Текст книги "Aurelian"

Автор книги: Аарон Дембски-Боуден

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NINE

THE UNBOUND

THE SOUND BEGAN as the promise of thunder. Lorgar raised his head just as the tortured sky went black.

A gargoyle shape cast darkness across the clouded heavens, blasting wind downward from its beating wings. He saw it descending in a graceless spiral but, despite his eye lenses tinting to reduce the greasy glare of warp space, he could make out little detail in the figure’s form.

It struck the ground a hundred metres distant, sending up a vast spray of powdery sand. The ground shuddered beneath Lorgar’s feet; stabilisers in his armour’s knee joints clicked and thrummed harder to compensate for the quake.

Its wings rose first – huge, bestial black wings, the membranes between the muscles and bones as tough as old leather, cobwebbed by thick, pulsing veins. Scarred fur coated much of its body, while the rest of its bunched musculature was encased in great brass armour plating. Its horned head defied easy description – to Lorgar it resembled nothing but the malicious features of Old Terran’s greatest devil-spirit, the Seytan, as seen in some of the oldest scrolls. It did more than tower over any mortal man – it stood above them as a colossus. Its fists, each the size of a Legionary, gripped two weapons: the first, a lashing whip that thrashed of its own accord, sidewinding across the sands; and the second, an immense axe of beaten brass, its surfaces encrusted with dense metal runic scripture.

It stalked from the crater it had made, each fall of its armoured hooves sending tremors through the world’s surface.

The targeting reticules and streams of biological data across Lorgar’s retinal displays offered no insight at all. One moment they listed details in a runic language the primarch had never learned. The next they told him nothing was there.

When he spoke, his voice was a breathless exhalation, crackling through the lowest frequency of his helm’s vox-grille.

‘What, in my father’s name, is that…’

Ingethel had slithered away while Lorgar stood rapt, yet it still heard his voice. Hunched upon itself, doubled over and leaking fluids from every orifice on its head, the daemon’s psychic sending was a weak stroke.

The Guardian of the Throne of Skulls. The Deathbringer. Lord of Bloodthirsters. First of Kharnath’s Children. The Avatar of War Given Form. In the mortal realm, it will come to be known as An’ggrath the Unbound.

It is the revered champion of the Blood God, Lorgar. And it has come to kill you.

He opened his mouth to reply, but all sound was stolen in a tempest of breath as the creature roared. The scream was loud enough to disrupt the electronics in the primarch’s helm, causing his aural intakes and retinal displays to crackle with static. Lorgar tore the helmet free, choosing to breathe the thin air over fighting deaf and blind.

His lungs reacted immediately, clenching like twin cores within his chest. The granite-grey helm fell to the sand by his boots. Fear didn’t clutch at him, the way it would a mortal. He feared nothing but failure. Defiant irritation set his skin crawling, that the deities would test him this way. After all he had endured. After being the one soul to seek the truth.

Now this.

Lorgar raised his maul, activating the generator in the haft. A rippling energy field bloomed around the weapon’s spiked orb head, hissing and spitting in the wind. Sparks streamed away from its spines, like halogen rain.

The daemon thundered closer, step by step.

This was never part of the Great Plan. You are not a duellist to match the Lion. You are not a brawler to match Russ, nor a fighter to match Angron, nor a warrior to equal the Khan. You are not a soldier like Dorn, nor a killer like Curze.

‘Be silent, Ingethel.’

Kharnath has violated the accord. Kharnath has violated the accord. Kharnath has v—

‘I said to be silent, creature.’

The winged daemon roared again, its fanged maw wide, and the veins in its taut throat as thick as a man’s thigh. Even braced against the gale, Lorgar was forced back several metres in a skidding slide over the gravel. The primarch breathed a stream of Colchisian invective and, as the stinking wind died down, he replied with a shouted challenge of his own.

Before sanity could wrest control of his limbs, he was charging, boots pounding onto the red sand, his crozius raised in both hands.

THE FIRST BLOW struck with the force of a gunship falling from the sky, and with an impact at the same volume. The cleaving blade crashed against the golden maul, both weapons banging together and locking fast. Sparks sprayed from the elbow joints of Lorgar’s armour as the muscle-mimicking servos overloaded and shorted out. But he did it. He blocked the first bow. In spiteful retaliation for the beast’s presence, his crozius kissed the axe’s edge with leaping bolts of electrical force. With a cry that wouldn’t have shamed a feral world carnosaur, the primarch hurled the bloodthirster’s axe backward in a heaving shove, and brought his warhammer to fall on a downstroke, smashing into the creature’s knee.

At the moment of connection, faster than mortal reactions could process, the weapon’s power field protested at the kinetic treatment and burst outward in a blast of force. Something in the daemon’s leg cracked with the wet rip of a tree trunk falling.

First blood. Lorgar was already scrambling back, stumbling over the quaking sand, when the lash found his throat. The spiked coils bit as they wrapped tight, turning the trial of breathing into an absolute impossibility.

In the panicked rush of distorted senses, he saw the creature driven to one knee, its back-jointed bull-legs bent in submission. The primarch’s first blow had near crippled it. Had he been able to take in any air, he’d have roared in exaltation. Instead, he crashed to his knees, clawing at the serpentine weapon encircling his shoulders and throat. One arm was pinned to his body by the lash’s wrapping caress. The other clutched and pulled, dragging the whip off in a mess of snarling armour joints. For a flickering, red-stained moment, he remembered a painting in his father’s palace: a restored oil work of an oceanic sailor – in the era when Terra had possessed such large bodies of water – entangled by a krahkan sea monster.

Lorgar heard the bloodthirster’s wings rattling, felt the force of more wind as they beat again. Another acidic spurt of panic knifed through his thoughts: the daemon sought to take off, and drag him into the sky with it.

He rolled into the whip, trapping himself further, for the chance to tear his crozius from the fist wedged against his body. The lash around his throat squeezed in leathery embrace, freed of all resistance now. As he was dragged across the sand towards the daemon, Lorgar hurled his maul one-handed, with a strangled cry and the last of his strength.

It struck the bloodthirster’s face with the juicy crack of shattering bone, silencing the victory roar that had been brewing in the beast’s lungs. Fangs clattered down onto the primarch’s armour in a discoloured enamel hail. One sliced his cheek open with the daggerish fall of a stalactite. Had he been able to breathe, he’d have laughed, but pulling himself free of the slackened whip was enough.

Lorgar’s first three steps carried him to his crozius. Numb fingers slapped onto the hammer’s haft and he hauled it back into his grip. He turned in time to catch a face full of sprayed blood and spit, shaken from the daemon’s broken maw. It stung his skin, even as he wiped it away. The rest ate into his armour with hissing, smoking slowness.

‘Let this be finished,’ he bared his teeth, unaware how his expression reflected the daemon’s. For a wonder, it replied through its broken jaws and architecture of cracked teeth. Its voice was pulled right down from the thunderheads colliding above.

‘All the strength in the flesh. And the bitter caress. And the taste of blood on my tongue.’

He knew those words. He knew them well.

Perhaps the beast had intended them as a distraction. Perhaps it was channelling mockery straight from the mouth of a god. Either way, Lorgar met the next attack with a laugh. The bloodthirster’s axe crashed against his swinging maul. One of the weapons shattered with the same ease as the daemon’s teeth. Metal debris burned in the air, flickering with ghost-white fire, before clattering across the sand.

Lorgar advanced, his maul still raised. ‘You quote my home world’s holy scrolls to me? Is even this moment supposed to be a lesson? Even this?’

The daemon’s wings snapped out at full reach, darkening all view of the horizon. The display sent the foetid, spicy reek of spoiled meat emanating afresh from its pinions. It wasn’t finished. It wasn’t even close. It needed no axe when it bore such claws. It never needed to walk, when it possessed those wings.

But it was bleeding now, and Lorgar’s disquiet had long since burned away in the wind. He didn’t fear the thing. Every broken fang heralded triumph, as did every droplet of molten brass blood running from its black gums and each grinding crackle from its shattered knee.

‘I will not die here,’ the primarch promised the daemon.

The bloodthirster’s answer was to roar again. This time, it threw the primarch from his feet, sending him tumbling across the rocky ground. Dull snaps sounded from beneath his armour; jagged spurts of pain pinched inside his chest. Even the fibre-cable cushioning wasn’t enough to prevent broken bones. He crashed to rest against a jutting rock, and in dragging himself back to his feet, he caught sight of Ingethel – its warmish form coiled as it crouched in the sand.

Cracked ribs stole the strength of his voice, rendering it a wheeze. ‘Help me, you spineless bitch.’

Ingethel slithered away, chittering with frightened laughter, leaving a thick sidewinder trail in the red dust.

‘You die next,’ Lorgar breathed at its retreating back. That, too, was a promise.

But Ingethel could wait. Thumbing the trigger brought his crozius back to electric life, just in time to fall under the shadow again.

Sonic booms rent the air with each thrash of the whip. Its lashing impact carved ravines in the sand – canyons Lorgar rolled to avoid, while desperately evading each strike. Each breath brought fresh pain to his broken bones. Each inhalation was strife in the thin atmosphere.

Another rift in the rocky sand yawned to the side as he weaved away from the touch of the lash. It split the ground with a thunderclap, throwing him off balance again, beyond the means of armour stabilisers to adjust for. The daemon’s immense hand, deprived of its axe, reached to clutch at the prone primarch, and Lorgar reacted purely by instinct. He raised his hand to meet the downward grasp, little caring how his eyes burned and streamed with psychic fire. The great red fist crashed against a psychic barrier, knuckles crackling like loose gravel.

Lorgar struck. The crozius sang its tempestuous song, thudding against the curled claws and pulverising the black iron bones beneath its flesh. Blood sprayed from the split skin, splashing molten brass across the primarch’s gauntlets and chestplate.

The whip lashed back, snake-keen and vicious. It spiralled around his arm and crozius, biting with barbs. Lorgar staggered, his armour joints whining at the sudden, harsh movements as the wounded daemon pulled him closer. Its breath hit him in another rancid blast, though the creature didn’t roar. It was done with such displays; as Lorgar leaned back, boots scraping across the sands, he could see the beast’s intentions all too easily. Its jaws were already falling open, offering up broken fangs as a weapon where an axe and whip had failed.

In the past, he’d imagined his death more often than he cared to admit – wondering if it would come in the distant cold of a deep-void battle, or the burning warmth of a blade to the back.

Despite their vaunted immortality, despite the invulnerability bred into their bones, a primarch was still a being of flesh and blood. One of Angron’s snorted witticisms came back to him in those moments Lorgar mused over mortality: if something bled, it could be killed.

Everything bleeds, Lorgar.His brother’s words, cutting right to the quick even years after they were first uttered. Tanks bled fuel and coolant. Aliens bled blood and ooze. Angron had never stood upon a battlefield and failed to apply his own brand of tortured logic to the conflict.

Lorgar hauled back against the drag, succeeding in doing nothing beyond pulling the coiled lash tighter. The daemon’s clumsy, shattered hand reached for his torso, and the primarch’s kick crunched into its thumb, mangling it further.

With a roar, it lifted him from the ground. In the time it took to spit a curse, the beast snapped its jaws on his free arm, cracked incisors scraping across the ceramite. Melted brass droplets dripped from the creature’s bleeding gums.

He was not used to pain – at least not physical agony. The pressure constricting his arm was incomparable to anything else he’d experienced. Ceramite split in metallic rips, threatening the sealed integrity of his armour plating. Something in his elbow clicked, then crunched, then snapped entirely. The fist at the end of his arm fell loose, the fingers relaxing, no longer obeying his mind’s impulses.

With a fury even his brother Angron would have admired, the primarch wrenched his crozius free with a final scream. The hammer head crashed against the bloodthirster’s temple in a cacophony of breaking bone, shattering its cheek, eye socket, and the hinge of its jaw. The grip relaxed immediately, dropping the primarch to the sand.

He landed hard, heaping more abuse on his ruined arm, but kept a grip on his power maul. With a roll through the beast’s stampeding hooves, Lorgar struck the creature’s other leg, smacking a blow right against the thing’s kneecap. This time, the crack of splitting bone was enough to cause him to wince even through his own pain.

The bloodthirster howled as it fell, crippled, to the sand. Worthless legs stretched out behind it. Before the wings could even beat twice, Lorgar vaulted its back, boots clinging tight to the leathery flesh, and pummelled a single strike to its ridged spine. Another tectonic crackle heralded the daemon’s backbone giving way for good. One wing ceased its ignoble flapping, slapping against the sand and twitching with spasms.

The primarch hammered its club-hands aside as they reached back, deforming the fingers beyond use. Only then did he move around to face it once more, meeting its fevered, bleeding eyes. The blood running from its maw was already cooling in the sand, fusing its jaw to the ground.

A nasty smile coloured his lips. ‘What did you learn from this?’ he asked the creature.

It snuffed at him, almost dumbly bestial but for the enraged sentience drowning in its eyes. Even crippled and broken, it sought to drag itself forward, as if the primarch’s very life was some intolerable insult.

‘Rage without focus is no weapon at all.’ Lorgar raised his crozius. ‘Take this lesson back to the Blood God.’

For the second time, his hammer fell, butchering the incarnated essence of a god.

TEN

ORACLE

THIRTEEN SECONDS LATER, Lorgar collapsed alone.

He didn’t feel the crozius fall from his nerveless fingers. He didn’t feel anything but the breath sawing in and out of his abused body. On instinct, he dragged his broken bones closer, curling upon the sand in foetal echo of the time he spent gestating in his genetic life-pod.

He could taste blood. His own blood. How different it was from the chemical-thick piss running through a Legionary’s veins, or the molten, sick richness of the dead daemon.

The air is too thin.In his heavy-eyed delirium, his own thoughts came in Ingethel’s voice. And my lungs are pierced by spears of rib.

For a time he lay there, struggling to stay alive, breathing blood-wet air into weak lungs.

The daemon died with the same maddening dissolution of so many aetheric insanities in this haunted realm. As for Ingethel, the primarch had no idea. He would check soon. Not yet. Soon. He… he had to…

‘No more tests, Anathema’s son,’ said a voice.

‘One last test, Anathema’s son,’ said another, similar to the first, but somehow flawed. It was as if a botched cloning had lightly scarred the voice’s timbre.

The primarch hauled himself over, blinking bloody eyes up at another winged figure. This one was grotesquely avian, with stinking, withered wings and two vulture’s heads. While it would have towered above a mortal man, it was a hunched and decrepit thing by the standards of its daemon kin, closer in size to Ingethel.

‘I am the one sent to judge you,’ both heads said at once.

‘I am tired of being judged.’ The primarch lay on the sand and laughed, though he couldn’t think what was funny.

‘I bring the chance for a final truth,’ said one of the creature’s heads, in a corvidian caw.

‘I bring the final lie you will hear,’ its second head croaked, just as sincere as the first. No shade of amusement shone in any of the four pebble-black eyes.

‘I am done with this,’ the primarch grunted. Even rising to his feet was a trial. He could feel his bones sliding awkwardly together, jagged pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit cleanly. ‘That,’ he breathed, ‘is most unpleasant.’

‘Lorgar,’ said the creature’s right head.

‘Aurelian,’ said the left.

He didn’t answer them. Limping, he moved to retrieve his crozius from the sand. Its active power field had scorched the ground to black glass. When he lifted it, it had never felt so heavy.

‘Ingethel,’ Lorgar sighed. ‘I am done with this. I have learned all I need to learn. I am returning to my ship.’

There was no answer. Ingethel was nowhere to be seen. The bland desertscape offered no hope of determining direction.

He turned back to the two-headed creature.

‘Leave me be, lest I destroy you as I destroyed the Unbound.’

Both wizened heads bobbed in acknowledgement. ‘If you could banish the Unbound,’ the first said, ‘you could easily banish me, as well.’

‘Or perhaps I am more than I appear to be,’ the second hissed. ‘Perhaps you are weaker now and you would fall before my sorcery.’

Lorgar shook his head, seeking to tame his swimming senses. The air was so painfully thin, it made all thought difficult.

‘I bring you a choice, Lorgar,’ both heads spoke at once, sharing the same serious, watery-eyed expression.

He limped over to his overturned helm, lifting it from the ground and shaking sand from its interior. Both eye lenses were cracked.

‘Speak then.’

The daemon fluttered its wings. Vestigial, skinny things – Lorgar doubted the creature could even fly. Small wonder that it squatted on the sand, leaning upon its bone staff as a crutch.

‘I am Kairos,’ both heads said at once. ‘The mortal realm will come to know me by another name. Fateweaver.’

Lorgar’s desire to show respect for the gods’ agents had faded somewhat in the last hour. The words came through gritted teeth.

‘Get on with it.’

‘The future is not entirely unwritten,’ both heads spoke again. Their wrinkled features were strained by effort, as if speaking with unity was a great challenge. ‘Confluences exist as sureties. There will come a time when war breaks out across the Imperium of Man, and you will once again face the brother you despise.’

Lorgar’s kindly eyes, already weary, now grew cold. ‘I do not despise my br—’

‘You cannot lie to me,’ one head said.

‘And if you try, I will always see through to the truth,’ said the other.

The primarch forced himself to nod, before placing his helm back on. It took a moment for the cracked eye lenses to flicker into clarity, but a grainy picture materialised soon enough. Curiously, Lorgar couldn’t see the daemon through his left eye lens, merely the horizon beyond. In his right eye, the creature sat in hunched repose.

‘Get on with it,’ he growled this time. Three of his teeth were loose and bleeding.

‘It will happen at Calth,’ the right head said.

‘Or it will happen, yet not at Calth,’ said the left, though its placid tone wasn’t one of argument.

Lorgar still tasted blood in the back of his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and he suspected the pain in the bridge of his nose was a mashing break that would need resetting.

‘What will happen?’

‘You will face Guilliman,’ both heads squawked in eerie unison. ‘And you will slay him.’

Lorgar hesitated. To consider it, truly, was almost beyond him. Even if there was no way to avert the coming crusade, did it truly have to come to such measures as fratricide?

His own selfishness was a surprise. With a shake of his head, he considered the other side of the coin. Was fratricide worse than genocide? The loss of life would be immense on both sides of the divided Imperium, among the faithful and the ignorant.

He had to focus.

‘Go on.’

‘I am Kairos, the Oracle of Tzeentch,’ said both heads. ‘I am bound to always speak one truth and one lie.’ The creature rattled its withered wings. Several blue-black feathers, the colour of ugly bruises, drifted from its pinions. ‘But this is a moment of great divinity. A nexus of possibility. A fulcrum. The Great Gods have bound me to speak only the truth, in this moment of moments.

‘I am sworn now to stand before the chosen of the pantheon, and offer a choice. Now, and never again, I may speak with one mind. No lies. No words of deceit from one mouth, and words of truth from another. This, now, is too important. The gods are in alignment for the first time in an eternity.’

‘And the Unbound?’

Both heads regarded Lorgar with impassive, unblinking eyes. ‘Kharnath violated the accord. But the Blood God is still bound by it. Still oathed to it. The pantheon of heaven is kin to the primarch pantheon of your species. They wage war amongst themselves, just as you will wage war against your brothers. Existence is strife.’

‘To strive,’ the second head added, ‘is to live.’

The thought chilled Lorgar’s blood. A convocation of warring gods. ‘I understand.’

‘No,’ the first head said. ‘You do not.’

‘But you will,’ the second nodded, ‘in the decades to come.’

‘I bring you a choice,’ added the first head. ‘Face Guilliman and slay him.’

‘Or let him live,’ finished the second. ‘And taste the shame of defeat.’

Lorgar wanted to laugh, but the creeping sense of unease held the mirth back. ‘How is that a choice?’

‘Because of Calth,’ both heads replied. One was silently weeping now, the other grinning with beakish malice. Could a bird grin? Somehow, this one did. Lorgar couldn’t help but stare.

‘You must choose whether you walk a path of personal glory, or one of divine destiny,’ said the first head.

The second spoke through its crystalline tears. ‘You must choose whether you will stand among your brothers as an equal, with vengeance as your goal, or work in the name of the gods, tasting shame for a greater victory.’

‘I am not a vain man.’ Lorgar felt his broken ribs aching as they slowly re-knitted beneath his armour and flesh. ‘I seek enlightenment for the species, not self-glorification.’

‘You will end this war with many scars,’ the first head lowered in bizarre respect.

‘Or you will end it dead,’ nodded the second, ‘in one of a thousand ways.’

‘Get,’ Lorgar forced the words through a barricade of teeth, ‘to the point, creature.’

‘Calth,’ the first head intoned. ‘You will be given one chance – and only one chance – to shed Guilliman’s blood. It is written in the stars, by the hands of the gods. If you face him at Calth, you will slay him.’

‘But you will lose the war,’ said the second. ‘You will earn your brothers’ respect and awe. You will savour your vengeance. But your holy war will falter. The Emperor’s defences will be enriched by too many defenders, drawn there by fates that would otherwise have been denied. You may never even reach Terra.’

Lorgar turned from the daemon, shaking his head in wonder at their offer. Like ruined wings, the remains of his cloak flapped in the breeze.

‘Is this prophecy? If I fight Guilliman, I am destined to win, yet I will lose all I sought to achieve?’

The daemon’s first head hawked and spat bloody saliva in a thick string. As it coughed, the second head spoke. ‘It is prophecy. You will not always be the lost one, Lorgar – the weakest of your brothers. You will find your strength in this faith. You will find fire and passion, and become the soul you were born to be. That is why Guilliman will die at your feet, if you choose to make it so. Fight him at Calth, and you will finish the battle with his blood on your face. You crave that temporal triumph, and it could be yours.’

The first head twitched with sudden movement, regarding him with its beady bird’s eyes. ‘But the cost is high. To bring about this future, you will be at Calth, instead of standing in the place your species most needs you to be in that ordained hour. If you face your brother Guilliman, and choose human honour over the destiny of your species, you will kill him. Yet in doing so, you will fail in your hopes of setting humanity free from ignorance.’

‘I say again, that is no choice at all.’

Both heads laughed. ‘Is that so? You are human, whether you choose to confess to it or not. You are a slave to mortal emotions. The primarchs are far from a perfection of the human recipe, despite their individual might.’

‘There will come a time,’ the first head smiled with beak-creaking amusement, ‘when your pride and passion will demand that you destroy the Warrior-King of Ultramar.’

The second nodded in accord. ‘But weigh the balance, Emperor’s son. A moment of personal glory, proving to your brothers that you are ascendant among them… Or paving the way for the future of your species. All prophets make sacrifices, do they not? This will become one of yours.’

‘If,’ the first finished, ‘you live long enough to make it.’

Lorgar said nothing for some time. He listened to the wind toying with his tattered cloak, and the withered feathers on the daemon’s wings.

‘Show me,’ he said in a soft voice.

THE SHIP BURNED.

On the deck around him lay a hundred dead mortals and slain Ultramarines. The walls of the strategium shuddered, venting air pressure and feeding the flames sweeping across the entire bridge deck. Thrones stood in flames. The fire was already cremating those that had fallen in the last few minutes.

Lorgar saw himself at the heart of the flames, his crozius in his gauntlets. The image wore red armour, in mirror of the Word Bearers he had seen at the Eternity Gate, and cast its maul aside with an angry flourish. Whatever battle it had been fighting had taken its toll; the image of himself stood in cracked armour, with its face blackened by burn scarring.

‘For Monarchia,’ the image of Lorgar raged through bleeding gums and split lips. ‘For watching me kneel in the dust of my many failures.’

At first, Lorgar couldn’t make out who his image was addressing. Then, with grim and wounded majesty, Guilliman staggered from the flames. Silently defiant even as his armour blackened into a burning ruin, the Lord of Macragge drew a gladius. His helm was gone, baring a face that remained stoic despite a crushed skull. One arm was gone, ending at the elbow. Blood ran in viscous rivulets from the joints of his armour. His white cloak was aflame.

Lorgar’s image threw his hand forward. Psychic energy, so intensely golden it aborted direct sight, haloed and crowned his head with three aetheric horns. A wave of unseen force pounded into the Ultramarine liege, hurling him back through the fire and against the wall beyond.

Guilliman crashed to the deck, a twitching, ragged marionette with severed strings. And then, with his remaining hand, he reached for the fallen gladius again.

Lorgar crushed the hand beneath a crimson boot.

‘This, my brother, is for every life lost in the name of a lie.’ Lorgar hauled the Lord of Macragge up by the throat, smashing him back against the wall even as he strangled him. ‘Your fleet burns. Your astral kingdom dies next.’

Guilliman managed to smile.

LORGAR FACED THE twin-headed daemon again.

‘I must see more.’

‘You have seen all you need to see,’ both heads chorused.

‘I do not understand. At the last, he seemed amused.’ The primarch winced at the pain of his heart thudding against broken ribs. ‘How can that be?’

But he knew. At least, he could guess. He had seen that look in Guilliman’s cold, warlord’s eyes before. Not anger. Not wrath. Disappointment, bordering on disbelief. What have you done wrong this time?The accusation came in Guilliman’s arch, solemn voice, as if proclaimed by their father himself. What have you ruined now? What lives have been lost because of your foolishness?

Lorgar’s lip curled. ‘He knew something. Even as he died, he knew something.’

‘He hates you,’ said the daemon’s first head. ‘He was amused to learn he was right about you. That you were, as he always suspected, a traitor in waiting.’

The second head shook in dismissal. ‘No. He has never loathed you, Lorgar. You have always imagined his hatred. He does not respect you, for you are too different to find common ground, but your imagination has always been the source of the feud between you.’

The primarch cursed. ‘Which one of you is telling the truth?’

‘I am,’ they both said at once.

Lorgar swore again. ‘Enough. Tell me then, if I am not at Calth, where should I be? What path must I walk to enlighten my species?’

‘I am not your seer, Emperor’s son,’ the first head rasped. ‘I have given you the choice. You will make it in time.’

‘If,’ the second matched its tone completely, ‘you live that long.’

The creature spread its wings.

‘Wait, please.’

It didn’t wait. ‘All will be decided in Ultima Segmentum, Lorgar. Vengeance, or vision. Glory, or truth.’

The primarch raised his hand to plead for more time, but the daemon was gone in the time it had taken to blink.

HE FOUND HIS prey coiled upon itself, curled in some grotesque foetal parody of reptilian gestation.

But all rage had bled from him. He couldn’t help but see the young maiden shaman that had whored her life away to become this thing. Not for glory or gain, but for faith. He doubted she existed as more than an echo in the creature’s mind, but the idea itself was enough to bleed the anger from his body.