Work In Progress

Chapter 1

'Pain. It's what defines us. Shapes us. It is our lifelong companion, giving us the strength to fight on when all sense is telling you to lay down and die. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it'

The Reclusiam was empty save for the solemn figure of Alastair Castiel, master of the 3rd battle company of the Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines. He did not wear his armour, preferring instead the simple robe of his order while he prayed. The candles arrayed around the chamber cast flickering shadows and the light of the flame caught on two silver studs in the flesh of his forehead, the only indication of over two centuries of service as an Astartes in an otherwise youthful face. His rank and status within the convoluted structure of the chapter meant that he had the relative luxury of choosing when to come to the Reclusiam for his daily prayer, which in turn meant that he was most often here when others weren't, allowing him to fully consider the weight of responsibility that fell on him without the distractions of his younger battle brothers around him for Alastair knew things that the Astartes under his command did not, things that had the potential to destroy over ten millennia of loyal service to the Emperor in a heartbeat, things that the Dark Angels would do anything to keep from the eyes and ears of the Inquisition.

His ministrations complete, Alastair rose from his kneeling position in one fluid movement and turned to be met by a vision of death incarnate, a skull made not of bone, but of ceramite and plasteel. Interrogator Chaplain Rhamiel regarded him for long seconds before he spoke: "Brother Castiel, your vigil here speaks well of you, it has been several hours since you entered this chamber" the Chaplain's voice was clipped and deep, a fact even the vox unit of his death's head helmet failed to hide. "Brother Chaplain, I did not hear you enter, I was deep in contemplation"

"Contemplation? Your victory at Futard was absolute; the heretics were purged from the field of battle with minimal losses to your own force. What is there to contemplate?" the Chaplain's questioning tone held a hint of warning and Alastair hesitated before answering. "It seems that too often in these times we are called upon to eliminate Imperial citizens. It rankles that the sins of our former brothers have lowered us to such a level" Rhamiel's gaze did not waver as he replied. "The loss of civilians is felt keenly by all within the chapter, but was the truth about the renegades to become known, it would only lead to further uprisings as the citizenry panicked and their faith began to waver. By eliminating those who would weaken the integrity of the Imperium do we ultimately make the Imperium stronger"

"You are right of course brother; the end always justifies the means when it comes to Chaos"

"Indeed it does, though we were created to protect the Imperium and all within it, it is better that thousands of innocents die than one traitor be allowed to live" the fierce red orbs of Rhamiel's ocular lenses felt like they were boring into the captain's very soul though he knew that to be the province of the chapter's psychic Librarians. Right now, as he left the darkened chapel, he was glad that none of them were present for if they had been he was not certain that Rhamiel would have let him leave the chamber at all.

Alastair had not always felt this way. As a youth he had been determined that when the great warriors of the stars came around again as they did every generation that he would leave with them or die during the trials, there was no other option for him. In fact, the trials had almost killed him. Not the multiple combat against the other aspirants, for he had been strong and swift even then, nor even the endurance march through the methane swamps of Kimmeria, but the final trial where he and the few remaining aspirants were ordered to attack a rival tribe's camp and kill the women and children while the men were out hunting. He had not understood why it had to be only the women and children and it had left a sour taste in his mouth. At one point he had even paused, thinking there to be little satisfaction in taking the heads of those who were hardly able to fight and had barely avoided having his head taken off with an axe as a woman desperately defended her child. She had survived for mere seconds afterward as a fellow aspirant had run her through with his spear. In the end though, he had steeled himself to the task at hand, passed the final trial and been taken in what he now knew to be a Thunderhawk gunship to the fleet waiting in orbit. From there he had been taken to a giant spaceborne monastery that the warriors of the stars had told him was called the Tower of Angels for his training to begin. His training had been painful, and had included much indoctrination and hypnotherapy that allowed him to ignore the inhumanity of the deeds he was to perpetrate for over two hundred years after that, but upon his promotion to master of a battle company thirteen years ago, and the subsequent revelations that followed as he was initiated into the Inner Circle, he had been refused the luxury of ignorance and felt as though he were slowly being crushed by the enormity of what he had done, and of what he would be called to do until the appointed day of his death. The campaign to cleanse the agri world of Futard had been one occasion among too many where the Dark Angels had been forced to silence imperial citizens because they had seen or heard something that they should not.

Alastair returned to his chamber and immediately began the task of cleaning his armour. By rights it should have been the first thing he did when he returned from battle but a heretic autocannon had bracketed him, and his armour had required a visit to the forge for repairs before he could clean it. While the Techmarines had healed the rents in his armour, he had attempted to heal the rents in his faith by visiting the Reclusiam. As he worked the cloth over the Imperial Laurel on his left shoulder guard, he allowed his mind to wander back to the battle that had seen him rewarded with this most holy of honours:

The air was filled with fire. Tiny vapour trails criss crossed the battlefield, marking the positions that both sides had fired bolters from, positions that were in turn targeted by heavy weapons in an attempt to eliminate the superhuman warriors that were in cover there. Black Legion havocs poured missiles and autocannon rounds into already ruined buildings, cackling as they saw a green armoured body fall or vanish in a pink mist. In return, Dark Angels devastators raked the havocs with plasma and lascannon fire and imperial dreadnoughts clashed with twisted parodies of their holy forms in the centre of the field with massive power claws and multi-meltas. In the midst of it all stood Alastair and his attendant command squad, each a veteran of thousands of battles and each having forged a bond through fire and brimstone with their leader. Sheltering in a burned out bunker, it was brother sergeant (Veruliam) that spoke first. "Sir, we must move from here soon, the traitors know of our position and will move heavy guns forward to flush us out. The damage this bunker has suffered makes it a poor spot to weather an artillery barrage" as if on cue, a massive explosion shook the bunker as a shell landed nearby. The company master regarded each of his friends in turn, no sign of fear on their faces as befitted the Adeptus Astartes. His black hair was cut short, though he sported a good head of hair that had earned him much light hearted beratement from his battle brothers. His eyes were purest blue and spoke of the keen intelligence that had in part earned him the right to command a hundred of the finest warriors in the entire Imperium. After a moment, he responded to his sergeant with a wry smile: "with prescience like that sergeant, are you sure you're not destined for the Librarium?" his sergeant grinned "I don't think so sir, blue really isn't my colour" the squad each checked their weapons one last time, Alastair working the action on his combi-melta to ensure it was still functioning correctly after being covered in dust from the explosion. He looked up out of the firing slit of the bunker and then turned back to his brothers "there is a large agricultural building one hundred and thirty metres to the southwest. We will secure that building and from there we can effectively coordinate fire support from the Devastators before making the assault ourselves and crushing the traitor's western flank. On my lead" as one, the squad leapt out of a breach in the western wall of the bunker and sprinted for the agri building, ignoring the ricochets of bolter rounds as the surprised traitor marines tried to draw a bead on the six Dark Angels hurtling towards their lines.

The first indication that the obliterator had found them was when brother (Ezarel), the last to enter the building, fell through the door with a massive smoking hole through his chest. Moments later the entire front wall caved in and the Dark Angels were knocked flying as something huge smashed through. Apothecary Maalox was the first to react, his chainsword screaming as he threw himself at the chaos monstrosity. Maalox swung his chainsword at the chaos obliterator with all the might a space marine can muster, only to be rewarded with the screech of metal on metal as the churning body of the infected traitor created an armoured plate where seconds before there had been an elbow joint. The obliterator grabbed Maalox in an oversized gauntlet, closed its hand and then threw the pulped remains twenty metres back through the hole in the front wall where it was riddled with bolter fire. Alastair picked himself up from the rubble, noting that one of his greaves was damaged and commended the souls of his two brothers to the Emperor. This beast had killed two great warriors such as Maalox and Ezarel within the space of a few heartbeats and Alastair knew he could not afford to underestimate it or make a single error. Raising his combi-melta he fired, the superheated beam shearing through the obliterator's armour and making the beast scream in pain before unloading the entire clip of his bolter at the hole in its body. Mass reactive rounds entered the hole and detonated, throwing great gouts of black fluid and pieces of shrapnel into the air, but still the obliterator would not fall. As the magazine ran dry, Alastair cast his weapon aside and drew his power sword.

Determined that this abomination would not live one moment longer, he charged, angling to keep on its wounded side. The obliterator roared, a strangled metallic sound, and lumbered round, swinging a multi barrelled assault cannon that was already cycling up to fire. Alastair threw himself to the side as tongues of flame spat from the barrels of the cannon, spewing hundreds of rounds out a second and chewing through one of the internal walls of the agri building. He landed hard, sparks flying from his armour as he slid to a halt just metres from the creature. He rolled aside as a massive armour shod claw smashed down where he had been only moments earlier and slashed at where he thought the achilles tendon of his foe might be. His blade rang where it met his opponents armour but left little to mark its passing apart from a long scratch. Again, the claw came down but this time it swung in an arc that sent Alastair flying through the air to smash through yet another internal wall. The ceiling began to sag. Picking himself up once more, dust cascading from his battered armour as though it were water, the Company Master took the measure of his foe. He himself was battered, bleeding and bruised and his armour was registering only eighty nine percent available power from its reactor but the obliterator was unsteady, black gore still freely flowing from the massive wound in its side. Commending his own soul to the Emperor, Alastair and the obliterator charged simultaneously, a roar building in each of their throats. Time seemed to slow for the Astartes as he closed with his opponent and he could see with perfect clarity as the obliterator flexed the claws that it now sported on both arms and swung the arm on its wounded side almost ponderously toward him. It was watching Alastair's sword in his right hand and didn't see the pin or the arming handle as they both flew from the krak grenade he was holding in his left. With timing that only an Astartes is capable of, Alastair ducked under the swinging arm of the obliterator, posted the grenade into the gaping wound that yawned like an enormous black maw and carried on running. The obliterator barely had time for one last metallic scream as the krak grenade detonated, blowing its entire chest cavity out in a flurry of gore and bringing the unsupported ceiling crashing down onto the exposed flesh of its head.

With his foe defeated and the immediate danger passed, Alastair's attention turned to the status of his squad's remaining brothers and he cast his eyes around, attempting to locate the other Dark Angels through the dust and rubble. It took long seconds to locate the three warriors and Alastair was heartened to see that all of them survived even though brother Mendocas sported a shattered arm from the pile of masonry that had engulfed him following the attack by the obliterator. Their captain waited for the status icons representing the command squad to flash green in his helmet display before speaking: "Brothers, the enemy has dealt us a grievous blow in the deaths of Ezarel and Maalox, but we will not falter from our path. To do so would be to hand victory to the foulest foe our chapter will ever face and I would fight the Gods of Chaos themselves before taking a single step back in the face of traitors! We will continue forward, push into the enemy lines and reap furious vengeance from their corrupt flesh. Ready your weapons!" Alastair strode to the southern wall of the agri-unit and activated his company level vox-link. "Warriors of the 3rd, we have allowed the hated enemy to live for too long. The strength of the Lion himself flows through our veins and now is the time to use that strength, to destroy utterly the taint that lingers here. On my mark, all units are to concentrate fire on the eastern flank of the traitor lines; Tactical squads Achristus and Vangelis will mount up in Rhinos and storm the centre of the lines with flamers, supported by Assault squad Barchus. I will assault from the west with my squad and together we will win the day. For the Lion and for The Emperor, attack!" As one, the remaining Astartes of the 3rd company struck their targets with unerring accuracy and unbridled fury, the door-slam bang of bolters and hollow crump of missile launchers dominating the scene for the minute or so it took for the assault units to reach their targets and then the crackling whoosh of flamers and the scream of chainswords elicited screams of agony from the traitor marine positions as the Dark Angels took vengeance on their enemy for the brothers they had lost. For all the time that the traitors had held the Dark Angels in position that day, the vengeful wrath and ingrained hatred the Astartes felt for the renegades ensured that the final assault lasted less than fifteen minutes, and that only two of the enemy survived. Alastair had felt no sense of failure at the news that his men had not killed everyone. After all, he thought to himself, these two had been the reason he'd started this battle in the first place….

Bringing his thoughts back to the present, Alastair finished cleaning his armour and reverently placed the final piece back in its position on the arming rack. Stepping back, he allowed himself a moment to take in the majesty of the suit, the painstaking detail of the etching on the cuirass depicting Lion El'Jonson swearing fealty to the Emperor on Caliban, the raised winged sword of his Chapter's symbol in gold laced obsidian on the bone coloured right shoulder guard and the sacred Imperial Laurel on the left. The armour had been modified extensively over two millennia ago by the techmarines to provide significantly more protection than standard pattern power armour and it had saved his life on many occasions where the armour of his brothers had failed. With this thought lodged in his mind, the master of the 3rd turned on his heel and headed for the Sepulchre to inter those of his company who had given their lives for the Emperor and the Primarch in this latest campaign.

The Rock was no mere starship; it was a piece of Caliban itself and home to the first and largest of the Dark Angels fortress monasteries, known as the Tower of Angels. No member of the chapter ever set foot inside the Tower however, to do so was considered the gravest of dishonours to the memory of those that had fallen within its walls ten thousand years ago, and none would ever set foot on the holy ground until the appointed return of Lion El'Jonson. This did not restrict the Rock's habitable space however; the asteroid that the Tower of Angels rested on had been hollowed out by the Dark Angels following Caliban's destruction and converted into a spaceborne vessel of unimaginable proportions and this in turn ensured that Alastair's journey to the resting place of the chapter's dead could be extended significantly if he wished, allowing him the solitude that he craved more and more with the passing of the years. After nearly sixty minutes of traversing the winding corridors and shadowy spaces of the place he had called home for over two centuries Alastair arrived at the chamber he had already visited too many times in his relatively short captaincy; the Chamber of Rites that served as a reception area for the chapter's dead before they were carried on a bier to their final resting place inside the Sepulchre by the command squad of the company to which they had originally belonged. None of the rank and file warriors were permitted access to the chamber and even Company Masters had to seek permission to enter from their Chaplain if they were not interring a member of their company. Alastair hated the place; though it was a place of peace, and every man in the chapter wished to rest here one day, to Alastair it simply represented another battle brother lost and he couldn't help but wonder how many of these honoured warriors would still be alive today had it not been for the Chapters' ten millennia mission to hunt down and capture, not destroy, the foulest and deadliest enemy any Astartes could ever face: his own brother, fallen from grace.

Rhamiel was already present in the chamber and had likely come here directly from the Reclusiam a few hours ago. On seven large wooden biers arranged around the perimeter of the room were the still armoured bodies of the Astartes that had fallen on Futard; the five members of a combat squad taken from squad Achristus that had been killed by a Leman Russ from the Planetary Defence Force when they had been mistaken for the enemy, a battle brother from sergeant Anazel's Devastator squad who had suffered a catastrophic plasma cannon overload that vented plasma into the gunner's chest and face, vaporising both instantly, and assault sergeant Barchus, killed when the leader of the Chaos warband had ripped his head off with a power fist and threw it to a pack of nearby hounds. The triumphant grin on the face of the Chaos champion had quickly turned to shock as he was bisected by the crackling blade of Alastair's power sword.

Now that the Company Master, his command squad, the Interrogator Chaplain and a Codicier from the Librarium were all present, the last rites of the dead could begin. As Rhamiel spoke the rites and entreated the Emperor to take their souls to his side, and as the hooded Librarian solemnly recorded the event so that their names and the manner of their deeds and deaths could be remembered in the chapter annals, Alastair and the men of the command squad began the physical preparations for the ceremony. First, they removed the armour of the warriors and set it aside as reverently as they would their own, then they would wash the body, removing the dried sweat and the blood from whatever wounds they had suffered. When they came to the warrior from Anazel's Devastator squad they found their work made light; there was no blood and the sweat on his body had evaporated when the plasma had flash-heated and ignited. This part of the process could be done by servitors while the command squad simply acted as an honour guard and in other companies typically was but Alastair had long ago decided that he would personally inter each and every one of his men, not wanting the mind wiped drones interfering in what, to him, was a sacred rite.

When the process was complete, the rites spoken and recorded, each warrior was then covered in a sheet of green silk with the winged sword of the chapter stitched onto it in white by chapter menials. Now that this stage of the ceremony had been attended to, there was only the funerary procession itself left. This was the part that would take the longest; the Astartes would never rush in the honouring of their heroic dead and the sheer size of the Sepulchre ensured that the procession may take many hours to reach the stone casket that had been built and prepared specifically for their charge. As the six men lifted the first bier to their shoulders, Chaplain Rhamiel drew his Crozius Arcanum, a badge of office for all chaplains that doubled as a deadly instrument of the Emperor's wrath in combat. He also took a censer from the wall next to the vault doors that led to the Sepulchre itself. With this he rapped once on the doors and stood clear as they swung open, the musty air billowing out into the chamber and the temperature dropping enough for Alastair to notice it through his robes. Just inside the doorway stood two of the diminutive beings that were known to exist all over the Rock, though none could say where they came from, nor how or why they were there; Watchers in the Dark. The Watchers never communicated with the Dark Angels and this occasion was no different. Instead they simply turned and began moving deeper into the corridors of the Sepulchre. At this Rhamiel turned and spoke: "Come Brothers, the Watchers will guide us to Brother Bethor's resting place" then he turned once more and began a solemn processional walk, slowly swinging the censer so that the air soon smelled of incense.

Alastair and his brothers followed close behind, in lockstep with the black armoured figure, and the faceless Librarian brought up the rear, his staff held up off the ground now so that it did not disturb the sanctity of this place with unnecessary sound. For eighteen hours they continued like this, setting a warrior to rest in his casket and then returning in the same lockstep to collect another bier and lay another of their brothers to eternal rest. In that time not one of them faltered, missed a step or uttered a sound. Second only to actually prosecuting the enemy, this was the holiest of callings for the Astartes, and as much a part of daily life as cleaning weapons or prayer.

Astartes did not fear death; it was a fact of their duty and they honoured their dead as much as they honoured those heroes who were still living. In the past, after a particularly telling campaign where many of the company had fallen, this procession had been know to last for many days and in all this time the warriors involved would continue in their duty, never once stopping to rest. To do so would dishonour the dead. As the nineteenth hour of the service approached, the procession finally marched back into the Chamber of Rites. Having laid the last of the dead to rest, Rhamiel rapped once again on the vault doors, waiting as they swung closed once more with a finality that caused the torches on the wall to flicker urgently and left the room feeling altogether more claustrophobic even though it was large enough to handle perhaps ten times the number of biers that had lain in there on this occasion. The command squad had assembled in the centre of the chamber, in a line that faced the giant doors through which they had passed so many times that day. The Codicier was barely visible in the shadows that the torches could not chase away and Alastair briefly wondered if the Librarian himself had something to do with their impenetrability. His attention was quickly diverted when Rhamiel addressed him and his men: "We have laid seven great heroes to rest brothers, their work is done but for us the long war still remains for only in death does duty end. Remember their names always, that their example may strengthen your resolve, that their loyalty to the chapter may keep you fighting when all others would flee. This is your legacy, bear it proudly, in the name of the Lion" The six attendant warriors echoed the chaplain; "In the name of the Lion"

Little did Alastair know that those words would one day save his soul.