Blood Rite - Rachel Harrison

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘There was no extraction,’ Donato says, reaching out to the longsword that could have done nothing but break. ‘No retreat. Of that I was certain.’

  ‘Even if there had been, would you have accepted that as a choice?’

  Donato is quiet for a moment as he puts his fingertips to the broken blade. It cuts him easily, and he pulls his hand away again.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I do not think that I would have.’

  ‘Because you believed that you could keep Sanyctus from death. From the Flaw and the chalice and becoming Zalak’s sacrifice, by standing together. You believed that you would not fail a second time.’

  Donato turns his hand and watches the blood paint a thin line down his fingers. By the time it reaches his palm, the cut has already started to clot and knit back together.

  ‘I believed that I had learned from my failure,’ he says. ‘That I would be able to save my brother, and the shrine into the bargain. I believed that I could make right everything that had been broken or changed. That I would stand once again in the Angel’s Crown and look upon the chalice as I had all of those years before.’

  The blood settles into the creases of Donato’s palm like molten steel running into a mould.

  ‘But I was wrong,’ he says.

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  Donato has set foot in the Angel’s Crown once before. He remembers how it looked on that day, all of those years ago. A white marble chamber far above the clouds, lit by pale sunlight streaming through the Angel’s eyes. He remembers how it had been dappled with colour from the glassaic. How he had walked through shards of coloured light to approach the stasis field in which the chalice was held. Donato remembers priests murmuring blessings constantly around him as he stood before the chalice. All that he had been able to think about was how perfect a thing it was. He had seen no marks made from casting. No tarnishing or flaking of the gold.

  No flaws.

  Not like today. The Crown is dark and violent. It is not light that streams through the Angel’s eyes, but smoke that billows out of them as if it burns from the inside. The floor is dappled with coloured light, but this time it is violet and crimson and makes the shapes of screaming faces where it hits the marble. In the centre of the Crown, the dead have been dragged into a pile. Their arms are all spread like wings and their blood has been painted to make a jagged, uneven star on the floor. Cultists kneel around the sacrifice circle, clad in strips of linen. Sixteen of them. They put their hands flat down in the blood and then press it to their chests and faces and throats in jagged, marionette movements. The stasis field is broken, but the chalice still floats in space at the heart of the darkness, at the heart of the rite. It is turning black as Donato looks at it.

  ‘It hurts.’ Sanyctus’ voice over the vox is a slur. ‘The chalice hurts.’

  Donato struggles to tear his eyes away from that perfectly made vessel. Ruined now. Around it stand eight figures clad in crimson and steel, whose armour is decorated with horns and jagged edges and scraps of tanned skin. They are the ones to murmur now, to utter profane blessings as the darkness twists to a point above their heads.

  Donato registers all of this in seconds, despite the pressure of the rite and the roar of the whispers, so loud now. His mind turns, assessing the threat even as his spirit sets fire at the sight of what they have done.

  ‘Traitors!’ Donato bellows. The word tears its way free from his throat. His voice has a near-animal edge. Donato feels as though his vision has narrowed to a singular, specific point as one of those figures clad in crimson and steel turns. One who wields a staff of bones, and whose skin is painted with golden cuneiform.

  The figure drops into a neat, mocking half-bow and smiles with needle teeth.

  ‘Ah, brother-captain,’ Tur Zalak says, in his deliberate, sonorous voice. ‘It is good to see you.’

  ‘Do not speak that word,’ Donato snarls. ‘You have no right to speak of brothers.’

  Zalak steps down from the dais. A pressure wave precedes him that breaks against Donato’s armour like an ocean tide. Donato’s limbs tremor. He wants to charge Zalak more than anything.

  He wants to destroy him. To shatter his bones and break open his skull.

  To spill his blood.

  Blood.

  Donato shakes his head, hard.

  ‘The chalice,’ he voxes to his squad. ‘It is the locus of power. We must destroy it.’ It hurts to say it, to suggest the destruction of such a thing. But better that, than allow it to become something twisted. ‘We stand together, for that is how we are strongest. We go forward, and we finish it. Kill the traitors. Destroy the chalice. End the rite.’

  ‘Together!’

  The answer comes from every one of his brothers. It echoes in Donato’s ears.

  ‘I promised you death,’ Donato says, to Zalak. ‘I have come to deliver it.’

  Zalak tilts his head. His dark eyes flicker with amusement as his traitor brethren step down off the dais too. They grow wings which flicker and distort and change. The darkness grows, and the pressure with it. Donato feels blood run from his nose. He barely tastes it. His blood is already singing.

  Zalak laughs, and it is twinned and echoing. ‘Death?’ he asks. ‘No. Not death.’

  Zalak raises his other hand, the one holding the jagged dagger that cut Donato so badly on Perdicia. That scar aches again now, sending fire along his nerves. Zalak holds the dagger in a loose grip, pointing it towards Sanyctus. Donato is dimly aware of the sound Sanyctus makes in response. Of the snap of his lightning claws as they go live.

  ‘What you have delivered is the last sacrifice,’ Zalak says. ‘The greatest sacrifice.’

  Donato’s vision is so tunnelled that all he sees is Zalak’s hateful, traitor’s grin.

  ‘A perfect, violent thing,’ Zalak says.

  And then he crashes that staff of bones on the marble floor, the murmur reaches a crescendo, and a jagged star of balefire rolls out from Zalak. It is crimson and violet and yet more black than the empty void. The balefire quests for spaces in the Archangels’ formation and tries to push them apart and build walls of flame between them. But Larracus Donato and his Archangels are made to endure. Made to withstand. They stay on their feet and they stay together, just as he ordered. As one, they push forwards through the fire, towards the chalice. Donato’s armour creaks and splits across the surface layers. His cloak is turned into tatters and his helm’s eye-lenses splinter. Donato views the world through fractured sight as Zalak and his daemon-possessed Word Bearers come to meet them.

  Donato raises his combi-melta and fires. One of the Word Bearers is torn asunder by the scorching beam of light. He sheds smoke as he crashes unceremoniously to the floor of the Crown. Beside him Victorno and Lurani raise their shields and block another of the traitors from reaching Sanyctus. Power fields scream and flare and then Phaello and Ebellius both fire their storm bolters on the traitor, shredding his wings. The Word Bearer’s shifting mask splits, becoming toothed jaws that open wide as he bellows in pain. Darrago remains with Sanyctus. At his side, as always. Donato thunders his power fist into another of the Word Bearers and breaks his tainted form open to the bone. Curved claws close around Donato’s vambrace in answer. The ceramite bends. Buckles. The bones in Donato’s forearm buckle too. Integrity alarms blare in his ears as he lands another blow with his power fist. This time, the Word Bearer is more than broken. He is obliterated.

  Zalak is upon them now. The balefire parts for him and coils in his wake. Donato fires on the Dark Apostle. The combi-melta beam is white against all of that darkness. It dazzles Donato’s flesh-and-blood eye, and his bionic adjusts to compensate. The melta fires true as it always has. Donato knows that he will not fail, not this time. He will kill Zalak now, just as he should have all of those years ago. He will make the Dark Apostle pay for Perdicia. For every death.

  For every sin.

  But then the balefire coils around Zalak in defence, swallowing up the melta-fi
re, drinking it like sand drinks rainwater. Donato doesn’t have time to fire again, because Zalak is not weighed down by the darkness. He is buoyed by it. Elevated. Almost too quick to catch.

  Almost.

  Donato raises one arm in time to turn aside a strike from Zalak’s jagged knife. He drives the weight of his combi-bolter into the Dark Apostle’s face, breaking bone and sending dark, sour-smelling blood into the air. Zalak tries to break Donato in return, but Donato catches the staff of bones in his power fist before the blow can land. The power fields snarl, and for a moment in time, the two of them face one another. The angel, and the monster.

  ‘You could have defeated me,’ Zalak says, through his broken teeth. ‘Had you just let go. Had you just given into the gifts of your blood.’

  ‘You know nothing of my blood, or my gifts,’ Donato says, as the staff of bones begins to splinter in his power fist’s grip. ‘And you are defeated. You just do not know it yet. Archangels!’ Donato roars.

  Phaello and Ebellius weather the cutting claws and bolter-fire of the possessed Word Bearers to move in perfect concert with one another. They fire their storm bolters on Zalak while Donato has him locked in place. The impacts blow craters in the Dark Apostle’s armour and the flesh beneath it, scattering his blood across the marble and across Donato’s own battleplate. Zalak’s guard fails and his staff drops away, breaking the deadlock. Donato does not give him an opportunity to recover. He crashes his power fist into the Dark Apostle’s chest. Once. Twice. Even warp-touched and elevated by darkness, it is too much for Zalak to withstand. He falls to his knees with his armour buckled and smoking, looking up at Donato as he bellows and raises his fist to strike again. To kill Zalak, as he should have on Perdicia.

  For all of the lost.

  For his failure.

  But then in the instant between heartbeats, when time itself seems frozen, Zalak smiles and speaks a string of hideous unwords in his heretic tongue.

  Donato is pushed backwards. He goes momentarily blind. Deaf. His mouth fills with blood and the animal part of him that he so carefully controls surfaces, furious. But he cannot move. Cannot act. The animal is caged, and so is he. Donato’s limbs lock and his fingers go numb. He drops his storm bolter and falls to his knees as his armour’s sensors chime and wail in distress. Donato looks down to see that his armour is broken open, and that he is too, along that old, aching scar. He cannot breathe. Cannot stand. He can do nothing but watch as daemons resolve from the balefire at Zalak’s command and roll across his Archangels like a hateful tide. As one of the possessed Word Bearers, a monstrosity of horns and teeth with one lidless eye, buries its bladed hand in Lurani’s chest. Donato hears Lurani gasp over the vox as his shield falls, and his hammer with it. Lurani’s last act is to take the traitor’s head in his hands and crush it, even as his hearts fail. With Lurani’s death, their line is broken. Ebellius is pulled to his knees by red-skinned daemons wreathed in balefire. Maeklus roars and wades into the fire to save him. Victorno’s shield is cracked like glass. Phaello is disarmed and sent reeling. Darrago’s armour is splintered. He has to use the standard to keep himself upright. Sanyctus cuts and cuts at daemons and at the Word Bearers alike but the noose is closing around him.

  No, Donato tries to say, but he can no more speak than he can move.

  Zalak manages to get back to his feet by leaning heavily on his staff of bones. Black blood scatters as he limps forwards. His chest rattles with every breath. Despite that, Zalak smiles.

  ‘Old wounds, brother-captain,’ he says, haltingly. He has that jagged knife in his hand. ‘They never quite heal, do they?’

  Donato tries to move. To act. To speak. But it is just like the ossuary and the dream he was given.

  ‘I know what it is that you dread,’ Zalak says. ‘You dread seeing your brothers torn apart. Seeing them die. Seeing them fail and change.’ Zalak’s smile broadens. ‘I could kill you now,’ he says. ‘But I rather think that death is a mercy that you do not deserve.’

  Donato’s fury is caged inside the prison of his body. He can do nothing but twitch and struggle to breathe as Zalak turns away to make for the dais. To make for Sanyctus.

  ‘Now, Larracus Donato,’ the Dark Apostle says. ‘You will see the true value of angels’ blood.’

  THREE

  ANGELS

  THE SANGUINE TEAR, NOW…

  Adiccio Sanyctus is badly burned. Arms. Hands. Throat and chest. His face, too, he thinks, from the way it feels. Those burns open anew when he shifts his weight and when he moves his manacled hands. That is where the burning is the most severe. As if from contact. The adamantium manacles are cold against the bubbled, ruined skin of his wrists. It looks like candlewax put to heat and left to run. Left to set itself again as it cools. It should be agony to be burned like that, but Sanyctus feels no pain at all. Not even when the wounds open again. He is just numb. Distant.

  Calm.

  Sanyctus takes in the cell that surrounds him. For that is where he finds himself standing. In a cell. It is dark and shadowed, lit only by the grey light coming through the narrow, horizontal slit in the door. The walls are plain, decorated not with marble or gold or paint, but with marks made by hands, or something like them. It smells like cold iron. He is unarmoured, instead wearing roughweave as an aspirant would. The manacles he wears are thick binders, made to hold back those who are strong. Who cannot hold themselves back. They are scored and scuffed just like the cell is.

  A memory comes back to Sanyctus then, just a splinter of one, of him offering out his hands, and allowing the manacles to be closed around his wrists. The others were there, too. The Archangels. His brothers. His captain.

  It had been Donato who closed the manacles.

  Sanyctus blinks. The old scar still tries to mimic his good eye, even after all this time. He is not sure that is the sort of thing that can be unlearned. It is instinctual. He uncurls his closed hands. One is empty, but in the other there is something he recognises. A small icon, wrought in gold. A chalice, with feathered wings. He has been holding onto it so tightly that it has made an impression in the skin like a bruise.

  Another splinter of memory hits him. A woman’s face, cut deeply and bleeding. The mortal’s head is shaved and marked with a faith-tattoo.

  Violence, she says. Such violence.

  Sanyctus waits to recognise her. But the woman’s name will not come, and neither will the rest of the memory. All he has are the words and the look of shock and awe on her face.

  That, and the instinctive knowledge that whoever she is, the woman in his memory is dead.

  Sanyctus curls his hands and it makes the chain link on the manacles click together, and the burns open up on the backs of his hands.

  He let them close the manacles. He wanted the chains. The cell.

  The quiet.

  So he sits in the quiet for what feels like hours as what happened returns to him slowly, like a dream remembered on waking. Luminata. The shrine of Sanguis Gloria. The lost. Arthemio. Ivaro. Alfeo, Vytali. Lurani. His brothers.

  And the mortal, Talina Orako.

  Sanyctus remembers the way she looked at him in the moments before life abandoned her. The words she spoke.

  But I didn’t give in, though it would have been easy to. So easy.

  I think perhaps I can be proud of that.

  And he wonders if he can feel the same.

  Sanyctus is drawn from his thoughts as the bolt holding his cell closed slides free and the door opens. The smell of incense smoke steals inside in the moments before his visitor steps over the threshold. It is one of his brothers. One Sanyctus knew to expect from the moment he saw the manacles and the markings on the inside of the cell door. His brother is clad in crimson armour that is sculpted to resemble raw muscle. It is intended to look as though it is laid bare. A truth. His pale face is unhelmed, framed by a fall of tangled dark hair. His eyes are darker. Reflective, like glass. He stops before Sanyctus and draws the weapon of his office, putting the head of
it to the stone with a heavy thud. The curved edge of the executioner’s axe catches what little light there is.

  ‘Do you know why I am here, Adiccio Sanyctus?’ asks Astorath the Grim.

  And Sanyctus realises that he does know why. It is a memory that should unsettle him, but doesn’t. Just like Astorath’s presence should, but also doesn’t.

  ‘Because I asked to speak with you, High Chaplain,’ Sanyctus says. ‘Because I wished to submit myself for judgement after the events of the battle for Sanguis Gloria.’

  Astorath nods. It is an economical action. He does not wear his shadow-black wings here, but he looks no less like a dark reflection of their father for it. One gauntleted hand rests easily on the pommel of that axe he bears.

  ‘Then speak, Adiccio Sanyctus,’ he says. ‘And I will judge.’

  THE SHRINE OF SANGUIS GLORIA, THEN…

  Sanyctus is dimly aware of the battle around him. Of his brothers, falling. Failing. Bleeding. Trying to protect him. Some part of him recognises the moment Lurani flatlines and the sight of Donato going to his knees. Recognises Darrago’s urgent voice.

  ‘Adiccio,’ he says. ‘Wait.’

  Sanyctus can hardly look away from the chalice. It is turning so black. Bruised and rotting. There is barely any gold left to see.

  Closer, it says.

  ‘Let me go, Than,’ he says. ‘I need to go.’

  ‘No,’ Darrago says. ‘Don’t be a fool. Remember the lesson.’

  Sanyctus shakes his head, and his vision smears with the movement. The only thing that stays sharp is the chalice. Darrago’s words make no sense. He does not remember. He cannot find the want to try either because of that voice. It is beautiful. Mellifluous. It makes Sanyctus think of the slow spill of molten gold. Of choir song. But the voice is in pain too. Such pain that it makes Sanyctus’ fangs ache. Makes his hearts ache. A tear paints its way from his good eye. He has been able to hear it since the teleport. With every step it has grown louder. With every kill, more insistent.