Of Blood and Iron

[hushrong]

A new army means new fluff. Please enjoy these snippets while I begin the building of my new Iron Warriors Grand Company!

---

 

I look up to the sky that I once looked up to in my youthful mortality. I no longer see the blue skies where my soul once soared but instead there is smoke and ash, the telltale of destruction. I cast my gaze to my hands. I can no longer see the dulled iron of my armor under the crimson. The blood on my hands, there is no pure water that can cleanse them now.

 

I look around and I see my foes slaughtered, their lives ended by my blade. Once these were my people but now they are either my victim or slave. I see my brothers standing amongst the ruins of what was once our home. The rage born from this massacre will never leave them. It will never dissipate but will be branded to our hearts until the last beat. The world around me is alight with raging fires and the songs of war & misery are deafening. Olympia is burning.

 

The ancients once spoke of a place of eternal damnation and pain. I know it well, for I am its creator, its lord and master.

 

+++

 

She tried to struggle but even the enhanced servo muscles of her power armor were no match for her captor. They had torn away the power source and her armor became heavier each second. He carried her through the manufactorum like a beast making off with its kill. The facility had been emptied before their advance into the industrial hive. The defenders would not leave anything for the enemy to gain. It was a wasted effort as the Iron Warriors now controlled the entire world. The manufactorum bore marks from the savagery of war. Its walls had been blasted open in several sectors and its interior had been burned or utterly destroyed, perhaps from constant bombardment. The floor surface was covered in dust and broken glass after days of abandonment. It reeked from the stench of death and decay.

 

One gauntleted hand kept her wrists together with little effort. The strength in her armor was failing and he carried her through the open work stations that had been abandoned. She could not keep pace but that did not stop the armored behemoth as he dragged her across the manufacotrum. The armored plates of her legs scraped against the floor as with each massive stride the traitor astartes brought her to an empty corner. She did not have a chance to catch her balance as she was then thrown onto the ground.

 

Face first she landed, her skin being cut by shattered glass and inhaling dirt into her mouth and nostrils. With forced effort she turned over and could not react as she saw one armored giant pin her by the neck to the ground in a chokehold. Another appeared in her vision, it brandished a narthecium. She knew their purpose and had seen them at work. Now it was set upon her.

 

The whirring saw-toothed blades cut into the armor against little resistance. The serrated teeth became heated as it dug itself into the armored plate. She could feel this as the wrist mounted chainblade ruined her sacred armor. She let out a curse but it fell upon deaf ears. With another incision the torso portion had been cut open and was being torn further apart with armored gauntlets, being forcibly removed. She screamed as the narthecium continued to cut away plate after plate of armor. There was an invisible pain that stung violently for having suffered such desecration. She would grind her teeth when the segments protecting her arms and legs were soon removed as well.

 

With little care or ceremony the rendered segments were discarded and thrown to the side as they were taken off. All the while and she raged in anger as the sacred armor’s defilement was complete. It was only the beginning.

 

The Iron Warrior whose gauntlet wrapped around her throat lifted her. No longer under the protection of her armor and her flesh bare, she had been pinned to the wall by the astartes. The Iron Warrior who had brought her here took her right wrist and stretched it out against the wall, twisting her arm so her palms were touching the surface. Then he stabbed a nail through her hand into the rockrete. It broke through the bone in the center. She could not hold back the scream of pain. He did it again to the wrist and forearm as she continued to scream and then did the same to the other arm. Tears mixed with the dirt on her face.

 

She was released from her chokehold and felt the weight of her body being held aloft by her pierced flesh. Her screaming and anguish was palpable as it echoed through the empty manufactorum.

 

While wide-eyed and breathing heavy she did not notice the mechandrite slither and tangle around her right hand trigger finger. It snaked its way, wrapping tightly before bending her finger and every knuckle in the opposite direction intended in their design. Again she screamed before she could grind her teeth.

 

“You will not be firing a weapon in that hand anytime soon” rasped a mechanical voice. It sounded as though two blades ran their sharpened edges together. “Then again, I do not expect you to survive our little session” it said again.

 

An armored hand ran through her hair before grabbing a bundle and forcing her head back, so that she and her tormentor were eye to eye. Her face of scars, bruises, and cuts met the leering features of an astartes’ helm with red eyes like that of a damned monstrosity.

 

She spat blood and muck from her mouth into the armored face of the Iron Warrior. He was unfazed by such a trivial display of defiance. His vox-caster reactivated and before he said a word his breathing hummed loudly. “First you will be defiant. You will utter your curses and benedictions and fight back your screams. Later you will lose hope. I know this and no prayer to a false emperor will ease your suffering. Then as we continue I will have you begging and pleading for death. It will not come so easily” he said with his helm came closer to her face.

 

She breathed in the smell of sulfur and smoke that emanated from the traitor astartes. Before she could cough from the fumes she screamed again. Mechandrites pierced themselves into her abdomen and sinking beneath the flesh. A dozen had entered and began to bore through her taut muscles sending waves of agony through her.

 

“This is only the beginning mortal” he whispered.

[hushrong]

Gaius Faust was not well. His wounds ailed him from the lack of treatment and the onset of infection. A loss of blood had robbed him of strength. Lastly, dehydration did not help his beaten condition. His mouth was dry and he felt as though he had swallowed a flame. He tried to salivate to at least taste some moisture. However, with the twin suns high in the sky there was no chance. Whenever he opened his mouth it felt as his tongue would crack from the heat. A drop of water would have been a salvation.

 

Under his coat and armor sweat perspired and left his body further weakened. The unending glare of the suns burned and heated the articles on his body. It was a torture in itself. A drip of sweat ran down from the side of his shaven head and into the corner of his lip. Its salt taste did nothing to help quench his thirst. He began to lean forward as his strength continued to diminish but with an ounce of determination he held firm. Despite his condition he would not show weakness among the guardsmen or their captors.

 

He was an inquisitor. Even so close to death he would be defiant.

 

Faust knelt in the rubble surrounded by the dead. Their eyelids had been cut away and their eyes had dried out in the sun when their naked corpses had been discarded. They looked like ragdolls with their limbs resting at unnatural angles from broken bones and joints. Portions of their bodies were flayed and metallic pins stuck out from the flesh where they were hooked into muscle. There was further evidence of burning, electrocution, incisions, and other forms of torture on their bodies.

 

These were his members of his retinue, of the Ecclesiarchy, and the guard. They were acolytes, crusaders, sororitas, and devout souls taken by their captors whose deaths were made painful and slow. There were seventeen bodies and none had even survived an hour of whatever horrors the Iron Warriors prepared for them out of sight within the manufacotrum.

 

He looked over to where the other survivors were kept in a sunken pit. A lower level filled in with the destroyed rubble of the structure it was once under. The surviving guardsmen and his retinue were herded here, surrounded by astartes and heretic militia.

 

Then a sound caught his attention. Another scream rang out, amplified by the vox caster of the servo skulls that floated aloft. Inquisitor Gaius Faust raised his head and struggled to yell. “Not another” he thought in anger. Barely a word left his tongue as a second later the stock of a lasgun struck him and Faust was knocked onto his side.

 

He was surprised he was not concussed as he lay in the rubble. Another two injuries tallied with the dozens he had already received in combat, one from being struck and another from striking his head against rockrete. He could see blood on the rockrete and feel the opening on his forehead. Then he heard it again, the thrumming of power armor, an Iron Warrior was coming.

 

It palmed the top of his shaven head and painfully lifted him to his feet.

 

“Do you hear that, Inquisitor? The chorus has begun anew.”

 

The voice was unaltered except for the distinctive sound that only bellowed from an astartes. It was deep and insidious.

 

“Can you not hear how much suffering you cause? Could you not already see it in the eyes of these wretches?” The astartes asked as it pointed toward the prisoners to punctuate his point.

 

“I defy you as do they. Even to the last breath we will defy you, traitor.” Faust muttered with what energy he could gather.

 

The astartes dropped him to the ground as it chuckled. “Defy me? That is what you had tried when you and your infantile Inquisition attempted to drive us from this world. You all failed and now you continue to live on part of my generosity. Unlike the corpse you praise and worship my power is tangible. You do not owe your life to the false emperor but to me as I now determine your future.”

 

Faust grunted when his knees collapsed into the rockrete. He wriggled until he could lift himself, barely kneeling upright with his hands bound behind him. The Inquisitor would not break. Not to his enemies and not in the sight of those loyal to the God-Emperor.

 

“I assume, Inquisitor that you know why I am here. What could be here that would require so many of your office? Why are there so many off world guardsmen stationed on a planet that cannot sustain a regiment of its own? Hells, it is a barren waste that even xenos would avoid to occupy. Why does your Ecclesiarchy invest so much interest here? Curious is it not? Any traveler not deaf, dumb, and blind would ponder such questions.”

 

Inquisitor Faust turned his bleeding face away from his tormentor. He could hear the screaming again.

 

“You can end this. You can end her suffering and save a life, unlike those whose corpses are strewn about you. Is that not your mission? To save those too weak to save themselves or is it? Just answer my questions! I know it is here on this world and I am sure you know its exact location” remarked the astartes as it grabbed the inquisitors jaw and forced the mortal to look him face to face.

 

Here he was, Inquisitor Gaius Faust, eye to eye with a heretic and traitor who had ten thousand years ago betrayed His master. Whether it was faith or rage it did not matter as Faust felt revitalized and he would continue his defiance.

 

“You are a traitor and your word is as worthless as any threat you can muster. Flay my flesh and crack my bones, I will not betray my loyalty to the God-Emperor. Unlike you, I do not simply fold.” He said with his dried voice.

 

The astartes let go of his grip. There was a sign of annoyance and rage but the Iron Warrior would not indulge the mortal of his barb.

 

“Again you call me a traitor and that is how I know you are only a puppet and a pawn. You are insignificant despite whatever you have accomplished. You are small minded and ignorant and worst of all a fool. You are expendable and disposable to a being you revere too deeply, one who would betray you if it suited his needs. You call me a traitor when it was my brothers and I who were betrayed by your precious emperor. He and his puppet masters will string you along and when they tire of you they will cut your strings. I pity you, Inquisitor for you do not see the truth that your emperor, if he had his way, would have betrayed all of humanity for his own gains.” retorted the astartes.

 

Faust’s anger rose at being subjected to such blasphemy.

 

“I tire of your stubbornness. I have many things to do little mortal. Know this Inquisitor that you could have saved these lives.”

 

The astartes looked over to another Iron Warrior and nodded.

 

Surrounding the prisoners several astartes and their human militia raised their weapons. Faust saw the traitor astartes brandish flamers and he realized what was to come. The heretical militia opened fire at targets huddled within the makeshift pit while the astartes directed controlled bursts of promethium into the mass.

 

Faust tried to raise himself to his feet before militia men grabbed him. He could not do anything more than scream from a dried throat and kick his feet in protest as he watched loyal men and women suffer such an odious execution.

 

“What use is a slave that is too weak to even grasp a shovel?” stated the astartes in response to the slaughtering of the guardsmen. “I have other ways to find what my lord desires.”

 

Two Iron Warriors joined Fausts tormentor having left finishing off the guardsmen to the militia.

 

“Brothers, see to it that the Inquisitor is brought aboard the Olympia’s Revenge. Have the flesh sculpters work their craft upon our guest.”

 

“By your command, Warsmith” they uttered as they saluted. They departed leaving with the broken inquisitor.

 

Detestas the Thrice Cursed, a Warsmith of the Iron Warriors turned away from the screams of the dying. He had sated his thirst for such barbaric revelry during the sieges. He stalked toward his transport and saw that one of his squads awaited him.

 

They were his elevated warriors, his chosen awaiting their warsmith after returning from their task. If they presented themselves to their Warsmith then they had not failed and in the past they never had. The Warsmith looked upon the armor of mixed devotions. He saw iron of the sons of Perturabo and the charcoal black of the Lion’s sons. His suspicion of this unit never faded from his thoughts but in the time of their service they had never failed and that was all that mattered.

 

His warriors held their heads high as the others cast their gaze elsewhere with their hooded veils.

 

“Report” demanded the Warsmith.

 

“Lord, we have located the excavation site. It bears fruit.” responded an Iron Warriors as it presented a skull. Not of natural origins, it was one of metal. In its iron gauntlet the astartes presented the severed head of a living machine, a being known as the Necrons.

 

An expression of satisfaction marred the Warsmith’s feature as he took the skull faced head into his own grip. He would pursue the treasure this world had to offer. He would not dare return to Brigannion Four and to his lord and patron without it.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

Very interesting.

 

It seems that another Iron Warrior has an interest in the Necrons!

 

Keep up the good work!

[hushrong]

Thanks bud, that second part is going to be completely rewritten. From there I should be back on track.

 

And the Necrons are a barrel of fun! I tried going for something different with my Heart of Iron fluff...but lost sight of it.