Dark Apostle

'Calm your mind, First Acolyte,' boomed the ancient one. It was the sound of the sepulchre given voice, an impossibly deep baritone that reverberated through the still tomb, deep within the strike cruiser. Each word was spoken slowly and deliberately, amplified through powerful vox-units.

Once he had been a mighty hero who fought at the side of the greatest warriors ever to have lived. As a captain he had led great companies of the Legion against the foes of Lorgar and the Warmaster, and Marduk had studied all of his recorded sermons and exhortations. They were masterpieces of rhetoric and faith, filled with righteous hatred, and his skill at deciphering and predicting the twisting patterns of the future through his ritualised dream visions were astounding. He had fallen fighting against the archenemies, the deniers of the truth, those who followed the False Emperor in their ignorance and blindness.

'You fight your visions too hard. They are gifts from the gods, and as with all gifts bestowed from the great powers, you should receive them with thanks.'

The meagre physical remnants of the inspirational leader had been interred within the sarcophagus that lay before Marduk. Though his body was utterly ruined, he was destined to live on within the tomb of his new shell, and become the Warmonger. While the other Dreadnoughts of the Legion had slowly succumbed to madness and raving insanity, the Warmonger retained much of his lucidity. It was his faith, Erebus himself had stated, that kept him from slipping into darkness.

All the anger and frustration flowed out of Marduk, and he smiled. The face that had looked brooding and twisted with anger a moment before was darkly handsome once again, black eyes glinting.

'Pray for enlightenment, but do not be impatient and expect instant gratification,' continued the Warmonger. 'Knowledge and power will come to you, for you are on the path of the devout, and the favour of the gods is upon you. But you must let yourself succumb to the embrace of the great powers; they will buoy you, and only then will the veil be lifted from your eyes. Only then will you see what your vision means. You need not fear the darkness, for you are the darkness.'

The Warmonger flexed its huge, mechanical arms, hissing steam venting from the joints.

'My weapons ache for the bloodshed to begin anew,' the dreadnought said, massive weapon feeds aligning themselves in anticipation. 'Do we fight alongside our Lord Lorgar this day?'

'Not today,' said Marduk quietly, recognising that the Warmonger's lucidity was slipping. It was often this way.

'And the Warmaster? Do his battles against the False Emperor fare well? Has he yet dethroned the hated betrayer, the craven abandoner of the Crusade?'

The mention of the Warmaster Horus pained Marduk. He longed for the simpler days of the past, when the victory of the Warmaster over the Emperor seemed like a certainty. The memories were fresh in his mind, and his anger, hatred and outrage burned within him stronger than ever. He wished he had been at the battle of the Emperor's palace on Terra alongside the Warmonger and most of the warriors that made up the Grand Host of the Dark Apostle Jarulek, but he had not. No, in those days he had been but a novice adept sent to serve under Lord Kor Phaeron. It was a great honour, but while he fought the hated Ultramarines of Guilliman on Calth with passion and belief, he longed to be fighting the battle at the palace that would determine the outcome of the long war. Or so he had thought. The war ground on, and would never end until the so-called Emperor of mankind was thrown down, and every cursed edifice that falsely proclaimed his divinity was smashed asunder.

'The Corpse Emperor sits on his throne on Terra still, Warmonger,' said Marduk bitterly, 'but his end draws ever nearer.'

BOOK ONE:

SUBJUGATION

'From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar, the Bearer of the Word, the favoured son of Chaos, all praise be given unto him. From those that would not heed we offer praise to those who do, that they might turn their gaze our way and gift us with the boon of pain, to turn the galaxy red with blood, and feed the hunger of the gods!'

- Excerpt from the three hundred and forty-first Book of the Epistles of Lorgar

CHAPTER ONE

Kol Badar glared across the expanse of the cavaedium. The arena of worship, located deep within the heart of the strike cruiser Infidus Diabolus, was large enough to allow the recently swollen ranks of the entire Host to stand in attendance. Its curved ceiling stretched impossibly high, and immense skeletal ribbed supports met hundreds of metres above. The kathartes perched along the bone-like struts, daemonic, skinless harpies that flickered in and out of the warp. But Kol Badar's gaze did not rise to look upon the carrion feeders.

No, his scowling features were focused on the last of the warriors filing into the enormous room. From his vantage point, just one step from the top of the sacred raised dais that none but the most holy of warriors would occupy, he could see the last of the Host's champions leading their warriors into the cavaedium, to take their places for the coming ceremony. The expanse was almost full. The entire Host had been gathered. Kol Badar let his gaze wander over the serried ranks, glorying in the strength and power that his warriors exuded. None could hope to stand against such a force of the devout, and his warriors would soon prove their worth once again.

His warriors. He grunted at his own hubris. They were not his warriors. If anything, they were the warriors of the Dark Apostle, though in his words they belonged only to Chaos in all its glory. The Dark Apostle claimed that he was merely the instrument through which the great powers directed these noble warriors of faith, and that Kol Badar was his primary tool to enact the great gods' will.

Kol Badar was the Coryphaus. It was a symbolic title, granted to the most trusted and capable warrior leader and strategos of the Host. His word was second only to that of the Dark Apostle. The Coryphaus was the Dark Apostle's senior war captain, but more than this, he was the voice of the congregation. The mood and opinion of the Host was delivered to the Dark Apostle through him, and it was his duty to lead the chanted responses and antiphons from the gathered Host in ceremonies and rituals. It was also his role to lead the responses within the true house of worship of the dark gods: the battlefield.

The processional corridor that ran down the middle of the nave remained clear as the cavaedium filled. Almost half a kilometre long and laid with black, immaculate carpet consecrated in the blood of thousands, none dared to step upon this hallowed ground, but those deemed worthy, on pain of immortal torment. There were no seats within the nave: the warriors of the Legion received the word from the Dark Apostle standing, armed and armoured. Dozens of smaller sanctuaries and temple-shrines branched off from the ancient stone walls of the cavaedium, containing statues of daemonic deities, ancient texts and the interred remains of holy warriors who had fallen during the constant, long war.

An almost imperceptible, ghostly chanting whispered around the room. Lazily swooping cherubiox circled in the air, skeletal, winged creatures with sharp fangs set within childlike mouths, each carrying a flaming iron brazier. Odorous incense descended from the tusked maws of daemon-headed gargoyles towards the gathered Host. The clouds of smoke eddied and roiled in the wake of the gently weaving cherubiox.

Kol Badar stepped heavily down the altar steps, the joints of his massive, ornate Terminator armour hissing and steaming. He passed through the gates of the ikonoclast, the spiked metal barrier that separated the altar from the openness of the nave. Its wrought iron frame was decorated with dozens of ancient banners, twisted icons and trophies dedicated to the gods of Chaos, and upon its spiked and barbed tips were impaled the heads of particularly hated foes.

He prowled along the base of the altar, glaring at the warrior-brothers filing into the room, as if daring any of them to dishonour him in any way. The warriors of the Legion stood unmoving once they had taken up their positions. Almost two thousand warriors of the Word Bearers stood in absolute silence, and Kol Badar stalked back and forth along their ranks.

Two thousand was a particularly large number of warrior-brothers for a single Host. The ranks of the Host had