The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

The Grand Army of Molech was assembling in the hills north of Lupercalia, stretching eastwards from the rugged haunches of the Untar Mesas to Iron Fist Mountain. With thousands of armoured fighting vehicles, hundreds of thousands (if not more) soldiers, battery after battery of artillery and two Titan Legions mobilising to fight, the Lord General could surely manage without one Knight.

He’d searched the upland forests for days now, climbing through rugged crags and mossy valleys to find the White Naga. His initial thrill of being on the verge of something miraculous had faded almost as soon as he’d left camp. The divine avatar of the Serpent Cult had singularly failed to manifest before him, and his patience was wearing thin.

He’d chosen a direction at random, marching his Knight from camp with purposeful strides. The damage the Warmaster had inflicted was still there, a bone-deep hurt that would never go away, a permanent reminder to rival that of the loss of his sons. Being connected to Banelash via his spinal implants made their loss seem remote, disconnected, as though it had happened to someone else.

Tragic, yes, but ultimately bearable.

That remoteness would end as soon as he disconnected, and he entertained the wild idea of never removing himself from Banelash. Ludicrous, of course. Prolonged connection with the machine-spirit of a Knight filled a pilot’s brain with foreign memories, unrelated data junk and sensory phantoms.

To remain within a Knight for too long was to embrace madness.

As crazed as it was, the idea had taken root and could not be dislodged.

Raeven’s mouth was parched and his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten before leaving camp, and wine soured in his belly. Recyc-systems filtering his waste were allowing him to continue without food and water, but he could already feel toxins, both physical and mental, building throughout his body.

If the White Naga didn’t reveal itself soon, he wouldn’t survive to return with any divine boon. The thought of dying alone in the deep forest amused him momentarily. How ludicrous an end it would be for a Knight of Molech. He would become a statue of iron and desiccated flesh, standing alone and forgotten for thousands of years. He imagined debased savages of a future epoch discovering him and coming to worship at his corpse as though Banelash were an ancient pagan altar.

He blinked as the sensorium flickered and stretched like poured syrup. The images it displayed were not externally rendered by machines, rather they were mental projections, controlled stimulations of his synapses to trigger a visual representation of the auspex returns.

Then Raeven saw it wasn’t the sensorium that was faulty.

It was the landscape that was twisting.

Normally the display was a monochromatic thing, stripped bare for clarity in battle, but now it erupted with sensation. The trees blossomed with new life and incredible growth. Flowers sprouted where he walked and their perfume was intoxicating and almost unbearably sweet. Colours with no name and sounds hitherto unheard assailed him. Raeven saw circulatory systems in every blade of grass, unblinking eyes on every leaf, a history of the world in every rock.

Every colour, every surface became unbearably sharp, excruciatingly real and swollen with vital potential. It was too much, a sensory overload that threatened to burn out the delicate connections within his mind. Raeven gasped, nausea stabbing his gut. If it hadn’t already been empty, he would have puked himself inside out.

Banelash staggered in response, an iron giant lumbering like a drunk. The Knight’s bulk smashed writhing branches apart and dislodged rippling boulders. Its energy whip lashed out, felling centuries old trees that shrieked as they fell. The rain-slick ground offered no purchase, as though it wanted him to fall, and Raeven fought to keep the Knight upright.

To fall so far from help would be death, but the thought no longer amused him. He wrestled with the controls as the overwhelming ferocity of the world’s hyper-reality cut him open and pared him back to the bone.

‘Too much,’ he screamed. ‘It’s too much!’

‘There is no such thing as too much!’

The power of the voice stripped the blinking leaves from the trees for a hundred metres and set Raeven’s mind afire like an aneurysm. The armourglass canopy of his Knight cracked and he screamed as blood filled his right eye.

He finally righted his staggering Knight.

And saw the divine.

‘The White Naga,’ he gasped.

‘One of my many names. I am the Illuminator, the beginning and the end, the ontological ideal of perfection.’

Without conscious thought, Banelash knelt before the godly being. The White Naga shimmered with light, a sun come to Molech in corporeal form with a heat so savage it would burn him from existence in the blink of an eye.