Narthok

'Tell me something,' I said, 'before I leave.'

'Speak.'

'Sigismund. How did he wound you?'

Abaddon fell silent, the vicious vitality of ambition bleeding away. The black rebreather covered much of his face, and the murk occluded some of his expression, but I believe for the very first time, I saw something like shame flicker across my lord's face.

How curious.

'He wouldn't die,' Abaddon said at last, thoughtful and low. 'He just wouldn't die.'

I did not need to skim his mind of insight. Just from his tone, I knew what had happened. 'He baited you. You were lost to rage.'

I saw the muscles of Abaddon's jaw and throat clench as he ground his teeth. 'It was over before I knew he had struck me. I couldn't breathe. I felt no pain, but I couldn't breathe. The Black Sword was buried to the hilt, like the old man had sheathed it inside my chest.'

Ezekyle's voice was soft across the speakers, cushioned by the bitterness and fascination of reflection. His words were almost staccato whispers, each one a drop of acid on bare flesh. 'The only way to kill me was to welcome his own death, and he did it the moment the chance arose. We were face to face like that, with his blade through my body. My armour sparked. It failed. I lashed back. His blood soaked the Talon. He fell.'

I remained quiet, letting Abaddon's tale unspool. His eyes were looking through me, not seeing what was, but what had been.

'He wasn't dead Khayon. He was on the floor, sprawled like a corpse, disemboweled and town in two, but he still lived. I was on my knees, forcing my dead lungs to keep breathing, kneeling over him like an Apothecary. The black sword was still through me. Our eyes met. He spoke.'

I did not ask Abaddon to tell me. I tentatively reached into his thoughts at first in case he rebuffed my presence.

Then I closed my eyes, and I saw.

The black knight, fallen and ripped apart. His Sword Brethren gone or dead, I did not know which. Red staining Sigismund's tabard, red decorating the deck beneath and around him; red in Abaddon's eyes, misting his sight.

Blood. So much blood.

Here at last, he looked at every one of his years, with time's lines cracking his face. He looked upwards at the chamber's ornate ceiling; his eyes lifted as if in reverence to the Master of Mankind upon His throne of hold.

Sigismund's hand trembled, still twitching, seeking his fallen sword.

'No,' Abaddon murmured with brotherly gentleness through the running of his blood and the heaving of his chest. 'No. It's over. Sleep now, in the failure you have earned.'

The knight's fingertips scraped the hilt of his blade. So very close, yet he lacked the strength to move even that far. His face was the bloodless blue of the newly dead, yet still he breathed.

'Sigismund,' Abaddon said, through lips darkened by his lifeblood, 'This claw has killed two primarchs. It wounded the Emperor to death. I would have spared it the taste of your life as well. If you could have only seen what I have seen.'

As I stared through Abaddon's eyes, I confess I expected the triteness of some knightly oath, or a final murmur in the Emperor's name. Instead, the ruined thing that had been the First Captain of the Imperial Fists and High Marshal of the Black Templars spoke through a mouthful of blood, committing the last of his life to biting off each word, ensuring he spoke each one in shivering, sanguine clarity.

'You will die as your weakling father died. Soulless. Honourless. Weeping. Ashamed.'

Sigismund's last word was also his last breath. It sighed out of his mouth, taking his soul with it.