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A More Perfect Union – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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A More Perfect Union

Rich McCormick

A soul-light, brighter than the rest. Not just brighter, but closer too, close enough to reveal itself as a vessel for countless smaller lights. They twinkle like a tiny galaxy, even through the gloom.

She taps at the glass, once, twice. Come here, little galaxy, she says. I can show you such pleasure.

It always started like this. The world was Harmony. An appropriate name. The sky was alive with swirls of pink and wisps of purple, pearl-white clouds layered on a turquoise horizon. It was beautiful, until it started falling.

A chunk of pure hatred, called forth from the void and hurled at Canticle City, whose screaming spires stood as a testament to the glory of the Emperor’s Children. The purple sky curdled, turning dark like a bruise, before it disappeared entirely.

Xantine looked up and stared at a dark mass the size of a city, wreathed in a halo of yellow fire, falling from the void. Black and gold, come to annihilate him.

The planet shook, and the towers – monuments to excess, to obsession, to beauty – toppled. A chunk of purple marble, polished to a perfect shine, fell across his body. Xantine lay, speared in place like an insect on a specimen table.

And then, a tug under his arms. Soft, it felt, like the touch of silk on skin. The ache in his legs dissipated. He was lifted up in gentle arms.

‘Xantine. We must go,’ said a voice.

Go? Go where? he wondered. His legs were shattered. The sky had vanished. Where could he escape to?

A tug again, harder this time, jolting him upwards. He looked down at the purple-armoured arms pulling his body up to a standing position.

‘Xantine.’

He looked up again at his Legion’s destroyer.

Xantine. This was another voice, a different voice. He was stumbling now, cradled in the crook of his rescuer’s arm, but he heard it, soft on the wind, yet somehow audible over the sound of the city’s death scream.

It was a voice of aching, of longing, of cloying desire. He felt it in the base of his neck, a frisson of delight in the darkness.

‘Xantine!’ This third voice was much less pleasant: harsh, metallic and accompanied by a cold blast of liquid. Xantine opened his eyes, tracing his long tongue around swollen lips, tasting something sweet.

Perilymph wine. A good vintage, too – good enough that he knew it could only belong to one individual on board this ship. Euphoros, warlord of the Children of Torment, and eminent power aboard the frigate Exhortation. Xantine steeled himself and opened turquoise eyes.

‘It has been some time since you made your way to my bedchamber, my lord,’ he said, draping a purple cloak around his naked body and drawing himself up to standing height with a predator’s grace.

Euphoros stood in the centre of Xantine’s quarters, his glassy black eyes staring, unblinking, from their pits in a puckered, inflamed face. ‘Truly it has, Xantine, my dear boy,’ he said, through a fang-ridged mouth that ran from ear to ear. His elaborate armour was heavily modified from the original form, decorated with barbed spines, engraved with scenes of debauchery, and festooned with golden tassels. It was largely painted black, except for a handful of panels that had been rendered in purple and mother-of-pearl.

He was different, once. The Euphoros Xantine had known had been a proud warrior of the III Legion who tried to strike out on his own after the destruction of Harmony, bringing with him a small warband of dispossessed Emperor’s Children who had escaped the collapse of their fortress-city. For a time, Euphoros succeeded, raiding and reaving with Xantine at his side along the fringes of the Chinchare Subsector.

But now the Legion wars were over, with Abaddon’s Black Legion the clear victor, and their hatred of their old rivals meant that as long as Euphoros’ warband wore the imperial purple of the Third, they were harried and harassed. So Euphoros had done the unthinkable – he had cast aside his allegiance to the Emperor’s Children, and joined the other worshippers of the Youngest God who chose to throw their lot in with Abaddon by taking the mantle of the Children of Torment. Xantine hated him for his decision.

‘So, my lord,’ Xantine asked. ‘Why come now?’

‘I missed you,’ Euphoros replied with exaggerated affection. ‘We missed you.’ Euphoros gestured at the hulking figure behind him, closer to the bedchamber’s ornate door. Vavisk, once captain of the Emperor’s Children 37th Company, now Noise Marine of the Children of Torment, inclined his head.

‘Brother,’ he croaked.

Vavisk rarely wore his helmet, but still his voice came filtered through a vox-grille, the shimmering metal grown out of the remnants of his mouth after long millennia in the warp. To compensate for the loss of a sensing organ, smaller mouths had sprouted on Vavisk’s neck. They opened and closed seemingly at random, whispering promises or tasting the air with fat little tongues.

‘In truth, we have guests, Xantine,’ Euphoros continued, pacing slowly around the opulent bedchamber. The thick carpet muffled his heavy footsteps. ‘As we speak, the Black Legion cruiser Shattered Blade arrives in-system with guidance to an unknown world, its alien riches already claimed by the Corpse-Emperor.’

He gesticulated as he spoke, turning his long-fingered hands and raising his arms in a theatrical flourish. The servos in his ornamented plate whirred musically with each sweeping movement.

‘We have operated on the fringes of Abaddon’s crusade, yet we have won glories beyond compare. Finally, we have been recognised for our perfection, and now our companions in the Black Legion come to us, to bring us into the fold.’ Euphoros turned, his black eyes shining. ‘Just as once we were brothers of the Emperor’s Children, first among equals in our father’s beautiful host, once again I give us that chance – to secure our rightful place at the pinnacle of Abaddon’s host, and to slake our thirsts with the Warmaster, as true members of the Black Legion.’

This was an ultimatum, Xantine realised. Under the bluster and theatrics, Xantine understood the deeper point. What other choice did Euphoros have? Short on men and materiel, his warband would have died out with time, afflicted by the same cancer that had almost strangled the Emperor’s Children at birth. To Euphoros, it was better to lap at the dregs of sensation than try to refill a spilled cup.

Xantine said nothing, and his warlord sighed. Pacing again, Euphoros made a show of inspecting the detritus he found in the bedchamber, jabbing an armoured boot at a collection of jars and containers piled up against an arming table, their lids removed and their contents drained. He bent down and plucked one from the floor. It was ceramic, etched with runes, and still rimed with frost. Euphoros cast a black-eyed glance in Xantine’s direction again.

‘What is it you desire, Xantine?’

Xantine considered the question. Sensation. Glory. Revenge. He caught his tongue between his sharpened teeth and bit down. The blooming taste of blood filled his mouth.

‘To serve you, my lord.’

Euphoros waited a beat, and then clapped his hands together. Golden talons clacked as they met each other over polished breastplate. ‘Good. Good! So much has changed, and yet, you remain my most faithful servant. I was worried. I hear pillow talk from souls that tell me you are lost to your…’ He looked at the empty containers. ‘To your predilections.’

‘No, my lord,’ Xantine said, and his soul rippled with the memory of the previous night’s excesses. ‘They are fleeting delights, nothing more.’

‘How excellent!’ Euphoros squealed. ‘Excellent. You are very dear to me, Xantine,’ he continued, his tone honeyed. ‘As I must be very dear to you, as your lord, your protector.’ He paused for a beat to let the words bite. ‘And your saviour.’

It had been an ultimatum. Now it was a threat.

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