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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

Space Marine Battles

WAR OF THE FANG
A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

THE WORLD ENGINE
An Astral Knights novel

DAMNOS
An Ultramarines collection

DAMOCLES
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

OVERFIEND
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

ARMAGEDDON
Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

Legends of the Dark Millennium

ASTRA MILITARUM
An Astra Militarum collection

ULTRAMARINES
An Ultramarines collection

FARSIGHT
A Tau Empire novella

SONS OF CORAX
A Raven Guard collection

SPACE WOLVES
A Space Wolves collection

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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

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Date Ident: 887939.M41#1312

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About the Author

An Extract from ‘Roboute Guilliman’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

WARHAMMER 40,000

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.

‘Forget your past life. From this day on you are simply a Dark Angel – nothing else is of consequence. The Chapter is all that matters.’

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Blood on the snow.

He remembers it pooling crimson against the white, crystals of ice melting. The wind kept at bay by the tall cliffs, leaving calm and quiet for the drip-drip-drip of emptying life fluid to sound impossibly loud in his ears.

The head had belonged to a Borsginian, his plaited hair caked in dried blood, pierced nose flattened by the blow that had knocked him down. His throat had been parted by the axe strike that had followed.

The head sits atop the third pole of defeated foes, crowning seven others below it. He steps back, admiring the battlework of the past year since he was old enough to join the hird. Twenty-four foes, all dead by his hand. He remembers each one and smiles at the recollection. Raiders defeated, guards slain, warriors bested.

A shout from the fires at the head of the valley draws his attention back to the others. He has nearly forgotten that tonight the elders will issue a pronouncement. He is to be confirmed as successor to the leadership of their people, to become chieftain when his father dies. Twenty-four heads prove that the blood is strong, that the line of Vangar the Bloodwoven still deserve to lead the Gothra.

His name is called, almost lost as the storm strengthens. The clouds are darkening rapidly, the snows coming thicker and faster. The light of the fires starts to dim as the sun dips below the cliff tops.

There is drinking and feasting. The raid against the Borsgini brought back much-needed meat, cheese and even fresh milk.

For a moment, trudging through the old snow while fresh fall flutters down, he wonders again if there is another way. What if the Gothra gave the Borsgini iron instead of sheathing it in their bellies? And the Borsgini gave back the product of their herds in return?

His father scorned the idea of trade. Lean times, he had said, make for poor bargains. The Gothra had only their sword-arms to negotiate with, and that kept their neighbours honest enough and the store-tents full.

He is greeted by accepting smiles and nods as he enters the circle of warriors around the greatest fire. The elders are impassive. Faces carved by age and harsh weather look at him silently; their pale eyes reflect the dancing flames.

Thunder splits the sky.

Not thunder, he learns a heartbeat later when the roar continues, drawn out and increasing in temper. The others look to the skies and his gaze follows theirs. Fire burns in the clouds. Three red sparks turn slowly about the camp of the Gothra.

There is commotion about the fires. More shouting, calling the names of the others recently ascended to warriorhood, demanding they come forth from the other fires.

‘The stars have brought the war-angels again!’ cries Demetha, her voice cracking with emotion, long white hair whipping like serpents about her head. ‘Set forth our sons for their judgement!’

The youths of the Gothra race out into the darkness, following the gleam of the war-angels’ iron birds as they descend towards the proving grounds at the end of the valley. The adults watch them leave, stern-faced, knowing that none will return alive, though the bodies of the weak will be found in the morning.

‘Not you.’ His father’s hand on his arm stops him as he moves to follow the other sons of Gothra. ‘You are my successor. The tribe needs you.’

‘Unhand me, father. It is my right.’

‘You are not chieftain yet,’ his father snarls. ‘I am. And my word is law. And my word is no.’

He wrenches his arm free and turns his back, taking a step after the other youths swiftly disappearing into the blizzard. He hears the creak of leather but does not turn in time to stop the blow that crashes against the back of his head. He falls, dazed, but the ice cold of the snow on his face rouses him quickly as his father’s calloused hands grab his furs.

He rolls, pulling his father down into the snow with him.

They tumble apart and both rise to a crouch. His father is between him and the proving grounds, his axe in hand, held as a club with the cover still on the blade.

‘Listen to me, boy,’ he growls. ‘Our people need you. I cannot lead forever and you are my only child.’

He moves quickly, dodging past the axe handle, his booted foot slamming into the knee of his father, snapping bone. His father topples in a fountain of snow, the axe falling from his hand as he clasps his broken leg. At any other time, the injury might not be fatal, but it is the heart of darkwinter. The tribe have to move on to the next raiding territory. There will be no stragglers; no food will be wasted on those that will only become a burden.

‘This is how I serve our people!’

He sets off down the valley and his father’s bitter words follow him.

‘Traitor! They’ll kill you!’

The youth walks into the swirling snow, the cries of his father falling on deaf ears while the lights ahead grow brighter.

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1312

The Chapter serf’s eyes glistened and his lips quivered with suppressed shock. His whole body trembled as he waited for Grand Master Azrael’s permission to return to his position at the communications bay of the Penitent Warrior. Azrael regarded him without thought for several seconds, his mind blank, robbed of inspiration by a moment that left him shocked and numb.

‘Very well, Artisane,’ he managed to say. The serf fled back to his bench, to the comfort and shared grief of his companions.

Nobody else on the bridge had heard yet, each engrossed in their own affairs and duties. The battle-barge was poised above the world of Rhamiel and was one of many ships in escort to the Rock, its complement of First Company veterans standing ready to respond to their commanders’ next words.

His Chapter aide, Delefont, had his back to the Grand Master. The unaugmented human discussed some detail of navigation with the manoeuvres team. Sergeant Belial, second in command, was at the position of the gunnery officer, overseeing the firing solutions for their next bombardment of the renegades’ headquarters.

Azrael stood alone. He felt cocooned in silence, isolated from everything that had transpired in the last forty-two seconds since the tightband communiqué had arrived from Master Sheol. The universe had changed. Azrael’s world had shifted on its axis and what happened next would determine not only his own fate, but very likely that of the entire Chapter of the Dark Angels. Not just the thousand warriors that besieged Rhamiel, but unknown generations to come.

Into the gulf came a storm of thoughts of personal, strategic and historical import. He considered ripples from a stone being thrown into a pool, but really a boulder had been tossed into a raging torrent. To try to discern what effects that might have, and what measures might be taken to guide the course of the ripples, was pointless.

‘Focus.’

It was as though the word came from outside him, but Azrael had whispered it himself. The single utterance brought clarity. His priorities were clear, the issues to be addressed falling into place as soon as the decision was made.

He activated the Chapter-wide vox channel.

‘This is a terrible day in the history of our brotherhood,’ he began. ‘Supreme Grand Master Naberius is dead. By authority of my position as Grand Master of the Deathwing, I hereby issue notice of command and assume temporary leadership of our Order for the duration of the current campaign.’

All eyes on the bridge turned to him, surprise in some, shock and despair in others, and he could imagine such a reaction from the many Dark Angels fighting on the world below. It was imperative that tragedy did not become disaster.

It was his duty by tradition and doctrine to take over directly to ensure continuity of command, but they did not permanently grant him the highest rank of the Chapter. When the present campaign was resolved the members of the Inner Circle would convene to select one from their number to be the next Supreme Grand Master. Azrael was, by opinion of most of the Inner Circle and previously Naberius himself, the natural successor. Yet it was possible that others might put forward another name from amongst the leadership. A strong display during the Rhamiel suppression would forestall any potential for disruptive politicking amongst the Chapter’s commanders.

‘Our resolve must remain the same, to bring the traitors to the justice of the sword. All battle-doctrine remains as briefed – pursue your enemies without remorse and fight for the shade and memory of Lord Naberius.’

Belial quickly crossed the bridge, the mass of his Tactical Dreadnought armour dwarfing even the Space Marines attending the control stations, its size matched only by Azrael’s own Terminator plate.

‘How did it happen?’ asked the senior sergeant. ‘Do we have details?’

‘Few,’ replied Azrael. ‘The Supreme Grand Master’s Thunderhawk was brought down as it led the assault towards the enemy citadel. Honoured Decifael reported unusually intense anti-air fire. Traitors swarmed the wreckage, hundreds of them. Decifael was the last to fall. We just received his last transmission. Naberius was killed by enemy shelling of the crash site before cultists overran their perimeter. Too easy. The artillery was already marked on that position, the renegades poised for the following attack. This was planned and executed with precision.’

Azrael did not continue, keeping further suspicions to himself.

‘We cannot allow his remains to be taken by the enemy,’ Belial said. He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Our foe is are twisted, corrupted by the Warp Powers. Who can say what dark acts they might perform on the body of a Chapter Master, what rituals such a vessel might fuel?’

Azrael did not reply, though he had already contemplated the possibility.

‘The Chapter banner lies with them,’ Belial continued.

‘But we would better honour the sacrifice of Lord Naberius with victory,’ Azrael countered. He gestured towards a hololith projection of a sphere a little larger than his head, slowly rotating to show hotspots of conflict across Rhamiel. Red icons clustered around Imperial institutions overrun in the earliest days of the rebellion, such as the Adeptus Arbites precincts, the Administratum tithe houses and the star ports. Black icons marked where significant ground defences had been eliminated, concentrated around the capital fortress known as the Iron Stalagmite and several Adeptus Mechanicus forge cities.

‘The cultists are the froth of rebellion, but they are churned by a darker, deeper force. We know there are Night Lords here, orchestrating events. From our initial contacts, it seems that the taint is restricted to the upper echelons of the ruling hierarchy plus several regiments of the planetary defence force, aided by a large number from a dissident faction of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This is a coup d’état, not a popular uprising. Naberius believed that if we can sever the command of the Night Lords and eliminate the armed resistance, the world might be restored to order in good time.’

He did not add that Naberius and the Chapter Council had also believed there was an even more sinister root to Rhamiel’s turn against the rule of the Emperor. Belial did not need to know of such discussions. A name, much cursed by past leaders of the Dark Angels, had been mentioned in connection with the revolt – a name that had forced a vote on the council which Naberius had narrowly won. A vote in which Azrael had joined with those eager to bring several companies to Rhamiel in pursuit of nothing more than rumour.

Whether the Fallen were here or not, it seemed the arrival of the Dark Angels had been expected, if not desired. The speed with which the rebels had sprung their counter-attack certainly suggested the latter, and Naberius’ death may have been their intent all along.

‘I do not think the two objectives are at odds,’ said Belial. ‘A strike into the enemy command base would deprive the foe of Naberius’ remains, secure the Chapter banner and provide intelligence on the whereabouts of the traitor legion puppet masters.’

It was hard to argue with such an assessment. The Dark Angels had only scant information regarding the Night Lords and their role on Rhamiel. Even their numbers were unclear, though for them to remain hidden so well it suggested only a handful of Space Marines were operating directly on the planet. Near-orbital was littered with micro-moons and asteroid satellites, plenty of cover for a small ship to drift undetected for some time.

‘Very well, we strike at the headquarters. First Company only. The short-range teleport screen is no longer an obstacle. The renegades have foolishly left the beacon on the downed Thunderhawk operational, giving us a location fix for teleport assault direct into the compound.’ Naberius had planned to use teleport homers to support his swift assault. It was ironic that in death he had succeeded in what he had failed to do in life. ‘The remaining companies will continue with the cordon operation.’

‘Coordinates have already been obtained,’ said Belial. ‘I have checked them myself against the latest surface reports. They should deliver us into a central courtyard just outside the inner wall.’

‘We can get no closer to the citadel?’

‘Their anti-strike shield also bars teleport, Grand Master,’ said Belial. His voice carried just the tiniest hint of censure – disappointment that his commander thought there might be something Belial had overlooked.

‘Of course, sergeant,’ Azrael replied. ‘Who is on first strike?’

‘I will lead Squad Belial and Squad Therizon will simultaneously teleport. Remaining squads to deploy in pairs as detailed in your standing assault doctrine, Grand Master.’

‘Then I will join Squad Therizon.’

Belial opened his mouth to say something but then stopped himself.

‘What is it, sergeant? Give voice to your opinion.’

‘As Grand Master of the Deathwing it is your duty, your right, to lead the assault. As Supreme Grand Master you have wider concerns to occupy your attention. But it is not my place to make assumptions.’

‘It is a good observation, Belial, but mistaken in one respect. If I cannot command the Chapter with a blade in my hand, I am not fit for the position.’

Belial smiled, a rare occurrence.

‘Of course, Grand Master. A truth I overlooked. You shall bring credit to the First Company and I am sure the Chapter Council will endorse your elevation permanently.’

‘Any thoughts of the future are just a distraction from the mission at hand, sergeant. The Chapter Council, and my role within it, can wait until victory is secured.’

Belial accepted this with a salute and started towards the door. Before he had left the bridge, Azrael’s train of thought had sped on and he signalled for Delefont to attend him.

‘Convey my regards to Master Sheol and have him prepare the Fourth Company for a supporting assault. The Deathwing shall break the rebel gates, and Sheol shall have the honour of meeting us.’

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1351

Anti-aircraft turrets pulsed salvoes of blue laser fire into a sky cast mauve by the dull light of Rhamiel’s ancient star. Gunships circled at a distance, kept at bay by the weight of fire from the fortress’ cannons, while Land Speeders in the distinctive jet black of the Ravenwing screamed back and forth, daring the guns in order to strafe along the walls with heavy bolters and assault cannons.

The Iron Stalagmite the natives of Rhamiel called the defence keep, once the abode of the Imperial commander now ousted by the insurrection from the upper ranks of his military. It could be mistaken for a small mountain, a kilometre high and four kilometres broad at its flared base. A ring of outkeeps and trenches once protected the approaches, but all that was left of them was plasma-blasted slag and cinders. The steep slopes of the three spiralling roads up to the main fortress were littered with the smoking shells of tanks, walkers and self-propelled guns. A few forest-green armoured vehicles of the Dark Angels continued to prowl the ramps to ensure no traitor survived the onslaught.

The summit was a flattened mesa crowned by thick walls and a high central keep. The gates had been closed and the breach in the north wall from the Space Marines’ first attack had been rapidly blocked and sealed with vehicle wreckage and debris.

It was here that Naberius fell, lured into a direct aerial assault by the seeming fragility of the walls and lack of firepower – a deliberate ruse ruthlessly enacted with the deaths of thousands of rebels.

Half way up the mount, four companies of Dark Angels encircled the enemy stronghold. Tanks and transports ranging from Rhino personnel carriers to immense Land Raiders were dug in behind berms of broken rock sealed with dark grey spraycrete. Squads of power-armoured Space Marines waited beside their armoured vehicles, using the lee of the berms to shelter from the sporadic bursts of artillery and rockets that still occasionally spat from the inner grounds of the stronghold.

Part of the line started to move. Responding to their orders, the Dark Angels of the Fourth Company raced into their Rhinos while the engines of Predators and Land Raiders roared into life. Two Thunderhawk gunships descended on plasma jets, their ramps opening as they touched down. A pair of Assault squads mounted the first while Brother Daviel, a four-century veteran interred in the sarcophagus of a massive Dreadnought war machine, boarded the other. From the cupola of his command Land Raider, Master Sheol led his warriors out of their defensive positions, the thunder of whirlwind rocket launchers heralding their attack.

On the flattened summit of the mountain, within the curtain wall, a pulse of lightning and a blast wave of super-compressed air announced the arrival of the first two Terminator squads. The Grand Master and ten of the finest Dark Angels warriors arrived within the rebel stronghold, dispersed over fifty metres of hard ferrocrete. Azrael and Squad Therizon were closest to the citadel, seventy metres from its imposing gatehouse and weapon-topped towers.

Belial and his warriors materialised about a hundred metres to their right, appearing by chance directly within a squad of renegades moving towards the outer wall. The shock wave of the Terminators’ arrival threw the enemy soldiers to the ground, several of them twisted and broken by the explosion of forces that delivered the Deathwing to the surface.

The rebels were dressed in dark blue greatcoats and black bascinets with aventails of reflective mesh – they were members of Rhamiel’s planetary defence force now turned against the Imperium they were meant to serve. Azrael noticed the badges of allegiance on their helms – winged skulls in the form of the Legion symbol of the Night Lords.

The survivors of the teleport arrival had no time to pick themselves up before Belial and his squad opened fire. The din of storm bolters rang around the courtyard. The fusillade scattered tatters of bloodied fabric and bodies ripped open by bolt detonations.

Azrael’s squad moved into formation and his sensorium feed drew on the inputs from the other Terminators to coalesce into a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree representation of the battle zone. The outer wall was twenty metres high, reached by steps and ramps every thirty metres. Pillbox bunkers broke the line of the wall’s top every ten metres, filled with enemy soldiers. More rebels manned bipod- and tripod-mounted heavy weapons at semicircular revetments between the bunkers.

The broken remains of Naberius’ Thunderhawk had been dragged inside the walls and dumped unceremoniously on the ferrocrete. The rebels had taken time to paint crude winged skulls across the Dark Angels insignia and the aquila of the Emperor. The sight of such defacing caused Azrael a twist of anguish in his gut, a reminder of what could be happening at that moment to the body of the Supreme Grand Master and the honoured standard of the Chapter. He fixed his attention on their objective, his resolve hardened to the task ahead.

The main citadel was a solid hexagonal building nearly two hundred metres to each wall, soaring a hundred metres above the courtyard. The walls bulged with angular defensive positions, and each corner was reinforced with round towers broken with narrow windows for small-arms fire.

Halftrack vehicles were drawn up in lines beneath armoured canopies some distance to the left. Quadruped battle walkers stood guard by the main gates of the curtain wall – three of them, each with twin turrets mounting heavy cannons. These rose up and turned towards the Terminators that had appeared in their midst, while las-fire and bullets started to rain down from the inner fortress.

‘Gate breach!’ called Azrael as he moved towards the citadel. Behind, his squad fell in line and as one they raised their storm bolters and poured fire at the closest defenders, their hail of bolts forcing the enemy back from their firing slits above the citadel gates. Through the sensorium Azrael could see Belial’s squad had moved to intercept a platoon of rebels pouring from a guard house behind the outer wall. In the corner of his eye he could see the countdown until the teleporters aboard the Penitent Warrior had cycled through the recharge phase. Forty-six seconds until the next squads arrived.

The Deathwing moved as a single entity to form a protective ring around Brother Garvel as he strode towards the citadel gates with his thunder hammer. Enemy fire flashed from his raised storm shield and sparked from the armour of the others. Azrael stood next to Therizon and the two of them turned their weapons on the halftracks, scything through the renegades trying to board the vehicles, sparks racing along the armoured hulls of the bulky transports.

Bracing himself, Garvel swung his thunder hammer at the massive metal gates. The impact was like the crack of a storm, a flare of light and a rolling crash that reverberated across the courtyard. Azrael kept his attention focused on the halftracks, where rebel soldiers now skulked behind the vehicles, sniping at Therizon’s men with their lasguns.

The walkers opened fire, cannons belching smoke and flame. The shells exploded against the Tactical Dreadnought armour of the Deathwing, rocking Brother Sammeus and engulfing Brother Daellin with broken ferrocrete and shrapnel. As the bitter wind cleared the smoke, the two Terminators emerged from the fume, the assault cannon of the first chewing fist-sized hunks of steel from the armour of the closest walker, the storm bolter of the second rippling fire across the armoured hydraulics powering the walker’s legs.

Garvel smashed his hammer against the gates a second time with another explosion of power. The banded metal of the gate flexed; stress fractures ran up its length from the point of impact.

A couple of rebels had managed to crawl up into the cupolas of the halftracks and now swung their heavy machine guns around. A stream of bullets scoured across the ground in front of Azrael, ripping towards the Grand Master in a zig-zag. With bullets shrieking over his breastplate, Azrael levelled his storm bolter at the gunner on the right, the targeting crosshair dancing over the pale face of a woman behind the gunshield. He opened fire and the rebel disappeared from view in a mist of crimson. The machine gun swung upwards, caught in her death grip, emptying its fury into the sky.

Another sharp crack of air brought forth squads Daeron and Balthasar; the former appeared behind the halftracks, the latter a few metres from Squad Belial. Azrael could see movement on the outer wall – traitor officers assessing the threat in the heart of their stronghold, caught between the Deathwing and the approach of Sheol’s incoming attack.

The third blow from Garvel’s thunder hammer split the gate.

Needing no prompting from their sergeant or Grand Master, Garvel and Luciel swapped places, thunder hammer replaced with field-sheathed chainfist. The teeth of Luciel’s weapon growled into a blur and sparks flew as he directed slashing blows at the rent created by Garvel’s hammer.

‘All squads converge on the gate,’ Azrael told his warriors. ‘Cover fire against those walkers.’

A burst of missiles from the cyclone launcher in Squad Balthasar flared over the heads of Belial’s warriors as they retreated from the continuing barrage of the walking tanks. The warheads detonated against the slanted armour plates of the rebel engines, scattering white-hot shards of shrapnel and broken ceramite.

‘Gate breached!’ announced Luciel. He tore the last remnant of the broken gate away with the gauntlet of the chainfist and tossed it aside. Dim yellow light seeped from within, fluctuating with the shadows of movement inside.

Azrael stepped closer. An incandescent blast from beyond the shattered portal engulfed Luciel. It was impossible to see exactly what happened in the midst of the blinding light but broken pieces of Tactical Dreadnought armour and burning flesh sprayed across the other members of the squad. As one they poured fire into the breach, firing blind in retaliation.

‘Lion’s shade, what was that?’ exclaimed Brother Galad, his armour pitted with smouldering pieces of adamantium and plasteel.

‘Keep firing!’ ordered Belial.

Azrael readied the grenade launcher fitted to the back of his power fist. Clenching his fingers, he fired a spread of frag charges through the opening. A second later the blossom of their detonation lit the interior of the gatehouse.

In the split-second of illumination the Grand Master saw a tableau of figures in stark contrast to the shadows of the gatehouse hall, which was a vaulted structure about twenty metres high, the walls unbroken but for an inner portal.

Dark robes obscured overlapping plates of segmented power armour, the defenders’ faces hidden behind masks shaped like snarling wolves, eye-lenses like smooth rubies. Arcane machinery sprouted from packs upon their backs, coiled about with thick cables that ran to the guns in their hands. The cerulean pulse of plasma chambers glowed dully through the folds of their robes.

Thanks to the integrated surveyor systems of the sensorium web, the others saw exactly what Azrael witnessed. Alert to the danger, the Terminators withdrew from the breach still firing, while Brother Horst unleashed the fury of his heavy flamer. The burning promethium lapped at the ragged edges of the gate remains and poured into the interior.

‘Daeron!’

The sergeant and his squad were moving even as the command left Azrael’s lips. Breaking into a lumbering charge the Terminator assault squad pushed into the still-burning breach, thunder hammers and lightning claws crackling with power.

Azrael and Therizon’s warriors followed close behind, in time to see Daeron’s squad fall on the mechanically augmented defenders. In the glow of guttering flames, their claws sheared and hammers crushed plates of armour, rending and pulping the bodies within. Fractured plasma cells sprayed sparks of cerulean energy that left melt-lines streaked across the outer skin of the Terminators’ armoured suits.

‘Dark technomancy,’ muttered Sergeant Daeron as he crushed the helmeted head of a dead foe beneath his massive boot. ‘The foes arrayed against us have made unholy alliances here.’

‘There is certainly a darker purpose,’ said Azrael. He surveyed the inner doors, the heavy metal flawlessly sealed, the locking mechanism hidden on the other side.

A hiss attracted his attention and he looked up to see dark gas pouring from vents in the ceiling. His suit’s sensors picked up several toxic substances. None of them would be lethal to him even outside of his armour. The acidic compounds in the cloud hissed as they flowed over the Terminators, peeling away enamel and gilding but doing little damage to the ceramite beneath, though an unarmoured attacker may have been swiftly stripped down to muscle and bone. The noxious cloud billowed out through the breached gate.

‘Crude,’ said Belial, ‘and perhaps desperate. They were not expecting teleport attack. Their force is concentrated on the wall.’

‘Or they have sealed the citadel for another reason,’ said Therizon. ‘The Supreme Grand Master’s locator is still transmitting.’

Azrael focused his suit’s systems, homing in on Naberius’ transponder. Through the sensorium he picked up the signal. Due to the interlinked nature of the sensor web, the others found it too. Galad stepped towards the door.

‘We must hasten, before something unspeakable happens to our lord’s remains.’

‘Into a waiting trap, brother?’ said Belial. ‘The advantage of our surprise arrival is swiftly diminishing.’

‘There is not a warrior in this stronghold that can hold against the Deathwing, brother-sergeant,’ Galad replied. He slammed his storm bolter against his eagle-embossed plastron. The crash of it rang loudly in the entrance chamber. ‘The finest plate of the Chapter, the most skilful warriors. Rhamiel has nothing to threaten us.’

‘So the greatest danger is arrogance,’ said Belial.

‘Wait.’ Azrael’s calm command cut through the discussion. ‘The traitors have to know we are coming for him. We must be wary not to fall to the same hazard as Naberius.’

From the viewpoints of the Terminators still outside he could see that one of the walkers had been destroyed, the others beset by Squad Balthasar who were prying open armour and tearing at hydraulics with their power fists. There was no immediate danger from the courtyard; the troops on the wall were still occupied with the incoming Dark Angels company.

‘Balthasar, I want you to seize the outer gate,’ he voxed to the sergeant. ‘Master Sheol’s attack is underway – I’ll not have him humbled at the walls.’

‘By the Lion’s command, it shall be done, Grand Master,’ Balthasar assured him, his visual feed showing his sword plunged into the exposed engine grille of the armoured walker. ‘We’ll hold until Master Sheol arrives.’

Satisfied that the initial assault was progressing as intended, Azrael tapped into the sensorium feed from the others to triangulate the source of the Supreme Grand Master’s transponder code.

‘Above us, somewhere on the upper levels. Therizon, hold the gate.’ He checked the chronometer. ‘Reinforcement in twenty-three seconds. Sheol’s attack will reach the walls in another minute. When it arrives I want a collapsing cordon – all Deathwing will converge on my signal and reinforce the assault.’

Their affirmatives crackled across the vox.

‘By the Lion’s shade, we shall restore our honour with the blood of our enemies,’ growled Belial.

‘Step aside, brother,’ Garvel told Galad. His thunder hammer flared into life, casting long, wavering shadows across the hall. ‘Let me use my key.’

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1423

Azrael had expected sudden confrontation, an attack the moment they had broken through the inner gate. No such ambuscade came and it was with concern that he led his warriors into the wide hall beyond – a vast space that took up almost the entirety of the lowest floor.

‘Their best fighters expend their energy at the walls,’ said Galad, ‘as I expected.’

‘Or they conserve their attack for the most opportune moment,’ countered Azrael. ‘Watch your sectors, stay alert.’

The sensorium picture grew out of a fuzz of static as sophisticated cogitators assimilated the datafeeds of the Terminators to create a secondary reality of lines and runes over Azrael’s view. The citadel extended above and below, reached by elevators and stairwells through doorways at the far end of the hall. Dozens of tertiary readings – probably life signs – flashed along chambers and corridors to either side and above.

‘Where is the Supreme Grand Master?’ asked Belial. Fluctuating energy readings intermittently obscured the beacon signal from Naberius’ armour.

‘We secure the conveyors,’ said Azrael, pointing ahead. His arm swept round, to the right and then left. ‘This is the killzone. Nothing enters that is not destroyed.’

The heavy thud of their tread reverberated around the vaulted space, echoing back from bare ferrocrete walls along which were mounted yellow lanterns like torches in sconces, fed by exposed cabling that crawled over the grey artificial stone. Overhead lumen strips hung from the metal rafters, their dull light barely enough to reach the slabs of the floor.

The Deathwing advanced swiftly, a broad line abreast, weapons angled to cover the archways and doors to either side. The returns from the sensorium shifted, signals melting away, heading down and beneath the Terminators to flow behind them like the sea churning in the wake of a ship.

‘Therizon, watch your rear,’ Belial warned.

‘We see them,’ the other sergeant replied. ‘We have your backs.’

Azrael had pushed on in full confidence that the other squads would secure the battle zone behind them. He trusted his sergeants and their squads to fight impeccably, freeing him to concentrate solely on more strategic matters. His thoughts were fixed on the fluctuating sensor beacon from his objective.

‘What is the mission, Grand Master?’ asked Belial.

‘To retrieve the Chapter banner and the corpse of the Supreme Grand Master. We will secure the area and await reinforcement from the Fourth Company. We will then scour the remaining area of all rebels.’

‘Understood, brother-captain.’

They continued in silence, unmolested until they reached the far end of the hall some three hundred metres from the entrance.

‘Daeron, flank left,’ Azrael told the accompanying squad. ‘I see an energy cluster about thirty metres away. Possible conveyor control chamber. Investigate. We will secure the transit lobby.’

The assault Terminators peeled away, heading to one of the large archways leading to the surrounding rooms. As the distance increased, the sensorium link wavered. When Sergeant Daeron passed into the adjoining corridor the link was severed, reducing Azrael’s input to the Terminators in his immediate vicinity.

‘Thermal concentration ahead,’ remarked Meritus. ‘Could be enemy.’

‘Or an environmental heat exchange,’ said Azrael as he studied the blur of orange on his display. He motioned for Belial, Meritus and Galad to break right towards one set of doors while he led Turivael and Garvel to another doorway to the left.

Garvel went first with his thunder hammer readied, storm shield raised against possible attack. The door was barely high enough for him to pass through, and his pauldrons scraped the frames as he turned sideways through the doorway.

‘Tight fit,’ he muttered. ‘Barely room to swing a sword.’

The foyer beyond was small, just large enough for Azrael to follow Garvel, the two of them shoulder to shoulder in front of a flight of steps and the doors of an ascender cage. Belial and Meritus arrived at the other end of the corridor, the space filled with their bulk.

The conveyor beside Belial was open and he backed away as far as he could while he gestured to Azrael.

‘I doubt more than one of us could get in there,’ said the sergeant.

‘If it can take the weight,’ added Meritus.

‘Perhaps that is the intent of the foe,’ said Azrael. ‘To divide and isolate us in the close confines.’

Before the others could respond, the sharp crack of bolters rattled in the distance and the vox snarled into life.

‘Targets engaged,’ reported Therizon. ‘Nothing dramatic, brother-captain.’

‘Daeron, report,’ said Azrael, concerned that the sergeant and his squad were separated from the sensorium link. ‘What have you found?’

‘As you suspected, Grand Master, we have located a generator chamber. Oil-fed, very basic. Shall we shut it down?’

Azrael looked at the small conveyors and then the stairs.

‘No, not at present. We will attempt to find a more suitable route to the upper levels. Continue to guard our flank.’

‘Affirmative, Grand Master. The enemy are keeping their distance at present. Will report any significant change.’

Azrael turned to Belial.

‘There must be some means for the citadel to transport heavier loads to the gun turrets. A munitions elevator or similar. Back to the hall – we shall investigate the rooms on the northern side of the fortress.’

They filed back into the central grand chamber and followed Azrael as he headed towards the archway opposite the one by which Daeron’s squad had departed. The bareness of the walls disturbed Azrael. Though the Iron Stalagmite was military in origin it was also a seat of planetary governance that would have played host to visiting dignitaries, trade delegations and others. It was too austere for such ceremonies.

He realised the hall must have previously been decorated with banners and other hangings – torn down when the occupants had rebelled against the Imperium. Even so, the lack of slogans and graffiti was at odds with his experience. Dissidents were keen to make their own mark in the vacuum of Imperial sigils, to display their independence and greater power, but there was nothing to denote the allegiance, goals or ideals of the rebels at all.

Did they have an agenda at all, or had they merely been manipulated into uprising by the Night Lords? What precisely had brought the renegades to Rhamiel? The Supreme Grand Master had believed it was the work of the Fallen, the Dark Angels own secret traitors from the dark days of the Horus Heresy. If that was the case there was still a monumental task ahead: to overthrow the rebels, defeat the Night Lords and, if possible, apprehend the Fallen without involving battle-brothers kept ignorant of their existence.

In the light of such thoughts, Azrael understood a little better Naberius’ decision to launch a focused lightning strike against the Iron Stalagmite. The Chapter Master had hoped to deliver a decisive stroke against their foes whilst isolating any potential Fallen involvement. The Deathwing, each First Company veteran already aware of the Fallen’s existence, had been on standby to provide a swift response. Similarly the Ravenwing, the mounted Second Company, formed a swift moving cordon to intercept any traitors that might escape the fortress, taking them into custody before they reached the battle-brothers of the main siege line.

It had been a good plan, right up until the moment the Supreme Grand Master’s gunship had been shot down.

The corridor beyond the hall was tight, forcing the squad to advance in single file. Belial took the lead, Azrael a couple of metres behind, and the rest of the squad following with Meritus bringing up the rear. The sensorium did not provide much assistance or direction, except to display the rough layout of passageways and chambers, which became increasingly maze-like away from the main hall. There was, however, a broader space fifty metres ahead. It was just inside the citadel’s wall. Azrael highlighted this in the sensorium, marking it as their objective.

‘A hidden secondary gate, perhaps,’ he told the squad. ‘Internal loading area with bulk conveyors, I hope.’

‘Am I the only one that isn’t happy about how easy this has been?’ said Cadael. ‘Resistance has been virtually non-existent.’

‘Stay focused,’ said Azrael, though he shared the Terminator’s concern. ‘If they think to draw us in for ambush, they will not live long to regret the favours they have granted us.’

They continued in silence, moving past storerooms filled with consumables in boxes and sacks. Each chamber was almost full, small walkways left between the piles of stores and sagging shelves.

‘They brought in a lot of supplies,’ remarked Cadael.

‘Preparing for the worst,’ said Belial.

‘I think they must have been expecting attack before we arrived, brother-sergeant,’ Cadael continued. ‘It would have taken weeks to gather all of these stores.’

‘That means little,’ the sergeant replied. ‘They have broken from the Imperium – they must have expected some form of retaliation.’

Azrael only half-listened to the ongoing conversation, subconsciously assimilating their exchanges in the same way he monitored the occasional vox chatter and reports from the other squads. He was occupied with the same issues that Naberius must have wrestled with. As Grand Master of the Deathwing he was well acquainted with the necessity to prevent knowledge of the Fallen spreading too far through the Chapter. It had been his duty on several occasions to directly intercede to ensure that his warriors were present at a crucial moment to spirit away the offending traitor.

But it had been Naberius’ strategy that had engineered such opportunity. Now that he was confronted with the reality of the potential task - to win a military campaign whilst hamstrung by the need for secrecy at the highest level – Azrael found the proposition daunting.

A fluctuation on the sensorium pulled him out of his thoughts. The squad had reached a T-junction. A wider corridor, broad enough for two Terminators abreast, ran across their line of approach, with the objective just ten metres further on. The passage to the left continued for about thirty metres before a turn to bring it alongside the outer wall.

His attention had been drawn by an energy surge that rippled through the surrounding rooms. The others had seen it and instinctively paused in their advance. Belial took a few paces towards their objective while Azrael turned left to cover the opposite approach. He could see nothing in the standard visual spectrum, but the overlaid rendition of the sensorium picked out a tracery of orange and yellow power feeds that snaked along and through the walls ahead.

A buzzing started, low and indistinct. He could not isolate the source; it was emanating from the ceiling and walls, in front and behind.

‘Can you hear that? Can you see that?’ asked Meritus. The Deathwing Terminator covered the corridor along which they had advanced, and via the sensorium Azrael could see a shadow creeping slowly up the passageway towards Meritus. ‘I think I’m experiencing a malfunction.’

‘I hear it, brother,’ replied Galad. ‘We all can.’

The darkness was not a thing in itself, but the absence of the power grid. This was no shutdown – no immediate cessation of supply. It was as though something was moving along the conduits, devouring the electricity within. In its wake the sensorium went dark as well, just flickers of sound and the occasional spark like a distant star.

‘Emperor’s throne, it’s... eating the light!’ Meritus’ exclamation was dramatic, impossible, but accurate. The shadow had reached the extent of his suit lamps, twenty metres ahead, but the beams from the high-powered lumens of his armour simply stopped as though hitting a black wall. A wall that was edging closer, a few centimetres every second.

‘Shall I open fire, Grand Master?’

‘Test rounds, four rapid,’ Azrael replied, monitoring the other sensor feeds. The shadow was definitely originating from a single source rather than approaching from multiple directions.

The bark of Meritus’ storm bolter was sharp and loud. The four shells shrieked down the corridor. Their propellant sparks blinked out and then disappeared into a black veil, their detonation suppressed or enveloped by the encroaching shadow.

‘Sergeant Daeron, report.’ Azrael kept the command short, forcing a calmness he did not feel. ‘Therizon, what is your situation?’

Static replied.

‘Movement!’

Belial’s warning startled them all, their fixation on the shadow delaying their reactions for a split second. The sergeant opened fire. Through the shared visual feed Azrael glimpsed a flutter of robe and a pale face a second before three bolt-round detonations blossomed brightly in the gloom. The sensorium was suddenly alive with signals, approaching from ahead of Azrael and Belial. Only darkness remained behind the squad.

‘I swear something’s in there,’ whispered Meritus. ‘Something moving in the dark.’

The darkness was a spear of nothingness on the sensorium, depleting everything around it, surrounded by an aura of sonic diffusions and visual blackness. Where sensor readings remained, the life signs tripled and then quadrupled over the course of several seconds – masses of rebels pouring up and down from the levels around the Terminators.

The squad opened fire as more figures appeared at the extremity of visual range, the whip-crack of las-blasts searing down the corridor from both directions. Azrael could make them out more clearly now – dressed in robes rather than combat fatigues, their heads hooded and masked like those at the citadel gate. That the hail of bolts that greeted them had not slain them all stood testament to the armour concealed beneath their robes.

‘More hereteks,’ he said to the others. ‘Blasphemers against the Machine God.’

‘Traitors of all types deserve nothing but scorn,’ replied Galad. ‘Their particular delusion is irrelevant.’

‘But not their capabilities,’ said Belial. His sword flashed with a pulse of blue. ‘Prepare for close assault.’

‘Grand Master?’ Meritus was subdued. If Azrael hadn’t known it to be impossible, he would have thought the warrior was afraid. He could understand the battle-brother’s concern. The darkness was ten metres from the Terminators, obliterating all scans of everything beyond it. It was like staring into a bottomless abyss, a maw that threatened to swallow everything. ‘Orders, Grand Master?’

‘Belial, lead the assault.’ Azrael opened fire again, targeting the helmed heads of his foes. Two fell to the salvo, a third forced back into the cover of a doorway. Beyond them a handful more levelled their weapons and unleashed a flurry of las-bolts. ‘I shall hold this flank. Meritus, withdraw to my position.’

‘Gratitude, Grand Master,’ replied the veteran warrior. He moved backwards, storm bolter still raised against the slowly incoming wave of blackness.

‘Garvel, on my left,’ snapped Belial, waving the other Terminator forward with his sword. The field of Garvel’s thunder hammer crackled sporadically, blue light glinting from fittings and cables along the walls.

The two Terminators advanced shoulder to shoulder. Belial kept up bursts of fire from his storm bolter; Garvel had his shield raised against the intermittent las-fire that returned. A coruscating ball of plasma screamed down the passageway, glancing across Belial’s shoulder. The blast erupted into a spray of cerulean energy, bathing the Terminator and wall with a pulse of power.

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1441

‘Cover fire!’ barked Azrael.

Cadael opened up past his reeling sergeant, firing on full automatic for several seconds while his squad leader recovered from the plasma impact. A handful of hereteks retreated from the furious blaze of bolts.

Azrael was aware of Meritus just behind before the heavy thud of steps sounded through his suit’s auto-senses. The sensorium and a decade of experience fighting together joined them beyond the physical – they shared senses and knew each other’s manner and instincts intimately. The Grand Master steeled himself against the infectious discomfort that flowed from Meritus’ unease.

‘Some kind of anti-tech pulse field, I warrant,’ Azrael said to calm his companion. He fired at movement to his left, a flurry of bolts that turned a stone doorway to a cloud of flying shards.

‘Of course, Grand Master,’ Meritus replied, unconvinced. ‘Very likely. Nothing arcane or unnatural at all.’

The crash of Garvel’s thunder hammer resounded down the corridor, swiftly followed by the higher pitched crackle of Belial’s power sword and a scream cut short. Azrael had to reload.

‘Swap positions,’ he told Meritus. ‘Hold them back.’

The two Terminators rotated around each other like a single mechanism, leaving Meritus free to continue firing at the hereteks. Azrael came face to face with the approaching shadow. While he ejected his weapon’s magazine and pushed home another, he studied the wall of blackness. It was hard to remain objective, as though an aura of menace preceded the dark wave.

The sensorium had no reading from the shadow, so he was forced to estimate its distance. Seven-point-five metres. Another flare of plasma brightened the feed from Garvel and the Terminator cursed, falling to one knee as his leg armour gave way under the strike. Immediately Cadael was there, standing over his battle-brother, his fist smashing aside a heretek lunging at the Terminators with a serrated axe.

Azrael fought against the distraction and tried to focus on the edge of the cloud where it touched the wall. From the lack of data picked up by the sensorium, he knew the field, or whatever it was, extended through the ferrocrete and into the surrounding rooms for several metres.

He fired a grenade. The charge arced onwards until it met the shadow and then vanished. He waited, and two seconds later heard the faintest of noises, almost a sigh that issued from the blackness.

Belial hewed the helmeted head from a heretek as he reported.

‘Passage to the objective is secured, Grand Master.’

He and Cadael were at the doors to the large room Azrael hoped was some kind of conveyor chamber. From what he could see on the sensorium scan, once they were in there would be no other way out. The hereteks seemed content to allow them into the room, perhaps knowing they would be trapped there until the energy-eater reached them.

‘Hold the line.’ Azrael fired a flurry of grenades at the shadow-wall and ran towards it with storm bolter blazing. ‘I shall return.’

His outstretched power fist touched the blackness. Warning sigils and a piercing whine exploded through his war-plate as systems overloaded. The stacked crystal core of the reactor burned at one hundred and fifty per cent for almost a second to compensate for the sudden energy drain.

Azrael could feel himself slowing, the servos and artificial muscles of his Tactical Dreadnought armour shutting down as the shadow swallowed up its power. Like a vampire, the darkness leeched everything from the suit – sensorium, locomotive and environmental systems blacked out in rapid succession.

For a heartbeat, and then another, nothingness swamped Azrael. There was no feedback from his armour at all, but he could smell his own sweat inside his helm, taste the metal of the suit. He could see his eyes reflected in the red lenses just centimetres in front, devoid of head-up display and sensorium readings.

It was like losing a limb; the jacks and sockets of his black carapace that linked him to the armour became cold metal embedded in his flesh. Not painful, but suddenly stark against the warmth of his own body.

As he had thought, momentum took him onwards and just two seconds after entering the shadow the impetus of his charge carried him free of it again.

The sudden light and sound was blinding and deafening, the whine from his suit as power once more surged through its limbs like a welcome clarion. His bolts and grenades exploded just a few metres ahead, ripping across a tangle of wires and metal just a little narrower than the corridor itself, a metre and a half tall.

A trio of hereteks stood behind the device, which continued to slowly grind forward on metal tracks. He saw their eyes widen with fear in the visors of their wolf-masks, as they reached for long-barrelled pistols hanging in holsters beneath their robes.

He fired high. The first bolt took the nearest heretek in the face and turned her mask into hot shards, flinging her back with a piercing shriek. The second had started to duck but two bolts caught the top of his head, ripping his cranium apart from within, the blast partially contained by his hood so that as he fell a slick of broken skull and gobbets of flesh coated the inside of the rough cloth.

The third did not flinch as a bolt whirred over his shoulder. Azrael had time to register the strange ruby-like gem that tipped the pistol – rather than a muzzle or las-lens – a moment before a spark no bigger than a thumbnail hit him in the chest.

Though not large, the shot dug deep through the layers of metal and ceramite. The discharge of energy carved open his breastplate like the swipe of a lightning claw. Scorching pain lanced through Azrael’s pectoral but he pulled the trigger as he stumbled back and his next two shots found their mark in the heretek’s chest. Two bright explosions tore open his robes and scattered blood-spattered scales into the air.

Blood bubbled from the wound in Azrael’s chest, quickly solidifying as modified cells clotted the injury.

There were more hereteks behind the shadowcaster, but the bulk of the machine was between them and the Grand Master, blocking their lines of fire.

With a grunt, Azrael heaved a shoulder into the metal plate fronting the machine. Its tracks squealed and screeched on the hard floor as snarling engines fought against the powerful fibre bundles of the Grand Master’s warplate. Its momentum, though slow, was implacable and it continued to push forwards, sliding Azrael back across the ferrocrete floor. Detecting a loss of traction, his suit responded, jutting slender memesteel spines from the soles of his boots. The spikes dug ragged grooves in the stone until they found purchase.

The growl of the shadowcaster’s engines grew to a loud whine. Past the armoured shield Azrael could see robed figures clambering onto the engine block and track housings. He stowed his storm bolter against his greave with a clang of its magnetic clamp and grabbed the bottom of the frontisplate with his now free hand.

‘Boost to servos,’ he told his armour and it responded immediately, the hum of its stacked crystal core reactor becoming a pulsing buzz. A temporary surge of power flooded the Terminator suit’s limbs and spinal hydraulics.

Azrael straightened his knees and lifted the front of the shadowcaster. As its tracks rose from the floor it lost traction, and the Grand Master’s task grew easier with each passing moment. With a shout, Azrael hauled the diabolic engine up, turning it as he did so to tip aside the hereteks climbing along its length.

Metal screeched and tore as he continued to tilt the shadowcaster. He toppled the bulky machine onto a handful of techno-cultists, its weight crushing them to a paste across the unforgiving floor. Tracks whirred against the bodies of those on the other side, dragging robes and limbs into drive wheels, grating flesh and bone against the wall.

Azrael pushed. With no force to act against the power of his armour, he broke into a run, using the overturned shadowcaster as a ram to flatten even more hereteks that had been following behind the bizarre field generator. Their screams and panicked cries were silenced as the engine crashed through them like a runaway heavy loader.

Twenty metres and more than a score of dead enemies later, the shadowcaster crashed against the wall of a junction, mashing another trio of cultists to pulp against shattering stones. Sparks flared from the shadow generator and flames burst from ruptured lubricant lines. In seconds the entire infernal machine was engulfed in green flames.

Able to utilise the sensorium again, Azrael saw that his companions were beset from three sides – the scanner relay showed their beacons as a few bright dots amongst a sea of energy signals. The chamber to which they had been heading was as full as the corridor, which had been empty thirty seconds earlier, indicating that the rebels had some means to arrive at the ground level.

Further afield more Deathwing squads approached from the main hall – Squads Therizon and Karolus. Daeron’s men were still out of range.

‘Daeron, status report,’ Azrael voxed as he started back towards Squad Belial.

‘A few attacks. Nothing troubling, Grand Master. I think they are just trying to keep us occupied for the moment.’

‘The citadel shield generator is still operational. Link up with Karolus and locate its source. I want that shield down in five minutes.’

‘Affirmative, Grand Master. We’ll follow the energy grid and do a sweep from here.’

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1444

Arriving back at the arterial corridor, Azrael was confronted by an anarchic scene. The hereteks had pushed through the fusillades of the Terminators and an intense close assault raged on both flanks. Belial’s power sword swept back and forth with relentless precise strokes. The crackle and crash of power fists landing body-shattering blows punctuated the shouts and shrieks of the techno-cultists.

The hereteks thrashed and slashed with all manner of weapons, from simple crowbars to whirring chainblades and field-wreathed claws on mechanical tentacles. Many had considerable bionic and augmetic replacements and pounded the Deathwing with piston-like arms and additional blade-tipped appendages.

The press of bodies was tight and the corridor gave the Terminators little room to manoeuvre. With two warriors holding each flank, there was nowhere for Azrael to move forwards. He fired a few shots, picking off hereteks with sparkling arc-cutters and lasdrills literally crawling over the armour of Meritus and Garvel.

‘Belial, Cadael, push past the door and allow me to secure it,’ he instructed as he advanced towards the sergeant. ‘Garvel and Meritus, fall back to the new position.’

Belial lopped the head from another foe and advanced, using the mass of his armour to push his enemies back. Cadael’s fist slammed through a pair of cultists lunging through the door to the objective while his bolter salvo chewed through more inside the room. In the moment of relent he followed his sergeant, storm bolter blazing, giving Azrael room to reach the doorway.

The Grand Master lingered for a moment at the entrance, taking stock of his surroundings before stepping over the threshold. The corpses of several dozen hereteks littered the floor of the chamber, their blood and limbs strewn haphazardly over scratched and broken flagstones. As Azrael had suspected, the far wall was in fact a large gate, counterbraced with metre-thick bars and locked with heavy wheels.

The hereteks had plenty of cover from boxes and containers piled across the loading bay – cover from which they sniped and threw grenades at the Grand Master. His chest still ached from the strange blast of the heretek, and as he returned fire he picked out the most ostentatiously dressed foes and targeted them first on the assumption they might be leaders armed with similar weapons. Bolts scoured along crates and barrels, splinters of metal and wood added to the storm of shrapnel from the explosive rounds.

Two conveyor carriages lay open to his left, each large enough to carry three or four Terminators. Not ideal, but workable. Certainly better than the stairs.

‘Squad Belial to my position. We go up.’ Azrael switched to the company vox channel. ‘Status reports. Daeron, have you located the field generator? Therizon, what is your position? Balthasar, is the main gate secured?’

‘We have located a power source two levels down that may be the generator, Grand Master. Ninety seconds until we arrive.’

‘You have sixty,’ Azrael replied.

‘Ground floor main hall and access secured, Grand Master. Three squads pushing down in flank positions to Daeron and Karolus. We have the conveyors and stairwell within the cordon. Flamer operations ongoing at other ingress points.’

‘We have the gate, but the Fourth Company are making heavy work of the approach, Lord Azrael. The enemy have broken away from their engagement with the Third Company and are countering along the south-eastern flank of Master Sheol’s advance. We are surrounded – we cannot remain here for long. Master Nadael is suggesting that the Third break position in support of Sheol’s squads to speed the attack.’

‘No, we are not committing to full assault at this point,’ Azrael snapped back. He adjusted the vox frequency again and advanced towards the closest hereteks as he spoke. His power fist turned the piping they had been sheltering behind to crumpled steel. Two bursts from his storm bolter cut down the exposed rebels. ‘Sheol, can you break through to the walls within two minutes?’

‘They have sally bunkers hidden from the initial scan, and retracting tank traps. The crossfire is increasing,’ the captain of the Fourth Company replied. ‘I could reach the walls within that time frame, but expect casualties to be at ten or even fifteen per cent.’

Azrael bit back a frustrated curse, remembering that he was now in overall command. Properly investing and then assaulting the Iron Stalagmite had never been part of the strategy – it would be too costly for dubious benefit when a couple of companies could just as easily contain any threat with a siegework. While the morale of the Chapter was important, the retrieval of Naberius’ remains and the Chapter banner was starting to look like a false errand.

‘Sixty seconds to make significant progress, otherwise withdraw to pre-assault positions.’ Azrael moved to the right as Belial and Meritus came into the loading chamber, forming a firing line that swept clear everything in front of the conveyors. He switched back to the Deathwing channel. ‘Balthasar, if the Fourth do not reach you in the next minute, break out and form up with the other perimeter squads for a move back to the citadel.’

‘Understood, Grand Master.’

Galad and Garvel turned right as they entered, firing on the move while Cadael held back the hereteks at the door.

Azrael heard the ring of a bell and one of the conveyors started to close.

‘Proximity fuse,’ he snapped and fired a frag charge into the gap between the closing doors. ‘Brother Tezalion?’

‘Yes, Grand Master?’ replied the Techmarine attached to Squad Caulderain.

‘I need you to find the conveyor controls and override them.’

‘We’re already en route, Grand Master,’ Sergeant Caulderain assured his commander. ‘One level below you. Thirty seconds until we secure the controls.’

A brief thump and flash on the sensorium highlighted the detonation of the frag charge as rebels opened the conveyor some distance above. Azrael crashed through the remains of another barricade, always moving, his fist and storm bolter in constant action. Belial was at his shoulder, his weapons cleaving an equally bloody path.

‘Grand Master, this is Sheol. We cannot reach the walls.’

‘Understood, brother-captain. Continue to engage force on the perimeter to cover the withdrawal of Squad Balthasar and then return to siege positions.’

‘The sooner we leave here, the better, Grand Master,’ said Cadael.

‘I concur, brother.’

Azrael was about to switch to the company channel to order a convergence on the citadel gate when they reached the entrance to the docked conveyor. Naberius’ beacon signal was almost directly above.

To Azrael’s surprise it pulsed faintly, an indication of continuing lifesigns. Intermittent and weak, but real. No longer a theoretical, morale-boosting objective, now Naberius was once more a living, breathing battle-brother. If the thought of the hereteks despoiling the Supreme Grand Master’s body had galvanised him, the notion that they held him prisoner was like a threat to his own life, his purpose of existence. The Grand Master’s hearts pounded faster in response, flooding his body with a surge of energy.

He was not the only one.

‘By the Angels, the Chapter Master is alive!’ Brother Galad strode towards the closed conveyor doors, his power fist raised as though he might smash them down with a single blow. The others exclaimed their own surprise.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cadael. ‘We had a confirmed sighting of his death.’

‘From a wounded brother,’ replied Garvel. ‘Now dead himself.’

‘Or not,’ said Azrael.

The welter of stimulants swelling up through Azrael, both hormonal and artificial, brought everything into a slow, sharp focus. The need to act filled him; an overwhelming desire to be on the move took him to the threshold of the open conveyor before he stopped. He forced himself to assess the situation with a critical eye, riding the wave of battle euphoria, using it to speed his thought processes and observations rather than letting it sweep him on without conscious thought.

‘If Naberius survives, others of his command squad might also be alive.’ He addressed his company again, speaking quickly but clearly. ‘All squad commands attend for mission reprioritisation. Squad Belial and I will retrieve Supreme Grand Master Naberius and the Chapter banner. Primary objective is to secure and destroy the field generator. Secondary objective is to maintain possession of the conveyor controls. If we cannot succeed in the first for teleport extraction, we will require the second. Sergeants Therizon and Balthasar have command in my absence. Organise task forces and deployment as dictated by local conditions.’

Having failed to prevent the Terminators reaching the conveyors, the hereteks had withdrawn a short distance to regroup. A few continued to snipe at Cadael from doorways and columns along the access corridor. The crunching of gears and the grumble of an engine somewhere at the top of the second conveyor shaft announced the return journey of the carriage.

‘Tezalion, are you at the controls?’

‘Negative, Grand Master. I have not yet accessed the control panel.’

Azrael pointed at the descending conveyor and the squad formed a rough semicircle, storm bolters and heavy flamer readied. With a creak and bang the conveyor reached the ground floor.

‘Annihilate whatever is inside,’ Belial told his squad.

The doors wheezed open to reveal a hulking creature that almost filled the cage, twice as big as even the Terminators, its bulbous head cocked to one side beneath the ceiling of the carriage. It wore a robe like the other hereteks, dark red and stained with oil streaks, marked with solder burns. Such flesh that showed was dark grey, coated with long wiry hairs. Pistons hissed as it tensed to leap out of the cage with long simian arms outstretched towards Belial, lips drawn back to expose finger-length fangs.

The crash of simultaneous storm bolter fire was deafening. A dozen bolts hit the brute in the next seconds, shredding its face and chest, almost decapitating it.

The huge body flopped out of the conveyor; the grisly remains of its head slapped wetly against the ferrocrete just a few centimetres from Belial’s boots. The sergeant stamped down on the remains of the head and drove his sword into the spine.

‘Better to be sure,’ he told the others, pulling his sword free from severed vertebrae.

While Meritus dragged the carcass clear, Azrael inspected the inside of the cage. The metal sheeting was pocked with shrapnel marks from his grenade and there was congealed blood spattered by the doorway. He spotted an ear in one corner, oddly intact and incongruent.

‘Grand Master, Tezalion here. I have overridden the conveyor controls. Where do you want to go?’

DATE IDENT: 887939.M41#1452

The clatter of the conveyor’s chains echoed along the shaft, the whine of ancient gears in accompaniment. Azrael tried not to fixate on the pulsing beacon from Naberius’ war-plate, now only twenty-five metres above. A flurry of confused energy and life signals masked the exact location, but betrayed a concerning amount of activity in the upper levels of the citadel.

‘Retribution will be ours, Grand Master,’ Belial assured him.

It was strange to find comfort in the words of his junior, but Azrael took heart from them all the same. The sergeant had a manner about him that exuded precision and confidence, both excellent qualities in a leader.

‘Have you ever thought about becoming a Master, Belial? Naberius’ loss would require a redressing of the ranks. I would happily nominate you for command of a company.’

‘Ambition is a distraction, Grand Master.’

‘But we exist to serve, sergeant. To command is a duty as well as an honour.’

‘And if I am called upon to command, I will accept. But I cannot say in honesty that I desire it, because I do not. I am content in whatever role suits the Chapter.’

Fifty metres above. The conveyor was swaying a little now, the clank of the chains louder in the dwindling space above.

‘Did you desire it? Command. Did you strive for it, Grand Master?’ Belial’s question was quiet, respectful and entirely unexpected. It took Azrael a second to compose a suitable reply.

‘No. I was born to it, brother.’

They rattled the last few dozen metres to the level where Naberius’ signal was strongest. Belial dragged aside the lever to activate the brakes and the contraption shuddered to a halt. The sensorium was thick with returns; heat, light, sound all merged together. A tracery of energy cables and light fittings, environment systems and door controls created a wire-frame reality within the datastream that outlined a small antechamber and then a large hall. The details blurred beyond twenty metres but the pulse from the Supreme Grand Master’s armour was irresistibly strong.

‘The Lion wills it,’ said Azrael. He activated the door rune and the cage squealed open.

The antechamber was only a little wider than the conveyor, and about ten metres long. It was lavishly decorated and furnished, at odds with the militaristic surrounds of the rest of the fortress and compound. A chandelier sparkled overhead, thick carpet underfoot as Azrael stepped out.

Wooden benches and tables had been upended to provide cover for a score of defenders. These were a mix of the hereteks they had encountered on the lower level and the renegade forces that manned the Iron Stalagmite’s outer defences.

A rage of bullets and las-blasts screamed into the open conveyor, bouncing and hissing from the Terminators and walls. Azrael opened fire as he forced himself into the storm, directing a trail of bolts that ripped through a trio of rebels sheltering behind an upturned table directly ahead.

Belial fired past his commander, turning a sofa to kindling and torn upholstery, leaving those it had sheltered bloodily smeared across the pastel-coloured wallpaper behind.

The doors ahead opened and more soldiers fired from beyond, using the frame as cover. Azrael replied with a long burst from his storm bolter, each explosive impact turning the plastered wall to dust, punching through in a shower of deadly wood and brick splinters.

The whine of the second conveyor announced its arrival, a second before the rest of Belial’s squad burst into the close confines, their storm bolters unerringly seeking the defenders. Volleys of fire spat past centimetres away from the Grand Master and sergeant, never at risk of hitting them.

Azrael trusted his battle-brothers to clear the room in his wake and did not pause in his advance. Long strides took him to the doorway where the remains of five soldiers were piled. Another tried to slam one of the doors against him. His powerfist swung out, turning the wood to splinters that tore open the man’s face and throat and sent him reeling back with a gurgling cry.

The space beyond the door was dark, and only by the artificial projection of the sensorium was Azrael able to see that it extended almost a hundred metres towards the centre of the citadel. A maze of smaller chambers and corridors surrounded it – private rooms, storage areas and service access.

Naberius’ signal was a bright star in the centre of it all, drawing Azrael on like a siren. He almost did not notice the soldiers arrayed along both sides of the hall, nor the blistering fire that sparked from his plate.

He activated his suit lamps and their blinding light bathed the hall. Flinching from the glare, the rebels were easy targets – the steady pound of rounds from the Grand Master’s storm bolter cut down a dozen foes in the next few seconds. Writhing tentacle-like cables and pipework covered the walls and ceiling and coiled across the floor like serpents. Puffs of vapour and gasses issued from grilled maws, and blinking coloured lights seemed to stare back at the Grand Master from within loops of semi-organic technology.

Advancing a few more paces, Azrael brought the light to the further reaches of the hall. What he saw made him falter in his next step.

Naberius was held up in a web of iron spines and ribbed pipes, his armour broken and his flesh pierced in many places. His helm lay in the blood-spattered coils below, as did the broken haft of the Chapter banner, the standard itself draped over the undulating mass, burned and stained.

His eyes were open, pale circles in a mask of crimson from a steadily weeping wound across his brow. Something had been daubed over his head, oily and glistening, and it ran in black tears down his cheeks. The Supreme Grand Master silently mouthed something, lips and jaw moving in the same manner again and again.

More techno-cultists surrounded the ghastly vision, their wolf-masks pushed back to reveal sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. One amongst them had golden robes – clearly their leader. A shock of white hair fell from his balding scalp almost to his waist, as he stood before Naberius’ half-corpse with arms outstretched. In one hand he held a serpent-hafted rod with a cog-shaped head; in the other, a three-tined dagger with blades that shimmered and moved as if alive.

They did not turn, intent upon their ceremony, oblivious to the violence that erupted around them. As more Deathwing moved into the hall the storm of bolts grew intense, a near-constant barrage of fire that turned men, women and machines to ruin.

Azrael opened fire on the chief cultists. His bolts flared across the divide and then stopped a metre from their target. They hung in the air until their propellant burned out, and then clattered to the floor.

The technomage did not turn.

The horrific scene had so consumed Azrael he only just noticed the surge of signals on the sensorium. A swirling immaterial vortex appeared to his right, beyond one of the doorways, its centre a mass of spiralling stars and sickly hues. Hulking warriors materialised from the depths, motes of power dancing from their armour as they strode from the immaterial breach.

They were as large as the Deathwing – traitor legionaries in Cataphractii Terminator suits older than the Imperium itself. Their livery, amongst the baroque gold stylings and plain metal and ceramite of patchwork repairs, was a midnight blue. Shimmers of lightning crawled over the plates as though trapped in the enamel.

Night Lords, despotic servants of the Dark Powers, architects of the Rhamiel revolt.

The Deathwing and traitors opened fire together; rounds from combi-bolters and storm bolters flashed past each other in the glare of suit lamps to spark from walls and armour. Ceramite splinters showered from the impacts as the two forces traded fusillades at point-blank range.

Azrael turned his weapon on the Night Lords but continued his advance towards the tech-cultists, Belial and his squad moving with him.

A bass growl issued from the left, causing another squad of power-armoured Night Lords to part like a stormy wave. From the pulsing warp portal behind them, a blocky shadow even larger than the Terminators eclipsed the light and the floor resounded with a monotonous heavy tread.

With a metallic screech, a Dreadnought tore through the reality barrier and paused at the threshold. The walker filled the space with its massive armoured form. Its central sarcophagus was rendered with an embossed image of a skeleton with bat wings, arms folded across its chestbone, as though a grotesque mockery of the Angel of Death found in so many of the Dark Angels’ designs.

It was armed with two scythe-like claws that gleamed red with a shimmering energy field, bathing the lightning-wreathed armour of its body with ruddy light. It looked hunched, if such a thing was possible, almost off balance as it lumbered into the hall. It paused a few metres from the heretek cabal and let out a piercing mechanical shriek, a scream of insane rage that filled the hall.

The Night Lords squad behind it turned their bolters and missile launcher upon the Deathwing, catching them in a crossfire with the traitor Cataphractii on the other side of the hall. The Dreadnought loomed over Azrael, glittering battle-scythes sweeping back and forth as it charged.

The Grand Master avoided the first blade as best he could, but his armour was too heavy to allow him to elude the second. The crackling edge lashed across his pauldron, scoring deep through the armour, biting into the crux terminatus honour badge that adorned it.

He grabbed at the flailing weapon with his power fist and the fingers of the huge gauntlet clamped around reticulated links. Servo matched servo with hisses and whines as the Dreadnought tried to wrench its weapon free, its own bulk blocking the attack of its opposite limb. Clawed feet dug into the stone floor and tertiary clamping talons flicked out to set the legs in place. With a burst of vapours from ornate exhaust stacks, the warped battle engine pivoted at the waist, dragging Azrael sideways towards the Cataphractii.

Meritus and Cadael charged the traitors, throwing themselves bodily at their opponents with power fists swinging. Garvel followed behind, the first swipe of his thunder hammer taking a renegade square in the chest with a concussive explosion of power.

Belial strode past Azrael, power sword in hand, his storm bolter directed at the second squad of Night Lords to the left. The Dreadnought detected his approach and flicked out a scythe-blade with a metallic snarl, but too late to catch the Deathwing sergeant. Belial’s blade rang against the plated sheath of the leg, throwing up sparks and leaving a deep welt in the armour.

He struck two more blows, each strong enough to slay a man but of little use against the thick armour of the war machine. The Dreadnought snarled and backed away, trying again to slash open the sergeant with a powered scythe, tugging and wrenching at Azrael to free its other weapon.

A fresh flurry of bolts from the doorway announced the arrival of Squad Balthasar. Manael’s assault cannon snarled, followed by the rapid bark of a reaper autocannon carried by one of the renegades. Their shells shrieked past each other across the hall.

‘Your orders were to secure the field generator, sergeant,’ Azrael snapped, adjusting his weight as the Dreadnought changed tactic and lumbered towards him, trying to bear him down with its mass.

‘You gave me independent command, Grand Master,’ the sergeant replied as his squad fanned out behind a wall of fire directed at the Night Lords in power armour. ‘Therizon and three squads are securing the generator now – it’ll be destroyed in the next sixty seconds. I thought you might need assistance – you have not been answering the vox.’

In retrospect, Azrael realised he had heard nothing from the others for two minutes, having been too focused on Naberius’ continued survival. The sensorium was working, but there was a buzz at the outer edges of the scanner screen – some kind of interference from the hereteks.

‘Give me an opening, Grand Master!’ said Belial, now behind the Dreadnought.

Azrael complied without thought. He relinquished his hold on the Dreadnought’s scythe and manoeuvred past its shoulder to slam his fist into the weaker armour beneath its engine. Ceramite cracked and splintered from the first blow and disintegrated at the second.

With a roar, the Dreadnought ripped up its feet and turned. Though the scythe did not catch Azrael, the articulated arm smashed into his chest, knocking him to his back with a crash. The Night Lord war engine took a step closer, arm drawn back for a second swing.

Belial lanced his sword two-handed into the breach made by Azrael’s power fist, driving his blade to the hilt. The Dreadnought spasmed as the blade penetrated the internal sarcophagus, piercing the mortal remains of the traitor Space Marine within.

Azrael lifted his fist to ward away the blade as it slashed down, the blow a little wide of the mark as the pilot’s death spasms twitched the war machine’s limbs. The scythe glanced across the back of the Grand Master’s power fist, the flare of competing fields giving off a blinding flash. The weapon’s tip dug into the broken remnants of Azrael’s pauldron to embed into the flesh of his shoulder.

With a last shudder, the Dreadnought settled, pilot dead.

‘The hereteks!’ Azrael snapped as Belial stepped past the war engine to assist his Grand Master. ‘Naberius comes first.’

Balthasar’s squad were halfway up the hall by now, providing cover fire for Azrael as he prised the Dreadnought’s blade out of his arm. Blood bubbled up from the wound and pain made his fingers spasm as he first rolled to one side and then awkwardly pushed himself up from the floor.

Belial’s squad was locked in battle with the Cataphractii – two Night Lords were down but so too was Cadael, armour torn from chest to throat, exposed body turned to bloody rags and splintered bone.

Sergeant Belial was at the circle of hereteks, raining blows against the invisible wall that surrounded them, striking empty air like a maniac. Azrael moved up beside him and slammed his fist towards the chief cultist. His blow stopped half a metre from its target, encountering impossible resistance that rapidly slowed the attack rather than stopped it sharply. Pulling his fist back again was like dragging at a heavy weight.

‘Grand Master!’ Balthasar’s shout drew his attention to the sensorium, through which he saw a spark of energy crackle in the air behind the defeated Dreadnought. It flickered and started to expand.

‘This isn’t working, sergeant,’ Azrael told Belial as the sergeant swung two-handed at the invisible barrier.

He stepped back to survey the hall more closely, seeking inspiration. Balthasar’s squad had driven back the Night Lords on the left, but were in turn being held at bay by the hissing blasts of a melta-gun, powerful enough to cut through even Tactical Dreadnought armour with a single shot. Meritus and Garvel had been forced to withdraw by the arrival of more Cataphractii. With another portal about to open, the tide of battle was most definitely not moving in favour of the Deathwing.

‘We cannot go through,’ said Azrael, vocalising his thoughts to help focus them. He fired a grenade, its trajectory directed towards the centre of the hereteks’ circle, but it stopped some distance above, just like the bolts, its detonation spraying outwards from the shield that protected them. ‘We cannot go over...’

His eye was drawn back to the gaunt features of Supreme Grand Master Naberius. For just an instant their eyes met, and in that moment Azrael saw... nothing. The dead stare that returned his gaze held nothing of the warrior he knew. It was a look of unthinking coldness, and betrayed the final indignity inflicted by the hereteks.

‘He’s not alive,’ Azrael told Belial. His gaze moved to the cables and pipes that kept the Supreme Grand Master suspended in the air. ‘Not truly. They are keeping his body operational, nothing more.’

‘A trap, the bait for us,’ Belial replied, reaching the same conclusion as his commander. ‘One that we were too willing to spring for them.’

‘Naberius shall have the final vengeance, brother,’ Azrael said grimly. ‘Vox-capture, code Vanguard-eight-four-alpha.’

+Vox-capture recognised+ appeared in his display.

‘Command authority override. Transmit to signal alpha. Terminus override.’

The pulse of Naberius’ life signs became a fixed point in the sensorium, accompanied by a constant hum of recognition from the Terminator suit’s machine spirit.

+Terminus override signal ready to transmit.+

‘Transmit.’

It took three seconds for the core of the Supreme Grand Master’s power pack to overload, too swift for the hereteks to recognise what was happening. One moment they stood in a circle around their prize, trusting to their archeotech and Night Lord allies to protect them. The next, a fireball exploded from their captive, incinerating everything within a three-metre radius.

Flesh turned to ash, robes burst into flame and reflective armour became glassy slag by the core detonation. The effect on the shield was instantaneous, and the last remnants of the shock wave passed over Belial and Azrael as a wash of heat and light.

With the deaths of the hereteks the vox-blocking mechanism was also destroyed. The comm channels burst into life with a chatter of signals, one of them insistent above all the others.

‘...have lock on to your position. Ready to teleport. Grand Master Azrael, this is the Penitent Warrior awaiting your command. We have lock on to your position. Ready to t–’

‘Penitent Warrior! This is Azrael. Immediate withdrawal, all Deathwing squads, standard hierarchy.’ He stepped over the smoking remnants of the techno-cultists and dragged the ash-strewn remains of the Chapter banner from beneath the body of their leader. Little more than a square metre of it remained, the splayed feathers of a white wing. Yet it was enough; it had survived. There was a lesson in that. ‘All squads, prepare for extraction.’

DATE IDENT: 627819.M41

The singing in his head has almost stopped.

Almost.

He realises it hasn’t; he has simply ceased to listen. Its mellifluous tones, its constant strokes of praise and demands for adoration are part of the background hum of his thoughts, ever present like the armour that encloses him or the twilight of the deep mines of Truan IX.

He keeps the siren lure at bay with his own voice, fixes on every word that he speaks as if it is a cliff edge on which he is hanging. He not only sings the hymnals, he feels them, pulls them in to his soul as a ward against the accusations and mockery of the thing that has destroyed his battle-brothers.

No, it did not destroy his brothers. It made them destroy each other with its fake threats and false promises. Only he has survived. Only he remains to avenge them. Four days have passed since Master Batheus and the others died. Four days since he started his hunt for the creature. Four days alone against the unceasing voice.

The litanies continue even as he roams the lower shafts seeking its lair. Every canticle and verse he can recall becomes his armoury, until the teachings of the Chaplains are exhausted. He then begins the Lessons of the Armorium, and feels a quiver of rage run through the walls as he starts the Rites of Bolter Sanctification.

The las-scorched walls and floor are bare here, the litter of miners’ bodies and those of his battle-brothers far behind. Soon even the touch of the ore-workers disappears, to leave only virgin stone for him to follow.

His continuous muttering moves on to the Seven Chantings of Activation for the engine of a Land Raider. As he recites the Third Chanting – the Release of the Invocating Rune of Gears – he spies a gleam ahead, a shimmer of gold that, when he turns to gaze upon it fully, is more of a darker shadow.

He lost his helm during the fighting against his squad-brothers. Or removed it after, he is no longer sure. Perhaps he took it off to listen to the song all the better, unfiltered by the machinery of his auto-senses.

The soulmusic is so pure, so invigorating, it lifts him...

‘And on the Fourth Chanting thou shalt ignite the Battery Connections with the activation of the Rune of Power. By its inverted red triangular shape shall it be known, located on the thoracic converter panel on the left of the driver’s station,’ he calls out. His voice rises to a bellow, the words almost meaningless, but better than outright defiance of the whispering threats, for he has learnt that to engage, to confront is only an invitation to a wave of paranoia. ‘If the Rune of Power be active already, recourse must be made to rectify the negative flow!’

His pace quickens as he nears the source of the gold-shadow aura – a natural cavern that swiftly expands from a branch of the tunnel to his right.

The cave is not large, no more than thirty metres across, and half that in height. The darkness here is almost total, yet shot through with golden sparks that hover on the edge of vision. His breath comes in chill clouds, though until he entered the cave the temperature had slowly increased with each level descended.

He activates the lamp of his war-plate and reveals a circle of eight pillars that rise from floor to ceiling, veins of crystal through them that reflect the yellow beam.

Within the ring of columns, something stirs.

It is the shadow incarnate, an auric gleam at its heart that briefly shines and then dims again as its bulk moves. It does not turn like a living thing but shifts its presence, coiling about itself until a cluster of amber-gem eyes regard him with their inhuman stare.

The soulsong has become a mewling, pleading entreaty full of sorrow and loneliness.

‘Pathetic,’ he growls as he circles the pillars, his bolter levelled at the creature, his combat knife in the other hand. Spare ammunition and grenades salvaged from the others clank and scrape as he paces. ‘You make yourself pitiable? I am a Space Marine of the Dark Angels. I have no pity.’

The thing lashes out at him, materialising a tentacle of darkness about a golden thread that whips between the columns and strikes him on the shoulder. Its touch passes through his armour, leaving a burning welt inside the flesh and bone, a gnawing pain that is as much psychic as physical.

He staggers backwards, the agony in his hearts as much as his shoulder, as though his body is suffused with the manifested disappointment and hurt of a spurned child. Swallowing hard, he ducks the next lashing blow, but is not swift enough to avoid a third, which coils about his leg for an instant before evaporating, sending the chill of abandonment and scything wasp stings coursing through his mind and body.

A glancing touch from another tendril caresses his throat, robbing him of his voice. He spits and coughs even as anxiety and an overwhelming need for approval swamp his thoughts. He thinks of his superiors, of the Lion and the Emperor, and knows shame at the thought that he will fail them. The pressure is almost too much, the weight of expectation of ten millennia of Dark Angels ranged upon his shoulders. He is unworthy of the title, dishonouring the name of the Chapter.

But it is surrender to the xenos that would be failure – all other fates, even death, are acceptable.

That shame hardens into anger; the warp-induced despair becomes hatred. The creature has been luring him closer, herding him nearer and nearer to the columns with its lashing blows as though steering a yoked beast with flicks of a whip.

He looks around the chamber and sees the pillars pulsing, flaring into life each time a shadowy appendage passes between them. The floor and ceiling are marked with more crystalline shapes, half-seen but faintly gleaming.

‘This is not your lair,’ he snarls through a fresh surge of pain when another questing tendril slides through his gut. ‘It is your prison! Someone brought you here, wanted to use you, and you killed them. You want to be free? Not here, not in my world. You’ll feed on no more of the Emperor’s servants.’

He opens fire and bolts blaze into the shadow-beast. It reels and squirms, throws more flailing tentacles towards him. He meets them with the edge of the knife, slashing through insubstantial limbs.

The voice of Master Batheus roars in his thoughts, commanding him to lay down his weapons. He hesitates for an instant on instinct, a moment in which the creature renews its assault, leaving lacerations across his cheek and temple with another whip-crack blow.

Having emptied his bolter, he thrusts home another magazine. He fires again, knowing that his shots have little effect. He continues to shoot; the act of fighting invigorates him, gives him purpose and muscle-memory focus even as the warp-beast’s lamentations and urgings drag at his thoughts and try to force his surrender.

Rolling beneath a pair of lashing whips of darkness, his attention is again drawn to the pillars. Where his gaze passes close to one of the stone columns it seems he can see the creature more substantially. The stone is imbued with some peculiar quality, an aura that extends a distance from the surface through which he is looking at the creature’s real form.

He rolls again and fires, testing a theory. The bolt passes close to the pillar and disappears. A moment later a surge of anger and pain rolls out from the inner cave, slapping him aside like a fly, his armour cracking and clattering as he slams into the wall. Something in his leg snaps on landing. Even with the support of his armour and the pain-killing elixirs that flood his veins, he can barely stand.

A rapid succession of tentacles explode between the nearest two columns, striking him across the chest and face. It feels as though his hearts are being ripped out, his brain turning to hot embers at their touch.

‘Not enough,’ he says through gritted teeth. He limps through the next attack, thoughts fixed on the apparition within the pillars. ‘Not nearly enough!’

He reaches the closest column and half falls into it. Resting on one shoulder, shuddering as a tendril slides up and down and through the back of his leg, he pulls an explosive charge from his belt and drives it into the stone.

The assault stops.

In the discombobulating silence that follows, he almost forgets himself. So hard has he been concentrating on forcing back the creature’s thoughts, he almost opens himself up, like a pugilist that overextends and becomes unbalanced. Fresh whimpering and pleading course into his mind, seeking some image, some thought to latch onto that will stir his empathy and compassion.

He laughs and staggers to the next pillar with a fresh explosive in hand.

‘Find only my hate!’

Around the circle he continues, alternately assaulted and cajoled and tempted and caressed by the shadow monster. His leg feels shattered in a thousand places, his ribs a solid mass of pain, his hearts thundering lumps of solid stone in his chest.

He thrusts in the final explosive just as a new sensation sweeps into him, of brotherly concern, of a father’s stern admonishment.

The song becomes a bombastic insistence demanding that he stop, cursing his existence. A moment later warnings and worries assail him. The song is one of fraternal bond again, but it is a lament for both of their deaths and he understands what the creature intends. He looks again at the ceiling and sees the cracks in the rock, the whole chamber held up only by the pillars.

He knows then that he has won. He detonates the charges.

The whole world falls. As the rocks tumble, two pillars form an angle as more and more debris crashes down, spilling to either side in drifts of crushing rock. He throws himself between the toppling columns and slides to a halt beneath the furthest as it falls into its neighbour.

Amongst the tempest of tumbling mine workings he hears a drawn out roar of rage and frustration that eventually diminishes into the rumble of falling rocks.

Crouched between the crumbling pillars, he waits for the assault on his senses to end. For several minutes the ground shakes and the tumult continues, to the point that he wonders if it is not perhaps some fresh attack from the creature, that he has failed to despatch it back to the warp.

The space left is barely large enough for him to spread his elbows and he cannot stand. The throb from his leg is insistent. He welcomes it, the clarity of the pain, as he welcomes the silence in his thoughts.

He is alone.

There is no way out and the rest of the force from the Third Company has been killed by the miners or each other. He is the last and will probably die here, unremarked. It does not matter. He has done his duty, and if he is to perish in this lonely sarcophagus he is content with that.

He has no regrets.

DATE IDENT: 935939.M41

Many times before, Azrael had met Chief Librarian Ezekiel, either on the field of battle or across the table of the council chamber. Always the Holder of the Keys had seemed aloof, concerned with matters beyond the immediate and mundane.

Now Ezekiel was entirely fixated upon Azrael, and it was not a pleasant sensation. In the half-light of the catacombs beneath the Tower of Angels the Librarian’s bionic eye was a glimmering ruby that regarded Azrael with unblinking intensity. Like the Grand Master, the commander of the Librarius had removed his armour and was dressed in a ceremonial robe – in Ezekiel’s case in the blue of the Librarians, for Azrael the bone white used by the Deathwing – with a black tabard marked with the sigils of the Inner Circle.

‘Are you ready, Azrael?’ The Librarian’s soft, informal tone took Azrael aback.

‘I don’t know,’ he confessed with a glance at the forbidding shadows that lay beyond the rune-marked archway behind Ezekiel. ‘I have no idea what to expect, so how can I be prepared?’

Ezekiel nodded in acceptance of this answer, head slightly to one side.

‘It is not necessary to undertake this ritual yet,’ said the Librarian. ‘The council have backed your temporary elevation to Supreme Grand Master. The campaign on Rhamiel continues.’

‘I need to know,’ Azrael replied, a little too quickly, eliciting a frown from Ezekiel. The Librarian said nothing, but his expression made it clear he expected Azrael to explain himself. ‘At the end, when we fought the Night Lords and... When I killed Naberius, I had a moment of doubt. Was I doing it for him, for the Chapter, or myself? If I understand it correctly, this trial will provide the truth.’

‘That it will, Azrael.’ The Librarian became solemn. ‘Every Supreme Grand Master must undertake the Passing of the Gates, as proof of their commitment to the Dark Angels and the Inner Circle.’

‘Have any failed? Did they forfeit their honour? Their lives?’

‘I would not tell you if they had.’

Azrael absorbed this without comment.

‘I have seen two previous Grand Masters through this ceremony. Your predecessor, and his. Both proved themselves worthy. You knew both – do you judge yourself a lesser warrior, a lesser leader, a lesser man than they?’

Azrael took a breath and looked the Librarian in his good eye.

‘I have the correct qualities. I would court false modesty to say otherwise. But I do not claim anything else.’ Azrael squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘When does the trial start?’

Ezekiel shifted his weight, moving slightly so that Azrael could see past him and into the darkness beyond the archway. Two pairs of lights hovered a metre or so above the ground, pinpricks of bright red.

Eyes, Azrael realised. Watchers in the Dark.

‘It’s already begun?’

Ezekiel nodded and turned away.

‘Follow me, Azrael.’

The Grand Master fell into step behind Ezekiel and matched his slow, ceremonial pace. He could see nothing of the Watchers. The Librarian paused at the archway, one foot inside the shadows, the rest of him still in the flickering light of the torches in the sconces upon the walls of the entrance chamber. Azrael could feel the heat from the flames on his hands and face, and equally the chill draught that emanated from the corridor ahead. The breeze brought with it a musty smell of long centuries, though Ezekiel had just admitted he had passed this way with Naberius less than half a century earlier.

‘We step into the Corridors of Shadows,’ Ezekiel intoned. He started forwards again and in a moment was lost in the darkness, all sight and sound of him vanished.

Azrael followed without hesitation. He quickly read the inscription on the keystone of the arch as he passed beneath.

‘Walk the shadows. Bring the light.’

He found it heartening, the thought that he might be the beacon, the bringer of hope to the despairing, the incarnation of justice and truth.

As the darkness swallowed him he realised how naive that might seem to others. His skin prickled as the last heat of the brands evaporated and he was left in total blackness. He resisted the urge to look back, to check the flames still burned behind him.

‘I am the light,’ he whispered and continued on, blinded but not blind.

The darkness reminded him of the blanketing effect of the shadowcaster used by the Rhamiel rebels. It was all-concealing, so that three strides in he saw not a glimmer from behind nor any light ahead, and there was no sound but for the thud of his hearts and the whisper of his own breath.

Was it a similar technology at work here? He had wondered at the mysteries that surrounded much of the Inner Circle’s workings, of the labyrinthine catacombs that existed below the Tower of Angels, beyond the cells where the Interrogator-Chaplains did their bloody work. How much was simply the archeotech of the lost generations, shrouded in ritual? There were treasures and perils in equal measure in the deepest levels, in the dungeons where forays by the Techmarines still occasionally ventured to glean secrets from buried chambers, risking life and sanity to bring them back.

As if a switch had been flicked, he stepped into light again. Blinking, he focused on Ezekiel, standing to his right in front of a narrow hanging. The banner depicted the Angel of Death, as did so many of the Chapter’s standards. Yet instead of a sword held in gauntleted hands, the hooded figure clasped a chain on the end of which hung a red rose. He remembered his tutelage as a novice, that the red rose signified blood, the sacrifice of the Lion and the Emperor.

He was about to speak, but chose to keep his silence, aware that the occasion required a certain degree of solemnity. To speak seemed a violation of the proceedings.

‘This is the Portal of Penumbral Sorrow,’ Ezekiel said quietly, motioning towards a heavy wooden door opposite Azrael. ‘The light becomes darkness. It is the boundary between what was and what shall be. To step through is a declaration of your intent, a move from the past to the future, a remoulding of the man you are into the man you must be.’

As before, the lintel was carved with old letters, so worn now that Azrael took a few seconds to decipher them.

‘Bring the light. Cast the shadow.’

It was not such an encouraging thought. A duality. A summation of the role of the Supreme Grand Master, to be both the bearer of the Chapter’s great burden but also its greatest hope of absolution.

He nodded his understanding. Ezekiel stepped forwards and clasped the iron ring of the door. He looked intently at Azrael, eye never leaving the Grand Master as the Librarian silently pulled the door open.

There were more shadows beyond, but of a conventional nature – a gloom rather than utter darkness. Azrael stepped through the door with a swift stride and felt Ezekiel follow him a few paces behind. With the softest of clicks the door shut and the darkness increased.

A faint warmth came off the stones to either side, the passage little wider than his shoulders.

He sought no explanation beyond the mundane – they had to be close to the heat exchangers of the Rock’s plasma cores. The depths of the massive asteroid-fortress were riddled with energy conduits, coolant pipes and thermal vents, more than enough to conjure strange changes in temperature from one place to the next.

He felt rather than saw a larger space opening up around them. His footfalls disappeared into the distance. His eyes grew accustomed to the dark and he realised that there was a massive window above the passage by which he had entered, the light of the stars filtered through the ancient panes of coloured plasglass. By the twilight he could just make out the symbol of the Chapter on the floor – a winged sword against a circle of red.

From every direction an amber glow suffused the chamber, emanating from more than a dozen different archways and open doors. Corridors ran away from the hall at uneven intervals like spokes from a hub. He turned his head left and right, trying to count the entrances, but it was hard to focus; there seemed more or less each time he looked.

One moment the light was ambient, an ochre gleam; the next it was present, a circle of small lanterns, each born by a Watcher in the Dark. The light spilled across the flagstones but did not reach far, serving only to accentuate the shadows more than dispel them.

He heard footsteps before he saw the others. Each arrived behind a Watcher. Cowls hid their faces but he knew them immediately all the same – their tabards bore their company colours and the icons of their specialities: Masters, Chaplains and Librarians.

One of the robed warriors stepped closer, a large censer swinging from a chain in his hands. The burner was crafted from red-lacquered metal in the shape of a rose. He recognised the voice of Dagonet – the sigils on his tabard confirmed the identity of the Master of Sanctity.

‘One has come who would be master of all,’ Dagonet intoned with a swing of the burner. Acrid smoke swept over Azrael, stinging his eyes, thick in his nostrils. ‘One has come who would be servant to all.’

A chance movement gave him a look at Dagonet’s face beneath his cowl. Just a glimpse, but it was enough for Azrael to see that the Master of Sanctity’s eyes were glassy, their stare fixed at some point beyond the would-be Supreme Grand Master.

‘One has come,’ the others chanted in unison as Dagonet withdrew to the circle in a billowing white cloud of incense. Their voices were flat, their timing perfect.

‘Are they asleep?’ Azrael looked to Ezekiel for an answer but the Chief of the Librarius had moved to the circle, one among the many for the moment.

‘They fulfil their roles.’

Azrael turned at the sound of Sapphon’s voice, one of the Interrogator-Chaplains. He located him by the sigils on his tabard, but there was no sign he was any more aware of what was going on than Dagonet or Ezekiel.

Seeking explanation, his eye moved across the hall again. With an effort, he focused on one of the Watchers, and realised he had almost forgotten their presence. Even as he thought of them his mind slipped away, forgetting the question for which he sought answers.

A master in jet black took three strides forward – Sammael, commander of the Ravenwing. In his hand he held a black feather as long as a man’s arm. He stretched out his hand, the feather balanced on its tip in his palm, unstirred by the breeze Azrael could feel coming from over his shoulder.

‘One has come who would seize the shadows,’ Sammael chanted.

Azrael felt that he should take the feather in response, but when he reached out his hand the black plume turned to smoke between his fingers.

‘One has come who would lead the shadows,’ the Master of the Ravenwing continued.

‘One has come,’ chorused the remaining members of the Inner Circle.

Ezekiel was the next to approach, his one good eye flecked with gold as it glared through Azrael. The Chief of Librarians seemed shrouded in shadows; darkness hung from his robe like a cloak. Or like wings, flowing from his shoulders, ready to bear him up like the Angel of Death so revered by the Chapter.

‘One has come who would see the unseen.’ The Librarian held out his hands and the shadow rippled along his arms to his fingertips.

By unconscious prompt, Azrael turned his back on Ezekiel and he felt the touch of his companion on his shoulders, as though setting a great weight upon them. He could feel the cold embrace of the shadow behind him, a chill that suffused his body. Even as the sensation faded, the chamber seemed to brighten around him. Like a veil lifted from his eyes he saw the many passages and doors that linked together in the chamber.

‘One has come who will guide the unseen.’

‘One has come.’

Azrael blinked. In the moment when his eyes were closed, something changed. He had been staring at an empty wall. An instant later he stood before a huge archway three times his height, its keystone embossed with the head of a roaring lion. More startling still, the arch was flanked by two Dreadnoughts, each war machine a stark white, where a split second before had been nothing.

‘They are the Wardens in White,’ said Ezekiel, his voice returned to his own. Azrael glanced back and saw that there were no others in the chamber – no others that he could see, he reminded himself.

The armoured forms of the Dreadnoughts were heavy with ornate scrollwork and paintings of the Chapter iconography, their sarcophagi decorated with stylised versions of the Angel of Death. Scores of wax and parchment seals had been attached to them, and from their weapons hung small banners of plain black cloth.

‘What are their names?’

‘None can remember and no book records them,’ answered Ezekiel. ‘They are the last guardians of the Rock. Only the Supreme Grand Masters have passed beyond the Chamber of Passageways.

‘I am Hope,’ said the Dreadnought on the left.

‘I am Despair,’ said the other.

‘If you have the strength, dare tread the path between us,’ they intoned together.

Azrael nodded and took a step forwards. Ezekiel stopped him with a hand on his arm.

‘You will need this,’ the Librarian told him. He gestured to one side to draw Azrael’s attention to a Watcher in the Dark, who bore a scabbarded sword in its gloved hands. It lifted the weapon to the Grand Master and he took it.

‘The Sword of Secrets?’ He freed the blade, the keen-edged sword in one hand, sheath in the other. ‘But I thought it lost with Naberius.’

Ezekiel’s look and silence was non-committal. Azrael wondered if Naberius had asked the same questions, made the same remarks when he had been presented with his predecessor’s weapon – the Heavenfall blade that was the badge of the highest commander of the Unforgiven.

Another question nagged at Azrael but went unvoiced as he stepped between the Wardens in White. Why would he need a sword?

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

The corridor from the Chamber of Passageways was no more than ten paces long and ended in a plain wooden door. There was no handle or lock, but it opened as Azrael approached.

A bitter wind swept over him, numbing his face in a moment. The crack of bolters had him raising the Sword of Secrets the moment he stepped through, alert to danger. He found himself on the ramp of a Rhino transport; behind him came a squad of warriors clad in the icons of the Third Company.

Space Marines swept past him into the teeth of vicious fire from traitor war engines dug in along the snowy ridge ahead. Thunderhawks roared overhead and more Rhinos crashed to a halt on the bank of the frozen lake to disgorge other warriors of the Third Company into the assault, the fire of Predators and Land Raiders flashing past.

The ice fields of Soloo.

He lowered the sword and watched himself leading his squad, fresh to the rank of sergeant. He directed their fire towards a bunker on the hill. The squad’s lascannon spat beams of white death, while their bolters chewed at the ferrocrete pillbox. Missiles and battlecannon shells from the circling gunships crashed down, obliterating a hundred metres of razorwire, trenches and fortifications in a firestorm of plasma, shrapnel and promethium. Dark Talon aircraft swept down, their rift cannons tearing holes in reality, shredding what little remained of the defenders.

The scene slowed, explosions blossoming along the front, las-blasts and bullets searing past Sergeant Azrael and his Space Marines. It stopped, frozen in a moment of time.

‘What is this?’ Azrael demanded, stalking through the fire and fountains of snow, particles of smoke and dirt hanging on the air.

A moment, whispered a voice.

He looked around but saw nothing.

A moment of weakness, the voice continued. Azrael followed what seemed to be the direction of its source and came up beside the apparition of himself. The incarnation of his memory was blurred slightly, though everything around him was sharp and stark. The voice seemed to issue from his frozen counterpart.

‘Not weakness – assessment,’ Azrael replied, recalling the moment to which the voice referred.

The line of advance was cleared. You did not advance. Hesitation.

‘Inexperience. I took a few seconds longer than I should have to verify that the bombardment had been successful.’

See the missile.

He knew it was there, its vapour trailing from a crippled walker to the left. He had spotted it the moment the scene had frozen.

‘It will kill Brother Kasper,’ Azrael admitted. ‘Had we moved forward earlier we would have seen the walker and targeted it with the lascannon. This is not new. I have revisited this scene a dozen times over the centuries. But the past cannot be changed. And the future is not set. Kasper may have lived but another died a minute later if we had not been delayed calling for the Apothecary to extract his gene-seed.’

His surroundings boomed into life again, and two seconds later the anti-tank missile struck Kasper below the arm, punching through his armour and into the side of his chest cavity before it detonated its warhead. The explosion almost turned his thorax inside out, coating his battle-brothers with gore and splinters of bone.

But Azrael did not have to watch; he remembered it already. His gaze was fixed on himself, on the memory of himself. Sergeant Azrael was halfway out of the crater, attention fixed on the enemy in front.

The blaze of the missile engulfed Azrael, and when it faded the vignette had changed. Soloo was gone, replaced by a dark sky across which blazed a purple comet. Drop pods screamed down through the clear heavens, each a growing star of plasma.

One pod, retros firing, landed directly on top of him. He resisted the instinct to flinch, told himself it was simply a hallucination. With a crash the drop pod smashed into the ground atop his position, but he remained unharmed, the reconstructed memory unfolding around him.

He found himself, bounding from the drop alcove as the restraints fell away, bolter in hand. This was before Soloo, before Truan, the Cargenesis Ultimatum and so many other battles.

‘Athenia V, my first ever engagement as a full battle-brother. I acquitted myself well that night.’

Arrogance.

He followed the voice to himself once more, pounded across the blackened earth a few paces behind the newly ascended Brother Azrael. His marksmanship was efficient, clean, each burst of fire finding an ork amongst the green-skinned tide rousing from its camp towards the drop assault. He remembered seeing the banner of Master Tydroth amongst the fury of battle.

History paused again.

‘Is that it?’ Azrael pointed to the red and gold standard. ‘You think it arrogant to look upon the banner of my commander and be inspired.’

Ambition, whispered the breeze.

‘Aspiration. They are not the same thing.’

You have ascended to the highest rank of the Chapter. Your aspirations have brought you as far as they can.

‘It is only the beginning of a new battle,’ Azrael replied. He gestured with the sword, encompassing the fury of the greenskins disgorging from the rough shacks and tents, sweeping it across the green-armoured Space Marines deploying from their drop pods. ‘Just like this. Becoming Supreme Grand Master does not crown my achievements – it redefines them. What came before is done, part of the journey that brought me here. It means nothing to my future conduct. The war before me is the one I must win.’

The memory played out as he recalled. He kept at the shoulder of Sergeant Raxiel as he had been told, and fired relentlessly at the oncoming xenos filth. Concentrated aggression ensured that not a single ork came within fifty metres of the squad as they pressed on, forming a tight knot with several other squads as they reached the scattered hovels that denoted the outskirts of the ork settlement.

Sergeant Raxiel sent half the squad to clear the nearest outbuilding, Azrael amongst them. The Grand Master recalled vividly that there was nothing inside, but followed after his former self as he vaulted through the window.

Rather than landing on the dirty floor of the hovel, Azrael found himself in snow again, this time almost to his knees.

The wind keened down a desolate valley, not a single tree or bush to halt its progress. On the crest ahead rough banners flapped from crooked poles. Several dozen fur-clad warriors waited there, hammers and axes and shields in hand. A drummer started a slow, steady beat and they advanced through the snow towards the valley floor.

A matching rhythm from behind caused Azrael to turn. Another group of barbaric fighters descended from the opposite slope, beneath banners of bloodstained leather.

‘I was not here. I do not remember this,’ he said, watching the two warbands approach, sliding over the snow as much as pushing through it.

You have been persuaded to forget, the wind told him.

He scoured the line of faces to each side, trying to recognise anything, but nothing came to mind. He strode forwards, snow gripping his legs, seeking something familiar – an enemy face, a shield design or weapon. There was nothing.

Behind the warbands came two more groups, smaller in number. They were youths, wiry and hard-eyed, but none more than twelve or thirteen Terran years old.

Now he saw himself. Not from conscious memory, but a vague recollection that he could not define. He held a length of wood edged with bone shards, almost as tall as he was. Thick leather protected his arms and chest, his legs free of armour. The better to move through the snow, though he could not say how he recalled such a fact.

He made a leap of judgement, based on what he had already seen.

‘You are showing me moments of transition,’ Azrael told the Watchers, for surely it was they that had engineered this memorial construct. ‘I assume this is my first battle.’

The wind said nothing.

The two warbands broke into charges with throaty bellows of hate, while the youths forged through the snows towards each other for their own separate battle. It was hard to watch with detachment as his young self squared up against a girl of similar age from the opposing tribe, a maul of fire-hardened wood in one hand, a sharpened stake in her other. He had no connection from memory, and on an intellectual level understood that he would be victorious – but in his enforced ignorance he could not help but want his young self to do well and was eager to see events unfold.

Child-Azrael swung wildly, his bone-axe missing the girl by a wide margin. The girl, a vicious grin on her face, punched him in the jaw and knocked him into the snow. The youth threw himself sideways as she swung her club, and scrambled through the snow with his enemy in pursuit, legs pumping as he struggled to find purchase in the white drifts.

He regained his feet just in time, weapon raised to block the descending club. The girl’s sharpened stick found his leg, and Grand Master Azrael winced as blood poured through the thick fur of his younger self’s leggings – his leg twinged as if in memory, though he had no conscious recollection of the event.

The wound only incensed the young warrior. Azrael felt pride as the youth launched a blistering assault, swiping his axe at the girl again and again, ducking and dodging her return swings.

His foot caught on something under the snow. A rock, perhaps. He stumbled, falling into the upswing of his foe’s club. Its tip caught his mouth, slamming his head backwards. He flailed in the snow, stunned, weapon falling from numb fingers.

The girl stood over him. He wiped a hand over his mouth, smearing blood across his cheek and arm, still dazed. She pulled back the club.

A stone hit her in the temple and she toppled, falling across his legs with eyes glazed. Another boy shouted, pointing at the unconscious girl, insistent, his meaning clear. His younger self picked himself up, still groggy, and retrieved his bone-axe.

‘No,’ whispered Azrael. He stalked towards the young version of himself. ‘The victory is yours. There is no honour in her death.’

The scene froze with boy-Azrael poised to smash in the head of the defenceless girl.

What is honour?

‘Avoiding needless slaughter.’

It is a weakness. It is indulgent mercy cloaked in ritual.

‘It is a code, the reason we fight. If not for honour, we are simply killers. Honour shapes our cause.’

Honour is false. Victory is all.

‘Did I spare her?’ he demanded, standing over the pair of young warriors. They seemed so small to him.

Does it matter?

The snow was falling fast; thick clots of white filled the air. The scene began to waver, to pale before his eyes.

‘Did I kill her?’ he growled, head turning left and right to seek the perpetrator of this torment. ‘I do not remember! Show me!’

He wanted to reach out and snatch the axe from his young hand, but he knew it was simply an apparition, not reality. He could not change what had passed. Was that the point?

‘Why do you remind me of these events? What accusations are you trying to make?’

The white was almost complete around him, the paleness an all-encompassing aura of diffused light, like being inside the shell of an egg. The light flickered and divided. His eyes focused again and the light resolved into several lights, becoming yellow and orange.

A dozen candles on sconces on the wall around him.

He was in a circular chamber of rough stone blocks. No doors. He looked up and down. No trapdoors or grates or other means of exit.

An oubliette.

In the shadow beneath each candle stood a Watcher in the Dark. Red eyes regarded him with unblinking stares.

‘These are your doubts? Hesitation, arrogance, mercy? These are my sins by which I’ll be judged.’

We do not judge. We watch.

‘Why did you choose these visions? If not accusations, what are they supposed to mean?’

We did not choose them.

‘That makes no sense.’ He turned from one Watcher to the next, but they seemed identical, even to the folds and creases of their robes. ‘Why confront me with these moments from my life if they have no meaning?’

So that you understand.

He was not sure what to do next. Had he already failed the trial? Was this prison to be the last thing he saw, slowly starving and dying of thirst? He examined the stones again, ran his hands over their surface. They were real enough, cool to the touch, with patches of lichen in places.

He approached one of the Watchers, but could get no closer than three paces from it – when he took another step it was as though the room shifted and the Watcher was another pace further away without moving. The chamber adjusted around him as he turned on his heel and started towards another. Watchers and candles remained just out of reach, so that it seemed as if he and they were immobile and the stones revolved around them.

He checked every surface again, but there was no crack or weakness in the stones of the walls or floor and the ceiling was out of reach. Azrael waited, staring at the figure of a Watcher, trying to see what lay beneath the hood, though not quite sure he wished to know.

The lack of action gnawed at him.

‘What do you want?’ he shouted, turning about on his heel, staring at his captors. ‘What do you want of me?’

There was no reaction, not even a flicker of recognition.

The Dark Angel examined one of the candles, as close as he could. It flickered like a flame, but the wax did not melt. After some time – time he lost track of despite his innate Space Marine temporal sense – he was sure he saw a pattern, a repetition. The candle flame looked like a hololith on a loop a few minutes long.

Was time really passing? Was he caught in some kind of stasis chamber?

This thought sent a surge of adrenaline through him and he fought against the overwhelming desire to act, to do something.

It was a test, he reminded himself. Everything was part of the trials.

‘Patience,’ he muttered even as the urge to slam his fists against the wall gripped him.

For how long would he have to wait until their intent was revealed? How long had he already been here?

Azrael returned to the centre of the oubliette and sat cross-legged on the floor. The Grand Master had forgotten he was carrying the Sword of Secrets still. He sheathed it and placed the scabbard across his lap. Fingers knitted together, he rested his hands on the sword and contemplated his surroundings, trying to remain calm.

There certainly was no way in or out, other than by the machination of the Watchers in the Dark. He turned his attention to the sword. Ezekiel had said he would need it. Was he meant to attack the Watchers? To prise or dig his way out?

Another idea occurred to him. Time passed here, but what of the world outside these walls. What was the rest of the Inner Circle doing?

Waiting for his return. Or... had he failed? Was this not the test but the consequence of his shortcomings?

Was he to remain here forever while another took up the rank of Supreme Grand Master? Surely previous aspirants had been found wanting.

‘I am not infallible,’ he said.

Was it a test of acceptance? To settle for this fate rather than command? What drove him to desire his freedom? Duty? Self-
aggrandisement? Arrogance?

‘I failed.’ His voice was a hoarse whisper, choked with the realisation. He swallowed hard and did not look at the Watchers. Azrael felt the desire to plead his case again, to argue against their judgement, but he remained silent all the same.

Was that pride? A stubborn glee from his own martyrdom?

How long had he been here? How much longer would he have to endure?

Until dehydration killed him. Even with his post-human physique he could survive for only a few days without water. His body would start to cannibalise itself in the last twenty-four hours as it desperately sought to survive – as though it were another organism apart from the creature that was Azrael.

Madness would likely claim him. All the training and psycho-conditioning could do nothing against the physiologically-created manias that would assail him. Body chemistry, altered or not, ruled the mind more than willpower.

Such an end was ignoble, the nadir of what he had desired for his life. Reduced to animalistic craving and insensible delusions when he had fought so hard for nobility and civilisation.

Azrael slid the sword partway from the scabbard, exposing about half a metre of shining blade. Looking at the keen edge, a darker thought occurred.

Was this a quicker, more noble death?

Ezekiel was the most powerful psyker of the Chapter. He must have seen something in Azrael’s future – or lack. It had been an act of mercy to pass him the sword.

How long? How long to make that decision? Was his resistance to the temptation the proof required by the Watchers?

He hated all of the questions that wracked his thoughts, despised himself for his need to know these things. More evidence of pride being in control. It was not his choice; he was the instrument, the tool, the weapon.

The weapon... Azrael’s gaze moved back to the blade. His reflection seemed haggard, cheeks sunken, hair grey. He had been here far longer than he had realised. Or the madness had already begun conjuring phantoms of his own fears.

He looked up, suddenly convinced that he was alone. The Watchers regarded him impassively.

He could endure no more scrutiny.

Perhaps the quicker way.

But it had not yet come to that end. Azrael did not give up easily, and he was not about to surrender to despair at the first setback.

He slammed the Sword of Secrets back into its scabbard and took a breath.

It was important to be objective, to challenge assumption. The Wardens in White had told him that he must tread the road between Hope and Despair. Was that the meaning of the visions?

The Watchers had brought him here to undergo their trials. What were they looking for? Weaknesses. They had said as much. Flaws in his character that would impinge his ability to lead the Chapter. They had doubts and had shared them.

Even so, they had insisted that they had not chosen the visions. It could be a lie, a manipulation intended to distract and dishearten him, but that seemed unlikely. He had no reason to think the Watchers were being false with him. In that case, they were genuine in the assertion that they had not selected the nature of the visions.

He closed his eyes, trying to still his thoughts. If by act of sheer will he could come upon the answer, he was determined to do so.

Pride. Was it pride talking? Was it pride that made failure so unacceptable? Not just pride, but stubbornness. But it was not wrong to be steadfast in his beliefs and principles. The conflict this caused threw his thoughts into another spin, unable to settle on one matter for some time.

He opened his eyes and started counting the stones. It was a simple technique that Chaplain Analleus had taught him. The mundane, repetitive task was better than any mantra or canticle, and required just the right amount of concentration to clear his thoughts.

It was time to start again with the analysis.

The Watchers had not chosen the visions. Who had? He felt that if he could solve that puzzle he would take a step closer towards passing the trials.

The visions had come from his memories. One was even a memory he could not consciously recollect. The Watchers had certainly been complicit, giving shape to those embedded thoughts. But they had not chosen them. By what criteria had they been selected and by whom?

He mentally retraced his steps, back to an earlier assumption. If the trials were not set to expose the doubts of the Watchers...

‘My doubts,’ he said, standing up. ‘They are the lingering threads of my past life. They are the worst parts of me given form, the doubts that have accrued over the centuries.’

He stepped towards the closest Watcher in the Dark.

‘I understand. But the answers I gave were not justifications, they were the truth. We all have doubts, and if you are a leader it is not that you have them, but how you deal with them. My doubts are what keep me true to the cause. I question my motives. I examine my deeds. I keep my doubts close for they are the guard against complacency, the sentry I place to ward away arrogant certainty.’

The Watcher looked up, the bright coals of its eyes met his gaze and dizziness struck the Grand Master. The room started to revolve, faster and faster, until he lost balance and fell.

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

A breeze stirred Azrael. Stronger than a breeze. Cloth lightly touching his face.

He opened his eyes and saw the hem of a robe, dark green. The Grand Master thought it a Watcher in the Dark, but as his senses returned and he looked up, he found himself looking at a tapestry depicting the Angel of Death.

A quick glance around revealed more of the same, twelve in total, hanging by golden ropes from hooks on the plain plastered walls of a chamber a dozen metres across.

There was no sign of the Watchers.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

The question came from every direction, an assault on his hearing. He caught movement in the corner of his eye and spun, but there was nothing to see, only a gently undulating hanging.

‘I am a Space Marine. I know no fear. You cannot intimidate me.’

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

He shuddered at the force of the demanding voice. Azrael’s hearing buzzed for several seconds after, though he was sure there was no echo despite the spacious dimensions of the chamber.

More movement on the edge of vision. This time he turned more slowly, alert to any change. He saw nothing.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

He was about to give an answer but instinct threw him aside; only a moment later his conscious mind registered the whisper of a blade cutting the air. He turned as he rolled, whipping the Sword of Secrets from its scabbard.

Coming to his feet, he confronted empty air, his blade raised to a guard position. A second later, he turned again in anticipation of a fresh attack, slashing with the sword at throat height.

The meteoric metal crashed against another blade. Azrael stepped back, reeling from the spectral sight before him.

One of the Angels of Death loomed large in the centre of the chamber, its ornately hilted sword gripped in two skeletal hands, a yawning black emptiness beneath the rippling hood of its dark green robe. White wings quivered behind it.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE? it demanded, cutting its sword towards Azrael’s midriff.

He parried without thought, turning the blade past his thigh. The counter-attack was equally instinctual, the tip of his blade thrust towards the chest of his adversary. With impossible speed the Angel of Death blocked the attack and whipped its own sword at his shoulder.

Though he parried this latest assault, Azrael gasped as the pain of his recent wounds flared through the muscle of his arm and chest.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

‘The Emperor!’ Azrael shouted back, stepping aside to avoid an incoming stroke towards his aching chest. ‘I serve the Emperor!’

Leaping out of reach, Azrael saw another Angel of Death flow from a second tapestry. It was as if the threads came to life, unravelling and bulging from the canvas, reknitting as a towering apparition.

The Grand Master dived between the two wraith-like figures, cutting his sword through the robe of the one on his right, where knees should have been. The Sword of Secrets parted cloth, slicing effortlessly through the thick fabric, but passed on through the robe without meeting resistance.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

The pair of angels spoke in unison, their wings fluttering with agitation as they turned on the Grand Master and assumed identical poses with swords pointed at his face.

‘Mankind,’ he gasped. ‘The Space Marines serve mankind.’

Azrael managed to block one of the swords, but the other struck him in the arm. The long blade left no mortal injury, but at its touch a numbing chill spread along the limb, deadening it between elbow and fingers. He tried to flex his hand, to regain life, backstepping rapidly as a third Angel of Death manifested itself in the chamber.

With the Sword of Secrets in one hand, he stayed in motion, jabbing and feinting, using short and quick steps to keep himself out of harm’s way, not allowing the three apparitions to surround him.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

‘The Imperium?’ Azrael was tiring quickly despite his superhuman physiology. The slightest graze of a ghostly blade sent a shiver through him, leeching his strength, wearing down his resolve.

The fourth Angel of Death came at him directly from behind. Azrael threw himself at one of the others to avoid being speared in the back, shoulder-charging the spectre with a roar.

Cloth fluttered around him, its touch oddly delicate amidst the fury of battle, and then he slammed into the wall behind, meeting hard stone at full speed. He rebounded and turned, lifted up his weapon in a wild defence to catch the crossguard of a descending blade.

WHOM DO YOU SERVE?

Sword locked with the apparition of the Angel of Death, he stared directly into the fathomless depths beneath its cowl, seeking some light, some indication of what it was. What it wanted of him.

‘The Dark Angels.’ He pushed with all of his strength, dragging his blade free from the entanglement of the ghost sword. ‘I serve the Dark Angels.’

As swiftly as they had manifested, the Angels of Death retreated to their banners, becoming one with the woven cloth in seconds. Panting, Azrael regarded them warily, flexing his fingers as life returned. The pain in his shoulder subsided and his hearts slowed from their frantic thrashing.

Something had changed, and it took a moment until he saw what it was. Where before the embroidered figures had held their blades with the point to the ground, they were now upraised.

The Angels of Death saluted him.

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Azrael wondered how he had not noticed the door before, between two of the hangings. It was not so much a door, though, but a line of shadow delineating its outline and nothing more. He pushed and felt a little resistance. Putting more weight behind his effort he felt the stones behind the plaster give way. The section of wall receded, leaving a gap just a little taller than him, and just wide enough for him to pass through. It stopped, meeting another wall, to leave an alcove a couple of metres deep.

He stepped into the opening and examined the newly revealed sides and floor, but there was nothing but more smooth, naked plaster.

‘This way.’

The unfamiliar voice behind him caused Azrael to spin on the spot, sword at the ready. He had thought he could not be further confounded by the trials of the Watchers, but to come face to face with a copy of himself was a revelation.

The doppelganger was perfect in every way, as far as he could tell. Every small scar and lesion from centuries of war marked his tanned skin. The eyes, the wrinkles at the corners of eyes and mouth, perfect down to the smallest detail.

‘I am a projection,’ the doppelganger told him. ‘A representation. What I look like is inconsequential.’

‘Of course,’ Azrael said, feeling foolish. He sheathed the Sword of Secrets and noticed that his counterpart was unarmed.

‘The trials turn my doubts against me, test my loyalty. What are you for?’

‘That is curious – I was about to ask you a similar question. What is it to be Supreme Grand Master?’

Azrael stepped back into the chamber. It was as before, the hangings on the plain walls, still with swords raised. He circled his doppelganger. The other Azrael did not try to keep him in sight, but stared vaguely ahead, like a hololithic avatar.

‘Why do you not answer my question?’

‘Because it is really my question, I think, and I am wondering what I really mean by it. The Watchers have constructed this trial not to test me, but for me to test myself. What is it I actually want to know?’

‘Then answer the question. What is it to be the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels?’

‘It is to be the Lord of the Tower of Angels, the Master of the Unforgiven. Commander of a thousand Space Marines, spiritual lord to thousands more.’

‘Your commands will guide them, shape the course of countless souls. One day the future of the Chapter, of the Imperium, may rest on your decisions. What will you do with that power?’

‘Defend the realms of the Emperor, protect mankind and prosecute the alien and impure.’

‘Trite nonsense, Azrael. You want to be Supreme Grand Master, not a Novitiate Prefectus. Answer properly. What is your greatest power?’

‘To destroy worlds. This fortress-monastery alone can sterilise entire star systems.’

‘Short-sighted, beneath one that would assume command of such a potent force. What do you hope to achieve?’

Azrael thought about this for far longer, as unsatisfied with his answers as the doppelganger. It was impossible to obfuscate, to deceive, when arguing with himself.

‘I was called, chosen by the others of the Inner Circle. I do not seek this honour – I must bear this burden.’

‘Better.’

‘The Hunt. The Hunt is the greatest mission of the Dark Angels. While it goes unresolved, while the Fallen remain at large, there is an open wound in our Chapter that spills our lifeblood, distracts us from our true calling.’ He took a long breath. ‘My greatest power is to unite the Unforgiven, to bring us together in common cause. All that we achieve is as nothing if we cannot expunge the stain upon our honour. And with me is also the power to destroy it all, to unravel the very fabric of the Imperium itself with revelation and truth. Secrets and lies, these are the unfortunate weapons I have in my armoury, as much as boltguns and chainswords.’

‘So what will you do as Supreme Grand Master?’

‘End the Hunt. Restore our honour.’

‘End the Hunt? Is it possible?’

‘I must believe so. To think otherwise is to submit to the ultimate ruination of the Chapter. Ten thousand years we have endured. Not under my watch shall we finally succumb to the treacheries of the past.’

While he had been speaking, his attention had wandered, his focus moving away from the doppelganger. It returned now as the figure started to change, becoming a shadow that divided and divided again like a duplicating cell, creating a dozen vague likenesses of itself around him, each somehow merging with the angels depicted on the banners.

As though waking from a dream, Azrael blinked, clearing his vision, his body and mind dull with fatigue.

Twelve members of the Inner Circle waited around him, hoods covering their faces, hands lost within voluminous sleeves. By their tabards he knew them: the Grand Masters of the companies, the heads of the Librarius and Reclusiam.

A gleam of red and gold drew his attention to Ezekiel’s half-hidden face. The Chief Librarian nodded once and lowered to one knee, gaze cast to the ground. Like a ripple expanding outwards from him, the others followed, showing obeisance to their new commander.

‘Praise Azrael,’ they intoned, ‘Supreme Grand Master, Lord of the Dark Angels.’

Ezekiel straightened but did not stand.

‘My lord, you have passed the trials of the catacombs. You are the Supreme Grand Master, Commander of the Unforgiven. Your word is our law. Your oath is our honour. We are your servants, as you are the servant of the Chapter. What would you bid us do?’

Azrael stroked his chin in thought, aware that every word he said carried an unimaginable weight. To speak in haste could bring disaster.

‘I shall think on the matter. Tomorrow you shall have your orders.’

Was that a hint of a smile on the face of Ezekiel, or a trick of the dim light? It came and went in a moment, and there was nothing but the Chief Librarian’s usual stern demeanour when he stood up. The Inner Circle nodded their respects and passed wordlessly from the chamber.

When they had departed, Azrael noticed a small, solitary figure in one corner, almost invisible in the shadows. Red eyes gleamed, brighter for an instant. He felt a sensation of contentment for just a second, and then the figure was gone.

DATE IDENT: 939939.M41

They sought him out in his private chambers, Ezekiel and Dagonet. The Left Hand and the Right Hand, they had sometimes been called when Naberius had been Supreme Grand Master. Azrael greeted them, offered them wine and chairs and then stood at a window looking out at the stars.

His gaze passed down the expanse of the Tower of Angels, turret after turret, battlements and walls laid down on foundations that predated the Imperium by a millennia or more. All that was left of ancient Caliban, a space-borne scion of a destroyed world.

‘Who shall know what sights once lay beyond this window?’ he said quietly. ‘Fields, perhaps, or the green forests of which the oldest chronicles speak. Mustering grounds where armies that conquered the galaxy for the Emperor were gathered.’

He turned back to them and gestured towards the small door to one side.

‘The Supreme Grand Master’s library.’ He ran a hand along the ornate table, the dark wood smooth beneath his touch. ‘The Supreme Grand Master’s desk. Now mine. As are the Supreme Grand Master’s labours.’

‘We stand to bear the burden with you,’ said Dagonet, ‘as we did for your predecessor. But the choice is yours. Naberius chose us as his Right Hand and Left Hand – you may choose one, both or others as yours.’

‘A waste of deliberation,’ Azrael replied. ‘I can think of no finer officers in the Chapter.’

‘Do not be so swift to dismiss alternatives,’ said Ezekiel. As always he spoke softly, his voice carrying a weight far beyond its volume. ‘We will take no slight if you decide others are more suited to your temperament. Sammael, for instance, is a bold and decisive leader. The lower ranks glory in his achievements and daring. He would make a fine champion.’

‘Or Sheol,’ suggested Dagonet. He twirled his goblet between his fingers, the dark red wine within threatening to spill over the rim but never quite doing so. ‘Like yourself, he once considered joining the Reclusiam. A warrior of particular intelligence and heart.’

‘I would think you do not enjoy the position,’ Azrael said with a short laugh. ‘You seem eager to name your replacements.’

Neither of them shared his humour. They exchanged a look and it was Dagonet that spoke.

‘Your appointment comes with twofold duties, Azrael. You are the commander-in-chief, Chapter Master of the Dark Angels. You have the experience and skill to command fearlessly and competently.’ The Master of Sanctity shrugged. ‘But name any man amongst the Inner Circle and that would be true. One does not become a senior officer without merit. Your tenure, whether long or short, shall not lack for military achievements.’

‘Your praise overwhelms me, Brother-Chaplain.’

‘It is the second duty, the Hunt, which will define you,’ Dagonet continued. ‘I am the custodian of the Chapter’s spirit, Ezekiel the guardian of its mysteries. You must be master of both, and through your leadership of the Inner Circle your accomplishments and legacy will be defined. Accomplishments that few will ever acknowledge and fewer still will celebrate.’

‘To be the Right Hand and the Left Hand is to hold power at the deliberations of the Inner Circle,’ Ezekiel continued. ‘You must be assured that whomever holds such titles is worthy of the trust and authority that comes with them. Do not be persuaded by Naberius’ decision – you must make your own, fully and freely.’

‘And I have,’ Azrael replied, his tone sharper than he intended. He sat behind the desk, gaining himself a little time to regain his composure. ‘I can think of no better candidates and I refuse to expend further effort for no gain. If my ascension is to mean anything it is to signal a fresh desire for action, for impetus, not inertia.’

‘As you wish,’ said Dagonet, standing. Ezekiel rose also but remained silent.

‘Brother-Chaplain, we shall speak at the council,’ said Azrael, by way of dismissal. ‘Ezekiel, remain with me a while longer.’

When Dagonet had departed, Azrael sat with his elbows on the desk, chin rested on his fists, looking at the Chief of Librarians. He met the unwavering stare of Ezekiel’s mismatched eyes, determined not to avert his gaze despite his unease at their scrutiny.

‘What do you know of my examination by the Watchers in the Dark?’

‘Only that at which I was present,’ Ezekiel replied. ‘Naberius tried to tell me of his experiences but I refused to listen. I would advise the same to you. What passes between you and the Watchers, then and now and in the future, is for you alone.’

‘I fear their trial has placed more doubts in me than it has settled. I am reminded of my many mistakes and defeats.’

‘Give me a leader that has never made a mistake and I will show you a man that never had to learn a hard lesson. We laud victory. We must value the forge of defeat equally.’

Azrael accepted this with a nod, heartened by the thought. He continued to watch Ezekiel, who seemed unmoved by his new commander’s scrutiny.

‘Who are you?’ Azrael eventually asked.

‘A question that masks another, brother-commander,’ replied the Librarian. ‘What do wish to know about me?’

‘I know your duties, Ezekiel, and the marks of honour next to your name. I can look up your battle history, the story of your novitiatehood. I even know your role within the darker quest we undertake, and your dealings with the Fallen.’ Azrael sat back. ‘These are the things you have done, the duties you perform. Tell me, who are you? What are you to me?’

‘You cannot define the indefinable,’ the Librarian said slowly. He stepped past Azrael and waved towards the starfield beyond the window. ‘What is a star? A pinprick of light. A monster capable of devouring worlds. A lifegiver. A collection of volatile atoms. A beacon.’

‘Did you refuse to give Naberius straight answers as well?’ growled Azrael.

‘I am what you need me to be, Supreme Grand Master.’ Ezekiel laid a hand on the desk in front of Azrael, fingers splayed. ‘I am your confidante, if you wish. Your advisor, should you require it. A judge, if that is what you desire. Your conscience, if you need me to be so. Your enforcer, your avenger, your guide and your critic. Any and all of these things I shall be.’

‘You mean “can be”, surely?’

Ezekiel straightened and set his inhuman stare upon Azrael, unblinking and intense. He seemed to swell in size while the shadows in the chamber darkened, making the gold flecks of his eye brighter, and the red gleam of the false lens in the other seem all the closer.

‘I do not choose the roles, and neither do you, Lord of the Rock. I will simply be what is required, shaped by your choices, moulded by your acts.’

The Lord of the Librarius turned away and the room returned to its normal state.

‘You must understand a simple fact, Azrael,’ Ezekiel told him, not turning around. ‘I am more powerful than you. My abilities and training have honed me into a creature as far above a Space Marine as you are above a normal man. If I desired it, I could slay you out of hand. I need not even raise my sword to do so.’

Azrael pushed to his feet, an angry retort swelling inside, but it was halted as Ezekiel turned around, his expression not one of belligerence but sorrow.

‘I do not say these things to threaten you, Azrael, because I do not need to. Despite your conditioning, against all the defences prepared in your mind against the likes of me, I could unpick your thoughts as a thief at a lock. More than that, I could reassemble them as I desire, to make a puppet of you to my whim.’

The Librarian sighed, head bowed, a moment of very human frailty Azrael had never seen in Ezekiel before.

‘You think your loyalty was tested? You think that your character, your strength of purpose was pushed by your induction into the Chapter, by your trials with the Watchers in the Dark? Think on what examinations my kind undergo, what judgements are arranged against us for the simple fact of a quirk of nature? Forget my suitability to become a Space Marine. When first I was found, my life and soul as a human hung in the balance.’

His face grew stern again, eye narrowed.

‘I am a psyker. A witch. A doomsayer. A necromancer. I dwell in a place between worlds, not entirely of one or the other. I walk paths no other man can see. I open doors to places where the greatest evils dwell. I confront temptations that would crush the will of lesser folk.’

Azrael said nothing, taken aback by the usually taciturn Librarian’s outburst.

‘You ask what I am to you? You demand that I explain myself to you, Supreme Grand Master?’ Ezekiel returned that inhuman stare to his lord. ‘I am nothing, for if not, I would be everything!’

Stunned, Azrael made no intervention when the Chief Librarian turned away. With a flick of a hand Ezekiel opened the door and strode out, his talisman and charms clattering. Azrael blinked as the door slammed shut.

For several minutes he looked at the door, trying to absorb what had happened. The only firm conclusion he could draw from the entire episode was that he would have to phrase his questions more precisely in future.

DATE IDENT: 941939.M41

The tower stands on a hill, broken, its empty windows a dead stare, battlements tumbled from within.

Lightning flashes. There is a face in the lowest window; frail fingers clasp at the metal bars. The night air is torn by a plaintive howl, not of any animal, but the unleashed despair of a man.

The twilight that breaks across the sky is no dawn, it is the glow of devouring flames. From the ground itself rises the fire and in the crackle of its burning washes a maniac’s cackle. The licks of fire that paw at the ruin are questing fingers seeking entry. The inferno surrounds the tower, its ruddy light caught on the age-worn stones.

From the tower the man shrieks and moans, his pain a piercing felt keener than any dagger wound. The flames consume him, releasing an agony that is overwhelming, all-devouring and eternal. The burning is not the burning of another, but of the dreaming observer.

He that was without the tower is now within and only he can break himself free.

Azrael rose from his sleep-like state, the dream an itch at the back of his mind. He lay on the hard slab of his cot for several minutes, trying to catch the last images but they fluttered from his thoughts like the embers of a dying fire on a breeze. They were replaced by a memory of small hooded figures with ruby eyes.

He sat up, scanning the cell for interlopers, but he was alone, the door bolted. He recalled the words of Ezekiel, his promise of non-interference, and had to trust that the psyker was true to his commander.

The Chapter Master took the ewer of water from the nightstand beside the cot and drank heavily, ignoring the plain metal cup beside it. The cold liquid refreshed his body even if it felt as though a dark fog continued to permeate his thoughts.

There was something he had to do, he was certain of it, but could not recall the specific task. Instead, he walked over to the vox-caster on the desk. He pressed the runes to connect to the Librarium. After a delay of several seconds the link crackled into activity.

‘This is Supreme Grand Master Azrael.’ The extra word in his title came surprisingly naturally. ‘Inform the Chief Librarian and the Master of Astropaths that they are to broadcast an invitation to our Successor Chapters to attend at the Tower of Angels for a grand council. The sons of the Lion will convene in full at Rhamiel.’

The Hall of Decemial echoed with the tread of the company masters and other officers of command rank. Their robes and hoods were gone; they came garbed in their war-plate, as warriors of the Dark Angels, not members of the Inner Circle. The audience chamber was nearly a hundred metres long, situated above one of the great gates of the fortress once known as the Angelicasta.

Banners and rolls of honour from ten thousand years of war adorned the walls, overhanging each other in places, so great was their number. The heraldry of a thousand captains surrounded the proceedings; the standards of sergeants and squads otherwise long forgotten by history formed the backdrop of Azrael’s first council as Supreme Grand Master.

At one end of the hall was a low stage set with a throne, its back higher than the tallest Space Marine, made of intricately carved obsidian and ebony. This chair dominated the room despite the vastness of the hall. Its size warranted attention but its presence was far greater, for this was the Throne of the Lion and the mark of the Primarch lay upon the wood and stone. Every Space Marine that entered looked upon the chair and gave a quick bow, as though Lion El’Jonson were still sitting upon its dark frame.

A little way ahead and to the right of the forbidding throne was set another chair, itself a sizeable piece of furniture that would have graced any monarch’s hall, but dwarfed and made plain by its companion. Azrael stood before the Regent’s Seat, fully armoured, the Sword of Secrets laid upon the broad oval table placed in front of the thrones for the council’s deliberations.

The table was nearly thirty metres long and ten wide, its surface once heavily lacquered in red but now a dark brown, almost black with centuries of wear and patina. At the edges the wood was split and knocked from ten millennia of fists pounded in support of a speech, of knives belligerently plunged into the timbers and fingertips jabbed in emphasis.

Gold leaf marked a winged sword at its centre, and about the icon were arranged six other symbols: a key and a gate; an hourglass and a flame; and a sword and a gauntlet, their original meanings now lost to antiquity.

This was the public face of the Chapter command, the known seats of the ruling council, distinct from the secret, hidden chambers of the Inner Circle. The galleries and hall were open to all to witness the deliberations and oaths of their leaders, though few were the times in ten thousand years that any but a handful of Dark Angels had been spared of battle duty to observe such meetings, save for on those rare occasions decreed by the Supreme Grand Master that recalled the entirety of the Chapter during momentous events.

Such was not this day. The Dark Angels were at war; companies still engaged across Rhamiel to contain the uprising and guard against the threat of the Night Lords and other traitors. To mark his ascendancy, Azrael had permitted his commanders half a day of reflection and debate. The Supreme Grand Master was absolute authority incarnate within the Rock, but he was not a tyrant.

A few warriors whose injuries prevented them returning to the battlefield watched with interest, alongside several score of Neophytes and Scouts for whom the occasion was a first glimpse of such Chapter spectacle, and also a much-desired break from the hard routine of training and studies. Some tried to maintain the solemnity they thought appropriate of such occasions, others chattered excitedly, exchanging tales and rumours of each hero of the Chapter that entered the grand audience chamber.

Opposite the thrones were immense double doors, made of wood carved with two identical figures of the Angel of Death. Azrael could not help but remember his trial when he looked at them, hiding a shudder of discomfort at the recollection.

By the great doors stood two young Neophytes, each no more than sixteen Terran years of age, dressed in tabards and cloaks of deep green. One had a long clarion in his hands and let forth a pealing note as each Chapter dignitary entered. As the last echoes resounded around the Hall of Decemial, the other youth called out the name and titles of the council member.

‘Captain Ballan of the Seventh, Lord of the Unbowed, Master of the Watchers!’

With a wheeze and hiss of hydraulics from his artificial spine and left arm, Ballan paced down the hall to his position next to Araphil of the Sixth.

‘Master Chaplain Denathiel, Bearer of the Ebon Scrolls!’

The senior Chaplain made his way to the opposite side of the table to sit next to Asmodai, the recently promoted Master of Repentance. Azrael could not help but notice that the two of them did not exchange so much as a glance. Dagonet was already seated, either oblivious to this antipathy or choosing not to engage with it in the public forum of the council hall.

‘Captain Calogrant of the Eighth, Lord of the Wrathful, Master of Condemnation!’

Calogrant was short, comparatively, heavy-jowled and thick-browed. His bald scalp caught the light of the hundreds of lumens that lit the chamber. His dark eyes fixed on Azrael and did not leave the Supreme Grand Master even when seated at the table.

‘Captain Xerophus of the Ninth, Lord of the Remorseless, Master of Relics!’

And on they came, Saphamedes of the Tenth, and Epistolary Dalgar, and another Chaplain of the Reclusiam, Sapphon, until all thirty members of the Chapter Council had been assembled bar one.

Last appeared a warrior in Terminator armour, newly painted with fresh heraldry. He held before him the Sword of Silence, kin-sword to Azrael’s own Heavenfall Blade, offered up with hilt pointed towards the Supreme Grand Master.

The heralds fell silent at this point. The assembled officers stood, all eyes turned to the newcomer. With hisses and clatters of gear they unsheathed swords and freed their axes, hammers and maces from their slings. Thirty-eight weapons raised in challenge, thirty-eight relics of the Chapter whose histories were better known even than their bearers, offered in defiance of the stranger amongst their ranks.

Azrael then stood, picked up the Sword of Secrets and sheathed it at his hip, drawing his cloak over it, hiding the weapon.

‘My first appointment – Lanval of the First, Lord of the Deathwing, Grand Master of the Knights of Caliban.’

‘I have been bidden here by my lord,’ the Terminator declared, his voice carrying easily to the furthest reaches. He drew the Sword of Silence and raised the glittering blade towards Azrael and then to the others. ‘I have come to answer my duty. Do any here deny me?’

For several seconds silence descended. Lanval faced down his challengers, expression stern, eyes moving from one Master of the Chapter to the next.

‘Praise Lanval!’ Zadakiel of the Fifth was the first to lift up his sword. ‘Grand Master!’

‘Praise Lanval!’ added Sammael, raising the Raven Sword in salute to his new brother-in-command. ‘Grand Master!’

A chorus of ritual assents and cheers swelled up from the company of officers, welcoming Lanval into the council. All but one had raised their weapons in acknowledgement of Azrael’s choice and their attention turned to the last.

Ezekiel stood with the point of Traitor’s Bane levelled at the candidate – the edges of the force sword glinted with psychic power, matching the golden motes that dazzled in the Chief Librarian’s remaining eye. For several seconds more the Librarian remained motionless. Azrael held his breath. It was Ezekiel’s right, as any council member, to oppose the appointment, but such a right had not been exercised for many centuries.

‘Praise Lanval.’ The Chief Librarian’s hoarse whisper seemed louder than the shouts of the others combined. Traitor’s Bane lifted in acceptance. ‘Grand Master.’

Lanval acknowledged the salutes with his own blade and then sheathed his weapon before striding to his place at the grand table, to the gap between Azrael and Sammael. He received more informal congratulations and support on the way, and accepted the praises of his companions with dignified nods.

All present paid honour to Azrael once more before settling their weapons again. Only Azrael remained with his sword drawn. He looked at each of his councillors in turn.

‘The accession of a new Supreme Grand Master is never a cause for celebration, for in the elevation of one is counted the fall of another. I come before you to swear that I will discharge the duties of Chapter Master to the best of my skill. Formal declarations of command transfer have been broadcast for the attention of the Adeptus Terra. So it is that I assume without hindrance, by the traditions of our Chapter and the requirements of Imperial Law, leadership of the Dark Angels Chapter of the Emperor’s Space Marines.’

Azrael held the Sword of Secrets at chest height and gripped the blade in his other hand, drawing blood from his palm. He let his life fluid run down the runnel of the blade and offered up his wounded hand to his companions.

‘I swear my first oath here. We shall avenge ourselves against the rebels and Night Lords that robbed us of Naberius and continue to slight our honour with their resistance. Rhamiel is cursed. We shall deliver it.’

DATE IDENT: 237744.M41

He shivers and clasps the rough woven tunic tighter. He knows he should not feel the cold. The draughty corridor is nothing compared to the bitter winds and snow of his home. But it is not the temperature alone that chills him. The stones leech the warmth from the air, from his skin, as though feeding on it, sustained over an age by the life of mortals.

The others feel it too and press close together for comfort.

‘In line,’ growls the towering giant in the skull-faced mask. His robe is black, stitched with a silver hourglass on the left side of his chest. His hood covers his head, and all that identifies him are the dark grey eyes behind the eyeholes of the skull. ‘In step.’

In one hand he carries a rod tipped with the symbol of the winged sword – the icon of the Dark Angels, the young aspirant has been taught. The master chides and goads with it but never strikes. His presence alone, his gruff remonstrations are enough to have the half a dozen aspirants falling into single file again.

They walk, leather slippers following the track down the corridors worn smooth by unknown previous generations, until it leads them to a square chamber with eight archways. Through each they see more rooms, and within the rooms rows of lecterns and shelves. Youths from their own age up to those on the verge of adulthood work at the lecterns, buzzing electroquills in hand.

‘You, in there.’

It takes him a moment to realise he is being addressed. He sees that the master is pointing to the closest arch. The rest are sent to different chambers.

None of the inhabitants look up as he enters. He loiters at the threshold until an ageing serf dressed in black overalls and a dark green shirt notices him and beckons him closer.

At the serf’s direction he stands at an empty lectern. There is blank parchment upon it and beside is a thick-bound tome open to a colourful page depicting a monstrous green humanoid with lines of small symbols all around it.

‘Your past ends here.’ He looks up in shock as the master looms over him. ‘Nothing that came before exists in this place. Your home, your parents, your friends. You are dead to them and they to you. Your name is gone, left behind on that planet. The Rock is now your whole world.’

The master draws a slab of metal from the folds of his robe and a shining plate springs into life on its surface. The youth stares in fear at the sorcery on display in this place – lights that need no flame and other dark marvels.

‘You shall be...’ The master’s finger flicks the plate a few times. ‘Azrael. Your name is Azrael now.’

‘Az-ray-ul.’

‘Azrael. Yes.’ The master puts away his magical slate and pushes back his skull mask to reveal a broad face, the left side heavily scarred with a burn, the skin thick and leathery. The look in his eyes is stern but not cruel. ‘Azrael, you are to become a Space Marine of the Dark Angels Chapter. The tests you have undergone, the trials we submitted you to, are just the beginning. Only the bravest, fiercest, fastest and most loyal warriors become battle-brothers of the Chapter. If you do, if you are amongst the one-in-a-hundred novitiates that survive and prove your worth, you are committed to a lifetime of service to the Emperor and unending battle.’

These statements are made clearly, slowly, without accusation or softening. They are simply facts laid before him.

He nods his understanding, though he grasps only the most basic concept of what has happened.

‘I will...’ he looks around the room. ‘I will learn here? To be a Dark Angel?’

The master nods and gestures to one of the nearby youths.

‘Daethus, this is Azrael. Fetch the Roll of Honour.’

The boy nods and dashes off through another doorway. He returns quickly with a scroll and offers it to the master. The Space Marine declines it with a shake of his head and points at the other novitiate.

‘These are the deeds of all that came before who bore the name of Azrael. Daethus, read out the Roll of Honour.’ The master picks up the pen beside the lectern and presses it into Azrael’s hand. ‘You will make a new copy, on here.’

Azrael looks at the blank sheet and at the electroquill. He puts the pen down on the lectern and looks at the master with tearful eyes, believing he has already failed.

‘I cannot... I cannot make the symbols.’

‘Writing,’ Daethus tells him. ‘It is called writing.’

‘I cannot make the writing, master.’

The master pulls down his mask and his voice becomes a harsh growl again.

‘Of course not. Your ignorance is your virtue. But we will unmake you, and with the flesh and bone and spirit that is left craft something far greater. Say not that you cannot read nor write. There is nothing a Dark Angel cannot strive towards. Say instead that you cannot read and write yet.’

Azrael picks up his stylus.

DATE IDENT: 032940.M41

Vengeance. To most, vengeance is little different from justice. To them vengeance is a balancing, a restitution against those that have wronged. A proportionate act. To the Dark Angels vengeance was a master to be obeyed, a demand, not to right wrongs or address slights, but to eradicate all threat and knowledge of the injury.

To the Dark Angels vengeance was a blade whetted by the bodies of their enemies for ten thousand years, and they were both precise and relentless in their pursuit of it.

The purging of Rhamiel began with the extermination of the Iron Stalagmite. While Naberius had been hobbled by the suspicion that the Fallen were involved in the rebellion of Rhamiel, Azrael no longer harboured such illusions. If they had been present, they were long gone. All that remained was to excise the cancer they had nurtured in the flesh of the Imperium.

At the command of the Supreme Grand Master, the Rock moved into low orbit above the enemy stronghold. Naberius’ previous assault had destroyed all but the most basic anti-orbital weapons and these were easily dealt with by pinpoint strikes from Dark Angels aircraft and bombardment from their escort vessels.

Ancient power grids blazed into life at the intervention of the Master of the Forges. Cybernetically nestled within the framework of the Rock itself, the lord of the Techmarines redirected the output of plasma reactors and poured forth his ire into the batteries of cannons that bristled upon the walls of the Tower of Angels. Serf teams laboured in the depths to bring forth the huge macro cannon shells from the magazines and toiled with the massive torpedoes that would sow Azrael’s wrath upon the surface of Rhamiel.

Maintaining position just at the edge of practical orbit, the Rock appeared as a blot against the noon sun, the shadow enough to cause a chill to pass over the defenders that manned the walls of Rhamiel’s greatest stronghold. Rebel and heretek looked up in awe as it seemed an early twilight settled upon them.

Through the miracle of scanner datafeeds from circling aircraft and vox-net communications, from atop a stepped dais at the centre of the strategium the Supreme Grand Master viewed the scene on the world kilometres below. On screens five metres high he observed the unfolding spectacle from the centre of the Rock’s command spire.

The command deck situated halfway up the main tower was an octagonal hall, its high ceiling held up by broad columns. Blue light spilled down from huge lanterns mounted in the high vaults, merging with the gleam of monitors and vid-screens from a hundred workstations arranged about the hall’s main deck and on galleries and mezzanines above. Though there was a company of attendants and Space Marines alert to the orders of their Supreme Grand Master, the bulk of operations were handled directly by the Master of the Forge. It was to him that Azrael issued his command.

‘Burn it,’ he said simply.

The fire command blared out through the gun turrets and cannon batteries of the fortress-monastery and the Techmarines of the Dark Angels responded. Laser fire speared down through the skies and plasma bombs rained.

From the ground it was as though the heavens wept fire. Beams of light pierced the walls while the fury of artificial stars fell upon the citadel. In their wake screamed shells built to break the spines of starships and warheads that exploded with vortices of flaring energy that swallowed everything they touched.

Into the devastation swept a flight of Dark Talon fighters, their rift cannons tearing punctures through the walls of reality to rip asunder the foundations of towers, to crack open bunkers and magazines.

Black-painted Land Speeders of the Ravenwing swept and soared through the smoke and flames of the Iron Stalagmite’s death, assault cannons and heavy bolters slashing through any that had survived the onslaught from the heavens. Like vultures preying upon a dying behemoth, the gunships of the Dark Angels circled the summit of the fractured mountain. The thunder of battlecannons and the streaks of blacksword missiles heralded the end for scores of hereteks fleeing the ruination of their city.

Azrael watched the unfolding termination without comment or emotion. It would be too easy to take satisfaction from the event, to see the destruction of the Iron Stalagmite as the end of one road and the start of the other. To take joy from that moment would be an invitation to repetition, to seek destruction for its own sake.

He knew there were some amongst his fellow Chapter Masters who might glory in the crushing power unleashed against the enemies of the Emperor. There were likely some even amongst his predecessors as Lords of the Rock. Not for Azrael the aggrandisement of annihilation. The destruction was not a victory; it was a condemnation of the failure of Naberius.

Azrael did not see an enemy stronghold laid to ruin, he saw a citadel of the Emperor lost. He would bring fire and death to Rhamiel and would wage the terrible war required to expunge the taint in the world’s soul. Thousands had already died. Many thousands more were still to be slain. Millions perhaps, depending upon the depth of heresy and the scale of resistance.

As he watched a tower collapse under the combined pummelling of two Thunderhawk gunships, Azrael reminded himself that this might have been avoided. Naberius had hoped for a clean strike, a decapitation of the rebel movement that would allow the rest to be vanquished without resort to full-scale intervention.

It was a laudable aim, and spoke of Naberius’ moral quality more than his strategic acumen. The avoidance of collateral deaths was desirable but not of paramount importance. The Imperium had countless numbers; even the loss of billions barely registered in the calculations of the Adeptus Terra. The practicalities of such losses were inconsequential.

But Azrael knew why Naberius had delayed the grand stroke, and hoped to win by capitulation what Azrael was now forced to extract with decimation. The power of the Rock and of the Dark Angels that were its far-flung children, might be intoxicating to a lesser commander. Even as Grand Master of the Deathwing, leader of one of the most destructively elite companies in the Imperium, Azrael had known but a fraction of the power that he now wielded.

And the temptation to unleash that power, the lure to put right all wrongs with its overwhelming force already nagged at Azrael’s thoughts. Already he was re-examining his decision to crush Rhamiel, to bring the full force of the Dark Angels Chapter to bear against the rebel world.

Vengeance. The shade of Naberius demanded it. The honour of the Chapter was salvaged by it. Duty to the Emperor, the example to others, allowed no alternative.

For all that, Azrael knew there was another possibility, another more personal reason for the extremity of his reaction.

The site of Naberius’ death was being eradicated, torn down to its decayed roots, but that did not absolve Azrael of what he had done. None had mentioned it, but the fact remained that Naberius had been alive when they had found him. Though sustained by the machines of the hereteks, the Supreme Grand Master had been alive and it had been Azrael’s act that had ended his predecessor’s existence.

‘Supreme Grand Master?’

The questioning tone broke through his thoughts, and Azrael realised the attendant had addressed him twice before to gain his attention.

‘Yes?’

‘Grand Master Sammael requests permission to lead investigatory teams into the ruins.’

Azrael knew immediately the subtext to the Ravenwing commander’s request – to hunt for any Fallen that may have been in the citadel. That had been Naberius’ fear, that destruction alone would not root out the traitor Dark Angels he thought responsible.

‘Declined,’ Azrael replied. ‘The scourging will continue at distance. Ravenwing squadrons to remain enforcing the perimeter.’

The attendant nodded and returned to the vox desk. The sound of boots on the deck announced the arrival of another Space Marine behind Azrael.

‘You keep the leash tight on Sammael, my lord,’ said Ezekiel, stepping up beside Azrael.

The Supreme Grand Master said nothing immediately, but watched the unfolding controlled cataclysm on the many displays arrayed about the command deck. He saw both from a great distance and at first hand the force he had unleashed. Orbital scans highlighted the plasma residue and cyclotronic scarring as clinical lines of data. Conversely, the cockpit feed of a Ravenwing gunner brought stark contrast – the mute, screaming face of a silver-scaled heretek ripped asunder by heavy bolter rounds, his arm and leg missing as he flailed across bloodstained rubble.

Azrael looked directly at Ezekiel.

‘There is nothing to be found in the ashes of the Iron Stalagmite. The manner of the Night Lords’ arrival during our assault stands testament to a technology, or other power, capable of spiriting them through an active force field. I do not expect them, or any others of rank, to have remained long in the stronghold once the bombardment started. There is no reward in a quest for something that does not exist.’

Ezekiel’s eye narrowed at this answer, sensing Azrael spoke of something deeper than this particular mission.

‘On occasion we do not know the true nature of the quest until we undertake it,’ the Librarian replied. ‘The goal is often simply enlightenment.’

‘Wisdom without action is empty,’ Azrael replied. ‘The Iron Stalagmite is no more. One by one we shall find the rebels’ dark holes and bring the light of battle to shine upon them. Though we may do so for the memory of Naberius, let us not forget that a world of the Emperor has been taken from His kingdom.’

‘There are others that can restore it to His Imperial grace,’ Ezekiel replied.

‘The Astra Militarum? By the time they arrive, a year hence perhaps, the whole world will be damned. We have a chance here to thwart the growth of heresy before it takes deeper root. Whatever misgivings we may have about coming here, what untruths lured Naberius to his doom, we should not forget that we have been granted an opportunity.’

Ezekiel said nothing, leaving Azrael to wonder if his silence was acquiescence or accusation. It was hard to believe the Master of the Librarius’ odd behaviour towards his new commander was related to the outburst in Azrael’s study. That suggested a pettiness beneath even a newly promoted Scout, never mind a Master of the Chapter. Azrael knew there was no point in asking directly. Ezekiel seemed intent on trying to teach the Supreme Grand Master a lesson, and like the Watchers during Azrael’s trial was equally determined to force him to discover the nature of the lesson himself.

‘Strategic control, hierarchal report,’ he called, turning away from Ezekiel. ‘What is our next target based on population density and Adeptus Mechanicus presence?’

‘The city of Ixxios, Lord Azrael,’ came the reply. ‘Widespread forge facilities and Adeptus Mechanicus work force.’

‘Good. Have the Intolerant and escorts move to attack position and notify Master Belial. We will leave no haven for the hereteks. We shall scourge Rhamiel until the populace will grant them no succour.’

Azrael watched for a few seconds while the order was relayed. With the next step along the path resolved, he turned to address Ezekiel. The Chief of Librarians had departed, leaving Azrael with an uncomfortable number of questions.

DATE IDENT: 113940.M41#0734

‘Do you think they’re ready for a fight?’ asked Sammael.

Smoke from burning cities cast a twilight pall across the ashen waste that had been the heartland of Rhamiel’s northern hemisphere agrizone. To the north west the flanks of shallow mountains were awash with promethium flame from three days of relentless firebombing. When Azrael had promised to burn the rebellion from the face of Rhamiel he had not been using metaphor.

The Dark Angels had been relentless and merciless in their prosecution of the scouring. In areas identified as harbouring large rebel forces, the Ravenwing and battle companies drove millions from their homes, before the gunships and star vessels of the Chapter razed the cities and levelled farmlands and sprawling manufactoria.

After such devastation of the third city, Daephios, a counter-rebellion had begun. Thousands of loyal defence personnel and armed Imperial citizens now roamed the streets to attack any they believed to have rebel sympathies, driving them from their urban shelter and away from the bulk of the population. There would be no more succour, no sanctuary for those that defied the Emperor.

The wilderness had provided little relief for the hereteks and renegade planetary defence force. Separated from the general populace they had been made easy prey for orbital bombardment and targeted aerial assaults.

The Dark Angels offered no relent against their enemies. The Ravenwing sought them out from the ice-harvest fields of the southern pole to the equatorial geothermal stations, and brought down the ire of a dozen starships on those they found.

The Deathwing broke open the plasma cores of forge-cities and armoured columns speared into the red deserts of the eastern hinterlands, engaging massed enemy tank squadrons across treacherous rivers and ever-shifting dunes of carmine sand.

Across Adeptus Mechanicus forgeworks over a thousand-island tropical archipelago the battle companies of the Rock drove out the hereteks and their insane machines. They warred across five thousand bridges, tunnels and skyways to raze the last existence of the traitor cult from Rhamiel.

Now the last rebel defence forces issued forth from the northern mountains, to challenge the Dark Angels to open battle, the last of the hereteks among their ranks. The smoke of their exhausts adding to the fume of the burning refineries to the east, long columns of tanks previously sheltered from the wrath of the Space Marines wound down the mountain highways, escorted by three immense Knight walkers roused from dormancy by the renegade Adeptus Mechanicus. Tri-rotored attack craft swept above, while the sky was scarred with the contrails of interceptor jets. Soldiers numbering in the thousands advanced on foot and in armoured transports, beneath black banners and skull-topped standards. Everywhere the winged skull of the Night Lords could be seen, replacing the Imperial aquila and Machine-God’s sigil in devotion, though of the traitor legionaries themselves there was yet no sign.

Broken outcrops of glassified rock and plasma craters marked the battle zone amongst still-burning lakes of promethium and fields of unexploded ordnance. An orbit-dropped aegis line delineated the killzones, a solid row of prefabricated armoured ferrocrete punctuated by squat bunkers every three hundred metres. Several kilometres of livewire – heat-seeking razorwire – had been laid upon the banks of the Scalsis River to guard against aquatic intrusion on the Dark Angels’ western flank. Here Land Speeders had already duelled with patrol boats and turreted hovercraft issuing from armoury depots dug beneath the mountains.

The strength of the Chapter was arrayed against the oncoming army, nearly a thousand battle-brothers from across the ten companies. Scout squads had deployed in the charred foothills to waylay and ambush where possible, and to monitor and report on the numbers and strength of the host issuing forth from the valleys.

Devastators manned the Aquila strongpoints and Firestorm redoubts, mixed with Tactical Squads equally capable of defensive and offensive action; in turn a dozen Dreadnoughts bolstered the line where the terrain was dense and fighting would be at its closest. Vengeance weapon batteries and Deathstorm drop pods had been scattered like seeds over the razed ground a kilometre ahead of the main line.

Assault Squads and the Deathwing Terminators waited half a kilometre behind, a fist pulled back ready to land a decisive blow or counter-attack an enemy success. Land Raiders and Rhinos waited to carry forth these reserves while Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds of various marks and armament readied their heavy weapons to counter any armoured thrust.

Seething shadows moved back and forth across the newly blasted wastelands, the concealing auras of Ravenwing Darkshrouds. Within the umbra of ancient technologies, the bike squadrons and attack bikes of Ravenwing roamed, ready to intercept outriders of the enemy moving ahead of the main force in Sentinel walkers, and to counter mounted patrols and stalking automatons conjured by the wild technologies of the hereteks.

At the centre of the line rose the main bastion of the Dark Angels fortifications. The walls of the compact fortress rose five metres from the plain, manned by honoured squads from the Third and Seventh Companies. Another twenty metres high stretched the central tower from the summit of which Azrael and his highest-ranking advisors held their final council before battle commenced. Brother Agathor stood bearing the Standard of Fortitude, the fragment recovered from the hereteks now incorporated into a new tapestry faithfully recreating the original design by the labour of the Chapter’s aspirants.

‘This is a fight they shall regret,’ Lanval said.

‘Which begs a question,’ said Ballan, Master of the Seventh Company. ‘What do they hope to gain? Either a fool or a genius leads them against Space Marines, fortified and prepared.’

‘That they come is glad tidings enough for me,’ said Sammael. He started towards his Land Speeder, the Sableclaw, which hovered beside the wall of the tower roof. The Grand Master of the Ravenwing stepped into the waiting seat and looked back at the others. ‘The battle is almost upon us and I must be with my company. I may let some of the rebels reach the line for you to make practice of your bolters – I am feeling charitable today!’

He drew the Raven Sword in one hand and took up the controls with the other. With a salute, Sammael guided the Land Speeder away, the swirl of his passage soon lost in the haze of smog and distance.

‘I had best join my men also,’ said Lanval. He gestured towards the Land Raider Crusader waiting behind the tower. ‘If you want to end this swiftly, do not delay the counter-attack, my lord. It will not take long for the rebel scum to break, and I would rather not give them too much of a head start back towards the mountains. Let them hit the wall and then drive them hard from it.’

‘I will remember that, brother-captain,’ said Azrael.

The other company masters left with Lanval, so that it was only Azrael, Ezekiel and Dagonet who remained atop the citadel.

‘Ballan speaks truthfully,’ said Azrael. ‘To meet the enemy in open battle so swiftly is beyond all expectation.’

‘Is it possible they care for the people they come from?’ suggested Dagonet. Ezekiel and Azrael both directed harsh glares in his direction. ‘It is right to hate the heretic, but do not misjudge them. They are wayward, but it was not the will to do evil that first took them from the realms of duty and loyalty. Selfishness, often, but sometimes the desire to seek something greater for others. Who knows what lies the Night Lords have planted in their souls? Their new allegiance is carried on every shield and banner.’

‘But their masters do not march with them,’ said Azrael. ‘Either they have committed the sin of treachery twice and abandoned their new lords, or there is some purpose to the renegades sending out their army to confront us openly. They have not begun to stretch our resources or test our mettle.’

‘You are quiet, Ezekiel,’ said Dagonet, ‘even for you. Does the Librarium have any guidance for our lord?’

The Chief Librarian turned his unnatural stare out to the battlefield. He rested one hand on the hilt of Traitor’s Bane at his hip, the other held in a fist against his chest.

‘The omens do not portend well for this battle,’ he confessed. ‘There is a greater darkness in the shadows.’

‘Should we abandon the fight?’ said Azrael, startled by these words. ‘You said nothing previous to our deliberations.’

‘To chase shadows is to clutch at nothing, Azrael. Echoes of the future might be phantasms of our own creation. It is a warning, not an edict.’

‘Is there further precaution I should have taken, Ezekiel? The army is arrayed and, to my experience, outmatches the foe in quality and disposition. Our brothers are prepared, in good spirit and eager. The enemy are desperate, poorly led. It is not overconfidence to express my satisfaction at this arrangement.’

‘I speak not of the battle laid before us but of a battle we cannot yet see,’ said Ezekiel. ‘The Night Lords, Azrael. Where are the Night Lords?’

‘Hiding, or perhaps they have fled. We have seen that they owe nothing to the creatures they have swayed to their cause. In seeing their cruel works undone they might choose to abandon Rhamiel to escape the just prosecution that follows them.’

‘Be wary,’ Ezekiel said. ‘That is all I can tell you.’

Azrael nodded and smiled.

‘Were you such a nagging mother to Naberius?’

‘No,’ said Ezekiel, showing no humour. ‘Now he is dead.’

‘Quite.’

The Supreme Grand Master descended into the tower with his companions and attended to the strategic station on the upper level. Here a battery of screens and vox-decks compiled datafeeds projected from dozens of inlet-channels throughout the Dark Angels force. Vid-captures from Ravenwing Land Speeders, orbital multi-spectrum scans, Deathwing sensorium readings and coopted vox-records from command tanks and squad sergeants all converged into the banks of cogitators.

Overseeing the mass of gauges, vid-slates, hololiths and vocalisers was Radagal, a senior Techmarine of the Chapter Armoury. The veteran was more machine than man, having been wounded close to death by a rampaging tyranid monstrosity some years before. The behemoth had almost devoured Radagal before Sergeant Belial and his Deathwing had sawed their way into the creature’s gullet and dragged the unfortunate Techmarine free, slaying the alien leviathan in the process. Radagal had lost both legs, his left arm and half of his head, but through the attentions of the apothecaries and his brothers’ technomancy, and no small measure of personal stubbornness, the Techmarine had survived.

Had he been a brother of the fighting companies he would have likely been interred in a Dreadnought sarcophagus to continue his warrior life. As a specialist of the Chapter, his skills in other areas were too valuable, and a unique automobilia had been constructed for him based upon the engineering and cyberorganics that sustained the Master of the Forge in the heart of the Rock’s infrastructure.

He moved on two tracks taken from a rapier mobile laser cannon, his missing arm replaced with a trio of tendril-like appendages that ended in a dataport-spine, tri-digit claw and combat blade. From his bared skull splayed a dozen mind impulse unit cables, three of which snaked to the apparatus of the strategic metriculators, the others connected to attendant half-man servitors slaved to the Techmarine’s brainwaves, who monitored and manipulated the external controls of the databanks and cogitators.

The vox speakers buzzed with reports from the Ravenwing and orbiting ships, detailing the movements of the approaching army. Azrael deciphered the short snippets of overlapping combat-cant, piecing together a picture of the battle zone as he watched the runes appearing on a two-metre display screen at the centre of one wall.

The enemy tanks had formed an armoured spearhead at the fore, using themselves as a mobile barrier to protect the troop carriers and infantry. Their pace was deliberate, their formations tight. The Knights moved alongside with long strides, their directional ion fields leaving a scatter of red sparks in their wake.

‘No mad dash, no manic rush for victory,’ remarked Dagonet. ‘A calculated attack. Some semblance of leadership remains.’

‘They retain some of their Imperial discipline, that can be seen. But whether it is good command or simply the habit of drill we shall only see when the first shots are fired.’

‘We shall not have long to wait,’ said Radagal. A subscreen flickered into life and a jerky vid-feed crackled across the viewer. Azrael recognised the gliding movement of a Land Speeder. Its flight path took it along the closest hillsides, upon which large-bore cannons were extending stabiliser legs while enormous vat-grown monotask servitors lifted shells from ammunition carriers.

‘Can Sammael reach those guns?’ asked Dagonet. ‘Strike before they can open fire?’

Azrael assessed the plethora of range-demarcation runes and sigils that crowded the main display and shook his head.

‘The enemy have one flank anchored on the river, the same as we do. The tanks out-range the Ravenwing by a margin.’ Azrael moved to the broad panel and picked up a digi-quill. He drew it over the screen. Bright lines of red appeared in its wake to delineate the possible attack vectors towards the assembling enemy battery. ‘By the time they outflank to the east, the enemy can move these infantry into a blocking position. The only other route is directly through the armoured spearhead.’

‘The Knights, Azrael,’ said Ezekiel, drawing the commander’s attention to the giant war machines advancing alongside the tanks. ‘They will soon be in range of Sammael’s squadrons.’

‘Bikes and Land Speeders are no match for bolt cannons and volkite weapons,’ said Dagonet.

‘Agreed,’ said Azrael. ‘Radagal, signal Sammael to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the east. The Ravenwing must endeavour to engage their light elements but stay away from the Knights and heavy armour. When the attack is broken they will be at the forefront of the pursuit.’

Radagal complied without comment, while Azrael continued to examine the unfolding scene. He moved his attention to the orbital assets at his disposal. A Dark Angels battle-barge was currently on station to provide support, its huge cannons at the ready.

‘Have the Angel of Redemption commence bombardment of the enemy artillery.’

A nod of acknowledgement from Radagal.

The renegade tanks came on, the rumble of their tracks and the growl of their engines audible even without the pick-up and vox-feeds. The outermost perimeter of defence posts came online, their machine brains detecting the approaching armoured vehicles. Stabs of white lascannon beams cut through the smog while rocket pods rippled with the fire of multiple launches. In reply battlecannons boomed in the murk and autocannons barked their retorts.

An engine exploded, a muted blossom of orange in the gloom. Armour sparked and flared from other shots. Shell impacts from the return fusillade ripped up the already tortured ground around the dropped emplacements and tore at their armoured walls. Ion shield crackling, a towering Knight pressed forwards; its heavy cannons raked fire along the defence line to obliterate several outposts with a single devastating salvo.

Slowing and turning, the columns of renegade vehicles headed through this breach like water rushing for a hole in a dyke. Coming into range they poured more fire onto the ends of the severed cordon line. The Knight continued its assault, crushing a Deathstorm pod beneath its foot even as the automated turret spewed a hail of missiles into the oncoming war engines. Behind, another Knight opened fire; the crackle of arcane technology seared through the smoke to obliterate another outpost.

In their wake the transports accelerated, crashing and bumping over the uneven terrain, small armoured cars speeding alongside. Interceptors peeled away as Azrael ordered his gunships to stem the sudden rush of tanks heading towards the aegis-line.

‘Lanval’s foresight is impeccable,’ Azrael told the others. ‘Here, at grids fourteen and fifteen. They are hoping to punch through just one part of the line, overwhelm us with successive waves against a narrow front. We can halt the attack with just a single solid counter-offensive. We’ll blunt the assault, catch the lead elements against their own following forces and then turn them around one flank with an armoured noose.’

He quickly reeled out orders for his reserves from the armoury and Deathwing to commit, as well as for two of the companies on the wall to mount up in transports for a counter-attack through the uncontested ground to the west. The heavy weapons of the Devastators had engaged the nearest tanks, who in return were slowing to lay down a barrage of cannon and multilaser fire against the aegis-line.

‘They are making our task even easier,’ said Dagonet. ‘Already they are slowing down their own second wave.’

A hissed intake from Ezekiel caused the Supreme Grand Master and Master of Sanctity to look sharply at their companion. The Chief of Librarians was not looking at the screens, his gold-flecked gaze directed to something no other could see.

‘Codicier Vanael has detected something,’ Ezekiel whispered. ‘A psychic disturbance. It is similar to the warp echoes we detected before the Night Lords’ arrival at the Iron Stalagmite.’

Before Azrael could inquire any further, Radagal attracted his attention.

‘My lord, the Knights are changing the axis of their attack. They are coming directly towards the centre. Towards us.’

‘Let them,’ said Azrael. ‘Our wall cannons will give them a hot greeting for their folly.’

‘My Librarium brothers are of accord,’ Ezekiel continued. ‘I feel it also. A shifting. A veil splitting.’

‘The Night Lords show themselves at last,’ said Azrael. He glared at Radagal. ‘Where? Where are they coming through?’

‘No anomalous energy signatures, my lord. If they are–’

‘They come,’ growled Ezekiel. ‘By the Lion’s bane, their sorcery is powerful!’

Knowing that technology alone could not detect or predict the sorcerous ways of the enemy, Azrael had to see the battlefield for himself. He sprinted to the stairwell and mounted the steps three at a time until he reached the roof lookout.

To his right the white Land Raiders of the Deathwing pushed out from the line and disgorged their Terminator squads into the heart of the enemy armoured offensive while a storm of weapons fire blazed past between the tanks.

Around the First Company, infantry squads surged like the froth of a tide up a beach, thousands of hereteks and renegade soldiers stumbling and running past the broken remains of the outer line, flowing past the wrecks of tanks and defence emplacements.

In the far distance, the hills burned with plasma flames while the bombardment from orbit continued. The blur of warheads and supersonic shells fell like monstrous hail, each detonation illuminating the battlefield with a flare of bright death.

The Knights seemed uncaring of the counter-attack to their rear and were, as Radagal had warned, heading directly for the command tower. This brought them across the line of advance of the companies Azrael had despatched in the encircling manoeuvre. The Rhinos of the Dark Angels fell back from the armoured giants, awaiting the support of weapons capable of harming the war machines of the traitor Adeptus Mechanicus.

‘That way.’

Ezekiel had followed close behind and pointed to the north west. Through the murk Azrael could see the red-gold shimmer of opening portals, just like the ones at the Iron Stalagmite, though larger by far.

Midnight-clad vehicles and squads disgorged from the swirling rifts, just a few hundred metres from the aegis-line. Heavy weapons from both sides opened fire, criss-crossing the cratered plain. Azrael counted twenty, then thirty, then forty traitor legionaries, and more still arrived. The breaches continued to widen and the first Land Raiders pushed through. More outlandish creations lurched and lumbered into view – shrieking, snarling monstrosities of metal and unnatural flesh melded together by prohibited sorceries and malign technology. Whip-like tentacles writhed and cannons glowed balefully with their own life.

The force advanced swiftly, contemptuous of the bolter fire that rained down on them. Even with his auto-senses, Azrael found it hard to mark out the Night Lords in the murk of smog and fires. As the traitors advanced they trailed shadows like smoke, coils of concealing darkness that followed them from the warp rifts.

‘Get Sammael!’ he barked over the vox to Radagal. ‘I need an immediate counter-attack! And air support. Target priorities on the Knights for every gunship available.’

He looked up, the flare of fire between the duelling aircraft above not an encouraging sight. As he watched, another portal appeared, perhaps a kilometre above the battlefield. He expected to see aircraft emerge, but the thing that broke out of the exposed warp was no piloted machine. A drake-like body of lightning-wreathed metal and bone hauled itself from the breach with an ear-splitting screech that could be heard even over the raging cacophony of battle.

Jagged wings swept out trailing storm clouds like some obscenely vast chick still wet from its hatching. A thunderclap shook the ground as the beast swooped down. Its serpentine neck flexed with a shriek of tormented metal as it cast its gleaming gaze along the line of defensive embrasures and bunkers. A thunderhead of darkness and lightning streamed as the heldrake dived to the attack.

DATE IDENT: 113940.M41#0845

The horrific semi-mechanical abomination fell upon the squads of the Fourth Company to the east of the command tower. Bolter fire sprang up from the walls to patter from the armoured skin of the onrushing beast, accompanied by the crack of missiles and sharp flare of plasma.

Raking fire erupted from the cannon set within the beak-like maw of the creature, every round trailing sparks of unnatural energy as they ripped into the armoured warriors manning one of the gun emplacements. Metallic claws flashed as the heldrake crashed bodily into the Dark Angels streaming along the aegis-line. Power armour shattered beneath the terrible assault, half a dozen warriors of the Chapter laid low by the monster’s crushing impact. Its rampage continued, serrated wings shearing through ceramite and bone, the fire of its maw-cannon like the breath of a mythical beast.

‘Radagal, concentrate all available firepower on the Knights. Assault reserve to engage the Night Lords.’ Azrael sprinted to the wall just as Dagonet reached the roof of the tower. ‘With me, brothers!’

The Supreme Grand Master vaulted over the wall. He fell several metres, gauntlet scraping over the Angel of Death cast into the ferrocrete before they found purchase on the crosspiece of its sword’s hilt. Azrael pushed himself away and plunged the last ten metres to the rampart below.

He landed hard but recovered instantly, bounding into a run along the wall towards the mechanical drake. Ezekiel and Dagonet followed at a slightly less precarious pace, a few metres behind their commander.

‘Ballan! Bring half your squads. Now! The rest provide fire support for the assault reserve.’ The Lord of the Rock continued to snap out orders as he pounded along the aegis-line, accumulating squads like a comet’s tail. Reaching the first revetment he leapt, the muscle bundles of his armour launching him onto the roof. He landed without missing a stride and bounded down on to the next line of parapet. ‘Radagal, I want orbital support redirected immediately.’

He was still three hundred metres from the rampaging monster. Master Zadakiel had rallied several squads around his banner and was directing fire at the beast flapping and screeching along the wall. Bolt rounds exploded harmlessly against the infernal construction; missiles left blackened blossoms against the lightning-wreathed metal but did little damage.

Fire screamed in from the Rhamellian tanks not yet engaged by the Deathwing. Shell detonations rippled along the rampart in a rolling salvo. Flame and shrapnel surrounded Azrael as a round exploded right in front of him. He plunged on through the shock wave, ignoring the shriek of his power armour’s warning chimes.

Through the churning thoughts that swirled in his head, Azrael realised that the Night Lords had held the advantage since the outset and he had acted exactly as they had desired. The orbital strike against the artillery had drawn away the wrath of his deadliest guns. The Ravenwing had been forced to the flank of the army by the armoured thrust, away from the Night Lords’ point of entry. Even his premature commitment of the reserves had only served to direct forces away from the aegis-line, to allow the Night Lords the opportunity to emerge within the outer line against a depleted defence.

As he hurdled a Rapier Destroyer he could not help but think he was doing exactly as his foes intended. The heldrake was just close enough for the counter-attack, but far enough to draw forces from directly in front of the Night Lords’ line of advance.

But he could not do otherwise. The line was tested at four points along its length and he could not afford to allow one part to fail. He needed the gun turrets and squads of the centre to hold back the Rhamellians. He did not appreciate the irony that the foe he deemed weakest was the most likely to break through at that moment.

Blurs of darkness sped overhead as Thunderhawks, Nephilim fighters and Dark Talons banked hard over the aegis-line to engage the renegade Knights. Ion fields flared into scarlet clouds as they shunted aside battlecannon fire and missiles. Super-heavy weaponry roared and crashed in response; the blast of laser and volleys of shells scythed through the smoke-filled air. Azrael watched a Thunderhawk split open from cockpit to tail by a coruscating beam of energy, its burning remnants crashing down into the hereteks surging towards the Dark Angels wall.

The constant stream over the vox had become a half-heard murmur. Azrael listened only for one voice – Radagal’s. The logistarius filtered out the mass of communication; his calm reports highlighted only the most pertinent developments.

Despite the anarchy that seemed to reign, the battle was still in favour of the Dark Angels. The Night Lords had used all their cunning and sorcery to gain every advantage, and the numbers of the hereteks and renegades would soon start to take their toll, but for the moment the line held.

Crossing the roof of another strongpoint, Azrael threw himself down onto the wall just one hundred metres from the warp-spawned monster. He unslung his weapon – the artificer-created bolter-plasma gun known as the Lion’s Wrath – and drew the Sword of Secrets.

Behind him, Traitor’s Bane trailed cerulean fire in Ezekiel’s fist and sparks of psychic energy flashed in the Librarian’s eye. The aquila-shaped head of Dagonet’s crozius arcanum gleamed with a silvery powerfield, a plasma pistol in his other hand.

‘Keep it grounded,’ Azrael bellowed as he raced towards the beast.

The heldrake swung towards him, a flailing battle-brother gripped in one claw. The creature opened its maw to reveal the multi-barrelled cannon that jutted from its throat. The weapon started to spin with a building shriek.

Azrael opened fire at the same moment that Ezekiel unleashed a blast of psychic fire. Plasma and unearthly energy slammed into the creature’s mouth. Molten metal spat and streamed as the heldrake thrashed backwards, coughing streams of liquid fire.

Bolts continued to spatter harmlessly from the silvery metal of its hide. Its tail whipped back and forth, slashing the head from another Dark Angel. Rivulets of cooling metal hung between sword-fangs as the heldrake lumbered towards Azrael, claws striking sparks from the armoured floor of the rampart.

Dagonet dashed past, his crozius lifted to deflect the claw that swung towards Azrael’s head. The Master of Sanctity flew back from the blow, clattering hard into the battlement. Azrael struck, cleaving the edge of the Sword of Secrets into the exposed neck of the mechanical nightmare. He ducked underneath the reeling monstrosity, dragged his blade free in a spray of oily blood.

Ezekiel swung two-handed, lopping away a claw raised against the Supreme Grand Master, tendrils of psychic energy playing from sword to wound.

A flare of plasma flashed into the beast’s eye from Dagonet, who crouched at the wall’s edge, one arm hanging limp at his side. Azrael moved quickly, rolling under a wing that tried to buffet him from the wall. The Sword of Secrets sliced through intestine-like cables in the creature’s underbelly, bringing forth fresh rivers of life fluid that splashed across the Supreme Grand Master’s armour.

The heldrake reared back, wings beating frantically. Ezekiel lashed a bolt of lightning into the beast’s chest, scorching through metal and bone with an explosion of multicoloured sparks. Azrael dropped the Lion’s Wrath and thrust his fingers into the ragged wound he had carved into the monster’s gut. As it lifted from the ground with laboured sweeps of its wings, Azrael rose with it, his grip tight about a metallic brace inside the beast’s body.

The Lord of the Rock rained blow after blow against the exposed innards, twisting, thrusting and hacking with little skill or grace, widening the wound to a gash two metres long. His robe was soaked through with gore and lubricant, the heavy fabric clinging awkwardly to his armour joints. One final thrust pushed the point of his blade deep towards the heldrake’s chest and the semi-daemonic beast spasmed, one wing furled as it spiralled away from the wall before rolling over towards the ground.

There was no chance to get clear and Azrael was dragged down with the monster. It crashed into the inferno-baked earth amidst a storm of metal splinters and exploding rock shards. The impact almost tore Azrael’s arm away and whiplash cracked his head hard against the beast’s metal flesh.

Dazed, Azrael rolled away, falling heavily from the carcass. Ears ringing, he struggled to stand. A death-judder from the heldrake sent a twitching wing crashing into Azrael just as he gained his feet, knocking him to his back again. His fingers groped for the Sword of Secrets as he turned to his stomach and looked up. He was several hundred metres from the aegis-line. Armed once more, he staggered away from the steaming corpse of the heldrake.

The dull thump of munitions and crack of bolters seemed strangely muted and distant.

‘This is Azrael, respond,’ he said even as his fingers moved to the side of his helm and found a finger-long rent across the side where the vox transmitter was located. Only crackling answered. A distracting static buzzed across his auto-senses and he twisted off his helm with a hiss of escaping air.

He drew in a deep breath, the air tainted with the fume of battle and the stench of blood. Recovering his senses, he assessed his situation.

The enemy had reached the wall at several points. The Night Lords were almost at the aegis-line and several hundred hereteks scrambled over piles of their own dead to reach the rampart while purpose-built siege automatons strode through the dying masses with crackling hammerhands, telescopic ladders and grapnel launchers at the ready.

One of the Knights had been felled; its burning wreckage spilled more black smoke over the oncoming hordes of traitor soldiers. The other two mechanical giants loomed through the murk, barely half a kilometre from Azrael’s position, only minutes away from the command tower.

The Deathwing were closer than the wall, their ivory armour stark against the camouflage green-and-grey of armoured vehicles and the blackened earth. Around Lanval’s banner a knot of Deathwing Knights led the counter-attack. Their blades and maces broke open the hulls of tanks, shields raised against the torrent of incoming fire.

Azrael took several steps towards them, picking his way across the strewn wreckage of the heldrake while flames consumed the unnatural corpse. A hissing sound caused him to slow and turn.

Just past the burning remains the air churned. At first he thought it vortices of the fire, a trick of heat haze, but over several seconds the whirling became stronger, more distinct. Motes of energy danced in the smoke, spiralling towards a central point where a star was beginning to form.

Run!

The word slammed into his thoughts like a boarding torpedo breaching a ship’s hull. He winced as pain flared behind his eyes.

Run, Azrael!

It took a moment before he recognised the voice of Ezekiel, though louder and fiercer than he had ever heard it pass his lips. Despite the Librarian’s insistence, Azrael’s body refused to respond. He stood transfixed as the swirl of particles became a pulsing hole, a widening gap through the barrier of reality into a place far removed.

He averted his gaze at the last moment, knowing that to look into the abyss of Chaos itself was an invitation to madness, even for an iron-willed Space Marine. The thunder of the portal’s opening shook the ground and the carcass of the heldrake heaved and fell into a widening ravine as rents opened crazily in the hardened earth.

Azrael dared a glance at the abyssal breach and saw darkness coalescing into a monstrous humanoid form. While he watched, smaller breaches tore at the fabric of the material world, orbiting the central portal like slave moons. Outlandish shapes writhed in their hearts, embryonic nightmares clawing and gnawing at the veil to spawn into the world of mortals.

RUN!

The psychic imperative forced its way through his mental defences and earthed through his nervous system like lightning down a rod. His body responded before conscious thought caught up with events and his legs took him away from the portal and the emerging nightmares.

Adding will to psychically impelled instinct, he pumped his arms, covering the ground with three-metre strides. He ran with a steady pace, fuelled not by the raw fear of a normal man, but the cold knowledge that his doom was truly bearing down on him. He could see his battle-brothers flooding to the rampart ahead, a thicket of bolters and heavy weapons springing into view. A golden gleam signalled where Ezekiel stood, one hand held aloft as psychic forces churned and swirled the air around him.

The shadows he had glimpsed danced at the edge of his thoughts, daring him to look back. He tried to fix his gaze and thoughts on the sanctuary of the aegis-line but the phantasms created by his imagination were more compelling – he knew the reality could not be as nightmarish as the mirages conjured by his primal reactions.

He glanced back and found that his imagination was poorly matched against the insanity of the warp.

DATE IDENT: 114940.M41#0852

Blackness coiled from the writhing warp portal, streaming like vapours from the jagged edges of the tear between dimensions. The thing that lurched from the abyss was made of the shadow, real and not real, twice the height of Azrael. Faceted spider eyes clustered at the centre of its mass, glinting in the flare of battle. Tenebrous limbs more tentacle than jointed legs propelled the daemon onward, six of them, tipped with iron claws that fountained sparks of red from the ground where they touched.

And mouths.

More mouths than Azrael could count, filled with serrated fangs; shifting, gnashing, whip-tongued maws that appeared and vanished across the shadowbeast’s body.

Distracted, Azrael did not see a jag of broken Thunderhawk hull buried in the ravaged earth. His foot caught against it and he fell, rolling onto his shoulder out of instinct as a razor-edged fin of armour speared up towards him.

He crashed and tumbled, grip tight on the Sword of Secrets as he slid down the slope of metal, churning fresh welts across the burn-scarred paint.

Snake-quick, he regained his feet, blade at the ready.

The shadowbeast came on, but it was not alone. The black tendrils that seethed back to the portal gathered together, twining about each other like rope.

A clawed fist appeared, holding the shadow-lines.

A leash.

The monster that followed was as tall again as its insane hound, twice the size of a Dreadnought. It was clad in a warped mockery of Tactical Dreadnought armour – thick plates of midnight blue that bulged and shifted like flesh, edged with gold and white like the armour of the Night Lords it led. More lightning flickered, crawling across the armourskin in waves, pulsing with the tread of hooved boots.

Its head and face were elongated and fleshless, with growths flaring from its temples. A winged skull, the symbol of the traitor legion. True wings swept out fromt its back, in span the equal of a Nephilim fighter.

The hand not holding the shadowbeast’s tether was almost as big as Azrael, a dagger-tipped gauntlet that gleamed with hellish energy. A nightmarishly exaggerated power fist, the Supreme Grand Master realised, with the twin muzzles of a large cannon protruding from the back, a ruddy infernal gleam emanating from the barrels.

The empty sockets of the daemon prince’s eyes fixed on Azrael and a coldness chilled him.

‘What have we here?’ The daemon’s voice carried like a cold wind, soft yet biting. ‘Another whelp of the Lion, come to deny me my rightful conquest.’

‘You have no place here, spawn of nightmares,’ Azrael growled. He took a pace closer. The plate of Thunderhawk armour creaked under his weight. ‘This world belongs to the Emperor.’

‘The Emperor is dead, orphan of Caliban. He died at the hands of Horus. You have been lied to for ten thousand years, lion cub. There is no power on Earth, just a carcass whose strings are pulled by the ambitions of weak humans.’

‘It is you that lies. The Emperor defeated Horus. Your crusade is over, your Legion shattered. There is nothing for you here, dark flame of Nostramo!’

The daemon had no features but the jolt of its head signified surprise.

‘That is right, son of Night Haunter, I know the darkness from whence you came,’ Azrael said, advancing slowly, paying attention to the flex and moan of the Thunderhawk wreck beneath his feet. ‘Caliban died, but the Angelicasta survived. You think we do not have records of the Heresy, when all was anarchy and betrayal? I know you Night Lord. I know your kind. Ten thousand years you have lusted after the dominion of the Emperor, and for ten thousand years men like me have held you back. Today it shall be the same!’

‘You throw around names that mean nothing to you.’

The daemon prince pulled back on the leash of its shadowhound, causing the grotesque monster to whine and gibber with frustration. ‘You have no knowledge of the deeper mysteries, just children’s books with bright pictures. The World of Night is no more – I hail from a far grander realm.’

‘And you will see it again soon, son of Curze.’

‘Do not use that name, Lion’s pup!’ Motes of redness flashed from the daemon prince’s eyes. ‘It is a dead thing, of no value. There is only one title that you need speak. The Painted Count demands your subservience and you shall grovel before me to be granted it.’

‘I see that ten thousand years has not settled your delusions,’ Azrael said with a forced laugh. He had almost reached the top of the slope, twenty metres from the daemon prince. ‘I am Azrael, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels, Lord of the Rock, Scion of Caliban, Commander of the Angelicasta. I bow only to one power and He resides on Terra! You... You are not fit to scrape the mud from the tracks of my Land Raider.’

‘This world shall be mine, Lion’s whelp,’ the Painted Count said with a deep laugh. It lifted up its monstrous hand and lightning crackled across the splayed fingers. ‘It is too late to stop me.’

A dozen wrinkles in the air became splits in reality, and from each spawned a dozen more, spreading out across the battlefield, scattering across the sky. Warp power churned and an unnatural storm boiled the smoke clouds while purple beams of coruscating energy leapt from one abyssal gate to the next.

Azrael watched impotently as the portals widened, stretching and distending, revealing crowds of nightmarish entities pushing and clawing as though trapped behind flexible glassite.

‘Be thankful you shall not live long enough to see the world fall and your brothers devoured.’

The Painted Count released the shadow-tether of its infernal hound. With a screech of joy it bounded forwards, limbs a blur, phantom mouths spraying spittle.

Reaching the summit of the slope, Azrael steadied himself to meet its charge, a shoulder turned towards it, the Sword of Secrets held in a two-fisted grip. He fixed all of his attention on the approaching daemonbeast, blotting out the horrendous moans and screams that cut the air, the flare of purplish otherlight as the Painted Count’s host started to burst through the veil that held them back from Rhamiel.

The thing lurched, one moment a dozen metres away, the next upon Azrael, a flailing, snarling cloud of blackness that engulfed the lord of the Dark Angels. A hundred mouths snapped at his armour, countless teeth rasped and scratched at the plate. Droplets of spittle hissed and burned where they fell on the enamel, and stung the flesh of his exposed face.

He swung the Sword of Secrets.

The blade was a shard of silver in his hands. Its light separated the body of the shadowhound to leave frayed tendrils of darkness parting around Azrael. He had expected resistance and met none, almost overbalancing, at the last moment throwing out a hand to seize hold of a jutting spar to stop an awkward tumble back down the slope of armoured plate behind him.

Oily black rain spattered across him and onto the ground, each a tiny quivering creature for a second until they splashed together into a puddle at his feet. The surface seethed and boiled, quickly vanishing into nothing.

Azrael pointed his sword at the Painted Count, a silent challenge.

The daemon nodded in acceptance. It arched its back, exposing a heavily ribbed chest. The bones shifted and split, breaking open to reveal the gory cavity within. The Painted Count reached inside its chest and seized hold of a bright gem that pulsed like a heart. As the daemon pulled it free the jewel elongated, becoming a long blade of dark red that left after-images of shadow on Azrael’s vision.

Daemonblade in one hand, brutal powerfist encasing the other, the daemon flexed its arms and wings, obviously relishing the contest to come.

It levelled its fist to fire a stream of flaming blasts at Azrael.

The Supreme Grand Master narrowly evaded the salvo, forced to hurl himself to one side, seeking better footing as the Painted Count laughed again.

The air behind the daemon prince shimmered. A corona of gold and emerald formed around the creature, flickers of energy spreading out like cracks in the air. The Painted Count adjusted its aim and cocked its head to one side.

‘Good bye, Lion whelp.’

A golden shard appeared in its chest, pushing through from behind. For a moment the daemon prince stood transfixed, immobile, eyes widened in shock. Auric power rippled from the needle of gold like flame along paper, consuming the daemon prince, stripping away its physical shell in seconds.

A cloud of gold-edged ash fluttered away, as though driven by a wind, to reveal a figure. As tall as Azrael, though slender of waist and shoulder, swathed in a scarlet robe embroidered with curving silver sigils. The gold shard was revealed to be the point of a sword, no wider than a finger, slightly curved with a basket hilt. In the figure’s other hand was clutched a staff headed by an intricate sun design, wrought from gold and precious stones. Black gloves covered long, narrow fingers. An ornate full helm enclosed its head, adorned with oval gemstones that gleamed with a light not from Rhamiel’s sun nor the fires of battle. Jewelled eye-lenses regarded Azrael with their sapphire gaze.

Even if he had not known what it was he looked upon, the moment the figure moved – the simplest of motions to lower its sword to its side – it was clear that Azrael looked upon no human. Effortless grace defined the figure, a lightness about its person so that it seemed barely of the real world at all, but instead perhaps a reflection of something distant.

One of the ancient and mysterious eldar.

DATE IDENT: 114940.M41#0900

Across the battlefield the fluctuating abyssal rifts spasmed and wept golden energy. Bruises on the veil of reality became iridescent spheres; the half-seen daemons within shimmered and the wails of their anguish flooded over the renegades and Dark Angels.

Where the unholy entities of the warp had been making egress into the realm of mortals, graceful craft swept out from flickering arches of gold light. Swept-wing aircraft and sleek grav-tanks slid effortlessly into being from the void portals, their hulls the same red as the robe of Azrael’s saviour. Behind came flights of jetbike riders in scarlet and black, long pennants trailing from their speeding mounts.

More portals opened in the distance, delivering alien warriors against the renegade artillery corps and the last infantry columns still marching down from the foothills. A particularly blinding flash of auric power opened up a wavering gate twice as tall as the Dark Angels command tower and from its whirling depths strode two immense walkers – elegant war machines with slender limbs as tall as the Knights, with cannons and blades to match the might of the hereteks’ renegade engines. Pulses of blue energy leapt from their guns to catch the closest Knight unaware, punching through its rear armour.

As its companion fell, the last surviving Knight ponderously turned, its directional field flaring when the eldar walkers redirected their attack, its multi-barrelled cannon roaring a violent defiance. Alien vehicles and jetbikes curved and raced, encircling the labouring rebel tanks, xenotech weapons scything and blazing.

‘If you think to feed on the scraps of our battle, you will find they have a nasty bite left in them,’ Azrael told the eldar that had slain the daemon, brandishing the Sword of Secrets.

The eldar regarded him silently, poised elegantly on a rise of rock just a few metres away. The golden portal from which the alien had emerged fluttered several times and a handful of other figures appeared, also garbed in robes and odd bone-like breastplates, bearing swords and spears. Their helms were less ornate, their finery not as ornamented as their leader.

‘We do not come for you.’ The eldar’s voice drifted on the wind, each syllable pronounced with soft precision, its mellow tone neither deep not high-pitched. Azrael could not tell from the voice nor the slim build of the alien whether it was male or female. ‘It is the slaves of the Dark Gods that feel our wrath today.’

‘We do not need such aid,’ growled Azrael. ‘This world is not yours to protect.’

‘Pride, warrior of the Emperor, is a terrible weakness. I do not think you truly believe you had retained the upper hand in this battle.’

Azrael knew the alien spoke the truth, but would never admit as such openly to one of the xenos. The arrival of the eldar had averted what had looked to be another disaster, but he was not yet ready to claim victory.

‘You have not answered to your purpose in coming here. What is the world of Rhamiel to the eldar?’

‘This planet is not yet safe. Though its banishment seemed dramatic, the Painted Count is not vanquished, nor is its dark host. We are able to keep their power at bay for a while longer while we slay their mortal allies, but that will not keep them from this world for long.’

‘You propose a truce? Unite against a common foe? You still have not told me your motive for this intervention.’

‘Such is the gratitude of the Emperor’s sons,’ the eldar said with a long sigh.

‘Such is the nature of alliance with the eldar,’ Azrael snapped back. The alien responded with a lilting laugh and a tilt of the head.

‘You are not wrong.’ The alien sheathed its blade and took up its staff in both hands. ‘I am… My name would be Walker on Grey Paths in your tongue. I know from our intercepts of your communications that you are Azrael of the Dark Angels.’

The Supreme Grand Master said nothing. He heard cautious calls from behind and glanced over his shoulder to see that a small knot of Space Marines had ventured from the aegis-line – two squads led by Ezekiel and Dagonet.

‘Hold your fire,’ he shouted back, raising a hand to forestall any such behaviour.

‘Your warriors are quite safe, Azrael of the Dark Angels,’ the eldar told him, though he knew better than to trust the word of an alien.

‘I ask one more time, and if I do not receive a clear answer there can be no alliance. What is your purpose in coming here?’

‘Speak not with the xenos!’ Dagonet bellowed, coming up past the broken Thunderhawk fuselage. ‘Lies fall from the tongues of the eldar as easily as rain from clouds.’

‘Do not make any bargain with it, Azrael,’ warned Ezekiel. His eye was a shimmering orb of gold, the wires of his psychic hood blazing with power as he confronted the eldar. ‘It is a farseer, a high warlock of their kind.’

‘Enough!’ The harshness that entered the alien’s voice was a stark contrast to the mellifluous air of moments before, like the stroke of a soft glove that became the crack of a barbed whip. ‘Time is not our friend.’

‘You have an answer?’ Azrael asked, motioning for Ezekiel and Dagonet to stay back a short way.

‘A common foe and vested interest,’ Walker on Grey Paths told him. ‘Your gifted companion is correct – I am a farseer, a teller of prophecy and unwinder of the skein of fate. If you are not victorious today, your foes will claim Rhamiel and from here their taint will spread to threaten our home in the future. Today offers us the best opportunity to cut that thread of fate and protect our people.’

‘You buy your security with the lives of the Emperor’s faithful.’

The alien offered no argument against this. Dagonet moved as though about to speak but Azrael raised his hand to quiet him.

‘You could have intervened earlier,’ he said slowly, gaze fixed on the farseer. ‘If you wished to cleanse Rhamiel of the infernal taint, you had opportunity to slay the rebel leaders before today. Why wait until battle is engaged?’

Another tilt of the head. Azrael thought the farseer amused, but the words that followed were not spoken in humour.

‘Your insight is a credit to you, Azrael of the Dark Angels,’ said Walker on Grey Paths. ‘This battle will not seal the safety of my people. There is another, a sorcerer of the faction you call Night Lords. It is his power that allowed the Painted Count to break the veil to this realm. He was hidden to my sight, but has revealed himself now.’

‘We were bait in a trap?’

‘More than that. We require you to hunt down the Dark Summoner. I need your help, Azrael of the Dark Angels.’

‘What can I do that the eldar cannot?’

‘The Dark Summoner has a ship in the outer system. A fortified lair surrounded by a guard of enhanced warriors.’ Walker on Grey Paths swept a hand to encompass the raging battle. Scarlet-hulled craft and flights of jetbikes zoomed and slashed through the renegades, who in turn pressed towards the unforgiving guns of the Dark Angels. Overhead Thunderhawks, Nephilim, Dark Talons and eldar craft circled each other warily, some diving down to strafe the enemy tanks in swift attack runs while others flew patrols over their own forces. ‘My people require room to manoeuvre. We do not like to fight in confined spaces. It would cost a great many eldar lives to prise free the Dark Summoner. Your warriors are hardened to brutal assault.’

Azrael did not bother repeating his accusation that the eldar were spending the lives of his brothers for their own benefit. The farseer either did not acknowledge the sacrifice or simply didn’t care.

‘I warned that time is short. The Painted Count is not banished, merely inconvenienced. The Dark Summoner will return its master to the battlefield before night falls.’

‘If the sorcerer is hiding in the outer system it would take days to reach him,’ said Dagonet.

‘That is not the alien’s intent,’ replied Ezekiel. He pointed his sword at the golden portal that still shimmered behind the farseer and its entourage.

‘Is this true? You think we would use your diabolic gates to reach our enemy?’

‘My companion, Blade of Winter Tears, will guide you,’ said the farseer. One of the other eldar stepped forwards, a curved blade in one hand. ‘She will make the parting of the ways and take you to the heart of the Dark Summoner’s void castle.’

Azrael retreated several paces, never taking his eye from the eldar. Dagonet and Ezekiel came closer, sensing his desire for council. The accompanying Space Marines spread out, their weapons levelled at the eldar cabal.

‘You cannot trust this creature,’ Dagonet said.

‘I do not,’ Azrael assured him. ‘But that does not mean it is lying.’

‘We are being manipulated,’ the Chaplain countered.

‘We were being beaten.’ Azrael said quietly, his gaze moving from Dagonet to Ezekiel. ‘Again. You were right, the omens were poor for today. What do you see now, Master of the Librarius?’

‘I am not an eldar – I do not conjure visions of the future on a whim,’ Ezekiel snapped.

‘Tell me, then, whether you feel the infernal host is still close at hand. Can you sense it?’

The gleam of the Librarian’s psychic hood became more diffuse, extending from his helm for several seconds.

‘There is a darkness upon the warp. I hear the scratching of overthings, their whispers in our waking dreams.’

‘Walker on Grey Paths is telling the truth, it seems, or part of it.’ Azrael tightened and then relaxed his grip on the Sword of Secrets. ‘I do not like this situation, but we have little choice. If the eldar wished us ill they could have attacked at any time since our arrival. I do not know how their scheme will play out, but I see no alternative but to hunt down this sorcerer, for the sake of Rhamiel.’

‘Alliance with the aliens?’ Dagonet could not keep the disgust from his voice. ‘It is against every teaching of the Chapter. What honour is there in such a bargain?’

‘Better our honour than a world lost to the darkness,’ Azrael growled. He turned on his heel and strode back to Walker on Grey Paths. It seemed as if the farseer had been immobile during the entire conversation, a statue that came to life again at his approach.

‘Twenty warriors, that many the web-strand can carry,’ said the farseer before Azrael had even spoken of his assent. ‘Your best will be required to defeat the Dark Summoner and his creatures.’

‘I do not trust you, Walker on Grey Paths. Not all of my brothers will return from this venture. My life may be the cost. We will not be your puppets. If this mission is so important to your people, what sacrifice do you offer in return for that?’

The farseer did nothing for several heartbeats. And then, almost too swift to follow, reached to the gem set in the middle of the bone-like breastplate and plucked it free. It sparkled with its own light as the eldar stepped forwards, the jewel proffered to Azrael.

‘I have no need for baubles,’ said the Supreme Grand Master. ‘Its value is meaningless.’

‘This is my spirit stone, Azrael of the Dark Angels.’ It was impossible to be certain with an alien, but the Space Marine detected sadness, a deep and profound regret, in the voice of the eldar. ‘You shall never understand how important it is to me, nor the power it contains. It will suffice as hostage, for if I should die without it, my spirit is forfeit and I shall be eternally damned. I entrust my fate to you, warrior of the Emperor.’

Azrael held out his hand and the farseer dropped the spirit stone into his palm. He felt its warmth, but not in a physical sense. The soft throb in the heart of the gem pulsed through his thoughts, his feelings. The rhythm was mesmerising, and it was with an assertion of will that he broke his eyes from the gem and thrust it into a pouch at his waist.

‘Do not lose it,’ whispered Walker on Dark Paths. The farseer pointed to Ezekiel. ‘I would speak with your warlock, if I may. There are details of the Dark Summoner’s powers that only one with the gift of warp-sight would understand.’

Azrael nodded and returned to the others.

‘Ezekiel, choose two of your best psykers to accompany us. The farseer wishes to speak with you.’

The Librarian nodded and moved past Azrael to approach the eldar. ‘Dagonet, my vox is broken. Contact Lanval. I would have ten of his warriors as escort. Belial amongst them, if he still lives.’

‘Not Lanval himself, my lord?’

‘I will not rob my Chapter of all its best commanders in one action. You will remain also, as witness to what has occurred. Choose your two most diligent Chaplains – I feel we may be in need of spiritual as well as physical and psychic strength in this endeavour.’

‘Asmodai and Cathas,’ the Master of Sanctity replied without hesitation. ‘Their zeal is unmatched.’

‘If I do not return before nightfall, kill the eldar.’

‘I will be sure the farseer pays for any treachery.’

‘Not just Walker on Grey Paths. Kill them all. If we do not return, whatever the price, you will make the eldar rue the day they courted the wrath of the Dark Angels.’

DATE IDENT: 114940.M41#1423

The eldar called Blade of Winter Tears waited for the Dark Angels, a barely visible silhouette against the white-and-gold shimmer of the portal. Belial stomped past Azrael, his squad close on his heel.

‘Your pardon, my lord, but you are not entering that infernal conjuration first,’ declared the sergeant. ‘Squad, prepare arms.’

The four other Terminators assembled around their sergeant. The glow of power fists gleamed from their ivory armour but fell strangely on the fabric that clothed the eldar warlock, as though absorbed by the silky robe.

‘Let us be about this endeavour without delay,’ Azrael told his men. He looked at Walker on Grey Paths. ‘Any duplicity will be punished.’

‘Of course, Azrael of the Dark Angels.’

At a nod from the farseer, Blade of Winter Tears stepped to the threshold of the portal, sword raised as if in salute, coruscations of power rippling along its length. Azrael signalled to Belial and the Deathwing advanced towards the gate. As they approached, Blade of Winter Tears stepped forwards, the edge of her sword parting the rift before her.

With Belial in the lead, the Terminator squad of Sergeant Caulderain at the back, the Dark Angels marched through the breach between worlds.

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Azrael had expected something akin to teleportation – an endless but instantaneous half-moment of transition followed by an explosive re-entry into reality aboard the target ship.

Instead he found himself in a tunnel, with an arched roof, as though made of deep grey marble veined with purple. Slender golden columns and vaults held the walls every few dozen metres. It seemed almost solid.

Almost.

As he turned his head quickly to the side, to check Ezekiel was still at his shoulder, he caught a glimpse beyond the passage. Through the wall. Stars, distant and cold, obscured by a glittering curtain of rainbow colours. It lingered now on the very edge of his vision.

Ezekiel’s face was unmoving, as though set in stone. There was not the faintest flicker of psychic energy in his eye or from the tracery of his psychic hood. Looking over his shoulder, Azrael saw that the other two Librarians, Epistolaries Dalgar and Maldarion, were likewise rigidly passive in expression.

‘It would be unwise to look with our inner eyes,’ said Dalgar, guessing Azrael’s question from his look. ‘Not while in this unnatural burrow.’

Azrael sped up, passing Belial’s squad to come alongside Blade of Winter Tears.

‘Can you speak our language?’ he asked. ‘How long until we arrive at our objective?’

‘One cannot expect a beast to speak, so we learn to interpret the meaning of their grunts and barks,’ the eldar replied.

‘Arrogant xenos f–’

Azrael glanced back to see Ezekiel holding out a hand to restrain Asmodai, whose crozius blazed in his hand.

‘Stand down, Chaplain,’ growled Azrael. ‘Save your ire for the traitors.’

The passageway continued ahead until hidden by the haze of distance, without rise or fall or turn. There was light but from no source, and a sense of weight, or gravity, though Azrael knew logically that they traversed the empty void of space.

‘How far? How long?’ he asked again.

‘The stride of a god, within his heartbeat,’ Blade of Winter Tears replied, still with gaze fixed ahead. ‘The journey shall take as long as it takes – your expectation and prior knowledge will make it neither longer nor shorter. I will warn you when we are approaching the Dark Summoner.’

They continued on in silence. Total silence, Azrael realised. Not a footstep from the massive Terminators, nor even a creak or hiss of actuators. It was disturbing, and after some time the lack of auditory input started playing tricks on his mind, as did the illusory nature of their confinement.

It seemed to Azrael that perhaps the walls were real, after all, and he and his companions were ghosts. It occurred to him that the eldar had betrayed them and now only their shades remained, wraiths being taken to some soul-prison for whatever vile practices the aliens employed for their witchcraft.

He felt the weight of the Sword of Secrets, and tried to reassure himself that it was real, that he was real. Blade of Winter Tears walked with such ease it seemed she barely moved, every swing of her arms and every stride efficient and effortless. Azrael resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, to prove to himself that she was also more than just phantasm.

The monotony of their silent journey, the endlessly repetitive surrounds, made time meaningless. He understood why their guide had refused to be drawn on a specific time of arrival. Distance in this place was not set.

‘We have arrived,’ the warlock said, stopping, her voice sudden and startling.

The tunnel seemed unchanged, going on infinitely in front and behind the Dark Angels.

‘Where?’ asked Azrael.

‘I have not yet spliced our thread to that of the sorcerer’s domain,’ Blade of Winter Tears replied. ‘We are close. I will attempt to release you into the starship as close as possible to its heart where the Dark Summoner resides. It is impossible to do so perfectly. I cannot say how much further you will have to proceed on the far side of the veil.’

‘You speak as though you are not coming, warlock,’ said Ezekiel.

‘That would be wise,’ said Azrael. ‘We cannot afford to lose her – she is our only means of returning to Rhamiel.’

‘That is correct. I will remain within the threadway and seal the gap between realms when you have passed through. You will need to return to the point of entry. I will sense you and bring you back.’ The eldar looked around, obviously at something other than the mirage of the corridor. ‘You must return as swiftly as possible. We are safe here for the moment but this threadway is only temporary. I can protect it from assault for a while but not indefinitely.’

‘Very well.’ Azrael took a breath, looked at his companions to assure himself they were ready, and then nodded to the alien. ‘Do it. Open the portal.’

As before, Blade of Winter Tears ceremonially cut the air in front of her. Azrael could see no change with the look of the everlasting passage.

‘It is done,’ said the warlock. When Azrael remained where he was, she stepped back and looked at him for the first time. Her helm’s eyes were ruby-like ovals, betraying nothing of the face within. ‘You cannot see it? How did humans survive this long with such dull senses? Simply walk past me and you will come upon the starship of your prey.’

The Sword of Secrets sheathed, Azrael took up the Lion’s Wrath in both hands. He turned his back on the eldar to address his warriors.

‘The mission is simple. We locate the traitor sorcerer and eliminate him. Kill anything that attempts to stop us. All other considerations are secondary.’ He stepped in front of Belial as the sergeant attempted to pass him by. ‘I lead this time.’

Azrael squared himself in the tunnel and advanced to where he thought the breach was located. He could feel the faintest of vibrations at the nape of his neck.

He turned to look at his companions, but as he twisted he felt the tunnelway slip backwards, receding rapidly away from him until it was nothing more than a bright spark, and then just a memory.

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

The ring of his boot on metal confirmed to Azrael that he was back in the material realm. The weight of his gun, the sigh of fibre bundles settling, the thrum of generators and buzz of electrical cables were all welcome signals that he was alive and real.

He continued forwards a few paces, allowing the others room to exit the eldar portal as he analysed his environment.

It was dark; the only light came from a few buzzing red globes set behind wire mesh in the ceiling of the chamber. The room itself was out of use, and appeared to have been abandoned some time before. It was a few metres wide, twice as long, a wheel-locked door at the far end.

The walls sagged oddly.

He stepped closer and saw that in fact it was not the walls themselves that curved into the floor but an accretion of... something he had not encountered before. He would have taken it for spraycrete, but it recoiled slightly at his touch. Not so much soft as hollow.

A grunt of distaste caused him to turn. Belial was on the opposite side of the room, peeling back a layer of the material like pulling a scab from a wound. The analogy seemed even more disgustingly apt as a pulsing, fleshy undersurface was revealed.

‘Throne’s heart,’ growled Cathas.

Belial let the covering flop down and his power fist glimmered back into life.

‘Which way?’ Azrael asked, looking to Ezekiel.

The Chief Librarian convened with the other two psykers and they communed for several seconds, saying nothing. They gathered closer, drawn to one another, a nimbus of power faintly glowing around them.

Ezekiel broke away from the others, leaving a slight after-figure of golden light in his wake.

‘We have found the heart of the darkness. This way.’

The lock-wheel on the door screeched into motion at a gesture from the Chief Librarian. The grate of corroded metal set Azrael’s nerves on edge.

‘I am sure a clarion blast would have announced our presence more succinctly,’ said Belial.

‘Our presence is already known, brother-sergeant,’ Ezekiel replied coolly. He waved and the door swung inwards with a drawn-out creak. ‘Head left. The enemy are gathering.’

Azrael allowed Belial and his Deathwing to take the lead again. Operating in close confines against a deadly enemy was their speciality. Following them out, flanked by the two Epistolaries, Azrael stepped into a corridor wide enough for the Terminators to advance two abreast. The same strange cladding covered the walls and ceiling, the lighting spheres set within puckered orifices, the faint stench of blood on the air mixed with oil and sweat.

‘Incoming signal,’ warned Belial.

The squad halted. For the first time since leaving the Deathwing, Azrael felt slightly adrift without his sensorium link. He was no longer enmeshed with the others, a step removed and reliant upon their reports.

With a wheeze like a dying lung expelling its last breath, a hatch opened in the floor a short distance ahead. A wire-thin figure clambered out, skin so pale as to be white like the creatures found in lightless caves. It was naked, deep pink welts covering its alabaster flesh. Massively dilated eyes turned towards them. The boy, for such it must have been, flinched at the sight of the Terminators, baring black gums and stubs of teeth. With a rattling cry, it dived back into the darkness beyond the hatch.

One of the Terminators moved forwards, storm bolter aimed at the opening. While he guarded the entry point the rest of the squad advanced past. Movement from the squad behind urged Azrael and his companions forwards without any word, but it was clear the two Terminator squads were acting in unison, guiding their charges towards the objective.

He glanced past the Deathwing warrior on overwatch. The hatch led into pitch blackness, joining a crawlspace just a metre below the deck. There was no telling how many enslaved crew lurked in the gaps between the halls and chambers. Would they resist, or simply allow the Dark Angels to pass unhindered?

Azrael allowed the Terminators to perform their duty and lead the way along the corridor, which became dank a few metres on. The floor was slick with mould fed from the drips of a broken pipe that jutted from a cavity in the wall-flesh.

‘Which way, Brother-Librarian?’ Belial asked when they reached a T-junction at the end of the passageway.

‘Left,’ replied Ezekiel. ‘We must find somewhere to descend. The sorcerer is somewhere in the middle decks amidships.’

‘The arterial hall is this way,’ said Belial, pointing to the right. ‘It may be the swifter route, even if less direct.’

‘Go left,’ said Azrael. ‘The confines suit us better than our foes.’

Belial offered no argument and led his squad down the left-hand passage while the other Terminators trained their guns to the right.

The dampness increased, the humidity growing as the heat rose. Thin mist hung in the air, glinting in the ruddy light. Belial pressed on directly into the ship at the urging of Ezekiel, passing several smaller chambers. Azrael glanced through the next door as they passed.

‘Wait!’ He stopped at the threshold for a better look.

It had been a dormitory of sorts. The remains of bunks stretched down each wall, broken lockers beside each triple-stacked set of cots. Thin, patched blankets lay strewn over the floor and bed frames. Buckled metal plates and bowls were scattered about, along with wooden spoons and upturned serving platters. Old food rotted in the mesh of the deck.

There were emaciated bodies amongst the detritus. Almost skeletally thin, skin peeled back from lesions across their chests, backs and shoulders. Rictus grimaces contorted their faces, but even so they appeared to have died in terror. Their fingers were bloody and broken, as though they had clawed at the walls and doors, perhaps trapped, trying to escape.

A shadow flickered across the far wall.

‘Movement,’ he told the others, bringing up Lion’s Wrath.

‘Nothing on the augur system, my lord,’ Belial replied.

Azrael was certain he had seen something. He thought to take a step closer to investigate but changed his mind.

Dead flies and maggots covered the bodies and he spied the mangy, furred corpses of rats amongst the debris.

‘Even the vermin died,’ he whispered, retreating a pace. He focused on their purpose. ‘Keep moving. The sorcerer must be slain.’

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Sounds of industry from ahead had the party advancing with caution. Chains clanked, ratchets ticked, metal squealed. The light that spilled from the arches and doorways flickered as though cast by flames. Shadows moved through the light, indistinct and jerky.

They arrived at a wider area that stretched up to a vaulted ceiling encompassing several decks above and below reached via ramps and winding metal staircases. Lines of spindly naked figures laboured at pulleys and capstans, raising and lowering five platforms, each large enough to carry a Thunderhawk. More of the withered minions worked at loading and unloading the platforms, toiling with a monotonous intensity.

‘Nothing but bone and sinew,’ said Belial. ‘A miracle that they have the strength for such labours.’

‘A dark miracle. Spite and hatred bring their own peculiar strength,’ replied Ezekiel.

Corpses. The cargo was an unending mass of cadavers, marked by the same wounds and lesions as those Azrael had discovered earlier. By the hundreds they were laden onto the platforms, lowered and then dragged off at the bottom some twenty metres below.

The source of the strange light became clear. There were rows of furnaces on the bottom deck. Rather, furnace-like openings in the walls. The gleam from within the huge ovens was like no normal flame, tinged with purples and greens that left bizarre shadows lingering on the edge of vision.

The bodies were fuel for these despicable furnaces, bundled without ceremony through open grates in front of each doorway. Despite the scores of corpses being thrown into the infernal fires every few seconds, Azrael saw no smoke issuing from the flames, and could detect no charnel smell. The hellish furnaces consumed everything.

‘Where are the overseers?’ said Asmodai, turning to the left and right, his pistol seeking a target. ‘Someone will pay for this butchery and degradation.’

‘No life signs...’ muttered Garvel. ‘Why are there no life signs?’

‘They need no overseer, brothers,’ Maldarion said ominously. He strode towards the closest line of labouring figures and grabbed one by the arm, jerking her from her place.

The woman did not respond as he turned her towards the others. Her face was slack; her arms fell uselessly to her sides. Her eyes looked as though they were filled with black fluid, dark and oily, but otherwise devoid of any spark of intelligence or life.

‘Dead?’ Azrael stared at the creature in Maldarion’s grip. ‘By what power?’

The dead thing sprang into life, its face snapping towards Azrael. It lunged at the supreme Grand Master, caught in the Librarian’s grasp. With a noiseless snarl it ripped itself from its own arm with a crack of bones and spurt of blood, swiping broken-nailed fingers towards his face.

The Sword of Secrets parted it from shoulder to hip with one blow. The animated cadaver fell to the deck, still jerking and flailing.

The hall resounded with the pattering of thousands of bare feet as the dead slaves broke into shuffling runs towards the interlopers in their domain.

The Deathwing opened fire, their storm bolters shredding the closest corpses in a hail of rounds. Azrael let loose a blast of plasma, incinerating two emaciated foes, while around him the others let free the fury of their bolters and pistols. Brother Damactus in Caulderain’s squad unleashed a jet of burning promethium from his flamer, catching more than a dozen targets with the burst of white fire. The corpses continued to rush the Dark Angels even as their bodies were consumed by the intense flames coating them.

‘Movement below!’ Belial warned.

Azrael turned to the closest steps. The slave-corpses at the furnaces had dumped their loads and were also pressing towards the stairs and ramps, black eyes turned up to those that sought to destroy their creator.

‘There must be thousands of them,’ Caulderain said. His power sword lopped the heads from two creatures as they reached the top of the stair. ‘Blades and fists, brothers. Save your ammunition.’

The Deathwing formed a two-part wall between the horde of living dead and their officers. Within a few seconds the mound of the vanquished was as tall as the warriors as they hacked and smashed with power swords and blazing fists. Garvel stepped from the line, wading into the sea of enemies with broad swings of his thunder hammer, his storm shield crushing more against the rails and bulkheads that lined the hall. The lightning claws of Brother Maldevor coursed with arcs of destructive power as he slashed and swiped, scattering severed limbs and heads.

‘Make way, brothers.’ Ezekiel did not raise his voice, but was heard easily across the crash of storm bolters, crack of powerfields and the snarl of Temenael’s chainfist.

Without thought, Belial’s squad parted to allow the Chief Librarian and his two companions to pass. Ezekiel advanced ahead of the Epistolaries, the triumvirate of psykers bathed in a cerulean glow of power. The Master of the Librarius cut down a walking corpse with his blade and smashed another aside with his backswing, making space for Dalgar and Maldarion to step alongside.

As one they thrust out their swords, each lancing their blade through the chest of a foe. The azure field that enveloped them spasmed and waxed stronger and brighter, boiling along their embedded weapons. Like a tsunami hitting a shore, the wave of blue burst out from the Chapter psykers, the touch of its lightning-flecked aura turning each corpse in its path to motes of flying dust.

Outwards and onwards poured the banishing wave, streaming and undulating from the swords of the Librarians, focused through Traitor’s Bane in the grip of Ezekiel. A score of enemies, a hundred then a thousand were swept away by the wall of ravening warp energy.

Ezekiel’s hands started to quiver; his shoulders shook with the effort of maintaining the flow of psychic power. With a gasp, Dalgar reeled back and fell to one knee, his sword clattering to the deck from weak fingers. Maldarion reached out his free hand and laid it upon the shoulder of Ezekiel, adding his physical and mental strength to that of his Brother-Librarian. A fresh pulse of immaterial fire flared through the thronging dead, leaping with a life of its own from one animated cadaver to the next, pouring up and down the decks as though possessed of a vengeful intent of its own.

Cursing, Maldarion too recoiled from Ezekiel as though struck by a blow, half spinning away from his master. Fronds of gold and black electricity coruscated across his armour for a few seconds before earthing through the gore-spattered deck.

Now alone, Ezekiel turned slowly, his sword sweeping the cleansing fire in an arc across the hall. He took a slow step forwards, twisting his sword to send a fresh flurry of power pulsing down into the furnace level.

‘Open fire!’ Azrael urged the others, who had been as equally mesmerised by the psychic display. ‘Cut our way through.’

The Deathwing formed a solid wall again, anchored on Ezekiel at one end of their line. As their bolts flew into the miasma of power churning through the hall they caught alight with its cleansing touch – each round sliced through a dozen foes before exploding with blue bursts of fire. Asmodai thrust himself into the pressing mass of corpses with a battle chant spilling from his lips, his crozius arcanum a blur of shimmering power that split open heads and crushed chests. Beside him Cathas was more measured in his attack, laying his own crozius upon those that eluded the frenzied assault of the other Chaplain. Metre by metre, they pushed into the seemingly endless horde, advancing along the hall beside Ezekiel, a score of broken foes for every stride taken.

‘Can you walk?’ Azrael demanded, stepping up to Maldarion. ‘Dalgar, are you hurt?’

‘We will recover,’ Dalgar assured him, pushing to his feet. He reclaimed his sword. ‘My lord, our master should not expend all of his strength here. We cannot say what trials still lie ahead.’

Azrael saw the immediate truth of this. Ezekiel was aflame head to foot with the power of his cleansing energy, but within the nimbus he was shuddering, shoulders flexing uncontrollably, head jerking to the left and right as though in the grip of a seizure.

‘Ezekiel!’ Azrael moved to lay a hand on the Chief Librarian but Dalgar pushed aside his arm before he touched.

‘That would be unwise,’ the psyker warned.

‘Ezekiel,’ Azrael said, again, quieter, as a companion rather than a commander. ‘That is enough, Ezekiel.’

With a howl more animal than human, Ezekiel tore himself away from his own conjuration, letting the fires gutter and die around him as he staggered back into Azrael. The Supreme Grand Master threw out an arm to catch Ezekiel as his legs gave way, giving him just enough support to stay on his feet.

The Chief Librarian pushed away, sparing just a momentary glance at his superior, flakes of burning paint falling from his armour, a hue glowing on the lenses of his helm like the gleam of molten gold. He turned, set his shoulders, adjusted his grip on Traitor’s Bane and then set upon the enemy once more, laying his blade against the foe in more mortal fashion.

The corpse-slaves were little threat individually – even those that fell on the Space Marines with lengths of pipe, chain and crude tools could not harm them – but their numbers alone would stifle the Dark Angels’ advance.

‘Deadlier foes are coming, I am certain of it,’ Azrael told his brothers as they pressed into the crowd of inhuman enemies thinned by Ezekiel’s psychic assault. More continued to approach from above and below, stumbling from behind and to each side. ‘These soulless shells would suffocate our advance with their bodies given the chance.’

‘Push hard, brothers,’ Belial urged his squad. Caulderain followed suit and the two sergeants formed the point of a spearhead, breaking into a run, their sheer bulk battering aside the cadaver-puppets that staggered into their path. The other Terminators followed on, pulping bodies beneath their boots, weapons silent for the moment.

Azrael and the other officers came on after them, paying no heed to the foes around them, confident that their war-plate would hold against the scrabbling claws and ineffectual blows from the handful of corpse-slaves that hurled themselves into the vacuum behind the advancing Terminators.

They reached the far end of the hall, guided to a double arch by the directions of Ezekiel. Azrael stopped at the corridor entrance and turned to take stock of the situation. The massive chamber was heaped with the bodies of the slain, ripped by bolt, crushed by power fist, charred by psychic fire. Vapour rose from the body piles like a mist, swirling around the distant skeletal figures that lurched through the gloom.

In the distance, more were coming. He could hear them above the crackle of furnaces and the creaks and groans of the ship itself. Hundreds of feet, slapping and pattering on the metal deck.

‘We’ll hold them, Lord Azrael,’ said Caulderain, motioning his squad to turn and take up a defensive position around the two archways.

‘Dalgar,’ said Ezekiel. ‘Remain with the sergeant and be alert for fresh sorcery.’

The Epistolary nodded and joined the Terminator squad, flecks of light shimmering around his force sword.

‘We will return for you,’ Azrael promised the group. He held up the Sword of Secrets in salute. ‘Hold the line and know that the strength of the Lion is in you.’

Ezekiel had already started down the broad corridor, the nimbus of power around Traitor’s Bane the only source of light. The golden aura played upon fleshy outcrops from the plasteel walls, caught on vertebrae-ridged vaulting and jutting, spiny growths that quivered and clashed like grasping fingers at his approach.

‘How much further, Master Librarian?’ Asmodai asked as the others fell in quickly behind the Holder of the Keys. ‘How close is the sorcerer’s lair?’

‘Two hundred metres, Brother-Chaplain,’ Ezekiel replied.

The hiss of power weapons and bark of storm bolters followed them down the corridor as Squad Caulderain’s rearguard began.

When the Dark Angels had covered half the distance to their objective, the Night Lords attacked in strength. Belial shouted a warning, alerted to an energy surge by the sensorium grid just moments before the first bolts shrieked out of the darkness. Azrael spied a gleam of portal lights, a purple hue that appeared for just a few seconds.

‘They are behind us,’ he growled, turning with Lion’s Wrath at the ready. The flicker of bolt propellant lit the gloom a moment before three rounds exploded across his chest plastron, showering him with ceramite flakes.

Asmodai opened fire, bellowing curses as his bolts streamed back down the corridor into the shadows. Azrael held, finger on the trigger, ready to fire the plasma gun of his combi-weapon. He ignored two more bolt impacts on his backpack, peering into the gloom that persisted despite the auto-senses of his armour.

‘Maldarion, relieve us of this cloying umbra,’ the Supreme Grand Master commanded, still seeking a target.

‘They have gone,’ reported Belial even as a glow of white light from the Librarian’s upraised fist thrust back the living darkness.

‘Hit and run,’ said Cathas. ‘A tactic of the outnumbered. I think we overestimate their strength. The greater part of their host must be committed to the surface.’

‘I agree,’ said Belial as he started down the corridor once more. ‘We will draw them into direct confrontation.’

‘Wait!’ Ezekiel shouted, but his warning came too late.

The floor erupted around the lead Terminators like a massive jaw closing. Fang-like, steel-and-bone points swung up and punched into the armour of Belial and Garvel. Caught in the shoulder and midriff, the sergeant gave a cry of pain. The other Deathwing warrior made no noise at all, pierced through the chest, his armour no more protection than a padded vest. Blood streamed to the floor, where hissing midnight-blue beetles scurried from the cracks and gratings to feed on the thick lifefluid of the Space Marines.

Inhuman appendages thrust and swung at the Dark Angels; serrated horns and grasping fingers clawed and hacked at their armour. Issuing a long moan, a doorway beside Azrael opened, spilling forth a swarm of wasps formed of lightning and fog. Engulfed, the Supreme Grand Master swatted with his blade, to no effect.

The crackling, buzzing cloud swirled, filling his auto-senses with their flickering and droning. He glimpsed bright flashes of light but only when his armour registered the impacts did he realise that the traitors had returned to waylay the stricken Dark Angels.

Blinded, he kept moving, throwing himself towards the opening from which the psychic swarm had emerged. With the Sword of Secrets held before him like a lance, he charged, half-expecting to crash into the bulkhead.

Instead he met soft resistance, a sound like tearing cloth as his blade parted whatever he had encountered.

‘By the Lion, this is not the end of me,’ he snarled, plunging through the tatters of flesh, bloody fronds slicking over his armour like tongues.

Though coated in grime and blood, he was free of the infernal swarm. A few wasps clung to his arms and legs; others zipped fitfully around his helm. The room was little more than a maintenance conduit, dominated by a confluence of pipes and cables to a series of black-screened panels on the far wall. Cracks in the wall let in more beetles, while slugs as long as his arm oozed through a fissure in one corner.

He turned and pushed back through the bloody opening into the corridor. Just a few metres away a Night Lord levelled an ancient meltagun at Asmodai, who was now beset by the swarm, roaring and flailing.

Azrael fired before the traitor, turning his head and chest to ash with a blast of plasma. The smoking remains of the Night Lord’s armour collapsed, the archeotech weapon falling from his dead grasp.

Behind, two more traitor legionaries fired their bolters at Azrael, stitching a crossfire of shots across his chest and pauldrons. He ducked into their fire, firing the bolter of the Lion’s Wrath in reply. The closest Night Lord reeled back as detonations raked his helm and faceplate. The second dived past Azrael, hand outstretched for the fallen meltagun.

Caught between the two foes, the Dark Angels commander’s momentum carried him into the first, the Sword of Secrets burying itself to the hilt in the traitor’s gut.

The Night Lord smashed his bolter into Azrael and grabbed his wrist in the other hand, trapping him as the meltagun’s generator whined into life behind the Dark Angel.

Azrael swung the Lion’s Wrath towards the other Night Lord. A small reticule in his vision, fed from the targeter built into the weapon, danced across the traitor’s faceplate, not quite on target.

A flash of white light split the air. Asmodai emerged from the blinding pulse, the eagle head of his crozius arcanum buried deep in the skull of the Night Lord. The corpse’s legs and arms twitched when the Chaplain ripped his weapon free.

Azrael elbowed aside the other Night Lord’s bolter a moment before the legionary opened fire; the crack of the rounds echoed back from the ceiling. The Dark Angel twisted his blade, opening up the wound in the Night Lord’s gut. He lifted a foot and stamped hard, ramming the heel of his boot under the chin of the traitor, smashing his head back into the metal of the deck.

Thrice more he kicked, cracking open the Night Lord’s helm, turning the skull within to blood-coated shards.

‘Vengeance,’ growled Azrael, ‘finds you even after ten millennia.’

He slid the Sword of Secrets free from the traitor’s body and turned back to the others.

The others had prised Belial free and dragged aside the body of Garvel. Meritus and Turivael, with Ezekiel behind, had positioned themselves on overwatch a few metres further on, but the Night Lords had disappeared once more, leaving the shattered bodies of three more casualties.

‘I shall hold here,’ declared Cathas, standing guard next to Belial. The sergeant seemed barely conscious, his heavy armour slumped against the wall, one side coated in his blood. ‘We shall watch your and Caulderains’ backs. Find and slay the sorcerer quickly, my lord, so that we might quit this cursed place.’

‘Meritus, you will remain also,’ said Azrael, striding to join the Master of the Librarius. ‘Turivael, Galad, advance in our wake and destroy anything that tries to come behind us. Lead the way, Ezekiel, as quickly as you dare.’

‘Swiftness shall be our shield,’ the Librarian replied.

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Azrael, Asmodai, Ezekiel and Maldarion quickly outpaced the Terminators. The light from the Chief Librarian’s psychic hood pushed ahead of them like a bow wave, the shadows ahead darker than ever as if in response to their intrusion.

Azrael could not see what energies swirled around the Chief Librarian but he was certain that more than light preceded their approach – it was impossible for him to know what mystical duel he fought, what immaterial shields Ezekiel and his Brother-Librarian projected around the advancing Dark Angels.

The ring of metal on metal reminded him of the more obvious battle taking place behind as their Deathwing brothers intercepted another attack. Storm bolters barked and the hiss and snarl of detonating plasma followed them along the broad passageway.

Though they no longer had the sensorium of the Terminators, the othersight of Ezekiel and Maldarion led them unerringly towards their target. They took a branching tunnel decorated with parts of broken skulls. Shattered mandibles and pieces of cranium flowed through the half-flesh surface to merge into faces that silently leered and snarled at the Dark Angels.

Two large figures loomed out of the darkness ahead – a pair of Night Lords in slab-armoured suits of Terminator armour. Even as the muzzle flash of their autocannons blossomed, Asmodai moved, leaping in front of his companions. The conversion field set within his sacred rosarius flared into blinding life as he charged straight into the converging streams of shells.

‘I shall break them as the Lion broke the walls of Kanna!’ the Chaplain bellowed, accelerating while hunks of ceramite and slivers of metal stripped away from his armour like the tail of a comet, splintered by the rounds that passed through his energy shield.

Azrael and the two Librarians followed close on his heel, understanding Asmodai’s intent. The Chaplain was an ebon-black figure in the heart of a silver star as he crashed into the closest traitor Cataphractii. The impact sent a shock wave reverberating down the tunnel, rippling the walls as it boomed past Azrael.

Asmodai’s arm was like a piston as he laid his crozius into the helm of his foe, blow after blow after blow, each strike accompanied by a shout of pure rage. Azrael did not stop, but stormed past the two traitors to plunge into the hell-lit chamber beyond the open metal gateway they guarded.

The Supreme Grand Master could not have mistaken the hall for anything other than the heart of the sorcerer’s lair. It felt as if he had broken into some gigantic beast’s ribcage; massive bone vaults soared above, their summits surrounded by a swirling cloud lit from within by orange and red gleams of unnatural power. Shadows cast through ancient stained glass windows hung like webs, almost tangible in the fume that issued from pulsing orifices in the floor.

Bizarre sculptures broke the expanse, more half-seen in the distance. All were of wretched, horrific figures. One bronze crouched, holding entrails that spilled from a gaping abdominal wound, another cowered in terror with eight-fingered hands covering her eyes. A goat-headed dwarf leered with a serpent’s tongue while centipedes crawled from its long, ragged beard. A dark granite skeleton in voluminous rags plunged stiletto fingers into its own bony chest, piercing heart and lungs sculpted in red marble within.

Upon a dais some twenty metres distant the largest of the displays loomed over the macabre exhibition. Great loops of intestinal ropes hung down from the walls, glistening with fluid. Where they joined, a robed figure squatted on all fours, bat-wings furled upon its back. Its startlingly youthful face was a picture of ecstatic joy, eyes uplifted, mouth slightly parted.

With a screech like metal tearing, the figure stood, not a statue at all. Its wings stretched out with a drawn-out creak.

Vermillion eyes regarded Azrael from an impassive face as the Dark Summoner seemed to continue to uncoil, robes billowing like a cloud boiling from an abyss.

‘You have destroyed so many of my toys.’ The voice came from all around the chamber, issuing from the mouths of gargoyle figures set into the walls several metres above Azrael. ‘Now I will destroy you, vulgar one.’

‘Here you die, spawn of the night,’ Azrael declared. He advanced with the Sword of Secrets held ready for the attack. ‘Your unholy existence ends now.’

The Supreme Grand Master felt a pulse of energy emanate from the sorcerer – nothing he could see or hear, just a sensation that jagged along his nerves and made his bones itch.

A babble of groans, gargling and moans swelled up around him. Uttering piercing shrieks and plaintive wails, the things he had taken to be sculptures roused from their dormancy and threw themselves at him. A bronze golem with shards of ice for fingers tried to seize his throat while a crow-faced satyr pounced upon his back, wrapping a cold metal arm across his face.

Sword in hand, Azrael punched the golem in the face, cracking open the cast metal. He hacked his blade into the monstrosity that followed it, before throwing himself backwards into the wall to smash apart the thing that clawed across his back.

Ezekiel appeared, Traitor’s Bane burning as though pure white flame, parting every creature it touched. At his shoulder advanced Maldarion; forks of purging lightning flared from his fingertips. An inhuman shriek boiled out of the speakers above and the animated figurines turned from Azrael to fall upon the psykers.

Azrael knew better than to waste the opportunity bought by the attack of his battle-brothers. Sword in hand, he set off down the hall, intent on the sorcerer.

The Night Lord warlock sensed his approach and turned his head. Closer, Azrael realised that the face was in fact a mask, the ruddy light coming from behind a smoothly fashioned visage.

With a contemptuous flick of a hand, the sorcerer hurled a bolt of blackness at the Dark Angel. It caught him full in the chest, but rather than the concussive impact he expected, instead he found himself entangled with strands of solid shadow that multiplied and lengthened, pressing against the joints of his armour as they sought ingress. Hooked tendrils flailed outwards, latching onto the walls and floor, and then constricted rapidly, trying to drag Azrael down.

He pulled and slashed, parting a few of the dark strands but others took their place, splitting and growing from the knot burning into his plastron. He glanced down and swallowed hard as a single lidless red-pupiled eye regarded him from the centre of the black mass.

Choking back his disgust, Azrael let Lion’s Wrath drop and seized hold of the warp-spawn. His fingers slid into the amorphous mass, which seethed and congealed, spreading up his arms to engulf the vambraces of his armour.

Questing tendrils sought out his face, probing at his eyes, slipping loops about his head and throat. Tearing free a fist was like pulling his arm from set ferrocrete. The puckered wound quivered for a moment, revealing ichor-slicked innards before sealing.

Azrael snatched a frag grenade from his belt and primed it in his fist. Teeth gritted, he plunged his hand back into the monstrous creature.

The thing’s otherworldly form contained most of the blast, though Azrael felt the heat and shock reverberate through his trapped hands. The warp-leech thrashed in pain and Azrael tensed, pulling his arms apart at the moment of its greatest spasm.

Ragged remains came away in his fists and he swung hard, pulping them repeatedly against the floor with relentless hard blows, smashing its flowing form against the metal again and again. The creature’s tentacles melted away into oily trails, releasing Azrael from their grip.

He took up his weapons, turned on the Dark Summoner and opened fire.

Plasma splashed across the sorcerer, a fountain of white and blue droplets of fire sprayed across the dais. When the glow of the impact dissipated the sorcerer remained, unharmed.

Azrael had expected as much and was already running, a stream of bolts roaring from Lion’s Wrath. Under the cover of this distraction, bolts exploding harmlessly across the torso of the Night Lords psyker, he leapt up to the dais, the Sword of Secrets already swinging.

A clawed, jointed appendage lashed out from within the folds of the sorcerer’s robes. The limb caught Azrael’s elbow, turning aside his blow.

A second extra arm speared into the softer joint material exposed under Azrael’s shoulder, driving deep into the flesh. Shock coursed through him and blood poured out of the wound from the severed axillary artery within.

Azrael staggered back, his sword arm numb. His heel missed the edge of the dais and he toppled backwards, a fresh spray of blood exiting the wound as he fell free of the puncturing limb.

It felt like an age, the gleam of the sorcerer’s eyes bright in his vision, before he crashed onto the deck and everything went black for a moment.

Shaking his head, clawing for the Sword of Secrets with his left hand, Azrael stared in disbelief as the sorcerer seemed to grow. As well as the additional arms, four arachnid legs pushed out from beneath the robes, lifting up the inhuman warrior.

Rolling to his feet, gasping and panting, Azrael glanced away to see Ezekiel bursting free from a crowd of puppet-statues, Traitor’s Bane pointed at the sorcerer. Maldarion lay unmoving at the Chief Librarian’s feet, his robes torn to shreds, armour split open in dozens of places.

Azrael lifted his blade to deflect a scything claw as the sorcerer stepped down from the dais. The force of the blow almost knocked the Sword of Secrets from his weakening grip. The tendril-cables detached from the Dark Summoner’s body, pouring filthy effluent and dark bile into pools across the deck.

‘Kill it!’ he bellowed to Ezekiel, hoping that with the death of the sorcerer the creatures it animated across the ship would also cease.

Ezekiel hacked the head from a troll-like assailant made of fired clay and threw out a fist. White fire pulsed across the hall to envelop the sorcerer. The Night Lord let out a screech from the speaker-gargoyles and scuttled backwards.

One arm hanging uselessly, sword in his other fist, Azrael advanced with deadly purpose. His superhuman blood had stemmed the bloodflow, though a thin trickle continued to drip down his armour and spread a crimson stain across his off-white robe. A fork of emerald lightning flared past to crackle across the sorcerer’s body. Its robes had burned away, revealing chitin-covered abdomen and thorax. The wings flapped ineffectually, not large enough to lift its bulk.

‘I am the beacon,’ said Azrael. ‘I am the light.’

He thrust the Sword of Secrets into the burning breast of the Dark Summoner. Sparks flew as the blade shrieked across its infernal hide, leaving nothing more than a ragged scratch.

He slashed with the edge of the blade, but a raised arm deflected the attack, at the expense of nothing more than a shallow notch in the sorcerer’s armoured exoskeleton.

A barb-footed leg lashed out, catching Azrael in the gut, hurling him back several metres. He kept his footing this time, but before he could counter-attack, another spider limb cracked against his wounded shoulder to send sparks of pain burning through his mind.

Together. Ezekiel’s voice was like the cool of a stream, cleansing the pain and hurt, calming and familiar. We strike together, brother.

Azrael held aloft the Sword of Secrets. A moment later a flash of power engulfed it, setting the silver blade gleaming along its length.

He lunged, spearing the tip of the shining blade into the point where a human’s heart would be. The sorcerer twisted to avoid the blow, but the enchanted sword lanced through chitin and muscle, driving deep into the Dark Summoner’s thorax.

Strength ebbed from Azrael as he pushed harder and harder. The combined blow of two spider-arms threw him back again, his plastron almost broken in half, chest burning with fresh pain. He kept his grip tight on his sword as he fell, pulling it free from the sorcerer’s wounded body.

The seer’s stone. Its touch will scorch the daemon within.

Azrael could hear the screech and pound of fists and claws against the Chief Librarian’s armour and knew his companion was about to be overwhelmed. His near lifeless fingers fumbled at the pouch.

The Dark Summoner loomed high on its many legs, two limbs upraised, a crackle of black power pulsing between them.

The pouch snapped open, dropping Walker on Grey Path’s gem into his palm. He almost dropped it, ducking as a rush of black sparks erupted from the eye holes in the sorcerer’s mask.

With his left hand Azrael swung the Sword of Secrets at the Night Lord’s head. The sorcerer flinched, but not quickly enough. The tip of the blade shattered its mask, revealing a nest of writhing maggots where its face should have been.

But the blow was just a feint. Azrael punched his right hand into the wound opened up by his earlier blow, sinking his fist deep into the thick tissue within.

He felt the otherworldly warmth of the spirit stone growing stronger until it started to burn his fist. He kept his grip tight as sparks of gold erupted from the wound. Silver and green light pulsed, while motes of red and purple started to flash across the sorcerer’s chitinous shell.

The Dark Summoner froze, immobilised by the pulse of power thrust into its heart. Azrael thought his hand would be consumed, flesh and bone charred by the burning of the spirit stone, but still he did not pull away.

Cracks appeared in the armoured skin of the Night Lord, each erupting with a faint silvery gleam. Like glass fracturing, the sorcerer fell apart, collapsing into tiny shards at Azrael’s feet.

Azrael found himself standing with fist out-thrust, flakes of blackness fluttering around him like ash. The clatter of metal and crash of stone accompanied the collapse of the Dark Summoner’s animated minions.

The Dark Angel’s hand was cold. He opened his fist and a trickle of silver and gold dust spilled between his fingers. Of the stone, nothing remained.

He turned, hand still outstretched, and looked to Ezekiel. The Chief Librarian stood among a pile of twisted metal, stone pieces and broken pottery, his robe torn away, ceramite chipped and scratched from many blows.

Ezekiel shook his head to the silent question.

‘The eldar told me only that the stone contained a portion of his energy,’ said the Librarian, ‘anathema to the powers of darkness and the spawn of the warp.’

Azrael accepted this without further question, somewhat dazed by the turn of events. He looked back to where the Dark Summoner had been. A ring of charred black stained the dais and deck where the possessed sorcerer had been immolated, but there was no other sign of its existence. Even the meat tendrils that had linked it to the ship had withered away.

He realised the pain in his arm had gone. He flexed his shoulder, feeling a dull ache. Whatever power had destroyed the daemon-kin had also partly healed his injury.

‘We shall not leave our dead in this damned place.’ Ezekiel’s softly spoken words snapped him from his fugue. The Librarian stooped and picked up Maldarion’s body. ‘Lead on.’

They found Asmodai guarding the door. Beside the shattered ruin of the two Night Lords Terminators lay several more power armoured bodies contorted by violent demise. One side of the Chaplain’s skull-helm was cracked and he had lost his right pauldron. He kicked a body out of the way to clear the footing for Ezekiel.

‘This whole ship should be purged,’ said the Chaplain.

‘We do not have the time, brother,’ replied Azrael. ‘We must return to Rhamiel as swiftly as possible.’

They rejoined Dalgar, Cathas and the Terminators, and retrieved the body and weapon of Garvel on the way back to the eldar threadway gate. Belial moved with the support of his squad-brothers as they continued back to the chamber by which they had entered.

The corpses of the puppet-slaves littered the chambers and hallways, swiftly rotting now that they had been released from their unnatural animation. If any living warriors of the Night Lords survived on the ship, they were willing to allow the Dark Angels to depart without further molestation. If Azrael knew anything of their kind, it was likely they had already started murdering one another to establish dominance.

They reached the point of ingress and waited.

‘Can you send a signal or something?’ Cathas asked the Librarians. ‘Tell the witch that we are here?’

‘She knows,’ replied Ezekiel.

As though in confirmation of his words, the far wall started to shimmer. Like water disappearing down a plughole, the air swirled as the gate opened, revealing a white-gold flicker of power that expanded to encompass the entire wall.

Blade of Winter Tears emerged, sword at the ready. She gestured once, an insistent wave of the hand.

‘Hurry, warriors of the Emperor! We have destroyed our foe, but uneasy peace holds on the world below.’

Azrael was not sure how long he had been away from the surface, but by rough reckoning he knew it had to be close to sundown – the deadline for his order to attack the eldar.

‘Tarry not,’ he told the others. ‘We have no time to waste.’

DATE IDENT: UNKNOWN

Azrael ran along the endless tunnel, with the Librarians and Chaplains close behind. The Terminators followed after as quickly as their massive suits allowed, bearing the bodies of the dead.

Unlike the trek to the sorcerer’s ship, he felt no dislocation or confusion. A thought burned in him, kept him focused as the seemingly timeless journey continued. A single desire carried him through the fatigue and aches that gripped his body. Azrael was possessed by urgency. He cared little for the lives of the eldar, or any expectation they might have for coexistence, but if his brothers attacked there would be casualties amongst the Chapter. Needless casualties.

If he was to prosecute the Hunt as best he could, Azrael needed every warrior fighting fit, every commander and member of the Inner Circle all striving for the same aim. He would not start his time in command of the Dark Angels by throwing away the lives of his warriors.

The eldar warlock kept an effortless pace beside the Space Marines, seeming to float along the infinite passage. It was impossible to guess at the thoughts of such a strange creature, but Azrael had to think that Blade of Winter Tears shared his concern, only hers was for the lives of her kind. And, he suspected no small measure of self-preservation, for she was surrounded by a dozen of the Emperor’s finest warriors, whose wrath would be swift if they discovered battle had broken out on Rhamiel.

Without ceremony or word, Blade of Winter Tears darted ahead, blade flashing once before she disappeared through the cloven veil of reality.

Grunting, Azrael sprinted after, one moment racing along the immaterial threadway, the next pounding across the dark ground of the battlefield almost exactly where he had left. His boots skidded in the dust and grit as he came to a halt.

DATE IDENT: 114940.M41#1745

Azrael looked left and right, letting out an explosive breath when he saw his warriors arrayed along the walls of the aegis-line, tanks prowling back and forth before them while gunships circled overhead. Bright scarlet-and-black eldar grav-tanks swept majestically past, emitting barely a noise, weaving around each other in complex formation manoeuvres while jetbikes raced alongside.

One of the giant eldar walkers had survived the battle and stood half a kilometre away, its long cannons trained at the central command tower. Azrael had no doubt that in orbit Dark Angels ships had precise firing solutions locked into their targeting systems, to unleash a deadly bombardment the moment hostilities began.

Rhamiel’s star was three-quarters set, a dull purple arc on the horizon, the shadows long.

Blade of Winter Tears stopped a short distance ahead. The other eldar psykers gathered around her protectively, a nimbus of energy gleaming from their swords in the twilight. Azrael heard the wheeze of Ezekiel’s armour just behind and the deep growl of Asmodai.

‘Stay your weapons,’ Azrael warned them. His swift assessment of the situation left him with no doubts. Though the Dark Angels held a strong line, the eldar’s skimmers would swiftly negate any advantages of the defences. On a personal note, battered and weary from his confrontation with the Dark Summoner, and a similar toll doubtless taken on his companions, he was not sure of victory against the cabal of eldar psykers close at hand.

He felt a momentary relief when Walker on Grey Paths stepped out of the group, staff in hand, blade sheathed. The farseer approached at a stately walk, eye lenses fixed on Azrael. Unease quickly returned when he remembered what had happened to the spirit stone the farseer had given him. Would there be retaliation?

‘The Dark Summoner has been destroyed, Azrael of the Dark Angels,’ said Walker on Grey Paths. ‘The banishment of the Painted Count has been fortified and the servants of the Dark Powers will assail this world no more. A catastrophe for my people has been averted.’

‘Your... The stone...’ Azrael slid the Sword of Secrets into its scabbard and held out his hands, empty palms up. ‘I used the power of the gem to destroy the sorcerer. It... It is no more.’

‘I know.’ The two words were simply said, but carried a plethora of meanings – of expectation, of foreknowledge, of an understanding deeper than he would ever achieve. And accusation, reminding him of his demands for a sacrifice.

The eldar stepped closer, voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

‘I have looked upon your thread, Azrael of the Dark Angels. Shadows follow you, darkness seeks you. You stand poised upon the blade of extinction and glory. Perhaps both in time will claim you. By your word planets will burn and billions of your own kind will perish. I see a wolf, wounded in its lair, your sword held ready for the blow. Execution or mercy killing? Whether your blade falls or not will decide the fates of countless worlds. Choose poorly and you will doom that which you have vowed to protect.’

At some unspoken word from the seer, the eldar started to move away. The warlock contingent strode past the Dark Angels, giving the newly emerged Terminators a wide berth as they headed towards the glimmering portalway. Everywhere across the battlefield new gateways of gold opened and the tanks and bikes of the eldar glided away.

‘You told me that without the stone you would be eternally damned. Was that a lie?’

‘You asked what I was willing to sacrifice for my people, Azrael of the Dark Angels.’ Walker on Grey Paths withdrew until almost swallowed by the golden light of the gateway. ‘You have your answer.’

‘Wait!’ Azrael took a step and held out his hand. ‘There must be another way. There is always a chance at redemption!’

But the farseer had gone.

‘How can that be?’ he asked quietly, of nobody in particular, though Ezekiel chose to answer.

‘They are a strange kin, enigmatic and capricious. Do not mistake self-interest for honour. We have nothing to learn from the eldar in that regard.’

But Azrael was not so sure.

DATE IDENT: 119940.M41

The cold, dry air of the Rock was a comfort, a familiarity that told Azrael he was back where he was meant to be. He had fought many campaigns over his long years, but Rhamiel was the first that had left him with such unease. The Dark Angels had been victorious, for certain. Winning left him feeling worse than the defeats of the past. At what cost had the foe been vanquished? A favour from an alien? By what means had they been delivered from disaster? The whims of fate?

And the words of the farseer haunted him too. He could not wholly trust anything the eldar had told him. All of it could be lies to manipulate and deceive, for some agenda he might never unravel. Was it simply that he was now Supreme Grand Master? His new position and perspective brought fresh burdens and labours. He had claimed during his trials he would burn star systems, really no different from the assertions of Walker on Grey Paths.

Yet there was more to it. The psyker had known what would happen to the spirit stone, had seen the future so specifically that a chain of events was set in motion as predicted. And the farseer had spoken prophecy to Azrael, unheard by any of the others. The Dark Angel could not unravel the import of it yet, and perhaps might never understand.

But there was something else he needed to know.

He turned his head to the diminutive, shadowy figure that stood close to his desk. It looked at him with coal red eyes.

‘I have to know. Show me. What manner of man am I? What is in my soul?’

The girl stood over him. He wiped a hand over his mouth, smearing blood across his cheek and arm, still dazed. She pulled back the club.

A stone hit her in the temple and she toppled, falling across his legs with eyes glazed. Another boy shouted, pointing at the unconscious girl, insistent, his meaning clear. Azrael picked himself up, still groggy, and retrieved his bone-axe.

He drew back the weapon, ready to strike.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs. He is particularly well-known for his Dark Angels stories, including the Legacy of Caliban series. His Warhammer 40,000 repertoire further includes the Path of the Eldar series, the The Beast Arises novels The Emperor Expects and The Beast Must Die, Horus Heresy audio dramas Raven’s Flight, Honour to the Dead and Raptor, and a multiplicity of short stories. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering, and much more besides. He lives and works in Nottingham.

An extract from Roboute Guilliman.

One empire came to Thoas to crush another.

The empire of order and light arrived in the form of an armada. If the eyes of the other empire had turned to the void, perhaps they would have witnessed the final approach. They would have seen a swarm of blades. Each blade was a ship thousands of yards long. The greatest of them spanned fifteen miles from stem to stern. It was both sword and mountain chain. From the surface of Thoas, it would have appeared as an elongated star, moving with unalterable purpose with its smaller brothers. A constellation of war filling the night sky.

But in the second empire, there were no eyes to look upwards, or none to understand what they saw. This was not an empire worthy of the name. Yet it had held a dozen systems. One by one, they had been ripped from its grasping claws. Now the empire unworthy of the name was reduced to its core. Its seat of strength. Its source of contagion.

It did not see its doom arrive. If it saw, it did not understand. If it understood, it did not care. Such was its nature. That reason alone was enough to warrant its extermination.

Remark 73.44.liv: The visibility of the leader at significant moments of a campaign carries its own signification. It reinforces his interest not just in the goal, but in those sworn to carry it out. The leader who lacks these interests invites and deserves defeat.

Roboute Guilliman stood at the lectern of the bridge of the Macragge’s Honour. Below him, in a tiered space the size of an arena, the level of activity had risen in urgency, but proceeded with no loss of calm. Officers performed their tasks with the same efficiency as the servitors. The bridge hummed with the sound of human machinery, gears meshing smoothly, readying for war.

Guilliman had been at his station five hours already, ever since the translation to the system. He was here to witness and to be witnessed, as was proper. Addendum to 73.44.liv, he thought. Interest cannot be feigned. He would insert the correction to the manuscript later.

He had watched Thoas grow large in the forward bridge windows. He had seen its details resolve themselves as the layers of augur scans built up the composite picture of the target. The forward elements of the fleet were now at low anchor, awaiting his command for the next stage of reconnaissance.

‘Another message from Captain Sirras,’ said Marius Gage.

‘Reconfirming that his Scouts are ready?’ Guilliman said.

The Chapter Master Primus of the XIII Legion grinned. ‘That would be correct.’

‘He’s contacting you directly now?’

‘We were together on Septus Twelve in the Osiris Cluster.’

‘In the hive?’

‘Yes,’ said Gage. ‘We both made it to the surface in time to see the flares of the fleet burning when the Psybrid ships sprung the ambush.’

‘So he presumes this gives him leave to bypass the chain of command?’ Guilliman asked.

‘The Twenty-second is still without a Chapter Master,’ Gage reminded him.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ The orks of the Thoas Empire had taken Machon’s head in the final stages of the campaign to purge them from the Aletho system. ‘There will be a new Chapter Master before we land on Thoas. The current lack does not justify Sirras trying to make an improvisational end run around my timing decisions.’

‘An official reprimand?’ Gage asked.

‘No. But inform him that if he contacts you again, the next voice he hears will be mine.’

The old warrior nodded. His features were worn by his centuries of campaigning, and had been weathered into wry, intelligent cragginess. He walked a few steps away to vox the captain of the 223rd Company.

‘Wait,’ Guilliman said. Remark 73.42.xv: It is the duty of the soldier to accept an order without a rationale being provided, but the absence of a rationale should never be the default condition. ‘Let him know the scans are still being collated. He isn’t waiting on a whim. He’s waiting for a worthwhile target.’

In the bridge window, another layer of topographical detail was added. The image of Thoas sharpened. Coastlines changed from fractal abstractions to specific geological characterisations. The world was becoming a real place. It was tidally locked by its blue star. Half of the planet burned forever while the other half froze. The Ultramarines fleet was anchored over the region of the terminator, where twilight and dawn would never end.

Guilliman examined the sphere. He frowned. ‘Magnification of the northern tropic,’ he said.

The image grew.

‘Increase magnification.’

There.

A cordillera ran along a north-to-south-west diagonal down the western region of the largest continental mass. To the east, the land was wrinkled with mountains, canyons and plateaus for close to five hundred miles. To the west was a vast plain that reached almost to the coast before it ran up against a narrower, lower chain of peaks. In the western flank of the cordillera, Guilliman saw lines that were too regular. There were structures there, almost as big as the mountains in which they nestled.

‘Biomass readings in this sector?’ Guilliman asked.

‘A very high concentration of orks, lord,’ the Augur Master reported.

Given the inviting geography of the plain and the easier slopes of the foothills, that was to be expected. ‘Compared to the other principal land masses?’

‘Higher,’ the officer confirmed.

‘Are you seeing this?’ Guilliman said to Gage.

‘I am. Are those human?’

‘Records about Thoas are fragmentary in the extreme. To date I have found only two references to any form of human colonisation.’

‘Those are big,’ said Gage. ‘This was more than a colony.’

Guilliman nodded. ‘It was a civilisation.’ The prospect was pleasing. If there had been human colonies in the other systems reclaimed from the orks, all traces had long since vanished. That such signs would appear on this world, where the final battle against the greenskin empire would take place, was a gift of inestimable value. If the ruins were human. ‘Tell Sirras we have a target for him.’

‘Evido Banzor has Scouts ready for a low orbit drop too,’ Gage said. ‘Part of the 166th, under Captain Iasus.’

‘Good. Send them both down. I want their eyes on the ork dispositions with particular respect to those structures. The Thoas campaign begins there.’

‘“When presented with a choice of beginnings, choose the one with meaning,”’ Gage quoted.

‘Remark 45.xxx,’ said Guilliman. ‘Flatterer.’

‘Merely a manifest truth,’ Gage said, his eyes on the traces of immense ruins.

‘Our captain honours us with his presence,’ said Meton. His voice was a whisper, inaudible except over the vox. The orks were a long way beyond earshot. The visible ones, at least. Meton was observing proper discipline, taking no chances as the squads made their way up towards the ridge.

‘Theoretical – our captain is merely eager to get his hands dirty with greenskin gore,’ Sergeant Phocion said.

‘Practical – your captain would like you both to shut up,’ said Eleon Iasus. They were both partly correct. There was no compelling necessity for him to have left the Praetorian Trust to accompany the Scouts on their reconnaissance. There was no dereliction of duty either, though. As a sergeant, he had held Phocion’s position for decades. And he had cleared his venture with Chapter Master Banzor. Yes, he wanted the feel of Thoas’ surface under his boots as soon as possible. There was more, though. Theoretical: there is no such thing as superfluous advance knowledge of the battlefield. Practical: where possible, add first-hand experience to intelligence gathered from a distance. He wanted to see the ruins. He wanted to know what would be the epicentre of the campaign.

The Scouts of the 166th prowled along the western spines of the cordillera to the south of the ruins. They maintained vox contact with the squads from the 223rd coming in from the north. Both had come down by Thunderhawk, deposited on ledges a short way down the east-facing slopes. There had been no contact with the enemy. There was nothing to attract the orks here. The mountainsides were sheer, the valleys narrow and barren. There was nothing to fight over, and no room to fight either. The tectonic upheavals in this region had been so violent, so sudden, and involved so much compression that the chains of the cordillera were as narrow and sharp as rows of fangs.

Footing was treacherous. Iasus and the Scouts climbed, working their way up the nearly vertical mountain face. The sharp folds of the granite caught and held shadows. Both of Thoas’ moons were full, but the mountains had draped themselves in a dark more profound than night. Even with his enhanced sight and the night-vision lenses, Iasus was blind when his climb took him deep into the vertical crevasses. He climbed by feel, reaching up, digging his gauntleted fingers into the cracks, holding onto jagged protrusions with certainty they would not crumble beneath his weight. Long before he reached the top, the drop below, a fall from dark into dark, would have been far enough to kill him.

He was glad he had come. Each foot of the climb instilled a greater sense of Thoas in him. The theoretical knowledge transforming into the practical experience.

The ridge was as sharp and narrow as he had imagined it would be. He stood on the edge of an immense, rocky sawblade. It was difficult to stand.

‘Theoretical,’ said Meton. ‘If we drive the orks into these mountains, we’ll smash them.’

‘We’ll smash them regardless,’ Iasus said. The Scout was correct, though – an army that retreated into the mountains would be devoured by their teeth. And if by some chance the orks survived, if they went any further east, they would reach sunrise, and be cremated.

Iasus looked down. The orks were all to the west, the clans gathered in their hundreds of thousands on the plain near the base of the foothills and on the gradual slopes of the start of the mountains.

And they infested the ruins.

Phocion’s squad had advanced to a point several thousand yards from the nearest structure. The edges of the ork horde were directly below. The growls and snarls of the brutes rose to the heights like the roar of a violent surf. There were orks on the plain too, but the bulk of their numbers were sticking to the high ground. There was no reason to think these greenskins were intelligent enough to understand what force was coming for them, but they were readying for battle. As the Ultramarines had taken apart their empire, they had left no survivors in their wake. The beasts lacked anything but the most rudimentary technology. They had nothing resembling interplanetary vox communication. Yet somehow, they knew. Some collective instinct of the species told the greenskins to prepare.

Iasus turned his attention from the orks to the ruins. He raised magnoculars to his helm lenses. The structures snapped into clearer focus. They were badly damaged. The upper levels had collapsed. Apertures gaped, open to the winds and storms of Thoas. The roofs were gone from the buildings he could see. They were still colossal. They were constructed of huge blocks carved from the mountains. Iasus estimated that each brick was larger than a Thunderhawk. He saw pillars as high as Warhound Titans. They too were monoliths.

So much had fallen that the original shape of the ruins was difficult to discern. What Iasus could make out looked like terraced pyramids, each the size of a small city. The terraces were narrow in proportion to the levels’ soaring height. The effect was less of broad, squat structures, more of towering massiveness. The architecture was aggressive and brutal even in its decay. But it was not alien. Colossal as the scale was, the shape of the vaulted apertures was recognisable. There were smaller doorways in the walls, openings where orks had to bend down to pass through.

‘The greenskins did a thorough job,’ Phocion said.

‘So will we.’ Iasus lowered the magnoculars. ‘This was a human world once. It will be again.’

Guilliman met with his Chapter Masters in his compartment. Twelve Chapters had come to rout the orks from Thoas. Eleven Masters stood in a precise arc before Guilliman’s desk. With them were two captains – Hierax, the senior captain of the leaderless 22nd, and Iasus, who had earned his place at the audience with the knowledge he had brought back from Thoas.

That, Guilliman knew, was what was widely assumed to be the reason for the honour granted to Iasus. For the time being, he did nothing to correct that perception.

Behind the primarch, the crystalflex walls showed the orb of Thoas below the Macragge’s Honour. The flagship was at low anchor, in geosynchronous orbit above the great plain at the foot of the cordillera. The ruins were not visible at this altitude. Even so, if Guilliman turned around, his gaze would zero in on their location in the mountains.

He gestured to the data-slates on his desk. ‘The reports from the Scouts are conclusive,’ he said. ‘Humans once called Thoas home. They built great cities. That civilisation has fallen, but humans will lay claim to this world once more, and towers will rise again. There is more. Thermographic imaging and geologic auguries have revealed the presence of an extensive network of caves beneath the ruins.’

‘Do we know how deep they run?’ Atreus, Chapter Master of the Sixth, asked.

‘No,’ said Guilliman. ‘There are significant radiation blooms in the area too. They made imaging difficult. We know the tunnels are there. Beyond that, we’re indulging in conjecture. An unhelpful application of the theoretical.’

He stopped speaking. He observed the two captains. Their stances were perfectly formal, perfectly motionless. The Chapter Masters were more relaxed in their bearing. They understood that this compartment was a space for inquiry and debate, and the free exchange of views. Here was where theoreticals were worked over and modified, demolished and reconfigured. Absolute deference to his authority here was counterproductive. It undermined what he hoped to accomplish.

Though Iasus and Hierax might as well have been statues, Guilliman could still detect minor variations in their bearings. Iasus was content to wait until he was called upon. His stance was one of simple patience. Hierax, on the other hand, was on the verge of an explosion. He was leaning forwards slightly. Awareness of rank and the nature of his position held his tongue. The reason for his presence urged him to speak.

Guilliman relieved him of the dilemma. ‘You have a recommendation, Captain Hierax?’ he said. Surprise me, he thought. Say something other than what I’m expecting.

‘The ork infestation on Thoas is the worst we’ve seen in this campaign.’

‘This is the heart of their empire,’ Guilliman pointed out.

‘Exactly,’ said Hierax. ‘We should rip it out at a stroke. There are no humans in those ruins. There haven’t been for a long time. There is no reason to hold back.’

‘No holding back,’ Guilliman echoed, keeping his tone neutral.

‘The Second Destroyers will purge the orks from Thoas within the day.’

‘Along with all other life.’

‘Primarch–’ Hierax began.

‘Captain,’ Guilliman interrupted him, ‘how expedient were you planning to make this invasion? I assume you imagined keeping Thoas intact, so that eliminates cyclonic torpedoes. Virus bombs, then? Would you go that far?’

Hierax said nothing at first. His face was closed, so carefully neutral it lacked any expression at all. Like Gage, Hierax joined the XIII Legion on Terra. His rough features bore layers of scars. His face had a geologic history, as if roughened by successive lava flows. The nobility of the Ultramarines shone in his armour. Hierax himself embodied the harshness of war. The Destroyers were the necessary violence of the Ultramarines. They represented the moments when the heart was hardened, and the terrible act undertaken. They lived their name. They were the blood spilled by the blades of the Great Crusade. The Destroyers were not its hope, its promise and its creation. When Hierax spoke again, his voice was strong but cold. He already knew that Guilliman would refuse his recommendation.

Just as I know what it will be, Guilliman thought. I’m disappointed. It would have been nice to be proven wrong.

Hierax took a breath. ‘If necessary, yes,’ he said. ‘Our mission…’ He stopped, realising he had overstepped. The mission was not his to define.

‘Go on,’ Guilliman urged. ‘Speak freely, captain. If we cannot do that in this space, half of its utility vanishes.’

Hierax nodded his thanks. ‘Theoretical – our mission here is one of extermination. Practical – the most efficient way of ending the enemy while minimising our expenditure of lives is though the weaponry of the First and Second Destroyer companies.’

‘You see no other value to the world?’

‘Mining will still be possible after the worst of the radiation subsides. Its agricultural possibilities are poor. What Thoas offers will survive the worst we can do on the surface.’

‘I see.’

The Chapter Masters remained silent. You know me well, Guilliman thought. They knew the debate was about more than a tactical decision.

‘Captain Iasus,’ Guilliman said. ‘You were on the surface. What are your views?’

‘I respectfully disagree with my brother’s evaluation.’ The captain of the 166th was younger than Hierax, and a native of Macragge. His features were far less worn than Hierax’s. The long, livid scar that ran from his right temple down the length of his jaw made his profile seem even more aquiline. ‘The value of Thoas is more than industrial. There was an important culture there. Its memory should be preserved.’

‘That culture failed,’ said Hierax.

‘It did,’ Guilliman agreed. ‘Does that mean it should be expunged from our collective memory? Do we have nothing to learn from it? Does that mean its stand against the orks does not deserve to be commemorated? That there were no battles worthy of song?’

‘It does not,’ Hierax admitted.

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Guilliman placed his hand on a stack of bound vellum manuscripts on the side of his desk. ‘There is no tactical value to the remembrancers on our vessels. They contribute nothing to the battlefields of the Great Crusade. What they contribute in between the battlefields is inestimable. The records of the pacifications. The celebrations of victories. The memorialisation of the fallen. The analyses of the recovered cultures. This is the living tissue of the Imperium’s culture, Hierax. Even the dead civilisations are part of the human story. They have a life beyond the dust of their citizens.’

He turned to look at Thoas. Most of the planet was a dark brown, but it was far from dead. Its atmosphere was turbulent with the flashing energy of storms. The coasts were green with vegetation. Thoas was alive. Even with the cancer of the orks upon it, it was alive. He would not kill it. And he would not kill its history.

‘The orks took Thoas from humanity,’ he said. ‘We will take it back. We will not lose its heritage in the process.’

‘The radiation levels…’ Hierax began.

Guilliman raised a hand. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘They are high in the region of the ruins. Will we make them higher yet? We come to reclaim and to build. We will take Thoas back, and we will build a new civilisation here. Of course it will surpass what was there before, but it will also honour this world’s history.’

He smiled at Hierax. ‘Do you understand, captain?’

‘I do.’ The Destroyer’s tone was flat.

I wonder if you do, Guilliman thought, even more disappointed. Hierax was a good officer, but he was limited. He also symbolised a larger problem Guilliman had seen growing in the Legion, one the time had come to deal with.

‘The Nemesis Chapter stands ready to deploy when and as ordered,’ Hierax said.

‘I’m sure the Twenty-second does.’ Guilliman’s use of the numeral designation sounded like a rebuke. ‘And deploy it will.’

‘All of it?’ Hierax asked.

Guilliman raised an eyebrow at the shade of anger in the question. More evidence of the necessity of what he was about to do. He was glad he had asked Hierax to be here. Listening to the captain had confirmed him in his resolution.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not all of it. There are some actions that will not be necessary.’

Hierax’s lips thinned.

‘The time and the place must be the correct ones,’ Guilliman said. ‘These ones are not.’

Hierax bowed his head. He said nothing.

To the Chapter Masters, Guilliman said, ‘You have seen the intelligence gathered by the Scouts of the 166th and 223rd Companies.’ He emphasised the credit. He had just informed Hierax he would, once again, not be seeing action. He wished the captain to know, also, that the contribution of his Chapter had value.

‘We land in the plain?’ Banzor asked.

Guilliman nodded. ‘Your thoughts?’

‘A good staging area. The orks have the high ground, but our presence will draw them down.’

‘Their high ground is a dead end,’ said Atreus. ‘If we force them back there, that is where they die.’

‘And they will be a diminished enemy in retreat,’ Klord Empion of the Ninth mused.

‘That practical depends on the theoretical of the orks abandoning the ruins,’ Banzor said.

‘When have greenskins ever resisted the bait of a fight?’ said Gage.

‘Good point,’ Banzor admitted.

‘We see no chance the ruins are so important to them that they might hold their ground?’ said Vared of the 11th.

‘Highly unlikely,’ Guilliman said. ‘It would be unprecedented.’

‘“The unprecedented,”’ said Iasus, quoting Axioms 17.vi, ‘“is the catalyst for adaptability. Do not hope to expect every eventuality. Meet it instead.”’

Hierax frowned at the other captain’s temerity. Gage raised an eyebrow, amused.

‘The very words,’ Guilliman said, grinning.

He ended the briefing a few minutes later. The target was clear. So was the strategy. This wasn’t an attack that called for finesse. It would have bored Lion El’Jonson or Fulgrim senseless. Angron might have appreciated the straightforward application of overwhelming force, though he would have been baffled by the decision to capture and preserve the ruins. This was the strategy the enemy and the goal called for, though, so it was the strategy that would be employed. The difference between doctrine and dogma is the gulf between triumph and defeat.

‘Evido,’ Guilliman called to Banzor as the Chapter Masters and the captains filed out of the compartment. ‘A brief word, if you would.’

Banzor walked back to the front of the desk. Gage remained where he was, off to the side and between the desk and the crystalflex walls. Guilliman had told him some of what he had planned, but not all. He was visibly startled by the fact Guilliman had asked the Chapter Master of the 16th to stay. Banzor merely looked puzzled.

When the doors had closed behind the others, Guilliman said, ‘What is your evaluation of Captain Iasus?’

‘In what sense?’

‘In general. And in his ability to command, in specific.’

‘A fine warrior. An excellent captain.’

‘He inspires loyalty?’

‘He does. He doesn’t just lead from the front. He’s fought at one point or another with just about every squad in the company. They know he knows what they do and what they need to do it.’

‘So his mission with the squads was typical rather than unusual.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Adaptable, then.’

‘Very.’

‘And his overall command of the company? I appreciate his fine knowledge of the workings of the squad, but a captain needs to be more than a very flexible sergeant.’

‘You need have no reservations on that score, primarch. The 166th has been exemplary under his leadership.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Thank you, Evido.’

Banzor left, still puzzled. He had questions, but he did not ask them. Guilliman did not offer him answers. He had not made a final decision yet. Until he did, there were no answers for Banzor’s questions.

Guilliman moved to his seat behind the desk. He looked at Gage. The Chapter Master Primus looked less puzzled. He’s guessed, Guilliman thought. Even so, he would not open this particular discussion with Marius. He wanted the quiet of his own counsel first.

Gage understood. Gage knew him well. So Gage spoke of something else. ‘Thoas,’ he said. ‘Are the ruins that important?’

‘You think I should let Hierax off his leash.’

Gage shrugged. ‘The Destroyers haven’t been planetside at all on this campaign.’

‘Their tactics and their weapons have not been called for. We are not fighting that kind of war.’

Gage hesitated. ‘Will we ever?’

‘For those companies as they are presently constituted, I hope not.’

‘“As they are presently constituted”?’ Gage asked.

Guilliman waved off the question. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘To answer your first question – yes. The ruins are that important.’

‘Why?’

‘Their symbolism. Thoas is a culmination. We will crush the ork empire here. We will reclaim a world that we know was once a human one. Another piece of what is and must be inherent to the Imperium will be restored.’

‘All that would be true regardless of the state of the planet.’

Guilliman gave the old veteran a sideways look. ‘Since when are you such an advocate for the Destroyers’ way of war?’

‘I just don’t think we should reject Hierax’s approach out of hand.’

‘I haven’t. I said the symbolism of the ruins is important. It is for two reasons. We are not destroyers, Marius. That isn’t why my Father created us. It can’t be. It won’t be. So preserving a city, even a dead one, is important. Especially now.’

‘Because of the one we destroyed,’ Gage said after a moment.

‘Yes,’ said Guilliman. ‘Because of the one we destroyed.’

Monarchia. Lorgar’s pride. The city raised to glorify the Emperor. The city razed because it had deified the Emperor. A place of architectural wonder. A beautiful city. The XIII Legion had come to the jewel of Khur. The Ultramarines had taken possession of the city. They had rounded up the population. They had reduced the empty city to ash and glass.

The people of Monarchia had committed no crime. They were loyal to the Emperor. Loyal to a fault, Guilliman thought. They were guilty only of believing the lie taught them by Lorgar, a lie Lorgar had believed himself. The memory of the grief on Lorgar’s face during his confrontation with the Emperor haunted Guilliman. It had been the terrible agony of a son punished for doing what he had thought would be pleasing to his father.

The Ultramarines had destroyed a city and the spirit of its populace to chastise Lorgar. To humble his pride.

To make a point.

Symbolism.

‘I keep wondering,’ Gage said, ‘why us?’

‘Because my Father could trust us to perform the task as it needed to be done. Would you have wished it on any of the others?’

Gage shook his head.

‘And Angron might have enjoyed himself,’ Guilliman added. ‘We did what we had to. We were deliberate. We were dispassionate. My Father’s chastisement was measured.’

With a sigh, Gage said, ‘I did not feel measured when we flattened Monarchia.’

‘None of us did.’ The destruction had taken its toll on the Word Bearers. That had been its purpose. There had been a cost for the XIII Legion too. ‘We suffered a blow because of what we did there. We took that blow because it was necessary and because we could stand it. Do you see what Thoas can be for us?’ Symbolism. He tapped a data-slate, summoning the picts Iasus and the Scouts of the 166th had captured. ‘There is majesty there. Majesty worth preserving, and worth building upon. We will take back this city, and in time we will see a new civilisation rise here.’

‘We’ll be creators again,’ Gage said.

‘Thoas will wash the bitterness of Monarchia from our mouths.’

As he spoke, Guilliman turned his seat to look out through the crystalflex at the planet below. He saw the plain where his legions would land. His eyes locked onto the spot where he knew the ruins stood. He thought of absent cities. He tried to make himself think of cities yet to be, not of cities unmade. He failed. He thought of both.

He thought of the force of symbolism, and of the choice he knew he had already made.

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