40K Pulp

They told him his name was Arcterus. It meant nothing. The sky was on fire with a thousand shades of red: the dark gutturalness of crimson, the sanguinary coat of scarlet, the destructive ardour of carmine, the scarred quality of vermillion, all burning together in a muddled haze.

He stood upon marble steps, the wings torn from his back. No. Not his wings. His lord’s. The air howled with the death of angels and the ground rumbled with the fury of countless boots pounding the broken ground. Before him, the gates lay shattered. Beyond him, a figure waited, vast and terrible, wreathed in light that burned like betrayal.

“Horus,” Arcterus growled. The Traitor’s name was a curse in of itself. It tasted like blood.

“Cousin!” Someone called to him from somewhere to his right. 

Arcterus turned to see a warrior clad in blue, helm cracked, the deep black of his bolster pistol a smudge within the sea of red. He seemed vaguely familiar. For a moment, the fire dimmed.

“It’s Castor,” said the warrior. “Your brothers and mine were separated from each other. We’re on Baal Secundus. We need to…”

The warrior’s face changed. Flesh sloughed away from bone, a flaring purple mouth taking its place. The ceramite plate blackened and caved in on itself, spiked appendages splitting through and rising with demonic intent. The reaching hand had become a claw.

Warp trickery. Foul lies of The Arch-Enemy. Arcterus surged forward, chainsword roaring, every cell in his body alight with a grief that had never been his, and yet had always been. The whirring, gnashing teeth of his weapon was a sweet balm against the pain of seeing his primach fall. Each severing cut was vengeance denied ten thousands years too long. 

The raging of his chainsword was all Arcterus could hear for some time, until the teeth stopped buzzing and the rest of the world came flooding back in. Arcterus let out a ragged breath, surveying the battlefield once more. All around him, tyranid carcasses littered the ground like giant malformed beetles. 

And in front of him, lay a fallen Astartes. The corpse’s head had been cleaved so badly that he was unrecognisable, save for the sigils of Ultramar that adorned his blue ceramite and the purity seals of specific battles that Arcterus recalled being present for. It was Castor.

“I…” Arcterus faltered. His grip on the chainsword loosened and his arms tremoured. 

Then the sky burned red all over again. The gates were broken. Sanguinius lay dying. And Horus…Horus yet lived. With a howl that split the heavens, Arcterus charged once more into eternity, chasing death.