Reaper’s Revelation

Cerrus Sentanus, Lord-Veritant of Excelsis, strode through the shadowed dungeons. He ignored the screams and moans that echoed around him. Pale eyes stared out from between thick, black-iron bars as he passed, but swiftly shrank back when they saw the white lines of his armour, and the blazing lantern-stave he carried. They knew well the tools of the White Reaper. One deviant with a raw, burn-marked face was foolish or deranged enough to meet the Lord-Veritant’s gaze as he passed by, barking insults in some crude tongue. Sentanus’ hand shot out, lightning-fast. The human’s eyes bulged, bloodshot and terrified as he clawed pitifully at the metal gauntlet around his throat. Sentanus twisted hard, and there was a sickening crunch. He let the dead body fall, and walked on.

Sentanus had travelled to the deepest levels of the Consecralium, many leagues below the streets of Excelsis. These miserable sub-levels were home to the very worst heretics and monsters captured by the agents of the Knights Excelsior, too wretched to be allowed to walk free under the light of the heavens, but far too useful to be purified on the holy pyres – until every last scrap of useful knowledge had been dragged from their withered bodies, at least. Ahead, at the end of the hall, the steps rose to a pair of enormous double doors, their surface sculpted in the image of a blazing sun. Faint streams of white light flickered along the smooth stone floor beneath. There was a powerful smell of decay spilling out from the room beyond, like spoiled meat. Sentanus climbed the stairs and pushed open the doors.

Sentanus entered a small, high-ceilinged chamber that was empty and featureless aside from a dangling cage of chain lightning that hissed and spat. Within this prison of energy hung a corpse, pallid and skeletally thin, suspended in mid-air.

The corpse’s eyes opened.

As the Lord-Veritant circled the lightning prison, the dead thing’s eyes tracked him. The orbs were wide and luminescent, like those of a hunting cat.

‘So you come at last, lightning lord,’ the corpse hissed. As it spoke, Sentanus could see the telltale curve of elongated incisors pressing over its bloodless lips. ‘I have been looking forward to this.’

‘Then you are a fool,’ said the White Reaper. ‘You and I will spend many hours together, soul-blighted thing. You will proffer all of your secrets, in the end.’

‘I am a scion of the ancient bloodlines. I have walked the realms since before your wretched kind was forged. I have tasted the crimson wine of kings and emperors. You think your petty tortures impress one such as I?’

‘Your arrogance is predictable. But you have strayed into the wrong city, beast.’

The corpse began to shake and shudder. Sentanus realised that it was laughing.

‘Strayed?’ it said, its face contorted into a rictus grin. ‘Oh, you deluded fool. We have always been here, from the very moment of this city’s founding, and we will be here long after you rot away to dust.’

The creature leered at him, its angular face lit by the soft blue glow of the storm-cage.

‘The great Cerrus Sentanus,’ it continued. ‘The Saint of the Purge. For all your empty threats, you truly have no idea what lies at the heart of Excelsis, do you? All those lives you have ended in the name of your holy war, and never once did you sense our presence.’

‘I sense it now,’ said Sentanus.

‘Too late, witchfinder,’ said the beast. ‘Far too late.’

‘We shall see.’

Sentanus raised the Lantern of Abjuration high, and blazing light flooded out to fill the room. The creature retched and howled in pain, unable to stand before the power of that radiant glow. Maddened twitching caused its limbs to crash against the lightning cage, and there was a loud crackling sound followed by an eruption of foul-smelling smoke.

The vampire’s screams rose to a deafening pitch.

When Sentanus left the prison chamber, more than a day later, the air was thick with the stench of burned flesh. The cleansing light of the storm-cage was gone, and once more the halls of the Consecralium were smothered in darkness.

Liberator-Prime Kronis, warden of the underlevels, met the Lord-Veritant as he descended the stair to the main dungeon.

‘What secrets did the creature spill?’ asked Kronis.

‘Enough to greatly trouble me,’ replied Sentanus.

Kronis was stunned by this admission. He had never heard the White Reaper admit to a moment of unease. He had thought such weakness simply not in the Lord-Veritant’s nature.

Sentanus noticed his companion’s surprise, and turned to face him.

‘We have been deceived,’ he said. ‘We have allowed our tireless pursuit of Chaos worshippers to blind us to another foe. An ancient enemy that even now spreads its foul influence into Sigmar’s free cities. They walk amongst us, feeding upon the lifeblood of the populace, using illusion and our own ignorance to obfuscate their evil.’

‘Of whom do you speak?’

‘I speak of the dead,’ said Cerrus Sentanus. ‘Ready your warriors, Liberator-Prime. Tonight, we take to the city streets in search of this infection. The creature’s will was strong, but before it burned to ashes it whispered several names to me. Lords of the city. High-ranking officers in the Freeguild. Pact-sworn agents of the Sanguinary Choir.’

Kronis’ brow creased in confusion.

‘I have not heard that name before.

‘Nor have I. Yet the vampire howled those very words as its flesh began to crumble away. I believe it was laughing as it died its final death.’

Sentanus slammed the pommel of his lantern-stave against the stone floor, sending a gunshot echo rippling along the cavernous halls of the Consecralium’s dungeon. Kronis stood still, unsure of what to do. He had never seen the Lord-Veritant like this before.

‘See to your orders,’ Sentanus growled at last. Kronis saluted the Lord-Veritant by clashing an armoured gauntlet to his chest, and made for the stairway leading to the ancillary barracks.

Sentanus stood alone in silence for a long while.

For the first time in many years, he felt uncertainty. Apprehension. The dead thing’s words had unsettled him greatly. For so long had he guarded Excelsis against the depravities of the Dark Gods, only to discover another breed of infection had spread all but unchallenged throughout the City of Secrets.

‘There is much work to be done,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Many questions that must be answered.’

He swore that he would have those answers, even if he had to drag every mortal soul in the city to the darkest depths of the Consecralium.

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