Inspiration Friday 2016: Thousand Sons (until 1/13)

[Kierdale]

Chief Apothecary Podalir of the Psychopomps

Part One - Curiosity

Hidden Content

The transformation of a mortal into one of the Emperor’s Angels of Death was a process which began at a tender age between ten and fourteen years: puberty, that period during which a human’s brain initiated great change within the body. Signals sent which sparked hormonal release in the gonads, stimulating the growth, function and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin and hair and igniting libido. Greatly accelerated height and weight gain at rates not seen since gestation and the initial years of life. It was this period of metamorphosis that the genesmiths of the Emperor had chosen to exploit and supplement with the product of their own artifices. Nineteen phases supplemented by hypnotherapy, chemical treatment, training and indoctrination, completed at sixteen to nineteen years of age, though not all survived the terrible process.

The majority of the implants required to create an Astarte could be grown in the medical labs of Adeptus Astarte fortress monasteries though the eighteenth: the progenoids, were most vital for it was via these two organs, one implanted within the chest and the other in the neck, that a chapter could recover its geneseed, produce those organs and thus create future generations of warriors.

 

“My, my, my, we have been in the wars, haven’t we?” Podalir looked over the corpse before him. The marine’s armour lay on a table behind the chief apothecary for delivery to the armoury. But for the plastron it was in as good a condition as one could hope for in a renegade warband. That chest plate　however would either need to be scrapped or melted down, for it had been punched clean through by a single round. Spalling on the inside indicated that the marine, Meus of the Psychopomps’ elite Reapers, had been slain by a bolt shell. But no normal bolt shell for it had penetrated too easily through the thick chestplate - which showed no signs of a prior structural weakness, nor a hellfire round for there was no corrosion of the ceramite by acids and neither could it have been the result of a vengeance round for such a shot would not have caused the burning of the body within. A hideous burning unlike that of prometheum. If one stared long enough at the burn marks on the inside of the armour, and the twisted, charred torso which had been within it, one could almost imagine they saw daemonic faces and other offensive imagery. Balefire, soulfire, malefic ammunition or inferno bolts, there were a number of weapons which killed in such a manner, all of which indicated the touch of Chaos.

But chief Podalir’s attention was not focused on the armour, which was the purview of forgemaster Thenaros or one of his attendant warpsmiths, it was on the corpse.

Various contraptions adorned his oversized left gauntlet, many of which had been tools of his trade as chief apothecary of the Stygian Guard, and a few which he had added since the chapter’s fall. The reductor hissed as it extended, the once-pristine chrome shaft now covered in a thin sheath of daemonic flesh, veins webbing its surface, stretching taught as the instrument lengthened and became charged.

He paid little attention to the marine’s chest, for it was a charred ruin. At the edges of what remained of the rib cage could be seen twisted and melted fragments of the black carapace. All that had been within was lost, including the progenoid gland therein.

He clicked his tongue in irritation and looked toward Meus’ throat, gently probing it with the bare fingers of his right hand, the skin almost as pale as that of the corpse. It seemed the burning had not gone as far as the throat. Perhaps it had burned out once it had consumed his soul?

The reductor gave a squeal, neither quite mechanical nor animal as it punched into the dead marine’s throat. With ease he extracted the progenoid gland, having carried out the procedure countless times. In recent years on both the fallen of his own and other chapters. And not only on the dead.

He inspected the fleshy lump in the glass collection chamber, appearing innocuous yet containing the very genesis of an Astarte. Every time he performed this operation he fought the urge to consume that morsel of twisted, man-made DNA. That three times his will had proven weak and he had delighted in the meaty ambrosia made each subsequent time all the more difficult. His hands shook as he carefully placed it within a cryocask beside him. Sealed away out of sight, the tremors subsided.

His eyes went back to the corpse. It appeared that the rest of Meus had been left untouched by the combat in which he had been slain. His loss was such a shame. Podalir ran his eyes over the fallen marine’s fine body. Heavily muscled, long of limb. The medic traced scars on Meus’ body with his fingers and the tip of the reductor, judging from their age whether they had been caused before or after the fateful mission to Cyprius III. Some of the newer ones showed the touch of the Pantheon. A puncture wound in the Reaper’s flank from before the Aelial mission - on which Meus had perished - had not sealed up; teasing the edges back with the tip of a blade, Podalir could see the wound had at some point grown sharp teeth. Such a blessing! He shook his head in sorrow at the loss and moved on, running his bare hands across the corpse once more.

The elongation of the fingers and the hardening of several nails into talons. He blinked though filters in the HUD of his helmet, observing the bone structure of the left hand. The metacarpals were unusually close. Perhaps in another couple of years they and the phalanges might have fused into a claw. A further gift of the Prince.

“Such unrealized potential,” he tutted and reached up to remove his own helmet.

Chief apothecary Podalir filled his armour. Since their fall he had become more than bulky. Corpulent even, and he rarely trod upon deck or battlefield. Outside of his apothecarium he was carried about upon a palanquin of flesh, the very skin and limbs of its twisted bearers forming the platform and throne upon which he rode, yet more attendants – chains piercing their flesh – were charged with moving before the palanquin, pulling his vast bulk forward. His face was fat and swollen, hairless from the shaving his slaves gave him daily and soft from the oils that same chattel massaged into it.

He raised Meus’ left hand, the skin as pale as the alabaster of their armour had once been. Unguents and other tinctures had staved off rigor mortis though the limb was cold. His hot, excited breath misted in the cool air of the apothecarion as he brought the fingertips to his quavering lips, brushing them. Finally he could not resist any longer, biting down on the fingers, shoving them deep into his mouth, so deep that their nails scraped the back of his throat and he nearly gagged. But this merely drove him on. His jaw clenched and the fingerbones he chewed upon cracked loudly. He gnawed at them until the fingers came off and he chewed excitedly, thick black stagnated blood dribbling down his chin as he giggled and looked about, fearful that he might be discovered and forced to share the delicacies before him. He took into him the flesh that had been touched by the Dark Prince, so that that blessing might be passed on unto him.

The geneseed was the property of the chapter he knew and he well remembered how he had been punished by lord Sophusar for his past three moments of weakness. Oh he recalled the punishment perfectly. The masterful strokes of the Chaos lord’s whip, the exquisite agony! A part of him was inclined to offend again. Deliberately. Would their lord carry through on his promise to kill him if it happened again? Or would his beating eclipse the last? Ecstasy or oblivion...Podalir bit deep into the corpse’s flank in order to distract himself, his own mouth fastening over the daemonic maw-scar, his tongue stroking it, teasing it as if to see whether the neverborn flesh would bite him even now in death. Disappointed that it did not, his great jaw closed, biting the blessed flesh from the corpse. The dead teeth fragmented between his own and shivers ran up his spine as his mutated omophagea and neuroglottis, the 8th and 15th implants, digested the more-than-alien tissue. This stilled his nerves a fraction which both pleased and irritated him. As a medic he valued his control, for such was needed when lives were in one’s hands – he had often commented that as an apothecary he had far more power than his battle brothers, for while they merely took the lives of their enemies, both the lives of enemies and allies were in his hands – but at the same time to live upon the razor’s edge of sensation, upon the cusp of madness everlasting, was that not the epitome for a devotee of Slaanesh?

At some times, during long sessions within the apothecarium and even in the heat of battle, fighting to save the lives of his battle brothers, he also felt another calling. His work with life and death had fascinated him with the chemical processes of life and its interaction with the soul. As a loyal, blind pawn of the Golden Throne he had, like the pathetic masses of the Imperium, believed that one’s soul upon death would become one with the Emperor. The Astartes did not believe that the Master of Mankind was a god, but a supremely powerful man indeed, and the souls of his people would fuel his might. Such lies the Lords of Terra sowed in order to steer the herds of men.

On Cyprius III and afterwards they had learned a bitter truth: that the lies of the Imperial Cult were in fact bona fide to a degree. That the Emperor was indeed a deity, a Corpse-God and that he was, though the Four might never admit it, perchance a rival and true nemesis to the four gods of Chaos: the true powers of the Warp.

But what fate then awaited the soul?

Since hominid had become human and gained the luxury of pondering one’s existence amid the daily toil of survival, man had questioned the existence of the soul and its ties to life. Mysteries still, upon the cusp of the forty-first millennium, unsolved. What did the soul experience upon departing the mortal coil? What shackled it to the flesh?

These things fascinated Podalir and that old, kind voice offered to teach him these secrets and more in the times when curiosity got the better of him. He had experienced all the spectrum of sensation that a human mind possessed thanks to the Infernal Engine, that fell device combining the pain glove with his own craft and that of old Zenelaius, Thenaros’ predecessor. With it the Psychopomps shared the emotions of those strapped within the Engine, subjected to myriad tortures. Not merely the agonizing pain with which those pale degenerates of the Eldar race assuaged their souls, but everything from rapturous joy through torment to heart-rending woe could be inflicted. They had even explored beyond the ken of humanity, forcing Eldar and other xenos into the Engine. But with repetition came ennui, and faster in Podalir’s case than that of his brethren.

Perhaps in truth he had not experienced all there was of life, but found himself more and more fascinated with that which lay beyond.

 

 

But for the hum of the ship’s engines the only sound in the room was his breathing, which came in periodic hisses. Ironic, for while his transformation at the hands of the herald of Slaanesh had seen him reborn with the lower body of a serpent, he now made a sound like such an animal not due to his rebirth but due to one who had sought to fight against the changes coming over the chapter: Upon Angra and Holusiax’s confronting of chaplain Dagoso, at a time when they sought to enlighten him, Dagoso had resisted. Resisted most violently, only Holusiax’s Slaanesh-blessed reflexes saving him from having more than just his lower jaw blasted away by the stalwart chaplain’s bolt. Hence the metal mask which he now wore over the lower half of his face.

“You would have me tell you of what lays beyond the veil?” the naga sorcerer addressed the visitor within his chambers, the dim lanterns illuminating little of the room beyond the silken drapes and scrollwork carved into the walls. Light reflected off glassware, metal and bone upon a case behind the serpentine marine, but insufficient for the guest to make out specific shapes or forms. “Surely you would do better to ask our master of sanctity; for he died, whilst I was merely transformed.”

“Lingnam bisulcam!” Podalir remarked of Angra, the dark apostle, “Besides, I am a physician. I wish to learn, not be preached to.”

“The Infernal Engine?”

Podalir nodded, to which Holusiax shrugged his thick Astarte arms, his lower pair of daemonic arms still folded in his lap. “How many have perished within the Engine so that we might open our minds and satisfy our hungers?”

“All, of course,” a smile tugged at the corners of Podalir’s mouth. It titillated him that all eventually died in the Engine. Knowledge was power, after all. No pain, no gain. He suppressed a laugh.

“And all those of us who rode them to oblivion were forced out when the end came, were we not?” It was true: the ordeals the Psychopomps subjected their captives to within the Engine did not leave minds intact, so they drove the captives to breaking point. And when each expired the Psychopomps connected to them found themselves forced out of the captive’s psyche, denied a glimpse of what lay beyond.

“With your power, Holusiax,” Podalir ventured, giving the sorcerer a conspiratorial look, “surely you could anchor me, tether my soul to that of the captive, no?”

“You flatter me, chief apothecary. Yet what if my power proves insufficient to bring you back?”

“I am not afraid of death.” That the obese apothecary – so corpulent was he that it was said he never shed his armour lest it prove impossible to dress him in once again – had come to Holusiax’s quarters on his own two feet, not carried aboard one of his flesh-palanquins, spoke of the import of the matter...and his desire to keep it secret.

In a blink Podalir found one of the sorcerer’s crimson bladed knives at his throat.

“Then why waste a captive? I could easier kill you now and grant your wish.”

“You do not wish to know, Holusiax?” Podalir looked the other straight in the eyes, “Tell me you do not want to know the truth.”

“I know what lies beyond.”

“No!” the medic spat as he leaned forward, jowls shaking, the dagger drawing a line of blood at his thick neck, “You know what they have told us.” Podalir grunted dismissively, “And the greatest of them, Ki’mah’gureh, is called a `Keeper of Secrets` for a reason.”

Holusiax withdrew the dagger and sheathed it out of sight, his Astarte hands upon the coils of his lower body as if he were sat in the lotus position, his daemonic hands folded once again. After a moment’s consideration he addressed the other once more.

“No mere sacrifice will suffice. It needs must be one close to you. One whom you care about.”

The apothecary’s features shook as he laughed a bitter laugh. “There are none I care about! When we were the Stygians none of us cared the slightest for one another so long as duty was done, and now? All that stops us from knifing one another in the back is that we’ve all done it to death already. Pardon the pun.”

Holusiax studied the other before answering.

“Not entirely true, Podalir. I know what happened on Golstadt.”

 

Part Two - Temptation

Hidden Content

Lighting rent the heavens, illuminating the battlefield for a split second before darkness swallowed all once again. In that brief moment it had reflected off the pale white armour of the Stygian Guard manning the city walls and the ornate statuary which adorned those walls, as defensive as they were decorative. Images of the first settlers who had come to Golstadt during the Dark Age of Technology, fought its native xenos and won their home. The lightning barely picked out the Imperial guardsmen of the Golstadt regiments for while they lined the walls and the courtyards behind it, a thousand of them for every astartes the Stygians had sent, their armour and fatigues were as black as the perpetual cloud cover of their homeworld. The light only caught the chrome spikes atop their pickelhaubes. Heavy rain poured down, washing clean rooftops and walls, sluicing streets clean but creating great mires of the cratered plains beyond the walls.

The lightning also picked out the relentless phalanxes of the foe, trudging their way through that marshland, the flashes of harsh white electrical discharge catching gleaming chrome skulls and lean limbs. When the darkness fell once again all that remained was the eerie green glow of their weapons and power systems.

The boom of thunder drowned out the whine of the enemy flyer, a large crescent vessel which shot low across the plain, arcs of green lightning streaking out from weapons on its underside as it neared the wall. Flakk shells from the defenders streaked up but could not touch it, only serving to drive in onward toward them. All those present had witnessed the unleashing of these xenos weapons before and ducked behind thick merlons. Even still, the arcing green energy lapped about and struck several guardsmen, charring their flesh and melting away armour with ease. The chemical energy released by their deaths fed the arcing and it leapt to squad mates, felling more before dissipating fully. There was then a blinding light as the flyer played a thin beam across the shield wall. It appeared so fine and noiseless that one could only assume it was some form of designator for a larger weapon, but the intensity of that beam gave away the destructive power it carried and the death ray caused a vast section of the wall to be sliced away, screams drowned out by the sound of falling masonry as bodies tumbled into the void in the wall.

As the Doom Scythe shot skyward, its attack run successful, the sky was filled with cannon shells and missiles from the Imperial defenders in far greater volume that before. No matter how advanced the xenos machines were, they could not withstand the brutality of man and the crescent aircraft was swatted from the skies, spiraling back to earth and exploding amid the ranks of skeletal warriors advancing toward the breach it had made. A cheer went up from the forces of mankind as the Scythe’s explosion tossed bodies high in the air, but it was short lived and bitter for all knew that when felled, even when blown limb from limb, the enemy robots would often right themselves, pull themselves back together, and continue fighting.

A series of low booms from within the city hailed the beginning of the Golstadt offensive: the 94th Artillery. The booms were replaced with whistling and seconds later heavy shells struck the plains beyond the city, pulverizing dozens of the enemy droids, throwing more into the air and sending the body parts of others scything through their own ranks as debris.

Yet on they came in an implacable mass.

Fire poured down from defenders on the walls, heavy weapon teams and devastators directing their fire at any of the enemy who stood out from the massed ranks of robots. Those with additional limbs, strange weapons or simply glowed more than those about them. There was little time to study the foe, only to crush them. While more ordnance rained down upon the enemy’s inexorable advance, those within the walls prepared themselves to fight within the breach.

The enemy had been allowed to bring a section of the wall down, for in the three months since the xenos onslaught had begun, the robots had been found to be a simple yet stubborn foe. The Golstadt field marshal, Wollstone, declared that, presented with an avenue of access into the city of Witold the enemy would be unable to resist it and, thus channeled, their numbers would serve them no good.

As the baleful green glow within the chrome skulls of the mechanicals appeared in the breach, the ranks of the Imperial guard unleashed ranked fire from their lasguns as officers called out orders. For several minutes the tide was stemmed and body upon body piled up. Those which attempted to rise were shot again until the sheer weight of dead – if such a term could be used for these soulless mockeries of God-Emperor given life – upon them pinned them down. More guardsmen and the marines of the Stygian Guard upon the walls and surrounding rooftops added their fire and it seemed as if Wollstone’s strategy might finally halt the enemy advance. But steadily those in the courtyard into the breach noticed that their fellow defenders upon the walls were no longer directing their fire down into the breach but rather back out onto the fields beyond the city. The diverting of their heavy weapons allowed the mechanicals to begin pushing through the breach, literally topping piles of their own slain in some cases.

“Captain, explain yourself!” the major in charge of the guardsmen in the courtyard shouted into his man’s vox handset, addressing the commander of the Astartes upon the walls.

But captain Semoru, commander of the Stygian Guard’s ninth company, did not respond. The Golstadt regiments would hold the breach, or they would lose their homes and their lives. And if his devastators did not take down these new threats then the breach they had allowed the enemy to make would be the least of their worries.

It had at first seemed as if the wind had increased and was whipping at the high grass of the marshy fields beyond Witold’s walls, until one of his men had called out that the undulating movement was in fact legs. Hundreds of them. Then, binocs raised, Semoru saw the beasts. Some were larger than rhinos and predators while about them scurried swarms of smaller constructs. Scuttling forward at an alarming rate upon countless spindly legs.

He ordered his men to open fire at maximum range and for sergeants to feed their signums’ data directly to him. In a hololith projected above his left vambrace he could see the insectile advance. Rather than marching straight at the city as the androids had, these new xenos forces were sweeping out to the east and west. A new tactic for the mechanicals, though flank attacks were hardly all that advanced. By the time he had passed the intel on up the chain of command to field marshal Wollstone, his devastators had redirected their rapiers and the darkness was lit up with flashes as conversion beamers began lancing out at the xenos constructs. Firing at extreme range the energy weapons created huge blasts, converting the matter of all within into blasts of energy and light. He nodded in satisfaction, allowing himself a modicum of pride in his men and their performance.

When the lenses of their helmets cleared, autosenses having blackened out the blasts to protect the marines’ eyes, the insectiles which had been moving eastward were nowhere to be seen. Obliterated.

There came the roar of engines from off to the west. So many that he could hear them over the continuing lasgun volleys down in the breach. The regiments were sending out their tanks – and in large numbers if the sound was any indication – to deal with the westbound constructs. He pointed his binos westward, catching a glimpse of the tank squadron commander, waving his sword toward the enemy.

Satisfied, he directed his men’s fire back toward the massed skeletal ranks.

 

The distress calls from the Leman Russ squadrons were the first sign that the battle was turning. Cries of terror were soon drowned out by the sound of metal being torn as easily as paper and then the transmissions were cut. The next flash of lightning revealed smoke rising from the carcasses of the Golstadt tanks far out on the plains. But of the xenos constructs there was no sign.

The devastator captain cut the comm feed, for the despair and blame-passing of the guard officers would help no one. He had his men maintain fire upon the enemy they could see, while at the back of his mind the feeling grew. A weight heavy upon his mind.

 

The guard had called upon one of their Punishers to support the ranks of guardsmen holding the breach, the Leman Russ’s huge punisher cannon screaming as its barrels spun and spat forth a torrent of fire, supported by its hull and sponson bolters. Even the tank commander was adding to the devastation, firing his heavy stubber while screaming epithets at the xenos invaders.

When the punisher suddenly ceased fire the guardsmen rushed to raise their weapons once more, reinvigorated by their brief respite. All assumed the tank had had to stop in order to reload or allow the great gatling cannon to cool, until the tank had been lifted aloft upon an explosion. An explosion from within which erupted a huge multi-legged, chrome carapaced monstrosity! Though the Stygian devastators had succeeded in felling many of the constructs out on the fields before the city, the remainder had buried deep...

Beams of green energy began playing about as the huge mechanical millipede triggered its weapons, bodies and armour alike dissolving at its touch. Bladed legs kicked out, eviscerating guardsmen as they fled.

More and more constructs pulled themselves out of the tunnel the first had created and the spike-helmeted guardsmen of the Golstadt regiments broke, fleeing down alleyways as screeching metal insects the size of attack dogs gave chase bounding from wall to wall.

They had lost control of the breach and in came the legions of skeletal warriors, finally raising their glowing firearms to add to the devastation.

While others might have fought on, attempting to pull victory from the jaws of defeat or earn oneself a glorious death, such was not the way of the Stygian Guard.

“Retreat! Fall back to the dropships!” Semoru ordered. Witold was lost.

 

 

 

* * * *

“When did you last sleep, captain? Both hemispheres.”

“Before we began to man the wall,” Semoru answered tiredly “A few hours in the morning a week ago. Not that `morning`, `evening` or `night` has much meaning here.” He looked out at the perpetual darkness before returning his gaze to the apothecary and his ministrations. The captain had sustained injuries during their pull out from Witold. Nothing that would permanently affect his combat ability, but he would be off the front line for a couple of days.

“And the enemy?”

“Gone. As always. Likely having killed every man, woman and child in Witold but only that.” None had found an explanation for the xenos assault. They did not enslave, they did not steal nor appear to hunger for resources, nor did they conquer: they left neither bases nor garrisons.

“Any sign as to where they might strike next?”

“Aside from a general north-eastern advance? Likely Wendelin, Ottfried or Gerwig will face them next. Field marshal Wollstone divides his forces between the three.” Semoru’s lack of confidence in the Golstadt commander was evident in his tone.

“And master Sophusar?”

“`The Lords of Terra assigned us to Wollstone’s command.`”

Podalir nodded gravely. The Stygians were, as ever, shackled to duty.

The chief apothecary turned away to set his tools upon the table beside him in the chamber he had been assigned. Castle Odenwald dated back to the first settlers, having been raised – it was said – the day after their victory over the native xenos barbarians. It was now decrepit and mouldering. He had installed brilliant lights to banish the darkness, both to aid his work and to keep out the natives who were uncomfortable in such harsh light.

“How many did we lose at Witold, captain?”

“Five,” Semoru took the question not as an insult to his command, for the Stygians voided themselves of pride by way of the pain glove. Fellow astartes were resources and it was rare for one to refer to another as `battle brother` as marines of other chapters commonly did.

“Five?” he straightened. “I received only four cadavers for recyc.”

“Greacor’s could not be recovered.”

Podalir was quiet for a moment.

“You redeploy…?”

“In five hours,” he raised a hand to stay the sawbones’ protestations, “sergeant Duneust will lead the ninth while I recover.”

“Can you spare me a landspeeder and one of your men, captain?”

Semoru considered the apothecary. As with all chirurgeons of the Adeptus Astartes, he was both a warrior and a medic, yet while Semoru had seen apothecaries of other chapters tirelessly toil over fallen brothers hideously maimed and beyond hope, all too often he had seen Podalir glance at injured Stygians only to coldly move on, judging them foregone. Was it a product of the chapter’s ascetic attitude? He sometimes wondered if there was something more, something even colder at the apothecary’s core.

Yet now he wished to go back to a devastated city in search of one of their fallen?

 

 

“Stay with the speeder,” Podalir ordered the marine in the pilot’s seat once they arrived at the breach in Witold’s wall. One of Semoru’s devastators, Arthesi saluted and took the landspeeder into the cover of a ruin before dismounting, killing the engines for silence, and setting watch, his bolter up and ready. The darkness swallowed the marine and the speeder once again.

A day had passed and carrion eaters had set about the Imperial fallen. The eyes and the tongue, Podalir observed that these were the juiciest morsels to the scavengers. Would their souls reach the afterlife blind and dumb, he pondered. A blessing, perhaps, for it was taught that those who died for the Emperor went to join Him in glory. They would not need their eyes for His glory was blinding, nor their tongues for his majesty was beyond description. Yet as he looked over the corpses more he noticed that all too many had fallen in flight from the breach. Wounds to their backs. A blessing then, for those who died without His blessing were doomed to damnation. Better for them that they not see it or allow their torturers to hear their cowardly cries.

Such musings were against the Stygian creed yet it tugged at the corner of his mouth in mirth as he considered them.

He traced the path captain Semoru had given him, from their defensive positions upon the wall, through winding alleys and courtyards filled with brackish rainwater puddles, his backpack lamp lighting the way, through ruined buildings and across roadways to where the Stygian dropships had awaited them.

As he walked he passed not only dead humans – both guardsmen and the peoples of Witold – but also the xenos mechanicals. Out of sight of his escort he knelt to examine one of the latter. So similar were they to the skeletal structure of Man that one had to fight the blasphemous temptation to ascribe the similarity to the design of some higher being.

He removed a gauntlet to run his hand over the cool alloy of the machine’s rib cage, reflecting the light of his backpack’s lamp, wondering what manner of mechanical heart had once beat within it, and up to its skull-like head. The eye sockets were dead, void of the eerie green glow that had once filled them. With a wrench the head came loose and he raised it to examine it more closely. What manner of programming drove them? They appeared so dissimilar to the automatons of the Adeptus Mechanicus, for even they contained some measure of organic tissue yet not these xenos...

He moved on in his search for Greacor’s corpse.

 

The reductor hissed as it retracted and he examined the recovered geneseed. Even in death Greacor’s body had attempted to enter a form of comatose state before fully expiring. Perhaps all was not lost.

What was most worrying was the injuries that seemed to have taken Greacor’s life. Not disintegration or gauss flaying, but he had been felled by clawing, and much of his skin removed post-mortem. His face included. This disturbed Podalir as such actions by the enemy had never yet been reported.

He raised the glass vial and the geneseed within once more, scanning it with various filters only for a sound to cut through his concentration.

The scrape of metal over rock.

He drew his pistol with one hand, stowing the geneseed with the other, and swept his surroundings with his weapon, searching for targets. Greacor had fallen, his back to a wall and his bolter empty in his hands, in a guildhall. About him lay several of the skeletal automatons, the damage to them speaking well of the marine’s marksmanship. Yet scuff marks in the dust indicated that at some point a number of the fallen had managed to reactivate and leave. Did these revenants linger still?

The scrape of metal over stone again. He killed his backpack lamp, relying on his helmet’s autosenses. Whether or not the mechanical could see in the dark, he needn’t illuminate himself.

 

When the figure staggered into the ruins, dragging a footless leg behind it, Podalir raised his bolt pistol but held his fire. At first he had held his fire as the intruder appeared to be a heavily injured Astartes, such was its bulk, yet the man’s nakedness here in the middle of a ruined city was incongruous in the extreme. A flash of sheet lightning, cloud to cloud, overhead revealed not the hobbling Astartes’ injuries, but the fact that its exposed bones were in fact gore-smeared chrome and the muscle and flesh of its bulk were merely draped over a skeleton of metal. Upon its face it wore the torn, ragged visage of Graecor. Heathen xenos sacrilege!

It was unarmed but for taloned claws.

This was the first time he had beheld one of the mechanicals `alive` - let alone one so morbidly clad-, having spent the war up to this point within the confines of his makeshift apothecarium and it the android’s similarity to an animated, fleshless skeleton was eerie. The smoothness of its movements, evident damage aside, made him sure it must possess some form of intellect above that of the automata of the Mechanicus. How else could it move thus? And why might it choose to wrap itself in the flesh of man? Some ill-conceived attempt at camouflage? Trophy-taking?

And he questioned himself. Why had he not yet fired? He had come for Graecor’s geneseed and had successfully recovered it. His duty was to execute this monstrosity and return to his chapter. But something stopped him. Curiousity? It was as if something whispered to him, urging him on. But the xenos before him was no more than a machine, wasn’t it? What then was that presence he felt when he held the balance of life and death in his gore-soaked hands? Like a loving father watching over a son. Such a feeling was alien to him, his transformation into Astartes having stripped all memories of his mortal life from him decades ago, yet the feeling stuck. The whisper on the wind...a soul trapped within the monstrosity before him? The souls of those it had slain? Would they not cry out for release, rather than coaxing his inquisitiveness?

He tracked it with his pistol, sights fixed between the machine’s glowing green eyes as it dragged itself across the room toward him. And he studied it.

Nearing him it raised its hands toward him.

How much strength was in those limbs of metal, he wondered? Were they a match for the thews of Astartes? And did life run through them as it did the limbs of men?

He adjusted his aim and fired a single shot, blowing off its complete leg at the knee. The truncated limb sparked but the mechanical kept coming, dragging itself across the floor now.

A second shot took off its right arm and it paused, reaching for the severed limb with its one remaining arm and Podalir held his fire, having heard of their ability to self-repair but never having observed it firsthand. He watched as components adjusted their positions, cut wires writhed and metal seemed to bend and melt plastic-like as the arm was restored. Only the metal. None of the skin or muscle it had wrapped about itself was involved in the regeneration. It immediately began crawling toward him again.

Taking careful aim he fired at the same point, blowing off the limb again, fragments of metal and scraps of worn meat flying everywhere.

Could areas once damaged and healed heal again?

It appeared so and, his curiosity satisfied, he blew off the right arm a third time and kicked it away. Another shot took off the left arm at the elbow and he kicked the struggling, maimed robot onto its back. That the sound of his shots echoed out through the ruined city did not concern him, so lost was he in studying the xenos construct.

A foot upon the strange glyphs engraved in its chest he now looked down at his captive. The weak points of the mechanicals were well enough known that both Astartes and even guardsmen knew where to aim their bolters and lasguns, but what other weaknesses might Podalir be able to discover with a `living` specimen. What secrets might he unlock from this mockery of life? Their healing ability...could limbs only be reattached from where they had been severed? Could they be swapped, left and right? Arm and leg? Could decapitation be reversed? Would two heads fight for the control of one body?

He bent down and pulled the face of the fallen Stygian from that of the xenos, casting away the rag of flesh and looking upon the robot’s chrome face at last.

The ways of the Imperium forbade xenos technology. It was heresy. But the Stygian Guard held duty above all else. Could not some knowledge be garnered which might aid them in the fulfillment of their duty, their mission? He meant not so much to use the xenos technology as to manipulate it against them. If he learned nothing then no one need know. If he learned something of use...the presence looking over him warmed, and he smiled.

However, the smile faded as he heard the tramping of metal upon stone. More mechanicals inbound. Several, and from a couple of directions if his autosenses were accurate.

The first two were skinless. He gunned them down as neither was armed, having lost their weapons at some point. But the next came in firing and the apothecary was forced to remove his boot from his prize, throwing himself prone and firing as he rolled. This one too he `killed`, for he hoped to capture a second one but could still hear more on their way.

Rarely did an Astarte ever hear a deadman’s click, for a minor aspect of the hypnotraining which turned men into the Emperor’s angels of death included the subconscious tracking of ammunition and Podalir reloaded without thinking, his pistol quickly up and ready. A skilled marksman though he was, he was not prepared for three of the automatons entering the ruin he knelt within at the same time. One entering through the open doorway, another through a blast hole in the adjacent wall and a third barging its way through a thin internal wall.

His prize forgotten, he charged toward the first, firing as he did so and rolled as soon as his target fell, turning as he did so, planning to come up and fire on the second before pivoting to target the third if he survived long enough.

The harsh double bang of a bolter halted him as he came up from his roll, finding the remaining two mechanicals headless.

“Apothecary!”

It was Semoru’s man.

Podalir’s mind raced. He jogged over to the mutilated android he had planned to somehow take, and prepared to execute it but the marine entered before he could.

“Chief apothecary!” Arthesi called out, entering the ruin, sweeping his bolt gun over the downed robots and putting another shot into the chest of one for good measure. “You are unhurt?”

“I am fine!” he snapped, unable to hide his frustration as thoughts of experimentation and secrets untapped began to seem beyond his reach.

“You’re welcome,” the devastator muttered sardonically as he walked over to the medic’s position, observing the mechanical under the officer’s boot. He then noticed the corpse of Duneust in the corner. He did not approach it, merely took in the removed chest plate, the faceless skull, the puncture wounds in his chest and neck and nodded. Sorrow was not the Stygian way. Duneust had performed his duty during the defence of Witold. In retreat he had failed, become separated, and had paid the ultimate price. As Podalir had recovered his geneseed, so too would Arthesi recover the armour. It would be granted to one of the scouts and nothing more thought of it.

He looked once again at the mutilated robot, noting the amputation of the limbs.

“A tenacious foe,” the devastator’s voice was level. Was he wary of seeming to compliment the reviled xenos before a senior officer?

“So similar in form to the skeleton of man,” Podalir commented, his bolt pistol’s sights set between the eyes of the chrome skull. Not once did it scream out, curse them or make a single utterance.

“And yet they take so much firepower to put down.”

Podalir nodded. “Aye, their metal bodies heal as if flesh – nay! – faster than flesh.”

Arthesi stepped away, keeping his eyes on their surroundings. “How better might we combat them, apothecary?” still his voice was even, difficult to read.

“The better one knows one’s foe, the easier the conquering.”

The devastator turned to look Podalir in the eye at last, “too many of my brethren have fallen already. Too many you have deemed beyond hope.” Attachment to one’s squad mates was worthy of castigation within the companies of the Stygians, not to mention the implied insult to the chief apothecary.

Podalir finally met the other’s gaze. “Then transport me and my burden back to Schloss Odenwald, and tell no other.”

 

Part Three – Fall

Hidden Content

“Arthesi is no more,” Podalir replied, fighting to keep his voice calm, lest he betray any emotion. Anger at the sorcerer for knowing his secret, and pain at being forced to recall the loss of one he had in time come to call brother. “Five years after Golstadt he was transferred to the Bloody First, just before the Nantessi Insurrection.” The chief apothecary looked over at the coiled sorcerer.

“Then came Cyprius III.”

Podalir nodded. The Stygian Guard’s first company had accompanied the brash, demanding inquisitor Tobias Fen to the planet Cyprius III, investigating rumours of corruption. Corruption indeed! The planet had been under the sway of the Dark Prince of Chaos for centuries if not longer, though the veteran company had not fallen to Slaanesh. No, no. In a move of cosmic irony they had fallen, in their brutalization of the Cypriusian cults and populace, to the worship of the Lord of Rage.

It had been the rest of the chapter, come seeking their finest, who had fallen to the Great Corruptor and had finally come to blows with the Bloody First.

Holusiax leaned forward conspiratorially upon the coils of his serpent body.

“He lives.”

The shock was undisguisable upon Podalir’s face.

“In a manner of speaking.”

 

* * * *

The mission to Cyprius III had culminated in a duel within the governor’s palace. The arch-puppet of the Dark Prince, the governor himself had been slain with ease, but his head had been a prize sought by both first captain Viphic and chapter master Sophusar. Some said that Sophusar had pushed the loyal (there was a joke if ever there was one! Those loyal to him, at least!) Stygians hardest here at the end, so that he was able to take the governor’s head before his former equerry arrived at the head of the Bloody First. He had done this to enrage the rogue first captain even more and they had dueled over the still warm-corpse of Slaanesh’s puppet.

Viphic had been bested and brought to his knees, though not without the deception and witchcraft of Holusiax. He and much of the Bloody First had been hunted and rounded up, imprisoned within Charon’s dungeons.

Podalir knew this well for Sophusar had granted the chief apothecary access to their misguided brethren in order to work upon them unfettered by the rules and decrees of Imperial medicine, free of good conscience. To shackle the madmen, not to temper them but enslave them. They could not be freed from their worship of the Lord of Rage, but they would become tools of the Psychopomps as the Stygian Guard had been tools of the Lords of Terra.

Holusiax lead Podalir deep into their flagship. The two were flanked by six of the naga sorcerer’s masked and hooded Blessed: great glaives in their hands and clad in purple and pink-sheened scale armour and cloaks, all reminiscent of the arms and armour of the Q’tlahs’itsu’aksho: those most numerous of Slaanesh’s servants. Podalir knew not exactly what purpose the Blessed served the warband’s highest sorcerer beyond that of bodyguards – but why surround oneself with mortal defenders? – only that they were sacrosanct and untouchable by others of the warband.

Onward through the corridors and chambers of the flagship they marched. Even now Podalir eschewed one of his flesh-crafted conveyances, instead the chief apothecary waddled along upon his oversized, bowed legs. Their journey did not end as they crossed the gantry overlooking the cages within which they kept the Bloody First, as Podalir had half-anticipated it would. Half anticipated for he would have known if Arthesi had been held there, he himself having operated upon each and every of the veterans they had captured. By his hand had the drug pumps and neural shunts been installed. He would have known unless lord Sophusar had instructed one of the chief apothecaries’ men to carry out the procedure on that one Astarte closest to Podalir behind his back. To save him the act? Or to torture him at a later date?

But they passed on, the Psychopomp guards bowing their heads before going back to taunting their barbaric kinsmen as the two officers and their escort passed on into a deeper, darker chamber.

 

“What am I looking at? Why are you showing me this?” Podalir’s voice came out as a harsh whisper fraught with confusion, but Holusiax knew realization would come in time. And so he did not respond.

“This was captured?”

He beheld within the darkness of the cell, a hunched, blackened figure. Its skin was as if charred, as if indeed the entire body were made of wood and had been incinerated. In its depths heat still glowed, running up and down long, strong limbs, up a pair of horns which sprouted from the sides of its downcast head.

“No. Summoned.”

“By whom?” the apothecary asked but even as he did so he knew that it had been Holusiax who had committed the act. “Master Sophusar- chaplain Angra...?”

“Approved by both,” Holusiax answered with a nod, “granted the blessing of Ki’mah’gureh too. And yes...the daemon was summoned by myself.”

“How can this be?” Podalir looked from the monster to the librarian and back again. “How can you summon a pawn of – of -.” He could not name that destructive power.

“The Prince’s nemesis,” Holusiax finished for him.

The hot chamber was octagonal, each wall ending in a seamless door, every square centimeter of seven of them covered in sigils and scrawled text. While they had entered through the one unmarked door, Holusiax had then opened another, revealing a cage within it and a beast inside it.

A bloodletter at first glance but as the thing moved, shuffling and struggling against the iron chains which held it, either having heard them or sensed them somehow, it turned its visage upon them: eyes glowing, blood running from their lidless rims, Podalir could see that it was no mere daemon. The bloodletter had been summoned into a body of flesh which it had then moulded to its will. The bulk, the muscle-corded limbs.

Astartes flesh.

Podalir stepped back from the portal, away from Holusiax though never breaking his eye contact with the sorcerer.

“How?”

“An experiment,” Holusiax explained, gesturing to the twisted, possessed Arthesi with one of his own daemonic hands. “Jinx retrieved a tome of such knowledge by chance – if you believe in such things – and what could be more exquisite?”

“But- “

“We care little that the blood the Bloody First shed and the skulls they claim nourish their loathsome patron. They are our slaves. They work toward our ends,” Holusiax went on, motioning to the possessed marine again. “This experiment...perhaps someday we will succeed in enslaving them too. But not this one.” He examined the hunched wretch with distain. “It is imperfect.”

The naga sorcerer turned back to Podalir, his fat face sheathed in sweat, “So, chief apothecary. You wish to see beyond the veil?”

 

* * * *

He had witnessed the joy of motherhood, the birth of a child caringly nurtured psychically by both parents...only for pawns of She Who Must Not Be Named to descend upon his world, destroying the beauty they had tended to, enslaving his peoples and even at the end of that vision he had seen himself in that Eldar’s memory, he had seen his sickeningly fat form carried upon a bier of willing slaves, directing corrupted Astartes as they rounded up the injured xenos. These and more experiences had expanded his mind immeasurably yet nothing could have prepared him for that which he beheld within the mind of the possessed Arthesi.

 

The sky was as overcast as that of Golstadt all those long years ago, yet coloured scarlet, the clouds roiling and churning as if in time lapse. Beneath his feet was an endless field of beige cobbles and only as he took a step did he recognize the sound of ceramite upon bone. Skulls. As far as the eye could see was a carpet of skulls. Some faced upward, their eye sockets vacant, others displayed obvious damage: trepanation scars and fatal injuries. Out to the horizon the bonefield extended and only as he turned about, searching the seemingly featureless plain did he find something. Having turned and turned, coming back to face the direction he believed he had started in, he found a great tower of brass now stood before him, innumerable stories reaching high to the sanguine clouds above, staircases winding about the tower like genetic helixes.

Was he now within the mind of his accomplice, his co-conspirator from Golstadt? Within what passed for the mind of the daemon which possessed him? Or were their minds now as one? As he took his first step toward the brazen tower he realized that likely the naga sorcerer had played him. Was this the fulfillment of Podalir’s own wish, or merely the next step in Holisiax’s own experiment?

He stopped.

He could feel a presence atop the tower, awaiting him, but he was an officer of the Psychopomps, a champion of Slaanesh and a master of life and death. He answered no one’s summons.

Almost as soon as he had finished the thought he noticed a darkening of the shadows within the mouths, eye sockets and nasal cavities of the skulls at his feet. As the liquid reached the light and began to spill over, out of the skulls into the crevices between, he could see that it was red. Slowly, steadily blood began to well up from within every skull in sight. He experienced a moment’s sinking feeling as the skullfield became submerged and only by watching the level of the liquid rise up from his ankles toward his knees, dying his pastel armour with thick cruor, could he judge its rise.

“I am within the fractured psyche of one possessed by the neverborn. This is not real,” he declared, his jowels swaying as he bellowed the echoless words.

It was when something fastened its grip about his ankle that a primordial, base panic seized him and, kicking free, he began to wade through the now waist-deep gore toward the tower. Again and again fingers brushed against his legs, fleshless digits he knew for they scraped across his ceramite greaves and as he hauled his considerable bulk onto the bronze stairs of the tower he found deep grooves scored into his armour. As he ran a finger over a groove he wiped the blood away but his touch left the armour blackened below.

What madness was this?

He began his ascent, half expecting the rising tide to quicken, to threaten to engulf him, but it did not, yet steadily and inexorably it rose. Breathing heavily, he pulled himself up the spiked, skull-decorated spire, the bronze tarnishing in his wake only to be swallowed by the mire of blood seconds later.

 

 

“They are soulless. Betrayed by those who offered them salvation,” Podalir answered Arthesi’s question.

Stood atop the bronze tower, its peak within the swirling crimson clouds, after ascending countless levels, the chief librarian had found the Stygian veteran stood, his armour alabaster white, his flesh healthy, as he had been on Golstadt.

A smile broke the marine’s face. A bitter smile. He had only once seen Arthesi smile, when the two had succeeded in smuggling the still-active Necron back into castle Odenwald.

“Not so dissimilar to us then.”

The apothecary looked questioning at the other. One of them bearing the blessings of his corruption, the other appearing as he had in the prime of his life, before the chapter’s division and fall.

“My soul is but a fragment…I am but a wraith, an echo of that which was once Arthesi...endlessly being consumed by the daemon inhabiting my flesh,” Arthesi motioned out to the scarlet clouds whirling about them. Was this some small facet of his mind the marine had managed to keep pure, unadulterated and uninvaded by the daemon?

“You chose to kneel before the lord of skulls.”

“As you and the rest chose the whelp prince.”

“I embrace his gifts. For therein lies knowledge. Power. You chose naught but violence.”

“I chose life!” the devastator screamed at the apothecary, and his scream seemed to part the storm clouds. Below them now lay not a sea of blood out to the horizon, but the ruins of a city, the architecture unmistakably Imperial yet twisted. Podalir immediately recognized the colours and iconography of his patron: pinks and purples, pastels, silvers and golds, the symbol of the masculine and the feminine entwined or inseparably combined. It was Cyprius III, the planet where the Stygian Guard had fallen to the Lord of Rage and the Prince of Chaos.

A figure lay broken in a doorway. It could have been one of the wolves of Fenris, for his once white armour was grey with dust. Scorched from fire and explosions, rent by blades and unnaturally keen claws. Thick blood rain from several wounds and about it were a dozen corpses: barely-clothed humans both male and female, their musculature exaggerated as if caricatures of man, enhanced by drugs and foul sorcery. The limbs of some ended in claws, tentacles and in less fortunate cases had been crudely amputated and blades fitted to the unhealed stumps. The flesh of all was crisscrossed with swirling tattoos, some seemingly tribal, others technical, a great many depicting martial or carnal acts or combinations of the two. There were also thick pools of ichor, for it was common for the bodies of slain neverborn to evaporate back to the sea of souls, leaving only these rank pools of matter in their wake.

Nowhere were his squad mates to be seen. He raised his bolter sluggishly in his one good arm, the angle of his head indicated that his right eye was blinded: turned to the right so that the left eye might see all before him. The bolter wavered as more daemons stepped from the shadows across the debris-strewn street. Pastel-hued hair billowed in aetheric winds which did not touch the mortal world. Some giggled and tittered as they regarded the fallen marine, dancing about each other as they advanced.

He waited until the foremost was close. Far closer than any able-bodied angel of death would have allowed, before opening fire. A single shot, bucking the weapon in his unsteady hand. Bucking it too hard, for the shot went wild, to the amusement of the daemons. His second shot exploded the head of the most raucous laugher, but he then lowered his weapon. Empty.

The daemons closed upon him quickly now and feelings bled off the fallen marine like concussive waves from a detonation. Anger at himself, his squadmates...his chapter. The base, animal longing to survive. A burning desire to finish his mission. Yes, this burned brightest, as was the Stygian way. To kill those who opposed him, those who would deny him. It burned incandescent in the mind’s eye. In the sea of souls.

And like a beacon, it drew watchers.

Indeed the events of Cyprius III were already being watched, for the fall of the Stygian Guard was a game betwixt two of the great powers. And at that point an aspect of rage given mind-form was granted permission by its fell lord, from upon his osseous throne, to go forth and enter the game.

 

As the neverborn came – a thing of purest rage and the sworn enemy of the daemons circling him – entering into his mind and body via his pleas, the marine’s will was torn from him.

 

Arthesi turned away, looking out into the clouds which shrouded the peak, the sky darkening as he did so, the air growing thick and angry, as if the daemon knew of its hosts talking with the intruder within their shared mind.

“I share their fate of soulless life.”

Podalir stepped to his comrade’s side, resting a hand upon his pauldron and again did he notice that his very touch left a mark upon the white armour. Not a stain of blood, but a smear of corrosion. He pushed it from his mind.

“A measure of you remains, does it not? Allow me to grant you release, brother.”

A tremor ran through the tower.

He took Arthesi’s hands and turned the devastator to face him, noting again the blackened marks his hands left on the other’s plate. Darker now, the ceramite cracked as if aged millennia.

“My soul is doomed. My skull destined to be set before his throne for judgement.”

Podalir was forced to widen his stance as the tower shook, the ground canting slightly and the clouds raced about them, the wind whipping at Arthesi’s hair.

“Podalir, I would no more be the plaything of your debauched lord.”

The apothecary looked at his hands, his palms now as blackened as the marks upon Arthesi’s armour. He pulled his gauntlets off only to find his pudgy hands swollen yet festering with sores. Something seemed to writhe beneath the surface of his pale flesh.

“Embrace me, brother,” Podalir finally said, “And I shall take you beyond life.”

 

* * * *

“What word of our chief physician?” lord Sophusar’s voice was strong, rich, demanding obedience. Holusiax prostrated himself before his terminator armoured lord sat upon his great throne, surrounded by reclining devils upon the steps like a statue of a depraved god from some ancient, censured cult.

“I aided him in his quest, my lord, as you ordered.” There was something left unsaid.

“Your sacrifice is appreciated, Holusiax. He is turned from his path?”

The moment stretched out in silence and servos hissed as the lord of Chaos stood, daemonettes abandoning the steps, reading his ill mood as he slowly descended them.

“I fear he may have been pushed further into the embrace of Nur-“

Sophusar’s boot came down hard on the sorcerer’s spine, upon his serpentine lower body. Again and again until Holusiax feared his reformed flesh might split and his innards spill out. Vertebrae fractured and agonizing, exquisite pain shot up his spine. As the pain became too much to stand, it ceased.

His vision was dark, his limbs limp, but he could sense his master now kneeling at his side. Could feel the lord’s breathing upon the side of his face.

“W- we can u-use him,” Holusiax managed, blood dribbling from the metal prosthetics which covered his own mouth.

“Enlighten me.”

 

I hope that told enough but also kept some mysteries.

[Kierdale]

I thank you for your entries in Interview with a Chaos Apothecary over the last weeks.

I must admit I have not yet had the chance to get through all the entries, so no comments from me (yet) this week.

I hereby close that topic for the purposes of rewards (though as always if you have more entries on the topic please post them at any time, with a suitable note in the post’s title).

Here begins our twenty sixth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2016:

Chaos Trophy

No warriors of the 41st millennium adorn their armour, weapons, vehicles and fortifications with as many trophies as those who fight for the Primordial Annihilator.

No matter the form it takes, be it the head of a lapdog of the Corpse-Emperor or that of a champion of a rival god...the prized weapon of a foe taken in a climactic duel...a vehicle stormed and taken...I would have you tell us this week of a Chaos trophy. How was it acquired? What significance does it have to the one(s) who took it? How dearly do they prize it? Does its original owner want it back and how badly? It is merely an ornament or does it have some deeper, darker purpose?

Inspirational Friday: Chaos Trophies runs until the 16th of September.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: Carrack. To the chosen victor: step forward and claim your Octed Amulet:

[Carrack]

Send for the Apothecaries! Alright, under no circumstances, would I ever want any of the fictional apothecaries in this week's stories treating me. :)

 

Collectively, all the entries this week told of the apothecaries of different warbands, and there was an underlying tone of horror in each. MyD4rkPassenger also showed the hallmarks of the VIII legion, sadism, vindictiveness, and treachery. Scourged showed the madness of his chapter, highlighting by the differences in views between the Iron Warrior Warpsmith, and the Scourged own apothecary. Both were worthy of the title, "Mad Scientists". My own story tried to show the ritual role of the Black Maw apothecary. These stories were good, but I'm certain we all could have done better.

 

Kierdale did better. It wasn't the length of his story that mattered. Ahem :) It was just well written. The first part, did a better job explaining the role of the apothecary in the Psychopomps, along with the grotesque nature of Podalir and his flaws. The second part was a great battle scene, and told of Podalir's initial act of seemingly justified heresy, given the nature of the Stygian Guard. The third part delved into the great question. Where do we go when we die? And ended with an unforeseen twist.

 

I choose our IF host, Kierdale, as winner. However, if he doesn't have the time to run the contest and judge the winner, then I recommend that MyD4rkPassenger be given the opportunity to choose the next winner.

[Kierdale]

Sorry, mine was a bit of a biggie! As it was when we did sorcerers and dark apostles, I couldn't help it! :D

 

I've got time to judge this week's entries, so I'll take that Octed :tu:

[Carrack]

A New Trophy

 

 

The great spinal corridor of the Angels of Immolation's flagship, Ember, was many things. Functionally, it was the great corridor that ran the spine of the battle barge, an avenue from prow to stern that ran midship, and allowed the fastest movement of its marines across the ship. In normal operations of the battle barge, the corridor teamed with traffic, mortal and Astartes, on foot and in small cargo conveyors. Spiritually, the corridor was equally important, it held the battle honors of the chapter along its mosaicked floors, frescoed walls, and painted ceiling. A walk down the great spinal corridor was a walk through the history of the chapter, and it was glorious, not just the moments illustrated, but the depictions themselves. The serfs of the Angels of Immolation were master of fresco and mosaic, and only the best of their very best ever graced the spinal corridor of Ember. The mosaics depicted the terrible defeats the chapter had suffered since its founding, each beautifully rendered, but fit only to be trod upon with the boots of those who would remember the bitter losses, but symbolically keep such failures beneath them. The frescoed walls depicted great accomplishments, not total victories per se, but achievements, such as the seizing of the Narbina Heights, the recovery of the the Arinflame, and the slaying of Warboss Gakk Ull in personal combat. The walls were where the eye fell for those who walked the spinal corridor routinely, and were reminders of what it took to achieve the great victories depicted above on the ceiling. The vaulted ceiling was said to have been painted by the great Vensominair, without remuneration. It had taken two decades to finish, and the troubled, but brilliant artist had sworn to halt any future projects, should he be called to add another scene to the painting. It had already cost him most of his eyesight and some of his already fragile sanity. Most critics considered it his best work, and they had only seen but pic captures of the miles long painting, critics not being worthy to walk the deck of a warship of the Emperor's Finest. The spinal corridor was both these things, a functional artery of a warship, and a history of the Angels of Immolation chapter, but at the moment the spinal corridor was the battlefield that would determine the fate of the Aspis Subsector.

 

The defender of His claim on the Aspis Subsector strode forth to meet his foe. He looked the part of a righteous champion. His armor gleamed with more gold than the red and orange of his chapter's livery, and it was his chapter, for he was Chapter Master Barcar, and he bore the very Aspis Eternal, from which the subsector drew its name. His armor gleamed from the gold painstakingly wrought into it by its Martian smiths. The gold was not the only embellishment to Chapter Master Barcar's panoply. The shield that symbolized the Emperor's protection of this subsector, the Aspis Eternal, was polished to a mirror, and reflected the brilliance of its bearer and the spinal corridor he traveled. Purity seals, written by his Master of Sacristy, were sealed with his own signet to his pauldrons with vermillion wax. The seals were inscribed after the stalwart defense of Punicia, the Angels of Immolation's fortress monastery. Thirteen red threads, taken from the personal banner of the Angels of Immolation's primarch, were collected into a tassel that hung from the haft of the Chapter Master's hammer. They were bequeathed to the Angels of Immolation by the Ultramarine's own Chapter Master upon the founding of the successor chapter. Laurels grown on the mountains of Ultramar crowned his shaven head. Laurels won in fighting the Great Devourer at a cost of almost half his chapter's brother marines. Each trophy was a testament to the honor and glory of his chapter, like the artwork of the corridor, none of it glorified the Chapter Master personally, they all belonged to the chapter he commanded. For the honor of the chapter, Master Barcar went forth to face the enemy, if he was to win, the fight would be remembered upon the walls of the spinal corridor. If his chapter won the battle for the Aspis Subsector, he would be awarded a trophy to carry on behalf of his brother-marines.

 

The enemy did not gleam as he stalked down the glorious hallway, he darkened it with his foul presence. His armor had its fair share of gold, although bronze was more prevalent. It was mostly black, black as his hateful hearts. Across the enemy's back was a great cloak, dyed with blood, and trimmed with the fur of the greater white bear. The enemy's weapons and plate were adorned with spikes, hooks, and skulls, mostly obscured by the splattered blood of martyrs shed from the dripping blade of his cruel axe. These accouterments were not enough to show the enemy's terrible power, jutting from the back of his terminator power plant was a great rack of bronze spikes that pierced the helms and skulls of humanity's heroes. Two spikes were unadorned with skulls and helms, one bore a blood red bag. The bag was said to carry the knuckle bones from rulers of worlds that the enemy had conquered or burnt. The bag bulged, for the enemy was Lord Carrack, called Slayer of Multitudes, and one could not easily count the worlds he had ripped from the Emperor's breast. The other empty spike awaited another skull, that of Chapter Master Barcar.

 

The defender and the enemy paused just outside of range to take the measure of one another. The righteous hero glanced back at his honor guard, each marine a hero in his own right, and was reassured by their steadfast resolve. The enemy didn't look back, but his third, simian arm clawed out at one of his retinue who had disrespectfully ventured too close to the front of Lord Carrack. His retinue were chaos terminators, each nightmares that had plagued humanity for ten millennia. The honor guard and retinue would stand aside for the coming duel, out of honor or fear, depending on which leader they followed. The duel would determine the fate of the battle. The battle would determine the fate of the subsector. The Angels of Immolation were the only force that could drive the enemy out of the subsector. What ever the outcome, a new trophy would be taken to mark this day.

 

[Kierdale]

Some of my own comments on last week's entries:

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Carrack, I really liked your story, The Mesomelas[/b]. That the marine is chosen by the former holder of the position and that they wear armour other than their own while in the position were great points. That the potential for promotion after fulfilling the role can depend on the quality of the geneseed recovered made me wonder if an unscrupulous Mesomelas might not seek out those possessed of fine geneseed and, in the fog of war, give the possessor a less-than-gentle `push` off the mortal coil...so as to speed their own return to the ranks (or indeed a step up in the warband).

MyD4rkPassenger I liked your piece Old Wounds Never Heal. That an apothecary of the 8th still holds such a burning grudge against the 1st legion, and would not deign to recover the geneseed of even a traitor Angel who had fought on his side.

And Scourged’s Fleshmoulder. I loved that Thamda’ul’s narthecium had become a part of his arm, biomechanical. I enjoyed the exchanges between the Monger and the Moulder, their different views (and their shared laughter). That the two have tools/minions, seemingly sentient to varying degrees, attached to them, augmenting them in their work yet one’s of flesh and the other’s of metal was also an excellent idea.

And my entry for this week. Not exactly a `Chaos Trophy`...but I'm judging this week's so it doesn't matter too much if I twist the theme a little

The Last Son

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Brume V. The Ghede had come to the mist-swathed world in the wake of their attack upon the Exodites of Gabalte to recover. To rearm and plan their next moves. And if truth be told, to hide, for the warband had taken heavier losses in their attack upon the Eldar `primitives` than they had anticipated. The possessed who navigated their decrepit battle barge had led them here to this charted yet abandoned world and their sorcerers had looked upon the swirling clouds, so like a cataract-blighted eye, and declared it the providence of the Grandfather.

It was when bokor Damballa did not return from his journey to commune with the Loa in the deepest of the misty valleys that alarm was raised and Legba ordered a party sent out to search for him.

Scarophagia carnaria crawled over the armour of the Ghede marines and buzzed in the air about them, the constant drone comforting to the fallen astartes. It showed them that Grandfather was watching over them, even as they pushed on into the thick mists, their formation closing up as even their autosenses had difficulty penetrating the thick fog. Onward they pressed, the sergeant keeping on the heading which would lead them to the chasm Damballa had entered. On they trudged, the thick mire coming almost up to their knees. Even for superhuman astartes it was exhausting, but an APC would have become bogged down long ago and flight was far too dangerous in anything less than a thunderbird. The warband’s arrival had seen several square kilometers of skeletal forest crushed and torched. Coming down was one thing but flying about was suicide. Thus onwards they trudged.

A wind picked up as a patch of the mists ahead darkened and as they moved toward it the mists thinned, the darkness revealed to be a small stream leading down from the near stagnant pools in which they stood, down between great crags, into the shadows of a ravine. But they would not need to venture within, for at the mouth of the gulley a crude spear had been driven into the ground. Crafted from the grey wood of the native trees, atop it was helmet.

Damballa.

The colour, the model, the trinkets and amulets dangling from it...it was unmistakably that of the bokor.

At a hand signal from sergeant Atrusia his marines spread out forming a perimeter and it was as he reached his hands out toward the skewered helmet that he realized he could no longer hear the drone of the flies. They were gone, as the mists had lifted from about them, the flies had dispersed.

Muttering a prayer to the Loa, Atrusia grasped the helmet and lifted it, revealing the shrunken, shriveled head of Damballa impaled within.

His chanting increased as he struggled to take in what had happened. They had been led here by the whispers of the Loa, speaking the Grandfather’s words, had they not? Had they been guided here so that Grandfather might lay his hand upon Damballa? Had the bokor displeased their patron in some way none had perceived?

It was these questions and more, churning about within the Ghede marine’s head, which suddenly ceased as his head was exploded by the sniper’s shot.

The shooter knelt in the filth, tying five of the heads together by their topknots and slinging them over his shoulder. The rest of the fallen astartes had fled as he had exploded their brothers’ heads about them. The heads of the sergeant and the warp-weaver he skewered upon the spikes protruding from his own backpack. Shouldering his long rifle he pulled his cameleoline cloak tight about him and made his way off back into the mists, toward his ship. Gabalte had not quite been avenged, but he had tracked the Ghede hither and they would now be driven from this planet. He would follow, and he would take more heads.

* * * * * *

The Tears of Isha. Soul stones. These crystals captured the souls of the Eldar who bore them upon their deaths. They could then be placed with Wraithbone bodies, the spirit awakening in its new wraithguard or Lord body. Those with twins who outlived them might find themselves reunited with their sibling in the frame of a mighty wraith knight. The great majority spent their time resident within the infinity circuit of their Craftworld, interacting with their fellow dead and acting as advisors to the council of seers. But such would not be the fate of this pathfinder for his Craftworld was no more. He had been absent during its fall and found himself now wracked by guilt. He chose not to converse with the spirits inhabiting the souls which crewed -if such a verb was most fitting- his small ship, despite their beseeching him to do so. No, he spent his time in his chambers cleaning his weapons, performing repairs to his armour and camouflage, perusing intelligence reports he managed to slice from the Mon-Keigh networks...and examining his trophies. While the warriors of some races took the arms and armour of conquered foes, he took only the heads. He could not now recall when he had started the gruesome habit. Row upon row, rank upon rank of shrunken heads stared back at him. Some bore the injuries which had slain them: an eyeball missing where his shot had penetrated the skull, noses caved in, some were missing their lower jaws where his shots had scythed through and taken heads from necks. He shot all from the front. The backs of some craniums were blown out, but he cared not as this could not be seen once they were mounted.

He shot them all from the front. To face those who had killed his kin? So that they might, even from the great distances at which he slew them, catch a glimpse of him before the end came?

Or so that when displayed upon their spikes here in his trophy chamber, he could look upon them clearly? A shot in the back of the head would blow out the face, and he wanted their faces intact. To gaze upon them.

He was the embodiment of Kaela Mensha Khaine.

He was the wrath that would slay the corrupt.

He was the last son of Carth-Lar.

* * * * * *

He drove another head onto another spike. A Psychopomp. That most hated of foes.

Upon learning of their raid on the Imperial convoy, he had been unable to resist. Immediately setting out he had managed to tail the small band of raiders - but a fraction of that fallen chapter's true strength - to a jungle hideaway. In his zeal, in his thirst for vengeance he had revealed himself and it was only with the blessings of the gods that he had gotten away injured - he cradled his left forearm - but alive. Though with but a single head.

Would it have been better to have died there? To have taken more of them with him, charging into their ranks with a bandoleer of grenades and welcoming oblivion? If he had succeeded in slaying them all then his soul stone might have survived, laying amid their corpses upon that uncharted world until the hour of the Rhana Dandra.

But no. There were more out there. And it was the duty of the last son to exact vengeance in full.

The Psychopomp had died with a look of comical shock upon its face, akin to the masks of the Rillietann. Mirth tugged at the sides of the pathfinder's slim mouth as nothing had since his orphaning. He looked about at the other faces, seeking to find if any matched this one's expression, checking again and again for he swore than some changed whilst he turned his back. But no, none shared it. Its humour, its shock. Its perfection.

That one there, the Ghede sergeant, was close. Very close. He reached out and tugged its left eye open a fraction more. Yes. That was it. He found himself smiling, and shook his head.

In the deep shadows cast by the dim light, the faces lost their Astartes gigantism and almost reminded him of those of his own race. Sorrow and bile welled up suddenly within him and he fled the chamber.

* * * * * *

Another trophy. This one was not human, or not entirely so. It was bestial, with curving horns and a long muzzle that contained not the flat teeth one would have expected but sharp fangs for rending meat. As much weapons as they were aids to feeding. Its skin was a vivid pink covered in black tattoos. Swirling tentacles which seemed to snake across the skin, probing orifices and tickling the lips and nostrils. The right eye was encircled by a ring from which the design spread out across the beastman's cheek into the symbol of She Who Must Not Be Named.

Elathrandiir hissed as he looked at the icon: the symbol of the Chaos God his own race had given birth to, and in doing so doomed themselves. A part of him dared not leave the symbol intact, displayed here within his trophy chamber. He should disfigure it, tear the painted flesh out. Burn it. It was surely an ill omen...but another part of him was defiant. Like the old Mon Keigh tale of the man who carried about his neck a bullet inscribed with his own name, he would keep it, he would bear this ill omen and in doing so defy it.

The head in his hands, he looked about the chamber, finding no empty spikes. Only rank after rank of preserved faces watching him, their screams and accusations, their tempting voices and declarations of unfulfillable vengeance sounding out only in his head.

He plucked the head of a berserker from a spike and cast it to the floor, mounting the Slaangor head there instead. He recoiled as his fingers accidentally brushed against the Great Corruptor's tattoo and instinctively looked to his fingers, searching for some wound or taint but finding nothing.

In killing the Slaangor herd he had not only slain children of the Dark Prince but also had managed to recover a trophy the beastmen champion - who now regarded him from the spike - had bore: a guardian helm displaying the colours of Carth-Lar. Clearly these brutes had been there when the Psychopomps had taken his home. This rage had fueled him as he had hunted and gunned down the beasts. Now, his newest trophy proudly added to his connection, he examined the guardian helmet. Brown stains at its base indicated the wearer had been decapitated. There was no head within, which he found most relieving, for reasons he could not quite place. It had been shocking enough to find the helmet of one of his kismen or women. Would it have pushed him over the edge to gaze upon the visage of one who had been there at the craftworld's end while he had not? Should he not have rejoiced at the opportunity to tell a late comrade face to face of his works to settle the balance? A chance to show the late guardian his trophy room?

His hands shook and he lowered the helmet to the floor, letting it lie there as he quickly left the chamber.

His rifle. He must attend to his weapons. For in them lay salvation.

Not in memories.

Not with the dead.

* * * * * *

Rarely were these individuals ever so still. If seen at all they were but blurs of light, shimmering avatars of death that capered across the battlefield. But they danced not now. The troupe, clad in their blues, yellows and reds, stood about a seventh figure clad in stark black and white but for the roseate daemonesque mask upon its face.

From a safe distance, unnoticed, they observed the pathfinder as he finished another of his rogue missions. Collecting more grisly trophies.

"He is pitiful."

"He is righteous."

"He is consumed."

"He is wrathful."

"He is a disgrace to our race."

None dared say what they truly thought may have befallen Elathrandiir.

"He is doomed."

"Are we not all?"

Their words quick and lilting, those of the troupe spoke, but not the solitaire. Never the solitaire.

"He believes he is the last son of Carth-Lar."

"He is the last son, is he not, Qarasion?" The troupe leader addressed the solitaire.

Hidden Content

I was glad to be able to bring back Elathrandiir, the pathfinder who `rescued` Qarasion (so she could be exiled for her crimes), explain why he’s not at the fall of craftworld Carth-Lar (which reminds me, we really must get back to the next step of the Campaign series )...and I could reveal what happened to autarch Qarasion after she was exiled. My Armies On Parade entry this year will show the next bit...

[MyD4rkPassenger]

Take from them everything

 

 

The space above Centurilis IV was calm; trading ships floated listlessly towards their jump points and tiny workers could be seen crawling along fixing up larger imperial warships like insects.  Centurilis Iv was a model Imperial world, but all of this would shatter sooner or later.  As fate would have it, it would be sooner.  Out in the void a dark orb began to form, bolts of lightning began to crackle from its center and if one dared to look at it directly, faces of inhuman predators swirled inside the cloud.  Moments later a knife like prow extended from the mass of darkness.  Moving with the grace of an ancient terran ocean predator the warship slid from the darkness and edged around the sensors of the imperial world.  Talvor Kardos sat in his command throne, wreathed in darkness, only his outline and the blood red glow of his eye lenses identified his presence.  Above the typing and clicking of menial slaves and servitors, one would be able to hear a sharp click, followed shortly thereafter by a second.  The lord was speaking on his vox network to his legionaries.  A casual observer would also note in his hand he rolled a small bone.

From his command dias he observed Centurilis IV and its defenses, and smilied.  His warriors would fall upon them like wolves on a solitary prey.   He looked down at the bone trinket in his palm.  It was an Astartes metacarpal, the bones that make up a human hand.  He casually turned his hand back and forth, letting the trinket roll around in his massive guantlet.  It was covered in Nostroman runes that anyone with knowledge of the dead language would know were names of great warriors he had slain.  Many in his band of warriors took heads, great swaths of skin, and other grisly trophies from their victims.  Its not to say Talvor Kardos did not, for he had a cloak made of the skin of Imperial guard platoon leaders, but only he would take time after a battle to collect a metacarpal or strange bone from a worthy foe.  The newer members of his warriors balked at the practice, what use were hand bones in terrorizing the foe.  Only the ones who had stormed the Imperial palace and survived Tsagualsa knew the strange practice of their lord. 

During the Great Crusade it was not uncommon for legionnaires to spend time in other legions, making war like they did and learning their culture, in an attempt to later enrich their own legion.  Talvor Kardos was assigned to a stint with the imperial fists.  It was here his unbreakable stubbornness and incredible defensive tactics were born.  It was also where he learned to scrimshaw.  The fists, in an attempt to pass time or to reflect on a loss, would often carve into bone or metal names, objects, or events.  Talvor Kardos quickly showed a knack for the skill and would often compare with the brothers of the VII.  Ten thousand years later he could not shake this habit. 

He stopped rolling the bone and pulled a leather pouch from his waist, a servo skull with a large disc on top floated over.  He deposited the many-scrimshawed bones inside the pouch onto the dias and began to look for a relatively empty one.  He plucked a piece of skull from the pile and drew his combat knife.  He meticulously went to works recording the events to come.  Centurilis IV, 41^st millennia, VIII, and his own name.  Next to it was a blank space, he placed the skull fragment on the dias with the rest of the bones.  Here was a list of every battle he and his warriors had fought since he returned to his legion from his time with the fists.  Hundreds of worlds and thousands of battles were inscribed on the various trophies before him.

He looked up and barked out an order to ready the dreadclaws and thunderhawks.  The time to strike was neigh.  Looking back down he pulled a braded rope of hair from his belt and began to string the bone fragments along it.  Finishing quickly, he held up a macabre necklace.  He did not smile as he looked upon it, for it was a somber trophy as well.  He tied it about his neck and let the bones rattle upon the winged skull relief of his legion on his breastplate.  He rose from his throne and stepped out of the darkness.  The flayed skin cloak fell about his armor, concealing his full form.  His helm, a MK4 design, formed a terrible leering skull flanked by small wings.  His gaze burned with intensity as his voice boomed over the ships vox network.  “Descend upon them brothers, leave none sane, leave none alive.  Ave Dominus Nox.”

3 hours later he stalked through the corridors of the Governmental palace, blood and ichor drenched the walls and the boots of his Atramentar crushed bodies of the hapless PDF that died like cowards.  He stopped as he entered the Governor’s chamber.  The man was crucified upon his desk, his skin flayed and his eyes gone.  Talvor moved to the desk and the man weakly turned his head away, aware another Night Lord was here to torture him.  Talvor moved his arm out, his cloak falling away and revealing his midnight armor, and touched the man’s chest.  He howled in pain as the Night Lord’s sharp gauntlets caressed his flayed chest.   Talvor thought aloud, “I have yet to take a sternum.”  At this he punched his hand into the man’s chest, grabbing the bone, and yanking upwards.  He inspected his newest trophy and deposited it into his pouch at his waist.  Smiling he then boomed over the man’s screams, “My belt needs a new skull as well”.  With speed unmatched he drew the chainglaive from his back and swung it down decapitating the governor.  He crouched and picked the head up, looking towards the Atramentar.  “Signal the Thunderhawk, we are done with this world.”

Back aboard the Abyss, Talvor removed the necklace as he sat down upon his throne, the skull floated back over and he placed the necklace on it.  He drew his blade and found the skull fragment he prepared earlier, he deftly carved the time it took to take the planet and then deposited all the bones into his pouch.  He smiled as he began to clean the skull and sternum he acquired as the warship floated away from the burning world as silently as it had arrived.

 

[Scourged]

Twitch

Hidden Content

Twitch

They were gods to them all. Each of them, sapphire giants looming above and radiating unbridled power. Their flesh was strong, and for the lucky few among them their minds were even stronger. The wrathful deities brought swift penance to world after world as only true angels of death could. None of the guilty were spared, and none were ever found innocent. Only the least tainted of men would pass their judgment and find safe passage aboard their crusade. That lack of taint is what brought Roarke to dutifully serve his new lords.

Three of the Lords were passing through his manufactorum hall, for reasons none of the humans within dared ask. His hand was twitching again, as he watched the gods walk in a steadfast processional past him. Just a nervous tick like always, that hand. Just a harmless twitch. Nothing to worry about. That’s what he’d always say. Jalen would worry about his hand, so he would tell her it was just a tick, a leftover habit from a previous life. It comforted her. It soothed her worry. But Roarke knew the gods would be angry if they heard. Every comforting lie spoken to Jalen was just more growing taint within him.

Could they hear him now? Did they know what excuses he would make, long before the need to speak them ever arose? That was the gift that all the gods shared, if the stories were to be believed.  As the trio of them walked past none gave any indication they heard is mental transgressions. They simply walked, ignoring Roarke and all those like him, having no time for the insignificant thoughts of the mortal humans.

The bonded leather of the khopesh’s grip was a soothing balm on his hand. When had he grabbed it? It soothed the twitch, though; his hand was once more calm. Funny how holding the blade would always ease the overactive muscles in his hand. He must have reached for it seeking unconscious comfort. Was that a habit he always had? Well, not always; Roarke was not the first to own the sword.

The guardsman sergeant he killed for the blade had been a lethal challenge. Roarke was not a warrior, or a soldier - he was a laborer, never once having touched a blade or pistol until the gods saw it fit to rescue him from the false life he was living. But the price for salvation was paid in blood, so serve along the war lines he did. He feared death, and he feared battle, but he feared the gods so much more. And so, when the sergeant found him amidst the furious melee Roarke fought back, eager to live. To disappoint the Lords was worse than death!

Something blessed him in that moment. Something gave him power, and knowledge, and strength. He should have died, like so many others in his group. He should have been cut apart by the elegant khopesh now gripped tightly in his hand. His blood should have fed the hunger in this blade. But instead something mystical imbued his limbs and his mind, giving him the force and the will to slay the sergeant. With the deathblow struck the energies faded, but Roarke was victorious nonetheless. And this khopesh? It was his prize for the victory, a physical memory of his ascendency to championship made manifest.

Funny how this most modest of trinkets was enough to earn him the respect of his peers. They spoke wild stories of his championing blows and toasted endlessly to his victory, though the single enemy fatality proved useless to the grander scale of the battle. They hoisted him, paraded him, lauded him as their champion, their leader, none of them knowing the real winner was the aetheric energies temporarily bestowed upon him. Roarke would lead them now, forever at the frontlines, forever gripping the now-prized khopesh until death finally found him.

Still, holding the blade always soothed his twitch. What had he done to calm the muscles before the blade? He could not remember. Did the spasms in his hand ever strike him before he had the sword to dispel them? He could not remember that either. With each day that passed in the void, and each campaign that tested the resolve of everyone aboard Deception’s Call, the memories of his false-lived life grew fuzzier and fuzzier. Madness would slowly creep in, tainting him further still. Before long, he was sure he’d remember nothing at all, save the twitch and the blade.

Suddenly, his musing and reflections were abruptly shattered: one of the gods stopped and broke rank from the rest. Something caught its attention and demanded intervention. Roarke froze, looking away, hoping the sapphire giant was not coming in his direction. No, no, no, he did not want that. None of them wanted that. Though they revered the gods among them, none of the humans wished to face them directly. He looked to Markael and Skubben, his eyes as wide as theirs, as he dare not meet the gaze of the approaching Lord. They were afraid. Their gazes were panicked and worried, but for all the wrong reasons. They were scared not for themselves, but for him.

“You, mortal…”

“Tenscabel Roarke, my Lord.”

“Roarke. Champion Roarke. Cult Leader Roarke. Manufactorum Hero. Slayer of Sergeants. Wielder of the mighty Khopesh... Why do you grasp your weapon as we walk by? Do you aim to threaten an Astartes?”

The towering deity leaned in close to ask its question. It spoke with a mocking sarcasm, making light of the titles lauded upon him since that day. The god was obviously not impressed with such things. Its voice reverberated through Roarke’s malnourished body, the vox grill’s metallic inflection amplifying the menace the words carried. Oh no. Oh damnit no. Damn that twich. Damn that blade. Damn this place. Damn the Fates. Damn it all.

“Oh no, Lord, not at all! I swear! To see the Lords walk past us so regally… it inspires me. I am merely eager for our next purge of the false-clingers, that is all! I long to let this sword feast on the blood of the unworthy and earn my titles, Lord.”

He was sweating, soaking through the pits of his tattered overshirt. He was shaking, as if his whole body had the twitch. Every instinct within his mind and body told Roark to flee, to run away, to seek shelter behind some massive machine or construct. Anything to find a safe place away from the angered deity.

Meanwhile the armored giant before him did not move. It stayed, hovering, leaned over and uncomfortably close to Roarke. He hoped the answer provided soothed it. He hoped it placated the god. He hoped and hoped and hoped it would be enough to convince the Lord and free him from the burning judgement of those glowing green eyes. He hoped against all hope that he would live another minute.

Finally it laughed. Or, at least as best as Roarke could tell the god was laughing. The sound echoing from the helmet’s grill was akin to bursts of harsh static mixed with a barking canine. But the Lord leaned back, arms outstretched and relaxed before walking away with not another word spoken. Yes, he had appeased it. Amused it, even. It had all been just a game to entertain the bored deity, and he had succeeded. Luck was on Roarke’s side this day.

Once the trio of sapphire gods was well beyond the confines of the cramped manufactorum hall the room echoed with a collective sigh. Tension drained from absolutely every surface. All returned to their work with their usual tedious vigor, save for Markael and Skubben. They rushed to Roarke’s side, patting his back, laughing with each other, commending him for holding strong beneath a god’s gaze. He joked back with them, though still pumping with adrenaline from the experience. Finally having enough of their fawning, he took his hands and shooed them away, pushing them back to their stations so they all could work.

Then his hand twitched again.

[Kierdale]

I thank you for your entries in Inspirational Friday: Chaos Trophy over the last week.

Carrack gave us A New Trophy. Continuing the Black Maw’s assault upon the Angels of Immolation flagship Ember (I love how you’ve covered the assault on this ship from a few different angles and participants already). The description of the great spinal corridor of the ship with the floor mosaics depicting the chapter’s losses – trod upon those who now serve the chapter – and its victories painted on the high sealing was simple yet exquisite symbolism.

I liked that chapter master Barcar’s wargear glorified his chapter rather than his own acts. Very selfless and loyalist!

And lord Carrack, Slayer of Multitudes, the antithesis of Barcar. I liked the knucklebone collection in particular.

...and then you ended it before they clashed. You tease, you!

MyD4rkPassenger gave us Take From Them Everything. I love that the VII legion scrimshaw bones and I think your Night Lords commander here puts a lovely twist on the habit he picked up. I particularly liked that he kept a log of his warband’s exploits on the surface of the bones. Making a necklace of them too, brought to mind tales of necklaces of ears in Vietnam...

Scourged gave us Twitch. I’ve been planning to do an IF on cultist champions sometime so perhaps we’ll see more of Tenscabel Roarke then (I love that first name. You just have to say it aloud several times). The transhuman dread of the cultists in the presence of the Scourged was very well written. The explanation of the khopesh as the only thing which served to calm the cultist’s twitch was a great idea, as was the tale of how he had become the cult champion. It would have been nice to hear how he had acquired the blade too...hopefully in a future IF entry.

And I gave you a tale of an Eldar pathfinder whose survivor guilt had driven him to madness (beyond it?) and the taking of trophies, the obsession with them and to a degree the revulsion of his past. Finally showing him being watched by another (a major player in the stories of the Psychopomps) who had been absent at the fall of her craftworld.

I hereby close that topic for the purposes of rewards (though as always if you have more entries on the topic please post them at any time, with a suitable note in the post’s title).

Here begins our twenty seventh challenge of Inspirational Friday 2016:

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Sons of Sanguinius

The ninth legion. The sons of Sanguinius. The Blood Angels. How close they came to joining our cause at Signus Prime! But alas it was not to be and the noble sons of the Angel could not be turned. The warmaster’s slaying of his closest brother aboard the Vengeful Spirit in orbit above Terra ensured the ninth legion and its successor chapters would forever oppose those who fought the Long War. Culminating in the opening moves of the 13th Black Crusade, no less...

It is these struggles I wish you to tell us of this week. Clashes betwixt the sons of Sanguinius and the forces of the primordial annihilator, the four gods of Chaos.

Inspirational Friday: The Primordial Annihilator versus the Sons of Sanguinius runs until the 23rd of September.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: me!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading all this week’s entries, each of which was sufficiently individual and unique. Trophies of past victories both personal and shared, gruesome trophies mixed with old habits learned from those now considered mortal foes, to desperate man whose only way to find calm is in the brandishing of a weapon.

This week I choose MyD4rkPassenger’s Take From Them Everything as our winning entry as I thought the taking of and scrimshawing of bones put a frightful Night Lords-twist on the Imperial Fists tradition.

MyD4rkPassenger, step forward and claim your Octed Amulet:

[Evil Eye]

Bugger, I missed yet another deadline! Oh well, hopefully I'll get one cranked out for this one.

[Kierdale]

SquigSquasher, if you finished a piece for the trophies topic then please post it anyway. I'm sure we want to read it. :)

The competition element of IF is just something to push everyone a bit. The main thing is just to share ideas and stories (before or after the deadline).

[Evil Eye]

It's not finished yet, but I'll work on finishing it ASAP. Thanks for the encouragement! :tu:

[Carrack]

Note: I have a feeling this might be a long one, so rather than dumping a wall of text, I'm going to put it out in installments to be more easily read. For the purposes of the contests, I'd like the story to be judged in its entirety. Does this work for y'all?

 

 

To Bloody the Maw

 

Thirst

 

 

Alexandru awoke, blanketed in shame. It was crippling, the shame threatened to overwhelm him, but he had awoke for a reason. As much as he desired to lay in his sarcophagus, wallowing in his failure to control himself, he had a duty that demanded he rise. Perhaps there would be some redemption in that duty, some token act that would cancel some of his sins. Alexandru climbed from his sarcophagus, taking stock of his healed collarbone and knee, at least the deep slumber of his regenerative coma had accomplished what it was supposed to. Then he looked at the source of his current shame, and staggered worse than when he had suffered the wounds that had driven him to the sarcophagus in the first place. Ionut, his attendant-serf, lay dead in the corner of the cell, a desiccated husk. Alexandru had done it again. He had failed to control the Red Thirst. He had known he would.

 

There was a time when he had only felt the Red Thirst in the thick of battle, when he was filled with righteous rage. There was a time when he could fight it off. That was over a century ago. Now, he felt it every time a foe sought to pierce the armor he awkwardly donned himself, he felt it every time he pulled the trigger of his infernus pistol he checked and locked to his thigh, now he felt the thirst every time he drew the blade he slung sheathed across his back. Worse than the loss of control in the heat of battle, was the complete loss of control whenever he let consciousness slip away. It was a more recent failure, and a harbinger of what he would eventually become, a monster, a blood craving monster, utterly devoid of humanity and self control. Ionut was not the first to quench Alexandru's thirst when he was supposedly healing in his sarcophagus. He had hoped this time would be different, that he would not unconsciously leave his sarcophagus and murder his loyal attendants, but he knew he would, it happened every time he rested now, same as on the battlefield.

 

Armed and armored, Alexandru opened the door to his monastic cell and made his way to the bridge. Vasile, Ionut's assistant, and likely Alexandru's new attendant-serf, cowered in the corridor outside his cell, reeking of garlic. That ancient superstition must have taken hold among the serfs of the Pinion again. It was understandable, it had been a long voyage through the Sea of Souls, and most of the Angels Vermillion under Alexandru's command had been forced into the sarcophagi to heal wounds from the last battle as well. Most suffered from the Red Thirst the same as Alexandru, though such shameful weaknesses were never openly discussed, and what was confessed to the Sanguinary Priests was not divulged to others, even Alexandru, their commander. Even now, Alexandru passed young Brother Gheorge, carrying a bundle wrapped in an embroidered rug to the chute across from his cell, tears pouring down his face. He pretended not to notice, and entered the bridge.

 

Grigore, his steward-captain, met Alexandru with a reverent, but wary bow, and appraised him of the tactical situation. Little had changed from the information hypno-inducted into his brain as he was awoken from his slumber. Pinion had translated into the midst of a massive void war. Nearby, two strike cruisers, Pyromaniac, of the Angels of Immolation, and Blood Eye, of the Black Legion, were engaged in a boarding action on the heretic's vessel, but that was a secondary battle. The main battle was a more massive boarding action aboard the Angels of Immolation's flagship, the battle barge Ember. The battle barge was defending against what was likely the entire traitor marine contingent of the heretic warband, their own flagship, the Bitter Revenge, was idle, well outside of range. It was a gamble, if the heretics destroyed the Angels of Immolation's flagship, they would break their ability to defend this subsector, but if they were repelled, the Angels of Immolation would be able to destroy much of the Black Legion fleet, and drive the surviving heretics back to the Eye of Terror. Alexandru could not relieve Ember in time, not directly. His gladius frigate did not have the speed, or the marines to meaningfully affect the boarding action, which by design, were quick affairs. He did have the angle to indirectly affect the battle. Pinion had translated behind the Bitter Revenge. He ordered steward-captain Grigore to take Pinion on an assault run on the grand cruiser's stern, and to bring it in as close as he dared. He then announced to his brothers to don jump packs, they would be boarding the enemy directly. Hopefully the enemy would withdrawal some of its traitor marines to defend their own flagship. Hopefully Alexandru could redeem his sins by giving the Angels of Immolation a chance to win the battle.

 

[Chaplain Gunzhard]

Does this have to be from a certain time period? ...30K, 40K, ...50K? ...I see that Signus Prime is mentioned (30K) but then also the 13th crusade... does this matter?

[Teetengee]

Does this have to be from a certain time period? ...30K, 40K, ...50K? ...I see that Signus Prime is mentioned (30K) but then also the 13th crusade... does this matter?

As far as I understand, any time is fine.

[Kierdale]

Indeed, any time period is fine. :)

[Carrack]

To Bloody the Maw

 

Turn Back

 

 

Lythane the Black stared into the back of Lord Carrack as the lord of the Black Maw paused before his loyalist opposite further down the corridor. What was the fool doing, saluting his challenger like this was some epic battle in a stupid Fenrisian ballad? No, he was opening a vox link, projecting his helm's vid feed across the warband's general channel. Was this an act of hubris? Did he only wish to display his prowess for the entire warband to see? Or was he showing every legionnaire the glory of him winning this symbolic duel, and thus, his favor with the gods. Lythane couldn't tell, both were equally possible motives for Lord Carrack. The Doom of Calebra Hive had held his position as lord of the Black Maw for decades, and was capable of playing a politically astute move when required, but he was also deeply lost to the Blood God, and he faced a worthy opponent, he might be given over to the moment, Lythane could never tell. In any event, the feed was stepped on by someone within the warband, and the channel blared a continuous loop of a beseeching prayer to the Architect of Fate. Who would dare enrage Carrack with this interruption? Lord Carrack apparently assumed it was Lythane, and whirled on him with his axe held high. Lythane quickly ripped his helm off by one of its horns, breaking away the magnetic seals and latches to show he was not broadcasting from his helm's vox suite. Now was not the time to fight his lord. Maybe after he killed the loyalist chapter master, if he won anyway, and if he was sufficiently softened up, and if the terminator armored killers of his retinue would stand for it. Only then would Lythane fight his lord.

 

Before Lord Carrack swung back to face his challenger, he cocked his head to the side, and gestured to Lythane's helm with his mutated third arm. Lythane put the helm on as best he could, and caught the tail end of a transmission coming over the command vox channel. The Bitter Revenge was being boarded by the thin-blooded sons of the IX Legion. Mention of the IX Legion made him involuntarily reach to the old scar that ran collarbone to hip, but he shrugged such distant, painful memories aside, for now was finally his chance to take control of the Black Maw. He could justifiably abandon his lord, and take his bodyguard with him. He summoned his Ki with a few measured breaths, and began reciting the Stanzas of Harbor, focusing on the familiar teleportation shrine of the Bitter Revenge.

 

Lord Carrack howled like a beast as he charged down the spinal corridor. The Angels of Immolation's chapter master charged as well, in determined silence. Lythane would have to push his sorcery to its limits. He did not have the time or the proper sacrifices to make the teleport safer. He would have to trust in his own ability, and the will of the gods. His hand strayed to the dread Liber Apocal chained to his waist. It had the power to safely channel the spell, if he could quickly read from its cursed pages, but he checked his hand, saving his soul from being sucked into the margins of the book like so many weaker sorcerers who had owned the grimoire before him, but now we're trapped for eternity within the Liber Apocal. He would have to cast the spell on his own.

 

As he started the final Stanzas of Translocation, he watched Lord Carrack fire a long burst of bolts out of his combi-bolter. The mass reactive warheads exploded off the loyalist's shield and armor, but didn't slow his advance. As he neared completion of the spell, Lord Carrack fired the under-slung melta barrel of his combi-weapon. It struck the loyalist on his right side, and spun him around as the heat from the beam slagged the side of his chest plate. The loyalist fell, and it seemed that Carrack had won a cheap victory, but the chapter master recovered as he looked at the shield on his arm, and warily, arose to continue his advance. Then the spell was complete, and Lythane and Lord Carrack's retinue were caught in a whirlwind of black lightning, pulling them in to its center, shrinking them into nothing as the vortex collapsed on itself.

 

Lythane and the retinue were tethered to a mass of black cords, being pulled through a cave filled with pink light and floating eyes, hungry, dead eyes, eyes that had never seen reality, but wanted to consume it. Fortunately, they were pulled too fast for the eyes to catch them, and were yanked out the toothy mouth of the cave. They landed on the silver circle inscribed on the floor of the teleportation shrine, off balance but managing to keep their feet. The retinue turned on Lythane, weapons still in their hands. Lythane, still disoriented, had the wits to bark out, "Our flagship is being boarded. We must repel them or this war will be lost!" The terminators paused a second, then advanced on Lythane the Black. He had no Ki left for sorcery, and although he was skilled as any in battle, there was no way he could face three of Lord Carrack's most ruthless killers alone.

 

[MyD4rkPassenger]

From the Dark

 

 

Many considered Teradax VII a useless out world with no real significance in resources or strategy. The Imperium however, needed it more than they were willing to let on. They had been struggling to hold the Calixus sector recently as piratical hordes of Eldar and Chaos marines battered the small system. As a response to the slipping grasp on the near useless sector, the Imperium sent the Blood Angels to redeem their honor and control of the system, with Teradax VII as the beachhead. Unfortunately, the Night Lords, in a spiteful move, weren’t willing to let their hated enemies triumph…

 

Squad Brandath waded through the waist high water, the torrential downpour obscuring even Astartes vision. Thunderous claps followed blindingly large bolts of arching lightning that filled the sky above. Massive jungle trees and foliage flanked both sides of the river, shrouding the contents of the jungle in an ominous darkness. The Blood Angels held no fear of their surroundings, they were the Emperor’s fury manifest, they feared nothing the galaxy held. The infantry of the Cadian 375^th infantry platoon were not so strong. The waist high water to Astartes was chest high to the mortals; many held their lasguns above their head to prevent waterlogging. The rain that annoyed the Astartes vision was a terrifying cloud that prevented situational awareness from protecting the men and women. Finaly the jungle itself, despite the presence of the Emperor’s angels of death, chilled the men and women to the bone more than the water did.

 

Sergeant Brandath lifted his fist ordering his men and the platoon to halt. The guardsmen heard vox clicks coming from the space marines, something had spooked them in to forming a defensive perimeter. Sergeant Brandath turned to the platoon leader and ordered the men to ready their guns and fan out. Snapping a salute he turned to his platoon and ordered a perimeter secured as the space marine said. The terrified guardsmen stuck close to the marines as they formed an oval in the riverbed. Corporal Henderson stopped as his boot hit something large in the river. Tilting his head in an inquisitigve manner he squinted his eyes and peered into the water. A massively dark shape was slightly distinguishable in the murky depths. Suddenly two red points of light activated from roughly the top of the shape. Henderson barely formed a shout as it shot forward, grabbed his throat and shattered his neck and spine. All around the group of soldiers these shapes rocketed out of the water, lashing out with weapons. The Blood Angels immediately recovered from the ambush, acknowledging the attackers as members of the VIII legion. The Night Lords wadded through the hapless guardsmen, their enhanced preysight piercing through the downpour and darkness. Flashes of lightning were the only indicators of their positions to the terrified men. Reacting fast the Blood Angels formed firing lanes, trying to regroup the guardsmen and unloading on the Night Lords.

 

The Night Lords anticipated this and had another ambush waiting for their fellow marines. A pinpoint of ethereal purple light appeared behind one of the tactical marines. His brother wielding a heavy bolter turned and shouted all too late as a lighting fast shape shot out of the widening hole in reality, eviscerating the unaware marine. Four other shapes flung out of similar holes as Sergeant Brandath shouted to the eight remaining men, “warp talons!” The twisted marines dove down like birds of prey, their deadly lightning claws aimed forward for killing blows. With the space marines occupied by the deadly predators, the other Night Lords continued to attack the guardsmen. Sergeant Brandath drew his power sword shouting, “FOR SANGUINIUS” as the Blood Angels fired upon the jump pack marines. Brother Corbidius unloaded his heavy bolter at the descending foes, knocking one off course and it disappeared into a portal before it hit the water. The remaining 4 landed amongst the marines. Water sloshed around as the titanic warriors clashed in the riverbed. Lightning flashed as brother Corbidius drove his combat blade into the neck of a talon as it impaled him upon its claws. Another talon killed two Angels with predatory grace as it danced through the melee. Above the clash of steel and discharge of weapons inhuman howls filled the air as the Night Lords terrorized their foes. Sergeant Brandath decapitated the talon that impaled Corbidius, ripping off his helmet roaring with fury. His pupils filled his entire eyes as he ferociously dueled two talons. He was losing touch with his world as his men were slowly decimated around him, his armor rent apart and plates falling off. The waist high water was a deep crimson as the successful ambush was coming to a close. Night Lords encircled the remaining sergeant, lightning illuminating the blood soaked warriors waiting like scavengers. Brandath dropped to one knee, the water splashing on his mutilated face, and a talon shot towards his head. With his strength failing he managed a weak parry as the remaining talons descended upon him. Lightning claws slashed and stabbed downwards like vicious dogs and the last thing the Angel saw were the eyes of the warp predators…

 

The imperium of man would come to consider the Calixus crusade a failure; two companies of guardsmen, and a demi-company of Blood Angels were lost to the piratical Night Lords. The sector fell into chaos as all vestiges of imperial law disintegrated and humanity collapsed under the foot of the hateful traitors.

 

 

Im grateful for the pick, I love reading all these stories of vengeance y'all come up with! Also newbie question, how do I add pictures like the amulet to my signature?

[Teetengee]

From the Dark

 

-snip-

 

Im grateful for the pick, I love reading all these stories of vengeance y'all come up with!  Also newbie question, how do I add pictures like the amulet to my signature? 

The amulet and other images are added by going to your profile page and clicking edit. Then you can navigate to your signature and add them there by dragging them.

[MyD4rkPassenger]

 

From the Dark

 

-snip-

 

Im grateful for the pick, I love reading all these stories of vengeance y'all come up with!  Also newbie question, how do I add pictures like the amulet to my signature? 

The amulet and other images are added by going to your profile page and clicking edit. Then you can navigate to your signature and add them there by dragging them.

 

Thank you!

[Chaplain Gunzhard]

What time exactly is the deadline? I'm trying to throw something together now haha! ...and if it's from the Blood Angels perspective do I post here as a "spoiler" like others have done, or in the BA sub-forum?

 

Thanks.

[Carrack]

To Bloody the Maw

 

Fathers

 

 

Alexandru waited on his command squad to stack on the next armored hatch. He had gotten ahead of his squad again in the heat of the battle. Slaughter, not battle, for the thralls of the heretics' ship offered little in the way of real resistance. He, his squad, and the three squads under his command were butchering their way through the engine crew of Bitter Revenge, spiking generatorums with melta charges and slowly crippling the ship. The thralls fought for all they were worth, but their tools, shivs, and sidearms were not equal to the task of stopping the Angels Vermillion. They did pose a threat though, with their bloody and easy deaths, they were stirring the angels' thirst. Already Alexandru had broken formation, and allowed himself to get ahead of his command squad just so he could cut the elongated neck of the mutant thrall who was scrambling to open the next hatch. The mutant's blood ran down his chin, Alexandru having found some excuse to remove his helm much earlier, as had most of his marines.

 

He was not alone in his descent into bloodlust, 2nd squad had not responded to vox hails minutes ago, though their position was marked by the occasional explosions of generatorums and fuel reservoirs. Alexandru sensed a madness from his silent squad, a madness worse than giving into the Red Thirst. He didn't have any facts to explain their silence, but he knew for certain what it was. It was uncanny, just like the sense of deja vu he felt aboard this Black Legion warship. He had not seen any in-depth intelligence on the Bitter Revenge, but the welding, the pattern of the rivets, even the Cithonian graffiti scrawled on the decks and walls, just seemed too familiar. He thrust such thoughts aside and fired his inferno pistol into the top hinge of the armored hatch. A short hiss preceded a popping sizzle as the hinge and the frame it was attached to melted away. Alexandru didn't bother kicking the rest of the hatch open, he merely charged through it without paying attention as it was cast aside off his armored thighs. As he charged into the next compartment, Alexandru shouted, "For the Emperor, for Sanguinius!"

 

...for Sanguinius...

....The Angel...

 

He must reach his brother and stopped this madness. His brother had sunken so far, his once glorious battle barge was dark, twisted, and corrupted, just like his brother's son who stood before him now, one of his librarians, Lythane.

 

Wait, something was wrong, Lythane hadn't won terminator honors, yet here he stood, clad in black and gold tactical dreadnought armor, and the compartment here was smaller, yet at the same time more twisted and mutated.

 

...I am not the Angel...

 

I need to reach my brother before it is too late. I don't have time for Lythane, so I strike him down with my sword, and step across his body. I must reach my brother before it is too late. Three of his first company veterans step into the compartment, also clad in tactical dreadnought armor that has been profaned by the madness of my brother. I must reach my brother before it is too late. I must get to the bridge of Vengeful Spirit before my father visits his wrath on my brother. I shout at them to stand aside so I can reach Horus and save his life from this madness that has caused him to attack Terra below. I strike the Son of Horus veteran who went left, knocking him back, although not piercing his plate, and I parry the axe blow from the one who went right, but the center Son of Horus bulls through my guard, and drives his chainfist through my waist. It is a mortal wound. My killer looms over me with his grotesquely tusked helm inches from my face. His voice booms, "You are not who you think you are foolish thinblood. I've met him, and you are not his equal. My father was not worth saving anyway, but at least you actually killed that wretch, Lythane, unlike your own failure of a father."

 

 

[Kierdale]

Please post entries here. Putting them in hidden boxes simply makes browsing easier ;)

 

I usually close each topic around 10:00am Saturday Tokyo-time...19 and a bit hours from the time I post this.

[Kierdale]

...or would members like an extra week? :)

[Scourged]

Decimation

 

Hidden Content

Decimation

Twenty of them sat within the crumbling remains of the building. Each of them stayed silent, hiding as best as they could amidst collection of rubble. Often one or two of them would look around the battlescape, seeking out their squad leader, waiting for some kind of signal or update. Crouching huddled near the radioman he would eventually acknowledge their curious eyes, silently telling them all to hold position. It was not the time, not yet. Not yet. They would all have to sit and wait longer cowering within the ruins.

It wasn’t so long ago that the shattered building had been a centralized distribution center for the western reaches of the continent, a home to the spoils of the vast Harvest reaped annually upon the permafrost plains of Tachylite. For millennia the Harvest had been a massive source of wealth for the world, allowing it to shine and prosper and forgo the usual suffering found within the Imperium’s reach. As such, the bounty of the Harvest was sacred, and buildings like this protected the endless stores through the harsh seasons. No wonder these distribution centers were primary targets for the invading forces.

Thanks to the bombardment the plasteel and ferrocrete of the sprawling complex was broken and shattered. Heaps of the aged materials collected in massive piles along the floor. The windows had long since been blown out by concussive waves of explosions throughout the cities of this world. Shelving had crumbled, vehicles had overturned, and walls had collapsed within the battered building. What had once spent eons protecting the bountiful Harvests ironically unable to protect itself, transformed now into useless ruins.

This destruction was no matter of concern to the Changemongers. Another Harvest would come, and the destruction caused here would be of no consequence. The Emperor could send his agents of death and destruction all He like, but not a difference it would make. The Zephyr had blessed them, and would continue to bless them for all eternity. Never once had It abandoned them. Even now, huddled beneath the teetering ruins that would surely collapse from the force of an errant cough, the twenty cowered militiamen knew that the Zephyr would protect and guide them.

It was the wisdom of the Zephyr that had brought the strike force here, to this broken facility. It was the knowledge of the Zephyr that told them to take position in a specific set of crumbled walls. It was the guidance of the Zephyr that ensured them all that the Changemongers would survive this day. And it was their faith in the Zephyr that fueled their fervent servitude to those commands. Every man and woman on Tachylite held within their souls the hope and belief in the Zephyr’s guidance.

When not anxiously surveying the landscape, each of the twenty sodliers had been reflecting upon their beliefs, beseeching the blessed Warpwind to calm their nerves. But the time for prayer abruptly ended with new sounds echoing off the broken walls. They were no longer alone. A few of the infantry blessed with heightened senses - Change be Praised! - heard, smelled, and felt the coming enemy before the rest could notice. There were four, no, five Astartes slowly approaching their position. Soon enough the rest of the squad took notice and they all observed their intruders. The Astartes’ movements were slow and careful, methodical. Searching. Looking. Hunting.

The approaching Angels Vermillion squad caused an energetic electricity to ripple through the huddled, hiding infantry. This was their purpose. This is why the Zephyr commanded they be here. This small squad of Angels needed to die. Maybe they would prove important to a later stage of the invasion, or would stumble upon a useful piece of intelligence within the center, or would otherwise eliminate a vital contingent among the Tachylite-born. Whatever the fate predetermined to unfold, the Changemongers were here to prevent it, one death at a time.

More and more the twenty men and women looked to their squad leader, eager to deliver the wrath of the Winds of Change unto their target. But his reaction remained the same as before, urging caution from the eager troops. Still their leader did not move, and still he convinced them all to remain concealed for the moment. It was not yet time. Not yet. The Zephyr had not spoken, and they were to wait. The squad loyally complied, as always, and all continued to wait. But the approaching thuds of ceramite boots made each of them all the more eager to fight.

And oh, how eager all of them were to fight! The invaders sought to destroy Tachylite. This was their home, their sacred lands - such a blasphemy could not be allowed! It was from the depths of the obsidian caves that the Zephyr first spoke to their ancestors. It was on these plains and tundra that their ancestors developed the means for the annual Harvest. It was within their genes that the Zephyr made itself manifest, letting a sacred few give rise to the beauty of Change. This was a life known to Tachylite long before the Imperium came. And yes, for a while they had complied, but that time was no more! The Zephyr would not be denied - no more living within the lies of the Imperium and its False Emperor! Tachylite would once more be free!

The radioman stirred, eight-fingered hand to his ear, and nodded to the squad leader. It was finally time. The Zephyr, through some unknowable means, had spoken. Change be Praised! With a snap twenty heads and twenty guns popped up from behind the ruins, their vermillion targets only a scant few meters from their position. With all manner of collected autogun and a precious pair of plasma they opened fire, smothering the five Angels with righteous indignation.

The Angels Vermillion had not been expecting the lightning strike. The ambush squad had avoided their detection, an impossible feat were it not for some heretical intervention. The hobbled militia was not the most skilled with a weapon, and nowhere near the marksmanship of an Astartes, but numbers and surprise more than made up for such deficiencies. The defensive actions of the Angels were instinctive and quick, but not enough to escape the fusilade of shots.

Of the multitude of shots bombarding them, only Brothers Vasari and Carafa fell victim. It was the luckiest of rounds that pierced the soft neck joint of Vasari’s armor, while Carafa was the unfortunate soul who fell victim to a searing ball of plasmic energy. Though the Angels weathered the storm well, the deaths inflicted upon them were large for a squad so small. But they did not break. An Astartes fears nothing. They were Sons of Sanguinius and would not falter to the meager resistance of lowly heretics! It was their turn to open fire.

The three bolters returning fire were of little immediate threat to the militia hiding in the ruins. Yes, four of the zealous Changemongers fell to the returned fire, but numbers were still on their side. And true, were Angels Vermillion relying only on their boltguns they would lose the firefight due to inferior numbers. But the Red Thirst was rising within the Astartes, and the need to strike down the traitorous infantry with their hands and blades was all but necessary. Bellowing their rage into the air, the three remaining Angels Vermillion charged.

Their advantage now gone, the Changemongers steeled themselves against the assault. The sight of three red power armored marines was a terrifying prospect, but they found the resolve to hold their position. The Zephyr would aid them now, in their time of greatest need! They opened fire once more as the Angels Vermillion barreled into them, but the barrage of weapons could not find purchase on the battle-lusted Astartes and the two forces clashed in melee. This would prove quite unfortunate for the heroes of Tachylite.

Driven by a nearly-insane desire to spill the blood of the heretics, the Angels Vermillion hacked at their foes with superhuman speed and strength, far more than the mere mortals could dare withstand. Five more Changemongers met their end before they could muster any form of counter assault. The little humans fought and scraped against their attackers, desperately seeking to inflict even the most minor of wounds, but nothing and no one could penetrate the enraged trio clad in ceramite. Suddenly fearing obliteration and death, the ambush party fled.

None of the survivors in the half-strength militia squad could believe their current fate. Had the Zephyr abandoned them? Why would their beloved Warpwind bring them to this spot and deliver such a beautiful ambush, but then forsake them to die? Each of the panicked fighters looked to the squad leader, hoping for answers their situation couldn’t give. But the man was no demagogue. He was just as lost as the rest of them, abandoning hope in the face of scarlet adversity. Nothing could be done but flee.

Deeper and deeper into the facility they ran, all of them praying to live through the next few moments. The Angels behind them continued to give chase, firing off round after round of bolters into the retreating ranks. Two more fell to the explosive ammunition, keeping the Changemonger squad perpetually on the run. It seemed that nothing was going to save them. They were all going to die. Perhaps this was what the Zephyr truly wished for them after all. Even now, in their bleakest moments, many turned to their patron Spirit for any sense of comfort. If they must die, then at least it would be on their home.  

In that blackest moment of no hope the air abruptly grew cold, rimes of frost spread in spiraling tendrils. The growing ice expanded rapidly between the retreating infantry and the advancing Astartes. Dark energies began to arc from nothingness at the center of the spreading hoarfrost, licking at every surface they touched and leaving temporary scars. The Angels Vermillion halted their advance, weapons up, anticipating the incoming reinforcements. They were familiar with these telltale signs of teleportation, even if the now-hiding infantry was not. With a sickening burst of immaterial effluence reality ripped open and deposited its cargo, and the tempo of the battle immediately shifted.

What came through was a terrifying sight for all to behold. It stood at three times the height of the already overly-tall Astartes, and just as wide at its shoulders. On bipedal daemonimechanical legs it stood, hunched over, its masked head resting low on a bulky frame beneath a trio of smokestacks. It howled with a sound that was all at once bestial, mechanical, and daemonic.  

Already primed for the fight, its two arms were outstretched with hands of four-bladed claws wide open, both palms erupting with torrents of green fire.

The nine lucky survivors watched as the inhuman apparatus annihilated two of the Angels with its superheated plumes. Though the last Son of Sanguinius still stood, armor still flickering with embers, it was clear this battle was already over. Each of the Tachylite-born soldiers cheered and cried out, thanking the Zephyr. How could they have ever doubted their Savior? This… this was their purpose all along: their fighting and suffering was a beacon for the daemonic construct of their salvation. And oh, what a righteous salvation it was!

Surely, the last Angel must have known he would die like his brothers. To stand alone against the might of the war machine before him was a surety of death. Yet, stand proud he did, feet firmly planted and boltgun spraying shot after shot into the walking behemoth, screaming proclamations in the name of the False-Emperor. The machine did not care. In two steps it closed the gap with the marine and grabbed it with both bladed hands. Every digit snapped closed and severed the Angel Vermillion into a collection of broken armor and viscera, finally silencing him.

Having finished decimating the invading squad, the machine from the Warp rested, somehow appearing to be at ease, sated by the blood on its hands. The Changemongers left their comfortable safety behind the rubble and formed a squad around the daemonic device. They cheered and celebrated the infernal device, lavishing it with praise and adoration is surely did not understand or care for. Still, it was here to fight with them, and the fight was not yet done. The radioman - somehow surviving the fray - stirred and spoke once more, relaying the commands of the Zephyr as always. It was time to move. The tides of Fate were shifting, and in the Changemongers’ favor. It was time to bring the fight back to the Angels.

 

Change be Praised!