Lord of the Night

Alone amongst them all, the Night Haunter's contempt for his father had outdated, and outlasted, the rebellion. The Emperor's favoured son Horus had corrupted the other dark Legions, pouring poison upon their primarchs with insidious whispers and sweet promises, but not so to the Night Haunter. Not to Konrad Curze. He had seen his father for what he was long before. He had chosen Chaos as a tool — as an ally — but was not seduced by it. And when Horus was cut down, when the other Traitor Legions were shattered, when distant Terra was liberated and the Emperor triumphant, had the Night Lords fled? Had they yelped in fear and skulked into the gloom to fight amongst themselves, as had the others?

No. No, not they.

Their primarch unleashed them, he fed them the fear they yearned, and on Tsagualsa he called them to his side, and showed them his palace.

It was built of bodies: still living, fused at broken joint and sliced skin, knotted around coiling vertebrae and dissected sinews.

In the screaming gallery, where a carpet of moaning faces rose in broad steps — writhing spines and clutching fingers shivering along every edge — the Dark Lord received his captains with a bow.

He was naked, but for a cloak of black feathers, and had never been more magnificent. Sahaal and his brothers dropped to their knees and hailed him: their father, their master, their lord, their Dominus Nox.

He regarded each in turn, and to each he nodded once, a feral jolt of recognition, like a wolf regarding its pack. All of them were there: Quissax Kergai, Master of the Armoury, whose scouring of the Launeus forgeworld had crippled the loyalists of the Trigonym sector. Vyridium Silvadi, Lord of the Fleet, who had routed the flotilla of Admiral Ko'uch and bombarded the Ravenguard for five days before they could retreat, unsupported, like the cowards they were. Even Koor Mass, encased now in the sleek shell of a dreadnought, its every surface decorated with flayed skin, had deigned to attend his master's audience.

There was one other who Sahaal noted amongst the menagerie, and he avoided that one's gaze, finding his countenance distasteful. Krieg Acerbus, youngest of the Haunter's captains, incalculably vast and swollen with pendants and gory souvenirs of his works, leant on the shaft of his great poweraxe and smiled with insolemn pleasure at his master's attention.

Sahaal ignored the giant's smirking features and concentrated instead upon his lord, resplendent upon a throne of obsidian and silver.