Planetfall, Plus Nine Hundred Forty-Seven Hours Terran Sidereal
The pile of skulls hurt to look at. Taller than a Marine and cleaned, flensed, and gleaming, the skull pyramid spoke to what the World Eaters had been gathering heads for. Nex didn't know why they did this. He'd seen other similar pyramids assembled by Angron's Legion – ruins of them, too. Loyalist survivors were striking them. The hit and fade pattern indicated Raven Guard tactics; he supposed he should feel some kind of relief or pride.
Currently, all Nex felt was a dull ache behind his eyeballs, like throbbing pressure against his skull. He'd never gotten so close to one before. His retinal display flickered and danced with static as he stared at the skull pyramid a quarter kilometer away. He… tasted blood. Like a mist on his tongue. His hands clenched unconsciously and he stopped himself from drawing Melchar's pistols. A hot spike of adrenaline drove through his brain; he needed to spill blood. Tear flesh apart, coat his fists in it, watch it spatter upon the ground.
Blood. Blood for the-
He'd already risen from his crouch and taken two steps towards the pyramid before he realized what he was doing. This… this was new, disturbing. He'd never experienced such loss of control. The realization perturbed Nex like few things ever had before.
He forced himself back down to a crouch in the late Isstvan afternoon, breath coming in rapid gasps. No gunfire, no shouts. Nex looked away from the skulls, forcing it out of focus. He stared instead at the Astartes forms surrounding it. Blood and gore coated their armor in such thick layers he couldn't tell which Legion they belonged to. All the while the pyramid's presence clawed at his head like some ethereal parasite. He didn't understand how the pillar could cause such a reaction. Was this one unique? Did all Astartes feel this way near them?
Nex started moving again, crossing the cracked and blasted ground in a quick crawl. The pyramid stood at the apex of a low hill, catching the fading light; it somehow seemed to cast a red glow. A trick of the eye: it must be. He pulled himself along from shadow to shadow, careful not to stare too long at the flensed pyramid. He needed to destroy it. Armor husks still littered the ground, Legion sigils and colors obscured by the thick layers of ash that had been fallen in the battle's aftermath. The pressure in his head increased as he drew closer. His heart raced, screaming for him to kill and rend tear and…
Chanting. He heard chanting now, in some language he didn't recognize but sent spikes of pain and hatred through him. Nex crawled closer; such activity wasn't the norm for World Eaters. Finally he got close enough for a better view. It was a joint group: gore-spattered white armor among stormy gray plate.
Word Bearers. They were the ones doing the chanting. Not the only ones, he realized as he crept closer. The World Eaters chanted too, low atavistic growls barely recognizable in Gothic.
"Blood for the blood god blood for the blood god blood for the blood god…"
He barely stopped himself from leaping up and running in to rend and hew and tear and- No. Another look: four Word Bearers and four World Eaters, clustered before the gruesome fane. One of the Word Bearers held a tome of some kind, reading aloud from it. Swirling Colchisian script decorated his armor from pauldrons to greaves. First target.
The World Eaters clutched bloody chainaxes, banging the teeth across their chests. They gunned the motors in rhythmic spurts; Nex crawled a meter closer every time the shrieking growls filled the air. He could taste the blood again, thick on his tongue now. Feel the drizzle of it on his skin. He-
Had stood up and walked the last steps towards the pyramid.
The Word Bearer with the book lowered it as he noticed Nex's presence. His shaved scalp gleamed with more runic script that twisted and warped as he grinned mockingly. "Come to join us, brother?"
The World Eaters turned towards him as well. Feverish eyes and glowing lens stared at him. Their stillness was not that of the Word Bearer's smug confidence but the tension of a wolf pack sighting their prey.
"The blood god marks your soul," the Word Bearer continued. "Come, slake your devotion to the true pantheon and-"
Nex's plasma bolt burst his head in a splash of vapor. The two World Eaters on either side of him died next, simultaneous plasma shots slicing through ceramite armor without resistance. Nex kept shooting; he pressed triggers as each hand ambidextrously guided a pistol. The other Word Bearers died seemingly without noticing him, still kneeling before the skull structure. The three never stopped chanting even as plasma bolts punctured lungs and spines.
The World Eaters lunged forward, axes ready. One went down to a plasma round that sheared the left half of his skull away. The other staggered when a plasma bolt burned through his chest but kept coming. The bellowing Legionary collided with Nex, knocking one pistol away. Nex deflected a chainaxe stroke with his empty hand, then went over as the World Eater bore him to the ground.
He nudged his head aside from a blow; the axe crunched into the rock beside him, sent a spray of shards bouncing off his helmet. The traitor Legionary hammered a fist into Nex's faceplate, spittle flying from his bare head. He was close enough that Nex could see the jagged veins protruding from his forehead. Too close for a plasma shot. The pistol vibrated in his grip anyways, pulsing its overheat warning from constant use and-
Overheat.
Nex wrestled his hand free, brought the pistol up between them. Steam poured from the exhaust vents just behind the muzzle. Turning his hand, Nex pressed the red-hot muzzle into the World Eater's eye.
Not even a Legionary could ignore such a thing. Blood hissed and evaporated as the muzzle burned into flesh. Yelling in pain and rage, the World Eater's grip loosened slightly – just enough. Nex curled a leg up, planted his boot in the other Legionary's gut, and kicked out. The World Eater left a scrap of flesh seared to the pistol muzzle as he staggered backwards.
Nex extended the plasma pistol; temperature warnings flared in his retinal display as he discharged the weapon across his body. The son of Angron sank to his knees, a second gaping hole melted through his breastplate. The chainaxe slipped to the ground with a clatter from unresponsive fingers.
Pulse hammering in his ears, Kaedes swept forward, intent on seizing the chainaxe. Melchar's plasma pistol fell forgotten to the ground. He would split the World Eater's skull, grind the teeth through bone and brain, tear skin and flesh from wet osseous and renduntilthebloodflowedandpouredand-
Nex stopped, then pulled the power dagger he'd taken from the Alpha Legionnaire. He stepped in, swept around behind the gasping World Eater, and took hold of the lolling head. Vivid flashes of spraying blood and adding another skull to the pyramid filled Nex's vision-
He punched the dagger forward into the base of the wounded Legionary's skull, severing the cervical vertebrae. Kaedes grimaced as he withdrew the dagger and released the corpse, forcing himself not to carve the body to pieces. The pounding in his head grew stronger; rage crept in like water from cracks in a dam.
Pulling himself away from the corpses, Kaedes retrieved Melchar's fallen pistols. Strangely the feverish bloodlust diminished as he did so, just enough to barely think clearly again. He looked down at the customized weapons – and saw something he'd never noticed before. Melchar had modified the already-custom shroud cowls covering the radiating coils. He'd carved aquila symbols into the thick metal heat sinks. Only the Third Legion had held the right to bear to bear the Emperor's symbol upon their heraldry, but that evidently hadn't stopped Thayon from marking his own gear.
Nex moved warily back towards the corpses, breathing shallowly and rapidly. He collected frag and krak grenades, fighting the urge to collect skulls as he did so. Approaching the skull structure felt like walking into a plasma reactor. The skulls… Nex couldn't shake the feeling that the skulls were somehow staring at him. Working quickly, he shoved grenades into the base of the pyramid. Each contact through his gauntlets felt like plunging his fist into- hot, flowing blood.
The Blood-Crow popped the ignition lever on the last krak grenade and tossed it into the pile, then turned away and started running. Twenty meters away the munitions detonated with a series of rippling cracks. He felt the pyramid collapse; not physically but with a snap in his mind like the overpressure from a thermobaric weapon. The driving, incessant bloodlust quieted down; the taste of blood vanished from his tongue and the pounding within his head eased away.
Nex kept running. Plasma fire was an unsubtle thing, as was a chain detonation of grenades. Hunter squads still prowled the Isstvan wilderness, seeking survivors from the loyalist Legions. No need to get caught.
He headed northwest. Out in the distance, far beyond where Horus had made his initial fortifications, swarmed lander ships of sizes and builds ranging from Legion Thunderhawks to Mechanicum Titan-barges. The sheer numbers rendered them visible from dozens of kilometers away; moving the gathered forces of seven Legions was no small undertaking. Nex had been heading towards the landing site for the better part of a day – or was it more? The continuing meteorological disruptions made it difficult to tell.
That way lay… he wasn't sure. Was it escape? The landing zone was almost certainly the only way off Isstvan V. And that was… optimistic. The site also ensured plentiful targets. Far more than he could take alone. Pure suicide.
The prospect held its own appeal, Nex realized. His Legion was destroyed, his Primarch's fate a mystery. Corax's last target designation to him had been broad: kill any traitors he encountered. There was no way he could do that now by himself. Not literally. What was it Corax had always said? The principle behind an order is even more important than the method with which it is executed. Understand the spirit of the law, and the letter will fall into place.
Corax had such strange ideas.
But he'd always been worth listening to.
Nex slipped into the shadows of rocky crevice as the whining hum of jetbikes sounded in the distance. He listened for a long moment, determined they were heading for the pyramid site. Not surprising. Nex held still, waiting for the patrol to move on. He thought about what the Legionnaires gathered around the skulls had been doing. Ritual and worship, proscribed under the Imperial Truth. As far as Nex knew, it said nothing about massacring fellow Legions. Perhaps it should have.
Jetbikes screamed past and scattered, dispersing into a standard search pattern heading east. Unsurprising: he still heard signs of fighting from that way, and it stood to reason few of the surviving loyalists would head towards the greatest gathering of the traitor Legions. Whatever remained of the three Legions caught in the Warmaster's trap were peeling away, drawing hunter packs and Angron's Legion out towards the wastelands beyond the Urgall Depression.
Nex waited for the sound of the engines to fade before resuming his trek towards the landing zone. He still heard the chants echoing in his head like – blades scraping bloody flesh from skulls – patterns of vox distortion. Blood god. Pantheon. Such foreign terms. When had Astartes turned to worship? The last time he'd encountered human expressions of faith had been…
Nearly a year ago. Kaedes had been prowling the lower decks of the Shadow of the Emperor: one of his routine exercises. Some of the others called it wraith-slipping. Kaedes called it moving. The darkness that so defined the Legion's preferred environment dominated the corridors and chambers of these decks. It was part Legion tradition, part practicality. When the massive Battle Barge engaged its reflex shields it needed to minimize every possible emission and the fewer unnecessary lights the quicker the transition.
Down in a transitory corridor running from generators to one of the lance broadsides, Nex moved from shadow to shadow, following the course of thick, shielded power cables running along from ceiling to deck. This was almost too easy; between going unarmored, the constant background hums and clatters of voidship operations, and the multiple nooks and crannies throughout the decks, Nex had made his way through the winding spaces without being noticed once.
He paused and froze instinctively as another sound joined the hum of the power cables. Voices – mortal voices from up ahead. Crew members, gathered under one of the rare puddles of light in this section. He crept onwards, listening. He'd been through this way dozens of times; there was no scheduled shift for this hour. Neither did the voices sound like a Mechanicum overseer directing a work group. It sounded like… a remembrancer gathering Corax had made him attend once. Nex drew closer, transhuman hearing picking out the chatter and augmented vision showing him the different uniform assortments present on the twenty-four people. These people came from assorted departments ranging from command staff to armory menials to army auxiliaries.
One older man wearing the uniform of crew support stood before the others, a battered pamphlet in his hands. "The Emperor of Mankind is the Light and the Way, and all his actions are for the benefit of mankind, which is his people. The Emperor is God and God is the Emperor, so it is taught in the Lectio Divinitatus, and above all things, the Emperor will protect..."
"The Emperor will protect," echoed the others.
Nex took a long moment to understand what he'd just witnessed: a secret gathering claiming to venerate the Emperor as divine. He started forward, silent and invisible as ever; only after four meters did he realize he'd drawn his ever-present knife with the intention of executing everybody up ahead.
He made it another three before remembering that Corax hadn't given him permission to kill them, and he'd given the Primarch his word about such "indiscriminate rampages." Two more steps and Nex stowed the blade away.
"Be at peace, brothers and sisters," said the one who appeared to be the leader. "That concludes this meeting. As ever, we'll get word to you when we have a time and place for the next one. Go, and know that the Emperor watches over you."
With that, the meeting began to disperse. Nex watched from the darkness; this group knew what they were doing. They left in small groups of twos or threes, staggered apart and in different directions heading for various access points. They left no physical evidence either, tucking pamphlets and prints into uniforms and pockets sewn into the inside of their clothing. Before long only the leader – the priest – remained, head bowed in a posture of devotion.
Nex never knew why he allowed himself to be discovered. He stepped out into the penumbra of the shadows, waiting as the man finished mumbling some last benedictions. The priest looked up – and recoiled at the sight of the pale specter staring at him with eyes of pitch black.
"Oh, God-Emperor," he whispered, crossing his hands before his chest. Nex noticed the resemblance to the aquila. "If you've come to kill me, then do it. Just know that you can kill neither our belief, nor the faith that strengthens us."
Nex said nothing, just stared at the man. The priest sighed and trembled after a moment, then backed away slowly from the motionless Astartes. He reached the edge of the light, then stiffened, turned, and walked away. Nex watched the whole time, hand on the knife hilt.
He listened as the priest's calm, measured footsteps eventually faded, then sheathed the blade. He should report it, tell the Primarch about the movement within his ranks. Corax would know what to do, would be true to the principles of the Imperial Truth.
Kaedes shrugged and kept walking.