Work Text:
“Not yet,” Razel said, mostly to himself. Not yet, the Death Speaker said, to himself, to the machine spirit of his armor, forcing his legs to work, through the failing armor. Sharur dragged, a dead weight, deserving so much better, behind in his useless right hand.
He was almost there. He would make it. He had to make it.
His armor was hung with litany papers, inscribed with the names of those gone to their final honor, ragged and clotted with vitae. But the oath he followed now, the oath that pushed him beyond his failing armor, and fading mind, was one that was inscribed nowhere.
Some, he knew, would think it a betrayal, but as he had lived and fought and witnessed countless battles, countless oaths of vengeance and retribution, something had taken root in him, some mustard-small seed, that had at first grated like a piece of grit, in his mind. He had tried to exorcise it, over the years, with more prayer, more fasting, more oaths, but it had stayed, accreting weight to it like a pearl gathered nacre, until it could no longer be hidden or denied his notice.
His vox crackled: the signal shattered by the toxic radiation here. His men, looking for him. He ignored them. They would carry on without him. They would carry on the honor of the chapter in vengeance. He was of another age, their penitent age, and they were of the new era, one he had thought he'd never live long enough to see, to shape.
He had done so much and he had come to realize over the decades that his death would not be the blazing red honor in combat he had always sought.
It had been a revelation that had come to him, like a shadow creeping around his eyes, a lictor stalking his mind, but even he had recognized the truth of it. One's life, an arrow aimed at honor, destined to fall short.
Sometimes honor was not in battle laurels but a debt to be repaid, even if unclaimed.
He had such a debt to pay, and he was doing his best to pay it, staggering forward, ignoring the flaring glyphs on his armor warning of critical injuries. Yes, I know, he thought, impatiently. I know. That is why I am doing this, riding that razor edge of late and too late.
Each step felt like a spear driven up through the soles of his feet, but he persisted. It wasn’t far now. He would reach their picket in a few moments.
And then he could rest.
No, not quite.
Then he could lay this burden down. Then he could pay this debt. It was not rest; it would likely not be peace, but it would be...something he had no words for yet.
[***]
A challenge flared across his helm’s display, red and hostile, demanding he stop.
Despite himself, Razel gave a groaning sigh of relief. He dragged his back foot up to meet the front, and then stilled himself, feeling his blood and energy pooling around him, draining him of everything except the iron will that had dragged him this far.
A skull mask--like his own but unlike--hove into view. The armor was the red of half-dried blood, the daemon’s skull on the pauldron scratched with signs of combat. A reiver, double bladed, staring at him for a long moment, long enough that Razel was sure there was some comm on their private vox. He hoped so.
The reiver's voice was that wet snarl that Razel knew spoke of a throat wound, long past, never fully healed. “Are you lost?”
A loaded question, that if Razel had the energy, he would have laughed at. Yes. He was lost, in all ways except what brought him here. He took a moment to gather enough energy to speak. “Your Librarian.”
The helm tilted, studying him, and there was another pause. “You have your own,” the Exorcist said, finally.
Razel said nothing, merely stood, exhaustion wavering him on his feet. His silence was his answer. As Death Speaker, he was not used to having to explain himself. He would not start now.
If for no other reason than he had to conserve his strength, his words.
He imagined they were sending for an Apothecary, as well. Or not. There was no need. It was too late, and anyone who had fought as a reiver would know that.
The reiver positioned himself a pace away, wary, watching him, his entire body a coiled spring, waiting for some trick to be revealed. They stood this way, facing off, for a long moment, long enough that Razel almost began to form a worry that he would not live long enough, and then he saw the slide of blue armor into his field of vision.
“I cannot shrive you, Death Speaker of the Executioners.” The Librarian’s voice was cold and hollow, like a ringing brazen bowl.
“None can,” Razel said, forcing himself to straighten. “I bear my own sins to the end.”
“As do we all,” the Librarian acknowledged, and the words were somehow a bond between them, that he would listen, at least.
Razel heaved his right shoulder, his shattered arm dragging Sharur forward. The reiver tensed, fingers tightening on his blades, but the Librarian waved him down. The Librarian bent to lift the offered crozius up. “A relic,” he observed. The Librarian was unhelmeted, and Razel could see puzzlement on his face. Relics belong with their Chapters. Normally.
“More than.” Razel pushed with some of his fading strength, pushing the crozius further into the Librarian’s hands.
He could feel, as he had always felt, the faint stirring of a psyker using his gifts, and it brought back…memories. Memories that should have been long buried, but weren’t; memories that had stalked his rest, dogged his prayers.
The Librarian’s eyes darted to his, and Razel knew he understood.
He gave a nod. “You have a prayer, your kind.” It was what he had dragged himself across this battlefield to find, to ask for, if he could do so much.
“We have many prayers.” Wary.
Razel shook his head. “A prayer for souls in the Warp.” He jutted his chin at the crozius. “For him.”
“Igikura.”
Razel squeezed his eyes shut, briefly, at the name, the name that had gone unspoken for centuries, the name the Librarian had pulled using his gifts.
Igikura had gone out like a phoenix of legend, blasting the vile Ushmengar and its hellish device with all he had, save the bit he had flung into Razel’s crozius, filling it with the righteous power and wrath of someone who was giving every bit of himself for someone else’s revenge. Loyal beyond loyalty, to the very last. “He is there.” A question, a confirmation.
“Part of him. Yes. Enough.”
Razel did not know what the Librarian saw, or felt. He could not, and didn’t want to. It was enough confirmation of what he had felt all these years–Igikura’s soul, trapped within his crozius. A silent, unblaming companion.
The Librarian looked down, gaze unfocusing, and Razel could see the gold limning around his eyes as he used his gifts. He had no gifts of his own, but he could imagine Sharur’s machine spirit, riled by this entire thing.
“It would cost the life of the weapon,” the Librarian said, looking up, a sole drop of blood trailing down from one eye across his pale cheek. Asking permission.
Razel sagged, his energy fading. Sharur was a sacred relic, in his hands since the Badab wars. Was it a betrayal to destroy it to free the remains of Igikura?
“There is another way,” the Librarian said, hesitantly. “That would preserve the weapon.” The tightness in his voice said it involved things of his Chapter that were not an outsider’s to know.
“He would…be free?” Razel’s breath was coming in shallow pants, now, his lungs starting to fail. He tore his helmet off with one hand. As if that would help.
“Are any of us free?” The Librarian’s mouth quirked into a bitter smile. “He would…accept it.”
Razel gulped at the air, his vision starting to fuzz. “That, then.” In his last moments, he would do what he could.
Igikura hadn’t wanted to go on that mission, had thought it a fool’s venture, chasing retribution and penance even after the end of their penitent crusade. Igikura had seen, and wanted to be part of, a fresh start for the Executioners. He had wanted to help train the young, guard them with his gifts, see time beyond their shame.
Razel had stolen that.
But Igikura had gone along, unwilling, giving the last of his life for Razel’s obsession, Razel’s blind need for retribution.
That, then. He echoed his own words, though they were starting to lose meaning, and he dropped to his knees, poleyns gouging into the pitted ground. The reiver still watched him, warily, but it was if he, too, could sense Razel’s diminishing threat.
Razel could sense the pressure of the warp, the orderly pull of a Librarian drawing on its unseen, arcane energies, and words that seemed unpronounceable fell from the Librarian’s lips like spoons of ash.
Razel dropped further, palm slapping the hard ground, and then falling hard onto one shoulder, till he lay, half on his side, wracked with pain, and unable to move beyond the few agonal breaths that remained to him.
The Librarian spoke, stepping slowly, almost gently, into Razel’s fading vision. “We shall return this relic to your Chapter,” he said, and it did not need a parchment to have the weight of an oath to it.
Razel tried to find words. After all this time, he had thought he would know what to say, but no words came. His eloquence failed him in the end, and he had no words of courage, nothing to sustain even himself.
Besides, his breath was failing, and all he managed was an attempt to shape Igikura's name.
The Librarian's voice changed, to a quiet lilt Razel had not heard in centuries, and when he rolled his death-hazed eyes upward, he saw the Librarian’s eyes limned silver. “Your penance is done, Death Speaker,” Igikura said, from the Librarian’s voice, sad and soft.
It was.
It finally was.
Razel let go of the effort of trying to see, then the effort of trying to breathe.
He had wanted to die in honor, something of legend, that would record him in the annals of Executioner Chapter lore forever.
But this was honor of a different kind, and honor among brothers, and Igikura's soft voice, forgiving, understanding, accepting the tithe of pain Razel had paid, was, he thought, before thought slid from him forever, just as worthy.