II. COUSINS
A true warrior does not waste words. His foe is another matter, though.
'Every Blood Angel must die,' the creature snarls. 'Even one like you.'
Ignoring the taunt, Leonid Verrano masterly wields his force spear. Blood splatters on the boulders and rocks all around. Snowflakes fall from the night sky of the unnamed planetoid, settling in droplets on the fighters' armour then condensing into steam. A trivial episode of the galaxy-wide confrontation on the scale of eternity, and yet one full of deep meaning.
They fight alone – two Space Marines having lost the way to their respective legions through different causes yet inexorably drawn into the same fratricide as everybody else. Two warriors, exemplary, once-famed. A Luna Wolf +no, not a Luna Wolf, they are the Sons of Horus now+ dispatched with his altered company to the Throneworld itself ahead of the main offence, to capture a location whose importance might surpass even the Imperial Palace in many respects – and stranded on that path, just another soul marooned on the byroads of the greatest conflict in humankind's memory but playing a part in it like all the rest, irrespective of their initial goals. And, defying him – a Son of Sanguinius; a Librarian banished long ago with several of his closest kin for a thing their minds proved too stubborn to erase: a friendship with those rejected by their own Maker, fate and history.
That's what they had both become: outcasts, pariahs, forgotten by their own brethren and, seemingly, by the very existence. Cousins long separated by the implacable force of destiny and the choices of their genefathers.
But Leonid Verrano remembers. Despite everything he had been through, everything he'd witnessed along this immensely treacherous way, he remembers.
Scars and burns cover his angelic, once-beautiful face framed by ringlets of golden hair. The bloodred lacquer on his armour had flaked off to near-bare ceramite over time. The golden halo crowning his psychic hood broke off decades ago. His entire squad had perished. And yet he remains, having survived for long enough to behold the time when the Imperium of Man ceased to be what it had been supposed to and is now about to vanish in the greatest of storms beside which everything done by the two misguided primarchs in another age is a mere trifle. The whole known past has faded and lost value against the backdrop of the present.
During his exile Verrano had seen entire civilisations and star clusters annihilated by the great betrayal. He'd visited worlds on the farthest galactic periphery where isolated nations lived in blissful ignorance of the Imperium and the catastrophic war now tearing its foundations apart, and he had envied those people.
Where are his proud brothers now? Scattered across the void, fighting at the approaches to the Sol System, defending the gates of Terra alongside the other still-faithful? How many of them yet remain? Thousands, hundreds, scores, none at all? Impossible to know this far away from the Guiding Light, even provided that it still exists, even for a psyker of his talent.
The Son of Horus is magnificent, a warrior supreme. A legionary of the only primarch glorified above his peers by the Emperor Himself – and now something much more than a legionary. Something horrible. Its blade-claws move so fast that even the Librarian has to fall on the defensive.
With his true sight, Leonid sees its muzzle under the plumaged bronze-and-verdigris helm: distorted by an unholy bond with a fiend of the warp, thin pale lips drawn into a fixed, fanged grin. Its eyes and helm-lenses glow ruby red. The Librarian can feel its foul breath, reeking of ash and raw meat. He can sense what goes for its thoughts, where only carnage, gore and thirst for vengeance reign. He knows that the possessed legionary's name is Marrek Sartha; knows that this name is false and yet the rightest one it has ever borne.
It snarls again, louder, the sound utterly bestial, and rushes him, lightning-fast. Any other Astartes would have already lost to such a foe. Yet Leonid Verrano is more experienced. By far.
Contemptuous of its unceasing attacks, the old Terran swirls his weapon, rotating the force spear two-handed, and it clangs against the monster's warplate, again, again, chipping and breaking the surface and opening the desecrated flesh beneath, weaving the melody of battle from a series of blade strikes and crackling sparks of energy. None can hear these chords except the duellers themselves, but it matters not. Such is the Blood Angels' role: not only to fight and kill, but also to create – something better, nobler, – and Verrano will be the composer of the song marking this creature's demise.
By no means shall the lot of the two affect the outcome of the wider warfare, but come what may, Leonid Verrano still has a duty, a destiny, an honour. He lives to serve, and he serves to inspire.
Even now. Especially now.
Because, one way or another, he must return.