Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Guy Haley
Read between
May 9 - July 4, 2025
The dark liquid trickled down through a drainage membrane, dripping into the Ortus Grail, the chalice of rebirth. The grail was suspended in a consecrated antechamber below them. At battle’s end, Amit’s company would sip from its gilded edges, so that the fallen might live on in their veins.
am His vengeance as He is my shield.’ Manakel upturned Brother-Sergeant Seraph’s chainsword and pressed the tip of the blade into the deck, as was his ritual. The same ork who had robbed Manakel of his voice had also killed Seraph, ripping out his primary heart and leaving Seventh Squad under new stewardship.
‘We will deliver death to His enemies as He brings deliverance to our souls.’
‘When you have bled for the Chapter only to watch those you have suffered for devolve into madness, then you may talk to me about vengeance.’
Removing a pack of ceramite paste from a compartment in his thigh, Manakel squeezed the viscous liquid over a crack in the side of his abdominal plating.
live is to kill. To live for the kill is to be of the Blood.
eleven members of his Death Company inside the Storm Eagle’s hull. The eleven were further secured by heavy mag-harnesses, the type normally used to shackle Dreadnoughts during transit. Stimm injectors fed their veins an elaborate mix of specially engineered muscle relaxants that would help keep them sedated until they were needed.
‘Yet that is what it means to be a Space Marine. To fall from the heavens as fire and wrath. To bring death or to greet it.’
Manakel drew his knife across his palm and flicked a measure of blood over each of his fallen charges. ‘Death sealed by the Blood shall be the final death, a lasting rest.’ It
the branding iron from the Reclusiam’s brazier. ‘Brotherhood and adamantium, both bonds that can be broken.
Victory as fleeting as pain.’
‘Sanguinius shape my being, redress my temperament, render me a reflection of your perfect form.’ Cassiel muttered the prayer, his lips shivering. He repeated it again and again, letting the words slow his breathing and bring his trembling body to rest.
We are angels of fury and violence. We are wrath and we are death, and nothing more. In the last moments of life we embrace the darkness, for there is no light after death, no forgiveness, only the blackness of rage and the absolution of death.
‘Daryn Asmodel, I armour you in darkness, for there is no light after death, only absolution.’
Brothers Aquinus and Furiel, veterans who had died by Sanguinius’s side.
The triumvirate represented the Tempest of Angels, the honorific duel the chamber was fashioned to host, where one combatant fought to protect Sanguinius, while the other attacked. Nuriel grunted in derision. Sanguinius was dead. Now there was only attack.
The electros would keep her mind and body functioning even beyond death, allowing her to command the vessel until the battle was over. The storm of motion had lasted only
his voice. He didn’t care if Ronja’s pride was injured –
The serfs had given their lives for an ideal larger than they or even he. For the first time, admiration replaced Barakiel’s feeling of pity for the humans.
He could hear its blood bubbling in its veins. He thought of the rain. He thought of the ocean. A vast sea of blood that would drown him in ecstasy. ‘Die,’ he roared, shouting until his cry sounded silent, and forced his blade through the thing’s spine. The eviscerator’s teeth shredded the brute’s innards, showering Amit in viscera and putrid fluid.
many. Sanguinius’s cry for vengeance cut across the fabric of this realm and ours.’ The daemon bunched an outstretched fist in emphasis. ‘His roar of anguish gathered to a great wind of slaughter, a bladed fury that scythed over the blood plains.’
He remembered what Sanguinius had said to him during the Tempest of Angels. You fight because it brings you peace. But there will come a time when the cries of those you have led to death will drown out the roar in your veins. There will come a time when you must lay down your sword to defend what little we have left.
‘If we are to die cursed, then so be it,’ said Amit. ‘We will not die damned.’
‘How many of the wrong lives can you take before you are damned?’ Zophal whispered. ‘How many sins can one bear and still claim to be righteous?’ The Chaplain knelt in the wreckage of
word of their actions reached Guilliman, the Flesh Tearers would be cast out. Hunted. Killed. There was no longer any room for doubt. No path to redemption. Zophal bowed his head, stopping short of asking the Emperor for forgiveness. He deserved none. How many survived? Amit had asked. None, he had answered.
‘Arrogance and bloodlust are your only gifts to this brotherhood,’ said Geron. ‘There is one other gift I have for you,’ Seth snarled. ‘Come down here and claim it.’
A persistent icon flashed on Appollus’s tactical display. ‘Pity,’ he said, and blinked the rune for stone to Manakel, ordering the Dreadnought to stand down. Seth had been clear with the Inquisition – no psyker would be permitted to set foot upon his vessel. Manakel stood within the nearest of the docked Thunderhawks, ready to enforce the Chapter Master’s edict.
‘Emperor…’ Corvin’s lips trembled. Appollus pulled the inquisitor closer, the visage of his skull helm filling Corvin’s world. ‘He is not listening to you.’
The Librarian reached out with his gifts. The Death Company Space Marine’s mind was incandescent. His anger burned, a pyre that called to Balthiel. He dove into the flames, until they surrounded him, shuddering at the power in the warrior’s blood. The Rage was absolute. The flames licked at his armour, trying to find a way to his flesh. The wards inscribed on Balthiel’s battleplate held, glowing as they turned aside the fire’s advance. He pushed down to the kindling that had given the fire life. Scooping up a pile of embers in his palm, he sought the inquisitor’s mind. It hid beneath layers of
...more
behind masks of gold and brass. Seth’s face crumpled in disdain. Beauty on the outside did not remove the beast within.
Seth had spent enough time in the company of the damned to recognise the black flicker of rage. He felt the numbing touch of sadness in his gut. Tycho was a great warrior, one who would not easily be replaced. His spirit was as strong as Baalite steel, but it would not be long before the captain was lost to bloodlust and madness.
‘The lives of the Emperor’s servants are not yours to waste.’ ‘They are! That is what it means to be of the ordos. I would sacrifice every man, woman and child in this sector to do the Emperor’s work. It is a shame you do not share the same clarity of purpose, Flesh Tearer.’
So what then is your worth, Chapter Master? What will history remember of a warrior who deploys black-armoured beasts to fight his battles?+
The Validus’s commander’s tone was flat. To him, war was a perfunctory task. He acted devoid of emotional intent. Seth’s thoughts turned to his Flesh Tearers, to the rage that flowed through their veins. It was the Chapter’s secret. A truth each of them was charged with concealing, yet its touch made them more honest in deed than any of their allies. Unlike the princeps, their actions were all emotive. Unlike the inquisitor, they did not pretend to be anything but monsters.
He killed again, reaching out with his hand in a desperate effort to grab hold of the blood as it spilled from the orks’ veins.
‘Sanguinius, clad me in rightful mind, strengthen me against the desires of flesh.’ Seth ground his teeth, struggling through the litany. The beast in his breast shuddered, hammering a final blow as it felt his will shackle it. ‘By the Blood am I made… By the Blood am I armoured… By the Blood… I will endure.’
‘Perhaps.’ Harahel grinned and tore his weapon through another ork. ‘But we cannot fight a withdrawal. A single detonation inside that tunnel will see us buried.’ Seth knew he was right. ‘We will return for your body. Your bloodline will not end here.’ ‘See that you do.’
‘No. Knowledge corrupts. It is far more terrible than a simple weapon. It is justification. Too much knowledge, too little knowledge. Knowledge was the catalyst for the most devastating civil war mankind has ever faced. We cannot risk inviting such a war. I will not let you siphon the datacore.’ ‘Are you worried about what I might find? About what I might uncover about your precious bloodline? Perhaps your progenitors were not who you think. Perhaps they aided the Archene–’
sought to undo the Flesh Tearers, to expose their curse. Corvin had sought answers in dark places. Seth had given him a taste of true darkness.
Nerissa’s disregard for the lives of Imperial soldiers had appalled him because it had been unnecessary. But she had been wrong to think him above such actions. He was an angel of death, lord of murderers.
They had interred him in the Cowl’s command throne, keeping his body alive through a regimen of electroshocks and bio-fluids. Zuphias was to be transferred to a Dreadnought sarcophagus on his return to Cretacia, given an armoured body in which to continue his battle against the enemies of his Chapter. But operational requirements had necessitated he remain on the Cowl. Now, after more than six decades, he could no longer be removed from the vessel.
He did not learn the names of his human crew; to do so would be a waste. Their time on the Cowl was short lived. It was a vessel unlike any other. Home to the bulk of the Flesh Tearers Death Company, it was tasked with but a single objective – to bring ruin to the enemies of the Emperor. The human mind was unable to cope with the miasma of anguish that saturated the ship. Most killed themselves within two Terran years.
The Death Company were cursed, the walking dead: their bodies intact, their minds consumed by the Rage. Without the burden of conscience, all that remained for them was to ensure that they didn’t enter death’s embrace alone. Appollus was honoured to lead them in their final charge.
eaves of the chamber, the Chapter’s cherubs began intoning the prayers from the Iraes Lexican.
As a Librarian, he feared the moment of laxity that would see his soul devoured by the things that hungered in the warp. Balthiel growled in frustration. He was twice cursed, destined to succumb to the monster within or the daemon without. He focused on the Death Company, on their anger. He listened to their hearts beating, pounding in their chests, racing to thrust blood around their murderous veins.
Balthiel closed his eyes. ‘Emperor, defend my soul this day of battle. Let my weaknesses be overcome by Your strength that I may serve the Chapter.’
The shield of Sanguinius, as it was known amongst Balthiel’s order, was a psychic barrier, a physical manifestation of a Librarian’s will. He knew of no one who had ever attempted to manifest the shield on the scale he prepared to. Drawing on such power was dangerous. His soul would blaze in the warp, a refulgent feast for the denizens of that daemon realm. Should he succumb to their seditious whispering, should the foul powers take command of his flesh, Jophiel would end him.
Amit had been the best of them before his thirst for blood and violence had consumed him.
have stood consumed by darkness and led an army of monsters in defence of the light. I have done what must be done to ensure the future of the Chapter,’ said Seth.
Harahel was from Taci, a province of their home world Cretacia. The region was well known for the broad, well-muscled and aggressive individuals it bred, traits further amplified when they underwent the physiological enhancements required to transform them into Space Marines. Brother Amaru had replaced Harahel’s harness with one normally used to secure warriors in Terminator armour, in order to accommodate the Assault Marine’s bulk.
