A/N: Chap 48 review responses are in my forums. We're approaching the climax of the story. Thank you all for staying with me through these past few hundred thousand words.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Ubi Sedes Est Satanae Et Tenes
"What do you think about all this?"
Chief Scout Oan MKoll didn't bother looking at Heqta Jajjo. The Verghastite-born Ghost was one of Jada…Taylor Hebert's scratchers. He'd actually served as one of her scouts.
With the severity of their losses on Hagia, Mkoll decided to take the man out on a scouting run, just to see if he was a suitable candidate to help replenish the scouting corps. The forest around them had a different kind of dark to it than the strange place the Primarch led them through. This place was alive, like the nalwood forests back home. The trees didn't move, perhaps, but Mkoll could almost feel the density of the life around them, and saw some spore that made him think there were quite a few beasts in the woods meaner than him.
The boy's question hung heavily in the air. He was still new enough not to realize the point of scouting. He was still learning all the handsigns, and was obviously nervous in the strange place. That was a product of being a hiver. But though he was nervous, Jajjo did good keeping overwatch, and was able to spot things others missed.
He just needed to learn not to talk. "Not paid to think," Mkoll finally whispered.
"But…" Jajjo stumbled over the thoughts in his head, completely missing the point of the whisper. Failing anything profound, the young man said, "You know, she taught me how to shoot."
"She's had a while to learn," Mkoll said.
"How's that work?"
"Don't know. Don't matter. Take a sniff."
"I mean…what…what the gakking…?" To the boy's credit, his eyes widened. He stopped himself from talking and instead signed an interrogatory.
Mkoll raised and signed a threat, then motioned the direction. Jajjo immediately went on silent alert, lasrifle held at the ready. He at least knew that sign. The two men squatted down behind the thick, rotting trunk of a massive tree and slowly–making no further noise–began to squat-walk down the length of the obstruction toward the horrid, rancid smell that suddenly seemed to dominate the forest floor.
A pair of monsters squatted down in a rocky clearing, ripping some unspeakably huge animal apart and eating it with the loud sound of snapping bone and tearing flesh. Each monster stood nearly seven meters tall, with massive, simian builds but a head dominated by massive, teeth-ringed jaws framed by tentacles. The smell of them was worse than ten-day old corpses.
Mkoll quickly signed for a tactical retreat, but the monsters never had a chance to be a threat.
A figure of nightmare even to monsters stepped into the rocky clearing. Just looking at the newcomer caused Jajjo's eyes to begin seeping blood in the corners, and vomit spewed out of his mouth. Mkoll himself felt the need to be sick, and had to fight against vertigo and shortness of breath.
It was no man, though it carried a mostly human form, if one made massive in size. Oddly disturbing wings, almost like things of smoke and shadow, darkened the clearing from the newcomer's back. As he stepped into the clearing, the two trees on either side began collapsing in on themselves, as if their cores had rotted away entirely.
The two creatures, too stupid to recognize the threat, attacked. That's when the demonic creature wielded a scythe larger than Mkoll was. Though each monster was twice his size, one swipe of the blade cut both beasts in half. Immediately, the monsters began to decompose at an impossibly accelerated rate.
Mkoll's nose was bleeding. Jajjo had fallen. His eyes rolled up in his head and his whole body was convulsing. Mkoll wasn't sure why he hadn't fallen yet.
The monster answered. In a low voice that sounded like steel grating against stone, the monster spoke to him. You carry Her blessing. She has healed you. That will not save you from Silence.
Mkoll spun on his heel and ran. Almost immediately a bolter round struck and blasted a gaping hole out of the back of a tree inches away from his head. He ducked, rolled over a root and quickly found his footing again. Behind him, the demon prince laughed.
His vox bead remained silent; something was blocking his signal. Still he ran. He had to warn the colonel!
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The convoy made its way slowly toward the second shattered mountain, once known as Sanctuary. "I imagine it's a lot different than you remember," Telos said as they marched.
"The mountain was artificial, built thousands of years after I last visited, and then blown apart during the Heresy."
"You know, I've never had a good explanation of what this heresy was. Was it like a religious schism or something?"
Taylor considered their youngest self. The three of them walked closely together. El Johnson led from the front of the convoy, assuming command almost subconsciously. More importantly, all the men of Constantin's residual forces allowed him to do so. It was the nature of primarchs to lead. Behind them, Sister Cera walked just ahead of the Tanith, who had taken it upon themselves to serve as the Saint's ceremonial guard.
"So, the Emperor of Man crafted twenty beings he called his sons," Taylor said. "The Lion was just one of them."
"Twenty?" Sabbat sounded confused. "There were only…"
"Twenty," Taylor confirmed. "Horus Lupercal was the greatest of them. After the Emperor unified Terra, he launched a galactic crusade to unite all humans under a single banner. He made the Primarchs to help him do it. Things went great, until Horus and several of his brothers got the Chaos bug and rebelled. The civil war wiped out almost a quarter of the entire human race galaxy wide, more than half the population of Terra, and put the Emperor's mostly dead corpse on a giant psychic battery that serves as the compass for all FTL travel in the Warp."
Sabbat, having served as an Imperial Saint and led a crusade herself, stuttered. "No wonder the Inquisition wanted you dead," she muttered. "None of that is publicly known."
"It's been ten thousand years," Taylor said. "In our day, how much did we actually know about the ancient gods from before Olympus? From the time of Gilgamesh? I met Enkidu during my third lifetime, and he was ten thousand years older than dad was. The first gods walked, talked and lived among their people. What do we really know?"
The vox bead in her ear beeped twice–regiment-wide communications. "...plague marines inbound! Alert, plague marines inbound!"
Telos hearing was sensitive enough that she heard through Taylor's vox. "Plague marines are bad?"
"Very."
"How'd they find us so fast?"
"They already knew where we were," Sabbat said. "The demons couldn't follow easily, but plague marines are not purely of the Warp. They're fallen Astartes."
The announcement set a fire under the convoy. The Lion obviously heard because they could hear his shouted orders at the head of the convoy even from a quarter of a mile away. All of the vehicles sped up, and the soldiers began to jog toward the shattered mountain.
Gaunt reached them at a quick jog moments later. He had no questions–combat was one thing he needed no guidance on. "Beati, ladies, we're going to establish a perimeter against the Sanctuary mountain ahead. My scouts identified several defensible spots."
The horizon behind them darkened. Taylor saw the way the shadow moved, but Telos and Sabbat with their divine eyes saw the details. "Flies," Sabbat whispered in horror. "Taylor, it's not just the plague marines. I…"
"Colonel, we need to move, now!" Taylor gasped.
The order was given. The fast march turned into a full run, all up and down the caravan.
"So what do plague marines do?" Telos asked.
"Exactly what it sounds like," Taylor said. "They can wipe out a whole regiment without a single shot just using diseases. They're pledged to a chaos god of disease and decay."
Telos, for once, found no need to argue or make a snide comment. Ahead, the mechanized elements of Constantin's armor was already forming up along the sharp, artificial edge to the hollow, destroyed mountain. Soldiers were quickly climbing up to various points to build what fortifications they could in the brief time they had.
The enemy did not give them time.
The Demon Primarch came swooping down on wings of living shadow with a plume of green smoke that caused Constantin's soldiers to stagger away choking to death on a cloud of poison. A scythe as long as a Custodes swung with a flash that cut a Malcador-pattern tank almost in half. The machine immediately began to rust.
Three of Valdor's custodes attacked with their guardian spears. Winged astartes fell upon the demon with machine-like determination–no hint of human fear appeared on their beautiful, fanged faces.
One of the Custodes fell away, cloven into three pieces. But the other two got close enough to strike at the monster.
Telos started to charge in, only to stop when a golden gauntlet grabbed at her. "They fight to buy you time!" Constantin Valdor declared. "Go!"
"I'm not letting someone else fight and die for me!" Telos shouted back.
"Then we'll all die for nothing," Valdor said darkly. "I knew your father. He died so that my Master could fight the necessary battles. Your battle is not here, Telos!"
"But…"
"Is this any different than what dad did for us in Morocco?" Taylor's question cut through Telos' complaints.
She spun and glared, her wings flared in agitation. "And we hated it then!"
"But he was right," Taylor said. "And they're right, now. We have to go, if we're going to go at all!"
Winged Astartes and gold Custodes, while titans in their right, could not even as a group defeat a demon primarch. Mortarian, for who else could he be but the Lord of the Death Guard, cut them down one after the other before his bone-white eyes saw them. Soldiers who tried to get close enough to engage immediately paled or turned puce as illness took them to their knees.
Strangely, he concentrated not on Taylor, but Telos.
There is the one who befouled my master's garden. Come back with me, child, and we shall show you the delights of the garden!
Telos visibly shuddered. "Okay, right. You're right. We should run."
The demon primarch stepped forward, gripping his massive scythe, when one last warrior intervened.
"TRAITOR!"
Lion El Johnson slammed his lion-faced shield directly into Mortarian, blasting the demon off his feet and throwing him against a mobile artillery piece. The giant wheeled cannon toppled on its side and began immediately to rust.
Taylor remembered from the propaganda of the early Heresy that the Lion was regarded as one of the finest warriors among the twenty Primarchs. He showed it now, moving with all the martial skill their father had during his most powerful days. Sword and shield moved in perfect concert.
Every time the massive, cloud-shrouded scythe struck the golden shield, light and shadow flashed off each other. It was mesmerizing, and a part of Taylor wanted to watch it.
But Mortarian did not come alone. His children, the plague marines, had made the treeline and were charging to join their genefather.
"Come on!"
"Gaunt, you and your men are with us!" Valdor snapped the orders over his shoulder.
The colonel-commissar simply nodded. He had no intention of leaving his charges regardless.
They didn't make it half-way to the sagging, half-destroyed entrance of the mountain before Mortarion somehow gained the upper hand and sent his brother staggering back with a massive slash through the chestplate of his armor.
Age has slowed you, brother. But it has only made me stronger!"
The scythe named Silence rose, and in that second Taylor saw that El Johnson was too wounded to defend himself. Another primarch was about to die. Or so she thought. Her rush to escape faltered again when a shadow appeared almost out of thin air. It looked like a mirage of feathers and steel and shadow, and two obsidian eyes that glowed with black fire. A roar that hurt her mind more than her ears rang over the field as the newest Warp thing attacked Mortarian with brutal efficiency.
The demon primarch staggered back, bleeding black smoke and green bile from a half-dozen cuts through his corrupted artificer plate. What matter of creature are you?"
"Do you not recognize me, brother? You are not Lorgar, but you were there at Istvaan. I saw your spawn murdering my sons as well as Lorgar's ilk. Your guilt is as rancid as theirs!"
Corax. "That's Corvus Corax," Taylor whispered. "But…" She shook her head. "Sabbat, heal the Lion and then we go!"
Constantin shouted. "We need to…"
"This is our battle too, Lord Custodes," Sabbat shouted right back over the increasing din of a full regimental-sized battle. She darted toward the fallen Primarch as the remaining, intact loyalist forces began to open fire on the approaching plague marines. The saint's healing power obviously struggled against the Warp-powered corruption in the Lion's wound, but eventually she overcame it.
Rather than give thanks, El Johnson immediately climbed to his feet and rejoined his long-lost brother, the Primarch of the Raven Guard, in their fight against Mortarion.
"I feel like I've walked into the climax of a movie I completely missed," Telos said.
"You did, but it doesn't matter! Come on!"
Sabbat rejoined them, and they ran into the broken mountain once called Torger. "Can you see a path?" Taylor asked her sainted self.
Bifrost eyes scanned the rubble. "It's buried under a boulder the size of…oh."
Telos stepped to the building-sized rock Sabbat pointed to. With a grunt that reminded Taylor very much of their father, she began to move the hundreds of tons of stone.
"By the emperor," Gaunt whispered behind them. "How strong is she?"
"As strong as she needs to be," both Taylor and Sabbat said, before smiling faintly at the other.
Telos grunted and strained but somehow lifted the boulder away from the opening of their needed passage. She pushed the massive piece of the collapsed mountain to one side. "No lights," she said.
Sabbat waived a hand, and a golden globe of light came to life before them. She didn't go, though. Instead, she turned to Taylor. "You know the way."
"There's only one way from this point," she told her sister-self. And then, because her words were so true, she started down the stairs.
Of course, the true entrance to the depths of the mountain would never have been so close to the surface. With Sabbat's witchlight guiding them, she led her sister-selves, Sister Cera, Valdor and roughly two thousand Gaunt's Ghosts through the long-abandoned underlayers of what had once been the sanctuary of a Adeptus Mechanicus facility from the days of the Great Crusade and Heresy.
It was, she'd read somewhere, also the seat of the ruling family of Knights during the planet's heights. It never recovered after the Great Scouring that saw the surviving loyalists drive the traitors back to the Eye of Terror Ten Thousand Years back.
Ten thousand years and an orbital barrage of barracks breakers had filled many of the chambers of the Vault Transcendent of the ancient Mechanicum with debris. The acorn she'd slipped into the pocket of her fatigues pulsed suddenly, just brightly enough in the dark passages to get her attention.
Glancing at her other selves, she removed the acorn and saw it was, once again, growing faintly brighter.
Given that none of the structure they were in even existed the last time Taylor was on Molech, she found herself depending on the light of the acorn to guide their steps. When at last they found their way, it was to a simple, ancient door of rusted iron set in the dark stone of the wall.
Valdor easily ripped the door from the wall, revealing the narrow passage within. All sound of the battle outside the mountain was lost in the dark. Not even echoes penetrated the vaults. The air felt preternaturally thick.
They started down. The memories came back unbidden from hundreds of lives prior—memories that had been blocked for most of her lives. She could almost see the Emperor shearing the walls with the power of Odin's broken staff, still unforged in its final form. He'd moved unerringly, drawn to the well deep within the crust of this strange, hostile world.
She could almost feel her father beside her, a hand on her shoulder to guide her. Angelia looked nervous; her beautiful features lost in the shadow. Erda's face was blank, but Taylor had known her long enough to know she was angry just by the set of her shoulders.
"How much longer?" Telos asked.
The question broke Taylor's fugue. "Time gets more relative the deeper we go," she said. "This is a godly domain."
"Which gods?" Sabbat asked.
"All of them," Taylor breathed.
"Were these stairs here when you arrived the first time?"
"He made them," Taylor said.
They walked down for what felt like hours, until abruptly they stepped into a wide hall that hadn't existed just moments before. The stone was as black and shiny as obsidian, but deep within it a silvery blue light illuminated their steps sufficiently that Sabbat released her witchlight.
"Where's the light coming from?" Telos asked. "What, are those…those are bricks? Who made this place?"
The hall ahead opened into a large chamber walled in ancient, umber brick. Behind her, Valdor stiffened. "I did not realize it, since he'd drawn the details of the memory from my mind. But Pandemonium had similar-colored bricks in its construction. Do you know who built this place, Mother?"
"No," Taylor said. "And I'm not sure He did either. It…it might not have been built. This chamber had no passages, and it existed before the geological forces created the topography above us. The planet itself may have formed around it."
She did not comment upon the asymmetry of the umber bricks. Their placement simply felt wrong to her mortal eyes.
"You know, I think those bricks weren't laid down by humanoids," Telos said. "It's a duadecimal system."
"How could you possibly know that?" Sabbat asked.
"The repeating pattern has twelve bricks, see? And each wall has twelve sets of twelve."
Taylor took her Olympian sister at her word and continued forward.
They found the bodies littered across the seeping black stone of the floor. Beyond them, at the far end of the chamber, she saw the ancient archway. Irregular pieces of seeping black stone veined in white formed the archway, within which was black stone so perfectly smooth and reflective it might have been glass.
Valdor knelt down beside the ancient mummified remains of Astartes. He had to brush off caked dust from their armor. "Ultramarines," he said. "They died defending the gate."
"Yeah," Taylor said. "Horus would have come here if he ever wanted to challenge Him."
"If this gate was so dangerous, why didn't He close it?" Telos asked. "Why leave his enemies the chance for that much power?"
"He couldn't, not by then," Taylor said.
She knew what she had to do, and she absolutely hated the thought of it. "Sister Cera?"
"Yes, Holy Sister?"
"I'm going to go stand against the wall. When I'm in position, I need you to shoot me in the head."
"What?" Telos stuttered in horror, and even Sabbat looked disturbed.
"He did not kill himself to enter," Valdor said.
"He was already a god. I'm just a perpetual. I'll be right back, Cera. It won't be my end, I promise you. But the only way to enter this well is through intense blood sacrifice. And we might as well sacrifice the one who won't stay dead."
"What if you do?" Telos asked.
"Then I finally get to rest after forty-thousand years," Taylor said with a shrug. She handed the glowing acorn to Sabbat and stepped to the wall.
"Are you sure, Holy Sister?" Cera asked.
"I am."
With that affirmation, Cera did not hesitate. Taylor heard a loud bang, followed by a ringing…
"Return to me, child…"
She blinked down at the feet of her own dead body. The wall ahead of them had a reddish glow. "Telos," she said, once more fourteen years old. "Hit the wall as hard as you can. The rest of you, stay here. You can't follow where we go."
"Did He come back out?" Sabbat asked.
"No, but he illusioned Angelia with the thought he had, so that she would stay and guard over it. She did, too, until Horus came."
Telos looked shaken by seeing the dead, nearly decapitated Taylor on the ground at the edge of the wall, with the living Taylor in jeans and a teal blouse that they all recognized. But even with her shock, she overcame the hesitation. With a scream, she took a stutter step and then lashed out with her fist in a magnificent blow that would have made their father proud.
The wall of smooth, glowing black stone shattered.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
The Lion exulted in the heat of battle. The Saint, Sabbat, had healed him so thoroughly he moved for the first time since his awakening without pain. His sword swung true and his shield held back the deadly poison of his fallen brother's weapon.
Beside him, as had not happened in millennia, another of his brothers fought with him. However, Corvus Corax was as changed as Mortarion had been. Where Mortarion had been corrupted into a demon of the Warp, Corax seemed to have been stripped of all but his rage and thirst for vengeance.
As powerful as the demon primarch was, he faced one of the finest swordsman of the Emperor's sons, and the Emperor's vengeance made manifest in the other.
Valdor's armies–his false Custodes and winged Astartes–proved the equal of the demon's plague-ridden sons. The enemy came without heavy armored vehicles, overly confident in their demon-infused armor and bolter guns. But it was Mortarion and Mortarion alone that concerned the Lion.
As he fought, Mortarion began to growl in frustration and anger. Try as he might, he was simply not the equal of both his opponents. He was never the most powerful of the Emperor's fighters, and when he moved to block a vicious strike of multiple blades from the Warp-infused entity that used to be Corax, El Johnson struck.
His blade passed without resistance through the warp-flesh of the demon primarch, and the scythe named Silence fell with a clatter while Mortarion stumbled back with a pained shout.
Corax pounced without hesitation–a creature of blades, shadow and spite. The shadow wings of the fallen primarch tried to fight off the attack, but it was shadow against shadow, while Corax's great adamantium claws easily ripped all around them to shreds.
Mortarian stumbled back, his false flesh bleeding bile and plague. He gasped within his mask and his white warp-eyes glowed angrily at them.
"She's gone," the Demon Primarch gasped. "This game has no further use."
"Run back to your master, Slave," Corax snapped. "You will see us all again."
As final proof that his brother was indeed no longer a being of flesh and blood, the Lion watched as Mortarion seemed to melt away. And I, too, shall see you again, brothers.
In the brief respite that followed, as the armies around them fought, the Lion studied his other brother. "What happened to you, Corax? How are you here?"
"I hunted the traitors in the Warp so long, I became of the Warp. And my hunt continues still. But I saw the winged child pierce reality. I saw her face, and I knew I had to follow. It was good to see you whole, brother. Perhaps we shall hunt together someday."
The shadow suddenly flew away from him right toward the approaching lines of Plague Marines. In moments, the infected bodies of the fallen traitor Astartes began to fly into the air, torn to pieces by the Emperor's living vengeance.
"Farewell, brother," El Johnson whispered.