The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

The White Naga’s hold on him slipped. Just for a second, a fraction of a second. It was enough for him to look into its eyes and see the yawning abyss of madness and ego that thought nothing for a single other living being, and cared only that they fall to their knees and adore it.

Raevan clenched his fist and Banelash coiled its energy whip.

With a cry of rage, horror and anguish he swung.

The whip cracked, its photonic length slashing down through the White Naga’s powerfully muscled shoulders. Milky light spurted from the wound, as though the creature was formed from hyper-dense liquid under intense pressure.

A wing crumpled, torn like tissue, and its upper arm spun away like a broken tree branch. The whip tore through the creature’s torso and its anguished screams were those of a god whose most fervent believer has turned against it.

The White Naga – or whatever damned thing it truly was – lurched away from Banelash. Shock twisted its once beautiful features and made it ugly. Worse than ugly, the furthest extreme of loathsomeness wrought into being. Its repellent form fuelled Raeven’s towering sense of injustice.

Raeven shucked his other arm and felt the heat of his thermal lance engage. He rarely employed the lance, its killing power too swift and sure for his liking. But that was exactly what he needed right now. The White Naga surged in anger, its ruined body bleeding radiance from the galaxy of stars in its chest.

One wing hung from its muscular back, and its right side was a crumpled, molten mass of lightning-edged flesh where its arms hung limply at its side.

Raeven burned the thermal lance through its chest.

And ran.

EIGHTEEN Eventyr / Torments / Deaths overdue

1

Every bump in the road was exquisitely transferred up through the suspension of the Galenus to send jolts of pain into Alivia’s side. Her chest hurt abominably, and the fresh grafts in her chest pulled painfully every time she shifted position on the gurney.

Still, she knew she was lucky to be alive.

Or at least lucky it hadn’t been worse.

‘You need more pain balms?’ asked Noama Calver, the surgeon-captain, seeing her pursed lips.

‘No,’ said Alivia. ‘I’ve slept for altogether too long.’

‘Sure, just let me know if you need any though,’ she said, missing Alivia’s meaning. ‘No need to suffer when there’s a remedy right here.’

‘Trust me, if it gets too bad, you’ll be the first to know.’

‘Promise?’

‘Hope to die,’ said Alivia, crossing her heart with her hand.

Noama smiled with matronly concern. She squeezed Alivia’s arm as though she were her own daughter, which was exactly the emotion Alivia had planted in her mind. Noama Calver had a son serving in an off-world Army regiment and her concern for his wellbeing ranked only slightly higher than the wounded men under her care.

Alivia didn’t like using people this way, especially good people who might have helped her if only she’d asked. Getting to Lupercalia was too important for her – for them – to take any chances that Calver might not have helped.

Kjell had been even easier. A good man, he’d joined the Medicae out of a desire to stay away from the front lines – little realising that medics were often in the thickest fighting without a weapon. The Grand Army of Molech was preparing to meet the Warmaster’s army in open battle, so it had been child’s play to ease his thoughts towards heading south to Lupercalia.

Noama moved down the Galenus, checking on the other wounded they carried. Every one of them ought to be back with their units, but they’d kept quiet when Noama ordered her driver, an impressionable boy named Anson who just wanted to get back to Lupercalia to see a girl called Fiaa, to drive away from the fighting.

Too easy.

Jeph lay stretched out on a gurney farther down the Galenus, snoring like an engine with a busted gear. She smiled at the softening of his features, hating herself for making him care for her so much. She’d had enough of time alone, and there were only so many years a girl could spend on her own before company, any company, was infinitely preferable. She knew she should have left him back in Larsa the minute the starship crashed, but he wouldn’t have lasted another hour without her.

Honestly, back in the day, would you have looked twice at him?

An easy enough question to answer, but it wasn’t that simple.

There’d been complications. Two complications to be exact.

Miska and Vivyen sat playing a board game called mahbusa with a number of ebony and ivory counters. She’d taught it to them a few months back. An old game, one she’d learned in the counting houses of the Hegemon, though she suspected it was older even than that compact city of scribes.