"We are the skyborne, the angels macabre, the death that strikes from above. We cut the life-cords of our foes even before they realize the mortal danger they are in. We are the storm incarnate, and we will not be denied."
The Mortifactors, the grim knights of the Second Founding.
@the-fluffy-underbelly For those of you waiting for the hardback of @a-40k-author’s Red Tithe, who don’t have the money right now, and/or just want some more Space Sharks, here’s a short fic about the Carcharodons and the Second Founding.
[Our Sign of Parting on AO3] [My fics on AO3]
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
021.M31
FIVE THOUSAND LEGIONARIES stood in ebon ranks in the primary muster-hall of the Ravenspire. It was a shadow of the Raven Guard’s former strength and could easily have been accommodated in one of the smaller parade grounds, but Corax felt it was warranted by the magnitude of the occasion. For almost all of the legionaries before him, except those few raised in the years since the massacre, they now stood on the same jet flagstones where they first beheld their primarch. At his side, Branne and Agapito Nev were among the yet smaller number who were an exception because they had known him before he had taken command of his legion. It would end where it began. The last time the Raven Guard would ever be assembled as a legion.
“My lord.”
“What is it, Tev?”
“The augurs report that a small fleet has just translated into the system. It’s,” Aloni Tev hesitated, scarcely able to believe the reports he was receiving from the shipmistress of the Raven’s Claw. He wondered whether Corax would react with rage, or relief. “It’s a nomad-predation fleet.”
Corax turned sharply at that, pale features creased with concern.
“They want to know whether to treat it as hostile.”
On the bridge of the Nicor, Arkhas Fal was unsurprised that his hails went unanswered. Neither was he surprised that the fleet above Deliverance was moving to encircle his ship and her escorts.
“The enemy battle barges are in maximum range of their primary weapons, lord,” one of the crew reported. Fal had never bothered to ask her name.
“Not enemy,” Fal corrected her, smiling. “Not yet.”
The crewman’s breath caught in her throat as she heard the rasping whisper of the Lord Reaper’s voice approach, the vast, terminator-armoured figure casting her in shadow. Fal had set foot on the bridge of his battle barge only a handful of times in nearly a year of her service, and his presence was deeply unsettling. An aura of predatory silence seemed to hang around him, like the moment before the executioner’s axe fell.
“Are you sure, my lord? Detecting weapons locks trained on the Nicor, Predator, Razortooth, and Xeric. Energy is being routed to their weapons.”
“Keep our guns cold. If they open fire, we’ll have the answer we came for.” They would be perfectly within their rights to do so, Fal knew. The primarch’s ban had been on pain of death, yet here he was, not only defying it, but sailing into the primarch’s own home system. The significance of the timing of his arrival could not be lost on Corax. “There’s a reason we left most of the fleet behind.”
More than one, if truth be told.
The prodigal son looked out on his father’s home, the dark shape of the prison moon reflected in the obsidian pools of his eyes. Fal took a deep breath, letting it hiss through the malformed points of his teeth. He had often wondered, in the stillness of the outer dark, whether that moon could only ever have caused a rift between them, or if Corax might have seen things differently if he had only landed in a different part of the complex. Fal thought not, though he knew many of his brothers held the other view.
Corax had spared him once all the same. Silently, he awaited his father’s judgment for the second time.
“Lead vessel identified as the Nicor, my lord,” Tev relayed.
Concern hardened into a scowl on the primarch’s face. It was the oldest vessel in the legion, and second only to the destroyed Shadow of the Emperor in might, but Corax had always hated that ship. An irredeemable monster with slavery in its bones. Tev, and the other veterans old enough to remember, knew those words were meant for its master just as much. Corax only ever spoke of the exiles by referring to their ships.
“So, he thinks he can become a master again,” Corax muttered, half to himself. He fixed Tev with a sharp glare. “I will not give him what he came for. His duty is his burden, never his right.”
“I never considered the call from Terra would reach them,” Agapito commented. The summons from Terra had come months ago, recalling every legionary to their homeworld in preparation for the Edict of the Second Founding. The end of the legions, divided into autonomous chapters. The end of an era.
It had not occurred to any of them what that meant for the exiled nomad-predation fleets in the outer darkness. They had been forgotten for so long, even after the legion was decimated in the dropsite massacre. Whispers had reached Deliverance of renegade fleets encountered during the scouring of the Nostramo sector that suggested the betrayal had reached them anyway.
“The nomad-predation pattern is already functionally autonomous. With no contact from the others, he could keep them in line, or hunt down those who have strayed,” Soukhounou, who had served the longest under the forgotten Legion Master, suggested. “Perhaps he should be part of this.”
“I will not have slavers set foot on Deliverance again!” Corax roared. Face twisted in an ugly snarl, he looked hauntingly like Curze.
Soukhounou swallowed, shrinking before his primarch’s rage as the silent legionaries stiffened almost imperceptibly in their ranks. Unable to hear much of the conversation, they had no idea what had roused their lord to uncharacteristic fury. Even if they had, few remained who remembered the old Legion Master.
“Shall I give the order to open fire, my lord?” Tev asked.
The tension fell from Corax’s face with a sigh, bleeding out of him as swiftly as it had come. “Tell him to go,” he whispered, just as he had whispered the command that sent Arkhas Fal into his first exile. This time, there was none of the spite, only weariness in the face of this last unwelcome surprise. “Tell him to go back into the void and the outer darkness. Tell him to be forgotten.”
“Forgotten,” Fal murmured as he cut the vox-link with the Raven’s Claw. It was not a vessel he remembered.
As if on cue, the skin around his eyes flared with irritation. Ocean predators composed of stylised Xeric whorls closed their jaws over his eyes as he screwed them shut, fingers flexing inside clawed gauntlets. Beneath the tattoos, the skin had become ridged with rough, serrated denticles. Unlike the grey pallor that the leeching touch of Corax’s gene-seed had left the once-dusky Terrans of the Panpacific, the apothecaries thought this new degeneration was the result of some rare form of radiation produced by the stars on the farthest reaches of the galactic rim.
Several of the crew flinched as the Lord Reaper gave a low growl. He was in motion as suddenly as his black eyes snapped open, the armoured deck trembling with each thunderous step.
“Contact Shade Captain Jakr and inform him we have been delayed. He is to begin the hunt for Nerat Kirine, and we will meet him in Thramas as soon as we are able,” he ordered as he passed the vox station on his way to the helm.
“And what is our course, my lord?” the helmsman asked.
“Circle around and set full burn to the Mandeville point. Tell the Navigator to chart a course for Terra.”
