Age 8
The Sororitas laugh. They carve. The men kneeling in bleak horror, eyes wide before being sawn from their roost and sent lolling past bloody split forms, not enough blood in the body to hide what Arcadia saw; the horrible flopping things inside, the eye pointing at him for a split second, milky-wide, accusatory, help me, you could have helped me, you are one with these women, I did not deserve this. And then the eye fell away, bouncing on its stalk, lolling at the ground, taking in the most irrelevant thing in the world as its final charter, the final cruelty done to it and its master; what use without a master, this retainer of honor, the reporter, truth-teller, never deceiver unless deceived by its master. Its master split now, a roast loaf of cotton candy puffed aloft by the crash of revolving metal, unstoppable, unanswerable, ungainsayable, crashing through the precious and the waste in a single heavy punch. The rattling breath, the machine exposed as machine, the myth exposed as machine, the theater exposed as machine, the story, the campfire, the beast of honor, inside it a wheezing, fluttering, falling-out bagpipe and in the end it is a divinity destroyed for pleasure. The Emperor’s creation, a perfect chassis, a knight, a titan, a forge world, stripped of an eighth and look at it now, a broken ripped umbrella, a banana peel, a tub of gooey fruit shuddering and steaming. Whatever the man was now he was at least at peace; his innards were littered with teeth and bone, little furry wisps of white and red on the stones around him, the stone-spikes, the murals, face-saints, suns and mountains whirling in precision, a horror of helplessness now, stepped on and squashed by a Sister’s steel sabaton.
Gaping, gaping, everything gaping. Whole bodies in a gape that will never end, the horror of their mouths rent wide into the horror of their whole corpuses, the Sisters laughing with their chainswords spraying mosaics of blood across the pale blue stones, chipping them with little puffs or lolling daintily above deflated bodies. The boy Arcadia could not retch where he hid kneeling in the colonnade twenty feet from where the prisoners were massacred. He was locked in the grip of a giant. Soft, pillowy fingers ten thousand miles thick.
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Age 28
Arcadia’s every inch was covered in filth. The Arbitrator was wound so tight that he was careful where he looked so he would not break out in tears or rage. He walked towards the temple awning. There were figures beneath. He didn’t look at them. They greeted him quietly as he entered.
The grit in his armor scraped at his raw, wet skin as he walked. His shins and knees wobbled from overuse whenever he stood. He could smell gunpowder and sweat wafting from his collar and within it there was a hint of blood. He was clenching and stretching his hands as he walked, silently contemplating the many ways he’d stood by death in these last days. The other man had died, over and over. Skill was the difference. But it was evil luck that killed them; evil luck they were born with cursed blood in their veins. The blackest work of the Alien.
Arcadia passed a group of dark, kneeling forms as he entered the temple. He paused and glanced. Kneeling Enforcers with their heads bowed. Some had hands over their eyes. One sweaty, sootstained and underfed face leaned back into the light. His eyes were clenched in passion. In front of them was a Priest who whispered to them with furrowed brow. The service was more heartfelt than any Arcadia had seen. All respected the gathering’s need for quiet.
Arcadia saw the Marshal’s white beard in the darkness and approached. The old man faced him. His familiar breastplate, once gilded and gleaming, was sooty and scarred. Arcadia gave the names of his dead.
“Algira, F. Faber, N. Faber, Majori, Penitens, Rigel, Suidae, Tum, Ursinus.”
A Servitor scratched the names into a thin copper slate with impolite speed.
The Marshal nodded and placed a hand on Arcadia’s shoulder. He looked Arcadia in the eye.
“Eat and sleep.”
Arcadia bowed. He turned and set off from the reception hall to the Chapel of St. Anaïs. His forefeet ached and filled with blood when he lifted them. It was bright here. He narrowed his eyes and lifted them to the shining windows of the hallway. They were stained glass and were letting in the music of the dawn. Images of saints and martyrs. Very explicit. A kneeling Imperial Guardsman of some barbaric regiment. His clothes were blown nearly away and soaked in blood. He was visibly burnt. He knelt and was knighted by the sword of a High King while angels draped a cloak of white about his shoulders. The cloak bloomed with blood wherever it touched him. The man’s suffering was not over if he was to become a Knight.
A Battle Sister weeping in agony over a disemboweled Priest. The sun gleamed in his blood. She held the Priest’s hand in her armored gauntlet. Her grief was personal. Arcadia was surprised the window hadn’t been taken down at some point in the past. Some would feel it a dangerous impropriety. Arcadia saw forbidden love between the sacred two. Perhaps the Ecclesiarchy had implicitly agreed that such a scene was worth preserving.
Men standing in muster along the top of a shattered trench. Only their backs could be seen. Some were missing limbs. All were filthy and bloodied. Still they mustered. Comrades held those without legs. The sun was breaking over a horizon of broken trees and it bathed their beaten forms. The window had been set to receive the dawn. At this moment the sunshine pierced directly through the stained glass sun and the sunrise was impossibly literal.
Arcadia was in his proper company here. His eyes teared up afresh at each window. Every scene was indescribably potent to him after what he had witnessed in the Hive. He felt the passion of every figure whom he passed. He walked at their sides.
He entered the chapel of St. Anaïs. It was blessedly empty. Hot tears were upon his cheeks but he didn’t have the inclination to destroy them. He sat on his filthy bedroll and gazed up at the statue of St. Anaïs. Now he wiped his eyes and blinked, seeing her in the light for the first time. Her weathered hood was falling from her head. Her face was scarred in subtle ways and there were little holes shot through her wings. Some saints presented swords to tired soldiers, but hers was sheathed down her back. Some stood to receive adulation, their wings about them like walls. Hers were straight back, feathertips intertwined like fingertips. She knelt and shared the burden of the petitioner with her eyes. She shared Arcadia’s burden. Soldier-Saint. Arcadia wept in gratitude for the works of all Mankind.
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