PART ONE
THE CARRION WORLD
I
The Longest Dream
‘Because we are brothers. We’ve seen primarchs die to blade and fire, and we’ve seen our actions set the galaxy aflame. We’ve betrayed others and been betrayed in kind. We’re bleeding for an uncertain future, fighting a war for the lies our lords tell us. What do we have left, if not blood’s loyalty? I am here because you are here. Because we are brothers.’
– Jago Sevatarion, ‘Sevatar’, the Prince of Crows
As quoted in The Tenebrous Path, chapter VI: Unity
The prophet’s eyes snapped open, bleaching his vision with the monochrome red of his tactical display. The familiarity was a comfort after the madness of the dream. This was how he’d seen the world around him for most of his life, and the dancing target locks following his gaze were a welcome extension of natural sight.
Already, the nightmare fled before him, elusive and thread-thin, unravelling as he sought to hold onto it. Rain on the battlements. An alien swordswoman. A gunship, shooting up the black stone.
No. It was gone. Shadows remained, images and sensations, nothing more.
That was happening more often, recently. The visions refused to stick with any tenacity, whereas once they’d melded to his memory. It seemed to be a side effect of their increasing frequency, though with no understanding of his gift’s genesis and function, he had no way of knowing the truth of the matter.
Talos rose from where he’d collapsed on the floor of his modest arming chamber and stood in silence, tensing his muscles, bunching them and rolling his neck, restoring circulation and checking the interface feeds of his armour. The ceramite suit of layered war plate – some of it ancient and unique, some of it plundered much more recently – whirred and growled in rhythm with his movements.
He moved slowly, carefully, feeling the quivering strain of muscles too long locked. Cramps played along his limbs, all except his augmetic arm which responded sluggishly, its internal processors only now realigning with the impulses from his waking mind. The bionic limb was still the first section of his body to come back into full obedience, despite its halting sphere of motion. He used it, the iron hand gripping at the wall, to haul himself to his feet. Armour joints snarled at even these minor motions.
The pain was waiting for him back in the waking world. It crashed against him now, the same torture that always spiked through his blood like a toxin. He murmured breathless, defiant syllables behind his faceplate, uncaring how the words were vox-growled to the empty chamber.
The dream. Were they destined to be deceived, or destined to be the deceivers? Fate often played them the latter hand. The Exalted had said the words so many times: Betray before you are betrayed.
No matter how he reached for the dream, it dispersed ever further. The pain wasn’t helping. It flooded back as if filling the hole in his memory. On several occasions in the past, the pain had been severe enough to leave him blind for entire nights. This eve was only just shy of the same torture.
He hesitated as he reached for his blade and bolter. They both rested as they should: racked against the wall and bound in place by strong leather straps. This, however, was rare. Talos was many things, but fastidiously tidy was not one of them. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d returned to his room, replaced his weapons in perfect order, and promptly passed out comfortably in isolation. In fact, he couldn’t ever recall it happening before. Not even once.
Someone had been in here. Septimus, perhaps, or his brothers when they’d dragged him from wherever he’d been when he fell prey to the vision.
Still, they’d never concern themselves with something as mundane as restoring his weapons to their racks. Septimus, then. That made sense. Uncommon behaviour, but it made sense. It was even laudable.
Talos pulled his weapons free before fastening them to his armour. The double-barrelled bolter mag-locked to his thigh, and the ornate golden blade sheathed at his back, ready to be drawn over his shoulder.
: come to the bridge
The words peeled across his visor display, spelled out in distinct Nostraman runes, clear white on the background red-tint like any other measure of tactical information or bio-data. He watched the cursor flicker at the end of the final word, blinking almost expectantly.
Quintus, the fifth of his slaves, had been rendered mute through battlefield injury. They’d communicated during the serf’s years of service via hand signs or text uplink from a hand-held auspex to Talos’s armour systems, and usually a fair degree of both at once. Quintus, much like Septimus, was a good enough artificer that a little inconvenience was a small price to pay.