Xaphen closed his eyes, murmuring a litany from the Word. ‘Faith raises us above the soulless and the damned. It is the soul’s fuel, and the driving force behind millennia of mankind’s survival. We are hollow without it.’
Argel Tal drew his weapons. The swords of red iron slid free from their scabbards with twin hisses.
Both blades sparked into electrical life as the captain pulled the handle-triggers. Xaphen regarded him with hooded eyes.
‘Do it,’ the Chaplain said. ‘Let it begin.’
Argel Tal whirled the blades in slow, arcing loops, their crackling power fields growing more intense, the blades emanating ozone mist as they burned and rasped through the frozen air.
‘Aurelian,’ whispered Malnor. ‘For Lorgar.’
‘For the truth,’ Torgal said. ‘Do it, and we will carry these answers back to the Imperium.’
Argel Tal looked at Dagotal; the youngest of his sergeants, only recently promoted before the Legion’s humiliation. The outrider commander’s eyes were distant.
‘I am weary of being lied to by the Emperor, brother. I am so tired of being ashamed, when what we believe is the truth.’ Dagotal nodded, meeting his captain’s eyes at last. ‘Do it.’
He stepped forward, staring at a cluster of vein-like cables twitching as they channelled artificial blood around the semi-organic tower machine.
Argel Tal span the swords, leaving blurred trails of lightning in their wake.
The blades chopped down, crashing through steel, iron, rubber, copper, bronze and vat-grown blood.
Both swords exploded in his hands, their blades shattering like smashed glass and decorating his bare face with bloody cuts.
And then, for one horrific, familiar moment, Argel Tal saw nothing but burning, psychic gold.
EIGHTEEN
A Hundred Truths
Resurrection
Return