Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius Read online

  ‘Concentrate,’ said Peloris, glancing at him. ‘Be ready.’

  Needles of red energy began spraying from Peloris’ power armour, flickering across the clouds of scented smoke. Antros felt the force of it shivering along the length of his staff.

  The noise grew louder and the flagstones answered in kind, groaning and creaking beneath the hunched Librarian. Then the whole room started to judder, as if in the grip of a quake.

  There was a harsh cracking sound, as though the air itself had snapped, and Peloris was lifted off his feet and hurled away from the monstrance like a child’s toy. His massive, armour-clad form clattered across the flagstones, trailing smoke as he crashed into the base of a pillar. He cried out in rage and frustration as the cord of magic he had been channelling lurched free, a wild serpent, lashing back and forth.

  ‘Peloris!’ bellowed another one of the Librarians on the far side of the circle.

  Even in the shifting light, Antros recognised him. Epistolary Rhacelus was Mephiston’s equerry and one of the longest-serving veterans in the entire Chapter. Rhacelus had been responsible for much of Antros’ training and his contemptuous glare still haunted his dreams. The psychic hood of Rhacelus’ power armour was ablaze with warpfire and, as he climbed to his feet, his whole body shook under the strain. Sparks were crackling around his eyes and gums, spitting and flashing as they danced over his face, but he drew back his shoulders and kept his force sword aloft, holding up the column of energy he was channelling. ‘Lexicanium Antros,’ he said calmly, as though he were merely ordering a servant to fetch him a drink. ‘Close ranks.’ Despite his exertions, he managed to give Antros a warning glance. ‘Do not let me down, neophyte.’

  Despite his raging heart, Antros stepped calmly into the circle, catching the loose arc of crimson on the head of his staff. The impact rocked him back on his heels, but he held his place, clutching the staff in both hands as it quivered and sparked. Pain washed over his flesh, as though he had been set alight, but the agony was dwarfed by the torrent of visions that exploded in his head. Another world superimposed itself over the Ostensorio. Vast sheets of flame thundered past beneath him as powerful wings hurled him through the air. The vision was wonderful and overwhelming. It took every ounce of his training to anchor his thoughts. ‘What is this?’ he cried, his voice contorted by pain. He sensed a being of incredible power forming above the huge chalice. ‘What are we summoning?’

  Rhacelus was unwilling, or unable, to reply. He merely twisted his lip into an even more disdainful curl.

  Antros tried to decipher the shape in the blood. It was still too vague to make out so he switched his gaze to his Brother-Librarians. As the light of the sphere swelled and enveloped them, the Librarians’ noble features began to change, growing feral and furious. They howled in outrage and Antros joined his voice to theirs as he felt the cause of their anger. Whatever Rhacelus had intended to invoke, they were now facing something horrific. The warp itself was straining to breach the sanctity of their fortress-monastery. Incredibly, something was trying to enter the Librarium. Antros found it hard to breathe, suffocated by a potent mixture of outrage and excitement. The visions threatened to overwhelm him again, but then he sensed a presence beside him and turned to see Lexicanium Peloris. Peloris was barely able to stand. His power armour had been rent open by the psychic blast he had taken and his mouth was full of blood. He managed to nod at Antros. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘If you fall.’

  ‘What are we–?’ began Antros.

  ‘Now!’ said Epistolary Rhacelus, interrupting Antros as he sliced his sword down through the air. It connected with a brass circular channel, embedded in the flagstones, creating a blinding shower of sparks. The other Librarians followed suit, smashing their swords against the metal, severing the cords of power and enveloping the dais with crimson light. For a second the red sphere burned white, blinding everyone, then the light vanished, leaving nothing. All the lights had vanished – not just the sphere but the cords of magic too.

  Unbalanced, Antros staggered forwards, straining to discern shapes in the void.

  For a while there was nothing, just the laboured breathing of the unseen Librarians and the thick, charnel stink. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Antros saw a crouched, powerful shadow, just visible at the centre of the circle.

  I was sure the answer would be there,+ said a hushed voice, speaking directly into Antros’ mind. +But I found nothing.+

  Light seeped back into the chamber as braziers sputtered back into life and the cherubs’ candles reignited, revealing the figure at the centre of the circle. Finally, Antros saw the being they had wrenched from the warp: Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, Master of the Librarius.

  The Lord of Death had returned.

  Chapter Four

  Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal

  Unlike the other Adeptus Astartes gathered in the Ostensorio, Mephiston’s armour was crimson. The ceramite plates were intricately sculpted to resemble flayed muscle and as Mephiston rose from the floor of the chamber his robes billowed around him like blood pooling in water. Behind him, a faint echo of the sphere could still be seen, a void rolling in the darkness, a window on the stars.

  As the lights returned, they revealed the sprawled forms of the other Librarians scattered across the stone floor. At the sight of their lord they clambered to their feet and grabbed their discarded swords. They formed into orderly ranks and pounded the hilts against their chests. ‘Chief Librarian,’ they cried in proud, strident tones. Taking his place amongst them, Antros mirrored their salute and stood erect, awed by the sight of his lord.

  At the same moment, the projection of the priest rose from its throne and began shouting words that were lost to the void. His mouth opened and closed but no sound reached the chamber. The hooded priests crowded around the projector, tapping dials and flicking switches until a deafening voice boomed through the air, backed by a shrill wail of feedback.

  ‘My lord! What did you find?’ roared the ghost-priest, his jowly face trembling with emotion. ‘Is Divinus Prime safe? Did you–?’

  He paused as he noticed what Mephiston was carrying. Hanging limply in the Chief Librarian’s grip was an unconscious man, a robed priest.

  Yet, perhaps there was the echo of an answer,+ said Mephiston, speaking as calmly as if he had just entered the hall through a doorway. +Something just beyond my reach.+ No one else heard him and Antros realised the words only existed in his head.

  ‘An answer to what?’ he whispered.

  The flickering image cried out again, frustrated by the lack of a reply. ‘Chief Librarian?’ The static-chopped voice broke down into a series of abrupt barks and feedback loops. ‘Can. You. Hear. Meee? What has bebebebecome. Divinus Prime?’ He stared at the unconscious man. ‘Who is that? One of ours?’

  Mephiston continued to ignore him as he laid the priest carefully on the floor and turned back to the fading sphere. A look of mild surprise crossed his face. +I have been followed,+ he said, speaking directly into Antros’ mind again. He sounded intrigued rather than alarmed.

  Antros braced himself seconds before the chamber exploded. A thunder crack hurled Mephiston through the air. He smashed through the ranks of Librarians and tumbled into the darkness, leaving a trail of sparks as his armour scraped across the stone.

  Behind him, the afterimage of the blood sphere surged back into existence and warped into a new form. Crimson light became crimson flesh as a gaping wound opened in the air, hanging just above the floor. It swelled like a disease-bloated tumour. The air around it rippled and congealed like pus. It looked like a septic scar, opening onto nothing.

  The priest recoiled in horror, despite being half a galaxy away, but Antros and the other Librarians steadied themselves and levelled their force weapons at the growing tear.

  ‘Chief Librarian?’ cried Epistolary Rhacelus, searching the ch
amber for his commander. There was no reply from Mephiston, so Rhacelus gave his Brother-Librarians a silent order. They leapt to obey, fanning out to surround the horror forming in front of them. Shapes were bubbling from the aether. Something was emerging from the wound.

  ‘On my command,’ Rhacelus said, and Antros whispered an oath, causing his staff to sizzle and blaze with psychic power.

  Flies began to drift from the hole. Just a few at first, winding lazily into the chamber, then clouds of them, gushing through the opening, adding a low drone to the din that had already filled the air. Antros recognised the magnitude of what was happening. Danger in the very heart of the Arx Angelicum was unheard of. He stared at the grotesque thing that was quickly filling the Ostensorio. It was a window onto madness and, as he raised his staff, a hellish tide of creatures spewed into the room, tumbling through the clouds of flies. It looked like a torrent of internal organs – a coiled mass of glistening tubes and pulsing sacs that slapped onto the floor of the chamber.

  ‘By the Throne,’ he grunted as a horrific smell filled the air. It was a thick stink of putrefaction and faeces, and he felt as though he were suddenly trapped inside the bowels of a rotting animal.

  ‘On my command!’ repeated Epistolary Rhacelus, gripping his sword in both hands and bracing himself as clouds of flies swarmed around him. His majestic tones revealed no trace of fear, but Antros could sense his outrage.

  The visceral, faecal soup blossomed into humanoid forms, sprouting gangly, mottled limbs and hunched, pot-bellied torsos. Grubs blistered up from open sores, forming into drooling, slack-jawed faces. Others sprouted grey, membranous wings, bristling, insectoid faces and glistening proboscises.

  Rhacelus waited a few seconds more, his face full of scorn as pus-yellow eyes blinked open in the centre of oozing, bulbous foreheads. Then he raised his chin, imposing and magnificent as he gave the signal to attack, bringing his sword down in a chopping motion.

  Antros unleashed all his rage and determination through the head of his staff. A column of blue light ripped from the weapon and slammed into the emerging horde, joining the ferocious storm of psychic energy hurled by his brothers.

  A grinding sound filled the chamber as the Librarians poured torrent after torrent into the creatures. A sphere of light began to form as their warpfire clashed with the malformed creatures, and an acrid stench of burning meat filled the air.

  As Antros saw the full horror of the fly-shrouded shapes he knew instinctively what he was looking at. ‘Daemons,’ he muttered. During his gruelling years of training he had seen pict images of countless xeno-types, including some far stranger looking than this, but it was not the anatomy that arrested him; it was the utter wrongness. They did not conform to any natural laws. Their crumbling, foetid flesh was revolting, but Antros’ mind could see through it; it was just a façade – a shadow of their true, incomprehensible nature.

  Antros broke ranks and climbed the steps of the chapel again, seeking a better view. As he looked back at the fighting he saw what the other Librarians could not – their psychic blasts were feeding the wound, causing it to gape ever wider. The front ranks of daemons were disintegrating under the ferocity of the Librarians’ attack but as the hole widened it vomited ever-greater volumes of warp-filth into the chamber. Some of the Librarians strode forwards to meet them, lashing out with their swords and carving the daemons into slabs of scorched flesh.

  ‘Stop!’ he cried, knowing that his words would be lost beneath the din. On top of the noise of the Librarians’ blasts, the swarming of the flies and the tearing of the air, the hololithic confessor was still crying out, his voice growing louder and more distorted with every word. ‘MephMephMeph. Whaaaat. Youyouyouyou. MMMMeph.’ Everything merged into one dreadful, apocalyptic roar.

  ‘Lord Rhacelus!’ boomed Antros, striding back towards the fight, scouring the carnage for a site of the equerry.

  The whole chamber was juddering and Antros found himself mired in a storm of flies and crimson sparks.

  He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to slip through the tempest, reaching out for Epistolary Rhacelus. Antros’ powers were far greater than they had ever been before, magnified by the blood magic that was coruscating through the air. What he had intended as a simple call reached Rhacelus as a warp-fuelled scream.

  He saw the veteran stagger under the impact of the message, scowling and clutching his head.

  ‘Hold!’ ordered Epistolary Rhacelus once he had recovered.

  His Brother-Librarians obeyed, lowering their weapons. The smoke cleared to reveal a steaming mound of twitching daemons piled up before them, smouldering and flickering with ripples of warpfire.

  Antros muttered a curse as he saw how big the gap in the air had grown – it had tripled in size and was spraying ever more nightmarish shapes at them. Worse than that, it was straining outwards, bulging towards the edges. Something was forcing itself against the other side, something massive. As it swelled, it spewed even greater swarms of flies. They battered against the Librarians with such force that they struggled to stand and the entire chamber was now a storm of whirling fly clouds, making it impossible to see clearly.

  Epistolary Rhacelus was about to give an order when Mephiston swept through the tornado, his spectral wings outstretched and his force sword raised as he dived into the heaving mass.

  As Mephiston reached the tear, it opened with a wet, ripping sound and a black shape approached through the swarm of flies. There were now millions of the insects, and Antros could not see the shape clearly. In his mind he saw something that resembled a great geyser of oil that slammed into the Chief Librarian and engulfed him.

  Mephiston’s blade flashed and tore the storm apart, blasting the insects into sparkling blue embers. He continued on into the hole, vanishing from the materium into whatever hell lay beyond.

  Mephiston was only gone for a few seconds. The clouds of flies parted as a new nightmare hauled him back into reality – a mountain of mucus-lined flesh that uncoiled itself slowly into the chamber, belching fumes and pulsating like a huge mollusc. It was so large it crashed against the ribs of the distant, vaulted ceiling, and it was encased in a mantle of frilled, rippling muscles that resembled rows of gills. Parts of this undulating mantle extended out from the main mass, creating long, serpentine limbs, one of which had almost entirely enveloped Mephiston. It was lifting him towards a serrated opening in the thing’s eyeless head.

  ‘No!’ hissed Antros as he saw Mephiston nearing the mouth.

  Vermin,+ said a nonchalant voice in his head. +Nothing more.+

  Mephiston plunged his force sword into the creature’s mouth. Traceries of red light rippled through its enormous bulk and it reared up in pain, smashing through the ceiling of the Ostensorio. The stone gave way, sending arches and vaults tumbling down into the chamber, smashing into pieces and adding plumes of plaster dust to the clouds of flies.

  The Ministorum priests started screaming as the structure of the Ostensorio gave way. Huge cracks knifed out from the hole created by the swaying bulk of the daemon as it lurched and undulated, colliding with pillars and buttresses. Antros and the other Librarians were still hurling thick columns of energy at the daemons, filling the clouds with pulses of light and barked commands.

  A Ministorum priest stumbled through the haze. Antros headed in the man’s direction, intending to shepherd him from the hall, when another figure emerged from the dust clouds with a swagger. One of the stooping, gangly things had broken through the ranks of Librarians. It stared at Antros with a bulging, cyclopean eye, holding up a pair of rusty meat cleavers.

  Psychic flame ripped from Antros’ staff, tearing the daemon apart in an explosion of diseased flesh and pus-green blood.

  Antros lowered his smoking staff and looked back to find the priest. The man was sprawled on the flagstones, clutching his severed throat as blood gushed from him in great gouts.


  Antros rushed to aid him but another daemon lumbered into view, its jagged sword dripping with the priest’s blood. Antros hunched over his staff and unleashed a blast of psychic wrath, smearing the second daemon across the wall.

  Great hunks of stone were now crashing down all around him and the ceiling was almost entirely gone, revealing the soaring walkways and towers of the Librarium beyond. Column after column slumped and fell, and the two surviving Ministorum priests sprinted through the chaos, dodging falling slabs and leaping over cracks in the floor as they struggled to locate the exit. The hololithic projection of the senior priest was still visible through the bloody haze and falling rocks. He was howling in fear and rage, his eyes wild, but the speakers had been destroyed and he was once again mouthing into the void – a deranged, shimmering giant, presiding silently over the death of the ancient chamber.

  Antros’ enhanced vision saw easily through the haze, locating the doorway, just a dozen or so feet away.

  ‘This way!’ he cried, shepherding the dazed priests towards the exit. The door’s lintel had cracked and the opening looked like it might give way at any moment.

  He looked back to see a wall of daemons charging towards them, countless dozens of the loping horrors, approaching from all directions.

  As the daemons flooded across the shattered flagstones, Antros raised his staff, cutting them down with a scythe of psychic force and filling the air with gore.