by Darius Hinks
Mephiston’s face was as emotionless as ever, but Rhacelus glared. ‘Address your Chief Librarian with respect, neophyte.’ Rhacelus had completed Antros’ training. He knew Antros had not been a neophyte for several years, but still seemed to enjoy taunting him with the term.
‘Forgive me, my lord,’ said Antros.
‘This is Prester Kohath,’ said Mephiston, oblivious to Antros’ breach of etiquette. ‘He was seconds from death when I lifted him from Divinus Prime. When I found him he was making his way through a ruined temple, seeking the company of cultists, unaware that they were all about to be destroyed by their own ordnance.’ Mephiston tapped one of the display screens, peering at the cascading figures. ‘In saving him from the Cronian Sector, I almost destroyed him.’ He glanced at Antros. ‘Part of what you see here is my attempt to keep him alive.’
‘Why bring him back, my lord?’ Rhacelus looked at the unconscious priest with obvious distaste. ‘You said he was seeking cultists. Surely a swift execution would have been more appropriate?’
‘He is a piece of Divinus Prime,’ said Mephiston. ‘A link to that wretched world. And something told me that a way back might be useful.’
‘Lord Mephiston,’ said Antros. ‘What convinced you to visit Divinus Prime? Epistolary Rhacelus is right – none of our campaigns in the Cronian Sector have come to anything. Every time we stop one civil war another two spring up in its place.’
‘Confessor Zin came here specifically to ask him to go,’ said Rhacelus. ‘He begged the Chief Librarian to discover what has become of this specific Cardinal World. Something about the loss of Divinus Prime has forced him to approach us for help.’
‘But the world has not been lost?’ asked Antros.
Mephiston shook his head. ‘Merely hidden.’ He waved them over to a circular desk at the back of the scriptorium. Its surface was unadorned but at a wave of Mephiston’s hand it flickered into life, flooding the chamber with blue light and a swirl of stars. Mephiston pointed at a ghostly shadow near the centre of the sector map. ‘I was intrigued by this phenomenon long before Zin’s communiques arrived.’ He placed his hand over the strange anomaly. ‘It is impossible to contact Divinus Prime by any normal means. I felt the death agonies of entire astropathic choirs when they tried. And the Imperial fleet could scour the Cronian Sector for centuries without finding anything. Even if I ignore the voice that has been calling me there, I find this anomaly interesting. It is clearly the work of whatever or whoever is behind all the other uprisings and schisms.’ He closed his fist around the projection. ‘I only managed to project a sliver of my being, a simulacrum. I could not hold my place there for long, but I had enough time to perform the Second Rite of the Ensanguined. I mingled my blood with the flesh of Divinus Prime.’ He looked at the priest on the rack. ‘And brought a little of that flesh back with me.’
‘What have you learned from him?’ asked Antros.
Mephiston shrugged. ‘Nothing. He has been like this since I dragged him through the warp.’ Mephiston stepped closer to the rack and examined the dials and gauges that punctuated its brass frame. ‘But something in Zin’s ramblings made me think Divinus Prime is worth further thought. The time has come to try again.’
Mephiston summoned his personal chirurgeon over. The serf scuttled out from the shadows, carried on a rippling skirt of needle-like legs. He was a walking collection of surgical devices arrayed around a few vestigial scraps of humanity. The man had been so heavily augmented that he looked more arachnid than human. His long, segmented forelimbs clattered against the dials of the machine with no obvious result. Then he droned a few prayers before plunging a needle into the priest’s thigh.
Kohath slumped in his bonds, hanging limply from the metal frame.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Rhacelus, more irritated than concerned.
The chirurgeon shook his head, shaking an oily mane of cables. He had a round, whiskered face and wide, unblinking eyes, and as he prodded Kohath he rubbed some of his syringe-tipped fingers over his robes, fidgeting and nervous. ‘No. Lord Rhacelus,’ he replied, his voice punctuated by a series of moist clicking sounds. ‘That is not the case. I do not think that is the case. At least. At least. If it is the case. I do not think–’
Prester Kohath woke up with a scream. He jolted against his restraints, thrashing wildly, trying to free himself. His terrified stare was locked on Mephiston.
‘Daemon!’ he howled, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Warp spawn! Get away from me! In the name of the Throne!’
‘Aphek,’ said Mephiston and the chirurgeon raised its forest of clicking limbs into the air, before selecting a second syringe.
The priest lashed out at the servitor as it approached, but Aphek dodged the blows and plunged the needle home.
Prester Kohath slumped again, but this time his eyes remained open and he ceased his screaming. The sedative drained the fury from his face, leaving the wry, cynical leer of a drunk. He studied Mephiston with derision and slurred: ‘We are what our scars have made us.’ He laughed, as though enjoying his own wit. ‘We are born in blood.’
The chirurgeon backed away, surprised, shaking his head and making another series of clicking noises.
Mephiston stared at Prester Kohath as he continued laughing to himself. The Chief Librarian looked surprised by the words and they filled Antros with an inexplicable chill. They were the words he had heard on Thermia as Mephiston butchered and burned.
‘He’s still in there,’ said Mephiston. ‘Or at least part of him is. He’s a child of Divinus Prime. His flesh knows the way home, even if his mind does not. Let me take a closer look at what he’s seeing.’
Mephiston drew his rune-inscribed force sword and Antros thought he was about to behead the man. But, instead of swinging the sword, Mephiston dragged the tip of the blade across the man’s cheek. Kohath continued babbling drunkenly as Mephiston drew a small line of blood. Mephiston brought the sword tip to his mouth and licked the blood from the blade, shivering slightly as he swallowed. Then he gripped the sword handle in both hands, placed its point on the floor and nodded his head against the hilt, closing his eyes as he muttered an incantation.
The blade pulsed red, humming like a badly earthed electrical device. Then a breeze whipped along the bookcases and pict displays, extinguishing the candles and leaving just the cold blue light of the screens. After a few seconds they too began to fade, causing the rows of servo-scribes to stop writing and look up in surprise. Some of their hoods fell back and Antros saw that they had no faces – the fronts of their heads were as smooth and featureless as the backs. The last screen died but he could still sense the faceless servo-scribes in the dark, twitching and straining towards him.
Prester Kohath continued muttering and laughing as blood trickled down his cheek and the scriptorium fell into darkness.
The sanguine glow from Vitarus was enough for Antros to discern the towering silhouettes of Mephiston and Rhacelus looming over the rack. The Chief Librarian still had his head resting against the handle of his sword and both battle-brothers were so motionless they could have been part of the architecture.
‘The sky,’ exclaimed Prester Kohath, ceasing his gibberish and speaking in a soft, quiet voice. ‘Peculiar. Like nothing I’ve seen.’
Antros recognised the odd mix of accents and realised Mephiston was now speaking through the priest. He had possessed him.
Prester Kohath looked directly at Antros, his eyes changing to a deep, bloody red. They flickered like votives in the dark as Mephiston continued speaking through his captive. ‘Zin’s priests are butchering each other. Another pointless holy war. A genocidal schism over some subtle point of doctrine. There’s a fortress. Volgatis. A convent. All the bloodshed stems from there. The ecclesiarchs are killing each other for possession of it.’ The man chained to the rack shook his head, confused. ‘Kohath doesn’t even know why. None of them know why. Kohath ju
st knows that the convent is divine – and that it must be saved. No, wait, he thinks it must not be saved. He does not know who to believe. He is–’
Kohath screamed again, jerking against his chains as the red light vanished from his eyes. His screams became ragged coughs and blood bubbled between his lips as he thrashed from side to side. He shouted ‘Born in blood!’ repeatedly until Aphek clattered forwards and sedated him again, sending him back into a fitful sleep.
The candles flickered back into life and Mephiston lifted his head from the handle of his sword. There was an intrigued expression on his face and Antros sensed that he had seen more than he had shared with them. ‘He’s on the verge of collapse. I can push him no further.’
‘And what will you say to that baseborn oaf, Zin?’ asked Rhacelus. ‘If we must endure another meeting with the cretin, can you at least disabuse him of his romantic ideas about Divinus Prime?’
Mephiston glanced up into the shadows, studying the ranks of gilt-edged books that lined the walls. ‘Take word to Captain Vatrenus, Rhacelus. When Confessor Zin lands, they should escort him to the Ostensorio. I will meet him there.’
Rhacelus’ strange blue eyes flashed in the half-light. ‘The Ostensorio? Are you sure, Mephiston? It’s ruined. One false step and the whole place might come down.’
Mephiston glanced at the star chart that was still hovering over the desk. ‘The Ostensorio, Rhacelus.’
Rhacelus hesitated briefly, then clanged his sword against his chest armour and marched from the scriptorium, leaving Antros alone with the Chief Librarian.
Without a word, Mephiston strode off down a vaulted passageway, heading towards his private chambers and clearly expecting Antros to follow. Antros felt a rush of elation. His private audience with Mephiston had finally come. He hurried after him, intrigued to know where they were headed. The Chief Librarian’s inner sanctums were a mystery to all but an elect few of the Chapter’s most senior officers.
The passageway broadened and then reached a dead end. Facing them was a tear-drop-shaped alcove, eight or nine feet tall, and set in the recess was a candlelit shrine. The shrine centred on a golden, haloed death mask, fixed to the top of a marble plinth, glinting in the flickering light. Even in death, it was clear that the original wearer of the mask must have been strikingly beautiful. His expression was wonderfully serene, as though he had died in a state of utter oneness with the universe.
Mephiston lifted the golden mask and pressed it to his face. He only wore it for a second, but when he placed it back on its stand, his face was punctured with hundreds of tiny cuts.
As the mask clicked back into place, it rattled slightly and opened its eyes, revealing two featureless white orbs. Upon seeing Mephiston, the mask’s tranquil expression vanished and the face crumpled into a bestial snarl, jolting on its base and forming its mouth into a silent howl.
Antros was about to ask for an explanation when the shrine dropped back into the wall, taking the tormented mask with it and leaving an open doorway onto nothing. Damp, cool air rushed out to meet them and Antros stepped closer, peering into the void.
‘The Sepulcrum Maleficus,’ said Mephiston, stepping through the doorway and vanishing from sight.
Antros followed and found himself on a curved, metal stairway, wrought of interlocking metal plates, that plunged down into the shadows. He could see very little, but the hulking form of Mephiston was just a few steps lower and he hurried after him.
Mephiston waved one of his hands, describing a lazy circle above his head. Lights sprang to life in answer to his gesture – torches, housed in winged, golden sconces, fixed to the walls of a tall, cylindrical atrium. The top of the atrium was so far away that Antros thought he could make out the stars of a distant night sky. Then he looked down and saw that there was no floor – the network of interlinked metal stairs hung over an abyss. The stairs were slowly rotating – vast hoops moving in stately, sweeping arcs, intersecting like the rings of an enormous orrery, but rather than carrying planets, the circular stairs carried elaborately sculpted sarcophagi, swinging them through the darkness like heavenly bodies.
‘The Sepulcrum Maleficus?’ whispered Antros. ‘I do not recall that name, my lord.’
‘My resting place, Lexicanium, and the resting place of my predecessors. Our place of communion, where we come to share thoughts. Although their gene-seed has been removed, their wisdom remains.’ As they passed the ivory caskets, Antros glimpsed names of great renown – long-dead heroes of the Librarius, their imposing sarcophagi decorated with ornate scrollwork, warded with liturgies and runes.
Mephiston paused beside one of the tombs and placed a hand on the cold ivory. ‘Chief Librarian Asterion,’ he said. Antros sensed that the words were not directed at him but at the dead hero in the coffin. It sounded like Mephiston was greeting him. As he continued on down the steps, Mephiston muttered, ‘He will not be here long.’ Again, Antros sensed he was talking to ghosts.
They reached a circular platform at the centre of the atrium. It was open to a sheer drop on all sides but at its centre there was a cluster of tall, claw-armed chairs, gathered around a gilded table.
Mephiston waved Antros to one of the chairs and, as Antros sat down, a man stepped from one of the orbiting staircases and began removing Mephiston’s armour. Mephiston had not had a chance to clean his battleplate since the fight in the Ostensorio and it was caked in blood and filth. As Mephiston’s artificer worked, Antros watched the man with interest, wondering what kind of soul would inhabit such an austere place. He was dressed in thick, crimson robes, embroidered with an intricate pattern of glyphs and runes, and he was clearly more than just a simple blood thrall. His frame was as powerful as one of the Adeptus Astartes and, when Antros caught a glimpse of the man’s face, he saw that his eyes had been removed, leaving two puckered scars.
The blind artificer unclasped Mephiston’s plates of ribbed armour, whispering prayers as he worked. The prayers were accompanied by the wheeze of hydraulics as he carefully removed the slabs of ceramite to be polished and venerated. As Mephiston’s scarred, corpse-grey limbs were revealed, Antros noticed something odd. Sections of the Chief Librarian’s skin were shimmering and dark, as though consumed by a black fire. He was falling into shadow.
Mephiston saw Antros looking at his arm and frowned. ‘What have you learned?’ he asked, covering his skin and signalling for the artificer to leave.
Antros was unsure if Mephiston was speaking to him or the corpses.
Mephiston gave him an unreadable look. ‘Regarding Divinus Prime. Did Rhacelus not pass on my order?’
Antros hesitated. How could a mere Lexicanium hope to advise Mephiston?
‘You found nothing,’ said Mephiston.
‘Very little,’ Antros admitted. ‘The Cronian Sector is so awash with warring sects that nothing is recorded with any diligence. The Wars of Sanctitude seem so pointless it is not always clear who’s fighting whom. Some of the cults have been isolated for so long that they barely follow the Imperial Creed. There is so much superstition. So much mythologising. It is hard to find concrete facts.’
Mephiston, dressed now in a simple habit, began plucking books from the room’s single bookcase. It was beautifully made, a set of tall shelves, carved from the same ivory as the sarcophagi and holding an eclectic mix of military treatises and history books, as well as a few battered data-slates and auspexes. On the top shelf was a small shrine to the Angel Sanguinius, and another object that caught Antros’ eye: an ugly little splinter of rubble, placed in a gold casket as though it were the most revered relic in the Librarium. He recognised it straight away: it was a piece of the ruined fist he had seen on Thermia, a relic of the dreadful scene that had thrown them together. Mephiston saw him looking at it but said nothing, signalling for him to continue.
‘As you know, Divinus Prime is even more of an enigma than the other Cardinal Worlds in the sector,�
� Antros continued. ‘It seems to me that the ecclesiarchs were hiding it for long before this recent vanishing trick.’ He clicked a data-slate from his armour and scanned through the meagre notes on its screen, ‘Nobody is ever given permission to land. The last secular visit I could find mention of was thirteen centuries ago.’ He peered at the data-slate. ‘The Terran poet, Pindarus.’
Mephiston paused at the mention of the poet, mouthed a few stanzas of his work, then continued studying his book.
‘There was nothing in any of the usual texts,’ said Antros.
Mephiston nodded.
‘But I did find one morsel of information.’
Mephiston looked up, surprised.
‘It was very little, just the briefest of mentions in some old breviaries. Apparently, the man who acts as planetary governor is a senior priest called Arch-Cardinal Dravus. He has a rather antiquated title – the Lord-Ministrant Proconsul of Divinus Prime. He’s the head of an Imperial cult called the Children of the Vow.’ He shook his head, scrolling through the notes again. ‘I could find no mention of that cult anywhere else. It seems to have been deliberately obscured.’
Mephiston stared at Antros in silence. Then he rose from his chair and returned to the bookshelves. ‘The Children of the Vow,’ he muttered, pulling another book down and flicking through the pages. ‘That’s it,’ he said, with surprising urgency. ‘The Vow. How did I miss that?’
Mephiston spent the next ten minutes reading intently and speaking under his breath in languages Antros could not understand. It sounded like a jumble of different tongues, as though many people were speaking at once. Antros wondered if he was expected to leave. He rose to go and then paused at the bottom of the steps. ‘My lord,’ he said. ‘In the Ostensorio…’
Mephiston continued staring at the book and replied in vague, distracted tones. ‘You are no longer a neophyte, Antros. You will witness many such things in years to come.’
‘I understand. But I was not talking of the things that followed you. When you returned to the Librarium you said something, in my mind, just before they attacked. You talked about finding an answer. What did you mean by that? An answer to what?’ He hesitated, aware that such questions might be another break with protocol. ‘Were you referring to the events on Thermia?’
