Celestine - Andy Clark

by Warhammer 40K

  A glance upwards made Celestine wish that she hadn’t looked. The climb stretched endlessly into a kaleidoscopic haze, and the shimmer of the crystal surface made her vision swim with hazy half-images as though the cliff itself were rippling and pulsating.

  Jaw set, Celestine looked down instead and was surprised to see that the same many-hued clouds had closed in below her. She had been climbing for a matter of minutes, yet already the crystal dais had vanished into the haze, taking Faith, Purpose and the girl with it.

  The climb now appeared endless. Celestine clung to the jagged crystal cliff and took several slow breaths, fighting the irrational panic that seized her at this thought. She had come to take her wings for granted, she realised. Now, with the drop vanishing away below her, she felt their absence keenly. Logically, the ground must still be down there below her. But what if it wasn’t? whispered a treacherous part of her mind. This place was as inconstant as the ocean waves, and a million times more mutable. She had no guarantee that, the moment the ground was lost to her sight, it had not been lost to her altogether.

  ‘Faith, if we have become separated, you must look after that child,’ muttered Celestine into the vox-bead in her armour’s gorget. She had no reason to think that her fellow angel would hear her, but somehow the action felt right. Like maintaining a connection. ‘If you can hear me, Faith, you do whatever you have to. Just keep her safe, and I will find you again.’

  Celestine took another slow breath then forced her limbs into motion. Whether the ground was there or not was immaterial. Her task was to climb, and so climb she would. She had to trust that she would reach the top of this nightmarish ascent. She had to hope that the Emperor still watched over her.

  As Celestine continued to climb, a wind blew around her. It was puckish and gusting, trying to prise her from the rockface. Grim-faced, Celestine resisted its efforts and forged on.

  The minutes crawled by and she fell into a rhythm. Seek the next handhold or foothold. Move a limb to it and secure her grip, by force if necessary. Test that her new anchoring point could take her armoured weight. Haul herself upwards. Repeat. Her heart thumped steadily with the exertion, and a slow warmth suffused her limbs. She sought a ledge or deeper crevice where she might secure herself for a few moments’ rest, but nothing was forthcoming.

  The climb wore on and Celestine lost track of time. The wind moaned and shrilled through the crystal crags. Tatters of purple and blue cloud scudded past her. Occasionally Celestine thought she saw shapes moving in the haze above, dark suggestions of huge, winged things whose attention she dared not attract. At such times she froze, hugging the cliff face and pressing her cheek against the crystal, praying to the Emperor that the mysterious creatures would pass her by. It was not that Celestine feared battle, but in such a place, without even the facility to draw her blade and make a stand, she had no illusions as to her hopes of surviving.

  Celestine’s limbs began to burn. Her joints ached with the effort of constantly hauling herself upwards. Her fingers and feet grew sore from driving into the cliff face again and again. Though her armour was perfectly fitted and padded, still her skin began to chafe against its inner surfaces through the constant toil. Sweat prickled Celestine’s skin, and stuck her hair to her forehead and neck. Her blood thumped steadily in her ears. With so many other sources of pain dragging at her, the fire from her severed wings threatened to break through again and steal her strength with its intensity.

  Still she climbed, though she could no longer say how long she had been doing so. Perhaps it had been hours, now? Perhaps it had been days? A small part of Celestine wondered if she had ever done anything else but climb, whether all that came before had simply been an illusion, and whatever hopes she had for reaching the summit were just a mirage. She knew the dangers of such thoughts. She crushed them ruthlessly, yet her doubts could not be entirely driven away.

  ‘Emperor, lend me strength,’ she prayed, but if her deity answered or offered her his protection she didn’t feel its benefit. Perhaps he could not reach her in this place, thought Celestine with alarm.

  ‘Perhaps it is worse than that. Perhaps he hears you and he doesn’t care,’ said a voice she recognised as her own, yet she knew she had uttered no words. It took Celestine’s tired mind a moment to register that the voice belonged to her blurred reflection, still staring back at her from the crystal depths.

  It smiled, though she did not.

  She stopped climbing and screwed her eyes shut, keeping them that way for a long moment before opening them again. Her reflection remained, staring at her with eyes that were little more than warped smudges. Behind it, through it, she saw many-coloured fires flickering.

  ‘I am still here,’ it said. ‘You cannot escape me, Celestine, any more than you can escape the purgatorial task to which you swore yourself. Your Emperor doesn’t care about your suffering. Those you suffer for do not care either. You toil, and you sweat, and you bleed, and none of them care at all.’

  ‘Base trickery,’ said Celestine, beginning to climb again. Her limbs had settled into a position of comparative rest, and now she felt fresh pain throbbing through them as she forced them into motion again.

  ‘Do you even know why you fight?’ asked her reflection.

  ‘I fight… for my Emperor,’ Celestine said through gritted teeth.

  ‘A god should be able to fight his own battles, do you not think?’ asked her reflection. ‘And besides, Celestine my dear, you can’t lie to me. I’m you. So. Why do you fight?’

  ‘I fight to protect those who cannot protect themselves,’ said Celestine. ‘I fight to bring light and hope to the Emperor’s flock.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ asked her reflection, and its laughter was the bright crackle of fresh kindling. ‘So, you are a martyr, are you? A selfless soul, dragging herself through the purgatorial wastes for the sakes of countless billions who neither know nor care about her sacrifices in their name? That has a rather pathetic sound to it, does it not, my dear?’

  ‘For the strong to sacrifice themselves to protect those with less strength than they, this is the mark of faith and goodness,’ quoted Celestine, drawing the words from her patchy memory of the Imperial Creed. ‘For though the almighty flock of mankind may bear little worth individually, as one they serve the Emperor’s will, and a single man or woman may magnify their worth to the Emperor a thousandfold through the offering of their blood.’

  ‘Your scripture is a little dated, my dear,’ said her reflection with a blurred grin that looked too wide for its face. ‘They quote a rather darker version of that creed in this desperate age.’

  Celestine blinked as her reflection shimmered and vanished, replaced within the crystal surface by a hazy image of a battlefield. Skies burned dark over an ashen wasteland of trenches and razorwire. Wrecked tanks burned like will-o’-the-wisps amidst the gloom, and vaguely Celestine saw hordes of soldiers advancing between them across this hellish no-man’s-land. In the distance, she saw the icons of the Chaos Gods rising above further trenches and bunkers, while Imperial aquilas waved above the advancing army before her.

  The vision shifted, drawing closer, moving with Celestine even as she doggedly continued to climb. She tried to look away, but she could not do so and also search for handholds. Nor could she risk climbing with closed eyes. And so she was forced to watch as the vision showed her the pale, hollow-eyed masses advancing beneath Imperial banners. She saw their cruel faces and pinched features, deep-sunken eyes dulled by stupidity and pain. Priests of the Imperial faith strode amongst them in bloodied robes, and plied gold-handled lashes across their ragged backs.

  ‘Let all sacrifice themselves to protect the Golden Throne, for this is the mark of faith and obedience,’ bellowed the nearest priest. ‘For the flock of mankind is worthless as all but grist for the mill of battle, and war is the Emperor’s will, and lo. The only worth of man or woman is as blood to be spilled u
pon His golden altar.’

  Around him, the soldiers raised a sorrowful cry and pressed forwards into the guns of the foe. Celestine looked away as the slaughter grew bloody, and the image faded, became her reflection again.

  ‘Are these the people you die for, my dear?’ it asked, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Surely they too are martyrs to the bloody creed of the Emperor you cling to? What difference can you make as just one more wasted life?’

  ‘I do not have to answer you,’ said Celestine. ‘You are not me, and your lies will find no purchase upon my soul.’

  ‘I am nothing more than an expression of your own doubts,’ taunted her reflection.

  ‘I do not doubt, for I have the Emperor to watch over me,’ said Celestine.

  ‘The cripple, the cadaver locked forever in gilded repose, the careless would-be-god for whose obscene ambitions all of mankind has suffered for ten thousand years,’ hissed her reflection. ‘That Emperor? He doesn’t watch over you, Celestine my dear. He is little more than a ravenous corpse.’

  With each utterance, Celestine’s reflection filled the gaps in her memories. Yet what returned was horrifying, soul destroying. Celestine remembered the Imperium, remembered how, with each new incarnation of herself she had seen it darken and decay. The Emperor was trapped forever within His Golden Throne, the Chaos Gods sent fresh legions to assail mankind’s domain with every passing day, and as the millennia ground past so hope and courage were replaced by ignorance, fear and oppression. Each recollection was like a physical blow, making her ears ring and spots dance before her eyes. She felt sick to her stomach, and for a moment it felt as though she might simply relinquish her grip upon the rockface and let herself drop.

  Her reflection’s grin widened further, nearly splitting its head in two.

  ‘You remember, do you not? You remember the Imperium you fight for, how worthless it all is, how pointless.’

  ‘It is not pointless,’ spat Celestine. ‘There is strength yet in humanity. There is good. There are those worth saving.’ As she said this, the image of the child flashed through her mind again, lost now, so far behind. Her reflection wavered, and Celestine saw a suggestion of ghostly images flicker in its place, of loyal warriors fighting on against the odds, of herself standing in their midst with the Emperor’s light singing about her and her blade flashing in her hand. The harder she focused, the more the images resolved themselves and the more of her memories slotted back into place. Celestine realised that, for every grim recollection that weighed her down, there was another memory of heroism and victory against the darkness that buoyed her up.

  The fires deep within the cliff face pulsed, and her reflection swam back to the fore. Its smile was gone, though its face was still subtly deformed.

  ‘Do you remember how it all began for you?’ asked her reflection, brows drawing down into a scowl. ‘Would you like to remember? Allow me to help.’

  Its image wavered away again and now Celestine saw a corridor within a fortress. It was tilted, and part ruptured, mortar spilling in where one wall had collapsed. Flames danced, smoke billowed, and wounded men and women screamed for aid. Celestine saw herself amidst it all. No warrior, this woman. She wore a robe of brown and grey, imprinted with Imperial aquilas in black and gold. She was crouched in the ruins, face bloodstained from a scalp wound, clothes and skin smeared with ash. She looked angry and fearful in equal measure, and Celestine felt again a ghost of the emotions she had felt that day.

  ‘The last battle,’ she breathed. ‘The Emperor’s palace.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered her reflection. ‘The bombardment. The evacuation that came far too late. You were less than a footnote that day, cast aside…’

  ‘No, I was chosen,’ snarled Celestine, and the image before her rippled like a pool into which a stone has been hurled. A huge figure stood over Celestine, light shimmering from his magnificent armour to suffuse the corridor. Her crouch of fear became a protective stance, and for an instant she saw the suggestion of something beneath her, shielded by her body. Golden light reflected in her wide eyes.

  The image rippled again, and the figure was gone. The scream of falling munitions filled the air, mingling with the despairing wails of human voices to create a cacophony of the damned. Explosions blossomed and all-consuming flames roared along the passage. Celestine saw herself stare into the onrushing firestorm with a look of utter despair, her hair and robes flapping in the furnace wind, her skin blistering before the intense heat.

  ‘He left you to die,’ hissed the voice of her reflection. Yet in that instant, Celestine knew her tormentor had slipped.

  ‘No, he gave me a task,’ she said. ‘He gave me a choice. A duty. A purpose.’

  In the moment before the firestorm struck, the image shuddered again. Celestine’s expression of terror shimmered away like the illusion it was, and she saw upon her face a look of such absolute determination that it made her heart swell with pride. Again, there came the momentary suggestion of a shape beneath her, afforded the meagre shield of her body. Then flames consumed everything, and the vision faded.

  ‘Your purpose is to suffer endlessly for the undeserving and the ungrateful,’ spat the voice of her tormentor, whose image had now become a formless blur centred around a leering maw. ‘You die, and die, and die again. You will die over and over until the ending of the universe and the final damnation of all. You will watch the stars perish in the blazing heavens, Celestine, and you will know that it was all for nothing.’

  Another image shimmered before her, Celestine clad in the tattered garb of the Repentia, a roaring eviscerator in her hands. Celestine falling amidst her failed sisters, her corpse lying amidst theirs, another wasted death. Celestine focused her mind and the image rippled, revealing her chest still rising and falling as she clung instead to life until her sisters found her and declared her survival miraculous.

  ‘I will be slain, and slain again,’ agreed Celestine. ‘But each time I die, I will also live, and each time I live I will fight, for that is my duty. That is my side of the bargain that was struck that day. And with each life I will know satisfaction in service, and with each death I will know contentment in acceptance, for with every battle fought and life given I do my duty to the Emperor and His endless flock. And so do I come ever closer to my reward.’

  With that, Celestine felt fresh strength fill her limbs. At the same time, her tormentor spat a frustrated curse and faded from view, smoke and fire vanishing deep into the cliffs and out of sight.

  Celestine looked up and there, above her, she saw a ledge. In the same instant she found herself staring into the large, dark eyes of the child she had left far below. The girl looked over the ledge for a bare instant then ducked back, vanishing from Celestine’s sight.

  The Saint gritted her teeth and dragged herself upwards with limbs that burned and shuddered. She dug her gauntlets into the cliff face and hauled her armoured weight upwards in a series of lurching movements. She ignored the drop below her, the shapes moving in the murk, the rumble of thunder and flame amidst the clouds.

  She reached up again and suddenly she was grasping the lip of the ledge. She hauled, panting with effort, and pulled herself up and over. She rolled away from the drop and onto her back where she lay, heart pounding, limbs burning, breath rushing in and out like a bellows.

  ‘Celestine!’ The shout brought her up into a fighting crouch, her sword held ready despite the aching exhaustion of her limbs. She realised that the ledge was sizeable, a crystal platform fifty feet across, and at its rear was a dark fissure. A cave mouth, she realised, leading into the cliff face.

  Between her and that dark rent knelt Purpose, her body leant forward and her head lying on a block of gore-stained brass. Faith stood off to one side, burning brands in hand, staring at Celestine for guidance. Over Purpose loomed a huge figure, massively muscled and easily twelve feet in height. The being was part-armoured in da
rk red plates that were held to its otherwise naked form with brass chains. Its face was hidden behind a blank red helm that mounted curling ram’s horns of huge size and bore a stylised skull rune upon its eyeless faceplate. Its skin was marred with scarification, repeating the skull rune over and over again, and in its hands it held a massive headsman’s axe.

  ‘Order the blow, Celestine.’ The axeman’s voice rumbled out from behind its helm in an inhumanly deep snarl.

  This blade hung poised, ready to swing down and lop Purpose’s head from her shoulders with a single blow. It took Celestine’s tired mind a moment to realise that the figure was waiting on her word.

  Purpose looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. Her bone mask was gone, lying shattered to one side. Revealed was the face of a tired old woman, weathered with sorrows and cares unnumbered. Tears tracked across her face.

  ‘I am sorry, Saint,’ said Purpose. ‘I am sorry for all that I have put you through. I will not ask your forgiveness. I do not deserve it.’

  ‘Where is the child?’ panted Celestine, recovering her breath by degrees.

  ‘Gone,’ said Faith.

  ‘Gone where?’ she asked. Before Faith could answer, the hulking figure growled behind its helm and brandished its axe.

  ‘Order it…’

  ‘It awaits your decision, but its patience is thin,’ said Purpose.

  Celestine eyed the monstrous figure and felt nothing but revulsion. This was a creature of Chaos, monstrous and tainted. Celestine felt anger at all that Purpose had put her through, the pain and danger she had subjected her to. The image rose again in her mind of Purpose with her blade to the girl’s throat, and a wave of hate and fury rose up within her. For the barest of instants, Celestine wanted to command the monstrous figure to strike.

  Yet in that same instant, Celestine realised that the anger she felt was not her own.