‘Why are you here?’ said Horus.
‘I am home,’ said the Red Angel. ‘I am unbound. The cold iron Erebus hung on me has no power here, nor do the warding oaths cut into my skin. Here I am the sum of all horror, the thirster after blood and the devourer of souls.’
Horus ignored its grandstanding. ‘So why are they mocking me?’
‘You are a mortal in a realm of gods. You are an insect to the Pantheon. Insignificant and unworthy of notice, a fragment of dust in the cosmic wind.’
Horus sighed. ‘Noctua was right, all you warp things are ridiculously overwrought.’
Razored bone talons ripped from its gauntlets. Curling horns tore from its brow. ‘You are in my realm, where you will see only what we wish you to see. I can snuff you out like a candle flame, Warmaster.’
‘If you’re trying to intimidate me, you’re doing a poor job of it,’ said Horus, taking a step towards the daemon. ‘Let me tell you what I know. You exist in both realms, but if I destroy your body, your time in my world is over.’
The Angel laughed and stepped to meet his advance.
‘Daemons never die,’ it said.
‘No, but they do get incredibly tiresome,’ said Horus, reaching up to wrap his hand around the Red Angel’s throat. He lifted it from the ground and squeezed. It spat black ichor and the fire in its eyes blazed.
‘Release me!’ it roared, clawing at his arms. Blood welled from the cuts and splashed the mirror-black flagstones. Black veins of disintegrating blood vessels spread down Horus’s arm at the daemon’s touch. He felt the internal mechanisms of his body decaying, but only crushed the daemon’s neck harder.
‘You will die for this!’ spat the daemon.
‘One day perhaps,’ said Horus. ‘But not today. You weren’t sent here to kill me.’
Horus nodded to the vast citadels in the mountains. ‘You’re here to guide me. Your masters need me, so take me to their fortresses, speak my name and tell them the galaxy’s new master would treat with them.’
Horus dropped the Red Angel and for a moment he thought it might fly at him in a rage. Booming thunder rolled down from the mountains, bellows of anger, squeals of delight and more sibilant whispers. A million voices swept the nightmarish landscape, and the Red Angel’s claws retreated into its gauntlet.
‘Very well, I will take you to the Ruinous Powers,’ it said with a hiss of venom that curdled the air. ‘The Obsidian Way is the eternal road. It is perilous for flesh and soul. It is not for mortals to walk, for its dangers are–’
‘Shut up,’ said Horus. ‘Just shut the hell up.’
Aximand cried out at the awful sensation of blindness. His helmet’s auto-senses had failed the instant the Warmaster’s hammer struck the black wall. He tore his helmet off, but was still in the dark. Not just a darkened space, but a place of utter absence, as though the very idea of light had yet to become real.
‘Ezekyle!’ he yelled. ‘Falkus! Sound off!’
No response.
What had happened? Had they failed? Had Lupercal inadvertently unleashed some hideous apocalypse on them? Aximand felt as though his entire body was enveloped in viscous glue. Every breath was laden with toxins, with bile and with sweet, cloying tastes that sickened him to the core.
‘Ezekyle!’ he yelled again. ‘Falkus! Sound off! Anyone!’
And almost as soon as it had begun it was over.
Aximand blinked as the world came back again. He spun around, seeing the same confusion in the faces of his brothers. Even Mortarion appeared discomfited. The Deathshroud gathered close to their master as the Justaerin looked around for someone to protect.
‘Where is he?’ demanded Abaddon, though Aximand wasn’t sure who he was addressing. ‘Where is he?’
‘Exactly where he intended,’ said Mortarion, looking at the black gate. It had previously appeared to be a slab of polished obsidian, but now it was a vertical pool of black oil. Rippling concentric rings spread over its surface, as though raindrops were falling on it from the other side.
‘Do we go in after him?’ asked Kibre.
‘Do you want to die?’ said Mortarion, rounding on the Widowmaker. ‘Only one other being has passed into the warp and lived. Are you the equal of the Emperor, little man?’
‘How long has it been since he went in?’ said Abaddon.
‘Not long,’ said Aximand. ‘Moments at most.’
‘How do you know that?’
Aximand pointed to the ruby droplets running down the Death Lord’s reaper. ‘His blood is still wet on the blade.’
Abaddon appeared to accept his logic and nodded. He stood before the portal, as though trying to drag Lupercal back with the sheer power of his will.
Kibre stood with him, Abaddon’s man to the last.
Aximand took a breath of deep-earth air. Not even the horror of Davin could have prepared him for this moment. The Warmaster was gone and Aximand didn’t know if he would ever see him again.
A cold shard of ice entered his heart and all the light and colour bled from the world. Was this what the Iron Tenth had felt when Ferrus Manus died?
Aximand felt utterly alone. No matter that his closest brothers stood with him. No matter that they had just won a great victory and fulfilled the Warmaster’s ambitions for this world.
What would they do without the Warmaster?
No use denying that such a thing could ever happen. Fulgrim’s slaying of Manus proved a primarch could die.
Who else but the Warmaster had the strength of will to lead the Sons of Horus? Who among the true sons could achieve what Horus had failed to achieve?
Horus is weak. Horus is a fool.
The words struck him like a blow. They were without source, yet Aximand knew they had issued from beyond the black gate. Delivered straight to the heart of his skull like an executioner’s dagger.
He blinked and saw a time a long time ago or yet to pass, an echoing empty wasteland of a world. He imagined a death. Alone, far away from everything he had once held dear, dying with a former brother at his feet whose cruel wounds bled out onto the dust of a nameless rock.
Breath sounded in his ear. Cold and measured, the breath of nightmares he’d thought banished with the ghost of Garviel Loken.
A fist of iron took Aximand’s heart and crushed it within his chest. He couldn’t breathe. Transhuman dread. He’d felt it briefly on Dwell, and now it all but overpowered him.
The feeling passed as a bitter wind blew from the gateway.
‘Stand to!’ yelled Abaddon. ‘Something’s happening.’
Every weapon in the chamber snapped to aim at the portal. Its surface no longer rippled with the gentle fall of raindrops, but the violence of an ocean tempest.
Horus Lupercal fell through the oil-black surface of the gate and crashed to his knees before Abaddon and Kibre. Behind him, the darkness of the gate vanished with a bang of displaced air. Only a solid wall of mountain rock remained, as though the gate had never existed.
Aximand rushed forward to help them as the Warmaster held himself upright on all fours. His back heaved with breath, like a man trapped in a vacuum suddenly returned to atmosphere.
‘Sir,’ said Abaddon. ‘Sir, are you all right?’