Dan Abnett - Prospero Burns

Navid grinned.

‘It’s exquisite , isn’t it?’

‘The Crimson King was loyal. Misguided, but loyal. So this tragedy need never have happened?’

‘I know!’ he said, exalted, his eyes bright. ‘But now this has happened, oh Kas, now this has happened, a door has been opened. A precedent has been set. If you think Prospero is a tragedy, an abomination, a terrible mistake, you should see what happens next. Two Legions Astartes, locked in mortal combat? Kas, that’s just the overture .’

He was close to me. His hands were reaching out. He had folded back the integral gloves of the soft robes to free his hands. I did not want him to touch me.

‘How long did I know you before you weren’t Navid Murza any more?’ I asked.

‘I was always me, Kas,’ he cooed. He touched the side of my face with one hand. I felt his fingers against the knotwork of my mask. My headgear’s marks of aversion were not keeping him at bay.

Him. It , I think. I could smell its breath, the charnel stink of a predator’s bacteria-swilling mouth, the venomous air of Prospero outside my private dream, burning up at the end of all its days.

‘Always you?’ I asked. ‘No, I think there was a Navid Murza once, and you took his place.’

‘It’s naive of you to think so, Kas,’ it said, stroking my cheek.

‘It’s naive of you to get this close,’ I replied, and spoke the word Navid had spoken, all those years before, in the back alley behind the cathedral corpse. Enuncia , he had called it, part of the primeval vocabulary of magic. He had been so cocky, so arrogant; he had never expected me to retain its form, not after so many years and so brief an exposure, but I had spent a long time with the rune priests of Fenris recovering and replaying my memories. I had heard it over and over again, enough times to commit its jagged, razor-edged shape to memory.

I had it, word perfect.

I spat it into the thing’s face. It was the single most important word I have ever uttered as a skjald.

Its face exploded in a blizzard of flesh and blood. Its head snapped back as though it had been struck in the face with an axe. It tumbled away from me, screaming and howling, the sounds horribly muted by its mangled mouth.

I was hurt too. I could feel how raw my throat was from retching up the word. I could taste the blood in my mouth. My lip was split. Several of my teeth were loose.

Caring little for any of that, I moved forwards, raising my pistol.

‘Tra! Tra! Help here!’ I shouted, and then had to spit blood through the slit of my mask.

I fired at the writhing, robed form. Its cream-felt shape crashed over the chamber’s bed and fell on the floor on the other side, squealing like a butchered pig. Furniture toppled over. Books spilled from broken shelves. Damaged, the bedside dataplate began to repeat, ‘Ser Hawser? It is your hour five alarm. Ser Hawser? It is your hour five alarm…’

I fired at the thrashing shape again.

‘Skjald? Skjald?’

Voices were calling me in Wurgen. The chamber door opened, and Godsmote appeared with Orcir. They hesitated for a second. Behind them lay the bright glint of the looking-glass hallway on Prospero. Ahead of them lay a cramped and gloomy sleepchamber overlooking Terra. At the doorway, where they stood, two realities had been grafted together. Their dismay was understandable.

‘Help me!’ I yelled. I pointed at the thrashing figure in the corner of the room.

‘Kill it!’

Orcir pushed past me, bracing his heavy bolter. There was no hesitation. He fired a sustained burst of shots from the massive weapon, the noise of which was overwhelming in the confines of the tiny room. The bolts shredded the figure. They blew the soft, plump folds of its Bibliotech robes apart and obliterated the body underneath. Blood, sap and fibrous tissue plastered the wall behind it.

But it was not dead.

It rose up, a shattered human skeleton, dripping with gore, and remade itself. It grew. Skin rewove. Organs reassembled or uncooked. The last remnants of the cream Bibliotech robes sloughed off like shedding skin as white-gold armour formed underneath it. Remade, the Warmaster wore a vengeful, insane expression. One of his eyes was blown.

‘Get back,’ I warned my brothers.

‘Hjolda!’ Orcir gasped. ‘Lupercal? Lord Lupercal?’

‘Get back!’ I cried.

‘Orcir,’ Horus whispered, saying the name like a charm. An unseen force propelled Orcir towards the giant.

The Anathame glimmered in Horus’s hand. He struck it down into Orcir’s chest. Orcir screamed out. His thread already cut, he tried to use his heavy bolter, point-blank, against his killer. Horus spoke Orcir’s name again, and once again the name gave Horus power over our wolf-brother. This time, the unseen force lifted Orcir off the killing blade, and threw him like a doll across the bedchamber. His armoured corpse hit the viewing port, and the window shattered.

There was a monstrous bang of decompression. Every stick of furniture, every loose object in the room, every bead of blood, rushed out of the broken port along with the atmosphere and all the tumbling shards of window glass. Orcir’s body, limp and spread-eagled, fell away from the window, spinning end over end, and dropped towards Terra, getting smaller and smaller, beginning to burn up like a shooting star.

The decompression did not dislodge Horus. He roared in the failing air. I felt my feet lose purchase. I tried to brace, but the explosive voiding of the chamber would not let me go. The glass shade of a lamp smashed off my shoulder. A book struck my knee. I grabbed the doorframe. A toy horse made of wood flew past my head and went out into the blackness.

I could not hold on. My grip broke, and I shot backwards like a cork. I was suddenly pulled up hard as Godsmote’s fist clamped around my arm and anchored it. He had hooked the head of his axe to the door frame, and was clenching the weapon’s haft with one hand as he clung on to me. The effort of pulling me in made him roar. As soon as I had a grip too, I added my strength to his.

We pulled ourselves through the doorway, and slammed the door. On the outside, it was just a mirrored surface. We were in the temple precinct again, in the glass hall.

I expected questions from Godsmote, urgent demands for explanation, but he did not even break stride. Driven and single-minded as all Wolves, he knew we were not yet safe. We moved quickly, down the side hall into the main atrium, the space ruined by gunfire.

Horus came behind us. He exploded through the temple’s glass wall, bringing sheets of mirror down as though they had been rammed by a Land Raider. He tore his way from one reality to the next, out of my past into my present, out of my memories into my reality. He was running, each great, racing stride ringing out on the polished floor.

‘Kasper!’ he commanded.

I felt the tug upon me, the power of my name, but Kasper Hawser is only one of the many names I own, and none of them are my true, birth-name, my signifier. Not even I know that. I resisted.

He was gaining on us. Godsmote turned to fight him, Astartes against primarch-thing, Fenrisian Wolf against Luna Wolf.

‘Godsmote!’ Horus declaimed. Godsmote faltered for a second, and then put his arms into that famous stroke of his, his godsmack. The axe-bite took Horus in the ribcage on the left side, and actually knocked him sideways a few paces. He howled. Godsmote ripped his axe out and did it again, ripping a gash in the Warmaster’s left thigh.