Lord of the Night

'The Corona!' he roared, leaping towards the witch. 'Give me the Corona!'

Acerbus was faster.

Like a striking crow, like shadow-wreathed lightning, he was on her, swatting Sahaal aside with a deft flick of his midnight claws and pinioning her to the floor, great tendrils of smoke and shadow tightening around her arms and ankles, wings opening like a canopy of perpetual night. The melta gun crumpled in his grip. She screamed and screamed and never stopped. The Daemonlord leaned close to her face, running a broad tongue across her cheek. 'Mm...' he mewled, intoxicated. 'Her fear is... exquisite...'

Sahaal leapt at his brother with a wordless howl, stabbing out with claws outstretched, hacking through semi-real pseudopods of smoke and dark. The Daemonlord spun to face him, spined shoulders glittering in constellations of darkness, amused at the crippled warrior's truculent attack.

Claw met claw like the peeling of razor bells, and for long instants the pair slashed and stabbed, parrying blows that would split a man in two. Sahaal found himself dancing between bloody-tipped blurs, leaping above vengeful thrusts and spinning through blows like hail, never more than a moment ahead of his foe's attacks. Acerbus was playing with him. Let him.

Sahaal changed tack with a feral growl. Twisting his body, wincing as wounds reopened and ribs crackled at unpleasant contortions, he slipped away from the savage blades and pounced towards Mita. Blows landed on his back, gashing him open, flooding his senses with fire and fear, but none of it mattered. Only the Corona.

He cut the witch free of the boiling limbs that held her and dragged her to her feet, gore pouring from his wrecked body. Holding her tight against his shoulder with his one useful arm, he staggered with her towards the great rent in the wall and stared out at the shifting tempests of Equixus. Ice bathed him: a frozen baptism to cleanse his tormented mind. Somewhere behind him the Daemonlord realised what was happening, howling at the thought of his prey's escape. Sahaal bunched his legs, final reserves of energy pushing him out into the void.

Let the storm swallow him. Let the ice enfold him.

Let the darkness claim him as its own.

He had the witch. The witch had the Corona. Nothing else mattered.

And then the daemon oozed from the smoke at his back with a roar, fire spouting from hate-filled eyes, and snatched at the witch's arm.

The limb parted from its shoulder with a wrench and a sticky slurp.

The Corona Nox tumbled from slack fingers and spun, tilting and flipping over, catching the firelight of a dying world in a single glorious reflection—

—and then it was gone: tumbling end over end into the smoke and the fire and the ice, dwindling away along the sides of the hive until darkness swallowed it.

The witch screamed, blood pulsing from the open wound. The Daemon Prince Krieg Acerbus roared so loud that the windows of the gallery room burst, like droplets falling from a fountain.

And Zso Sahaal, the Talonmaster, heir to the throne of the Night Lords Legion, pushed himself out into the void — his jump pack flaring in the endless dark, the witch howling from her perch upon his ruined shoulder — and chased his legacy down into the abyss.

He would not give up.

The Corona Nox would be his.

He would bring the vengeance of the Night Haunter upon the heads of those that stood in his way.

One day he would kill Krieg Acerbus. He would lead his Legion once more.

One day he would descend from the skies of Holy Terra, and set his claws upon the bulwarks of the Palace itself.

One day, in the name of his master, he would have his revenge upon the Traitor Emperor. Ave Dominns Nox!

EPILOGUE