The Spite Crusade

[Spite]

 

Part I

 

Feed the Horses

 

One

 

Mundane divinity

The too human familiarity of Angels

Survived by

 

i.

 

“At the beginning, in my younger years, I did not think it possible that man alone could change the way of the stars. 

“I thought it the purview of His great Angels, and those iron behemoths shaped in His image. That only they, in His divine power, could reach out their hands and wring from the stars the yokes of their fortunes and bounties and treasures so that Mankind might prosper.

“It wasn’t until Anchreus that I saw just what Man could do. 

“Men, flesh, blood, of tissue and sinew unchanged and unblessed. By their thousands. By the very tide of their bodies, I saw as they stacked one another up, chewed through by bullet and las, they changed fate.

“A rout made into victory by flesh. An unwinnable battle won, because of the bounty of flesh Man had to offer. Castles unassailable, assailed unto ruination, by Man.

“It tore me to my foundations. The sight quite literally drove me to a sort of personal madness, an affliction of the spirit my liege would say. He is like that, both painfully aloof and vague, but blunt unto the point that it borders on rude, even accusatory. 

“You are welcome here, Historitor Acenya Bhabli. The Spite Crusade welcomes all pilgrims. I cannot take you to the lord Spitewielder now, nor his commanders, but I can take you to his knights.

“My dear, are you well? You look rather, I’m sorry, not pale, but a…mauve?”

Acenya Bhabli caught the shoulder of the older man, steadying herself. Translation fatigue, she thought. She could picture the shipboard medicae advising that her new medication would aggravate the symptoms. 

She offered the older man, the appointed liaison who had been awaiting her arrival at the docking hangars aboard the Astartes battle barge The Flail, flagship of the Spite Crusade, and home to the Black Templars crusaders forming its backbone.

The liaison, an aged man in a cream robe with a black woolen rope around his waist, older in feature if  not gusto, was still staring at her, a look of paternal concern tugging at the folds and wrinkles of his eyes.

“I’m well, sir, thank you. Translation fatigue, I’m told.” She smoothed out the crinkles of her tunic, clearing her throat to make up for the lapse. “His knights, you were saying?”

The liaison, Tyren, turned to stern, his crooked nose preferred over his finger in directing her.

 “Follow me this way, Historitor Acenya Bhabli. There are few on board, him, the Castellan, their squads. The rest are below, completing the last of their preparations before departure.”

He led them away through various corridors, both immense in scale and claustrophobic in its immediacy. She had been led to believe, before her master had sent her on this task, that the Templars were somewhat ostentatious. That the insides of their vessels were gilded bow to stern, and that every panel inside would be lined with a sector’s worth of gold and jewels decorating them. 

Most areas were spartan, left bare, save for the heraldic cross of the Black Templars Chapter and candles left in their loneliness. Almost every archway and door carried the icon. Either acid etched, carved, or embossed, each one was different from the last. Some were deep stones of jet, others dull and uninteresting blackened iron. 

The Flail was old, and she showed her age in the cavities that ran throughout her bones. Ancient prayer scrolls from thousands of years ago, barely tattered moth-scraps left on grisled wax seals that were much more grime than purified wax. She sensed an air of melancholy running through it, which she found both highly perplexing of an Astartes vessel, and profoundly sad. 

She spent many months aboard shift ships, and the last handful aboard the mass transport vessels of civilian ships. Crowded, teeming, so full of life. Certainly cramped, and containing very little privacy. And the noise, so many people corralled together, confined to claustrophobic quarters. 

 She hadn’t seen much on the approach to the docking hangars, but she heard the pilots almost fawning over the sight of the ship. On more than one occasion, she had heard the term “halcyon” used by them before landing. Now that she was inside, she felt something between let down and intrigued.

She came to appreciate quickly that most starships were, in fact, ships and shared a great deal of mundane familiarity amongst each other. Halls were just halls, no matter their grandeur or ornamentation. Scaffolds were just scaffolds, regardless of the intricate, painstakingly hand etched blessings carved into their handrails.

However, there were some places that demanded reverence. Ancient places that floated out amongst the stars, sheathed in the ships they called home. Tyren had brought her near the threshold of such a place.

Black and white checkered tiles led on until her vision could only see where the narrowed walls met. Worn from years of use, yet not a single stain or crack hobbled their surfaces. The walls themselves were brushed brass, with black iron sconces burning at regular intervals, the flames throwing arcs and moors of light, cascading onto forever in the dim glow of millions of trillions of reflections proliferating on and on and on.

Paintings of individual warriors, of the Templar knights, hung from the walls, their features jumping between portrayals of stoicism, pride, and unbridled zeal. Most of these were unhelmed, save for a few wearing the most ancient marks of that sacred attire.

Hauntingly, the far, faded echoes of hymnal chanting reverberated from the depths, beyond where the light reached. It was deep, unceasing, coming from dozens of voices. Without knowing why, she felt that she could tell the chanting was old. Old old, from a time long before that the actual grasping understanding of its length was laughable. 

Banners depicting richly sewn scenes of triumph, loss, somber humility, and righteous victory hung heavy, looming even, as sentries from the ceiling on thick chains. Here was the depiction of a bold knight in black armor, wielding a mace with the very same death’s head the knight wore.

The figure seemed vindictive and righteous, surrounded by knights in uniform black and white checkered armor. The scene was intricately wrought, sewn in the classical Gothic style that dominated most Ecclesiarchal domains and that of nobles. Yet here, it lacked the ostentatious nature. Indeed, all of it held a heavy air of reverence. She looked at the other banners.

There, another this done in fine golden thread, with rich reds and oranges laced throughout its stitching. This knight was hewn into the shape of a giant astride a field of fel corpses, the same mace as before held before him as if in warding.

Her eyes drank more and more in. Each banner detailed a similar skull-faced figure, similar but slightly different from banner to banner, yet all carrying what she believed to be some ancient relic of the Chapter. She craned her neck straight up to look at the closest banner. This one was newer, the fabric still vibrant and fresh.

On its pallid surface, three warriors rested at a respectful kneel, two of their armor trimmed in red, the third in silver. A fourth figure was prone, abasing himself at the feet of yet another warrior whose features were that of a human skull. In its outstretched hands, the skull-headed mace. The scene was surrounded by flames, warriors in crimson armor staked atop black spears. 

She let out a startled gasp as the liaison placed a firm hand onto her shoulder, stopping her from taking the step she was unconsciously making onto the checkered tiles.

“We are not allowed here.” Tyren said. All warmth had left his voice. 

“What is this place?” She asked, entranced now with the mystery of it more than the gaudy nature of the hall.

“It is their temple. Their church is beyond the dark, there. Only they are allowed here, and certainly we mustn’t cross the threshold. Do not step onto those tiles, Historitor Acenya Bhabli.”

“It’s…just Bhabli.”

“They will kill you, Historitor Acenya Bhabli. They will kill you and that will be the end of it. Take nothing else I say to heart but this; go no further.”

She made to respond but was interrupted by the dim shadows.

“He is correct.”

They both startled. The voice came from the blackness beyond the light of the sconces, deep and mechanical. She felt her guts tighten, and a thin sheen of sweat coated her skin.

A slow, steady thump echoed down the hall. The rattling of chains and the teeth aching hum of an active engine crept from the dark. An immense figure of black armor confidently strode into the dull torch light. 

“Castellan Kestian.” The old man offered a deep bow.

“Why are you here, Tyren?” The giant asked, coming to rest just meters from them.

“Mistress Jasper advised me to take Historitor Acenya Bhabli through here to the Solemn Archive to await the lord Spitewielder.” Replied Tyren, not moving from his proffered state.

“This is the Historitor?” The Astartes asked.

“Yes, lord Castellan.” Tyren replied.

“This was to be Jasper’s duty?” 

“Yes, lord Castellan. But she entrusted it to me, citing other pressing matters she needed to attend to.” Said Tyren, wrinkling his nose.

“Serf Jasper is a girl of thirteen, Tyren. You are…what? Fifty-seven now?”

Tyren frowned. “Fifty-eight, lord Castellan.”

As he made his attempt to abase himself to the Castellan, Bhabli took in the full features of the knight before her.

He was without a helmet, allowing her to see the rich ochre skin, like a fine, deep leather. A well kept beard trimmed his features, only giving way to a trio of diagonal scar tissue, reaching from the crest of his bald scalp, carving just near his left eye, catching at the corner of his lip, before finally disappearing into the collar of his gorget.

 Slung over his shoulder was a finely crafted ax that gave a faint reflection of blue in its recesses. It was heavily ornate and finely decorated, but she could make little of its features from the light.

The knight wore a tabard belted at the waist by a chain. The same symbol shown on his chest as she had seen at every entryway of the ship. A chevron adorned his right pauldron, three stylized morning stars the color of sage over a field of white. 

He would have been handsome had his features not been enlarged by the transhuman reshaping that forged him into homo Astarte. 

“The Primarch sent you?” He asked, turning his brown eyes upon her for the first time. 

That direct look shot a bolt of pain into her chest from the terror response. Transhuman dread was still difficult to shake off even for those who were more accustomed to being around them. You weren’t being looked at like another person. You were being meticulously killed a thousand times over as efficiently and brutally as possible in their gaze.

She was held steady, impossibly immobile by the giant’s hand engulfing her shoulder. Without her even seeing it, he had bent to a knee and held her steady. His eyes were now directed to the top of her shawl that hid her face.

“My apologies, Historitor Acenya Bhabli. Too many days spent with those used to marching beside us. Are you well?” The Astartes sounded genuine. 

When the shaking had left her bones, she took in a deep breath and nodded.

“I’m fine, thank you. I’ve a touch of translation fatigue, it’ll pass, and I’m smart enough to admit that, yes, you did terrify me just then, and no, you do not have to apologize again.”

“Lady Historitor! Mind yourself, that is the-” Tyren was cut off from his chastisement by the warrior’s single raised finger.

“You are expected to meet with the lord Spitewielder in the Solemn Archives?” Bhabli nodded as the Templar rose to his feet. 

He turned to Tyren, gave him new orders, accepted the elder man’s bow, and turned.

 One massive gauntlet rested against her back and she was being led further down the hallway, away from the decorated hall they had met.

“I was actually intending to meet with my brothers there. I will take you.”

 

ii. 

 

 

The Solemn Archives were the names given to the vast halls that contained all repositories of information, lore, history, and documents collected since The Flail was a fledgling warship in her birth-anchor. 

The entrance was guarded by a single knight. His armor was largely unadorned save for a single chain of silver hanging from his left pauldron. The charm at the end was a heavily stylized version of their Chapter’s heraldic cross.

Drawing his sword in a left handed grip, the Templar came forward. In his free hand, a beaten lantern of black-iron barely illuminated the hallway. A strong smell of perfumed smoke crept from the bent and tattered corners that met the candle box’s glass surface. Inhaling the smoke made her eyes throb and her pulse became a beating tattoo in her temple.

“Halt ert name thyselves!” The warrior’s voice was strong, assured, almost cocky as it carried away into the blackness they had traversed. 

“Step aside, boy.” Came the Castellan’s reply. The Templar did not waver, though he hesitated before activating the sword.

“That pause would have cost you, Initiate Hunfrid.” Clapping the guardian knight on his pauldron, Kestian pushed past him. “It is a good thing I am not the one seeking admission into the Reclusiam. The Spitewielder would not have found your familiarity with me a virtue.” 

Chastised, the knight saluted, jogged past to open the door, his head dipped in dogged resignation as they left him. 

They were greeted with towering shelves spanning into the hazy dark. Distantly, softly, the sound of a heavy organ rang hauntingly throughout the endless isles of contained knowledge. The space towered above her, yet she felt compressed, consumed by the vastness that stretched forever upwards and forwards.

She could see stretches of finely crafted wooden floors, corralled by beautifully wrought iron banisters creating balconies in which different shadows played host to the lights its occupants inhabited. Corners flickered with candles, robed and isolated figures that were certainly other Templars, poured over books and scrolls and patches of torn cloth.

Pieces of art were displayed in their own cabinets. As they walked past, she would appreciate them, hungry for any details she could glenn for future recording.

In one she saw an intricately detailed landscape in miniature. Small figures of what seemed to be Black Templars amongst a broken city’s garden district fought against armored Astartes in oceanic green, of whom were adorned in spikes. Though the Templars looked odd, their armor etched in black and Imperial gold, icons of thunder bolts and fists as frequent as the heraldic cross. 

A second held what, at initial glance, looked to be battlefield detritus. A rusted piece of barbed wire, a chunk of burned rockrete painted in hazard stripes, and another item that caught her curiosity. A symbol she had spent much of her recent life around. 

Near the corner of the display case, atop a cushion of black velvet, sat a broach in the shape of the Ultima symbol of the Ultramarines Chapter. Though this seemed more archaic, more ornate, indeed, there was a certain air to it that spoke of something both painful and merciful.

They walked for what seemed like an hour before coming to a closed door nestled between two shelves stacked either side with helmets. Each bore some grisly damage, no doubt the killing wound to its former bearer. Some were black, others gold, sprinkled throughout where she could see were a handful of cream and checkered patterns as well. Fewer still were faint suggestions of red helmets further up near the ceiling.

The Lord Castellan opened the door and held it for her. A hiss of escaping air greeted her. Inside were several more Astartes, each tending to their own interests.

“Greetings, brothers. I’ve brought with me Historitor Acenya Bhabli, sent to us from the Primarch himself. She has assured me that our lord is interested in meeting her.” The proclamation was greeted with silence. Every eye turned to look at her, but this time, she turned her gaze to their boots, tucking her eyes further into the recesses of her shawl. 

“He’ll be another hour, says his herald.” One of the warriors spoke, a seated Templar with long, curled hair. He was square jawed and stoically featured, closing the book he had been reading as he addressed them.

“Should you not be with him, brother? Being our Castellan and what not?” Asked another, this one of paler complexion. A thin beard trimmed his chin, with a buzzed mohawk of dirty blonde scything his head. He offered the Historitor a toothy, confident grin.

“He dismissed me.” Replied Kestian, closing the door behind him.

“Dismissed you?” The two asked simultaneously. 

“Did you talk reason to him?” Asked a third Templar, looking over his shoulder from the cogitator he was stationed in front of, his silhouette made more absurd by the many snake-like appendages jutting from his backpack. 

“I did.” Said Kestian with a knowing smile.

“That would do it, then.” The knight turned back to the glowing monitor, the sound of heavy mechanical clicks emanating from his corner, one of the appendages made a machine buzz sound as it turned within its arm housing.

“I’m sorry. May we slow down?” Bhabli finally managed, trying very hard to follow the conversation. Sweat crept down her neck, making the shawl stick to her uncomfortably. Her head hurt and there was a twitch in her eye she didn’t appreciate.

“My apologies, Histo-”

“Just Bhabli, please. Please.” She interrupted, turning fully to emphasize her point.

“Very well. My apologies madam Bhabli. Brother Kybert is inquiring as to my presence. Our lord is particularly choleric as of late, and has dismissed me from the current fleet junction going on.”

 Spoken so plainly, Bhabli balked at the casual nature of the remark. Especially coming from what was a lord Castellan.

“You were not sent to fetch me?” She asked.

“No, madam. I was simply leaving my meditations from the chapel and happened upon you and Tyren.”

“Tyren?” Asked the warrior Kestian had indicated was Kybert. “What was he doing at the chapel?” He looked appalled, the other Templars almost motionless. The Castellan raised a hand to calm them.

“Outside the Hall of Legacy, not the chapel itself. Tyren was escorting her on Jasper’s orders.”

“I have more questions now.” Said Kybert, his face pinched in confusion. 

“Lady Bhabli, could we offer you a seat? I can hear your pulse. You are under immense stress at the moment.” The Astartes who had been sitting in one of the stone benches arrayed in the room rose, gently taking her hand in his silver gauntlet, and gave her his seat.

“You are surprisingly gentle for Space Marines.” Bhabli let the words come freely, feeling from the gathering of warriors that simple plainness of word was welcome, even encouraged, here. She winced as she saw how the three unhelmed warriors’ eyes collectively twitched.

“Our lord has made mortal interaction and etiquette mandatory training within the Crusade.” Replied the warrior as he bent back up from aiding her down.

“How very Macraggian of him.” 

The Castellan laughed, as did Kybert. The warrior helping her let slip the edge of his lip in the flash of a smirk, but nothing more.

“He would probably find that both incredibly humiliating and painfully true.” The warrior turned, the edge of his silver arm catching the light from the other seated Templar’s display. He poured a small amount of wine into a pewter cup made to scale for Astartes. She took it with both hands, lifting the folds of her shawl before taking it up, and drank.

“I am Altus, and this is Malgur of the Forge. He is poor company, but not a displeasure to be around. That is Kybert. Him and I, as well as another of our brothers,  are what remains of our founding of the Spiteful.” 

She blinked. She felt utterly naked without her quill or servo skull. There was an aching pain to write everything she had just heard, to catalog and to push and to question. 

“What-” She began.

There came a knock on the door. All heads turned. The lord Castellan went to the door, pushing it open on silent hinges. 

“The lord Spitewielder comes just before me. Please make ready.” A man of middling age came  through the door, half his face covered by a gorgeously carved mask hewn in the features of fury. He turned and nodded upon seeing her. “Excellent. Please rise, Historitor Acenya Bhabli.”

 She did so. He made for the door, disappearing behind it. A final warrior joined the congregation.

A chorus of rattling chains and the smoke of burning candles filled the room. Adorned in black armor, a different, more profound black from that of his brethren, it was hard edged and cumbersome looking. Atop his backpack were three headstones, each of which hosted a skull fashioned from bronze. Atop these were votive candles, their flames strong and bright. Spikes adorned the vents of the massive generator.

Secured to his shoulder by chains was a human ribcage. She was oblivious to the symbolism of it. But it was a chilling site to see such a grisly trophy displayed on a warrior of the Emperor. This was not the gothic touch the Imperium festooned upon everything. It was simply a butchered man’s rib cage chained to the Templar’s shoulder, the charm’s heraldic pendants shaped into crosses.

Hanging from behind his tasset, set at the waist, hung a black tabard showing the white crest of his Chapter.

His helmet was like the one seen in the banners she had looked at before crossing Kestian. The singular gleaming red eye lens. The black cross branded onto the scowling forehead. The vox caster clamped between grinding teeth. All of this collectively, almost instinctively upon making the connection to the banners, forced her to look at his hip.

Hanging against a loop of brass, a war maul shaped into a grinning skull, a halo of spikes cresting it. A limp chain connected it to his vambrace. An aroma came off of it, deeper and more pungent than the smell of incense or the smoke from the candles. 

It was the smell of centuries of blood. Of slain foes and retribution. It stank of malice and hatred and something very specific, something more personal than resentment, but more meaningful than vengeance. 

There was a palpable scornfulness to its casting. It wasn’t just a lump of steel or iron or ceramite. From its recesses and in the pools where the light didn’t quite catch it was a deeper color still. The weapon was unlike any she had seen in her handful of years documenting the fighting edges of the Imperium, where the Primarch sent the very mightiest of the Emperor’s armies to fight and wage war against the encroaching darkness. 

This here was the man she had been sent to meet with, and to document and make historically accurate texts of, as per the laws of her newly found Order. Here was the curator of an Imperial Crusade Army, and of that, a particular kind of Crusade Army.

This was what the Templars would cite as a True Crusade Army. One commanded by the Black Templars, the scions of Sigismund, and sons of the Primarch Rogal Dorn. Here were warriors who had never left the Great Crusade. These warriors claimed a legacy that dated back ten thousand years.

And she was ignoring him entirely.

“Lady Bhabli, are you well? This is not the first time you have been asked this, I am told.” 

“You are the warrior from the banners I saw.”

The skull faced helmet tilted to the side ever so gently.

“Yes, but no.”

“Yes, see, he has a fancy necklace.” Kestian pointed to the golden cross, studded with rubies and ambers, hanging from yet another chain, though this, too, was gold. “The others were more humble.”

 A chorus of laughs came from the gathered knights.

“It is a long story, and one many Chapters have done since the time of Legions. Armors are passed down from generation to generation, from dead knight to risen squire. The face of a Chaplain will carry on even further than that, thus you recognize me. You see the face of my master, and his master before him.” 

The Spitewielder ran a hand over the skeletal visage of his face.

“This helmet looked upon the face of my father when he still walked amongst us. It has seen the face of the Arch Traitor himself, and the whoresons he sired. It has bled the foe under the skies of Terra. I am the face of the warrior from the banner, yes. But, I am a faint echo of an eternal spite.”

“He also,” Grumbled Kestian, “says a lot of exhaustive like this.”

Bhabli’s hands clenched and unclenched with the ache to begin writing. Seeing this, the masked man who had accompanied the Chaplain, quietly spoke into the hem of his collar before stepping to the door, retrieving a small yellow satchel, and offered it to the Historitor with a servile bow.  

She tore into it, tossing the bag onto the stone bench, fetching her slate and quill. The Templars had already begun talking amongst themselves. 

She made quick and short snippets of dialogue, explanatory and contextual notes, and maddened scribbles. Her head shot up once she had emptied the brewing storm of words in her skull, threatening to burst from her ears and eyes if she did not release them onto screen or parchment.

The knights were departing, the last words she caught mentioning a formal inspection before mass boarding. Castellan Kestian offered her a polite bow of his head, before donning his studded helmet. 

“Well met and best of luck, madam Bhabli.” 

Then the doors shut and she was alone with the man of highest authority in the entire sector. 

“Where shall we begin, Lady Historitor?” 

 

 

iii. 

 

“You are coming from Demeter IV, with the armor reinforcements? That was several months’ travel for you, Lady Bhabli.” 

They had retired into one of the anterooms adjacent to where they had met. Here, several chairs designed to both support an armored Astartes, but also provide some semblance of comfort to an unarmored warrior, it was still laughably too large for her.

The Chaplain was seated, his hands resting against either armrest. Wine was near and available, but he had not removed his helmet. She had not yet mustered up the courage to ask him to.

There was a quality to him that made it somewhat more difficult to be around him. There was a heightened awareness that there was something other about him. Between the transhuman dread, and her bout of translation fatigue, she accepted two things; firstly, she was human, and ultimately susceptible to those mortal limitations. 

Secondly, the warrior before her was a great many things. A Chaplain of an Astartes Chapter, the architect of this Crusade, and a living weapon set before her in an intimate setting. There was much to be unnerved by.

“I am, my lord.” She said, picking up the lapse before it lingered too late. “My master gave me instruction to join your fleet, to embark on your Crusade. Document its goings-on and analogize what can be given back to humanity, when so much knowledge and lore has been lost.”

 Even saying it, she felt a tinge of home-sickness. She perfectly recited what her mentor would quote to her small class at every chance he could when describing the nobility of their cause, and the justness of its execution. 

“Quite so. What is it you know of us?” The Chaplain drummed the fingers of his right hand in a steady rhythm. The knuckles of which were banded with brass spikes, the brutal stumps fat and acid etched with minute scripture. It sounded like a piston hammering into stone.

“Of the Black Templars? Only what the Primarch’s office provided us. Basic organization structure - more so, what your ranks were and how I might address you - but otherwise, nothing much more than the name of your Chapter Master, which legion you hail from, and your progenitor.”

She swiped through her data slate, clearing her throat and read from it.

“It is known that the Black Templars are devout followers of the Imperial Creed, and that you are some of the most sought after and requested warriors of the Era Indomitus. The Imperial Regent, the Primarch Reborn, impressed upon my master, who impressed it upon me, that the Knights of Dorn would do well to raise the hearts of Imperial citizens, and offer hope in these dark times. So, it is my thanks that you accepted this proposal. I have heard tales from my colleagues that many of the other Crusades denied them.” 

She went to sip from her wine, embarrassingly remembered the cup’s size, sat the data slate down, and lifted the cup up slowly with both hands.

“I imagine many, if not most, were denied. We are sons of Dorn. What else is there needed to be known from us?” The Chaplain’s mace sat in his lap respectfully across his knees. 

Occasionally he would run his thumb along its leather handle, fidgeting with some unseen imperfection. 

“Well, first and foremost, my duty is to document the Crusade. My master was particularly enthused by your acceptance to our request. He claimed that it was special in some way.” Bhabli’s fingers held the quill firm to the dataslate, ready to transcribe everything. The Chaplain did not reply for many moments. He simply stared at her, the one eye lens showing with a pinprick of red. 

“Many Crusades exist amongst the Imperium. Mightiest is the Eternal Crusade. The one our sire, the first High Marshal Sigismund, vowed to continue. Amongst some of that mighty number are peculiar beacons of history, myth, and legend.” 

He stood then, taking the maul near the base of the head into his fist and carrying it with him to where a fireplace did its poorest effort of illuminating the room they were in. 

“The Black Templars are an old Chapter. We existed even in the time of the legions, inside the order of the Imperial Fists. Many of our artifacts and heirlooms come from such times, so we are dedicated and watchful stewards of these curios.”

 He turned the mace over in his fist, looking at it, his back partially turned to her. She didn’t move, only her hand making steady, quick traces over the green ambient hue of her screen. The Chaplain continued after a moment’s pause.

“Crusades take on titles and names of the system they are conquering, or the foe they face, or the warrior that leads them. Sometimes the essence of the war entire. But some Crusades bear the Titles of Eternity. Meant to be challenges to our enemy, a boast of what we represent, a promise to those that dare foul His realm.”

“So the Spite Crusade is such a thing?” She asked.

“It is.”

“And so what curio do you house? What myth is carried by the knights of the Spite Crusade?” Bhabli was leaning over her data slate as she wrote, furiously transcribing the Chaplain’s words.

The room was then suddenly filled with a dreadful rasp and a baleful light of stark, unforgiving white. From across the room, the Chaplain had activated, and was pointing, the head of his maul at her. 

“This is the honored crozius arcanum Spite, wielded against the traitor on the walls during the Siege of Terra. We are the 88th founding of the Spiteful, the oathed keepers who continue the saga that would wield Man’s spite in His glory.”

He ran the weapon in an arc across the air, sparks snaking out of its head, encompassing the greater ship around them.

“Similarly, The Flail has been the home of Spite and its host since it was gifted to our Chapter at our founding.” He finished.

“And so now you are the Spitewielder?” Bhabli’s throat was dry, and the active weapon field ate any moisture in the room. It made her gums itch and eyes sting. 

Spite deactivated in an abrupt growl, coming to rest at the Chaplain’s knee.

“As were the wishes of my master, and the blessed Reclusiarch. Everyday, I must be found worthy of it. You come at an auspicious time, Lady Bhabli.”

“Why is that, my lord?”

“I am still young in my years as the Spitewielder. You’ve met my Castellan?” She offered him a wry smile, one he ignored behind the snarl of his helmet’s stylized teeth. 

“Yes, well, in most circumstances he would be in charge. Indeed, he should be a Marshal, but he is also…No, sorry, but forgive me keeping some secrets. There would typically be a Castellan or a Marshal appointed to this role.”

“And not a Chaplain?” She asked, curiously holding her quill away, looking for a physical cue to continue writing on the lore of his Chapter. When he simply did not protest, but continued talking, she did too with her transcription. 

“Chaplains have led Crusades. But these are usually warriors under my circumstance, or due to the death of other officers amongst a Crusade. But yes, as the title of Spitewielder sits upon my mantle, I hold the authority of that office.”

The Templars priest let the mace fall into its holster-loop with a dull thud and walked over to her, nudging the dataslate down to read with his middle finger. 

“Your handwriting reminds me of my own.” He said.

“Thank you.”

“It was a criticism, not a compliment.”

She blinked, read over her notes, and wrote something down and turned the screen to show him.

“Now, certainly that is something you should avoid calling me out loud. Lest it be inappropriate to a man of my station.” 

“I may correct it. In the future.” She set the data slate down. “So you are new to the title? To the office? And this great collection of ships and what looks to be a jumbled mix of cobbled together troops?”

The Chaplain’s head tilted to the side in that curious manner of his.

“How do you mean?” He asked.

“Well you mention my coming here amidst the armored reinforcement.”

“I have made a call to war, sent out a Declaration of Arms to the various worlds and systems surrounding us. We have been docked here for years, waiting, gathering, amassing. The last of those to heed the call are here. Those who would answer have sent what swords they could.” As he spoke, he reached up to the golden medallion dangling from his neck, running armored fingers down it. The word “Spite” was engraved in High Gothic.

“To gather warriors, especially in these times, can be difficult. I am, due to my rank and title, and the very nature of what I am, afforded more luxuries. But supplies, man power, ships…all so valuable, more so with the return of the Primarch Reborn. Those pilgrims that come to me are welcomed, and brought together under my banner. Even still, I’ve lingered and cannot spare any more time. We must be the blade unsheathed. 

“I take any and all who come. Ours, Lady, is the spite, and I can wield it in any fashion it is forged. Come with me, Historitor Bhabli, I will take you to the world below and show you the many manifestations it has come to me in.”

Edited January 26 by Spite

[Spite]

On-going "True to universe/lore" fanfiction.

 

New releases on the 9th of each month.

 

Summary:

 

Join the ranks of the Spite Crusade, a relentless warband of Black Templars led by the enigmatic Spitewielder. As they march into the Pale Spiral, an ancient and forgotten realm at the galaxy's edge, eldritch secrets from ages passed reveal themselves. Witness the tumultuous history of the legendary crozius arcanum, Spite, and those that wield it. 

 

[Spite]

Two

 

Like Churches in the sky

The fetid stench of history

First time

 

i. 

 

“Have you met other Astartes before us, Historitor Bhabli?” The Chaplain asked, taking them across the flagship through outer halls. Cathedral-like windows gave breath catching views of the void beyond, the assembled ships of the Spite Crusade, and the planet below.

“I have, lord. On Demeter IV, no less. The Excoriators were present in the manner of their 5th Company. They’d just put down a Chaos-induced rebellion when we arrived. My master afforded us a view of their departure march. An interesting Chapter, and one I am told, who shares your blood.”

“They do.” Agreed the Chaplain, one hand resting atop his mace, the other casually at his side. He was looking out of the window, the faint reflection of the red ocular lens just a tiny pinprick amongst the sea of black outside.

“Have you met other Astartes, lord? Those outside of your Chapter, of course.” It had taken her several minutes to decide to ask, the very notion seeming childish, and saying it aloud even more so.

“I have not. Brother Altus has, in the manner of the Deathwatch. As has my Castellan, and our Champion.” Turning and tilting his head, he looked down at her as they continued walking. “A curious question.”

“I have been surrounded by Astartes for several years. At first, I was led to believe that you were all machine-stamped copies of something greater. But, with the few I’ve been granted a private audience with, you all seem painfully more rich in character.” She did not make eye contact with him, but managed to look into the cavity of the skull helmet’s “nose”. There, she wouldn’t shake under his seemingly bitter gaze.

“Interesting. No, Historitor Bhabli, I have not met other Astartes of other Chapters and other bloodlines. I’ve only known the Templars, and have fought at the very edge of the Imperium since I was taken as a boy-child.” The words were not expanded on. So she pressed.

“You ask why? The galaxy is a large place, and when duty has you in the fine margins, well, it leaves little in the way of exploring the empire we are fighting for.” 

She made a face.

“That’s a very boring answer, lord Chaplain.”

“Spitewielder.” Came the reply, gentle, but sure.

“As is that, lord Spitewielder.”

“Yes, well, I am Astartes, Lady. My purpose is to be out there, killing, taking, dying if I must. I do not have the luxury of-”

“Not even the Feast of Blades?” She interrupted, looking up at him with a knowing grin.

“You know of our familial tradition?” The Chaplain had stopped, again, his head tilting just so as he looked at the mortal woman whose head barely came above his waist.

“The Excoriators were on their way to the Feast, the 5th Company was to be their Chapter’s representative.” 

“I have not attended personally, nor have the members of my Crusade. I know not if we’ve attended since that same Chapter won against mine own. It is impressive, what you know, Historitor Bhabli, for one who supposedly only knows so much of my Chapter and our ways.”

 The Spitewielder had waited by one of the many viewing windows, watching as another ship lumbered into view. Turrets, gargoyles, castle walls, sword motifs, and much more adornment that Bhabli had expected to see on The Flail, passed by in silence. She drank in the scale of it, in awe at the might of humanity made in the form of floating iron and steel.

“What is that?” She asked quietly, playing witness to the warship anchoring.

“That is the Undaunted. Would you believe me if I said that it is one of the newest ships in the Imperium?” When she offered nothing but a blank expression, he continued. “The Undaunted was a gift from my liege, the High Marshal himself. It was forged upon my ascension, and bequeathed to our Champion as his personal chariot.” 

The name, gilded in pressed bronze and inlaid with millions of millions of etched golden script surrounding it, passed by. As Undaunted drifted past the window, she saw a pillar of silver sculpted in the shape of a rearing wolf. She stared at it until the white-blue heat of its engines became the new sun in the view of the armored window. She looked back to the Chaplain as he began to pace away from her, continuing down the hall.

“And this is an Emperor’s Champion?” Again, the Chaplain looked down at her, nodding in agreement and what might have been approval.

“Aye, you will meet him on the world below. The ship is not delivering him, it is coming to its master’s call. A fine captain, Shipmistress Aneshka Hos, commands it. The Undaunted is a principle line-breaker of my fleet. She has sailed for just under a decade, and has performed admirably in that short time. I have not seen something fight with that kind of tenacity outside of The Flail.” 

They came to a sealed door. Two armored serfs bowed and opened it on hissing hydraulics and released air pressure. Several branching arteries cut off just past the door, but the Chaplain led them straight still. Less than a few meters, another hatch, this one an elevator platform, illuminated and waiting, rested at the floor.

They made no further conversation as they were conveyed to lower parts of the ship. Another hour’s walk, this filled with spritzes of quick and mostly uninformative conversation. She had the sense that the Chaplain only had such a capacity to speak on things, and that she would need to “feel” out the best moments to engage with him.

They were in the bare bones of The Flail, gantries and industrial beams comprising the frame of the ship were more frequent and present here. Parchment with prayers and devout mantras hung from pipes, and candles littered corners and small perches along dozens of different places. Steam collected like fog in some of these areas, as well as pools of moisture.

She had been amongst two different fleets, but had not traversed their ships as extensively as she did now. To see an Astartes vessel like this opened up to her that most ships probably were like this, or worse. She knew The Flail was old, ancient even, but those that were in thrall to her were devoted to her upkeep. She was impressed that there were no stains, no creeping rust, not coughing or gurgling pipes or machinery draped across every meter of the ship.

Her experience so far had been a strange one. So much of what she was told to expect, and what she had built up in her mind, were instead replaced with stark mundanity and an almost utilitarian fashion, peppered with some of the Templar’s more well known devotee practices. 

They were in a main thoroughfare now, a great spacious gang-way that was meant to begin the mass of bodies heading toward the hangar and muster decks. Crew and serfs could be seen attending to duties or jogging to unknown destinations. Every one of them halted in their tasks and, curiously to Bhabli, bowed, but did not make the sign of the Aquila in his presence.

“I wish to remark upon an earlier statement you made. The one about the personalities of Astartes that you’ve engaged with.” He did not look at her, instead committing to turning his death mask to face each soul they passed. 

“Yes, you Space Mar-” 

“Do not call us that.” The Templar priest’s voice cut through the almost solemn air that had formed on their journey here. “At least in my presence. That particular pseudonym rings too poorly. Astartes, preferably. Angels, if you must. But anything sounds more noble and appropriate.”

“Curious, but thank you for that insight. Was that…always your way?”

“Since my dawning of the Visage Eternal, I have learned that titles and names mean a great deal, and carry significant weight.” He replied.

They passed through a great arch, shaped into a mighty gate. Carved into the stone to mimic that of a twin tongued banner, words gilded in gold addressed all those who passed beneath it.

 

 

And still I must give more

 

 

Seven braziers of black iron adorned each side of the portcullis leading to and from its mouth. Along its lip, gun boxes swiveled to track them. Armed and armored serfs stood in sizable numbers amongst it, defending its walls and watching those come and go.

“I can not comment on other Chapters, I have no knowledge nor experience as we’ve discussed, but the Templars are not exempt from fierce egos or mighty personalities.

“To become an Astartes is to suffer and triumph through pain and harm and endurance far beyond what a mere human is capable of. One can only succeed through that with discipline beyond measure, and a fiery spirit beneath. And what good is an Astartes without life in him? Does His empire believe soulless automatons fight for His people?” The oath parchments wax sealed to his legs fluttered in a sudden gust of air that ran through the corridor.

 Bhabli wrote, glancing over at the hovering servo-skull that accompanied her, having been granted to her upon exiting the Solemn Archives. The machine clicked, a red light shining bright to indicate it was recording.

“I confess, lord, that I’ve only ever actually spoken to three other Astartes prior to meeting you.” She pulled her shawl tighter, a current of air pressure had become stronger the further they got from the portcullis and to what she guessed were the Black Templar specific embarkation decks. “Maybe I’d rolled the dice and just happened upon three with some hints of their humanity in them.” 

“There is a lightness about you, Historitor Bhabli, that makes it more appealing to be open with you. Perchance it was that, or maybe you are correct. I, however, would like to believe the Emperor envisioned us to be more than simply a blunt instrument. A good sword has character to it. A ship has its own personality. A lasrifle does not fire the same as its ten thousand similarly stamped cousins. 

“Just look to our founder. He was a man of singular focus, but of great passion, of a great humanity within him. I believe that to have made him the single greatest Astartes in history.” His words were sincere. 

Bhabli made notes, compounding her thoughts that the Chaplain’s words did not come across as a boast, but something more similar to how her master discussed the histories with his fellow colleagues, or debates in one of his lectures. 

“And you’ve modeled yourself in such a fashion?”

“Yes, Historitor Bhabli. And, as commander of this Crusade, I’ve fashioned my knights in such a manner. I prize fury, zeal, passion, intrigue, and above all, spite.”

She grinned, even gave a soft chuckle. 

“You are amused?” The Chaplain asked, again in a very direct, cold lash that reigned in her playfulness.

“Spite, lord. The name of the Crusade, your weapon, and one of the less virtuous qualities of man. But, as you mentioned earlier,” She closed her data slate, recovering from the conversational stumble and focusing her thoughts, “Why this particular trait? How do you even know an aspiring boy has it?”

“Spite, Historitor Bhabli, has a particular flavor to it. It colors your face in a way no other emotion can. All souls can possess hatred, and this we look for too, but it takes a particular kind to have the capacity for spite. It’s all consuming, it is brutal, it brooks no quarter. That is the essence of a Templar manifest.”

They came to a final gate, it stood open, the yawning portal opening up to The Flail’s main embarkation decks. Dozens of war vehicles sat in their cradles, or were arrayed in neat order, gravitically sealed to the deck through the massive plates their tracks sat on. 

Above were docked avian-like gunships. Each of them painted in the color of the Templars, sporting the heraldic cross on their wings and bellies. Servitors and tech adepts of the Machine Cult of Mars were tending to them, or carrying crates to and from, here and there. 

Dozens of menials, ratings, serfs, slaves, servitors, and tech adepts buzzed around the deck. Compared to the practically mournful ambience of the rest of the ship, here, the crew were visible, audibly, and active. 

A lone gunship was sat at the edge of the deck, near the shimmering layer of atmospheric shielding protecting them from the vacuum of hard space beyond. Its ramp was lowered, and arranged before it were the knights she had met within the Archive, and several others she had not.

The Templars were in a loose semi circle, with brother Altus at its center, the pole of a furled banner grasped in the silver fist of his left arm. A stylized “I” was embossed in blood-red stone, bisected with three vertical gold bars. 

These warriors, each of them, had a handwritten word etched in white paint above their left eye lenses. SPITE. These were the Spiteful, the retinue to the lord Spitewielder. The Chaplain’s very own command squad, and those knights entrusted to the safety and protection of a Chapter’s sacred artifact and holy relic. 

Only the Castellan was absent. In the light of the embarkation deck, the Templar known to her as Malgur was clad in far different armor than she made out in the dim lighting of the Archives.

Where the other knights in the circle wore the black of their Chapter, this warrior was clad in Martian Red, four arms, each ending in different heads, jutted from his back. A black hood hid his helmet, and from it, the light of a single red light shown through a horizontal slit across what she guessed was the warrior’s helmet.

In unison the Templar banged their fists to their chests and remained as such until the two came to rest before them.

“Board.” Came the Spitewielder’s reply once he returned the salute.

“Lord Kestian wished for me to convey his apologies.” Altus said, boarding last and taking his place beside the Chaplain. As Bhabli ascended the ramp into the waiting gunship, she had a brief moment of vertigo.

“I’ve not been on an Astartes gunship before, lord Spitewielder.” She stood at the mouth of the gunship, staring at the rows of empty harnesses meant to hold other knights Templar. Brother Kybert came to her, and fastened her near the pilot hatch, where eight human sized seats were bolted into the interior wall. 

“Try not to talk, and keep your tongue curled, that’ll also help with the ear pressure. But more importantly, you won’t bite it off. Ardan is an excellent pilot, chosen personally by our lord himself. But he does have a pension for speed.”

At this, Kybert slammed the restraints onto her and secured himself adjacently. “In the absence of the Spitewielder, I have been honored with your protection, Historitor Bhabli. Indeed, after tonight’s events, I will be the one to escort you through The Flail to your personal quarters.” 

Bhabli nodded but was too caught up in clutching the servo-skull tightly in her lap as the ramp closed shut and a tremendous roar began to build in the cabin. The lights sank into a menacing, rich amber. The Templar’s eye lenses were swallowed, giving their helmets a baleful glow that only seemed to accentuate the recesses in the crooks of their gorgets and faceplates. 

The Chaplain’s helmet turned towards her. His voice boomed from the cabin’s vox emitters.

“Planetfall.”

Her stomach was pulled into her lower gut and then sent slamming into her ribcage as the Thunderhawk burst out of The Flail with its engines flaring. It dove straight into the waiting planet’s atmosphere and became a shooting star in the nighttime sky. 

 

ii. 

 

Rothusberg hung lonely within the gulf spanning the Crucis and Pandora Sectors, at the edge of the Segmentum Tempestus. One of three worlds, and one of the two habitable ones, it became the waypoint between trade of the two sectors. 

Here, toeing the edge of the Galactic Meridian, there hadn’t been so much as a visual sighting of xenos in the area for some two generations. In mortal span, the reality of the xenos took on more of a mythical, folktale fiction. A story to be told to young children to coerce them into proper behavior. 

When the ships of the Black Templars sailed into its sky the people saw their arrival as a blessing. They did not appreciate the ill portent the coming of the Emperor’s Angels of Death really were. In the comparatively short time they had been anchored, the Black Templars had been true to the heritage they came from.

The world was fortified, a monastery keep was built in the lone mountain chains that Rothusberg boasted from her northern cap. A minor simulacrum of a spaceport was erected near the planet’s capital, Roth’ul. Walls were raised, towers and turrets buttressed along them, and the city’s populace trained. A fine PDF regiment raised in its millions, trained by the knights who bade them muster. Two regiments, the 1st and 2nd Roth Janissaries were founded. Each regiment boasted a complement of no less than sixty thousand men, rigorously tutored in war by the black armored knights that accompanied their daily exercises.  

And so, they became burdened by the harshest of the Emperor’s Tithes. Entire generations were given over to the scalpels of the Templar Apothecaries. Young boys were harvested, taken from proud or miserable parents. 

But in return, the world was made strong. Its people made proud, and their legacy forever carved into the annals of the Solemn Archive. More Black Templar would be sired here, and play host to a small skeleton force garrisoning its monastery. 

Trade-skills flourished during this time. The Crusade would need to manufacture its war material, and furnish its newly found soldiers. Under the watchful, and oddly personal, eyes of the Black Templars commander, the Imperial Guard forces were outfitted and armed. 

Not so populated that it would develop into a Hive World, not without substantial reinforcement from the Adeptus Adminstratum, it was still widely inhabited. Its capital city held nearly fifteen percent of the planet’s population alone behind its newly constructed walls. Its people were held in thrall by a pseudo-feudal governance, ruled by a Duke chosen by way of a council vote of several richer, influential Houses. 

Upon his arrival, it is said the Black Templars commander ordered them to show deference to the warriors of the Emperor, and had them retake their oaths of loyalty, service, and duty. To this, he demonstrated how little power they actually held, eviscerating a nobleman too proud to bend the knee. Indeed, his corpse could still be found hanging from the Cathedral of the Emperor and Lesser Saints’s main communion chamber. 

A knight was raised to the rank of Castellan, a sergeant Lykanstirr, and vowed his oath of protection in the ruling nobility’s presence. They then gave similar oaths to the newly raised Castellan, vowing their patronage and support of the Templars monastery and Chapter. 

From the void, the world shown in dark hues of blue and green, rich and almost gloomy. It sported a single desert, in its southern hemisphere, and fair tundra near the north. Its people were hardy, traditional, and largely privileged in the wider Imperium. Their galactic neighbors to the East were the mighty empires of Ultramar. Nearer still were active patrol fleets of the Fleet Segmentum. 

But as was the way of the galaxy, war came to all. Bloodshed and hurt found everyone in their remote corners of the inky blackness that seemed to hate the very notion of life. And so they became people of the Black Templars, and played subservient to the Astartes that had drastically changed the course of their world’s history forever. 

For Bhabli, however, the world was an all consuming, present roar that filled her head fit to burst. The shaking of the gunship rocked her into her harness and the poor excuse for padding that made up the rest of the restraint chair. She simply focused her efforts on not severing her tongue, curled as it was instructed to by the knight Kybert. 

They stayed in void for a little under seven minutes, before the brutal transition between the world’s atmospheres hit. When that came, it felt like an eternity. In the scant moments she opened her eyes, all she could see was the blur of the red tinted cabin, and the knights motionless in their harnesses.

After seemingly forever, the flight smoothed out, but the speed increased. The engines screeched, and she was pushed further into her chair. The cabin light suddenly went to a sickly yellow, flickering incessantly. 

As one, the Templar disengaged their harnesses, stomped into orderly ranks, and waited. Kybert stood, but remained near his harness, one hand gripping her right-most handrail. 

“Three. Two…” A mechanical voice buzzed over the vox-emitters. There was a sickeningly fast, whip like spin, into a teeth crunching, but controlled thump as they came to rest. As the feet touched down, the light inside of the gunship turned green, and the ramp hissed open, letting in the overcast sky. 

She made to release herself, but the Templar placed his hand on the restraint and offered her a respirator. Without waiting, he placed it over her mouth and nose.

“Breathe deeply, Historitor Bhabli. You’ve been on shift ships for several months. This is your first true atmosphere. You don’t know it yet, but your legs are cramped and would fail you if you tried standing.”

 His voice came out of the grills of his helmet in an angry, mechanical snarl. She did not argue, taking in deep lungfuls from the mask. 

The Astartes released her after several minutes. By now, they were alone, save for the pilot above, locked away in the cockpit. She tried standing, finding herself still caught lightheaded. She leaned on the towering Templar. He took her hand steadily, barely a single digit for her entire hand.

“Thank you, knight Kybert.” She said, taking the time to reorient herself, adjust her shawl, and reactivate her servo-skull. The Templar nodded, then led her down the ramp slowly. The world had a gentle chill to it. It was mid-autumn, and the foliage on the trees had already begun to change into a deep red, like that of wine, flecked with orange and goldenrod. 

The smell of rain saturated rockrete was everywhere. Puddles sat rippling in the unseen breeze of the late afternoon, reflecting thick, ugly gray clouds looming above. Hundreds of ships sat in smart, ordered rows along a runway that seemed to stretch beyond her sight’s limits. There were dozens of similar gunships that she had come in on, outnumbered by the hundreds of Imperial Guard Valkyries, Arvus lifters, and personal Aquila fliers.

Fighter engines whirred overhead, guarding, patrolling. Great towers hovered above her, affixed with many barreled guns, cables, dishes, and antennae in equal measures. Guards with lasrifles and sabres at their hips walked the runway grounds in small, vigilant groups.  

“Sir Kybert, why are measures of security in place? I was told there were no active war zones in this sector.” As she asked, another wing of six Imperial Thunderbolts raced overhead, filling the air with a ballistic roar as they did. 

“The lord Spitewielder demands consistency in all things. And more so, we Black Templars are the Crusaders Eternal, we are always in a zone mortalis, Lady.” Kybert pointed to another Black Templars gunship resting near an archway. “That is the Castellan’s Thunderhawk.” 

She looked over, seeing the red-winged profile of the Castellan’s machine. Brutal, ugly, and durable, the gunship had a menacing quality to it in its avian features. The heraldic cross of the Chapter was decorated in red, similar to the Castellan’s pauldron. 

“The colors are significant, no?” 

“Aye. The Castellan was once of the Sword Brethren. A high honor within our ranks. He earned the rights to the Marshal’s Red.” Kybert saluted the gunship as they walked past, his fist hammering to his tabard-covered cuirass. 

They passed through the arch, a uniformed officer jogging over, saluted, and pointed down the roadway to their left.

“Second right, then your first left, sir knight.” 

Bhabli blinked twice at the butchered Gothic. It was nasally, the ‘sir’ mashed in its non-rhotic chirping. 

Kybert nodded, then continued down the path instructed. 

“You come to appreciate the tongue. They’ve a pointed candidness that can be very refreshing, if not humorous.” The Templar said, catching Bhabli’s expression.

They passed by rockrete barracks, prefabricated mess halls, mesh wire gates, and pipes coiling over the ground. The place had a tang of engine smog in the air, and the whispers of techno-mechanical chanting could just be heard. When they’d wound their way into the final left hand turn, they were greeted with a wide promenade. 

At its end was a large keep, built from stone, ferrocrete, and ceramite plating, its three towers stabbing into the sky. Spot lights from the ground were trained upwards, aiming directly along the wallskirt of its closed portcullis. 

Filling the expansive gray slabbed path were tens of thousands of bodies arrayed in orderly ranks, with more still filing in and resting in neat order behind their compatriots. Banners stood in their hundreds amongst the sea of varying uniforms.

Cherubs floated over their heads, their infant hands gripping vox emitters in the form of trumpets, or carrying skulls with their jaws replaced by the boxy amplifiers. 

A narrow path cut through the marshaled forces of the Spite Crusade, enough for a single tank to trundle down. Priests of the Ecclesiarchy, and Chapter serfs sworn to the Templars were carrying incense burners, or splashing blessed water onto the soldiers at rest, walking up and down the path. Others offered small blessings, anointing some, chastising others. 

“Sir Kybert?” Bhabli asked, halting.

“Just Kybert is agreeable, Lady.” He said, stopping as he looked over his shoulder to see her waiting. 

“Can you get me higher up? I wish to detail the events more accurately.” 

The Astartes nodded, pointing to one of the dozens of small, raised observation platforms. Striding unimpeded, climbing the small ladder, Bhabli set her servo skull to passive//wander and pulled out her data slate.

She wrote furiously, ignoring the other occupants sharing the space with her. She gazed across the gathering mass of soldiers. She noted the way the sky sat like slate, and how the atmosphere gave everything in Rothusberg a subtle, navy tinge. 

When she finished her notes, she slowed down to appreciate the scene, and her compatriots whom she’d ignored upon arriving on the observation platform.

A young man was sat in front of his easel, confidently and purposefully smearing paint with the edge of his spatula. He didn’t pay any mind to her. Another man, this one much older, rake thin, and tall, clacked noisily away at the runes of a brass keyed stenograph.

The last occupant, this one a woman of middling years, stood still in the corner, leaning against one of the platform's support columns. The upper part of her face was hidden within a dome of pearl, sealing just above her philtrum. Her fingers were multi-jointed, and ended in six digits as opposed to five. They twitched at her unseen commands.

Bhabli turned back to her own slate, and looked out amongst the crowded palisade. She noted banners, names, sigils, emblems, coats of arms, the stylized words of regiments, and the way their uniforms clashed in the muted colorscape of the city they inhabited. 

A great and terrible electric whine cut through the late afternoon air. She winced as it faded from its peak. Several figures stepped into the light of the illuminated wall top of the portcullis. 

At their arrival, dozens of servo skulls floated amongst the gathered soldiers, and filled the empty space between the parade grounds with miniature images of the looming silhouettes. Others bobbed on idle gravitic pulses, gently hovering above their heads, their vox emitters tuned to full. A snarling voice carried over the promenade.

“Soldiers of the Imperium, warriors of the Spite Crusade, I bid you all welcome, and rejoice at the sight of you.” The Spitewielder stepped forward from the gathering. 

“Patiently, you have waited, and trained, and prayed as we’ve gathered our strengths here. See the heavens and see the unyielding iron that hangs above us. See the many guns and the might of our engines. We are now a mighty host, a sharpened blade ready to be unsheathed and thrust into the stars of the Pale Spiral.”

A great roar of approval greeted his words. She saw troopers, captains, and even the tall peaked caps of the Commissariat punching their balled fists into the air. The other documentists around her picked up their pace, and in embarrassment, she did so too. 

When all settled, the Spitewielder stepped back, allowing for a mortal to replace him. This, a stocky, broad, older gentleman wearing a fine coat of deep plum, white embroidery decorating its shoulders. She couldn’t make out the details of his face from where she stood, but the voice that echoed over the promenade spoke of a well schooled man, his words clear and spoken knowing they would be followed to the letter.

“In two hours we will begin mass boarding. The morning after next, we will have left Rothusberg behind and to begin warp travel. Efficiency and speed are crucial in these coming hours. Commissars, see to the expediency of your commanders’ efforts. Troopers, the word of your leaders is the word of the God Emperor!” The man held his arms to the sky, greeted by a chorus of Ave Imperator!

A final figure stepped forward. As one, the knights situated at the front of the gathering, so much taller than the figures behind them, raised their weapons in salute. The collective synchronicity of their movement sent a brief chill down Bhabli’s spine. A cry was taken up by the Astartes.

“Imperator Vult!”

The figure raised a single hand. Almost like a madness had taken them, several mortal commanders stepped forward, kneeling at the portcullis. Commissars, clearly bristling, came forward with weapons drawn and ready. A single word echoed through every vox speaker, halting the harsh punishment impending on those bending the knee out of order.

“No.” 

Bhabli looked around, unsure, catching the eye of the older, taller man with the stenograph.

“He’s very popular.” He whispered, pointing with his chin to the distant figure.

“Who is he?” She asked, only able to make out that he was an Astartes.

“That is the Crusade’s Champion, lord Wilhelt, affectionately known as “the Wolf”.” The man turned back and added a few more lines to his work. “I understand he’s trained a good portion of this world’s newly founded regiments and-” The Champion’s voice rang across the promenade, drowning the old man out.

“To the death!” 

“TO THE DEATH!” Came the reply of tens of thousands of throats.

 

iii. 

 

In neat order, the representatives of the host comprising the key fighting elements of the Spite Crusade, turned, and began marching away. The dignitaries and documentarians watched, some composing their fine work, others enjoying quiet conversation with their fellows.

Bhabli scribbled, not bothering to look down, and wrote as much about what she could see.

Here, closest to her, were the red-carapaced forms of the 62nd Jovich Grenadiers, their heraldry that of crossed swords and a skull embedded within a knight’s visored helmet.

 Across from them were the 119th Mastian Armored, a simple tunic of beige with cream trim, and a ballistic helmet with the Aquila stamped onto it. Their right arms, however, were decorated in overlapping plates of polished silver.

The 8th Host of Rahm stood behind them, each in black trench coats and sporting half-masks of fire scorched brass sallets, each shaped into glaring eyes. Their standard was that of a flaming Aquila, the inverted body of a man crucified from its neck.

On and on they marched past, none bothering to look up at the observers above them. Bhabli made quick sketches of some of them, noted how individual companies marched, or how their officers addressed or moved them. She looked further back, to where the great gate stood, where the commanders of the Crusade had made their speeches.

The line of Astartes was much smaller than she had originally anticipated. Indeed, there were so few in comparison. The size of the Excoriator Company she had witnessed seemed massive, alongside their fighting vehicles and specialists. Here, she guessed the Black Templar were less than fifty knights in strength. 

“That can’t be right.” She muttered out loud, not meaning to. The artist had left by then, and the older man was already partially down the steps. The dome headed woman looked right at her.

“Pardon, mamzel?” She asked, her voice surprisingly high, sounding almost childlike.

“None needed, miss, I simply said a thought aloud.” Bhabli replied, staring where she thought the woman’s eyes would be. 

“A crown for your thoughts?” When Bhabli raised an eyebrow, the woman giggled. “An old man’s saying. Go on, then, love.  I’m curious.”

She marched very evenly, one foot, literally, in front of the other. 

“Really, mamzel, it’s nothing. Just that I figured there would be more of them.” Her left hand held out to the now vanishing sight of the Black Templars Astartes.

“The Black Templars are here in more strength than they let be seen.”

At this, Bhabli raised her eyebrow. The halls of The Flail seemed barren enough, having witnessed a handful of mostly mortal crew. 

“A curious bunch, the black crusaders. They’ve made quite a harvest of this world, planting their banner in the furthest, darkest, coldest, harshest region. But still, quite effective. Very effective.”

When the pearl-headed woman stopped speaking, Bhabli began her question, then stopped, and followed it up with another instead.

“Who are you?”

“I am Carmine Estella, savant to my lordship, Lady Inquisitor Charlotte Maldese.”

[Spite]

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.

[Spite]

Four

 

Lances of the Cosmos

Chariots aflame 

Akin to Elsinore’s ramparts

 

i. 

 

The Flail sat at far anchor, just at the edge of the gathered fleet’s noosphere and planetary cordon. From the bridge, standing at the rail of his throne’s dias, Fleet Admiral Ancis Croz observed the mass conveyances of troops and material assets as they rose from the planet below to the waiting bellies of their mother ships.

Besides the flag ship, three other vessels sat at low anchor, taking the influx of transports. The rest of the fleet, though not now numerous, sat gathered in a defensive cluster facing towards the Mandeville Point. The space of the bridge was silent, save for the subtle hum of cogitators and the chime of the auspex.

Croz let out a deep and heavy huff, because he always did. Though every time he did, his immediate junior officers turned their heads to him.

He’d grown to ignore it, but still waved them back to their duties. Though short and stocky, his broad shoulders made him imposing. A wild broom of hair was neatly tucked beneath his black bicorn hat. His thick chops sat either side of his heavy cheeks.

The crew of The Flail were a fine stock. Many of them were veterans, having served under the previous Spitewielder. Service to the Templars was no kind duty, for they were hard drivers and expected a great deal from them. Bu, beloved Throne of Terra, was it the duty. 

Since taking the throne and becoming bonded to The Flail over sixty years ago, Croz had served to an exacting degree, having little desire to displease his Astartes masters. He needed no motivation. He was always, he thought, an enthusiast of star ships and void vessels, with a touch of an overwhelming need to micromanage.

He was a privileged young man growing up, born to a family that wasn’t rich, but did not struggle. Raised upon a ship-forging world, their silhouettes and shapes always intrigued him, tickling his interest.

 A combination of happenstance and the wild, chaotic nature of the galaxy brought him to the Black Templars and he had served as a lowly deck rating, working his way up. 

The entirety of his youth and middling years had been spent in thrall to the previous Captain, a cantankerous old bastard that had served for nearly two centuries under the previous lord Spitewielder. Though a hard man, his commitment to the craft had been a model Croz learned to respect, even if it was the sort of respect one gives a brutal taskmaster.

 He was ambitious, knew his craft and knew it well, and certainly knew that commitment was often the difference between a great officer or a gutsy one. And so he committed and was now the master of this fine vessel and its crew.

He mused that his life was one of both extreme luxury and the unimaginable horrors of facing the worst the galaxy could offer. In command of a mighty warship of the Adeptus Astartes, and now an admiral of a fledgling fleet, Ancis Croz was as devoted to his service as any proper servant of the Black Templars could be.

A chime echoed through the bridge.

“Incoming vox-to-vox from the Spitewielder, lord Admiral.”

Croz nodded, the Master of Vox turning a dial and flipping a switch, giving him a thumbs up.

“My lord.” Croz spoke to the open air.

“Admiral, how long now?”

Croz turned, holding his hand out. A rating ran over to him, handing him a dataslate. The rating reached over the Admiral’s shoulder, scrolling to the relevant data for him.

“Estimates have it as another nine hours. Capsize and Hesitation Wounds have their respective elements onboard, we are just finishing the loading of Harm’s Way. The rest of the fleet is in position awaiting us to join them.”

Silence greeted him. A decade ago he would have looked over the Master of Vox to see if the line were dead, but he knew better now. After what was just slightly too long of a delay, the Chaplain’s voice came back over the speakers.

“Move the fleet onwards and let our presence encourage haste amongst the transports. I’ll be aboard within the hour.”

“Yes, lord.” Croz turned to the crew, who were turned at their stations, awaiting orders.

“Engines.”

“Engines, aye!”

The Flail began her slide across the planet’s exosphere, its engines burning a furious hot blue as they fired fast and angry. He didn’t realize the vox link was still live, and so stood with a boot on the first step to his throne when the Spitewielder’s voice came again.

“What of our guests?”

Croz looked over his shoulder. “Auspex?”

“Compliance, lord. Tracking…” The Master of Auspex clicked a barrage into her system’s key runes, the orange light of her display bathing her pale skin. Both of her eyes were augmetics, and they whirred in their housings with her scrutiny.

“The Sonder is reportedly within the fleet’s formation at their flank. I’ve sent the data to your throne, Admiral.”

Croz ascended, not yet sitting, but turned one of the many monitors that jutted from his throne’s arms on spindles of slender mechanical limbs.

“In position with the rest of them, lord.” Said Croz to the speakers mounted in his throne. 

“Has Abiry received word from them? Has your office?” Abiry, the Spitewielder’s herald, was at the foot of his dias, a common enough place for him while their lord was away. He shook his head, the metal of his mask glimmering in the low light of the bridge.

“None, my lord.” Replied the Admiral, turning his head to look out of the view port to the distant ships of the Crusade. They were far figures, but not far enough away he couldn’t make out their bladed forms. 

The Inquisition had appeared three months ago, and had made no formal declaration or so much as informed any of the Crusade as to their intentions. At first, the Spitewielder had ordered them to hail the Inquisition, but they had been politely turned aside with comments of ‘official Inquisitorial business’. No further word had come from them, nor from the greater Crusade elements.

Only the lord Militant of the Jovich Grenadiers voiced his displeasure at the shadow play. The rest had followed the example of the Spitewielder and simply ignored them. They had not, so it seemed, meddled in the Crusade’s affairs. Croz did not care, outside of  maybe a guilty intrigue into what they were doing here, but ultimately, it mattered not at all to him nor his lord.

From what little The Flail’s augurs pulled from her passive data collection, the Sonder was just a retro-fitted Claymore-Class Corvette. It was fast and looked capable of some form of stealth, and had dozens of dishes, antennas and radars attached to it. 

Nowhere aboard her iron hull were symbols of fealty carved, so when she translated into the system, she simply declared that she was the conveyance of a lord Inquisitor and that she would be making anchor. The Templars did not stop her, nor did the navy vessels aligned to the Astartes. The Sonder came to rest beside the other anchored ships and refused to elaborate any further.

“And?” The Chaplain asked.

“I have already factored them into fleet disposition, warp transferral, and dispersal. I am told Abiry has also composed a letter to send to the office of this Inquisitor to invite them to the briefings.” The lord Admiral finished.

“Very well.” The vox communication was properly ended, as signaled by his vox officer.

Coz drummed his fingers along his forearm, a habit he had picked up from his lord. He gestured to the vox officer again.

“Hail Undaunted.” 

A new voice rang over the speakers decorating the bridge. The voice had a twang to it, rolling the ‘r’s and catching on her ‘c’s, but it boasted a cold confidence.

“Greetings to you, my lord Admiral. How can Undaunted be of service to you?” Came the voice of Shipmistress Aneshka Hos. 

“Move the fleet to the Mandeville Point. The Flail will escort our troop ships there once they’ve raised anchor.” Admiral Coz sat in his throne, expertly navigating the runes of his cogitator one handed. “I’ve sent you the data, Shipmistress.”

“By your will, my lord Admiral.” 

The Flail slid closer to her charges, a cattle dog surrounding the herd. She was many times larger than the Carrack-pattern frigates she guarded, bristling with weapons batteries and slabs of hard edged armor. Her hull was a fire-scorched black, trimmed in bronze that shown as an amber-gold in local starlight. 

Bedecked in fine cathedral-castles, hosting a legion of gargoyles and skulls, and older symbols still, she was beautiful in her finely clad brutality. Sparsely, lightning bolts could be seen, clenched in armored fists near her broadsides. At her head were two gargantuan statues mounted to either side of her hammer headed prow. On the left was the Heraldic Cross of the Black Templars, finely wrought, with veins of gold in the stonework used in its carving. 

On the right was its twin, though this was made of a dull bronze, but bedded within was a mailed fist of black iron, clenched tightly, haloed by the crusader’s emblem. From the forward facing arms of each cross were the muzzles of jutting twin barreled cannons. The barrels of the Macro Laser Cannons were massive, their mouths fashioned into the skulls of mythical beasts.

She was a tenacious and wicked hulk in a void fight. Each of her captains had learned that she was best used in tandem with the traits of her name-sake. A close range weapon capable of fighting at a distance.

Croz's signature was to engage all four of the main forward cannons and ram his foes just after impact, diving as he emptied his broadsides, and powering The Flail into a violent uppercut to finish whatever was left. 

The Spitewielder appreciated the blunt honesty of it, and had been on the bridge to see the maneuver used in many of their starbound engagements. Croz was proud of it, though in no way original, he thought himself something of an artisan to the tactic, an enjoyer of the finer details to the one specific play.

He communicated to each of the transport ships’ masters, advising him of the further fleet’s movements, and asked after their time estimates. When he offered them a drawn huff from his nose, they had revised the time table. Nine hours had become seven, which would be acceptable for now. When he had concluded with them, a runner notified him of the Spitewielder’s arrival aboard the flagship. He nodded and resumed his work, knowing that his lord would come to him of his own accord.

When he did arrive, the atmosphere of the bridge shifted. Where once, a tranquil, almost empty air of serene purpose held a dutiful grip, an altogether more unwelcome feeling slid its cold fingers deep into the veins of the crew. 

It wasn’t transhuman dread, the human feeling of Astartesian fear. It was something less tangible, grating at the back of your skull like an aching absence that crawled its way into the primal spaces of a man’s mind. 

The Spitewielder dipped his head courteously to the Admiral, who in turn bowed deeply to his lord. Croz resumed his seat as the Spitewielder wandered the bridge, looking out of the viewports at the planet below. 

A steady stream of ships flew to and from the three anchored ships below them, conveying men and material from Rothusberg. Though the two armies founded on the planet were great in number, they were not at all the capacity a planet of this size could produce given more time.

But still, the Spitewielder had amassed a fearsome host below, and the transportation of so many men took time. And here, at the cusp, Croz could see that his lord had already departed from Rothusberg in his mind. Reality had to catch up, and it was dragging.

The doors to the bridge opened, and two knights, both bearing twin headed axes, escorted a hunched figure. The figure was swaddled in layers of purple fabrics, bedecked in esoteric astrological symbols. Its head was completely wrapped in parchment, words of warding scrawled across it, almost like the ancient Gyptian practices of Old Terra, of ritual mummification. Chains led from the waists of both knights, linking to a black iron spiked collar that was firmly clamped around their charge.

It was brought before the Spitewielder, who had stood beside the Admiral’s throne and watched as the Choir Master of the Astra Telepathica was escorted by his Templars. The Choir Master sank to his knees and bowed his head before the Spitewielder.

“L-lord.” The Choir Master whispered from a painfully dry throat. Even with his helmet’s hearing, the Chaplain did force himself to concentrate on the Astropath.

“Speak, witch.”

“We have received a dream from your b-brother, lord.” The chains rattled as the Choir Master shifted his weight on his knees. He continued after taking a wheezing breath. His voice sounded pained. “S-shall I convey it to you, oh lord? Oh mighty and benevolent one?” 

The last word was a snake’s hiss of strangled breath. He nodded and bade the Astropath continue.

The Choir Master sank into the folds of his seemingly depthless robe, lost amongst the purple fabrics. From the layers of rough cloth, the sound of a drum beat, steady and sure, doled out. 

As if possessing a life of its own, the fabric rippled and started to jump and dance in time with the beat of the drum. With each beat, folds would twist and corners would tie into themselves and out and through, the fabric contorted and shaped itself.

The folds made a shape, the edges of each layer fluttering in an unseen breeze. It looked as if it had fallen atop the thing it mimicked. Made from the shape of the robe that the Choir Master supposedly inhabited, the form of a great trebuchet sat before the throne of the Admiral and the Spitewielder, its arm cranked back and ready.

At three smacks of the drum, the image vanished as the robes and its layers fell to the floor. A new beat came, this one frantic and fast, and individual shapes contorted into a faint echo of an upturned boat, then a murder of crows, before ending in the shape of a splayed hand.

Finally the drum fell silent and the robes of the Astropath fell to the floor. The withered frame of the Choir Master could barely be made from beneath its weight. The Spitewielder nodded, and the man-thing was unceremoniously dragged away on taut chains, the knights simply turning and walking from the bridge.

The Admiral looked over his shoulder to his lord, who remained still, arms folded across the slab of his featureless chestplate. 

“Ancis.”

“Lord Spitewielder?” Replied the Admiral at his lord’s address.

The Spitewielder had walked forward, his gaze having remained upon the viewport, eyeing almost in contempt the idling transport ships.

Before his lord could issue an order, Croz scrolled through one of his displays and called out.

“Master of Vox, issue the following; Embarcation Decks Beta 6 through 9 to assist in conveyance efforts. Our new timeline is to be five hours.” He was replied to by the affirmatives of the deck supervisors.

Without turning, nor addressing Croz directly, the Templars priest spoke.

“Which of our squads still aboard The Flail claim one of those decks?”

The Admiral didn’t need to verify.

“Squad Heinkar remains, lord, and claims Deck Beta 8.”

The Spitewielder did not speak further. Croz continued with his work, though the presence of his lord did chafe at him. It wasn’t until several minutes after the command had been issued that he received notice of Squad Heinkar’s Thunderhawk, Where Next to Conquer, had launched with its full complement of seven Templars, and was racing towards the Harm’s Way. 

He smirked at that. As Admiral, he could have commanded the same, as well as having earned the respects of the Templars who were housed aboard his mighty warship. But he thought even that too beneath them. Evidently, their commander did not.

A fierce and rapid three hours passed, and the four ships sailed to join their small coterie. Their destination was set, marked, and distributed across the fleet. Seven ships cut into the veil, following the lead of their flagship, plunging into the wound made in reality, and setting course to deadly shores.

 

ii. 

 

Bhabli sat in the sparse and bland confines of her room, which was arguably more akin to a cell. Though, she did remark upon the fine quality of the wooden furniture that furnished the room, though little there was of it. No more than a single stool and a small, circular table. 

She never liked warp travel, and the rumblings of the ship around her as they traversed into the Sea of Souls brought an itching sense of dread into the back of her mind. She was, however, quite pleased to hear a shipwide vox transmission of a beautiful prayer, recited by the Spitewielder’s clergy, whom from the Reclusiam, sang a hymnal of safe voyage and the guarding of souls. 

She spent her first day alone in her room, mired in the transitioning period that she’d come to accept when aboard starships. On her second day, she had managed to poke her head out of her room, finding the hall sullen and empty. She had courage enough to follow the hallway until it turned, leading to a similar hallway with no distinct markers from the one she currently stood in. Defeated, she returned to her cell and read over her work.

As a Historian, she was a social creature by nature, and inquisitive by mischievous hunger. She craved interaction and kinship. She would not enjoy spending her time isolated and alone.

The knock upon her door sent her heart fluttering, excited by this new stimulation.

It was the knight Kybert, arriving after the tolling of the second bell. He was still in his armor, which Bhabli couldn’t quite understand why she found that odd, but she did. Kybert led her to the kitchens, where they sat amongst the serfs, other Templars, and their squires. She was happily surprised to not find slab or gruel on her plate, but something that, while not entirely appetizing, did resemble food.

Two cuts of a white meat, dark bread, sickly green vegetables with orange chunks throughout, and a paste with a single berry sitting lopsided near the edge. She turned her head, and saw the serfs around her digging in. The Astartes, from where she could see, had similar plates. Their protein portions were different, however, replaced by a dense, heavy brick of matte brown sitting alongside portions of vegetables and bread.

A watered wine accompanied their meal. Bhabli enjoyed herself, the dry meat was edible, and the vegetables were helped by salt. She brought her dataslate out from her bag and sat it next to her, asking Kybert and the serfs unlucky to be caught within easy reach about their lives aboard the ship and wider crusade.

Most answers she found woefully typical and expected. Service eternal, glory in duty, thy master’s bidding, dull, lame, and utterly forgettable. She did meet a rather enthused Squire, who had joined well after the end of her meal. Kybert had made no objections, simply sitting idly and playing audience to her interviews.

She paused, when she noticed from afar, the old lanky fellow who had been in the observation tower with her at the parade grounds. He was seated at a further table, mostly in his lonesome, the serfs seated by him having inched away from the stranger in their midsts.

“Sir Kybert?”

“Lady?” The Astartes asked, his blue eyes amused and light.

“Are there other documentarians aboard?” 

The knight nodded, adjusted his posture, and indicated with his head to the man behind him that she was looking at.

“The Spitewielder has welcomed any of them that wished to come. He has allowed a number of them aboard The Flail.” 

She raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware the Primarch had sent more of my kind here.”

“He has not. You are the only one. There is an order of history keepers aboard the flagship already, however, Rothusberg also has an extensive historical library, with learned and trained historians. So our lord accepted them, and when news of your coming came, we invited some aboard to accompany you.”

Bhabli blanched. Kybert flashed his teeth at her.

“It is a big ship, Lady Bhabli, we can afford space for a handful of you. And besides, he’s fond of historians and painters.” Said Kybert, nodding to a passing pair of Squires who offered him respectful salutes.

“But…for me?” She said, still confused.

“You are sent by the Primarch, son of the God Emperor. The Spitewielder acknowledges your value to the empire, and made arrangements accordingly.”

Bhabli composed herself.

“You’re quite sure he isn’t an Ultramarine?” She asked, leaning in conspiratorially to whisper to Kybert. 

He laughed, his smile wide and sincere.

“We are Dornsons, Lady. Planning and strategizing are bred in the bones of us.”

She made a quick note about that in her dataslate, but wiggled her eyebrows from underneath her shawl at him.

“Kybert?” She asked again after a period of silence, receiving a patient nod in reply. “What are we doing in the Pale Spiral? I checked my charts, those are Imperial held worlds. I did not find anything within my accessible archives of its fall, or dangers.”

She saw he ran his tongue along the inside of his lip and chewed on it before speaking.

“You will know soon enough, once we arrive at Eryx Forgeworld.”

“What is at Eryx Forgeworld?” She asked.

“Our first and last stop before the Spiral proper.” He said, turning his head uninterestedly and began scanning the room. “Two weeks’ time, and I don’t believe we’ll be there long. From there, a seven month journey, pushing hard through the warp.”

She didn’t like the sound of that.

Kybert pointed his chin to the far end of the dining hall. Taking up four large communal dining tables, a host of various colors and uniforms sat together, standing out amongst the black and white clad serfs and crewmen seated around them. Several men in the black trench coats of the Commissariat paced around the eating troopers, glaring sternly at them.

“That is the ceremonial host of the Guard regiments oathed to the Spite Crusade. You could find good stories amongst that lot as well, Lady”

“They are on board as well?” She asked, scanning the faces of the eating soldiers.

“They are. The Spitewielder thinks it important to make sure we are well integrated. One of our Squads was dispersed amongst the fleet, carrying with them a pair of knights to mingle with.” Kybert wiggled his eyebrows back at her playfully, flashing his teeth once again in amusement.

“An expected strategy, coming to know him. I am surprised at the number of non-serf mortals you’ve invited aboard your flagship, however.” She scrawled something down onto her data slate.

“The Flail is a warship. There is little holy ground aboard her. So long as you lot avoid it, there is no harm in your wandering.”

She let the words sit there for a moment, soaking in them, parsing meaning before asking.

“I may wander the ship as I like?”

“Lady Jasper has spoken so.” The knight replied, as if that were enough.

“Who is this Jasper woman? I’ve heard her name before.”

At this, Kybert stood, offering his armored hand to her.

“Now that is something much more interesting to witness than interviews.”

 

Bhabli knew the route they were taking. Indeed, they came to the very same elevator that she had taken with her journey down to the embarkation deck alongside the Spitewielder.

This time, they ascended. The hallways were less grandiose in this section of the ship, but they were still wide and tall enough for an Astartes to manage. The hallways were barren, handfuls of devotional scrolls were left to hang alone on walls and inhabit lonely corners.

They passed through a copper gate and were greeted by the scents of a space well lived and occupied. It was a bailey, with various, cheaply constructed hab-units spaced throughout. Some houses were stacked atop one another six or seven high, some listing forwards, others with flaking paint and chipped edges.

They were simplistic and unoffensively painted, so as to be mute and humble. Cooking smoke wafted through the makeshift alleys, clothes hung to dry from windows, and children ran about.

The ‘street’ itself was clean, the space was quiet, but had a lived in quality that made her feel comfortable, even in the hazy amber gloom. 

Devotionals hung from the walls of the hab units, like decorations, depicting personal coats of arms or the personal heraldry of the knight-brother the serf family attended upon.

Was this some reflection of the knight-brothers' connection to their people, or simply the way the serfs made peace with their lives? The historian in her couldn't help but wonder. 

Small stalls dotted the street, empty but worn from use. She suspected they were popular stops along one’s route home.

“They have time for families and home life?” She asked, though quietly and almost ashamedly.

“They do, Lady.” Said the knight as he led her on.

“Are they not…busy doing slave tasks?” 

“They are.” He agreed.

“So what am I not understanding?” She asked.

“A knight does not always need to be waited on. Classes end, prayer is only thrice a day, and the Forgemaster insists that his office repair all weapons and armor.” He took a turn, almost stumbling into a group of playing children, who scattered with laughing, excited apologies to their lord.

“For some, serfdom is hereditary. You inherit your family’s duty. Our lives are structured as such that they have roughly four hours together, in their hab or their assigned chamber. Some live amongst their knights, entire families living in the knights’ cell. For others, they are here.”

Bhabli had always imagined serfdom as an endless cycle of toil and subjugation, but there was a rhythm here, a quiet, unspoken harmony that seemed to pulse through the street, carried by the flickering amber glow from windows. It was comforting. She was almost jealous.

They approached what looked like a checkpoint, as intimidating and powerful as the others she had seen throughout The Flail.

Several men posted at a barricade stepped forward and bowed, done up in the same armor she had seen when passing the gate to the embarkation deck days ago.

“Sir Kybert! Command us.” They remained bowed until spoken to.

“I am here for Lady Jasper.” Kybert said, looking around at the passing serfs who showed deference to him before continuing on.

“The Lady is here, Sir Kybert. I will escort you to the manor at once.” The man stood, turned smartly on his heel, and began a brisk march.

“That will not be needed, serf, thank you. I know where Lady Jasper lives.” At that, Kybert moved on, motioning with his head for her to follow. The guards bowed again then returned to their post. 

She was led down a long, central ‘street’ formed by the natural curves and bends of the impromptu houses. She wasn’t sure how, but sometime during their journey, the floor began a gentle rise and she could see well over the houses to the great door they had come through. This cavern of the starship dedicated to serf housing was huge and vast, cold and dark. 

Each home shown through various windows with soft orange light, the lumens or fires or candles creating a gentle haze that permeated the streets in lue of lamps. The smell of cooking fats and cleaning chemicals mixed with the cold scent of The Flail’s recycled air. 

They came to a small gate at waist height, made of simple wood. A man was stripped to the waist, his tunic discarded somewhere. He was lean and tall, with dark hair and bladed features. Lash marks were visible along his back.

He set down the rifle he had been cleaning in the ‘yard’ of his appreciable hab-unit, or the manor, as she’d heard the guards say.

The man sauntered over to them, but as soon as was appropriate, went to his knee.

“Sir Kybert, a pleasure my lord. My father is not home right now, my apologies. I can send a runner to fe-” He was interrupted.

“I’m here for your sister, not your father.”

The man stood and nodded. He looked at Bhabli with a raised eyebrow.

“And who might this be, Sir?”

“This is Historitor Acenya Bhabli, a guest of the lord Spitewielder’s. I am here to introduce her to your sister.”

There was no further prompting. The man opened the gate, and saluted as they passed. He didn’t so much as spare her another look, which she found to be a shame, as the man wasn’t entirely offensive to her eyes.

“Who was that?” She whispered.

“Hartwig von Flail, second son of Abiry von Flail. He is the Commander at Arms of the Templars’ serfdom.”

“He’s very handsome.” She said, placing her hand gently on the giants’ forearm to keep pace with him.

“Is he?” Asked Kybert in what seemed a genuine response.

“I think he is.” At this, the knight slowed his pace, stopping just before the manor’s door.

“I wouldn’t know, Lady.”

“Not your type?” She asked as the giant knocked once with a gentle tap of his knuckle.

“Sure.” He said as the door opened.

An older woman opened the door. Her black hair was done up tight into a bun, held in place by a white linen bow. She wore the same serf tunic worn by all amongst the slaves of the Templars. She gave a deep and sincere bow, though it was obvious it pained her greatly. 

Kybert made a noise from his teeth and reached for her, gently aiding her back up. The woman gave him a soft apology as she leaned her weight against the Astarte. Something told Bhabli she knew where Hartwig’s good looks came from.

“Lady Gwendlin, the lord Spitewielder will flay me for your bowing to me.” He scolded her in what Bhabli hoped was meant to be playfully. She was relieved when the woman smacked his arm weakly. The knight took her inside, ducking his head and chest to get through the door. 

“May I?” Bhabli asked from the porch where she stood. Kybert looked over his shoulder, hulking and barely able to fit in the hallway he stood in.

“Do come in.” Came the voice of another, a girl no older than thirteen or fourteen appearing from behind the door.

“Thank you.” She said, extending her hand. “I’m Acenya Bhabli, Historitor of the Order of the Historians Terra.”

The young girl took the hand firmly, holding unblinking eye contact with her.

“Jasper von Flail, serf primus of the Spite Crusade, and equerry to our lord Spitewielder.”

 

iii. 

 

Kurt was unnerved for the first few days of their travel aboard the titanic hulk that was The Flail. The Black Angels had become a common enough sight back home on Rothusberg, but they took on an entirely different manner aboard their flying home.

The Flail was a leviathan of metal, groaning with the weight of centuries. Kurt had never felt so small, so trapped, as when he stood within its hull. The hum of its engines vibrated through the deck beneath his boots, a constant reminder that they were hurtling through space at the mercy of forces Kurt could neither see nor understand.

The knights were still patient, if not plainly polite. But they were attended to by black tunic serfs, and were not permitted to wander the wider parts of the ship. They, and ‘they’ being the collective honor guard stowed with Kurt, had access to only a handful of decks.

The dining hall had been unexpected, and the small scattering of knights amongst the mortals was something of an odd sight, regardless of his exposure to them.

Kurt was elbow to elbow with members of his regiment, but the wider table beyond was filled with the clashing uniforms of the mortal contingent that fought alongside the Templars. 

The dour black fatigues of the Host of Rohm and their stoney faces. The humble and spartan jumper of the Mastians, who were a pale folk with silver hair. What he could see of the far seated Jovich, they wore rough canvas long shirts and tan linen pantaloons.

His own fatigues were similar to the serfs around them, largely inspired by them even, but bearing the colors and crest of the Janissaries. 

The food was good, though not as varied or fresh as what he had been eating at the barracks planetside, he did appreciate how much shipboard food still resembled food. 

His time aboard the flagship of the Crusade was not as idle as the Historitor had found for herself. Kurt, alongside the other members of the honor guard detachment, ran consecutive drills. Often, a knight or group of knights would join them, melding their skills together.

Some knights, Sergeants mostly, would come to consult with Kurt’s Captain, or the other ranking officers. Or to drill the detail on specific actions. These would leave the men, though hardy and used to the rigors of Astartesian training, in a heap of cramping muscles and soaked uniforms.

Lessons also did not stop. The early afternoons and mid evenings were spent inside intimate lecture halls, reading, writing, reciting, and reading more still. Templar serfs would arrive with carts of tomes and books, data slates and rolled parchment. Members of the ship’s Reclusiam, known amongst the Crusade as “the clergy”, would come often to teach them the history of the Crusade they inhabited.

They were not allowed to worship within the serfs’ church, nor the knights’, and the Templars would not construct a makeshift or ad hoc chapel, for it was unseemly and they were capable of better

As Kurt understood, it was a member of the Sptiewielder’s retinue who had suggested that the honor guards’ chapel time be spent on the embarkation deck, where Oaths of Moment were sworn to the Emperor, and many battle vows made. It was deemed an acceptable enough holy site.

Amongst the clunking and rattling of the tech magi and their servants, they would pray to the God Emperor. The Templars’ primarch and their Chapter’s founder, as well as their supreme leader, were mentioned in blessings and benedictions. Rothusberg was praised, a new addition since boarding that Kurt had grown to feel pride for.

Kurt and his coterie had finished their meal and were blessed with two hours of personal rec time. He was interested in spending his time in one of the communal training spaces, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the Black Angels in his routine. The thought appealed to him, and he was discussing his plan with one of his fellows just as the ship heaved and emergency lighting overtook the hall. Klaxons began to wail in an aggressive, angry tone.

A piercing whine cut through the cacophony of the alarm, insisting upon itself and rattling around Kurt’s head.

“All hands, all hands. Come to Secondary Order. That is Secondary Order - Hold current ground and await further orders.”

Kurt’s vision swam, his head felt light, and he dearly wished to be gripping something in his hands. The adrenaline smacked him like a bull grox and the training took over, springing him to action. 

He and the rest of the men in the hall sprinted back towards the dining hall, seeing the great commotion taking place there. 

A handful of knights had been present, and one was barking orders at the serfs gathered. Nearby, one of the remaining Commissars had his pistol out, forming the honor detail into a cohesive unit.

Kurt joined them, forming a wall of men in a calamity of uniform colors, arms raised and poised for unarmed combat.

Several armed and armored serfs entered the hall, towing in step behind them a munitions cart, neatly packed and a trail six long. Shipboard shotguns, boarding shields, and power mauls were being distributed amongst the gathered mortals. Kurt clunked the action on the heavy, ancient patterned void shotgun, very much appreciating the throaty chic-clunk it made as he prepared it.

Several killboxes were made facing the four tall, arched doors that lead into the hall. Four knights took position just behind the wall of boarding shields. They were each armed with their personal blades, held in black armored fists. One of the knights revved the motor of his chainaxe eagerly.

Fog slithered through the gaps around the doorframe, a damp, creeping presence that filled the air. The scent of briny ocean air mingled with the earthy promise of an approaching storm, overwhelming their senses until Kurt could almost taste the salty tang of seaweed lodged at the back of his throat. 

From beyond the door came a strange, guttural noise—a sound like someone struggling to breathe underwater, muffled yet insistent, as though a drowning man was determined to speak despite the choking murk. The noise reverberated through the door, a wet, dissonant chorus that sent a shiver crawling down Kurt's spine.

Then came a faint, discordant thudding against the doors, soft at first, but slick and uneven, as though something wet was being pressed into the wood. The sound grew more frantic, the wet slaps growing louder, each one adding to the unsettling chorus of dull bangs. With each heavy thud, the noise seemed to swell, reverberating through the thick air. Above them, slimy false raindrops fell onto the gathered Guardsmen and serfs below.

The knights exchanged silent, wary glances.

From beyond the door, a multitude of voices rippled through the thick wood. It was almost imperceptible, as though they were speaking in whispers just shy of being heard. But like the banging, they too grew louder. The voices weren’t speaking, not in any language Kurt knew, or thought he ought to know, but just a garbled mix of gibberish and disjointed syllables, their meaning absent.

And as one, the voices aligned for a single word, resonating so clearly in the ears of the nearly seven hundred souls present, it brought most of them to their knees in nauseous bouts of vertigo.

“Yog'cwllh'naak!” The voice gurgled.

The word struck Kurt like a blow to the skull. His mind reeled, his thoughts fractured and scattered. The very air seemed to pulse with the sound, as though reality itself was being twisted by the utterance. The smell of briny ocean muck filled his nostrils, thick and nauseating, and before he could stop himself, the contents of his stomach erupted onto the cold tile. He could still hear the gurgling echo of that alien tongue in his ears, like it was inside him now, eating away at his sanity.

Only two of the knights had kept their feet, though one of them was swaying, using his upturned chainsword as a crutch. 

The other, a Sergeant, shook his head and bellowed out the call for composure. The Commissar nearby blew his whistle, though all it did was cause Kurt’s left eye to twitch in sympathy. 

Men struggled to regain themselves, to find any balance, let alone to stand. Indeed, many had fallen onto the floor, where the fog had already greedily clung to. It embraced them, swallowing whole some of those poor unfortunates, as they sunk into the wisps and tendrils of it, not to return.

With a great, ominous crack, the doors began to give way.

 

iv. 

 

She was alone with Lady Jasper in a loft that wasn’t the most extravagant she’d ever seen, but comfortable enough. Familial mementos adorned the walls, a curious choice for someone of her position. Bhabli found it both humble and odd—surely, serfs didn’t keep such things. But with the Spitewielder’s eccentricities, she’d long since abandoned the expectation of surprise. Every detail of the Crusade’s workings seemed, to him, to carry some esoteric value.

She had her data slate out, though she was hesitant to touch the quill embedded within it. With the Spitewielder, he was difficult to both be with and talk to, for their own reasons Bhabli felt entirely justified in assigning a random value of her own to, thank you very much.

But the girl was disarming. She was both intense and very relaxed. When she spoke, there was almost the hint of the child she was, but at the front was the woman she most certainly had to become.

“Who are you, or rather, what are you?” She asked finally, after an entirely too awkward period of time after they had exchanged pleasantries.

“I am Jasper von Flail. My father is Abiry von Flail, and my mother over there with Kybert is Sofria von Flail.” The girl said matter of factly, tilting her head in mimicry of her master.

“Well, yes, but the other parts.” Bhabli replied, still happily writing down the names and family ties.

“I am serf primus, and personal equerry to the Spitewielder.” Jasper said, her tone betraying no hint of pride or drama. Just facts.

Bhabli didn’t blanch, nor balk, but she did tut. She motioned the girl to continue.

“My grandfather held the role prior, but upon my tenth year, I inherited my position and my grandfather, Tyren, retired.” Jasper’s hands were folded into her lap, and she sat patiently and attentively. Her hair sat at her shoulders in a bob of a deep auburn, which Bhabli found curious. 

Then she raised her eyebrow.

“Tyren is your grandfather? He was the previous serf primus, and he retired from the service of the Astartes?” She made certain to emphasize each point, pulling down the hem of her shawl to show the girl she was looking down her nose at her pugnaciously. 

“Of course not, no. But my family is privileged, and my grandfather has earned a great deal of respect from my master. But, he mostly serves as my second, oddly enough.” The girl, Jasper, just shrugged her shoulders. “What else is there to do aboard a battleship of the Adeptus Astartes?”

Bhabli nodded, correcting some of her notes. It made sense, she surmised. 

“What is it like to work for the Spitewielder?” 

Jasper blinked and looked away in thought. 

“It is rewarding in its own ways. Understand, madam Historitor, I largely exist to organize my fellows serfs, as well as to manage anything within the purview of my master that he deems beneath his attention or is outside of his time.

“I am extended a portion of his power. Not to the same extent as my father, but it is his favor I wield as he wields the beloved Spite. Favor I use for the mundane, I assure you. There isn’t anything I would believe you to deem glamorous or of much interest.”

Bhabli was about to ask a follow up when The Flail shook violently, sending family paintings to the manor’s floors. Jasper had stood immediately, a look of fear immediately hammered into purpose played across her face.

Kybert came up and into the Loft, carrying the form of Lady Jasper’s mother as gently as an armored Angel of Death could. They placed her onto one of the chairs. Kybert tilted his helm, the lenses of his eyes glaring down at them.

“Remain here. Do not leave this place.”

He had left, then. Jasper ran into one of the adjacent rooms, returning with both a torch and a vox bead. The former she handed to Bhabli, hooking the latter into her ear and speaking into the vox-bead.

“This is Jasper, report.”

There was a long pause, Jasper’s eyes hardened and narrowed as the rumbling of a deep voice filled the space quietly between the women.

Bhabli looked down at the older woman, Sofria. She was wincing, a look of concern about her face. Bhabli crouched and offered the older woman her hand, which she took. It occurred to Bhabli that the serf was likely not as alarmed as she was, and was instead projecting onto the older woman. The serf was actually comforting her. She giggled.

The woman smiled at her and opened her mouth to say something when Jasper spoke.

“We’ve hit a warp eddy, but the Geller Field is still intact. However, decks are reporting manifestations and anomalies.” Her manicured fingers began to pick at her lip. Something akin to the sound of shattering glass reverberated outside of the window nearest to them. Jasper went to it, shortly followed by Bhabli.

Outside, in the streets, figures arose from the street as sickly yellow entities. They were vaguely humanoid, and where mouths on most faces should be was instead a deep, black hole. Some of the entities crawled on their bellies, while others shambled drunkenly in the street.

The knight, Kybert, was swiftly dispatching them with his inactive chainsword, swinging the blade into the phantasmal images, whom upon impact, shattered into pieces of light that dissolved into tendrils of wispy smoke. It smelt like a spray of fine mist, until it hit you at the end of  your sinuses, infused with a rancid odor of chum left out too long.

The figures around the knight convulsed, shaking as if seizing. There was a great, unified collection of breath, before each of the figures spoke as one.

“Yog'cwllh'naak!” They each intoned, together, even as they were cut down. It was with great fright, however, as when the words were spoken, just as the knight had struck one of the glowing entities, he fell to his knees. 

Kybert braced himself against his sword, holding a hand to the side of his head and grimacing in pain. Even from behind the window, a story up, Bhabli’s stomach felt queasy at the sound of their words.

The words—if they could even be called words—were an echo in Bhabli’s mind, hollow and reverberating in a way that made her teeth ache. The figures spoke in unison, their voices a discordant symphony that shook the very air.

Having delivered their message, the figures of light dissipated, evaporating into silky fingers of luminous smoke, disappearing into the vaulted ceiling above. She could see Jasper’s brother, Hartwig, stumbled over to the knight. She couldn’t hear their exchange, but saw the knight motion him away. 

By the time Bhabli had made it down the stairs and to the door of the manor, the alarms had fallen silent, and the lights had resumed their regular color and intensity. A voice came over the ship wide vox, deep and menacing.

“The threat has abated. Kill teams to mobilize. Brothers, make way to your posts. We will not suffer their return.”

Kybert stood, marched over to her, and apologized. He then, without question, lifted her and ordered the von Flail’s to their stations. The serfs of the Spitewielder nodded and moved. Bhabli attempted to protest once, but it fell on Kybert’s uninterested ear.

The knight turned, and began to run at a startling pace for someone so large and encumbered. Indeed, she let out a pitifully startled yelp. 

 

v. 

 

He closed the link in the same moment he deactivated the ancient relic arcanum. Spite crackled into silence, heavy and ominous, having slain six of the manifested light entities. His voice came through the vox grill of his skull helm in an irritated growl.

“Someone explain this.”

None came. The bridge crew were silent, some wiping sweat from their brows, others lowering their service side arms. Some of the Spiteful patrolled the bridge, hunting.

“Navigation, report. Now.” The Spitewielder ordered.

An elderly man with a ridiculously large and full mustache fixed the spectacles sitting on his nose and looked over his holo-charts. 

The man reached for a brass horn and spoke into it. The Chaplain heard the words, but ignored them nonetheless, waiting until the full picture was painted for him. The navigation’s officer looked down his nose, his mouth open as he charted the course.

It was several beats of both of the Spitewielders’ hearts before the old man offered anything.

“A wave, sire. A great and enormous wave! We’ve smashed straight through the guts of her, and Emperor bright and true, we’ve come out the other side!” The officer looked dumbfounded, pointing his fingers into the charts.

“Auspex, what of the fleet?” He asked, turning his singular eye lens to the next officer. She nodded, her augmetic fingers dancing over the runes of her display.

“All contacts report back affirmative minus one, lord.” She said, still working at her station’s keys and dials. “We’ve lost any and all signifiers from the Burial Hymn.”

“Navigation, arrival time to destination.” The Chaplain ordered firmly.

“Three days shipboard, sire.” The officer replied.

“Vox, open fleet noosphere. Broadcast is as follows…”

 

The fleet sailed hard and fast for the predicted three days. They suffered no further molestations at the hands of the warps, or the strange happenstances that comes with traversing Hell.

At the orders of the Crusade’s head, the fleet remained at secondary order until their arrival at their first drop. The crew were relegated to a strict schedule and routine, allowing for very little travel beyond required locations and vital staff required to move to those spaces.

Black Templars stalked the corridors, guarded the enginarium, and whispered hushed prayers while in the dark places of The Flail. No further explanation was forthcoming. The Geller Fields had remained active on all of the Crusade’s ships, yet each of them reported incidences of manifestations, the smell of salty and briny sea water, and the strange, guttural tongue of a foul language not of Man. 

Just before the dawn of the fourth day, the Spite Crusade dived from the belly of the Warp, carving a wound into reality and traversing into the Mandeville Point of the local star system.

They arrived lazily, as if in shock. The crew remained in a deep, grim silence. Until the klaxons wailed, shattering the quiet like a glass shattering under the weight of a hammer. The ships in the fleet were still groggy from the long warp journey, their systems not yet fully attuned to realspace.

Under the threat of multiple target locks and confirmations of guns running hot, the Spite Crusade was at the mercy of a waiting blade at its throat.

[Spite]

Five

 

Gathered about a Round Table

Time, as a construct

A great and terrible jihad

 

i. 

 

The six ships of the Spite Crusade were borne down upon by a mighty fleet, held only at the mercy of their curiosity. Though The Flail was assuredly the largest vessel present, many ships held her at gunpoint. A gruesome battle it would be, indeed, but one the great battle barge would likely not live to glorify.

The Spitewielder stood, arms folded across his chest, glaring through the bridge’s main viewport. The order to drive out their own guns was not needed, and they were slowly coming to align at the first of their newfound enemies.

“Vox.” He ordered.

“Vox at your will, lord!” Came the officer’s quick reply.

“I know not what stupidity drives you to pull blades on The Flail, but I will allow thirty seconds before I start tearing into your mongrel hides.”

The words were delivered coldly, as definitive a promise as one could be made. 

“My lord Spitewielder, is that you?” Came a voice clearly belonging to another Astartes, and one he knew.

“Answer me, Jarod.”

“Lord, you’ve been lost to us for a year.” Jarod’s voice was hesitant and still cautious. 

In his peripherals, the Spitewielder could see the heads of his bridge officers turn to look at one another over the proclamation. 

“Elaborate.” He said.

“Nearly fifteen months, lord. When you did not arrive after the first month, we consulted with the Astropaths, who told us that your light had not faded, but was mired in a certain sort of stillness.”

The words were met with an eerie silence. Admiral Croz muttered what the other crew were thinking.

“The eddy.”

“We are returned to you, Jarod. Stand down and lead us to port. All of you are to return home this instant, we clearly have much to discuss.” The Spitewielder turned, ignoring any follow up from his subordinates.

He gave the briefest glance to Croz, who returned the look with a nod and began issuing orders. 

When he was alone, he ground his teeth together, flexing his fingers before sighing deeply. He opened the vox to all of his knights.

“Assemble on the embarkation deck. Now.”

He cut the link and strode toward the main embarkation deck. Another thought occurred to him, one weightier and blacker, and he opened a private channel

“Vicar.”

“Lord Spitewielder?” The voice that answered was deep; Vicar Iyan, apprentice to the Chief Apothecary of the Spite Crusade. A reclusive Templar, more often found in the seclusion of his lab than amongst the battle throng.

“Begin preparations to receive the victorious dead.”

“By your will, lord.” Iyan replied. The link went dead.

The elevator took him to the primary embarkation deck, where his knights and the remaining strength of The Flail gathered. He cycled through several channels, issuing more orders as he walked. Approaching the embarkation gates, he issued a final command.

“Prepare arrangements for a Table Gathering.”

His Herald, Abiry, gave him his assurances.

The Spiteful were gathered in full order, his host of eleven attendant knights, as well as the remaining strength left aboard The Flail. They gathered into two lines, while the Spiteful formed a semi-circle around their lord. 

With them, the honor guard sat off to the side at full parade display, banners and colors held proud and bold. They stood with straight backs and their weapons held erect in rigid hands. Several of the historians were there as well, including and especially Bhabli, who unlike the others, stood with the knights of the Spiteful.

He nodded to her and she offered a respectful bow, holding her dataslate against her thighs.

“So we’re late then?” Asked Kestian as the Spitewielder joined them.

“Evidently.” He replied curtly.

“A strange place, the warp.” Said Altus from behind them, holding the personal standard of the Spitewielder.

The knights fell into an introspective silence. There wasn’t the air of nervousness, not amongst the Templars, but there was a charged essence to the air. Bhabli found the courage to speak up.

“What are we doing here exactly?” She said, not timid, but she didn’t exactly raise her voice.

“You brought with you a means to record and document?” The Spitewielder asked.

She nodded.

He turned his head back, staring at the void beyond. 

“Do what you are here to do, Lady. Now we are made whole. Watch, observe, it will all be revealed to you here in but a moment’s time.”

Bhabli made a face, her expression hidden behind her shawl, but she accepted the way of things among these black knights. Squinting into the void, she saw shapes beginning to resolve against the blackness. Thunderhawks, adorned with the heraldic cross of the Templars, raced toward them in horrifying numbers. Gooseflesh rose on Bhabli’s arms as a cold sweat broke out on her neck.

To the Spitewielder, it was a sight to assuage all ills and aches of the galaxy. A tightness that had made its home in the furthest corners of his jaw finally unclenched. The ache that followed was much worse.

The battle barge’s primary embarkation deck was massive, and could easily accept a swarm of gunships. Even still, they had to come in cautiously, packing tightly together to fit.

The emptied gunships took off, rehoming themselves to other decks, allowing others to land and disgorge their cargo.

After several minutes of noisy and cacophonous landings and departures, the final Thunderhawk touched down.

She was edged in bronze fixings, decals of thorned rose flowers adorned its frame like fine gilding. As the Thunderhawk landed, the newcomer knights turned and went to a reverential rest, their weapons tip down, hands double clasped and heads bowed.

The Thunderhawk Dazgin lowered its ramp, aromatic mist falling in lazy coils off its angled surface. Funeral shawled knights marched solemnly from the gunship’s hold.

First came the casket bearers. 

Two knights to a box, they gently marched down the ramp, carrying the tabard swathed coffins containing their slain kin. These were allowed to pass without fuss The Spitewielder’s retinue made way, offering hushed words of reverence and mourning to their fallen dead. 

The Spitewielder ran his hand along the sides of each as they passed, silently welcoming his brothers back home. Seventeen coffins went by, the funeral march making their way towards The Flail’s Apothecarium. 

Two knights in the iconography of Sergeants came forward from their fellow Templar, presenting their arms in salute. The first was in the slim, sleek design of mark VI battle plate, his avian beak more of a houndskull, patterned in checkers of black and brass. He was without a tabard, save for a small draping that hung from his left pauldron.

Buckled at his side were two swords of varying lengths, sheathed in scabbards of finely tanned leather studded in pins of the Chapter’s icons. Chains adorned his thighs and chest in tight hatches.

The second wore the more commonly worn mark VII. Though, uniquely, this knight’s armor heraldry was quartered. His arms and legs were a mismatch of their partner. 

His helmet was a more brutal, Iron pattern, with a heavy brow encasing the T-shaped visor. A chainaxe sat on his back, while a heavily decorated and ornate inferno-pistol was slung inside a cast iron holster fused to his thigh. 

 

Both Sergeants had the word SPITE painted above their left eye lenses.

Before anything could be said, a funeral prayer’s recitation hung quiet and heavy over the assembled knights, spoken from the grinning teeth of a half-skull helmed warrior. He walked amongst the congregation with his arms held aloft, palms up, speaking to the air above them.

“O’ holy Emperor, we beseech thee! Turn thy gaze to mine flock!

“Reclaim thy brave dead who hath fallen in the field of battle!

“Honor thy slain so that they might inspire the living to greater deeds! 

“For the faithful who sacrificed, look and guide them to thee!

“For the warriors whose blood soaked the soil of your kingdom, O’ Lord!

“O’ God-Emperor, Master of Mankind, accept these servants to Your side!

“Let their fury in life have granted them honor in death, upon the shoulders of grieving brothers!

“We offer these souls to You, O’ Golden One, in both thanks and mourning.

“May we serve You, eternal.

“Ave Imperator.”

“Ave Imperator.” The gathered Templars intoned reverently, some unclasping their hands, all unbowing their heads. 

The skull-helmed figure went to his knees, and with slow purpose, prostrated himself until the forehead of his helmet kissed the decking of the hangar. Several knights amongst the ranks did so as well, following the prone Chaplain’s pious display of humility and faith.

From where she stood, just a handful of meters away, Bhabli blinked in exasperated surprise. The figure abasing himself at the lord Spitewielder’s feet was every inch the man she had expected the Spitewielder himself to look like.

The prone figure stood in a clanking clamor of chains and rustling parchment once he had finished his prayers.

Draped about him like a robe were lengthy rolls of foxing parchment, richly decorated and inscribed with what looked to be intricately detailed handwriting. It flowed over the jagged edges of his spiked pauldrons.

A grisly fetish was nailed to a rondel at the warrior’s left shoulder. A severed gauntlet, its edges tattered and gored, colored in a sickly red, crucified with its palm laid flat against the rondel.

Chains swirled all around him, forming a skirt across his knees. Others dangled from the lip of his pauldron, and wrapped around both of his forearms. A thicker chain acted as his belt, which hung from it several incense bells that breathed fragrant coils of smoke that caressed and steamed off of the Chaplain, hissing from the flaps of his scrollwork robe. 

Sitting in an artisanally crafted holster of rose-gold rings entwined with one another, was a brutally, beautifully wrought warpick. The long hafted hammer was crafted into the shape of the cross of the Black Templars. One arm ended in a blunt hammer’s head, while the other narrowed into a wicked, angular point. At its center was a raised embossing of a bronze skull, coiled as if by a snake in a long vine of rose thorns. 

The Chaplain raised his hood now that his devotional was over, scarlet script work was tightly woven into its black fabric. A crude mohawk of brass spikes studded the top of his helmet, creating jagged peaks where the hood settled. Silhouetting him were trophies that, while gruesome, became familiar amongst the trappings of the unnamed Chaplain.

Three helmets were staked to his backpack, rising high enough above his head to be fully visible. Each stake was topped with red candles, the wax having formed long tears, like oozing blood, down the ruined helms.

Above the armored brow of his forehead was the word SPITE in that same, familiar handwriting.

When this new Chaplain spoke, his voice came out soft and reserved, but colored with warmth and welcomed familiarity.

“Brother, it heals my soul to be home, amongst you all.”

The two warrior-priests collided in a jangling clang of chain covered ceramite meeting chain covered ceramite. Embraced, both Chaplains pressed their foreheads to one another.

The Spitewielder separated them, but kept both of his hands clasped around his brother’s shoulders.

“The Crusade is made whole again by you and our brothers’ return, Alibrand.”

Alibrand stepped aside to allow the Spitewielder to embrace the two Sergeants.

“Stahvar, Jarod, I would speak with the two of you in the Solemn Archive once your companies are settled and the dead laid to rest, properly.” The Spitewielder said after the brotherly welcomes. Both men nodded.

The Spiteful stepped forward, embracing their returned brethren. Johann, Altus, Kestian, and Kybert had a particular brotherhood with the two Sergeants, as well as the new Chaplain Alibrand. The other members remained more reserved, not sharing in such familiar brotherhood regardless of their shared titles.

“Lord Spitewielder, we should away to debrief, but first, I wish to make communion within the Chapel of Transfiguration.” Alibrand stated, less of a request and more a matter of fact.

The Spitewielder offered no protest. He bid welcome to the returning knights, and the gathering began to dissolve. The host of Templars were being led away, while trains of attendant serfs and tech adepts followed, a parade in miniature. 

At Kybert’s instruction, Bhabli was escorted to the Solemn Archive once again. The honor detail departed, and the historians packed their belongings and left.

 

 

ii. 

 

 

The Chapel of Transfiguration would humble even the most resplendent cathedrals on the Cardinal worlds of the Imperium. Its foundations were not merely built, but carved into the very bones of the ship, crafted by artisans long since passed into forgotten history. Some even whispered that the schematics themselves bore the signature of the Progenitor’s hand, a faint echo of his divine will.

Timeworn alabaster stone, weathered and worn by the passage of centuries, supported a vast, circular dome that loomed overhead like the eye of an ancient god. Beneath it, towering archways of rich, warm wood rose in succession, each one adorned with ornate gothic sconces. From the high corners, grotesque gargoyles leered down, each one clutching weapons, scrolls, or flasks in gnarled, clawed hands. Their eyes seemed to follow the living with a predatory gleam.

Above, the ceiling was a tapestry of murals, each brushstroke a benediction. Pleasingly, they lead the eye down to the sanctuary, where the largest mosaic lay.

The Emperor was depicted as a towering figure, cradling Terra in one hand, his other outstretched to defy a many-faced chimeric beast of ancient legend. Beneath him, the dead sprawled at his feet—humans and demons alike, slaughtered in some cataclysmic doom. The Chimera’s hooves beat down upon their corpses, its form twisted and unnatural, a heathen icon of man and demon entwined. Above, the heavens burned, their faces contorted in agony, weeping tears of blood.

At the altar was a stone tablet with an indentation the shape and form of a crozius. It was empty, draped with a black cloth.

Simple pews lined the Chapel, their wooden surfaces worn smooth by centuries of prayer. Great candled chandeliers hung on thick chains from the ceiling. Smaller candelabras sat in their warm haze at the corners of the Chapel. 

Near the walls, finely crafted confessionals stood, draped in black fabric, empty and waiting.  Small lecterns sat next to them, scrolls of parchment lay open to read, weighed down by led. 

A fine carpet of red made a sanguine line bisecting the Templars’ church. The assembled clergy, hidden from view, still devoutely chanted and filled the ample space with dutiful worship. The smell of frankincense and myrrh choked the air.

The twin, heavy iron doors pulled apart, allowing the three knights their private access.

The Chapel of Transfiguration was large enough to comfortably house two hundred fully armored Astartes, and so cavernous and ample a space, small sounds echoed especially loudly within its confines.

In this very same church, the gathered knights once took their very first oaths. These were the hallowed halls where the first words of any true and meaningful value spoken in their lives were said.

Alibrand, silent in his thoughts, removed his helmet.

His face was a canvas of tattoos: the lower portion inked to resemble that of a clavicle, a grim mockery of mortality. Gnostic symbols of the Chapter’s worship were etched across his forehead, his nose, and beneath his eyes, a branding of his perfect devotion. 

Only the Spitewielder remained helmed.

Alibrand moved toward the sanctuary, his footsteps deliberate, and knelt before the mosaic. His fingers intertwined in quiet prayer. Kestian followed, lowering himself to one knee, his head bowed in reverence.

The Spitewielder lingered a moment longer, watching them, before he too joined in. The trio knelt in silence, the hum of the distant chanting barely a whisper in the vast emptiness of the Chapel.

Moments passed in stillness. Only when the doors groaned open again did they rise, turning to welcome the final member of their brotherhood.

Wilhelt, Emperor’s Champion to the Spite Crusade, the Sword of a Generation, ‘The Wolf’, and final member of their Spiteful founding had arrived aboard The Flail.

He was a hulking titan of an Astartes, his Armor of Faith a testament to both his rank and his unyielding devotion. Thrice blessed, consecrated with the finest oils and crafted from the oldest of the Crusade’s armories, his armor was a fusion of faith and war. Portions of Tartaros Pattern Terminator armor had been melded with the unique plating of the Spite Crusade, creating a suit of unparalleled power, suited only and specifically for a Champion.

Massive plated shoulders, wide and imposing, bore the weight of a heavy cloak, draped in dove-white and gold. On one pauldron was the proud wolf’s head of Fenris, overlaid with the Black Templars’ cross. On the other, a series of short, blunt spikes bristled from its raised rim. The barrel-like chest plate was adorned with a golden plaque bearing his name in High Gothic. Brass organ pipes jutted from his raised power plant, their twisted shapes extenuating his height. 

A skirt of mail and leather covered his waist, from which hung chains with hooks that carried skulls and hands and other grisly trophies. 

Nestled inside his raised collar was a great helm with slanted, glaring lenses. A torse and mantling of black and green sat like a circlet around the top of the great helm. Jutting from the center of the Champion’s forehead was a rearing wolf, done in silver.

Finally, a thin piece of parchment was waxed just above Wilhelt’s left eye lens.

SPITE was written in thick black ink on the parchment.

The Champion was a walking monument to war, bedecked in the iconography of faith and fire. Indomitable, unyielding, undaunted. The Champion of the Emperor banged his fist to his chest.

“Brothers.” He intoned, his voice deep and rumbling.

The gathered knights dipped their heads to their Champion, who removed his great helm. His bald head was tattooed heavily in both Imperial Gothic and Fenrisian. Two service studs sat heavy on his brow. His face was covered with a thick, sandy beard.

“The fight here,” Rumbled the Champion, “was it any good?”

“We lost nearly twenty knights, brother.” Alibrand replied, his tone morose. The Champion nodded, but said nothing. The Chaplain gave a heavy sigh of regret before continuing.

“It was a mechanical thing, brother. A civil war within the Cult Mechanicus. There was no passion, no holy foe, just men masquerading as machines, slaughtered for the error of false servitude.”

Alibrand shook his head, a bitter edge to his voice. “Seventeen souls lost for the fealty of a single Titan maniple.”

The Spitewielder tilted his head, his curiosity piqued. His words were as cold and clinical as an Apothecary's blade

“The Legio has agreed then?” 

Alibrand nodded, continuing his tale. If he were disappointed, he did not show it.

“When you did not arrive when expected, we devoted our time to seeking out the survivors and purging any final remnants. We helped settle disputes amongst the remaining Mechanicus magi and became well allied with Legio Gnostica.”

The Chaplain recounted more events, told of the heroics of the knights of the fractured Spite Crusade, and the eventual retaking of the forgeworld. Each of the assembled knights asked questions, probing, extrapolating, learning.

Hours passed within the dim light of the Chapel of Transfiguration. Alibrand told them of the past year’s events, while Kestian detailed the warp incident and the phantasms they encountered. Alibrand narrowed his eyes when they mentioned the fel word spoken.

“The Geller Field was active you say?” Alibrand’s question was met with a collection of nods.

“We’ve no explanation for it. I’m hoping our silent Inquisitor will enlighten us during the Round Table.” Sighed the Spitewielder. He turned his head to look at the closed door.

As if provoked, they opened, the standard bearer Altus coming to them.

"They await you, lord." Altus' voice cut through the somber air.

The Spitewielder nodded, and with a final, deliberate glance at the empty chapel, the knights turned and strode out together.

 

 

 

iii. 

 

 

 

The Flail’s strategium was one of the most secure locations aboard the flagship. In its main theater it boasted space for nearly a thousand souls to be gathered. Its coliseum-like seating circled the main hololith table, capable of projecting fine detailed projections large enough for all to see.

Surrounding it was a circular stone table, of which it was accompanied by twenty-five similar rough-hewn stone chairs. In some of them, one could just make out the time worn names that used to inscribe them. The first, at the head, was instead made of amberish bronze, hammered into the shape of a wooden throne.

The Spiteful retinue formed the ceremonial guard, standing at regular intervals around the theater. Junior officers and staff were seated in the wider seats above, as well as adjutants and attendants. Here, too, were the Crusade’s historians and high members of the serfdom. Last of these were the Sergeants of the Crusade Squads, whose armored forms sat amongst one another.

Gathered at the Round Table were the architects of the Spite Crusade.

Seated at the bronze throne was the ever scornful looking Spitewielder, his skeletal cheek resting on his spiked knuckles. Seated to his immediate right was his Castellan, Kestian. His helmet was sitting at the table, its jowled cheek appearance leering at the gathered commanders. His hand was occupied with a goblet of wine, held loosely and casually, the only one to seemingly be at ease.

Next to Kestian was the indomitable form of the Champion Wilhelt, followed by the new Chaplain, Alibrand in his grim finery. Forgemaster Malgur was beside him, awkwardly seated with his many extra appendages, and occupying his master’s place was the Vicar, Iyan. 

The veteran Sergeants, Stavhar and Jarod had their places next, solid and reliable commanders of the Crusade both. 

On the Spitewielder’s left, the mortal contingent’s commanders sat in the high back chairs designed for Astartes. 

The first mortal was the Spitewielder’s mouthpiece and ever present shadow, Abiry von Flail with his fury-sculpted mask and funeral attire, Herald of Spite. Seated next to him was his daughter, the Spitewielder’s Equerry Jasper von Flail, serf primus of the Spite Crusade. Last of the family tree was Hartwig, Commander at Arms of the serfdom militant, known as the Friary Brethren. 

Lord Militant Dietrich Alder sat with his arms across his chest. He was a man of advanced years, riddled with old scars, and patched with augmetics. His uniform was a simple gambeson with a heavy iron cuirass covering it. A horde of medals adorned his left breast. At some point the Lord Militant had lost his hands, the iron clamps tucked into his elbows. He was commander of the proud 62nd Jovich and their heavy guns.

General Armand Courcy sat beside his compatriot, the master of the 119th Mastian Armored, who had graciously bolstered the Crusade, wore a more traditional Astra Militarum uniform seen on most Military Nobility. Though the armored sleeve remained a staple of the uniform, his was gold in comparison to his troops’ silver.

The High Zar of the 8th Host of Rahm, Malik Rzchyvk, or known as Chanyu of the Rahm from his men, was a giant of a man. He was wrapped in a black djellaba, and a large turban surrounding his head. Stuck in the crook of his gnarled fingers, heavy with jeweled rings, was a long, thin pipe wisping tendrils of aromatic smoke.

A fork tongued saber lay unsheathed atop the table in front of the High Zar. It was his peoples’ tradition when speaking amongst fellow warlords. 

Seated in knightly composure similar to the Templars who had founded his regiments, Marshal Jorik Gottfried of the Roth Janissaries sat patiently. Dressed in full body chainmail, sporting a circlet of rosemary around his head, the Marshal was a tall man, his face sharp and angular. The Templars had blessed him with the right to brand their sigil into his neck, which he sported proudly. 

He wore a black tabard with the crest of his regiment, cinched at the waist by a leather belt from which hung a handsome sword.

Accompanying him, at long last, was the mysterious Madam Inquisitor Charlotte Malde of the Holy Ordo Hereticus. Her pointed hat and form fitting battle plate were black, like the knights sitting at the Table. Only her eyes were visible above her raised collar. Her hands, ungloved, were clean and a pale white, the nails coffin shaped and painted a vivid red.

She was a petite woman, with an appreciably sized chest, and what visible hair there was were brunette curls. The woman was utterly silent, having said nothing since taking her seat, arriving alone save for a single, bulb headed servant who had taken her place in the stadium seats above.

Ancis Croz, Lord Admiral of the Spite Crusade’s fleet sat next to her, wiggling his upper lip and tugging on the stray hairs of his chops. He seemed annoyed, as if being away from the bridge physically discomforted him.

The last representative was a lanky man, long necked and slender. He wore many stunning layers of fine linen cloth and velvets of varying purples, greens, and yellows. In his well manicured left hand was a glass scepter, which he carried daintily. His lower jaw was replaced by a glossy, smooth augmetic that was a jewel inscribed vox emitter, tubes and pipes sinking into the flesh of the man’s neck.

Along his shoulders was a mantle of tightly woven copper, creating a tapestry of the Cog Mechanicus that haloed him. Princeps Ephraim Sephiroth, pilot of the majestic Thassalor Sophrica, sat as regal and perfect as a portrait.

Assembled together at the Round Table, the commanders and heads of the Spite Crusade convened as a whole for the first time. Seven serfs blew a quick staccato from their trumpets and disappeared into the recessed alcoves.

The Spitewielder shifted his weight, leaning forward onto his elbows. He took in the seated leaders and the lesser officers above them. At his word, a historical shift would begin.

“So now do I call together this council.” He spoke at last. Heads bobbed at this.

“Before we continue properly, I must confess to you all something you have certainly by now already realized.” His fingers drummed on the stone table. “I have not been transparent regarding our stop here at Eryx Forgeworld.”

The assembly remained silent, but he held their attention firmly.

“The Crusade’s main host has been stationed here, aiding Legio Gnostica in the recovery of their homeworld, and to garner their support for our endeavors.” At this, he motioned for the other Chaplain to take over.

“Four years my brothers and I have fought here.” Alibrand said, casting his skeletal glare around the room. “Because of that blood shed, it is my honor to inform this council we have the support of the venerable Warbringer Nemesis Titan Thalassor Sophrica and its attendants, the Warhounds Inspired Revealer and Demiurge.”

A chorus of cheers greeted the proclamation. 

The Spitewielder nodded as the applause died down.

“We are now mighty. We can bleed the stars.” Came the growl from the finely fashioned teeth of his helmet.

He met the gaze of his assembled commanders, finding pride in their dogged resilience to meet it.

“We go to the edge of Segmentum Tempestus, to a queer place known on stellar charts as the Pale Spiral. Centuries have passed with nothing coming from its denizens. No news, no trade, no tithes.”

The Spitewielder gestured, and the hololithic display of the Round Table activated, projecting a sizable representation of the system in question. It held true to its name, appearing as a gaseous spiral of milky haze, hiding the faint glow of a handful of stars.

It sat, alone and isolated, near the furthest reaches of the Segmentum.

When the lord of the Crusade spoke again, the image enhanced to give an isolated view of the Spiral itself. 

“According to Chapter records, thousands of years ago a Black Templars crusade, led by Marshal Kruevher, was reported as lost with the sixty-six knights of his crusade. Two warships and the gene seed of heroes, lost to us all this time.”

He let the words hang, but only just.

“With them, they carried a worthy and valued relic dating as far back as before our Founding.” At this, the Spitewielder nodded to Abiry, his Herald made another gesture and the hololith displayed a view of an ancient tome, opened, showing a heavily stylized depiction of the Templars’ ancient history.

A gold armored warrior carried with him a lance, surrounded by other golden warriors with black fists plastered on their pauldrons. They stood atop a disintegrating wall, slaying foul demons in the shape of false angels.

“The Heavenly Lance of Saturnine.” 

The assembled Templars made holy gestures, or saluted the weapon. Unaware of its significance, the mortals remained silent.

“Furthermore, we know from what little data is available that at the dawn of the 37th Millenium, two Astartes Chapters were founded and homed within the Spiral as its guardians and masters. They have been as silent as the stellar arm itself.

“It is my full intent to use the might of the Crusade to reestablish, and if necessary reclaim, the Pale Spiral. Secondary objectives are to find any indications of  Marshal Kruevher and his crusade’s fate, and if able, to recover the Holy Lance.”

Silence met his proclamation. He continued.

“The Sibilant Host and The Mariners Chapter were both reported to be at full Codex strength. We don’t have anything regarding what possible Astra Militarum presence should or could be expected within the Pale Spiral, but we can make educated guesses.”

Again the hololith flickered, changing to show a host of worlds, seven arranged in orbit around a medium sized sun whose light gave a pallid, sickly orange radiance to its charges. With a spiked finger, the Spitewielder selected a single world of deepest, darkest blue, veined by rocky ridges that flensed the planet like scars.

“Dhulmarak, homeworld to the Sibilant Host Chapter, as well as the system’s Capitol.” 

The planet spun in the air, data scrolled next to it in tiny Low Gothic script. The Spitewielder continued.

“There’s little data on the world itself. We know not what their orbital network may be composed of. ”

There was quiet murmuring amongst those gathered at the table.

“I would like to begin tactical planning and assessment, beginning with Fleet Admiral Croz, but I offer the floor to any of you who might have questions.” 

Both the Jovich’s leader and the Janissaries' commander asked follow up questions, receiving answers to their satisfaction regarding troop disposition and possible spear tip leaders.

“Should we arrive in system and find evidence of apostasy,” Came the quiet yet bladed voice of the Inquisitor, “I shall be the one to sanction judgment upon them.”

“If apostasy should be found. There is still every possibility this is a secluded region, holding its own despite the horrors of the wider galaxy.” The Spitewielder countered.

“My investigations will see to that.” She replied.

“Perhaps Inquisitor,” Abiry, Herald of Spite, leaned into his steepled fingers, “you might enlighten us as to your investigations, so as to be better instruments to His Holy Ordos.”

The Inquisitor looked between the Herald and the Spitewielder, almost bored.

“An Imperial crusade has been called to arms. I, a representative of His Holy Ordos, have arrived to provide you with further support in the manner of my aid.” She made to say more, but the Herald spoke first.

“Let us be direct and honest, Inquisitor.” The Herald spoke from behind his clasped fingers, his one flesh eye narrowed and unblinking.

The Madam Inquisitor dipped her head in respectful acknowledgement.

“An Imperial crusade has been called to arms-”

A dry snort cut her off.

“How many of my knights do you require and what access do you not already have?”

Both the Castellan’s and the Champion’s heads turned to look at their lord, while several of the mortal commanders looked to the Inquisitor for her reaction. She handled it smoothly.

“A single squad seconded to my retinue would be appreciable, failing that perhaps a handful of squads from one of your regiments.” She began, folding her hands into her lap. “I know not of your Lance, so any data pertaining to its origins and the rumors of its loss will be shared with me. Finally, the Sonder will not participate in any military actions and is not under your purview as the leader of this crusade.”

The Spitewielder nodded.

“Acceptable.”

Shared glances passed between those gathered at the Round Table.

“Let us speak then of conquest.” Said the Spitewielder, standing from his seat.

 

 

 

iv. 

 

 

 

With the minds of the Spite Crusade stowed within the great heart of The Flail, the fleet set sail for the distant black. They plunged into the Warp, a vast, unyielding storm that would carry them for the next nine months on their journey to the Pale Spiral.

The fleet had grown in strength. What began as six ships was now twenty, each one a hammer poised to strike. Among them were the two Titan transport vessels, accompanied by their venerable attendant factory ship, Menith Stant. A boon beyond measure to the Crusade. Forgemaster Malgur, along with his retinue of Templars, now took residence aboard it, serving as both guardians and liaisons.

A final report, detailing the fleet’s composition and intent, was left behind with Eryx Forgeworld. Astropathic signals were dispatched to Rothusberg and the Eternal Crusade alike, though none expected a reply.

The Spitewielder stood at the helm of The Flail, his gaze fixed on the distant stars. With a final, deliberate blessing, the fleet surged into the Warp. The journey ahead was uncertain, and the weight of anticipation hung thick in the air.

No one wanted a repeat of the oddities they had encountered on the journey here. The memories were still fresh in their minds.

As the Warp enclosed the last of the Crusade’s vessels, the final words of blessing rang out across the system’s vox, carried by the cold, steady voice of the Spitewielder.

“No Pity. No Remorse. No Fear.”

[Spite]

Part II

 

A bottomless Sea, a bottomless Curse

 

Six

Inn at the borderland

They sing of great sorrow

A Quest should not start at a grave

 

i. 

 

As the seventh month of their journey came to an end, the Spite Crusade broke from the Warp in staggered ranks for the last and final time before entering the Pale Spiral proper.

Here, the Crusade’s host would be divided up into their own battle groups, self sufficient spheres that contained all elements of the greater whole. The ships clustered together and began the arduous task of personnel and material transfer. While this took place, the Crusade’s command would meet, too, for a final time, to finalize and ensure their plans.

The Crusade’s Navigators held counsel and The Flail’s Navigator brought herself before her lord. He and Fleet Admiral Croz had taken the meeting in private, within the Navigator’s quarters.

“It is as if a haze permeates this region of the Warp, my lord.” She said, bringing before them the fears and worries discussed amongst her kin spread elsewhere in the fleet. “Similar to how it appears in reality, lord, so too does it exist within the Sea of Souls.”

The Spitewielder nodded, standing near the door of the room they spoke in. Croz was seated in front of her, sipping at the amasec offered to them. 

“Are you unable to guide the Crusade through it?”

She hesitated, running an elongated finger around the rim of her glass. “I cannot say, lord. I have not seen its like before. It is similar to the Great Rift, but it is…quieter here, the malaise is thicker, almost, like tar oil, yet it is both a physical structure and an…idea. It is the best way I can describe it to one without the gift, lord.”

Croz took his hat off, finger combing his hair in vain. “Like a fog over a still sea.”

The Navigator snapped her bony fingers, pointing enthusiastically at the Fleet Admiral, who grinned toothily. Their lord nodded again.

“Do you sense any danger? Relatively, of course.”

She shook her head. 

As he sank his glass back, Croz sighed in appreciation and tapped at the data slate lying on the table. An image of the Pale Spiral displayed on the screen, where the Admiral’s finger jabbed at it.

“Whatever that gas is, that mist or fog –whatever it is we’re agreeing to call it– you’re saying it possesses some liminal quality that exists in both?” He asked.

The Navigator nodded without offering more.

Barely audible, a click came from the Spitewielder’s helmet and the door opened, the standard bearer Altus entering at a hunch.

“Lord?” 

“What make you of this?” Probed his lord.

The Navigator recounted the conversation, and slid the data slate over to him. Altus took it, removing his helmet and inspected it thoughtfully.

“It reminds me of the Aeldari, but only just. The Watch’s archives describe their webways as being coated in an abnormal fog.” The silver-armed Templar handed the data slate back. “But I am no Navigator, nor am I a great sailor. And, with reverential reluctance, I am oath bound to the secrecy of the Watch. My apologies.”

“We go forward then. Navigator?” Turning his head to the thin woman, the single light of his eye lens held her in its glare.

“There was never any doubt amongst us, lord.” She replied, standing and bowing. “I shall plot a course with my fellows and present it to the Fleet Admiral.”

“The Emperor protects.” Said Croz.

 

 

 

 

 

ii. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After many weeks, the Spite Crusade was at long last, ready. They traversed into the Warp once more…

 

…And so close to the Pale Spiral, that as the Warp swallowed the ships…

 

                                                                                                                                                           ..gulping down their iron hulls into its long gullet…

 

 

 

                                                   …It found…that it choked…And the shipscoffinstombsshipsjustships…

 

                                                                                                                                                 …Were taken to a place of strange aeons…

 

…and far off, stygian places, where fractal memory and residual unknowing squirm…

 

                                                                …The Light couldn’t be found here even though it was there, and there, and here, too…

…What odd angles the smoke makes…

 

                                                                                                                                 …Cyclopian eyes of crowded pupils, not malign, but indifferent, blink…

 

…Torn ages from the myths of creation are purged in an instant, the galaxy is silent…

 

                                                                                                                               …Such silence, such horrendous…

 

                 …We are, all of us, so close to such beauteous, rapturous calamity…

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                  … … ……………… …………. …

 

                                                                       …There was…

                       …a terrible…

                                                                                                                                                                         …Crash…

 

…Between Here and Now and Elsewhere and Nowhere, The Flail struggled through the final part of the strange veil that sat nestled within the Warp, like the long flowing hem of a pale gown. Lazy tendrils of its not-quite-white vapors crawled from her like a lover reluctant to relinquish the warmth of a partner.

The other ships followed after her, steaming, oozing, dripping in the foul strangeness that coated their iron skins. Amongst the few psychically touched within the Crusade, those mortals that were only just tolerated amongst the Templars, whispered of a strange and different fear gripping their guts.

As they crawled through the Warp, no longer sailing, but also not shaking in the tides of the Sea of Souls, the fleet slowly continued. It was quiet here, and dreams became sluggish and forgetful, no longer a haven from horror or a horror haven. Two weeks in this strange land of the Warp, the mineral tang of oceanic water and dried sea vegetation seeped from every crevice of every ship in the fleet.

Reports began to crawl through of strange happenings within the Crusade. Ratings and menials found kilometers from their posts, in locations they had no reason being in. Most were found dead. Those that were discovered alive were mad in a sense, stuttering in whispers, speaking nonsense. And then executed.

Then the suicides began.

Warp travel claimed its fair share of lives, but sometimes, it truly took from a ship. The suicides reported throughout the fleet were odd, staggered, and seemingly without purpose. Each investigation could find no foul taint of Chaos. No altars, no rituals, no bloody inscriptions. Just corpses, cold and dead.

The ship's officers held meetings with tense resolve, their voices a little too loud, a little too practiced, as if the absurdity of trying to maintain order had become their own defense. But even their stoic faces couldn’t hide the sheen of sweat that clung to their skin, or the hollow look in their eyes, as if they were staring into something they couldn’t fully grasp.

At the final leg of the journey, the water supply began to go brackish. Tension that had been building since the unresolved trauma of the first arrival of the light entities during their trip to Eryx Forgeworld, finally snapped. Steady and tried serfs became twitchy and disobedient. Servitors began wandering beyond their surgically implanted routines. 

Not a true madness, but one of a sort, closed its hand around the struggling ships, finger by finger, slowly closing into a fist. Many of the shipmasters knew it would only be a matter of time before their precious Navigators became the next victims.

Each day that passed felt like a countdown. There was a silence in the fleet that no one could explain, a silence not of peace, but of something waiting, something watching. The feeling was like being buried alive, the weight of the unseen growing heavier with every passing moment.

Many times did Croz advise his lord to remove them from the Warp, but the Spitewielder would reply with a cold and measured, ‘No.’.

Reluctant to argue, especially in such a trepid setting, he conceded to his lord.

Templars from across the fleet were ever vigilant. Their armored forms skulked about the deep and dark places of their ships, seeking out whatever evil may lurk there. And yet, no knight drew blades in holy anger. All that was ever reported were the echoes of dutiful crew and the solemnity of silent transient corridors.

But still, intrusive and lazily malicious, the flavor of a foreign and alien fear crawled its way into the throats of the Spite Crusade, wiggling its length into the belly, nestling in the bloated and gurgling guts of the anxious and the nervous, flexing and churning and cramping as it pulsed and lingered.

It ached in the way that it seeped and saturated, how it hung heavy in the air. The mundane slowly became unnerving, places of quiet calm were filled with something of charged expectation that never delivered. 

Then its eldritch nature found its way to the Chapel of Transfiguration.

Bishop Sostom, the newly head of the Reclusiam’s clergy, came to his lord Spitewielder in the dead of shipborne night. His knocking was tender, but persistent. Lady Jasper opened the door, clearly awoken from her own slumber, her usually complete look disjointed in this otherly circumstance.

“Ah, my good Lady…I was hoping to speak with our Lord, if he is awake.” The Bishop stammered, his breath achingly rich of garlic and wine.

“He is asleep, Sostom. You know this.”

The Bishop nodded, looking over his shoulder into the gloom beyond. When he turned his head back to look at her, he licked his dried and cracked lips.

“We should wake him. There is something…well, I do not know how to word it, Lady. I am simply at a loss.”

Jasper nodded and withdrew. Sostom hung anxiously by the door for what felt like an eternity before the hulking, spiteful presence of his sire stomped through the door.

“Liege.” Sostom bowed.

“I am not Helbrecht. Lord, not liege.” Corrected the Spitewielder.

“Of course, sire. I came to-” The Spitewielder stalked off, ignoring him.

“Show me.”

 

The Chapel was empty. Its doors guarded by several Friar Brethren, armed outside of traditional remit, who opened them and bowed deeply upon his arrival. Sostom jogged to keep up, huffing as he did so, pulling the hems of his robes up in balled fists.

Scanning from one side of the Chapel to the other, the Eternal Visage sought anything that stood out. Both his eyes and artificial senses found nothing.

“What anomaly plagues this place, Sostom?” He growled.

The Bishop pointed to the floor.

A slick, oily film covered the Chapel’s floor, its surface glistening with a faint, unnatural sheen. The air was thick with the scent of brine and damp decay. When he moved, the water barely rippled.

He pulled Spite from its loop and activated it, holding it up as one would a flaming torch to illuminate the way ahead.

Forks of lightning flickered, their jagged reflections multiplying in the shimmering surface below, revealing that the water had claimed the church’s entire ground floor. The Spitewielder tilted his head, a silent gesture of contemplation.

“Do I need to ask the obvious, Sostom?”

The Bishop shook his head, struggling to swallow in the presence of the hallowed weapon. “N-no lord, I-I inquired with the tech magi and menials. N-no leaks, no flood. You saw yourself, vengeful one, there was no water outside, dry as a bone it was! Just here. Only here.”

“Jasper, fetch Kalfr.” The Equerry bowed and departed. When she returned, she was accompanied by a leviathan that put even the Champion’s size to shame.

The Terminator armored Huscarl dipped his head in respect to his lord.

“I come, Spitewielder.” The voice was mechanical, using the title in a respectful manner.

“I need you to remain within the Chapel, Huscarl. Watch it. Guard it.”

Curious, the Huscarl removed his helmet and drank in the scent of a nonexistent sea within the Chapel.

“Witchcraft.” He growled.

“If only it were that simple.” Came the Spitewielder’s reply. “It doesn’t taste of sorcery. It’s something other.” 

 

 

 

 

iii. 

 

 

 

 

They lingered within the Warp for several weeks longer than they anticipated. Strange happenings continued to plague the Crusade throughout its meandering journey. When at last they had exited the Warp, they did so in clumsy piecemeal, spewing from the cut into reality in stillborn births.

One by one the ships of the Spite Crusade lumbered from the womb of the strange fog that painted realspace in a malign static of grays and whites. The destroyer, Sermon of Swords, was first to exit, followed by the flagship and Undaunted. Together, they waited as the fleet amassed, watching the obscured stars beyond for warnings of danger.

Each ship came to them without loss, yet each arrived at different and strange angles, transitioning from the Warp into wary patterns, adrift amongst the void. They were nowhere near this region’s Mandeville Point. Chartographers and the Master of Auspex worked to divine their position, while the fleet formed into many swords, primed for the kill.

They pushed onwards through space for many days, lost amongst the cosmic fog, queer shadows cast upon them from the multitude of miserably dim, false starlight that seeped through. Days passed with nothing but endless, mindless sailing.

Klaxons whirred, their shriek sudden, colliding with the pent up breath that held the Crusade in thrall. Heads snapped, hearts rang, voices shouted.

“The Killchain has something on its auspex, lord!” Shouted the officer. “Displaying now.”

A single blip appeared on the display. A lone ship, just within auspex distance. Croz pursed his lips.

“Is it broadcasting an identifier?” He asked. The officer reported negative. Croz continued to watch as the hololithic projection showed the fleet, clustered in their battle groups, slowly churning through the stellar morass, at its very edge, just before the auspex would cut it off, a lone ship crept at their heels.

The unwelcome image of some sleek, many toothed diluvian predator swam just outside the herd of ships migratory pattern. He almost sneered with the unpleasant tang of fear it flooded into his mouth. He swallowed grimly.

Watching with a cold but silent glare, the lord Spitewielder also observed the projection. So far, the Crusade’s commander offered no input, nor further orders. 

“We continue forward. The fleet is to remain prepared, but advise The Killchain to prioritise monitoring this shadow vessel. Position The Flail here, with Undaunted’s sphere compensating for our coverage-loss.” Croz ordered, receiving affirmatives from his officers. 

“It is Imperial in origin.” Said the Spitewielder at last.

Croz looked to the display. Indeed, the hololith had projected the outsider vessel in the bladed form common to the Imperium. 

“It’s a clipper.” He said, reaching up to zoom in on it. “Orion-Class, if I had to guess.”

The Flail plowed towards the wayward vessel, bearing down upon her like the matriarch of a great sea-heard, keeping the hungry scavengers at bay with a display of might.

The clipper didn’t change course, it continued to swim in the quagmire that the dust-fog-mist made of realspace. As they neared, all eyes, including that of Croz’s, turned to look upon their lord.

The Spitewielder hadn’t moved, and with no facial expression outside of snarling apathy, the crew could not see what he was thinking.

“Open channel.”

The Master of Vox wasted no time, signifying he was live.

“I see you.” Growled the priest.

No reply came. The message was sent once and only once.

“Full forward.” Croz ordered.

The Flail powered forwards, a banshee hurtling through sea-village brume. The Admiral gave shipwide orders to brace as they approached the inevitable, the mightiful battle barge hammering into the space the clipper occupied.

Only The Flail had decimated the shadow of a clipper, and once through the fog, true proximity klaxons wailed, warning runes flickering alongside churning lights. Ships of the Spite Crusade were all around her.

Somehow, the flagship of the Crusade had sailed into its own backlines, diving headfirst into her own battle sphere.

“Dive, damnit, dive!” Croz roared, screaming himself hoarse.

With a gut wrenching lurch, the ship dove. Gravitics fought to compensate, and officers and ratings were thrown from their feet. Several servitors were hurled, bodily, across the deck, landing in mangled piles of twisted limbs and leaking lubricants. 

The Sword-Class frigate, Wrath of God, barely avoided the megastructure of the forward crosses, while her sister, a Tempest-Class known as Judgement, had her shields overwhelmed by the near collision. Armageddon and Cataclysm, fine and sturdy Gladiuses both, had maneuvered just in time to provide all ships room enough to perform such vital and life saving actions. 

Halting, recovering from the strange folly that almost saw catastrophic damage inflicted upon itself, the fleet sat, collected and confused.

“Do not ask lord, because I, nor do any of my officers, have a thought for what in the pissing Hell just happened.” Croz said, reaching down to reclaim his fallen hat.

“I have grown incredibly sick and tired of these subterfuges and fae oddities. All Navigators, augur-scryers, and chartographers are to ascertain our position, and get us to Dhulmarak. Immediately.”

All moved to obey the Spitewielder, none enjoying the knifed tone he had taken. Impatience was boiling behind the Eternal Visage.

 

 

 

iv.

 

 

 

The uneasy journey through the cosmic fog continued. With each coming and going of pretend day and never-night, the Crusade’s pathfinders delved into their lore repositories and data stacks. While they continued to ply the way forward, the ships were at the mercy of the mists that clouded their path, the fog refusing to dissipate even as it stretched on.

With nothing but the shipboard chimes to delineate between time, ill omens gnawed upon the edges of the Crusade’s resolve. No maps, no charts, no augurs could give them a clear path. The stars were veiled, and the Warp seemed to twist in even more unnatural ways, bedding, as if it sought to hide from what lay here.

It was during these uncertain days that they were greeted with an unexpected omen.

The Choirmaster had begun to dream in strange fever visions. In his sleep, he would whisper in fragmented tones. The words jumped from him, as if being pulled, beckoned beyond his wiry frame.

One of his guardian knights provided the Spitewielder with  a live feed to witness what he saw of the Choirmaster. Through the eyes of another warrior, he witnessed the man writhing in convulsions in his cell chamber.

The Templar leant closer so his lord could hear the man’s effort laden ramblings.

“T-the stars…are not where…they should be! T-the p-p-path! The path winds, but not as…not as we see it. One cannot sail through a dream…Y-you…you must sink, not swim…”

He lay like this for many nights, with more Templars assigned to watch over him. The Spitewielder and Navigator both attended him, witnessing the babbling for themselves.

It was one particular night, miserable with more suicides and tales of lost and missing souls amongst the crew, that the Choirmaster went into a right and proper fit.

Through blood curdling screams, thrashing in his bed, held down by the Spitewielder’s uncaring boot, the man tore himself ragged, scratching his fingers into nubs against ceramite as he vomited divination.

“The path you seek is not a line, but a circle. You cannot sail through a dream. You must drown.”

With these final words, he fell silent, exhausted and spent from his efforts. The Spitewielder brought his boot up, and then sent it into the Choirmaster’s head, destroying his skull and the bed beneath, the wooden frame exploding.

In the days that followed, the fleet’s movements became increasingly intentional. Though loath to admit to taking the guidance of a witch, even one as austere and sanctioned as those of the Choir, the Spitewielder took the divinations and the suggestions of the Navigator, and brought them to Croz. 

When they

“A spiral?” He asked, finally.

The Spitewielder nodded. “The entire fleet, as if we are sinking below, we must mimic the spiral and go ‘down’.”

“Obviously.” The Admiral nodded, clearly unconvinced, but not stupid enough to mock his commander.

The orders were given to the fleet, who arrayed themselves and lit their engines to full. As a whole, the fleet went in a counter-clockwise motion, ‘diving’ deeper and deeper, looping into a single point. 

At first, nothing. It seemed pointless, laughable even, that an entire Imperial Crusade was now whimsically turning in a dust arm.

But augur readings suddenly became inexplicably more accurate, the stars themselves conspiring to show them the way. The fleet did not move forward by logic or reason, but by something far more ancient, from far beyond.

It felt to the Spitewielder that they were no longer simply navigating through space; they were navigating through something older than the concept of travel, something otherworldly. Not Chaos, not xenos, but other. All the while, the overwhelming feeling of being known, of being discovered, grew stronger. Like something was aware of them, a presence alert to a foreign entity. 

Looking at the stars, as they sank, or sailed, or swam, or drowned, or fell, or plunged, specular reflection diffused light from one angle of space to another, shifting them, mimicking them and replacing them in kind. 

And as they sank, further and deeper, the stars blurred. The fog coiled and spun and began to slowly, teasingly, ease. Just as one passes through the dense fog of a mountain, the faintest blurred outlines of trees on the horizon; so too did the shape of a world resolve into being as the stars parted and those wispy fingers began to reluctantly release them.

They had arrived at Dhulmarak.

 

 

v. 

 

 

It was a jarring transition.

From the muck and mire of the stagnancy being stuck within the fog caused, the sudden shift to inky, cold, unforgiving blackness both ached and relieved at the same time. The all consuming, ever present tendrils of the eerie mist constellation had suddenly left, as simple as a light being turned off in its abruptness.

The stars here were lonely things, too far even for their light to be considered bright or twinkling. Just faint gray suggestions, tired pinpricks on the landscape of cosmic nothingness.

Slowly, wakingly, the Spite Crusade pushed through the morass. A shoal, new to these antediluvian deeps. A white dwarf wheezed within the system, two worthless planets caught within its unfortunate embrace. By its lonesome, a single monitor spun within its anchorage in the dark, its lights long since burned out, adrift alone without sign of life or operation. It was scanned ravenously by the fleet, unable to coerce the machine spirit of the monitor to give up its true identity or origins. It was simply a machine, left or lost to this odd place.

Auspex, vox, and augury officers across the fleet swept the abyss around them, reaching into the fathomlessness of the region. 

Aboard The Flail, silence reigned. 

Near the command dais at the Admiral’s throne, the Spitewielder spoke the first words uttered in hours.

“Report.” He asked, swivelling his helm on growling false muscles.

The Master of Auspex commandeered the main projector, displaying the planet for the bridge to see.

“Dhulmarak, lord. We are pulling data now, a moment please.” She worked furiously at her station, her juniors around her operating the many dials and switches at theirs. A hum reverberated from the projector and data streamed alongside the planet. She listed off the main curios in an almost mechanical, emotionless drawl.

“No lingering traces of void traffic. Negative returns on mechanical feedback, no defense monitors or guidance buoys. Not reading any satellites within orbit or expanded. Radiological signatures read as-” She paused. Her juniors, simultaneously, pulled levers directly installed into their cogitators.

Klaxons blurted out, the juniors blurted out a chorus of, ‘contact’, as the Master of Auspex flipped a switch at her console. 

“We have contact lord, scanning…scanning…” She clicked her tongue. “Signature is severely outdated, but Imperial. It returns under the identifier Apocrypha Treble, it’s a frigate, lord.”

“Second contact.” Said a junior.

“Second contact!” Another called out.

“Ethe Alto, read returns as some sort of clipper. I can’t decipher what class or make.” The Master of Auspex reported.

Eyes turned to the Spitewielder, who shared a quick glance and a determined nod with the Admiral.

“Master of Vox, hail the Apocrypha Treble.” The Chaplain ordered.

“Vox and projection achieved, lord.”

The Spitewielder stood before the projector, arms folded, squaring the bulk of his shoulders as the connection displayed. They were greeted by a helmeted Astartes in purple armor, his shoulders and backpack red. Gold eye lenses glared from the mark IV helmet.

What was visible of his chest plate bore a single loop of gold where most Chapters proudly wore the Aquilla or the more common Imperialis. The warrior’s voice was a breathless whisper, the sound a harsh shrill through his vox grill.

“Who wanders upon this place?” 

In his simple and cold delivery, the Spitewielder replied. “You witness the Spite Crusade of the Black Templars come to return this place to the Emperor’s magnificence and bury the rest.”

The Chaplain lifted his chin, jutting with the sculpted bone of his clavicle.

“I am the Spitewielder. Who are you?”

The Astartes removed his helmet, revealing an aged face, scarred and pockmarked. His skin pale, with the most vivid blue eyes the Spitewielder had ever seen, etched in pure and visible confusion. Four service studs hung heavy over his brow.

“I am Conductor Agim Prifti of the Sixth Choir to the Sibilant Host. You should not be here. Your crusade should not be here. This is a sacred place, the home of our dead, our graveyard. You trespass.”

The words were spoken in that same breathless manner, but without accusation or hostility. 

“This is Dhulmarak?” Asked the Spitewielder.

Something like annoyance passed across the Conductor’s face.

“This is Dhulmarak, my peoples’ homeworld. We lay our dead here so that they might be at peace. You trespass.”

Only the last words held any hint of mirth. The Spitewielder replied with a verbal swing of his own.

“You will submit yourself to me, Conductor Agim Prifti. I am lord of this Crusade and we come with the full might and authority of the God Emperor of Mankind’s Holy Empire Eternal. Your God Emperor, unless you wish to dispute that claim?”

To the Conductor’s credit, the only show of disbelief against the Spitewielder’s ego was to blink several times.

“I do not know you, ‘Spitewielder’. You hold no authority over me. Your God and my Master are one and the same, but do not hold yourself above me with your zealotry.”

“Make what preparations you must,” Replied the Spitewielder, ignoring him. “You will submit yourself aboard The Flail in twenty-seven hours’ time as soon as we are in anchored orbit.” The Spitewielder ordered the link cut.

“Lord!” Called an officer. “Ethe Alto is firing engines and pulling away from Dhulmarak’s orbit!”

The Spitewielder shrugged at this. “I care not. Get us to orbit. Now.”

[Spite]

Seven

To see as They see

Bring the violence

Strangers in these odd eons

 

 

 

i. 

 

 

Bhabli was escorted to the embarkation deck, amidst the ceremonial contingent of the Guard forces amongst the Spite Crusade. Leading them at a brutal march was Kybert, her appointed guardian. His casual and relaxed manner was instead replaced by a grim sort of stoicism, his helmet donned for the first time she had witnessed since joining the Crusade.

She was dressed in the finery of her Order, those scholarly and handsome robes and vests and trinkets. Her servo skull floated beside her, its eyes whirring and lights blinking as it scooted along its gyro-motors. Closely to her stomach she clutched her data slate, ready to document whatever it was she was being led to do.

Kybert had shared very little, and the last time she had attended a meeting on that deck, it was a somber and quick thing. What she recorded was quaint, and felt more a private affair than something to be recorded amongst the more broader strokes of the histories she was to collect. But she knew that something regarding the planet was happening, and her suspicions were soon confirmed when they entered the massive deck.

Some seven squads of Templars were gathered in neat rows facing one another, in all of their finest panoply. Trophies and oath parchments hung heavy from many of the assembled knights. The final squad, not at all to her surprise, were the Spiteful.

Each knight was decorated differently from his brother, but each unified together; if not by the banner they stood before, then by the word etched atop each of their eyebrows.

Standing with the Spitewielder at the head of the Spiteful, Kestian and one of the recently arrived Sergeants, both imposing in their war plate and personal heraldry. Kestian had a shield mounted to his back, while a cape of deep sage hung heavily from his shoulders. 

The other knight wore armor with a mismatched paint scheme, one Bhabli could not understand the significance of. He was not known to her, and still wore his helmet. She noticed that every knight gathered wore their helmet.

With the Spitewielder and Castellan was the Lady Inquisitor Charlotte, a long cloak hiding her form behind a black veil. None of her retinue were present, or at least that Bhabli could not see amongst the already gathered elements.

The Guard marched to stand with the Templars, forming the first row of warriors any guests would walk past. They held their rifles at their shoulders, standing stiff and proud beside their knightly masters. The Spitewielder nodded as Kybert joined them, ushering her into the familiar company of the Spiteful.

“An exciting moment, lady Bhabli. You do a blessed thing documenting History’s great achievement.” Said Kybert as he moved her toward the awaiting retinue. 

“Or its doom.” Said another knight as they took their places beside him.

“Craft incoming.” Came the drone of a servitor’s voice over the deck’s vox. 

Collectively, the knights braced. Arms went rigid, legs went stiff, and backs went utterly straight. Bhabli could taste the rich chemical tang of Astartes blood enriched with killing potential. She found it to be a bitter and unwelcomed taste that unkindly found its way through the seal of her lips. 

A Thunderhawk of royal purple and sanguine red landed amongst the black and white decor of the Black Templars, greeted with red eye lenses and the Black Cross of Sigismund. Curiously, as it rested, droplets of water dripped unrhythmically. In the first minute of the twenty-seventh hour, the ramp to the Thunderhawk lowered, six Astartes similarly colored clambered down to the deck.

Four were standard line warriors seen throughout every Chapter. Golden eye lenses staring back amidst a sea of red.

The fifth was the Conductor, his helmet held within the crook of his arm. In his free hand was a golden rod, a scepter; topped with a milky, off white orb. He was tall, especially when standing before the Spitewielder. But he did not have the broad shoulders or the palpable, malign aura of barely checked aggression.

As the sixth figure took its final step aboard the decking, the Templar collectively took a step back, weapons that were held to chests at a parade rest, were now held ready across them, heads tilted and chins tucked to chests as the Librarian stepped foot aboard a Black Templars’ vessel.

Golden robes rippled as the warrior leaned against his staff, a psychic cowl pulled up over the man’s head, hiding obvious connector cables that fed from his armor into the back of his skull. His eyes were wet, and seemed too big inside of his head. He looked, oddly, like he was perpetually surprised or in disbelief.

An odd smell, like that of shipwrecks and salt water emanated from them.

The Conductor looked over the assembly of the Crusade, hiding his feelings behind a stern expression of one who had been severely inconvenienced. When he spoke, it was with mirth and open annoyance, whispered passionately.

“Know that I am here only by duress of the threat of your fleet that hangs above the skies of my homeworld. If you are making a play for diplomacy, you may consider that avenue thoroughly and forever burned.”

The Spitewielder made no comment. His gaze was transfixed by the Librarian, the skeletal glare never leaving the sorcerer’s person.

“You bring a witch with you.” Was all he said to the silence that followed the Conductors’ words.

“I bring with me an officer of my Chapter. Do you Templars not have officers who conduct themselves with the purview of their fellows?” The Host warrior asked, furrowing his brow in chastisement.

“My Chapter does not solicit the aid of witches and sorcerers, no.” The Spitewielder said after allowing the cold silence to settle uncomfortably. The Sibilant Host entourage made no reactions to this and simply stood motionless, surrounded by the Templars.

“Truly, enlightened men have come to my doorstep.” Agim said, the Conductor rolling his eyes. The whispered syllables were harsh and hard. “What is it you want, Chaplain?”

There was a pregnant silence as the Crusade’s commander did not answer, but instead, walked past the Conductor to the witch, pacing around the man and the gathered warriors of the Sibilant Host.

“The Pale Spiral has been silent for a very long time.” He said at last.

“You’ve seen the stellar anomaly that plagues these lands.” Replied the Librarian, speaking softly from behind his hood. “That you are here at all has caught us so unawares, my dear Conductor knows not how to approach you, sir knight.”

As the Spitewielder paced around the Host, his devotional chains rustled, clanking against his armor. The smoke of his generator’s housing candles wafting a faint smell of burnt wood and spices. It mingled poorly with the natural scent that oozed from the collection of the Sibilant Host.

“My first experience with this anomaly and I, along with my fleet, were able to traverse it.”

“A feat I would very dearly wish to replicate, Chaplain.” Said the Conductor this time, turning to face the priest as he wandered around them. 

“Tell me of the Sibilant Host, and of the Mariners.”

The Librarian and Conductor looked at one another. Instead of answering, the Librarian asked a question of his own.

“How is your vessel psychically shielded in such a strange and silent manner?”

Bhabli heard Kestian laugh, and when she looked at him, his folded arms shook in his hearty chuckle. 

“A curious question.” The Spitewielder conceded, tilting his head in his usual manner he was fond of. “Why do you seek to reach beyond your mind, witch?” The last word was pointed, the question carrying with it every barb and lance of accusation. The Conductor looked between the Chaplain and his Librarian.

The Librarian shook his head, leaning once again onto his staff. “You mistake simple curiosity for malice. I am a psyker, expanding my senses is no more different to me than how we as Astartes assess everything before us.”

“No goodness nor noble will comes from arts that demand blood rituals and the immersion of one’s soul into damnation.” Replied the Spitewielder, almost casually, almost as if mumbling them to himself. But they were spoken with intent and backbone.

The definitive tone of the words did not allow for misinterpretation nor allow room for argument. Everyone familiar with the Spitewielder knew it was a poor punch to pull, but one they saw coming.

“I ask again. Tell me of your brethren, and of the Mariners Chapter.”

The Conductor raised an eyebrow, sweeping his scepter across the assembly of the Spite Crusade.

“In front of them? Here and now?” He asked, the whispers spat in a hush.

The Spitewielder nodded, stopping and standing before them once again, the Spiteful gathered behind him before their banner.

“My ships fly over your homeworld’s skies. I have a fleet amassed in your orbit. I and I alone come bearing the might of the God Emperor in the form of this Crusade. You will submit yourselves to me, or in my power, I will cleanse you from what seems to be ill and misbegotten stars, Conductor.”

The Conductor laughed, the sound strange and crackling as it left a throat unused to bellowing so loudly.

“A fleet comes to my world, after hundreds of years of silence, and some egomaniacal dunce demands absolute and unshaking obedience of me. You stand here and tell me, were the roles reversed, you’d comply?”

The Spitewielder shrugged. “The roles are not reversed.”

“You are an imbecile and should be disposed of as such.” Returned the Conductor, going so far as to spit onto the deck at the Spitewielder’s feet.

There was a tension in the air so thick, Bhabli could almost choke on it. She physically fought to swallow the breath she held in her throat. Gently, Kybert placed the immensity of his hand onto her back, more absolute and unyielding than a wall.

She knew her servo skull was both recording and actively snapping photos of the verbal swordplay, but she worked doubly as furiously at her data slate, conveying the tone and mood and atmosphere as best as she could transcribe. 

The moment swelled, bloating and reeking and stinking as it made the air pregnant with its obscenity, bursting as the Librarian screamed and just the same as the air did; so too did his head burst into a mess of the cranial abortion his psychic gift made of his skull. 

Shaking his head, sighing deeply, the Spitewielder unlimbered his burden from his belt, taking a single step forwards and activating the ancient crozius.

Its malefic white light crackled angrily, scorching the deck plate and setting fire to the parchment waxed at his shins. 

“Incredible stupidity is what I usually come to find amongst those who claim to be “gifted” with such abominable powers.” The priest pointed the mace at Agim, who was simply looking dumbfounded at the corpse of his Librarian. When he looked up, his eyes had become milky and his face slack and stupid.

“You’re a–.” 

Spite caved his skull in until it crunched into his collar bones, settling in amongst the stump of his spine where it passed through the shoulders.

The corpse tumbled to the deck.

The remaining Hosts died almost to a man, as the front rank of Templars charged into them, burying their blades into the Astartes, even as they fired a single volley. 

Bhabli shrieked as shrapnel sparked and tanged off of the deck and armor of the Astartes. An entire squad had stood before the assembled Guardsmen, shielding them from the worst of it. Some caught minor scrapes and cuts. The Spiteful’s banner was gifted with the smallest knick along its length.

“Indeed.” Said the Spitewielder to the dead Conductor, shaking the gore from his weapon of office.

His men brought him one of the now seemingly traitor Astartes, pinning him to his knees beside the corpses of his commanders. The Spitewielder reached down, taking the Conductor’s scepter from his lifeless fingers, hefting it in his grip.

He approached the kneeling traitor, using the tip of the scepter to tilt his head up and look at him.

“Has your Chapter fallen in the absence of His light?”

The lone Host did not reply. At a glance from the Chaplain, one of the Templars tore the man’s helmet off. Beneath was a pale face, youthful by Astartes standards, and his blonde hair was dank and greasy. One of his eyes was turning milky with the loss of vision.

Kestian was beside the Spitewielder, looking down at the kneeling warrior. 

“Answer him, boy.” He said, going to his haunches and yanking the youth’s hair to wrench his head back. The glare of the Castellan’s eye lenses stared down at the young warrior’s lone good eye.

“You haven’t seen it.” The man finally whispered in a wet rasp. 

Kestian pulled the other Astartes' face close to the grill of his helmet. 

“Seen what? Must everything here be damnable riddles?” The Castellan growled, now grabbing the man’s face in his armored fingers. “Speak something of worth.”

“His sign!” The Host warrior groaned from his viced face. “His sign! His sign!”

Kestian threw the man to the deck.

“Heretical filth. Bewitched mad men. Chaos scum.” He spat.

At the accusations, the Host shot a withering and completely lucid glare at the Castellan. He pointed a finger at him daringly, jabbing with it as he spoke.

“We are not traitors, you dog! We serve humanity as we have always done. My Chapter and my brothers have not fallen to Chaos, you bastard, you scum, you…you!” The Host’s voice broke the whisper, coming out a dry and scratchy thing, but it was still filled with apathy and defiance.

The Castellan looked to the Spitewielder, who in turn stared down at the Host Astartes. When he looked to Kestian, he had slid Spite back into its loop, carrying only the scepter from the dead Conductor. The look lingered.

“How many of you are in system?” Asked the Spitewielder. The Host warrior just laughed.

“Go find out, whoreson.” 

At this, the Spitewielder shook his head. 

“You accuse us of being imbeciles, yet you plead you are no traitors while your witch lies dead from his own machinations, and your Conductor for his arrogance. I will kill every single warrior wearing the colors of your Host. Do you understand me? How many are aboard your ship and homeworld?”

A great metal screeching sound came from behind the fallen Host warrior. He craned his head around to see Malgur and several Templars tearing into his Thunderhawk, no doubt looking to extract data from its onboard cogitators.

The Astartes turned his head back then laid it onto the deck in resignation.

“My Conductor told you the avenue to niceties was burned. May the Deeps consume you, fool.”

Black gauntlets seized him, hoisting him onto his feet. He was made to look into the singular lens of the Spitewielder’s eye.

“Very well. Consider the rules of chivalry formerly redacted from your Chapter.” The priest turned then, making eye contact with Bhabli. She gasped, though she didn’t know why.

“Crucify him to my Thunderhawk.”

 

 

 

 

ii. 

 

 

 

 

Several gunships left from their mother ships amongst the fleet at the command of the Spitewielder.

Two soared through the void aggressively towards the idly floating Apocrypha Treble, guarding between them an Aquila flyer. Three others descended towards the strange, dark orb of Dhulmarak. 

At their lead was the Spitewielder’s own craft, burning in the thin atmosphere of the planet. Inside, he had clambered up the confined gangway to the cockpit, seeing through the viewport as his pilot did. They were flying through a lazy wash of rain, the droplets sticking to the window.

The Chaplain raised an eyebrow from behind his helmet.

What they believed to be oceans were, in fact, deep crevices of oceanic stone basalt. That deep, rich blue that bordered into black, and when the sickly radiance of the moon caught them at far lost angles, they shown purple like the void.

And even in this evaluation they were wrong.

In some madness, the denizens had hewn into the very earth itself in feats the Mechanicus would baulk at. 

They had carved into the very tectonic plates themselves and from those deep places, birthed eldritch idols in fashions far beyond euclidean understanding and scope the mortal mind couldn’t comprehend.

There was such an utter wrongness to them that even knowing they were there hurt the mind. In their cyclopian scale, they cast queer shadows throughout, inky and sickly, the edges of them almost oozing or rippling like mist in a fine wind. 

Everything shimmered in the haze of the rain, cascading into huge aqueducts that took the water and channeled it through continents to a single point. 

Each led to a mountain that sat like some wicked crown, its tips scraping to claw at space itself. From its base, expanding outwards, was some manner of city. There were no lights that the priest could make out, and nothing resembling anything remotely Imperial, Mechanicus, Inquisition, or otherwise. 

Its forms and structures, its angles and edges, the very mathematics and principles and mad sciences and better forgotten religions so deeply and profanely different that it didn’t even register as Xenos or Chaotically influenced.

Since the manifestations, he had some vague hint of otherness about their Crusade. Something that didn’t sit within the known lines of the galaxy he understood. There was something truly bad about these stars.

He was pulled from his stupor by his vox going live in his ear.

“Spitewielder.” Malgur’s voice crackled over the vox, the sound of bolter fire filling the gaps in the background noise.

“Forge Master.” He replied.

“We have boarded and are making way to the bridge now. Resistance is minimal. Seven confirmed Astartes ki-.” There was an abrupt pause as the sound of roaring chainblades and hiss of a powered blade hitting something metal roared through the open channel. “Correction, eight confirmed Astartes kills. I will inform you should we run into more.” The connection cut, leaving him and the pilot alone again in the cockpit. 

The Spitewielder could feel the rigidity of his pilot’s flying, a new sensation, and one they hadn’t felt since he had first been accepted as the Chaplain’s personal chauffeur. The slightest turn of the pilot’s head told him that he knew the Spitewielder was aware of it also.

“Apologies, lord.” The warrior said.

“Speak openly to me, Ardan.”

The pilot, Ardan, worked the sticks, stiffly fighting them back to true, not once leaving to adjust a dial or interact with any runes or switches. When he replied, the Spitewielder heard it through teeth clenched in frustrated concentration.

“The..forgive me, lord, but the perspective is off. As if I’m both right there and still afar. The shadows and textures and…it’s all just off. I will correct my failings.”

The priest didn’t respond. He continued to look out amongst the non-euclidian architecture, if it indeed was architecture, and found his own emotional response to be disturbing.

Because he, too, identified with what Ardan was feeling. And that confirmed to him, in some strange manner, that this was indeed not something Warp-spawned. At least not in any sense he had combatted it before.

He left Ardan in silence, joining the Spiteful below.

They sat in their harnesses, still as statues, grim in their Templar heraldry and their own personal eclecticness daubed about themselves in their right as members of the Spiteful. Historitor Bhabli sat against the bulkhead, strapped in and cocooned within bulky void armor. During the voyage, she had spent many months with Kybert learning to walk, run, crawl, crouch, jump, and fall in the armor. It had not been a pleasant experience.

Her visor locked eyes with the lense of the Spitewielder. His voice growled within the claustrophobic confines of her helmet, whispering into her ear.

“The world we are descending upon is a strange place. I suspect you will not find it accommodating.”

As she made to respond, a particularly violent wave of turbulence rolled into the Thunderhawk, rattling her between the armbars of her harness. When her vision steadied, she spoke through clenched teeth.

“Almost everything is better than flying.” 

He didn’t reply, but in the light of the gunship’s brutal red glow, it looked for all the world as if he were smiling.

The ships tore through the gloom of the day’s storm, making way for the central mountain. 

Beneath them, a city of inconsistent and impossibly connected towers of stone and blocks of basalt sped by. Jagged peaks of black stone obelisks and monoliths reached up to the sky, as if trying to tear the struggling airships from their flight. 

The immensity of the mountain rapidly loomed over them. From its base to tip, it ranged somewhere near twenty-nine thousand meters. Intractable ranges of spiny cliffs and deep basins of inky black overlapped one another, layering themselves over the carcass of another until the tip was no more than tiered peaks wandering crests.

For kilometers around the base of the mountain, the land was utterly clear and bereft of anything other than flat plains of black sand, which glittered in the wet shimmer of the false daylight rain. The three gunships of the Black Templars landed, black turtles beached upon black shores.

The scorched armor of the Sibilant Host warrior sizzled in the rain, and was promptly buried in the sand, every crook and crease and nook filled with the black grit, as the ramp crushed him into it as it lowered.

Leading the detachment, the Spitewielder purposely marched down the ramp, halting just meters away as the other Templars gathered. He looked up at the breadth of the mountain before him.

Cranning his neck up and beyond the clouds he had just descended from, the yawning abyss of its black mouth was forever held open, waiting, threatening. The idea of its never-to-be-satiated hunger didn’t leave Bhabli’s thoughts as she warily strode down the ramp, looking at the Chaplain’s back, herself entranced by the mountain. When she looked around, every helmet of the Templars was tilted upwards to look up at the massif.

“I feel as if I cannot take all of its scope in.” She breathed into the vox. “I…my entire vision is filled with it.”

The assembled Templars did not respond to her. Kybert took her gently by the shoulder and pulled her closer to him. Huddled in loose formations of familiarity, the crusaders of the Black Templars followed their lord to the base, the yawning black mouth agape, waiting expectedly for them.

The Spitewielder didn’t hesitate to cross the black threshold when they made it to the mouth, crunching the sand beneath their tread for what felt like too long. When he did so, his vision didn’t automatically adjust to the dark. His vision was hazy, the edges tinted in a nighttime blue, like static overwash.

A soft, gentle glow of bruised light filled the cavernous space, twinkling and swimming as if through glaciers. The temperature dropped significantly, and his armor’s arcane senses could not provide him with data on the depth of the cavern’s mouth.

Thirty warriors of the Crusade marched with him, their heads turning to address the same sensations he was feeling and fighting. Bhabli, encompassed by the warriors, was a meagre thing, a black beetle in her armor. The press against her senses was immense, and she couldn’t stop her eyes from their rapid blinking. Her breath, too, hastened.

They moved with slow purpose, eyes trying and failing to pierce the everpresent dark.  The blackness swam around them, almost pulsing as they moved forward. Astartes boots crunched soundlessly, deafeningly, on the absent black sand beneath them. Whatever light that didn’t exist, caught rare glimpses of the black grains, making them sparkle and twinkle like stars in the night sky.

To Bhabli, the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other felt to her like an entire lifetime. She would have guessed that they had been marching nonstop for near six hours, but that couldn’t be right, because they had only just landed, and just entered the cave, and she wasn’t tired in the slightest, though her head hurt, and she felt as if the statues around her had suddenly appeared and-

Her head bounced off of the leather skirt at Kybert’s waist. The knights had their weapons brandished, pointed out in every direction they felt was likely to birth a threat.

The statues Bhabli had only just noticed were everywhere. They lined either side of the party, hung from the ceiling, and they sprouted from the sides of the walls. Each of them was some grotesque, miserable ghoul, either crouching or hunched over in menace or starvation. Their proportions were wrong, and they matched none of the Xenos breeds she was familiar with. 

None of them resembled the other. Each looked carved by different hands, of different minds, with different tools and techniques. Yet, the lack of uniformity united them in some vile amalgamation of other-worldliness. The darkness around them did not appreciate the brandishing of weapons.

Slowly, that same darkness enveloped what little light the strange, atmospheric blue haze offered. Coiling around them with its black tendrils, the first of the Spite Crusade’s deaths began.

A knight from Jarad’s squad walked into the darkness, his brothers too slow and too quick to have grabbed him in time. His vitals didn’t disappear from the noosphere. His entire noospheric presence was removed. The knight ceased to exist within their collective annals of knowledge and knowing.

The Spitewielder bellowed, and ordered the remaining twenty-nine Templars to move in the wake of their brother, who had seemingly been spirited away. Warriors marched with the intent to inflict their lord’s will upon the world, eating distance and hacking apart the inky shadows swathed about them.

“Is this…are we in a cave? Is this some sort of complex?” Asked one of the Spiteful as they hurriedly marched in search of the missing knight.

“They said this was a place for their dead. Perhaps this megastructure is a necropolis; a holy tomb of such magnitude to honor their Chapter’s traditions?” Altus offered, though flatly and without sounding as if he, too, believed his own theory.

No one responded. No one cared, it seemed.

 

 

 

iii. 

 

 

 

The Spiteful were smashing the statues that sprang from the ground and draped from the ceiling that had come to both be directly above their heads, and impossibly far above them. Hands hewn from rock, or its simulacrum, reached out and scraped armor. In their hasty wake, the knight's Templar were bashing them aside with uncaring swings of their fists or blades.

It funneled them into a column of two knights, barely abreast, leading them deeper into winding depths still populated with the abundance of destitute effigies blighting the mountain-necropolis. 

“There’s a fork.” Said the lead knight, his voice growling through the near constant sound of pulping stone.

The column came to a halt, the Spitewielder crunching his way to the front and looking upon the unkindly looking tunnel mouths that bisected their path. With what seemed like little actual consideration, the priest went right, keeping his hand to the wall, which closed about them in an immediacy that seemed only just able to accommodate the exaggerated proportions of the Astartes.

Leading them now, the Spitewielder’s hand dragged, the sound jagged and carried ahead of them. Inside her armor, Bhabli was sweating and greatly disliking the intimacy of her visor. She wanted to be free of it and tear it off of her, the thought taking up what little space was left inside that claustrophobic confines, and wiggled its way through her nerves. She tore the helmet off in a desperate scrabble of fingers, halting the knights behind her.

The helmet came away, and free, she took in a greedy gulp of air, blinking her eyes hard enough to cause lights to explode behind her eyelids. When she focused, she saw that the lights behind her eyes were, in fact, twin sconces throwing shadows from their torch light.

Crossing the archway into a cavernous amphitheater, the space before them opened up, and sloped downwards. Meters from them, roughly carved stone steps lead further down into the umbral beyond. Either side of the steps, unending rows of benches, carved from some material that resembled old ivory, 

“It’s cold here.” Bhabli said in a hushed tone, her breath fogging before her.

Black Templars were spreading around her, pushing back the shadows and stepping over and onto the ivory benches and stone steps that curved outwards and disappeared further below them. There was no sign of other sconces or torches from afar, only the ones that sat behind them. 

The breaths of the Templars who went unhelmed roared like dragon’s breath as they turned their heads to watch for danger. Taking the steps gingerly, she followed the knights as they descended, scanning her head left and right as they left the glow of the torches, watching the ivory wash away into dim shadows and suggestions of benches. 

“What is this space?” She spoke again. One of the Spiteful looked over his shoulder at her.

“I would think a mausoleum.” A redheaded knight, Thietmar, whispered, holding his bolter to his chest. His words were greeted with a grunt of agreement from their lord ahead of them.

“It has the reek of it.” Came his reply, leading them with Spite held above his head like a torch.

The knights came to an immediate halt. Bhabli stumbled into Thietmar, uncomfortably meeting his elbow with her nose. Smarting, she looked around his bulk to see the Spitewielder standing before a raised stage. It was carved from the same stone as the cave, but etched into its face were a series of symbols she did not recognize.

Though their pattern reminded her of a musical manuscript or the composition of a score on parchment. Sitting atop the stage was an altar, made from glossy black stone, shaped into imprecise approximation by seemingly poor tools. Baskets woven from mottled birch laid discarded around it. 

Splayed on top of the altar, arms and legs extended and chained tightly to the corners, was the Templar knight that had disappeared. 

Impaling him to the altar, sunken into his guts and out through his spine, was the Heavenly Spear of Saturnine. Its auramite hue glowing dully in the absence of true light.

In a single bound, the Spitewielder took to the stage, striding to the sacrificial form of his knight upon the altar.

“Brandr, what foulness has taken you?” The priest said, sweeping his mace along the length of the oblated Templar.

“The…s-spear…” Came the gurgled reply of the knight, the words oozing from his split lips.

Lights flickered into life from above, illuminating other arches that lead into the mausoleum. From their sable maws spewed hunched, grey figures, shuffling in their dozens from the archways into the benches that tiered the altar around them. The slapping of exposed feet on the stone floor echoed throughout as the space was filled with the sudden strangers.

The Spiteful took up arms, forming a bladed semi-circle around the stage. What seemed like hundreds of dozens of wretched figures took to the benches, and when the flow stymied, the forms of nearly ten Astartes accompanied them, followed by a far stranger, incongruous shape. 

It towered above the Astartes, and was vaguely serpent. Its head, barely able to bend in the fashion of a man to look down, sat more like that of a fish, stiff necked and unaccustomed to nodding. It had three sinuous arms, each ending in webbed, gnarled hands. One carried a scepter, similar to the one sitting at the Spitewielder’s belt. 

It was naked save for a cloak of what could only be described as scabs, which hung from a cord of fraying rope tied at what was, ostensibly, its neck. Translucent needle teeth poked out from its screeching maw as it pointed at them with the scepter.

The hunched figures, in various stages of nudity or wearing scraps of rags, flung themselves bodily at the Templars. 

It was Jarod, the Sergeant in the mismatched heraldry, that gave the order to repel.

As one, the knights of the Spite Crusade engaged their weapons.

Chain weapons roared, energized blades sang, and bolters belched as spite was dealt to the enemies swarming them. Individual knights, those of the Spiteful in their swagger and bravado, dug deeper into the foe, carving for themselves pockets of violence and mangled bodies.

Limbs, emaciated and poorly muscled, littered the feet of the Templars, mulched and eviscerated into a fine carpet. Jarod swung his chain axe in a two-handed grip, hacking and slashing the heavy weapon into the chests of the all-too-happy to die cultists flinging themselves at the crusaders.

Altus, standing beside Kybert who was defending his charge, blasted into the crowd with his pistol, splintering the ivory benches and spewing rock fragments from the stairs. Those grey forms would hurl themselves at Kybert, spears and shards of the benches jutting out of them from sanguine petals blooming in their flesh.

Kybert, his chainsword rising and falling, rising and falling, had his feet planted wide, his free hand held back, forcing Bhabli against the stone wall of the stage. Blood speckled her olive features. 

The Astartes came, slowly, behind the mobbing forms of their mortal followers. They were firing bolter rounds into them in steady rhythmic succession. Black Templars were forced backwards, visors spinning or pauldrons cracking as the staccato caught them off beat.

Purple armored warriors, their arms crimson with black fists, began to sing. In the space of the amphitheater-mausoleum, the acapella floated to them through the sounds of sputtering, meat clogged chain-teeth and the growls of the Spiteful. To Bhabli, cowering behind her protector, the melody lasted too long, and rang too poorly. There was no beat, no tempo, that matched the fight as she saw or heard it.

Behind the poorly performing Astartes came the fish-man-serpent, swinging the scepter before it, as if it were a conductor.

Orbs of ill-glowing gold formed around the wretches being massacred, enveloping their heads like lazy globules of resin, and began to radiate with a fierceness. One by one, they threw themselves at the Templars, and as they flopped onto the floor in meaty smacks, they exploded with a force of visceral gore hard enough to throw the black knights from their feet.

Several mobbed onto an Initiate knight, smacking their orbous heads into his armor until they cracked, becoming clinging bombs of flailing, suicidal devotion. Only the knight’s legs remained, toppling to the floor as the rain of gore fell atop them. The Templars began hurling their foes away, or in more frenzied cases, drove deeper into them when overrun, tumbling into many and causing a rippling tide of explosive gore to decorate the mausoleum anew. 

A star was birthed inside of the sea of bobbing orbs and entrenched warriors. It grew to maturity from the altar, before dying in an explosive beam that seared through the face-neck of the aberration commanding the foe. It fell forwards, sliding down the stairs, the scepter spinning away from its dead grip.

The Spitewielder lowered his plasma pistol, turning from the impaled offering, and joining his warriors at last. In a rattle of chains, he leapt beside Bhabli and his companions, dipping his head towards the coming Host.

“Jarod and I will take them.” Waving his crozius forward, the chaplain strode into the fray, batting aside the cultist misbegotten as they hurled themselves to their deaths at him. Pockets of exploding corpses were tossed in his wake as he marched to meet with his sergeant. 

Twin-headed and multi-enginged, Jarod’s axe bellowed and churned as it pulverized the mortal flesh it collided with. The white painted segments of the sergeant’s armor were plastered with sticky gore. With him, a handful of knights from his own squad pushed to take the fight to the Hosts, rushing up the slick stairway to get at them.

One of the Sibilant Hosts, whose helmet was wreathed with a crown of threaded golden wire, removed it and took in a deep breath of the blood-misted cavern. With a familiarly husky voice, the Astartes half whispered, half barked an maligned bastardization of a word. The force of it hurled the Templars back and burst several of the benches into vicious splinters that peppered everything in their path.

A handful of the wretches remained, their heads no longer encased in sluggish gold, and piled atop those warriors that were buried within the messy mounds of their comrades, stabbing at the soft portions of their joints and seals.

The Host staggered, holding his hand to his mouth. His brothers fired another volley, taking the knight closest to the Spitewielder. He pushed himself from his knees, bounding with single minded doggedness at the unhelmeted warrior. Ego and the warrior's need to meet a foe face-to-face overwrote the objectiveness of burying a plasma bolt in him.

Two simultaneous bolts exploded on his chest, but found no purchase in the brutal mark III plate. He was four strides from the Host.

At the first stride, the Sibilant Host warrior steadied himself, locking eyes with that of the chaplain’s.

On the second stride, Spite was rising from across its wielder’s left knee, following an arc that would carry it high above the priest’s right shoulder.

When the third stride was planted, the Host Astartes unhinged his jaw and attempted to shape the words in his mouth once again.

But the Spitewielder had made the fourth stride, and Spite had long since been at the apex of its swing, and was now using the counter momentum to fall, fall, fall, like a baleful star, hurling to the only possible place it could collide with. 

The crozius broke through the warrior’s zygomatic bone, obliterating his maxilla before ripping his mandible from the Host’s face anatomy. Super heated tongues of its power field licked out and melted the warrior’s left eye. Below his nasal cavity was the singed, flopping mess of his tongue. With his free hand, the Spitewielder threw his spiked knuckles into the ruined remains of the warrior’s face, digging his knuckles into the Hosts' memories.

Tossed aside and discarded, the body smacked heavily as the chaplain turned to the retreating forms of the other Hosts, who had abandoned one another to their own fates. Two were already dead, a third and fourth were running towards the same exit, and the remainders were small pockets of ever shrinking resistance as the Templar hacked them apart.

The Spitewielder walked towards the abomination that lay like a whale’s corpse beached upon a death’s stranding. His boot turned it over, finding rancid, milky ooze barely seeping from the scorch burn of his plasma shot. 

“Stay one’s execution!” He barked, pointing to the final pocket of Host warriors. “I will tear from him a truth!” He turned, watching Kybert and Altus approach warily. Behind them, Bhabli crouched and retrieved something jutting from a steaming ribcage.

When she rose, in her hand, was the same scepter as the one that hung from the Spitewielder’s belt.

[Spite]

Eight

Roaming presence

Things betwixt

A numinous sign

 

i. 

 

The Apocrypha Treble sat like the carcass of some herd beast, surrounded and in the process of being devoured by its killers.

Around it, the brutal form of The Flail loomed over her, several of her flight decks open, and her impressive array of guns directed her way. Beside her, just as large but more ponderous, the Menith Stant had its stern facing the encircled frigate. The Mechanicus Forgeship buzzing with auxiliary support craft moving to and fro, fussing over the massive Martian ship in sporadic fits of activity. Last the Destroyer Heavy This Axe had its gun ports aimed at the silent ship, like some hook billed carrion bird. 

The Forgemaster’s contingent of Templars had boarded the Apocrypha Treble from Menith Stant and had secured the ship’s most vital components within the first hours of boarding. 

That had been days ago.

Days and days, while the Spitewielder and dozens of other Spite crusaders were absent without word for what was slowly turning into the sixth day.

Kestian was staring past the captured frigate, his features set in a mask of infinite patience. The Castellan had assumed formal command after the first hour of the Spitewielder’s strange and silent absence. He had spent the time since securing the system, and ensuring that all lanes to the cursed planet below were watched by Templar guns. 

But he hadn’t sent any more of the crusade below. Indeed, he was a much more cautious and careful soul than the Spitewielder, and had instead prepped the fleet for immediate retaliation from a void-born foe. It was a trait that had won him far more glories and battles than any zeal or ego his brothers could boast.

Though his brothers within the remaining Spiteful were less keen to ignore the planet. He had already had to chastise the younger, newer members from descending on another Thunderhawk to investigate.

And, indeed, they could not continue to wait in the nothingness created by their missing master. Either an answer had to be found, or the crusade was doomed at the very first meeting of the unknown. 

For now, they waited for the efforts of the Forgemaster to prove fruitful.

When they had cleared the Apocrypha Treble of its meagre Host compliment, the Forgemaster had set to the task of deciphering the Sibilant Host Chapter’s noospheric archives and shipboard data-cores to extract from them a more coherent history of the Chapter they faced, and the strange and foreboding stars they found themselves in.

But that task had long since become another issue for them to face without the use of their strength or blades. The ship’s interior itself was at odds with any STC design in use today, offering the invaders dead ends and false loops. While the data stacks and cogitators of the ship were largely what the Forgemaster had come to expect, its machine spirit argued and fought back, and finding the ship’s archives for greater lore about the Sibilant Host was so far lost and undiscovered. 

Kestian received the reports every hour. He reviewed helm-fed footage of his knights traversing hall after hall, pondering through service corridors that looked stamped and repeated back to back, endlessly. 

“I will dismantle this ship piece by piece, deck by deck if I must.” Malgur had said over the vox, his voice tinged with the long hours of frustrated denial of his appointed duties.

Kestian had left the Apocrypha Treble to him, less enamored by it than the world it lingered over. Dhulmarak was the color of an old bruise, deep purples and nightly blues splotched by pockets of inky black. No greens, or whites, or browns shown through the planet’s atmosphere.

Even from orbit he could see the wrongness of the world’s tectonic face. The cyclopean statues visible, though barely just, from where he stood. He did not like the way it made his vision vibrate and his thoughts dim when he paid it any particular mind.

“One more day. One more day, brother, and I will offer myself and a handful of souls to find you. Or bury you.” Kestian said to the window, his breath fogging his view.

He turned, wanting to address the Fleet Admiral when one of the ratings chirped from their station.

“Contacts!” Came the cry.

Several officers began to fire off reports or notices from their station.

“Auspex?” Kestian asked, moving to the Admiral’s throne, wanting to see the command display.

Several ships had just popped into existence at the far edge of the system, opposite of the Mandeville Point. No warp signatures, no tears into the material realm. They had just simply shown up, one moment The Flail’s auspex rang empty, another it was ping’ing with identity signatures. 

“More witchery.” Croz said, stepping down from his throne and joining the Castellan at the strategio, waving the images away until it focused on the newly arrived ships.

The lead ship, a silhouette unfamiliar to both Kestian and Croz, was a deeply burnt gold and highly ornate, its flight towards the ships of the Spite Crusade a bladed and direct path. Seemingly unphased by the plethora of might it would face down, the data stream detailed it was on a direct course for The Flail.

Another ship, this one the familiar Ethe Alto, hung in the void behind its new attendants, and the only ship brandishing the colors of the Chapter of the Sibilant Host. 

Five other ships, each of them frigates bearing the mark of Astartes vessels, were armored and daubed in what looked like solidified amber barnacles on their hulls. When the abysmal light reflected from their hued surfaces, they sparkled and glittered like the jewels they resembled. 

These gem-ships followed behind the burnt gold of the lead vessel, leaving the Ethe Alto in the wake of their plasma drives as they made haste to the waiting, and now responding, ships of the Imperials that had wandered into their realm.

Croz barked several orders, attendants and ratings sounding sharp confirmations as they worked to obey. Ships hanging in the outer layers of their battle formation lulled tighter to their cousins, the Crusade slowly amassing to present a wall of hateful black iron and Imperial Green to the newly arrived foe.

The Undaunted, its master still residing within her, took to the speartip without needing orders, presenting her fierce prow like the downward tilted head of a wolf on the attack, teeth bared and snarling. 

Kestian watched it all. He was silent, allowing for the Admiral to conduct the fleet and orchestrate them to appropriate spheres to repel and deny. He was more so interested in the unidentified ship.

“It looks like a void station.” Croz said, seeing the Castellan’s long and silent stare.

“It looks mighty.” He said.

And indeed, the lead ship, brandishing golden towers with turrets and crenelations, long and tiered ramparts spanning leagues, and mouths, did resemble an ancient and archaic might.

Artillery mouths, gargantuan open maws, each of them spouting dozens of barrels, each of them pointed towards the black and silver profile of the Undaunted, adorned the floating fortress. The ship, and it deserved that title just barely, was moving at impressive speeds for something of its size. 

It matched The Flail and the Menith Stant easily, and in some regards, out classed them in the grandeur of its bulk. It looked, for all the cosmos, like a floating gun-city cast from age faded gold. A castle of the most ancient times, aloft in the heavens.

Nowhere on its surface, whether it the hull or its many curtain walls, offered any identity to their allegiance. Just the indifference of burnished gold, pointed and vast, making haste to them. The frigates behind, encrusted and bejeweled as they were, sailed at speed with her, klaxons wailing inside of The Flail as they ran out their guns.

“They are hailing us, lord Castellan!” Called the Master of Vox. Kestian motioned and the bridge display crackled.

From the hololith, projected in such perfect synchronicity and detail as to look like he were standing there, came the supposedly relayed image of a colossal warrior.

An Astartes, plated in highly decorated, masterfully crafted and ancient artificer Terminator Armor, stood immaculate above the bridge. From his rounded shoulders, a fine cloak of interlocked pearl chains and rippling, faded satin gold hung heavy and many layered. His armor, etched with painstaking details of constellations and esoteric, gnostic symbols that were unfamiliar to the eye, shown with a glossy hue like that of a beetle's carapace. 

It was a fine rose gold, as if lit by a far setting sun, whose gradient one could get lost in forever. He looked like some ancient religion’s symbol for strength, or perhaps the manifestation of a god’s justice. Beautiful, resplendent, and entirely without the brutality seen so commonly amongst the Spite Crusade. 

On his chest, a thin halo circlet of gold wire thread stood proudly, a golden serpent eating its own tail.

Though magnificent, it lacked the airs of gaudiness and ego, but more ceremonial and austere. Like all his fine trappings were a burden to be shouldered, rather than honors thrust unto them. His helmet, unlike any Kestian had seen before, must have been entirely crafted for him. 

A radiating fan-crest sat atop the great helm. There was a scene carved on its surface showing men with instrumental horns all trumpetting at a symbol that sat at the very point of the crest, like twin oroboros interlinked and entwined. Two deep, vertical slits of mother-of-pearl ran where the helmet’s visor would be. 

He was a gorgeous, mythical thing. And when he spoke, the ship filled with a baritone acapella of immaculately spoken Gothic.

“Offer deference, Black Knights, for you intrude wrongly upon my realm.” The voice intoned, the transmission of his speech the cleanest thing to ever emit from the ship’s voxcasters. “You make quarrel with us unjustly, while the real foe reaps and reaves the neighboring stars. You draw blades on a place of ceremony and sanctity while the vileness you accuse us of is just beyond yonder stars.”

The eyes of the Astartes bore into Kestian’s. 

“You are not this supposed ‘Spitewielder’.” He said finally.

“No, blessedly. I am Kestian, Castellan of the Black Templars, and commander of the Spite Crusade. You are spectacular to behold, Astartes.” 

To his credit, the Warlord did not falter at the offered compliment where insult would have been expected.

“I am Barsal Discant, Consul of the Nihilith’s Sixth Order. You will cease whatever perversions you have committed to my world.” The Consul’s words fluttered through the air, the harmonics of the voxcasters sending his voice as a bassy rumble in the chests of mortals. 

Kestian glanced at the Admiral with a look of peaked interest. Croz simply shook his head, clearly unenthused with more riddles to unravel.

“I am unfamiliar with your order, and more so with your loyalties, Consul Barsal Discant of the Nihilith’s Sixth Order. My Crusade controls the orbit of the Sibilant Host Chapter’s homeworld presently.” Kestian replied after eyeing the gorgeous armor again. 

The ships of either side were just seconds from maximum firing range, and the newcomers did not seem to be in a hurry to cut their speed.   

“Aye,” Spoke the burnished giant, “my world.”

 

ii. 

 

Bhabli was deeply intrigued by the scepter now that she got to see it up close.

It was heavier than she expected, and ill balanced. The haft was forged of a black stone material that seemed incapable of catching any light, no matter its presence. As she ran her thumb up the smooth material, she could feel grooves carved into it. Neatly wrapped script, or verse most likely, crawled from the butt to the neck of the sphere sitting at the top.

Cast from a warm, honied gold, the sphere was smooth and only offered the haziest of reflections when glanced into. She did so now, tilting her head this way and that, moving her head from side to side to see the mimicry of it within the orb. 

There was a stillness inside of her that grew too deep. The gnawing sense of being divergently out of step with the rest of the world took grip of her in a clammy and cold embrace. She became overly aware and sensitive to the inside of her mouth, smacking her tongue against her teeth, the taste of it overwhelming her and making her nauseous. 

Aching from the sudden onset of chill, her joints flared and she felt something in her sinuses snap. Her teeth were vibrating. Her throat was convulsing. Her thoughts were racing to form syllables, like a palsy tick that could only be satiated by giving in to the release of it. She began to froth at the mouth and make appalling, mewling, whining sounds from her gut.

The scepter in her hand grew hot. It was pulling from her thoughts and stealing her means of coherent speech.

In an act of supreme mercy, the scepter was wrenched from her grip by the Spitewielder, whose presence filled her with a more icy, blunt stillness. The light of his single eye lens was narrowed at her.

“Document, Historitor. Do not touch.” He said, as Kybert came behind him, kneeling to offer his bulk to lean on, which she obliged to.

Bhabli pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until lights burst behind them from the pressure, and let out a lengthy breath.

“T-throne, but what was that?” She asked as she looked up to the Chaplain.

The Spitewielder looked to the scepter for a long moment before returning his glare to the Historitor.

“You tell me, Historitor.” 

“It was…I felt…” She took another steadying breath. “I was too still. Holding that thing. I felt like…” She reached up for her shawl that wasn’t there, and instead, bit at her lip for a brief second as she looked to the scepter clutched in the Spitewielder’s grip.

“It felt like it was sifting through my head, grasping for words and jumbling up all the ones I already knew to make new ones.” She looked between Altus, Kybert, and the priest. “It wasn’t pleasant.” 

Kybert nodded, turning to look at his lord, who looked at Bhabli for a prolonged moment before turning to address the carnage wrought within the place.

Bodies, limbs, and shattered benches littered the area around the altar. Gore was heaped in mounds, but also discarded in great smears and streaks that rose to the top of the tiered stairs. Amongst some were the black armored forms of crusader knights, dead within hordes of the deranged foe.

These were being pulled and gathered back to the altar, placed before the Templar crucified atop it.

Jarod, along with a handful of knights, were coercing the two remaining Host Astartes they had not butchered. Both were on their knees and had their hands severed at the wrists. One of the Spiteful, Bhabli couldn’t see who, had taken these and impaled them to a hook at his waist, making for a grizzly collection.

The Spitewielder went to them, standing before them with a maul in each fist. His right held the weapon of his office, chained to his arm, the other held the newly acquired scepter. This he used to lift the chin of the first warrior.

“Confess, heretic.”

The Host warrior spat on his arm, the acid sizzling immediately. Jarod yanked on the warrior’s hair and the Spitewielder wiped the acidic bile onto the captive’s eyes and brow, letting the jagged edges cut into his skin. To his credit, the Host Astartes didn’t cry out.

“I command you to confess, filth.” The Chaplain said again, pressing the head of the scepter into the man’s throat. “Tell me how and why your Chapter fell from His Grace. Tell me what this place is.” 

The other Host warrior, an aged Astartes with ghostly translucent hair hanging over his shoulders, cackled dryly. 

“Our brothers Beyond would not have turned from Him. No true Angelson could.” The Host whispered in harsh, gargled words. 

“And yet, I am here, killing you as traitors, finding sorcery and corruption amongst you.” This last part made the Spitewielder tilt his cadaverous features to the dead man-fish-serpent that lie there like beachrot. The older Astartes followed, but his fellow cast his head down, chin resting on his chest.

“Conductor Baroq came closest to understanding the S-s-symphony more than any other, save for the f-f-first Composer of our Chapter.” The ghost haired Host said, jutting his chin to the serpent thing. “He assumed the burden of that liminal form to better sing amongst His choir.” 

The Astartes coughed, doubling over with the effort to speak. The other warrior growled a warning.

“Silence yourself, idiot.” He urged.

“They cannot escape The Mountain. They will wander as we wandered.” Replied his stuttering comrade, nodding at the black knights around them. “They will s-s-suffer in this place.”

The Spitewielder smacked him with the scepter, striking the man’s face with a back swing that sent teeth wetly smacking into the viscera around them.

“Make sense.” He demanded.

“Tell us of the B-b-beyond, and I will be as a bard to you, priest.” Said the ghost haired Host, the other captive growling at him. The Spitewielder looked to Jarod, who looked to the knights holding him. The warrior was dragged away before being hacked apart by the Templars that restrained him. Each took something of a trophy from the now dead Host.

The elderly Astartes, not watching, but looked transfixed to the other scepter hanging from the Chaplain’s belt. A look of understanding passed over him as he took a breath, collecting himself as best he could.

“Dhulmarak is our homeworld, but it was an old, p-p-primeval place. I think He may have stepped foot here once.” The Host went into another fit, extenuating the word. “When my Chapter seeded this place, The Mountain had already been here, same as you likely beheld it. We sent serfs in, Tech Adepts, even bands of Hosts. None ever returned. Every few years, we’d just, heh, send in more! 

“The Mountain can’t be read with augurs or sensors. And nothing ever comes out. But it was a still point, the barrier between Materia and Immateria as solid and firm as the mountain itself. But it is odd. It is otherly.”

The Host rolled his head to indicate and encompass the space they occupied. The high walls, the domed stone roof, the ivory benches. His speaking was faster, hurried, but not yet frantic.

“You would stumble into places like this, already here, empty, waiting. But no exit. Never an exit.” The Host said, letting the words bite into the Templars around him. 

The Spitewielder said nothing, just looking at the Host with a still indifference as he spoke.

“Witchcraft. We are ensorcelled.” He said finally, the words gnashing from the fashioned teeth of his visor.

“The only psychically gifted of us to enter w-w-was the Conductor. He had been bound to this peculiar place longer than most. Not the f-f-first of my Chapter, but amongst them.” With a knowing shake of his head, the Host replied, an almost apologetic look on his face. “I know nothing of the Gifts myself, priest, but I know it not to be mere sorcery. You are experiencing and witnessing the skeleton of the galaxy as it articulates and rattles.”

The Astartes of the Spite Crusade had gathered their dead by then, lining them up and folding their arms across their stomachs, weapons pressed into dead hands as Bhabli listened to the captive prisoner tell them of his plight, which was about to change mantle to their own. 

“I was elevated to be a Sibilant Host when the Sign was already known to us.” The Host said after a melancholic lull hung over them, as the knights watched the last of their slain be gathered. “It lives amongst them, though for how long, I do not know. They came to my ancestors, after years and decades, and spoke to the first Composer of the Sibilant Host.”

“Sign?” Asked the Spitewielder.

The Host nodded.

“A n-n-numinous Sign etched into the skin of the Mariner’s Chapter homeworld, one of the elder worlds. A Sign formed of the blood and bones of existence, Chaplain. A Sign that bestowed us guidance and power. Power not only to combat Chaos, but to cause it terror!” The old warrior had a look cross over his face, one of defensiveness and apathy. “N-n-not sorcery! Not Chaos bedevilment!”

At this, the Spitewielder simply pointed his crozius to the dead monster of what was supposedly his Conductor. 

The Host warrior worked his mouth, but could find no good ballad or tale to sing from it.

“I am simply a chorus-brother, meant to obey my harmony or Conductor. I p-p-posess no knowledge or insight beyond my bolter and battle.” Spoken finally, the elder Astartes let the silence reign once again.

“How long have you been here?” 

Blinking, the Host shrugged, shaking his head.

“Decades? Centuries? Not as long as the Conductor, but my brother, S-s-simher whom you’ve murdered, had only just joined us. Maybe four or five decades ago? Our chronometers stopped once we entered, and I can only assume based on the beating of my hearts.”

Nodding, the Spitewielder pointed to the trio of caverns that lead to and from this now corpse mound. 

“How do we leave? Ah ah ah! None of that, now. You’ve spoken better than the other curs of your colors I’ve encountered.” The Chaplain held a finger in warning, still gripping his crozius.

The Host warrior shook his head, nonplussed. “It is not my duty to explain to you, a murderous intruder, a blundering b-b-bastard, the metaphysical whimsies of liminal spaces and peculiar places. I would advise you kill yourself, and that of your brothers, or meet an endless tide of my kin as they, I am sure, continue to enter and wander The M-m-mountain.” 

He grinned at that, beaming to the Templars holding him with his mangled stump arms. Jarod looked to the Spitewielder.

“What in the name of Dorn have we stumbled upon, Spitewielder?” 

The Chaplain pointed to the altar, where even now, his knight was impaled by the replica of the Heavenly Lance of Saturnine. “What say you of this devilry, then?”

A deep frown creased the ashen features of the old Host.

“This theater was used for those of us that found it to gather, and recite stories of old to one another. I h-h-have not, until this night, seen that weapon before in my life.” He regarded the spear with vague curiosity. “Does it hold importance to you?”

“It is a weapon sacred to my Chapter. Another Crusade, led by another knight came here thousands of years ago. It was lost, along with those brave Templars.” Recanted the Spitewielder, turning to look upon the spear once again.

Another lengthy silence. The Spitewielder turned to look back at the Host warrior, who was staring very intensely at him.

“There is a tale,” Began the Host, becoming quickly sober from his mania, lucidity bleeding from his eyes as the stammering and stuttering halted. “Of the doom that came for the first Composer, and the felling of the Tower…”

The Spitewielder bade him continue.

“Haa’li, The Mariner’s homeworld. I…” The Host was giggling now, an ugly and wispy thing. “I had always thought it some fanciful verse, some colorful poetry regarding the blood bond between our two Chapters. But it’s you, isn’t it? It’s you.”

He was returning to hysterics. The coughing rang loudly, and eventually, his shrill voice, abnormally high in pitch for one of their breed, cut through the somber air of the theater in furious bouts that only seemed to heighten.

Spite returned to its belt loop. In a jingle of devotion chains, the Spitewielders arm shot out. He grabbed the older warrior’s lower jaw, inserting his fingers into the Host’s mouth, his thumb curved under the lunatic’s chin. The spikes of his knuckles had broken several of his remaining teeth. He applied a motivating amount of pressure.

“How do we escape this place?” He growled, bringing the warrior’s face to his. He let go, but only just.

“The Mountain,” Came the mangled words from a mouth now swollen and damaged, “is a transient space. Move through it. It is all you can do.”

His left fist collided with the older warrior’s face, the brass spikes along his knuckles gouging chunks from him and taking it away as it swung back, then came forward again. The second punch sent the Host to the floor. 

The Chaplain lifted his boot, and stomped once, twice, a third and final time, pasting the gore smear of the man’s once face to the already gruesome decor of the floor.

Bhabli flinched, closing one of her eyes as she forced the other to witness the brutality.

The Spitewielder turned, running his gored hand over his skeletal features and made his way back to the stage and altar, the Eternal Visage now saturated in blood. Jarod followed him.

Together, they removed the impaled knight and the Spitewielder broke the pretend lance over his knee, discarding it amongst the mortal remains.

The fallen had been lined shoulder to shoulder, each bearing their weapons in holy solemnity. Seven knights dead.

Jarod and six others stood at the head of each fallen knight, staring at the closed eyes of their brethren. Kybert looked at Bhabli, and spoke in a very reverential and hushed tone.

“Be mindful of what you…interpret here, Lady. What you are about to witness, it is about lineage, and it is about remembrance. We do not have the luxury of an Apothecary presently, and the legacy of these heroes cannot simply be left behind.” 

Bhabli, not quite understanding what he meant, but somehow knowing the importance of what she was about to witness, pulled the stylus and slate from her armored pack.

As she pressed its tip to the screen, the knights, in unison, extracted knives each fashioned to the wielder. Some were slender daggers, others fat combat knives. Each knight carved into their slain brother, and extracted after some time, a globule and held it in the air above their waiting mouths.

To her horror, one by one, each Black Templar consumed the gene-seed of their killed battle brother. The Spitewielder was speaking softly. She recorded the words with frightened fingers, becoming now a dangerous witness.

“May you remember who you were.

“May you witness the glory of your kin, whom you are survived by.

“May you go to His Light, Eternal.

“May we grow from the memories of your triumphs, beloved brother.

“Ave Imperator.” He intoned, finishing the incantation.

“Ave Imperator.” Came the gathered reply of the remaining knights of the Spite Crusade.

The Spitewielder turned to those knights and pointed to the closest of the cavern mouths.

“Out from this place. Back to The Flail.”

“The Flail.” The knights chanted, and chanted again. Then again. A steady mantra as they filed to the cavern mouth, their enigmatic lord at their head, carrying the twin scepters in either hand. Kybert, himself reciting the words, ushered Bhabli along. Quite taken aback, and more than a little stunned by the encounter, she allowed herself to be guided away, desperately hoping that when the time came to edit her works, she’d be able to find any coherency amongst her findings. 

 

iii. 

 

Kurt had been in the Apothecarion, occupying one of the many sterile cots, staring up into the ceiling as the lone serf worked her rounds, checking himself and the three others who inhabited the ward. He had been one of the unfortunates during the meeting with the Sibilant Host to have been hit by shrapnel from their initial volley. A knight, Kurt didn’t know who, had put himself in front of him, taking the bolt in the hip. More ceramite fragments than bolter shell had found their way into his shoulder and collar bone. 

He had been occupied with counting the number of chirps one of the machines had been making when a klaxon wailed in the hallway, muted by the walls, seeping eerily into their chamber. The serf’s neck snapped up and she ran to the door, exiting the room swiftly. Kurt could see warning lights flashing through the porthole window set within the door.

The only conscious occupant in the room shared a glance with him, a burly serf whose foot had been turned the wrong way when he had come days before. 

“All of the Black Cross; bear arms and prepare to repel the foe.” Came a voice over The Flail’s shipwide vox.

Kurt shot up from his cot, smacking his feet hard against the clean tile of the Apothecarion floor, and bolted for the door. Stepping into the main hallway, the sound of the klaxons reached a pitched tone before promptly being cut, though the warning lights continued to flash. 

He wasn’t familiar with this part of the ship, and armed with nothing and armored in but his pantaloons, Kurt wasn’t of any particular use. Still, he made for the end of the long hall, in the direction the serf had sprinted towards. 

A door with the Helix of the Apothecarion painted on it sat heavy and closed at its end. At each corner were black crosses forged from some sable stone webbed through by veins of crimson. He had never really noticed until just such an inappropriate time, but each door he had come through since his boarding was daubed in some different representation of the knights’ heraldry.

He halted his pace and squinted his eyes to read the cogitator set within the wall. Its screen buzzed an angry red, the rune for “closed” shown in the same color.

Kurt clicked his tongue, then punched in a random series of numbers, a code seven characters long.

A heavy clunk-clank-slick came from within the door and it hissed open. Blinking rapidly, lost in the momentary blissful confusion of his sudden and random victory, it took him a moment to comprehend the figure before him.

The serf, dressed now in a heavy combat vest and armed with a heavier shotgun, raised an eyebrow behind her surgical mask.

“Return to your cot and remain there, footman.” She said in a small, light voice.

Kurt pointed to her gun. “Arm me. I can fight.” 

She looked at him for a moment, but nodded, pointing down a bend outside the hallway she stood in, crossing the threshold and taking up position beside the door. 

“Go right, follow the corridor until it forks. The immediate left at the end is the holdout. Tell Maeric you’re a Janissary and he’ll direct you from there.”

He made the sign of the Aquila with his good arm as she closed the hatch, sealing the Apothecarion.

The harsh, sterile light of the medical ward disappeared, leaving him in the somber light of the ship’s internal, hushed luminescence. In some areas, it was easy to believe you were traversing the cramped confines of a stone keep in the night hours of a feudal world. Here was not dissimilar.  

As he made to leave, the crunching of heavy steps came from the opposite direction. Nearly a dozen knights had come around the dimly lit corner, their sergeants both going without helmets. 

The lead sergeant, this one wearing a leather coif atop his head, his features square and clean shaven, pointed at him.

“What are you doing, imbecile? Why are you naked?” 

Kurt’s mouth opened, then closed, and a pathetic sound of confusion stammered out of him as he attempted to articulate himself. The knights had taken defensive positions in front of the Apothecarion chambers, armed with tall shields and boxy, archaic Phobos-pattern bolters. 

“I’m heading to the holdout. Orders were to standby to repel, lord.” Kurt stammered, very much wishing he had more than just his pants on.

The sergeant nodded after a moment, looking to his fellow officer, who made no particular look of interest or care.

“Be on your way, then. Do not return here, Janissary. It will be sealed by now.” Said the sergeant, taking his place amongst his men. Kurt nodded and raced off, following the directions the serf had given him. 

The holdout was a boxy, blunt, narrowed corridor that ended in a kill box rich portcullis, made to be defended and bled to take from. Several serfs, armed in black plate and heavy gambesons, turned as he came around the corner, sighting down their hellguns. 

One of them came forward, and after a humiliating explanation, jabbed his thumb to the small, easy to miss sallyport. Another serf, this man presumably Maeric, ushered him inside.

The Apothercarion’s armory was a small thing, and mostly housing arms and armament for the serfs. A handful of bolt pistols and chainswords sat patiently in their cradles high atop the weapon’s rack.

He threw on a jacket that was not dissimilar from his own uniform’s, and heavy black boots. Then a carapace of black iron plate, chainmail hanging from its bottom and sides. An identical shotgun, like that handed to him when he was in the dining hall, was pressed into his grip along with a bandolier of shells.

“You're ceremonial, then?” Maeric asked as he made himself up. Kurt grunted an affirmative. “Go back to the fork and continue straight. It will lead you out of this artery and into the spinal transits. The Friary gathers there to defend it, they’ll have you.”

Kurt nodded, tugging at the armpit of his gambeson, the fit smaller than he would have liked. The four other serfs defending the holdout escorted him to the end of the hall, before taking a defensive retreat back.

He was jogging now, his own echos now booted and weighty, selfishly relishing that the alarms were still flashing. He had not tasted true combat, and the idea of a foe boarding a ship like The Flail both unnerved and excited him. Though, if he had to admit, the sensation of being utterly alone and unspokenly lost within the guts of the knight’s floating fortress made him feel as if he were in a dream.

The stretch of companionway he had been instructed to take seemed to go on for a considerable amount of time. Kurt came to a hesitating stop, unsure at first, before completely halting. He looked behind him, seeing the same length of stone and adamantium continue back the way he’d come. Ahead, and it was the same. 

Now the unease was fully and truly present, too actualized to ignore. No discerning features, no location plaque to base himself, just the option of forward or back. Huffing, he pressed forward. Stone beget stone, adamantium wall stretched into more adamantium wall. 

Only him and the echoes of him. 

Since boarding, he had only experienced the routinely mundane, or the extraordinary surrealism of the vagaries of the cosmos. And here it presented itself to him, an unwilling participant. 

Kurt wasn’t particularly superstitious, and a lack of education in his youth had blunted any sense for the other worldly or unnatural. He was simply a man, made of flesh and bone, with the spine to face those same beguiling stars that now seemed to toy with him. 

“My lord Spitewielder calls me to arms. I answer now as I did before.” He spoke to the unraveling mundanity of the endless corridor.

There was no reply.

“I know no pity, no remorse, and my lord as His vassal has girded my soul in the armor of contempt; for I know no fear.” He intoned, now taking measured, intentional strides. 

“I am a servant to Him upon the Throne of Holy Terra. I am an extension of my lord Spitewielder’s might. I am a vassal of the Black Templars.”

He was marching now, moving with purpose, the gun cradled in his arms. In his mind’s eye, he focused on the Eternal Visage, in that church upon his homeworld, where he had for the first time truly met the man he was offering his and his brother’s lives to.

The Spitewielder had been a surprisingly dreadful presence to be in. That cold, aching, muted sensation, all consuming and muddying his thoughts. But to be beheld by him, for him to know of you, was a balm to a soul like Kurt. A boy who was less than nothing, destined to be forgotten by even the dirt he tread, had been turned into a fated man, elevated beyond any hopes he could have had, because of his newly forged service to the Spitewielder and his black knights.

He was blessed to be a part of the honor detail privileged to be homed on that same angel’s ship, the Spitewielder’s personal chariot, and he would defend it with his life, cursed hallways be damned.

That girl had been there, a small thing in a black gown and white ribbons, no taller than his waist. He remembered finding it odd, that she and she alone sat keeper to their maleficent lord. He knew now who she was, and even her station elevated her laughably above Kurt’s own. 

Jasper von Flail appeared from an intersecting hall that had not been there before he blinked. 

Dressed in almost the same attire as he had remembered, she turned to regard him and the hall with a great deal of bewildered disgust.

“Surely…” She said to him, accepting his salute. “This is not Spinal Primary Tertius. Who are you?” 

“Footman Kurt, ma’am. 1st Roth Janissaries, ceremonial company.” He replied, still holding the salute.

She looked behind her, in the direction he had been marching. “We’re…I don’t know where exactly. Where’ve you come from, footman?”

“The Apothercarion, medical ward secundus, ma’am.” 

She turned smartly and adopted a brusque pace. Kurt took after her, his heels kicking the stone floor. From over her shoulder she hurled a series of questions at him.

“I was instructed to muster at one of the spinal junctions with the Friary. I’ve been walking for a very long while, but I…don’t know the ship, ma’am.” He answered, matching stride and hurrying beside her. He used his bad arm to gesture. “This hallway has been going on since.”

“Were you talking to yourself before running into me?” She asked after a moment.

Kurt’s cheeks went warm, and his forehead was suddenly very damp.

“I, uhm, was praying. Focusing my humors, ma’am.”

“Which prayer?” She asked, turning her head to look at him.

“Maybe not a prayer. A vow more like.” He mimicked her, looking over to her as they walked. 

“A vow to who? For what?” 

She was relentless, and Kurt, unaccustomed to any form of attention from the opposite sex, crumbled and failed to easily make conversation.

“To, the uhm, to the Spitewielder. Thanking him for my strength.” He meekishly choked out through his teeth. “A-and the Emperor too! The God-Emperor!” 

Jasper, born into the life of serfdom and knowing only duty and devotion to the Spitewielder, Templars, and the God-Emperor, offered him a genuine nod.

“That is my master’s labors manifested in your devotions, footman. Avow and move forward.”

When they turned their heads, the hallway before them had changed.

Black and white checkered tiles led on and on, worn from years of use, yet not a single stain or crack hobbled their surfaces. The walls themselves were brushed brass, with black iron sconces burning at regular intervals, the flames throwing arcs and moors of light, cascading onto forever in the dim glow of millions of trillions of reflections proliferating on and on and on.

Paintings of individual warriors, of the Templar knights, hung from the walls, their features jumping between portrayals of stoicism, pride, and unbridled zeal. 

Behind them, the backs of old banners, hanging from their chains in the stagnant, unmoving air. Torches burned steadily inside of their sconces, stretching backwards the way they had come, casting orange radiance, collapsing as the way stretched into unfamiliar dark.

They were walking the Hall of Legacy, away from any of The Flail’s spinal thoroughfares.

Jasper said as much out loud.

Kurt couldn’t help but gawk in fear and awe at their sudden intrusion into a place so reverential, so sobering, and constructed without a single thought for either of them in its making. He was unaware that Jasper was squirming, not only from the translocation of walking one hallway to end up in another, kilometers away, but because she was committing a taboo, a forbidden act amongst her kind, even for one of her station.

She grabbed his good wrist and led him by it, hauling him forward at such a pace that he took an awkward gait to keep up with her.

The twin doors that safeguarded the Chapel of Transfiguration were massive. Here was one of the few places where wood was incorporated into the architectural design language of The Flail and her private sanctuaries. They were cut from an ebony wood and lacquered with a matte finish, so as to not shine or glare in the unfavorable light of the torches. 

There was a mosaic carved in a queer fashion or technique that neither mortals could rightly identify or name. 

It was, certainly, a crown. But in its hewing gave the suggestion of a crown-shaped absence, as if implying that it were unfinished, the artist to return with some powdered pigments or perhaps brilliantly colored foils. 

At the center of this suggestion of the absence of a crown was a small, obsidian sphere. Within its depths were arcs of golden lightning veins embedded deep within it.

Kurt’s mouth was agape, stupefied. His mind lacked anything close to properly discern for himself what he was seeing, nor what he was experiencing. 

This was something ancient. A thing that only the Black Knights were meant to see, whose importance was to only be understood by them alone. It took him two attempts to swallow the lump in his throat.

Jasper hid little of the fact that she, too, was just as entranced and confused and frightened by such an esoteric and provocative tapestry. 

“Nonsense.” Jasper whispered. “Madness.”

Kurt took a step forward, hand outstretched. Jasper smacked it with a clap that uncomfortably broke the quiet tension around them.

“It is forbidden to be here, to go in! To even think of going in!” She hissed.

“But we are here, when we did not intend to come here. You think we should go back?” He was rubbing his hand, looking back at her. She didn’t look convinced.

“I think we should turn around, yes.” Though she made no indication or move to do so. 

Kurt put his eyes back on the door, trying his best to look at it without actually looking at the mosaic. 

Two heavy rings of black iron sat nestled to either side of the seam of the door near his shoulders, a convenient height for the hands of an Astartes. He picked one up and hefted it in his hand. He looked at her again.

“Help me, will you?”

She blinked at him. She was still blinking at him when she took up the other ring, then again with her other hand. They nodded.

And heaved.

The doors were heavy and tall and wide. With a grunt of effort, his muscles taught with the action, Kurt hauled the door, hearing the wailing groan as they began their ponderous swing outwards.

Four blackclad gauntlets seized the door’s lip and added their immense strength to the mortals, who stumbled with the sudden unexpected aid.

The two knights pushed the doors openly fully, and from the darkness of the Chapel, the Spitewielder, followed by a handful of attendant knights and a woman Kurt didn’t know, emerged from the threshold. 

Jasper gasped, composed herself, then bowed deeply, hands held flat together at her knees. Kurt stumbled and went to a kneel.

“Jasper.” Intoned the Spitewielder. “And footman Sebastian Kurt, brother of Ryndal Kurt.” Their lord swivelled his head between the mortals who had freed him from the bowels of a maddening mountain into his sanctum of holiness. “A strange pairing in a strange place to find the both of you.”