The villagers brought the horangi corpse to the center of the jumak. What work was to be done had been abandoned as everyone crowded to come see the body. The horangi were heavenly beasts, wrathful emissaries of the mountain lords. They were only seen by their baleful eyes piercing through the mist and heard by their chilling roars that echoed through valleys, as none survived an encounter to return with greater detail.
Now it lay lifeless and mutilated at their feet. Its face was brutalized and its foreleg was torn away as if mauled by a greater, more ferocious monster. A beast of the witch laid low by servants of this “Emperor”. Perhaps the monks and the nun were telling the truth of His power. If they were also telling the truth of his wrathfulness, then it would be prudent for them to repent.
For now, to help stomach all the hearty information and choices they were digesting, they would drink. After all, they would not be able to think straight for work with all this heaviness weighing them down. If anything, the Emperor would be pleased if His arrival was marked by celebration.
With such convincing arguments, the villagers raised their cups to the king of kings and His daughters. Takju flowed freely; those who could not hold their liquor poured out makgeolli next to others that guzzled soju. No matter what they drank, their faces flushed and their labor stiffened bodies were loosed up for dance.
Amidst the blur of laughter and revelry few took notice of the ghost that drifted across the tavern. Some might have spared a glance, but a dirty cloak was no stranger in these parts, so they assumed it was a traveler and let their attention be distracted by other mundane innanities. The ghost drifted its way through, deftly maneuvering its way around raucous and blundering merriment, up to the bar, where the only sober mind left noted that the figure was a head tall over the crowd.
“What can I getcha friend?” he asked.
“Give me the toughest you got.” A ‘She’ answered. He could not make out the face, but the voice was that of a woman with the cadence tinkling raindrops on tin. He poured a shot of soju and passed it to her then the glass was empty. As he blinked away his disbelief of missing her ever touching the glass, she placed a diamond on the counter then ran his mouth ajar. “I’ll take a whole bottle. This should cover it, yes.”
The barkeep examined the diamond—no, this was more than a diamond. He saw diamonds before, in other villages and from travellers. None of them had them were so shapely, had such luster, or—ouch!—this sharp! He set the gem aside and pulled out the finest soju he had, surely worth whatever this visitor was offering. He watched her drink as he sucked on his thumb. Her head was turned away and a glove disappeared up her sleeve. Whoever she was, she could hold her liquor because she downed it from cork to base. She let out the gasp of a refreshed and satisfied customer.
“Thank you for that, darling. May I keep this bottle? I want a souvenir to remember this place by.” He nodded approval. She turned around and leaned her back on the counter.
“What’s all the commotion about anyways?” She asked. He looked at her confused and gestured to the corpse in the center that everyone, intoxicated as they were, gave a wide berth.
“The orange horangi of the witch was killed by the daughters of the Emperor. They think it proves the Emperor is stronger and wish to show their allegiance. Not that it takes much to get these folks drinking; it’s amazing we have rice eating, let alone drinking, given how much work these fools don’t get done.”
“To revel is to live, upturns in the heavens are as good a reason as any if any are needed. Where are these daughters anyways?”
“They took off in their skyboat. One of them stays here; the others will hunt for more spirit beasts then leave us. The most we might see are some more monks to replace the old ones.”
“Replace? What happened to the old ones?”
“They got spirited away is what I picked up from the ‘gothic’ the daughters speak. Couldn’t make out everything, but from what I know and their reactions, they weren’t sure what happened to the monks either. There were some other daughters that came here only to disappear too; is why we were skeptical of them at first, but it looks like this batch did the trick.”
“Oh no, I hope the missing people are alright.”
“Aye, here’s hoping. If the new ones go missing too, I doubt the witch would take kindly to turncoats gloating around her children’s corpse. Fawners appease whichever way the wind blows when they should be keeping their heads down and nodding along just enough to be left alone.”
“Perhaps that works with the Witch, but the Imperial sorts don’t just want appeasement: they want active devotion in mind and body.”
“Theirs wanting it, and then there’s having it. The monks devoted themselves to the Emperor and it made no difference for them and the land. They’ll come and go, especially when something more important to them distracts them, but the Witch is always here, been that way for generations.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she grabbed the head of her hood and pulled it down, “thank you for treating me.”
The Thunderhawk laid on its belly with its nose buried under the mound of dirt it dug up. The sister seraphim gathered in the long furrow the ship had ploughed across the field upon landing. It had barged through the trees and shacks to bring them back to the monastery they just hiked down the mountain to leave. Yoon’s wounds opened up so the hospitaller had to plug them up with bandages and reapplied the stints. The ophanim was meditating, her heavy bolter resting in her legs-crossed lap.
The seraphim superior was examining the damage to the plane. The impromptu landing scratched up the underside and gunked up the wing and nose, but nothing that would hinder operability. The bigger problem was the holes in the cabin windshield, or rather, whatever caused them. This was not the work of any beast, not any that were logged in the databanks at least. Whatever did this was almost certainly still around.
Whang ordered her squad into the monastery. The hospitaller and Yoon would go to the infirmarium to salvage whatever they could to get Yoon’s hand back in workable condition. The rest of the squad would stay with Whang in the church. Whatever wanted them out of the sky was unlikely to let them leave without a fight and they needed every able hand that they could get.
Not that there was much to use in the infirmarium. It was a modest little clinic with cupboards’ worth of medicine meant to treat coughs and scrapes, and that was before whatever struggle that occurred disemboweled the cupboard. The hospitaller scraped together the remaining analgesics from the infirmarium’s stock and injected them into Yoon, saving her own reserves in case they were needed again. A small dose of stimulants were used to get Yoon’s finger’s moving again, despite the fractured bones.
“Only move your hand if you have to,” warned the hospitaller, “the more the bone moves around, the harder it will be for the chirurgeon to fix it.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I doubt our enemies will give us the luxury,” said Yoon Si-nae. Still, she carefully motioned her fingers and wrists to find which positions it would start to pinch.
“Take my other pistol. Stay back and shoot with one hand if it comes to it.”
“Our superior wants me at the tip of the spear.”
“A speartip is no good once it's been chipped. You have been chipped; the superior has made her point,” the battle hospitaller looked toward the hallway that led back to the church, “at least, I hope she is thinking straight enough to see that. She was clearly itching for an excuse to use ‘obstreperous’ in a sentence.”
“She used obsterporous in a sentence?”
“Yes. While you were sleeping. She went on for a while.”
“Glad to not hear it.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
With the bleeding clotted and the hand functional as a claw at best, the two returned to the church. They heard it before they pushed the wood doors open: ‘Never a Silent Night’ being sung in High Gothic, distorted by helmet grilles.
Druvata Imperator dux noster;
in eman sua firmissimus.
Sacrificium eius illuminare fecit;
On their knees in the aisle of the nave was the rest of the flamewing. Two columns of seraphim knelt beside each other with their pistols crossed over their hearts; at the head was the superior with her pistols in the same aquilla cross, and at the rear was the ophanim with her heavy bolter in her lap.
The hospitaller took her seat in the choir, leaving Yoon alone to stand in bafflement. An unknown enemy could be upon them at any moment, and here they were singing; it was supposed to help them concentrate, but this seemed like a distraction.
Druvata nostrae puritas
Nos kandu electa eius
Egredere facem mahsemo.
Yoon knelt in the last position left open. Her good hand and borrowed pistol over her heart. Her bad hand rested on her lap. The others had their heads bowed but she kept her chin raised. She did not know what got into them, but she could not keep her head off the swivel even if she wanted to. The tall windows around them each a weakpoint they could be struck from. The dispersed mist still clouded sunlight and obfuscated at a distance. If the monks were taken without much struggle, what would become of them?
Renuntiatio eius helel;
Per tenebras et pólemos.
The phantom that passed by the windows made Yoon jump to her feet, pistol ready. She scanned over the windows: nothing. Her heart drummed in her ear louder than her jumppack as adrenaline surged in her veins. Yet no further phantoms passed. Her sisters were still on there knees, as if it was an apparition only she saw. Even if it was, they shouldn’t be ignoring one of their own being alerted.
No, not one of their own. Even with these wings, I will never be one of them.
Nam qui eius ma’or.
Azar mundans iacet.
Something cracked a window from the left and stabbed into a pew on her right. She scarcely made it out to be a thin sapphire splinter before it melted into an acid that slightly corroded the wood of the pew before evaporating into nothing.
More came from the window behind the pulpit, their origin lost to the mist. Yoon darted behind a pew for cover, not wanting to test her ceramite and servomuscle against this unknown ammunition. Still her sisters sang, even as the trinkle of splinter grew into a downpour, the cracks in the windows becoming full shattering of glass panes and muntins. From every window, every direction, came a sapphire hailstorm.
Hostes Imperium,
Da veniam irae.
Ora Imperator, praebe nobis tuam fortitudinem
When it was over, Yoon peeked out from her cover. Most of the pews were pockmarked, holes a splinter had stabbed into surrounded by grey circles of dead wood surrounded by healthy brown. Others had pieces chewn off, the repeated strikes causing the wood to become undone. Fewer still were torn apart, having borne the brunt of the attack. Yet, down the aisle, even with cratered tiles around them, the sisters were undisturbed and unblemished, heads down like nothing happened.
Yoon saw a lance of darkness race over Whang’s shoulder—and stayed there. No, it did not stay over Whang’s shoulder, it stayed over Yoon’s sight. No matter where she turned to look, a black bar was there, as if a piece of her vision had been excised with a scalpel. She put her hands over her visor as if to grab it then stretched her arms out as if to reach for it, but it was no physical object—the darkness had seared her retinas.
Ut simus tui justi khang.
Omnis ut efches,
Nullus furor sanctum eius effugiat.
With the song done, the sisters rose. Yoon had thrown away her helmet and was nearly clawing at her eyes, heedless of her bad hand. The Superior and Hospitaller came to her side.
“It’s gone!” gasped Yoon. “The attack took a piece of my sight! What kind of weapon does that?! Did the rest of you see none of it?”
“Our eyes were closed. Perhaps if you had faith, you too would have been spared injury,” rebuked Whang.
“I don’t need your sass right now you throne-damned nyeon, we are under attack!”
Whang’s augmetics flashed a warning rune about her unhealthy spike in blood pressure as she stepped forward, but she was stopped by the hospitaller in her path.
“Let me see,” asked the hospitaller. She held Yoon’s hands until Yoon calmed down, then lowered the hands to waist level. She raised a mag-monocle to get a closer look at Yoon’s eyes.
While the hospitaller studied the upstart, the Superior’s augmetics inspected the damage. The pews and tiles were shredded, but only one hole was bored finely. Perhaps that was the one that shot through the cabin. She could only guess, as none of the damage left any trace of evidence as to the weapons used. Begrudgingly, she would have to ask the only witness.
“What did you see of the enemy?”
“First, I saw a shadow swoop across the windows. It was fast and flying. I think it had something on top of it. Then there were sapphire splinters that dissolved and evaporated. Then the last one was a lance of darkness. All of them were coming from above angled down.”
Whang took in the clues and referenced them against her databanks. The disappearances. The mobility. The weaponry. Nothing like this was among the tactics and plagues of the Sinui. Nothing like the beasts and hexes of the Witch. Nothing among the capabilities of gangers or renegades. It was nothing like what has been seen on this world or wretched from the warp. Not the enemy within. Not the enemy beyond.
Without a word, Whang walked down the nave and pushed open the doors to the outside. The other seraphim followed, then the ophanim, then the hospitaller and Yoon. They saw her head tilted up and followed her gaze.
All-together, they looked up at the stars.
The final frontier.
The last voyage.
The endless void.
The dark forest.
The enemy of mankind.
The enemy that made the Emperor take the throne and build the bulwark.
The enemy at the gates of lone, scattered, vulnerable worlds.
Lone, scattered, vulnerable worlds like Incheo.
Finally, inevitably, the stars had reached them.
The enemy, at last, had found them.
The enemy without.
The Alien.
Xenos.
