[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest

by C. S. Goto - (ebook by Undead)

  “It will not end, young Ckrius.” There was no point in lying to him now. “Do not trust to hope that the pain will stop. But one day you will learn to embrace it. It will burn into your soul in every waking moment, reminding you that you are alive, and that you live for only one purpose. You are being remade to serve that purpose fully, with your entire being, as an Angel of Death.”

  “I… I… can’t.” The wretched voice grated and hissed as blood gurgled in his raw, sliced throat. As though to demonstrate his desperation, Ckrius attempted to flex his bulging arms, but they merely shuddered and convulsed, like a corpse twitching with electric current. He had no control, and his body was not yet formed. He could no longer even strain at the shackles that gripped his wrists and ankles.

  “Do you wish you were dead?” asked Tanthius again, taking the last step to bring himself next to Ckrius’ feverish face. “I can end it now, if that is your wish. I can end this suffering.”

  The massive Terminator sergeant loomed over the neophyte, staring calmly down into his crazed eyes. “We are not savages, Ckrius. You give yourself willing to us, or we do not take you at all. Know this: this is the last choice we will ever ask you to make. Service is a matter of choice, but it offers no choices.”

  Ckrius’ eyes twitched and shook in their sockets as hysteria wrestled with his reason. The sergeant had seen this before, and he could remember the frenzy of thoughts that were assailing the youth’s tortured, damaged and mutilated mind. At this point, the neophyte was beyond rational thought—the human brain can only withstand so much pain and suffering before its grip on reason and sanity grow too weak to be meaningful. But it was not a rational answer that Tanthius was waiting for; he was waiting for a cry from this boy’s soul. He wanted to hear the word of the Emperor touch this youth’s lips. With all of the architecture of rational thought stripped away, Tanthius wanted to know who young Ckrius really was after all.

  All Blood Ravens were asked to make this decision at this point in their transformation. In was called the “Constituo Fatum”—the fateful choice. Long and tortuous justifications and rationalisations of this principle filled hundreds of shelves in the Librarium Sanctorum aboard the glorious fortress monastery of Omnis Arcanum. The orthodox treatise, penned originally by the Great Father Azariah Vidya himself, argued that this moment of choice represented the only instant in a human being’s life when his soul could be subjected directly to the light of the Emperor.

  Stripped of dignity, physical integrity and mental fortitude, the only thing left for a mind was truth. According to tradition, the question should be posed by the veteran Blood Raven with the closest bond with the neophyte. In most cases, this meant the chaplain. However, Tanthius had discovered Ckrius on Tartarus; he had brought the youth aboard the Litany and had watched over his progress. The Terminator sergeant was the closest thing to a father that Ckrius had in the Chapter. If Ckrius’ soul was found wanting, despite the gene-compatibility and resilience of his body, Tanthius would kill him. In the past, a number of Librarians in the Blood Ravens had argued that this was a waste of an able neophyte. They pointed out that most Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes require no such choice from their aspirants—indeed, some Chapters actively coerced gene-compatible neophytes, effectively forcing them to become Marines, by which time their fates were sealed. To discard a neophyte at Ckrius’ stage of transformation was costly, foolish, and unnecessary.

  But the Great Father had been clear and adamant. No matter how low Blood Ravens’ numbers became, and no matter how desperately the Chapter needed to recruit new battle-brothers, they should never compromise on the purity of their neophyte’s souls. It was subsequently suggested that Vidya had been so adamant about this because of the special nature of the Blood Ravens: they were scholars and researchers, who spent much of their time immersed in the forbidden and secret teachings of ancient times or alien species. Only the purest of heart would be able to keep the grace and light of the Emperor always in mind, even in the face of the greatest temptations and the most powerful of knowledge. Vidya’s “Constituo” helped to ensure that the Blood Ravens would not slide into heresy.

  “Well? Shall I end it for you now?” Tanthius’ eyes glistened with a mixture of pity and resolve.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the gurgling, rasping breath of the neophyte. “No! The choice is not mine to make. I am the sword of Vidya.”

  A faint smile of relief creased Tanthius’ features. “As you wish, young Blood Raven.”

  The sand storm had thinned to little more than a shifting mist of dust since the Thunderhawk had touched down onto the cracked, rocky slope. The gunship’s thrusters had been cut, leaving only the wind to whip the sand up from the desert, disturbing the layer that shifted constantly over the barren rock. Even the wind was broken by the ring of tors and boulders that surrounded the landing site, offering the vessel a little cover from the elements and from any prying sensors that might have been trained around the outskirts of the strangely deserted, alien city that dropped away into the bottom of the circular valley to the east.

  The rocky cleft in which I had pressed myself offered me some measure of cover, and I was reasonably sure that whomever was inside the Thunderhawk would not be able to see me directly. Whether or not they had sensors that would be able to detect my presence, I had no idea. If they are looking for me, then I will be found. On the other hand, if they were here for some other reason, then I was confident that they would not notice.

  It is only the rare mind that notices the unexpected.

  The maxim was just sitting there in my thoughts, like the face of an old friend. As soon as I saw it, I recognised it as the first truism of the Scholastia Librarium, where I was once trained in the ways of knowledge and scholarship. Images of great columns aspiring into majestic, illuminated vaulted ceilings, soaring above endless rows of document stacks blossomed into my mind.

  A pang of nostalgia gripped my heart, and I realised that the librarium was important to me, as though it was an essential part of my being. Strip away the confusions of knowledge and you are left with only one thing: the truth.

  A flicker of genuine pain troubled my soul at the thought of having forgotten even that place. It was like forgetting home. Home? I had forgotten that too.

  A loud metallic crack drew my attention back to the gunship in the clearing. The prow of the Thunderhawk had shifted forward, revealing a wide joint all the way around its nose. A ring of smoke or steam hissed out of the gap, circling the vessel like a vertical halo before dissipating the wind. The nose creaked and then tilted back, pivoting along the roof-line, revealing the mechanical grind of a ramp dropping down to the ground from within. It was like watching a massive metal beast snarling.

  As I watched, a dark, sickly, nauseating cloud of emotion seemed to plume out of the interior of the vessel. It was hardly visible, except as a slight haze disturbing the sand-filled mist. But I could feel it emanating briefly from the open prow of the Thunderhawk.

  Instinctively, my mind jumped into an alertness that took me momentarily by surprise. I have defences against this thing. The realisation was accompanied by a new clarity in my sight, as though my mind was somehow filtering out the chaotic whirl of sickening energy that ran out of the gunship like an ocean spray.

  Striding down the ramp in the wake of the invisible energy flows, his heavy boots resounding solidly against the metal, was a magnificent and formidable figure. He must have stood over two metres tall. Like me, he was adorned in an ornate and breathtaking suit of blue power armour. Like me, he had no helmet, although a great gold and blue crest rose out of his shoulders framing his head from behind. Nonetheless, like mine, his face was exposed to the abrasive sand. However, from my hiding place in the rocks, it seemed that the mist of sand parted around him; not a single grain appeared to touch his oddly shifting skin. I strained my eyes, employing the trick of optical enhancement without giving it a second thought. However, despite being only fifty metres or so
away from the stranger, I could not make out his facial features. It was as though he didn’t have a real face at all. His skin seemed to shift and swim before my gaze. It was at once both pale as porcelain and dark as ash. It gave him an immense gravity, as though the entire planet was suddenly drawn into orbit around him, but it also made him seem entirely translucent and insubstantial. More than that, however, I found that I simply couldn’t look at his skin for long enough to see it properly; my eyes kept slipping off his form, drawn into his own eyes like matter into dying stars. And they were such eyes! I could see no eyeballs; there were only complicated, intense blue infernos, flickering and spitting like shards of warp fire.

  As the awesome sorcerer reached the bottom of the landing ramp, he paused and looked around, surveying the landscape as though he were drawing it all into his thoughts, mapping the scene in his head, possessing it like a creation of his own. Behind him, in the shadows of the interior of the Thunderhawk, I could hear the clattering of other people preparing to disembark. Then, after a few seconds, a squad of blue- and gold-armoured warriors strode down the ramp, each carrying assortments of heavy kit and arcane equipment. Like the awesome sorcerer himself, each of the Marines sported elaborate crests, which plumed up behind their exposed heads. None of them appeared to have helmets, but there was something disconcerting about all of their faces, as though they were lingering on the very edges of reality.

  The squad parted around the sorcerer, like a stream rushing around an immovable boulder, and then set to work erecting machinery and emplacements in front of the Thunderhawk, as though establishing a camp. Meanwhile, those inferno-eyes continued to scan the surroundings. As I watched them sparkling and sweeping the rockscape, a realisation struck me. He’s looking for me. He knows I’m here!

  As soon as the thought leapt into my mind, the sorcerer turned his head directly towards where I was hiding, bringing his flaming blue eyes straight into mine until I thought that I could feel the heat of his warp-fire burning into my irises.

  I stepped back instantly, pressing my back harder against the rocky resistance of the interior of the cleft behind me, dropping my face into the shadow of the crevice. Although the spitting fires of his eyes had seemed to settle on me, I was not sure whether he had seen me. Something in my mind stirred, telling me that he knew I was near, but I could not tell whether he had yet spied me with the mundane realities of sight. The trained mind sees things that cannot be seen: the Emperor’s eyes are beyond nerves and flesh.

  My mind raced: should I reveal myself to these strangers? There was something familiar about them, but my soul did not rejoice in their image. There was no sense of nostalgia, no sense of homecoming when I had finally seen the magnificent sorcerer striding out of the Thunderhawk. My intuition told me that these were not my brothers, even while my reason railed against me, telling me that I could recognise at least something of myself and my nature in the stature of these impressive warriors: if there was nobody else on this lost world, then I would be foolish to let these strangers pass. But there are things more important than finding a home: finding truth. It is better to perish in truth than to live in delusion.

  I peered out from the crevice once again, still unsure about how to proceed. What had I expected to do once the gunship had landed? Suddenly the whole enterprise seemed foolish and ill-considered. Why had I followed the landing craft if I had not wanted to make contact with its occupants? If only my mind would clear and return to myself—I needed my memories now, perhaps even more than I needed Vairocanum.

  The towering figure of the sorcerer was striding away from the rapidly constructed camp, marching directly towards my position but leaving his battle-brothers behind him. His eyes flared ineffably, like miniature galaxies swirling hypnotically as he approached.

  Hidden in the shadows of the cleft, I carefully drew my sword from its holster on my back, clasping it into both hands in readiness. I would not go out to meet this sorcerer, but I would be ready for him if he made the mistake of trying to root me out like an animal. I am the sword of Vidya.

  Even as I watched, I saw a sudden flicker of red light over on the other side of the clearing, beyond the approaching stranger. The sorcerer stopped instantly, turning his head away from my position, back around towards the apparition. Another light appeared, shimmering like a multicoloured flame. It danced for a second and then vanished. By now, the rest of the sorcerer’s squad had noticed the unusual patterns of light; they were abandoning their work on the camp and reaching for their weapons.

  With emphatic slowness, the sorcerer turned his warpfire eyes back in my direction. For a long moment, I thought that he was staring straight into my face. But then he turned briskly and strode back through his camp, hefting a long, heavy black staff from an ornate case that had been laid across a makeshift altar for him. As soon as he clutched it into his hands, the staff burst into life, sizzling with unspeakable energies. The other warriors fell in behind their leader, and they broke into a run towards the location of the multicoloured, flickering lights. After a second or two, they all opened fire with their weapons, unleashing a relentless and furious barrage into the rocks, shredding them into explosive hails of shrapnel and masonry.

  The strange, unearthly flickering lights vanished almost immediately.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, whatever it was, I eased myself out of the crevice and darted across to the cusp of the valley, sheathing Vairocanum before dropping off the cliff and spinning to catch myself on the lip with my fingertips. Quickly spotting a ledge beneath my feet, I let go of the cliff and dropped a few metres onto the stone shelf below. The impact of my boots rang hollow, as though there was nothing beneath the stone ledge but air.

  Cut into the cliff-face under the shelf was a shallow cave, obscured completely from above by the ledge itself. Gripping the lip of the ledge, I kicked into a handstand and let my weight roll me over in a slow somersault. Pivoting around my grip, I spun down into the cave, hitting the uneven rocky ground and rolling to stop against the back wall.

  He will not look for me here. Safety embraced me like a cloak of shadowy anonymity. As I sat back against the dry wall of the cave, hidden in the sheer cliff-face that dropped down into the strange, circular valley, my mind leapt back up to the mysterious sorcerer in the clearing above me. What caused those lights? Their timing was too perfect—they were designed to give me a chance to escape.

  Looking out of the cave mouth, I could see the ancient, alien city below me. It may have been a trick of the light, as the three suns started to drop once again over the distant horizon and their beams were refracted into spectrums by the rock formations around the crest of the valley, but I thought that I could see a faint flickering of multicoloured lights dancing into the outskirts of the city. For a moment, the flickering motion paused, and I thought that I could discern the nearly-human shapes of a group of lithe figures. They appeared to be checking behind them, perhaps to ensure that they were not being followed into the city. Then they vanished into a blur of lights once again.

  Perhaps the sorcerer and I are not alone on this planet after all. It seems that I was not the only one tracking that Thunderhawk.

  It had been many years since Father Librarian Jonas Urelie had walked through the ornamental portal of the Sanctorium Arcanum. Indeed, it had been several decades since he was last aboard the battle-barge Litany of Fury. Before entering the sacred chamber, he paused under the lintel, on which was engraved a single raven’s wing, its tips dripping with blood. Inhaling deeply, he tasted the incense-clouded air and let it ease into his bloodstream, allowing the rhythmic and elevated chorus of astropaths, telepaths and mystics to intoxicate his senses for a moment. During his time on Rahe’s Paradise, the father Librarian had neglected the ceremonial aspect of his nature; in relative isolation, it had been all but impossible to maintain the range of rituals that defined the routine of the Blood Ravens in normal circumstances.

  There had been a time, long ago, when Jonas had r
elished the ritualistic significance of this hallowed space. Indeed, when he had first been elevated to the rank of father Librarian, he had been given responsibility over the rituals and ceremonies of the Secret Orders of Psykana. In many ways, this was a homecoming for the aging Blood Raven, and his deep breath on the doorstep filled him with mixed emotions.

  Smiling faintly, the Librarian stepped into the Sanctorium, letting the portal drop shut behind him. He heard the once-familiar grinding of heavy bolts clanking into place, and he knew that a complicated array of purity seals was also clicking into position around the perimeter of the door. The Sanctorium was almost impregnable to physical and psychic attacks; not even the Implantation Chamber itself, where the Blood Ravens stored its precious gene-seed, could boast defences of the same magnitude.

  However, its best defence was its secrecy: potential enemies of the Imperium would have no idea that such an unusual and important chamber existed hidden within the depths of an Adeptus Astartes battle-barge. They would not be able to detect its presence with any kinds of sensors or psychic channels. Only the all-seeing eyes of the Emperor himself could see the gleaming, silvering pearl of energy that rotated in the centre of the hemispherical chamber.

  Jonas knew that the purpose of the pearlescent Beacon Psykana was far from certain. It was one of the many innovations of the Great Father, Azariah Vidya, who had arranged for it to be built several millennia before. Like so many of Vidya’s designs, however, their real purpose and meaning had been lost in the ensuing centuries, buried beneath piles of treatises and tracts by lesser scholars who thought that they could interpret the actions of their Great Father. One of the great travesties of the Blood Ravens Chapter was the over-profusion of mediocre and confusing scholarship that obfuscates more than it reveals. Such was the price the revered Chapter paid for its emphasis on the importance of scholarly pursuits.