Dawn's Wolves - Beware the fangs of the young day

***Dawn's Wolves - Beware the fangs of the young day***

# Chapter 1

Even the canopy of the dense forest did precious little to stop the raindrops from soaking the ground underneath the majestic trees. The downpour had been going for well over an hour now, a common occurrence this time of the year on the forested world of Canapal IV. Only fools would have remained outside with this weather.

Fools, soldiers and warriors. A camp of Planetary Defence Forces had been erected in a clearing, the tents struggling to resist the rain. At first glance, it would have looked like any other camp erected by loyalist forces in the Imperium Sanctum. But two things reminded all who could see that they were on the wrong side of the Cicatrix Maledictus, this massive rend in the Galaxy’s reality, from which the countless horrors of the Warp seeped into the material world.

The first were the ghastly lighting, filtered by the protective layer of dark clouds overhead, which still managed to cover the tents in stygian lights, dangerous traps for the unprotected mind. The few men still out, acting as sentinels, looked sick and feverish as pink tinges gave way to purple, to blue and then red, and all the colours possible – and impossible – in-between.

The second things was an absence rather than an objective element, but one which spoke volume. The camp lacked any Imperial icon. There was no banner etched with the disgusting markings of Chaos, or even the brand of foul xeno overlords. No, this camp had simply nothing to indicate its loyalties.

For the Grey Champion Takamoto Seiichi of the Dawn’s Wolves XIIth Great Company, it was proof enough that those were traitors. Ever since the Company had landed on Canapal, he had seen enough to be certain of that fact. With over twelve years of service during the Indomitus Crusade of the Lord Roboute Guilliman, and the short decade since he and his brothers had formed their own Chapter, he was quite certain of it.

“Why aren’t we storming those bastards?” growled Ulfr Iron-Jaw in the squad coms. “We should wipe them out!”

Seiichi smiled in his helmet. It had been a year since his Chapter had received reinforcements from Fenris, the fabled world of their equally as legendary older brothers, the Space Wolves and those warriors proved as headstrong and impulsive as they were famed to be.

“Patience” he calmly replied to the young Dusk Claw. “Our quarry hasn’t shown itself yet. Those are scum, who will be dealt with in due time. But uncontrolled aggression won’t work for us here. Be patient. Like a true wolf.”

Ulfr grunted but said nothing, and his four Brother around remained silent, even if they shifted uncomfortably. Seiishi smiled again. As a Grey Champion, putative heir to his Reik, he had been assigned to the Fenrisians who had the hardest time to embrace the ways of the Dawn’s Wolves.

He could not fault them. While the Chapter had tried to model itself after what it knew of the Space Wolves when it had been created, after the Battle for the Pit of Raukos, which had heralded the end of the Crusade Indomitus as they had known it for twelve years, they lacked true first-hand knowledge. Having some Fenrisians born in position of power, such as their Kindins, Rasmus Bluebear, had done very little to help them model accordingly to the whims of their distance Brothers of the VlkaFenryka.

Also, their experience as Unnumbered Sons had forged them in a different way, as demonstrated since the adjunction of Battle-Brothers from Fenris. Still, the stubbornness of Russ was in them all, and it had surprisingly helped smooth most conflicts. Fenrisians were quite willing to adapt to new ways of war once one had demonstrated his willingness to bash them in the head, mused Seiichi.

“Grey Champion” urged Svengar Icewalker, the Alpha of the small Dusk Claws’ Pack.

“I see them” replied Seiichi, his voice dropping an octave as a underneath growl could be heard in his voice. “Move, and be discreet. I want those bastards wiped out before the rest of the camp may swamp us.”

The Grey Champion got up, his Mark X Tacticusarmour almost silent under the din of the rain. He still wished he had chosen a Phobos armour, but it wouldn’t have helped him instil the creed of the Dawn’s into his young protégés. Lifting his large shield, he glanced at them and nodded proudly, even if they didn’t saw it.

They moved like natural-born hunters, in a swift and discreet way he could never hope to emulate. His own discretion was born out of countless guerrilla operations at the forefront of the Indomitus Crusade, weakening their foes so the main force would shatter them like glass and crush them underfoot.

He chanced a glance at his warriors. They looked beautiful in their blue and bronze livery. On their left shoulder, the red head of a howling wolf on a golden circle displayed for the world to see their Chapter’s heraldry. They wore more pelts and trinkets than most of their Brothers, f course, but it was expected of Fenrisians.

His own armour was adorned with decorations which would have seemed more fitting for an Ultramarine probably, and indeed the blue of their livery was meant as a nod of respect for those noble sons of Roboute Guilliman, the Brother of Russ who had made the Primaris a reality. Still, a few runes had been etched, especially on his left arm, whose armour was still grey.

Running just at the edge of the sentinel’s night vision, they circled the camp to approach their prey. Elite troops, in carapace armour, black, without any marking, neither of loyalty nor betrayal. Seiichi felt the usual urge to rush them, to cut down those imbecils who threw away their lives instead of serving the Emperor.

“What are we waiting for now?” grumbled Ulfr as they stopped in the back of the traitors.

“The pincer-attack” replied the Grey Champion with a low growl.

“From whom?” asked cockily Olaf Olfasson.

“Them” stated Seiichi has he charged his prey.

He lived for those moments. They all did. The moment when they rushed an unsuspecting target was the greatest time to be alive. Their screams of surprise turning to terror when they realized that they were charged by Primaris, whose howls suddenly pierced the silence, heralding their deaths with each swing of their blade.

At the other side of the camp, three other Greyshields from the retinue of Reik M’baku suddenly bolted out of the bushes. The unsuspecting traitors closest to them were bashed to death by their huge shields. Those who fell alive were trampled by the boots of the Primaris, and the remaining few hacked to death with their power swords.

With a loud howl, Seiichi joined the fray, the pack of Dusk Claws at his back letting out their own warcries. The crack troops tried to turn around to resist their onslaught, but the Grey Champion did not gave them the time. He collided with them like a wrecking ball, sending the soldiers flying, granting him the space to let his blade free. His sword lopped a head and he bellowed his own howl.

“Make Russ proud!”

If they had charged into the camp from the get go, perhaps the heretics would have been a slight danger, able to hurt or even kill one of the overeager younglings with a lucky shot. As it was, confused and pincered on two fronts, the twenty or so warriors were killed in a matter of minutes, none able to do more than a scratch on Olaf’s armour.

Even in the midst of the carnage, Seiichi had time to focus on his warriors. His Greyshields peers were felling men left and right, with no one able to resist them. The Grey Champion noticed that – as often – Dragomir Carnatar was not wearing his helmet. His prey didn’t seem to like his predatory grin, his fangs on display as he screamed and howled.

Closer to him, Seiichi noticed that his Dusk Claws were displaying the usual ferocity expected from natives of Fenris. He had seen recruits from over a hundred worlds being inducted in the Chapter and none could match their sheer fury when unleashed in battle. Arms and other body parts flew as his warriors felled their opponents. It was truly a sight to behold, one he aspired to be able to match, someday.

He pared a heavy blow from a desperate sergeant, the mortal’s power sword colliding against his shield in a discordant scream, which covered even the din of battle. A brutal punch in the unprotected face caved his skull, silencing the mad man as Seiichi searched for another opponent. He cleaved another heretic in two and sent a third flying with his shield, before abruptly stopping.

“Retreat” he suddenly ordered, his ears picking a disturbing sound in the distance. “Now!” he added when he saw the hesitation of the pack, his voice brooking no contradiction.

His Greyshields brothers were already moving out of the clearing, slaying any who tried to slow them down. His Dusk Claws were overeager, excited by the scent of blood. Even if he had ordered them to keep their helmets on for now, he could see their snarls and need for more carnage in the camp. They did not want to retreat.

And yet they did, their training and the authority of his voice bringing them back out of the battle frenzy they were so close to succumb to. Bolvekr and Jörmund the Swift were the last two to disengage, going as far as shooting at the humans with their bolt pistols as they moved back to the cover of the forest.

They had barely left the clearing when an angry noise became audible for all. Screams of panics became shriller in the camp, before a loud detonation sent a tremor all around it. Even Seiishi had to brace a little. His helmet dampened most of the auditory trauma and he looked over his shoulder as the heretic’s location, which had become a see of flames.

“By the All-Father!” howled Ulfr. “What was that?”

“Artillery cover fire” calmly, almost joyfully, explained the Grey Champion to the bewildered Dusk Claw. “They are trying to kill us from afar, and they clearly don’t care about finishing their own troops. It was quite the rapid answer to our action. Someone in that camp gave that order as soon as the Greyshields attacked, I suspect.”

“But how did you knew it’d fire at us?” asked Svengar, with perhaps a hint of awe in his voice, if his helmet’s radio didn’t fool Seiichi.

“Dawn Fangs Infiltrators and Reivers have sent rapports about those pieces of artillery being deployed on the theatre of operations. I highly suspected one was nearby. Our assault was, mostly, a test to see if my hunch was correct. It seems it was.””

“But what’s the point?” grumbled Bolvekr, his words almost covered by a primal growl – he had the hardest time out of the whole Great Company battling the Wulfen inside of him. “We can’t take them down!”

“We can’t, but our brothers can. By firing at us they have revealed their locations. A pack of Moonlight Hunter Hellblasters or Heavy Intercessor will be ready to strike at them and silence the bastard for good.”

“So what, we were decoy?” huffed Bolvekr.

“Calm down, the Swift!” shouted Svengar, trying to assert his authority as the Pack’s Alpha. “The Grey Champion knows what he does!”

“Thank you, Svengar. But to answer Bolvekr’s question. No, we were not a decoy. Those soldiers had been spotted by our Dawn Fangs. They needed to be taken out of the picture, and that was our objective. That the enemy was foolish enough to play his hand like he did is… a bonus, if you will.”

“But they were weak!” grunted Bolvekr, clearly struggling to calm himself. “They couldn’t have been a real threat!”

“Of course they are weaker than us” admitted Seiichi with a form of serenity. “It’s our Great Company’s first deployment since it was created. We need to forge bonds in battle for become a cohesive whole, sending us against to deadly a foe would result in unnecessary deaths. We chanced this world, which doesn’t have real defences, outside of the Planetary Capital for a reason. We will bring it back to the fold and forge our bonds, so that when we will face a true foe, whose might may be a real challenge for us, we won’t shatter under its blow.”

“No man who dies for the All-Father does so in vain!” shouted Olaf and the rest of the pack showed its support by a series of shoots.

“True, but I’d rather we all kill His enemies for centuries than to go to our death with naught but a pitiful saga to recall.”

No one dared to challenge the Grey Champion’s word, this time.

Behind them, the shriek of dying traitors were now covered by the sound of roaring fire, a fiery inferno able to burn even in the downpour. Seiichi smiled grimly. How many times had he taken part in such an action during the Crusade? He had excelled in those hit and run assaults, drawing their preys once they had given them a bloody noise.

“It’s a shame they aren’t Orks” he muttered aloud. “They always make for the funniest of hunts.”

Nobody seemed to have heard him and – for a time – he allowed his memory to wander back to the Pit of Raukos.

**\* \* \***

Twenty thousand Primaris gathered before their Lord. It had been a sight to behold, one not seen in over one hundred centuries, and they were but the pitiful remnants of the Unnumered Sons, Legion-sized armies which had brought back the Law of the Emperor into the whole of the Imperium Sanctus, and even outside of it.

All those remaining warriors had taken part into the whole length of the Crusade. They had seen brothers die, leave to form whole new Chapters or join existing ones. Now that the former option was unavailable to them, Seiichi had wondered what the Primarch had in store for them all, even as he stood at attention, waiting for Roboute Guilliman to appear, in an hololite form.

“You think we’ll be sent to the Space Wolves?” asked Blagovest, to no one in particular.

“Well, what do you expect? There is barely enough Sons of Russ left here to scrap half a Chapter together… and they’re too grim for us” had chuckled Seiichi.

It was true. Sons of Russ had always been tribal, forging bonds with Brothers from the same Father with far greater ease than with those of other lineages. And even then, there was a fracture between them – the future Dawn’s Wolves, and the other Sons of Russ of the Octus Fleet. Too many rumours about their geneseed and character.

“Well I know of someone who should join them, if he was honest with himself” insisted Blagovest as he signalled to Kang Hyunggu to his right.

“I won’t join them” stated the dour warrior, who had picked up on his Brother’s innuendo. “My oaths are to Captain Stoyanova. And he’ll follow the Bluebear.”

“Sure but-“ started Blogovest until a chorus of trumpets forced him to silence.

Even from so far away, Seiichi had been awed by the Primarch. He looked perfect, refined and yet a powerful warrior, the Avenging Son of the Emperor. And yet, a part of him wondered if he felt the same if it had been Leman Russ standing before the troops. Would have been more awed or less? Would his Primarch look lesser than the Lord Commander did today?

He didn’t really listened to what was being said, as the Primarch spoke of the greatness of the Indomitus Crusade. Everyone here knew he was only recapitulating their glorious days, but that they were coming to an end. Ultramar was in danger, he had heard, so Guilliman had to return to it. It was only natural. But now, all the Primaris worried about their fate. An it seemed the Brother of Russ was coming to it.

“As you know it, our Crusade is at an end, but your glory has only just started. I have gathered your records and pondered about your fate. Some of you, my Sons of many lineages, will be sent to reinforce Chapters in the Imperium Sanctus. But other, I trust to forge new legacies. You may start with not enough Brothers to form a full Chapter, but I know you will quickly gather new recruits to aid you in your wars.”

It had been at this moment that Seiichi had known in his hearts that he wouldn’t be sent to the VlkaFenryka. It had been a premonition which had seized him and made his hearts beat faster. He’d be given an opportunity to pave a way, instead of having to prove himself in regard to predecessors since time immemorial!

“It will be a time of trial for you” continued the Primarch, his perfectly modulated voice covering the whole expanse of the assembled army with ease. “You will be alone, cut off from the thousands of Brothers you could count on until today.”

It was a new idea, one which clearly displeased some more than others. The Sons of Russ around Seiichi, who shared his love for the banter with the Sons of other Primarchs, seemed to be the most affected. Others took this information in stride, a slap on the face perhaps, but not even enough to make them frown.

“But you are the veterans of a crusade which lasted for more than a hundred years! You have proven yourself, and you’ll do so again in the future! You will make me proud, like you did countless times before. Ave Imperator!”

“AVE IMPERATOR!” had shouted Seiichi, joining a chorus of thousands of voices, for the last time.

**\* \* \***

“Helmets off” ordered Svengar as soon as they had made sure no pursuer was on their trail, at least for now.

A series of relieved sighs followed his words, as his Brothers were finally allowed to be free f the confines of their armours. Sure, a Mark X helm was a great tool of war, but as Sons of Russ, Svengar and his Pack favoured the keen senses that the Canis Helix had gifted them over the runes of target it displayed when worn.

The young Fenrisian warrior glanced sideways. The Grey Champion hadn’t said anything, but he hadn’t removed his helmet either. Somehow, it frustrated the young warrior more than anything else. Surely no true warrior would have wanted to go to battle hidden from head to toe beneath a shell? Why couldn’t Takamoto behave like a proper Sky Warrior would?

“Do you smell anything amiss?” suddenly asked the veteran, surprising the younger Primaris.

“I don’t smell shit” grumbled Olaf, shaking his long brown mane as he displayed his impatience. “Not one of those bastards dared to follow us in the forest. We should have pounced back on them once they were done shooting at themselves!”

“I bet the forest is swarming with them back there. We could have been killing them all, already” grunted Ulfr, his short red hair almost as fiery as his face as he brought some support to his packmate. “Why are we even running from them?”

“Sounds like woman’s work to me” spat Jörmund, another one of fiery mane, albeit a longer one any other in the pack. “Don’t we have allies here, who’re supposed to still be loyal or something? They can deal with the rats. I say we need to strike at the heart of the whole planet. The capital city!”

“Us five against the defenders?” laughed Bolvekr, the fire of battle finally receding in him, even if his face, shrouded by unkempt blond hair still looked somewhat bestial. “It’d be a glorious fate, no matter the result!”

“It would be a waste of your lives” cut off the voice of the Grey Champion, immediately dampening the spirits of the pack members.

“Then what would you have us do, Grey Champion? Nibble at the heels of the traitors?”

Svengar couldn’t suppress the disdain in his voice any longer at the very thought of cleaning up such pathetic preys. He was angry at Takamoto, because he could see the older Primaris was a deadly warrior, worthy of respect thanks to his prowess alone, but he didn’t act like a true Son of Russ should have, in his eyes.

“I would have us win this war, Svengar” replied the Grey Champion, his voice deepened by his helmet, which he still hadn’t removed. “We are testing ourselves here. What hope do we have against real foes if we can’t fight as real Brothers do?”

“How can we win if we don’t strike at the capital?” pressed the Alpha, his anger slightly lessened by the firm tone of Takamoto. “The head of the traitor is there!”

“Quite true. But what makes you think we aren’t already striking there, Brother?”

“We haven’t heard of any assault on the capital?” grumbled Olaf, who sounded a little unsure now. “Wouldn’t assaulting the capital necessitate a massive assault?”

“Only if we tried to rush it by force, Brother” explained Takamoto. “And we would, if we suspected that the secessionists could muster a dangerous force. But right now, by drawing their attention outside of their walls, we are allowing our Dawn Fangs to infiltrate without being noticed. And then, they’ll cut the head of the snake, and we’ll depart Canapal to seek out a true foe, worthy of our Great Company.”

“Well that sounds disappointing” huffed Jörmund.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure our future campaigns will have far better opponents for us to defeat, Brother” chuckled Takamoto. “See this campaign as an opportunity to hone your skills – which are considerable, believe me.”

“You shouldn’t coddle the pups so much, Unavenged” suddenly said a voice Svengar didn’t knew.

“I’m not coddling them, Dragomir, I’m preparing them for what’s to come.”

“And we’re not pups!” growled the Alpha, as the trio of Greyshields appeared out of the forest. “We are great warriors, born and tested on Fenris!”

“As if it meant anything” grumbled another Veteran, whose name Svengar hadn’t heard yet. “It’s here, in the Sea of Stars that one has to prove his mettle, not on a single planet, as deadly as it can be.”

“Enough Arterius” barked the third one. “Seiichi, a new concentration of traitors has been located, ten kilometres way. Do we wipe them out? They do not seem to have any dangerous troops. Should we ignore them?”

“No. We will deal with them. And we’ll see how Svengar’s pack can handle them. What do you think, Brothers?”

“I agree!” yelled Bolvekr, as the rest of the Dusk Claws voiced their agreement. “You agree too, right Sven?”

“Of course! If they are that weak, at least they’ll allow us to vent our frustrations. What could go wrong?”

# Chapter 2

The smell of blood hung heavy in the air of the temple. It had been a Church of the Emperor, once. But when the Cicatrix Maledictum had opened, faith in the God-Emperor had fallen by the wayside. No light came from Terra anymore and all but the most foolish had realized that the Throneworld had fallen. It was now every world for itself. And Eigberth von Raulkov had seen to it that his own would survive, no matter the cost.

He had been a younger man, then. Dashing, energetic and more than able to convince all his Council of Lords that he was right to turn away from the Emperor of Mankind. He wouldn’t come to them. He had far more pressing matters – if he still existed – than to head the plight of a small, feudal planet, whose sole resource of worth was its regiments, levied by the Astra Militarum, after all.

He was old now, and felt frailty crawling up on him, a detestable feeling of weakness he hated with all his heart. Only here, in this holiest of place, where the true God of Battle and Carnage awaited his servants, did he feel strong. It was a strange sensation, one which was drawing him here more and more as the years went by. But today, he discovered that no sudden influx of strength could lift his spirits.

“You promised me that we’d be safe!” he bellowed, his voice crackling a little. “When you came to this world, we offered you everything you asked, in exchange of eternal protection!”

“Not everything” cackled the Emissary, who didn’t even bother to turn away from the blood boiling in a brass cauldron he toiled on. “You did not deliver your people to Khorne.”

Eigberth winced. When he had sealed that pact with the Emissary, when he had vowed to dedicate his world to Khorne in exchange of safe keeping, he had driven a hard bargain. He had sent all those who committed crimes to the dungeons when the priest of the Blood God and his acolytes then rested.

He had even assisted in several of the ritual sacrifices, when petty criminals and faithful of the God-Emperor were beheaded in bloody rituals which had been meant to shield the planet from any outside interference. Until today. Until the blue invaders that assaulted his troops out of the shadows only to melt back into it, leaving only corpses and the echoes of their howls behind them.

“I gave Khorne thousands of skulls” he pleaded. “Surely it is enough to repel the invaders? They are few and their ship has departed once it had dropped them. They are weak, they must be pushed back and destroyed!”

As he spoke, Eigberth felt his temper flaring. He realized, with a little bit of surprise, that he wanted the invaders dead, he wanted to see them all beheaded and their heads piled into pyramids, offerings for the Blood God to whom he had sold his souls, and drink their blood. All he needed was his power blade and he’d reap the souls of those repugnant invaders.

“Your planet has millions of souls, my Lord” smiled the Emissary, finally turning to look at the Planetary Governor. “You have shielded them from the hand of our red god. You refused that all should fend for themselves and that only the strong may survive. You did offer blood and skulls, and it pleased Khorne, but his needs are… far greater than those meagre offering.”

The old man staggered backward, as if he had been slapped in the face. The words of the Emissary looked far too much like the dreams he had had, all those years since he had vowed to pray any god willing to preserve Canapal. How often had he woken up, sweaty and strangely exhilarating, after one of those visions where he slaughtered all he had ever disliked – and even some of his loved ones?

“You know of what I mean, I see my Lord” whispered the Emissary, his voice carrying a malignant power which made von Raulkov feel sick and yet yearning for more. “Do not fear those visions, for they are a blessing from our god! Purge the Capital, and extend his reach in the wilderness, were the primitives peoples of your world still cling to the worship of the Corpse Emperor! Only then will those bestial invaders be driven back!”

“And then, none would invade our world? We would be safe?” asked Eigberth, who felt as if he was in a trance, as visions of glorious battles against ignominious foes flooded his brain. “We would be able to repel anyone foolish enough to threaten us!”

“No my Lord, we would take the war to them! We would slacken our thirst for their blood, making sure that none would be able to stand against us. It would be a crusade of blood and gore unlike any the galaxy as ever seen! Even the so-called Great Crusade of the Corpse-Emperor would be a pale shadow of our furious glory!”

“Invading other worlds? But… but we can’t even leave this one! We don’t have any ship able to dive into the Warp! At best we’d reach the nearby planets, but those colonies were always restive!”

Eigberth was doing his best to find excuses, for a part of him that was still decent and respectable balked at the words of his priest. But another, darker, portion of his soul was drunk with the possibilities. He wouldn’t rule his pathetic backwater world, full of peasants barely able to wield a fragspear! He’d be at the head of a mighty horde of warriors, washing the Galaxy in the blood of their pathetic preys!

“Fear not, my Lord, for I have means to transport us where we’ll be needed. Or do you think those last decades I toiled in vain? The Blood Gate will soon be completed. When it’ll open, the means of our conquest will be at hand! Then, it will be time to remake this world in the image of Khorne’s eternal battlefields. But I’ll need your help to finish it, my Lord.”

The Emissary gestured at the ground, beneath them. Eigberth had done his best to not think about what was below the grill he stood on, but he knew what it was. He had, after all, been the one ordering the construction of that vast pool. The blood of its builders had been the first to fill it, and now it had gorged in the red nectar of thousands of sacrifices.

It was the main source of the horrible smell which made him dizzy. The fragrance of hundreds of killed, of a thousand mutilations and tens of thousands of screams rested here, in that swirling pool, never resting, as if something swam in it, something which had only grown stronger and stronger as the pool received more blood. The Planetary Governor licked his lips and battled away the nauseous sensation that they were covered in someone else’s blood.

“How can I help you, Emissary?” he finally asked, his voice less sure and strong than before, the mere thoughts of the pool leaving him weak and vulnerable, as if some predatory monster looked at him from below and only waited for him to fall into its red maw. “How can we open that Blood Gate of yours?”

“By spilling more blood, my Lord. Here, in the Capital, and even outside. We need more devoted of Khorne. Order your soldiers to kill in his name. Purge your Council of the weak-willed and the feeble. Only the strong will survive this night, and we will prevail!”

Eigberth nodded. He had never heard such fervour in the voice of the Emissary and he felt his urge for blood grow even stronger. He’d do as he was told, he’d please Khorne! He started to regret not doing it sooner, when he was younger and stronger. He’d have been able to take down all his foes, unmake all his problems with a bellowing screaming and a hard strike.

“I shall leave you now, Emissary!” he shouted, his body tingling with a surge of strength he had never felt before. “Blood for the Blood God!’

“Blood for the Blood God!” roared the Emissary as Eigberth swirled around and rushed out of the temple, to gather his Council and purge it of the feeble minded in its ranks.

He never heard the soft laugh of the Emissary behind him.

**\* \* \***

Svengar smiled, taking in the smell of their preys. The mortals had gathered, over a hundred of them, in a depression, barely a hundred meters away from the hiding position of the Primaris, offering them a great view of their arrangement, but also a nice slope to gain speed and power for their upcoming charge.

Most of those men were not the PDF’s troops, but instead the ferocious natives, in the hinterlands. They wore large sword, fragspears, primitive las-guns and, more interestingly to the Dusk Claws, what looked like primitive power armour. They had a look of dark determination on their face, one Svengar could respect.

“So, what’s the plan, Sven?” asked Olaf, who was toying with his chainsword, making it swirl as his impatience grew. “We charge in and we slaughter them all?”

“No. We’ll show the Grey Champion how Fenrisians fight” stated the Alpha, pointing at the unit of guardsmen at the back of the troops, clearly freshly arrived from the Capital. “We’ll pierce through the ranks from the left, where their warriors seems the greener. Then we’ll fall on the commanding officer and his guards.”

“And then we slaughter them?” asked Bolvekr, a bestial grin on his face.

“Aye, we kill them all. But we do that properly” added Svengar, which made his pack mates frown. “Bolvekr, I want on the left of the assault, you kill everything that comes from that. Jörmund, you’ll be the tip of the spear with me. Ulfr, you take the right and you hold them off. Olaf, on the back, you slay any who would try to backstab us. Got it?”

“I don’t want to be on the back” grumbled Olafsson. “It’s always me when you plan that sort of stuff! Give that role to Jörmund, for once!”

“Watching the back of your Brothers and ensuring that they are safe to kill in the Emperor’s name is one’s most important position. Only a trusted warrior can take it, one whose will is as indomitable as iron and the arms as powerful as Russ’ fury.”

The Dusk Claws all turned to look at Haguleyy the Wise, the third of the Greyshields accompanying them. Svengar felt a little bothered by this intervention. He had been given the right to mount the assault as he saw fit, after all. Still, he couldn’t deny the wisdom of those words, nor the effect they clearly had on his Brothers.

“He’s right, Olaf? Do you want Jörmund to be the one watching over your back?”

“Eh, now that you mention it, no I don’t want. He’s not the most reliable around, right?”

“Get eaten by a Kraken and die, bastard” chuckled Jörmund. “It’s just that you’re too slow to be upfront!”

A joyful banter erupted for a few seconds. Svengar appreciated those moments. It reminded him how close Fenrisians could become when they fought together. The other ones, the Dawn’s Wolves from other worlds didn’t seem to share those moments, at least not as often. Even now, the four Veterans remained silent, with only Dragomir showing his face, and he looked more focused on the enemy than anything else.

“Greyshields, Grey Champion?” called the Alpha. “I wouldn’t presume to command you but, hum, would you be willing to play a part in that assault.”

Those words stopped short the smiles of his Brothers, and all five of the Dusk Claws turned to watch at the older warriors. As often with the Dawns, their reactions seemed muted. Dragomir turned his head to nod only a second, starting again to watch their preys a heartbeat later. The other three remained silent for a few more seconds.

“I though you wanted the pups to deal with them alone, Unavenged” finally growled Artorius to Takamoto.

“Making use of all their assets as they saw fit is also them dealing with our prey, Brother” explained the Grey Champion, as calm as ever. “You have my approval Svengar. It is always a good way for young warriors to grow, to lend them great weapons.”

“And it’ll allow us to cut loose a little, right?” chuckled Haguleyy, who unsheathed his power-sword. “Good, I’ve needed some reprieve from Artorius constant sour mood.”

“Yes, with some luck he’ll take a fragspear in the mouth and it’ll shut him up a little” grumbled Dragomir, with only the faintest smile on his face proving he was not entirely serious.

“You rats, if it weren’t for me, both of you would be unable to focus on the task at hand and you know it” groaned Artorius. “Anyway, since we all agree the pups should tell us what to do just this one time… Go one Alpha, we don’t have all day!”

“I’d need you to strike from the right, the four of you, before we charged. It’d draw the attention of all our preys and we’d be able to wipe them out faster and in a safer way.”

“Uugh, why make them even weaker?” groaned Bolvekr, but Svengar ignored him.

“That’s how we attack other tribes on Fenris” continued Svengar, ignoring his Brother, “to win their lands – at least my Blackfangs tribe did so like that, when we knew the enemy’s will to fight rested entirely on their leaders.”

“It’s a good plan” stated Takamoto. “We’ll do that but you’ll need to be quick Svengar, or you and your pack mates won’t have anyone to fight.”

“Don’t worry about it Grey Champion!” laughed Ulfr Iron-Jaw. “I don’t think we’ll have the patience to wait too long, am I right or am I right Svengar?”

“Yes, we won’t make you wait too long, don’t worry! For Russ!” shouted the Alpha.

“For Russ!” replied a chorus of voices.

**\* \* \***

“Blood for the Blood God!” bellowed Eigberth as he used his power-sword to slice his friend’s Artorius’ head like a ripe melon.

The Council of Lord’s room had erupted in madness. Some of the leaders of Canapal tried to hide beneath the large table upon which they usually banqueted and talked about the destiny of their world. Other were killing each other, helped by the servants, who were chanting prayers of carnage as they slaughtered their masters.

“This is our destiny! By denying it, your lives are forfeit!” roared Eigberth.

Strength was flowing into his body, making him forget all his doubts and worries. When he had entered the room, barely ten minutes ago, he had doubted he would truly be able to do what the Emissary had asked of him. A slaughter of planetary proportion seemed too radical, too dangerous to truly contemplate. But then, his political rival, Paula von Gustenbolt had brought the matter of the invaders to the table.

“My Lords” she had said, her voice as cold and firm as ever, “the Angels of the God-Emperor are on our world, and they are killing our soldiers. How can it be? Surely, our Planetary Governor made contact with them and assured them of our world’s allegiance to the Throne?”

“As you remember perfectly well, Paula, Canapal as seceded from the Imperium, decades ago” had curtly replied Eigberth, not even trying to dissimulate his disdain at the woman’s pathetically obvious assault on his position. “A vote which was ratified by this very Council, by the way.”

“Before my time, and my mother voice her opposition, you may find it in the scribe’s account of the very session you speak off, my Lord Planetary Governor” icily stated Paula. “I think it is safe to assume that the assumptions which served as its basis have now been proved unfounded and that the motion you speak off will be repealed.”

Eigberth had felt terrible. He knew what Paula was doing. She wanted him to admit he didn’t want that motion repealed, because it’d be his undoing. She and a few others, of the younger Lords and Lady, would be able to save their lives, but his would be forfeit. And she knew he knew, considering her condescending smile. That smile that doomed her.

Before he could even realize what he was doing, Eigberth had drawn out his small bolt pistol, a gift from his grandfather, aimed at Paula’s head and shot. Her horrified expression had been replaced by a large spray of blood, broken bones and mangled brain, and a flood of power and rage had swelled inside the Governor’s chest.

“So will perish all the servants of the Corpse-Emperor!” he had screamed, and he had started killing.

It had been as if he had unleashed a torrent of hatred in the large room. Peoples who had hated each other’s for decades were now dealing with their grievances in blood. And only a few fools, like that dear, honourable and steadfast Artorius, had tried to quell the madness. And to arrest him first. For that, he had died, and now Eigberth was looking at the corpses, and he laughed.

“My Lord?” asked a servant, her face covered in blood, wounds disfiguring her face, marring a lineage which had been bred for centuries only for the pleasures of the Lords of this very Council they had slaughtered. “What do you want us to do?”

“Go in the palace, in the city, and kill all the non-believers! And have the soldiers outside the walls be noticed. They now kill for the Blood God!”

**\* \* \***

Svengar waited, carefully looking at their preys. Something had stirred them, clearly. The leader, someone he suspected would have been a lieutenant or another ranking officer in the Astra Militarum, had received a call and he seemed agitated. The rest of the soldiers were even worst, with whatever semblance of order they had had now dissolving.

“Pah, they are losing their minds?” asked Bolvekr, as he spat on the ground. “Those bastards wouldn’t even be able to endure a strong wind, by the look of it!”

“Russ’ fangs, do you think I can read mind? I’m not a Rune Priest” groaned Svengar. "It changes nothing, really.”

“They are called Skaalds here” thought wise to state Ulfr, earning a series of growls from his Brothers.

“Who cares” grumbled the Alpha. “Be ready, the Greys will be joining the fray soon.”

And indeed, barely had he finished his sentence that for enormous forms in Mark X Tacticus armours, adorned by all manners of decorations which looked better on a Son of Dorn than of Russ, with only a few runes etched here and there, suddenly bolted out of the forest’s edge, toward the mortals below.

To the credit of the defenders, the more primitive looking actually held their ground and even managed to shot a little bit at the Primaris who brought them death. Of course, it was an exercise in futility. Their guns couldn’t even dent the ceramite, and instead barely removed the coat of paint above it, when they found their mark.

The violence of the impact when the four veterans collided with the disorganized soldiers was so great that several mortals simply died, their bones crushed. The unlucky ones, barely grievously wounded, soon joined them in death when the bolts and blades of the Greyshields started to dance, each strike a killing blow, while the Primaris advanced, barely slowed down by the mass of their foes.

They had already deeply penetrated the Canapali’s formation and more reinforcement were rushing their way. The confusion and terror of the humans was palpable but only the guards of the Capital seemed weak in their resolve. The others shouted and rushed at the invaders, displaying a bravery which granted them a modicum of respect in the Alpha’s mind. But it was the time to kill, not to praise their enemy.

“Now!” roared Svengar, charging forward. “Beware the fangs of the young day!” he added, shouting the battle-cry of his Chapter.

“Beware the fangs!” shouted his Brothers as they followed him.

The slope was steeper than it had looked, but Svengar easily compensated it. He was used to fight on a boat, where the footing changed from one moment to the next, and even the shaking grounds of Fenris. He used the increased momentum to his advantage and jumped above the first line of mortals, crushing two beneath his weight as he touched ground, his chainsword roaring and killing all around him.

Behind him, his Brothers quickly closed the gap, slaying all who stood between their Alpha and them. Svengar stood his ground, slaying three of the brave mortals who dared charge them, until Jörmund the Swift finally joined him, and the other three soon after. Icewalker advanced in the mass, cutting a bloody way through the humans.

After four more steps, they ceased to face the backwards defenders of Canapal IV to engage the true PDF. Those men seemed less willing to throw away their lives at the Primaris, but a stern voice in their back ordered them to open fire, and soon Svengar felt the sting of lasguns finding their marks. He ignored the pain and cleaved a first traitor in two with his chainsword.

“Slay them all! For Russ and the All-Father!”

“For Russ!” bellowed his pack mates.

“For the Emperor and Leman Russ!” roared the Greyshields in the distance, their voices easily covering the din of battle and the screams of the mortals.

The battle turned to a veritable butchery. The PDF couldn’t hope to hold the fury of the Dusk Claws, who slew a dozen of them in less than thirty seconds, using chain swords, heavy bolt pistols and even a grenade. Finally, the Alpha spotted a direct way toward the man leading the traitors in this spot, and pointed at him with his chainsword.

“Here! We need to get him, Brothers!”

“Brothers? Are you turning into a real Dawn’s Wolf?” mocked Bolvekr, the fury in his blood making his voice harsher, as if his body struggled more than ever to contain the Curse of the Wulfen.

Svengar ignored the taunt and kept the path open toward his prey. On his right, Jörmund helped him and he could feel that Bolvekr and Ulfr were protecting their flanks. The only one he couldn’t get a grip on his position was Olaf, and for the first time ever he realized that keeping his helmet would have been a boon in this situation.

He ignored this stray thought and finally reached the officer, but just as he prepared his killing blow, two of the feudal warriors jumped on him, forcing him to deal with them first. One was easily dispatched, his neck broken with one back-handed blow from his pistol, but the other one managed to dodge his chainsword and hit him in the face with his fragspear.

On a twist of wyrd, or perhaps sheer dumb luck, the frag did not detonate and Svengar preserved his head. He gutted the mortal, his chainsword opening his primitive power armour in half and then bit deeply into his stomach, making him screaming in a very disturbing way, and the Dusk Claw finished him with a bolt in the head, before searching the officer around.

“Kill them all! Hold your position and kill them all” yelled a high pitched voice, and Icewalker finally saw his target, a few meters away, behind two line of frightened defenders. “Kill them all for the Blood God!’

“Keep him alive!” thundered Takamoto before Svengar could fully grasp the meaning of what the mortal had truly said.

# Chapter 3

Seiichi felt an old fury fall upon him as he opened a way toward the leader of the Canapali. The men parted before him now, their resolve broken and some even threw down their spears and pleaded for mercy. Usually, he would have said something to them, to either confirm their hopes of survival or dash them, but the rage which now seared his mind prevented him from talking.

He saw that his words had reached Svengar but, for the faintest of moments, it had seemed that it wouldn’t be enough to stop the young warrior’s enthusiasm at killing their foes. Mercifully, the wisdom of the Emperor was on the boy, and he spared the officer, merely breaking the hand in which he had held his human-sized bolt pistol.

“Grey Champion?” asked the Alpha, confused by the approach of his older Brother no doubt.

“You did well. Very well in fact” growled Seiichi, trying to push his hatred aside for a moment. “And you too” he said to the other four Dusk Claws, covered in blood and gore. “See to it that the Canapali are not harmed any further. Dragomir, Artorius and Haguleyy, screen them. Those who are a lost cause, dispose of them. The others, keep them alive, we’ll need them soon.”

Giving orders, focusing on what he knew was necessary to adapt to the changing battlefield Canapal IV had suddenly revealed to be, helped him cool off slightly. Still, when he turned his helmet toward the officer, his anger was painfully hard to control. He wanted nothing more than to tear the man’s throat with his bare hands, but the Grey Champion managed to push that urge aside, contemplating silently the Chants of Appeasement he had learnt when he had started his transformation into a Primaris.

“You! You talked about a blood god. This is unheard off her on Canapal. What prompted you to do so! Speak and you may yet live a while longer!”

The young man, whose resolve was as broken as his hand, didn’t need much incentive to talk, but truly hearing him proved hard for the veteran warrior. His mind kept drifting back to distant – but never forgotten – memories. He absent-mindedly started to caress the holster of his neo-volkite gun.

“It… it was an order from the Capital! Just… just minutes before you attacked us! I swear! I’ve never… I don’t even know who that Blood God is supposed to be! All I know is that the Governor said he’d help us, that calling his name would give us the strength of pushing away the invaders! Please, I swear I’ve never turned my back on the Imperium! I just followed orders.”

“Following orders is not an excuse for betrayal” growled Seiichi menacingly, before straightening the faltering man, who cried for mercy in the most pathetic way the Primaris had ever seen. “Enough of your whimpering! You won’t die, at least not yet. I need to bring you to the Reik! He’ll be the one deciding of your fate. But if you want to live, you’d better everything you can about the Capital. Am I clear?”

“Yes my Lord! Please spare me my Lord, I swear I’ll tell you everything you want to hear, please, please!”

Seiichi shook his head in disgust and released the officer, who fell on the ground and lumped into a ball of self-pity and hysteria. He looked at the mortals around him. They all had lost the will to fight, at least for now, and he needed to call M’baku, even if he seethed with rage now. At least he had had time to leash it, for now.

“Svengar, I need you and your pack mates to look out the perimeter. I don’t want any surprise. You may have to put your helmets back on, I’m afraid. But whatever comes out of that forest and isn’t one of our Brothers, I want it dead before it has crossed half the slope.”

He put his hand on the Alpha’s left shoulder for a moment, before turning away and calling M’baku. Being a Grey Champion had its privileges, but even as he waited merely ten seconds before his call was accepted, he couldn’t help but regret the absence of any starship above. It’d have helped tremendously, but sadly they’d have to make do without it.

“Seiichi, what’s happening?” suddenly asked the distorted voice of his Reik. “I’m a little busy right now, trying to negotiate with the envoys of a dozen villages who wishes for us to purge this planet of the traitors and bring them into the fold of the Imperium.”

The Grey Champion heard the amusement in his new Reik’s voice. M’baku had earned the moniker of Laughing Death among his Brothers but it wasn’t only in battle that he had a great sense of humour – according to the standards of his Chapter, of course. Sadly, Seiichi was in no mood to enjoy it right now.

“I’m afraid I have dire news, my Lord” he replied curtly. “The traitors have fallen lower than we feared. They have called for the Blood God in battle.”

There was a moment of silence and Seiichi knew it was his Reik’s trying to determine if his warrior was making fun of him or not. Their Great Company was too new for all of them to truly know each other, after all. M’baku and he hadn’t served under the same Reiks before the formation of the XIIth Great Company, after all.

And even the young Dusk Claws had a hard time understanding the often dry and silent humour of the Dawn’s Wolves. Artorius liked them, otherwise he wouldn’t have called them pups – it was when he used one name’s that things would go sour. As for Dragomir, that he didn’t kept his eyes on you was a proof of his respect and trust in you. But today, Seiichi was deadly serious, alas.

“Do you have a prisoner or someone we could interrogate back at Camp Prime?” asked M’baku, his voice now stern and joyless. “The face of our war as just changed, for the worst, Brother.”

“I know my Lord” concurred the Grey Champion. “But sadly, it is the truth. I have an officer here and over fifty prisoners, mostly feudal warriors. They may come in handy in the next stage of our purge. If they are free of any real taint.”

“Yes, they may well be. Winning the allegiances of the villages will be even more important now. I’ll see you and your Brothers at Camp Prime. Bring back the prisoner and the warriors, I want to look at them.”

“Camp Prime is a three days walk for us. I’m afraid the prisoner will bring that count far higher, not including the soldiers who may be still pure and that we’ll need to add to our numbers to attack the Capital” stated Seiichi even as he started to map the easiest way to reach his Reik over the forested terrain of the region.

“I’ll send four Thunderhawks and their escorts. It should be enough to bring you here in a few hours.”

“It won’t be… discreet, my lord.”

“No, it won’t” admitted M’baku. “But I’m afraid the time of secrecy is over, if adepts of the Dark God are on this planet. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it. No unplanned action regarding the cultists and the Capital yet, Seiichi.”

“You know my history with the servants of that false god” grumbled the Grey Champion, is voice as cold as the winters of Fenris.

“That is precisely why I’m ordering you to stand down for now. We need to see the whole picture before sending you and whatever force you’ll deem necessary to wipe out those Lost and Damned. You’ll be our spearhead Brother. Know this and remain patient.”

“As you order, my Reik” replied Seiichi, who felt slightly better at the news of his future deployment.

The Laughing Death cut off the communication and Seiichi sighed. His rage was still burning, calling for him to ignore his orders and seek out the nest from which the corruption had come to wipe it out by himself. But he hadn’t achieved his rank by being rash and irrational in his actions. He tried to cool himself and turned toward the Dusk Claws, who were still looking over the perimeter.

“Svengar, is there anything of note?”

“None, Grey Champion” came back the voice of the Alpha, who had put back his bronze helmet. “Are we meant to move? Can we kill the traitors yet?”

“Not yet. The Reik is sending us a ride to Camp Prime. It seems you and your pack’s hope have been heard, Brother Svengar. The time of subtlety is over. Prepare your warriors, we will soon assault the Capital.”

**\* \* \***

Eigberth was running around the palace. He was now covered from head to toe with gore and blood, some of it having trickled into his mouth. Its metallic taste had made him gag at first, but now he discovered he craved more. He needed to find more of the unworthy servants and nobles of his Capital and slaughter them, but sadly, he had received a call able to pierce the red veil which had covered his mind.

“The servants have gone mad! Father, please, you have to help us! They have killed Mother! We have barricaded ourselves into our chambers! Please, come!”

The voice had belonged to his elder son, a brave young man, used to command the defenders of the Capital. He had children of his own now, little things, fragile and easily frightened. He needed to protect them from the folly he had unleashed. It was the thought piercing his urge to kill more and more.

*They are a weakness.*

Eigberth almost lost his footing. He didn’t know from where this idea had sprang. It almost seemed that in the splatters of blood on the wall and the puddles on the ground he could see movements, things pressing hard on the barrier of reality. He wanted to scream in terror, but he was also strangely entranced, even as he ran around the corridors filled with corpses.

*They are unworthy.*

The voice sounded more like his own now. Or had it a growl, an anger he never had suffered from before? He couldn’t really tell. Still, there was something in it, something he wanted to hear more, even as a portion of his soul seemed to wither and scream in terror and agony. He noticed a pack of nobles, armed with guns and decorative weapons. They hadn’t seen him yet.

*Weaklings must die, to pave the Gory Way.*

With a growl, he charged the nobles, who turned but were too shocked by his appearance to react. He blew up the head of one of them with his pistol, like he had that hated Paula, and then slashed the others with his power sword. It sliced through their pathetically feeble body, fat and shivering, as if they had no bones to oppose it. More blood covered his face.

Not all of them died that easily. A man, he couldn’t tell who he was, probably some lesser noble-administrator, dodged a piercing strike and tried to counter-attack by a wild slash toward Eigberth’s throat. Sadly, the man was not possessed of the fury which was, even then, mounting higher and higher inside the old Planetary Governor.

His rage allowed Eigberth to ignore the danger and he took a step forward, bringing himself inside the arc of the attack. The horror on the noble’s face turned to pain when the Lord of Canapal IV shot a bullet in his groin, screaming in agony for a few seconds before the power sword split his head in two.

*See how they die? Each kill is an offering to Karneth! Slay more, and more, and more! Each kill makes you stronger. Each kills give you the strength to rule over all the pathetic worms who crawl in the Empire of the Corpse Empire!*

It was his voice now, he was sure of it. He had always had that fire in it, that rage which could only be sated for a mere moments by a kill. Eigberth blinked, looking around at the dozen or so people he had slaughtered in mere moments. He had never been so strong and powerful. He licked his lips and tasted their blood, their fear giving it a perfect taste.

“I need more” he growled as he started to dash again toward his family’s chambers.

More signs of the madness which had engulfed the palace were evident everywhere as he advanced. Screams, bands of roving cultists who nodded and dashed out of his way as he ran toward the aisle where his family rested. It took him a long time, and several more calls went unanswered, the voice of his son growing frantic and particularly repulsive to von Raulkov’s ears.

Finally, he reached his destination. The doors still held, but a dozen or so cultists, whose hips were adorned by as many heads, whose agape mouth and bleary eyes seemed to still scream in silent pain and terror, were battering at it with whatever they could find. They were strangely beautiful to Eigberth’s eyes and he wondered why he needed to kill them.

“Out of the way” he growled, his voice deeper and slightly broken – he hadn’t even realized that he had roared far too much for his throat to endure it.

The raving band of killers turned around. One or two seemed ready to challenge him but a woman, whose hands held two large cleavers – a servant he remembered, who cared about his grand-daughters – forced them to move. She seemed to recognize him, and the way she looked at him now would have been enough to flog her, before. Now, Eigberth wanted to kill with her.

“They are inside my lord” she said, her voice deeper than a natural human voice should have, her eyes burning with the fierce fire of carnage. “They have rejected the gifts of Khorne.”

“I’ll be the judge of that” he replied, even as he felt the weak, human, portion of his soul screaming and scratching at the back of his mind, as if to  try and persuade him to not open that gate, to not let the raving lunatics inside.

He approached a hidden scanner, and put his eyes before it, letting the technology he had never understood work its magic. The weak portion of him, which was growing weaker by the second, pleaded and cried, and hoped that the fury which had overtaken him had changed him enough that the machinery would not recognize him. But it did.

The doors opened with a hissing sound, as if they were reluctant and could feel the blood and violence which would soon engulf the sanctuary they had protected for centuries, the home of all the generations of von Raulkov which had reigned on Canapal IV ever since their distant ancestor had discovered an STC blueprint allowing for better trash compactors.

Inside, he passed through two empty rooms, where furniture had been hastily pushed, as if to try and form a feeble barricade. Behind him, the cultists held their ground, but growled, like a pack of ravening hounds, eager for the call to come and to ravage the poor occupants of the aisle.

Eigberth found them in the third room; A clump of twenty peoples, adults and children, with ashen faces, screaming and crying. They fell silent when they saw him, covered in blood and gore as he was. His son’s eyes lightened up for a moment and he rose, revealing his empty hands and puffy face, hope etched in a little smile.

*They are weak. They make you weak. Kill them. Kill them all and Karneth will reward you! Kill them and the Blood Gate will open!*

The man that he had been surged with a strength which made Eigberth stagger. He almost let his weapons fall on the ground. The decent, gentle part of him pushed him to embrace his family. He had sentenced them to death by opening the gate. They’d die together but perhaps he’d spare his planet from the horrors that were waiting on the other side of reality.

*They are weak.*

It was decided then, the voice of his reason, of his morality finally snuffed out, within the arc of his blade as it rose and pierced the jugular of his son, entering it and reaching the inside of his brain, killing him on the spot. The screams became shriller and behind him the roar of his true family, the killers at the gate, rushed inside to partake in the glorious slaughter he had unleashed here and everywhere in the Capital.

It did not take long to kill the pathetic remnants of flesh and blood he had called kin before, for they mewled and cried and tried to scatter away, none possessing the will to fight, not even the mothers who threw their babes and children at their killers, in the faint hope that it would delay their inevitable fate. It did them no good but offered the little ones a chance to die quickly and first.

Finally, panting, Eigberth the Kinslayer looked around him. Blood bubbled on the ground, as shapes from the other side of reality were pressing on it, using it as a portal to enter Canapal. Soon, the invaders would have to face them. Soon the carnage would extend beyond the castle, into the city proper and then the whole planet, bathed in blood and fire.

**\* \* \***

Deep inside the former Church of the Corpse Emperor, the Emissary smiled. The energies of the Warp were swelling. Further away from the Great Rift, perhaps it would have bene barely sufficient to open a gate to a few bloodletters but here, it was possible to do more. Especially thanks to the decade he had spent preparing for this very moment.

All over the Capital, his cults were attacking their friends and neighbours, their lovers and rivals, channelling more and more of the rage and fear which fuelled Khorne ‘s mighty powers. But he felt that some were resisting him, far more than anticipated. He had tried to mellow it this city, to prepare it for the arrival of his Master’s host.

But the seeds of faith in the Corpse Emperor had been too ingrained on this planet. That and another, ancient legacy, which had drawn the Sons of Russ on Canapal IV. The Emissary doubted they knew it, but long ago, at the onset of the Great Crusade, that primitive planet had bene brought into compliance by a conjoined action of the XIIth and VIth Legions.

It had been nothing more than a training ground, an attempt by the glorious War Hounds to ingrain some much needed control in the Rout. It had failed, of course, and the bestial sons of the VIth had slaughtered their way on this world, ravaging its defences, even as the War Hounds had beheaded their leaders, razing their castle, without any unnecessary bloodshed.

“How the tables have turned” mused the Emissary. “Now, it is you who show restrain, Sons of Russ. And it is us, the Sons of the Red Angel, who will make blood rain on Canapal!”

He had served the Legion for so long, his life extended first by the rejuvenant treatments of the nascent Imperium, thanks to the kindness of his Master, and now the gifts of his God. He had earned such a long life thanks to his utmost devotion, always, and Canapal would not be the last place he’d exercise his considerable skills in service of the Blood God and the Goreborn.

A deafening explosion, even in the bowels of the Planetary Governor’s palace, rocking it and threatening to spill the precious blood the Emissary he kept in his cauldron. The man was even sent on his knees. The tremors lasted for far too long and he felt that his plans were starting to go awry. Still, he did not worry for long. The Blood Gate was ripe.

Whatever had caused the explosion also had taken a tremendous amount of lives. Enough to allow for the arrival of Nurr Correk and his warriors of the true Astartes. Not the servants of the Corpse; nor those strange mongrels which were now invading Canapal and tried to push back against the inevitable victory of Chaos. With a roar, the Emissary pushed the cauldron, to empty its content on the blood below, ignoring the searing pain of the heated metal on his hands.

He had exsanguinated the few pyskers born in this planet, their pain and rage and attempts at resisting distilled in the sprinkled blood of the cauldron. It was the perfect tool to spring the Gate open, and as expected when the last drop fell in the putrid bath of blood below it reacted, bubbling and swirling vehemently.

“Khorne, greatest of the Four Brothers! Open the way for your chosen warriors! May they remake this world in a place of carnage! May their wrath bring this prize to your demesne, where we will know war eternal!”

**\* \* \***

Far above the planet’s sky, the Cicatrix Maledictum flared, responding to the horrors of the Capital’s carnage by extending lazily one arm of pure Warp energy toward it. It descended, armed with malevolent intention, a spectacle of both beauty and terror, paving the way for Canapal IV’s damnation, with only a fine line of howling warriors standing between this world and its terrible fate.

The Warp struck the planet, which seemed to recoil from its touch, as if it tried to run away. But where the Immaterium seeped into reality, it twisted both the livings and the unloving. The Palace of the Planetary Governor turned into an abomination, its blood-drenched corridors turning and moving, doors acting as ferocious jaws, even as cackling cultists received the gifts of their dark god.

Deep below the surface, in the temple the Emissary had consecrated to Khorne, the Blood Gate opened. While bloodletters and other monstrosities manifested themselves into the rooms where blood had been spent, the true killers of this world had finally reached it, their blood-covered armours ancient and terrifying to behold.

“You took a long time, slave” growled the voice of their leader, a giant of man once, now reinforced by the will of the Blood God. “Why was it so long?”

“There was no worthy enemy my Master” explained the cultist, his voice full of reverence. “None which would offer you a challenge worthy of our God of Carnage’s attention. But they have come now, able to offer you a true conquest of Canapal IV.”

Nurr Correk, the Goreborn, Chaos Lord of Khorne and leader of the Red Slayers looked at his two hundreds Astartes, veterans of the Heresy and the Great Crusade before. They all had dedicated their souls to Khorne. They all had proven their worth a thousand times over in the war of the Eyes of Terror. A smirk of doubt appeared on the massive warrior’s face.

“Who would deserve such a claim, slave?”, his question an order impossible to deny. “Who would be able to offer me the final proof of my worthiness? Who would open me the gates of immortality!”

As he had spoken, the Emissary had noticed his Master’s struggle to contain his unbridled fury enough to communicate with him. The faintest of smiles spread on his lips, which he hid as he looked at the ground. He knew his answers would greatly please the Goreborn.

“The Sons of Russ, Master. Tamed, weakened, but still their arrogant selves. They are yours to slay!”

A mighty roar escaped the Astartes. All of the Red Slayers shared a deep hatred for the arrogant Space Wolves, all had vowed to wipe the VIth Legion from existence, and none more than Nurr Correk. The Chaos Lord dashed outside the room, already ready and willing to kill, again and again, until only he and his warriors were the last surviving creatures of Canapal IV.

# Chapter 4

“What in Russ name was that?” asked Ulfr, straining in his harness, as the Thunderhawk, swayed wildly.

“The pilot must have bene drinking one keg too many of mjöld” replied Svengar, amused by the situation in spite of himself. “Not that it’s a bad thing, at least it’s not boring!”

His pack mates chuckled and nodded, even Bolvekr. But in truth, the Alpha felt as if his whole body was tingling, preparing him to fight an unseen threat. He wished for the Grey Champion to be here, surprisingly enough. Now that he had time to think, he realized he had a lot of questions to ask him, starting with this strange title. Who in their right mind would wish to be known as the Unavenged? It sounded ominous to a Fenrisian’s ears.

“What do you think we’ll see at Camp Prime?” asked Jörmund, sounding half-bored. “I’m betting on more Primaris in ranks waiting for some Codex-approved order!”

“Pah, who would take such a bet, when it’s obviously what we’ll see!” growled Bolvekr. “I bet we’ll see all those twelve-year old veterans of the Crusade Indomitus worried and ready to call for reinforcement because someone said a few bad words in the midst of battle!”

“Remember thay also have almost ten years’ worth of fighting on their own” chuckled Ulfr. “Great veterans they are!”

“The Grey Champion said we’ll assault the Capital” reminded them Svengar, who sounded a little unhappy with the way they talked about the older Dawn’s Wolves. “And show a little respect to the other members of our Chapter and our Company. They may not have Fenrisian spirit, but they are great warrior. Or is any of you telling me he could take Takamoto in a fight?”

“Nobody’s telling that, Sven” replied Olaf, who sounded a little surprised by his Alpha’s outburst. “It’s just… we all know we’d have been better suited for the Dusk Howlers, or the Crimson Prowlers or… or even the Wild Wolves! Those are true Sons of Russ, ferocious and unforgiving! They don’t hide in shadows and don’t retreat from a fight, no matter the danger! And don’t tell me you don’t share those feelings, you said those words when we were selected!”

“I don’t deny them” grumbled Svengar. “But remember we could have ended with all those maleficarum wielders of the Icefangs or any other Chapter out there. There are many now who shares the blood of Leman Russ.”

Silence fell on the insides of the Thunderhawk, only shattered by the roars of the engines and the rumbling of the air pushing against the large machine. Svengar started to thought. Why did he suddenly felt as if he had misjudged the Dawn’s Wolves? He couldn’t really tell and it bothered him.

Perhaps it was the incredibly effective way the four Greyshields had slayed their preys, and even the ferocity Takamoto had been unable to hide when that officer had shouted about that Blood God or whatever. It was surprising, as if he had suddenly discovered that an old dog was in fact able to bite – and more than willing to do so.

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the banter of his Brothers who had started again. Bolvekr was mocking Olaf for his role as the backline defender of their little pack. He needed to think. He didn’t want to be mellowing out. He didn’t like the Dawn’s Wolves. They were congenial and didn’t look like a true Son of Russ, a Sky-Warrior, should have in his mind.

They even revered Roboute Guilliman! He hadn’t been a Space Wolf for long but he had learnt of the deeds of the Legions Breaker ten thousand years ago. He didn’t want to like them. He didn’t want to read that cursed Codex Astartes, so full of Guilliman’s vision to constrain other lineages, to force them to submit to his will instead of letting them flourish in their own ways!

“Oi, Svengar!’ called Jörmund, interrupting his reflections.

“What, I’m thinking!” he barked.

“I noticed, there was steam coming out of your ears. But I asked you a question and I’d like an answer!”

“What question?” grumbled the Alpha, who blushed, ashamed to not have heard his pack mate’s interrogation. “It better not be something dumb or I’ll kick you out of this hawk!”

“Do you think we have what it takes to storm the Capital of this dumb planet? We have no star-ship sailing in the Sea of Stars above, and it’s supposed to be well fortified, right?”

It was a legitimate question, and Svengar took his time to choose an answer. The easy one was that they obviously had the strength for such a task. They were a hundred Primaris deployed on Canapal and probably gathering on Camp Prime. And the *Fenrisian Dawn* wasn’t that far away, just the other side of the system, a few days of travel probably, if it could be brought back and wasn’t embroiled into some terrible war on some other planet.

But there was something in his guts which told him that things wouldn’t be that easy. There was a tension in the air, which hadn’t been there a few hours prior. He felt as if the eyes of some huge monsters were on him, like that one time a kraken had assaulted the tribe’s longships during the Season of Fire. A bad omen if there was any – so many of his people had died that day, after all, that the Blackfangs had been forced to avoid combat all year long, as best they could, to survive.

“Svengar?” pressed on Jörmund, sounding perhaps a tad worried now.

“I don’t know” finally replied the Alpha, shaking his head. “Were we VlkaFenryka, I’d say yes. But the *Aurora Lupi*?” he continued, using the Chapter’s name in High Gothic. “I honestly don’t know. I guess we’ll see what they’re truly made off soon enough. At least we’re here, and a score of our Fenrisian brothers, even if most of them have been Reivers!”

“That’s not really what we wanted to hear” said Olaf, voicing the opinion of the pack. “But we have to see the good in that: all we have to do is show them the strength of true Fenrisians, and then they’ll listen to us and we’ll be able to remake them into true Sons of Russ!”

“If you think that, you’re even dumber than you’re ugly” laughed Ulfr Iron-Jaw. “And by the All-Father, I’ve never seen anything as ugly as your face!”

“You’ve never looked at yourself in a mirror then” huffed Olaf, amused by this antic. “Because I swear you would make an Ork balk in horror!”

“We’re approaching Camp Prime” suddenly came the voice of the pilot, stern and gruff. “Be prepared for the landing, pups!”

“Someday” started Svengar, looking at his Brothers, “I’d love them to explain how we are pups when we fought all our lives on Fenris and they just charged headlong under another Primarch’s command for twelve years or so.”

**\* \* \***

“There has been a Warp surge” stated Seiichi, calling the pilot of his Thunderhawk. “The air feels like on Tanovar Secundus.”

“Affirmative, Grey Champion” came the reply, loud and clear in his helmet. “A strand of Warp energy came from the Great Rift and struck the Capital, as far as I can tell. The auspexes also picked up a series of huge explosions on the walls separating the city from the rest of the world. I suspect some sort of civil war as erupted.”

“You are probably correct. They were secessionists and traitors in here, but it seems something far worse lurked in the shadows and as now come to the fore. Prepare yourself, neophyte. Soon you may have to enter a real battle.”

“I’ll prove myself worthy of the Tacticus, my Lord” came the reply, the voice of the young man confident and strong.

Seiichi smiled. Tasking the young recruits from the Chapter to pilot the vehicles of the Dawns had been, at first, a stop-gap, a hasty measure to free as many of the five hundreds veterans of the Indomitus Crusade as possible to fight on the frontline. Teaching those apprentices, barely enhanced enough to endure the speed and power of a Primaris tank or plane had seemed mad at first.

But it had become a staple of their practices now, one which had surprised the Wolves from Fenris who had ended joining their Chapter, but still, it seemed it had been readily accepted. Being able to avoid pilot duty as much as possible seemed to get their approval. Only the Iron Masters and their apprentices didn’t seem too fond of it, pretending that the neophytes lacked proper respect of the Machine-Spirits of their engines of war.

A frightened whimper brought the Grey Champion’s attention to the other occupants of the Thunderhawk. At his side was the officer of the PDF, nursing his wounded arm and doing his best to not look too terrified - with little effect. But at least he seemed better off than the ferocious warriors of Canapal, who huddled together as best they could, terrified by the insides of the “dragon” they were in.

Seiichi almost removed his helmet. It had been a long time since he hadn’t used his enhanced senses to better smell the fear of mortals. It was a fume he found strangely appeasing, as it reminded him of long solitary hunts in snow-covered forests he had never seen but often dreamt off when he allowed himself the reprieve of true sleep. But he couldn’t give in to personal pleasures just yet. He had a duty.

“Have the Reik been informed of those developments?” he asked the pilot.

“Yes Grey Champion. I have been told that he’s well aware and preparing to act on it.”

Seiichi nodded, even if the pilot couldn’t see him, of course. He didn’t doubt that M’baku was getting ready all right. He craved a real fight – they all did even if the veterans of the Indomitus had agreed that they needed something lesser in scope to better cement the ties of their Great Company. As it turned out, it was clear that the Emperor had other plans for them all.

“We’ll land in five minutes” suddenly stated the pilot in the loud-speakers of the Thunderhawk, startling the mortals even more. “Be prepared. May the fury of Russ be with us.”

“And may we slay the Traitors and the Damned” replied Seiichi as was customary.

He noticed, with no small measure of pleasure that the officer shivered and tried to look as small as possible when he said those words.

**\* \* \***

“All-Father above” muttered Svengar when he exited the Thunderhawk and got his first look at the strand of Warp energy tainting the planet. “What is that?”

“The heart of all evil on this planet” growled the voice of Artorius behind his back. “We will soon purge it, so be prepared pups. It won’t be a pretty fight, I’m betting on it. We’ll hack Traitors and worse by the hundreds soon enough.”

There was a trepidation in the voice of veteran which drew the attention of Svengar. He noticed with some sort of surprise that, for once, the Greyshields had removed their helmets. Only Seiichi kept his own, and even he couldn’t hide the wrath burning inside of him, evident in his posture and the way he barked orders at aspirants and the serfs of the Chapter to come and take care of the captured warriors of Canapal.

The Alpha got a good look at the trio of Greyshield. They looked too damn young. In the Space Wolves, officers had been centuries years old - at least in the Grand Company of Brand Redmaw he had been a part off with his pack. He couldn’t deny them a look of danger, with their facial scars and their harsh eyes. But their hair was still not grey, their fangs barely longer than his own! Taking orders from them was surprisingly hard.

“Surprised that we aren’t all withered and all?” asked Artorius when he noticed the glances of Svengar, his clean shaved face topped by short buzz-cutted black hair. “Guess you expected us to look more like that old pain in the ass Thür.”

“That old pain in the ass can hear you, boy” growled the voice of the Nighthowler, the warrior who had been a Primaris Wolf Priest on Fenris and here had to wear the strange name of Dawn Caller. “Should I kick your teeth in to teach you respect?”

“Bah, start washing once in a while and you’ll get a modicum of it” replied the Greyshields, to Svengar’s and his pack’s horror, but the grizzled Dawn Caller started to laugh.

“As uncultured as ever” chuckled the old man, his long grey hair contrasting quite a lot with the youthful faces of the Greyshields. “But no matter, it shows you’ve got guts, and that’s the least expected to be a true Son of Russ.”

“We wished he had more brain also” stated Haguleyy, his long blond hair hiding slightly his smile.

“Barring that, no tongue to speak would be great” added Dragomir, his brow hair, kept slightly longer than Artorius, giving him a wilder aspect that his Brother.

“I do not doubt that” admitted Thür. “You’ll be able to raise the question with the Reik, he’s called for you four. And the pack of Svengar also” he added, as if an afterthought.

“The whole pack or just us five?” asked the Alpha, who managed to not totally look cowed by the golden glare of the Dawn Caller.

“Just you five for now. The rest of your pack mates as yet to return from their duty. It seems that being more compliant to their better’s orders allowed them to fight a little further than you.”

Svengar grimaced and he heard several of his pack-mates groaning in disgust, but they all held their tongues. How the old Thür had been so easily swayed by the Dawn’s Wolves was beyond him. Sure, he had seen them in battle before they had been granted the right to receive their reinforcements of warriors from Fenris, but still, it seemed almost sorcerous that the Dawn Caller had taken to the burgeoning traditions of his new Chapter. Perhaps it was because he had crossed the Rubicon mused the Alpha.

They crossed the whole of Camp Prime, which was a buzzing hive of activity. Serfs and servitors were working on a larger concentrations of tanks and combat planes that Svengar had ever seen, realizing for the first time that his Great Company clearly possessed more firepower than he had given them credit. And the warriors he saw, gathered in their packs, seemed ready to go and strike at the enemy immediately.

It was the silence which unnerved the most. Only the younger warriors, most of them who weren’t even from Fenris but from over a dozen worlds they had been stolen form to join the ranks of the Primaris, truly talked loudly. The packs of Reivers and Infiltrators were not even speaking to each other, working in silence, as if they disliked the very idea that others could hear them in the limits of the camp.

“Why do they never speak or laugh?” grumbled Bolvekr, pointing at one of the veteran’s squad. “They can’t share this moment with us?”

“They do talk. To themselves” explained Takamoto, his voice deep but somewhat hushed. “But only when Dusk Claws or Moonlight Hunters can’t hear them. It’s the way we act, the call of the Great Lone Wolf in our blood, we can’t deny it. It calls to us and we must answer.”

Svengar almost stumbled when he heard the last words. The Great Lone Wolf! Somehow it explained a lot about his new Chapter. Lokyar was said to have been the only one from the brood of Morkai to never hunt with the rest of those terrible, god-like wolves. Leman Russ had spent over a whole year hunting down the beast, to force it to stop roaming the frozen seas!

“You feel that call also, Grey Champion?” dared to ask Jörmund, who didn’t seem as shaken by that sudden discovery as his Alpha was. “I mean, you seem pretty talkative for a Lokyar-touched.”

“Remember that we are less gregarious than you Fenrisian, here, so the mark of Lokyar is lessened, I guess. The burden of sociability is not as heavy on us” chuckled the older warrior, seemingly amused by Olaf’s question. “But yes, I did serve in the Reiver packs. The same as Rasmus, the Kindins. I also served in his Greyshields before joining M’baku’s.”

Svengar glanced at his pack-mates and he saw on their faces the same feelings he had now swirling in his chest. Perhaps he had misjudged them all? If they were truly touched by the Great Lone Wolf, it meant that all the Dawn’s Wolves had to crave for the hunt in large, open lands. If so, was it why they shunned direct assaults on their adversaries? Perhaps what he had taken to be squeamish reluctance to strike was actually an eagerness to hound their preys and strike only once a satisfactory hunt had been achieved?

“Now you’re starting to understand” stated Thür with no little satisfaction in his voice. “And soon, you’ll realize your place in all of it, young man.”

**\* \* \***

Eigberth now roamed the darkened corridors of his home. His mind was consumed by his bloodlust, but he had enough reason left to realize he was changing. His muscles had grown when the Warp had struck the planet, his arms swelling to proportions more akin to those of an ogryn than any normal humans would have been able to achieve.

And it wasn’t the only change. His whole body had grown, at least thirty centimetres, and had thickened with muscles and bones. And the scratches on his face! They were driving him half-mad with rage, because he was almost certain that if he killed someone, anyone, they would cease! But there was no one with him right now, the other killers of Khorne in the palace having long gone their separate ways to seek new victims to slaughter.

He knew he needed to get out of here, but something kept him in here, as if a voice in the back of his mind willed him to remain holed inside his keep a little while longer. It wasn’t the pathetic remnants of the man he had been, weak and feeble and old. No, it was the deep rumbling voice of his God promising him carnage to come if he waited just a while longer.

What a difference it made with the indifferent Corpse-Emperor! He had prayed to him when he was young, hoping to worthy of his favours. He had prepared the world for the next coming of the Administratum, who would levy tax, soldiers and materials from his primitive world. But he had never been answered, and when the Great Rift had opened, he had realized the Emperor was long dead, a myth of the distant past, probably on a planet which didn’t even exist to begin with!

“There you are my Lord!”

Eigberth turned, growling, already ready to kill the intruder but stopped when his eyes fell on the Emissary and those who walked with him. Those were true chosen of Khorne, he knew it in his heart and an intense fire of jealousy was lit inside of him. Those killers, gore covered as they were, should have been serving him! He was the Lord of Canapal!

“Who is that, and why was I led here!” bellowed the colossus at their head.

“This, Master, is the ruler of this planet. He is the one whose dedication to Khorne opened the Blood Gate and summoned you and our allies from the Realm of Carnage. He is the Key of the Blood God’s manifestation here. And as you can see, he has been blessed!”

The two lords, the Astartes and the mortals looked into each other’s eyes. With some stupor, Eigberth realized he didn’t really need to look that much up to stare into the red eyes of his guest. He closed his fists around his weapons but didn’t dare attack, not yet. The Master of the Emissary seemed too formidable still. Yet he felt that the slaughter of his family had greatly pleased his new God and that, should he had more kill to his name, rewards may come quickly to allow him to supplant the blood-thirsty brute in front of him.

“You allowed for us to be summoned here” growled the Astartes, his diction slow and heavy with his killing intent. “For that, you shall keep your head for now. But once that planet will have been remade in Khorne’s image, you shall be disposed of, if you can’t learn to not look at your betters without defiance!”

Eigberth growled but he bowed his head and took a step back. Still, he swore he’d see that bastard die or at least foil his plans in any way he could. He would be the ruler of Canapal forever more, under the Blood God’s furious will. He just had to be patient, even if it had become… harder to focus, to think and not just give in to the rage which burned into his mind. And he saw that the newcomers were afflicted in the same way.

“The Key shall not leave the confines of the city until you’ll have achieved your goals, my Master” stated the Emissary. “There is, after all, hundreds of thousands of people to kill still inside of it, and millions more on the outside.”

“Only the mongrels of Russ interest me” roared the Chaos Lord, his veins bulging where his skin was visible, as his rage grew ever more violent. “I shall mount their heads on spikes, as offerings to Khorne and skin them, to wear their pelt as cloaks!”

Behind him, the hundreds of maddened killers roared their approval, the thinly held mastery of themselves they struggled to maintain already slipping at the simple thought of battles and butcheries to come. Eigberth did get out of the way, letting them pass, furious and determinate to kill them all for their lack of respect if he got a chance. Only the Emissary nodded at him, and he followed them from a distance, intent on getting out of the hungry corridors of his Palace.

It took far longer than he had expected, and their column of warrior was joined by monstrous things, which would have made him scream in utter terror the previous day. Bloodletters and huge hounds, more reptile than dogs, stalked the corridors, following the trail of wrath that the transhuman killers exuded and joined their ranks, eager to slay any mortals they could find. But even they gave Eigberth a wide berth, as if they could tell he was off limits. For now.

The Planetary Governor seethed. As soon a she was out, the lights of a burning city greeting him, gifts from the cultists which had sprang from the Palace and their places of hiding a few hours ago did nothing to appease his spirits. With a roar of rage he ran toward a nearby alley, where he hoped that servants and other mortals may have found refuge in the refuse of his city. He ignored the Astartes marching toward the large section of the walls which had been blown up by an explosion, caring little for their fate.

Only when he finally stumbled upon a poor soul who had dared to stray out of his refuge did his mind forget the slights he had suffered. With a bellowing roar, he charged the servant and hacked at his body with his now far too small power sword. When fresh blood sprayed on his face, finally, the incessant scratching ceased and Eigberth started to laugh.

# Chapter 5

The Reik had established his command centre in a plasteel bunker, whose blue outer walls were barely adorned by a few bronze elements, and the red wolf head on a gold circle which was their Chapter’s emblem. A trio of Moonlight Hunters, clad in mighty Gravis armor and equipped with the standard weapons of a squad of Aggressor stood by, looking strangely relaxed at first glance, but Seiichi could read their tension in the way they watched over all the Brothers around the camp.

In theory, Greyshields should have held that position, protecting their Lord M’baku, but the Reik had ordered his best warriors to be deployed far and wide in the vicinity of the Capital, to ensure that the few Fenrisians who still struggled to accept the ways of their new Chapters would be properly corralled and inspired by the prowess of their Great Company’s elite soldiers. Plus, they were only a dozen or so anyway.

“Dawn Caller Thür, Grey Champion Seiichi” called one of the Moonlight Hunter. “You are expected. So are your Greyshields Brothers and the Icewalker Pack” he continued, his voice a little too serious for the Unavenged’s ears.

“At ease Brother. Being overly tense won’t do you good. You are one of our bastion of strength in that armour, feel confident and trust in the Gift of Russ to smell out any intruder.”

“As you command, Grey Champion” replied the Primaris, who didn’t seem to relax one bit. “But it’s… strange to be here, protecting the Reik in your stead as my first real mission for this Company. I wish I could be out and slaying our foes!”

Seiichi nodded. Unlike the first ten Great Companies, which had been built around the ten fifty-strong Marines groupings of veterans of the Indomitus Crusade, after Raukos, and had grown in the decade since the Chapter’s founding, the XIIth, and it’s XIth sister, were makeshift formations, built barely six months ago, when the fleet of Space Wolves had finally reached the Dawn’s Wolves with their reinforcements – far too much to simply use them to replenish the ranks of the Great Companies. After quite a bit of adventuring, according to Thür, who had led them around in their chase of their elusive successors.

“Do not worry, it won’t last long” grumbled the Dawn Caller, putting a heavy hand over the Moonlight Hunter. “We will gather all our strength and then I suspect you will have to deal with quite a lot of deadly foes to prove yourself among us.”

“Aye, may you be right Nighthowler!” replied the warrior, whose spirits seemed lifted. “But I’ve wasted enough of your time, get in, get in!”

Seiichi followed the black –armoured veteran, impressed by the way he had easily lifted the spirit of the Aggressor. He wondered if he’d possess such an uncanny ability to read his Brothers if he ended living and fighting for the Emperor for centuries, like Thür had before he crossed the Rubicon. It was a strange thought, which reminded him of the youth of his Chapter. They were starting its history, its traditions. He felt the weights of potential thousands of years suddenly pressing on him.

“Something’s wrong Brother?” asked Haguleyy, as perceptive as ever.

“Only a sudden realization that we stand in the shadows of giants from Fenris and are paving the way for legends of tomorrow who would emulate us. It is… disconcerting.”

“You always think too much, Unavenged” grumbled Artorius. “That’s why you’re a Grey Champion and not just a Greyshield enjoying the great life of fighting in the worst of battle against the worst of foes and to kill them all.”

“And that was another great morsel of wisdom from our Brother Artorius” sighed Dragomir with an amused smile which bellied his words. “Are you sure you don’t have Ork blood in your veins? Sometimes I really worry about you.”

“Hold your tongues, boys” growled the Dawn Caller as the door opened. “We are in the presence of our Reik!”

**\* \* \***

Svengar tensed as he entered the command room. He had never been so close to the lord of his Great Company and he wondered what sort of man he was. Of course, the Laughing Death had a reputation in his Chapter, one of a bloodthirsty and ferocious warrior, almost as savage as Ayur Redmane who loved nothing more than shock assaults. But Icewalker wasn’t sure he could trust such stories about him in his new Chapter, unlike with the Space Wolves whose sagas were truthful.

When his eyes fell on M’baku however he realized it was probably true, what he had heard in hushed whispers in the corridors of *Fenrisian Dawn*, as they waited to be deployed. The Reik was tall, a whole head taller than his Greyshields, and his Gravis armour did little to enhance his height, it was genuine. He didn’t wore his helmet, and his black face seemed focused and intense, his brown eyes glowering with the fire of wrath for the enemies of the Emperor.

He kept his black hair long, in complicated dreads, with golden ornaments in them, which tingled as he shook his head. Barely visible scars on his face made white line on his dark skin and proved to all that he was a warrior who had no qualm facing the enemy in close battle. By the smell of his pack-mates, Svengar knew they felt the same way he did when it came to their Reik. He was a man they could follow, a true warrior.

“You brought me the prisoner, I see” stated their Lord, pointing at the man Takamoto had brought over and that the Alpha had all but forgotten until now. “Do you think he’ll truly be of any worth just yet?”

“He doesn’t know much, but whatever little bits he knows, we’ll need to assault the Capital and purge it from the taint of Chaos” stated the Grey Champion, his voice firm. “But I can bring him to the Dawn Fangs for interrogation, if you so wish my Lord.”

“No, no, don’t bother. I am sure he’ll be willing to answer our questions. Won’t you, soldier?”

The officer looked at the Reik with such terror that it seemed he was unable to understand the words that had been spoken to him, at first. Then he understood and he started to plead and speak, at such a great speed that even Svengar’s enhanced brain and the many languages he had been psycho-indoctrinated to understand failed to hear more than an incredible gibberish, which made him scowl. It was truly a pathetic display, and it seemed M’baku shared his beliefs, as he growled at the mortal.

“Enough! Your fate will be decided according to what you may teach us. You are a Traitor and justly deserve death for having opposed the servants of the Emperor! But you can still redeem yourself, or be confined to the annals of History as a pathetic worm, unworthy of the Imperium’s sacrifices! So now, answer my questions!”

“Yes my Lord!” squeaked the terrified man.

“Good. Now, who rules this planet? And do not think we can’t tell if you lie. We can smell it” he added, a savage grin on his face as he poked his nose. “So? I’m waiting!”

“Eigberth von Raulkov, Lord! He – he he’s the Planetary Governor. He’s the one who said to us, Capitolian, that the Emperor was gone and that we had to fend for ourselves, my Lord!”

“And nobody opposed his lies? Nobody dared to fight for your God?” growled the Reik as he started to turn around the terrified mortal, not unlike a predator would his prey. “Nobody had the guts to kill the traitor and preserve your world?”

“He… the astropaths had all gone mad! The von Raulkov have always ruled Canapal IV! We… he told us he’d keep us safe, that if he was wrong, we’d submit to the Emperor’s will! That under his watch a repeat of the slaughters of the Great Crusade wouldn’t happen! He swore!”

“What slaughters?” asked the Grey Champion, surprising Svengar with the intensity of his question, going as far as too approach the prostrated human to tower over him. “The World Eaters?”

“Who?” asked the officer, shaking visibly and with tears in his eyes. “Perhaps, I never heard that name” he added as Takamoto didn’t move. “They… the legends says they wore grey armours and were bestial. The War Hounds reined them in but the Vi were able to kill so many of our ancestors…”

“The Vi?” dared to ask Olaf, surprised. “Never heard of those!”

“The VIth Legion”, growled Thür, surprising them all, “the shadow before the Wolf, when our forefathers were losing themselves to the rage within, to their killer instincts…”

The voice of the Dawn Caller was laden with dread and shame, and all the Sons of Russ present could understand why, for the stories of their parent Legion before the coming of the Wolf King were bleak and spoke of uncontrolled fury and a love for assaulting the weak and the fleeing, without honour but only the call of their savage hearts. Russ had given them pride, as dark as it could be with their role as weapons of war, putting an end to their excesses.

“The Rout came here” stated Thür. “And so did the Traitorous Sons of Angron… It seems the wyrd set up this world for us to find and fight for…”

“The scions of the Red Angel” growled the Grey Champion, taking a step back and turning as if to leave.

“Unavenged!” thundered the Reik, stopping him in his tracks. “My orders remain the same. We need to know more before we can unleash you, Brother.”

“There is degenerates on this planet, my Lord” replied Takamoto, turning his back on his lord, his breathing hard as if he struggled to keep his feelings in check, which would have been a first as far as Svengar knew; he almost believed that the Greyshield was simply unable to feel real anger.

“I know, and we’ll purge them. But rushing to your death will do us no good. We need more information. Such treason can only have happened because of some other source of corruption. The Warp wouldn’t touch a planet, even this close to the Great Rift, without someone calling it! So now speak, soldier! And tell us your name, that we may judge you in fairness!”

“I…. My name is Ernst Bauer, lieutenant-junior in the Planetary Defence Forces of Canapal, my Lord!” answered quickly the mortal. “And… and as for the source of corruption, it has to be the Emissary! It has to!”

“The Emissary?” asked M’baku, focusing again all his attention on the mortal, even as the Grey Champion seemed to still struggle with violent feelings. “Who is that?”

“No one knows, my Lord. He… he never left the Palace, and, I’m too low to ever have been granted an audience inside. But… but I have heard rumours of… of a desecration… Those led to the riots in the streets and several petty nobles in the countryside to declare open revolt when they heard of it also…”

That was an important crumble of information, if Svengar had ever heard one. It was clear to the young Alpha that this so-called Emissary was the true root of the corruption taking over Canapal IV. He wanted to track him down and slay him. It would make for a great saga – if even the Chapter had those – he sombrely pondered. With a deep breath, he focused on the mortal, who was still talking.

“– tasked with crushing the revolt, and most of the forces in the Capital were unhappy. The primitives outside of the walls are the sole true resource of our world, they make up our Astra Militarum regiments, the Canapali’s Spearmen. But the Governor told that if we didn’t crush the dissenters, half the world would be in open revolt in a few months.”

“And did you? Crush the dissenters, I mean” asked M’baku, with such a calm and gentle tone that all in his presence felt the trap in his words.

“Not me, Lord” hastily replied Ernst, raising his hands as if to try to protect himself from the potential fury of the Reik – a futile gesture when faced with a Gravis-armoured Primaris of course. “I was too young, I only joined the PDF two years ago. I know peoples who did, they weren’t proud of it.”

“I bet they weren’t’ huffed Artorius. “Sure must have been hard to kill true servants of the Emperor when one’s turned his back on the Imperium.”

“A clean death is more than those traitors deserve” added Dragomir, before spitting on the ground, glaring at the prisoner.

“Peace, Brothers” ordered the Reik. “Lieutenant Bauer will hear of his fate soon enough. Still I need to know. Why did you call the name of a Blood God, as those witnesses may attest?”

“It was… it was an order from the Capital, Lord” explained the mortal, trying his best to shrink as much he could under the gaze of the assembled Primaris. “They said a new God had come to our help and would help us defeat the Children’s of Vi – that’s… that’s you…”

“Yeah, we guessed that” grumbled Haguleyy, who was now playing with the pommel of his power-sword.

Svengar realized he did the same with his own chainsword’s. He wanted to strike at those traitors and he was fairly certain he had one in front of him. That grovelling worm had sold out his loyalty to the Emperor in exchange of what? Some semblance of protection against His loyal servants? If his leaders hadn’t turned their back on the Imperium, the Dawn’s Wolves wouldn’t even as much as land on that little planet!

“It seems that not everyone shared in the pleasure of praying a new god” stated the Reik, turning his back on the officer. “This morning, loyalist elements in the Capital revealed themselves. They realized that they had fought on the wrong side of our little war, and acted accordingly. They sent us a message and gave us a great gift.”

“A gift, my Lord?” asked Takamoto, surprised enough that he turned again toward M’baku and not the door.

“Yes. They blew up the Southern walls. Detonated all the plasma reactors, and other munition deposits. The Capital is open on over two kilometres by now. As soon as our forces will have gathered, we will storm them through here and kill whoever dares to stand in our way until Canapal is returned to the Emperor’s service! And now, Lieutenant, has come the time of your judgement. As a Reik in the service of our High Judge, Rasmus Bluebear, it is my right and duty to dispose of your life.”

“Please, my lord” mellowed the poor mortal, eliciting no flicker of mercy in M’baku’s eyes. “I told you the truth, all of it that I knew!”

“Aye, you did. And for that reward you shall not be put to death yet. Still, only death can redeem your crimes, Lieutenant. And to be returned to the grace of the Emperor, you will join the mortal militia which will accompany us into the city. Should you die, you will be judged as cleansed of your sins. If you live… well, my axe may take one more life. Now, Haguleyy, if you and your Brothers were so kind as to take that man out to the Apothecarion –“

“The Wolf’s den” interrupted Thür with a grin.

“The Wolf den” continued the Reik, smiling at his councillor. “Seiichi, you and the Icewalker pack will remain here a while longer. We have to discuss of your next deployment.”

Svengar felt his heartbeat rising. If the Reik was planning a distinct deployment for his pack, it certainly meant something dangerous, where he’d get to prove his valour. He just wished he’d not be paired with Takamoto. Not that the Grey Champion wasn’t an impressive warrior but he had admitted to be touched by Lokyar, and as a former Blackfangs, he had reasons to be wary of such individuals!

“How long before the Great Company may assault the Capital?” asked the Unavenged.

“Three days” replied the Reik. “We need to get all our Brothers back, deploy the tanks and other Storm Speeders, and their Machine-Spirits takes time to be fully roused, you know it, Seiichi.”

“And there will be the mortal auxilia” added Thür. “We’ll need them, we can’t be bogged down by whatever forms of mortal Traitors remain inside the ruined walls.”

“Aye” seconded M’baku. “Still, I do not wish to wait that long for a strike to be delivered. We need to punish the Traitors, to let them now that we won’t let them sully the worlds of the Emperor any longer. And that’s when you come in, Seiichi – you and the five members of the Icewalker pack.”

“We’re twice that number usually, Reik!” dared to say Bolvekr, who didn’t seem to quite grasp the rank of their lord, felt Svengar who did his best to not cringe.

“We don’t have time to wait for those to come back. And a smaller group, six warriors, will do better for what I have in mind.”

“You want us to get inside and kill that Emissary.”

The Grey Champion wasn’t asking a question, his tone made it clear he understood his lords’ will. Not for the first time, Svengar was impressed by the way the veterans of the Indomitus Crusade knew each other. They almost acted like real pack members. Almost. But there was always a certain coldness, one he now understood the source, of course. It still gave him the chills, as if he was surrounded by dozens of lone wolves, all waging their own little wars instead of supporting each other as Fenrisians would.

“Yes. I know you’d wish to take the head of whatever leader of demons or Heretics we will face, Brother. But I need to send a spear in the dark! I need to make them feel our fury and weaken them, to sap their morale and let them know their God is nothing, they are nothing!”

“You want to teach them to be wary of the fangs of the young day, so” grinned Thür. “A most excellent idea. And those five pups will do wonders, if the Grey Champion’s report about them is correct.”

“A report? What report?” asked Svengar, clearly confused, looking around as if he expected a serf to be here, holding a data-crystal or some form of parchment with their names on it.

“A helmet have various usage, Svengar” said Takamoto, and it was clear he was slightly amuse by his reaction, in spite of his anger. “It helps prevent a shot from taking your brain out, and it can be used to speak to others over long distances.”

“I know what a helmet can do” grumbled the vexed Alpha. “But when did you –“

“In the Thunderhack” explained the Grey Champion. “You and your pack-mates are natural killers Svengar. You lack discipline still, but it’s only natural, as I’ve understood from the Nighthowler’s explanation about Fenrisian youths. And I’ll need suck skilled warriors if I am to succeed in my mission.”

“So you agree? You will go and kill this Emissary, Brother?” asked M’baku, a relieved smile on his face. “It would have pained me much to have to order you around for you to do it.”

“You could also have sent Dimitar. He is your other Grey Champion” mused Takamoto.

“Please. Dimitar is a great warrior but there is a reason he was never even considered for the Vanguard and Reiver forces back in the Crusade” huffed M’baku. “He’s an excellent marksman, however.”

“I wish you had reminded yourself of that before you ordered me to pick up a Tacticus for this campaign” grumbled the Unavanged. “It would have come in handy for me to be more discreet.”

“But less resilient” countered the Reik with a huge smile. “Now go, get prepared. You and the Icewalkers are leaving as soon as you’re ready. If Russ wills it, you’ll reach the Capital at nightfall or later, and we’ll be able to sneak in unnoticed. Khornate degenerates are notoriously sloppy with their watches, after all.”

The six Primaris saluted. Svengar still felt strange doing that, with each of his fists over his heart, but it was clearly an old habit from the Dawn’s Wolves veterans most of the newcomers had picked. Even Bolvekr did it without thinking now, as far as he could tell. He got out of his thoughts when he noticed that the Grey Champion was already briskly walking toward door of the command room and dashed after him.

“Unavenged!” he called as his pack followed him. “We need to talk!”

“We should be preparing for our infiltration in the Capital City Brother” gently replied Takamoto, but he seemed to notice that something was off with Svengar. “Is there a problem?”

“I…” suddenly Svengar felt dumb; what would he tell the Grey Champion? The truth, he decided in a split second. “I don’t think I can fight with a Lokyar touched.”

“Why so?” asked Takamoto, turning toward him fully now and the Alpha could tell he was intently watched. “Is there something… dangerous, with such an individual on Fenris?”

“Not at all” interjected Jörmund, as swift with the talk as with his feet. “It’s nothing more than Svengar being a moron!”

“No it’s not!” roared the embarrassed Alpha. “On Fenris, in my tribe it’s said that those touched by the Great Lone Wolf can’t be relied upon, when the battle get thick. I come from the equatorial region, where a lot of tribes fight each other’s, during the Season of Fire, Grey Champion. One warrior not in step with his kin, the rest of the crew and it’s the death of all the tribe. That’s what I’ve been told. That’s why I can’t fight alongside you anymore, now that I know that you are one of those.”

Takamoto said nothing. Svengar felt as if he was naked suddenly, under the silent scrutiny of that helmet, the red oculars seemingly boring into his soul. For the first time ever, he felt dumb to believe in the traditions of Fenris. The Grey Champion wouldn’t have raised through the ranks if he hadn’t been a supportive warrior to his peers, the Alpha knew it. And yet.

“I understand your concerns, Svengar. I won’t deny their validity. Space Wolves, and even Fenrisians, are quite the gregarious warriors, as far as I can tell. It is normal than the more aloof among you be viewed with some sort of suspicion. But if it may assuage your worries, I’ll tell you that, from my experience fighting alongside Primaris of other lineages than Russ, what is considered being touched by Lokyar is nothing more than their standard behaviour.”

“If you say so, Grey Champion, but –“ started Svengar, but he was interrupted by the calm voice of the veteran.

“Alpha, would you leave me to fight alone, to accrue greater glory, if the opportunity arose?”

“Of course not!” shot back Icewalker, whose temper was starting to flare – if only a little yet. “But I don’t see what it has to do with anything I said!”

“It means that I trust you to be by my side” explained Takamoto, putting a hand on the right shoulder of the younger warrior. “And know this, for I swear on my soul, under the vigilant eyes of Russ and the Emperor above, I shall not desert you Brother. Especially not before those hated servants of Khorne!”

Svengar hesitated but he finally nodded. He wasn’t certain he could trust Takamoto fully yet, he’d have to prove himself in the young warrior’s eyes. But still, such an oath deserved a modicum of respect. It was clear that the Grey Champion felt both his misgivings and his acceptance of the mission. His hand left his shoulder, and the six Primaris went their separate ways.

“Rendez-vous at the western end of Camp Prime in thirty minutes, Brothers” ordered the Unavenged.

# Chapter 6

Nurr Correk advanced through the streets, littered with the headless corpses of the citizens of the Capital City of Canapal IV. He had hardly killed any of those pathetic mortals, sadly. Most of them had been killing each other, and he had a hard time keeping his warband in check, let alone the bloodletters and their juggernauts. The demons stalked the city, seeking preys to kill and sustain their presence in the material realm.

“My Lord” growled one of his Chosen, a great warrior whose name had been erased long ago by an ocean of blood and rage. “We need to find something to kill. The soldiers. They will. Kill. Each…” he couldn’t finish his sentence, a long growl of wrath escaping his lips, his mind unable to contain the rage any longer.

The Goreborn didn’t need anything more. With a howl, he called his troops. They needed to walk toward the downed walls. The servants of the False Emperor would assault them from there, and the battle would be glorious, a bloodshed of epic proportion like this planet hadn’t seen since the VIth and XIIth Legions had brought it into the fold during the Great Crusade.

It had been an inglorious conquest, even then. The world wasn’t as primitive as it had become, then. The City was larger, and not alone. He still remembered that era, when the War Hounds had been tasked with teaching honour to the Rout, to help them control their bloodlust instead of letting it dictate their every actions. An impossible task, and one which was now grimly ironic.

The Chaos Lord tried to push back the memories away. They would detract him from slaughtering all who would stood in his way. And yet, a part of him couldn’t help but dwell on his past, to remember all those long decades of war, before and after the coming of Angron. The Red Angel had changed everything. Had ruined everything, a vicious part of his mind whispered to him.

His long history of battles had started in the Sol System. He had been a mongrel Voidborn, in one of the countless ships which had dared to oppose the XIIth Legion’s expansion into the galaxy. As a child, he had been torn away from his family. The yells and screams of his mother still echoed in his mind, as did the thunder of the bolt pistol which had silenced her forever.

If only he hadn’t fought so bravely as a child against them, never relenting even when his legs had been broken, perhaps his fate would have been different. But he now knew that the dark eyes of Khorne had been on him all along, and that he would have found his way to the God of War and Carnage no matter what, even as a lowly mortal probably.

His training had been harsh. The War Hounds were great warriors, called by the blood in their vein to great battles and ferocious slaughter against the enemies of Mankind. At that time, a san initiate, Nurr had appreciated it. The tensions, the shed of one’s Brother’s blood when slighted, it all had allowed them to be prepared, to be able, when their Father had been returned to them. They had been able to ascend to become the World Eaters, unfettered by reason or morality any longer.

And yet, Canapal had come before it. Its five great combines had refused the entreaties of Imperial Compliance and dared to defy the might of two young Legions. Nurr had been a sergeant by then, a warrior of peerless prowess in his generation, destined for greatness, and in the bloody streets of the capital, he had earned the rank of Assault Captain, one step from becoming a real leader of all his Brothers, owning his own Company.

The defenders had been counted in the millions, refusing to surrender even when it had become clear that all was lost, that they held no chance to contain the tide of controlled fury that had been the War Hounds assault. Even the rumours of carnages unleashed by the half-demented killers of the Rout hadn’t been enough to break their resolve just yet.

It had been a brutal battle, to purge every street of the city, as women slit the throats of their children and jumped on the Astartes from any height they could find, trying to bring one down with them, no matter how futile the attempt. It had been the War Hounds’ common certainty that this maddened resistance had been the result of the VIth’s actions.

But now, the Goreborn wondered if his God hadn’t played a part in this bloody war. Perhaps it had been a test, to see which of the two Legions was better to his licking. His hearts swelled with pride as he passed a crossroads covered with the headless corpses of today’s citizens of the Capital City. They had proven to be better than the Sons of Russ then, and would do so again, soon.

“Movement. Left” barked his second in command, Volrak Targ.

Thousands of cultists, their body covered in blood, heads at their belts, were emerging from the ruins of a large building, perhaps a market for the inhabitants. In theory, Nurr knew he should have gathered them, mustering whatever force they could bring to bear to strike at the servants of the Emperor outside the walls, who probably did the same with the mortals around them.

But the need to draw blood was too great. With a bellowed roar, he charged toward them. To their credit, those blood-drenched madmen did not shrink from the fight, instead rushing headlong into it, screaming and screeching like only devoted of Khorne could do. They would offer enough killing for the Goreborn’s mind to be able to be cleared, for a time at least, once they’d all be slaughtered.

Those men and women looked like the settlers which had been brought back to the ruins of this city, thousands of years ago. They lacked the darker mien and brown hair of the true natives of this world, and they were now paler even, blood loss and exhaustion taking its toll on them. And yet, they were driven to kill and fight and die under the chainaxes of his Berserks.

And they served a higher purpose, one they didn’t knew existed but which drove each and every action of the Red Slayers. Each kill would sate the hunger of his warriors and him. Sating the Red Slayers would approach this planet from the tilting point where the Warp would fully engulf it. Each planet devoured by the Warp in the name of Khorne would hasten Correk Nurr’s ascension to the rank of Demon Prince. And his rise would fuel the grand return of the Red Angel in the material realm.

What a glorious massacre they would unleash then. Whether it was in this portion of the Galaxy that the slave of the Corpse had called Dark Imperium and washed their hands of, or even their precious Imperium Sanctus, with its pathetic little Primarch as the sole real defender. None would be able to stem the bloodtide, and the whole realm of the old tyrant would come undone under the howling fury of his Legion.

As his thoughts drifted, Correk slayed all the mortals in his vicinity. But they fought savagely and never gave their ground? Several of his unluckiest – or unskilled – Astartes where even brought to the ground, their neck chopped by the enraged populace. If he noticed, the Goreborn didn’t seem to care. He had demons to help him face the enemies of Khorne and his God only cared about blood and skulls, not their provenance, after all.

**\* \* \***

Eigberth hunted his own streets, seeking more peoples to kill. He avoided the cultists, who did the same. A whole day had passed and now night was fast approaching, and he felt like he hadn’t killed enough, far from it. Nests of Imperial Loyalists had revealed themselves, barricading in houses, barracks and whatever place they could protect, using their weapons, makeshift or the standard equipment of the Planetary Defence Force.

To his own surprise, his minds had started to clear after he had killed a dozen pathetic, mewling, citizens who had tried to plead to him. They had had children with them, and he had taken all their skulls. He’d need to kill at least as many soon, to keep his mind clear. It seemed that the invaders hadn’t launched an all-out assault just yet. A mistake, he was sure of it.

More and more of the glorious, angelic, servants of the Blood God appeared in every place of slaughter. They seemed to relish the opportunity to kill and kill in the material plane. They all seemed to converge toward the large gash in the city’s wall. It was not where he wanted to go. He felt a call toward another section of the sprawling urban centre, as if something was scratching the inside of his brain.

It was a whine, a strange one, which made his belly turn with disgust. Magic. Somehow he knew it was the source of his discomfort, and a danger he needed to deal with, for his God to keep showering him with his mighty gifts. He needed to get stronger and to kill those repulsive sorcerers, or else Khorne would cast him aside as a failed servant. And he wouldn’t accept it, no. He needed all the power he could get to kill the Goreborn and claim his Warband as his own.

It was the only thing he could truly focus on now. How he wanted to reclaim his planet from those other invaders, who dared to pretend he was master of Canapal IV no longer. He had given everything to Khorne, been handsomely rewarded but he wanted more! And if he needed to kill to obtain it, so be it! He’d slaughter his way back to ultimate power and he’d use Nurrek’s head as a reminder for all to see what a true champion of Khorne could achieve!

The clamour of battle brought his mind back to the present. Roars and loud screams called down Karneth’s wrath on the defenders, but it seemed the Blood God did not favour his new servants in this battle. As Eigberth turned at the corner of a ruined street, near the Eastern Wall, he was momentarily blinded by the flash of psyker-fire falling down on the raving jackals who had led the butchery in the streets of the Capital.

Thirty or so soldiers rained down death from the windows of a mall, managing or now to hold a horde of raving lunatics. But without the presence of two psykers, probably sanctioned members of the PDF; he had managed to keep some since the opening of the Great Rift, after all. It turned out that they would oppose the will of Khorne, whose hatred for their kind was self-evident now to Eigberth. Seeing the sorcerers in action stoked the fires of his rage to new levels.

With a mighty roar, he dashed in the streets, lasers pointlessly landing around him, as if the hand of his new God himself protected him and he pushed the other cultists around, abusing his increased mass to turn them into meat shields as he rushed toward the barricaded doors of the mall, crashing into those with the strength of an enraged ogryn. He dispersed the furniture hastily assembled and even two defenders who seemed incredulous at his sudden appearance.

“Bow before the Planetary Governor!” he thundered, his voice deeper and heavy with bloodlust.

They did not, in fact, bow. The two soldiers tried to get back on their feet and shoot at him in the same time, failing at both. Eigberth rushed and pierced the heart of the soldier on the left, using his power-sword to kill him in one blow. For the other, he pushed aside the las-rifle, pushed back the soldier on the ground and crushed his throat under his large foot, enjoying his pathetic gurgling as his life left his body.

The breach he had opened was small but it was all the frenzied killers outside had needed. They rushed inside, several of them crushed to death by the press of their bodies. Eigberth didn’t care one bit about that, instead, as his victim finally died under his foot, he finally was able to see what he looked like, in a mirror which had miraculously survived the violence of the day.

Eigberth’s body now looked very little like it had barely 24 hours before. His mass and height had swelled, transforming his flabby form into that of a colossus, better proportionated than an Ogryn, perhaps closer to the look of those red-armoured butchers who had been summoned on his planet. His skin seemed healthier, but patches seemed to change, as if horns tried to grow out of him.

His hair had largely fallen out, and the few patches he still had seemed ready to follow suit at any moment. As for his face, it was now brutish and savage, with the red mark of Khorne forming a rash on it, scar tissues forming on their own under the tender ministrations of the Warp. The Planetary Governor started to laugh. He felt powerful, he was powerful and soon he’d be even more. Once he’d slay the pyskers. How he knew they were the victims his God craved right now, but he didn’t care. He followed his instinct and rushed upward, followed by hundreds of demented killers.

The soldiers greeted them with a volley of laser, and dozens of the cultists fell, their brains fried by precise shot. Eigberth had always wanted the PDF to be well trained and it proved he had been able to achieve it. But now, it only meant they were worthy trophies to claim, and it seemed that despite his size, they wouldn’t be able to hurt him, the lasers barely stinging him. A sudden blue flash and an ozone smell announced a use of psychic power which true him back several steps, roaring in pain.

A young woman, her visage gaunt and tired took a step back, as an older man took her place, making several heads explode as he bellowed a prayer to the God-Emperor. Eigberth growled, anger dulling the pain in his body. He wanted to kill those two. He needed to kill them, to make sure that they would not oppose his ambitions. And to make clear such practices, cowardly and unglorious were not welcomed on Canapal IV anymore.

The soldiers held their grounds, killing more and more maddened killers by the second, but the throng also shielded him from their volleys. He managed to get up on his feet, cleared his mind for a moment and dashed forward, pushing out of his way the weaker of the cultists. A wide slash from his sword decapitated one soldier and cut off the top of the skull of another, opening a way toward the psykers, one which would soon be claimed by another, if he hesitated.

Eigberth rushed toward his deadly victims, pushing aside any guard trying to stop him. The old man was weary but he tried to oppose him, unleashing a series of lightning bolts which seared the Governor’s flesh, but mostly incensed him, which allowed him to ignore the pain long enough to properly impale the psyker on his sword. The younger woman let out a horrified scream at the death of her mentor and tried to gather enough warp-power to smite him into oblivion, but Eigberth was faster.

With a sick grin, he drove his powerful fingers right into the throat of the witch, before reaping it apart in a gory display of blessed blood. The woman’s eyes stopped flickering with psychic energy and she died, screaming as her soul was hurled into the Warp, at the mercy of the myriad predators she had spent her whole life trying to avoid or to fight. And as her body laid on the ground, Eigberth felt the blessings of his God on him.

His neck started to burn as a brass collar formed on it, out of burning flesh, eliciting a flow of rage in Eigberth’s mind. He dashed toward the nearest living behind, as the collar grew, killing and killing again, until the pain calmed down enough that he could look around and realized that his neck was now sealed into the collar. It was a gift, however, one he knew he had earned for killing the psykers. Around him were corpses and killers, and he started to laugh, knowing that he had taken another step toward reclaiming his world.

**\* \* \***

“Isn’t three days way too long?” asked Ulfr in a hushed whisper, even within the confines of his helmet. “I mean, it took us, what? Twelve hours from Camp Prime to here?”

“Remember that what six can do quickly, a hundred can’t. Especially with the need to keep all the tanks together. We’ll need them to purge this place. And the mortals also’” explained Seiichi, who felt strangely calmed by his own words, as if they allowed him to forget his rage – for a moment.

He looked around him and nodded for himself. The Dusk Claws were doing good. They were not as skilled as most of the recruits of the Chapter, but it was only natural, since discretion was a valued element in the choice of their aspirants. But they were Fenrisians, great hunters in their own right, when they remembered that they didn’t need to charge headfirst all the time. And covered by heavy hooded capes of woollen threads, they were almost invisible in the shadows of the great trees still surrounding the ruins of the Southern walls.

“Why did they allow trees to grow so close to their walls?” asked Jörmund, who looked around him, puzzled. “It makes their cannons kind of useless if they can’t see where to aim!”

“They grew sloppy” conjectured the Grey Champion. “I suspect it is the root of all evils here. They are a feudal world, which can only give soldiers to the Imperial Guard as tithe for the Imperium. I guess it was easy for the inhabitants of the Capital, they only sent those outside the walls and had never any problems. And if no one assaulted the planet in the last thousand years, as seems to be the case according to what archives we have found…”

He let his voice trails off. In truth, it mattered little that the enemy had been unable to account from such dangers, but as servants of the Emperor, it also meant that they had shirked their duties. He darkly wondered how many worlds shared this behaviour and how many now regretted it bitterly. Perhaps not that many in the Imperium Sanctus, but here in the Nihilus, he was afraid a great deal of planets had been lost because of such disinterest in their own defences.

“Complacency is the bitter root of betrayal” he mused aloud.

“We will punish them, Grey Champion” proudly stated Bolvekr, his voice heavy with bloodlust already. “We’ll tear them down and let the streets of their city red with their blood!”

“Careful Brother” chided Seiichi, who didn’t like the emphasis the young warrior was putting on the slaughter he wanted to unleash. “We will be entering a place tainted by the Blood God. Its influence will try to drive us to carnage, to rage so that we may become corrupted, like those we will face. To give in would be a betrayal of your oaths.”

“How do you know so much, Grey Champion?” asked Olaf, as the rest of his pack-mates looked at him. “I mean, we haven’t faced those before. Have we?”

“I fought Khornate traitors during my time in the Indomitus Crusade, Olaf” gently explained the Unavenged. “And even before that, long ago…” he added absentmindedly, as dark memories he half wished to forget came back to the surface. “But we will speak about it no more, Brothers. The time is now to enter the belly of the beast, and tear it from the inside!”

The older warrior started to move, toward the breach. As expected, his helmet indicated a lack of presence on its rubbles. Most of it was now glass, the heat of the plasma reactor’s explosion having turned earth and rock into it. Even several hours after the fact, a few places still burned, hot enough to kill a normal man without any protection. Even in their power armours, the heat was hard to bear and Seiichi gritted his teeth as he moved through it.

Several runes of alarms appeared in his vision when he strayed too close to one of the hottest areas. Seiichi grinned below his helmet. It was the start of a true hunt, when danger was rife and he’d have to lead his warriors on the track of a dangerous and elusive quarry, even while being ill-equipped for the task. It’d make killing that so-called Emissary more glorious even. It reminded him of his first days in the Indomitus Crusade.

He hadn’t been immediately dispatched into the ranks of the Reivers then. Arch-magos Dominus Cawl had seen fit to gather most of the Sons of Russ in Intercessors or Assault Intercessors squads, and other variances. It was true that most of his Brothers had excelled in those roles, especially the later. But Seiichi had quickly felt that something was amiss. He wanted something else than the simple charge into the foes, in the gruelling battles of the Crusade where Sons of Russ had been deployed early on.

It had taken almost two years for him to be granted the right to leave his first squad and join with the Reivers. With Rasmus. It had been made easier with the many losses suffered by then – when he left the squad, it was basically full of newly awakened Primaris. What a liberation it had been, to be sent deep into enemy lines, far ahead of the rest of the forces of the Crusade, to slaughter their foes in a flurry of screams, earning fearsome glory in so doing, which paled still in his eye with that of the silent hunt before.

«Grey Champion, I think I picked up a living presence, thirty meters ahead, to the right» stated Svengar in his com-link, bringing the attention of the veteran back to the task at hand.

«I see it. Combat knives only»

A second figure seemed to join with the first, as the group of Primaris altered their course to reach them. Making use of the diffraction of air caused by the wells of hotter elements, Seiichi guided his younger Brothers in a complicated trail, which allowed them to approach under the cover of night and rubbles. Even the sounds of their heavy feet and power armour was covered by the crackling of cooling materials, diffusing the excess warmth caused by the explosion.

By the time the Space Marines had almost reached their target, it became clear that they were a quarry. Blood-covered, with disgusting symbols of Khorne the Grey Champion knew too well, the two stragglers had been joined by another four. For the time being, they hadn’t noticed the Primaris, as they started to speak to each other, seemingly in a heated debate. Seiichi didn’t even care to try listening to them. They were Heretics. They’d die.

«One kill each» he ordered. «Don’t let them flee nor scream. Fan over and kill them all. For Russ»

«For Russ» came the replies of his warriors.

Moving around the cultists turned out to be easier than expected. They were alone in the ruins, on the stub of what had been the foundations of the fortress walls. And they were sloppy, paying little attention to their surroundings, clearly lost in arguments which grew heater by the second. Weapons were raised and it seemed the traitors were willing to help the pack in its goal of killing them, much to the Unavenged displeasure.

With a low growl, he dashed to cover the last few meters separating him from his prey. It was a woman, turning her back to him. He saw the exact moment his massive shrouded form appeared in the eyes of the man she was shouting at who froze in sheer terror as the colossal warrior seemed to form from the fabric of the night itself. With a satisfied grin, Seiichi saw OIaf appearing in the same way behind the traitor.

His combat knife found the base of the woman’s neck, pushing deep into it, in an upward movement which saw it reach her brain, killing her on the spot. He removed his weapon, letting her corpse fall to the ground and looked around. All their preys were dead, none able to shout in alarm. He nodded.

«In we go now, Brothers»

# Chapter 7

Almost as soon as they entered the city, the nightly downpour of Canapal IV started. Seiichi heard the rough whispers of his Brothers, cursing at the rain which mafe their capes cling to their armours, threatening to curtail – if only a little – their movements. As for himself, the Grey Champion actually smiled under his helmet, appraising the usefulness of the rain. As demented as the servants of Khorne were, they’d remain in dry places. Or at least, the mortals would.

«Grey Champion?»+ voxed Svengar, his voice failing to hide both his impatience and apprehension. «What are we supposed to do now?»

«We try to advance deeper into the city without being discovered Brother» explained Seiichi, opening the communications with the whole pack. «If we spot mortals we can use our combat knives to silence them before they can alert our enemies. If it’s something worse… we try to avoid for now, and we’ll engage only if it’s absolutely necessary»

«Sounds like cowardice» growled Bolvekr, clearly unhappy with those orders. «We should wipe them out!»

«And we will, Bolvekr. But I won’t let your bloodlust compromise this mission. If you think you aren’t up to the task of being discreet and winning this war, you can get back to Camp Prime»

For the first time since he had been assigned to the Dusk Claws, Seiichi let his temper flare, if only a little. His words hadn’t been as harsh as his tone, and he was certain they young warriors perfectly knew that. He expected a challenge. Fenrisians were said to be a turbulent bunch and so far it seemed to be the case. He chided himself for his lack of control. He couldn’t let his temper get the better of him, not now.

«I’m sorry Grey Champion» suddenly came the response of Bolvekr, who sounded genuinely ashamed. «It won’t happen again»

«And I am sorry also, Brother» said the Unavenged after a second. «I am… on edge when we face Khornate Heretics. I have…. History with those degenerates. You are a great element Bolvekr, I am confident you will be one of our greatest warriors someday. If we survive this mission. And if we don’t. Well, we’ll bring those bastards with us!»

Silence fell on the group, only broken by the sound of their boots on fragile ground and the distant screams of peoples – or things – which had turned into frenzied monsters. The baleful lights of the Warp gave far too much visibility to their group, in Seiichi’s eyes, and proved – if it was necessary, that the city was corrupted beyond any hope of redemption. Even under his gaze, the Primaris saw buildings subtly shifting, their forms rearranged by the energies of the Empyrean.

So far, the Grey Champion felt that they had been lucky. Outside of the few stragglers on the ruins of the wall, they hadn’t spotted anything alive, meaning that no one had probably seen them. Still, advancing in the city started to prove harder when they left the radius of the blast, and even the outskirts of it, where large portions of the wall had crushed houses and buildings, as they were propelled at high velocity.

«Careful now» he voxed when they approached a crossroad.

It was a perfect opportunity for an ambush. His experience during the Indomitus Crusade made him certain they’d face opponents there. A three way assault was always assured to take lives on the infiltrated troops. He prepared to draw his neo-volkite gun at a moment’s notice. Better to make a sound now and live to finish the hunt than to die in silence, he reasoned.

But when they turned, he discovered, to his surprising dismay that no one was here. It was a perfect position to protect but the Heretics hadn’t even bothered to do so. He gritted his teeth. A part of him was happy about it, but another worried it hide some form of treachery. Or that they were supremely confident they could deal with them because they had reinforcements and forces far beyond what mortals could hope to oppose the Primaris. He hesitated but a moment, signalling his Brothers to gather around him, not willing to risk com-links.

“Listen Brothers. There should have been opponents here. Foes to fight off, or at least evade. Instead, there is no one. And it is not a good sign. Be ready for anything from this point onward. We are Sons of Russ; We will prevail, no matter the odds.”

“Are you telling us we won’t turn tail?” asked Jörmund, and Seiichi could see his smile in spite of his helmet. “No matter what happens we fight onward?”

“This is what we always do” stated the Grey Champion sternly. “I know you haven’t realized it Brothers, but our fury is great. Retreating to charge again is a strength, not a weakness. Think of the tally of kills you can gather with that.”

“I… I hadn’t considered it like that” conceded the Swift, who sounded surprisingly accepting of the veteran’s words, which made Seiichi wonder if he should have been stricter with them from the get go.

“It is understandable Brother. I have heard of Fenrisian’s bravery, retreating his not in your manners. Which makes you formidable warriors. You also teach us, even if you don’t realize it yet. But enough talking, we need to keep going. To the Palace!”

He led them ever onward, but worryingly, he spotted no enemy. He could feel that something was wrong however. The powers of the Warp were ever increasing as they delved deeper into the vast city. Seiichi often stopped, hidden in dark shadows cast by the malignant buildings, hiding the few lights which still flickered in this cursed place. But he heard nothing, no screams nor sounds of feet, at least not near them.

“Russ have mercy on us and give us a fair fight” he mumbled, just loud enough that his own ears heard his words.

They walked almost on hour in silence, until the tension in the air became so heavy that even the Grey Champion wanted to stop and scream, just to break it. His Brothers couldn’t contain it as well as he did, and he heard them talking, louder than he had wished. But he did nothing to stop them, letting them exorcise their worries in that relatively innocuous way. Sadly, it left him a little bit unprepared for what was to come.

As his warriors followed him in the butchery which had been a large house, with bits of corpses littered everywhere, bickering angrily but softly about the situation, the attack came. One moment Seiichi’s helmet hadn’t picked anything, the next half a dozen or so figures appeared, wielding monstrous blades of brass which seemed to flicker as if freshly out of the blacksmith’s forge. The Grey Champion did not hesitate and rushed toward them.

“To arms! Kill them all!” he roared as he drove his knife into the shoulder of the nearest demon, pushing it away from him.

He used the few seconds he had to unsheathe his master-crafted power sword and picked up his storm shield, which he used to bash the same bloodletter’s head in. Still, it was not enough to send back this horror into the Warp and he was soon faced by three demons, fighting with a ferocity he hadn’t seen in a long time. He had almost forgotten how deadly the otherworldly servants of Khorne could be. Almost.

“Russ!” he bellowed as he finally managed to kill the first one, lopping its head off but taking a vicious blow from the demon on his right, that penetrated his armour and pierced his abdomen.

“For the All-Father!” came the wild answer of the Dusk Claws.

Svengar’s chainsword struck at the bloodletter which had hurt him and the weapon managed, either by luck or skill, to cut the abomination’s arm. A loud bang from the bolt pistol of the Alpha finished the job, pulverising the torso of the creature, sending it roaring and angry, back into the Warp. Jörmund and Ulfr jumped on another of the demons, preventing it from joining the fact, while Bolvekr charged headfirst into the remaining two, leaving only one to face Seiichi and Svengar.

“Blood for the blood god!” roared the thing, but the two Dawn Wolves made short work of him.

“There is more coming from behind!’ warned Olaf, who started to shout at the targets he had spotted. “Mortals, perhaps up to twenty. What do we do?”

Seiichi wanted to deal with them all, but a scream of pain informed him that Bolvekr had bitten more than he could chew. He had to save the young warrior, and he rushed toward the last demons, who had circled on the too eager Fenrisian. Two joyous howls informed him that the Swift and the Iron-Jaw had finished their quarry and were ready to join the fight. He decided that supporting Olaf was the best course of action for them.

“Jörmund, Ulfr, go help Olaf!” he ordered, his voice brooking no discussion, as he charged the last demons.

A swift and clean strike from his blade freed Svengar from his foe, but not before the demon had traced a bloody line on the Alpha’s torso, disfiguring the Aquila. An enraged growl at this sight and escaped Seiichi and he and Svengar came to the help of Bolvekr with a greater fury than the last bloodletters expected. In a matter of seconds, they were sent back screaming into the Warp.

“We move!” ordered the Unavenged, who did not want to be bogged down in this place – the longer they fought here, the greater the danger that more mortals and worse would gather around them and sooner or later they’d die.

“But Grey Champion!” pleaded Olaf. “Those are only heretics!”

“We move Brother!” repeated Seiichi. “You will have your opportunity to slay those traitors and worse!”

The veteran only waited long enough for the three Dusk Claws to break off from their shooting position to start rushing toward a weakened wall, going through it and discarding his cape in the same move. Discretion had probably reached its need, now they would have to fight their way into the streets and buildings. As his thought focused on the best route to take, he couldn’t help but notice that the pack behind him had adopted a formation he appreciated.

Svengar and Jörmund were the tip of the spear, with Bolvekr and Ulfr a step behind them, protecting their flanks. Olaf protected the rear guard, turning around and shooting over his shoulders to kill the quickest of the cultists. While this sound probably drew more attention to them, Seiichi doubted it did more than the loathsome screams of the Lost themselves and said nothing, instead picking up pace to lose their pursuers.

Indeed, after four minutes, they had left the mortals far enough behind that they couldn’t be tracked down, just yet. And already the pain of his wound was fading, his geno-forged body doing its best to knit it back together. Soon, only the gash in his armour would remind him that he had been hurt by the corrupted blade of his enemy. Still, prayers and meditations would be sorely needed to purge himself of any potential taint.

He tried to gauge their direction. He hadn’t led his warriors in a random direction to chase off their opponents, but even he couldn’t be certain of the exact direction of the Palace. They were currently in a portion of the city were tall buildings – probably a form of hab-blocks – had been erected, and were so close and tall enough that he couldn’t see the palace.

“What were those things?” finally asked Bolvekr, removing his helmet, quickly followed by Ulfr and Jörmund – Seiichi noted with pleasure that neither Svengar nor Olaf did the same.

“Demons” replied the Grey Champion, slowing his run to a steadier jog, to better talk with his Brothers. “Manifestations of the Blood God’s curse on this planet. They are sustained by the Warp.”

“So how do we deal with them? Did we kill them? If they are maleficarum…” continued Bolvekr, who seemed strangely agitated.

“I don’t know that word” replied Seiichi, who looked around him, trying to find the best way forward. “All I know is that they come, called by the depravity of weak men and that we can send them back screaming into the Immaterium. They are not killed doing so, but it changes nothing. Defeating them allows us an opportunity to wipe out their supplicants and to purge this planet.”

“Pardon me Grey Champion but… you seem to know a lot about those beings” stated Svengar. “Is it common knowledge among the older warriors of the Chapter?”

“Yes… and no” slowly explained the Unavenged, who clung to his sword with greater force suddenly. “We have fought such beings and worse during the Indomitus Crusade, they have stolen the lives of too many a Brother for us to be fully ignorant of their kind. But in my case… Khorne’s monstrous servants are but shadows of my youth, during the Heresy.”

**\* \* \***

Corr Nurrek advanced in the emptied streets of the city. The pockets of resistance were dwindling, with servants of the Emperor falling by the wayside, as more and more entities from the Warp spawned into reality. No Bloodthirster yet, but two Defilers had appeared through the Blood Gate, and even a monstrous Lord of Skulls. According to his servant, Heldrakes had been called and with but a few more skulls, they would materialize and allow him to launch his assault on the slaves of the False Emperor outside the walls.

“They are not entering the city” growled one of his Chosen, Kadras Tur, if the Chaos Lord remembered his name right. “They are cowardly! We should rush them and slaughter the whole lot of them to please Khorne and ensure your elevation, my Lord!”

“No” growled the Goreborn, his voice dripping with barely contained rage. “They have aerial superiority still. We need Heldrakes. When they’ll be there, we will assault the rest of this pathetic world and offer the skulls of its inhabitants to the Blood God!”

The last few words had not been spoken so much as bellowed over the ruins surrounding his two hundred Astartes. He spied his Eighthbound circling around the rests of a position where humans had fought to the bitter end against them. They all needed more kills, more victims pleading pathetically for their lives or fighting until they could do so no more. But it seemed that they were killing them too fast.

The echoes of bolter in the distance suddenly attracted the attention of his Red Slayers. The Goreborn himself rushed headlong toward the sound. Sons of Russ had entered the confine of the city and he wanted to claim their heads. He was surprised both by the fact the sounds seemed to come from well beyond the walls that the loyalists had destroyed earlier that day and their sloppiness. Why did they shot so much?

A part of him remembered battles with those bastards of the VIth, during and after the Great Crusade and the Heresy. He had seen their Scouts, silent and cold killers he despised with all his heart, so unable where they to express true, genuine, rage like a real warrior should. But they were discreet, and wouldn’t have used bolters so easily. Here, it seemed several warriors of the Dawn’s Wolves were shooting at something. Or someone.

Cultists and other demented former citizens of the Capital City seemed to gather on the sound, clearly seeking new preys to sate the bloodlust which consumed them all. With a growl Nurr charged right into the backs of a throng of mortals and started slaughtering them, his great power axe swinging left and right, cleaving dozens of the pathetic beings, meagre offering to Khorne indeed, even if some managed to turn around and strike fruitlessly at his armour.

Opening a bloody path through their masses, Correk tried to hear the sound of bolter, but sadly the screams of agony and rage all around him, magnified by the rest of his warriors joining the fray and slaughtering their mortal allies, covered them. He growled and let the rage flow, forgetting all but the glory of carnage and the beauty of a beheaded body advancing still for a second or two until it fell on the ground, bleeding helplessly.

Long ago, he would have considered such a behaviour pathetic and counter-productive. He had chided the VIth Legion, on this very world, for the way they slaughtering cowering and terrified mortals. It was a waste of resources, he had said then, and they had growled, their bestial miens failing to hide their distaste of him and his words. They were too far gone, lacking in honour and control. Unlike the War Hounds. How Khorne must have laughed that day and even more so now.

And today, each death served a far greater purpose. The lives of the mortals had no meaning beyond fuelling the power of the Immaterium. Each one of them who died weakened the veil between the worlds, and allowed for more and more demons being summoned. From the corner of his eyes, Correk saw bloodletters forming out of the pools of blood his warriors were spraying on the ground, and darker, more dangerous shape seemed to push against the barrier of reality.

Still, he had not become a lord simply because his strength of arm. Unlike too many of his kin, he hadn’t lost all his intelligence in a tidal wave of blood, since thinking allowed for far more skulls to be brought to the feet of the Blood God. He quickly stopped his carnage to appraise the situation. The mortals were descending into a greater frenzy, and his Astartes also. Demons even started to join in, their lust for carnage too great to be contained any longer. But what had stopped was a strange wail in the sky. He had never heard it, but he had enough experience to know what it was.

“Take cover!” he bellowed, his voice powerful enough to pierce the veil of madness on his Brothers long enough for them to obey.

They started running toward the nearby buildings, already emptied of any living things, either because the occupants had been killed or joined the throng of madmen in the streets searching for the servants of the Corpse in the confine of the city. The Goreborn had barely entered one when the roaring of assault canons, weapons able to slay even a true Astartes of the Old Legions. He even heard the sound of ceramite crackling under this fire when some of his warriors were too slow to hide.

Nurr Correk roared in an impotent frenzy. His demon engines were still earthbound and he needed the Heldrakes now more than ever, to punish the cowardly Sons of Russ who had dared to strike at them in the night and with that kind of weapons. His screams was repeated by the Astartes, while the frenzied mortals threw rocks and shot their pathetic little guns at the shadowy form of the Dawn’s Wolves machine, to no avail of course. And then, a sound of tear followed by the horrible, beautiful sound of demon engines roaring to life covered all other sounds.

It seemed that the servants of the Emperor dared not defy the Heldrakes since he heard their engine growing weaker even while the hellish creations of the Dark Mechanicum started to circle over the city. Another proof of their weakness and lack of courage. The Sons of Russ truly had devolved during the last ten thousand years. There would have been a time where they’d stay and fight – they’d even have charged at them all, no matter the odds.

“Your Father would be disappointed in you, little wolves” mumbled the Goreborn, “but I’ll take your heads nonetheless, and with greater pleasure!”

He got out of his cover and appraised the situation. His warriors were mostly intact, only a handful had been unable to hide in time, their bodies ravaged by the assault canons. He cared very little for their deaths, since they still served Khorne by spraying their blood on the ground. Dozens of mortals had also been torn to shreds and the World Eater grunted in pleasure at the sight. Each drop of blood made his God stronger, after all.

With all those events, he had almost forgotten the intruders. Almost. The Goreborn turned his head toward the place the shots had been fired. All was silent now and whatever had happened, he couldn’t know for sure if it was over. He needed to send troops to secure the perimeter, and possibly scour it clean, just to be sure some dangerous rats hadn’t made their nest in his city. But those very thought drove him mad with rage. He wanted to kill! To slaughter! To maim! For Khorne!

Mercifully, it seemed that the aerial roar of the Sons of Russ engines had roused some pocket of loyalists still in place somewhere in the city. The wind drew to his ears the sound of lasers being fired and screams, even faint prayers. He growled and gestured to his soldiers to follow him. The other Space Marines could wait. He’d kill them once he’d have finished the mortals who opposed the Throne of Skulls.

When, after a glorious carnage, two hours had been spent, and that more than half of the night was passed, Nurr Correk had all but forgotten the infiltrators, enjoying too much the taste of fear-laced blood on his tongue as he drank from the neck of an unfortunate mortal who had dared resist him. He prepared his troops for the battle he expected at dawn. Surely the servants of the Corpse wouldn’t make him wait any longer before he was given the true battle he craved?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Capital, Eigberth continued to prowl. He had picked up the trail of the intruders, as if called by a siren song only he could hear. They had made short work of over twenty zealots, whose enraged mind hadn’t been able to comprehend that charging straight at Space Marines over an open terrain was not a good idea. Still, the warriors of the Corpse had fled before them, indicating a small number.

As he entered the building where Seiichi and the Icewalker Pack had fought the demons, his nose suddenly picked a smell he had never smelt before. It was blood, but far richer than any mortal’s, and yet there was something non-human in it, almost bestial. He searched around, wondering where the source of it could have been and finally after almost five minutes spent sniffing the ground as a hound, he discovered it.

Two sprays of blood on the ground, darker than any human he had ever seen – or shed in the last few hours. He had to use a torch to see it but it was unmistakable, as was the fact it was already far too coagulated to smell like it did. He didn’t need much imagination to come to the conclusion that here, two of the Invaders, those disgusting Sons of Russ who had dared to try and force him back under the yoke of Terra, had been hurt.

Eigberth laughed for himself. It was, indeed, great news. Those warriors, the rare picts he had seen of them, were enormous, even taller than the troop of that arrogant Correk. And yet, barely into his city, they had been wounded, they had bled. And if they bled, they could be killed. And killing them would mean earning more rewards from Khorne – and their weapons, to turn against the Goreborn to claim his skull and his warriors perhaps!

“Run, little dogs, run. You are on my turf now” he mumbled as he started to follow their trail.

# Chapter 8

Seiichi had brought the Dusk Claws into hiding, as the night came to an end. They had covered a lot of ground, lucky enough to avoid any other demons or servants of the Dark Gods. But everywhere they went, corpses and blood littered the streets, and the proof of depravity seemed omnipresent. How the city could have come to this in a few hours only was a grim reminder of how easily Man was corrupted.

“Look at that” mumbled Olaf, pointing at the body of children, horribly maimed. “What sort of monster do that? Little kids do not get killed on Fenris!”

“I agree” concurred Bolvekr, whose voice as full of impotent rage. “Only cursed beings would do that!”

“Indeed Brothers” calmly stated the Grey Champion as he drove them forward. “But we need to find a place to hide for the day now. Then we will speak, if you want.”

“To hide?” asked Svengar, confused. “Won’t we continue to advance during the day?”

“Not in the surface of the city” explained the Grey Champion. “And I’d rather not crawl in the sewers. I suspect many mortals tried to find refuge here, but there must be mutants, heretics and worse down there, and it won’t do us any good to die before we reach our target.”

As he expected, the prospect of using the sewers to progress did not interest his younger Brothers. Seiichi smiled in his helmet. He had had to undertake such missions before, as a Reivers. Once, on Candurias, during the Indomitus Crusade, when the Unnumbered Sons were still divided by lineage, he had been a part of a deployment far beyond enemy lines.

He had had to wait for three days, almost immobile, in the refuse of a large city, waiting for the leaders to try and use the escape way that had been built thousands of years ago and largely forgotten, except in the direst moments. What a slaughter it had been, to fall on the heretics as they flew, surging from piles of repugnant rotting materials to scream and kill. It had garnered their packs little glory among the other Sons of Russ, but Rasmus had reminded them of their pride as the ones who finished the rebellion.

It had been what had started their Chapter, now that he thought about it. None among the Sons of Russ wanted to play such a role, waiting for so long, but for the Brothers who shared that love of the hunt and the patient killing intent which was the boon of the Dawn’s Wolves now, but at been the mark of their exclusion by many of their fellow Sons of Russ.

Only the future Wolfspears shared this love for the dark places to strike from, and even they had a different vision of those, a mean to an end and nothing more, a place to commemorate the First-Slain and prepare their vengeance. For the Dawn’s Wolves, even then, being able to wait for days to strike at their foes was seen as an end in itself, ensuring the final embers of betrayal to be utterly quenched. None would make those heresies rear their ugly heads again, thanks to them.

It had been a thankless task, but one which had been remarked by the Lord Commander himself. Seiichi had heard enough from his superiors, back then, to know that their cadre of Reivers and Infiltrators was held in high regard by the Regent of the Imperium, and it had been enough to feel his hearts with joy. He didn’t need the accolades of the throngs, the satisfaction of a duty well done was enough – that and the thrill of the hunt.

“So we need to find someplace discreet enough to be hidden all day long? Won’t it be difficult for us?” asked Jörmund, who seemed agitated.  “Doing nothing for hours seems like a poor use of our strength.”

“Who said we would be doing nothing?” asked Seiichi, amused by the ideas of his cadet. “We will prepare for the next night. We need to kill the Emissary tomorrow, to pave the way for our Brothers to assault the city.”

“So we’ll plan ahead to reach him and kill him. Got it” stated Svengar, who could appreciate that idea. “It’s like when you have to hunt down a sea serpent, you need to be sure you can kill him fast enough then.”

The other four Fenrisians nodded and grunted their approval. The Grey Champion had no idea if the comparison was apt, but he added his voice to the chorus, since it seemed to at least achieve the acquiescence of his Brothers. Now, all he had to do was to find a place to lay low for a few hours. Mercifully, he had already started to think about it long before he brought the subject to the Dusk Claws.

“We should find an adequate hiding place, a den if you will, there” he explained, pointing at the ruins of a cathedral, its roof destroyed by some form of ordinance. Probably some traitor among the guards of the city had used a mortar. In fact, they’d spot the piece, destroyed by a defective shell, a little before reaching the ruins, once they’d approach it. But before, the young warriors needed some more to be convinced.

“Are you sure, Unavenged?” asked Ulf. “I Mean, it’s a ruin…”

“Precisely. They won’t expect us to hide here, most people would seek out refuge in something less derelict. Plus we can probably find spots to truly mesh in, which would allow us to spring on any intruder. Remember that waiting is not the same thing as doing nothing. Anyone who sees us must die, even a potential loyalist. We can’t take any chance.”

“Understood” replied Svengar, and he gestured to his pack to follow as he started to walk toward the church.

The Grey Champion led them through the small streets. Corpses were less prevalent here than in other parts of the city, but he felt no one around them. His auspex picked up no signal and his own senses and it worried him a little. There should have remained stragglers and people trying to hide from the violence. Such was humanity after all. Their absence signalled something far worse than he had feared.

“Where are everyone” grumbled Olaf, who walked at the back of their group. “There should be someone at least, right? Or corpses. Something.”

The young Primaris voiced the concerns of Seiichi, but hearing them into the mouth of a less experienced warrior only increased the worries of the Grey Champion. Perhaps he should have drove the Dusk Claws toward another section of the city? But now, it was too late to change course. Moving through the rubbles during the day would make them far too easy to spot and they needed to avoid unnecessary fights, as much as possible.

“There should” he finally said as he crossed over the blood-covered ruins of a small wall, destroyed by a grenade. “But their absence may be nothing more sinister than this section of the city was less populated than the rest. Or it could be that prisoners were taken somewhere else, which would be far worse. Rituals can use the death of imperial citizens to summon horrors from the Warp, and here the veil between our world and the demon’s is far too thin.”

Seiichi knew he was taking a risk explaining too much. He had seen the dangers of demonkind, even for the minds of Primaris. Many of his Brothers had been taken away by the Chaplains during the Indomitus Crusade, never to be seen again, his soul unable to bear the weight of those horrible truths. He suspected that the Dusk Claws would be able to endure it longer than peoples born on a less deadly world than Fenris, which bred legends and myths allowing its native to survive uncorrupted under the distant but baleful gaze of the Eye of Terror.

And he really didn’t have the choice. As Space Marines they had to face all manner of enemies, even those creatures, and the Brother of Russ had ordered that knowledge of the true nature of demons not be hidden from his warriors in the Unnumbered Sons. Seiichi wasn’t certain it had been the right decision but now that they possessed a sliver of knowledge about those beings, they had to know enough to be protected.

“Ignorance is a bliss, knowledge a burden” he grumbled, feeling the surprised eyes of his Brothers on his back. “Forward now, we need to enter the ruins.”

They covered the last few hundreds of meters separating them from the church. Seiichi looked around, and almost removed his helmet to smell the place, but he didn’t dare do so, with that horrible Warp-light touching the ground so close. His armour already struggled to protect him from the emanations of the Immaterium, the Legacy of Russ inside of him fighting off the deleterious influence of the Ruinous Powers.

Seiichi led the group of warriors into the ruins. The auto-senses of his helmet picked no trace of anything living here, and only a few beheaded corpses, huddled together as if they had tried to protect themselves from their killers. Surprisingly enough, a statue of the Emperor, rather naïve in appearance, still stood, with some sprays of blood forming red tears under his eyes. At the sight of this desecration, the Grey Champion let out a low, furious, growl.

“They will pay” he simply vowed to the Emperor’s wooden likeness. “We will purge the whole planet of their taint, and when we’ll be over, none will remain to dare even think the name of the Dark Gods or the word sedition!”

**\* \* \***

Svengar moved through the rubble, ignoring the complaints of his pack-mates in the squad’s communication channel. They didn’t like hiding any more than he did, but he had to admit that Takamoto’s explanation made sense. What would have been the point of fighting and killing dozens of traitors if it prevented them from reaching their target? Plus, sealing the rift allowing demons to invade the Material Realm seemed far better in a saga than the slaughtering of hundreds of traitorous civilians.

He removed his helmet to get a better idea of the place. On Fenris, the Wolf Priests had been clear, their senses were keener than the technology in their helmets. It was a gift of the Canis Helix, the counterpart of the dreadful Curse of the Wulfen. It was why it was a good thing for Sons of Russ to smell the world around them, to hear it and prepare accordingly to what their acute ears and nose would teach them of the situation. So, Svengar did as he had been trained to initially.

He took a deep breath and frowned. There was one smell drowning all the others. It was something he had never smelt before, but it made his throat constrict a little, as if it was a poison, and yet his helmet hadn’t picked any trace of chemical component and his physiology preserved him from any common bacteria found on the worlds of Mankind. And yet, that perfume was nauseous even to him.

“Morkai’s teeth, what is that?” he stated out loud, turning on himself to try and better understand what he perceived.

“The rotting taint of Chaos” came the reply of the Grey Champion, who still stood by the statue of the Allfather. “Be careful Brothers. We need to be sure we’re alone, while not giving away our presence here… and the sun is rising. Dawn will be on us soon.”

Svengar and his Brothers looked through the gaping hole in the roof of the little church of the God-Emperor. The coming of a new day was not heralded by a rise in luminosity but rather by the weakening of the atrocious, otherworldly colours of the Great Rift, which spanned most of the sky of Canapal IV. In fact, in the last few day he had been there, Svengar had already noticed that only the midday sun was strong enough to fully hide the hideous Cicatrix Maledictum from mortal eyes.

“There is no one here, Grey Champion” called Ulfr. “But I don’t see where we could hide either… We’re just too massive for this place!”

“I think I’ve found something!” suddenly called Jörmund, it looks like… a door in the ground?”

“It’s a hatch” explained the Grey Champion as he approached the young Dusk Claw. “And it’s what I hoped to find here. Most churches have those, where priests hide relics and resources… or worse things sometimes. Be careful and ready to fight” he ordered as he opened the hatch and pointed his gun at the pitch black darkness inside.

Nothing sprang out of it, neither the pleas of desperate survivors nor the roar of some Warp spawned terror. Nothing but a sad silence, which reminded Svengar of tomb he had seen, on a world they had stopped at when Thür Nighthowler had led them into a decade long chase toward the Dawn’s Wolves. There was nothing but sadness in death inside the room under the hatch. And yet, he needed to enter it.

“We will pass under Morkai’s care in here” grumbled Bolvekr, who touched several of his talismans to ward off the maleficarum he suspected was at play here. “Couldn’t we find some other place? I smell death in here…”

“We don’t have the time for that anymore. Have faith in the Allfather ordered Seiichi, who started to go down. “And remember to lock the hatch only after we’re sure we can find another escape route… It would do us no good to be entombed here.”

Svengar grimaced as he put his helmet on. Takamoto wasn’t really reassuring – not that he was truly afraid, he was a Space Marine after all, and a Fenrisian to boot! But the idea of simply dying of inanition and thirst in a place like that was truly not a fitting end to his saga. It’d rather be worthy of scorn than anything else! He followed his Brothers into the cave beneath the church’s floor, letting his lenses adapt to the lack of light.

“Gold, gold and, look, more gold” chuckled Ulfr, gesturing toward piles of coins. “Somebody kept the faithful’s gifts for himself it seems.”

“Unsurprising, sadly” commented Seiichi, as he walked around the place, searching for another way out.

“It’s a sad man who steals from his brethren” affirmed Svengar, and the other Fenrisians let out their agreements in wordless growls. “The rot has been ancient here.”

“Yeah, from even before the Rift I’d bet” concurred Olaf who still stood near the hatch, his bolt pistol aimed at anything who could appear. “I think this world would have rebelled, even without that whole maleficarum. They just waited for an excuse, really!”

Svengar believed the same, at least about the Capital City’s inhabitants. From what little he had seen in fighting with the ferocious inhabitants of the feudal portions of the planet. Those mortals didn’t flee when Primaris charged them from below the dark trees of their vast forests, he doubted anything could have made them afraid enough to turn their back on the Imperium. More probably, they had been fed lies, painting the Dawn’s Wolves as dangerous invaders.

“The Children of Vi” suddenly said Bolvekr, passing his hands on half-erased words sculpted in the rock of the cave. “Beware their blind fury, for they bring death to the vulnerable… Somebody didn’t like us here. Bastards.”

“Hardly surprising” sighed Takamoto. “Our ancestors’ Legion had a fell reputation, before they were reunited with Leman Russ. Our Primarch gave them honour and glory, as grim as it could be. But even then, detractors used their pasts and the Fenrisian mien of their recruits has savages or worse, when the Heresy started and, here it is!” he suddenly yelled, shoving old pieces of furniture around. “Another escape route” he added, pointing at a wooden door, ancient and yet still sturdy.

“But what heresy are you talking about, Grey Champion?” asked Olaf as he finally let the hatch close on them all, sealing them in the dark. “There has been many!”

“Oh… that’s right, for you it is the case. I’m speaking about the Horus Heresy, when I was but a kid.”

**\* \* \***

Eigberth advanced in the ruins, followed by a throng of demented killers and a bunch of bloodletters. He wished that something more powerful was with them, to send them at the invaders first, to weaken them and then claim the kill for itself. It may have been a cowardly tactic but he cared not, all that mattered was to kill them and claim their skulls for Khorne. And if the servants of the Corpse Emperor managed to send some of his servants to the Blood God, then He would be much pleased indeed.

His body had grown some more, and now he was certain he’d have been able to look into the Goreborn’s eyes, if not force the arrogant Astartes to look up at him. But his clothes were tattered and his power-sword was barely more than a larger than average dagger. He needed something more befitting of someone his stature, but sadly he had found nothing yet to satisfy him. Hopefully, some of the invader’s armours and weapons would fit.

The smell of their blood was still in the air, even if it had weakened. If Khorne hadn’t given him such ability, he doubted he’d have been able to track them down. For giants in armour heavier than a normal man, they had been surprisingly discreet, leaving barely a footprint where enough fresh blood had been spilled that they couldn’t simply walk over it. They had gone deep into his city, but he couldn’t yet understand what their goal was. There was nothing for them in there, nothing they could do to reverse the change he had brought his world.

“I need to kill… I need to kill…” suddenly mumbled a woman to his right, who seemed to become extremely agitated in a matter of seconds.

Eigberth took a step back, pushing an unfortunate man, who looked like a former cloth-washer near the woman, who screamed and split his torso in two with a monstrous cleaver, covering her head and hands in his blood, screaming the bloody sacraments of Karneth. Soon, several other mortals joined into the fray, those whose minds were too weak to contain the blissful fury of their god. The demons didn’t join the fray, their otherworldly minds entirely focused on the task of hunting the Primaris.

A sudden feeling of oppression aggressed Eigberth, who couldn’t really tell from whence it came. Around him, the rest of the devotees of Karneth shook their heads and grumbled, and even the demons hissed and seemed hesitant to continue, if only for the faintest of moment. The Planetary Governor looked around and saw nothing which could explain this sudden reluctance to move forward. Had he lost the trail? Was the Blood God trying to warn him of something?

“Khorne, guide your faithful” he growled, his throat constrained by the brass collar, his voice rugged by the changes in his physiology, proofs of his new Master’s attention.

He looked, once more around him, noting nothing strange at first. But as he focused, ignoring the storm of rage inside of him for a moment, he finally realized that something was amiss. When he tried to look around, it seemed that he always glazed over the same spot, as if he just couldn’t look at it. It was both infuriating and concerning. What could prevent him to look at anything on his planet, in the very shadow of his Palace? Anger allowed Eigberth to ignore the compulsion to look away and finally managed to see what he needed to notice.

A church. A derelict relic of an already ancient age. The depiction of the Corpse Emperor was in there, the distant tyrant and false god who had let his peoples suffer, while never answering his prayers. Eigberth spat on the ground. Around him demons and mortals alike seemed unable to even see the ruins. That alone was enough to make him sure that his victims, the hated intruders, had found refuge there.

He tried to call for the rest of the Khornate band to look at the church, but he found himself unable to speak. In fact, just continuing to look at it required an act of will, and he feared that if he so much as turned his head for a second, he’d simply forget about the church altogether. He gathered all his will to try to fight this pressure which prevented him to act he willed, something he had always hated, for as long as he remembered.

He had always raged against the constrains of the Administratum, which prevented him to develop his world as he saw fit. He had to preserve the native’s savage fury, which made them such great recruits in the Astra Militarum, never allowed to go and dig deep for whatever iron and other metals that backwater place could give – admittedly, very little according to the magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had come at his request, to assess the world’s resources.

And when he had grown up, when he had taken his weak father’s place, Eigberth had had to deal with the arrogant bastards of the rest of the system, and even worse the sub-sector. Canapal V was just a mining world, but they had been allowed two centuries ago to erect factories to transform the raw materials they extracted from their ugly brownish orb into components needed by the Adeptus Mechanicus or whoever bought their production, when he had been denied, repeatedly.

And even at home, he had to deal with political opponents, rivals who begrudged his family’s hold on the seat of the Planetary Governor. He had had to deal with arrogant bastards whose only virtue was to have cultivated ties with some passing Merchant of the sector, or even a deadly – if barely known – Inquisitor or two, always ready to turn his most minuscule mistakes into weapons to chip at his power and authority.

Artorius had learnt how to appease him, over the years, helping him manage those situations, a veritable power behind the throne, in a sense, even if he never had tried to obtain anything from his friend, content to simply help Eigberth rule Canapal IV as he saw fit. He had recognized the vision of the young man and supported with all his abilities. And Eigberth had killed him, and felt good about it, as if he had broken the chain which had kept his anger locked all those decades.

As he stood there, minutes at went by, and now the sun was starting to bring light to the ruins of his city. This vision gave him strength. Since he hadn’t been allowed to make this backwater place into a centre of wealth and prestige, then it was only right he was the one to destroy it, in a planetary holocaust dedicated to Khorne! And just like he had felt good killing his best friend, he’d feel good doing so, and better, he’d be rewarded for his actions! Such was the power of a real god, after all!

“The church!” he finally managed to bellow, his rage and fury, decades of frustration and anger allowing to push back against whatever force tried to protect the invaders. “Get in! Find them, and kill them all!”

As he extended his hands toward the ruins, dawn passed. A new day had started on Canapal IV and dozens of mortals whose minds had been irredeemably corrupted by Khorne’s wrath charged the place of their former worship, escorted by demons, and goaded by a monster who had been a man once, and was now both far less and far worse.

# Chapter 9

Nurr Correk watched as another day dawned without intervention from the Sons of Russ. His rage was truly reaching new peaks in face of such an affront. Why couldn’t the bastards runts simply charge headlong into battle? He would have slaughtered them of course, but at least their deaths would have been glorious. Instead they waited in the forests of Canapal IV, wasting their time in pointless endeavours.

The strategic mind of the former Legion Assault Captain he had been knew it was a good thing for him. It allowed him to finish whatever pockets of resistance remained in the Capital City proper, insuring his rear would be safe from any sudden assault by the loyal servants of the Corpse of Terra. Even World Eaters and demons, aided by cultists long ingrained in the population couldn’t wipe out the millions of inhabitants of the town in a matter of hours. Even now, that the sun rose above the horizon, he could hear the clamour of battle rising again in distant part of the city.

But they were mortals, cattle to kill without any effort, barely worth the time of claiming their skulls and shedding their blood. This new breed of Astartes he had heard about were better kills, worthier in the eyes of Khorne. They were not as experienced as their kind, as far as the Goreborn had heard in hushed whispers and roared frenzies in the Immaterium. But they were strong, perhaps stronger than real Astartes who did not share the blessings of Khorne.

“We should seek them out if they are too cowardly to come to us” growled one of his nameless Chosen. “We have demons, Hounds of Karneth! They will sniff them out!”

“No” thundered Correk before the idea could fully take root in his warriors’ bloodthirsty minds. “They have support equipments and aerial reinforcements” he tried to explain, making use of his ancient knowledge. “In the open, they’ll shoot down too many of us. We need to survive to take part in the Red Wash of Angron…”

The last few words had been drooled more than spoken as he battled the ferocious viciousness of the Butcher’s Nails. Ever since he had them implanted, the Chaos Lord had find it harder and harder to think, but before he had devoted himself to Khorne, even those instruments of torture had changed, their effects magnified. He was truly happy only when killing, the rest of his life being reduced to a painful existence thanks to the device’s effects. Still, he was a leader, not a slave of his killing intent.

“The city allows us to hide our strength, to force them to come in, where we can suppress whatever advantages they may have. The demon engines are also growing stronger with each kill we make here, waiting for them.”

His bodyguards didn’t seem fully convinced, but none dared to oppose him openly, at least not yet. He knew it’d happen sooner rather than later if he couldn’t give them something to kill, and while he wished to remain near the breach in the walls, from which the assault would come, he knew he needed to give them a reprieve from the pain of the Nails. With a long growl, he gestured for them to follow him, their hulking terminator armours adorned with skulls and brass ornaments in honour of their savage God.

The rest of his Warband, comprised almost exclusively of Berserks, roamed the streets, seeking more skulls to claim, even those of victims killed by the mortals slaves who had paved the way for their approach or simply by the devastation of the wall’s sabotage. They noticed the colossus as the moved around the rubbles and followed them, like enraged beasts who picked the trail of new victims. As he advanced through the streets, toward the sound of battle, Nurr mused about his previous coming to Canapal IV.

In this bygone era, when only Horus Lupercal walked with the False Emperor at the head of the armies of the Great Crusade, it hadn’t been uncommon for the leaders of this mighty campaign to send the VIth and XIIth Legions together on campaigns, as if they had tried to correct the misbehaviour of the former with the shining example of the latter’s focused fury. For Nurr, it had always been a mistake.

The VIth couldn’t be reasoned with; they were more animals than Astartes. They were good warriors, in the initial phases of a campaign, perhaps even able to equal the War Hounds of this era. But they always succumbed to their instincts, and were thus easily goaded into attacking a retreating force. If they hadn’t been fighting mortals, but instead Orks or the other myriads of Xeno threats of this bygone era, they would have suffered tremendous losses of life – and in fact they did, or so he had heard back then.

There was a grim irony he was privy too, that their Legions’ fate were changed as they were by the rediscovery of each of their Fathers. Leman Russ had given something to his Sons, a sense of pride, a bleak honour they craved. Even the oldest of the Terran veterans had seemed changed, once reunited with their Genesire, as if the ravenous predator had been turned into a deadly attack dog. A War Hound, of a sort.

Such had not been the case for the XIIth. Angron had been a difficult lord to follow. Even now, as he walked the streets of Canapal’s Capital City, Nurr Correk couldn’t suppress the disappointment he had felt when he had first seen his Father. That brutal, constantly angry and, frankly, lunatic killer, was supposed to be their Primarch? Those thoughts, and many others, had gnawed at him, crushing in their finality.

He had been one of the last picking up the Butcher’s Nails. He had hoped, for so long, that their Father would be able to remove his own, to understand that the War Hounds had been his real calling, not those Eaters of City he had fought with before and that he always used to measure his Sons’ prowess. Because of it, he had almost ended deployed in the front lines of Istvaan III. Almost, but he had learnt the error of his ways before it, sparing him such an ignominious fate.

It had been an epiphany. When he had felt the savage bite of the Nails inside his brain, he had realized how wrong he had been about everything, especially about the depths in which the Wolves had fallen, because of their Primarch, while they had stood on the precipice of Khorne’s glorious embrace before being reunited with Leman Russ. Angron had brought them the clarity of rage, the appeasement of pure fury. In the bloodshed they were freed of remorse, of ethical quandaries and self-doubts which plagued other Legions.

And the gifts of his God were plentiful even beyond those. He was stronger than ever now, able to wrestle down Ogryns with contemptuous ease. His blows could shatter normal weapons, requiring the slaves of the Dark Mechanicum to give him monstrously heavy axes to endure the fury of the battles.

His resilience was also far greater than a normal Astartes. Where those lapdogs of the Corpse needed fully sealed armours to fight in the void, he and his Brothers didn’t, the blessings of Khorne shielding them from the coldness and radiations of outer space. Truly, they had become far greater beings than their former kin, who slaved at the feet of mortals.

As he turned around a ruined street, Nurr stumbled upon a large plaza, littered with corpses and debris. A great battle between mortals had been fought here, and it was hard to tell who had won. In any case, the large statue towering over the remains seemed strangely intact.

It was an Astartes of old, wearing an ancient MKIII model, adorned with the few symbols of the Rout. Neither fur nor trinkets of bone and fang, but instead pieces of enemies’ armours and scars of war on the plate. His face was hidden by a helmet but it did very little to conceal the identity of the ancient killer. Enoch Rathvin himself, in all his savage glory, standing over the world he and his savage kin had butchered.

Even after thousands of years, even after having sold his soul to Khorne and shedding more blood that the VIth first Legion Master had ever shed, the Goreborn clutched his fist. That bastard had been cold and honourless even back then, a monstrous killer in the form of an Astartes, a shame for us all at the start of the Great Crusade.

“Khorne would have welcomed you, old bastard” he growled, speaking at the statue, almost as if it could answer him. “You and your Brothers would have loved it, I think. Alas for you, your pathetic Father was a leashed dog and he sent you to die in the Wheel of Fire. What a pathetic end for you, Rathvin.”

Nurr spat at the feet of the statue. When he’d had finished with this world, he’d come back, and then he’d topple it, as a final insult to the man who had been feared and hated by the natives but was now revered as a protector, thanks to the lies of the Imperium. Truly, a disgrace.

“My lord, heavy fire in the north-east” suddenly growled one of his bodyguards.

The Goreborn turned around, listening. He had been so preoccupied by ancient memories that he had failed to grasp the full situation, lost to the reality around him. It happened from time to time when he was on the material world. Something here brought him back from the near-mindless pleasure of slaughter.

Another good reason to hate it, of course.

“It seems that some mortals still have the guts to fight” chuckled another World Eater warrior.  “We should silence them for good!”

“Shut your mouth, Urkor!” roared Nurr, turning so fast his bodyguard in terminator armour couldn’t avoid the glancing blow of his power axe on his shoulder. “I decide when we kill. I!”

The Chaos Lord almost gave in to the temptation of beheading his subordinate, but he managed to control himself, even if he drooled abundantly, his body producing a large amount of acidic solution in his drool, that caused his lips to blister and burn under its sting, but he didn’t event felt the pain.

“Those bastards of Russ don’t seem to want to attack. So we will be giving their loyal slave in the city a taste of what’s to come” he finally ordered, gesturing for his troops to follow him. "Blood for the Blood God!”

**\* \* \***

Svengar blinked, and then looked at his Brothers. Had the Grey Champion truly said what he thought he had just said? The Horus Heresy was a time of ancient legends, shrouded in myths, lies and hushed whispers, for fear of the horrors its tales could conjure in the material world, so dire was the influence of maleficarum in them! It seemed ludicrous to even contemplate the idea that Takamoto could have hailed from that era.

“That’s bullshit!” groaned Bolvekr, who removed his helmet to spit on the ground, the acid in it melting a little bit of the rock it had fallen on. “You can’t be 10 000 years old! That cannot be!”

“And yet it is” replied the Grey Champion. “I understand it can be a little difficult to understand, but it is when I came to be. The Primaris Project was started just after the Horus Heresy and its first thousands of recruits were chosen in that era by the Archmagos.”

It was something Svengar could barely conceive. As a young Fenrisian, living beyond a few decades already felt like a span of time which was simply too large to comprehend. So, to imagine that the Primaris could have been worked on for one hundred centuries felt more like the stuff of strange sagas than reality.

“Prove it” ordered Ulfr Iron-Jaw, who was starting to get agitated.

“And how would I do that, Brother?” asked the Unavenged, who did sound a little amused now, as far as Svengar could tell. “Would you want me to produce a piece of technology of this distant era?”

“Ys, I think it’d be a great proof!” barked Ulfr, who seemed to have missed entirely the gentle sarcasm in Takamoto’s voice, something that Olaf picked on quickly.

“Yes, I think it would be great if he displayed his ancient data-tablet that could help us tell if he’s that old or only a measly three or four thousand years old.”

“You’re an ass, Olaf” growled Ulfr.

“Tell us something we don’t know or just trust the Grey Champion!” replied Olafson.

For the first time, Svengar realized that his Brother was starting to change the most of the five of them. He seemed to really have taken a liking to the Grey Champion and seemed to chance his stance on the Dawn’s Wolves practices. Not that he could entirely fault him.

Takamoto was impressive as a warrior and the reveal that he may have lived through the terrible era of the Great Heresy only reinforced his stature in his eyes too. And he had an aura of nobility and competency which bellied his young age as a warrior. He didn’t displayed the *fengr* of a real Fenrisian, but then again he didn’t seem to try to be one.

Still, he was touched by Lokyar, a danger for all around him. Svengar never liked the Scouts of the Space Wolves, with their aloof and cold behaviour. He expected the Grey Champion to ditch them at any moment, to pursue whatever prey would strike his fancy, leaving the pack to fend for itself.

And yet, almost in spite of himself, he wanted to learn more about the Unavenged. Like most of the older Brothers of the Chapter, he was surrounded by mysteries, his Deed Name and even his origins were never talked about. The former Unnumbered Sons at the core of the Aurorae Lupi all seemed to know about it and never spoke of those things which seemed fundamental for a Fenrisian.

“Can you tell us more, Grey Champion?” asked Jörmund, as Svengar still struggled with those thoughts. “We don’t know much about the rest of the Chapter’s warriors. How can we be Brothers if we don’t?”

“I see your concerns and I understand them” replied Takamoto slowly. “Opening up is… difficult for us. It’s a trait shared by many of our first Brothers. We keep close our secrets and our past to outsiders.”

“But we aren’t outsiders” stated Svengar. “You call us Brothers after all.”

“True… Then I guess you will have to hear me out. But be warned, it’s a long story, and not a glorious one…”

“Well, we have time, don’t we?” chuckled Olaf.

**\* \* \***

“Seiichi!”

His mom’s voice covered the large fields surrounding their village, easily heard by any who wished to hear. But of course, three years old Seiichi didn’t want to. He was far too busy playing with the beetle-eels foraging in the water-gorged soil of the agri-world’s production of water sheaf.

“Seiichi!”

The voice was louder and perhaps a little bit angrier, and the young boy looked up. The sun was still in the sky, even if it was nearing the horizon now, and he was almost certain, with the sort of confidence only a young child could display, that he was allowed to remain to play a little with the strange bugs of Kosegumo a while longer yet.

The boy had never really understood the urgency in the voice of his parents and all the adults of their nameless village. They spoke of an horus and an emperor and many other things he couldn’t quite grasp. All he knew was that the life was safe and peaceful on their planet.

There was no predator on Kosegumo, not even that many rodents and other dangerous creatures for humans. The population was low not because of the dangers but because the work was tiring and raising children was too heavy a burden for many – a truth Seiichi didn’t know yet.

“Takamoto Seiichi!” roared his mother and now the boy looked up.

When she called him like that, he knew she was really angry. With a sigh, he dropped the beetle-eels, got up and dashed as fast as his little legs could carry him toward his home. As he climbed the terraced hill, he saw his mom standing before the door of their house.

She looked tired and unhappy, a surprising combination to the little boy. His mom was often tired, of course, her work as a cultivator, tending to the fields, was exhausting, and she also had to take care of his two older brothers and three sisters, quite a large family in the community, where most families were far smaller.

“Where were you? I told you to come back before the night!”

“But moooooooom” whined Seiichi, pointing at the sun. “It’s still day!”

His mom grumbled and forced him in. Seiichi felt a little betrayed and he started to pout. He wasn’t much of a cry baby, often interiorising his feelings, at least compared to the other children of the village. He also disliked talking, often lost in his own thoughts. He wanted to explore the world around his home alone, to search and discover all its secrets and surprising sights. Which was at odds with his parent’s protective nature.

“How was your day?” asked his father, suddenly appearing and kissing his wife on the cheek. “Anything new?”

“I’m the one who should be asking that” sighed his mom, shaking her head but smiling also. “You’re the one who talks all day to the rest of the world, dear.”

They kept talking, but Seiichi didn’t really pay attention anymore. His young mind focused more on the many things which could attract his attention inside his home, such as the many medals his father had won when he had served in the Planetary Defence Force of Kosegumo, before meeting his mom. They were shiny and strangely shaped, at odds with the curves and colourful adornment of the wall, yet they had an aura of mystery on them.

It had been the subject of discussion between Seiichi and his father, one of the few they had shared. There was faces on those medals, peoples he didn’t knew about, only names and legends surrounding them. Corax, Dorn, Alpharius, Guilliman, Russ. And Horus. Those were the faces on the medals, earned in acts of glory by his father. Nowadays, two medals had been removed from the display, which, made the whole thing look unbalanced, broken.

“Ships? Coming for us?” suddenly asked his mom, bringing his attention to his towering parents for a moment.

“I don’t know” said his father, shaking his head. “As far as they can tell, they just don’t answer.”

“But why would they come to Kosegumo? We’re in the Segmentum Tempestus!”

There was fear in his mom’s voice, and it worried Seiichi. Had he done something bad? He was too young to grasp that he was born the very day Horus destroyed Istvaan III, nor that his home planet was in the first system beyond the border of the Segmentum Solar and Tempestus, and the Tempestus and Ultima, with nothing of note beyond its location and the food it produced to feed the sector. All he knew by then was that his parents were upset.

“I’m sorry!” he blurted, hoping to appease them, attracting the attention of his mom, who lifted him, cradling his small body in her arms.

“It’s nothing baby” cooed his mom, trying to appease him.

They spent the rest of the evening as usual, sharing a meal with all the family. It was calm, each eating what his mom had cooked during the evening. Still, Seiichi couldn’t help but feel the tension in the house. Something abnormal had happened, something he wanted to discover. His curiosity had always been greater than those of most children his age and he continued to display it, even as he played with his bread a little.

“Eat properly, Seiichi” chided his father, his voice stern. “Don’t waste food, you never know when you’ll need it most. What would you do if an Ork attacked and you had just thrown your bread away?”

“Takeshi, he’s three” sighed his Mom, with a weary smile. “He won’t be joining the PDF any time soon.”

Their discussion drifted to other subjects the kid couldn’t understand and didn’t even try to. His siblings, older and better able to follow the conversation, joined it, but he remained silent, lost in his thoughts. All he wanted was to return to the fields at night, like he used to a few weeks before.

But he couldn’t and was forced into his small room, to try and sleep off the night away. The next day, he’d have to go to the Schola, which he didn’t really liked much. It was boring and the teachers tried to cram knowledge he had no interest in, such as the tending of the water sheaf and or how to count, when all he wanted was to explore the village.

“Sleep well, little one” whispered his mom, kissing his forehead as she left him in his little bed.

As he drifted to sleep, Seiichi didn’t knew that it was the last time he’d lay peacefully in his bed.

The next day, Nurr Correk would come to Kosegumo.

# Chapter 10

The space-crafts entered the atmosphere with a roar, their motors braking the gloomy silence of Kosegumo. Hidden in the bushes, thirteen years old Seiichi glared at them. More invaders. More servants of Horus and the hated World Eaters, he was sure of it. All those who came from the sky had been monster, bloodthirsty and degenerate. They’d pay.

For ten years, he had taken to the ruined fields and wild territories of his planet. He had been saved by his father when the gore monsters had come. He hadn’t been able to save the rest of their family, but he had managed to save Seiichi, and he had trained him for a time.

Until the mad servants of Correk would claim his father’s life, in a brutal ambush when he had been ten. Seiichi had killed them, destroying their skulls and burying his father. Then, he had picked up his las-pistol and continued to hunt them. He rarely drifted too far from the ruins of his village, but he made sure none of the slaves brought by the World Eaters would defile its surroundings, sometime tracking one for months on end, if they dared to disturb the rest of his peoples.

The rough blade, hewn from pieces of scrap metal months ago, felt heavy in his hands as he looked up as the crafts landed near the ruins.

He frowned when he saw a strange, black and white symbol on the side of the machine, a cog and a skull, as far as the young teenager could tell. He had never seen that one, perhaps new traitors had come to try and claim his world. If so, they’d die, just like any others. He’d make sure of it, and offer them to the souls of his family. He licked his blade clean, starting to crawl around the landing zone.

The first peoples to come out of the craft were monsters he had never seen, aberrations of man and machine, which made his stomach churn. And then, robed peoples, whose body seemed strangely misshapen, appeared following the creatures which seemed to be equipped with terrible weapons. Seiichi hesitated. Should he flee for now, to try and surprise them later.

<<<Come out, whoever you are!>>> voxed one of the robbed figures. <<<In the name of the Emperor-Omnissiah and His servant Belisarius Cawl!>>>

Seiichi hesitated. Was it a trap? Could this be the start of some new tactics by the traitors? It seemed strange to Seiichi and, on a whim, he got up and walked toward the figures, who didn’t seemed surprised to see a teenager, thin and covered in scars, emerge from the bushes. He still held his makeshift knife in his closed fist.

<<<A child>>> voxed the second robed figure. <<<It seems the will of our master may be served quicker than expected.>>>

A sudden storm of incomprehensible sounds followed that remark, from the first adept. If Seiichi had known it, he’d have recognized Binary, the language of the techno-priests. As it was, the only thing he could do was to stand with a glint of defiance in his eyes as the two newcomers continued to exchange high-speed sounds, as if suddenly ignoring him.

<<<Do you want revenge against the traitors?>>> suddenly asked the second figure, who seemed to be female, compared to the first one, even if it was hard to confirm it, so augmented where they.

“Yes!” he replied after five long seconds, as his mind tried to remember words he hadn’t used in years – he had no one to talk to, really. “I want to kill them all. I swore it. All the World Eaters. All of them.”

His voice was a dry croaking sounds, his broken lips paining to move and form the words, but he stood firm and the flame of hatred strengthened his spine and his soul. If those newcomers wanted to offer more kills to him, he’d join them without a second thought.

<<<Good. Then come with us. This world will be purged from the taint of Chaos, but we are tasked with retrieving promising recruits. You may be one. Or not. Only tests will prove your purity>>> replied the first figure, revealing a metallic hand from out his robes. <<<In the craft.>>>

That was an order and Seiichi followed it. His life had changed again, more than ever before and he didn’t even knew it.

\* \* \*

<<<Subject NF-R/00000015-TS, move forward.>>>

Seiichi walked toward the centre of the room, its floor white and clinical as various engines moved out of their nests in the walls. Some would inject him with various products or prod him while others would monitor his heartbeat and other various elements of his changing physiology.

The servants of Cawl were thorough and they wanted to be sure the first batch of recruits implanted with the modified geneseed of Russ would acclimate it and not turn into monsters. It had been two years that Seiichi had joined the Primaris Project – at least for him, but he had been in stasis for so long several centuries if not thousands of years had passed.

As of yet, there was no fully deployed Sons of Russ, their numbers were no more than thirty, being tested and prodded again and again over the months. It seemed that the reaction of non-Fenrisians to the Canis Helix was still too often unpredictable and deleterious. Seiichi was counted among the few who seemed to have managed to endure its effects without turning into a savage monster.

<<<Lift your arms.>>>

Seiichi did has he was ordered, as always. He had hesitated at first to truly submit to the chirurgical procedure of Cawl’s project. But his body was changing, making him stronger, better equipped to achieve his vengeance. He was taller than any man ever born on his world and even if he doubted he’d live to see it, he was helping others exterminate the World Eaters by helping Cawl refine the geneseed of the Sons of Russ.

His mind drifted back to Kosegumo. His memories shouldn’t have been that vivid, a human mind, especially one as young as he had been back then, couldn’t have preserved so many moments. And yet. He still remembered the smell of his mom, a mixture of tea, salt and a fresh odour he associated with calm and patience.

He still could see the face of his elder brother, rolling in the river alongside him, floating away, his body destroyed by a bolt from the white-clad Astartes who had descended, and the taste of his father’s palm on his mouth, muffling his horrified screams, as tears rolled down his cheeks.

<<< Subject NF-R/00000015-TS, your cardiac rhythm his increasing and the level of battle-hormones in your blood is following a similar pattern. Calm yourself. The experiment cannot continue in those conditions.>>>

Seiichi gritted his teeth but did as he was told. He pushed aside the memories, focusing on the moments between stasis. He had grown stronger in those moments when he woke up – even if it was sometime hard to tell if he was awake or if the occult machinery of the Archmagos induced what he believed what reality.

Silence and solitude had started to take its toll on him. It was something new, something he had never experienced, even when he had been alone on his birth world. Ever since he had been granted the honour of Leman Russ’ geneseed, he had craved something more, the presence of likeminded warriors.

But he wasn’t ready yet. His body could still react poorly to his variation of the geneseed. The voice from the walls liked to remind him of the high rate of failure among inductees in the Sons of Russ. Each time he got out of stasis could be his last, his body and mind caving in under the sheer pressure of the predatory taint of the Wolf King.

As of now, Seiichi had held it off at bay and earned the right to progress toward further indoctrination and augmentation.

It was something he had come to take great pride in. As one of the prototype for the Sons of Russ, no matter what happened to him, progresses would be made and the genetic legacy of the Lord of the VIth could be passed down to other warriors, not hailing from the frigid world of Fenris. He was paving the way to future champions.

<<< Subject NF-R/00000015-TS, you may return to your stasis chamber. The next phase of geneseed implementation will be undergone at your next trial phase.>>>

Seiichi nodded, not that any seemed to notice his gesture. It was just an old habit he couldn’t quite forget just yet. He turned around and walked back to his pod. Calling it a chamber was truly an exaggeration, considering its small size, especially now that he had grown so much already. With a sigh, he entered it, turned around and prepared for suspended animation.

To help him endure the many phases of stasis, gases were released which allowed his body to relax and even fall asleep. Without the help of the medication, he would have perhaps felt claustrophobic as metallic pincer held his biceps, thighs and neck in place. Instead, he closed his eyes and started to dream.

He was back on Kosegumo, a young child of three, with his whole family fleeing in the woods. Behind them, far on the horizon, the smoke clouds of Kyodai, the largest city on their continent, were blotting out the setting sun. In a single day, their world had went to peaceful but fearful of the Heresy to a battlefield.

Perhaps it would have been better to be invaded by a large army of servants of Horus. The battles would have been brutal but mercifully short. As it was, only a minuscule portion of his forces had come ashore, a single vessel of the World’s Eaters. The monsters, led by an Assault Captain, Nurr Correk, had proclaimed their goal on all broadcasted channels.

They were hear to claim this world for the forces of the traitors. Slaves would be brought to tend to the fields, those who surrendered would join them. The others would die. Perhaps, if his parents hadn’t been as brave as they were, Seiichi would have shared the fate of the millions of inhabitants who slowly starved to death feeding the forces of the Archeretic.

Instead, they fought. His father had served in the PDF and he had been able to retain some weapons. He gathered a handful of resistant and led assaults on the monsters from outerworld. Their goal was to break their hold on Kosegumo, depriving them of its resources in their war against Terra.

It was an abject failure. His mom died in the first month, all his sibling in less than three and only Seiichi and his father remained, without any other allies. But his father never lost hope. Instead, his hatred grew colder and denser, searching for preys they could kill. He died when Seiichi had been nine, finally felled by a roaming band of Khornate degenerate.

By that point, Nurr Correk had left the planet since years, of course, and in fact even the Heresy had been over. But the Great Scouring took a lot of time to come here, in spite of their relative and he had been alone, hunting them. Until the envoys of Cawl.

*I’ll avenge them. I’ll kill the World Eaters.*

*All of them.*

**\* \* \***

“You… survived the Heresy?” gasped Ulfr, who seemed aghast as the Grey Champion finished talking.

“And you were one of the first Primaris?”

“Yes, and yes, but only for the non-Fenrisians, I suspect, in the second case” replied  Takamoto, as calm as if he had simply told them that he had learnt to hunt with his dad during the Long Winter.

“That’s… quite the sage” mumbled Olaf, as he played with the pommel of his chainsword, worried. “How come we’ve never heard about it before?”

“Well…” started Takamoto, as if he searched his words. “We aren’t as open about our past actions as the Fenrisians are. Much of the recruits who didn’t came from Fenris or Terra and who were incorporated in the Sons of Russ share a similar tale of woe.”

“Do you mean that the Archmagos Cawl selected a certain type of aspirants?” asked Svengar, curious in spite of his reservations. “He didn’t simply used the recruitment pool of other Chapters? I heard rumours it’s what was done for the Primaris born of other Primarchs.”

“It’s possible” admitted the Grey Champion. “But I have no proof, and can’t say if it’s true or not. However, I can assure you that most of the recruits who were tested early on, at least, came from worlds ruined by some form of traitors or another. I don’t think I ever spoke with a Brother whose world had been ravaged by Xenos, when I was finally woken on Mars the Red, to join the Greyshields of the Indomitus Crusade.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with the Curse of the Wulfen?” asked Jörmund the Swift, his voice a low whisper, as if he feared to bring that ancient woe to him by speaking his name. “Did Cawl searched for aspirant strong enough to endure it?”

“I can’t answer that question. The tests were many but over thousands of years. I didn’t see other Sons of Russ until I was awoken at the start of the Crusade, when the Lord Commander came back from the dead. I’ve heard rumours, among his servants, that the number of recruits among the Sons of Russ was thrice that of other lineages, but we were never more numerous than the other eight. Do with that what you will.”

Svengar mused about those new bits of information. It helped better understand Takamoto, and he had to admit what little he had seen of him was now reinforced by newfound respect. Surviving the Great Heresy at the dawn of the Imperium was already worthy of legend, but fighting still to avenge wrongs done so long ago was the basis of a good saga, if he had ever heard one.

“Do you hope that you’ll be the Avenged one day?” asked Bolvekr, with his usual lack of tact. “Killing all the World Eaters, it’s a tall order.”

“Quite true” admitted the Grey Champion, “but it’s what makes its worth and-“

He fell silent suddenly, raising a fist to order a similar course of action among his warriors, but he hadn’t need to bother with that, for Svengar and the rest of the Icewalker pack heard the din of the Lost and Damned entering the ruins of the church. The Fenrisian’s hearts burned with hatred at the thought of those bastards defiling even more this sacred place.

Takamoto moved silently, with a surprising ease, approaching the hatch. He stood still, for a few moments. Svengar suspected he was trying to discover if the traitors had spotted their trail. If so, they’d probably need to fight in the crypt. Not a bad place, all things considered, if they fought only mortals. But some of the screeches sounded awfully like demons.

The Unavenged swirled around and moved toward the escape route he had found, signalling to his younger Brothers to enter first. Svengar was surprised he chose to protect their back – it seemed strange for someone touched by Lokyar, but he did as he was ordered. As the Alpha, he gently pushed the door and led his pack in the darkness beyond.

As soon as they had opened the door, screams and horrible yells came from over the hatch, which was opened brutally. Several servants of the Blood God appeared in clear view and the Dawn’s Wolves did not hesitate to shoot at them, destroying their barely protected bodies with their weapons.

“Out, now!” roared Takamoto, gesturing for the Dusk Claws to run into the tunnel.

Svengar led his pack forward, gritting his teeth. He hated to flee before those degenerates, but he knew they had no choice. If the Allfather was with them, they’d managed to find some place to lose their pursuers. In the meantime, all they could do was run toward their target, the palace of the former planetary governor who had betrayed the Imperium and sold Canapal to the Dark Gods.

**\* \* \***

Eigberth let out a mighty roar, pushing aside the cultists around him. The sound of bolts was deafening, and the geysers of blood they created were enough to freeze in place even the most savage of the worshippers of Khorne, but Eigberth had been blessed far beyond their might and he shoved them to the ground as he approached the hatch.

He jumped inside the crypt as the last of the blue figures, covered in darkness, turned around and fled through a door.

“After them, dogs! Show your worth to the Blood God!”

He led the throng of frenzied killers, followed by the bloodletters, who could follow his speed. He didn’t even knew about this tunnel, dry and safe, impure by the lack of blood on its ground and walls. The lack of side corridors meant their future victims wouldn’t be able to run away. Eigberth grinned as he realized that the Space Marines had nowhere to hide and that, sooner or later, they’d have to fight against his forces.

But he also knew that it’d mean they’d try to fire at them first. And the narrowness of the tunnel meant that a Marine would be able to hold them off for quite some time, if they so wished – of course, the warrior would die quickly enough. He slowly reduced his speed, letting the demons and some cultists move in front of him.

“Quicker! We need to catch them!” he yelled, forcing his servants forward.

Licking his lips, the corrupted Eigberth already tried to picture the taste of the Primaris’ blood on his tongue. They couldn’t escape him now.

# Chapter 11

“They’ll catch us, sooner or later.”

Olaf’s voice was strangely calm, which unnerved Svengar. The Alpha wanted nothing more than to turn and fight the servants of Chaos, but even he knew they would be wasting their lives doing so. His Brother’s words grated on his nerves nonetheless.

“No they won’t” replied Jörmund the Swift. “We are Primaris, the mortals can’t hope to run as fast as we do.”

“And what of the neverborn, those walking maleficarum?” asked Olaf with a tone which conveyed a surprising calm considering their situation. “Those things won’t tire before we do and with them on our heels we won’t be able to infiltrate the Palace, as we were told to do.”

“We still have time, two days before the rest of the Great Company assault the city” grumbled Bolvekr. “I don’t see why you’re worrying about our pursuers, Olaf!”

“Because our Brother has grasped our predicament” replied Takamoto, his voice sterner than ever. “But I can’t let you do what you have in mind, Olaf. It is my duty.”

“You’re our Grey Champion” replied the Dusk Claw, as if he and the Unavenged continued an ongoing discussion instead of starting one. “Your blade will be needed to sever the bond between Canapal IV and the Immaterium, we all know it, even if some here are too stubborn to say it. But Blackfangs have always been dumb so they’re forgiven.”

“Fuck you, Olaf” spat Svengar, worried more and more as his pack mate spoke. “What do you have in mind?”

“He wants to take the rear guard and stop the traitors in our back from chasing us.”

Takamoto had said those words with a soft voice which bellied the rage all could hear in his tone. For Svengar, it was a strange thing, as if he was slowly discovering that Lokyar touched could actually display the spread of emotion any other Fenrisian could. That they chose to do so in those dire moments was cruel irony.

“Absolutely not!” growled Ulfr Iron-Jaw, turning his helmeted head to look over his shoulder at Olaf. “Have you gone dumb, Grimskull?”

“I think I’m the only one with a functioning brain here” replied Olaf, who was slowly getting angry. “We need to stop the maleficarum from seeping further into this planet! Each second we waste is another horror summoned to assault our Brothers!”

“And since when do you call them your Brothers?” asked Svengar, his voice a low growl. “Or have your forgotten how you felt when we joined them?”

Svengar glanced at the blue and bronze armours of the Primaris before him. They were many, he’d give them that, and their plates had seen battle, some fairly recent. But even the five hundreds Space Marines arrayed in front of him and the two hundreds or so survivors of the fleet under Thür Nighthowler’s command failed to impress.

“They look like sons of Dorn” mused Jörmund on his right. “Look at how tense they are, ready to parade.”

“I think they look fine” had replied Fjolda One-Claw, another member of their pack, who had acclimated well to the Dawn’s Wolves and their behaviour. “I mean, they have what, twenty years fighting, at best, and only ten as their own Chapters, if the rumours are true. They’ll grow into proper Sons of Russ soon enough.”

“They smell funny” grumbled Bolvekr, grimacing as he inhaled the smell of their soon to be Brothers. “Why do they smell funny?”

“It’s their ships” growled softly Ingvar Hailspitter, one of the few Long Fangs who had been a part of their little force. “I’ve fought with Black Templars before, and they smell a little bit like that. They don’t have a planet to call home so they stay in their ships and it changes them. But be careful pups. They may look stuck up but my eyes don’t deceive me. They are good warriors.”

Svengar had groaned. He wasn’t sure the veteran had been right. With their pose and silent behaviour, the Dawn’s Wolves didn’t behaved like true Sons of Russ should have in his eyes. It made the last ten years spent chasing those elusive warriors all the more bitter for the young Blood Claw.

He could have been gaining renown in battles with the Great Company of Kjarl Grimblood, as he had been selected to join those great warriors. Instead, almost as soon as he had managed to earn the right to wear his power armour, he had been sent on a fool’s chase over the stars, his shoulder plates unadorned.

At first, it had seemed like an easy enough mission. To track down one of the few Successors, like the ferocious Dusk Howlers or Crimson Prowlers, or perhaps one as grim as the Blades of Morkaï or the Wolfspears. Some even expected to join up with the savage brothers of the Wild Wolves. All were left disappointed.

*It seems our little brothers gave us the slip.*

It had become a sentence far too often occurred by the dejected three hundreds warriors of Fenris as they toiled the Sea of Stars, in search of the Aurorae Lupi. Far too often had they followed the trail of rumours about the blue-clad Sons of Russ, only to discover them long gone.

They had learnt some truths about their kin however. One, they almost always waged war as a full Chapter, several hundred Primaris assalting the worlds they needed to purge. Two, they favoured more discreet missions, killing as few of their opponents as possible when no trace of Chaotic corruption was found.

Many in their Battle Barge had groaned and called them cowards – or worse. The Dawn’s Wolves seemed to relish on ambush tactics, assaulting the weak to strike at the heads of their preys and disappearing almost as soon as they had blooded their weapons. Their tactics were effective, but unworthy of the legacy of Russ in Svengar’s eyes.

“Is that the whole of their Chapter?” asked Ulfr, his voice heavy with derision. “That’s barely two Great Companies back home.”

“I don’t think so” replied Svengar, shaking his head. “There has been reports of five other companies fighting further away in the Nihilus.”

As he said those words, Svengar couldn’t contain a shiver of nervousness. To find their kin, they had crossed the Cicatrix Maledictum at Raukos. The few Wolspears stationed here had greeted them with praise but had warned them, that all signal with the Dawn’s Wolves had been lost soon after they had entered the depths of the Dark Imperium.

“We do not think they are dead” hd said the Wolves of Raukos. “But they may not want to be found just yet.”

“Brothers!” suddenly thundered the voice of the one who led the Aurorae Lupi, Rasmus Bluebear if the reports were right. “For Brothers you are! Your Dawn Caller, Thür Nighthowler has spoken with me. He told me that you came here, with great warriors from Fenris to see if we were deserving of the name of the Sons of Russ. According to him, we are, so I’ll say to you what I said to him.”

The Bluebear managed his effects well; Svengar had to give him credit for that. He seemed enthusiastic and a large smile was painted on his face. It made his next words hurt that much more.

“His words matter has much as farts in the winds” growled Rasmus, his tone suddenly menacing. “You come here bearing the words of the Great Wolf, he who rules over Fenris in the absence of our Father and you expect respect, when you have done nothing to deserve it.”

Shouts of anger were already starting to be heard among the ranks of the massed Space Wolves, and Svengar wasn’t the last to speak up. Who was this upstart, barely older than he was, to tell them that they were unworthy? They had Long Fangs! Wolf Guards! They were worthier than them.

“Oh, you can bark, pups” spat Rasmus, a savage grin on his face, as his Brothers shifted, abandoning their rigid stance for those of mocking grin and aggressive preparation for a brawl. “You took ten years to find us! Ten! And we didn’t even try to be sneaky! And you come here, with mjold in your bellies and trophies on your belts and you expect to be treated as revered heroes? Pah!”

The Bluebear spat on the ground and his silent Brothers did the same, showing their teeth to the Vlka Fenryka.

“I am the Kindins here, the High Judge! I command. I rule the Dawn’s Wolves. Not Grimnar, not Ulrik or whoever thinks he can impose some outsider’s will on the Sons of Russ! So if you want to avoid returning to Fenris because you’re not good enough to be part of my Chapter, you better stop behaving like drunken dogs and learn our ways!”

“Look at the gothi!” suddenly shouted Olaf in Svengar’s ears.

Svengar and the other Space Wolves around turned their attention toward Nighthowler. They expected him to be furious, ready to pounce on that arrogant bastard of Bluebear. Instead, he was smiling, on the verge of laughter. Icewalker was confused. How could he smile like that? They were being insulted.

“Nighthowler, if you will, I leave you the final speech. Perhaps you can prove me there is more than a bunch of uncultured savages in your warriors.”

“Nothing could prove it better than a fight. So I ask you, Brothers of Fenris! Are you ready to kill? Are you ready to cover your blades in blood and gore to show that you are truly the best of the Sons of Russ, the closest to his legacy? Are you willing to show this and more to our brothers in blue?”

“YES!” roared the assembled warriors of Fenris, their voice thundering in unison.

“Good! Now then, get ready to paint your plates anew, and await your orders. There were ten Great Companies here, now there will be twelve, and we will teach the rest of the Dawn’s Wolves how a proper Son of Russ behave!”

The warriors had dispersed quickly, the Icewalker pack returning to its quarters. They were bristling, ready to prove their might to anyone of those so-called Wolves, who looked more like house dogs, in Svengar’s eyes. And Olaf had been perhaps the most vocal about it.

“They didn’t fucking said a thing! How can you hope to trust warriors who’re silent even when insulting us or when we answer their spat with our roars? I just can’t and that’s final!”

“I’ve changed my mind” admitted Olaf, his voice still far too calm for Svengar. “I’ve seen them, and I understand them better. I don’t think they need to mimic the Vlka Fenryka, it’d just be ridiculous and it’d weaken them. And I don’t want to weaken my Brothers.”

“You never have and you’ll never will” replied Seiichi, his voice soft, with a tinge of sadness perhaps.

He still led his Brothers forward, covering more ground as they appraised their options. As post-humans, their minds allowed them to think faster and with greater depth than mortals, and they used those abilities now, to decide of their course of actions.

“And yet, I need to stop them. We all heard it, it’s the most trusted Brother who must do that, right?” said Olaf, almost laughing now, as if the approach of his death made him happy.

“You’ve lost your mind!” shouted Bolvekr, pivoting as if he was ready to stop Olaf.

“Keep running” growled the Grey Champion, his tone harsh enough to brook no discussion. “If we stop running, we’ll die, for nothing.”

He knew it was difficult for the Dusk Claws. He hadn’t a lot more experience than they did, but he had lived through those events, during the Crusade. He had seen Brothers staying behind, losing their lives alone, to save others. It was the most glorious death a Dawn’s Wolf could aspire to achieve.

Not for them was the great tally of killed in a savage battle. Not for them the great duel against mighty warlords, or great beasts, felled but victorious even in defeat, their memories immortalized forever in sagas sang in joyous recalling. They were the silent wolves, the ones who died unremembered, unsung but by their Brothers.

As it should be.

Cawl had made them Primaris. Russ had given them the strength and ferocity to fight until the bitter end. But they were the one who had chosen to pursue a different path than their Brothers among the Sons of Russ. They had decided that each lives saved was worth it, that each servant of the Imperium whose life had been bettered was a greater victory than a carnage.

It was a dark era, darker even than the dark days of his youth, but Seiichi knew it was the right thing to do. Others may consider them congenial, weak. Cowardly. It mattered not. They had been given strength, and that strength always had to be used for others. Not for them, not in the attempt to claim some fleeting glory.

For others. As Olaf wanted to.

“No one can deny a Dawn’s Wolf’s chosen time to die” he stated, his voice steady and yet heavy with a mix of emotions he tried to convey to the Fenrisians. “If you want to stop them Olaf, it is your right. And you are also right to remind me, however much I may want it, that I have not that right yet.”

“You can’t be serious!?” roared Bolvekr, who sounded indignant. “You’re giving up on him! His saga –“

“Who cares about his saga?” growled the Grey Champion. “Our Brother will die! His life for the success of our mission! What matters more than that? Your renown in drunken feasts? We are Sons of Russ! Ours is not to pursue glory like some drunkard pursue booze! We do what we must, no matter the cost for us!”

He didn’t expect his words to hit them, not with that tone. He needed to explain, to convince, he couldn’t just order them around. He couldn’t tell them that it was so because it had always been like that among the Greyshields who became the Dawn’s Wolves.

Even among their Brothers of the Indomitus Crusade, they had been a breed apart, and it was still true. The Wolfspears honoured the fallen as the First Slain, and made a great deal out of it. The Iron Beasts and the Bloodied Hunters remembered their dead in beautiful songs, strangely at odd with their plain and brutal honesty.

But not the Aurorae Lupi. Their dead were dead, their names inscribed on plates and books and the memories of those who knew them. But the duty of the Wolves was not with the dead. They served the living. They protected the future of the Imperium, not legends of the long departed.

This knowledge, deep in their bones, had made them who they were. Solitary, yet convivial, jovial yet deadly. For them, wiping out a whole city to exterminate a few traitors was a last resort, not a first solution. But if it was needed, than they’d carry it out. Not for their dead. For the future of children yet unborn.

“I’m sorry Grey Champion” finally replied Bolvekr, sounding cowed. “I’ve made a mistake, it won’t happen again.”

“Good” stated Seiichi. “Because it seems it is time to bide farewell to Olaf.”

In front of them, the tunnel was coming to an abrupt close, long ago buried by the heirs of those who had carved it in the rock of Canapal IV.

**\* \* \***

Eigberth was starting to feel some fatigue. He hadn’t been made to run so fast, so long. The part of his brain who was still able to ponder such knowledge estimated that his victims had covered nearly three kilometres in a dozen or so minutes, perhaps even more. The cultists were long forgotten in the back, unable to endure this pursuit.

Only he and the Bloodletters remained, and the demons were almost silent, growling and hissing, but without a word, their bestial legs moving like the pistons of some old machinery. Whatever light remained in the tunnel came from the runes on their blades and the crackling fire which seemed to smoulder into their impossible bodies.

Eigberth smiled. The smell of the invader, of their blood, had faded away, as if something now prevented him from tracking them down. But they had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He’d catch them, wherever they’d exit that secret artery in his city and they’d be slaughtered.

And then he’d take on Nurr Correk. With the gift of Karneth for killing the Space Marines, he’d reclaim his world.

The sudden roar of a bolt pistol brought his mind back to the present. To his right, one of the demon’s head exploded. Somehow, he knew they shouldn’t have been destroyed so easily, but their passage through the church had weakened them. And there wasn’t enough killing for now to sustain them. Khorne needed more blood.

But the former planetary governor had no time to think about it. A lone figure appeared twenty meters away, lighted by the flashes of his pistol. A colossus, even taller than the Goreborn, his armour blue and bronze, his helmet an expressionless plate, but his voice terrible, thundering in the confines of the tunnel.

“Beware the fangs of the young day!”

The pistol slew two more Bloodletters, sending them back screaming into the Warp. Only a handful remained, and him, but Eigberth was confident he’d prevail in this fight. The Marine was alone, his Brothers having forsaken him, for whatever reason. He had to be weak. He’d be easy kill for them.

Then he heard something rolling between the legs of the demons. Looking down, he saw a grenade. Only thanks to the enhanced reflexes granted by Khorne did he manage to jump away, and even then, the blast hurt him, bad. His legs felt pierced by dozens of small fragments, and the hands he used to protect his face also.

The demons roared, seemingly more resistant to this attack than the direct assault of the bolts. And as if in answer, the unmistakable sound of a chain-weapon coming to life answered. The large mass of the Space Marine moved, his sword eager to taste the blood of the neverborn.

The first demon was still recovering from the impact of the grenade and failed to parry the monstrous strike of the blue warrior. Eigberth saw the weapon biting deep into the otherworldly flesh of the Bloodletter, a geyser of warp-blood suddenly replacing the smouldering light of the creature as it was cleaved in two.

Even as it died, the Bloodletter tried to strike at his slayer, but the Angel of Death managed to avoid both the blade and claws, finishing off the creature with another bolt in the head. Then he turned his head toward the servants of Khorne who still craved his skull and blood. A short laugh escaped his lips, bitter perhaps but still happy somehow.

“The others should have remained and you’d all have died” he stated before launching himself at his opponents.

Only three demons remained. Three demons and Eigberth himself.