Retribution

Retribution

Hello! This was my entry for the Cold Open Stories monthly flash fiction contest with the theme of personal vendettas. I decided to use one of the most famous rivalries in 40k lore between the Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. The story is set during the Siege of the Fenris System in the final days of M41, when Magnus the Red and his followers invaded the worlds of the Sons in Russ in retribution for the razing of Prospero during the Horus Heresy. My story wasn't chosen by the COS judges for publication, but I'm still proud of it!

It is impossible to tell where reality ends and the Immaterium begins. The veil between dimensions is not just torn but tattered. The Architect of Fate is the undeniable master of the arcane arts, and his daemonic host is likewise skilled. They overrun the battlefield in dazzling sublimity, scorching the land with the coruscating fires of change.

With these infernal beings march my brothers and me. We are neither mortal nor monster, but warriors, once crusaders for human supremacy. We now fight for ourselves. Our motives are as many as the warbands present at this siege. We each have our reasons for being here. I can only speak for mine.

The Rubicae under my command advance with determined gaits, firing their relic bolters into the enemy ranks. They have no motives or minds of their own, only blind acceptance of my will. Ahriman turned them to soulless husks eons ago. I will make that wrong right too. But one vendetta at a time.

I know this pack of Wolves. I know their heraldry. I search for a familiar face. Granite-hewn features. Icy blue eyes. Braided tawny hair. A tattoo of runes on his forehead.

I have thought of this face for hundreds of thousands of years. I care nothing for the corpse sitting atop the throne on Terra. I do not seek the gifts and favours of Dark Gods. For me there was never a Long War or a Black Crusade. Just that face, forever burned into my memory, and revenge.

I see him. His hair is no longer tawny but grey. His left eye is now a red-glowing oculus implant. His face is still stone but heavily scarred. The tattoo of runes on his brow is now one part of an elaborate pictorial story running across his cheeks, jaw, and neck. He wears an immense charcoal-coloured wolfskin over his pauldrons. He locks his azure eyes on me, my face obscured behind the distinctive headgear of my legion. I sense no recognition on his part. A shame.

I point at him. “You.”

He hears me, even over the din of combat around us. The faces of his nearby brothers appear as bewildered his does.

“On Tizca you slaughtered my mentor. A teacher and a friend. Today you answer for that. What is your name, dog?”

The warrior does not hesitate. “Rurik Fangs-First!”

“Know that Qadim Abydos is the one to kill you.”

He charges me before I remove my sword from its sheath. It is the blade of a sorcerer, intricately engraved with the glyphs of a long-dead language, the rare jewels in its hilt conduits of fell energies. Rurik hefts his two-handed axe and brings it down in a pulverizing arc. I parry the blow, the axe sizzling against the power field encasing my weapon. It takes all my concentration to resist the momentum behind the strike.

Rurik laughs. His aura is the same as it was over one thousand years ago on Prospero: unthinking brutality, a killer instinct. But it is the laugh that clinches it. That throaty, jeering laugh of contempt. This is the Wolf, to be certain.

I expect him to pull away, to back up and swing again. Instead, he keeps his weight of his axe upon my sword and kicks me square on my breastplate, causing me to stagger back.

I send images to his mind, memories I have relived over and over. My life as an aspirant, then my initiation into the XV Legion. My commander, my teacher, Xorias Typhon. As Tizca falls, he buys my brothers and I time to escape. To our shame we run, leaving him to die, cut down to the sound of Rurik’s laugh. I turned, and the Wolf’s face was the last thing I saw before the Crimson King transported us to sanctuary.

From then to this moment, from the burning of Prospero to the siege of Fenris, I have hunted him through the stars. At last, we meet again. I show Rurik all this through my psychic power, and slowly he understands the story I weave.

His face is contorted with rage. “Out of my head!”

“Xorias Typhon!” I cry.

He lets out a guttural grunt as he swings his axe wildly. Even with the distance between us I almost fail to dodge it.

“His name was Xorias Typhon!”

I can tell he is not listening. He is consumed by fury.

As he starts to run toward me, I begin to chant as I run a hand over my sword. A malign intelligence slowly awakens in the blade, which begins to radiate with a cerulean light.

Rurik freezes mid-stride. His every molecule is stuck in place, succumbed to an arcane paralysis rendering him helpless. A spectre emerges from my blade, a ghostly mass of twisting flesh and limbs. It lets out a psychic shriek that leaves me deafened before it swirls smoke-like around Rurik, gradually sifting through his mouth, nostrils, and ears.

I am grateful the Wolves tend to forgo their helms in battle, for it also means I can watch the confusion in his eyes. Astartes may know no fear, but Rurik demonstrates that we are capable of shock. I sense him searching for meaning as he becomes host to a being he does not comprehend, an eldritch wraith even older and more powerful than he, me, or any other of our kind. I have not just killed him; I have made his body host to a creature of Chaos, and a powerful one at that.

Rurik contorts and writhes, his body bulging and breaking underneath his armour. Soon the ceramite cracks, and Rurik is no longer Rurik, but a bulk of obscene and monstrous anatomy. Insane and mindless, he roars as he rampages among the Wolves.

I care not what comes. Fenris may fall. Terra may burn. Our war goes on. But I know this: I have had my retribution.