The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Her hands were radiant, leaving echoes of warp light in their wake. A pattern began to emerge, disjointed knowledge seeded throughout her psyche coming together in a multi-dimensional lattice that was part unbreakable seal, part demo charge.

She smiled, seeing the cunning that had gone into its design, the care it had taken to hide within her. So intricate was its construction, she almost didn’t mind being used like this.

She certainly didn’t mind that its completion would kill her.

A spray of blood drenched Alivia and she cried out as one of her protectors dropped with a hole blown through the cobalt-blue of his breastplate. A concussive pressure wave hit her and slammed her to the ground. A spinning fragment of hot metal sliced across her shoulder. Pain blazed as blood ran down her back.

Her surroundings bled back into her awareness. The noise, the fear and the choking clouds of smoke. She heard heavy footfalls, all thudding in unison. Short, tramping steps and the scrape of iron on stone. Alivia rolled onto her side, blinking away tears of pain from her shoulder.

The elite Justaerin Terminators advance

Her left arm felt useless and the stink of burned meat filled her senses. Valance lay on his back next to her. He’d taken the brunt of the blast that had knocked her to the ground. What was left of him was only recognisable by the half of his head that remained.

She looked up in time to see a ridged line of interlocking shields barge its way into the chamber. Sons of Horus with breacher’s shields. The Ultramarines couldn’t hope to hold their position, scattered by the missile explosions and overwhelmed by suppressive volleys.

Concentrated bursts of fire took them down in twos and threes.

The shield line widened as the chamber opened up. Sons of Horus warriors following behind pushed the line out and brought yet more guns to bear.

Arcadon Kyro put a hole in the shield line with coordinated blasts from the plasma one-shots on his mechanised arms. Each bolt impacted at precisely the same time, and blew apart one of the shields and the warrior behind it.

Massed bolter fire brought him down, a ridiculous amount of overkill that shredded his flesh unrecognisable and thoroughly dismantled his mechanical augmentations. Didacus Theron and Castor Alcade pushed into the gap Kyro had opened, looking to tear it wider.

Theron’s power sword cleaved through a shield and the arm holding it. His bolt pistol fired point-blank into the face of a Terminator. Such hulking war-monstrosities all but eliminated the need for mortal flesh entirely. The bolts detonated on impact, but left the warrior beneath unharmed.

The Terminator’s crackling energy-fist pistoned out and rammed through the centurion’s body. He came apart in an explosion of disembodied limbs and shattered plate.

Alivia tried to drag herself back to the gate, pushing along the floor on her backside with her heels.

Her work was almost done. Just a little more and her obligation would be over. No more long, wearying years, no more lies and isolation. No more anything.

A towering figure broke free of the shield line.

A giant, a demigod, a beautiful avatar of all that humanity could achieve in greatness. She’d heard all these epithets and more used to describe the Warmaster, but they’d been coined by those viewing him at peace.

Seeing him in battle was something entirely different.

Horus Lupercal was a monster. A daemon of war and ruin made flesh. He was a destroyer, an unmaker and the face of all humanity ought to have turned its back on millennia ago.

His was the face of uttermost evil...

And he didn’t even know it.

It was the worst thing Alivia had ever seen.

Castor Alcade vaulted away from the Terminator bearing down on him and ran to put himself between her and the Warmaster. There was no way Alcade could defeat the Warmaster, no hope of even a fair contest.

Alcade was dead the moment he moved, but he did it anyway.

It was the best thing Alivia had ever seen.

The legate of the XIII Legion thrust with his gladius.

It snapped on the amber eye at Horus’s breast.

The Warmaster’s titanic maul swept out and Castor Alcade was obliterated as though he had never existed.

Alivia pushed onto her feet and threw herself at the gate, her hands slippery with blood. She traced the final lines and opened her mouth to speak the last of the apotropaic words.

All that came out was a scream of pain.

Alivia looked down and saw four parallel blades jutting from her chest. They pinned her to the black wall and her blood ran down the blades and into the gate.

‘I don’t know who you are, but I need that open,’ said the Warmaster.

‘Please,’ said Alivia as the pain finally caught up to her.

Horus snapped the talons of his gauntlet from Alivia’s body. She fell, and it felt like she fell for a very long time before she hit the floor.

She looked up into the Warmaster’s face.

She saw no pity, no mercy. But, curiously, she saw regret.