The Masque raised an arm, and a planet swooped upwards, its orbit changing smoothly to bring it into graceful near collision with its neighbour. The Masque spun, and the entire orrery glowed more brightly, mirroring the build-up of warp energy in the star system. The daemon danced, and it summoned death for the Imperium.
The dance created and shaped the music, yet the dance itself was a form of captivity. The daemon moved without rest, and could never rest. The Angriff system was a puppet of the abomination’s will. Its will was expressed through its movements. Yet motion itself was beyond the control of that will. Another hand pulled the daemon’s strings. Joy and pain and shame and pride played across the Masque’s features. Through the alchemy of its sequence, it transformed its torment into that of worlds.
On Titan, in the Halls of Purity, the ancient texts that discoursed on the nature of the Masque were rare and dangerous beyond compare. Familiarity with the daemon invited its attention, and exposed the scholar to the risk of being caught in the dance of damnation. Crowe had read them, as he must, to know the most dangerous foes of the Emperor. He had exercised extreme caution when he had opened those black volumes. He had surrounded himself with layers of overlapping hexagrammic wards. Conscious of the added danger that came from keeping the daemon sword within the protective circles, he had read only a few sentences at a time, pausing for days of meditation and prayer between each session. No siren call was more powerful than the Masque’s. The greatest artist in the court of the Dark Prince, the Masque had been cursed by Slaanesh because the god had perceived mockery in one of its dances. The daemon would now dance forever, eternally seeking a redemption its master would never grant. And the Masque’s curse was its terrible power. Only the gods themselves could resist its summons.
The archives of Titan chronicled the devastation the Masque had wrought across the galaxy. The horrors were catalogued in detail. It had annihilated armies. It had brought civilisations down in ruins. But in all the lore, so dangerous to read, there was little to provide weapons against the abomination. Its true name, even the smallest portion of it, was unknown.
Two Grey Knights marched into the orrery to battle a destroyer of worlds.
Consumed by the frenzy of its dance, the Masque did not appear to notice the Purifiers. They reached the outermost orbit, and it did not look their way or attack. Even so, with every step, Crowe felt the pull of the music becoming stronger, as if it were throwing loops of chain around his being, and would soon bring his freedom of will and movement to a violent end. The chains had not tightened because the music had not yet been turned on him, specifically, as a weapon. It was dangerous enough as the governor of all reality in this palace. But as long as the Masque did not look their way, Crowe thought, they had the chance to attack. Or at least the illusion of initiative.
‘We must draw close,’ Crowe said. Bolter shells would not be enough. Their assault had to strike the physical and spiritual existence of the daemon at the same time if it was going to have the slightest chance of succeeding.
‘Can we banish this daemon?’ Drake asked.
‘We can because we must,’ Crowe said. He had no illusions. The distance between them and the centre of the chamber was too vast. The daemon would see them. Yet he advanced. There was no choice. And there was faith.
Your faith is the greatest lie, said the sword. It has my respect because of its power. You believe in the lie. You defend an empire built on the foundations of nothing. You will abandon your faith, warden. You will abandon it, because it will abandon you.
Behold! it shouted. Here walk the abandoned!
The daemon’s snarl cut across Crowe’s mind. It slithered through the ether. The shout was more than simple mockery.
The Masque heard the voice of Antwyr, and turned its head. The daemon’s eyes fell on them. The Masque pointed its sceptre at the Purifiers, the gesture so naturally part of the flow of movement that it seemed this moment had always been choreographed, always been planned as a small part of the greater art. In the next instant, the music became a personal attack. The beat hammered against Crowe as if it would pound his bones to dust. It seized his being. It became his being. The Masque danced, and he could not look away.
Crowe tried to turn his head, tried to raise his bolter in an act of desperate defiance. He tried to shift his weight, to throw himself to the right, even if only to fall, to break free of the gaze of the Masque. But he could not, and already the Masque looked away. It did not need to watch them. It had seen the Grey Knights, and incorporated them into the dance.
The Emperor protects, Crowe thought. The Emperor protects. I am the instrument of His will.
His will.
His will.
Crowe sought the strength of that will he served, so much greater than his own. He clung to his faith in its absolute power, and for a few seconds, though he could not break from paralysis, the music could not move his limbs either.
The dance of the Masque had already taken Drake. The Knight of the Flame cried out to the Emperor, and his body attacked itself. He moved with the rhythm, but not with the same motions as the Masque. The daemon forced him through steps that were an agonised counterpoint to the wild grace of the daemon. It trapped him in a dance of self-destruction, one so perfectly attuned to the being of a Grey Knight, it could have been a dark ritual of the Chapter reserved for self-immolation. Drake lunged in attack and defence, each time straining his body beyond the limits, his limbs bending too far, striking and stopping too fast, and with too much power. The dance turned him into a grotesque, a daemonic mockery of the magnificence of the Grey Knights in battle. All his skill at violence went inwards, the Masque dishonouring him by dragging him into a lethal, narcissistic implosion. He aimed his storm bolter at his chest. He sliced at his armour with his force sword. He called out to the Emperor, and raged against the enemy with all the force of his purity, but he could not break free. He could not arrest the movements that would kill him.
Crowe resisted. For one second, then two, then three, he resisted. Excruciating pain tore through him. Tremors built in his spine. They spread to his skull, then to his limbs. He was pushing against a force that moved planets, and he could have no victory here. The daemonic music crashed through his defences. These were ramparts he could no longer defend. He fell, and the dance of death took him, while the sword howled with laughter.
The numbing toxin stole Styer’s body from him. He could feel nothing. He knew he stood, but no signals reached his brain from his legs to confirm what he could see. Hands clutched his daemon ­hammer, hands so distant, so cut off from his perception that surely they were not his. A void surrounded his mind.
The eyes of the captain of the Emperor’s Children gleamed in anticipation. He wanted Styer to know what was coming next, and Styer did. After the numbness would come the river of pain, made so intense by the prologue of unfeeling that it would disable him. The captain pulled back the narthecium. Its drills hummed, clicked as they adjusted to the flow of a new toxin, and hummed again.
In the pause before the Traitor struck, the imprisoning energy tendrils hit Styer. But he could not feel them. The electric agony that locked his joints and fused his spine did not arrive. Styer discovered that though he could not feel his limbs, for a brief moment he could command them once more. The repeated shocks had frozen him with the daemon hammer raised high, its blow suspended. He seized his chance.
Strike, he thought, and those faraway hands slammed the hammer down. Surprised, the Traitor could not react in time. The hammer hit his chest-plate like a meteor. There was a flash of pure blue light, a thunderbolt of justice. The Traitor’s armour caved in. Styer drove the head of the weapon through the bone plates of his fused ribcage. The damage slowed the Traitor, though the pain did not. He plunged the narthecium into Styer’s exposed throat.
Venom hit his nervous system. The pain came, washing through Styer like liquid fire. But he had expected it, and he kept moving, racing against the next blast from the warp energy. He threw his weight against the Traitor. They fell together as the lightning formed. The immaterium’s anger struck Styer, but the shock caught the captain, too. His body a storm of colliding agonies, Styer fought off the paralysis with will and anger. The Traitor’s mistake had jolted him into motion, and he would not stop. He jerked his wrist against the captain’s skull. It was like moving a mountain.
Horror flashed through the Traitor’s eyes. ‘The work will destroy you!’ he shouted. He rammed his fist against Styer’s arm.
A burst of shells obliterated his head.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, Styer told himself. If he paused, the pain would freeze him again, and he would be as helpless as his brothers. He turned from the captain’s body. He was sluggish, controlling a stranger’s form. Another of the Emperor’s Children was almost on him. Styer rose, firing. The Noise Marine opened up with his sonic blaster. Shells and sound collided. Styer’s lunge carried him through the sound, his armour cracking and distorting. He held the stranger’s arm steady, pouring the shells into the Traitor, punching through his armour, blowing open his chest. The Noise Marine staggered. He lost control of his weapon and the waves of sound lost cohesion. Styer sent commands to the distant hands, and the stranger slammed the daemon hammer against the side of the Traitor’s neck, decapitating him.
The tendrils reached out for Styer. They drove him to his knees. The pain sucked his strength away. There was still one of the Emperor’s Children alive. The shards of corrupt lightning held the other Grey Knights captive. They roared and shook their chains of energy, but they could not break free.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Styer could not. His legs would not obey. He could not raise his arms. Standing near the centre of the chamber, the Traitor kept his distance from Styer. He trained his bolter on the justicar.
The sphere of lightning expanded to fill the chamber. There was mockery and triumph in its brilliance.
Miles away, in answer not to the command of a mere warrior, but out of sacred duty to the Emperor, a stranger’s hand moved. It pulled a melta bomb from Styer’s belt. The stranger’s hand jerked, sending the charge skittering across the floor towards the feet of the Traitor. The enemy leapt over the explosion. His head plunged into the midst of the sphere.
The thunderclap came, and the body of the last Traitor fell. Smoke rose from the charred, melted remains of his neck.
Styer slumped lower, the vice of pain crushing him, pulling him down to the floor.
Keep moving. Keep moving.
The Emperor’s Children were dead, but the lightning formed and discharged, formed and discharged, the destroyer’s beat of the music going on and on and on.
The sonic Dreadnought screamed, sending madness beyond words shrieking from its gargoyle faceplate. The sound filled the hall, and the warriors of Furia’s squad cried out in their turn. The Dreadnought slammed its chainfist at Setheno, but she saw the blow developing, and was gone before the fist shattered the ferrocrete deck. Setheno and Furia rushed at the Dreadnought, across the threshold. They broke left and right. The huge mass spun after them, torso spinning around as the legs stamped and turned.
The hall beyond the door was an amphitheatre of torture. The remains of thousands of victims were arranged across pews, along aisles, and fastened to the walls. Past the Dreadnought, the floor sloped to a stage on which lay the ruins of an exploded vault. An elaborate iron structure, designed as both claw and ritual, conducted the blinding strikes of warp lightning to a runic circle in the centre of the stage. Instead of destroying the granite surface, the lightning vanished where it struck, channelled down to Angriff Primus. The Cruciatorium shook and flashed, the entire space rejoicing in the creation of the unholy song.
With the clarity that was her gift in battle, and her shield against hope, Setheno saw the contours of what it would take to disable the sorcerous machinery of the chamber. Only the narrowest of threads differentiated the difficulty of the task from the impossible. Furia’s veterans would be of little use here. The Dreadnought would kill them in seconds, if he had not already done so.
But little use was not the same as complete futility. Their oaths would compel them to join the fight.
She would have it no other way. She would use them as she could.
The Dreadnought flailed his chainfist again, splintering a row of pews just behind Setheno. She ran downslope, jinking left and right, but visible to the monster, holding its attention. ‘The conductor of the lightning,’ she voxed Furia.
‘I see what must be done,’ the inquisitor answered. She sprinted to the nearest wall, fast and angular as a blade. She jumped up, grabbing the spikes holding up the crucified dead and started to climb.
The lightning flashed, and the Dreadnought hesitated, seeing one target and not the other. The crazed mind inside hunted for direction. The beast howled, gabbling nonsense. ‘Hunger, hunger, hunger, where is the sensation, where is the prey?’ He stopped, distracted by the forces building in the iron above. ‘Who calls Diotian? Who is Diotian? I am Diotian? Will I feed? Will I feel?’ Then, with growing certainty, ‘I will worship. I will serve. I will feed!’
Furia reached the network of chains that hung from the ceiling. She leapt away from the wall and caught a hook dangling beside one of the conducting struts.
Diotian’s hull-mounted heavy flamer sprayed a wide stream of burning promethium down the slope. It doused Setheno, turning her into a moving torch before it ran off her armour. The moment the flame hit, she reversed course, running back uphill towards the Dreadnought. Diotian knew where she was, and was content to launch an area attack in her direction. The disappearance of Furia was what tormented him. Setheno fired her bolt pistol, trying to bring Diotian’s focus back to her. Her shells exploded against the hull, chipping armour pointlessly. The Dreadnought ignored her. He spun back and forth, seeking Furia. He did not consider Setheno a threat. Because he could not find Furia, she was a danger.
So we are a threat, Setheno thought. We can cause harm here.
The Dreadnought spotted Furia hanging from the chains. She was attacking the framework with her power knife, timing her blows with the moment after each discharge. ‘FEEEEEL!’ Diotian screamed. ‘FEEEEEEED!’ He raised his blastmaster arm. The huge sonic cannon’s hum rose from a deep thunder to a piercing whine as Diotian attuned its fire to his target. Either the maddened warrior’s instincts still functioned well enough for him to understand what he must kill, and what he must protect, or another force whispered to him, directing his attacks.
A rocket screamed across the Cruciatorium from the doorway. It slammed into Diotian’s right flank just as the Dreadnought fired, rocking him. His shot went wide – a sound so concentrated it was a visible blur of disintegrated metal a few yards from Furia. Chains, blades and chunks of dried, leathery corpse rained to the deck. The impact rippled over Furia. It knocked her off her chain, but she grabbed another hook as the sound threw her sideways. She held tight, arresting her movement with a yank that would have dislocated an organic arm.
Diotian turned towards the flame. ‘I will feel, I will feel, I WILL FEEL!’ he shouted. Klas Brauner sent a second rocket into the Dreadnought’s faceplate. Diotian roared with hope, embracing the explosion and the damage it caused as if they were the near approach of the sensation forever desired and forever out of reach. Diotian pounded towards the false promise. Furia’s veterans met his advance with flamers, las and grenades. The assault washed against the Dreadnought’s hull, delivering nothing of the promise. Diotian screamed in horror as the mirage of sensation retreated. He fired back with heavy flamer and blastmaster. Fire enveloped the doorway. The sonic wave was deep this time. Air and decking and flesh were all the same to the destructive blast. It tore them all apart with a thunder as profound and shattering as an earthquake.
Furia cut through one of the conductor’s supports. A long chunk of iron rod a foot thick crashed to the deck. Energy arced out from the gap, and the Cruciatorium vibrated from the uncontrolled discharge. Furia swung from chain to chain, making her way to the next support. Diotian shouted in distress. He had let himself be distracted, and his maddened consciousness realised he was failing the task given to him by his Dark Gods. He turned away from the burning wreckage of the doorway and reached up as if he would pull Furia down with his chainfist. The blastmaster’s hum ran high again.
Setheno ran in front of the face-plate. She slashed at it with Skarprattar. The only damage she did was to score the armour, but the flash of the sanctified blade against the corrupt hull was blinding. Diotian jerked, momentarily disoriented by the sudden eruption of holy light.
Setheno maglocked her pistol and climbed the Dreadnought using the spikes of the tainted armour and the weapon mounts for handholds. The fury of Diotian’s outraged shrieks almost knocked her down, and blew apart a swathe of pews before the Dreadnought. She stood astride the hull and struck down with her sword. She was stabbing a mountain, but each blow burned deeper through the layers of ceramite and adamantium. Diotian screamed. His arms waved in frustration, unable to reach her. He rocked from side to side, trying to shake her off. She kept her balance and stabbed deeper. She cut through a layer of circuitry between the plates. Electrical fire exploded from the breach. The sarcophagus jerked again, its movements more wild and erratic. The monster shrieked even louder, torn between the insanities of anger and the hope of pain.
Furia cut a second support. The daemonic song became ragged, distorted by secondary thunder triggered by the lightning arcing from the gaps and striking the walls and deck of the Cruciatorium.
‘No!’ Diotian howled. ‘I do not fail, I must feed! YOU MUST NOT MUST NOT MUST NOT!’ Reckless, desperate, he fired the blastmaster.
The sonic wave, narrowed like a heavy las-beam, struck Furia’s perch as she leapt. The network of torture pulleys and chains vanished, blown to dust. The entire structure of the lightning conductor groaned in stress. The immense claw wavered slightly, and the lightning struck dangerously close to the edge of the runic circle. Furia’s jump took her out of the direct impact of the blast, but the shockwave sent her spinning. She collided with an intersection of girders and dropped twenty feet to the deck.
Setheno stabbed again, desperate to reach a vital core, but there was still too much armour. Diotian turned the blastmaster arm straight down. The weapon’s charging hum grew deeper once more. The Dreadnought screamed incoherent curses at Setheno, and fired. The slope of the Cruciatorium erupted in a radius of fifty feet. The explosion lifted Diotian into the air. A battering ram of air and sound smashed into Setheno. She flew from the Dreadnought and crashed into the last set of pews before the stage. Her entire body rang like a bell. Blood poured from her ears and nose, rushed up her throat, choking her.
As she dragged herself to her feet, the Dreadnought closed in on Furia.
The music changed. The difference was not a critical one. It was a nuance, though, marked enough for Styer to hear it. More importantly, he felt it. The beat in the tower became more pronounced. Once more, the intensity of the lightning sphere spiked, as if somewhere, another portion of the system-wide instrument had begun to break down, and the tower again was called upon to compensate. The sphere was brighter. Styer could not look at it directly. It grew larger, too, each expansion bringing its surface to within a few inches of the chamber walls. It was impossible to stand upright without being swallowed by the lightning ball.
Styer did not think he could stand still if he wanted to. But he could move. Fewer tendrils struck him from the walls. There was less energy to spare in defence of the sphere. Almost everything was being pulled into it, and then sent into the void. The shackles of electrocution and sorcerous pain loosened their grip on the other Grey Knights. Like Styer, they were on their knees, dropping just before the sphere’s lethal expansion. They were beginning to find the strength to move again.
Gared was motionless. He lay where he had fallen, in the centre of the chamber, the bottom of the sphere only a few feet above him. Clusters of energy from the sphere itself attacked him, holding him down, keeping him helpless. The power behind the sphere sensed the presence of the most powerful psyker in the squad.
The biggest threat.
‘I am coming for you, brother,’ Styer called, unsure if Gared was even conscious. His breath became a snarl as he rose to a low crouch, fighting off the blistering shocks. He moved towards his brother.
From the other side of the chamber, Vohnum began to crawl forward. ‘I will be at your side, justicar,’ he voxed.
‘Maintain your position,’ said Styer. The shocks made it difficult for him to form words. ‘Keep the circle formation,’ he told his squad. ‘The banishment must proceed.’
The music’s thunder battered his hearing. The growth and flash, growth and flash of the sphere seared his vision. Warp energy surrounded him, coruscating about his armour. It wished to break him, to force him to concede to weakness. He refused. Supported by faith, he kept walking until he crouched beside Gared.
The Librarian’s eyes were open. Gared had fallen forward. His head was turned to one side, his unmoving gaze fixed on the wall. He did not blink when the sphere flared. He was not dead. He was conscious. Styer saw the tremor in his cheek. Energy pulsed at the edges of his psychic hood, sparks that could not achieve the ignition of a counter-attack. Gared could not move, and it was taking all of his strength to protect himself from a fatal blast of lightning.
‘I am here,’ Styer said. ‘Together, we will fight back. The Emperor protects, brother. We are the hammer.’ He braced himself. ‘We are the hammer.’ He placed himself between Gared and the expanding sphere. Warp energy blasted against his Terminator armour. He shouted in pain, but he was prepared. He took the blow, and did not fall. The sphere vanished, and he dragged Gared away from the centre of the floor before it came again. When the lightning ball reformed, it lashed out after them. The energy hit them both. This time, Gared fought back. He raised a shield. The lightning shattered it at once, but even that brief protection made a difference. Styer moved faster, pulling Gared towards the edge of the chamber.
Tendrils of lightning pursued them in the build-up to each thunder­clap. Every blow was agony. Styer’s mouth flooded with the taste of copper. His muscles trembled like iron just before it snapped. He did not stop. Away from the direct centre of the chamber, the lightning strikes were fewer. They felt weaker, and Gared’s shield grew stronger. When he tried to stand, Styer held him down.
‘Conserve your strength,’ Styer said. ‘We have need of it.’
And then they were next to the wall.
‘Help me up,’ Gared rasped.
Styer raised him to his knees. Gared hissed at the sphere, and straightened his back. Arms parted, hands curled into angry claws, he faced the lightning directly. ‘Now, my brothers,’ he said. ‘Now we purge this chamber of sorcery. Now!’
Gared’s mind reached out to Styer’s. The justicar joined his ­psychic strength to the Librarian’s. So did Vohnum, Tygern, Gundemar and Ardax. They formed a ring of silvery grey beneath the endlessly reborn sphere.
‘We are the will unbreakable!’ Gared cried. ‘We are the vigilance unceasing! We are the light incorruptible! We cast you out!’
He roared the last word with the power of six souls. Styer shouted with him, as did the entire squad. The moment the sphere disappeared, they tore the materium open in the centre of the chamber. Into that rift the energy would fall when it returned. The sphere of lightning would die as it was born anew, vanishing back into the warp.
The chamber shone with the terrible light. The lightning gathered. The sphere contorted as it formed around the rift. It shrank in on itself to the point of near implosion, but then it expanded again, trembling and flickering, but intact. Its growth slowed, and the beat of the daemonic song staggered.
The sphere vanished, the lightning struck out into the Angriff system, and the thunder boomed. And then it came again. The song went on, straining but unstoppable.
‘It is too powerful,’ said Gared. His words came in a harsh staccato. ‘We cannot banish it.’
Yet we are having an effect, Styer thought. There had to be a way of harming the daemonic engine still more.
‘I cannot hold the rift open much longer,’ Gared said.
The sphere filled the chamber. Styer saw how perfectly the contours of the wall matched the surface of the sphere. ‘The vessel!’ he shouted. ‘We must smash the vessel!’
The stone of the palace was unnatural. Buried for millennia, awaiting this day to rise and unleash the malice of its ruler on the galaxy, the palace was anchored in the materium. But no natural geologic process could have created the material of its walls, and its construction was sorcerous. The taint of the warp lay deep in every aspect of the palace. It was daemonic.
‘What is daemonic can be banished,’ Styer said.
‘We do not have the strength to banish the castle,’ said Gared, his words coming in a slow, agonised whisper. He was shaking with the effort of maintaining the banishment. The sphere’s resistance smashed at him and the rest of the Grey Knights. The threat of explosion kept building in Styer’s chest. The danger and the pain would be even more intense for Gared. If the Librarian’s strength failed, they would all perish with him.
‘Not the palace,’ Styer said. ‘The tower. A focused banishment. The roof, Gared. Target the roof.’
Gared understood. His eyes blazed with determination. With a burst of renewed psychic strength, he waited until the sphere vanished, then moved to the rift. He pushed it through the air to the top of the chamber’s dome. ‘Let all that is tainted burn in the Emperor’s­ sight!’ he cried.
The dome tore open. The rift disrupted its integrity, ripping open the veil between the materium and the warp. But the rift was one of banishment, and it dragged all that was daemonic back into the abyss of the empyrean. The matter of the walls flowed. A maelstrom of stone formed, hurling itself into the breach. The upper third of the dome twisted. Architecture screamed with a voice of sudden sentience. The entire section of the dome imploded as the lightning sphere reformed.
Gared collapsed. The rift closed, but the vessel was smashed. The tower was open to the air. The peak was gone. The sphere expanded beyond the confines of the walls. It lost coherence. No longer a sphere, it was a dense, raging cloud of destructive energy. The chains of the daemonic song held it even now, and when the moment of the beat came, the lightning lashed at the sky. But the strike was uncontrolled, its direction random. Styer heard the injury to the music. He felt it in his soul. The melody was ragged, turning towards confusion. The thunder roared, the sphere returned, and the lightning flashed. The rhythm was the beat of a massive engine marching itself to destruction. The blasts of the lightning cut across the sky with chaotic savagery.
Gared was on his hands and knees. ‘I can do no more,’ he said to Styer.
‘You have done much, brother.’
‘The music still rages. The energy is still in the thrall of the enemy.’
‘Not as it was.’ Styer watched the inchoate anger explode across the void. ‘This is not the heart of the evil. It has not fallen to us to end the war.’
The other Terminators staggered their way. Styer helped Gared to his feet. The Librarian shuddered and looked up. ‘But what have we done?’ he asked Styer. ‘What have we done?’
Styer looked again. Between the flashes of the lightning, he saw doom had come for Angriff Primus.
Sendrax lay at the base of the tower. He hovered at the edge of a sus-an membrane coma. He could almost itemise the list of broken bones and ruptured organs. His auto-senses had gone dark. His armour’s power plant was badly damaged, and all but the most critical systems had shut down. The servo-motors would still obey his will, he thought. He would not have to fight his armour as well as his body when he tried to stand.
The pain helped keep him conscious. He tried to move his fingers. This time, they obeyed him. That was a start, his first movement since he fell. He might yet find his way through the thicket of agony and regain his feet.
He must move. He would not lie here and wait for the daemons to discover him as helpless prey.
Scratching at his ear, a voice. The vox, he realised. The vox was working. The voice was Berinon’s. He and Warheit were calling for any of the squads in the palace to answer. After three tries, Sendrax managed to whisper his name.
‘Knight of the Flame?’ said Berinon. ‘Are you within the palace?’
His auto-senses had gone black, so had any signals from his suit other than vox traffic. ‘The tower’s base,’ he said.
‘Is your squad with you?’
‘No.’ He winced, this time in psychic pain. Their runes had faded at the moment of the explosion. He had not consciously taken in that sight until he had woken on the ground. His battle-brothers were dead. ‘They are lost.’
‘What of Castellan Crowe and the other squads? We cannot reach anyone within the palace walls.’
‘I do not know.’
‘I am coming for you,’ said Berinon. ‘We are running out of time.’
The pilot’s words forced Sendrax further out of the blindness of his pain. His eyes cleared. He could see the world again, and what was coming for it. Lightning from the other tower flashed with madness. It had struck Desma again. One of the broken planet’s halves had shattered into a swarm of asteroids. A cloud of stone spread over the firmament. Fragments moved to the command of the daemonic song. Others careened away from the centre of the mass. Planetoids collided. The fragments of Desma warred with each other. The cloud was a storm, and portions of it reached for Angriff Primus.
Sendrax witnessed the first of the asteroids to hit the atmosphere. The flame of its descent lit the night. It fell beyond the southern horizon. The hammer blow of its impact disrupted the unholy rhythm. The sun rose in the south, an immense fireball filling Sendrax’s sight. The earth shook, and the broken towers of Algidus fell. The city’s remains crumbled. Silhouettes against the new sun disappeared, dropping into final ruin.
Movement crept back into Sendrax’s body. He turned his head away from the holocaust. The fire and the brilliance of the lightning flashes hid the sky from him now. He could not see the next piece of Desma to fall. There was only the red and silver of raging destruction.
Crowe, Sendrax thought, what have you done? What have you done to us all?
The daemon music beat on and on and on.
Build new walls, Crowe thought. As his body convulsed to the commands of the Masque’s dance, and Antwyr howled in triumph, he pulled his mind away from the maelstrom of torment.
The warden is prisoner! Antwyr gloated. The warden is prisoner! Here it ends, it ends, it ends!
New walls, Crowe thought. New walls. The Emperor protects. I serve him still. My watch is not ended.
His body was not his, but his mind was. He had held the gates against the assaults of Antwyr for decade after decade. The gates did not fall now. His arms and legs tried to wrench themselves out of their sockets. He and Drake jerked across the floor of the orrery, new planetoids in orbit around the star of the Masque. Soon he would hear the first snaps of his bones. But he retained the will to fight back. Drake’s armour smoked from the impact of bolter shells. His force sword cut ever deeper gouges in the ceramite of his left arm. The movements of the dance called for Crowe to turn his weapons against himself as well. He managed to resist for a few more seconds, though the Black Blade twisted in his grip, eager to exact its vengeance.
Use these moments. Fight back. Break this sorcery.
‘Emperor take your accursed being!’ Drake roared at the Masque as the daemon curled a finger, and the dance forced his bolter arm up again. This time, he pressed the muzzle of the weapon against his helmet. To Crowe, he said, ‘Forgive my weakness, castellan.’
Drake was only a few feet away from Crowe. In their prisons of movement, he might as well have been on the other side of the palace. Crowe could not reach for him. He could not take any action not commanded by the Masque.
The dance jolted Crowe to the right. He did not resist but threw himself into the movement. His sudden energy exaggerated the gesture. He flew across the gap and collided with Drake, knocking his arm up as the bolter fired. The shells exploded against the ceiling, shattering crystal, marring the perfection of the Masque’s work.
The daemon hissed. Its anger added a new sinuosity to the melody of the dread song. It sank the music’s claws deeper into Crowe’s being. A great punishment would be the price for the moments of life he had gained for Drake.
The hiss became a snarl and then a scream of anger. Cacophony overtook the melody. The orrery trembled, shaken by a force outside the daemon’s control. The Masque’s scream rose higher as half of Desma exploded into fragments. The monster reached out as if it would force the pieces back together. It failed. The shrapnel tore through the eldritch machine, destroying a balance as delicate as it was powerful.
There were no longer eight planetary bodies in motion. The Masque’s art depended on a twisted, Chaos-corrupted form of order, and now that order unravelled. Crowe felt the Masque’s grip slip. The floor heaved, and the mechanism of the orrery ground against itself. The orbits of the planets went out of control. Contritus hurtled across the system, a world missile launched free. It collided with Angriff Tertius, crushing the smaller sphere. Seizing the chance of the disruption, Crowe pulled against the Masque’s spell. He could not move as he chose, but he arrested his motion.
Drake could not escape. His movements became even more frenetic. They were jagged, too, and erratic, as he fought the Masque’s control and the daemon struggled to rein in the upheaval of its cosmic design. From the most profound core of his faith in the Emperor, Drake found the strength to turn one of his enforced actions against the Masque. The daemon commanded that he spin, and he spun. He threw himself into the turn. He came out of it facing the Masque. ‘We are the hammer!’ he cried. He fired his storm bolter at the same time that he threw all his psychic strength into banishing the great daemon.
It was as if Drake’s very soul roared past Crowe, rippling the air, searing the veil. Shells and anathema struck the Masque together. The physical and psychic explosion staggered the daemon and it missed a step of its dance. Chasms split the floor of the orrery, radiating from the Masque’s dais. The chamber rose and fell with vertiginous speed.
The mesmeric grip on Crowe loosened yet more, and he wrenched himself free. Drake stood still, not free, but for a moment uncompelled. He looked at Crowe. ‘Strike hard, castellan,’ he said. ‘Fight on, brother.’
They had fought side by side for more than a century. Every instinct of comradeship pushed Crowe to use his freedom to rush to Drake’s side. Reason and duty forced him away. ‘I shall,’ he said, the promise all the sole tribute to their friendship the struggle allowed. He ran towards the Masque.
What will you do? the sword asked. You rush to the futile end, it answered. This is the uselessness of sacrifice, the emptiness of nobility. Run on, warden. Run quickly. Amuse me with the gesture.
Antwyr laughed again, and kept laughing as the Masque took hold of the orrery once more. The daemon’s eternal dance had been the doom of billions. It held a star system in its grip. It would not be broken now, not by one warrior. The Masque’s art fell upon Drake with the daemon’s fury. Crowe did not look back. Though Drake’s roar of pain was suddenly choked off, he did not look back. Though he heard a monstrous tearing, the sound of ceramite ripped apart as though it were parchment, he kept moving. The sundered remains of Drake’s armour hit the floor of the orrery. The sound of the impact had the finality of the slamming of a tomb door, and Crowe did not look back. There was nothing but silence now from Drake. Crowe honoured his sacrifice, and fuelled by towering grief, he charged across the broken floor, leaping over fissures, weaving between the careening clockwork, racing to bring judgement on the abomination.
He did not think how he would do so. He knew only that he must seize the moments he had to make an attempt.
The sword laughed and laughed and laughed.
The Masque danced, and spun. It turned its eyes on Crowe, and the chains of the song seized him once more.