Pilgrims of Fire by Justin D Hill

Author:Justin D Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-30T13:41:46+00:00

iii

Three gunships descended into the raging dust storm. Each one shook and rattled with the elements as the pilots spent hours combing back and forth over the seas of rubble and rust looking for the place that Dovere had identified.

The pilots were flying by instruments only, close enough to the ground for the augurs to scan the landscape. But the storms made the search impossible.

Palatine Albreda heard the vox-traffic with a sense of despair. She prayed, and for the first time she felt the answer come to her.

‘Set the gunship down!’ she ordered. She confirmed her instructions to the pilot.

The touchdown was bumpy.

Palatine Albreda led a party of Celestians out onto the surface. It was the same rubble that Helewise’s team had found, a mix of bones and charred rockcrete.

Albreda led the Celestians away from the gunship, and through the storm they could see a shape, dark against the horizon.

They were bent into the storm, the servos of their suits of power armour whining with effort.

Albreda led them as the structure slowly came into view. It was a pyramid.

The realisation quickened the Palatine’s heartbeat, but as she drew close to the base, she saw through the whipped dust that the structure was built of skulls.

She refused to give up hope.

The pile of skulls rose up before Albreda like a mountain. She set foot upon the base, and the skulls fractured and tumbled beneath her weight, the burnt ones crumbling under her boots.

‘They were all slaughtered,’ she voxed her team as she took in the magnitude of this devastation. ‘Such suffering.’ She knelt. Liquid seams of melted gold ran through the fissures, and she pulled a lump of carved stone from the ash.

It was a fragment of a gargoyle – the face of a Battle Sister, with the image of a burning heart carved into it.

‘This is the spot,’ she voxed. ‘This is where Aoid was laid to rest.’

Sustained salvos of melta shots cleared the skulls. It took hours before they reached solid footings and found a step of intact stone – not a facing slab, but part of the construction layer. They eventually found a tunnel and the entrance was cleared of skulls and rubble.

Bèle wanted to go first, but Albreda would not let any go before her.

The tunnel mouth moaned as the wind blew over it. Albreda wiped the dust from her eye-lenses as she paced down the dark tunnel. It was wide enough for two Rhinos to drive abreast. The walls were carved with images of Sisters in battle. The heads had been chipped away, and profane symbols had been scrawled across them all.

The roar of the storm fell away as they processed into the ancient structure. The tunnel ended with a bent and misshapen door.

The name carved above the door confirmed their worst suspicions. Aoid’s Sepulchre, it read.

‘This is it,’ Bèle said.

Albreda nodded. The tomb door had been blasted through with melta shots.

Bèle put her hand out to stop her.

‘No,’ Albreda said. ‘We must go in. We must bear witness.

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