A scrutiny of angels

[Welcheren]

“My forebears made war upon the holy fields of Terra itself,” brother Cyth intoned the litany, vox deactivated so that only he could hear. The hymn was ancient, older by far than any of the mock civilisations upon this blighted world. “That legacy resides within my sinews, within my bones, within veins. I shall not betray it.” The adepts of the stars are jealous of their secrets. Like others of his long, noble lineage, Cyth harboured the secrets encased within the helix-strings of the scions of Sanguinus. In addition, he bore mysteries of the order of the Blood Drinkers. “To deny the blood is to deny life, to deny life is to deny duty. To deny duty is to betray the Emperor.”

 

With his grip upon his own soul restored, Cyth returned to scrutinising the scene below him. It was lit by torches and moonlight. He gazed down into the belly of a vast crater. From its centre rose a ziggurat, crudely built but of monolithic proportions. It filled the crater from jagged lip to jagged lip. Huddled within its hard shadows were five altars of stone. Each held a single prisoner, visible only from the waist up. The remainder of each body was sunk into openings on the top of each altar. The hapless victims’ tongues had been cut out and their arms amputated. The nature of machinery inside the altars were unknown to Cyth, but the mute mouths twisted in voiceless agony, and blood glistened down channels cut into the surface of the tall altars. So much blood. So much fresh blood. Rivulets glided down with ironic grace, while a crowd of black-robed cultists hummed with eldritch harmony, making a song or a prayer with words that evaded meaning no matter how hard his Lymen’s ear parsed, filtered and replayed the sound.

 

Cyth was a veteran, an exemplary warrior of an exemplary order. That was why he had been elected to answer Inquisitor Manchu. He had formed part of the veteran guard lining the landing pad when the Inquisitor arrived upon San Guisiga. From the first the aristocratic grin and the politely phrased petition had ground on his nerves. The subsequent audience between Lord Orloc and the Inquisitor had been a closed one. Cyth could only speculate why the latter specifically sought an adept of his brotherhood. Several hypotheses had occurred to him. None were pleasant. Even as he returned his attention to the tactical exigencies of their current mission, Cyth remained acutely aware of the servo-skull hovering close behind him - Lord Manchu’s eyes and ears.

 

Slowly and only one at a time, the heretics below were filling chalices with blood. Intelligence suggested that this was a xenos-inspired cult. Clearly, it had cannibalistic proclivities. The process was painfully slow, accompanied by the persistent and unchanging hymn, its notes and cadences rolling on as if the cultists could not remember anything else. The interminable process irked Cyth, scraping on his nerves. Why had the Inquisitor sent him here?

 

 

 

 

 

[* Line from the Rite of Holos in Guy Haley's Death of Integrity]