With a cry of impotence, Tejas placed the Custodian’s signifier ring against the lock plate and the door slid into the walls of the cell. Cut from the hand of a dead man, the ring’s skeleton key properties spoke to the arrogance of the Legio Custodes that they had never considered the possibility of one of their precious rings falling into enemy hands.

Atharva stood in a fluid, uncoiling motion, like a rearing snake poised to strike down its victim. He stepped from the cell, gasping in remembered pleasure as he felt the power of the Great Ocean swell around him. The psi-damping collar around his neck cracked and broke apart as though twisted by invisible hands. Its remains clattered to the ground and Atharva laughed as he felt the currents and tides of the Great Ocean rush to fill his body.

‘Tejas, the ring if you please,’ said Atharva, extending his hand.

The horrified Tejas dropped the ring onto the plateau of Atharva’s palm, and he lifted it to his lips, as if to kiss it. His tongue flicked out to clean it of blood, and the rich gene-rich flavour of the Custodian’s essence flooded his senses, an ambrosia of genetic mastery.

‘Oh, this is a wonder indeed, Tejas,’ said Atharva. ‘What secrets might be unlocked by its study? What wonders and miracles might a master like Hathor Maat work with such a palette of genius?’

Tejas didn’t answer and Atharva handed the pristine ring back to him. He placed one oversized hand upon his thrall’s shoulder, placing the images of five warriors in the forefront of his mind. Five. All that would be useful from twelve. What a waste.

‘Tejas, I want you to release these men, and these men only,’ said Atharva.

The man nodded, his mind bursting with the need to do Atharva’s bidding and the horror of what he was doing. Though every fibre of the man’s willpower was trying to fight off his control, he was a leaf in the face of a hurricane. Atharva watched him run towards the other cells, and let his mind float into the mid-level heights of the Enumerations that would better enhance his skills in bio-manipulation. Sense organs at the back of his throat struggled to assess the content of the Custodian’s blood, though they could not hope to unravel something so exquisitely constructed. Yet what understanding they could glean might be enough.

Though Atharva’s skills as a Pavoni were not the equal of Hathor Maat, he had mastered enough of the vain Fellowship’s arts to achieve what would be required to leave this place of confinement.

So long as Tagore didn’t kill Uttam Luna Hesh Udar too soon.

FISTS AND ELBOWS, knees and feet. They fought in a blur of thundering punches, bone-breaking kicks and titanic impacts. Two warriors, crafted to be the pinnacles of fighting men, flew at each other with rage and neuro-cortical implants and the finest genetic manipulation on either side of loyalty.

Tagore fought with teeth bared, eyes bulging madness. He fought without heed or thought of restraint, with no care for injury or death. Uttam Luna Hesh Udar fought with precision, grace and exacting killing blows straight from the combat forges of the Legio Custodes.

Two warriors of extremes, two warriors primed to deal death in completely different ways.

Uttam was armoured, Tagore was bare-skinned and bleeding.

The Custodian’s guardian spear lay broken between them, its haft snapped like matchwood in Tagore’s grip. Its blade fizzed and spat in the moisture drizzling from the cavern’s roof. Tagore spun around Uttam, kicking his heel into the back of the Custodian’s knee. Uttam went down with a grunt, catching the follow-up knee to the face in his blocking gauntlets. Uttam twisted his grip, spinning Tagore from his feet. He followed up, foot thundering down to crush the World Eater’s head.

Tagore rolled, came up, and punched the side of Uttam’s thigh. Plates cracked and the paralyzing nerve-impact dropped him to one knee. A right cross tore his helmet off and an uppercut threw him onto his back. Tagore scissored himself to his feet and hurled himself at the fallen Custodian. Uttam met his flying leap with a downward-bludgeoning fist that drove Tagore into the ground like a downed Stormbird. Tagore rolled aside from the inevitable head-crushing elbow and sprang to his feet in time to meet the Custodian’s charge.

They grappled like street brawlers. Rabbit-punching kidneys, legs locking and unlocking as each warrior sought a hold that would drop their opponent. The iron plates bolted to Tagore’s head spat fat red sparks as it pumped chem-stims and rage boosters into his bloodstream and electrical impulses to the anger centres of his brain. His fury had been building to critical mass ever since his incarceration, and this was just the fight to unleash it.

The first advantage went to Uttam. Every blow Tagore struck was against artificer-forged plate, hand shaped in the armouries beneath the Anatolian peaks, where Uttam hammered unprotected flesh. Pure concussive force cracked the bone shield in Tagore’s chest, and he grunted as a piledriver of an uppercut drove up into his gut. The briefest flinch, but an opening nonetheless.

Uttam twisted and slammed his elbow into Tagore’s jaw. Blood and teeth flew from the World Eater’s jaw. Uttam closed for the killing blow, but pain was just another stimulus to a killer like Tagore. The World Eater spat a tooth, and caught Uttam’s fist in one raw meat palm. He caught the other fist mid-punch and smashed his forehead into Uttam’s face. The Custodian’s nose broke, and both cheekbones shattered. Blood blinded him for an instant before he shook his eyes clear of it, but an instant was all Tagore needed.

His blooded fist hammered into Uttam’s chest, driven by rage and betrayal.

Ceramite shattered, adamantium buckled and bone broke.

Tagore bellowed in atavistic triumph as his power, momentum and strength drove his fist deep into the Custodian’s chest. Meat and blood parted before his digging hand until his fingers closed on iron-hard bone.

The Custodian’s eyes were wide with agony, his body still fighting for life even as Tagore ripped it out of him. Tagore spat blood in his face, grinning a manic skull’s grin.

‘Still think I make empty threats, Custodian?’ he snarled.

Uttam tried to respond, but only managed a horrid sucking noise from his gored chest cavity. Tagore felt bone buckle, crushed beneath his implacable grip. Strong and tough, but not as strong or tough as a sergeant of the World Eaters.

A figure appeared at his back, tall and reeking of cold metal and ice.

‘Damn you, Tagore, I need him alive,’ said a voice that could only belong to Atharva of the Thousand Sons. ‘He can still survive this, Tagore. Don’t kill him.’

‘Only Angron and his captains can tell me what to do,’ hissed Tagore. ‘One of Magnus’s bastards does not.’

With an awful cracking sound that seemed to go on and on, Tagore twisted his grip and wrenched his arm from Uttam’s chest. Crimson past the elbow, nubs of broken bone protruded from either side of his fist. Glistening mucus-like blood and spinal fluid dripped from the ruptured bone, and in the last seconds of life left to Uttam, he realised he was looking at a portion of his own spine.

‘Rip your spine out through your chest!’ yelled Tagore, hurling the wreckage of Uttam’s bone to the ground. ‘And what I say I will kill, I kill.’

The Custodian toppled onto his side, his body still trying to fight the inevitibility of his death. But even the formidable endurance wrought into so magnificent a body could not survive such a grievous wound, and Uttam Luna Hesh Udar’s life ended in a shimmering pool of his own blood at the feet of a warrior to whom each opponent bested was a badge of honour.

‘By the Eye, Tagore,’ snapped Atharva, dropping to one knee beside the slain Custodian. ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’

‘Killed a powerful foe, one worthy of remembrance,’ said the World Eater.