It was dark. No lights shone from what should have been, literally, a shining beacon of faith. Such buildings were to be found on every major world of the Imperium, many hosting one in every city. Her discomfort deepened as she reflected on how such a centre of spiritual authority should have been heaving with activity. Officers of the Imperial Creed, worshippers, penitents, petitioners, pilgrims, the cathedral should have been crowded with people, but it was silent.
Brielle approached the vast steps, at the top of which stood mighty doors of cast bronze. She began to climb, her unease growing with each step she took. She reached the top and studied the doors. The weakest of flickering candlelight shone through the gap at the base, and for the briefest of moments, something approaching hope pulled at her.
A small hatch was set into the vast doors, and she tested its handle. It swung inward, its hinges groaning so loudly that she winced as she heard the noise echo back from the depths of the cathedral. She stepped through, to be greeted with inky blackness.
After a few moments, her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Brielle could discern her immediate surroundings. Wan candlelight flickered and guttered by the door, but beyond it, she could scarcely see. Yet she felt the vast, cold emptiness of the cathedral, sensing the huge space that seemed to swallow her up, body and soul.
She took a step forwards, coughing as dust billowed up from the floor, disturbed by her tread. How long had the cathedral stood abandoned, and why? Such a question was beyond her experience, for although she had faced all manner of alien monstrosities, she had never had to deal with such heresy upon a loyal world of the Imperium. How could a civilised world exist beyond the constraints of faith?
She started forwards into the darkness, her eyes adjusting further as she moved away from the circle of light cast by the flickering candles. She began to discern other, tiny pinpricks of light against the all-encompassing veil of darkness.
She closed in on one such candle, finding it guttering and hissing, almost entirely spent. As the small flame flickered and died, a chill swept through her body. An involuntary gasp escaping her lips, she turned, and saw a terribly misshapen face looming towards her from the darkness.
Brielle dived to her left, a bulky form moving through the space she had just vacated. She froze, ready to defend herself against attack, but none came. Instead, a second flame ignited, lighting the form and revealing it to belong to a decrepit mono-task servitor. She saw that the flame emanated from a nozzle that replaced the servitor's right hand.
She watched as the servitor replaced the dying candle from a stock carried in a large sack strung around its shoulder, lighting the replacement by way of its own flame. Its task complete, Brielle expected the mono-task to shuffle off, but before it did, it lingered a moment. She watched in silence, she could have sworn it mumbled a quiet prayer as it gazed into the newly lit flame. Then it did shuffle off, its sack of replacement candles dragging at its feet.
Brielle waited until she could hear the servitor no longer, determined to continue. Cautiously, for despite the trail of renewed candles left in the servitor's wake, the cathedral was still dim and the dust thick. She followed a cloistered walkway, statues of ancient saints ensconced along its walls, until she reached the entrance to what she knew would be the cathedral's inner sanctum. She stood before the entrance, and hauled upon the brass doors. They gave only slowly, the grating of metal on stone painfully loud in the vast emptiness.
The doors open enough to allow her passage, Brielle stepped through. She was greeted by a vast, hexagonal space, many times taller than it was wide. Massive columns supported an intricately worked glass ceiling.
Through the glass, shafts of silvered moonlight beamed straight down, illuminating the altar at the centre of the chamber.
Brielle stepped forwards, her head tilted up. She stepped into the light. Looking down at the altar, she turned her head sharply as the moonlight glinted from a metal statuette set upon it. She waited for the retinal burn to fade, before cautiously looking upon the altar once more. The statue represented a martyr she did not recognise, although the stylised tears running down its face were a common enough motif. She looked around, seeing that the cathedral must have fallen into disuse many years ago. The tears of unnamed saints had not kept the flock faithful, she mused, a bitterness rising unbidden within her. As incredible as it was to her, she saw that the Imperial Creed had simply faded away, as forgotten to the people of Mundus Chasmata, as was their world to the Imperium. Such a thing ran contrary to everything she had been brought up to believe. Yet she stood in the very centre of an abandoned and forgotten cathedral, the people given over to their own selfish follies and affectations.
Verses from the Creed ran through Bridle's mind, clashing and contradicting where once they had soothed. Unfamiliar teachings stabbed at her, until she realised that she was hearing not her own, inner voice, but distant words echoing through the night outside the camedral.
Holding her breath so that she could hear well enough to determine the voice's direction, Brielle stepped out of the shaft of moonlight cascading from above. She ghosted down dusty, cobweb-strewn corridors, the voice growing louder all the while. After several minutes, she came upon a small portal, and stepped through it. She was in the plaza once more, on the opposite side of the cathedral to where she had entered, and she could clearly hear the voice, across the square from her. A crowd clustered on the plaza's edge, the voice clearly audible. Now that she was in the open, Brielle could hear that the voice was an angry one, that of a preacher haranguing a crowd. She looked behind her at the vast, empty cathedral, curious as to why such an expression of faith would be manifested outside of the institution of the Creed.
She started towards the crowd, the words of the speaker becoming clearer.
'And there shall be a great apocalypse! A great war whose might and clamour shall dwarf all the wars that have come before'
The familiar verse drifted towards her, and she instinctively raised her hands to her chest to make the sign of the aquila, but something made her hesitate. Some deeply hidden doubt rose to the surface, a feeling of tension that only increased as she neared the crowd.
'We bring upon ourselves the doom of all that was and all that is!
Reaching the nearest of the crowd, Brielle stood upon the tips of her toes in order to see over the shoulders of those before her. She caught a glimpse of the preacher, and was surprised to see that he appeared not to be a robed priest, but a trader or a merchant.
'We the masses huddle in our hovels, unaware of the war fought on our account'
Brielle did not recognise this segment, although there were so many thousands of variations of the books of the Creed that that alone did not concern her.
'How long shall the masses toil in silence? How long must we labour in ignorance?
A chorus of agreement swept the crowd. Yet their reaction was not one of anger or of fervour, but of curiosity. Brielle studied the faces of those nearest her. Each man and woman appeared to listen intently, as if a spectator at a theatrical performance. Small quips and witticisms abounded, ripples of applause sounding at what the crowd perceived as particularly well-constructed verses.
She raised herself up once more, intent upon a closer look at the speaker.
'What is our fate, if not to adapt, to evolve?
After each verse, the speaker leant forward, studying the crowd as if reading their reaction. He caught Brielle's eye, and delivered his next line straight to her.