Lord of the Night

They had not expected his revival, that much was clear. He was upon them like a lion before even they, blessed with lightning reactions and impossible grace, could react. The first he clove in two with contemptuous ease, turning away and rolling as he touched down from a shallow swoop, tumbling onto his injured shoulder and springing upright. A second startled xenogen appeared before him, fumbling for its weapon, and he tore through its frail chestplate as he rose. The tips of his claws slipped so far through eldar meat that they cracked the inner orbs of the alien's eye-slits, like branches growing from within. He shook the body away and leapt onwards, luminous fluids drizzling clear.

Somewhere in the crucible of his peripheral senses he registered the tusked inquisitor, standing agog with the Corona clutched in his gloved fingers, and he diverted his aerial leap towards the astonished figure, forgoing the urge to rampage out of control. Beyond, in the decorous shadows of the doorway from the glassy bridge, he could see the witch rise groggily to her feet, held helpless in the ring of vigilant servitors. Inwardly Sahaal spared a curious thought for how long had passed since he was first knocked unconscious. His communion with the young psyker seemed to have lasted a lifetime, whilst in reality scant seconds had passed.

The warlock had not yet placed his elegant fingers upon the horned crown.

Nor shall he!

No sooner had the defiant thought arisen than the antlered fiend itself swept into his path, staff crooked. Sahaal bunched his muscles, preparing to dip aside, to dodge the blast of astral fire the creature was doubtless summoning, when a wall of pain unlike any he had felt before caromed into and through him.

Striking with unerring accuracy, satisfied that its target was otherwise engaged with its warlock master, one of the capering xenos had fired its catapult unnoticed, a spinning shuriken slipping deep into the heart of the grievous wound upon his shoulder, unhindered by armour.

It all but severed his arm.

Howling, struggling to shut out the agony, feeling numbness gripping the dead limb, Sahaal's flight-arc stalled and he twisted in the air, his remaining arm gripping uselessly at nothingness. Thus crippled, slipping towards a ruinous impact, he was ill prepared for the warlock's shrewd intervention.

Lightning engulfed him for the second time. A thick strand of gauss power burst from the creature's blade-tipped staff, needling its way past flesh and bone, sinking dog-toothed jaws into the pulp of his mind. As before, it tweaked at his doubts. It blossomed beneath fields of uncertainty and sadness and urged him to yield, to withdraw, to lock himself away within his own psyche.

It bid him spiral away into blackness.

It stroked at his mind and soothed him, coaxing him to surrender.

Not this time, warpspaum.

This time he was forewarned. This time his mind was not so easily overturned, his vulnerable uncertainties were buried away, and his muscles could no more be overridden than his bitterness could be neutralised.

Above all he was in the grip of a rage of such purity, such strength, that the warlock's machinations could do nothing to deter it.

This time all the psychic tampering in the world could not stop him. He was a juggernaut of phosphorous hate, and he would not be denied his fill of slaughter.

He descended like a swooping hawk, ineffectual psionic incandescence crackling like a halo around him, and punched his remaining claws through the alien's antlered helm with a whoop. Blood and bone scattered like shrapnel, and through its splattered clouds his momentum carried him and his victim's limp body down to the ground, smearing the creature's fluids across his face and his armour.

The remaining eldar reacted as if electrified. They spoke not a word, exchanged not a glance, and fired not a single shot: turning as one and rushing — blurring — towards the bright vortex from which they had issued. It swallowed them and dissolved, a pinprick of suspended flame that dwindled and died in their wake.

Sahaal dropped to his knees and shook the warlock's body free from his claws, exhaustion finally overwhelming him. He felt as if he'd spent an eternity struggling, as if he couldn't remember a time without pain and violence. The wound at his shoulder continued to bleed, coagulation impaired by the sliver of alien metal embedded deep within, and every movement sent daggers throughout his body.

He could see already he would never use the arm again.

And then slowly, eyes rolling in their sockets with planetary patience, he lifted his gaze to find the thief. The villain. The Lord Inquisitor Ipoqr Kaustus.

'Servitors!' the tusked man yelped, backing away, his arms wrapped around the Corona like a child clutching at its favoured toy. 'Protect me! Protect me!'