Reign of Fire: A Crimson Lords Short Story

[Son of Carnelian]

The scream echoed over the battlefield again, this time louder. What little glass remained in the war-torn city shattered at the sound. Bartholomew could feel their pinging impacts against his armor through his black carapace. He turned his head slightly so that he could reaffirm that his only remaining squad mate still followed behind him.

 

“Still no contact with our forward elements,’ Brother Alford mused as the two of them made it into cover. ‘Should we proceed?”

 

“Our orders stand, diminished as we are,’ replied Bartholomew. When they began this task, the squad had numbered ten. A single pass from their target had taken them down to two. No thoughts of grief had yet entered Bartholomew. His duty came first. He would either succeed and mourn his comrades at battle’s end, or die and join them in death.

 

“After it makes its next pass, we ascend another level.” Alford nodded in assent. The building they now traversed had become a ruin with the coming of Chaos and its servants, but the structural integrity of the place remained sound. Desks and other bits of light cover lay strewn about, but only the masonry of the walls would protect them from their target’s weapons. Even their reinforced armor offered no security. Their flesh would simply burn inside a shell.

 

Again, the scream like crying metal ripped through the air. Bartholomew’s autosenses tried bringing the horrible noise down to tolerable levels, but something about the nature of the target itself made this effort futile. Bartholomew shook his head in disgust and refocused on the young Alford. With a nod, the two armored figures burst from around their cover and rushed up towards the stairs, weapons in hands. The bounded upwards, hoping against hope that they could make it into another patch of cover before the beast circled around again. Their armor had gotten covered in layer of ash, some from the city, some from their comrades’ fiery demise. But the cream and red of their plate still made them stand out against their blackened surroundings. Bartholomew had pride in the colors that marked him as a Crimson Lord, but for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing that they stood out a little less. Anything so that he and his brother might have another second, another breath even before the beast noticed them. 

 

They almost made it. The monstrous creature let out another predatory cry as it caught sight of the two Space Marines from above. Slamming themselves against the right and left side of a window larger than a man, the two warriors silently agreed: no farther. They would make their stand here.

 

Bartholomew peered ever so slightly out of the window. He had still not viewed the beast in full until now. The full sight of it almost nauseated him. Everything about it spoke of the vilest heresies against both flesh and machine, shaped into being by some dark artifice whose practitioner had surely gone mad long ago. The wings that held it aloft look just close enough to Imperial make that he could recognize their inherent wrongness. The jets behind it spluttered some horrible gas, likely a result of its masters’ devotion to Nurgle. The places where metal gave way to flesh looked diseased. Even the metal looked somehow decayed, with rust and atrophy marking every section. The head looked shaped into the form of an ancient Terran legend, the dragon, but no legend could match the horror of what the two Crimson Lords faced now.

 

A heldrake.

 

The beast plunged forward towards them, screaming all the while as it plowed its head through the window and into the building itself. The neck of the beast alone stretched several meters into the interior and Bartholomew found himself desperately wishing for a power sword so he could behead the abomination. But a solid kicking from Alford sufficed for the moment. The Space Marine slammed his boot into the beast’s neck, bracing his leg against the corrupted metal as he fired several shots from his bolter. They never came close to penetrating the metallic hide but they did annoy the heldrake, something that Bartholomew had counted on happening. The daemonic machine withdrew its head and reared back from the building, going into a gentle hover that ill-fitted its monstrous nature.

 

“Get to cover!” The words had barely left Bartholomew’s mouth before a jet of flame came roaring through the window. Alford had made it back behind the window frame in time, but just barely. The front of his bolter had caught the edge of the blast and had become molten slag in Alford’s hands. He tossed it away and looked over his brother.

 

“You won’t get another chance!” Bartholomew agreed and stepped out in front of the still white-hot window. In a single moment, time slowed and he could perceive every bit of the unfolding scene. The heldrake hovered in the air in front of him, eyeing him hungrily even as its mouth simmered with another prepared flame attack. The power cells within his own weapon glowed bright, signifying the buildup of power that would see the beast’s demise, if he could complete the shot before it spat hot death again. Rows and rows of oscillating metal teeth ground together in the heldrake’s mouth, their sound like the grinding of metal on bone.

 

Then it happened. Bartholomew snapped back into reality as the grav weapon in his grip discharged right in front of the beast’s metal snout. Waves of concussive force rushed over the heldrake, amplifying the pull of the planet’s gravity far past its regular state. Metal bent and broke in a shower of sparks as the monster’s body folded in and then down upon itself. With a new scream, one of pain rather than hatred, the beast fell to the ashy ground, its form now flightless and partway shattered. The abhorrent thing died with a noise that sounded somehow between an animal whimper and a deactivating cogitator.

 

“And that’s how you slay a dragon, eh Brother Bartholomew?” chuckled Alford. He slammed his face against his brother’s shoulder plate and withdrew his combat knife in preparation for the next fight.

 

“Though I suspect the ancient Terrans did it with fewer casualties, aye. That is how you slay a dragon.”

 

+++

 

Hey gang! Hope you liked the story. This really took place during one of my recent games. A tactical squad came down to two members and one of them used his grav gun to ground a heldrake from cover. Incredibly cinematic stuff, so I just had to turn it into a story as a present to myself on my birthday. Hope you guys like it and leave me any comments you have below. 

 

And yes, I also did rewatch the movie that the title refers to recently. Such an incredibly awesome film. 

[Llagos_Tyrant]

Good read. I enjoyed your description of the Heldrake and the cues to its warp nature.