The first blast decimated Retrigan's cover in a dome of fire and displaced soil that sent the once-raptor sprawling out across the street. He groaned, initially too stunned to get his limbs to obey his mental commands.
Across the way, he watched as Gyrthemar had somehow managed to get in close enough to begin slaughtering Ferric Sentries with his spear. His movements and stance betrayed his utter glee at the activity. Well, at least one of them was having fun.
But more kept coming. Gyrthemar had perhaps already killed three of the ten members of the squad, and the rest were beginning to regard him with far more tact. They began to surround him, staying out of reach and firing their bolters at him or striking with close combat weapons from behind whenever there was an opening. It was only a matter of time before he became too overwhelmed.
Groggily, Retrigan's arms finally began to work again and he forced himself up onto his hands. Strange, he'd expected another shot from the Repulser Executioner to come and finish him off, but the second blast never ca–
Metallic stomping rapidly approached him.
Retrigan immediately rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a chainsword to the spine. Metallic teeth ground against rockcrete as the charging Ferric Sentry repositioned and flowed into another strike. Retrigan unsheathed his lightning claws with a Snk! He managed to parry the attack with one claw, causing the blade to glance off his leg, while his other hand thrust forward at his enemy's chest. It bit through the armor, the smell of burning flesh and ruptured organs leaking through the wound as the Astartes collapsed.
Looking down, he saw the hit to his greaves was superficial and hadn't even broken through the plating. He allowed himself a small smile as he looked at his fallen foe with his punctured chest. They just didn't make armor like they used to anymore.
The mirth quickly faded from him as he looked up to see his brother thoroughly battered and outmatched. More importantly, however, Retrigan realized no other Astartes were coming to challenge him—which left him a wide open target for the Repulsor Executioner.
He watched as the main cannon began to glow as it charged up the shot that would kill him. There wasn't anything Retrigan could do about it. He didn't have anymore cover or the alacrity to reach it if there were. All that he could do was stare down the enormous barrel of glowing plasma and wait for it to incinerate him completely.
Most would have closed their eyes and waited for oblivion. Retrigan did not. He wanted to see the exact moment that his soul transitioned from this life and into hell so that he knew that he had arrived.
He didn't expect it to be pleasant.
The plasma cannon's glow reached its ultimate climax, ready to spew forth burning death. It had begun to rain, the droplets sizzling and steaming as they fell within a foot of the superheated barrel.
Then the light died completely, snuffed out like a candle. Retrigan watched as the tank then began to shudder and spark, arcs of violet electricity crawling across its surface. The machine let out a shrill, metallic screech. It almost sounded like it was in pain.
That was when Retrigan heard the singing.
A dark, baritone voice boomed out across the clearing, chanting out litanies in a language that was entirely incomprehensible to the once-raptor's corporeal ears. A chill went up his spine and he turned to look behind him to see a large shadow approaching in the rain. Even the Ferric Sentries had ceased their fight with Gyrthemar to watch in confusion.
A Night Lord aboard his helstalker, the corpse of the Fifty-first Company's visionary strapped to the side of its hull via chains, emerged from the darkness.
The lord discordant stopped in place and ceased his chanting for the moment. He hefted the shaft of his chainglaive and pointed it directly at the Ferric Sentries.
"I," he said, voice cold and firm, "am Pyotr Kravis, the Revenant of Nostramo. And your agony will be mine."
The rain had become a downpour, making it difficult to see.
Despite that, the Sorcerer of Stars watched the battlefield with a serene expression. The Ferric Sentries had won much ground throughout the conflict and were steadily pushing their way deeper into the city. Many lives had been lost and the scale had long since been tipped by the weight of the Night Lord and Carnage Stitcher corpses as opposed to their Imperial counterparts. It was, simply, a doomed battle.
But not for them.
"Is it time yet?" Zasharr growled from beside the sorcerer. He smiled in response.
"Yes."
"Good." The mad apothecary shoved his way past the Sorcerer of Stars, then looked back to glare at him one final time. "I have lost many brothers this day, Zseron. Know that there will be repayment for such death."
The sorcerer nodded in acknowledgement but said nothing further as he suppressed his smile from growing wider. The berzerker surgeon amused him in ways that were dangerous to admit aloud in his presence.
Zasharr lifted his chainsword into the air. Immediately, the motor of the blade began to belch a deep red fire that was too dark, too much the color of blood, to be natural. It spread, fully encompassing the weapon and its wielder's fist. If the fire burned, Zasharr did not show it.
The Sorcerer of Stars watched as the fire seemed to reshape the blade, causing it to grow larger, more brutal. Where the leader of the Carnage Stitchers once held a common chainsword, he now held a glorious, two-handed eviscerator that churned with daemon fire licking down the blade's side with hooked teeth that were no longer metal but bonelike fangs that were reminiscent of those belonging to the dragons in Ancient Terran myths.
Zasharr roared into the rain. His men roared back, the call echoing across the battlefield in a rallying cry.
The sorcerer returned his attention to the city. All throughout it, midnight blue drop pods sat scattered around the forces at war. Most were still closed tight, implying their nature as a decoy. Six had landed in the heart of Equinox Secundus in a near-circular pattern by happenstance. The entire bulk of the Ferric Sentries' army had, in their push for ground against their enemies, found themselves within the perimeter and fully encircled by those six pods. Also entirely by happenstance.
At least, that is what they would have thought if any at all had noticed the odd placements. So overwhelmed with their wrath and games for glory, though, the Sorcerer of Stars knew that none of them had.
The six drop pods opened at Zasharr's call. The nearest one's bulkhead doors fell open with a solemn crash. Then the first creature within emerged.
An Astartes in grey power armor stepped out onto the battlefield, bearing the heraldry of the Ferric Sentries. He clutched at his head, writhing in torment from the pain engine that had forcibly been attached to his skull. A malevolent apparatus of a vibrant red alchemical concoction created personally by the mad apothecary sat affixed to the warrior's power pack and was pumped into his bloodstream through injector tubes that burrowed into his neck and forearms that would further heighten his fury and strength.
Four other Astartes of the same affliction clambered their way out of the pod. They grappled with themselves for a moment, but were eventually consumed by the bloodthirst and rage forced upon them and charged the nearest living entity with frothing mouths and wild eyes. The sorcerer knew that the same would be happening with the other five drop pods.
The Ferric Sentries stood stunned for a moment as their own brothers charged into them and began to tear them apart limb from limb with khornate chainweaponry. The shock was short-lived as return fire began, but it still did its job flawlessly. The butchery had begun.
Zasharr roared again and thundered into battle, joining the nearest squad of broken loyalists. His daemonic weapon pulsed, seeming to both bolster the converted marines and cow them to not strike out against their master.
The Sorcerer of Stars watched this all as the rain fell. The Night Lords were aware of this stage of the plan. They knew to give Zasharr's creations space so that they would not become a target, but to still press the advantage. They would be able to continue this assault for a few more hours yet.
Looking down at his stave, the sorcerer admitted that he itched to join the battle, as well. But his role as overseer was not yet complete. He must be ready for when he was needed—and he would be. He could feel the tides of fate shifting. His role would be vital, but not particularly glorious.
That honor would go to the Revenant.
Naduvion was, much to his surprise, still alive.
It did not mean much, as he found himself unable to move and gasping for each breath. He continued to live more out of stubborn willpower than any of his internal organs working as they properly should. It would have been simpler just to let himself drift off to oblivion, but he resisted for reasons he could not necessarily pin down. Perhaps spite, perhaps pride. It did not matter much.
He was dimly aware that Dreeve had managed to crawl his way back behind cover as the Ferric Sentries halted their volley to reload their bolters. That meant the next series of shells would go solely into him. And there was not enough willpower in the galaxy to survive from that.
So Naduvion closed his eyes. Internally, he seethed. Not from his brothers' betrayal. No, that was to be expected. In fact, he may have even done the same thing to the right brother. Instead, he felt outraged that he would die never completing the perfect work of art. It was right at the edge of his grasp, always fleeting. If only he had had just a bit more time.
Bolters clicked as their magazines were primed. Time was up.
He heard the first salvo echo through the wind and rain. Naduvion braced himself for pain, his mind too blood-starved to realize that he would have felt the latter before he heard the former. Regardless, though, pain never came.
Opening his eyes, Naduvion saw a blasted fortification before him, blood spattered across the metal as corpses limply laid across it. In the air, several kilometers ahead, he saw a dark gunship making a turning maneuver as if it had flown past and was on its way back for a return course.
"Throne in flames, I leave the three of you alone for five minutes and you go and nearly get yourselves killed," Yenash said over the vox.
"Eat my bolter muzzle, coward," Griegor spat.
"Yes, yes, you're welcome." The thunderhawk touched down directly on top of the Ferric Sentry fortification, crushing it and several buildings around it in the alleyway. "Now hurry aboard before Naduvion bleeds out."
Naduvion attempted to speak, but his vocal cords and lips felt too weak to make even the softest of noises. Moments later, he felt a hand grip him by the back of the gorget and begin dragging him towards the thunderhawk.
"Apologies, brother," Dreeve said, looking down at him as he limped alongside Naduvion. The only response he was able to give was a wheezing laugh as he was delivered towards salvation.
Artemis would have been dead if not for the unstable stones under the Astartes's feet. The warrior fired just as his footing shifted, causing his shot to go wide. The shell exploding mere inches from her head shocked Artemis out of her stunned paralysis.
With a fluid motion, Artemis drew the stub revolver from the holster at her side and aimed it at the warrior.
Five bullets. She would need all of them to slay the giant. And if she missed…
Artemis brought her other hand up to hold the firearm. She wouldn't miss.
The first three shots were fired in quick succession. Each one cracked across the Sentry's helmet just above the brow. First, a web of cracks formed. Then, the ceramite chipped. The third bullet broke off a piece entirely, revealing a shard of the marine's face. A strong, sculpted face with one, baleful eye glaring out at her.
Artemis fired her fourth shot.
And missed.
Her breath caught as the bullet bounced harmlessly off of the Ferric Sentry's pauldron. She felt her hands begin to shake.
Failure. You failure! a voice within her hissed.
The Astartes shoved his way past the debris, stomping his way toward her and Jep. He began to lift his bolt pistol.
She still had one bullet left.
It doesn't matter. You'll just fail again.
She had to try.
Why? You needed all five. Pyotr said as much.
She… She…
All the pain, all the grief, all her miserable incompetence thrummed inside her like a heartbeat pumping poison into her soul. This was all her fault. She had caused this because she'd dared to hope. Every ounce of misery that had befallen her had been caused by her own, red-stained hands.
Artemis screamed as she pulled the trigger.
And the world shattered around her.
A new one quickly came in to replace it. The shapes and surroundings were the exact same as the one she knew. Only, they were made up entirely of grey motes, each one connected to each other by faint strands of light.
Time seemed to move at a near-frozen pace in this world. Artemis watched as the bullet inched its way out of the barrel of her gun. She marveled at it all.
What… What was this?
The motes suddenly seemed to buzz and thrum, the cords binding them pulling taut. Artemis didn't know what to make of it all, but somehow, instinctively, she knew that her bullet was going to miss again. The binding connections she saw weren't just what were, but also what could be. And the one leading from her bullet did not connect to the Ferric Sentry, but the stone rubble just over his shoulder.
This should have brought Artemis more sorrow. Instead, she felt… curious.
Artemis reached out to that line of possibility. Not with physical hands, but with a sense of… control that she didn't quite understand. She grasped onto it, holding the delicate strand as if it were spider silk. Then, she gently nudged it, watching as the line shifted as the bullet's trajectory was altered. She changed possibility until it fit her design. She wasn't sure how she was doing it, only that she was.
Reality snapped back into place the moment that she finished.
Everything happened all at once. The bullet, the gunshot, the impact. Then an Astartes collapsing to the ground, a round, bloody hole just above his eye. Artemis couldn't help but stare, her mouth agape.
"You… you killed him," she distantly heard Jep say.
But Artemis wasn't thinking about that—at least, not quite. She wasn't even thinking about that strange world she'd entered. Instead, she was thinking about the fact that she'd only needed four shots.
Pyotr had lied.
The taste of iron on her lips shook her out of her daze. Artemis brought a hand up to her mouth and it came back bloody. It was only then that she realized that her nose was bleeding.
As she turned back to Jep, the man took a tentative step back, his expression… was startled. Why was he scared of her? What did she do?
I… Artemis blinked. I killed an Astartes…
But how? The memory was already becoming blurry. Another world of lights and lines? That… had to be some kind of trauma-induced hallucination.
Right?
"We need to move," she said.
Jep blinked a few times, then nodded. "Can the system take us out of the city?"
"No," Artemis sighed, wiping away more blood as she began to walk. "But it can take us to one of the warband's planned evacuation points."
"We're… going back?" Jep asked, a quiver in his voice.
Artemis felt her shoulders drop and she glanced at her friend. "We don't have any other choice, Jep. It's this or the bolter."
There was a long pause before his response came. "Okay," he said. "Lead the way."
Pyotr felt—he felt—excitement course through his veins as he watched the Ferric Sentries flinch away from him—the augments beneath their armor twitching at his presence alone.
His grin broadened, but his attention was quickly pulled back from the Repulser Executioner tank as it began to recover from his litanies of corruption that he had ceased chanting in order to announce his arrival. He resumed them, watching in glee as the war machine once again began to writhe and whimper like a cowed pup.
It had been so long since he'd spoken the words of torment, used the tones of machine flensing. He hadn't realized he had forgotten them until they had returned to him mere minutes ago.
The litanies. How could he have forgotten the litanies?
Pyotr gripped Tzimiti's reins and gave the command to charge. In that moment, he became Death.
The helstalker bound forward with eager hunger toward the Imperial tank, and Pyotr swung once with his chainglaive as he sailed past the brother of his that was being harried by the slaves of the Corpse-God. Four heads fell from their torsos. Gyrthemar cheered, and dove back into the fight as the rest of the Ferric Sentry squad came to their senses and began to counter assault. Pyotr did not see, but sensed the gnashing of Retrigan's boltgun as he gave fire support to his brother.
Tzimiti was upon the Repulser Executioner in seconds, leaping into the air to land atop the machine. It managed to fight through the torment to fire a single shot at Pyotr and his daemon engine—and missed horribly.
Serrated metal limbs sank into the hull of the Repulser Executioner, latching on, and the tank had no choice but to wail in despair a Tzimiti thrust the needle of its techno-virus injector into the vehicle's chassis and pump it with the debilitating scrapcode that would flay it from the inside. The following screams from both the operator within and the machine spirit itself was music to Pyotr's ears.
"Thank you," he said, letting out a rapturous sigh, "for the gift of your misery."
The tank began to bleed. Crevices and fractures spread across its hull from the techno-virus running rampant through its system, leaking red-black ichor that steamed in the air and caused the metal to begin glowing red-hot.
This did not seem to bother Tzimiti, who plunged its mandibles into the machine and began to drink greedily from the motive force itself, stealing it so that its energy could bolster and strengthen his daemonic soul further. As it did, the tank's metal plating began to rust over and become brittle, collapsing and falling apart as it was consumed.
Pyotr watched and listened with metamechanical senses as the machine spirit wept, shrinking away until there was nothing more than a frail spark of a divine soul. Then even that was gone.
When the deed was done, Pyotr turned to face his brothers—who had just finished expunging the last remainders of the squad they fought with Retrigan plunging the talons of his lightning claws into the chest of a dying Sentry.
"Brother!" Gyrthemar cried, arms spreading in a gesture of elation. "You live!"
"I do," Pyotr responded, surprised at the emotional inflection in his voice. He could not possibly be happy to see Gyrthemar, could he?
"You seem… different," Retrigan said, glancing at Pyotr warily.
The lord discordant nodded. "I have rejected She Who Thirsts. I am… myself again."
Tense silence filled the air for several moments. The once-raptor recognized Pyotr's freedom from the Ruinous Powers, but he was still a devotee of the Warp, using it to fuel his warpsmithing capabilities. Despite that, Retrigan stepped forth and offered his hand up to Pyotr. "It is good to have you back, brother."
Pyotr hesitated, then clasped forearms with his fellow Night Lord and nodded.
"Anras did not make it, I see," Gyrthemar pointed out, poking the visionary's corpse that was chained to Tzimiti's flank with his spear. "I can't help but be overjoyed."
Pyotr snorted. "Let us be on our way. The plan continues as–"
"PYOTR!" a voice bellowed through the rain, echoing across the dense city. Pyotr felt his muscles tense and his hearts quicken.
Him.
Retrigan frantically looked in the direction the voice came from, then back at Pyotr. "Brother, no! We cannot afford this fight! Leave him!"
"FACE ME, HERETIK!"
Fabrinus was out there, searching for him. He had a debt to collect. As did Pyotr.
In a daze, Pyotr felt himself pull on Tzimiti's reins so that the daemon engine turned its body in the direction of Lavitor Fabrinus's screams.
"Think of Anras, Pyotr! His geneseed is too valuable to be lost!" Retrigan pled.
"Yes… valuable…" Pyotr agreed, not really listening. "Take his body to Zseron. I will join you once the matter is dealt with."
He lifted the reins to urge Tzimiti onward, but was stopped by a soft blow to the back of the head. Had that been… a rock?
"Dammit! Listen to me, you self-righteous bastard!" Retrigan growled. Pyotr blinked, then turned to look at his brother. "You cannot keep doing this! Time and time again you face that chapter master alone, and time and time again you come back closer to death than you had the previous encounter! Let it go, damn you!"
"SHOW YOURSELF, COWARD!"
Pyotr's jaw worked as he stared at his brother, who glared at him through ruby eyes. Gyrthemar stepped up beside Retrigan, the wolf-killer's posture… apprehensive.
"Do not do this, brother," Gyrthemar agreed.
Slowly, Pyotr's head turned to face the horizon, Lavitor's voice echoing in the distance. As it faded, he glanced down at the limp body that was strung across his steed's side. Then, finally, he looked once more at his brothers. Had he not just learned that he could not let his emotions rule him any longer? Had he not been taught a lesson?
But would the chapter master not continue to hunt him to the ends of the galaxy until one of them finally fell? Would ending him not keep his brothers safe?
Pyotr closed his eyes, expression pained as he heard Lavitor call out for vengeance and blood yet again.
He had a decision to make. And knew what he must do.
Lavitor Fabrinus found him in a crumbling amphitheater.
The heretik sat on the stump of a collapsed marble pillar, hand idling resting on the haft of his chainglaive as he waited. Other, more whole, columns flanked him on either side, the lot of them outlining the shape and size of the stage that stood before a half-circle of stadium seating. A fitting place for a final duel, Lavitor supposed.
"There you are, filth," he snarled. Cercopes, riding atop the techmarine's shoulder, bore his fangs and howled at the heretik.
"Here I am," Pyotr drawled slowly, not rising from his seat.
"You have been hiding from me."
The heretik chuckled. "The city is in the midst of a battle, Lavitor. Where would I hide?"
The chapter master of the Ferric Sentries stalked forward, omnissian axe in one hand, grav-pistol in the other. "I am eager to expunge your stench from this existence."
"Do you not grow tired repeating the same doddering mantras?"
Lavitor sneered. "You only live because the Omnissiah blinked back on Exodus Station. No such timely intervention will happen today."
Pyotr said nothing, but Lavitor held the disturbing sense that he was smiling behind that helmet. "I hope you are ready," he finally said.
Lavitor's cheek twitched in outrage. He lifted his axe and pointed the head at Pyotr in challenge. "Let us end this, traitor!"
"Agreed," Pyotr said. "Lavitor Fabrinus…" The heretik rose to his feet. As he did, two figures emerged from behind the pillars on either side of him. One held a spear that did not belong to him, the other with claws extending from his arms that crackled with blue electric currents.
"…We have come for you," Sixth Claw said in unison.