Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius Read online

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  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Principal Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  An extract from ‘Azrael’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Warhammer 40,000

  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.

  Principal Characters

  Blood Angels

  Mephiston, Chief Librarian; formerly Battle-Brother Calistarius

  Epistolary Gaius Rhacelus, Librarian; Mephiston’s equerry; member of Quorum Empyrric

  Lexicanium Lucius Antros, Librarian; newly appointed master of the Orbicular Tower

  Codicier Peloris, Librarian

  Captain Vatrenus, Fourth Company captain; member of Quorum Empyrric

  Sergeant Seriphus, Fourth Company Tactical Marine; sergeant of Squad Seriphus

  Sergeant Hestias, Fourth Company Tactical Marine; sergeant of Squad Hestias

  Battle-Brother Mandacus, Fourth Company Tactical Marine

  Battle-Brother Casali, Fourth Company Sanguinary Priest

  Battle-Brother Gallus, Fourth Company Techmarine

  Scholiast Imola, Blood thrall; member of Quorum Empyrric

  Scholiast Dimitra Ghor, Blood thrall; senior scribe of the Orbicular Tower

  Aphek, Blood thrall; Mephiston’s personal chirurgeon

  Ecclesiarchy

  Confessor Zin, Accensor Prophetic of the Luminous Throne

  Arch-Cardinal Dravus, Proconsul of Divinus Prime; Lord-Ministrant

  Cardinal Vectis, Dravus’ second-in-command

  Prester Kohath, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime

  Prester Brennus, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime

  Prester Cyriak, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime

  Father Adamis Orsuf, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime

  The Unbegotten Prince, Prophet of the Enlightened

  Livia, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime

  ‘General’ Dharmia, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime; follower of Livia

  Abderos, Ecclesiarch on Divinus Prime; follower of Livia

  Order of the Hallowed Gate

  Saint Ophiusa, Adepta Sororitas, canoness of Volgatis

  Sister Superior Melitas, Adepta Sororitas, Seraphim stationed at Volgatis

  Astra Militarum

  Captain Hesbon, Commanding officer of the Volscan Dragoons

  Kruk, Commander of the Vharun 12th

  Lieutenant Myos, Trooper of the Vharun 12th

  Prion, Trooper of the Vharun 12th

  Sergeant Athor, Trooper of the Vharun 12th

  Prologue

  They circled in the deep: two sorcerers, blooded and drowned beneath a diamond sea. Their quest for knowledge had led them to the unknowable. They had peeled themselves
from the bones of reality and become lost, tumbling towards oblivion, clinging to a dizzying truth. They were a moment away from eternity, a victory away from omnipotence. If one could best the other they would be free, born anew in the white heat of change.

  The game was almost done.

  Their duel was centuries old but even now, as they reached the endgame, they would not relent. Their magic was spent. Their familiars banished. Their grimoires burned. Their armies ground into dust. But they fought on with sinew, knuckle and claw, howling as they sank into a glittering abyss, drunk on the promise of its power.

  The sorcerers reached the seabed, a blinding mirror of silver, and lunged, hacking at each other’s ruined armour. One was clad in gleaming white, the plates warped into ivory whorls by the fury of the battle. Rather than eyes, he viewed his enemy through a single, fist-sized sapphire, embedded deep in his forehead. The jewel was gilded and clasped, a lidded eye, cold and glimmering with rage. The second sorcerer wore voluminous robes, a storm of azure that flowed from her skin, girdled by a belt of fire.

  As the sorcerers fought, their blood formed patterns in the sea – coral-bright flowers that spiralled around them as they began to die. The patterns became glimpses of madness: an inconceivable architecture of jumbled physics, a labyrinth of impossible colour.

  Their blows grew weaker and the sorcerers’ breath slipped away, robbed and refracted by the diamond sea. Then, as their vision dimmed, the blossoms of warp-fire flashed brighter, searing into their minds, halting them at the last threshold of death. Magic and dreams coalesced, forming a single, hooded figure, drifting towards them on the crystalline currents. It was a frail-looking monk, dressed in simple robes. Where his face should have been there was an avian skull, jutting out from his hood like a pale claw.

  ‘We dream, dreaming, dreamed,’ he said, speaking without opening his beak, his voice a confusing polyphony of tones. ‘But if infinity comes, came, or ever was, what will we do? What have you ever offered that you could truly give?’

  The sorcerers rushed towards him, rapacious grins on their faces.

  ‘I am the one,’ rumbled the white-armoured sorcerer, struggling to speak, his vocal cords shredded. ‘Pick me. I will be your most loyal servant. I will be your greatest student.’

  ‘He’s a fool,’ gasped the second sorcerer. ‘Choose me. I have learned so many things that he could never even conceive of. He knows nothing of true change. He could never understand the brightness of the flame. But I do, my lord, I do!’

  The monk waved for silence. Rather than an arm, the limb was a snake, coiled and tense, eager to strike.

  ‘You showed and will show that you have shown such promise. You have reached the beginning at the end. But I will despair of you in the past and I despaired of you in the future. Your strategies are obvious. Your wars will be dull. Your games were led, leading and will lead to nothing.’

  The sorcerers fell silent and withdrew into the darkness, exchanging confused glances.

  ‘I gave and will give you a final chance,’ said the monk. ‘You frittered the legions you will be given and waste your gifts on pointless wars, but I will grant you a new arena.’ A note of amusement entered the monk’s voice. ‘I will steal you a world of clever fools, an unruffled pool, waiting to be disturbed.’

  ‘My lord,’ began the one-eyed sorcerer. ‘We will not bore you again. All we need is–’

  ‘A prize won and worth winning,’ said the monk. ‘And you shall have it. Whichever one of you brings, bring, brought me the Blade Petrific shall become my acolyte and lived long enough to learn the true wisdom of the flame.’

  The one-eyed sorcerer opened his mouth to reply but the monk was gone and a strange landscape had opened up beneath them. They fell, and as they dropped, reality rushed back into view. They saw a world of spires and bones, a planet-sized tomb, gleaming with promise.

  The sorcerers smiled as they parted, eager for the game ahead.

  The Wars of Sanctitude entered their ninth decade and the Cronian Sector remained trapped – mired in a stygian swamp of superstition and misbelief. It became impossible to record even a fraction of the atrocities perpetrated in the God-Emperor’s name. The Cronian Sector became a byword for mystery and deceit but there were few on Terra who could honestly say which of the warring cults were heretical and which were ferocious defenders of the faith. There was no logic to the wars and no sign of an end. As their most precious relics slipped deeper into the morass, on the brink of being lost, the senior prelates of the Adeptus Ministorum petitioned the High Council of Terra for aid. They were refused. Brutal as they were, the Wars of Sanctitude were only a single note of pain, set against the great opera of screams that filled the stars. The Ruinous Powers were extending their reach into every corner of the galaxy and the bickering of a few priests barely warranted a footnote on the council’s order of business. It seemed that the Cronian Sector would simply fall from view – another unmarked tragedy of the 41st millennium. Then, divine providence appeared to intervene. In the halls of a fortress-monastery, on the Blood Angels’ home world of Baal, a pair of blood-filled eyes turned towards the most obscure Cardinal World in the Cronian Sector, Divinus Prime. Beneath the soaring walls of Arx Murus, The Lord of Death heard a voice, calling to him from across the void.

  – Prolocutor Obath, The Wars of Sanctitude, Volume Two.

  Chapter One

  Thermia V

  Six miles south of the Raumath Docks

  Thermia was a world of ghosts and half-seen things; a vaporous corpse, shrouded in a winding sheet of fine black powder. Lucius Antros had come here in search of a vision, in thrall to a prediction, but Thermia had seeped into his mind, clouding his thoughts. What had seemed so clear in the Arx Angelicum now seemed absurd.

  On Baal he had dreamed that he, and he alone could save Mephiston. He had seen them fighting together beside a vast, shattered fist – a ruin, surrounded by monsters. He had been sure that the Chief Librarian was on the brink of disaster. The idea seemed ridiculous now, but Antros could not let it go. He had to find the ruined fist. He had to know if it was real. He had to know what it meant.

  He came to a halt and peered through the billowing ash, staring at movement up ahead. At first he struggled to make out the shapes but then his augmented vision honed in on them, resolving the silhouettes into something recognisable: a group of human soldiers, heading towards him at a slow, exhausted plod. He flicked the safety off his bolt pistol and strode on to meet them. The dust worms had left half of Thermia’s settlers insane. The evacuation force had spent almost as much time killing humans as rescuing them. They had escorted thousands to the Raumath docks, readying them for evacuation, but others were so consumed by madness they had to be gunned down. As Antros approached the men he was quite prepared for either eventuality.

  It was a group of shock troopers. They staggered to a halt as Antros loomed out of the soot clouds. The soldiers were clad in black fatigues and thick plates of flak armour. Their crested, iron helmets completely encased their heads, and their faces were hidden behind thermal imaging goggles and heavy, bulbous rebreathers. They looked like thick-jawed attack dogs, the best Thermia had to offer, but Antros could see they were as burned out as the rest of the planet. These veterans of an unwinnable war had watched their home die and it showed in their posture as they stumbled through the ash and embers. Their heads were hung low on exhaustion-rounded shoulders and their lasguns trailed behind them through the fumes. At the sight of Antros they dropped into combat stances and raised their guns.

  ‘Who’s that?’ growled the leader, trying to disguise his fear with a gruff yell. He looked up at Antros’ power-armoured bulk, his eyes narrowing behind the filthy lenses of his goggles.

  Antros stared down at him and the eye-lenses of his helmet pulsed into life, daubing the fumes with two spots of crimson fire. He scoured the men’s souls, searching for the scent of corruptio
n, but found only grief and despair. ‘I am Lexicanium Antros,’ he replied, when he realised he might not have to kill them. ‘I am a Blood Angel.’

  The soldier glanced at his men, clearly at a loss for words.

  ‘Make for the docks,’ said Antros. ‘The planet is lost.’

  ‘Lost?’ The trooper could not hide the emotion in his voice. At first Antros thought it was relief, but then, as the man looked at the ground, Antros realised it was shame. ‘Then we really are defeated?’

  ‘Nothing can defeat you,’ replied Antros, ‘apart from despair. Conquer that and the Emperor might reward you with a more worthy foe.’

  The soldier’s eyes widened and Antros thought that he might weep. Then he drew back his shoulders and stood upright, giving Antros a stiff salute. ‘Forgive my manners. I’m Lieutenant Myos of the Vharun Twelfth.’

  Antros nodded. ‘My battle-brothers are surrounding your camp as we speak. Yours is the last manned outpost. We have evacuated everyone else. We all leave tonight.’

  The men paled. They clearly understood what he meant: Thermia was beyond saving and must be destroyed.

  ‘We were checking the camp perimeter,’ said Myos, sounding dazed. ‘We saw gunfire to the east. I guessed it was a relief force, but…’ He shook his head. ‘We were just returning to camp for a debriefing.’

  Antros was no longer looking at the man. ‘The battle for Thermia is over. It is time to leave. I was sent to check for sentries such as yourself. We will not leave good men behind if we can help it.’

  What did you see? demanded the daemonic shape, striding towards him through a storm of ghosts.

  Antros staggered, shocked by the violence of the vision. It filled his mind with more force than ever before. The same crimson eyes. The same murderous rage. The same crumbling, stone fist, rearing up from a scorched landscape. The same furious question.

  What did you see?

  He grasped his head, his cranium pounding. Then the vision faded and the voice was gone.

  The men stared at him in confusion.

  Antros lowered his hand from his face and glared at them. He nodded back the way they had come. There was a line across the horizon, just visible through the ash clouds. ‘Did you travel near the forest?’