Resplendent Hero of Ullanor. Slayer of the Dark Champion of Ekxos IV. Favoured son of Roboute Guilliman. Titles that meant nothing as Praetor Cestus gurgled on his swiftly coagulating blood. More bolt rounds blossomed in his chest, liquefying his organs in a percussive storm of shrapnel. Strength fled his lifeless body as he beheld his killers.
‘Are you happy now?’ The one in crimson asked, daemonic faces leering from the warp-infused ceramite of his battle plate.
‘Why would Cestus be happy about dying?’ Another asked, his scarab-topped psystave crackling with eldritch energies.
‘He brought this upon himself. Haven’t you, Cestus? You really couldn’t help gloating after Monarchia and-’
‘He’s dead, Racka. You can stop now,’ Khait of Prospero said, carefully laying a hand on his Word Bearer cousin’s spike-adorned shoulder pad.
‘Damn him. He should’ve had the decency to listen to my complaints as he waited for the Dark Gods to swallow his soul,’ Racka Utó replied, kicking the mangled corpse that used to be Praetor Cestus. Bits of the broken Ultima device of his plastron skittered across the bolt-torn deck of the Glorious Perfidy, Battle Barge of the Seventeenth Legion. Emergency lighting flashed intermittently, and vox-hailers droned with the multitude of damage the ship had taken.
‘We should find a way out before the rest of his company shows up,’ Khait advised. Leaning heavily on his psystave, he was surprised to be still alive. Cestus and his squad had almost killed them. After Istvaan, after Prospero, after Terra, any notions of camaraderie had been purged from the loyalists as they came to finish the job. The Ultramarines had been braying for their blood even as Racka Utó and Khait had slain them.
‘What do you suggest, cousin? In case you haven’t noticed, a dozen assault rams had hit the Glorious Perfidy along its starboard side. We have more of these brainless loyalists rampaging across the ship. And even if we make it to a Stormbird or saviour pod, the void is burning around us. These bastards have all angles covered,’ Racka Utó seethed with anger, but that didn’t stop him from looting the dead Ultramarines for spare bolt shells and grenades.
Khait hated himself for stooping to the same low, but losers couldn’t be choosers. The Warmaster’s gambit had failed. Grand ideals burned on the pyre of defeat as the siege of Terra turned into a disgraced rout. Khait had almost met his end amongst the rubble of the Imperial Palace. Fate, however, had something else in store for him. A cohort of Word Bearers had happened upon Khait as they had been retreating to their Stormbirds. Now, the Thousand Sons sorcerer enjoyed his cousins’ dubious hospitality as the Emperor’s lapdogs hunted them relentlessly across the stars.
‘No answer, huh? Typical of your Legion. Always full of yourselves, but unable to answer a simple question when it matters the most,’ Racka Utó snorted, snapping a fresh clip into his bolter. The weapon’s barrel ticked as it lost its orange glow.
‘Your tone is unacceptable, cousin,’ Khait warned, teeth grinding audibly. He was dead tired. The enumerations came sluggishly. Yet, his anger pushed him beyond his boundaries as fresh power emerged from the well of his soul. Reality distorted around Khait as pure, undiluted warp essence bled from him in waves. ‘I will not deny your help in escaping. It is by your beneficence that I stand here now. But I shan’t tolerate bad mouthing from a mere preacher!’
Khait slammed down his psystave upon the dead Cestus. The Ultramarine jerked back to life, his recently departed soul temporarily yanked back into his uninhabitable physical shell.
‘Save… me… from…’
The reanimated Praetor couldn’t finish his plea as Khait lifted his weapon, disconnecting his will from the broken corpse. Cestus’ soul screamed as it plunged back into the depths of the Empyrean, to be devoured by the ravenous neverborn.
Racka Utó said nothing, the avaricious glee on his face hidden behind the daemonic visage of his horned helm. His emotions, however, bled into the warp, and nearby denizens of the Immaterium rushed to feast on it. Inhabiting the butchered corpses of the dead Ultramarines, sundered muscles and bones bubbled through rent ceramite plates, coalescing into nightmare shapes. Avatars of the prime emotions – fear, anger, lust – sculpted from dead meat groaned, shrieked, howled to a mimicry of life.
Dismayed at what his unleashed powers had fashioned from the transhuman bodies of the once noble and proud Ultramarines, Khait raised his psystave to banish the otherworldly intruders.
‘Begone, foul-’
‘Hold that thought,’ Racka Utó said. The Word Bearer stepped past the sorcerer, pulling his serrated ritual knife from its sheath. ‘You just gave me an idea.’
Khait raised an eyebrow, but quelled the thoughts of banishment and redirected his will to uphold the psychic gateway that allowed the warp incursion.
The ritual knife keened as it slashed through the air, the sound turning into an angry hiss as it parted mutated skin and bit into aetheric essence. The blade tasted its kin and spat angrily, but couldn’t defy its master. Racka Utó hacked ancient runes of obeisance into the cavalcade of rippling tentacles, pincer arms and diseased bellies.
A chorus of angry wails answered. Finally given physical form, the neverborn were suddenly robbed of the freedom of their flesh-suits, forcing them to do the bidding of a mere mortal.
Racka Utó grinned beneath his helm as the daemons could neither escape his will nor retreat to their realm.
‘Well done, cousin,’ the Word Bearer said. ‘Now we have the means to fight back.’
Khait nodded silently, but grim thoughts gnawed at his determination. Magnus had told them they were the heralds of mankind’s future. They fought and bled for this idea, even against the immense might of the Imperium they helped create. Yet at this very moment, heading into battle at the head of a squad of daemons wrought from the dead flesh of those he had once called cousins, Magnus’s promise never seemed farther.
