Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius

by Darius Hinks

  Antros and Rhacelus sat in silence, watching the slumped figure of their Chief Librarian. The only sound came from the blood rain, splashing crimson stars across the dazzling floor.

  Antros was about to speak when a torrent of images flooded his mind. He saw Hades Hive again, but this time he was pinned beneath a huge weight, unable to move, despite an incredible fury pounding through his veins. It was agony, but Antros sensed that he was now seeing the truth.

  It is always the same and always different,+ said Mephiston in his head. Antros looked over at the Chief Librarian, but he was still insensate. +Always, Armageddon. But each time I try to discover the meaning of my power, changing the details, searching for the truth of my birth – the truth of my nature.+

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Antros.

  Yes, you do, Lexicanium. We have nobility in our blood. Such nobility. The blood of the Angel. Divinity. Filling our hearts. Swelling our veins. Our father was the Emperor’s purest son and we carry his bloodline still. I know you feel it, Lexicanium – the faith and the fury, the honour and the hunger, burning within you, as it does in all of the Angel’s sons.+

  The dome’s walls parted to reveal a wall of blood-filled eyes, dozens of them, all staring at him. +Apart from me, of course. I have escaped the curse. The tales are true. However furious the fight, the usual hunger does not haunt me – my heart no longer pounds with those terrible lusts. I have escaped the doom of our Chapter. I am unfettered, free to finally prove our nobility. I have the power to avert the grim fate that hangs over us – this slow, gnawing decline, this gradual death.+

  The eyes closed and the walls became a featureless white once more. As the grotesque images vanished, the scenes of destruction filled Antros’ mind again, showing him the ruins of Hades Hive.

  And yet I return here, faithful as the tide, endlessly rewriting the moment of my death-birth. You see, I have escaped one curse only to discover another, far crueller torment. What you saw on Thermia is an echo of that first slaughter on Hades Hive. But instead of fading, the echo grows louder with every repeat. Every time I give vent to my power, it becomes wilder, more dangerous, more unstoppable. At first I can use it as a weapon, but the weapon becomes the wielder and, when I am myself again, I recall nothing of the excesses it has driven me to. All I know is the carnage I have wrought.+

  There was a clatter of ceramite as Mephiston sat up in his chair. His face was freckled with blood spots and his hair was plastered across his clammy skin. ‘But I have to control it, Lexicanium,’ he said, speaking out loud. ‘If I can find an anchor for the power that is growing in me, I will be the living embodiment of what a Blood Angel can be. I will be proof that we can finally escape this curse. Do you understand? If I can master this gift, I can save us. There is no power in the warp equal to the strength that has been given to me. It is like none of the disciplines we strive to master through learning. It is not practised. It is not studied. It is wild, glorious. It is the blood of Sanguinius unbound. It is the power of a…’ His words faltered and he looked at the blood-splattered floor. ‘I am so close to fulfilling the destiny that the Angel was robbed of, but if I cannot harness this… If I cannot control this power, if it keeps growing in fury and I find no leash…’ He shook his head and his voice was full of pain. ‘Then it would be better that I died as Calistarius under those rocks. Rather than save us, I will be the final death knell for the sons of the Angel.’

  Mephiston fell silent and after a while Rhacelus spoke up. He saw the surprise in Antros’ face and his usual, sardonic tone was absent. ‘For decades I have watched over the Chief Librarian in this hidden chamber. Witnessing his agony as he pushes himself again and again to the edge of destruction, attempting to divine the key to this gift.’ He rose from his chair and crossed the room, covering the floor with a new explosion of bloody sigils. ‘But we have failed, every time.’

  As Rhacelus reached the wall of the sphere, a brass plinth, as high as his waist, materialised from the dazzling whiteness. On top of the elegant, beautifully filigreed plinth was a book: a thick, leather-bound ledger, locked shut with a metal clasp. Its cover bore no title, but it was embossed with a winged blood drop, picked out in gold leaf. Next to the book was a quill and inkstand.

  ‘I record everything,’ said Rhacelus. ‘Every word and deed that drives the Chief Librarian to the brink and at the moment I feel him straining at the bonds of sanity…’ He nodded to the bloody syringe lying on the floor. ‘I bring him back.’

  ‘Then you do have control,’ said Antros, looking at the empty syringe.

  Mephiston shook his head. ‘Each time it is harder to hear Gaius’ call.’ He leant forwards in his chair, his eyes shifting colour to match the sapphire gleam in Rhacelus’ eyes. ‘If I gave vent to all the power I have within me, there is nothing that could bring me back. So I chain myself like a dog. Always, holding myself back.’ He began pacing around the chamber. ‘But this power comes from the Angel! To deny it is impossible. And wrong. I must find a way to unleash his full might. I have held it at bay so long that it is starting to devour me from within.’

  He stopped and faced Antros, his eyes burning, his mask of serenity forgotten. ‘Why would the Angel show me so great a destiny but deny me the means to embrace it? What is this trial he has set me? Ultimate power, within my grasp.’ He clawed at the air, causing it to ripple and boil. ‘And I cannot use it.’

  He stopped pacing and stared into the middle distance, his eyes full of hope. ‘But now I see a chance. I have heard the same summons that haunts Zin. Someone is calling me to Divinus Prime. Something is waiting for me there. Something that will give me the answer. Something Zin thinks I am blind to. But until now I could not give it a name.’

  Mephiston drew Vitarus and dragged the tip of its blade across the floor, causing a new explosion of crimson ciphers.

  Antros leant forwards as a shape started to form from the bloody symbols. He noticed that Rhacelus was watching just as eagerly and realised that whatever Mephiston was about to reveal was news to his equerry.

  ‘Today, Lexicanium, you found the name that has eluded me.’ He stared at Antros. ‘All these years I have searched afar for something that was so close. And now you walk into my own chambers with the name of my salvation on your lips.’

  Antros shook his head, mystified. ‘I have found no more information about the Children of the Vow.’

  Rhacelus stared at the image emerging beneath Mephiston’s sword. As he recognised the shape, his face went slack.

  The blood had drawn a picture of an awkward-looking sword hilt. Antros shook his head, mystified by Rhacelus’ awed expression. The thing looked not only ugly but also useless. The handle was an odd, triangular shape that would be almost impossible to hold. It was like a child’s idea of a sword handle.

  ‘The Blade Petrific,’ muttered Rhacelus, dropping to his knees in the blood and reaching out so his hand hovered just a few inches above the image.

  Mephiston nodded, his hand trembling slightly on Vitarus’ hilt. ‘It is there, Rhacelus. I hoped against hope when Antros drew my attention to Zin’s use of the word “vow” but I was not sure until he walked in here with that name rattling around his skull, unprompted by me. The Blade Petrific is on Divinus Prime, Gaius. Those halfwit priests have no inkling of what they are fighting over. They have been praying to it, in secret, since before the dawn of the Imperium, in complete ignorance of its true importance. They think it is a holy relic and nothing more. It is because of the Blade Petrific that Zin is so desperate to retrieve this world in particular. The Children of the Vow have built their whole faith around the blade. They wish to keep it secret and hidden above all else.’

  ‘A sword?’ asked Antros, recognising the shape of the hilt from the illuminated letters Scholiast Ghor had shown him. ‘My lord, I do not understand. You’re helping Zin reach this damned world because of a sword? Surely there are weapons in our own vau
lts more worthy of you?’

  Mephiston lifted Vitarus off the floor and the image vanished, returning the blood to a formless spiral of numbers and lines.

  ‘The Blade Petrific is no sword,’ he said. ‘The shape is merely a coincidence. It is a machine – a device created in the Dark Age of Technology, a neural conduit. It predates even the forming of the Legions, Lexicanium. Who knows what the thing is really called, but it was born in a time of far greater understanding than ours.’ Mephiston paced back and forth, disrupting the blood map that covered the floor. ‘It is a way to control and harness even the greatest phyrric waves,’ he explained, ‘a psychic lens worthy of a god.’

  Rhacelus looked dazed by the implications. ‘You could fully unleash the Gift. You could let your mind soar.’

  Antros started to understand how significant this piece of archeotech was. He thought back to the scene he had witnessed on Thermia and considered what could have been if Mephiston’s wrath had continued to grow, unabated: a psychic storm, primarch-like in its magnificence. As he considered this, a shocking image flashed through Antros’ mind. He saw the Chief Librarian bathed in blood as thousands of Ecclesiarchy priests lay around him in mounds, butchered and bleeding. But it was not the corpses that shocked him; it was the things that were moving through them – protean, mercurial creatures, forming and reforming as they gambolled and slid through the gore. They were lunatic things from the darkest recesses of a nightmare – warp-fiends, giggling and shrieking as they devoured the souls of the dead.

  Antros sat back down heavily in his chair and Mephiston halted to stare at him.

  Antros dared not meet the Chief Librarian’s eye. The vision had filled him with an unspeakable doubt, a thought that no servant of the Librarius should ever entertain. What if the power Mephiston sought to harness did not come from Sanguinius? What if it came from another, darker source? He thought of the black flames he had seen rippling across Mephiston’s arm.

  Mephiston remained silent, staring at Antros as the rain of blood continued pattering against his armour.

  ‘My lord,’ asked Antros. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  It took a while for Mephiston to answer and when he did his voice sounded strained, as though he were struggling to maintain his usual, calm demeanour. ‘Because I feel you in my mind, Lexicanium. I do not understand why, but I sense that you know things about me that I do not even know myself. One way or another, my trials are nearing their end. Either I control this power or it will destroy me. I am so close to losing my mind. My sanity is besieged by shadows. What happened on Thermia shocked me, Lexicanium.’ His voice faltered. ‘You know what was in my mind when I turned on you.’

  Antros felt a wave of nausea as he realised that the Chief Librarian had been about to kill him.

  Mephiston took a deep breath and looked at his left hand. It was trembling slightly, like the hand of a drunk. He did not look at Antros as he said, ‘Either you have come to save me, Lexicanium, or to save everyone else from me. And on Divinus Prime I will find out which.’

  Chapter Nine

  Kobella, Divinus Prime

  Captain Hesbon grinned as a tide of hands held him aloft. As he rose over the heads of the crowd, he felt as though their cheers were carrying him. The victory songs were almost loud enough to drown out the screams of the wounded. Around him, cowed and broken, kneeled the great bastion of Kobella. The final obstacle between the Enlightened and Volgatis had been conquered, its ancient gates torn down and its guns silenced. His dragoons had fought for twelve days, sustaining their worst losses since the start of the crusade, but the sight of those broken gates made it all worthwhile. Beyond them, outside the city, the Great East Road was lined with thousands of soldiers, its ancient flagstones hidden by a river of golden cuirasses and smiling, exhausted faces. As one, the Enlightened roared their refrain: For the Emperor!

  Those that could get near enough snatched at Hesbon’s robes, hoping to catch a piece of divinity in their captain’s threadbare cloth. After four decades of devotion, Hesbon had finally caught the attention of his god. No, he thought, trying to crush his pride, they had all caught the attention of the God-Emperor. ‘I may have given the order,’ he cried, trying to show some humility, ‘but it was your courage that smashed the gates!’ However hard he tried though, he could not suppress his proud grin. As the victorious army passed Hesbon over their heads, crying out his name, he started to laugh.

  The Enlightened poured into Kobella; they trampled over the corpses of its defenders. Their former brothers lay in smouldering heaps, torn apart by the guns of the dragoons. The flails and chainswords of the Frateris Militia were scattered across the ground, lying next to the corpses of their previous owners. With the battle over, and the threat gone, the dead militiamen made a pathetic sight. Hesbon felt a flash of pity, but he quickly crushed it. The militia had been offered the same truths as the rest of Divinus Prime and they had refused to see the Emperor’s light. It was a tragic end but he hoped that in death they might have seen the truth of their heresy and found forgiveness.

  As the dragoons filed into the great square, Hesbon bellowed orders, sending men clambering over the shattered statues and temples to take up positions in the rubble, training their guns on the avenues that led deeper into Kobella’s heart. The gates may have fallen but there was still hard, bloody work ahead of them. Hesbon lay back on his bed of hands and savoured the moment. The sky was draped with low, fast-moving clouds and Hesbon, to his shame, found this a relief. Unlike the dead militiamen, he never doubted the sanctity of the Miracle, the incredible transformation of the heavens, but he had also never got used to looking at it.

  As they crossed the square Hesbon heard cruel laughter mingled with the cheers and battle-cries. A few moments later, he saw the source. One of the heretics was still alive, trapped at the edge of the square as Hesbon’s dragoons surrounded her. She was cowering in the wreckage of a gun emplacement. It had toppled from the walls during the battle and now lay like a slain beast in the centre of the mob. There was a crater full of burned-out tanks behind the emplacement and the heretic had clearly been taking shelter in the jagged shards of metal. She was screaming and howling in fear as the Enlightened hurled lit brands at her, and some of the surrounded ruins were already catching. It would not be long before she was engulfed in flames.

  Hesbon’s grin faded as he realised that the heretic was only a girl, fifteen years old at most and completely unarmed.

  ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘We’re not animals!’

  The noise of the crowd drowned him out, so he climbed to his feet and stood, swaying precariously on the heads and hands of those carrying him.

  ‘Stop!’ he roared.

  A wave of surprised silenced passed through the crowd and the victorious soldiers turned to face Hesbon.

  His nerve almost failed as he saw the suspicion and anger in the faces of his men. They were like hounds, hauled back from the kill. His doubt was fleeting. He considered what the Unbegotten Prince would do in the face of such barbarism. With a rush of renewed outrage, he cried out again. ‘Brothers! This is not worthy of us. It is not worthy of the Emperor. Do not lower yourselves to the level of these misguided souls. They are stumbling in the shadows of misbelief, but we are not. We are Enlightened. Think of all that we have been taught.’

  ‘These people are damned!’ roared a nearby dragoon. He pointed his lasrifle at the sky. ‘They denied the Miracle!’

  ‘They denied the prince!’ yelled another.

  ‘Would you let her rejoin her brothers?’ cried another. ‘And give her another go at killing us?’

  The crowd roared in agreement, hammering guns against breastplates and hurling rubble at the girl.

  Captain Hesbon cried out another order to stop but it was impossible to be heard over the din of the mob. Anger filled his mind. ‘Are we no better than the fools we’ve slain?’ he cried, but they did no
t hear. The crowd were still holding him aloft, but the grips were harder now, more aggressive.

  He looked around the crowd and saw that some of his men had fallen back, their faces full of shame, but others had started to push towards him through the press of bodies, outraged, savage curses on their lips and guns raised. They were still full of bloodlust after a battle that had been hard won. Captain Hesbon struggled to free himself but, as the crowd grew more frenzied, the hands gripping him locked even tighter, presenting him to the approaching soldiers like an offering.

  ‘Damn you!’ he yelled, trying to draw his sword, but finding that he could not. ‘I will have you shot for this!’

  Light flooded the square.

  The blaze was so bright that it momentarily blinded anyone facing the shattered city gates. Hesbon thought at first that the clouds must have rolled back to let in some sunlight, but as he looked back he saw the truth.

  The crowd fell quiet as a dazzling, spectral entourage rode through the gates. It was a divine host, sculpted from sunlight: patrician lions, sagacious dragons and hundreds of soaring eagles. All there and yet not there. None of them cast shadows and the landscape beyond was visible through their incandescent flesh. Above the host were dozens of haloed saints, their wings spread and their swords raised to the heavens. Yet, as magnificent as these creatures were, every eye in the courtyard was fixed on the figure riding before them. The Unbegotten Prince was on a huge, winding serpent – a truly monstrous creature, unlike anything Hesbon had seen before. It was fifty feet long, sported vast, glittering wings and had the head of an enormous eagle. But Hesbon’s eyes skipped over the winged snake and fixed on its rider. The Unbegotten Prince was dressed in gleaming white-and-gold battleplate. The layered ceramite was filigreed and engraved with such intricate designs that it glittered as he raised his sword to the clouds. His helmet was at his belt and his waist-length black hair was free to tumble across his power armour, in sharp contrast to his gleaming white cuirass. The prince’s face was lit from beneath by cold blue light, shining from a fist-sized sapphire embedded in the centre of his chest armour. He was a holy vision, shimmering in the heat haze – a star, fallen from the heavens and given human form. The Emperor’s prophet burned bright, aflame with divine wisdom.