I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.
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Subject : Inquisitor Ekaterina Salem
Location : Baal – Baal System – Facility 99-Alpha – "Mausoleum of the Faithful"
Timestamp : 362nd day, year 999.M41
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The Emperor sees all. The Emperor knows all.
The Mausoleum was a place of shadows, lit only by the dim glow of emergency lumens and the flickering light of stasis fields. In her left hand, Ekaterina held a lantern, fashioned from the bones of Imperial servants who had died in the pursuit of their duties to the Inquisition and glass made from the melted sands of Prospero. The flame that burned inside the lantern had been taken from the Eternal Flame that burned within the hallowed temple of Dimmamar, where the memory of Sebastian Thor was honored by the people of his homeworld.
The lantern was a relic, a gift from Ekaterina's master, who himself had received it from his own mistress, and so on, all the way back to the early days of the Holy Ordos. Pieces of the lantern had been replaced over time, of course, and the flame that burned inside had gone out and needed to be renewed – but the lantern had retained the blessing and properties that made it useful.
As long as one carried it into the dark places, the light that shone from the lantern would keep its bearer from wandering down the twisted paths that led to madness and heresy. And though the Mausoleum was a place sealed against the machinations of the Archenemy by defenses laid down by the first Grand Masters of the Grey Knights themselves, the secrets contained within were dangerous enough to warrant the lantern's use. For here, in the scoured ruins of what had once been known as the Arx Angelicum, greatest stronghold of the Ninth Legion in the halcyon days that had preceded the Imperium's sundering, was the accumulation of ten thousand years of lore about the dark fate that had befallen the Blood Angels.
The true names of sons of Sanguinius who had ascended to daemonhood could be found alongside the records of the worlds they had conquered during the Great Crusade. Scrolls contained the recollections of Acolytes who had faced the minions of the Ninth Legion in the depths of Imperial hive-worlds, while paintings showed the visages of spire-born nobles who had succumbed to the lies of false angels. Books made of human skin and held in place by chains of cold iron contained the autobiographies of self-aggrandizing warlords, and gene-locked hololiths contained the last words of mad seers who had glimpsed the surface of the Harbinger Star.
After passing through the five gates that barred the entrance to the Mausoleum, answering the ancient questions and submitting herself to the purity tests that guarded each, Ekaterina had spent an hour in meditation before the adamantium memorial upon which were engraved the names of the loyalist Blood Angels who had died on Isstvan III. Only then had she ventured into the labyrinthine corridors. Like its defenses, the layout of the facility had been designed by the first Grey Knights, using arcane patterns to disturb the accumulation of empyric energies and nullify the baleful influence of so much dark knowledge gathered in one place.
In her three centuries of service to the Ordo Hereticus, the Inquisitor had become one of the experts in the activities of the shattered Blood Angels. She had seen worlds bled dry to appease the Thirst of roaming warbands, and set fire to the pyres upon which entire bloodlines had burned for the sin of heresy. She had come the Mausoleum seven times before, each visit separated from the one before by a span of decades. In each of her previous visits, she had come seeking something in particular : a piece of lore, a clue related to her current investigation. Now, however, she did not know what she sought. She had been drawn to Baal by visions that had haunted her dreams for the last months, where she had seen the Mausoleum, and heard a distant voice crying out. She had never been able to make out the words, but she could hear the desperation in the voice.
Consulting the Emperor's Tarot had revealed nothing – but then again, that was hardly surprising. As the millennium drew to a close, all methods of divinations known to Ekaterina had become less and less reliable. Discussing the issue with those few colleagues she trusted had revealed that the problem wasn't something limited to her. Something loomed in the future, something vast and terrible that blocked the sight of all seers. With this taken into account, her visions couldn't be ignored. Whatever that looming doom may be, if it was related to the Mausoleum, then it must also be related to the Blood Angels – and that made it Ekaterina's duty to investigate.
And so she had come to the thrice-accursed Baal system. Her ship had provided the correct access codes to the flotilla blockading the system, her tech-priests had cleansed and blessed her mnemonic implants, and she had come down into the dusty ruins of the Arx Angelicum on a servitor-piloted aircraft. Now she was here, her ancient lantern in hand – and she still did not know why.
Entrusting her fate to the Emperor, she began to walk, choosing directions on impulse whenever a crossroad presented itself. The low, distant buzzing of power generators was the only sound other than her footsteps. She passed before a row of golden masks with vampire fangs that had once been used by the priesthood of a feral world, walked past a pillar of wraithbone engraved with the names of every Blood Angel who had taken part in the destruction of the Craftworld Kher-Ys.
She turned around a shelf filled with bottles of blood held like a collection of precious wine that had been reclaimed from the vaults of a captured Legion ship, and stopped. There, before her, was a ghostly figure that towered over her. It was the translucent image of an Astartes, wearing armor of ancient design and holding no weapon. Its face was hidden behind a Mark-III helmet, and any trace of its allegiance had been scoured away from its warplate. She knew what this was, for she had seen it before, in three of her previous visits to the Mausoleum. Her master had told her about this, the guardian of the Mausoleum, held there by chains that not even death could not break.
Ekaterina raised her lantern higher. As its light shone on it, the specter appeared to grow more solid, more here.
"Are you the one who called me here ?" she asked. As far as she knew, the guardian had never spoken, but perhaps it could guide her toward knowledge that would help her find out why it was that the future could no longer be glimpsed …
Suddenly, the temperature around the Inquisitor dropped. Frost formed on her skin and the stones beneath her feet, while the eyes of the specter blazed with a cold, pale light. She closed her eyes, overcome by a sudden pain in her head as a voice echoed within her skull. It was the voice she had heard in her visions, but clear and understandable – yet still filled with despair and horror.
"The End of the Cycles sends its champion to steal the fading embers," it said, and she felt the words inscribe themselves onto her very soul. On her neck, she felt the mnemonic implant heat up as its sensors were overwhelmed by a deluge of input they could not make sense of. "The children of the Hungry Goddess will rend the heavens above the palace's walls !"
Her eyes snapped open, and she saw the specter's helmet right in front of her. She sensed something on her shoulders, and saw that the wraith was holding her, touching her and keeping her to her feet. The light in its eyes blazed brighter and brighter, painfully so, filling Ekaterina's vision with an intensity that grew alongside the pain in her skull, until she finally passed out. As darkness engulfed her, she heard the final warning of the Mausoleum's guardian, screamed into her mind after ten thousand years of silence :
"The angels will fall, the angels will fall ! The Angel will rise, the Angel will rise !"
Ekaterina woke some time later, laying on the cold stones of the Mausoleum. Next to her was her lantern, which was shattered to pieces, its flame extinguished. She felt a cold hand tighten around her heart as she forced herself up onto trembling legs. Of the guardian, there was no sign.
"Terra," she said out loud, talking to herself, trying to restore control of her own emotions. "Whatever will happen, it will happen on Terra."
She turned from the ruined lantern, and began to run, making for the exit of the Mausoleum. She needed to get out of there, to return to her ship, to clear the Baalite interdiction zone and send an astropathic message to all of her peers who would listen. They needed to go to Terra at once.
She could only pray to the God-Emperor that her message would not come to late.
AN : Happy Halloween !
This is the first of a series of interludes that will be published before the next big chapter of the Roboutian Heresy, the finale of the Terran Crucible, The Angel War. These interludes will serve to set up the Angel War so that the big chapter can be in the format I normally use : that of a historical record with short scenes and biographies/descriptions. I have several ideas for other interludes already, though these will take place in the Solar system.
I am still hoping to finish the next chapter of Warband of the Forsaken Sons before the end of the week. You would think that finishing that chapter would be easier than write entire, if shorter, chapters for Prince of the Eye and this interlude ... but you would be wrong.
What do you make of the guardian's cryptic warning ? What difference, if any, do you think Ekaterina's message will make ? Tell me in your reviews !
Zahariel out.