END OF NIGHT
Ben Counter

'For those who say there is no beauty left in the galaxy,' said Memnogon, 'let them look upon this.'
Beyond the precipice stretched a bewildering expanse of mad¬ness. The ground was of black glass, shattered into a labyrinth of sheer-sided chasms into which poured corrosive waterfalls flow¬ing to toxic underground oceans. Steam billowed from enormous machines breaching the surface, cogs and pistons heaving up black glass islands in time with the beating of this world's steam-powered heart. The sky was seething, the colour of rust.
Weak-minded maniacs crowded by the greater machinery, in the shadow of spinning flywheels and coils of brazen spring. They were drawn there by nightmares and visions, mutineers and stowaways. They leapt into the workings, lubricating the workings with their blood in frenzied offerings to the lord who sent them their calling. The sprays of steam were tinted pink with their vaporised bodies.
Memnogon of the Night Lords turned to see his warband fol¬lowing him up the slope of the glass mountains. He had led them through the warp storm, across worlds as mad or even more mad than this, always seeking the greatest triumphs to prove their worth to the powers of the warp. 'Brothers,' he said. 'This is the Cradle of Brass. Here Prince Kthul reigns, and here he will be destroyed.'
]Then let the view be sufficiently admired,' said Helkast, whose humour was grim even on the eve of triumph. 'There is a lord of daemons to kill.'
Helkast was one of the oldest of the dozen Night Lords in Memnogon's warband. The dark blue of his armour was almost lost in the barnacle-like growths that flourished in the warp, miniature creatures that fed off his anger and hate.
'I dreamt of this,' said the dry, tattered voice of Fulkrom, whose armour was covered in scraps of parchment that constantly smoul¬dered with the power of the prayers he had written on them. 'Kthul falls like a continent sinking into an ocean. In fire and blood. I have seen it.'
'I brought you here because I sought out the greatest prize,' said Memnogon. 'I spilt my own blood to read from the oracles. They spoke of a daemon lord in a body of brass and steel. We seek to pit ourselves against the greatest challenges the warp can put before us, my brothers, and this one, as all before them, we shall crush!'
'Once,' said Druthix, 'we knelt before a Golden Throne. We obeyed. We defied the men we were.' Druthix was a gladiator, a student of bloodshed armed with a pair of ancient lightning claws that only one who had studied them for centuries could wield. 'But we cast off those chains. We chose freedom, and the greatest freedom is to face the will of the warp itself and defeat it. Thus is the glory of Chaos! Freedom and glory!'
'Freedom and glory!' yelled the Night Lords as one, holding chainswords and boltguns high in salute. The salute was to Chaos, and to Memnogon.
'Our blades together are the equal of Kthul,' said Memnogon. 'And now all the warp shall learn it!'

The hate had almost burned Memnogon up from the inside. It had been ignited by his Legion's banishment from the fold of mankind, from being cast aside by an Emperor to whom the Night Lords had dedicated themselves. Or was it the Night Lords who turned from the Emperor first? The memories were so fractured by hate that the details had been lost.
But the hate had not taken him. He had found a group of Night Lords wandering the galaxy seeking to quench the same fires inside them. Together they learned their purpose. Victory cooled the fires down and made them bearable - victory over the greatest enemies they could find. Only then could a man feel like he meant anything against the infinite cruelty of the galaxy. Only then could he be wor¬thy of the glory of the warp. In the moment of victory, and never any time else, a man could be truly free.
It was the anticipation of that moment that burned through Memnogon's body as he ran up the glass slope towards the throne of Prince Kthul. The vast machinery of the planet's heart broke through in a mass of brazen entrails. Roaring pistons hammered into the ground, hurling gales of razored slivers that clattered against Memnogon's armour. A huge throne of bronze and steel rose lopsidedly from the peak of the rise, upon which sat a hulking draconic crea¬ture. Like the world beneath its feet it was a horror in clockwork, the fires of the daemon within burning between plates of glowing-hot armour. Its head was long and fanged, its eyes an array of gold-tinted lenses embedded in an iron skull wreathed in steam.
'You do not seek an audience,' growled a voice of grinding steel, 'for those who seek one stand before me raving and tattered, driven here by their dreams. And you do not seek to pledge your devotion, for you do not kneel in obeisance and terror. So this one surmises you have come to depose him, and sit upon his throne.'
Memnogon's hatred was too strong to express. He had tried, in prayers hurled into the warp and diatribes screamed into the faces of beaten enemies. But he had learned that only victory would calm it down. He drew his power mace, the blood on it smouldering in its power field. The blood never dried, an eternal reminder of every victory.
'I am Memnogon of the Night Lords,' he said, fighting to keep his voice level. 'And these are the brothers of my warband, wanderers through the warp. We take the heads of only the worthiest of foes. Be honoured, Prince Kthul, in death.'
Kthul lurched up from his throne, forelimbs unfolding into blades of burning steel. An articulated tail slithered across the ground as he thudded onto the glass slope, rearing up over Memnogon with eyelenses narrowing.
'Then let another skull be cast into the pyres,' Kthul growled, and lunged at Memnogon.
A great raking claw shattered the ground beneath Memnogon, a half-second after he rolled out of the way. Kthul roared in anger, steam spraying from every joint of his mechanical body.
'There is not but one Night Lord here to depose you!' cried out Memnogon. He drew his bolt pistol and shot out one of the daemon prince's eyes, yellow steam spurting from the ruined socket. 'You face the blades of my brothers, and as one we will bring you down!'
Memnogon had travelled the galaxy, real space and warp, for centuries with his warband. Those early days were corroded in his memory but the more recent years were a parade of victories, every one of his brothers working in concert to defeat foes none could take on alone. He knew their strengths, weaknesses and the actions they would take in the next few seconds - the chains of cause and effect that each one would spark, all leading to victory as inevitable as the warp itself.
First a burst of bolter fire would blind the daemon prince. Then the Night Lords would charge in with chainswords and power maces, shattering the daemon's joints so it collapsed to the ground. There they would dismember it, piece by piece, until it was spread out across the expanse of broken glass.
Memnogon hammered fire up into the daemon's face, anticipating the volley of shots that would burst its remaining eyes.
There was no gunfire from behind.
No Night Lords charged in beside him.
Memnogon glanced back, risking a split second with his eyes off his enemy. At the base of the slope the warband stood, watching. None of them had drawn a weapon. None of them moved to help their leader.
The shock of the sight was almost as cold and painful as the blade that lanced through his back and out through the side of his abdomen. Almost, but not quite. Memnogon grabbed the blade and snapped it off, giving him room to slide himself off it even as the pain ran through him. He shut the pain off, ordering that weak, human part of his brain to fall silent.
Memnogon turned, one leg buckling weakly under him. He was on one knee when Kthul's hand came down again, this time the blades of his claw cutting down through both of Memnogon's shoulders, carving down to his waist through lung and intestine.
Memnogon flopped backwards and as the colour drained out of his vision he could see the warband still lined up below, unmoving.
They did not flinch or draw a single blade as Prince Kthul peeled Memnogon apart, and cast the gory chunks of his remains across the shattered glass.
There was nothing left on this world for them. Their spacecraft, a corroded and misshapen gunship inhabited by a surly enslaved dae¬mon, squatted like a black metal toad in the obsidian valley where they had landed. The light of the pyre flickered against its pitted hull - the pyre on which what little remained of Memnogon was burned.
'He had to die,' said Fulkrom as he stood over the fire. 'Chaos is freedom. In pure freedom no one man can rule over another. By proclaiming himself above us, Memnogon violated the freedom that is Chaos. We will not turn down such a path again. The warp has had its way.'
'Do you not remember?' snarled Helkast. 'We thought that before, with Lord Korst! And Vixol Khren before him! They fought the hard¬est and won the most, and so they came to lead us, and then we abandoned them to their deaths because Chaos will not have one of us lord it over the others!' He looked around him, at the other Night Lords of the warband who stood silent in the wake of his words. 'None of you remember? The warp corrodes our minds, it is true. I cannot remember who I was before I took on these colours. But surely you can remember the deaths of those who went before Memnogon?'
'Be silent, Helkast, damn your guts!' It was Druthix who had spo¬ken. 'This is our quest. We defeat the weakness within as well as the enemies without. Memnogon died. We all understand why. Thus we throw off the weakness of his law and come closer to Chaos.'
'But we will come no closer,' replied Helkast. 'It will happen again. Maybe it will be me, maybe you, Druthix, maybe even this pallid youth here.' Helkast jabbed a finger at Fulkrom, the youngest-appearing of the warband. 'But one of us will come to lead the rest again. He will believe he is different, that the rest of us will forgive him his law and let him live when the victories come rolling in. But he will be wrong, and we will abandon him, and he will die. How many times has it happened? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?'
'Then break the cycle!' said Fulkrom. His eyes were wide, as if he was in the grip of one of his visions, when the landscape of the warp unravelled before his mind's eye and he could read the future from its contours. 'Throw yourself on the fire, or take that bolt pistol and put a round through your skull! If, that is, you think that will grant you an escape.'
Helkast looked down at the pyre, which was burning low, leaving only a few chunks of charred bone. 'Did we once think we could rise above Chaos,' he said darkly, 'and seek to impress its gods with our triumphs? Are we being punished for our arrogance? Is that why we are here?'
The other Night Lords were already embarking onto their ship. Perhaps they had not even heard him. With a final glance at the remains of the fire, Helkast joined them.
The ship rose from the obsidian valley, breaching the clouds to continue its flight through a night that would never end.