The angel tumbled in her landing, skin of black ceramite skittering atop the rocky surface of Ranéla before coming to a halt. But if she was pained or wounded, she did not show it, and rose from the ground with fists clenched and eyes closed. Unwise, I thought, and made to teach this facsimile of my wife better. But when I tried to nick her front with Drepane, she replied by meeting its edge with one of her fists, golden light smashing out upon the blue lightning of the Nemesis falchion. Only then, as our powers contested, she opened her eyes to look into mine. “You wear the shape of my shadow,” she said softly, but did not let up in pressing against my blade, keeping us at odds.
“And you the face of my failure,” I replied, and willed myself harder against her power. Even her awesome light began to give way to my fury, and she took a step back as I advanced upon her. Rain began to fall upon us, the skies having eclipsed the sun above to produce a terrible gloom that overtook the world.
“One of your men, I presume, is responsible for killing someone I cared very much about,” she heaved out, and reached a fist back before propelling it toward me. While it did not strike me, instead stopping a foot and a half from my being, it did shoot forth a continuous stream of gold psychic energy. I met it with an open palm from my biological hand, where shadows opened up and devoured her power as she unleashed it.
“And your hands are stained with the blood of my brother,” I grilled her, and then cut away from her, in an instant appearing some distance to her side. She drew the Eviscerator that rested on her backside, and lowered it between us. “You’re a dead thing, and you don’t even know it, do you?”
“Threats don’t work on me.”
“It wasn’t a threat, just an observation,” I replied, and then bolted for her accursed, mocking visage once more. All the while, the daemon laughed and laughed. And who could blame it? I was the butt of the joke, sure, but that does not mean I was ignorant of the punchline that stood before me. Lucene was dead. This thing was not her, even if it wore her face. Would I be fighting Silas’s corpse one day, too?
All in good time, Blackgar, it laughed further.
I shouted in unbridled fury when Drepane struck her Eviscerator, then, and must have surprised the faux-angel as much as I had myself, as the biomantic and psykematic force that struck against her blade was colossal enough to bat her far beyond my view. But I could still sense her even as she careened away from me. I lurched my free, biological hand forward, and as I had regrettably learned from Cronos, ripped another hole in reality to step through. I was possessed of such power, and I hated every ounce of it.
When Bliss had stopped Cronos’s emergence on the deck of the Coldbreed those long and painful years ago, I had learned a great deal about the truth of myself. Long had I thought myself a low-to-mid-Gamma-grade Psyker, which would have left me terribly powerful enough as it was. But that was a lie, crafted by the Inquisition and surgically implanted into my skull in the form of psychic wards. No, for centuries the extent of my power had been suppressed, and when Cronos nearly broke free, one of the first things it did was shatter those wards. In reality, I was a tier beyond such measurement, mid-to-high-Beta-grade. Anything higher, and my very sanity would have been threatened—not like it was at all intact anymore, though. So there I was, a Timeless reservoir of horrifyingly colossal psychic power for an Exalted Greater Daemon to engorge itself upon for eternity. Such is the terrible truth of my entire existence.
Yet Lucene, meanwhile, was deservedly crafted into what some would dub an angel. But the irony therein was too rich for that fate to be anything other than someone’s terrible plot. So the daemon laughed. When my sanity broke entirely, which might be soon, perhaps I’ll laugh too.
I emerged ahead of Lucene’s forced flightpath, though I noted she had righted herself for landing. I chose to expedite that process, and reached my sorcerous arm toward her before psychically smacking her out of the air, where she plummeted, hard, into the ground below. It was a landing that would have splattered a human, yet when the dust settled, Lucene stood defiant, not a scratch on her ceramite body. Ceramite which, I’ll add, had melted and resettled long ago. I suspect when The Finality catapulted through the Warp, her power armor seethed over her dead flesh, and merged with it. And the Rosarius? The shielding symbol bequeathed from Igan Caliman to me, and from me to her? Well, Silas had already proved its continued existence, and I could sense it within her, literally. It had sunk below her flesh, shielding her adjacent to her beating heart like another organ unto itself.
This was Lucene, in all manner of the word ‘was.’ But the thoughts in her mind, and the soul beneath the flesh, those were not hers, they could not have been. Oh, my poor child, the daemon taunted. If only you knew.
“Do you even know what you are?” I asked of her, Drepane and sorcerous hand still held ready before me.
“A dead thing, according to you, yet here I breathe,” she deflected.
“And every breath you take is evil at play,” I hissed, then whipped my free hand aside. Her eyes went wide as the world between us was cleaved away, bringing us face to face, upon which time I struck out at her again. My blade proved my point of her identity, bouncing off an invisible barrier that emanated from beneath her skin, and creating all manner of sparking lights in the process. She sought to capitalize on my apparent instability after that attack, and brought her Eviscerator down upon me; I caught it within a sorcerous grasp, not making contact with its roaring edge, while I spun Drepane into a backhanded grip and swung wide against her once more.
Lucene must not have fully trusted the defense of her inner Rosarius—which was fair—as she repositioned her Eviscerator to block Drepane’s second slice. But as before, I had buried my fury in its edge, and when our blades connected I sent her stumbling back, albeit not flying away as I had at first. I leapt after her, and again she caught Drepane against her larger sword, only this time I did not knock her away. Instead, I whisked my witching hand out from between us, scorching the scene ahead of my view in black flame.
When the flames parted, I spied her eyes glimmering slightly brighter than they had before, but her already-stygian flesh had apparently been singed by my attack, loosing a slight steam. There was more to her than I knew, more to her than she felt she needed to reveal to me yet. I already knew she possessed wings, and could survive beyond an atmosphere, though she had not demonstrated either feat to me or to Silas in combat. But still, I knew she had more than that yet. Howsoever she had acquired such power, through whatever manner of villainy, I knew I had to destroy her. She was a pawn in a game of darkling creatures, as was I, and if the common men and women of the Holy Imperium had any hope for survival, we had to destroy each other. No man could face those such as she and I in bloodthirsty combat and emerge victorious. We, therefore, did not belong, but at least I knew it.
And still, the daemon laughed and laughed.
I surged forth for her again, and in such movement her eyes glowed brighter and brighter. She must have thought I had taken her bait, and sought to exploit that in a burst of heightened abilities. If she had inherited anything from the Lucene I had known, it certainly was a prowess in combat. Little did she know that I had already spent centuries learning from her tutelage as well. A moment after I ran toward her, she repeated the attack that had taken my brother from me, and in a blink of golden light, had raced across the scene, bringing her Eviscerator through me in one clean motion.
In a way, it was comforting to know that she, like me, was going for the kill. Perhaps we really would destroy each other, for the good of the Imperium, and I might finally be freed from the clutches of the daemon. But though her Eviscerator had passed through me, I had not allowed it to make contact, and she spun about in time to see my figure fade out in smokey wisps, blown away by the wind. And then, an instant later, I repeated her attack myself and drew us close, Drepane backed by my heinous magics against her Eviscerator. “You can do more,” I hissed over the roaring of her chainweapon.
“My power is not for you,” she said, eyes narrowing.
“If not for me, for no one,” I answered, and took a deep breath as I plunged my mind into the deepest recesses of its psykana. In the past, this would have pained me greatly, forcing a nose- or ear-bleed. I had thought that was the cost of using such great power, but in truth it was just me unknowingly fighting against the Inquisition’s wards. With those shields shattered, I was made whole, so terribly complete. And though I could likely still tire out and temporarily exhaust my abilities, I would first need to unleash a horrifying amount of psykana.
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I slid away from Lucene in a brief retreat, but brought Drepane overhead and arced behind me. I took one step toward her, crouching into a sideways squat as Lucene’s eyes went wide, and then spun about and whipped Drepane out in her direction. The blast was deafening, and Lucene at last revealed her wings to fly above and beyond it. A ripple of psychic darkness shot out along Drepane’s edge, slicing reality twain, until it collided with a faraway mountain range. It sliced the caps of those mountains off, and then the concussive shockwave of a vacuum being formed across reality blasted those mountaintops to smithereens.
I felt nothing, where once it would have killed me to unleash an attack a thousandth as powerful. I felt nothing, and heard only laughter.
Lucene hovered above, wings beating, as she looked down at her darkened foe. I glanced up at her, and she said, “You are no mere man.”
“What gave that away?”
“What is your goal here? Why are we fighting?” she asked.
“My goal is to end you,” I answered. “And we are fighting because neither of us belongs in this story anymore.”
“My story is not yet told,” she denied.
“And whose fault is that?” I shrugged. “And what makes you think your story is worth telling in the first place?”
She paused at that, and closed her eyes. After a deep breath, she answered, “My story is one of hope. And I will never stop believing in that.”
“You and I have different opinions on your involvement in hope, then,” I replied. “When I look at you…all I see is anguish and despair. Hope is in people, not in angels and daemons like us.”
“You’re a daemon, then?” Lucene asked, and I had no answer. The line seemed so very blurred these days. What was the difference, really, other than that Cronos wanted to destroy everything imaginable and I did not? That’s pretty much the only difference, for now, it confirmed. “Then perhaps my power is for you after all.”
“If you think it’ll be enough,” I replied, and flourished Drepane, preparing for whatever she had in store. Lucene blinked once more, but when her eyes opened from that blink, they were gone, replaced with pools of golden light. Her figure shone, a light in the dark, and the clouds above even began to part. I looked on at her with some awe, I’ll admit. Whatever she may have been, truly, she certainly had the outward appearance of an angel, and may have had the power to play the part. Could she do it? Could she defeat, nay, could she slay Cronos, with all her glimmering, gilded might?
No.
My grip tightened on Drepane. Oh, how I wished she could do it. My mind, briefly, flicked back to Abseradon. “Will you see it?” Sigird had asked me of my death. I wondered if Cronos could see its demise above me, if it merely pretended not to.
I do not die this day, Blackgar.
But that does imply a death one day. So there was hope, then. One would have to give that to this faux-Lucene, then, for inspiring that. Thinking about Cronos’s death, I whispered to myself, “Bring it on.”
And she did.
Thick, gargantuan tendrils of golden light shot out from her back and slammed into the ground all around me, blasting through and shattering the nearby terrain. Each one missed me, but it took me a moment to realize that they were not for me, not directly; instead, they formed a cage, one which very rapidly shrunk in size as Lucene descended upon me from above. She slammed into the ground where I stood, Eviscerator- and fist-first, and the scene lit up as though a star had been born on Ranéla’s surface.
When the light faded, everything in view had been scorched in an intense, near-nuclear heat, shadows burnt into faded ground. Only Lucene’s angelic form remained, ablaze in golden fire and with white wings extended. And then she sensed it. The shadows on the ground began to flicker, proving not to be burnt images at all but a hiding place for something sinister. “Very impressive, we two destroyers, aren’t we?”
“I am more than a destroyer,” she rebutted.
“Pity,” I replied. I waited for Lucene to blink, and when she did, when her view had darkened, I reappeared before her. In the brief span of time in which her eyes were still shut, I willed the shadows out of the ground and into my sorcerous grasp, after which I threw my arm wide across the scene. Purple-tinged darkness lanced out from me as though from an inverted lascannon, and Lucene opened her eyes just in time to shield herself in golden light. Where the shadows struck the ground around her, abyssal purple flames erupted, shattering the scene after her attack further and wider still.
Lucene shot forth for me again, but even before she had reached me, I was gone. I reappeared a short distance to her right, and just as quickly vanished again. I popped in and out of sight all around her a dozen times over the span of a second to overwhelm her senses, choosing at last to manifest above her. I plummeted Drepane into the ground where she stood, aware that she would backstep and dodge such an attack with ease, so I followed it up by punching a hand of witchfire into the hole Drepane had carved. Lucene found herself caught in the shadows that exploded out from the ground, and was subsequently blasted away from me, enshrouded in black flame.
She caught herself on her feet, and with a single beat of her wings, dismissed the darkling flames that had enshrouded her. But they had met her flesh despite her shielding power, singing her further. When the dark fire of my initial explosion faded, I had gone from her view once more. “I wouldn’t recommend trying that attack again, daemon,” she warned me.
“Why?” came the weak and weary response to her left, and she spun about in horror to face her lost friend, reanimated. “Why are we here, Lucy? What’s to be gained?” the Eldar asked her. “Think of what we’ve lost already.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Zaer,” she replied, but closed her eyes and shook her head. Mental imagery of the scene faded away, the Eldar, the ground, and the sky melting apart, and she found herself instead suspended in the air, trapped within a shadowy grasp. “You dare use my fallen friends against me?” she seethed. I stood a short distance before her, biological arm extended her way to keep her afloat and contained.
“It is what they do,” I sighed, nodding.
“Are you or aren’t you one of them?” she growled.
“I have never thought myself among the angels, if that answers your question,” I shrugged.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to be among the daemons,” she replied. “It’s your choice, whoever you are.”
“My choice?” I asked, scoffing. But then I thought about it. Much as I had never wanted this power, as I had never imagined such a horrible fate for myself, I understood that she was not wrong. I chose to get a name from Cronos to save Mirena’s life, I chose to live to fulfill Lucene’s dying wish. Would I get a third chance, and even if so, what could it possibly look like?
In my distraction, Lucene found an opportunity to surge power out from her form and shatter the grasp I had on her, letting her fly free of me. But she was not retreating, not really; once more, tentacles of light cascaded out of her form, and these ones flew for me directly. I dodged between them, at times physically and at others via minor Warp translation, but she must have been able to sense Warp signatures, as she persistently seemed to know where I was heading next. Even when I appeared before her, in midair, her surprise was only momentary at best, short enough that when I thrust a fist of shadow toward her, she deflected it with one arm and used the other to launch me away.
I vanished into a plume of black fire upon landing far below her, but she chose to follow me into the fire. She dove down, into the murky depths of darkness I had conjured, and illuminated them with another near-nuclear display of light. That time, I was the one to get burned, albeit only barely. But I had clearly forced her to give me her all; I decided, then, it was only fair that I do the same. I had, until then, been fighting with only one blade, Drepane, but the Pyran way was with two. As I leapt away from her dazzling shine, I thrust my witching hand to my side, and the shadows coalesced from the surrounding area and out of my body into an edge of darkness that mirrored the shape and size of Drepane to a T. Never before had I felt this power before; it was cool, icy, like cold steel within my grasp.
I brought both blades ahead of me, focusing on Lucene’s golden gaze that hung between their ends. And then I brought them to bear against her, Pyran-commissar-turned-nigh-daemonhost against Sister-Repentia-turned-nigh-angel, faith-forgotten versus power-undesired, and our clash was swift and merciless, like celestial bodies in collision. I cannot hope to fit a moment-to-moment description of our battle within this text, as Lucene and I traded too many blows in too short a time to ever begin to enumerate. Suffice to say that either of us could have eviscerated the nightmares of Abseradon, or crushed the Phaenonite Cabal, or shattered the Shatter Corps in an instant if faced with such ‘threats’ then. Our battle eclipsed anything therein, and yet for all our power, I knew in the back of my mind that even this display would not have changed the outcome Ouranos had designed for us, that for all we could muster, our fates were inescapable. Power was not enough. We needed something that neither of us had, and may never have.
That, then, must have been why Cronos was so confident that Lucene could not kill it.
Nothing was enough to kill it. Even our cataclysmic, earth-shattering battle drowned in the abyss of its deafening laughter.
It was when I full-body ducked under a horizontal slash of her Eviscerator that an opportunity to win presented itself, and I took it. As its monomolecular teeth screeched by, I briefly dropped Drepane to the ground and thrust my augmetic up against the flat of Lucene’s blade. With a simple flick of my thoughts, my augmetic hand shot upward, launching the blade far overhead, out of Lucene’s grasp. In her moment of surprise, I reeled my augmetic digits back to me while their mechanical forearm broke the shielding of her Rosarius with a trio of Psybolts. In that brief, millisecond-length downtime, I spun about, slashing through her flesh with the cold edge of my psykana while plucking Drepane from the ground, and in the same motion, closed both of my blades, material and ethereal, upon Lucene’s neck as she fell to her knees.
And my heart broke once more.
