The Khan set Xyrokles' body down gently.
'Rouse your astropaths. Summon the fleet here,' he said to Ishigu. 'You did well, but we have a little work left to do, and it must be done quickly. I wish to neutralise more such places and clear the way for Guilliman before we head back deeper into the cluster. Sanguinius needs us. The Warmaster has mustered many more Titan Legions at Beta-Garmon than we suspected.'
Ishigu bowed. 'What of this one, my Khan?'
Jaghatai stared down at Xyrokles' corpse for a moment. 'Bury him with respect. He fought well, and with finesse.' He turned his gaze skywards, already calculating where his attention should fall next. 'In this war, an enemy with finesse is no small thing.'
I do not know why I have been chosen, or how, only that I am.
My footsteps are quiet against the sweeping mosaic that spans the floor of the passageway. I walked slower then, in those early days of ascension, when each new-drawn breath brought new insights of my changing flesh. It was well enough that way, for it granted me the time to drink in the magnificence that surrounded me.
The walls are lined with masterworks in oil, fresco and gold, every piece flowing perfectly into the next and each one more incredible than the last. The vision, the detail of them, is enough to send gooseflesh rising over my scar-laden skin. Any single one of these pieces would take pride of place anywhere on any world, with the exception of Terra.
This continues on into the next corridor, with wondrous art filling every surface: wall, floor and ceiling above. It would be easy for me to forget where I was, were it not for the ever-present thrum of the Red Tear's heart.
At last my destination comes into view. A pair of high double doors lie ahead, intricately carved with a stunning scene of angelic beauty in pearl, ruby and gold. Two of the Legion's Terminator elite stand guard before it still as statues until my approach sends their fibre-bundle musculatures snarling into life.
No word of challenge is spoken, but the hall rings with the clash of swords brought together to bar my path. I lower the cowl of my simple crimson aspirant's robes, revealing to them a face still shedding the last vestiges of a past humanity. The Terminators scrutinise me for a moment, and my now-enhanced hearing detects the minute clicks as they speak with the lone occupant of the chamber beyond the doors.
With a sharp rasp of steel, the Terminators lower their blades, and part before me as the doors slowly open.
For a few long moments, I stand upon the threshold, simply content to stare at what lies in front of me. I had expected a sprawling chamber of high, painted ceilings and prized works of incomparable beauty sitting upon plinths or gently hanging within the cool hum of stasis fields. What I find is a plain, simple studio, little different than what one might find in any city of any world within the expanding Imperium of Man. But that isn't what roots me in place.
Standing in the centre of the studio is the source of the transcendent blood that flows through my veins. Such a being belongs in a gallery surrounded by other masterpieces, yet even then he would effortlessly reduce them all to pale imitation. His wings stir a fraction, their pinions pale as pure snow, as he looks at me with a noble countenance that demands loyalty, or even worship.
I have to physically resist the overwhelming urge to sink to my knees in the primarch's presence, to hold back tears at the mere sight of him.
The Angel.
'Hello, my son,' says Sanguinius. 'I have interest in seeing you work.'
It is only then that I notice the equipment filling the studio. There are tools and benches, a furnace and kiln, and a sweep of different sands and crushed minerals that, when combined, could render wonders.
Like all other neophytes, I had been exposed to the myriad avenues of artistic endeavour as part of my Legion training.
I had composed sonnets and symphonies, painted portraits and scenes from Baal's history, and moulded clay and stone into heroes of the past. But like all Blood Angels, one art form called out to me with insistent strength, and for me that art form was glass.
In truth, the medium had likely ingrained itself upon me much earlier. The memories I have of life before the Legion fade with each passing day, swiftly disintegrating, but there are sometimes fragments. Here an image, there an untethered emotion.
I remember the day my tribe died, raided and butchered by the mutated hordes that terrorised Baal and her moons in the age before the primarch's arrival. I remember the flames staining the ground, turning the sand to filthy, jagged glass. It was with a sliver of that glass that I survived, fighting to escape into the endless dunes of the sour, rad-poisoned wastes, before my eventual masters discovered me.
'You have the materials you need?' asks Sanguinius, jarring me from my thoughts.
'Yes, lord,' I nod quickly. 'This is more than adequate.'
'Go, then,' Sanguinius gestures to the furnace and tools. 'Be about your work. Act as though I am not here.'
'That is impossible, sire.'
The primarch smiles softly.
I proceed to the furnace, selecting a combination of sand and ground glass fragments and pouring them inside. The contents within quickly grow molten in the intense heat, forming a pool of searing liquid at the base.
I draw in a breath and take up a blowing iron, a hollow tube just longer than I am tall. I drive the iron into the furnace, rolling and turning it in my hands to gather up a portion of the molten glass around it. The material is the consistency of honey, and I quickly set about shaping and forming it, reapplying heat from a hand flamer to keep it pliable before it grows too cold.
After hours of heating and cooling, cutting and shaping, and finally annealing within a ceramic kiln, my work is complete. When it is cold enough to remove, I pull the piece out, placing it on a plinth before my primarch, who has watched its creation in silence. I step back, head bowed, tugging off the insulated protective gloves that are rapidly growing unnecessary for me to use.
Sanguinius looks down, and sees his own visage reflected back at him. I have sculpted an exact likeness of the primarch's face. I worked with painstaking detail, stealing glances at the Angel to ensure that the resemblance is uncanny, apart from the colour. The glass shines a brilliant forest green, as though it is carved emerald.
'The colour,' says Sanguinius, letting the question hang.
'Soil from Baal,' I answer. The iron-rich earth of the Legion home world, a famously deep crimson, transformed into green when applied onto the molten glass.
'Your coming brought rebirth to Baal,' I elaborate. 'The unification of the tribes, peace, the Emperor, it was all a transformation and spring of new life for us, and the hope to return our world to what it once was.'
Sanguinius turns the sculpture over in his hands, tracing the features with his fingertips. 'This demonstrates skill, passion, even vision. Yet it fails in the most critical of ways.'
Fails. The word from my gene-sire's lips makes me go cold in an instant, like a knife blow to my spine. 'I do not understand, lord.'
'You failed,' continues the primarch, 'the moment you created something for me, rather than something from within yourself. You sought to flatter, rather than inspire. The artist must create his works as though he would be the only soul to behold them, shards of his very self rendered into being. Otherwise he is simply an artisan, a merchant selling wares for coin at a market.'
I feel my heart sink, and my hands tingle. It is a sensation not unlike when I took my first life, in the trials of ascension. The sense that I have crossed a threshold that I can never return from, but this time in failure.
'For your next piece,' says Sanguinius, setting the sculpture back down on the plinth and stepping away from it, immediately forgotten, 'I expect to see you, rather than myself.'
I look up. 'My next piece, sire?'
'Yes, Jehoel,' the primarch smiles. 'Now, start again.'
With the years come change - to the Imperium, the Legion and the Blood Angels who fill its ranks. The constant wars of the Great Crusade sprea
d the Emperor's dominion wider across the galaxy, won at the edge of the Legions' blades. New scars mark the golden hull of the Red Tear, and the sons who walk her passages.
I myself carry my share of those scars, the collection of ragged marks that crisscross my post-human physique earned in battle overtaking those made by the Apothecary's knife. War is my purpose, the reason my hearts beat and my lungs draw breath. But by my father's design, it is not my only purpose.
The studio is a welcome refuge for me, a sanctum to refocus my mind from weapons drill and training in the art of destruction, to turn my thoughts to different endeavours. As my battle company continues to enact tireless compliance upon world after world, star system after star system, I have not been able to sculpt in many weeks, and I relish the opportunity to feel the heat of the furnace upon my face once more.
But it does not take long for my sanctum's tranquillity to vanish.
I spit as I pull the finished piece from the kiln, disgusted with the misshapen sculpture that had been annealing in its intense heat. My initial gather had been poor, an unequal collection of material that formed the core of the work. The angles I have wrought are clumsy, the cuts and pulls of the molten glass with my pincers awkward and inelegant. My proportions are lopsided. Looking upon the piece, it resembles the work of an amateur, a child even, rather than that of a Legion warrior who has spent years perfecting his craft.
With a snarl of rage I dash the sculpture to the ground, shattering it into a heap of jagged glass shards that scatter over the deck. Breath slashes from my nose, and between my teeth. My fists ball and unclench, one callused and dark with soot from the furnace, the other a clicking simulacrum of dark iron.
'What is it, my son?'
I start, so rapt in my anger that I had not even noticed the change that the air takes in the primarch's presence, the extrasensory radiance that beams from him wherever he goes. It is normally a boon to lift one with inspiration, but standing here, with my destroyed work spread around me, I feel only guilt.
'It is my hand, father,' I reply, ashamed by my lapse in discipline. 'Ever since we completed the scouring of the Adryantis, since I lost my arm and this machine took its place, I can no longer shape the glass.' I hold up the augmetic, the metal fingers whirring as I flex them. 'It is as though the touch has fled from me.'
The primarch does not answer me right away. Instead, he walks a slow circuit around the studio, his great wings stirring in soft rhythm with his breathing. He stops briefly at each piece that I have created, favouring every sculpture, vessel and figure with a moment's attention.
'Tell me,' Sanguinius says finally, 'how do you define art, Jehoel? What does the word mean to you?'
I consider for a moment before answering. 'Art is the attempt to define those aspects of our minds and hearts which resist definition,' I say. 'It is a manifestation of emotion.'
'I did not ask for what a text would say,' the primarch laughs softly. 'I asked what it meant to you, my son.'
I look to my gene-sire.
'We gave much to you,' Sanguinius continues, 'as we did to all those who have ascended to the ranks of my Legion, but there is also much that we take. The cost paid in exchange for becoming one of the Adeptus Astartes is high, and so many of those who walk beneath the banners of my brothers cast aside the ties to their birth, some with relish, even. But not all vestiges of what we once were must be sacrificed.'
He stops at a sculpture I created six years ago, one of the more abstract works that came in the dying moments of a battle won against the horrid greenskin xenos breed.
'There are endeavours,' says Sanguinius, 'that can bind you to the race you once belonged to, that remind you of your purpose and the beauty of what we protect. That is why each brother of the Ninth is to practise an art of their own choosing. For as much as we are a force of destruction, we must never forget that we also have the ability to create.'
Sanguinius stops beside my basins of materials, gathering up a measure of fine sand and letting it slip slowly through his fingers. 'One day, our crusade will end. This entire galaxy shall be my father's realm, and there will come a time where there is no more cause for destruction, no need to shed blood. What will the Legions do then, Jehoel? What will become of us?'
I cannot find an answer, because in truth I have never considered such a future for myself. My life within the battle company has taught me that the foundations of the new Imperium are to be built with the lives of the Legiones Astartes, the stones of its grand edifice joined with our freely given blood. It is a glorious end, and it is the only one that had ever entered my mind as a possibility.
'Will we be cast aside?' Sanguinius goes on, repeating his circuit of the studio. 'Regarded as nothing more than the relics of a more barbarous age, a necessary evil wielded as the means to a greater end? Or can we be more than that? Roboute has moulded his sons into statesmen, while Magnus the Red has raised a Legion of thinkers, philosophers and healers. Through art, by capturing and distilling what is wondrous in our universe and creating works that connect us with it and enhance its beauty, my Blood Angels will prove to my father that we are more than just killing machines. That there can be a place for us once His conquests are won. But to do so, it requires a triumph of the spirit.'
'The spirit?' I ask. While it was true that the Legion had carried over some vestiges of the mysticism from Baal, we had always followed our primarch in his adherence to the Emperor's Imperial Truth. 'You believe there is such a thing?'
Sanguinius hesitates. 'I believe my father,' he says finally. 'Though I also trust what I have seen within my own mind.'
There is more to it than what he has said, but before I can press his meaning further, he points to my new arm.
'You are not the first to face challenges that you must overcome to pursue your craft, my son. And you will surely not be the last. Across our Legion, my sons have endured horrific injury in service to my father. And yet, each of them still takes up the brush, the quill, the lathe. Why, even Venerable-Exemplar Jophial still works tirelessly at his marble from within his sarcophagus.'
My strongest image of Jophial is of him tearing down city gates with a siege hammer. 'That is so, my lord?'
Sanguinius grins. 'Try and stop him. Your touch, as you regard it comes no more from your flesh than it does his. It is within you, Jehoel, and all it requires to usher forth is the belief that it is there.'
I dip my head, duly chastened, but grateful for his words.
'And so,' says Sanguinius. 'Do you still believe that art comes from the hands?'
'No, father.'
'Good. Now take up your tools, and start again.'
I walk the corridors of the Covenant of Baal, the Legion's new flagship announcing with every clanging step, every sound and smell, that it has become a monument to all that we have lost.
There is little beauty to behold here. The walls are bare plasteel and ribbed adamantium, the brutal function of Imperial shipcraft laid bare without thought for aesthetic. At a regular interval there stands a sigil or monument, or a fresco that adorns the ceiling of a thoroughfare junction, but their relative scarcity seems to only amplify the cold grey of the ship's metal bones. I find the same reflected in my battle brothers. The past battle, and the revelations it brought forth, has stolen beauty from us.
We are a brotherhood lost, adrift in the churning tides of a warp we now know to be conscious in its malevolent intent for us. The concept of betrayal had never dwelt within our thoughts. Worlds that resisted compliance were merely ignorant, rather than treacherous. Yet now the word hangs over each of our heads, like a revenant that never leaves us. The solid ground we once felt underfoot now chums beneath us like quicksand. The things we have seen, new realities we had trusted could not exist, have changed those of us who survived.
I go now to the studio I have assembled since I came aboard. With so much cast to the wind, we each cling to what we can from that time now lost to us, only weeks past but gone forever. We striv
e to recover beauty, when all that we can see is hell.
The tools I have now are simpler, the furnace smaller than the one I had grown used to, but they function, and that is all I require of them. I allow my mind to drift as I work, learning to draw my creativity from what is unconscious within me. The heat and sounds of the glass hardening as I roll and smooth it are soft in my ears in this trance-like state as the piece takes shape.
Sanguinius arrives to watch my work as he used to, though this is the first time aboard the Covenant. He walks differently now, even though his legs have long since healed. Just as with his sons, not all the scars my father bears can be seen. Some are etched deep within his mind, only hinted at in the haunted look that has never left his eyes since Signus Prime.
I withdraw the work from the furnace, my hands gently turning the rod by instinct. Setting it into a bracket I continue to turn it while I select a battered tin from my materials. I open it, unwilling to breathe in its contents as I raise it up. Like dark snow I sift the ash down, the motes of storm grey merging with the cooling glass to drive the purity of crystal away.
'Show me what you have seen,' says the primarch, coming to a halt by my side. 'What have you made?'
I step back, allowing him to see my work and for the first time consciously looking upon it myself. It is a creature a sort of impossible mingling of serpent and skinless dog, rising up from the centre of a wilting bloom and holding a bleeding heart in its black teeth. I study the precise intricacy that my hands had worked, etching in the minute shapes that covered its mottled hide, recognising the burning runes that visit me on each rue occasion where I have sought sleep.
'No!'
I blink and the blowing rod is gone from my hands. Sanguinius thrusts it back into the furnace like a spear, still clutching the length of hollow iron to smash the piece to ruin against its scorched insides. It makes a sound like hollow bells which rings around the cramped room, seeming to me to echo longer than it should. I watch as the last shards fall away from the metal, quickly losing shape before they disappear into the slick pool of molten sand.
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