DAEMONBLOOD
Ben Counter

THE SPACE MARINE and the Battle Sister gazed across at the sight before them. It was an ocean of corruption. It was a continent of evil.
The morass undulated gently, lit by the phosphorescence of vast colonies of bacteria and fungi. It spread so far through the subterranean darkness that it formed the horizon, and far away island-sized buboes spurted like volcanoes. Rivers of ichor oozed across the slabs of fat and tattered, stretched skin, bursting with the sheer immensity of the creature it contained. Here and there huge spires of splintered bone jutted up from the vile sea, picked clean of flesh by the layer of flies that hung as thick and vast as a city's smog and obscured the cavern's ceiling. This sea of flesh was dead, yet alive. It was the diseased green-black of decay, and yet it pulsed with the life of the pestilences that had made this rank, boiling ocean of filth their home.
Sister Aescarion of the Ebon Chalice tore her eyes away from the sight, bile and vomit rising in her throat. What she saw was a manifestation of everything she had been taught to fear, and then to hate, throughout all of her life. Yet there was little room for fear here, or even hatred. It was a blank revulsion that overwhelmed her.
She was lying on her side, still wearing the fluted angel-wing jump pack, for she had landed badly on the thin promontory of rock which arced over the sea. Instinctively she checked her auto-senses. The respirator in her power armour was working hard to filter out the toxins in the air, and warning runes flashed all over her retinal display.
Hurriedly she tried to remember where she was, and the image of the heretic city flitted back into her mind. Far above them, on the planet's surface, the city of Saafir raged as the heretics and their daemonic allies fought

her brothers and sisters. And here was surely the heart of Saafir's evil, encapsulated in an unimaginable sea of writhing corruption.
Beside her stood Sergeant Castus, the deep blue armour of the Ultramarines glinting strangely in the half-light. He had removed his helmet, and held his bolter by his side. His centuries-old armour sported several fresh dents and bullet scars, a testament to the ferocious battle which he and the Sister had fought to get here. Like all Space Marines he was tall, and his dark hair was cropped close. His face was as strong and forbidding as a cliff of rock, his eyes fixed grimly on the sight before him.
Aescarion grasped her simulacrum, rolling the ivory beads in the black gauntlet of her power armour. In spite of its comforting presence she knew the sea was alive, and that it could tell they were there. She knew that it would not make do with merely killing them.
'Brother Marine.' she called to Sergeant Castus, her voice small and quiet when usually it was strong and inspiring. 'Close your mind to it. Look away!' Castus did not seem to notice her.
I have my faith, she told herself. I am alive where no human should have a right to survive. The Emperor is with me always. I have my faith. But I fear for the Space Marine. Why do I fear so?
A ripple of movement shivered through the air. Aescarion reached out and grasped the haft of her power axe where it had landed next to her. Its head, like a giant chiselled shoulder blade, thrummed angrily wim the power field around it. She could not hope to hurt the creature in front of her, but she was not ready to die on her knees, and death in battle with such a thing would be a glorious end in itself.
Am I really going to die here, asked that voice of faith deep inside her? A spirit true to the Imperium never dies. And the Marine? He would have great strength of mind, as he had been trained - but strong enough ?
A kilometre or so across the corpse-ocean, a chasm many leagues long sluiced apart, revealing layers of fat and necrotic muscle beneath, bloated and useless organs. Further away, two orbs the size of cathedrals rose up from the mire with a great, vile sound like a hundred bodies being pulled from a swamp. They shed their filthy membranes to reveal a gleaming black surface. Castus took a few steps away from the rock's edge, but he did not take his eyes off the monstrosity.
It was a face. A mouth and two eyes. When it spoke, it was with a voice felt rather than heard, deep and slow, and Aescarion could feel the waves of malice that swept across the promontory along with the thing's noisome breath.
What curiously small creatures you are to present such a thorn in my side.' The words roared and rumbled through the air, thick with dark amusement. "What little bundles of ignorant flesh. I am Parmenides, called the Vile, chosen Prince of Nurgle. I am the virus which the Plague God sends to infect your mortal worlds. I am the festering in your

wounded empire. Do creatures as insignificant as yourselves have names too, I wonder?'
'Sergeant Castus of the Ultramarines, Second Company.' the Marine replied in a defiant voice, as if he were trying to impress the daemon prince.
The horrific gaze turned to Aescarion, questioning.
'I would not give you my name, though it cost my soul.' the Battle Sister snarled, and she gripped her axe tighter.
'Such a shame.' Parmenides replied. 'But the girl I can understand. Her mind is most infertile. What has she ever questioned? They teach her and she believes.' The corners of the chasm turned upwards. The thing was smiling. 'But you, my man. You are different, are you not? You can travel across the stars - but you do not know what lies between them. I could show you, my boy. I could show you why your omnipotent Emperor chooses to let his Imperium of toy soldiers be eroded by Chaos.'
Parmenides's immense face rose up in a vast static tidal wave that surrounded them like an amphitheatre of flesh. He gazed down on them from above, drowning them in his blank gaze. Sister Aescarion took an involuntary step back, then held firm. Sergeant Castus continued merely to gaze upon the corrupt being, his eyes steely, jaw set in righteous defiance.
'Now ask yourself, who is in the ascendancy? Every year more and more worlds are lost to you. No matter how you lie to yourself that the warp is held at bay, you know deep in that untaught part of yourself that humanity will fall. The girl cannot see the inevitable. But you can. And do you really want to be dragged down by the Imperium as it sinks? You will die knowing your efforts were futile. You will die knowing that you know nothing!'
Castus shook his head slightly, but whether he was refuting the monster or agreeing with it Aescarion could not tell.
'I can give you flesh that will not wither, only change and become home to a civilisation of pestilence. Do not follow the Imperium when it falls. With my help you can crash it beneath your heel, and become an Imperium yourself, my boy! I can show you what secrets this dark little universe contains. I can show you what it really means to exist in a world your Imperium is blind to.'
Castus's face was set but uncertainty flickered in his eyes like lightning. Aescarion could sense the insidious psychic worming that would even now be burrowing for his soul, but the Ultramarine was fighting it, trusting in the Emperor, refusing to bow before Parmenides's strength.
Castus tried to hold his hands up to his face and block out the sights and sounds that were trying to change him, but he was pinned by great chains of psychic energy, to the rock where he stood, utterly immobile, held wide open and totally vulnerable to the mental ambush. He tried to

remember the years of training and conditioning in the temple of his fortress-monastery. He felt himself getting more and more desperate as he tried to recall all those words of steel that had been spoken to him by the Chaplains ever since he had first set foot in the Chapter's aedificium. But they were all slipping away, as his mind was dissolved by Parmenides's will.
'Nnnoo... nnnnn...' the Space Marine grimaced as he tried to form the words of defiance spinning in his mind.
It was a new type of fear he felt now. He had known what it was like to feel the air shredded by bolter shells and laser fire, to anticipate, every second, the hot bloom of pain. And he had become used to it over the years, until it was not a real fear, but an understanding of the constant danger that accompanied a sacred duty to defend the Imperium.
This was so different. Here, his body was not at stake. His mind was the prize, his spirit, his very soul. A Space Marine should never feel fear. But Castus felt it now, a fear of change to the part of him that had always remained the same, a part of him that was as sacred to him, in its own way, as the Imperium itself.
'Domina, salve nos...' he hissed through his teeth, grimacing, a thin trickle of blood running from one nostril.
With a mental shrug, Parmenides cast a dark psychic mantle around Castus's soul - a vast, terrifying emptiness, crushing, draining his spirit.
Castus knew that if he had ever been strong enough to earn the armour of a Marine, he would have to be stronger now. 'Imperator, in perpetuum, in omnipotens, in umbrae...'
Aescarion tried to drag herself towards him but the very air was drenched with power and she, too, could barely move - she felt as if she were entombed in rock. Her ears buzzed with a low, savage laughter, and the abhorrent image before her was shot through with red flecks as her head pounded. 'Never break!' she yelled at the top of her voice, unsure if Castus could hear her. 'Never break!'
From between Parmenides's eyes a shimmering psychic lance leapt out and transfixed Castus, laying him open, white arcs of energy leaping off his armour to the rock, lighting him up like a beacon in the darkness. Every fiendish trick the prince could muster was poured into Castus's disintegrating soul.
The crashing power smashed Castus to his knees with an involuntary scream of panic. Deep in his mind he scrabbled madly, grasping for the memories that were stripped from him and were incinerated by the force of Parmenides's malice. Endless hours of battle blistered and died. The liturgies of the Ultramarines were blasted from his memory. And below even that, a past, a childhood, all were flayed away and burned. The threads of personality that had held him together melted in the psychic fire until all that was left were the most base instincts. The flame left him

seared clean of all that had made him a Space Marine of the Emperor. Castus was reduced to an animal with no morals, no duty, no memory of the almighty Imperium that had borne him.
And no faith.
A tide of cold horror rose in Aescarion's heart. Castus was limp, swaying where he knelt, his skin pale, blood running from his nose and ears. All his mental defences had been peeled away and the shrill scream that she could hear in her soul was the sound of Parmenides's foul mind savaging the Marine's spirit like a predator tearing apart its prey. Castus had been strong - but this foul Chaos filth had been stronger.
'Do you join me? Do you belong, fleshy little ignorant man?' the daemon prince's voice rose amidst a screeching psychic crescendo. Answer! Answer! Do you embrace knowledge, and the plague, and the true path of humanity? Do you transcend your sad little species? Will you watch them fall beneath you, while you walk the stars?
'Do you join me?'
In a heartbeat the mental chains shattered, and Aescarion could move again. But she knew that this was the worst sign, because it meant that Castus had succumbed.
'Yes!' Castus yelled in a monstrous, throaty voice that was not his, throwing his arms wide apart as if offering himself to sacrifice. 'Oh yes!'
Parmenides laughed, and great walls of flesh pounded against the walls of the promontory, sending debris crashing around them. Aescarion was not going to die here. She was not going to join the Emperor, not just yet. The moment Castus gave himself to Chaos, he had given her something to avenge.
She swung her power axe above her head and rushed at Castus, smashing the blade down amidst its howling blue power field. Castus blocked it with his forearm and his hand was severed in a waterfall of sparks. He looked back at her, not with the eyes of a man, but with the same black, filmy, liquid eyes of the Daemon prince, and smiled at her with Parmenides's malevolent grin. His skin was scarred and pockmarked by the heat generated by the daemon prince's invasion, his teeth were cracked and shattered. His body had been wracked and broken enough - but that was nothing compared to the mutilation of his soul.
He did not bother to draw his combat knife or raise his gun. He simply drove the heel of his remaining hand into Aescarion's breastbone and sent her sprawling across the rock with a strength not even a Space Marine should have.
The Sororitas clung to the rock and saw the waves of filth rising towards her. She drew her stiletto combat knife from its sheath, but instead of rushing at her new nemesis and dying a good death, she drove it into the casing of her own jump pack. In two strokes the fuel inhibitor was sliced out, clear fuel spurting onto the stone.

'Damnation tuum.' she growled through clenched teeth. A heartbeat passed and her jump pack erupted into life. She rocketed into the air on a plume of flame as all the fuel was ignited at once. Her ears were filled with the roar of superheated air. The savage heat slammed against her and knocked her half-unconscious. The pack fused solid. The armour on her back began to melt and her hair caught fire.
As she soared upwards and prayed that she would be immolated before falling back into the cavern, far below her the enfolding waves of Parmenides's corrupt flesh covered Castus. In the darkness below Saafir, a new champion of Chaos was born.
As THEY WITHDREW from the burning ruins of the city of Saafir, the Imperial forces found Sister Aescarion, broken and shattered. Her fellow Sororitas had taken her from the rubble and transported her to the Order Hospitaller in the Ecclesiarchal Palace on Terra. In the dark majesty of that most ancient of worlds, the priests and apothecaries grafted new skin on to her back and furnished her with a new suit of black power armour and white dalmatic from her Order's vaults. They gave her back her hair, so her red-brown ponytail hung between her shoulder blades as if it had never been seared away. But she still had her scars, tiny scorches around her hairline, like hundreds of toothmarks.
When she gained consciousness in one of the wards of the Order of the Cleansing Water, they told her a story she already knew. They told her how the Ultramarines and the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice had been selected to support the Imperial Guard in assaulting and recovering the heretic city of Saafir. About how the cultists they found there were cut down in hails of bolter fire until suddenly a tide of foulness had bubbled up from below the streets, carrying daemons of the Plague God with it: grinning, one-eyed abominations carrying swords of venomous black metal, tank-sized beasts that killed with a touch of their bestial tentacles, and millions of tiny, pestilent abominations, which giggled insanities as they swarmed into armoured vehicles and even between the joints of power armour. Aescarion was familiar with the way the Marines and Sisters had been forced back, selling every inch of ground for a few drops of daemons' blood, but were finally forced to abandon the city to its fate as the forces of Nurgle grew overwhelming in number and ferocity.
Aescarion answered with a tale of her own, telling how her Seraphim squad had been cut down in mid-air by the poisoned blades of the Plaguebearers and vast thunderheads of fat, purple flies. How she and Castus had found themselves alone in the carnage, facing an assault that oozed straight up from hell. And finally, how the streets had given way beneath them and delivered them into the underground chamber containing the vilest creature imaginable.

She told them of Castus's fall from the Emperor's light, and they hung their heads in shame.
AT ONCE THE Ultramarine armour had been fused to his muscular frame. The blue surface and white Chapter symbol blistered off and the plas-teel plates transformed into a living metal which thickened and split, drawing itself into biological curves which oozed dark fluid at the joints. Sometimes he could catch scenes reflected in the dull surface - a darkness descending from the skies, the tear that splits reality in two, Nurgle himself emerging laughing from the shattered remains of the galaxy.
The Plaguebearers that attended to him brought him a morningstar. The haft was cut from the leg bone of some monstrous beast, and the head had been hacked from a stone so black it drank hungrily at the light, and a dark halo played about it constantly. To hold it, he had a new hand made of overlapping plates of dark purple crystal, which flexed and gripped with a cold, alien strength.
On his other arm was a shield as tall as he was, bound in layers of human skin. The varying shades had been wrought into the triple-orbed symbol of Nurgle, and it was drenched in such sorcerous elixirs that it could turn the blows of gods.
The helm they placed on his head had a single eye-slit through which he seemed to see better than with any auto-senses. This was just as well because his implants had soon fled him, wriggling out of his new flesh like metallic maggots.
The Plaguebearers looked upon him with approval in their single glowing eyes, their ever-grinning mouths stretching wider. Castus held his new arms high above him and screamed a never-ending scream, so that even Nurgle on his throne of decay would hear him in the warp and perhaps smile a little at the dedication of his new servant.
THE CULTISTS HAD no time to react as the circle of angels dropped around them from the ceiling of the space hulk's dormant engine room, stitching vermilion threads through their bodies with twin bolt pistols. The cultists were naked to the waist, their bodies and faces daubed with crude symbols in woad of strange colours, their skin white and tarnished by the touch of decay, their eyes black and empty. But armour would have helped them little here, as the concentrated fire cut them down before they could hope to fight back.
The graceful black Sororitas armour flashed in the light of Sister Johannes's hand flamer as it spat a gout of blue-hot flame into the centre of the circle, carving a charred canyon through the torso of one and setting two others alight. The cultists howled, spinning like madmen as the blazing chemical adhering to their skin tore its way into

their muscles and organs, until their unholy life was burned from them. They slumped to the ground, skeletons of smouldering ash.
Aescarion's axe-head sliced down into one cultist's shoulder, severing the left side of his body to leave him staggering, almost comically lopsided as his organs spilled out onto the floor. Canoness Tasmander had wanted to present Aescarion with an ancient power sword, in recognition of her famous strength of faith beneath Saafir. But she had refused it: it was too elegant a weapon with which to despatch heretics - they should be slaughtered like animals and pounded into the very earth. That had been a long time ago now - now she was in command of a new Seraphim squad who had become her sisters - but the axe remained beside her just the same. And it was that axe which descended upon the hulk's ill-prepared defenders, lopping off limbs and splitting carcasses like a butcher's cleaver.
A spattering of lasgun fire broke against the walls; one impacted on Aescarion's greave. 'By sections!' she yelled and the Seraphim broke their killing circle, their jump packs hauling them into the air from where they swooped down onto the remaining cultists. The last heretics died so quickly they didn't even have time to scream.
The hulk seemed to have been built by giants. In itself it was the size of a hive city, and everything inside it was immense. In the engine room, ornate turbines as big as city blocks loomed above, too high for their crenellated tops to be visible, and immense pistons bridged the shadows. Everywhere had been daubed with the primitive slogans and symbols of the Plague God, and a reek of death and despair hung in the fetid air. This was a dark, terrible place. But for Aescarion, that was good - because it meant she must be close.
The majority of the hulk had been deserted, and they had spent days picking off the few lifeforms on the scanner. This squad was now as familiar to her, after years of missions, as the Sisters she had lost on Saafir, and they were good, even for the chosen Seraphim.
She was good, too, she knew, for she had learned a great deal of warfare since Saafir. There was a new purpose to her, beyond the service of the Ecclesiarchy. It had driven her to pursue Castus across the stars for almost longer than she could recall, and now her nerves were on fire, because she had found him.
'How far now, Ismene?' she asked.
'Not far, my sister.' Ismene said, the ancient scanning device's pale green glow lighting her face. It showed that she was no longer a young maiden, fresh from the Schola Progenium - they had been hunting darkness for a long time now together. Strong, but not young.
'Then follow.' Aescarion strode through the darkness towards the corridor leading to the ship's control centres.
Sister Johannes looked up from examining the smoking corpses she had created. While Aescarion's scars were unobtrusive, Johannes's formed

a web of chewed-up skin spread across her face. They were a relic of a past mission to a hive city and an altercation with a chainsword, and made her look like a savage. 'Forgive me, Sister Superior, but how can you be sure it is him?'
'I do not know him well.' Aescarion replied, fixing her Seraphim with a cool gaze, 'but I know him well enough. Follow.'
The rest of the squad checked their ammunition and marched into the corridor. The walls were streaked with foulness, blood and viscera. Scraps of skin clung to the edges of the metal. The passage grew narrower and narrower, until finally they came to a bulkhead that blocked their way. The symbol of Nurgle was smeared on it, in blood both human and otherwise.
'Grenades.' Aescarion commanded, and hacked the door off its hinges.
The Sisters threw their krak grenades into the space beyond. Aescarion's auto-senses snapped her pupils shut in front of the sudden light.
She was not afraid. She just wanted to see if he really was here, at last.
The flare died down and the captain's suite was revealed in tatters, its elaborate hangings and fine furnishings first defiled by the presence of corruption, then scoured clean by the armour-piercing shrapnel. The intricate murals on the ceiling could just be made out under the filth and scorching, and at the far end a huge, ornate window looked out into space, a black velvet tapestry studded with a billion points of light.
The quartet of blasts had not killed him. Aescarion had not expected them to.
He stood in the flickering wreckage, a standing stone of a warrior, his bright armour twisted beyond recognition and corroded gunmetal grey. One hand was composed of dark amethyst cut into a thousand facets, catching the starlight in sinister forms. The eye-slit of his helmet pulsed with a sickly yellow glow, and his hands bore a full bodyshield and a monstrous ball and chain. He swung the morningstar slowly above his head, thrumming in the air and leaving an eldritch trail of reeking black fire behind it.Aescarion felt a cold shadow of the horror she had felt many years ago. But that was not all. There was some pride, sinner that she was, that she had managed to track him down even though he had been sowing decay across the galaxy since he had first been turned. And most of all she felt that most wonderful thing: the blank hate of the Sisters of Battle, the refusal to accept that such an enemy could exist, the absolute certainty that to kill him would be right. Aescarion unholstered her bolt pistol and levelled it at Castus's face.
'Damnatio tuum.' she cried, and the Sisters fired in unison.
Castus took most of the shots on his shield, the rest going wide or ricocheting from his armour. Two penetrated and raised sprays of blood, but he stood firm. The champion of Nurgle swung his morningstar once and

drove it downwards, shattering the face of the nearest Seraphim in a shower of bone. The next he drove to the ground with his shield. Instinctively she flipped her jump pack switch and hurtled away from him, hitting the far wall and tearing like a fly against glass.
Aescarion yelled with rage and dropped the pistol, taking her axe in both hands and rushing at her nemesis. Castus turned to catch her on his great shield, flipping her over with her own momentum. She hit the ground hard and felt something break.
A cataract of flame caught the champion off balance. Johannes's mutilated face was twisted into a grimace - she made ready to sell her life dearly, drawing the hulking warrior away from her Sister Superior. Castus covered his face from the heat and swung the morningstar into her midriff, flinging her across the room, still trailing flames. A staccato burst of pistol fire from Ismene lasted only as long as it took Castus to behead her with a swipe of his shield.
Aescarion, braised and broken but still alive, straggled to her feet. Castus had changed, too - he was faster and stronger than any Marine. But she had her faith, which was something Castus could not claim. She had her faith - and that had been enough once before.
The two circled slowly through the debris. Aescarion's auto-senses told her that the armour was pumping painkillers through her battered frame at an alarming rate. The pain was stemmed but she could clearly feel that the whole left side of her body had been badly damaged.
She looked to where Castus's eyes should be, to see if there was any semblance of humanity left there. Past the menacing glow, she thought she could just make out the shadows of a face, a pair of eyes that had once belonged to a human being.
This might be my only chance, she thought. This may be the last time I will ever be able to ask him.
It was a question that she had meditated upon for many years, something she simply could not understand. It was something that would keep her awake at night, and now that she had the opportunity, she had to ask.
'Why did you turn?' she asked calmly. 'Why did you surrender and desert your Emperor?'
In what was left of Castus's mind something flickered and a memory sparked. He had seen the woman before, long ago, rising on a column of flame. This was something Parmenides had not told him about. Could it be that he had not always been a servant of blessed Nurgle? Was there something else, a life that also happened to be his?
But that spark of recognition was drowned out in an instant. There was nothing else. Nothing else but an eternity of beautiful decay, for that was the inevitable path of everything that lived: to rot, to collapse, to die.
'Why?' Castus's voice was thick and dark. 'Why not? He is no Emperor of mine. His Imperium is dying beneath him.'

Aescarion tried to hold his gaze, but it was gone, taken over by something inhuman. She slowly swung the comforting weight of the power axe, ready to strike, knowing that he would not hesitate to kill her as quickly as he had done her Sisters. 'It is dying because of weak souls like yours. You defile the spirit of humanity. Eventually you will not even care if you see defeat or victory - all that will matter will be the blood which is shed around you. Your damnation will make a shell of you in the end.'
There was a sound that might have been laughter from inside Castus's helmet. He held the morningstar high, ready to bring it down in a brutal arc.
'My beloved master Parmenides was right,' he sneered, recalling words that he was sure he had never heard before. 'You have no imagination.'
'Really?' Aescarion took a teleport homer from her belt and flicked it to Transmit. 'I would beg to disagree.'
A score of punctures opened up in space-time as the teleport beams locked onto the signal and sent their cargo. Three squads of Battle Sisters materialised with a thunderclap.
In the time it took them to pull the triggers of their bolters, Castus had realised that the woman had used his savouring of the victory to her advantage. Raising both arms above his head and yelling a vile Chaotic curse, he drove the shield and the morningstar into the floor with such force that it shattered and he fell, through the maze of decks and into the darkness below.
The Battle Sisters poured volley after volley into the hole, but as the tongues of fire leapt from the boltgun muzzles a great column of flies twisted upwards from the lower decks. So vast in number were they that the swarm of tiny bodies absorbed every bullet. The insects fell dead to the floor in drifts, many ablaze, but by the time those still living had dissipated, there was no sign of the abomination which had summoned them.
Johannes, still alive, hauled herself over to the edge of the hole and peered down. She spat a gobbet of blood-flecked phlegm into the darkness. This isn't getting any prettier.'
Aescarion kneeled behind her, exhausted. 'His master has pulled his puppet strings and dragged him back through the warp to Saafir.' She turned to the Sister Superior of the first squad. 'Search the ship. Kill everything.'
As the Sororitas rushed to do her bidding, Aescarion pondered. She had lost him now. But she had found him once and she could find him again. A link between them had been forged. And if Castus had a weakness, that link would be it.
ON TERRA, THEY said, the very air tasted different, it had the tang of age and of honour. It was heavy with the smell of power, they said. And they were right.

The Ecclesiarchal palace dominated a continent, as if the ground itself had sprouted a great gothic mountain range, fluted and pinnacled, shot through with uncountable temples and monasteries, all the myriad departments of the Adeptus Ministorum.
Deep within this vast creation were the quarters of the Ebon Chalice, the Convent Sanctorum. And within this, the chambers of Canoness Tas-mander. Aescarion was not young but Tasmander was definitely old, a white-haired bull of a woman with a heavy face and deep, imposing voice. Her campaigning days were over now, and she administered to the practical and spiritual needs of her younger Sororitas. Once she had been a warrior of rare skill and ferocity, so strong and brutal in the pursuit of her duty that she gained respect even from the squabbling bureaucrats of the Administratum and the immensely proud Space Marines.
She sat in her quarters, at a desk carved from black marble. The room was of similar black stone, an elaborate mosaic of the Order's symbol covering the floor, and all around hung ancient standards and litanies held in power fields to prevent their ageing. In many ways, the canoness herself was a holy relic, old and revered - and still powerful.
Canoness Tasmander had seen many faces come and go on Earth. She had learned to recognise how they changed. Aescarion's had changed more than most.
Standing in the centre of the room, stripped of her armour and dressed only in her simple Sororitas robes, Aescarion lost half of her bulk. She was slender but wiry, with a strange pent-up energy that marked her out as a fine leader. She had been called before the canoness few times before, and then it had been only for praise. But this was different, she knew it.
'Sister Aescarion,' the canoness began, 'you know that I value you as a stalwart of this order. There is not one in the Ministorum who would not have cause to praise your faith. Let that not be doubted - you are one of the foundations upon which the Ebon Chalice is built.'
'Thank you, my canoness.' Aescarion knew that Tasmander would not approve of her pursuit of Castus. She had undertaken it as a personal task, an act of vengeance, while at all times, the Canoness had stipulated, the Order must act as one. But surely, Aescarion told herself, the destruction of such foes as Castus was the reason the Orders Militant existed?
The canoness leaned forward, her voice turning cold. 'There are paths down which our faith may take us which are false. I have seen it many times and it is one of the saddest aspects of my post, may He forgive me. For a servant of the Emperor to pursue harmful goals through nothing worse than devotion is a tragedy.
'I have long approved of your determination and purity of hatred towards the Darkness which threatens us all. But if you look within yourself, you will find that it is personal wrath that drives you to actively hunt Castus, not the good of the Imperium or my orders. A Sister's duties are

to the Emperor and the Imperial cult, to the Adepta Sororitas - but not to her own lust for revenge. Your rage takes you away from this order and you are too valuable an asset for us to lose.
'You will no longer be party to any military operation that may bring you into a confrontation with Castus. Are my orders clear?'
Aescarion turned her eyes to the floor. She knew that she had not done anything wrong. Her faith was strong. She could not do anything to harm her blessed Order, she knew that. But now she was barred from acting upon that faith.
Which is the greater, she thought? The orders of my canoness, which have been the word of law since I was not much more than a child? Or my faith, which has driven my soul through this savage universe and never once failed me?
'I understand and obey. But if I may presume, this is a matter which affects me greatly. Castus's turning by Parmenides was the greatest act of abomination I have ever witnessed.'
Tasmander nodded. And you could not let that go unavenged. I am not attributing any wrongdoing to you, Aescarion. But the Ebon Chalice is an Order Militant. I can accept absolutely nothing other than total obedience. This order is a legion of Sisters acting as one. I cannot let you fracture that allegiance. Now will you heed the word of the Ministorum and cease this dangerous pursuit?'
Aescarion raised her head and looked the formidable canoness in the eye. The war inside her was over. The decision was made.
'Of course.' she lied.
THE NEXT TIME he stopped to think about what he had become, Castus did not recognise a human being. He had died, and not noticed. Where once his blood flowed there was stagnant, brackish sludge. Where once organs had throbbed with life, there were desiccated twists of petrified flesh. He was not truly alive, but knitted together and animated by the millions of diseases which Nurgle's unholy touch had introduced.
The shield's covering of skin had developed senses - when it fended off blows, he felt pain. The morningstar had become a part of him, the crystalline fist fused around the haft of bone. The helmet had slowly melted and reformed until it and his skull were one. Through its slit he saw only mottled shades of green and purple, the more diseased the brighter. He was something he no longer recognised.
But what did that matter? He had transcended mere humanity. He was the greatest of men. He would see the Imperium fall and live to triumph in its ruins. He should accept these petty changes and rejoice. Shouldn't he?
The warrior gazed down from the promontory. The cavern had not changed after all these decades. Above, the city of Saafir was a mass of

festering rot, seeping through the ground, making the whole planet unclean. In the night sky, the nearest and brightest points of light were planets which had fallen to his daemonic hordes. But down below it all, the cavern was the same, with its long, narrow isthmus of stone on which Castus now stood.
And Parmenides, of course. The daemon prince was still there. Castus had long given up wondering if Parmenides was really a majestic demigod who would deliver all he had promised, or a malevolent beast who was laughing at him. He had grown to realise that there were more important things. To serve Parmenides was to serve the greater powers which linked this world to the next with chains of their will. Castus told himself this every second of his waking.
But behind his thoughts, wasn't there something else? Wasn't he a little more than the champion of the Plague God? Hadn't there been a Castus before, a different man but the same? There was only one thing he could say for certain. He had not always been like this.
Below him, the immense waves of decaying flesh rolled and split, and Parmenides's vast face appeared once more, with its malignant grin and dead black eyes.
'My boy.' the daemon prince said, 'you have done much for me. Led my armies. Carved out an empire. Nurgle is much pleased. But now your talents must be turned to another task.'
Castus kneeled on the rock, laying his shield in front of him, ready to receive his holy orders.
'I must confess.' Parmenides continued, 'I cannot see how these little fleshy creatures can be such a nuisance. But now they prepare to strike back at us. A ship is coming, my boy. It is heading for this very planet, such is their insolence, so it is you, my treasured champion, who will demonstrate to them the insanity of their actions. Lead my fleet and be sure to show them the true way of all flesh before you break them. They must not breach Nurgle's sacred boundaries.'
Castus bowed his head. A cancerous shock rippled through the air. The warfleet's ancient teleporters took hold of the warrior's altered frame and hefted him up into orbit to make ready for the foe's arrival.
THE HALL IN the centre of the Convent Sanctorum had been sealed for many days. Although a questioning nature was not encouraged in the Adepta Sororitas, Battle Sister Aescarion could not help but wonder what political machinations could be going on in there, carried out by men who arrived in secret, dressed in shadows. When she was summoned there, she realised the truth almost at once. It had been a long time since the canoness had sought to separate her loyalty from her faith. While Aescarion had done everything she had been told, on all her campaigns skirting the furthest reaches of the Imperium,

throughout the savagery of her many battles, she never forgot her thirst for the blood of Castus.
The hall had been a chapel thousands of years ago, rebuilt and absorbed as the Ecclesiarchal palace spread itself across the continent. The grey stonework had been carved with stern gothic fluting, the ceiling was high and vaulted and the air was cold. In the middle of the hall was a large table around which sat the delegates, perhaps a score of them. All but one of them were mere presences. The lights set high in the chapel's ceiling hid.their hooded faces.
In the centre of them all sat the only visible being, the inquisitor. He was still dressed in his ceremonial Terminator armour, elaborately inlaid with precious stones, with the massive scarlet Inquisitorial seal on the ring of the power-glove. He had an intense face, drawn and lined, not with age, but with the terrors his calling had forced him to endure, and it looked incongruous amongst the great shifting plasteel plates that gave him the bulk of a walking tank. He indicated Aescarion's designated seat with a wave of the power-glove. It was at the head of the table, and her invisible judges sat in an intimidating crescent before her.
'Sister Aescarion... I am aware of the differences the Ministorum has had with the Inquisition in the past.' the Inquisitor began. His voice echoed grandly around the old stone. 'But I am sure you have seen enough in your service to realise that, while we may go about things differently, we both have similar goals at heart.'
Aescarion had always been suspicious of the Inquisition. With their obsession with secrecy, they seemed to her not far removed from the heretics they monitored. She had herself refused any part in dealing with them in the past. But now, she knew, there might be a chance to realise the wish that she had harboured for most of her career in the Ebon Chalice.
The inquisitor raised his unarmoured hand and a servitor somewhere in the back of the room caused a stellar map to be projected into the air above the centre of the table. A network of fine lines and icons appeared, marking out the western edge of the Segmentum Pacificus. One planet was highlighted.
The activities of Chaotic forces have always been our primary concern.' the Inquisitor continued. 'The planet indicated is Saafir, which we have been monitoring very carefully for over twenty years. Now, we understand that there is an official position held by your canoness regarding Castus and yourself. Is that correct?'
That is so.' Aescarion felt a ripple of excitement in her blood. It had been a long time since anyone had dared to even mention that name around her.
The inquisitor nodded gravely. A point has been reached where it is no longer feasible, we believe, for this to stand.' He gestured again and several

planets lit up around the marked one. These are the planets which Par-menides and his foul hordes have secured so far. They are mostly barren worlds in which we have little interest. However, Saafir itself is of considerable material value, with incalculably important mineral resources.'
'I know.' Aescarion replied. 'I was in the force sent to recover it in the first place.'
The inquisitor allowed himself a smile. 'Quite. For these reasons we have been content merely to contain this threat.' A dozen more planets lit up on the map. 'These worlds are under attack now. If Parmenides secures them they will give him a considerable sphere of influence. His empire is, in effect, a Chaotic centre of operations within Imperium-controlled space. This is a state of affairs that cannot be tolerated.'
Aescarion glanced from the inquisitor's face to the shadowy figures on either side. She could feel they were studying her intently, trying to gauge her reaction. What could have brought them here, officials of the Imperium so important their identities had to be kept from her? Then she knew.
'The Exterminatum.' Aescarion breathed.
The inquisitor raised his eyebrows. 'You are perceptive, sister.'
'With respect, inquisitor, though you will know I am not disinterested in the fate of Parmenides, I fail to see why I have been called here. I have pressing duties elsewhere on Terra.' She knew full well why they needed her. But she wanted, she needed to hear them say it.
'Sister Aescarion, Parmenides's area of influence has recently become off-limits to all Imperial craft. Any warfleet we send will be intercepted.' His voice dropped - he was saying this with reluctance, Aescarion realised, because he was so unused to telling such important information to a member of the Ecclesiarchy. 'We know that the forces sent to attack any Exterminatus mission will be led by Castas. Now, in truth, all of our intelligence concerning Castas and most of that concerning Parmenides has come to us indirectly from you. Records from his days in the Ultramarines are next to useless - only you know his mind now.'
Aescarion looked at the inquisitor slyly, 'You need me?'
The inquisitor looked at one of his companions, and the silhouette nodded to him. Yes, sister.' he replied. We need you.'
'Because only I know how Castas might think.'
'That is not the only reason you are here.' The inquisitor shifted uneasily in his seat, the servos of his armour whirring. This was not something he wanted to say. 'One of the forces which governs this galaxy, and the Imperium within it, is Fate. It is a strange force which cannot be manipulated, only accepted and worked around.
'Part of the reason the Imperium has endured is because we take Fate into account.' Above the table, the map winked off, leaving only the inquisitor lit. 'Lesser leaders ignore it, which is why they all eventually

fall. In this matter, it is Fate that connects you to Castas. You are a thread running through his life. Without you, he is completely in the thrall of Chaos. But so long as you are alive, there is a link between him and the Imperium that he cannot escape.
You were there at the start of this. Fate may well decide that you should be there at the end. This situation may require you to die alongside Castas. I am led to understand that you will accept this.'
Aescarion could feel shadow-hidden eyes examining her. In her mind, she could still see that foul stain of Chaos spreading across the map.
'I could serve my Emperor in no greater fashion.' she said quietly, 'than by scouring Saafir utterly of the filth which infests it.'
ONCE AGAIN, CASTUS had changed. Standing there on the bridge of the Chaos vessel, Defixio, Aescarion could see the armour around his barrel chest breathing as he did. Where it had been scored it bled a green, brackish ichor. There were no longer eyes behind the helmet, just a single slash of malevolence. He moved, not like a man clad in armour, but like something wholly biological, primeval and strange.
Castas, for his part, knew that he should recognise her. He had seen her before, more than once, but he could not name her. The face had been younger, certainly, with fewer lines; the eyes brighter, the hair a deeper colour. He recalled dimly that age did these things to humans. But it was definitely the same person, the same black-armoured woman, the same symbol of the flaming chalice embroidered on her white robes. But her name... what was her name? Where had he seen her?
Aescarion had seen this moment a million times in her imagination. All around her lay the shattered wreckage of the Defixio's bridge. The ancient computation banks were torn apart, spilling brass rods and gears onto the floor. The floor and walls were scarred with gunfire. The bodies of the ship's crew lay all around, alongside the mangled corpses of Cas-tus's daemons. Great swathes of daemons' blood spattered across the walls and pooled around the bases of the control consoles, still smoking and bubbling. None had given any quarter, and all had died for their devotion, either to the god of the Plague or to the purity of the Imperium.
Through the great observation port which served for a ceiling, the stars outside marked the fringes of Parmenides's corrupt domain. The warfleet had barely entered the disputed space when the metal fangs of something alive had burrowed into the Defixio's hull and disgorged a horde of Nur-gle's finest. One by one the ships protecting the Defixio had fallen to the same fate, their huge empty hulks drifting lazily through space like bodies in the water. Only the defenders aboard the Defixio had been able to stem the tide, and then only at the expense of their own lives. The two forces had ground each other down in the corridors and engine rooms of the ship, until only two stood.

Aescarion, whose axe blade still smouldered from the blood of a dozen daemons. And Castus, whose morningstar was heavy with gore and whose shield was blistered and slashed. So, as Fate and the Emperor's divine will had decreed, they faced each other once again.
Wearily they began to circle once more, weighing their weapons in their hands. Aescarion knew her chances were slight. She was Castus's match in skill but not strength, and she had none of his toughness. She had faced him twice before, and each time her broken body had needed the attentions of the Orders Hospitaller to heal. And Castus would be a greater warrior than he had ever been. He was wholly Chaotic in form, and lacked the weaknesses of humanity.
But, of course, he had not fought this duel out in full, in every waking second of his life, as Aescarion had done. She had mapped out the tides of the struggle, every move, every outcome. She had seen how he fought. She knew even before she had moved how he would react. Aescarion brought her axe down towards him. Castus thrust his shield in front of him but she knew he would. She drove the blade into the top edge of the shield and split it clean in two. Blood fountained from the torn panels, the warrior letting out a bestial roar of pain. His morningstar swept in a wide black path but the Seraphim ducked it, slicing upwards into his armoured torso.
The axe's blade slashed again and again, a lightning bolt that struck in a dozen places at once, the energy field lashing against the armour so it split and buckled. The wounds were shallow but they were many, for Aescarion knew she could not fell him with one blow. He had to be ground down, whittled away until he could not resist, with blows his supernatural reflexes could not avoid.
My faith has taken me this far, Aescarion prayed as she sliced and circled the warrior. Now my hatred will take me through.
Castus was forced back under her onslaught. For the first time he felt panic welling up through long-dead avenues of his mind. He fell to his knees, the blows battering his head now. The blade of bone lashed into his body, the flesh exposed, the armour falling away in chunks. He fell onto his back, his altered blood spurting all around, his blackened, dead flesh drying and contracting as it was exposed to the air. He waited for the final blow that would break him.
This was a feeling he had felt before, so many years before. This helplessness, being laid open before an enemy. This was what it had been like when his mind was flayed away. His faith blasted from him. His soul laid bare for Parmenides to corrupt. The heart-rending memories of that day bubbled up into his mind from the dark corner of his soul where they had festered, just as he had festered for all of these years. He had not always been as he was now. He had been changed. This woman! She had been there when it happened - and now she had come back.

Aescarion looked down at Castus. He was at her mercy at last. Now came the part that could so easily become undone. The speech she had rehearsed all these years.
'It makes no difference if I kill you now.' she spat. Той are bound to the Plague God. If you die, your soul will join a billion others in damnation. If I let you live, you might wait a thousand years more, and by then you will have no mind left to care what happens to my species. Parmenides offered you knowledge. Now you have it, from me. You have seen both sides of reality - you have served both the Imperium and Chaos. But there is one thing you don't know, one fragment of experience you have not claimed. You do not know how it would feel to become righteous again.'
Castus looked up at her. He knew that he would not live for long, not with his stagnant blood running so freely onto the floor. He stared up at her lined face, and the strands of grey in the hair that he had once seen burning above him.
'You are old.' he whispered through his time-ravaged throat. 'I did not realise it had been so long.'
Aescarion switched off her axe's energy field. The air fell still. 'You have all the knowledge you ever will. You are stronger than any man alive, than any Space Marine I have ever known of. But is it enough? It cannot get any better, Castus. It will only get worse. It might take thousands of years, but it will get so much worse.'
Castus felt his life draining away. He knew well, by now, the ways of death. He had minutes, not years. The words of this woman would not leave his mind. He had thrown everything he had believed in away to be one with the blessed Plague God. Surely he could not return?
Aescarion was virtually unarmed now, but she knew Castus was harmless. Even if he wasn't dying, his thoughts were keeping him docile. There was a war going on in his mind of a kind she knew so well. 'You may think that you cannot be forgiven, that you can never be a part of humanity again. But there is more than one path to redemption.'
More than one path. There is always another way. Castus had walked two paths in his life. He had abandoned one. Could he do it again, with the time he had left?
'Look what the years have done to us both.' Aescarion continued. 'They turned you into an animal. They forced my faith away from the commands of my Order. But all that time has let me come to see that whatever happens here, you will never have the chance to change the galaxy again.
'You have an imagination. Use it. Change your path once more before you draw your last breath.'
THE SICKENING FLASH brought him back into the cavern, returning him to the very place where his new life had begun, so long ago. The Chaos champion straggled, but struggled in victory. His steps were laboured as

he dragged his bleeding bulk along the promontory once more to his position above the roiling face of the daemon prince.
'Castus, my boy!' Parmenides had been waiting for his servant's return. 'I see it has been a taxing task I set you. But are you victorious?'
Castus nodded slowly, his last reservoir of energy draining dry.
'The Exterminatus? Is it averted?'
'Better... better than that.' Castus croaked. 'It is... unnecessary.'
The face reared up in its slow tidal wave, a kilometre-wide frown furrowing the cascade of reeking flesh. 'Meaning what, my servant?'
Castus pulled himself up to his full height. With the force of sheer will he unclenched his altered hands. The fingers reluctantly peeled away, the crystal splitting, the morningstar falling from his grip and spiralling down into the corrupt sea.
He spread those fingers and, with what little strength he had left, plunged them into his breastplate. The metal split along the lines which Aescarion's axe had scored, laying open the diseased torso which had been enclosed since he first set foot on Saafir.
The dead organs had been hollowed out and the rotting loops of viscera were gone. Now in his distended ribcage there hung a slim metal cylinder, harmless in appearance - until the daemon prince's psychic sight perceived the gothic letters inscribed upon it:
IN EXTERMINATUS EXTREMIS.
DOMINA, SALVE NOS.
Sergeant Castus of the Ultramarines looked Parmenides the Vile in the eye, and tasted joyfully the fear he saw there.
'Damnatio tuum.' he whispered, and the white light of purity blasted him clean for all eternity.