Haadlingen had survived the initial betrayal by dint of the simple, bloody-minded loyalty of Athanaric: His long-suffering discipline sergeant shoving him bodily into the bunker that saved him, sealing the hatches on his mentor in one last, heroic act of fealty set against a backdrop of horrifyingly colossal fratricide. As scrapcode devoured the vox channels as surely as the life-eater scoured the surface of the world, Haadlingen had railed at his friend, who’s final, gurgled words echoed those of Haadlingen’s own mentor, long-departed Skieringer, “Morior invictus, custos morum” – I die undefeated, a guardian of morals.

Anger had consumed Haadlingen then, unlike any he had ever known, a cruel counterpoint to the hungering hatred that had found root in the heart of his legion and stolen its soul. Once the firestorms had blown themselves out, he had emerged from his sanctuary and howled at the blackened skies even as the flaming comets of his Primarch’s wrath descended to compound the betrayal. In the days that followed he had fought a ceaseless war of vengeance, unremitting in the violence he meted out to their would-be murderers. Never having taken the butcher’s nails however, his rage had been one of bitter clarity, with Athanaric’s name frequently on his lips as he slew Angron’s mongrel scum in their droves.

But it was not to last, harried and hounded, he had finally found himself cornered by a familiar face.

“HAADLINGEN! CONSUL-OBSEQUIARI! LAPDOG OF THE FALSE EMPEROR!”

Edekon, once Haadlingen’s pupil, had found his former master amid the charnal nightmare of the killing fields, drawn by the whispers of one last, remaining loyalist discipline officer. Determined to expunge his past in the blood of his former compatriots and calling, Edekon was a near-feral thing of battered and bloodied warplate, a chainaxe his only weapon, frothing from the hammering of the nails. He had barrelled into combat with Haadlingen, and the inelegance of that headlong charge had cost him his head in one clean swing.

But where Edekon had died in haste, shrewder hunters followed at his heels, the jackals that were now the bastard remnant of the once-proud Warhounds, stalking pack murderers with low animal cunning. They drifted out of the bloodied fog of war in ones and twos, circling and encircling as their numbers grew, cutting off any possible avenue of escape, until eventually all motion stopped and Haadlingen arrived at the end.

“Come on then you bloody bastards, let’s make an end of it: Who’s first to taste Skeggøx’s bite? MORIOR INVICTUS: CUSTOS MORUM!”

Whilst it made a great many cuts before the end, the last neck to taste Skeggøx’s bite was that of its own master.

—

“Please switch it off…”

He turned away from the screen.

“I remember Haadlingen. For a brief time his path intersected with ours. That is no way for a loyal son of the XIIth to die. And a poorer fate that his only remembrance will be stolen away by you and your Inquisition. Custos Morum. You are not even worthy of those you seek to replace…”