Daemonology

Chris Wraight

The world was called Terathalion, named for the species of jewel found in its equatorial belt under mountains of copper and iron. Even during the long interstellar silence before the Ipsissimus had made himself known, those swirled green-orange jewels had been mined and cut and polished, adorning the chief treasures of the planet – these were always books.

For Terathalion was a world of words where documents stored in a thousand human tongues were collated, analysed, annotated and catalogued.

A library-world, they had called it later. A place where knowledge coalesced, all under the benign guidance of distant masters on Prospero. For a hundred years after its incorporation into the Imperium, ruby-armoured magisters had been welcome and frequent visitors, prompted by curiosity or sent on assignment by their venerated primarch in search of myriad fragments of learning. Those visits had slowly dried up as the demands of the Great Crusade had drawn more of the XV Legion away from the loose-thrown Prosperine empire until, one day, they had ceased altogether.

During this new isolation, the world’s temporal masters did not worry unduly, nor did they seek especial clarification. The galaxy had been made safe for study, and so Terathalion’s patient work continued unabated. They knew that the Legions would return in time, for it was widely understood that Space Marines left no task unfinished.

In that, the temporal masters were of course entirely correct, except the ships that eventually emerged from the Mandeville point in the Imperial year 007.M31 and spread out through the local system were not the sleek and gloriously decorated system-runners of the XV Legion, but corpse-grey, vast-hulled leviathans.

Moreover, it was no mere squadron that had arrived, but an entire battle group. And as the warships took up position above Terathalion’s risibly meagre orbital defences, even the most trusting of the planet’s overseers felt a sense of unease.

They sent messages to the lead battleship, a colossal Gloriana-class monster with the tactical ident Endurance, but no response was received. Orders were frantically transmitted to the defence grid to mobilise, but by then even that gesture was made far too late.

The placid people of Terathalion had never witnessed the full firepower of a Legion fleet before, and so they could hardly be blamed for not knowing what to expect. They were still looking up into the skies when the bombardment began, turning the skies white as the clouds boiled away. Mass drivers annihilated the outer ring of defences before pinpoint lance strikes destroyed every command-and-control node across the northern hemisphere. A rain of incendiaries ripped through the urban centres, falling for hour upon hour in an unrelenting barrage that left barely one stone standing atop the next. Sheets of promethium flame swept through what little remained, scorching it black.

The books burned. Millennial tomes that had been secured in vacuum chambers were ripped apart as the armourglass casings shattered. Archives became white-hot tunnels, atomising irreplaceable volumes in puffs of burning dust.

When the bombardment finally relented, the few survivors crept slowly from whatever refuges they had been able to find, their ears ringing and their eyes streaming. For a moment it seemed to them like some awful error had been committed, and that the worst was over, and that – satisfied with the apocalyptic destruction they had wrought, for reasons that were still entirely mysterious – the attackers would now move on to their next target.

But then dirty contrails of drop pods split the smoke-barred skies. All across Terathalion’s newly tortured surface, clusters of adamantium teardrops crashed to earth, disgorging squads of pale-grey Space Marines from the impact-rubble. More and more landed, until whole battalions of warriors stalked through the rapidly toxifying atmosphere, their faces hidden behind slope-grilled helms. With horrifying efficiency, they ground their way from one ravaged hab-section to the next.

They asked no questions and made no demands. As aftershock thunderheads boiled across the rubbled cityscapes and heavily acidic rain began to drum from still-hot metal, the survivors of ruined Terathalion were hunted down like vermin.

In Geryiadha, once the world’s fifth most populous city and home to satintree groves and fountain-gardens, the concentration was more intense than anywhere else. In the main boulevard – now a pitted trench of smoking rockcrete debris – the air itself shimmered and broke open, leaking arcs of neon. Dust swirled and whipped into serpents, and masonry blocks rolled clear. A sphere of silver suddenly flashed into life, laced with writhing black energies. A sharp snap rang out, shattering the orb’s fragile skin and sending shards bouncing away across the detritus.

At the centre stood eight massive figures. Seven of them strode out immediately, hefting long scythes in heavy gauntlets. Their thick battleplate was gouged and charred, as though they had just come from some furious battle against sterner foes than anything a library-world might reliably muster.

The eighth towered over even those leviathans. His archaic armour, lined with rust and marked with what looked like deep blade-cuts, steamed with warp-frost. Yellowed eyes glinted from beneath a shroud-white cowl, set in a gaunt face ringed by rebreather tubes and feeder-vials. His expression was haunted, even though there was nothing on the planet that could possibly harm him, and his fingers twitched as he hauled his own great scythe into position.

The crackle of flames rumbled on in the distance, punctuated by the muffled crack of bolter fire. Forge-hot winds tore across the disintegrating urban vista, fuelled by the infernos raging in the hollow hab-spires.

The primarch Mortarion drew in his first rattling breath of Terathalion’s smog-choked atmosphere, and swept his gaze across the boulevard.

‘Find it,’ he rasped.

Seventy years earlier, and half a galaxy away, Malcador the Sigillite had been occupied when the alert came through. The First Lord of Terra was always occupied, for the civil affairs of the expanding Imperium were more than one man could possibly handle.

In a sense, of course, he was far more than one man. He was an aberration, just as all the powerful of the galaxy were aberrations – a random fluctuation in the psychic tides, an anomaly amidst the quadrillions that made up the burgeoning mass of humanity.

Still, that did not enable him to escape from the burden of all empires. Whenever one executive order was signed off, another nine would take its place. With every compliance came more demands for iterators, cultural assimilators, remembrancers, terraformers, trader treaties. He looked down at the long list of incoming diplomatic communiqués, and his ancient heart sank.

When the alert flickered across his display feed, then, it was welcome.

‘My lord,’ came the voice from the comm-bead in his collar, the one reserved for urgent transmissions. ‘My lord – he is here, and he will not be dissuaded.’

Malcador rose from the antique writing desk and reached for his aquila-topped staff. ‘Understood. I will be with you shortly.’

He walked quickly through his private chambers, then out into the corridors of the Imperial Palace. The courtiers and political delegates shuffled out of his way; either they had no idea who he was and had no interest in meeting his gaze, or they knew exactly who he was, in which case they did not dare to. He passed through the image-lined colonnades, garden chambers and libraries, padding softly on soft-soled shoes.

Gradually the ranks of unaugmented courtiers fell away, to be replaced by the red and gold of the Mechanicum and the Legio Custodes. None barred his passage – down in the subterranean levels, all knew his name and what his simple aquila staff represented.

He reached the excavation stratum, and the functionary who had called him hurried over, an apologetic look on his face.

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ he said.

‘That is all right, Sefel,’ Malcador replied. ‘Where is he?’

‘In the outer portal.’

‘Then you should have summoned me sooner.’

He went more quickly then, ignoring the towering vaults around him, and the low rumble of the creation engines and flashes of light from arc-welders. The air became hotter. Soon he was walking across bare rock, still scored from the drills that had delved into it, and had to step over the bronze-lined cables that lay like serpents across his path.

Malcador found him just inside the first gate, with the sound of macrohammers ringing through those dark arches. He was standing, staring up at the unfinished portal, his grey face lost in thought.

Following his gaze, Malcador drew up alongside him. It was an octagonal gateway, three hundred metres across, reinforced with an adamantium collar and ringed with the runes of Old Earth.

A Titan could have walked through that gate. Perhaps, in time, one would.

‘What is it for?’ the watcher asked.

The question felt premature. The portal would not be finished for decades yet. Its immense frame opened up onto nothing but bare rock – it was a door to nowhere, fashioned at enormous expense and in conditions of the utmost secrecy.

‘Why are you here, Mortarion?’ Malcador asked, as gently as he could.

‘What is it for?’ the primarch repeated.

Malcador placed a withered hand upon Mortarion’s back, making to usher him away but not being so foolish as to actually push. ‘Come with me. We should talk.’

The primarch glared down at him, his toxin-scarred features etched with contempt. ‘One day, old man,’ he said, curling his gauntlet into a fist, ‘one of us will leave you gasping in the dust. Perhaps it will be me.’

‘No doubt you are right. Now, please, come away from the gate.’

‘Why? Is it dangerous?’

Malcador didn’t look up at it. He never liked to look at it.

‘Not yet,’ he said.

Lermenta didn’t run immediately. She’d known that it was the end as soon as she had seen the first augur-pinpricks confirmed. As one of the higher-ranking syndics of Geryiadha’s administrative archival cadre, she was privy to things that others weren’t, although on that day she found that she couldn’t take any particular pleasure in that.

She had made her way quickly down from the main collation spire and jogged through the rows and rows of bookshelves, allowing herself a momentary twinge of sorrow as the titles passed by in the gloom. By the time the warning sirens were sounding, she had made it out of the core and into open air. She’d looked up, as if she might catch a glimpse of the ships that she knew were falling into position above her. The sky had been a pale, pure green, just as it was every morning during the tithe-season. Like most things on Terathalion, it had always had a sparse beauty to it.

Now that was all gone, stirred up into fire-edged storms that shed acid rain-like tears. Everything stank of cordite, mingled with the hot-metal aroma of plasma-discharge. She crouched under the shadow of a shattered medicae unit, feeling numb even amidst the burning. Her scholar’s smock clung to her, driven by the racing fire-wind.

She’d seen whole kill-squads of Space Marines moving through the city zones, cutting down survivors with chilling expertise. They had never made a sound, save for the crunch of boots on bone and the coarse bark of their outsized bolters.

They didn’t scare her, but it drove the others mad with fear. Those that could still run sprinted for the city limits, no doubt hoping that if they could just get clear of the drop zone then they might have a chance.

Lermenta watched them from her inadequate shelter. They were doing what every instinct told them to do, though it made them terrifyingly easy to kill. She could only watch as men, women and children were gunned down at range, cut apart up close or crushed beneath the treads of tanks brought down by bulk landers. Terathalion had been home to a population in the billions, and it took a while for even the Legiones Astartes to track them all down.

When she had to move, she kept her body low and hugged the remnants of whatever buildings still stood. The rockcrete was hot to the touch, burning through the soles of her regulation sandals. She didn’t have a plan. There was precious little to plan for when the entire planet was clearly being torn apart, and all that remained was a dumb, animalistic sense of wanting to stay intact for just a little bit longer.

She went south, towards the old rivercourse where industrial hoppers for the jewel-trade stood. Those were made of plasteel and adamantium, enough to withstand the smelters, so some of them might still be standing. As she flitted between hollow wall sections, she felt her heart thudding in her chest, tight and rapid.

She was so wrapped up in picking a route that she heard the boot-falls too late. Cursing under her breath, she did what all the others did and broke into a sprint. She did not look back.

Perhaps they hadn’t seen her, in which case she might still race through the shadows and get away.

Perhaps they hadn’t seen her.

The absurdity of the thought was amusing, in spite of what it portended. These were Space Marines. They heard everything, they saw everything. Still, she ran on, gasping in the ash-thick air, weaving through what remained of an old manufactory depot. She veered hard around a corner, skidding on the rain-washed stone.

Ahead of her, a long alley stretched away, lined with the empty corpses of drive-housings.

At the far end, she saw him waiting.

He was massive, far bigger in the flesh than she had ever conceived he might be, radiating an aura of such astonishing psychic authority that it made her want to gasp out loud. The elements themselves seemed to sheer away from him, though his scythe’s energised blade ran with boiling rainwater. She wanted to look away but the yellowed eyes held her fast. He walked slowly towards her, looming through twisting palls of smog, cracking the road surface under his heavy tread.

For a moment, as she stared up at the approaching face, she was only struck by one thing in particular.

Pain. The primarch’s grey visage was twisted into what looked like a permanent wince, half-hidden behind a hissing rebreather intake.

‘What do you want here?’ she managed to blurt out, hearing the arrival of more Death Guard coming up behind her.

Mortarion shot her a withering look, as if to say, Don’t try that with me. He grabbed her chin and held it up, pinching it between the plates of his elaborate gauntlet and held her gaze for a little while longer. It felt like knives being shoved into her lungs. Then, mercifully, he released her. He gestured to his entourage, and Lermenta felt two hands grip her by the shoulders.

‘We have it,’ Mortarion announced, though not to her, and in a voice that sounded like a flail being dragged across rusted iron. ‘I will return to the ship. You may destroy what remains.’

Malcador took Mortarion back up to his personal chambers, high up on the slopes overlooking the vast sprawl of the palace’s grand halls and spires. The Sigillite had spent more than a mortal lifetime making it a place of beauty and sanctuary, but Mortarion seemed barely to notice what had been placed there. The primarch simply stood on the polished marble, exuding vapours, his breathing a coarse scrape.

‘I would see my father now.’

‘The Emperor is not available,’ Malcador replied.

‘Where is he?’

‘I do not know.’

Mortarion snorted. ‘You know his every movement. You know his every thought.’

‘No. No man knows those things.’

Mortarion started pacing, kicking aside priceless pieces of antique furniture as he went. ‘He cannot keep me here for much longer. He tries my patience.’

‘Your Legion awaits you, and the last preparations are being made. You will join them soon enough.’

Mortarion turned on him, his eyes flashing with frustrated anger. ‘Then why imprison me here? Did he do this to any of my brothers?’

Malcador noticed the edge of unreason in his guest’s face, and wondered if it was getting worse. All the gene-progeny of the Great Project had been damaged by the scattering, but Mortarion’s wounds ran deeper than most. Angron had been physically damaged, and Curze’s mind had sunken into darkness, but Mortarion seemed to have been inherited something of both afflictions. The Emperor’s desire to keep him a while on Terra prior to joining the Crusade had been motivated from the highest intentions, just as all the decisions they had jointly made had been. That did not mean that it was the right decision, nor that the poisons could all be extracted…

‘You were all given different gifts,’ explained Malcador patiently. ‘You have all had different trials.’

‘None had more than I,’ muttered Mortarion.

‘I know you believe that.’

Mortarion turned back to the view, wrinkling his grey skin against the glare. ‘You have done nothing but preach at me since I was brought here. You talk of the Imperial Truth, and yet you are neck-deep in witchery.’ He grimaced beneath his rebreather, making the skin around his temples wrinkle. ‘I can smell it on you. As soon as I leave your presence, you will be back at your spellbook.’

Malcador suppressed a sigh. This again.

‘There are no spells, Mortarion. You know that.’

‘What is the gate you are building down there?’

‘I did not say it was a gate.’

‘It has eight sides. It is surrounded by numerological symbols. I could smell the incense.’

‘Your father has many projects.’

The primarch nodded. ‘He does. He starts many things, and discards them when they no longer keep His interest. There are times when I think He may have started too many, and that they will come back to haunt Him.’

‘There is a purpose,’ Malcador replied. ‘A design. Some things He is able to explain now, and some He will explain later. All we ask – all we have ever asked – is for a little trust.’

When Mortarion made his move, it was surprisingly quick.

He whirled, his gauntlet flashing out, catching the frail lord by the neck and gripping tight. Malcador struggled for breath, looking up into the mask of sudden hatred now looming over him. The primarch still bore the stench of Barbarus upon his armour.

‘Trust?’ Mortarion hissed. ‘I see your foulness before me, as plain as the sun. You are a sorcerer, old man, and the stink of it makes me wish to vomit.’

For once, Malcador struggled for the right words. He could have used his art to defend himself, but that would only enrage the primarch further. There was so much subtlety at stake – the nature of the psyker, the proper use of the human mind – but such arguments were hard to formulate with a gene-forged fist around one’s throat.

Then Mortarion let go as suddenly as he had grasped him and snorted contemptuously as Malcador only barely found his feet.

‘You must think me stupid,’ he snarled. ‘A peasant of Barbarus, not fit to walk the same paths as my illustrious brothers. But I see through you, old man. I see what you are, and I tell you this – I will never serve in your Crusade while there are witches among us.’

Mortarion’s toxin-spoiled voice shook with fervour, but Malcador composed himself. At one time or another, all of the primarchs had exerted their strength in his presence. They seemed to enjoy demonstrating their physical prowess over him, as if perpetually resentful of his privileged place at their father’s side. He had gotten used to letting the slights pass.

‘Do you… really mean… that?’ Malcador managed to ask, and Mortarion’s glower was all the confirmation he needed. ‘Very well. I had hoped to show you this later… when matters were at a greater stage of readiness… but perhaps now will serve.’

He brushed down his robes, trying not to show just how much Mortarion’s choking grip had pained him, and gestured towards a pair of mahogany doors that led to a chamber normally off-limits to all but himself and the Emperor.

‘After you. I think you will find this… interesting.’

The primarch’s chamber aboard the Endurance was cluttered and claustrophobic. Lermenta let her eyes run across it, taking in the piles of old equipment scattered across the black pressed-metal floor. Perhaps once it had been a finely appointed space, decked with fine items more in keeping with a private retreat of an Emperor’s son, though now it looked more like the domain of a mind teetering on the edge of insanity. Rolls of crumpled parchment spilled across collections of ephemera from a thousand worlds – stuffed xenos heads, astrolabes, divination boards made of rosewood and iron, leather-bound manuals on numerology, or knapped-flint knives of all sizes tied with lengths of twine.

The floor had been etched with concentric circles, each marked with a different rune. Iron lozenges, also marked with sigils, hung on chains from the arched ceiling, twisting gently under the dim light of flickering torches. The air was close and as hot as blood.

Lermenta was shackled tightly by her wrists, neck and ankles, bound to an iron frame that stood at the far end of the ramshackle chamber, facing in towards the circles.

She had to twist her head to catch a glimpse of Mortarion. An eye-shaped viewportal stood over to her left, taking up nearly the entire height of the outward-facing chamber wall. Terathalion could be seen through the armourglass, still glowing brightly in the void and betraying little of its ongoing pain. Mortarion stood before the portal, breathing deeply, watching the planet die. Every so often he would twitch, or his gauntlets would clench, or his rebreather would emit a faint choke of expelled air. He had been standing there for over an hour. Since the Legion menials had pinned her to the frame and left the two of them alone in the chamber, he had said nothing.

‘So, you did that all just to find me?’ asked Lermenta, growing tired of the enforced silence.

Mortarion turned upon her slowly. His every movement was deliberate, as though weighed down by a terrible weariness. Up close, Lermenta could see barely-healed wounds beneath the shadow of his cowl.

What could wound him? What could even scratch him?

‘Not all of it,’ he rasped throatily, his rebreather clicking as it filtered his words. ‘It is good to destroy a world. It purifies the soul.’

Lermenta raised an eyebrow. The primarch’s voice sounded strangely febrile.

He limped past her, coming to rest at the epicentre of the rune-circles. He folded his arms and regarded her. ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘I believed what my new father told me. I told myself that you were a myth.’

‘Well, you can see that’s not true.’

‘I see a mortal woman.’ Mortarion said. ‘I could snap your neck with my fingertips.’

‘Such a charmer.’

Mortarion advanced towards her, his tortured face looking oddly distracted. He stared at her like a man might stare at a newly discovered tumour.

‘How long were you down there with them?’

‘Twenty-five years,’ she replied.

‘And the mortal you consumed?’

‘I forget. I can’t ask her anymore – she quickly lost her mind.’

‘Why were you sent?’

‘I was not sent,’ Lermenta snapped. ‘I chose it. There were priceless things down there and now you have destroyed them all. Your brother Magnus will be angry, when he returns.’

‘Do not speak to me of my brothers. Any of them.’

Mortarion was studying her intently. Close up, Lermenta could smell the chemical tang of his armour-systems, the ripe edge to his extruded breath. She could see the minuscule darts of his pupils, and the faint hidden spasms around his mouth.

‘You are foul to me,’ he pronounced at last.

Lermenta bowed as much as her bonds would let her. ‘Yet you are nothing less than astonishing to me. I am full of admiration. Truthfully, I did not expect to endure long enough to see you at such… quarters.’

The flattery made no impact – Mortarion’s psyche was so inured to disdain that he could no longer see anything other than veiled contempt. Lermenta could almost hear that paranoia echoing in his mind, pursuing him, dragging at his mighty, wounded soul.

‘My brothers are already using your kind,’ Mortarion told her. ‘They tell me Lorgar willingly infects his warriors. And there is Fulgrim.’ Mortarion shuddered. ‘I wonder at it. The hypocrisy.’

‘You should not. They have seen the order of nature and accepted it.’

Mortarion smiled joylessly behind the rebreather. He turned, gesturing to the collection of esoterica in his chambers. ‘These are wards,’ he said. ‘Protections against the dark. Sorcery is a cancer. We must guard against it. Push it back.’ He shuffled over to one of the scrolls and idly traced a finger over the text. ‘The ancient Terrans believed in one god. Infinite. Omnipotent. That gave them a conundrum – how to describe perfection? What words could possibly suffice?’

Mortarion crumpled the parchment in his fist. His fingers were almost trembling.

‘All they allowed themselves was the via negativa – to speak of what their god was not like. And when they had exhausted all the things that were not true, what remained in the blind spot was his nature.’ He looked back at her, and the evident loathing returned. ‘I surround myself with all that is not the warp, for it is hateful to me. Whatever remains is corruption. I seek it out. I destroy it.’

‘And yet,’ said Lermenta, ‘of all that world’s souls, you chose to preserve me.’

Mortarion’s right eyelid twitched. ‘For now.’

‘Why?’

He drew close again, and it was all Lermenta could do not to shrink back in her bonds. ‘I am surrounded by the damned,’ he said. ‘Jaghatai was right – I am on my own with them. The aether stains everything. But I will understand it. And I will overcome it.’

‘Oh, for pity. Nothing can overcome it.’

The primarch loomed over her, and his shadowed face boiled with an old, old resentment. ‘All things can be overcome,’ he hissed. ‘Your final task, daemon, is to show me how.’

Malcador ushered Mortarion into a narrow chamber. The only furniture was a long, low table draped in black silk. When the doors were closed behind them, the room sank into a velvety darkness.

Malcador gestured with his index finger and a hololith emerged over the table, tiny points of light glinting like diamonds in the air. It was a tri-map of the galactic sector.

‘It took us a long time to find a suitable location,’ Malcador said, as the display gradually zoomed in. ‘A very long time.’

He watched as Mortarion’s shrewd, suspicious eyes took in every detail – the inbound ship trajectory markers and the manifest logs that flickered in scrolling lists.

‘Then there were the negotiations with Mars. I thought they’d be pleased to help, but there are always difficulties to unravel. But the work, I am happy to say, is now advanced.’

The hololith continued to cycle in closer. A planet swam into focus, its surface wracked by tectonic faultlines.

‘Where is this place?’ asked Mortarion.

‘You tell me you will refuse to serve if psychic potential remains in the Legions,’ said Malcador, watching the view continue to expand. ‘I believe you. It has been at the forefront of the Emperor’s mind for many generations. There are complexities to overcome, but much of His labour has been expended on that very question. This is a part of it.’

Mortarion gazed at the planetscape before them. There were rainy images of vast Mechanicum void-engines hanging in low orbit, and terraforming crawlers being lifted down through a volatile atmosphere. Other projections shimmered into life – a huge complex, rising out of a desolate landscape of volcanic ash, radiating out from a massive central arena.

‘Imagine it,’ said Malcador. ‘If a way could be found to remove the warp from the arteries of the Imperium. If the armies of humanity could travel without use of the Navigator gene. If the psykers could be withdrawn from the Legions, steadily and with caution. We have already begun to prepare for this day. It will not be easy, for there are powerful forces ranged against us, both within and without.’ Malcador arrested the zoom, hovering over the half-built arena. It was a colossal space, a palace in its own right, carved out of the volcanic wound of another world.

‘This is Nikaea, Mortarion. It is a world with a destiny, and you will have a part to play there.’

Mortarion appeared to be caught between emotions – the perennial distrust, leavened by an undoubted curiosity.

‘What are you telling me?’ he asked, grudgingly.

‘That you are valued, Mortarion. You will be mighty, as strong as the bones of the earth, and a pillar of your Father’s vision.’ Malcador dared reach out to him, to rest a hand on the primarch’s colossal wrist. ‘Remain true to us, and He will give you this. You will speak there, to make your case before the eyes of the entire Imperium, to unburden yourself of the things that you now carry unaided. For now, we must perforce build an empire with forbidden tools. But a day will come when all these things are no longer necessary.’

Mortarion’s eyes remained fixed upon the arena. It was as if he were already imagining himself standing there.

For a long time, he said nothing. Then, slowly, his demeanour changed.

‘Tell me more,’ he said.

‘You are a fool,’ said Lermenta, interested to see how far she could push the primarch. She guessed that it would not be very far – he was already teetering on the precipice. She had heard of what had been done to him on Barbarus, and did not wonder at the monster that had been produced. In some ways, it was a miracle that he still had any sanity left at all.

‘I have learned many things,’ wheezed Mortarion, gesturing to the arcane objects strewn across the floor. ‘Your kind can be warded against. You can be bound. You can be used, like blades, and then sent back to the hells that spawned you.’

Lermenta felt like laughing in his face. She had heard the same screeds from a thousand other mortals over the aeons, each one convinced that he alone had found a way to negotiate with the gods for no price at all.

‘Let me tell you of the empyrean,’ she said. ‘There are many great forces in the aether, and one of them has your name etched over his rusting throne. He is waiting, though not for very much longer. It matters not how many trinkets you rattle or wave – he will not be denied. He has claimed you.’

‘None have claimed me!’ snarled Mortarion. ‘Even my Father could not claim me! Me, who was guilty of patricide long before the seeds of treachery were sown in the Warmaster’s heart. I have seen them all off – the tyrants, the witches, the xenos filth. Only I remain – pure of it all, free of corruption.’

‘You do not look pure to me.’

The primarch glowered. ‘I can compel you, daemon. I know the words, the numerical constants that bind you, dragging you from one form to another. I have studied these things. It is not witchery, but scientific reason.’

Lermenta felt real contempt then. The damaged figure before her had no true knowledge, just false hopes and gleanings. Her own master’s favourite, Magnus – ah, now there was one who really understood the mysteries of the empyrean, and even he had been deceived.

‘You wish to know the truth?’ she asked.

Mortarion came closer. ‘I will know the truth,’ he hissed.

‘I can show it to you.’

‘I destroyed a world to find you. Give me the knowledge.’

Lermenta smiled sweetly. ‘Very well.’

Exerting her power was trivially easy. Most of the wards and cantrips Mortarion had assembled to keep her in place were embarrassingly weak, and only one thing in the chamber had the power to really hurt her.

‘This is the truth.’

Her bonds shattered. Her human shell peeled away, sloughing from her like a bloody cloak and revealing a glossy, insectoid true-form. She launched herself at the primarch, her jaws gaping obscenely wide, her claws raking.

She took him by surprise. It was her only advantage and she pressed it, gouging at his grease-streaked armour and trying to gnaw at the flesh within.

He hammered a heavy fist down, trying to take her head off, but she evaded him with ease. She punched a claw into his midriff, biting deep, eliciting a roar of pain.

By the gods, she was enjoying this.

His physical strength was enormous, but that would not help him, for she was a creature of anti-physics, shackled only by laws that he feared to invoke. She wounded him again, goading him like some huge taurodon, driving his anger deeper towards mania.

‘Banish!’ he roared as she laughed at him. ‘Go back!’

His fists were flailing now, trying to latch on to her, to drag her down. She slipped through his fingers like an eel, bloodletting as she went, adding freshly scored lines to his already battered war-plate. The two of them rocked back towards the circle, and she felt the power of the wards overlap in the air, tearing at her flesh even as she ripped through them.

‘Do it!’ she taunted, slapping him across the face. ‘Do what you came to do!’

He resisted, trying to tear her apart with his hands, still relying on the immeasurable strength in his post-human musculature.

Lermenta spat at him, and the acidic spittle clogged in his eye.

That did it.

‘Barbaroí!’ he roared, and the runes etched around the chamber flared into life. A hot wind suddenly howled from the centre of the circles, snatching at her revealed trueform and harrowing it. ‘Gharáz! Baghammon’echzhaza!’

She couldn’t help but scream, though the pain was mingled with a cold satisfaction at what she had provoked.

Mortarion kept up the chant, and now his fist-strikes, spiralling with warp-lightning, caused real damage. He smashed her back against the iron frame that had held her, and the blows drove into her carapaced stomach.

‘So it comes for you at last,’ she hissed through bloodied fangs, grinning. ‘You could not resist.’

The glorious stink of learned sorcery and hedge-magick was now pungent and inescapable. It was within him, and he was using it, in spite of every protestation.

‘Never mock me,’ Mortarion growled, spraying spittle from the vents of his rebreather. ‘Heijammeka! Never goad me!’

Lermenta sagged back against the wall, feeling her soul pulled back into the empyrean. The primarch was crunching her to pieces now, hammering furiously with his fists, pouring out all of his fury onto her broken physical shell. It was hard not to be awed by it – she was the first to see a fragment of what he would eventually become.

Here, above the burning remains of Terathalion, was the future of the Death Lord being born.

And so as she died, and her quintessential matter sucked itself back into the maw of the aether, she managed a mock salute. ‘Hail, Master of the Plague!’ she cried through the ruin of her jaws. ‘By the gods, you learn fast.’

Then the mortal universe ripped away, and the warp came rushing over her like a tide.

Mortarion stood over Lermenta’s crushed form, breathing heavily. He could smell the ichor upon his gauntlets. It wasn’t blood, however it stained just as richly.

His hearts were beating as one, though the combat had sickened him. He wanted to vomit, to expel the curdling sickness that hung heavily in his stomach.

But here was something else there, too. He remembered Malcador’s promises; the smooth words spoken, so it seemed, an age ago.

A day will come when all these things are no longer necessary.

The Sigillite had been wrong about that, either lying or mistaken. That day would never come now, and there was no point pretending otherwise. Perhaps all the old certainties would have to be overturned now, even the oldest, forged in the gas-clouds of the foundling world he had both loved and hated.

He remembered, too, the words that he had spoken.

I will never serve in your Crusade while there are witches among us.

For too long, he had been used by all sides – Nikaea had been and gone, and the promises made for it had all been hollow. The void now seethed with witchery, more virulent than ever, and he could feel its tendrils grasping for him.

He looked down at the etched floor, at the wards and the symbols and the runes. He would have to learn more. He would have to master all the paths of ruin. He would, as perhaps he had known for a long time now, have to become the very thing that he had always hated.

‘So be it,’ he growled, retreating back to the centre of the arcane circle. ‘It starts here.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Scars, the novella Brotherhood of the Storm and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and the short story collection Wolves of Fenris, as well as the Space Marine Battles novels Wrath of Iron and Battle of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Time of Legends novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works near Bristol, in south-west England.

Sent to wipe out the last survivors of a downed Imperial Fists vessel, Death Guard Chaplain Murnau unleashes one of his Legion’s most deadly weapons – the Destroyers.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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