They almost looked peaceful. Dozens of slack-limbed nuns, their ebon habits finely pressed, rested along the arched pews that surrounded the altar in a moon-shaped crescent.
Mother Camilla was most serene of them all, and were it not for the trickling froth at her parted lips, Daniella would’ve believed her to be merely napping upon the chantry. The chalice still dangled from the crook of her wrinkled, rigid fingers and a few lingering droplets of the poisoned sacrament fell to the smooth stone below.
Daniella trembled. She had not partaken in the final communion. She had not followed her sisters into the Emperor’s shielding light, yet…How protective could it have possibly been? The abbess had lulled their spirits with lies, proclaiming that the armies of the Golden Throne were unvanquished, that heresy could never befall their world. They’d longed to believe her, even as the writhing chaos spawn took to the streets, led in a macabre procession of defilement and bloodshed by their worshippers and dark apostles. Even as they raised their lips to silver cups of the sweetest poison. Mother Camilla had reassured them that the Emperor would forgive their desecration of the flesh, the taking of their own lives, if it meant the preservation of their souls.
The chanting beyond the convent was growing louder, the percussive bark of bolters and debased litanies rising like a terrible crescendo in a symphony of corruption. Daniella was sobbing. She stood alone amongst the statuesque corpses of her sisters. She did not wish to die, yet the shame was impossible to ignore. Loose strands of auburn fell in messy collections of sweat-locked tresses from the edge of her cowl, framing a tear-stained face.
Daniella dropped to her knees, and began to pray. Prayer had failed her once already, but perhaps she had not been earnest enough. Perhaps the Emperor had heard her call, but had been too late. Or maybe the abbess was right, and the God-Emperor had abandoned their flesh. The thought was unbearable, but Daniella could think of no other reason that he would allow such an unholy atrocity to befall his beloved children.
Then she heard it, the earth-rattling footfall of power armored boots. Daniella hurriedly pressed her spectacles into the ridge of her nose, scrambled beneath a polished, wooden pew, and prayed silently.
The doors to the convent groaned before buckling against the unseen force, yet there was no raucous splintering of wood. Only silence. A step, marred by the hiss of ancient servos, then another. The chapel shook to its foundations with each labored boom, growing louder and louder until they stopped just before the tabernacle, nearly adjacent to Daniella’s pathetic sanctuary.
The figure was silent for a long while, then spoke. “You can come out, sister, there is no need to hide.” It was the brassy hollow of an astartes, no doubt, as Daniella had been graced by their presence only once before in a rare visit by traveling Blood Angels. The voice was both inhuman and incredibly commanding, yet underlined with a certain softness that betrayed the stature of the giant.
She could not move. She would not dare to even breathe.
The astartes spoke again, “Rise, please.”
Daniella obeyed but not of her own willing volition. It was a primal, bodily compulsion. Her knees had buckled, her legs quaking beneath the weight of her body. She was standing.
Daniella tried to speak, but only managed a stuttered, incomprehensible whimper.
The astartes chuckled gently at her, but did not turn. Instead, the hulking warrior knelt before the deceased abbess, and began to pray. He had removed the helmet of his battle-plate, a burnished crimson scarred by the unknowable passage of centuries, and as the last traces of sunlight caught the contours of his face, Daniella saw a pious devotion she had only thought possible in the holiest of paintings. He cleared a place upon the altar for his bolter. A massive weapon nearly the length of Daniella’s legs and the width of her torso, painted the ichorous red of the warrior’s panoply.
“This place is soothing,” the space marine whispered aloud, “I have visited many temples. Most much grander and resplendent than this one, but there is a warmth here. Perhaps it is a thing that cannot be described with words, rather felt in the uplifting of one’s soul.” His eyelids fluttered, a wry smile lifting at the corners of his mouth.
“You are an angel of the Emperor!” Daniella’s relief was palpable, emerald orbs wide with hope as she rushed forward, hands clasped before her.
The astartes smiled, turning to face her with a look of confusion. “Oh, dear one, you are mistaken.” He rose, standing at his full height and looming over the sister. A sudden sense of dread filled the nun. “I am a Bearer of the Word, though the warband fancies themselves as the Scarlet Sons now.” He thought back to grander days, of a legion undivided, orchestrated by a father who could guide the unseen ebb of their errant hearts.
Daniella struggled to stand. She’d heard of the traitors, of the Emperor’s fallen angels, and even within the abbey there had been hushed rumors that mentioned the Word Bearers explicitly.
“How could you?” The nun fumbled upon the bench behind her, recoiling as a misplaced hand pressed against a rigor-stricken sister, “How could you turn from his light?”
The Word Bearer was a mountain, though Daniella could not shake the undeniable malaise that emanated from his otherwise unflinching form. His eyes were pools of swirling gold, tarnished by millennia of sin, though incandescent nonetheless. The thin smile upon his lips soured yet he did not lash out as she thought he would, “You speak as though you were there, but I cannot blame you. You were not. You did not stand beneath His lapping rays, feel the purifying warmth of His golden glow upon your skin, and be reprimanded for your devotion. To hear your God deny His divinity is to know the meaning of true despair. I do not resent Him, just as I do not resent my father, Lorgar, for wandering into the yawning void in search of solace. You cannot fathom it, sister, you cannot know the depths to which we sank in search of an answer, any answer. My brothers and I are unforgiven, yes, but in these quiet corners of faith I find a reassurance not provided by the pale imitations they so eagerly worship.“ Gauntleted hands interlocked into the blessed Aquila, a sign of fealty utterly out of place for one so fallen.
She swallowed the dry mucous that clung to her throat. There was a cool serenity to his speech, an even temper that stood in the face of all she’d heard. The slaughter beyond the abbey’s marbled walls was growing closer and served to remind her of the impending doom. “If you are here to kill me…Please, I beg of you, do not mock me so. I have strayed, traitor, but this…”
“I do not mock, little one. I am brother Oros and I come to hold vigil for this world in its final apotheosis. My brothers would have killed you. Would have twisted yours and the corpses of your sisters into profane shapes and iconography as to please their craven Gods. I have come here merely to collect what is worthy, catalogue the faith and traditions of a damned people, and hold their memory in eternal recollection.”
Her lip quivered, tears running anew. She was not a secular woman, yet she knew the nature of the creatures outside the convent. She knew that the Word Bearers were the worst sort of abomination, and that their arrival was a mark of the end. She was dead already and that would not be the worst of it. They would rape her flesh and spirit. Their eager thralls would pick at her ethereal essence like carrion upon a carcass.
Oros had turned, once again looking upon the body of Mother Camilla, his voice growing gentle, “Tell me, why do you still live?”
Daniella choked, gasping through the snot and tears. She did not want to die, not at the hands of some traitor or in the burning inferno that surely awaited. She wanted to live, to be free and happy, though she knew that was no longer possible. The abbess was gone, her sisters as well, and the world was falling. She was trapped in the interim between devotion and self-preservation, the tide of profligates growing closer all the while.
Oros had not moved, still staring intently upon the body of the abbess, and waited.
Daniella could not speak, her breath coming in short, ragged gulps.
He sighed, “It seems that both of us have been weak, though yours is a sin of far less import. Do not resent yourself.” Oros knelt, his eyes level with hers — the warmth of a falling sun setting upon a rain-licked briar — and his hand reached for the nun.
She was frozen in fear, unable to move. His gauntlet rested upon her shoulder and she could feel the weight of his armored form, the immense heat.
“Tell me your name, so that you may be remembered, please.” Those eyes, so deep and golden, seemed almost pleading. There was a certain condemnation in his words. An implication of the coming horror and the whispers of an unspoken farewell.
Daniella swallowed hard, her hands trembling, and whispered, “Sister Daniella. I am Sister Daniella. Please, do not kill me. I do not wish to die…”
“We all die, sister. Even now, listen to the sounds of it.” She did, she could hear the terrible squelch of flesh being torn, of the city’s final, stalwart defenders being tortured in manners most unspeakable. “Your people are dying. Your world is dying. Although, perhaps that is what they secretly yearned for.”
“What?”
“We send emissaries before the final assault, black-tongued disciples of The Pantheon that search for the weakness within the very soul of our conquest. Your world was found lacking in the degree of faith required to repulse such heresy, so now, it cracks at the very firmament, casting aside its physical shell to become something…changed. I do not desire to witness it but witness it I must. If it brings you any consolation, it is almost over.”
Her eyes widened, the urge to soil herself singly kept at bay by the thought of humiliating herself before the fallen angel. The sound of chanting filled the night. They were close, perhaps too close, and Daniella could not stop herself. The tears would not cease, the shaking had grown worse, and her stomach was in knots.
“Your tears are not unfamiliar to me. I have seen enough tears to fill the great oceans of ancient Terra.” Oros paused, his brow furrowing in contemplation, before the creases softened into a polished sheet of bronzed flesh. He had seen how her eyes darted to a nearby dagger, a ritualistic thing unfit to prepare a meal, let alone kill a demigod. “Martyrdom, splendid.”
She could not speak, instead staring dumbfoundedly at the Word Bearer. The thought was a weak one, born of an almost selfish desire to seek atonement in the eyes of the God-Emperor. “Would it work?” she pleaded, completely enraptured by his beneficence, forgetting that he was a monster, “I do not wish to but…”
Oros lifted his chin as to present it freely, “You could try. It would be the right thing, I suppose, and your death would be a mere flick of my wrist. There would be no pain.”
She was a woman without options, and the knife was in her hands before the words had fully escaped his lips. Daniella could not bear to look at the thing, but it felt warm and real. It felt like salvation. Her breath slowed, the tears still falling, and her hand rose to his throat. Oros closed his eyes, his lips parting in silent prayer.
The blade never came. Its edge rested along the unblemished ridge of his throat, the sinews beneath rippling like fibers of twisted steel. Even though she would draw no blood, that the ornamental dagger would chip and break before it broke his skin, it felt like a betrayal. He had been kind. He had offered her a chance at joining her sisters in the sweetness of the God-Emperor’s love. She thought of the tales, of the vileness that must have surely lived in the traitor’s heart. Any excuse that would triumph above her cowardice, but there was none to be found. The dagger clattered to the ground in a tinny ring.
“Hmph,” Oros lowered his gaze to meet Daniella’s, “Understandable. To ask such of you was a miscalculation on my part; I am sorry. You could have begged to join them, could have thrown your soul to the ravenous clutches beyond these walls. You did not.” Oros seemed satisfied, “Martyrdom was the easy path, what I offer now is the path fraught with perdition. Come with me.”
Oros stood, and offered his hand.
Daniella looked down at her feet, her mind spinning. She wanted to be saved, to live. To live beyond the dying world.
“They will kill me.”
“I can lie, if it would soothe your mind. Lie to them and claim you as a slave. They believe me a profligate who seeks to parody the faith of the Throne, yet I still believe. I believe in the same light that cleansed my flesh, even as I must now wander in darkness and sin. I have observed, I bear not only the word but witness to a thousand dying worlds, and you may now walk alongside me.” That may have been a fate worse than death, but it was the only offer that remained. “The path shall be dark. Temptation shall test your faith at every junction, the lurid fantasies of neverborn entities always clasping at the hem of your skirt and the edges of your soul. We shall walk together and bear His word, even if it is the solitude of our hearts.”
Daniella reached out her trembling hand and placed it in his. The gauntlet was warm, the metal smooth, and the strength contained within could have shattered her bones with a single flex. Yet, it was a comforting warmth, and Daniella could not understand how or why.
The Word Bearer gently clasped her hand and brought her to her feet. He took up his bolter and whispered, almost too softly to be heard, his face turned heavenward, eyes closed in reverence, the faintest hint of a smile.
“I cannot defend this place, even if I have staked it as mine in my soul. My brothers and their congregation will be here soon enough. The greatest mercy I can allow it is to burn it all to ash before they arrive. Take a token of your faith as we depart, for you shall need it upon our vessel. Mine is a sanctified corner but the frigate is vast, frothing with the spiritual entropy of the immaterium. As we walk, do not close your heart to the death of this world. See it. Know it. Bear it within your soul and remain steadfast. Stay close.”
He was moving, Daniella stumbling behind him. She looked down at her hand, the Word Bearer’s fingers wrapped firmly around her own. She would survive.
Daniella could hear the screaming as the convent came alive with fire. Oros did not turn back, the flames reflecting from his armor like liquid gold.
She did not dare look back either, and in the distance, Daniella thought she could see the stars winking out. She would survive. As would her world, if only in their hearts.
***
The vessel was a crimson spear in the night.