Prologue

Smoke was belching from the shaded plateau beyond the mountain ridge. Tainted touch of Chaos that reigned over the deserted planet. No living creature dwelt in the barren rocklands but a smell of musk and ambergris lingered in the torrid air. Sergeant Pterophyllo could feel it even through the filters of his helmet. He had left the field camp with his squad when the scarlet sun of the alien world was rising to the dusty skies. Now it was noon, but the sorcerer was still far ahead though he was weakened by wounds.

The Blooded were a dangerous enemy, better not to cross ways with for any servant of the Ruinous Powers. Pterophyllo felt his sire's ancient wrath rise from the depths of his mind. Wrath he cherished and feared. Beastly ferocity hidden within exemplary Angels. Older than the black sorrow of the Great Angel's death, the mystery even the Chapter veterans seldom dare to recall.

They had chased the sorcerer from the Imperial borders till they ambushed his filthy gull-ship and Captain Aphael himself led the charge against the traitor. Yet the sorcerer's unholy power let him avoid judgment. With the help of his foul patron, he banished the gull to the warp and eluded down to the surface of the planet. He had to be found and sent to the hell where he belonged before he could heal his injuries.

Wrath and thirst for battle were growing stronger with every hour Pterophyllo stayed in this world. As he was driving his Land Speeder to the mountain pass, his twin hearts were pounding in fierce excitement as never before. Shadows of eerie beastly shapes flickered on the edge of his vision but were lost to sight when he turned towards them. The smell of musk was suffocating though he had turned the air cleaning to the maximum. Rock walls around were engraved with twisting lines of unknown symbols. Spirals, vertebrae, eerie runes. Pterophyllo had seen vaguely similar drawings once, years ago, when his company was purging a Genestealer lair. Alien repulsive sigils he couldn't stop staring at.

'The sun has reached its zenith but the shadow ahead is even deeper,' said Platax, the youngest of his Battle-Brothers. 'A foreboding place, I heard from the Company veterans.'

'Indeed.' Pterophyllo knew he shouldn't show anxiety or doubt before the warriors he commanded. 'There was a xenos shrine of false gods in the valley before the Heresy. A squad of Luna Wolves stood bravely against its foul guards till only the Sergeant was alive. When he returned to his ship, all traces of blasphemous worship were erased from the surface with orbital bombings. There's nothing to fear when we're ready to fight for the Emperor and Sanguinius.'

They started descending to the vale, and the unnatural shadow fell over them as if the sun had vanished in a moment. Pterophyllo looked up, at the tiny patch of blue sky above. They couldn't have gone that far below in a few seconds. The auspexes showed they were a thousand miles beneath the cliffs. Warp-tricks they should never mind, for the Emperor is stronger than the malignant entities that dwelt beyond the material realm. Pterophyllo checked up his vox. All connection lost. Librarian brothers were to assist him in the search for the foe but now he had to rely on himself and his squad only. He had taken a relic psychic sensor from the Librarium before they embarked so he still had an opportunity to bring the sorcerer to justice.

Pterophyllo activated the sensor and looked at the auspex screen on his wrist. The shadow was there as well. It seemed to veil the place from sunlight and psychic sight alike. After minutes of fruitless tinkering he finally found the enemy's soulfire barely glowing in the distant end of the canyon. The shadow had turned a searing blaze into a tiny spark.

Lights were of almost no help in the viscous, sultry darkness. Pterophyllo's hearts leapt when they suddenly found themselves before a towering outline of a palace built by no human hand. Scanners didn't see it until they stopped before its cyclopean gates. Even through the shadow Pterophyllo could see columns of fluent shapes that resembled animal spines and intertwined serpents, monstrous beasts carved upon the doorleaves of red gold. It couldn't have survived the bombings. The millennia of desolation. The rock under their feet trembled as if the palace was built of live throbbing flesh.

They got off their Land Speeders. Pterophyllo shouldn't show his confusion before his fighters. He stepped forward and knocked on the gates.

Swirling smoke gushed from the maws of engraved beasts forming a theroid shape the size of a Titan. But they couldn't retreat. They were His Angels who should know no fear. Pterophyllo met the abomination with a mighty strike of his power claw when its spectral tendrils lashed out to put them down.

When he came back to himself, he was back to the mountain pass over the sinister valley. Scraps of feverish visions still lingered in his mind, and he uttered the familiar words of the litany to chase them away. The only one alive. They had died in vain as the sorcerer had vanished from the planet. He clenched his fists in powerless fury on seeing what had been left from his brothers. Pools of drying blood in piles of ravaged armour weapons had been useless against the monster out of nightmares.

His own armour had been torn off from his body, and flaps of skin had been flayed from his face and trunk by the monster's smoke claws. He sat up and wiped his face but blood started running again when he touched the wounds. Drop after drop fell on the dry red soil, on the golden chalice sign still glistening over the broken remains of his power pack. Fleeting images flickered before his eyes again, leaving nothing behind but overpowering hunger. With a desperate howl Pterophyllo threw himself down to lick his own blood from the rocks.

Even weeks later, when he arrived to the Reclusiam to take his Pilgrimage vows, he didn't dare to tell what looked upon him in the palace that couldn't exist.