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Sanguinus knew what kind of place this was. They’d dragged him to an arena. Not the kind with tiers of seating, where he might be watched and mocked in the image of a brother who was now a blood-soaked beast lost to the most violent instincts of the warp, but a place of battle all the same. It was in the imprint of it where living souls and emotions had pressed through to the empyrean and left their mark. There were layers of ghosts, moving in memory. They tore at each other and died.
And of course he could smell the blood. It made his jaw itch. And his teeth.
It had taken five terminators to move him, hooking chains to black warped battle-plate, painting runes in the air which tasted sugar-sweet enough to burn the tongue and make teeth ache in a different way. Similar runes etched his bindings. They made him both more and less what he was. Some parts suppressed, others raw and exposed. A flayed wound. Vulnerable.
As Horus wanted him.
The thought was akin to a summons; a door in the wall opened and the greatest - the worst - the most ruined - of Sanguinius’ brothers came in. He was stripped of armour, half-naked. A faint sheen of sweat painted his skin. From what exertion, Sanguinus wondered? His presence was as suffocating as it ever was. His attention was a cloth thrown over Sanguinus’ head, over his shoulders, pinning him down. If one looked into his eyes now, something new looked back.
It was not as simple as possession, Sanguinus understood that much. There was no daemon wearing his brother’s skin. This was still Horus, still his brother, but at the same time he’d made of himself a conduit to powers vast and near unfathomable, yet sapient and knowing enough to wish to see and feel and hear what their champion of the materium saw and felt and heard.
He did not want to look at Horus, but equally he did not want to be unable to anticipate what he might do. Sanguinus watched from the corners of his eyes, tracking only movement.
“My dear Sanguinus,” Horus said, circling him and stopping behind his back, between the furled arcs of his wings. They twitched via instinct rather than Sanguinus’ conscious control. His strength was pinned down by nails of warpcraft - though he could crush a man’s chest with a blow from a wing once, all he could do to Horus now was bruise him.
Sanguinus said nothing. He wasn’t sure if Horus expected him to respond.
Fingers brushed down his spine. There were feathers there, though there hadn’t been before. He wasn’t sure when it had changed. He wasn’t sure if there would be more changes. At times he thought he might sprout a tail, a wide fan of white feathers, or that his fingers would grow talons. He had no mirror but when he caught his reflection in polished metal he thought his eyes were different; golden and hawkish. He’d been told a tale - or perhaps it had been a dream, a vision, a lie, the truth - that at the same moment their father died and the light guiding humanity with him, their brother Corax turned into a bird and flew into the same forest that had eaten the Lion, escaping the beasts of the warp that pursued him.
If Sanguinus became a bird entire then he could slip through the bars of his cage and fly away too… but that would never happen.
“My sweet Sanguinus,” Horus continued, his fingers deep in feathers, stroking, massaging. Both hands now, firm against underlying muscles stiff from lack of flight. Sanguinus hated that it felt so good. “Why do you still defy me? There is no purpose in it. I’ve won. There is nothing to gain from resistance.”
Still Sanguinus made no reply. Nothing to gain - save the integrity of his soul. He knew the hunger of a predator and he felt it in the warp. There were so many things in there that wanted. It was all desire, all instinct. A moment of weakness would be enough to lose ground, to allow a thing that was other to get claws in him. Then it was a path of many steps down, and much harder to turn and move the other way. Perhaps impossible.
Horus sighed. “Encouragement,” he muttered, possibly just to himself. “That’s all you need.”
He drew back. Another door opened. Something entered; shivering muscle, raw nerves, a blood-stain stink as pungent to the nose as a slap in the face, the distant blare of horns overlapping into a scream, fury and death, brass and bone. A neverborn.
It was chained too. It pulled against its chains, bullish, snapping its jaws, dull red eyes fixed on Sanguinus. All that it was leaned forwards. Hunger in physical form.
His fingers twitched. He was still the thing he’d been designed to be, a weapon for his father’s hands. A piece of the Emperor’s will to go out into the galaxy and destroy it. All instincts in him revolted at the sight of the neverborn in front of him, a nauseous urge to destroy it. Behind him Horus laughed and stepped back. Suddenly the chains loosened.
Sanguinus was free - no, not free. Less restrained. He whirled, his wings mantled protectively around him, snarling at his brother. Horus was by the wall, out of reach. Shadows seemed to cup him in a way that was unnatural. He was smiling.
Sanguinius shook his head. There was no point in attacking. He measured the distance to Horus against the slack he’d been given and refused to humiliate himself. He turned back to the neverborn. Horus wanted him to fight, so he should not. All he would have to endure was a little pain. His brother would never let him die. He wouldn’t even suffer his pet to be mauled too badly, so there was no reason to fight at all.
Faint steam issued from the neverborn’s snarling snout. The bindings holding it back were physical only up to a point, then they disappeared into void and fire. Runes flashed in the air around it, eye-searing, impossible to read without a degree of concentration Sanguinius had no desire to give even though they caught at his attention, barbed to drag at curiosity. That was a trap too, just as combat would be. It was unarmed save claws and teeth and hooves, but that would be enough. Its hide was a shifting, rippling sheet of blood and there was no true muscle underneath, nothing so understandable and mundane as taut, corded flesh, yet its being was of the nature of strength and so it was a heavy, bulky thing.
Horus clicked his fingers. The neverborn was unleashed. It bellowed as it charged, bringing the thunder of war-horns with it as a physical blow of sound. The air in Sanguinius’ chest vibrated. He braced himself to meet the beast head on. The blood-stink of it made his mouth wet. Saliva dripped down his throat and into the empty pit of his stomach with a nauseous clench.
The daemon intended to tackle him, bear him to the ground and devour him - yet Horus had planned for this well. It had not been freed for this fight either, not as it had first seemed. It too had only had its chains slackened. It spread its arms to envelop him and was caught short by a collar pinned around its thick neck with barbs of some unholy bone. Sanguinus sneered at it - but it was still close enough to land a blow. Claws caught him across the side of the face. A spray of his own blood painted his chest.
Sanguinus gasped. It should not smell so good.
Frustrated, the neverborn panted and growled. Each false-breath out was a mist of blood, just as blood frothed at the corners of its jaw in place of saliva. It was intoxicating. Sanguinus felt his choler rise, wished he could blame it on warp-witchery, but he knew what such taint felt like and that he could fight it. This was not external. It came from within. Animal instinct. A desire of his soul.
He recognised this creature as a thing of violence given form because he was such a thing too. Resisting one’s own nature was far harder than rejecting influence from outside.
All this passed through his mind in the time it took for the daemon to draw its hand back for another blow. It would not hit him with a closed fist when what it wanted was to draw his blood - he saw his own hunger reflected in its eyes, though they were but burning embers in craters of scalded meat. As it struck down Sanguinius dodged back, judging he would be kept safe by the limitations set on it by its bonds. He was - but only for that attack. With the next - lightning quick for a beast his same size yet twice his bulk - it took a step forward and scored four deep lines across his belly as though to disembowel him. It hissed in a tongue that vibrated agonisingly in his ears, but that he somehow still understood, “Blood! Blood! Pretty thing give me your blood for Him!”
The neverborn was chained with sorcery; it did not follow the rules of the materium. Sanguinius guessed the dimensions of its bonds were its distance from him rather than from some point in space where its chains had been fixed. He did not have that luxury. His chains were real. He could retreat only so far. Even at arms’ reach it could cut him to ribbons unless he fought back.
Which was what Horus wanted.
Sanguinus could bear pain. That was not what pushed hard against his resolve. It was the blood. The scent of it. The taste of it on the air, on his own lips. The sight of it running over his pale skin and the coating the neverborn itself wore instead of natural hide. It caught and tugged at his control. It was hunger and thirst put into one. Every part of his body ached for it.
It did not help that the neverborn was driven equally wild by the very same thing. It struck at him ever more fiercely, clawing sometimes at itself where the collar and cuffs held it back from him, utterly frenzied. When it did so it drew splashes of its own blood - which smelled just as delicious in a different way, and Sanguinus moaned despite himself.
He wasn’t sure exactly what it was that broke him. He only knew that his teeth were long in his mouth and pressing against his lips, sweet little cuts that teased his hunger more, and there was food right there in front of him and all he would have to do would be to bite down…
The skin of the neverborn was blood and the flesh and muscle beneath it was blood and even if it started out as something strange and solid it melted into his mouth as he tore at it and went down his throat like fire. Sanguinus almost choked on it, but though it burned with a mind-numbing intensity it cooled to mere warmth when it hit his belly and it was good, satisfying, almost more so than anything he’d ever had before in those stolen shameful moments of giving in…
Something clotted and not quite substantial tore away from his jaws. Sanguinus blinked and saw that the neverborn had jerked its arm free - he’d savaged a great rent in its shoulder that should have bitten down to exposed bone. Instead blood gushed onto the floor, and the false-muscle held inside its semi-liquid hide bubbled and reformed, healing itself in moments. Sanguinus growled. He was hunger, unsatiated. Every part of him ached with it, and he could no more control it than the beating of his own heart. He lunged.
The daemon was ready for him. Violence incarnate, how could it not be? It opened its arms as though welcoming him, baring blunt animal teeth. Once Sanguinus had been an elegant warrior, darting across a battlefield like a bolt of lightning which brought death at the point of his lance wherever he alighted, but he no longer remembered how long ago that had been. He gave no thought to technique now. Only instinct remained. He met the neverborn strength for strength, a ripping, tearing grapple that sent them tumbling over the arena floor, writhing together in a parody of lovers. It raked Sanguinus over and over with its claws but he was heedless of such minor pains. It lacked the leverage to tear him apart or slice deeply enough to disembowel him. He still lacked any natural weapons despite his earlier fears, but he would not have thought to use them even if he had sprouted talons in the moment. He was a mouth and teeth and a throat and every other part of him was subordinate to that.
The brass collar was an obstacle, but not one Sanguinus could break. Instead he forced the beast’s snout upwards, extending its neck backwards with the leverage of its curling bovine horns, and made enough space for his jaws. Was he all fangs, or only his incisors? He no longer knew and it did not matter. It was enough to open up its throat, latch on, and drink deep.
The neverborn shrieked, a bellow that rippled the substance of it in Sanguinus’ mouth but which had little effect on him save buffeting his hair and wings in a strong wind. He puffed his feathers up against it, wings mantled over his prey. Fire came in and filled him up. He would have cried out in satisfaction had his throat not been otherwise occupied. Hooves kicked at his legs, claws raked along his arms and shoulders, but all of the strength was coming out of the daemon and draining into him. He devoured it. He took it for his own. The runes and bindings that pinned him burned with renewed effort, though still far from breaking. Entities that fancied themselves gods had whispered the secrets of them into his brother’s ear and Sanguinus was not foolish enough to think he had any chance of ever breaking free.
Soon the blood of pure, sweet nourishment slackened. The body dangling from his jaws was limp and light. Sanguinus let go of it. It hit the floor as dry bones and leather, and the impact turned it into dust. The warp-chains lay in curls like dead serpents, their purpose spent. His stomach was full. It felt like the first time in… he did not know. Perhaps it was the first time ever. What was drinking the blood of a mortal compared to this?
For a long, shining moment he was satisfied. The hunger was gone - but at the same time Sanguinus knew that it would return. This was a brief respite, nothing more.
A hand fell onto the top of his head. Sanguinius jerked in alarm, his wings flaring. He hadn’t heard Horus approach. “Well done,” his brother said, carding fingers through his hair. “Good bird. My hunting raptor. You see how glorious you are when you simply give in to your true nature?”
Sanguinus would not give him the satisfaction of a response. He stared at the floor in silence. Even the neverborn’s dust was disintegrating further, borne away on an unseen wind and vanishing. It left bare metal behind, splashed with the drying marks of his own shed blood.
The injuries the neverborn had dealt him were gone. Devouring it had healed them. It was unnatural. He was more a warp-thing than he liked to think about.
Horus leaned in behind him and whispered in his ear. “Would you like some more?”
He did not give Sanguinus time to decide whether it was worth giving him the satisfaction of speaking to him even to tell him no. The far door opened again, but not to the stink of blood. A fresh breeze flowed over him, dry, incense-spiced, sandy. It drove a pang of sweetly agonising nostalgia into his stomach like an iron spike. It was the wind of home. The wind of Baal.
“Oh my lord, he is every bit as glorious as you have described him,” a laugh of a voice said, a voice like the tinkling chime of clusters of bells. “A bright angel of hunger and desire.”
Was it better to look at it or not? These were hardly the first neverborn Sanguinus had encountered. The war had been, at times, a nightmare of them. He knew how to deal with them on the battlefield, but laid low and made vulnerable by his brother’s power was another matter. He’d erred already, he knew that now his head had cleared, and he wanted to weep at how dismal it was.
He should have more hope. He had always been able to kindle it in others. It was only that it was not a case of sharing what he felt with those around him, or even consciously tugging at the strings of their hearts. It was just an innate property. Another trait, an instinct and not a power. He was a warp-beast that wanted to protect itself, and so he made others love him and believe in him and that which he stood for.
Sanguinus forgot that he should not look up. The air around this neverborn was a heat-haze. It was proudly naked, with pale, soft skin, both swelling breasts and muscle under a warm padding of just enough fat to take the edge off any harsh lines. Curls fell around its pointed ears and framed a heart-shaped face, but it was hairless below. All the angles of its body seemed to draw the eye there, where two plush, coquettish lips concealed the warm, wet delight within…
He shook his head. Those thoughts were not his own. He was not the sort of person to think like that, to be so easily distracted.
Even knowing this it was difficult to look away. With an effort of will Sanguinus managed to focus on its feet instead, which were somehow both strong and delicate at the same time, with neat, even toes and perfect painted nails and no hint of human imperfections. He wanted to put them in his mouth but to lick and not to bite down…
No! That was its influence too! There was no safe place to gaze upon it, no part of it that it would not use to provoke new and previously unfelt lusts. Somehow Sanguinus closed his eyes. This helped somewhat. The neverborn had claws instead of hands on two of its four arms, and yet until this moment he hadn’t thought that odd or unlovely. It appeared that even the sheen of a chitinous shell and the sharp hard ridge of its cutting edge could be made alluring by a thing like this.
“Oh, baby bird,” it cooed as it came nearer. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to fear. You’ve eaten well - doesn’t it make you feel alive? Aren’t you strong? Virile? Don’t you want to fuck after you fight? What’s so bad about pleasure?”
He would not listen to it.
Sanguinius could tell himself this, but he had no way to stop up his ears, or confidence that it would even help. He’d calmed a little after killing the other neverborn, but not entirely. There had still been tension in him, a restless energy. That much was not a lie of the daemon’s warp-power; his stomach was full and his heart beat strongly and the glory of victory was on him even if the greater part of him knew it was no real victory at all in any way that mattered. Its voice was very gentle and sweet, and made one want to listen to it say anything at all, for it could imbue even the dullest material with unearthly beauty.
“Oh, gorgeous, gorgeous,” the daemon repeated to itself. He could smell its closeness in perfume and feel its bodyheat. “Such a subtle, delicate allure. Does anyone ever notice its pull? Dear darling thing, how could anyone hope not to love you?”
Sanguinus turned his head away. Alongside the scent of Baal was something less spiced and more floral, sweet and soporific. It urged him to relax into it, a different sort of curtain thrown over the world to the dominant aura of Horus which merely expected submission absent any particular motive. Even so, the neverborn’s words prompted creeping fear. Could it read his mind? Hadn’t he been thinking about the effect he had on others just before it came in?
Was this his brother’s lesson? Was this why he’d summoned these particular daemons - to force Sanguinus to make the comparison between them, to recognise himself in a cracked mirror, to admit that he was kin and therefore that there was no point in fighting his own nature as a thing of Chaos…?
Disgust surged, poisoning and corroding the false-ease the neverborn brought with it. He wanted to kill it again - he should have wanted that from the start. That was his purpose, the task his Father had set him to which was all that could make up for being what he was. Resist and defeat the warp in whatever form it took.
Some manner of cry burst from Sanguinius’ throat as he struck out - he barely registered it but it had something of a raptor’s shriek about it. He was unarmed, his fingers tipped only with blunt human nails. Instinct should have curled them into a fist. Yet for a moment perhaps they were talons instead. The neverborn’s smooth flesh parted in four long lines, even its wounds somehow symmetrical and beautiful. The daemon emitted a sweet gasp of surprise - but also too much like joy. The hatred in Sanguinus’ gaze did not give it pause. Its large eyes, framed with long dark lashes, met his own and its lids creased with pleasure.
Sanguinus was braced for the smell of blood, thinking that since he’d only just slaked his thirst it should have no purchase on him. What seeped from this daemon was not blood but a clear liquid, thick as honey. Indeed the scent of it was honeyed too - intensely sweet. His mouth started to water again.
The neverborn swiped its finger along the line of one cut and put it into its mouth, full lips wrapping around it and sucking it, playing with it. With mock hurt it said, “Now that wasn’t very nice.”
“No,” Sanguinus replied. He wished he had a clever response, and even this one word was meant not as a reply but a general rejection of every part of this situation. The flare of hate and disgust had not lasted as he’d hoped, and it was hard to keep a grasp on those emotions. He was clinging, holding on to his resolve with his fingertips. He bared his fangs, wings mantling above him, feathers splaying and puffing out.
The daemon only cooed with delight. “If you want to claw at me again, dear bird, follow your heart’s desire. I’m such a big bad daemon, a bold warrior like yourself should certainly punish me.”
The last neverborn had been violence made manifest; this one was sensation. It mattered not what manner of sensation that was, bane or boon, only that it was something rather than nothing. The way to defeat it would be the same as with the first - to not engage at all. Sanguinus had failed at that, failed to keep his hunger in check. Could he do better on the second attempt?
The daemon reached for him. Sanguinus startled away, jumping backwards only to find that Horus was still standing there. He collided with his brother’s strong chest, and his arms came around to hold him by the waist. Sanguinus could smell him beneath the daemon’s overpowering scent; warm, faintly animal, tinged with oils and hot metal and something utterly undefinable that he could only think was the corruption of the warp.
“You never used to hold yourself back like this,” Horus whispered in his ear.
Sanguinus froze. It would not be the first time his brother had reminded him of what they had once shared - but that had been before he betrayed them all. Before he betrayed Father. Killed Father. “You know why,” he murmured back.
“There’s no-one left to be loyal to,” Horus told him. “They’re all dead, or they are with me. All you’re doing is hurting yourself, and for what?”
The neverborn slunk closer and sunk to its knees in front of him. It put its humanoid hands on his belly, folding the crab-clawed ones behind its back. Small claws like needles pierced his skin in tiny bursts of sharp pain, somehow far more intense than they ought to have been, yet not unpleasant. Leaning in, it lapped at his musculature with a too-long tongue. He tried to ignore it, to ignore anything that might be occurring down there. Lust was present and had been present since this thing began to exert its influence on him, but that did not mean it was wise to acknowledge it.
“Sanguinius. I wish I did not have to chain you anymore. I miss you. I miss us.”
Sanguinus wished he believed him. Horus missed something that was impossible now. His brother had changed too much. He didn’t want to return to the past, he wanted to mould Sanguinus into a creature that would fit into a mockery of it. At the same time he ached for the loss too. He missed his brother, his lover, just as much.
Horus kissed the side of his neck, moved down to his shoulder. Where he touched, it burned. It was difficult to think clearly. The strength he’d drunk into his stomach spread out from his core, warming where it went. His head span. Resolve weakened.
Later, it would be easy to think of excuses, for that was the way of the weak and Sanguinius had never been as strong as he was expected to be. He’d done his best for his sons, for his brothers, for Father… hadn’t he? Or had he just told himself that so he did not have to admit to his own failures?
It was the daemon’s musk, it was the memories, it was the influence of Horus, it was the corrupted essence he’d taken into himself it was it was…
Maybe he wanted it. Maybe that was true.
He turned his head. Pressed his lips to Horus’ cheek. Let stiff and arched wings relax downwards in a show of submission.
Horus caught his mouth with his own. His tongue slipped in and brought a promise with it, an unspoken portent that Sanguinus could not dare to acknowledge. He ran it along Sanguinius’ teeth and caught it against one fang. Sweet, familiar blood was a burst of flavour.
Of desire.
“Oh!” the neverborn exclaimed, digging its claws into his belly. “Oh, he wants!”
“And we must give,” Horus murmured, words spoken lip against lip. His hands tightened against Sanguinius’ hips, then reached for the loincloth that was all which preserved his dignity. He did not tear it free. It was slow. Seductive. It had been like that sometimes, but other times he had been fierce and forceful and Sanguinius had delighted in a submission far more willing than this. Would he have preferred that now? It might have allowed him a further edge of denial, another excuse that well he had no choice, he had been forced…
It didn’t matter if Horus took him gently or viciously when he made no attempt to fight back. Whether his brother would have let him say no in this moment after all this effort of seduction… it was better not to think about that. He would end up broken either way. Had always been broken. Always the failed project, cloaked in a psychic veil of perfection to hide the monster that lay beneath…
“Too much in your own head, as always,” Horus told him, putting a hand on his cock and squeezing lightly. “Stop thinking, my angel.”
“How can I be an angel now?” Sanguinius replied. “Yours or anyone else's?”
“What is an angel if not a thing of gods and the warp?”
Shuddering, Sanguinius looked down - and saw the daemon’s heart-shaped face gazing up at him with something worshipful, hungry, waiting. Slowly it leaned forward and took the tip of his half-hard cock in its mouth. With Horus’s hand still clutched around most of the length of it he could hardly jerk back, or move at all, and so he had no choice but to be teased by it running its tongue back and forth along his slit, lips playing somehow with his foreskin in a way that did not seem at all natural. Long and thin, that tongue pressed in, in, delving into a hole not meant to be penetrated!
Sanguinius stiffened, jerking, an undignified cry escaping him. The serpentine invasion stopped and the neverborn drew back.
“Too much?” it asked, innocent and seemingly chagrined.
“As an opening?” Horus replied. “I think so.”
It had not been unpleasant exactly, or painful, Sanguinius wanted to say, it was just unexpected. He held the words back. Heat wavered through him, his skin, his bones, his lungs. He would have panted, but didn’t he still have some dignity? Wasn’t he trying to… to… to do something? Be someone? Be the person he was expected to be?
He could taste his brother’s blood on his tongue, so different from neverborn ichor. He had been filled and yet hunger woke anew. Time was the enemy of satisfaction. Ease never endured. Yes he desired, and before him was an entity which knew only that and was only that. He reached down and cupped its face in his hands and it watched him unafraid. He could snap its neck - or could have if it had been more mortal and less itself. That was one desire in him. Others overrode it. He chose to let them override it. He pulled it towards him, to the place where he was all mouth, all hunger, all desire and it rose giggling, ecstatic with a victory he did not care about in the slightest.
When he fastened his teeth into this daemon’s throat he tasted not blood but nectar, caramel-thick, sweet but not so sweet as to be sickly. There was a savoury edge to it, and warm spices, milk and comfort. For a moment he felt like a babe suckling a teat - a flash of an impression before lust hit his groin and he ground up against the neverborn in front of him, rutting and clutching it close.
It laughed, twining long fingers in his hair, needle-claws scratching his scalp, tilting his head just so to press deeper into its bared neck. “Drink me! Drink me!” it whimpered. “I am endless, you are wanting and never full!”
Sanguinus gasped, latched on, sucked. His throat worked in spasms as he swallowed, licking in, licking the liquid free of the substance that held it. He drank and drank and it seemed to be true. He’d devoured one neverborn this way but now the rules had changed. He couldn’t do it again.
“Is that taste not enough?” the daemon whispered in his ear. “I have other places to taste, and those are even better.”
Sanguinius whined, unsure but wanting. Slowly and reluctantly he retracted his fangs from wet flesh and let go. Immediately his mouth was empty and yearning to be filled again. The hands in his hair pressed down, guiding. He followed the pressure onto his knees and found the source of the musk that filled the air. It was in front of him and all he had to do was lean in…
Liquid dripped from the slit in front of him and he followed it up with his tongue. There was a delicious opening which gave out nectar and he wanted to drink it too - he grabbed the soft, full hips and pulled them close, he lapped and the daemon cried out with many voices all at once, laughter and joy and rocked against him and it was all so much, he was frenzied with it and his teeth grew long again and he bit… And flesh tore and became soft honey and caramel, he buried himself in a hole of his own making, a gash, a wound, as though he’d burrow up into the guts of the thing just so he could eat more of it and it only laughed and laughed and let him do whatever he wanted as gushes of thinner sharp-tasting fluid spurted out of it and trickled down over his chin and it yelped and gasped and cried in the throes of ecstacy.
Sanguinius tore himself free, sticky lines of sugar stretching between the rapidly knitting skin of the neverborn and his mouth. He panted, breathless, wild, disgusted with himself and at the same time almost proud, possessive. Still his fangs itched to be wrapped in something soft and yielding but an identical desire was burning lower down. His cock stood proud, exquisitely hard. At some point he’d borne the daemon down to the floor, crouching over it as it spread its legs around his head and allowed him to…
Strong hands were buried in his wings at the shoulders, and something else hot and hard rubbed up against the curve of his ass. Shame was a bolt of nausea churning Sanguinius’ guts. Those had been the actions of a wild animal, what must Horus think of him…
“Glorious,” his brother said, a heavy weight at his back. “My beautiful angel.”
Sanguinius’ cheeks flushed with heat. How could Horus say it? It was so wrong. If this hadn’t been a neverborn but a creature more beholden to the laws of reality, of yielding mortality… But of course Horus was not the man of dignity and pride he’d been once. He’d sworn oaths, pledged himself to four great corruptions. He did not shy away from their natures. Had he worshiped the god that spawned such creatures of desire with indulgence and decadence and excess? Who had been in his bed since Sanginius left it?
The daemon laughed, the tinkling of bells again. Its legs had been curled up around his shoulders, heels buried in the softness of feathers, the rest of it draped languid and serpentine on the floor. Now it lifted itself up in a sinuous clench of abdominal muscles to run fingers over his lips. “Is that the spice of jealousy I taste on you, little bird? Or is it envy?”
Horus hummed. “Jealous of me?”
Sangunius shook his head at once. As though he’d want anything the Warmaster had!
“Jealous about me then,” Horus said. His mouth was a grin against Sanguinius’ spine. He let go of his grip on his wings to palm his ass instead, each globe of it the perfect size to be grasped in one hand as his thumbs spread those cheeks wide and brushed over the delicate place within.
Old instincts called for submission - to drop his head, spread his wings, rock back and let Horus open him up in whatever way he chose. Sanguinius resisted them - it was ridiculous to try and find a little dignity in front of a daemon, especially now after ravaging it so intimately with his fangs, but if so then he’d be ridiculous. He bared his teeth at the neverborn and growled. Hadn’t it done what it had been summoned to do? Hadn’t he given it the climax it wanted? Now it ought to leave him alone with Horus. Perhaps he could kill it, if it dared to stay.
He was still very turned on, tense and worked up with lust. Sweetness had drowned the taste of blood from his mouth, but that hunger was unfortunately eternal and lust could become violence a little too easily. It had already, in one way. There were others.
The neverborn didn’t shrink back from his hate or his warning, only wriggling in delight as though he’d promised it a treat. “Oh, eat me again,” it whispered. “Rip out my throat! Tear out my entrails! Punish me!”
Sanguinius tensed his core and reached up to push the daemon’s legs off of him. It didn’t resist, though it made a little gasp of mock-fear as to tease. He would have struck down at it but Horus rubbed a thumb over his hole and he froze, lust a lance stabbing up at his guts. It was too familiar. He wanted. He wanted not to want, but it was too late for that.
“You needn’t be jealous of creatures like that,” Horus told him. “They’re nothing more than tools.”
Anger flared, and so Sangunius understood that apparently they were right and he was jealous after all. “It’s a bit more than using your hand to stroke yourself with,” he hissed.
“So much more,” the daemon promised, reaching between its legs and parting now fully healed flesh to show off a dripping wet hole. Once again Sanguinius found his eyes drawn there and struggling to look away. Horus pressed in, massaging, almost distracting enough a sensation. He was caught and he had not the first idea what to do. It was his brother who slid his free hand under his wing and around his waist and took hold of his cock to guide it down, pressing on him with the weight of his body, moving him like a puppet that made no attempt to resist as he slowly pushed in and penetrated a close wet heat, a clenching cave, a glove of muscle that rippled powerfully and sucked him in and engulfed him…
Sanguinius cried out, and the daemon cried out, and Horus sighed in satisfaction.
It was better to stop thinking. He’d feel guilty about it later, but he rose and fell from lucid to drunk on desires and hungers to lucid again when they were so briefly satisfied. Now he just felt good. It took so little to get him to abandon his restraint. He hated this neverborn beneath him, he wanted it, he’d been told to use it as a tool and so he did. It would enjoy whatever he did and so he need not think of its pleasure at all, only his own. He fucked the tight hole with abandon, gripping tight to whatever piece of its body aroused his lust in the moment, slamming in with all his strength. Whenever he drew back he rubbed up against Horus and at some point it was not a hard shaft but the head of his cock and Horus pushed into him at the same time Sanguinius pushed back against him and it slipped in with a familiar pressure and stretch and the slight edge of pain… but Horus was not intending on having him dry. His cock was slick with something, Sanguinius did not care what, only that it was enough to ease him in, deeper with every motion between the sword that impaled him and the scabbard that sheathed him.
Two sources of glorious sensation and he could not have the pinnacle of both at once. He was movement, he was rhythm, he was aching, he was a piston, a loop, an infinite circle. There were hands in his wings and hands in his hair and caresses both hard and soft and sharp tugs at the nubs of his nipples and two thick fingers pressing into his mouth between the razors of his fangs and down his throat and…
In glorious radiant golden light Sanguinius came. His wings snapped out in a wide, spasmodic arc, and his essence spilled from him and was swallowed up and his own hole clenched tight and made the cock which filled it so deliciously tense and spurt and spill in him in return. He was a moment and an eternity. Horus groaned his name. A daemon cried something like it in a different tongue. They were anointed with pleasure and the pleasure stabbed into reality and pierced the empyrean beyond.
Eternity was an illusion. Moments cannot last. From the midsts of lust came clarity’s dawn once again.
Horus had pulled him up and held him close, muttering inaudible praise, his own lassitude of the aftermath. Sanguinius relaxed against him. He could do little else. His energy was gone. The daemon might be able to reawaken it with its power to stoke the eternal fires of want and need, but somehow even it too had achieved a measure of satisfaction and peace. It lay beneath him, artistically arranged, eyes closed, expression a happy sigh. His seed dripped out between its thighs, and a few loose feathers had fallen to dust its skin like flower petals.
“A worthy defeat of your enemy,” Horus said, rousing enough for proper words. “The second so far.”
“Please tell me you don’t propose that I face another two neverborn after that,” Sanguinius whispered back, exhausted.
Horus chuckled. “Not today, I think. You’ve done enough. More - you’ve done very well. You draw closer and closer to seeing and embracing the truth.”
The truth of the warp, he meant. The truth of Chaos. Oh, Sanguinius knew the truth. He acknowledged it. He just knew it as horror rather than salvation. Horus was wrong if he thought he’d broken him today, but not wrong if he only thought he’d drawn closer to that horror. Sanguinius had always known he was something evil, tainted, made of warp-stuff. All the other times he had misstepped hadn’t ruined him before, and it wouldn’t now.
Not without a great deal more convincing.