ceiling, telling the tales of the glories won and the lives lost in each single facet of the Eternal Crusade.
The only noise except for Grimaldus's own breathing was the crackling hum of stasis fields enclosing Templar relics. Grimaldus passed one, a blurry field of smoky blue force revealing through its milky surface a bolter that had once belonged to Castellan Duron two thousand years before. The kill-markings scratched into the firearm's surface, etched in the tiniest Gothic lettering, covered the entire weapon like holy scripture.
Grimaldus stood by the plinth displaying the bolter for some time, his fingers itching to enter the release code on the keypad built into the shield's column. Such secrets were the purview of the Chaplain brotherhood that maintained this shrine, and even before he had risen to his current rank, Grimaldus had honoured the machine-spirits of the chamber's relics through ritual blessings and reconsecrations.
There was great succour in bearing the weapons of champions, even if only to cleanse and purify them after a warp jump.
Only one of the plinths - and in the Temple of Dorn, there were over a hundred occupied displays - bore what Grimaldus had come for. He stood before the short column, reading the silver plaque beneath the pulsing stasis shield.
Mordred Reclusiarch.
'
Beneath the words was a keypad, each key bearing a Gothic sigil in gold leaf. Grimaldus entered the nineteen-digit code for this specific column, and the stasis field powered down with a grinding of ancient engines inside the stone plinth.
Upon the flat surface of the white stone column, a weapon rested, deactivated and silent, freed of the blue illumination that had protected it.
Without any ceremony at all, Grimaldus clutched the maul's haft and raised it in his sure grip. The head was a hammer of holy gold and blessed adamantium fashioned into the shape of eagle wings over a stylised Templar cross. The haft was darkened metal as long as the knight's own arm.
The weapon's ornate head caught the dim glow from the lume-globes ensconced in the walls, and was painted briefly in flashes of reflected light as he turned it in his hands.
The warrior-priest stood like this for some time.
'Brother,' came a voice from behind. Grimaldus turned, instinct bringing the weapon to bear.
Despite never holding the relic before, his scarred fingertips found the activation rune along its handle before his heart could even beat once. The eagle-winged hammerhead flared with threatening brightness, serpents of hissing electricity flickering over the gold and silver metal.
The figure smiled to be revealed in such stark illumination. In a face pockmarked and crevassed by decades of battle, Grimaldus saw the amusement in the younger knight's pale eyes.
'Reclusiarch,' the figure inclined his head in greeting.
'Artarion.'
'We draw near to our destination. Estimates put translation back into realspace within the hour. I took the liberty of readying the squad for planetfall.'
Artarion's grin, much like Artarion himself, was ugly to look upon. In contrast, Grimaldus finally returned the smile, but as with his eyes there was an unsuspected gentleness in the expression.
'This world will burn,' the warrior-priest said, not even a shadow of doubt creeping into his voice.
'It will not be the first.' Artarion's scratched lips parted to reveal steel teeth - implanted replacements due to a sniper shot fifteen years before. The rifle round had taken him in the side of the face, shattering his jaw. The mess of scar tissue webbing the flesh around the left side of his lips added to the thin, sneering image he projected when his helm was removed. 'It will not be the first,' he said again, 'nor the last.'
'Have you seen the projections? The fleet auguries, the number of vessels in the local systems already, the reports of those yet to arrive?'
'I lost interest when the numbers became too high for me to count on my fingers.' Artarion snorted at his own weak jest. 'We will fight and win, or fight and die. All that ever changes is the colour of the sky we fight under, and the shade of the blood on our blades.'
Grimaldus lowered the crozius hammer, as if only then realising he still held it at the ready. A rich darkness settled over their sight as the relic's crackling illumination faded. In the wake of the brightness, the sharp scent of ozone - that strange freshness after a storm - filled the air. The power cells within the maul's haft whined as they reluctantly cooled down. The weapon's spirit hungered for war.
'You speak with a soldier's heart, but you are wrong to be so dismissive. This campaign… This has the weight of history about it. It would be the gravest of errors to consider this merely another conflict to add to the honour rolls.'
The softness had left Grimaldus's voice now. When he spoke, it was with the bitter passion Artarion was all too familiar with, fierce and thick with anticipation - the growled challenge of a caged animal. 'The surface of this world will burn until all of mankind's great achievements upon it are naught but ash and memory.'
'I have never heard you claim we would lose before, brother.'
Grimaldus shook his head, his voice still low and fevered. 'The planet will burn regardless of our triumph or defeat. I speak of the coming crusade's underpinning truth.'
'You are so certain?'
'I feel it in my blood. Win or lose,' the Chaplain said, 'come the final day on Armageddon, those of us that still stand will realise no war has ever cost us so dearly.'
'Have you shared these concerns with the High Marshal?' Artarion scratched the back of his neck, his fingertips soothing the itching skin around a spinal socket.
Grimaldus chuckled, momentarily blindsided by his brother's naivety.
'You think he needs me to tell him?'
Few ships in
the Imperium of Man matched the lethal grandeur of
Some ships sailed the heavens like the seaborne vessels of ancient Terra, journeying between the stars with solemnity and a measured grace.
was not one of these. Like a spear hurled into the void by the hand of Rogal Dorn himself, the flagship of the Templars had been slicing through space for ten thousand years of war. Its engines raged, streaming plasma contrails in their wake as they powered the vessel from world to world in echo of the Emperor's Great Crusade.
And the
was not alone.
At her back, the capital vessels
and
burned their engines hard, striving to keep pace and fall into a lance formation with their flagship. In the wake of these heavy cruisers - a battle-barge and smaller strike cruiser respectively - a wing of support frigates formed the rest of the lance. Seven in total, each of these faster interceptor vessels powered forward with less of a struggle to maintain formation with the
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