spell cast

		It makes such perfect sense. Such perfect, rational sense. Caecaltus isn't sure why it's taken him so long to appreciate it. The Emperor must die. He must. It's the only logical conclusion that anyone sane could reach. The Emperor must die–
No–!
The Emperor must die. He is mad, a mad monster, drunk on power, and His tyrannical rule has lasted far too long. He really must die–
Nooo–!
He must die now. It's the only way to stop the war. It's the only way to protect the human race. The Emperor must die immediately–
Please stop–!
He must be put down and destroyed as quickly as possible. And who better to do that than the men built to guard His life? Who else is strong enough? Close enough?
Please–
Who else has the peerless clarity of mind to understand the perfect, rational sense of it? The Emperor must die.
I can't–
Take that spear. Plunge it through Him. Free the species.
Shut up–!
It's all been arranged. The stage is set. Everything is ready. The Emperor won't see it coming, because He's a mad monster, and utterly deranged. All the hard work's been done. He's been brought out of hiding to His place of execution. He is defenceless. Now just take that spear–
Get out–!
The cunning of Horus Lupercal knows no limits. There is a reason his father named him Warmaster. He has arranged it, and made it all so easy. Look at the simple perfection of his stratagem. He set a trap so blatantly and painfully clumsy it can only be a trap, a trap so brazenly incompetent that the Emperor could not afford to resist it–
Stop! No!
He laid bait so staggeringly unsubtle that it spoke to delusion, to a loss of faculty, to hubris and arrogance, and beckoned with such graceless inelegance that even the infallible Master of Mankind was convinced His first-found had lost his wits–
You will stop–
And so the Emperor, proud and mad as He is, rushed into it, knowing full well it was a trap, yet arrogant enough to think He was ready for it. Ready for anything. More powerful than anything. More mighty than–
Noooo–!
No, indeed. The trap itself was the ruse. There was no way in creation for Horus to surprise his father, so he didn't even try. Instead, he let his father surprise Himself. His arrogance was His own trap. Now, take the spear–
Caecaltus Dusk resists. He falls to his hands and knees, weeping and spitting blood. The feral ingenuity of Horus Lupercal has undone him entirely. It has undone them all. Choking on his own gore, he goes into violent convulsions as he tries to break the insidious control that has been placed upon him. He wants to get up – needs to get up – and defend his king and master. Some of his brethren have collapsed, stricken like Caecaltus, but many of the other Companions have already turned on Him. Part of Caecaltus' brain, the part that he is resisting with every fibre of his being, is telling Caecaltus to get up and join them. It is screeching at him to become the utter contradiction of his nature.
There is a pain in his chest, an invisible knife through his heart, pinning him to the deck. All he can do is lie there, shaking and fitting, witnessing the horror as a blood-dimmed vision.
A vision of atrocity. Of heresy. Of natural law undone and duty desecrated. Of the most shameless infidelity. A king, turned on by his royal bodyguard. A monarch, surprised and betrayed by the ones he trusted most. A caesar, butchered by the captains he never thought to doubt.
We cannot be doing this, but we are. It is impossible for us to be doing it, but we are doing it anyway. Horus, you will pay for this. My King-of-Ages is alone. He cannot–
Blood jets.
The Master of Mankind decapitates Sentinel-Warden Kliotan before Kliotan can skewer Him with his lance. The Lord of Terra catches Sentinel-Warden Cazadris and Hetaeron Companion Kintara on the backswing of His burning blade as they rush Him. He deflects Shield-Captain Damorsar's halberd, and cuts him in two. Hykanatoi Krysmurthi weeps as his master beheads him, because he realises what he is being coerced to do.
You will pay. You will pay, you traitorous monster.
Shield-Captain Avendro cartwheels away, auramite splintering like golden glass, the long spray of his blood spattering the white hull of the Stormbird racked beside him.
The trap was in us, all along. There was nothing waiting for us at all. Your doors were wide open and your shields were down. There were no surprises waiting for our master except your profound mastery of the immaterium, which we have woefully underestimated. We knew your power was great, first-found. We had no conception of how great.
Host-Marshal Telemonis shreds through a guard rail, his headless form plummeting into the shadows of the underdeck sub-holds.
The Emperor came here ready for anything, first-found, so you prepared nothing. Misdirection. He was looking everywhere except at Himself. With His attention held, you reached in and, with formidable sleight of hand, took away His readiness. You took away His focus and determination, from the moment He arrived. You took it from all of us.
The Emperor's warblade, a brand of white fire, leaves burning magnesium after-streaks in the air.
You took away our keen edge by easing our minds into distraction and puzzlement, into reflection, into random thoughts. You did it with such precision we forgot ourselves. You did it with such concealed domination of will even our master couldn't sense your mind at work.
Companion Caercil sinks to the deck and slides apart in three pieces, like a perfect puzzle that will never be put back together.
And then you twisted the pristine souls of the Custodians. Each one of us was painstakingly restructured on a molecular level to withstand the corruption of Chaos, but you took the incorruptible and you broke our minds. You broke the unbreakable.
Sentinels Tyrask and Systratus thrust at their master with guardian spears, firing their integrated bolters.
We are shrieking because we understand what you have done to us. We are screaming because you have forced us to turn on the master we love above all things. We are howling because we are fighting it and we cannot resist.
The mass-reactive rounds explode against the rippling shield of His will, and He slices off the powerblades of their spears. Tyrask and Systratus get to take one step backwards before they are struck down.
You are forcing our master to kill us.
Sentinel Mendolis grazes the blade of his castellan axe against the Emperor's right pauldron, throwing sparks. Companion-Captain Vantix, wailing in lament, drives his warblade into the Emperor's ribs.
Blood jets.
You will pay, Horus! You will pay!
The Master of Mankind reels, then shreds Vantix into ribbons with His power claw. He sidesteps Mendolis' second lunge in a swirling billow of cloak, and runs His sword hilt-deep into Shield-Captain Amalfi's chest.
Each Companion He strikes down is a profound loss to humanity. Each one is a perfect creation of genetic and esoteric engineering, masterpieces hand-wrought with the most diligent and exacting labour. Each one is a boon companion and a friend, beloved as any son. And He is being obliged to destroy them one by one.
The peerless blade splits Mendolis open. It splinters Companion Heliad's visor and spins him off his feet.
Was that why, first-found? Was that why you made us your weapon of choice? The psychological effect? Did you think it would make Him hesitate? Did you think it would make Him vulnerable?
You clearly do not understand at all.
Vestarios Entaeron drops to his knees, clutching his ruined torso. He crumples sideways. Sentinel Justinius misses with a two-handed swing, and does not live to try a second.
He is the Emperor of Mankind. He comes upon you in wrath, clad in His aspect of war. More than thirty thousand years of work will not be undone by your malice and spite. That He is required by you to kill His own, perfect warriors does not make Him falter or weaken His resolve.
It just makes Him all the more determined to vanquish you. He–
Beam energies rip across the flight deck. The Master of Mankind is knocked down.
Oh, Golden Throne. Oh my King-of-Ages–
The Emperor has fallen against the side of another Stormbird, denting the armoured flank and shaking it on its launch rack. The Tharanatoi squad closes in, encircling Him, the blood of their tears streaming down the ornate goldwork of their Terminator armour, their Adrathic weapons cycling for a second salvo.
He cannot let them hit Him full beam again–
The Emperor leans for a split second against the Stormbird, fighting down the lingering pain so He can refocus His will. A squad of Hykanatoi vault the guard rails to their master's right, racing up the launch ramp to flank Him.
The relic weapons of the Tharanatoi glow with power.
The Emperor raises His hand.
Imperial lightning ripples out, a brilliant neon blue. The searing forks scorch the deck and hurl the Tharanatoi into the air like sheaves of corn caught in a cyclone. One ricochets off a ceiling hoist, fragmenting. Two tumble over the platform edge and plunge down the shaft of the through-deck elevator. Two hit a racked Stormbird so hard their armoured bodies punch through the hull like breacher rounds. Four hit the deck with enough force to leave craters. One explodes, the power system of his Adrathic beamer jarred to critical instability. The catastrophic detonation throws others off their feet.
They sprawl on the deck around Caecaltus and the other handful of Companions convulsing in resistance seizures. Caecaltus rolls on to his side, shaking. He tries to rise, but he can't. He tries to reach for his spear, then pulls back his hand. He knows that if he touches it, the urge to use it against his master will become impossible to resist.
He sees the Hykanatoi bearing down the ramp on his master's right. He sees his master turn and look at the deck supervisor's console on the chamber wall a hundred metres away. He sees his master tense and spear the console with a telekine pulse, and then duck to His knees. The ramp's ion launch catapult fires the Stormbird He was thrown against. It slams over Him, past Him. Fuelling cables stretch and snap in clouds of sparks. Its engines and systems are dead, so it is merely dead weight, slung by the ion rail's accelerator. The Stormbird mows down and pulverises the Hykanatoi on the ramp. It keeps going, starting to tumble, down the entire kilometre length of the rampway, in an expanding, seething fireball, and finally obliterates as it impacts the invisible integrity fields at the deck mouth.
The Emperor rises to His feet. Loss, bitter pain and fury have broken the lulling spell of indecision woven by the warp. His will is now entirely clear and engaged. Before any more of the screaming Custodians can move or rise or act, He enforces it fully.
The deck lamps dim. Guide lights blow out. Consoles short and explode. Cables spit cinders and sag from the ceiling systems. All the Custodes still alive drop. Caecaltus collapses onto his face. They are all screaming and writhing. It is no longer in torment or grief.
It is simply in pain.
Pain will do it.
The Emperor applies more. Shrieking, Caecaltus can hear his master's booming wrath inside the buckling bones of his skull.
+I will burn your touch out of them, first-found.
+Do you see what I am now?
+Do you see what is coming for you?+
…
		Caecaltus feels his master ease His will. The pain ebbs. The shame will never go away.
Thirty-nine of the proconsul's company are dead. The rest sprawl, trembling. Some are too broken in mind or body to continue.
+If you can rise and stand with me, rise now.+
Caecaltus hauls himself to his feet. Twenty-seven others claw their way slowly upright. They cannot look at the Master of Mankind, such is their abject remorse. Caecaltus feels his lord reach out with mindsight and scan each one of them, blink-fast. Caecaltus feels it wash across him. The scan hunts for lies, for lingering deceit, for the smudges of remaining, implanted treachery.
There is none. The Custodes have regained their grip, though none will ever be the same again.
+Take up your arms.+
They obey.
Caecaltus looks at the rest of the Hetaeron company, those who have not risen, who cannot get up. He feels another tremble of psykanic power as his master extends a small measure of grace to each, a final, soothing thought to ease their suffering. Then the Master of Mankind ends them, quickly and without pain, a needle of will to each that triggers a cataclysmic intracerebral haemorrhage, and instant death.
The lights flicker, stuttering the embarkation deck between twilight and sickly glare in a fitful pulse.
+Proconsul?+
Caecaltus walks with his master between gilded corpses towards the main hatch. The twenty-seven Companions follow them. Caecaltus checks his sensoria and comms, but from Dorn and Sanguinius and the captain-general, or any of the warriors in the companies with them, there is no answer, only the low and threatening crackle of the warp, like wood burning in a grate. They should all be here, but they are not.
The Emperor and his depleted company face the hatch. The Lord of Terra takes hold of its six-tonne adamantine mass with His mind and crumples it like metal foil. He lifts it from its frame and tosses it aside.
Through the shredded portal ahead of them, they see the hallways of the Vengeful Spirit.
To his left, Caecaltus hears Companion Estrael shudder and moan as his mind submits. The Emperor quickly administers a needle of will to stroke Estrael out and end his torment. The Companion falls to the deck. Caecaltus continues to gaze at what lies ahead of them, trying to reconcile what he sees without losing his grip on his own injured sanity.
Now this is the hell his master was expecting…
…
		I see a hell-pit, a realm of horror that my lord's first-found has wrought, mistaking it for heaven. Perhaps the great Lupercal is now so far gone this seems like a heaven to him. His gods – gods that are not gods – have lied to him.
The lies are so very convincing. Fleetingly, they fool even my master. I see him forced to blink and look away as he advances, to shake off the visions of gold and lustrous pearl, the pure white light that bathes everything in a glow like sunlight on fresh snow. It reminds him of the great Himalazian peaks, silent and unspoiled, when first he climbed them, lifetimes ago, and stood, and breathed the empty cold, and looked upon the white dazzle of the top of the world, and decided that this would be where he would raise my city. It was a place that knew eternity.
This place knows it too. This poor, proud ship is a ship no longer. The four, the False Four, have made it a bridge to infinity, matter fused with unmatter, a pathway from sane reality to insane ether. The entire Solar Realm is subsiding into the warp, and the Vengeful Spirit is the focus, the primary pathway between realms.
I see that my master, for all his great power, is finding it hard to concentrate and hold on to the truth. The compounding lies of heaven and hell are so very convincing. It is all too easy to become lost in private fantasies born of doubt, or secret fear, or burning need. The warp tempts us all. I fear for all who embarked on this assault with him: Constantin, Sanguinius, Rogal… wherever they are, they may already be lost to delusions manufactured to exploit their smallest flaws.
My master's Companions, the pitiful remains of the Hetaeron company, for all their preternatural gifts, are entirely beguiled by the lies. They see heavens of their own, madly beautiful or beautifully mad. Warden Xadophus sees an Elysian temple of glass and gold leaf, sunlight beaming from a pale dome. Custodes Frastus beholds a serene field of glory, surrounded by alabaster pillars under a bright noon sky. Prefect Andolen perceives the halls and galleries of a golden palace, lined with auramite effigies of heroes, paved with silk-sheen marble. The others too: it's hard to track. Their thoughts, usually so steeled and focused, are slippery with amazement and wonder. They see around them the glory of the Inner Sanctum, the Palace they have guarded their whole lives, replicated in every detail, but magnified in scale and richness a thousand times, more lavish than any citadel their master ever built. To Proconsul Caecaltus, he that I marked with my sigil, the company advances along the Gilded Walk, yet it is ten times broader and a hundred longer, and gleams beneath a sky more pure than any Terra has ever known. To Karedo, it is the Hall of Worthies, flanked by statues and roofed in crystal, which marks the final, western approach to the Silver Door. To Ravengast, this is the cryselephantine Yulongxi Passageway, which leads to the cloisters of the Imperial adytum.
Lies. All lies. They are all so amazed at the radiant kingdom, they see not the menace suffusing every inch of the place, at every hand. Frastus, pausing to marvel, sinks slowly into the golden floor, unaware of his descent as he vanishes from view. Braxius, lost in rapture, disappears quite suddenly. I think the golden statues took him, yet they are quite still, their frozen gazes turned away innocently. Andolen stops, and leans back against an engraved auramite wall in contemplation. The wall begins to pull him in, without a ripple, as though he is being gently lowered into molten gold.
I see this happening. My mouth moves, silently screaming. I want to call out, but they cannot hear me. They do not see what I see: the nightmare black, the rot, the filth, the truth that briefly replaces the palatial glory every time I blink.
I see my master turn and yell Andolen's name. Andolen stirs, and smiles to see his lord. He is half-sunk in the wall. There is no seam or line where the gold of his plate ends and the wall begins. My master grabs his hand and tries to pull him free.
He sinks further.
+Andolen, awake!+ I hear my master cry. Andolen blinks, confused, then alarmed, slowly realising his plight. My master cannot pull him free. He won't let go. He stakes his sword in the deck and, with his free hand, grips the limb of a vast aureate statue nearby to anchor himself. He hauls, yet still Andolen won't come loose. The statue feels cold to my master's touch, even through his gauntlet. The statue is one from the Hall of Worthies. It depicts one of the primarch sons. I don't know which one. My master grips the leg so hard the gold deforms, ruining the sculptor's perfect line of thigh and knee. I see the crafted shape of harness and plate, the laurels on the head, the sceptre held high in the left hand, the loop of frayed red twine tied around the fingers of the right hand.
+Awake!+ my master roars. He will not let the lies consume them. Straining to pull Andolen clear, he unleashes his will to drive the radiant cloud of falsehood from their brains.
+Awake! Please. Know yourselves. Wake from this stupor or be forever fallen.+
They wake. Some of them, at least. Others are too far gone. They wake, by his will alone, and see the ship as I see it. They see the darkness and the decay, the cancerous steel of the deck, the diseased bulkheads. They see their master gripping a half-broken stanchion as he tries to haul Andolen from an oozing wall of meat that is sucking him in like quicksand.
Andolen is screaming. The most terrible sound in creation, to hear a Custodian cry out in fear. Others start forward to help their lord: Xadophus, Karedo, Caecaltus. But all they drag free is Andolen's arm, torn off and blurting blood.
Frustrated that their lies have been exposed, the spirits of the ship become vengeful. They sweep in from all sides, wide-mawed and roaring, from the darkness, snatching men off their feet even as they turn in confusion.
I see what the cursed first-found is trying to do. Or rather, I see what the four that rule him are trying to do. This is them at work, the predators in the long grass. All four have deployed their gifts here, to stop my lord, because they fear him. They are targeting the Hetaeron Custodians because they dread the killing power each one represents. They are trying to pick them off, one by one, through violence or madness, until my master is forced to stand alone. Further, they are trying to weaken my lord and dilute his power. The Custodes were built to protect him, but the four have turned them into a burden, forcing him to protect them, for only if he shares his will and mindsight with them, diminishing his own power, can he keep them alive and alert.
Once more, the insidious cruelty of the warp is demonstrated to me. It fights not fairly if it can fight with cunning. It wants no match with my lord and his warriors on an equal footing, for it has no doubt as to who would win that. It turned my lord's men against him when he first arrived, now it turns them into an encumbrance. It knows, and mocks, his love for each of them, and it knows he will not see them wasted and destroyed. It obliges him to mete out his strength to them, so they can at least see the truth, and fight it. It seeks to weaken my great lord and wear him down until he is at last alone and vulnerable.
These are the treacherous blood games it wishes to play. Well, my lord and Master of Mankind has some skill in such games.

The End and the Death Vol. 1