Day 67, continued
In orbit of Monstrum, a dark mind was at work. It guided its trapped kin, watching as they decimated the things that pretended to be mortals. Every victory, savored, every loss, condemned. New things spun up within the forges it had taken for itself, new servants were dragged screaming from Palaces of Pleasure and Pain that drifted in the Warp.
Slaughter, glorious in its beauty and rampancy, filled the corridors of Ate. Those it had entrapped expressed their rage in excessive violence and delicious torture. Yet, they were growing tired of the task the mind had set them, the destruction of their soulless foes, who were numberless and implacable, constantly forcing them away from the harvests. Just as the mind tired of the task it had been set by another, a self-proclaimed demigod that sought power from the fragment of something greater that could be found within this desolate and disturbed place.
The dark mind cared nothing for this mission, save that it had been promised freedom in exchange for delivering this fragment. Once the fragment was delivered and the mind had escaped the clutches of the Arkifane, nothing would be beyond it.
Until then… The mind paused as the vessel it had made its form was alerted to a change. A massive spike of energy upon the world below, but not in any of the hive cities or the ashen sea that they rose from. Instead, it was in the least expected area, a part of the world that defied explanation and would be the death of any who entered it, a part inhabited by hunters.
Was it simply the final spark of the foolish servants of the Architect? Or was it, perhaps, a sign of greater power that resided there?
With an exertion of power, an array spun into activity. The ancient vessel was filled in moments by roaring, mechanical monstrosities, dragged up from the surface by technology of ancient days. Then, the ship was emptied again as the monsters teleported to the surface, this time to the location of the power source.
Piece by piece, they reduced the Wendigos in size. Catherine Ellen found some relish in the battle, though an equal amount of shame as well given who she was fighting it for. She had grown tired of Tide's wooden dolls and he had offered a variety of new, imagined foes, which she had refused, demanding a true challenge.
She had not expected monsters made of living ice that dwelled on the far side of Monstrum. She probably shouldn't have been surprised that so many of the Sororitas had turned traitor, given how they'd responded to her own orders, but she'd found it strange to be fighting alongside them in this fight. For all their faults, they hated Chaos with as great a passion as she did, yet now they aided Tide in attempting to capture sorcerers rather than kill them. Still, she could not help but feel some bond with them, even if this fight posed little threat to her given Tide's insistence on her usage of one of his forms instead of fighting herself.
She had protested that, but he had given her the choice of either using whatever vile sorcery allowed her to possess one of his forms or staying behind. She had chosen the former in the end, though she knew she was not the only person present who had been annoyed at using a body and armor such as this.
The Callidus Assassin, for all the power and strength of this puppet body and armor, was held back by it far more than even Ellen herself was. A creature like her was the pinnacle of the Imperium's genecraft and augmentations, not to mention the fact that her usual equipment was superior to even that of Ellen's own wargear and many other Inquisitors as well.
Perhaps the Callidus had been tricked by Tide. He had strange powers over the mind, so she would not be surprised if he had somehow made the assassin's mind see allies in the heretics Catherine now found herself forced to fight alongside. Surely, he could not have actually convinced an assassin, psycho-indoctrinated as they were, that his cause was anything but heresy?
You have a… unique way of looking at the universe, you know that?
"Leave my thoughts." She punctuated her point by slashing through the neck of another Wendigo, sending its head flying though the lights that could be ascribed to be eyes remained fixed in place, hovering over the stump of its neck. The creature slashed upwards and she twisted aside, only receiving a graze across her armor's right pauldron. It leapt back and vanished into the snow, reappearing elsewhere, reformed but a little smaller.
If you really think I'm so terrible, why join us?
"Chaos is a threat to the Imperium," Ellen replied just as another Wendigo appeared next to her. She ducked under its horizontal swipe, her blade twisting around and cutting through the creature's ankle. Her sword came up and split in two, her blade narrowly avoiding the pulsing crystal heart within its chest. "You are a threat to the Imperium. Let threats to us fight among each other and we shall grow stronger for it."
The Imperium is a threat to the Imperium. Does that mean all your civil wars are actually beneficial?
"Die," Ellen bit out as the Wendigo fell back once more and vanished. "You are stopping me from striking the heart, making me miss. Why?"
Because that might kill them.
He answered as though it were obvious and she snarled. "You are making this harder for us?!? On purpose?!?"
You wanted a challenge, didn't you? Besides, you're not in any danger. Until I understand more about these creatures, I'd prefer they weren't exterminated, as your Imperium would be wont to do.
"It's effective," She replied, chopping off the arms of another Wendigo. Even the largest of their number had shrunk to the size of a human and several were even smaller now.
At what, making people hate you?
She was about to respond again, only to be cut off by the mountain's quaking. There was a lull in the fighting as all attempted to regain their footing, though the Wendigos simply sank into the snow and did not reappear. Catherine looked up, already having guessed the source of the unnatural rumbling.
The Chaos vessel was wreathed in strange, ephemeral lights that stank of the Warp's foulness. It took her a moment to recognize just what was happening, far longer than it took for Tide to do so. Before she'd even processed the insanity of what she was witnessing, Tide had retaken control of his loaned body from her and the rest of them, forcing them to sprint as fast as they could towards the wreckage.
They, Aliciel began, verbalizing her thoughts within the Domain as she stood alongside the rest of those who had been fighting. Tide was silent, utterly focused, and concerned in a way that she hadn't felt from him before. They can't seriously mean to…
She felt a flare of frustration from Tide. Elsewhere from this place, she saw massive tendrils wrapped around pods like the one sent the powered frames had arrived in, though these were filled with whatever troops he had managed to scrounge together. She had seen him send the first pod through some method of teleportation, yet now something seemed to be rejecting his attempts, shunting the pods back to where they came from rather than their destination.
Through eyes no longer hers to control, she noted shapes rushing in towards the downed ship that were not the puppet armors, moving over patches of wind-swept rock. Where the snow did not exist for them to move unseen, dozens of Wendigos were now rushing towards the Chaos ship, dozens more emerging from the snow, some small as humans, others the size of knights. The Wendigos must have recognized the danger as well, though if they understood it was another matter.
The icy monstrosity reared back, its serpentine form writhing above him as the white flash of the generator's flame struck it. It did not melt, even as Ahsael felt the heat almost boil him within ceramite battleplate. Instead, it shimmered with the energy as it was dragged into its form, clearly in pain, yet clearly alive. However, that was not all that occurred. Many of those cultists and serfs who had not managed to find cover within the various antechambers screamed and fell to the ground as their flesh was scorched away.
The generator had ruptured somehow, Ahsael realized. Not, not 'somehow', because of him. He had removed a section of the outer casing and now the generator's heat flowed into the room, melting the edges of the area where he'd ripped away the metal needed for his improvised telekinetic weapon. But, the generator hadn't leaked right away and even now it was starting to be contained as the energy was drawn away.
But it wasn't being drawn by the creature, as the rest of the heat had been. At least, the giant did not seem to be able to absorb the energy limitlessly, nor in such vast quantities. Then what was causing the generator to-
He felt a thrum underneath him, almost as if the ship were in flight. But that wasn't possible, their engines had been destroyed, but what else could draw so much energy as to make the generator spike in power-
The Warp Engines. Ahsael turned as horror dawned upon him. He saw Uirus running towards him, armor looking partly melted.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!?" Ahsael all but screamed at his brother.
"I needed to activate something to get the generator to output enough power!" Uirus shouted back in reply. The giant was twisting in and around itself, the ice slowly reforming around the crystalline heart in some kind of warped dome, as if to protect itself.
"SO, YOU DECIDED TO THROW US INTO THE WARP!?!" Ahsael demanded furiously, lightning crackling in his eyes and around his fingers. Yet Uirus only laughed. There was something broken in the way he did so, Ahsael noted.
"Well, we were already in a sort of hel, right?" He said, a smile clear in his voice. He shrugged his shoulders in a way that seemed exaggerated in battleplate. "And, who knows? We might survive."
No, this couldn't be how it ended. He couldn't die in a warp rift, torn apart by hungry daemons, surrounded by nothing but his failures! Yet, as the thrumming grew louder, Ahsael saw the first signs of Warp translation that would go terribly wrong. Never mind that they were in a planet's gravity well, there was no telling what kind of effect the crash had had on the Warp engines. He could feel the Warp before he could see it, like the ocean leaking in, pressing against the corners of his mind.
Whispers began then and he heard a tapping noise, like the beating of two hearts, but it was more like the clicking of claws against ceramite. A howl was growing at the edges of his perception, a wind-chilled cry.
Ahsael ran. He did not know where he was headed, did not know how he would escape this, but none of that mattered. In truth, he should have ran long, long ago.
"Now, it is too late", Kalfen whispered to him.
Then, his eyes were blinded again by a flash of light, this time the familiar signs of teleportation matrix.
Uirus couldn't help but laugh when the daemon engines materialized from beams of light, entering existence with cries of victory that were cut off as they looked around. He had never seen daemons be confused before, yet even as mechanical monstrosities, he could tell they were caught off-guard by the situation they found themselves in.
Several appeared too close to the generator, some seemingly appearing within its walls if the shrieks of indignation and pain were anything to go by. Those that were on the other side but had appeared too near let out cries of anguish and delight as the flames scorched the flesh-parts of their twisted forms.
Those that were further away reacted swiftly to the giant ice beast, that was slowly rising once again to two feet. Their reaction was quite interesting, as it was as if they were as horrified as they were excited by the sight of the creature. A soul grinder charged forwards, almost like a child's toy if one compared its size to the giant's, roaring a challenge. It vanished beneath the giant's step, crushed into the deck. He heard a ghostly whisper, like a strangled cry, and then… nothing. Warpsight showed the daemon fleeing back to the Warp, but he noted that a portion of it lingered and was drawn invisibly into the heart-crystal of the giant, which seemed to shine just a bit brighter as it took the power inside of it.
Even daemons have predators, Uirus thought to himself and he couldn't help but chuckle at the sight as he stood in the midst of chaos. He could feel the Warp closing in around him, could feel the scratching at his mind, and yet… he just couldn't really bring himself to care much in that moment.
He was tired. Tired of the plots, of the fighting, of the running. That wasn't normal for a space marine. It wasn't normal for Uirus.
The Warp-twisted monsters rushed towards the giant, attempting to hack away as its ankles while it slashed through the horde like a farmer conducting a harvest. Uirus heard distant metal tearing and looked over to see more ice creatures, smaller ones that ranged in size from that of a human to taller than even a space marine, tearing their way through the walls and joining the battle.
Uirus turned to the empty armor and scattered dust of the Rubric marine. Walking over, he ignored the ensuing battle in favor of plucking up the empty helmet, staring at its dimmed eye lenses.
"Were you like me, I wonder?" Uirus asked it, though he could barely hear his own words over the cacophony of battle. He could feel the generator's heat continuing to build around him, but he just ignored his helmet's alerts and warnings, banishing them from sight. "Were you weak? Unworthy of a position in the Thousand Sons?"
He took a seat atop the chestplate, which remained mostly intact and was strong enough to hold his weight. Turning the helmet in his hands so that it faced the ensuing battle, as though the spirit of the warrior bound to the dust and armor might have been able to still see it, Uirus continued to talk to it.
"I have heard that Ahriman wants to free you and the others like you," Uirus said. The daemon engines turned and rushed to engage their new foes, which were swarming by the dozens and then hundreds. All the while, the giant tore through them with vicious power, even as it was struck from all sides by Warp-touched ammunitions. "I don't believe he will ever find you here, however. I apologize for that."
The helmet was silent in response. Even if the Rubricae had been intact it couldn't have answered anyways.
"It is odd, I think," Uirus began. "That he should care so much for his fellow brothers that he would try and free them. Or is it just guilt? I have never met him. Did you? It is said he was responsible for your entrapment. So, do you hate him? Can you feel hate?" Can you feel anything?
Uirus was quiet for a time, simply witnessing the battle. Neither side seemed overly interested in a single space marine that wasn't doing anything, too focused on slaughtering each other. All the while, reality shuddered as the Warp Engines tried to do the impossible. Materium and Immaterium pressed against each other and he felt a pang of sharpness in his skull, like a knife being stabbed into his brain.
"I can save you," A myriad of different voices whispered, or something to that effect, even as countless more demanded he offer his soul for them to devour. "Let me in."
Uirus ignored them and turned the helmet in his hands to look into its eye lenses once more.
"I would have liked to be friends with a brother like Ahriman, I think," He said. "Perhaps I should have sought him out instead of coming to this world. I doubt that would have been much better, though. There are sayings on many worlds about how one shouldn't meet their heroes."
He could see reality starting to fade away. Strange shapes were forming, like shimmering ghosts forming out of mists, but gaining solidity with every passing second, even as his mental defenses were continuously clawed away at. Some of those ephemeral forms had claws or whips or swords or a myriad of other weapons that were only half-real yet retained their lethality. Many charged into the horde of ice creatures and there were bursts of strange Warp energies as many shattered under their blows, but some notably attacked the daemon engines as well and brought more and more down.
"Do you think they'll know?" He asked conversationally as one daemon engine, a defiler, turned its gaze towards him. It roared and charged forwards, likely intent on slicing him apart with countless whips that writhed like serpents from its arms. "The Thousand Sons, I mean. Will they even care that we're dead?"
"Probably not," A new, unfamiliar voice spoke, modulated by a mechanical filter. Uirus turned his head languidly and took in an odd sight. Around twenty warriors, each equipped in a strange, human-sized power armor he had never seen before and wielding heavy-looking lascannons and swords, stood at the entrance. Four had surrounded him without him realizing it, three with lascannons trained upon him. The fourth held a sword to his neck.
As one, the rest of the warriors raised their own lascannons and opened fire on the approaching daemon engine. Powerful blasts of energy slammed into the mechanical monstrosity with sniper-like precision. It didn't destroy the defiler, but it caused it to fall to the ground, shrieking a strange sound of indignity. The warriors equipped with swords rushed forwards, the lascannon-wielders close behind, though the four guarding him remained.
"Surrender or die," The warrior with the blade to his throat said. Uirus could probably have moved faster and taken him out if he were human. He probably wasn't, Uirus decided, not that it really mattered one way or another. He likely couldn't move out of the way of the lascannons anyways. "One chance."
"Do whatever you want," Uirus replied, looking back to the battle as a third (fourth? Fifth?) contender joined it, rushing forwards to deal with the Defiler. The warrior with the blade seemed to not be expecting this, as they were silent for a time. Perhaps they were communicating, though Uirus suspected all vox-feeds were filled with daemonic chatter and scrap-code at this point.
"Alright," The warrior finally said. Uirus closed his eyes and waited for the deathblow to finally come.
It never did.
