XXVII. My Faith is my Sword
- Location
- London, England
Can you do this? The question weighs upon you for a brief moment, and just as swiftly the answer rises in its place. Yes. Yes, you can do this. Tchar has aided you and yours in the past, but it was only ever an alliance of convenience, two sets of self-interest overlapping. It was never an ally, never the sort of friend you would sacrifice for, never a brother by your side on the battlefield. If the choice is between its continued patronage and Lorgar's glorious vision of the future, well, that is hardly a choice at all.
The daemon sees the resolution in your eyes, the myriad paths of possibility collapsing into one. It snarls, and what was three become one, the faces of your loved ones replaced by your own maddened form glaring back at you.
"Come then," your mirror snarls, drawing a whirling storm of blue and pink into the outline of a great axe, "you who could have been anything, don your chains once more."
"Anything, yes," you say, hefting your blade and stepping forwards, "And I choose this."
You cross the mandala written on the floor, breaking the circle with your presence, and the response is immediate. The world detonates like a bomb, a blinding pillar of light and heat erupting from seemingly nothing at all, space and time cracking like glass before the force of a immortal's will. You slide backwards, your skin burning, your feet gouging great trenches in the metal floor, and behold the glory of a daemon lord's fury.
Stars pass beneath the arch of Tchar's wings, the light of galaxies reflecting in ten thousand feathers that stretch across the firmament. A skull torn from something that never existed leers down at you from the distant horizon, pulsars that beat the rhythm of the universe resting in the cavernous sockets where a lesser thing might have an eye. You stand upon an endless plain and within the depths of Fidelitas Lex, atop a soaring mountain and at the base of an abyssal trench, and always Tchar is there, the heavens and the horizon and everything in between.
"I am Tchar Truthbringer," it says in the roar of dying stars, and three Word Bearers turn to broken pulp at the sound of its voice, "The Open Hand, the Thrice-Sought Answer, Warden of the Crystal Labyrinth. I am no mere beast to be put to slaughter, not by you!"
You say nothing. What would be the point? Will you hurl your name into the abyss, boast of your deeds in the face of infinity? You know who you are, and that is enough. Your brother's sword will speak for you, and with a roll of broad shoulders you take it in both hands and raise it high.
"No. No!" Tchar snarls, serpents of purple fire falling from the sky like rain, eating through adamant and flesh with equal ease. "You cannot do this! I will not allow it! Angron! I will not-"
"Die," you say, and strike.
The daemon does not have a heart, nor lungs or guts or anything else you could target, so you do not try. You simply cut, the same motion taught to a billion souls across the galaxy with every passing dawn, and before the light of truth the hundred thousand lies of the daemon are as nothing. Tchar falls, and in its dying screams you hear the wails of uncounted futures dark and glorious, silenced forever.
Silenced, but not stilled. The titan that was Tchar collapses in on itself, flesh and feathers melting into azure flame, and in the distance you can hear the warbling shriek of emergency alarms. The Fidelitas Lex quakes, bulkheads collapsing inwards and deck plates shattering like ice, and for one terrible moment you stumble and almost fall.
Lorgar catches you, one golden hand clasping your arm while the other rises to paint symbols upon the air. Walls of brilliant light spring into being, layered bulwarks of faith and knowledge rising around you one after the other, and it will not be enough. Tchar's death has torn a hole in the world, a screaming rent through which the glittering ruin of a crystal city may be seen, and even now you fall towards it one terrible moment at a time.
"Stay with me, my brother," Lorgar says with a laugh, standing by your side with a smile on his face and conviction in his eyes, "and have faith."
You laugh, and raise your sword against the hell that would swallow you whole.
-/-
It happens too quickly to be real.
The Thirteenth Expeditionary Fleet is in high orbit when it happens, shields down and crews at rest. What awareness it has is focused on the looming shadow of the Sixteenth Legion flotilla, the Warmaster's own escort in this distant and forgotten system. When the auger arrays come alive and the immaterium alarms start blaring, there is a frozen moment where nobody at all can understand what is happening, much less believe it. A warp breach, here? None of them even have their engines running at full power. It should not, cannot be possible.
By the time they move past their shock, it is too late to intervene.
On the bridge of the Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin screams orders at her crew. She demands explanations, answers, a solution. She demands to know what has happened and what can be done about it, for surely within her reach as flag-captain of an entire fleet there is something she can do. Surely she cannot be helpless.
On the Vengeful Spirit, Horus Lupercal stares into the void of space, uncomprehending. His mind is post-human, his reasoning beyond that of even the Mechanicum's precious supercomputers, and he does not understand. Primarchs can die, he knows this, but Curze fell at the apex of a military campaign, in a maelstrom of blood and death. For two to disappear in little more than a twinkle of light cannot be possible. The universe cannot work that way.
Both of them know the truth already. It will take them time to accept it, but the facts of the matter are already plain, and by startled oath and whispered prayer they spread across the fleet like wildfire. Horror, outrage, grief and loss, and none of it means a damn thing.
The Fidelitas Lex is gone. Lost to the warp, with every soul aboard.
The daemon sees the resolution in your eyes, the myriad paths of possibility collapsing into one. It snarls, and what was three become one, the faces of your loved ones replaced by your own maddened form glaring back at you.
"Come then," your mirror snarls, drawing a whirling storm of blue and pink into the outline of a great axe, "you who could have been anything, don your chains once more."
"Anything, yes," you say, hefting your blade and stepping forwards, "And I choose this."
You cross the mandala written on the floor, breaking the circle with your presence, and the response is immediate. The world detonates like a bomb, a blinding pillar of light and heat erupting from seemingly nothing at all, space and time cracking like glass before the force of a immortal's will. You slide backwards, your skin burning, your feet gouging great trenches in the metal floor, and behold the glory of a daemon lord's fury.
Stars pass beneath the arch of Tchar's wings, the light of galaxies reflecting in ten thousand feathers that stretch across the firmament. A skull torn from something that never existed leers down at you from the distant horizon, pulsars that beat the rhythm of the universe resting in the cavernous sockets where a lesser thing might have an eye. You stand upon an endless plain and within the depths of Fidelitas Lex, atop a soaring mountain and at the base of an abyssal trench, and always Tchar is there, the heavens and the horizon and everything in between.
"I am Tchar Truthbringer," it says in the roar of dying stars, and three Word Bearers turn to broken pulp at the sound of its voice, "The Open Hand, the Thrice-Sought Answer, Warden of the Crystal Labyrinth. I am no mere beast to be put to slaughter, not by you!"
You say nothing. What would be the point? Will you hurl your name into the abyss, boast of your deeds in the face of infinity? You know who you are, and that is enough. Your brother's sword will speak for you, and with a roll of broad shoulders you take it in both hands and raise it high.
"No. No!" Tchar snarls, serpents of purple fire falling from the sky like rain, eating through adamant and flesh with equal ease. "You cannot do this! I will not allow it! Angron! I will not-"
"Die," you say, and strike.
The daemon does not have a heart, nor lungs or guts or anything else you could target, so you do not try. You simply cut, the same motion taught to a billion souls across the galaxy with every passing dawn, and before the light of truth the hundred thousand lies of the daemon are as nothing. Tchar falls, and in its dying screams you hear the wails of uncounted futures dark and glorious, silenced forever.
Silenced, but not stilled. The titan that was Tchar collapses in on itself, flesh and feathers melting into azure flame, and in the distance you can hear the warbling shriek of emergency alarms. The Fidelitas Lex quakes, bulkheads collapsing inwards and deck plates shattering like ice, and for one terrible moment you stumble and almost fall.
Lorgar catches you, one golden hand clasping your arm while the other rises to paint symbols upon the air. Walls of brilliant light spring into being, layered bulwarks of faith and knowledge rising around you one after the other, and it will not be enough. Tchar's death has torn a hole in the world, a screaming rent through which the glittering ruin of a crystal city may be seen, and even now you fall towards it one terrible moment at a time.
"Stay with me, my brother," Lorgar says with a laugh, standing by your side with a smile on his face and conviction in his eyes, "and have faith."
You laugh, and raise your sword against the hell that would swallow you whole.
-/-
It happens too quickly to be real.
The Thirteenth Expeditionary Fleet is in high orbit when it happens, shields down and crews at rest. What awareness it has is focused on the looming shadow of the Sixteenth Legion flotilla, the Warmaster's own escort in this distant and forgotten system. When the auger arrays come alive and the immaterium alarms start blaring, there is a frozen moment where nobody at all can understand what is happening, much less believe it. A warp breach, here? None of them even have their engines running at full power. It should not, cannot be possible.
By the time they move past their shock, it is too late to intervene.
On the bridge of the Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin screams orders at her crew. She demands explanations, answers, a solution. She demands to know what has happened and what can be done about it, for surely within her reach as flag-captain of an entire fleet there is something she can do. Surely she cannot be helpless.
On the Vengeful Spirit, Horus Lupercal stares into the void of space, uncomprehending. His mind is post-human, his reasoning beyond that of even the Mechanicum's precious supercomputers, and he does not understand. Primarchs can die, he knows this, but Curze fell at the apex of a military campaign, in a maelstrom of blood and death. For two to disappear in little more than a twinkle of light cannot be possible. The universe cannot work that way.
Both of them know the truth already. It will take them time to accept it, but the facts of the matter are already plain, and by startled oath and whispered prayer they spread across the fleet like wildfire. Horror, outrage, grief and loss, and none of it means a damn thing.
The Fidelitas Lex is gone. Lost to the warp, with every soul aboard.
