Visage by Rich McCormick

Author:Rich McCormick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science fiction: military
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2023-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

About the Author

Rich McCormick is a writer and videogame producer whose love affair with the worlds of Warhammer began when he was handed a small plastic ork at a very tender age. He used to live in Japan, but now lives in Yorkshire, with his wife and son. His work for Black Library includes the short stories ‘Knife Flight’ and ‘A More Perfect Union’.

An extract from Lorgar: Bearer of the Word.

The Tower of Infinite Lords was less impressive than its name suggested. Three storeys high, hexagonal, a pilaster of white gold rising from the peak of its roof, it was in fact smaller than any one of the weapons turrets on the Fidelitas Lex. But the structure exerted a dominance over Forty-Seven Nine that more than justified its title.

‘I was expecting something bigger,’ said Captain Jarulek. Like his skin beneath, Jarulek’s grey armour was covered in a continuous tracery of cuneiform – neatly inscribed passages from the Book of Lorgar in the tongue of Colchis, a sign of its wearer’s­ devotion.

At his back stood forty Word Bearers, their slab-grey armour anointed with blessed oils that glistened on squad markings and the rune of the Perpetual Spiral Chapter. With them came Chaplain Melchiades, though Kor Phaeron had known him better as Dar Voldak back on Colchis.

The First Captain, the Keeper of Faith, favoured of the Urizen, had taken personal command of the last assault on the bastion of the church that called itself the Silvered Cup. Across Hierapolis the cult’s shrines and followers had burned. The last were to be slain that day by order of Lorgar Aurelian. With Kor Phaeron were ten Space Marines of the Ashen Circle, warriors sworn to the destruction of all false idols and heresies.

‘It is but a capstone, I believe,’ said Kor Phaeron. ‘If the confessions extracted from the non-compliant are to be trusted, the tower sits atop a necropolis that stretches beneath most of this city.’

He cast an arm to encompass the ruins that surrounded them, buildings levelled by orbital and Whirlwind missile bombardment the previous day. Amidst all of the destruction, and despite the ferocity of the attack, the tower still stood. The official Legion reports put this endurance down to a concealed energy field of some kind. Kor Phaeron suspected that a more otherworldly force was at play, hence his decision to intervene directly in its razing, legitimising the presence of his own men in the guise of the Ashen Circle – men who knew the Truth could not be buried nor burned.

‘It doesn’t even have guns,’ scoffed one of Jarulek’s sub­ordinates, a sergeant named Bel Ashared. Kor Phaeron was of a mind to recommend the squad leader to Erebus for promotion to the ranks of the Legion’s Chaplains and this expedition was, though Bel Ashared did not know it, a test of temperament – and loyalties.

‘Then you will not shirk from being the first through the gates,’ replied Kor Phaeron, pointing his chainblade towards the tower’s ornate entrance.

‘The Emperor wills it, it shall be done.

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