With a snarl, Celestine kicked off the wall and powered herself along the alleyway in three swift wingbeats. Raising her blade, she dropped from the sky and slammed down amidst the daemons that were clambering over one another to get through the doorway.
Three swift, hacking blows saw unnatural flesh part and ichor spray. Celestine lunged through the mangled corpses of her foes and into the gloom of the building beyond.
Celestine found herself in a single room perhaps twenty feet wide and double that in length. Four columns had singularly failed in their task of holding the place’s roof aloft; it sagged in several places, drab daylight and skirls of ash spilling through. Mouldering pews sat in rows, all facing a low mezzanine at the room’s far end. Upon that platform stood a toppled altar, the rubble of what might once have been an eagle statue, and the woman she had been pursuing. She had set her burning brands in sconces at either side of the mezzanine, and they threw flickering light across the old shrine.
‘The door, there isn’t much time!’ shouted the woman. Celestine spun at her urging and saw there was indeed a door on the inside of the archway, hanging open. She grabbed it and, her strength easily overcoming the groaning protest of rusted hinges, swung it shut against the onrushing mass of daemons. The woman was next to her in a heartbeat, sliding a heavy key into the door’s lock and turning it with a satisfying clunk.
Immediately the door shook as something struck it from outside. It juddered in its frame as more impacts came thick and fast. Mindless shrieks rose from without.
‘My thanks, angel,’ said the woman. She did not seem in any way out of breath from her exertions, standing tall and noble despite her threadbare attire. In the half-light, Celestine could see that her features were graven and proud, with a stern cast to her brow and an intensity in her dark eyes that was unsettling to behold.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Celestine. ‘What are you doing in this place? For that matter, where is this place? And why are the daemons so intent upon you?’
The woman smiled, and the expression illuminated her face with beatific beauty.
‘I am Pilgrim,’ she said. ‘I am here because this is where I must be. As to why the daemons seek me so? They detest my strength, my purity. It burns them worse than the ashes that fall from the skies for it has the power to bring hope where none exists, and so they will not suffer me to live.’
‘I hate them,’ said Celestine simply, and realised with a calm righteousness that it was as true as anything she had ever said.
‘Such is only just and proper, for you are an angel of the Emperor, and thus are you righteous,’ said Pilgrim. The door shuddered and banged, and she led Celestine away from it, down the dusty aisle of the shrine towards its narthex. Celestine glanced about the structure, noting more daylight filtering through grubby leaded crystal.
‘Where are we?’ asked Celestine again. ‘I have been following a light, was that… you? Do you know of it?’
Pilgrim glanced back at her and smiled, but she did not answer.
‘This place is not secure, they will soon break in,’ Celestine said. ‘How do I help you escape?’
Pilgrim shook her head. ‘No, Celestine. Ask that which you really wish to know,’ she said.
Celestine frowned, one question falling over another in her mind. This was the first living being she had met since waking and suddenly she found she had too much to ask and precious little time to ask it in. Could she even trust this woman, she wondered? Her heart said yes, but everything in this realm was shifting and illusory. How could she place her faith in anything at all?
With that thought, she knew what she must ask.
‘Who is the Emperor?’ she said. ‘Why do I know of him, and why do you call me his angel?’
Pilgrim’s smile deepened. From the roof-spaces, Celestine heard the scrabbling claws. The door banged in its frame, splinters spitting from the wood. Dark shapes moved outside the windows.
‘The answers that you seek are already within your heart,’ said Pilgrim. ‘The Emperor has been your companion and your guide for a long, long time Celestine. As have I.’
At that moment there came a splintering crash as the door was hammered from its hinges. Daemons spilled through it like a flood-tide of dark flesh, blood-red eyes and flashing claws.
‘Get behind me!’ barked Celestine. ‘Up onto the mezzanine and take up your weapons.’
Pilgrim fled up the aisle, yet to Celestine’s annoyance she made no move to recover her brands. Instead she dropped to her knees before the toppled alter, bent her head, and began to pray.
Celestine swept her blade through the first surge of daemons that came at her. Foul flesh parted and she leapt back, beating her wings once and coming down with a thump before the steps up to the mezzanine.
‘You will not touch her, filth,’ said Celestine. ‘In the Emperor’s name, I swear it.’
The daemons surged again, and Celestine hacked her blade in a figure of eight, driving them back and slaying several. As the daemons fell, lights flared in the corners of her vision. A glance showed her candles, sitting in sconces around the chamber’s edge. Why several of them had suddenly lit she didn’t know, but as she ran another daemon through then lopped the head from the next, more of them blossomed into flickering flame.
There came a sound like the rushing of a gale-force wind, and the tide of attackers redoubled. They poured into the shrine, smashing through the windows in razor-sprays of crystal and squirming like maggots through the rents in the ceiling. All Celestine saw was a heaving mass of daemonic flesh, scrabbling limbs, beating wings, yawning jaws, and jagged fangs and talons. Yet she felt no fear at the impossible odds she faced, just a furious desire to fight until not another breath remained within her body.
Celestine swung and hacked, stabbed and parried. She kicked out to shattered daemonic limbs. She drove her blade pommel into open maws and smashed fangs to flinders. The horde mounted like a wave before her, filling the shrine in a grotesque horde of the living and the dead, yet still she fought. Talons raked her armour and slashed the skin of her cheeks. She was driven back step by step, up the mezzanine stairs, yet not a single slavering daemon passed her guard to reach Pilgrim.
With every abomination that Celestine slew, more candles flared to life. They glowed along the flanks of the shrine. They burned bright in dangling iron chandeliers. Their flames leapt in alcoves and drove back the darkness. And now Celestine realised that a furious white light was building behind her. Celestine could hear Pilgrim still praying fervently to the Emperor, and without conscious thought she joined her voice to the chant.
‘And lo, though the daemons of the Dark Gods gather around and about, and though all the tribulations of the darksome realm press close upon my soul, still shall I walk in His light, still shall He show me the way and drive back the noisome and the unclean! I am His blade and His righteous angel, as He is my saviour and my lord, for His is the power, and His is humanity to shepherd and protect just as I too shall shepherd and protect them as His faithful servant! And in His light the heretical and the abomination shall be purged with righteous fire, with flashing blade and holy admonition! Lo, and the darkness cannot touch upon me, for the Emperor protects!’
With those last bellowed words, the light at Celestine’s back swelled to a supernova that blazed across the chapel and filled it up with holy light. Daemons screamed and flailed as their flesh tattered like clouds in a gale. They bleached burning white and evaporated, pulsing shockwaves of energy hurling them away and banishing them from existence.
As suddenly as it had begun, the banishment ended, and the light faded away. Yet Celestine saw that the candles still burned, and their warm light filled up the shrine and banished the shadows to the spaces beyond.
She turned, her armour running with daemonic ichor, her skin cut and torn.
‘Who are you?’ she asked again. Pilgrim rose a
nd turned. Placing one hand upon Celestine’s shoulder, she led her around the tumbled idol to a stone font that stood forgotten at its rear. Firelight danced on the clear water that still filled it, and as Celestine and Pilgrim leaned over the reflection, the truth was revealed.
‘We look the same,’ said Celestine.
‘You know that is not true,’ said Pilgrim.
‘We are the same,’ amended Celestine, her tone wondering. She looked away from the reflection and into Pilgrim’s eyes. She saw her own revelation reflected in the other woman’s pupils.
‘I am your faith in the Emperor,’ said Pilgrim. ‘In this place I am given corporeal form. I am the strength you derive from the God Emperor of Mankind, the purpose with which His service fills you, and the righteous strength that is yours alone to wield.’
So saying, she drew the sword from her back and dropped to one knee before Celestine, bowing her head and offering the blade.
‘I am glad to be yours,’ she said. ‘I am glad to be your companion, and I will do what I can to guide you through the wilderness, Saint Celestine.’
Celestine felt shock at the title. Saint? How could she be a saint? Were they not those who had died in the cause of holiness? And yet, Celestine realised, she had seen her own mortal remains dotting the flanks of the bone mountain like morbid shrines. The thought that she might be a being possessed of some form of divinity stunned her. It was too immense a notion to accept, and for an instant Celestine’s mind reeled. Then, just as suddenly, she was filled with a sense of rightness as she levelled her own blade and laid it flat against the one that Pilgrim proffered. Celestine was suddenly calm, accepting. There was a flash of light, a keening note, and the two swords became one.
Celestine stepped back, jaw clenching as knowledge and memory flooded through her. Battles uncounted, prayers spoken, speeches delivered in the darkest of hours. She saw the flames of hope and faith that she had lit, and she felt the full and true love for the Emperor of Mankind flow through her.
‘Pilgrim, I thank you for this gift, and for these answers,’ she said.
‘The gift you give yourself. The answers you fought for and earned,’ said Pilgrim. ‘Call me now by my true name, for I am Faith, she that is embodied within one of the Geminae Superia. I am at your command.’
Celestine smiled.
‘Faith, then,’ she said, and found that even the word gave her strength. There was much still that eluded her, much she didn’t remember, but this was a beginning. Now that the Emperor was with her, in her heart, she felt she could achieve anything.
‘Rest now, Saint Celestine,’ said Faith, taking up her brands. ‘Sleep, and I will watch over you until it is time to set forth once more.’
Celestine nodded, retiring to one of the mouldering pews and making herself comfortable as best she could. She felt safety and contentment for the first time since waking, and as the candle-light bathed her face, her eyelids grew heavy. The last thing Celestine saw before sleep took her was Faith, standing silent sentry beside her, her burning brands ready in her hands.
‘The Emperor protects,’ whispered Celestine again, and then darkness fell.
405TH DAY OF THE WAR – 0730 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
CANYON-CITY TANYKHA ADUL – LO:564-3/LA:675-9
Sister Superior Meritorius walked down the Emeritus Canyon, into a sunrise she hadn’t thought to see. The Emeritus was one of three primary canyonways within the city, over three thousand yards deep, its walls thick with cavern habs, gantry-ways and protruding structures. Many showed battle-damage from the fighting, but the simple fact that they stood at all amazed her.
She led her Sisters along the ferrocrete highway at the canyon’s base, ignoring their muttered prayers and the excited whispers that threaded between them. They passed the burned-out hulks of Leman Russ battle tanks, and dodged around others that were still hale, hearty and rumbling along the roadway. Exhausted Cadian and Astorosian soldiers sprawled by the roadside, some offering weary signs of the aquila to the Battle Sisters as they passed.
‘It is a miracle, is it not, Sister Superior?’ said Sister Penitence as they walked, her voice tight with restrained excitement. ‘The Living Saint walks amongst us, and we are saved.’
‘We saved ourselves,’ corrected Meritorius. ‘The Emperor aids those who fight for themselves, Penitence. Do not forget it.’
‘No, Sister Superior,’ said Sister Penitence, sounding in no way chastised. Yet Meritorius couldn’t deny that their survival was nothing short of miraculous. As she watched rose-and-gold illumination spilling over the lip of the canyon, she supposed that she should feel relief, perhaps even joy. Certainly her Sisters did; she could sense the electric undercurrent running through them at the thought of standing in the presence of the Living Saint.
Instead, Sister Meritorius felt hollow, crushed on some level by the simple realisation that even the coming of Saint Celestine herself did not appear to have rekindled her faith. She saw the rapture and amazement on the faces of the women she led, heard the excited chatter of the more zealous Cadians, and then looked inside herself and saw nothing but the same bleak ashes she had known these past weeks.
Meritorius hated them all for their easy raptures. She couldn’t help it, and she hated herself all the more because of it.
Rounding a long bend in the canyonway, Meritorius and her warriors emerged into the full spill of dawn light where it fell through the ruptured remains of Jackyl Gate. Sister Absolom sucked in a breath at the sagging ruin of the gate’s fortifications, and the mounds of blackened corpses still burning in the morning sun. Black smoke boiled upwards in greasy columns. The bodies of the dead had been bulldozed aside as best the Cadian tanks could manage, to make the approach to the gate navigable. The loyalists were cast onto burning pyres, over which Imperial preachers spoke rites of devotion. The heretics went into excavated pits that more than one Cadian soldier had used that morning as a latrine.
‘There she is, in the gateway,’ said Penitence with awe. Meritorius saw, and wished that she shared in the glories that her comrades so keenly felt. Celestine stood atop the wrecked hull of the traitor Stormlord, its shattered carcass jutting half-way through the gates where it had finally been laid low. She was framed against the sunrise, her silhouette rendered angelic by the metal wings of her ornate jump pack and the golden halo of sunlight that played about her head. Hundreds of Imperial Guard soldiery and Kophyni civilians had massed around the tank. Many were knelt in worship. Others cried out in religious ecstasy, or simply stared in adoration.
‘And there are Sisters Constance Indomita and Imani Intolerus at her side,’ said Meritorius. ‘An honour indeed, to be selected as the Geminae Superia.’ One I will never be worthy of, hollow remnant that I am, she thought miserably.
Saint Celestine had appeared many times throughout the history of the Imperium, always when the darkness seemed absolute and the servants of the Emperor needed aid most desperately. At such times, it was customary for her to select two Battle Sisters, should any be present, to serve as her Geminae Superia, bodyguards and advisors both. It was said that the act of choosing imbued those Sisters with powers bordering upon the supernatural, though another, darker tale told how they rarely lived to see victory, for the mantle of self-sacrifice in their mistress’ name settled heavy about their shoulders.
This had never stopped a single Adepta Sororitas warrior from answering Celestine’s call, of course.
Indomita and Intolerus now wore the jump packs and carried the twinned pistols that went with the rank of Seraphim. Even from a distance, Meritorius could see that they carried themselves differently, standing tall and proud beside the Living Saint.
‘Come then, Sisters, let us hear what she has to say to the faithful,’ said Meritorius. ‘I see the Astra Militarum top brass have already answered the Saint’s summons. Let us not keep them waiting.’
Major Blaskaine stood near the rear of the crowd with his command staff around him. Captain Maklen of the 230th had joined him, as had Lieutenant Tasker of the 88th. The Astorosian sub-duke could be seen some way deeper into the crowd, surrounded by his strategic court, who all stared with rapturous awe at the Living Saint.
‘I’ll admit, she’s an inspiring sight,’ said Blaskaine.
Captain Maklen shot him a sidelong look. She was old for an officer, her features lined and her hair steel grey. Her advanced years had done nothing to undermine Petronella Maklen’s strength of personality, however. Now she snorted at Blaskaine’s words.
‘I’ll be sure to send a runner up front at once to let the Saint know you approve of her appearance, Charn.’ Maklen’s every word was bitten out and crisp, her diction faultless. It was no wonder, Blaskaine thought wryly, that the soldiers of her regiment referred to Captain Maklen as ‘Her Ladyship’. Though he had noted it was said with a fierce loyalty.
‘You know what I mean, Petronella,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘Emperor knows the woman turned the entire fight around last night, and I doubt we’d be still living if it hadn’t been for her. But still…’
‘Still what?’ asked Maklen, arching an eyebrow.
‘Faith has its place within the Imperial war machine, but in my eyes, it should always take a firm second place to solid discipline and rational conduct.’
Maklen snorted again and shook her head.
‘Upon her arrival, Saint Celestine descended upon Jackyl Gate and rallied the defenders as they were about to break and run. She killed eighteen Mas’drekkha single-handed then crippled the engines of that ruddy Stormlord and used it to block the breach. Word of her arrival bolstered courage throughout every battle-front on which we fought, and Throne alone knows what she did to the enemy bombers when she arrived. You know that’s not even half of it, Charn, and yet you can still stand there giving her that look.’
‘What look?’ asked Blaskaine, trying to rally.
Celestine - Andy Clark Page 6