Ghosts and Shadows - The Crowning of Spareknikov

[Spareknikov]

Feel free to tell me if there're any grammatical errors here guys. I'd say spelling mistakes too but I doubt there are any of those hahah.

 

 

The flames completely wreathed the basilica, illuminating a portion of the schola progenium abbey buildings against a backdrop of an alien, clear night sky. Ruins of skeletal hands reached up in pain to the sky, and embers mocked them as they ascended towards the stars.

 

The surrounding square almost glowed orange at the brightness of the ruined abbey. Light had no space in which to touch the street floors, instead choosing to faintly reflect from the dark midnight blue armour of the Night Lords present. Almost five hundred Astartes surrounded the building, with huge armour, tanks three times the size of mortal men, which occasionally presented themselves with the sheer terror of their hull ornaments which consisted of decaying corpses of past enemies and heads impaled upon gothic spikes. Twisted leering gargoyles witnessed the scene, the flames enhancing their nightmare features.

 

All that was Chaos watched the blazing ruin, as if entranced by the flames. In truth however, all watched its every angle to determine the presence of any survivors who dared to leave the roaring abbey. No humans would surely leave the basilica, and even if they did, they’d be cut down instantly by the watching statues.

 

A wall collapsed into the furnace. Not one Astartes flinched. All that could be heard was the crumbling walls caught in the huge crackling flames.

 

Suddenly, all eyes that could see caught movement in the huge arched entrance. A large black figure wrapped in a glowing flame slowly emerged from the firestorm. Unperturbed by the fire, the glow dissipated into nothing to reveal the scorched and twisted armour. He tore off his winged helm, and allowed it to fall to the floor which it hit with force, as if the flames themselves had stopped its noise in a terrible awe of this figures presence; his oiled black hair fell from his head and past his breastplate.

 

The dreadful character looked around at the traitors gathered before him, regally looking on expectantly with a twisted pride from each helmed face to another when finally, he bellowed ‘Lord Veigh’Jiann,’ he paused, deliberately, drawing in more breath to bellow and impose his meaning, ‘is no more!’

 

With this, he threw a bald head stained with seared flesh and blood to the floor, gravity carrying its dead weight down the flight of steps and rolled slowly as it reached the bottom to a nearby Astartes. His left hand appeared to flicker with a quick shock of lightening which carried itself around his huge bulk of armour. This one was different from the rest. This one wore a deep red upon his armour, trimmed with silver and decorated with parchment and script of an unknown language writ in white. His armour was huge compared to the others. Reaching a full head above all others and was twice their bulk.

 

He slowly drew a great blade, easily the size of a grown man, and hurtful symbols were carved into every inch of its blade. They too blazed with the same fire as the ruins before them all. The red one approached the long haired figure, making his way up the steps.

 

This chaos from the flames did nothing to stop his advance. In fact, he did quite the opposite. He arched his neck back at an angle, and rotated it forward to gaze at the approaching herald with a sharp toothed grin. It was a grave and excessive sight to behold, even in the Empyrean. He awaited this Word Bearer with relish. When he did arrive, neither did strike, and nor did either raise weapons in confrontation.

 

Instead, the crimson terminator got onto one knee and offered the ominous figure the great rune blade with his left hand, hilt first. He muttered, and only spoke loud enough for the figure to hear him, ‘Lord,’ the other moved and hummed with satisfaction, tilting his head forward to look down at the Word Bearer.

 

‘Lord Spareknikov.’

 

All who were present upon that distant alien world on that bloodied night bowed also in one concerted fashion, and the laughter of Spareknikov rung through the Warp, magnified countlessly by Daemonic energies.

[Brother Hadafix]

Not bad for a short story... What were the ideas behind the telling?

[Spareknikov]

Not bad for a short story... What were the ideas behind the telling?

 

Thanks Brother.

 

This is basically the prologue of a much larger story I'm working on. If Black Library don't take it, it's doomed to circulation among friends... ;) But there's a few things I wanted to portray with this part. It doesn't say here, but this excerpt takes place during the Scouring, so I could put in a large number of Astartes but give it some form of (sorry :P ) chaos.

 

Hmm... I wanted it to be dark and slow, so it could create some sort of atmosphere to get people hooked in. Which is why things happen so slowly... Really, there's not much I can say about this... :huh: