The Cursed King, Chapter 64

Wind swept the ruin. It carried the stink of iron and the long wail of distant guns. Toward the heart of that blasted waste two shapes closed the distance. One moved on pale wings streaked red, the feathers dragged by ash‑laden air. The other came on boots of battered iron, his cloak in tatters, his eyes lit with cold design. 

Sanguinius alighted on a ridge of fractured basalt. The stone bled under his tread, dark veins opening where his heel cut. Crimson mist rose in coils from the ground, drawn to him as filings to a lodestone. His Cursed Technique: Blood Field, was roused from the slumber imposed upon it by its master.

“Brother,” He said. “Please, surrender. Do not make me kill you.” 

Across the flats Perturabo watched. His gauntlet flexed once. He lifted it and the ridge split, groaning, every grain of basalt drifting upward, atoms unlocked from bond. The fragments hung a breath, glimmering, then flowed to his palm as molten ore. He closed his fist and a spear of gunmetal lengthened from his knuckles, edges keen as thought. The Angel’s eyes narrowed. Perturab’s Cursed Technique was one of the most powerful, even among Primarchs: Creation and Annihilation.

As far as Sanguinius knew, Creation and Annihilation gave his brother the power to render any non-living material thing apart into baser constituent parts again and again, down to the atomic level, and then rearrange said parts however he saw fit. Such a power was breaching into the realm of gods. And not once did Sanguinius ever have to imagine the possibility that he would have to face such a power.

They stood opposed, silent.

Perturabo, the Lord of Iron, snorted and chuckled, but behind both was something close to melancholy. “I’d like to see you try, Sanguinius. Truly.” 

Overhead the sky hung black, save where fires burned in slow columns. Far artillery thudded, its echo lost in the churn of dust devils that stalked the plain. Between the brothers stretched a dead city ground to shards by orbital shot. Towers sheared to stumps. Streets clogged by armor wreckage fused with bone. Not a soul moved there.

Sanguinius stepped from the ridge. He walked in calm strides across the ruin, wings furled, the blood‑wind circling him. Perturabo descended rubble tiers with deliberate pace, spear balanced, eyes never leaving his brother. At forty paces they halted.

Sanguinius opened his hand. The crimson mist thickened. Droplets spun, bright as rubies, drawn from a thousand corpse pits hidden beneath the slag. They orbited him in tightening rings, before they turned into spears as bright as flames.

Perturabo raised his spear. It shimmered, broke apart. Plates, rods, cables split away until the weapon was a cloud of parts. He moved his fingers and the pieces whirled, regrouped, became a lattice of thin blades folded back on themselves. A moment more and they had forged a cube, hollow, its faces bristling with razor filaments.

He launched it.

The cube tore the air. Sanguinius flicked a wing. The cube struck an bubbling barrier of spinning blood and slowed. Threads of ruby slid through its lattice and spun faster. The cube rattled. Its filaments dulled, corroded, then burst as the structure collapsed into sludge. The blood mist swallowed it without sound.

Perturabo’s eyes narrowed. He raised both hands. Sections of ground behind Sanguinius cracked, lifted. Tanks, bunkers, concrete chunks—everything in a sweep of ten hectares lifted skyward in a storm of shrapnel. Each fragment dissolved to a dust of elemental shards. The shards streamed to Perturabo. Around him they eddied, sorting, layering, locking into new forms—turrets of dull steel, barrels bore‑smooth inside, housings sheathed in ablative plates. In strikes of thought he built them: forty gargantuan guns set upon skeletal tripods, muzzles tracking the angel.

They fired.

Bolts of condensed tungsten and plasma rockets lanced the plain. Sanguinius leapt, wings flaring. Shells carved furrows under him, turned wreckage to vapor, and explosions of plasma turned rock and stone and metal to slag. He banked once, bleeding speed, and the mist trailed him like a cloak. He made a symbol with his left hand and uttered, “Blood Field.”

The air rippled. A circle a hundred yards wide flashed scarlet under his feet. Every shell entering that ring slowed, warped, liquefied. They struck the ground as dribbling metal, hissing into puddles.

Perturabo was already moving. He walked through the hail of ricochets, palms out. The failed rounds quaked, rose, reversed course. They arced toward Sanguinius, shapes shifting mid‑flight into darting flechettes. Sanguinius twisted, wings snapping closed. His hand cut a sweep. A wall of blood surged up like a tide, the darts struck and vanished inside.

He dove.

Feathers brushed shattered rooftops as he closed on Perturabo. The primarch of iron met him without haste. Between them rose a curtain of debris—a slab the size of a gunship lifted by Perturabo’s will. At twenty paces he broke it down, reduced it to sand, drew that sand into a narrow cone. He hardened the cone to glass, whipped it forward. Sanguinius drove one wing through the volley, shards slashing feathers. He landed, talons digging grooved stone.

Talons? 

The Angel’s eyes narrowed. 

He was transforming. 

His fist opened. The blood about him thickened, shaped by silent rhythm into chains tipped with serrated hooks. They lashed out. Perturabo spun, gauntlets parrying with bursts of molecular unbinding; every link that touched him lost cohesion, fell away as vapor. Yet each destroyed link fed the next—Sanguinius’s power took the freed matter, clotting it back into fresh hooks that struck again.

The brothers wove within a jungle of red chains and silver sparks. Perturabo redirected a length into the ground, let it anchor, then broke the earth beneath Sanguinius, seeking to swallow his footing. The angel’s wings beat once, lifting him clear. He twisted mid‑air, palms outward. Blood Field deepened to a storm. Wind shrieked. From the cyclone flew spears grown from crystallized claret—twelve, twenty, more—driving like comet tails toward Perturabo.

Perturabo’s eyes flared. Annihilation blossomed. The ground to his left and right ruptured, columns of marble rebar and beam scrap ascending. He drew them in, fused them, forged a shield of interlocked plates just as the first spear landed. The blow smashed the bulwark flat, but it held another instant—enough. Perturabo bent low and swept a hand. The shattered shield dissolved, then reformed into needle hail that shot at Sanguinius.

Spears and needles crossed mid‑flight, detonation ripping the sky. A wave of heat washed the flats. Both primarchs staggered, armor scorched.

Sanguinius rose higher. The air grew thin. He inhaled slow. Blood vortices below thickened until the plain looked a sea of restless crimson. He spread his arms. Red threads stretched from wrist to wrist, forming a bowstring of pulsating gore. A lance of spinning blood condensed in his grasp, lengthening, hardening, its point flickering lightning. Its mass pulsated with raw power, Cursed Energies undulating in waves that would’ve driven entire Hive Cities mad. 

Perturabo saw. He dropped to one knee, hand slamming earth. A circle fifty meters wide glowed. Street, scrap, buried cables—all came apart into raw iron and carbon dust. He thrust both arms skyward. The dust followed, racing up around him, layering in rings, knitting a cannon barrel as vast as a battleship’s main gun, breech still hot from birth. Shell casings coalesced by his side, first one, then many, each a tungsten cylinder big enough to skewer a titan.

They fired together.

Sanguinius loosed the blood‑lance; Perturabo triggered the cannon with a thought. The red bolt screamed down, the shell screamed up. They met halfway. White glare erased the city’s bones. Shockwave rolled ten miles, leveled what few walls still stood. Both primarchs were hurled back, wings and cloak flailing.

Sanguinius struck a tower stump, granite splintering. He slid to the ground, blood matting his armor. Perturabo landed amid rubble, plates dented. He coughed, drawing breath like grinding gears. Smoke veiled them both. 

They stood.

Crackling pops sounded as rebar reknit itself under Perturabo’s feet, climbing his legs, plating new armor over the dents. He tore a length of rail, broke it molecule by molecule, rebuilt it to a ribbon‑sword glowing dull white.

Sanguinius stepped into the mist. Blood beaded on his skin, sliding over cuts and sealing them. The crimson tide pooled around his boots, throbbed with his heartbeat. He raised a hand. The pool rose, forming blades beside him, each curved like a falcon’s beak.

They clashed again.

Steel met blood crystal in sparks. Perturabo’s ribbon‑sword flexed, lashed, its edge shifting micro‑seconds before impact to counter each angle. It met a crimson blade, sheared through, but the severed blood reformed on his gauntlet, dragging taloned strands that sought the joints. He shattered them, but shards clung, seeped, threatened to jam articulation.

He stepped back, palm out. The sword dissolved to dust and swept forward as a cloud. Every particle an edge. Sanguinius spun, wings cloaking around him. Blood thickened into a shell, the razor storm shredding it in waves. Feathers drifted charred. Through the breach Sanguinius darted, elbow crashing into Perturabo’s helm.

Metal rang. Perturabo reeled. He caught a feather mid‑air, broke it to atoms, and forged it into a spike already pressed between Sanguinius’s ribs. The angel gasped, drove a headbutt. Helm warped. Spike snapped. Blood hissed out, rejoining the storm.

They broke apart, breath ragged.

Across the ruin the blood sea lapped smoking rubble. Perturabo’s constructs stood silent, barrels warped by stray heat. The brothers circled within a square of shattered streets.

Perturabo knelt, palms flat. Everything within ten yards liquefied—steel, stone, blood, bone—drawn into a whirling disc beneath him. He rose at its center. The disc thickened, lifted, became a dais. Layers rose, stacking farther, forging a ziggurat as he climbed. Atop he stood, hands weaving. From the tower’s flanks sprouted barrel arrays, gear racks, torsion springs, all wrought instant, all primed.

Sanguinius watched. He spoke no word. He stepped in silence, wings folding forward. Blood Field narrowed, condensed around him in a tight sphere. Inside it the vapor swirled, darker, thicker. He knelt, wings encasing him wholly, the sphere shrinking to his silhouette.

Perturabo finished his work. Cannon muzzles glowed orange. Racks of rockets hissed steam. The tower’s capstone split, revealing a lens of diamond just birthed. He lowered an arm. Guns fired.

The plain disappeared under stormfire. Rocket trails crisscrossed. Beams of hard light lanced. All struck the sphere at the center. They vanished on contact, energies folded inward. The sphere held, pulsing, growing brighter, denser.

Perturabo watched.

Inside, Sanguinius’s eyes were closed. The blood around him spun faster, hotter, pressing against itself under impossible force. Colors shifted from crimson to white to something beyond color. A star born in a shell of wet iron.

The sphere burst.

A column of scarlet plasma ripped skyward, wider than any keep, brighter than forge‑fire. Perturabo’s tower met it. Diamond lens vaporized. Upper tiers folded like wax. The beam punched through, carving a hole straight down the ziggurat’s spine. The tower fell in burning sheets.

Perturabo dropped with it, trailing shards. He hit ground, rolled clear as slabs crashed. His armor glowed. Flesh showed charred beneath rents. He crawled to a knee.

Across the wreck Sanguinius staggered. His wings smoldered. Armor peeled, chest plate half‑gone. Blood Field flickered faint. The beam had drained him.

They looked on each other.

Perturabo spat black. He set a gauntlet to rubble, tried to unbind it, but the atoms would not heed. Too much pain. Too little will. He let his hand fall.

Sanguinius tried to raise a blade of blood. Nothing stirred. He exhaled, chest hitching.

Dawn crept grey over shattered spires. A lone shell boomed far off, stray echo of another fight. The brothers stood amid steaming ruin. Neither moved to strike. Smoke drifted between them, veiling the distance.

“We will finish this… another time.” Perturabo straightened. He turned, limping toward the east where iron banners burned in silent rows. Behind him the tower’s corpse smoldered, its guns melted to slag.

Sanguinius watched. He raised battered wings, one feathered ruin, one leathery shred. He beat them once, twice, and lifted from the ground. Ash spiraled beneath him. He turned west where dusk fires marked the Blood Angels’ line.

They left the field.

Between their departing shadows the plain lay scarred beyond knowing—a landscape reformed, rivers of congealed red winding through slag heaps, a lone, ruined mountain slumping into its own grave. No victor and no surrender. Only silence left to note the place where two sons had met and broken the world, yet could not break each other.