The Lautis cathedral was not as Augusta remembered it.
Walking down the ruined aisle, the building hollow and roofless over her head, the Sister Superior let her boots ring from the stone. Kawa’s fate and the desecration of the town had left her tight with anger, and she walked bolter in hand, the weapon issuing an outright challenge to whatever was lurking here.
With her, her squad walked in double-file.
But they could not reach the steps.
Unlike their previous visit, the nave was filled with rubble – tumbled pillars, collapsed walls, smashed pieces of fallen buttresses. Augusta knew the pattern of krak grenade debris all too well; she recognised the scars in the stonework where the ammunition of her Sisters had chewed chunks from the rock.
She halted, Caia behind her, auspex in hand.
‘Full suppression bursts,’ Caia said. ‘Bolter and heavy bolter alike.’ She paused, studying the spreads of the scars. ‘They fought a retreating action, backwards, up the aisle.’ Turning slowly, studying the instrument in her hand, she pointed. ‘There!’
From beneath the rubble she saw a single, augmetic foot, grip-talons extended as if in some final act of rage or pain.
Scatters of warm rain misted across the air.
Augusta knelt, carefully moving the rocks. ‘Common construction servitor.’ The thing was smashed to a pulp, the flesh parts of its face rotting and the cogs in its skull all starting to corrode.
‘Melia?’
‘Been dead longer than the townspeople.’ Melia dropped to one careful knee beside the Sister Superior and turned what was left of the head with a red-gauntleted hand. ‘Flesh doesn’t last in this climate – there’s nothing left but tools and circuitry.’
‘Jatoya, watch our backs.’
‘Aye.’
They moved more of the fallen stone. The heap groaned and shifted; scatters of dust and pebbles rolled down its sides. Slowly, they exposed more of the thing, its chest a disintegrating mess of cybernetic organs, its left arm ending in a heavy, stonecutter saw.
Its right arm was completely missing.
‘It was fighting something.’ Melia tapped the dried stains on the sawblade.
Augusta nodded. ‘They must have been surrounded, or overwhelmed.’
‘But what could do this?’ Melia asked her. ‘What could move with this sort of swiftness? Overwhelm a squad of our Sisters and a contingent of fully-equipped construction servitors?’
‘And was it the same thing that emptied the town?’ Augusta’s question was rhetorical; she was still moving the rubble, searching. ‘I do not yet comprehend this, Sisters, not this place and its mysteries, and not this foe. I fear that there are darker things here than orks.’
Melia said nothing. The other four had deployed to a compass defence, covering pillars and archways; Caia still moved her auspex in careful arcs. Augusta’s mention of the orks had returned the memory of their previous battle, and the squad had no intention of being caught a second time.
The Sister Superior moved more of the pile. It shuddered and shifted, exposing a second, semi-human body, this one with its face all but missing.
She looked down at it, gauging. Servitors could put up a hard and nasty fight – there were worse melee weapons than heavy construction tools. And, like Melia, she did not understand what could have overcome them so swiftly.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We scout by twos, roll call every ninety seconds. Melia, with me. This puzzle requires an answer.’
The squad deployed as it had done once before, spreading out to explore what was left of the transept and cloisters. Augusta kept Melia with her, needing the woman’s medical training – Melia was not a Hospitaller, but her field knowledge was excellent.
What they found were pieces.
The dismembered remains of the servitors were spread throughout the nave – almost as if some predator had gone on a hunting rampage and had scattered leftovers in its wake. Not one of the corpses remained intact: many of them were missing heads, or limbs, or tools, or tracks. Many more had been disembowelled and their internal organs spread out around them.
Yet they found no sign of Jencir himself – and nothing to show what had happened to the Sisters.
Melia picked up a servitor’s detached clamp-arm and turned it over. ‘This was bitten,’ she said. She held it out. ‘What can bite through plasteel?’
‘Very big teeth,’ Augusta commented, taking the limb to examine it.
Over the vox, Viola said, ‘There were gun-servitors in the east transept. There’s no sign of whatever took them down.’
‘Which way are they facing?’ Augusta asked.
‘They’re a mess,’ Viola commented. ‘But my instincts say the attack came from the nave.’
‘Understood,’ Augusta said. ‘Keep looking.’
‘Aye.’
Picking their way past the fallen stonework, pieces of it as large as an immolator tank, Augusta and Melia reached the bottom of the steps. Electro-candles had been left here, one on each step climbing towards the altar, but they stood rusting and lightless, now – forgotten.
But still, not a single flash of scarlet armour.
Bitten.
A suspicion was starting to grow in Augusta’s heart.
Over the vox, Jatoya’s voice said, ‘West transept clear, proceeding into the cloisters. Looks like the repairs started as scheduled, Sister, there’s a full support framework out here, platforms and scaffolding.’
‘What of the defences?’
‘Gun-servitors here, too,’ Jatoya said. ‘Weapons are still half-loaded. Whatever took them down was fast.’
Augusta’s suspicion was solidifying with every word Jatoya said. She paused before the top step. The drop to her knee was as much a part of her faith as drawing breath, but this time, she stayed standing.
And her hand tightened on her bolter as the anger surged in her soul.
On the Emperor’s high altar, there sat a skull.
Just the one.
It was – or had been – human, but its plates and eyestalks and mechadendrites identified it easily.
Jencir.
It had been flayed of all skin and placed in the altar’s centre, exactly where the Holy Aquila should have been. To one side of it lay a rosarius. To the other, a single fleur-de-lys blade.
All three items were stained with dried and flaking blood. It had been poured lavishly over them. It had streamed from Jencir’s eye sockets; it had covered the top of the altar, coated its sides and spread out across the stone like a stain.
A flicker of sweat stole across Augusta’s skin – like an echo of a dark disquiet.
I know this…
Melia had stopped at her shoulder.
Softly, the Sister Superior murmured a prayer – for the tech-priest, for the profaned altar. She spent a long moment looking, then she stepped onto the top step, the Holy of Holies. With a surge of anger and the slam of one armoured fist, she knocked the skull sideways. It clattered across the chancel and rolled to a stop.
‘Noli timere,’ she said. ‘Feruntur Lucem.’ The words were soft, aimed at the bloodstains, at the dark and eerie creeping in her skin. I do not fear you. I carry the Light.
Carefully she picked up the blade and the rosarius and tucked them into her belt. Then she turned around and drew the chainsword with a rasp that echoed down through the nave.
‘Sisters,’ she said. ‘To me. We are played.’
Melia had put her back to the altar stone, was covering the approach with her bolter. ‘What do you mean?’
Augusta’s suspicions had become a certainty, cold and hard. ‘This was a gift,’ she said. ‘A taunt.’ She stood still, framed by the desecrated altar, by the empty window where the Emperor should have been, resplendent in glassiac and glory. ‘All of you, to me.’
‘Aye.’ Jatoya’s tones were dangerous; Augusta could hear the squad moving, running for the steps.
‘I have faced this foe before,’ she told them. ‘Witnessed the depths of the horror it brings. It thirsts for blood, and for warfare. It haunts my dreams, and it wakes me in a cold sweat.’ The admission was a warning, not a weakness. ‘And it knows that other members of the Order must come, seeking their Sisters.’ She turned to look through the nave, searching. ‘It has been waiting for us.’ Then she snapped, ‘Like that!’
Unsurprised, she used the blade to point down the steps, indicating a curl of red flesh that crept around the base of a pillar. The motion was sinewy and horribly familiar. It brought a mouthful of anger and bile, echoes of images she could never forget. But her faith burned fiercely and she held herself still, her flickers of fear and fury absolutely controlled.
She said, ‘What has teeth that could bite through plasteel?’
Melia cursed. ‘What in Dominica’s name is that? It looks like it’s been…’
‘Skinned alive.’ She knew these things, these things that brought terror like a herald, like a rush of sickness to their hearts.
‘There.’ She pointed the blade again, at another one, a second slide of hot, red skin. ‘And there.’
And at another, around the pillar opposite.
At a fourth, a fifth.
Blade still in her hand, she raised her bolter, and began to recite the Litany of Mettle.
‘Et Tu quaeris tibi fortitudinem stare coram nobis…’
We stand before You and ask for Your strength…
And more and more of them crept into her line of sight.
Augusta knew exactly what the creatures were, had faced them before. On the industrial world of Hephaestus, down in the heart of the ash-choked mines, too much death had summoned them, and they had come.
Come hunting.
The things were quadrupedal and big; their spiked and sloping shoulders were the height of Augusta’s hip. They had long, yellow fangs, and eyes that burned with unholy light, bright as bloodlust and cruelty. Some had horns on their muzzles; others had back-ridges that spread like batwings. But every single one of them was as red as glistening gore, as red as a newly flayed victim, as red as the Sisters’ own armour.
As they crept forwards, they stared, unblinking, at the women.
‘Flesh hounds,’ Augusta said. ‘Denizens of Ruin.’ She held the gaze of the lead beast and stared it down, confronting the fear, the memories. Her heart pounded as the litany trilled through the vox. ‘They can tear through flesh and bone and metal. Overwhelm servo-skulls and servitors alike.’
Beside her, Melia had bolter in hand, but her aim was trembling as she watched the things slink low across the floor. They moved like blood, like the rise of night, and the fear came off them in a wave. Augusta raised her bolter, but she did not fire, not yet.
She watched.
She watched as more and more of them came into view. They skulked behind the rubble-piles; they lurked in the half-light. Their eyes glowed with hellish colours, and steam rose from their backs.
She felt like she was struggling to breathe, like there was a knot of tension in the top of her chest.
‘Single shots,’ she said. ‘Aim carefully and conserve your ammunition – there may be more. Hold steady, my Sisters. The fear is but an illusion, a trick of the dark. His light is with us.’
‘Aye.’
Melia raised her bolter and shot a creature in the face. It shook its head and growled at her, teeth bared. Saliva sizzled as it hit the stone.
At the sound, the others started to snarl, a low, bubbling rasp. It echoed throughout the ruin, rising in volume and fury.
The air grew thicker still. Augusta’s grip tightened on blade and bolter both.
Then she heard Jatoya, ‘A morte perpetua!’, saw the fierce whoosh of fire as it leapt in an arc from one side. Two of the creatures exploded into flame; one of them staggered. It voiced a horrific, hollow howling, a sound that almost tore the litany from the air…
…and then it detonated, a nightmare banished.
The flames flickered in its wake.
The second beast, its flesh burning, turned and threw itself at the women.
Beside Jatoya, Akemi hesitated for just too long; the beast landed full on her chest, knocking her over. Eyes and skin afire, its sharp, slavering teeth went for her gorget. Frantically, she scrabbled backwards, her bolter lost, both panicked hands reaching for the thing’s bronze collar.
Jatoya leaned down and picked the hound up, one-handed, almost without effort. With pure, physical strength, she slammed it bodily against the nearest pillar.
Augusta heard it crack.
It fell to the floor, twitching, burning.
Firmly, Jatoya brought her boot down on its skull. It exploded with a force that sprayed blood across armour and stone.
The flicker of the remaining flames made the building dance with shadows.
Jatoya reached her gauntlet to pull Akemi to her feet. ‘Never freeze in battle,’ she said. Her voice was firm but carried no judgment. ‘You know this, Sister. There is no fear. The Emperor is with you.’
‘Aye.’ Akemi’s tone was full of failure.
‘Say it, Sister Akemi.’
‘The Emperor is with me.’
Nodding, Jatoya raised the Litany of Battle and Augusta saw Akemi raise her head; she felt her own blood surge in response. She saw Viola stop by a headless pillar, check her field of fire and then take down a single creature with a short, precise burst.
Caia called, ‘My auspex is broken, I think. But there are more incoming, Sisters. They’re everywhere!’
Augusta said, ‘To me, all of you. We will hold at the altar!’
They ran.
Behind them, the growl rose in volume. It sounded eager, like hunger made manifest, like the creatures of the darkest teachings brought to snarling life. But Augusta knew this, remembered it – she held to the words of the litany and took aim on a skulking hound. Beside her, Melia fired careful, single shots, her breathing tight with fear.
The creatures’ snarls grew louder; they were coiling to spring, and any minute now…
‘Viola!’
The other four Sisters had raced up the steps. As she reached Augusta’s location, Viola turned, raised the heavy bolter and cursed. ‘All the rubble’s in the way…’ As Augusta had done, she took the final step, right up to the altar, and turned around.
‘Now.’ Viola grinned, the thrice-blessed heavy bolter in both hands. ‘Sentio de ira Imperatoris!’
The weapon roared into full life. With it, she thundered the words of the litany.
All through the nave, the hounds reeled under the suppression. They shuddered and twisted and crumpled under the impacts. They tried to flee but instead whimpered and detonated, vanishing back to the warp. Some staggered sideways, leaving red smears on the floor, others broke into a full lope, leaping forwards with froth on their chests and their teeth bared. Still more, further back, tried to duck behind the rubble, but Viola’s elevation meant they had nowhere to hide.
Music and gunfire boomed from the headless walls.
Stone rumbled, and the remains of a pillar cascaded down over the aisle, crushing the hounds beneath. A red mist rose in their wake.
Augusta shouted, ‘Hold!’
The bolter was silenced, and the quiet was deafening.
Dust blew through the air.
‘Caia.’
Caia said, ‘The screen keeps glitching, I can’t read it properly.’
Viola went to move, but Augusta held up a hand. ‘Stay there. Reload.’
Unmoving, almost unbreathing, the Sisters watched the nave. Augusta watched the auspex in Caia’s hand. Its light flickered and danced.
It showed nothing.
No motion.
No life.
The whole cathedral seemed to hold its breath, waiting.
And then…
One blip.
Two.
Five.
Ten.
All clustered down by the main doorway.
‘Where are they coming from?’ Akemi asked.
‘From the crypts,’ Augusta told her, watching the auspex. ‘Viola?’
‘Aye.’
‘Hold until I give the word.’
More of the red shapes were coming back into view now, creeping up the ruined aisle. Augusta said, ‘Jatoya, guard our backs. Akemi, that one, there.’ She pointed her chainsword at the nearest snarling hound. ‘Shoot it.’
‘Sister?’
‘Shoot it, Sister Akemi, and then keep shooting. Single shots, to the head if you can.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
Aware of Akemi’s tension, Augusta took up the litany once more, and felt the younger woman steady. Akemi raised her bolter in both hands, sighted on the bared teeth of the lead hound and pulled the trigger.
She hit it clean in the face. Its skull exploded with the impact; the body twisted and was gone. More gore splashed across the stone.
‘Good,’ Augusta said. ‘Like that.’ Augusta shot another, and another. She kept speaking over the barking of the weapon, over the rhythm of the litany. ‘For every stain they’ve made upon this cathedral, we’ll make one of our own. For every death brought by Chaos, we’ll bring a death for the Light of the Emperor. Keep firing, Sister Akemi, and feel His light as you do.’
With Viola still standing above them, heavy bolter in her hands and waiting for the order to resume, the Sisters of the Order raised their voices to the broken walls and shot at the incoming hounds.
But the air was still thickening, still choking them. The beasts surged forwards, and Melia fell back.
‘Sister! I… can’t…’
‘I said keep firing!’ Augusta’s order was a sharp bark. ‘Switch to short bursts, these things cannot be permitted to reach the altar!’
Impossibly, their numbers were still swelling; a seething mass of scarlet that covered the floor of the nave and flowed higher and higher over the rubble.
Augusta could feel Viola’s tautness – feel her itching to open fire.
She shouted, ‘Now!’
Again, the heavy bolter roared and the beasts smashed backwards in the sudden blast of destruction. But there were too many of them – as the ones in the centre exploded, one after another, there came others, surging at the flanks. Caia cried out as one bounded up at her, teeth bared and hellish eyes glowing. As it opened its jaws, she fell back, tried to put the bolter muzzle in its mouth.
But it was too close, and its teeth closed on her elbow.
She cried out. Her armour splintered as the thing bit down, and her voice hit a crescendo of pain. She couldn’t use her bolter, but then Melia was beside her, shouting, clubbing the thing on the head with her own weapon, over and over and over again, finding a release for her fear in the sheer fury of the action.
Augusta barked an order. Both women fell back as the heavy bolter turned its suppression towards that side of the steps.
But the weapon clunked to a stop as the magazine emptied. Cursing, Viola reached for another.
Augusta turned and beheaded the closest hound, but they were still coming. Still snarling.
And the fear was still clamouring in her chest.
The Sister Superior knew that Sister Felicity Albani must have done this.
Exactly this.
Faced these monsters, this onslaught.
And Felicity had surely fallen.
But her squad would not. Could not. As Viola replaced her magazine and opened fire once more, as the full suppression drove the beasts back, Augusta prayed aloud.
Because she knew, as Felicity must have known, that these were only the vanguard. Somewhere, they had huntmasters, monsters that drove them on.
Like the flesh hounds themselves: daemons.
Her hand tightened on the bolter.
Daemons that had ripped their way through the mines of Hephaestus, driving the people to madness and screaming death. Daemons that had profaned this altar, this place of the Saint and of the God-Emperor.
Daemons that had slain her Sisters.
Viola gave a shout of defiance and victory – the tide was beginning to falter. Augusta gave her the command to drop back, but still the Sister Superior did not lose her focus.
She raised her own weapon to blow the last of them away.
But the fight, she knew, was only beginning.