The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,57
crossed. A priest stumbled past me, his eyes bleeding, seemingly blinded. Others were surging up towards the altar dais, screaming. A penitent engine walker, greatest and most grotesque of the creations of the Ecclesiarchy’s militant arm, limped down the nave with its flamers activated, but it was hampered by the press of bodies around it. I caught a glimpse of bald-headed prophets in rags occupying the pulpits and calling down the End Times.
It was demented. No prayers were being said; the congregations were swilling around like dumb animals, lost on a tide of psychic fear. Amid all the confusion, ignored by all, something was taking shape over the altar. The air seemed thicker, more viscous, and it was rapidly curdling into something solid.
I kicked through the altar railings and strode up the steps. One of many reliquaries hung over the altar-top – a crystal casket lined with blackened gold the length of a mortal man, chained heavily and covered in tatters of devotional prayer-strips. The casket was vibrating wildly, yanking against its bonds. Its transparent faces were cracked, and a thin whine emanated from it like glass placed under high pressure.
A priest crawled up to me, his face covered in blood. ‘It… it…’ he gasped, sinking to his knees, gesturing weakly to the vibrating reliquary.
They couldn’t get near it. The dais was already littered with dead or dying clerics, and blood was running down the marble steps in dark rivulets. I could hear something scratching. The air over the altar became thicker.
I activated Gnosis’ energy field, and the snarl of plasma reacted wildly. The casket caught on its chains and shook violently. I looked inside the crystal and saw a sword suspended within – a relic of some saint imbued with ancient power, venerated no doubt for millennia but now acting as the conduit for something even older.
I could sense the veil thinning rapidly, ready to be torn aside like so much gauze. I swung Gnosis two-handed, shattering the casket in a flash and a shriek of released energy. The entire nave shook, rocked by the shock wave, and the sword spun clear of its bonds, scything round to point itself at me. I had the fleeting impression of something reaching to grasp it – a tall creature with an animal’s grin under a crown of horns.
I thrust Gnosis into the apparition’s heart, and the vision annihilated, blowing apart into a whirl of glistening teardrops. The sword clattered to the marble, flexing as the steel face hit. I heard the echo of a howl, then a choir of broken laughter.
‘I was first, though,’ I heard, like a hissed breath echoing around the nave. ‘First of Many.’
Clanging echoes died away. The tumult in the nave went on unabated, but the aroma of madness at the altar faded.
I knew what I had seen. The daemon had almost entered the world of flesh, just a breath away from becoming real. Whatever resonance it had taken on had been connected to the relic, stored here under the watch of the Ministorum for generations.
I looked down at the blade. The metal was still hot, but cooling now. A terrified cleric approached it warily, holding up his staff as if it could protect him.
‘Leave it,’ I commanded, drawing closer to the fell blade. I could see writing etched along the steel in a language I did not understand. I guessed that it hadn’t been there before.
This was Terra. This was the shrine world of the Imperium and the temporal seat of the Master of Mankind. For all its corruption and all its many sins, there had not been daemonkind treading on this world since the cataclysm of the Great Heresy. Powerful wards had been constructed since then, consecrated and renewed by each generation, tended by an entire culture geared to endlessly watch the dark. It shouldn’t have been possible, not here, not under the gaze of so many priests and saints and Ordo Hereticus agents.
The world was awry, cast loose from its moorings.
The thing could not remain here, lost amid these crowds of half-mad and terror-stupid. I took it up, knowing the danger, and felt its wasp-sting touch even through the auramite of my gauntlets.
In the blink of an eye, I saw another reality. I saw the skies torn open and legions of the Neverborn striding across the burning arc of Terra’s ruins. I saw the Imperial Palace besieged as it had once been before, and heard the soul-scraping cry of vendetta tear the wind, and