Chapter 4 Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal

Chapter Four

Librarium Sagrestia, Arx Angelicum, Baal

Unlike all the other Blood Angels gathered in the Ostensorio, Mephiston's armour was crimson. The ceramite plates where intricately sculpted to resemble flayed muscle and as Mephiston rose from the floor of the chamber his robes billowed around him like blood pooling out in water. Behind him, a faint echo of the sphere could still be seen, a void rolling into darkness, a window on the stars.

As the lights returned, they revealed the sprawled forms of the other Librarians scattered across the stone floor. At the sight of their Lord they clambered to their feet and grabbed their discarded swords. They formed into orderly ranks and pounded the hilts against their chests. "Chief Librarian," they cried in proud, strident tones. Taking her place amongst them, Mariah mirrored their salute and stood erect, awed by the sight of her Lord.

At the same time the projection of the priest rose from its throne and began shouting words that were lost to the void. His mouth opened and closed but no sound reached the chamber. The hooded priests crowded around the projector, tapping dials and flicking switches until a deafening voice boomed through the air, backed by a shrill wail of feedback.

"My lord! What did you find?" roared the ghost-priest, his jowly face trembling with emotion. "Is Divinus Prime safe? Did you -"

He paused as he noticed what Mephiston was carrying. Hanging limply in the Chief Librarian's grip was an unconscious man, a robbed priest.

+Yet perhaps there was the echo of an answer,+ said Mephiston, speaking calmly as if he had just entered the hall through a doorway. +Something just beyond my reach.+ No one else heard him and Mariah realised the words only existed in her head.

"An answer to what?" she whispered.

The flickering image cried out again, frustrated by the lack of a reply. "Chief Librarian?" The static-chopped voice broke down into a series of barks and feedback loops. "Can. You. Hear. Meee? What had bebebebecome. Divinus Prime?" He stared at the unconscious man. "Who is that? One of ours?"

Mephiston continued to ignore him as he laid the priest carefully on the floor and turned back to the fading sphere. A look of mild surprise crossed his face. +I have been followed+ he said, speaking directly into Mariah's mind again. He sounded intrigued rather than alarmed.

Mariah braced herself seconds before the chamber exploded. A thunder crack hurled Mephiston through the air. He smashed through the ranks of Librarians and tumbled into the darkness, leaving a trail of sparks as his armour scrapped across the stone.

Behind him, the after-image of the Blood sphere surged back into existence and warped into a new form. Crimson light became crimson flesh as a gaping wound opened in the air, hanging just above the floor. It swelled like a disease-bloated tumour. The air air around it rippled and congealed like pus. It looked like a septic scar, opening into nothing.

The priest recoiled in horror, despite being half a galaxy away, but Mariah and the other Librarians steadied themselves and levelled their force weapons at the growing tear.

"Chief Librarian?" cried Epistolary Rhacelus, searching the chamber for his commander. There was no reply from Mephiston, so Rhacelus gave his fellow Librarians a silent order. They leapt to obey. Fanning out to surround the horror forming in front of them. Shapes were bubbling from the aether. Something was emerging from the wound.

"On my command," Rhacelus said, Mariah whispered and oath causing her sword to sizzle and blaze with psychic power.

Flies began to drift from the hole. Just a few at first, winding lazily in to the chamber, then clouds of them, gushing through the opening, adding a low drone to the din that had already filled the air. Mariah recognised the magnitude of what was happening. Danger in the very heart of the Arx Angelicum was unheard of. She stared at the grotesque thing that was quickly filling the Ostensorio. It was a window onto madness and, as she raised her sword a hellish tide f creatures spewed into the room, tumbling through the clouds of flies. It looked like a torrent of internal organs – a coiled mass of glistening tubes and pulsing sacs that slapped onto the floor of the chamber.

"By the Throne," she grunted as a horrific smell filled the air. It was a thick stink of putrefaction and faeces, and she felt as though she were suddenly inside the bowels of a rotting animal.

"On my command!" repeated Epistolary Rhacelus, gripping his sword in both hands and bracing himself as clouds of flies swarmed around him. His majestic tones revealed no trace of fear, but Mariah could sense his outrage.

The visceral, faecal soup blossomed into humanoid forms, sprouting gangly, mottled limbs and hunched pot-bellied torsos. Grubs blistered up from open sores, forming into drooling, slack-jawed faces. Others sprouted grey, membranous wings, bristling, insectoid faces and glistening proboscises.

Rhacelus waited a few seconds more, his face full of scorn as pus-yellow eyes blinked open in the centre of oozing, bulbous foreheads. Then he raised his chin, imposing and magnificent as he gave the signal to attack, bringing his sword down in a chopping motion.

Mariah unleashed all her rage and determination through her force sword. A column of blue light ripped from the weapon and slammed into the emerging horde, joining the ferocious storm of psychic energy hurled by her brothers.

A grinding sound filled the chamber as the Librarians poured torrent after torrent into the creatures. A sphere of light began to form as their warpfire clashed with the malformed creatures, an acrid stench of burning meat filled the air.

As Mariah saw the full horror of the fly-shrouded shapes she knew instinctively what she was looking at. "Daemons," she muttered. During her gruelling years of training she had seen Pict images of countless xeno-types, including some far stranger looking than this, but it was not the anatomy that arrested her; it was the utter wrongness. They did not conform to any natural laws. Their crumbling, foetid flesh was revolting, but Mariah's mind could see through it; it was just a facade – a shadow of their true, incomprehensible nature.

Mariah broke ranks and climbed the steps of the chapel, seeking a better view as she looked back at the fighting she saw what the other Librarians could not – their psychic blasts were feeding the wound, causing It to gape ever wider. The front ranks of daemons ere disintegrated under the ferocity of the Librarians' attack but as the hole widened it vomited ever-greater volumes of warp-filth into the chamber. Some of the Librarians strode forward to meet them, Lashing out with their swords and carving the daemons into slabs of scorched flesh.

"Stop!" she cried, knowing her words would be lost beneath the din. On top of the noise of the Librarians' blasts, the swarming of the flies and the tearing of the air, the hololithic confessor was still crying out, his voice growing louder and more distorted with every word. "MephMephMeph. Whaaaat. Youyouyouyou. MMMMeph."

Everything merged into one dreadful, apocalyptic roar.

"Lord Rhacelus" boomed Mariah, striding back towards the fight, scouring the carnage for a site of the equerry.

The whole chamber was juddering and Mariah found herself mired in a storm of flies and crimson sparks.

She closed her eyes and allowed her thoughts to slip through the tempest, reaching out for Epistolary Rhacelus. Mariah's power was far greater than normal, magnified by the blood magic that was coruscating through the air. What she had intended as a simple call reached Rhacelus as a warp-fuelled scream.

She saw the veteran stagger under the impact of the message, scowling and clutching his head.

"Hold!" ordered Epistolary Rhacelus once he had recovered.

His fellow Librarians obeyed, lowering their weapons. The smoke cleared to reveal a steaming mound of twitching daemons piled before them, smouldering and flickering with ripples of warpfire.

Mariah muttered a curse as she saw how big the gap in the air had grown – it had tripled in size and was spraying even more nightmarish shapes at them. Worse than that, it was straining outwards, bulging towards the edges. Something was forcing itself against the other side, something massive. As it swelled it spewed even greater swarms of flies. They battered against the Librarians with such force that they struggled to stand and the entire chamber was now a storm of whirling fly clouds, making it impossible to see clearly.

Epistolary Rhacelus was about to give an order when Mephiston swept through the tornado, his spectral wings outstretched and his force sword raised as he dived into the heaving mass.

As Mephiston reached the tear, it opened with a wet, ripping sound and a black shape approached through the swarm of flies. There were now millions of the insects, and Mariah could not see the shape clearly. In her mind she saw something that resembled a great geyser of oil that slammed into the Chief Librarian and engulfed him.

Mephiston's blade flashed and tore the storm apart, blasting the into sparkling blue embers. He continued on into the hole vanishing from the materium into whatever hell lay beyond.

Mephiston was only gone for a few seconds. The clouds of flies parted as a new nightmare hauled him back into reality – a mountain of mucus-lined flesh that uncoiled itself slowly into the chamber, belching fumes and pulsating like a huge mollusc. It was so large it crashed against the ribs of the distant, vaulted ceiling, and it was encased in a mantle of frilled, rippling muscles that resembles rows of gills. Parts of this undulating mantle extended out from the main mass, creating long, serpentine limbs, one of which had almost entirely enveloped Mephiston. It was lifting him towards a serrated opening in the things eyeless head.

"No!" hissed Mariah as she saw Mephiston nearing the mouth.

+Vermin,+ said a nonchalant voice in her head. +Nothing more.+

Mephiston plunged his force sword into the creature's mouth. Traceries of red light rippled through it's enormous bulk and it reared up in pain, smashing through the ceiling of the Ostensorio. The stone gave way, sending arches and vaults tumbling down into the chamber, smashing into pieces and adding plumes of plaster dust to the clouds of flies.

The Ministorum priests started screaming as the structure of the Ostensorio gave way. Hugh cracks knifed out from the hole created by the swaying bulk of the daemon as it lurched and undulated, colliding with pillars and buttresses. Mariah and the other Librarians where still hurtling thick columns of energy at the daemons, filling the clouds with pulses of light and barked commands.

A Ministorum priest stumbled through the haze. Mariah headed in the direction, intending to shepherd him from the hall, when another figure emerged from the dust clouds with a swagger. One of the stooping, gangly things had broken through the ranks of Librarians. It stared at Mariah with a bulging, Cyclopean eye, holding up a pair of rusty meat cleavers.

Psychic flame ripped from Mariah's sword, tearing the daemon apart in an explosion of diseased flesh and pus-green blood.

Mariah lowered her smoking sword and looked back to find the priest. The man was sprawled on the flagstones, clutching his severed throat as blood gushed from him in great gouts.

Mariah rushed to aid him but another daemon lumbered into view its jagged sword dripping with the priest's blood. Mariah hunched over her sword and unleashed a blast of psychic wrath, smearing the second daemon across the wall.

Great hunks of stone were now crashing down all around her and the ceiling was almost entirely gone, revealing the soaring walkways and towers of the Librarium beyond. Column after column slumped and fell, and the two surviving Ministorum priests sprinted through the chaos, dodging falling slabs and leaping over cracks in the floor as they struggled to locate the exit. The hololithic projection of the senior priest was still visible through the bloody haze and falling rocks. He was howling in fear and rage, his eyes wild. But the speakers had already been destroyed and he was once again mouthing into the void – a deranged, shimmering giant, presiding silently over the death of the ancient chamber.

Mariah's enhanced vision saw easily through the haze, locating the doorway, just a dozen or so feet away.

"This way!" she cried, shepherding the dazed priests towards the exit. The door's lintel had cracked and the opening looked like it might give way at any moment.

She looked back to see a wall of daemons charging towards them, countless dozens of looping horrors, approaching from all directions.

As the daemons flooded across the shattered flagstones, Mariah raised her sword, cutting them down with a scythe of psychic force and filling the air with gore.

Then she turned and grabbed the two priests by their robes and hauled them out into the light.

The scene outside the Ostensorio was almost as chaotic as the gruesome struggle taking place within it. The battle-brothers of the Fourth Company were racing towards the building, weapons raised, bus as they climbed the steps the walls and buttresses started bulging and toppling. Captain Vatrenus and his Space Marines took aim as the cause of the destruction rose into view.

The enormous bulk of the daemon tore forwards, ripping open the roof of the Ostensorio as though it were wading through a low tide rather than demolishing a building the size of the cathedral. Huge hunks of crenellated marble collapsed beneath its bulk, tumbling down on to the Blood Angels below.

Captain Vatrenus roared a command and the air filled with bolter fire as daemons flooded through the broken doorway, Lord Rhacelus and the rest of the Librarians emerged from the Ostensorio, covered in filth and dust, still hurling gouts of psychic energy as the monsters crashed through the building above them. A low, tectonic groan filled the air, but it was not coming from the doorway. Mephiston was still crushed against the daemons circular mouth, his blade burning read as it sank deeper into the thing's insubstantial flesh. The sound was coming from the point of contact. It was such a bass rumble that Mariah could feel it resonating in her guts, cracks started to spider out from the base of the Ostensorio, splitting roads into shards of rockcrete and gaping chasms that opened up before the staggering Blood Angels.

The noise grew louder and the Ostensorio finally collapsed, thundering down to the ground with all the fury of a landslide.

A tower of dust and flies reached up towards the heavens, blocking out the sun, like a doom-laden finger laying judgement on the screaming masses below.

As Mariah fell backwards, her battleplate crushed beneath a tsunami of rubble and broken bodies, she caught a final glimpse of Mephiston. His ink-black wings were spread and he was soaring clear of the explosion, a triumphant angel, his ivory face turned to the heavens, the daemon's severed head clutched in his fist.