Confrontation: Afterword

It's funny how projects can spin out of hand...

I'd thought to start this narrative gaming blog shortly before heading off to take part in my first tournament. Writing up the tournament into a short story seemed like a fun way to kick off the blog - as well as being a great writing challenge - before I moved onto the other projects that I have lined up for this page.

Three months later...

I'd never intended to come back with five blow-by-blow battle reports to type up, and I've largely stuck to that, aiming for covering each game's general flow instead and even omitting some other details entirely (sorry for editing your Stalker Tank from the entire thing Jody). So while each chapter follows the battle it describes pretty closely, it's selective, sometimes leaving out the flyers, or a last-minute, desperate objective grab that wasn't really relevant to the narrative.

Ah yes, the narrative. We won our first game at the tournament and then lost the following four, being tabled twice in the process. Couldn't care less incidentally, we had a great time. The tournament, organised and hosted by Ricky at Confrontation Events (https://www.facebook.com/confrontationevents/) was superb, filled to the rafters with fun and funny players, lots of friends and club members, and the sense of a great local games community. It was a pleasure to attend regardless of the score-line.

That said, a story about an army that fails to win battles continuously might not be a natural draw for a reader. Luckily fate stepped up to lend a hand. After winning our first game we were in a pretty good position, table-wise, and so went up against a big hitter of an army.

Culture shock time. Being new to the whole thing, we'd drafted army lists within the constraints of the tournament rules but sticking quite closely to the 'fluffy' gaming style we play on our regular games nights. We now faced the tournament list your mum warned you about, a beast that was failing to win hearts and minds across the world at the time; consisting of about 70 Fenrisian wolves, in a single formation unit with around four or five Dark Angel librarians joined to it as characters were able to do in 7th edition, I believe it has been dubbed the Barkstar. It stretched across the entire gaming table, one unit that similarly stretched the letter of the games rules to breaking point - it was the ultimate wake up call. That the team fielding it had found the list online and were substituting tyrannid models for wolves and Night Lords for Dark Angels in a WYSIWYG tournament was the icing on the cake.

The sheer audacity of the thing had me laughing in disbelief for three hours straight. As it happens, if we hadn't faced off against that team the resulting tale I came back with would have been far more ordinary and plain. That army, and that game, became central to the overall story. Even the model substitution informed how I would come to describe my 'abomination'.

At this point it's worth noting that there were nearly 30 teams at the tournament, fielding almost every conceivable faction available - there was an amazing Slaaneshi daemon army that I would have loved to have played. Ynarri elder forces, T'au, a genius Ork army with motorised buggies. Yet after our defeat at the hands of a combined Space Wolves / Dark Angels team our next two games were against... Space Wolves and/or Dark Angels. Indeed, we didn't ever face one non-imperial opponent. On the face of it that might have made forging a narrative quite difficult, yet the preceding story had presented itself before we'd even driven home on the second day.

I have a vague timeline plotted out for the Stigmata Seraphim, from their inception 10,000 years in the game's past, to the events that will take place as a direct result of this story. I had no idea that this story would take place of course; of the manipulative, cold-hearted nature that the commanders of my chapter would have taken on by this stage, but it was fun to discover it.

It was equally entertaining to personify our opponents, especially the Dark Angels, sorry Lions Castellant. I like to use home-brewed chapters where possible to avoid conflict with 40k canon. Carving out your own little corner of the galaxy is something that's been encouraged by the game developers since Rogue Trader, and is part of what's inspired this blog. Those character moments between bit-parters were a large part of what drew this story out to its final length but I'm glad they're there. Perhaps someday I'll discover what happened between Eufrayn and Guyyl in the end.

Needless to say, our opponents were good natured, fair players to a man, and won their games fair and square, regardless of the character's shenanigans in this tale. My thanks for both the games and for the permission to take the in-game pictures are gratefully given; any changes to the games are for narrative purposes and not an attempt to suggest that myself and Jody didn't get our arses kicked. They were kicked often.

Other than our strange attraction for Wolf/Angel team-ups, there was another odd moment of note that weekend. It came during the Barkstar game, against an army that some might view as a microcosm of everything that had gone wrong with 7th edition 40k. As I laughed at the unlikeliness of what was happening, it was as though Tzeentch gazed down and laughed with me. An hour into the match, Games Workshop officially announced 8th edition. Suddenly the tournament had a commemorative feeling of sorts, of an era drawing to a close.*

Our first 7th edition tournament, it turned out, was also our last.

I hope that the story I've finally presented here manages to capture a little of the grandiose madness of those games, and also whets your appetites to discover what takes place before and after this tale. Hopefully all will become clear in time.

Just, you know, not too much time.


*I know 7th was only around for a couple of years. But we played it a lot.

Confrontation Part 6

The Inquisitorial battlebarge ‘The Fallacy of Mercy’ surged forth through the warp, the strange and unreal energies of that other-realm buffeting against its Geller-sustained skein of real-space. The immaterium was in turmoil, roiling about the ship as though some vast and mighty hand stirred its daemonic currents from just beyond sight. The immense ship kept to its heading but the going was slow. Something was building, out in the deep. The ship’s crew laboured beneath an aura of dread.

Inquisitor Karstax reclined upon the bridge, his visage dark and brooding. The Astropath had never seen it otherwise.

“My lord, Interrogator-Chaplain Euphrayn wishes to advise you –“

“No,” the Inquisitor silenced him with the merest wave of his hand, “Word for word, if you will.”

The Astropath inclined his head in deference. He was leaning heavily upon his staff and the veins in his bald and bulbous pate were pulsing. The warpstorm around them was causing him no little discomfort. Still he forced his mind forth to communicate with their servants and allies.

“ ‘Inquisitor Karstax, it is my solemn duty to inform you that the heretics are dead; by your word and our deed.’ “

Karstax nodded. He continued the conversation as though their intermediaries were not there.

“You saw this with your own eyes Interrogator?”

The Astropath closed his eyes as he relayed the thought, and awaited his opposite’s reply.

“ ‘Yes my lord. I shared in the butcher’s work.’ “

Karstax nodded and rubbed his chin.

“Did you encounter resistance besides?”

“ ‘The Seraphim had allies, my lord. Astartes of the Hawk Lords chapter who fell beside them. We encountered Space Wolves, who aided us for a time, though I fear we have lost their favour; and a strange abomination, an unholy product of the singular madness in this sector. It too is dead.’ “

Karstax had moved forward in his seat.

“All dead? You are certain of the abomination?”

“ ‘We obliterated it from orbit. It seemed the only way to be sure.’ “

Karstax nodded.

“You have done well Euphrayn. I shall commend you to the Rock. Consider your duty fulfilled; I release you from your geas.”

The Inquisitor signalled again and the conversation was ended. A thin crimson line began to run from the Astropath’s nose towards his upper lip. His hand shook as he wiped it. Karstax sat back again.

“One more my friend, and then you may rest,” he said. The Astropath nodded weakly.

“Contact Brother Captain Barbarossa. Inform him to move in now. They are to scan for signs of an orbital bombardment – that is where they will find the Key of Assai. Upon retrieval it is to be transported and destroyed as agreed. The Palace of Woe must not be opened.”

The Astropath lowered his head and sent forth his mind; Karstax rubbed at eyes that were forever weary.

“Goodbye Zarathustra,” he muttered, soundless air on his lips, “goodbye my brothers. May the Emperor grant you the mercy that I could not.”

About them the vessel heaved and rocked. Through the punishing fury of a gathering storm, it sailed on.

The vessels hung in orbit, running silent, concealed in the darkness. From the shadows they monitored the dead world.

They watched the Lions Castellant vessel as it positioned itself, broadside above the planet’s skies; saw the Space Wolves craft move to intercept. They watched the atmosphere burn as the Lions unleashed a salvo of cannon-fire capable of toppling cities. Seismic ripples bloomed outwards from where the crackling light fell.

They listened to the frantic vox-bursts between the two ships, saw the Wolves warning shots streak across the Lions’ prow. The Lions’s ship fired again and then began to accelerate out of the planet’s gravity well, even as Wolf fire lit up their ship’s shields, even as the blasts of their cannon scorched across the plains below.

Pinpricks of light, stars falling in reverse, broke through the atmospheric envelope to rendezvous with the Lion’s cruiser. As the last transport docked, the enormous vessel lit its thrusters and made for the black gulfs of space. An instant later those black gulfs seemed to twist and glow, swallowing the ship whole as it transitioned to warp-space.

A minute passed, a minute of swarming activity as the Space Wolves left the world below and reunited with their ship. It swung ponderously about, accelerated at near-impossible speeds, and vanished into the warp in pursuit.

Only then did the Librarian reach out with his mind.

Zarathustra’s psychic response was immediate.

“Status report?” he prompted.

Librarius Brother Malkin looked about the darkened bridge; he looked to the five bodies arrayed along the transept, Sanguinary adepts reverently harvesting their precious geneseed from throat and breast.

“I am the last,” he sent, “The cost was great but the deception successful. The enemy are gone.”

For a moment there was nothing. Then Zarathustra’s words again in his mind.

“Their sacrifice will be remembered. Our brother’s names will live evermore.”

“For Orlando,” Malkin thought, “for Sanguinius, and for the Emperor.”

It came automatically. Their chapter’s litany in place of actual thought, a mask for his inability to frame a response. His mind felt numb, the efforts of taking the ethereal dreamstuff that made men mad in this place, and manipulating rather than repressing it; to cloud the thoughts of psycho-conditioned warriors - steel-minded zealots like the Lions Castellant - and create living dreams for them…well. The cost lay there upon the floor.

The Lion’s Deathwing Librarian had pierced their hastily drawn veil, he knew. They had suffered in their efforts to remove him before he could lay bare the charade. Tearing open a portal to the warp had caused a psychic feedback loop to lash through their Librarius conclave – the Deathwing Librarian died but so did three of Malkin’s brothers, psychic hoods fusing and smoking about their heads. His remaining brothers had collapsed in their own turns, blood flowing brightly from eyes and ears.

All the while the Hawk Lords ship had shrouded the area with a static projection to interfere with enemy augurs; the Lions had been blind to their true enemy as they had wrestled with spectres. The projection concealed the ground forces still.

A thought occurred to Malkin then, and he supposed it worthy of sharing.

“I am the last of the conclave,” he told Zarathustra, “and the effort of keeping the madness at bay is great. In the Emperor’s name make haste my brother. Make haste.”

“We approach the strike zone now Malkin. Our trials are almost at an end.”

There was a subtle chiming across the darkened bridge, shrouded alarms that grew in number with each passing moment. Malkin sagged against the rail before him and looked to the viewports in despair as Imperial Fist and Black Templar vessels swam across them, sleek hunting predators silhouetted against the bright world beyond.

Filled with the sense of a nameless doom, Malkin wordlessly sent the image to Zarathustra…

All faces turned to him as the rage rose audibly in his throat, a primal roar that shook about the cramped transport’s bay. Auguste stared at him, unblinking. It took Zarathustra a moment to realise that the Hawk Lord’s captain was poised to strike him, if needs be.

The momentary loss of control spurred Zarathustra to bottle his fury quickly, forcing it deep into his chest. The anger had been thrilling, liberating; it had felt good to be free of his burdens and the increasing weight of ill fortune. It was a luxury he could not permit.

“There are others,” he spat, “Imperial Fists. Black Templars. They are closing on the strikezone as swiftly as ourselves.”

“What could have drawn them here?” Auguste asked.

“It is no coincidence. It is him. It –“

He blinked. Where was he? Where had he just been? The transport bay was around him, dull glow bulbs and oil streaked panels; not the warped gothic plasteel vaults of some daemon haunted battle barge… He blinked again, and the helms of his brothers took on their familiar visages once more, rather than the archaic crusade designs they had borne a moment before. The shadows were gone, there were no traitors coming for him.

No…

Sweat on his skin. He had performed the pre-battle checks upon his brothers not an hour before – for want of a chaplain the hunt for signs of the Black Rage fell to him. Their eyes had been clear, their minds in the present.

Unlike his own…

Auguste was speaking his name. Zarathustra wanted to silence him, to teach that fool the error of presuming to strike him; the error of forsaking their father and siding with the Warmaster…

No.

“We must hurry,” he croaked finally, “the Librarius conclave is all but slain and… and the madness is creeping in. Ready the men. Let nothing stand in our way.”

Auguste nodded and slipped away; Zarathustra sagged on his axe-haft and prayed for strength.

Strength and sanity.

The ground had been punched into a crater, a smouldering wasteland, miles across. Smoke floated lazily above it, spiralling gently as the super-heated air cooled to a temperature that would not sear flesh from bone. The ground slowly undulated towards the centre of the bowl-shaped scar, last traces of geological formations, hills and rivers, brooks and copses, that had stood for aeons until mere minutes ago.

Flames still smouldered in the cracked earth, deep beneath the ash drifts.

Here and there a twisted heat sculpture, warped and wrought by inconceivable energies, dotted the barren ground; they loomed out of the smoke like pain wracked giants. There were several near to the epicentre, where stood a blackened pillar, stout and solid, some four feet high. No longer were there crests upon its helm; no longer were there wings upon its pauldron.

It was towards the pillar that Zarathustra and his allies raced. It had been minutes since they had entered the range of the newcomer’s sensor arrays – thanks to Auguste’s static broadcast - since blurts of vox-chatter had flooded their comms links demanding they identify their forces and state their intentions. They had not replied. There was no point, no time. It would be war, regardless.

Their own augur arrays tracked the drop ships and drop pods of the Imperial Fists and Black Templars – the Inquisitor’s Crusaders, Zarathustra thought snidely – as their trajectories bore them down on an interception course. They would strike at the very heart of the crater, around the pillar that Zarathustra coveted more than duty, more than honour, more than life itself.

He triggered his force’s closed-loop vox-comm.

“Brothers,” he began, with low solemnity, “it is a dark hour. Once more we face the most righteous, the most valiant, the most loyal servants of humanity; once more we seek their deaths. I ask you to look upon them not as brothers though, for they are afflicted by a malady that brings them lower than the xenos scum who cower between the stars; lower even than the heretics and traitors who would undo the blessed Emperor’s holy works through gross vanity and basest ambition.

“They are lower yet for their malady has placed them in our path, here this day, seeking to stay our work, and our work is the Emperor’s work. The fate of mankind may pivot upon the fulcrum of this dark hour and we must triumph or all else, all of it, will have been for naught.

“You have shown me bravery, and loyalty, and devotion since we struck out upon this holiest of endeavours – I beg you show me them one last time. Take to the field, and slay your enemy though he bears the face of your brother – he is not your brother. He may be the undoing of us all. Strike him down and crush him in the dirt; and then the next; and the next! Let nothing stay your fury, save death!

“And should you die this day, your soul may stand unbowed before the Emperor - knowing you have died in his name - and he will judge you well. To war brothers!

“For Orlando, for Sanguinius, and for the Emperor!”

A cacophony of voices responded, echoing the Seraphim litany, and surely there were Hawk Lords numbered among them. Zarathustra ended the broadcast and attempted to gather his thoughts. There were shadows building all around him.

The Templar’s drop pods slammed to the ground like comet strikes, billowing showers of spark-shot ash skyward where they fell. Ceramite petals thumped down and black-clad squads of astartes disgorged from each pod, labouring under the weight of the enormous cannons they bore. One of the pods struck home only feet from the black pillar – its squad deployed around the stunted artefact, stern faces underlit by glowing graviton coils.

Templar assault squads dropped on jump-pack burners to flank their devastator brethren while, seconds later, bright yellow transports swooped down; a huge, thundering land raider, hull bedecked with centuries of battle honours, and the personal heraldry of Captain Barbarossa, roared from the belly of a vast Thunderhawk and ploughed through the ash towards the oncoming Seraphim and Hawk Lords. Rhino and Predator pattern tanks rumbled into position across the Crusader’s battle-line.

The transports shook the ground with their thrusters and rose at the head of roiling ash-cloud as their pilots sought to evade and engage with the incoming Seraphim air-support.

Instants later the Hawk Lords joined the fray. Assault troops swept ahead, vox-casters roaring oaths and battle-cries, they braved a hail of bolter-fire to crash into the Imperial Fists infantry squads. Behind them scouts and devastators clad in the gold and crimson of the Stigmata Seraphim dropped to the ground and sighted targets amongst the Crusaders; heavy weapons fire lit the dust clouds from within like storm-tossed thunderheads. Hawk Lords tactical squads pressed forwards, bolt-guns spitting shells into the enemy ranks.

Armour shattered and crumpled; blood flowed and men screamed, and in seconds the crater was the very image of hell.

Templar scouts mounted a twisted heat sculpture and began to pick off Seraphim Devastators – their sniper fire was joined by heavy assault weapons mounted on the advancing land raider to tear up the ground around the Devastators and silence their guns forever. Seraphim snipers and Hawk Lord marines returned fire into the scouts, plucking them brutally from their perch.

A lightning flanking manoeuvre by bolter armed Seraphim scouts saw them appear behind a Templars devastator squad and rake their position with close-range fire; the return plasma-barrage lit up that corner of the battlefield like a spotlight – yet for a few vital seconds the plasma cannons were facing away from the battle-front.

On the right flank, Hawk Lords assault marines bludgeoned at their foes with abandon, but not without loss. They fell back, regrouped, charged once more into the Fists. Pistol fire and chainswords bit deep, shedding blood that blackened the grey ashes where it fell. The Imperial Fists fell too.

In the whirling centre of the battleground the land-raider’s hatches slammed open and a command squad of Imperial Fists disembarked ahead of their Captain, bolters firing into the tightly grouped clutch of Hawk Lords ahead of them. The side-sponsons of the land raider tracked about, heavy flamers preparing to douse the sons of Corvax in flaming promethium.

Smoke trailing it like a shroud, a gold and crimson Stormhawk roared out of the clouds; it hammered the ground with its turbine thrusters, engaged targeting arrays and drew up above the land raider’s flank, a hunting bird with claws gleaming.

The hulking, ancient tank made to reverse and the gunship let rip with lascannon, multimelta and stormstrike missiles; storied honours burned away alongside bold yellow paint. Ceramite cracked, buckled and bent under the remorseless fusillade. Deep inside the venerable warmachine a promethium cache was breached. Metal sparked on metal. The land raider exploded violently, raising from the ground and spinning ponderously as it arced and fell. It collapsed back to earth with a deafening crump, showering Barbarossa and his squad with flaming ash and debris. The Stormhawk forced them back further still, pummelling the veteran warriors with twin hurricane-bolter racks.

The surviving Hawk Lords gave a ragged cheer, drew targets along their boltguns and drove relentlessly forward. Still they were met with renewed fire, strobing the air around them and curving away overhead towards the hovering Stormhawk.

A lilac Stormtalon streaked in to rake the entire length of the left flank with assault cannons, sending Imperial Fists back behind their idling transport and Templar devastators diving for cover. Lasblasts from the Predator’s twin-linked turret danced around the nimble assault-ship.

The dust clouds behind the Crusader’s lines lit from within as jump packs flared in descent and a golden Sanguinary Guard unit fell to the earth, catching a Templar assault squad in the flank and halving their number with deadly Angelus boltgun fire.

The Templar devastators surrounding the pillar reacted immediately, falling back and spreading their firing line out to maximise shots against the golden interlopers; their gravcannons whirred, a high keening noise that built in pitch before exploding in a sub-sonic roar. The cannon’s graviton waves lashed across the Sanguinary Guard and crushed them where they stood. Vox-casters amplified nightmarish death-screams; golden armour crumpled in upon itself as though grasped by the gods themselves, and a rain of blood showered the ground for yards around.

A single Guard still stood. He did not run. He looked back blackly into the devastator’s eyes, triggered the thrusters of his jump pack and on ebon wings descended amongst them, Blade Encarmine swinging.

Behind him, a second strike force landed, Hawk Lords headed by Captain Auguste. They tore into the remaining Templar assault force with lethal efficiency, felling them to a man. Captain Barbarossa witnessed the butchery of his men and ordered his command squad to fall back and shore up their rear lines.

The enemy were closing on the key.

Ahead of him, in a stretch of open ground ringed by drop-pods and exhaust-belching war machines, a globe of air pulsed outward, wreathed in dust fumes and brilliant static discharge. As the teleportation flash faded, Zarathustra could be seen, blue lightning crawling upon his golden Terminator armour. Beyond him was the blackened pillar.

Barbarossa bellowed at his troops and bolter fire sang around the towering librarian. It sparked from his ancient armour to no avail. Heavy plasma fire rained around him but still Zarathustra stood. The Predator’s turret ratcheted about; a las blast seared past, inches from his face. A second triggered his armour’s defences, dispersing brightly against his personal energy shield. Roaring with disquieting laughter the librarian strode forward.

The key was ahead. He could feel it so keenly that it practically blazed from within the blackened pillar. The air around him was a strobing blur of incoming fire and he cared not. The key was screaming in his mind, clawing at him, yet without the captive librarians to amplify its voice the key was akin to a lone warrior battering at a fortress wall.

 A black, heat scorched drop pod stood between him and the pillar. Zarathustra reached out one warp-wreathed hand and contemptuously stripped the ancient assault craft down to its skeletal frame. Metal shrieked as it convulsed in his psychic grasp, rivets popping as panels sheared from the craft; he swept his hand to the left and the armour shards whipped across the battlefield to ricochet amongst the Templar’s plasma squad.

Behind the pillar, the lone Sanguinary Guard was busy in his work. The encumbered Templars had never stood a chance; breastplates did not slow his blade, nor pauldrons or helms, or even gravcannons. All parted beneath its powered edge and before too long the Guard’s golden armour was dripping with gore. The pillar secured, he cast about for fresh threats.

Overhead Auguste sailed at the fore of his men, plasma snapshots veering wildly about them. They slammed feet first into the Templars, scattering them with claw and sword.

The key howled at Zarathustra as he stepped forth and drew back his axe; it pleaded, cajoled and threatened him; it reached into the corners of his mind and dragged the Black Rage into the light, conjured twisted astartes in ancient armour and the gleaming eye of Horus to charge, screaming at him.

Zarathustra grinned past gritted teeth; he allowed the illusions to wash into and over him. He would not be denied. His armour rattled with incoming fire, his skin bled from a dozen minor wounds, and his axe fell upon the black pillar.

It sheared the carbonised figure in two, black crystals shattering into a fine rain that sloughed sidelong to the floor. Glittering at the heart of the pillar, the key was a tangled thorn of strange angles and endless curves, impossible forge-work that seemed to writhe beneath the eyes. Its voice was a continuous scream of terror and utter despair as he reached out and pulled it free.

Triumph swelled in Zarathustra’s mind. He was laughing, he knew, like a madman he was sure. The key withdrew from him, cowering, pleading to escape.

Auguste struck an opponent to the ground, turned to Zarathustra, screamed to him.

“Destroy it!” he cried, “Zarathustra destroy it!”

Zarathustra held the Captain’s gaze for a moment. He felt no guilt, no shame, no dishonour. His was holy work.

“Now Malkin,” he said with his mind.

He felt the strange disorientation, like falling inwards, as the telepotarium pulled him from the battlefield. The sound of gunfire, and Auguste screaming his name, faded blissfully away…

Zarathustra stumbled from the teleport dais, boots heavy on the steel gantries of the ship. He held the key before him like an especially weighty, venomous beast.

“I have it,” he voxed to Malkin, “ready the chamber. We’re leaving.”

“Yes my lord.”

The vessel trembled as its gun hatches rumbled open. Querying vox-casts from the Hawk Lords turned to cries of outrage and panic as a point-blank broadside battered their shields down and tore explosively through the ship’s engine chambers. The Seraphim were already moving, blazing away from their concealed mooring among the debris, leaving the ailing Hawk Lord’s vessel slowly spinning in the wake of crippling explosions.

Hatches rumbled closed across view and gun ports; the ship swung hard astern as the Crusader’s vessels first sighted, then moved to intercept them.

Deep in the ship Zarathustra bore the Key of Assai towards the sickly green light of a stasis chamber. It was fighting him again now, with fury and desperation, a wild beast in sight of its cage. Each step felt a league in distance. Each heartbeat was a season of war.

The key shrieked, vibrating through his mind, his body, his entire being.

“Silence,” he spat, and tossed the key into the chamber.

A servitor triggered the rune panel to the side of the portico, and the key hung, suspended in the glowing light of a single drawn-out moment. The key’s voice was gone from his mind suddenly, and Zarathustra collapsed against a railing and sank heavily to the floor. All his aches and weariness fell upon him at once. His triumph glowed like an ember in a cyclone of pain.

“Transitioning to the warp,” Malkin said in his ear, and the vessel shuddered in confirmation. It immediately began to roll in some immaterial tempest but Zarathustra barely noticed.

He spared a thought for the last of his Confrontation Conclave, and Auguste’s beleaguered force. The Captain was resourceful, his men skilled. They would survive, escape that forgotten world in time.

His own men would understand, he knew.

Zarathustra triggered his vox-comm to hail the bridge. His voice was a whisper in his ears.

“Malkin,” he said, “instruct the navigator to set a course.

“Take us to Galadrian. To Galadrian and the Palace of Woe.”

END

Confrontation Part 5

They flew high, and they chased the sun. They kept themselves visible, traceable, and in the tumbled skeleton of a nameless city they put down and waited.

And prepared.

The dropships of the Lions Castellant streaked in beneath the bare sun; they overshot their marks, dipped, looped and retraced their flight paths, boarding ramps lowered all the while. They grazed the earth at the height of a marine and the Ravenwing spilled from their bellies, engines screaming into the wind, wheels kicking up clouds of dust and dirt as they tore into the ground. Their formations were arrow straight, parade-ground perfect, and they gunned their bikes towards the city as the dropships peeled away from it, into the haze of noon.

Sunlight and sand; bleached bright above, as below. Heat-haze and dust devils, sun-flare on polished metal, and motion blur as the city’s bones approached, surrounded, and swallowed them. Ancient boulevards, collapsed administrata; vaulting scattered columns in the time-choked avenues. Hand signals to attack vectors; figures in the ruins ahead.

The sun, a reactor furnace with the doors hanging off. All colours drained out, the world a corpse with its throat long since slit. Incoming fire.

Figures in the ruins ahead.

Squad Belisarius peeled away to the right, tore across shattered rockrete slabs, up and up into the open frame of a two-storey municipal ruin. Euphrayn triggered his twin-linked plasma guns and his squad followed suit. Superheated tracer fire scattered out ahead, bursting within the sun-blazed ranks of the cowering enemy.

Time slowed, the world stretched; seconds into minutes, into lifetimes.

Lilac jump-troops sailed through the air towards Belisarius, bolt pistols spitting fury. They came down short, and Belisarius gunned his squad’s bikes straight into them. Charge and counter-charge. Chainsword on armour, on flesh, blood sizzling where it sprayed on plasteel and stone.

His plasma was tearing through chestplate and pauldron and helm; the enemy fell with their fingers on their triggers. Bolts ripped the air beside his face, ricocheted from his armour, his force-shields.

The golden Librarian was approaching, lightning leaping from his fingers, sunlight erupting into a daemonic halo about his gilded livery. Euphrayn could still see the dent his maul had left in the breastplate. The Interrogator-Chaplain triggered an augur switch and signalled for reinforcements, springing the trap, outflanking and surrounding the heretics.

Ahead to the north a drop pod screamed from the blinding sky and slammed like a piledriver into the ground, at the Librarian’s back. The earth shook and coughed clods of stone high into the air. Door catches blew and ceramite petals slapped down. Growling, the dreadnought – ancient war walker, armoured giant with an undying battle-brother wired into its enormous shell – stomped forth.

To the east, ethereal beads of teleportarium tracers erupted into storm-lit reality rents, and the Deathwing flickered into place. Sand and static swirled about bone-white boots as their sudden materialisation forced a cascade of air out across the burning streets. Veterans all, killers all, they bore the chapter’s finest relics into battle, and were unmatched among their brethren.

Librarian Epistolary Tormont was at their head. Unhelmed he blinked into the stark sunlight, brow creased, trouble settling across his fine features. Euphrayn saw it, saw Tormont’s eyes widen, his hands began to weave sigils of protection.

A blink, bright white, like a sunburst; was there a shift there, a displacement? Euphrayn was sweating inside his helm, roasting in his armour. Too hot.

Panic on Tormont’s face, then pain. He doubled back and howled at the sky, as the air behind him boiled, and seethed and tore. A shadow patch blossomed, spreading panic amongst the Deathwing. Impossible black, clawed tendrils snaked out of the nightmare void and snared Tormont and one of his brothers.

Euphrayn watched in that long, drawn out second, as his brother-in-arms, his confidente and companion, his friend, was dragged backwards out of the world and deep into hell. The air sealed over, a bubble shrinking into itself, and they were gone.

Great were the perils faced by those who sought to control the warp, awful the consequences for those who failed. The very idea that a warrior mage of Tormont’s standing could lose his grip on his abilities so easily though… The shock to Euphrayn was physical.

The second ticked over.

“Kill them all!!” he screamed.

The dreadnought thundered forward on piston driven legs, the twin lascannons borne upon its central sarcophagus tracking towards the heretic librarian. The psyker raised his hand, intent upon some malefic sorcery; the lascannons flashed, bright as the sun.

Zarathustra was torn in two.

Euphrayn roared in jubilation. At his side Brother Jo’ast, the Ravenwing Epistollery, screamed psychic ruination at a squad of lurking scouts, liquefying their brains inside their skulls. Then the fool Auguste descended towards them on blazing wings, firing plasma as his assault squad loosed a volley of bolts. The barrage availed them nothing.

As the jump troops touched down, Euphrayn led his brothers into a speeding circle around them, shrinking, hemming them in, lashing at them with power sword, and maul, and his crackling Crozius Arcanum. The Hawk Lords fell beneath them, fell under their wheels, until only the Captain remained standing, glowing lightning claws driving straight for Euphrayn. With a cry the Interrogator-Chaplain whirled his Crozius overhead, and landed it square upon Auguste’s faceplate – there was a crack as the Chaplain’s maul-of-office unleashed a blast of iridescent energies, and the beaked helm crumpled in; blood glittered in the sunlight.

Auguste dropped.

The lumbering dreadnought overran the Seraphim Devastators, weathering their heavy fire until they were within reach of its immense, club-like assault fist. Piston-driven ceramite claws punched into, and through, the golden marines, crumpling armour and bursting crimson blooms into the noon-tide sun.

Belisarius circled from the north, a pincer claw that met Euphrayn’s own column, trapping the remaining heretics between them. Rapid fire bursts of plasma knitted into and through the enemy from both sides. They span, and fell, and smoked upon the baking ground.

Heat haze and dust devils, sun-flare on polished metal; the Ravenwing prowled about the battleground, around the piles of the dead. The Deathwing watched the shadows and horizon, poised against any further attack. None came.

Grief like he’d never known crowded Euphrayn’s mind. Such loss, and for what? He signalled for the extraction of his forces – best to leave the corpses of these heretics to rot on this dead, forgotten world.

They sped through the bleached wilderness, towards their rendezvous. Euphrayn established a vox-link with their orbiting vessels. Tormont’s final report weighed heavy upon him, like a shroud of utter defeat.

“My lord Euphrayn?”

“It is time,” Euphrayn said grimly, “Target the abomination. End it.”

Interlude III

The thing that had once included Brother Gabriad knew peace, for a while. It radiated from the Master and filled all its servants with bliss and light. Truly, they knew heaven.

Brother Gabriad (though he would not have known the name, nor the concept of a name at this stage) had not been aware of himself for some time. He had been part of the web that existed both physically, where his seething muscle and fur dominated, and ethereally, where his compound mind reigned, all in thrall to the Master. To find himself small, singular, apart, came as a staggering shock. His nerves lit up with panic.

He realised the Master was speaking, there in his mind - his mind alone - for he bore the Master at the heart of the throng. The Master spoke of new stars in the sky, and the doom and downfall of all who heard the Call. It was a war on heaven that the Master foretold, and the end of all joy.

“Hold me,” the Master whispered, “hold me and keep me safe. And I shall protect you always.”

Gabriad looked up through his paltry twin eyes and saw the new stars, a daytime constellation directly overhead, begin to grow brighter. Distant memory tugged at him, and filled him with dread. Down he went, below the fur and muscle, curling down embryonically, wrapping his body around the Master, keeping it from harm.

He felt the Master pierce through him, not unpleasantly, and his mind was filled with imagery; of an impossibly vast crystalline structure against a kaleidoscopic, nebulous sky; of unnervingly strange beings of light, wholly alien to his mind, the architects of that staggering complex, that giddying palace.

He knew of the darkness contained within, an ancient darkness that the alien creatures could imprison but not destroy. The palace was a mind-shatteringly complex labyrinth, through which the evil could pace out eternity.

He saw them fashion the key with which to seal the palace, until such time as they could devise an end for the evil. They imbued the key with life and arcane knowledge, that it could protect itself from those who would use it for ill; then they cast it unto the stars, to conceal itself until they called it home.

He felt the passage of time, unimaginable in its scope. He watched as impossibly distant gas clouds formed into spiral galaxies, that span and twirled through infinity, before colliding with others of their kind and unleashing energies seldom seen in the universe since before even the gods were born.

He saw new galaxies birthed from the aftermath.

All these things and more the key had seen, before bringing itself to this world and having the inhabitants murder each other for its protection - to lose itself should any ever hunt it. And now the hunt was finally done.

The Master knew only despair and terror. Gabriad knew only what the Master knew.

Then he knew no more.

Guyyl’s scout craft and skimmers had located and identified their missing brethren; there were no wolves on Fenris, it was said, and the huge loping beasts native to that world were as kin to the wolf-lord and his grey-clad warriors. The Canis-Helix, the genetic imprint that made the Space Wolf chapter who they were, produced a feral and bestial mutation in those who carried it – transforming them over time into something beyond a man, something ferocious, lupine. Who could say how the mutation would progress in the fullness of time..?

There were no wolves on Fenris…

The wolf-riders had barrelled from the bellies of their troop-carriers, eager to locate their missing kin. They would cross the last miles upon their hulking Thunderwolves, hoping to calm them, herd them, guide them - escort them home to Fenris.

A short way out they saw the lights in the sky; underhanging a ghost ship, chalk-white against the blue, paled by the atmosphere. The lights grew in intensity; garbled vox-casts vied for attention in Guyyl’s ears – the Lions Castellant had moved their vessel to make an orbital strike. Was his own cruiser to intervene?

Yes, he screamed, stop them, stop them. Then searing pillars of fire fell from the skies, touching the earth beyond the crest of the hill and rolling the plains with seismic quakes and shockwaves of superheated air.

Tears in his eyes as he fell from his mount. The howling of wolves all about.

And he shrieked a curse to the sky.

Confrontation Part 4

Zarathustra blinked his eyes open; the pain squeezed them closed again. For an instant the dust-mired gloom of the STC command station was as bright as blazing phosphor, bright as a sun. It burned past his eyes to the heart of his skull and to his credit, Zarathustra did not cry out.

His head was a crucible of pain, tender as flayed flesh, delicate as aether-crystal. He remembered the psychic force that had assaulted him and, despite centuries of psych-conditioning, still felt the flicker of fear in his belly. They would need another strategy, he thought.

He forced his eyes apart, just a fraction, and squinted into the light. He fought the nausea until the burning shapes resolved themselves into familiar objects, and figures. The glow faded to shades. He was laid out close to the command dais, Reverend Brother Galen peering anxiously down at him. The Sanguinary Priest was crouched at the Librarian’s side. There was blood on Galen’s instruments, and on his gleaming white armour.

“Welcome back Brother Master,” Galen said wryly, “you may be feeling some discomfort. I have been forced to relieve an excess of pressure in your skull, and stem some bleeding. Not my finest work, but given the circumstances, it will suffice.”

Zarathustra grunted and raised a hand to his face. Beneath the pressure of his gauntlet, the skin felt twisted, sore, and hot.

“You will be well, I think, for the battles soon to come…”

“Soon,” murmured Zarathustra, and then – “help me to stand.”

Galen frowned but did as he was bid. Zarathustra swayed a moment and then shook the Priest away. Already he could feel a flood of endorphins in his veins, alleviating his pain; the skin of his face tingled as his enhanced flesh set about healing itself.

“Speak to me of these battles,” he said. It was Auguste who answered, haloed by daylight as he filled the doorway.

“Our vessels have reported Astartes ships gaining orbit within the last two hours; more Wolves and Angels.”

Zarathustra nodded weakly.

“Searching for their twisted brethren, no doubt. Our cruisers remain concealed?”

“They do. But our brothers are not here for the abomination we encountered. We have monitored their augur scans. It seems they are hunting us.”

“You’re certain?”

“They are making planetfall to the east and west as we speak. We are under attack. I had your apothecary revive you prematurely –“

“Galen is a Priest,” Zarathustra snapped awkwardly. He was still confused, thoughts muddled by surgery and opiates.

He called for his axe. Three scuttling servitors hefted it to his hand and connected the thick power cord to the port in his armour.

“They have refused to respond to our vox-casts. The madness must grow stronger, drawing more of our brothers into its grasp…” Auguste mused.

“No,” said Zarathustra, “we have seen the madness, faced the madness. This is not that. This is something else…”

He stepped out onto the raised battlements of the command centre and surveyed the sky. Contrails feel to east and west, pale against the blue. Dust clouds stirred on the horizons, rising by the second.

About the dropsite Seraphim and Hawk Lord readied for battle, an armoured defensive square formation; guns bristled in the first rank, assault jump packs whirred to life behind. Zarathustra called to Auguste.

“Order your drop ships to make ready. Exactly half your units are to prepare for withdrawal. Ours also.”

Auguste stared at the Librarian as if he’d been struck.

“Half..?” he gestured to their mustered forces, “They will tear us apart!”

“A glorious death! Furthering the Emperor’s work! It’s what they were born for!” Zarathustra shouted, swaying a little unsteadily. “Retrieving the key is all, Auguste. Dying here will gain the Imperium naught. We shall fight with the vanguard, until the transports are ready to depart. Do you stand with me brother?”

The Hawk Lord eyed the Librarian warily, face wrought with uncertainty. He donned his gleaming helm and snapped the beaked visor closed; concealed, his eyes betrayed no more doubts.

“Aye brother,” he said quietly, “I stand.”

The vox-waves erupted with furious activity as orders were issued, battle-lines redrawn, units pulled from the fight. The enemy was visible. Heavy weapons dug in around the command centre. Snipers sought the high ground and tactical squads picked out the best lines of fire. Auguste and an honour guard of assault troopers ignited their jump packs and soared high, accompanied by half of Zarathustra’s remaining Sanguinary Guard. The ramps of Thunderhawks and Stormravens rang with the fall of boots.

Zarathustra stood and watched, warp energy crackling about his fingers. Then the wolves were upon them.

The huge, shaggy Thunderwolves stood taller than a marine, and marines were far taller than a man. The beasts were titans of muscle and tooth. Upon their broad backs the Space Wolves rode, grey armour draped in furs and fetishes, rune necklaces hanging beside trophies of tusk and tooth below wild shocks of hair and beard. They held vast double-headed axes that appeared hewn from jagged ice, swung them high above their heads as they sang battle-songs, and cried brutal oaths of violence. They were unique among the armies of the Imperium, and terrifying to behold.

Zarathustra’s forces held in the face of the charge. They fired.

The flash of las-beams, the snap of melta fire, the thunder of boltguns; volleys of ordinance crackled from the fields around the wild rider’s rune embossed storm shields and, unharmed, they came on. Two columns of them, they forked towards the ring of the dropsite, swift as a raging storm front.

A scout squad peeled away from their concealed position and unloaded bolter fire into a rider at point-blank range. Blood sprayed, but still the wolf came and the scouts went down amid blood, dust, and screams. Fang and claw split armour like tin, revealing the red beneath.

The weight of heavy weapons fire punched a Space Wolf, then his mount, to the floor. Storm shields and the swift loping of the huge war beasts frustrated careful sniper fire. Zarathustra grit his teeth, waiting for the attackers to come within range of his psychic fury.

And then they were in.

At the heart of the melee swirled an enormous warrior-lord, marked out by a mane of red hair and a grey wolf's head standard on his pack. He wielded battle-axe and shield with the grace of a fencer, and his Thunderwolf moved below him like the hind-quarters of a centaur. He bellowed with laughter as lilac-clad warriors were scattered before him.

On trails of flame and ebon wings the Sanguinary Guard descended, antique Blades Encarmine swinging for the Wolf Lord's throat, Angelus boltguns spitting death. The wolf-rider laughed as he side-stepped the veteran Seraphim; he laughed as he took their golden heads.

Zarathustra cried orders into his vox-caster, seeking to stymie the wounds that the wolves had torn in his ranks. He glanced behind him, anxiously seeking out the rest of the foe, but saw only dust. He sensed it - the wrongness of it - an instant before the warp-birthed illusion was stripped away. A twin-phalanx of bikers - cowled and clad in armour the deep black of ocean trenches, cycles adorned with tall, winged plumes and the ghastly glow of twin-linked plasma weapons - was upon them. There wasn't even time to shout.

The trap closed. The air erupted with rapid flicker-pulses of blazing plasma as the Ravenwing riders bore down. Explosions erupted on the battlements of the command centre, and amongst the Devastator squad beside him - powered ceramite as much protection as a damp jerkin against their guns. All around him his brothers died; glorious deaths, he thought with grim irony, to further the Emperor's work.

Brother against brother. The second phalanx ploughed into and through another of Auguste's tactical squads, only to be met by the Captain himself, and his honour guard, as they dropped from the sky. The Hawk Lords hacked at the Lions Castellant with a fury born of despair, and the dark riders fell where they did.

Zarathustra's fresh and livid scars seared pain deep into his skull as he struggled to harness the immaterium to his will. The surviving Devastators began to drop their cumbersome heavy weaponry, useless at this range, and reach for the bolt pistols at their belts. The Ravenwing came closer, never slowing, and then they were up - against all expectation, all reason, riding their howling metal steeds like daemons, they powered up the wall of the command centre and dropped down amongst the stunned marines sheltered there. Pandemonium erupted.

Pistol fire assaulted the ears, the roar of engines and the crumple of armour plates jostled for attention as the biker squad, banners flying in the wind, tore around the narrow gantry of the STC building, rolling over and through any who stood in their way.

Zarathustra found his storm bolter in his hand, squeezed off a shot. He swung his force-axe with his other hand, and all his strength, at the dark blur that bore down upon him, aiming for the hooded skull where a face should have been. His blade deflected in a burst of light from an ornate pauldron and he just had time to register the movement before the maul came in under his defences. It took him square in the chest, triggering his personal force-field too late, and sent him tumbling backwards, over the battlements and down to the floor.

His armour was heavy and it landed hard. He lay there stunned, in the dust and the sunlight, wracked with pain and shame. Only for a moment. He gritted his teeth, marshalled his thoughts, girded his will.

He looked to the transports. The last of their marines were aboard. He forced himself to his feet, forced his legs to carry him, to power the servo-muscles in his Terminator armour to a run. He fled the battlefield, heading for the open ramp of the Thunderhawk.

"Auguste!" he bellowed over the vox, "We're clear! Retreat!"

He pounded up and into the transport, felt it shudder and accelerate even before he reached the hold. With his free hand Zarathustra grasped a rail and turned, looked back towards the battle. Stray shots arced towards them, and away. A single figure rose in a graceful arc from the ground, gaining altitude alongside them, his winged jump-pack giving him the bearing of some noble bird of prey as he powered towards the still lowered ramp.

Captain Auguste swooped towards them and landed beside Zarathustra in the ship's hold, as gracefully as a hunting-hawk returned to the perch. The ramp rose and slammed shut, with a sound both final and cold. The vox-cast still whirred with the chaos of combat, the litanies of the doomed, and the screams of the dying. Less though, every second.

Auguste didn't look once at the Librarian as he strode past into the ship.

Zarathustra held the rail and stared at the ramp.

"For Orlando," he muttered, "for Sanguinius. And for the Emperor."

The last to die was a lightly armoured scout, a sniper, perched atop a transport crate. He fired his pistol at point blank range, screaming defiance at an Iron Priest and his wolves as they clambered up toward him. The wolf riders prowled about, looking on, laughing at the sport. Jaws closed around the scout’s boot; he went over screaming, and was dragged to the floor. An instant later the screaming ended, though the sounds that replaced it were no more pleasant.

The Interrogator-Chaplain looked on impassively. He had no taste for such barbarity, though he felt a certain satisfaction as he watched the heretic die. That feeling was dangerous, he decided, a shadowed doorway to darker impulses. He would flagellate himself for it later.

He looked about at the corpses littering the floor. Hawk Lords as well as Seraphim. Allies in heresy, or the bodies of the deceived, he wondered. Little matter. They would all need burning.

A padding figure loomed above him. He looked first into the red eyes of the slavering Thunderwolf, then raised his skull-faced helm to meet the gaze of the young wolf-lord, Thorun Guyyl.

“Grim business,” Guyyl grinned from behind his red beard, “when our brothers run to the bad. Still, yer Inquisitor’ll be satisfied, aye?”

The wolf snorted hot breath across Euphrayn’s robes; he pretended not to notice.

“So then. About our bargain…”

“They ran,” Euphrayn said, almost to himself, “Fully half of them escaped.”

Guyyl frowned, as if at a personal affront, nodded at the scorched earth of the landing site.

“Aye well, the' wouldn’t if yer man had shown up to cut ‘em off…” he stopped and frowned again, “Speakin’ o’ which, where is the big bastard?”

Euphrayn paused.

“Brother Tormont is…engaged elsewhere.”

A dark fury crossed the wolf-lord’s face then, and Euphrayn wondered if the priestly runes the Space Wolves wore to keep the madness at bay, as the Lions Castellant used psychic protection, were truly little more than superstitious trinkets. There was murder in Guyyl’s eyes.

“You…wee…little…” he turned his thickly maned head and spat, a long glistening string into the dirt.

“You swore to me! You swore! If you’ve harmed those wolves, you treacherous –“

“I did what I had to,” Euphrayn growled, even as the Thunderwolf snarled in his face and pawed anxiously at the ground. He couldn’t have afforded for his brother librarians to be discovered on this world, not if there was a chance they’d fallen. It had cost him his quarry here, but by now Tormont should have had the matter resolved.

Thorun Guyyl jabbed a finger at the ground, where his spittle trailed like an opaque earthworm.

“There’s yer damned honour!”

He spat again.

“There’s yer damned Inquisitor!”

He spat again.

“There’s yer whole damned chapter!”

A storm sounded at the back of the Thunderwolf’s throat, its black mood matching its master’s. Euphrayn was aware of prowling giants behind the wolf-lord, of the sound of engines gunning behind him. The insult couldn’t stand.

But there were other matters to attend to.

“You will answer for that when next we meet, dog-lord,” Euphrayn called out for all to hear. Then he took one pace back.

The Space Wolf reared his mount around, signalled his brothers to follow him.

“Ah, go f-“ he began as his wolf loped away, but the wind took the rest of his retort.

The wolf-riders howled as they barrelled away from the dropsite, out towards the strange pack of man-and-beast that sat at the heart of this madness, and Euphrayn could not tell if it was mount or rider that cried the longest.

Brother Armistas approached, a techno-vox skull hovering at his shoulder. He eyed the departing wolves as he came, a lack of satisfaction at the resolution of their conflict writ upon his tattooed brow.

“My lord,” Armistas said, inclining his head with respect that Euphrayn could see he did not feel, “incoming communication for you.”

Euphrayn curled his lip inside his helm. He would address this lack of discipline later. So much to address later.

“Is it Brother Tormont?” he asked.

“No my lord,” said Armistas, “He says his name is Auguste.”

Brother Tormont looked on, wracked with fascination and disgust in equal measure. The writhing heap of flesh and armour smeared itself away, across the plain, baking and sweltering in the mid-day sun. Its stench rose above the unnatural flame that bathed the thing, to shimmer in the air.

He was watching two of his brothers, Deathwing elite in their bone-white Terminator armour, being dragged by their squad, twitching, away from the lip of the horde. The psychic effluence that permeated this place was staggering; a thousand tiny tendrils kept pressing at Tormont’s mind, seeking ingress, like a mask of mealworms on his face.

The abomination had shrugged off all assaults, both physical and immaterial, and only now seemed to be regarding their presence as a threat. Tormont had seen more than enough.

Their primary objective was to return the Librarians to the Rock for Interrogation; to try to piece together what had happened to them, to their ship and crew, their brothers, and ultimately this entire sector. Tormont was clear now that this objective was beyond them; whatever remained of his brothers was inseparable from this horror.

In such circumstances the contingency was brutally simple.

The sweating mound of bodies began a slow surge towards their position. Tormont signalled the retreat.

“This place,” Auguste said calmly, levelly, “is stricken with insanity. It has held me. It has held my brothers. It blinds you to reason and spurs you to murder. It turns brother against brother. It is this madness that has you.”

“No,” came the reply, deep and hollow as a tomb door closing, “it does not. You collude with heretics. You are heretics. I will end you also.”

“We are not heretics. We are loyal servants of the Emperor, sons of Corax and Sanguinius, as you are sons of the Lion. We are all servants of humanity, regardless of our livery and the legacies we bear. Do not let the hatred blind you.”

“Hatred is holy. Hatred is pure. Hatred of the alien, of the mutant. And hatred of the heretic. You are Heretica Execratis. I will destroy you.”

“Brother, that is the madness speaking.”

The Interrogator-Chaplain chuckled as he replied.

“Fool, that is the Inquisition speaking.”

A chipped scarlet gauntlet reached past the Hawk Lords captain and switched off the vox-cast. Auguste whirled on Zarathustra.

“What - ?” he began. The exhaustion on the Librarian’s scarred face stalled him.

“The conversation was ended. Our persecutor unmasked.”

“The Inquisition,” Auguste said, a crease of unease on his brow, “what business have you with them?”

“Even a body as…” Zarathustra paused, sneered, “incorruptible as them, can be seduced by the ruinous powers. One such paragon has pursued us for some time, and seeks to undo our very chapter. He would marshal the Imperium entire against us, were it to hand.”

“Why?” Auguste asked carefully, cautious cynicism abroad on his face, “To what end?”

A weary smile touched Zarathustra’s face.

“We are crusaders against Chaos, brother. They need no other reason.”

Auguste considered a moment.

“We are at half strength,” he said, only the hint of an accusation in his voice, “we cannot hope to stand against our pursuers.”

“The Angels do a zealot’s work. They will hunt us until we are dead.”

“Then what would you suggest?”

Zarathustra drew himself up, sloughed off his pain.

“It is clear brother,” the Librarian said, “that we need to die.”