Children of the Ecclesiarchy

'They are truly blessed', I thought, as Lord Lorcan walked up and down the assembled aspirants, inspecting them. Occasionally he slowed his measured pace, or betrayed particular interest through a slight tightening around his eyelids. 

Blessed, though they do not yet realise it.

Save for his helm, my Lord was in his full power armour, which only made more marked the difference in mass between his form and that of the fragile-looking youths kneeling before him. The battle for Hever had been equally unkind to my masters and the blue-and-silver traitors ranged against them, but even in its battle-tarnished state, the white that marked Lorcan as a member of the Sanguinary Priesthood shone bright. 

He cradled the chalice with two hands as he paced between the figures. He shifted his grip at each youth, freeing a hand to anoint the selected. It was filled to the brim with blood. 

The scene took me back to the day when I had stood; and had been found wanting. It seemed like a lifetime ago. It was, in fact. A lifetime in the service of gods. I wouldn’t change it for a second. In all the years since I had trialled, I had never seen an intake as large as this. Not even close. 

There were more than two hundred and fifty ‘volunteers’, all of them robed in fatigues, all of them blindfolded. 

 

[//positident=Lorcan, honorifVAL=true: 'Sanguinary Priest'; 
positident= Rutgen,honorifVAL=true: 'Chaplain';
Pictured with honour guard on Artex, following the issuing of the Edicts of Fools.+]
[//paul_h/@the_midnightmare et dennis_k/@the_iron_within+]

It was strange to think that these children were not Karpathian-born. These, and other groups like them across the Chapter, had acquired a name. It was strangely apt; sardonic and sincere all at once. I mused on it while looking down over the group. 

One of the winged servo-putti, plucking its miniature harp ever so slightly asynchronously to the recording, dipped out of formation momentarily. I watched as it re-joined its companions. Music from my homeworld, distant Karpathia, was playing from the voxes mounted on the walls of the chapel. Perhaps the melancholy tunes, so comforting to me, so alien to them, played on their fears. Well it was that these inductees were marked apart by that name.

*** 

Whether it was the music or the presence of the Space Marines, or something else besides, fear was ripe in the chamber. It stank. All of the aspirants reacted to the growl of Lorcan’s suit as he passed. Most steeled themselves as his heavy footsteps came near. My occulobe caught the subtle tension at their necks and fists – for aye, though I had fallen short at the last, it is with pride I bear some part of the God-Emperor as my own gift. 

A number pulled back or flinched as Lord Lorcan's thumb daubed the sacred vitae on their foreheads. These would likely fail, I thought. Fall short of the ideal, as once I did. 

Even those failures might still serve. Serve as I have, perhaps, I mused. I would be lying were I to profess no jealousy towards the aspirants. Every one of my sixty-four Karpathian cycles I have dreamed of being as one of my masters. I had my opportunity. I missed the mark. It is comfort of a sort that I serve them; indeed, serve highly, as the highest of familiars to the Commander himself... yet that yearning to be one of the Great Angel's true sons will never leave me. 

A rebellious, unworthy thought came to me. I felt a bilious mix of anger and sorrow well up. If the rumours proved true, those arrayed before me, robed and blindfolded and marked by blood, might serve in other ways. They would serve regardless of their quality; serve a truncated and partial life in comparison with a successful aspirant.

But serve as a Flesh Eater nevertheless. 

Whatever their failures, however they rejected the blessings, they would soar on technomantic wings; make war in the name of the Primarch; and be clad in the plate forever denied to me.  

Their name came to me once more with bitterness. These 'Children of the Ecclesiarchy' are truly blessed.

*** 

[//paul_h/@the_midnightmare et dennis_k/@the_iron_within+]

I chastened myself and re-focussed, turning my eyes to Chaplain Rutgen. He paced behind Lorcan, following his steps at a short distance. He was fully armoured. The skull-visage of his helm, crowned with angel's wings, stared accusingly at each aspirant. In his black livery he was a dark mirror of the Sanguinary Priest. 

I listened to his words. Though Rutgen was barely more than muttering the Binevenit – the Welcoming – my Lyman's Ear allowed me to pick out the low grumble against the music, the putti and susurrus of the assembled brethren. It reverberated strangely through the chancel. 

Under normal circumstances, this was a task that Reclusiarch Constantine performed. Circumstances were far from normal. Constantine's attention was elsewhere. Following one of the Commander's increasingly-frequent outbursts, he had taken over my cell, which sat adjacent to the chambers of the Grand Voivode. 

Despite my status, I had been dismissed. For reasons that I did not, do not, fully understand, the serfs were no longer permitted to wait upon, or even witness, the Master of the Chapter. After so many years in his confidence, it seemed a doubly-cruel blow.

I distracted myself, turning my attention once more on the aspirants and the two figures moving steadily through their investiture. 

What had become of Lord Velghor's other serfs, I do not know. I can not say. 

[//Personal memoirs, Eghor Drohl, high chapter serf and familiar of Commander Velghor+]