The sky ran the gamut of every colour known to man – and many others that weren’t – unnatural light bleeding in though shattered windows onto the stone floor below. The wind howled like the laughter of dark gods, and tremors rocked the already damaged structure in which Ezekiel now found himself. Though the unease he felt was not as pronounced as it had been in the Eye of Terror, the influence of the warp was all-pervasive here, seeping into the very fabric of this unknown world.
‘Is this to be my lot from henceforth, daemon?’ Ezekiel said. Neither he nor the daemon had form here, instead assuming the roles of omniscient observers. ‘To spend all of eternity escorting you to every corner of reality and unreality? If so then you might as well consume my soul now as you will find me to be a far from agreeable travelling companion.’
‘There is nothing I would enjoy more than showing you the secrets and lies of your Chapter and the depths of human misery forevermore, but alas, this is our final destination.’
‘Where are we?’
‘All those months you spent convalescing here and yet you still don’t recognise the old place?’
‘The Tower of Angels,’ Ezekiel said. Though it did look like the Tower of Angels where he had spent so much time during his life as a Dark Angel, some of the details were different from how he remembered them, and it seemed newer somehow. Ezekiel put this down to trickery and obfuscation on the daemon’s part.
‘Ah, but where – or perhaps that should be when – is the Tower of Angels?’
‘Caliban?’ Ezekiel said, in barely more than a whisper. ‘The warp storm? Does that mean…?’
‘It does. These are the final moments of the cradle of the Dark Angels.’ There was a smug satisfaction in the daemon’s tone. ‘And that being the case, who do you think that is down there?’
Ezekiel’s focus was drawn to a figure lying still on the stone floor below. On the periphery of his vision he could make out the form of another prone armoured warrior, but his identity was irrelevant to Ezekiel. At this moment, all of his attention was focused on one being.
‘The Lion,’ Ezekiel said, reverence threatening to spill over into emotion. He wanted nothing more than to be at his primarch’s side, to mend his wounds and make him whole again. To change history so that the greatest of the Emperor’s sons would live on to bring hope and light to an Imperium blighted by despair and darkness.
‘It’s tempting, isn’t it?’ the daemon said. ‘But, even if you could save him, your part in this unfolding drama is merely that of watcher.’
Loathing welled up from deep within Ezekiel, a primal hatred directed solely at the daemon, but he did not give voice to it. To show a son of the Lion his father’s dying moment was intolerable cruelty; for the son to respond to it was to hand the daemon a victory, no matter how small or petty.
Ezekiel looked on in silence as a third figure entered the great hall of the Tower, robed like the captive in the first cell within the Eye of Terror. Upon seeing the dying primarch, he stopped in his tracks, arms hanging limp at his side. The noise of the raging warp storm was broken by the sound of a bolt pistol falling from one hand and hitting the stone floor, a plasma pistol dropping out of his other. Slowly, he approached the Lion, sinking to his knees beside the giant figure. The primarch, aware of the newcomer’s presence, spoke softly.
‘Come closer. There are things I must tell you. A task you must complete.’
The robed figure pulled back his hood and leaned in close to the Lion. Though Ezekiel could see his primarch’s lips move, he could not make out what was said.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ the daemon said, ruining the moment, ‘I don’t know what he said either.’
His final words imparted, the Lion breathed his last and the robed figure fell upon his primarch’s breast weeping the tears of angels. Ezekiel wished he could turn away, to allow the stranger to grieve in private, but this was all part of the daemon’s torment, to force him to watch regardless. Composing himself, the figure rose to his knees, carefully placing his fingertips on the Lion’s face and closing his dead eyes. Then, as if sensing the presence of others, he jerked alert turning his head to look right at where Ezekiel and the daemon were positioned.
‘Time to take our leave,’ the daemon said, a little panicked. ‘Too much knowledge can be a bad thing.’
But Ezekiel already had too much knowledge. Though the eyes that had looked straight through him had not been the ones he had expected to see, he had recognised them nonetheless.
‘Come on, you stubborn bastard, live!’
Rephial’s arms were coated in Ezekiel’s blood up to the elbows, his cuirass and pauldrons similarly spattered with crimson. He had been trying to get the Librarian’s heart restarted for hours without any success, and by rights should have given up trying long ago, but there was one thing keeping the Apothecary going: though neither of Ezekiel’s hearts were beating, the sensors hooked up to him showed that the Librarian still had brain function. He was fighting so Rephial was going to fight alongside him until the battle was won or lost.
The medicae was almost deserted, most of the personnel having retired to their billets to prepare for the imminent counter-attack, leaving behind only a skeleton staff to tend to the most severely wounded. The rhythmic beeping of monitoring devices was the only sound, save for the background hum of the generators that powered them.
Rephial ceased his latest attempt to get Ezekiel’s primary heart started and switched his attention to the secondary, placing both palms on the still organ. It was cool to the touch but not as cold as Rephial would have expected after so long, which offered him further encouragement. He pressed down hard on the heart a couple of times before beginning his silent count that led into the next repetition. Halfway through, he ceased counting, his attention drawn by one of the Astra Militarum doctors. One of the Guardsmen had succumbed to his wounds and the doctor – a Vostroyan judging by the facial hair – was preparing for the body to be removed. He respectfully closed the dead man’s eyes, then removed a canula from his forearm and switched off the heart monitor, which by now was making a constant, monotone squeal. The Vostroyan was just about to turn off the portable generator when Rephial approached him.
‘Are you using this?’ the Apothecary asked, pointing to the generator.
Shocked into silence, the Vostroyan simply shook his head. Rephial picked the generator up with both hands, carrying with ease what three burly Guardsmen would have struggled with. He placed it down beside the gurney upon which Ezekiel lay, chest splayed open, his head a bloody ruin.
Rephial had acquired many skills and techniques in the course of his centuries of service above and beyond what the Master of the Apothecarion had taught him as a newly elevated Dark Angel. Principal among them were employing a garrotte wire for battlefield amputations, cauterising a wound with a lasweapon and the use of the butt of a bolter as a means to relocate a dislocated shoulder; but there were also more advanced methods he had been made privy to. Just as the Dark Angels apothecarion had shared with the Reclusiam the exact composition of a serum that could prolong life over the course of even the most arduous interrogations, so too had the Chaplains shared their discovery that a heart that had ceased beating could be restarted with judicious use of a crozius arcanum. While Puriel’s weapon of office had been lost when its wielder had been slain, a brief surge of energy could be administered by any source powerful enough to coax the organ back into action.
Holding out the cable that delivered the power, Rephial spat acid onto it, stripping away the coating that prevented accidental electrocution and thrust the bare wire deep into Ezekiel’s gaping chest.
‘You told me that Caliban was our final destination, daemon,’ Ezekiel said. ‘So what are we doing back here?’
They were both back in the darkness where the daemon had first appeared to him on wings of fire. Sensing their presence, the things of the warp began to circle.
‘Technically here isn’t anywhere,’ the daemon said. ‘At least not anywhere you would find on any map or chart.’
‘Has there been a point to all this? You’ve already demonstrated that you have absolute power over me in this place, so if your plan for me is not eternal torment then what is it?’
Ezekiel raised his voice, the psychic predators getting ever more agitated the louder he became.
‘Those things I showed you, some will be and–’
‘Some will not come to pass. Some were real. Some were not. So you keep saying, but what does any of it have to do with me? I’m already dead, or was that one of your lies, daemon?’ Ezekiel raised his volume yet again, stirring the aetheric entities into a greater frenzy. If he could keep the daemon distracted for long enough, perhaps they would get close enough to attack and hopefully even vanquish it. At the very least they might consume it and spare him any more of the daemon’s cryptic visions and prattling.
‘Let me assure you, you are quite dead, Ezekiel,’ the daemon said. ‘Those things I showed you? Some of them benefit me greatly if they are allowed to occur, others cause me irreparable harm.’
‘But some of what you showed me has already happened. The benefit or harm has already been done.’
‘The past is easily altered. If you had been able to save the Lion then the next ten thousand years would have taken a very different path indeed,’ the daemon chuckled. ‘It’s also easy to confuse the past and the future, especially when at times they can be one and the same.’
‘Are you functionally incapable of giving a straight answer?’ Ezekiel yelled. ‘What does this have to do with me?’
‘I need you to do something for me, Ezekiel.’
‘I’d rather die than help you, daemon.’
‘You are already dead, or did you forget that little detail? What I need you to do also aids you, Dark Angel.’
The things of the warp were tantalisingly close. Ezekiel did not have to stall the daemon for much longer.
‘And what is it that you need me to do?’
‘Isn’t it obvious, Ezekiel?’ the daemon replied, all frivolity in its voice frozen out by malice. ‘I need you to live.’