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Repentia – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Repentia

Alec Worley

The nameless warrior felt the rock crack beneath her armoured boots. She grabbed the ridge above her as chunks of stone tumbled away below, leaving her entire weight suspended from the fingers of one hand. Cold terror bolted through her as she looked down past her flailing legs. Torrents of water surged around her, merging into white spray as they gushed down the face of the black cliff, feeding the misty rapids hundreds of feet below. The distant river zigzagged through jagged rocks before disappearing into the jungle, where myriad scavengers would feed upon her shattered remains. This was the land that had devoured her Sisters; now it waited to receive her too.

Strong hands seized the warrior’s wrist just as she felt her fingers slipping upon the wet rock. Her fellow Sister Repentia squatted above her, bare limbs glossy with spray, bunched muscles bound with crimson rags fluttering in the wind. The older woman glared down at her comrade, grimacing from behind her executioner’s hood, the symbolic veil of the penitent. Starved ribs heaved at her sides, and she adjusted her footing as she struggled to haul the younger Repentia up onto the safety of the ledge.

‘Give me your other hand, Sister,’ she barked.

The brutal weight of the Eviscerator chainsword strapped to the younger warrior’s back threatened to drag her from her saviour’s grip. The Sisterhood of the Repentia wore no harness on which to maglock their Order’s weapon of choice; the sword was their burden, both a reminder of their shame and a promise of redemption to come. The younger warrior knew she could save herself by simply undoing the knotted rags that bound the immense weapon to her back. But she would sooner relieve herself of a limb than cast off her sacred armament.

She fumbled with the pouch on her belt as the older warrior yelled over the booming water. ‘Sister! What are you doing?’

The younger warrior retrieved an ancient book, the size of a data-slate, its tattered pages bound in battered iron. Feeling herself slipping from her comrade’s grasp, she thrust the relic up towards the older warrior.

‘Take it,’ she gasped.

The other Repentia snatched her outstretched hand at the wrist.

‘You are not dead yet, little Sister.’

She raised herself with a roar, lifting the younger Repentia within reach of the ledge. Her comrade clambered to safety, and they both fell onto their backs, panting like hounds. The younger warrior lay there, shivering with adrenaline. She didn’t thank her fellow Repentia; she had done so often enough these past weeks that her gratitude was by now a given.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said the older warrior, her eyes smiling as she pointed to the mouth of a small cave beside them. ‘These cliffs are riddled with passages. We can reach the nest from here, I’m sure of it.’

The younger Repentia felt too exhausted to move, overwhelmed by aching hunger once again. She got to her knees, still panting, and again offered the ancient book to the other Repentia.

‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘You’ll live to see the rescue ship, I assure you, Sister,’ said the older warrior.

The other Repentia gave her a sour look. ‘We’ve both lived long enough under the Oath to know that you can make no such guarantee. You know this world far better than I. Take the book.’

‘I’m fortunate to have studied the worlds in this system,’ said the older warrior. ‘I’m even more fortunate to have remembered half of it.’

‘Please.’

‘I am merely lucky,’ said the older warrior, kneeling beside her comrade. ‘Whereas you have been blessed.’ She pressed the book back into the younger Repentia’s arms. ‘You found it, Sister, you carved through packs of xenos predators to retrieve it from a swamp-drowned shrine. The Scriptures of Arch-Confessor Maxus Hurn, a relic lost for aeons. And you shall be the one to hand this prize to the canoness upon our return. Beneficia tuum numerare, little Sister. Treasure every blessing.’

The younger Repentia looked out from the cliff, blinking through the booming spray. She felt ghostly with hunger as she gazed over the jungle sweltering beneath a flawless blue sky. As she stared, the horizon tilted, treetops whirled below, the emerald ocean pulling her into the depths of this primeval world, drowning her in the enormity of what she had achieved. She steadied herself, running her quivering fingers over the hieroglyphs etched into the cover of the ancient book.

‘How many of us did they send to find this?’ she said absently.

The older warrior sighed, her famished belly gurgling. ‘A great many, I imagine. The Ecclesiarchy pinpointed this world as its most likely resting place, but they didn’t have exact coordinates. That book could have been disintegrating at the bottom of an ocean for all they knew.’

‘And yet here it is.’ The Repentia squeezed the book, as if to assure herself of its reality.

The older warrior patted her shoulder. ‘Who better than the faithful to go hunting for a miracle, eh? Now, come.’

She went to help the Repentia to her feet, but the younger warrior bowed her head in prayer.

‘A spiritu dominatus,

‘Domine, libra nos.

‘From darkness shall your light guide me.’

The older warrior growled. ‘Our Mistress of Repentance is no longer here to lash us for failing to carry out every last observance. Right now, you need food more than prayer, little Sister.’

‘From hopelessness shall faith deliver me,’ she continued.

‘From weakness shall your spirit strengthen me,

‘From despairing solitude shall the martyrs countless escort me.’

The younger Repentia made the sign of the aquila, feeling the eyes of her companion upon her.

‘My old canoness once delivered a sermon upon that very prayer,’ said the older warrior. ‘Shortly before I…’ She swallowed. ‘Before I took the Oath. She told us that dogma was a formidable ally, that repetition strengthens one’s resolve, but the Adepta Sororitas are not machines.’

The younger Repentia wiped her face and looked up.

‘We are not servitors,’ said her comrade. ‘We are not Space Marines, bolstered by implants and augmentia. We are human, and the God-Emperor inhabits our bodies as surely as He does our spirits. Through the yearnings of blood and heart and sinew, He speaks truths that can save us. Humanity is not a weakness, little Sister. We must know when to trust our flaws.’

‘I cannot speak for you,’ said the younger Repentia, her gaze unyielding. ‘But weakness has brought me nothing but disgrace, and exile from the Sororitas. We are Repentia, are we not? Our flaws are what got us here.’

‘Aye,’ said the older warrior. ‘And our flaws may yet get us out.’

With a growl, the younger Repentia sprang to her feet, slamming her startled comrade within the mouth of the cave. Seconds later, a huge shadow slid over the rocks and a rush of air hissed over the huddled warriors. A huge reptile soared close overhead, its immense bat-like wings easily the span of a Thunderhawk. It joined several others, screeching as they circled the jungle in search of prey.

The Repentia slid the book back into the pouch at her hip and grumbled at her comrade. ‘Are you certain we’re safe up here?’

‘We’re safer, certainly. Now that we’re out of the marshes. If I recall my studies correctly, there are worse things in the trees down there than there are up here. Those winged creatures – azachtera xenopteryx – leave their nests just after dawn, and their eggs shall make a welcome change from eating grubs and beetles. Follow me.’

The Sisters Repentia entered the cave and clambered up a rocky tunnel, water dripping from above, trickling down their backs, glistening under their feet. They passed caverns and passages illumined by stray beams of sunlight, the cloying smell of ammonia growing stronger as they climbed.

‘We’re close,’ coughed the older Repentia as the tunnel widened. ‘They say Maxus Hurn could summon unbreakable courage with the poetry of his sermons, turn the tide of battle against hopeless odds. Is there anything in that book that could help us with this smell?’

The younger warrior smirked, despite herself. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, forcing herself not to gag upon the suffocating stench. ‘But, alas, it will take the Orders Dialogus years to piece together a translation, and I doubt we can hold our breath for that long.’

Her comrade fell before her, cursing amid a flurry of crumbling rock. The younger Repentia scrambled to the mouth of the tunnel and looked out. Her comrade had slipped down a bank of loose rocks and into a huge cavern, open to the sky, its floor a swamp of reeking guano. Her hand on the hilt of her Eviscerator, the Repentia slid down to join her comrade, searching the darkened alcoves for enemies. Seconds passed. Nothing challenged their arrival.

The older Repentia laughed as she brushed herself off, indicating a nest crowded with huge grey eggs.

‘Death can wait, it seems,’ she said. ‘But breakfast cannot.’

A spear of sharpened bone exploded from her chest. The younger Repentia stumbled back in surprise and horror, her face splashed with hot blood. She found her footing, drawing her Eviscerator as her Sister’s body was scooped into the air, the long bloody spike still protruding from her gushing chest. The corpse seemed to levitate in the darkness for a moment, arms and legs swinging as her monstrous killer flung her aside and knuckled out from the shadows of an alcove.

Hunched beneath the cavern ceiling, the creature was still over twice the Repentia’s height, its enormous blade-like wings folded under its spindly arms. Amber eyes gleamed either side of a huge pick-axe head that bobbed atop a neck as thick as a palm tree. The long beak scissored open, thick with her Sister’s blood, as it exhaled a warning hiss.

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A Black Library Publication

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ISBN: 978-1-78030-909-5

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