‘We are leaving. Gather everyone, but leave two squads to maintain vigil over the pit. We are rejoining Narek and the others.’
Jadrekk bowed again and went to carry out his orders.
Thirty-seven legionaries awaited Elias beyond the confines of his sanctum. Twenty of those would stay behind, whilst the rest would reinforce Narek. It had never been intended as a battle force. It was an honour guard, Elias’s own personal cult. Mortals were but lambs to slaughter in the Pantheon’s name. Legionaries demanded sterner attention. Elias had thought the loyalists nothing more than an inconvenience, sustenance for the Neverborn when he unleashed them upon this world and forever tainted it for Chaos. Now they stood in the path of his deserved glory. They had proven resourceful so far, but their resistance was at an end. Sheathing the fulgurite spear in his scabbard, he lifted his mace with his good arm. It was heavy, but it felt good to wrap his fist around the skin-bound haft.
It would feel even better when it was cracking skulls, every blow a step towards his eventual apotheosis.
Erebus severed the psychic communion to his disciple and staggered. Reaching out, he supported himself against the wall of his cell and exhaled a shuddering breath. Even imbued by the power of the warp, his regeneration was slow. He looked down upon the bare metal of his bionic hand. It was already clenched in a fist, as if his will alone could sustain and restore him. The grimace on Erebus’s face was transformed into a smile. He saw it reflected in the metal floor of his sanctum, just as he saw the slow creeping of flesh that had begun to colonise his flayed visage. It was harder, darker than before. Tiny bone nubs protruded from his skull. His eyes took on a visceral cast. It was the favour of the gods, Erebus knew it. Lorgar and Horus might have forsaken him for now, but the Pantheon had not. He could feel their restlessness, however. Despite the Dark Apostle’s knowledge and manipulation of the fates, Horus was not the pawn that Erebus had claimed him to be.
In the earliest days, when sedition was muttered in whispers and the warrior lodges were in their infancy, there had been other choices. It need not have been Horus. None of that mattered now. Erebus was, above all, a survivor. His ravaged face and body bore testament to that.
‘I am still the architect of this heresy…’ he hissed to the darkness, which had been listening eagerly ever since he arrived.
His mistake was at Signus. Had he known, had he caught the slightest inkling of Horus’s jealousy… Sanguinius was supposed to have turned and become a Red Angel. Instead, he lived, and neither Horus nor Erebus had got what they wanted. He would be subtler next time. But he needed answers. The Angel and the Warmaster were not his concern now. Erebus’s eye had fallen upon another.
It took some effort, but he raised his head to meet the gaze of the other being in the room.
‘Can it kill him?’ he asked.
The creature manifest in a pall of roiling smoke opposite nodded its feathered heads. Its beaks chattered, incessantly mumbling. Erebus forced his mind to shut out these words, for they were madness and to hear them was to be damned to the same fate.
He bowed as the smoke faded, taking the daemon with it. The great pressure upon Erebus was relieved, and he could straighten his back. He breathed for the first time in a long time without it feeling like a saw was ripping through his chest.
‘Then it shall be done, Oracle,’ he said to the ghosting smoke, and left the sanctum.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Penumbra
His breathing gave my brother away.
‘Ferrus, leave me alone…’
Since my last encounter with Curze, I had sunk into a deep melancholy, struggling to put together what was real and what I only imagined. Each time I returned from death, I felt a piece of my mind slip away like a shed scale or flake of ash. And the harder I tried to grasp at it, the more it fragmented. I was breaking – not physically, but mentally. Yet I was not alone in that. Curze too had showed me some of his inner doubt, his pain. Whatever he had witnessed in the visions he described had disturbed an already fragile mind. The sadistic tendencies, his obvious nihilism, were both symptomatic of that. I didn’t know if he meant to share his trauma to make me pity him or somehow lull me into trusting him as part of some longer torture, or whether his mask had simply slipped and I had been treated to his true image. Both of us had been reflected in the obsidian glass and neither of us liked what we saw.
‘Ferrus is dead, brother,’ a voice answered, prompting me to open my eyes.
The cell of volcanic glass hadn’t changed. In its walls I beheld my reflection, but could see no other, despite the fact that whoever was in here with me was close enough that I could hear them whisper.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, standing. My feet were unsteady but I held my ground. ‘Ferrus, if this is some trick–’
‘Ferrus died on Isstvan, as I once thought you had done.’
My eyes widened, I dared to hope. I recognised the voice of my unseen companion.
‘Corvus?’
From the darkness, I saw a shadow that bled outwards into a silhouette before finally resolving into Corax, my brother. It was as if the Ravenlord were wearing a long cloak that he had suddenly cast off to reveal his presence. Despite the fact that he was standing in front of me, he still portrayed no reflection in the glass, and as I regarded him I found it difficult to pinpoint his exact location in the room. He wasshadow, always within the penumbra even in the harshest daylight. It was his gift.
I reached out to touch his face and whispered, partly to myself, ‘Are you real?’
Corax was clad in black power armour of an avian aspect. With two taloned gauntlets he disengaged the locking clamps that affixed his war-helm to his gorget. The beaked helmet came loose without a sound. Even the Ravenlord’s power generator from which sprouted his jump pack’s incredible wings functioned almost silently. It was only by the virtue of my primarch’s hearing that I could detect the lowest, residual background hum.
‘I am as real as you, Vulkan,’ he said, lifting the war-helm to reveal a slightly aquiline face framed by long, black hair. There was a quiet wisdom in his eyes that I recognised, as well as the greyish pallor common to inhabitants of Kiavahr. A pelt of raven feathers ringed his waist and there was a large skull that rested above his armoured pelvis from some great prey-bird that he had once stalked and killed.
‘It isyou, Corvus.’
I wanted to embrace him, to embrace hope in the form of my brother, but Corax was not as tactile as Ferrus had been. Like the bird from which he took his name, Corax did not like his feathers to be touched. I saluted him instead, pressing my clenched fist against my bare chest.
Corax saluted in return before replacing his helm.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘We are aboard Curze’s ship.’
‘I can explain how I found you later.’ He clapped me on the shoulder, a rare concession for him, and for the first time in what felt like years I experienced a lost sense of brotherhood and comradeship. ‘Now I need you to come with me. We’re getting you out of this place.’
As he spoke, my eye was drawn to the half-light spilling into my cell. Through the open door, I saw a dimly lit corridor and a strike team of Raven Guard surrounded by dead Night Lords.
‘Can you fight?’ Corax asked me, glancing over his shoulder as he led me to freedom.
‘Yes,’ I replied, and felt some of my faded strength returning. I had been a long time from earth and beaten constantly as I was, my fighting prowess was far from its height. I caught a bolter in mid-flight. It felt good to wrap my hand around the trigger, feel its heft. I racked the slide. It was Corax’s own weapon, not his favoured armament but a back-up. I was glad to receive it.
I had questions, many of them, about the war and Horus. But this was not the time.
As my brother reached the doorway, he said something to his Raven Guard in Kiavahran that I didn’t understand before unfurling his power whip and letting the three barbed tips crackle with energy as they touched the ground. Four silver claws extended from his other hand, their blades wreathed in actinic fury.