The things were still out there.
On the altar steps, Sister Felicity stood waiting for them. Her red armour was stained with gore, her black-and-white cloak in tatters. At one hip rested her now-empty bolter, at the other, her silent chainsword.
A small, upright figure in the heart of the broken cathedral, Felicity stood alone.
Before her, scattered about the cathedral nave, the tech-priest’s servitors lay dead, their haphazard defence overwhelmed, their repairs all brought to an unready end. Jencir had commanded them to protect, and they had done so with utter brutality, hurling rubble and using their mechanised limbs to horrific effect – yet the incoming numbers had just been too many. Overcome by the rising tide, they had fallen as they had fought – mindless to the last.
In a ruined state, around the base of the steps, lay the five Sisters of Felicity’s squad, their last stand thrown down. They too had fallen fighting, blade and bolter, fist and faith, savage to the last woman.
In her head, she bade them farewell: blessed be their memories. She would not be able to give them their Last Rites, but they had perished with courage, and they stood now at the hand of the Emperor.
With them lay the tech-priest Jencir, his back ripped open as he’d tried to flee – not an act of cowardice, but a failed attempt to reach the exterior vox-transmitters. And finally, slumped against the ruined wall, the missionary Lyconides was too broken to stand, his last breaths now rasping bloody, his lasrifle still gripped in his hand. His other hand was in his lap, as if trying to stuff his steaming bowels back into his belly.
She respected the man’s courage – he was no soldier, but he’d given his best.
As Felicity listened, his final prayer drifted like a ghost across the emptiness, and was gone.
‘Requiescet in lumine suo,’ she whispered softly. Rest in His light.
The missionary toppled over sideways and lay still.
Down in the nave, the things yammered.
They were coming closer now, skulking and sneaking – she could hear their claws scraping on the ancient stone. They were circling round to her sides, lurking in the hot, ruined darkness of transept and cloister. She could feel them pacing, feel their presence like a crawl of sweat across her skin. She didn’t know if they were taunting her, waiting to see if she would falter, or if they were simply awaiting commands – but she knew that there were dozens of them.
Hundreds.
She drew the chainsword.
If she stood fast against the beasts’ onslaught, she thought, she may yet get a strike at their master…
Before she died.
Slowly, Felicity walked up the final steps. She looked back at the fallen Jencir, his eye-clusters and mechadendrites hanging damaged and broken, his red Mechanicus cloak spread about him like a pool of blood.
She reached the high altar, and stopped before the final step.
Above her, the great window was missing, fallen from its stone frame thousands of years before; the new electro-candles, bought as a promise of reconsecration, burned with a tiny and defiant light. Despite the creatures behind her, she took a moment to bend one knee, her free hand tracing the fleur-de-lys on the front of her armour.
‘A morte perpetua. Domine, libra nos.’
And then she stood up.
And turned around.
The Sisters had not known.
Felicity’s directive had come from Ophelia VII, direct from the canoness of her Order, Ianthe herself – and she and her squad had been sent all the way across the segmentum to this tiny world, this sweat of overgrowth and jungle. The previous deployment of Sisters had declared the location secure – they’d driven back the marauding orks, and had cleared the area enough to allow the tech-priest in. Felicity had come as security, and – more importantly – to ensure that the cathedral stayed within the ownership of the Order of the Bloody Rose, and of the Convent Sanctorum.
An icon of Saint Mina, or so it was rumoured, still lay within this building – and her Order were not about to relinquish it.
But their restoration had been interrupted.
Jencir had raised the alarm – his deployed servitors, seeking to understand the extent of the repair, had ventured into the crypts. They’d detected movement, and the Sisters had gone down on reconnaissance.
The first encounter had been small, and easily defeated.
But they’d had no time. Even as they’d regrouped, taken a tactical defence position at the head of the crypt’s steps, more of the creatures had come.
And then more.
A welter of horrors, surging up from the depths. The servitors had been overcome in moments; the incoming beasts had seethed like nightmares, like a surge of teeth and blood. Outnumbered, surrounded, the Sisters had been cut off from their makeshift, modular habitations, and from any hope of off-planet communication.
They’d done the only thing they could – they’d fought back. They’d retreated, defended the altar with every prayer, with every breath, with every last expended round… and they’d sung with the fury of it, their voices raised to the cathedral’s roofless, ruinous silence.
But the things had just kept coming, mindless and slavering, attacking from every angle. Krak grenades had slain hundreds of them, brought walls down in cascading rumbles of broken stone; the creatures hadn’t cared. Felicity had seen her squad fight and fall, one after another, had watched the things dismember them, watched the creatures drag her Sisters’ limbs away in their teeth and worry at them, gnawing on them like old bones. They’d scattered the women’s remains in some deliberate pattern, some vile act of blasphemous worship.
It was too hot in here, close and suffocatingly still. Under her blood-scarlet armour, sweat slid down her spine. Her gauntlet tightened on the hilt of her still-silent chainsword.
Noli timere, she told them silently. I do not fear you.
Felicity did not know why she still stood while the others had all perished, but she suspected that the things had some greater purpose for her, more than just their thirst for her life.
Calmly, she recited the hymnal.
‘That Thou wouldst bring them only death,
That Thou shouldst spare none,
That Thou shouldst pardon none
We beseech Thee, destroy them.’
And the creatures heard.
They were creeping into view, now, letting her see them. They came down the aisle, and around the bases of the headless pillars; they rose up over the rubble like the slow advance of some thick, red tide. They came patiently this time, almost as if they savoured it; they came sniffing and snarling and licking, their long teeth bared and their spiked shoulders slinking low.
They were taunting her, and she knew it.
She raised her blade. She wanted to go down there, punish them for the deaths of her Sisters; she wanted to hack them to gobbets, pick them up and throw them against the walls, slam them into the cracked and weed-grown floor until they howled in pain and their bones broke and shattered–
But she was the Emperor’s Daughter and her thoughts were clear.
She stood where she was, His light at her back.
The things came on, closer, closer. Their eyes were sharp as fangs, yellow and glinting. They reached the foot of the altar steps, and more and more came in behind them until the whole floor of the cathedral was alive, a writhing mass of red and glistening bodies.
With a rasping snarl, she started the chainsword. The sudden roar echoed through the building, and the things leapt forwards as if goaded. They bounded up the steps, baying with impatience, jumping for her throat.
‘Mori blasphemous fui!’
Die, blasphemer!
She cut the first two clean in half, caught another on the backswing and sent it flying, its ribs half pulled from its body. Blood slicked her already red armour. They were all round her in moments, worrying at her cloak, their teeth and claws scraping over ceramite and plasteel. She kicked with her boots, hitting skulls and spines; the things snarled and yelped. Her free hand grabbed a leaping creature; she snapped its neck with a jerk of her wrist and threw it aside.
The chainsword rasped its way through more.
Her blood and voice sang.
But still, they just kept coming. The cathedral was full of them, the whole floor rippling with spike-shouldered motion. They surged round her to get at Lyconides, and at the remains of the tech-priest. They threw themselves at her bodily, one after another, trying to knock her from her feet. She fought them off with knees and elbows and head-butts; she sawed into their red flesh, she kicked and stamped at them. Her free hand grabbed them by their collars and tossed them aside. But they had no regard for their own lives; they were driven by a bloodlust that burned from their skin.
Ten more died, exploding into mist and gore.
Twenty.
Twenty-five.
They just kept coming.
Piles of crippled creatures grew around her, slowing their advance. One sank its teeth into her vambrace and hung from her forearm, the weight dragging at her shoulder. But she was still fighting, still singing the words of the hymnal, still defiant and exultant, still burning with her faith that was every bit as powerful as their craving for blood–
They stopped.
She staggered, suddenly bereft of resistance. The one on her arm hung limp; she had no recollection of having struck it. She sawed it off at the neck, watching the body detonate before it hit the floor.
Recoiling almost reluctantly, the things shrank away. They growled at her, baring gore-smeared, yellow teeth. Coiling like curs, they slunk to the bottom of the steps and then stayed there, snapping at each other and pacing, restless.
They watched her as they did so, their eyes burning.
Felicity felt a rush of pure zeal; the Emperor was with her. She was still alive, still on her feet, still fighting. Her armour was scarred but intact.
And she was still singing, her voice loud in the vox though there was no one left to hear it.
But her discipline was strong – this was not victory, not yet. Those hounds were not beaten, they were waiting for something. She’d proven that she could best them, and they’d been called off…
By something bigger.
By something that wanted to face her itself.
Not victory – but perhaps the single highest purpose of her life.
Felicity was a Sister Superior of the Order of the Bloody Rose, here to reclaim this cathedral in the name of Saint Mina, and of the God-Emperor Himself.
She had failed.
Nevertheless, her final task was clear.
Her bloody chainsword in one hand, she laid the other on the very last of her krak grenades.
Whatever this warp-spawned horror may be, it did not daunt her. And she would take it down as she offered her life to the Emperor.
Defended by the high walls of the Convent Sanctorum, Sister Superior Augusta wore her padded scarlet underarmour and a chasuble of black and white. Her steel-grey bob of hair fell forwards over her face as she bowed her head. Murmuring the Litany of Cleansing, she knelt upon the cold stone floor of her chamber, and she cleared her mind, her soul and her heart.
Augusta was a warrior, a Daughter of the Emperor and the fighting fist of His Imperial Creed – but these ritual moments were just as sacred as the bloodshed and the battlefield.
On the floor before her, laid out on its familiar red cloth, was her Sabbat-pattern ceramite armour, each piece positioned correctly, as illustrated in The Accords of Deacis VI. Her chainsword, stilled and silent, lay down one edge; her bolter, stripped and cleaned, on the other. The arrangement was as much a part of her as her litanies and the fleur-de-lys tattoo upon her cheek.
Coloured light tumbled from her tiny, narrow window, catching the scarlet curve of her helmet and making it shine.
It was dawn, and this was Lauds, and the ritual that came with each morning.
She recited, ‘Et promissa – daturum adversus vires hostium Arma omnium qui oderunt nos.’
He promised that He would grant us strength to face our enemies, the weapons of all who hate us.
As she intoned the words, she picked up the armour, piece by piece. She checked its fastenings, its purity seals, its strength and integrity; she studied it for damage, for cracks and dents, for uncleaned bloodstains.
A Sister’s wargear was her second skin – one of the first battle-lessons Augusta had ever learned. ‘Every Sister walks with the Emperor,’ her tutor had told her, many years before. ‘But she must also depend on three things – her armour, her weapons, and her Sisters that surround her’.
It was a lesson that Augusta had never forgotten.
Continuing her recitation, she picked up her vambrace to check its inbuilt chrono-compass, her pauldrons, and then her breastplate to examine its semi-hidden fleur-de-lys blade. Then she laid the last piece back upon the cloth and sat back on her heels, head bowed.
A familiar, armoured footstep sounded at the chamber doorway. Without turning, Augusta knew who it was, standing in the outer cloister and waiting for her to finish her morning devotions.
‘Sister Superior,’ said Sister Jatoya respectfully, as Augusta raised her head. ‘I did not wish to interrupt.’
In one smooth move, Augusta came to her feet and turned around.
Her second-in-command stood waiting in the cloisters’ biolume, her head bare, her helm upturned under her arm. Her dark skin gleamed, but there was expectation in her stance – she was here with a request.
Or an order.
‘You’re early,’ Augusta said. ‘Do you not have a class this morning?’
‘Aye,’ Jatoya said. ‘Teaching the schola’s novices the finer tricks of open-handed combat.’ She gave a faint smile, and the light from the window lit her face with the reflection of the Saint, and with the deep colours of the Bloody Rose. ‘But Canoness Ianthe has requested our presence, Sister. When our devotions are done, we’re to report to the Order chapel.’
A rush flickered through Augusta’s skin. ‘Do you know why?’
‘No.’ Jatoya shook her head. ‘I’m not privy to such knowledge, and the servitor was little help.’ The smile spread, then faded. ‘But for the summons to come before the morning begins…’
Jatoya let the implication speak for itself. A personal summons from Canoness Ianthe was rare – in twenty years, half of them as the Sister Superior of her squad, Augusta had responded to maybe a dozen… and every one of them a call to war.
The rush grew stronger, but it was instinctive, recognisable. It was the touch of her faith, that so-familiar flare of passion and hope.
She looked up at the Saint in the window, at the holy light that haloed her stern, sword-bearing form, and gave a moment of thanks.
Jatoya said softly, her tone amused, ‘I feel the nature of our devotions is about to change, Sister.’
It wasn’t Jatoya’s place to speculate – but the two women had known each other for more than a decade. They’d stood side by side against the orks on Lautis, the aeldari at Mis’bah, the tyranid invasion at the war-ravaged cities of Yulzond Cross. The trust between them was battle-honed, and strong.
‘You may be right.’ Augusta began to pick up her armour, donning it piece-by-piece – breast- and back-plate, cuisses, greaves. She closed her gorget around her throat, slung her blade at her hip, picked up her bolter and snicked the sight and magazine back into place. Then she opened the breech, sighted briefly down the barrel, and closed it again.
‘Very well,’ she said, holstering the bolter and picking up her helmet. ‘It would hardly do to keep the canoness waiting.’
They walked through the cloisters together, the huge drop of the convent’s outer walls to one side, the black rise of the Hallowed Spire to the other. The great, stained-glassaic windows ran with rain, and the blur of starships – the war vessels of the Imperium, the cargo and transport ships of the Ecclesiarchy – moved across them like shadows.
The Chapel of Saint Mina was a later addition to the Convent Sanctorum, built by Deacis VI some two and a half thousand years after the ascension of Sebastian Thor. The Order of the Bloody Rose was young, but as warlike as its Saint had been, and no less militant.
Walking past the votive candles and the floating cherubim, past the statues of the Saints and the engraved prayers, Augusta murmured the Litany of Mettle like a reflex, words of hope and strength.
Beside her, Jatoya echoed each line.
Age and faith surrounded them. Since the days of Thor himself, the Sisters of Battle had carried the flame of their devotion to all corners of the galaxy, had waged a ceaseless war against the Emperor’s foes – every witch, every mutant, every heretic, every xenos, every trace of Chaos wherever it could be found.
As if eager, Augusta’s sword rattled against her thigh. She placed her hand on the pommel. Her squad been cooling their heels in the convent for almost a month – studying, practising, teaching the arts of war to their less experienced Sisters.
It was rare for a veteran of Augusta’s rank to be at rest for this long, and peace was not in her nature. She missed praising the Emperor with bolter and blade.
From the convent, voices began the morning hymnal, the verses immediately lifting into crystal-pure, four-part harmony.
Gooseflesh prickled down Augusta’s arms.
Jatoya said softly, ‘I will be glad if this hiatus is at an end. By Dominica’s eyes, if I have to spend another evening playing Tall Card…’
‘Only because Sister Caia always wins.’ Augusta chuckled, but briefly. ‘But beware, Sister Militant. You may say those words to me, but in the presence of the canoness, you will show the proper respect.’
‘Aye,’ Jatoya agreed. ‘I understand.’
She was nervous, Augusta realised – curious, as Jatoya had never once shown fear in the face of an enemy.
‘But…’ Jatoya made a final comment as they neared the chapel doors. ‘Tell me you don’t long for a new mission.’
They knew each other too well, and Augusta did not need to speak her answer aloud.