Lord Of The Night

'Do you taste it?' it whispered. 'Do you taste the terror of this world? It is... mm... it is intoxicating.'

Sahaal felt disgust engulf him.

'You dare to lecture me on the Night Haunter's lessons?' he snarled, anger gripping him, breaking through the shame and failure like a hatching beast. 'You dare, when you've fallen so far from his wisdom? Fear is the weapon, fool, not the goal!'

The devil crooned, maw spreading in delight.

'Ah... Righteous little Sahaal. How I have missed you...'

'Look at you! Look at what you've become! You've spat in the face of his legacy. Have you no shame?'

'Our master's legacy lives, little Sahaal.' The beast brandished a fist, clenching claws together. 'Through me, it prospers!'

Sahaal's bolter was in his hand before he had even considered drawing it.

'You are not fit to call yourself a Night Lord,' he said, and squeezed the trigger.

The Mordax Tenebrae spat shells like a hateful dragon. With every blast he saw his master's haunted features, heard his soothing words. With every shell he whispered his master's name.

And then the smoke cleared, and he saw that he'd barely scratched the monster's skin. Through boiling frost clouds and shifting shadows its eyes burned, and before Sahaal had even registered movement its great paw slipped from the smog and swatted him like a fly. His armour cracked. He crossed the room on his back.

'You,' Acerbus said, pouncing across him at a speed inconceivable in a creature so massive, holding him down with invisible cords of warpstuff and poking with child-like interest at the wound on his shoulder, 'should have more respect for your lord.'

His whole body burned. Each vicious slash-stab, each playing prod of the daemon's claws, was a universe of agony compressed upon his brain. Acerbus ate his fear and crooned to himself.

'You'll never be my lord!' Sahaal stormed, reserves of rage spilling through the cracked edges of his soul. 'The Haunter chose me! I was the heir to the Corona Nox!'

'Little Sahaal. Little Sahaal...' the beast shook its head, smoke oozing from burning eyes. 'So foolish... You were never its heir. You were merely its keeper'

'Spare me your lies, scum! Let me up! Fight me!'

'Ha... Have you never considered, little Sahaal, that Konrad Curze intended all of this?'

'How dare you speak his n—'

'He had seen his own death. He had tasted the future. You know that. It plagued him all his life.'

'W... What of it?'

'Do you truly believe, foolish little Sahaal, that he had not foreseen your disappearance? Do you truly believe he did not know you would be lost to this galaxy for ten thousand years? Have you never asked yourself why he would allow such a thing?'

'I... I...'

Lights bulged before his eyes. His world quivered around him.

It couldn't be true. The Haunter had never foreseen it!

Acerbus's voice was a poisoned needle, pumping toxins into his brain. 'Of course he knew,' it hissed. 'He understood his own soul better than anyone. He understood the division in his heart. He understood the choices before him.'

'But he chose me... he chose me!'

'He chose me, Sahaal. He knew that he was two men. One was... just and righteous — ''the daemon spat the words, disgusted'' -whilst the other... mm... the other had felt the kiss of Chaos all its life. One thrived on focus. The other ate fear!'

'And he chose the first, damn you! He spurned Chaos! He chose me!'

'No.' The claws scooped at the flesh of his shoulder, igniting every nerve in his body. The voice was relentless, crumbling every bastion of his resistance. 'He fooled himself. He was divided, but the dark side was strongest. He had foreseen the fate of the Corona, so he bequeathed it to you. He set you to chase after it like some vapid dog, doomed to an era of sleep. He sent you away, so your... ha... your worthy witterings could not obscure his vision. His vision of a Legion that sowed fear in his name. A Legion to eat the terror of the Imperium. He knew you would never accept such a thing. He knew you had to be removed.' The beast leaned down, so close that its fanged maw all but touched Sahaal's cheek. Hot breath washed over him. 'He condemned you to your prison, little Sahaal. He exiled you!

'No! You're lying! If that were true he would have simply killed me!'

'And leave the Corona unguarded? Leave his killer to steal it? Use your sense, Sahaal.'

'But he told me everything! The... the sanctioned genocides! The Emperor's betrayal! The assassin before the Heresy!'

'Lies. The whispers of his Chaotic side, pouring poison in the ear of his virtuous self. Perhaps... hah... perhaps he even believed it himself.'

Sahaal's brain collapsed upon itself. This would not stand. He could not allow himself an instant's doubt. He could not permit the suggestion — the suspicion — that Acerbus spoke the truth. To do otherwise would be to make a lie of everything he had ever believed, and everything he had struggled to achieve.

The Daemonlord was wrong. That was all there was to it.

'You're lying, warpshit!' he snarled, spitting in the creature's face. 'The Corona is mine! He gave it to me!'

'Ah... ah yes, the Corona. I have been without it long enough. I think I should like to have it now.' The creature dug claws further into Sahaal's wound, twisting with a vicious grin. 'Where is it?'

A voice spoke from nearby. 'It's right here, you bastard.'

It was the witch. Little Mita Ashyn, the woman who had set Sahaal free. She stood with blood pouring from her eyes, legs shaking at the tumult of psychic revulsion pouring from the monster, the Corona brandished before her like a halo of darkness. She looked on the verge of insanity and death, and were it not for a single detail, a single redeeming facet, Sahaal might have cursed her for all of eternity, for presenting the prize to the Daemonlord.

In her spare hand she held a melta gun — prised, no doubt, from the dead fingers of a broken servitor.

She smiled.

The melta-stream hit Acerbus full in the chest, and he barrelled away from it as if struck by a rogue meteor. The indistinct tentacles that held Sahaal down whipped away, tangled amongst the devastation of the tumbling beast. It roared so hard that the hive seemed to shake, flexing and mewling at a wound on its front, as if a great scoop had been plucked from its flesh. Raw warpstuff — liquid gore that glimmered and dissolved even as it touched the air — geysered from the crater, becoming smoke and ether before even hitting the ground.

Sahaal was on his feet and sprinting before the beast's collapse was complete. He had no energy to speak of, his mind was a wreckage without hope of salvage, and every truth he had every believed had been stolen from him. In all the world, in all the brutal realities of the galaxy, one thing alone held any meaning.

'The Corona!' he roared, leaping towards the witch. 'Give me the Corona!'

Acerbus was faster.

Like a striking crow, like shadow-wreathed lightning, he was on her, swatting Sahaal aside with a deft flick of his midnight claws and pinioning her to the floor, great tendrils of smoke and shadow tightening around her arms and ankles, wings opening like a canopy of perpetual night. The melta gun crumpled in his grip. She screamed and screamed and never stopped. The Daemonlord leaned close to her face, running a broad tongue across her cheek. 'Mm...' he mewled, intoxicated. 'Her fear is... exquisite...'

Sahaal leapt at his brother with a wordless howl, stabbing out with claws outstretched, hacking through semi-real pseudopods of smoke and dark. The Daemonlord spun to face him, spined shoulders glittering in constellations of darkness, amused at the crippled warrior's truculent attack.