Zha could not believe her eyes.

  Beholding Lunacius was itself a psychic phenomenon of profane intensity, but setting eyes upon his apparent brother was tremendously worse for one’s Imperial purity. Zha had of course known of daemons, having learned of them across—and before—my employ; particularly so, recently, while in the process of studying what Ordo Malleus scripture she could get her hands on to combat Cronos. But Mordefir was no daemon. The red brute was flesh and blood, a purposeful mutation of blasphemous power. And yet, as was the case on Shanolok, psychic energy rippled under the surface of Mordefir’s being. Veins that bulged from masses of muscle coursed with sheer, unbridled power.

  He may not have been daemonic by definition, but Mordefir was, at a glance, every bit as horrifying and terrible as those Greater Daemons that had plunged untold worlds into the Warp.

  And yet, it was not his presence alone that Zha could not believe.

  Nor was it the fact that Mordefir had contributed to the slaying of his own brother; the treachery of those associated with the Warp was well-documented. In retrospect, to Zha, that event almost seemed inevitable. Yet Zha knew that there was a motive to all things, and there must have been one behind that betrayal, too. Especially so if Mordefir was operating on Veralith’s orders, which seemed highly likely.

  “You will find I am not like my brother,” Mordefir’s voice boomed several yards away, at the forefront of his battle with the only trio that may have stood a shred of a chance at stopping him. He went on to continue his lecture, but Zha’s attention was dragged to the lone Xenos by her side.

  “I am detecting a familiar aircraft,” Kor’Kassan reported, looking over his own xenotech. The T’au engineer had stayed back, accompanying Zha, while the two defector humans moved forward to assist the logistics of the still-building lines of Zha’s forces. “Approaching this fortress rapidly, descending from the Void.”

  “What do you mean familiar?” Zha asked him, scanning the skyline.

  And, before Kor’Kassan had answered her, she saw it.

  Zha could not believe her eyes.

  The Bird had flown home. Kor’Kassan gave a response that quantitatively confirmed what her eyes already beheld, but Zha barely heard it. Yes, we had arrived. But in that moment, having just set eyes on Lunacius and Mordefir, and having felt the gaze of Veralith, Zha could only think to worry about how, now, Cronos had entered the battlefield of Apotheosis too. Surely that was what the daemon wanted all along. Zha was clever enough to know that she was being outsmarted by higher powers. And, yet, this had likely been the Ordo Chronos’s doing. That had to count for something.

  “Rally your human fellows,” Zha said then. “I suspect our time to act approaches.”

  Kor’Kassan made to reply, but Mordefir’s booming voice interrupted him. “Unlike my brother, however, I do not fight second battles; mine end with the first,” the not-daemon warned the trio, far ahead. Then his fiery eyes twitched and his muscles tightened. He sensed another presence. In a heartbeat, his gaze took to the skyline, and he squinted while pulling a chainaxe-wielding arm back.

  Heavy Bolter fire peppered his crimson skin ineffectively while a flurry of Hellstrike Missiles rocketed into the daemonic front lines. Mordefir waited still. Zet had taken Luciene back to recover from her self-inflicted impact with the not-daemon’s hand while Bliss joined Mordefir in looking, with awe, to the skies. Then, finally, Mordefir moved, with such haste and might that he sent a shockwave out from his body, air compressing around his joints. His Angel-sized chainaxe was thrown high and far, streaking through the skies faster than the oncoming Thunderhawk gunship could move. Mordefir’s torso then erupted into black smoke and soot from the thunderous impact of the Bird’s main Battle Cannon, which sufficed to make the titan take a single step back, but only one at that.

  Then his chainaxe hit its mark, and the armoring along the right side of the Bird was cleaved clean off. The Bird erupted into flames before it made its landing, which it did by punching dead-on into Mordefir himself. Mordefir shoulder-checked the former Astartes craft, and 120 tonnes of ceramite, titanium, and adamantium crushed and compressed against his body, the crimson goliath unflinching from the impact. With a wide swing of his arm, Mordefir tossed the crumpled remains of the Bird off the side of the Fortress, where its enflamed carcass joined the fires below.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  It was then, finally, that Mordefir and I locked eyes with one another. I stood at his feet, with Mirena some distance behind me, accompanying Bliss, Luciene, and the Xenos. Psychic teleportation, it turns out, was rather handy at avoiding certain death. “Blackgar,” Mordefir growled, willing his thrown chainaxe back into his grasp while clenching at the one he still held.

  “You’re very…red. We’ve met, haven’t we?” I asked, sizing him up. Red, yes, but the more apparent descriptor was that he was very large. The words ‘titan’ or ‘colossus’ echoed through my allies’ heads at my back, but those, frankly, were understatements. Mordefir was the size of two Thunderhawks, side by side, and every inch of his crimson skin was knotted muscle.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he answered, even his casual voice booming like that of Antonius Sigird’s in the latter’s factory of death. “You slew one of my Agents, and gave me the ragged flesh of his corpse.”

  “Gale Ryke died poorly, and a coward,” I nodded.

  “Will you die better?” Mordefir asked, and made a noise between a growl and a chuckle.

  I did not answer him, and instead glanced to the allies at my rear. “Head on inside. I’ll bury this one myself.”

  Mirena stared on at me with disbelief, and Bliss likely did the same, though her visage hid behind her synskin mask. Luciene, meanwhile, more matter-of-factly warned, “He is far stronger than I am, Cal.”

  “So am I,” I shrugged, and turned back to Mordefir. “Go.”

  You are not strong enough for him, Blackgar, even with my gifts, Cronos warned me.

  I’m counting on it, I answered.

  It seems you have your answer, then, Cronos said, and though I understood his meaning, he still clarified what he meant regardless. To whether you wish to live.

  Maybe I care more about you dying than me living, I thought back. Or, will you defend yourself, as you did with the Orks?

  Your sacrifice here will stall me none, you realize. I can just as well find another host.

  I smirked. But at least I’ll be rid of you. And will they be as…delicious to you as my mind has been?

  “I can hear your inner discourse, you realize,” Mordefir muttered, and I looked up at him. “I am no great psychic, like my sister, but our quartet—trio, now—is still attuned to the Warp all the same.”

  By now, my allies had begun to file past me. Those who were once under my command proved more reluctant in that regard, but Mirena and I had already talked this through. I had not told her of Cronos, but she was not so ignorant as to be unaware of there being powers at play within me that were not my own. The psychic ‘miracles’ I had worked in her vicinity coinciding with the timing of my catatonia proved hard things to build a deception around, so I had not bothered. So, when I had told her I had a plan, she—begrudgingly—went along with it.

  I think Bliss and Zha must have inferred the same as she had, for they, too, passed me by as I had asked of them. That left me with a monster at my front and two armies at my back, one daemonic and one Imperial. The monster, then.

  “You know,” Mordefir began, when we were on our own. “You are not the first daemonhost I’ll have destroyed in my time.”

  “I’d wager I’m the last you’ll ever try to, though,” I returned, and drew Drepane.

  Suppose I’m willing to come to your aid, Blackgar. How’s that meant to work?

  He snorted. “Take away the pyskana that is only-partially yours, Blackgar, and if nothing else, you still have a fair measure of courage. Yes, I imagine you will die better than Gale Ryke. A one-armed, one-eyed Inquisitor. To think that one as short on flesh as you will cap off this long and arduous journey of mine.”

  Possession is weak and fragile, with you ever-struggling to regain yourself from me. It is a weakness Mordefir would surely exploit.

  “And when the Inquisition catalogs the events of my lifetime, you should rejoice in having earned a spot among my footnotes,” I countered. Then, silently, I thought, And if I did not resist?

  I’m ready for that when you are, Blackgar. You know, with your life on the line here, I am not going to give you—or your allies—any leeway, right?

  I think you’ll have your hands full, daemon.

  I’m sure Mordefir likes to think so, Cronos said, and at that, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  And I opened them. “Having fun exchanging words with the mortal?” I asked Mordefir. “Perhaps he reminds you of yourself, from eons past, hm?”

  “I did not think this a gambit either of you would accept,” Mordefir admitted. “But it matters little. You are still contained within a body of flesh and blood—blood that is mine to spill. And I shall.”

  “Contained?” I laughed. “What makes you say that?” Black, sinewy tendrils erupted out from Blackgar’s missing shoulder, wrapping around themselves to take the form of an arm ending in a four-fingered claw. I also disengaged Drepane’s Warp-dampening power, letting my own overtake the blade. And my eyes, two of them, had fallen to pools of shadow. “Are you truly foolish enough to throw yourself against me in futility, as Blackgar did against Ouranos? Do you fail to understand the mechanics and significance of your actions?”

  “I follow my sister’s command, and it is her command that I meet you on the field of battle, daemon,” Mordefir answered, pulling one arm back to strike, but holding the blow yet.

  “I shall have to have a word with your sister. And worry not, you will not keep me long from that,” I replied and, with black lightning frothing from storm clouds that fell off my body, I leapt at the volcanic titan before me.

  Apotheosis shook and shattered as we two forces of nature clashed.

  And Blackgar, damn him, laughed.