171. Renewal

Vox was already running when the monster let go of its whip and sunk its claws into Guilliman’s throat where the axe had left a breach in his glorious blue and golden armour.
Without the interference of the warp, they would have been no more than a few steps apart but in the current circumstances, she felt like glued to the spot. 
From the corner of her eyes she saw Guilliman’s honour guard trying to move in and yelled “Fall back!” on the top of her voice. Swinging in the resonance of the empyrean, her voice carried and she could only hope they would heed her command. Redoubling her efforts was rewarded with sudden success, when the warp gate collapsed unexpectedly. Titus must have killed the psyker.
Free to span the distance Vox sprang forward, ducked in under the wings of the Bloodthirster and with a swift sword strike forced it to let go of Guilliman or lose an arm.
It retracted its bloodied claws but immediately came back to strike against her. Vox and Sanguinius both knew that it was far too early to summon the white flame again but the future was decided in the fraction of a second and in these fractions, it never was rational thought that tipped the scales. In these moments, it was passion, fear and wrath that commanded a warrior and right here and now, there was only the unwillingness to let the new found brother be taken from her. She had felt Sanguinius cry out, had witnessed his agony and despair and, unbidden like always, the white flame had sparked inside her.
Vox could not stand the tears that her Primarch’s pain drove to her eyes. She was unable to endure the sorrow and dismay. All her life had she struggled not to grow impervious to things like this and there was still strength in her now. Vox had healed in the past six months, had gathered fortitude as much as resolve. That she had thought she had done this for the revival of Horus was of no consequence. The fire burned inside her again and she fuelled power into it.
Her secondary hand was bare in any case since she had lost her gauntlet in the fight with Abaddon. Determinately she pressed it to Guilliman’s face and let the heat inside her break free.
For a few crucial moments she tried to contain the radius, hoping that the honour guard would fall back. Tiberius she had perceived heeding her words but the others were rushing towards their falling Primarch and then it was too late in any case. The rift ripped open again, tearing the world apart with a much louder bang than before and Vox reached into the pure immaterium. She felt the power there, the forces that were so tempting to abuse for the cause until the mind had lost its way and grew unable to distinguish right from wrong anymore. She felt the Bloodthirster make a grab for her and crumble away under the heat she projected. She felt it becoming as pure energy as it had been before it had taken form. Writhing with the pain, Vox funnelled all the life force that was burned free into the Primarch under her fingers and got hit with his memories in return.
It was as pleasant as ever, which meant that she had rather crashed into a block of plasteel than into the all-consuming, dark dismay that ate away at this powerful mind.
As a psyker, Vox was far more susceptible to dark emotions and had to struggle to keep them at bay by overlaying them with friendship, love, loyalty and a cause to cling to. She had felt lonely in the past year but Titus had been at her side. She had felt despaired and lost but her lover and her friends had been there for her.
There had been no one for Roboute.
The Primarch supported the whole Imperium on his shoulders and he did it alone. There was no one to speak to him, to challenge him or help him out. There was no one to talk to, to confide in. No one who could even remotely keep up with the considerations he had to bear in mind.
She saw herself through his eyes, saw how she had borne a small flame of hope to his horizon like the glimpse of dawn in an endless night. Vox realised how the ridiculously little warmth she carried these days had melted his resolve and had made him want to die because he could stand things getting worse again.
The man under her fingers was just a coil of pain and despair. He had welcomed the axe that had finally brought the prospect of blissful oblivion. He had longed for the incredible pain inside him to seize. He had hoped to find serenity in death, had been prepared to leave his responsibilities to others and now, Vox was about to pull him back. Back into his tortured mind, back into the life gone wrong since his brother had rebelled against their father. In a detached part of her mind, she reasoned that the white flame would dampen his pain and bring him the respite he wanted but for her there was only ice cold truth. To her, the white flame brought only suffering. Trapped between the cries of Sanguinius who feared to lose the brother again and the desire of Guilliman to unravel into infinity, Vox struggled to keep the balance between the forces she was commanding. She wanted to scream but all she managed was an agonised groan under the strain of the flames and beyond them, she already saw the daemons gathering. The newly ripped open warp mixed and tangled with the real world, lending all the daemons around matter to slip into and with insatiable hunger they took their chance. 
Pushing the flames further out again was out of the question and so the beasts came into the world around them, only waiting for her to slip.
Sanguinius piled in with the little strength he had left and Vox managed to sustain the flames just a bit longer. The exhaustion was about to claim her and through the fog of mental and physical agony, she noticed Guilliman looking at her. She had not called him back into his body again. He had come on his own accord. Through everything he had wanted to leave behind, he had dived back into his existence and as he came to his knees, she saw how much weight he lifted.
He stared at her with large, blue eyes. Not like Vox’s eye colour but of a deeper hue like a thunderstorm threatening on the horizon of a summer’s day. Swaying and keeping a desperate hold on his neck so that the flames could not harm him, Vox saw a quiet horror in his eyes dawning. Guilliman knew who was keeping the rift open now and he knew only one way to end this.
Guilliman groped for his sword while the white flames dwindled to a short, flickering fur of defiance around them.
Vox sagged more and more, fighting to keep the flames alive and the daemons gathering around them at bay while the warp danced and screamed around her. Titus was out there somewhere. She did not have to win this by herself, she just had to hold until he got to her.
Her senses and judgement clouding over, her considerations growing muddled, she was still surprised  when Guilliman’s arm came up to envelop and steady her. The armour plates of her makeshift armour cracking under his grasp. She must have damaged the thing again was a thought that scuttled by unattended. 
The Primarch of the Ultramarines lifted the glorious burning blade of his father to her throat but the tip sank until it pointed at her belly. As if unable to look her in the face he pulled her in closer.
Vox closed her eyes and smiled and Titus crashed into them, ripping her limp body away and ending the next warp rift at a stroke.
Left was a valley filled with an assortment of daemons with the three of them in the middle. 
Titus came to his feet and took charge because he did not know what else to do. Trying to orient himself without tripping over Vox’s limp wing, he roared “Tiberius!” into his vox com.
“I see you, turn left!”, his techmarine answered. He and two of Guilliman’s honour guard had retreated fast enough to get out of the valley. Now, they hovered in the gulley they had arrived by and opened fire to cover Titus. Aegis Titus ran towards them, hoping that his Primarch would follow. Infused with the white fire, Roboute Guilliman refused to retreat further than to protect his surviving men.
Titus’ dash for safety ended in a rather anticlimactic huddle behind the three brothers from where he could witness the full might of his beloved progenitor while he held Vox cradled in his arms.
Under the demigod-like strength of Roboute Guilliman the supply of daemons lasted mere minutes. They came at him in hordes, sprang him in packs, tried to assail him single-handedly, nothing worked against the Primarch, snatched back from the dead.
When the last beast fell and crumbled back into nothing Guilliman spun around. Titus had seen it in his movements already. There was more than the pure strength and roar for power there. His Primarch was angry.
That only two of his men had survived seemed of no interest to the mighty man. He pushed them apart to come to a halt before the kneeling Titus with the lifeless angel in his grasp.
The shield of his lady looked up into the stern face of his forefather and cringed before him. Guilliman said nothing, only stared into Titus’ eyes and Titus was unable to withstand it. When he lowered his gaze, the storm-blue eyes of his beloved progenitor jumped over to the still form of the angel in his arms.
Vox looked even worse than she had done after Zenith. Her face was practically one large bruise. The wound on her cheek had ripped open and still trickled in a steady stream of blood. The fingernails visible on her bare hand had cracked and bled as well. The vox com around her neck had split, revealing the armour duct underneath. It looked like something had tried to rip it free. Blood was trickling out from under it, a large bruise forming in the tissue around and Titus dreaded to speculate what she looked like under the armour now.
Trying to control the tense shiver that wanted to come over him for his angry Primarch so close, Titus pressed her more tightly to himself. He could only hope that the still running blood meant that she was still alive. When Guilliman said nothing, just sorted his anger out behind his resolute stare and finally knelt down beside Titus, he dared to raise his gaze to the Primarch again.
Roboute was unable to speak through the turmoil of emotions inside him. The incredible power that burned inside him, the dismay he had felt when he had thought he had to kill the angel, the relief when she had been ripped from his grasp and the warp gate had collapsed. The rush of the fight and the wrath that he was still here. Through all this, Roboute took off his gauntlet and gently searched for a pulse on Vox’s throat. Titus stared at him mutely. In his wide, grey eyes, Roboute saw that the warrior was more than concerned to lose his lady. He feared it. That was something he had never seen in an Astartes and he was most surprised that there was some unrest inside himself that might have been classified as very sharp concern. It came with the image of the lifeless, badly wounded angel. Was that fear too?
“She’s alive”, he said curtly when he was sure that there was a weak throbbing under her skin. “Move!”, he added and turned away to spare himself the dawn of awe in Titus’ face.
He despised this in the men nowadays. They had grown up believing that something as simple as taking a pulse was some arcane art and had to be undertaken with a whole lot of stupid rituals. Apothecaries were treated like shamans or priests who talked to the Emperor personally and none of them dared to gain or pass on even the most basic skills of first aid.
As Roboute came to his feet, he felt unable to tell if he was angry or overjoyed. There was this sense of boundless exaltation and unlimited power mixing with the disappointment and anger that he was still standing upright while eight of his men had left nothing but sad piles of scorched armour in the valley. One glance told him that there was no gene seed to be harvested here. Their apothecary had died with them in any case. Unwilling to let the boiling emotions inside him take control, he decided to revert to his logic instead. That meant, retreating to the troops before another assassin found them.
With the stormy expression on his face unchanged, he laid a hand each on the shoulder guards of his surviving men before he passed them by.
Vox Sanguinius would have to answer a few questions as soon as she came around, he vowed.