It begins on Baal, as it ever does. At the head of a throng of men and Space Marines a million souls strong, Arkio marches towards the gates of the fortress-monastery. At his shoulders are Astartes in armour all shades of crimson—not just Blood Angels, but warriors from the Flesh Tearers Chapter, the Blood Drinkers, the Angels Vermilion and more. There are men in the black of the Death Company, their greaves crossed with the red saltires that mark them as fallen to the rage, but they walk with him as tranquil as their battle-brothers at rest. His presence alone is enough to calm them.
The wind-scoured gates open before Arkio and the monastery presents itself to him and his crusaders. Every figure within, Marine and Apothecary, tech-priest and Chapter serf alike, all of them drop to one knee and bow their heads as they pass. There is none of the rough clamour and bellowed shouts that the people of Shenlong poured forth for him—here on Baal, only the wind is heard, and the silence of these faithful marks their devotion to him. None shall chance to speak in the presence of the Reborn Angel, such is their reverence.
Through the silent cloister and into the grand hall. He sees the faces of the greatest Blood Angels as they salute him, fist to chest as he strides past. Argastes. Corbulo. Lemartes. Moriar. Vermento. Even the honoured dead are here to greet him, Tycho standing shoulder to shoulder with Lestrallio, and for a moment, he spies Koris among them, his aspect a flicker, then shadows.
At the altar beneath the towering statues of Sanguinius and the Emperor stand Dante and Mephiston. There is a moment when both men meet his gaze and Arkio fears that he will be forced to draw the Spear upon them; but then both the high commander and the Lord of Death bow to him. Then, and only then, are the voices of his warriors raised, and they shake the pillars of heaven as they call his name.
But from the shadowed corners, something dark and foetid approaches.
“Lord inquisitor, what are we to make of this?” said Delos, his voice barely concealing an edge of fearful concern. “See, the light that falls from the Blessed.”
Stele’s face soured as he watched the play of yellow-white colours over Arkio’s golden form at the other end of the grand chamber. The hot glow of the Spear of Telesto crackled around him like summer lighting. “Yes, Chaplain, you were correct to summon me. This… This is a manifestation of the Reborn Angel’s will. He prays for guidance in our coming battles…” The lie tripped easily off his tongue.
Delos exchanged glances with his fellow priests. “But his face… It shifts and moves, Lord Stele. I have not seen the like before… And his cries. I would swear that Arkio is in pain—”
“No!” Stele snapped, “You cannot fathom the ways of the Holy Lance, priest. Arkio communes with the blood within him, no more. He must… He must be given solace to do this alone.”
“But we cannot—”
“You must leave,” the inquisitor thundered. “I will stand sentinel for the Blessed.” When Delos hesitated, he stabbed a finger at the chapel doors. “Out!” Stele’s voice became a roar. “By Sanguinius’ name, I command it.”
The moment the wooden doors rumbled shut, Stele broke into a run toward the altar. There was a stench in the air, and it was as familiar to the inquisitor as the sound of his own breathing; dead flesh, hot blood, cold iron.
Chaos.
CHAPTER NINE
The dream colours and darkens. It becomes a nightmare.
And now all transforms into ashes.
In the moment of his greatest triumph, as every Blood Angel living and dead pays fealty to Arkio’s name, the shadows gathering in the corners of his vision flood into sight. A wash of aged blood sweeps over everything, turning the men around him into rotting corpses, their bodies flayed under the tide, ceramite turning to paper, skin curdling over greying bones. The stone walls crack and crumble, ageing aeons in seconds. Baal itself cries out in agony at the pollution spilling across it. The dead are a tide about him, oceans of clawed skeletal fingers scoring into his golden armour. Dante and Mephiston clutch at him, screaming in pain, shrivelling eyes begging him for the reason that he has forsaken them.
Arkio’s mouth will not form the words, and he does not have an answer for them. All he knows is that this great decay is his fault.
The wave of ruin reaches his boots and climbs him like fast-growing fungus. The golden armour turns to tarnished brass, then dull rust, then crumbling dust. Arkio’s voice finds him in time for a soul-shattering scream.
The sound that left Arkio’s lips made Stele pause as he skidded to a halt at the foot of the altar. The cry hammered at the walls of the grand chamber, vibrating the stands of photon candles and the censers that dangled from chains high above. He threw a nervous glance to the doors—they remained closed. At least the Chaplain had taken his order to heart. It would not go well if Delos and his battle-brothers observed what was about to transpire. Stele grimaced as he stepped into the halo cast by the Spear. The touch of the weapon churned up complex, heady emotions inside the inquisitor, and he forced them to the back of his mind. He would need all his ability to concentrate on the here and now.
Arkio was trembling, his skin white and wet with perspiration. Shapes seemed to be moving beneath the surface of his elegant face, thin, worm-like cilia pushing at the curve of his cheekbones and his jaw. Stele swore a curse; the young fool had brought this on himself. Unwilling to simply leave the Holy Lance alone, Arkio had spent too much time in the radiance of the device, and now the architects of his change were in danger of spoiling. Dark lesions, hard and black like rare pearls, were appearing over his neck and forehead. Some of them had opened like eyes.
“Too soon,” Stele snapped. “It’s too soon. The mutation was stable, I made sure of it.”
He shrugged off his coat and placed his hands about the sides of Arkio’s head. Biting back a sudden urge to throw up, the inquisitor marshalled his strength and let his psychic senses extend through the skin contact. Gently, his fingers began to melt into the matter of Arkio’s face.
The worst of the horrors is left for the last.
Everywhere his battle-brothers have fallen, a new and monstrous shape takes form, rebuilding itself from the debris of bone and armour. Things come. Unhallowed creatures in sick parodies of Blood Angels nobility, their crimson armour stained with the blood of innocents, the white wings of the Chapter sigil now bones and blades, the red teardrop wet with gore. Horus and teeth sprout from them; their abhorrence outpaces even that of the traitorous Word Bearers. Everywhere, his twisted brethren paint eightfold crosses, throwing back their heads to call Chaos to their midst.
Air thickens about Arkio like quicksand. He reaches for the Holy Lance, the last beacon of purity, even as the skin sloughs off his bones. His fingers touch the warm, yielding metal…
Arkio’s arm jerked, a marionette pulled by a careless puppeteer, and his fingertips brushed the Holy Lance.
Hot air sizzled around the two men and Arkio was shoved backward.
The murky infections across his skin bubbled and popped. Out of sight beneath his armoured chest plate, more cancerous growths erupted across Arkio’s flawless body and spat yellow pus. Bony juts of distorted matter pressed at the cage of his skin. The flesh of the young Space Marine, so perfect and magnificent, was rotting inside.
“No!” snapped Stele. “Not yet. I will not permit it.” Moving through his flesh, the inquisitor’s fingers buried themselves in Arkio’s spine, probing and feeling for the ebony egg of corruption that had been planted there so many months earlier.
…and the Spear of Telesto rejects him.
Pain, great stabbing swords of agony more powerful than mortals could comprehend surge into Arkio. He recoils and his body shifts; the flash-burned hand knots and writhes. It become a nest of tentacles and claws. He touches his face and finds an orchard of spines and barbs there, black flapping tongues and runny flesh. The black tide is in him now, rewriting his soul. He sees it there, cutting the mark of Chaos Undivided into him.
And
there is a roaring beast within him, the hateful heart of the red thirst, that welcomes it. Arkio teeters and falls. He has become the Unblessed.
There. There it was, clasping the bones of Arkio’s spinal column like a nesting spider. Thin lines of liquid darkness issued out of the egg-form, thousands of feelers infiltrating every organ and element of the Blood Angel’s body. So delicate, so subtle were they that only by flaying him open or ripping up his mind on a psyker-rack would anyone discover the lurking poison inside Arkio. It was a black heart of raw, undistilled Chaos. The object was glassy and hard, a piece of some decayed thought-form created by the Malfallax. The Monarch of Spite had made it from himself, granting the seed to Stele on the day that this intricate plan had become a reality. There was not a part of Arkio that was not touched by the mutations the egg created. Its cilia had infiltrated all of him, warping the youth’s flesh; it had been this that granted him the gift of his wings, his change, his Emergence. Stele cooed to the egg, stroked it and calmed the malignant parasite. He had to be careful now, while the mutation progressed slowly and subtly, the taint in Arkio’s body would lay undetected—but the foolish whelp’s obsession with the Spear of Telesto had aroused the seed. Unless he could quiet it, all these carefully laid plans would unravel.
Before, here was where the vision ended, but now it went on.
Something comes. A man in crimson ceramite, untouched by the mutation and corruption about him. The tides of foulness retreat about his footfalls. Arkio’s traitor-self spits and loathes.
There is a blink of yellow light; suddenly the Holy Lance crosses the room and settles into the hands of the new arrival. Arkio, lisping through manifold mouths crowded with the buds of crooked new fangs, speaks his name.
“Raaaaaaffffffffennnn.”
His brother does not know him. Rafen turns the Spear of Telesto on Arkio and plunges it into his heart.
Betrayed, mutated, changed and discarded, Arkio dies screaming.
Arkio sagged and dropped to the stone floor of the grand chamber, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Deftly, Stele withdrew himself from the flesh of the Marine’s neck, the skin sealing over like the surface of a pond. A few small rivulets of blood clung to the inquisitor’s fingers and he wiped them away with a silk kerchief.
The figure in gold moaned. “Rafen… No…”
Stele grimaced at the mention of Arkio’s brother, watching the lesions on the Blessed’s face shrink back to nothing, the raw mouths of weeping sores retreating into the folds of his skin. Once again, Arkio was perfect, an alabaster ideal of the Pure One. His eyes fluttered open.
“Stele?” he asked. “My friend? What happened to me?”
The inquisitor displayed a mask of concern that hid his genuine annoyance. “Blessed, praise Sanguinius that you are well. I feared the worst…”
Arkio got to his feet, his wings furling behind him. “I saw… a terrible vision, inquisitor. A victory snatched away by the tide of Chaos.”
Stele’s face remained utterly impassive. “You must be mistaken, Blessed.”
He looked down at his hands, then to the humming form of the Spear. “The lance…” Arkio began, his voice catching, “it turned against me.”
“Impossible,” said Stele, his tone soothing. “Such a thing could never happen.” He approached the Spear on the altar. “Look here, Great One. The Holy Lance is yours alone. Touch it.”
Hesitantly, Arkio extended a hand to the weapon, fingers tracing the shape of a hooded figure on the haft of the lance. The Spear of Telesto glowed beneath his caress. Relief crossed the Marine’s face.
“You see?” Stele smiled. “It was no vision, Arkio. Just the weight of days preying upon you. The Holy Lance is yours,” he repeated. Inwardly, the inquisitor was relieved. His ministrations had been enough, and the mutations had been suppressed so that the Telesto weapon would not react to them—for the moment.
“It was so real.” Arkio was saying. “I could feel the hand of the warp inside me.”
“Your mind changes as does your body and spirit, Blessed,” said Stele. “Only you can know what purpose Sanguinius holds for you. Perhaps this… vision was something of a warning…”
“Explain yourself.” Arkio demanded, his hesitance falling away as his lordly manner returned.
“Perhaps… perhaps the Great Angel is showing you what will transpire if we fail him…”
“Yes…” Arkio turned away. “That shall never happen, Stele. With your counsel, the Blood Crusade will ignite the stars with its righteous fire.”
The inquisitor gave himself a nod of self-approval. The crisis was passed. “Indeed it will, Blessed. And we will begin with planet Sabien.”
Arkio nodded and walked on into the transept alone. Stele watched the feathers on his wings flicker as he moved. It would only be a matter of time before the taint of mutation made itself visible again—but if all went to plan, by the time that happened Arkio and his Blood Angels would be glorying in the name of Chaos, and they would welcome it like the gift that it was.
Jets of spent thruster discharge vented from the underside of the Thunderhawk as it settled under the gravity of Sabien. From the deployment ramp at the ship’s prow there was a scramble of quick, controlled movement. Four Blood Angels, each grasping a bolter in battle-ready postures, fanned out and stepped into a wedge formation. Their eyes and their guns never stopped scanning the landscape for any sign of movement.
Behind them came a figure towering like a dreadnought, striding with cool purpose across the deck. Two more Marines, one a grizzled veteran, the other a tech-priest, followed at his heels. “Deploy scouts,” he said, his voice carrying over the rumble of engines as a second and third Thunderhawk landed nearby. “I want a secure perimeter established, brother-sergeant. We may appear to be the first arrivals, but appearances can be deceptive.”
“By your command, lord.” The veteran saluted and broke into a run, growling out commands to a cadre of lightly armoured Space Marine outriders.
The other warrior paused, listening to a voice in his vox. “Message from the Europae, lord. The ship has attained a geostationary orbit above this location. Awaiting your orders.”
Mephiston stepped on to the surface of Sabien and took a lungful of air. Hundreds of scents assailed his heightened sense receptors, his brain quickly processing the smells into familiar categories. Death. This planet smells of death.
“Lord Mephiston?” asked the Techmarine, hesitant around the Chief Librarian. Even among the members of his own Chapter, the supreme psyker of the Blood Angels was feared as much as he was respected.
“The Europae is to remain at maximum battle readiness,” replied Mephiston, studying the landing zone. “What of the sporadic sensor contact in the debris belt?” He glanced up. Above, a ghostly white shimmer could be seen bisecting the blue-orange sky—the thick band of rocks and captured asteroids ringing Sabien, the remnants of the planet’s largest moon.
“No further detections,” replied the Marine. “Cogitator reports conclude the contact may have been solar refraction from ice crystals or possible thermal outgassing.”
Mephiston curled his lip at that assessment. “We shall see.” He left the tech-priest behind and walked out, the squad of tactical warriors moving with him. He eschewed the use of the more typical honour guard Marines on planetside missions; he preferred the company of line trooper Blood Angels, better to see first hand the disposition of the men that Lord Dante commanded, better to watch for signs of dissent or corruption.
This was not the first time Mephiston had set foot on Sabien. Once before, several lifetimes ago, he had stood in the same place, breathed the same air. He had been a different man then: Brother Calistarius, a mere codicer centuries away from the events at Hades Hive that would remake him as Mephiston, Lord of Death. Yet, as much as he had changed in the intervening years, Sabien had not altered at all. The shrine world remained as it was, as it had been for hundreds of years after the smoke a
nd ashes of the brutal Phaedra Campaign had cleared. At that time, Sabien had seen the largest loss of life to the Blood Angels Chapter since the battles of the Horus Heresy, and when the world had finally been pacified at the cost of untold expended lives, the Imperial Church had awarded custody of the planet to the Sons of Sanguinius. The site of their desperate last stand against the enemies of mankind became a place of pilgrimage, and it had been on such a journey that the psyker had first come to Sabien.
Mephiston’s piercing gaze crossed the broken ridges of the skyline. The Thunderhawks had landed in the city square, in the place where the last great engagement of the campaign had taken place. The open space was littered with fallen masonry as far as the eye could see, shattered spars of rusted iron laid down upon the crumbling remains of columns. The remnants of architecture created in the ancient styles of Old Terra were everywhere. Long halls and cloisters mingled with cathedral towers that once had cut the sky with their magnificence. Now, Sabien’s streets were filled with drifts of fallen stone and the towers were humbled. Only a single construction still remained in the middle of the echoing square. Canted at an angle by eruptions of some long-silenced shell fire, a statue on a stone plinth kept watch on the dead city. Somehow, the figure of an angel had never once been struck in all the madness of the fight for Sabien. It remained here now, its features worn to vague shapes, as a symbol of human will.
The Librarian rested one hand on the hilt of his sheathed force sword and closed his eyes. Gently, he summoned the energy of the Quickening that coiled inside his mind, moulding it and absorbing it into his senses. The exhilarating rush of potency ran through him in a shiver, and Mephiston allowed his mind to slip free of its sheath of meat and bone. Gentle blue glows hovered around the horned skulls that decorated his psychic hood and the Lord of Death reached out, searching for life. The ghost of his psy-self slipped through the ravaged streets, a breath of mental power shifting and flowing in a gust of wind.
Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow Page 42