III

"Var?"

The full moon is glaring down upon him – yet Echoderia is no longer illuminating the night with her soft pale light; the satellite has been transfigured into a huge swollen eye, blood-red and baleful like –

– the Eye of Horus looming triumphantly over him as the Talons crush his wings and he is dashed to the deck ruined and broken looking up into the warp-lit eyes of the one he had cherished above all others but the Warmaster only smiles mockingly at his pain and so with a surge of fury he forces his body to rise and hurls himself once more at the unholy vessel his brother has become –

"Var!"

Something solid and heavy strikes Varsoreth upside the head and the cavernous bridge of the Vengeful Spirit dissipates from his mind's eye as he slips through time from one nightmarish reality and into another. He blinks confusedly. Kasvo stands before him, fangs bared in anger; the neophyte has torn off the Chaplain's skull-helm and hit him with it hard enough to draw blood from his temple. Two more Lost Ones are each clinging to Varsoreth's arms, preventing him from attacking their alpha with their own formidable gene-forged strength.

"Not time for bad dreams, Var!" Kasvo cries, casting the helmet aside and revving his chainsword to screaming life. "All must fight! Chaos is come!"

"Release me – now," Varsoreth gasps raggedly, stifling the urge to kill them all for their temerity. The young Space Marines let go and draw back; the Chaplain staggers unsteadily to his feet, his armour's servo-joints snarling in protest. A new world unfolds before his horrified eyes. "No." The plea escapes him before he can fully master himself. He stretches out a hand as if he can halt the annihilation of all he has endeavored to safeguard throughout the lonely years of his bitter exile through sheer effort of will. "No."

The Defile is filling with blood. Raging rivers of vitae rush through its canyons and gullies before converging and spilling into the valley in a rising vermillion flood. The Tower of the Lost Ones is slowly being submerged; impossibly, Varsoreth can hear the deranged cries of the neophytes imprisoned within as the carmine tide engulfs the stronghold's base and surges against the walls. A torrent of crimson rain begins to fall, drenching all of Homneria in the liquid detritus of a galactic slaughter. The rich coppery reek is overwhelming. Like a maddened beast the Thirst thrashes in the cage of Varsoreth's self-control as the blood-rain drenches his exposed face. The Charnel Blade begins to salivate uncontrollably, his canines aching as they lengthen. Dread grips his hearts and he turns away – he must not succumb, not again, not when damnation lies so close.

"Is it not glorious, Varsoreth? Is it not breathtaking? It is not what you truly desire? Rejoice, for now is the hour of rending and bloodletting; now is the time of battle unceasing and of slaughter unending!"

At the sound of the daemon-lord's proclamation the whole ridgeline quakes and the stones split. Blood wells up from the cracks and fissures as if Homneria herself has been mortally wounded. Varsoreth looks skyward, eyes slitted against the downpour. Above him churns a shifting expanse of roiling clouds the colour of butchered meat. The stars are gone. Hell seethes in their stead – a vast warp-rift has been torn in the fabric of realspace and the horrors of the empyrean are spilling into the material realm in a cataclysmic tide of destruction and madness. Loathsome half-formed daemonic visages leer down at the Chaplain from the boiling tempest before dissipating only to be replaced by others more horrific still. Agony lances into the Space Marine's skull and his mind reels at the infernal onslaught. Then fury fills him – the righteous fury of an Angel betrayed. No. This will not stand – not while I yet draw breath…

"Show yourself, Neverborn!" Varsoreth roars as he draws Retribution, his relic bolt-pistol and activates his crozius' energy field, channeling his fury into his ancient staff of office. "I stand against you! In the name of the Emperor of Man and the Angel Sanguinius I deny you this world! Depart! Crawl back to the Skull Throne and report to your master he will find no welcome here!"

The daemon's contemptuous laugh all but sunders the stricken heavens. Spears of multihued lightning strike at pinnacles of rock all about the Defile; dismayed the Lost Ones bunch together, growling threateningly at enemies they sense but cannot yet see. The cosmic stench of the warp assails Varsoreth, bringing bile to the back of his throat. "Only you, Chaplain?" the unseen Neverborn mocks as the rain of blood increases. "Where are your battle-brothers, those proud angels in red and black? The last time we met two full-strength companies stood alongside you. Why are you now so alone?"

"I am not alone, Chaos-filth," Varsoreth retorts as a defiant Kasvo takes his place alongside him, the neophyte's scarred skin now dyed a bright crimson. The Chaplain has no hope of outside reinforcement or extraction. The entire mustered strength of his brotherhood has long since departed for the Baal System, led by Chapter Master Sarova Kyrosavor himself, heeding the summons of Lord Commander Dante. Only a token garrison remains to hold the Charnel Blades' fortress monastery in the frigid snowy regions to the far north. Varsoreth knows the venerable bastion must be under assault by the daemon lord's minions – his remaining battle-brothers cannot aid him even had they wished to. So be it then, Father – your grace will be sufficient for the task.

"So, this is your reward for all your years of loyal service: to play nursemaid to your Chapter's genetic rejects – a lifetime of selfless sacrifice undone by a single death. How the mighty have fallen! Your brothers could not wait to wash their hands of you once you had surrendered to your innate hungers. Your primarch's curse festers within you like a poison that cannot be excised. What a perfect monster you are!"

The daemon laughs again, this time in knowing relish and Varsoreth staggers as if struck by a thunderhammer, unwelcome memories invading his thoughts – memories of PDF Captain Regina Hammiel struggling helplessly in his grip as he tore open her throat and drank his fill while the hive-city of Kastermar burned around them. "Let the beast dwell with the beasts," Reclusiarch Nikovac had proclaimed during the final verdict as Varsoreth knelt before a tribunal of Sanguinary Priests and his brother Chaplains, their condemning stares searing his soul. Lifelong exile from the main body of the Chapter had been decreed, for the Tower of the Lost Ones had been in need of a new warden. Not even Baal's desperate plight had been justification enough for his return. Yet his brethren had been right to leave him behind. The taste of Rell's lifeblood lingers still-savoured upon his tongue – proof indeed that beasts should dwell with beasts.

"My sin of self-indulgence was abhorrent and my brothers' judgment just," Varsoreth snarls, refusing to allow the shameful recollections to weaken his resolve. "Do not seek to turn me against my Chapter, daemon-spawn. The bane-gifts of our gene-sire are ours to bear, not yours to exploit."

"You succumbed to the Thirst once, Varsoreth, to your own disgrace – then you succumbed again, with the boy. Your weakling primarch may have taught his sons to differentiate between the blood of the guilty and the blood of the innocent, yet my master cares not from whence the blood flows, so long as it flows. You are more a true son to him then you are to the Slaughtered Angel. Blood is all you want, Varsoreth, and blood is all you care to want. So it is with your entire accursed gene-line. You know this in your hearts. Why struggle against a hunger you can never hope to overcome? Pledge your soul to Khorne and the blood of the galaxy shall be yours!"

Insidious visions assail Vorsoreth – glimpses of the future awaiting him should he renounce his oaths to the Emperor and Sanguinius. He sees himself slaughtering the Lost Ones in a whirlwind of violence before kneeling and offering the daemon-lord Kasvo's severed head as a show of fealty….

"You have already murdered the degenerate by-blows in your hearts time and again! Claim their skulls and free yourself from the strangling chain of servitude that binds you!"

He beholds himself imbued with the Blood God's infernal fury and boundless strength, standing victorious within the fortress-monastery's Grand Reclusiam, his uplifted hands red and dripping with the vitae of the Charnel Blades garrison force, the mangled remains of his slain battle-brothers piled upon the profaned high alter…

"Your own brotherhood exiled you to live out your days amongst subhuman beasts! Why not remind them what it truly means to be one – for who amongst them knows better then you?"

Drums beat. Blades clash. The innumerable armies of Khorne muster beneath bleeding skies, preparing to sweep across the galaxy in an unopposable tide of carnage and conquest. Varsoreth fights at the forefront of one great host, drenched in gore and bellowing praises to the Skull Throne with each swing of his crozius as his foes break before his onslaught, free at last to slake his bloodlust for all eternity untroubled by restraint or guilt…

"For there is only war!" the daemon-lord roars in empyric exaltation as the Chaplain falls to his knees, frothing at the mouth and gnashing his teeth, the alluring promises of everlasting battle and bloodshed in Khorne's name causing the angel and the beast bound within the very fiber of his genetic lifecode to contest for the dominion of his soul. "There is only blood for the Blood God! Only skulls for the Skull Throne! The stars will drown in the blood of the Anathema's dying Imperium! It has already begun! I shall conquer this planet and refashion it into a daemon-world worthy of the eternal glory of Khorne! Bow down to me, Varsoreth, and I will raise you up as its new lord!"

Blood is all Varsoreth can see; all he can smell; all he can taste. Blood rains down upon his armoured form; blood flows from his worsening wounds; blood seeps up through the rents and splits in the rocks beneath him. His homeworld is being remade by the corrupting defilement of Chaos. A full-scale daemonic incursion is immanent. The galaxy is screaming. His battle-brothers are dying. The Thirst is rising, clawing at his sanity and eating away at his defenses like a corrosive acid. A despairing moan escapes him – the hunger, the pain and the shame entwine and become as one within his hearts. Varsoreth weeps, and blood taints his tears. Oh Father, why have you forsaken me…

Then a firm hand grips the Chaplain's pauldron and pulls him to his feet – the clawed hand of a creature who is both a beast and a brother. "We defy you!" Kasvo cries, brandishing his chainsword challengingly at the seething hellscape above; behind him the seven Lost Ones roar and howl in support of their alpha. "We are sons of Great Angel! We are brothers!" the bloodsoaked neophyte proclaims proudly. "We defy you for-ever, Never-born! Come fight us!"

"So be it! Let angel strive against daemon for the delight of the Blood God!"

And in a tide of teeth and talons and bloodthirsty blades the daemons of Khorne descend upon them.