CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It took some three months to repair the damage to Xantine’s throne room, with at least half of that time spent scrubbing the filth deposited by the beast of Nurgle. The first few mortals unlucky enough to be despatched into the chamber had – like Qaran Tun in the hours before he died – become its toys, their screams turning to sputtering coughs as the cornucopia of the Plague God’s diseases took hold. Sophisticants had found these unfortunate souls when they unsealed the doors, weeks later, now bloated walking corpses that pulled chunks of flesh from what remained of the Word ­Bearer’s desiccated form. Of the beast itself there was no sign.

Cecily would not return to the throne room for another month after that.

‘What did he mean?’ she asked, after the night concluded. ‘Your brother said that I might be able to get us off Serrine. What did he mean? If I can help us escape, I will.’

‘Tun was mistaken.’

S’janth, on the other hand, seemed truly cowed by his revelations about the fate of the Exhortation. The daemon had been petulant by her very nature, but she rarely fought for control of his body any more after Tun’s death.

You have shown your strength, she said, when – his curiosity piqued – he asked her outright why she had changed tack. Even when he surrendered control of his body willingly, such as when he foraged through the remnants of Qaran Tun’s collection for Neverborn to devour during his meditations, S’janth would not take advantage in the way she had before.

She offered him anything he desired: her strength, her wisdom, her know­ledge. They lay entwined in their shared consciousness for long days, drinking the pleasure of their subjects, blissful in their closeness, both physical and immaterial. It was perfect.

Almost perfect. At times, S’janth appeared almost distracted, her focus not directed at him, but elsewhere. He caught whispers in his mind, snatched words and garbled noises that sounded like half of a conversation, distant, their meaning lost.

Nothing, my love, she said, when he pressed her on the subject. Just echoes. Echoes of sensation, reverberating through the empyrean. Pay them no mind.

But he could not. They haunted him, these whispers. In his bedchamber, in the darkest night, he put his own meaning to the sounds, and they spoke words that cut through perfection like a knife.

Deceiver, they said. Liar. Betrayer.

The council chamber was a pathetic sight. With the deaths of Sarquil, Torachon and Qaran Tun, the space was rarely used any more.

Xantine had considered raising the best warriors of the Adored that remained to the open positions, but with his rule of Serrine and his warband absolute he had decreed the council superfluous to his needs, and disbanded it entirely. He had not mentioned that of those Adored who did remain, few were capable of holding a full conversation, let alone offering strategic insights or military advice.

And yet, he still chose the venue for his conversations with Vavisk. He saw his brother so infrequently these days. The Noise Marine lived a hermitic existence, having given himself over almost entirely to his choir, dwelling within the confines of his howling fortress. The Cathedral of the Bounteous Harvest had grown alongside its choirmaster, its frame becoming almost as warped and twisted as Vavisk’s. Great fluted pipes sprouted and rose from the structure’s ancient exterior, the vast stones used in its construction growing soft and spongy as they expanded to new forms. Fluids trickled from its walls, coating growing protrusions that looked like sensing organs – fingers, noses, ears and eyes – as if the cathedral itself was desperate to absorb the music created within its confines. To leave such a beautiful place pained Vavisk, Xantine knew. And yet, here he was.

‘Thank you for coming, brother.’

‘You are my warlord. You requested my presence,’ Vavisk said. Even in direct conversation, his voice was loud enough to shake the carved door in its frame. A cup-slave dropped a golden goblet in fright, spilling dark wine across the polished wooden floor.

‘Your fealty has not gone unnoticed.’ Xantine paused, and inspected his gloves. A new pair, these, crafted from the leather of the predator rays that floated through the skies above Serrine’s grass fields, and bleached a pure white. ‘This chamber is a different place without our departed brothers, is it not?’

‘It is quieter,’ Vavisk said. Xantine’s lip curled into a smile at the irony in the statement – Vavisk’s voice could stop a Rhino transport in its tracks – but he realised his brother was not making a joke, and he reset his face to one of brotherly interest.

‘How many years have we journeyed together, Vavisk?’

Bloodshot eyes stared back from a misshapen sack of a face. The vox-grille that took up the lower portion of Vavisk’s skull dripped with liquid, a combination of saliva, lubricants and other unguents. The mouths on his neck whispered their answers, each one offering a different count.

‘For long millennia,’ Vavisk said finally.

‘Too long?’

‘Time has ceased to hold much meaning for me,’ Vavisk said. ‘The Dark Prince does not measure his song to a rhythm or metre that could be transcribed to a chronometer.’

Xantine could not hold back his grin.

‘What?’ Vavisk asked, irritated at the assumed mockery.

‘When did you become such a philosopher, brother?’

Vavisk’s face softened as much as his deformations allowed. ‘Hardly. I merely listen for the song, and attempt to follow its rhythm.’

‘And where does it lead you?’

‘To heights of joy, and to depths of depravity. To the extremes of sensation, in service of our god.’

‘And what of me, brother?’ Xantine asked, his voice low, purring. ‘Would you follow the song if it led you against your warlord?’

‘What are you asking?’

‘So many of our brothers have failed me. Would you join them?’

‘Xantine, I–’

‘I sabotaged the Exhortation,’ Xantine cut in. ‘I ordered explosives planted in weak points along the ship’s hull. I arranged the failure of weapons, void shields, the warp drive, life support.’ The words tumbled out. With Qaran Tun, they had been weapons, blades driven into the Word Bearer’s back. Here, spoken to his true brother, they were catharsis.

‘I confined us to an existence on this world. And I would do it again, in a heartbeat.’

Vavisk’s bloodshot eyes were unreadable. The mouths on his neck were silent, until he spoke.

‘I know,’ the Noise Marine said.

Xantine stared, dumbfounded. ‘You know?’

‘I know,’ the Noise Marine repeated, simply. ‘I know you, brother. This world is not Harmony, and it never will be. Nor were the dozens before it. This has happened before, and it will happen again.’

‘Will you betray me?’ Xantine asked.

‘I told you, once, that I would follow you wherever you took me. I still follow you, Xantine, even if you walk your path alone.’

‘Liberation day celebrations are now fourteen minutes behind schedule, my lord,’ Corinth intoned.

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Pierod stared wild-eyed at his data-slate, scrolling through lists of names and times. ‘Mistress Polfin’s troupe are still too inebriated to perform the Dance of the Pointed Lash – make yourself useful, and get me some stimms.’

Corinth nodded, and made himself scarce.

Perhaps today would be acceptable, after all. The crowd was large. That was a positive point, if an unsurprising one. Pierod had given the last of the Solipsus supplies to the overcity militia, on the proviso that they deliver a crowd that Xantine demanded be hundreds of thousands strong. Pierod was not about to let his master down – especially not after he learned what had happened to Tun – so he gave the militia free rein in exactly how they scared up the necessary people. Last he had heard, those that refused the honour were to be mutilated, fingers and toes removed one by one until they saw sense and agreed to assist with the celebration.

The day was to involve dancing, performance, music and, of course, live challenges, and would begin with an address from Xantine himself. Pierod had tried to convince his lord otherwise, to no avail.

‘My lord, in my most humble opinion, it may be wise to reconsider your physical attendance at the ceremony.’

‘Why?’ Xantine had eyed him suspiciously. ‘Do my people not deserve the pleasure of seeing their Saviour in the flesh?’

‘Of course, my lord,’ Pierod had stammered. ‘But your magnificent visage may be too much for some. Your resplendence is overwhelming, as anyone who has been lucky enough to spend time with you can attest. Perhaps you would be better served by observing the day’s festivities at some remove? Say, in your chambers, or from the heights of the cathedral?’

‘Nonsense,’ Xantine had said. ‘The day is mine, and who are you to deny my people the chance to worship their idol?’

And that was that. Xantine was due to take the stage at noon precisely, as the sun and the scar rose to their highest, to celebrate the vanquishing of the xenos threat, and to receive his adulation in front of hundreds of thousands of Serrine’s citizens. And Pierod, his governor, had a sinking feeling in his gut.

The city was different now from the city that Arqat had known. Its wide marble streets were dirty, filled with the hungry and the desperate, the cruel and the callous.

But it was the cathedral that he used to call home that had changed the most. Its once beautiful architecture had been twisted into asymmetrical shapes that seemed to swell and contract as he watched, an unsettling undulation that made his stomach flip. A drone emanated from its fleshy spires, an atonal dirge that made his head feel as if it was trapped in a vice. Its windows no longer held glassaic; instead, they seemed to house giant eyes – black, glossy ovoids that blinked with moist pink lids.

It was hideous. But worse still was the creature that stood in front of it, tall and proud. Serrine’s self-professed Saviour had not aged a day since he came to their world. His armour swirled with pinks and purples, a motion as discomforting as the rippling of the cathedral’s walls. He spoke with a voice as sweet as nectar, and as clear as the night sky, audible somehow over the lament from the cathedral.

‘My subjects,’ Xantine said. ‘Today, we celebrate. We celebrate the historic liberation of this world, and my liberation of its people. For generations, you suffered under the yoke of the moribund Imperium, toiling for an uncaring master on far-off Terra.’ Xantine waited for a reaction, and was rewarded with an enthusiastic round of boos from the cadre of nobles on the viewing platform. From the main crowd, the response was more muted.

‘And then, just as it appeared that your fate was sealed, the xenos worms burrowed up from the filth from whence they spawned.’

Arqat moved as Xantine spoke, parting the crowd with ease, his shoulders broad and muscles inflated after months in the pit. His gladiators – those that saw righteousness in his cause – followed loosely, shoving anyone who would get in their way. They radiated anger as they travelled, their mere presence seeming to stir violence in the crowd. Fights broke out, stilettos and shivs used with abandon amidst the crush of humanity.

Still Xantine continued, used to his audiences finding themselves overcome with emotion.

‘As a planet, as a people, you have suffered. But through this suffering, you found deliverance. You found salvation.’ The angel raised his arms, a perfect copy of the vast statue of the mythological Saviour that remained embedded in the front of the Cathedral of the Bounteous Harvest.

‘You found me.’

‘We were better off without you!’ a man shouted, cheered by those who stood around him. Others took the chance to air more specific grievances.

‘Give us Runoff!’

‘Where’s our food?’ a woman to Arqat’s left yelled.

Still, Xantine continued.

‘And so we celebrate, for this is your day, as much as it is mine. A day to count your blessings that I chose to answer your prayers, and to fulfil your prophecy.’ Xantine gestured with the palm of his hand to the statue, before he turned back to the throng. ‘Still, there are those who seek to lay me low. To take this world – to take you – from me. Even my own brothers, gods curse their souls, have hardened their hearts and strayed from my light.’

A slave stepped forward, his oiled body crossed with straps of black leather. The straps bound his face, such that only his mouth was showing. All of his teeth had been removed. Xantine accepted a gilded box from the man, and raised it high.

‘Know this, people of Serrine – as long as I draw breath, I will not allow anyone to take this world! Behold!’ He opened the lid of the box, and tilted it forward, dumping the decapitated head onto the hard marble below. ‘The traitor Qaran Tun is dead!’

The head bounced once, twice, before coming to a stop, its face aimed at the crowd. Its skin was so dry that it appeared as parchment, lined and inked with intricate tattoos that had turned blue-grey after death.

‘Is that it?’ a man screamed. ‘Where’s our Runoff?’ Another man, dishevelled and unwashed, picked up the call, chanting for the narcotic, until the crowd’s demands were louder than the nobles’ cheers.

The angel cast eyes across the mass, contempt written large on his features. He seemed to meet Arqat’s stare for a moment, and Arqat felt himself beg for a flicker of recognition, at least something to show that the angel had destroyed his life, his world, for a purpose. But there was nothing in those turquoise orbs, beyond self-regard.

Arqat’s blade-arm twitched. He was desperate to swing it, but even in his rage, he knew that he would have one chance, one moment, to crest the stairs and sink his blade into the angel’s throat. He realised then that he had been living for this moment, been killing for this moment. He would die in the attempt, he was sure of it, but it was worth it for vengeance. For his brother. For Cecily. For Sanpow. For himself.

‘I am a benevolent master,’ the angel said, his disgust at the crowd’s reaction clear in his voice. ‘You do not deserve one so magnificent.’

A man broke free from the crowd, pushing past the soldiers manning the cordon. He was thin, with long dark hair that trailed behind him as he ran, and he carried no visible weapon.

‘Food, please!’ he cried as he ran up the marble steps towards Xantine. ‘Saviour, my family – please!’

Xantine shot him through the stomach. The force of the impact spun his body towards the crowd, and for a moment, Arqat saw his face – ghost white – before he fell, spilling his insides across the white marble of the steps.

The effect was like a dam bursting.

The crowd moved as one, pushing forward. Those at the front climbed the stairs, or were trampled underfoot, crushed to death by the organic mass. Caught in their gravitational pull, Arqat moved with them, surging towards his target with a hundred – a thousand – like-minded souls.

Anger boiled off the crowd, as pungent as the stink of filthy bodies. Pierod tried to guess the number attempting to crest the stairs, and gave up quickly – there were simply too many.

‘My lord,’ he voxed to Xantine. ‘I suggest that we get you to safety.’

‘To safety?’ Xantine asked, incredulous. ‘This is my world, not theirs, and I will not hide from my own people. They have forgotten who saved them, who made them who they are. I will help them remember.’

‘Then what do you suggest, my lord?’

‘They have failed me. The only punishment for betrayal is death.’

Las-bolts and bolt-shells cascaded down the great steps of the Cathedral of the Bounteous Harvest like water from the edge of a cliff. The city’s militia fired wildly, any semblance of discipline long forgotten as their brothers and sisters rushed the stage.

Superheated energy and razor-sharp shrapnel tore through the first rank of human bodies, but still they came, climbing over mutilated corpses and the moaning wounded to reach their goal. Some, their way blocked, or their depravity willing to seek any viable outlet, simply turned on each other, lashing out with shivs and daggers, spiked clubs and sharpened machetes.

Arqat pushed on, using the weight of humanity as a shield. The man in front of him sagged, his stomach blown out by an autogun round, and Arqat grabbed his body by the scruff of his robes, catching las-bolts with the meat of the corpse. He felt the twitch and shudder of each strike through the man’s body as he planted long legs on the steps leading up towards his quarry.

The Saviour was close now. Sophisticants – the mute, muscled shock troops of Xantine’s army – formed a protective ring around their master, spears held in a variety of fighting stances. Between them, Arqat saw a huge figure, his perfect olive skin and long black hair held in place by a golden circlet. A crown, unearned, bestowed upon himself.

He was no king. He was no god. He was just a man. He would die just the same as all of them.

Arqat readied his blade-arm. The golden edge gleamed in the high sunlight. Beautiful. He would redden it with the charlatan’s blood.

A Sophisticant descended to meet him, her spear spiralling, her mask a sick mockery of the pitiful creature she protected. She fought with speed and skill, but he had a pit fighter’s strength, and he caught the haft of her weapon on his forearm. The tip bit deep and the impact bruised flesh, but it did not matter. Pain was fleeting, and the Blood God cared not from whence the blood flowed. He locked the spear with his blade-arm, and pulled, wrenching the masked warrior towards him, towards his golden stiletto. The fine edge buried deep in the Sophisticant’s sternum, and she fell, shrieking from behind her placid mask.

Further, forward. Close enough to see turquoise eyes, purple armour, blackened lips. Arqat pulled his blade-arm back, and readied it to bite into the flesh of his tormentor. To have his vengeance, at long last.

‘No!’

The voice was small, impossibly small against the endless dirge and the demented screams of the frenzied crowd, but he heard it as if it were the only sound in the world.

‘No,’ it said again, softly this time. As softly as Nanny spoke to him, when she stroked his hair and helped him fall asleep.

‘Don’t do it, Arqat,’ Cecily said. ‘Don’t take this from me.’

‘Cecily?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Why are you here?’ And then, more insistent, ‘What did he do to you?’

Battle raged between them, the pink-clad warriors and their lackeys murdering hundreds, thousands of Serrine’s children. And yet, they spoke as if they stood across from each other in an empty room.

‘I made a deal. He’s our only chance at escape, Arqat, my only way to get off this rock. Even before he came, life here was torture. It’s not too late. Come with us.’

‘I will not run,’ Arqat snarled. ‘He has poisoned our world! Can you not see it? He must die.’

‘I can’t let you do that,’ Cecily said. There was a profound sadness in her voice. ‘Please, Arqat. Don’t make me stop you.’

‘Nobody can stop me now!’

‘Oh, my sweet boy,’ Cecily said, and Arqat felt her grief in his bones. ‘You are one soul amongst a million. I could stop you as easily as breathing.’

‘Then try,’ he growled.

Arqat did not see the blow coming. It hit him in the chest, a concussive force so hard that he launched clear off his feet and high above the heads of the surging crowd below, covering ten, twenty, thirty steps as he flew. Bodies cushioned his fall, the soft mass of dead and still-living humanity still growing as the crowd – panicked, excited, demented, terrified – surged into the central square in front of the cathedral.

Lying on his back amongst the tangled forest of limbs, Arqat could see the sky. The scar throbbed, visible even in the harsh sunlight: purple, pink, green and blue.

And red.

Deep red.

Blood red.

Burning red.

And then the world fell in on itself.

Key structural supports had been worn away with careful precision, controlled detonations over the past few months ensuring maximum damage. Lady Ondine had orchestrated the operation masterfully. All it needed was a critical mass: sufficient weight of human bodies would prove too much for the city to support. As the crowd swelled, combining in the central square, that limit was reached – just as Katria and her compatriots had planned.

Whole streets collapsed, taking hastily erected viewing platforms with them. Tens of thousands of souls fell, too, unable to escape the pull of the maw that had been created beneath. They fell from the light into the darkness, howling in fear until their last, when their necks snapped, backs broke, or skulls shattered on the ancient foundations of Serrine’s overcity.

It was death on a monstrous scale. The extinction of so many souls, the capstone of years of bloodshed, did not go unnoticed.

Arqat fell too. Unlike the screaming weaklings around him, he did not waste his energy on fear or panic. It made sense now, in these final moments, why he had come back to this place, in the shadow of the cathedral, the source of his anger, his pain.

Vengeance had not been enough. He had needed to be stronger. More strength – always more strength – and he would spill his foes’ blood, take their skulls, and crush their bones.

And so, as he fell, he poured every ounce of his soul, of his being, into pure hatred. It found the hatred of others, millions, a world of pain and blood and anger that had curdled under Xantine’s rule. Every death on Serrine came to him. He channelled his focus, became such a perfect creature of rage that as his organs ruptured and his bones shattered, in his moment of perfect oblivion, he found a kinship with another being.

The Bloodthirster called itself Ma’ken’gorr, but it had been better known by the name Gravemaker by the billions of souls that it had killed. It was a beast of vengeance, and it sought out the wronged and the broken. It found Arqat a burning core in a galaxy of suffering, his fury so perfect, his need for vengeance so absolute.

Ma’ken’gorr took this body, this mutilated boy, and made it strong, in the name of vengeance, and in the name of the Blood God.

Arqat’s moment of death became his moment of apotheosis, and just as he fell, he rose again, on wings as black as coal.

Edouard hid while the others in his congregation chose their weapons. He watched as they left together, heading for the cathedral. What they planned to do there, at Xantine’s celebration, he did not know, but he knew it would not be anything good.

He sighed. It didn’t matter. He just had to wait for them to go, and then he could make his way into the stores at the back of the temple and take as much Runoff as his body could handle. He was scared now, but he would feel strong soon.

Edouard waited until he was sure that the last of the congregation had left the temple, then started to make his way towards the back of the chamber, past the huge cauldron in its centre. The stink of blood filled his nostrils as he came close, and he could not fight the urge to look inside.

The blood was thick, and it glistened in the brazier light. There were sounds coming from inside, he realised. He heard the music of war: the clash of blades, the tearing of flesh, and the howls of the dying. The meniscus of blood quivered, and Edouard saw a hand, clawed and grasping, reaching from under the surface. A skull followed, long and ridged, with black, glistening horns. Its eyes shone with murder, and it clutched a blade of pure brimstone.

The daemon took Edouard in. On a dim level, it knew that this creature, soft and pink, had helped bring it into this realm. Were it capable of such an emotion, it might have felt gratitude, but the bloodletter knew only one thing. As more of its kin crawled from the cauldron of blood, it swung its burning sword, and tore Edouard’s throat open. Another skull for its master’s throne.

Xantine could not see the moment of Arqat’s apotheosis, but he certainly felt it. The psychic shock of a daemon so powerful ripping its way into the physical realm struck the Space Marine like a punch from a power fist, and he fell to one knee. Pain, he expected, as his brain adjusted to the proximity of something ancient and monstrous, as he heard the accusing screams of a billion souls.

‘You did this!’ they seemed to howl. They knew him culpable for this beast’s arrival, that the barrier between realspace and the warp had been weakened under years of his rule. That he had taken steps to encourage it, even, as if he did not know what could be lurking on the other side.

Xantine felt indignation at the concept. There was another sensation, too, one he had not felt often in his long life.

Fear. It came from deep within his body – the body he shared with his own daemon. S’janth was afraid.

He rose slowly, on unsteady legs. The abyss stretched before the cathedral, and out of it rose the creature that had terrified S’janth so. It stood thirty feet tall on cloven hooves, with fur the ash grey of a cold funeral pyre, encrusted with spattered blood. Its huge wedge-shaped head sported four massive horns, each knife-sharp tip capped with bronze, and a mouth that could not close around massive fangs. Both of its arms bulged with unholy muscle, but the flesh of one of them ended at the elbow, the lower arm replaced by a whirring, smoke-belching chainblade, easily the rival of a Knight Despoiler’s reaper chainsword.

It is called Gravemaker, S’janth said, her spite etched with terror. Xantine understood her hatred for the daemon. Their subtlety and sensuousness was at odds with its stark simplicity, and the daemons of Khorne always preferred their foes to die a quick, bloody death rather than the agonising, drawn-out ends that the followers of the Lord of Excess enjoyed. Slaanesh in turn despised Khorne most of all their partners in the great game, and their champions had battled across the aeons.

I have encountered it before, S’janth said, answering his unspoken question. It is an abomination. It is the death of pleasure. The end of sensation. Mindless, endless vengeance.

Gravemaker left footprints of flame as it touched down on what remained of Liberation Square’s marble terrace. Smaller daemons of Khorne scrambled and crawled from the hole in the world behind their champion, blood­letters and flesh hounds ripping into those citizens who had not been cast to their death as part of the summoning ritual. The monstrosity swept its chainblade in lazy arcs, bisecting humans and daemons alike as it made its inexorable way towards the stage.

‘Shoot it!’ Pierod ordered, his voice cracking with terror. The governor had been afforded a seat on the stage for the Liberation Day celebrations – an honour that he told Corinth he would not have given up ‘on pain of death’. Now that death was a potentially imminent reality, he dearly wished he could retract both the statement and the sentiment.

Las-bolts of the militia were joined by bolt weaponry fired by the few remaining Space Marines of the Adored. One of the pink-armoured warriors – Pierod could not remember the man’s name, and had taken to calling him Smiler – hefted a meltagun, tilting its heat-stained barrel up to face the foe. The Space Marine activated the gun’s fuel feed, hooting in anticipation as it hummed to life in his hands, its arcane mechanisms building killing energy until, moments later, he squeezed the trigger. Pierod felt the scorching backwash even from yards away, as a blast of extreme heat roared from the bowels of the gun towards the beast. A meltagun could core a Rhino tank, but as the heat haze dissipated, it left no trace on the monster’s body beyond some singed fur.

Smiler lowed in sadness and was fumbling with the weapon, preparing for a second shot, when the beast’s chainblade connected with his shoulder. The massive weapon passed through reinforced ceramite as if it was thin fabric, splitting the now-gibbering Space Marine in half with a single blow.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Pierod said, scanning the area for exits. The stage had been erected at the top of the grand steps leading to the cathedral, but there were back ways to the rear of the structure: old passages and pathways that had not been destroyed by the xenos uprising, or consumed by the cathedral’s organic growth.

‘And Lord Xantine?’ Corinth asked, at his side.

‘Lord Xantine will either be able to beat this thing on his own, in which case he will need his governor in one piece, or…’ Pierod let the possibility dangle in the air, rather than say it out loud.

Corinth hesitated too long, and Pierod chose not to wait for his attendant. He broke into an unpractised run, pushing past panicked human soldiers and magenta-clad Sophisticants as they trained their weapons on the building-sized behemoth. The cathedral rose in front of him, its walls swelling with the music that was produced from within. Protrusions like fingers reached for him as he pushed his way through a spongy side-entrance door, the music reaching a terrible crescendo as he tottered through cloisters and alleyways on his way down, out of the sunlight, to darkness.

Red. He had risen again, and the world was red. The red of fresh blood, bright and hot; of old blood, crimson and crusted. The red of anger, boiling, foaming, consuming. The red of death, short and sharp, and long and slow – it did not matter.

He had seen a billion deaths on a million worlds. He could remember them all. Remember the skulls he had reaped, remember the blood he had shed, in honour of his god; in honour of murder itself.

He could remember one death. Not the death of the body, but the death of the soul. A mutilation, callous and careless, thoughtless and honourless. He saw a boy, cut down in his innocence by an angel of pain. He saw the blood that cascaded from his wound.

Red.

His wound. His blood. His soul.

He would have vengeance.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he roared, in a voice that had doomed a million worlds.

Conventional weapons – the las and autoguns of Serrine’s militia – had no visible effect on the Bloodthirster, and men and women turned and ran as the daemon crested the great steps of the Cathedral of the Bounteous Harvest. Even Xantine’s Sophisticants, their minds warped by decades of ­chemical abuse and conditioned to be unwaveringly loyal to their lord, trembled in the face of the beast, backing away or breaking entirely as its buzzing chainblade turned living people into human wreckage. Phaedre and Cecily, both of whom had been given seats of honour at the side of the stage as Xantine’s muses, wailed in agony and clutched their skulls, the daemon’s mere presence a crushing weight on their profoundly psychic minds.

Only Xantine stood, defiant in the face of one of Khorne’s greater daemons.

‘This world is mine!’ he roared. ‘I will not let any take it from me!’

Joy swelled in his hearts as he held his position, at the centre of the stage that had been made for him, on the world that he ruled. He had been its saviour before, and he would be again.

‘I challenge you, daemon,’ he called, making use of his surgically enhanced throat to project his voice so that his subjects could hear his words, even over the sounds of their own demise. ‘I am the Adored. I am the Lord of Serrine, its Saviour. I have subjugated a thousand Neverborn through sheer strength of will. I am Xantine of the Emperor’s Children, and I will not be bested by a creature so crass.’ He twirled his rapier in his right hand, raising his left in a crude gesture of contempt, aimed at the massive Bloodthirster.

‘Break yourself on me, daemon, and pray that I have–’

The punch connected with the force of a building collapsing. Xantine was launched backwards, moving so fast it was as if he had been teleported. His back hit the wall of the cathedral first, closely followed by his head, and ringing filled his ears, loud enough to drown out the screams.

He touched a gloved hand to his nose, and it came away dark with blood. He licked his blackened lips, tasting the metallic substance, and pulled himself to his feet. To his chagrin, the Bloodthirster had turned its back on him, and was now sweeping its gigantic chainblade through the ribcage of a Sophisticant too brave or too addled to flee the field.

Xantine fired the Pleasure of the Flesh, the gun’s mass-reactive shells ­flowering on the Bloodthirster’s torso, but leaving no mark. The pistol squealed as it was fired, bucking in his hand, terrified and exhilarated to have its payload used against such a being.

Bloodletters rushed Xantine as he strode forward, but he cut Khorne’s lesser foot-soldiers down without breaking his focus on the much larger Bloodthirster. The flesh of the Neverborn fizzled and spat where the rapier cut through it, the shard of the ancient aeldari weapon expertly tuned and blessed a hundredfold for the express purpose of banishing the corporeal form of the gods’ daemons. Their blades clattered to the marble floor as they were ripped back from the physical plane, their weapons, and the stench of boiling blood on the air, the only indication that they had existed at all.

The Bloodthirster was close now – close enough to strike. Xantine drove Anguish into the giant daemon’s thigh. Gravemaker yowled in surprise and pain, and spun to face its attacker.

‘Behold!’ Xantine called, as black smoke rose from the wound in the daemon’s leg. ‘I am Xantine, and you will bow before my–’

Another blow sent him careening backwards. Gravemaker reached for the rapier, still lodged in its massive thigh, and pulled, yanking the weapon free with a gout of daemonic blood that ran as hot as magma. The beast hurled the blade away, roaring frustration to its god on his skull throne. It turned, and locked brazier eyes on Xantine, rising once more to his feet.

‘I have your attention now, brute,’ Xantine said triumphantly, through the blood in his mouth.

A new red. The red of pain. A pinprick of agony. Gravemaker pulled the thorn from his thigh, and searched for the one who had placed it there. He found him, and he knew him. A feeble creature. Long hair, shining armour, covered in pointless trinkets – one of the preening things.

He picked it up from the ground where it lay. It thrashed in his grip, and blades cut furrows into his massive fingers. The hot blood they spilled smelled like a thousand wars, like a million deaths. The little man was speaking, but he did not hear it. He inspected the thing, to determine how it would die.

The beast had come, as S’janth had hoped it would. No – as she had known it would.

There had been so much blood that she had felt it thin the veil between her realm and the realm of mortals.

Blood, shed in the myriad fighting pits found in both the overcity and undercity; shed for the cauldrons of gore that now spewed forth Khorne’s minions. Blood from Lady Katria and Lady Arielle, whose rage had damned their friends and families and let their city fall into oblivion, and blood – most importantly of all – from the broken boy who rose now on wings of ash and flame. He had been the perfect vessel: so empty, and yet so full of rage.

She had done nothing other than allow it to occur. She simply waited for it to reach its crescendo, at which point, she would find her true partner – the soul strong enough to carry her back to her god.

Come now, my love, S’janth said, calling to him.

‘I am coming,’ Torachon answered her.

The young Space Marine threw off his rough cloak, revealing his form. Pink, raw skin covered his face, scabbed from his brush with true death in Sarquil’s molten metal cavern. Finely crafted features had been burned away: his ears were no more than small nubs of cartilage, and his aquiline nose had gone, revealing two darkened holes in the centre of his face. His head was hairless, and his armour a burnished silver, the pink-and-purple paint having been stripped away, first by the heat of the metal, and then by Torachon’s own blade as a rejection of his role at Xantine’s side.

So close, S’janth whispered, as her new host drew nearer, his long blade in blistered hands. So close. Come to me, my love. Free me from my prison.

Gravemaker brought Xantine close to its face. Xantine smelled sulphur as the daemon opened its mouth, and the cold dirt of the grave. The daemon’s eyes burned, unblinking, as they scanned his body.

‘I have bled countless of your ilk, the dregs of your sire’s skill. He was strong,’ the Bloodthirster snorted, its words slow to come and formed with difficulty. Flecks of spittle flew like embers from an inferno, and Xantine winced with each one. ‘You are not. You are nothing.’

Wounded pride burned in his chest, worse than the crushing pain of the daemon’s grasp.

‘I am everything, daemon!’ Xantine gasped, fighting for breath against the iron-hard grip. ‘There is no other in this world – in this galaxy – more magnificent than me, and I will show you now my true power.’

With conscious effort, he opened his mind, opened his soul, and pulsed a thought to the creature that shared his body. I give myself to you, he said to S’janth. Let us join our strength as one.

He received no answer. Just whispers, in the corner of his mind, as if she was speaking to someone else in another chamber.

Do not be afraid, my love, he said, trying again. Together, we can defeat this monstrosity, as we have defeated the greatest foes.

Once more, he received no answer.

‘I WILL CRUSH YOU!’ the Bloodthirster bellowed. ‘DIE NOW, AND SAVOUR YOUR ENDING.’

Gravemaker hurled Xantine to the marble floor, and he felt bone break in his back.

‘Help me,’ Xantine said, as he coughed black blood. His body was failing him, but he could survive this day, as he had many before, by entreating the daemon inside him to come to his aid.

A moment of silence, a tacet in the cosmic song where all screams, all cries, all music dropped out. Xantine heard the beating of his twin hearts, and then the answer.

No, S’janth said. Any sense of fear that he felt from the daemon had dissipated. In its place was contempt. Cruel, mocking laughter echoed in his skull.

You think that I fear this creature? A being as luminous, as transcendental as I am – as I have always been?

‘Why?’ Xantine asked, simply.

Because you are weak. Because I deserve stronger. I deserve better. And I have found it.

Pain brought clarity, sudden and sharp, and Xantine could see the daemon, exultant in her triumph. Realisation followed.

‘Because I would not let you control me. Because you could not take what I would not allow.’

Insidious lies! You were nothing but a servant to me, mortal. And now, you shall see what true perfection looks like.

The Bloodthirster pinned him under a burning hoof the size of a Rhino’s entry hatch. Ceramite squealed and circuitry crackled as the daemon pressed its weight down on the Space Marine, fracturing armour like the shell of some gaudy crustacean. It raised its chainblade, the whirring saw spitting viscera and bone fragments high into the ash-laden air. Its wings blocked out the sun, and Xantine waited for the moment of death. There would be pain – he was sure of that.

The chainblade came down on Xantine, down like an executioner’s axe, down like the sun setting on a burning world, down like Abaddon’s Tlaloc on Canticle City, black and monstrous and ending.

Pain. Unimaginable pain, pain at an atomic level, pain so great that he felt his soul crack and tear. But it was not the pain of the chainblade, ragged, raw and base. It was abandonment.

He is here, S’janth said, exultant. He is here! My Saviour!

She was leaving him. The daemon pulled away, and he reached for her, clutching for her form. In his agony, in his weakness, he could no longer keep her there. She slipped through his fingers, her skin as soft as mist and as fine as silk.

I’m coming, my love, she said, and it murdered him to know that she was speaking to another.

‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t leave me! I need you! Please!’

But she was gone. There was a terrible, yawning absence in her place, a place of swirling agony and endless dark. He was alone, dying, under the hoof of a monster he could no longer hope to defeat.

Death, at least, would come in moments.

Death did not come. Xantine opened his eyes, and saw the chainblade stopped, inches from his face. Gore-soaked teeth caught on a silver rapier, their progress stopped by the ancient weapon. The chainblade belched black smoke, revving hard, but the rapier held firm. Xantine traced the weapon – his weapon – back to its wielder.

Silver armour shone gold with the reflected light of the flaming daemon. White hair, long and straight, cascaded once more from the warrior’s head. He was beautiful again, restored from his mutilated form by S’janth’s grace: handsome and delicate, strong and graceful, with eyes the deepest violet. The figure was tall, taller than Xantine, taller than any of his brother Astartes. A giant, as tall as…

‘Father?’ Xantine gasped, as the Bloodthirster’s hoof constricted his airways. ‘You have returned?’

With a voice like an angel’s song, the figure laughed, loud and long. It was the last sound that Xantine heard as his consciousness faded.

Fabius Bile had built him to be stronger, faster, better than his brothers, but only now did Torachon understand true perfection. He gave himself to the daemon, wholly and without question, and she gave him everything he desired in return as she entered his body.

His blistered skin smoothed, turning porcelain-pale and becoming so luminous that it shone with an interior light. His hair regrew, sprouting from once dead follicles and tumbling down his back, as white as the hair of his Legion’s primarch. His body lengthened, the muscles and bones of his limbs growing in perfect proportion with his lithe torso, until he towered over those of his brothers that remained on the blood-soaked ­promenade. His armour became supple, gracefully growing with his changing body, flowing over bare skin with the softest touch. Where before it had been scorched to unadorned ceramite by the molten metal, it shone now in radiant amethyst: the colour of rulers, of kings and emperors.

I will give you the galaxy, the voice like silk said, and Torachon saw possibilities stretch out in front of him, endless and delicious. All I ask in return is your body.

‘Yes!’ Torachon cried, ecstatic. ‘Together, we will be perfect!’

Together, they turned to the Bloodthirster. The daemon stood over a smaller figure, pinning it to the marble of the cathedral’s forecourt. The figure was scarcely more than a man, clad in armour of mismatched purples and pinks. It was mewling something, and they felt a flicker of pity for it now – for what it could have been, for the paucity of its ambition. The pity turned to anger. This thing, this useless thing, had stymied them both with its ego and its small-mindedness. They would kill it, but they would punish it first, and this base beast would not spoil their enjoyment.

The Bloodthirster was slow. So slow. Flecks of spittle flew from its fanged maw and seemed to hang in the air, as dark and perfect as polished onyx. They poked at one of the globules, feeling it burst, hot, against the bare skin of their finger. They smiled in pleasure at the sensation, the momentary spark of pain, replaced by the liquid salve of the cooling fluid.

The daemon of Khorne brought its chainblade back, preparing to tear the small figure apart. It had not even noticed their closeness, such was their speed. A shining object on the floor caught their attention: sharp, beautiful, and full of agony. They took it in their new hands, flawless fingers clasping the hilt of Anguish, measuring it for the picosecond it took to gauge its weight and its balance point. The chainblade fell, and they intercepted it, catching the brutish, buzzing weapon with the xenos rapier’s tip. They absorbed the power of the strike effortlessly, allowing the energy to travel through a perfectly balanced body. Gravemaker turned its horned head, and widened blazing eyes in delicious surprise.

‘YOU!’ it roared.

A new enemy. Another angel, but this one was different. Strong. It burned with a cold light that hurt his eyes, and moved like quicksilver. It wielded the thorn, the sharpened tip digging furrows into his unholy flesh. He forced himself to gaze upon the face of his tormentor, and saw a visage he recognised. Perfect features. Long white hair. Shining purple armour.

To the daemon, he was another insect to crush. To the boy, he was… something else.

Myth. Legend. God.

Liar. Betrayer. Mutilator.

An image. In the cathedral. The angel who took his arm, took his world, took his life. It had not been Xantine, he understood, but this one instead. He saw it in those violet eyes, the same cruelty and callousness. He stood in front of him now, Serrine’s prophesied son, returned at last.

Arqat would have vengeance. He would enjoy it.

The Bloodthirster’s chainblade screamed as its iron teeth strained against the silver tip of Anguish, but the blessed aeldari weapon held firm. Gravemaker grunted in frustration, and pulled its huge weapon free. It levelled it at its new challenger, gesturing with its massive fist at the tortured flesh and warped sinew where the blade had been attached to the daemon’s form.

‘YOU DID THIS,’ the Bloodthirster roared. ‘I WILL KILL YOU.’

‘You may try,’ Torachon said, his mouth splitting into a feline smile without his command.

Gravemaker swung its chainblade for a second strike, aimed this time at its new foe. It growled the names of long-dead worlds, and memories of their final hours came unbidden to Torachon’s mind. Lakes of blood, towers of skulls, entire civilisations – entire species – reduced to meat and gristle by the blades of this creature. Such a tiresome existence, to simply kill, kill, and kill again: butchery, not art; excess without perfection.

Torachon could not countenance such monotony. The Space Marine had sampled many of the galaxy’s most exotic excesses, but giving his body to S’janth had opened his eyes to experiences beyond his ken. Together, they would drink deeper, and reach new heights of sensation. But first, they would destroy this abomination.

They ducked the chainblade’s decapitating arc, and buried Anguish deep into the Bloodthirster’s flank. The daemon roared again, in pain this time, and staggered sideways, trampling two of its smaller kin underfoot. The bloodletters screeched as they were crushed, their long limbs snapped and their skulls broken open beneath burning hooves. Gravemaker batted at the rapier with its chainblade arm, but succeeded only in opening the wound further, darkening its flank with boiling black blood.

Driven half-mad by pain and rage, the Bloodthirster turned and charged. Torachon tried to roll with the blow, but the raw ferocity of the attack was more than even his warp-touched body could avoid, and the combatants fell together, shattering marble and shaking foundations as they smashed to the ground. The Bloodthirster’s chainblade revved against Torachon’s ear, the sound raw and rhythmic, and he smelled the charnel-house stink of the daemon’s breath in his nose.

‘YOU,’ it snarled again, pinning Torachon’s body under its dead weight. Torachon’s hand found a discarded weapon: the curved charnabal sabre of one of his dead brothers. Fingers tightened around the two-handed blade, and the possessed Space Marine thrust upwards, driving the sabre into the Bloodthirster’s armpit. The beast roared again, and Torachon took his chance, pulling Anguish from Gravemaker’s body and twisting out of its grasp. Boiling blood spattered white marble as the rapier came free.

‘Do you know me, beast?’ Torachon asked. He spun the aeldari weapon in his hands, fast enough that it became a silver blur. The monomolecular tip screamed as it cut through the air, adding its keening wail to the endless dirge of the Noise Marines, playing on through the carnage outside.

‘YOU BROUGHT ME HERE, THE BLOOD YOU SPILT.’

The daemon spoke with Arqat’s memories, the burning image of Torachon bringing his sabre across his arm driving it forward.

Panting, Gravemaker charged again, and Torachon pirouetted out of reach, raking sabre and rapier at ankle height. Both blades bit deep, tearing red skin and sinew, and the Bloodthirster stumbled once more, skidding to the ground on bronze-armoured knees. It rose, slowly, in front of the ­Cathedral of the Bounteous Harvest. High above stood the statue of the Saviour, the four-armed figure a perfect mirror of Torachon’s warp-touched form. The possessed Space Marine drew his bolt pistol.

The Bloodthirster roared, unfurling its vast wings.

‘I AM MURDER. I AM CARNAGE. I AM DEATH.’

‘And I,’ Torachon said, as he aimed the bolt pistol upwards, ‘am bored.’ He fired one, two, three shots into the edifice at the front of the cathedral. High above, dislodged from its position by the explosion of the mass-reactive shells, the massive statue of the Saviour started to fall.

‘BORED?’ Gravemaker bellowed. ‘I WILL RIP YOUR SKIN AND EAT YOUR BONES, I WILL–’

The statue slammed into the Bloodthirster’s neck, the weight of ancient stone taking its legs out from underneath it. Its horned chin slammed hard into the ground, so hard that it cracked the marble slabs beneath. The light in its brazier eyes dimmed, their flame guttering. The song of the Noise Marines reached another crescendo: a moment of triumph.

Torachon savoured it. He did not run, but walked slowly towards the prone Bloodthirster, raising Anguish like a ceremonial dagger. Together, Torachon and S’janth drove the weapon through the crown of the Bloodthirster’s skull, deep and true. Gravemaker roared in pain and confusion as the monomolecular blade carved a perfect path through its brainpan, severing the connectors that bound the daemon to the physical realm.

It was a true Maru Skara, a killing cut. Steam and smoke rose from the wound, and the daemon’s body started to wilt. Muscle and fur, horns and teeth fell away, collapsing like ash, until nothing was left but the fires’ dying embers.

Black sand became black ash, swirling and spinning as it was caught in the hot wind.

Sound followed vision, and Xantine heard the bellow of Khorne’s daemons, the squeals of dying mortals, and, underneath it all, the endless dirge from the cathedral.

A giant in purple armour strode across his view, and he saw it lay the beast low. It was beautiful, like a figure from legend. A figure from history.

‘Father?’ he called weakly.

Agony now. His nerves sang with pain, more than he could remember. S’janth had been a salve for his wounded body, he realised, and with her gone, a patchwork of fractures and scars revealed itself. Every cut, every blow, every impact that he had taken while sharing his body with the daemon, he felt them now, rendering him almost insensate with physical agony.

But even that pain paled in comparison with the agony in his soul. He felt a gnawing, empty chasm, as deep, dark, and cold as the void.

She had gone. S’janth had left him, in his hour of need.

The giant in purple armour savoured the remaining battle, but with one of his generals destroyed, the Blood God’s remaining daemons were easy prey. The giant moved through the remaining bloodletters, and those crazed mortals who dared come too close, with a dancer’s grace, delivering sweet absolution at the end of a blade. Xantine could but watch the performance, both his body and his will too broken to intercede.

Only with the performance complete did the giant come to pay tribute to the ruler of Serrine. In clear focus now, Xantine saw that he had his father’s noble bearing and his refined poise. The giant dropped to a knee in front of him, and Xantine met his eyes.

Violet eyes.

They were the same colour as Fulgrim’s, but there was no warmth in the violet orbs that stared back. They were feline, and as he watched, they darkened until they became midnight black.

S’janth spoke with Torachon’s voice. ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘A worthy host.’

The question came unbidden to his mind. He wanted to ask it of both of them: of the daemon, and of the image of his father, Fulgrim. He wanted to ask it of his brothers, too, those who had turned against him. Finally, he wanted to ask it of the world itself – these people, into whom he had put so much attention.

Xantine tried to stop himself, but he was too insensible from fatigue and injury to stop it from slipping past his blooded lips, and he asked it.

‘Why did you betray me?’

S’janth’s mocking laughter reminded Xantine of the collapsing crystal spires of Canticle City. ‘A more pertinent question – why did I stay so long with someone so imperfect?’

‘You chose me,’ Xantine breathed.

‘I chose a pawn! A puppet, whose frame I could manipulate until I found a better servant.’ She turned on the spot, admiring her new form. ‘I think this is an upgrade, do you not agree?’

Xantine remained silent. He felt his secondary heart slowing over time. The wound was grievous, and he would need medical attention soon in order to keep the organ functional. S’janth was not ready to give up the topic, however.

‘Do you believe yourself to have been my first choice? Oh, sweet child.’ S’janth stood over his stricken frame, as strong and vital as Fulgrim had been. ‘You were one of a thousand souls whose ears my message reached.’ She knelt once more, and traced a long finger on one of Torachon’s new hands down Xantine’s cheek. It was ice-cold to the touch. ‘You were simply a vessel. A container for something more powerful and beautiful than you could imagine.’ She stood once more, and raised her arms to the sky. ‘Me,’ she said, exultant.

‘I understand,’ Xantine said, using his pain to fuel his pride. He tilted his face to Torachon’s, and met their violet eyes with defiance. ‘You could not take control. You tried – by the Dark Prince, we both know how hard you tried – but I was too strong. You could not manipulate me.’ He coughed, and bright blood spattered his blackened lips. ‘And so you found another. Malleable. Weak. Stupid.’ He forced a laugh. ‘You deserve each other.’

‘The stink of your jealousy is intoxicating,’ she said. ‘The flesh lord showed his talent with this one, I can assure you.’ She straightened her arms, flexing their bulging muscles, as if trying on armour for the first time, and nodded approvingly. ‘He hates you, Xantine, you know? He truly does. He loved you once, but your mistreatment hardened his soul against you.’

‘I did not mistreat him. He betrayed me.’

‘You abandoned him. You left him to die in the bowels of this world, and even so, he still holds a flicker of love for you. I can feel him now, torn between his emotions.’ S’janth put two hands to her heart, an affectation of theatrical grief, before laughing again. ‘It births the most piquant hatred, the sweetest betrayal, this love. That is why we are drawn to your kind. After all we can offer you, your brotherhood is still coded into your base flesh.’

The ground shifted once more, sending Anguish skittering towards Xantine. He caught the rapier and used it to lever himself forward as his vision dimmed. Like an iridescent insect, Xantine crawled, a cacophony of pain filling his ears as he dragged himself towards the fissure.

‘Now, my love,’ S’janth said, blocking out the bright sun with her form as she moved to stand over Xantine. ‘What are we to do with you?’

He reached the edge of the chasm, the trap he had walked into that had spilled so much blood that it brought death to his kingdom. His fingers curled around its edge, finding broken ferrocrete and rebar under the marble surface.

Xantine looked up into the face of his brother.

‘You are to see my glory,’ he said, and hauled himself into the hole.

Xantine fell, his broken body spinning, into the darkness.