The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Noctua was down on one knee, clutching his chest. Abaddon ran to his side, a long-bladed sword held low. Stuttering muzzle flare lit the cavern in strobing bursts. Suit lights swayed and danced. Hard volleys of mass-reactives shattered crystalline growths, blew out fist-sized lumps of calcified stone. The Justaerin moved to interpose themselves between their attacker and the Warmaster.

Noctua fired from his knees. Kibre added his combi-bolters to the sweeping barrage, not aiming, just firing.

They hit nothing.

The cavern was suddenly gloriously illuminated. An angel of fire, with swords of lightning held outstretched. Faceless, remorseless, Horus recognised it for what it was. A sentinel creature, a final psychic trap emplaced by the Emperor to destroy those who sought to unpick the secrets of His past.

Horus could barely fix on the beast.

Its radiance was so fierce, so blinding. Its swords unleashed forking blasts of lightning, and Aximand was hurled across the cavern. His smoking body slammed into a wall. Stone and armour split. Horus knew the impact trauma was enough to break his spine.

Coruscating blue swords lashed out like whips. Abaddon dived to the side, his pauldron sheared clean away. A portion of the First Captain’s shoulder remained inside, and bright blood sheeted his arm. One of the Justaerin took a step towards his downed captain before remembering his place.

The creature turned its gaze upon the Terminator. The warrior staggered. The combi-bolter fell from his grip as he struggled to tear off his helmet. His screams over the vox were agonised. Liquid light writhed in the joints of his armour, spilling out in blistering streams of white-green fire.

Horus shucked his taloned gauntlet, slamming shells into the breech of the inbuilt bolters. He often spoke of the murder-haruspex of Cthonia that led him to the weapon in an arming chamber of a long-dead warlord. That wasn’t entirely accurate, but the truth was for Horus alone. The gauntlet’s baroque craftsmanship was unmatched, and though Horus had been little more than a callow youth at the time, the gauntlet fitted his blood-scabbed hand as though fashioned just for him.

A two metre tongue of flame blazed from the weapon. The recoil was savage, but Urtzi Malevolus had built his armour well and suspensor compensators kept it on target. Scads of light flew from the angel like molten steel. Torn from its body, its essence dimmed, dissolution turning it to vapour in seconds.

It shrieked and the air between it and Horus buckled with concussive force. The last Justaerin flew apart, shattering like an assembly diagram of something vastly complex. His skeleton and internal biology atomised in a flash burn of intense light.

Horus flew back, as though lifted by a hurricane. He came down hard in the water, its freezing temperature ramming the breath from him with an explosive fist. His mouth filled with black water. Throat muscles reacted instantly to seal his lungs and shift breathing to secondary respiratory organs.

He spat black mouthfuls and rose from the water in time to see Abaddon pinned in place by blazing tridents of lightning. Light poured from the First Captain’s mouth. Kibre’s gunfire sprayed the angel of fire, surrounding it in swarms of phosphor embers. Enough mass-reactive shells to put down a bull-grox achieved precisely nothing against the blazing sentinel.

Horus marched from the lake, whips of fire arcing from his talon. Noctua plunged his sword into the angel’s back. The blade melted in an instant and Noctua cried in pain, clutching his ruined hand. Aximand crawled towards the fight, spine cracked, legs useless.

Horus didn’t bother to shoot the angel. He killed the power to his talons with a thought. Its essence was godly and mortal weapons were useless. He reached for his only other option.

The angel spun to face him, releasing Abaddon from its crackling barbs. The First Captain fell to his front, broiled near death by divine fire.

The angel descended on Horus, wings of bright flame erupting from its back. The swords of lightning became elongated claws. Furnace heat blazed from its body.

Horus stepped to meet it.

He swung Worldbreaker in an upward arc, like a hammer thrower from an ancient age. A weapon forged by the Emperor’s own hand, Worldbreaker was a gift from a god. Its killing head buried itself in the flaming body of the angel.

Only one thing could end this creature, and that was the power that had birthed it.

The angel exploded. Streamers of fire arced from its death like blazing promethium. It shrieked as the power binding it to this place was shattered. By the time the Warmaster’s maul had completed its swing, the angel was no more.

Its scream lingered long, echoing throughout the mountain, all across Molech and through uncounted angles of space and time. The embers of its sun-hot core drifted to the cavern floor like grave-bound fireflies.

And with its death, Horus remembered Molech.

He remembered everything.