Саймон Спуриэр - Lord of the Night

'W-what?'

'She was the last of a long line. A line that he had evaded at every stroke. A line whose endless attempts had exhausted him beyond his desire to retaliate. He had endured enough, do you understand? He was the hunter! He was the first, and the mightiest! He ruled the shadows! He reigned in the Dark! And then his father rescinded his sanction, and at the end of the Great Crusade, before the Heresy had even begun, he was brought before his lord and his brothers, humiliated, and held to account. Did he betray the Emperor's honour, then? Did he excuse his actions by telling the truth? By revealing to his kin their father's duplicity? No. Loyalty gripped him still, and he endured his father's derision with boundless humility.'

'I remember the tales...' Ancient texts swam through Mita's memories, the echoing spaces of dusty libraries vivid in her mind. 'He attacked his brother-primarch, Rogal Dorn. Where was his loyalty then, Night Lord?'

'Dorn's pomposity infuriated him. Was it not enough that he had toed his father's line, without the chiding of ignorant fools? Of course his temper snapped. Whose would not have?'

Mita opened her mouth, a suitably acidic reply prepared, but stalled herself. There was little acid left in her, and that which remained was certainly not directed at the melancholy creature suspended above.

'What happened?' she breathed.

'My master was confined to his quarters. He sought time to meditate, to confer amongst his honour guard.'

'And?'

'And the conference was interrupted by a black-suited devil. An assassin, child. You understand me? Sent to kill the Night Haunter. Sent to silence his outbursts. Who else could have sent him? Who else but your holy, righteous Emperor? And, witch, remember: this was long before Horus unveiled his treachery and turned from the light!

'That's... that's impossible...'

'The attack was foiled and my master flew into a rage. Finally he recognised the truth of his father's so-called "justice". He fled from the conference to gather his strength, to consider his movements, to fume at the insult of the attempted murder.

'It was the first of many. Before, during and after the Heresy. On Tsagualsa the Night Haunter stopped running. He built a palace that he knew would be his mausoleum, and he awaited the bitch that would take his head and steal his crown.

'So you see, child, the Haunter was not killed for his part in the Heresy. He was not killed to halt excesses or unsanctioned behaviour. No... no, he was kitted by a father who thought nothing of using him. Of twisting him into a hated monstrosity. Of demanding atrocities and horrors from him to scare his enemies into submission. Of taking from him everything that was pure, everything that was human, and then repaying the sacrifice with betrayal.

'So tell me this, little witch. Do you still believe you aren't being used? Do you still think you'll find some... some reward in death for your loyal service? Do you still think the hatred of the masses is irrelevant?

'Do you still think your Emperor loves you, girl?'

If she'd had a stomach, if this incorporeal realm had taken form and replaced her astral self with a physical body, she knew she would be vomiting blood at the disgust that gripped her. Disbelief battled certainty, the doubts spiraled and flocked to dominate her whole soul, and like an island sinking beneath the sea, like a ship that had been considered impregnable splintering apart and slipping down into cold and lightless depths, every shred of faith that Mita Ashyn had ever felt in the Emperor of mankind crumbled to dust.

She peered through her tears, raised the gun, and fired.

The chains that bound the Night Lord to his crucifix splintered and unravelled.

Zso Sahaal smiled a savage smile, and tore free of the prison inside his own mind, to reclaim what was his.

It was not a gentle awakening.

He arose from the mire of sleep — that psychic trap that the warlock had constructed around him — with red rage in his eyes and every muscle tightening together. He felt the cords stand out on his neck. He felt the knuckles of his hands strain against the flat blades of his claws, brandished before him like a bevy of swords. He felt the talons of his feet — autoreactive pinions studding the periphery of each boot — scratching at the metallic floor on which he'd awoken, pushing him upwards.

All without conscious thought. All at the whim of his fury alone.

He felt the rush of boiling air as his jump pack swooned to life, and the dizzying acceleration as he left the ground.

He felt the soup of hormonal insanity that was his armour's chem-boost deploying into his flesh like a liquid sigh, and for the first time he did not struggle against it. For the first time he welcomed its unsubtle burst, he drew its burning promises into his blood as if accepting a second layer of armour, and he opened his mouth and screamed like a flaming banshee.

There was alien blood patterning his claws before his mind had fully thrown off the shackles of slumber.

They had not expected his revival, that much was clear. He was upon them like a lion before even they, blessed with lightning reactions and impossible grace, could react. The first he clove in two with contemptuous ease, turning away and rolling as he touched down from a shallow swoop, tumbling onto his injured shoulder and springing upright. A second startled xenogen appeared before him, fumbling for its weapon, and he tore through its frail chestplate as he rose. The tips of his claws slipped so far through eldar meat that they cracked the inner orbs of the alien's eye-slits, like branches growing from within. He shook the body away and leapt onwards, luminous fluids drizzling clear.

Somewhere in the crucible of his peripheral senses he registered the tusked inquisitor, standing agog with the Corona clutched in his gloved fingers, and he diverted his aerial leap towards the astonished figure, forgoing the urge to rampage out of control. Beyond, in the decorous shadows of the doorway from the glassy bridge, he could see the witch rise groggily to her feet, held helpless in the ring of vigilant servitors. Inwardly Sahaal spared a curious thought for how long had passed since he was first knocked unconscious. His communion with the young psyker seemed to have lasted a lifetime, whilst in reality scant seconds had passed.

The warlock had not yet placed his elegant fingers upon the horned crown.

Nor shall he!

No sooner had the defiant thought arisen than the antlered fiend itself swept into his path, staff crooked. Sahaal bunched his muscles, preparing to dip aside, to dodge the blast of astral fire the creature was doubtless summoning, when a wall of pain unlike any he had felt before caromed into and through him.

Striking with unerring accuracy, satisfied that its target was otherwise engaged with its warlock master, one of the capering xenos had fired its catapult unnoticed, a spinning shuriken slipping deep into the heart of the grievous wound upon his shoulder, unhindered by armour.

It all but severed his arm.

Howling, struggling to shut out the agony, feeling numbness gripping the dead limb, Sahaal's flight-arc stalled and he twisted in the air, his remaining arm gripping uselessly at nothingness. Thus crippled, slipping towards a ruinous impact, he was ill prepared for the warlock's shrewd intervention.

Lightning engulfed him for the second time. A thick strand of gauss power burst from the creature's blade-tipped staff, needling its way past flesh and bone, sinking dog-toothed jaws into the pulp of his mind. As before, it tweaked at his doubts. It blossomed beneath fields of uncertainty and sadness and urged him to yield, to withdraw, to lock himself away within his own psyche.