IMPERFECT END
Andy Smillie

I take a knee while the Chaplain dies. Blood, thick and rich-red, spills from the eyes of his helm. It is a thing of baroque beauty, inlaid with the names of those who have died beneath its cowl, and inscribed with catechisms that border on the operatic. A skull helm. A visage of death meant to terrify the living into subservience and act as the final image the bearer's enemies take to their grave. I wait for the Chaplain's body to stop twitching and withdraw my finger from his forehead. The serrated edges of my digit emerge thick with brain matter. I relish the sharp tang of pain as I lick it clean, the barbs worked into my flesh tearing at my serpent's tongue.
'It is a saddening shame, Blood Angel, that the poetry of your death is lost on you,' I speak to the helm as a final pair of blood drops streak down its smooth plate. 'Though I am not surprised, it has taken me all of my life to adequately prepare for my own.'
My journey to the truth has been a long one. Since the day my brothers and I were freed from the Emperor's leash, I have believed that only His flesh would sate me. That only bathed in the Emperor's entrails, my thirst quenched by His magnificent blood, would my long quest reach its conclusion. For far too long, I have believed that only the Emperor could die a perfect death. That the taking of no other life could elevate me to my patron's side.
A terrible error that I have laboured under for centuries.
I feel the constricting grip of fury even as I reflect on the falsehood. It is a mistake that has driven my every action, consumed my every moment. Regret. I am blessed to feel such a thing. Few among my brotherhood can claim the same. Truest sorrow is something we learn only in our last moment. Yet I am in perfect health.
With ritual care, I cut the Chaplain's primary heart from his chest. Bifurcating the organ, I hook one half over the last empty barb stud¬ding my belt, a talon ripped from a hound of Khorne. The other I hold to the sky, and squeeze. It bursts between my fingers the way a thousand have done before. The blood is gone in an instant, carried aloft to my patron by the baleful wind. It is an ode to his majesty that here - under such an indiscernible zion, beneath the fulgurant collision of colour and sound that frames this forsaken world - I have at last found clarity.
I rise, and make for the tower.
The movement drags a snarl from one of the five Blood Angels that lie bisected around me. I enjoy the sound, savouring the desperate rasping of the Chaplain's black-armoured sheep as it tries to drag its torso towards me. Death Company. My face twists into a sneer as the words form on my lipless mouth. The maddened Blood Angels hold no more dominion over death than the countless millions my armies have cleaved from existence. I pace to just outside its reach. It growls, curling its fingers into the red earth as it reaches for my boot.
Perhaps I would permit even the initiated among my brotherhood to be spared death if they mistook the Blood Angel's roar for anger, if they thought it a mark of pride and defiance. My ears, though, have never mistaken despair.
The Blood Angel's cry is not the frail shriek of an eldar or the piti¬ful whimpering of a human, but it is despair, as sure as my flesh is bone-white. The Death Company warrior would kill, and yet it can¬not. It is anguished, it is broken, and it is without purpose. I feel its fingers caress my boot and I smile, stepping past it. My blade has gutted ork warlords, cast down the ancients of the necrontyr and cut apart the mightiest of tyranid bio-organisms. I will not sully it now, not at this late hour.
The tower is in ruin. The shattered remnant of a once-great dae¬mon fortress, its stone, forged from sun-baked blood, is cracked and punctuated by snaking fissures that ooze where the weapons of my brothers have turned it molten. The arterial magma is hot underfoot as it runs back to the cursed earth of this place. I take the stairs one at a time, eager - but in no rush - to make my final kill.
Atop the battlements, I look down on the slaughter below. It is glorious, a writhing multitude of death and desperation. There is no hope on the wind, only the lustful hunger of murderers and the fearful agony of the dying. Bathed in the bloody radiance of the battle, I am as a god, gazing down on my disciples as they create the backdrop for my final kill, and bring my life's work to completion.
I was wrong, before. The perfect death requires many things, but chief among them are the perfect victim - a being of purest majesty - and the perfect killer, a bladesman of exquisite skill. Yet more than that, it requires these to be one and the same, for both the killing and the dying to be experienced at once and together, a sublime blend of action and reaction.
So it is that I, Ashesh Kushal Siddhran, Pleasure Prince of Slaanesh, am ready to die by my own hand. I will taste the sweetness of my own flesh, and silence the beating of my ensorcelled hearts.
I draw Gh'aphern, my sword, from its scabbard. It is a Blade of Change, one of only nine in existence. Forged in the incandescent fires of the warp, it is never twice the same shape or balance. Yet, it is always perfect. I feel the daemon bound within the weapon rejoice, its glee shivering through the hilt as I tighten my grip. Gh'aphern knows full well the flesh it is about to taste, and it is rapacious. It can think of no greater joy than to kill me, the one who banished its mortal form and enslaved its essence. I smile. It is as it was meant to be. The perfect death I have before me requires no less than the most sublime of poetries.
I test Gh'aphern's edge on the light bleeding down from the world's six suns as they rise to alignment. Striated strands of blue, red and green shimmer down the weapon's length as it slices the light to its constituent colours. Satisfied, I reverse my grip, take hold with both hands, and step to the edge of the battlement. The wind catches my cloak, billowing the eldar skin out behind me like a banner, and lifts the long strands of my golden hair from my face. Below me, as I had planned, the bulk of the fighting finally reaches the foot of the tower. My body will not be left to rot like some corpse god or forgotten monument. It will be torn apart, ravaged by the beautiful carnage below. I press Gh'aphern's tip against my chest, and meet the gaze of the dozen eyes glaring up at me from my forearms. Ripped from my enemies and stitched in place, they widen and blink back at me in gleeful horror.
'Yes,' I say to them. 'Now.'
I pull the blade into me and feel it pass effortlessly between my two hearts. Pain, warm and enveloping robs me of thought. I hear Gh'aphern laugh as it widens within me, murdering both organs at once. My blood, black as the void, spills out over the flagstones. I topple. The roar of battle rises up around me like applause.
I fall. I fall to darkness.

The black of oblivion is not the impenetrable shroud I had imag¬ined. It is a forest of shadow that retreats before me, thinning and growing lighter as I push my consciousness through it. I pace for¬ward and stop. Odd that I find myself aware of the motion while the sensation of the act is lost to me. I move again. Still nothing. Perhaps it is to be expected. Perhaps I am still to fully inhabit whatever new form my patron has granted me. I move again, twice in succession. The actions come slower than I am accustomed to. I feel heavier, more rigid. A knot of frustration rises in my core, and I shift my thoughts, unwilling to allow it to choke away the splendour of my rebirth. Still for the moment, I dream of the killing to come, of the souls I will claim, and of the butchered meat that shall adorn my new form. Lost in gleeful wonder and hungry longing, I am taken unawares by the figure that resolves before me.
'You have awoken, lord.'
I make to speak but find myself silenced by surprise. Tay'lon, my flesh-smith, stands clad in his warplate, its rivets still thick with red earth.
'Your wounds were severe, and I admit it took more than my skill alone to save you.'
There is something in his tone, something…
It is then that I see the others: Narsun the Apothecary and the sorcerer Ilmyir. The damning stain of amusement marring their faces. Behind them, reflected in the polished steel of the chamber wall, I see myself.
'You!' I roar, though the voice that sounds in response is not my own. It is a cacophony of machine garble, the crudest approximation of speech. I charge forward in fury, bent on their deaths. A power field sparks, flaring crimson as I collide with it. Shuddering in shock, I strike out - once, twice. The barrier ripples but holds fast, the sim¬ple beauty of its energies mocking me.
'What have you done? You dare deny me the death I am due?'
'Always one to see pleasures only in the obvious. Don't worry about what we have taken from you. What we have given you is so much more,' Tay'lon's lips twist into a cruel smile. 'You will soon experience a whole new sensation. Something none of us have ever known…' He turned and gestured to the workbench behind him. 'Terror.'
'Gh'aphern.' The weapon's name comes unbidden from whatever lips I have left.
It lies shattered on the bench, the wards running its length dull and inactive. Ilmyir follows my gaze.
'Yes.' The golden orbs of the sorcerer's eyes flash with malice. 'We would never dream of separating you from your prize.'
The noise came then. A scratching of metal, a bladed whisper that gnawed at my mind.
'No!' I roar. 'No!'
My three commanders turn their backs on me, stepping from the chamber and extinguishing the luminators, to leave me alone in the darkness with the daemon. I feel it smile.
The burning gnawing intensifies. Panic rushes through me as my thoughts begin to unravel, and my mind begins to fracture. I recoil as the daemon laughs and works its way into the cracks of my psyche. It shows me my end.
I will be robbed of my life's work. I will die the most imperfect of deaths. A gibbering wreck, possessed of a ruined mind, I will be unable to experience the rotting agony of my power feed decaying. Even the nightmare pain of my flesh being scorched from my bones as this adamantium shell is finally destroyed, will be beyond my knowing.
Strange then that my last sane thought should be one of joy. In the final moments before I lose my mind, I have at least felt the encompassing pain of terror.