Warhawk Quotes

“And he felt it.
Rogal Dorn had been feeling it for days, weeks, building up, up, up, rising over him like a black fog, dragging at his limbs, clogging his mind, making him question every decision he made, every order he gave.
He hadn’t had any respite at all, of any kind, for three months. Three months! His sharpness was going now, his reactions were slower. A billion functionaries depending on him for everything, reaching out to him, suffocating him with their endless demands, pleas for help, for guidance. A billion eyes, on him, all the time.
And he’d fought, too. He’d fought. He’d fought primarchs, brothers he’d once thought of as equals or betters. He’d seen the hatred in Perturabo’s eyes, the mania in Fulgrim’s, stabbing at him, poisoning him. Every duel, every brief foray into combat, had chipped a bit more off, had weakened the foundations a little further. Fulgrim had been the worst. His brother’s old form, so pleasing to the eye, had gone, replaced by bodily corruption so deep he scarcely had the words for it. That degradation repulsed him almost more than anything else. It showed just how far you could fall, if you lost your footing in reality completely.
You couldn’t show that repulsion. You couldn’t betray the doubt, or give away the fatigue. You couldn’t give away so much as a flicker of weakness, or the game was up, so Dorn’s face remained just as it always had been – static, flinty, curt. He kept his shoulders back, spine straight. He hid the fevers that raged behind his eyes, the bone-deep weariness that throbbed through every muscle, all for show, all to give those who looked up to him something to cling on to, to believe in. The Emperor, his father, was gone, silent, locked in His own unimaginable agonies, and so everything else had crashed onto his shoulders. The weight of the entire species, all their frailties and imperfections, wrapped tight around his mouth and throat and nostrils, choking him, drowning him, making him want to cry out loud, to cower away from it, something he would never do, could never do, and so he remained where he was, caught between the infinite weight of Horus’ malice and the infinite demands of the Emperor’s will, and it would break him, he knew, break him open like the walls themselves, which were about to break now too, despite all he had done, but had it been enough, yes it had, no it could not have been, they would break, they must not break…
He clenched his fist, curling the fingers up tight. His mind was racing again. He was on the edge, slipping into a fugue state, the paralysis he dreaded. It came from within. It came from without. Something – something – was making the entire structure around him panic, weaken, fail in resolve. He was not immune. He was the pinnacle – when the base was corrupted, he, too, eventually, would shatter.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“The traveller is the one who takes his truth with him into strange lands. The moment he forgets his truth, he ceases to be a traveller, and becomes the strange land.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“What can we really do for this Imperium? Can we sustain it now, bearing its weight on our shoulders? Not the way we were made. But we can kill for it. We can break, we can burn, we can unmake. We have done everything they asked of us. We have held their battle line, scored it with our own blood, and it has not been enough. If we are to die here, on a world that has no soul and no open sky to rejoice in, then we will die doing what we were schooled to do.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“They shall never have it. They may take all other worlds, they may master the warp, they may despoil the very arch of heaven, but they shall never have this place. It has our mark upon it. It is sacred."

One by one, the khans were doing as Shiban did - planting their feet squarely, mastering their hate, returning to their right mind, restoring equilibrium.

"When we fight again, it will not be for conquest, nor for vengeance, but to preserve this.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“Mortarion was still the greater of them. He was still the stronger, the more steeped in preternatural gifts, but now all that he felt was doubt, rocked by the remorseless fury of one who had never been anything more than flighty, self-regarding and unreliable. All Mortarion could see just then was one who wished to kill him - who would do anything, sacrifice anything, fight himself beyond physical limits, destroy his own body, his own heart, his own soul, just for the satisfaction of the oaths he had made in the void.

'If you know what I did,' Mortarion cried out, fighting on now through that cold fog of indecision, 'then you know the truth of it, brother - I can no longer die.'

It was as if a signal had been given. The Khan's bloodied head lifted, the remnants of his long hair hanging in matted clumps. 'Oh, I know that,' he murmured, with the most perfect contempt he had ever mustered. 'But I can.'

Then he leapt. His broken legs still propelled him, his fractured arms still bore his blade, his blood-filled lungs and perforated heart still gave him just enough power, and he swept in close. If he had been in the prime of condition, the move might have been hard to counter, but he was already little more than a corpse held together by force of will, and so Silence interposed itself, catching the Khan under his armour-stripped shoulder and impaling him deep.

But that didn't stop him. The parry had been seen, planned for, and so he just kept coming, dragging himself up the length of the blade until the scythe jutted out of his ruptured back and the White Tiger was in tight against Mortarion's neck.

For an instant, their two faces were right up against one another - both cadaverous now, drained of blood, drained of life, existing only as masks onto pure vengeance. All their majesty was stripped away, scraped out across the utilitarian rockcrete, leaving just the desire, the violence, the brute mechanics of despite.

It only took a split second. Mortarion's eyes went wide, realising that he couldn't wrench his brother away in time. The Khan's narrowed.

'And that makes the difference,' Jaghatai spat. He snapped his dao across, severing Mortarion's neck cleanly in an explosion of black bile, before collapsing down into the warp explosion that turned the landing stage, briefly, into the brightest object on the planet after the Emperor's tormented soul itself.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“Jaghatai started to cough, sending more bloody spurts out over the ripped-apart ground. His shattered gauntlet still clutched the hilt of his blade, but the arm must have been broken in many places. Only slowly, as he trudged back, did Mortarion realise that the sound was bitter laughter.

'I… absorbed,' Jaghatai rasped, 'the… pain.'

Mortarion halted. 'What do you mean?'

'I… know,' Jaghatai said, his voice a liquid slur. 'The Terminus Est. You… gave up. I… did not.' And then he grinned – his split lips, his flayed cheeks, his lone seeing eye, twisting into genuine, spiteful pleasure. 'My endurance is… superior.'

So that was what they all believed. Not that he had done what needed to be done. Not that he had sacrificed everything to make his Legion invincible, even suffering the ignominy of using Calas as his foil, even condemning himself to the permanent soul-anguish of daemonhood so that the change could never be undone by anyone, not even his father.

That he had been weak.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“It was as simple as mortal indecision. He didn’t know. Every course ended in disaster. And he couldn’t even pretend that he didn’t care, because he did. God of Decay, no father ever cared more.’ At that, Morarg suddenly remembered what Mortarion had told him. I loved you all too much. That is the only error I will admit.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“No running now.’ The Khan’s head snapped back, and blood sloshed down his neck. He had a brief glimpse of the skies above – the mottled incarnadine clouds, hiding the monstrous fleets above – before Mortarion’s profile loomed up to block it. And then the dream came true, just as Yesugei had described it to him – the Lord of Death, rising in darkness over a world of shadow, arms raised for the killing strike. Not everything is fated, the Khan had told him then. ‘It ends,’ Mortarion said, his face a rictus of anger. ‘Here.’ The Khan chuckled painfully under his shattered, lensless helm. ‘See, but I’m laughing now, brother,’ he rasped, the thick blood in his throat making his words gurgle. ‘You should start to worry.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“The Khan nodded. ‘Then he wants this as much as I do.’ ‘But Ganzorig is still too far off. We cannot yet give you–’ ‘Time runs out. Are you strong enough?’ And that was the question. The strain of it might kill him before completion. Of more importance, it might kill his lord. But time was already racing away from them while warriors died in the plague-sunk halls of the Lion’s Gate. In that place, at that time, there was only one answer to be made. ‘Give me the order, Khagan,’ Naranbaatar said, steeling himself for what had to come next. ‘I shall be as strong as the task demands.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“Did he regret the change? Did Khârn, the most faithful of all Angron’s sons, wish for things to be different? Maybe. Except that he had never known his master undamaged. He had never seen him in his youth, before the Nails had been inserted, and so his loyalty had always been given to a broken angel. And after that, once he’d been given the same bad medicine as his master, it had been easier just to wash any doubt away with fresh blood. When you killed a man, a woman, a child – when you ended a fragile flame of life, when you took away the chance of any further development, of happiness, of sadness, or selfishness or vice or sainthood or intellect – when you did that, in that one moment, the torment ceased. Just a fragment, an atom of peace amid an eternity of rage. But at the same time, in that fleeting glimpse of sanity, you could recall everything you once were. You could remember discourse, and laughter, even pity. And so you had to start again, to move to the next victim, the next challenge, because that knowledge was the worst goad of all. To kill.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“I suppose I don’t know why she kept you on,’ John said eventually. ‘I mean, if she hated all of this so much. Aren’t you just… the worst kind of reminder?’ Leetu chewed steadily. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe that was a problem for her.’ He never really smiled. His bull-necked, slab-muscled head was always held perfectly poised, almost expressionlessly. ‘Or maybe she liked to remember a beginning. From when things were more optimistic.’ John raised an eyebrow. ‘But, if you believe her, she was the one behind it all. No Erda, no traitors. Everyone raised properly in father’s secure Palace, given the guidance they always needed.’ ‘What makes you think that would have gone better?’ ‘Is there a worse outcome than this one?’ ‘I would say so. There usually is.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“He slammed hard into contact, his black sword screaming up against the teeth of the enemy’s blade. One, two, three swipes, hard and fast, hammering the Reaver backwards and making him stumble on the loose stone. Sigismund’s severe face twitched into a smile under his helm – a flicker of real enjoyment. He hated this enemy. This enemy was an unbeliever, fallen from the light of hard truth, a thing to be exterminated with joy. That was what had changed. It wasn’t about skill. It wasn’t about the abstract goal of conquest. It was about righteousness. It was about certainty.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“My Khan,’ he ventured, not from any lack of resolve, but because it needed to be asked now, needed to be settled, before pulling away became impossible. ‘Can we do this?’ The Khagan nodded fractionally, acknowledging the question. He pressed his fingers harder together. ‘Not if we delay,’ he said quietly. ‘Another day, maybe two, and the moment is gone. Once he has everything in place, we do not have the strength to break him. It must be while he is consumed with his own conquests. He has the numbers, he has the gifts, he has the power. All we have is what we have always relied on. To be faster.’ He smiled darkly. ‘See, what can we really do, for this Imperium? Can we sustain it now, bearing its weight on our shoulders? Not the way we were made. But we can kill for it. We can break, we can burn, we can unmake.’ The smile disappeared. ‘We have done everything they asked of us. We have held their battle line, scored it with our own blood, and it has not been enough. If we are to die here, on a world that has no soul and no open sky to rejoice in, then we will die doing what we were schooled to do.’ He looked out across the entire chamber, making each khan feel as if he were the only one there, the only one to enjoy this final confidence before the war-horns were sounded and the engines were gunned. ‘But get me to my brother,’ the Khan said, ‘and as eternity is my judge, I shall scour his stench from the universe forever.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“He watched the burning lands, the spoil of a once proud galactic civilisation, brought low by its own vices. ‘I made contact because, if you do this, it may be the last time we ever speak. And so I wanted to send you my blessing. I wanted to wish you luck. And I wanted to express the hope that you’ll ram that damned scythe so far down his throat that he’ll never find his stupid rebreather again.’ The Khan laughed hard at that. Even distorted by the poor link, Sanguinius heard that it was the right kind of laugh – not cynical, not knowing, just a brief break in the suffocating tension. ‘We will meet again, my friend,’ the Khan said. ‘We will build all the things we ever dreamed of. Until then, do what you must. Keep them hoping. Hold the walls.’ The link cut. Sanguinius stood for just a little while longer, alone on the parapet, watching his birthworld burn. He looked over his shoulder, to where the great massif of the Inner Palace rose up. In the darkness, against the gathering glow of the many fires, it looked more like an ossuary than a fortress. ‘I plan to,’ he said softly.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“This is the gift I bring for you now, my brother,’ he breathed, his metallic voice rattling against the strictures of his corroded rebreather. ‘The gift that only I could bring, the reason the god set me here, in this place, at this time.’ He closed his hooked fingers over the bastion, snuffing it out, masking it with his sealed fist. ‘The last sensation you will ever have. The last emotion you will ever feel. And you will understand, in your soul, who gave it to you, and why you remain powerless against it.’ The sun slipped away, drenching the entire Palace in darkness. All that remained was the vice, the grip, the merciless application of pressure. ‘Despair,’ rasped Mortarion, ascended daemon-king of life and death, plague-maker, hope-ender. ‘I send you despair.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“Those who demand veneration are never really worth it, in my experience.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“He soon laid eyes on the enemy again – warriors of Lorgar’s Legion, advancing through the unnatural dusk with raw confidence, surrounded by the spectral flicker of half-instantiated daemonkind. Their armour was carved with words of power, decorated with the bones and the flesh of those they had slain, their helms deformed into outstretched maws, or serpent’s mouths, or the leer of some Neverborn warp prince. Their cantrips stank and pulsed around them, making the natural air recoil and mist shred itself into appalled ribbons.
They were engorged with their veil-drawn power, sick on it, their blades running with new-cut fat and their belts hung with severed scalps. For all that, they were still warriors, and they detected Valdor’s presence soon enough. Nine curved blades flickered into guard, nine genhanced bodies made ready to take him down.
He raced straight into the heart of them, lashing out with his spear, slicing clean through corrupted ceramite. The combined blades danced, snickering in and out of one another’s path as if in some rehearsed ritual of dance-murder, all with the dull gold of the lone Custodian at its centre. A poisoned gladius nearly caught his neck. A fanged axe-edge nearly plunged into his chest. Long talons nearly pulled him down, ripe to be trodden into the mire under the choreo graphed stamp of bronze-chased boots.
But not quite. They were always just a semi-second too slow, a fraction too predictable. The gap between the fighters was small, but it remained unbridgeable. His spear slammed and cut, parried and blocked, an eye-blink ahead of the lesser blades, a sliver firmer and more lethal in its trajectory, until black blood was thrown up around it in thick flurries and the lens-fire in the Word Bearers’ helms died out, one by one.
Afterwards, Valdor withdrew, breathing heavily, taking a moment to absorb the visions he had been gifted with each kill. Lorgar’s scions were little different to the true daemons in what they gave him – brief visions of eternal torment, wrapped up in archaic religious ciphers and a kind of perpetually forced ecstasy. They were steeped in some of the purest, deepest strands of Chaos, wilfully dredging up the essence of its mutating, despoiling genius and turning it, through elaborate tortures, into a way of war. To fight them was to be reminded, more acutely than with most others, of the consequences of defeat.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“I’m not going back. They need me. There are hundreds of thousands here, millions, in every basement and undercroft. It would be the work of a generation to kill them all, even for these monsters. But we can turn that time against them. Make the survivors forget their fear, teach them to hate. Teach them to venerate the god on the Throne, teach them that their life means nothing in isolation from it. Give them a symbol, give them a means to make fire.’ She smiled. ‘You see a single Sigismund, and your stomach revolts. I will give you a million Sigismunds. A billion. A universe full of them. If that scares you, imagine what it will do to the enemy.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“And that was the strangest thing of all – to talk to him again, brother to brother, just for a moment before it had to end. For so long, his every thought had been of the kill that had been denied him, but now it was just the old fraternal one upmanship again, the kind of relentless needle all of them had given one another since the start. Because you could forget, if you were not careful, how alone they were; that no one, not the gods, not even their own father, perceived the universe just as they did. They were unique, the primarchs, bespoke blends of the physical and the divine, irreplaceable one-offs amid a galaxy of dreary mass production. In a fundamental sense, Jaghatai knew more of Mortarion’s essential character than most of the Death Guard, and he knew more of the Khan’s than the peoples of Chogoris. That had always been the paradox of them – they had been strangers in their own homelands, cut off by fate from those who should have been their blood brothers. Now they were all back on Terra, the place of origin, and all that seemed to have been forgotten amid the heedless hurry to murder one another.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“Oll had learned the hard way that those who seemed most clearly in control of things were often the ones with the shakiest grip. Except for Him, of course. He’d always known exactly where He was going.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk

“He had always wanted the world to be just like that – no doubts, no lingering areas of hesitation or equivocation, just action, purity of will and deed, the knowledge that whatever he did could never be, and could never have been, otherwise. From the first day of this rebellion, everything had shaken that single-mindedness. The things he had relied on with total surety had proven to be illusory and weak, and things he had thought of as being fictive and simple-minded had proved to have unexpected power. He had been forced to recalibrate, to reorientate. As every sword-brother knew, the time of greatest weakness was during the correction of a defective technique. He had started to fight… and lose. He had faced Horus Aximand and had been made to withdraw. He had faced Khârn, whom he had not yet been able to bring himself to hate fully, and been beaten. He had even taken on a primarch. Had that been hubris? Or just frustration, a desperate bid to recover his now-so-elusive sense of superiority? If he had somehow done the impossible and bested Fulgrim, would that have finally banished the whispers of doubt?
Probably not. The fault had never been external, he knew now – it had always been within him, slowly metastasising, becoming impassable the longer he ignored it. He had needed to hear Dorn’s words of release to understand it. They had, all of them, been fighting with one hand behind their backs, trying to hold on to a dream that had already died. The enemy was utterly changed now. They were physically stronger and morally intoxicated, eagerly drinking up gifts that should have been shunned as poison. And yet, those who remained loyal had tried to cling on to what they had been at the very start. They had still mouthed pieties about Unity and the Imperial Truth long after fealty to such virtues had become impossible. Once he grasped that, once he faced up to it, he had what he needed to remove the fetters in his mind.
I no longer fight for the Imperium that was, he told himself. I fight for the Imperium as it will become.”
― Chris Wraight, Warhawk