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The Sisters of Death – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Sisters of Death

by Danie Ware

Lightning tore through the sky. Seen through the cathedral’s massive glassaic window, it was a pure and holy wrath, flashing His image to brilliance.

‘O most Holy Emperor, grant to our Sister eternal rest!’

Beneath Him, at the altar, the slight, grey-robed form of the canoness raised her arms to His glory, her voice in the sacred requiem. Rolls of thunder joined her words, rumbling at the building’s walls, beating down upon its high and vaulted roof.

‘Let the light of your Throne shine upon her!’

Below the elderly figure, her congregation were mesmerised. In the foremost pew, helm off and head bowed as was proper, Sister Superior Augusta Santorus suppressed a shiver at His manifest might. His storm reigned perpetual, here on this tiny, forgotten world.

‘Hear my prayer, O Emperor. To you, all lives are owed! To you, all flesh must come!’

The requiem was unaccompanied – no organ, no music. Its harmonies were dense but unfamiliar, twisting through the acoustics in an eerie, minor key. Sister Akemi, to Augusta’s left side, shifted, shot a glance along the pew at Sister Melia.

The storm grumbled on, like the anger in grief. Behind Augusta’s squad, the Sisters of the canoness’ order and their frateris militia raised their own voices, responding to the litany.

‘May her mind be raised to your glory!’

‘May her mind be raised to your glory!’

The service was a funeral. Despatched by the Ecclesiarchy and newly arrived upon Letum, Augusta had not known the young Sister who had passed to His grace. She’d had no time to speak to the canoness personally; instead, she had respectfully agreed to attend the service.

But this…

The image in the great Sol-facing window was not Him in His full glory, armoured and bearing His bright and flaming sword – it was Him as He would be, ancient and enthroned in cables. Before it, four ancient servo-skulls hovered like guardians, their metal corroded, but their green eyes sharp as gemstones. She could not shake the feeling that they watched her, analysing what they saw. Carefully, she honoured the hymn, though the responses were unknown.

‘As we offer this, our Sister’s body, to the storm!’

‘As we offer this, our Sister’s body, to the storm!’

The lightning flashed again, causing His image to blaze, for a split second, out across the nave, almost like He had been there in person. Chilled to the absolute bone by the undisciplined thought, Augusta offered a penitent prayer.

Such was arrogance, and unforgiveable. This place was unsettling, true, but that was not a justification. Sister Viola, always the hothead, cursed under her breath. Alcina, the squad’s second-in-command, snapped the ghost of an order and Viola subsided. But Augusta’s odd, visceral shudder did not.

Tiny and isolated, cut off by His never-ceasing storm, the Sisters of this convent were completely unknown. They wore no armour, their robes and cloaks were a beautifully embroidered grey, and rather than a fleur-de-lys, their faces were tattooed with the outline of a skull. They called themselves the Order of the Broken Sepulchre.

The Sisters of Death.

Letum was a cemetery planet, a world of gravestones and towering, carved sarcophagi. In millennia past, it had been a resting place for the Imperium’s most honoured dead, and a silent, stone civilisation had grown out around its endless corpses – spreading grids of sunken walkways, shrines and chapels like ossuaries, all studded with bones, locked reliquaries where only He still remembered their contents. Once, pilgrims had come here, to study the headstones or to tend to them – but no pilgrim had touched this world in centuries.

Not since the coming of the storm and its restless, magnetic field. Any ship attempting to land here would be brought down by His lightning. The Imperium’s bureaucracy had known this, but Letum had little intrinsic value – no wealth or resources. Lost somewhere between endless scriveners, and now both unreachable and unimportant, it had been abandoned, and left to its veneration of death.

Augusta stole a look upward, her head still bowed, her bobbed hair falling grey past her ears. Atop the altar, as grey as everything else, lay an open coffin; within it, the young Sister who had passed. The coffin was steel, beautifully wrought and etched in skulls; at either end, a conducting rod connected it to the cathedral’s outside wall.

The thunder growled low, like anticipation.

With the sound, the congregation’s expectancy rose. The canoness still prayed, her arms aloft, her words a torch, a hymn, a tocsin.

‘He comes!’ she said, her tone livid with passion. ‘Let us witness the touch of His light!’

Perhaps the flash of His image had been less arrogance, Augusta thought, and more a deliberate illustration of this convent’s empathic belief. But still, her shudder did not fade. She should have more discipline. Praying, she focused her thoughts.

The canoness’ voice rose further. She had her congregation gripped, the three pews of her Sisters, the frateris further back. Her head tilted back, strands of her white hair floating upwards round her face, she was entreating His storm for its touch, calling it to her.

And, much as Augusta tried to banish the unworthy thought, the storm seemed to be listening. The flashes, vivid and shocking, were coming closer; the gap between the light and the sound narrowed with every strike. Even as the Sister Superior stole another look, a crashing rumble of thunder sounded directly overhead. There was the sudden hiss of rain against the glassaic.

The canoness cried, ‘Bring mercy! Release our Sister to your storm!’

Propelled, the congregation were on their feet. They returned her words, but their cries were staccato, now, scattered throughout the nave and rapidly becoming louder. Frenzy rang from them like the clashing of cymbals.

‘Release!’

‘Have mercy!’

‘He comes!’

Uneasy, Sister Viola flashed a look over her shoulder. As Augusta glanced sideways, she crossed gazes with the younger Sister’s bright green eyes, saw flickers of both concern and non-comprehension. Briefly, Viola raised an eyebrow, but Augusta only frowned, indicating that she should attend to her prayers.

The canoness cried again, ‘He comes!’

‘He comes!’

‘Praise His lightning!’

‘Praise it!’

Another flash. Another bellow, loud enough to shake the bell towers. Augusta prayed, then found herself catching her breath… For here, even as His image flashed down upon the altar itself, bright yellow crackled along the conducting rods, a spark like pure, bared adrenaline.

The congregation cried aloud, one long, ‘Ah!’

And light detonated from the metal coffin.

It was blinding, but the Sister Superior held her place, blinking the after-flash from her vision. His touch was gone. Instead, flames were crackling, warm and soft, from the coffin’s contents. There was the faint smell of burning wood and flesh; grey smoke curled, thick and greasy. Extractors hummed, though she could not see them. The still-hovering skulls glittered in new firelight. They grinned, wide and toothy, as though they had seen this a thousand times, yet had never tired of it. As though they knew secrets they would never tell.

‘By the Throne…’ Shaken, Viola swore again, her words a whisper.

This time, neither Alcina nor Augusta corrected her. Whatever this funeral service was, the squad had never seen its like.

The storm crashed in violent farewell, then, slowly, began to rumble away.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-504-2

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