Angel of Fire

We piled out of the hatches and swarmed down the sides of the Baneblade. Even that enormous, ancient presence seemed dwarfed by the cathedral.

The air smelled of brimstone and incense and a scent I remembered well from the factorum-foundries of my youth: molten metal. A strange light glowed around everything. Our surroundings looked too bright, but sometimes shadows that should not have been there rippled across walls, as if cast by something huge moving against a light which had no source in our world. It was eerie, unnatural and disturbing. Sometimes the shadow of the Horrors was visible as if they were just about to manifest.

Over everything was an oppressive sense of the imminence of something supernatural. I felt like I was in the presence of something greater than human, much greater. I was reminded of the moment when I had confronted the Titan in the rubble of the factorum but this was a thousand times worse. The ancient warmachine had been a being compared to which I was an insect. To the thing manifesting itself now, I was a microbe.

For a brief moment, I understood why the heretics were doing this and why they were so filled with worshipful awe. How many men can say they have been in the presence of a living god? Blasphemous as it sounds, the only comparable situation I can imagine is to stand before the Tomb Throne of the Emperor on galaxy-distant Terra and gaze upon the immortal being within.

For better or worse, I can say I have stood in the presence of the divine. It was evil but it was wonderful and terrible too; the sort of experience a man might only be vouchsafed once in a lifetime and then only after a long and arduous pilgrimage.

It did not take the heretics long to recover. They came at us from many of the arched entrances to the great vestibule. Macharius ordered us to hold the line. More and more of our own troops flooded in through the broken gates and soon the hall was filled with a vast swirling conflict. We had the advantage in that we had our vehicles for cover and their anti-personnel weapons cut down the incoming heretics. Of course, sometimes it went wrong and our own men were scythed into death as well. In the Imperial Guard such things are inevitable and accepted.

Ivan and Anton crouched down beside me. ‘What are we waiting for?’ Anton asked. ‘I thought every second was vital.’

‘Ask them, not me,’ I said pointing to Macharius and Drake. The general was surrounded by his personal bodyguard of elite troops. More men and women in the robes of the Inquisition came to join Drake. I was surprised to see other people as well. The high inquisitor talked to them as if they were more than common soldiers. Some of them were garbed as privates, some as officers and some wore the clothes of local civilians. Anna was with them, garbed in some sort of greyish battle-armour that fitted her like a second skin.

I understood what was happening now. These were Drake’s agents concealed within the body of our army and the local population. If I had needed any proof of how desperate things were, this would have been it. All of these agents were hidden in place, spies among the people of the planet and our own army, reporting directly to Drake.

‘Who are they?’ Anton asked.

‘They are spies, Drake’s agents,’ I told him.

‘Psykers?’ he asked.

‘I guess.’

‘There’s a bloody lot of them,’ he said and shuddered and I knew then what he was thinking. They had been there all the time, walking among us, unknown and undetected, agents of the Inquisition, armed with supernatural powers. It was not a reassuring thought, even if they were, at a time like this, on our side. More and more warriors and psykers assembled around us.

Drake was surrounded by his own bodyguard now. They seemed to appear out of nowhere but obviously had arrived with the main body of our troops. They were hard, competent-looking men in heavy carapace armour I associated with shock troops and storm troopers. They did not have the insignia of any regiment I knew though which was ominous enough. They were armed with lasguns bigger and heavier than ours. They glanced warily about, looking for threats. Somehow they managed to interpose themselves between Drake and his surroundings without ever appearing to. One of them saw me looking and glared at me hard. I smiled at him just to be annoying. Beyond him I could see Anna talking with Drake. The inquisitor looked distracted. She looked as calm as she ever did.

Macharius clambered onto the side of our Baneblade, and looking at him I remembered the speech he had given what seemed like so long ago when we had first arrived on Karsk and thought about how much had changed since then. There was a light about him now it seemed. It might have just been a trick of the light or some eddy current of the strange sorceries that were being woven around us, but he looked like something greater than human.

This time there was no technical engine of the Adeptus Mechanicus to amplify his voice and form. This time there was just him. He stood there, chainsword raised in his fist, and he addressed us. He had that trick of being able to speak as powerfully as a great actor filling an amphitheatre even with his own voice.

‘This is the hour,’ he said. ‘The forces of evil and heresy threaten to engulf this world. We will not let them!

‘We will show these daemon worshippers how men can fight and if need be how men can die!’

His voice had a rasping metallic ring to it now. Every man there strained to hear.

‘Above us, false men seek to summon a false god! They have been deluded by their own evil and their own lies. If they succeed, they will bring only darkness and inevitable retribution and death to all who dwell here. We shall not let them succeed. We shall climb into the very heavens if need be and tear down their false idol and overthrow the dark thing they worship and we shall bring the light of the Emperor’s Truth to this benighted world.’

He believed every word of it and in that moment so did we. We felt the righteousness of our cause and the necessity of our victory.

‘Onwards, men! For the Emperor. Smite the heretic! Follow me. To victory!’

There was nothing else for it but to follow him into the depths of the cathedral. We would have followed him then if he was leading us towards the depths of hell. It was just as well really, for that was exactly where we were going.

Step by weary step we fought our way upwards. Rivers of blood flowed down the stairs, turning them into crimson waterfalls. Burned meat and ruined flesh formed barricades built of corpses.

The heretics opposed our every footfall. They died in their thousands, throwing themselves in our way, being burned down by las-fire or blown asunder by frag grenades. They took their toll on our men, killing almost as many as they lost. More and more of our lads flooded in behind us. I could only pray that enough of them had made it to the city to keep the flow of reinforcements coming.

The air shimmered and one of those rainbow whirlpools appeared. Out of it erupted a horde of the pink-skinned Horrors we had encountered earlier, blasting flame out of their enormous fanged mouths, tearing men asunder with long, clawed fingers. The psykers around Drake responded with a surge of power and the vortex swirled shut. The daemons became marginally less stable-looking, one or two of them seemed to turn sideways on and vanish. The rest we swarmed into, shooting and stabbing. The storm troopers around Drake blasted with those heavy guns of theirs. A Horror bounded right up to me and opened its mouth to incinerate me. I stuck the shotgun in and pulled the trigger. Its rubbery flesh seemed to resist the shot. It expanded like a balloon for a moment under the force of the shot and only once it had become almost half again the size it had been did it burst. I half-expected it to explode but it did not. It mostly vanished leaving only traces of slime and a foul smell and a hail of shotgun pellets falling suddenly to earth.

Macharius swept past me along with Anton and Ivan and a group of square-jawed troopers. I raced to catch up and dived once more into the maelstrom of battle.

I was glad that there were no priests facing us. Then I thought about where they must be and what they were doing and my gladness gave way to fear.

The temperature was rising. My throat felt parched. My skin felt as if it might crack. It was a by-product of the evil magic swirling around us.

One of the psykers blasted a swathe of heretics aside with some sort of mystical bolt. Drake shouted, ‘Save your strength! We shall have better use of it soon!’

The psyker nodded abashed. It was the last help of that sort we saw. It was all down to the main strength of the Imperial Guard now.

Macharius led us, speaking calmly, exhorting us to greater efforts, blasting with his bolt pistol and slashing any enemy who got within reach with his chainsword. He was worth a company of men alone just for his physical prowess. The inspiration the sight of him brought was worth much more.

Striding towards a manifesting daemon, he looked certain of his righteousness and utterly confident of victory. He moved through the combat as if nothing could touch him, and nothing did. I have often wondered if Drake wove some sort of spell around him that day to prevent heretic fire from harming him. It seems like the only explanation to me. I have never seen any man walk as boldly across a battlefield. Macharius marched as if he believed he was invincible and we followed him as if he was.

Under his Lion banner and the banners of our regiments we fought and died. Metre by bloody metre, step by bloody step we made our way up the inlaid marble steps into the heart of the cathedral and the horror waiting for us there.

Ahead of us I could hear what sounded like a choir of possessed angels. The hymn was beautiful, haunting and terrifying. The words echoed inside my skull, singing the praises of the Angel of Fire, telling of his glories and the way he would reward his worshippers and punish those who opposed him. It should have sounded like an evil parody of Imperial liturgy but it did not. It sounded as if the singers believed utterly in the truth of the words, which I suppose they did.

It was all in dire contrast to the bloody work we were doing as we fought our way into the inner sanctum. It was in a space so packed with bodies that we were reduced to hand-to-hand fighting. The heretics fought with all the fanaticism of zealots defending sacred soil. We smashed them down in the name of Macharius and the Emperor.

The Sons of the Flame fought us every metre of the way. I clubbed one down with the butt of my shotgun, cleared another few packed metres of space by pulling the trigger and sending some more heretics to hell. Macharius chopped down more with his chainsword.

And then we were within the sanctum itself. It had been repaired from our previous visitation but not completely. Scorch marks covered the walls and floors. The lectern was still there though, as was that massive statue of the Angel in all its glory but it was no longer the focus of attention.

Ahead of us were massed ranks of priests chanting and singing their awful hymn. In front of them stood their High Priest, the focus of the whole devilish ritual. It was not he who commanded our sight though. It was the Angel. It had already manifested under the vast vaulted roof. The hanging banners already smoked and burned in contact with its burning wings. Around it everything seemed to shimmer.

It towered above us, seemingly a hundred times the height of a man. It looked bigger, as if something infinite were compressing itself into the tiny space available in our world. It came from somewhere else where its size had no limit or meaning. In my mind I imagined it larger than a planet, able to hold a whole world in its beautiful clawed hand. Its skin was the colour of bronze. Its robe was shimmering white. Its face was beautiful. Its eyes were filled with fire. Its wings billowed from its back in a cloud of gaseous plasma. It seemed immense but not yet solid. All of the flames in the temple twisted towards it, dancing worshippers genuflecting to their god.

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.