Chapter 31: The Beast Arises


"The Son shall be turned to darkness, and the Moon into blood before the great and terrible day of Lorgar. Arise over the dead, and tell the masses that the weak shall surely die. From the fires of our hate comes faith, from faith comes resolve, and from our resolve comes victory."

The deafening clamor of bolter fire echoes like rolling thunder in the tightly packed corridor leading through the outer chambers of the Delphos. As the prayer leaves the grey-clad figure's lips, blood bubbles up as a string of explosive concussions bursts their plackart and drives them to the floor.

"Choke on it you nonsecular bastard!"

Vipus snarls through gritted teeth as the withering fire of bolts rattles down the corridor in a firestorm of desolation. The sergeants bolter runs dry, and he ducks down just long enough to thumb the pin of a grenade and toss it down the hallway.

Torgaddon braces his bolter against the pocked and blast riddled column and switches targets as Vipus's grenade kicks up a squall of dust. His broken form still looms imposing as he angles away the ruined armor sections, letting his scarred and dented pauldron take the ricochet and fragments that had turned the sea green plate into a maze of dull grey scrapes.

The Word Bearer lies on his back, a defiant fist held upwards for some manner of divine assistance.

"Frag out!" Loken's voice cuts the jumbled static-popped vox link as he blindly throws the fist sized explosive fifteen meters down the corridor. The innocuous metal cylinder tumbles and scrapes across the floor, coming to a stop barely a meter from the downed figure just as another press of grey armored warriors emerged from the sharp bend to the left.

The sharp concussive roar dissolves the noise in a sheet of fire and smoke. Bits and pieces of shattered ceramite and stone bounce down the halls, kicking up another rolling dust cloud that grants some temporary cover.

Vipus leans back into cover behind a gouged out section of igneous basalt forming what was one a rough hewn section of the chamber's entrance frame. He kneels with Marr directly behind him, both lean out to snap off shots and use the pair of dead Word Bearers to further extend their cover.

"Loken, ammo." Vipus growls his warning.

"I know, I know." Loken returns calmly. "I'm already out." his chainsword held in a tightly clenched fist.

"Well, we sure can't go back." Torgaddon mutters as more shapes form in the dust still dissipating at the end of the hall. He squeezes the trigger again, sending ringing pops off ceramite as flashes and screaming hisses whistle past the column.

"No, no we can't..." Marr snarls, bestial and low. "C'mon. Loken, Vipus." he stoops down, seizing one of the legionnaire corpses and roughly hauls the Word Bearer's corpse upright.

"Tarik, Setar, Kamphaddon, cover on three! Marcellus, we need you up here!" Loken nods, having a good idea what Marr was thinking. Readying his last frag grenade, Kamphaddon did the same, only to be confronted by a similar object tumbling down the corridor towards them.

The explosion rocks the hallway and fills it with whirring shrapnel shards. "Three!" Vipus roars, leaning out from cover to see the blue glowing eyes cut through the gloom. The flurry of shots and hastily thrown grenade from Loken joins with the stamp of boots.

Even among two near simultaneous thunderclaps, Marr had hefted the Word Bearer on his shoulder and posed his broadsword low like a fighter of ancient antiquity. Rushing down the corridor with his grisly shield, Loken peels himself from the wall stanchion and follows at a sprint with Vipus not far behind.

Twenty meters.

A wall of bolter fire from the advancing Word Bearers ring off stone and blows off bits and pieces from their macabre shields. They were still barely visible aside from five or maybe six sets of crystal blue eyes shining in the dust choked corridor.

Fifteen meters.

A wry shot snaps Loken's helmet down and shreds the flexsteel rebreather cabling on his left side. Marr's impromptu shield judders with impacts, spewing blood and liquefied tissue across the walls though he remains unharmed.

Ten meters.

The haze is clearing, showing the gold trimmed grey battle plate of their opponents. A bolt pistol shot from either Kamphaddon or Setar skips low, rebounding off a skull-faced sergeant's foot and digging up into his shin before exploding. His leg buckles in a shower of meat pulp and ceramite shards, pitching him forward while waving a power axe desperately to regain his balance. He fails and falls to one knee.

Five meters.

Through the still soft tapping of bouncing metal and stone, Loken could ease his thundering heart and hear the flat ominous 'clack' of bolters running dry. A predatory smirk traces across the captain's lips as he sees the legionnaires in dim grey come to the same realization far-far too late.

Marr slams bodily into the formation bowling over two Word Bearers with a roar of unadulterated anger. His broadsword slips low, gliding up and under the plackart of one of the legionnaires. It severs the power cables and carries straight through into the Colchisian warrior's guts.

Loken barges past the toppled sergeant and swings his chainsword in a murderous overhead strike. It catches one on the collar before the blade screams to life, biting deep into the plate and dragging the whirring teeth deep into the legionnaire's chest.

The weapon skips and judders as it connects with the gorget, flinging shattered metal. Though the legionnaire raises a hand to shove Loken away, the captain angles the blade out and guns the throttle. With a re-energized snarl of ruined meat and bone, the blade rips through flesh and drags outwards. Loken heaves again, and the Word Bearer's arm comes off with a wet squelch.

A heady snap echoes in the hall, and Loken didn't need to guess what happened. The grunt from the kneeling sergeant precedes the scrape of grinding ceramite as he's tossed flat on his back. Vipus's knee carries from under the sergeant's chin as he stamps his foot down on the warrior's breastplate. Despite throwing the axe up to block the descending strike, Vipus's combat blade stakes him through the elbow joint, pinning him to the floor with the power axe crackling just short of Nero's neck. With a quick flick, Vipus snatches his bolt pistol from his hip, a mirrored motion from the Colchisian turning it into a lightning draw. But Vipus made it first, forcing the snub nosed barrel up under the Colchisian's chin and pulling the trigger with a muffle thump.

Wrenching the power axe from dead fingers, Vipus crashes into the same pack of warriors as Loken. His crashing impact throws back a second Colchisian clambering to slam a barbed combat blade into Loken's helmet ring.

"Marr, watch your back!" Vipus snarls, energizing the power axe with a flick of a thumb on the activation stud. Grasping a Word Bearer by the pauldron and pulling him off balance, Loken recenters his stance and spots the indicated threat and two more darting around the body choked corner.

Marr shoves forward, his gory shield tossed off and the warrior impaled on his blade booted hard into the wall. But two more Colchisians circle, a bayonet tipped bolter rising up to blast the captain with barely enough room for the steel spike to trace over his plate. A backhand slaps the probing blade away, but a second Word Bearer squeezes between him and the wall.

Darting low, the Colchisian grips Marr by the bracer and forces his arm up, combat blade posed to strike. With an audible growl, Marr tries to shove down as the second tries to hold him still.

"Marr!" Vipus pulls away, hacking in a wide arc with his power axe, chopping the blade down on the word bearers vambracer and cleaving through ceramite and flesh in an instant. The limb hits the floor a moment later.

A weight slams into Vipus's back, driving the off-balance sergeant to his knees as a Word Bearer grapples with him. The fight swiftly turns into a snarling scrum so close that even blades were awkward and unwieldly.

Loken's chainsword sweeps low, seeking opportune limbs and gaps in armor before he could leverage his other hand to let the scything teeth bite. Two legionnaires pile into him, a third emerging from around the corner and crashing into Marr.

"How many of them are there?!" Vipus snarls and flings an elbow back, crashing into a helmet visor as fingers seek out the ring of his own neck seal.

"Enough!" Marr snarls as he forces the tip of the blade down and slams into his opponent's thigh. It splits wide open with the tinny cry of external vox amps, but it was a short victory. Marr was already in trouble, fumbling for his combat blade while keeping a hold on the bayonetted bolter seeking to end him.

The stamp of armored boots said nothing, but Loken could hear a few pops of static and a rumbling growl.

'-poorly for thirty or forty rebels. And you're not dead yet?'

It's followed by a more jovial laugh.

'Sorry to disappoint you. They got closer than most, if that's any consolation.'

There was a reply, something that hiccuped and burbled beyond sense, just in time for fingers to pry into his neck seal and wrench his helmet off.

Loken's eyes adjust to the dim fume laden hall. His opponent's blue armorglass lenses blaze in the darkness just inches from his own. And it slams forward, headbutting him back with a crack of broken cartilage. Blood streams down Loken's face as his nose bursts and teeth crack.

Reeling back, Loken draws in a sharp breath. With a hoarse snort, he spits blood and acid from the betchers glad into his opponent's face, blinding the Word Bearer. The Colchisian warrior reflexively lets one hand go, reaching to wipe his lenses clear.

Loken's chainsword sweeps up in an instant, shredding the forearm grasping him by the collar. A kick to the inside of his knee sends the Colchisian to the ground, and a sharp boot sends him tumbling onto his back. The second legionnaire swings a bolter to pulp his skull, only for it to crack off Loken's shoulder when he turns sharply and shoves his weight against the legionnaire. It slams him against the wall, power pack whining as he urges it to lend him even more strength. He struggles to grip the bolter and turn it, centimetre by agonizing centimetre the two struggle to turn the weapon on one another before a black shape looms over them both.

A massive gauntlet reaches over, seizing the Colchisian by the helmet, and with a single flex, crushes his skull in a slurry of powdered ceramite and bloody meat.

The spasming body slumps against the wall as another massive form brushes by his back with an amplified roar. The obsidian giant swings a chainfist upwards, driving it through one of the Word Bearers grappling with Marr and lifts the struggling legionnaire off the ground. A chattering scream of combi-bolter shells dismembers another from centimetres away, spewing scraps of ruined flesh across the wall.

But Loken was spun about on his feet, coming face to face with an avatar of rage incarnate. Ezekyle Abaddon. His top knot swung like a gory red fetish plume, face saturnine and spiteful with a menacing snarl of perpetually bared teeth. Stepping even closer to let more of his Justarian file through, he looms over the fellow captain, nearly pinning him to the very wall he'd struggled against seconds earlier.

"Loken, you rotted bastard!" His howls in Loken's face, spittle flecking across the captain's blood slicked cheek. "Just what did you think you were doing?! Do you have any idea what danger you put the Lupercal in?!" The spittle laced roar was loud enough to permanently deafen a mortal man.

Face still streaming blood, Loken looks up through sweat blurred eyes, "We had to do something, it's a damned fane, Ezekyle! He won't be the same, they were trying-"

"Trying to save him!" Abaddon snarls.

Loken takes in a breath through his broken face, pressing his chest out to challenge the captain despite the enormous power differential just from the terminator plate, let alone Abaddon's enormous physique.

Loken was about to spit out a reply when another voice beat him to it. "Damn it, look around you Ezekyle!" Marr grasps the First captain by the shoulder, but even his genhanced might couldn't pull the First Captain off Loken. "You can't be this blind! Sober up from your blood rage for five seconds and tell me how Word Bearers got freely into this fane without being seen? How are they supporting heretic priests? Where is Erebus? This is a set up, Ezekyle!"

Finally, Abaddon rounds on Marr, confronting him and letting Loken get some breathing room. "Don't say my name like you've earned it, Marr! This is Mourneval business!"

A short cough and displeased grumble draws their attention as the Justarian's combi-bolters crackle like sheets of tearing fabric as they round the corner in an unbroken spear of obsidian and gold. Torgaddon and his three wounded troopers shuffle behind a Justarian wielding a multi-melta. "Then I think I should be here for this vote, but where's Little Horus?"

Abaddon sucks the spit from his cheek and glares at the grinning face of Torgaddon. "Taking the front door."

"Don't you think we should go meet him in the front foyer?" Torgaddon uses his chainbladed bolter to gesture forward.

Abaddon snorts and grasps Loken before the captain can protest. The oversized power fist clamps down on his cuirass and squeeze with a threatening crack. "Oh no, I'm damned well taking you back out the way we came. And you will beg Erebus to make this right! You are not-"

"Where is he?" Marr chokes out, his helmet's vox amp turning the growl threatening. "I don't see your sorcererous little fri-"

Abaddon's immense two handed blade flicks up, crossing over Marr's throat, though the captain's stance remains unchanged. Defiant. The First Captain's lips curl into a bestial snarl, "Final warning, Marr. Shut. Up."

"Tybalt brings up a good question, where exactly is Erebus? You haven't seen him, have you?" Torgaddon staggers up next to Marr, getting Abaddon's ire to shift.

"I am First Captain, Tarik. And you are pushing my patience to its limit. Get back to the Storm Eagle." he tilts his head and makes a small tilting gesture of his chin to say 'get'.

"Damn it, Captain Abaddon." Marr growls and reaches to wrench his helmet off. The two were both True Sons of Horus, their resemblance to the Warmaster uncanny. But while Abaddon was still a rage-flecked avatar of wrath, Tybalt Marr's cold glare was just as unwavering. "If you're going to threaten to kill me, then say it and be quick about it. But look around you! We were ambushed and lost legionnaires. We fought our way through slop, and slime, and the mutant scum. We are here to see our Commander! So why are Word Bearers here at all when they wouldn't even let YOU inside!"

Abaddon stares, green eyes searching Marr for something. The First Captain looks around at the fallen of the XVIIth legion and then to Loken and Torgaddon. But it was Vipus who rose using the wall as a support. Through gritted teeth, the sergeant takes a ragged breath, "First Captain Abaddon, sir. The Word Bearers fired first, sir."

Abaddon fixes the line sergeant the same penetrating glare as the others. Nero Vipus merely stiffens, battle plate soaked in blood and torn to ruin by bolter shells. "They fired first, without warning." he nods and remains at attention.

"It's true, Ezekyle." Torgaddon chips in and nods, "Did a sloppy job of it, but they did."

The First Captain's silence was deafening. "Come here." he finally says, letting Loken go and pointing his warblade back up the hall.

"But-" Marr protests only to be shushed by Torgaddon who gives a weak grin.

The senior captain mouths, 'hold on.' He follows the First Captain back down the run without protest.

Loken bobs his head to the broken but defiant remainder of squad Locasta. The knot of soldiers follows behind until they re-emerged into the first chamber. Abaddon looks at the other seven and points to the still form of Basek laying lifeless on the stone floor.

"Swear on him." Abaddon looks at the others with a stony glare. Abaddon continues, "Swear on the life and death of one of our own that the Word Bearers drew legion blood first. Swear on it!"

Perhaps uncharacteristically, Torgaddon stiffens and his almost omni-present smile shifts to an impassive mien expected of legionnaires. "On my oath as captain of the second company, my honor as one of the Mourneval, as Commander Horus Lupercal's Legionnaire until death, I do declare in the presence of my brothers: the Word Bearers betrayed our bonds of friendship and murdered one of us. They killed one of the Sons of Horus, through no mistake, but intentional murder. I swear this: the Word Bearers fired first."

Catching on quickly, Loken pressed his hand to his chest in salute, "On my oath as captain of the tenth company, my honor as one of the Mourneval, loyal to the Lupercal and Emperor, both, I do declare in the presence of my brothers: the Word Bearers fired first."

One after another, the remaining members of the strike team make the same oath as a stony faced Abaddon watches them each. The First Captain waits until the very end and lets the final words die in the silence.

Abaddon bites his cheek and looks at Loken before confronting him first. "If I find out you're lying to me, Garviel, being Mourneval won't save you." Turning to look at Torgaddon he keeps the same level glare, "The blood of every legionnaire is now on your head. Everyone that dies is from your making." He snorts like a bull and lowers his voice to the rumble of a landslide, "And if the Lupercal dies-" he jams the unenergized claw of his power fist hard into Loken's cuirass to shove him back,"so do you."

Turning on his heel, the lumbering giant shoves his way forward and upwards through the hall. Abaddon's clipped voice crackles over the vox set, "Kibre. Keep pushing the advance. Link with fifth, any message from seventeenth legion officers or Erebus goes straight to me. Understand?"

"Narrow thing there, eh Garvi?" Torgaddon slaps his friends shoulder and looks back and forth before gesturing Marr towards himself. The rest of the group returns to the site of the scuffle wordlessly. Marr drags his sword free from the pinned Word Bearer that one of the Justarian had dispatched in a flurry of combi-bolter shells while Loken stoops to pick up his helmet. He'd left it there to at least give himself an excuse to go back.

Once it was on, Torgaddon opens a private channel between the three captains, "Garvi, Abaddon said something I didn't much care for."

With a click, Loken affixed his neck seal and then stooped again to fetch a fallen bolter. "What's that?"

Torgaddon's whisper was almost confused, "When he first found us, he said we were doing pretty poorly for killing only thirty or forty rebels."

"There were a whole lot more than thirty or forty damned hostiles, Tarik. A lot more." Loken nods as Nero and the rest of Locasta gathers to swiftly strip the fallen Word Bearers of spare magazines and grenades. Marr glances backwards but disappears right behind the spearhead of Justarian terminators.

"I know, but he couldn't have been that far off counting bodies... where'd they go? Garvi, Nero... keep your head on your shoulders. I've got a bad feeling about this." With a slap on his shoulder to cover up the awkward exchange, he hustles around the corner to follow Marr.

The hallway grows more narrow and curves downward. The group's mighty footfalls blotted out the noise earlier, but now the slow rising wail of discordant voices buzz in the stifled incense laden air. Cloying scents of fragrant sandalwood and bitter myrrh mingle with the rotten meat stink of ginko and salt laden odor of unwashed bodies.

But above it all is a steady thrum, a seismic pulse rippling through the stone floor from the foundations upwards. It shivers through boots and more than once caused Loken's remaining teeth to chatter.

They could follow the hallway, feel it headed inwards, and almost by magic, they had turned a corner and saw it opened up into a towering chamber replete with tiered steps and titanic pillars reaching into dark corners of the towering citadel spires.

They had stumbled into the neos, the temple's last bastion.

Concentric circles of fetish hung polls stood from unhallowed circles carved into floors with ancient script that hurt the eyes. Sickly murals on free standing monoliths jut from the ground. Bonfires and profane rituals of cavorting bodies dot the open halls, showing milling masses of near-humans and ab-humans of every conceivable shape and size in their thousands.

And above them all, scores of grey wraiths. The towering bulk of grey armored warriors stand on stair tops and among gatherings of prostrate warrior cabals, seemingly at random though each at the head of their own congregations spread around the wide semi circle dais around the neos as large as a mustering stadium. Eight stairwells converge on a single towering edifice, a carved door illuminated by the hellish glow of the bonfires: an eight pointed star. Atop the steps stands a grey-clad astartes officer surrounded by his cadre of chosen warriors, draped in red and as solemn as a a storm.

"First Captain Abaddon," Kal Belekar's sonorous voice rolls through the cavern like thunder, "I fear you have made a grave mistake. Lay down your arms."


The Delphos priestess strides forward through the stinking puddles surrounding the Lupercal. Luna turns, one dead wing tucked to her side and the other fanned out in a wide-threat display.

"YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIM!" she screams, voice booming in the enclosure, rippling through the waves of magic spilling through small tears and rips as dreams met reality. "Sunset, try-"

"Already on it!" Sunset darts over, crossing the distance with a leap and trying to surmount the stone plinth. With an 'oof' her lower body collides with the edge, driving the breath from her lungs as the priestess looms up over Luna, the ray of moonlight lancing through the half-there spectral figure with no apparent effect.

Sunset reaches down, her horn pressing to the bald pate of the man. There's a static crackle and a flash of pain like a spike of feedback driven into the Unicorn's skull.

She howls wordless pain but presses through as the spell tries to take effect.


'You are alone'

'Your progeny will leave you for your eldest just as you abandoned your father's side. You are nothing but a footnote in a dead millennium. You are a mistake, a byword for misery that will be only mentioned in what you have ruined.'

'You are alone'

'It is what you deserve, Sedecium. Your name was given, your title was given, but you are nothing more than a tool on the tray for your father's use, just like Secundus and Undecium before you. You relented and abandoned their memory because your so-called uncle threatened you once upon a time.'

'You are alone.'

'Sedecium you are, and nothing more. Not the first, nor the last, but a mere number. Sixteen. Horus Lupercal is a lie. You live a lie. And for it, you are cursed.'

'You are alone.'

'Struggle, yes, struggle when you know the truth. No one will come to help you. Why fight when the end is a foregone conclusion? Just stay still and play your part, Sedecium. It is all you have ever done from Cthonia to Ullinor.'

'You live alone, and you will die alone. Screaming at what you have done when the final light goes out.'

Flashes of painful light spring unbound to Sunset's eyes as the echoing chamber of filthy nipping voices fade into the darkness.

Great ships sweep into the starry heavens, pinpricks of light and slender silvered daggers that slip past view through a craggy maw of steel and shattered glass. The hellish underworld around her bubbles and belches smoke and cinders out into the pale solemness of space. She can feel the stone beneath her hooves like an infernal oven staring out the window to some better world.

And she felt alone... she felt alone despite the clanging fires of industry and huddled morass of humanity that lurked in rags within the deep pits and sheltered corners of the latticework of pipes and metal that gnawed at the worlds rotted core.

It took a long moment to realize the shadow that fell on her. Sunset turns back, glimpsing the form seated on a craggy metal spar draped in padded cloth and a few metal plates. He was tall, enormous even, but silhouetted by the night, she could see pale skin and tangles of short curly black hair as he turns his golden gaze to the ships silently drifting through the moonlight. He stares into the abyss, and what feels like an eternity of solemn airs melts with a single hand held out to reach for the stars.

'You usually ask for a starscape. It's not difficult, but why do you like them so much?' A voice intones, familiar for once. Luna's upbeat tempo rings in Sunset's ears, and she thought for just a second, she glimpsed silver sparks hovering next to the seated man.

He smiles, the voice coming from nowhere and everywhere, 'isn't it enough that I like your stars?'

The Alicorn's voice rings out in a thoughtfulness, 'Yes. But I'm still curious.'

This time, the voice was a whisper. The man's smile falters as the fleet of silver vessels spark, giving life to flickering fireflies that drift through the heavens towards them. 'I could lie and say that it's because father promised them to me. But in truth, it's because when I looked up in the night sky, I felt like I belonged.'

A golden flash, a shattered memory, kneeling before the a shimmering sun god. She heard the swell of voices, the rising chant that broke the void and shook the gates of Antarkates.

'Lupercal, Lupercal, Lupercal!'

Standing among lesser men, poised among equals that would never be. A blade of authority held to the trembling sky, where silvered ships in numbers uncountable, spin past as glittering flecks while the tide of humanity knelt to him and saluted by the glittering warrior giants clad in pearl armor.

A god.

Unmatched. Unparalleled. Unequaled.

Alone but for the sound of his own name. A name bestowed.

Horus, the master of wolves.

A long trestle table stretches before him in a marble dining hall so close to Canterlot Castle's it evokes a sense of homesickness in the Unicorn. She sees the long resin waxed surface glittering with inlaid gold and onyx, white robed figures seated around it in comfortable conversation.

Horus himself spoke to dignitaries dressed in velvet and silk the likes that would make Rarity swoon. And despite the deep and amiable smile crossing the Lupercal's freshly shaven face, she saw his eyes dart to the side towards one empty chair. And part of her knows the wound is still fresh. The grin was forced just a little too wide as the golden plates of his eyes dull in the glint of the mid day sun. The whisper on the wind says 'my noble Sejanus', among whom he was master and equal in the same breath.

Fleeting memories of something, of a sliver of the moon and diamonds on a dark sea. Something tried to swallow them up. Something ate at her, and howled in the setting ocean. Some monolithic creature arises from the depth, pouring red waters down over the bow of an ancient sailing ship. Its silhouette glows as a massive horned daemon without certain form and of immense stature, rises from the deep. The collapsing waves wash her from the vessel, tossing her over the side with a single careless flick. She spots the lightning flash illuminate the figure of a man and...


"I can't!" Sunset's voice echoes blearily just an instant after Luna heard her slam into the stone table. But it was distinct and ragged, "It's there but I can't get at it!"

Luna turns, the priestess looming up and over them all in the cave. Sunset's grip falters as she slumps from the stone table, scrambling weakly as her hindlegs give out.

The midnight blue Alicorn turns, a serpentine voice rooting around in her head as Discord's voice bubbles up from its depth.

'Symbolism is important here.'

She takes an uncertain breath, "Stars above."

The sleeping prince, the evil witch come to claim his heart. The valorous princess...

And that flash of fear disappears as raises her upper half up on the plinth next to the demigod. His hands at his side, the shadow at her back. And all she could see was the alabaster flesh, marred with two wounds on his chest and side.

"Please, wake up."

Her head dips and her lips find his. They were cold, still. And the Alicorn's eyes start to close. A single rhythmic beat of a dual heart entwined and what feels like a sucking inhalation that steals the breath from her lungs.

Golden eyes flutter open wide one second, and narrow to pinpricks in the next as Luna finds her reflection played out in his own. His lips form a smile...

'Oh wait, that's more of scowl... huh, that's not the face of a happy stallion.'

With the speed beggaring belief, the Alicorn saw him tense his arm and slide his elbow up in a short wind up as he clenches his fist.

'O-oh... oh buck.'


Akshub closes in, hands on the stone dagger as she stands at the Lupercal's side with the flickering monstrosity crouched almost protectively over him. With a snort, the Davinite priestess raises the blade over her head. With a final smirk hidden by the primitive mask, she brings the ancient ritual blade down.

The blood of a primarch, the death of a god-

His eyes snap open and his fist hurtles into mid air like a rolling mountain. With a sickening 'crack' she hears no more. Her congregation watches as the wooden mask folds around his fist and the head snaps back, ripping from her shoulders and spinning across the room to smash against the far wall like a rotten pumpkin.

The music, the chanting, even the fires seem to stop as her headless corpse spasms and flops down and the sacrificial dagger clatters from nerveless hands.

And the Demi god splutters in a hacking cough, hauling himself up in his white burial sheet and looking around the chambers like a wild animal while wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"LUNA?! LUNA, WHERE ARE YOU?! COME BACK HERE AND FACE ME YOU CRETINOUS LITTLE WHORSE!"