Pain and endurance were their genetic heritage and through the spilling of blood, Demetrius Katafalque had taught them that spiritual communion with the primarch could be achieved. In the cold remove achieved by Excoriators during the hot agony of purgation, Rogal Dorn had answers for each of them. Kersh had seen Excoriators punish themselves as such before. He had done so, cloaked in the shame of losing the Chapter Stigmartyr and failure to protect his Chapter Master. It led to a dark place. The long journey from Samarquand had taught him that his flesh had a greater purpose in Dorn’s eyes; that beyond the spiritual unity of the Mantle lay only a labyrinth of needless suffering in which to lose oneself forever.
Kersh was so struck by the spectacle – the simultaneous sadness for and anger towards the hurting Skase – that he did not even acknowledge Ezrachi’s hydraulic approach. Others in the dormitory had, however, and a figure behind him promptly closed the hermitory door.
‘Have Toralech relay a message to the Chaplain,’ Ezrachi ordered Brother Micah. ‘Inform him that the corpus-captain is conscious and demands a report.’
Micah nodded and peeled off into the shadows.
‘I ordered a cessation of ritual observance,’ Kersh growled at the ferruswood door.
‘And Chaplain Shadrath enforced it,’ said the Apothecary. ‘You’ve been out a few days.’ Ezrachi turned the Scourge’s face towards him before dazzling the Excoriator with some medical instrument that sent a flickering beam between his eyes. Since the dull, scratched surface of a ball bearing sat in one socket, Ezrachi focused his attention on the corpus-captain’s remaining eye.
‘Days,’ Kersh marvelled. ‘The company…’
‘Shadrath will make his report. Be still.’
Kersh allowed the Apothecary his rudimentary medical tests.
‘It’s not healthy,’ Kersh said looking back to the door, but the Apothecary brought his attention back to the beam.
‘I’ve spoken to Skase,’ Ezrachi said. ‘Right now I’m more worried about you.’
‘Was it a relapse of the Darkness?’
‘No,’ Ezrachi said with some certainty. ‘I just don’t think you were sleeping. Even an Adeptus Astartes must sleep some time. I can give you something for that. You must tell me if you begin suffering the delusions you spoke of.’
‘You think I’m hallucinating?’
‘I should have listened. My apologies, corpus-captain. We must accept the possibility that the catalepsean node is still malfunctioning. It might require further surgery. It is certainly more evidence for the likelihood of the Darkness having a genetic rather than spiritual cause.’
‘Well, thrilled as I am to help you solve a medical mystery,’ Kersh told him, ‘just fix it, will you?’
‘I need the surgical bay in the apothecarion – on board the Angelica Mortis. I’m happy, however, to submit a report indicating that you’re fit for duty.’
‘I suppose this recent incapacitation has further cemented ill-will towards my command amongst the Fifth.’
‘The rank and file hate you with a passion,’ Ezrachi told him with brutal honesty. ‘Nothing has changed there. Events, however, have overreached us.’
‘Explain.’
‘Follow me.’
The Apothecary led Kersh up a spiral staircase of stone and dust. In the awkwardness of full plate, Ezrachi found that he had to angle his pauldrons to ascend, while the globes of the Scourge’s muscular shoulders merely brushed the staircase walls. A door at the top of the twisting steps opened out into a narrow balcony. Below them the tiled roofs of the hermitage extended; above, a small bell tower reached for the darkness of the cemetery world sky. Stars glimmered in the heavens, and on the horizon, the Eye of Terror’s distant, heliotropic haze besmirched the depths of the void. It was not the warp storm’s horror that held the corpus-captain’s attention.
‘Katafalque’s blood,’ Kersh said, the oath carried off on the light breeze. Above Certus-Minor, the sky had been cleaved in two, a gore smear trailed across the starry firmament – like that a wounded soldier might make, crawling for his life. Instead of a soldier, the haemorrhaging bulb of a crimson comet blazed the bloody path. ‘The Keeler Comet…’
‘Destruction follows in the wake of the comet,’ Ezrachi told him. ‘It is more than just an omen. If the crimson comet appears in a sky then the world to which that sky belongs is doomed to fall.’
‘Stop talking like a prophet and give me specifics. Specifics I can kill.’
‘We’ve been out of segmentum, but Shadrath claims intelligence is patchy. The comet leaves no witnesses to its passing,’ the Apothecary said.
‘No survivors?’
‘Some claim the comet eats worlds whole,’ Ezrachi replied, ‘others that it is responsible for some kind of rift or daemonic incursion. The Imperial Navy reports sightings of an armada trailing its tail, a Blood Crusade called the Cholercaust. The Exorcists, the Grey Knights and our cousins the Fists are rumoured to man a cordon at Vanaheim – to prevent a crusader advance on Segmentum Solar.’
Kersh’s eyes drifted down to the planet surface. Beyond the city, the necroplex of grave markers, statues and mausolea extended before being swallowed by the darkness.
‘How long until dawn?’
‘Two, perhaps three hundred hours standard. The cemetery worlders call it the Long Night.’
‘We’ve got to send word to Vanaheim,’ Kersh said. ‘We need to alert the Viper Legion on Hellionii Reticuli. The Cadians…’
‘This world’s problems have already begun,’ Ezrachi said, pointing behind the corpus-captain. Turning, Kersh took in the rising spires and towers of Obsequa City with the dome of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum topping the cathedralscape like a crown. Smoke streamed from various fires across the city while tiny sparks of las-fire could be seen flashing across the streets below. Amongst the chaos, Kersh could make out large crowds in the streets. A mortuary lighter made an unsteady take-off and blasted past the belfry at full throttle. Kersh could imagine the panic and pure havoc created on the cemetery world at the appearance of the crimson comet. Kersh made for the stairs.
‘I presume an evacuation has begun,’ the Scourge called behind him.
‘With necrofreighter captains auctioning space in their empty holds to the highest bidders,’ Ezrachi said with obvious disappointment. ‘The ruling classes and many of the priests simply abandoned world. There was little in the way of haggling – speed being of the essence.’
‘The pontifex…’
‘Remains,’ Ezrachi said. ‘He claims he won’t leave his people or sacred Certusian soil. There are, of course, many thousands of scribes and labourers without the coin to secure a passage off-world.’
‘What about the Sisters?’
‘Umberto II’s remains are too fragile to transport,’ the Apothecary explained. ‘With or without the pontifex, the Order of the August Vigil have orders to protect the Ecclesiarch’s bones. I think we can rely upon them to do that, but little else.’
Kersh stormed out of the stairwell and out onto the hermitage thoroughfare.
‘My battle-plate,’ he roared up the cloister at his serfs. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Kersh asked, holding out the crystalline wafer he’d been holding. Ezrachi took it. ‘It was placed with me as I slept.’
‘From the Emperor’s Tarot. Members of the Librarius use them,’ the Apothecary told him. Ezrachi squinted at the card. ‘The Great Eye,’ he read.