I try one more time. ‘Reclusiarch,’ I say, ‘remember the duties of your high office. Destroy false gods. Guide our Chapter through the thickets of the archenemy’s illusions.’
‘I do,’ he answers. ‘I am.’
I take a step forward. I do not raise my sword, but nor do I sheathe it. ‘Really? Where, then, is your theological rigour? You are being fooled by a cunning lure. Look at the horrors that surround this graven image. It is the source of these horrors.’
Quirinus shakes his head slowly. ‘You mistake your own blindness for mine.’ He pities me. ‘The blasphemies outside these walls are not spawned by the icon. They are an attack on it. You are part of that attack, and I wonder just how unwitting you are.’ His helmet is unmoving. I know he is watching me closely, waiting for an attack. Without turning his head, he points up and behind to the statue. ‘You tell me to look, psyker. Do so yourself. Gaze upon the glory of our primarch’s martyrdom. Find your soul, Mephiston, or learn now if you still have one.’
I do as he asks. I will engage with him as far as reason and too-precious time permit. I do not want to come to blows. I have too much respect for the Blood Angel he once was, and that he still believes himself to be. So I turn my gaze to the statue. Without my willing it, it fills my consciousness. Its perfection is overwhelming. It is majesty and tragedy. It is the heart-rending moment when the future of our Chapter turned to ash. It requires an extraordinary effort on my part not to fall to my knees.
‘Why do you resist?’
I hear Quirinus’s voice. I do not see him. The radiance of the statue is the only sight in the universe.
‘I see you straining, Mephiston. Why? What is the daemonic influence that turns you against our primarch? You see the truth now. I can tell. Show me that there is still hope for you, that you are not forsaken.’
The questions strike home. The statue reaches into the deepest recesses of my being. I resist it. I will not have it there. But Quirinus asks why and suddenly all my answers seem tainted. The doubts that have gnawed since my struggle with M’kar twine like serpents around my soul. What is it within me that fights against this icon? Is it the daemonic that struggles against the holy? Why do I wish to turn from this light and drape myself in darkness?
Quirinus says, ‘Calistarius.’
The sky was black with smoke. Smoke from burning vehicles, ruined buildings, high explosives. Flesh. It had been necessary to raze Ecastor. The Word Bearers had done more than occupy the fortress. They had made its population their own. There had been nothing to save, and everything to destroy. The Blood Angels had visited the judgement of the Emperor upon the heretic and the traitor. Perhaps elsewhere on Arlesium there would be those who had not turned their faces away from the Emperor’s light. But not here. Ecastor and all within its walls had been put to the sword. The fortress itself had been shattered. Not a single wall still stood. On its plateau was now afield of rubble. From where Calistarius sat on a pile of rockcrete, the landscape of heaped and shattered grey stretched for kilometres in every direction. Here and there, an arm emerged from the wreckage. Some hands were limp, others were splayed in perpetual pleading. Beneath the remains of the fortress were thousands of lost souls.
‘You seem pensive,’ Quirinus said. The Reclusiarch strode toward him over the wreckage like the triumph of faith itself.
‘The mutations were severe.’
‘You mean there were many psykers.’
Calistarius nodded.
‘You have fought many such contingents before.’
‘But ones so large?’
‘You were tested,’ Quirinus observed.
‘I was.’ He was exhausted. He had been forced to discover the limits of his power by slamming up against them repeatedly.
Quirinus removed his helmet. ‘The smell of burning heretic is strong,’ he said, apparently changing the subject.
‘Better that than the stench of living heretic.’
Quirinus laughed. ‘Well said, brother.’ He looked off at the smoke-blurred horizon. ‘Now tell me what is troubling you.’
Calistarius smiled. ‘Do you never tire of being my confessor?’
‘If I did, I could not admit to it.’ Quirinus turned back to the Librarian. ‘Out with it.’
‘The heresy took root here so quickly,’ Calistarius said. ‘And it spread so quickly too. This world was a loyal one only a few years ago. I do not understand how a people could fall from faith with such ease.’
‘That is the essence of temptation,’ Quirinus responded. ‘Ease is what lies at the core of heresy. Chaos seems to demand nothing and give much. If one is weak, such a combination is impossible to resist. Faith, Brother-Librarian, true faith, is difficult. It demands everything.’ His voice suddenly took on a sharp, probing edge. ‘Has the warp been speaking to you?’
‘No more than usual. Whispers, promises of infinite power, visions of becoming the ultimate defender of the Imperium…’
‘… and then its ruler.’
‘Precisely. Have no fear, Reclusiarch.’ There was still a novelty to using that title. ‘I know these lies for what they are. They have no appeal for me.’
‘Perhaps not now. But if there is no temptation, then you have yet to be truly tested. The day may come when such power will seem necessary and justified.’ Quirinus paused. ‘During the battle, the Thirst and the Rage, you were able to keep them in check?’
‘Yes’. The turn of the conversation made Calistarius uneasy. He thought again of that moment on the Thunderhawk during the approach to Ecastor, when two different time periods had overlapped in his consciousness. ‘I am not slipping away,’ he reassured his old friend.
‘See that you don’t,’ Quirinus replied with more command than confidence. ‘The struggle against the Black Rage is difficult, and will always grow more difficult. Remember your faith, and remember its nature. The struggle is eternal. Beware of ease, and know that its presence is always a lie.’
‘Calistarius,’ Quirinus repeats, ‘is there anything of you still there?’
The use of that name is his mistake. The Reclusiarch is calling out to the dead, and so revealing how the quality of his thought has degraded. He believes Mephiston to be a shell built around the core of Calistarius. He is wrong. But his use of the name dredges up one of the dead Blood Angel’s memories, one that is useful. Quirinus was right all those years ago. True faith is difficult.
Belief in the statue would be easy. Therefore it is a lie.
And this is the hard, but simple truth: we have been led here by the forces of Chaos. There really is no other consideration. No matter what the statue appears to be, it is the daemonic that brought us here. That one fact negates any appearance of the holy.
The spell is broken. Full consciousness returns to me. I look away from the statue. I know it is a lie.
And yet…
No. The pain I feel in turning away is the pain of truth. I face Quirinus. ‘You have forgotten your own teachings,’ I say to him.
Either he does not hear me, or he chooses not to. ‘You are lost to us,’ he says. Though he speaks with sadness, I hear an undercurrent of satisfaction in his words. He will not forgive me for existing instead of Calistarius. He welcomes the chance to believe in my damnation.
‘No,’ I tell him, and walk towards the statue. ‘It is you who is stepping into the abyss.’
‘Come no closer,’ he warns. He braces. He will shield the statue from me. I think now he would even shield it from my unbelieving gaze. His grip on the crozius tightens. He will use it against me. The war of brothers, that tragedy that has repeated itself time and again down the Imperium’s history, is here again.
‘Move aside,’ I answer.
He raises the crozius. ‘In the name of the Emperor and Sanguinius,’ he begins.
I cut him off, anger drowning what pity I might have felt. ‘Do not speak their names,’ I snap. ‘You forfeited the right to do so when you began believing the visions that led to this accursed place.�
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He is silent for a moment, stunned by what he interprets as temerity. He has no idea of how much restraint I have shown towards him. His crozius wavers. Perhaps he is capable of doubt after all. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘Putting a stop to this monstrousness.’
‘No.’ The weapon rises again. ‘No.’ The helm vox-speaker does not convey emotion well. I hear his desperation nonetheless.
‘Your time in the warp has twisted your reason,’ I tell him. ‘I pity you, but I have had enough of your delusions. Step away from the statue. Now.’ I continue to stalk forward. I still do not raise my sword. Even if our conflict is inevitable, I shall not precipitate it. But my patience is exhausted, and so is time. Outside the tower, war is an eternal roar. On the vox-network, grim determination mixes with desperate strategy. There is no limit to our brothers’ valour and skill, but they fight against impossible odds.
Quirinus does not move. ‘You walk to your death, daemon,’ he says. He sounds more desperate yet. He does have doubts, then. He responds to them by shoring up his false belief with greater lies. He would rather I be the worst agent of Chaos than face the fact that he has been tragically mistaken.
‘You are choosing ease over truth,’ I tell him with real sorrow.
He does not listen. The skull of his helm faces me, concealing his eyes and expression. I do not need to see them. I can read his thrumming stillness. He is working very hard to maintain his conviction that he is walking the path of the righteous. The effort makes him think he has made the hard choice. The comfort this decision gives should tell him it is the wrong one.
I stop before him. Less than an arm’s length separates us, yet we are more distant than that weak vessel Calistarius could ever have imagined. This is the last moment before one of us makes the gesture that will forever bury the memories of a past friendship. ‘You have been deceived,’ I tell him. ‘There is no dishonour in that. The shame lies in deceiving yourself.’
He hears me. I know he does. He was once a giant among our Chaplains. The mind that made him so, the mind that had the strength to survive that measureless time in the warp, still lives, however clouded. ‘I…’ he says, and hesitates. He looks back at the statue. And seals his fate. The brilliance is too great. How many Chaplains could resist such a culmination of their faith? How many Blood Angels could shun this manifestation of the primarch?
Here and now, on this planet, just one.
Quirinus turns back to me. By the set of his shoulders, I know I have lost him. I say nothing more. I move around him and set foot on the dais. ‘Stop,’ he says. I do not. I raise my sword to strike the statue. Now it is my turn to hesitate. I know the icon must be destroyed. But to smash an image of Sanguinius is an act of such enormity that it gives me pause.
Quirinus seizes the moment. Cursing my existence, he swings his crozius.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ICONOCLAST
My peripheral vision catches the movement. I shift my stance, bracing at the last second. The weapon strikes my armour in the mid-section, a sacred relic clashing with a holy work artificed for me alone. The force of the blow knocks me across the chamber. I slide along the floor and slam against the wall to the right of the entrance. The metal of its construction shrieks. Bits of mortared weapons fall around me. Quirinus charges. ‘Desecrator!’ he yells. He is upon me in the blink of an eye. He aims his blow at my skull.
I bring my hands together. The sound is a thunderclap. The shockwave is directed. It lifts Quirinus off his feet and hurls him away. He lands with a crunch of ceramite on marble at the base of the dais. I stand, and am suddenly at a loss. I have never fought without lethal intent before. Quirinus has no such compunction. His bolter is out and he fires as he rises. I barely have time to conjure a shield. I stand behind a flashing, crackling shimmer in the air. Shells collide with it and ricochet around the vault. Quirinus jerks as a round punches his left pauldron. Others should be hitting the statue, but it has its own protection, and they vanish in a burst of light just before striking.
Quirinus has me on the defensive. He keeps firing. I stand motionless, concentrating on the shield. He runs at me, ignoring the stray hit. His clip empties just before he reaches me. His crozius comes in from my left side, the swing powered by the momentum of his charge and by his frantic faith. I try to block it. I am not fast enough. The blow is massive. Pain explodes on my flank. I am flattened against the assemblage of war.
My armour floods my system with pain-dampening drugs, but not before the injury transmutes restraint into rage. Quirinus thinks he knows what he is fighting. He thinks he can use the tactics he would against a common psyker: overwhelm through incessant, multiple, changing attacks; disrupt concentration; prevent any move to the offensive. This is sound strategy, and the Reclusiarch is a fierce warrior. But he does not know me. At so many profound levels, he has no idea what I am. And now his ignorance tires me. I have had enough. I sink my will into his own with the force and speed of a venomous serpent. He staggers away, clutching his head, his weapons forgotten.
‘You feel it, don’t you, Reclusiarch? You feel your mind and your body wrenched asunder. Struggle, claw at your helmet as if you could reach into your skull and pull me out of there. Savour these few seconds, the last of your control over your own movement. And now they are done. Stop.’
He stands still. There are now two statues in the vault. There is a mental scrabbling, like a small animal beneath the palm of my hand. It is his mind, struggling to escape my grip. His outrage and disbelief are palpable. He has never imagined he could be vulnerable to such an attack. The faith of a Chaplain is an iron shield against most mental assaults, and his has always been of an exceptional nature. But today, it is a false faith, an obsession clung to in defiance of the truth. It will not help him, especially not against me.
‘Mephiston!’ a voice calls from the entrance.
I turn. Albinus has followed me here. ‘What?’ I ask him. ‘Did you think I was going to kill him?’ When he does not answer, I snort my disgust and send Quirinus over to the Sanguinary Priest. Quirinus walks with stiff, jerking motions, like the marionette he is. ‘Hold him,’ I tell Albinus.
‘What are you going to’
‘Hold him.’ I command, and Albinus obeys.
I release Quirinus. He begins to struggle immediately. Albinus has him contained for the moment. Quirinus may break free, and perhaps Albinus will let him go when he realises what I am about to do, but I have the seconds I need. I leap onto the dais. I channel such energy into Vitarus that its light is a crimson brighter than the brittle white emanating from the statue. Nothing will shield the icon from me, not even my own instincts. Because still, in this final instant, the awful spectre of damnation falls over me. I do not hesitate. I attack the statue as if it were a living foe, bringing my sword down on the neck. Horror fills my soul. This fragment of time, as my arm completes its arc, is stretched almost to infinity. I see and feel and hear and taste every nuance of this irrevocable act. There is all the time in creation to wish away what I am doing. There is no time at all to prevent it. There is a sudden flare as my blade pierces the statue’s shield without slowing. And then I murder my primarch.
I know the object is no ordinary statue. Even so, my expectation has been that I would be cutting through some warp-simulacrum of stone and precious metals. Instead, my blade sinks into the neck as if it were flesh. The texture of the skin, the degree of resistance, and the nature of the wound are all familiar in the most ghastly fashion, because I have killed in this way thousands of times, across hundreds of worlds. I do not know the act of decapitation with the same intimacy as does Astorath, but I know it well enough. Ice reaches up my arm and stabs me in the chest. In the eternity that has enveloped me, I know the worst of myself. I know that M’kar’s most poisonous insinuations were the truth. I know that I will bring darkness to the Imperium until I am destroyed.
I know all these things, and then the statue vanishes, and with it, ev
erything else. False matter becomes infernal energy. My sword is a conduit, sending everything into me. Power that has been building for five thousand years courses through my blood. I cannot see, for the light is coming from me. My mouth opens in a tendon-tearing, silent howl of ecstatic agony. The scream is silent because the power is too great. There is no room for anything else. From my throat, my eyes and my hands come searing beams of pure warp energy. They are absolute potential, and at the next act of will, they will become a destruction no less absolute.
I cannot scream, I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot move. But I am capable of understanding. I have little choice. Epiphany is too weak a word to describe what I undergo. Knowledge floods me, answering questions unthought, creating new ones. The energy is encoded with the memories of the being for whom it was gathered. There are so many, too many, cascading through my mind in such an avalanche that I can retain only fragments. They are from five thousand years ago, and ten thousand, and more, back and back and back, before the Heresy, before the Emperor, before the Age of Technology. Throne, there are thoughts from the Age of Terra, almost forty millennia ago. How old is this being? It is not xenos. The earliest memories are all of humans, all on a Terra so ancient as to have passed beyond all record.
Then all these questions, all these fragments, vanish under the weight of a single memory. It falls upon me, complete and perfect in clarity and horror. It is the secret that lay behind the statue. No, I am wrong. It and the statue are one. The representation of Sanguinius was so true because it was not the work of an artist. It was a memory given form. It was a memory of a being who was present when Horus slew the angel.
A memory. And a celebration.
At this last revelation, I do not find my voice, but I find something more powerful. I find my rage. It is not the Black Rage, and surely any of my brothers would have fallen to that curse had they been exposed to that memory. But as agonising as the experience is, I have known it before. I suffered the Black Rage; I lived Sanguinius’s death. Scars have reopened, but the madness does not take me. I have known the primarch’s death twice now, once through his eyes, and once through those of a dark witness. The rage I feel is directed at that witness, and the rage does not belong to Sanguinius. It belongs to me.
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