Black Library Weekender 201415 by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-09T15:39:19+00:00

Hounds of Wrath

John French

‘Do not ask which creature screams in the night.

Do not question who waits for you in the shadow.

It is my cry that wakes you in the night,

And my body that crouches in the shadow.’

– Karazantor the Vile, the Traitor of Xian

Know this, the daemon is a lie.

The daemon claims supreme dominion. They claim that in time all will be their slaves, that reality will lie broken, and that they shall rule the realm of mortals for eternity. They say that it is destiny. They say, in the paradox time of the warp, that this has already happened. These claims, like every part of their nature, are false.

The daemon’s existence is a dream. Its power is the stolen strength of mortal minds. Its shape is an image painted onto existence so that we may look on them and know that our sins have returned for us. Though they have power it is a power which eats itself. The high daemons, which some call gods, squabble of souls and dominion, betraying each other and themselves. They are not predators. They are carrion.

Yet, for all its falsity, the daemon has the ability to twist the mind of the living, to make flesh a mockery, to defy death, and bring ruin on the works of mortals. When the warp waxes, and the neverborn walk through the veil, they have the strength to break armies and cast down heroes. They are always there, watching from the edge of thought, and the corner of sight.

The daemon is a lie, but it is a lie that can unmake reality.

I say this because I have made my life in the calling and controlling of these creatures. I am Ctesias, and I above all know the price for believing in the power of the gods and their children.

Arrogance is the mark of the sorcerer, and those of the Thousand Sons more than any. We make the mistake of thinking that because we are not slaves that we cannot be prey. This is a tale of how I made that mistake, and the price that I paid.

The Fall of Ignorance spun in the fires of its death. Its hull had split from prow to beneath the bridge. Its stern hung from broken bones of girder. Standing upon the bridge, I watched as a splinter of iron and stone the size of a hab-stack tumbled slowly through the void.

+Geller field failure.+

I looked up. Astraeos knelt on the deck

I shook my head and looked away without replying. The bridge was a cave of twisted metal open to the vacuum. Spheres of machine oil and blood drifted past me. Corpses, or rather parts of corpses, spun in lazy arcs. Portions of servitors hung from tangles of tubes and cables, still tethered to their systems. My eyes found pieces of power armour amongst the debris: a silver gauntlet set with a spiral of blue stones, a peg of severed bone projecting from within.

I sniffed. Inside my helm I could taste burnt meat and bitter ash

+No,+ I sent.

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