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Consecrated Ground – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Consecrated Ground

Steven B Fischer

Blood pools atop the holy, golden aquila inlaid upon the chapel’s onyx floor – a crimson stain spreading across its polished black surface like the scar that mars the God-Emperor’s galaxy. It is an ill omen if I have ever seen one.

Beside me, Brother-Chaplain Dant falls to his knees before the small sanctum’s altar. The reliquaries bound with consecrated golden cord to his black power armour rustle gently with the gesture. His lips move, though he is silent, whether so enraged by the obscenity of this scene that he cannot speak, or merely lost in prayer and meditation, as he is wont to be more and more in these dark days. With reverence, he unclasps the skull chained around his neck and begins the Sanctification of the Dying. Alvus, my stalwart Apothecary, surveys the flayed corpse atop the desecrated altar.

‘This is a soiled world indeed, Brother Emeric,’ he growls, ‘if the enemies of the Throne are so emboldened they perform such atrocities on consecrated ground.’

I nod grimly and mutter my own prayer for the dead ecclesiarch’s soul as I step up beside him. The priest’s body is scarcely recognisable as human in the mess of flesh and offal he has become. His skin is flayed from head to toe, his entrails arranged in a grisly, indecipherable pattern.

‘Burn it,’ I call to the Neophytes at my back. Flamers roar to life at my command, engulfing the chamber in purifying fire.

Serraq’s Reach. Jewel of the Iliena Subsector. A swarming, boiling corpse of a hive world, ruled by an unworthy, privileged fool. It has been decades since I set foot on this depraved planet, but the stench of its rot has only grown stronger, as has my revulsion for its decadent aristocracy, picking like bloated carrion-fowl at the corpse of the world they were entrusted to rule. If not for the debt of honour my Chapter holds to the lord governor’s great-grandsire, I would have called myself blessed to never return.

But Marshal Laise’s orders had been explicit.

Do not linger on that broken world, Brother Emeric. Fulfil the lord governor’s request for aid, and burn out the cult she claims threatens her peace. Then return. The crusade cannot spare you for long, castellan.

Castellan. The title feels strange to me, even in memory. Too fresh to be comfortable upon my shoulders, like the first time I wore my sacred power armour.

Rainbow-hued light fills the defiled shrine, flickering off a roof of the finest glassaic – a literal vision of the God-Emperor staring down over this abomination. I cannot fix this world. But perhaps, by His grace, I can purge it of one evil.

Flame swallows the sanctum and the despoiled altar, the priest’s corpse crackling and hissing as his skin turns to ash.

‘He was a loyal servant of the God-Emperor,’ Brother-Apothecary Alvus remarks. ‘Murdered first, then skinned. The purity of his soul shall usher in the reconsecration of this ground.’

I grunt. ‘He was dead before he was mutilated, and therefore no use to any true servant of the Archenemy. What is more, the sacred relics and liturgical instruments that should adorn this chamber have been removed.’

Alvus nods. ‘A poor effort by perpetrators of common theft and murder to place the guilt of their sins upon more conspicuous transgressors.’

I turn from the altar and towards the door. Despite a week on this world, my fighting company has had no success hunting the cult we pursue. They have decimated a dozen of the lord governor’s patrols in that span, then vanished like a shadow at the breaking of dawn.

‘This seems another trail that leads us nowhere,’ I say.

A figure stands in the gloom outside the chapel, and my hand falls unbidden to the power sword at my waist. Penitence drinks in the light of the conflagration and hums in my gauntleted grasp. Stepping from the blaze into the empty cold of the city, I face the interloper.

He stands half my height, short even for a mortal human, and wears his scalp bald and dyed a deep azure in the fashion of this system. A rusting bionic sits beside his single natural eye, and his left arm has been replaced by a prosthetic of marginal quality. A brutal shock maul and short-barrelled projectile shotgun hang from his belt, though he makes no move towards either.

‘My lord,’ he calls out before I reach him.

I stay my blade out of curiosity. ‘These grounds are shut.’

The man trembles slightly, and I hear his heart hammer within his chest, but he masters his fear and holds it from his voice when he speaks.

‘This is my stack, my lord, and therefore my jurisdiction.’

He moves aside, the silver crest of the local Enforcers flashing on the lapel of his grey leather jacket. Beside him, a dark icon is scribed upon the chapel’s stone exterior. A black silhouette stares down at me, roughly the shape of a man but winged, with a gleaming star at the centre of its chest. A coil of chain lies broken beneath its feet, masking an inlaid litany that is no longer legible.

‘Vice-Regulator Kendam Ranp, my lord,’ the enforcer says by way of introduction. ‘There’s only one gang in this sub-stack bold and stupid enough to crack a priest and try to blame it on cultists. But they got their iconography right, and that alone is cause for concern.’

Penitence dances in my hand, a dimly flickering shard of retribution in the near-black. This blade has been held by Black Templars for so long that it scarcely needs my direction at all. The weapon is a thousand years old, at least, and has been borne by more than a dozen of my brothers before me.

I breach a narrow doorway in the dilapidated habitation stack, my pauldron shattering its decaying frame. I raise my storm shield and feel the soft shudder of repeated impacts. A moment later, two weapons fall to the floor, as do their wielders’ hands as Penitence sings.

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