EXTREMIS DIABOLUS

The Relictors Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes were once amongst the staunchest of Humanity's defenders. Now, however, the insidious, corrupting tendrils of Chaos have tainted the very heart of this once-proud chapter. Graham McNeill recounts recent events and the threat to the Relictors' existence...

The dream memory always begin in the same way. Katanen would see the face of the man he had just killed, begging him through bloodied lips not to open the vault as his lifeblood flooded from a fist-sized crater in his chest. Katanen and his battle-brothers of the Relictors Chapter had ignored the dying guardian of the vault and pressed on towards their goal - the Diamedes Archive. Great monolithic doors, weathered and dusty with age, swung wide on squealing cogs that had not turned in millenia and Katanen felt a great vindication as Captain Pediese entered the vault.

But then his dream no longer mimicked his memories as a bright light shone from the depths of the vault, searing and unbearable in its intensity. It burned through him. darkening to become a sickly yellow glow that reeked of corruption and evil. A laughing from the vault, its features cruel and hungry. It turned its gaze upon him, burning eyes stripping the armour and flesh from his body even before he had breath to scream.

Katanen awoke, instantly alert, his senses razor sharp. For the briefest instant, he believed he could still smell the stench of scorched flesh, but dismissed the notion as ludicrous. A Space Marine did not dream. He did not know what these things he was experiencing were, but they could not be dreams. The hour was early, he still had some time before morning devotions and prayer, so he rose and donned his exercise garments, padding silently from the dormitory and into the attached gymnasia. Katanen eased into his morning ritual of devotional callisthenics, stretching and working his muscles in time to catechisms of ritual obeisance. Though he knew it was impossible for a Space Marine to dream, the images of the mission to Fremas kept intruding on his rest period.

The Diamedes Archive had been constructed, as near as the Techmarines could deduce, almost four thousand years ago, though how it had come to exist buried in the heart of a mountain top, with no obvious way in or out, was a mystery they had no answer to. An earthquake some five centuries ago had cracked open one of the deep tunnels that led within and soon after its contents had been sealed by order of the Ordo Malleus. No one, save the highest adepts on Terra, truly knew the contents of the Archive. No one, that is, until the Relictors had captured a newly-created daemon blade from a warband of Word Bearers on Subiaco Diablo. The Librarians of the Chapter had coerced the bound entity to translate ancient texts known to have been penned by its servants thousands of years ago. The text had spoken of the Diamedes Archive and the ecret held in its hidden vault; a secret that had been sealed away for all time.

Time had made its guardians complacent and it was a simple matter for the six Space Marines to overwhelm the company of Guardsmen stationed within the fastness and open the vault. Inside was a treasure of the Ruinous Powers, a treasure that groaned with the weight of ages and dark knowledge. Reverently placed within a stasis chest before being transported in great secrecy to the Chapter's fortress-monastery, it now sat in the warp-sealed Reliquarius, studied by the most powerful and pure Librarians of the Chapter. The secrets of the Immaterium it could unlock would make the deaths it had taken to retrieve it worthwhile and, though there would be those who would persecute them for their chosen path, the Relictors were careful to leave none alive who could speak of what they did.

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