The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

Shapes raged in the flames – shadows and suggestions doing battle with the daemons, their fiery forms indistinct and ever-changing. The fire-born avatars of fallen Ten Thousand, knee-deep in psychic fire and thrusting with lances of flame. The silhouettes of Space Marines, the betrayed dead of Isstvan bearing axes and blades and claws; half-seen sigils of slaughtered Legions obscured by the ash of their blackened armour. A giant among giants, its great hands bared and ready as it seared forwards at the crest of the tidal fire. The tenth son of a dying empire, so briefly reborn in his father’s immolating wrath.

Daemons burned in their thousands, their aetheric flesh seared from their false bones. White flame haloed from the sword in corrosive, purifying radiance. It coruscated in thrashing waves from each fall of the Emperor’s blade. To look at Him was to go blind. To stand before Him was to die.

And with a roar, the Custodians followed their lord and master. They reaved the Neverborn, banishing them with each thrusting spear and bellowing boltgun. Their blades carved through daemonic flesh, sending acidic blood raining in corrosive sprays. It wasn’t mist that occluded sight now, it was ash from the incinerated dead. Spears flashed silver in the dust-thickened air. The Last Charge of the Ten Thousand.

Behind the golden warriors came their arming thralls, bearing fresh ammunition and armour sealant; warriors in their own right but sheltered from harm by their masters’ spinning blades.

It didn’t matter that all these years of secret war had depleted the Legio Custodes to a ghost of itself. It didn’t matter that they had fought and bled and died for the last half-decade in this sunless, merciless realm populated only by the dead and the damned. Their king had come, the sun had risen and they charged with a cry that far eclipsed the wails of the daemons dying on their blades.

The beasts that survived the Emperor’s onslaught staggered and lurched towards the Custodians, raising brittle blades in dissolving hands, uselessly staring through bleeding, blinded eyes. Something dead – a creature hunched and bloated, still bearing within its flesh the plague that had slain it – lunged at Ra. His spear thrust burst its eye and cracked through the malformed skull. Hissing and bubbling blood sluiced across Ra’s gauntlets, steaming as it burned away in the Emperor’s aura.

He loosed his last explosive bolts, sensing the weapon was empty before the warning sigil flashed on his visor. ‘Reload!’ Ra cried as he hurled the weapon back towards the armoury thralls, already drawing his meridian swords in its place. The curved blades ripped through diseased flesh, spilling rotten organs to the misty ground. The swords’ energy fields spat kinetic aggravation at every impact.

A rune chimed on his retinal display, flickering white. He sheathed the twin sabres in a smooth turn and caught his guardian spear as the ammunition thrall threw it back to him. The moment he had a fist around its haft, he was killing again. This was the way of his kind.

For Ra, time ceased to exist. There was nothing but the beat of his heart and the lactic burn of his muscles. All he saw were the blades and claws flashing towards his face. The ash of dying, dissipating Neverborn coated his armour.

‘Reload!’ Solon called from behind him. Ra heard the snap-crack of Solon’s meridian swords activating, and the rumbled murmur of compliance as the armoury thrall gathered the guardian spear left thrust into the ground.

Ra parried a cut from a heavy brass blade, returning a blast from his digital lasers that blew the creature’s face out the back of its sloped head. Daemonic slop from the burst skull rained across the Emperor’s back, turning to ash before it touched the monarch’s armour.

Torrents of chemical fire marked Zhanmadao’s position to Ra’s left. Ra could hear the draconic roar of incendium pikes, burning the still-thrashing creatures that had fallen beneath the blades of the Custodians’ first rank. The Ten Thousand and their golden king were shin-deep in ash, the smoky spectres of daemonic entities flailing as they were swallowed by the Emperor’s fire.

The daemons that managed to reach the Emperor suffered worst of all. The strongest, most savage of their kind, they swung weapons at a man who was no longer there, cleaving through the golden mist that swirled in His place. With thunder-cracks of psychic force, the golden warlord would appear at the beasts’ backs, His flaming sword already buried in their spines. Fire erupted behind their eyes, boiling and bursting them from within. Their sizzling gore soaked Ra and the Custodians closest to their sire.

Exaltation quickened Ra’s blood, the cure to the weariness that had slowed him. He was tired beyond belief, yet that had never mattered so little. Each beat of his still-living heart was vengeance, vindication.