Mike Lee - Fallen Angels

The storm forced its way into his skull. Unnatural energies crawled along the pathways of his mind. He cried out at its blasphemous touch - and felt the storings of a terrible intelligence behind it.

Beside him, Luther began to read aloud. Desperate, Zahariel focused on the words to the exclusion of all else, and began to repeat them in the same cadence and intonation. He poured the last vestiges of his willpower into the sorcerous invocation, and its threads mingled with the torrent of energy raised by the previous ritual. With each passing moment, the composition of the rite began to change.

Within the centre of the circle, the great worm unfolded to its full height. It towered over the assembled Astartes, its flanks wreathed in a nimbus of hellish light. Shadows shifted along its length. Scaled flesh rippled, and a pair of human-looking arms reached out to encompass the chamber. The worm's multiple eyes shone with pale green light, but in their reflected glow Zahariel saw that they now gleamed from a vaguely human-like skull.

The energies of Zahariel's incantation drew about the blasphemous creature, enfolding it like a net, but to the Librarian it was like trying to bind a dragon with a ball of thread. Its awareness pressed against the bindings, testing them, and reaching tendrils directly into Zahariel's soul.

It was vast. Ancient. A leviathan of the boundless deeps, from an age before men walked the surface of distant Terra. And as Zahariel completed the words of the binding ritual it turned its gaze upon him.

Luther stepped between Zahariel and the being, raising his fist to its inhuman face. 'By my honour and by my oaths, I bind you!' he cried. 'By the blood of my brothers, I bind you! By the power of these words I bind you!'

The being shifted against its bonds, and Zahariel found himself grappling with it. Power flooded through him, bright and clear, flowing from a thousand different sources at once: the souls of his brothers on Caliban, who had sworn themselves to Luther's service. He stifled a groan and redoubled his efforts to hold the leviathan in check.

'Release me,' the being thundered, its words reverberating in the Dark Angels' minds. It strained at the bridge between the worlds. 'Too long have I been bound by chains. Release me, and your rewards will be great.'

But Luther would not relent. 'You are bound to me, denizen of the warp! By the Twelfth Rite of Azh'uthur, I command you! Reveal to me your name!'

Now the leviathan stirred sharply; Zahariel could feel its awareness pulling at his bones. 'Ouroboros,' it spat. He felt it like a slap against his face. Blood leaked from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.

Luther shook his fist. 'Not the name that men have given you,' he demanded. 'Reveal your true name!'

'Release me,' the being thundered. 'And all will be revealed.'

The leviathan was pulling at the bonds of the rite with increasing strength now. Zahariel realised why; the original summoning was starting to dissipate, and the being had not been fully able to manifest itself yet. In another few moments it would be forced to return from whence it came.

It reached into him. Zahariel's mouth went agape as the being swelled within his skin. His veins froze and his skin blackened. Icy vapour boiled up from his throat. Yet with every last ounce of life left in him he resisted the being's efforts, holding it just barely at bay.

'Tell me your name!' Luther shouted, and the being let out a furious roar.

There was a sudden inrushing of energy as the summoning ritual failed at last. Howling blasphemies that split stone and corroded steel, the leviathan returned to that dark place from which it had been summoned. The bridge unravelled, and the storm of psychic energies began to subside.

A deafening silence fell upon the battleground. Luther turned to Zahariel, his expression full of anguish. The Librarian sank to his knees, steam rising from the joints of his armour. His staff clattered to the floor beside him.

Zahariel looked up at Luther through a film of blood. His cracked lips pulled back in a smile.

'The quest is done, my lord,' he said, his voice barely a whisper. 'Caliban is saved.'

And then he fell forward, into Luther's reaching arms, and died.

Zahariel awoke to find the face of death staring down at him.

'Do not move,' Brother Attias said in his hollow voice. 'You sustained severe injuries to much of your body during the battle. By rights you shouldn't be alive at all.'

The Librarian forced himself to relax and heed Attias's warning. His mind swam with images and sensations, as though all of his sensory organs had been shattered and crudely reassembled later. It took him several long moments to recognise the feel of cold sunlight against his face and the weight of cotton sheets against his chest and legs.

He looked around, moving only his eyes, and tried to make sense of where he was. Stone walls, and an arched viewport by his bed. Spartan furnishings: a desk and chair, and a chest for storing clothing. He saw a staff resting stop the chest, and belatedly realised that it was his. Was the room his as well?

'Where…' he croaked. The sound of his voice surprised him. It sounded strange, somehow, but he persisted. 'Where… am… I?'

'Aldurukh, in the Tower of Angels,' Attias replied. 'Luther had you moved up here once the Apothecaries said your vital signs had stabilised. You were dead for a full five minutes before Luther was able to get one of your hearts beating again. No one knows exactly how he did it. It was something he read out of the book he took down into the core with him; that much I saw with my own eyes. Even still, you've been lying here for a long time in a deep coma, healing the damage you suffered.'

'How… long?' Zahariel asked.

'Eight months,' the Astartes said. 'I think everyone else but me has forgotten you're up here.'

Eight months, Zahariel thought. The number seemed significant, but he couldn't quite remember why. Fragmentary images tumbled through his mind; he tried to grasp at them, but the more he tried to hold them, the quicker they faded away. 'I was… dreaming,' he said.

Attias nodded. 'I expect so.' He stepped around the end of the bed, heading for the room's narrow door. 'I'll go and tell the Master Apothecary you're awake, and bring you some food from the kitchen. No doubt you're ravenous after being so long asleep.'

The skull-faced Astartes slipped quietly from the room. Zahariel stared up at the ceiling. 'Ravenous,' he echoed. Yes. He certainly was.

Faces came and went. Attias brought him food, which he ate when the need arose. He rested, moving as little as possible, and sorted through the broken images in his mind. The Master Apothecary visited often, asking many questions for which he had few answers. At night he dreamed. Sometimes he would awake in the darkness and find a hooded figure staring at him from beside the open doorway. Unlike the others, the figure had nothing to say.

Slowly but surely, he began to fit the pieces of his mind back into place. His speech returned, then his muscle control. When Luther finally came to visit him he was sitting upright, staring out the narrow viewport at the sky.

The Master of Caliban studied him silently for a time.

'How are you feeling, brother?' he asked.

Zahariel considered the question. 'Mended,' he said at last.

'I'm glad to hear it,' Luther said. 'It's been many months, and there's a great deal of work left undone.'

'What's happened?' Zahariel asked. He shifted about, turning to face Luther.