by Darius Hinks
Rhacelus paid them no heed, placing his palm on the two numerals sculpted in the centre of the door. The door swung back with a groan of hinges and light flooded out to greet them. They walked on, past the sentries and, as he passed by, Antros had the odd sensation that their heads were swivelling, owl-like behind their gold masks, watching him as he passed. He looked back and saw that their heads had not moved, but he could not rid himself of the idea.
‘The Chemic Spheres,’ said Rhacelus, calling Antros’ thoughts back to the blinding light ahead of them.
Before them was an ivory dome, caged by elegant, golden struts and buttresses. It burned with the power of the star trapped in the vaults above. There were rune-inscribed cables embedded in the girders, feeding Idalia’s furious energy down into the dome’s walls. The ivory surface was opaque, so he could see nothing within it and it shone so brightly that he could not see what surrounded it.
‘What is this?’ asked Antros, impressed by the majesty of the structure.
‘A prison,’ replied Rhacelus. ‘A prison within prisons, strong enough to contain the Chapter’s most dangerous weapon.’ He looked hard at Antros. ‘It takes the power of a sun to contain the soul incarcerated here.’
Antros felt another rush of excitement. How many other Lexicani had been here? He looked around at Rhacelus, but the old warrior ignored him, scratching his iron-grey beard thoughtfully as he studied the curved ivory wall before them. This close, Antros could see that the surface was not as featureless as it first appeared, but engraved with an intricate pattern of tiny numbers.
Rhacelus unclipped a glass syringe from his armour. It was full of crimson liquid and as Rhacelus held it up into the sphere’s light, Antros saw shapes suspended in it. He watched, fascinated, as Rhacelus pushed the needle into the wall of the sphere. The surface gave a little, as though it were flesh rather than ivory, and Rhacelus slowly injected the red liquid.
At first, nothing happened. Antros was just about to ask for an explanation when a web of thin red lines spread out from the needle tip. The crimson tracery crawled and trickled, like paint blown by a child. As the lines rippled over the ivory they formed a blood-red rectangle, several feet taller than the two Librarians.
‘You remember what I said?’ asked Rhacelus, glaring at Antros.
‘Of course,’ replied Antros, but he was only half listening – he was focusing all of his thoughts on the dazzling sphere, trying furiously to see a glimpse of what lay beyond the red door. His mind touched on something that made him recoil. He felt, rather than saw, a snapshot of horrific violence.
Rhacelus looked at him in surprise. ‘You saw something.’
Antros shook his head. ‘Just a feeling,’ he muttered.
Rhacelus was clearly puzzled but said no more, returning his attention to the doorway. He muttered a string of words but Antros only caught two of them – it sounded like ‘dark heir’ or ‘dark air’.
Then Rhacelus gave Antros a brief nod, withdrew the needle and stepped into the crimson portal, vanishing from view.
Antros followed, his hands raised before him, expecting to slam against the wall of the sphere. He did not, and found himself in near-total darkness. The only light came from Rhacelus’ warp-tinted eyes as he turned to face Antros. ‘Remember,’ he said, before muttering another series of words and vanishing from view for a second time.
Antros stepped after him then halted, blinded by light and noise.
He crouched low, drawing his pistol. He and Rhacelus were standing on the ruins of a colossal Imperial building. Flames and smoke covered shattered parapets and the ground was shaking, as though the world were in the grip of a violent fever. There was a dull hammer blow of artillery impacts and the chemical sky was slashed into strange geometry by rocket trails and lines of tracer fire. Beyond the ruins there was a great mountain of flame, rolling majestically across.
Rhacelus laughed. ‘No need for that,’ he said, nodding at Antros’ pistol. ‘We are neither here nor then.’ He clambered over the face of a decapitated statue and waved for Antros to follow.
Despite Rhacelus’ words, Antros could not help flinching as ordnance pounded and cracked all around him. A shell landed nearby, obliterating a grand archway and hurling debris in all directions. Antros held his hands before his face as a tank-sized piece of rubble flew towards him. The masonry passed straight through him and crashed down several feet away. He looked down at his battleplate and saw it was unmarked.
Intrigued, he tried pushing his foot through the rocks he was standing on and found that he could. His boot passed through the ground like water. He was an apparition.
‘The illusion mirrors real-world physics,’ explained Rhacelus as he continued climbing across the ruins. ‘It’s easier for your mind to cope with it this way. We could just as easily swim through these stones but our minds have an annoying fondness for the inconveniences of the materium, so they let us think we need to crawl and clamber through a “real” Hades Hive.’
‘Hades Hive?’ exclaimed Antros, looking up at the shattered spires that surrounded them. He suddenly recognised the ruins that were silhouetted against the war-torn sky. The wars for Armageddon were legendary for their brutality and Hades Hive in particular had great significance for the Blood Angels Chapter. ‘Why are we at Hades Hive?’ he cried, struggling to be heard over the explosions and clatter of collapsing walls.
‘Listen, neophyte,’ replied Rhacelus, as Antros hurried to catch up with him. ‘I told you we are not there or then; we are on Baal, beneath the Diurnal Vault, shouting like idiots into the silence of the Chemic Spheres.’
They crested a fallen buttress and found a bloodbath. Scattered in a crater below them were the corpses of dozens of xenos monsters – massive, brutish greenskins, clad in crudely wrought plates of armour and clutching a scrapyard of jerry-built weapons. Their low-slung heads had a boar-like bestiality, and their enormous jaws were crammed with tusks. If any of them had been alive, they would have made a terrifying sight. As it was, they were gutted and bleeding, gathering flies as their spilled viscera slowly baked in the sun.
Sitting on a toppled pillar, clutching one of the greenskins’ hearts, was a peculiar sight. It was a Blood Angel dressed in the black of the Death Company. The ceremonial armour, daubed with a red X, clearly marked him out as one of those brave brothers who had lost his mind to the gene curse. The berserkers of the Death Company could only serve the Chapter by making their deaths as costly as possible. Sitting calmly on a rock was not possible for such damned souls – they raged, screamed and killed until they made their final sacrifice. Then Antros felt a flood of understanding as he saw the Blood Angel’s face. It was Mephiston, but Mephiston as he must once have been – as physically perfect as any other Blood Angel. ‘Calistarius,’ muttered Antros. This was the moment of Mephiston’s rebirth.
From his vantage point on the buttress, Antros could see dozens more greenskins loping through the ruins towards the spot where Calistarius was seated. He was about to call out, when Rhacelus placed a hand on his arm and shook his head. ‘Remember your training, Lexicanium,’ he said, nodding to the pouches at Antros’ belt. ‘Record and illuminate, brother, record and illuminate.’
Antros shook his head, confused. The whole situation was surreal, but he did as he was ordered, taking out his mnemonic stylus and tablet and beginning to take notes.
‘You said this was a prison,’ he said, whispering, even though he knew the greenskins could not hear him.
Rhacelus nodded. ‘Mephiston created the Chemic Spheres to imprison our most dangerous weapon – himself. He needed a safe place to explore what he is.’
‘What he is?’ Antros was struggling to follow.
Rhacelus nodded at the approaching greenskins. ‘Watch and record. Talk later.’
He tried not to react as the greenskins picked up their pace, smelling the presence of Calistarius. They swagg
ered across the rubble, hulking and ape-like as they belched out commands in the disgusting guttural language of their kind. The leader was a head taller than the others and clad in a full-body suit of rusting, jagged metal. Even its enormous head was hidden inside a grille-fronted helmet, hammered together from mismatched plates of armour. It looked more machine than ork, splintering slabs of rockcrete under its square, metal boots as it smashed through walls and piles of razor wire. A flame gun was fixed to its left arm, dripping promethium, and the other arm ended in a giant, mechanised claw. At the sight of Calistarius it bellowed with pleasure, pointed its flamer at him and turned the crater into a lake of fire.
When the flames cleared, Calistarius was still seated, calmly studying the now blackened heart he was holding. He glanced up at the circle of greenskins that were forming around him but showed no sign of lifting the force sword that was lying across his lap.
The leader of the greenskins raised its metal claw and roared again, spraying blood and spit through the mesh of its helmet. The rest of the greenskins swept forwards, flooding the crater with their armour-clad bulk.
At the last possible moment, Calistarius stood and stepped to one side, swinging his sword as he moved and decapitating the first ork to reach him. The movement was so easy and fluid that it seemed more like dancing than fighting.
The now headless monster crashed into the wall of the crater, tearing away another hunk of granite.
The orks tried to correct their charge but several of them slammed into the spot that Calistarius had just vacated and the rest of them howled in frustration as they saw that he had moved again. Calistarius had bounded over a series of burned-out tank chassis and leapt at the orks’ leader.
The monster tried to spin and face him, but its heavy armour made it slow and, before it could aim its weapon, Calistarius dropped from the sky and hammered his sword blade down through the grille of its helmet. As the blade struck home it erupted into crimson fire and the ork’s head detonated in a plume of blood mist.
As the creature collapsed to the ground, Calistarius pulled his sparking sword free, placed his boot on the ork’s corpse and used it as a springboard for another leap. As he passed over the heads of the mob below, they loosed a barrage of gunfire, but Calistarius merged with the ceiling of black fumes and vanished from sight, before reappearing back on the rock where he had started.
‘There are too many,’ hissed Antros, drawing Rhacelus’ attention to the huge mobs of greenskins that were now rushing towards the crater, drawn by the flames and gunfire.
‘That’s the point,’ replied Rhacelus, nodding at Antros’ stylus. ‘Record and illuminate.’
Antros looked back to the crater and saw that Calistarius was now standing on the broken pillar, his sword raised and his plasma pistol drawn in readiness as the waves of orks charged.
Lines of blue plasma cut through the smoke, slamming into the heavily armoured orks and sending them sprawling onto their backs. Calistarius fired with preternatural speed, filling the crater with light and broken bodies. The orks crashed over the lip of the crater in ever greater numbers, crushing each other in their kill frenzy and, finally, Calistarius’ pistol sparked and died, overheated by such a furious barrage of shots. He hurled it aside and stepped casually forwards to meet them with his blade, slashing, thrusting and parrying with such languid ease that he might have been back on Baal in a training cage.
By now the crater was heaped with greenskin dead and they were gradually forcing Calistarius back with their sheer numbers, grunting and roaring as they tried to bring him down.
Still showing no sign of alarm, Calistarius took a step back, grabbed his sword in both hands and stabbed the flaming blade down into the ground. Lines of fire splayed out beneath the orks’ feet and, with a series of moist tearing sounds, their bodies began to burst open, exploding in a shower of boiling blood. The spitting, steaming liquid filled the air as row after row of the greenskins exploded inside their plate armour.
All the greenskins near to Calistarius collapsed in ruptured mounds, adding to the heaps of dead. Calistarius wrenched his force sword free and waded through the gore towards the survivors.
‘Rhacelus,’ hissed Antros, as he saw what Calistarius could not. As Mephiston prepared to finish off the rest of the orks, one of the fallen orks behind had risen from the corpses and aimed an odd-looking pistol at him.
Rhacelus shook his head, so Antros watched in impotent horror as the pistol flashed blue and fired.
Calistarius had already begun killing the rest of the orks, but he seemed to sense the shot before it was fired, dodging to one side. His foresight stopped the blow taking his head off but it still impacted with his shoulder with a fierce blue flash, hurling him through the air and slamming him into the base of a toppled pillar.
He reached out towards the ork with his fingers splayed and the monster arched in pain, before collapsing into a sack of broken bones and pulverised flesh.
Another ork had taken advantage of the distraction to fire at Calistarius, this time with a big, two-handed rocket launcher. To fire a weapon like that at such short range was nothing short of suicidal. The crater vanished in a column of dust and whistling shrapnel.
When the dust cleared, Antros saw that Calistarius had been crushed into the masonry, like a toy pressed into wet clay. His black armour was glowing with embers and scorch marks and his force sword had been warped out of shape, the blade twisted into a useless mass of blunted metal.
Calistarius wrenched himself out of the rock and shook the dust from his face. The light show had drawn an even bigger crowd. Hundreds of greenskins were now gathering round the crater, grinning with their huge, tusk-crammed jaws and training a forest of guns on the dust-shrouded Space Marine below them.
Calistarius paused in shock, not at the numbers of greenskins, but at the sight of his ruined sword.
Antros gasped in pain as his head filled with an unbelievable rage. Rhacelus grabbed him before he fell, staring at him.
‘What–?’ he started to ask, but at that moment, a deafening howl tore through the air, drowning out even the sound of artillery and aircraft.
The ruins fell into shadow, as though something had passed in front of the sun and Antros looked down into the crater to see that the sound was coming from Calistarius. Just as he had seen on Thermia V, Calistarius had been transformed by an uncontrollable rage. He raised his hands towards the sky as though beseeching the clouds for aid, howling all the while.
All Antros could do was watch in awe as the heavens responded to Calistarius’ summons. The wheeling, toxic clouds overhead formed into mountainous shards of grey rock and then dropped from the sky.
Antros shielded his face as the colossal spearheads slammed into the ruined city. They hit with a seismic impact, collapsing the few remaining towers and sending up new mountains of dust and fire. Antros climbed the wing of a broken statue and looked out over Hades Hive. Much of the view was obscured by the plumes of dust and smoke, but in the gaps he saw that, in every direction, the rain of mountains was obliterating the ork clans. The blows were not discriminating between ork and human, though. He saw entire columns of Imperial armour vanish beneath the falling rocks and squadrons of Stormraven gunships smashed from the air.
As this atrocity grew in fury, Calistarius’ roar grew louder. There was now a note of horror mixed in with the rage and, as Calistarius howled at the boiling sky, Antros felt alien thoughts blossoming in his mind. It was Calistarius’ agony. Now! said a voice in his head. Now!
The noises inside Antros’ head merged with the cacophony outside, until he could take no more. He joined his howl to Calistarius’.
Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the scene was gone. Antros stumbled, fell to the floor and saw that he was back in the Chemic Spheres. Nothing of the crypt beyond was visible – he was inside the ivory dome. Except it was no longer ivory. The intricate netwo
rk of red lines had now crisscrossed the entire sphere and it was dripping constantly so that as Antros looked up, a fine, crimson rain washed over his face and he had to blink away the blood to see.
Opposite him was Mephiston. He was sitting in a tall, brass chair engraved with thousands of tiny cartouches. His face was haggard and cadaverous once more, and he was dressed in his usual crimson armour and robes. One of the syringes had been removed from his armour and it lay at his feet as he stared up at the ceiling of the sphere. The glass barrel was empty, Mephiston’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets and he was slumped in the chair like a corpse. Antros thought the Chief Librarian might be dead. He was drenched in the blood that was falling over everything, slapping in thick droplets on the gleaming white floor.
‘Chief Librarian!’ cried Antros, climbing to his feet.
A hand on his shoulder halted him.
The veteran Librarian nodded to the other side of the sphere. As Antros looked, a second brass chair materialised from the air, covered in the same strange symbols as the first. As it formed from the aether, a complicated tracery of glyphs, lines and numbers spread across the floor, as though drawn in the blood by an invisible scribe – a crimson spiderweb, linking the two chairs.
Antros noticed that, as he walked, the crimson symbols on the floor morphed and flowed around his footfalls, redrawing their shapes in response to his steps.
Rhacelus walked in the opposite direction and sat on a third brass chair that materialised to greet him. A complex network of red lines and ellipses now covered the floor, linking the three chairs as if they were celestial bodies in a star chart.
