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Tradition's Last Breath - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

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Tradition's Last Breath

Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Three immortal brothers meet this night under a sky devoid of starlight. Around them lies the silent remnants of a dead city, the towers carved apart in conflict generations ago, now weathered down to husks of eroded stone. The brothers stand here at the heart of an empty home world, the only ambassadors present from the three warships anchored in low orbit. This world was once claimed by the Blood Eagles. Now it stands as a monument to their memory. There is peace here, though it’s the peace of the grave – that perfect silence of lessons learned too late.

Each brother brings his victories to the gathering, balanced – as the old law demands – by his miseries. The brothers are always honest on this night of nights. They may not speak every truth out loud, for there are shames that should never be spoken even amongst family. But it was agreed upon ancient oaths of bloodletting that no falsehoods will be told when the Triarchy’s representatives gather.

This is tradition.

Tradition is a word these immortals know well. It shapes them, it binds them, and at times it threatens to shroud them. Tradition exists to these warriors as air exists to mortal men and women: a thing ever-present, something sustaining and eternal, yet notable in its absence and murderous when fouled.

The first brother wears ceramite armour of royal red draped elegantly with a cloth loros tailored by slaves, the linen dyed the shade of precious ivory. The ceramite protecting his pale flesh is marked with oblique runes and decorated with talismans of faith and fury. Here, a vial of cloned blood hangs chained to his wrist, clanking softly with his gestures. There, bound to his breastplate, is a winged symbol of his ancestral Legion, forged by artisans from grotesquely rare Terran marble. He is beautiful the way a noble lie is beautiful, the way statues of the Emperor’s Angels of Death show divinity without flaw. Even his scars are threaded with tiny jewels, giving him a face repaired by ostentation where it would otherwise be marred by war.

This is Ynoch. The symbol on his pauldron declares his Chapter with naked pride: the winged figure clasping a chalice in its gauntlets proclaiming this immortal to be a lord of the Red Seraphs.

The second brother wears armour of scratched bronze. He had to fight to get here and it shows in a hundred ways, some visible to mortal eyes, others detectable only by immortal senses. The chainsword at his hip has thrown several teeth in previous battles, giving the blade a beggar’s leer. He seeks to hide his weariness from his brothers, though they can hear the dull thunder of his heart, the calm rhythm yet betraying his recent exertions, just as they can smell the scent of the battle-sweat that dried hours ago on his dark skin. Verdigris shows in the joints of his ceramite, speaking of a long war fought far from the foundries of his home world and the forges aboard his flagship. The Unspoken Need – also called the Craving, the Red Thirst, the Bitter Hunger – shows in his fanged smile, another sign of exhaustion getting the better of him.

This is Jagudir. On his shoulder, stark in its funereal majesty, is a pale skull crowned by a bladed halo: the sigil of the Angels Numinous.

The third and final brother wears armour fashioned to mimic the polished black of volcanic glass. This immortal, clad in obsidian edged with deep-vein red, shows no emotion at all. His skin is the grey of the grave-born. His breath taints the air with the smell of old gore, of meat that was rotten even before it was devoured. His skin stinks of a stasis crypt. His long cloak reeks of sepulchral dust. He could be a statue but for the slow drift of his gaze; eyes the white of clean mist miss no movement in the ruined chamber.

This is Mordath. His pauldron displays the ornate, stylised cross of the Charnel Guard.

Three angels bound by the blood of their grandsire. Three drinkers of life and eaters of death gathered here tonight in the ashen garden of their greatest defeat.

This is tradition.

‘We are Three Chapters, drawn from Two Bloodlines, born of One Legion,’ Ynoch says. The first human voice this dead planet has heard in a generation.

‘We are Three,’ Jagudir echoes, ‘drawn from Two, born of One.’

‘We are Three, drawn from Two, born of One.’ Mordath says the same words, though not without a trace of cold amusement. His lineage is by far the oldest. The Charnel Guard were ancient when their kindred, the Blood Eagles Chapter, tore themselves apart to form the two disparate bloodlines standing before him now.

With the ritual words spoken, the brothers may begin their conclave.

This is tradition.

This is tradition in an age when tradition is beginning to fail.

Ynoch, wreathed in crimson ceramite, speaks of what his Red Seraphs have saved. He tells of campaigns fought, cities defended, enemies overcome, oaths repaid. The Chapter’s roll of honour is long and storied. He speaks of the Seraphs’ nobility, of their defiance in the face of the Grandsire’s Curse, of their endurance against the encroaching Night.

He speaks with a poet’s voice and an orator’s passion that is lost on his brethren. Jagudir spits on the ruined earth at a particularly poetic refrain, more from weariness than disrespect. Mordath barely even blinks during the various retellings.

When Ynoch finishes, he ends with a confession, one that he delivers with a gesture of his gauntleted hand to the sky above. A sky stained violet with supernatural anger.

‘And with regret I must admit that, despite our efforts, we cannot yet cross the Great Rift.’

Jagudir, armoured in dirty bronze, speaks next. Where Ynoch speaks of past defiance, Jagudir tells of a haemorrhaging present. He talks of wars ended by the wrath of the Angels Numinous, of brutal void battles at the edges of diminishing territory, and of the increasing numbers of closest kinsmen lost to the Grandsire’s Rage, who now stand armoured in Death Company black. The Triarchy is scattered across the infected stars. Filth pours from the great wound in the galaxy. Corruption seeds its way through the Imperium Nihilus within loyal-held lines. Travel from system to system, even planet to planet, has rotted away into a series of protracted, bloody odysseys. The Astronomican, that sacred light of the Padizhah-called-Emperor, remains dark and dull. Even the new Primaris warriors, the Second Generation, may not be enough to turn the tide.

Ynoch nods in solemn agreement. Mordath listens in motionless silence.

Jagudir bares his canines in a snarled curse as he finishes with the same confession.

‘We have also been unable to cross the Rift. We can only fight the poison that pours out of it.’

The old law states that each speaker must tell of their Chapter’s past, present and future. Ynoch has spoken for the Red Seraphs. Jagudir has spoken for the Angels Numinous. Now both warriors look to Mordath to do the same for the Charnel Guard.

This is tradition, in an age where tradition no longer offers any answers.

Mordath, cold and cadaverous against his war-scarred brothers, exhales softly. When he speaks, he talks not of his Chapter’s victories and losses. His words are terse, rasping, riding his ghoulish breath.

‘Tradition has failed us,’ he tells them. ‘We rage in the dark. We gasp at the dying light. We fight for what we once owned. We die for what we’ve already lost. No more, I say. No more.’

Ynoch and Jagudir have agreed on very little over the course of their lives, both born of Chapters that agree on nothing. Yet the two warriors cautiously nod, not realising how they reflect one another in that moment.

‘We attack.’ Mordath hisses the words through his fangs. ‘We attack. An unending tide. Fury unceasing. We take our rage to the stars. No longer will we stand our ground. We must hunt for foes, greeting them with blade and fang and bolter and flame.’

Ynoch closes his eyes. His fist rests against his heart in solemn acknowledgement. Jagudir grins, absent any mirth, breathing through his clenched teeth. His incisors prick against his lower lip, drawing blood to spice the air between the three brothers.

‘If we are to die,’ the Charnel Guard intones, ‘we die together. Swords drawn. Fangs red. Our bodies left to rot in the heart of enemy lands.’

This last promise is the truly dangerous one. If his brothers are to rebel, it will be at these last words. The Red Seraphs honour their dead with internment inside ornate sarcophagi in the beautiful bowels of their warships. The Angels Numinous have meticulous incineration rites to free the spirit, that the shades of the dead might reach the Padizhah’s throne of gold.

Yet neither warrior recoils. Mere years before this night, such words would be blasphemy. Now they are a blessing. Tradition has failed all of them. This new age of battle and blood demands more than the laws of the past have ever offered.

‘And if we reach the Primarch Reborn and his Indomitus Crusade,’ Ynoch begins.

‘We join it,’ Jagudir finishes.

To that, Mordath says nothing. He merely smiles.

Hours later, as dawn crests the horizon over the long-dead city, three warships are pulling away from the silent planet. The first is the Misericordiae, bearing hopeful word back to the embattled Red Seraphs. The second is the Aruval, its engines grinding to life for the long voyage back to the besieged Angels Numinous. And the last to leave, only venturing away from the world once the others have torn open their passages into the tempestuous warp, is the Tacit Canticum, cutting into the unstable night to return to the Charnel Guard.

In the months to come, whole fleets will return here. A gathering of might. A mustered host of angelic fury.

This is not tradition. This is survival.