The Colonel's Monograph

by Graham McNeill

  It began innocuously enough, but soon descended into madness.

  I cannot bring myself to set down every hideous detail of what was recorded in that damned book, a mercy for which you should be thankful. I suspected there were many journals before this, ones that dealt with the logistics of commanding a sector-wide campaign, but I never found them. By the time the words in the monograph had been written, however, the very worst canker had taken root in Elena Grayloc’s soul.

  Her descent into treachery began sometime after the liberation of Heliogabalus, a hive world where a debased pleasure cult had taken root in the noble family of an Imperial commander named Aphra Verlaine. The corruption had swiftly spread to his ancestral allies, ultimately resulting in a devastating civil war that spilled over into neighbouring systems.

  Elena Grayloc had led her Tempestus Scions in a decapitating strike against Verlaine’s palace, fighting their way to his throne room through hordes of shrieking cultists whose bodies had been transformed by grotesque surgeries and mutagenic drugs. Elaborate descriptions and detailed anatomical drawings of the foe were recorded in the monograph, abominations and things of such horror that it seemed impossible they could live beyond a single breath.

  With the death of Aphra Verlaine, the Archenemy forces fell into disarray, the tide of the war turned, and Heliogabalus was liberated.

  I cannot say for sure how her fall to darkness began; an artefact taken from the palace that carried with it some taint, a wound that festered and corrupted her from within. Or mayhap some psychic spoor of Verlaine’s was laid within her skull that day. However it came to pass, when Elena Grayloc left Heliogabalus, it was as a servant of darkness.

  Perhaps learning from what had befallen Aphra Verlaine, the corruption began to spread slowly through the regiment with a subtle insidiousness. A number of new martial customs and practices were established in every company, practices that allowed the evil of Chaos to corrupt every Guardsman within the regiment: tainted litanies of battle, blasphemous iconography, and a broadening of the rules of engagement that encouraged debauched conduct in the aftermath of battle.

  With every campaign, the behaviour of the 83rd grew ever more hideous, with Colonel Grayloc overseeing scenes of mass murder, torture and depravity I could scarcely bear to read. Their victims were men and women, mothers, children and babes in arms. All were mere sport for the soldiers and officers of the regiment, their bodies simply canvasses upon which they wrought the most monstrous of evils.

  Colonel Grayloc saw to it that her regiment was deployed on the front lines of the most hellish warzones, theatres of conflict where the terror of their debasements and ­horror of their actions could more easily be concealed. Each ­victory against Archenemy forces saw yet more artefacts and tomes concealed from the quarantine teams of the ordos and despatched in secret to Grayloc Manor.

  Perhaps to the very study in which I now sat.

  My skin crawled at the thought of sitting in a room where so many cursed tomes and blasphemous artefacts had once been stored. What evil had seeped from their pages and into the very air? Was that what the Fireblooms were to conceal, the rank stench of perfidy?

  I looked up from the flickering light cast by the storm-lantern, fear making me see monsters in the shadows on the walls and hear the muttering of the damned in the rumbles of thunder coming from the library above.

  I had no wish to return to the colonel’s monograph, but I felt compelled to read more.

  On and on it went, revelling in heinous excesses. A carnivale of grotesqueries followed in the regiment’s wake until finally, at the height of the terrible wars in the Ocyllaria subsector, the rumours surrounding the truth of Colonel Grayloc’s regiment came to a head.

  With mounting horror, I read of the colonel’s frustrations as the net closed in on her corrupted regiment. Her every effort, combined with the fury of war and the capriciousness of the warp, had conspired to conceal their depravities for longer than ought to have been possible, but eventually the truth of their utter corruption could not be denied.

  Imperial agents of the Holy Ordos, combined with elements of the Adepta Sororitas, at last moved against Colonel Grayloc, but it was already too late.

  Sensing her enemies closing in, Elena Grayloc committed the ultimate betrayal of her species. Thankfully, I could not fully understand the nature of what she did, nor how she did it, but it seems clear she used the tainted artefacts in her possession to call for aid from the dark prince she now called master. Her words described this moment of apotheosis thusly:

  ‘…a wondrous veil fell across the world, a shroud of Night, a tide of darkness to devour the slaves of the rotting corpse god. It rolled ever on, a black tide that spilled like tainted seed to corrupt the land with its glorious boon. And when it had supped all the life and vigour of this world, it reached up into the heavens to quench its endless thirst, and, one by one, snuffed out the stars as easily as I might douse a candle flame.’

  I could barely draw breath by this point. Tears streamed down my face as the full extent of what Elena Grayloc had done became clear.

  She had caused the Dawn of Dark Suns and killed everyone who knew of her sins.

  The deaths of millions of men and women of the Astra Militarum lay upon her soul. Their blood was a red ocean upon her hands.

  And her superiors had unwittingly rewarded her for it!

  The sickness in my gut was almost too much to bear.

  My heart pounded within my chest. Blood thundered in my ears.

  Every time I thought I could not bear to read more, my eyes were irresistibly drawn back to the silken pages.

  I took a deep, calming breath that helped not at all. I needed to know more.

  After her monstrous crime, Colonel Grayloc returned to Yervaunt and, for a time it seemed, sought to curb her unholy appetites. I imagine they were harder to conceal without a war to cover the excesses of blood and depravity. But the blight on her soul would not be so easily restrained, and Grayloc Manor became a locus for those of like desires. Gatherings of the wicked and the damned became common. Dubbed Maraviglia, these were days-long debauches of sense-heightening drugs, unnatural couplings of orgiastic intensity, and ritualised murder that sent such jolts of revulsion through my mind that I feared for my very sanity.

  I read accounts of men and women variously described as sensationalists, gourmands, profligates, epicures and libertines, who journeyed from afar and even from off-world to partake in the colonel’s wild debauches. The descriptions of seething flesh, blood, bodily fluids and vile acts made me sick to picture them.

  These guests came to the hidden jetty at the foot of the cliffs or arrived under cover of night at her cliffside landing platform. The descriptions of these Maraviglia defied belief, and the activities described were so outrageous and so unimaginable that I now understood the calamitous nature of the colonel’s debts.

  With trembling fingers, I closed the colonel’s monograph.

  I covered my face with my hands, weeping and shaking with the horror of what I had learned. My eyes were tightly shut, but upon the inner surfaces of my eyelids I saw only screaming faces twisted in lust, in anguish and in agony.

  Each arrhythmic crash in my chest made me fear for my life. The rush of blood through my head felt like hammer blows upon my skull.

  Then I understood that the pounding noise was not just in my head.

  Heavy footfalls were descending the steps from the library.

  I took my hands from my face, too terrified to move.

  A brutish outline filled the doorway, a glowing storm-lantern held aloft before him.

  Kyrano.

  I rose from the chair on shaking legs as the servitor strode towards me with relentless purpose. He had already tried to murder me once before, and I knew I was powerless to stop him from succeeding this time.

  ‘Please,’ I begged the cyber
netic as he approached.

  I screamed as loud as I could, filling the small space with my anger and terror. It did no good, and Kyrano cared nothing for any noise I made. For all I knew the servitor and I were the only two souls left alive in Grayloc Manor.

  Where was Garrett Grayloc? Had the servitor already murdered him in his sleep?

  Was this thing still enacting Elena Grayloc’s deviant orders beyond her death?

  The servitor circled the table, and I could already imagine how his hands would feel around my neck as they crushed my throat. He would kill me with no remorse, no passion, and no care for the evil of what he was doing.

  My legs spasmed with frantic tremors, the muscles twitching as my anger at this fate railed against the paralysis of terror. I pushed back from the table, thankful for its scale, as I circled in the opposite direction to the approaching servitor.

  I could not hope to fight him, but perhaps I could delay him or, at the very least, hurt him.

  Leaning over the table, I snatched up the storm lantern. Kyrano reached out to grab me, his fingers closing on my sleeve. Thankfully, his fingers had no real purchase, and his grip slid free. For a moment, it seemed I saw frustration in his one remaining eye, a hooded, flinty thing that had peered into the heart of true evil.

  Glancing towards the stairs leading back to the library, I tried to imagine how quickly I could cover the distance. Could I outrun Kyrano?

  He was not fast, but he was utterly relentless.

  I judged my chances poor, but what other choice was there?

  Feinting one way, I bolted for the stairs. Faster than I would have believed possible, the murderous servitor came after me. I heard the thud of his booted feet behind me and reacted with an act of instinctive self-preservation.

  I swung the storm lantern like a club and managed to smash it against the side of his metalled skull. Burning oil flared in a sheet of bright orange fire. It filled the hidden study with light, and engulfed the servitor’s upper body in flame.

  Pools of burning oil landed on the table and hungrily spread to the two books. I hurled the smashed remains of the lantern to the floor and ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I did not look back, and heard the servitor thrashing around the study.

  I had not thought servitors capable of feeling pain, but was in that moment glad it seemed not to be the case here. I hoped the flames would consume Kyrano and whatever was left upon the shelves.

  Smoke followed me up the stairs, and I took a shuddering breath as I emerged into the library. Rain hammered on the skylights and a forking bolt of lightning split the sky. I drew in sucking breaths of air, wondering if I could somehow seal off the study and trap the murderous servitor below.

  A flare of light behind me told me I had no time.

  Kyrano was climbing the stairs after me. The flames had burned away much of his suit, revealing the scorched skin of his torso. Beaten metal gleamed through pallid skin criss-crossed with crude surgical scars that looked as though they had been inflicted as much to hurt as to heal.

  I turned and ran for the library doors, pausing as I saw the stern face of Colonel Grayloc staring down at me from the frame of her portrait. Even then, in full knowledge of her monstrous deeds and the millions of lives she sacrificed, I could see no hint of that evil lurking in her eyes. She appeared to be every inch the Imperial hero she was believed to be. That such depravity and such a black and soulless heart could hide in plain sight behind a mask of civility and a veneer of civilisation was the true horror.

  Evil walked amongst us and we knew it not.

  Thudding footsteps galvanised me into action, and I ran to the portrait to seize the weapons hung beneath it. I have no love of firearms, but Teodoro and I both held to the view that every Imperial citizen ought to at least maintain a basic competence with weaponry.

  The weapons were old, and neither had likely been fired in years.

  I could see the plasma pistol had no powercell in place, so snatched the lasrifle down from its mount, quickly hauling back on the charging lever by the trigger guard. Even a Whiteshield knows to strip an unknown weapon down before risking pulling the trigger, but that was a luxury I could not afford.

  The lasrifle hummed as power flowed into its firing mechanism, but any hopes of using the weapon died as the powercell registered as empty. I wanted to weep with frustration.

  I dropped the lasrifle and took up Colonel Grayloc’s power sabre. I thumbed the activation rune at the pommel. Even if its charge was depleted, I could at least swing it and hope its edge was sharp.

  Footsteps sounded, and I gagged at the thought of the servitor’s rotten-meat body touching me. A deafening rumble of thunder crashed overhead. I thought I heard my name. The blade sparked to life. I screamed as I spun around and swung it with all my strength.

  The energised edge struck flesh, carving through meat and bone, muscle and organs. Blood sprayed from the wound, a catastrophic amount jetting from ruptured flesh. It sprayed my face, blinding me. I ripped the blade loose and lifted it high, ready to strike again.

  I blinked away the blood in my eyes.

  I had not killed Kyrano.

  I had killed Garrett Grayloc.

  His body lay on the floor of the library in a vast lake of blood, split from collarbone to pelvis. I backed away in horror at what I had done. His head turned to me, incomprehension flickering in his eyes as the last vestiges of life left him.

  ‘No… no… no…’ I cried, as though forceful enough a denial might undo this murder.

  I saw him die in front of me, and looked up as I saw Kyrano approach. Smoke and flames lit the library behind him, and he no longer had his storm lantern. I saw him register the presence of Garrett Grayloc’s body, but could not tell what reaction – if any – his master’s death had upon him.

  Still holding the colonel’s sword, I ran for the library doors, barrelling through them, breathless and horrified at what I had done. My entire body was shaking with fear and revulsion. What had I done? I had killed an innocent man! I bent double and expelled the contents of my stomach on the floor.

  I wanted to sink to my knees and curl up into a ball. I wanted this tide of horrible things to stop, to leave me alone. My mind could not cope with so many nightmarish revelations, with such bloodshed and murder.

  Looking back into the library, I saw Kyrano bend to lift the lasrifle from the floor where I had thrown it. He expertly swapped out the empty powercell for a fresh one and rose smoothly as he snapped back the charging lever to render it lethal.

  Even armed with the power sabre I could not fight a deadly killer armed with a rifle.

  ‘No,’ I said, but this time the word was not said in reaction to an accidental murder, rather it was a declaration that I would not end my days squatting and afraid.

  Pushing myself upright, I ran for the staircase that led down to the vestibule.

  I emerged from Grayloc Manor into a thunderstorm of epic proportions. Bruised clouds of lightning-shot darkness pressed down on the landscape, and a deluge set to drown the world fell from the sky in howling torrents. The power sabre spat and hissed as I half ran, half stumbled around the corner of the building.

  Looking out to sea, the storm was even more impressive.

  Purple and blue columns of lightning battled on the horizon and the normally calm bay within the crater raged against the coastline. I saw ships smashed to tinder at their moorings, and pummelling waves broke against structures hundreds of metres from the shoreline.

  Across the headland, the temple was in flames, and not even the downpour could quench the conflagration. And was it my imagination or did I see the figure of a man in priestly vestments within, vainly attempting to fight the blaze?

  I could think of no more apt a metaphor of my time in Vansen Falls.

  I turned the corner, heading for the cliffside hangar where the
Kiehlen 580 groundcar was housed. If I could just get the car, I could escape this nightmare. I passed the winding path leading to the follies, and stopped at the entrance to the maze as I saw my path to the hangar was blocked.

  Kyrano stood illuminated in the glow of the burning manor. Flames leapt from its gable windows and billowed high from the shattered skylights in the library.

  I had stupidly assumed the servitor would blindly follow me, but of course he would take the more direct route. He must have anticipated I would run to the hangar and had chosen a route to intercept my flight.

  His augmetic eye blinked red and he marched towards me, seemingly untroubled by the horrific wounds wrought upon his body. The rain slicked his ruined flesh, and he held the colonel’s rife across his chest. My strike with the storm lantern had wounded him terribly, the burning fuel devouring his dead skin and leaving him all but crippled.

  But even crippled he would easily kill me.

  His pace was unrelenting. Not fast, but fast enough to catch me no matter where I ran.

  Heading for the follies seemed foolish, so I turned and entered the maze. My only hope was that Kyrano did not know its paths. Or even if he did, that I could navigate them faster and emerge while he was still within.

  Perhaps then I could reach the groundcar and escape.

  I plunged into its tangled depths.

  The rain beat down as I pushed deep into the maze, washing my face of tears. My feet slipped on the muddy paths, and several times I fell as I lost my footing. Thunder crashed, but even over its echoing rumbles, I could still hear Kyrano following me.

  I blundered through the maze, scratching my face bloody on grasping thorns and deactivating the sabre’s blade. I had no idea how much power was left to it, and saw no need to drain what little remained until I needed it.

  I struggled to focus as I ran, remembering the times I had navigated the maze and committed its paths to memory. I prayed to the Emperor I was remembering things correctly, and that Kyrano had not seen fit to walk within or learn its many twists and turns.