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Daemonbreaker – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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I

The butcher’s hatchet bit into Aveline’s shield hard enough to drive her to one knee. It was a clumsy overhand swing delivered with more fervour than skill, but its wielder – a factorum worker with thickly corded muscles that spoke of a life of manual labour – might be a worthy threat nonetheless. He had been huge even before the blasphemous alterations the Cult of the Eightfold Prophet had wrought on his flesh, but now he was truly monstrous. His skin was etched with unholy sigils and stretched tight over the hulking slabs of muscle beneath. He roared, and fish hooks through the corners of his lips stretched his mouth into a crude square, revealing bloodstained teeth sharpened to points and a forked serpent’s tongue.

Wasting time on threat displays was his first mistake. If he had followed up his first blow with a second, he might even have injured her. Fool. Aveline raised her shield and rose to her feet in a single smooth movement, bringing the hallowed mace in her right hand around to slam into the heretic’s knee with a satisfying crunch of splintering bone. His roars turned to screams, and the air filled with smoke as the mace’s power field seared through skin and fat and set his ragged breeches alight; but he stayed on his feet, drawing back the rusty hatchet for another blow.

This time she was ready. Aveline shifted to her right, letting the heavy blade glance from the edge of her shield so that the heretic lunged forward, unbalanced for a mere second before righting himself. She swung her mace deliberately wide of his face, and as he stepped back out of reach of the sparking power field, she pulled the trigger of the bolt pistol nestled into the grip of her shield. The shell struck him in the centre of his chest, obliterating the carved eight-pointed star and the ribcage beneath and sending a sizeable proportion of his internal organs spraying through a massive exit wound in his back. The bloodshot eyes went wide as a torrent of blood surged from between the sharpened teeth, and then he toppled backwards to lie twitching on the cracked astrogranite.

‘Faithful defenders of the shrine, rejoice!’ Aveline’s vox-amplified words boomed across the battlefield, drowning out the dying heretic’s choking rattle and the howls of his living companions. ‘The hour of your deliverance is at hand!’

‘Praise be to the God-Emperor!’ A ragged cheer went up from the shrine’s defenders, and a swift volley of las-bolts streaked from the parapet to dispatch a cluster of heretics.

‘The Sisters! The Sisters have come!’

‘Hail the blessed daughters of the God-Emperor!’

Aveline raised her mace overhead, blue-white light arcing between its flanges like bolts of lightning, bright as the triumph surging through her. ‘I am Celestian Sacresant Aveline Aboyé of the Order of the Sacred Rose, and I swear to you this shrine will not fall!’

The heretic at her feet moaned. She crushed his skull with a contemptuous overhand blow, and paused to savour the sweetness of the moment.

They had arrived on the Imperial world of Struthian Tertius at exactly the right time to turn the tide of battle, just as she had planned. The beleaguered planetary militia were fighting valiantly on the white granite walls of the Shrine of Saint Lycestra of the Nine Wounds, but it had been clear from the state of their defences and the increasingly sporadic volleys of las-bolts fired that their reserves were dwindling and their morale was close to shattering.

But all of that was as it should be.

The Sisters of the Sacred Rose were there to bring victory in the God-Emperor’s holy name, and with their arrival the outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt.

‘For the Prophet!’ A woman with the same filed teeth as the dead butcher ran screaming towards her, a bloodstained carving knife raised above her head.

‘Your prophet is a liar.’ Aveline spat the words with utter contempt. She smashed the knife from the woman’s right hand with an upward blow that struck her open jaw. The heretic’s head snapped back, her teeth shattering before she crumpled to the ground and lay still.

‘Do you hear that, false prophet?’ Aveline shouted. ‘I have come to deliver you the God-Emperor’s judgement!’

‘My lady, a moment.’ The soft voice through her vox-bead was laden with apology, but Aveline felt a flicker of irritation. Now was not the time for distractions, no matter how humble their source.

She knocked another cultist aside with her shield while staving in the skull of his gibbering companion. ‘What is it, novitiate? Moments of my time are in’ – she took a third at the knees, sending him to the ground screaming and clutching at his mangled legs – ‘short supply!’

Another cheer rose from the defenders on the parapets. She raised her mace in acknowledgement then unleashed a backhand blow that sent a malformed heretic flying.

‘Sacresant Superior, please, if you would only wait–’

‘If you cannot keep pace, Marguerite, the fault is not mine.’ Why was the girl so slow? The battle was ahead of them – there would be no glory found lingering in the rear.

A rune flashed in the corner of Aveline’s visor display, a fine green line tracing an outline around a human shape in the centre of the cultists. ‘My Sisters,’ she called. ‘I have sight of the false prophet.’

‘Moving to your position.’ The contrast between Novitiate Marguerite’s wavering voice and Dominion Superior Vasiliki’s confident reply could hardly have been starker.

‘Please, my lady, let me fight at your side.’

Aveline rolled her eyes and cut the vox-channel. A place in the spear-point of the advance was something earned, not given – and speed was worth a hundred quavering novitiates. A cultist darted towards her wielding a bloodstained pick, and she punched out with the edge of her shield, crumpling his skull inwards. A mace-strike crushed the chest of his companion, and she stepped over the bodies, pushing through the howling throng that blocked her path to the walls, her mace shattering skulls and limbs and ribcages, her shield slamming heretics to the ground, the precious shells of her bolt pistol spent sparingly to thin the crowd whenever they pressed in too close. This was her destiny, this fierce exultant joy that drove her on through the bone-splintering carnage, pulled towards victory as though the God-Emperor Himself waited to welcome her behind the shrine’s marble walls.

The cultists were nothing but a distraction – she could slay every one of them and the cult would grow back like tumours on the face of a rad-labourer. The prophet was the rotting heart at its centre. Carve out her malign presence, and the cult would cease to be.

‘Come and fight me, coward! Are your false gods so weak you do not dare face me?’

The throng parted, revealing the prophet clearly for the first time. She was a slight woman, her shoulders lopsided and misshapen beneath her robe. She lowered her hood, revealing a face composed of two mismatched halves – the left side twisted in a rictus grin, the right grotesquely deformed, with a bloodshot eye the size of a clenched fist bulging in its socket like an amphibian’s and the brow distorted by a single gore-smeared horn that protruded through her mottled skin. The twisted mouth stretched wider, and she extended her right hand in mocking benediction.

‘The blessings of the true gods be upon you!’

A ripple of force surged from the prophet’s outstretched hand, sending cultists scattering in all directions. It struck Aveline’s shield like a Dreadnought’s fist, pushing her back across the broken earth with warning runes flashing in her visor display. Bright, searing anger surged through her – that the witch should desecrate this place of sanctity, corrupt the weak, and stand against the God-Emperor’s chosen.

‘Know your place, witch!’

She pressed forward again, but another pair of cultists were already bearing down on her – one a lanky youth with eight-pointed stars branded into every visible inch of flesh, the other a woman dressed in the rags of a society matriarch’s robe, foaming at the mouth as she spat out a stream of syllables devoid of meaning or reason. Aveline crushed the lower half of her face to a bloody pulp with her gauntleted fist, took the legs out from under the youth with a sweeping kick, aimed her bolt pistol between his eyes and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber, and the boy grinned up from the ground, his mouth full of blackened teeth.

‘Your corpse-god has deserted you!’

‘The God-Emperor is with me.’ She silenced his blasphemous tongue with the heel of her boot and stepped over his corpse, searching the melee for the prophet. A storm bolter roared somewhere behind her, heralding the welcome approach of Dominion Superior Vasiliki and her squad. The battle might not yet be over, but the tide was turning and the heretics’ fervour was becoming fear despite all the prophet’s efforts.

This had gone on long enough.

Aveline sprinted forward, the motorised joints of her leg armour granting each stride inhuman strength. She bore down on the prophet like the God-Emperor’s vengeance, with her mace drawn back to strike, shield raised to deflect another burst of arcane force, her ears full of the roar of the shrine’s defenders as they called out her name. The prophet stepped back, stumbled, then fell to one knee, and Aveline brought her mace down… to jar to a halt inches from the heretic’s skull, held back by an invisible dome.

The witch’s jagged mouth stretched wide until the lower half of her face was nothing but torn lips and a row of serrated teeth. Aveline strained against the unnatural barrier, and the prophet’s face twisted with effort. A spider web of capillaries ruptured in the woman’s bulging eyeball and turned the yellow sclera a vivid carmine.

‘Know my place, corpse-god’s daughter?’ the prophet rasped. ‘And where is that?’

A shadow moved in the corner of Aveline’s vision, and she reacted just in time to deflect a broken section of column with her shield. Pain blossomed through her shoulder and chest as the heretic’s hands set the air rippling like a heat-haze. An eerie, keening hum filled her ears, growing louder and higher, and the shattered debris of the broken column rose slowly into the air along with the witch herself. Ice crystals were forming on the false prophet’s skin and on the gilded edge of Aveline’s shield. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees in an instant. Was the prophet planning to freeze them all to death?

‘Your place is with all your kind!’ Aveline forced herself upright, banishing all doubt with an effort of will. ‘On the pyre where you belong!’

‘Not today!’ The witch’s mismatched eyes rolled back in her head, and she drew back her hands to unleash another blast of sorcerous energies.

Aveline struck.

This time there was no force shield to deflect the blow. Her mace smote the witch squarely in the midriff and sent her flying back to smash into the statue of Saint Lycestra. The heretic slithered to the ground, leaving a broad smear of blood on the white marble behind her, and Aveline was on her immediately, shield braced against any further sorcery – but none came. The prophet lay still, eyes closed, her breath coming in heavy, irregular rasps.

‘You will burn,’ Aveline said. She looked down at the dying woman and felt only contempt. If the witch had ever been truly human, ever truly faithful, she had taken the God-Emperor’s gifts and squandered them, thrown them away for the empty lures of her false gods. ‘There will be no forgiveness for you.’

‘The great change is coming.’ Blood welled up between the sharpened teeth, dribbling down the witch’s jaw and soaking into her robes. Her voice was different to the hoarse rasp of moments before, taking on a curious harmonic quality as though a choir was echoing her words a split second out of time. ‘The sky will be torn in two, and the Imperium of Man with it. The true gods are returning to take what is theirs.’

Aveline’s gauntlet tightened on the grip of her mace. ‘Lies.’

‘I have seen what your saints and seers cannot. I have seen my death, and I do not fear it.’ The witch coughed out a gobbet of blood and mucus. ‘And you, Aveline Aboyé, Celestian Sacresant of the Sacred Rose. Twice baptised in fire you have been. The Lords of Wrath and Ruin know your name now, and your vanity will be your undoing. The Eightfold Path awaits you, whether you will it or not…’

A prickle of unease ran down Aveline’s spine. ‘I have heard enough.’ She smashed the mace into the witch’s lying mouth, the impact spattering blood, bone and teeth across the broken marble.

‘Aveline, the enemy is retreating!’ Vasiliki shouted across the battlefield, her voice bright with triumph. ‘We have the Shrine of Saint Lycestra secure! Pursue or hold?’

Aveline looked down at the dying witch. The shattered jaw was still moving, but the woman’s breath was coming in a bubbling, breathless moan and there were no more words.

‘Hold. Their prophet is dead. Our work is done. The militia can root out the rest of the cult in the days to come.’

‘As you command.’

‘My lady, forgive me.’ Novitiate Marguerite was approaching at a flat-out run, her circlet askew and her veil flapping wildly around her shoulders. Her face was scarlet with exertion. ‘I should not have fallen behind.’

‘Correct.’ Aveline had no intention of offering the sweating novitiate any false comfort. She had failed in her duty. Shame was the appropriate response. ‘You should not.’

‘No, my lady.’

‘Do better.’

The novitiate’s hand shot to the vox-bead in her ear, her head tilting to the side as a tinny crackle escaped through her veil. Aveline reactivated her own vox-bead, and it gave a high-pitched squeal, as though its tiny machine spirit was displeased at having been awakened from its slumber.

‘…the Adepta Sororitas with all haste.’

The voice was faint, crackling with the unmistakable interference of a trans-atmospheric vox-cast.

‘Rex Bellorum, this is Sacresant Superior Aveline. Repeat yourself.’

‘As you command, my lady.’ Something rustled at the other end of the vox-channel, then the Rex Bellorum’s vox-officer cleared her throat. ‘“Canoness Talitha of the Sacred Rose sends her most sincere benedictions to her Sister in the Faith, Celestian Sacresant Aveline, and commands her to travel with her retinue to Orison VIII to join a sacred warhost of the Adepta Sororitas with all haste.”’

‘Is that all?’

‘There are co-ordinates, my lady. Shall I–’

‘No.’

Orison VIII. A long-ago memory of schola rooms flashed into Aveline’s mind, of hours spent poring over star charts marked with famous battles, active warfronts and precious shrines. The name of Orison VIII lurked on the edge of memory, something to be dragged up from the depths and brought ancient and dusty into the light.

‘It lies within the Cadian Gate.’ Marguerite’s time in the schola was more recent, and it seemed she had none of her usual hesitation in displaying her learning. ‘One of the companions of Saint Arabella is buried there.’

That brought the memory back. Orison VIII was home to the tomb of Saint Nadezhda, one sepulchre amongst the countless thousands that covered the surface of the cemetery world – but it was the planetary location that piqued her interest most of all. There was only one war in that sector of sufficient import to require a sacred warhost of the Adepta Sororitas, only one world outside Ophelia VII or Holy Terra itself that could draw warriors in such numbers.

‘Do you know what this means?’ Aveline asked.

The relief of Saint Lycestra’s shrine was nothing compared to Orison VIII, today’s battle a mere skirmish compared to what was to come. The task ahead of her would be a true test of her faith, a field of blood upon which to build her legend. This was the battle of a lifetime – of ten lifetimes – a war the likes of which the Imperium had not seen since the Age of Apostasy.

Marguerite shook her head.

‘Cadia,’ Aveline said, the word as sweet as holy wine on her lips. ‘Make yourself ready, novitiate. We are to join the great war for Cadia.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
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