Wrath of the Lost

Book : Warhammer 40,000

by Chris Forrester

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Having secured Baal, the Flesh Tearers receive timely reinforcements from the Indomitus Crusade. In that moment of hope, however, they realise they've not heard from their now isolated homeworld of Cretacia in far too long…

Ordered by Gabriel Seth to secure Cretacia, Chaplain Dumah and Apothecary Barachial set course for the Flesh Tearers' homeworld. But when they finally lay eyes on it once more, will they find a garrison standing firm, or a desolate wasteland scoured by their enemies? The Space Marines must walk in the footsteps of their chapter's mythic founder, and along the way they will learn what it means to embrace the Wrath of the Lost – or die trying.

Release date: October 10, 2023

Publisher: Games Workshop

Print pages: 464

Sample

PROLOGUE

The reliquaria’s dark iron doors cast a long shadow over Reyan Abdemi.

Carved with tiny cuneiform detailing the blood-soaked history of Creta­cia’s angels, the chamber’s door was usually guarded by two archangels clad in thick slabs of sacred metal. Celebrated veterans of the God-Emperor’s sky-wars, their stature and aura of raw aggression never failed to set his heart racing and catch his breath in his throat. He had looked upon them with quiet awe, their heavy armour lending them a loose semblance to the statues of ancient war-gods he’d seen in countless Cretacian shrines.

Now the veterans were gone, with almost all their brethren.

In their place, two mismatched horrors of dark metal and greying flesh stood sentinel, their eyes lit by flat, murder-red stares. The thick coils of their arm-mounted light-casters glowed bright blue, harsh illumination grinding flashes of hot pain against his temples. Blood roared in his ears and his heart thudded a staccato rhythm against his sternum. He felt it echo in his knees and elbows. Like the angels, these new guardians had been known to kill those who failed to show the proper caution and respect.

A stone panel retracted on the nearest column, revealing a small square of clean black glass, like that left behind by the fire-mountains’ eruptions. Reyan pressed his right hand on it, ignoring the sudden flush of heat and the faint green thread tracing around his fingers and palm. The glass hummed and grew hotter, burning his callus-thickened skin. A wince hissed between his gritted teeth, but he kept his hand pressed against the plate. Needles bit into the tip of each digit, the hungering device exacting a blood-price as tribute.

‘Access granted,’ a harsh, grating voice boomed.

The stone snapped back over the plate and the hideous, half-metal sentinels swivelled on their gimbal-torsos to face outwards once more. The ancient doors ground open and the soft flicker of torchlight spilled out. Reyan glimpsed human-sized shadows darting across the widening gap, the soles of barasaur-hide boots clacking sharply on rough stone punctuated by the supervisor’s croaked orders. Wiping the blood on his ash-black fatigues, Reyan hefted his fire-caster and followed the scent of burned wood and fresh paint into the reliquaria.

He strode through the low light and carved stone. Galleries of granite pedestals and recessed alcoves held battered suits of metal armour, broken weapons, and banners stained with blood and grime in thin strands of white light. Cuneiform detailed the valiant deeds of angels fallen long seasons before his birth, their lines sharpened by mason-serfs through the careful application of hammer and chisel. The measured clunks knifed white-hot pain through his skull, but Reyan was grateful for it. The pain muted the silence.

Reyan had feared silence since the angels had left Cretacia.

The armsman walked further into the hall, absorbing the faint details of mosaics and frescoes where angels battled lithe, laughing monsters and shadows of fang, claw and dark flame. The artworks framed relics of warriors that had walked in the God-Emperor’s time, their deeds captured in faded colour and eroded line. He read their legends, confusion prickling his mind. Several words had been used in a context that no longer made sense, while others held no meaning to him at all. Had their language evolved so much since the angels’ arrival?

He dismissed the question as unimportant.

Reyan reached the farthest end of the reliquaria, pausing before a towering suit of armour, like that of the angels, but larger and more imposing. His eyes locked on the dull green of its inactive lenses, before scrolling along the crimson-and-black metal of its chest and arms. He read echoes of titanic struggles against unimaginable horrors in its scars, and ferocity finally unchained in the saw-toothed blades and bulky fire-casters attached to its fists. His gaze fell to the legend beneath it, written in elegant script that had no origin on Cretacia.

+They will die, you know.+

Reyan’s heart seized. The voices were back, stalking his thoughts as they had done since the angels sailed away. They refused to leave him alone.

+Soon your beloved angels will meet their end.+

‘No, please…’ He silently begged the God-Emperor, master of the heavens and the stars, great ancestor to the angels. ‘Cretacia cannot lose her angels.’

Cruel laughter echoed in his skull.

+The Anathema cannot save them, fool, and they will not survive what now comes for them. The Devourer will rend their flesh, and the Angels’ Bane will take their strongest into his service. By blade or by blood-oath will he bring them to Kharnath’s throne.+

Reyan screwed his eyes shut, white-knuckling his fire-caster. Visions of burning jungles and mountains ground to meal beset him, the scent of smouldering wood spiced by the spoiled-meat reek of the rotting corpses choking the rivers. His ears rang with the howls of red-skinned beasts with curved fangs and snarling, toothed saw blades that slaughtered his people for sport. It was the same whenever he closed his eyes.

Sleep was a refuge denied to him.

‘Did you say something, armsman?’ a cracked voice called.

Reyan spun wildly, searching for the speaker, heart pounding against his sternum. Had he spoken aloud? Or had the voices invaded the world beyond his skull?

‘Or are you here for another lesson?’

Hakaar Vakhoni hobbled towards him and Reyan’s heart settled to an even rhythm. Hakaar was a withered specimen, ravaged by time and servitude. Skin hung slack from his sparse frame. The tufted echo of a beard sprouted from his wattled chin. Age crooked his spine so much that his upper body resembled the cane he clutched in stiff, shaking

 hands, though his eyes gleamed with a fierce intelligence. Hakaar had been a formidable fighter in his time, a high chief of the armsmen before infirmity relegated him to maintenance.

‘I learned all you had to teach long ago, old man.’

‘Believe that at your own peril, lad,’ Hakaar laughed – a wet, throaty rasp. He patted Reyan on the chest, the arthritic echo of old strength still clinging to the elder’s hands. ‘I could still humble you in the fighting pits without even breaking a sweat.’

The whispers throttled Reyan’s laughter.

‘If you say so,’ Reyan said, flavouring the words with forced humour. The old man’s eyes narrowed and Reyan flinched inside. Words slipped between his teeth like water through cracks in a dam. ‘I know better than to steal an old man’s fantasies.’

Hakaar scowled.

Reyan quashed the nervous wrench that twisted his stomach. The ­dis­respect of an elder was a great offence among the clans, but his relationship with the old man had always risen above such tradition. The voices receded, though the scent of burned wood and decomposing flesh still circled his nostrils. Bile flooded his mouth.

A chuckle broke Hakaar’s wizened scowl.

‘Did the carvings catch your eye?’

Reyan nodded, swallowing the bile.

‘No point trying to read them, lad,’ Hakaar said, leaning heavily on his cane. ‘The tongue of the first angels can only be read by their heirs. It is tradition, unbroken since they saved Cretacia and made her their heaven.’

Hakaar led him away from the heavy armour, towards a ragged banner of black cloth, easily three times his height. Blood and grime marked the fabric but failed to obscure the cup that brimmed with blood, the angelic killer, and the toothed saw blade and cerise droplet of the angels. Hakaar hefted an age-arched finger and pointed to the mural behind it.

Reyan gasped to see a crude reflection of the banner clutched in the metal hand of an angel. Tails of orange fire streaked blue skies, trees and mountains rendered in smears of grey and mixed green. A second angel, massive beyond reckoning, wore the same suit of heavy armour that had fascinated him moments ago, and stood at their head like a chieftain. Awe flushed through Reyan’s veins to see them battling green monsters, thick with muscle and yellow-tusked, beside smaller, dark-skinned figures that could only be Cretacian warriors.

‘Our ancestors painted this during the era of the first hunts,’ Hakaar said. ‘When they helped the angels raise their home. They say sky-fire rained upon the clans for seven days, that smoking rocks carved open the earth for the under-dwellers to emerge and spill our people’s blood. It was only by the efforts of the angels that they were stopped.’

Reyan knew the story well.

His parents, like any other mated human pair on Cretacia, had used the threat of the under-dwellers and their dark cousins, the Night Terrors, as cautionary tales whenever he and his siblings misbehaved or shamed themselves. His people feared the monsters’ return, even with the angels’ vigil over Cretacia promising to keep them safe. They spat and spilled blood to ward against that dread event, hissing whenever they were invoked. Some clans even offered sacrifices at the sites of the ancient battles.

Reyan had visited the sites twice himself.

‘Do you know why the angels left?’ he asked the older helot, feeling absurdly childish for each breath he assigned to the question. He could not stop himself. He had to know why they abandoned Cretacia. ‘Why only five remain to keep the vigil?’

Hakaar chuckled again.

‘The angels do not entrust mere mortals with that knowledge, boy,’ he said. ‘Rest assured, they have left before. Twice in my lifetime they have all sailed into the stars to serve the God-Emperor. We thought them gone forever, but they endured His trials and returned to us with fresh trophies and new tales. This time will be no different, mark

me.’

Reyan drew breath to speak when something heavy struck the reliquaria’s door. The clamour of charging weapons and raised voices slipped through the narrow gap between the stone wall and iron portal. Artisan-serfs ceased their restoration efforts, casting fearful gazes at the door. Hakaar hobbled towards them, shouting for them to continue their work when the metal trembled again. Reyan’s grip tightened on his fire-caster as he backed away.

The door crashed open and one of the monstrous half-metal guardians skidded along the stone floor, its torso ripped from its legs. Its light-caster was torn free, the stump of its shoulder leaking thick black fluid. The light vanished from its eyes, the silver grate of its lips rasping something akin to a death rattle. Reyan watched the artisans heft their hammers and chisels with growing terror. Had the under-dwellers risen with the angels’ disappearance?

He shrank further back, clutching his fire-caster.

An angel charged into the hall. Reyan’s relief caught in his throat when he saw the angel’s armour was marred by fresh scars and simmering scorch marks. The angel was bareheaded and unarmed, his expression locked in a rictus mask of fury and old scars, streaked by dried gore. A vicious burn peeled back one cheek to expose stringy tendons and nubs of blackened bone. His eyes were pools of liquid black madness.

‘Traitors!’ the angel bellowed, closing on the serfs. Several fell to their knees, hands clasped or raised in fear, moaning protestations of loyalty through salty tears. Others were rooted to the spot, frozen by confusion or terror. ‘Vile oathbreakers! Slaves to Horus! Upon which deck does your master cower?’

Then the killing began.

Reyan cowered behind the banner’s plinth. Wailed pleas and shrieks pounded his ears, a nightmarish kaleidoscope of pain and terror punctuated by the dry snap of bone and the wet wrench of violated flesh. Vomit seared the serf’s throat, spraying through the gaps between his gritted teeth to stain his thighs. The angel screamed demands for blood, for this Horus to step forward and account for his sins. Reyan knew no one by the name. It was not Cretacian, nor was it an angel name. An awful realisation settled on him, numbing his horror.

The angel had gone mad.

The angel had gone mad and Reyan was going to die.

Each thunderous beat of his heart was one step closer to the cold, quiet finality of the abyss. He wanted to stand, to fight, to die defiant and with honour, earning himself a place at the God-Emperor’s side. But his muscles refused to obey. No matter that he willed strength into his body and steeled his thoughts with zeal, he could not move. He tried again and again, mouthing desperate pleas through the shrieks of dying men and women. It was no use.

He would die a miserable death at the hands of an angel.

‘Brother!’ a machine-altered voice snarled.

A second set of footsteps thudded against the stone. Slower and more measured, they broke the dissonant caterwauls of dying humans. Reyan winced at the clamour, even louder now than the din of slaughter had been. Guttural snarls and frothed curses met vulgarities native to Cretacia’s equatorial clans, punctuated by the dry growl of toothed blades and the arhythmic clangs of blows. Reyan measured his life in the space between each beat his heart managed to complete. The adrenal cocktail of elation and dread soaring through his blood begged him to look, to watch death or deliverance approach.

He refused, kept foetal by fear.

Then there was silence.

It took several minutes for Reyan to summon enough courage to risk peeking around the plinth. He saw the second angel bear his unbalanced brother from the hall, away from the holy relics and without a single glance at the murdered helots. Blood gushed from a wound that curled from the first angel’s back to his abdomen. His head lolled to one side and one arm was severed at the elbow. Reyan did not know whether he lived or if the other angel had killed him for defiling such a holy place.

Reyan emerged from behind the plinth, time populated by the breaths of dying men and women. The air was

thick with the stench of blood and voided bowels. It clogged his nostrils, invisible fingers closing around his throat, constricting every breath. He vomited violently, scrabbling for breath between expulsions. He picked his way through the piles of pulped flesh and wet, glistening organs.

He found Hakaar near the door.

The old man’s remains were pale from exsanguination, strips of torn connective tissue and ripped veins trailing from the stumps where one arm and both legs had been. Vital organs sagged through the ragged tear in his abdomen, a pungent mound of offal that pooled blood onto the carved stone. His skull was a cratered ruin of brain meat and bone fragments, his tongue lolling on his lower jaw. The circular blade and crimson droplet stitched over his heart was untouched by blood. Hakaar’s cane was still clutched tightly in his left hand.

Nausea swelled Reyan’s stomach, his throat threatening to close.

He vomited, clutching his sides. He was no stranger to death. It was unavoidable on Cretacia, culling the weak with every rise and fall of the sun. He had fought men and monsters since he could hold a spear. He had killed in battle. He had killed for food and self-defence, for jealousy and anger. More than a hundred tongues were stored in his cell, their owners’ ghosts silenced by their removal. But the butchery the angel had inflicted was of a magnitude he had never seen before.

‘Why did you do this?’ he whimpered, staring at the relics befouled by the blood of his ­brothers and sisters. ‘What offence had we given?’

Hakaar’s voice answered him.

+None.+

‘Then why do this?’ Reyan snapped through hot tears, hand on Hakaar’s heart. The old man’s tongue rested on its bed of flesh and teeth. He would not take it. Reyan still wanted to talk to him. ‘There must be a reason for it… for your death… It cannot be random!’

+What do you know of the angels in black?+

Reyan remembered everything.

The angels in black were a legend whispered between servants on the cold night watches. They were angels fallen to madness, driven there by endless war and the loss of beloved ­brothers. Reyan was ready to dismiss it as lurid fantasy, as he always had, but then he remembered the angel’s eyes. The fury and despair he’d seen there.

‘They are real,’ he breathed.

+They have always been real.+

‘The angel that killed you,’ he said, connections flowering in his mind. ‘Did this happen because his ­brothers were absent? He screamed for blood like an under-dweller, demanding one called Horus face him. What about that?’

+The Sacrificed King is of no consequence, boy. The blood is. It matters most to the angels. It is their shield and sustenance. It drew them to Cretacia in the time before, and the promise of an ocean to slake their thirst drew them back to the stars. Only direct offerings will prevent them drowning in it, and the angels here succumbing to madness.+

Realisation struck Reyan like morning light.

He drew his knife, an age-yellowed oviraktor tooth with a grip of wound human hair. He slashed it across his palm, clenching and unclenching his fist as crimson droplets seeped from the wound onto the serrated symbol on Hakaar’s chest. Reyan ignored the pain in his palm, determined to keep the blood flowing onto the angels’ symbol.

‘Sons of Cretacia. Angels of Wrath.’

Reyan intoned their titles, recycling the words until his voice cracked. Crimson drops fell with each syllable that left his lips. Cretacian blood had drawn them here, Cretacian blood would bring them back.

‘Sons of Cretacia. Angels of Wrath. Flesh Tearers.’

 

PART ONE

‘Seth shares the uncompromising honesty my brother valued in his forebear. Amit courted censure often, but never wavered in his loyalty and service. Seth can speak whatever truth lives in his heart. I know he will not stint in his service to the Emperor, nor will his Chapter.’

– Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines

ONE

The Victus’ Reclusiam was hot and dark, shrouded by a silence that was almost complete. The measured throb of plasma drives slithered through the carved granite of the apse. The snapping hiss of smouldering wood wafted from stone fire-bowls and flambeaux, weighing the air with a caustic incense. Black basalt cladded the adamantium bulkheads and carved menhirs framed the nave. Alcoves cut into the standing stones housed Chapter relics in shimmering stasis fields. A moat of volcanic sand staked with silver-steel honour blades divided the apse from the nave and transepts, their deck plates a grim mosaic formed from the plastrons of fallen captains.

To Dumah, it was a shaman’s cave ripped from its primitive hellscape.

The Chaplain, his void-black Mark X Tacticus power armour embossed with fanged skulls rendered in gold and brass, crossed the narrow causeway that bridged the black sand, holding a relic chainsword reverently. Its black housing was sliced by two diagonal crimson stripes, and acid-etched with the names of fallen warriors. That honour roll stretched back to the strife of the Imperium’s early foundation, and its kill tally reputedly exceeded that of several Chapters. It was a weapon, plain and pure, and the Flesh Tearers embraced the fact in its naming, an act of savage honesty Dumah could not help but admire.

They called it Severer.

Dumah carefully placed Severer on the mountings set in its niche, before unclasping the rosarius affixed to his belt and slotting the icon in another aperture. He made one quarter-turn with the icon, hearing the low hum of the stasis field powering to readiness. Dumah’s eyes rested on the twin rows of monomolecular teeth, Severer’s wrathful war-spirit calling to the sacred fury shackled in his own breast. Dumah relished the kinship he felt with the weapon, hands itching to lift it once more. He never felt a similar unity of purpose with the souls of Cawl’s Mars-forged weapons.

He turned the icon after another moment of hesitation, sealing the chainsword in stasis and denying his desire to claim it. It mattered not that he knew the great deeds and valiant deaths of every warrior to wield it since Manakel, a vaunted hero of the IX Legion and a former High Chaplain of the Chapter. Appollus entrusted him with its protection and consecration. The preservation and protection of the Chapter’s history and sacred relics was his calling, the crozius his staff of office. He would have it no other way.

Dumah moved away from Severer, casting his eye over the other artefacts locked in stasis. He admired reforged blades and suits of power armour with honour rolls longer and more illustrious than Severer, their surfaces engraved with Baalite sandscript. There were others Dumah privately considered distasteful – too Cretacian – in their primitivism. Razor-wire coils sported tongues ripped from the skulls of ork battle-chieftains, severed ears of aeldari witches, the scrimshawed bones and corrupted blades of Traitor Legion warlords, and chalices fashioned from the skulls of demagogues and despots taken by the Flesh Tearers during their long history. Some stasis seals were gene-locked and hexagrammically warded by the Chief Librarian, so their taint could never infect another loyal Imperial soul.

Some relics were famous throughout the Sanguinary Brotherhood.

He saw Slayer’s Wrath, the stylised ‘I’ of the Holy Ordos still visible on the bolter’s casing, and its exotic munitions stacked beside it. Sorrow’s Genesis squatted on a block of grey stone three niches from the bolter, the Exsanguinator gauntlet renowned for its ability to restore mortally wounded warriors from death’s embrace, though at terrible cost to their sanity and spiritual sanctity. The Gauntlet of Iron Wrath, black power fist of Chapter Master Korda, rested on a plinth of carved wood. Dumah sensed fury in its spiked ceramite plating, the same ferocity that had helped Korda carry the breach at the Siege of Phaeton, slaying an Iron Warriors’ daemon prince and Dreadnought talon in the same hour.

Only one other artefact called to him as Severer did.

It rested on a black basalt ledge, silent in deactivation. A vellum honour scroll was set beside its haft of meteoric iron, ringed with spiked bands of gold. Its head was fashioned into the shape of a skeletal angel, wings spread wide in a frozen echo of flight. Dispersal studs for its disruptor field were cunningly woven between ribs and dark-iron feathers, the razor-edged wings of its ornate head capable of slicing flesh from bone or shattering power armour. At the angel’s heart, the heraldic device of the Flesh Tearers was rendered in polished silver, a rare Baalite bloodstone set at its centre. A crozius arcanum, it had belonged to a hero and former High Chaplain. Dumah had inked the warrior’s name on the honour scroll himself.

Carnarvon.

Brass censers leaked cleansing vapours onto the sacred metal, oils and unguents set on the ledge beside it ready for him to reconsecrate it to the Chapter’s service. Dumah hefted the maul. It fit his hand as though forged for it. Its balance was perfect, the weight of the layered adamantium and gilded steel in its ornate head countered by a pommel carved to resemble a fanged, skeletal wight. Forgemaster Liscus had done exemplary work in his restoration, ensuring no compromise of lethality for artistry. Had Dumah been granted the High Chaplain’s office, he would have eagerly accepted the weapon and borne it in battle, not left it here to moulder in safety as Appollus had.

The Chaplain lifted a square of cloth from a small wooden box on the ledge, dipping a corner in the first unguent and gently applying it to the maul’s deactivated head. He intoned the First Litany of Reconsecration, dabbing the cloth again, the combination of word and balm purging any lingering impurities left from its exposure to xenos blood and the taint of the warp. The reconsecration rituals would take several hours,

with numerous invocations and layers of unguent required to satisfy its venerable war-spirit, and ensure its purity was beyond question before its stasis-interment in the flagship’s Reclusiam.

A secondary access hatch slid open.

Chaplain Kamiel and Judiciar Israfil entered, their black armour partially concealed by robes of supple leather coloured the earthen brown of sun-dried flesh. Israfil’s executioner sword was mag-locked to his back, and Kamiel’s crozius hung from his waist. Both wore their skull-faced helms, the lower half of Israfil’s obscured by a square of brown leather he wore as a mask. They knelt in supplication before statues of Sanguinius and the Emperor erected in the transepts, paying homage to their father and their monarch. When their obeisance was made, they moved towards the chancel.

Dumah’s vox-bead pinged.

‘Cede your reconsecration duties to Kamiel and Israfil.’ Appollus’ normal angry tone was edged by either disgust or disappointment, Dumah was not sure which. ‘Your attendance is required at a council in the personal sanctum of Lord Seth.’

Dumah clutched the crozius tighter, unwilling to surrender it.

‘Lord Appollus, you entrusted this duty to me,’ Dumah said. ‘I have scarce begun the required ministrations for Carnarvon’s crozius. To interrupt the rituals of consecration would greatly dishonour this artefact, an offence incompatible–’

‘I did not ask for excuses, Dumah!’ Appollus snapped. Data screeded onto the Chaplain’s retinal feed. ‘Seth has demanded that you attend the council in his sanctum. That is an order, not a request! Kamiel and Israfil will sanctify my predecessor’s weapon, and any further relics that require the rites. You will depart immediately.’

Dumah reluctantly placed the crozius on the ledge.

‘Yes, High Chaplain.’

He exited the Reclusiam without another word.

The dolorous clang of beaten metal welcomed Dumah to the upper levels of the command spire. The Chaplain exited the lifter, the red lambency of emergency lumens diluting on the osseous white of his skull helm and the silver traceries that charted recent battle-damage in his black ceramite. Sheets of opaque plastek obscured the route to the flagship’s strategium and the personal sanctum of Lord Seth. They billowed on the stale, unfiltered oxygen wheezed into the suffocating heat of the corridor by damaged air-filtration units.

Dumah strode along the corridor, navigating between the plastek sheets and the mobs of thralls in heavy environment suits. Their hearts raced as he drew close, the dull thud of war drums reaching crescendo. He read exhaustion and malnutrition in their greying, sweat-greased skin and the hardened lines of their unremarkable features. They averted their eyes as he passed, tucking their chins to their chests, their focuses locked on the grinding machine tools showering the deck with orange sparks, and the ­acetylene hiss of arc welders fusing new sheets of plasteel to the bulkheads. The intense whine of metal shearing metal clawed his helm’s auditory receptors and the stench of scorched plasteel filled his nostrils.

Several menials lay where they had collapsed, either killed or rendered unconscious by privation and the extreme heat. Dumah stepped over them as though they were not even there. He did not consider the act malicious, merely expedient. The menials lived brief, meaningless lives ruled by fear, selfishness and pain. That these menials had spent their lives serving the Emperor and Sanguinius earned them his recognition, brief thoughts he would not squander on the teeming trillions he would eventually sell his life to protect.

Dumah sighted the heavy iron doors of Seth’s personal sanctum.

Carved with the sigil of the Chapter and framed by rust-veined scaffolding, the portal was guarded by two Terminators of the honour guard, their ceramite patched by grey repair cement and bonded sections of temporary reinforcement. The scent of old gore clung in the crevices, to the myriad trophies of xenos bone, carnelian chitin and flayed flesh secured to shoulder and thigh by brass chains. The bitter tang of charred ozone clung to the veterans, the air alive with the energies required to power the massive suits of battleplate.

‘I have been summoned to a

attend a council with Lord Seth.’

The Terminator on his left inclined his helm, a piercing snarl of damaged servos and scraping ceramite. His storm bolter was drawn, its shot-selector switched to automatic fire, his power fist sheathed in crackling disruptive energies. The teeth of its underbite chainblade attachment were broken and chipped, the grey metal stained with age-darkened blood.

‘You are expected, Chaplain Dumah.’

The doors opened and Dumah stepped through.

Seth’s sanctum was simply furnished, with an arming rack and a small workbench set against one wall. An iron chair, sized for an Adeptus Astartes, was set slightly at an angle from it, and there was a small shelf with several sealed jars and old battle-trophies on it. Blood Reaver, the Chapter Master’s infamous two-handed chainblade, rested on the workbench beside teeth tracks and a container stamped with the Technicarum’s insignia. Two sealed hatches led to Seth’s private arming chamber and his ablutions cell. The final fixture, situated in the centre of the chamber, was the hololithic planning table.

Five Flesh Tearers were gathered around it, all looking at him.

‘I see you found time to attend,’ Harahel growled in heavily accented Gothic. His Terminator plate was draped with grisly trophies, numbering far more than those of the warriors he had stationed outside. ‘Did the Butcher not teach you that heeding your Chapter Master’s summons is compulsory?’

Dumah bristled, more offended for himself than Lord Guilliman. He had received the summons from Appollus a mere thirty minutes ago, time he had spent in transit between the Black Tower and the command spire. His eyes found the High Chaplain lurking in the Terminator’s shadow, his body set in an expression of raw, restrained wrath. Anger burned sun-bright, then Dumah snorted, admonishing himself for expecting support from his senior.

He bowed his head in a display of faux contrition.

‘The Butcher taught me much, Harahel,’ he said to the Chapter Champion. ‘Not least that the duties of office are manifold and often keep their occupiers engaged. I do not recall any lectures in etiquette and protocol. Why? Do you seek some for yourself?’

Harahel laughed, a shotcannon’s bark, and gunned his chainfist.

Dumah smiled and reached for his crozius.

‘Enough!’ Gabriel Seth snarled, slamming his fist on the table.

The master of the Flesh Tearers was an immense figure. Scars cut the natural contours of his square-jawed face, his expression rigid with the same restrained fury that bled from his High Chaplain. Seth’s eyes locked with Dumah’s, and the Chaplain felt himself grimace beneath the Cretacian’s gaze, instantly regretting his flippancy. The Chapter Master exuded an aura of elemental aggression that sent a very human chill slithering down Dumah’s spine.

Seth truly embodied the mantle Guardian of Rage.

‘We do not have time for pointless bickering.’ The words rode the predatory snarl that hissed between Seth’s gritted teeth. ‘We must resolve this matter, and quickly. There are wars that require our attention, and tyranid blood yet to be spilled.’

‘My lord, the Fourth Company stands ready for your orders,’ Tanthius said, and Dumah caught the ripple of eager impatience in the captain’s voice, his scuffed and scarred Tacticus plate a visceral narration of wounds sustained in close assault. ‘Upon which battlefield shall these monsters next taste our wrath?’

Seth keyed a number string into the hololith’s data-pad.

The stuttering projection of a planet layered itself onto the table, a sphere of trembling light the colour of clean oceans. Its topography was shrouded in dense clouds and electrical storms. High Gothic script screeded beside it, detailing its classification as an extremis-grade death world, approximate lists of indigenous species, and its stewardship by Adeptus Astartes Chapter 082, ...