V2 Chapter 106: I Curse You! You Will Die in Your Own Glory!
A brief silence fell across the western fortification.
Slaydo kept his grip on Liberatus, his gaze still locked on Nadzybar. He had heard Duvette's answer and had not immediately rebuked him, because he understood clearly that the young Commissar had already made his decision.
Nadzybar looked at them both. A low laugh came from behind the golden mask.
"Pathetic."
His voice pressed out through the mask's seams.
"The Warmaster of the Imperium and the Commissar of the Imperium, standing in my High Palace, arguing over which of them gets to kill me."
Duvette paid no attention to the mockery.
He raised the power sword. The blue-white disruption field along the blade hummed low.
Nadzybar slowly raised the desecrated sceptre. The runes at its crown lit with dark red light. That Warp energy had barely begun to gather when Duvette was already in front of him.
The first strike shattered the outer force field around the sceptre.
The second took the hand holding it clean off.
The severed hand and the sceptre hit the floor together.
Nadzybar staggered back. Duvette swept the blade in a short arc, flicking the burned black blood onto the marble floor.
"I don't care about your arguments concerning the Imperium and Chaos."
He looked at Nadzybar.
"All I know is that you, servant of the Ruinous Powers, die today."
Nadzybar looked down at his severed wrist.
Then he laughed.
The sound started low and quickly became something sharp and unpleasant. The golden mask began to crack apart in the process. The body beneath the black and gold robes started to expand in ways that had nothing to do with nature.
Slaydo stepped forward.
"Duvette. Watch yourself."
Nadzybar raised his head.
The mask fell away entirely, striking the floor.
The face behind the gold had long since ceased to be human. Flesh pushed out through split skin. Bone spurs drove through shoulders and back. The fine robes tore as the body beneath them surged upward past three metres.
He shed the last pretence of a human form, letting the mutations that his robes and armour had concealed pour out in full.
Nadzybar released a low roar and brought the black sabre down at Slaydo.
Slaydo went to meet it.
The two blades collided. The stone beneath Slaydo's feet cracked from the impact. The force came down all at once and drove the ageing Warmaster to one knee, blood running from his nose and mouth.
At the moment of crisis, Duvette drove in from the other side.
The power sword cut into the muscle of Nadzybar's leg. The disruption field tore through the mutated flesh. Nadzybar roared and swung a kick. Duvette rolled clear of it, then reversed the blade and drove it at his flank.
Nadzybar used the stump of his severed wrist to beat the blade aside. The black sabre came back at Slaydo.
Slaydo had no intention of taking that hit straight. He threw himself sideways. Nadzybar's increased mass had slowed him marginally, and the Warmaster escaped the stroke.
"Nadzybar!"
Duvette shouted and drove forward again, the power sword going into Nadzybar's abdomen.
Nadzybar only glanced down at it. Then he turned his attention back to Slaydo, dropped the sabre, and reached for the Warmaster's throat with his remaining hand. Duvette snarled and wrenched the blade free, then took two of the deformed fingers off at the bone with a single cut.
"Marshal, pin him down!"
Slaydo did not answer in words.
The body that had been pressed against the floor erupted upward with sudden force, and Liberatus drove into Nadzybar's abdomen from below. Duvette seized the instant, took the power sword in both hands, and swung it across in a horizontal cut.
Nadzybar's head came off his shoulders.
It struck the floor, rolled several times, and came to rest at Slaydo's feet.
But it did not die immediately. The crimson eyes looked up at the Warmaster of the expedition, filled with contempt and something that resembled pity.
The split lips moved. The voice came dragging up from deep in the throat.
"I curse you, Slaydo..."
"You will die in your own glory."
"You will destroy with your own hands everything you sought to preserve."
"The crusade you hold dear, the saint's name you have chased, in the end all of it will..."
A power sword drove through the skull.
Duvette pulled the blade free and said quietly: "I will change all of it."
Nadzybar went silent.
The close-quarters fighting on the western fortification began to wind down. With their master dead, the remaining enemy broke apart. The Warmaster's personal guard and the Imperial assault teams pressed in from both sides and finished what was left.
Duvette turned to look at Slaydo.
The Warmaster was standing where he had been, breathing heavily. Both his chest plate and abdominal armour had been torn open. Blood ran through the gaps in the ceramite. The pain from the wound to his interior was clearly reaching his nerves. But he still held Liberatus, like a man who intended to keep going forward.
Duvette went to him immediately and put a hand under his arm.
"Marshal."
Slaydo took several laboured breaths and waved him off.
"I haven't reached the point where I need you holding me up."
Duvette did not let go.
At that moment, dense footsteps reached them from the passage behind. A large body of Imperial troops had finally broken through the outer resistance and poured into the western fortification. Medicae personnel, the Warmaster's personal guard, and several officers moved immediately toward Slaydo.
Slaydo looked once at Nadzybar's body, then at Duvette.
"Well done."
His voice carried some roughness to it.
"The greatest enemy is finished. But the High Palace isn't cleared yet, and the battle isn't over."
Duvette frowned.
"You need to pull back for treatment."
Slaydo gave a short laugh and pushed his hand away.
"I'm not that easy to kill."
He looked toward the throne hall.
"Go and take charge of the right side of the High Palace. There are units pinned down in the side corridors over there. Don't let the enemy break out in the confusion."
Duvette started to say something further, then stopped himself.
He swept the Eye of Judgement and the strategic map across the throne hall direction. No high-threat targets were registering there.
He considered it for a moment, then gave a single nod.
"Take care of yourself, Marshal."
"Go."
Duvette turned and left the western fortification.
Slaydo watched his figure disappear into the passage, and finally let out a long breath. Medicae personnel moved in immediately to deal with his wounds. He sat down on the broken steps and continued issuing orders to the officers at his side.
"Keep pushing."
"Clear every section of the High Palace interior."
"Nadzybar is dead, but his remnants cannot be left standing."
Three Terran hours later, the gunfire across the High Palace district had thinned to scattered exchanges.
The Imperial forces were dealing with the last of it. Isolated fighting still moved through the corridors, but the main resistance was finished. Blood Pact remnants had been cut off in several side corridors and underground chambers. Clearing them was a matter of time.
Slaydo stood inside the throne hall.
This was the seat of the highest power on Balhaut. The hall had been cleared in a preliminary sweep by several waves of Imperial troops. Visible enemies, traps, and Chaos markings had all been dealt with.
Several Chaos sigils had been scraped away, leaving scorched marks behind. The air still carried the smell of burning sacred oil and disinfectant.
He walked slowly through the hall, a guard detail following behind.
The throne was empty.
Nadzybar was dead.
The most dangerous, most critical enemy the entire expedition had faced was finished. The Sabbat Crusade ahead would still be difficult, but without Nadzybar, the Chaos warlords would struggle to unify again for some time.
From this moment, the nature of the war had changed.
Before, they had been facing a beast still in possession of its head.
Now they were dealing with what remained after the head had been taken.
Slaydo stopped before the throne and let out a quiet breath.
The only thing that gave him pause was that Nadzybar's head had not fallen to his own blade.
The thought of that young Commissar's figure brought a short laugh out of him.
"Insufferable young man."
There was no anger in it. What he actually felt was something closer to helpless admiration.
It was then that his gaze settled on a corner of the hall.
Something lay there, covered in dust, pressed under a fragment of cracked stone. It looked like an old piece of decoration that the clearing teams had passed over.
Slaydo walked across to it.
His guards moved to assist. He raised a hand and stopped them.
He bent down with some difficulty and picked the object up.
It was a small stone figurine.
Ancient, cracked, its surface thick with dust. But when Slaydo wiped the dust away with his fingers, the face beneath was still visible: serene, radiant, unmistakable.
Saint Sabbat.
The figurine might have been some Imperial relic that Nadzybar had discarded into a corner. Or it might have been a devotional object that some nameless believer had hidden here long ago.
Slaydo looked at it for a moment in silence.
Then he blew the remaining dust from its surface and wiped away the last of the grime with his glove.
"Have the regimental chaplain purify it."
He said it quietly.
Then he tucked the figurine into the inner pocket against his chest.
A small prize of war.
And a small proof, now that Balhaut had returned to the Emperor's hand, that something was being given back to Saint Sabbat.
With that thought, Slaydo turned and walked out of the hall with his guards.
The throne hall fell silent again. In the dimness, it was as though nothing had happened here at all.