The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

His knights circled back and forth, closing in time and again to deliver thrusts of their lances and stabbing cuts from their reapers. They were hurting it, but it was too big to be brought down by such wounds.

He looked up and saw the beast’s wounded heart, a pulsing shimmer of light where the source of its power lay. Thick scales of draconic armour protected its heart from a frontal attack, but from behind...

From behind it was vulnerable. Even more so now. The Stormlord’s first thrust had hurt the beast and exposed its greatest weakness.

‘Warriors of Molech!’ shouted the Stormlord. ‘No one lance can pierce this beast’s armour. We must be as one in our ardour, as one in our thrust into its heart.’

A breath of fire incinerated another of his vajras. If the killing blow was not struck soon, the beast would overwhelm them. It was already turning its wounded heart away.

‘Your lances!’ screamed the Stormlord. ‘Unite them with mine!’

His knights formed up around him as they rode with all possible speed to chase the dragon’s wounded heart. It bled light and steam, the exhalations of a monster the world needed slain.

The Stormlord laughed as he felt the strength of his knights fill him. Their lance arms were now his. What he stabbed, they stabbed. What he killed, they would kill.

The leavings of the beast still streamed from its gigantic legs. Ants and bacterium shed from a desperate creature that knew its ending was at hand, but still clung to life. Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps. The vajras fought and killed them with their battle blades alone, for their lance arms were now his to command.

His armour shuddered with impacts, his shield arm was just as strong as his lance arm. He felt the heat of the conjoined lances in his fingers, the potency of a weapon on the brink of release.

The dragon knew what he was doing.

It knew he had the power to kill it.

He was too fast for it, the fleetness of his steed more than a match for its cumbersome power. No matter how fast it tried to turn, he would be quicker. It spat a breath of fire to the ground, incinerating a host of its own defenders in its desperation. The Stormlord felt one of his vajras die, and cried out as he felt the righteous fury of the knight fill him.

The spirits of the dead flowed into him, filling his skull with their death screams. Any other man would have been driven mad by now, but he was the Stormlord. He was the hero, the saviour of Molech and he would end this beast.

And then he saw it exposed, the beast’s one weakness.

The Stormlord thrust his lance deep into the exposed heart of his prey.