The world is dark and cold. I enter it with some fight in me, but there is nothing to fight. No great doors of brass stretch to a ceiling unseen, no hordes of the daemonic lie in wait for me. And yet, my Shadow remains, only this time there are two of them. They are seated at a wooden table, next to each other. One has tea, the other not. The one with tea says, ‘Pull up a chair, Angel. Care for a drink?’

  ‘What is this? Where are we?’ I ask, dodging past the question. I do not ‘pull up a chair,’ as it were, and not just because there were no other chairs in sight in what appeared to be a shadowy rendition of a simple cabin. I do, however, step closer to the seated duo. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You know all too well who I am,’ the one with tea says. The other stays silent. ‘We’ve fought before. And this one here is your Shadow, as you’ve known him, though in this realm he is as yet without a voice.’

  ‘What? Blackgar? Without a voice? What does that mean?’ I ask.

  The daemon takes a sip of its tea again before shrugging. ‘Out there, in the realm you know as the materium, I have his body. So, his mind wanders down the avenues my manifestation has opened to him. He is here, in a sense, but knows not how to manifest himself properly.’

  I look to Blackgar’s faceless, voiceless form with some measure of pity, and my shoulders fall. ‘So, that’s it then. You’ve won,’ I sigh, my words meant for the daemon.

  ‘Near enough to it. And yet your choice remains important—me or her. My battle with her brother takes its toll. Under ordinary circumstances, one such as Veralith would be a gnat I could so easily swat aside, but I am not yet fully emerged into the materium, and my powers wane against Mordefir. If you fail and Veralith succeeds, even I must confess that I am in no position to stop her,’ the daemon admits. ‘So, we’re here.’

  ‘We’re here,’ I repeat flatly.

  The daemon nods. ‘It’s time for you to choose.’

  I shake my head. ‘Choose what? You or her, yeah, I know. What does that mean? Would it kill you Warpspawn to make things clear for once?’

  ‘It might, actually,’ the daemon chuckles. Blackgar’s Shadow straightens in his chair, his textureless form appearing to regard me for a time. ‘Life or death, Angel. You’ve learned by now that Veralith is a seeker of absolute death. You know that I pursue life.’

  ‘Whose life—whose death?’

  The daemon laughs again. ‘Now you’re beginning to ask the right question. Tell me, Angel, if you had one more life to live, would you want to? What if you could spend all eternity here, with Blackgar, if you chose not to live, but in choosing life, you’d never be with him again? Is life worth so much to you that you’d abandon him here?’

  I look to Blackgar, and though he had no eyes or face to read, I understand so much in that singular moment. Once, our positions had been swapped, aboard what I now knew to be The Finality. Blackgar had been given the same choice, and he had chosen Life, for as much suffering as that entailed. It did not seem fair to him to choose otherwise now. And yet, to do so was to thread the needle between two apocalypses; one Veralith, the other Cronos. Nevertheless… ‘I choose life,’ I answer the daemon, and Blackgar slouches in his chair, easing into unspoken relief.

  ‘Impressive. Very impressive. But tell me, Angel, whose life indeed? Because this isn’t all about you, is it?’ I pause. I do not know, not immediately. Was the daemon not, moments prior, asking me about my life? But if not me, then who? And then it hits me. No, my life is not the one that matters. What I choose to do with it does, but the binary state of my life or death is inconsequential. That, however, is not the case for everyone. The daemon recognizes my understanding the moment I achieve it: ‘So you see now, then? You see what must be done.’

  ‘But I do not see myself having the power to do so, and certainly not in one life as you claim,’ I reply.

  ‘You would be surprised how much you need—or, rather, don’t,’ the daemon shrugs. ‘Go,’ it says, and nods past me. I turn to see an empty door frame, with nothing beyond. ‘You have all you need, Angel, to see this through.’

  ‘And when I do, am I saving anything, or just serving existence up to you, daemon?’

  ‘We’ll find out together, won’t we?’

  I turn back to them both, my eyes initially on the daemon. Then my gaze slides to Blackgar. ‘This isn’t goodbye.’

  ‘I know,’ he replies.

  ***

  Luciene comes to in a tumble, plummeting through the skies of a Hive World. How many planets has it been, now, that she has seen smote to cinders from Veralith’s merciless onslaught? How many billions of lives lost in this senseless struggle? She cannot say.

  Yet as with all the worlds thus, this one, too, was at war. Luciene fell through a swarm of Tyranid Gargoyles that scoured the skies, cutting a swath through them as she went. They seemed unbothered by her intrusion, and verminously flew on to whatever target the Hive Mind had in store for them. From there, Luciene’s descent continued unopposed, though she actively fought to right herself before being reduced to a splat on the ground.

  She managed to regain her winged composure just in time. She had fallen to within mere yards of a Militarum embankment before successfully righting herself, white wings flapping over the heads of a company of newly-slackjawed soldiers. Even a nearby Commissar ceased barking orders into a vox unit to stare in silence up at the Angel overhead. Many fell to their knees and hung their heads low in prayer.

  But from their reverence of her, Luciene was conflicted. She knew the best thing for them was for her to be as far from them as possible, that Veralith no doubt had her eyes on the scene and would see them slain to further her point. Yet, for an Angel to turn her back on the company below would have been equally devastating in morale.

  Luciene slowly drifted to the ground.

  As she did so, she noticed that there were some Astartes present, further away from the main company of the Guard. Even they, too, fell to their knees in prayer. In that lull of combat, Luciene stood within a pool of silent reverence, made uneasy and feeling the honor bestowed upon her was not earned. “It has nothing to do with earning it, Luciene,” Veralith said, though it appeared only Luciene could hear her. “This is what you are. An icon of their war. It is all you’re good for.”

  Luciene did not reply. Instead, she ignored her foe, and slowly knelt down in front of a female Guardsman, reaching a hand out to the woman in silence. With awe, the woman looked up, and beheld the face of the Angel. The woman began to reach to take Luciene’s hand into her own, but just before their fingers touched, awe turned to fear, and Luciene spied the glint of blue light in the woman’s eyes. Luciene shifted, then spun about and rose to her feet again, burying the blunted tip of her Eviscerator into the ground, where it towered over the Guardsman’s height.

  Only then, standing among people she knew to be her own, did Luciene at last answer the cerulean foe that hovered overhead. “You have spent my lives telling me what I am, Veralith, but no more,” Luciene declared, and beat her wings once, spurring the Guardsmen from their awed stupor. “I choose to be something they can place their faith in. Something they can hope for. It no longer matters to me what you have to say to that. You no longer matter to me!”

  “There is only one way to escape the shadows of your past, Angel,” Veralith shouted back. “Are you finally ready to bloody your sword?”

  Luciene barred her teeth in a sneer while her Eviscerator drew itself from the ground, rising out of stone and ceramite without a hand on its hilt. It hung handle-up before her, waiting patiently for the Angel to take it into her hands one last time. She hissed a deep breath in through tightened teeth, then out. “We’ll find out together, won’t we?”

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  It was Veralith’s time to pause, then, as a thin smile creased her lips. “Show me.”

  And she did.

  Luciene’s first priority was to take their fight far beyond the camp of soldiers she had just stood in, to direct Veralith’s ire away from them. In that, she succeeded, in a flash flying high and far. Veralith pursued, for a time, until Luciene fought against her own momentum to double back upon her foe. That momentary halting gave Veralith all the time she needed to prepare herself, however, and before Luciene could make an attack of her own, Veralith but whisked an arm over the scene. A crease formed in the empty air between the duo, and from it poured out an eruption of Warp energy. Luciene narrowly ducked and dove under the hemispheric spillage that sliced through the skies and, she noticed, the peaks of the Hive City below. Where this Warp-plane touched, existence dematerialized in an instant. And it was no mere convergence of the realspace and the immaterium, for this plane had claws, eyes. It was a living entity, at least as alive as any daemonic interplanar slice could be.

  But if it was of the Warp, Luciene knew she could kill it, and willed the very fiber of her being into the underside of the interplanar intrusion. Streaks of gold raced from her body and into the dimensionless violation of reality, forcing it to bleed immaterial blood and punching holes through to the other side of realspace.

  Luciene flew on.

  Another swarm of Gargoyles managed to surge past her again, these ones racing for Veralith as well. Perhaps the Hive Mind had decided to make a target of her at last; the so-called Dark Queen certainly had been trying hard enough to earn Its attention. But with another flick of her wrist, Veralith degloved every Tyranid in the swarm, tossing their flesh and meat aside. Another of Veralith’s hands, meanwhile, reached up and clenched into a fist; she seized the skeletal remnants of the Tyranids with her immense pyskana, and with that immensity repurposed their remains into a gargantuan arm that extended well beyond Veralith’s physical form.

  This bodiless appendage thrust itself down unto Luciene, whose Eviscerator met Tyranid bone and carved along the extent of the arm in an ever-diverted flightpath. Whether from her blade or the negating effects of her aura on Veralith’s psykana, the arm fell apart after only a few moments of contending against Luciene’s might. The skeletal remains of countless Tyranid corpses fell upon the world below, separated from the pile of flesh that had been scattered away just moments prior.

  Luciene flew on. As she did, she spied Veralith’s hands already in motion again, which saved her life; they spun around themselves, carving a circle in front of Veralith. In the next instant, a gaping hole formed between the pair, and an enflamed Imperial Battleship launched out into the heavens of the world. The vessel belonged in orbit, and damaged as it was, it plummeted toward the ground in what would be a city-leveling catastrophe. Luciene, herself, was directly in its way.

  She could not stop a Battleship from falling, not directly, but she could right the wrongs that had been wrought upon it. She darted over its form, gliding across the flaming carcass adorned in burnt-out steeples and ruined temples. As she went, she took the flames with her, working a miracle to repair what she could of the damaged vessel from her aura alone. By the time she flew into the voidship’s wake, it was beginning to right itself and, more than that, open fire upon atmospheric Tyranid targets. It only occurred to Luciene, then, that this vessel may not have even been fighting Tyranids at the time it was so-damaged; Veralith may have stolen it from an entirely different theatre of war.

  Regardless—Luciene at last reached Veralith's position, and with the voidship’s flames in her wake, thrust them, and the pain and damage they signified, forward unto her foe. They blasted past the Angel and erupted through the skies in a field of fire, yet when the dust settled, Veralith was nowhere to be seen. And Luciene knew better than to believe such an attack would have sufficed to end her foe. Then, indeed, she caught a glimpse of Veralith, only just—her avian adversary appeared before her in a flash before vanishing just as swiftly. Veralith popped in and out of existence all around Luciene, talons primed to flay an Angel. Yet Veralith’s fragmented advance was not new to Luciene; I had performed such an attack against her already.

  So, when Veralith struck down at Luciene from above, the Angel was ready, and met talon with the revving teeth of her blade. Luciene found the pressure from Veralith physically weak, and overpowered her foe to slash up and wide at her. However, her blade passed harmlessly through Veralith’s body, a laughing smile spreading over her face as her form faded. Then a force rammed into Luciene’s backside, and drew golden ichor from the Angel. Veralith launched Luciene away with a kick, apparently unharmed from the voidship’s flames and seeming to enjoy herself from the battle at last.

  ‘A kick’ was underselling the blow; Luciene rocketed across the skies, punching into the top of a Hive City before careening out the other side. A trio of spired temples collapsed in her wake. Luciene fought to retain consciousness, all but torn apart as much from the initial attack as from her impact with countless Imperial structures. Veralith was strong. Probably augmenting her strength via biomantic psykana, but nevertheless exponentially faster and stronger than even Morderfir had seemed.

  But then, her—Luciene’s—task was never going to be easy, was it? Bloodied but not out of the fight, Luciene righted herself in midair again, then plummeted toward the ground willingly, flying fast as she could straight down. She had sensed Veralith behind her, and knew she could not endure a second such attack from her foe. Even given Luciene’s complete lack of hesitation, one of Veralith’s talons still managed to claw a gash into the back of Luciene’s head as she fled. Nothing major, but enough to draw further blood, and mere microns from taking the Angel’s head off entirely.

  Veralith probably meant to pursue the Angel, but even she was forced on the defensive, crossing her arms in front of her face as her visage vanished in a colossal beam of lancefire. The voidship she had brought into this world had turned on her. When the lance strike passed, Veralith’s arms fell, and save for a few feathers clipped from her wings, she did not appear too injured. Nevertheless, she lashed out in frustration, and with another flick of one of four wrists, cleaved the vessel in two, separating bow from stern.

  Veralith then turned back toward the ground where Luciene had fled to, but for the first time, failed to find her target. It was her target, instead, that found her, and Veralith suddenly found herself careening toward the surfaceworld below. Veralith swiped a talon out at the Angel that had tackled her from behind, missing her entirely. Then the two struck the ground, shattering it on impact. Shortly thereafter, gold light from the heavens above caught up to them and rammed into their impact site, incalculable holy power surging into the crust of the world and blasting it—in a localized area—to smithereens.

  As Veralith rose to her feet at the bottom of a veritably-thermonuclear crater, she wiped a fist over her lips. She paused, then, at seeing her own blood, red as a human’s, upon the back of her hand.

  Movement to her left.

  Veralith thrust one of two left arms up toward Luciene, who was barreling toward her in a sprint. But no psykana unleashed upon the Angel. Instead, Veralith’s attention turned to movement on her right. The Eviscerator, flung toward Veralith’s neck with holy might. Veralith rose one of her right hands to flick it from its path. Then she looked back to Luciene and swiped her claw down.

  Luciene cartwheeled to the side in the nick of time, for it was as though Veralith had simply deleted a pie-slice of reality with her attack. No great Warp spillage surged forth, but an angular corner originating from Veralith’s position and extending for untold miles had simply become the Warp. As horrifying a prospect as that was, Luciene remained undeterred. A burst of gilded light shone out from the Angel, and a third of Veralith’s arms moved to deflect the apparent attack—but the light stopped short of striking Veralith directly, instead crystalizing before her view. A smile spread over her lips; she was being distracted, and she knew it.

  Veralith shot into the air, scanning over the surface of the still-smoldering crater for her foe, and in so-doing neglected to dodge the blunt-side of an Eviscerator. Luciene hammered Veralith back to the ground, having user her distractions to get her blade back into her possession, then took a page from my—and Veralith’s book—and began darting from one angle of attack to the next, waiting for Veralith to give her a viable, final opening. Veralith replied, in apparent desperation, by tossing four Warpcraft-encased hands into the ground, fissures spurting blue flames running rampant across the crater and beyond. In another moment, Veralith may well have detonated a continent.

  Luciene did not give her the chance. As the roaring teeth of her chainweapon descended upon Veralith, the fourth and final member of the Vaktez Quartet had but a single thought as her smile widened into maddened ecstasy.

  Doomsday, at last.

  House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. But when you have as many of them to color as these last few chapters have had, it really is quite a hassle.