He believed every word of it and in that moment so did we. We felt the righteousness of our cause and the necessity of our victory.
‘Onwards, men! For the Emperor. Smite the heretic! Follow me. To victory!’
There was nothing else for it but to follow him into the depths of the cathedral. We would have followed him then if he was leading us towards the depths of hell. It was just as well really, for that was exactly where we were going.
Step by weary step we fought our way upwards. Rivers of blood flowed down the stairs, turning them into crimson waterfalls. Burned meat and ruined flesh formed barricades built of corpses.
The heretics opposed our every footfall. They died in their thousands, throwing themselves in our way, being burned down by las-fire or blown asunder by frag grenades. They took their toll on our men, killing almost as many as they lost. More and more of our lads flooded in behind us. I could only pray that enough of them had made it to the city to keep the flow of reinforcements coming.
The air shimmered and one of those rainbow whirlpools appeared. Out of it erupted a horde of the pink-skinned Horrors we had encountered earlier, blasting flame out of their enormous fanged mouths, tearing men asunder with long, clawed fingers. The psykers around Drake responded with a surge of power and the vortex swirled shut. The daemons became marginally less stable-looking, one or two of them seemed to turn sideways on and vanish. The rest we swarmed into, shooting and stabbing. The storm troopers around Drake blasted with those heavy guns of theirs. A Horror bounded right up to me and opened its mouth to incinerate me. I stuck the shotgun in and pulled the trigger. Its rubbery flesh seemed to resist the shot. It expanded like a balloon for a moment under the force of the shot and only once it had become almost half again the size it had been did it burst. I half-expected it to explode but it did not. It mostly vanished leaving only traces of slime and a foul smell and a hail of shotgun pellets falling suddenly to earth.
Macharius swept past me along with Anton and Ivan and a group of square-jawed troopers. I raced to catch up and dived once more into the maelstrom of battle.
I was glad that there were no priests facing us. Then I thought about where they must be and what they were doing and my gladness gave way to fear.
The temperature was rising. My throat felt parched. My skin felt as if it might crack. It was a by-product of the evil magic swirling around us.
One of the psykers blasted a swathe of heretics aside with some sort of mystical bolt. Drake shouted, ‘Save your strength! We shall have better use of it soon!’
The psyker nodded abashed. It was the last help of that sort we saw. It was all down to the main strength of the Imperial Guard now.
Macharius led us, speaking calmly, exhorting us to greater efforts, blasting with his bolt pistol and slashing any enemy who got within reach with his chainsword. He was worth a company of men alone just for his physical prowess. The inspiration the sight of him brought was worth much more.
Striding towards a manifesting daemon, he looked certain of his righteousness and utterly confident of victory. He moved through the combat as if nothing could touch him, and nothing did. I have often wondered if Drake wove some sort of spell around him that day to prevent heretic fire from harming him. It seems like the only explanation to me. I have never seen any man walk as boldly across a battlefield. Macharius marched as if he believed he was invincible and we followed him as if he was.
Under his Lion banner and the banners of our regiments we fought and died. Metre by bloody metre, step by bloody step we made our way up the inlaid marble steps into the heart of the cathedral and the horror waiting for us there.
Ahead of us I could hear what sounded like a choir of possessed angels. The hymn was beautiful, haunting and terrifying. The words echoed inside my skull, singing the praises of the Angel of Fire, telling of his glories and the way he would reward his worshippers and punish those who opposed him. It should have sounded like an evil parody of Imperial liturgy but it did not. It sounded as if the singers believed utterly in the truth of the words, which I suppose they did.
It was all in dire contrast to the bloody work we were doing as we fought our way into the inner sanctum. It was in a space so packed with bodies that we were reduced to hand-to-hand fighting. The heretics fought with all the fanaticism of zealots defending sacred soil. We smashed them down in the name of Macharius and the Emperor.
The Sons of the Flame fought us every metre of the way. I clubbed one down with the butt of my shotgun, cleared another few packed metres of space by pulling the trigger and sending some more heretics to hell. Macharius chopped down more with his chainsword.
And then we were within the sanctum itself. It had been repaired from our previous visitation but not completely. Scorch marks covered the walls and floors. The lectern was still there though, as was that massive statue of the Angel in all its glory but it was no longer the focus of attention.
Ahead of us were massed ranks of priests chanting and singing their awful hymn. In front of them stood their High Priest, the focus of the whole devilish ritual. It was not he who commanded our sight though. It was the Angel. It had already manifested under the vast vaulted roof. The hanging banners already smoked and burned in contact with its burning wings. Around it everything seemed to shimmer.
It towered above us, seemingly a hundred times the height of a man. It looked bigger, as if something infinite were compressing itself into the tiny space available in our world. It came from somewhere else where its size had no limit or meaning. In my mind I imagined it larger than a planet, able to hold a whole world in its beautiful clawed hand. Its skin was the colour of bronze. Its robe was shimmering white. Its face was beautiful. Its eyes were filled with fire. Its wings billowed from its back in a cloud of gaseous plasma. It seemed immense but not yet solid. All of the flames in the temple twisted towards it, dancing worshippers genuflecting to their god.
It looked down on us and it smiled.
I felt as if it was looking directly at me. I am sure every man there did. It is a discomforting thing to come under the gaze of a great daemon. It was looking into my soul, seeing my darkest secrets, measuring every particle of sin. It knew me in a moment better than I knew myself. It knew all the dark and hateful things I wanted to keep hidden even from myself. It recognised me as one of its own. It made a beckoning gesture with its hand. There was an awful invitation in the movement. It called upon me to step forwards, to join it, to be purged by its cleansing flame and renewed.
There was a promise of immortality in that gesture and the fulfilment of all my dreams. I could walk forwards and join the ranks of its followers and become one with the immortals. I could welcome the presence of this tremendous cosmic being into my life and become part of its legion of worshippers and leave this place and conquer worlds in its name.
Visions of an eternity of splendour danced before me. I would be ruler of a world, many worlds. My enemies would fear me. Women would adore me. I would be greater than any king. I watched transfixed. I think it was curiosity that saved my soul, strange as that may sound.
For some reason I looked at Macharius, perhaps even then seeking to follow his lead. He stood transfixed. His eyes were locked on the daemonic Angel. There seemed to be some sort of direct communication going on between them. I wondered what he was seeing, what temptations were being placed before him. I was being presented to myself as a conqueror of worlds. He was already all of that and more.
What could it offer him?
I can only guess. It does not take a great deal of imagination to think of what devil’s bargain it offered. There is only one thing great enough for a man like Macharius to imagine seizing, only one throne worth taking possession of. I think the magnitude of the daemon’s offer was immense; the throne of all the worlds located on distant Terra.
It was possible I suppose. Imperial armies have been corrupted in the past. Imperial generals, aye and beings greater than Imperial generals, have fallen to the temptatio
ns of Chaos. Backed by the power of the daemon-gods, they have conquered huge swathes of the galaxy, temporarily it is true, but nonetheless they have conquered.
I think this is what was offered to Macharius. And if you want the truth, I think he considered it. What man would not? Offered the galaxy, anyone might pause and think. Though I might be purged by the Inquisition as a heretic for saying it, I know I would have.
Macharius looked grim. He frowned. His eyes narrowed. I looked at the heretics. If anything supports my theory of the temptation of Macharius, it is that they did not attack us. By all rights they should have. They should have struck us down as we looked in awe on their daemon-god. They did not.
I think the Angel sent them some subtle message that they should wait. It must have felt there was a real chance of winning Macharius and the rest of us to its side. That would have been a prize for it, a great Imperial commander and all his armies. It must have deemed it worth the risk.
I wondered then, as I still do now, at this temptation of Macharius. Was it possible that this entire conflict, the destiny of this entire world was merely one small link in a chain of circumstance that would bring Macharius to this spot, to open him up to this temptation?
Could a daemon really have such subtlety and foresight?
Or was this simply an aberration of chance, a moment when the destiny of two great beings became intertwined because of an accident? I do not know the answer. The only beings who truly do are not telling.
We stood enthralled, awaiting the outcome, while the Angel of Fire watched us with burning eyes.
Document under seal. Extract From the Decrypted Personal Files of Inquisitor Hyronimus Drake.
Possible evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake.
Cross-reference to Exhibit 107D-21H (Report to High Inquisitor Toll).
And so it came to pass that I found myself within the sanctum of the most unholy Angel of Fire. Surrounded as I was by storm troopers sworn to protect me, standing at the heart of an army of the Imperial Guard, I knew there was no safety. I sensed the vast web of incalculable power being spun out of the netherspaces of the warp, all focused on the massive apparition that loomed in front of me. I was given a sense of quite how small I was and quite how great evil can be.
It was a titanic dazzling thing, feeding on the deaths of its worshippers, drawing strength from the rituals being performed all across the city. The cathedral itself was a focal point for these, and I understood, for the first time, that all of those cages had been placed according to a very precise pattern, aligned in such a way that they would channel energy to this place at this time. In my mind’s eye, I seemed to be looking down on the city, my spirit soaring clear and able to comprehend the sheer awesome scale of the massive ritual. For some reason, the attention of the daemonic entity was focused on Macharius. I sensed that perhaps it wished to recruit him, to make him its servant. If truly he was the one for whom we wait, he would make a true and terrible vessel for it. I knew that this could not be allowed. There could be no more terrible threat to the Imperium than such a one as Macharius possessed by such a thing as this.
I was at the centre of a smaller pattern, made up of the brave men and women, psykers all, who had been assembled in a final valiant attempt to forestall the ritual. I felt every last one of them through the link we shared, all of the sanctioned psykers of all of the Guard regiments, all of my agents who had been dispersed throughout the massive army. Only a few of them were present with me. Others were scattered through the cathedral, part of the fighting regiments within. All of them, at that moment, stood frozen, all of them lent me their strength.
I looked at the focus of that hellish ritual and I drew on what strength I could. We did not have even a fraction of the power that was needed to overcome that vast ingathering of cosmic filth. Such was not my intention. I needed to disrupt that lattice of force and the whole thing would spin out of control, like a mechanical engine when sand has been thrown into its workings.
It was the only chance I had. I summoned all my strength and threw a bolt of titanic psychic energy at the focal point of the ritual.
Twenty-Seven
Macharius looked upon the daemon. The daemon gazed back. My glance flickered from one to the other. Drake moved up beside Macharius. Sweat rolled down his brow. Tears of blood dripped from his eyes. He seemed caught up in some invisible spiritual struggle beyond my understanding. All around people were screaming and vomiting and tearing at their own eyes with their nails as if trying to gouge them from their sockets. There was no pattern to it, save that they all seemed to be people who had come with him. Among the Guard I saw men in the uniforms of sanctioned psykers doing the same.
Even the inquisitor’s mighty will was not up to breaking the daemon’s spell. Macharius stood silently, seeing whatever vision the daemon had put in his mind, wrestling with whatever gigantic temptations it offered him.
All of our men were rapt in a mystical trance, just as much as the heretics who had summoned the daemon. Men knelt weeping, some caught fire and turned to ash and fell leaving only outlines of dust on the ground. Some howled the praises of the Angel and abased themselves grovelling. Blood streamed from the nostrils of the righteous and unrighteous alike. It was not just our men who were falling and burning. The same thing was happening among the Sons of the Flame.
I knew that I stood at the centre of some great swirl of events, that the consequences of what happened here would ripple out through the sector and eventually the galaxy, that worlds would live and worlds would burn in consequence of it.
Macharius looked up at the daemon. ‘I refuse you!’ he said.
As if taking strength from that, Drake spoke the words of a great prayer, invoking the name of the Emperor. There was a ripping, tearing sensation inside my head, as if the wave of power he had unleashed was so strong that even I could sense it. As suddenly as it had come over us the daemonic spell was lifted. We were purged of the influence of the unclean.
I raised my shotgun to my shoulder, took careful aim and fired at the High Priest. The sound of the shot was shockingly loud in the ominous silence. The chief heretic’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and brains. In that moment, all hell broke loose.
The swirling essence of the daemon descended upon the corpse of the High Priest. The body slowly rose, one eye dangling from an optic nerve torn from its exposed skull. The other was filled with fire. Great flaming wings emerged from his back, a sword of fire appeared in his hands. His ruined corpse had become the vessel of the Angel. Some of the sense of terrible presence was gone.
‘It has not fully manifested,’ Drake shouted. ‘It cannot draw on its full power. We can still overcome it.’
I was not sure I believed him.
The corpse advanced towards us. The flesh of the right cheek had been ripped away to expose grinning teeth. It looked evil and terrible and filled with awful wrath. Macharius raced to meet it, chainsword screaming in his hand. The daemon parried the blow with its weapon. It seemed impossible something so insubstantial could parry a weapon as solid as a chainsword but it did. It struck back, blade flickering forwards impossibly fast, a line of fire searing Macharius’s cheek.
Drake and his psykers started to chant then. A glow surrounded Macharius, of the sort you see depicted in religious paintings of the Emperor and his primarchs. It was the first time I had ever seen it in reality. I swear a halo of light had appeared around Macharius’s head. He looked like a saint made flesh, which was in its way reassuring; to survive this we were going to need the assistance of a saint and more even than that.
Macharius fought with the Angel of Fire. I thought I heard something over the roar of battle and the chant of plainsong. I realised it was Drake. He was shouting: ‘Kill the priests!’
We waded in among the heretics, stabbing and bludgeoning and shooting. I have never considered it honourable to murder unarmed men but in this case I was prepared to make an exception. The priests screa
med and died. The air where the Angel had been swirled; looking up I saw what appeared to be a hole in the fabric of our reality, a gateway to somewhere else, to whatever distant, Chaotic realm the Angel had come from.
All I seemed to see were swirling colours, flames dancing in all manner of strange patterns and bearing a resemblance to whatever real-world objects my mind projected on to them. They took on shape, like those castles you sometimes see when staring into a fire. I saw molten landscapes over which rose citadels sculpted from flame and around which fluttered hosts of fire-winged angels. They were assembling themselves into disciplined regiments and preparing to jump the gap to our world.
I tore my gaze away from that portal into an alternative reality and I saw that Macharius was still engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the avatar of the Angel of Fire. As ever, he moved with blazing quickness. His motion was a blur, too fast to be followed easily with the human eye. It did not appear as if the daemon had any trouble doing so.
The Angel parried Macharius’s blade with its sword of fire. If anything, its attacks were even faster than the general’s. I was surprised that anything could live when faced by the full fury of its onslaught. Every time that fiery blade licked out it seemed to impact upon the general’s armour. And yet, Macharius did not burn. It took me some time to realise why. He was being protected by the power of our own psykers.
As ever, Macharius had a very sound grasp of the situation. Of course, in all likelihood, he knew no more about how to deal with it than I did. On the other hand, he knew that there was someone present who did.
‘Close that infernal portal before it is too late.’ Drake heard and obeyed.
Lines of light began to emerge from all of the Imperial psykers and converge upon the stalwart figure of the inquisitor. He did something with all that power, channelling it into a mesh of potent energy that swirled outwards from his hands and surrounded the glowing gate. He began to pull the net tight. The opening started to close but not without resistance.