The Return of the Word Bearers

[Lord Insanity]

THE RETURN OF THE WORD BEARERS

CHAPTER 1

Acheron walked out of the Warp-gate, beholding the black sand and reddened sky of the Deimos Peninsula. It had taken him years to reopen the portal, and as his Chosen walked alongside him, Acheron smiled a cruel sneer of delight at the insanity and taint the Inheritor had unleashed. Before him kneeled eight black-cloaked cultists, hellfires burning within their eyes, forming pinpricks of light in the blackness of their hoods, the madness of them obvious. The black stone ruins of Eliphas’ fortress loomed over him, the Warp-portal the sole survivor of the Blood Ravens’ purge.

 

‘Misguided fools,’ he thought. ’soon they will fall before the might of Chaos Undivided.’

 

 

‘Kill,’ he commanded, his voice cold, without pity or compassion. ‘Kill them all!’

 

The bolter rounds soon blew the cultists apart, flesh rent and torn by the powerful explosions, viscera and extremities sent flying in multiple directions by the shots. One survived, hideous wounds marking him and his legs blown away - Acheron had him decapitated and his head stuck on the Accursed Crozius he bore. The rest of his strike force soon arrived from the portal’s confines, ready to slaughter the loyalists in the name of Chaos.

 

But Acheron needed more than that. Taking out a copy of the Book of the Epistles of Lorgar, he spoke thus:

 

‘We are the Scions of the Storm, the Apostles of Lorgar the Righteous,’ he read, his voice filled with purpose and zealotry. ‘We are the Word Bearers, for we bear His word to the servants of the False Emperor. We shall not falter; we shall not fail, for our faith is true and pure. Death to the heretics who do not repent, death to the blasphemers who dare defile the holy name of Chaos, death to all the servants of the False Emperor, death to all those who dare defy us! Eliphas, the so-called ’Inheritor’ was weak, foolish, lacking in faith - a failure. He suffered his eternal punishment - death. Death and pain are illusions of the weak mind. When he is filled with faith, a Word Bearer ignores pain; he fights till death takes him. Eliphas did not. He tried to flee from his death. So let your soul be armoured with faith in Chaos, let your body be armoured by adamantium and ceramite, and you shall be victorious. We shall destroy them all!’

 

Then he walked over to the edge of the overlook, beholding the remains of Chaos idols, the blood-red waters of the sea, the baleful white sun in a burning red sky, the Chaos-tainted ground releasing unholy flames from hellish pits and cracks in the blackened earth, and finally, at the edge of the peninsula, the Blood Ravens monitoring post, on the very cusp between Chaos-tainted hell and verdant green woods. That would be the first place to fall. Yes and its inhabitants would suffer an eternity of torment. That he had sworn.

 

***

 

Blood was everything that Eianus, saw; blood-red skies and blackened, tainted earth. The hell that Deimos had become burned in his vision as the cultists dug the trenches and bunkers to his exact specifications, watching as they laboured in their endless toil. They suffered greatly under the lash of Acheron, no pity or mercy or compassion granted by the Word Bearers. They laboured with insane zeal, but their wretched slavery would soon end in the blessed relief of death. The Word Bearers gave them nothing, and took from them everything. A death that was merciful compared to the fates Acheron declared for slacking.

 

Acheron looked over at his forces fortifying the overlook, and knew that soon he would be victorious. They were lacking in faith, but cunning and intelligent nonetheless, ideal siege engineers who would help his chances of victory and Daemonhood greatly. He still remembered that dream, over a year ago, clearly and calmly. He had beheld the fall of the Inheritor’s fortress - the death of Eliphas himself, at the hands of Lorgar as he tried to flee. After it, he had consulted all the augers and omens, then performed a years-long ritual, hoping beyond hope for it to work. Now it had worked, and soon, all of Kronus would fall.

 

The cultists had been weak and foolish - none could have survived what Acheron planned for them. Now, the stronger ones were being marched through the portal, towards the mad creations of Acheron’s chief sorcerer, Zetias. Zetias was with him, being one of his Chosen bodyguard, as well as Stygius, Geryon and Sol Kadar, his most loyal allies. There was one purpose to these insane devices - recruitment.

 

They brought the body through the years of gene-alteration and psycho-indoctrination that created Space Marines in moments, a process only the very strongest could survive. Many would die, but Acheron saw that only as purging of the weak. The others were being rounded up and made into slaves, forced to work till they fell of exhaustion into fortifying the defence lines and digging the trenches, aiding the Iron Warriors in their task. And once the preparations were made, he would assault the Blood Ravens monitoring post and crush it, smashing Aceria’s defences and claiming it for himself.

[Lord Insanity]

CHAPTER 2

Blood. It was a red haze over his vision, the disgusting poison over his mind. All he remembered was the beatings, the torments, the breaking. He had not broken. He was Astartes, not like these heretics, these ‘Word Bearers’.

 

PDF soldiers fell around him, the Defiler moving upon him. He knew he was doomed when he saw it. Ten thousand would not be sufficient to quell that machine-beast’s blood-rage and eternal fury. The encampment was burning, burning like the whole forest.

 

That was when the third element arrived. Tau attacked the heretics, falling down as the bolter-blasts struck them, mowing them down with incredible power. The Defiler was distracted, but somebody was moving closer, faster than his auto-senses could track, then...

 

Darkness ended. Blood poured on him. He tasted it in his mouth. His skin and armour were broken in multiple places, whipped and broken, a figure in crimson armour standing over him.

 

‘Good, you broke easily,’ the figure said. ‘Lord Acheron will reward me greatly for this.’

 

Acheron looked over the Deimos Peninsula, high in the rocky mountains of the Eres Badlands. Soon, he would be at the altar…ah, there it was, atop a peak red with blood. Bloodmount, the locals had called it, avoiding it in superstitious foolery. Now was time to reconsecrate the other faces of the great monolith, four altars on each side, one for each of the gods of Chaos. The cultists looked glad to be sacrificed as they threw themselves onto the iron spikes atop each altar, their bodies contorted in unimaginable joy and agony.

 

They began to levitate, floating up in the air, blood sacrificed to fuel the monument’s hunger, literally exploding, Zetias chanting black words not meant for mortal tongues, reconsecrating the foul memorial. Script began to appear on the shattered faces, forming unearthly geometries not meant for mortal man to behold. The words themselves changed endlessly, the maddening shift driving lesser men insane, but Acheron had beheld Sicarus, the accursed Daemon-planet of Almighty Lorgar, and was not fazed by the abominable carvings.

 

The restored altar absorbed the light, so much that it glowed a deep black, the words shining with bright-red glare, their evil apparent in the maddening light.

 

Acheron planned to return to Deimos now. He had work to do.

 

______

Stygius laughed with insane mirth as he laid the device in the undercity of Asharis, directly beneath the communications node. He sneered, laughing maniacally in the darkness of the dank catacombs. He had been sent on a personal mission by Acheron himself, being the Coryphaeus and thus most favored of the Dark Apostle. The device had been crafted by Zetias over a , forged in the blackness deep beneath Sicarus’ dead earth, and prepared carefully by the sacrifice of ten thousand slaves.

 

He grinned beneath his armor. Ten hours to activation. Then the Doom of Asharis would begin. He walked away, as the device began its work.

 

***

 

LATER THAT DAY

 

One message went to everyone in Asharis, on every telescreen and radio-link, every las-line and opticon. It said one thing: ‘the Word of Acheron has come.’

 

Then a burst of energy annihilated the entire communications node, reducing it to little more than burning fragments drifting down, cutting communications to the rest of Kronus. Cultists aligned to Acheron took this as their signal to revolt, and mass panic immediately struck. Before long, fires and riots had struck every district, and the Tau forces were hard-pressed to defeat them.

 

High above, in the mountains, Stygius sneered. The hand of man was making the blood sacrifice, and Acheron held the vessel that received it. Now only one thing remained; to return to Deimos. Acheron would want to know the success of his Coryphaeus’ mission.