Chapter 282: Beat His Ass
A shrill, metallic shriek of tearing steel exploded through the chamber.
[What the hell are you doing?!]
Chains rattled as Mortarion raised his arm, the thick vambrace already straining against the taut links.
On the other end of the chain was the haft of his heavy scythe Silence. The reaper's hook had found its prey.
Beneath the hood of Death, his golden eyes blazed with a hell-born fury, nothing remotely human left in them.
[I asked you—what the hell are you doing?!]
The roar shook the walls. The chains clashed and clattered as Mortarion yanked savagely, scythe whirling, flinging gore and fragments of ceramite alike.
Curze screamed like some great beast, clutching his wound as he skittered back into the corner. A twisted light gleamed in his eyes.
[He's a monster! He destroyed the future! My brother, didn't you see it?! Didn't you see it?!]
His fanged teeth scraped against bloodied, pale lips.
[You don't understand! You can't see! I must— I must kill him!]
In the next heartbeat, Curze lunged again. But Mortarion was ready—his scythe met the Night Haunter's charge with a blaze of sparks, heavy steel singing through the air.
Enraged, Mortarion moved with impossible speed. He who cared little for swiftness now matched Curze's frantic pace. For an instant, the chamber rang with ceaseless collisions of metal, punctuated by Mortarion's furious curses and Curze's desperate protests.
Curze sought to break through, but Mortarion would not allow it. Wound for wound, blood for blood.
Mortarion swore the Night Haunter would know pain.
From the moment Curze entered the chamber to the clash of Primarch against Primarch—only heartbeats had passed.
Now they were locked in furious combat. On the other side, Sevatar, hurled aside by Curze, spat blood. Though no blow had struck him, the oppressive weight of the moment had rattled his very mind.
He didn't understand—didn't understand what their father was doing. Sevatar knew Curze was haunted by visions, by torment—but why such madness?!
This was the second time this had happened. The last had been before Rogal Dorn—when their Primarch tore into Dorn's flesh with tooth and hand. The Legion had been punished, buried in silence for so long afterward.
A gurgling sound rose in Sevatar's chest, half cough, half laughter. He had no time to think, no time to reflect—but he knew what he had to do.
If the Night Lords—if Curze—still wished to survive within the Imperium.
He cloaked himself as best he could and slipped toward the Death Guard.
Curze howled in pain.
[No!!!]
The maddened beast tried to halt his son. But the furious Lord of Death gave him no chance. Mortarion heard nothing now—save the urge for another blow, and another, enough to rip away flesh until nothing was left.
Drawing close to Hades was hard. Too hard. The suffocating weight pressed tighter and tighter. Sevatar felt naked, stripped bare, as if drowning in the void with each step.
At last, he seemed to fall into endless darkness. His eyes could still see light, but his body felt nothing at all.
Clawing forward, crawling through chaos, Sevatar dragged himself closer to Hades.
Then—the crushing weight vanished. Blinding light flooded back into his mind. For a moment he lost control, blinking blankly as he heard Hades muttering to himself, voice calm.
The Death Guard commander hadn't even noticed him.
"Garro… take care of the Legion."
Sevatar froze—Hades was speaking on Death Guard vox-channels. Realization struck. He too had to warn the Night Lords.
So, even as he rushed to staunch Hades' wound, Sevatar fumbled to open his Legion's comms.
However, the signal wouldn't go through.
Hades cast a glance at Sevatar—and Sevatar saw it. Beneath the calm surface of that gaze, a leviathan swam in the deep.
"Don't bother. I've blocked all communications."
Hades' voice was cold, as though none of this chaos concerned him. Sevatar recognized the signs—his cousin was on the verge of slipping into a feigned-death state. But Hades' pulse told him he was still fighting against it.
Sevatar wetted his cracked lips. "I've got adrenaline, sedatives, and sleeping agents."
"The first two."
With trembling hands, Sevatar injected him right there amid the blood-soaked floor. The Primarchs' screams and roars still tore through the air. He completed the emergency treatment, but his own mind was going blank.
He truly—truly—had no idea what to do.
Once more he turned to look at Hades' face. It was calm, but Sevatar could feel that mask fracturing.
"...What now?"
The words slipped from Sevatar before he realized how stupid they sounded. How could he expect guidance from someone on the brink of collapse?
"Do me a favor," Hades said lazily. "Keep Horus at least fifty meters away from here."
Sevatar froze.
"What are you planning?"
"That's an order."
Expressionless, Hades locked eyes with him. His gaze did not waver, machine-like.
"Otherwise, you'll get to watch three Primarchs die today."
Sevatar swallowed hard. What—what in the Throne's name was Hades talking about?!
And yet, he didn't think it was a lie. He realized the void he had just stumbled through was tied to Hades. He didn't understand what it was, but—
Sevatar himself was at his breaking point. Curze's curses and manic shrieks pressed down on the strings of his reason like the last straw.
He rose in a rush, muttered a hoarse apology to Hades, and fled the chamber.
Hades listened calmly to the sound of his footsteps fading. In his ears, Garro's shout over the vox still echoed.
Mortarion was still grappling with Curze, but it was clear the Lord of Death was being pushed back. Curze was a consummate assassin—front-loaded lethality personified. Mortarion, by contrast, was a late-blooming juggernaut. Hades knew Mortarion was close to breaking.
Curze had drawn in tight around him, like some lithe reptile. He clung to the larger Primarch, sinking fangs and claws into his foe again and again. Mortarion's scythe seemed pale and feeble in comparison, the Lord of Death forced into furious staff-fighting instead of reaping.
"My brother! You cannot destroy the future!"
"Who in the abyss is your brother?!"
Mortarion roared in fury, straining to tear Curze away, but the Night Haunter was too quick—like some darting insect. Once he realized Mortarion struggled in close-quarters, Curze abandoned restraint and clung to him with a suicidal frenzy.
. . . . .
"Lord Horus, you cannot pass."
Sevatar stood silent in the Vengeful Spirit's corridor, braced against the wrath of a Primarch.
The Wolf of Cthonia had lost his rare composure—he bellowed at Sevatar with a voice that shook the ship.
. . . . .
Hades, meanwhile, lay staring at the ceiling. The shouts of the two maddened Primarchs battered his ears: the shriek of tearing metal, the crack of gunfire, the cries of agony. To him, they were only noise.
Yet those very voices—those two howling monsters—were enough to scatter the crowd. He felt them fleeing in terror. Only Horus and his retinue pressed forward, only to be barred by Sevatar.
The ceiling above stared calmly back at him.
"All right then."
He muttered the words, and the buried madness, the long-suppressed fury, bled into his once-calm voice.
"Now…"
Said the Lord of the Dead.
"Kneel."
—Black Domain Unleashed—
A concussive impact shook the chamber. Both Mortarion and Curze writhed and collapsed to the ground, twisting, shrieking like fish ripped from water, their ragged gasps filling the room.
Horus froze. He and his sons still tried to remain standing, but in their field of vision, every other figure suddenly collapsed as if their strings had been cut.
A vast, crushing pressure rippled outward. Those who hadn't managed to flee were struck with sudden weakness, their bodies hollowed out, strength stripped away. They clutched at the walls, trembling, sinking to their knees, unable to comprehend why their muscles would no longer obey them.
Curze screamed, clutching at his eyes. He no longer tried to kill Hades—he only wanted to escape, to crawl away from this place that smothered him with despair.
Mortarion let out a hoarse, corpse-like laugh. Broken as he was, swaying like a scarecrow in the gale, he still laughed. With blood dripping bright crimson from the edges of his rebreather mask, he seized Curze by the leg and dragged him relentlessly toward the abyss.
Even as his soul slipped loose from his flesh, Mortarion exerted himself with impossible strength.
Curze shrieked in terror, thrashing to get free. He didn't understand! What was this existence?! Why had such a thing not been crushed long ago?! His foresight was gone—his vision clouded! He could not see the future!
He should have killed it when he had the chance. Now it had erupted, and they would all die—Curze, Mortarion, Horus, Sevatar— even Horus' flagship itself would be destroyed!
But the struggle between the two Primarchs ended abruptly. As if a furious quarrel between children had in an instant turned dull, both had no strength left.
"Too noisy."
The rasping voice cut through the chaos. The next moment, both Primarchs fell still.
The world fell silent.
Time seemed to stop.
The Lord of the Dead closed his eyes in satisfaction, and the darkness receded like a tide.
It felt like a century had passed before Mortarion's fingers twitched, before Curze's throat rasped with a strangled, gasping breath.
Mortarion rose like a corpse—no, more like a body propped up by will alone. He staggered, gripping his scythe Silence. The blade screeched across the floor, trailing sparks and shrill cries of metal.
His eyes blazed with a manic light, as if they might ignite—yet the world before him was still nothing but smeared blocks of color.
He laughed his hoarse laugh. He didn't understand. But he could still bring death.
He raised his scythe—
—and in the next instant, a figure of white and gold crashed into view, tackling Mortarion to the ground.
"Calm down—! All of you, CALM DOWN!!!"
Horus' broken voice echoed through the chamber.
But the three unconscious figures within could no longer hear his desperate cry.
. . . . .
Too noisy… why was it noisy again?
Hades frowned in irritation.
His mind floated hazily upward from the dark. A little light seeped in. He saw the familiar bone-white.
Ah. The Endurance.
He quietly tucked the thought of releasing the Black Domain away again, ready to sink back into the dark.
He was tired.
"Hades?! Hades!!! Hades!!!!"
Someone kept shouting for him, far away. Noisy. Hades forced his eyes open. Stop shouting, damn it, what are you yelling for?
And then he saw Mortarion—face smeared with blood, his seven orifices only just staunched, though still leaking.
"Hades. Hades."
Mortarion's voice trembled.
"Say something? Anything. Just… hold on. Hold on, we're almost at the medical room."
Despair welled in Mortarion's gaze as Hades' lips parted.
Please, Mortarion thought, shattered and raw. Please, not another line about the greater good.
But that was impossible. He was Hades. Even on the brink of death, he had still managed to send word to Garro first.
Mortarion felt like he was about to shatter.
"Fi…" Hades whispered softly.
What? Mortarion froze for a moment, then quickly pressed his face close to Hades'.
"Fight," Hades said.
"Mortarion."
"Beat his ass for me."
——————————
Terra.
Malcador was at work in his office when, on the bookshelf behind him, a black clay figurine—stitched back together with golden thread—suddenly began to tremble violently.
Bang!
The figurine exploded.
Malcador turned, staring at the shattered fragments scattered across the floor.
The old man quietly muttered a curse under his breath.
Only that madman would dare place a live time bomb at the side of a Primarch.
<+>
If you want to see more chapter of this story and don't mind paying $5 each month to read the latest posted chapter, please go to my Patreon [1]
Latest Posted Chapter in Patreon: Chapter 351: The Onlooker Sees More Clearly Than the Player[2]
Link to the latest posted chapter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520[3]
https://www.patreon.com/collection/602520?view=condensed[4]
[1] https://www.patreon.com/Thatsnakegirl
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520
[3] https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520
[4] https://www.patreon.com/collection/602520?view=condensed