The Emperor Vs Drach'nyen [Warhammer 40K: Master of Mankind Excerpt]

Transcript

Be ready. For what, sire?" Ra's retinal display flashed its white sigil. He caught the returned weapon, spitting it with the force and speed of a rotor blade.

The tunnel around them cracked and sparked with the strain of overworked generators. There, Ra, it draws near. The Emperor moved on, cutting, carving.

He led his guardians into the very hordes of a mythological hell, and like the paladins of yore, they followed their king. Rare emotion spiced the Emperor's silent words. I sensed such purity of being, such pure, unadulterated malice.

Ra weaved back from a swinging axe blade, returning a spear thrust that punched through the creature's scaled throat. He dared a glance left to Diocletian, seeing his kinsmen hauling his own spear from the innards of a pot-bellied, horned grotesque impaling a prize of rotted entrails. Flies droned around the decayed tangle, swarming at the loss of their hive.

Even immortals could tire. Ra's breath sawed between his closed teeth. Inside his helmet, sweats drew lines of wet fire down his face.

His retinal display kept auto-dimming to compensate for the fire and light bursting into being. With each fall of the Emperor's blade, I only see the horde, sire. He didn't like the rapt fascination in his lord's tone.

Reveal thyself. The Emperor raised his blade, bringing it down in a crescent of fire. A tide of flame bellowed forth in an incendiary arc, bathing the ranks of the never-born before him.

Mortis ash blasted back in the windless air, coating the closest custodians in the dust of dead demons. A shadow, a shape in the ash. A man.

Just a man. Long of hair, dark of skin, tribally bearded, wearing jewelry of shaped bone and bearing a spear of kidnapped flint, vine lashed to fire-hardened wood. A man wearing wounds almost as grievous as those he had inflicted upon so many others.

Hundreds of spear slashes and sword cuts marked his flesh. The freshest and bloodiest shone on his chest. The legacy of Jaya's last blow.

One man leading the ranks of the howling madness behind him. The echo of the first murder. The Emperor's words broke into Ra's skull with crushing gentleness.

The anathema was its sick, sick reply. Predators always revealed themselves in the second before they struck. Wolves howled as they chased.

Sharks cut the ocean's surface with their fins as they hunted. Here the ashen silhouette moved through the Neverborn's ranks, lesser creatures parting before its two-human tread. Whatever the creature's true form, it wasn't this muscled stone-apok warchief.

Man merely aped the form of the first humans. For the first terrifying time, Ra's doubt flickered within his master's eyes. The sight flooded him with the unfamiliar taint of dread.

Sire, Ra whispered, we should- But the Emperor was gone. Monarch and demon ran at one another. Sliding out of existence, outpacing their lessers on both sides of the battle.

And the two entities, one the salvation of a species and the other its damnation, met blade to blade. Blood burst into the ashy mist the Emperor arced. The warlord's body taught with the utter unfamiliarity of agony.

Five talons, each one the length and width of a spear, dripped red as they stood proud of the Emperor's back. Ra had heard tell that every man, woman, and child saw a different face, a different skin tone, a different temperament when they looked upon the Emperor. The Ten Thousand had no such experience with such an effort.

They considered it dograil from the strains of unready minds when confronted by a true immortal. To Ra's eyes, the Emperor was a man like any others. The custodians saw only their master.

In that moment, as the claws ran red with his king's blood, Ra saw what the rest of the species saw. The boy who would be king, an old man, cloaked and hooded, life running from his cracked lips. A knight in his prime, maned with dark hair, crowned with a wreath of laurels.

A barbarian warlord, barbarous and strong, grinning through, teeth turned red with his leaking blood. Images, identities, men who once were, men he might have once been, men who had never drawn breath. The Emperor's boots left the misty ground.

He barely even struggled as he was lifted, impaled by the five spearing talons. His sword fell from his gloved hands to disappear in the shrouding fog. To the Emperor! With Ra's scream the order loud enough that his retinal display blurred for half a second.

To the Emperor's side! He ran, killing faster than he'd ever killed, energized by an adrenal cocktail of loyalty, hatred, and the alien touch of something nameless that tasted foul on the tongue. Not fear, no, never that, surely never that.

I am the end of empires. The thought wasn't Ra's own, it belonged to the silhouette in the ashes. The Emperor's killer, speaking by twisting through the thoughts of the humans in its presence.

A wretching violation, with the crude, cruel fingers pulling at the insides of Ra's skull. Forcing his thoughts to form the demon's words. Kill it, Ra shouted, half in oath, half in order.

The man's shape turned in the settling ash, still holding the Emperor above the ground. The warlord clutched at the impaling arm. His telepathic voice was Ra.

Stay back, all of you, stay back. I am your death, the creature promised the Emperor. Perhaps one day, but not this day.

Gold light flared bright enough to blind unshielded eyes. The Emperor manifested at Ra's side, down on one knee. One hand clutched to his chest, hair hanging down to veil his features.

Blood, human blood, no matter the legend said, ran in runnels from the Emperor's sundered armor. Ra, the sending was thick with pain defiance. And then, Ra, he said aloud, raising his eyes to meet his loyal custodian's horrified gaze.

A blade ran through the Emperor's body, an ornate sword, as much sorcerous bone as metal. A weapon with writhing, shrieking faces, soul carved upon the steel. The faces shrieked as they drank the Emperor's divine life.

It thrashed as the Emperor clutched it in his hands. It was alive, starving, its form rippling and growing and distinct. With a cry, the Emperor pulled the weapon free, unsheathing it from his own body.

He hurled it from his grip, casting it aside with a surge of armor-boosted strength and devastating telepathic force. Ra blinked once with the impact, feeling it as a thundercrack against his chest. He swallowed, finding himself unable to breathe.

Blood streamed from his mouth, denying the passage of air. It was a blade through his body. It was a demon embracing him.

It was a disease in his blood, eating at his bones. It was there, and it wasn't there. Everything and nothing.

The Custodian fell to his knees, hands curling around the impaling blade, the thwarted rage of the demon sent nerve pain lightning bolting through his fingers. Why? Ra asked his king.

The Emperor stood tall once more, looking down, eyes cold. In that moment, Ra knew. The Emperor's words, spoken what felt like an eternity ago, flashed through his blackening mind, infusing his thoughts with red revelation.

To illuminate you, the Emperor had said, as they looked upon the wonders and sins of the galaxy's past. You will fight harder once you understand what you are fighting for. And now he knew.

Ra and Digimon, the one living soul, shone the entirety of his master's dreams and ambitions, an enlightenment not yet gleaned for the purpose of waging war, but for this. To know the truth when all others believed in shadows and fragments, and to suffer that truth until it was torn apart. Ra rose on shaking limbs, leaning on his spear for support.

The sword was gone now. The demon was within him, caged by his flesh, bound by his agony-drenched will. He felt its tendrils circling his bones, retching at them, thrashing at it in its need to reach the master of mankind.

The creature tunneling through his blood would never stop. Never die. It could not be destroyed, only imprisoned.

The custodian didn't meet his sire's eyes. He didn't demand any explanation or apology. Ra was born to serve, raised to obey, and chosen for the greatest illumination preceding the darkest duty.

With him raged a beast even the Emperor couldn't kill, the Emperor destined to end the Empire. Every step he took away from the Emperor, separating this demon from his master, would mean another day that the Imperium stood unbroken. The Emperor still bled, still clutched his wounded chest with the one gloved hand.

Blood flecked his lips. When all that remains is dust and ash, he said, strained, be ready. The sword rose, and once more it fell, fire tidal waves from its killing edge, immolating all in its path, clearing the way, the neverborn dragging themselves over the ashen remains of their kinder tasted of the same destruction.

The Emperor spoke to Ra one final time, a single command heard by no other, run. Ra and Digimon, Drakion's golden jailer, the son of a water thief, obeyed the last command he would ever be given. He ran.