Barbarus

The throne before us was fashioned of carved bronze and Terran marble, that blue-veined stone rarer than an honest man in the Nine Legions. Its high back and broad arms were flanked by stands of braziers and ascending candles, painting the white rock amber and casting flickering shadows across the dark warrior seated there.

Many legionaries and humans alike have mistaken Abaddon for his father, Horus. There was no way that this warrior could be mistaken for his primarch liege. His armour was black, as was ours. The ceramite layers were rimmed in gold, as were ours. It is said that our armour is black to obfuscate our past colours, and this is true, but I saw the very same mournful and hopeful defiance in the wargear of the warrior before me. The stain of failure clung to him as it clung to us, and rather than drape himself in funereal black out of a need for revenge, he had darkened his armour as a statement of atonement and redemption.

He reclined like an idle king, too stalwart to slouch, too alert to be resting, his hand on the hilt of a black sword. Every one of us knew that blade’s legend. Many of us had lost brothers to its killing edge. Their blood had soaked into its black steel, running across the inscription marking its length. The oculus image was too flawed to read the words but I knew what they would say if the view resolved: Imperator Rex. The blade was forged to honour the Emperor, the king of kings, the Master of Mankind.

The warrior’s hair was cropped close and whitened by time. A short beard framed the thin, scarred line of his mouth. Age had weathered his skin and frosted his hair, but his shoulders were unbowed, and no oculus distortion could hide the icy fury in his eyes. Vindication burned in that gaze. He had waited for us here, down the many decades, and he had been right to wait.

He was us, through a lens of loyal zeal, through a mirror of indignant righteousness. I would have known this even before I tasted his knight’s brainflesh months before. I would have known it the second my eyes fell upon him, this ancient knight-king, enthroned on white stone and leaning upon a sword that had reaped an untellable number of lives during our doomed rebellion.

Abaddon was standing, staring, his glyphed teeth showing through parted lips. He was as awed as the rest of us. Knowing what was waiting once we broke free was one thing, but witnessing it with our own eyes was quite another. A smile dawned across his features, and his warp-lit eyes gleamed.

‘Only you, Sigismund,’ he said to the knight-king, ‘would pursue a grudge to the very borders of hell. That’s a hatred so pure, I can’t help but admire it.’

The ancient knight rose, raising the blade in a warrior’s salute,one I recognised from fighting alongside the Imperial Fists in brighter, better days. He kissed the hilt, then pressed his forehead to the cold blade.

‘I suffer not the unclean to live.’

Abaddon’s grin deepened. ‘Blood of the Gods, it is good to see you again, Sigismund.’