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Whispers – Alec Worley

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A Black Library Publication

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Whispers

Alec Worley

Marcus Amouris bounded up the steps of the village shrine and appealed for calm as the Thunderhawk circled overhead. The ship’s sudden appearance, materialising out of the early morning mist like some mythological bird of prey, had interrupted the tribe’s dawn rituals and driven them into a panic. Mothers screamed, racing from the doorways of their huts to retrieve awestruck children from the storm of leaves and dirt churning beneath the transporter’s powerful turbines. The menfolk had already gathered into a mob, brandishing hunting mattocks as they beat their chests and bellowed challenges at the hovering vessel. The village shaman huddled on his knees, absorbed in frantic prayer to his obsolete deity.

Marcus tried not to smile. He always savoured this moment, when the scales finally fell from the eyes of the converted and they beheld the glorious light of the Emperor for the first time.

‘People of the Sundered Claw,’ he bellowed, his weathered robes snapping in the booming downdraught. ‘Your faith in me this season has been rewarded.’

He had mastered the nuances of the local dialect within weeks. His genius for languages had not dimmed in the years since he was an orphan boy, studying at one of the holy academies of the Schola Progenium.

His strident voice caught the ears of the tribe’s chieftain, a brute almost the size of a greenskin and flanked as always by his two hulking champions. The chieftain raised his ceremonial mattock – the Sundered Claw itself, its head fashioned from the talon of some prehistoric beast – as he roared for silence. All who heard it ceased their clamour and stood, squinting into the wind, all eyes on the Imperial missionary as he continued.

‘The curse upon your sacred forest shall soon be lifted,’ cried Marcus. ‘Your noble hunters shall be preyed upon no more.’

He gestured with a flourish towards the Thunderhawk, as though he had conjured it into existence. ‘Did I not promise an end to your famine? Did I not promise deliverance?’

The ship continued to circle the village, surveying the scene below. Its thrusters tore the mist into curling shreds, revealing the peninsula of low hills that opened to the south, then whipping the branches of the fathomless pine forest that otherwise enclosed the village like a bulwark.

‘Your honoured ancestors called the same god by many names,’ said Marcus. ‘The Grey Father, Cloudbearer, Ward of the Forest. But he has answered my prayers, granted me a portion of his command, because I know his true name.’

Marcus looked out over a sea of starving, enraptured faces, gazing at him like children spellbound by a campfire tale. Marcus welcomed the force of their attention. He absorbed their devotion like warmth, feeling something nourished deep within him.

‘And this is my gift to you,’ he said. ‘Your god’s true name…’ He paused, relishing the moment’s tension. ‘The Emperor.’

They gasped on cue. Several dropped to their knees as if with the weight of their revelation. The shaman was speaking into the ear of the perplexed chieftain. Ignoring them, Marcus singled out a thin woman nearby clutching her wailing child, her cheeks gaunt from weeks of hunger. He reached towards her with a gesture of entreaty.

‘And the Emperor does not stand by while the children of his disciples starve.’

He indicated the Thunderhawk once again as he addressed the rest of the tribe, directing the force of his words at the chieftain.

‘The Emperor has despatched a band of mighty celestial warriors, brave men whom he has sent to purge evil from your hunting grounds.’

The Thunderhawk finally peeled away towards a low hill outside the village. Marcus beamed at the thought of introducing the wide-eyed chieftain to a platoon of Imperial Guard: strangely armoured warriors summoned out of the sky. The tribe had never seen guns before and Marcus planned on ordering the squad to shoot a volley of las-fire into the air, overawing the tribe with a demonstration of the Emperor’s might.

As the dust subsided, Marcus got his first clear view of the Thunderhawk as it prepared to land on the tallest of the nearby hills. His face fell at the sight of the two crimson and black Rhino transporters the ship had clamped to its belly.

Emblazoned upon the side of both vehicles was a white fleur de lys.

Euphoria melted into panic as he leaped down the steps of the wooden shrine. His mouth was dry, his voice trembling as he hurriedly warned the tribe to remain within the village, not to venture near the ship until he had greeted the visiting warriors and assured them of the tribe’s faith. He pushed past several bemused tribespeople as he ran to the hill, his heart pounding, cursing whichever fool in the orbiting watch station had relayed his orders to the Ministorum.

He had requested assistance over two weeks ago, during which time he had been left to wonder whether his summons had been forgotten or relayed at all through his barely functioning vox-caster. The village food stores had continued to run low and the shaman had been asking too many questions, muttering too often into the chieftain’s ear. Skilled though he was in creative hyperbole, the missionary had found himself running out of excuses.

Marcus reached the crest of the hill. He gripped his knees, panting as the Thunderhawk’s front ramp yawned before him.

A towering figure in ebon power armour descended towards him, a scarlet tabard flowing from her waist. The woman wore a pistol holstered on her right hip; the beaded chain of an Imperial rosarius swung at the other. She wore her black hair short and straight, cut in the severe fashion of the Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle.

Her squad followed close behind, their boots clattering upon the metal ramp. The Battle Sisters were smaller than the monstrous Space Marines, but no less intimidating. Some carried bolters, their faces bare, expressions pitiless, eyes eerily intense. Others were encased entirely within their black power armour, faces hidden behind white crested visors as they hefted double-barrelled storm bolters.

The hazy morning sunlight revealed their commander’s face. She was pale as marble, sculpted yet scarred, a dark Y-shaped fissure running down one side of her face. She halted at the foot of the ramp and gazed at Marcus, her face immobile, eyes vivid green and unreadable. They were heavy-lidded as if with weariness, arched black eyebrows twin peaks of disdain. If her breath had not smoked in the cold air, Marcus felt he could have mistaken her for a statue.

‘Ave Imperator,’ she said, her lips motionless. Her voice emanated from a vox-grille in her sculpted gorget, the device giving her words a haunting metallic resonance. She continued: ‘I am Sister Adamanthea, Dominion Superior. I am told you need me to kill something.’

Marcus saw the two-handed hilt of the immense eviscerator chainsword she had clamped to her back. He felt suddenly nauseous and forced himself to speak before fear could prevent him.

‘Blessed Sister,’ he said, attempting a smile. ‘You are a heartening sight indeed for a weary pilgrim. But I’m afraid there has been an error. I requested a detachment of Astra Militarum, and did so for a crucial reason.’

Adamanthea’s expression remained glacial.

‘Are you questioning the decision of the Ecclesiarchy?’

Her left cheek bore the tattoo of a single red tear, an icon of the Order of the Valorous Heart, whose Battle Sisters were infamous for the paranoid nature of their zealotry. Marcus had heard tales that these women could literally see sin radiating like an aura from the weak and faithless.

‘I question nothing, Sister,’ he stuttered. ‘I only serve. I am merely suggesting that our masters may not have been made aware of the delicacy of this undertaking.’

He turned to see the tribe approaching the hill. Cold fear swam through Marcus’ veins as he saw the shaman babbling and gesticulating at the Battle Sisters. The chieftain, his lumbering champions and the village hunters followed close behind. The sight of the women stopped every one of them in their tracks and their expressions curdled with outrage.

‘Sister,’ said Marcus hurriedly. ‘You must understand, these people are simple-minded barbarians. Such are their savage traditions, their sacred forest may be entered only by men! To contravene this law is an affront tantamount to blasphemy.’

Marcus cried out as Adamanthea strode past him towards the gathering mob. The squad remained as he hurried after her, cursing.

‘This tribe dominates all others in this region,’ he told her, struggling to contain his rage. ‘The Missionarus Galaxia has calculated that their conversion will spread the Imperial Creed across the entire continent within a generation. Your presence here risks undoing all I have achieved thus far.’

‘Stay back,’ she told him as they neared the tribe.

The shaman rushed forward, halting Marcus, gibbering curses in his face. The gathered tribesmen stared in both dismay and wonder as the Dominion Superior strode towards the appalled chieftain. The brute snorted with fury, folding his arms as his two champions advanced towards her, casually swinging their vicious tools. They were burly, bear-like men, hulks of scar and muscle, veterans of the countless wars of aggression waged upon neighbouring tribes. Sister Adamanthea ignored them as she continued towards their chieftain.

Marcus watched, helpless, months of work about to be demolished by capricious violence. The champions sauntered towards Adamanthea, confident their threatening presence alone would deter the woman. But still she advanced on their chieftain as though neither guardian existed.

One of the men went to grab her shoulder. The motion seemed to animate Adamanthea; her aura of stillness suddenly vanished as she flinched away from the champion’s outstretched paw. Snatching the brute’s wrist, she drove her power-armoured forearm into his elbow, snapping the limb in an explosion of screams and splintered bone.

She was on the other man before he could bury his mattock in her shoulder, her hands shooting past his guard like striking snakes, closing the distance before he could land a blow. Grabbing the weapon, she wrenched it from his grip with a savage motion, then swung the pommel upwards into his teeth with force enough to hurl him senseless onto his back. She cast the weapon aside as she stepped over his body and the enraged chieftain charged at her, swinging the Sundered Claw about his head.

Adamanthea drew her bolt pistol and shot him in the foot.

The chieftain shrieked and fell to the ground, his tribesmen screaming in primal terror as the pistol’s bark echoed over the hills like thunder. They cowered before Adamanthea, their chieftain still howling, staring with horrified eyes at the bloody wreck that dangled from the end of his leg. Marcus was surprised to feel a surge not of rage, but of anguished envy. What a thing it must be to inspire awe by force of arms alone.

Adamanthea turned to Marcus.

‘I did not come here to play with savages,’ she said, her face a mask of tranquillity, oblivious to the spray of blood that now freckled her cheek. ‘I came to destroy whatever is preying upon them.’

She marched back up the hill towards the ship, adding, ‘I require further instruction, Brother Marcus. Quickly, for the Emperor’s time is precious.’

As a missionary, Marcus was accustomed to closed minds and knew the futility of chiding the Battle Sister for her recklessness. At least she had left the tribe in no doubt of the Emperor’s power. He felt another rush of envy and cursed himself at having to scurry after her like a lackey. The tribe retreated further back, carrying their wounded chieftain with them, as the two Rhinos crawled out from beneath the Thunderhawk, their engines rumbling like beasts hungry for war.

Standing nearby, Adamanthea surveyed the immeasurable forest. Dark spires of pine gradually faded into mist until the vast mountains beyond were but ghosts. Strange birds crossed a cold white sky.

‘Sister Adamanthea,’ said Marcus, joining her as he stifled his lingering annoyance and mustered his most authoritative tone. ‘I studied this region extensively prior to my departure and suspect an indigenous predator to be the source of our troubles. The mountain region to the north is home to several carnivorous species affected by a diminished source of prey. I’m certain one or several such creatures have migrated to this area in search of food.’

‘Bodies?’

‘None. Every group of hunters sent into the forest to search for their brethren has failed to return.’

One of the Sisters approached to confirm the squad’s readiness. Adamanthea nodded and gave the order to embark.

‘The coordinates you gave us point to ancient ruins, brother,’ she said, as they walked to the lead Rhino. ‘The Ecclesiarchy believe they are almost certainly Imperial. Our historians say this world was civilised millennia ago during the Reign of Thor.’

‘My studies brought me to precisely the same conclusion,’ said Marcus. ‘However, the tribe know the site as “the City of Whispers”. They regard it as a fearful place, and believe their men were spirited away by ghosts. Now none of them dare enter the forest. They’d prefer to starve to death than be dragged to hell.’

‘Local superstitions may harbour ruinous truths,’ said Adamanthea, her disembodied voice ringing like steel as her mouth tightened into a frown. ‘Did you not think to summon the Inquisition?’

‘The Emperor’s time is precious, as you say,’ he said, offering an innocent smile. ‘I wouldn’t think to waste it when so much evidence points to natural causes. The site is located near a major water source drawing abundant prey, making the ruins a natural lair for any mountain-dwelling predator such as the glacies lupus or the common lacundum ursus.’

Adamanthea’s impatient scowl pleased him.

‘Hunting beasts is a base labour, Sister,’ said Marcus, nodding sympathetically. ‘Wholly unworthy of the Adepta Sororitas, but fides ante vanitas. “Faith before vanity,” I always say.’

Adamanthea nodded towards a figure bearing baggage nearby. It was the young tribeswoman whom Marcus had chosen to school as his maidservant. He reluctantly bid her approach. She was pretty and full-figured, despite the ravages of hunger. Marcus tried to ignore Adamanthea’s penetrating gaze as the girl bowed low, her eyes downcast as she handed him his flak jacket. He took his coat and stopped her as she tried to kneel and kiss his hand.

‘“Faith before vanity,” indeed,’ said Adamanthea. She watched Marcus flush with embarrassment as he dismissed the girl, snatching his backpack and the cloth wrap containing his lasrifle. The girl retreated with an extravagant curtsy, which Marcus now sorely regretted teaching her.

‘Clearly you are an asset to these people,’ said Adamanthea. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you stayed behind.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Marcus, irritated as he fished a painted claw from inside his vestment. ‘You see this pendant? It is a totem of honour worn by every hunter. It means I have sworn an oath to these people to enter the forest, confront their enemies and return triumphant. Though it embarrasses me, I am forced to abide by their ridiculous traditions if I have any hope of guiding them into the light.’

Adamanthea had already turned to follow the last of her squad into the back of the Rhino. Taking her silence for acquiescence, Marcus went to follow her up the ramp when she turned and addressed him, her voice a tinny hiss.

‘I heard that you united the warring hordes of Kordaius Quintus, brokered peace between them in the name of the Emperor. I also heard that you are now worshipped among them as a prophet of – some would say excessive – renown.’ She leaned in. ‘Do you believe a person of weak character might develop a taste for such adoration?’

‘I believe they might, Sister,’ said Marcus coolly. ‘I have seen valour turn to vanity in many a warrior. But, of course, superbia vocat corruptionem. “Pride beckons corruption.” Words spoken by Sister Lucia, the founding saint of your Order, I believe.’

‘Sage words indeed,’ said Adamanthea with menace, her green eyes gleaming as she studied him. Marcus failed to stifle a shudder as she unhooked the eviscerator from her back. The blade’s purity seals fluttered stiffly in the breeze, dark with dried blood. She ducked inside the transport, taking the seat nearest the door.

Marcus huddled into a space near the driver’s hatch, struggling to dismiss the sting of Adamanthea’s words. These Battle Sisters were as brutish as Space Marines, as ignorant as the savages he had devoted his life to enlightening. What did this Sister Adamanthea know of the nuances of converting a populace? He knew that mere men were not enough to inspire the masses, to prompt unwavering devotion to the Throne. No – the people needed legends. Heroes of song and saga, vision and valour.

He allowed himself a tight smile and looked over at Adamanthea as the ramp closed, activating the photon-candles set in the recesses of the Rhino’s interior. Like the rest of her squad, she was already deep in prayer, touching her forehead to the hilt of her eviscerator, oblivious to all but her own devotions. Marcus could sense her dormant vitality radiating like heat.

Prove your worth, Marcus Amouris. The notion came to him as clearly as if someone had whispered it in his ear. He nodded to himself, swaying in his seat as the Rhino thundered down the hill, towards the forest.

‘With me,’ barked a voice.

Marcus woke from a heavy doze to find himself addressed by a lone Battle Sister. She was young, smooth-skinned, but with a thick scar across her crumpled nose. She motioned with her bolter, urging him towards the open ramp and the brightness of the world outside. He blinked and gathered himself, embarrassed at having fallen asleep, unwrapping his lasrifle and strapping on his pack as he followed her, wincing at the cramp in his legs.

The perfume of pine and earth was a welcome change from the dank odour of sweat and sacramental oil that permeated the inside of the Rhino. The Battle Sisters had set up a perimeter around their two idling transports and were scanning the surrounding trees.

Marcus sniffed and wiped his nose. Twilight was an hour away but the air was already freezing. White vapour wrapped itself around the trees, swallowed the towering pines, reaching up, up into the high branches where it framed beams of dying sunlight. The silence here was so intense that Marcus thought he could detect a strange hiss, like static in the air.

His bodyguard nudged him up the road and he clutched his lasrifle, making a show of looking alert to his surroundings as he approached Sister Adamanthea. The Dominon Superior was conversing with two of her squad beside the hunting trail, which terminated in a crumbling ledge that had halted their progress. Marcus gazed across the gloomy expanse beyond. Then, shivering with involuntary excitement, he scrambled to higher ground as he realised what lay before him.

The City of Whispers. A dead metropolis of ruined Imperial basilica. Domed roofs like shattered skulls, rubble impaled by the prevailing trees. The splendid wreckage lay strewn for miles, drowning in a sea of boiling mist that merged into the distant grey horizon. A landscape of once-proud pinnacles stood strangled and splintered by the cloying vegetation, interspersed by a grave community of immense statues, silently contemplating eternity as they disintegrated into the murk. Everywhere Marcus looked he saw the detritus of faith fighting a slow and hopeless war against the creeping advance of nature.

But might not someone turn the tide of this conflict… retrieve these stones from the pagan earth and re-consecrate them in the name of the Emperor?

Marcus saw before him not a city lost to ruin, but a grand opportunity. Glory for the taking. Once the Sisters had driven out whatever nuisance lurked here, Marcus himself could resurrect this holy site and welcome all those whom he enlightened to come and pay tribute. They would raise statues of him in gratitude, of course. Proof indeed of his worth. How might he be known? Amouris the Intrepid? The Beneficent? Father of the Faithful?

The young Battle Sister caught Marcus’ arm, pulling him back down the steep bank of trees he had climbed to gain a better view of the ruined city. He went to protest when he saw just how close he had been standing to the edge of the steep cliffs that encircled the city; perhaps the remains of some monumental moat that had encircled this place an aeon ago. Looking back at the crumbled ledge that had halted the Rhinos’ progress, he saw it was the remains of a stone bridge, a section of which had collapsed and disappeared into the misty canyon below. The bridge appeared to have once been part of a grand pavilion leading into the upper tier of an extravagant cathedral. The building appeared relatively intact from what Marcus could see through the mist. Was that a flight of stairs leading up to an open archway, and high above it the remains of a circular lattice where an immense rose window had once stood?

He suddenly ached to see what was inside and once again felt that sense of something seething in the air, like ghostly rain. Was it some trick of the wind? Of climate or air pressure? It was easy to see why the local tribes shunned this place.

‘Are you sure this is the correct trail, brother?’

Marcus jumped at the sound of Sister Adamanthea’s sonorous voice. Before he could answer, two Battle Sisters trudged into view from a steep rocky slope that descended nearby into the canyon beneath the ruined bridge.

‘It came down recently, Sister,’ panted one of them. ‘Likely within the last day.’

Adamanthea immediately snatched the lasrifle from Marcus’ hands. Before he realised what she had done, she had tossed the weapon to his bodyguard and slammed him against the side of the Rhino, pinning his throat with her forearm.

‘Who have you been talking to?’ Her voice was cool and measured as it rang through the vox-grille at her throat.

‘I don’t know what–’

Adamanthea jammed her forearm deeper into Marcus’ throat, her face impassive as he choked and squirmed.

‘No animal did this. Someone knows we’re coming,’ she said. ‘What do you hope to lead us into?’

She held him a moment longer, watching him with those languid green eyes as he gasped. She stepped back, releasing his frantic reply.

‘I swear by the Throne,’ he coughed, his words impassioned with fear and confusion. ‘I have no idea.’

Several other Sisters now surrounded him, their bolters aimed at his chest.

‘Sister Clarice.’ Adamanthea gestured to Marcus’ bodyguard. The young Battle Sister with the broken nose grabbed Marcus’ arm and twisted him onto his knees, pinning his face against the Rhino’s muddy flanks as she stripped him of his backpack. A knot of impotent rage tightened in his chest as she rummaged inside his flak jacket.

‘The remains of the bridge show no sign of explosives.’ One of the other Sisters was speaking. ‘From what we can see, it looks like someone removed the keystone, demolished the supports with tools.’

Marcus’ thoughts raced. How could anyone know they were coming? Was there a conspiracy afoot in the village? The shaman perhaps? Unlikely. They were half-starved simpletons terrified of this place. So who destroyed the bridge? And if they wanted the squad dead why not loosen the stones and wait for the transports to drive across? Did someone want them – or him – alive?

‘No vox-caster, Sister Superior,’ said Clarice, concluding her search of Marcus’ pack. ‘Nothing.’

Marcus wiped the mud from his face and clambered to his feet.

‘Watch him,’ said Adamanthea.

Clarice nodded and Adamanthea ordered the rest of the squad to move down the slope, into the misty canyon beneath the crumbled bridge. They murmured a prayer of sanctity in eerie unison as they marched towards the mouth of the slope.

Sister Clarice slung Marcus’ lasrifle over her shoulder as she shoved him into line.

Marcus turned to her, imploring. ‘Sister, there must be other bridges, other entrances further along these cliffs. We are clearly walking into an ambush. Why?’

‘Because,’ Adamanthea cut in, the trace of a smile on her frozen lips. ‘I am impatient to meet those who believe they can challenge the will of the Emperor.’

Marcus couldn’t stop shivering. It was even colder down here on the swampy floor of the canyon, the mist even more impenetrable as evening neared. The fog seemed to swallow up every sound beyond the clink of the squad’s war gear and the squelch of their boots. Several Battle Sisters probed the path ahead, searching for tracks while the Dominions trudged several feet behind them, clutching their storm bolters. Adamanthea stalked beside them, her bolt pistol drawn. Marcus plodded among the rear guard, young Sister Clarice close by his side as the squad advanced towards the distant cathedral, following the course of the shattered pavilion high above.

The ruins rose about them like colossal tombstones. Marcus felt miniaturised, like something out of an absurd dream. The air stank of mulch and stagnant water, seeming to crackle and tighten like freezing ice, writhing with whispers that seemed to hiss at him from among the flooded rubble.

Some malign intelligence was at work here. Something the Battle Sisters would have to eradicate before he could fully enlighten this world, before he could cleanse this place and secure his legacy. He felt borne up by faith: a faith, if not in the holy Emperor, then in himself, in his own ability, his own talent for survival. Although he missed his lasrifle, he felt a strange absence of fear.

Prove your worth, Marcus Amouris.

Marcus repeated the thought over and over, like a mantra. So immersed was he in his benediction that he was slow to realise a murmur of activity had taken place at the head of the column. Subtle gestures had been exchanged and the Battle Sisters’ formation was now shifting. He watched curiously as one of them threw something at a line of toppled masonry ahead.

He realised she had thrown a grenade only a split-second before it detonated with a boom of sundered rock that filled the air with smoke and a rain of spinning leaves. Screaming figures bounded through the pall as though the blast had released them from the earth. The Dominions answered their appearance instantly, with a deafening battery of storm bolter fire that sent Marcus’ heart into a spasm of fright.

Panic electrified him as a second storm of bolter fire erupted. The Battle Sisters guarding him were blasting at howling figures leaping at them from the mist, muzzle-flare sending shadows capering about the ruins. One of the fur-clad figures dashed in as a bolter round obliterated its shoulder, flinging its right arm back into the mist. The ghastly wound failed to slow him as he and another crashed into Sister Clarice, driving her onto the ground. As the three of them fought like maddened animals, something landed nearby. Marcus’ lasrifle.

He ran to retrieve the weapon as the cascade of bolter fire continued like a thunderous choir, mingled with the oaths of the Sisters and the bellows of the monstrous things they fought. Something charged into his side, winding him, smothering him with its huge arms. As Marcus struggled to free himself, he caught sight of his attacker’s wild, lidless eyes. A drooling mouth bore a sneer of ruined teeth. The creature’s flesh was mottled, smeared as though scarred by fire, a gaping nasal cavity puffing strings of mucus as it fought to drag him from the fray.

Around its neck, it wore the claw totem of a tribal hunter.

Sister Clarice rose before him, eyes wide in a mask of blood and filth as she slammed her bolter into the skull of Marcus’ misshapen kidnapper. The hunter staggered forward, releasing him. As the missionary scrambled for his lasrifle, Sister Clarice fired a torrent of bolter rounds into the stricken creature, the blaze illuminating a look of terrible ecstasy on her mud-splattered face. The sound of joyous, sonorous prayer had now joined the surrounding clamour.

Marcus snatched the lasrifle and turned, seeking targets. He saw another of the malformed hunters thrust the butt of his pickaxe into Sister Clarice’s face, breaking her nose anew. The Battle Sister staggered back, snorting through the blood bubbling over her lips as the hunter gathered himself for an overhead swing, aiming to bury the point of his weapon in Clarice’s head while she was still dazed. Marcus already had the lasrifle to his shoulder and fired a blistering red bolt through the back of the creature’s skull.

Sister Clarice looked up. Spraying blood as she sang, she joined her Sisters in prayer, her eyes wide, enraptured. Their resounding hymn drowned the cries of the retreating hunters fleeing into the mist-shrouded trees. Marcus fired wildly after their routed attackers. His heart soared as he joined the Sisters in song, the air thick with reeking gunsmoke. Sister Clarice gestured for him to cease fire as the hunters disappeared back into the mist.

But Marcus could hear them howling anew. They had rallied and were charging once more, darting through the cover of the mist and trees back towards the squad. The Battle Sisters did not return fire. Another figure was already running through the mist towards the hunters; a figure wielding a snarling eviscerator with both hands.

Sister Adamanthea surged through the trees like a crashing wave, twirling the chainsword, guiding its immense weight, sweeping through trees and bodies alike and casting a crimson trail in her wake. She fought without fear, reckless as the hunters’ mattocks struck sparks from her armour. She struck back like a maddened serpent, making no effort to parry, only to kill, hurling herself into the fray as if to embrace death.

Marcus was reminded of the Sisters Repentia, those of the Adepta Sororitas exiled for terrible transgressions of the Imperial Creed. These disgraced souls took up the red rags of the penitent and sought redemption on the battlefield. Armed with nothing but faith and a ceremonial eviscerator, they fought in the very teeth of every conflict, drawn to the most desperate of odds. Berserk martyrs gambling their survival upon the omnipotent Emperor’s infrequent willingness to see them spared.

Seeing her in combat, Marcus couldn’t help but wonder whether Sister Adamanthea had once walked the path of the Repentia. Absolution – let alone survival – was so rare it was considered a miracle.

Adamanthea’s squad murmured blessings and prayers of reverence, some kneeling, some thumbing the beads of their rosariuses as Adamanthea spun her chainsword from victim to victim, each body parting like curtains to reveal the next. To her fellow Sisters of Battle, the Dominion Superior was a living embodiment of the Emperor’s grace. This woman enacted the holy miracles about which Marcus merely preached.

Prove your worth.

The thought came, and he felt himself bolstered once again. He would help the Sisters purge this place of evil. He would battle alongside Sister Adamanthea, comrades in faith and arms. He would return to the tribe victorious, living proof that the Emperor’s will had prevailed. He would be revered by the tribe as a prophet, and, as the Imperial Creed spread, his legend would surpass Adamanthea’s own. His legs shook with adrenaline. His breath tightened, making him giddy. Yes, his own legend was almost within reach.

‘Casualties?’ said Adamanthea, her face drenched in gore, her hair dripping. Marcus realised the hunters were all dead and she had returned to her squad.

‘Nothing prayer cannot mend,’ reported one of the Sisters.

Adamanthea’s sense of stillness had returned. It was as though she had spent all her living energy on combat and ossified once more into a woman of stone. She was staring at one of the hunters’ bodies.

‘Your missing tribesmen,’ she said without looking up at Marcus. ‘As I expected.’

‘But did you expect this?’ said Marcus, pointing at the corpse’s face.

The flesh looked as though it had been somehow creamed onto the skull like clay. Fish-like eyes gazed in opposite directions, the mouth impossibly crooked, the features in disarray as though clumsily assembled. No natural predator had done this. Something had corrupted these hunters, mutated them, bent them to its will.

Once again, Marcus could sense that whispering static in the air. The more he focused upon it, the more it seemed to somehow emanate from within the cathedral ahead. His mouth felt suddenly dry. His limbs trembled as if eager to carry him up those stairs and destroy whatever lurked beyond. He felt fear only as a distant thing, trivial next to the grand destiny the Emperor was offering him.

One of the Dominions called to Adamanthea, relaying a message from her vox-feed. ‘It seems the Rhinos have located another bridge. It’s intact, a few miles to the south. They’ve requested permission to join us.’

‘No,’ cried Marcus before Adamanthea could reply. Her eyebrows peaked in rare surprise.

‘We need no such aid against these wretches,’ he told her, breathless with excitement. ‘Hunters from the other tribes have disappeared as well. We face a mere few dozen more. That’s all. I’m sure of it!’

‘Stray animals was your last hypothesis, brother,’ said Adamanthea.

Marcus stemmed an angry retort. ‘We must move now. Strike before they can gather.’

‘I saw one of them try to capture him, Sister,’ said Clarice, gesturing towards Marcus. The lower half of her face was still caked with blood from her ruined nose. ‘It could have killed him. Instead it tried to carry him away, like it wanted him alive.’

Adamanthea silenced Marcus as he went to respond. ‘Return to the transports, Sister Clarice,’ she said. ‘And take Brother Marcus with you.’

A chill shot through him. He stammered, the inside of his head hissing with static, words of protest refusing to form.

‘Do not fear, brother,’ said Adamanthea, her metallic voice as cold as ever. ‘We shall clear the site for you, but the honour shall remain yours, for the sake of your oath to the tribe.’

Marcus touched the painted claw dangling from the cord around his throat, suddenly reminded of its presence.

‘If you truly wish to ensure this world be brought into the light,’ she added. ‘If you truly serve the Throne above all else, then you will return with Sister Clarice and do so without argument.’

Marcus felt her words strip him of his destiny. He felt it as keenly as though he were being skinned. The zealot despised him, wanted an excuse to claim his glory for her own. She turned away, her voice amplified to a brazen roar that galvanised all who heard it.

‘Sororitas! The Emperor’s grace is mysterious indeed. He sent us to this world to hunt beasts. Instead we find corruption and heresy. The Sisters of the Valorous Heart shall purge these sacred walls of the mutant’s presence, and that of his progenitor, whatever it may be.’

She cradled her dripping eviscerator as though it were her child, her eyes glazing as she envisioned some murderous rapture.

‘For by Lucia, we shall not suffer the mutant to live!’

‘Ave Imperator!’ cried her squad, clutching their rosariuses, voices ecstatic. Sister Clarice took Marcus’ shoulder, her touch sending a current of terror through his body, rousing him.

He jerked his elbow into her face, pulverising her wounded nose. He heard her gasp with surprise and pain as he bolted towards the cathedral, gripping his lasrifle. The squad gave chase. Power-armoured bodies pounded after him as he sprinted through mud, vaulted over broken stone, dodged every root that threatened to snare his feet. It was as though the Emperor’s will was guiding him past every obstacle, ensuring nothing impeded him from grasping his destiny, a destiny that Sister Adamanthea – in her arrogance – had tried to deny him. He heard her synthesised yell ring through the fog. She was far behind him now. He felt like laughing, his limbs trembling, electrified.

His rosarius bounced at his thigh, flashing in the evening gloom. Armed with nothing but faith and lasfire, Marcus Amouris would prove his worth indeed. He would draw the mutants to him, engage them in time for the Battle Sisters to join him. Together, they would cleanse this place – but the fight would be instigated by him, not her. Tonight’s triumph would be the cornerstone of his legend on this world.

He could no longer hear the cries of the Battle Sisters. He had left them far behind, swallowed up by the mist. He ran on, spraying hot spittle with every panting breath, as the mist cleared before him, finally revealing the towering flight of stairs that ascended into the cathedral.

Marcus thought he should probably stop and give the squad a chance to catch up. Instead he found himself bounding up the broken stairs, ignoring the agony in his legs, the fire in his lungs, his breath smoking before him.

Prove your worth. Prove your worth.

His racing heart seemed to pound out the words. The thought flowed through him, animating him, working him like a puppet. He stared at the dark archway of the cathedral above. It looked like a maw poised to devour him. Exhausted, he finally willed himself to stop, to wait for the Battle Sisters to at least draw near. But his body refused to obey.

Cold horror consumed Marcus as he realised some invisible force had taken possession of him, was driving him up the stairs, sending his lungs into convulsion, choking him as he ran.

He stumbled, fell, the respite a blessing. But his arms and legs were already forcing him upright, sending waves of fresh agony through his tortured body. As he rose, the beaded chain of his rosarius snagged on a crack in the step. He willed his hand to reach out and free it, but his limb did no such thing. Instead his wilful body strained until the chain snapped and Marcus found himself resuming his agonised ascent. He heard the rosarius chime like a bell as it bounced down the steps and found he was unable even to cry out in despair. The force that had taken hold compelled him up the last of the stairs and onwards, his every step a torment as he staggered through the darkened archway and into the ruined cathedral.

The walls loomed either side of him, tidal waves of wreckage. The immense vaulted ceiling had succumbed to gravity millennia ago, the fallen detritus creating meadows of ruin far below. Marcus stumbled around the remains of an iron chandelier the size of a drop-pod. He panted like an animal, his lungs begging for breath, but his legs gave him no mercy. He was running towards fires that burned half a mile away in the cathedral’s crossing, dimly illuminating the rows of cavernous arches that gaped like some colossal choir. As he dashed past each darkened portal, Marcus thought he could see pale figures stirring within, but his head refused to turn and look.

Prove your worth, Marcus Amouris.

The words were not a thought. They were a whisper; a voice that was not his own, that had never been his own. They were uttered by the force that was drawing him towards the fires ahead. Terror seized him.

Surrender your weapon.

He felt his hands loosen around the lasrifle. Then, something stopped him from releasing it. Whatever it was, it broke the awful spell and his legs gave way instantly, dropping him at the foot of a hill of rubble. He lay there, helpless and gasping. Voices whispered from all directions, promising the glories that awaited him upon reaching his sacred destination.

But another voice had risen among the whispers, and was now drowning them in glorious song.

‘A morte perpetua, domine, libra nos.’

A chorus of fearless female voices. Their chanting refrain rang about the halls like church bells, driving away the darkness, returning strength and agency to Marcus’ exhausted limbs. He gathered himself, then froze. A pale ape-like thing was clambering down the rubble towards him.

It was naked and genderless, lidless eyes staring, open-mouthed as its flesh oozed up its body like molten wax, like a candle dissolving in reverse. It appeared to be of the same corrupted species as the hunters, but in an even more unfinished state of evolution. It resembled a figure crudely sculpted from some living clay. Marcus fired in panic as it pounced, livid red bolts flashing past its head before two more lanced through its chest, killing it. He turned to flee and saw salvation mounting the fallen stone some distance behind him.

Black power-armoured bodies seemed to materialise out of the gloom like angels, their pale, chanting faces framed by curtains of black hair as they unleashed a booming hail of flickering bolter-fire. Marcus threw himself to the ground as more half-melted figures exploded about him, showering him in gobbets of hot, steaming flesh.

Sister Adamanthea seized the air, impassioned with faith as she sang before her Dominions. Her scarred features were tight with rage as the vox at her throat amplified her voice to a terrifying roar.

‘And though they may cower and hide, naught shall save them from His righteous fury!’

She threw down her hand and the Dominions fired. A chorus of pounding thunder shook clouds of dust and debris from above. Marcus crawled away as the explosive rounds demolished boulders and bodies alike.

Adamanthea howled. ‘Neither stone nor steel shall save them from faith unbreakable.’

As if in obedience to her declaration, the Dominions’ gunfire dislodged a huge statue, which slowly toppled onto several of the creatures as they fled.

Marcus scurried into an archway where he lay in darkness, panting and weeping, clutching his lasrifle to his chest. He watched from behind a pillar as several more mutants loped past him towards the advancing Battle Sisters. The creatures’ forearms bulged as they moved into position among the rubble, their hands swelling into monstrous club-like appendages. One of them squatted beside a chunk of masonry nearby and Marcus recoiled in horror as the skin of its swollen fist peeled back to reveal a toothed, circular maw, the throat of which already glowed with witch-fire.

Marcus felt a horror that plunged into his very bowels. Witch-fire! These creatures were daemonic in origin, the insane heresy of the warp made fire and flesh. He groped instinctively for his rosarius when he remembered it had been lost, torn from him during his uncontrollable ascent of the stairs outside. He suddenly felt as though he were falling, shrinking, lost to despair. Even the litanies of protection he had spent his life memorising failed to reach his whimpering lips.

The Sisters of Battle marched, faltering neither in step nor in song as the mutants rose and vomited fire from their arms. The inferno brightened the walls, revealing rows of cracked aquila that crested the great arches, watchful as the Battle Sisters below were consumed.

Two of the women staggered forth, their bodies wreathed in flames, bolters still blasting, screaming in either agony or rage. The others returned fire, shredding three of the mutants where they stood. But the creatures flooded in from the depths of the cathedral, joining their obscene brethren as they dowsed the Sisters’ line with streams of fire. The Sisters could only answer the blazing volley with more screams and a dwindling holler of bolter-fire.

Weak with terror and exhaustion, Marcus retreated deeper into the archway as one of the mutants approached, the flesh of its face writhing about its staring eyes as it sniffed the air.

‘Suffer not the mutant to live!’

The silvery cry of Sister Adamanthea rang out as the Battle Sisters charged, bellowing prayers of strength and protection, their verses unbroken as two more fell screaming in flame. Adamanthea held her eviscerator aloft with both hands and charged at one of the flame-throwing mutants, heedless as the abomination smothered her in fire. The flames washed over her power armour as she sprang, slashing the monster in half. Its cleaved remains hissed and smoked, its fires drowned in blood.

Adamanthea hurtled on without pause. Her blade cartwheeled through two more mutants as her Battle Sisters destroyed yet more with point-blank bolter-fire, slashed them with combat knives, tore open their flesh with power-armoured fingers.

The heat was becoming unbearable, but the screams of the dying Battle Sisters seemed only to urge their surviving comrades to sing all the louder. Adamanthea moved to protect them as more pale fiends scampered towards them. Terror gave way to desperation and Marcus raised his lasrifle. But as he tried to steady his quaking sights against the nearest mutant, something fell upon him.

Gelatinous paws wrestled the weapon from his grip and dragged him, shrieking and kicking, from his hiding place. The whispers closed in once again, masking the indomitable howls of Sister Adamanthea. Marcus watched the world burn behind him as the mutants dragged him towards whatever horror awaited at the heart of the cathedral.

The whispers intensified as they hauled him by his arms towards the fires burning at the cathedral’s crossing, barely illuminating the vast derelict halls of the transepts either side. He could hear a heavy slopping sound nearby. The mutants led him to what had once been the cathedral’s baptistery, laying him before the ruined shrine as though presenting an offering.

Marcus looked up at the crumbling two-storey structure. Cracked pillars surrounded a fathoms-deep baptismal well. Pilgrims from across the galaxy had once come here to be reborn in the light of the Emperor, perhaps to become missionaries, spreading the faith wherever they roamed. Now, the well had become sanctum to something else: a pale, undulating thing that crooned and gurgled at Marcus as he shivered before it.

The daemon rose to get a better look at him, faceless though it was. It stood at least four times the height of a man, its long, slender body a column of molten meat, streaked with pulsing veins. The creature flexed its whip-like limbs, splattering dollops of fat across the floor. Eyeballs streamed around its body, clustering like bubbles as they stared down at the helpless missionary.

The well in which the thing had been lounging brimmed with swirling flesh, liquefied somehow by the alchemy of the warp. This pale sludge slopped and oozed over the lip of the well, creating huge polyps that bulged onto the floor. They swelled and wriggled into humanoid forms that hurried away to join the battle Marcus could hear, still raging far behind him. He gagged, sickened, not only by the majestic sacrilege before him, but also the growing sense that some part of him welcomed it.

He watched, hypnotised as the daemon’s face swirled, forming a vortex at its centre, an iris of flesh that seemed to open a hole in the very fabric of reality. It created an aperture through which Marcus could hear things that made his sinews itch, eldritch words with the power to corrupt both minds and flesh, to shape the course of destiny itself.

The daemon extended a welcoming arm towards him, the flesh of its hand spiralling into a tentacle. Marcus gave a silent scream as he saw himself reach, unwittingly, for it.

The tentacle curled around his hand and slithered up his sleeve like a snake. Marcus felt his flesh burn at its touch. The thing dissolved into his arm as it swam through skin and bone towards his throat. He felt its psyche merging with his own. He blinked, and found himself staring down through countless eyes at his own choking body.

Marcus’ terror-stricken mind flooded with moving images – snatches of strange memories, frantic and emotive – one streaming after another like water flooding the hull of a sinking ship. The daemon’s consciousness was fusing with his own as it absorbed him body and soul. But as his perception expanded, Marcus comprehended with dizzying horror that these memories belonged not to the daemon, but to himself. The creature had infiltrated his mind months ago.

Tendrils of arcane influence had been whispering through the cracks in Marcus’ faith without him even realising. The daemon knew his thoughts because it had helped shape them, goading his pride, luring him with his own desire to prove himself.

His awareness alighted upon another image, another soul ensnared by the daemon’s psychic coils. Marcus found himself staring through the eyes of a man prowling the forest alongside his brothers. All of them had been hypnotised by alluring whispers in the trees that promised a hunter’s bounty, but instead led them to their doom. The image vanished, replaced by that of Adamanthea’s stony visage. The daemon had been eavesdropping when Marcus directed her towards the City of Whispers. The image rippled into another. Marcus saw hands before him, gnarled by mutation. The fallen hunters, their bodies smelted into liquid flesh, then clumsily remoulded to carry out the daemon’s bidding. The hands were prising ancient stones from their moorings, tearing away the brittle cement of the aeons-old bridge. The image melted away. Now, they lay in wait for the unwitting missionary and his protectors. They wanted him alive, and Marcus felt the daemon gorge on his terror at the thought of it.

Fear. Marcus’ heightened senses could feel it radiating from these ruined walls, from the entire city. The outlying tribes had projected their terrors upon this place for generations, drenched it in dread, softening reality like sodden parchment until it tore. The daemon had whispered through this opening for centuries, luring the weak, the proud, the arrogant, rendering their living flesh into a perfect mercurial state, gathering clay enough to form a legion of horrors. But the daemon wanted more.

Marcus gasped as the tentacle fused around his throat. He suddenly comprehended a great web cast across the galaxy. A nexus of threads moored to every world; strands of influence tugging and tensing, teasing fate towards some unfathomable goal. The whispers coalesced into a single word that gurgled up from his throat like vomit: the name of his new master, the dread being that dwelt like a venomous spider at the centre of a cosmic web.

‘Tzeentch! Tzeentch! Tzeentch!’

His lord craved an envoy, a missionary, one skilled in the use of subtlety and words, who could whisper the ruinous creed to the outlying tribes; gather worshippers whom the Changer of Ways could warp to his purpose to raise a cathedral of corruption that would radiate his whispers around this world and make it his own. Marcus would indeed become a prophet of legend, a chosen of the Architect of Fate. His burning ambition would soon become flesh.

The world went black.

Marcus thought he was dead, only to realise he was lying on the floor, gasping in pain. Beside him lay a severed tentacle, thrashing as it dissolved into ash. A suffocating wave of heat washed over him, brightening the surrounding ruins like dawning sunshine. The daemon was breathing a jet of fire from the vortex in its face, chasing an armoured figure from pillar to pillar. Above the chugging growl of the woman’s eviscerator, Marcus could hear a sinister chime, like a blade repeatedly drawn from its sheath. Sister Adamanthea was laughing.

She charged, bounding over broken masonry, lashing out at the liquescent daemon as it heaved itself backwards, gathering itself to unleash another hail of fire. The blade whooshed several times through empty air as Adamanthea slashed the great weapon about her with the grace of a dancer. The creature rolled about the well, avoiding each furious swipe.

It exhaled another column of fire, but Adamanthea had already dodged aside and was hurdling over the gaps in a broken flight of stairs. They led onto a balcony overlooking the well. She dashed around the circumference of the terrace above the daemon, barely outrunning the jet of flame scorching her heels, her eviscerator carried low, trailing behind her like a saw-toothed tail.

She scooped up a rock the size of a cannonball and flung it at the daemon’s head. The missile shattered on impact and the creature reeled, flames guttering in its strange maw. Seizing her chance, Adamanthea sprang from the balcony with a shriek like tearing metal as she spun through the air, gathering momentum. She swung her eviscerator around and down and hacked the churning blade into the daemon’s exposed neck.

The creature lurched like a tide as its arms whipped up, wrapping around the Battle Sister’s wrists, halting her lethal stroke. She snarled in frustration as it prised her hands from the hilt, releasing the trigger. The eviscerator’s teeth stilled, quenching the spray of blood and meat. The huge weapon stood silent, lodged deep in the centre of the creature’s neck as streams of flesh swirled up its body to seal the grievous wound and remount its half-severed head.

The daemon turned a livid red as it swung Adamanthea through a pillar. A section of the balcony collapsed in an avalanche of dust and tumbling stone as the creature flung her limp body into the floor, the weight of her power armour punching a crater into the slabs. Pinning her with its arms, her eviscerator still embedded in the centre of its neck, the daemon poured a weight of molten flesh down through its limbs on top of Adamanthea, streaming through the cracks in her shattered armour. Her torso enveloped in streaming flesh, the daemon hoisted her into the air, as if it wished to get a better view of her agony as it bent her to its will.

Marcus heard cries and bursts of bolter fire. Whatever was left of Adamanthea’s squad was approaching, but the clamour sounded too distant for them to arrive in time to save their commander. Adamanthea struggled weakly beneath the cocoon of rippling flesh and Marcus clapped his hands over his ears, moaning as the whispers intensified once more. The daemon turned crimson as it squeezed her. Marcus could feel it straining to make her speak. Its rage boiled as it tried to force its name from her lips as it had done to him. Through the daemon’s eyes, Marcus could see the Battle Sister staring back at him – not with anger, not with hate, but a cold serenity.

She was praying. Her faith immaculate, impervious to doubt. A single immovable truth existed at the core of her being: though her body may be broken, no force in the galaxy could break her faith. She was the Emperor’s will incarnate, His righteous fire was her own. The Adepta Sororitas had no need of augments or gene-engineering, not when their strength flowed fierce and pure from the Emperor himself. Should their bodies be rent asunder it would be because He willed it.

Faith was Sister Adamanthea’s true armour. It was also her greatest weapon, the force with which she performed such fearsome miracles upon the battlefield. This was the certainty that burned at the heart of every Battle Sister; a spirit that would endure, ferocious and unyielding, until the very last of their sinews had perished and the Emperor summoned them to dwell in His eternal light. Martyrdom was their immortality. Death only spurred the living to achieve even greater heights of valour. As such, Adamanthea and her Sisters were immortal, their faith a fire unquenchable.

Marcus felt tears streaming down his face in helpless awe of Adamanthea’s faith. The daemon fought to break her, but it may as well have been trying to wring words from a stone. It hurled her to the floor with a howl, fragments of broken power armour scattering as the creature smashed her down.

The daemon loomed over the wounded woman, swelling as it guzzled the last of the melted flesh from the reservoir in which it stood. A buckled pauldron slid from Adamanthea’s shoulder with a clang. She was clawing steadily up a chunk of a wrecked pillar as she hauled herself upright, blood pooling at her feet. Marcus could feel waves of hate crashing inside the daemon as it glared at the wretched mortal beneath it, an inferno of thwarted rage preparing to erupt.

Adamanthea was still clambering up the broken pillar when the creature abruptly drowned her in fire. The conflagration rose and boiled until it filled the chamber with clouds of flame.

Marcus cowered nearby. He whimpered beneath the scorching heat, his eyes closed, but still seeing what the daemon saw: a churning chaos of flames that would reduce the woman to a smear of ash for her insolence.

A figure burst through the flames like a tiger, clawed hands outstretched. Shielded by faith alone, Sister Adamanthea’s body was miraculously intact, as if the firestorm were but a breeze.

She caught the protruding hilt of her eviscerator as she pounced on the daemon’s chest. As she clutched the trigger with both hands, the weapon roared into life in a flurry of churning ichor. The daemon staggered back. Adamanthea let herself drop, dragging the blade downwards, unzipping a deluge of gore in her wake.

She landed on the lip of the well as the daemon emptied itself above her. She slashed the creature into chunks as it fell, its severed limbs dissolving in mid-air as she whirled the eviscerator about her. When the daemon’s head finally dropped within range, she delivered her final stroke.

Marcus’ vision turned black once more. His head spun as he fell into a faint.

He awoke to find three bloodied Battle Sisters kneeling nearby. They were chanting prayers of sanctification, restoring the Emperor’s presence to their polluted surroundings. They continued their litanies as Marcus cried out, agony suddenly flooding his body. He stared in horror at his hands, the flesh of which stirred on the bones, winding about his fingers like smoke. He touched his face and the flesh came away on his fingers, like strands of hot tar. The realisation of what the daemon’s touch had done to him hit like a blow. He curled up and retched in pain.

‘Sister Adamanthea?’ His once powerful voice had withered to a croak.

The Dominion Superior knelt beside what remained of her squad. She was drenched in blood and filth. Her brooding green eyes were piercing in her blackened face. Her gorget had been shattered, her vox-grille destroyed, revealing a small cybernetic port in her throat, surrounded by welters of scar tissue.

‘Will you hear my confession?’ said Marcus, feeling for the corded claw that hung from his neck. He tugged the pendant free and offered it to Adamanthea.

‘Return to the village wearing this,’ he said. ‘Fulfil the hunter’s oath in my stead and you will bring this world into the light.’

Adamanthea received the talisman grimly. Her face twitched with a pang of frustration as she absently touched the great scar at her throat, unable to speak.

‘Superbia vocat corruptionem,’ he said, faltering. ‘Pride indeed beckons corruption. My love for myself, for my own ambition, exceeded my love for the Throne. Forgive me, Sister.’ He raised his hands towards her, as he heard a familiar whisper in his head, the name of the kingly terror that had possessed him.

He gasped before the voice could overwhelm him. ‘Suffer not the mutant to live!’

Adamanthea’s face seemed to soften at his words, as though he had spoken a spell that brought life to cold stone. She pressed something into his ruined hands.

His rosarius.

‘Ave Imperator,’ he sobbed, kissing the icon. Adamanthea rose. That terrible rigidity returned to her face. Her surviving Sisters murmured a blessing over her eviscerator as Marcus bowed his head, exposing the back of his neck. He shuddered with grateful tears as the weapon roared into life.

A heartbeat passed before darkness snatched the whispers away.

About the Author

Alec Worley is a well-known comics and science fiction and fantasy author, with numerous publications to his name. Also a film journalist and critic, he is an avid fan of Warhammer 40,000. ‘Whispers’ is his second story for the Black Library. He lives and works in London.

On one of the Imperium’s holiest worlds, civil unrest and rumours of sinister, four-armed monsters spur the Sisters of Battle into action against numberless foes.

A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Whispers © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Whispers, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-735-1

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