted mine struts.

After nearly an hour of this, Llourens noticed the walls were much smoother than the ones above had been. It looked like polished basalt, but there was something moving in it. She stopped for a moment and ran her finger over the stone, removing a layer of soot. There were faint green lines beneath the surface, pulsing with heatless energy. The shapes were clearly not natural. It looked like a circuit board – grid lines and intersections, shimmering beneath her fingertips.

‘They made this place,’ she whispered.

Eskol paused and looked back at her, his brutish face underlit by the lumen on his gun. ‘We’re in the crypts.’ He grimaced behind his mask. ‘I can feel how old everything is here, can you? I can feel it in my chest. It’s like crawling into a grave.’

She nodded. The cold was pervasive. And strange. It felt like a spiritual chill, locking around her brain, filling her with dread.

‘Makes a change from slowly burning to death,’ said Eskol, shrugging.

His dry tone caught her off guard and she laughed, loud, then grimaced as the sound echoed up and down the stairwell, seeming to grow louder rather than fading.

Eskol paused for a moment, shining his lumen back down the stairwell, looking for signs of movement. There were none, so he continued.

After passing through a few more levels, the steps finally came to an end in a broad, hexagonal passageway. Like the chambers above, it was built of smooth, jet black stone, polished to a sheen and flickering with emerald veins.

As they gathered at the foot of the stairs, crowding the passageway with their bulky rad-suits and weaponry, Llourens noticed that the green circuits were not the only sources of light. She nodded down the passageway. There was a warm, golden light licking across the walls in the distance.

‘Looks like we’re getting close to something,’ she said.

Eskol and Ghadd stared back at her from behind their filthy masks, their eyes gleaming with a mixture of fear and eagerness.

Llourens understood. ‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Bringing the fight to them for a change.’

Ghadd nodded, gripping his lasrifle a little tighter. ‘After a lifetime on the run, we finally get to be the aggressor.’ He shrugged. ‘Admittedly, we’ll only have a few minutes to enjoy it before they slaughter us.’

‘No one is getting slaughtered. The lord of the Blood Angels wants us to cause a commotion and then get the hell out. There’s no need for heroics. We take a few of them down, make a lot of noise, and then withdraw. If they try to follow us back up that stairwell they will be two-abreast at most. We can slow them down until we get back to the upper levels.’

‘And what then?’ asked Eskol, looming over her. ‘What about when we reach the open galleries back in the mine? They won’t be two-abreast then.’

‘When we get back to the mines,’ she replied, ‘we can run rings around them. We know those tunnels and shafts far better than the ancients.’

‘She’s right,’ said Ghadd. He tapped his gun. ‘And we can teach them how to dance while we’re at it.’

‘But remember,’ said Llourens, raising her voice slightly and looking back at all the other troopers. ‘Don’t lead a host of ancients to the Kysloth barracks. Or the blistermen’s cathedrum. Once we’re back in the areas of the mine we know, scatter and head for anywhere but home. Spend a whole day hiding if you need to, but make sure you are not being followed before you think about going home. Understood?’

Everyone nodded.

She jogged down the passageway, with Guardsmen and the ogryns right behind her. After a hundred feet or so, they reached a T-junction. The left passage led away into darkness, but the right one was the source of the light. It went a few feet and then broadened into some wide steps. This was very different from the stairwell they had just clambered down – here the steps were grand and impressive, opening out as they descended, and even from the passageway above, Llourens could see that the chamber below was a vast hall, filled with drifting fumes. Through the fumes, in the far distance, she could make out the silhouettes of giant, torch-lit statues, as tall as the domes of the ogryn cathedrum.

Carefully, waving for the others to follow, she descended the steps, revealing the hall in more detail. It was too vast for her to make out the ceiling but there were clusters of lights glittering in the smoke. This must be what it’s like to walk under the stars, she thought, impressed by the grandeur of the scene, despite knowing who had built it. The hall was rectangular and lined with the colossal statues she had glimpsed from the top of the steps. She realised she must be walking down the arms of one of them.

She scoured the floor, hundreds of feet below, through her gun scope. ‘No sign of ancients,’ she whispered. Her voice echoed strangely through the cavernous space and she grimaced, signalling for a halt.

There was still no sign of the enemy, so she carried on, crouching low and keeping to the darkest shadows at the side of the steps. The steps ended at a wide balcony, as broad as a major transitway and still hundreds of feet above the floor of the hall. It ran the whole length of the chamber, and placed at regular intervals along its length were large copper braziers – the source of the golden light that had led them to the hall. Plumes of smoke billowed up from them, heavy with incense, making a shifting roof over the hall below.

Llourens had no idea which way to go next. Both ends of the hall were too distant and smoke-shrouded to see clearly. She looked through her gun scope, but that only made matters worse.

‘Eskol,’ she whispered, trying to speak even more quietly this time.

He pulled out a scanner and tapped the screen, nodding in the direction of the nearest brazier. Llourens nodded back and set off in that direction, keeping as far from the edge of the balcony as possible.

As they neared the brazier she noticed that, beneath the scent of incense, there was another smell in the smoke – a thick, acrid tang that caught at the back of her throat. She had to struggle not to cough as she reached the copper bowl. It was as tall as she was and the heat it gave off was intense. She could not get very close, but even from a dozen feet away she could see what the ancients had used for fuel. The brazier was crammed with human corpses. Most had burned down to little more than charred skeletons, but some still wore their skin, bubbling and curling in the heat.

Llourens stumbled to a halt, horrified. She could see scraps of Imperial uniforms in the blaze. These were her fellow soldiers. They would have been people she knew.

As the others reached the brazier they halted, the colour draining from their faces.

‘Xenos bastards,’ muttered Eskol as he approached. He glared into the fumes beyond the brazier.

Llourens whispered a prayer for her fallen kin, then hurried past the brazier, struggling not to vomit as she inhaled the smoke.

Once she had passed beyond the blaze, Llourens saw the rest of the hall more clearly. The main entrance to the ancients’ fortress was ahead of them. It was a single, enormous door, as tall as the rest of the hall. The design of the door was like nothing Llourens had seen in Imperial architecture. It was built in the shape of an isosceles triangle, with the three corners rounded off to a bevel, and it was made from the same, gleaming black stone as the rest of the hall. In its centre there was an emerald-coloured gemstone, as big as a tank and alive with inner fire, casting a sinister green light across the billowing smoke clouds. A symbol had been engraved into the stone around the gemstone. It was a circle, radiating five lines from its bottom half and topped by a bowl-shaped half-circle. Llourens had seen the symbol countless times before, on the ancients’ chest-plates, but after seeing the contents of the brazier it filled her with more rage than ever before.

‘Soon,’ she muttered, trembling with suppressed violence. She waved the others on, and after another long sprint they arrived, breathless, at the door. This close, they could hear the hum of the circuitry embedded in the stone. The balcony ended at the wall beside the frame of the door, about halfway up its length.

Llourens leant out over the railing, into the clouds below. There was still no sign of any sentries, so she gave the signal to descend. They used ropes and grappling hooks to abseil slowly down the sheer walls of the hall. It took nearly fifteen minutes, the distance was so great, but finally they gathered at the foot of the huge door and unclasped their ropes.

‘Who has the charge?’ she whispered, glancing back at the remaining ogryns.

One of them stepped forwards with an ammo crate large enough to crush a normal man. The ogryn carried it as though it were weightless and held it out to her.

She laughed and shook her head. ‘You’ll need to put it in place.’

The creature nodded, placed it carefully on the floor and looked back at the other ogryns. One of them came forwards and handed over a small device, similar to an auspex but with no screen, just a mass of dials.

Llourens was about to speak when a resounding hammer-blow clang echoed down the chamber. They all backed away and looked up at the door, expecting to see it open, but there was no movement.

There was another boom of metal on metal, and this time Llourens realised it came from behind them. Ghadd walked into the middle of the hall, staring into the smoke.

‘Everybody back,’ snapped Llourens, seeing movement in the smoke at the other end of the hall. They all hurried into the shadows.

Gradually, flashes of silver began to punctuate the fumes. As Llourens and the others watched in dismay, a vast phalanx of necron warriors marched into view. Llourens had never seen so many xenos in one place. Every form of ancient she could recall was there, from the mindless, skeleton-like foot soldiers to the hulking, heavily armoured elite troops, and behind the infantry came a terrifying array of war machines, all clad in ebon plate and gleaming with the same emerald lighting that hummed through the door.

‘They must have finished their manoeuvres on the surface,’ said Eskol.

‘What do we do now?’ whispered Ghadd.

‘Wasn’t our job to give the Blood Angels fewer ancients to fight?’ asked Eskol. ‘Now they’ll be facing an army.’ He looked at the ogryn beside him, hunched next to the ammo crate. ‘Should we blow the doors quickly? We could wipe out half of those bastards in one go.’

Llourens hesitated, looking pained.

Eskol shook his head. ‘What’s the problem? We blow the doors and kill a load of ancients into the bargain. It just makes the deal all the sweeter.’

‘You idiot,’ said Ghadd, looking from Eskol to Llourens, his expression grim. ‘I know what she’s thinking.’

‘What?’ asked Eskol, growing annoyed. ‘We blow the doors as planned, surely.’

The ogryn crouched by the ammo crate looked up at Eskol, waiting for an order.

Llourens licked her lips and closed her eyes for a second. Then she looked at Eskol. ‘Yes, we can blow the doors. But once we do, we’ll have no way of getting back to the stairwell.’

Recognition dawned on Eskol’s face.

‘We might kill the front ranks,’ said Ghadd. ‘But the rest of them will be between us and our escape.’

Eskol looked back up at the distant balcony. ‘We could–’

‘We’d never make it,’ said Llourens, her voice flat. ‘They’d pick us off before we climbed ten feet.’

Llourens looked at the ogryn who had primed the device, pointing to the trigger he was holding. ‘What’s the range on that thing? Can we set the charge off from over there?’ She gestured to the feet of the nearest statue, over at the side of the hall.

The ogryn nodded.

‘So we could wait until the first few ranks have passed through the doors and then trigger it?’

He nodded again.

Llourens took a deep breath and looked around at everyone. ‘Two options, then. We can skulk back into the shadows and hide until this army has gone back inside their fortress. Then we could wait until they’re far enough inside, get to a safe distance and blow the doors to create a bit of a distraction. We could take out the rear guard, but most of this huge army would be left to descend on the Blood Angels.’

There was no reply.

‘Or we blow these bastards to hell as they’re halfway through the door.’ She gripped her lasrifle. ‘And we give the Blood Angels a real chance to rid this planet of xenos filth who use our families as kindling.

‘We have a chance to do something,’ whispered Llourens, looking each of them in the eye. ‘Let’s face it, we were never going to get out of this place alive. We were born to die here. But maybe now we could die with a purpose. We could make the ancients take notice of us. And we would be more than just a distraction. We could kill hundreds of them. We could show them that we are not defeated. Not yet.’

For a long moment, no one moved. Then one of the ogryns pressed his gun against his scarred chest. ‘For the Emperor,’ he growled.

Ghadd stared at the ogryn. Then he nodded and saluted. ‘Captain.’

‘Captain,’ said the rest of the Guardsmen, mirroring Ghadd’s salute.

Eskol looked pale and there was a tremor in his voice as he spoke. ‘This might be your last chance to tell me how attractive you find me.’

Llourens returned their salute and spoke with a hard, level voice. ‘Keep your heads down until we blow the door. If we don’t have to trigger it until the first ranks are inside, we could take out hundreds of them.’ She nodded at the shadows behind the statue. ‘If we wait there until the door comes down, we might even have a chance to do some shooting before the end.’

The ogryn positioned the crate in the shadows behind the angular columns of the doorframe and they all sprinted back across the hall, vanishing into the darkness as the first rows of necrons clattered into view, emerging from the smoke clouds with unerring, mechanical precision.

Once she was sure the others were all safely hidden, Llourens crawled across the statue’s grave-cold plinth and positioned herself behind its left foot, giving herself a clear view of the hall.

As the first rows of necrons clattered past she struggled to stay calm. Every inch of her wanted to howl and start firing her gun at their dead, expressionless skulls. She held her tongue.

She almost lost her nerve as more necrons marched into view, much closer to the statue than she had expected. The nearest of them were only a dozen or so feet away. If they looked her way the army might halt before it even reached the door. She considered crawling back to join the others, but moving now was too much of a risk so she simply lay there, praying that none of the necrons would look towards the statue.

The xenos marched past with metronomic rigidity. They looked like a single machine, devoid of sentience. With a rush of relief, Llourens saw the immense door start to move. Rather than open outwards, it sank into the ground, dropping with a quietness that seemed bizarre for such a huge slab of stone. It did little more than hum gently as it slid from view, revealing another identical chamber beyond, lined with the same gruesome braziers.

The first few ranks marched into the fortress, then more, and Llourens knew this was the time to strike. She hesitated for the briefest moment, picturing, to her immense surprise, the rueful faces of Eskol and Ghadd. Then she turned, looked the ogryn in the eye, and nodded.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Heliomancer Xhartekh was in the Halls of Kythmosis – the deepest chambers of the whole necropolis. Unlike the rest of Nekheb-Sur, the air in these chilly vaults was clear of smoke, and he was able to see, with horrible clarity, how much damage the phaeron’s crypteks had done. The orchestrion’s design was simple and utterly baffling. It was a rectangular case, cast in a silver alloy, about the length of a coffin, and framed in its centre, filling the chamber with coloured rays, was a circular chromascope – a collection of slowly rotating crystal lenses. The lenses were tinted different colours and lit from beneath, so as they overlapped they projected confusing patterns across the walls of the chamber.

The reason for Xhartekh’s dismay was the foot-long hole that had been bored into the side of the case. The silver alloy was scorched and ragged where the crypteks had burned through it and dragged wires out through the hole. Xhartekh’s dismay grew as he saw that someone had forced a thick cable into the device through the hole.

‘What is this?’ he said, kneeling beside the cable and tapping it gently. ‘What was this intended to do?’

Most of the crypteks had made their excuses when Suphys, the phaeron’s herald, had brought Xhartekh into the chamber, but on Suphys’ orders one had remained so that he could explain the work they had done so far – and how little progress they had made.

He did not look at Xhartekh as he spoke. ‘None of this was my idea, Lord Xhartekh. I would never have chosen to carve a hole in something of such antiquity and importance. We have not been able to gain any understanding of its workings anyway. I have never seen anything like it.’

‘What was the cable meant to achieve?’

The cryptek hesitated. ‘When the Unmortal One learned of our failure he demanded that we make some use of the device. We failed to fully activate its primary circuits, but…’ He looked at Suphys, as though the herald might allow him to escape any further explanation.

‘But?’ prompted Xhartekh.

‘The device has a power supply greater than anything we have been able to achieve since we emerged from the Great Sleep. It utilises a kind of fusion I cannot explain, but I have been able to relay a fraction of its power through a series of amenphosis transmitters.’ A note of pride entered his voice. ‘I have fed the power through our regeneration nodes and now every warrior in the Khenisi Dynasty is receiving a portion of the orchestrion’s power. We are all linked to its core. Our regeneration process is faster, our weaponry is more powerful than ever before and our bodies are free of corrosion. You must have noticed how untarnished we all look. That is entirely due to my work in this chamber. I have returned our physical forms to their original magnificence.’

‘You are draining the orchestrion of its subsidiary power, before finding a way to activate its core reactor?’

Xhartekh felt like striking the idiot, but he reminded himself that the phaeron would have threatened him with execution if he did not provide results. ‘If we do not remove that cable quickly, the orchestrion will never have enough power to fully engage, even if I can work out how to trigger it.’

‘My lord.’ The cryptek’s voice shifted up a pitch. ‘You must do no such thing.’

Lord Suphys nodded. ‘The phaeron has explicitly praised the crypteks for this small piece of good news. He is keen that we keep utilising the orchestrion’s power.’

‘Then I must speak with him as a matter of urgency,’ said Xhartekh. ‘If we do not stop this barbarism, the device will not have enough power left for full activation.’

‘His majesty will not have time to assist you for a few days at least, Heliomancer Xhartekh. He is engaged in a tournament.’

‘Tournament?’

‘Crowns,’ explained the cryptek.

‘Of course.’

‘You come highly recommended, Heliomancer Xhartekh. His majesty is expecting to see results when he visits you after the tournament.’

Xhartekh looked despairingly at the gauge in the case, wondering who would be the first to behead him – the mad phaeron or his equally deranged concubine.

He bowed to Suphys. ‘If you will forgive me, my lord, I will need privacy to complete my work.’

Suphys nodded. ‘I will return with the phaeron soon.’ He gestured at the other cryptek. ‘Hezekyr will assist you.’

‘No,’ said Xhartekh. ‘I need to work alone. Hezekyr’s help will not be required.’

Suphys was watching him closely and Xhartekh realised he would need an excuse for his secrecy.

‘I am a high priest of the Still-heart Conclave,’ he said. ‘My fraternity demands a strict code of secrecy from all its members. If they knew I had shared my techniques with an outsider I would be banished from the order. I will be utilising atmospheric refraction, Zemlya effects and tropospheric optics to engage the core reactor. I must not divulge the details of such methods to anyone.’

Suphys nodded. ‘Leave the heliomancer to his work, Hezekyr.’ He turned to leave, but paused at the threshold. ‘Whatever oaths of secrecy you have sworn, Heliomancer Xhartekh, his majesty the phaeron will wish to understand every detail of your work.’

Suphys and Hezekyr left the chamber and once he had heard their footfalls recede into the distance, Xhartekh took a closer look at the orchestrion. It was not quite as plain as he first thought. The metal case was delicately inscribed with astrological designs. There were glyphs in a language he had never encountered before, and a complex pattern of grids and ellipses. He used one of his lenses to look closer and realised the lines showed star systems of every size and form, but none of them familiar.

‘Were you forged in another galaxy?’ he said, tracing his finger over the designs. The metal hummed and crackled at his touch, scattering sparks through the gloom.

‘I wonder if that’s how you’re meant to respond.’ He glanced at the hole in its side. ‘Or if it is a result of the damage.’

He spent the next few hours patiently committing the designs to memory, tracing the shape of every planet and rune, until he could picture the whole pattern without having to see the box. Then he found a workbench and began laying out his tools in neat lines, like a surgeon preparing to operate.

He was almost ready to begin in earnest when the chamber jolted, as though it had been struck by an earthquake. Tools and machinery clanged across the stones and the orchestrion toppled from its stand, hitting the floor with a worrying thud.

Xhartekh was thrown against the wall, and when he got back to his feet the chromascope at the orchestrion’s centre had gone dark. The lenses were static and there was no light shining through the crystal. The chamber was still shuddering violently but Xhartekh managed to stagger towards the device and grab it, trying to stop it sliding any further across the room. As he gripped the case, the chromascope flickered back into life and the metal started humming again.

Xhartekh was still in that position, shielding the orchestrion from falling debris, when a group of the phaeron’s lychguard marched into the room, their warscythes raised, as though they expected to find him under attack.

‘You have been summoned to the throne room,’ said one of them.

‘I must not leave,’ said Xhartekh, nodding at the wreckage that was still falling from the ceiling. ‘I must protect the device. What happened?’

‘Nekheb-Sur is under attack. All nobles are required to attend his majesty immediately in the throne room.’ His eye sockets flickered in warning. ‘It is not a request.’

‘Under attack? From who?’

‘All nobles are required to attend his majesty immediately in the throne room,’ repeated the guard, not looking at him.

Xhartekh looked at the orchestrion. It was covered with dust and pieces of rock, but the chromascope was now blazing as vibrantly as when he had first seen it.

‘Do not concern yourself with the device,’ said the guard.

Some of the other guards marched past Xhartekh, moving him aside and lifting the device back onto its stand. They turned and formed a circle around it, holding their warscythes up before their faces, becoming quite motionless.

‘That will be no help,’ said Xhartekh. ‘If there is another blast the device could be crushed.’ He rummaged through his robes and took out a small sphere of polished silver. He drew an invisible shape on it with his fingertip and then placed it on top of the orchestrion. A few seconds later it opened, like a metal flower bud, folding back its petals to reveal a smooth green gemstone.

The lychguard was about to ask for an explanation when an umbrella of emerald light rose from the silver ball and enveloped the orchestrion. It looked like mere light, but when Xhartekh approached and tapped it he was pleased to hear his knuckles clang against a hard surface.

‘Dispersion glass,’ he explained. ‘The charge will only last for an hour or so, but nothing will get through in the meantime. The whole necropolis could come down and that glass would remain.’

The lychguard gave no reply, other than to wave his warscythe at the door.

The throne room was far less sedate than the first time Xhartekh had entered it. The colonnaded walkway down the centre of the chamber was crowded with courtiers and nobles dashing back and forth, carrying metal-clasped scrolls and flickering data scanners.

The ordered ranks of lychguard had mostly gone, presumably to defend the breach, and the animated frieze of the galaxy had vanished from the walls, replaced with a schematic of the city, clearly showing the vast rent that had been torn in the outer wall.

At the far end of the walkway was the vast copper scarab and the royal dais. The phaeron had risen from his throne, surrounded by nobles and aides. He was locked in a debate with Nemesor Tekheron and his crimson-armoured concubine, Alakhra. Scattered across the dais, still twitching and attempting to reassemble, were the body parts of several lychguard. The war council did not appear to be going well.

As Xhartekh made his way up the steps between the scarab’s antennae, the phaeron caught sight of him and came to greet him, trailed by a crowd of nobles.

‘Heliomancer,’ he said, raising his arms in welcome. ‘You must excuse this interruption. The perfidious ones have deployed an underhanded ruse in an attempt to stop us activating the orchestrion. They know their witchcraft will not aid them once you finish your work.’ He lowered his voice as he leant close and gripped Xhartekh’s shoulder. ‘I presume you are nearly done?’

‘Your majesty,’ said Xhartekh, glancing at the nemesor and concubine.

‘Of course you are. I knew you would understand these matters better than the simpletons who pass for my crypteks.’ He nodded at the schematic shimmering across the distant walls. ‘I will need your help with this minor inconvenience before you can show me what you have done with the orchestrion. Tekheron and Alakhra insist that we find a way through the bomb site and make sure none of the aliens survived the blast.’

‘Nothing could have survived that blast,’ said Tekheron, ‘but we need to see what remains of our phalanxes and man the breach.’

The phaeron shrugged. ‘I will have no peace until you have found a way to march at the head of a parade.’ He nodded to the throne beside his – the one with the half-born corpse in it. ‘I will consult with my brother. He will suggest a speedy resolution.’

Xhartekh followed the phaeron and stood before the mouldering pile of rags and bones. The flesh had been partially preserved and he could still recognise its haughty, necrontyr features. They stood in silence before the corpse for a few seconds, while the phaeron nodded respectfully, responding to words only he could hear.

Then the phaeron turned to Xhartekh. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

Xhartekh shook his head. ‘Your majesty?’

‘You did not answer my brother’s question,’ said the phaeron, becoming suddenly serious. ‘What do you think?’

‘I agree,’ said Xhartekh, trying to sound sure of himself as he humoured the phaeron.

The phaeron stared at him and Xhartekh was about to change his answer when the phaeron nodded.

‘He agrees with you.’ He patted the corpse on the shoulder, dislodging a layer of parchment-like skin. ‘Of course he does. Very well. If that’s what you both think.’

The phaeron turned to Nemesor Tekheron. ‘Heliomancer Xhartekh will accompany you to the first sepulchre and aid you in clearing a path through the ruins. Once you are through, return him to the Halls of Kythmosis so he can complete his work.’

Xhartekh felt like knocking the corpse’s head from its shoulders, but instead he gave Tekheron a slight bow. ‘I will be happy to assist in any way I can, nemesor.’

As they arrived in the first sepulchre, Xhartekh halted, shaking his head. The air was simmering with irradiated particles. He could feel them like an echo of the blast, and they were behaving in a peculiar way. ‘These were unusual explosives,’ he said, picking up a piece of rubble and turning it between his fingers. The stone was still glowing slightly and he could feel the heat eating into the pitted metal of his hand. ‘There is some kind of sub-gravitic radiation. Most unusual.’

They were surrounded by lychguard, so Tekheron waved Xhartekh away from the block of troops to stand beside the base of a toppled pillar. He spoke in a low voice. ‘The phaeron thinks this is the work of aeldari witches.’

‘Yes, I understand. But we both know there are no aeldari on Morsus, so who has managed to create a weapon like this?’ He picked up a charred rock and handed it to the nemesor. ‘Feel it. Whatever created this blast was not a typical weapon. In fact, I would say “weapon” is the wrong word. It seems more like something that would be used to carve out mine shafts.’

The nemesor nodded. ‘The humans who created the mines. We have never fully removed them from Morsus.’

‘Humans?’ Xhartekh was shocked. ‘The primitive races have managed to live alongside you all this time?’

Nemesor Tekheron leant close. ‘You cannot imagine how difficult it is to marshal troops based on the outcome of the phaeron’s games. But all of my predecessors who attempted to deviate from his instructions were executed.’

‘Well, while the phaeron plays his games, the local humans have been hoarding explosive weapons that could potentially disrupt your regeneration protocols. If they created another explosion like this near one of your regeneration nodes, they could hinder your ability to reinforce your legions.’

‘None of them could have survived this blast,’ said Tekheron, looking at the mountainous wall of rubble that filled one end of the hall.

‘But what if this was only the advance party? How many warriors have you just lost?’

Tekheron’s voice was brittle. ‘Hundreds. I tried to explain that to the phaeron, but he is more concerned with you and your work in the crypts.’

‘As am I,’ replied Xhartekh. He stepped away from the pillar and looked at the wall of rubble. ‘Let me help you so I can get back to the orchestrion and finish my work.’

Xhartekh strode across the sepulchre and headed towards the rocks. ‘You just need a passage through the antechambers, correct?’

Tekheron nodded, following him. ‘There may be a few survivors out there. None of our readings are clear. If you can give me a quick path through, I can see for myself. If I can find any human corpses, I could show them to the phaeron. Perhaps togaether we could convince him they are a threat.’

‘You are as insane as he is,’ replied Xhartekh. ‘Remember what we agreed. I will make the orchestrion work in the way we discussed and then we will get it off this world. If we start arguing with the phaeron now we will be dead before–’

A grinding aftershock rocked through the sepulchre and more of the columns gave way, ripping sections of wall and tearing up the flagstones. The noise was immense and dozens of lychguard were hurled back through the air, many of them losing hold of their weapons as they crashed to the ground.

Xhartekh and Nemesor Tekheron dashed back across the hall, making for the entrance, but huge pieces of statuary were slamming down all around them, filling the air with dust and shards of rock that whistled through the clouds. The two nobles made it to the exit and raced back into the second sepulchre, but as they paused to look back, another aftershock rocked the necropolis.

Xhartekh was hurled through the chaos, smashing into a flight of steps with a howl of grinding metal. He lay there, dazed for a moment, his circuits overloaded with data.

Nemesor Tekheron hauled him to his feet and they both ran across the splintering floor, clambering over the broken flagstones and leaping through pools of fire spilled by overturned braziers. Another aftershock hit, then another. The floor gave way and they both fell, plunging into darkness.

For a moment, Xhartekh’s cerebral processors failed to comprehend what had happened. Then he realised he was lying in a half-ruined crypt, next to the nemesor.

‘The device!’ he cried, his voice a distorted howl of feedback. ‘I must protect it.’

There was an exit and stairs leading back down to the lower levels, but Xhartekh hesitated, looking back at Tekheron.

‘I must martial the legions,’ said Tekheron. ‘If you are right, and these blasts could threaten our regeneration nodes, I must deploy troops to guard them.’

‘The phaeron will not believe you.’

Tekheron’s eyes pulsed with anger. ‘Then perhaps Alakhra and I will have to accelerate our plans. I will not stand by and let the phaeron hand our crypts to these simian wretches.’

Tekheron dusted himself down and strode towards a doorway, waving Xhartekh towards another. ‘You must be ready to activate the device and harness its true power. Alakhra and I will come to you as soon as we can.’ He pointed his warglaive at Xhartekh. ‘Morsus will soon have new regents, cryptek, and we will not tolerate failure.’ With that he was gone, storming off into the dust clouds.

Xhartekh stayed there for a moment, watching Tekheron go and listening to the necropolis collapse around him. With a feeling of sinking dread, he stumbled off in the opposite direction, heading back to the Halls of Kythmosis.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Mephiston steadied himself as tremors rocked through the walls. They were in a narrow side passage running above one of the vast, innermost sepulchres. The corridor was not grand enough to warrant the statues and braziers he had seen in the previous halls, but the design was still unmistakably xenos. The walls were made of the same emerald-chased black stone as the crypts and they were impossibly smooth, polished to such a sheen that they reflected the ornate battleplate of the Blood Angels as they stormed on through green, sickly light.

‘They did it,’ said the old ogryn as he listened to the distant explosions.

Mephiston nodded. ‘But earlier than we agreed.’

Argolis made the sign of the aquila. In the unnatural light of the green wall circuits, he looked like a subterranean monster, risen from its cave to unnerve them with its inhuman stare.

‘Move faster,’ said Mephiston. ‘Every necron in the complex will be rushing to defend that breach. The Sabine Guard may distract them for a while, but when the xenos see no army coming, they will understand our ruse and return to these halls. We must plant the last charge and be gone before then.’

‘What about the Blood Oath?’ asked Rhacelus. ‘If the necrons realise we are behind this attack, they are hardly likely to honour the ceasefire you brokered. The aetheric shield we invoked will not hold up against sustained necron attack.’

Mephiston nodded. ‘We have to find the fastest route to the central regeneration node.’

‘I can lead you,’ said Argolis, pushing himself away from the wall and hurrying through the doorway. ‘The schematics I showed you in the cathedrum are complete in every way. We mapped these tunnels for decades, using the same sonic devices used to locate Morsus’ promethium seams. And I have had a lifetime to memorise them.’

They raced down the passageway as an eerie dirge rose from the halls below. Rather than klaxons, the necron alarms were low, mournful horns, playing a single drawn-out note that echoed down the passages, ominous and strange, like a call from the past.

They reached a crossroads and Argolis waved them down the right passageway, which quickly opened out into a broad balcony overlooking one of the great funerary halls.

As Mephiston had predicted, the necropolis was filled with activity. Blocks of necron warriors and lychguard were running through the chamber. Their movements were as uniform and precise as always, but they were moving at great speed, weapons raised as they thundered through archways at the end of the hall.

‘We have to reach the far side,’ said Argolis, pointing to a stairway opposite, leading to another balcony and more passageways. ‘Then we will be near the centre of the whole complex.’ He glanced back at the Blood Angel carrying the explosive device. ‘If we trigger the explosion there, the others will go up in a chain reaction. The whole fortress will come down.’

Mephiston nodded. ‘When the hall is empty we will cross and engage the device. You should all have time to leave the fortress before the blast.’

Rhacelus frowned. ‘We should have time to leave?’

‘I still need to find the device that blocked my warp sight, Rhacelus. Defeating the necrons may not be enough to clear my vision. If the cause of my blindness remains lost, buried under tonnes of rubble, I might still be unable to hunt down the daemon. I believe the device is not far from here – almost directly below the place Argolis intends to place the explosives. I will reach the lower levels, disable the device and leave by one of the lower exits.’

Rhacelus looked at Argolis. ‘Are there other exits?’

Argolis nodded. ‘They may be guarded though.’

Rhacelus scratched at his beard. ‘I do not see how–’

‘My lords,’ said Lieutenant Servatus from the back of the group. ‘I hear something.’

They paused to listen. At first it sounded like rain, rattling down on the necropolis – a pattering drum of tiny impacts. Then it grew louder, like the beginning of a landslide. Mephiston glanced at Rhacelus, but the old Librarian’s shimmering eyes showed the same confusion.

They walked back down the passageway towards the source of the sound. Argolis sniffed the air, looking agitated, pacing back and forth. Then he growled and dropped into a crouch, pointing his ablation drill back down the narrow corridor.

Mephiston drew Vitarus as the scuttling sound grew louder.

‘The plague of the ancients,’ muttered Argolis, his voice constricted by hate. ‘Metal insects. They’ll strip the flesh from our bones if we–’

The shadows exploded. A wave of glinting shards hurtled towards them.

The Blood Angels fired. The corridor became a blue inferno as silver scarabs swarmed across the walls, emitting a high-pitched chittering noise as they flew through the gunfire. Mounds of scarabs fell back, but there were so many that some rushed through the barrage, washing over the Blood Angels.

Battle-Brother Anassus fell, dropping his gun and clutching his helmet as hundreds of the metal constructs devoured his armour, surrounding him in a cloud of crimson spray.

‘Fall back!’ cried Mephiston, striding forwards with Vitarus raised.

The Blood Angels backed away, firing and slapping furiously at their armour as scarabs dropped from the ceiling.

Argolis howled and discharged his drill, evaporating mounds of scarabs. Mephiston stepped to his side, bringing Vitarus down with a curse. The blade shimmered with runes, filling the corridor with fire. Scarabs detonated with a rattle of explosions. Metal carapaces became spinning fragments, shrouded in embers.

There was a brief silence as the scarabs’ charred remains tumbled back in a blackened pile. Then the chittering began again. Hundreds more scarabs boiled from the darkness, hurtling towards Mephiston.

He brought Vitarus round in a backhanded swipe, hurling flames. Again, they fell back, incinerated, but there were so many that some made it past him, teeming over the walls towards the other Blood Angels.

Rhacelus raised his force sword and it erupted with the same blue fire as Vitarus. The hood of his battleplate flashed white as he recited an incantation. The scarabs rushing past Mephiston detonated, filling the air with shrapnel.

Metal bounced harmlessly off the Blood Angels power armour, but Argolis gasped as it slashed across his chest. The abhuman fell back, dropping his drill as more scarabs streamed into view. Mephiston also staggered backwards, slashing and hacking, casting lines of blue fire, but more of the scarabs broke through, swarming over the prone form of Argolis.

Rhacelus rushed to help, warp fire crackling across his robes, and the scarabs flew back as they were ripped from Argolis’ body.

Rhacelus reached Argolis and dragged him to safety, assisted by Servatus. Blood rushed from dozens of cuts in the ogryn’s thick hide as they hauled him to his feet.

‘They don’t attack alone,’ gasped Argolis, leaning heavily on Rhacelus, struggling to breathe.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Rhacelus, raising his sword and immolating more insects.

A fourth wave crashed through the corridor and Argolis’ reply was drowned out by the roar of plasma weapons.

‘They are always controlled by one of the sentient necrons,’ cried Vidiens, flying into view and managing to raise its shrill voice over the din. ‘They are mindless. A necron must be driving them this way.’

Argolis was rocked by a coughing fit. Blood sprayed from his mouth, splattering across the blue ceramite of Rhacelus’ battleplate. The old ogryn slumped, unconscious, in Rhacelus’ grip and he lowered him into an alcove.

Sergeant Agorix fell back, howling in pain. He collapsed to the floor, wrapped in a heaving skin of metallic shells, thrashing wildly as they tore his armour and flesh. Rhacelus paused to help, but as he drew back his sword the Space Marine disintegrated, shredded into gore by the frenzied attack.

Rhacelus battled to Mephiston’s side, hacking with his blazing sword and shooting scarabs from the walls.

‘Something is driving them towards us!’ he cried.

Mephiston was fighting with murderous speed, still holding back the main thrust of the attack. His battleplate was alight with psychic power and he was knee deep in shattered scarabs.

He nodded down the corridor as he hacked and lunged. ‘The necrons may be more sane than the sergeant thought. They are returning to protect the regeneration nodes.’

Rhacelus joined his force to Mephiston’s, flinging back more of the insects. As he fought, he followed Mephiston’s gaze and saw what he was referring to.

A humanoid figure was striding towards them. As the Librarians’ warp flame coiled around the tunnel, it revealed more details. The xenos was larger than the others they had seen, clad in thick plates of bulky armour and draped in a cloak of emerald discs that flickered as it moved.

‘One of their techno-mages,’ growled Rhacelus.

Mephiston strode forwards, incandescent, burning through the scarabs and pointing his pistol at the distant figure. He fired, but the necron’s cloak shimmered as the blast hit, and the necron reappeared a few feet away, unharmed.

Blood-rage boiled through Mephiston’s veins. The ugly, feral side of his ancestry strained against his mask of nobility, but he quashed it, muttering a fierce oath and raising his sword for another strike.

The cryptek waved its staff with an elaborate flourish and hundreds more scarabs crashed into Mephiston. He lashed out with Vitarus but the weight of them knocked him from his feet. He hit the floor with a clang and Vitarus slipped from his grip, clattering back down the tunnel. Scarabs washed over him, pouring across his armour like oil. Their mandibles began shredding the plate in a feeding frenzy.

Mephiston reached into the core of his being, unleashing his full might. Heat radiated from his chest, burning the scarabs to ash and hurtling on down the corridor, moving with such force that the walls splintered and bowed away from him. The shock wave lifted the cryptek from its feet and hurled it down the passageway.

As the scarabs fell away, Mephiston leapt to his feet and extended his hand. Vitarus flew through the air and slapped into his open palm. He sliced the blade down and launched another column of psychic fire at the necron.

The necron crashed into the wall, enveloped in blue flame, shaking violently as electricity spat from its armour. As it danced and jerked, Mephiston strode forwards and drew back Vitarus for the killing blow.

Still shaking, the cryptek pulled a scythe from its belt and pressed a button in its handle. As Mephiston brought his force sword down, the necron blinked out of existence, reappearing behind him.

Vitarus sliced into the wall and jammed. Mephiston whirled around, leaving the blade in the wall, just as the cryptek’s scythe sliced into his chest. Charged with disruptive energy, it hummed as it cut straight through his ceramite.

Pain flared in Mephiston’s lungs before the suppressors kicked in, and blood gushed from his armour, splashing across the necron’s metal skull. He reached out to grab the cryptek’s iron-cabled throat, but his hand closed on nothing.

The necron blinked into view on the far side of the corridor, pointing its staff at him. Mephiston lurched aside as emerald light spat from the staff and sliced into the wall. He barely dodged the blast. His limbs were oddly sluggish and blood continued to rush from his armour, as though his Larraman cells were unable to heal the wound.

The cryptek shimmered into view once more, drawing back the scythe to strike again, but a column of blue light thudded into its stomach, doubling it over and knocking it back across the floor. It rolled away as Rhacelus strode after it, his sword dripping fire.

The cryptek’s fall was a feint. It rolled to its feet and hurled the scythe. Rhacelus staggered, clutching his throat, the blade embedded deep in his neck. As Rhacelus fell, the cryptek whirled its staff around its head, summoning shadows from the walls and hurling them down the passageway. The shadows fragmented as they approached, becoming another tide of scarabs that poured over the wounded Librarians.

The cryptek leapt forwards, pulled the scythe from Rhacelus’ neck and drew it back for another thrust.

Then it jolted forwards as Vitarus burst from its chest.

Mephiston loomed up behind the necron like a shadow, elongated and magnified as he wrenched the sword upwards, splitting the cryptek’s chest and head with a shower of sparks.

As the necron hit the floor, the scarabs vanished. The necron jolted and twitched for a few seconds, then disappeared.

Mephiston slumped against the wall, weak from blood loss. His battle-brothers rushed to help, some stooping over Rhacelus while Servatus rushed to Mephiston’s side.

‘Chief Librarian,’ he said, ‘we must get you to a Sanguinary Priest.’

Mephiston shook his head, but as he tried to walk he nearly fell. He nodded at something glinting on the floor a few feet away. ‘Bring me that.’

Servatus did as ordered, returning with the cryptek’s scythe in his hand. He handled it gingerly, aware that it had just wounded two of the Chapter’s most powerful psykers.

Mephiston took the scythe and stared at it closely. The hooked blade was crowded with a mesh of circuits and the crossbar was studded with activation runes, one of which had been depressed. Mephiston scoured his eidetic memory, and as he studied the runes, the pages of reference books flooded his mind. For a moment he had the pleasing sensation he was back on Baal, in his private chambers – the book-crowded halls of the Diurnal Vault, deep in the Arx Angelicum. He could almost smell the dusty, mildewed pages of his treasured texts. Just the thought of the Librarium was enough to calm him. He imagined himself drifting through the psychic wards known as the Crimson Tears and lifting books from the veiled cabinets beyond. There were whole rooms devoted to the study of cryptek weaponry, but he honed in unerringly on the right volume.

‘Voltaic toxin,’ he said, surprised to find that his voice was husky and weak. ‘The blade carries a corpuscle suppressor.’

The other Blood Angels had managed to help Rhacelus to his feet, but as he removed his helmet they saw that his face was corpse-grey and his eyes, usually alive with aetheric power, were dull and unfocused.

‘A poison blade?’ said Vidiens, flying to Mephiston’s side, sounding almost hysterical.

Mephiston touched his chest and grimaced. Blood was still pouring from the wound. ‘The cryptek’s science is disrupting the normal functioning of our Larraman cells. We cannot heal ourselves.’

He looked at Rhacelus, who was already slipping into unconsciousness, leaning weakly against his battle-brothers.

‘We will bleed to death if I do not halt the toxin,’ he said, his mouth tacky with blood. ‘Watch the entrances.’ His words were muffled and slurred. He waved at the Blood Angels to either end of the corridor and slipped free of Servatus’ grip so he could sit with his back against the wall.

He motioned for Servatus to join the others and dragged Rhacelus to his side. Then he closed his eyes and sank back into his memories of the Librarius. He was not truly projecting his mind – Morsus prevented him from performing psychic projections – but his recall was so clear he felt as though he were back in the Diurnal Vault, running his fingers across the gilt-edged spines of his library. He looked again at the technical manual he had remembered earlier, letting his memory skim through each word until it alighted on the relevant passage.

Of course, he thought, finding the answer he sought. He dallied for a moment longer, relishing his memory of Baal, then dragged his thoughts to the present and studied the blood pooling in his lap.

He lifted his arm and realised that he did not have long left to act. His limbs trembled and his mind was becoming muddled. He summoned Vitarus into his palm with a thought. The blade’s soul linked with his and ignited, galvanising his faltering hearts. He slurred a phrase, one of the first invocations he had learned, binding the warp to the molecules of his flesh.

He felt, for a moment, as though he were a single atom, moving through the particles of his body, breathing incorporeal fire into each of them, repelling the synthesised cells of the poison blade. He mouthed another conjuration, bending seconds and minutes to his will, slowing the pace of time. His hearts stopped, and in the pause between beats Mephiston’s mind leapt from cell to cell, burning them clean of xenos taint, before passing into Rhacelus’ arteries and doing the same.

Rhacelus sat upright, his eyes smouldering once more. He wiped the blood from his face as he stared at Mephiston. ‘I feel terrible.’

Mephiston gripped him by the shoulder. ‘The cryptek poisoned us.’

‘Poison?’ Rhacelus looked disgusted. ‘No honour.’

Mephiston helped Rhacelus to his feet and pressed his hand to his throat, feeling the healing taking place beneath the ceramite. He nodded. ‘You are fine. You will recover as normal.’

He looked around. A few of the other Blood Angels were still in view, their weapons trained on the shadows, but most had done as he ordered and headed off to guard the exits.

Beneath his armour, Mephiston could feel his own cells binding and knitting back togaether. He took a deep breath, and when he was sure his weakness had passed, he opened the vox-network.

‘Is the hall clear yet?’ he asked, cleaning Vitarus and sliding the blade into its scabbard.

‘For the moment, Chief Librarian,’ came Brother-Lieutenant Servatus’ reply. ‘There are more necrons coming. The cryptek must have called for help. We need to go now.’

‘Regroup on the balcony,’ said Mephiston, waving for the other Blood Angels to follow as he lurched off down the corridor with Rhacelus at his side and Vidiens chattering away overhead.

He halted a few feet from the exit. Argolis was on his knees beside a fallen Blood Angel.

‘Move,’ said Rhacelus, hauling the ogryn to his feet. ‘There is nothing you can do for him. Go.’

The Blood Angel’s armour had been devoured by the scarabs, along with the front half of his body. There was nothing left but slop and bones.

Argolis looked at the two Librarians and shook his head.

‘We failed,’ he said, clutching his head. ‘All these centuries. All for nothing.’

‘Failed?’ Mephiston shook his head. ‘We can still place the charge. None of your work has been wasted.’

Argolis was too overcome to reply. He simply pointed at the corpse.

Lying at the Blood Angel’s side, barely recognisable, were the remnants of the ammo crate that held the explosive charge. It, and the contents, had been devoured by the scarabs. All that remained were splinters and scraps of wire.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mephiston stared at the remains of the explosives, lost in thought.

‘What do we do?’ asked Vidiens, fluttering overhead and staring into the shadows from behind its blood-stained mask.

‘Give me the salver,’ said Mephiston, and Vidiens flew lower, handing him the brass plate.

Mephiston pored over the details engraved into the metal. He had worked on the design for years – sometimes consciously, but more often in a kind of wild fever-dream or fugue state in which his hand moved of its own volition, embellishing the metal with calligraphy so ornate that even Mephiston found it hard to decipher.

He ran his finger across the marks until he reached the symbols that denoted the Revenant Stars, and then on to Morsus itself. He picked out the rows of stylised, blank-eyed corpses he had noticed when they were still on the Blood Oath. He stared at them, sensing he had missed something. They signified the necrons, that much was clear, but why did he think there was something more to understand?

He cast his mind back over the events of the last few hours, searching for something significant he had overlooked, sure that his subconscious had left him a clue in this delicate script. Then he recalled the eyes of his dead entourage, gathered around him in Argolis’ cathedrum, just after his conversation with Rhacelus. He looked back at the salver, finally understanding. The pictures of corpses did not only signify the necrons. They symbolised the dead of his past. The dead in his mind. Even here, on Morsus, the salver was showing him the way forwards.

He looked up into the darkness, knowing what he would see.

There they were, waiting patiently for him in the shadows – the ghost of every soldier who had died in his service. Even in death they served. Even in death they would not desert him. Foremost among them was a newcomer. Llourens stared back at him with the same calm expectation as the others. Her body was ruined, but her eyes blazed with hope.

‘Lord of Death,’ muttered Mephiston, understanding, for the first time, the significance of his own epithet.

Rhacelus frowned at him, but Mephiston could not explain. Not yet. He looked back down the passageway and saw the dead moving away from him, out towards the balcony.

‘Move,’ he said, handing the salver back to Vidiens and striding after guides only he could see.

‘Servatus,’ he voxed. ‘To me.’

They climbed down a narrow staircase between statues and hurried across the huge, brazier-lined hall. Mephiston paused, halfway across, and looked in the direction the necrons had been heading. At the far end of the hall, between the legs of another colossal statue, he could see flames and jagged mounds of rubble.

‘No sign of gunfire,’ said Rhacelus, stopping next to him and giving him a meaningful glance.

Mephiston carried on across the hall and climbed the staircase opposite, heading back into the network of tunnels, still following his ghosts. The corridor led to a wide crossroads, with one route forming another set of stairs, plunging steeply down into the darkness. Without hesitation, the horde of spirits headed for the route to the lower levels of the complex.

‘This way,’ said Mephiston, waving Vitarus at the stairs.

‘Chief Librarian,’ said Rhacelus, grabbing one of Mephiston’s pauldrons and halting him at the top of the steps. ‘Where are we headed? We have no charge to detonate. The other explosives are useless without it.’ He glanced back at Argolis, who was leaning heavily on Servatus and watching the exchange. ‘Argolis told us the only way to trigger the chain reaction is with that device. If we head deeper into these crypts we will be surrounded by the entire necron army. Even we cannot take them all on.’

Mephiston struggled to maintain his calm demeanour as the spirits slipped out of sight. ‘I cannot explain everything, Rhacelus, even to you.’ He nodded at the stairs. ‘If we linger here–’

‘Too late,’ snapped Rhacelus, shrugging off Argolis’ grip and dropping into a crouch, pointing his pistol down the passage opposite the stairs. The rest of the Blood Angels rushed to his side, lifting their plasma incinerators to their shoulders and aiming them down the passageway.

The viridian glow of the wall lights washed over a block of necrons racing towards them. These were similar to the heavy-armoured variants they had observed in the hall, moving in perfect unison – a living wall of metal thundering down the passageway, driven by wordless, unstoppable determination.

‘On my command,’ said Rhacelus, raising his pistol.

Mephiston hesitated, looking towards the stairs behind him.

‘Do you have a plan?’ asked Rhacelus.

Mephiston nodded.

Rhacelus drew his sword and stepped past the other Blood Angels to face the approaching wall of silver. ‘Then I will hold them back until you are done.’

Mephiston pounded his chest, waved for Vidiens to follow and bolted for the stairs. He did not pause, even when the passageway behind him exploded with noise and light.

As the stairs descended into the lowest levels of the crypt, the air began to grow clear of the scented smoke that filled the rest of the complex, and the temperature began to drop, coating the blood-red lacquer of his war-plate with a thin layer of frost. Vidiens swooped ahead, scouring the dark for signs of movement.

The steps emerged into a vast mausoleum – a triangular chamber crowded with rows of stone, coffin-like caskets. Each of them was leaking splinters of green light that sliced through the darkness and washed over the ground, revealing masses of cabling and quietly humming devices that Mephiston assumed were transformers or generators of some kind. The air trembled with charged particles and a low, ominous moaning sound that resonated up through the floor.

‘By the Emperor,’ whispered Vidiens, hovering over the first of the caskets. ‘There are thousands of them.’

Mephiston did not pause. His ghosts were gliding over the caskets, making for a large structure half hidden in darkness at the far side of the chamber. As he ran, taking a weaving route between the caskets, he saw movement up ahead, and flashes of silver. He drew his pistol as half a dozen necrons marched from the shadows, their weapons raised to fire.

Vidiens swooped down for cover behind one of the caskets, but as the plodding automata came within shooting distance, they stayed their shots and stared silently at Mephiston. The only sign of life was the light bleeding from their empty eye sockets.

‘They do not want to shoot in here,’ said Mephiston, looking at the caskets that surrounded him.

He raised his plasma pistol and fired, ripping a molten hole in a necron’s head. The necron staggered back, then returned to stand in the same spot, weapon raised, as though nothing had happened.

Mephiston fired until the necron was a pile of smouldering scrap. Another stepped forwards and Mephiston repeated the process until all six of them were in pieces. Then he strode on.

As he passed the mangled necrons, a severed hand grasped his ankle, causing him to stagger and barge into a casket, dislodging it with the bulk of his power armour. The casket smashed to the floor, the lid clattering away, and virulent green chemicals flooded out, along with a half-rotten corpse.

The corpse was dressed in the mouldering remnants of ceremonial robes, its flesh riddled with rusty metal devices. They were designed to resemble scarabs, pushed deep into the flesh and sparking with electric charge. The cadaver tried to rise, groaning and wailing. It was pathetically wasted and decayed, and as it stumbled towards Mephiston flesh sloughed from its bones, revealing the chemically preserved organs beneath.

Mephiston fired into the thing’s chest, launching its grey-green body back across the floor. He marched on.

Vidiens flew after him, still carrying the salver, and togaether they reached the shape jutting out of the wall. It was a tall, stylised skull, identical to the heads of the necrons Mephiston had just dismantled. It was forty feet tall and framed in each of its eye sockets was an emerald large enough to crush a man. Mephiston’s ghosts rushed on, passing through the surface of the stone skull and vanishing from view.

‘My lord,’ said Vidiens. ‘The mark of the abomination.’

The servitor pointed to the side of the skull’s tightly clamped jaws, where there was a coffin-shaped cartouche carved into the stone. It was the same ankh symbol that adorned all of the necrons’ chests, but this one was framed by the outline of a skeletal hand.

Mephiston returned to the casket. The cadaver tried to rise again, slipping from its chemical gloop and reaching towards him, metal scarabs still sparking beneath its skin. He grabbed the thing by the arm and dragged it, thrashing and jerking, back to the skull, then he raised its hand and slapped it against the cartouche.

The low moaning sound shifted in pitch and with a whoosh of hydraulics the skull’s jaw sank into the floor.

Mephiston looked up at Vidiens. ‘Wait here. Call out at the first sign of more necrons.’

Vidiens was about to protest, but Mephiston had already dropped the gibbering corpse and marched on into the next room.

It was a laboratory. The walls were lined with tall alcoves, each containing the necron equivalent of Tesla coils – green, pyramidal crystals, linked to each other by dancing limbs of electricity. The air was a mesh of emerald lightning bolts, thrashing and whipping against a metal casket at the heart of the room.

Mephiston paused at the threshold, momentarily blinded by the intensity of the blaze. As his Adeptus Astartes eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw a robed necron stooping over the casket, carefully positioning prisms next to a glass circle at its centre. The necron was so engrossed in this task it did not notice Mephiston, so he watched for a moment, intrigued. His ghosts had gathered around the android. This was clearly what they had intended to show him.

The necron adjusted the prisms so they refracted coloured beams from the projector at the centre of the casket, scattering lights across the walls. The design of the box was different to the caskets outside. It appeared to be unadorned, apart from the circular projector, until Mephiston’s keen eyesight picked out fine, xenos symbols etched into the metal case. Mephiston knew he had seen such a device before.

His mind slipped back to the books of his Librarius. He recalled his most esoteric, ancient collections, the ones dealing with artefacts from other galaxies, objects so arcane they could manipulate the dimensions themselves, altering perceptions and physics without any need for the treacherous currents of the warp. Mephiston’s unerring memory led him to the page he sought: a faded diagram of the prehistoric object now before him.

‘An orchestrion,’ he said, unable to contain his surprise.

The necron whirled around, scattering its prisms in the process. They flew from the lid of the casket, hit the wall and shattered.

Antros raced through the necropolis, his armour luminous and pulsing with warp fire. With every second that passed, more power roared through his body. As he ran through the ancient crypts, the stone floor rippled away from him, splitting and cracking, as though he were a living, walking explosion.

He was ecstatic. If he willed it, he could bring down the whole fortress with a thought. He had become a true scion of Sanguinius. He had become everything that the Angel had wished for his sons. He had become all that Mephiston had so far failed to be. He needed to find the Chief Librarian but his mind was so alive with the warp that he was no longer quite sure why. Was it so he could explain the Sleepless Mile? Was that enough? Could Mephiston even understand? Perhaps that time had passed? He stifled the thoughts, angry with himself. Of course the Chief Librarian would understand. The influx of new power was overwhelming him, confusing him. His psychic powers had accelerated beyond anything he could have expected. He needed to remain calm. He needed to tread the Sleepless Mile at all times now.

He looked at his auspex. The device had been damaged in the cave-in, but the signal was still clear. Mephiston was somewhere in the chambers below, a few miles at most.

He scoured the shadows for a route to the next hall. He was in a grand chamber, even by the standards of the halls he had fought through to get this far. The previous chambers had been swarming with necrons. His untrammelled power had easily carved a path through them, but now, for a moment at least, he seemed to be alone.

He ran across the room, then halted as a powerful tremor rocked through the walls, knocking columns to the floor with an explosion of sparks and shattered stone. Antros was hurled back by the blast and buried beneath mounds of rubble. As rocks crashed down onto his armour, he felt the fortress shuddering around him.

‘Mephiston has launched an attack,’ he whispered, ‘and I am too late to help.’ He cursed. Rhacelus would be furious that he had taken so long to arrive and then missed whatever action they were taking against the necrons. Whatever news he brought from the Dawnstrike would be overshadowed by his failure to aid his battle-brothers.

As tonnes of rock pressed down on him, he tried to reach out psychically, through the darkness, trying to reach the Chief Librarian to tell him that he was near.

It was no use – the numbness was thicker than ever down here in the necron tombs.

Another idea occurred to him. Perhaps the Sleepless Mile could aid him? He was yet to understand its complexities and limits but Lord Dragomir said it would be his path when he was lost.

He whispered the mantra and looked deep into his own thoughts. To his delight, Antros’ subconscious showed him the necropolis. It was not like any psychic projection he had deployed before. He seemed to be dreaming his way through the fortress. He had no way to know if he was seeing truth, but as he hauled his physical self out from beneath the rocks, he let his mind soar away down the Sleepless Mile.

Antros’ consciousness sailed into the lower levels of the necropolis, gliding through chamber after chamber until it floated into a huge mausoleum, crowded with rows of caskets. He moved across the room, then halted, noticing that one of the sarcophagi had been overturned. There was a trail of green chemicals smeared across the floor, leading to a large skull-shaped structure on the far wall. Somehow, Antros knew that Mephiston was waiting for him on the far side of the skull. The Sleepless Mile was speaking to him with all the conviction of prophecy.

As he neared the skull, Antros’ vision began to fade. Even the power of the Sleepless Mile was nulled by Morsus’ psychic wards. Antros’ anger flared as he realised he might not reach Mephiston after all. With every few feet the vision grew weaker. He would soon be back in his own body. He had to find some way to anchor his thoughts, something to pin his mind to.

He looked around for anything that might help. Next to the door in the skull was a corpse. Its dripping hand print was on the door’s activation rune – it looked as though this grotesque thing had admitted Mephiston to the next chamber.

A craven, inner voice asked Antros why a necron would grant Mephiston access through these chambers. There could have been countless explanations but it was as though someone were whispering venomous thoughts into Antros’ ear. He tried to rid himself of the poison. Mephiston was his lord. He would find him quickly and explain the secrets of the Sleepless Mile. Then they could explore its mysteries togaether. Mephiston had always treated Antros as a trusted advisor. Now Antros would show him the trust was well placed.

The vision had almost entirely faded and Antros sensed his time was nearly up. He noticed, with distaste, the corpse was moving slightly, clawing at the floor, perhaps not dead at all. He wondered if he could possess it, but the idea was far too obscene to seriously consider.

As the scene fell away, Antros saw a frail, robed figure drifting above the caskets on mechanical wings. It was no bigger than an emaciated child and it wore a blood-splattered, porcelain mask that almost, but not quite, hid the mass of oily cables and butchered flesh behind.

Vidiens, thought Antros, recognising the Chief Librarian’s servant. What could be easier to borrow than the tiny, butchered mind of a servitor?

With seconds to spare, Antros whispered an oath and hurled his mind into the servitor’s head. The force of his power caught Antros unawares and Vidiens’ consciousness collapsed beneath his psychic fury, extinguished like a snuffed candle.

The necron ignored Mephiston and rushed across the laboratory, dropping to its knees beside the shattered prisms it had dropped when Mephiston had spoken. ‘They were priceless. Quantum phase shifters. The very finest. Made by Syptakh himself.’

Then, with a visible jolt, the necron finally registered Mephiston’s presence. It reached into its robes and drew out a small mirrored cube.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the necron, looking over Mephiston’s shoulder to see if anyone else had entered. Then it looked back at Mephiston, its anger replaced with confusion. ‘What did you say?’

Mephiston wondered if the necron was deranged. It should have been attacking him, or triggering alarms. But it had the distracted air of a lunatic. There was a droning torrent of numbers coming from its motionless mouth and its head twitched slightly as it looked him up and down.

‘Earlier. When you entered.’ The necron stepped warily around the casket with the mirrored box held before it, like a weapon. ‘You said something. What was it?’

Mephiston’s fingers itched to draw his pistol and silence the xenos. The dead stared at him in warning, though. Silently, they willed him to stay his hand. More of them were seeping into the chamber with every minute. Llourens was there again. Her face had been torn apart by the blast that killed her, but along with the others she was staring at the metal casket.

‘I said that this is an orchestrion,’ said Mephiston, deciding to buy himself time until he could understand what his ghosts expected of him. ‘I have never seen one before, but I have studied its workings. It would be simple enough to activate it.’

The necron stumbled as though it had been punched. It lowered its mirrored box and stared at him. ‘You could make it work?’

Mephiston was about to reply when something tugged at the edge of his consciousness. He felt as though someone were calling him, or watching him. He tried to reach out with his mind but the haze that had blinded him for months was stronger than ever in this chamber. He looked at the orchestrion. This is it, he realised. My blindness stems from this box.

He stepped closer to the orchestrion. ‘I can make it work,’ he said, not noticing that, behind him, Vidiens had drifted into the room.

For the second time that day, Antros felt as though he were being crushed alive. The space that had been inhabited by what passed for a servitor’s mind could not contain even a fraction of Antros’ growing consciousness. Almost as disturbing was the sensation of being in Vidiens’ wasted little body. He could feel the crooked, emaciated limbs and the heavily mechanised mess of the servitor’s face. It was like being encased in a rotting spider.

Antros calmed his revulsion in the same way he was controlling everything else – he kept his mind on the path shown to him by Dragomir and the Sons of Helios. The crushing claustrophobia faded as he pictured their cool, healing light.

Once he had achieved a calm state, Antros thrashed Vidiens’ wings and flew into the chamber, excited for countless reasons to finally reach the Chief Librarian. Soon, he would see his lord cutting down the vile xenos beings that had invaded Morsus. Soon, he would have proof that his doubts were unfounded.

‘I can make it work,’ said Mephiston, as the servitor flew into the chamber with Antros staring through its eyes. The Chief Librarian was standing beside a necron noble and they were both looking at a metal box that dominated the centre of the room.

Antros had just fought through dozens of necrons to reach this chamber, and here was his Chief Librarian chatting idly with a xenos monster about how to activate a war engine. The doubts he had been trying to quash returned with renewed fervour. Perhaps he had misunderstood something?

As he fluttered closer, he noticed something familiar hanging around Mephiston’s neck. It was the oval locket he had seen in his disturbing vision – the one handed to the Chief Librarian by the daemon. At the sight of the locket, questions exploded in Antros’ mind.

He flew away from Mephiston as anger and confusion threatened to consume him. The madness he had battled in the Great Rift locked around his mind, and his consciousness began to slip from Vidiens’ body. He panicked, then recalled what he had learned from the Sons of Helios. We dream, dreaming, dreamed, he thought, stifling his rage with the calming mantra. He managed to regain some control, but the fury was still growing. He flew from the room.

His mind full of light and visions, he flew Vidiens straight into one of the caskets outside, snapping one of the servitor’s wings and landing in a crumpled heap.

As Antros lay there in the servitor’s mangled flesh, dazed with blood loss and shock, his mind lurched between the mausoleum, the Sleepless Mile and the incredible visions he had seen in the Great Rift.

Pain sliced through his chest, then faded as he fell back into his own body. He clambered to his feet, shrugging off more rubble as he found himself back in the chamber miles above the one where Mephiston was conversing with a xenos machine.

‘I have to leave,’ he gasped, suddenly unable to separate madness from reality. The walls of the chamber altered as he tried to focus on them, becoming the fierce, bestial faces he had seen in the warp. He gripped the mirror Dragomir gave him and raced back into the shadows, muttering furiously as he disappeared from sight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Rhacelus knelt beside Brother-Lieutenant Servatus, both of them firing into the advancing necrons.

The passageway was like a tunnel carved into the sun. So many plasma blasts and gauss beams sizzled through the air that they had combined into a single, white-hot furnace, shearing armour and flaying flesh everywhere he looked.

To Rhacelus’ left was a single pair of Blood Angels – all that was left of the Hellblaster squad. Both carried serious wounds, but neither would back down, despite the corpses of fallen battle-brothers that lay all around them.

Behind Rhacelus was Argolis. The ogryn was slumped against the wall, weak with blood loss, but Rhacelus deflected every necron blast that lanced towards him, swinging his force sword in blinding, graceful arabesques as Servatus fired into the fray with calm precision.

Rhacelus stood up, knocking away another blast with a backhanded slash. With each deflection he cried a word of power, igniting runes along Lucensis’ blade. He gestured for his other two battle-brothers to come to his side, but the gunfire was so fierce he had to bark an order over the vox-network before they responded.

‘No word from Mephiston,’ he said, as they moved into position, huddling next to him, their incinerator guns kicking superheated plasma into the enemy ranks. ‘I’m going to try something else. Give me covering fire.’ They nodded, firing another dazzling barrage.

Rhacelus strode away from them, still deflecting shots with Lucensis as he grabbed a book chained to his armour and flicked through the pages with his other hand.

A shaft of green energy, much larger than the others, shot towards him with a fizzing, tearing sound as it burned through the air. He leapt aside, barely dodging the blast as it screamed down one of the other passages leading away from the intersection.

He steadied himself, lifted the book again and incanted one of the lines of neatly printed text. A dozen feet away, a few ranks deep into the necron troops, a chasm opened in the floor. Some of the androids slipped and fell, forced into the gap by the momentum of the necrons behind. Others managed to steady themselves but had to cease shooting as they teetered at the edge.

The pause in gunfire gave Servatus and the other two Blood Angels a chance to fire with even more accuracy than before, demolishing the necron spearhead and scattering troops in every direction, hurling more of them into the crack opened by Rhacelus.

As the necrons stumbled, trying to adjust their attack protocols, Rhacelus ran towards them, his psychic collar blazing as he read another line from the iron-bound book. A second chasm opened, a dozen feet behind the first, causing another confused scrum as necrons toppled into each other or fell into the gap.

The Blood Angels rose to their feet, blasting necrons into hot shrapnel as they tried unsuccessfully to return fire, staggering across the uneven floor and struggling to stay upright as the rest of the phalanx pushed inexorably forwards.

Rhacelus intoned the third line in his book and the ground between the two chasms fell away, sending dozens of necrons tumbling out of sight and leaving an impassable gap before the rest.

‘Fire at the walls!’ boomed Rhacelus, drawing his pistol. He shot gouts of plasma at the wall above the sheer drop he had created, causing an explosion of rock and dust.

The other Blood Angels did the same, and after a few seconds they had created a wall of rubble at the edge of the chasm.

The front rows of necrons climbed the mound of rocks, finding themselves trapped on the other side with a wall behind them and a drop ahead. They clambered back the way they had come, only to be mercilessly cut down by the Blood Angels’ gunfire and the coughing shots of Argolis’ drill as he staggered to his feet and rejoined the battle.

After a few seconds of this brutal slaughter, the necrons fell back and the shooting ceased.

‘Mephiston,’ said Rhacelus, opening the vox again. ‘Are you there?’

The only reply was a static hum.

‘Mephiston,’ he repeated. ‘Can you–?’

His words were cut off as a loud, clattering sound filled the passageway.

The necrons stepped aside, making way for an armour-plated war machine. The vehicle was similar to the scythe-shaped aircraft they had encountered on the planet’s surface, but this one was as wide as it was tall, its broad, circular base formed around a command rail, behind which stood a necron noble. He was clearly different from the ranks of automata that surrounded him. The noble leaned forward across the rail, pointing his warscythe directly at Rhacelus. Everything about him radiated majesty and outrage. The whole vehicle pulsed with malevolent green light, all centred on him. His armour plate seemed barely able to contain the emerald furnace at his core. His skull was crowned by a metal mohawk and his armour was swathed in robes.

‘Lord Mephiston,’ he said, his booming, sepulchral tones reverberating around the passageway, amplified by a speaker array at the front of the vehicle. ‘You have trespassed on the sanctity of these royal chambers and destroyed works of great antiquity. You have proven yourself to be a liar and criminal. I am Lord Suphys, and as herald of the phaeron I have sent word to his majesty, informing him of your treachery. Expect your star craft to be destroyed within minutes. You may beg forgiveness as I execute you.’

‘I am not Lord Mephiston,’ replied Rhacelus, striding out before the vehicle. ‘But I will gladly give you his reply.’

He brought his force sword round in a broad swipe, hurling glittering runes through the air. They hit the vehicle with a roll of explosions, tearing through its hull and rocking it back on its axis.

Suphys staggered, barely managing to clutch the rail. Fire enveloped the vehicle as he regained his position and hurled a command at his pilots. Runes were still flashing across the war machine, detonating as they went, ripping the hull into jagged shards, but the pilots managed to launch it across the chasm, aiming for Rhacelus. It hurtled towards him, trailing plumes of smoke and flame.

Rhacelus brought his sword back round and unleashed more of the burning runes. The war machine exploded, becoming a fireball as it crashed into him.

The other Blood Angels were thrown back as flames and debris rolled down the passageway. When the blaze dimmed, Rhacelus was still intact, standing calmly at the heart of the fire, sword raised and head bowed as flames tumbled from his armour. He was surrounded by wreckage and the dismembered pieces of the two pilots, but the noble was nowhere to be seen.

As he turned back to face the other Blood Angels, the noble lurched from the broken vehicle and leapt at him. The necron’s warglaive sparked as it rushed towards Rhacelus’ face.

Rhacelus ducked. The blade missed his face, but sliced through his psychic hood, shearing wires and ceramite. Pain exploded in his head as cables tore free from his skull, spitting blood and electricity. He staggered backwards, clutching his blood-drenched head and losing hold of the book.

Lord Suphys landed behind him in a crouch, flipped backwards and sliced the glaive through Rhacelus’ Achilles tendons. Rhacelus’ legs gave way, but as he crashed to the ground he brought Lucensis up to meet the necron’s next strike.

The impact jangled through the necron’s metal arms and jolted the glaive from his grip, sending it clattering across the floor in a shower of sparks. Lucensis followed, bouncing out of Rhacelus’ gauntlet and landing a few feet away.

Rhacelus was almost blind with the agony of his severed neural implants, but as the necron staggered away from him, he lifted his pistol and fired, hitting Suphys square-on, tearing a hole through his chest.

The necron slammed into the wall. Rhacelus tried to fire again, but his pistol only spat fumes and flashed warning runes, finally overheated.

Suphys grabbed his warglaive from the ground and sprinted back towards Rhacelus, blithely ignoring the hole in his chest. Rhacelus halted him with a punch, slamming his fist into the necron’s skull. As his fist connected it exploded with warp fire, smashing through Suphys’ face and deep into his head. He wrenched his fist free and punched again, pummelling the necron to the ground with another flash of psychic energy. He dropped to his knees, punching until he was still.

Back down the passageway, the necrons had spanned the chasm with a column they had cut from the walls and they were now marching forwards in the same perfectly regimented blocks, their gauss weapons trained on the Blood Angels.

Rhacelus leant against the wall, exhausted, then staggered back into the fight.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mephiston stared at the designs on the orchestrion, trying to understand why his ghosts had led him here. Did they show him the device simply so that he could destroy it? With the orchestrion gone, his warp sight would return. He could continue on his way, leave the Revenant Stars and resume his stalking of the daemon, but he sensed that more was expected of him.

He looked at the sea of patient, mutilated faces that surrounded him. Surely that is not what you intend, he thought. I do not believe you want me to leave these people to their fate. He thought of Rhacelus and the others, back in the upper levels of the complex, trying to buy him time so that he could… So that he could what?

The necron was watching him from a few feet away, adjusting one of its devices.

‘Who taught you to speak my language?’ it asked.

Every cell in Mephiston’s body screamed at him to tear the thing apart. He had been bred for exactly that – to protect mankind against the predations of a cruel galaxy. But he left Vitarus in its scabbard. The dead wanted more of him today, more than this single necron head.

He paced around the necron, watching it closely. ‘It is a debased dialect. A mockery of the languages used by your necrontyr forbears, but I can decipher your meaning.’

The necron emitted a sound like blades being sharpened. ‘I am Heliomancer Xhartekh. That will mean nothing to a simple creature such as you, but I was studying languages thousands of years before your relatives crawled out of a swamp. And you are a panting animal. An ape in clothes. How dare you lecture me about my forbears?’

Mephiston kept talking, trying to buy himself time. He still did not understand what the dead wanted.

‘Do you know why it’s called an orchestrion?’ he asked.

The necron stared at him in silence.

‘It projects astral music,’ explained Mephiston. ‘Not audible sound. I mean a kind of musica universalis. It mimics the interactions of heavenly bodies. It recognises the harmony of nature. The divine angles. The pure mathematics. It sees the poetry of the spheres and the symmetry that binds us all togaether.’

Mephiston placed a hand on the orchestrion. ‘It understands the beauty of the universe and utilises that knowledge to confound. It can sing an altered harmony alongside the great song of reality, distorting the physics that link dimensions.’

The necron sneered. ‘You mean it blinds witches like you.’

Mephiston nodded, like a teacher encouraging a backward student. ‘Something like that. Your forbears used it to blind the aeldari in the wars of prehistory, that is certainly true. How it ended up here, I can–’

He paused, noticing the ugly rent in the side of the box and the thick cable jammed into it.

‘What have you done?’

The necron was still playing with the little box that hung from its robes, clearly tiring of their conversation, and Mephiston realised he was almost out of time. Soon he would have to kill the necron. But he sensed he was close to his answer. The hole in the box was an appalling act of vandalism, but it also screamed out to him as being in some way significant.

‘Why would you do such a thing?’ he asked.

‘I did not. The phaeron’s crypteks are responsible. They are draining the power of this priceless relic to bolster their weapons and make their faces look less rusted. Ridiculous. They use it like a battery – just to power their regeneration nodes and enhance their command protocols.’

Mephiston halted. The pieces fell into place. He glanced at the ranks of dead, sending them silent thanks.

‘They linked the power of this device to some of their troops?’

‘To all of their troops,’ replied the necron. ‘They fed it through the regeneration nodes. But it was not my idea.’

It strode towards Mephiston, still clutching the mirrored cube, jabbing it at him like a knife.

‘You said you knew how to activate it, but I have seen no sign that you really know. I think you are playing for time, simian. I think you were lying when you said–’

‘I can activate it. But it will do you no good.’

The necron clicked a switch on the cube and it pulsed with inner light, spraying pale energy into a lens on the front of its casing. ‘Show me.’

Mephiston stepped over to the device. ‘The orchestrion is triggered by the same thing it blocks.’ He held his hand, fingers splayed, over the central disc of lenses. ‘Psychic resonance.’

‘Witchcraft?’ snapped the necron. ‘Is that all you have to offer?’

Mephiston whispered an oath and channelled warp fire from his psychic hood, through his hand and into the spinning lenses. The tracery on the orchestrion lit up, glowing like lava flows, shimmering across the polished metal.

The necron lowered its weapon, staring at the orchestrion as the tracery burned brighter. ‘What have you done?’

Mephiston was about to reply when the sound of marching troops filled the hall outside. He rushed to the door, then halted as he saw that the hall was crowded with necron warriors and lychguard. They were divided into two camps, marching towards each other, about to meet in the centre of the chamber.

Leading the necron warriors on this side were two nobles. One was unlike any necron Mephiston had seen before – slender, almost feminine, and painted a dark, bloody red. It moved with lethal grace, weaving and padding through the rows of caskets as though hunting an unseen prey.

The second noble was of a kind Mephiston had encountered before. It was a powerful, regal-looking lord that wore a grand helmet topped by a wide, transverse crest: a necron general. It strode purposely at the head of its troops, trying to keep pace with its crimson companion.

On the opposite side of the hall marched the lychguard and at their head were two thrones, each carried by a scrum of mindless, metal courtiers. In the first throne sat a being so grand and finely attired that it could only be the phaeron, but Mephiston was confused by the figure in the second throne. It looked like a dismembered corpse, wrapped in rags and strapped to its throne.

‘Nemesor Tekheron!’ cried the phaeron, rising up in its throne. ‘I knew you would be here. Even with all your ridiculous talk of attacks, I knew you would want to see the war engine activated. Our ascension is moments away, Tekheron. Soon we will–’

‘You are insane,’ interrupted the necron general as it approached the throne. ‘None dare say it, but I will. Your mind is gone. Even now, with the fortress besieged, you can only think of your absurd predictions.’

The phaeron shook its head, clearly bewildered. ‘Insane?’ The necron looked back at the bundle of rags and meat in the other throne. ‘What is he talking about? What does he mean?’

As the general neared the throne, it gave its troops a signal and they trained their weapons on the phaeron. The phaeron held up a warning hand and lowered its voice to a dangerous hum, studying the ranks of troops arrayed behind the general.

‘You would dare raise arms against me?’

The phaeron gave a signal and its warriors pointed their gauss weapons at the general’s troops. The general paused a dozen feet from the throne, blocked by the phaeron’s vanguard. For a moment, no one moved.

Mephiston looked back into the laboratory and saw that the runes on the orchestrion’s surface were growing brighter with every second. He smiled.

There was an explosion of splintering metal as the crimson necron reappeared and crashed through the phaeron’s troops. It sprinted towards the thrones with a blinding flurry of sword strikes. The lychguard whirled around, trying to defend their phaeron, but the crimson necron tricked them. Rather than making for the phaeron, at the last moment it dived in a different direction, pouncing on the pile of meat and rags in the second throne.

The phaeron made a strange screeching sound as the red necron lifted the corpse and beheaded it, hurling the rotten skull to the floor, where it burst apart with a dull popping sound.

The lychguard opened fire, ripping the red necron to pieces in a dazzling barrage of gauss fire. The general’s troops returned fire and the hall exploded into movement and noise as the two factions rushed towards each other, weapons blazing.

The general took a shot to the chest and fell backwards, dropping its glaive as necron warriors toppled all around it. The general’s troops rushed to defend their lord, but more lychguard pushed into the chamber, blasting the phaeron’s enemies to pieces.

‘Wait!’ cried Xhartekh, appearing next to Mephiston. ‘The device is activated!’ The noise of the battle was too great, so Xhartekh stepped out into the fray, dodging gauss blasts and trying to be heard.

The phaeron had nearly reached the general when Xhartekh noticed what Mephiston had done.

‘What is this? What is happening to them?’ asked Xhartekh, studying the battling necrons through a lens. Every one of them was starting to glow. Light seeped through their metal bones – not the green flame that pulsed from their eye sockets, but a white, pearlescent aura that was quickly growing brighter.

‘I did as you asked,’ replied Mephiston. ‘I triggered the orchestrion’s primary power relays.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Of course not,’ said Mephiston, still watching the scene unfolding in the hall.

By this time, the phaeron had reached the wounded general. It leapt from its throne and smashed its sceptre into the general’s head. As the weapon hit, it crackled like a Tesla coil, splitting the general’s head into a cloud of metal splinters.

‘You will never rise again!’ cried the phaeron, pummelling the headless body, scattering sparks across the floor.

‘I will see that you never…’ The phaeron’s words trailed away as it noticed the glow pouring from its chest. The light was now so fierce that the necrons seemed to be wearing white armour.

‘What is this?’ demanded the phaeron, looking over towards where Xhartekh was standing and finally noticing Mephiston.

Mephiston stood calmly, his hands resting on Vitarus’ pommel.

‘Your majesty,’ said Xhartekh. ‘I have activated the orchestrion.’

The phaeron raised its arms, staring at the light pouring from its metal flesh.

‘In truth,’ said Mephiston, speaking to Xhartekh, ‘your machine is broken.’

‘Broken?’ Xhartekh looked back at the orchestrion. ‘But you have awoken it.’

‘Even ruined,’ replied Mephiston, ‘it is a source of unusual power. And that cable you jammed into it gives me a direct link to every necron on Morsus.’

Xhartekh finally understood. The cryptek reached for its weapon, but too late.

The necrons in the hall became a constellation of stars, radiant with the power Mephiston had unleashed from the orchestrion.

‘We are ascending!’ cried the phaeron as, one by one, the necrons’ bodies burned away, leaving only luminous pillars of fire.

As the orchestrion’s core overloaded, its power over Mephiston was removed. His mind grew clear. The ancient machine pulsed and died, and his vision was reborn. He sighed with satisfaction as he saw, with absolute clarity, the end of every necron on Morsus. Wherever they were on the planet, battling Rhacelus in the halls above, or sitting outraged in their throne rooms and battle cruisers, they burned briefly with the full force of the orchestrion, then blinked out of existence.

The necrons flickered and vanished until only the phaeron remained, shaking its head, staring at Mephiston, sensing that something was wrong. It tried to walk towards him, but after a few steps, the phaeron disintegrated, toppling into a cloud of embers that faded as they drifted away.

The hall sank into darkness.

Mephiston ducked as a gauss beam sizzled past him and hit the stone walls. Xhartekh was behind him, striding through the fading lights, clutching a glowing crystal.

‘You are not from this dynasty,’ said Mephiston, understanding. ‘Not linked to their regeneration nodes.’

Xhartekh said nothing, preparing to fire the crystal again.

With the orchestrion gone, Mephiston’s power was unshackled. He was already regaining his control of time’s eddies and currents. It was easy for him to step into a frozen moment, draw his pistol and gun the necron down.

Xhartekh crashed to the floor, cursed, and drew out a different device, flipping a clasp on its side. Mephiston braced himself for another blast, but instead of attacking him, Xhartekh simply vanished.

Mephiston hurled his newly recovered sight through the walls of the necropolis, but Xhartekh was nowhere. He shrugged. The cryptek was of no interest to him. With the orchestrion destroyed, his work on Morsus was complete.

He stood there for a moment, savouring the calm, listening to the rumble of vast machines exploding around the complex. Every one of the necron regeneration nodes had been torn apart by the overloading orchestrion. As they exploded, shedding tonnes of stone and metal, the necropolis began to tremble. It would not survive such a wound. Within hours, the city would be lost, finally burying its long-dead lords.

The wall in front of Mephiston glowed where Xhartekh’s shot had scored it, then even that light faded, leaving Mephiston in complete darkness.

He waited, knowing who would come. After a few seconds, he sensed them – the dead, gathering around him, pressing close, reaching towards his face. He opened his arms, welcoming them home, knowing, finally, who he was.

EPILOGUE

‘Well?’ asked Rhacelus. ‘Was it worth the risk, codicier? What did you learn?’

The two Librarians were standing with Brother-Lieutenant Servatus on the command dais, right at the centre of the Blood Oath’s bridge, surrounded by dozens of blood thralls and servitors. The hall was thick with incense-heavy smoke as the serfs performed the myriad rites needed before a jump to warp space.

Antros could think of nothing to say and kept his gaze fixed in the middle distance.

A few feet away from them, First Officer Castulo was ordering his officers to make final checks and ready the rest of the crew for the journey ahead. Like the Blood Oath, Castulo had barely survived the battle for Morsus. When the ceasefire ended, the necrons had begun attacking the ship again. The wards invoked by the Librarians had held, deflecting most of the damage, but not all. Castulo walked with the stooped posture of a man twice his age and his face was a colourful explosion of bruises.

As Castulo prepared for the jump, the bodies of his crew were still being carried away. Mephiston was overseeing the preparations personally and this was clearly adding to the first officer’s pain. Vidiens had been replaced by another, almost identical servitor that fluttered beside the Chief Librarian, holding the salver out to him. Mephiston was gesturing to the impossibly intricate grids on its surface, explaining to the first officer the route they needed to take as they continued their hunt for the daemon.

The three Librarians had not spoken on the gunship that returned them to the Blood Oath. Mephiston had spent the journey hunched over his salver, plotting the next stage of their route, deep in one of his strange fugue states, and Rhacelus had been under the care of a Sanguinary Priest. He had sustained several injuries during the necrons’ final push to reach Mephiston and he was barely conscious for most of the flight back to the frigate.

It was only now, several hours after they had returned to the Blood Oath, that he had sought Antros out for an explanation.

‘Antros,’ said Rhacelus. ‘Do you hear me?’

‘My lord,’ he replied, shaking his head, ‘forgive me.’ He hesitated a moment longer. Until that second, he had fully intended to explain everything he had learned from the Sons of Helios, but as he watched Mephiston talking to the first officer, an unexpected answer came from his lips.

‘I learned nothing, Lord Rhacelus,’ he said. ‘You were right. It was a needless risk. The Sons of Helios have no special skills. There was nothing they could offer that might aid the Chief Librarian. If they did have anything unique about them, they would not have lost their home world and most of their Chapter.’

Rhacelus frowned and looked closely at him. Antros could feel the old Librarian’s thoughts pressing in on his own, looking for a trace of deception. It was almost laughably easy to shield his mind. There was a time when Rhacelus’ powers of telepathy dwarfed Antros’, but since his time in the Great Rift, Antros felt like a giant beside his old tutor. It was like deceiving a child.

‘Three weeks wasted then.’ Rhacelus sounded annoyed rather than suspicious, and Antros relaxed. ‘Consult me in future. There is no reason for you to trouble the Chief Librarian with your schemes.’

‘Of course, Lord Rhacelus.’

‘If you had arrived on Morsus before the fighting ended, our losses may not have been so grievous.’

‘I realise that, my lord.’

One of the blood thralls approached to ask Lieutenant Servatus a question and Antros took the chance to leave, feeling Rhacelus’ gaze burning into his back as he left the bridge.

As soon as he was out of Rhacelus’ sight, he came to a halt and sighed, baffled by his own behaviour. Why did I lie? he thought. There’s no way back now. How could I ever explain such a terrible deception?

He ducked into the first empty chapel he could find and sat before the altar, trying to clear his thoughts. He could not understand why he had not told Rhacelus of the Sleepless Mile. He had raced across half the sector, desperate to share what he knew and now, when he had his chance, he held it back. As he stared at the altar, an image slipped into his mind. He recalled how he had found Mephiston on Morsus, hunched over the xenos device, talking to a necron as though they were old allies. There would doubtless be some explanation for the Chief Librarian’s behaviour. All he had to do was ask him. When he boarded the gunship on Morsus, the other Blood Angels had explained how the Chief Librarian defeated the necrons by massively overloading their regeneration nodes. He had slaughtered every one of them. The idea that Mephiston was in league with the xenos was absurd. And yet… And yet Antros knew he was not going to tell Mephiston what he had learned. On some fundamental level he could not rid himself of doubt.

Antros felt furious at his own disloyalty. The anger blossomed in his mind, turning to aetheric force with shocking speed. The iron bench beneath him buckled and warped, popping screws and groaning as though it were alive. The candles in the sconces flashed brighter and the flames began to writhe across the walls, snaking towards him. Antros gasped. The power jolting through his flesh was beyond his control. It seemed to be coming from outside his thoughts and it was growing wilder with every second.

He heard footsteps outside, rushing towards the chapel. He had to control himself, quickly. He could not be seen in this state. For a moment, he was at a loss and the tremors grew even more violent. Power flooded out of him, causing the shrine to twist and bulge as though crushed by an invisible hand.

Moments before the footsteps reached the chapel, Antros recalled the mantra Dragomir had taught him. ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed,’ he whispered, grabbing the mirror at his belt.

Instantly the tremors ceased. Peace filled his mind at the merest thought of the Sleepless Mile.

A few moments later, when a blood thrall looked through the doorway, the candles had all blown out and the chapel was in darkness. The blood thrall stared into the rolling shadows, confused. There was a small, stooped figure standing in the darkness – a robed monk wearing a deep hood.

The blood thrall backed away, inexplicably afraid. Then the figure stepped out into the light and the blood thrall realised the shadows had played a trick on him.

‘Lord Antros,’ said the blood thrall, bowing to the Librarian.

Antros smiled, his expression serene, before heading off into the depths of the ship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar award for best newcomer. Since then he has ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the novels Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus, and has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer world with Island of Blood, Sigvald, Razumov’s Tomb and the Orion trilogy

An extract from The Devastation of Baal.

Already the morning gongs were ringing when Uigui the water seller roused himself for another day of thankless toil.

Uigui rose fully clothed, and went to empty his bladder into the home-made purification unit in the corner. Every drop of water was precious on Baal Secundus, whatever the source.

His single-roomed home held three cots, a table, the recyc unit and precious little else. Old transit pallets heaped with threadbare blankets against the cold of desert night were their beds. On the way to the recyc unit, Uigui passed his great burden, his idiot son. The boy had gone away to the Chapter trials full of hope, and come back minus his wits.

‘Get up! Up! Up, you little fool!’ Uigui kicked at his son’s booted feet. The boy thrashed awake and threw up his hands in alarm. A frightened face peeped out between filthy fingers.

‘Get up!’ growled Uigui. ‘Dawn’s coming – can’t you hear the Angel’s gongs?’ He looked out of a window of low-grade alabaster set into the wall of unpainted adobe. Daybreak should have shone pink through the stone. Instead a red darkness lingered outside.

Most mornings were cold but beautiful, the sky flawlessly smooth and tinted a deep rose by the light of the Red Scar. Sometimes, the colours were enough to stop Uigui and make him forget how much he hated his life. ‘Not that you can tell,’ grunted Uigui. ‘Red mist. A thick one too.’

‘D-d-d-d-do we-e-e have to, Da?’ said the boy.

Uigui looked at the boy with clear hatred as he urinated into the recyc funnel. ‘Y-y-yes!’ he spat back, mocking the boy’s stutter. ‘Now, up! I need help to fill the flasks, age be cursed, or I’d turn you over to the Emperor’s mercy and be rid of you!’

Uigui adjusted his filthy clothes and stamped, bow backed and swaying, to the door of gappy wood that separated the single room of his home from the goods yard outside. He clutched at his lower back as he reached for the door handle and rubbed fruitlessly at the pain in his bones, his mood souring further.

‘Be kinder to the boy. He is my daughter’s son,’ croaked the aged voice of the room’s final occupant. The coverings on the third bed shifted, the lump beneath them growing thin arms and knotted hands as a woman even more wasted and hunched than Uigui emerged. ‘You owe him some love for her memory, if you can’t summon some for the boy himself.’

The old woman coughed hard. Phlegm rattled around her throat. Uigui looked at her in disgust. Her face was as deeply lined as the pit of a fruit, as if time had rotted away the pleasant outer flesh, leaving the bitter, craggy interior of her soul exposed for all to see.

‘Where’s your daughter now, you old witch?’ he said. ‘Dead. Dead and gone, leaving me with a fool and a crone for company.’

‘You are cruel,’ said the old woman. Clustered carcinomas blighted her face. She had only a few more months of life in her, but her eyes were bright and shrewd. Uigui hated her eyes most of all. ‘The Emperor will punish you.’

Uigui snarled. ‘We’ll all starve long before the Emperor notices if you and your precious grandson don’t rouse yourselves. We must be at the gates before they open for the day.’

The woman shrank back into her blankets. ‘The Red Mist is here. You will have no customers.’

Uigui rested his hand on the piece of scrap he had fashioned into the door handle. It was worn almost featureless. He had unearthed the metal in his youth from one of the moon’s ruined cities. An unidentifiable artefact of the system’s lost paradisal past, it could once have been a piece of art, it could have been a component from a wondrous machine. It could have been anything. Now it was old, ugly and broken, suitable only for the coarsest work. Just like Uigui.

‘Then we will starve. Get up. We go to work.’ He flipped the door open, letting it bang into the wall to show his anger.

The Red Mist was the worst he’d ever seen: a choking, thick vapour laden with sand particles. Only on a low gravity lunar body like Baal Secundus was such a phenomenon possible, though Uigui didn’t know that. His worldview was necessarily limited. What he saw was a day’s business ruined. Red Mist was iron sharp in smell and texture, a soupy brume that lacerated the nostrils. He coughed and pulled up his scarf to cover his mouth and nose. He had no clip to hold it in place, so he pressed it to the contours of his face with his left hand.

Though his home was modest, his stockyard contained a fortune. Four huge terracotta urns, taller than men and too wide for the embrace of two people to meet around, lined the wall. With such wealth to protect, the courtyard was better built than the house. The walls were of stone, not mud brick, and high, the tops studded with rusty spikes and broken glass. The gate was deliberately small, triple-barred, plated in scavenged metal, upon whose pocked surfaces the marks of the ancients were still visible, when the light was right.

There was no sun. The early day was tainted a bloody murk. The urns were looming shapes, the wall invisible. The yard was little over twenty feet side to side, but the Red Mist was so dense that day Uigui could not see across.

He paused. At the very least the fog would be full of toxins given off by Baal Secundus’ poisoned seas. If the sands in the mist had been picked up over one of the old cities, the rad levels would be high. Uigui supposed he should fetch his rad-ticker from inside. Frankly, he could not motivate himself to retrieve it. He was old. A dose of radiation from the badlands could not shorten his life by much, and if it did, what of it? He was tired of life. It was hard and unforgiving.

Sometimes he thought of ending it all, the misery, the graft, the wearing company of his son and mother-in-law. He had no illusions death would bring a happy afterlife in the Emperor’s care; all he wanted was peace. He could not bring himself to do it. The mindless will of genes forced him to continue living, which he did begrudgingly.

Blinking gritty moisture from his eyes, he headed for the lean-to where he kept his cart. A pair of tall wheels bracketed two cargo beds, one above the other. Three dozen clay flasks were on each level. He fetched the first and took it to the tap attached to the nearest urn. To fill it he had to let his scarf drop. The dust in the mist tickled his nose and he swore. Rusty water ran into the bottle, making him want to piss again. His bladder was another thing that was failing him.

‘Boy! Boy! Get out here and help me!’

The door creaked. Out came the old woman instead, her face veiled in the ridiculous manner of her desert tribe. Uigui should never have married out of town.

‘Where’s that damn boy?’ growled Uigui.

‘Let him breakfast, you old miser, he’ll be out in a moment.’

‘He’s a waste of food and water,’ said Uigui. He shut off the tap, pressed the cap closed on the bottle and fetched another flask.

‘It’s not his fault,’ said the old woman.

‘I think we all know that it’s the Angel’s fault,’ said Uigui quietly.

‘Hsst!’ she said. ‘That is heresy. Would you leave him without a father as well as his mind?’

‘He went to their trials a strong youth, and was returned to me a fool. Who else should I blame?’

‘Fate,’ she said. ‘He was not meant to join them, and he is getting better.’

‘He is not,’ said Uigui sourly. He set the full flask into his cart, and fetched a third.

The crone shuffled across the courtyard to the cart, her long skirts disturbing the moist sand of the ground. There she stopped, but she did not help, only watched him, a judgemental phantom in the fog. Uigui gave her a filthy look.

In her gnarled hands a small auto-tarot deck made its tooth-grinding clicks. She pushed the button at the side. The tiles behind its scratched viewing pane clattered into place. She studied the little pictures on them a moment, then pressed the button again. Then again. Uigui fought the urge to strike her, to knock the tarot from her hand and cast her out. The tarot was the instrument of the Emperor. Even he balked at such blasphemy.

‘Help me, then,’ he said. He squinted at the sky. ‘The sun is rising.’ The fog remained as thick as ever, but the light behind it was getting stronger. ‘We are late.’

The old woman hooked her tarot deck to her rope belt, took a flask up and went to the second urn.

‘Today is a day of great portents,’ she said.

‘You say that every day,’ said Uigui.

The woman shrugged. ‘Today it is true.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, but he was wary of what she said. She had a knack for reading the tarot. He half believed she was a witch. In truth, he was frightened of her. He slammed the latest filled flask into the cart hard, making the others rattle. ‘Where is that boy?’

The boy pushed the cart. At least he was good for that. Uigui and the old woman walked behind. The flasks knocked and clinked in their trays, warning others they were coming. It was a good advertisement, but under the cover of the fog the noise made Uigui nervous. For all that Angel’s Fall was under the direct administration of the Blood Angels, there was always the possibility of robbery on a day of mist.

They met no misfortune as they walked the street from Waterer’s Row towards the Sanguinian Way, the small city’s main street. There were precious few people about. Those figures that appeared suddenly out of the murk were swaddled head to foot, and just as quickly disappeared.

‘Quicker, boy,’ grumbled Uigui. ‘We want a good spot. I want to get there before they are all gone.’

They turned onto the Sanguinian Way. At its far end was the Place of Choosing, where the giant statue of the Great Angel spread his arms and wings to face the eastern sky. Immense though Sanguinius’ effigy was, the fog obscured it totally. With the majestic statue hidden, the cramped, low buildings that made up Angel’s Fall seemed ruder than ever. It did not look like a holy city. The fog forced attention onto its inadequacies. Even the Sanguinian Way was meanly proportioned, and crooked. Without Sanguinius, Angel’s Fall could have been any town on any backward, arid world in the galaxy.

Gongs boomed from unseen towers, signifying the start of the Peaceday markets. Only a handful of stalls had been set up at the roadside, and foot traffic on the way was low. Uigui reckoned visitors to Angel’s Fall would be fewer than usual, though there were always some. The Red Mist discouraged travel. Not only was it toxic, but Baal’s violent wildlife hunted under its cover. He cursed his luck. Water was expensive to both the buyer and the seller. The price he’d get for his stock barely covered the cost, and he owed a lot of money to Anton the reguliser. Anton took prompt payment of debts very seriously. Uigui rubbed at the stump of his left little finger, a reminder of the last time he’d been late with a payment. Anton had been nothing but apologetic; he had said he had no choice.

Uigui thought they would have to stay out late, selling to people exiting the city to travel in the cool of the night. Assuming the mist lifts today at all, he fretted. Such a fog was rare. Baal Secundus’ principal weathers were wind and dust storms, but there was not a breath of a breeze today.

‘This weather is unnatural,’ he said.

‘A day of portents,’ said his mother-in-law in satisfaction.

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘It’s just a day. Boy. Here.’ Uigui pointed out a patch of ground in the lee of the Temple of the Emperor. The temple occupied a whole block by itself, and another of Angel’s Fall’s major streets intersected the Sanguinian Way there.

‘This will do.’ The gongs continued to ring. ‘Why all this racket?’ Uigui said.

‘Happenings. Baalfora has much in store for us today,’ said the old woman, using the local name for Baal Secundus. She settled herself down. Her joints grumbled, and she grumbled back at them, forcing her old legs to cross. Upon skirts held taut between her knees she set her tarot deck and began repetitively clicking at the workings. Uigui bared his teeth at her. He took out his irritation on the boy.

‘Come on, boy, set out the table! Where are the cups? By the Emperor, we’d all die if you were in charge here!’

‘S-s-s-orry, father,’ said the boy.

‘Don’t call me that,’ he said. ‘My son is dead. Stolen by angels. There is no one to inherit my business once I am gone. Do not presume your place.’

The boy bowed his head to hide his tears, showing the ugly scar running across the top of his head. Uigui hated the sight of that most of all. He was sure had his boy not fallen he would be up there on Baal as a warrior of the Emperor. He stared at it as the boy set up the little table that folded out from the side of the cart and put out a set of small bronze cups. Something like grief hurt him. He responded with anger.

‘Quicker!’ he snapped.

The gongs were still booming long after they should have stopped. He squinted into the dim morning. There was another sound, a distant rumbling, under the clamour of the gongs.

‘What is that?’ he whispered.

‘V-v-void ships?’ ventured the boy.

‘Silence!’ snapped Uigui. But even as his anger flew out of his mouth, he thought the boy might be right. Angel’s Fall was no stranger to the ships of the Angels. There were offworlders too, who came to pay their respects to the place where Sanguinius, purest of the Emperor’s progeny, was discovered. But rarely did they arrive in such numbers that the sound of their descent was so constant.

Uigui heard the crunch of heavy feet on sand coming down the way. He swore at himself. Angels. They would have no use for his water.

‘Bow! Bow!’ he hissed. He dropped his head, and forced his idiot son to kneel.

A huge armoured figure emerged from the murk. Armour black, his helm cast in the shape of a skull. A Space Marine priest, death incarnate. Uigui trembled. He dropped to his knees in fright, waiting for the figure to pass by.

He did not. The footsteps stopped by the little cart. Uigui felt the Angel’s regard upon him. His bladder twinged yet again.

‘Be at peace, blessed son of Baal Secundus,’ said the warrior. His voice was inhumanly deep and thickly accented.

Uigui looked up. The grimacing skull glared down at him. Breathing hoses were clamped between its stylised teeth, and eye-lenses of glowing green set below the angry brow. The armour hissed and whined in response to microshifts in the Space Marine’s posture, making Uigui more afraid.

The warrior looked down both streets of the crossroads.

‘The great square. Where is it?’

Though made hollow and booming by its projection machinery, the warrior’s voice was kindly. Still Uigui could not see past the terrible visage glowering at him. He stared dumbly back.

‘Waterseller, I mean you no harm,’ said the Angel. ‘I come to pay my respects to my lord. Where is his statue?’

Uigui trembled and flung up his arm. He intended to say ‘That way, my lord!’ A strangled mewl came out of his mouth instead.

‘My thanks, and my blessings,’ said the Chaplain. ‘The Emperor keep you.’

He glanced up at the great temple, then strode away.

‘W-w-why does he not know?’ said the boy stupidly.

‘I do not know,’ said Uigui. Still upon his knees he gazed fearfully at the departing giant.

‘M-m-m-more!’ said the boy, and shrank back behind the cart.

Uigui followed his son’s wavering finger. More Space Marines, dozens of them. Uigui had never seen so many at one time and his body shook in terror. They walked past, armour dull in the foggy daylight. Uigui could see clearly enough to know they were not Blood Angels. Their armour was adorned in a similar manner to that of the masters of Baal. The heavy plates were beautifully formed, covered in scrollwork and delicate embellishments, and decked with bloodstone drips cased in gold, but the red of their armour was an unfamiliar hue, their helms and trim were white, and their markings were strange.

Uigui watched, amazed, as the column of warriors moved by in solemn silence, voiceless but for the growls and hum of their armour. It was not unusual to see other angels claiming descent from the Great Angel in Angel’s Fall, but only in ones or twos. When a second group in yet different colours marched by, these armoured half in black and half in bloody red, Uigui’s mouth fell open. The gongs boomed. Outside the wall, the roaring of braking jets grew louder.

‘Th-th-there’s hundreds of them!’ stuttered the boy.

For a moment, Uigui forgot his anger, and put his arm around his broken son.

‘W-w-w-why so many?’ the boy said.

‘They come to pay respect to their father. They come to pray,’ said Uigui. ‘It is a marvel.’

The old woman chuckled, a low growling sound like a felid about to bite. The tarot tiles rattled.

‘What is it?’ Uigui said.

The old woman’s smile was evident in her voice. ‘The burning tower, the bloody angel, the falling star, the foundered void ship – these are fell signs.’

Uigui looked sharply back at her. ‘What do you mean?’

The old woman regarded him through the cloth of her veil. ‘They are not coming here to worship, you foolish man,’ she said. ‘They have come here to die.’

Click here to buy The Devastation of Baal.

For the Hinklings. May you always go the highest way. And always see bin lorries.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Lie Setiawan.

Mephiston: Revenant Crusade © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Mephiston: Revenant Crusade, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-992-8

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