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The Buried Beast – Gary Kloster

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

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THE BURIED BEAST

By Gary Kloster

‘And in that time, there was brought a message to the Order that a great beast had risen from the River Rue, and blood and despair flowed heavy in the dark waters. The fisherfolk begged for succour, for vengeance, but the Order was much reduced–’

‘Stop.’

The servo-skull ended its recitation, the vox-speaker fixed between its teeth going silent. Grey light filled the stateroom, the dull radiance of a ruined moon, barely enough to illuminate the circuit-wrapped skull or the man who stood straight and still in the centre of the space.

Much reduced.

Lazarus, master of the Dark Angels Fifth Company, repeated the words silently to himself as he stared through the narrow viewport that let in the moonlight. The story spilling from the servo-skull was from long-lost Caliban, the words a dialect of Low Gothic not spoken for millennia, but their meaning… it fitted the grey death-light and the dark mood that had gripped Lazarus ever since he’d died.

The moon outside was Cinero, one of dozens that circled a storm-ridden gas giant. Its face was scarred with strip mines and stippled with the light of a million lumens, a pitiful echo of the stars that spread beyond. Lazarus would have appreciated the view not so long ago – his long service as a Space Marine had only sharpened his awe of the infinite, not reduced it. But now, after the agonising apothecal miracle of his resurrection…

When he looked at the stars now, Lazarus saw their bright points flicker. Flicker and change into flames, terrible and bright, wrapping around him, burning into him and tearing him apart.

Lazarus stared at the stars as the flames ran through him, and the heavy muscles of his remade body went rigid with remembered pain. He silently recited the Litany of Horrors Past, and the familiar words slowly pushed away the flames, but when they were gone, when the stars were steady and bright points fixed in their terrible distance again, Lazarus caught the dim ghost of his own reflection in the armoured viewport. Short-cropped grey hair and dark eyes, pale skin split by a dark scar that ran from his hairline almost to his lips, it was a hard face that had settled long ago into stern watchfulness. A face that should have been as familiar to his eyes as the grip of his sword was to his hand, but the sight of it shook the calm the litany had given him. The stars trembled again behind his reflection, and in his head the fire threatened to rekindle again…

And then the door chimed, and Lazarus fought to ease the tension that had seized his muscles again.

‘Lumens,’ he said, and the lights snapped on, washing away the grey moonlight and the trembling stars. ‘Open,’ he ordered, and the heavy hatch of his stateroom slid aside.

Waiting in the corridor beyond were two figures, hulking in their dark green power armour. The men had their helmets off, but Lazarus could have recognised them in full armour. He was master of the Fifth, and every one of the Unrelenting was known to him. These two he knew well enough to sense their hesitation as they saw him standing before them dressed only in simple ship cloth, his own armour standing empty against the wall, surrounded by the broken standards of a hundred different conquered enemies. But neither of them said anything as they stepped in.

‘Chaplain Demetrius,’ Lazarus said. ‘Lieutenant Amad. What word from Cinero?’

‘Master Lazarus,’ Demetrius said, nodding his shaved head to Lazarus. The Chaplain was the oldest man in the unit, but he fell silent after giving his greeting, leaving Amad to speak.

‘I have spoken to Planetary Governor Ruus. I told her why we have come.’

‘And?’ Lazarus asked.

‘She did not wish to speak of the Lion’s Blade. She did not even want to admit that she knew the name,’ Amad said. ‘But I was able to finally break that admission from her. She knows the ship, and where it crashed, but she would not give me the location.’ Amad frowned. The man liked to think he was as skilled at getting answers from mortals as an inquisitor, without having to resort to their particular skillset. ‘She is quite insistent that the wreck should remain hidden, and would not tell me why.’

‘Unacceptable,’ Lazarus said. ‘The Lion’s Blade is ours. No matter that it has been buried on this rock for ten thousand years.’

‘I told the governor that. And that we would tear this moon apart to find it, if she did not give us its location.’ Amad shook his head. ‘Still she refused me, until I thought we might have to carry out the threat. But I salvaged it, in the end. Catherine Ruus will not tell me where the Lion’s Blade lies, but she says that she will tell you, if you meet with her face to face.’

‘Face to face.’ Lazarus thought about the request. He’d gone over all the records they had on Cinero when the orders had come through to them from the Rock. This moon was an old mining colony, barren, thick with radiation, worthy only in that it was a source of adamantium. That rare metal had made the colony prosperous, and it had always been loyal to the Imperium, its governors diligent in filling their quotas. A trick seemed unlikely, but Lazarus didn’t like the request. They were Adeptus Astartes. They did not bargain.

Lazarus looked through the viewport, to the grey, battered moon, and he could feel the stars try to shift, until he looked away. He wanted away from this place, wanted to return to the Rock, most of all wanted to have the flames and the horrible feeling of dissociation that came with them gone.

‘She wants to see me?’ he said. ‘Then tell her I will come. Now.’

‘They will be in their sleep cycle now,’ Amad said. ‘The governor will barely have time to ready herself before your Thunderhawk lands.’ He smiled and started out. ‘I will send word to Cinero.’

They watched him go, then Lazarus turned his focus back to Chaplain Demetrius. Long ago, a plasma blast had taken half the man’s face and his left eye, and the skin that had regrown around the gleaming green cybernetic replacement was a deep black, in contrast to the warm brown of the rest of his skin. It made the artificial eye look like an emerald star floating in shadow, and for a moment Lazarus could see himself reflected in its shining lens. His face, not his face, and the flames threatened to grow across his vision again. Then he wrenched himself back into control.

Demetrius tilted his head, a tiny movement. ‘What do you see, Captain Lazarus?’

‘I see…’

For a moment, Lazarus almost wanted to tell him. But what would he say? That after the flames he didn’t recognise himself any more? That since his miraculous rebirth, when he looked at himself, he saw a stranger?

‘I see delay, Demetrius. One I wish to be rid of.’ He turned away from the Chaplain, half expecting Demetrius to say something more, but his brother did not, and Lazarus heard the door slide shut as he stepped out, leaving Lazarus alone in the silence.

‘Resume recitation,’ he said, opening the gleaming armour, and the servo-skull drifted out of the corner it had retreated to, its vox-speaker crackling to life.

‘–was much reduced by other battles with the great beasts that ravaged Caliban. But there was one, the knight Chene, who stepped forward, wounded but unbowed, and he told the broken people to take him to the lair of the beast.’

The corridor was carved from the grey stone of Cinero, but it had been polished to a mirror sheen, so that the floor and walls reflected Lazarus as he strode to his meeting. A massive figure in dark green ceramite accented in gold, a cloak of white edged in red slung around it. The bright lumens of the corridor gleamed off the power armour, showing every detail of its deadly precision, perfect and clean.

Lazarus was not used to such perfection.

The armour he’d worn before, the armour that had burned around him when he’d died, had been ancient. It had been well cared for, by him and his predecessors, but it had survived a thousand battles over as many years and bore the marks of its use, the scars from blows that it had taken. That armour had been smashed, trying to save him. It had broken, and then he’d died, but here he was, alive and walking, in a body as new and different as the armour that now wrapped around it.

The Rubicon Primaris was a terrible thing. The long, painful procedure was the only way for one of the older Firstborn Space Marines to be reborn as a Primaris Marine, the next generation of the Emperor’s chosen warriors, the new-forged blade meant to cut the heart from the enemies of humanity. The reward for crossing this painful Rubicon was great, but the risks were steep. Not all who attempted it survived, and so many brothers hesitated. Not out of fear, for the Adeptus Astartes feared nothing, especially death. But they were keenly aware of how few of them there were, standing against humanity’s countless enemies, and they would not risk reducing those numbers. So many of them chose to remain as Firstborn.

That was the choice Lazarus had made. Until it was taken from him by death.

Before him, the doors to the Governor’s Hall stood open. The keen sensors of his new armour’s auspex swept ahead and found one life form waiting in the space beyond: a human woman, unarmed. Her, and something else, something just inside the chamber. Something alive and not alive, and Lazarus focused on it without breaking stride, one gauntleted hand resting on the hilt of his sword. A servitor, his auspex told him, a cyborg built into the wall, its desiccated organic parts kept functioning by the eldritch electronics buried in the stone. The thing was unarmed too, helpless in its unliving prison, and Lazarus ignored it as he walked through the doors, the ceramite treads of his armoured boots grinding the polish off the floor beneath him.

‘He comes!’ The servitor spoke as he passed, its deep voice rolling out of a throat formed of broken flesh, polished stone and profane circuitry. ‘Lazarus! Master of the Fifth Company. Master of the Unrelenting. Brother of the Dark Angels. Adeptus Astartes, the son of Lion El’Jonson, a child of the Emperor Divine!’

The Governor’s Hall was a dome of clear glasscrete, supported by polished stone arches, and the words of the servitor crashed like waves off their hard surfaces. For a moment the echoes of his announcement sounded like the roar of flames, and the hard points of the stars through the glasscrete dome shimmered – and Lazarus stopped. His hand gripped his sword hilt as he stared at the unsteady stars, forcing them to still as he spoke the Litany of Horrors Past silently to himself, pushing the flames away.

The stars went still, and the master of the Fifth stood in the centre of the Governor’s Hall of Cinero, and the planetary governor stood in his shadow. She seemed poised, resolute… but in her eyes Lazarus saw a growing terror.

Catherine Ruus was tall, so tall the top of her head was higher than the centre of his chest, but her body was drawn out, slim, like a sculpture made of knotted wire beneath the silver silk of her robe. The skin of her narrow face was as grey as the polished stone of the arches, and her hair and eyes were black. The low gravity and harsh radiation of this moon had changed its people, made them almost abhuman, but the traces of adamantium found in the metallic core of Cinero were valuable enough to the Imperium that such alterations were deemed acceptable.

‘Master Lazarus,’ she said, bending into a graceful curtsey. ‘With the voice of all Cinero, I greet you–’

‘Enough.’ The echoes of the servitor’s announcement were still grating at the edges of Lazarus’ auspex, the very light of the stars above was threatening to dissolve into flames, and the Fifth’s captain wanted nothing more than to be done with this. ‘I know you, Governor Ruus, and you know me and my purpose. Servant of the Throne, minion of the Administratum, I order you to obey your oaths and render unto me what is my due. Tell me where lies the wreck of the Lion’s Blade.’

Governor Ruus straightened, clearly uncomfortable with looking up at him. But she forced herself to, and when she spoke her voice was steady. ‘I do obey my oaths, Master Lazarus, and that is why I have asked you to come.’ She folded her hands into her sleeves, to hide their tiny tremble. ‘Long ago, when this mining colony was barely begun, the Lion’s Blade broke out of warp and crashed here. Its warriors told the miners that they were under attack by some fell beast, a vile servant of the Ruinous Powers that had set itself upon them in the warp. They were fighting, but it was killing them, and their chance at besting it was slipping away. They meant to drop their ship into the heart of one of the great volcanoes that ring this moon’s equator, to drown the beast in fire, but the engines of the Lion’s Blade failed them and they crashed short, smashing through the volcano’s slope instead, into the dead lava tubes beneath.

‘After the crash, there was one last message. The last Dark Angels ordered us to collapse the tunnels and bury the Lion’s Blade. They ordered my ancestors to make them a tomb, then made them swear to hide their grave and to never allow it to be disturbed, lest we set free the beast. And so my family made an oath, and kept it. For hundreds of generations, we have kept it, Master Lazarus. And now you come, and ask me to break it.’

Lazarus looked at her carefully. He could hear the speed of her heart, smell the fear sweat on her, see the tremor in the muscles of her face. No ordinary human could have sensed the mix of fear and anger and pride that underlay that calm recitation. But he could, and he believed her. This story was a truth, handed down to her by her family over the countless years, and it was as important to her as the oaths she had sworn to the Throne.

Slowly, Lazarus raised his hands. His gauntlets touched his winged helm, and with a low hiss it opened and came free. He pulled it off, cradling it in the crook of his left arm. Face bare, he stared down at Ruus.

‘Your family did well.’ When his orders had come from the Rock, the Dark Angels’ home, they had only stated that records of an ancient crash of one of their ships had been discovered. There had been no indication of why the ship had gone down, but it had happened some time during the terrible years of the Heresy or its aftermath. Much had been lost then, and he believed her. ‘You will not break your oath with me, Governor Ruus,’ Lazarus said. ‘I am no fool of a miner. I am a Dark Angel, brother to those who died sealing that monster away.’

‘I understand that, Master Lazarus.’ Governor Ruus looked up at him, and then away again, unable to meet his eyes for long. ‘I know I should tell you the location of the site. I know I will.’ Those last words came slowly, and they were a terrible mix of relief and fear. ‘I will tell you, but before I do, I will make confession to you. I fear what will happen when you go there. I know your might, but… I fear.’

She looked again out at the barren moon, the black sky, the distant fire of the stars, and now the fear in her voice was clear.

‘I fear that you will free the beast, and we will all die.’

‘Knee-deep in the cold water of the Rue, Chene stood. His armour battered, his shield crumpled, his body bruised and bleeding, but he stood. With sword in hand and head held high, he stared at the beast that coiled in the pool before him. Horn and teeth and slashing claws, the monster twisted its deadly bulk, never still, always moving as it stared at the knight who dared challenge it. And when its flashing eyes fell on the knight, they poured doubt into him like venom.

‘“Who am I, to attempt this? Who am I, bleeding and unsteady, to face this beast? It is the Lord of the Rue, it is murder, it is ruin, and I am but a broken man.”’

The stilted words of the story rolled around Lazarus as he stood in his dark stateroom. Dark but for the grey, dead light that came through the viewport, shining on the sword and helm that he’d laid out on the table before him.

The senses of this new body of his were keen. He could see every spot of wear on the hilt of his sword, Enmity’s Edge. Every tiny mar that the artificers had not been able to remove from the wings of his helm, Spiritshield. These were the only pieces of his old equipment to survive the inferno that had killed him, repaired and refurbished until they almost matched the rest of his new armour’s glowing perfection. Offence and defence, potent and ancient: married now to this freshly wrought battleplate, they would be stronger than before.

Isn’t that what he was supposed to be? His mind, his memories, his experience, reborn in a body even more powerful? That’s what the Apothecaries had told him, when they’d brought him back from the darkness of death. That they’d not only brought him back to life, but had also made him better.

‘Better?’

He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. The one word caused the servo-skull to go quiet, and now he stood in the death-light and silence and everything seemed to waver, as if the air were filled with flameborn heat, and with it came a twisting, dizzy feeling of not belonging in his own body that made Lazarus grab the edge of the steel table, holding himself up as he ran again through the litany.

Lazarus had just finished when the door behind him chimed. He ordered it open as he pulled his hands free from the table’s edge, warped and bent where his armoured gauntlets had twisted it.

‘Chaplain Demetrius,’ he said without turning, knowing the man by his scent.

‘Captain Lazarus.’ The Chaplain stayed quiet for a moment, and Lazarus wondered if he would ask why the lumens were off, what had happened to the table, why Lazarus was not yet down at the landing craft, inspecting the squad he’d chosen to go with him to the wreck of the Lion’s Blade. Instead, Demetrius walked over to the patient servo-skull, meeting its vacant socket and red sensor with his eyes black and green. ‘How goes the translation of the ancient tales?’

‘The translation proceeds… not at all,’ Lazarus said.

As Keeper of the Unseen Ritual, it was the responsibility of the master of the Dark Angels Fifth to collect and translate all of the Chapter’s ancient histories. Lazarus had never had enough time for that duty, as conflict and the preparation for conflict was always the primary task in this age of strife. But since his rebirth, even the little he’d been doing had fallen away. Now, he just listened to the old tales of the Order, the ancient knights who had protected the people of Caliban before they’d been rediscovered by the Imperium. When the Dark Angels hadn’t existed. When the planet of Caliban had.

‘But I find the tales comforting, of late.’

‘Comforting.’ Demetrius turned his mismatched eyes to the captain. ‘Have you need of comfort?’

Lazarus pressed his lips together. He shouldn’t have said that much, but Demetrius had a way of making people talk which was completely different to Lieutenant Amad’s, though equally effective.

‘Once, when I was in training to be a Chaplain, I had the honour of attending the ceremony of investure for a new Dreadnought,’ Demetrius said. ‘It’s a rare thing, for a brother to be reborn like that. A solemn occasion, and dangerous. The brothers who guide the Dreadnoughts have been grievously injured in battle. Their last memories are of pain, of death coming, and then they are brought back to life in a new body. Some have difficulty with that transition, but there are ceremonies, litanies, that we Chaplains conduct with the Apothecaries to ease that trauma.’ Demetrius tilted his head, staring at Lazarus. ‘There is a little difference here. You were dead, Brother Lazarus. You died in flames, cut down by sorcerous servants of the Ruinous Powers. You died saving your brothers from that hell on Rimenok. And then you were ripped back to life.’

‘Ripped,’ Lazarus said. ‘That word feels right, Demetrius. I was ripped in two by that fire. There is the me I remember, and the me I’ve become, and I am stuck somewhere between.’ He shook his head. ‘They say they made me better. I do not feel better. I feel reduced.’

‘You are not,’ Demetrius said, his deep voice sure. ‘You are just out of focus, wrenched back into the field without the time you needed to adjust.’

‘I–’ Lazarus snapped, but he cut off his words, frowning. ‘I am. And I am greatly angered at that.’ He looked at Demetrius. ‘You have been lurking, suspecting something like this. Well, I have made my confession to you. Now can you offer me any help?’

‘No.’ Demetrius raised his gauntleted hand, cutting off his captain. ‘And yes. I have no easy answer, no litany that will ease this, but I can tell you something I learned about how our brother Dreadnoughts were helped through. They were given purpose. You cannot have connection without it. It is in service, in duty, that your mind, body and soul will be tempered after this reforging.’

‘I am master of the Fifth,’ Lazarus said. ‘I am a servant of the Emperor. I am the sword that He thrusts at the enemies of all of humankind. Is that not purpose enough?’

‘You are that,’ Demetrius said. ‘But you are more. There is something else in you, something else that you need. Find that, and you will find yourself again.’

Lazarus would have argued on, but over the vox came the signal from the launching bay. The landing craft was ready. The only thing they waited on to begin was him.

‘Thank you, Chaplain Demetrius,’ he said, picking up his helm and sword. ‘I will consider your words.’

‘With great annoyance, I imagine,’ Demetrius said. ‘I am sorry I cannot give you an easy solution for this battle, brother. But if there were simple answers to such questions as these, the Chapter would have no need for Chaplains.’

Lazarus grunted, then clapped Demetrius’ shoulder. Enough. He started down the corridor, pulling Spiritshield over his head as he walked. The familiar feel of it, settling over him, made the world swim again, made the displays the helm drew across his eyes seem to dissolve into flames, but Lazarus kept walking. A purpose.

What other purpose was there?

Lazarus waited until the Thunderhawk started its long descent to the belt of volcanoes that slashed across grey Cinero, then activated the vox in his helm.

‘Our task today, brothers, is simple and sorrowful.’

There was a full squad of Assault Intercessors belted into the armoured belly of the transport, along with Lieutenant Amad, listening intently to their captain’s orders.

‘Ten thousand years ago, the Lion’s Blade fell here, taking with it the beast that had beset it in the warp. Our ancient brothers died fighting that thing, and made their tomb a prison for it. Today we honour their sacrifice, and bring them home.’

‘And their killer?’ Amad asked.

‘More than likely it is dead too,’ Lazarus said. ‘Either by their hands or by the passage of so much time. And if not…’ The master of the Fifth set his hand on the hilt of Enmity’s Edge. ‘We will honour our dead with its blood.’

The other Dark Angels settled in, satisfied at the thought that there might be some opportunity for vengeance. The Thunderhawk rocked, turning to home in on the coordinates that Governor Ruus had given them, and the motion made the read-outs at the side of Lazarus’ vision shimmer and dance. He set his teeth, trying to force them back into focus, trying to force himself back into focus, into one, but they would not settle even after he had recited the litany to himself twice. Finally, he switched through the channels on his vox until he reached his own private one, and cued up the recitation that he’d been listening to in his stateroom.

‘It is ruin, and I am but a broken man.’

The words echoed in his ears, and the lines of his read-outs began to settle back, the old story somehow working better than the litany.

‘Poisonous doubt filled Chene, but the knight held up his sword, defying his fear and the beast before him. “No. I am not broken, monster, while I hold my blade. Come, and learn this lesson.”

‘And so the great beast fell upon the knight again. Once with horn it struck him down, but he rose. Once with claw it struck him down, but he rose. Once with fang it struck him down, but he rose. And so the beast snarled, and with its coils it caught Chene, wrapped itself around him, pinning his sword to his side, and roared its challenge.

‘The knight was caught, trapped by the beast as it drew back its head, but he was not beaten. “I am a knight of the Order,” he shouted into the monster’s teeth, “and I bring your death, for I am a slayer of beasts!” And as the beast struck, Chene pulled free his arm and thrust his sword into its maw, cleaving jaw from jaw, and spilling its blood into the cold waters.’

‘Master Lazarus?’ Amad’s voice came over the vox. ‘Are you ready? We are landing.’

Lazarus cut the recitation. ‘I am,’ he said, one hand touching the hilt of Enmity’s Edge.

Was he? The lines of his read-outs were steady, but the old words had not made his new armour, his new body, seem to fit any better. But there was no time for that now. The Thunderhawk was crunching down onto the grey crust of Cinero.

‘Dark Angels,’ he ordered, slapping off the restraints that held him. ‘Rise!’

There had been a battle in the Lion’s Blade. The corridors of the vast, ancient ship were twisted and out of true, bent and damaged when it had smashed into Cinero, but the impact of the vessel into the moon hadn’t caused all of the destruction Lazarus could see. As he moved through the labyrinth of dark, broken halls, blade in hand, his auspex carefully searched and catalogued the damage. Metal torn by bolter fire, scorch marks caused by flamer or plasma gun, terrible rents from chainsword or power fist – and mixed in with them all, massive wounds in the walls, as though something huge and impossibly sharp had passed through them.

‘We’ve found nothing.’ Amad’s voice crackled over the vox. Lazarus had left his lieutenant to secure a safe zone around the hatch that they had entered, while he led the rest of the men forward. ‘Blood marks, but no dead. And nothing living.’

‘Set some brothers to hold the perimeter. Then start your search,’ Lazarus ordered. ‘We’ve just reached the bridge.’

He pushed his way through the door and into the dark room. The lumens on his armour washed across black screens and dusty runeboards. No bodies here either, and not nearly as much damage. They had tried to keep the fight away from the ship’s critical systems. Lazarus moved to the centre of the bridge, motioning the rest of the squad to follow. He reached out with his auspex, but there was nothing. The Lion’s Blade was a tomb. A seemingly empty one.

‘On watch.’

Lazarus spoke and the Dark Angels took their places around him, securing themselves in the weak gravity. He called up the records that the Rock had sent him with his orders, sorting through them until he found what he needed, fighting as he did to keep the lines straight, to keep them from twisting into flames. Purpose. He had purpose. The Supreme Grand Master himself had set him to this task. There was information on the Lion’s Blade that Azrael wanted, and here he was, searching it out. Serving his Grand Master. Serving his Chapter. That was purpose.

Lazarus went to a panel at the base of the bridge’s command throne and ripped it away. The records he had been sent were correct. Embedded in the complex web of circuits was a servo-skull. A memory keeper, like his storyteller. Lazarus pulled it free and tucked it under his arm. These were the records that Azrael wanted, the secrets the Inner Circle sought to recover, to protect. Was that not purpose enough?

The displays in his winged helm shifted, and he received his answer.

‘Master Lazarus?’ Amad’s voice over the vox didn’t end the shifting twist of the captain’s vision, but it helped him calm it. ‘We have found our ancient brothers – most of them. And something else.’

The bodies were in the largest hold, dried remains held together by their armour. Their weapons lay broken around them, and every dead Dark Angel was missing its head.

‘Whatever did this took trophies.’ Lieutenant Amad knelt beside a body, his finger tracing over the cut ceramite of its armour. The edge was smooth, perfect. ‘Back to the warp, or into that.’

The lieutenant turned his helmeted head, staring at the hole that had been sliced into the ship’s hull. Beyond it, the smooth throat of a long-dead lava tube ran off into darkness.

‘Ten thousand years,’ he said. ‘Would a daemon persist beyond the warp for so long?’

Lazarus didn’t know. It didn’t seem likely, but… But the galaxy was full of dark miracles. He stared at the tunnel, and he felt the weight of the memory unit. That was his mission. His purpose here. But… in the darkness beyond the ship’s torn hull, he could see Governor Ruus’ face.

I fear you will free the beast, and we will all die.

‘Lieutenant.’ Lazarus held out the servo-skull, and Amad took it. ‘This artefact must make it back to the Rock. It is this mission’s priority. Our dead brothers are second. See them gathered and taken back to the ship.’

‘And you, captain?’

Lazarus kept staring into the darkness. Against the black, the displays drawn by his helm twisted into flickers of flame, but then another voice ran through his head.

But there was one, the knight Chene, who stepped forward, wounded but unbowed, and he told the broken people to take him to the lair of the beast.

Lazarus’ vision steadied, and he walked towards that darkness.

‘I will make sure ten thousand years was enough.’

He’d had to order Amad out, to take the rest of the squad with him, to let him go alone.

There was a trail in the cave beyond the ship’s split hull. The dark, dried marks of blood that the vacuum had preserved, and cuts carved into the stone that matched those on the Lion’s Blade. The daemon had gone this way, after finishing its butchery, and taken its prizes with it. If they wanted back the rest of their dead, someone had to follow, and Lazarus had chosen himself, and only himself. Now he walked the dark tunnel, knowing that his lieutenant was right. Proceeding on alone was a kind of madness. But it was a madness that steadied the captain, that made the sickening feeling of dissociation which had filled him ever since his resurrection fade. So he walked alone into the black, until it began to turn to light.

Red light, firelight. The tunnel opened into a circular cavern lit by the pool of lava that lay in its centre. The molten rock bubbled and spat, and in the empty vacuum over it, drops of lava glowed and drifted like bloody stars, slowly cooling to darkness as they floated back down to burn again.

In that crimson light he saw them. The heads of the dead Dark Angels, still encased in their helmets, set in a pyramid beside the pool. Trophies, neatly arrayed. He stopped, meeting the blank gaze of the helmets, and waited.

Lazarus’ auspex showed him nothing but stone and heat and empty space, but there was something here. His skin prickled, as if a razor had slid over it, and in the cold, flat air flowing through his armour there was suddenly the faint trace of a scent that couldn’t be there – the smell of blood, burning. That scent went through him, an echo of his death, and the pool and the heads shimmered as if there were air to be heated, and that made Lazarus grind his teeth behind his helm.

‘Show yourself,’ he ordered, and in answer the lava pool moved. Shifted, splattered, as a shape slowly pushed itself up through its glowing surface. Reptilian skin as red as the molten stone, and horns black as the shadows. Limbs long and clawed, and a head heavy with fangs and scales.

The monster rose out of the lava, its body vaguely humanoid but hideously twisted, hunched in on itself with long, whiplike limbs corded with power. It pulled itself out of the pool and stretched to its full height, twice that of Lazarus, and stared down with black eyes. It was a thing shaped not by natural laws, but by nightmares of murder. A daemon, and in one hand it held a sword as long as the master of the Fifth, a sword that glowed red as the lava except for its edge, which gleamed so white-hot it was almost impossible to look at.

‘Finally, the flesh.’

The intricate wards built into Lazarus’ helm didn’t stop the words from crackling through his head, but they absorbed much of the malignant intent that carried them into his thoughts.

‘I knew you would come. If I waited.’ The monster rolled massive shoulders and flicked its sword, scattering shards of molten stone through the cavern. ‘Waited so long. But I knew there would be more. More flesh. More.’ The daemon’s eyes fixed on Lazarus, the red reflection of the pool dancing in their depths like flames.

Lazarus met the beast’s gaze, and stared into those flames. They grew, spiralling out around him, the red becoming green, blue, purple, orange. The colour shifting, but the flames always hot as they washed over him, killing him.

Not dead, Lazarus thought, and he was, and he wasn’t, and through the fire, through the pain, his reactions slowed as the daemon roared and charged forward, sweeping its glowing sword at his neck.

Enmity’s Edge rose, its dark power field crackling around it like the wings of black birds, and it caught the brilliant, sharp edge of the daemon’s blade. The impact of the blow smashed Lazarus backwards, sending him flying across the cavern and into the far wall. In the low gravity Lazarus started to ricochet back, but he lashed out with his hand and dug armoured fingers into the stone. He was still, but the flames yet danced in his eyes, twisting with the read-outs of his auspex, making him half blind, and this was it. The sure truth of it ran through him, pure and cold. This is where he would settle it. Where he would either end the flames that were pulling him apart, deny his death and make peace with his new body.

Or where he would die, finally, again.

‘Fight, flesh. Fight!’

The daemon charged him, unaffected by the low gravity. It lashed a kick out, and Lazarus tried to block it, but the fire running through him slowed him and the lava-flecked hoof caught him in the side and sent him tumbling.

His armour absorbed the impact, but the blow sent him across the cavern again, through the burning stars of liquid stone that were slowly falling back into the pool and into the far wall. This time he did smash off it, up into the ceiling and then down again to the floor, where he managed to catch hold of the stone. Lazarus was gasping from the force of the blow, the dizzying impact of spinning off the walls, and the dissociation that still almost blinded him, that made him move too slow.

Is your purpose to live? he thought, and forced himself up. The daemon was stalking him, circling closer as it passed its sword from hand to hand. It watched him rise and, with a terrible smile, it charged forward.

‘Blood for the Blood God! Too long have I hungered here, bound by your dead. Fight and die and feed me, flesh! Feed me and my master! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’

The beast swung its sword like a hammer, massive blows that Lazarus was barely able to block with Enmity’s Edge. The dark energy flashing around his blade countered the strength of those strikes, kept the white-hot killing blade at bay, but Lazarus stumbled back, and with a swing of its head, the daemon caught him with a horn and sent him rolling again, almost into the lava.

Lazarus stopped himself, clinging to the stone. If not your life, then fight for the Lion! For your Chapter! For the Emperor Himself! Damn you, fight! The thoughts ran through his head, but as the daemon bellowed in rage and hurled itself at him, the fire still twisted in his vision.

Blade smashed against blade, Lazarus trying to block, to fight. This close to the beast, he could see the white, almost translucent patches that mottled its red hide. Long years of reality had worn at the daemon, weakening it, and that was the only reason he lived, but that weakness wouldn’t save him if he stayed divided like this, dead and burning, alive and bleeding.

The daemon smashed the hilt of its sword into Lazarus’ stomach, sending him flying back. Lazarus crashed into something that broke beneath his armoured body, and when he rose on hands and knees, he found himself among the scattered heads of the dead Dark Angels.

Purpose. Purpose. Vengeance was purpose. But so was survival, so was honour, so was serving the Golden Throne and the one who sat there.

What more could there be?

‘You are weak, flesh.’ The rage in the daemon’s voice was twisted with contempt. ‘Has the Lion’s blood grown thin over the years I’ve waited? You are weak, and now I bring your death.’ The monster stomped down, its hoof pinning Lazarus to the stone, and raised its sword.

Now I bring your death. The words went through Lazarus’ head, and then, like an echo, they twisted together with another memory, about another monster.

And I bring your death.

The words of Chene, knight of the Order. Lazarus lay pinned to the ground by the daemon, its terrible sword starting to fall, and everything went very still. The flames in his vision stopped dancing, and through them he could see the tumbled, broken helmets that surrounded him. He could see them, but he could see the faces of Amad, of Demetrius, of all the other brothers he had brought here, and then they were gone and every one of the faces wore the strange, drawn-out features of Governor Ruus, her dark eyes wide.

You will free the beast, and we will all die.

Her words echoed in him, and the memory of the flames grew sharp around him. Painful, bright, burning, killing. But Lazarus cared not. If he stayed in the flames, they would all die, and so he pushed himself forward, through the fire, through the pain, through the death, and he picked up his sword and slammed it up, catching the falling daemon blade just before it found his throat.

The blades crackled and spat, hellish white heat grating against energy dark as the void, each fixed in their spot. The daemon leaned in, snarling, pushing, but Lazarus held Enmity’s Edge still, fixed in the air above him as the pain of his passage through the flames, through death, finally fixed his mind to his new body.

‘Listen to me, daemon,’ he said. ‘You shall not kill me. For I am a Dark Angel, heir to the knights of the Order. When every other blade was broken, we rode into the black and knew no fear… because we know who we are. I am Lazarus, slayer of beasts, and I will bring your death!’

With that, Lazarus moved, twisting out from under the hoof of the daemon as he spun his sword away. He rolled over the stone, bouncing up as the beast lurched forward, overbalanced. The thing turned, fast for its size, but Lazarus had already spun Enmity’s Edge around and the dark blade caught the daemon across its leg. The crimson hide splintered under the disruptive energies of the blade, spilling a viscous red fluid that burst into flame in the airless void of the cavern.

But flames meant nothing to Lazarus any more. He’d already passed through that hell, and now he was on the other side, and his purpose was to kill this thing, this and all the monsters that would dare threaten anyone under his protection. He sprung up, using the low gravity now instead of fighting it, soaring over a vicious swipe of the white-edged sword, and swung again, again, drawing great cuts across the beast’s arm, its back. It shuddered and bled, caustic flames spilling from its wounds, and as the fires of its life flashed across the cavern, Lazarus could see the white patches spreading across its hide. Over its back, around its belly, up its neck–

‘No! I will have your head as a trophy!’ the daemon roared, slashing its sword around it. It gouged stone from the walls, flung up lava from the pool, and drew deadly flashes of white through the vacuum as it sought to cut into the master of the Fifth. But Lazarus was moving easily, dodging sword and hoof and horn, ducking beneath gobbets of molten stone and shards of splintered rock, his sword blocking and then flashing in to attack, cutting that red hide, bleeding the daemon until he finally kicked one last time off a wall and soared past the beast’s head.

Enmity’s Edge fell, catching the daemon in the neck, in one of those spreading white patches, and the blade bit through that drained portion of the beast as easily as if it had been mortal flesh, cutting through the neck and sending the vicious head tumbling across the room as the rest of the body flared up into fire, then dissolved like ash.

The last echoes of the servitor’s announcement were still ringing around them when Lazarus stopped in front of Planetary Governor Ruus. He waited as she swept through her curtsy, noting the way her dark eyes ran over the marks that now marred his armour.

‘Master Lazarus. You honour me and Cinero again with your coming.’ She stood and looked at him, briefly meeting his eyes before ducking her head. ‘Word comes that your ship is preparing to leave. Did you find what you came for?’

The records the Rock wanted, yes. And the bodies of their long dead brothers, yes. And something else. Lazarus could feel his body, and it still felt different. New. But it was his, now. He wasn’t trapped in the flames any more. He’d pushed through them, and been reborn.

‘We did,’ he said. ‘And something more.’ He waved a gauntleted hand, and the servo-skull that had been silently following him drifted forward. Green light sprang from one eye socket and sketched an image in the air before them. A hololithic projection of the end of Lazarus’ battle, one still frame taken from the recording his armour had made. The daemon falling, its hideous head tumbling away from Enmity’s Edge. Governor Ruus didn’t flinch, but her grey skin went lighter as she stared at the daemon’s death.

‘The beast is no more,’ she said, her voice low. ‘After ten thousand years. No more.’ Her dark eyes touched him again, then she swept into another curtsy, deeper this time. ‘I thank you.’

‘We are the Dark Angels,’ Lazarus answered. ‘And it is our purpose to slay the beasts that would beset mankind. We do not forget our duty.’ He inclined his head, a fraction, but enough to make her eyes go wide. Then he turned and walked out, hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Kloster is a writer, a stay-at-home father, a librarian and a martial artist – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. He lives among the corn in the American Midwest and his short fiction can be found in Analog, Apex, Clarkesworld and others. For Black Library, he has written the Necromunda novella Spark of Revolution, and a number of short stories.

An extract from Avenging Son.

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

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

But that was yet to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messinius stared at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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