Lord of the Night

There was little doubt where he would find his prize. The uppermost of the three exposed interiors was a storage chamber, gloomily lit and utterly ruined. The charred bodies of dormant servitors leaned from recharge booths and gagged on singed tongues, dead eyes lolling in sockets. The second level was a private chamber: gaudily decorated and flamboyantly furnished. A regal bed occupied the centre of the devastated zone, pairs of winged cherubim-drones clinging to its canopy like bats. Evidently a spout of fuel had doused the suite's interior, and now every exquisite tapestry was a blackened sheet, every gold-leaf insignia was a puddle of shimmering slag, every luxurious carpet smouldered like a burning forest.

But the third level, the endless gallery of tedious exhibits and pompous wealth, clipped by the craft's entry — the corner of its ceiling neatly dissected to allow him entry — that was a different affair. From amongst its endless parades of useless treasures the Corona whispered to him, reached out to caress his spirit, promising him all that he had ever dreamed. He slipped into the room's cavernous belly like a lizard: scuttling along a wall, pausing every few moments with reptile precision to cock his head, listening, watching.

Was he disappointed, he reflected, that the thief was not present? Had he hoped, in his secret heart — still burning with the blue-tinged flame of unfocused insult — to catch the culprit red-handed? Had he yearned to bathe in the bastard's blood?

No... No, he could see inside himself now. The mutterings of Chaos were gone. He was stronger than that. Whatever damage his pride had suffered was irrelevant.

The Corona was his.

He found it at the room's centre, placed on a plinth like some common librium artefact, and his twin hearts felt as if they might burst with joy.

The package was unopened. The skeletal emblem of his Legion — the winged skull — remained sealed, its cryptic secrets unexposed. He reached out trembling hands and, as if fearing the prize might be a dream ~ a cruel hologram trick — settled them upon the box's shell, testing its solidity.

He sighed, awash with relief. He twisted the fresco pattern here and here, then placed fingers at the skull's eyes and tapped twice.

'Ultio,' he said, eyes closed. 'Ultio et timor.'

Vengeance and fear.

Something inside the package chattered. A mechanical clatter shuddered through it, pins meshing together like a shark's teeth, vocal recognition engines awaking, and with the slowness that came from a hundred centuries' inertia tiny diaphragms opened within the skull's eyes, flooding them with red light.

The seal broke.

The box opened.

And Zso Sahaal, Talonmaster, heir to the throne of the Night Lords Legion — the chosen of Konrad Curze — lifted from its dust-dry innards the Corona Nox.

It was a crown, of sorts. A black circlet of mercurial metal, polished and undecorated, burning with an eerie non-light. To either side of its tapered ring there rose tall horns, needle-straight and jagged-edged, like twin sabre-blades dipped in oil.

But most stunning of all, beyond the simple elegance and curious captivation of the thing, set into the crown's frontispiece and suspended upon the wearer's forehead on a platinum mounting, stood a jewel.

A perfect teardrop of ruby-red, its face was uncut by diamond facets or inelegant designs. Smooth and unblemished, it had about it the look of an organic creation, as if not cut from the earth but grown, planted and fostered to glorious life in some secret crystal garden. And despite the dismal lighting of the gallery, despite the shadow cast by Sahaal's colossal body, it burned. It burned with an inner light. It burned with a radiance that was unconfined by sight alone, that broke the boundaries of luminosity, that flooded out the visual spectrum and dazzled Sahaal without even passing his eyes.

There was something other than the merely material about the jewel, and it bathed Sahaal in such peace, in such confidence and assurance, that the shivering of his limbs ceased, the perpetual furrow of his brow smoothed away, and he blinked a tear of serenity from his midnight eyes.

'Ave Dominus Nox,' he whispered, fingers caressing the circlet edge, lifting the horned crown above him, pulling it down towards his own skull.

He was divorced from reality, in that timeless instant. In a dream world of endless calm, the crown descended towards its rightful owner.

He would lead his brothers in their master's name. He would tear from the skies of Terra itself, shrieking with an eagle's cry. He would repay the insult. He would cut the Emperor's shrivelled throat, and paint the withered god's blood across the walls of his defiled palace.

He would have his revenge upon the Traitor Father.

He would be the Lord of the Night.