by Darius Hinks
As Antros studied them, he noticed something that troubled him. For as long as he could remember, he had heard the galaxy whispering to him, filling his mind with half-heard prayers and visions. The elders of his tribe had feared his second sight and, had his life taken a different turn, he would have been executed as a warlock or sequestered onto one of Terra’s mysterious Black Ships for a fate unknown. As a successful Blood Angels aspirant, however, he had found his way into Epistolary Rhacelus’ care and begun the slow, still incomplete task of harnessing his mind. But now the voices had been silenced. The idea pained him, as if he had just lost a part of his body.
‘The Dolorous Towers,’ whispered somebody.
Antros thought that perhaps his powers had returned, then he looked down and saw that he was no longer alone. Kneeling beside him, his white face paint streaked with tears, was Confessor Zin. It was he who had given a name to these soaring ossuaries and he kept repeating the words, rocking with his hands clasped together in prayer. He was quite oblivious to anything else.
Standing a few feet away was Rhacelus, his head bowed and thrown into shadow. He was tracing runes into the dust with his force sword and talking to himself in hushed, urgent tones.
Further down the road was Mephiston. He was crouched in the shadows, his hand pressed onto the ground, embers drifting up from between his fingers. He stood, wiped some blood from his palm and strode off away from them down the road, hair trailing behind him like a vivid, white pennant. Captain Vatrenus and his two squads of Tactical Marines marched behind him, scanning the roadside as they went, peering at Divinus Prime through the sights of their bolters. Squad Seriphus took one side of the road and Squad Hestias the other. In their crimson armour they looked like blood, pouring towards the horizon. Antros noticed that there was no sign of Battle-Brother Mandacus, and a few others had vanished too. Clearly not everyone had survived the journey. Two squads had set out, along with the three Librarians, Captain Vatrenus and an Apothecary, but now Sergeant Hestias was only accompanied by two of his men and Sergeant Seriphus only led three. That left twelve Blood Angels in total. Enough to face anything the planet could throw at them, decided Antros.
‘Lexicanium,’ said a voice from behind him and he turned to face Zin. ‘Could you help me up?’ asked the priest, wiping the tears from his eyes.
Antros nodded vaguely, still disorientated by the psychic silence that had enveloped him. He stepped to Confessor Zin’s side and hauled him to his feet. Zin looked at him with wild, glistening eyes. ‘Do you understand?’ he asked, grasping at Antros’ armour. ‘Do you know what you’re seeing?’
Antros shrugged. ‘I have seen ossuaries before, but never on this scale. In the catacombs beneath the monasteries I have seen monks preserve their dead in great caskets of bones, but nothing like this.’
Zin shook his head. ‘Brother-Librarian, the Dolorous Towers are not simple tombs. They were not built by the hand of man.’ Zin reeled away from Antros, staggering across the road and looking up at the white towers. His words took on an impassioned, fiery tone that he had obviously honed over decades of preaching.
Rhacelus looked up from his work to watch the performance.
‘When the Emperor first came to this world,’ said Zin, ‘it had another name. A name too dreadful for me to utter, but let it be simply said that it was a benighted pit – a well of profanity and false worship. The souls of this world were sick with corruption. They turned on the Emperor and His missionaries, assaulting them with hexes and vile oaths, calling out the things that lurk in the space between spaces. Even the God-Emperor could not sanctify entire nations of unbelievers, so He ordered His servant, a moon wolf by the name of Lupercal, to descend from the heavens and watch over the daemon-worshippers while the God-Emperor forged a weapon so powerful it could leech their dark arts from their hearts and leave them powerless. As Lupercal harried the treacherous occultists, the God-Emperor delved beneath the ground and began to devour the molten core of their world. For a hundred days He feasted on the inferno, His flesh sloughing from His bones as He ate until He was no more than an ember of divine power, flickering in the dark places that mortal sight can never hope to comprehend. On the hundredth day, He emerged, and vomited a sword forged from the planet’s heart. As He rose, reborn from the flames, the God–Emperor raised the blade and commanded the storm-wracked skies.’
Zin levelled a trembling finger at the nearest of the bone towers. ‘And the planet answered! From the bowels of this world rose a great symbol of his power – an endless multitude of mountain-sized blades, made from the bones of every non-believer who had ever died here.’ Zin staggered, drunk on his own rapture. ‘The holy blades soared into the heavens, leeching the sorcery from witch and warlock alike, until the heretics squirmed beneath the towers’ righteous judgement. Some called them Dolorous Towers and others called them the Penitent Trees, but all saw the God-Emperor’s wrath made manifest. Then, these glorious monuments unleashed the magic they had captured from the heretics and hurled it into the blade the Emperor had forged beneath the world’s core.’
Zin paused, gasping for breath.
‘The people of this world saw truth for the first time in centuries,’ he continued. ‘And as the glamour fell from their eyes, the heretics fell to their knees. Before the Penitent Trees they swore a terrible, binding oath that they called simply the Vow. Then the God-Emperor saw a wonderful truth, that His blade had created a people more devout than any other of His subjects, so He gave their world a new, more appropriate name – Divinus Prime.’
‘What was the oath?’ asked Antros dragging his gaze from the towering obelisks to the wild-eyed priest.
The fervour vanished from Zin’s eyes and he staggered to a halt, caught off guard by the question. His expression changed in an instant, from fiery zeal to something resembling guilt. The change was so dramatic that Antros almost laughed in surprise. He guessed that the Vow was connected in some way to the thing Zin was desperate to avoid mentioning – the Blade Petrific.
When Zin spoke again, his voice was muted and hesitant. ‘They swore to protect this world until–’
‘Until what?’ asked Mephiston. No one had heard the Chief Librarian’s return and Zin flinched in surprise.
Rhacelus rose to his feet, leaving his runes and saluting the Chief Librarian.
‘Until the Day of Wrath,’ said Zin, after taking a deep breath and raising his chin. ‘When both heretic and believer shall receive a just reward.’
Mephiston seemed about to press him for more, but then he nodded and waved down the road to where Captain Vatrenus and the two squads of Tactical Marines were waiting, gathered in orderly ranks, their guns held across their chests. ‘There are people ahead of us on this road,’ said Mephiston. ‘I can hear them praying. They are no more than an hour’s march away, but their prayers are growing weaker. We do not have long to reach them.’ He looked at Rhacelus. ‘Finish your work, Gaius. Seal the rift and follow as quickly as you can.’ Then he took Zin by the shoulder. ‘Walk with me, confessor. Tell me what you know of the geography of this world.’
As the Chief Librarian marched away, Zin staggered and lurched after him, cringing like an obese child being reprimanded by its parent.
‘This place has a colourful past, then,’ said Antros, giving Rhacelus a sideways glance after watching the pair head off down the road. ‘Strange that these magically summoned towers so resemble all the ossuaries seen on other worlds – all of them known to be the simple burial practice of the indigenous population.’
‘It is easy to dismiss such picturesque legends, neophyte,’ said Rhacelus, ‘but faith in the Emperor is rarely worth mocking, whatever form it takes.’
‘Faith does not have to make fools of us,’ replied Antros.
‘Oh, but myths can be so much more enlightening than the dreary truth.’ Rhacelus glanced at the petrified spires. ‘Holy blades, summoned into being by th
e God-Emperor Himself. Such ideas have kept this world pure while so many around it have fallen.’
Antros shook his head. ‘Pure? We have yet to see what the priests’ ideas have done to this world. Perhaps we should wait a little while before we praise them for their devotion. From what the Chief Librarian described, they are as confused and violent as the rest of the sector.’
Rhacelus studied Antros through the visor of his helmet. ‘Would you rather Zin looked to other gods?’
‘Of course not.’ Antros was irritated to be so misunderstood. ‘The God-Emperor’s light is all we have. But surely you and I are seekers of truth? We must draw a distinction between pure faith and obscure superstition. What use is the God-Emperor’s light if we are not clear-sighted enough to see it? Why else do we spend our hours recording and studying?’ He looked at the towers. ‘These are tombs. The dead of this world have been left to rest in the open air, rather than buried beneath the sod. And the atmosphere of Divinus Prime is such that the bones are calcified and preserved. These are quite mundane facts, rather than anything more elevated.’
Rhacelus shrugged. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. It is right that you should place such value in our records and archives, neophyte, but do not let that shield you from the truth. The entire store of knowledge in our Librarium amounts to a guttering candle, illuminating one corner of a vast, unknowable canvas.’
Antros looked at the uninspiring shape of Zin, stumbling after Mephiston, and decided that some candles illuminated more than others. He tried to reach out with his mind to see what the priest had been holding back, but the odd silence that had filled his thoughts seemed to have affected his other abilities. He could see no glimpse of Zin’s thoughts.
‘My lord,’ he said, glancing at Rhacelus. ‘Your vision – your second sight – is it…?’
Rhacelus nodded and looked up at the clouds. ‘We are now behind whatever barriers have hidden Divinus Prime. We are blind.’
Rhacelus stepped back to the runes he had carved into the road, resting the tip of his sword against the circle surrounding the symbols. Both circle and runes erupted into blue flames that licked and crackled around the design. The Librarian kept his head lowered as the runes lifted from the ground like embers, shimmering and rotating, following the complex series of lines and intersections that he had described in the dust.
There was an explosion of noise as the fire summoned a peculiar audience – dozens of crows landed on the chalk road, their black forms in stark contrast to the white stone as they hopped and fluttered around the edge of the shimmering circle. There were dozens of the birds and their raucous, barked laughter rang out strangely through the barren fields. The landscape was otherwise devoid of life, and it was clear that the birds had been drawn by the power of the Librarian’s incantation. Rhacelus paid the birds no heed and with a single, muttered syllable he completed the ritual. A blinding column of light shone up from the circle, illuminating his regal features as it rose past him and pointed up into the heavens.
Antros gave a nod of respect as the column of fire reached even higher than the ossuaries. It spread across the dun belly of the clouds, gilding the sky like lightning hurled back at the firmament. He did not fully understand this, but he knew Rhacelus was sealing the portal Mephiston had used to bring them here. Whatever the exact nature of the conjuration, it made a glorious sight as it danced fitfully across the clouds, writing blazing words of power across the sky.
Antros gasped as the lights revealed something unexpected. Since they had arrived on Divinus Prime, the sky had been hidden behind low, gloomy clouds but as the blue flames flickered overhead, they revealed a peculiar sight. In the few gaps of clear sky that were revealed, there should have been a deepening dusk, littered with a few early evening stars, but instead, the clouds parted to reveal a mirror image of the landscape below. Each of the delicate funereal spires was clearly reflected in the firmament, pointing back down towards the ground.
‘Does your science explain that?’ asked Rhacelus, without looking at Antros.
Antros said nothing, and Rhacelus snatched his sword from the circle and backed away from the column of light. The flames died immediately, plunging them back into the dusky half-light. All that remained was a faint glow around the runes he had inscribed in the ground. Rhacelus dropped to one knee and traced the shapes with his finger. ‘This world has been masked for a reason.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘To hide something.’
‘We should catch up with the others,’ he said, standing and striding past Antros.
As they hurried from the site of the ritual, they were accompanied by the hoarse cackling of the crows, launching themselves back into the twilight.
After an hour’s brisk march, they reached a narrow valley that crossed the landscape for as far as they could see, a great scar in the plains, hundreds of feet deep. The road dropped away beneath them, plunging down a steep incline before slicing across the valley floor towards a walled city that looked back at them from the top of the opposite slope, watching over the valley like an ancient sentinel. Even from such a distance, they could see that it was a city of bones – a tomb city, built of the same, intricately woven fossils as the towers. It was a dwarf beside the Penitent Trees that surrounded it, but the rotunda at its centre was clearly a colossal structure. Dusk was quickly becoming night and its ivory dome gleamed against the indigo sky like a fallen moon.
Confessor Zin whispered a prayer and made the sign of the aquila as he saw trails of smoke drifting up from behind the sheer, white walls.
‘Do you recognise the place?’ asked Mephiston, turning to Zin.
The priest nodded, looking dazed. ‘Tarn Abbey.’ He waved his crozius at the tiny clusters of light that peppered the gloomy valley below. ‘The monasteries that cover these plains all belong to the diocese of Cardinal Vectis.’ He looked back at the fortified city opposite. ‘His abbey is built around Lake Tenos.’ Zin’s face paint was still streaked and smeared from his tears and, to Antros at least, he looked like a savage – a berserker, ready to charge screaming down into the darkened valley. ‘It’s one of the holiest sites on Divinus Prime. Lake Tenos marks the spot at which the God-Emperor emerged from the Underworld.’ He gave Mephiston a wary glance then looked back at the flames.
Antros was about to ask a question when he noticed that Mephiston was not looking at the city, but at the road that crossed the valley. The white stone made it easy to follow its route through the gloomy scrubland, but it took Antros a few more seconds to notice that it was lined with winged shapes – birds of some kind. He thought at first they might be more crows, then he dismissed the idea, realising how huge the birds would have to be. He blinked a few times and his visor zoomed in on one of the shapes.
‘By the Throne,’ he muttered as he saw the gruesome truth. The road was lined with crucifixions. The poor souls had been caged in wooden frames that resembled eagles, and their emaciated bodies were naked and scorched – blackened by days of exposure to the fierce sun.
The other Librarians did not reply and he realised that they had already seen what he had seen, as had Captain Vatrenus and the other Blood Angels.
‘What is it?’ demanded Zin, looking around the group, painfully aware that he was missing something dreadful.
Mephiston shook his head. ‘It is as I warned you, Confessor Zin. Divinus Prime is at war with itself.’
‘No. I will not believe it,’ said Zin, but his denial lacked the vehemence he had shown on Baal, and, as they began their descent, he prayed quietly under his breath, glancing warily at the shadow-haunted slopes.
By the time they reached the first of the corpses, the last traces of dusk had faded and darkness had fallen. The Adeptus Astartes had no need of light to see their way, but they knew their mortal companions did, so the Tactical Marines triggered the lumens fixed to their bolters, revealing the full horror of the scene. Their light picked out the corpses, giving
them the appearance of tormented, grimacing actors, caught in the footlights as they ended their sad tragedy before a backdrop of pure pitch.
Zin howled as he saw the first crucifixion. The dead priest, slumped pitifully inside the bird-shaped cage, was clearly a member of his own order. His robes had been stained dark brown with dried blood, but a few patches of white revealed their original colour, and his frontal hair had been shaved away in just the same shape as Zin’s. He also wore the same medallion as Zin – a capital I with an iron halo at its centre, surrounding a skull device.
‘Oh, my beloved brother,’ groaned Zin. ‘Rejoiceth in your fate. Your light will burn as one with the God-Emperor. You hadst faith and you will hath succour.’
Mephiston nodded to Captain Vatrenus and he led some of his men ahead, scouring the gruesome cages for signs of movement.
The group waited in respectful silence until Zin had finished his prayer. He turned and looked up at Mephiston. ‘Astra Angelus,’ he said, his voice weak, ‘such an atrocity cannot go unpunished.’ He looked at the Tactical Marines’ flickering lights as they moved on down the road, revealing countless more crucifixions. ‘The dogs behind this must face the Emperor’s judgement.’
Antros expected the Chief Librarian to balk at such a demanding tone, but Mephiston nodded in reply. Then he lifted Vitarus and showed Confessor Zin the blade. It was pulsing with a hungry, vermillion light.
They continued their march down the road in grim silence, attempting to ignore the mouldering colonnade that flanked them. Antros mouthed a prayer for each one he passed – not a prayer for their easy passing, but a promise that they would be avenged.
They were halfway across the valley when they saw that Captain Vatrenus and some of his men were waiting for them, huddled over something in the middle of the road. As they approached, Antros saw that it was one of the crucified priests. He was still alive and Vatrenus’ men had cut him down from the eagle cage. He was wailing and trying to lash out at the Space Marines, but his feeble limbs were useless against their Adeptus Astartes bulk.