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.
Distillate
"Through Blood, we are made eternal."
Attributed to the Primarch Sanguinius, in the Annalects of Dawn, a text whose possession is ground for execution to the tenth familial degree by decree of the Ordo Hereticus.
Holy Terra – Thirty minutes to Light's End
The followers of the Angel had gathered in the depths, far from the sight of the Empty Throne's slaves. They came to the cavern that had been dug out of the accumulated dirt of millennia by generations of the faithful in small groups.
They followed secret paths through the labyrinth of tunnels that spread beneath the continent-sized hives that covered the surface of Terra, pausing to pay their respects to the idols left by their forebears in small shrines. Eventually, safe for those who vanished in the tunnels, never to be seen again – and there were always a few of those – they all came to a vast cavern.
Located several hundred meters below the nominal surface of Terra, the cavern was nearly two kilometers wide, and had been dug into a rough circle. Thousands of people had gathered there, from members of the bloodless gangs to workers in the Lightless Factories and clerks of the Administratum's bloated bureaucratic machine. There were even a handful of tech-priests, before whom the crowd parted in reverence as they made their way toward the great scaffoldings that led to the complex machine hanging from the cavern's ceiling.
No one living remembered how the machine had begun. As far as the cult preachers knew, it had always been there. It vaguely resembled an enormous inverted pyramid. It was called the Distillator, taking the bodies that were fed into it and drawing every ounce of blood from them before turning it into a potent elixir.
The teachings of the cult said that the Distillator extracted the spark of divinity that lingered within the blood of every human, no matter how high or low. Only the tech-priests working to maintain and improve it had even the slightest inkling of how it worked, though it was often whispered among the cult that it was the Distillator itself that guided the tech-priests' hands as they worked, shaping itself toward its complete form.
And at the centre of the cavern, directly below the tip of the machine, was an ornate sarcophagus, surrounded by various offerings : sculpted bones, trinkets woven from hair and dried skin, and the petty treasures found in the hands of the Imperium's underclasses.
The sarcophagus lacked any upper cover, letting those who could see past its three-meters high sides behold the one entombed within.
Even in a stillness so complete it might as well have been death, the figure still exuded an aura of barely contained violence. It was that of a Space Marine, clad in scarlet armor of a design the Imperium hadn't fielded for thousands of years. The helmet was missing, exposing a pale face whose noble features could still be glimpsed, even though it was thin to the point of starvation and beyond. The Blood Angel's mouth was open, revealing the ivory-white of his fangs, stained red by the slow dripping of vitae from the Distillator, whose dispensing beak ended just above the lips of the sarcophagus' occupant.
The gauntlets had also been removed, revealing hands into which were planted several hypodermic needles. They were connected to tubes that, at the culmination of day-long celebrations, were used by the cult to extract the divine blood and use it in their communions. Only the most blessed of the cult were ever allowed to sample the vitae directly – the rest of the cultists drank from a cauldron where a few drops were mixed with hundreds of litres of lesser blood taken from sacrifices, willing and otherwise.
The artistry that had gone into the decorations of the sarcophagus belied the materials from which it was crafted – pieces of stone stolen from the Imperial Palace's construction sites,
and scavenged bits of metal painted gold and silver with chemical mixtures collected from the rivers of filth running down the hives.
Amidst the carvings of eldritch runes that the artists had seen in their fevered dreams was a single word written in High Gothic : "Belphegor".
An entire side of the sarcophagus was given over the carvings depicting what the cultists believed Belphegor's life to have been. By piecing together fragments of their blood-induced visions, they had been able to construct a remarkably self-consistent mythos.
The carvings showed Belphegor, represented as an angelic figure, descending from the heavens along with his brethren to strike at a fortress of lies and iniquity, the vanguard of a great army coming behind them. The eye was naturally drawn to that first scene of descent, and from there flowed naturally to the next scene, where Belphegor battled twisted creatures with gnarled wings atop the fortress' walls, triumphing time and again against superior numbers.
But ultimately, the gaze of the viewer would come to the scene at the bottom of the sarcophagus' side, where Belphegor was struck from behind by several cowardly foes at once and fell from the wall. Small figures were shown approaching the fallen angel. The blood from his wound flowed into their mouths and they fell prostrate in worship, becoming the first of the cult. The rest was history, known to every follower of the Angel. The august founders had carried the Angel to the depths, where the slaves of the False Emperor could not find him. They had fed him their own blood, breaching the law against bloodletting that had been set across Terra in the wake of the failed invasion. And though the Angel had not awakened, he had grown stronger from the offering.
This, the cult believed, was proof that the Imperial law-makers knew of the slumbering Angel, and feared his awakening. Through treachery had they struck down Belphegor and his kindred, and now sought to prevent those who knew the truth from awakening him through their planet-wide interdict, impractical and all but impossible to enforce as it was. As the Annalects of Dawn professed, there was power in blood, and through the Distillator the faithful would unleash it.
It was the founders who had begun the construction of the Distillator. During the great war that had seen Belphegor fall, the blood of countless angels had been spilled upon Terra, and traces of that blood existed within all of those who had been born on the planet since. The blood of mere men could not raise the Angel from his torpor, only sustain him during his slumber. But, so the scriptures said, if enough angelic blood could be extracted and fed to the sleeping Angel, then his strength would be renewed, and he would rise once more and lead his faithful servants to paradise.
The other sides of the sarcophagus were covered in more esoteric though no less intricate scenes.
The followers of the Angel had spent millennia seeking the Echoes of Blood and the visions of grandeur and majesty – what weaker minds called abomination and madness – they bestowed.
Those who had survived the visions and the hundreds of Ordo Vigilus Inquisitors tasked with keeping a lid on the Echoes had tried to paint, carve and sculpt what they had witnessed.
The result was a mess of shapes, symbols and colors that had driven those looking upon it mad many times. Their minds blasted by the sight, they had thrown themselves onto the sarcophagus, cutting their flesh open on its many jagged edges and spilling their lifeblood upon it.
And yet, despite this, there was not a trace of old blood upon the sarcophagus, for every drop of vitae that touched it vanished within seconds, devoured by that which slept within. Dark as it was, it was still a miracle, and one that the cult's hierophants used as undeniable proof of their slumbering god's power.
As the last of the faithful trickled in and the entrances of the cavern were sealed, six of those priests now emerged from the crowd, standing in a circle around the sarcophagus, their back turned to the rest of the faithful. A hushed silence fell across the cavern, broken only by the slow drip-drip of the distilled blood falling between Belphegor's lips.
"Brothers and sisters," the leading priest called out to the assembly, still facing the sarcophagus. Thanks to the cavern's acoustics, his words were carried to all within, even those behind him.
"Sing with us, my brethren ! At long last, the hour is at hand ! We shall awaken Belphegor, and rise along with him to paradise !"
Together they recited the Lithurgies of Blood, chanting to wake the sleeper. Far above, in cathedrals and palaces, clocks began to ring the coming of midnight, while in a chamber at the heart of the Imperial Palace, a son granted peace to his father.
"In blood we find truth," the priests sang, and their words were echoed by the thousands of cultists in the cavern. "In the blood we shed in sacrifice is the truth of our conviction, and in the blood of our foe is the truth of our destiny. Our truth is written in blood."
At the culmination of the chant, each of the six priests produced a ritual dagger from their robes and cut their own throat. In their last moments, they moved so that all of the blood would flow onto the sarcophagus – one last offering after ten thousand years of sacrifices unending, willingly made by those who understood so very little, and yet knew entirely too much.
Blood splashed onto the immobile form of Belphegor as the corpses of the priests fell, dashing their bones onto the stone. There was a moment of absolute silence, as the cultists watched in rapt anticipation. Then there was a crack of ceramite coming apart, and something akin to an exhalation of breath. Within the sarcophagus, the ancient flesh twisted and tore. A great arm ending in a purple claw burst from the body's chest, followed by a naked torso and a beautiful and horrible horned head.
With exaggerated slowness, the Keeper of Secrets – for this was what the creature was, though none of the cultists recognized it as such – emerged from the ruined body of Belphegor, shivering with ecstasy at the sensations of the Materium washing over it. The cultists watching in rapture believed it to be Belphegor reborn, ascended beyond even his former angelic nature through the refinement of the Distillator – but the truth was much different.
Belphegor was dead, and had been dead for millennia, his body turned into a shell within which a seed of evil could linger, hidden from the burning light of the Astronomican by Astartes flesh, centuries of accumulated rituals, and kilometers of rock. And now that this light was flickering with Magnus the Red's ascension to the Golden Throne, the creature that had transformed the comatose Dawnbreaker Legionary into its host manifested itself in all its awful glory.
Yria the Seducer, who had fought in the Webway War of the Heresy, when the forces of Chaos had sought to pass through the portal beneath the Imperial Palace after Leman Russ had shattered its seals, smiled at the assembled cultists. They swooned in delight, their souls ensnared by its inhuman beauty. Several clutched their chests and fell, struck by sudden heart attacks. Others took knives to their own flesh, cutting themselves apart to reveal lesser daemons of Slaanesh brought to the fore by their Greater kin's manifestation.
"Come with me, my children," laughed Yria, lifting its arms toward the surface. "Let us claim our paradise."
AN : No creepy poetry this time. I am afraid people are ging to start to worry about my mental state if I keep going with those.
Hi, everyone ! So, as you have noticed, the speed of updates for this story has gone up dramatically in the last three days.
That is because, before releasing The Angel War, I intended to write a series of Interludes introducing its various elements. And because past me is an idiot, he thought that since Slaanesh's sacred number is six, it would make sense for the Dark Prince's greatest play to date to involve six Keepers of Secrets and six warbands of Chaos.
So ... yeah. There are going to be twelve of these - and then one more for good measure, one different from the rest, one I think you will all enjoy very much. And they are only going to serve as a prelude to the actual Angel War, which is still as the "skeleton" phase (but is already 7k words long ... Emperor help me - wait, dammit).
It's unlikely that I will be able to keep up the rate of one interlude per day for all of them : I had several in advance before uploading "Beloved", but I wasn't done for all of them, and while writing under a tight deadline can produce interesting results, I won't risk low quality for the sake of meeting an arbitrary deadline. I already wasn't quite satisfied with "Constant" (which makes sense, given that his warband was the one for which it was hardest to find a theme and a target).
Anyway, see you tomorrow. I need to go back to writing the one that comes after that.
Zahariel out.