by Rob Sanders
‘My lord,’ Havloc grizzled, with fear and fire fighting within him. ‘Great Pilgrim, the Right Claw of Khorne, Chosen of the Brazen-Fleshed. What is thy bidding, my merciless master?’
‘I lead,’ the cacophony of spite continued, ‘the Cholercaust follows. To what part of the doomed Imperium does the crimson comet – the physical embodiment of the Blood God’s will – take us next?’
‘Under your ruthless leadership, Great Pilgrim – back to Terra, to the crumbling walls of the corpse-Emperor’s palace and the Eternity Gate. For your murderous amusement, the War-Given-Form has blessed your path with a faith world. A planet of the dead, where the corpse-Emperor’s cultcubines minister to the galaxy’s silent majority.’
‘A planet of the dead, indeed,’ the Pilgrim boomed through the mouths of the mob. ‘Hone your blades, my slaughterkin, for shortly they shall taste priest-flesh…’
I dream.
For the longest time I have lived a nightmare. My eyes have been half open to events unfolding about me while behind them a macabre puppet show has played. To be neither awake nor asleep. A mind-breaking combination of both. It is custom to pinch oneself – to test if one is awake. I need no such test to know I am finally asleep. To know I am in the cradle of the unconscious. The world about me has that punch-drunk quality, the distant resonance of the unreal.
I walk the surface of the cemetery world. The sandy Certusian earth crunches beneath my boots. Through my helmet optics I zoom in on a crenulated horizon. A sea of gravestones and masonry markers extends before me. Above, the ivory sky broils and bubbles in the distance. Then, like an atomic explosion, a mushroom cloud vomits forth from the heavens and billows thunderously for the surface. There is no sound – only doom. The creamy cloud spumes and rages, swirling black, then red and gold as a swirling wall of flame overreaches the blast wave and the inferno hits the ground.
I turn and run. Armoured footfalls pulverise the grit beneath my boots as stride for stride my plated form attempts to outrun the conflagration. As the firewall of destruction billows furiously across the necroscape behind me, I feel my progress slowing. Even in full battle-plate I could make the horizon, but it is not the distance, nor the extra weight of ceramite that impedes me. I hurdle gravestones and will myself on, but as the flames engulf the world behind me, my boots sink deeper and deeper into the grave dirt. The soil has lost its consistency and I have run myself down into a quagmire. The earth – black, sodden and heavy – pulls me down into the ground itself. It oozes up my greaves, splatters plate and swallows cabling. With my legs and arms churning the morass, I see shattered bones, earth-stained skulls and rotten remains in the mire about me. Even a smashed stasis casket surfaces for a moment, like a sinking ship, before disappearing back into the depths.
With every movement my ceramite sinks further, and within moments I am up to my helm in cemetery world dirt. I turn to see the bank of flame – an unstoppable inferno of fire and fury that has scorched the Certusian surface clean – erupting upon my position. The most primal of instincts takes over, and before I know it, I have dived down below the quagmire and into an underworld of darkness, grit and death. My optics turn black. I desist in my armoured struggles and allow the cemetery world to take me down, while above the earth hardens, as the inferno bakes the ground with the heat of its righteous fury.
Kersh opened his eyes. The vague recollection of a dream misted his mind like a taste water wouldn’t wash away. He felt smothered yet calm and took a moment to savour several deep breaths. He allowed his head to roll to one side. A form sat by his bunk crystallised into focus. Bethesda, his personal serf and absterge, was watching him. Her mask of tension broke with relief and she smiled. The curl of her lip was simple and sweet, and Kersh found that he was actually quite glad to see her.
She turned and called ‘lord’ lightly at the dormitory door. It opened slightly and Kersh saw Micah’s face in the crack. His expression became a grin.
‘It’s good to see you, sir. I’ll send for your Apothecary, plate and bondsmen.’
Kersh nodded and went to sit up. The hermitage slab made a harsh bunk, but the Scourge had known worse. He had been stripped of his warrior’s plate and lay in his clean but blood-stained robes, bearing the venerated symbol of the Stigmartyr. As was custom, the cream of the garment was fresh but the spiritual work of ‘the purge’ was forever allowed to stain the material.
Putting the soles of his feet on the cold stone of the hermitage floor, Kersh felt something fall from his chest. On the flags beneath him, the Excoriator found a liquid-crystal wafer. He picked it up. It bore an illustration: a single eye, unflinching, open and glinting with predatory intention. The Space Marine felt some unease looking at the disturbing image. It was as though the card itself was watching him. Below the illustration, inscribed in High Gothic, was the title Magnus Occularis. The Scourge’s brow creased with confusion.
‘Did Melmoch leave this?’ Kersh asked. Bethesda shook her head.
‘Your armour, sir?’ Micah said as Kersh strode past and out into the dark hermitage thoroughfare. The company champion’s thoughts were always centred on his commander’s safety. The dim light of struggling candles illuminated the glower on the Scourge’s face.
‘The plate can wait,’ Kersh murmured, advancing up the cloister past the heavy doors of private dorms and hermitories. The corpus-captain came to a silent halt outside one. The ferruswood door was slightly ajar. Beyond, Kersh and Micah could hear the savage crack of a ‘purge’ at work. Kersh recognised the knotty face of Chief Whip Skase’s lictor. The serf himself was stripped to the waist and his body slick with the effort of mortification. Edging around, Kersh could also see the pool of blood gathering around the purged. Dorn’s Mantle had not been so much donned as spread across the floor. Both Skase’s seneschal and absterge were employed with mops and buckets, attempting to stem the flood. Against the wall stood the chief whip himself, stoic and immovable – like a statue – his mangled back cut to ribbons.
Pain and endurance were their genetic heritage and through the spilling of blood, Demetrius Katafalque had taught them that spiritual communion with the primarch could be achieved. In the cold remove achieved by Excoriators during the hot agony of purgation, Rogal Dorn had answers for each of them. Kersh had seen Excoriators punish themselves as such before. He had done so, cloaked in the shame of losing the Chapter Stigmartyr and failure to protect his Chapter Master. It led to a dark place. The long journey from Samarquand had taught him that his flesh had a greater purpose in Dorn’s eyes; that beyond the spiritual unity of the Mantle lay only a labyrinth of needless suffering in which to lose oneself forever.
Kersh was so struck by the spectacle – the simultaneous sadness for and anger towards the hurting Skase – that he did not even acknowledge Ezrachi’s hydraulic approach. Others in the dormitory had, however, and a figure behind him promptly closed the hermitory door.
‘Have Toralech relay a message to the Chaplain,’ Ezrachi ordered Brother Micah. ‘Inform him that the corpus-captain is conscious and demands a report.’
Micah nodded and peeled off into the shadows.
‘I ordered a cessation of ritual observance,’ Kersh growled at the ferruswood door.
‘And Chaplain Shadrath enforced it,’ said the Apothecary. ‘You’ve been out a few days.’ Ezrachi turned the Scourge’s face towards him before dazzling the Excoriator with some medical instrument that sent a flickering beam between his eyes. Since the dull, scratched surface of a ball bearing sat in one socket, Ezrachi focused his attention on the corpus-captain’s remaining eye.
‘Days,’ Kersh marvelled. ‘The company…’
‘Shadrath will make his report. Be still.’
Kersh allowed the Apothecary his rudimentary medical tests.
‘It’s not healthy,’ Kersh said looking back to the door, but the Apothecary brought his attention back to the beam.
‘I’ve spoken to Skase,’ Ezrachi said. ‘Right now I’m more worried about yo
u.’
‘Was it a relapse of the Darkness?’
‘No,’ Ezrachi said with some certainty. ‘I just don’t think you were sleeping. Even an Adeptus Astartes must sleep some time. I can give you something for that. You must tell me if you begin suffering the delusions you spoke of.’
‘You think I’m hallucinating?’
‘I should have listened. My apologies, corpus-captain. We must accept the possibility that the catalepsean node is still malfunctioning. It might require further surgery. It is certainly more evidence for the likelihood of the Darkness having a genetic rather than spiritual cause.’
‘Well, thrilled as I am to help you solve a medical mystery,’ Kersh told him, ‘just fix it, will you?’
‘I need the surgical bay in the apothecarion – on board the Angelica Mortis. I’m happy, however, to submit a report indicating that you’re fit for duty.’
‘I suppose this recent incapacitation has further cemented ill-will towards my command amongst the Fifth.’
‘The rank and file hate you with a passion,’ Ezrachi told him with brutal honesty. ‘Nothing has changed there. Events, however, have overreached us.’
‘Explain.’
‘Follow me.’
The Apothecary led Kersh up a spiral staircase of stone and dust. In the awkwardness of full plate, Ezrachi found that he had to angle his pauldrons to ascend, while the globes of the Scourge’s muscular shoulders merely brushed the staircase walls. A door at the top of the twisting steps opened out into a narrow balcony. Below them the tiled roofs of the hermitage extended; above, a small bell tower reached for the darkness of the cemetery world sky. Stars glimmered in the heavens, and on the horizon, the Eye of Terror’s distant, heliotropic haze besmirched the depths of the void. It was not the warp storm’s horror that held the corpus-captain’s attention.
‘Katafalque’s blood,’ Kersh said, the oath carried off on the light breeze. Above Certus-Minor, the sky had been cleaved in two, a gore smear trailed across the starry firmament – like that a wounded soldier might make, crawling for his life. Instead of a soldier, the haemorrhaging bulb of a crimson comet blazed the bloody path. ‘The Keeler Comet…’
‘Destruction follows in the wake of the comet,’ Ezrachi told him. ‘It is more than just an omen. If the crimson comet appears in a sky then the world to which that sky belongs is doomed to fall.’
‘Stop talking like a prophet and give me specifics. Specifics I can kill.’
‘We’ve been out of segmentum, but Shadrath claims intelligence is patchy. The comet leaves no witnesses to its passing,’ the Apothecary said.
‘No survivors?’
‘Some claim the comet eats worlds whole,’ Ezrachi replied, ‘others that it is responsible for some kind of rift or daemonic incursion. The Imperial Navy reports sightings of an armada trailing its tail, a Blood Crusade called the Cholercaust. The Exorcists, the Grey Knights and our cousins the Fists are rumoured to man a cordon at Vanaheim – to prevent a crusader advance on Segmentum Solar.’
Kersh’s eyes drifted down to the planet surface. Beyond the city, the necroplex of grave markers, statues and mausolea extended before being swallowed by the darkness.
‘How long until dawn?’
‘Two, perhaps three hundred hours standard. The cemetery worlders call it the Long Night.’
‘We’ve got to send word to Vanaheim,’ Kersh said. ‘We need to alert the Viper Legion on Hellionii Reticuli. The Cadians…’
‘This world’s problems have already begun,’ Ezrachi said, pointing behind the corpus-captain. Turning, Kersh took in the rising spires and towers of Obsequa City with the dome of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum topping the cathedralscape like a crown. Smoke streamed from various fires across the city while tiny sparks of las-fire could be seen flashing across the streets below. Amongst the chaos, Kersh could make out large crowds in the streets. A mortuary lighter made an unsteady take-off and blasted past the belfry at full throttle. Kersh could imagine the panic and pure havoc created on the cemetery world at the appearance of the crimson comet. Kersh made for the stairs.
‘I presume an evacuation has begun,’ the Scourge called behind him.
‘With necrofreighter captains auctioning space in their empty holds to the highest bidders,’ Ezrachi said with obvious disappointment. ‘The ruling classes and many of the priests simply abandoned world. There was little in the way of haggling – speed being of the essence.’
‘The pontifex…’
‘Remains,’ Ezrachi said. ‘He claims he won’t leave his people or sacred Certusian soil. There are, of course, many thousands of scribes and labourers without the coin to secure a passage off-world.’
‘What about the Sisters?’
‘Umberto II’s remains are too fragile to transport,’ the Apothecary explained. ‘With or without the pontifex, the Order of the August Vigil have orders to protect the Ecclesiarch’s bones. I think we can rely upon them to do that, but little else.’
Kersh stormed out of the stairwell and out onto the hermitage thoroughfare.
‘My battle-plate,’ he roared up the cloister at his serfs. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Kersh asked, holding out the crystalline wafer he’d been holding. Ezrachi took it. ‘It was placed with me as I slept.’
‘From the Emperor’s Tarot. Members of the Librarius use them,’ the Apothecary told him. Ezrachi squinted at the card. ‘The Great Eye,’ he read.
‘Give it back to Melmoch,’ Kersh ordered.
‘It wasn’t Melmoch,’ Ezrachi said. As the Scourge continued marching up the cloister, the Apothecary stopped. He opened a nearby door and called, ‘Kersh!’
Scowling, the Scourge returned and looked in through the open door. It was the small sanctuary chamber Ezrachi had converted to a temporary apothecarion. Epistolary Melmoch lay upon a hermit’s slab, arms across his chest.
‘Is he…’
‘No,’ Ezrachi interjected as the two Excoriators entered the room. ‘But he is out cold. He breathes but fails to respond to drugs or stimuli.’
‘What happened?’ Kersh asked as Bethesda and Old Enoch began running in pieces of plate from the rack outside.
‘He was found like this,’ Ezrachi replied. ‘I believe it might have something to do with this,’ the Apothecary said, picking up a small, ornately decorated urn from a dormitory shelf. He handed it to the Scourge who examined it with interest. ‘It was reported stolen from the Memorial Mausoleum by the Sisters but found here with Melmoch.’
‘What is it?’
‘The Palatine was short on detail but I gather it is used in an annual, ceremonial capacity to dust the Ecclesiarch’s shrine. The material inside the urn is formulated from a by-product of the Emperor’s metabolism, if you believe that. The dust particles are impregnated with negative psychic energy, so I’m told. For all I know there could be bread crumbs inside, but for the fact that the Palatine and her Sisters were almost on the verge of charging down the hermitage door to recover it and the effect exposure has had on Melmoch here.’
‘Why would he do that to himself?’ Kersh asked as his serfs worked fast about him.
‘This is nothing. Ever since the comet appeared, witchbreeds have been dying,’ Ezrachi told the corpus-captain.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Astropaths hanging from cloisters, Navigators stepping unsuited into airlocks. All kinds of insanity.’
‘What about the Angelica Mortis?’
‘Zaragoza’s dead. That bird of his went mad and tore his throat out,’ the Apothecary said.
‘Something wrong with the pet?’
‘Or with Zaragoza,’ Ezrachi said. ‘Who knows? Shadrath recalled the Angelica Mortis back to the cemetery world. She has the sprint trader Avignor Star under her guns. The captain wishes to leave with the last of the great and good, but the trader carries the only remaining Navigator. Commander Bartimeus is under orders to destroy her if she attempts to leave. With the pontifex’s chief astropath, Melmoch
and this Navigator are the only psykers left on or around the planet.’
‘Chaplain Shadrath has been in command?’ the Scourge asked.
Ezrachi nodded. ‘He charged me with your care and completed the destruction of the Ruinous monument.’
‘The monument,’ the corpus-commander repeated, looking down at the Librarian. ‘Melmoch said it was a beacon.’
‘Well, now we know what it was beckoning,’ the Apothecary said.
‘Why didn’t Shadrath just leave?’ Kersh asked. ‘That’s what he wanted.’
‘He had no orders to leave,’ Ezrachi insisted. ‘I told him your symptoms were likely to be short-term. He restricted his commands to the execution of your wishes and precautionary measures. The Gauntlet sits on the rockrete, fuelled and ready to go. The strike cruiser awaits your order to leave. We are leaving, aren’t we?’
Kersh’s mind seemed elsewhere. He was looking down at the small urn.
‘We should return this…’
‘Kersh!’ Ezrachi said. ‘We’re leaving, yes?’
‘You would have me abandon one of the Emperor’s worlds at the sight of an omen in the sky?’ Kersh grizzled.
‘Whatever is ending worlds in the wake of the Keeler Comet, I fear we are too few a number to dissuade it from taking this tiny planet of the dead,’ Ezrachi barked back. ‘We have a ship. We have a Navigator. We should alert the cordon at Vanaheim. There – shoulder to shoulder with our brothers – we can make our stand.’
‘We have an astropath – you said it yourself,’ the corpus-captain persisted. ‘And we have a message for him to send. The Viper Legion are nearest.’
‘There is an astrotelepathic blackout for light years around,’ Ezrachi shot back.
‘Then he shall have to double his efforts!’
‘Kersh, don’t do this.’
‘Do what, Ezrachi? Carry out my Chapter Master’s orders?’
‘Our purpose here is fulfilled. Events are unfolding on a larger canvas. We must make a run for Vanaheim–’
‘We are Excoriators,’ Kersh seethed. ‘Attrition fighters. Our gene-kindred fought before the walls of the Imperial Palace. We are not heralds and harbingers. We are Excoriators and this is the Imperium beneath our feet. We stand our ground and we fight, whatever the odds. As though this were the palace itself. I have failed my Chapter Master. I will not fail my Emperor.’ The two Space Marines burned into each other with searing eyes as Kersh’s serfs pressurised his seals and attached his weapons to his belt. ‘And neither will you.’
