At first there was only darkness.
In an eternity of pitch, noiseless and still, Ezekiel lingered there, neither dead nor truly alive, incorporeal in the void. Gradually – though time had no meaning in this place – sound encroached and shapes began to coalesce on the edge of perception, shadows on black. Predators began to circle though they had no form, merely ideas given function and purpose by the warp, and Ezekiel could feel them lashing out, taking aim for his soul.
As the hunters drew closer, he became aware of a light in the darkness, like a meteor arcing across benighted skies. The entities that hungered for Ezekiel hesitated, flinching back, some cowering at the approach of this strange newcomer, though the larger, more advanced concepts paid it no heed, their raw aggression unchecked. As it flew nearer, Ezekiel could see that the thing of light had human form, mighty blazing wings at its back and a sword in its hand. The warp predators began to panic, those closest to Ezekiel frantically trying to reach him before the angel, but it was to no avail. With wide strokes of the illuminated blade, they were cast asunder, blinking out of unreality.
Ezekiel had no physical body here but he felt the angel’s arms wrap around him and bear him aloft, pursued by scores of the neverborn, emboldened at the prospect of losing their prey.
After that there was only light.
Blinking with eyes that he knew were not his, Ezekiel could feel that he had a physical presence again, though, like the eyes, it was not his true form. As the light bled away, it was replaced by surroundings that were familiar to Ezekiel. In his centuries of existence, he had travelled to thousands of worlds, even had a hand in destroying several of them, but there was one place that was indelibly etched onto his memories, one place that he did not need his eidetic memory to recall in near-perfect detail. The site of his greatest defeat, the source of his secret shame. The place in which he was robbed of part of his psyche, of part of his being.
Korsh.
Suddenly aware that he was not alone, Ezekiel spun on his heel, expecting to lay eyes on his saviour. Instead he turned to find Grand Master Danatheum standing before him.
‘Hello, Ezekiel,’ Danatheum said in the daemon’s voice.
‘Don’t think you’re slipping away from me that easily,’ Rephial muttered, inserting an enormous syringe into a vial of clear liquid.
Around him, the Astra Militarum medical personnel paid him little heed, busying themselves with the scores of wounded still awaiting attention. Those beyond treatment were piled against the walls of the infirmary in stacks already six deep.
Withdrawing the needle from the bottle, the Apothecary ran his thumb along the base of Ezekiel’s fused ribcage, feeling for a gap in the muscle and sinew. Finding a weak point, Rephial raised the syringe high above his head and stabbed down hard, depressing the plunger the instant the point had broken the flesh, delivering enough adrenaline to shock a fully grown bull grox to life directly to Ezekiel’s secondary heart.
To the Apothecary’s dismay, it had no effect, Ezekiel’s body lying as lifeless on the gurney as when he had been dragged in.
‘I’m not giving up that easily,’ Rephial said, reaching for the bone saw. It whirred into life with a flick of his thumb. ‘And neither are you,’ he added as he began cutting.
‘What am I doing here?’ Ezekiel said.
‘What an interesting question,’ replied the daemon. ‘And strange that it is the first one that you ask of me. You could have enquired how it is that I wear the form of your mentor, or, possibly most pertinent of all, how is it that you are still alive, but instead you want to know why you are back on Korsh.’
‘What am I doing here?’ Ezekiel repeated.
The daemon ignored the Dark Angel’s question for a second time, circling around the bare patch of obsidian stone it was standing on. ‘I’ll answer the second of those questions first. You are not alive, Ezekiel. You are not even hanging by a thread somewhere between life and death. You are dead. That ork bullet finished you off once and for all. Your body is still on Honoria, bled out and brain-dead, but your soul is here.’
‘I shall only ask you once more, daemon. Why am I here?’
‘To answer the first question,’ the daemon continued, ‘I did not choose this form – you did. Danatheum, pathetic little hedge wizard that he is, is many, many light years from here wasting precious lives and resources futilely trying to defeat an enemy that he should never have awakened. In time, he will realise his folly and order a retreat, but not before more lives are needlessly lost.
‘He will return to the Rock in shame, and though his superiors will lay no blame at his door, Danatheum will step aside as the Master of the Librarius and name his own successor. But you know all of this already, don’t you? You have foreseen it.’ The daemon laughed cruelly. ‘Ah, but I forget. I have persisted for millennia and yet this is all so new to me. You no longer have your powers of divination do you, Ezekiel? I have them now. I see what you are supposed to see.’
Though he was stood some distance from the daemon, Ezekiel leapt towards it, hands held out ready to grasp its throat and snap its neck. By the time he got there, the daemon was gone, Ezekiel crashing to the hard floor, his robes dangling in the streams of lava that crisscrossed the entire surface of Korsh. The fabric was unburned, confirming Ezekiel’s hypothesis that this was all an illusion of the daemon’s making.
‘So impulsive. So impatient,’ the daemon scolded from a ridge high above. ‘I was getting around to answering you. I just wanted to get the less important questions out of the way first. Just as with this body I manifest, I did not choose the location for our meeting – you did. Or rather your subconscious did.’
Ezekiel said nothing.
‘Why is that, do you think?’ the daemon said. It jumped down from the ledge, landing in a pool of lava that came up to its waist. It walked towards Ezekiel, exiting the burning magma unscathed and coming to a halt an arm’s reach in front of the Librarian. ‘I think that despite your conditioning, despite the fact that the fear was supposed to be driven from you, it is because this place, and what happened to you here, scares you. You are afraid, Ezekiel.’
This time the daemon did not react, did not teleport itself out of the way in time, and Ezekiel thrust out his hand, grabbing and snapping the daemon’s neck in one fluid motion. Danatheum’s body fell to the ground, lifeless.
‘It’s still so hard for you, isn’t it? Still too raw,’ said the daemon, once again inhabiting Danatheum’s form on the ridge high above. ‘Very well. Let us continue this some place else. My choice.’
The illusory world crumbled, replaced by darkness.