Solomon Demeter stared at Julius Kaesoron, cloaked in sadness.
The First Captain was the same as always - helmeted, large-headed, powersword gripped tightly in decorated gauntlets. Though his face was hidden, the helm - as always - showing only holes for nutrient tubes, Demeter could sense Kaesoron's own sadness through the ceramite.
"Why did you do it, Kaesoron?" Demeter asked. "Really. I don't want to hear it from the Phoenician - I want to hear it from you."
"Slaanesh," the former First Captain replied. "It is a god of evil."
"How can this be evil?"
"How can you not see the evil in this?"
Demeter nodded, permeated with the epic origin, and drew his own sword. "Well, this is a fitting place for the final duel, at least."
The Emperor's Children stood several meters apart, on a rooftop in the approach to Spire Alpha. This was a sub-spire's tip; to Demeter's front and left, the bulk of the main spire rose, a titanic monument to the Ultramarines that would soon fill it. It disappeared into the mist that filled everything in the spire's vicinity.
"For Fulgrim," Demeter said, wondering how Kaesoron would answer.
"I turned you onto this path," Kaesoron said, "didn't I?" He took a look around, as if checking for daemons. "Well, let's begin. For humanity!"
Julius Kaesoron charged, and the swords clashed, sending lightning into the fog above. Demeter cut below, but Kaesoron jumped to avoid it, then went forward in an attack Demeter barely blocked.
Electric potential rippled around the two Captains as they fought, some of the best blades ever forged on Chemos ringing against each other. Neither could gain a decisive advantage, but Kaesoron was a smidgeon more aggressive, and he pushed Demeter towards the spire's brink.
Demeter fought back, twisting his powersword to the sides. The lightning was visible once again, confined, yet furious. The first raindrops fell onto Solomon Demeter, Second Captain of the Emperor's Children, sizzling across his blade's surface. Recognizing he was approaching the edge, Demeter leapt right, and the Emperor's Children began to circle.
A bird creaked overhead as it soared, a soft sound almost lost among the patter of the raindrops. Demeter tilted his head, taking in the wonder of a lifeform existing in this high-altitude air.
"They nest on the Hive walls," Demeter stated, even as Kaesoron lunged and the Second Captain had to knock aside another assault. "We can't do that."
"Do you want to?"
"Yes."
"Then do it, and leave the rest of us alone!"
Kaesoron struck high, and Demeter felt the wind on his wet hair despite deflecting the strike. He responded by an attack at the traitorous First Captain's neck, but that, too, barely missed upon Kaesoron's reaction. The dance continued, microscopic specks of sword lost in the rain's vastness.
Violet met violet, and then Demeter barely sidestepped a strike that would have crushed his head if not for Fabius Bile's modifications. Kaesoron followed up, and in a moment drew first blood, cutting into Demeter's left arm. Then he pushed the Second Captain further yet, to the brink of the great tower.
"We need no gods," Julius Kaesoron said as he struck left; Demeter matched the feint, and a moment later, the lord of the Lions of Chemos kicked the Second Captain off Spire Alpha-sub-53.
Lightning enveloped Solomon Demeter's body. A storm erupted, even as he grasped for support; but it was not death, oddly enough. It was life. Thunder raged through the Second Captain's ears as he fell.
Moments later, it had ended, and Solomon Demeter was hanging attached to a window, several floors below the spire's tip. He was positioned spider-like, and the wind - or something - was jerking him, though his hands stuck fast to polished glass.
This was impossible - glorious, but impossible.
In any case, Solomon Demeter had a fight to finish. He kicked the window broken, then swung into the apartment. It was empty - unfortunate, as any inhabitants would have been worthy dedications to Slaanesh, but fortunate for those very inhabitants. The Second Captain charged into the room's exit, taking the time to sketch the sigil of Slaanesh on the door with his blade. An instinctive action, and Demeter was not sure what he would conclude if he contemplated it.
This was the conclusion - the tragic fall, either his or Julius Kaesoron's. As Solomon Demeter charged up the stairs, he considered this, the image of dusk etched within his mind. He kicked open the wooden door at the stairs' tip, exiting onto the roof, only to see that Julius Kaesoron had no plan for a decision here.
The treacherous First Captain was gone, likely picked up by a gunship or other transport. Solomon Demeter was left alone.
He screamed his denial to the sky, and any birds that cared to listen, as the storm gathered around him. Kaesoron would not have killed him; Demeter was confident that, the second time, he would have held his own.
He considered the image, in his mind, as it would look from the side; the Space Marine, screaming at the heavens, on a square grey roof lodged in the slopes of a manmade mountain. It made for a nice image, though a bit too grim for Demeter's tastes - there was, after all, always tomorrow for Kaesoron, and always eternity for Slaanesh.
For the second time, Solomon Demeter descended from the rooftop, this time in the conventional matter. He felt a buzzing in his brain; he was disoriented, definitely, though still prepared to fight if he had to. The stairway circled around him as he stepped, slowly, through the utilitarian well.
Then he sped up, first to a jog, then a dash, shaking off both disorientation and doubt. Steps careened past Solomon Demeter, as well as mildly drab doors. Those, the residents had decorated, though without much artistic talent; if anything, the barren stairwell was better-looking. Yet the doors twinkled, nevertheless, a sign of life.
Demeter rammed through those doors, one by one. There was a different story behind each one. Some rooms were empty; on one subfloor, the entire wing was gone. Others were full. The girl Demeter had hung out of a window (a theoretically unbreakable window) while carving the Legion symbol into her flesh, the family that had been forced to sing his glory as their vocal cords were readjusted, the dozens of men and women that had simply had their hair cut in a pleasing pattern… it was difficult to focus on the sculptures individually, really. Sometimes Demeter skipped several floors, either out of absent-mindedness or because of a lack of time.
Sentry guns fired, in some places, but their placement was predictable. After the first two had stripped his left pauldron and slightly injured that shoulder, Demeter was able to take them out from afar, with weapons such as table legs. He tracked his Company, too - the Squads were scattered across Carenn, many quite far from the fighting.
More than once, Demeter recognized that he was maiming and even killing innocent civilians - they hadn't personally made the decision to rebel, after all. Was he turning into a son of Konrad Curze? More than once, though, Demeter recognized, with horror, that he no longer cared. More than once, he noted that the sons of the Night Haunter tortured and executed out of hate. Demeter was doing it out of love.
More than once, Solomon Demeter came to the conclusion that the Night Lords inflicted pain on their enemies, though - unlike Demeter - artlessly, but to themselves granted neither that pain nor pleasure. They acted, sometimes, in the service of Slaanesh; but in the end they desired order.
Demeter's primal urge, and primal pressure, was for Chaos, and for chaos.
He saw artwork on the wall sometimes, murals of city life. It was laughably inspiring, created to please the overlords of Ultramar. One had to go to Underhives to see true expression.
Solomon Demeter carved a path of destruction through the corridors of Spire Alpha-sub-53. Some humans dared to resist his art, but though brave, their defiance was useless. Others ran, joining the general evacuation; none were fast enough. He danced, gliding down through these domains of the once-powerful, spreading the word of Slaanesh, ever moving forward, even as his sides felt like they were being crushed with a phantom pressure - but a Space Marine advanced only faster through such pain.
Gaius Caphen met him in the stairwell, fully armed but radiating concern.
"Brother-Captain!" he said. "Rejoin the fight!"
"What do you think I'm doing?"
Caphen roared in frustration. "You're tormenting the civilian population! The Ultramarines are that way!" He pointed, too, as if the Second Captain didn't know.
"We're fighting Carenn, not the Ultramarines!" Almost unconsciously, Solomon Demeter began to circle his second.
"We're fighting the Ultramarines. Which is tragic, I know, but-"
"But beautiful?"
Caphen grunted. "But necessary."
"For the Emperor and Slaanesh. But that is not my duty. I'm fighting for life with death, Caphen. How can you not understand?"
"I understand! I understand you're not half the Marine you once were. I understand you've lost track of what we're fighting for. I understand that you'll be confusing pain and pleasure - "
"There's nothing to confuse!"
"I understand," Caphen said, "that you - have - gone - insane! Come to, Brother-Captain. Please."
He was right, too. This was madness - that was the pressure in Demeter's mind, madness. Why was Demeter still listening without action?
No matter - this was a problem easy to fix.
Lightning-fast, aided by the feet Fabius Bile had enhanced, Solomon Demeter leapt forward. Simultaneously, he drew his powersword. Caphen didn't have time to understand what was going on as Solomon Demeter brought his blade, lengthwise, to his second's throat and pushed, even as the pressure built up to his head.
He let it out by driving the sword forward, forward. It was all too brief, but Gaius Caphen did not deserve a long or glorious death. Demeter had promoted him out of respect for his bureaucratic competence, but the Emperor's Legion had for a long time been no Legion for bureaucrats.
Caphen's head still seemed attached to his body, for a moment, before it rolled to the Hive floor. It bounced twice before coming to rest. There was a lot of blood, but not too much. The pressure behind Solomon Demeter's half-dead eyes was still there, still strong - too strong….
It exploded.
Lightning flew arcs around the stairwell. An evacuee who didn't realize his companion on this path stuck his head in, only for it to stretch as by a black hole. Light faded, except for around the discharge.
Physics was forgotten; the lightning raced around itself as a sentient being. Time moved slowly- or was it simply gravity that slowed Demeter's attempts to lift his limbs? It was hard to tell, as the pressure inside the Second Captain's mind spilled outward in a tide of madness.
The lights were dead, and Demeter knew that this effect was unlikely to be limited to this room. There would be a mass blackout, changing all sorts of essences.
It would be delicious.
Slaanesh was a god of pain and pleasure, life via death, electricity imitating gravity. Demeter felt, hoped, that this was the god's power - perhaps he was wrong, perhaps he had simply been a latent psyker, but that didn't explain anything. He had been tested, more than once, by the Librarium - back when there had still been a Librarium. Nothing suspicious then - nothing even mildly out of the ordinary.
It had been staring at the Warp, unprotected, that had done it. He had already been sworn to Fulgrim's path, though then he did not yet understand it; and gazing into the depths of the primordial truth had been sufficient to invite a spark of it to remain within his consciousness.
The evacuee from above was toppling on the stairs, seized by shaking; he was quite clearly dead, body ruined by Solomon Demeter's power. There was a malevolent gleam in his lifeless eyes, a smile that seemed to welcome darkness onto the Second Captain - no.
No!
The pressure was not gone, not quite. It had merely transformed, a heartbeat becoming a heart. The fullness of Slaanesh in the impossible and wonderful beyond, the fullness that Caphen had rejected. And Demeter had killed Caphen...
No. He had desired to follow the path of Slaanesh; but what he had been doing, so far, was merely being pushed in its vague direction by the gales of Warp-whim. And that aimlessness had led him to kill Caphen, even as he had realized his second-in-command spoke truly. There was a time when that knowledge would have cracked Demeter's mind, opened it to Slaanesh's most erratic faces once more.
But this time, Demeter only smiled at the past. Buffeted wrongly, losing his self - that was death through life. Not life through death. But he was still alive.
With a pull of pure willpower that shattered the pressure by swaying it to the side, Demeter snuffed out the nascent presence, wrapping it with his mind, sending ethereal waves of lightning into it. It… shifted. The daemon - if it was a daemon - disappeared, but passed a violet-pink spark into the weakened consciousness of the Ultramar human.
The eyes focused.
"Where… am… I…" the corpse asked.
Solomon Demeter grinned, then rushed into the wall. He flew, lightning fading around him, through the space around the spires. He still had no idea how this was possible, but he knew it didn't matter. He was a psyker; he had the power. And with the new equilibrium he had reached with his patron deity, it was power of Slaanesh, but it was not Slaanesh's - it was his.
The aura of lightning gave out as Demeter crashed into a window of the primary Spire Alpha. Guns immediately swiveled to face him.
A glimmer passed through the III Legionnaire's eyes, a glimmer of a struggle settled and a soul reborn.
"Begin," he said.
