Three
There came a departure
Thy bidding
Not my father's son
i.
"You'll be taking your leave of us then, lord Angel?" The seated figure had stood upon his arrival, offered a sincere bow, then rested both hands atop his cane. Around his shoulder, heavy with frocks and braids of gold and crimson, was a black pelt of some gargantuan lupine creature. His hair was slicked back, the roots already gray, breaking into the curls of chestnut blonde.
Duke Arnluf Luftvin was an impressive man. Tall, but not overly so. His shoulders and straight-backed posture spoke of more martial hobbies, and his face was clean, save for two aggressive bushes that crowded his lip.
He was the newly, hastily elected Imperial Governor of the planet, and had been present on the Council since the first days of the Angels' arrival. Indeed, he had borne witness to just how little the Spitewielder cared for the indifferences of the Imperial Regency.
"We are, Duke Luftvin. I've come to wish you success in guiding this world in the Emperor's grace, and to assure myself of your reliability."
At this, not only the Duke, but the gathered noble emissaries went to their knees. The Duke took it a step further, coming down from the raised dais of his throne and pressing his forehead to the tile of the floor beneath the Chaplain's boots.
"I, as is this world, are humble servants of His will. I have already begun stockpiling supplies to send to you once we have received your order, oh great Angel!"
The Chaplain, nor the small squad of Templars gathered, were not unfamiliar with such abasement. The Spitewielder's helmet dipped in acceptance, and motioned that the ruling governor should stand. Almost reluctantly, as if it were a sign of deviousness to do so, the Duke rose. It was only the second time of the Duke clearing his throat did the other nobles do so as well.
"This gladens my heart to hear, Duke Luftvin. Castellan Lykanstirr will be traveling to your sister planet, Rorinsberg, within the month. You've made your oaths to him, but I ask again that you do everything you can to aid him. I have left him with a Titan's share of burdens."
The Chaplain turned and motioned forward three squires, all hard faced and serious, their tabards clean and cinched tight around their waist with common rope. Two stepped towards the Duke, while the last turned smartly on his heel and knelt before the Spitewielder, offering up the object in his hand on outstretched arms.
"For you, I offer three parting gifts. The first," He indicated the first squire, who offered him a crisp banner, folded to exacting standards, "is the banner of the Black Templars. You may display this to show that you and your people have been found…worthy in the eyes of the Chapter's Reclusiam. We owe you a debt eternal. Let none challenge you so long as that banner remains high and true."
At this, the Duke took the banner, his fingers rubbing together as he felt the fabric of it in his fingers. He looked up, beaming with pride and what was clearly a breath of relief.
"The second is more practical, done with the aid of our Forgemaster Malgur. In that dataslate are the blueprints and manufacturing lore of bolter-shell production manufactorums. I have skimmed it, briefly, but be prepared. The initial material and manpower needed will be intense." A pale skinned youth of a squire handed the Duke a dataslate with far less reverence than the others had shown the Chaplain.
The Duke called over an attendant, who took the slate and began reading it immediately.
"Lastly is something of much deeper significance and will drastically dictate the future of your world, governor."
The Spitewielder stepped closer, the Visage Eternal scowling down at the mortal ruler. The Duke took a single pace back, but resolved himself with what little courage was in his spine, and looked up at the towering figure of the Astartes priest.
"This is a citation of a Sovereign Scriptum, the written law of exemption of Imperial Tithe. With it, your coin, food, material, and blood will not be taken. You are now, instead, pledged to His Eternal Crusade. You will be oathed, until the very stars themselves shine in the radiance of our God Emperor Immortal, to His unending endeavors. You will sacrifice your sons, so that they might replace me and my brothers in the centuries to come. You will cast your iron into the stars, so that they might purge the darkness above. In many ways, Luftvin, your world has an even greater burden upon it. Will you rise to shoulder it?"
There was a heaviness in the air, like a funeral prayer. The collected dignitaries, though few there were for such an impromptu meeting, said not a word nor shifted their weight between feet. The Duke Luftvin looked at the ancient piece of papyrus in his manicured hands.
"The people of Rothusberg will not fail you, lord Spitewielder, nor the God Emperor upon the Golden Throne of Holy Terra."
At this, the assembled knights of the Black Templars simply left. Only the Chaplain lingered behind, the single glint of his eye lens glaring and unwavering. He offered a nod, then turned, leaving without further word. The Duke looked down to the scroll in his hand, hearing the weight of ages ring in his ear.
ii.
The two Castellans stood in front of Kestian's Thunderhawk, looking over the tide of bodies boarding their own transports. Inside, his personal squad stood waiting, harnessed, their eye lenses staring emotionlessly out of the open ramp.
"Tell me the number again." Kestian said, not bothering to look at the newly raised Castellan.
"Sixty, nearly from the first batch. We've more ready for trial. I'm told that there are as many as three hundred expected to come by next month's end just to be assessed."
At this, they both shared a moment of thoughtful silence before he continued.
"And the viability rate the Apothecaries suggested? Seventy-eight percent. Ven claims he has not seen such promise in two centuries." Lykanstirr turned the vambrace-mounted dataslate off, resting his hand on the pommel of his new sword. The cape draped over his right pauldron was still unfamiliar to him.
Kestian didn't speak, only removing his helmet and taking a deep breath of non-recycled air.
"You've a great duty ahead of you, Lykanstirr. Especially with the promise of such a high yield for successful candidates." He looked over to the newly raised Castellan, finding his expression mostly flat. Kestian turned, placing his hand on the other Astartes' shoulder guard.
"Too many see stewardship as an imprisonment. As a sign of decline. Look at me, Lykanstirr. I disputed the lord Spitewielder's candidate for this role because I knew you would fill it better. The Crusade needs a stalwart shepard to guide these people to righteousness, to instill in its culture the hunger to carry on that great and ancient legacy. You are not confined here, brother. You are needed here."
The other Astartes nodded, his other hand crashing into his breastplate.
"I serve, lord." Kestian kept his gaze, then nodded. He left him then, turning and boarding his waiting Thunderhawk. He would be returning to The Flail, they all would be.
All except him and his squad.
As it began to close, Kestian offered one last bit of advice.
"You are held above authority save for both our liege and the Emperor Himself. Serve His people, but do not allow them to delay you."
The ramp closed and the Castellan's Thunderhawk rose on growling, howling turbines.
Lykanstirr watched it rise, turn, then speed away amongst the flow of airborne transports. He looked across where his sat guarded by two knights, including himself; they were three of the remaining five Templars that would remain behind on Rothusberg.
iii.
Trooper Kurt marched behind his fellow squadmates in parade perfect order. His lasgun was tucked smartly into his arm, and his foot stomped into the rockrete beneath in harmony with the other men of the 1st Roth Janissaries.
He felt powerful in his full attire. He felt, almost, like one of the Black Angels.
He was dressed in a padded gambeson, over which was fitted the "Emperor's Embrace", a Rothusberg forged ceramite-chain hauberk. A chain coif of flak-mail and a simple, kettle fashioned helmet sat stiffly on his head. Dangling from a leather scabbard was his issued short sword, blessed by the lord Spitewielder himself.
Indeed, in all of his fine panoply, he felt indomitable.
This is what purpose feels like, he thought to himself, pride swelling in his breast.
As a youth, he had spent all of it watching his father float from job to trade to near servitude, aimless, without direction. His mother had died from an illness his father couldn't explain when he was just a boy. Since then, their lives had been a miserable sort.
But then the Black Templars arrived, filling the stars where once mass conveyors were their only visitors.
Their leader, a warrior-priest of his Chapter, changed the entire planet in what felt like almost overnight. The Duke changed without a great fuss, and laws and reforms came into being that brought about great changes. He remembered the look on his father's face as the deathly visage appeared on their small pic-cast, his voice coming through as a harsh mechanical buzz.
"I am the Spitewielder of the Black Templars. The God Emperor sends me to you to raise you into his grace. He calls, Rothusberg. Do you hear Him? Look upon my face if you doubt it."
His father had wept openly then. Kurt was too entranced by the broadcast to care.
"In two weeks time, subject yourselves to my knights. The Spite Crusade calls for more swords, do not be found wanting."
So he had waited those weeks and left his father alone in their shack of a home. He even took his younger brother, just a child no older than six, from his grandparents, and went to the newly erected space port. The city, already gargantuan in its size and populated appropriately, was brimming to burst.
Pilgrims flocked in from all corners of the continent, and soon he figured what would be the entire planet. It took them three days alone to reach the city center, and still they were no closer to the walls of the space port.
A queue so absurdly large, it cut a semi-permanent wall through a quarter of the Eastern Commercia District, Kurt sobbed at the site of it. They had stood behind a line of anxious people, milling and crowding and complaining and swearing and cursing and praying on and on into the urbanized horizon.
Kurt's younger brother, Ryndal, had been stoic through the entire ordeal. In the small hours they had to themselves, he would assure his younger brother that something better waited for the both of them at the end of it.
He was close to breaking by the end of the third week in the queue. They hadn't eaten, nor showered, in almost six days.
Great horns bellowed orders,breaking him from his misery, demanding the line move. Kurt took his brother's hand, and practically dragged him into the tide of humanity powering past them.
More than once he had lost his footing, tumbling, and lost grip of his brother. Each time, he would have to fight his way back up, punching and kicking into the crowd. The crowd was overwhelmingly men, and they all fought back with equal abandon as he did.
Men much older than him, boys his age, the ruthless and cruel misguided younger men in their prime. Every balled fist that pummeled into him drove him on further. He hated this weakness, he hated the others around him for reminding him of it.
Bloody and bruised, wheezing and broken, they had made their way to the mustering point the Angel on the pic-cast had called them to. Three grueling hours of walking and fighting and bleeding and more fighting brought them, blessedly, to the feet of the angels.
It was the same landing field he was walking to now from the parade grounds in front of the keep. He could, from where his troop marched, see the same gate he and his brother passed through back then.
Seeing it, approaching his regiment's designated shuttle, he went back to the memory.
The shuttles disappeared, replaced by a hoard of people, held at bay by a scant handful of black armored angels and their attendants. The same face he had seen on the pic-cast was before him now.
"It pleases me to see you all, and I offer you welcome. Listen simply to these instructions."
He turned, designating a white armored angel, who instead of wings, had two massive spider-like arms jutting from its back.
"Boy-children under the age of fourteen Terran standard years will be escorted by Apothecary Venestral."
He pointed to another angel, who wore a cape of red and black around his shoulders, his head and legs studded with silver rivets.
"Mortals of fifteen to forty, you will follow lord Castellan Kestian."
Finally, he pointed to a group of several human servants, all wearing a cream tabard with a black cross embroidered on their chests. An elderly gentleman was at their head, a massively pointed nose fixed firmly on his face.
"The rest, follow serf primus Tyren. The Emperor protects."
And so Kurt took his brother and offered him to the care of another boy, equally bruised and bloodied, and watched as they departed, several Angels closing around them and almost herding them into waiting avian-like ships beyond.
The heads of every Angel present followed and watched them.
From his place in the crowd, he could just make out the back of his brother's head, leaving forever. Some part of him felt detached. He had spent the last two months on this grand journey, caring for and looking after his younger brother, and now he was gone.
But this, he told himself, was delivering on the promise he made to the both of them. Ryndal would be with the Angels, and he would be wherever this other Angel took him.
He was curious, though. At nineteen Terran standard, he hadn't met the requirements to walk with his brother. He heard whispers amongst the crowd that they were being taken to become angels themselves.
Kurt hoped that were true. They were destined for little better than labor servants, or bondsmen, with where their lives would have brought them. He wished very deeply for that to be true for his brother.
He suspected, and was soon proven right, that he was going to be trained to fight.
And train he did. Every capable soul that arrived was, shockingly with little resistance, forcibly conscripted into two armies under the tutelage of the newly arrived Angels. They were housed, bathed, medically examined and purged accordingly, then driven into the madness of the Templars' training regime.
For two years he was drilled and trained, over and over again, to more and more exacting, harsher demands. Each one stretched and redefined the definition of the human limit.
The Angels themselves were their tutors. They were rigorous and unforgiving and without mercy. And so it was instilled into their minds their sacred and ancient mantra. Kurt had become a man, muscle built on top of his wasting frame, he had a strong and steady grip, and could dismantle and assemble his Lucius pattern lasrifle in under sixty seconds.
He learned to use a sword, and march in formation, he was taught to both read and write, and more than training; he was taught the power of prayer.
Three times a day chapel service was held. The Spitewielder himself led the morning and evening prayers, while an appointed priest of the Ecclesiarchy, chosen by the Spitewielder, gave benedictions during the afternoons. Kurt was taught hymnals, the proper etiquette of worship, and deepened his spiritual connection to the God Emperor of Mankind.
Those two years were both the longest and shortest span of time he had lived through. Sometimes he struggled to comprehend the new image of a man he saw in the mirror at times. Where once a wasted youth of lost potential offered nothing but a defeated, deadpan stare was instead the fiery gaze of a man who hadn't made it, but was making it.
At the end of his training, he was given a very short, private audience with the Spitewielder. All those who were "graduating" their two year induction were.
When word first spread, there was almost a mass-hysteria amongst the younger troopers. They became so exacting, so purposeful to their duty, they had begun attacking the older or slower members of their companies, so as not to fall behind in their scores before given audience to a man they came to revere.
He saw it amongst his own company, though he never participated, he was witness to more of the older members of their company coming back from night watch duties bruised. The young thought they were being slowed down, that a difference of three or four years would separate them entirely from meeting with the Crusade's commander.
His Captain had come in full dress uniform, sword unsheathed and demanded he follow him.
He brought Kurt to the chapel house and shoved him through the door. It was early evening, and the amber light of dusk filtered through the stained glass windows, creating inspiring murals along the stone floor and pews. At the far end near the lectern, the Spitewielder waited. Seated at the first pew was a young girl wearing the tabard of a serf.
Kurt had seen many serfs, and the Spitewielder on more than one occasion in person, but he had never seen the girl before. To see her here, now, was a weird dichotomy to witness. She was too small, too fragile looking to be in company with a being so large and menacing.
"Speak your name." The Astartes commanded.
Kurt didn't know if he should kneel or stand. In most cases, they had always knelt before him, as their supreme commander. But here, alone, in this too intimate of settings, Kurt felt a gnawing instinct not to do so here.
So he stood, and met the Spitewielder's gaze.
"Sebastian Kurt, my lord." The girl beside him at the pew wrote into a book sitting in her lap. She was no older than twelve, thought Kurt, thirteen maybe.
"Why have you come to my Crusade, Sebastian Kurt?"
The lone eye lens did not waver from him. The candles looming above his skull atop the Angels' backpack only served to emphasize the glare.
"I wanted to be more than my father, lord. For me and for my brother."
"Did you?"
Kurt blinked and fought back with every atom of his being the tears that threatened to burst from his eyes. He ground his teeth so hard he felt a sharp pain shoot into his jaw.
"Yes, my lord."
"Your brother is Ryndal Kurt." The Spitewielder stated plainly, barely letting him finish.
"Yes, my lord."
The Spitewielder turned his head to the girl. She nodded in acknowledgement and wrote something again.
"As has your brother, it seems."
Kurt's heart banged in his chest. He wanted to ask, he wanted so dearly to be away from this room just as much.
"Should we meet in the coming battlefields, Sebastian Kurt of the 1st Roth Janissaries, Eighth Company, Second Squad, know that it honors me to have your sword at my side."
Then the Spitewielder saluted him. A single fist to his chestplate, the chains around his wrist rattling. The spiked knuckles of brass glinting from the candle light.
Kurt returned the same salute, drank in the image for a daring second longer than he thought appropriate, then turned.
Now, he was marching alongside the colors of his regiment to a waiting troop transport to take him into the star sailing vessels in the void above. He was Trooper Kurt now, a man ready to build his own future, to serve his God Emperor, and repay the Angels of the Black Templars for granting him a purpose in his life.
That meeting had been two months ago, the culmination of just as many years dedicated to training, learning, prayer, and fortifying his soul for the bitterness to come.
Captain Sessian ordered a full stop of Kurt's squad, and they remained at parade rest just before the cavernous mouth of a heavy troop transport. Most of the honor delegations were loading into this ship. The other men, the vast hoard of bodies that made up the other founding regiment, his own, and the several that had come to Rothusberg at behest of the Spitewielder, were all making ready to board the transports.
There was an energy in the air that fed good humors into the greener regiments. They had not come to know the harsh reality that the Emperor's wars would throw them to. But for now, they were all fine men, armed and armored in the finest their world could offer, and trained by the very same Angels they would be fighting alongside.
He had not, however, managed any luck in the eight-week shore leave they had been given near the end of their training. It was encouraged that the fighting men going away should sow the seeds of their lineage before setting sail. Many of the men had returned back to the barracks with stories of anxious, heartfelt goodbyes to sweethearts they would not return to. Others came back and boasted, as if it were some triumph they had conquered.
Kurt had tried, of course. He was only human, after all. He had never known a woman, he barely remembered his mother, and had spent most of his life estranged from his grandmother. As a boy, he was sickly and thin, and so he had never developed the ability to strike up easy conversation.
There had almost been a moment, in a bar not entirely overrun with the perverted brevotto of other Guardsmen.
A small, pale thing with raven hair. Eyes like honeycomb and jasmine. She often worked with a lit lho hanging from her pouty lips. She did this thing with him specifically, where she would blow the smoke of it into his face when he'd try to take precious moments of her time during the busy hours.
He told himself it was love. Not because it was, but because he so desperately wanted it to be.
Every day he went back to that little hovel, sitting at the bar nearest to where the sink was, chatting with her as she would wash a dish, or grab another mug.
He had caught her on a slow day, a few weeks before, and they talked. And talked some more, and then more still. So much so he nabbed her address and secured her interest in a long, shared evening together.
But, at the end of the walk path to her door, he faltered. He was met with the immeasurable weight of the curse that all sons must bear; to be better than the man that had sired him.
What better of a father would he be? Would he even return home? A child, his child, would grow up without their father. Then what was he? Nothing more than an echo of an already forgotten man.
So, with a self loathing he had thought scourged from him, he turned down the road. And he walked. He continued to walk until the sun showed through heavy gray clouds threatening to bring on the rain. It was a long walk, one that Kurt didn't wish to dwell on any longer.
He thought of her nightly, and here again now. Too often he wondered what she thought when he had not arrived, and had not shown up any more after that.
And, guiltily, thoughts of his brother crept in. His liege lord had said, vaguely, that his brother had succeeded in his own efforts. Was he an Angel now? Could a boy no older than seven, maybe eight now be one of the armored knights that rubbed elbows with them?
He sniffed, resigning himself to the satisfaction that whatever was to come, it was better than whatever meager life either of them would have scraped out remaining where they were.
"Company!" His Captain yelled, his voice a thin, reedy rasp spitting from his mouth. "Board!"
Trooper Kurt set his shoulders, gripped the butt of his lasrifle, and marched up the gangramp to the transport above. He didn't so much as glance over his shoulder to see the final site of the world of his birth.
He didn't see the rain pouring from the heavens, abused by so many engines compressing and squeezing the atmosphere; Rothusberg weeping at the sight of her children departing.
He did not see the tens of thousands of families waving farewell from afar, the sound a raucous roar that would soon be overtaken by the bellows of engines.
He did not see the black-haired woman, waving a handkerchief into the air, shouting his name in a passionate, emotional cry.
Indeed, he did not see the gaunt face of a man missing too many teeth, his skin like leather, weeping his and his brother's names as the ramp began to close with a final hiss of Rothusberg's air.
iv.
In the far North of Rothusberg, its uninhabited ice caps, tundras, polar oceans, and tallest mountains stood as silent observers to the changes of the greater planet beyond.
In that quiet cold the Black Templars constructed their great Tabernacle, housing the five chosen knights to safeguard it and train a new generation of crusaders.
The fortress was cut into the face of a triple spined mountain range of no name. It sat on the border of the northernmost tundra before it gave way to the deserts of snow and bitter ice. During the spring, the fields actually bloomed into something picturesque.
A small village had moved to the foot of the monastery, and at the orders of the newly appointed Castellan, a simple wall was built around their settlement, bringing them into the fold of the monastery's defenses.
Built on two monolithic columns of naturally formed stalagmites, the Tabernacle's Eastern face boasted a broad platform capable of fielding two super-heavy mass conveyors at a given time. Today, it housed only two gunships in the colors of the Black Templars.
The lord Spitewielder trudged down the ramp as soon as it touched ground, leaving the other members of the Spiteful in his wake. He was greeted by three of the assigned knights to remain as guardians of the fortress.
"Lord." They said as they rose. The Chaplain nodded and moved on, wasting no time.
"Return to your duties, brothers." The gathered knights saluted and departed the platform, the Spiteful falling in step behind their master. Only brother Altus remained, standing with the banner at the open mouth of the parked Thunderhawk.
Fortress monasteries were a grand thing amongst the Adeptus Astartes. They conformed to the culture and identities of the Chapters that built them. For the Black Templars, of whom many forget them as descendants of master craftsmen and builders, theirs were castle cathedrals. Great, high towers, turreted carpet walls, crenelated bastions, murder-holes, the integration of round and angular points, and that wasn't bothering with the technologies buried in their bones.
Families would be bonded, servants taken, and they would begin their blood oathed serfdom to the Black Templars. It was, by his orders, to be a fortress entirely manned and defended, with the Black Cross of Sigismund adorning the chest of its defenders.
So, on Kestian's behest, they had appointed Squad Lykanstirr to the role of stewards, and gave Lykanstirr the honored traditional role of Castellan, to command the Tabernacle. He had always taken to heart the words of his long time friend and so accepted the choice and put it into motion.
He did not envy them.
The role of steward was a trial, a hardship as trying as any battlefield. Here, the future of the Chapter would be, must be, cultivated. They would have to mold the world, its people, and its future to that of the Black Templars and the Eternal Crusade. Harder, still, to do on an already established, thriving, developing Imperial world. But the Apothecary's findings were undeniable, and so the challenge was accepted with zeal, in line with their hallmark passion.
The baseline genetic marker of the world's populace read as a seventy-eight percent match for the Black Templars's gene template. When the Apothecary had presented him these findings, the Spitewielder had felt something akin to the Emperor's hand guiding him, firmly on his shoulder.
And now he was here, in a hollow fortress, hastily built, and huge devotion of resources committed to its barren halls. They would all be rewarded for this labor, in time, he thought.
A handful of trophies had been transported from The Flail to fill the rafters and alcoves with the mark of His crusaders. Murals, busts, old war trophies taken from the slain foes of the Spite Crusade's past, a small collection of banners.
He passed these as he made his way deeper into the heart of the Tabernacle. One had caught the attention of his retinue, causing them to loiter. Not quite in reverence, but in more surreal amusement.
"Surely not?" Said knight Behretor, leaning his helmed head closer to the display case.
"But…I've seen this one. If I've seen it, can it be an artifact?" Asked another Templar, brother Jakub. He turned his helmet to look at his lord. Where most of the retinue had SPITE daubed in white paint along the brow of their left eye lens, his was done in black, stenciled over the white cross painted over his faceplate.
"He is our Champion now. We should honor him as such. Do not lie to me and tell me that once that sword, in his hand, did not enrapture you." The Chaplain came over to the case, running his hand over the plaque beneath.
'Hreta'
Sword of the Emperor's Champion Wilhelt before his Ascension
A rather plain and unassuming sword sat cushioned within the caress of a velvet pillow. Its crossguard and pommel were simple black iron, but the steel of the sword was a bold and vivid white.
One ring of the original chain that bound it to its owner was left intact, after being ritualistically severed. He had been there, personally, to witness it happen.
"You know," The Spitewielder said, allowing for a tone of familiarity and nostalgia to color his words, "he would always fight left handed, without a powerfield integrated into his weapon."
The other Black Templars stared at the sword, no doubt remembering in their lifetimes seeing the blade rise and fall in the hands of its former owner.
"All for the rush, all for the challenge. He has accepted his new role with fervor, and we're all the better for it. So, yes, it is an artifact of our Chapter now, and generations to come will stand right where you do and gawk at their history, and we will be honored to have been present for its making."
At that, the Spitewielder turned, moving away from the display case and moving off down the hallway. The remainder of the squad followed, only brother Johann remained behind, appreciating a sword he had spent a good portion of his life as an Initiate of the Chapter watching carve its way through the galaxy.
He jogged to join them, coming alongside the newer members of the retinue conversing together.
"Is it true, brother? What our lord says about the Champion?" One of them asked him as he took his place beside them.
"It is. More than one mouth has voiced that he is the Sword of our generation." As the remaining member of their Spiteful founding, Johann had watched that same sword hack its way into the annals of the Chapter's history.
"After the hardest campaign of my service, it is an odd thing to think that same battle was to be its retirement, and also to be the same place this Crusade's history changed." He did not elaborate, his features hidden behind the mark IV helmet, SPITE standing proudly above his eye, written in the hands of a man long dead now.
"And an odder thing still to be a witness to the changes of time." Spoke the Spitewielder, not stopping or turning. His words tumbling into them in the darkness of the derelict halls.
The retinue stopped speaking, simply following the corridors, barricades, choke points, and gates that became thicker and more frequent the closer to the heart they got.
The walls changed from stark stone, to a soft, muted white. The lingering aroma of antiseptic liquids and harsh chemicals permeated the air. Bright lumens, intense and brilliant, denied the spaces of their shadows, and the floor gave way to clean marble.
Overlaid by the heraldic black cross of the Chapter, the prime helix stood as a proud sentinel on the walls and banners leading to the primary hall of the Apothecarium.
Guarding it, Castellan Lykanstirr stood in front of the gate unhelmed watching as the Spiteful approached. They came to a halt in a loose circle, the Spitewielder at their center.
"My lord, welcome. Apologies, I've only just arrived and was already here when word of your arrival reached me." Lykanstirr looked over the faces and eye lenses of the gathered retinue accompanying his lord.
The Spiteful were another quirk of the Spite Crusade. These were initiate knights chosen by the Chaplain himself as his personal command squad. Each Spitewielder fielded their own retinue, and they took the shape formed by their leader. This generation's was no exception.
Some of the warriors were more contemplative, more mercurial than traditional Templars. Others were men of great skill and fortitude. A small few had forged names of their own, and so the Spitewielder had moved them elsewhere, to be greater instruments. Many, Lykanstirr knew, were new members. Only serving in the retinue of the Spiteful for less than two years, having recently been raised since coming to Rothusberg.
"Venestral is inside?"
"He is, lord." The Castellan moved, keying the gate to rise on machining, clunking gears. The sound of active medical apparati chimed through the opening.
Not waiting, the Chaplain walked in, ignoring most of everything and making his way to the hunched figure near the center of the room, surrounded on all sides by banks of monitors and charts.
The hunched warrior did not look up at them. He was unarmored, wearing an upsized medical tunic worn by most of his staff. A red prime helix was emblazoned on the chest. His enlarged fingers worked at the key-runes to one of the cogitators he was immersed in.
Trained serfs, taken from both The Flail and Undaunted, as well as those in training, were attending the dozens of medical cradles lining both walls. These, the Spitewielder eyed with unguarded interest. The hunched figure did not turn his head to address the new arrivals.
"Fifty-eight as of this morning. There are a further nine from the latest trial that I must conduct physicals on. Another sixty potential stand waiting in Antechamber 1B. Beyond that, there are currently two hundred and thirty-four personnel that need to be interviewed and trained and oathed. Finally, next week we receive our first shipment of supplies and equipment from Pharum, the quality of which I will test before introduction into our already established vaults."
The breakdown was given clinically, almost mechanically, without pause or hesitation. He never so much as slowed down in his typing, his eyes unblinking as he continued to key in streams of data.
"Ten months before we're operating at a "skeleton crew" capacity. It'll be another thirteen or fourteen to have this place competently staffed to efficiency. Once these are of maturity, this fortress will be one of the greatest bastions in the Segmentum." At this, he motioned to the cradles around them, medical serfs hovering over them and adjusting dials and tubes.
The Chaplain ran his eyes over the room, nodding a single time.
"As only you could do, Venestral."
With a final, deliberate click, the figure turned.
His face was aggressively overrun with freckles, a pair of them even visible on the center of where his lips met, adding a curiously pleasant aesthetic to his cold features. A thin crop of dirty blonde hair and richly blue eyes made up the rest of a face without scarring. Indeed, its proportions were not entirely flattened by his ascension to Astartes.
The head Apothecary of the Spite Crusade made no further comment, leaning back in the chair he occupied, folding his arms and sheathing his hands into his armpits.
"You are sure of your desire to remain here, Apothecary?" The Chaplain strode around the banks of cogitators, taking a random clipboard and reading over it.
"Such grand ambitions require diligent orchestrators, Spitewielder. You are to entrust these plans with another?" The Apothecary asked, not having moved a muscle.
"And you would leave the Crusade in the hands of your apprentice?"
In almost all things, coming from the Spitewielder, this would have been a pointed barb. Here, it was an honest and simple question.
"Iyan is a capable mender. He and the new blood, Edvin will be enough. There is too much here that requires my personal ministrations to see to fruition." The Apothecary stood, walking over to one of the cradles that the staff were most gathered to.
"There's much promise amongst the populace. This batch alone, Throne, the results we got back. Our lowest projection? Seventy-two percent. I've worked on far, far worse odds than that, brother." He handed a data slate to a waiting attendant, then spoke a few words to others. The serfs dispersed, attending to their new duties.
"And you've taken…samples from this group?" Asked the Spitewielder, chewing on the words.
"I have, and will do so on all that manage to hit that close-to-gold ratio."
The two Astartes looked at one another.
Here was the grand scale of vision and ambition made manifest. The Spitewielder was expressionless beyond that grimace of his visor, but his tone took on a charged cadence.
"Make your final wishes known to me."
There was a long pause where the Apothecary seemed to ignore the statement, focusing on several other things between the cradle he currently occupied, and a never ending cycle of data slates being presented and signed off on.
"You've not chosen a proxy to attend in your absence." Venestral said without looking away from his work.
A deep, rasping sigh emanated from the clenched teeth of the Chaplain's helmet.
"Too much change and too little time. You will make due without one."
There was another moment of silence before he replied.
"That seems like an oversight."
Making no reply, the Chaplain strode to the cradle the Apothecary loomed over. He leaned to look inside, knowing what he'd see.
A boy, no older than eight or nine by Terran standards, was in a medically induced coma, while his insides were laid open and bare, tracts of skin flayed back to reveal the muscle or bone or nerves beneath. Tubes and cables to and from him looped in snaking heaps. His eyes twitched all the while.
This boy was being made ready for his transmutation into the ranks of the Emperor's Angels of Death to become an Astartes of the Black Templars.
On the ninth day of their arrival to the planet, the Spitewielder had ordered his cult Apothecary to conduct examinations and tests of the local populace. Days later he had been summoned to The Flail's bowels, where Venestral had first told him of Rothusberg's higher than average compatibility rate.
Most Astartes Chapters operate on what is known in varying pseudonyms as the "Silver Ratio", where the acceptance rate of their Chapter's successful genetic encoding onto a viable aspirant fell between forty to sixty percent. Some Chapters, much more it was likely, operated even under that ratio, receiving scarce handfuls of new influxes of recruits in a given generation.
Rothusberg was nestled in that fable, that myth, of as close to a "Golden Ratio" as could be expected. Numbers like this had not been seen, according to The Flail's records, since the time of Legions. So it was with great hunger and devotion did the Spite Crusade turn its machinations towards the harvest and construction of new Astartes.
Already their first harvest was plentiful, the fifty-eight souls chosen were here, in these cradles, beginning the process of hormone, bone, and muscle acceleration to enable them to take on the organs and rigors of becoming homo Astarte. Yet, even with such a high probability rate, there was no assurance the aspirants would live through the first of the coming dozens of surgeries that laid before them.
But a higher yield to pick from meant more were likely to survive, meaning that the Black Templars of the Spite Crusade could swell in number.
"I will leave Olio to attend to their spirits. You will seat him as nothing less than my vassal." Venestral raised an eyebrow to the Spitewielder's words.
"He is the head of your Reclusiam's clergy." Venestral said.
"And in the absence of a Chaplain, I can think of none amongst the Crusade more fitting for the duty." The Spitewielder turned his singular gaze to the Apothecary, reaching out and grabbing his shoulder. Contact like such made the Apothecary uncomfortable, but did not resist his lord.
"Needs must, Venestral. You and I, Wilhelt, Kestian, all of us labor for a greater purpose. I face the horrors of this age knowing there are men like you at work to bring about a future worth suffering for."
"You do not need to give me a speech, brother." Venestral took the Chaplain's arm and removed it from his shoulder. "I know my duty. I am here, committing to it."
The Apothecary turned back to his work, holding his hands out for the serfs to clean and glove them.
At once, the lights in the room went pitch, servo skulls hovering in perfect synchronicity above them turned on fine point torches and shown them onto the boy below. Silently, serfs gathered around with tools offered up on sterile steel trays. Venestral, now draped in surgical garb, turned his head to the Chaplain.
"Leave now. I must do this great work you've steeped upon mine shoulders, Spitewielder."
One last glance to the cradle offered the Spitewielder the name of its occupant.
Dipping his head to the side, he made a hushed murmur just before the squealing whine of a surgical saw began to buzz.
Ryndal.
