169. Rebirth

Vox gave a heartfelt groan as she felt the icy force of the daemon weapon enter her mind. She had foreseen the danger, had decided to gamble on it and lost.
The daemon was ancient. Aeons old and so cold it burned. Born of the first act of hatred, of a brother killing a brother.
Drach’nyen was its name and even though it had willingly taken the form of a sword to swing in the hands of the Despoiler, it still remembered what it truly was. It was corruption and hatred, disgust and envy, it was a force in itself, ready to drive a trillion souls to swallow a trillion more every moment.
It burned into her, freezing away her being until it clashed against her hard, shining core. Vox felt herself shudder. She very much doubted that she could withstand a second blow like this when Sanguinius rose from the depth of her consciousness and came to her aid. He filled his own, steel hard certainty into her to renew her defences and with her core being stabilised, Vox felt gratitude flow through her. It happened faster than a thought and without intent but as she felt the heat of shy love for her Primarch rise inside her, she heard the daemon scream in response. Suddenly, Vox knew what to do.
There was more love inside her. It was the heat that Titus caused in her soul and it was ridiculously easy to summon.
The beloved man had left his memories with her, about how she had been before she had gone into the cave to fetch her Primarch. She had shone so brightly that the love had radiated far beyond her inner self. With the frozen pull of purpose Sanguinius induced in her, this had faded but even the small flame that only just spanned the realm of her own being, made the daemon cringe and shy back. Love was its anathema. The one thing it could not touch. Drach’nyen was the thorn in reality. It was made up, renewed and sustained by hatred. Trapped in the mind it had entered in the reckless desire to destroy, it suddenly saw itself surrounded by something that dissolved and dulled it like a sharp blade diving into molten rock. The compassion and the burning certainty of the devoted lover Vox carried inside herself was the worst that could have happened to the dark entity. It screamed and writhed and tried to lash out but there was just more fire wherever it turned. More compassion, more love and more softness enveloping it.
Outside, in the realm where matter and reality clashed with the illusive, wavering chaos of the warp, Abaddon heard a gut-wrenching screech. Far worse than the noise the two blades had made just now and far worse than anything he could have imagined because it came with the sword in his hand suddenly writhing and slipping.
Vox fell to the ground, shaken and disoriented by what had just happened, trying to get to her knees while Abaddon fought to keep a grip on his blade as Drach’nyen writhed like a snake in his hand and finally left its form to flee into the warp where the heat that had hurt it could not touch it.
Abaddon roared in anger and shock and threw a wild look around. There was no time for rational thought. Nobody was close enough to the figure on the ground, it still held its own sword and he would not run away from someone with wings who could dodge bullets. If he did not act now, everything would be lost. So, he threw himself on the angel, who managed to twist out of the way of the long claws on his right gauntlet but was unable to avoid his fist crashing into her face. He heard a satisfying crunch as her bones broke but with this, Abaddon had lost. In the shortness of time and shock of events, Abaddon’s powerful intellect had let him down. He had remained unable to fathom the danger the angel’s touch brought.
Vox still felt dizzy and weak but the pain and immediate danger of the terminator springing her, kindled her survival instinct. A spark sprang up inside her.
Almost dream-like, she reached out with her bare left hand, touched Abaddon’s dry skin and let the flames roar free.
The unstable world ripped open with a mind-numbing bang and the fire exploded into an unbelievable inferno as they fed on the raw power of the pure immaterium. Vox’s fingers curled around Abaddos’s ear and she held on tight even though he reared up, trying to shake her off. Vox gathered her strength and pushed the flames outwards.
They were commanded by gestures as much as by her will and when she flapped her wings, she sent towering walls of flames spinning around them, consuming everything in reach. A few hundred paces away, hopefully not yet engaged by the psyker that had snuck in his direction, Titus would spring forward and she hoped like hell that he would be here fast enough.
Abaddon scratched at her weakly while the mark of chaos on his forehead burned, staining the white flames with disgusting colours.
There were enough enemy warriors around to burn a stricken battalion back to life and Vox reached for them without mercy. Consuming them all, collecting all their life force, funnelling it through herself and fusing it into Abaddon’s centuries-old body. She filled him with all the power she could reach and driven by her doing, the world began to swirl with a terrifying momentum. The rift she had caused towered over her as high as the sky and Vox welcomed all the daemons that wanted to materialise. For now they were nothing but fresh life force to fuel her endeavour.
Burning, consuming, laughing, roaring the fire danced around her. It tugged at her with the joy of its power, tempting her to finally give it free reign into herself. The strain on her body grew, the cleansing force enticing her to carry away the acute pain in her cheekbone and the fatigue the daemon had left inside her. How inviting the prospect of falling into blissful oblivion under the building stress on her structure. 
She pushed the temptation aside and reached deeper into the forces, bent them to her command and channelled more and more energy into her victim.
Vox tried to shield herself but his memories assailed her with force. A thousand lifetimes of corruption and fighting, of rage and disgust, she had to purge. At some point, she doubted that she could keep this up long enough to fully renew him. The empty armours, bereft of whatever Abaddon’s bodyguards had been, already collapsed around them and Abaddon himself stopped struggling. After even more time, he stopped screaming while Vox fought to burn away the centuries on him, remove the stains of corruption on his body. Collapsed to his knees, his skin suddenly regained colour, his face stopped looking hollow and careworn, his hair unravelled when she burned the silver clasp away that had held his top knot and finally, his armour crumbled around him, consumed by the flames. She had meant it when she had told him that one goal for today was to get him out of his armour.
The fallen creature, formerly marked by chaos, age and its own malevolence, had become a young man again, kneeling in the ashes of his own past, his face peaceful, his eyes closed. She knew that there was no pain for him at this moment and as much as she despised him, she was glad about this because she had seen that, whatever he had been, he still had been a man. Someone like her, someone who had come too close to chaos and had lost the fight she had won over and over again. She was painfully aware of how easily she could have been in his stead. In the few seconds before Titus reached her, Vox contemplated on how very similar she was to the Despoiler. The only difference being their choices.
She only spotted her beloved Titus approaching when he stopped right beside her, wrenched Soon from her fingers and pressed the Anathame into them. The hand had gone numb already but the relief that filled her, renewed her resolve. She braced herself, grasped the handle of the cursed weapon more firmly and thrust the blade into Abaddon’s shoulder and together with this, thrust herself back into his mind. He gave a heartfelt groan, which she heard more with his ears than with her own and then, she was tearing his consciousness apart in search for the man she had truly come to find today.
Now was the moment she and Sanguinius had dreaded and longed for. Her Primarch opened himself to reveal what he had been carrying all along: The forbidden piece of his brother’s soul which their father had left to those who could find it. The Emperor had wiped Horus from history when he had killed him. He had annihilated every little echo of his favourite son, except for what rested with the people who had known him. Sanguinius handed Vox all he had left of the brother and she carefully encompassed this seed of a broken soul, channelled the white fire into it and suffered under the flames entering her mind. Determinately, Sanguinius piled in with all his strength to remind her who she was and help her push the growing soul away to find its own, new body.
“Horus!”, Vox whispered and her whisper sprang up and out into the world, causing swirls in the warp. The daemons assailed them anew, dying in the white fire but they screamed for this name they had not heard for so long. Their claws left burning marks on the surface of her mind and Vox fought to renew the bleeding wounds with purpose and strength and devotion to her cause, managing to stay on top of the pain.
Horus grew and came together more and more, collecting echoes and whispers of himself he had left in the world, inevitably focussing around the blade that stuck in Abaddon’s shoulder.
The sword remembered his name. It had known it long ago, had sought its owner out and had killed what Horus had been up until then. And Horus in turn remembered the sword and the pain it had caused him.
She felt the soul she had fed leave her in agony and gave him a last push to fling him towards Abaddon’s mind. The feeble remains of the Despoiler crumbled under the sheer force of the presence of his master as he settled into the body he would carry him from now on. Vox fought against the weakness welling up. It was not over yet. She pulled the sword out of his shoulder, dropped the blade and looked deeply into the dark, wide-set eyes he had opened when she had called him by name.
“This is where you strayed, Horus”, she said, flames still dancing around them. “This wound was your turning point to fall from the Emperor. Here is your second chance. Use it wisely.”
Titus caught her when she stumbled back and was enveloped in the flames before she was able to extinguish them.
The warp gate, she had ripped open, collapsed.
The man that had been Abaddon, looked uncomprehendingly at them as he knelt amidst the destruction Vox had caused for his sake. Naked and defenceless among the remainder of daemons that had made it to the other side with them. The beasts were surprised and disoriented to have been thrown into reality but would turn deadly within the second.
Vox snatched her sword up from the ground and started to hack down the foes, promising her blade that they would kill stuff now and managed to get them just enough space. Titus in the meantime grabbed the man that had been Abaddon and ran without a word. They had talked about this beforehand and he knew that Vox would be in now shape to carry anything. Pointing out that her engaging in a fight under the circumstances sounded a rather bad idea had been of no avail. They had very limited options at this point and Vox tried her best to cover their retreat.
After what she had accomplished just now, she was not up to it. She dared not employ her foresight again because she still felt dizzy and wanted to throw up for the devastation the forces she had just channelled had left. The exhaustion clouded her mind and her petty makeshift armour would prove a meagre protection if put to the test against the claws of the attacking daemons.
A great, clawed abomination managed to grab her wing, eliminating her chance to dodge its other appendage. She twisted and brought the sword around to at least block its way when Xavor crashed into the beast like an enraged meteor. His thunder hammer knocked the claw holding her aside, before it crashed into the face of the fiend.
Freed of the grip, she stumbled back and was scooped up by Arrick.
So, it had worked, she thought with dwindling senses. The rising ‘Cornix’ had been her signal that Abaddon’s Heretek was dead and after the fire had expired, Aegis had been able to move in.
Sanguinius and she huddled together while the darkness of unconsciousness closed in around them.
They had done it.