“Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For trying.”

  Bliss looked, softly, into Zha’s eyes, which had hardened considerably during their journey to the atmosphere of Apotheosis. Every now and then, the Aquila Lander that carried them jostled to avoid incoming fire, but such movement did not shake either Inquisitor’s gaze from the other. Yes, Bliss had tried to keep Zha back, out of the line of fire, out of the engagement. But Zha had none of it; if the younger Inquisitor had a leash, it was not held in Bliss’s hands. Nevertheless, Zha understood the effort for what it was.

  An attempt at mercy.

  But Zha had none, not for herself, and certainly not for her enemies.

  %Inquisitors,% spoke the vox-garbled voice of Caleb Vakian into each of their earpieces.

  “Go ahead, Captain,” Zha answered.

  %There is an additional contact in the void theatre,% Vakian reported.

  Additional. It was bad enough to be fighting a Blackstone Fortress, but when they had arrived, they had found those blasted Heralds of the Cataclysm waiting for them, the profane fleet that had once-assailed Quintus before being destroyed by the arrival of The Finality and Ouranos. Were they associated with Veralith, then? It seemed likely; they were enemies of Ouranos and the Inquisition alike.

  And yet, it seemed, enemies of Veralith made for temporary allies of the Inquisition, as further Xenos vessels accompanied Luciene’s inhuman ship, and now assaulted the Blackstone Fortress with the same ferocity that Zha’s forces were. The void theatre was growing quite crowded, especially if another player had arrived in it too.

  “Chaos in nature?” Zha asked her vox.

  %Negative. A Rogue Trader, it seems, and backed by some Inquisition vessels too. The Trader has identified themselves as Eleanor Sigird, and the Inquisition declaring themselves of the Ordo Chronos,% Vakian answered.

  While the Inquisitors’ eyes widened, their Aquila’s pilot called out to them. “Dropping you off in sixty seconds!” he shouted to the back of their lander. “Your landing will be hot! Be quick about taking cover!”

  “Sigird,” Zha muttered. “Chronos.”

  “Focus, Zha,” Bliss insisted.

  “These are no coincidences, Bliss.”

  “I know. But I can’t let you stand slackjawed in a warzone. You wanted to be here and not up there, so focus up,” Bliss demanded. A hole began to open between their seats, their manner of entry to the battle beyond. The Aquila was still in the landing process, and so revealed a scan of the surfaceworld far below before much-closer Noctilith overtook their view. Bliss rose to her feet, ready to jump in as soon as their pilot gave the go-ahead. Zha was slower to rise, but rose all the same.

  When the panning view through the floor slowed and, eventually, stopped, Bliss silently slid out from the Aquila, the synskin-clad Assassin moving with the grace of a cat and the certainty of a viper. Zha’s descent was delayed until having received permission from her pilot to make the plunge. But the moment her head cleared the Aquila’s bay, a flash of light overtook the Lander. Zha winced and averted her eyes from it, and in the next moment felt herself embraced in familiar arms while her backside pressed against hard steel.

  Their Lander, now a ball of fire, tumbled past the edge of one of the eight arms of the Blackstone Fortress, a glimmering light in Zha’s dark eyes. When any chance of shrapnel had passed, Bliss rose from having caught and covered Zha, and the latter Inquisitor was able to get a better look at things. Lights lanced out from the heavens above and up from the ground below, Apotheosis’s planetary defense forces doing what they could to destroy the enemy vessel that hovered over their world’s surface. Fires raged on the surfaceworld and in the cloudy sky alike, Imperial and Xenos craft doing battle with the daemonic. Far below, Zha spied Galen’s Drop Keep, which had deployed alongside the allied forces of what was, apparently, a Knight World. His banners bore the gilded colors of his original House as well as the stark blacks of the Inquisition.

  Across land, sea, air, and void, Apotheosis burned, incinerating in all-encompassing warfare that put the battles of Amnes Minoris or Jaegetri to shame. And Zha’s eyes took all of it in, forced to capture every corner of every battle being fought, for much as she tried to be an Inquisitor, she was forever doomed to be a savant. Luckily for her, however, she had Bliss on her side. As Zha drowned in the conflict that surrounded them, Bliss hoisted the younger Inquisitor onto her feet and, with a hearty slap on her back, knocked the wind out of her. Zha fell into a fit of coughing and wheezing, which Bliss kept her upright during while keeping an eye out for any stray shots that may come their way.

  “Frig you,” Zha gagged eventually, clawing at Bliss’s stygian, synskin shoulders.

  “Told you to stay focused,” Bliss said, drily. “Ignore all that noise. You want a fight so bad? Let’s go find one.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard,” Zha muttered, to which Bliss nodded and set off, pulling Zha along with her. In short order, Zha was able to carry on of her own accord, filing into ranks of Tempestus Scions and Boarding Troops alike, a never-ending cluster of Valkyries and larger landing craft dumping squad after squad onto the Blackstone Fortress. And not for nothing, for far ahead, verminous hordes of daemons lurked; daemonettes scattered about the far reaches of the Fortress’s arm, while a front line of Bloodletters had been raised. The two daemonic archetypes were keeping a fair distance from one another, but were nevertheless definitely on the same side. Combat had already begun, the Bloodletters clashing with the unfortunate souls that had landed nearest to them.

  Platoons and their leaders scrambled to disseminate their squads adequately amidst the bedlam. Three platoons—two Guardsmen and one Tempestus—were landing to each arm of the Fortress, with four navigable arms across the breadth of the nefarious beast. (The other four arms were vertically inverted, and did not make for viable insertion points.) Of the forces Zha had raised on her own, a veritable army now ventured onto Noctilith shores. And now another Rogue Trader and Inquisitor had arrived? And what of Luciene and her allies? How many bodies would cram into the bowels of this fortress to claim its heart?

  And could they?

  Zha had already been made uneasy with the battle that surrounded her, which was itself no small feat. But she felt such a presence, then, that for a moment, her knees wavered. For a moment, only a moment, she was seen. Watched. And she knew by who—she felt Veralith’s gaze upon her once before, from the girl in the temple on Aerialon. Now, she had again singled Zha out among a surging sea of bodies, and from that singular instant of her psykanic presence, Zha buckled. She was here, and she was vastly more powerful than she had been on Aerialon.

  Zha fell.

  Bliss caught Zha by her arm, until then not knowing the weight that had dropped her friend. But upon catching Zha, Bliss felt the watchful gaze shift to her, and she, too, wavered. Bliss went cold, numb. She was reminded of the surging psychic power of Cronos’s emergence on the deck of Coldbreed before my episode of catatonia, which she had only just barely halted. Yet this presence was so much more, so much worse. Then being looked upon by something other than mortal, Bliss, too, buckled under such inexplicable, indescribable weight. Only barely did the Assassin keep her footing, and only because the moment of being seen was just that—a moment. Veralith’s gaze had shifted elsewhere.

  As Bliss pulled Zha to her feet again, it became readily apparent where the nefarious gaze had fallen: golden light beguiled the scene, and many soldiers, Guardsman, Scion, and Daemon alike, looked on at its source with some form of awe. The Inquisitors had not spoken with Luciene much since Shanolok; where their fleet had required riding the currents of the Warp, her Xenos vessel darted around the galaxy with greater ease. They, therefore, until then did not know how she had processed her once-mentor having exsanguinated a planet.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Luciene did not look very happy about it.

  She hovered overhead, white wings flapping while gilded light shone from every corner of her being. Just as she had so-suddenly appeared, so, too, had her quartet of allies; the two Imperial defectors and the two Xenos. “You should join them,” Bliss muttered to Zha. “To ensure our armies do not turn on them.”

  “And you?”

  “We traded one psychic presence for a far lesser one, but it is evil and depraved all the same,” Bliss replied, and looked back toward the front lines. He had yet to reveal himself, but Bliss had come close enough to cleaving the bastard’s head off to know what his presence felt like. Lunacius was somewhere close, and likely soon to make an entrance. Bliss intended to be there when he did.

  She would not be, at least not immediately. Instead, as Luciene darted overhead, her golden specter smashed into sheer nothingness within the daemonic lines, Eviscerator grinding mid-blow against what appeared to be but air. Yet Luciene’s golden light fought against the unseen deception, and revealed the secret at hand for what it was: her chimeric foe had, like a chameleon, camouflaged himself in plain sight, otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

  “Miss me?” Lunacius taunted the Angel, claw scraping against her blade.

  “Not in the slightest. How’s the face?”

  “How’s your city?” he returned with a sneer, to which Luciene roared and shoved him away from her. “How’s Shanolok?” he asked as he regained his footing.

  “As a small gash to what I intend for you,” she retorted. “Where is she? Where is Veralith?”

  “Within,” he said, cocking his head over his shoulder. “But you’ll need to get past—”

  “You’re no obstacle to me,” Luciene hissed, and dove for Lunacius again, pressing her edge against his once more. All around her, battles raged on. With renewed inspiration, the Imperial forces that had witnessed her form rallied into the daemonic lines, pressing against them as she had Lunacius. Now, daemonette and Bloodletter alike had to meet their forces to keep them at bay, leaving Lunacius on his own. And her distraction should have been enough…

  “Not quite!” Lunacius quipped, tail snapping out to catch his Assassin’s arm before Bliss’s blow could land true. Lunacius tumbled away from the pair, gliding along the ground to fall to all fours, like a beast about to pounce upon its prey. “You’re on my turf now, and I am not so easily distracted!”

  “We’ll see about that,” Bliss shrugged, then darted to the side to let Luciene surge forth once more, meeting and catching Lunacius from his next leaping strike. The Angel parried clawed blows against her Eviscerator thrice before Lunacius pirouetted to strike down at the smaller Assassin that encircled him, knowing she liked to go for his ankles or other vulnerabilities of his flesh. In the interim, his tail busied the Angel for a time until she took to the skies, at which point he leapt up to join her and, in a moment of her shock, smacked her back down into the cold, hard embrace of Noctilith.

  He plunged his claw down upon the Angel as he fell, it being caught against the Assassin’s Xenos-made green blade inches from piercing the Angel’s face. However, as his hooves stomped into the bulkhead of his Fortress-home, his gut caught the blade of an equally-verdant scythe, after which he was tossed away from the duo. “Almost good to see you, Xenos,” Bliss greeted her temporary ally.

  “And you, Aberration,” Zet replied. Zet then nodded toward Lunacius, whose wound closed as he rose to his feet. “This again, then?”

  “This again,” Luciene repeated, rising as well. “And not for a third time.”

  “Indeed, this shall be the last time we need have this dance,” Lunacius agreed. “But you are not the only one with friends. Isn’t that right, brother?”

  “And here I thought you didn’t want my help,” boomed a deep, guttural voice that inverted Lunacius’s lighter, raspier own. Red flames erupted at Lunacius’s back, expanding to allow a titanic being of crimson emerge from the fiery portal. The creature was about Lunacius’s height, but far wider, a hulking goliath to Lunacius’s more lithe visage. A cloak wrapped around the goliath, colored a darker shade of red than his blood-red flesh.

  “Not with the Angel, she is mine to skin. But I’ll leave her pet rodents to you.”

  “How generous.”

  “Quite. Alas, one has no blood, as I’m sure you can tell. The other, at least, is very hearty,” Lunacius remarked.

  “Your words bore me. Do battle, brother, because at least your attempts at that are entertaining,” the colossus said.

  “Blockheaded twat,” Lunacius seethed, but nevertheless stepped forward, meaning to engage with Luciene once more. The titan behind made no move. Until such a time as the titan saw fit to engage with the battle at hand, Bliss’s target remained Lunacius, and so slipped about to prepare for a killing blow thereof. Still, Lunacius’s brother did not react, save for following her motions with a cold, uncaring gaze. Zet matched the titan’s patience with his own, as though playing chicken with the half-daemon duo, waiting for a moment at which he had to act before furthering his own involvement.

  Luciene and Lunacius clashed.

  The titan watched.

  Bliss went in for the kill.

  The titan watched.

  Lunacius moved to halt her advance.

  The titan watched, until inches from his brother having saved himself, he finally reacted. In a single vermillion flash, almost faster than Luciene or Bliss could see and certainly faster than they could react to, the titan made his move. Zet did not understand the logic behind what he was seeing, but he did understand the physics of it, and thought to let it continue unabated. Before Luciene or Bliss could strike true, a chainaxe the size of the Angel had embedded itself in Lunacius’s spine, and the chimera floundered from its impact. Then, in the next instant of time, Eviscerator and Phase Sword slid through the purple beast’s neck, and his head lopped off the side of the Blackstone Fortress.

  The titan reached his hand forward, and recalled his axe back into his grasp, pulling Lunacius’s corpse along with it. He dislodged the axe from his brother’s spine, making the corpse flop onto the ground at his feet. “You were never good at telling friend from foe, brother.” He then looked up at the confused trio before him. “He had it coming.”

  “No disagreement there,” Luciene replied, but still barred her Eviscerator’s teeth between herself and the giant brute ahead of her.

  The titan regarded her for a moment, then said, “You are the Crimson Blade. I am Mordefir, the Crimson Conqueror. What we could accomplish together, were I to wield you among my forces, would be legendary.”

  “And improbable,” Luciene returned.

  “So she says,” Mordefir shrugged. “But worth a try nevertheless. By Veralith’s command, I can grant you safe passage into our fortress to meet with her while I slaughter your allies. Or you can die here, with them. Make your choice.”

  “I already have,” Luciene answered, and in a heartbeat, raced across the scene for his neck. Once again, the titan watched and waited. A yard out, he had not moved. A foot away from meeting the same fate as his brother, Mordefir’s fiery-red eyes continued to study his foe. Only as her blade made the final descent upon him did he react, and his reaction, still, stopped short of direct confrontation. He reached his arm out to the Angel in a flash, palm open, and caught her gut in its grasp from her own hurried movement.

  Luciene bounced off his hand, torso caved in and coughing up golden blood. “You will find I am not like my brother,” Mordefir said, retracting his hand back under his cloak as Luciene sputtered on the ground at his feet. “He was a killer, a murderer. Not a warrior. He was weak, only capable of victory, not of conquest. His are the hands that end lives; mine are those that end worlds. If you wish to end me, you must have the strength to wage an entire war on your own. When I said I’d slaughter your allies, I did not just mean your foot soldiers,” Mordefir explained, and then looked up at the inferno that raged above him. “In the time you take to converse with my sister, I would empty the skies above and level the world below. Can you stand to match that?”

  “We must,” Luciene coughed out, fighting to push herself off the ground even with the help of her allies.

  Mordefir looked down at them again. “Then go ahead and try,” he replied, and the darker ‘cloak’ that wrapped around his body at last unfurled, taking the form of two gigantic, leathery, bat-like wings that spread wide across the backdrop of the Blackstone Fortress. They beat once, and in so doing sent forth a surge of wind that knocked the trio off their feet. As he drew twin chainaxes from holsters along his waist, Mordefir concluded, “Unlike my brother, however, I do not fight second battles; mine end with the first.”

  Onward to the inevitable end. Onward to Light. Onward to Apotheosis.

  his sister's plan coming together...