Death Eagles : The Long Truth

The Fahiri citizens, rammed together into makeshift prison cells within the civilian domestic zone, thought it
was thunder, though the sky was clear. Their gaolers, several hundred cultist fanatics left behind at the
dockyards of Fungal Farm Beta 34, wondered if it might be reinforcements dispatched from the pair of
warp-twisted frigates in low orbit.
They clutched weaponry tighter and peered upwards at the wide blue circle of bright desert sky half a
kilometre above, not yet able to see anything descending into the wide cavern access shaft. Enforcers among
them barged about, diaphanous robes billowing, screeching orders through their vox-unit masks and directing
their underlings to man the anti-aircraft positions that had been hastily erected amongst the dockyard derricks,
landing platforms and on jutting ledges up the throat of the shaft. Any Imperial transport, no matter their
armour or speed, would have severe difficulty making the descent to the dockyard without being blown to
scrap by the numerous autocannon and lascannon turrets which now groaned and stretched, creaked and
juddered, reaching their barrels hungrily towards the distant circle of sky. With less than two hundred metres of
diameter to the cavern shaft, there would be little to no room for manoeuvring either.
The rumbling grew louder. The Fahiri prisoners wailed and clutched their hands to their ears, throwing
themselves to the floor of their cells to lie prostrate in foetid pools of their own waste, which now visibly rippled
with headache-inducing vibrations.
And then doom was upon them, and with such devastating speed barely half a dozen shots were fired
by the Husks in defence. Two black, teardrop-slabs forged of ceramite, adamantium and wrath thundered
down the cavern shaft. Each glowed lava-red with atmospheric entry stress, like rocks hurled from heaven by a
vengeful god. They briefly fired retro-burners before smashing into the ground at the dockyard base - one
carved straight through a crane derrick and embedded itself in a raised landing platform, utterly obliterating the
quad auto-cannon and three-man crew ensconced there; the other landed fifty metres away at one of the
half-dozen rail-tunnel access points that led to the fungal field-caverns, ploughing straight through a
thousand-gallon storage hopper of promethium, which exploded into a searing lake of hungry flames, instantly
immolating the cultists nearby. They shrieked and flapped and fell into the fire, robes and skin charring and
blackening, their sutured vox-units sparking and blaring static from their agonised faces.
For a handful of seconds, the drop pods sat immobile. More cultists moved in around each one, taking
cover where they could, sighting autoguns, flamers and stubbers towards the ominous black transports.
Beneath the black charring of atmospheric entry, the heretic troopers could just make out a white winged claw
stencilled into the armour plating.
In perfect synchronicity on each drop pod, explosive release-bolts suddenly fired, slamming the five
armoured doors down into the ground. From the drop-pod on the landing platform strode armoured and
helmeted giants, already firing huge weapons that roared with ear-splitting booms and lethal accuracy. Their
legs and torsos were sheathed in deepest black; their arms, helmets and power-packs in purest white.The
Emperor’s aquila shone proudly in white on each broad chest-plate, and the winged claw symbol was stamped
in black upon every left shoulder-pauldron. Despite their size they moved with an eerie precision and economy
of movement. The enemy they faced were just ordinary humans hefting weapons of war, but they were
astartes, the Emperor’s own vengeful angels, living weapons with a human soul.
Five carried boltguns; they moved swiftly to the landing platform edges in a loose formation, heedless
of the sporadic enemy fire that sparked from their holy war-plate. Leaning out over the platform’s iron
stanchion, they judiciously picked targets and annihilated them. Robed bodies were flung explosively back
from their cover, deuterium-tipped bolt-rounds passing through gaudy robes and embedding in soft flesh
before detonating, blowing fountains of gore and limbs over their cringing fellows.
One particularly swift cultist crew managed to fire their twin-linked lascannon; the hasty shot speared
across from their sandbagged position on a neighbouring landing platform and exploded against the
drop-pod’s upper armour section, rupturing the ceramite and blasting debris out in a wide fan. The five Death
Eagles, now kneeling to brace their missile launchers, did not flinch away from their task even as chunks of
flaming wreckage spattered across them. Again, with that synchronicity borne of decades of training and
service together they each fired as one, five krak missiles rocketing towards their targets. Four cultist
emplacements spread across the dockyards ignited in fiery mushrooms, ammunition stacks cooking off in
larger secondary explosions which tore into any cultists unlucky enough to be sheltering too close.
Only one krak missile failed to score a direct hit, aimed at one of the overhanging shelf-emplacements
part way up the access shaft. It instead dug into the rock-cliff above the emplacement and detonated,
collapsing several tonnes of boulders and rubble down onto the screaming cultists, whose muffled cries were
quickly cut off as they were crushed. As the dust and echoing boom of detonation cleared, only the dented
barrel of one autocannon could be seen jutting forlornly above the rubble-pile.
By the access tunnel, the second drop pod disgorged a different cargo. Terminator-Captain Ouranos
Ida emerged slowly, his sacred tactical dreadnought plate limiting him to an ungainly jog at best. He stepped
straight into the lake of fire, the increased heat registered on his retinal display in precise celsius figures, yet
he felt nothing through the dense ceramite armour encasing his feet and shins as he hefted his huge, ornate
boarding shield before him and rested his combi-flamer, Ignis, on the corner indent. Following him came the
2nd Terminator squad of 1st Company, their Apothecary-Sergeant Acastus leading the way.
“Ready to hunt, brother?”
“Always, my Captain,” Acastus voxed back, gesturing with one of his two lightning-clawed hands back
over Ouranos’ shoulder. “But we have that screaming herd to clear first.”
Ouranos looked back towards the centre of the access shaft, away from Acastus and the drop-pod,
taking a moment to survey the scene. The railway line nearby snaked off into the near distance between raised
landing platforms, crane gantries and multi-storied storage warehouses. Further afield he could hear the
explosive retort of bolters and the return-fire of crackling autoguns. As he watched, a missile sailed across
from one of the obscured landing pads and thumped into a cultist position - no doubt Idaeus and 5th Tactical
going about their business with their usual precision.
More directly concerning was the wave of robed cultists rushing towards them down the tracks from
amongst the warehouse buildings. They began to take cover at the train carriages or by smashing out
warehouse windows. Ouranos braced his feet and raised his shield firmly as the first long range crackles of
autogun fire began to come his way.
“Defence Pattern Sigma!” The Captain barked, and his fellow Terminators moved quickly to respond.
With a whirring clatter Theano’s assault cannon roared to life, followed by the combi-bolters spread
amongst the rest of the squad. Ouranos sighted down Ignis’ stock, targeting reticules in his helm tagging the
traitor fanatics in red and labelling them with small Threat runes. Ouranos snorted quietly to himself as he
opened fire. Minor Irritation would be a more appropriate label. A smile curled his lips as he traced each target
among the patchy cover by the train-cars, waiting for heads or torsos to pop out of cover before hitting them
with single, precise bolt-shells that messily decapitated or eviscerated, sending fountains of red gore and bone
shards arcing through the air.
Presenting such a large target, the Terminators were difficult to miss and their layered ceramite armour
quickly became chipped, dented and cratered. Ouranos grunted in annoyance as a particularly lucky slug
ricocheted off his gauntlet and pinged up below the lip of his right shoulder pauldron, piercing the softer
inner-armour ribbing and lodging in the meat of his arm-pit. The bullet ground painfully against bone as he
swivelled angrily around in the direction the bullet had come from, his helmet helpfully providing a
reverse-trajectory path of the projectile and highlighting a cultist with more elaborately patterned mauve robes
and a flayed-skull helm above his ritually scarred face.The cult leader lowered his scoped rifle and scampered
back towards safety. Baring his teeth, the Captain slightly lowered his aim and fired off two quick shots that
blew out each knee, sending the cultist champion crunching into the ground headfirst and squealing with pain.
In the name of the Emperor, righteous vengeance, thought Ouranos, grinning again.
He blink-clicked the top right of a cluster of ten green runes showing on his visor display. “This is
Ouranos. We are negative on priority one. Only cultist filth here. Any leads at your end Idaeus?”
The vox-link crackled and jumped with interference, the tinny sound of gunfire and explosions coming
across as well.
“Hail, Captain. Some of the locals have pointed us in the right direction - they say the heretic astartes
disappeared down Access 4 a few hours ago.”
Ouranos craned his neck back as far as the joints in his helmet would allow in his Terminator helm,
creaking the ceramite and causing a whine of protest from joints and actuators around his neck. He peered up
at the slab of cliff face directly above him. An enormous ‘IV’ was riveted in place above the arched entrance in
five metre high steel letters. He gave a short bark of amusement - to Idaeus down the vox-link it sounded like
boulders tumbling down a hillside.
“The Emperor has blessed us with good fortune - we’re already there.”
 ***

It might not be the flashiest weapon, but for the umpteenth time in a couple of days Irsa Alaam thanked the
Allah-Emperor for the humble lasgun’s renowned hardiness. Vision blurring with tiredness and sleep
deprivation, she sighted down the laser scope, tucking the folding carbine stock tighter into her armpit. The
cavern lit up before her in false-green night vision, sloping rough and jaggedly down towards that damned
ma’an-pool she’d almost lost her weapon in. If they lived through this, the Earif would have her up on charges
for sure. As if she could hear her very thoughts, Irsa’s microbead clicked softly in her ear.
“I can hear you breathing from here, alhari. Calm yourself. Be still.”
Irsa willed her body to freeze, silently urging her chest to stop its nervous pounding against the inside
of her leather-edged flak-plate.
“My apologies, Earif. I am stillness.”
“Hrrnnn,” came her Sergeant’s response, gruffer and deeper than most of the women in the Fahiri
Rangers, which belied her petite stature. “Prove it again. We have no room for error here. You know what
hunts us.”
“Aye, Earif. Insha Allah.”
At the Earif’s words Irsa fought not to immediately bring to mind the horrors of the last days. Too much
heart-ache and shock to process. Too much terror, at the brief glimpses she’d had of the… she didn’t really
know what to call them, the hulking, mauve-armoured demi-gods that drove the hordes of hooded, infidel
cultists before them like shepherds behind their flock. Traitors, came the word unbidden into her mind.
Traitorous Angels. Irsa had spent many an idle thought during her monotonous punishment duties wondering
what she would feel if she were lucky enough to be in the presence of one of the Emperor’s angels, a real
astartes. Would she weep with joy and wonder? Be struck dumb by their majesty? Oh, what cruel irony that
she’d now give anything, anything, to never see their kind again.
Seeking distraction, Irsa flickered her eyes over the rest of the Rangers. It took a moment to discern
them, even when she flicked her nox-vis goggles to full gain. Raqib Parveen was ahead and a few metres to
the left of Irsa, expertly contouring her body around a large cluster of stalagmites close to the cavern-wall.
Impossible to camouflage fully, despite Parveen’s efforts to cover it in loose gravel from the rough floor, was
the intimidating stub of a meltagun. Ahead and to Irsa’s right, Shahnaz had buried herself in the scree slope
that flanked their position in the cavern, scooping handfuls of rock-chips to submerge her entire body bar the
suppressor barrel of her lascarbine and the top half of her face. The legendary Earif Mahdia herself was
somewhere behind Irsa, and even if she’d shuffled round to take a look towards the slit-crevice at the rear of
the cavern, she doubted she’d have seen anything. The Earif’s stealth skills, even among the Fahiri Rangers,
seemed close to supernatural.
Irsa stiffened suddenly as she heard footsteps echoing up from the tunnel ahead. She closed her eyes,
as all Rangers were trained to do, and listened. Sound travelled strangely through cave systems, echoing and
bouncing back on itself, travelling through thin areas of bedrock from tunnels below or above you. It could
deceive and trick, but it could also reveal a great deal, and especially so when the sound was made carelessly
and noisily.
Footsteps. Boots scraping scree. Grunts of effort and fatigue. Weapon belts clinking. Muttered curses
in a sibilant language. How many though, thought Irsa as she tried to count separate voices and footsteps as
they grew louder, closer. The number decides how we do this. Silent or Loud. She thought she could count-
“Just three,” muttered Shahnaz on the squad channel, beating her to it.
“Four,” Irsa snapped back, the tension lending her voice an edge she hadn’t intended.
“No,” the Earif flattened any argument before it could begin, and as she spoke Irsa could almost hear
the sergeant grinding her teeth together in grudging admiration. “They are learning. Listen. Behind those kafir
idiots at the front distracting us. At least ten more, attempting silence.”
Sure enough, now they were almost entering the cavern, Irsa could detect a quiet, padding shuffle of
many feet, with their boots either wrapped or removed. Damn them. Cunning. A dozen or more was too many.
It would have to be…
“Loud. You know the drill. Let them come fully in. Charges, Raqib?”
Irsa watched Parveen break her statuesque stillness to pull a blocky, metallic box from the side-pouch
of her pack. She silently pressed a trio of switches.
“Primed, Earif.”
“On my mark only.”
“Aye, Earif.”
Movement now at the cavern entrance. Three underslung stab-lights flickered back and forth, spawning
rock-shadows that spasmed and leapt. The lights swept forward steadily, obscuring the figures carrying them.
Confident, loud strides towards the middle of the cavern. And a good fifteen metres behind them, a cluster of
crouched, torchless shapes crept low over the rocks, just as the Earif had detected.
Irsa’s heart pounded in her chest, nervous sweat dripped stinging into her eyes but she refused to
blink, centering her crosshair just above the centre stab-light. Her finger felt slick and clammy on the metal
trigger. Any moment now…
“Cut the lead group down,” The Earif ordered across the squad-vox, the hunger in her tone coming
clearly through the link. Irsa let out a half-breath and squeezed the trigger. Three hissing darts of light, one
from each Ranger, cut almost simultaneously across the shortening distance and sliced into the shocked
cultists.
In the split-second flash of light from the discharges Irsa watched her las-bolt take the Cultist smack in
the face, entering just above the rough metal rebreather and below an eye, blowing a mess of brain matter and
skull fragments from the back of its head in a gory fountain. It collapsed in an undignified heap without a
sound. The Earif had similarly struck accurately and downed her cultist but Shahnaz had been less lucky, her
las-bolt deflected by a poor angle on some kind of armour beneath the cultist’s dirt-stained pink robes. Hurled
onto his backside by the impact, the heretic trooper fired instinctively as he fell, blasting a cluster of hard-round
bullets from an autogun in the general direction of the Ranger’s positions. The shots went wild, cracking into
the cavern wall and Isra’s limestone shelf, making her grimace and look sharply away to avoid taking any
stone splinters to her eyes or face.
The supporting group of cultists moving stealthily at the rear of the cavern had obviously been
half-expecting an ambush of some kind, and they reacted quickly. Seeing their comrades cut down, they raced
to whatever cover they could find ahead of them amongst the stalagmites and natural gullies in the cavern
floor before laying down a hail of suppressing fire.
Irsa, the Earif and Shahnaz tried to pick out clear targets but were forced gradually back by the sheer
weight of firepower coming their way, being outnumbered four-to-one. Irsa found her fear quickly transformed
into cold fury with each shot she fired. For Siddiqah. The stock thumped back into her shoulder. For Valiqa. For
Wahida. For Yasna. For Hafsah. For Dunya. Her squad had numbered ten at some point far back in the distant
past of two days ago.
She crouch-ran back towards the rear of the cavern again, adrenaline-fuelled heartbeat pounding in her
ears as hard-rounds exploded the scree around her boots. Vaulting a waist-high boulder she slipped on an
invisible pool of water on the other side. Her legs flew from under her, the world twisted and she cracked her
helmeted head hard on the ground, sending stars flashing across her vision. She must have blacked out for a
second, because now she was being dragged roughly across rocky ground by a vice-like grip holding her
flak-armour shoulder straps. The Earif flashed a wolfish grimace down at her, then looked back up to crack off
another shot at the Cultists with the laspistol in her other hand.
“You’ll kill no kafir lying on your ass, alhari. Ready for the big finish?”
Irsa nodded her thanks and scrambled up to stare back down the cavern, trying to shake off the
pounding in her head.
The cultists must have sensed they held a numerical advantage, for they suddenly began howling as
one. Not just a warcry but a full, throat-tearing scream issuing from every modified rebreather, the sound
amplified by both crude throat augmetics and the acoustics of the cave. The first time Irsa had seen the enemy
do this, the effect had been overwhelmingly terrifying enough to send her instinctively scrambling back, hands
clamped over her ears to try and halt the disorientating clamour. Hearing it now for the third time was no less
terrifying, but she endured it stoically, knowing what it heralded.
Still screaming and in eerie unison, the heretics rose and charged out of cover, sprinting up the cavern
towards them. Such was their fervour and malice, not one enemy trooper noticed the three fist-sized
melta-charges fixed to the cavern floor as they raced by them.
The Earif knew the moment had come too, judging by the grin splitting her lined, dark features once
again. Irsa briefly marvelled how anyone could be facing a charging horde of traitor cultists a mile underground
while suffering sleep-deprivation and still smile.
“Mark.”
If there was one thing above all the Fahiri Rangers prided themselves on, it was having a preternatural
feel for the very rock itself - the fissures and cracks, the seams and waterways, how it strengthened or
weakened the stone. Which areas would react badly to explosives, and which parts of the rock would respond
predictably. They had chosen their ambush location for a good reason.
The shaped melta-charges directed their volcanic heat downwards, causing the entire cavern floor in a
roughly ten-metre wide oval to collapse into the deep-crust fissure hidden below, taking a half-dozen of the
screaming cultists down too. From Isra’s viewpoint at the cavern-head it seemed like there was a muffled
whump and the front rank of charging troopers simply disappeared, swallowed up by the very planet itself. The
remaining four cultists who were further back were able to arrest their charge in time before they too fell into
the now gaping pit before them. A quick, panicked bark of conversation between them, and they whipped
around to flee back the way they had come.
Parveen sprang the final surprise from where she had been lying prone, invisible and silent among the
larger outcrop of stalagmites. Her meltagun roared to life, first atomising the fleeing heretics at brutally close
range, then sweeping back and across the cavern ceiling causing great chunks of granite, limestone and
basalt to thunder down with an almighty roar. As the last pebbles trickled down, the cavern entrance was now
completely choked off and impassable.
““Charges remaining?” the Earif asked gruffly, as each of the other three Rangers rose slowly from their
pockmarked cover, brushing themselves down and stretching cramped limbs.
Parveen’s expression beneath her crop of black fringe said it all. “Two, Earif.”
Their leader nodded wearily and gestured at the tunnel the remaining cultists had disappeared down.
“We follow.”
***

Husk Sezech had reached out to pull Master Arith-ken away from the armoured white giants who had crashed
devastating and accurate death into their ranks. The Master was thrashing and mewling in a most delectable
way, and Sezech along with three other Husk-mates had leaned forward to drink in the delicious display of
pain and suffering despite the ongoing firefight. But amongst the squealing whines and screeching,
pain-jagged huffs emerging from the vox sutured to Master Arith-ken’s face, the four Husks also discerned
some clear orders - take the message to the Radiant Ones. The enemy has come!
Sezech dragged himself from the fight with the white giants and down the railway track to the caves
where the Radiant Ones had been hunting. Screams from ahead told him he was close. High-pitched, female
screams. Ducking under a low overhang of rock and clambering up a limestone shelf, the narrow passage
suddenly opened up into a wider cavern, and the screams abruptly cut off. Sezech slowed and panned his
stab-light back and forth, the beam flickering from wet-slick rock, metre-tall bioluminescent fungal growths and
across to a roaring waterfall that dropped noisily into a black plunge-pool. And right by the pool…
An inhumanly large and winged armoured form, crouching over a bloodied and prone human female in
black fatigues. Sezech’s stab-light glittered from power armour the pale pinkish-purple of infected flesh.
 He prostrated himself, mouth-vox scratching and scraping on pebbles as he pushed his face into the
cave-floor. A sick, hot-iron stench filled the holes where his nose used to be. The boot-steps stopped, close to
his face. Now or never.
“Lord Radiant, oh glorious one, the great enemy are here, at the dockyard!” he rasped into the stones.
“Slaves of the corpse-Emperor!”
The last thing Husk-mate Sezech heard was the motor-actuator growls of a huge boot lifting, before it
descended with careful slowness to first creak, then splatter-crush his skull like a shattering watermelon. He
felt every moment of it.

***

The six Terminators moved virtually unopposed for a kilometre. The tracks had led them to the true fungal
fields and Ouranos, despite a long life doing the Emperor’s work across countless different environs, both
human and alien, couldn’t help but marvel at the underground vista that opened up before him.
This was how a desert world like Al Fahir could become an alpha-level exporter of fungal protein,
feeding billions across multiple systems. A previously natural cavern system, carved by a meandering
underground river, had been ruthlessly expanded in all directions. The river had been undermined, reshaped
and constrained by irrigation channels. The cavern roof had been raised to a height of twenty metres and
enormous humidity racks had been driven up into the rock, threaded by raised iron gantries for lighting, misting
and observation of the crop. Plascrete columns the width of a warlord titan’s leg were spaced at fifty metre
intervals to support the roof, and they stretched further than Ouranos could see to the left and right.
Filling the majority of the space at ground level were the crop, and they were unlike anything the
Terminator-Captain had seen before. He watched as Helios stomped up beside one of the towering fungi,
laying his huge, power-fisted right hand against the trunk and giving it an experimental push. It barely moved.
“Leave it, Helios,” he snapped. “Fall in.”
“Truthkeeper,” Helios rumbled back over the squad channel, using Ouranos’ secondary honorific as a
term of deference. He turned and began to move forward between the rows of fungi again, taking point in their
small formation, stout helm swinging left and right to scan for threats.
“The rats flee our light,” murmured Cyclades as they walked. “Understandable for such vermin. But
where are their masters? The Emperor’s Children, these ‘Radiant Blades’, don’t usually hide from us.”
“They must have heard you were on the planet brother, and fled screaming,” replied Scamander,
flexing the fingers of his power fist in a thoughtless, habitual tic. He was one of the few Death Eagles who had
managed to retain a portion of his human sense of humour since ascending. “I too would flee this squad to
gain distance from you if I wasn’t sure our noble Truthkeepers here would gun me down for such cowardice.”
Ouranos muted the squad channel briefly as the Terminators fell into their familiar pattern of brotherly
squad banter, even Theano, who joined in with curt hand signals to maintain his vow of silence. He allowed it
to continue - it was their habit and they were no less alert or competent for it. Instead, Ouranos opened a
separate vox-link to Acastus again.
“We need this, brother. A good harvest. You’ve seen the current stock levels.”
A pause pregnant with tension. “Yes, Captain. Only nineteen viable specimens remain in cryo-storage.
And our initiate survival rate is -”
“Abysmal, I know.” Ouranos allowed himself to confess a fear he would only share among
Truthkeepers. “We are dying, Acastus, one fight at a time. It can’t go on like this.”
“Sir!” Acastus suddenly tensed and crouched, peering through the mushroom trunks. The
Terminator-Captain immediately issued a curt stream of orders, forming the Death Eagles into a flexible
formation of close pairs that might account for a variety of threats.
A grating, static-laden chanting became audible, preceding the arrival of first dozens, then hundreds of
colourfully-robed heretic Husks. They walked calmly forwards from access tunnels and massed before the
Death Eagles. Intent and staring and manic, they still stayed outside of effective range, for now. Theano, letting
his servo-harness bear the weight of his assault cannon, glanced towards the Captain and signed quickly with
his free hand. Ouranos opened a squad-wide channel in response, so they’d all hear him.
“No Theano, I think we faced worse odds at Proxima Five. How will these wretches penetrate your
blessed relic-armour? What protection do they have from their fickle gods that will protect their frail, pathetic
bodies?” Ouranos’ voice rose as he warmed to his monologue.
For the Death Eagles, Truthkeepers filled a triple role: they were at once Apothecary, Chaplain and
Line Officer. Here were the skills of the Chaplain for all to see, stoking his brothers’ humours from embers to a
potent fire, all the better to cleanse the foul heretics that opposed them.
“We are astartes! We are Death Eagles! We keep the long truth, and we protect that truth with a holy
fury that sears the darkness and sends it reeling!” He raised Ignis high and strode ahead of the line of
Terminators. “Cull these vermin! Cut through them to the true heretics, those vile astartes scum who betrayed
the Emperor, who betrayed us, that defile our legacy with every breath they take! With me now! For the
Emperor!”
At that, the Death Eagles roared their assent, beat fists to armoured chests and strode forward, a
rumbling wall of white Terminator plate passing through the fungal forest. In response, the blasphemous
chanting rose to a final crescendo of screaming, an incredible volume that caused Ouranos’ helmet sensorium
to temporarily shut off audio input, lest the intense noise damage its aural circuitry.
At the peak of their scream, faces taut with ecstasy, the heretics charged. Ranged weaponry forgotten,
they instead drew knives, cudgels, hatchets and swords. Ouranos almost laughed at the primitive war materiel.
And at last, as he peered over his boarding shield at the wave of frenetic humanity thundering towards him, he
saw what he hoped to see - on a high gantryway on the far side of the fungal fields, five Emperor’s Children
had appeared.
 Their pale mauve, Mk 3 power armour was edged with black and silver, their bolters of an ornate and
outdated pattern. They wore their abhorrent mutant physiology with pride, for Ouranos could make out folds of
pale flesh that seeped through armour gaps, additional limbs and spined growths protruding through ceramite.
One heretic stood out above the rest: a good head taller than the others, with tattered bat-like wings
rising directly from his mutated power pack. He was hard to focus on, the air moving and shimmering around
him like he was underwater. Ouranos immediately fought to stay focussed, such was his rage at sighting their
hated enemy.
“Keep moving! We must keep momentum! Drive forward, do not stop!”
As they jogged forward, the Death Eagles opened fire at long range, for they could not possibly miss
such a densely packed target, shredding into the cultists, eviscerating some completely. The front ranks of the
cultists immediately became a charnel pool of gore and filth that slipped and slowed the following ranks, but
still they came, whipped into a fervour and believing the eyes of their dark gods were upon them.
As they closed the last few metres, Ouranos called, “Pace! And… brace!”
Each Terminator simultaneously slowed his jog to a steady walk and raised his power fist, ready to
smash down. Then the cultist charge hit them, and Ouranos’ world was reduced to just a few metres around
him. He had no time to process anything but the rise and fall of his thunder hammer, the crashing and beating
upon his shield from the wave of waist-high heretic filth. Multiple hands clung to the rim of his shield, trying to
drag it down through sheer weight of numbers. In his right hand he swept back and forth ahead of him with his
hammer, the charged head shattering bones, slamming back four or five crippled cultists with each sweep and
backsweep. They kept coming.
His boots were now crunching wetly through the corpses he had butchered with each footstep. His
steps became laboured; hands were dragging at his knee and thigh-plates, poking sharp pricks of pain into
armour seams with rusty knives. Those that couldn’t reach an armour-gap hammered and cut at his plate
armour in blind fury, despite the futility of it. He roared and risked a quick sweep downward and around with his
shield, trying to clear the bodies from his limbs. At the brief opening, a half-dozen screeching figures hurled
themselves up his side, clawing and dragging at his helmet and shoulders.
One filthy, gauze-wrapped body almost entirely hugged itself around his helmet, and Ouranos could
feel filth-encrusted fingernails scrabbling at the back of his neck, trying to pierce his neck joint. He smashed it
away with the back of his fisted hand rather than drop his shield. And still, the screaming! Every vox-stamped
face that pressed itself against him and was hammered away was still screeching at full volume. In the corner
of his vision, Scamander’s green rune flickered and turned grey, followed by a faint flatline whine. There was
no time for grief; only rage.
Enough! He rammed his shield into the ground, straight through two Husks, pinioning them together in
a bloody, fatal embrace. With a hand free he reached for Ignis mag-clamped to his thigh and triggered the
flamer where it was, immolating both himself and every cultist in a five-metre radius. Burning from head to boot
now in liquid promethium, Ouranos drew Ignis fully and panned it back and forth ahead of him, sending
shrieking, blackened Husks thrashing to the ground. And at last, clear space ahead of him opened up. The
flames were now eating their way through his punctured armour joints in numerous places, firing off red alert
runes in his helmet that warned of compromised suit integrity. He grimaced and put several quick bolt-rounds
into the humidifier racks above him; the water reservoirs there shattered and poured down, smothering the
voracious fires smouldering across his armour.
Ouranos took a moment to turn and take in the state of his squad as they stumped to a halt beside him.
Their previously pristine white plate was washed crimson with blood, chipped, dented and pock-marked.
Helios’ combi-bolter was gone along with the hand that had wielded it, and his whole left arm hung limply.
Cyclades had discarded his helmet and was clearly blinded in one eye, coagulated gore streaking down
beneath his right socket. Scamander…
Ouranos looked beyond his brothers, back twenty metres. Slumped against a fungal trunk and buried
beneath a dozen cultist corpses was the enormous armoured form, staked through both eye-lenses with
punch-knives. A messy and ignoble way to go.
Ouranos shook his head and turned back to the others. “Gather your strength brothers. The traitors
sought to weaken us with their fodder; now they come for us.”
As the Death Eagles had waded through the human tide, the Emperor’s Children had not been idle.
Dropping to the cavern floor from their gantry with rock-cracking impacts, they now moved in to engage. The
winged leader leapt and flapped higher, clinging to a humidifier rack far out of range, seemingly content to
observe his servants doing the fighting for now.
Coward, thought Ouranos. Unworthy of the gene-seed you carry.

***

The heretics were completely unaware of them as they rushed headlong back to the surface. The tunnels
were, of course, familiar to the Fahiri women, and Irsa soon realised their route was going to lead them via
Fungal Farm 4, back towards the Dockyards.
They eventually emerged high on a ledge which overlooked the enormous fungal crop. A furious battle
was in full flow below them. Irsa gasped at the scene below.
Six enormous white space marines stood surrounded by a cultist slaughter metres deep. The Imperium
had come to save them! Allah-Emperor hu akbar!
But their liberation was not yet certain. More power-armoured figures strode towards them, hefting
enormous weapons. But these were not noble, inspiring forms. These monsters were the stuff of nightmares
brought to life and wrapped in warped purple armour. And ahead of them, on the metal gantry not fifty metres
distant… something even more horrific, winged and daemonic. Irsa struggled to even look at it, the air writhing
and flickering around its form like it only had a half a presence in this reality. They were fortunate it had not
noticed them, but its attention seemed to be entirely focused on the space marines below.
 “What do we do?” Shahnaz flickered her brown-eyed gaze across each of them, a little manic hysteria
starting to creep into her tone. “What can we do? We fled one of their kind before. Now there are five of the
kafir devils!”
Earif Mahdia put a calming hand on shoulder.
“Our duty. Our sacred duty. These monsters defile our planet, our land, our home. We will do what we
can to hurt them, insha allah-Emperor. Fighting beside the space marines of legend?” Mahdia huffed and
grinned. “If I am to die today, I can think of worse ways to go. I want that one, whatever the feek it is,” she
gestured at the flickering, winged nightmare ahead of them, “to go back to the khara-hole it came from. Who’s
going to help me?”
Their only real chance, as the Earif saw it, was to get Parveen’s meltagun close enough for one good
shot. Their reserve plan was the two melta-charges they had left - the Earif took one and Shahnaz the other.
Though none of them said it, they knew why; redundancy. Now Irsa followed her comrades along the gantry,
closing as stealthily as they could on the beast.
The battle had changed tone below, with both loyal and heretic astartes clashing in a ferocious and
brutal close-quarters fight, but Irsa couldn’t spare a glance to watch. She carefully placed each black boot one
in front of the other, silently willing the rusted metal not to creak. The tumult from the combat below would
surely have drowned it, but she had heard rumours that the space marines had supernaturally powerful
senses. Presumably that applied to the warp-twisted versions as well? They were thirty metres away now, in a
loose spread across the gantry, each woman pacing slowly forward with gun-sights locked to the …thing.
Closer, she could now make out a few more details about it. Several hazy outlines of it seemed to flicker and
twitch around it. It seemed large even for an astartes, towering at least twice Irsa’s height. The leathery,
chiropteran wings seemed to have burst through the purple armour, as had multiple pale-skinned growths
through various rents and tears in the plating, Irsa noticed with revulsion. Its face was turned away, observing
the loyalists below, but it seemed curiously unarmed. Despite its stillness, it had an intense aura of threatening
lethality about it, like an alpha-predator taking the time to strike. The sheer unholy blasphemy of its very
presence had her mind screaming to flee or fire.
Surely we’re close enough? Irsa silently willed to her sergeant. No closer to this madness.
Evidently the Earif was of a similar mind, for at that moment she raised her fist before nodding to
Parveen. The Raqib gripped her meltagun tightly, breathed in a slow breath, and braced to fire.

***

Five Terminator-armoured astartes with the righteous fury of the Emperor on their side would normally have
overwhelming superiority against mere power-armoured astartes. But in his centuries as a Death Eagle,
Ouranos had learned this wasn’t always the case when hunting Emperor’s Children. If they were more
newly-inducted recruits rather than traitors of the long war, then yes, they were outclassed. But the rarer, true
veterans of the Long War, those heretic astartes who had fought in the Heresy… they had survived, killed and
thrived for millennia. As this skirmish began, it quickly became apparent to the Terminator-Captain that these
five were certainly of the latter breed. A challenge. He thought to himself, smiling. Good.
They simply would not engage in a fair fight. Purple-armoured figures flickered between fungal trunks,
loosing off quick shots and never presenting a clear target. They moved swiftly in a wide circle to surround the
slower moving Terminators. And like predators picking out the weakest in a herd, Ouranos noticed they
increasingly focused on both injured Death Eagles, Helios and Cyclades.
A flurry of bolt-shells from two directions impacted against Cyclades’ chest-armour, sending ceramite
chips flying and staggering him back with a roar. Ouranos turned and tried to move his shredded boarding
shield to protect his brother, but he was too slow - as Cyclades flailed back, bare head exposed, a perfectly
judged bolt-shot punched through his neck just below the jaw and detonated, exploding his skull with a wet
crunch. His headless corpse clattered heavily to the ground in the middle of his brothers, an unmoving mound
of white plate soiled with blood, dirt and viscera. The Captain noted with added despair that the shot had
precisely obliterated the progenoid gland in Cyclades’ neck, leaving nothing of his gene-seed legacy to
recover.
Ouranos growled. They would be gradually picked apart like this. “Hunt them!” he snarled into his
helmet-vox. “Split up and bring them down!”
Acknowledgement blips lit his helmet display and without further ceremony each remaining Terminator
stomped after a tormenting purple shadow. As Ouranos advanced, he began to hear deep laughter ahead. A
bolt-shell detonated suddenly against his shield, then another against his shin-guard, causing him to stumble
slightly.
“Face me!” he bellowed in Low Gothic through his external helmet speakers. “I am Ouranos,
Truthkeeper of the Death Eagles, and you fight like a coward, heretic scum.”
“You are delightfully arrogant,” came the purring reply. “Your kind take exquisitely long to die. I will pry
you out of that old relic, peel your flesh while you live, and inscribe my name upon your bones.”
From the shadow of a fungal trunk emerged a warped reflection of all an astartes should be. The chaos
space marine wielded an ancient pattern of bolt pistol and a wickedly toothed and barbed chainsword. His
armour was intricately decorated with swirling, gilded patterns of eyes, horns and mouths, and he regarded
Ouranos with eye-lenses that glittered coldly blue. He displayed no outward mutation, but the Captain knew
the armour could hide all manner of foul corruption.
Mag-clipping his combi-flamer to his thigh, Ouranos drew his thunder hammer and flourished it once
before him before leading with a powerful overhand swing, which the heretic evaded, sliding to the right and
slamming the hooked chainsword into his shield. The traitor wrenched hard, trying to yank it away, and
Ouranos obliged, releasing the shield abruptly, wrong-footing the Emperor’s Child. Ouranos took the
opportunity, crashing the hammer back round into his foe’s left side. The concussive boom of the impact
echoed around them and the traitor fell back, elaborate chest armour shattered. As he swung the hammer up
again for a killing blow, the chaos marine frantically fired bolt-pistol rounds into Ouranos’ helmet from prone
and the detonations blinded him, his downward strike thundering into the ground as the traitor rolled away. He
regained his feet and hefted Ouranos’ own shield, chainsword raised behind it.
“Don’t you grow tired of doing a false idol’s work?” spat the chaos marine. “You are a slave! I am free to
do what I wish, enjoy what I wish.”
“Eizai anachnios kia to doros ouk, aitha to parro pierso,” Ouranos responded in Chemosian - the home
planet language of the Emperor’s Children. You are unworthy of your gift, and I will reclaim it from your corpse.
The heretic momentarily froze in shock, and that was all the opening Ouranos required. He whipped
the hammer low, shattering his enemy’s left leg at the thigh and barged forward, knocking the chainsword
aside and easily body-slamming the purple-armoured astartes to the ground again. He raised a huge,
armoured foot and pressed it down against the shattered carapace. His foe still seemed in a daze, offering little
resistance.
“How do you... Poiros esai?” he spluttered.
Ouranos leaned down, closed his fist around the softer neck armour and began to squeeze. Choked
gasps emerged from the vox-grille of the purple helmet.
“I am you. As you should have been.”

***

At first, Irsa thought the blinding flash was something misfiring in the Raqib’s meltagun, but the weapon had
not fired. Where the daemonic space marine had stood before, there was now a flickering rupture in reality.
Irsa was blown from her feet by a blast of displaced air from behind her. She skidded across the
gantryway and clung to a balustrade column, narrowly avoiding falling into the fungal crop below. She looked
back to her squadmates with horror, for the beast was now, impossibly, right amongst them. It had torn through
another rent in reality and with a horrifically ecstatic smile across its too-perfect features, it set about
dismembering her fellow Rangers.
With a pitiful wail, Parveen was shorn in half at the waist by a massive sweep of bone-spur
finger-talons, blood spraying several metres to splatter onto the iron by Irsa. The two halves of her toppled
apart in different directions, the Raqib’s face muscles still twitching and eyes rolling in surprised agony.
The Earif screamed a wordless warcry and went for the melta charge at her waist but the daemon was
too fast, backhanding her aside and punching a crushing follow-up jab into her abdomen, talons punching and
tearing through her stomach. Mahdia was flung back against the balustrade, crimson spilling from her mouth.
She sank to the floor, fingers twitching and curling, legs drumming in spasms.
The heretic champion smiled indulgently and stalked towards her, but was distracted by a scream from
Shahnaz. Unable to comprehend the unfolding horror, she was running for her life back down the gantry. With
another flicker-jump, the beast appeared above her, slamming down onto her back as she ran and crushing
her into the metal floor. Shahnaz thrashed and screamed but the daemon seemed to enjoy her terror. It slowly,
tenderly grasped one of her flailing arms and pulled, wrenching the limb from its socket with a sick crack of
torn tendons and wrenched bones.
Irsa found herself still standing frozen.
Allah-Emperor, protect me.
She opened up on full-auto, clean white lasbolts streaking down the narrow gantry to pepper into
leathery wings and ancient power pack. It rose and turned, crunching a purple-armoured boot through
Shahnaz’s back as it did so. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, terror hijacked her mind and screamed at
her to run run run. She had dropped her lascarbine. She couldn’t remember doing so. Her limbs would not
respond to her. She watched excruciating death close in, until the beast loomed, reaching out blood-encrusted
talons towards her… and with an incredible effort of will she broke the trance enough to throw herself
backwards… she was falling, the air rushing past… then a jarring impact, and blackness.

***

“Well?”
“It is done, Truthkeeper. Apart from their champion. They put up a good fight, but Theano and I
cornered the last one on the way back towards the pods. Returning to you now sir.”
“Intact and recovered?”
“Yes sir, they’re with me. Three of them look good.”
“Hmm. Fine. Get back fast, Acastus. That last one looked a threat.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ouranos blink-clicked the vox-link closed and nodded to Helios, who returned the gesture.
“How is it?”
“Ach,” grimaced Helios, raising the ragged stump where his hand and storm-bolter had been.
“Suit-stimms are flowing hard and I can’t feel it. I can still fight, Captain.”
He raised his oversized power fist and clenched the fingers together. Ouranos’ mouth twitched,
threatening to break into a smile.
“I don’t doubt it. Let’s find that last one - it was somewhere above us.”
Moving slowly together, the two Terminators scanned the gloomy heights of the cavern above them.
They had pursued the Emperor’s Children a short way from where they had originally seen the chaos
champion, and so headed back in that direction. Fungal trunks eventually gave way to the cleared area of the
cavern where they had made their stand, clearly marked by the high-tide mark of torn and bloodied cultist
bodies which lapped messily around the white, humped islands of the two Death Eagle corpses.
Ouranos pointed Ignis up at the overhead gantry that clung to the cavern ceiling. “Do you see that? On
the gantry? Filter for heat signatures.”
 After a pause while Helios adjusted his helmet/lense feed, the Death Eagle responded, “Human bodies,
Captain. Cooling but still hot, so probably recent casualties. There’s one on the ground over there that’s still
registering a heartbeat, and perhaps one up high, though it’s very weak.”
“I didn’t see any heretic filth on that gantry before, just the winged champion. Let’s check the closer
one.”
The heartbeat signature was about twenty metres distant, but hidden from normal vision by the dense
crop. As they turned towards it, Ouranos abruptly felt a change in the air pressure around him. A subtle
change, like someone opening a window to the outside a few rooms and closed doors away. Tiny, wriggling
slivers of lightning began to dance along Ignis’ barrel, and the air felt incredibly still, as if reality held its breath.
Ouranos didn’t speak, but instead signed a quick combat cant to Helios and they fell into defensive
stances. The Captain swung his helm back and forth, scanning the ground ahead and trying to pinpoint where
the focal point of the psychic disturbance was…
A great, weeping slash in reality split apart not ten metres ahead of them, and through it stepped the
last Emperor’s Children marine. Evidently he had served a long and fruitful bondage to the fourth dark god, for
his resemblance to a ‘normal’ astartes was fading into insignificance. Ouranos didn’t waste time with
declarations of heroism or a demand to know the name of his enemy. He flicked Ignis to combi setting and
bathed the monstrosity in flames and bolt-rounds.
++ I am Radiant, ++ The voice knifed through both their minds with migraine-inducing force. ++You
will submit. ++
Great wings arched and curled down around its mauve carapace, dispersing the flames. Each
bolt-shell seemed to detonate a half-metre ahead of the creature, foiled by some kind of psychic barrier. As
Ignis clicked dry, the wings whipped back upright to reveal an angelically perfect face with intense blue eyes.
Ouranos was instinctively reminded of images he had seen of the Phoenician before his descent to corruption,
madness and daemonhood. This one clearly had a strong genetic link to his primarch father. Good.
With another rapidly signed cant, each Terminator split left and right, moving to surround and engage
the daemon. Helios held his power fist low and ready to strike, while Ouranos drew his thunder-hammer once
more and thumbed it live, the charge instantly vaporising the blood stains that crusted the edge into red mist.
Dropping his shredded shield to the ground with a thump, he instead took the hammer in a wide, two-handed
grip.
++So laughably predictable. You move like sons of Guilliman, but I lose track of all the ways you
have divided and weakened yourselves over the millennia.++
As he spoke into their minds, the chaos champion flicked his head back and forth between the two
Terminators, raising a fist to face each of them. From each of his bare white knuckles, four bony spurs
protruded. Ouranos and Helios circled slowly, gradually closing, timing their moment of attack.
++You bear eagle’s wings upon your shoulders. I see your Corpse-Emperor is bestowing that
reward upon even the weakest of thinblood chapters now. In my time, the Emperor’s Children alone
bore that honour. You are not worthy of it.++
 “We are the only ones worthy of it!” roared Ouranos, and stepped in to attack, swinging low as Helios
simultaneously punched high at the Radiant’s face. He swatted the hammer aside and ducked below the fist,
spinning to Helios’ dead-arm side and trying to stab at the Terminator’s face. As Helios hunched and ducked,
the talons instead sheared through the thick hood-armour behind his helmet, carving through with little
resistance. Ouranos followed up fast, trying to distract the beast, but the flapping, beating wings were a
weapon in themselves, blocking his advance, thrusting him back and flicking out of the way of his hammer
strikes.
Helios tried to step back out of range of the lethal bone-spurs but the Radiant pressed forward, allowing
him no space. With no way to defend himself while one-armed, Helios desperately tried to punch forward,
power fist crackling, but the Radiant read the move. With a leering smile, it punched both hand-talons through
the clenched power fist. Helios’ bellow of pain and defiance was cut short by the daemon headbutting him
square in the helmet. The power must have been incredible for Ouranos saw the helmet buckle inwards, both
eye-lenses shattering. Helios went immediately limp and crumpled to the floor.
Vowing silent revenge, Ouranos took advantage of the champion’s distraction. Dropping the hammer
into just his right hand, he swung back. He used his free left hand to grab a fistful of leathery wing membrane
and yanked it aside, before summoning all his Terminator-armoured strength to swing hard into the
Champion’s exposed right leg at the knee joint. The powered hammer-head struck true, clanging as it
shattered the armour and buckled the knee joint.
++Nyaaaaahhh++
The pained scream erupted both psychically and audibly. Beating his wings furiously, the Radiant left
the ground and whipped round to hover before Ouranos, blue eyes icy with fury, crushed leg dangling limply a
few metres above the ground. A cold, white-blue light began to grow and emanate from the daemon,
illuminating the ground below and underside of the gantry above. Sudden shadows leapt to life from the fungal
trunks around them. Ouranos grimly set his boots and stared upwards, gripping his thunder-hammer firmly.
++Enough. I will crush your mind, and use your body as I see fit. Perhaps a gift to my lord
Slaa-neth, to fill with another of my brethren.++
Without warning Ouranos’ head exploded with pain. At first he thought he’d been shot in the skull, but
the pain grew and grew and didn’t end. His suit sensorium went into overload and flooded his nervous system
with pain-balms and stimms, deducing from his heartbeat and ravaged pain receptors that he must be
grievously wounded. But this was an assault on his mind, not his body. He was kneeling now, screaming and
screaming and screaming. He felt his sanity starting to unravel, an unholy fire in his brain burning away his
sense of self. With a last wrench of defiant effort through the agony, he raised his helm to stare hatefully up
into the face of his enemy.

***
Irsa awoke with a start to a flash of blue light. The back of her head was an angry mess of swelling and pain,
while her ankle was almost certainly broken. For a dazed moment she couldn’t remember who she was or
what she was supposed to be doing, but then… that chaos beast! She struggled upright, braced herself
against a fungal trunk and looked for the source of the blue light.
There, hovering beneath the gantry was the nightmare, glowing a sickly blue-white. On the ground
before it was one of the loyalist astartes she had seen before. He was crippled, writhing in invisible pain. She
had to try and help, but her lascarbine was… she stared up at the gantry, and as she did so, she saw
something incredible. The Earif had crawled and dragged herself to the edge of the gantry. She was still alive!
Irsa could see blood dripping through the iron grille where her torn belly was pressing against it. The sergeant
looked down at the daemon hovering below her and swung her legs painfully around until she was sitting on
the edge, like a child dangling their legs into a pool before they plunged into the cold. In her bloodied lap she
cradled… both melta charges.
Irsa felt rooted to the spot, unable to cry out or act as Earif Mahdia shuffled herself forward, slipped
from the ledge… and fell five metres to land with a crack directly on the daemon’s warp-fused power pack. It
didn’t have time to react; the melta charges instantly detonated, vaporising both the chaos-infused astartes
and the brave woman clinging to its back.
Irsa gasped and shielded her eyes from the flash-glare. When she looked again, the blue light had
been completely snuffed out. On the bloodied ground, chunks of scorched power armour and smoking, torn
flesh were scattered around, the largest of which comprised both the head and a chunk of upper torso. Those
terrible blue eyes were now glazed and dim.

***

Ouranos clambered unsteadily back to his feet, breath sawing jaggedly and head still pounding painfully. The
psychic assault had fried his helmet sensors to such an extent that he disengaged the seals and lifted it from
his head, mag-clamping it to his belt with shaking hands. He breathed deep of the humid cavern air and the
earthy scent of the mushrooms, trying to recover his composure. Never had he felt so weak before, his
Terminator plate virtually propping him upright. Within the armour, his body, despite its multitude of post-human
upgrades, felt like it was determined to lay down and switch off for several hours. He angrily pushed the
impulse away; there were yet more duties to complete.
First he checked over Helios - his brother-marine was alive, incredibly, though the damage to his skull
had triggered his sus-an membrane and dropped him into a deep recovery coma. Even as an apothecary
Ouranos did not want to disturb Helios’ natural healing rhythms, so he left the Terminator alone where he was
for now, prone on the damp, dark ground.
Next he turned to the charred and smoking remains of the Radiant, a bleak smile breaking out on his
bare face. Such was the blinding pain at the time, he had no clear idea of what had destroyed the
daemon-astartes; perhaps its fickle god had turned on it, perhaps it had drawn too deeply from the well of
warp-power for its psychic abilities and had obliterated itself in the process. Whatever the case, he was
pleased to see the head and upper torso relatively intact. He knelt by the remains with a growl of armour
servos and quickly scanned his narthecium over the pale flesh at the neck. The return information was good,
indicating the progenoid gland had not been mutated beyond viable parameters. Now the surgical reductor
blade deployed to carve a neat incision, and with an action perfected through centuries of repetition, Ouranos
reached his other hand into the slit, eyes narrowed with concentration as he pushed into the nest of fibrous
tendons and connective tissues before carefully peeling the progenoid out. Holding it aloft and rising again, he
paused to pull a few stringy bits of gristle from its surface and sealed it into the cryo-canister at his waist,
murmuring a few sacred words of ritual as he did so.
After more rigorous testing in the Apothecarium aboard the Clawed Fury to determine its purity and
viability, it could, eventually, be implanted into a Death Eagles novitiate. Emperor’s Children geneseed
returned to Loyalist astartes - the driving ideal and hidden truth of the Death Eagles.
“What… what are you doing?”
Ouranos swivelled as fast as his immense armour would allow him to, drawing and levelling Ignis in
one smooth motion. In his sights, not ten paces away, was a dark-skinned human female. She gasped and
dropped to her knees with a cry at his threatening posture, hands raised in protest. She was unarmed but
dressed in similar fatigues to some of the corpses he had passed on his way into the cavern. He kept Ignis
trained on her.
“You are a survivor of the Guard PDF here,” he rumbled. A statement, not a question.
She nodded and nervously brushed a strand of wiry hair from her forehead, which was dotted with
dried blood.
“I’m Irsa, I’m…” Her lips trembled and eyes glistened moistly. “I’m the only one left.” She looked past
him to the corpse of the Radiant again, eyes wide with confusion. “What were you doing with that… thing, my
lord?”
A coldness settled on Ouranos as he realised the import of her words. She had seen. She had seen
the long truth of the Death Eagles. Face blank and emotionless, Ouranos advanced slowly towards her, Ignis
still raised.
“I’m sorry.”
“My lord?” She began to push herself instinctively backwards from the enormous Terminator stalking
towards her. “What are you doing? We are loyal! I am loyal to the allah-Emperor! Please! You’re here to save
us, aren’t you? I am on your side!”
She scrambled backwards now, voice becoming panicked and high. She backed up against a fungal
trunk, running out of room to retreat. Ouranos loomed above her, face impassive, the large barrel of Ignis still
aimed at her chest.
“Please! I don’t know what I saw! I won’t say anything! I won’t! Please!” Irsa sobbed out the words
between shallow, terrified breaths. Ouranos paused. His finger curled on the trigger.
“You’re right.”