Other stories featuring the Sisters of Battle

SISTERS OF BATTLE: THE OMNIBUS
James Swallow

THE BLOODIED ROSE
Danie Ware

SHROUD OF NIGHT
Andy Clark

CULT OF THE WARMASON
C L Werner

IMPERIAL CREED
David Annandale

THE DEATH OF ANTAGONIS
David Annandale

BLOOD OF ASAHEIM
Chris Wraight

Other stories from the Warhammer 40,000 universe

SPEAR OF THE EMPEROR
Aaron Dembski-Bowden

BLACKSTONE FORTRESS
Darius Hinks

• DARK IMPERIUM •
Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM
Book 2: PLAGUE WAR
Guy Haley

• VAULTS OF TERRA •
Book 1: THE CARRION THRONE
Book 2: THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN
Chris Wraight

• THE HORUSIAN WARS •
Book 1: RESURRECTION
Book 2: INCARNATION
John French

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Beyond

404th Day of the War – 0600 Hours

Beyond

405th Day of the War – 0730 Hours

Beyond

412th Day of the War – 1300 Hours

Beyond

415th Day of the War – 1840 Hours

Beyond

415th Day of the War – 2240 Hours

1st Day of Peace – 0616 Hours

Beyond

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Consciousness, sudden and violent.

Her eyes snapped open and hellish light poured in. She sucked a breath down her red-raw throat, then coughed hard, doubled up, curling foetal on her side. Her eyelids flickered, and darkness threatened to swallow her again. Her mind kicked against it, fought back, surfaced. Another painful series of coughs wracked her, then subsided. She took a slow, shuddering breath, blinking quickly as her eyes adjusted to the glare.

Her surroundings resolved; her senses cleared, sight, sound, smell and touch coming slowly. She registered that she was lying on something hard and lumpy, an irregular surface that shifted beneath her as she moved. To her bleary gaze, it looked like a mound of pale stones and jagged debris, but no matter how much she blinked and frowned, she couldn’t quite focus.

She could hear a low moan. The wind, she realised. It was warm, but not pleasantly so. Its touch was like the first bloom of fever-sweats that warned of illness to come. It bore a sharp tang. It took her long moments to place the stench. Sulphur, and something worse, some underlying stink of corruption that triggered primal revulsion within her. She pushed herself into a sitting position and redoubled her efforts to see straight.

What began as a fiery haze became a sky, though a more forbidding and ominous sight she could not have imagined. Blood-hued clouds roiled through a bruised void of purples and rotted greys. Vortices of black fumes whirled across the vista, ripping the bloody clouds to tatters and trailing crackling storms of lurid green lightning in their wake. Her gaze lowered, taking in the distant horizon with its jagged line of half-seen mountains. Fume-wreathed plains marched away from their feet.

She shifted again, fighting down feelings of dislocation. Her heart thumped as she realised that she had no idea where she was, or worse, even who she was. The questions almost escaped her lips aloud, before she realised there was no one there to answer. Something crunched beneath her palm, hard and splintering. She looked down with dawning horror.

Not stones.

Bone.

She snatched her hand back through the broken, brittle brow of an ancient skull. Bones ground beneath her as she moved, and this time she did let out an involuntary moan. She scrabbled backwards on hands and heels, as though to escape the carrion mound. Osseous matter cracked beneath her weight. Shards jabbed through the grey shift she wore, scraping her bare legs and arms. The macabre clatter of bone on bone grew, skulls and femurs and finger-bones grinding with her every movement.

She felt something cold and hard beneath her palms. She dragged herself backwards with a gasp of gratitude, until she sat on a slab of black-painted metal several feet across. It was part of something larger, she realised, buried in layers of bone, rusting and studded with rivets and old bullet-holes. Dimly, she perceived the faded remnants of an insignia still clinging to the metal, but she had no more attention to spare. The slopes of bone stretched away on all sides, spilling down and down, broken by jutting metal wreckage, tatters of coloured cloth and other, more organic looking remnants that she didn’t care to identify. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

‘Not a mound…’ she said, her voice a dry croak. ‘This is a mountain.’

Questions chased one another through her mind. She shut them into cages forged from her iron will, there to languish until she could address them rationally. Panic spread like hoarfrost in her gut, surged up through her chest. It met the fire of her determination and melted back as quickly as it had come. She took a deep, slow breath and closed her eyes, centring herself.

‘Emperor, protect me and light my way,’ she said, the words coming unbidden to her lips. They felt right there, natural, reassuring. She could not say for sure who the Emperor was, but she drew strength from His name. Feeling calmer, she opened her eyes and took mental inventory.

She could see no signs of movement beyond the occasional stirring of wind-tugged cloth. Whatever macabre carrion peak she found herself atop, wherever this wasteland was, she was alone here. She realised she had clenched her fists in readiness to defend herself.

‘A fighter, then, perhaps,’ she murmured, finding comfort in the sound of her own voice. It was deep and strong, a voice made for firm statements, stern prayers and binding oaths. But prayers to whom? Oaths of what? Seeing no immediate danger, she resolved to begin by answering as many questions as she could about herself.

She would open her mental cages one at a time and interrogate the thoughts within.

She took personal inventory. Her grey shift was unadorned, its material coarse against her skin. The body it clad was a powerful one; she could feel graceful strength in her every movement, and see wiry, chorded muscle shift beneath the skin of her arms and legs.

Her hair was shoulder length, and she could see from holding it out before her eyes that it was raven-dark. Beyond that, without a reflective surface she could tell little more about her age or appearance. What she had gathered for now would have to be enough.

She let her fingertips explore her facial features, moving down over her chin to her throat. She gasped and pulled her hands away as she felt a ragged ring of scar tissue there, bespeaking a catastrophic wound. Feeling nauseated, but needing to know, she gingerly felt around the circumference of her neck. Sure enough, the scar ran all the way around, and for a moment she felt an echo of something within her mind.

Screaming.

Flames reflected in churning waters.

Something towering and monstrous.

A light.

The strange sense was gone as suddenly as it appeared, moonlight glimpsed through tattered cloud. She frowned in puzzlement as she realised that the scar was gone too. She felt at the flesh of her neck with increasing agitation as she tried to find the horrible mark.

‘How is that possible?’ she asked the empty mountaintop. ‘How is any of this possible?’

She had no possessions, that much was clear. No weapons or armour with which to protect herself, no food, drink, any other items of clothing or gear. Nothing to suggest who she was, or to help her survive.

‘And no idea how I came here,’ she said. ‘But I have myself. That is enough.’

She knew she could not simply sit atop a mountain of bones forever. There was no telling what kinds of ferocious storms the brooding sky might disgorge, and she felt no desire to be plucked from this peak by a screaming gale or caught amidst ferocious lightning blasts. Though she felt neither hunger nor thirst, she doubted that would remain the case forever. Starving to death and adding her bones to the mountain held even less appeal.

Yet the thing that drove her to her feet was the desire for answers. Who was she? What was she doing in such a ghastly place? How had she come to be here? Who was the Emperor? She needed to know, and she would find no insights here.

She stood atop the mountain, shift and hair blowing in the hot winds. She stared down the steep slopes. They vanished ever downward on all sides into a thick crimson mist.

‘Nothing to suggest a route,’ she said. ‘No hint as to where I must go.’ Strangely, the notion held no terror for her. Instinctive as breathing, she closed her eyes and offered up a wordless prayer to the Emperor for guidance. To her surprise, she felt a faint warmth upon her cheek, as though a candle flame had been brought close to it for the briefest of moments. The sensation was there and gone, yet it was enough, its touch somehow pure, distinct from the clammy caress of the winds.

‘Are you a god, then? My protector, perhaps?’ Her questions fell dead and unanswered. Whatever the truth, she knew it would not be as easy as simply demanding answers.

She opened her eyes and turned in the direction from which she had felt the warmth. Steeling herself, she stepped carefully out, barefoot, onto the jagged carpet of bones. She began to make her slow and slithering way down the mountainside.

The going was treacherous. An ache built in her muscles until it became dull fire, and her chest tightened reflexively whenever she took in the nightmarish steepness of the slope. In places there was little more than a compacted cliff, and she was forced to spend long minutes scrambling crabwise across the slopes in search of a more forgiving descent. Splinters tore at her. Rusted jags of metal scraped her shins. When she was forced to put her hands down in a hurry, her forearms and palms were scratched and pierced until she left a trail of bright red blood drops behind her to mark her path.

Bone shifted underfoot with every movement, small avalanches of ghoulish matter clattering away down the steep incline to vanish into the mists below. She had to be constantly careful lest she twist an ankle or slip and fall; if she lost her footing, she might fall to an agonising death upon the jutting bone shards below.

Within minutes of beginning her descent, she found her heart thumping and her nerves singing from the constant exertion and peril. Briefly, as she clung by tenuous handholds to a protruding ribcage and felt for a foothold in the shattered arch of some ancient shrine, she contemplated turning back. Perhaps she could try another angle of descent? A glance upwards showed no obvious route of return, and she realised that – now that she had begun this perilous climb – her only option was to press on.

She gathered quickly that the mountain was not just made from the bones of the dead, but more specifically from those that had fallen in battle. It was apparent not only from the ways their limbs and skulls had been smashed, hewn and blasted, but also in the increasing quantities of rusted weaponry, armour and even vehicle hulls that peppered the mountainside.

Here, she picked her way carefully through a thicket of swords whose blades had been shattered and turned to rust. When there, she was forced to traverse the jutting prow of some manner of combat aircraft, its nose cone hanging downwards, its cockpit glass crazed with bullet-holes. Banners and pennants flapped in the wind, bearing myriad insignia that stirred feelings within her she could not identify. A portcullis gate flanked by eagles and lightning bolts here, a dark blood drop fringed by spreading wings there. Some seemed so familiar that she could almost taste their names on the tip of her tongue, yet she was left frustrated by each attempt to place them.

She had been scrambling downwards for perhaps an hour when a tangle of bones she was gripping cracked and gave way. She fell, her stomach lurching at the momentary weightlessness before she hit the slope feet first and spilled awkwardly sideways. Bones cascaded around her, clattering in a hollow storm of remains. She fell with them. She rolled and skidded.

Chest tight, she grunted with effort as she tried and failed to arrest her fall. Something gouged her arm. Something else crunched under her hip. A flare of pain shot up her leg and she cried out. She scrabbled for purchase as her speed increased, knowing with sick certainty that at any moment she would feel the slope vanish from beneath her as she sailed out into the void.

Her fingers found purchase at last, a solid chunk of metal that took her weight and arrested her plunge with a jolt. Her shoulder screamed in protest, but she hung on, heart thumping fast in her chest. She managed to get a grip on a femur with her other hand. She braced her feet against a jutting slab of stone and breathed out slowly. Fragments of bone continued to slither and roll past her, but the avalanche became a trickle, then stopped altogether. She realised that she had stopped just yards above a sheer drop.

‘Thank you, Emperor,’ she breathed.

As her pulse slowed, she looked to see what miraculous object had saved her life. Her eyes widened as she realised that it was a breastplate, moulded, lacquered black and edged with fine gilt filigree. Compelled by a feeling she could not name, she dug the fingers of one hand in around the segment of armour to work it loose, while clinging tightly to a rusty spar with the other. More bones scattered. For a moment she was gripped by vertigo as she wobbled on her perch, but at last she tugged the breastplate free and held it out before herself.

‘It is not just the breastplate…’ It was, in fact, torso armour both front and back, its clasps half-fastened, its plates dented and edged with verdigris. It was clearly meant to be powered in some fashion, for its interior boasted a webwork of fine circuitry, and she saw servo-actuator sockets ready to accept connecting components. A rent had been torn clean through both front and back. She let out a gasp as another sensory echo struck her. It was stronger this time, the sound of a blade rasping through metal, flesh and bone, accompanied by the acrid stink of smoke and burning flesh. She gritted her teeth as a tearing pain flared in her chest, there and gone in an instant.

She knew, then. This breastplate had been hers. It was hers. How that could be, she had not the faintest idea, but she knew it as surely as she still drew breath. As she turned the armour over in her hands, she saw a scrollwork plate set along its gorget. She ran her fingers over it, dusting away a patina of ancient grime.

‘Celestine,’ she read. The name was powerfully familiar. ‘Is that… me? Am I Celestine?’ The notion felt right, and she resolved that, until it was proved otherwise, she would claim this name for herself. It centred her somehow, made her feel less a wraith of this wasteland and more a being that ventured through it.

She considered throwing the armour aside, for it was battered and worn to the point of uselessness. Yet it was the first familiar thing she had seen in all this forsaken realm. She could not bear to part with it. She glanced down at her shift, ragged and torn where it had snagged bone and metal during her fall. She had been lucky not to suffer worse.

The armour would at least provide her some protection against another fall, and although she had no power pack for its systems, it didn’t seem so heavy that it would encumber her overly. Awkwardly, mindful of the drop beneath her, Celestine manoeuvred the armour into place. She slid her arms through the holes, then sealed its clasps with an instinctive, practised ease.

‘O divine machine-spirits, demideus Omnissiah espiritum, I beseech thee to shield my fragile flesh from harm.’

As the last clasp clicked into place, she blinked in bewilderment. Not only had the prayer of benediction sprung from her lips by some instinct, but the rent in her breastplate had vanished. The dents and grime faded as though they had never been. The armour she had donned had been a battered relic, but this was brand new, its lacquer shining in the bloody light, its scrollwork glinting. It took Celestine a moment to place the sudden hum that invaded her thoughts. She realised that an internal power source had activated within her backplate.

‘Emperor, whatever miracle this is, I thank you for it,’ said Celestine. The armour’s restoration was inexplicable, but then, so was everything else about her situation. She chose to take it on faith that this development, at least, was in her favour.

Her spirits buoyed, she forged onwards. The descent was still challenging, but with her torso and back protected from harm it was at least somewhat less painful.

Sometime later, a glint of light on metal caught her eye. Sprawled in the tumbled wreck of a blackened landing craft were a great heap of skeletons, many crushed and mangled, some warped into unnatural shapes that she took care not to touch. There, amidst the mounds of remains, lay the armoured lower body of a warrior. Boots, greaves, leg and abdominal armour – it was all there, rusted into a single mass. Celestine felt intense discomfort at seeing that the body stopped at the waist, the ragged stub of a spine jutting out to vanish under a heavy slab of metal. Again, she somehow knew it to be hers.

Tentative, she reached out and touched one leg of the armour. She was rocked by the intensity of the echo that washed over her.

Screaming voices, frantic prayers, the sounds of engines labouring and terrible voices cackling and gibbering. The crackle of fire. The crash of guns in a confined space. Bullets and bolts flying in all directions. The howl of escaping air, and a moment of steely determination as she felt herself lunge for the rune that would drop the blast shutter and seal this entire section of the dropship off from the rest of the craft. The warp breach could not be allowed to infect the rest of the ship, not so close to their destination. She struck the rune, and the seventeen-ton blast door fell upon her like an executioner’s blade.

Celestine came back to herself with a jolt. Had she died, she wondered? And if so, how was she alive now? How was such a thing possible? Was she remembering the lives of others, perhaps? Or was this all just some strange trick, part of a greater and crueller ruse that had brought her to this place and consigned her to a living purgatory?

Setting questions aside, Celestine braced herself upon a tilted drop-cradle and painstakingly dragged the armour into position, emptying it of its macabre contents before sliding and wriggling into it. She hissed with pain as rusted interior edges cut her flesh. She was forced to contort herself painfully to force her legs the last of the way down into the armour. Yet the moment she did, the same strange restoration occurred. System runes lit green upon locking clasps, rust flaked away and allowed joints to move whisper-smooth. Black armour plates gleamed. Celestine stood, armoured now from her feet up to her neck, and felt the strength humming through the suit she wore. The Emperor’s warmth had set her on this path, she thought. That she had found these artefacts of her own, personal battle armour amongst the remains of the countless dead… it was no accident.

The notion gave her hope.

Her pauldrons she found upon a skeletal figure knelt as though in supplication amidst a forest of skulls impaled upon jutting bayonets. Somehow, again, she knew this body was also hers. The kneeling cadaver was watched over by the shattered statue of some ancient saint. Her arm segments and gauntlets she located a piece at a time, strewn down a long slope of bone scree below the teetering wreckage of a super-heavy tank, each with their own twisted skeletal arms and hands encased within them. How could her armour segments be strewn so far, she wondered, and seemingly belong to so many different corpses?

‘Have I died more than once?’ she whispered, shying away from the question when she heard how haunted her voice sounded.

By the time she found the last of her armour and slotted its components into place, she was well down amidst the drifting crimson mists, tasting their coppery tang in her mouth. She had hoped for a helm, to insulate her from the foulness on the air, but she had no recollection of ever wearing such a thing and none was forthcoming from the mountainside.

With each armour component Celestine located, there came another flash of sense-memory, each stronger than the last. She was immolated in a searing ball of plasma. She was struck down by an axe as large as a battle tank. She was riddled with explosive bolts until her body was sundered and her blood misted the air.

Each death-echo was horrifying and painful, yet each brought with it an increased sense of duty and determination, and the inexplicable knowledge that every life she had given, she had given for a righteous cause. Along with the horror and pain of each demise, Celestine saw also the hopeful faces that surrounded her, heard the prayers to the Emperor, and knew that by her own martyrdom she had secured victory or salvation for countless others. It was emotionally exhausting. With each fresh segment that she found, the temptation grew simply to cast it aside rather than shoulder the burden of the bloody memories that came with it. She rejected that notion each time. She was sure in the knowledge that each echo would pass, and leave her fortified and better equipped to find the answers she sought.

At last, fully armoured, Celestine strode down the shallower slopes of the mountain’s foothills. Still she crunched over fields of skulls and ribs, femurs and spines, rusted blades and sundered guns and tattered flags. Yet her armour now shielded her from jabbing shards. With its servo-actuators aiding her balance and lending strength to her stride, Celestine made good time. She found herself picking her way between teetering heaps of remains that rose like cairns and carrion-piles. Many supported brass poles atop which she saw foul icons that caused her intense feelings of anger and revulsion. She saw an eight-pointed star and, as she wondered at the hatred that the crude shape awoke in her, a word rose unbidden to her lips. She spat it out like poison.

‘Chaos.’

The memories were fleeting, her mind wanting to skate away from them. Instead she climbed a jagged mound and grasped the foul icon atop it with both hands. She wrenched the iron pole free with a snarl and cast it down. Then the monstrous images came in a blizzard that set her reeling, slithering down the slope of the cairn to fall to her knees at its base.

Yawning maws stuffed with fangs; armoured heretics with burning red eyes; mobs of screaming fools, deluded and enslaved by malevolent entities they could not comprehend. Looming terrors made of smoke and flame, sorcery and evil. These were the arch-enemies of her Emperor, and thus they were her foes also.

Celestine knew it to be true.

As the barrage of images passed, and she returned to herself, something shifted amidst the mists. A shadow crawled along the flank of a nearby ridge, a vague suggestion of long limbs and grasping talons. Red eyes flashed in the gloom, and a wave of hatred beat against Celestine like furnace heat.

‘Warp spawn,’ she snarled, meeting its fury with her own.

Celestine clenched her armoured gauntlets into fists, servos whining and powercells thrumming as they added their strength to hers. She snapped her head round as she heard bonemeal spill, knocked loose from another ossuary-heap by a second shadowy figure. There were more, she realised, slinking between the mounds and scrabbling closer like scavenging beasts around a carcass. Their eyes glowed like coals in the gloom, the only clearly visible part of them. Their voices came to her, low moans of hunger and hate with nothing human in them at all.

Celestine could fight, she was sure of that, but she could not defeat so many of these unknown fiends at once. Sensing that the boldest of them was about to pounce, she did the only other thing that she could.

She ran.

Aided by the servo-strength of her armour, Celestine broke into a sudden sprint and pounded away downhill. She felt the rush of hot air as several creatures leapt, their shadowy talons missing her by a hair’s breadth. Howls of frustration chased her as she ran on, pulverised bone spraying up behind her heels.

Celestine careened downhill through thick red mists that reduced her visibility to a matter of yards. Bones and wreckage squirmed treacherously underfoot. Jagged mounds of detritus loomed suddenly from the fog, forcing her to dodge frantically around them at the last moment. Behind her, Celestine heard baying howls and the clamour of talons on bone as her pursuers gained on her.

‘Emperor guide my footfalls,’ she prayed as she ran. ‘Lead me not unto disaster or mischance. Ward away the terrors that hunt me.’

Daemons.

The word came unbidden to her mind, along with the knowledge that if the abominations that snapped at her heels caught her then she would not just lose her life, but her eternal soul also.

Celestine snapped a look back over her shoulder and saw dozens of glowing coals burning in the murk, drawing closer with every heartbeat. She ran faster.

The ground sloped steeply, and she almost fell, careening downhill amidst a shower of bones. Something dark shot overhead, and she had a split second to register that one of the daemons had leapt from the top of the rise to land in front of her. The monster spun towards her with a venomous hiss, lashing out with its claws. Rather than try to avoid it, Celestine clenched a fist and used her momentum to drive a thunderous blow into the creature’s face.

She felt a raking pain in her side, followed by a vertiginous lurch as her fist passed straight through the daemon as though it were mist. Celestine cannoned forward and lost her balance, crashing down on the bone slope and rolling downhill. She skidded to a halt amidst a heap of skeletons still partially clad in armour not dissimilar to her own.

Celestine’s head spun, and her chest heaved with the competing urges to suck in lungfuls of air or else vomit. There was no time to gather her wits. She could hear her attacker skidding down the slope above her, an alpha predator coming to claim its fallen prey. She glanced at her side and was surprised to see that her armour was wholly undamaged, though she could feel the hot pain across her ribs where the daemon had raked her.

‘Incorporeal enough that I can’t harm them, yet solid enough that they can butcher me,’ she gasped, struggling to her feet and preparing to run again. She felt neither panic nor fear, for her iron will kept such sensations at bay, but Celestine knew that her situation was dire. Outrunning her pursuers seemed unlikely, yet to her immense frustration it seemed that she could not stand and fight. Celestine hated that notion of powerlessness more than anything, and resolved that, should the daemons catch her, she would contrive to end her own life rather than submit to their theft of it.

That was when the mist thinned for a moment and, in the hazy crimson light, she saw the blade. It jutted up from a bone cairn, just upslope from where she stood. It was long and straight, a bastard sword meant for single- or double-handed wielding. Its crossguard was fashioned into a winged skull of burnished gold. A garland of dead black roses hung from its hilt, which was gripped in a skeletal fist that thrust up from the heart of the cairn. Though the blade was tarnished and notched, bloody light still glinted on it in a way that nearly hypnotised Celestine.

This was her sword. She knew it as surely as she had known that each segment of armour she came across during the descent was hers. Perhaps, with this weapon in her hands, she could fight?

Her pursuers were almost on top of her; she could see the lead daemon slithering down the slope, more of its brood close behind. Celestine gauged the distance and made a snap decision. She could make it.

She lunged uphill, digging her toes into the uneven surface and pushing hard. She clawed at skeletal remains to propel herself upwards, giving a roar of pure effort as she raced the daemon to the mound. The beast was almost on top of her as she reached the blade, wrapping her hands around its hilt and giving a hard wrench. For a moment, the skeletal hand seemed reluctant to relinquish its grip, and she was forced to yank it a second time, even harder.

Bone disintegrated. The blade was made anew, gleaming in the bloodlight. Celestine drew it back as the daemon lunged. She swung, struck, and her attacker’s head spun away into the murk trailing sprays of ichor. Celestine braced instinctively for the impact of its corpse, but the daemon’s body passed through her like a cold wind and she turned, watching it discorporate into smoke as it tumbled to a stop.

Celestine flicked black ichor from her blade and stared at it for a moment, feeling the sense of utmost holiness that radiated from the weapon. She suffered no sense echoes this time, though she had braced herself for them. Instead there was simply an abiding sense of rightness, and of completion.

Now she had the weapon that the Emperor had bequeathed her.

Now she was a warrior again.

Now, she was Celestine.

Spills of bone and rusting metal skittered around her as the daemons surged down the slope. Raising her blade beside her head, Celestine braced her feet and made ready.

‘Come, foul blasphemies, let me purge you in the Emperor’s name,’ she said with a tight smile.

The first creature flung itself at her, claws lashing wildly. She lopped off one arm and spun aside, allowing the pouncing daemon to tumble past her as the first one had. The next attacker came on more cautiously, feinting low then trying to rake its talons across her eyes. Celestine read its intentions easily and swayed back from the daemon’s attack, before ramming her blade up through its jaw and out of the top of its head.

She ripped the weapon free as the daemon dissipated into smoke, in time to aim a disembowelling swing at the next fiend to attack. Another came at her out of the mist, and another. Then three attacked at once, one of the beasts managing to rip its claws through the meat of her thigh as she held off the other two. Celestine snarled with anger and despatched each assailant in turn, but she could hear a clattering commotion that suggested dozens more daemons were surging closer.

The fires of battle burned hot in Celestine’s chest, but she knew that standing and dying upon this bleak hillside would not bring her the answers she sought.

‘Golden Throne,’ she spat, turning to run again, pouring all her strength and willpower into outdistancing the daemons.

Still they gained on her, and she cursed the futility of her plight as bone cairns and rusting wrecks flashed past.

‘Does this damned mountain never end?’ she gasped, legs and arms pumping as she ran.

As though she had summoned it, the ground levelled out with abrupt suddenness and then, to her surprise, began to slope upwards. Her pounding footfalls pulverised a last layer of bone, then fell upon hard black rock instead.

Celestine charged up the slope, through crimson mist so thick she could barely see a sword’s length in front of her face. Howls and screams billowed around her, the pursuing daemons just yards behind. Surely the sudden change in landscape must indicate a chance of refuge? Surely she could not simply have passed from one interminable hell into another, there to be swiftly run to ground and torn apart by overwhelming enemy numbers.

Surely the Emperor meant more for her than this.

That was when the ground vanished, so abruptly that Celestine had no chance to react. One moment she was running full pelt up a rocky slope. The next she was sailing through thin air as the stone promontory ended in an abrupt ledge and hurled her out into the void.

Celestine fell, her hair whipping around her face, crimson mist billowing past on all sides. Behind her she heard the daemons’ frustrated howls, receding swiftly as she plunged away from them into the endless red gulf.

The thought came to her that this was the end; not torn apart but condemned to a terrible plunge, perhaps to fall never-ending, perhaps to be dashed to red ruin on rocks far below. Then a strange sense swept through her, a miraculous unfurling of power that made her nerves sing and her soul tingle. Power surged through her body, and in a glorious moment of revelation a mighty pair of glowing gold and silver wings spread from between her shoulder blades. They snapped outwards, obeying her unconscious thought like muscle memory. They arrested her fall, caught the hot winds, transformed her plunge into a swooping glide. The mists swirled and parted before her and with a joyous shout she beat her mighty pinions and began to rise.

Celestine laughed as she soared upwards through the mists, beating her powerful wings as easily as she might command her legs to walk or her arms to swing a sword. Her hair billowed in the winds as she swept up and away from the bone mountain, bursting from amidst the crimson fog and into the desolate air above.

As the jagged horizon came into view, Celestine felt the candle-warmth of the Emperor’s light upon her face. She felt, more than saw, the distant glow of its illumination, far, far away across the plains, among the fanged mountains.

There lay her destination. She knew it. She had faith in the Emperor’s guidance. She had faith in her own strength.

Soaring on glowing wings of light, her silvered blade held firm against her chest, Celestine flew on over the blasted plains.

Towards the unseen light of the Emperor.

Towards answers.

404TH DAY OF THE WAR – 0600 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
CANYON-CITY TANYKHA ADUL – LO:564-3/LA:675-9

Bells tolled over the Adul, calling the faithful to war. Their chimes echoed along the las-sculpted chasms and ravines into which the city was built. They rolled reverberant through shadowy cavern-habs and dusty subterranean manufactoria, candle-lit shrines and fortified cliff-side bunkers. They rang amid spills of rosy dawn light and the crash of booted, running feet. They mingled with the first volleys of gunfire.

Major Blaskaine was out of his bunk at the first sound of trouble. Nineteen years in the Emperor’s service had honed his instincts to the point where Blaskaine’s men joked – when they believed themselves safely out of earshot – that he had a touch of psyker prescience about him.

He allowed the men their grim jests.

Since Cadia’s fall, any mirth was welcome, even at his expense.

This was not a day for jokes, however. As he marched down the shady corridor that linked his chambers to the Fourth Sector command bunker, Blaskaine reflected that precious few days on Kophyn had been.

‘A pox on this worthless ball of rocks,’ he muttered as he adjusted the collar of his uniform, double-checked the magazine in his laspistol and straightened out the medals pinned to his chest. Still, it didn’t do to look less than his best, even if there were no higher-ranking officers left to impress.

Blaskaine emerged into the command bunker to find it swirling with controlled pandemonium. The bunker was wide but low-ceilinged, its smooth stone walls typical of the las-carved chambers and corridors of the Adul. In places they were decorated by bas-relief Imperial angels and soldiery doing battle with mutants and traitors. In every carving, the forces of the Imperium reigned triumphant. If only that were true, thought Blaskaine.

Electro-lumen globes hung from the bunker’s ceiling, casting cold light over the large strategium-table that dominated the centre of the room. Maps, charts, rolls of parchment and scattered data-slates covered the table from end to end.

One wall of the bunker was dominated by a huge bank of runic consoles, vox-units, long-range auspex receivers and other machineries of various opaque purpose. Cadian operators jostled elbows as they leant over them, working their controls and speaking in clipped tones into bulky headsets.

Those men and women looked tired but determined. It was an expression Blaskaine had become all too familiar with over the course of this campaign.

Junior officers, priests, servitors, signalmen, tech-magi, regimental life-guards, commissars and dozens of other assorted hangers-on bustled around the bunker. Conversations in High Gothic and Low Gothic mingled with binharic cant and plainsong to create a substantial din. Yet all fell silent as Blaskaine strode up to the strat-table. Salutes and genuflections were directed his way. As the last senior ranking officer of the Cadian 144th Heavy Infantry, such was his right.

‘Situation report,’ said Blaskaine, pleased to hear that he sounded calmer than he felt.

‘Massive heretic assault incoming, major,’ reported Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt, Blaskaine’s adjutant. She plucked a data-slate from amidst the morass on the table and passed it to him. ‘Armour and infantry elements moving up the wadi from the south-east and pushing on Hawk Gate. Scouts have detected a second force circling the mesa to assault Jackyl Gate from the west, and long-range auspex suggests aerial elements inbound on our position.’

‘Clearly we merit substantial effort on the enemy’s part, ladies and gentlemen,’ barked Blaskaine. ‘I believe we should be flattered.’

His words elicited a handful of mirthless smiles, here and there a couple of wry chuckles. These soldiers were under no illusions as to the dire situation, but they were Cadians. With their homes, their families and all they had known torn away from them, what cause had they to fear death?

‘Enemy numbers?’ asked Blaskaine as the hubbub of the bunker resumed.

‘Substantial would be putting it mildly, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. She showed him a parchment print-out, and Blaskaine quirked an eyebrow.

‘Throne, Astryd… Tanks, artillery, cultists.’ Blaskaine exhaled. ‘Creed’s ghost, where did they scrounge a Stormlord from? The War Engine is throwing everything at us, isn’t he?’

‘It appears so, sir. I think he means to have done with us today no matter what it costs him.’

‘What’s our state of play?’ asked Blaskaine, plucking up a mug of recaff and pulling a face as he found it to be cold. Kasyrgeldt passed him a hot one.

‘Generatorums two, three and four are still running,’ she said. ‘Sectors two and four still have void shield coverage. Both gates are fully garrisoned by soldiers of the Hundred and Forty-Fourth.. We have sixteen platoons still at fighting strength, if you include the Whiteshields.’

‘No one is a Whiteshield anymore, Astryd,’ said Blaskaine quietly, but she pressed on as though he hadn’t spoken.

‘Forty-two armoured personnel carriers, twenty-eight main line battle tanks, nineteen pieces of self-propelled field artillery including Manticores and Basilisks, and three scout tanks remain. Captain Maklen has, at last count, thirty-four per cent strength of the Cadian Two Hundred and Thirtieth mech-infantry remaining. They’re ready to provide rapid response should a breakthrough occur. The Astorosian Ninth have mustered their engines in the runoff canyons near Jackyl Gate. We’ve substantial assets, sir.’

‘But…?’ prompted Blaskaine.

‘Candidly, sir, we’ve no strategic options left to us beyond dig in and endure,’ said Kasyrgeldt, keeping her voice low enough that only Blaskaine could hear. ‘The enemy has a planetary population to utilise against us, and all of the materiel they’ve scavenged from a dozen battlefields… Not to mention a formidable manufacturing base to turn out fresh weapons and war machines. The odds are against us surviving the day, sir, but beyond that? They’re even slimmer. And there’s no hope of rescue or escape, not since the darkness fell. We’re cut off, our astropaths are dead or mad, and we’re likely the last Imperial holdout on a world that’s already lost. No matter how determined they might be to die with honour, no matter how angry they might be at finding themselves fighting for another doomed planet, our soldiers know that it is doomed.’

‘The commissars and the preachers are doing their part, yes?’ asked Blaskaine.

‘They are, sir, but they’re fighting a rearguard action against their own sense of despair,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘There’s a worrying streak of fanaticism supplanting good Cadian discipline. I think the soldiery are praying for some sort of miracle.’

‘If it keeps our soldiers fighting, we’ll take whatever we can get,’ said Blaskaine, his mind racing. He knew his adjutant’s dire summation was right, and try as he might, the major couldn’t think of a way out of this rat-trap. ‘Honestly, Astryd, it sounds like we could use a miracle right about now. Talking of which, where are the Sisters in all this? I’d expected to at least hear from Meritorius, what with violence in the offing.’

‘The Sister Superior voxed word at first chimes, sir,’ replied Kasyrgeldt, consulting another data-slate. ‘They are already at the gates.’

‘Of course they are,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Good martyrs all, eh?’

‘The Battle Sisters are exceptional warriors, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, a note of reproach in her voice. ‘Their example is an inspiration to the soldiery, and frankly, I’ll take the aid of half a hundred warrior women with power armour and bolters any day. Sir.’

Blaskaine raised a placating hand.

‘There is no disagreement here, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I’ve just never seen soldiers so eager to die in the Emperor’s name. I don’t see the sense in seeking out hopeless fights when one can live to fight another day, and I don’t entirely trust the sanity of those who think differently.’

Blaskaine cursed himself as he saw Kasyrgeldt’s expression set into a carefully neutral mask.

‘Very good, sir,’ she said, and Blaskaine wondered if he would ever entirely escape the ghosts of Cadia’s fall.

Now was not the time to dwell.

‘Carry on, lieutenant,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Have a voxman and a tech-priest attend me at console eleven. I’ve a war zone to coordinate.’

He turned away brusquely and marched across the command bunker, telling himself for the thousandth time that there was nothing he could have done that day, but that he could do something useful now.

Sister Superior Anekwa Meritorius stood atop the ramparts of Hawk Gate. Stocky and powerfully built, Meritorius was lent additional bulk by the ornate black and white power armour she wore. Her dark skin and bleached white hair contrasted sharply and, combined with the steely glint in her eye and the wide-bladed power sword sheathed at her hip, ensured she looked every part the stern Imperial warrior. Still, as she stared down at the horde of heretics sweeping towards the Adul, Meritorius felt little of the strength she displayed outwardly.

Hawk Gate was a towering armoured portal that sealed off one of only two main access points into the canyons of Tanykha Adul. Its hundred-foot-high durasteel gates were housed within an armoured arch, flanked by a pair of macro-bastion gun towers and overlooked by the rampart upon which Meritorius stood, amidst the Battle Sisters of her Celestian entourage.

Sister Maria Penitence shot her a zealous look.

‘These gates would withstand bombardment by Titan-class weaponry,’ said Sister Penitence, as though Meritorius had asked. ‘Each gun tower is a fortress. Hundreds of Cadians garrison them, Sister Superior, and with our Sisters and the mission preachers spread through their ranks to bolster their faith, they shall not waver.’

‘Sister Penitence speaks the Emperor’s word,’ said Sister Constance Indomita. ‘The foe shall have little fortune throwing themselves at these gates, and even less should they attempt to scale the cliffs of the mesa. I believe I saw the Cadian engineers laying sufficient mines amongst those crags to blast an entire army of foes to pieces three times over.’

‘Not to mention the automated turret networks that watch over the canyon edges,’ added Sister Elena Absolom. ‘Even with the enemy advancing in such numbers, I believe we shall best them with the Emperor’s blessing.’

Meritorius found herself irritated by her Celestians’ comments. It had been a hard campaign, and she made no secret of the pressure that had fallen upon her after Canoness Rokhsanja’s demise, but she resented the notion that they might think her spirits needed bolstering. The alternative, that they truly believed what they were saying, seemed somehow worse. Thousands upon thousands of heretic warriors and war engines advanced under Kophyn’s hard cobalt skies. Their ragged red banners filled the horizon, and the dust cloud that rose in their wake resembled an onrushing storm.

‘The Emperor has no time for frivolous cheer, Sisters,’ she snapped, fighting off the sense that they were all of a mind and she was excluded from it. ‘Save your hopeful pronouncements for the Cadians.’

The Celestians exchanged glances that Meritorius chose to ignore, but they fell silent. Not so Preacher Unctorian Gofrey, a robed figure, dark of hair and steely of eye, who stood at Anekwa’s left shoulder.

‘Have a care, Sister Superior,’ he said, his voice deep and hard as a ferrocrete slab. ‘The Emperor may not put stock in baseless hope, but he frowns still more upon the craftsman that chips away his own foundations. So it is written in the Creed Imperius.’

‘Thank you, Gofrey,’ said Meritorius, voice tight, mouth a thin line. ‘You ensure that we never go wanting for counsel.’

The preacher made the sign of the aquila, offering a hard smile that didn’t reach his eyes. As was his habit, he touched his hand to his breastbone, where a lump indicated something hanging about his neck beneath his robe. Meritorius had never seen the priest’s Imperial aquila, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if it was scrimshawed from the bones of some luckless relative.

‘The enemy will be upon us within the hour,’ said Meritorius, turning away from Gofrey and addressing her Celestians. ‘Go now, Sisters, and take your places amongst the Cadian ranks. I will converse with their senior officers and ensure that our defensive strategy is soundly implemented. Have faith, my Sisters, for whatever fate awaits us this day, we stand tall and strong in the Emperor’s gaze, and we shall not be found wanting.’

‘Deus Imperius Eterna,’ they chorused, offering her the sign of the aquila.

‘Stirring words, Sister Superior,’ said Gofrey quietly as the three veteran Battle Sisters jogged away to their appointed posts. ‘I hope for all our sakes that you mean them.’

‘Don’t you have soldiers to unnerve, Unctorian?’ asked Meritorius without looking around.

‘I have the Emperor’s work to do, as do we all,’ smiled the preacher. ‘The fire must be lit.’

‘Then go and light it, and leave me to do my duty,’ said the Sister Superior.

‘The Emperor watches us all, Anekwa,’ replied Gofrey.

As she listened to him walking away, Meritorius silently hoped that his insinuations were unfounded. She cast her eyes to the heavens and offered up a prayer to the Emperor, hoping for the thousandth time to feel that spark of the divine that had once been her constant companion.

There was nothing. There had been nothing since the Great Rift tore its way across the galaxy, since the stars went out and His light was extinguished. Meritorius feared, in the darkest watches of the night, that her faith had been snuffed at the same time, just another candle flame drowned by the shadows. Did anything remain beyond the Rift? Was the Throneworld already gone?

Was she alone?

Such were the constant questions that she asked herself day in, day out. They were questions repeated over and again by the warriors she led and the soldiers they had found themselves fighting alongside. Cadia gone. The Rift devouring the heavens. The Astronomican vanished between one breath and the next. How could anyone maintain their faith in the Emperor and His Imperium in such a terrible time?

‘And yet, that is what faith is,’ she whispered to herself in a voice heavy with the frustration of having had this conversation with herself many times before. ‘You have to believe despite it all. That’s what gives faith its power, and the Emperor His. Just believe, and if you can’t, then for Throne’s sakes at least don’t let them see you wavering. Not this close to the end.’

Meritorius heard a door bang open at one end of the rampart. A Cadian heavy weapons platoon spilled out, jogging along the firestep to begin setting up their man-portable lascannons and heavy bolters. Meritorius returned their salutes, radiating steely composure as she activated the vox-link built into her armour’s gorget.

‘This is Sister Superior Meritorius of the Order of the Ebon Chalice, calling Major Blaskaine, Captain Maklen, Lieutenant Tasker and Sub-Duke Velle-Marchon. I bring you the Emperor’s blessings and ask your counsel, my fellow war leaders, for the enemy is at our gates.’

Preacher Gofrey stalked the corridors of gun fortress Hawk-Alpha. He stared steadily at the Cadian soldiers he passed, enjoying how the men and women of the Imperial Guard averted their eyes and offered him the sign of the aquila. Almost, he thought, as though warding away his judgement, or more properly, that of the Emperor. They sensed his authority and they respected it, just as they should.

He passed squad after squad of warriors gathered before armoured firing slits. Cadians prayed over their lasguns. They clutched gunmetal aquilas as they beseeched the aid of the Emperor, and of the machine-spirits of their weapons. Some reached out to touch the hems of his robes as he passed.

As Gofrey walked, he preached.

‘And yea, though the light of the Emperor may be occluded in this grim hour, His eye is never far!’ cried Gofrey, his voice echoing along arched corridors and through bustling chambers. ‘He expects of us, brothers and sisters. He expects of us and He judges most severely those who He finds wanting.’

He rounded upon a squad of troopers who were gathered around a battered vox-set and trying to coax the communications device back into life.

‘Are you faithful?’ asked Gofrey, his voice cold steel and fire.

‘We are, preacher,’ replied their corporal, a squat, pale man with tired eyes and too many scars. ‘We are loyal servants of the Emperor all.’

‘Is there taint amongst you?’

The man’s expression hardened.

‘There’s no taint amongst the Cadian Hundred and Forty-Fourth,’ said the corporal.

‘Arrogance,’ mused the priest. ‘Is that why the void turned to madness? Is that why the Imperium burns? Is that why your world is no more? Are any of us truly free of taint?’

A thrill ran through his body as he saw the Cadians bristle with outrage. Gofrey’s hand strayed towards the laspistol at his hip.

Do it, he thought.

React.

Betray himself for a heretic, so Gofrey may cut out another canker.

He centred his mind, focused the power of his will and risked the slightest mental nudge. If these men were impure, surely now they would reveal themselves. A muscle twitched under the corporal’s eye. The man balled his fists, but to Gofrey’s disappointment he held his place. The preacher knew he couldn’t goad the man further; there might still be some amongst this dull flock who were truly faithful. For their sake, he must restrain himself.

‘Cadia stands,’ said the man through gritted teeth. ‘And we are loyal.’

‘Prove it to the Emperor, not to me,’ said Gofrey almost conversationally, turning and walking away. The Cadians were forgotten already. There was no obvious taint there to excise. They weren’t where his purpose lay. But it was here, somewhere in this den of corruption, and he would coax it loose. The Emperor would show it to him, before the end. He had given Gofrey his gifts for a reason.

His thoughts turned to Sister Superior Meritorius, as they had many times in recent days, and righteous anger filled him. Gofrey saw the cracks in the façade of her faith, saw the way they radiated outwards to corrupt all those she consorted with.

Another preacher, Munctian Dunst, met Gofrey on the stairs as he prowled down towards the next level of the tower. Dunst shied away, and Gofrey sneered as the portly old priest hurried past him without a word.

All of them were faithless, thought Gofrey. All of them were at fault. The mission had always been a poor jest, for how did you bring enlightenment to a galaxy of sinners? They had brought this ending upon the Imperium and now they lived in the ashes of the apocalypse they had wrought.

Yet there were men here still with the faith to serve the Emperor to the end. Unctorian Gofrey held his secret close to his chest, and the Emperor in his heart, and he would serve his final function before the end of all things. He was the arbiter of the Emperor’s justice, and he would deliver it to all of the faithless, the moment their deeds betrayed them.

Starting, he sincerely hoped, with Sister Anekwa Meritorius. When the battle sirens started howling moments later, and the scream of incoming shells filled the air, Gofrey felt a smile stretch itself across his features and the anger burn hotter in his breast.

‘The time of testing is here!’ he cried, not caring to whom. ‘Repent your sins, you faithless masses, for in the fires of battle we all shall be tried for our guilt.’

Sister Meritorius stood framed by the man-high crenellations of the battlements and watched the enemy begin their attack. The vast majority of the foe advanced on foot, hordes of ragged ore-miners, smelt labourers and dust farmers armed with pilfered small arms and displaying the blood red bandannas and war paint of the War Engine’s followers. They chanted and screamed as they dashed headlong towards Hawk Gate. Above them waved tattered crimson banners and brass icons, all depicting the same stylised skull sigil.

It was an unclean symbol of the Blood God, Meritorius knew. The rune of he to whom the desperate peoples of Kophyn gave their worship when the light of the Emperor went out. She hated them for that choice, with a vehemence that eclipsed all else.

‘Enemy artillery drawing up on the ridge, ma’am,’ said one of the nearby Cadians, peering through her magnoculars. ‘I’d advise taking cover.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Meritorius as rippling muzzle flares lit the distant ridge.

‘So does ferrocrete, ma’am,’ muttered the Cadian as she ducked. A rain of shells tumbled down upon Hawk Gate, resolving from black dots against the cobalt sky to hurtling projectiles. Meritorius took a deep breath and willed herself to hold her ground. If it took the fires of the enemy’s fury to burn away the numbing shroud that kept her from her faith, then so be it. Anything to feel the Emperor’s love restored.

The shells hit and the world turned white. Thunderous detonations blanked out all other sound, and Meritorius felt the heat of the blasts as her hair and cloak billowed in the furnace winds. The battlements shuddered. Debris filled the air. Then it was over, and amidst the smoke and the first screams of the wounded, Meritorius found she was still alive. She raised a hand to a sharp sting at her cheek, her gauntleted fingers coming away spotted with blood.

‘Shrapnel,’ she said absently, then stared out through the smoke, trying to perceive the foe. She was dimly aware of the Cadians rising to their feet, looking at her with fresh wonder as they dragged their heavy weapons into firing positions.

‘They will maintain their bombardment,’ said Meritorius, her voice vox amplified through her gorget so that it boomed along the ramparts. ‘The enemy seek to keep our heads down and our guns silenced while their infantry close. Remember the fate of Dasha Adul. Keep the foe from the gate at all costs, and remember, men and women of the Imperium, the Emperor is with you!’

The Cadians raised a cheer at her words and, as the smoke tatters and orders flickered through their vox receivers, they let fly into the onrushing cultist hordes. They were not the only ones. Every gun emplacement, artillery position and firing slit flared bright as the Cadian 144th vented their fury upon the charging foe. The front ranks of cultists were a few hundred yards from the gate when they erupted in fountains of blood, fire and tattered flesh. A hissing storm of lasgun fire fell like glowing rain to scythe down dozens upon dozens of howling heretics. Missiles whipped down on trails of smoke and detonated amidst tight-packed clusters of the foe. Heavy bolters and autocannons chugged, chewing red lines of ruin through the footsoldiers of the War Engine’s hordes.

Hundreds died in minutes, yet thousands more poured in behind them. They scrambled and trampled over the bloody wreckage of their former comrades, wild eyed and bellowing. Hardly like humans at all, thought Meritorius. More like wild animals.

‘Ma’am, incoming!’ shouted the Cadian gunner as another volley of shells screamed down upon the ramparts.

‘Cover!’ roared Meritorius. ‘Then up and resume firing! The Emperor is with you!’

Again, the fire and fury of the enemy’s shelling shook the battlements. A hundred yards to her right a lucky shot passed between two crenellations and hit the firestep, blasting an avalanche of rubble and bodies down the backslope of the gate. Corpses and rockfall rained down on the Cadian Whiteshields waiting on the canyon floor. They screamed in agony, half buried beneath crushing rubble. As the field medicae dashed to reach them Meritorius saw one flattened suddenly beneath a late-falling chunk of masonry the size of a bunker door. Yet again, she herself was more or less untouched.

There was a day when such a thing would have made her faith burn hot. Now she found herself feeling little of anything at all.

The smoke cleared for a second time and Meritorius leaned out to add the thumping fire of her boltgun to the Imperial fusillade. Self-propelled shells whipped down into the enemy, every mass-reactive shot bursting another heretic as though they had swallowed a grenade.

As she fired, Meritorius activated her vox, speaking to her sisters and to the preachers of the Imperial mission that they had accompanied into the stars.

‘The enemy press hard, but this is only the beginning and we must hold at all costs. Let your voices ring out, sisters and brothers. Let your prayers be heard by friend and foe alike.’

Confirmations flashed back to her, and amidst the din of battle she heard the beginnings of a battle hymn from the gun fortresses. Vox amplified by the Battle Sisters, the choral singing rose over the hammering of gunfire and the screams of the dying, haunting and beautiful and stern. Soon enough the Cadians joined their voices as best they could, a mighty hymn of defiance echoing from Hawk Gate to defy the hated foe.

Meanwhile, Meritorius switched channels.

‘Major Blaskaine, this is Sister Meritorius,’ she voxed.

‘Receiving, Sister Superior,’ came the Cadian’s reply.

‘Major, the enemy have drawn up prodigious artillery assets on the ridge north of the wadi. If they continue their bombardment of us unmolested, I fear they will compromise our defences quite rapidly.’

‘Understood, Sister, we see them on auspex,’ said Blaskaine, and Meritorius felt a moment’s irritation at the man’s relaxed tone.

‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to intervene on our behalf, major?’ she said.

‘Wheels are already in motion, Sister Superior,’ replied Blaskaine. ‘I believe Captain Maklen is about to provide the enemy with a demonstration of what proper artillery looks like. I recommend you enjoy your vantage point and perhaps shield your eyes, Sister.’

A basso roar rose from deeper within the canyon city, sounding for all the world like a catastrophic avalanche or ferocious earthquake. Meritorius looked back to see half a dozen bulky rockets thundering into the sky on thick pillars of fire and smoke. Manticore missiles, she realised, each one the size of an armoured personnel carrier, machine-spirit guided and packed with thousands of micro-bomblets.

‘Throne alive,’ breathed Meritorius as the enormous rockets lumbered overhead and spread out before beginning their death-dive towards the enemy. She saw the blasts a moment before she heard them, a flurry of apocalyptic light-flares that transformed the distant ridge into a roiling sea of fire. Mushroom clouds billowed into the air as the dragon’s roar of multiple explosions reached her ears, and Meritorius watched the blast waves from the explosions hurl the rearmost ranks of heretics from their feet as they raced outwards.

‘Emperor be praised,’ said the Cadian gunner to Meritorius’ right, looking again through her magnoculars. ‘There’s no enemy artillery left. There’s nothing left…’

‘Magnificent, major, the Emperor’s wrath made manifest,’ voxed Meritorius. ‘Please relay my thanks to Captain Maklen and her gunners.’

‘Will do, Sister Superior,’ replied Blaskaine. ‘Just don’t ask for another demonstration. That was the last of the Manticore ordnance. The launchers are dry.’

‘Understood, Major Blaskaine,’ said Meritorius, before breaking the vox-link. Such a display of Imperial might, she thought, and yet she felt nothing.

Meritorius sighed and looked down over the ramparts to see fresh waves of cultists pouring into the fight. So many heretics had been slain now that the living were using bulwarks of the dead for cover, digging in behind the bodies of their former comrades and raking the gate with fire. Bullets chewed along the ramparts, spitting fresh shards of shrapnel where they struck. Meritorius flinched despite herself, and a glance at the Cadian gunner showed that the woman had caught the moment of weakness. For an instant, the two of them locked eyes and Meritorius felt as though her failings were laid bare. She despaired as she saw the first stirrings of fear and doubt blossom behind the Cadian’s eyes in response to her own. Then a round caught the gunner in the ear and blew out the side of her skull, throwing her body off the firestep like discarded waste.

The weapon’s other gunner looked up at Meritorius, eyes hard and demanding.

Meritorius broke his gaze and turned back to the battle, firing another volley down into the massed foe. She had nothing to offer him.

Major Blaskaine ground his fists into his eyes, trying to rub the exhaustion from them and failing.

‘How long have they been attacking now?’ he asked, directing the question to no one in particular.

‘Battle’s been going for twelve hours and sixteen minutes, sir,’ said Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt.

‘It feels like days,’ said Blaskaine. ‘And we’ll have nightfall soon. Won’t that be a delight?’

The nights on Kophyn had been hellish for many weeks now. The natural stars of the void were no longer visible amidst the darkness. Instead, freakish auroras lit the night, lurid colours spilling and billowing through the stratosphere, twisting into the monstrous suggestions of leering faces and fanged maws. What celestial phenomena could be observed were wrong and unnatural, corresponding to no star-chart that Blaskaine had ever seen.

‘If it’s any consolation, sir, I doubt we’ll have to last through the whole thing,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘I’m seeing fresh waves of heretic armour rolling up on Jackyl Gate. Looks like they’ve activated their Stormlord at last. The gate’s defences are down to eighteen per cent effectiveness, and Captain Maklen already deployed most of her reserves to shore them up. There’s no way we can stop that punch, and once the gate falls there’ll be heretics swarming through the streets like vermin.’

The bunker shook, and the lights flickered. Dust trickled down from fresh cracks in the ceiling.

‘Bloody enemy bombers,’ spat Blaskaine. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a few squadrons of Lightnings to get up there amongst them.’

‘If wishes were weapons, we’d have a Titan Legion on station,’ replied Kasyrgeldt.

‘Void shield generators failing above sector two,’ called one of the console operators.

‘Sister Meritorius reports another wave of enemy infantry approaching Hawk Gate, sir,’ said another one. ‘She’s reporting weapon servitors and Dreadnought-sized mutants.’

Any last reserves of gallows humour Blaskaine might have used to deflect the severity of the situation drained from him along with the blood from his face.

‘To openly invite the mutant into your ranks,’ he breathed. ‘It seems impossible for these people to have fallen so low.’

‘In days as dark as these, anything is possible,’ said Kasyrgeldt.

Blaskaine took a deep breath and stood from his own console. He placed one hand on the butt of his laspistol, and looked around the command bunker. Red runes flashed on every auspex screen. Operators talked rapidly into headsets, struggling to keep the strategic maps updated as wave upon wave of fresh enemies poured into the fight. The grim black signifier of the enemy’s Stormlord flashed ever closer to Jackyl Gate, the super heavy tank grinding unstoppably towards the beleaguered bastion. It was no doubt packed with the axe-wielding Mas’drekkha soldiery of the War Engine’s elite. Casualty reports spiralled by the moment.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Blaskaine, before the entire bunker shuddered again, more violently than before. Cracks shot through the bas-relief carvings, sundering Imperial angels and decapitating brave soldiers. The lumens went dark. Only half of them flickered back to life.

‘Void shields gone,’ came the report.

‘Stormlord engaging at Jackyl Gate,’ came another.

‘Breach! Breach reported at Jackyl Gate,’ barked another operator a moment later. ‘Sub-Duke Velle-Marchon is committing the last of his tanks to seal the gap.’

Blaskaine shook his head. They all knew that a score of battle-damaged tanks wouldn’t be enough to stop what was coming.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began again. ‘It has been a damned honour to serve with you all, but I think we all know that the situation is irredeemable. I am giving the order for all remaining combat assets to fall back through the deep caves. Voxman, please pass my regards to Sister Superior Meritorius and ask her to hold Hawk Gate for as long as the Emperor permits.’

‘Sir?’ asked Kasyrgeldt as the Cadian operators exchanged glances. ‘Should we not commit all reserves to holding Jackyl?’

‘You and I both know that there’s no victory to be had here, lieutenant,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Our duty now is to remove whatever assets we can from this combat zone. Whatever we salvage today can be used against the War Engine tomorrow.’

‘Sir, we can’t just let the gate fall,’ blurted a junior lieutenant angrily. ‘Throne knows we’ve done enough of that!’

Blaskaine pinned the lieutenant with the full intensity of his gaze.

‘When Cadia fell we all lost something of ourselves, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘But we pulled out as strategy and sanity demanded, that the Imperium might use our remaining strength for something more than a pyrrhic gesture of defiance. So unless you want to march down to Jackyl Gate now and fight the enemy off with your bare hands, I suggest you shut up and follow orders, there’s a good lad.’

Blaskaine stared hard around him, daring anyone else to challenge his orders. He could hear how it sounded, how laughable the notion was of staging any meaningful fight back if Tanykha Adul fell. And he knew the rumours, knew what they whispered about him ever since the fall of Cadia. But if there were more days yet to be lived, Blaskaine would just as soon live them, and he could salvage something in order to fight back on his own terms. He was duty bound to do so no matter what they thought of him for it.

Kasyrgeldt drew breath to speak, but at that moment a piercing shriek burst through every vox-set in the room. Operators yelled in surprise, ripping off headsets and reeling back from their consoles. The lumens glowed brighter, and a crystal-clear note sang in the air, growing louder by the moment.

‘What in Throne’s name?’ gasped Blaskaine.

‘Sir! The enemy aircraft. They’re… they’re just gone,’ cried one of the operators, pointing at the runic display on his screen.

‘Empyric augurs active, sir,’ came another report. ‘Some kind of phenomenon.’

‘Define some kind,’ barked Blaskaine. ‘What is this, a weapon for the enemy to finish us with?’

‘I don’t…’ The operator gaped in amazement at his conflicting readouts, two tech-priests chattering in binharic as they hunched over the console.

‘Report from Sister Meritorius, sir,’ shouted a voxman over the swelling note that filled the air. ‘She says it’s a miracle, sir. She asks you leave the bunker to look upon the skies.’

Blaskaine blinked, then turned and made for the exit, most of his command staff close on his heels. He followed the tunnels through the rock of the cliffside, making for the closest exterior balcony. As he went, he found himself advancing into a glimmering golden light that shone along the corridors like a false dawn. The high, singing note swelled and rose as he went.

Blinking in the glare, half-deafened, Blaskaine staggered out onto the viewing balcony and looked up. The deep shadows of the canyon city were thrown into stark relief by a spill of what looked like golden starlight, falling from on high.

‘What is that?’ shouted Kasyrgeldt, shielding her eyes and squinting upwards into the golden glare that filled the skies.

‘Are those enemy planes?’ asked a sub-lieutenant, pointing to flaming trails of wreckage tumbling from on high.

‘Three points north-north-west,’ barked an operator, staring through heavy ocular augmetics into the very heart of the blaze. The light began to dim, the note to fade, and as they did Blaskaine saw what the man was referring to. The glow had come from something. No, someone now drifting down through the night skies and descending towards Jackyl Gate.

A metal-winged figure, armoured, holding a glimmering blade, her hair flowing in a dark mane around her head.

‘Vox-set,’ he demanded, clicking his fingers at an operator who dutifully hurried forward with the man-portable set he wore on his back. Blaskaine grabbed the handset and flicked to Sister Meritorius’ frequency.

‘Sister, care to explain to me who in the Emperor’s name that is?’ he barked. ‘And perhaps you could enlighten me as to what in the name of the Golden Throne she just did to the enemy aircraft?’

Meritorius’ voice, when it came back to him, was so full of hushed awe that it gave even Blaskaine pause.

‘Major, I think… I believe that it is the Living Saint.’

‘Living Saint?’ gaped Blaskaine.

‘Yes, major,’ said Meritorius, sounding every bit as bewildered as he. ‘I believe she has come to us in our hour of need. It is Saint Celestine.’

Celestine flew through an ever-changing realm. The skies roiled overhead, turbulent strata of colour intermingling with streamers of glaring light and racing masses of cloud. At times there were faces amidst the thunderheads, vast and hideous things with rolling eyes and leering maws. Suggestions of avian abominations screamed through fanged beaks. Terrible yet beautiful visages stared down before breaking apart into flickers of energy like writhing worms. Winds blew hot and cold, carrying smells as variegated as sulphur and camphor, fresh bread and rotting flesh, warm skin and ancient ice and burning parchment and vomit.

Below Celestine, the lands rolled past in an ever-shifting morass. Some were so otherworldly and ethereal that her senses could barely perceive them. Others were all too tangible. She soared over a glimmering shore whose sands were formed from minute gemstones. Ragged things staggered through the glittering beauty, humanoid figures that sifted listlessly through an impossible fortune with callused hands and cried up to her.

‘A bite of food, my lady, just a bite!’ wailed one.

‘Water, please, water,’ gasped another, yet soon enough their desperate avarice dragged their eyes back to the riches at their feet. Celestine felt sorrow and pity mingle with disgust and flew on, for she knew she could not help these wretches.

Beyond the gemstone shores came an ocean not of water but of flowing energy that shimmered and pulsed through kaleidoscopic colours beyond her ability to name. The longer that she flew above that hypnotic ocean, the more its colours captivated her. There seemed some deeper meaning to the patterns of light and shadow that she could discern if she could only just…

Celestine realised with a start that she had flown so low she was almost touching the ocean’s surface. She banked up and away with a cry of alarm, in time to see something huge shifting below the waves. An eye the size of a building glared up at her then was gone, but its look of frustrated hunger stayed with Celestine long after the monster itself had vanished.

Next came a shattered land of deep canyons and craggy islands that floated around one another like untethered clouds. Chains hung from beneath those rootless isles, ending in cages that each contained a slumped and hopeless figure. The moans of the legion of wretches rose to Celestine’s ears, but she looked away, for she knew somehow that these souls were far beyond her aid. Atop each island rose a tower of black marble and pale bone, each supporting crackling orbs of fire that leapt and spat furiously as terrible creatures capered around them and waved long, black blades.

So it went on. She passed over a revolting swamp of bubbling fluids and effluvia in which writhed maggots the size of tanks. She flew high above a castle of crystal and vellum that sprawled for miles upon miles and teemed with garishly coloured creatures that leapt and screamed. A plain of swivelling eyes, a torrential river of screaming souls, a great empty blackness that radiated the most dreadful sense of sorrow, all passed below her.

Always, Celestine felt the candle’s warmth upon her cheek. Always she sensed more than saw the light glimmering just beyond the horizon, and as she pressed on she steeled herself to the terrible sights. None of it would distract her from her purpose. None of it would prevent her from finding the answers she sought.

‘How long have I flown?’ Celestine wondered aloud. Time felt fluid and strange, and she realised that she could not say whether she had been airborne for hours, days, perhaps even weeks.

Still she felt no hunger or thirst, and that thought disturbed her in and of itself. At least, she realised, she was beginning to feel the drag of tiredness upon her limbs. Yet though the sensation was somehow reassuring in its physicality, it was also problematic.

‘I cannot imagine finding refuge in this terrible place,’ she murmured to herself. Since the mountain’s slopes, Celestine had not run afoul of any of the denizens of this realm, but she doubted that such good fortune would last forever. Still, knowing that sooner or later she would have to rest, she cast a dubious eye below her for some safe eyrie or sheltered nook within which she might take rest.

She soared over a region of infernal volcanic chasms, hellfires burning in their depths and black ash carpeting the lands about them. Yet as Celestine looked down upon the merciless realm it transformed before her eyes. As though her scrutiny had summoned it, Celestine found herself flying above a city.

Streets and buildings marched away in all directions as far as the eye could see. The buildings were looming, their architecture gothic, encrusted with grim statuary. Bleak factories and towering spires pressed close against mouldering tenement stacks and forbidding fortresses and sprawling industrial plants. Streets and roadways wound through the sprawl, so deep and shadowed that they resembled ravines between forbidding mountain crags.

The place was deserted, as far as Celestine could see, and looked as though it had been for many long years. The buildings leant against one another like drunkards, their glassaic windows hollow and shattered, their fascias crumbling in disrepair. A howling wind blew through empty doorways and sent dust storms dancing along empty streets. Somewhere a bell tolled, mournful and sporadic as though caught by the callous breeze.

Celestine realised that night-black clouds boiled overhead, thick and viscous as oil. From them fell flurries of what she first took to be snow, until the flakes touched her skin and stung her with their heat. Celestine hissed through her teeth and wiped one finger against her cheek. It came away smeared with darkness.

‘Ashes,’ she said. ‘Or something worse. And hot enough to burn.’

The clouds were settling lower now, and the rain of hot ash fell thicker from them. Celestine realised that to remain aloft amidst such conditions would be dangerous. The hollow buildings below represented the best chance for shelter that she was likely to see.

As she flew lower, a sense of brooding malevolence reached up to caress her nerves and cause the hairs to rise on the back of her neck. Celestine felt a dreadful malice radiating up from the dark streets, a watchfulness and threat that belied their empty appearance.

‘No, not down there,’ she said, mindful of the swirling ashes now filling the skies. ‘I will seek shelter amongst the higher places.’

Soon enough she saw a tall tower block that loomed into the sky, its flanks shattered by cracks. Tilting her wings, she swept lower, soaring in even as the first stinging flakes of ash kissed her flesh. The holes in the building’s sides looked ancient, and the darkness inside it was sepulchral.

‘But it’s shelter,’ she said. Celestine swooped in through the nearest rent and alighted amidst the shadows.

She prowled through the darkness with her sword held double-handed in front of her. Old boards creaked beneath her tread, and the hum of her armour’s power pack sounded loud amidst the silence. Insectile things squirmed through dark corners, and though she was far from squeamish something about their half-seen shapes made Celestine’s flesh crawl. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realised she was in some sort of dwelling, but one that had not seen occupancy in a long, long time. Items of meagre furniture were scattered about, old chairs whose stuffing was escaping, and tables canted at strange angles on warped legs. Everything had a patina of grime and a feeling of decay and, the harder she stared, the more wrong it looked. Chair legs blended into floorboards like melting tallow. The room seemed to shift and settle subtly just beyond her peripheral vision, as though it were trying to close in around Celestine whenever her back was turned. A lopsided shelf bore pict frames, but every one was cracked and blackened as though by fire; whatever images they had once displayed were lost, and Celestine dragged her gaze away as the dark smudges that remained swam before her eyes.

On one wall was hung an eagle symbol, two headed and spread-winged. In such a small room, the large decoration seemed dominant to the point of incongruity, but Celestine sensed that there was something subtly wrong with it too. The shape of the symbol looked off to her, too jagged and twisted, its eyes cruel and its beaks open in idiocy or hunger. Perhaps both. Disquiet swelled in her heart at the sight of this bastardised symbol, and she sensed a cruel malice lurking behind the entire scene.

Celestine shook her head and moved on, keen to be out of the suddenly claustrophobic room, with its yellow-stained walls and its deep shadows. To remain felt like leaving her head poised between the yawning jaws of some monstrous thing and trusting they would not snap suddenly shut. She walked on into a hallway that tilted at a drunken angle, its floorboards split and ruptured upwards. Celestine picked her way down the hallway and into another room, this time some sort of communal washroom. She stopped at the sight of old blood smearing the tiles of the walls and floor, its source concealed within one of the wash-stalls towards the darkened rear of the room. Something dripped, slow and irregular, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw tendrils of some organic matter spread across the tiles. Their pale tips quested like blind worms, turning mindlessly in her direction and swaying as though scenting the air. Revolted, Celestine backed out and left the secrets of that noisome place undisturbed. Still she cast glances behind her until its door was out of sight, in case something should emerge from the unseen darkness.

She hastened on, the floor creaking beneath her, and passed swiftly through a succession of rooms each more oppressive and mournful than the last. Small family shrines lay toppled and abandoned or smeared with foul substances long dried to a black crust. The echoes of lives lay overturned and rotting, many broken as though hurled about and trampled. Somehow, the rooms where everything was almost intact, almost in place, were worse. They made Celestine feel unutterably sad, and her disquiet grew with each chamber, as though danger grew nearer by the moment.

She stopped in another shadowy corridor, listening carefully for any signs of movement. By this time, Celestine’s heart was thudding, and her senses were screaming of something predatory and terrible stalking her through the ruins. Though the city had looked empty, Celestine’s instincts were ever more insistent that it wasn’t so.

‘I’ll find no rest here,’ she murmured. ‘Only death.’ She cocked her head, frowning, listening hard. A sound came to her, a distant fragment too vague to place yet somehow familiar. Celestine considered dismissing it as just another artefact of this strange place, but then it came to her again, a little more distinct. A voice, warped by echoes and muffled by distance, but unmistakably a human voice. Female. Shouting.

‘No, not just shouting,’ she breathed. ‘Praying.’ Moved by a sudden sense of urgency, Celestine set off through the ruined building to seek the source of the sound.

A few minutes of hurried passage through the ruin brought her to another ragged wound in its flank. She edged carefully into the room, half of which had simply torn away from the building’s core like a rotten tooth parting company with a gum. Buckled floorboards jutted out over a drop filled with tangled rebar and mouldering rubble. Beyond, the gloomy cityscape was revealed again, now blanketed by a steady fall of hot ashes.

Celestine stopped, balanced upon a jutting outcrop of boards and peering at the buildings half-visible through the ash fall. She barely dared breathe as she listened hard for the sound to recur.

There. Her head snapped round and she peered down from her vantage point at the street below. Light flared suddenly, hot and fiery amidst the drab greys of the city. It was there and gone in a heartbeat, but it left an impression seared into Celestine’s vision. She was sure she had seen something moving in the firelight, a figure darting from one building to the next at ground level.

A voice floated up to her. Its words were echoes, but its tone was unmistakable. Celestine heard anger there, and fervour, and hate. It was a tone of righteous revulsion for something unclean, and it struck a sympathetic chord in her.

Celestine launched herself out into the ash fall, glad of the armour that protected most of her body from its searing heat. She looped down, a quick dive that she ended by tucking in her wings, shielding her face with her arms, and smashing through the remains of a broken window. Celestine rolled to a stop, finding herself crouched on a rusting gantry several levels above a derelict factory floor. Machinery, pipes and conveyors were everywhere, all of them thick with rust and verdigris. They possessed an uncomfortably biological aspect, the pipes sheathed in thin skeins of veined flesh while infernal lights flickered in the bowels of the largest machines.

As she looked over the railing, Celestine saw again that flare of fiery light. This time the voice rose clear and strident, echoing up through the shadowy factory and rebounding from ancient mechanisms.

‘In the Emperor’s name I abjure thee, warp spawn. I banish thee with the holy fires of the Master of Mankind,’ it cried.

Flames flared again and, as Celestine watched, a figure dashed across the factory floor, entering from one side of the building and sprinting hard for the other. It was a woman, clad in threadbare robes. Her dark hair flowed behind her as she ran, and she held a pair of burning brands, one in each fist. Upon her back, Celestine saw a sword was sheathed, half-concealed by the woman’s flowing robes.

Celestine drew breath to call out, but then the woman’s pursuers smashed through the doors and windows and the front of the factory and spilled across the floor. There were dozens of them, hunched and gaunt with tattered bat’s wings sprouting from their shoulders. Their snouts were long and fang-filled, and as they yawned wide they let out terrible keening cries. The creatures scrambled along on gangling limbs that ended in hook-like talons, and their dark flesh was tufted with matted fur. They were singularly hideous, and Celestine knew that they meant to chase the fleeing woman down and devour her.

The woman spun, stopping between two rusting hunks of machinery. She swept her burning brands up to point at her pursuers and bellowed.

‘Emperor’s light consume you!’

Roaring tongues of flame leapt out from each brand, hungry fireballs of golden light that shot through the gloom to explode amidst the monsters. They screeched and writhed as they burned, and those not caught by the twin blasts recoiled, wings flapping frantically.

The woman turned and ran again, and almost at once the things were after her, fresh beasts spilling through the shattered factory frontage to join the pack.

Celestine set off along the overhead gantries at a run. She ignored the cables that writhed like worms as she passed, the doors yawning like toothless maws in walls that could not be reached, and leading to rooms that appeared curiously inverted and unsettling. Her footfalls clanged on old metal. Wires sang and bolts groaned at her armoured weight, and the catwalks shuddered and swayed.

Below, Celestine saw the woman running as fast as she could. The monsters were catching up to her, though, spilling over one another and uttering their keening cries as they ran their prey to ground.

Up ahead, Celestine saw a break in the walkway. She gripped the haft of her blade tight and leapt through the hole. She spun in the air as she fell, glowing wings unfurled as best she could amidst the tangled confines in an effort to slow her descent. Celestine came down like a comet, slamming into the ground between hunters and prey with enough force to crack the ferrocrete. She rose from her crouch, blade held ready, and eyed the oncoming monsters. They had barely slowed at her sudden appearance, and Celestine saw their gaze was fixed solely on the fleeing woman at her back.

‘You shall not have her, daemons,’ she spat, and as she said it the word sounded right. Daemons of the Chaos Gods. Her age-old foes. Celestine felt righteous hatred surge within her. She leapt to meet the shrieking daemonspawn with a defiant roar.

Celestine swept her blade in long arcs, hacking at the horrible things as they came at her. Her first blow opened the skull of one daemon and took the forelimbs from another. Her return swing opened another creature’s throat, then lopped the head from a fourth. Each wound vomited black ichor, stinking filth like old sump oil that sizzled as it spattered the floor.

The daemons clawed at her with their hooked talons and snapped with their fanged maws. Yet she realised, as their blows clanged from her armour and rang off her blade, that the creatures weren’t trying to kill her. They were frantic to get past her, to continue their pursuit. It was as though, in their idiot hunger, they barely registered Celestine’s presence at all.

The thought sent fresh anger and disgust surging through her, and she used it to lend greater strength to her swings. Celestine spun, hacking her blade through several daemons then using her wings to smash another into a machine with bone-crushing force. The last beast dropped, broken but still trying to drag itself after its prey.

For all her efforts, Celestine realised that as many daemons were spilling past her as were falling to her blade. A lucky claw-swing rang against her shoulder and buffeted her sideways. A scrambling daemon raked its claws at her face, forcing her to leap backwards with a curse.

‘Fight me, you vermin!’ she shouted. ‘Are you truly so mindless?’

It seemed the creatures were, as they flowed on after their original quarry with hungry shrieks. From somewhere far back amidst the shadows, Celestine heard the fiery brands roar again.

‘If I want to save you, I’m going to have to fight at your side,’ she said, and launched herself skywards. Celestine beat her wings and shot through the air, weaving a perilous path between jutting chunks of machinery, dangling wires and sagging conveyor belts.

Sweeping over the hunting daemons, Celestine smashed through another stained-glass window that depicted the death of a world at the hands of a blazing orb from the skies. She shot out into a shadowed street, and amidst swirling clouds of ash she saw the woman sprinting up a winding metal stair at the street’s far end.

‘Wait! I will aid you,’ shouted Celestine. The woman didn’t even glance back, instead darting around a corner at the head of the stair. The daemons flowed after her.

Celestine beat her wings and gave chase, shielding her eyes from squalls of hot ash that danced like dust-devils down the darkened street. Rounding the corner at the head of the stair, she saw the trailing tails of the woman’s robes vanishing into a tumbledown structure at the other end of an alleyway. Daemons plunged into the building’s cavernous doorway, and fire flared within it.

With a snarl, Celestine kicked off the wall and powered herself along the alleyway in three swift wingbeats. Raising her blade, she dropped from the sky and slammed down amidst the daemons that were clambering over one another to get through the doorway.

Three swift, hacking blows saw unnatural flesh part and ichor spray. Celestine lunged through the mangled corpses of her foes and into the gloom of the building beyond.

Celestine found herself in a single room perhaps twenty feet wide and double that in length. Four columns had singularly failed in their task of holding the place’s roof aloft; it sagged in several places, drab daylight and skirls of ash spilling through. Mouldering pews sat in rows, all facing a low mezzanine at the room’s far end. Upon that platform stood a toppled altar, the rubble of what might once have been an eagle statue, and the woman she had been pursuing. She had set her burning brands in sconces at either side of the mezzanine, and they threw flickering light across the old shrine.

‘The door, there isn’t much time!’ shouted the woman. Celestine spun at her urging and saw there was indeed a door on the inside of the archway, hanging open. She grabbed it and, her strength easily overcoming the groaning protest of rusted hinges, swung it shut against the onrushing mass of daemons. The woman was next to her in a heartbeat, sliding a heavy key into the door’s lock and turning it with a satisfying clunk.

Immediately the door shook as something struck it from outside. It juddered in its frame as more impacts came thick and fast. Mindless shrieks rose from without.

‘My thanks, angel,’ said the woman. She did not seem in any way out of breath from her exertions, standing tall and noble despite her threadbare attire. In the half-light, Celestine could see that her features were graven and proud, with a stern cast to her brow and an intensity in her dark eyes that was unsettling to behold.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Celestine. ‘What are you doing in this place? For that matter, where is this place? And why are the daemons so intent upon you?’

The woman smiled, and the expression illuminated her face with beatific beauty.

‘I am Pilgrim,’ she said. ‘I am here because this is where I must be. As to why the daemons seek me so? They detest my strength, my purity. It burns them worse than the ashes that fall from the skies for it has the power to bring hope where none exists, and so they will not suffer me to live.’

‘I hate them,’ said Celestine simply, and realised with a calm righteousness that it was as true as anything she had ever said.

‘Such is only just and proper, for you are an angel of the Emperor, and thus are you righteous,’ said Pilgrim. The door shuddered and banged, and she led Celestine away from it, down the dusty aisle of the shrine towards its narthex. Celestine glanced about the structure, noting more daylight filtering through grubby leaded crystal.

‘Where are we?’ asked Celestine again. ‘I have been following a light, was that… you? Do you know of it?’

Pilgrim glanced back at her and smiled, but she did not answer.

‘This place is not secure, they will soon break in,’ Celestine said. ‘How do I help you escape?’

Pilgrim shook her head. ‘No, Celestine. Ask that which you really wish to know,’ she said.

Celestine frowned, one question falling over another in her mind. This was the first living being she had met since waking and suddenly she found she had too much to ask and precious little time to ask it in. Could she even trust this woman, she wondered? Her heart said yes, but everything in this realm was shifting and illusory. How could she place her faith in anything at all?

With that thought, she knew what she must ask.

‘Who is the Emperor?’ she said. ‘Why do I know of him, and why do you call me his angel?’

Pilgrim’s smile deepened. From the roof-spaces, Celestine heard the scrabbling claws. The door banged in its frame, splinters spitting from the wood. Dark shapes moved outside the windows.

‘The answers that you seek are already within your heart,’ said Pilgrim. ‘The Emperor has been your companion and your guide for a long, long time Celestine. As have I.’

At that moment there came a splintering crash as the door was hammered from its hinges. Daemons spilled through it like a flood-tide of dark flesh, blood-red eyes and flashing claws.

‘Get behind me!’ barked Celestine. ‘Up onto the mezzanine and take up your weapons.’

Pilgrim fled up the aisle, yet to Celestine’s annoyance she made no move to recover her brands. Instead she dropped to her knees before the toppled alter, bent her head, and began to pray.

Celestine swept her blade through the first surge of daemons that came at her. Foul flesh parted and she leapt back, beating her wings once and coming down with a thump before the steps up to the mezzanine.

‘You will not touch her, filth,’ said Celestine. ‘In the Emperor’s name, I swear it.’

The daemons surged again, and Celestine hacked her blade in a figure of eight, driving them back and slaying several. As the daemons fell, lights flared in the corners of her vision. A glance showed her candles, sitting in sconces around the chamber’s edge. Why several of them had suddenly lit she didn’t know, but as she ran another daemon through then lopped the head from the next, more of them blossomed into flickering flame.

There came a sound like the rushing of a gale-force wind, and the tide of attackers redoubled. They poured into the shrine, smashing through the windows in razor-sprays of crystal and squirming like maggots through the rents in the ceiling. All Celestine saw was a heaving mass of daemonic flesh, scrabbling limbs, beating wings, yawning jaws, and jagged fangs and talons. Yet she felt no fear at the impossible odds she faced, just a furious desire to fight until not another breath remained within her body.

Celestine swung and hacked, stabbed and parried. She kicked out to shattered daemonic limbs. She drove her blade pommel into open maws and smashed fangs to flinders. The horde mounted like a wave before her, filling the shrine in a grotesque horde of the living and the dead, yet still she fought. Talons raked her armour and slashed the skin of her cheeks. She was driven back step by step, up the mezzanine stairs, yet not a single slavering daemon passed her guard to reach Pilgrim.

With every abomination that Celestine slew, more candles flared to life. They glowed along the flanks of the shrine. They burned bright in dangling iron chandeliers. Their flames leapt in alcoves and drove back the darkness. And now Celestine realised that a furious white light was building behind her. Celestine could hear Pilgrim still praying fervently to the Emperor, and without conscious thought she joined her voice to the chant.

‘And lo, though the daemons of the Dark Gods gather around and about, and though all the tribulations of the darksome realm press close upon my soul, still shall I walk in His light, still shall He show me the way and drive back the noisome and the unclean! I am His blade and His righteous angel, as He is my saviour and my lord, for His is the power, and His is humanity to shepherd and protect just as I too shall shepherd and protect them as His faithful servant! And in His light the heretical and the abomination shall be purged with righteous fire, with flashing blade and holy admonition! Lo, and the darkness cannot touch upon me, for the Emperor protects!’

With those last bellowed words, the light at Celestine’s back swelled to a supernova that blazed across the chapel and filled it up with holy light. Daemons screamed and flailed as their flesh tattered like clouds in a gale. They bleached burning white and evaporated, pulsing shockwaves of energy hurling them away and banishing them from existence.

As suddenly as it had begun, the banishment ended, and the light faded away. Yet Celestine saw that the candles still burned, and their warm light filled up the shrine and banished the shadows to the spaces beyond.

She turned, her armour running with daemonic ichor, her skin cut and torn.

‘Who are you?’ she asked again. Pilgrim rose and turned. Placing one hand upon Celestine’s shoulder, she led her around the tumbled idol to a stone font that stood forgotten at its rear. Firelight danced on the clear water that still filled it, and as Celestine and Pilgrim leaned over the reflection, the truth was revealed.

‘We look the same,’ said Celestine.

‘You know that is not true,’ said Pilgrim.

‘We are the same,’ amended Celestine, her tone wondering. She looked away from the reflection and into Pilgrim’s eyes. She saw her own revelation reflected in the other woman’s pupils.

‘I am your faith in the Emperor,’ said Pilgrim. ‘In this place I am given corporeal form. I am the strength you derive from the God Emperor of Mankind, the purpose with which His service fills you, and the righteous strength that is yours alone to wield.’

So saying, she drew the sword from her back and dropped to one knee before Celestine, bowing her head and offering the blade.

‘I am glad to be yours,’ she said. ‘I am glad to be your companion, and I will do what I can to guide you through the wilderness, Saint Celestine.’

Celestine felt shock at the title. Saint? How could she be a saint? Were they not those who had died in the cause of holiness? And yet, Celestine realised, she had seen her own mortal remains dotting the flanks of the bone mountain like morbid shrines. The thought that she might be a being possessed of some form of divinity stunned her. It was too immense a notion to accept, and for an instant Celestine’s mind reeled. Then, just as suddenly, she was filled with a sense of rightness as she levelled her own blade and laid it flat against the one that Pilgrim proffered. Celestine was suddenly calm, accepting. There was a flash of light, a keening note, and the two swords became one.

Celestine stepped back, jaw clenching as knowledge and memory flooded through her. Battles uncounted, prayers spoken, speeches delivered in the darkest of hours. She saw the flames of hope and faith that she had lit, and she felt the full and true love for the Emperor of Mankind flow through her.

‘Pilgrim, I thank you for this gift, and for these answers,’ she said.

‘The gift you give yourself. The answers you fought for and earned,’ said Pilgrim. ‘Call me now by my true name, for I am Faith, she that is embodied within one of the Geminae Superia. I am at your command.’

Celestine smiled.

‘Faith, then,’ she said, and found that even the word gave her strength. There was much still that eluded her, much she didn’t remember, but this was a beginning. Now that the Emperor was with her, in her heart, she felt she could achieve anything.

‘Rest now, Saint Celestine,’ said Faith, taking up her brands. ‘Sleep, and I will watch over you until it is time to set forth once more.’

Celestine nodded, retiring to one of the mouldering pews and making herself comfortable as best she could. She felt safety and contentment for the first time since waking, and as the candle-light bathed her face, her eyelids grew heavy. The last thing Celestine saw before sleep took her was Faith, standing silent sentry beside her, her burning brands ready in her hands.

‘The Emperor protects,’ whispered Celestine again, and then darkness fell.

405TH DAY OF THE WAR – 0730 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
CANYON-CITY TANYKHA ADUL – LO:564-3/LA:675-9

Sister Superior Meritorius walked down the Emeritus Canyon, into a sunrise she hadn’t thought to see. The Emeritus was one of three primary canyonways within the city, over three thousand yards deep, its walls thick with cavern habs, gantry-ways and protruding structures. Many showed battle-damage from the fighting, but the simple fact that they stood at all amazed her.

She led her Sisters along the ferrocrete highway at the canyon’s base, ignoring their muttered prayers and the excited whispers that threaded between them. They passed the burned-out hulks of Leman Russ battle tanks, and dodged around others that were still hale, hearty and rumbling along the roadway. Exhausted Cadian and Astorosian soldiers sprawled by the roadside, some offering weary signs of the aquila to the Battle Sisters as they passed.

‘It is a miracle, is it not, Sister Superior?’ said Sister Penitence as they walked, her voice tight with restrained excitement. ‘The Living Saint walks amongst us, and we are saved.’

‘We saved ourselves,’ corrected Meritorius. ‘The Emperor aids those who fight for themselves, Penitence. Do not forget it.’

‘No, Sister Superior,’ said Sister Penitence, sounding in no way chastised. Yet Meritorius couldn’t deny that their survival was nothing short of miraculous. As she watched rose-and-gold illumination spilling over the lip of the canyon, she supposed that she should feel relief, perhaps even joy. Certainly her Sisters did; she could sense the electric undercurrent running through them at the thought of standing in the presence of the Living Saint.

Instead, Sister Meritorius felt hollow, crushed on some level by the simple realisation that even the coming of Saint Celestine herself did not appear to have rekindled her faith. She saw the rapture and amazement on the faces of the women she led, heard the excited chatter of the more zealous Cadians, and then looked inside herself and saw nothing but the same bleak ashes she had known these past weeks.

Meritorius hated them all for their easy raptures. She couldn’t help it, and she hated herself all the more because of it.

Rounding a long bend in the canyonway, Meritorius and her warriors emerged into the full spill of dawn light where it fell through the ruptured remains of Jackyl Gate. Sister Absolom sucked in a breath at the sagging ruin of the gate’s fortifications, and the mounds of blackened corpses still burning in the morning sun. Black smoke boiled upwards in greasy columns. The bodies of the dead had been bulldozed aside as best the Cadian tanks could manage, to make the approach to the gate navigable. The loyalists were cast onto burning pyres, over which Imperial preachers spoke rites of devotion. The heretics went into excavated pits that more than one Cadian soldier had used that morning as a latrine.

‘There she is, in the gateway,’ said Penitence with awe. Meritorius saw, and wished that she shared in the glories that her comrades so keenly felt. Celestine stood atop the wrecked hull of the traitor Stormlord, its shattered carcass jutting half-way through the gates where it had finally been laid low. She was framed against the sunrise, her silhouette rendered angelic by the metal wings of her ornate jump pack and the golden halo of sunlight that played about her head. Hundreds of Imperial Guard soldiery and Kophyni civilians had massed around the tank. Many were knelt in worship. Others cried out in religious ecstasy, or simply stared in adoration.

‘And there are Sisters Constance Indomita and Imani Intolerus at her side,’ said Meritorius. ‘An honour indeed, to be selected as the Geminae Superia.’ One I will never be worthy of, hollow remnant that I am, she thought miserably.

Saint Celestine had appeared many times throughout the history of the Imperium, always when the darkness seemed absolute and the servants of the Emperor needed aid most desperately. At such times, it was customary for her to select two Battle Sisters, should any be present, to serve as her Geminae Superia, bodyguards and advisors both. It was said that the act of choosing imbued those Sisters with powers bordering upon the supernatural, though another, darker tale told how they rarely lived to see victory, for the mantle of self-sacrifice in their mistress’ name settled heavy about their shoulders.

This had never stopped a single Adepta Sororitas warrior from answering Celestine’s call, of course.

Indomita and Intolerus now wore the jump packs and carried the twinned pistols that went with the rank of Seraphim. Even from a distance, Meritorius could see that they carried themselves differently, standing tall and proud beside the Living Saint.

‘Come then, Sisters, let us hear what she has to say to the faithful,’ said Meritorius. ‘I see the Astra Militarum top brass have already answered the Saint’s summons. Let us not keep them waiting.’

Major Blaskaine stood near the rear of the crowd with his command staff around him. Captain Maklen of the 230th had joined him, as had Lieutenant Tasker of the 88th. The Astorosian sub-duke could be seen some way deeper into the crowd, surrounded by his strategic court, who all stared with rapturous awe at the Living Saint.

‘I’ll admit, she’s an inspiring sight,’ said Blaskaine.

Captain Maklen shot him a sidelong look. She was old for an officer, her features lined and her hair steel grey. Her advanced years had done nothing to undermine Petronella Maklen’s strength of personality, however. Now she snorted at Blaskaine’s words.

‘I’ll be sure to send a runner up front at once to let the Saint know you approve of her appearance, Charn.’ Maklen’s every word was bitten out and crisp, her diction faultless. It was no wonder, Blaskaine thought wryly, that the soldiers of her regiment referred to Captain Maklen as ‘Her Ladyship’. Though he had noted it was said with a fierce loyalty.

‘You know what I mean, Petronella,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘Emperor knows the woman turned the entire fight around last night, and I doubt we’d be still living if it hadn’t been for her. But still…’

‘Still what?’ asked Maklen, arching an eyebrow.

‘Faith has its place within the Imperial war machine, but in my eyes, it should always take a firm second place to solid discipline and rational conduct.’

Maklen snorted again and shook her head.

‘Upon her arrival, Saint Celestine descended upon Jackyl Gate and rallied the defenders as they were about to break and run. She killed eighteen Mas’drekkha single-handed then crippled the engines of that ruddy Stormlord and used it to block the breach. Word of her arrival bolstered courage throughout every battle-front on which we fought, and Throne alone knows what she did to the enemy bombers when she arrived. You know that’s not even half of it, Charn, and yet you can still stand there giving her that look.’

‘What look?’ asked Blaskaine, trying to rally.

‘That look, disdain and cynicism,’ said Maklen, turning back to regard the Saint where she held her hands out in benediction to the praying masses. ‘It’s unbecoming and bad for morale. Besides,’ added Maklen quietly, ‘while the Saint was doing all that, what were your orders again, Charn? I forget…’

Blaskaine bit his tongue and looked away, feigning interest in the crowd. Retreat had been the soundest strategic option at the time, he told himself. They’d retreated from Cadia, hadn’t they? That had been on the orders of old Creed himself, the great and famous general. How could he possibly have factored divine intervention into his strategies at a moment like that? Only a fool looked to their faith to save them at such times; it was a motivational tool, nothing more.

Yet as he looked up at the stern visage of the Living Saint and saw the love and intensity in her gaze as she looked upon the faithful, some small part of Blaskaine wondered whether he had been wrong to think so.

‘She’s going to address the crowd,’ said Lieutenant Tasker, awe and excitement clear in the younger officer’s voice. Blaskaine saw that Celestine had indeed stepped forward and held out a hand for silence. Slowly the throng around her quieted, eyeing her with expectant adoration. She was their saviour, that look said, and they would do anything she commanded. Blaskaine shook his head quietly, and made a mental note to keep his head no matter what occurred. Someone had to.

‘Faithful of the Emperor, I wish to commend you,’ said Celestine, her voice deep and powerful, utterly filled with conviction. ‘In the dark of the night you fought like lions. You stood your ground against the heretic, the degenerate and the unbeliever, and you did not falter.’

As she said this, Blaskaine felt as though Celestine’s eyes found his for a moment. He looked away hurriedly, frowning.

‘The Emperor saw your bravery!’ cried Celestine, and the crowd around her cheered. ‘He saw your faith, and He heard your prayers,’ she said, her voice carrying over the din like a gunshot. More rapturous cheering erupted. ‘He recognised your sacrifices, and He sent you His Living Saint to lead you to victory!’ She brandished her silver sword above her head. The dawn sun shone from its blade as the faithful howled their devotion and uttered fervent prayers.

‘But our work is not yet done,’ said Celestine, motioning again for quiet. It fell swiftly, the crowd utterly in the Saint’s thrall, desperate to do anything that would please her. Blaskaine felt her power, the magnetic pull of her, the heat and power of her faith stoking his own. He found he was clutching the aquila that he wore about his neck and couldn’t quite convince himself to let it go, for all his reservations.

‘The darkness above has fallen across fully half of the Emperor’s realm,’ said Celestine, her sombre words eliciting cries of denial and moans of sorrow. ‘This world of Kophyn is but one of hundreds cut off from the Emperor’s light! But all is not lost, faithful! In adversity so we show our true strength, and though His light may not reach us here, now, know that the Emperor still sees our courage and He hears our prayers. Now is the time we must prove our faith by fighting harder than ever to dispel the darkness and drive back the servants of the Dark Gods! Now is the time we must snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! We must raise aloft our shining blades and drive them into the heart of every traitor and heretic until they drown in an ocean of their own tainted blood. Can you do this, faithful?’

Screams.

Cheers.

‘Tell us how, Saint!’ cried others.

‘The Emperor protects!’ came shouts and sobs and rapturous screams. Blaskaine shook his head again, this time in amazement. He liked to pride himself on a rousing speech every now and again, but this was something entirely other.

‘For now, look to your wargear, gather your rations, and arm those who carry no weapon,’ said Celestine. ‘Offer prayers to the Emperor and make ready for battle, for there can be no rest for us until this world is returned to the embrace of the Master of Mankind. Emperor go with you, faithful. Be ready to muster when you hear the bells chime.’

With that, it was clear that the audience was over. Blaskaine expected the crowd to linger, and for many to try to reach the Living Saint or beg her personal benediction. Instead they turned, all the rank and file soldiery and the citizens alike, and flowed away into the Adul to do as they were bidden. Many made the sign of the aquila or shot last, adoring glances at the Saint as they departed.

‘Throne alive, absolute obedience,’ said Blaskaine.

‘That’s the power of faith at a time like this,’ said Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt from her position at his right hand.

‘Well, time to discover what the Saint wants of us,’ said Captain Maklen as the last of the crowds dispersed, leaving only the command groups of the Astra Militarum and the Battle Sisters standing in the shadow of the gate. Celestine stepped down from the hull of the ruined tank, flanked by her Geminae Superia, and strode to meet them.

‘This should be interesting,’ said Blaskaine.

‘Thank you for attending my summons,’ said Celestine, favouring them all with a pragmatist’s smile. This close, Meritorius could feel the Living Saint radiating power. Even weighed down by the cold ashes of her own faith, the Sister Superior felt the heat of the Saint’s beating upon her. As one, the surviving Sisters of the Ebon Chalice dropped to their knees and bowed their heads, raising the sign of the aquila to Celestine. She motioned for them to rise.

‘I don’t see we could very well refuse it,’ said Major Blaskaine. ‘You came to us in our hour of need, after all.’ He gestured towards Celestine with a self-effacing smile. Meritorius thought the man was working rather harder than normal to affect his normal insouciance, and felt irritation that he would attempt to diminish the Saint so.

‘What would you have of us, my lady?’ asked Sub-Duke Velle-Marchon, bowing deeply. His strategic court stood around him in their armoured finery, staring with undisguised awe.

‘I would have your strength, and your faith, and your aid, Gastar Velle-Marchon,’ said Celestine.

‘You know my name?’ asked the sub-duke, blinking at her through his monocular. He removed his crested helm and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair, bowing again.

‘I know the names of all faithful servants of the Emperor, sub-duke,’ said Celestine warmly.

‘You have the Astorosian Ninth, or what is left of us,’ said Velle-Marchon.

‘And I am sure that I speak for all my comrades in arms when I say that the might of the Cadian regiments of Tanykha Adul is also at your disposal,’ said Captain Maklen. ‘But my lady Saint, to what end?’

‘Victory, Petronella Maklen,’ said Celestine.

‘On Kophyn?’ blurted Blaskaine. The Saint turned her gaze upon him, and Meritorius saw him quail.

‘Yes, Major Blaskaine, victory in the Emperor’s name,’ said Celestine. ‘You harbour doubts?’

Blaskaine looked around and saw the gaze of the other officers upon him, many of them disapproving. The glares from several of Meritorius’ own Battle Sisters were downright poisonous. She, for her part, merely watched to see if he would be cowed by the aura of power crackling around Celestine, or if he would fight his corner. Why did she not feel as her sisters did? Where was her awe at this magnificent woman? Why did she alone seem to feel doubt as Blaskaine did, even as she felt anger at his questioning? Meritorius felt such frustration in that moment that she would have done anything to climb outside herself, to be anyone else at all, any one of her sisters whose faith still burned hot and uncomplicated in their breast. Who even was she without her faith? What was her purpose here?

‘Yes, my lady, I’ve a few, as should any officer here who considers themselves worth their commission,’ said Blaskaine. ‘I know that you’ve only just arrived here from… wherever you were… but I can only assume that no one has appraised you of the situation. If that is the case then I can only apologise for laxity on our part, but you must understand, lady Saint, that conventional strategic victory is not a possibility on Kophyn.’

Celestine looked serious.

‘You believe this world to be already lost, major?’ she asked.

Meritorius was surprised to hear Maklen speak up in Blaskaine’s defence.

‘My lady, with the greatest respect, the major is correct. We’ve barely six thousand able soldiers surviving between all our regiments, and far too few armoured units to properly transport or support them. What few aircraft we had left were lost last night, as were the majority of our abhuman reserves. We’ve near as many wounded as ambulatory, and enough supplies and materiel for a few weeks’ survival at most.’

‘And what of the enemy, and how he came to command such power here?’ asked Celestine. ‘Sister Superior Anekwa Meritorius, tell me of the War Engine.’

Meritorius’ tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as the Saint turned her full regard upon her. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat.

‘The War Engine is a renegade warlord, Saint. None have laid eyes upon him and lived, for he coordinates his campaigns from a hidden location that we have been unable to find,’ said Meritorius. ‘Our mission had barely reached Kophyn when the darkness fell, and the world was cut off. We tried to shepherd the people, my lady, but…’ Meritorius found she couldn’t look Celestine in the eye. The weight of the Sisters’ failure settled between her shoulders and forced her to bow her head.

‘But there is much ignorance in this galaxy, and you could not stem its tide at such a dark and terrible hour,’ said Celestine. ‘Do not shy from failure, Sister Meritorius. Embrace it. Understand what it can teach you. And do not shoulder blame that is not yours to carry. Continue, please.’

Meritorius looked up, but her voice remained low and sombre as she recounted the rest of the harrowing tale.

‘When the people of Kophyn could not reach their Emperor, when the astropaths found themselves cut off from the light of the Astronomican, many feared that the end had come. They resorted to local folklore. Grim superstitions that had never been fully uprooted amongst the mountain miner-clans. They directed their prayers to a darker being, and so the War Engine came. A madness spread amongst the people. Sedition. Heresy. The Cadian regiments arrived early in the war, their ships spat from the void storms by pure chance. They joined the fighting, but it was already too late. With the planetary defence force turned, much of the civilian populace mobilised against us, and the War Engine’s formidable strategic leadership…’ Her voice faltered again.

‘Defeat followed defeat, though it was through no fault of Sister Superior Meritorius,’ said Blaskaine grimly, and she shot him a grateful look. ‘The situation was always untenable. We were on the defensive from the start, dashing from one fire to the next, never able to establish where our enemy’s stronghold lay or muster a proper counter-offensive. Not that we didn’t give it a bloody good try a few times.’

‘What if I were to tell you that I know precisely where the seat of the War Engine’s power lies, the source of the madness that has claimed the people of this world, and that it is but four hundred miles from this very spot?’

‘I would say that I sincerely wish you had come to us six weeks sooner, when such intelligence could have made a difference,’ said Major Blaskaine bitterly, eliciting several hushed gasps from Velle-Marchon’s advisors.

‘My lady, what are you saying?’ asked Captain Maklen carefully, ignoring her superior officer’s words.

‘I am saying that I know where and how we must strike at our enemy to defeat him and break his grip upon this world,’ said Celestine. ‘The Emperor did not send me here by chance. I am to lead the faithful in a crusade. A crusade to liberate Kophyn from its Chaos oppressors and return this world to the Imperial fold.’

‘My lady Saint, you ask us to martyr ourselves,’ said Meritorius, shocked at her own utterance. Celestine turned to look at her again, a strange expression upon her face, but Meritorius pressed on. ‘The enemy have millions of warriors and countless armoured assets to hurl at us. Last night we witnessed but a portion of their true power. We will fight for you, Saint, but what you ask of us is suicide.’

‘Have faith, Sister Superior,’ said Celestine. The thought rose unbidden in Meritorius’ mind that she would give anything, anything at all to feel faith again. She knew a moment’s panic at the thought her emotions might show on her face, but Celestine carried on without comment.

‘What I ask will not be easy. Few of us will live to see its end, for truly it is a martyr’s road. But at its end lies the salvation of this world, and the Emperor’s blessings for all of those who fought to secure it, the living and the dead alike.’

‘You’re suggesting we go on the offensive, with a force that can barely make better than foot-marching speed, across the dust plains of Kophyn against a world’s worth of enemies?’ asked Major Blaskaine. ‘With the utmost respect, we stand in the best remaining defensive position we’re going to see–’

‘A position that you were all too ready to abandon last night, major,’ said Celestine.

‘Be that as it may, this is madness,’ said Blaskaine, looking around for support from his comrades. ‘We’re all ready to die for the Emperor, my lady, but why throw our lives away so fruitlessly?’

‘The foe scattered to the winds after their defeat,’ said Celestine. ‘But they will return. You all know this. And when they come against you, you will find that this is not a fortress, but a cage within which you will be trammelled and slaughtered. That is a fruitless waste, for it serves no purpose but that of the Dark Gods.’

She looked around at each of them in turn, challenging any to dispute her logic. Meritorius could not.

‘Well then,’ said Captain Maklen after the silence had grown thick and awkward. ‘I say bugger it! Why ever not? One last glorious crusade in the Emperor’s name, surely better than dying like rats in a hole.’

Meritorius saw stirrings of agreement amongst the assembled officers. Her own sisters murmured loudly in support, several offering up prayers. Still nothing sparked inside Anekwa, though she willed it to with all her might. But she could see the sense of marching out over digging in, at least.

‘What of the wounded?’ she asked.

‘Those that can travel will be armed and returned to ranks,’ said Celestine. ‘Those who cannot should take to the caves of the Adul and barricade themselves in. With the Emperor’s grace, by marching out to war we will draw the gaze of the enemy away from our fallen, for the heretics upon this world serve a bloody god who seeks war above all things.’

‘And you say you know where we would go, where we should strike to potentially end this war?’ asked Major Blaskaine. To Meritorius’ surprise, the man sounded half-way convinced. She saw cogs turning behind his eyes.

‘That is correct, major. If we are strong and true, if we show faith and do not falter, then the Emperor has shown me that we can achieve victory upon this world, and that the truly worthy may even live to revel in it. And even for those who do not, there may be other opportunities along the hard and bloody road. Revenge. Catharsis. Redemption.’

Meritorius saw a muscle twitch under Blaskaine’s eye, but the major’s jaw set hard.

‘Then I’m with Petronella,’ he said.

‘We can hardly watch others commit to the word of Celestine, and not do so ourselves,’ said Meritorius. ‘The Order of the Ebon Chalice are yours to command in this, Saint.’

Affirmations came swiftly after that, the last of the officers pledging their strength to the endeavour.

‘My thanks, friends,’ said Celestine when they had finished. ‘We do the Emperor’s work. Now, gather about and please, those with maps and data-slates provide them. We must plan our crusade and gather our strength, and time is against us.’

Hidden amidst the smoke-wreathed shadows of the funeral pyres, Unctorian Gofrey had watched the Saint persuade the Imperial leaders to commit to her plan. Now, as their council of war broke up and they went their separate ways, anger burned within him, hotter than the corpse-fire behind which he hid. What kind of fools were these, to be taken in so easily by her honeyed words? No wonder the Imperium had fallen, thought Gofrey, if heretics such as these led its armies.

No, this supposed Saint was nothing of the sort. He knew. He saw with the Emperor’s eyes, saw clear and true.

Gofrey had witnessed many terrible things in his life, and he knew a daemon when he saw one at work. Her sudden manifestation, her aura of power, the way she had beguiled all around her with displays of strength and compassion.

So holy.

So convenient.

So false.

The Emperor had already sent a servant to this world, and Gofrey was he. And now, with the arrival of this silver-tongued harridan, he knew at last what task the Emperor had for him. The damned fools before him were already lost to her wiles, but there was one man left upon Kophyn with the faith to stand up to the winged temptress. Before this war was done, Unctorian Gofrey would see the Emperor’s justice meted out to she who epitomised all that had brought the Imperium to ruin.

He would banish the so-called Saint and display her true and twisted nature for all to see.

As he turned and paced back into the Adul’s depths, Gofrey clasped the thing that hung on a leather thong about his neck. Yes, he thought, he had secrets, and power, and he saw the truth.

‘Praise the Emperor,’ whispered Gofrey as he vanished into the shadows. ‘Praise the Emperor…’

Consciousness – welcome, filled with a dawning sense of purpose. Celestine opened her eyes onto candlelight and took a slow breath. She saw that Faith stood near the shrine’s arched entrance, beside the splintered remains of the door.

‘You are ready to depart, Saint?’ asked Faith.

‘I am, but if you will permit me, I have many more questions,’ said Celestine. She yawned, stretched, noted that she still felt neither hunger nor thirst.

‘I will answer what I can, but I know little more than you do yourself,’ said Faith. ‘My power lies in belief more than in wisdom.’

Celestine walked to join Faith, her armoured feet ringing against cold stone. She stopped and looked out of the shrine’s doorway onto ashen desolation.

‘Where is the city?’ she asked. Through the arch lay nothing but drifts and dunes of ash, a blackened desert where once had stood the mouldering ruins of civilisation.

‘Buried. Burned away,’ replied Faith. ‘Or else slipped elsewhere through this dreamer’s silent maelstrom.’

‘What is this place?’ asked Celestine. ‘Faith, I asked you before but you would not answer me then. Will you answer me now? Where are we? Why have I awoken here? What am I supposed to do?’

‘You know where you are, Saint,’ said Faith. ‘Just as you know that, at this moment, both you and I are of this realm, yet not of it. As to what you must do, I believe that you already know that also.’

‘The light,’ breathed Celestine.

‘For now, you feel it only, but soon I believe it will be revealed to you,’ said Faith.

‘It is the light of the Emperor, is it not?’ asked Celestine.

‘The very same,’ said Faith, smiling.

‘Will I find my answers there, Faith?’ asked Celestine. Faith did not reply, but her smile did not leave her face, either.

‘How will you travel with me, then?’ asked Celestine. ‘I won’t leave you here, not now that I’ve found you.’

‘I am a part of you, one of the trinity,’ said Faith. ‘I may fly as you do, if you but believe it so.’

She stepped out through the empty archway into the ashen wastes, Celestine following. A clearing of bare stone spread around the shrine for a distance of perhaps twenty feet in all directions. A perfect circle into which the ash had not settled or slid.

Celestine’s attention was drawn back to Faith. She arched her back as though stretching out the kinks from a long night’s sleep. As she did so, wings spread from her shoulders beneath her robes. They glowed like Celestine’s own, but where the Saint’s were formed from the golden light of the noonday sun, Faith’s were moonlight-silver, shot through with glimmering streamers of amethyst.

‘They are beautiful,’ said Celestine.

‘They are as much yours as they are mine,’ said Faith. ‘Now, Saint, lead as you always have.’

Celestine closed her eyes and shut out the hiss and shift of ashes in the cold desert air, the rumble of the fiery clouds above, the distant howling of unnameable things. She sought for the light of the Emperor, and after a moment of silent prayer, she found it. Warmth blossomed upon her face like a sudden sunbeam falling through a window, and she could not quite suppress a smile.

‘This way,’ she said, leaping skywards. Faith followed her, burning brands in hand, and their wingbeats whirled the ash into a storm in their wake.

An immeasurable span of time passed as two angels flew on through twisted skies. Celestine attempted to question Faith further, but always the answers were the same; either Faith would assert that Celestine already knew, or she would simply smile her warm and enigmatic smile and fly on without a word.

The lands had become less formless and shifting, the ashen deserts instead remaining a fixture that rolled on beneath Celestine and Faith for miles beyond measure. Eventually they began to see shards of glimmering crystal bursting up through the dead ground. First came isolated outcroppings, then what Celestine thought of as crystal copses. Those soon became a forest until they overwhelmed the ash altogether and melded into undulating crags and hills of jagged crystal through which deep ravines and tunnelled passages ran. The crystal itself described many strange and wondrous shapes and ranged through vivid blues and lurid purples to acid greens and garish, almost sulphurous yellows.

Fires danced here and there upon, or even within, the crystal crags. Some were small and isolated flickers, others sweeping conflagrations that sprawled for miles.

‘What fuels those fires?’ wondered Celestine. ‘There is nothing down there to burn.’

‘Sorcery,’ said Faith, and now her smile was gone.

As they flew on, Celestine saw that the land ahead was rising. A veil of shimmering silver mists rose before them, then parted like rippling quicksilver to reveal monolithic mountains rising upon the horizon and drawing swiftly closer. Celestine’s eyes widened as she took them in, for they resembled tongues of flame hewn from the same crystalline substance over which she now flew. They were beyond immense, soaring up and up and ever up into the roiling void so that their peaks were lost eventually to sight amidst clouds of foul-hued energies.

Somewhere up there, amidst the jagged crags, Celestine saw a faint glimmer of something pure.

‘There, the Emperor’s light, I see it!’

‘Shall we test these wings of ours and fly towards it?’ asked Faith.

‘I am not sure that even the power of flight could carry us so high,’ said Celestine. ‘Nor would I brave that swirling maelstrom unless I had no other choice. Besides, Faith, look.’

She pointed with her blade towards the base of the crystal peaks. Down there amidst the desolation rose a crystalline dais the size of a fortress, whose top pressed flush against the lowest slopes. Upon that wide span of shimmering blue-and-mauve crystal could dimly be seen a seat or throne, and upon it sat a humanoid figure. As they watched, Celestine and Faith saw the figure gesture. In response, braziers to either side of the throne burst alight.

‘Something awaits,’ said Celestine.

‘I believe you are correct, Saint,’ said Faith.

‘Let us not keep this stranger waiting,’ said Celestine, tilting her wings and swooping down towards the dais far below.

Celestine’s feet touched the crystal dais, and she folded her wings in behind her back. Close to, she saw that the figure sat upon a throne of shattered rock. It was swathed in heavy black robes, and what little of its face was visible was concealed behind a bone mask. It hunched forward intently, and Celestine saw the glint of a sword’s pommel rising between the figure’s shoulders. It resembled that carried by Faith. Firelight from the burning braziers danced upon it.

‘She is not dissimilar from myself, Saint,’ said Faith, making to approach. Celestine held up a hand. She felt the intensity of the figure’s gaze without needing to see it.

‘Caution, Faith, all may not be as it seems,’ she said.

‘Caution,’ spat the figure. Its voice was hoarse and croaking, but recognisably female. ‘What time is there for caution, anymore? Approach my throne or begone.’

Celestine exchanged a glance with Faith then stepped forward, blade held ready.

‘Who are you?’ asked Celestine. ‘How do you come to wait for us in this place?’

‘Questions and uncertainty,’ snarled the figure, and its robes stirred as it shook its head. ‘You are not what you should be. You are lessened, a vessel half-empty and not worth the filling.’

Celestine frowned and stopped a dozen paces from the figure’s throne. Her hand strayed to the hilt of her blade and stayed there. The crystal mountains towered over the dais, dizzying in their immensity. Grinding thunder rumbled overhead.

‘Name yourself, creature,’ said Celestine. ‘I command you in the Emperor’s name.’

A retching noise split the silence. It took a moment for Celestine to realise that the sound coming from behind the thing’s mask was laughter, cold and cruel.

‘You think you are worthy to evoke the Emperor’s name, do you?’ asked the figure. ‘Very well, Saint Celestine. I am Purpose, and I wait for you here in the hopes that you may yet prove me wrong.’

‘She is worthy of the Emperor’s name, and of His love and protection,’ barked Faith. ‘She is the Living Saint, the beacon of the Emperor’s light and the deliverer of His true servants.’

‘You, fasten your lips and know your place,’ spat Purpose. ‘Faith and entitlement make for poor companions, and many suffer beneath the lash of their good intentions.’

Faith recoiled with an expression of dismay, that turned swiftly to anger. She lifted her burning brands, and Celestine again gestured to her to hold back.

‘What have I done, Purpose, that has angered you so?’ she asked. ‘Who are you to me, that I should care to prove you right or wrong?’

‘It is what you have not done, Celestine,’ said Purpose, leaning further forwards in her throne. She laid her hands upon its arms, and Celestine saw flashes of pale skin spotted with age, long nails lacquered mourning black. Aquila tattoos ran across both sets of Purpose’s knuckles.

‘And what is that?’ asked Celestine, wary now.

‘The war still rages.’ Purpose bit out the words, injecting each syllable with venom. ‘The Primordial Annihilator continues its rampage at the expense of the Emperor’s realm. And here you stand before my throne again, with the temerity to ask what is yet to be done.’

Celestine’s mind raced as she tried to make sense of Purpose’s words. Though the sense of them was clear, still her memories were full of holes, half-formed and too far occluded to help.

‘I do not know of which war you speak, though clearly it is one between the Emperor and the Chaos Gods,’ she said. ‘You sound as though you would hold me solely accountable for its continuation.’

‘Should I not, then?’ asked Purpose, and Celestine heard the sneer clear in her voice. ‘Yet what was the bargain you struck, so long ago? What was the quest to which you swore your soul, and the reward you were promised for your sacrifices? What was your promise, before you were Celestine?’

‘I do not remember,’ said Celestine. ‘But if this war rages between gods then you cannot–’

‘I can, and I must!’ snarled Purpose, surging up out of her throne. Faith swung her burning brands to bear, but at a gesture from Purpose they were extinguished. Another flick of her wrist and the surface of the crystal dais convulsed. Jagged shards whizzed through the air as the dais burst open in a dozen places, and rattling chains of black iron surged upwards like serpents.

Faith cried out as chain links wound around her again and again, binding her in place. Meanwhile, Purpose advanced inexorably upon Celestine, who stood her ground with her sword-point levelled.

‘The war still rages, and you come before me asking who, and why, and how,’ spat Purpose. ‘You should be in battle. You should be spreading the light of hope to those who have none. You should be striking down the unrighteous with the Emperor’s own fury. You should already have triumphed, and in your triumph have led all others at last to theirs!’

Chains clattered towards Celestine, coiling in the air then lunging towards her. She struck one nest of links away with her blade, but three more slithered around her arms and dragged them down with strength that even she could not resist. Celestine snarled as she was dragged to her knees, more chains bursting up to coil around her neck and drag her head forwards until she knelt before Purpose as though in supplication.

Celestine heard the slither of metal against cloth, heard Faith give a strangled cry of alarm. She understood that Purpose had drawn her blade.

‘If you mean to strike my head from my shoulders then do so, but know that every time I fall in battle the Emperor brings me back,’ Celestine snarled. ‘I have seen it.’

‘It is a privilege hard-earned, not a right freely given,’ said Purpose. ‘And it is not for you, but for all those whom you serve.’

With that, Celestine heard the sharp swish of the blade through the air and felt searing pain. Yet Purpose struck not at her neck, but at the places where her wings emerged ethereally from her armoured shoulders. Pain exploded through Celestine and she gritted her teeth, determined she would not cry out. Blood sluiced down her armoured limbs, slicking the ground around her. Another swish, another hacking blow, and an awful sense of severing. It was agonising, but Celestine refused to make a sound. She clung to her blade one-handed and strained against her chains.

A third blow came, then a fourth, and suddenly the chains around her limbs relaxed. Light-headed with pain, Celestine nonetheless wrenched against her bonds with all her might. This time they gave, shattering before her furious strength. She surged to her feet, swinging her blade up, dimly registering the twin fires of agony between her shoulder blades and the tattered remnants of her fine gold wings strewn on the ground.

Celestine stopped mid swing, staggering with arrested momentum. Purpose stood before her, hood thrown back and skull mask revealed. Her eyes stared through its sockets, wild and red-veined. Her hair spilled in a grey mane around it.

Before Purpose stood a young girl in a simple white shift, a child no more than eight years of age. Celestine had not seen her approach; she seemed simply to have appeared. Purpose had a fistful of the girl’s black hair, and had laid the blade of her sword across the child’s throat. The girl stared imploringly at Celestine. Her eyes were dry, and her expression composed despite the blade that glinted before her.

‘What is this?’ asked Celestine.

‘An innocent, one of those you swore to protect,’ said Purpose. ‘Just one life amongst countless billions. Yet how much can she mean to you, this child, when you stand there with your oath unfulfilled? Kinder, is it not, for me to kill her now and spare her the slow horror of your betrayal? Your failure?’

Celestine’s mind raced. She forced aside her pain and confusion, the vast and horrible implications of Purpose’s words. She ignored the bone-masked woman altogether as she locked eyes with the child instead.

Carefully, Celestine lowered her blade.

‘It is alright, child,’ she said gently. ‘I won’t let her hurt you. What is your name?’

‘Don’t you know?’ said Purpose with a derisive snort. ‘Have you lost even that amidst your slow dissolution?’ The girl just stared at Celestine, a tiny tremor of her lip the only clue to the terror she was holding in check.

‘Just stay still, child, and do not fear,’ said Celestine. ‘I’ll save you from this.’

‘You can’t save her, any more than you can save anyone else,’ said Purpose. Celestine’s eyes snapped up and she locked her gaze with that of the woman in the bone mask. The Saint’s voice, when she spoke, was hard as clashing steel.

‘If you do the slightest harm to that child, then I swear by the Emperor’s name that I will take my sword and drive it through your heart. Do you doubt me?’

‘I do not,’ said Purpose, and Celestine frowned as she heard a slight note of approval in the woman’s voice. ‘Perhaps there is hope for you yet, Celestine. Perhaps you may still prove yourself.’

‘If I do, will you let her go unharmed?’ asked Celestine. She had no idea how she might protect this child amidst such a hellish realm, or how she would bring her to the Emperor’s light without placing her in even more danger. Even how the child had come to stand before her at all. She just knew, with absolute certainty, that she must defend her.

‘I swear it,’ said Purpose.

‘Then what must I do?’ asked Celestine, though in her heart she thought she already knew what she would hear next.

‘Climb,’ said Purpose, and Celestine closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. She opened them again and looked past Purpose, at the jagged immensity of the mountainside rising into the haze high above.

‘How far?’ asked Celestine. ‘To where?’

‘It is not for you to ask such questions,’ replied Purpose. ‘Is your faith not sufficient, Celestine?’

Celestine shook her head. She slid her blade into the sheath on her back.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But if you harm that child, I will hunt you to the ends of this infernal realm, and no amount of trickery or manipulation will be enough to save you from my wrath. I care not which gods rule here, nor how far from the Emperor’s light we stray, I will do this thing.’

‘Just climb,’ said Purpose. ‘We will remain behind, for this you must do alone.’

Casting another reassuring look at the child, and what she hoped was a meaningful glance at Faith, Celestine strode past Purpose and approached the crystalline rockface. Close to, it was jagged and riddled with cracks, its surface glinting with shattered reflections. Somewhere beneath the surface, flickering fires danced as though trapped in a glacier or a deep, frozen pool.

Finding handholds would not be an issue, thought Celestine. She stared upwards, and vertigo tried to set her staggering. No, she thought, the danger here was not the nature of the climb, but its hideous duration.

‘Emperor, lend me strength that I may save this innocent soul,’ said Celestine, and with those words she gripped her first handholds and pulled herself upwards.

At first, the climb was a straightforward affair. Between her own strength and that of her servo-assisted armour, it was a simple enough matter for Celestine to drive metal-clad fingers and toes into cracks and haul herself steadily upwards. The pain between her shoulder blades had not lessened, but she was able to push the sensation to the back of her mind and seal it behind a wall of iron.

The memory of the child’s frightened face helped her to do so.

Celestine’s thoughts whirled, Purpose’s words reverberating through them. What was this war that the Emperor fought against the Dark Gods? Was she truly burdened with its ending, and if that were so, had she truly failed in her duty to end it? How many innocents were suffering for her failures? And why did the thought of that child’s peril disturb her so much more deeply than the notion of others’ suffering?

‘Because it does, and you know it,’ she said, addressing her blurred reflection in the crystalline rockface. ‘Is it just because she was right there in front of you? Or…’ Celestine wasn’t sure how to finish that thought, but she knew that she felt a connection to the girl and that it was enough to propel her, hand over hand, up the cliff face.

A glance upwards made Celestine wish that she hadn’t looked. The climb stretched endlessly into a kaleidoscopic haze, and the shimmer of the crystal surface made her vision swim with hazy half-images as though the cliff itself were rippling and pulsating.

Jaw set, Celestine looked down instead and was surprised to see that the same many-hued clouds had closed in below her. She had been climbing for a matter of minutes, yet already the crystal dais had vanished into the haze, taking Faith, Purpose and the girl with it.

The climb now appeared endless. Celestine clung to the jagged crystal cliff and took several slow breaths, fighting the irrational panic that seized her at this thought. She had come to take her wings for granted, she realised. Now, with the drop vanishing away below her, she felt their absence keenly. Logically, the ground must still be down there below her. But what if it wasn’t? whispered a treacherous part of her mind. This place was as inconstant as the ocean waves, and a million times more mutable. She had no guarantee that, the moment the ground was lost to her sight, it had not been lost to her altogether.

‘Faith, if we have become separated, you must look after that child,’ muttered Celestine into the vox-bead in her armour’s gorget. She had no reason to think that her fellow angel would hear her, but somehow the action felt right. Like maintaining a connection. ‘If you can hear me, Faith, you do whatever you have to. Just keep her safe, and I will find you again.’

Celestine took another slow breath then forced her limbs into motion. Whether the ground was there or not was immaterial. Her task was to climb, and so climb she would. She had to trust that she would reach the top of this nightmarish ascent. She had to hope that the Emperor still watched over her.

As Celestine continued to climb, a wind blew around her. It was puckish and gusting, trying to prise her from the rockface. Grim-faced, Celestine resisted its efforts and forged on.

The minutes crawled by and she fell into a rhythm. Seek the next handhold or foothold. Move a limb to it and secure her grip, by force if necessary. Test that her new anchoring point could take her armoured weight. Haul herself upwards. Repeat. Her heart thumped steadily with the exertion, and a slow warmth suffused her limbs. She sought a ledge or deeper crevice where she might secure herself for a few moments’ rest, but nothing was forthcoming.

The climb wore on and Celestine lost track of time. The wind moaned and shrilled through the crystal crags. Tatters of purple and blue cloud scudded past her. Occasionally Celestine thought she saw shapes moving in the haze above, dark suggestions of huge, winged things whose attention she dared not attract. At such times she froze, hugging the cliff face and pressing her cheek against the crystal, praying to the Emperor that the mysterious creatures would pass her by. It was not that Celestine feared battle, but in such a place, without even the facility to draw her blade and make a stand, she had no illusions as to her hopes of surviving.

Celestine’s limbs began to burn. Her joints ached with the effort of constantly hauling herself upwards. Her fingers and feet grew sore from driving into the cliff face again and again. Though her armour was perfectly fitted and padded, still her skin began to chafe against its inner surfaces through the constant toil. Sweat prickled Celestine’s skin, and stuck her hair to her forehead and neck. Her blood thumped steadily in her ears. With so many other sources of pain dragging at her, the fire from her severed wings threatened to break through again and steal her strength with its intensity.

Still she climbed, though she could no longer say how long she had been doing so. Perhaps it had been hours, now? Perhaps it had been days? A small part of Celestine wondered if she had ever done anything else but climb, whether all that came before had simply been an illusion, and whatever hopes she had for reaching the summit were just a mirage. She knew the dangers of such thoughts. She crushed them ruthlessly, yet her doubts could not be entirely driven away.

‘Emperor, lend me strength,’ she prayed, but if her deity answered or offered her his protection she didn’t feel its benefit. Perhaps he could not reach her in this place, thought Celestine with alarm.

‘Perhaps it is worse than that. Perhaps he hears you and he doesn’t care,’ said a voice she recognised as her own, yet she knew she had uttered no words. It took Celestine’s tired mind a moment to register that the voice belonged to her blurred reflection, still staring back at her from the crystal depths.

It smiled, though she did not.

She stopped climbing and screwed her eyes shut, keeping them that way for a long moment before opening them again. Her reflection remained, staring at her with eyes that were little more than warped smudges. Behind it, through it, she saw many-coloured fires flickering.

‘I am still here,’ it said. ‘You cannot escape me, Celestine, any more than you can escape the purgatorial task to which you swore yourself. Your Emperor doesn’t care about your suffering. Those you suffer for do not care either. You toil, and you sweat, and you bleed, and none of them care at all.’

‘Base trickery,’ said Celestine, beginning to climb again. Her limbs had settled into a position of comparative rest, and now she felt fresh pain throbbing through them as she forced them into motion again.

‘Do you even know why you fight?’ asked her reflection.

‘I fight… for my Emperor,’ Celestine said through gritted teeth.

‘A god should be able to fight his own battles, do you not think?’ asked her reflection. ‘And besides, Celestine my dear, you can’t lie to me. I’m you. So. Why do you fight?’

‘I fight to protect those who cannot protect themselves,’ said Celestine. ‘I fight to bring light and hope to the Emperor’s flock.’

‘Do you indeed?’ asked her reflection, and its laughter was the bright crackle of fresh kindling. ‘So, you are a martyr, are you? A selfless soul, dragging herself through the purgatorial wastes for the sakes of countless billions who neither know nor care about her sacrifices in their name? That has a rather pathetic sound to it, does it not, my dear?’

‘For the strong to sacrifice themselves to protect those with less strength than they, this is the mark of faith and goodness,’ quoted Celestine, drawing the words from her patchy memory of the Imperial Creed. ‘For though the almighty flock of mankind may bear little worth individually, as one they serve the Emperor’s will, and a single man or woman may magnify their worth to the Emperor a thousandfold through the offering of their blood.’

‘Your scripture is a little dated, my dear,’ said her reflection with a blurred grin that looked too wide for its face. ‘They quote a rather darker version of that creed in this desperate age.’

Celestine blinked as her reflection shimmered and vanished, replaced within the crystal surface by a hazy image of a battlefield. Skies burned dark over an ashen wasteland of trenches and razorwire. Wrecked tanks burned like will-o’-the-wisps amidst the gloom, and vaguely Celestine saw hordes of soldiers advancing between them across this hellish no-man’s-land. In the distance, she saw the icons of the Chaos Gods rising above further trenches and bunkers, while Imperial aquilas waved above the advancing army before her.

The vision shifted, drawing closer, moving with Celestine even as she doggedly continued to climb. She tried to look away, but she could not do so and also search for handholds. Nor could she risk climbing with closed eyes. And so she was forced to watch as the vision showed her the pale, hollow-eyed masses advancing beneath Imperial banners. She saw their cruel faces and pinched features, deep-sunken eyes dulled by stupidity and pain. Priests of the Imperial faith strode amongst them in bloodied robes, and plied gold-handled lashes across their ragged backs.

‘Let all sacrifice themselves to protect the Golden Throne, for this is the mark of faith and obedience,’ bellowed the nearest priest. ‘For the flock of mankind is worthless as all but grist for the mill of battle, and war is the Emperor’s will, and lo. The only worth of man or woman is as blood to be spilled upon His golden altar.’

Around him, the soldiers raised a sorrowful cry and pressed forwards into the guns of the foe. Celestine looked away as the slaughter grew bloody, and the image faded, became her reflection again.

‘Are these the people you die for, my dear?’ it asked, sounding almost sympathetic. ‘Surely they too are martyrs to the bloody creed of the Emperor you cling to? What difference can you make as just one more wasted life?’

‘I do not have to answer you,’ said Celestine. ‘You are not me, and your lies will find no purchase upon my soul.’

‘I am nothing more than an expression of your own doubts,’ taunted her reflection.

‘I do not doubt, for I have the Emperor to watch over me,’ said Celestine.

‘The cripple, the cadaver locked forever in gilded repose, the careless would-be-god for whose obscene ambitions all of mankind has suffered for ten thousand years,’ hissed her reflection. ‘That Emperor? He doesn’t watch over you, Celestine my dear. He is little more than a ravenous corpse.’

With each utterance, Celestine’s reflection filled the gaps in her memories. Yet what returned was horrifying, soul destroying. Celestine remembered the Imperium, remembered how, with each new incarnation of herself she had seen it darken and decay. The Emperor was trapped forever within His Golden Throne, the Chaos Gods sent fresh legions to assail mankind’s domain with every passing day, and as the millennia ground past so hope and courage were replaced by ignorance, fear and oppression. Each recollection was like a physical blow, making her ears ring and spots dance before her eyes. She felt sick to her stomach, and for a moment it felt as though she might simply relinquish her grip upon the rockface and let herself drop.

Her reflection’s grin widened further, nearly splitting its head in two.

‘You remember, do you not? You remember the Imperium you fight for, how worthless it all is, how pointless.’

‘It is not pointless,’ spat Celestine. ‘There is strength yet in humanity. There is good. There are those worth saving.’ As she said this, the image of the child flashed through her mind again, lost now, so far behind. Her reflection wavered, and Celestine saw a suggestion of ghostly images flicker in its place, of loyal warriors fighting on against the odds, of herself standing in their midst with the Emperor’s light singing about her and her blade flashing in her hand. The harder she focused, the more the images resolved themselves and the more of her memories slotted back into place. Celestine realised that, for every grim recollection that weighed her down, there was another memory of heroism and victory against the darkness that buoyed her up.

The fires deep within the cliff face pulsed, and her reflection swam back to the fore. Its smile was gone, though its face was still subtly deformed.

‘Do you remember how it all began for you?’ asked her reflection, brows drawing down into a scowl. ‘Would you like to remember? Allow me to help.’

Its image wavered away again and now Celestine saw a corridor within a fortress. It was tilted, and part ruptured, mortar spilling in where one wall had collapsed. Flames danced, smoke billowed, and wounded men and women screamed for aid. Celestine saw herself amidst it all. No warrior, this woman. She wore a robe of brown and grey, imprinted with Imperial aquilas in black and gold. She was crouched in the ruins, face bloodstained from a scalp wound, clothes and skin smeared with ash. She looked angry and fearful in equal measure, and Celestine felt again a ghost of the emotions she had felt that day.

‘The last battle,’ she breathed. ‘The Emperor’s palace.’

‘Yes,’ whispered her reflection. ‘The bombardment. The evacuation that came far too late. You were less than a footnote that day, cast aside…’

‘No, I was chosen,’ snarled Celestine, and the image before her rippled like a pool into which a stone has been hurled. A huge figure stood over Celestine, light shimmering from his magnificent armour to suffuse the corridor. Her crouch of fear became a protective stance, and for an instant she saw the suggestion of something beneath her, shielded by her body. Golden light reflected in her wide eyes.

The image rippled again, and the figure was gone. The scream of falling munitions filled the air, mingling with the despairing wails of human voices to create a cacophony of the damned. Explosions blossomed and all-consuming flames roared along the passage. Celestine saw herself stare into the onrushing firestorm with a look of utter despair, her hair and robes flapping in the furnace wind, her skin blistering before the intense heat.

‘He left you to die,’ hissed the voice of her reflection. Yet in that instant, Celestine knew her tormentor had slipped.

‘No, he gave me a task,’ she said. ‘He gave me a choice. A duty. A purpose.’

In the moment before the firestorm struck, the image shuddered again. Celestine’s expression of terror shimmered away like the illusion it was, and she saw upon her face a look of such absolute determination that it made her heart swell with pride. Again, there came the momentary suggestion of a shape beneath her, afforded the meagre shield of her body. Then flames consumed everything, and the vision faded.

‘Your purpose is to suffer endlessly for the undeserving and the ungrateful,’ spat the voice of her tormentor, whose image had now become a formless blur centred around a leering maw. ‘You die, and die, and die again. You will die over and over until the ending of the universe and the final damnation of all. You will watch the stars perish in the blazing heavens, Celestine, and you will know that it was all for nothing.’

Another image shimmered before her, Celestine clad in the tattered garb of the Repentia, a roaring eviscerator in her hands. Celestine falling amidst her failed sisters, her corpse lying amidst theirs, another wasted death. Celestine focused her mind and the image rippled, revealing her chest still rising and falling as she clung instead to life until her sisters found her and declared her survival miraculous.

‘I will be slain, and slain again,’ agreed Celestine. ‘But each time I die, I will also live, and each time I live I will fight, for that is my duty. That is my side of the bargain that was struck that day. And with each life I will know satisfaction in service, and with each death I will know contentment in acceptance, for with every battle fought and life given I do my duty to the Emperor and His endless flock. And so do I come ever closer to my reward.’

With that, Celestine felt fresh strength fill her limbs. At the same time, her tormentor spat a frustrated curse and faded from view, smoke and fire vanishing deep into the cliffs and out of sight.

Celestine looked up and there, above her, she saw a ledge. In the same instant she found herself staring into the large, dark eyes of the child she had left far below. The girl looked over the ledge for a bare instant then ducked back, vanishing from Celestine’s sight.

The Saint gritted her teeth and dragged herself upwards with limbs that burned and shuddered. She dug her gauntlets into the cliff face and hauled her armoured weight upwards in a series of lurching movements. She ignored the drop below her, the shapes moving in the murk, the rumble of thunder and flame amidst the clouds.

She reached up again and suddenly she was grasping the lip of the ledge. She hauled, panting with effort, and pulled herself up and over. She rolled away from the drop and onto her back where she lay, heart pounding, limbs burning, breath rushing in and out like a bellows.

‘Celestine!’ The shout brought her up into a fighting crouch, her sword held ready despite the aching exhaustion of her limbs. She realised that the ledge was sizeable, a crystal platform fifty feet across, and at its rear was a dark fissure. A cave mouth, she realised, leading into the cliff face.

Between her and that dark rent knelt Purpose, her body leant forward and her head lying on a block of gore-stained brass. Faith stood off to one side, burning brands in hand, staring at Celestine for guidance. Over Purpose loomed a huge figure, massively muscled and easily twelve feet in height. The being was part-armoured in dark red plates that were held to its otherwise naked form with brass chains. Its face was hidden behind a blank red helm that mounted curling ram’s horns of huge size and bore a stylised skull rune upon its eyeless faceplate. Its skin was marred with scarification, repeating the skull rune over and over again, and in its hands it held a massive headsman’s axe.

‘Order the blow, Celestine.’ The axeman’s voice rumbled out from behind its helm in an inhumanly deep snarl.

This blade hung poised, ready to swing down and lop Purpose’s head from her shoulders with a single blow. It took Celestine’s tired mind a moment to realise that the figure was waiting on her word.

Purpose looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. Her bone mask was gone, lying shattered to one side. Revealed was the face of a tired old woman, weathered with sorrows and cares unnumbered. Tears tracked across her face.

‘I am sorry, Saint,’ said Purpose. ‘I am sorry for all that I have put you through. I will not ask your forgiveness. I do not deserve it.’

‘Where is the child?’ panted Celestine, recovering her breath by degrees.

‘Gone,’ said Faith.

‘Gone where?’ she asked. Before Faith could answer, the hulking figure growled behind its helm and brandished its axe.

‘Order it…’

‘It awaits your decision, but its patience is thin,’ said Purpose.

Celestine eyed the monstrous figure and felt nothing but revulsion. This was a creature of Chaos, monstrous and tainted. Celestine felt anger at all that Purpose had put her through, the pain and danger she had subjected her to. The image rose again in her mind of Purpose with her blade to the girl’s throat, and a wave of hate and fury rose up within her. For the barest of instants, Celestine wanted to command the monstrous figure to strike.

Yet in that same instant, Celestine realised that the anger she felt was not her own.

‘Purpose, I know your true name, and it is Duty,’ said Celestine. ‘And if the Dark Gods think for an instant that I would allow such a tainted abomination as this to act as the arbiter of my will, then they prove only that they cannot possibly understand the depths of my faith, or my conviction, or my strength.’

With that she sprang. The monstrous executioner swung its blade down with all its might and Duty screamed. There was a resounding clang as Celestine’s blade stopped the executioner’s axe bare inches above the nape of Duty’s neck.

‘I defy you, as I defy all the works of the Dark Gods,’ snarled Celestine, arms shuddering with the effort of holding back the executioner’s blade. ‘I accept my duty for it is every bit as much a part of who I am as is my faith, and I spit upon you and all your filthy kind!’

Servos whined in her armour as she pivoted, forcing her blade upwards and driving the executioner’s weapon back. The monstrous warrior roared, the sound muffled by the faceplate of its helm, and swung its weapon back for another blow. Celestine grabbed Duty by one shoulder and hurled her unceremoniously aside before diving the other way. The monster’s axe fell and struck the brass block. Sparks spat from the impact, but both Celestine and Duty were unharmed.

With a rumbling growl, the executioner wrenched its weapon out of the block and lumbered towards Celestine. Wingless, her back to the empty void, she took up a fighting stance. She was exhausted from the climb and this hulking monster shuddered with unnatural might. Yet perhaps if she could goad it into a reckless charge she might lunge aside and send it pitching off the ledge to its doom.

The executioner staggered as a raging blast of fire struck it from the side. Celestine saw Faith advancing on the monster, burning brands raised and a look of murderous determination on her face. The executioner spun her way, then staggered as another pyrotechnic blast hit it from the other direction. It spun again, flesh blackened, and Celestine saw that Duty was on her feet and wielding burning brands of her own. Wings had burst from the woman’s back, shimmering in the colours of ruby and obsidian.

Celestine didn’t waste her chance. She charged, ramming her blade through the executioner’s back, its tip aimed for the heart. The monster bellowed in pain, stiffening as though electrocuted as her sword point exploded from its chest in a shower of blood.

Muscles rippled under worm-pale skin as the executioner tried to turn. Celestine cried out as her blade was wrenched from her hands. She threw herself flat as the enormous axe thrummed over her head, then rolled away as the executioner’s foot slammed down where her head had been.

Flames billowed again as both Faith and Duty hammered the monster with their burning brands, and it staggered with another muffled roar. Blood showered from around both point and hilt of Celestine’s sword and the executioner stumbled.

Surging to her feet, Celestine dodged another almighty axe-swing and grabbed the hilt of her sword. With a grunt of exertion, she dragged the blade free.

‘Emperor, guide my blade!’ she cried, then spun on her heel and whipped her sword in a hissing arc. It struck low and hacked through the executioner’s right knee, severing the leg entirely. The creature gave another roar of mindless fury, but it was powerless to stop itself toppling sideways and crashing to the ground. Blood jetted from the stump of its severed leg and poured from the holes in its back and chest. Still it tried to drag itself towards Celestine, axe clutched in one massive fist, eyeless face locked upon her.

Faith and Duty strode closer and bathed the monster in flame until its flesh crackled and body fat spat and sizzled.

Still it crawled, emitting grunting snarls. Celestine eyed the ruined creature with disgust.

‘Such are the wages of heresy,’ she intoned, raising her blade high. ‘Such is the fate of all who defy the will of the Emperor.’

With that, Celestine’s blade whistled down and struck the monster’s head from its shoulders. Molten gore jetted, spattering Celestine’s greaves, and the axeman’s remaining limbs drummed against the rock as though its body still fought against death. Only when she was quite sure that it had stopped moving, and was finally, irrevocably slain, did Celestine allow herself to drop to her knees in exhaustion.

412TH DAY OF THE WAR – 1300 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
MANSEYT CRATER FIELDS – LO:722-6/LA:633-4

Major Blaskaine rode in a borrowed Taurox armoured personnel carrier named Endurance. For the past seven days, the vehicle had acted as his mobile command base and Blaskaine had to admit that, for a cramped and often sweaty metal box on tracks, he had become quite fond of the old girl.

At night, when temperatures plunged, he had been glad of the vehicle’s ability to pressurise and seal off the interior atmosphere. Now, though, with the midday suns beating down, he rode high in the vehicle’s cupola with the hatch open and his cap off. Blaskaine luxuriated in the simple pleasure of the wind blowing through his greasy hair as the Taurox rumbled along. If he was honest with himself, it was a rather pleasant surprise simply still being alive; Blaskaine found his spirits disproportionately lifted by the act of still breathing.

The view wasn’t much to speak of, of course. It rarely was on Kophyn. The planet was hard and scarred, a ball of rock and dust that had been deemed worthy of habitation only because of the rich mineral deposits running through its geological strata. Currently, the crusade was advancing across a dusty plain under a hard blue sky, with not so much as a scad of underbrush or a jutting rock formation to break up the lifeless monotony.

Endurance travelled near the head of the straggling column of tanks and soldiery that made up Saint Celestine’s crusade. The vehicles were forced to move at marching pace, for there had not been enough armour to mobilise everyone, and so progress had been steady at best. Still, reflected Blaskaine, they had been phenomenally fortunate thus far. Aside from a few scattered cult warbands and a single column of rusted renegade tanks, the crusade had met no serious resistance in an entire week trekking through hostile territory.

‘Nothing short of miraculous, really,’ he muttered to himself, and was surprised to find he meant it less acerbically than he had thought. Still, it unsettled him; in Blaskaine’s experience, an unseen foe was more dangerous than one stood proud before you. He had thought about convening quietly with the other Cadian officers to discuss their absent enemy, perhaps to arrange additional scouting parties, but he had put the decision off. Blaskaine told himself this was because they couldn’t spare the scouts. The truth was he couldn’t bear the thought that his doubts might be answered by warriors he had long respected now spouting zealotry and talk of unquestioning faith.

He could see her up there, at the very front of the marching column. The Saint, flanked by her Geminae Superia, striding along amidst the Adepta Sororitas. She walked like everyone else, even though he had seen her fly with ease. The message wasn’t lost on Blaskaine. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt as he glanced back at the Cadian soldiers marching stolidly through the dust trail kicked up by his armoured personnel carrier.

His reverie was broken by movement below him. Blaskaine scooted back to make space as Kasyrgeldt passed a vox handset up to him.

‘Captain Maklen for you, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Sounds like trouble.’

Maklen’s Leman Russ Executioner, Sunderer, was half-way back down the column. The potent plasma-tank was barely visible through his magnoculars amongst the dust clouds kicked up by the vehicles surrounding it.

‘Thanks, Astryd,’ said Blaskaine, taking the bulky handset and hitting the ‘receive’ rune as his adjutant ducked back into the troop bay of the Taurox. ‘Captain Maklen, this is Major Blaskaine receiving.’

‘Charn, my scouts are reporting possible trouble up ahead,’ said Captain Maklen.

‘What nature of peril comes our way?’ asked Blaskaine, wondering to himself whether now, as he had suspected, the other boot was about to come crashing down.

‘We’re approaching the Manseyt Crater Fields,’ said Maklen. ‘Prime ambush territory. And we’re only a hundred miles shy of the Khatmadh’Nul mountains now.’

‘Closing in on Shambach against all odds,’ said Blaskaine.

Shambach, the City of Ingots, was the ancient prayer city of Kophyn, and served as both the planet’s spiritual and mining capital. It resided in a rocky valley at the feet of holy Mount Imperator. Its blessed mines had been the richest on Kophyn for over a thousand years.

It was also, according to the Saint, the enemy’s primary stronghold and the source of the corruption that had beset the planet. She wouldn’t say how she knew this, of course, or what precisely the nature of that corruption was, and Blaskaine had become increasingly infuriated over the previous seven days with her firm insistence that he ‘have faith and trust in the Emperor’.

Still, he reflected sourly, such blandishments seemed enough for everyone else and he wasn’t one to fight losing battles. Privately, Blaskaine figured that dying beneath the guns of one traitor stronghold was much the same as dying beneath the guns of any other, and all would offer an equal chance to salvage some manpower and escape when matters inevitably went south.

‘Yes, but we’ll never make the City of Ingots if we run and get slaughtered by enemy ambushers out here,’ said Maklen, her regal tones snapping Blaskaine back to the present. ‘The Salamander crews are reporting huge renegade icons jutting from some of the craters.’

‘Seems a bit blatant,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Could just be scare tactics, heads on pikes, that sort of thing?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Maklen, sounding singularly unconvinced. ‘It could also portend some dark sorcery or other. Throne knows they’ve demonstrated ample aptitude for the conjuring of nightmares since this all began.’

‘Well, thank the Emperor we’ve a Saint on our side then, eh?’ said Blaskaine before he could stop himself. He winced at the cold silence that hissed back to him over the vox.

‘For a man with the nous to rise to the rank of major within the Cadian military, you really can be a spectacular arse sometimes, Charn,’ said Maklen eventually.

‘That, Petronella, is beyond question,’ said Blaskaine. He knew Captain Maklen well enough to know that, so long as she subjected you to the odd biting insult, you were still on her right side.

‘Well, just see to it that such blasphemous twaddle doesn’t reach the ears of the soldiery,’ she snapped. ‘Or, Emperor forbid, the missionaries. If they were zealous before the Saint’s arrival, they’re positively fanatical now. It’s a powerful weapon, might even give us a fighting chance in this madness, but I believe it’s made some of them dangerous.’

Blaskaine’s thoughts jumped to one priest in particular, the rangy one with the wild eyebrows and the penchant for baiting the soldiery. He’d had to discipline the man three nights ago at camp when he heard him preaching fire and damnation for all. Since then he’d caught the priest’s wild-eyed gaze fixed upon him more than once. It made him deeply uncomfortable.

‘You will find no argument here,’ said Blaskaine. ‘So, what is the best course of action, in your opinion? Circumnavigate the crater field or push on? What sort of delay are we talking about if we go around?’

‘Substantial,’ replied Maklen. ‘But Charn, it isn’t our decision, is it?’

Blaskaine sighed heavily before keying the ‘send’ rune again. ‘No, captain, it is not. Have you advised the Saint?’

‘I wanted to warn you first,’ she said. ‘But you know what she’s going to say, don’t you?’

‘Press on, and let the Emperor guide our path,’ he said heavily.

‘Precisely, and that tone of voice is why I wanted to give you a moment to adjust to the notion before I spread the word to Celestine, Tasker and Velle-Marchon.’

‘Thank you, Petronella,’ said Blaskaine.

‘You’re a damn good officer, Major Blaskaine. I’m proud to serve under you and I consider you a friend. But really, would a little more faith kill you?’ asked Maklen brusquely. ‘He’s sent us His Living Saint, for Throne’s sakes. What more indication do you need that the Master of Mankind still watches over us?’

Blaskaine scowled, then shook his head and laughed mirthlessly.

‘Between you and I,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘I’m amazed there’s a single Cadian left with any faith in the Emperor after the death of our world. She was there, too, don’t forget. She fought the Despoiler himself alongside Creed, and yet the Cadian Gate still fell after ten thousand years of resistance. It fell during our watch. With Celestine present at the death, might I add. There was no divine intervention that day was there? No last-gasp route to salvation for the loyal folk of Cadia. Doesn’t it make you feel angry, Petronella? Ashamed? Betrayed? How do you do it?’

‘Major Blaskaine, I would have thought it obvious,’ replied Maklen, the crackle of the vox making her tone hard for him to read. ‘It is only because of our faith in the Emperor that there are any Cadians left.’

With that, she cut the vox-link, leaving Major Blaskaine to brood. He looked to the eastern horizon and saw that dark clouds were gathering in their path, wisps of vapour coagulating unnaturally quickly into thunderheads that swallowed up the sky. The occluded light of the suns turned watery and grey.

Blaskaine pulled his cap back onto his head and set his jaw.

‘Very well,’ he said grimly, and found himself hoping that there were enemies waiting for them up ahead. He had a sudden, powerful need to shoot something.

Sister Superior Meritorius checked the clip on her bolter for a third time. Still full, she thought. Still clear, well oiled, all in good order. Even now, with all that beset her mind, she found her equipment drills came automatically. They were a touchstone, she supposed.

Warriors stirred around her, and a string of pips shot through the vox network.

‘The Cadians and Astorosians have closed up their formation and unshrouded their weapons,’ observed Sister Penitence. ‘They are ready to advance into the crater fields. At last.’

‘That was impressively swift for so large a formation of soldiery, Sister,’ said Sister Absolom. Penitence grunted in reply, clearly unimpressed.

The crater fields lay dead ahead, the flat regularity of the plains broken and torn where ancient asteroid impacts had ruptured the bedrock. Some of the craters had lips that rose several hundred feet into the air like the severed slopes of dispossessed mountains. Others simply plunged away into dark pits. From the lips of many craters rose huge icons of Chaos, towering iron shafts wrought on an industrial scale, supporting dark skull sigils the size of landing pads. Their lowering presence was beyond ominous, thought Meritorius.

‘The skies darken,’ she said, casting her eyes towards the heavens. Overhead, black clouds had gathered until the crusade found themselves mired in twilit gloom. Some of the Imperial tank crews had chosen to activate the stablights mounted on their turrets, and Meritorius found herself glad of their stark illumination.

‘Faithful warriors of the Emperor,’ cried Saint Celestine from nearby, her voice vox amplified so that it rolled across the Imperial lines. ‘We press on with prayers upon our lips and gladness in our hearts. Fear not the shadow on high, nor the symbols of the Dark Gods, nor any threat of foes ahead. The Emperor will test us in whatever way He sees fit, but I know that we shall all prevail, for we have true faith and its light can illuminate any darkness.’

Around Meritorius, her Sisters raised a mighty cheer. She saw the faith shining in their eyes, the ferocity of their determination, and felt the gulf of loneliness widen around her. Self-loathing warred with anger and recrimination in Sister Meritorius’ heart. How could she stand before a Living Saint of the Emperor and yet feel nothing? Why had this curse fallen upon her?

Hard-eyed, she raised her voice to cheer as loud as any of them. She had a duty to lead these women into battle, and she would not be found wanting, no matter how clogged with ash her soul had become.

Saint Celestine turned and advanced, her Geminae Superia close at her side. At the same time, the Imperial crusade force surged forwards amidst prayers and hymns, the snorting of tank exhausts and the massed tramp of boots.

‘Ten miles of this terrain, give or take,’ said Sister Absolom as they strode out at the army’s head. The Sisters of Battle formed a black-and-white-armoured spearhead that would lead the push through to the other side of the crater fields. ‘Perhaps three hours’ loaded march through rough terrain.’

‘Do you think the enemy are out here, or have the icons simply made the Cadians paranoid?’ asked Sister Penitence.

‘We’ve seen scarce sign of resistance so far,’ said Sister Absolom. ‘Perhaps their forces are far afield, fighting other Imperial holdouts of which we’ve no knowledge?’

‘Or perhaps they fell upon Tanykha Adul and are even now closing on our trail,’ said Sister Penitence, darkly. ‘The Saint soars aloft, surely she can just tell us if the enemy are lurking ahead?’

‘She is not a literal angel,’ said Sister Meritorius, her voice harder than she intended. ‘Even with that artificer pack upon her back, the Saint would have to put herself dangerously out of position to scout the highest craters. Besides which, I would not wish to stray too close to those clouds, would you?’

The first sparks of lightning were now crackling through the clouds overhead. A dry heaviness settled in the air, making everything feel close and charged. Corposant flickered across the towering Chaos icons, making them appear unnaturally energised.

Despite her words, Meritorius couldn’t shake the traitorous feeling that the Saint did know whether there were enemies out here and had simply pushed on regardless. Thus, it came as no shock to her when, an hour into their march, the groan of vast horns echoed out over the crater fields and masses of silhouettes appeared upon the lips of the highest craters.

‘The foe is here,’ shouted Meritorius, pressing the arming stud on her boltgun. ‘Look to your faith and your firearms, Sisters! For the Emperor, get ready to fight!’

Alarm signals shot back along the tightly ranked column of the Imperial advance. They crackled through vox-channels. They flashed from tank to tank by means of raised hazard pennants. They echoed in the tight, disciplined barking of orders from Cadian sergeants. Blaskaine heard most of themas he sat within the belly of his Taurox with a headset clamped to his ear.

‘I need numbers, enemy positioning,’ he said. ‘Are there any of them behind us?’

‘Negative, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt as information flowed in to the vehicle’s command console. ‘Looks like two sizeable forces, emerging from craters here and here.’ She jabbed at the console’s rudimentary auspex screen with her finger. ‘No word from the rearguard of anyone moving behind us.’

‘Split the platoons and push them out to flanks,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Staggered firing lines with sight-line priority to the heavy weapon squads. They’ve got bare slopes of rock to charge down, let’s punish them every step of the way.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, and began disseminating his orders via vox. Meanwhile, Blaskaine switched channels.

‘Lieutenant Tasker, do you receive?’

‘Receiving, major,’ came Tasker’s voice.

‘Your lot are in reserve,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Hold the centre, watch our rear, and if the lines look like they’re about to break, reinforce immediately.’

‘Yes, major,’ said Tasker, sounding irritatingly upbeat as always. The lieutenant didn’t help his case as he signed off with a heartfelt ‘The Emperor protects!’

Blaskaine scowled as another booming horn blast echoed across the crater fields. He could hear the muffled sounds of tanks and infantry redeploying beyond the hull of his transport and took a moment to feel thankful for good Cadian efficiency.

‘Captain Maklen, Sub-Duke Velle-Marchon, Sister Superior Meritorius, do you read?’ he asked, keying into the group command channel. Voices came back to him, and he heard battle hymnals being sung in the background.

‘Major, the enemy are upon us,’ announced Velle-Marchon, with altogether too much relish for Blaskaine’s tastes.

‘I had noticed, thank you,’ replied Blaskaine. ‘Maklen, Velle-Marchon, I’m spreading my soldiers out into firing lines. Deploy your armour squadrons along their back lines and lend supporting bombardment. We’ll pound them to dust before they get anywhere near us.’

‘Major, respectfully, a solid armour charge to either flank could shatter them before they even get into small arms range,’ said Velle-Marchon. ‘The men are reporting mobs of miner-cultists and turncoat planetary militia, and not a great deal of anything else.’

‘Doesn’t that strike anyone as strange?’ asked Maklen. ‘I know the ways of heretics are obscure at best, but they’ve had time to prepare for our arrival and this is all they offer us?’

She fed the vid-feed from her tank’s turret optics through to their command screens. Blaskaine watched the grainy image of several thousand screaming figures running pell-mell down the slope of a crater to the northern flank of the Imperial force. They were dashing headlong, miner’s garb and defence trooper body armour daubed with bloody marks and ashen skull runes. Yet it was true, he thought. This was hardly a masterful ambush.

‘There is more to this,’ came the voice of Sister Meritorius. She sounded grim, thought Blaskaine, but that was nothing out of character. ‘Look to the storm, the icons.’

The image in Blaskaine’s monitor blurred and swung wildly as Maklen ordered her vox-thief redirected. It settled again with one of the obscene icons slightly out of focus at its centre and the black stormclouds heavy behind it.

‘Throne…’ breathed Kasyrgeldt as she peered over Blaskaine’s shoulder. The icon was flickering with streamers of unnatural light, and smoke was boiling up from somewhere near its base, out of sight behind the crater’s mountainous lip. Meanwhile, the clouds themselves roiled unnaturally. Lightning flashed through them, and Blaskaine’s frown deepened as he realised it was crimson, the colour of spilt blood.

‘The enemy prepare to strike at us with deviltry from beyond the void.’ The Saint’s voice came suddenly through the command channel, and Blaskaine realised she had been listening in the entire time. The thought made him feel obscurely guilty, though he hadn’t been consciously excluding her from command decisions. At least, so he told himself.

‘What should we do, Saint?’ asked Velle-Marchon.

‘Follow your major’s orders and pray to the Emperor,’ said Celestine. ‘They have burned offerings and given sacrifice to the Blood God, and that which they have set in motion cannot now be prevented. We can only endure, with faith in our hearts. Remember, the Emperor’s eye is upon us and His protection is upon our souls.’ With that, Celestine cut the link.

Blaskaine blinked. ‘Well… you heard the Saint,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘Still, if the Emperor protects then He does it with good Cadian steel and massed las-fire, so let’s be about it. Captain, sub-duke, you have your orders. Sister Superior, I assume your warriors will bolster our lines?’

‘We shall, major,’ said Meritorius. ‘For the Emperor.’

‘For the Emperor,’ chorused the officers, before setting to their duties with a will.

Meritorius jogged into position, her remaining Celestians flanking her. One of her Battle Sisters raised a reliquary on a banner pole at their backs, leading the Cadian soldiery around them in a bellicose battle prayer.

Cadian squads ranged away to either side of the Sisters’ position, their lasguns sending hissing volleys up the crater slopes. More Sororitas could be seen peppered along their lines, bolters roaring as they added their fire to the fusillade. The Cadian tanks loomed at their backs, and the dusty soil seemed to jump with the shockwaves as their cannons boomed again and again.

Cultists charged towards them in a screaming mass and died with hideous rapidity. Explosions blossomed amongst their lines, hurling tumbling corpses through the air. Las-blasts and bolt shells snatched more men and women from their feet by the second.

‘Their charge won’t even reach our lines,’ said Penitence. ‘The heretics submit themselves to senseless slaughter.’

‘The Saint says otherwise,’ said Meritorius, casting a glance back to where Celestine stood atop a Taurox transport, her Geminae Superia flanking her. ‘There is some heretic sorcery at work here, can you not feel it?’

She certainly could. Even as she raised her bolter and fired into the howling foe, the hairs were standing up on the back of her neck. Lightning cracked dry as firewood overhead, and lurid red. Thunder rumbled like an angry god. The energies gathering around the icons danced faster. They made her feel nauseous to look upon.

‘Mist,’ shouted a Cadian in surprise. ‘Mist rising from the dead!’

Meritorius saw he was right. The ragged remains of the enemy force were still pelting closer, snapping shots off from autoguns and laspistols as they charged. She had no doubt a similar spectacle was playing out on the southern flank. Yet her attention was captured not by the charging foe, but by the seething crimson vapours that rose from the dead behind them.

The miasma grew thicker by the second, and as their guns continued to hammer and the cultists continued to fall, so it swirled and gathered.

‘Sacrifices,’ she breathed. ‘They were ritual sacrifices, all of them!’

The sky suddenly lit with a ferocious webwork of blood red lightning blasts, and amidst a crash of furious thunder a blood-red rain began to fall. At the same instant, searing bolts of energy leapt from the huge icons that loomed over the battlefield. They struck the mist like sparks struck amidst promethium fumes, and a raging firestorm erupted upon the crater’s slopes.

Meritorius’ eyes widened as she saw dark figures swim into view through the smoke and the fire. Horned heads rose. Bestial roars clamoured above the hammering of gunfire. A sulphurous wind howled down to batter the Imperial lines.

‘Gird your souls and stand your ground, servants of the Emperor,’ Meritorius cried. ‘For they have conjured daemons!’

Major Blaskaine spun the hatch release and leapt from the side of his Taurox, laspistol already in hand. He had heard the terror in the voices spilling through the vox, then everything had been drowned out by a cacophony of howling, shrieking voices that had caused him to tear the vox-set from his head with a snarl of pain.

He had exchanged a look of horror with Kasyrgeldt, then they had drawn their weapons. Blaskaine’s boots hit the dirt and, braving the hot red downpour that immediately drenched him, he raised his magnoculars to peer upslope into the infernos that raged to the north and south.

Just as quickly, he dropped the magnoculars with a spasm of horror, recoiling and managing only through sheer force of will not to vomit.

‘Throne almighty,’ he gasped. ‘What in the Emperor’s name are those things? Monsters? Mutants?’

‘Oh Emperor, sir, this isn’t rain, it’s blood,’ said Kasyrgeldt in horror.

Blaskaine tasted copper. He grubbed blood from his eyes in revulsion, felt it coursing hot and wet over his skin, saturating his uniform. He looked upslope again and saw the enemy – the true enemy – were now charging towards the Imperial lines. Loping, long-legged creatures with red-scaled skin and horned heads brandished black blades as tall as a grown man. Monstrous hounds the size of horses raised baying howls as they barrelled down the slopes. Massive brass monsters burst from the flames and surged forwards on clattering mechanical legs, their flesh-metal forms twisting and writhing as they sprouted cannons and piston-driven claws. And there, amongst the masses, spreading vast, bat-like wings as it loomed to its full height, was a nightmare given living form. Thirty feet tall or more, the daemon lord had a nightmare approximation of a hound’s visage and wore a brass helm crowned with jagged horns. In one huge fist it held a black-bladed battle-axe, in the other a coiling brass whip. Its body was all dark red muscle and brazen armour plates, and it stood upon gigantic hooves.

Blaskaine’s thoughts leapt to the Imperial scriptures that he had read in his youth, to their talk of warp spawn that bedevilled the Imperial saints and devoured the souls of heretics. His mind rebelled at the notion that what they faced here might be no natural enemy at all, but rather some malefic manifestation from the beyond. It was impossible, surely. The worshippers of the Dark Gods were simply deluded, were they not? But then, he thought, an Imperial angel led his forces to battle this day. And if he accepted that, truly accepted it, then could the daemons of Chaos not also be real, literal creatures also? He quailed at the thought.

The wicked creature threw back its head and gave a bellow of pure fury that swelled louder and louder by the moment. Cadians fell to their knees amidst the bloody downpour and screamed their terror. The Imperial fusillade became ragged, some soldiers firing wild, others dropping their weapons from nerveless hands.

Blaskaine’s vision swam as the roar filled his mind, and suddenly he was somewhere else.

He stood by the runic panel that would close the lander’s loading ramp. Flames filled the skies and the ground shook. Behind him, wounded soldiers moaned and prayed, but so few. So few. Out there amidst the apocalyptic ruins of the burning cityscape, he could see the people of Kasyr Haslen striving desperately to reach their evacuation point. They reeled through the smoke, clutching bundles to their chests that he told himself were personal belongings and nothing more. Please, Emperor, they were nothing more. Flames roared. The flight crew screamed at him that they had to leave now before tectonic destabilisation pitched the lander over and escape became impossible.

Blaskaine stopped listening. He watched the people struggle and falter as the ground shook and molten rock burst up amongst them. He looked back at the soldiers in his charge and for one, shocking, shameful moment he thought of his own life, his own desire for escape. In that instant, he made his choice. It was his hand that pressed the runic panel. His voice he heard telling the flight crew to dust off at once and make for low orbit. His ears that heard the despairing screams of Cadian soldiers and citizens who were just yards from safety when he made his choice.

His shame, that would stay with him for the rest of his days.

Daemons surged down the crater slopes beneath a blackened sky. They screamed and howled as they fell upon the hapless Imperial soldiers. Blood sprayed, and heads tumbled from shoulders as the daemonic fiends plied their blades.

Preacher Gofrey bellowed prayers to the Emperor as he fired his pistol full into the face of a needle-fanged monster. His shots blew craters in its foul visage, but it was the vehemence of his faith that truly sent it reeling. Gofrey fired again and again, sending the unclean being howling back into the void whence it came.

‘Fight, you cowardly dogs, fight!’ he roared. Some of the soldiers around him complied, but they were spraying fire in blind panic. Most could not even manage that, stumbling or collapsing amidst the bloody rain, helpless against the onrushing foe. It had happened the moment the daemon lord roared, thought Gofrey. Some fell curse was upon the Cadians and the Battle Sisters both, and he thought he knew its source.

Unctorian Gofrey turned back to stare venomously at the true agent of the enemy. There she stood, atop an Imperial tank, her wings spread behind her and her blade in her hand. Her chosen Sisters were on their knees, struggling with the same terrors that beset their comrades. Yet Celestine stood tall, her visage set as though carved from stone. Her eyes burned and Gofrey saw tremors running through her limbs, even from this distance, sweat beading at her temples and running down her face. The blood rain hissed off the tank’s hull, yet not a drop touched Saint Celestine. No vitae soiled her perfect form, thought Gofrey in disgust.

Fools might take that for a miracle, for the Emperor’s power shielding His Living Saint from the corruption of Chaos. They might believe that she was doing battle with the onrushing daemons on some level beyond the physical, in a form that could only be perceived through the senses of the Emperor’s angels.

Gofrey knew better. He saw the way reality shimmered like a haze around the Saint. He witnessed, in fleeting after-images, the way the air boiled to flame around her and the ground seemed for a moment to fall away so that she stood atop a mountain of splintered bone and broken skulls. She was a thing of the empyrean, a being spat from the maw of the warp time and time again. What was that but a daemon, thought Gofrey, feeling his Emperor-given senses sing with the truth. Unnatural energies boiled from the Saint just as they boiled from the daemons of Khorne. Gofrey knew what she was, and with the absolute certainty of religious hatred, he reached for that which hung beneath his shirt.

It was time. The Emperor had spoken.

Then, the Saint leapt into motion, and Gofrey’s moment was gone.

The daemon’s roar filled Sister Meritorius’ world.

Sister Meritorius saw not a rain of blood, but of ashes. She felt agony within her chest and looked down to see the chestplate of her armour glowing with fiery heat. Meritorius tried to scream, instead coughing up a blackened cloud of smoke that plumed before her. She couldn’t breathe, could barely see. She clawed at her chest and ripped away molten clots of armour that burned into the flesh of her fingers.

Meritorius thumped to her knees, tortured chest heaving as her armour’s breastplate burned away from beneath. She looked down at the scorched hole where her chest should have been, felt her sanity teeter at the sight of a blackened flesh crater full of embers that were already dying out. No heart, just a charred ribcage full of ashes. Meritorius looked up, oily tears streaking her face, to see a vast hole burned in the skies high above. That was where the ashes fell from, she realised. Terra, burning, and her faith, burning her alive from the inside out along with it.

All was ashes, thought Anekwa Meritorius. All was lost.

A sudden flare of golden light broke through the suffocating vision. It bathed her like sunlight parting clouds, and as it did the ashes billowed away and her chest became whole once more. She sucked in a screaming gasp of air, and the tears that tracked down her cheeks were once again just tears.

A figure slammed down beside her, and she looked up into the eyes of an angel.

‘Saint,’ she gasped.

A horned thing lunged, howling, and the Saint sliced it in half at the waist. She spun and stabbed, laying another fiend low before her Geminae Superia thumped down beside her on trails of flame and let fly. Their bolt pistols thundered and more daemons came apart in sprays of gore and ichor.

‘Sister Superior Meritorius,’ said Celestine as her hair danced in the furnace winds and a golden halo blazed at her temples. ‘The Emperor’s work remains before us. Will you fight beside me?’

Meritorius opened her mouth to reply, but no words would come. The light, she thought. That golden light, that spilled from the Saint like the rays of a blazing star. How could she have ever thought that light had gone out? Had she truly been so blind?

Strength surging through her limbs, Sister Meritorius rose to her feet.

Embers became sparks. Sparks became flames. Anekwa Meritorius gave herself gladly to the fire as she felt it flow through her.

‘I will,’ she said and, raising her bolter, she let fly.

Major Blaskaine thought he saw a wall of fire sweeping across Cadia’s ravaged surface. He had waited too long, and now they would all be killed. But then he saw it as the dawn, a golden sunrise that filled his senses and warmed him to his very core.

As suddenly as it had gripped him the vision was gone. Blaskaine realised he was knelt in a bloody morass, Kasyrgeldt slumped next to him, as their soldiers fought and died before them.

‘Throne above!’ he cursed, surging to his feet.

Blaskaine snatched up his laspistol and stared hard-eyed at the horrific melee. He grasped the situation in moments, the same sharpness of strategic thought that had served him so well these last years resurfacing amidst that golden glow.

Though the Imperial soldiery outnumbered them dozens to one, the monsters’ trickery had robbed the Cadians of their advantage and allowed them to crash headlong into close combat. Huge, scale-fleshed hounds with brazen collars about their necks clamped their jaws around screaming soldiers and shook them like bloody rags. Hellish warriors leapt and spun amidst the Cadian ranks, lopping off heads with every sword blow. Grotesque flesh-engines the size of tanks trampled through the Imperial lines, raking them with cannon fire, while barely a hundred yards away the daemons’ lord stomped and bellowed. Blaskaine clamped down on the bowel-loosening terror that the monster evoked, wincing as he saw it swing its mighty axe and smash an Astorosian battle tank onto its side with a single blow.

‘Sir?’ Kasyrgeldt’s voice was uncertain as she staggered to her feet. ‘Sir, what was… I saw…’

Blaskaine nodded, knowing that he must look as haunted as she. He had seen Cadia fall in flame and blood for a second time, and he had thought that was the worst manifestation of the Great Enemy’s malice he would ever witness. But now this, now these abominations for which he could produce no rational explanation. Blaskaine found himself hurled into a war between angels and daemons. Adrift upon such maddened tides, he realised that clinging to his trust in strategy and tactics, firearms and ordnance simply would not be enough to keep him afloat. Understanding dawned in Blaskaine’s mind, ushered in by his veteran’s sense of expediency; he must stay sane and find a workable solution to an impossible situation, one that all the practical teachings of the Tactica Imperialis were singularly insufficient to provide. Thus, as so many had before him, though perhaps not in such stark and pragmatic terms, Major Charn Blaskaine embraced the hope of salvation through faith.

‘It doesn’t matter, Astryd,’ said Blaskaine. ‘There’s only one word for what we fight here. Daemons. Look to the Saint’s light for guidance, for it is a battle beyond mortal comprehension.’

Blaskaine shook his head in mute amazement. Saint Celestine stood amidst the Cadian lines, towering over Sister Meritorius with golden light radiating from her in waves. The Saint swung her sword and a daemon fell away, bifurcated. Another lunged at her and she drove her sword point through its skull, before spinning and hurling its corpse away from her. Her Geminae Superia kept firing, their every shot rupturing another empyric entity and sending it screaming back into the void.

As the golden light spilled from the Living Saint, so it dispelled whatever foul glamour had beset the Cadians. Soldiers staggered to their feet, blinking or praying or scrabbling for their guns. Stalled Leman Russ tanks shuddered as their crews restarted their engines and tracked their turrets to new firing solutions.

‘Charn,’ came Captain Maklen’s voice over the vox, woozy as though she’d just awoken. ‘What in the Emperor’s name was that?’

‘Deviltry, I believe the Saint called it,’ said Blaskaine, feeling his anger surge. ‘Cruel visions meant to render us victims.’

‘Cadians will never be victims.’ He heard steel returning to her voice, her indignant anger matching his own.

‘Cadia stands,’ snapped Blaskaine, checking the load on his laspistol and wiping blood from his eyes.

‘And so it shall forever unto the ending of the Emperor’s light,’ agreed Maklen. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, major, I’ve got crews to shake into action.’

‘By all means,’ said Blaskaine, feeling more himself by the moment. And furious. He felt absolutely furious. The worst and most difficult moment of his life had been turned into a weapon to undermine his steely Cadian discipline, to accuse him of unworthy cowardice; it was a violation of his mind and soul. Worse, it had cost the lives of dozens of his men as he lolled in the dirt.

‘No more,’ he snarled, grabbing a vox handset from inside the Taurox and pulling it out on its unravelling cord. Fear still threatened to turn his legs to jelly and crush the breath in his chest, but Major Blaskaine’s anger and his newfound spark of faith were enough to drive the feelings back. No matter his personal terror, the major thought, his soldiers must see only Cadian courage.

‘Blaskaine to all Cadian soldiery,’ he barked. ‘Get your sorry selves up out of the mud and open fire at once. Feel the Saint’s light on your souls. Flamer squads, move up and purge line breakers. Heavy weapons, target those combat walker… beasts… the six-legged things with all the guns. Pray to the Emperor and push these monsters back. Cadia stands! The Emperor protects.’

He saw his warriors rallying as the Saint’s light bathed them and his words cut through their terror and madness. Lasguns and plasma guns flashed. Grenades thumped. To his rear, tanks jumped as their cannons discharged, shells streaking through the bloody air to blow daemon engines to pieces.

Then the daemon lord turned towards him, and Blaskaine’s blood ran cold. It trampled corpses into the mud as it strode towards him. Its whip lashed out and snatched a Battle Sister from her feet, hurling her through the air to crunch into the side of a tank with bone-breaking force. Its axe swung, and a tank was cloven almost in two, flames and smoke exploding from within.

Without hope or reason, Blaskaine raised his laspistol and fired, again and again. The beams of energy flashed from the daemon’s breastplate, leaving no discernible mark. Kasyrgeldt raised her shotgun and added her own fire to his. It made no difference.

The daemon lord stormed towards them, fire licking from its nostrils, vast bat wings spreading behind it.

‘It has been a pleasure, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘No matter what happened on Cadia, it’s been a damned honour.’

Blaskaine felt a wash of gratitude towards his adjutant, then the daemon’s shadow engulfed them and brought cold terror with it.

There came a flash of light, a flare of fire, and something streaked like lightning across Blaskaine’s field of vision. Something wet and scalding splashed him, and he fell back with a yell of pain. Blaskaine hit the ground and his gun spilled from his hand. He looked up and there she was, standing over him, wings spread and Geminae Superia stood at her side. The daemon loomed above them, but something was wrong with it. More wrong, Blaskaine corrected himself, feeling faintly unhinged.

Its head looked strange. Deformed. And then a great chunk of the daemon’s helm simply fell away, taking a chunk of its skull with it. The daemon staggered, half blinded and with boiling ichor spilling from its grievous wound. Celestine flicked bubbling gore from her blade and looked defiantly up at the monster.

‘Come then, daemon. Do your master’s bidding, and I shall do mine.’

The daemon bellowed and swept its axe in a scything arc, moving far faster than anything so massive had any business doing. Celestine parried, but the force of the blow was enough to throw her sideways into Blaskaine’s Taurox. The vehicle rocked on its tracks with the force of the impact and Blaskaine cried out in horror.

The Geminae Superia leapt skywards on trails of fire, unloading their bolt pistols again and again into the daemon. It bellowed and swatted at them as shells punched into its flesh and detonated to leave gory craters. It lashed out with its whip and struck one of the Geminae from the air. She slammed into the ground near Blaskaine, and groaned in pain as she rolled over, stunned and bleeding.

The daemon turned towards Celestine, stomped towards her, raised its axe.

Blaskaine didn’t think. He surged to his feet, snatching one of the Sister’s bolt pistols, and placed himself between the monster and the fallen Saint. Blaskaine squeezed the trigger and sent one, two, three self-propelled shells slamming into the daemon’s ravaged face. They detonated in quick succession and wrenched the daemon’s head sideways, ichor spraying from the wound.

For a scant second, Blaskaine allowed himself to believe that he had slain the monstrous thing. Then it turned the ravaged remains of its face back towards him, and he saw nothing but psychotic murderlust burning in its remaining eye. The daemon swung its axe back and then swept it towards him. Blaskaine felt a thunderous impact, then everything went black.

Consciousness, a return to pain, to a quest unfulfilled. Celestine opened her eyes and saw Faith and Duty standing over her, their wings furled about their shoulders, their burning brands in hand. They looked down at her expectantly, and for a moment she felt nothing but exhaustion.

She knew now who and what she was and understood something of the eternal task she was sworn to. Yet still she didn’t know precisely where she was, why or how she found herself in this place. Her only certainties were that she had to follow the Emperor’s light onwards, and that whatever forces were arrayed against her in this place, they surely weren’t done testing her. The thought of struggling on just made her feel so tired that for a moment she almost let her eyes close again. Then she thought of how far she had come already, the dangers she had overcome, and the face of a little girl who was lost somewhere in this hellish realm.

It was that last thought that drove Celestine to her feet.

‘How long?’ she asked Faith and Duty.

‘Time has little meaning here,’ said Faith.

‘Long enough to recover some strength, at least,’ added Duty.

Celestine nodded. She gathered her blade up from where it lay near the Executioner’s mangled remains. Part of her had hoped that her wings might have been restored through rest, but a flex of her shoulders told her this was not the case. There was nothing there but a deep ache, the sharp soreness of wounds freshly closed. Every joint in her body ached, every tendon and muscle felt stretched past its tolerances, and she could feel every bruise and abrasion from her battles with the daemonic entities of this realm.

Celestine squared her shoulders and shut it all away, deep in her mind. She inspected her blade, as much to give herself a moment to find her centre as to ensure the weapon was in good condition. She’d already known it would be clean, shining, without nick or notch. She knew that the weapon was a gift from the Emperor and that meant it was impervious to the corruption of this place. She hoped that the same was true of her.

‘The cave, then?’ It wasn’t really a question. She could see the glimmer of the Emperor’s light, impossibly high above, but without wings there was no way that she could continue the ascent up the mountain’s face. Her limbs hurt at the mere thought.

‘It seems the only route forward,’ said Faith. ‘And where there is a path to follow, you can be sure that the Emperor has placed it before your feet.’

‘Before we move, Duty, the girl…’ Duty shook her head. Celestine noticed she looked younger now, her hair darker, her features a harder facsimile of Faith’s.

‘I am sorry, Saint, but I know no more of the child than you do yourself,’ Duty said. ‘If you do not yet remember who or what she is, or why you care for her so, then I can no more tell you than you can tell yourself.’

‘And neither of you knows where she went? I saw her, looking over the ledge shortly before I reached it.’

Faith and Duty exchanged a glance, shook their heads apologetically.

‘I did not see her, Saint,’ said Faith.

‘Nor I,’ said Duty. ‘But I can offer you this gift. My service, Saint, always, and my blade.’

With that, Duty knelt and presented the blade she had borne upon her back. As before, Celestine laid her own sword against it, and in a flash of light the two blades became one. Duty rose, burning brands in hand, and nodded once to Celestine with an unreadable look upon her face.

Celestine took a last look back the way she had come, the warm wind tousling her hair as she gazed from the cliff face out over the formless, hazy wastes at her back. Then she turned towards the jagged cleft in the rockface to her fore and, feeling the faint candle’s warmth flicker upon her face, she walked into the darkness.

The cave, it transpired, was more of a fissure. It was jagged and narrow. Celestine, Faith and Duty were forced to pick their way carefully into the gloom, avoiding wickedly sharp shards of crystal that jutted from all around. Strange fires shimmered deep within the walls, clashing with the illumination from Faith and Duty’s brands and causing weird shadows to dance and jerk around them.

‘At least we don’t walk in darkness,’ said Duty.

‘Rather darkness than the illumination of the unclean,’ replied Faith, picking her way around a vicious nest of crystal blades.

‘It is the Emperor who provides our illumination,’ said Celestine.

She pressed on, her sisters advancing in her wake. As she did, a strange scent assailed her nostrils. It began as a curdled taint to the air, a slight tang of something sulphurous and sweet. The subtle scent became a rotten stench as they pressed on, and soon all three were breathing through their mouths and recoiling from the reek of putrefaction that swirled around them.

‘Something unutterably foul lies ahead,’ said Duty. ‘Yet that is our path.’

A grey-green mist was drifting around their feet now, and Celestine noticed that the crystal walls were streaked with veins of something black and slimy. It spread like capillaries beneath the glinting surface, pulsating slightly and resembling nothing so much as rot or mould.

The fissure ended abruptly, emptying out into a huge cavern. No, Celestine realised, it was not a cavern.

‘A tunnel,’ she said aloud. Roughly circular in shape, the tunnel’s floor and ceiling were hundreds of feet apart, its walls equally far-spaced. It stretched away to right and left, with numerous fissures like the one they had crept through radiating out from it.

It was also noxious. The black fingers of rot became radiating root systems here, burrowing through the surface of the broken crystal on every side. A slick of thick, dripping slime coated the walls and ceiling, and pooled in a stagnant mire upon the tunnel’s floor. It was the colour of rancid pus, shot through with vivid streaks of what looked like diseased blood.

‘Emperor protect us from the corruption of Chaos,’ said Faith, choking on the revolting fumes that rose from the mire.

‘Where now, Saint?’ asked Duty. ‘Do we follow this noisome tunnel or try to find a route onwards through another fissure?’

‘This tunnel was not manufactured, but rather burrowed. These side-passages are nothing but cracks, where the over-stressed crystal has fractured due to the passing of something huge,’ said Celestine. ‘I don’t believe they will lead us to anything but a dead end. Besides which, I feel the Emperor’s light blooming against my left cheek. I believe that is our path.’

‘The sinister side,’ breathed Duty. ‘Perhaps we will be fortunate, and whatever abomination created this passage has moved away to our right.’

‘Do you truly believe it would prove so easy?’ asked Faith. Duty snorted and shook her head. Celestine offered them both a grim smile.

‘We will be tested, and we will prevail. It is the way of this place and the will of the Emperor that it be so. Come, sisters. Let us not keep our destiny waiting.’

The passage snaked through the crystalline bedrock with a slow, undulating motion. It wound on and on, thick with billowing gases and a heavy stench of rot. The slurry that coated the floor varied in depth, so that one moment they might be trudging through ankle-deep filth, only to find that the next it reached up to their knees or even, for one intolerably revolting stretch, their waists. Celestine was thankful for the sealed armour that covered her body and kept the slime from touching her skin. She felt for her sisters, whose robes provided no such protection. Soon enough they were utterly caked in gangrenous liquid, their faces pale with nausea.

Unnameable things floated amidst the slime, clots of matter and rotted bone that Celestine felt no desire to investigate. The mucal effluent that coated the walls became thicker the further they pressed on, dripping in heavy glops to land with noisome plops in the sludge of the tunnel floor.

Again, Celestine found her sense of time fluctuating. It was hard to say how long they pushed on through the river of filth, the tunnel snaking lazily through leftward and rightward bends, passing through crystalline grottos where stalagmites had been bulldozed aside and left to jut up from the slime in shattered pieces. The journey felt as interminable as the climb before it, an endless wading trudge with no end in sight.

As they picked their way out of another deeper mire and saw the tunnel arc once again to the right, Faith stumbled. Celestine caught her and pulled her upright again, but she saw to her alarm that Faith’s skin was sheened with sweat and her eyes were red-rimmed and feverish. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks and neck, and she was shivering as though palsied. The fires of Faith’s brands had died, leaving her clutching a pair of blackened sticks.

‘Saint, I am sorry, this place…’ gasped Faith. ‘I ail.’

Celestine looked at Duty, who stood pale and grim-faced but otherwise untouched.

‘We will support you, sister,’ said Celestine, ignoring the aches and pains that howled from every inch of her body. She swung one of Faith’s arms around her shoulders and Duty did the same on the other side. So they pressed on again, slow ripples spreading away from them as they ploughed through the nightmarish river of filth.

From around the next bend, Celestine heard a low murmur of sound, growing steadily in volume as she drew closer.

‘Voices?’ asked Duty.

‘The moans of the damned,’ croaked Faith. Celestine felt herself grow cold at the awful sound, felt the hairs rise on the nape of her neck.

Faith’s prophecy was borne out as they rounded the slow bend to a ghastly sight. The tunnel bored away from them, arrow straight and disappearing into a haze of brownish-green gases and whirling motes that Celestine realised were flies. The walls and ceiling of the tunnel writhed with movement, and it took her a moment to make sense of it. When she did, Celestine’s mouth drew down in horror and revulsion.

‘People,’ said Duty, sounding equally aghast.

‘There must be thousands of them,’ said Faith dully, head lolling as she stared through the lank hair of her fringe.

Human shapes carpeted the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, apparently stuck fast in layers of thickened slime. Looking at those closest to her, Celestine saw that they all exhibited signs of decay and disease. Flesh crawled with fat buboes and dripping lesions. Parasites swarmed through lank hair that came away in clumps. Eyes stared blindly, yellowed with cataracts, while mouths full of rotted teeth and blackened gums opened to emit piteous moans of despair.

‘What new horror is this?’ asked Celestine. Duty only shook her head, while Faith gave a low moan alarmingly close to the sounds coming from the damned souls trapped in the tunnel.

‘Is that something moving down there?’ asked Duty, pointing with one of her brands. As she did, Celestine noted its fire was guttering, but her attention was caught by the suggestion of something stirring at the corridor’s far end.

Something truly immense.

‘Whatever hewed this tunnel and created this hellish place draws near,’ Celestine said. ‘Here, then, is our test.’

‘Do you still feel the Emperor’s light, Saint?’ asked Duty, stifling a cough. Celestine glanced at her and saw that her sister was beginning to flag, much like Faith before her.

‘I do,’ she said. The sensation of candle-warmth still caressed her skin, feeling as though it shone down upon her brow like the fleeting warmth of a winter’s sun.

‘That is… that is good,’ said Duty, before her knees gave way and she pitched forwards. Celestine cursed as Duty slumped on hands and knees into the diseased sludge of the tunnel floor, carrying Faith down with her.

Sheathing her blade, trying to ignore the huge form surging gradually closer along the tunnel, Celestine grabbed both of her sisters by their robes and dragged them to where the floor curved up into the nearest wall.

Damned figures turned their blight-raddled faces towards her and gave pleading moans. Several raised shaking hands to grasp at her. Others waved rotted stumps in desperation. Celestine ignored them, though it pained her to do so. She had no desire to lean her sisters up against the slime-slick wall, but it was that or let them slip into the sludge and drown. She propped Faith and Duty beside one another, making sure they still had a grip upon their brands. They looked at her gratefully, doing what little they could to help.

‘Saint…’ tried Duty. ‘I… sorry…’

‘Hush, just do not let yourselves become like them,’ said Celestine. ‘I need you, both of you, if any of us is ever to escape this nether-hell alive. For now, I will stand in your defence.’

So saying, Celestine took several paces back into the slime, looking for more level ground. She braced her feet and brandished her blade, trying to penetrate the murk to make out precisely what was flowing down the tunnel to meet her.

It didn’t take long to resolve, and when it did, Celestine wished the creature had stayed hidden. What approached was an immense maggot, its pallid flesh bulging taut and undulating. Thousands of chitinous legs jutted from its mass and dragged it along the tunnel, sending bow waves of filth rolling before it and heedlessly crushing those damned souls unlucky enough to be ground over by its immense bulk. Cyst-like openings squirted sprays of slime with every motion, coating the walls and drizzling down to the floor below. A wave of indescribable stench flowed before the creature, so utterly foul that it made Celestine light-headed.

Worst, though, was the thing’s face. At its front, the vast daemon maggot tapered, segments of chitinous armour gathering in overlapping waves around an immense maw. Several circular rows of fangs the size of battle tanks gnashed at her as the maggot got closer. Within, protruding from amidst a mass of pulsating red flesh like some obscene tongue, was a distinctly humanoid head the size of a boulder.

Three eyes stared at her, bulging black orbs ringed red and dripping tears of pus. Cracked and rotted antlers protruded above them, while below was a leering mouth several feet wide, lined with razor fangs and set amidst quivering white jowls and chins.

With a sound like a thousand sacks of offal being shaken together, the daemon maggot drew to a halt, looming over Celestine. She held her blade high, and it glinted in the half-light. Flies and stinking gases billowed around her, and the monster’s smile widened. Though it could have crushed her in an instant, Celestine was surprised as the maggot showed no signs of attacking.

‘Whatever you are, creature, you stand between me and the Emperor’s light,’ said Celestine.

‘Oh, little Saint,’ rumbled the maggot, bilious slime drizzling from its mouth as it spoke. ‘I am far too swollen to stand at all. Do you not clearly see my munificent magnificence?’

‘I see an abomination,’ said Celestine. ‘I see a foul daemon of the Chaos Gods, that I shall smite down with the Emperor’s wrath.’

Even as she said it, Celestine knew how ridiculous a threat it was. The creature was several hundred feet in height and she had no way of telling how far back its revolting body stretched. Miles did not seem an unreasonable guess.

‘And how would you do that?’ asked the daemon in an affable tone, as though discussing an amusing hypothetical with a fractious child. ‘I mean you no disrespect, morsel, but you are so very tiny and, well…’ The maggot shook its huge body, causing the entire tunnel to shudder in sympathy. The groans of the damned grew to terrified wails. ‘I will devour you in a single bite,’ the monster roared, before breaking into a booming salvo of laughter that caused Celestine to stagger.

‘The Emperor will guide my blade,’ she said, desperately seeking any place that she could strike at this monster. Its face seemed an obvious target, yet even that was more than a hundred feet above her, beyond rings of cracked fangs and dripping, acidic slime.

‘If you only had your wings, eh, morsel?’ said the daemon as though reading her thoughts. It pouted its lips in a revolting moue of mock sadness. ‘But you don’t. Your sickly little sister cut them off, didn’t she? Oh the irony!’

As the echoes of the daemon’s cheerful bellow rolled away, Celestine stared up at it. Perhaps if she could goad it closer…

‘If you are so powerful and I so weak, why do you hesitate?’ she asked. ‘Come and devour me, if I am but a morsel to you.’

The daemon laughed again, sending ripples rolling down its slime-slick body.

‘I do not need to devour such a fragment as you. I wish only to enjoy discourse. You are going nowhere, little Saint.’

Celestine stared defiantly up at the daemon. She stole a glance at her sisters and saw to her horror that blotches and rashes were creeping over their skin as the slime of the tunnel walls slowly sealed itself around their forms. Duty stirred weakly. Faith just lay, catatonic, as the slime lay claim upon her. Celestine looked back at the daemon, despising its knowing, somehow sympathetic smile.

‘Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it quickly,’ chuckled the daemon. ‘Yet what is there to do, little morsel? You cannot go back. Your Emperor expects you to go only forwards, always forwards. Yet here I am, the immovable obstacle that puts the lie to your irresistible force. You cannot help them. You can only watch them sicken into damnation. Entropy is a beautiful gift.’

‘I do not accept that,’ snarled Celestine. She took three running steps and launched herself at the daemon. She leapt high and brought her blade down in a whistling arc, slashing easily through pale maggot-flesh. She was immediately driven back as rancid fat and slime jetted out from the wound and splattered her from head to toe.

She staggered, retching and spitting, coated in stinking filth. As she ground the slime from her eyes she heard the daemon laughing and saw the wound she had inflicted sucking slowly shut.

‘I felt not a thing, little morsel,’ mused the daemon. ‘But by all means keep hacking away. That is, if you don’t mind drowning yourself. Grandfather Nurgle has been most generous to me. I am full to the brim with his magnanimity.’

Celestine spat, a small part of her mind screaming in horror as she felt things wriggling through the slime that had coated her.

‘What do you want?’ she shouted, frustrated and furious.

‘I just wish for you to realise how damnably powerless you are,’ said the daemon, and to her horror Celestine was sure this time that it sounded truly sympathetic. ‘You follow your Emperor’s light, and a little faith, a little duty, these things are supposed to be enough to propel you along the path? The obstacles He expects you to overcome. The horrors you must face, the hardships you must endure, and for what?’

Again, the image of the girl’s face flashed into Celestine’s mind, but as she looked up at the immovable cliff of diseased flesh looming over her she felt despair threaten.

‘Oh, I know, how can you ever reach her with me in the way?’ asked the maggot. ‘Poor little child, lost and alone in the realm of the gods, and you powerless to help her. I don’t suppose she’ll last long, if she’s even made it this far.’ The daemon shook its head sorrowfully.

Celestine’s mind raced, but she could not see any way out.

‘Your sisters sicken. There are minutes, at most, until they are beyond your aid,’ said the daemon. ‘You are thinking that you could perhaps flee, drag them with you and find another route. But you know that wouldn’t work. You are tired, Celestine. Even your despotic Emperor knows you’ll never make it.’

Celestine felt the truth of the daemon’s words as every ache and pain that she had shut away surged back to the surface. Her knees wobbled for a moment. Her grip almost faltered upon her blade.

‘I do not wish to eat you, little morsel, but…’ The daemon seemed to consider for a moment. ‘Perhaps it would be kindest? You have failed them, after all.’ In that moment Celestine knew that the daemon meant not only her sisters, not only the mysterious girl to whom she felt such a strange, wordless bond. Not even the Emperor. She stared along the corridor at the countless human souls, trapped in despair. Had they all died because of her?

‘If only you had ended the war as you said you would,’ sighed the daemon. ‘But I understand. You are one woman and it is such a vast galaxy. You have more chance of heaving my bulk aside single-handed than you have of extinguishing the fires of war that swallow the stars.’

Celestine felt doubt gnawing its way into her heart. Mucal filth had all but claimed her sisters now; they had begun to resemble the other damned souls trapped in this terrible place. What could one person do against such overwhelming horror, she thought. Her faith in the Emperor had brought no aid that she could see. Her duty was clear to her, but it was too big for her alone, surely.

‘I cannot…’ she whispered as a moment of weakness shook her and her exhaustion returned a thousandfold. ‘I just… cannot…’

Then she looked up into the daemon’s eyes and saw the hunger there, the avaricious leer of a miser about to gather up another armload of coin. She thought about the girl, lost and alone in a land of monsters such as these. She felt a moment’s self-loathing at her own weakness but saw that in turn for the trap it was. No, she didn’t hate herself for all of this. She hated the daemons that tormented her, and her sisters, and all the other humans that they treated as little more than playthings, soul-currency to be gathered up as a dragon hoards gold.

‘You desire me to surrender. To relent,’ spat Celestine, standing straighter. ‘You want me to give up because you know that the only way you will ever stop me fighting is if I lay down my blade of my own volition,’ she said, raising her sword before her again. She felt righteous anger well within her, white hot fury that this revolting mound of offal had so nearly manipulated her into giving in.

‘What is there to fight for?’ asked the daemon, its tone mocking. ‘An Emperor that doesn’t care about you? A species of pitiful, selfish beings who know little of your sacrifices for them and care even less? They have all given up already, Celestine, and that makes them wiser than you!’

Revolting spittle sprayed Celestine as the daemon bellowed, and its rotten stench redoubled in foulness. She ignored both.

‘And whose word do I have for that, daemon?’ spat Celestine, standing firm against its ground-quaking bellow. ‘Ever since I awoke in this place, filth like you have been trying to convince me that my task is thankless, endless, doomed. But that begs the question, why would the daemons of this realm keep trying to convince me of such a thing, unless it were a lie designed to rob my strength and steal my will? Unless, in fact, I stand tall in the love and light of the Emperor, a blade in the hand of the entire human race?’

Celestine’s voice rose to a shout, and as it did a golden halo leapt into being at her brow. She felt a magnificent unfurling between her shoulders as golden wings grew once more from her shoulder blades and stretched out behind her.

‘You are nothing!’ roared the daemon, all hint of its former, solicitous tone drowned in a tide of anger and contempt. ‘Who are you to stand against the storm of the primordial annihilator?’

‘I am Saint Celestine of Terra, you sack of rancid filth, and until my last breath I will defy you and the vermin-gods you serve!’

Celestine leapt, her wings beating powerfully and carrying her towards the daemon maggot’s head. At the same time, golden radiance surged from her like a newborn star, flooding the tunnel and causing the daemon to recoil with a roar of pain.

‘I name you the Worm of Doubt,’ cried Celestine, weaving around the thing’s huge fangs and lashing out with her blade. ‘And I strike you down for all of humanity!’

Her blade bit home, lopping the daemon’s head from its fleshy neck in a single, clean cut. The head splashed into the slime, still bellowing in fury, and the monster’s body surged forwards, attempting to crush or devour Celestine. Yet where her radiance shone along the passageway the worm’s thousands of victims were stirring and gasping, their ailments sloughing away and their strength returning. Thousands of faces twisted in sudden anger as they realised that the worm had fed upon their despair and trapped them within its foul larder. Thousands of hands reached out to snatch at the daemon’s rancid flanks, to punch and tear. Warriors drew blades no longer crumbling to rust. Soldiers swung firearms to bear that until moments earlier had been nothing but ancient junk.

The Worm of Doubt writhed as its viscous hide was punctured from thousands of points at once. Celestine felt the blazing heat of flames at her back as Faith and Duty soared up to join her and pour their fire into the ragged stump of the daemon’s neck.

‘My thanks, Saint,’ said Duty.

‘I am sorry that we failed you,’ said Faith.

‘You have never failed me,’ replied Celestine. ‘Let us finish this together.’

With that, they lunged at the daemon as its victims tore at it from every side. Half drowned in its own filth, the worm’s head continued to rant and rave, but its howls became piteous wails of agony as more and more of its fleshy body was torn and blasted. The immense maggot writhed, its limbs lashing out to tear its victims apart by the dozen. It crushed more into paste against the tunnel walls, and snapped at Celestine, Faith and Duty with its huge maw.

They wove easily aside from its clumsy attacks, three angels striking again and again with fire and blade. The light of the Emperor shone from them all, with the radiance of a furious star that burned deep into the daemon’s flesh and reduced swathes of its flesh to cracked black ash.

Wailing in agony, the daemon jack-knifed its huge body. Its immense forequarters slammed against the tunnel roof once, twice, thrice. On the fourth impact the crystal cracked and shattered. By the sixth, jagged cracks raced along the tunnel and shards of crystal rained down to puncture the vast, revolting maggot. At the eighth thunderous blow, the tunnel’s ceiling sundered altogether, and the entire space caved in with a shattering roar like a billion mirrors breaking.

Daylight showed through the shattered mass.

‘Now!’ shouted Faith as crystal shards rained around them. ‘Before we are crushed!’

‘What of the daemon’s victims?’ cried Duty.

‘They have already earned their freedom from this damnation,’ said Celestine with warm certainty. ‘They are victims of despair no longer, and in death their souls will fly free to join with the Emperor’s light. We must follow them.’

Her sisters needed no further urging. The three angels beat their wings and surged upwards through the jagged rain of crystal shards, leaving the Worm of Doubt to be crushed by the devastation of its own death throes.

Above, golden light blossomed, and warmth bathed Celestine’s face.

‘The light of the Emperor!’ she cried, and drove upwards through the last of the crystal rain into the golden skies beyond.

415TH DAY OF THE WAR – 1840 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
TWO MILES FROM THE WALLS OF SHAMBACH – LO:801-1/LA:631-3

Blaskaine woke to the sway of the Taurox crossing rough ground. The familiar smell of unwashed bodies in a close metal box invaded his nostrils. The sounds of the engine rumbling and his command staff talking into vox headsets reached his ears. It was comforting, somehow.

‘Wa–’ Blaskaine croaked, before a coughing fit seized him and doubled him over. At least, it tried to, but he found his movements restricted. He opened his eyes to see Lieutenant Kasyrgeldt and a regimental medicae leaning over him, looking both pleased and concerned.

‘Thank the Emperor!’ said Kasyrgeldt, hastening to undo the straps that Blaskaine realised were binding him to one of the Taurox’s bench seats.

‘Careful when you sit up, major,’ said the gruff medicae. ‘You’re still on the mend. Sir.’

Blaskaine waved them away, coughing again as he rolled into a sitting position and immediately regretted it. Pain stabbed at him from what felt like every part of his body. His head felt light and woozy, his limbs weirdly numb.

‘W-water,’ he managed to croak, and a metal flask was pressed carefully but insistently into his palm. He looked up gratefully at Kasyrgeldt, whose face wore a professional veneer of concern, then put the canteen to his lips and drank.

It was glorious.

‘Not too much, sir, you’ve been unconscious for a couple of days,’ said the medicae. ‘You’ve been on thrice-blessed intravenous fluids, so your body will need to adjust to the introduction of more mundane humours.’

‘Blessed?’ asked Blaskaine, wincing up at the man. His head felt muzzy, and something was off about the balance of his body.

‘The Saint herself,’ said Kasyrgeldt, a hint of awe in her voice. ‘You saved her life, she said, and so…’

Blaskaine blinked. The Saint had blessed the medicae fluids that had been pumped into him? Hazy memories pieced themselves back together and he flinched at the thought of the daemonic horror he had stood against. He couldn’t picture it now, he found; only a roaring darkness, a blood-fire haze. His mind was protecting itself, he supposed. His sanity might not long survive that sort of memory.

‘Sir, your wounds were substantial,’ said the medicae. ‘Compression breaks, crush injuries, impact trauma. I have done everything I can, but you will need to see an augmeticist as soon as possible. Third grade or above, I would say.’

‘Wait, what?’ Blaskaine’s thoughts snapped into sharper focus at the word augmeticist.

Those who fitted bionic augmetics.

Augmetics to replace parts of the human body too broken to be saved.

He gritted his teeth and looked down.

Blaskaine stared at his broken body for a moment, the foreshortened stump of his left arm, the bulky compression harness whose pipes vanished into his chest and abdomen. The heavy bionic splint-cage that encased his left leg, joints like rivets punching through stitch-puckered flesh.

‘Oh,’ said Blaskaine in a small voice, then promptly vomited his first drink in three days all over his lap.

Half an hour later, the major had dressed as best he could in a spare uniform. The medicae had, with profuse apologies, been forced to cut holes in the garments to allow for the ugly surgical enhancements. Blaskaine bore the man’s attentions with what shaky dignity he could muster. Now he sat on the same bench that he had apparently bled upon, and been operated upon, and then lain upon as he teetered slowly back from the mortal brink. He held a foil ration pack in one hand, in his only hand, sucking its paste-like contents through a straw as Kasyrgeldt spoke.

Something in the back of his head wanted to start screaming. Blaskaine instead took refuge in the emotional numbness that had settled in his mind like a blanket of snow. He would bury himself under that blanket for as long as he could. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to really face any of this, not really, before their desperate mission saw them all dead.

He realised his thoughts had wandered.

‘I’m sorry, Astryd, could you repeat that?’ he asked, his words still a touch slower than he was used to. After-effects of the anaesthetic philtres, according to the medicae. Blaskaine wondered if it had more to do with being smashed three hundred yards through the air by… no, he wouldn’t think about that. He forced himself to focus on his adjutant, to make sense of her words.

Kasyrgeldt glanced down at the data-slate in her hand, then back to Blaskaine. Masking a flash of sympathy, he wondered, or maybe disquiet? After all, was he really in any fit state to act as senior officer?

‘Of course, sir,’ she said. ‘As I was saying, since the crater fields we have remained undetected by enemy forces during our advance through the agriponic hydroplexes outside the city. In the days since you lost consciousness, we have seen no further sign of the enemy.’

‘None?’ asked Blaskaine, a sudden surge of suspicion dispelling the fug around his mind like cold water dashed in his face. ‘Isn’t this meant to be their heartland? Their seat of power? They should be on us like bloodmites.’

‘There are several theories,’ said Kasyrgeldt, clearing her throat. ‘Captain Maklen maintains this must be evidence of further Imperial holdouts still besieged elsewhere on the planet, and that the War Engine emptied his territories of followers in a bid to crush us all. That does seem viable.’

‘You said several theories?’ asked Blaskaine.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Velle-Marchon is adamant that the enemy believed their ambush would crush us, that they have arrogantly left themselves no second line of defence.’

‘In a hundred-mile radius?’ asked Blaskaine. ‘No, he’s wrong.’

‘I thought so too, sir. The other prevailing theory, which I should say stems from the Battle Sisters, is that it is a miracle. They say the Emperor has favoured us and hidden us from the enemy’s sight that we might do His work.’

There was a moment’s silence between the Cadians, before Blaskaine nodded.

‘That also sounds plausible,’ he said.

‘Er… I suppose… yes, sir, given everything else we’ve seen.’

‘It’s alright, Astryd,’ he said wearily. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But why not? We’ve fought daemons from scripture. We’ve seen an angel of the Emperor banish them. Throne, when that… thing came for her, I didn’t hesitate.’

‘You were incredibly brave, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, but he waved her away.

‘You never know,’ he said, his mind wandering back to his last sight of Cadia. ‘Perhaps I’ve reset the scales a little in my favour. Anyway, what do the other officers think? Meritorius? Tasker?’

Kasyrgeldt cleared her throat.

‘As I said, sir, Lieutenant Tasker was killed during the ambush, along with the great majority of his soldiers.’

‘Ah. Yes. You did,’ said Blaskaine, trying and failing to recall her words. ‘And our other casualties?’

‘Again, as I said, sir, they were substantial. The full breakdown is here for you to see if you wish, but in essence we have perhaps half our starting infantry strength remaining, a little over a third of our tanks, and a handful of self-propelled artillery pieces. Oh, and the surviving Battle Sisters and priests, of course.’

‘So, barely enough to stage a stand-up fight,’ said Blaskaine.

‘We also have the Living Saint on our side,’ replied Kasyrgeldt.

‘That we do, Astryd, and she may yet see some of us through this,’ said Blaskaine. ‘What remains of us, anyway.’ He managed not to glance down at his ruined body.

‘We can hope and pray, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘We’ll know one way or another soon enough. The crusade left the agriponics behind several hours ago and entered the spoil-zone around the city. We’ve a few last ridges to crest, and then we’ll be in sight of the walls.’

‘And then, I would imagine, even our luck, blessings, whatever they are, will run dry,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Still, no sense delaying things. Hand me that data-slate.’

Kasyrgeldt hesitated. Blaskaine realised that the hand he’d tried to reach out with was no longer there. He cleared his throat and set aside his ration pack before reaching out to take the slate.

Unctorian Gofrey lurked in the shadow of Blaskaine’s Taurox. The vehicle had stopped on the leeward slope of the last ridge before Shambach, using the high crest of the spoil to shield it partly from enemy eyes. Dozens of armoured vehicles and thousands of soldiers waited around it. They had drawn up into attack formations but halted here to await the final plunge.

Gofrey had chanced a quick look over the ridge, had seen the ancient stone city that rose up in tangled tiers to meet the feet of Mount Imperator. The mine workings could be seen up there amidst the streets of the Ore District, their cavernous entrances glowing with unholy red light.

Spike-lined ditches had been dug outside the city limits, to foul an attacker’s approach. High ferrocrete walls had been raised around the City of Ingots, incongruous in their ugly functionality. Their ramparts were lined with various heavy cannons and artillery emplacements and thronged with cultists. Red banners rose above them, while emblazoned upon the ugly walls were runes to both the Blood God and the War Engine. The latter sigil depicted a crude, humanoid figure formed from interlocking gears. It had a horned helm, an axe for one hand and a cannon for the other. Some claimed it depicted the War Engine himself, though Gofrey was confident that was an exaggeration spread around by the renegade warlord to appear more fearsome.

The enemies of the Emperor were given to falsehoods, he had thought, casting a venomous glance towards the Battle Sisters and their so-called Saint.

Gofrey had then drifted down to his current position of concealment, most Cadians giving him a wide berth. A couple of sentries had tried to move Gofrey along but he transfixed them with his wild-eyed stare and nudged hard. They had been a hundred paces away, walking downhill and entirely unsure of their purpose, before they had regained the capacity for independent thought. By then, Gofrey was out of sight and out of mind.

Now, he listened with self-righteous anger as Major Blaskaine held a vox-conference with Celestine and the other crusade leaders. The soldiers around Blaskaine’s transport had cheered the man when he had emerged, awkwardly, from its top hatch to survey the scene. Cheered was perhaps too restrained a word. They had all but praised the major as though he himself were another risen Saint.

It had been his self-sacrificing act that had done it, of course, stepping in the way of the rampaging warp entity long enough for Celestine to find her feet, and for the Cadian tank captain to draw a firing solution. The next instant, the daemon had vanished under a hail of artillery fire and sword blows, and the battle had turned from there. Blaskaine had paid for that victory with his own blood. His mangled body would never fully recover.

And the men knew it, Gofrey thought sourly. Oh, didn’t they know it. At least Blaskaine had had the good grace to appear bewildered. But that was not enough, for it was all too clear that even the major had now been taken in by the so-called Saint’s lies. Gofrey had thought to perhaps take the man into his confidence, but now, as the wounded martyr and talisman of the crusade? Not a chance. Gofrey clutched the thing beneath his shirt and muttered a prayer of thanks to the Emperor for his clarity of sight.

‘Yes, Saint, I understand,’ Blaskaine was saying. ‘So, the Basilisks concentrate all fire upon sector nine of the outer walls, and we rush the breach. That is your plan?’

‘Even if the artillery does bring down a section of wall, by the time we cross the open ground to exploit it our enemies will have moved their reserves into position to block us,’ came the tinny voice of Captain Maklen through the voxponder. ‘I’m sorry, Saint, I’m not sure I see this working.’

‘We will not wait for the breach to be opened,’ replied the Saint, her transmitted voice redolent with serenity and conviction. ‘I trust in the Emperor. A way shall open for us, and we shall pass through it, then on into the streets and towards the mines before the foe can react. The Emperor has shown me that the source of this world’s corruption lies deep within those mines. We will fight our way through to it, and we will defeat it.’

‘You are suggesting that we charge the wall before the breach is made?’ asked Blaskaine. ‘What if our artillery cannot get the job done in time, or at all? We’d be left sat before fifty-foot-high ferrocrete ramparts with no way forward or back, at the mercy of their guns.’

‘If the Saint says that the breach will be made, then it will,’ came Anekwa Meritorius’ voice. ‘Have faith, major.’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Blaskaine, and Gofrey skinned back his lips at the solicitousness he heard in the man’s voice. ‘But I must think of the lives of my soldiers.’

‘Of course, such is only right and proper, for the good shepherd thinks first of his flock,’ said Celestine. ‘I will lead my Geminae up onto the walls and we will do what we can to combat the gun crews from there. And my Sisters will lend their prayers to this endeavour, the better to shield our attack beneath the glory of the Emperor’s light.’

There was a moment of profound silence over the vox, during which Gofrey hoped that one or other of the Imperial officers might see sense. Surely the daemon Celestine could not have bewitched them all?

‘So be it, I’ll disseminate the orders now,’ said Blaskaine. ‘We move in fifteen minutes.’

‘Emperor have mercy on us all,’ said Captain Maklen.

‘He will,’ said Sister Meritorius, and Gofrey was surprised to hear the conviction in her tone.

‘He will not,’ hissed Gofrey under his breath. They were all damned, then. They would be led to the slaughter like the faithless cattle they were. Well, he would move amongst them like the proverbial wolf, ready to do his last duty for the Emperor.

Gofrey had already nudged a handful of particularly suggestible Cadians. The broken, the resentful, the dismayed – they would follow his commands when the time came. He had a few more candidates in mind, and, by the sound of things, scant time to act.

‘Emperor, fear not, there is still one faithful man alive upon this world,’ said Gofrey, setting off down the ridge towards the massing Cadian soldiery. ‘And he has the strength to do Your will.’

Engines revved and banners unfurled as the order to attack rang out along the Imperial lines. The Cadian regimental standard, with its portcullis gate and eagle-clutched lightning bolts, fluttered proud in the breeze. There was no speech given, no stirring words for a suicidal assault such as this. There was only the presence of the Saint, shining like a guiding star. That, thought Sister Meritorius, was enough. When Saint Celestine had stood over her in the crater fields, when she had banished Meritorius’ doubts and raised her up to fight anew, it had changed everything. Meritorius still felt shame, but now it was not at a paucity of faith within her; rather, she felt shame that it had taken her so long to recognise that the light of the Emperor did not shine down from the heavens, but rather it burned bright from within every one of His faithful servants.

She set off at a jog, wielding her bolter by its pistol grip in one hand and her crackling power sword in the other. Her Sisters advanced around her, Imagifiers raising their icons high as the few dozen Battle Sisters raised their voices in the Prayer of Faithful Lambastation. They led the way over the ridge, spoil-grit grinding under Meritorius’ boots before the ground dropped away and she found herself accelerating into a run as the slope took her. Imperial Guard tanks and transports roared as their track units rose proud of the ridge then dropped, slamming down as the vehicles accelerated. Massed men and women of Cadia poured in alongside them, hundreds upon hundreds of the desperate faithful charging into battle upon the promise of a miracle.

As she hit the flat ground at the bottom of the slope, Meritorius knew it was a miracle they hadn’t already been blasted into oblivion. There was no way the enemy could have failed to detect such a sizeable force outside their walls, and she was just thankful that gunships and rocket strikes hadn’t already put paid to their assault.

For all that, she found that she was in good spirits. As the rippling roar of Basilisk fire echoed from behind the ridge, Meritorius realised she truly believed they would open a path. Their shells whipped away towards the city, still a good half mile ahead, and hammered the designated wall section. Fiery explosions blossomed, and she felt their heat within her heart. Meritorius had seen the light, she supposed. Or rather, she had seen what the light of the Saint laid bare. The Emperor was not gone, the Throneworld had not burned. Meritorius knew this now, with a certainty that could only be faith. She recognised that, if there had been a darkness upon her soul these past weeks, it had lain within her, not without. The canoness’ death, the coming of the storms, the fall of this planet’s faithful; to endure such a string of punishing blows, one coming upon another, and then to find herself solely responsible for the wellbeing of her Sisters in a war that seemed wholly impossible to win?

It was no wonder the galaxy felt darker.

She enjoyed the simple sensations of her footfalls pounding bedrock and her weapon grips in her hands. There had been no miraculous transformation within her, just a gathering of perspective. The realisation had come upon her, as she watched the Saint defeat the daemons of Chaos, that the end had not come yet. Meritorius might not feel her faith as keenly as she once had, but she knew it lay within her still, regathering its strength. For now, she fought for a holy cause in the light of Saint Celestine, alongside faithful and determined Battle Sisters of her Order, for an Emperor who she now knew still watched over her even in her darkest times.

For Anekwa Meritorius, that was enough.

A terrible droning roar began to rise from deep within Shambach. It was an industrial siren whose note had been corrupted into something dark and unnatural. Meritorius realised that the sound was not continuous; it was a voice, forming dark words, bellowing them forth with such a force of hatred that they struck like physical blows.

‘The voice of the War Engine,’ she cried. ‘Shun its words, faithful. They are naught but the bellowing cries of a mindless beast!’

Around her, Meritorius’ Sisters chanted louder, more fervently, matching their battle prayers against the War Engine’s call.

Behind them, the Basilisks spoke again, sending another hail of shells whipping overhead. Yet now the guns of Shambach answered, and in that moment Meritorius realised just how desperate their odds were. If the barrage-fire of the Basilisks was a roll of thunder, the cacophony of the city’s guns was the full-blown fury of the storm. Dozens of wall-guns lit with fire. Emplacement weaponry opened up, heavy bolters and stubbers chugging mercilessly as they spat shells at the charging Imperial army. Deeper booms rolled from within the city bounds, explosives sailing up from hidden artillery positions to plunge down upon the Imperial lines.

‘The Emperor protects!’ cried Saint Celestine, who soared at the front of the army with her jump-pack wings spread and her sword raised.

The next instant fire and thunder transformed the world. The ground shook beneath Meritorius’ feet, almost throwing her onto her face. Her armour’s inertial dampeners kicked in, compensating for buffeting shockwaves of overpressure. Explosions blinded and deafened her, and as they cleared she saw sundered bedrock and bloody bodies raining from the skies.

Imperial tanks burned, their gutted carcasses rolling to a stop.

Wounded soldiers lay and screamed in horror, in agony, in fury.

Yet the Saint’s light was still there, untouched at the forefront of the assault, shining bright as the Emperor’s own Astronomican to guide their way.

‘Do not slow your pace!’ ordered Meritorius, her voice vox amplified to carry over the terrible roar of battle. ‘Sisters, commence the prayer of Holy Abjuration!’ The Sororitas raised their voices in plainsong again, and as they did so a shimmering haze grew in the air around them.

Artillery boomed. Shells filled the air, whipping both ways.

More explosions.

More death.

‘Beware the ditches,’ came Captain Blaskaine’s voice over the general command channel. Yet it was not so easy, amidst the smoke and mayhem. Meritorius herself almost pitched forwards into a yawning trench. The metal spikes that lined it made it look like some monster’s starving maw. She leapt the gap, thumping down on the other side. Several of her Sisters were less fortunate, and cries of pain rose behind her as they fell.

A trio of Leman Russ battle tanks thundered past on Meritorius’ right, cannon barrels elevated. The trio fired, shots whipping away to slam into the ramparts with explosive force. Enemy field guns disintegrated, their ammunition touching off and raising a rippling firestorm that reduced screaming heretics to windblown ash.

Meritorius bellowed an inarticulate sound of triumph at the sight, that was choked off as a massive shell whistled down and landed upon the central tank. She shielded her eyes before the blast blinded her, but this time she was thrown from her feet. As Sister Penitence hauled her upright, Meritorius saw that two of the Leman Russes were nothing but wreckage while the third was still forging on towards the walls with one track unit half torn away and its hull aflame.

‘Keep moving!’ cried Meritorius to whoever could still hear her. ‘Sisters, raise your prayers to the Emperor in this dark hour!’

She ran again, heading for the walls, following the light of the Saint as it shot away towards the ramparts. Around her, her Sisters’ voices soared and this time the hazy illumination blazed.

‘Whatever that is,’ came Captain Maklen’s voice over the vox, ‘keep it up! Look at the enemy gun crews, they’re blinded!’

Without the benefit of multi-spectral augurs and targetter arrays, Meritorius could see nothing of the foe, but she had faith, and sure enough the enemy’s bombardment slackened as the Sisters continued to sing.

Meritorius surged through the smoke, still leading more than twenty Sisters of Battle, who in turn led hundreds of screaming Cadian soldiers. Explosions blossomed ahead, showing where the Basilisks’ shells struck the wall yet again.

They were so close now. This must be it.

She burst through the last whipping trails of smoke and staggered to a halt.

Wall section nine still stood.

Battered. Blasted. Riven with gaping cracks, and ablaze from one end of its battlements to the other.

But still very much intact.

Shots rained down from neighbouring wall sections, punching two of Meritorius’ Sisters from their feet. Cadians staggered in behind them, their massed ranks easy targets gathering barely a hundred feet from the foot of the wall. The ravaged remains of the War Engine’s glyph leered down at them. To Anekwa’s eye it looked triumphant.

‘Find cover!’ she barked. ‘Suppressing fire against the walltop. Heavy weapons, hit the breach with everything you have. Flamers, burn those heretics you can reach. Faith and determination, sisters and brothers. The Emperor will not forsake us!’ She raised her bolter and sprayed shots up at the walls, hoping against hope that her words rang true.

Within his Taurox, Blaskaine swore quietly and vociferously. The runic display on his auspex was crude, but it showed him enough. He saw the Saint atop the walls, wreaking a platoon’s worth of butchery amongst the enemy gun crews. He saw the Basilisks continuing their bombardment of section nine. But he also saw the Imperial advance stymied as it reached a breach that did not yet exist. The attack was piling up, spreading out like liquid pooling against a flat surface.

‘Spread them out,’ Blaskaine ordered over the vox. ‘Use the shell holes and wrecks for cover. Maintain fire.’

It was all he could do. His Taurox was halfway across no-man’s-land, picking its way between the ditches, following a pair of Leman Russ Punishers towards the walls. They were amongst the rear lines of the attack, but they would be at the walls soon enough.

‘And what then?’ he asked himself.

‘Sir?’ queried Kasyrgeldt, lifting one earphone of her headset.

‘What then, Astryd? Do we just mass at the walls and wait? We’ll be butchered in a matter of minutes.’

‘The Saint said we must have faith, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, and Blaskaine nodded in frustration. The churn of emotions in his chest was too complex to convey: that he did feel faith in a way he hadn’t ever, even before Cadia’s fall; that he had to preserve the lives of his soldiers if he could; that every line of strategic scripture he had ever learned was screaming at him to order a retreat and rethink this suicidal assault; that he desperately didn’t want to admit defeat and pull back those assets that could yet be saved, lest he see again those he left behind on Cadia reflected in every soldier who fell during the subsequent rout.

Instead, Blaskaine settled for a surly grunt. His eyes flicked to the vid-feed from one of Maklen’s tanks near the wall. It showed the Saint, glowing like a star as she leapt and spun along the rampart with her blade lashing and stabbing. Heretics flung themselves at her and were smashed away, sent flailing over the ramparts or hacked into bloody rags. The Geminae Superia fought at their mistress’ side, pistols blazing as they gunned down artillery crews and heretic militia. It was a stirring sight, but alone, Blaskaine knew it still wasn’t enough. Then, over the vox, came a desperate voice that filled his veins with ice.

‘Mayday, mayday, this is Gunnery Sergeant Hokwis to any available Imperial forces! Basilisk battery under attack! Repeat, we are under attack by massed cultist forces! Origin of assault unknown, numbers overwhelming! Creed’s ghost, they’ve got Mas’drekkha leading them! Repe–’

Hokwis’ voice cut out amidst a squeal of static. Blaskaine looked at Kasyrgeldt, her horrified expression echoing his own.

‘No artillery, no breach,’ she breathed.

‘Throne damn it,’ snarled Blaskaine, trying to thump the console with a fist he no longer possessed. This was not how the attack was meant to go. He had seen the glory of the Saint. He had saved her, for Terra’s sakes! How could things turn out this way? Was this his punishment for Cadia, he wondered? Was it a punishment upon all of them for letting the Gate fall?

No. This wasn’t the work of the Emperor. That still lay before them, he realised, no matter the odds, no matter the cost.

‘This is Blaskaine to all forces,’ he barked over the vox. ‘All small arms, concentrate upon the walltop. Everything heavier than a damn lasgun, fire on the breach. We’ll make a gap even if we have to tear the walls down with our bare hands! The Emperor expects of us, ladies and gentlemen, and we shall not disappoint Him!’

‘Noble sentiment, major, but let the armour handle this, eh?’ Captain Maklen was addressing him on a private channel. He frowned, glancing at the auspex to see her designator rune moving towards the front lines. Several of her most veteran engines formed a spearhead in front of her Executioner, and infantry scattered from their path.

‘Captain, even your guns aren’t going to bring that wall down without an awful lot of supporting fire and a Throne-sent miracle,’ said Blaskaine.

‘I am well aware of the tolerances and capabilities of my engines, major,’ replied Maklen, her tone haughty.

‘Then what… Wait, Petronella, what are you doing?’ He gripped the console with his remaining hand as he realised her spearhead wasn’t slowing. One Russ’ signifier blinked out, then a second. Maklen and the two remaining tanks forged on, almost at the front lines now.

‘There can be no greater demonstration of one’s faith in the Emperor than to offer up that which one holds most dear upon the altar of His greatness,’ said Maklen.

‘Don’t quote scripture at me now, captain!’ snapped Blaskaine. ‘This is not the time!’

‘I would say it is precisely the time, since I shan’t be getting another chance,’ replied Maklen, and Blaskaine heard an undercurrent of sorrow and acceptance beneath her dignified tone.

‘Captain! Your experience and skill are required if we are to carry this attack home. Whatever you are planning, I order you to halt your advance and fire upon the breach immediately!’ barked Blaskaine.

‘I’m sorry, major, but you know there’s only one way that wall is coming down now. Thing about running helm on an Executioner, you accept early on that you’re essentially in charge of a damn great bomb on tracks. I’ve had a better run than most, and it’s been an honour to serve alongside you.’

‘Petronella, there’s another way!’ he said as he saw her tank’s rune break the front line and race for the breach, the two remaining Russ designators peeling off to let her go. ‘There has to be!’

‘Faith, duty and sacrifice,’ came Petronella Maklen’s last words over the vox.

Sister Meritorius saw the plasma tank surge out of the Imperial lines, rolling over the bodies of the dead, ploughing through flames and wreckage. A storm of fire hissed from the machine’s hull, yet miraculously it kept going, shells and rockets ricocheting from its heavy armour. Meritorius knew precious little of the sacred mysteries of the Omnissiah, yet even she could see the way the tank’s plasma coils were glowing alarmingly bright and steam was gouting from its exchanger vents.

‘They’re going to overload in the breach,’ she breathed, then shouted, ‘Down. Down and cover, now, now, now!’

Around her, Sisters and Guardsmen alike shielded their eyes and ducked down as best they could. The tank slammed at full speed into the shuddering wall section, and then the world turned white. The explosion was so ferocious that it extinguished Meritorius’ hearing completely. Everything seemed to stop for an instant, replaced by the purity of holy bright light.

Then sound rushed back in, the sounds of flaming rubble crashing down, the screaming of wounded soldiers, and the avalanche rumble of wall section nine caving in upon itself.

Meritorius was up in a heartbeat, blade raised and crackling. She looked upon the remains of Captain Maklen’s sacrifice and felt righteous fury building within her. Meritorius was glad for Maklen, in that moment, for the captain was with the Emperor now, but at the same time she felt nothing but hatred for the heretics who had driven Petronella Maklen to give her life.

‘We have our breach!’ she bellowed, her vox-amplified voice rolling like thunder. ‘Praise the Throne, we have our breach! Advance, in the Emperor’s name!’

Warriors rose, bewilderment turning to fury as they saw the gaping hole where Captain Maklen’s martyrdom had opened the way. As one, the beleaguered Imperial war machine surged into motion and charged for the breach. Meritorius led the way, and as she pounded through the still-glowing rent in the ferrocrete wall she saw the light of the Saint descending from above to lead them onwards.

‘To victory,’ bellowed Anekwa Meritorius. ‘To victory!’

Celestine soared upwards into golden light that shone as bright as the heart of a star. She heard a singing note growing all around her, and her soul sang in chorus with it, for surely here was the divine light of the Emperor.

‘We have found that which we sought, sisters!’ she cried, but there was no reply from Faith or from Duty. Celestine realised that the light about her had become so fulminating that she could no longer see the mountain from within which she had flown, nor the churning skies that had loomed above her for so long, nor even her two sisters who just moments before had flown at her side.

‘Faith? Duty? Where are you?’ shouted Celestine. Her only answer was that singular note, the ring of cut crystal swelling by the moment into a deafening chime that vibrated through Celestine’s body and seemed to shiver her bones.

There was no up or down, nothing around her by which to navigate or orient herself. There was only the light, so blinding she could barely keep her eyes open, and the sound, so deafening now that it was all Celestine could do to endure it.

‘It is the unfettered might of the Emperor, a last test against which I must prove my worth,’ she told herself, yet so loud had the ringing around Celestine become that she might as well not have spoken. She felt a wetness upon the sides of her face that might have been blood trickling from her ears. She closed her eyes against the glare yet still she could see it even through her eyelids.

Celestine was blasted by light and sound, saturated with it until she felt as though everything that made her what she was might dissolve and be scattered as motes upon the air. Still she beat her golden wings, striving to climb higher and higher into the light.

To turn back is to fail in the sight of the Emperor, to be sealed outside the final gate, she thought. To turn back is to be consigned to that purgatorial wasteland forever, or until my soul curdles and rots away amidst the corruption of Chaos. She knew she must press on. She must…

Yet every wingbeat brought pain more severe. Celestine burned in the heart of a divine furnace. She was battered by tidal waves of sound, pierced by blades of searing illumination and razor-sharp symphony. All coherent thought was driven from her mind, all but that one idea.

Do not turn back…

Do not turn back…

Do not…

Do not.

Light and sound vanished so suddenly that it was as though a bomb had gone off inside Celestine’s mind. The cessation of stimuli was shocking, and only after a moment did she realise that she had been, and still was, screaming.

She closed her mouth and opened her eyes, fighting a heartbeat’s fear that she must surely have been rendered deaf and blind.

Instead, Celestine found herself sprawled upon soft grass beside a fast-flowing stream of crystal clear water. The scent of flowers reached her nostrils, and as her ears stopped ringing at last she caught the sigh of a gentle breeze through leaves, and the lazy drone of insects.

Celestine sat up, bleary, bewildered. She felt the gentle warmth of the sun upon her skin, its dappled light falling through the stirring branches of trees that stretched out their limbs to form a dome canopy above the clearing.

‘What is this?’ asked Celestine, feeling mistrust rise in her chest. She received no answer, save the gentle chuckling of the brook and the soft soughing of the trees as they danced lazily in the breeze.

Frowning, Celestine rose to her feet. She was thirsty, she realised, for the first time since she had awoken atop the mountain of bone. She was hungry, too. She glanced at the ice-clear waters that flowed past, and at the fruit bushes that grew here and there amidst the treeline. Celestine shook her head and set her jaw.

‘I will not trust anything of this realm, no matter how fair it might seem,’ she said. Yet she could not help but feel out of place, the bloodied warrior in her filth-stained armour, too harrowed in mind and soul to accept the natural bounty that surrounded her. It was as though everything else were a gentle symphony, and she the only jarring note.

Celestine sensed nothing of the Chaotic corruption that had surrounded her in the lair of the worm, or in the ashen city, or upon the mountain of bone. That said, she felt nothing of the Emperor’s divinity in this place, either. Celestine decided that she would not relax her guard. Instead, eyes flicking around for possible threats, she drew her blade and prepared herself for some monstrous thing to come crashing through the trees.

‘Faith, Duty, please respond,’ she said into her gorget vox. Static hissed back at her. ‘Sisters, are you out there?’ Celestine tried again, but still received no answer.

Minutes passed. The breeze shifted the trees with a gentle hiss. The waters of the stream flowed on. The sunlight danced through the branches, spreading a delicate play of light and shadow across the lush grass of the clearing. Celestine felt her eyes drawn to its shifting shapes despite herself, and something tickled at the back of her mind as she watched the soft play of light and shade. A memory, perhaps, moving just below the surface of her conscious mind.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood like that, alive for threats, before a plump and fuzzy airborne insect bumbled through the air and settled upon her right pauldron. Celestine snapped her eyes towards it, ready to slap the creature away at the first sign of a threat. It ignored her entirely, fastidiously cleaning its limbs, turning in a slow and inadvertent circle as it struggled to reach its own hindquarters. It was, Celestine reflected, as absurd a spectacle as she herself must currently make.

‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she said, shaking her head and dropping her guard. She brushed the insect away and it set up an indignant drone as it wobbled away through the air. ‘I cannot stand here forever, blade raised against non-existent threats,’ Celestine told herself. ‘If my sisters are lost then I must find them, and whether this is some paradise of the Emperor’s making or just another veil of mists, I will not discover the truth stood here.’

Celestine closed her eyes and felt for the Emperor’s light. After a moment she realised that all she could feel was the warm sunlight as it caressed her skin. The sensation was good, pure somehow, but different to the ephemeral candle flame that had guided her path thus far. Celestine opened her eyes, surprised and disquieted.

‘And yet, what if they are one and the same?’ she asked herself. Realising that she had no other form of guidance for the moment, and unwilling to simply guess at a random direction in which to travel, Celestine resolved that she would follow the light of the sun. A glance at the canopy told her that, for the moment, taking to the air was not an option. Instead, Celestine folded her wings close in to her back and, taking a moment to fix the position of the sun in the sky, she strode off towards it with a look of determination upon her face.

Perhaps an hour passed as Celestine marched through the idyllic woodland. There was underbrush enough to add to the forest’s beauty, but not so much that it impeded Celestine’s progress. The trees grew tall and proud. She found that the longer she looked at their gnarled bark and spreading boughs, the more familiar they seemed.

‘Where is this place?’ Celestine asked herself, yet no answer was forthcoming. Whatever memories moved in the deeper currents of her mind, they refused to surface.

She slowly became aware of another sound upon the air, a roar both breathy and distant that set her to scanning for threats again. Passing through a thicket of spry saplings, Celestine heard the sound a little clearer and felt an involuntary smile quirk the corners of her mouth.

‘The ocean,’ she breathed. ‘That is the sound of waves breaking upon a shore.’

Celestine felt a simple happiness in her heart, a sense of peacefulness that she could not quite account for. She wondered why this was so familiar.

‘Faith, Duty, if you can hear me I am approaching a stretch of coastline,’ voxed Celestine. ‘Sisters, make for the sound of the waves or, if you can get airborne, move towards the coast and look for me there. I am proceeding and will take the lie of the land.’

She pressed on, out from under the eaves of the forest. Scattered fruit trees formed a natural orchard around her, their boughs heavy with ripe crimson orbs, but they were no longer dense enough to be called woodland. Celestine ignored them and marched on across the loamy soil under a clear blue sky. Tatters of white cloud rode the winds high above, and winged shapes wheeled, causing her to raise her blade again. Yet Celestine soon identified the creatures as nothing more than some species of coastal avian, and she dismissed them as irrelevant.

Ahead, the land rose into a steep bluff with tough grass tufts clinging to its leeward side. Celestine knew, though she didn’t know how, that this ridge was the trailing edge of a huge sand dune. Beyond its crest, the soughing of the waves promised a beautiful ocean view.

Celestine felt happiness growing within her. She knew a wash of contentment that she could do nothing to dispel, a sense of familiarity that she could neither place, nor shake off. It was maddening and pleasant in equal measure.

As she dug her armoured feet into the slope of the dune and began to climb, Celestine glanced up towards the crest.

She froze.

Up there, jarring and incongruous in this beautiful but empty place, she saw the silhouette of a human head and shoulders just visible above the ridgeline, looking away from her towards the ocean. They were small, rendered in silhouette by the sun, which spilled over the dune and limned the figure’s dark hair with gold.

She knew them.

She began to climb again, suddenly as nervous and eager as one who has long been away from the love of their life, and now hurries impatiently towards reunion. Celestine’s heart thumped in a chest tightened by nerves and anticipation. Thoughts of potential dangers, of her lost sisters or her current location, were driven from her mind by the singular thought that she would at last…

Celestine stopped herself, halfway up the dune. She would at last what? Be reunited with a child that she had met only hours or days ago? She would at last catch up to this silent figure who had come and gone like a mirage, remaining just out of reach?

Did she know her, truly? Her caution returned, and one hand tightened on the hilt of her blade. What, if anything, did she know in this place, except that nothing was what it first seemed?

The child had not moved. She had not responded to the whine of Celestine’s armour servos or the crunch and skitter of sandy soil shifting beneath power-armoured boots, though she must surely have heard both. She merely sat, still as stone but for the slight stirring of her hair in the sea breeze.

Cautious now, Celestine altered the angle of her climb, circling out around to the right of the child as she ascended towards the top of the dune. Her blade glinted in the sunlight, its killing edge keen, the silver catching the light in tight ripples. She imagined what she might see as she finally set eyes on the child’s face, dreading some ghastly apparition sent to lure her in then set upon her, the poisoned barb at the heart of some paradisiacal death trap.

‘Just a child,’ she said aloud as she finally set eyes on the girl. She was as Celestine remembered, a slight little thing with dark hair and dark eyes who looked up at her curiously. The girl scrunched her face up in a squint, shielding her eyes with one hand.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ replied Celestine, uncertain what else to do.

The two of them remained that way for several heartbeats. Celestine saw their shadows form a frozen tableau down the dune’s flank, the tall warrior with a blade in hand and wings folded tight to her back, the wisp of a child staring up with innocent curiosity.

Celestine realised with a start that she still had her sword raised. Hurriedly, she sheathed it.

Of the two of them here, it was she that must appear the monster.

‘Who are you?’ asked Celestine, trying to keep her voice gentle. The girl looked in no danger of startling or fleeing, but Celestine had little enough experience with anyone that wasn’t a warrior or a foe. Little girls were wholly unfamiliar territory. She would take no chances.

‘I’m Hope,’ replied the girl.

Celestine blinked as the name sparked something inside her, a jolt that ran through her whole body.

‘What are you doing here, Hope?’ asked Celestine.

‘I’m watching the waves,’ said Hope. ‘Would you like to join me?’ she added shyly after a moment’s pause.

‘I… thank you, Hope, I shall,’ replied Celestine, unsure how else to respond. As gently as one could in full power armour, she settled herself near the girl. Celestine left a clear three feet of sand and air between them. She told herself it was to avoid making Hope nervous, but she wondered if it would be truer to say it was for her own benefit.

‘The view is beautiful,’ said Celestine after the silence had stretched long between them. She found she meant it. The dune’s windward slope swept away before her, golden sand dotted for the first dozen yards with tufts of grass. Further away, the sun-warmed sands of the beach sloped down to the tide line, where they became slick, several shades darker where the waters had retreated. The ocean itself was a magnificent immensity beyond, its waves questing in and out amidst dancing sprays of foam near the shoreline. They rippled slow and stately atop the depths further out, crowned with gold by the sun’s rays. Eventually, the vista faded until sea and sky became one upon a distant and hazy horizon.

Celestine waited for the child to speak, but Hope had returned to staring at the view, her short legs stretched out in front of her, a stalk of grass idly twisting in her fingers.

‘Hope, where is this place?’ asked Celestine.

‘The beach beyond the woods,’ said the child, sounding distracted.

‘That much I can see,’ said Celestine gently. ‘But where is this? Are we… is this a world in real space? Or somewhere else?’

Hope didn’t reply, just kept twisting her grass. Celestine decided to try something else.

‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?’ she asked. ‘You were there at the bottom of the cliff, then again at the top of the ascent. And I’m sure I’ve seen you again since, running ahead of me through the shadows. How did you come to be here, Hope? How did you survive?’

Hope glanced at her.

‘That lady wasn’t nice,’ she said. ‘She hurt my arm.’

‘I know, Hope, and I’m sorry that she did that, but she was not herself,’ said Celestine, trying to sound as kindly as she could. ‘Have you seen her? Or the other woman that I was with?’

Hope shook her head. She frowned with childlike severity at the grass that was twisting apart in her fingers.

Celestine sighed. She returned her gaze to the horizon.

‘Why don’t you know where you are?’ asked Hope, after a pause. ‘Are you lost?’

‘Yes, Hope, I think I am,’ said Celestine. ‘I was following a light, and it led me here, but now I do not know where here is, and I do not know what to do next.’

Hope’s frown deepened, and Celestine had the distinct impression that the child was giving her words serious consideration.

‘What if here is where you were going?’ she asked. ‘What if you’ve arrived?’

Celestine laughed ruefully.

‘It’s a lovely notion, child, but I have a duty. There is a great task I must complete before I can rest.’

‘Oh,’ said Hope. Then, after a pause, she asked: ‘What is it? Your task?’

‘You helped to remind me of it, Hope. Do you not recall?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Do you know what monsters are, Hope?’ asked Celestine gently. Hope nodded quickly. ‘Well, there are monsters out there, in the galaxy. They come from somewhere else, somewhere wicked, and it is my job to send them back.’

‘Are there lots of monsters?’ asked Hope in a small voice.

‘There are, but you must not fear. I am equal to my duty,’ Celestine said, her voice hardening with determination on the last few words.

‘Do you have to fight them alone?’ asked Hope.

‘No, I have my sisters, wherever they have gone,’ said Celestine. ‘And there are others. So many others, all sworn to fight the monsters too.’

Hope frowned. ‘But… if there are so many people who can fight the monsters, why is it your duty? Couldn’t you stop, and let them do it instead? You could stay here. It’s nice here.’

Celestine paused, a reply half-formed in her open mouth. She was rocked by the sudden certainty that she could do what Hope suggested. She realised that she could divest herself of her armour, lay down her blade to be buried by the shifting sands, and simply stop fighting.

Yet as she looked at the little girl she felt a sudden stab of recognition, a stiletto of emotion that slid between her ribs.

‘Who are you?’ asked Celestine again. Hope merely looked confused, her expression turning down at the edges as the sharpness of Celestine’s tone threatened to upset her.

‘I’m sorry, child,’ said Celestine. ‘I just… I am not sure if you can understand this, but when I look at you I feel such a keen sense of familiarity. It is as though, were I to do as you suggested, to remain here with you, I would come to know at last who you are, and what you are to me.’

Hope blinked, and Celestine realised the girl was fighting tears.

‘Stay?’ Hope asked suddenly. ‘Stay this time?’ Celestine felt her breath catch at the aching need she felt to sweep the child up in her arms and comfort her. There was such aching sorrow in Hope’s small voice, so much more sorrow than any little girl should ever have to feel.

‘Oh, child,’ she breathed, and realised that she was fighting back tears of her own. ‘What do you mean, this time?’

‘Don’t you know?’ asked Hope, and now the tears did come, squeezing from the corners of her eyes and tracking down her cheeks. Her narrow chest hitched, and a sob escaped her.

‘Hope, I…’

‘You always leave!’ shouted the little girl, suddenly furious. She pushed herself to her feet and ran off down the dune, puffs of sand kicking up behind her heels. The shredded twist of grass drifted to the ground in her wake.

‘Hope!’ called Celestine, starting to her feet. The girl didn’t reply, dashing pell-mell down the slope of the dune and onto the flatter sands at its base. She was running towards the tideline, and suddenly the roar of the waves was loud in Celestine’s ears as they rolled hungrily in. What had seemed peaceful and picturesque now became greedy, the waves a rapacious presence that boiled forwards to grasp at the sand. She felt a surge of fear for Hope, who was sobbing disconsolately as she ran towards the waters.

Celestine launched herself into the air, sand swirling away from her wingbeats. She arced up into a sky that darkened with racing storm clouds and arrowed down over the beach. A few swift sweeps of her wings carried her over Hope and saw her thump down in the wet sand before the girl, Celestine placing herself protectively between child and ocean.

Hope kept running and thumped into Celestine with what little force she had, throwing her arms around the Saint’s waist. Celestine heard the gravel-throated roar of incoming waves and dropped into a crouch, encircling Hope with arms and wings both. The cold, dark waters hit Celestine from behind and rocked her forwards. Icy foam boiled around her legs and Hope screamed amidst her sobs as the water drenched her. The waters all but engulfed Celestine for a moment, and she held tight to the tiny life within her arms.

Then the waves receded, and Celestine rose with Hope cradled in her arms. She strode back up the beach, a sad certainty dawning within her. Hope clung to her, wet and cold, her tears slowly subsiding as she pressed her cheek to the hard surface of Celestine’s breastplate. As they walked back up the beach the sun split the clouds again. Columns of golden light swept the beach like searchlights, widening as the clouds tattered away into nothingness.

Celestine stopped at the foot of the dune and knelt, placing Hope gently on the ground. The girl’s shift was soaked, but the warm sun was already making inroads into drying it. The tears that tracked her face would take longer to dispel, thought Celestine.

‘Stay,’ said Hope again in a tiny, plaintive voice, but Celestine shook her head.

‘I am so sorry, child, but I cannot,’ she said. ‘That was not the deal. I know now that if I were to stay I would know you, and you and I would have the peace of that knowing. We would dwell in this beautiful place and it would feel like all the reward that I could possibly expect for the lives beyond count that I have given. But Hope, if I stayed, it would destroy us both as surely as if I had let you be swept away by the ocean waves. To surrender to temptation would let the monsters in. Do not ask me how I know this, child, for I cannot tell you. I just know.’

‘But I’m lonely,’ said Hope. ‘And you never stay. It’s never done.’

‘One day, Hope,’ said Celestine. ‘Have faith, my girl, one day it will be.’

‘Promise?’ asked Hope, and the desperate trust Celestine heard in the girl’s voice made her soul hurt.

‘I promise, Hope. No matter what I must do, what I must give, I will not fail in my duty. And one day, when I come to you here, I will stay. We will know each other, and we will understand, and that will be enough.’

And then she stood and turned away, and told herself as she did so that she didn’t feel the suffocating pain of her heart breaking within her breast. Traitorous thoughts whirled through her mind as she took first one pace away, and then another, and another, as she tried not to hear the little girl that she left crying in her wake.

Had she once been hers, Celestine wondered. Or was she in some way her? Her innocence? Her chance at life? Celestine didn’t know, but her blade felt suddenly heavier than it ever had, the cling of her armour claustrophobic and hateful, and the little girl’s soft sobbing made her want to hurl it all aside, to gather her up and hold her close until her crying stopped.

‘Emperor, I swear to You that neither daemon nor heretic shall stand between me and that which You have promised, and that I will fight for You until the fires of war are quenched in the blood of Your butchered foes,’ said Celestine as she walked towards the ocean. Her voice was razor-sharp steel, tempered by pain and fury. ‘But though I am Your faithful servant, and though I have only love for You in my heart, I say this now. You keep her safe until my task is done. You fill her days with simple happiness and You keep her mind from thoughts of loneliness or loss. The Emperor protects, that is what I have always told those who look to me for guidance. So, protect her, and honour her, or I swear that the last heart I plunge my blade into will be my own, as many times as I must, for I shall do no further duty for You.’

Celestine waited for some bolt of divine wrath to strike her down for her blasphemous words, but none came. Instead she walked on towards the hungry waves and did not once look back.

As she reached the tide line, the waters shuddered and swept aside. They parted for her and where her armoured feet fell Celestine found the sea bed hard and firm, cracked dry earth where there should have been wet sand.

With every pace she drove the ocean back. With every moment the golden light of the sun turned a bloodier hue, until it became sullen firelight dancing amidst drifting clouds of thick black smoke. The ground shuddered as though to the beat of some vast heart, and as it shook, so it heaved and cracked. The waters of the ocean roared down into those fissures, vanishing amidst gouts of steam even as coils of rusted wire grew from the desiccated soil like razor-weed. Celestine felt her heart harden with every step she took through what was rapidly becoming an arid and broken no-man’s-land, where bloodied corpses burned in ragged shell holes and the sky was lost amidst the fume of battle.

Still, she did not dare look back.

‘Halt. I sense her,’ came a voice, crackling from Celestine’s gorget vox.

‘Faith?’ asked Celestine. ‘Is that you?’

‘Saint, it is I,’ came the reply. ‘Emperor be praised! We thought you lost for sure.’

With a few swift adjustments, Celestine routed Faith’s transmission into her armour’s basic auspex unit and triangulated her location – perhaps a mile ahead, through the wastes.

‘Stay where you are,’ said Celestine. ‘I will come to you. Is Duty with you?’

‘I am, Saint,’ came Duty’s reply. ‘We have searched for you for many days amidst this grim place. Where have you been?’

‘For me it has been but a matter of hours,’ said Celestine, picking her way through the desiccated ruins of a battle long since fought. She skirted a rusted tank, something hulking and Imperial whose blasted remains were lodged amidst a mound of rubble. ‘As to where I was…’ She found she could not bring herself to speak of it. She didn’t want to. The forest and the beach were hers.

Hope was hers.

Within minutes Celestine and her comrades were reunited. Faith laughed in unalloyed joy when she saw Celestine through the smoke, while Duty’s frown gave way to a wolfish grin.

‘My sisters,’ said Celestine, observing that neither of the angelic women showed any sign of the hardships they had endured. They were unmarked by the foulness of the worm’s lair, and their robes and armour were unsullied by dirt or blood. Their brands burned bright, as did their eyes.

‘Saint,’ said Faith. ‘You are here at last.’

‘But where is here?’ asked Celestine.

‘Why, it is the end,’ said Duty. ‘And it is the beginning. It is that which we have sought together, which you have sought for yourself. Whatever your last trial was, you have passed through it.’

With that, the smoke began to roll back, billowing away from them as though driven by a wild gale and revealing a cracked plain that sprawled away for mile upon mile. At the same instant Celestine felt again the candle’s warmth upon her skin, but this time it swelled to a simmering heat and then to a roaring fire, a searing star, and its light and heat bathed her in a way that the saturating glare from before had not. This felt right, it felt wrathful, and she felt her heart beat faster as the call to war filled her.

‘The Emperor’s light,’ she said as golden rays fell upon them from on high. She looked to her sisters. She thought, briefly, of Hope where she sat atop her dune, waiting. Then Celestine locked Hope away, deep in her heart where nothing could touch her, and drew her blade.

‘Do you know who you are?’ asked Duty.

‘I am the Emperor’s blade, and His guiding light,’ said Celestine. ‘I am the candle flame in the darkness when all other light has failed His faithful servants. I am Faith, and Duty, and Hope.’

‘We’re ready, Saint,’ said Faith approvingly.

‘We are as ready as you,’ said Duty.

‘Then let us do the Emperor’s will,’ said Celestine, launching herself skywards. As she beat her wings powerfully and soared upwards into the light with her sisters at her side, she wondered whether this time would be her last.

The light of the Emperor swelled.

Golden and pure, it filled Celestine’s world.

Celestine soared upwards, into the Emperor’s light. Faith and Duty spiralled ever closer to her until the three of them swept upwards as one, their eyes alight with the magnificent radiance of the Master of Mankind. For an instant, Celestine felt the feather touch of small fingers upon her cheek and saw again a small figure sat atop a dune as the waves rolled in and out below.

‘We will see one another again,’ she said, and to her ears it sounded like a promise.

Celestine felt etheric winds lifting her higher and higher, speeding her ever faster towards the light. The light from Faith’s and Duty’s wings swelled and engulfed them in fiery haloes of ruby and amethyst. As one, their ethereal forms shimmered and folded into Celestine’s own. She felt their strength flow into her and whispered silent thanks as she hurtled towards the light of a searing star that grew closer with every passing breath.

The veil shimmered around her. She both was, and was not. She both knew, and did not know. She died. She was reborn. And for one glorious moment she perceived all that she had done, and all that she had fought for, and saw all the millions of candles that she had lit across the galaxy as their light burned ever brighter against the encroaching night.

Then the veil parted before her, and the winds of eternity swept her on towards rebirth, towards her destiny.

She flew.

She fell.

She was Celestine.

415TH DAY OF THE WAR – 2240 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
SHAMBACH ORE DISTRICT – LO:800-8/LA:631-2

The Taurox juddered to a halt. Blaskaine could hear small arms fire ringing from the hull. Something exploded nearby, rocking the vehicle on its tracks and almost throwing him from his feet as he put out a hand he no longer owned to steady himself. Kasyrgeldt caught him. He shot her a grateful look.

‘Ladies, gentlemen, now we come to it,’ said Blaskaine. One-handed, he awkwardly checked the load on his laspistol. Three-quarter charge remained. That would be enough. He looked around at the soldiers crammed into the bay. Kasyrgeldt, holding the shotgun that she had sworn by for as long as he’d known her. Two comms officers who had set aside their headsets for bulky portable vox-packs, the medicae – even the vehicle’s two drivers, who stood with lasguns humming. In the mines, there would be no room for armoured vehicles, or for non-combatants.

‘We stand ready, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt.

‘Damned right we do,’ said one of the drivers. Jans, Blaskaine thought. The man’s name was Jans. It was better to know the names of those he would die beside.

‘The Saint has led us this far, and now we must follow her again,’ said Blaskaine. ‘She is spearheading attack force alpha, going in through the Holy Lode workings. Sister Meritorius has force beta and the Sainted Seam workings. That leaves us with force charon and the Gilded Depths. Anyone that penetrates the enemy sanctum at the mines’ heart…’ He paused.

What would they do if they got that far? What would they find? Saint Celestine had been vague on that point. ‘We are Cadians. We will know what to do when we get there,’ he finished.

‘Kill every heretic in sight, sir?’ ventured Kasyrgeldt, racking the slide of her shotgun.

‘That would be a damned good start,’ agreed Blaskaine. ‘And we’ll work from there. Cadia stands!’

‘Cadia stands,’ they barked back at him. Then Blaskaine hit the release rune. The Taurox’s back hatch swung open to admit the din of battle, and he led the way out into the streets beyond.

In a nearby courtyard, Anekwa Meritorius stood and stared into the mouth of damnation. Her twelve remaining Battle Sisters stood at her side, and behind them several hundred battle-weary Cadians knelt in prayer on the worn flagstones. She had commanded them to make their obeisance to the Emperor, and they had gladly obliged.

Before them, the mountainside rose monolithic into the night sky. Las-cut into its flank was the cavernous entrance to Sainted Seam working, a huge rocky tunnel-mouth ringed by industrial machinery. Servitor-cart tracks ran from massive ore-hoppers dotted around the courtyard and vanished into the unnatural crimson glow that pulsed from the mine’s maw. A droning note echoed from within, an unnatural sound that set Meritorius’ teeth on edge.

From behind her came the thump of cannon fire as the Astorosian Leman Russ transports of the rearguard engaged again. The tanks were parked in the street beyond the courtyard, forming a bulwark of plasteel and iron that the enemy militia would not quickly breach. Back there, through the gloom, Meritorius could see smoke rising from the fires that spread through the city streets. Fires they had lit as they fought their way through. Cleansing fires.

‘It is not an inviting sight, is it?’ said Sister Absolom, indicating the mine entrance.

‘When has the Emperor ever asked us to walk into paradise to do His will?’ replied Sister Meritorius with a humourless chuckle.

‘There is no worth without suffering,’ said Sister Penitence. ‘But today, it will be the heretics that suffer.’

‘Truly,’ said Sister Meritorius, slamming a fresh clip into her boltgun. She turned to the Cadians, who were even now rising to their feet and readying their weaponry. They looked battle-weary, she thought, but their eyes shone with zeal. Few of them had truly believed that they would make it this far, and that they had done so only stoked the fires of their faith.

Faith, Meritorius could use.

‘Brothers and sisters, loyal servants of the Emperor! The Saint has led us to the very gates of victory,’ she began, her gorget amplifying her voice to a magnificent boom. ‘Do you have the strength to pass through them and into the everlasting light of the Master of Mankind?’

They cried their assent.

‘For the Emperor!’

‘The Emperor protects!’

‘Cadia stands!’

‘Beyond this threshold the full might of the heretic, the daemon and the abomination shall be set against us,’ shouted Meritorius. ‘Do you have the faith and the courage to face them? Do you have the fortitude to prevail?’

More cries and shouts, louder and more vehement than before. Meritorius felt the hot winds of their conviction fanning the embers of her faith into flames. Energy coursed through her, a sense of purpose purer and more ferocious than any she could remember.

‘Here, on this day, in this place, we have our chance to strike a blow against the Dark Gods themselves!’ she roared. ‘Here, by the grace of the Emperor, we shall raise our blades and our guns and we shall tell the daemon “no more!” Here, now, we will cleanse the taint of Chaos from this world with our blood so that when the new day dawns over Kophyn, it shall dawn upon a world that is loyal and pure!’

Frenzied cheers met her words. The Leman Russ gunners let fly again and explosions billowed beyond the buildings that ringed the courtyard. Sister Superior Meritorius turned to face the hellish maw and levelled her crackling blade at it.

‘Forward, in the name of the Emperor and Saint Celestine!’ she cried, and as one they advanced.

Unctorian Gofrey hastened down a red-lit tunnel with his laspistol glowing hot in his hand. Around him advanced the sons and daughters of murdered Cadia. The tunnels had narrowed as they pushed into the mines, funnelling the soldiery until only a handful of warriors could fight abreast. They moved up with well-drilled efficiency, dashing between the cover of side passages and burned out generators, overturned servitor-carts and makeshift sandbag barricades. Their lasguns and support weaponry howled as they sprayed fire at the cultists moving through the crimson glow. Dead from both sides layered the stone floor, Cadians in blackened flak armour and fatigues, cultists in cannibalised mining garb, crude face masks and foul robes of flayed skin.

Gofrey bellowed his hate as he marched through the press. He shoved Cadians aside where they impeded his progress and fired his laspistol as though hurling the bolts of energy by hand. Each shot found another cultist, punching through faces and chests and leaving them sprawled in the dirt. Return fire whined around him, bullets finding homes in Cadian bodies or blasting stone shrapnel from the walls. Gofrey was plying his mindcraft to its fullest, a raging headache building behind his eyes as he nudged the enemy into changing their aim or panicking just as they pulled the trigger.

He didn’t care. The spectacle of a priest walking miraculously untouched through a hail of fire was worth the pain for it would inspire and terrify in equal measure, and thus ease his passage. He would burn out his own mind if he had to, just so long as he did his duty first.

‘And lo, though the hordes of the unclean and the unworthy did stand before them, and though the hordes were many and the faithful men were few, still did the Emperor’s servants prevail, for their hearts were pure!’ he bellowed, his deep voice booming over the howl of gunfire and the sawing warp-note on the air. The Cadians who heard it rallied and fought all the harder, while their heretical enemies quailed in fear.

Another heretic burst from behind a barricade and charged at Gofrey, screaming and brandishing a revving rock-cutter. Gofrey adjusted his aim without breaking stride and shot the man through the knee. The cultist fell with a cry and his rock-cutter landed on top of him in a snarling spray of blood and bone chips.

Gofrey barked a cruel laugh and marched on.

‘To me!’ he shouted and sent a nudge to those Cadians whose wills he had suborned. A handful of soldiers broke from their positions and hastened to his side, ignoring the shouts of surprise and anger that came from their sergeants.

One such officer tried to stop two of her soldiers from breaking ranks, grabbing one of them by the arm. Gofrey shot the sergeant in the face, throwing her body back against the stone wall.

‘Do not impede the Emperor’s work, witch!’ he hissed. Gofrey ducked down a side passage before the startled Cadians could react, and his thralls – a dozen in all – followed. Their expressions were blank and slack, but their lasguns kept firing just as well, scything down the handful of cultists that dashed up the passage to meet them.

Something exploded close by and a rush of smoke billowed. Gofrey’s robes danced in the furnace winds. The lumen globes strung by wires along the ceiling clinked together and flickered on and off. Gofrey didn’t care; even should the lumens go out, the diffuse crimson glare that suffused the passages would be enough to navigate by. Even if he lost that light, he had the burning beacon of his faith to guide him.

She was up ahead somewhere. Somewhere close. He could sense the false star of her soul amidst the gloom.

‘I am coming for you, deceiver,’ he muttered, and clutched that which hung about his neck, that which lay always close against his skin.

His secret, hidden for so long, soon to be revealed.

‘Major Blaskaine, how far has your assault group progressed?’ The Saint’s voice came through on one of the voxmen’s backpack sets. Just hearing it filled Blaskaine with new strength.

That was fortunate, he reflected, because his original store was fading fast.

Blaskaine was still technically convalescent, sorely wounded and hobbling into battle on a leg full of pins while fluids gurgled through the pipes of his compression harness. It was painful and exhausting, but now here came the voice of the Saint, as soothing as any healing balm.

‘Saint Celestine, we have progressed–’ He paused to check the auspex that Kasyrgeldt held out for him. ‘Just over half a mile from the entrance of Gilded Depths workings. Cultist resistance is stiffening rapidly, my lady. Our advance has slowed to a crawl.’

But they were still advancing, dammit.

Blaskaine and his command squad ducked into a side-chamber, a claustrophobic rest space for miners with a few rusty metal benches, some bare lumen globes and a rack of hooks protruding from the wall for respirator masks to hang on. Outside, the fury of gunfire echoed amidst battle cries and the screams of the wounded and dying.

‘Keep pushing forward, major,’ replied Celestine. ‘My group has progressed almost a mile into the workings, as have Sister Meritorius’ warriors. I believe that we are nearing the enemy’s inner sanctum. The Emperor requires heroism of us all in this darkest hour.’

Blaskaine should have felt anger or perhaps resentment at the implication that his forces were lagging. Instead he felt only an intense desire to do better, not to let the Saint down.

‘We shall redouble our efforts,’ he voxed.

‘The Emperor guides your path this day. You will make him proud,’ said Celestine before cutting the vox-link.

‘You heard the Saint,’ said Blaskaine, looking around at his command staff. ‘It’s time we broke this damn deadlock. Kasyrgeldt, appraisal.’

The lieutenant set her auspex on one of the metal benches with its screen visible to them all. She laid a data-slate next to it, on which updating estimates of their and the enemy’s strengths scrolled constantly in runic script.

‘As you can see, this section of the workings has a single primary tunnel that runs south-west to north-east, away from the entrance and towards where the Saint believes our destination to be. We’ve the strength in numbers to force our way up the tunnel, but only slowly. Worse, the enemy are using side-tunnels here, here and here,’ she pointed to skull runes flashing on the auspex, ‘to move flanking forces in from the levels below us each time we threaten a meaningful breakthrough.’

‘Can we outmanoeuvre them, or block those tunnels?’ asked driver Jans, leaning intently over the auspex with his knuckles on the table.

‘Our enemy has a greater native knowledge of these workings than we do,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Our chances of catching them out through manoeuvre are slim. As for blocking the tunnels, that would require careful application of explosives. Our sappers would have to–’

‘We’re not blocking the tunnels,’ said Blaskaine. A strange calm had settled on him, an acceptance.

‘Sir? You have a plan?’ asked Kasyrgeldt.

‘Simpler than that, Astryd. I have faith,’ said Blaskaine.

‘Sir?’

‘Our enemy are fanatical, and what they lack in concentration of force, they make up for in delaying tactics and a steady stream of reinforcements,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Our numbers, meanwhile, are finite, our time even more so. The Saint requires every warrior that can do so to break through to the heart of this complex, for that is where the only battle of any import will take place. We are not going to make it in time if we continue to fight this battle of attrition, and if we fail her now then it won’t matter what else we do. Lieutenant, what is this tunnel here?’

‘That’s a crawlway, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘A conduit for cabling and gas-transference when the servitors are at the rockfaces.’

‘If I’m reading this right, it runs from one hundred yards behind our current position to this location, half a mile deeper into the mines at the exchanger hub, yes?’

‘That is correct, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt, her eyes lighting with excitement. ‘And with the mines inactive, there’s no gas down there. Soldiers could make their way along the crawlway at a crouch. We’d cover a half mile in a matter of minutes and appear substantially behind the enemy’s current front lines. Throne, that’s brilliant, why didn’t I see it?’

‘When you’ve served as long as I have–’ began Blaskaine with a ghost of his former smirk, but Kasyrgeldt was waving a hand, her face falling.

‘No, wait, sir, I did see it, but I discounted it. If we fell back on that position it would be a slow manoeuvre with this many soldiers. As soon as the enemy grasped what we were doing they could simply activate the compressor pumps and flood gas through the crawlway, or else just follow us down or collapse the passage.’

‘Not if they’re busy engaging a rearguard,’ said Blaskaine. ‘One-fifth of our remaining force will hold position while we quietly filter squads back and through the tunnel. When our numbers thin, the rearguard launch a full frontal assault up the main tunnel, draw the enemy’s fire and hold their attention long enough for the remainder of our soldiery to fall back on the crawlway, enter it and proceed to the exchanger hub. With the Emperor’s grace, that is.’

‘It is a desperate decision but it would have a high chance of success,’ said Kasyrgeldt. Blaskaine felt pride as he watched his adjutant and protégé working the numbers. As he had known she would, Kasyrgeldt set her jaw and looked him in the eye.

‘Sir, permission to lead the diversionary attack,’ she said.

‘Refused,’ said Blaskaine. ‘I will have that dubious honour, lieutenant.’

She looked confused, then horrified.

‘Major, you can’t. You are the senior officer in charge of this entire operation.’

‘I can, Astryd, precisely because I am the senior officer and as such you are all required to follow my orders and allow me to get myself killed in whatever damn fool fashion I so choose,’ said Blaskaine. ‘Look at me. One arm, one and half legs at a push, worn down and wounded so badly I might as well be dead. What use will I be to the Saint if I come hobbling into the heart of the enemy sanctum? I could, perhaps, die on the War Engine’s blade in a particularly distracting fashion?’

‘Sir, I know that your wounds are shocking, but with the proper medical attention–’ began the medicae, but Blaskaine cut him off with a sharp look.

‘Do not mistake this for maudlin self-pity,’ he said. ‘I am not some dewy-eyed martyr. I am not committing suicide by combat, and I’ll shoot the first soldier to suggest it. I have led a long life in the Emperor’s service and during that time I have sacrificed many, many lives, some of them in exceptionally difficult circumstances. I have always told myself that those sacrifices were necessary for the furtherance of a greater Imperial good, and I stand by that to this day.’

He heard again the sound of desperate cries, saw the fires of Cadia’s death throes cut off by the closing ramp of his drop craft. He knew that he had done the right thing, the difficult thing, no matter what anyone else said.

Sometimes just because one did the right thing, that did not stop one being damned for it.

‘If fighting in the light of the Saint has taught me one thing,’ Blaskaine continued, ‘it is that sometimes, to do our duty to the Emperor, we must be willing to sacrifice more – all, in fact – with nothing more than faith that our ending will prove worthwhile. I have finally come to a pass where the most strategically viable sacrifice I can make is that of my own life, not those of others. I will not have that decision diminished by questions about my reasoning. Do I make myself inescapably clear?’

The Cadians around him saluted, their faces grim.

‘Astryd, I’m placing you in operational command of assault force charon,’ said Blaskaine. To her credit, his adjutant didn’t protest any pretence at unworthiness, only nodded, her face pale but resolute. ‘Furthermore, I would have it recorded by all present that I am at this time enacting my right as a senior officer of the Departmento Munitorum to make a field promotion.’ Blaskaine fumbled awkwardly with one of his uniform pockets and produced a small metal pin, a skull with eagle’s wings stretching from it, chased in gold.

‘Astryd Kasyrgeldt, I hereby promote you to the rank of captain of the Cadian One Hundred and Forty-Fourth Heavy Infantry. May you serve the Emperor with honour, pride and heroism.’

Kasyrgeldt’s expression was unreadable as he pinned the captain’s badge to her tunic and stepped back with a wan smile.

‘It looks right on you, captain,’ said Blaskaine.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

‘Don’t thank me, just earn it,’ said Blaskaine, wincing at a pain in the stump of his arm. ‘Now, I’m sorry to say that second and fourth platoons will be remaining with me as rearguard. They look to be the worst torn up, according to your slate. Don’t worry, captain, I’ll give them the good news. Just leave me one of the vox-packs and I’ll coordinate the muster from here. Meanwhile, you pull everyone else off the line bit by bit and get them moving through the crawlway. Keep it subtle. We’ll hold out for as long as possible before we launch our push.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Kasyrgeldt. She paused, as did the rest of the command squad, then as one they saluted him again.

‘Enough. Get moving before my self-preservation instincts kick in and I volunteer one of you in my stead,’ said Blaskaine, keeping his tone bluff to mask the tangle of emotions tightening his chest. His soldiers hurried out of the chamber, ducking back into the screaming maelstrom of battle and thence to their appointed places.

Kasyrgeldt was the last to leave. She looked back at Blaskaine, and he saw fierce loyalty in her eyes, along with something else that it took him a moment to place. Approval, perhaps? Or was it pride?

‘I won’t let you down, sir,’ she said.

‘You never have, Astryd, even when I didn’t return the courtesy,’ said Blaskaine, then cleared his throat. ‘Go. Make the Emperor proud.’

‘I will sir, I just hope I can impress him as much as you have,’ she said, and with that she was gone.

Blaskaine took a deep breath and looked briefly at the stone ceiling. He listened to the gurgle of fluids through his surgical brace, felt the ache of his whole body, and worse, the pulsing darkness in his mind where he had forced the memories down.

He offered a silent prayer to the Emperor and hoped that his reasons truly were as dutiful and selfless as he had said. He thought of the Saint, of her golden light and her holy magnificence, of how his sacrifice would aid her in winning a great victory against the forces of Chaos. That was enough.

Blaskaine picked up the vox handset and keyed in a channel, linking to the vox-units of second and fourth platoons where they fought upon the firing line.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Major Blaskaine,’ he said. ‘I have new orders for you.’ He drew a deep, shaking breath. ‘You are not going to like them, but you must trust me when I tell you there is no other way…’

Sister Meritorius ducked, allowing her enemy’s axe blade to whistle over her head. She surged back up, lunging with the point of her power sword. It plunged through the ornate breastplate of the Mas’drekkha warrior, its molecular disruption field parting metal, flesh and bone. The man’s eyes bulged behind the eye holes of his leering daemon mask. She ripped her blade free and kicked his legs out from under him.

The Mas’drekkha fell and Meritorius stamped hard on the back of his head with one servo-assisted boot for good measure. Bone crunched and blood squirted, and her enemy convulsed in his death throes.

‘Fight, fight for the Emperor!’ she roared, swinging her bolter up and firing down a side-tunnel. Another Mas’drekkha jerked as her bolt-shells punched through his torso, then detonated in a spray of viscera as they exploded inside him.

Assault force beta had advanced at a relentless pace, the Cadians struggling to keep up with the power armoured Battle Sisters. Meritorius and her Sisters sang as they fought, proud hymns echoing down the tunnels. Still, the droning note that filled the air had grown louder with every step they took deeper into the mines, and now it all but swallowed their plainsong whole.

A squad of Cadians dashed past her, pelting up the steep slope of the tunnel with their bayonets fixed and lasguns spitting fire. Three of them fell to autogun rounds before their charge slammed home against the mob of cultists at the top of the stone ramp. Another two went down with Mas’drekkha axes embedded in their bodies. Blood flew as the two forces engaged, and Meritorius dashed in to help.

Her bullish assault slammed one cultist from his feet with a crunch of bone. The sweep of her power sword saw another collapse without a head, blood fountaining from the stump of his neck. A third warrior came at her brandishing a miner’s pick.

‘Blood for the Blood God!’ he screamed.

Meritorius caught the downswing of his weapon on the flat of her sword, then twisted it and disarmed the cultist with a flick of her wrist. She smashed the pommel of her sword into his eye, hard enough to cave in the front of his skull.

‘You were not even worth my blade, heretic,’ she spat.

‘Sister Superior, auspex suggests a massive space beyond the next bulkhead door,’ voxed Sister Absolom. ‘The Saint’s signifier rune is closing. We are converging upon the same point.’

‘The enemy’s sanctum, no doubt,’ replied Meritorius. ‘That would explain the sudden onslaught of Mas’drekkha.’

They had so far used meltaguns to cut through two huge armoured bulkheads that had been raised to cut off inner tunnels within the mines. They would handle this one in the same fashion. Meritorius switched vox-channels.

‘Assault force beta, all warriors, rally to these coordinates,’ she commanded, exloading the location of the bulkhead. ‘Gird your courage, sons and daughters of the Emperor, for we come at last to the heart of heresy.’

She switched vox-channels again as warriors streamed past her and along the high-ceilinged tunnel that led towards the bulkhead.

‘Saint Celestine, are you receiving me?’

‘I hear you, Sister Meritorius,’ came the Saint’s voice, strong as steel and musical as a choir.

‘Your forces and ours are about to converge,’ said Meritorius. ‘I believe we are at the threshold of the enemy’s inner sanctum. What of assault force charon?’

‘They are overcoming delays. Sacrifices must be made, Sister, but they will join us when the Emperor appoints it their hour to do so.’

‘Will you lead us in this final battle?’ asked Sister Meritorius.

‘I will fight at your side,’ replied Celestine.

‘I am not… That is, I have not…’ said Meritorius, her voice trailing off.

‘You are, you shall, you always have and will,’ replied the Saint without hesitation, and the firm warmth in her voice left Meritorius in no doubt that Celestine had seen the ashes and the fire both within her heart. ‘The void is dark, Anekwa Meritorius, and all stars wax and wane within it. But they rarely stop burning, and the darkness cannot diminish them.’

With that, Celestine cut the vox-link. Sister Meritorius felt an incredible sense of release, a lightness in her chest and in her mind. The Saint knew, and far from passing judgement she offered only acceptance, and strength.

‘Emperor be praised,’ said Sister Meritorius and set off along the tunnel at a run.

She emerged through an arched entrance onto a metal gantry that ran above a wide staging chamber. Its floor had been levelled with ferrocrete and stencilled with bays and numbers for the dozens of mining machines and prefabricated labour units it played host to. These had been dragged out of position and heaped up to form barricades. Several side-chambers led off from it, perhaps administration offices or rest areas during more peaceful times. The chamber’s ceiling was strung with hundreds of lumen globes, whose light flickered fitfully amidst the hellish red glow. Most of the chamber’s north wall was taken up by a heavyset metal blast shutter designed to slide open from the centre. It was daubed with the runes of the War Engine, repeating over and over in hideous proliferation, and looked far newer than the rest of the room.

Gunfire and screams echoed madly around the chamber. Meritorius saw that a hard core of Mas’drekkha and flesh-robed cultists were holed up here, dug into the side-chambers and hunched behind the barricades of machinery. They had crew-served heavy stubbers that raked back and forth across the chamber, streams of bullets whining from metal and stone, and punching through Cadians in puffs of blood. Dotted amongst the Mas’drekkha, she saw several especially huge and overmuscled warriors with black hoods, billowing skin-cloaks and ornate axes. She presumed these must be their champions – the cult leaders who had led their people astray, who had manipulated simple superstition into something darker. Meritorius could see the foul blessings the arch heretics had received for their works, shallow augmentations of strength and physical presence.

‘Scant enough rewards for the souls of an entire world,’ she muttered in disgust. ‘Such are the wages of heresy.’

The Imperial forces had pressed up behind several barricades, but were otherwise confined to the chamber’s southern entrances. Sprawled Cadian bodies showed where abortive attempts had been made to charge the stubber-nests.

‘Sisters, the enemy are dug in here and seek to prevent us from reaching their sanctum. Shall we relent?’ Her vox message was met by a suitably strident chorus of denial from the nine Battle Sisters that still lived.

‘Sister Superior, if the Cadians launch a two-pronged push up the flanks, it should afford us the chance to move on the central barricades,’ voxed Sister Penitence. ‘Once there we could hurl frag grenades into the closest gun-nests, and–’

Meritorius didn’t hear the end of Sister Penitence’s plan, for at that moment Saint Celestine swept into the chamber from its south-eastern entrance, her Geminae Superia close behind. The Saint launched herself through the enemy’s fire, bullets ricocheting from her armour. One Geminae landed atop a toppled hauler and unloaded her pistols into a stubber crew, blasting them apart. Celestine herself fell upon the Mas’drekkha with a cry of holy rage, her blade slicing through their bodies.

Behind Celestine, a second Imperial force flowed into the chamber with their guns blazing and Meritorius saw the balance of the battle shift. The stubber gunners tried frantically to draw a bead on the Living Saint, and their reserves burst from cover with howls of battle-lust.

‘The enemy have thrown away their advantage in their eagerness to spill blood for their foul god,’ cried Meritorius, her eyes shining at the magnificent sight of the Saint in battle. ‘So do all the slaves of the Dark Gods fail and falter. Forward, faithful, and slay them all.’

Gofrey was livid. He had intended to catch the false Saint while she battled through the confined tunnels. He had planned to set upon her from all sides, to spend his attendants’ lives in an ambush that would have brought him close enough to strike the killing blow. Instead, he had been forced to fight his way through wave after wave of cultists. Each conflict had slowed him and, though he had seen the glow of Celestine’s radiance ahead through the murk more than once, ever the agents of the enemy had impeded his holy work.

‘Just further proof of the daemon-witch’s heretical nature,’ he muttered to himself.

Ahead he heard the din of battle as the so-called Saint led the charge. Gofrey had half-expected her to abandon the army before the walls, and then had waited for Celestine to turn upon her followers during the assault up through the city’s winding streets and into the tunnels beyond.

Now, though, he knew her game. The Dark Gods do battle with one another and use mortals as their playthings and tools, he thought as he stalked along a sloping tunnel. Surely, then, this false-Saint was a servant of a rival deity and would use them to strike down the War Engine before turning upon those who remained. Worse, perhaps she would lead them on into damnation unutterable, then those in turn would fight for the Gods of Chaos!

No. He would not suffer this witch to live another minute. This ended now. He saw an archway ahead, saw Cadian squads dashing through it and into a storm of criss-crossing gunfire. He would find the false Saint here and expose her for all to see, for Gofrey’s faith was pure, and witches must be burned.

He nudged his thralls and sent them jogging ahead, slack faced with their lasguns ready. One, though, he kept with him. A gunner in whose hands thrummed a plasma gun primed and ready. A weapon enough to kill even the risen Saint.

He smiled.

Gofrey broke into a run, and as he did so, at last he drew out the mark of his order upon its heavy chain and let it hang proud upon his chest.

The rosette of the Holy Ordo Hereticus. The witch hunters of the Inquisition.

Inquisitor Gofrey charged into the swirling melee in the chamber, the fires of his faith burning inferno-hot in his breast. The witch Celestine would die, and all would see in the moment of her fall that she was but a daemon temptress sent to lead them from the Emperor’s light.

Gofrey beheld her winged shape ahead and snarled a command at his thralls. As one, they advanced with their guns raised.

In a smoke-filled corridor, strewn with bodies, Major Blaskaine crouched behind a pile of sandbags. He bled from several bullet wounds, and could barely feel his pinned leg any more. The flesh had torn around several of his crude medical sutures, and more blood soaked his uniform. It hardly mattered now, he thought. He must have bought Kasyrgeldt long enough. The Emperor could grant him that much, couldn’t He?

Bullets thumped into his barricade. A few Cadians still remained, firing their lasguns back at the enemy from positions of cover nearby. But they were a spent force, and the enemy was massing for a last push.

Blaskaine checked the charge on his laspistol again. Flashing close to spent. Still a few rounds left, he thought. Perhaps the last was for himself. But no, he couldn’t waste them. Each shot was for another heretic his soldiers – his warriors – wouldn’t have to fight.

‘Let this be enough,’ he said as he heard the enemy’s chanting reach fever pitch. ‘Emperor, I pray, let this be enough to settle my debts. Let this be my atonement. Let me be forgiven. And save me a seat next to Captain Maklen at Your table, hmm?’

He thought again of the Saint, leading the faithful survivors to victory on Kophyn despite all the odds stacked against them.

It was enough. Blaskaine hauled himself to his feet. He levelled his pistol shakily into the red haze and sighted through one eye at the milling figures half-seen through the murk. He snapped off a shot, then another, then one more. At least one of them connected, and he was sure he saw another cultist go down. One final heretic sent to damnation before his end. Suddenly, a hail of return fire shredded the barricade and his body into bloody tatters.

Charn Blaskaine’s body hit the ground, but he felt no pain. He felt only the calm smile of acceptance that spread across his features as the world vanished down a dark tunnel and the light of the Emperor blossomed before him.

‘Emperor… be praised…’ he whispered, and then knew no more.

Sister Meritorius sprinted across the open ferrocrete, enemy fire whipping around her. She fired back, pumping shell after shell into the heretics behind the barricade, blasting them apart. Her faith was a blazing fire. The Saint was leading them to victory. Even as she watched, Celestine swept her blade down and took the head from another of the hulking enemy leaders.

That was the last of them.

The enemy were slain.

Only the War Engine remained.

‘Sisters, meltaguns,’ ordered Meritorius over the vox. ‘Blast us a path. Surely the enemy’s foul master lies beyond this portal.’

Several Battle Sisters moved up, accompanied by a handful of Cadian weapons specialists with melta weaponry of their own. They poured microwave fire into the bulkhead until it glowed and shuddered. The bulkhead began to sag as their fire chewed through it, and Meritorius brandished her blade as she prepared to face whatever lay beyond. The sawing warp-note in the air rose in pitch and vehemence, becoming a scrapcode roar. She looked to the Saint, who stood ready atop a barricade with her Geminae Superia flanking her. Celestine’s face was composed, her calm absolute. Meritorius drew strength from it.

From behind her, Meritorius heard a commotion. She looked around with a sudden premonition of dread. A squad of Cadians was loping forwards with weirdly blank expressions on their faces, and her eyes narrowed as she saw Unctorian Gofrey accompanied them. Meritorius’ frown deepened as her gaze alighted on the talisman slung around Gofrey’s neck. She felt a moment of puzzlement as she absorbed the import of the Inquisitorial rosette. Then she took in the angle at which the Cadians were holding their guns, the thrumming plasma gun at the rear of the squad, and Gofrey’s mask of wild-eyed hate.

Perhaps, if there had been any psykers surviving within the Imperial force, they might have sensed the stirrings of empyric powers being used amongst the Cadian ranks, and alerted their superiors.

Perhaps those psykers would have warned their masters of the raw power they sensed, lurking somewhere within the Imperial ranks. The potent blend of psychic might and utter conviction hanging like a thundercloud over them all. The danger that the energies of the Great Rift might have tainted that power.

But the force had no psykers. None except for Inquisitor Unctorian Gofrey, a witch sent in secret to find witches, an extremist of the most unmerciful and single-minded sort. A man for whom that which did not originate in flesh and blood and iron was by its very nature unholy and suspicious. A man who saw witches at every turn and had but one solution for dealing with them.

‘Saint!’ yelled Meritorius, trying to throw herself between the Cadians and the Saint. Celestine’s Geminae were quicker, and as the lasguns flashed the two armoured Seraphim bounded into the path of the bolts. Sister Intolerus was blasted from the air, half of her face shot away. Sister Indomita weathered the storm of las-shots and returned fire, blowing two Cadians off their feet.

Gofrey howled, and Meritorius saw his eyes blaze with otherworldly power. Sister Indomita was hurled sideways by an unseen force, smashed through the air as though by the hand of a petulant god. She hit the far wall of the chamber with bone-breaking force and fell, limp as a rag doll.

Meritorious opened fire on Gofrey as, around her, the Imperial forces turned in amazed confusion to see the conflict at the heart of their advance. Meritorius’ bolts were intercepted by the bodies of Cadian thralls, who flung themselves into the path of her fire without a moment’s hesitation.

In return, their fellows opened fire on Meritorius and drove her into cover.

The Saint turned with a look of utmost sorrow upon her face.

‘Unctorian Gofrey, you need not do this,’ she said, and though she did not raise her voice, still it carried over the sounds of gunfire, the droning warp dirge, the hiss of melting metal and the crackle of fires. ‘Your fanaticism has blinded you and made you an unwitting tool of the foe, and in your zealotry and your fear you turn your hate upon that which you do not understand, even though it be the Emperor’s own gift to you.’

‘A witch’s lies,’ spat Gofrey, and his eyes flashed again. Meritorius watched aghast as a tracked cargo hauler the size of a small tank was hurled across the chamber. Celestine dived aside, evading the sailing mass which instead slammed into the weakened bulkhead and tore through the softened metal to crash on, into the chamber beyond.

The warp dirge redoubled in volume. Meritorius saw into the space beyond the bulkhead, saw a nightmarish mass of brass gears and pistons and roaring furnaces, bloody muscle and stitched flesh and staring eyes, rune-scrolling cogitator screens and flaring lenses, all stamped again and again with the skull rune of the Blood God Khorne.

The Cadians nearest the collapsing bulkhead cried out in terror as segmented metal tendrils and coiling cables slithered from the darkness. They tore off limbs and punched through bodies to shed sprays of blood. They coiled around necks and ripped heads from shoulders, dragging the severed skulls back into the mass of the daemonic abomination.

‘Is that the War Engine?’ croaked Meritorius in horror. Her sanity threatened to crack under the strain of the sight, and only her newly restored faith kept it bolstered. Then she heard a fresh eruption of gunfire and spun back in time to see Saint Celestine sweep down upon Gofrey’s Cadians. The Saint fought with the flat of her blade, clubbing one man senseless then spinning and backhanding a woman to knock her unconscious to the floor. In return, las-fire rang from the Saint’s armour and a frag grenade clattered down at her feet. Celestine kicked the explosive away and then drove her fist into another Cadian’s face, flattening him.

Recovering their wits and seeing the Saint in danger, a handful of Cadians from assault group beta raised their lasguns and advanced on Gofrey, yelling at him to cease his assault. Brave, thought Meritorius, to challenge the Inquisitorial seal. Their bravery earned them death, for Gofrey had none of Celestine’s restraint and crushed the Cadians’ skulls with a flick of his mind.

‘She is no Saint!’ bellowed Gofrey. ‘She is a daemon witch, sent to lead you into damnation! Turn your guns upon her in the name of the Holy Inquisition!’

Some of the Cadians stood and gaped in confusion, as did most of the Imperial preachers. Yet Cadians are amongst the most highly trained and disciplined soldiers in the entire Astra Militarum, and, in the absence of a commanding officer from whom to derive their orders, most made snap decisions as to their loyalties. Maybe thirty per cent of them obeyed Gofrey’s command. The rest chose their faith in the Saint, and as Meritorius watched in horror the chamber descended into civil war, Cadian squads turning their gun butts and fists upon one another. It would be scant moments, she saw, before these exhausted, highly strung warriors lost the last of their hesitation and began shooting.

And still the War Engine’s tentacles slithered further into the chamber, and its roar increased in volume.

It was then that Meritorius knew what she must do.

‘Sisters,’ she barked through her vox. ‘This discord serves only our foe. Have faith that the Saint will defeat this false Inquisitor. We must banish that which we came here to banish. We must slay the War Engine.’

With that she turned her back on Celestine, who fought now in the midst of a mass of brawling Cadians, and advanced upon the tentacled horror beyond the bulkhead. Meritorius raised her boltgun and began to pray, uttering the booming High Gothic words of the Rite of Banishment. Her weapon thumped, sending shell after shell whipping through the bulkhead to punch into the daemon’s flesh and blow sprays of gore from its mass.

The fusillade thickened as Meritorius’ Sisters joined her, bolt shells and meltagun blasts ripping at the convulsing daemon. Its roar grew louder, more furious as its cogs were smashed and its flesh ruptured, as cogitator screens shattered, and eyes burst, and furnaces spilled their glut of flaming skulls.

Cadians had joined her, Meritorius realised, their faces grim as they fought to complete the task the Emperor had set before them. Not all of them, though, she saw; the sight of this daemonic horror had been too much for some of the brave soldiers, and they ran mad with terror or fell to their knees, clawing their own faces bloody.

Tendrils lashed out, punching through a man to her right and tearing him in two. A segmented metal tentacle lined with blades whipped around Sister Penitence’s waist and hauled her forwards. Penitence was still screaming her hate and firing her bolter into the monster’s mass as she was stuffed whole into a blazing furnace maw.

Yet the daemon was quivering and shuddering, its flesh becoming translucent as its grip upon reality faltered.

‘Pray, Sisters!’ cried Meritorius. ‘Keep firing!’

It was then that she heard the distinctive whine and scream of a plasma gun firing behind her, and a sudden chorus of horrified cries.

‘The Saint!’

‘Emperor, no!’

‘Burn the witch!’ came Gofrey’s furious shout.

‘Heresy!’ howled another voice, full of outrage and fury.

‘Hold position, eyes forward, do not relent!’ bellowed Meritorius, internally screaming in frustration. She had to know what was happening at her back, but to relent for even an instant would be to let the beast rally and consume them all.

‘Grenades!’ barked Meritorius, palming a handful of krak charges and hurling them into the shuddering mass of the daemon that had turned Kophyn into its own private slaughterhouse. More charges followed, sailing through the air in a cloud and clattering into the daemon’s chamber to implode with ferocious force.

The War Engine heaved and shuddered hugely. Its digitised roar reached a deafening crescendo and its flesh-metal tentacles lashed out again and again, yet now its body was burning and torn. Its ichor spewed in gouts across the chamber floor, and in places it began to turn transparent then vanish altogether. Chunks of machinery clattered to the floor, no longer held within the corrupted mass of daemon flesh. Wires sparked. Cogitator engines clattered down to silence.

‘Flamers!’ ordered Meritorius, and brave soldiers advanced through the nest of flailing limbs to ply jets of fire across the disintegrating abomination. Several paid the ultimate price for their courage.

Meritorius fired again and again until her clip ran dry and she slammed a new one into place. She ignored the sounds of gunfire and screaming and clashing blades behind her, shut out the boom of Gofrey’s voice and the cries of the wounded, and kept firing.

Anekwa Meritorius did her duty.

At last, the War Engine blew apart with an explosive blast of furnace-hot winds and atomised gore, and a death scream so deafening that it caused lenses to crack and ears to bleed.

At last, with the abomination before her slain, Meritorius was free to turn and look upon the horror that had been wrought behind her back.

Inquisitor Gofrey could feel blood streaming from his nose, weeping down his cheeks from eyes that must by now be red with burst vessels. He had nudged dozens of Cadian soldiers to his cause, pushing so hard that he had killed almost as many as he had successfully enthralled. He didn’t care. It was a faithless man who balked at the cost of doing the Emperor’s will.

It wasn’t done yet, though. The Saint’s armour was cracked and blackened where las-bolts had pierced her body. She had torn free of her encumbering jump pack after Gofrey had crushed one of its finely crafted wings with his mind. Her face was a mask of blood where a Cadian sergeant’s sword had opened her scalp, yet still her eyes remained locked on Gofrey with furious intensity.

Other Cadians, those too far lost to heresy to hear Gofrey’s warning, had rallied to her. Now she came at him with her blade raised, and the once proud soldiers of the Astra Militarum flayed each other with point-blank gunfire.

‘This heresy ends now!’ roared Gofrey, and nudged his plasma gunner hard. The man’s first shot had been stopped by a Cadian selflessly hurling herself into the path of the blast. Determined to avoid the same thing happening again, Gofrey focused his will and, with a scream of pain, bludgeoned aside those soldiers between himself and the false Saint. Bodies tumbled, bones broke, and something in the Inquisitor’s mind tore.

‘Now,’ he growled, through the white-hot wash of agony. ‘Overcharge and fire!’

His thrall obeyed, the coils of the man’s plasma gun glowing, its capacitors screaming as they gathered their ferocity. The false Saint saw the danger and lunged, but too late. There came a blinding flash, a howl of energetic discharge, and Celestine was struck full in the chest by a ravening ball of sun-hot plasma.

The shot lifted her from her feet and threw her backwards to crash against the mangled metal of a barricade. She gasped in agony, and well she might, for Gofrey saw with vicious satisfaction that her chest was a molten ruin of fused armour and blackened flesh and bone. How the damned woman was even still breathing with such a crater in her was beyond him, but Gofrey knew now was his moment. As the faithless cried out in dismay at their Saint’s fall, Unctorian Gofrey strode towards her, his vision shimmering crimson at its edges.

‘Now, witch! Now, daemon! Now comes the judgement of the Holy Inquisition! Now I shall do the Emperor’s work and strike you down, that the scales may fall from the eyes of all who have followed you unto damnation!’

It was then, as he stood over the bloodied, gasping false Saint, that something roared and struck Gofrey in the back with sledgehammer force. The world jolted, and it took him a moment to realise that he had been driven to his knees, his entire back reduced to a blazing mass of agony. Gofrey fumbled behind himself and his palm came away dripping and red.

‘What…?’ he croaked.

Captain Kasyrgeldt pumped her shotgun and advanced towards the fallen preacher. Somehow, he was still upright, despite the full-bore blast she had unloaded into him. She resolutely ignored the wounded form of Saint Celestine beyond him, lest the sight undo her entirely. What in Terra’s name had happened here, she wondered.

‘All Cadian soldiery, stand down and ship arms with immediate effect!’ she barked, her voice carrying more authority than she felt. Around her she saw soldiers stepping back with relief, others shaking their heads and dabbing at bleeding noses as though emerging from some sort of trance. One man swung his gun to bear upon her but was instantly clubbed down by the soldiers to either side of him. No one else reacted.

Impossibly, the Saint was pushing herself to her feet, blood sluicing down her legs from the catastrophic wound in her torso.

‘Saint Celestine, please don’t try to move,’ urged Kasyrgeldt, then yelled for a medicae. Celestine shook her head and took careful, steady paces towards Gofrey, her blade held in one shaking hand.

‘Unctorian Gofrey, your zealotry and fear have blinded you and made you a tool of the enemy,’ rasped the Saint, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

‘Lies,’ Gofrey hissed, still trying to fight his way to his feet despite the wads of buckshot that had severed his spine. Kasyrgeldt frowned as she felt waves of force emanating from the fallen priest, then gasped in shock as she saw those same forces stir his robes and lift him to his feet.

‘In the very lair of the abomination that enslaved this world to the will of the Dark Gods, you turned the Emperor’s noble warriors against one another at the moment of their triumph,’ said Celestine, her voice grating and raw. ‘You are no better than Horus the betrayer. Heretic I name thee, traitoris extremis.’

‘Do not listen to her lies,’ Gofrey screamed, apoplectic with rage, and Kasyrgeldt heard clearly the madness in the man’s voice. Exhausted Cadians stared from every side, unsure whether to intercede, whether to aid the Saint or restrain her bloodied assailant, wary still of the Inquisitorial rosette that hung from his neck.

‘You have profaned the Emperor’s faith and made of it a lash with which to goad your fellow man,’ spat Celestine, raising her blade double-handed. ‘You do not believe in the will of the Emperor, but instead invoke His name to excuse your own monstrous deeds. I have love and sympathy in my heart for every loyal soul, no matter how wayward or lost they might be. But you, Unctorian Gofrey, your very fanaticism has transformed you into that which you hated most, and the darkness will be lessened by your passing.’

Kasyrgeldt felt unnatural forces whirl into being around Gofrey and cried out a warning to the Saint. Celestine’s blade swung through the air, a streak of silver amidst the gloom, and the Inquisitor’s head tumbled to the bloody ground. His body followed it, the thrumming pressure leaving the air as Gofrey’s powers died along with his mind. The next instant, the Saint fell in turn, her sword slipping from her grip and her eyes rolling up into her skull.

1ST DAY OF PEACE – 0616 HOURS
IMPERIUM NIHILUS – PLANET KOPHYN
SHAMBACH ORE DISTRICT – LO:800-8/LA:631-2

They bore Saint Celestine out through the mines and into the cold night air. Meritorius allowed Captain Kasyrgeldt to assist her and her Sisters in bearing the Saint out of the daemon’s lair. Tears ran down their faces as they walked, stately and sombre, bearing Celestine upon a makeshift bier.

The crimson glare was gone from the tunnels, so that only bare lumen globes lit their path. The awful droning dirge had halted in the instant of the War Engine’s demise. Now silence reigned, and in it the clink of wargear and the whine of armour servos was as loud as Celestine’s ragged breathing. The Cadians were too exhausted, or else too stoic, to set up any sort of mourning cry for the fallen Saint, and when the priests had attempted to exhort them to it, Meritorius had silenced them with a cold glare.

This would not be a grotesque spectacle of zealotry. She had witnessed where such perversions of the Imperial faith led a man, and his body burned at her back, consigned to the same fires as the daemon. Meritorius knew it would be dignified, for it was what she deserved.

They laid the Saint upon the stone flags of the courtyard through which they had entered the mines. They set her broken Geminae Sisters beside her, offered the same honour in death as their mistress. The Cadian medicaes did what they could, applying gels and dressings, but they expressed their doubts that Celestine would even regain consciousness, let alone live through her terrible wounds.

And so Meritorius and Kasyrgeldt stood, attending the Saint as her breath rattled in and out, unsure what else to do. Aides came and went, providing the Cadian captain with data-slate reports that she looked over swiftly before muttering orders and sending her subordinates hurrying away. Meritorius nodded in approval. Major Blaskaine was right to promote that one. Command came naturally to her.

‘Listen, the fighting has stopped,’ said Kasyrgeldt.

Meritorius realised the Cadian was right. She could hear fires burning, voices crying out in loss or bewilderment or pain, but no gunfire.

‘The city languishes beneath a pall,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose that, with the daemon’s banishment, its influence over the populace was broken?’

‘I fear the truth is rather grimmer,’ said Kasyrgeldt as she scanned a data-slate handed to her by one of her aides. ‘We’re receiving reports of mass suicides amongst the cult forces. They correspond with the daemon’s demise.’

‘All of them?’ asked Meritorius, aghast. Thousands upon thousands, taking their own lives in unison, she thought. And all of them once loyal servants of the Emperor.

‘All of them,’ confirmed Kasyrgeldt.

‘Perhaps it is better,’ said Meritorius. ‘They were irrevocably tainted. There would have been no forgiveness for them this side of the grave.’

‘I’m just glad they aren’t still in the field and seeking revenge,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘I feared this would prove a pyrrhic victory at best and yet, here we stand. Thanks to her.’ She looked down at the prone form of the Saint. ‘Should we offer up prayers?’

‘My Sisters already do so, but if any of your soldiers wish to join them it would seem appropriate,’ said Meritorius. ‘The Emperor should know the victory that the Saint led us to this day, and of our gratitude to her.’

‘He does…’ came Celestine’s rasping voice as her eyes opened. They knelt at her side.

‘Rest, my lady, don’t exert yourself,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘You’ve been sorely wounded.’

Celestine offered the Cadian a wry ghost of a smile.

‘The Cadian talent for understatement… still survives, I see,’ she whispered, and a cloud passed across her features. ‘I am… sorry, captain. I fought at the fall of your world, and… I could not save it.’

Kasyrgeldt appeared lost for words, and so Meritorius spoke for her.

‘Saint, you have led us to a great victory upon Kophyn with the light of your faith.’ More soldiers were gathering now, Cadians and Battle Sisters and even a few surviving Astorosian tankers forming a sombre crowd around the fallen Saint. Many bore hastily dressed wounds, while others leant on lasguns as makeshift crutches. Still they only had eyes for Celestine, and Meritorius thought briefly that they must resemble some scene from scripture. Perhaps, if she ever escaped this world, she would see to it that the moment was recreated in glassaic or tapestry.

‘I fought alongside you, and…’ she paused, choking. ‘I offered the Emperor’s counsel, nothing more. It was your faith, your strength and courage, your determination… that brought us victory this day.’ Around the circle, the wounded soldiers stood a little taller, fires kindling in their eyes at the Saint’s words. Meritorius felt a surge of tremendous love for Saint Celestine in that moment, for she had helped her to stoke the fires of her own faith again and now they burned hotter than ever before.

‘The daemon is banished, yes?’ asked Celestine, coughing painfully. Her balled fist came away from her lips arterial red.

‘It is, Saint,’ answered Meritorius. ‘We slew it by bolt, and by blast, and by flame.’

‘An initial inspection suggests that the War Engine was as much machine as daemon,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘Our enginseers are working on the hypothesis that the locals had some sort of Dark Age thinking machine hidden away up here, and that for whatever reason they activated it when the Rift came. We can only guess at their motivations, or how the machine-intelligence came to be corrupted by a daemonic entity, but…’ Kasyrgeldt tailed off as she felt everyone’s eyes upon her.

This is an officer who boils everything down to data to cope with loss, Meritorius realised.

The Saint placed her hand upon Kasyrgeldt’s and nodded slightly.

‘My thanks, captain. It is good to… to know the nature of the corruption that we have put a stop to here today. But there is such a thing as blessed ignorance, for the daemon corrupts those who seek to understand rather than abhor. Burn… everything that remains, and have your priests purge their…’ The Saint broke off as another coughing fit wracked her.

‘Of course, my lady,’ said Kasyrgeldt.

Meritorius felt a slight warmth upon the nape of her neck. She looked up, and saw the first light of the dawn sun was creeping around the mountain peak.

‘What do we do now, Saint?’ she asked, looking back down.

‘You have served,’ said Celestine, her voice wavering down to a whisper. ‘You have found faith and duty within yourselves… you must strive every day to keep them in your heart. You are the soldiers of the Emperor, and you will carry your light forwards into… the darkest of places without… without fear or doubt.’

‘My lady, we will do as you ask,’ said Kasyrgeldt. ‘But I fear we will never do so beyond the bounds of this world, for we have no way to escape it.’

‘The Emperor… provides,’ whispered Celestine with a smile.

The Saint’s breath rattled painfully in her ruined chest. Surely, thought Meritorius, she did not have long. The sun’s rays limned the mountain peak as the sky flushed pastel blue and russet above them. A spear of sunlight fell upon the courtyard, and the assembled soldiery gasped in awe as it crowned Celestine with a flickering halo. Meritorius thought she saw peace in the Saint’s eyes in that moment, but something else as well, a sense of foreboding perhaps.

‘Sir!’ came a shout as a vox-officer pushed through the circle to reach Kasyrgeldt’s side. ‘Sir, it’s a damned miracle!’

Kasyrgeldt shot the man a sharp glare. ‘Strevsky, show some damned respect,’ she snapped in a low voice. ‘Now, what is it? What’s a miracle?’

‘Ships, sir,’ said Strevsky, suitably chastened but still burning with excitement. ‘Imperial Navy ships in orbit and requesting to speak to our senior officer.’

‘How can that be?’ asked Kasyrgeldt in wonderment. ‘We were cut off. No one even knew we were here.’

‘Astropathic vision, sir,’ said Strevsky. ‘The captain wasn’t too clear, but it sounds as though someone saw something divine, a golden figure that led them through the storms and got them here, now…’

‘The Emperor provides,’ breathed Meritorius. She looked down at Celestine, but her words of thanks died on her lips. The Saint’s eyes had turned glassy and unblinking. Her body had become utterly still.

Saint Celestine had passed beyond the veil.

Consciousness, sudden and violent.

Her eyes snapped open and hellish red light poured in. She gasped and sat up, one hand going to her ruined chest. She found it whole beneath her palm, the material of her shift undamaged, the flesh beneath it unsullied.

She blinked as her vision slowly returned, as she perceived the osseous mountain upon which she had awoken. She did not know her name, nor where she was, nor how she had got here. As panic threatened, she felt a slight warmth upon her cheek, like the light of a candle or the brush of small, warm fingers.

In that moment she knew she must follow it, and that if she did, all would eventually be well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novels Gloomspite, Blacktalon: First Mark and several short stories for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain.

Niir Khazad was alive.

It had been borderline, for a while. Erunion, Courvain’s chirurgeon-philosophical, had worked patient hours over her, adjusting the vials and the sutures, snagging and twisting the flesh, until she was finally stabilised and her heart was beating and her lungs were pulling in air. When she awoke at last, it was his skinny face that she saw first, peering over half-moon spectacles as if scrutinising a disappointing lab specimen.

‘You’re tough,’ he admitted.

She knew that. Being born and raised on a death world had given her no alternative. During her long career, she’d suffered frequent and significant physical trauma and had always pulled through. On the mag-anchor platforms in low orbit over Dramde XI she’d taken a bolt-round through her shoulder that had pulled a fist-sized chunk of flesh with it. That should have killed her, as should the poison-laced spike in her stomach under the hive-slums of Hydra Demetrius. Back then, though, she had been able to draw on the services of Inquisitor Hovash Phaelias. Her old master had been a thorough man, with a well-supplied armoury and well-maintained apothecarion, and so her medical care, when needed, had been exemplary. Now, through a fog of pain suppressors, she barely knew where she was, let alone how reliable her treatment had been. Looking at Erunion, with his ghost-pale skin and flickering gaze, it was hard to be confident.

‘Yes,’ was all she croaked, proudly.

She gained strength after that. The chirurgeon shuffled away, coming back every few hours with more tinctures and needles. Servitors clunked and drooled around her cot, attending to the antiquated machines with their dumb, clumsy movements.

Her sense of self, of place, of memory, began to return. She remembered the long hunt, when it seemed like the world itself had turned against them all and her master’s retinue was picked off, one by one. During that time she had never tried to persuade him to leave, to flee off-world from a Terra that had become their enemy. An inquisitor did not flee, not when there was quarry to hunt. Right until the end, she had assumed that he would discover who their hidden enemies were and then find a way to counter them, but in that she had miscalculated. Phaelias was dead now, as were all the others. Only she remained, a fugitive plucked from the shadows of the great hive-spires and absorbed into another coterie of killers and misfits. Even then, death had still come for her in the deep catacombs under the Palace itself, where xenos and myth-pulled gods had fought amid the swirling shadows.

But she had cheated it again, one more time. Now she breathed, painfully. She blinked, painfully. She swallowed, and felt the rawness of her throat where the tubes had been. By the time she came fully back to her senses, the lumens in the chamber were dialled low. In the hazy murk, it took her some time to realise she was not alone.

‘Welcome back, assassin,’ said Erasmus Crowl.

She had never spoken to him before. She had only ever heard the name ‘Crowl’ when Spinoza had mentioned it, and such references had been fleeting and in haste. By the time the two of them had ended up in the same chamber at last, the las-bolts were already flying and the greatest of Rassilo’s hunters was coming for her with murder in their eyes.

Still, it was hard to mistake him. He wore black robes trimmed with silver. His hair was slicked back to his skull, pulled away from a gaunt face of scars and sickness. He sat calmly, hands on his lap, still as the shadows around him. Only his voice, which had a soft, dry surface timbre, gave away a little more humanity.

She tried to lift her head from the pallet, and failed. ‘Inquisitor,’ she croaked.

Crowl got up, tipped away the metal can of water by her cot and replaced it with a fresh one. She took a cautious sip.

‘I wished to give you longer to recover,’ Crowl said. ‘They’re serious wounds. Spinoza thought you might die from them.’

Spinoza. Luce Spinoza. The woman – Crowl’s interrogator – who had tracked her down and in all likelihood saved her life. She was cut from exceptional cloth, that one – rougher, harder, more ebulliently physical. Khazad and she were similar in many ways – warriors schooled in the Imperium’s imaginative arts of combat – but the man before her was a breed apart. Frailer in body, it seemed, but with an evident mental strength that even now, even here, was capable of chilling with a word.

‘Does she live?’ Khazad asked. It was hard to remember precisely how things had ended, down there in the deeps under those immense walls.

‘She lives, Emperor be praised. I think it would be very hard to end her, and I am grateful for that.’

Khazad swallowed again. It was slowly getting easier. ‘Then, can I–’

‘Peace,’ said Crowl, quietly. ‘You are not under edict of interrogation. Questions will have to come when you are stronger. For the time being, I wish you to know you are safe.’

Khazad smiled weakly. ‘Nowhere safe.’

‘Ha. Maybe not. But there are degrees of danger. Do you know where you are?’

Khazad nodded.

‘Most who come here never leave,’ Crowl said. ‘You, of course, may leave whenever you wish. I know a little of the Shoba doctrine. You will need to locate those who wronged you.’

‘Yes,’ she said vehemently. ‘I know names. If any still live–’

‘Indeed, and I approve of the sentiment.’ He leaned forward, into the pool of murky light, and Khazad saw the deep rings of black under his eyes. ‘You must take whatever path seems right to you,’ he said. ‘Either alone, or, if you choose, with us. Spinoza might have told you I habitually worked alone. That was partially true, for a long time, but things are becoming perilous here. An assassin of the Shoba school would be of use to me. It wouldn’t be the safest option, given how things are, but think on it, when you’re recovered.’

Khazad looked at him directly. ‘No time needed. I stay here.’

Crowl raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? You don’t wish to consider it?’

‘Spinoza trust me. I trust her. Have no other master – you will do.’

Crowl chuckled. ‘I see.’ He got up, and Khazad saw for the first time how lean he was out of the armour she’d witnessed him wearing before. In his long robes he looked like a coiled whip, frayed and flaking from overzealous use. ‘Get better then,’ he said, seriously. ‘Get stronger.’

Khazad began to feel her awareness slipping away again. Erunion must have piped something down the tubes that still ran into her arteries, something that would knock her out and accelerate the healing that still needed to be done.

‘Will be ready,’ she said fiercely, keeping her eyes open as long as she could.

‘Good,’ said Crowl. ‘They’ll come for you again, now. They’ll come for me, too.’

‘Yes.’

‘Just so you know. It isn’t over.’

Sleep rose up to smother her again, hot and cloying.

‘Never is,’ she murmured, thinking back over all those injuries. ‘Always start again.’

Maldo Revus, too, was recovering.

His body, too, was a thing of consummate toughness, honed and shriven over decades until every muscle was like boiled leather, held together by its scars and bearing the marks of its armour pieces. He had limped out of the catacombs with Spinoza, his carapace plate riddled with dents and his helm visor blurred with his own blood. That was the way such things usually ended, of course, so he had no complaints about it.

Perhaps, though, as he aged, the recovery times were lengthening a little. It had been eight years now, with Crowl. Before that he had served as a sergeant with another Inquisitorial detachment, and before that he had been a private soldier in a storm trooper division on permanent void duty. His memories beyond that were blurred, perhaps due to the strain of near-constant combat, perhaps due to the after-effects of the mind-wipes he had undergone multiple times during preliminary training. There was no true beginning for him, no commencement, just a growing set of impressions, steadily becoming firmer, solidifying into his current state as Crowl’s loyal killer.

At times, he would dream of another time and another world – empty skies of pale green, a dusty plain stretching away towards gauzy horizons, a child running in terror from the iron ships hanging in the grit-blown air. Even now, after a routine action, while recuperating in Courvain’s medical bays, he might remember the nights he had endured in the schola, stinging from the welts left by the instructors’ electro-whips, his lips bloody from constant recitation of battle-doctrine. He could revisit himself as an adolescent sometimes, crying angrily into the thin sheets of his cot, fists balled against the bolsters, exhausted, broken. All that psycho-training had left its mark, bludgeoning out the weaker elements, leaving only what was necessary for his vocation. Like so many others in the service of the Throne, he had been forged, hard-tempered, then re-made.

Courvain, for one of Revus’ experience, might have been considered a less than optimal posting. Another man in his position might have agitated hard for promotion, for transfer to a personal detachment in a more prestigious location, or even command of an active-duty regiment in some branch of the mainstream Militarum. Revus, though, knew what Crowl offered. Some inquisitors were sadists, treating their troops as expendable resources. Others were flamboyant mavericks, swaggering around the Imperium’s possessions like temporal lords and holding sway over fiefs in the name of none but themselves. Crowl was simpler to understand. He cared little for the outward ostentation of his office, but maintained an orderly, active programme of investigation. He had high expectations of those in his service, but was solicitous over their wellbeing. That engendered loyalty in excess of that guaranteed by standard indoctrination alone. For those who served long enough, it inculcated something close to devotion.

And yet, it was still possible to have one’s faith shaken; to be exposed, even briefly, to a wider world. For a very short time, down in those lightless pits, Revus had fought alongside Custodians. They had barely noticed him, in all likelihood, and his own contribution to the encounter under the walls had been little better than nominal, and yet, still, he had served alongside them. A man might live for a hundred years and never see such a sight. He might tell stories of it with every detail perfectly represented, and none would believe him.

Now, in the shadows of the citadel’s interior, Revus stood on the edge of the training square, his linen jerkin soaked with sweat. He tried to recall how they had moved, how they had handled those crackling staves. Perhaps there was something to learn from it, however imperfectly or clumsily. There was always room for improvement, to become a better servant of the Throne, and it was hard to imagine more exalted role models.

But in truth, there was no emulating such paragons, not even by degree. They were as far above him as he was above the wretched and disease-blighted masses of the underhives. Already the experience had begun to seem like a dream, a too-vivid vision provoked by fever. Back in Courvain, all was dark again, all was stained and old. They had been like shards of gold in an imagined sunrise, fleeting, seen from a distance, a reminder of another possible world of myth and forgetfulness.

He pushed himself from the wall, flexing his aching arms. The baton was greasy in his grip. In the centre of the training square was a padded column two metres high, a static opponent of limited use for honing his skills. It would make him stronger though.

The overhead lumens flickered as he padded on to the mat, rehearsing the litanies of manual combat, the same ones he had been taught in the schola and had used ever since. The sodium tubes above him shook as he thudded the baton home, swinging heavily, panting and throwing sweat from his forehead. As he worked, as he pummelled and struck, he had the golden giants in his mind’s eye the whole time, those titans of combat whose movements had been so fast as to be nearly impossible to follow.

There was so much to do still. So far to go before he reached the limit of his potential and the absolute satisfaction of what the Throne could demand. Once they had been seen, they could never be forgotten, and could only remain there, visions, goading him towards greater accomplishment.

There would never be fighting like it again. If he had never lived to see another day, it would still have all been worth it, just for that.

‘Again, now,’ he murmured to himself, getting ready for another bout. ‘Faster this time. More accurate.’

The lumens pulsed, as if in readiness. Sweat ran in thin trails down his flushed skin.

He hefted the baton, and started again.

Now Terra was her home.

Spinoza’s time on the Throneworld had been so short. She had seen many planets in her time and each had left their mark, though none had claimed her so completely as this one. She had ingested its poisons and breathed its soot-heavy atmosphere. She had observed the blush fade from her skin, to be replaced by the grey pallor that all wore here. She had already been swallowed up, enveloped and weighted down, until there was nothing left but this place, this endless city, this press of thousands upon thousands of souls, all of them clamouring for something, anything.

Now she stared at herself in her small mirror above her personal hygiene station, lit on all sides by unforgiving lumen strips. She saw the harder edge to her jaw, the deeper lines around her eyes. Her hair, which had always been a pale blonde, was now bleached almost entirely white. Terra’s mark had been made, and the process could only continue.

She had a choice now. She could either do what Rassilo had done and indulge in augmetics and rejuvenat to hide the damage, or adopt her master’s policy of letting the world do its worst. The latter was the more honest course and appealed to her innate sense of conventional piety, but the temptation to fight against the grime was still strong. There were things she could do, techniques she could adopt, all of which required coin, which she had enough of, and time, which she didn’t. It was most likely, then, that she would let it slide and gradually become one with this place, just another grey-skinned, dark-eyed cadaver stalking the labyrinths.

She splashed cold water over her face, rubbed the skin dry, and turned away from the mirror.

Her private chambers were set on the northern wall of the citadel, near the summit and only overhung by the topmost gun emplacements. Her sole view of the city outside was through a single set of narrow, reinforced windows. She could see towers crowding the night beyond, rank upon rank of them, each one surmounted by glowing marker lights and glittering from their thousands of tiny viewports. Palls of smoke from the incinerators and cathedral-furnaces rolled lazily across the darkness, snagging on the gothic turrets and spilling back down into the narrow canyons between.

The Palace itself was far to the north, a long way out of sight. Its grandeur might have been a world away from the crumbling mazes before her, and yet it never left her mind. She had come closer to it than she had ever dared to hope, albeit via buried ways that gave her little sight of the immense structures above. Since returning to Courvain, she had pondered little else – the ranks of statues forgotten in the deep dark, the foundations buried under centuries of accumulation, the smell of ancient dust in her nostrils, deposited in another age and only stirred again by their brief intrusion.

Crowl had gone further in, she knew. He had said nothing of what he’d seen, and she had learned better than to ask, but something had changed in him. He’d been brought out unconscious. When he’d finally stirred again, his first expression had been almost rapturous, as if he were still in the presence of something phenomenal, before he’d blinked, winced, and realised that it had gone. After that, there had been a change, some faint mark left on him. She could never quite put her finger on what it was – he remained dry, soft-spoken, occasionally sardonic – but an alteration had taken place.

Perhaps that was inevitable. You did not come so close to such powers without being changed by them. Even as Terra was moulding her, so the Palace, or what had taken place within it, had changed Crowl, and only time would tell where those changes would lead.

And then there was the heresy of it – the xenos, the monster, dredged up from the profane reaches of the void and delivered into the very precincts of holiness. The thought of it disgusted her beyond endurance, just as the memory of its many depravities still polluted her mind. She had seen foulness before, but never so close to the heart of what she had been charged to protect. It should never have got so far in. Now, whenever she closed her eyes to begin her devotions, she would see its hollowed-out face. Crowl said it was dead now, killed by the Custodian Navradaran, its body destroyed. She had to believe that. And yet, in the dark hours of the night, when she awoke, she would still catch it staring at her through the window, or back at her in the mirror, or from behind her altar, licking its dark tongue around its bone-pale lips.

Just visions. It was weakness to entertain them at all. To combat them, she read the catechisms aloud. She returned to the Pradjia rhythms again, clutching to their solidity and simplicity, trusting that, in time, faith would dispel such phantoms from her unconscious mind.

She donned her robes, pinning the rosette to her breast and adjusting the heavy fabric of her cassock. In the far corner of the chamber, hoisted on a metal rack and surrounded by ritual candles, was Argent, the modified crozius arcanum gifted her by the Space Marine Chaplain Erastus. Simply laying eyes on it made her fingers itch to grasp it, to take it out into the darkness and use it to tear the shadows apart. Physical violence was easy – it was pure, and it was sanctioned. Other forms of service, particularly those practised here, were harder.

A chime sounded, and a corresponding lumen-bead spread a soft blush of red across her wax-stamped purity seals.

‘Interrogator,’ came a thin voice over her private comm – Aneela’s, by the sound of it.

‘I am aware of the hour,’ Spinoza replied, pulling a cloak over her shoulders. ‘I shall be there presently.’

The link cut out. The candle flames fluttered in the hot air, sending their warm light flickering over Argent’s sacred outlines.

It had never been over. The short time for respite – a mere breath, a single heartbeat – had passed. Now it would all start again.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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For Liz, here’s to long conversations in evening beer gardens, and to you continuing to come up with all my best ideas…

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