It was not a sense of duty that stirred me from my sorrow. It was not the unquiet voices in my head telling me what to do. It was neither faith nor focus that guided me from Lucene’s side and into Ouranos’s den. It was no redeemable or reverential quality that drove me to end this long and terrible tale.
It was hatred. Pure loathing, a purer bloodlust than any I or any of my enemies had ever known. Sheer, unbridled hatred.
Accompanying me on my journey was not the faithful Sister whom I had once loved, but the cackling laugh of a Greater Daemon which I had once mistaken for that of Dark Gods. No, no God was It, much as It might like to think of Itself, even if its howling humor was mistakably deep and dreadful as such.
The last stretch to Ouranos may have been grand or short, it may have been that of a hallway or a throne room. I could not say; I paid no mind to such details any longer. All that mattered was finding the bastard, and when I spied a smugness that could only have belonged to a heretic such as he, my Boltpistol roared thrice. I cared not for the daemonic hordes astride us, that patiently waited for the command to have at me. I cared not for my own sake. I cared only for Ouranos’s death.
Yet his smug grin denied me it yet, as he lifted but a finger from his Navigator-like residence and caught my Bolts in midair, where they hung for a few moments before exploding in place harmlessly. “Now now, Inquisitor, we ought to talk,” Ouranos offered, though could not repress his own slight chuckle.
I replied by shooting him twice more. Again, his psykana suspended my shots in midair before they detonated.
“Are you so keen to ignore the dying wish of your beloved Sister?” he chided me, and that at last sufficed to grant me a regretful moment of clarity. “She wanted you to live, after all. I am prepared to offer you such a fate.”
“I thought…,” I said in a hiss, barely able to focus enough to form words upon my lips. I then shook my head from side to side, trying to clear my mangled thoughts. It did not help. “I thought you needed my end?”
“An end? An end to what?” Ouranos asked, shrugging. “You will die one day, Blackgar. We all will. What does it matter if you die to my hand, or theirs?” he suggested, gesturing to the many varied daemons that surrounded us both. “I need an end not to your life, but to your life as you know it. Really, right now, in this instant, do you want to live, Inquisitor?”
“Yes,” I hissed again, though my answer was given with such an absence of conviction that Ouranos looked on at me as one would a child crafting a fib.
“And what for? Because a corpse asked you to?” he suggested, pointing past me, to Lucene, who laid off in the darkness beyond. “Because it is your duty to your Corpse-Emperor? Do you really intend to live for the unachievable approval of dead things?”
“I want to live in memory of her,” I answered, that time with some insistent surety.
“Will that be enough?”
“Enough for what?”
Ouranos went through the motions of snorting a laugh, but it was not audible. “Enough to save you?”
“Save me from what?”
“Yourself. And Cronos,” Ouranos replied. “I understand the confusion, Blackgar. I’m trying to help you make the right decision. I have already won, you see. You don’t have a choice here that results in my defeat. You can kill me, sure, and I am sure you want to. These daemons will eat you alive and shred your soul for all eternity if you do, but you will have killed your lover’s murderer all the same. And, yet, you will have denied her the one thing she wanted in death. Or you can choose life,” he said, and pointed behind me, where reality collapsed upon itself to form a portal not unlike that which I had used to spare many of my allies thus far in this conflict.
“You can choose life, and betray your Imperium, betray your Inquisition, in letting me live too. I will go on to terrorize the lives of billions or even trillions, until someone else kills me, someday. But you will be branded a coward and a traitor for letting my existence continue unabated. However, you will have fulfilled your lover’s dying wish. You’ll get to live,” he explained. “But what kind of life will it be, to have turned your back on your Imperium and to have unavenged your lover’s murder? You will devour yourself, and in that self-destruction, set Cronos free,” he said, and then leaned forward in his Navigator-chair toward me. “What is the poor Inquisitor to do?”
There will be others who mistake life for being less harmless than death, Cronos’s voice echoed in my head. I do not believe the daemon repeated its phrase to me, then, but rather I came to understand its meaning at last, as once spoken when I had bartered for Mirena’s life in a Quintus Firestation. In the not-so-distant future, it had said, you may find yourself making an impossible choice. I want you to live. To choose life. Lucene and Cronos wanted the same thing for me, I realized.
And Ouranos knew it.
I had lost more than Lucene alone. I had lost the whole damned gambit.
The archenemy, at least through this agent, had won.
As my aim fell from between Ouranos’s eyes toward the floor, the heretic-savant murmured another chuckle, and observed, “So you understand, then. Defeat. It is not given by timeless fools playing with toys they do not understand, nor crafted in keeps of Iron by petulant drug-addled children. Defeat comes from within. Cronos is yours, as first realized on Pyrras-3, now realized here, once more.”
“Why?”
The question seemed to catch Ouranos off-guard, as much for the nature of the word itself as for the lifelessness with which it was spoken. “Why? Seeking the wisdom of a heretic, Inquisitor? Never a good sign,” he mocked. “Because I was shown the beauty of ruin once before, and believe in seeing it realized not merely in the Empyrean, but here, among the stars as well. I was the eleventh prisoner of the eleventh raid of a long-ago-lost civilian transport. When my captors, those silent, bonebleached, cannibalistic Space Marines, finally brought me to an altar of what I then-believed to be one of sacrifice, it was instead eleven of them that were smote down by powers beyond. I was chosen, in a mind-splitting vision, to see beyond the labyrinthine games of flesh and blood unto something more meaningful. And so it is here, then, that I give meaning to life and death through destruction. We all live, we all die, most of us without any meaning at all. But I, Inquisitor, give meaning to those that would not otherwise have it. Every string pulled to get you here needed to be pulled. And what follows from your destruction will bring beauty to the lives—and deaths—of trillions more. What greater meaning could you aspire to, Inquisitor, than an unending cascade of ruination?”
“You say that like I should be thanking you,” I noted of his pride.
“Perhaps you should be. I grant you the gift of true Annihilation. You’re welcome.”
“I think I would rather pass on that,” I admitted. “And piss on it, too.” He chuckled to himself again, despite my vulgarity.
“Is that so?” he asked, though I did not answer. “Well, I have given you all the information that I am able to. Make your choice, Blackgar; I will not stop any further Bolt from taking my head off, nor will I then be able to prevent you from becoming daemonic prey. I can only advise thinking your decision through.”
Though I lifted my Boltpistol toward him once more, I did not pull the trigger with thoughtless immediacy as I had before. Instead, I thought on it, as long and as hard as I could. For once, finally, the voices in my head quieted to let me dwell on the subject at hand, to let me try to identify the least-terrible course of action. I want you to live, Lucene’s voice blended with Cronos’s for me. I had tried to remember her voice, but Cronos’s still appeared. The daemon may have chosen to speak in unison with my memory, then.
“Oh, almost forgot to mention,” Ouranos remembered while at the other end of a Boltpistol. “I had once told you of those vile colors I kept at bay. You may choose to believe that your sacrifice, even if spent in denial of your lover’s wishes, is worth denying Cronos victory and putting an end to the suffering I would cause. But if I die, just as these daemons feast on your soul, those colors will feast on your Imperium. I am Warden to their Abyssal prison, and without me, there is nothing to hold them back. Annihilation arrives all the same.”
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“I think I’d much prefer you shut up now,” I growled, still trying to focus on my decision.
“Clock’s ticking,” he offered with a shrug, but otherwise said nothing else at last, and leaned back in his Navigator-unit. I at last looked over him properly, assessing the man that had ruined me so. He was unremarkably average in appearance; not terribly warped nor corrupted from what must have been intense exposure to the immaterium, nor mangled by the ravages of time despite the eons he must have lived. He could have passed for any ordinary citizen in the Imperium if he tried. A dull-red suit of weathered cloth adorned his body, and there were traces of some House sigils upon the coat, but they had long-since faded away to obscurity. A savant of a noble House, not unlike Zha Trantos, though he had fallen from grace where she had ascended in immaculate purity. She was everything he was not, and in that, I found some glimmer of happiness amidst the darkened horror of this foe. That sliver of hope, founded of the thought of Zha, was sufficient at peeling away the sly, smug grin Ouranos continuously wore, though only just.
But it was that smugness that revealed an out, even if the route involved was fraught with peril.
Five-point-three percent, Zha’s voice reminded me. 5.3% chance for me to kill him properly. And, born of the beast’s pride, I had just seen how. I lowered my aim, hand shaking weakly, and the smug grin returned. After flicking the safety of my Boltpistol, I dropped it to the ground while dropping my arms to my sides, eyes closing, lifelessly. I paused, breathing slowly, and waited for some gloating.
“Choosing to betray your Imperium, then, and take on Cronos alone? Fascinating. And not what I expected,” Ouranos admitted. “And yet, exactly what I expected. You always proved a formidably capable man to maneuver around. Who knows; maybe that is a battle you can win.”
“Hadn’t I asked you to shut up?” I sighed in disdain, opening my eyes in pained squints.
“Technically no,” Ouranos said in another chuckle. I ignored him and looked behind me, toward the portal, but not at it. I looked beyond, to the body of my lover, which laid alone far away in the darkness. “I cannot give you the time to retrieve her,” Ouranos warned me. “Turn your back on me and on your chance of escape, and these daemons will kill you all the same.”
“I understand, and don’t need you to explain anything anymore, you insolent wretch,” I hissed. Then, I took a deep breath in and simmered down. “You know, in every major campaign against you, I have lost an arm. The same one, thankfully, each time. I think you’re meant to take it. Keep it, this time,” I offered, and began unlatching my left appendage with my right.
“As what, a trophy?” Ouranos offered.
“Something like that.”
“I’ll admit, none have come as close as you have in all these years in getting to me. Yes, it would be a fine remembrance of the one who came the closest, and still failed,” Ouranos agreed. “Imagery matters in this universe, after all. A conquered Inquisitor’s arm can go a long way toward maneuvering the weak of will around. I accept your contribution to the cause of Annihilation, Blackgar,” Ouranos said, and broke into a hearty laugh thereafter. I did not respond to his mockery, and instead silently continued to work at dislodging my augmetic from my body before tossing it to his feet when it was free. It clattered on the ground a bit, but then remained motionless. Suddenly feeling significantly lighter on my feet, I found I had the strength, then, to walk toward the exit portal he had conjured for me. “Goodbye, Inquisitor.”
I did not reply to him before making my leave from The Finality at last.
L-14,815
~1 Minute 20 Seconds to Launch
***
I appeared, after so minor a flash of light it may not have been truly real, upon the deck of the Coldbreed, the vessel Lucene and I had called home for so long a time. It was busy, and blared of sirens telling of an impending Exterminatus. I did not care. +LEAVE,+ I commanded of all those present, and everyone from Captain Vakian to some attending techpriests to servoskulls and servitors left at once from the scene without a single quip, overwhelmed by the fullest force of my psykana I could manage. I would later learn that many, including Vakian, were so-compelled by my mind as to make for the launch bays of the vessel and seek the means to leave the ship entirely. Thankfully, none broke the vessel’s self-quarantine.
In their absence, I wrestled the blast doors beyond the command deck’s viewport open to see the space beyond, where The Finality lied. Where Lucene rested in the dark beyond my view. I then raised my biological hand to my augmetic shoulder, and began tapping away at a few buttons embedded in my body. Then, at last, I spoke, “Ouranos.”
There was silence for a moment, after which the garbled voice of my dreaded foe emerged from my shoulder. “Ah, Inquisitor, you mean to tell me that this trophy you’ve given me serves many such a purpose?”
“I do. It has proven quite the tool over the years,” I answered, and carefully, silently, continued tapping at my shoulder.
“Impressive. Though I do not imagine it can communicate through the Warp as the device I had left for Mortoc to find could.”
“Likely not.”
“Well, if you are so keen on hearing my voice, I am certain I can find a way to get in touch with you again later on,” Ouranos offered. “Until then, I shall keep this trophy of yours close, for it is a joyous reminder of our beautiful conflict.”
“Good,” I hissed, and thumbed the final button I needed to press with such force as to drive the bone of my hand into the sinewed metal of my shoulder. The line went dead as a blue-green explosion of flame erupted out from The Finality, tiny as a speck but discernable all the same against its stygian form and the black of space. “For the Emperor.”
It was then, as I fell to my knees, that missiles soared out from The Coldbreed and every other vessel of my fleet. They glimmered through the dark of the void for a few moments, but so, too, did the The Finality. A sheen of light skimmed over the Space Hulk ahead following the explosion that had breached its hull, and just as the Cyclonic Torpedoes breached the outer plating of the craft, the entire vessel lurched inward upon itself, as though folded like a piece of parchment. In a blink, The Finality collapsed upon itself entirely, and vanished into the Warp just as swiftly as it had once appeared before us. The missiles that had punctured its hull were left alone in the void, and detonated at once, sparkling in an array of lights with far less of an explosive result than if they had hid their mark.
I was certain Ouranos was dead, even if his vessel had escaped into the abyss with his corpse. With Lucene. It could be a thousand years—or more—before anyone saw it again, before anyone could find and recover her. She was alone aboard the dreadful vessel as it careened through an oceanic hell, aimless, lost. I had done that to her. I had brought that fate upon her.
Lucene Flint was gone.
And so was I.
Bliss, despite a recently stitched gut, found herself on the way to the command deck of her own volition as the Exterminatus countdown neared its end. Along the way, she stepped aside the sudden appearance of a large number of bridge personnel, including Captain Vakian. “Where are you all going?” she asked of him, huddled up against a wall.
“Leaving,” Vakian answered, carrying on his way.
“Leaving? Leaving where?” Bliss furthered. Vakian did not answer again, having moved out of earshot of simple conversation already, along with the busy crowd around him. “What?” she muttered to herself, perplexed, and then the moment of realization hit her. “Callant.”
Despite having broken into a full sprint toward the bridge, it was minutes more before she arrived. Upon her arrival, she was greeted not only with an intense rush of wind, but also the blaring of sirens anew. These sirens no longer called of the recently-launched Exterminatus, but instead of the Alpha Plus psychic anomaly detected amid the fleet. Bliss needed only scour the bridge of the Coldbreed to identify its source amidst a hurricane of dusty wind and debris: One man, with his head hung low, but standing upright like a soldier nevertheless.
“Cal—” she began, but the name was stolen from her mouth as the winds blew into her with tremendous force. She winced and shielded her eyes, and had to harden her stance, but kept her ground despite the deck-breaking pyskana wielded against her.
+GO, BLISS. PLEASE.+
Never, she thought, and despite the intensifying winds all around her, raised a foot into the air and took a single step toward me. The deck of the Coldbreed shook in agony, and the psychic onslaught in the room reached new heights, flattening all manner of cogitator consoles and leveling the scene. Bliss buckled, but still did not give way, far stronger than most as she was. She took another step forward.
The ground breaking beneath her did not deter her advance. Nor did the searing of the hair from her flesh, as the psykana intensified and funneled her way, like a cone of invisible might. Ceramite flooring gave way to adamantine below, and even that began to bend and melt as Bliss neared, her feet pushing clumps of the voidship’s inner hull into small mounds under her heels as she painstakingly pressed on. Even as her eyes and ears began to hemorrhage and bleed down her face, Bliss fought with tooth and claw to near me. Upon finally reaching me, a wave of psychic power rushed out from my body in all directions, pulverizing both Bliss and the scene around us, sending us both to the bottom of a crater in the ground not unlike that which had once flattened a Phaenonite on Hestia Majoris. This sufficed to drop Bliss to one knee and pop an arm from its socket.
Then, finally, I turned to face her, and Bliss finally saw the rainstorm falling from my eyes, which matched her own tears of blood. And she knew. She may have already suspected, but she knew, then, what had happened, and what was happening. Ouranos had won. Lucene had died. Cronos was emerging, and with a might that could shatter the crust of planets. If not halted here, it would feed on anguish unending, and there might be no stopping it at all. As if to accentuate this point, my eyes, visible ahead of Bliss’s, faded to black, as did the scene behind me, all light being sucked away into the fathomless depths of horror.
At this, Bliss lurched herself forward and upward, and at last embraced me as best she could, including with her dislocated arm. She could end it then. Throne, how I wanted her to. And yet, as the dim light of reality returned alongside the whiteness of my eyes, she chose not to. Instead, we cried and suffered together. Then we fell to the ground together, where we continued to cry and suffer. Bliss knew I did not have much left in me. I knew I had taken most of what she had out of her. And Cronos knew that until such a time that it had emerged from me entirely, Bliss was a threat it could not test directly.
I passed out first, in Bliss’s arms. As she laid me upon the ground in our adamantine crater, and after kissing my forehead with bloodied lips, she passed out too, still embracing me.
A terrible day of horrors had ended.
Many more were soon to follow.