this battle is AMAZING! the chapter is GREAT! the high as we got lulz mensha khaine, and that chaos captain got rekt, and the chaos forces started to die one after another.
the low as the Eagis got destroyed and Ruiz died before we got to have her have adventures, while still being awesome regardless...
the utter sink as the Ravange got cut in two, and we felt the despair, as Em did...
and the ELETION as the reinforcements arrived, not only Sly, but the Battlefleet CAlixis , with the Light of Terra. The utter incredulous high as a freaking BATTLEBARGE joined in, and the WTF as Ark Mechanicus arrived! that was a great emotional high and teh highlight of this quest so far!
I am super eager to see the conclusion you are building for it all!
[X] We will not have victory until the Lu'nasad is in our hands. Prepare for boarding. We shall take her and reclaim her.
[x] We will not have victory until the Lu'nasad is destroyed. House Scourge! Form up and follow me - we shall take the fight to her and obliterate her.
[x] We will not have victory until the Lu'nasad is destroyed. House Scourge! Form up and follow me - we shall take the fight to her and obliterate her.
Okay! Roll me a piloting+manuverving check using Ryia's stats and the Argent Scourge.
We put the ability to go 10+ VU per turn on the thing, lets fucking use it.
Also, fun fact: this next update is going to be the last before the epilogue! Since, you know...it's the final battle on the deck of the Lu'nasad for all the marbles!
I do hope no one minds if the final fight turns out to be "tine punches Karrad Vall so hard his head explodes on round one"
I'm not saying that WILL happen, but that might happen.
It's still getting ahead of ourselves, but if anyone has the money and the will to put two broken halves of a starship back together it's House Scourge. She didn't lose plasma containment or get dragged into the Warp. Everything else is fixable, as long as you aren't willing to allow "totaled" to enter your vocabulary.
I mean, out of everything we can't replace on that ship I'd rate the people highest. But yes, being able to make her spaceworthy again is not the same thing as putting everything back exactly how it was.
Considering how the Vall view point scenes seem to be implying that Vall is a daemon host or something similar one shoting the git in the first turn is probably the best outcome for any fight he's involved in.
To be fair, the issue is that Tine is an abject monster lady who makes Space Marines look like little babies. Vall may be spooky, but he's not a Primarch or a Warlord Titan.
The issue at hand is that it's very difficult to mass produce Tines, so she's inferior compared to a Space Marine, who is very easy to mass produce. Also, Warhammer 40K on the whole is a "no cute girls allowed" zone so no important characters are allowed to be cute girls.
TBH, even if this is a bit harder, it's a better outcome than the canonical run on the Craftworld, which is all about "You're not allowed to have nice things", as everything in there is tainted like crazy and you're not even allowed to use your own power because there's a bullshit "Lol you die if you leave the NPC" field that turns everything outside of your Eldar NPC's magic bubble into protoplasm.
Then you fight (Crew Number) Valls in a series of 1v1 battles at the same time because he's basically catboy Schrodinger and then he fucks off to maybe be a threat later.
"Tine Happens to him and he goes splat" is a far more fitting ending to this do-nothing mary sue villain.
TBH, even if this is a bit harder, it's a better outcome than the canonical run on the Craftworld, which is all about "You're not allowed to have nice things", as everything in there is tainted like crazy and you're not even allowed to use your own power because there's a bullshit "Lol you die if you leave the NPC" field that turns everything outside of your Eldar NPC's magic bubble into protoplasm.
Then you fight (Crew Number) Valls in a series of 1v1 battles at the same time because he's basically catboy Schrodinger and then he fucks off to maybe be a threat later.
"Tine Happens to him and he goes splat" is a far more fitting ending to this do-nothing mary sue villain.
Yeah. This is much better. Mind you, I expect that the most difficult and dangerous of all battles is ahead of us... Salvage rights.
We have:
3 different eldar factions
The Imperial Navy
The Adeptus Mechanicus
The Salamander's Space Marine Chapter
House Scourge
and The Warp Trek Federation
truly, splitting the loot in a way that won't start another war shall be our greatest and most difficult challenge yet!
*Shrug* Space Marines go where they're needed. Could be they were somewhere in range to hear a call to muster against a Chaos Fleet, and just came along to help.
"That ship's going too fast for us to dock with unless it has a freaking launch bay! Which it doesn't!"
"Yeah, well, too bad," Ryia said, gritting her teeth as she threw on the actual afterburner - her ship streaking forward towards the spear that was the Argent Scourge. To her left a vessel that was pathetically small - a mere five hundred meters, with maybe less than six hundred souls aboard - swept through a formation of corrupted Eldar fighters. They had a kind of mini-lance mounted on a pivoting sponson that could snap and aim around itself as nimbly as a Tech-Priests mechadendrite. The beams lanced out again and again and again, smiting the Darkstars, while Berrin swore.
"I'm out of ammo!"
"S'fine," Ryia said, then wove down as one of the Q'sall ships banked around a hades. The beam from her mini-lance played uselessly along the void shield of the vast heavy cruiser, and then she dropped what looked like micro-torpedoes. They detonated with heavy blasts against the shields, but didn't do enough to overload their capacitators. A moment later, several of the pintle turrets on the Hades opened up and the las-cannons punched into the shields of the Q'Sall ship. The Q'Sall built delicate, fast, and powerful...but the sheer scale difference told. The point defense guns on the Hades were on par with the main guns that the Q'sallians built for, and so, within seconds the shield expeditionary ship's shields were down and they had no armor. The disk-like frontal section of the ship ripped in half and the lower half, with the spindly nacelles, flipped around and around, punched through the Hades' shields and smashed onto her forecastle with a detonation that left a glowing red cherry.
The vox was alive with chatter - it had been a confused mess at first, but Em's voice had cut through it all and now, it was a clean, organized voxweb.
"Expeditionary force, pull back from the heavy cruisers - let the Navy work them over. We need you on anti-bomber patrol."
"Honored Astartes, we need your close guns on the carriers. Let none alive."
"Ark Mechanicus, your ship is the only that might understand the working of Lu'nasad's beam. Scry it, see if we can disable it!"
"Eldar...excuse me, wh-"
Em's voice clicked off the public nets then, and Ryia shook her head.
She had a bonkers trip to pull.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait! We can land in the belly hold, I think!" Yotta said.
"Too slow, we have to walk through the whole damn ship then," Ryia said, cutting her engines, giving herself a twirling spin, then saying: "Hold on!"
The side of the Argent Scourge swept forward. Yotta, able to do the math in her head, started to scream as she realized what was going on. Berrin gripped the sides of her turrets. Briggs sliced the tip off his cigarello, casually sticking it between his lips. The Argent Scourge was currently pulling two hundred thousand kilometers an hour, her plasma flare blazing brighter and hotter than the primay star of the Purgatiro system - and the Infamy was traveling perpendicularly with her, aiming so that the Scourge and her would have almost no relative motion to one another for the last few seconds of the approach. There, Ryia slammed the naider thrusters and sent her Fury bucking straight upwards - and the much complaining yacht berth that, a few hours before Ensign Noceda had left from, accepted the far larger, far tougher Fury with a squeal, crunch, and crash that made Yotta cover her head with her hands and whimper.
"Told ya," Ryia said.
Briggs lit his cigarello.
***
"What did you do to her!?"
"We didn't do anything - she's the one who did something to us, do you know how-"
"How!? You-"
"Be quiet, Callie!"
Ryia stepped onto the bridge right then and there, her own cigarello smoking between her lips. She looked at the trembling, furious Callie, who was standing on her tip toes to put her nose almost against Serradon's neck - despite everything, she remained the shorter one. She looked at Tine, who was kneeling beside the liter that held the naked, blanket swaddled form of Ensign Lucinder Noceda. She was asleep, breathing steadily, and covered in Eldar runes that looked as if they had been tattooed onto her body. Tine, the big goober, was petting her head gently, despite her being a lowborn sub-officer who had, about an hour ago, been a rating. Then she took in Xoti, who looked as if she was picturing throttling Serradon with her bare hands. The last member of this little drama was Desh, who was just shaking his head.
"Am I interrupting something?" Ryia asked.
"Yes," Desh said.
"Cool. It looks like we're going to be over the Lu'nasad in, eh, five minutes?" Ryia asked, puffing on her cigarello. "What's up with Noceda?"
"She has befouled an ancient ritual with her mon'keigh presence, in a way that I...I can't even begin to-"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Callie exploded, throwing her hands up. "SHUT UP! What has this fucking useless pride gotten us buy She Who Thirsts and millennia of warfare!? I think if Khaine was really OFFENDED by being housed in a human being then he WOULDN'T HAVE SHOWN UP to SAVE OUR LIVES and SAVE THE DAY! Now! I've been right about EVERY SINGLE GODS BE DAMNED PREDICTION that I have made in THIS ENTIRE UNFORTUNATE AFFAIR, so MAYBE...JUST MAYBE...BACK OFF about MY GIRLFRIEND!" She trembled, glaring up at Serradon.
Tine's eyebrows shot straight up to the edge of her bangs. Ryia couldn't help it. She put on the biggest, stupidest grin she could possibly have and started to chuckle.
"Zuh?" Noceda opened one eye. "Girlhuh?"
Xoti laughed, sheathing her knife. "So, uh, the First's ready to drop with you, Cap. So we can stick the dick in the dick and end this all. Ya know."
Ryia nodded. "Sounds good to me. Sound good to you two?"
"We have thirty minutes until the Lu'nasad cannon is ready to fire again," Desna said from her auspex pit. "We're in boarding range."
Xoti said something, then, that Ryia just had to take as it was, because the time to ask questions was passed - the vast, hideous sweep of the Craftworld swelled in the forward vistaplates, growing larger and lager by the moment as, behind it, the carriers that had been arrayed behind its vast wake were detonating one after the other after the other as the Eldar Corsairs simply parked themselves behind them and fired their pulse lances again and again and again.
"So, uh, Luz, can you get twelve feet tall and glowy again?"
"Mumbunle..."
"Guess not," Xoti beamed. "More fun for us then!"
***
Em felt the power armor lock around him. His shoulders squared as he walked down the corridor, his hand going to Lightning and Storm, adjusting his power-blades on his belt for easier draws. Beside him, Tine thumped along, holding up her maglev weapons, while Aria was strapped to her back. The sword radiated a grim confidence that Em felt faintly. It was comforting. Ryia walked to the other side of him, her own sword already in her hand, the force field around it crackling and popping.
They came to the shuttle bay of the Argent Scourge. Several Assault boats were there, with the Kriegers and the last of the Elysians there - the First looked a mixture of somber and dedicated. Even Xoti's normal smile had faded, now that she had learned that the majority of her fellow comrades had been...lost. The Eldar corsair Badb Ra and the two Farseers, as well as a few of the surviving Harlequins stood by one of the boats. Callie gave him a thin smile across the way.
The Eldar flanked the Anaris soul stone and the wraithbone altar that would, hopefully, begin the reclamation of the craftworld.
"Right now," Em said. "Below us, the Lu'nasad waits to be freed. Karrad Vall might...still win. The Lu'nasad's armor is thick. Her voice shields are incredible. Her fighters are an inexhaustible legion. Her main gun can destroy any ship in our fleet, from our mightiest battleship to the Ark Mechanicus, in a single shot. He thinks..." He started to walk along the side of the shuttle, patting the open doorway. "He thinks that he will still carry the day. That the forces of men and Eldar will fail and his Black Crusade will reign triumphant."
He growled. "Karrad Vall has taken from us friends. Family."
Xoti's hand gripped the hilt of her knife. Badb Ra growled quietly.
"Lets take our...revenge," Em said, and the response that filled the room was a furious snarl, a fierce sound that made gooseflesh rise on his skin.
They stepped into the shuttles - and of course, Ryia swung herself into the cockpit as the shuttle-bay's void doors opened. Em took hold of two restraints and Tine slid her arms around his belly, gripping him close as the shuttle screamed into the void. Eldar fighters swarmed around Lu'nasad, but before the shuttles were even away from the Scourge, three Q'sall ships darted in. Their mini-lances reached out again and again, like a finger of death. One of them lost a nacelle from the deck guns that covered the Lu'nasad, their beams seeking and questing for any weakness, but even missing a nacelle, the Q'Sall ship managed to limp away from the bulk of the craftworld. For Em, though, his focus was entirely on the Optimum Nemisis.
"So, we're going to land on the midships, cut our-" Lidda asked, her voice firm.
"No," Ryia growled.
"We're not?" Lidda blinked. "Captain?"
"No, we're not," Em said, his grin growing intense. "Hold on, First! We're going in hot."
He was remembering another meeting.
Another bridge.
Ryia thrust the throttle forward to maximum - and the forward momentum of the shuttle ratcheted to a ferocious degree. Puffs of flak and traceries of boltfire shot past them, but it was all so fast that Em didn't even feel fear. Tine's grin was feral and she unslung one arm to grab onto the hilt of Aria. Halfway to the bridge, Ryia threw the shuttle into a ferocious spin, which smashed Biggs against the wall and caused Xoti to let out a fierce "WooooooooAH!" as she clung to the ceiling restraints. "NOW we're cooking!"
***
"Sire! They're sending a hit and run after us!" Sclarius screamed as he turned from the forward vista plates of the Castle of Pain. Behind him, the boxy shuttles streaked through hate that was trying to bring them down, as if it wasn't even there. One shuttle in particular shone brighter than others, rushing straight towards their vistaplates. The Moment inclined IT WILL ALWAYS IS head towards Sclarius.
"Thank you, for your service, Sclarius. It becomes clear now."
"What?" the sorcerer asked.
As last words went...they weren't particularly auspicious.
The thrust plume of the Imperial's shuttle hit the vistaplate a full thirty seconds before the bulk of the shuttle did itself. The heat melted even the adamant glass, and caused it to explode inwards. The last spurt of thrust washed over Sclarius, bursting him into flames. He shrieked as the adamant glass, molten and bubbling, glued itself to the shuttle's rear, creating a near perfect seal as the back doors opened and three figures sprang from it, landing on the floor before the Throne of Blood.
The Moment stood from IT WILL ALWAYS IS Throne.
IT WILL ALWAYS IS looked down, across the way, at the Fated One and his women.
"VALL!" The Fated One shouted, his face twisted with fury. "Your reign of terror is over!"
He drew a crackling power sword and thrust it up at The Moment.
The Moment chuckled - a soft, human sound, behind the mask of the mask of the mask of the mask.
IT WILL ALWAYS IS reached up. Took hold of IT WILL ALWAYS IS helmet and golden plated mask. Lifted it.
Zephyr Scourge smiled down at their father - their long dark hair tumbling around a face made more winsome and fey by age than it had any right to be. They chuckled. "Who else did you expect?"
***
Em gaped, his sword almost dropping. Then he shook his head. "This is a trick. A bad-"
"No. It's not a trick. I am Zephyr," the figure in power armor walked down the stairs. Beside him, Tine had her hand on her mouth, her eyes wide, her breath soft as she hyperventilated. "Through the Warp...time and space flow as the will demands. Not by your understanding. There is a flowering, in my future. Where divinity itself is laid before me and I...grasp it, Father. That moment brings me here."
"No..." Em whispered.
"It can't be," Tine whispered.
***
"It can't?" June Sun Lee Ma'ko asked Tine, her tattooed face, emblazoned with the symbols of Chaos undivided, her eyes transformed from their old brown to a black on black with flaming irises. Horns grew from her forehead, curling back, completing the corruption. "Oh, but mother it is. It is! It will be! It always is! This moment, bends back upon itself - I am here, now, me! Karrad Vall! The Faceless Lord. Because I don't have a face. I have many!"
She spread her arms as Ryia stepped forward.
"That's impossible," she growled.
***
"Impossible?" Ryia asked herself, cocking her head as she licked her lips. She walked back and forth, prowling before the Throne of Blood she had sat upon for centuries. "You know as well as I do, you stupid bitch, that the Warp is what will - not what is, not what once was. I come back to this moment - the Moment I was made. Did you ever wonder why Purgatorio? S...Seriously, did you buy the knife ear's bullshit about a failed webway point, a proper ritual site?" She spat. "I came here because for me to be here, HE has to DIE!" She pointed at Em with her finger.
Ryia stepped between Em and the other her. The worst thing was...under the mask, ignoring the power armor?
She looked the same.
Older, yes. But...the same.
"You'll have to kill me first."
***
"That leads to me," June said, her forked tongue sliding from her lips.
"I won't let that happen! I'll do anything to stop it!" Tine said, stepping forward.
***
"Thus...into the universe steps Karrad Vall!" Zeph said, spreading their arms, their eyes turning a pale gold, flaring with an inner light. "Glorious and divine! Ruling the galaxy forever. This Moment IS what WILL be!" Their face crackled, as if Em was looking at him through static. In his place was Junie, her body corrupted beyond imagining, her eyes like black pits. "What will ALWAYS be!" Junie buzzed, crackled. In her place was...Ryia...unchanged, save for the weight of age and a wild madness in her eyes.
"It is!"
Tine shook her head, slowly. "No..." she said, stepping away from Em, glaring up at the Faceless Lord - who flickered, ephemerally, from face to face to face, from possible failure to possible failure. The possibilities were flowering outwards, Em could see them - between faces, Karrad Vall looked instead...like Captain Sly, leering and manic...like young Noceda, grown mature and deadly and dark-eyed...like Junie...lie Zeph...like Ryia...like Em himself. Time itself was stretching and rebounding, all based on what happened here, right now, in this room. "You're some knot of future possibility that thinks that just because it got spat into the past, it gets to act as if everything will work out." She growled. "But the opposite is true! You're not our futures. You're just a bad dream!"
She grabbed onto her sword, drawing it with a flourish.
"And I think it's time we all wake up," she growled.
Vall flashed. Tine looked at her own features, turned pinkish, with lips that split and opened, revealing two writhing tognues, before they withdrew. Her own voice, made musical and tempting.
"You will cry such tears...when I bind your soul to my armor and make you watch as I become infinity."
The world cracked like a splitting mirror. Tine blinked - and when her eyes cleared, Junie, Zeph and Ryia stood side by side, each in their corrupted forms.
"Come, mother," Junie crooned. "Lets dance."
Zeph sprinted forward past Junie as she whipped out a sleek, elegantly carved plasma rifle. A globe of fury shot forth as Tine flung herself to the side, rolling and coming to her feet as the blasts of plasma slammed into the ground again and again, splashing up waves of molten metal as Junie laughed, as if this was some kind of game for her, her black-pit eyes glittering. Tine came to her feet, running hard to the left, jinking furiously to avoid the blasts - springing up stairs five at a time as her power armor thundered her forward.
At the same moment, Zeph sprang off the stairs, and held in their hand...
Lightning and Lightning met - crackling and buzzing as Em used every iota of his skill to prevent the devestatingly fast attack from splitting him open from shoulder to hip. Energy crackled aroun the two identical power swords, while Em skidded backwards, and his child smirked across the crossed blades at him.
"You taught me - before you abandoned me," Zeph purred. Em shoved them backwards, thrusting the tip of his blade at their chest. Zeph twisted aside, parrying and flicking Em's guard wide open. They swept their blade in a glittering, crackling arc, and the only thing that saved Em from getting decapitated was leaping backwards. He'd never seen a swordsman this fast, this skilled.
Tine finished her sprint.
"You are NOT MY SISTER!" she shouted, flinging herself up into the air, Aria in her hands. She brought her blade swinging down and "Ryia" Lifted her arm and a wave of telekinetic energy exploded outwards, shimmering and bubbling and crackling around the older seeming woman. Her eyes flared blue, flickering with flames as the stone floor under her crumbled, cracked, then exploded downward into a crater as the force of Tine's blow transmitted through the impact, sending her shuddering down to one knee. Tine stood panting above "Ryia." Her voice was furious. "My sister would never become a low creature like you!"
"I'm more powerful than that stupid cow ever was!" "Ryia" said, her hands clenching. She lifted a fist.
Three glowing telekinetic fists appeared in the air. Each was the size of a small boulder, and each caused the air around them to buzz and hum with energy.
Ryia saw the movement and threw herself aside. The fist above her smashed into the ground with a roaring CRASH!
Tine saw the movement and stepped backwards. The first above her smashed down - and caught her between floor and fury. She felt something snap inside of her. She cried out, blood bursting from her lips.
Em saw the movement and pirouetted, his sword practice meaning that the impact only smashed into his side, sending him stumbling. He fell to a knee. Zeph lifted their sword.
Em hesitated.
His child stood above him.
Flickered. His wife stood above him.
Flickered.
In that flicker, Em forced himself to act. He thrust and the tip of his power sword found a weak point in the side of Zeph's armor, piercing them through and through. Zeph froze, their eyes widening, the sword slowly sliding from their fingers. Em dropped Lightning and caught his child as they fell.
"N-No...not...not...no...I'm...not..."
Ryia's eyes darted from figure to figure. Junie was putting her hand to her chest. Blood flowed between her fingers, at the same point that Zeph had been stabbed. Her eyes swept over, she saw the future echo of herself. She looked untouched. The distance in time, in possibility space, kept her alive, standing above tine, manifesting a telekinetic sword, which shimmered, crackled.
Ryia sprinted forward.
Her sword was in her hand. Tine rolled onto her back, coughing up blood.
Ryia sprang over her sister.
She saw her own eyes - and the blue flame within them.
Ryia swung.
Her own head tumbled - and Karrad Vall fell backwards.
Em leaned down, whispering softly. "Zeph..." his voice was soft, so soft. "It...won't happen. I promise."
"P...Promise?" Zeph whispered. Their eyes started to close. Their skin turned gray...flaking...crumbling.
"I promise," Em breathed.
"I'm...sorry."
The moment was passed.
Em found that he held nothing but an empty suit of armor.
"Zeph" charges his father with BANE, the daemon sword. they hits, Em Parries, Em Counters, He parries, Zeph counters BACK, MISSES! JESUS.
"Junie" rolls into some cover and opens up with an ancient plasma rifle. She gets 39, which is 2 hits with a semi-auto burst, aimed both at Tine, who gets a 26: 2 DOS, dodging both!
Tine charges straight at "Ryia" and gets a 15 to hit! She fails to dodge even WITH a fate point. She does 57 damage, reduced to 42 by toughness, bringing her down to -2, doing 1 level of fatigue that "Ryia" ignores.
"Ryia" uses Storm of Force. She gets a 51, meaning that she hits all three of them with 2d10+20 impact damage, which Em and Tine cannot evade, but Ryia can. Ryia does so with an FP (5/6), but Em takes 22 damage to the chest and Tine takes 35. Tine drops that to 20, then 17, taking her from 10 wounds to -7. Em, meanwhile, takes 13, dropped to 10, bringing him to 9 wounds.
2 of Tine's ribs break with a crack. She takes 1 fatigue and if she acts, she has a 20% chance of dying.
Em attacks "Zeph" with lightning attack: Hit! miss, hit! "Zeph" uses their SECOND reaction to parry the first, COUNTERS, but EM parries THAT, and the THIRD hit strikes - hitting his chest! 13 damage, pen 5! Armor reduces it to 11, then toughness to 6. He brings "Zeph" down to -8 (they share a health pool.) "Zeph" must make an immediate toughness test or die. He rolls a 55, passes with an FP.
Ryia charges herself...GETS A HIT TO THE HEAD! Herself fails to dodge...re-rolls with an FP...FAILS TO DODGE AGAIN! 17 damage! She ignores her armor, but unnatural toughness drops the damage to 5...which is enough to decapitate Karrad Vall and put an end to their madness.
Author's Note: There's going to be an epilogue, but it's super long so I'm splitting it off into its own update.
"Too slow, we have to walk through the whole damn ship then," Ryia said, cutting her engines, giving herself a twirling spin, then saying: "Hold on!"
The side of the Argent Scourge swept forward. Yotta, able to do the math in her head, started to scream as she realized what was going on. Berrin gripped the sides of her turrets. Briggs sliced the tip off his cigarello, casually sticking it between his lips. The Argent Scourge was currently pulling two hundred thousand kilometers an hour, her plasma flare blazing brighter and hotter than the primay star of the Purgatiro system - and the Infamy was traveling perpendicularly with her, aiming so that the Scourge and her would have almost no relative motion to one another for the last few seconds of the approach. There, Ryia slammed the naider thrusters and sent her Fury bucking straight upwards - and the much complaining yacht berth that, a few hours before Ensign Noceda had left from, accepted the far larger, far tougher Fury with a squeal, crunch, and crash that made Yotta cover her head with her hands and whimper.
"So, we're going to land on the midships, cut our-" Lidda asked, her voice firm.
"No," Ryia growled.
"We're not?" Lidda blinked. "Captain?"
"No, we're not," Em said, his grin growing intense. "Hold on, First! We're going in hot."
He was remembering another meeting.
Another bridge.
Ryia thrust the throttle forward to maximum - and the forward momentum of the shuttle ratcheted to a ferocious degree. Puffs of flak and traceries of boltfire shot past them, but it was all so fast that Em didn't even feel fear. Tine's grin was feral and she unslung one arm to grab onto the hilt of Aria. Halfway to the bridge, Ryia threw the shuttle into a ferocious spin, which smashed Biggs against the wall and caused Xoti to let out a fierce "WooooooooAH!" as she clung to the ceiling restraints. "NOW we're cooking!"
"VALL!" The Fated One shouted, his face twisted with fury. "Your reign of terror is over!"
He drew a crackling power sword and thrust it up at The Moment.
The Moment chuckled - a soft, human sound, behind the mask of the mask of the mask of the mask.
IT WILL ALWAYS IS reached up. Took hold of IT WILL ALWAYS IS helmet and golden plated mask. Lifted it.
Zephyr Scourge smiled down at their father - their long dark hair tumbling around a face made more winsome and fey by age than it had any right to be. They chuckled. "Who else did you expect?"
"It can't?" June Sun Lee Ma'ko asked Tine, her tattooed face, emblazoned with the symbols of Chaos undivided, her eyes transformed from their old brown to a black on black with flaming irises. Horns grew from her forehead, curling back, completing the corruption. "Oh, but mother it is. It is! It will be! It always is! This moment, bends back upon itself - I am here, now, me! Karrad Vall! The Faceless Lord. Because I don't have a face. I have many!"
"Impossible?" Ryia asked herself, cocking her head as she licked her lips. She walked back and forth, prowling before the Throne of Blood she had sat upon for centuries. "You know as well as I do, you stupid bitch, that the Warp is what will - not what is, not what once was. I come back to this moment - the Moment I was made. Did you ever wonder why Purgatorio? S...Seriously, did you buy the knife ear's bullshit about a failed webway point, a proper ritual site?" She spat. "I came here because for me to be here, HE has to DIE!" She pointed at Em with her finger.
Ryia stepped between Em and the other her. The worst thing was...under the mask, ignoring the power armor?
Tine shook her head, slowly. "No..." she said, stepping away from Em, glaring up at the Faceless Lord - who flickered, ephemerally, from face to face to face, from possible failure to possible failure. The possibilities were flowering outwards, Em could see them - between faces, Karrad Vall looked instead...like Captain Sly, leering and manic...like young Noceda, grown mature and deadly and dark-eyed...like Junie...lie Zeph...like Ryia...like Em himself. Time itself was stretching and rebounding, all based on what happened here, right now, in this room. "You're some knot of future possibility that thinks that just because it got spat into the past, it gets to act as if everything will work out." She growled. "But the opposite is true! You're not our futures. You're just a bad dream!"
She grabbed onto her sword, drawing it with a flourish.
"And I think it's time we all wake up," she growled.
"You are NOT MY SISTER!" she shouted, flinging herself up into the air, Aria in her hands. She brought her blade swinging down and "Ryia" Lifted her arm and a wave of telekinetic energy exploded outwards, shimmering and bubbling and crackling around the older seeming woman. Her eyes flared blue, flickering with flames as the stone floor under her crumbled, cracked, then exploded downward into a crater as the force of Tine's blow transmitted through the impact, sending her shuddering down to one knee.
...am I actually gonna cry for karrad fuckin vall rn
WHAT is HAPPENING
This was an awesome finale, DC. Tine did make that a LOT easier than it would've been elsewise, but we didn't build a murderbeast of a wife because we didn't want to do murders.
Well, I suppose that explains why the Eldar Far Seers couldn't figure who to kill and who to keep alive.
Timey Wimey Wibly Wobbly stuff.
On the other hand, it doesn't really say much good stuff about the whole family here that there are so many scenarios that result in them falling to Chaos and burning down an entire quadrant. One would expect they'd be able to comfort one another even if one of them dies.
On the other hand, it doesn't really say much good stuff about the whole family here that there are so many scenarios that result in them falling to Chaos and burning down an entire quadrant. One would expect they'd be able to comfort one another even if one of them dies.
