The Priest

To haunting, ethereal melodies he walked among his flock, benediction

    carved into his eyeless face, green ooze flowing freely from the slack jaw

on his smiling face as he joined in the song of the righteous,

it’s keening wail a rhapsody of madness and despair.

His fine silk robes of office swept around him,

Scraps of torn, mouldering cloth hanging from his waist

disturbing not an speck of dust in the gleaming sepulchre,

that ruined, bombed-out husk of a hab, full of dust and dead things.

As he walked, his staff, a grand, eagle-topped icon,

it’s jagged blade encrusted with rust and dried body fluids

tapped on the ground in time with the incense dispenser on his back

and throbbed and glowed with the mutagenic energies of the core

which sent sweet-smelling smoke wafting,

pulsing unseen through the air turning stomachs and corrupting flesh.

The newest initiate of his blessed order knelt in prayer

with their hands bound and flesh rent

awaiting blessing

screaming hoarse through the tight gag.

“Welcome brother, to this Holy Order. May the Emperor…”

it kept howling, that wet, guttural howl.

“And in the name of the Emperor, I bless you with this unguent…”

with agonizing burning as it ran in rivulets down his forehead,

“And give unto thee this holy beacon”

which glowed in it’s free hand, a huge phial of that same glowing, burning horror that dripped freely from the creature’s jaw. It ended with a screw, or a spike. He thrashed weakly, desperate to escape this horror and get back to his platoon. They would have given him up for dead. To his horror, the creature handed it’s staff to a waiting… acolyte… he supposed, and brandished a knife, a jagged scrap of twisted steel. The knife plunged into his shoulder and he screamed, wailing against the bindings that held him in place until he felt blood flowing down his throat. The creature raised aloft the phial, and with finality plunged it into the open wound.

The pain was too much. Everything went black, then glowing green.