The citadel and the quay at its base were the only man-made structures on Damesek. The quay remained mostly intact, but the citadel was a ruined holdfast constructed in an earlier epoch around a solitary basalt peak. The pale stone of its construction was not native to the region, and the monumental effort it must have taken the pre-technological inhabitants of Molech to bring it here was beyond belief.
One of the planet’s oldest legends told of a mythical figure known as the Stormlord. Where he walked, thunder followed, and his Fulgurine Path had once been a pilgrim route across the landscape. The last portion of that route led to this peak, where the Stormlord had ascended on a bolt of lightning to the celestial ark that brought him to Molech.
Before the dismantling of the Blood Angels Librarius, Drazen had studied a great many such legends in search of the truth behind them, and this was a myth dismissed as allegory by most of Molech’s people.
Most, but not all.
A determined cadre of mendicants whose number dwindled with every passing generation still dwelled in the lower portions of the citadel, subsisting on the alms and offerings left by curious folk who came to gawp at the ruins.
Drazen Acorah first laid eyes on the citadel almost two years ago, and had trained here many times with Captain Salicar and the Bloodsworn. He found much to admire in the malnourished men and women who subsisted in the ruins of this barren coastline.
Like the Bloodsworn, they cleaved to a duty that appeared to serve little purpose, but would never dream of abandoning. They no longer called themselves priests – such a term was dangerous in this age of reason – but the word was appropriate.
There was something tangible in the air here. Not so long ago, Acorah might have openly called it ethereal. But like the azure of the Librarius he had once proudly worn, words like that had been cast aside. The citadel’s stones whispered of something incredible, something he had never felt before, and only with difficulty did he resist stretching out his senses to listen to their secrets.
Eighty-three chosen warriors of the IX Legion fought sparring bouts under the uncompromising gaze of Agana Serkan, their black-armoured Warden. These warriors were among the Legion’s best, hand-picked by Sanguinius to stand as his proxies. Commanded by the Emperor Himself, the Blood Angels had sent a Bloodsworn warrior band to Molech for over a century. As great an honour as it was to serve a direct command of the Master of Mankind, its members were distraught at being denied the chance to fight alongside their primarch against the hated nephilim in the Signus Cluster.
Acorah shared their dismay, but no force in the universe would compel him to break his vow of duty. Salicar had accepted a crimson grail filled with the mingled vitae of the previous Bloodsworn band of Captain Akeldama. Salicar and each of his warriors had drunk from the grail, releasing their predecessors from their oath before refilling it with their own blood to swear another.
He put aside memories of his arrival on Molech and walked to the edge of the quayside. Ocean-going vessels had once braved treacherous seas to bring pilgrims to this place, but many centuries had passed since any vessel had taken moorings here.
The mendicant priests that constantly fussed around them parted to make way for him. Fully armoured in his blood-red battleplate, even the tallest of them barely reached to the base of Acorah’s shoulder guard. They were in awe of him, but their fear kept them distant and Acorah was glad.
Their fear left a bilious taste in his mouth.
They didn’t like that Salicar regularly climbed the tallest tower, but that didn’t stop the captain. They couldn’t voice their objections in terms of blasphemy or desecration and instead cited the instability of its remains.
Acorah heard one of the mendicants gasp in terror and shielded his eyes as he turned his gaze to the top of the tower.
He already knew what he would see.
Vitus Salicar arced outwards from the summit of the tower, his outstretched arms haloed by the sunset like the pinions of a reborn phoenix.
Acorah blinked as Salicar’s body was flickeringly overlaid with vivid imagery: a red gold angel plummeting in fire; a comely youth borne aloft on disintegrating wings; a reckless son careening across the sky on a sun-chariot.
He tasted ash and soured meat, and bit back the urge to let his psyker power move through him as it once had so freely. He spat bile as Salicar plunged into a rocky basin of deep water the surge tide had filled only a fraction of a second before.
The water swept back, revealing his captain kneeling on the black rock between a pair of spear-like stalagmites. Salicar’s head was down, and when he stood upright, Acorah saw the same fatalistic expression he had worn since their return from the Preceptory Line.
Before the waters could rush in and fill the pool again, Salicar jogged over to the quayside and sprang upwards. Acorah knelt and grabbed his captain’s hand, pulling him up. Denied its bounty, the water boomed angrily against the stonework, showering them both with cold spume.
‘Satisfied now?’ he asked, as Salicar spat a mouthful of seawater.
Salicar nodded. ‘Until the next time.’
‘A less understanding man might say you had a death wish.’
‘I do not wish death,’ said Salicar.
Acorah looked back up the length of the tower.
‘Then why do you insist on taking such needless risks?’
‘For the challenge, Drazen,’ said Salicar, moving off towards the fighting men of the Bloodsworn. ‘If I’m not challenged, I grow stale. We all do. That’s why I come here.’
‘And that’s the only reason?’
‘No,’ said Salicar, but did not elaborate.
Acorah felt the tips of his fingers tingle with the desire to wield powers now decreed unnatural. How easy it would be to divine the captain’s true motivations, but another oath bound him against such a course.
They came to where the Legion thralls had placed Salicar’s battle armour, a master-worked suit of crimson plate, golden wings and black trim. His swords hung from a belt of tan leather and his gold-chased pistol was mag-locked in a thigh holster. His helm was a jade funerary mask, as empty of expression as an automaton’s.
‘The mendicants would rather you didn’t climb the tower,’ he said, as Salicar picked up a towel and began to dry himself.
‘They’re afraid I’ll hurt myself?’
‘I think it’s more the tower they’re concerned with.’
Salicar shook his head. ‘It’ll outlast us all.’
‘Not if you keep knocking bits of it loose,’ pointed out Acorah.
‘You fuss around me like a fawning thrall,’ said Salicar.
‘Someone has to,’ said Acorah, as Salicar looped a pair of glittering ident-tags around his neck. Even without his transhuman senses, it was impossible to miss the blood flecks on them.
‘Is it wise to keep those?’ he asked.
Salicar was instantly hostile.
‘Not wise, but necessary. Their blood is on our hands.’
‘We don’t know what happened that day,’ said Acorah, pushing against the nightmarish memory of awakening from a fugue state to find himself surrounded by corpses. ‘None of us do, but if there is guilt, it is shared by us all equally.’
‘I am captain of the Bloodsworn,’ said Salicar. ‘If the burden of guilt is not mine to bear, then whose?’
Yasu Nagasena’s mountainside villa had been extended several times in the last year, with numerous annexes, subterranean chambers and technological additions. It had originally been designed as a place of retreat and reflection, but had become an unofficial base of operations for many of the Sigillite’s operatives.
Instead of a place of solace for those who came here, it was often the last place on Terra they ever saw. Nagasena himself was in absentia on yet another hunt, and Loken’s pathfinders had taken up residence.