Black Legion

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  As for myself, I have undertaken missions on my Legion’s behalf that took days to succeed, only to return to Abaddon and the Vengeful Spirit to learn that years had passed aboard our flagship. The reverse is also true. More than once I have waged war in the Black Legion’s name for years, even decades, only to find that practically no time has passed at all.

  But even this is seeking to define the undefinable. We are speaking of a concept that cannot be tamed with words.

  The truth is both simple and devastatingly complex. The truth is that most of us no longer care about time. It means nothing to us anymore. Marking the passage of days and months and years is almost impossible. We fight when we must fight. We kill when we must kill. We eat and drink to sustain ourselves. We sleep when our bodies force somnolence upon us. There is no routine, no harmonious schedule of order. We breathe and bleed and breathe and bleed. There is only existence, moment by moment. You are alive or you are dead.

  And that is the truth our Imperial counterparts most struggle to understand. When we lock blades with the Space Marines of loyal Chapters, and they pour scorn upon us for a bitterness that has lasted ten thousand years. When we have little idea which thin-blooded newborn conclave of hypno-indoctrinated soldiers is hurling itself against us with oaths the Emperor Himself would have found insane. The truth is that it is no ancient grudge rolling on through the cobwebs of old, old minds. Our hatred is still hot. Our wounds are still fresh. It has always been this way, and it shall always remain so. Time cannot dilute the venom that flows through our hearts, for time no longer exists.

  I could not tell you how many years have passed for me since I first set foot on a warp-touched world within the Eye. Sometimes it feels as though I was breathing Terran air only weeks ago. Sometimes I feel incalculably old, weighed down by the pressure of conflicting memories; things that feel as though they happened to other souls, in other lives.

  Time is a mortal conceit, a product of the material universe, and we are bound by no such laws.

  We found the first warrior’s body. He had died in battle, not killed in the crash. Whatever daemonic forces had swept through this ship like an ill wind, this black-armoured warrior had claimed several of them with bolter and blade. Ichorous residue marked the deck and walls nearby, where daemons had dissolved after the destruction of their physical forms. The same blood marked the teeth of his chainsword.

  The dead warrior wore a cross-marked tabard over his armour plating, the sigil matching that of the slaves we had seen earlier. A length of chain bound the sword to his wrist, either simple good sense to keep hold of a weapon in the chaos of melee or a nod to the gladiatorial pit-games fought on the most primal and bloodthirsty worlds.

  Or by the most bloodthirsty Legions. This was a common enough custom among the World Eaters. Even former XII Legion warriors among our number still held to the tradition.

  ‘Who goes first?’ asked Amurael. A few of his warriors stood nearby, red eye-lenses tracking the shadows, the thrum of their active battleplate a subcurrent of growling sound.

  ‘I will do it,’ I said.

  I crouched by the body and drew my ritual jamdhara dagger. The helmet came free easily. I began to carve, scalping the corpse as though I were some tribal primitive claiming a battle trophy. My brother Falkus and his Aphotic Blade are keen collectors of the skulls of fallen champions. I suppose the principle is much the same, but I had no taste for such grisly plunder.

  I broke open the skull for the cold feast within.

  Once life has left a body, decay sets in at once. A corpse’s internal cohesion breaks down, the binding particulates and processes no longer holding together. Despite no visible sign of rot, I could taste the onset of entropy when I chewed that first mouthful of brain.

  I swallowed and proceeded to force my way through the rest of the bitter meal. Then I closed my eyes.

  I waited.

  Not long after, I had the answers I sought.

  Where Past and Present Meet

  They called themselves the Black Templars.

  I learned this, and so much more, with that first taste of brainflesh.

  How much ink has been committed to parchment in detailing the myriad warlike uses of Legiones Astartes enhancements? So much is made of our capacity for perfect recall, of saliva glands that produce hydraklorik acid, the imperviousness of our reinforced bones and the might of our layered muscle and sinew. Far less is spoken of the biological gift that turns cannibalism from heathen ritual into revelation.

  The gene-seed organ responsible for this gift is the omophagea – called, in the oldest scrolls, the Eighth Step of Supremacy, or ‘the Remembrancer’. It takes root within our bodies, attaching to the brain and nervous system through fusion to the spinal column and digestive tract. Though we are gene-forged to steal sustenance from almost any organic matter, even the flesh of our fallen enemies, it’s through the omophagea that we also devour our foe’s memories. Nerve clusters in our stomachs carry pulses from the digesting meat to our minds, which the post-human brain interprets as instinct and insight.

  A beast’s flesh transfers its awareness of its existence, of its surroundings, its struggles, its hungers and its dangers. You sense the nearness of its predators and the taste of its prey. A human’s eyes show a blighted palette of a thousand images over the course of the person’s life, including that soul’s very last sight.

  The brain makes for the finest meal. It offers unparalleled insight from a gallery of stolen emotion and memory. You see another being’s memories as if they were your own: unreliable, often hazy, occasionally excruciatingly vivid. Their instincts overlay yours, your emotion and reason entwines with those of a life you never led.

  It takes discipline to suppress the narcotic qualities of this merging. The sensation can become an addiction all too easily, for it offers pleasure as well as power. In the Thousand Sons we had couched the act in ritual and solemnity – praising the warrior-scholar virtue of ‘knowing your enemy’, and quelling any guilty pleasure in the ­cannibalistic act.

  Of course, such feasts of flesh are hardly uncommon when any ­warband emerges victorious over another – look even to the Imperium’s­ own record of supposedly loyal Chapters, especially those of the Blood Angels Legion’s genetic descent. Flesh Eaters. Blood Drinkers. How do bands of warriors earn such names, I wonder?

  But I am getting ahead of myself. Those were names still many years in the future from the night aboard the shattered warship.

  That night, my senses swam with the reflected shards of another life.

  I run through a forest, cooled by the dapples of shade beneath a high sun. The rock in my fist is reddened with the dark blood that bleeds from a broken skull.

  I stare up at the stars from where I lie in the long grass, and I ­wonder: where is Terra? Which star warms the Emperor’s Throneworld?

  I stand before a warrior taller than any other I have ever seen. He tells me that I am chosen, that I am to come with him. The blade of my bronze knife breaks against his armour plating. I scrape my finger­nails bloody as I fight. He tells me this is good. He tells me that he chose right.

  I sit within a stone chamber, where the walls and floor and even the air is as cold as ice. I speak words of mumbled reverence as I brush sacred oils upon the teeth of an unpowered chainsword. I perform this rite with my bare fingertips, adding the blood from my cuts to the unguents.

  I rise from my restraint throne as light blasts into the drop pod. My bolter kicks in my hands, roaring at the inhuman creatures that throw themselves against us. Their chitinous hides burst apart beneath each impacting shell. Impure gore streaks me, streaks all of us, painting our armour with foul flesh, staining our tabards. I am shouting as I kill, and the words are like sunlight and life and the adrenal thunder of blood running hot in battle. The words embody me, my brothers and the heroes we strive to emulate. The words are everything.
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  No pity.

  No remorse.

  No fear.

  I kneel before my marshal, lowering my head to the hilt of my downturned sword. I breathe in the dusky scent of myrrh from the smoking incense braziers, and I speak my vows of loyalty, of virtue, of courage, of zeal. The Chaplain walks before us, leading the chanted chorus. I feel his eyes upon me, watchful for flaws in my demeanour, listening for any whisper of insincerity.

  He will find no flaws and hear no lies. I am worthy of this honour. I will not fail my brothers. I will not fail my Lord Dorn. I will not fail High Marshal Sigismund. I will not fail the Immortal Emperor.

  I stand before my arming thralls within my private sanctum. Armour drills whine and lock tight inside the sockets already surgically gouged into my flesh. I am dressed in ceramite. Weighted by it, rendered complete by its sacred burden.

  My sword is pressed into my left hand and chained in place, inviolately bound to my forearm. Around me, the serfs chant my name in monastic baritone.

  I stand on the bridge, arrayed with my brethren before Marshal Avathus’ throne. We stare into the tainted void ahead, where reality puckers and ruptures in the grip of unreal forces. This is the prison into which our ancestors cast our traitorous forebears. We stand before the very mouth of hell.

  I fight in the collapsing corridors of a dying ship. My weapons are sundered, my armour is broken, my body reduced to red ruin. Creatures – daemons, they are daemons, they can only be daemons – claw at me, bearing me down, pulling me apart while I still draw blood-tasting breath.

  No pity.

  Teeth fasten to the flesh of my face, biting in, grinding down, straining, scraping, cracking.

  No remorse.

  I push the cleaved remnants of my sword up into quivering, fatty flesh.

  No f–

  I was myself once more, metabolising the stolen memories. Tele­machon and Amurael indulged their curiosities as well; I could see them working through the ingested lives, trawling through the recollections for slivers of deeper insight. Telemachon was helmed, of course, but I could see Amurael’s features ticking with involuntary muscle responses to the emotions and traumas of the dead Black Templar’s long life.

  ‘Angevin,’ he said. ‘The warrior’s name was Angevin.’

  I had felt the same sense of identity when I first tasted the memories.

  ‘They came into the Eye willingly,’ he added. ‘Scouting and exploring.’

  ‘Hunting,’ Telemachon amended. ‘Hunting us.’

  ‘We have to warn Ezekyle.’ I had not intended to speak those words, but now they were spoken, the truth of them bit deep. ‘If these Templars stand vigil outside the Eye, it may change everything.’

  Telemachon shook his head. ‘No matter how many of them are waiting for us, no matter if they meet us with every warship in the Imperial Fists fleet, they won’t have enough iron in the void to stop us breaking free.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I conceded. ‘But they would have enough to leave us deeply scarred. Do you believe Abaddon wishes to lose hundreds, even thousands, of the warriors we have so painstakingly recruited?’

  ‘To say nothing of the casualties we’ll sustain when Ashur-Kai guides us out of the Eye,’ Amurael warned. This, too, was true. No few warbands had lost vessels in the desperate storms that raged at the Eye’s edge. Our prison was viciously adept at keeping us caged. ‘If we emerge piecemeal in the face of an enemy fleet…’ Amurael let the words hang.

  ‘Guesswork,’ Telemachon replied smoothly.

  ‘Preparation and consideration,’ I replied.

  Khayon, a voice breathed, and my spine tightened.

  Amurael spoke up, supporting my words. I was not entirely certain of the specifics of what he said. Telemachon replied. I do not know what he said, either. The voice I was hearing belonged to neither of them.

  Khayon.

  Nagual padded closer, claws scratching the deck. He bared his fangs in a slow growl.

  Who calls, master?

  I do not know.

  Telemachon and Amurael were still conversing, the former doing so while he took blood and flesh samples from the fallen Templar, the latter speaking while examining a compact but blocky pattern of bolt pistol I had not seen before.

  Khayon.

  I rose slowly, looking towards the archway mouth of the western corridor. The crash had broken this portion of the ship, leaving the deck sloped, leading down into yet more powerless dark.

  Khayon.

  I heard Telemachon’s armour purr as he turned to me. ‘What ails you, assassin?’

  I did not turn to look at him. ‘Someone is here.’

  I heard the echolocation clicks as Amurael reactivated his auspex. I felt Telemachon staring at me, though he remained silent.

  ‘Nothing,’ Amurael confirmed.

  Khayon.

  ‘I sense a presence,’ I said. ‘Nearby. Within the city, or whatever the closest settlement is called. It knows my name.’

  ‘Male? Female?’ Amurael asked. ‘Is it even human?’

  ‘I cannot tell. It is less than a whisper.’ And this was so. If you can imagine the impression of lips moving, mouthing your name, without breath to give sound to a voice.

  ‘Your miserable alien?’ Amurael snorted the question.

  ‘She has no psychic capability,’ Telemachon answered before I could, and his rich voice carried a seedy reverence that made my skin crawl. ‘Her soul is far too delicate.’

  ‘It is not Nefertari,’ I said. ‘Whoever it is, I am not even certain they are alive. This is a world of mournful echoes and unquiet ghosts.’

  ‘Then ignore it,’ was the swordsman’s suggestion.

  Khayon. Khayon. Khayon.

  I could not ignore this. For someone or something to gain access to my mind, even to brush my surface thoughts like this, spoke of a being with considerable power and significant intent. Trap or not, I was going to find the answer to this mystery. I reached after it, finding nothing but mist, mist, mist.

  ‘It is coming from deeper in the ship. Or… no. From beneath the ship.’ I looked to Amurael. ‘Are there any subterranean fortresses nearby?’

  The former Sons of Horus legionary took a moment to answer, and his aura flared with uneasy light. Something in my words had discomfited him.

  ‘Several.’ Amurael’s eyes met mine. He wiped the smeared evidence of his investigative cannibalism from his mouth.

  One of his legionaries clarified. ‘Lord Khayon,’ the warrior said, ‘the Monumentum Primus is only thirty kilometres from here.’

  I hesitated. That possibility had simply not occurred to me. ‘We are near the Tomb of Horus?’

  ‘Yes, Lord Khayon.’

  Khayon. The presence was a needling caress inside my skull. Khayon. Khayon. Khayon. I clenched my teeth against its unwelcomely tantalising touch.

  I rose to my feet. ‘Show me the way.’

  The ship had fused with the earth, amalgamating with the fortress complexes beneath the surface. Here was another world entirely, a realm of fallout bunkers, interconnected trench mazes and sub­terranean chambers. The Black Templars strike cruiser had speared into the ground and swiftly found its wreckage bound in the mutated grip of the realm below.

  Everywhere I looked corrosion was rife, the decay of the world above creeping down here in infections of rot and rust. Power lapses plunged whole portions of the complexes into darkness, and what light remained was strained and weak, flickering on the edge of failure. The truth of Maeleum was just as ugly as the lie, for soon enough we were walking through chambers and corridors littered with industrial detritus and the half-eaten bodies of slain humans, beastmen and legionaries alike.

  Most of the dead Legion warriors wore the armour of the Sons of Horus, left to rot where they lay. The purple and puce of the Emperor’s Children w
as also in evidence, along with shades marking resting places of fighters drawn from the other Legions. Most of these bodies had been gouged open by fleshsmiths and Apothecaries, their progenoids harvested in the heat of battles fought long ago.

  The charnel-house smell penetrated my armour and sank into my senses. I could feel it in my pores. I could taste it, that sour meat stink, on the back of my teeth.

  Amurael’s warrior, Dejak, led us deeper. My retinal display tracked the depth, and it wasn’t long before my fragile telepathic thread to the Rubricae aboard our gunship thinned and severed, leaving them unbound. They would fulfil their last orders, but I couldn’t reach them to see through their eyes or issue them new commands. Nor was I about to stop and achieve the necessary meditative focus to re-commune with them.

  Dejak stopped at a junction, his helm panning across a long, arcing bloodstain along a bolt-punctured wall. Nothing about it seemed any different to the rest of the biological mess we’d seen in the complex so far.

  Telemachon and I glanced at one another. ‘This smear of sanguine filth is notable in some way?’ I asked Dejak. I suspected that Lheor would have made some irritable remark about fine Cthonian art. As much as I wished for his presence here rather than Telemachon’s, I did not miss what passed for his wit.

  ‘It’s a sigil, lords.’ Dejak walked down the left-hand corridor without bothering to illuminate us as to what exactly about the blood smear informed this decision. He was with Amurael at the head of the squad, deferring to his lord.

  We followed once more. Telemachon’s clawed boots clicked and scraped with the percussion of each of his footfalls.

  ‘A gang sign, I suspect.’ His mellifluous voice murmured over the vox, to me alone. ‘A marking of territory. An echo of what once was, on now-dead Cthonia.’

  ‘Most likely.’ I was not certain where this conversational gambit was going, but I knew Telemachon, and I knew it was leading somewhere.

  ‘Lekzahndru,’ he purred my name with the Gothic twist of his former home world. ‘Tell me,’ he added, beneficent and smooth, ‘of Drol Kheir.’