him, watching as the hive fleet of the Great Devourer drew ever nearer. The bridge of his corsair
flagship was dark. Reclining upon his throne, with its razor-sharp barbs rising around him, he
scowled at the holographic images appearing before him.
He saw the twin moons orbiting the giant gas planet, with the flickering ghost-image of his
bladed ship pulling away from them. His ship was as one with the darkness, and had the voracious
organism-ships of the Great Devourer not been encroaching, Drazjaer was confident that he could
have preyed upon this system for years to come without detection.
As the moons had finally completed their long arc around the gas giant and emerged into the
light of the system’s dying star, the dark eldar ship had slipped unseen through the mon-keigh
blockade. It was likely that none had even registered his ship’s presence, and those that had would
have seen nothing more suspicious than a passenger freighter of their own design.
He had plied his trade in this system for two months, relying on the mimic engines and shadow
fields of his slave-ship to confuse the mon-keigh scanners, while his warriors raided the evacuating
populations. Within visual range, the mimic engines would no longer be able to fool even the pitiful
scanners of the mon-keigh, but still his ship would be almost impossible to pinpoint, thanks to the
shadow fields that cloaked its presence, and it was easy to keep out of the visual range of the
lumbering mon-keigh ships.
It had proved a profitable and successful hunt, and thousands of souls were held in the torture
decks below, ready for delivery to Commoragh. Still, it was not enough, and for the thousandth time
Drazjaer cursed the very existence of the black-hearted lord of the Black Heart cabal, Asdrubael
Vect. The tribute he demanded was extortionate. Drazjaer had hoped that raiding this one sector
would have provided enough souls to please the vicious lord, and it had come close, but his time
here was done.
Within the day, the tyranids would have overrun the prey-moons. The mimic engines would not
fool the hive-mind. It was time to move on, to continue his raids elsewhere, for to return to
Commoragh without his full tribute was out of the question.
Dismissing the observation screen with a thought, Drazjaer swung away from the console, which
retracted smoothly into the floor behind him. He saw one of his Incubi guards waiting for him, head
bowed.
“What is it?” the dracon asked.
“There is a problem on antitherea deck, lord dracon,” murmured one of the incubi, his voice
distorted by his tormentor helm.
With his screens down and completely confident that his mimic engines and shadow fields
would be able to fool any of the mon-keigh vessels, Drazjaer did not see the Astartes stoke cruiser
turning towards his ship.
Marduk hacked a path through the press of inmates, slashing with the blade-limb and sending them
reeling away from him, blood pumping from severed limbs. Those who fell were crushed in the rush
to escape, and the man, Baranov, kept close behind him.
The First Acolyte had the skeletal form of the haemonculus in a headlock, using his body as a
shield in front of him, and he hacked the blade through the neck of another inmate, who turned
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towards him, froth spilling from his mouth. The guards were being overwhelmed by the surge of
slaves and paid Marduk no mind as they fought for their lives, weapons spitting and torturous
electro-whips snapping.
“This way, I’m sure of it!” shouted Baranov, directing Marduk down a side corridor. The slave
deck was a labyrinth of side-tunnels and holding cells, and everywhere was chaos as the slaves set
upon their captors and each other with insane fury. Marduk had sworn that he would make the xenos
scum suffer for the ignoble sufferings that had been committed upon his flesh, and he smiled to see
the mayhem he had wrought.
Marduk moved past dozens of cells. The wretched inmates still cowered within many of them,
crouching in the corners, rocking back and forth, their heads in their hands, but it did not matter.
Enough of the slaves were hell-bent on overcoming their captors to provide an adequate distortion.
“There!” shouted Baranov, pointing towards what looked like a dead end. “That is where they
brought me from.”
Marduk swung down the corridor. A group of eldar warriors was backed up against its end, a
circular, closed aperture behind them. A slave, a human, launched itself at Marduk, hands clawing
for him, but the First Acolyte slashed his blade across its face.
With the haemonculus held in a brutal headlock, Marduk broke into a ran, dropping his shoulder
and barging his way through the crowd towards the far end of the corridor. Baranov struggled to
keep up, running in his destructive wake.
With a swat of his arm, Marduk slammed the first of the guards back into the wall, and slashed
his blade across the neck of the second, blood gushing from the wound.
Something stabbed into Marduk’s unarmoured back, and his body was jolted as his pain
receptors flared, and his muscles twitched uncontrollably. He lost his grip on the haemonculus, who
slumped to the ground in a bloody heap, and twisted around to see a trident sparking with energy
jabbed into his flesh, held in the grasp of a blade-helmeted dark eldar warrior. He grabbed the haft
of the weapon, sending flaring pain up his arm, and swung it upwards, sending the warrior wielding
the weapon smashing into the low roof. The warrior released its hold on the trident, and Marduk
turned and impaled another of its dark kin on its points.
“Get the doors open,” he barked, spinning and decapitating another warrior with a sweep of his
blade.
“I’m trying,” shouted Baranov, his fingers flickering over the glowing rune of a side-panel.
“Try harder,” roared Marduk, just before he was slammed back against the wall as a comscating
arc of dark energy struck him square in the chest, fired from the snub-nosed rifle of another enemy.
The eldar warrior was about to fire on him again, but stumbled as another slave slammed into his
back, knocking the eldar off-balance and towards Marduk. The First Acolyte reared up with a growl,
the flesh of his chest blistered and smoking, and slammed his fist up into the eldar’s chin, throwing
his full force behind the blow.
The warrior’s neck snapped backwards with an audible crack, and Marduk positioned himself in
a protective position in front of Baranov, ensuring that no one came near him. He saw the
haemonculus clawing away from him on the floor, and at a whim he placed his still-armoured foot
upon the skeletal eldar’s elongated cranium, pinning it to the floor.
“It’s not opening,” said Baranov desperately. “It’s been locked down, or something.”
“You can open it for me,” Marduk said to the haemonculus, exerting more pressure on the
creature’s skull. It gurgled something, and Marduk bent down and picked it up by the scruff of its
neck. His fingers completely encircling its neck, he held it half a metre above the ground. He pushed
Baranov roughly aside.
“Open it,” Marduk growled, and slammed the haemonculus’s head into the control panel for
emphasis. Its nose broke, and blood splattered across the black panel.
The eldar gargled something, but its voice was unintelligible, and Marduk slammed its face into
the panel again.
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“Open it,” he hissed again, before slamming its head into the panel once more. Its face was a
bloody ruin, its nose smashed, and blood and mucus was smeared across the deathly visage.
“You’ll kill it,” warned Baranov, but the haemonculus lifted one of its claw-like hands, reaching
blearily towards the panel.
The eldar’s fingers stabbed at a series of runes and blade-arcs of the circular door slid open.
An armed group of eldar warriors stood beyond the doors, a hundred slender rifles lowered
towards him. At the centre stood a tall figure in glistening black, barbed and segmented armour, its
pale xenos face staring at him with noble arrogance. He saw the long-haired bitch that had ensnared
him at its side, and a milky-eyed creature, glowing blue runes carved upon its ebony flesh.
“You… lose,” gargled the haemonculus, looking up at him in triumph.
“I don’t think so,” said Marduk, and slammed the haemonculus’s head into the control panel
once more, this time with fatal force. Its skull crumpled.
He flicked his glance towards Baranov, whose face was pale as he stared out at the horde of
enemy warriors before them.
“Stay close to me,” hissed Marduk.
Letting the dead figure of the haemonculus slump to the ground, leaving a smear of brainmatter
across the control panel’s surface, Marduk lifted his head high and stared defiantly at the eldar,
awaiting his fate as a warrior of Lorgar.
Blood covering his heavily scarred, naked torso, Marduk locked his eyes on the central eldar
figure. This one was clearly the leader of the dark kin, and if he had any hope of escape, it lay in
him. The arrogant bastard stood with his arms folded across his chest, blades gleaming down its
forearms, a look of utter contempt and sardonic humour on his xenos face. Surrounded by over a
hundred of his warriors, all with weapons lowered, the haughty eldar lord sneered down his nose at
Marduk.
“This is the prey-slave that has caused all this disturbance?” he asked, enunciating the words in a
perfect, old form of Low Gothic. “I am disappointed. It does not look like much.”
“I’ve still got the strength to rip your heathen head from its shoulders, xenos filth,” growled
Marduk. “Come, face me alone, if you have the nerve.”
“Face you alone?” laughed the dark eldar lord. “You are far beyond any mon-keigh notions of
honour, fool.”
“Coward,” snapped Marduk. “Even unarmoured you fear to face one of the blessed warriors of
Lorgar.”
The fiery-haired wych that had ensnared Marduk stood alongside the eldar lord, and said
something sharp in the twisted eldar tongue, her eyes flashing and her hand darting towards one of
the blades strapped to her slim waist. Her intent was clear: she wished to face Marduk in her lord’s
stead.
“Let your lapdog bitch fight,” urged Marduk, fixing his hate-filled gaze upon the wych. “I’ll tear
her beating heart from her chest and laugh as I watch the life drain from her eyes.”
The dark lord snapped something sharp as the wych took a step towards him, sneering, and she
paused.
“I have no wish to see you dead, prey-slave,” said the dark lord, “and I fear that Atherak will not
hold a killing blow. You are less than nothing to me, one of a race that exists merely to be preyed
upon. You have no right of challenge.”
Marduk’s muscles tensed in anger.
Having been stripped of his blessed armour, and with his flesh covered in the hellish wounds
inflicted on him by the ministrations of the haemonculus, Marduk was but a shadow of his former
self, but still his bulk and strength were impressive to behold. He advanced towards the arc of
enemy warriors with his head held high, determined to face his fate defiant and proud to the end.
Marduk grinned, as he called the darkness forth.
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Never before had Marduk felt such power as coursed through him now, and he felt the presence of
the darkling god of Chaos, Slaanesh, surge into his being, almost shattering Marduk’s sanity with
the full force of its potency.
Marduk had always honoured Chaos in all its guises, and had reproached those within his flock
who had strayed too close to the worship of any of the infinitesimal deities of the immaterium in
isolation. He had never felt the attentions of any single god upon him like he did now, and he
struggled to maintain control as the Prince of Pleasure exerted its will upon him. He fell to one knee,
clenching his eyes closed tightly, struggling not to be overwhelmed by the surging power that
threatened to tear him apart.
Do not fight me, whispered a seductive voice in his mind, its power staggering. The voice was
silken, though behind its whisper Marduk could hear a billion souls screaming in torment and
ecstasy. The power of the words ripped through his soul, and a tortured groan escaped his lips.
It is not for you that I come.
In an instant, Marduk lowered his defences, allowing the full potency of Slaanesh to manifest
within him.
“Get it out of my sight,” said the dark eldar lord, unaware of the power growing within Marduk.
Arrogant fool, thought the First Acolyte, he still believes me to be contained by the null-field
device.
Marduk’s face snapped up, his eyes a milky, pale blue with narrow slits in place of his pupils.
“I know what it is that you fear,” Marduk hissed in a voice that was not his own, and the dark
eldar lord recoiled as if physically struck. “Your souls are mine!”
“The Great Enemy,” breathed the dracon in horror, speaking in the eldar tongue, though Marduk
found that he could understand its words.
The First Acolyte pushed himself to his feet, feeling immeasurable power suffusing his body,
and he lifted his arms out wide to either side, palms upwards. He could feel the panic and fear flow
from the gathered eldar warriors, washing over him in a tantalising, delicious wave.
Marduk exhaled, and a pink mist rolled from his throat, filling the air with its heady, musky
aroma.
“Kill it! Kill it now!” screamed the eldar lord, and a hundred weapons fired, as if his words had
snapped his warriors from their horrified paralysis.
The air was filled with thousands of barbed splinters, lances of dark matter and comscating arcs
of energy.
None of the shots struck his flesh as Marduk continued to exhale, the mist curling and billowing
from his mouth. Splinters slowed as they came within centimetres of his flesh, dropping to the floor
in their hundreds with a musical ring, and beams of dark matter fizzled and dissipated as they seared
towards him. Arcs of energy flowed around his body, leaving his flesh unscathed.
The pale mist rolled across the floor, and the eldar recoiled, continuing to fire their weapons as
they backed away.
“Come to me, my handmaidens,” hissed the voice speaking through Marduk.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
Baranov threw himself backwards as the eldar began to fire, and stray shots sliced through the air
around him as he scrambled back behind the doors leading into the slave deck. His heart beating
wildly, he pushed himself backwards with his feet, so that he came to rest with his back up against
