As far as I knew, the brass doors were infinite in size, implausible as that seemed. They rose far into the darkness above, and stretched wide into the depths of The Finality beyond our sight. That we came upon the vault-like entryway at the crease between them was no divine benediction, I knew—no, it was Ouranos’s foul guidance that led us to the point at which the double doors could split. If there was ever any doubt of that, such uncertainty was sent careening aside by Ouranos’s voice over an unseen voxcom. “Welcome, Blackgar. The passage shall open before you only with the Sister’s dying breath,” the heretic’s voice beckoned to me, ignoring Lucene’s personhood entirely.
This dehumanization, of course, did not sit well with Lucene, who reacted to Ouranos’s greeting in an outcry that, I suspect, was a long time coming. “The Sister?” she muttered at first, quoting our foe. Then, with fists curled around her weapons, she shouted up at the wall of brass before us, “I am Lucene Flint, Daughter of the Emperor! I am no object to weaponize against the Throne’s faithful like Callant Blackgar, I am the blade that strikes their bestial foes down, and the shield that wards them from your heretical depravity!”
I anticipated silence from Ouranos, that he might continue not to acknowledge Lucene as anything more than being the path to my heart. I think that would have pissed her off the most. But I misjudged him, and he did instead bring himself to reply, even if dismissively. “You are a means to an end, o’ daughter-of-a-corpse. Blackgar’s end, specifically, and with him so much more. You are a pawn; a footnote in history that will only be used to acknowledge the process through which your Imperium died.”
What was I, I wondered then, in this contest of metaphor? An observer? I knew for centuries now that Ouranos’s ploy was to have me bear witness to Lucene’s murder. I also deduced that my witnessing of such an event would be used to bring Cronos out into the materium. Yet if I was merely an outside observer to and vessel of these inevitabilities, was I not also a means to an end? If that were true, why would Ouranos acknowledge me with some measure of humanity, and not Lucene?
You are the Decider, the daemon answered, its voice feeling closer than ever before, as though speaking to me from just over my shoulder. I will admit, in my shock I glanced behind me, in the voice’s direction, though saw nothing but the darkness from which Lucene and I had arrived at this locale. Yet I had come to realize that darkness was the essence of Cronos, and perhaps I looked upon the daemon then. You are the one to choose when and how everything ends, Blackgar. You think you have no agency, here, but you have all of it. We gave it to you, because we believed in the power of your choice. So choose well, as you have thus far.
This internal debate transpired over a mere moment, caught between the conversation between Lucene and Ouranos. “Then come and put an end to this footnote, heretic!” Lucene said, still shouting up into the abyssal heavens above. “Or will you hide behind massed legions of your damned minions yet, too cowardly to face me yourself? And if that, then rest assured, fiend, that I will not leave you with the forces required to defend yourself from the God-Emperor’s Wrath! Live or die, your influence in the galaxy ends here, at my hands!” She then looked to me, over her shoulder, and I nodded to her. “Bring it on, and know that the passage you hide within will rust and rot away before our fury does!”
“I suspect your fury shall begin rotting away very soon, but as you wish,” Ouranos replied, and audibly snapped his fingers over his vox channel. Before even registering the opposition around us, I readied my Condemnor ahead of my view, and stood back-to-back with Lucene as she prepared herself likewise. The darkness all around us began to coalesce into some as-yet unknown horde, but before it had settled upon itself, I fired the first of many Bolts to follow.
L-387,588
~35 Minutes to Launch
Our initial assailants were daemonic in nature, and while still something we had to adjust to fighting, we had encountered these sorts several times in our siege of The Finality thus far. Still, I messaged a strategy to Lucene. +If you must get in close, do so by my side. These beasts lash out in death, but they will not risk killing me first, or at all.+
“Affirmative,” Lucene answered over our private vox channel, sent between our power armor. There was no time for further chitchat. While these daemonic foes possessed no ranged weaponry, and were—compared to the various Xenos we had encountered—slow and bulky, they were resilient and numerous enough to press ever closer to us. My first Bolt met its mark, but sufficed only to blow a hole into marrow-colored chitin. My second Bolt did the same elsewhere on the same target, and only the third burrowed deep enough to rend apart the Schism, as Cronos had called it, blasting an arm and a shoulder off. It collapsed upon itself in its death, as they all had, taking some of reality with it. My helmet’s targeting apparatus recognized that we were being charged by these slow, lumbering foes, and therefore knew to prioritize those that were nearest or making the largest strides. So in an instant, I turned to the next and opened fire.
L-386,002
My next target had been a Beast of Malice, as Cronos had called it, those bird-skulls with spiderlike legs that skittered across the ground. They were not quite as resilient, and this one died to a single Bolt, but as with them all, it exploded into a hail of boney splinters when it met its end. I had already acquired my next target when this hail neared me, but they deflected harmlessly off the Conversion Field of my Rosarius, creating a brief—and unfortunately distracting—display of light in the process. This light stayed my shot a moment, but only that, and then I returned to firing upon what Cronos had identified as being a ‘Hunger.’
L-384,473
The Hungers were lumbering rat-creatures, human-sized but covered in fur and with a coiled tail. Unlike typical vermin, and like the Beasts of Malice, this being bore a skull that did not befit the rest of its body; these were possessed of a goat-like crown, complete with rudimentary, budding horns. The most distinguishing, and disturbing, note one could make of the Hunger were that they could speak in the Low Gothic. A bastardized version of it, granted, but they chittered and chattered of starvation and self-decay. It seemed a miserable existence, one I was happy to rectify.
My first Bolt blew open this Hunger’s stomach, black and white guts spewing out upon the ground. I at first thought that would have been sufficient to send the daemon back where it came from, as it fell and coiled up upon its lost innards, so I whipped my aim to another Schism. But the Hunger, nearer to me than the Schism, muttered on about a ‘Black Hunger’ even without its bowels intact, so I flicked my aim to its head and blew it apart. That sufficed to shut it up. Hungers exploded into a slop of seeping flesh far greater than their bodies would hint at possessing, and I knew not what nightmares one might endure to come in contact with such flesh. I did not wish to find out. Thankfully, when the Schism near to this fleshy eruption died a few Bolts later, it took much of the Hunger’s remains with it.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
L-381,914
With only thirty Bolts to my Condemnor’s magazine, the foes that could be safely killed at range numbered unfortunately few. They may have been a bit slow of pace, but not so much so as to afford me an opportunity to reload and continue firing upon them. I reloaded all the same, because the last thing I wanted was to die with ammo still on my person, but the time to shoot at our enemies from afar had come and gone. Any further shots would need to be taken in close proximity, and a Condemnor—sanctified bayonet or not—was no suitable melee weapon.
So, with my rifle reloaded, I hitched it backward up my augmetic arm, ‘storing’ it for easy access later. Varnus had weaponized me well, and I was grateful for it. In the meantime, I drew Drepane with my biological hand, and held it at the ready to meet the first of my foes.
Or so I thought.
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But a Schism had already reached Lucene. Two, in fact. While her Eviscerator held one at bay, another came from her left and sought to impale her through the long of her gut. I threw myself to intercept the blow, knocking the Schism’s blade-like arm aside against the shield of my Rosarius, and drawing Lucene’s attention from the ensuing flash of light. In the same motion of my movement, I spun on my feet and whisked Drepane through the neck of the Schism Lucene was wrestling against, while in the meantime she turned and heel-kicked the recently-deflected Schism further away from us.
As I suspected, the Schism I had decapitated did not erupt into an all-swallowing hole in reality, as doing so would have killed me on the spot. They were affording me some measure of immunity, and I was damned sure going to exploit that. Instead, the Schism faded away in an unassuming blur of particulates, troubling us no more. The other one, meanwhile, ate two Bolts to its upper torso, Lucene having dropped her Eviscerator to the ground momentarily to fire upon the daemon from a greater range. It, too, did not devour me in its death.
Lucene and I wasted a moment looking into each other’s expressionless helmets, but we did only that to acknowledge each other. No nodding, no gesture of thanks, nothing. In the next instant, Lucene stepped up to me and aimed her Boltrifle past me, while I likewise spun my Condemnor back into my grip. We fired in unison upon opposite foes before meeting them both head-on in melee once again.
L-376,477
~34 Minutes to Launch
For two centuries, I had fought against Lucene’s mind and body in contest and in combat. I knew her fighting abilities inside and out, and she knew mine likewise. There wasn’t an iota of ambiguity or uncertainty between us; if we found ourselves fighting something that could be killed, we killed it, decisively and without error.
At the beginning of our final stand, I was taking count of the foes we had slain. I cannot tell you why, exactly. Perhaps I wanted to die knowing how many I had brought with me. But I stopped counting in the thirties. However, Ouranos’s hordes appeared to have been without end. It had taken less than two minutes for us to fell our thirty-something foes. Lucene and I fought against the dark without rest for the better part of half an hour, and our pace of combat only ever accelerated, never deteriorated.
How many could it have been, then? Zha would have been able to know. How many times had I crashed Drepane through the pale exoskeleton of a Schism? How many Hungers had I fed to a fill with my fury? How many savage Beasts had I put down? And Lucene had matched everything I could, or bested me even then, as ever she had. How many heresies slain in the deep dark beyond, then? The math would tell you hundreds, and I would not argue with such a figure, though I might tell you it does not matter. What matters is that there were more than hundreds. What matters is that there were enough to nick and gnaw at Lucene’s armor. What matters is that I caught enough blows with my Rosarius for its Conversion Field to begin to waver.
What matters is the Schism whose arm sailed through a weakened Conversion Field to Impale my wife back to front.
Choose, Blackgar, Cronos said as I witnessed the splash of red blood erupt in our arena of empty darkness. It’s time to choose.
I slashed Drepane through the Schism’s arm, but the Schism was not there anymore. It vanished, as did the darkness itself, and all the daemons with it. As Lucene fell to the ground, and as I fell with her, our arena illuminated at last, revealing an empty hall before two vast, brass doors.
I rolled Lucene from her front onto her back, and tossed my Condemnor aside, as it would have just gotten in the way. I began trying to dress Lucene’s exit wound as best I could, while she laid—hard—on her entry wound, aided in small part by my power armor’s analysis of the gash in Lucene’s gut. But such analysis was not what my power armor was made for, nor did I have nearly enough field dressing for such a blow. I may have known that at the time, but if I did, it did not matter to me. Choose.
“Callant,” Lucene muttered weakly. I raced to meet her gaze, as her voice was the most important thing to me then. “We both knew this was coming.”
“Shut up, Lucene,” I seethed, and my mind flashed to me telling her those very words as I carried her out from her duel with the Eversor in Abseradon. I had saved her then. I could save her n—
“No, Cal,” she answered. “Look at me.”
“I am,” I assured her, nodding insistently. I then reached behind my head and popped my helmet off, tossing it aside with my Condemnor. We had already realized the air on The Finality was breathable; we had learned as much in the faux-jungle. “I am, Lucy.”
“So few of us got to say goodbye over the years,” she noted, but I interrupted her point.
“No, Luce, not now, I can—” I began, and turned back to her wound. It was more ghastly every time I looked at it, and was then a fountain of blood.
“No, Cal. Look at me,” she repeated, and I did, mouth agape. “I love you.”
I can save her. All you have to do is ask.
“I love you too, Luce,” I said, and felt the first drops of rain fall from my cheeks, mostly from sorrow, but surely some from the pain exploding in the back of my head. I then had an idea, and reached behind her own head and gently removed her helmet. I saw her face was as wettened as mine. “The curative, where’s your curative?” I asked, looking for her vial of the cure to Absalom’s curse.
“Shattered, hours ago, in the fighting,” she answered. “Look at me, Callant, and stop turning your damn face away,” she pressed on. I locked eyes with her again, in response. “Good boy. I have…a favor to ask you, my love,” she suggested, then noticed I was writhing around in my own power armor. “What are you doing?”
“Just getting something that should have been yours from the start,” I answered, and finally wrestled my Rosarius out from within my armor.
“No, Cal, I’m soon not to need that,” she protested.
“Neither am I,” I shrugged, and wrapped the Rosarius around her neck. She was not strong enough to resist me, though I imagine she wanted to. “Your favor?”
“Live,” she asked of me, more tears streaking down her face. “If you get a chance to live, take it. I know the pain it’ll cause you. But you deserve life, Cal. And you’ll be surrounded by those that love you as I do.”
It’ll be a simple thing to save her life. You’ve already had me help with saving that pilot of yours; why not your wife?
“I’m not going to want to without you, Lucy,” I admitted, and all but fell over her, fighting with everything I had to keep the pain in my head at bay. “I don’t want to do anything without you. That includes life.”
“I don’t care what you want, Cal,” she frowned, but made a sound like a pained laugh. “I want you to live. Because I know there can be happiness for you yet. And I want you to have that for me.”
“Please no,” I pleaded with her, wincing tightly but forcing myself to keep my eyes open to see her still.
“Live, Cal. Live…for me. Don’t make me…spend my last moments…begging,” she insisted, clearly also pained. A gut wound was always an awful way to go. I knew that. I hated that I knew that. I hated that I thought of her pain. I hated that she was in pain.
I swelled up in hatred for a moment, and my own pain reached an apex when I did, but I choked it down as one does tears, and kept it bay in the depths of sorrow still. Then, another idea.
“Goodbye, Cal,” Lucene said in a weakened sigh as I rummaged over my own armor. “I love you.”
“No, not yet, don’t go yet, please,” I begged, and cradled her head within the confines of my right arm. My left found what it was looking for. “Stay with me, Lucene,” I said, propping her up and pouring my own vial of Absalom’s curative into her throat. “Stay with me,” I repeated, and waited to see her beautiful blonde hair whiten. I waited to see her skin wrinkle, her face sag. I waited for her to age, for the curative to take effect, to spare her soul and let her go to the afterlife.
It did not.
The sound of metal scraping against metal pierced my ears, then, and I looked up to see the maw of brass open before me. When I witnessed it, I knew. I knew the terrible truth. I knew everything was lost.
As Ouranos opened a path to his lair, I at last let myself cry out in sheer, unbridled agony. The darkness returned to swallow me up.
L-122,222.222222…
11 Minutes to Launch