It looked down on us and it smiled.
I felt as if it was looking directly at me. I am sure every man there did. It is a discomforting thing to come under the gaze of a great daemon. It was looking into my soul, seeing my darkest secrets, measuring every particle of sin. It knew me in a moment better than I knew myself. It knew all the dark and hateful things I wanted to keep hidden even from myself. It recognised me as one of its own. It made a beckoning gesture with its hand. There was an awful invitation in the movement. It called upon me to step forwards, to join it, to be purged by its cleansing flame and renewed.
There was a promise of immortality in that gesture and the fulfilment of all my dreams. I could walk forwards and join the ranks of its followers and become one with the immortals. I could welcome the presence of this tremendous cosmic being into my life and become part of its legion of worshippers and leave this place and conquer worlds in its name.
Visions of an eternity of splendour danced before me. I would be ruler of a world, many worlds. My enemies would fear me. Women would adore me. I would be greater than any king. I watched transfixed. I think it was curiosity that saved my soul, strange as that may sound.
For some reason I looked at Macharius, perhaps even then seeking to follow his lead. He stood transfixed. His eyes were locked on the daemonic Angel. There seemed to be some sort of direct communication going on between them. I wondered what he was seeing, what temptations were being placed before him. I was being presented to myself as a conqueror of worlds. He was already all of that and more.
What could it offer him?
I can only guess. It does not take a great deal of imagination to think of what devil’s bargain it offered. There is only one thing great enough for a man like Macharius to imagine seizing, only one throne worth taking possession of. I think the magnitude of the daemon’s offer was immense; the throne of all the worlds located on distant Terra.
It was possible I suppose. Imperial armies have been corrupted in the past. Imperial generals, aye and beings greater than Imperial generals, have fallen to the temptations of Chaos. Backed by the power of the daemon-gods, they have conquered huge swathes of the galaxy, temporarily it is true, but nonetheless they have conquered.
I think this is what was offered to Macharius. And if you want the truth, I think he considered it. What man would not? Offered the galaxy, anyone might pause and think. Though I might be purged by the Inquisition as a heretic for saying it, I know I would have.
Macharius looked grim. He frowned. His eyes narrowed. I looked at the heretics. If anything supports my theory of the temptation of Macharius, it is that they did not attack us. By all rights they should have. They should have struck us down as we looked in awe on their daemon-god. They did not.
I think the Angel sent them some subtle message that they should wait. It must have felt there was a real chance of winning Macharius and the rest of us to its side. That would have been a prize for it, a great Imperial commander and all his armies. It must have deemed it worth the risk.
I wondered then, as I still do now, at this temptation of Macharius. Was it possible that this entire conflict, the destiny of this entire world was merely one small link in a chain of circumstance that would bring Macharius to this spot, to open him up to this temptation?
Could a daemon really have such subtlety and foresight?
Or was this simply an aberration of chance, a moment when the destiny of two great beings became intertwined because of an accident? I do not know the answer. The only beings who truly do are not telling.
We stood enthralled, awaiting the outcome, while the Angel of Fire watched us with burning eyes.
Document under seal. Extract From the Decrypted Personal Files of Inquisitor Hyronimus Drake.
Possible evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake.
Cross-reference to Exhibit 107D-21H (Report to High Inquisitor Toll).
And so it came to pass that I found myself within the sanctum of the most unholy Angel of Fire. Surrounded as I was by storm troopers sworn to protect me, standing at the heart of an army of the Imperial Guard, I knew there was no safety. I sensed the vast web of incalculable power being spun out of the netherspaces of the warp, all focused on the massive apparition that loomed in front of me. I was given a sense of quite how small I was and quite how great evil can be.
It was a titanic dazzling thing, feeding on the deaths of its worshippers, drawing strength from the rituals being performed all across the city. The cathedral itself was a focal point for these, and I understood, for the first time, that all of those cages had been placed according to a very precise pattern, aligned in such a way that they would channel energy to this place at this time. In my mind’s eye, I seemed to be looking down on the city, my spirit soaring clear and able to comprehend the sheer awesome scale of the massive ritual. For some reason, the attention of the daemonic entity was focused on Macharius. I sensed that perhaps it wished to recruit him, to make him its servant. If truly he was the one for whom we wait, he would make a true and terrible vessel for it. I knew that this could not be allowed. There could be no more terrible threat to the Imperium than such a one as Macharius possessed by such a thing as this.
I was at the centre of a smaller pattern, made up of the brave men and women, psykers all, who had been assembled in a final valiant attempt to forestall the ritual. I felt every last one of them through the link we shared, all of the sanctioned psykers of all of the Guard regiments, all of my agents who had been dispersed throughout the massive army. Only a few of them were present with me. Others were scattered through the cathedral, part of the fighting regiments within. All of them, at that moment, stood frozen, all of them lent me their strength.
I looked at the focus of that hellish ritual and I drew on what strength I could. We did not have even a fraction of the power that was needed to overcome that vast ingathering of cosmic filth. Such was not my intention. I needed to disrupt that lattice of force and the whole thing would spin out of control, like a mechanical engine when sand has been thrown into its workings.
It was the only chance I had. I summoned all my strength and threw a bolt of titanic psychic energy at the focal point of the ritual.
Macharius looked upon the daemon. The daemon gazed back. My glance flickered from one to the other. Drake moved up beside Macharius. Sweat rolled down his brow. Tears of blood dripped from his eyes. He seemed caught up in some invisible spiritual struggle beyond my understanding. All around people were screaming and vomiting and tearing at their own eyes with their nails as if trying to gouge them from their sockets. There was no pattern to it, save that they all seemed to be people who had come with him. Among the Guard I saw men in the uniforms of sanctioned psykers doing the same.
Even the inquisitor’s mighty will was not up to breaking the daemon’s spell. Macharius stood silently, seeing whatever vision the daemon had put in his mind, wrestling with whatever gigantic temptations it offered him.
All of our men were rapt in a mystical trance, just as much as the heretics who had summoned the daemon. Men knelt weeping, some caught fire and turned to ash and fell leaving only outlines of dust on the ground. Some howled the praises of the Angel and abased themselves grovelling. Blood streamed from the nostrils of the righteous and unrighteous alike. It was not just our men who were falling and burning. The same thing was happening among the Sons of the Flame.