in.
‘Proctor,’ I call, my voice bouncing unsettlingly around the cell block. Clutching the bars with my gauntlet, one power-armoured tug forces the simple lock and I step inside the cage. Grabbing Kraski by his shaggy hair I lift his head up. ‘Proctor,’ I call at him again. His eyes have rolled over white but seem to quiver a little as though he is fitting. Suddenly I find out why.
In the open mouth I see something horrible looking back out at me. Several spindly legs erupt from between the enforcer’s tobacco-stained teeth. An arachnoid being slips its tiny abdomen out of the opening and runs along my arm and across my armoured chest. All legs, the beast had crammed itself inside Kraski’s skull and devoured the contents.
Recoiling with revulsion, my pack slams into the bars of the cell. I knock the monstrosity onto the floor where it clearly considers scrabbling back at me. Dipping my hand into my holster I soon dissuade it with several floor-pulverising blasts from my bolt pistol. The horror scuttles across the floor and up the stairs before I’m even out of the cell. Holding the Mark II in both hands I smack my pauldrons into walls, aiming around corners – expecting the thing to jump at my face. The ground floor of the precinct house confronts me with a fresh nightmare of hiding places, but a swift staccato of bolt-rounds outside persuades me that the beast has fled the building.
Shouldering my way through the iron doors I see Brother Novah waving me to follow with the battle standard as he jumps from one piece of smouldering rubble to the next. I catch up with him at the boundary of destruction, where even a chapel-cryptia had weathered the bomb blast.
‘In here,’ Novah hisses, angling his bolter at a hole in the wall. Advancing through the brick- blasted opening, bolt pistol held before me, I creep into the darkness of the chapel-cryptia. Lowering the battle standard to get it inside, Novah follows. The interior – usually lit by candles – is a nest of shadows. A stained-glass portal above admits only gloom, and the centre of the chamber is dominated by a sunken stone stairwell down into a crypt. About the chapel are plinths bearing coffins of weathered stone, the brittle lids of which bear raised representations of minor Imperial saints. One is ajar.
Jabbing my Mark II over at the coffin, Novah and I move quietly through the chamber. We both freeze as our sensitive hearing picks up on a scuffling within the coffin. With Novah’s bolter aimed at the stone box, I count us down with ceramite fingers from three to one. Tearing off the lid with one hand I thrust my pistol into the darkness with the other.
There is a scream, which neither of us expect, and my finger twitches against the Mark II’s trigger. There is a young girl inside – alive and terrified; a dirty-faced cemetery worlder, hiding in the coffin. I hold my gauntlet up, as much an indication to her that we are no threat as an order to Brother Novah not to shoot. The foundling lets rip again with another shrill scream.
Following her eyes I see that she is looking at the battle standard and the rift-spider running down its shaft. Novah’s response is immediate. He smacks the banner against the floor, propelling the thing down into the darkness of the crypt.
‘Down!’ I yell at the shrieking child, prompting her to duck back into the stone coffin. Aiming my pistol down the steps I thumb the weapon to automatic and illuminate the thick darkness with a stabbing stream of firepower. The monster vaults straight back at me from the murk of the crypt, forcing me to drop the weapon. With my gauntlets out in front of me I hold the warp-strong thing at bay as it scrabbles for my face. ‘Novah!’
‘Do it!’ the standard bearer shouts.
Grasping one of the creature’s legs I swing it around, smacking its thrashing body against the chapel wall before hooking its obscene form back around and smashing through the stone torso of a nearby statue. Knocked senseless but still very intent on crawling into my skull, the thing spasms in my grip. I toss it into the air above the crypt where Brother Novah shreds the abomination with a precision burst of bolter-fire. With a reality- searing pop the creature vanishes and a light shimmer twirls for the roof. After a moment or two of silence, Novah says, ‘Are you all right, sir?’
I nod in response and walk over to the stupefied child. She looks up at me with blank, fearful eyes. Plucking her delicately from her hiding place in the coffin, I hand her to Novah who holds her in the crook of his elbow, beneath the Fifth Company’s battle standard. Pushing open the ferruswood chapel-cryptia door with the muzzle of his bolter, I hear him call in the end of our sweep of the demolished district.
I recover my pistol and re-holster the weapon. I find myself staring at the open stone coffin, its frail lid now shattered pieces on the floor. I think of the girl hiding within – the surreal nature of the moment we discovered her. Peering inside I can see something in the bare bottom of the coffin and I pick it out. It’s a crystalline wafer, a card from the Emperor’s Tarot. I look about, searching the shadows for the revenant, but he is nowhere to be seen.
I turn the card over in my fingertips. The wafer bears the image of a stellar eclipse – a moon covering all but the coronal ring of a distant sun – as viewed from an aligned planetoid. Under the representation is a single word: Umbra.
I feel the ghostly flutter of inspiration pass through the pit of my stomach – a sensation usually reserved for moments of inventive daring in combat, seconds before I wrong-foot my opponent with an unexpected slice of the blade or wholeheartedly commit to some bold and unpredictable manoeuvre. A sensation that has saved my life many times and taken the lives of my enemies many more. I am held there in the moment, stunned witness to the birth of an idea so audacious that it brings an involuntary smile to my mauled lips.
I am there, smiling grimly at the wafer, long enough for Brother Novah to return. He has vox- messages.
‘Corpus-captain,’ he says, still holding the mortal child. ‘Squad Whip Joachim for you, sir. He requests that you and Epistolary Melmoch meet him in the Sepulchre Square. He says it’s important.’
‘Fine,’ I reply. Then add, ‘Vox back Brother Simeon. Inform him that I am on my way up to the Memorial Mausoleum. Tell him I want to see the pontifex. Tell him…’ I hesitate. ‘Tell him it’s important.’
Chapter Fifteen
Cessation
His name had been Scarioch. He had been a brother Excoriator, a member of Squad Censura and a squad second whip. Hours before, it had been enough for him to serve his squad whip, to honour his company and fight for his Emperor. Katafalque’s words had been his guide and Dorn’s deeds his example. He had been an Adeptus Astartes – an Angel of the Imperium.
All this was nothing to him now.
He-Who-Had-Been-Scarioch now only thought in shades of red. He felt only a feral injustice – a hatred for everything he had been, for order and discipline, for honour and instruction, for spiteful subservience. For the first time the Space Marine felt the full potential of his superhuman form. He enjoyed the torrent of unbridled strength coursing through his bulging veins, brawn pumped to slabs of stone, the senses of a death world predator and the thunder of hearts in his chest.
The Space Marine felt only the beginning of the end. He had become something else, something new and powerful, something that lived only for the end of others. The crack of skulls. The whisper of razored edges through soft flesh. The thud of blades buried in bodies. The spurt of sliced jugulars. The snapping of necks and spines. The sighs and gasps of the dying. The splash of footsteps in pools of spilt blood. All this He-Who-Had-Been-Scarioch could feel just beyond his aching fingertips. He desired nothing more than to make these murderous fantasies fact and his inability to enact the blood-lush nightmare only fuelled his building rage further.
They had done this to him, his so-called brothers. The killing, the slaughter – it had to continue. The craven Angels of the corpse-Emperor failed to see this. Dastards all, they had mobbed him like cowards, holding him down and prising the steaming sword from his hand. Not before the Scarioch-Thing had broken a few more jaws and
