'Legion of the Damned' by Rob Sanders
‘How goes the Feast, brother?’ asked Ezrachi.
‘Badly,’ Corpus-Captain Shiloh Gideon lamented. ‘For the Excoriators, at least.’
‘How many?’ enquired the Apothecary as he approached. His right leg was a full bionic replacement and almost as old as the Apothecary himself. While robust and powerful, it sighed with hydraulic insistence and lagged a millisecond behind its flesh and bone equivalent, giving the impression of a slight limp.
‘Too many,’ Gideon snapped, running a palm across the top of his tonsured scalp. He grasped the hair that grew like a silver crown around his skull in obvious frustration. ‘We lost three more this morning. Occam, Basrael and Jabez. Occam fought well, but not well enough. I thought Jabez was dead. I don’t think anything is going to stop that Crimson Fist. The Feast may already be theirs.’
‘Brother Jabez will live,’ Ezrachi assured him. ‘Just.’
Gideon didn’t seem to hear the aged Apothecary.
‘Shame begets shame,’ the captain said. ‘Our failure at the Feast is tied to the loss of our Chapter’s sacred standard. I can feel it.’
‘Your head is full of Santiarch Balshazar’s sermons. I honour the primarch, but Dorn lives on through our flesh and blood, not dusty artefacts,’ Ezrachi insisted. ‘The loss of our standard is a mighty blow, but in truth it was but a blood-speckled banner.’
‘Rogal Dorn himself entrusted his sons – our Excoriator brothers – with that item over ten thousand years ago,’ the corpus-captain said. ‘It displays the Second Founding’s decree and is threaded with the honours of every battle fought in our long, bloody history. It carries the distinctia of the Praeses Chapters and our service in garrisoning the Eye. It bears the stigmartyr – the emblem that the Chapter adopted as its own.’ Gideon turned to present his own ivory shoulder-plate, adorned with the scarlet symbol to which he made reference: a gauntleted fist clenching the length of a thunderbolt-shaped scar. ‘It is much more than the blood-soaked rag to which you allude, and I’ll have you mind your irreverence, Apothecary.’
‘I meant no offence, corpus-captain,’ Ezrachi replied plainly. ‘As you well know, there is more than a little of my own blood splashed across that standard.’
‘Our brothers fight for a broken honour,’ the captain continued, oblivious to Ezrachi. ‘We are accursed. The Emperor’s eternal fortitude, once absent in the brother that surrendered the banner, is now absent in us all. It is our collective punishment.’
‘Is it not our way?’ Ezrachi put to him. ‘Do not the Excoriators, of all Dorn’s sons, feel the loss of the Emperor deepest? Do not the Excoriators alone know our primarch’s true grief, the agony of his redemption and the cold wrath of his renascence? Do we not purge his weakness and our own from this shared flesh through the Rites of Castigation and the wearing of Dorn’s Mantle?’
‘This is beyond our inherited sin,’ Gideon said miserably. ‘The loss of the honoured First Company, the near assassination of our Chapter Master, the failure and decimation of the Fifth and now this – one hundred years of humiliation in the making, right underneath the disapproving noses of our kindred. All as spiritual censure for the loss of Dorn’s gift – the very embodiment of our Adeptus Astartes honour.’
‘We have lost a great symbol,’ Ezrachi admitted, ‘but not what the standard symbolised. That is alive and well in the hearts of every Excoriator who bears his blade in the Emperor’s name. As they do here brother, at the Feast of Blades.’
‘Blades drawn in disbelief and sheathed in failure,’ the corpus-captain said grimly.
‘Is our standing in the Feast really so dire?’
‘I’m pinning our hope on Usachar and Brother Dathan. Usachar is a squad whip and a veteran. Dathan is young, but fast, and has a way with a blade.’
‘Some hope, then,’ Ezrachi said.
‘Usachar is chosen against Knud Hжgstad of the Iron Knights and young Dathan has drawn Pugh’s champion,’ Gideon reported. ‘It’s never easy crossing blades with those chosen to wear the primarch’s plate, but with the Imperial Fists defending their title and the Feast fought on a world they conquered, I don’t rate our chances. Even if they win, they’ll have to face that damned Crimson Fist in the next round. It’s fairly hopeless.’
‘So,’ the Ezrachi put to the corpus-captain, ‘it is time.’
‘I would enter the arena myself, but for the desperation it speaks to our brethren.’
‘Making your decision all the easier and more forgivable,’ the Apothecary persisted. ‘You have no choice. Give the order.’
‘I would not do this for a hundred worlds,’ Gideon snarled, ‘but for the dishonour we would endure in exiting the Feast so early and the disgrace to carry back to Eschara. I promised Master Ichabod a victory to lift the Chapter and carry our brothers through these dark times. I cannot return with both empty hearts and hands. News of our failure would likely finish what the filth of the Alpha Legion started. I fear the disappointment alone might end him, Ezrachi.’
The Apothecary shook his battered head. ‘Quesiah Ichabod is the greatest Excoriator to have ever lived. Those armoured serpents were lucky – and perhaps born so – but even they, with their lies and infernal ways, could not take him from us. Besides, he is now on Eschara with one of our best – the Chief Apothecary.’
‘I can’t look my Chapter Master in the eye and tell him I did everything in my power to secure victory when I did not.’ Gideon seemed to come to a dismal decision. ‘I’d privately hoped that it would not come to this. Nine Excoriators have fought for their Chapter in the Feast, yet ten were sent for such a hallowed duty. Only Dorn knows why Master Ichabod insisted upon his inclusion, but that is now the choice laid before me. Can he be made fit for anything, let alone battle?’
‘I believe so. We are pure of heart, but not of blood. As part of a former Legion and now as a Chapter, we are not alone in our experience of genetic deficiency. The Wolves and the Angels carry the flaws of their blood heritage on to new generations.’ The Excoriators Apothecary paused before continuing. ‘When the Darkness takes one of our number, it might appear to us a wretched palsy: the slackness of the jaw, the tremor of the limb, the blankness of the eye. Surviving Excoriators report the experience as a living nightmare, a sleeping wakefulness in which they relive the bottomless woe of Dorn’s most trying time – the grievous loss of our Father-Emperor, at least as we knew him. This is both our father’s genetic blessing and his curse to his sons. To know the possibility – for even a second – of an Imperium without the Emperor. To feel what Dorn felt. The profound misery of a primarch. The paralysing fear that even one as great as he experienced, for himself and for humanity, over the Emperor’s shattered body. To live the Darkness.’
‘Such details have little meaning for me, Apothecary,’ Gideon told him. ‘The Adeptus Astartes are bred for battle. We exist only to avenge the Emperor and put the enemies of humanity to the blade. I need warriors, not dreamers. Whatever the actual nature of this affliction, it does not befit one of our calling. If it were me, I’d rather my brothers ended such a vegetative existence than watch me live on in such a senseless state.’
‘Since the Darkness can strike any of us at any time, corpus-captain, I’ll bear that in mind,’ Ezrachi promised with a subversive curl of the lip. ‘While we dwell on such matters, you should know that the procedure I intend is untried and that the brother in question might not survive it.’
‘For the calamity he has brought down on all of us, I would lose little sleep over that.’
‘I suspected as much,’ the Apothecary said. ‘I inform you only that it in turn might inform your strategy for our brothers in the contest. You do know it is possible that his suffering caused the loss of the Chapter standard rather than his failure being the cause of the Darkness.’
‘What do I care for that?’ Gideon snorted. ‘He failed his primarch. He failed his Chapter Master. He failed us all. The only care I have in this is to find use for such traitorous hands. What will you do and how long do you need?’
‘Santiarch Balshazar has his way of managing the afflicted,’ Ezrachi replied. ‘A spiritual treatment that those suffering the Darkness survive or they do not. While I respect the symbolic significance of the Santiarch’s practice and the rituals specific to our Chapter cult, my method might seem comparatively direct.’ The Apothecary indicated a point at the back of his skull, where in the fashion of the Chapter, his thinning hairline met a scarred and shaven scalp. ‘The catalepsean node is located here on the brain stem. As the implant responsible for modifying the circadian rhythms – our patterns of sleep and elongated periods of consciousness – it seems possible that a malfunctioning node could be responsible for a loss of motor control and the experience of a ‘living nightmare’. I plan to drill through the bone and insert a hypodermic lightning rod into the brain. There I shall issue a localised shock to the catalespsean node, hopefully interrupting the affliction of the Darkness and reinstating the natural function of the implant.’
‘It sounds painful.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Good,’ the corpus-captain said before taking his leave. ‘I must travel down to the surface with Usachar and Dathan. The Rites of Battle begin for the next round shortly. The Feast waits for no one. Send word if your experiment meets with success. I’ll also need informing if our fallen brother fails us once again.’
‘How do you define failure?’
‘A living death. Or an actual one,’ Gideon told the Apothecary as he left. ‘It makes very little difference to me when it comes to Zachariah Kersh.’
I am in a place… of darkness. I have never been here, yet I know it well. My mind – like my body – is in sensory overdrive. Something far beyond my genetic inheritance, beyond the rigors of Chapter indoctrination and the suprahormones roaring through my veins. This moment feels more acute, vivid and keener than any I have formerly experienced. Every molecule of my being is devoted to it, like the seconds have been honed to a razored-edge.
Despite the intensity of this experience, the world about me is dark and indistinct. Everything, from the walls to the floor beneath my feet, is cloaked in a peripheral haze. I try to focus, but anything upon which I settle my eyes assumes the quality of screaming shadow. The howling gloom spreads like a stain, running into everything else and framing me in a vision of smeared charcoal.
I wander the labyrinthine nightmare of this place, weapon in hand, searching, splattered with blood that is not my own, knowing that brothers both lost and true clash about me. There is gunfire. There is death. I can hear calls of distant anguish. I cannot make out the words but know that they are laced with venom and cold reason. The hot ring of blades fills the air, before power beyond my comprehension is unleashed in the bleakness beyond. I feel its unnaturalness wash over me. My heart hammers. I am running, fearful, but not for myself.
I erupt from the maze and come to a halt in an open space. A giant archport blazes with the light of a nearby globe, set against a pin-prick darkness. I know not this world, yet its reflected radiance draws me in. I am where I cannot have been: above Holy Terra. The vista rolls and I feel the movement deep inside of me. I am aboard a vessel. A bastion of Angels, a cathedral amongst the stars. The bridge expanse beckons.
As I step between the armoured bodies that litter the deck in anonymity, I come to realise that this is not a colossal command deck. It is a throne room. Before me are three titans: fallen and terrible in the murderous ruin they have committed, one upon the other. Two mighty brothers lie twisted and broken on the steps. Their god-flesh is still, their fratricide over. The chime of battle hangs about their corpses. Their weapons decorate the deck. My own falls to the floor
Then, the centrepiece of the slaughter. The father of all lies amongst his fallen family. The Emperor of Mankind. A beacon in the darkness. Withering to look upon, impossible not to.
I approach as one might his doom, hesitant and uncomprehending. Child-like. The moment overwhelms me and tears cascade down my blood-flecked cheeks. I fall to my knees. I weep over my Emperor, for there is nothing left to do. No higher power to whom I can appeal. With His body held to mine I roar my defiance, like an infant freshly ripped from the womb. A new coldness clings to me. It saturates me with its despair. I sink deep within myself and find a greater darkness there. An Imperium without an Emperor. A fatherless humanity. An eternity without direction.
I quake. I know only fear and fury at an empty cosmos, devoid of answers. His head, in my arms, rolls to one side. His eyelids fall open and his divine gaze fixes upon the blazing archport. Dead eyes set on the dead space beyond. But there is a figure. Something I had not seen before. There and yet not. An armoured figure that steps from the darkness into silhouette, glorious against the Terran glare. Unlike my stygian surroundings, or the Emperor, eclipsed by His own brilliance, the figure falls into harrowing focus. Its movements are slow and deliberate and as it walks towards me it grows in stature and menace.
An ally? An enemy? There are no shortage of either, dead on the deck about me. I think of my Emperor and tighten my grip on His malevolence-mauled body. I clutch only the crisp air of the bridge to my chest, for the Emperor’s hallowed form has gone. I remain kneeling, as though my legs are now part of the deck. My face is that of a simpleton and my mind is overwhelmed with a grief beyond grief. I sit. I watch. I dread.
The revenant approaches. Its searing plate is of the blackest night. Each ceramite boot is wreathed in spectral flame. I look on as its incandescent steps fracture and frost-shatter the metal of the deck beneath them. The ghost-fire curls and crooks its way about the figure as one burned at the stake. It slows to an appalling stop and looks down on my kneeling form. Before me is an Angel of Death. A brother of the beyond. Devoid of Chapter markings, the armour speaks only of the grave: a rachial nightmare of rib and bone, a skeleton set within the surface of the sacred plate. Beneath, the ghastliness goes on. The faceplate of its helmet is smashed and a ceramite shard missing. The bleach-white of a fleshless skull leers at me. The glint of a service stud. The darkness of an eye socket that burns with unnatural life. Perfect teeth that chatter horribly.
‘What are you?’ I manage, although it takes everything I have left to brave the utterance.
It says nothing, but reaches out with a raven gauntlet. A bone digit protrudes from the splintered ceramite fingertip. I watch it drift towards my face with horror. The thing touches me. And I scream.
короче базарят два чувака из ордена Сдирателей, у них капец случился, потеряли баннер роты, но некоторые не особо расстраиваются, тк это всего лишь тряпочка, но это уже не первое несчастье - потеряли первую роту, чуть не убили чаптер мастера, провал и неудачи пятой роты и пр. короче не все гладко у сынов Дорна, а тут еще надо сражаться с чемпионами Железных Рыцарей и ставленником Пуха на Пире Клинков. а потом если победят, то столкнуться еще и с чертовым Багровым Кулаком. короче, бесполезно это, тк судя по всему те круче их. ну и все это на фоне синдрома Мрака - генетическое благословение и одновременно проклятие для его сынов - узнать, что испытывал Дорн сразу после смерти Императора - самое трудное время испытаний для него: видеть Империум без Императора. и все это сопровождается отвисшей челюстью, дрожащими конечностями, потемнением в глазах у боевых братьев, поддаться этому может каждый. называют это "кошмар наяву". апотекарий хочет проветрить им мозги и поэкспериментировать с каталептическим узлом, авось получится излечить братьев. ну и потом а-ля Черный Гнев и видения Кровавых Ангелов вкратце описание как я понял Дорна в битве Импи и Гора и его чувства. потом появляется Легионер Смерти, после сна.
