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Black Library Celebration 2025 – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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VISAGE

RICH McCORMICK

The skull glistened in the gloom of the apothecarion. White bone protruded from red meat, high cheekbones and a jutting chin forming islands amidst the sea of gore. Once, these islands had been hidden by tanned skin, itself decorated with a spidery scrawl of tattoos, but that skin had been roughly flayed from the flesh beneath by Horus Lupercal, and lay now on the cold decking of the Warmaster’s flagship.

Erebus – First Chaplain of the Word Bearers Legion, Dark Apostle of the Pantheon, and the sufferer of Horus’ punishment – was unconscious. So the devices attached to his body reported, anyway, but even as his acolytes and assistants worked to stabilise the massive Space Marine, his lidless eyes swivelled in their sockets, fixing the mortals with frenzied glares.

‘Primary heart rate spiking,’ a hooded figure reported.

‘Administering sedative,’ the lead chirurgeon intoned in response. His voice belied his age: he was young, having risen through the clandestine ranks of the Word Bearers’ medicae serfs, before being hand-picked by Erebus himself to join his surgical staff. The First Chaplain did not trust his Legion’s own Apothecaries as a rule, expecting – with just cause – that they may take any opportunity to kill him.

‘Secondary heart rate spiking,’ the hooded figure intoned again, with the cadence of a call to prayer.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ the lead chirurgeon said. ‘Acolyte Tournel, prepare a second–’

The rest of the sentence died in his throat as a massive hand took his neck in a vice grip. He followed the muscular arm up, and found himself staring into the bloodshot eyeballs of a now very much awake Erebus.

‘My… lord…’ the chirurgeon managed through a constricted windpipe. ‘I am pleased… to see you have stabilised.’ He squawked – an attempt at a breath – as his face reddened to the colour of the XVII Legion’s armour. ‘Please… rest… that we may begin the process of repairing your wounds.’

Erebus’ lipless mouth was locked in a rictus grin, as if he found the situation perversely amusing.

‘No time,’ the Dark Apostle said, tendons in his cheeks visible as they worked his mouth and tongue. ‘The athame leaves its mark on those it touches.’ He raised the dagger, still clutched in his left hand, its edge hissing gently even now with its master’s own blood. ‘It is simple, chirurgeon. I need a new face,’ Erebus said, as he pulled the man closer to the ruined mask of his own. The chirurgeon could smell the Dark Apostle’s breath, hot and rancid, even over the metallic stench of blood. ‘I will take yours,’ Erebus growled.

‘But, my lord,’ the chirurgeon stammered, falling backwards as Erebus loosened his grip on his neck. He rubbed at his throat, his voice still hoarse. ‘I fear such a procedure would kill me.’

‘Then you must give thanks to the gods directly,’ Erebus said conversationally to the cowering man as he sat up on the stone slab. ‘That your sacrifice may be in my name.’

The chirurgeon screamed as his fellows grabbed him from behind, restraining his arms and binding his kicking legs with a length of surgical hose. They pinned the man to the floor of the apothecarion, and Erebus heard the wet sounds of sharp metal on human flesh. The shrieks of panic turned into gurgles of agony, and when the figures reappeared, they held a scrap of olive-brown skin, raising it aloft like a hunting trophy.

Erebus examined it. It lacked the full range of intricate tattoos that had decorated his own face, but he could address that later. He could feel the athame’s effects coursing through his body: a grave-cold touch flash-freezing nerve endings as it slowly severed his physical connection to reality.

The mutilation was symbolic, as well as agonising. Stripped of his face, he was stripped also of its web of warding tattoos. Between the athame’s wounds and the constant attention of the Neverborn that he attracted, Erebus knew enough of the diabolic to understand that waiting much longer without those wards would put his life in jeopardy.

This solution would not last – a mortal’s face was not only physically smaller than a Space Marine’s, but also lacked the dense web of blood vessels – but Erebus had ensured that his acolytes were all marked with the same basic warding tattoos as he had been. The face would buy him the time to craft a more fitting solution. Perhaps he could even coerce Fabius to help him, he thought; the Chief Apothecary of the III was a skilled fleshcrafter.

‘Hurry,’ the Dark Apostle said, as he repositioned himself on the slab. The chirurgeons loomed over him. Their own faces were largely hidden, hooded by cowls and covered by masks, but he could see the fear in their eyes. He saw himself reflected in the lenses of their ocular implants – a visage from human nightmares – and he laughed.

He was still laughing as the chirurgeons placed the new face, still warm from its previous owner, onto his mutilated skull.

Bloody skin covered his eyes for a moment – a forced blink that marked Erebus’ first since Horus had meted out his punishment – but the apothecarion came into focus a moment later as the chirurgeons brought the scrap of skin into alignment. Needles kissed skin, their burrowing tips bringing fresh pricks of pain to the abused flesh. Gossamer-thin thread tied the new skin in place, expert hands blessing the sutures in the name of the gods as they were being made.

For a moment, as the last needle left his body, there was no pain. Erebus allowed his hand to move to his new face, and touched its skin. It was too tight, already splitting along lines of pressure, the capillaries and blood vessels strained to bursting. Erebus smiled, or tried to; his new lips could not move.

‘Behold,’ he said. ‘The new face of your–’

Erebus screamed as his face caught fire. Black flame sparked under the new skin, turning fat and flesh to ash in an instant, a total rejection of the unwilling donor’s gift. The Dark Apostle clawed at his skull, tearing stitches and skin alike as he fought to free himself from the torture.

‘Too late!’ Erebus howled, and he ran from the agony, springing from the stone slab and staggering out of the apothecarion, still scraping with wild fingers at his flaming skull.

‘Master!’ a chirurgeon called after him. The others stood still, their robes splashed with gore, too stunned by the horrific scene to know what to do.

Erebus staggered through the halls of his own ship, making for his chambers. There was only one option remaining to the First Chaplain. Bloody handprints daubed the walls, their rich redness energising the Colchisian script carved into every wall and fresco.

The font was ancient, a Colchisian relic of the old faith. The blood it contained was old, too, but it was liquid still, its unique properties sparing it from congealing over the years. It was powerful, this blood. It represented the profits of treachery, having been collected from the first loyalists to die on the blighted world of Isstvan III.

Erebus looked into its depths, and saw his face reflected in its glossy surface. This was not the screaming skull he wore in the physical plane, but a countenance split in four: just as he had seen in the cracked mirror as a child on Colchis. The Pantheon, represented through him. He carried out their will – he was their hand of destiny – and they in turn would help him.

Speaking words of beseechment and protection, Erebus submerged his face into the blood, and all became red.

Red faded to black. For the first time since his mutilation, Erebus was engulfed by blessed darkness. He savoured it for a time, the cleansing balm of absolution, until his reverie was interrupted by a pinprick of light.

One at first: bright and blue, it shone like a star. Then another, and another, until the blackness was scattered with tiny lights, like a million shining eyes.

They blinked. They were watching him.

He hung in the blackness, suspended, the pain of his ruined face forgotten, and asked the question.

‘What do you want from me?’

The answer was spoken by a million throats at once, in languages both dead and yet to be. The words ran backwards and forwards, their utterance guttural, shrill, and everything in between. Still, he understood their meaning.

Choose your path, the eyes said.

Possibility spread out in front of him like a web, the eye-lights joined now by thin strands of fate and happenstance. They connected across time and space, through reality and unreality, offering a billion versions of things to come. Erebus had but to follow these threads to see that which he desired most.

‘You seek to contain me in a trap of my own making. I know this trick, daemon. I have walked such paths many times before, with others of your kind,’ Erebus said.

No trick, the voices chorused in return. A path to what might be – a path to what has come. We can show you the possibilities, but you must make the choice. You are the instrument.

‘Entertain me, then. How will I play your game?’ Erebus asked.

The answer was physical. Pain wracked his body as bones grew and muscle ripped. His ribs cracked and his skin tore, and from his shoulder blades, great wings pushed forth.

Erebus shook the gore and ichor from his new wings, allowing the light of the eyes to warm them. He felt his own blood pumping through their veins, until he could unfurl them, wide and powerful. He felt as if he were Sanguinius, an angel from legend, but where the primarch of the Blood Angels bore wings of the purest white, Erebus’ new limbs writhed with the colours of the cosmos. Bolts and sparks of blues and greens coruscated along their length, illuminating a patchwork of pink-brown membranes and feathers coloured yellow and orange. Liquid gold flowed between the feathers, solidifying to form arcane symbols and runes, before melting again to form new shapes that even Erebus, with his knowledge of the diabolic, did not recognise.

Choose your path, the eyes said again.

And so he flew on avian wings towards the lights. Erebus made for a reddish speck, and found his feet amidst the sand of an endless desert. Oppressive heat beat down on his shaven head, signalling the height of Long Noon.

You know this place, the eyes said.

‘Of course I recognise Colchis,’ Erebus replied. ‘The world of my birth.’ He had no lips to shape his words, but his voice came as a youth’s, high and soft. It was his own voice, he realised, untainted by the genetic and surgical manipulations that had turned him into one of the Emperor’s warriors. He looked down at his hands, and saw them small and weak, his skin not yet marked with the ink that would cover his physical form.

They were still powerful, though, these hands. He saw them clenched tight around a garrotte; the taut wire wrapped around the neck of another youth. He was Erebus, this boy – the Erebus from whom he would take his name – and he was dying. As the brightness faded from his eyes, his arms slackened, and he slumped to the ground. With his dying breath, he passed his name to his killer, and Erebus stood on the sands of his home world.

Your choice, the eyes said. Your first, to set you on your path.

‘Not my first,’ Erebus sneered.

Click here to buy Black Library Celebration 2025.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Visage’, ‘The One Road’, ‘Web of Ruin’ and ‘The Long Promise’ first published digitally in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Jodie Muir.

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ISBN: 978-1-80407-857-0

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