by Nick Kyme
‘You are the vanguard, brother-sergeant,’ said Drakgaard, clenching his fist to shut off the hololith. ‘Take us in.’
Bar’dak led the line of warsuits out. Within minutes, their armoured forms were lost amidst smoke and dust. Only the sound of their heavy footfalls as they stomped through the rubble gave away the fact of their existence.
Drakgaard had his Serpentia honour guard and a tactical squad moving up in support. He switched his retinal lens display to tactical view and saw a truncated schematic of the terrain and his units advancing through it rendered as icons over his left eye. He opened up the vox-link.
‘Captain Helfer, you are to stay behind us with the Devastators until we breach this area proper.’
‘Understood, my lord,’ came the swift reply. Helfer was the leader of four squads of elite Kasrkins. They wore heavier armour than Colonel Redgage’s regular troopers and carried rebreather masks along with an array of specialist assault weaponry and hellguns, an enhanced version of the lasgun. Hellguns enjoyed improved armour penetration capability over their standard-issue counterpart, but even with this augmentation they were no match for power armour. Ordinarily cast as storm troopers, the Kasrkins were reduced to a support role until the Targons could establish the level of enemy resistance and root it out. Drakgaard had assured Redgage he would not use his men as bait, or treat their lives cheaply. Against Traitor Space Marines, the Kasrkin were at a disadvantage. Drakgaard wanted to mitigate that first before deploying into the Canticus war zone.
An icon associated with the second battle group flashed up on Drakgaard’s right lens display, rendered in luminous crimson over a transparent background tinged the same only lighter. Veteran Sergeant Kadoran had just given notification of simultaneous deployment of his own troops. As of yet, there was no word from Canoness Angerer. Drakgaard was about to try to raise her on the vox when a final marker blinked up on his display below the first.
‘Sisters are moving in behind us,’ he voxed to Elysius alone. ‘Angerer left it late for confirmation.’
The Chaplain had joined the Serpentia as part of Drakgaard’s command squad.
‘She is still unhappy that you insisted on us going in first.’
‘It is our right,’ Drakgaard replied. ‘I won’t have the glory of this victory stolen from under us by the Ecclesiarchy.’
‘Glory? Is that why we are here, brother-captain?’
‘Now is not the time to try and peer into my immortal soul, Chaplain.’
‘Just so long as you are clear why we are fighting this war.’
‘It is our duty, Elysius.’
‘That is our purpose, to do our duty, not the reason why we came to Heletine.’
The pain of his injuries was making him irascible, so Drakgaard cut the conversation short before he said something to the Chaplain he would later regret. There was one thing he wished he had voiced aloud, though. A question.
Can we trust them, brother?
Angerer fed the string of rosary pearls between her gauntleted fingers. She paused when she reached the black opal. All those souls she had saved and just this one eluded her. Sensing she was being watched, Angerer glanced up. Laevenius was staring at her.
‘How can you know where?’ asked the scarred warrior. Her Celestians were nearby, waiting patiently for their Sister Superior and canoness outside of the ship. It was one of several corralled together and brimming with Adepta Sororitas. They had touched down at a landing strip at the edge of Canticus, ostensibly to redeploy once the Salamanders and Cadians had made sufficient ingress into the city and engaged the enemy.
‘With faith,’ Angerer replied, letting go of the rosary, ‘and with this.’ She produced a small, brass artefact. When flat it resembled a teardrop, but unfolded across its fragile hinges it was more like a compass. In fact, that is exactly what it was. Setting the brass compass down, Angerer then took a phial of clear liquid from her trappings.
‘Precious little sorrow left,’ she murmured.
Laevenius remained still and stared at the glass bottle as Angerer decanted the last few drops onto the arrow of the compass. Then she waited. The seconds seemed to lengthen, both warriors waiting in silence for the compass to move. It trembled at first then the arrow spun around to settle in one direction. Angerer removed one of her gauntlets, and held her bare hand over the compass so she could feel its emanations against her skin.
‘Not far…’ she said. When she put her gauntlet back on, Laevenius saw a reddening of Angerer’s skin from where the compass had lightly blistered it. Gently, Angerer picked up the compass and handed it to Laevenius. ‘Give this to only your most trusted warrior then get everyone on board. We are leaving immediately.’
‘And the others, my canoness?’ asked Laevenius, taking the compass reverently and being careful not to spill a drop of the liquid.
Angerer was already moving to the front of the transport where she would take up position in the cockpit alongside the pilot and gunner. She only half turned.
‘Have them hold position for now. I want to be absolutely sure before we commit to this. I want to see her with my own eyes, Sister.’
There were catacombs beneath Canticus, and they stretched beyond the bounds of the city. Some reached as far as Escadan, others went all the way to Solist. They were old, and largely forgotten. It was where the Heletines had once buried their relics and their dead. It was a place of saints that had now become a lair for sinners. No one ventured into the catacombs anymore – they were dark and uncharted places. None save for those with longer memories and the reason to do so. None save for the unholy and the blasphemous.
The anteroom was carved from the very bedrock of the world, and festooned with skulls like the rest of the underground ossuary. Sigils had been cut into the walls, signifying the proto-Imperial Creed that had since spread to become the dominant form of religion in the galaxy. Smashed, befouled, these sigils had no power here now. Pillars raised the ceiling. In places it was high enough to house a Titan, stretching up into gloomy vaults speared with stalactites. There were deeps. Great wells that fell into black oblivion. A core of Heletine’s raw elements had existed here once, a fossil fuel used to synthesise promethium production. Miners and riggers had denuded this wealth, sacked it for their profit and prosperity. Men now long dead, their skeletons had joined the masses already entombed but with unmarked graves and forgotten lives.
In their wake came the Ecclesiarchy, the great Adeptus Ministorum. In vast ships, they crossed the ocean of stars and braved the empyrean itself to bring a lost world back into the fold. Some said it was the Crusade reborn, but they were foolish men, given over to vainglory. It was but one world, yet no less significant for that fact. The Ecclesiarchy reclaimed this land from the industrial tyrants who had yoked from it Heletine’s blood and marrow. Tombs thought lost for millennia were rediscovered. New relics were interred in the earth. Shrines were raised. Reliquaries formed. For the cardinals and the palatines knew this world’s legacy as well as its spiritual significance, and sought to gird it. But holy men are not the only beings privy to secrets, those locked away in ancient librariums or contained in the rasped whispers of the damned – daemons know things too.
Two warriors knelt before an immense statue. It was dark in the chamber, the only light cast by flickering torches, and in the shadows the statue loomed over them, powerful and oppressive. So still that, despite its anger, anyone entering the chamber without prior knowledge could otherwise be forgiven for not realising it had anima and was flesh, not stone.
Kneeling was not easy for these warriors, and not just because the hulking armour plate they were wearing had not been fashioned with the need for penitence in mind. Pride had compelled them to remain standing, but against the will of the towering statue figure they fell awkwardly in supplication.
‘We have lost the bridge, my lord…’ rasped one. His armour was festooned wit
h skulls, several impaled on spikes with others hanging from loops of dark chain and wire. A war-helm was clasped under his arm, a blood-red topknot rising from the crown in a plume. His face was patchwork, a raft of knitted-together skin each taken from a different provider. None of the flesh-givers had been willing participants in Kargol’s art, however.
The statue spoke, though in the darkness it was hard to tell if his lips actually moved. His voice was unmistakable, and though akin to human was most definitely unkind to any mortal being.
‘There were six of you that went out. Where are your brothers?’
There was genuine concern in the question and it was obvious then that the statue figure’s anger was directed at his enemies for the slaying of his men and not for the apparent failure of those self-same warriors.
Now the other spoke up. A long barrelled reaper cannon rested on his knee. He too was helmed, but left it on. It was part of him, fused to his flesh and could not be removed. Jade embers blazed behind his eye slits as if beneath the irremovable helm his face was perpetually on fire. For all his brothers now knew, perhaps it was. Ever since the ‘changing’, Kaid had been this way. Unlike some, he embraced the gifts and willed his gods to bestow further boons. He wanted glory, so he had gladly bended the knee and joined the rest of the Children of Torment when the Warmaster had made his offer.
Here, in this dusty catacomb of piled skulls and other forgotten bones, he did so again but not in the same cause. Conquest, a chance to fight at the head of a Black Crusade, that was Kaid’s desire. Glory. Down in the dirt with the long dead, he felt far indeed from such a promise. For how could his gods see him here in this pit, searching and scrabbling in the dirt?
‘Arvan and Helux are dead. Socred we lost to the river. Only the Eye knows where he now resides.’ There was bitterness in Kaid’s voice that he failed to hide. Despite the helm, his ambition was etched plainly on his brute, metal ‘face’.
‘Should I ask it?’ said the statue figure, affecting an air of menace with the coldness of his tone to the two veterans knelt before him. ‘Or would you like to, Kaid? Your desire for advancement is as palpable to me as the blade sheathed at my hip.’ He did not move to the weapon, which was immense and forged of warp-bonded black iron. He did not need to enhance the threat he had just made. ‘But know this, brother,’ the statue added, ‘there are many ways to ascend, some more inglorious than others. You are in service to the Warmaster’s Black Legion. On Heletine, I am Warmaster. If I choose to have you scrabbling in the dirt then that is what you will do.’
Kaid suppressed a shiver. It was as if the words had been plucked from his mind.
‘Or, the alternative is I bury you under it. For a brother…’ he paused, and there was emotion straining his voice, ‘a true brother never questions the orders of his captain. How I long for such days again…’
Kaid bowed his head, as the towering figure seemed to lose himself in remembrance. He knew he had gone too far and was quick to show contrition.
‘That will not be necessary, my lord. I can track Socred. Either bring back him or his body.’
‘Socred will find his own way back to us, if he lives,’ said the figure, dismissing Kaid’s offer with the slightest shake of his head. ‘I suspect he will attempt to “amuse” himself along the way.’ As he moved, the weak underground light inside the cavern caught the edge of his face. It glistened, and did not resemble skin at all, though that is what it was supposed to represent. It was more like porcelain or glass, the kind of material used to create a doll or the facsimile of a man.
‘And our enemies,’ he asked, ‘they move?’
Kargol silenced his brother by speaking first. ‘They move, my lord. In armoured column with outriders wearing jump packs.’
‘Then we have nothing to concern us. Arvan and Helux will be remembered. Socred too, if he is also dead. Rise,’ said the lord, turning to face the figure in the background who was regarding them. ‘Return to your brothers. Our other enemies will be here soon. We must be ready for them.’
Kargol and Kaid got to their feet with the snarl of servos, and took their leave. Down the long tunnel behind them and in the larger cavern beyond, the sound of the muster could be heard. Warriors were preparing for battle. With over half their number dead or missing, the two brothers would divide the warbands evenly.
‘You see, Kaid,’ uttered the lord to the warrior’s back as he was walking away, ‘your fortunes in the eye of the gods improve already.’
Kaid paused, ‘Yes, my Lord Faustus,’ before moving on.
Faustus paid him no further heed and approached the watcher, stepping into the light as he did so.
Apart from his head, which was bare and oddly the most artificial part of him, Faustus wore full war-plate. Coal-black, it wrapped his muscular form like a second skin, the epitome of his legion. It was also of a size and magnitude greater than the warrior in front of him, Faustus half again larger in every aspect.
The other warrior bowed, but without the trepidation of the two Terminators.
‘Why do you insist on them calling you that?’ he asked.
Faustus was nonplussed. ‘It is my name. Heklion Faustus.’
‘It was your name.’
‘And what is your name, brother?’ Faustus asked, though he knew it full well and was crafting a lesson for his favourite underling. The other had received this particular teaching before.
‘Lufurion, as it has ever been.’
‘But you are not he, not entirely.’ Viperously fast, Faustus seized Lufurion by the edge of his gorget and dragged him forwards. The light from a brazier’s flame flickered over them both, casting deepening shadow. It made the ridges of their armour shine and burn with reflected fire. More importantly, it exposed Lufurion’s surgeries. Beneath his armour, every major limb and joint bore the marks of amputation followed by attachment. Only the neck and arms, which were bare of armour plate, bore them obviously. Lufurion’s face was not his own. That had been a fire-ravaged ruin. He had taken his new visage from an old friend, one who had betrayed him and who he betrayed in turn. He smiled, revealing an over-wide jaw. Pointed teeth ran all the way across his face, up to his ears, and there was an acid burn etched into an inverted ‘v’ shape on his chin.
‘True,’ Lufurion replied, seemingly unconcerned. One of his lackeys devised to draw a weapon but a savage glance from Lufurion stayed the foolish warrior’s hand. Fortunately, Faustus was too lost in his own theatre to see it. ‘I have made myself flawless again. But you,’ Lufurion said, smiling thinly and nodding at the monster holding him in its grasp, ‘are not Faustus.’
‘I am a true Cthonian,’ Faustus sneered proudly.
‘That you are.’
Faustus wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. He glared, pain and hate warring for dominance in his eyes. They were strange, eldritch things, simultaneously ageless and yet also weary.
‘You and I are not familiar enough. You are not Klaed or Ahenobarbus, or Narthius. They were true brothers…’ Faustus drifted into the past again, and Lufurion took advantage of the warrior’s momentary lapse in purpose.
‘I came to tell you we are ready.’
Faustus blinked, as if revived from a dream. He let him go.
‘Show me.’ The genuine longing in Faustus’s voice was in stark contrast to the practiced indifference of Lufurion’s.
‘Of course. This way, my lord. I’ll be with you momentarily.’
Faustus deigned not to answer.
Lufurion met Klerik’s gaze. He was Incarnadine, one of Lufurion’s sworn warriors, now allied to the Children of Torment. Like the rest of the warband, and its warlord, the Incarnadine Host wore armour of heliotrope purple. Fashioned over the plate metal were leathern strips of cured flesh, baked and hardened. To this grisly apparel was added studs, spikes of bone and bloody daubing. Blades were favoured. Every man was scarred, imperfect i
n some way to better emphasise their warlord’s own flawlessness. Lufurion knew it was vain, but he did not care.
All except for Klerik. As Lufurion’s bloody right hand, Klerik was permitted to be flawless too. Aside from a short cape of flesh, his armour went without the fetishistic trappings of his brothers.
‘Marshal the men, Klerik. It will not be long now. They’ll be coming for her.’
Klerik nodded, eyeing Faustus as he left the room, then asked, ‘Who is dealing with our other pressing concern?’
‘Vorshkar.’
Klerik gave a quiet, ironic laugh. ‘That maniac. Hopefully he’ll end up dead.’
‘Hopefully.’ Lufurion’s tone suggested he didn’t think that was going to happen.
‘I heard our errant brothers met with ill fortune, captain,’ Klerik whispered, though Faustus was already gone and had paid the warrior’s furtiveness no heed.
Lufurion clapped him on the shoulder.
‘This makes our endeavours here even more important.’
Klerik nodded again and went to his duty as Lufurion went after Faustus into another subterranean cavern. It was deeper than the previous one and they had to descend a long ramp of earth to reach it. In ages past, some effort had been made to pave the area with stone but much of it had been worn away by entropy. Stepping through a wide arch, high enough for Faustus to pass under without stooping, was a vaulted chamber that ran on for several metres. A silver casket lay on a plinth at the end of it. Three of Lufurion’s warriors surrounded the casket, the igniters on their flamers burning a dormant blue.
‘Within, the sacred bones of Lucrezzia Absetia,’ said Lufurion, his words barbed enough to pierce flesh.
‘She is one of their saints? Another false idol?’
‘Just a mouldering corpse, one this false empire likes to revere,’ Lufurion replied, nodding to his men.