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'No! You're lying! If that were true he would have simply killed me!'
'And leave the Corona unguarded? Leave his killer to steal it? Use your sense, Sahaal.'
'But he told me everything! The... the sanctioned genocides! The Emperor's betrayal! The assassin before the Heresy!'
'Lies. The whispers of his Chaotic side, pouring poison in the ear of his virtuous self. Perhaps... hah... perhaps he even believed it himself.'
Sahaal's brain collapsed upon itself. This would not stand. He could not allow himself an instant's doubt. He could not permit the suggestion — the suspicion — that Acerbus spoke the truth. To do otherwise would be to make a lie of everything he had ever believed, and everything he had struggled to achieve.
The Daemonlord was wrong. That was all there was to it.
'You're lying, warpshit!' he snarled, spitting in the creature's face. 'The Corona is mine! He gave it to me!'
'Ah... ah yes, the Corona. I have been without it long enough. I think I should like to have it now.' The creature dug claws further into Sahaal's wound, twisting with a vicious grin. 'Where is it?'
A voice spoke from nearby. 'It's right here, you bastard.'
It was the witch. Little Mita Ashyn, the woman who had set Sahaal free. She stood with blood pouring from her eyes, legs shaking at the tumult of psychic revulsion pouring from the monster, the Corona brandished before her like a halo of darkness. She looked on the verge of insanity and death, and were it not for a single detail, a single redeeming facet, Sahaal might have cursed her for all of eternity, for presenting the prize to the Daemonlord.
In her spare hand she held a melta gun — prised, no doubt, from the dead fingers of a broken servitor.
She smiled.
The melta-stream hit Acerbus full in the chest, and he barrelled away from it as if struck by a rogue meteor. The indistinct tentacles that held Sahaal down whipped away, tangled amongst the devastation of the tumbling beast. It roared so hard that the hive seemed to shake, flexing and mewling at a wound on its front, as if a great scoop had been plucked from its flesh. Raw warpstuff — liquid gore that glimmered and dissolved even as it touched the air — geysered from the crater, becoming smoke and ether before even hitting the ground.
Sahaal was on his feet and sprinting before the beast's collapse was complete. He had no energy to speak of, his mind was a wreckage without hope of salvage, and every truth he had every believed had been stolen from him. In all the world, in all the brutal realities of the galaxy, one thing alone held any meaning.
'The Corona!' he roared, leaping towards the witch. 'Give me the Corona!'
Acerbus was faster.
Like a striking crow, like shadow-wreathed lightning, he was on her, swatting Sahaal aside with a deft flick of his midnight claws and pinioning her to the floor, great tendrils of smoke and shadow tightening around her arms and ankles, wings opening like a canopy of perpetual night. The melta gun crumpled in his grip. She screamed and screamed and never stopped. The Daemonlord leaned close to her face, ru
Sahaal leapt at his brother with a wordless howl, stabbing out with claws outstretched, hacking through semi-real pseudopods of smoke and dark. The Daemonlord spun to face him, spined shoulders glittering in constellations of darkness, amused at the crippled warrior's truculent attack.
Claw met claw like the peeling of razor bells, and for long instants the pair slashed and stabbed, parrying blows that would split a man in two. Sahaal found himself dancing between bloody-tipped blurs, leaping above vengeful thrusts and spi
Sahaal changed tack with a feral growl. Twisting his body, wincing as wounds reopened and ribs crackled at unpleasant contortions, he slipped away from the savage blades and pounced towards Mita. Blows landed on his back, gashing him open, flooding his senses with fire and fear, but none of it mattered. Only the Corona.
He cut the witch free of the boiling limbs that held her and dragged her to her feet, gore pouring from his wrecked body. Holding her tight against his shoulder with his one useful arm, he staggered with her towards the great rent in the wall and stared out at the shifting tempests of Equixus. Ice bathed him: a frozen baptism to cleanse his tormented mind. Somewhere behind him the Daemonlord realised what was happening, howling at the thought of his prey's escape. Sahaal bunched his legs, final reserves of energy pushing him out into the void.
Let the storm swallow him. Let the ice enfold him.
Let the darkness claim him as its own.
He had the witch. The witch had the Corona. Nothing else mattered.
And then the daemon oozed from the smoke at his back with a roar, fire spouting from hate-filled eyes, and snatched at the witch's arm.
The limb parted from its shoulder with a wrench and a sticky slurp.
The Corona Nox tumbled from slack fingers and spun, tilting and flipping over, catching the firelight of a dying world in a single glorious reflection—
—and then it was gone: tumbling end over end into the smoke and the fire and the ice, dwindling away along the sides of the hive until darkness swallowed it.
The witch screamed, blood pulsing from the open wound. The Daemon Prince Krieg Acerbus roared so loud that the windows of the gallery room burst, like droplets falling from a fountain.
And Zso Sahaal, the Talonmaster, heir to the throne of the Night Lords Legion, pushed himself out into the void — his jump pack flaring in the endless dark, the witch howling from her perch upon his ruined shoulder — and chased his legacy down into the abyss.
He would not give up.
The Corona Nox would be his.
He would bring the vengeance of the Night Haunter upon the heads of those that stood in his way.
One day he would kill Krieg Acerbus. He would lead his Legion once more.
One day he would descend from the skies of Holy Terra, and set his claws upon the bulwarks of the Palace itself.
One day, in the name of his master, he would have his revenge upon the Traitor Emperor. Ave Domi
EPILOGUE
Pec: Congresium Xenos
Dis: Inq. Palinus
Conduit Path: Tarith-Maneus-Pirras-J'ho
Ref: lNQ5#23-33
Sub: Disappearance' Kaustus
Incident At Equixus
My lords,
I have set foot upon Equixus, and I believe it is a memory that shall haunt me until my death.
You will recall that I was dispatched some weeks ago to investigate the disappearance of Inquisitor Ipoqr Kaustus.
At the point of my departure he had failed to engage the ordo in routine report for three consecutive years. Whilst hardly an exceptional hiatus, given the clandestine nature of his work, this was considered uncharacteristic. Kaustus's record indicates a level of assidiousness in such matters that rendered his silence troubling and, in the name of our blessed organisation, I set out to follow his trail in earnest.
My lords, I shall not burden you with the oblique course upon which the subject had meandered. Of most relevance are surely his final movements: a brief (and indeed unofficial) visitation aboard the Pervigilium Oculus, and an even more contrite stay at the Inquisitorial fortress-world Safaur-Inquis (also unrecorded). His rendezvous with the former, as chance would dictate, coincided with its commission by Munitorum officials as a sanctioned surveillance craft, tasked with maintaining a discreet watch over the eldar craftworld ''Iyanden''. His presence on Safaur Inquis is less opaque, although it is known that he recruited a new interrogator — a woman named Ashyn — during his visit.
From there the trail takes the erstwhile inquisitor to the hive-world Equixus, and here my investigation bore fruit. It is impossible to state with any certainty why Kaustus and his retinue travelled here (although, given the high incidence of Tauist cells amongst worlds in this region, perhaps we may speculate?), but we can be very clear on a single point:
Equixus is where Inquisitor Kaustus died.
Approximately one month before my arrival upon this world, the Night Lords Chaos Marine Legion descended upon the planet — for reasons of their own — and in the course of a single day brought unimaginable carnage to its people. I have spent two weeks with my retinue in the anarchic wasteland that remains, witnessing the deaths of hundreds from exposure and hunger, attempting in vain to uncover some reason for the Traitors' attack. I have found none.
My lords, the sheer enormity of the slaughter at Equixus would seem to draw a veil across the investigation. Certainly Kaustus did not leave the planet — my Magos Biologis identified what little remained of his body from gene-records shortly before our departure — and it is tempting to think of that, therefore, as the end to the whole affair.
There is, however, a single troubling enigma that continues to allude my logic:
Telemetry from the aforemention Pervigilium Oculus indicates that a sizeable flotilla of renegade vessels — notably including the Vastitas Victris (long suspected of harbouring the Night Lords' highest commanders) — was gathering near to the Iyanden craftworld at the time of Kaustus's visit. Cogitator matrices had indicated a 93.2% probability that the Chaos fleet pla
The assault never occurred: for whatever reason the Night Lords diverted their attentions towards Equixus, sparing the eldar from harm.
It would be remiss of me to suggest that Kaustus in some way precipitated the genocide upon Equixus. The Night Lords have a reputation for impulsive, arbitrary movements, and it is indeed unlikely — even if he were involved somehow — that the presence of a single inquisitor would have swayed their plans. Nonetheless, it is a curious coincidence that Kaustus was present in each locale that the renegades selected for their muster: a coincidence that is ultimately of benefit to nobody except the eldar.
Did they have a hand in this? Had they somehow anticipated an attack upon their fragile craftworld, from some distant point in the past, and sought — somehow — to divert it elsewhere? My lords, it is unlikely we shall ever know.
Kaustus is dead. Equixus has become a morgue. There is nothing else to say.
In Service to the Holy Emperor of Man,
Inquisitor Palinus, Ordo Xenos
Addendum:
My lords, forgive this brief postscript. I was on the verge of dispatching the above report when I encountered a further, tantalising, nugget of information.
Two days' travel from the Equixus system is the colony world Baih'Rus. As we passed by, preparing to enter the warp, my crew exchanged routine recognition codes with the long-obsolete clipper that comprises the entirety of ''that worlds'' orbital security. Upon receipt of Inquisitorial codes the clipper's captain indicated surprise, questioning aloud why there should be such a strong Inquisitorial presence in the region. Perplexed, I demanded to know what he meant. It transpires that a week ago another vessel passed near Baih'Rus: a small shuttlecraft formerly registered to the merchant starport on Equixus. When hailed the pilot — a woman — produced Inquisitorial recognition codes only slightly inferior to my own. As is his habit, the captain of the clipper ordered his sanctioned astropath to conduct a ''head-count'', a psychic sweep to indicate crew numbers. This command was duly obeyed.
Shortly before dying (''screaming and bleeding like someone took a piss in his brain'' as the captain so delicately put it), the astropath indicated the presence of two souls aboard — one male, one female.
Whether relevant to the disappearance of Kaustus or not, or whether merely a part of a greater picture than I am presently unable to determine, I felt it wise to bring this curious incident to your attention. It seems that whatever truly occurred upon Equixus, solutions to its mysteries shall continue to elude us a while longer.
Palinus