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Dread Night – Nick Kyme

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Dread Night

Nick Kyme

I wait in the shadow of Saint Agathena for night to fall. At night, the beasts disengage. From my studied observations, I have determined that the darkness makes them more or less quiescent.

It does not, however, make them any less dangerous.

The collapsed amphitheatre is cold, and the place I currently inhabit is narrow. There is barely room enough for my shoulders and every time I move, the armoured guards scrape against stone.

There is blood here too; I smell it on the hot breeze coming from the east where the city of Vanarius once stood and the last great battle of this world was fought.

And lost.

The hunters I am hiding from do not seek out this blood. It is old and any violence that once imbued the ancient rock of this temple has long since faded. They seek different prey now, a beast that is their equal.

When the shadow of Leviathan came to this world, that beast found them.

A faint but insistent pulse thrums gently against my chest. It is the transponder Dagomir gave me. I have been following it for three days, ever since my brothers and I became separated. It was after Vanarius, after we lost this world.

‘Brothers find me…’

If I will it hard enough, perhaps it will become true. I seek a reunion with my fellow paladins but I must cross an ocean of damnation and torment to reach them.

The last light fades in the blood-bleached sky, setting like ink in water. It paints my silver armour in ruby red. I wonder if the light will rise again. It is my sacred charge to ensure that, that one way or another, it does.

I am Siegus Mortlock of the Grey Knights of Titan and this is my final testament.

With darkness shrouding the barren wastes beyond the temple, I ease from my hiding place into the former arena. It is a sandy, rubble-strewn plain that yawns open to the sky like a wound. As I emerge, my armour’s servos growling, I realise I am not alone.

It is humanoid, its flesh the colour of viscera and sizzling like cooking meat. Iron-hard skin clothes a muscular form standing tall on reverse-jointed limbs that end in hooves, not feet. It is horned, this foot soldier of the aether, and clenches a dark blade in its clawed fist. It snarls as it sees me, a long serpentine tongue lathing the air as if to taste my soul.

I mutter three canticles of warding, the words trickling from my lips in a strong and certain cadence. To show weakness of faith before a hellspawn of the warp is to invite death and the rending of your soul.

This one is not alone as it stalks towards me, snorting and braying as if it were a beast of nature and not some abomination. Seven others join it. They hunt in packs of eight.

I will show them they should have brought more.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-568-5

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