It is only when I dream, that I forget that I am dead.
In those moments, I remember the Astartes that I once was. I can see the colours of the skies and feel the breath of wind on my skin. I relive the bonds of comradeship with brothers long gone.
All that is denied to me now. I am entombed. A walking ghost.
A dreadnought.
Together we stride forward into the rain and darkness. Astartes fan out either side of me, each one checking the trees for signs of hidden enemies.
It is Tuso who reaches the site first. He kneels in the mud examining the ground. Around him, the puddles reverberate with the weight of my approach.
Tuso stands and aims his bolter into the darkness, offering us his back with certainty.
‘There is a footprint, but nothing else,’ he says aloud. ‘Whatever it was, it has gone.’
A wind, moaning like a soft whisper, wafts through the forest around us.
My sensorium detects a sudden rise in the temperature. Though I feel no change within my tomb, I am aware that steam has begun to rise from the puddles.
Unbidden, the squad forms a loose circle around me. There are five of them. Five stout Astartes.
I feel a sadness knife through me. They will die here, I am certain of it. I will not be able to protect them, as I have failed to protect so many others.
I speak the words I have spoken too often before.
++ Stand strong, brothers. The Emperor expects you to do your duty unto death. ++
I know they shall; they always do.
My first death held pain. But I did not truly die.
It was the death of my body, my biological self. It was on the churned battlefields of Avarax that I fell, broken and poisoned by the spiteful claws of the alien horde.
I remember Luso and Valinor shielding my body with theirs as I lay on the ground, unable to move as my muscles had betrayed me. I am told Luso refused to leave me even when the Carnifexes came.
They found his body beside mine. Valinor would never speak of what happened.
Was it the Emperor’s Will that I was chosen? Perhaps, but I have stopped questioning why I was deemed worthy to live, and Luso was not.
They are all gone now. Valinor, Ares, Captain Ustos and so many more. Some have died by my side, some further afield, but each one I have been unable to save.
Hundreds of years have passed now since the last of my true brothers fell. Time and time again, new initiates step forward to fill their gaps. Yet, to these replacements, I am no longer Brother Sergeant Gallo of Squad Attilus.
I am an Ancient. A relic from the past. A memory entombed in a war machine.
The attack is swift and brutal. Figures made of fire itself seem to coalesce out of the night, seemingly unaffected by the mortal rain that falls on their hissing skin. Theirs is a fire that cannot be extinguished save by bolter and blade.
I reach down and catch one of the eldritch daemons in my left hand. I clench and its infernal body bursts within my fist. There is a roar of denial as the bloody thing is consumed by its own flames and thrown back to whatever hell it spawned from.
Spinning, I walk forward into them, crushing more beneath the weight of my contempt. The cannon that is my right limb opens fire. The heat of my fury courses through the rotating barrels as I pump a stream of heavy shells into the horde, scything them down like burning crops.
Yet their hellish blades rise and fall, hacking Astartes down around me. The daemon tide never stops, no matter how many I kill.
Soon, I am the last one, once more.
Their blades cannot pierce my armour, but there are weak spots. Joints exposed to allow movement. I feel the heat of their blades sliding in.
In my waking moments I stand vigil in our chapter’s halls, the names of the honoured dead carved into walls around me. The tally of those whom I have outlived grows ever longer, if this eternal entombment can be called life.
When I sleep, decades pass. Then, when I awake, I discover what hopes and dreams may have fallen to the conquest of time.
Yet still I rise, each time.
For it is only in the heat of battle that I am truly myself once again. I am a war machine of the Emperor dedicated to the destruction of His enemies. That single fact has never changed.
The blades do not stop, and I am powerless to prevent them.
I lie still, a broken machine on its back. Mechanical limbs that were never truly mine, have been hacked off and lie beside me.
My visual feed has been severed, but I know that the daemon tide swarms over me. Their fell blades are desperate, it seems, to find the one small piece of living flesh still trapped within this sarcophagus.
Perhaps now, this is finally the end?
There is a sudden stab of true pain. My mind reels. The liquid waters that have cocooned my mortal remains for so long are draining away. Cold air washes in. I did not think that I would ever feel that, or anything, ever again. But I know this is a prelude to death, real death.
The Emperor’s Peace at last.
A thousand years I have given to my chapter, the wisdom of ages, the unstoppable strength of fury. There is relief, but there is duty too. After all this time, I am still an Astartes. My ending will not be quiet.
With the last flickers of my conscious thought, I direct what is left of my internal power systems into overdrive and wait for my energy reactor to go critical.
Even in death, I still serve.
About the Author
Ziad Al-Hasso is a keen fan of Warhammer 40,000 – he has been writing, playing and GMing 40k for many years.
In his day job, he is a Project Manager for the digital team of Channel 4 News in London, UK. He is married and has two teenage daughters who all amazingly tolerate his hobbies and think Titus is pretty cool.
